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mortallydeepestobservation · 14 days ago

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Perfect plan -1-

Pairing: Namjoon x f.reader Genre: friends to lovers, friends with benefits? (But the benefit is a baby); crack, a smidge of angst, smut, fluff, happy ending. Rating: explicit. Minors do not interact. Warnings: mentions of cheating and ‘being the other woman’ (past relationship), reader works at a hospital, Namjoon is just an absolute sweetheart in this, cursing, multiple sex scenes, dirty talking, oral sex (f. receiving), fingering, just a smidge of size kink, unprotected sex, creampie, intensive orgasms, Namjoon tells you to “Relax, woman” before eating you out, lovemaking, and a quick scene of pregananat sex. Word count: somewhere around 15k. Author's note: You know there is this idea travelling around that writers write what they need to hear? Apparently, I need Namjoon to tell me it’s okay if I don’t have it all figured out. Thank you @callmenoona25 for all your help once again. You’re the sweetest! ✨ ps. English not first language. Brain dumb sometimes. If you’re still reading this, leave a comment, drop a like, they’re literally the joy of my existence. part 2: here

Confetti was not just decoration; it was a phenomenon. It had a very special way of never truly being vacuumed up. No matter how many times you tried, the colorful bits- pink, blue and gold- always seem to wiggle away and hide comfortably into the far corners of the room as if they had a mind of their own. They would stay there, nestled in the shadows, only to flutter up again whenever you tried to sweep them away.

After the third failed attempt, you let out a frustrated sigh and abandoned the vacuum cleaner. You’d leave that task for the sober version of you tomorrow.

Instead, you started gathering the scattered napkins from the dining table, folding them mindlessly. Your gaze wandered to the half-burned candles that still sat on the table, the melted wax serving as a quiet witness to your little gathering.

29.

“Happy Birthday!” – those words never felt heavier, laden with unfulfilled dreams and the weight of another year gone by without much to show for it. Even the celebration, once full of light and laugher, had left behind just another mess to clean up. The year was over and you were left with the quiet aftermath.

You had always imagined this age differently, or at least, that’s what you told yourself every year. By now, you thought you’d have things figured out. You thought there’d be someone by your side, someone to share the joy of the life you had built.

Little baby prints all over the house. Raising a child, teaching them how to blow out birthday candles and clean up the mess afterwards.

You had always imagined being a mother by now. Maybe that’s what hurt the most- how the years seemed to slip by without any sign of the family you’ve dreamed of. The house full of laughter, a partner to help you navigate the messes and milestones.

But instead, you found yourself alone. Alone in a big beautiful house, holding a top position as an administrator at a private hospital. But alone.

You threw away the last of the napkins and pushed your way through the clutter on the dining table, your mind still heavy with the weight of the thought that had followed your around since the last of the guests had left. The candles sat atop the garbage pile when you walked towards the kitchen.

The house felt quieter now, almost too quiet, as if it was holding its breath since the celebration had ended.

When you entered the kitchen, the hum of the dishwasher broke the silence. You hadn’t expected to find anyone still here, but here he was- Namjoon, your friend, still loading dishes with the same quiet focus he’d had all evening.

You two met back in your last year at college, when you were both striving to become more than just another student. You butted heads a few times, competing for the opening position of Teacher Assistant, only for the teacher to completely compromise the project by offering the job to his very own son.

Either way, you walked away with a new friend. (The enemy of my enemy?) You were drawn to his passion, his drive, and his unwavering belief in himself. Turned out the two of you also made a hell of a team when it came to it, because you managed to get the job done, despite the professor’s questionable decisions. You’d stayed late countless nights in the library, hashing out ideas, studying together, even venting your frustration in between textbooks. Namjoon had the uncanny ability to make even the most tedious projects feel worthwhile, and you couldn’t help but admire the way he could turn anything into an opportunity for growth. It was contagious, his unwavering belief that everything- every setback, every challenge, was just another chance to prove yourself.

You’d both laughed about it afterwards, the way the professor’s son had been handed the job without so much as a second though, while you and Namjoon had essentially worked the entire course in the shadows. But it didn’t matter in the end. What you had created, together, was far more valuable than the title ever could’ve given you.

The sound of glassware clinking together was oddly soothing, and for a moment you just watched him.

He was dressed in a casual cream turtleneck that beautifully highlighted his broad chest, paired with olive-green slacks. The golden framed glasses perched on his nose adding a little touch of elegance, perfectly tying the outfit together. He seemed relaxed, at large within the confines of your apartment.

“Still here?”

Namjoon glanced over his shoulder, flashing you a tired but warm smile, “You thought I’d leave you to clean all this on your own?”

You lean slightly against the counter, suddenly feeling restricted by the tight dress you wore, watching him work. It was such a kind gesture, but something about it made you feel even more isolated.

“I could’ve handled it,”

“I know you could,” he said, turning back to the sink, “But I wanted to help.”

There was something about him that made you feel seen, even in moments like these, when you didn’t want to be. Almost like he wasn’t just cleaning up your party mess; he was cleaning your life in some way too. The laughter had faded hours ago, and now it was just the two of you- no more distractions, no more Taehyung and Jungkook cracking jokes, no more celebrating. Just the quiet hum of the dishwasher and the soft clink of plates. Just still life.

You sigh and pull out a chair to sit down at the small breakfast nook “I just feel like… I’m stuck, you know?”

The sparkling champagne made you tongue loose. Feeling vulnerable and raw, you quietly searched his eyes. “Like, I thought by now I’d have it all figured out- where I’m supposed to be, what I’m supposed to be doing. I just thought I’d have more… more something.”

Namjoon set the plate down with a soft clink and turned towards you, his gaze steady but gentle. He wiped his hands on a dish towel, and for the first time that evening, he let the silence hang between you, as if giving you space to let the words settle before responding.

“You know,” he began, his voice low, “I think everyone feels that way sometimes. That sense of… not being where you thought you’d be. But I also think you’re more than what you’re giving yourself credit for.” He paused, then leaned against the counter, meeting your eyes in that way he always did- like he was truly seeing you, not just the person in front of him, but the one beneath the surface.

You shrugged, a half-smile pulling at the corners of your lips, but it didn’t reach your eyes. “I just-” You sighed. “I need to stop drinking.”

Namjoon studied you for a moment, his eyes softening as if weighing your words. He didn’t rush to fill the silence with advice or reassurances. Instead, he simply watched, letting the moment hang in the air, even as it thickened with unspoken words.

Finally, after a small eternity, he spoke.

“It’s okay not to have it all figured out.” He paused for a moment “Life isn’t a straight line. I know you like to plan every little detail of it, but sometimes, it’s just not how it works out. You can’t just arrive somewhere and expect it to be perfect.”

You wanted to laugh, to dismiss his words as is you didn’t know already. But something in the way he said it made it feel real. Like he wasn’t just offering empty comfort, but speaking form a place of understanding.

“And maybe you’re not where you thought you’d be. But that doesn’t mean you’re lost.” Namjoon set the tea towel down with quiet precision, then met your gaze once more, his smile faint but steady. “I think... maybe we’re all just figuring it out as we go. Some of us more than others.”

You wanted to say something, wanted to argue, but the weight of his words settled over you, a gentle blanket you didn’t know you needed.

“C’mon, you’re tired. Let’s get you to bed.” The softness of his tone caught you off guard, tugging at something inside of you. His words didn’t come with expectations, didn’t demand anything from you.

You opened your mouth to respond, but nothing came out. Instead, you simply nodded, feeling a heaviness settle over you that was both familiar and strange. You stood up slowly, legs still a little unsteady from the alcohol, and made your way to the bedroom, Namjoon following quietly behind you.

You didn’t speak as you reached the doorway. There was nothing to say, not really. So instead, you turned around and wrapped yourself around his body, pulling him in a tight hug.

“Thank you Joonie.”

Namjoon chuckled, squeezing you tightly before whispering “Anytime love.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The fluorescent lights of the 7/11 hummed overhead, as you stood in the middle of an aisle, heart melting into a puddle as you cooed over a chubby-cheeked baby sprawled across a shopping card. All bundled up in a puppy themed onesie, the little one giggled as he reached for a colorful toy, and you couldn’t help but mimic his joyous sounds.

You watched with admiration as the mother, a confident woman in yoga pants (and a vomit-stained shirt), gently tickled the baby’s round face, eliciting a fit of giggles.

Namjoon, as usual, was talking as he dropped something into your shopping cart, not that you were paying him any attention. Not when the baby’s eyes caught your gaze, his smile widening as he cooed at you.

“God Joon, I want one too.”

Namjoon, ever the pragmatist, didn’t miss a beat. “Well, I can get you one, they’re on sale.”

His voice was light, casual, the way he spoke when he didn’t take your thoughts too seriously. You blinked, caught off guard by the sudden shift in conversation.

“What are you talking about?”

“The crackers?” he said, glancing at you, his brow furrowed in confusion as he held a box of crackers in his hand, examining the label as though the fine print held some secret to the universe. “What are you talking about?”

You stared at him for a second, still caught up in the midst of your daydream, before laughing softly.

“The baby, Namjoon.”

“Ah-” he paused, looking back at the baby boy. “I don’t think they sell those here,” he chuckled, throwing a sly glance your way. “But if you want, I can distract the mother, and you make a run for the exit with the baby.”

You laughed at the absurdity of it, shooting him a playful glare, knowing where his teasing would lead.

“Don’t say that! You’ll get us kicked out." You scold with a playful grin.

Namjoon just shrugged, as if the thought didn’t bother him, the teasing glint in his eyes only making you smile wider. You pushed your cart towards the checkout line, the weight of it heavier now.

It’s been a few weeks since you had that moment of weakness, but the ache still lingered, quietly tucked away in the mundane day-to-day distractions. You’d buried the feelings under careful planning, an extra dose of work, and fleeting nights out with friends. But the longing never quite went away.

Instead, it had grown far beyond a mere ‘baby fever’. It was a full-blown malady by now.

Namjoon, however, was a constant, a comforting presence amidst the chaos of your thoughts. And tonight, it was no different, even in the middle of a basic errand run to 7/11. He was there, filling the space with his usual teasing and lighthearted energy, offering a sense of normalcy you didn’t even realize you missed.

“But seriously, I think you’d make a wonderful mother.” Behind you, Namjoon continued to toss items into the cart- bags of chips, cans of soda, candy bars- anything within his reach as he dropped one of the biggest compliments you’ve gotten in the past few years.

It hit you like a soft wave, unexpected, yet somehow exactly what you needed to hear. You paused, a bag of cereal halfway to your cart, processing his words. The motions of the store continued around you- people chatting, the hum of a checkout line in the distance, the baby’s giggles- but for a minute, they all slowed, and it was just the two of you in that fluorescent-lit aisle.

You turn slightly, trying to keep the heat from rising to your cheeks “You think so?”

Namjoon, oblivious to the shift in your mood, continued picking through the shelves, tossing things in your cart with an almost absentminded rhythm “I do.” He said, his voice easy and sincere as it always was with you

“You’re nurturing, you know? And patient. You make people feel safe, like they can just… be themselves around you.” He smiled “And you’re the mother of the friend group.”

He was focused on a big bottle of orange juice when he tacked on “You’d be amazing at it.”

The way he spoke made it sound so simple. But to you, it felt anything but simple. A rush of conflict swirled in your mind.

“Too bad my dating life is so stale,” you grumble, snapping him out of his obsession.

Your past experiences hadn’t been exactly pleasant. From really weird alpha-sigma-dudes trying to convince you that your worth as a woman has declined since you passed the age of 25, to insecure men that felt intimidated by your position in the working field, to just bad timing in general- it was all just… complicated.

The cherry on top was your last relationship. You felt the bitterness creep back into your chest as you thought about him- the doctor. The one who had lied to you for over two years. Even now, the memories felt like a stab straight to your ribs. Like a snake squeezing your heart into nothingness. You gave him everything, trusted him with your heart, only to have it shattered in the cruelest way. You could still remember the disbelief in your voice when you had to confront him.

“God, how did I miss that?” You murmured underneath your breath, your grip tightening around the cart handle.

Namjoon, who had been rifling through the cart, didn’t seem to notice the dark cloud that settled over you.

“Stale? Nah, you’re daring life’s just on pause.” He said, completely unaware of how much his words stung.

“The only man I wanted to start a family with turned out to be married!” You snap. The words slipped out before you could stop them, sharp and bitter. You could feel the heat rise to your chest as the frustration spilled over, the old wound reopening with an ache. Namjoon froze mid-motion, his hand still hovering over a bag of something. The silence that followed was heavy, and you immediately regretted it.

But Namjoon, ever the perceptive one, quickly managed to draw you back in.

“That dick?” he huffed “Its better you found out early on. I can’t bear the idea of you having asshole-babies.”

You couldn’t help but laugh at Namjoon’s lighthearted response, despite the lasting burn. The absurdity of ‘asshole-babies’, paired with the sincerity of his tone, almost made the bitterness dissolve. The tension in your chest shifting slightly.

He dropped the bag back into your cart and met your eyes. “You deserve someone who treats you right, who sees all the amazing things you are. You don’t need to settle for anything less.”

You nodded slowly, the weight of his words sinking in. It was comforting to hear him speak like that, as if he believed in you more than you sometimes believed in yourself.

“Thank you love,” you said softly, your smile genuine but still fragile.

He flashed a grin, nudging you with his elbow as he walked along you towards the checkout.

“Now, what the fuck did you buy? Why are there three bottles of ketchup here?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Okay! I have decided.” You announce suddenly, drawing the attention of everyone at the small table to you. The murmur of laughter and clicking of glasses fades into the background, and a bubble of anticipation surrounds your little booth.

The bar is buzzing with life; particularly crowded for a Thursday evening, yet, even among the crowded mess, Jungkook still somehow managed to secure a secluded little nook for your rag-tag group of four.

You glanced around the dimly lit room, where the flickering neon lights casted playful shadows along the walls- a slight twinge of courage envelops you as the warmth of the alcohol teases your senses, coloring your cheeks bright red.

Namjoon’s brow rises, and he takes a contemplative sip from his tall glass of beer, a thoughtful expression dancing across his face. In front of you, Jungkook and Aera are deep into their third glass, laughing at some inside joke only cringey couples would make, oblivious to the rising tension radiating from your suddenly bold proclamation.

“Decided?” Namjoon echoed, setting his glass down, the faintest hint of amusement tugging at the corner of his lips as he watches you.

Aera and Jungkook both turn their attention to you as well. Jungkook leaned back in his seat, a mischievous glint in his eyes, while Aera wiped her lips with the back of her hand, ready for whatever random revelation you were about to drop.

“I’m going to have a baby by myself!”

The words hung in the air for a long moment, as though the entire bar had suddenly gone still. Your proclamation floating quietly through the air before crashing and tumbling on the small table between you.

Namjoon blinked, his beer halfway to his mouth, while Aera and Jungkook both froze mid-laugh, their faces a reflection of disbelief and curiosity.

“What?” Jungkook was the first to speak, his voice completely drowning in confusion.

“I already set up a college saving’s account, and I got a head start on the nursery.” You reached for a napkin, just so your fingers have something to do. “The contractor is coming over this weekend to look at the room.” You looked up to gauge their reaction, but when no one spoke, you continued “I mean, I don’t even use the at-home office. It’s perfect.”

Leaning back into the seat, you plant your elbows on the table, the rough surface grounding you as the weight of your declaration settles heavy in the air.

“Wait, wait,” Aera says after regaining her composure, her eyes slightly narrowing with skepticism. “You’re seriously saying you want to become a single parent? Just like that?”

“She’s serious.” Namjoon cuts in, setting his now-empty beer glass down on the table.

He nursed that drink for the past hours only to finish it with one long sip?

“Trust me, this isn’t a rushed decision. She’s been toying with the idea for months.” He mumbled, leaning back into the booth.

“Yeah,” you nod confidently “The kindergarten right down the block from me has an afternoon group. So, after the baby turns three, I can start working again. And until then I should live comfortably with my savings.”

“Noona you can’t!” Jungkook looks terrorized by the thought, the alcohol just as evident on his face as it was on yours. “So what? You’ll just start fucking every Dick, Harry and Joe in town until you get knocked up?”

Under normal circumstances, the youngling would be much more careful with his words around you, but now, with the buzz going on in his head, his desperation seemed to have taken over. His eyes quickly shifting from you to his Hyung, as if pleading Namjoon to back him up.

The atmosphere shifts as Jungkook's words slice through your carefully crafted confidence. Laughter begins to bubble back to life around you, but your own heart has started to race, confusion and boldness swirling together like a cocktail in your stomach. You stare at Jungkook.

“You know that’s not how it works.” You reply, your tone steadier than you feel. An involuntary smile creeps back onto your lips. “It’s not that simple, and I’m not looking for casual hookups. God only knows what messed up genetics those dudes have. And I run a risk of an STD.” You shake your head. “No Kookie, I have a plan.”

You take a deep breath, allowing the faint buzz of the bar to seep into your consciousness again, grounding you while your amusement at Jungkook’s pure shock begins to surface again.

“Besides, the plan isn’t just a plan; it’s a well-thought-out strategy.” You try to encourage him, but he just blinks up at you like a hurt little puppy. “I scheduled an appointment at a fertility clinic.”

“And if the plan fails? What if you’re not ready for the challenges of parenting? It’s not just about the nursery or the savings. Have you thought about the reality of it?”

Deep down, you know that Aera just wants to help, however, her questions rub you slightly the wrong way.

“Of course I have!” You assert, a tad defensively but with sincerity woven into your voice. “I’ve done my research, Aera. What it takes. What I need. There are all sorts of resources out there for single parents. It’s not like I’ll be doing this entirely alone. I have you guys, and I know I can reach out to others too if it gets too tough.”

Jungkook ran an exasperated hand down his face, grasping at straws as he mumbled, “What about your love life? This is such a huge commitment, and you’re just going to push that aside for... A child?”

You appreciate the concern, but something in you quakes at the thought of your future being dictated solely by the prospect of a romantic relationship.

“My love life is already complicated. I don’t want to put my dreams on hold for a partner that might not even come.”

“Namjoon! Say something!” Jungkook pleaded, but the gentle giant just kept on silently studying you.

“Congratulations.” Was the only thing that left his lips after a long moment, making you beam up at him as if you’d just received a gold start on a test.

“See?” you said, your smile widening as you glanced back and forth between them. “Namjoon gets it! Life’s too short to wait around for the perfect moment!”

Aera finally shook her head, a soft smile gracing her lips despite the concern in her eyes. “It’s just, we can’t help but worry for you. What if it’s harder than you think? What if you regret this choice down the line?”

You reach for her hand, squeezing it gently. “That’s the thing Aera. I’m not doing this on a whim. I’ve mapped it out. I’m prepared. I believe I can give my child the love and support they need.” You smile, glancing between Jungkook and Namjoon.

“Fine.” Jungkook relented, leaning back in his seat with a resigned sigh, his hands raised in mock surrender. “I guess if you’re really set on this… just promise you won’t forget about me when you become Super Mom or something.”

Aera rolled her eyes playfully, yet her smile remained as she leaned against his chest “As if you’d let her forget. You’d probably be the most dramatic babysitter ever.”

A ripple of laughter echoed among the three of you, the tension momentarily lifting, only Namjoon just kept on staring at the bottom of his empty beer glass.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jungkook took no mercy on Namjoon as they walked down the street. After making sure you and Aera safely got an uber home, the little drunken monster unleashed.

“Hyung! You can’t let her do this!”

Namjoon gave a soft chuckle, though it didn’t reach his eyes. He was still processing everything himself; the weight of the conversation hanging heavily on him. Jungkook, who was practically bouncing on his feet with a mix of frustration and concern, shot him an incredulous look.

“You can’t just sit back and let her make such a huge decision by herself!” Jungkook insisted, his voice rising “She’s literally planning to have a baby alone, Hyung!”

“Kookie, she’s a full-grown woman.” Namjoon began slowly, rubbing a hand over his face “And she’s not doing this impulsively. She’s been thinking about it for months.” He paused, as if weighing his next words carefully “She’s not the kind of person to just… act on a whim. She has a plan. And I think, maybe, that’s what she needs right now.” He exhaled a deep breath, looking up at the street lights overhead, his mind running through the conversations he’d had with you.

Jungkook’s brows furrowed, a look of disbelief plastered on his face.

“And what about you?”

Namjoon stopped walking, his steps halting mid-stride as the question hit him like a stone wall. For a brief moment, there was nothing but the distant hum of a passing car and the quiet rustling of leaved in the evening air. He turned towards Jungkook; his eyes wide with uncertainty.

“What about me?” Namjoon asked, his voice low, the question more to himself that to Jungkook at first.

“Are we really doing this now?” Jungkook groaned “You love her. C’mon, catch up.”

Namjoon stood still, eyebrows meeting his hairline. He had always kept his feelings hidden, buried under layers of friendship and mutual understanding, the steady belief that he was just someone who needed to be there for you- no strings attached.

But now? Jungkook’s question churned him harder than he expected.

Namjoon blinked, unsure whether to laugh it off or tell him off.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Kookie.”

Jungkook didn’t let up. “Hyung, I’m serious. I see the way you look at her! The way you act around her! You’re not fooling anyone!”

“Yes, because she’s my friend!” Namjoon tried to protest, but Jungkook rolled his eyes.

“You don’t look at me like that!”

Namjoon’s chest tightened, his throat a little dry as he tried to force some clarity into his emotions.

“Kookie. You’re drunk, you need to sleep it off.”

Jungkook shook his head, as if he were trying to clear out the haze of alcohol clouding his mind. But the intensity of his words didn’t waver. “I’m not drunk enough to miss what’s right in front of me.” His voice softened a little “I’m just saying… maybe it’s time to stop pretending?”

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.” Namjoon repeated, but his voice wavered slightly, betraying him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sunday movie nights have been a staple in your relationship. Something you both held sacred since the beginning. Only under the most extreme circumstances had either of you ever canceled.

Lately, though, you seemed to call it off more often than not. Ever since you started your weekly appointments at the clinic, Namjoon noticed he was seeing less and less of you.

But tonight, you were adamant to keep the tradition alive. The opening credits of Deadpool 3 were already up on the screen, waiting for someone to press play, while Namjoon busied himself hauling all the blankets to the couch. A spread of your favorite snacks sat neatly on the coffee table. The only thing missing was... you.

In your bedroom, you sat at in the middle of your bed, the laptop balanced on your lap as you repeatedly refreshed your email inbox.

“You ready?” Namjoon called out from the living room.

“Yeah, just a sec!” You refresh again, your face lighting up when the awaited email appeared.

Namjoon watches your reaction and laughs, “Let me guess. It’s going to be more than a second now?”

“I just got the donor list. Want to help me choose?”

Namjoon’s laughter fades, replaced by a look of concern that make your heart race. He shifts from one foot to the other, trying to gauge your enthusiasm.

“Choose?” he repeats hesitantly, “Like, pick a donor?”

“Yeah,” you respond, excitement bubbling over as you quickly type away on the computer. “You’re my friend. I want your input. It feels right.”

He bites his lip, unsure of how to process this new layer to your already documented decision. “You really want me involved in this?”

“Of course! I trust you. Plus, it’s a big step. I could use a little support.” You give him a little sheepish smile, almost hiding your face behind the screen.

Namjoon nods slowly, the weight of your request settling in. “Okay… I’m here for you.” You beam up at him, quickly patting the space next to you “Just-how do we do this?” Namjoon settled down, his eyes quickly scanning the screen.

“There’s a list of profiles with backgrounds, interests and even photos. We can look through it together.” You pause, letting him read over the page.

“This guy seems interesting.” you say pointing to a profile that catches your eye “He’s into poetry, works as a dentist and seems really kind…” but your voice dies down “Ah, but his hair line is receding.”

Namjoon leans closer. “What about this smiley one?” he asks, highlighting a profile with a striking smile.

“Nah, he has a bit of an overbite.” You move the mouse away, “I want to minimize the chances of the kid needing braces.”

Namjoon chuckles, watching you scroll through the list “Oh look! A Redhead!”

“Can I be honest?” you glance up at him, smiling once you caught his gaze “I’m not really into gingers.” You whisper, earning yourself a lighthearted laugh from him. His dimples deepen, and his eyes nearly disappear with mirth.

“You’re such a stereotype.” He teases.

You finish scrolling through the profiles. Each one eliciting more critiques than compliments.

“Too many tattoos.”

“Too much facial hair.”

A crooked nose, a weird eye color, a weird mole. Too short; too tall. That one yodels for fun. You could go on~

After a few more profiles you reached the end. “Ugh, none of these guys are right. It’s like a never-ending list of disappointments.” You groan, closing the laptop and falling back on the mattress.

Namjoon sighs dramatically, taking the laptop from your grasp and setting it on the bedside table, leaning back on the bed. “Maybe you should add a ‘no weirdo’s filter’.”

“Seriously! What’s wrong with some of these guys?” you huff, crossing your arms over your chest.

This was already the third trial, and you still hadn’t chosen a single profile. Deep down, you knew the things you got so fixated on were merely superficial flaws, but they felt monumental when it came to deciding your future. Even with your careful planning, you couldn’t shake the feeling that you were running an undeniable risk.

That is not even considering the fact that the insemination might not even work in the first place. But that only added more chances and statistics to your plan, making your head spin. So, you consciously avoided that rabbit hole.

Namjoon chuckles softly, rolling on his side to face you. For a moment he said nothing, quietly studying your frustration.

“Listen,” he finally broke the silence, his eyes reflecting a gentle resignation “I know you don’t need it; but you have my full support. Whatever- or whoever- you pick.” His smile was so sincere that it made your heart skip over a beat, and in that moment, a new, bold idea took root in your mind.

You allowed yourself a moment to admire your friend- his perfectly symmetric face, kind eyes and adorable dimples. Your gaze drifted lower, taking in his chiseled jawline, elegant neck and the contours of his collarbones, all perfectly complementing his broad shoulders and newly toned muscles.

Suddenly, that unconventional idea that popped in your mind began to feel more enticing. After all, you knew him- the little quirks, the strengths, the pet peeves. You’d met his parents’ countless times. It could actually work out. And you were confident enough in your relationship to give it a shot.

You let out a soft sigh, your heart racing as you considered the next step in your journey. Turning to face him, you bit your lip as you hesitate before speaking.

“Namjoon… can I ask you something?”

“Of course.” He propped himself up on one elbow, concern flickering across his face.

You took a deep breath, gathering your ideas. “I’ve been thinking about this process, and-” You swallowed hard “It’s a big commitment. I want to make sure everything it perfect, you know?”

He is so understanding, watching you quietly and nodding along to your ramblings.

“So, I was wondering if you’d be willing to get tested.” You rushed the words out, your gaze darting to the ceiling, avoiding his eyes.

Namjoon’s brows furrowed in confusion “Get tested? Like... for what?”

You swallowed again, trying to keep your voice steady. “For compatibility. I’d like to know the donor’s genetics, and it would really help to have your input on it. It you’re comfortable, of course.”

A heavy silence filled the room. You could feel the tension in the air as Namjoon processed your request, your heart racing louder with each passing second of his contemplative silence.

“Wait.” He finally snapped, his voice low and measured “You want me to get tested as a potential donor?”

Your palms felt clammy as you looked back at him, offering him a shy nod “Yes?”

“That’s not what I meant-” He stopped his own idea in its tracks “Won’t it make things weird between us?”

“No! Just think about it! I know you; I know your family history. I like your face. And we don’t have to tell anyone. And you can choose how much you want to be involved in the baby’s life. Like I said, I want to be a single parent.”

Namjoon’s eyes widen as he listened to you ramble on and on about your idea. His brows furrowed deeper, knitting together as he tried to process your words. After a few long moments of constant talking, he held up a hand, stopping your frantic speech.

“Slow down,” he instructed, his voice low and measured, “Let me get this straight- you want me to consider being a sperm donor for your child?”

You nodded eagerly, stomach twisting with emotion and heart picking up in double time. “Yes! I know it’s a lot to ask, but I trust you. We’re best friends, and it would be nice to have a personal connection to the kid’s other parent.”

He turned away from you, deep in thought running a hand through his hair in agitation. “I-I don’t know.” His throat made a weird noise “This is a lot to process.”

Suddenly feeling uncertain, you bit your lip hard. “I know, I know. And it’s totally fine if you say no. We never have to speak of this again.” You shift slightly, feeling heat rise to your neck. “I just though since we’re so close…” You mumble, losing your idea for a moment, before quickly picking it up again "It's not like we'd be raising the kid together! Just, you know...biologically related. As friends."

Namjoon sighed heavily, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "Look, I need some time to think about this, okay? It's not a decision I can make lightly."

"Of course," you replied quickly, not wanting to pressure him. "Take all the time you need. I'm sorry for springing this on you out of nowhere."

He offered a small, reassuring smile. “It’s all right. I’m just surprised. That’s all. I’ll let you know once I’ve had a chance to really consider it.’

You nodded, feeling a mix of hope and anxiety swirling in your gut. “Thank you, Joonie. Just for thinking about it.”

He reached out, giving your hand a comforting squeeze “I’ll always be here for you.”

You returned the gesture, heart full of affection for your best friend. “I know, thank you.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Joon 🎍: Just got the tests back. Damn. Don’t even know what half these things are. Busy-bee🐝: If you bring them over, I’ll translate. 😊 Joon 🎍: Yeah. Omw rn. Did you have dinner yet? Busy-bee🐝: Nooo, can we please have Bibimbap? Joon 🎍: Anything you want, love.

Namjoon arrived a short while later, carrying a takeout bag that wafted delicious aromas through the kitchen. He set it down on the table with familiarity, fetching plates and utensils as you carefully looked over the medical results.

“Bibimbap, just as you ordered.” He said, grinning. He looked at you, his expression shifting to one of concern as he noticed the serious look on your face “Is everything okay?”

You glanced up from the papers, forcing a smile “Just trying to wrap my head around all of this.”

He slid into the chair across from you, pulling the take-out container and placing it in front of you. “Take a break from the serious stuff for a moment. Food first. Medicine later.”

You chuckle softly and opened the container, the colorful array of veggies and rice making your stomach growl. “You’re right. Can’t think on an empty stomach.”

As you began to eat, Namjoon began to rifle through the papers. “So, what’s this one?” He picked up a paper, squinting at the dense text. “I swear, some of these graphs look like they belong in a science-fiction novel.”

You giggled, nodding along “I know, right? Let me see… This one is about genetic markers for health risks, and this one,” you pointed to the colorful one “It’s about traits related to personality and intelligence.”

Namjoon let out a long-intrigued sound, “What does it say about me?”

You chuckle, trying to suppress a smile “Well, it’s not like one of those personality tests you find in a girly magazine. But it says our baby might have higher chances of being a visual learner, with higher openness to experiences.” You take a big bite, quietly chewing over the fact that you just called it ‘our baby’ – as in, you and Namjoon. Mashed together.

“Openness to experience? That’s code for ‘adventurous’ right? I think I prefer the term ‘spontaneous’.” Namjoon feigned offence, looking over the papers as if trying to confirm your diagnosis.

“It’s another way to say you’ll jump at any wild idea.” You tease him, mouth half-full. “But it’s a good quality! You’re creative, fun and adaptable.”

He leaned in closer, curiosity piqued “And what about intelligence? Am I a genius?”

You flipped the paper around, scanning for the relevant section. “Looks like you score high on analytical thinking and problem-solving. So, I guess, in the right context, you could definitely call yourself a genius,”

“Can I add that to my cv?” he joked, before turning serious again “But does any of this affect your choice? Does it change anything for you?”

You took a moment, pondering his question as you quietly chewed your food. “I guess it just adds another layer to think about. I want the baby to have a good mix of traits, you know? If I choose a donor who has strengths like yours, it could make an indent in my favor.”

Namjoon’s expression softened, silently watching you scan the results, before a small smile tugged at his lips. “Whatever you decide, love.”

You smiled, feeling reassured as you grabbed the next paper “Thanks, love. Now, let’s see how your swimmers are doing!”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There is a thin line between being a genius and an idiot. Namjoon liked using that line as a jumping rope. He had been called both names, sometimes within the same day. One minute he’d be diving deep into philosophical discussions, and the next he was deemed a mumbling fool simply because you fluttered your eyelashes at him.

He knows he is brilliant. His academic achievements and professional life were testament to that. A whole company depending on his decision. Yet here he was, getting grilled for the past hour by Seokjin and Taehyung for being the biggest dumbass that walked this dying earth.

“What do you mean you just agreed to be her sperm donor?” Seokjin blurted; his disbelief palpable as he leaned against Namjoon’s desk.

Namjoon just shrugged, trying to keep his cool. “It’s not as simple as that. We’ve talked about it, and I think it could work out.”

Taehyung leaned in; eyes wide with mock horror “You really jumped into this without thinking it through? Are you insane?”

“I thought about it plenty!” Namjoon retorted, frustration creeping in. “I trust her! We’re best friends. This isn’t some random decision.”

Seokjin raised an eyebrow, leaning back with a smirk “Best friend or not, you’ll be tied to her and that kid for life! You’d practically be family!”

"Guys, I get it," he said, trying to keep the edge out of his voice. "I've thought about this a lot, and I really believe this is the right thing to do."

Taehyung shook his head, a look of disbelief on his face. "You're not thinking straight, Namjoon. This is a huge decision, and you're not even considering the long-term implications."

"I am considering them!" Namjoon insisted. "I know that by agreeing to be her donor, I'm getting myself involved with her and the kid for life. But that's exactly what I want. I want to be there for them and support them in any way I can."

Seokjin sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "Namjoon, you're a brilliant guy. You've always been one of the smartest people I know. But sometimes, I worry that you're so focused on doing the right thing that you don't stop to consider whether it's the smart thing."

Namjoon opened his mouth to protest, but Taehyung cut him off. "He's right, Namjoon! This isn't just a textbook case. This is real life, and there are real emotions involved. You can't just apply your weird logic to everything and expect it to work out."

Namjoon sighed, feeling a pang of frustration. He knew his friends were just trying to protect him, but he couldn’t help but feel like they were overcomplicating things.

"Maybe you're right," he said after a moment. "Maybe I am an idiot for doing this. But it's a risk I'm willing to take. I trust her, and I want to be there for her. That's all that matters to me."

Seokjin and Taehyung exchanged a look, but eventually, they both nodded.

"Alright," Seokjin said. "We'll support you, no matter what. But you’re still an idiot.”

Namjoon sighed; resignation evident on his features at he turned his attention back to his computer.

“You could’ve asked her on a date and get to the baby making naturally.” Seokjin added.

“She doesn’t want a relationship.”

“Well, you can skip straight to the baby making!” Taehyung exclaimed, but Namjoon just rolled his eyes.

“It’s not that simple, Tae...”

Unbeknownst to Namjoon, on the other side of town, you and Sumi, your good friend and co-worker, were engaged in a strikingly similar conversation.

“So, I asked him to donate a sample.” You fidgeted with your fingers under the table, unable to meet her eyes, cheeks burning with embarrassment as you voiced your actions. “Any thoughts?”

Sumi studies you for a long moment, her expression inscrutable. You felt the intensity of her gaze as she tries to gauge your sincerity. Finally, she broke the silence.

“Yes, and prayers,” she said softly “You need them.” She gives you that incredulous look that only the head nurses seem to master.

You blink, stunned by her response. You expected something different, something along the lines of excitement or curiosity, instead, her reaction was surprisingly tame.

“Why didn’t you just bang him?” She asks, her tone casual, no hint of professionalism in her demeanor.

Your eyes widen in shock “Ayy! Don’t say that!”

“I mean, you can cut out the clinical middle man this way,” she continued “And god knows you need to get laid.”

Your face grew hot. “That’s not the point...” you mumble.

Sumi raised an eyebrow. “Then what is the point, exactly?” She leaned back in her chair, bubble tea clasped in her hands and a smirk playing on her lips. “The baby gets made either way. This is just more fun.” She giggled “You know, Jimin told me that Namjoon used to have quite a reputation with women back in his day.”

You shift in your seat, avoiding Sumi’s probing gaze as you gathered your thoughts. The conversation has taken a turn you hadn’t anticipated, and you were struggling to find the right words.

“The point is, I want to do this the right way.” you say, aimlessly spinning the straw in your drink. “I want to give this child the best possible start in life, and that means doing things properly.”

Sumi considers your words for a moment, before nodding in understanding “I get that,” she says. “But you don’t have to be so serious all the time. You can still have fun and enjoy the process.”

You can’t help but snicker as she emphasizes the words “You sound just like Jimin,” you say, referencing her boyfriend. “He’s always telling me to lighten up and enjoy myself.”

“Well, he’s not wrong.” Sumi says with a grin. “And just so we’re clear, sex is the ‘proper way’ that normal humans use to make babies.”

You roll your eyes, “I know that.”

“Good. At least I don’t need to explain how that works.” She smirks “And I’m sure Namjoon would be more than happy to oblige.”

Suddenly, a very vivid image appears in your mind. Namjoon, hovering over you, his breath washing over your face as your hips collide together. You feel a shiver run down your spine, butterflies emerging in your stomach and quickly push the thought away.

“Make the poor guy feel more involved in the process. You’re treating him like milking cow right now.”

“God, don’t say that!” You cry out, shaking your head to clear the image from your mind. Namjoon was a gentleman, and you were grateful for his help. But the thought of asking him to sleep with you too made you uncomfortable. How would that conversation go?

Hey Joonie, since you’re already getting me pregnant, why not just fuck me?

Sumi laughed, "Well, it's an option. And sometimes, the most unconventional methods can lead to the most beautiful outcomes."

You couldn't argue with that. After all, you were about to become a single mother, and that was certainly not the conventional route.

You take a deep breath, trying to steady your racing heart as you look across the table at her. She was watching you with a knowing smile, one that suggested she could see right through your nervous façade.

“And just think of it this way, all that money you save from all the clinic appointments can go towards buying cute baby clothes.”

That was the weakest argument yet, but still, you found yourself actually entertaining that idea.

“Do you really think he’ll agree?” as the words leave your mouth a pang of guilt strikes you. Namjoon has been nothing but kind and generous so far, and here you were, letting your horny thoughts take over. You respect and value your friendship more than the need to ‘make things fun’. You can’t do anything to jeopardize that.

“Trust me babe,” Sumi sounds so casual in her conviction. She’s right thought- sometimes, the unconventional ways do lead to the most favorable outcomes. And you can’t deny the spark that ignites in your chest whenever you think about Namjoon.

And this way, you can have more control over the situation. The amount, the frequency. The position….

After all, all the pregnancy and fertility books you’d read recommended that a deep connection is important when it comes to getting pregnant.

“I don’t know,” you mumble, fidgeting with your fingers again. “I mean, it’s not like I can just ask him to sleep with me.”

Sumi chuckles and takes a sip of her bubble tea. "Why not? You're two consenting adults, and you both want the same thing. It's not like you're asking him to marry you or anything."

You can't help but roll your eyes at her flippant attitude. "Yeah, I know, but it's not that simple. Namjoon is a good friend, and I don't want to ruin that. Plus, I don't know if I'm ready for something so...intimate with him."

Sumi raises an eyebrow. "Intimate? Girl, you're already asking him to donate his sperm. How much more intimate can you get?"

You take a deep shaky breath, trying to lower your blood pressure as you absorbed her words. She has a point- you hate it, but she has a point.

“Okay, I’ll think about it.” you finally say, meeting her gaze. Sumi just smirks at you, clearly pleased with that response.

“That’s all I can ask for.” She says, taking another sip from her bubble tea. “And remember, there’s no rush. Take your time and do whatever feels right.”

You nodded, feeling the heaviness in your chest swirl. You knew this was a big decision, and you don’t want to take any part of it lightly. But you also can’t ignore the possibilities that lay ahead.

As the conversation turns to other topics, your thoughts wandered back to Namjoon. You imagined his kind smile, his gentle nature, and his unwavering support. And you can help but let your mind fantasize.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Busy-bee🐝: Need to ask you smth. Joon 🎍: If it’s about the sample, I’m omw to drop it off at the clinic now. Busy-bee🐝: NoooOooOoo Busy-bee🐝: Stop! Busy-bee🐝: Pls don’t. Joon 🎍: Did you change your mind? Busy-bee🐝: No. Not quite. Joon 🎍: Quite? What happened? What do I do now? Busy-bee🐝: Can you just come over? Joon 🎍: Sure? But just so you know. I have a jar of sperm with me. Busy-bee🐝: Yyuckkk Joon 🎍: Don’t worry. It’s sealed. Busy-bee🐝: Still gross, lol. Just hurry. Need to talk.

While you waited for him to arrive, your heart pounded in your chest. You paced around your apartment in your pajamas, desperately searching for something- anything to clean or organize. The conversation with Sumi replayed in your mind, her words echoing as you contemplated your options thoroughly.

You couldn’t possibly complicate things with Namjoon, could you?

A soft knock on the door breaks you out of your reverie. And with a deep breath, you open it to find Namjoon standing there, casual and charming, in a green hoodie and ripped jeans, the familiar warm smile lighting up his face.

“Hey,” he says, stepping inside “What’s up? You sounded urgent.”

“Um, yeah…” you close the door behind him and gestured for him to sit on the couch. “I wanted to talk about the… um, sample?”

He raises an eyebrow “Didn’t you just say not to take it to the clinic?”

You wince sightly, still grappling with how to express what you really wanted to say. “Well, I was thinking…maybe we can talk about the process?”

Namjoon settles down, giving you his full attention, confusion clearly evident on his face “What’s on your mind?”

“Sumi mentioned that-” You stop, allowing yourself a second to gather your fraying thoughts, “Well, since we’re both consenting adults…I thought it would be more medically apt to try this with a more ‘hand-on’ approach.”

He nodded, listening closely as he rubbed his chin. A cliché lightbulb suddenly going off in his mind and Namjoon’s eyes widened as he took you in.

“Are you suggesting you what I think you’re suggesting? Because if you’re not my mind went to a very inappropriate place.” He asks, his tone light but serious.

You stammer, nodding slowly as heat flooded your face and neck. “I mean, it’s just an idea. We’re both single…” you trail off, staring at a painting on the wall, “I know it’s unconventional, but I just want to make sure everything’s… right.”

He leans back, quietly considering your words, “It’s definitely a bigger step. Are you sure you’re comfortable with that?”

As he leaned back on the couch, he spread his legs wider, getting comfortable and invertedly drawing your attention to his well-toned thighs, making your mouth go dry.

“Honestly,” you force yourself to look him in the eye. “I don’t know. But I like the idea of us being more connected during the- that. It feels… outlined better?” you sighed exasperated with your own brain for not cooperating. “But I don’t want it to ruin our friendship. You mean a lot more to me.”

“You mean a lot to me too, and don’t worry,” he says, “I promise the friendship will remain intact.” He paused for a moment, “And I also agreed once, so yeah, I’m here for you whatever you decide.”

A quiet moment passes as you let his words sink in. His expression was earnest, and the sincerity in his voice offered a reassuring warmth. It was comforting to know that, no matter what weird direction you decide to go in, Namjoon would still treat you like a priority. You let out a long breath you didn’t realize you were holding.

“Really? You’d be okay with that?”

“Of course,” Namjoon replied, “If your plan needs me here five times a week, then I’ll be here.”

A deep red blush creeps up your neck to settle on your cheeks, as your mind quietly conjures up the scenario where five nights in a row, Namjoon comes over and bends you over every surface in your apartment.

You smiled, a wave of excitement washing over you, but beneath that smile, your mind raced and your heart fluttered. This was a significant decision, and you needed to approach it strategically!

“The plan requires we lay down some ground rules first,” you say, shifting your tone to a more analytical one, “We need to define what this would look like for both of us. Like boundaries, approach and what we’re comfortable with.”

As you sit down next to him, your heart still pounds in your chest. “Okay, so, here’s what I was thinking,” you begin after a drawn-out breath, “We should approach this like a partnership, with communication and mutual respect. We’ll need to set some rules and make sure we’re both comfortable.”

“That makes sense. I want you to feel safe throughout this process. What kind of boundaries did you have in mind?”

“Well, for starters, we should only do this when we’re sober and well-rested. And we should check in with each other beforehand to make sure we’re on the same page.” You scratch at the back of your neck, looking away for a second.

“That’s a good start.”

“And it’s about the baby making.” You add.

“We already established that.” Namjoon nods, a serious look on his face.

“Are you comfortable with a more casual approach or do you think we should be more clinical about it?”

“Casual. Definitely.” Namjoon shakes his head at the idea of doing it in a sterile white room, a shiver running down his spine. But he quickly composes himself and in turn asks you, “What about after? Do we tell people about this, or keep it to ourselves?”

You took a moment to chew on your bottom lip, considering the implications, even though you’ve thought about this before.

“We should keep it to ourselves for the moment being. Even if almost everyone knows you donated, they don’t need to know…” you trail off again, the blush deepening “How.”

Namjoon nods in understanding, “I can respect that. I don’t want any unnecessary drama.” He gave you a reassuring smile.

You take another deep breath, and allow the sense of relief that comes with his smile wash away any lingering discomfort.

“Thank you. I really appreciate everything you’re doing.

Namjoon reaches out and takes your hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze. "I'm here for you, no matter what. And I want you to know that I'm not doing this out of a sense of obligation. I genuinely care about you and want to help you achieve your dream of becoming a mother."

Your heart swells with emotion at his words. "Thank you," you say, your voice barely above a whisper. "That means more to me than you could ever know."

You sit there for a moment, hands intertwined in silence. The weight of your decision quietly sinking in around you.

“I think the next thing we need to set is a schedule,” you say, ruining the moment. “It’s important we’re consistent about this, for the best possible outcome.”

“How often do you think we should try?”

“The research suggests that every other day is a good-enough frequency. But we can see how it works out and adjust afterwards.”

“Every other day. Got it.” He confirms, then asks the only important question of the night:

“When do we start?”

Your heart stops right in its tracks, even as you distract yourself by suddenly reaching to grab your phone, “Let me look at my cycle.” You mumble, opening the fertility tracking app you’d been using.

As you scroll through the app, you felt Namjoon’s presence loom closer, curiosity evident of his face. “How does that work exactly?”

“Do you need me to explain a period to you?” You tease, small smile breaking you from your serious poise.

“No. I just-” Namjoon took a deep breath, nervousness lingering on the edge of his voice as he ran a hand through his hair, “I’m just thinking out loud here, but why wait?”

An audible gasp leaves you lips when you look up at him.

The air between you crackles with electricity, and you suddenly realize just how close you were. In that moment you could almost feel the weight of your actions begin to unravel.

You lock eyes, the tension thickening as you ponder his suggestion. Taking a shaky breath, your heart thunders, and you struggle to process the whirlwind of emotions swirling within you.

"Are you sure?" you ask, your voice barely above a whisper. "I mean-"

Namjoon nods, leaning closer to you, his voice steady "I'm sure."

You bite your bottom lip, your mind racing as you try to decide whether or not to take the leap. You've always been a planner, someone who likes to have everything mapped out in advance, but for once in your life, you find yourself wanting to throw caution out the window.

It couldn’t possibly hurt; in fact, it might prove to be beneficial. You’d get the awkward stage over with quickly, instead of letting it simmer while waiting for your fertile window.

Why let nervousness and anticipation settle in when he’s right here, sitting on your couch looking absolutely delectable?

You quickly go over your mental check-list, feeling grateful that you showered and shaved just before he arrived. Your Pj’s are cute, and while your underwear isn’t the sexiest, it’s decent- either way, this isn’t about passion; it’s practical.

You were almost done chewing your lip off when you feel his thumb gently touch your chin, stopping you.

“Only if you want.”

“I can’t remember if I made my bed this morning.” You whisper sheepishly, pulling him out of his serious demeanor. His heartfelt laughter weaving through the tension that hung between you.

“That’s what you’re thinking about?”

“You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m here,” You giggle, shaking your head and throwing your phone somewhere on the couch. “Let’s do this.”

Namjoon’s smile broadens as he stands up, extending his hand to you. You almost hesitate for just a moment before placing your hand in his, letting him pull you up from the couch and in his arms. Heat radiates off his body as he leans in, his hand gently brushing your hair away from your face.

“Can I kiss you?”

“Yes,” you whisper, closing your eyes as his breath lingers just above your lips.

Then, he kisses you.

At first, it’s gentle, his lips barely brushing over yours, a subtle invitation for you to take the lead. His lips taste faintly like mint from Chapstick, soft and warm, and soon the kiss deepens with a surge of passion. Wrapping your arms around his neck, you pull him closer, feeling the heat between you build. Namjoon’s hands glide to your back, exploring you with a leisurely touch that sends waves of excitement through you.

He breaks the kiss, his lips trailing down to your neck, and you tilt your head back, moaning softly when he gently nibbles on your ear.

“You’re adorable.” He whispers, his hands moving to the front of your shirt to cup your breasts. You gasp as he teases your nipples through your shirt, and with a flicker of courage, your hands slip under his hoodie, feeling the hard lines of his abs under your fingertips.

Namjoon smirks at you as you tug his hoodie upward, but he helps you pull it off, revealing his bare chest and you run your fingers over his toned muscles, feeling his heartbeat beneath your touch.

“Joonie, you’re so jacked.” You say with an airy laugh, feeling a surge of confidence pulse through you. “God, I need you.” Taking his hands in yours, you guide him towards the bedroom, your heart pounding in your chest.

Walking ahead, you can feel a wave of self-consciousness wash over you, even as you remind yourself that this is just Namjoon—the man who always chooses his words carefully and who’s always there for you. But any hesitation melts away when you reach the bedroom. You push the door open, and with renewed vigor, you quickly shed your shirt and bra, moving on to your pants.

Namjoon’s eyes widen at the sight of you standing there in just your underwear. Though he fights to remain respectful, the hunger in his gaze is unmistakable when you bend down to throw your clothes in the corner of the room.

When you face him again, his lips capture yours, silencing whatever you were about to say. His tongue delves into your mouth, teasing and exploring, and you respond eagerly, his touch sending a thrill of excitement through you.

“You’re so pretty, baby.” He murmurs, his mouth leaving a trail of fire down your neck and shoulders. You arch into his touch, your eagerness growing with every lingering touch.

When his mouth finally finds your breasts, he captures one in his mouth and starts teasing it with the lightest graze of his teeth. A sharp gasp escapes you, a rush of pleasure shooting straight to your core.

Your hands fumble with the button of his jeans, desperate to feel him against you. But struggling to push his jeans down, Namjoon steps back just enough to help you, letting you slide them off with ease.

Taking a moment, you stop to gawk at his arousal straining against his boxers. Damn, you had a feeling he was equipped. He just carried that air about him. But nothing could have prepared you for how massive he actually was. The sight of him, hard and ready for you, sends a new wave of heat through your body, and you find yourself biting your lip in eager anticipation.

You can’t help but stare, taking in his impressive size. He truly is a giant, with broad shoulders, a muscular chest, and an impressive cock. You can’t wait to feel him against you, inside of you, filling you up all the way.

But Namjoon has other ideas. He kneels in front of you, his hands moving to your ass, giving it a firm squeeze before pulling you closer. He plants a series of soft kisses along your stomach and thighs, each one sending waves of electricity coursing through you.

“Can I take these off?” he asks against your thigh, playfully snapping the elastic of your panties. And unable to speak, you nod.

With a quick tug, Namjoon hooks his fingers around the elastic and pulls, leaving you completely bare before him. You gasp as the cold air brushes against your skin, but he doesn’t seem to notice. Instead, he looks up at you, his gaze intense and full of determination.

You take a moment to savor the image before you: Namjoon kneeling, his eyes dark with desire, radiating an intensity that makes it seem like he could devour you whole. You tangle your fingers in his hair, pulling him closer, and without hesitation, he places one of your legs over his shoulder, kissing your inner thigh while his fingers move to your folds. A jolt of pleasure shoots down your spine as he finds your clit, rubbing tight, deliberate circles against it.

“So wet.” He breaths against you, sending shivers through your body. He glances up at you one last time, seeking your permission with his gaze.

“Namjoon, wait,” you say, gently pushing him away. “This isn’t how we make a baby.”

God, the hold he had over you was intoxicating, making it nearly impossible to refocus and regain your composure.

He chuckles, the hunger in his eyes still smoldering. “No, but this is going to make you feel really, really good.” He replied, his voice a low rumble, hands still holding you steady by the hips.

“I know. But this isn’t about feeling good.” You insist, your hand dropping from his hair and your leg from his shoulder.

Namjoon almost looks disappointed as you step away from him, but then he nods, understanding the importance of your goal.

“Right, I got carried away.”

“Here, just sit on the bed,” you instruct, offering a hand to help him up. Namjoon obeys, perching himself on the edge of the bed, his gaze locked onto you, tracking your every step as you approach.

Removing his boxers, you’re awestruck once again by the sight of his pretty cock—big, veiny and heavy with a flushed pink tip, leaking precum. Namjoon reclines slightly, his hands resting behind his head, watching you straddle him. You spit into your hand, wrapping it around his hardness to pump him a few times before positioning him at your entrance, slowly sinking down on him.

You both let out a sigh of pleasure as he fills you completely. A soft whimper escapes you as you bottom out, and you bury your face in his shoulder as his hands move to your hips, his thumbs tracing gentle circles in a soothing rhythm.

“Are you okay?” he whispers in your hair.

“Yeah, give me a second,” you reply, taking a deep breath as you adjust to the stretch, his warmth filling you completely. After a moment, you straighten up, meeting his eyes with a soft smile. “It’s been a while.”

Namjoon nods, his gaze soft as he steadies you, guiding you into a rhythm. Rising and sinking back down, you gasp at the sensation of being this stuffed, bracing your hands on his chest for balance as you start to rock your hips, grinding against him.

At first, you move slowly, savoring the feeling, but soon your pace quickens, spurred by the intensity building in your lower stomach.

“That’s it, sweetheart.” Namjoon encourages, squeezing your hips to help you maintain your rhythm. Your quiet moans blending beautifully with the sound of skin meeting skin, filling the room with your shared pleasure.

Before long, your thighs start to burn, but the growing tension inside you keeps you bouncing on his cock. You were almost there; Namjoon could sense it too in the way your walls flutter around him. One of his hands slips between your bodies, fingers deftly finding your clit and stroking it with perfect precision.

And once he feels you getting too tired to continue, Namjoon takes over, trusting up into you with powerful, steady strokes that meet your faltering movements. The intensity of his pace, mixed with his fingers that never slowed, push you right over the edge, sending you spiraling into bliss.

You cry out as waves of pleasure ripple through you, your orgasm shaking you to your core. Namjoon groans, feeling you clench around him as your body crashes against his chest. His hands grip your ass tightly, and his thrusts grow erratic as he chases his own release, his breathing ragged and soft whimpers escaping his lips. Each sound spurs another clench from you, drawing him even closer to the edge.

“Come on, baby,” you whisper in his ear, fingers gently massaging his scalp as you let him use your spent body however he pleases. “Just let go.”

With a loud, drawn-out moan, Namjoon buries himself deep inside you, and you feel his hot, sticky cum filling you completely. A cry escaped you, muffled against his shoulder as you sink your teeth into his soft skin, overwhelmed by the intensity of the moment.

Your body slowly relaxes, breaths still coming out in quick, shallow gasps.

Namjoon looks over at you, a satisfied smile softening his expression, and a deep, unexpected sense of connection settles over you, an intimacy unlike anything you’ve felt before. Leaning in, you kiss him slowly, silently thanking him for the experience

As you pull away, you roll to lie beside to him, your legs still intertwined. Staring up at the ceiling, a warm contentment fills you, grounding you in the quiet rhythm of his steady breathing.

“Thank you,”

“Anything for you, love.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

6:30 AM- Your alarm rings.

You bolt upright, momentarily forgetting you were meant to wake up, letting out a little groan as you flop back onto the pillow.

“Why do you wake up so fucking early?”

The voice behind you startles you, and you remember with a rush that Namjoon ended up spending the night. His deep, early morning voice sends a flutter of butterflies through your stomach, memories of last night’s activities rushing back to you.

“Usually I do my yoga,” you mumble back, “and after that I shower and get ready for work.” You yawn, stretching all your limbs, before settling right back in his arms, snuggling closer.

“Why?”

“Because we can’t all afford to sleep till noon.” You tease.

Namjoon chuckles softly, wrapping his arms tighter around you. “Fair point. But I could get used to sleeping in with you.”

You smile, your heart picking up at the thought. “Maybe I’ll let you join my morning routine someday.” You stay nestled in his arms for a few more moments, enjoying the comfort of his warmth. But soon, the call of nature interrupts your peaceful morning.

With a reluctant sigh, you wiggle out of his embrace. “I’ll be right back.” You say, glancing over your shoulder at him.

Namjoon nods, sleepy smile on his face as he watches your naked body, before he snaps himself out of it.

“Are you going to take a pregnancy test?”

You chuckle as you swing your legs off the bed and pad softly towards the bathroom. “It’s too early. That would be a waste of a test.”

The cold floor contrasts with the warmth you just left behind, and as you close the door, you can’t help but grin, thinking about how nice it is to have him there with you.

You quickly go about your business, splashing some water on your face to wake yourself up. After a moment you finish up and head back to the bedroom. Namjoon is still lounging against the pillows, his eyes slightly glazed but filled with warmth.

“Back already?” he asks, sleepy smile spreading across his face.

“Yeah,” you walk over to your closet, rifling through your clothes as you decide what to wear. The soft morning light filtering through the windows, casing a warm glow over the room. Once you’re all done you walk over to him, leaning down to plant a sweet kiss on his cheek.

“I’m heading out. I’ll leave the spare key in the kitchen for you.” You say, feeling a mix of excitement and reluctance to leave.

He smiles, his dimples showing up on his cheeks, “Thanks, I’ll take good care of it…”

You laugh lightly, leaning in again, this time kissing him.

“God, if anything, I hope out baby gets your dimples.” You confess, your heart swelling at the thought.

His expression softens, a hint of surprise lighting up his eyes. “That would be adorable.” He says, a smile spreading across his face, and this time he leans in to kiss you. So soft and sweet, almost convincing you to join him back in bed. You need to place a hand on his chest to pull away, a deep red blush spreading across your face.

“I’ll text you later.”

“It’s a plan.” He smiles, watching you walk away, taking the warmth in the room with you. When the bedroom clicks shut, he finally feels like he can breathe again.

He was a walking disaster. Books will be written about his sheer foolishness, how he willingly tosses aside logic and reason in your presence.

Yet, deep down, he recognized that beneath his eager exterior lay a selfish yearning- a desire for you, wholly and completely, all to himself.

But for as long as you would have him, even like this, with weirdly restricted intimacy, he would give you everything you ask for.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Over the following months, you two manage to establish a working system. The spare key was Namjoon’s now, and he had a dedicated drawer in your closet for his things.

His toothbrush quietly chilling next to yours in the master bathroom.

Along the way, you uncovered a surprising list of things you never imagined you’d learn about your best friend;

Like the fact that he is a talker, loving the way you’d clench around him when he spills pure filth in your ear. He talks you through your climaxes, encouraging you to lose yourself, and cheering you on as if you were competing in a marathon each time.

He also had a habit of giving you all kinds of pet-names, sweet endearments that easily fell from his lips. “Sweetheart”, “Baby”, “Honey”, “Lovely”. However, your favorite was probably the time he accidentally called you a ‘busy bee’ in the middle of one of his ecstatic hazes. The unexpected nickname bringing a smile to your face, even as you surrendered to the waves of pleasure he unleashed within you.

He also had a thing for hickeys. Your breasts now fully decorated with blooming red love-marks, after you scolded him for leaving one right under your collar bone for the whole world to see.

For two weeks, you only wore turtlenecks because of him.

But what stood out the most was his seemingly endless stamina. If it wasn’t for your insistence to take it easy, he would very willingly fuck you until the early morning light.

Much like he was doing right now…

But it was Saturday. You decide you could afford to sleep in.

You could feel him right in your stomach, a ring of cum forming at the base of his cock as he kept on pounding into your abused pussy.

One of your legs over his shoulder, and the other one around his hip, pulling him closer as he kept on trusting into you. You tried your best to move with him, meeting his rapid movements, but you got lost in the pleasure when his finger flicked your clit. You almost scream reaching your climax for the nth time, your body shaking with the force of the release. Namjoon didn’t slow down though, instead picking up the pace as he chased his own orgasm.

“That’s a good fucking girl,” he growled “Not gonna stop til’ I fill you up with my cum. That’s what you want, right angel? Want to be stuffed full? Have it dripping out of you when I’m done?” he rendered you a completely useless, weakly moaning back at his filth.

“God, if you’re not pregnant after this.” He groans in your neck, making you shiver again.

The moon was high in the sky, casting a warm glow over the room. Engulfing him completely in a silvery haze, and you couldn’t help but admire the beautiful man on top on you. His closed eyes, a bead of sweat trickling down his forehead, his lips parted in pure ecstasy. You almost couldn’t believe this was your best friend, the person who knew you better than anyone else in the world.

Namjoon reaches his own climax, and you clenched around him, milking every last drop eagerly.

He collapses on top of you, your bodies slick with sweat, yet you just lay there, wrapped in his arms as the night quietly carried on.

This was the new normal, and you wouldn’t have it any other way.

After a little while, Namjoon pulls out, quickly grabbing a napkin from the nightstand to wipe away any excess cum before it stains your sheets. You winced at the touch, feeling sore in the best of ways.

“I’m sorry baby. I went a little hard.” He says after discarding the napkin, pulling you closer to him.

You lay there, spent and satisfied in his arms, a little chuckle escaping you at the absurdity of ‘little’ being the past four hours. “Rough day at work?” you ask, looking up, your fingers gently pushing the hair away from his forehead.

“You have no idea,” he huffs, glancing away “With the business trip coming up I can’t seem to catch a break.”

“You’re leaving on a trip?” you stand up straight, looking down at him, trying to keep the disappointment from your voice.

“Yeah baby, I told you I’m leaving on the 5th.” He replies, his voice twinged with exhaustion.

“That is this month?” You fumble out of the bed to grab your calendar from the desk, turning all the lights on and flipping through it.

Has it been two months already? How come you’re not pregnant already?

You quietly look over the pages, calculating exactly what day you should be getting your period on. And your heart raced when you realized;

Last week. This might be it. You might be pregnant already.

“Oh my god, Namjoon!” you giggle like a little girl, jumping and spinning around the room. “This might be it! I’m one week late!”

Namjoon’s eyes widened in surprise, and he grabs your arm, pulling you back on the bed. The calendar flying away somewhere as he places his hand on your still-flat belly.

“Really?”

You nodded, a big smile completely taking over your face

“Yeah really.” You giggle “I mean, can’t know for sure, but I’m one week late.” You insist, almost kicking your legs with excitement.

No way you were going back to sleep after this. Instead, you jump back up, running around the room like a little tornado, gabbing your clothes and rushing to the bathroom to shower.

You needed to schedule a doctor’s appointment, go buy the last of the supplies, pick a color for the nursery and look up all the forms needed for maternity leave.

Namjoon sat in the silence of your bedroom, listening to the water from the shower run as you chaotically prepare and plan your future. The thought leaves him feeling a little empty, knowing he is not a part of that plan.

He wanted to invite you to join him for the business trip in Singapore, the plane tickets bookmarked and ready to be purchased. Even if he’d be busy working, the thought of having you nearby calmed his nerves about the whole ordeal. But now he hesitated, unsure if it was a good idea. With everything getting more complicated- especially the possible pregnancy- his feelings were tangled between simply wanting to support you and grappling with the deeper emotions he couldn’t ignore.

“Do you think you can handle building a crib?” you ask when you return form the bathroom.

But only silence greeted you, with no sign of Namjoon left behind.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Life had this way about it. One moment you’re riding high, and the next one you’re struggling to comprehend the fragility of human nature.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise, yet it still stings when your plan doesn’t perfectly match reality.

You plan a future with a man, only to be confronted with the painful truth that you’ve been the second woman all along. Shaking you to your core and ruining any future relationships for you along the way.

You take the leap, decide to get pregnant, and for a moment, it feels like everything is finally falling into place. But then that red dark spot appears, shattering all your dreams and hard work.

You didn’t need the pregnancy test anymore- not when your period arrives unexpectedly at the hospital office. Yet, you still find yourself staring at the little stick resting on your desk while Sumi draws a blood sample.

“Are you going to be okay?” She asks, pressing a sterile swab to your arm before continuing. Her voice is gentle, but you can only hear the concern beneath it. You nod, though uncertainty lingers in your mind, and the weight of your reality feels heavier than ever.

You spend the rest of the day meticulously reviewing the hospital’s schedules, throwing yourself in the comforting security that the numbers and graphs provide. You check supplies, organize the timetables, and ensure that no section of the hospital is backed up. Each task grounds you, allowing you to focus on something tangible amid the chaos swirling in your mind.

At around noon you get the message from the testing facility. Deep down, you already knew the blood work would come back negative, just like the test stick, but it still shattered the last glimmer of hope you had left.

You read the message again, trying to process the words, but they blur together as a wave of disappointment washed over you. The sterile walls of the hospital suddenly feel suffocating, and the rhythm of the bustling environment seems to fade into the background.

You take a deep breath, fighting back tears. Great. Now you were hormonal too.

You force yourself to push through the day, focusing on tasks, but the ache in your chest still lingers.

Joon 🎍: Are we still on for tonight? Baby-momma 🐝: Nah. Got my period. Joon 🎍: Shit. Are you okay? Baby-momma 🐝: Shit pretty much sums it up. Baby-momma 🐝: But I’ll be fine. Joon 🎍: Well, it’s Sunday. We could just watch a movie…. Haven’t done that in a while. Joon 🎍: I’ll even pick up your favorite greasy foods if you agree.

You smile at your phone, feeling the warmth spread through you despite the heaviness of the day. The idea of sharing a cozy movie night with him feels like a welcomed escape. You type back quickly, your heart lifting just a bit.

Baby-momma 🐝: That sounds nice. I could use a distraction✨ Joon 🎍: Great. I’ll be over after work.

When the working day is finally over, you make your way home, quickly going through the motions. You shower, tidy up a bit, and set up the living room for the movie night, arranging blankets and laying out an array of snacks across the coffee table.

Namjoon said he’s be there by 7, but as the clock ticks closer to 9, you find yourself bored out of your mind. You glance at your phone for any updates, but there’s nothing. You try to distract yourself with a show, but your mind keeps wandering to what could delay him.

Just as you consider sending a text, you hear the key turning in the lock. The door swings open, and Namjoon steps inside, a smile breaking across his face.

“I’m sorry I’m late. Got caught up in a meeting.” He says, holding the bag of junk food.

You feel a rush of relief as he walks in the familiar warmth of his presence instantly lifting your spirits. “You made it just in time.” You say, gesturing to the setup.

He chuckles, placing the bag on the coffee table. “I got you one of those abominable triple chocolate cakes you like.” He settles in besides you, unpacking the bag and you can’t help but smile up at him.

“God, I love you.” You grin digging in, completely unaware to what effect your words have on him. He pauses for a moment, a hint of surprise flickering across his face, before returning your smile with a warmth that sends your heart racing.

As you both dig into the food, Namjoon seems a bit more pensive than usual, his smile lingering as he watches you blissfully enjoy the cake. You almost moan out loud after the first bite, your face surprisingly similar to the one you have when you reach your climax.

After a moment he clears his throat, looking away as a deep shade of red takes over his ears.

“Hey, I was thinking,” he begins, glancing at you with a hint of hesitation. “You know that I have that business trip coming up.”

“Yeah,” you’re barely paying him any attention.

“I’d really love for you to join me.”

Your head snaps up, surprise lighting up your features. “Wait, really? You want me to come?”

He meets your gaze, his expression earnest. “Yeah, I think it would be great. I’ll be busy with meetings, but we can explore together in the evenings. It’ll be fun.”

You can’t help but smile, feeling a rush of excitement. “If I can get off work, sure. Just tell me when to book my tickets.”

Namjoon’s face lights up with relief and happiness. “Yeah, I’ll send you the details as soon as I can.”

You giggle, already daydreaming about the adventure ahead.

“Next week, no?”

“Yeah.” he replies, taking a big mouthful of his burger. You grin, excited at the thought that by that time you would also be done with your period.

“Ah! There’s a medical conference happening around that time too. It would be so cool if they aligned,” you say your excitement bubbling over.

Namjoon nods, his eyes lighting up. “That would be perfect! You could network while I’m in meetings.”

“Exactly! I’ll look into it!” you say, feeling the anticipation grow. The idea of a trip filled with both work and exploration feels like just the right remedy for your disappointment, reigniting a spark of hope.

The duality of man.

#namjoon x reader #namjoon smut #namjoon x you #namjoon imagine #namjoon scenarios #kim namjoon #bts x reader #bts smut #bts x y/n #bts x fem!reader #bts x you #perfect plan

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shibaraki · 7 months ago

Text

OUT OF MY HEAD, HALF BURSTING ┊ MIDORIYA IZUKU

synopsis: japan’s sweetheart and saviour is in a quirk induced coma. you’re the only one that can bring him back.

tags: GN reader, post canon au, pro hero deku, quirk accidents, fluff + angst, hospitalisation, mutual pining, intimacy, technically doctor/patient but they know each other, friends to lovers, reader has quirk (‘dream walker’), memory/dream sharing, referenced depression, getting together, kissing, cheesy idc idc

wc: 5.2K

In your years wading through patients' memories, you’ve found that people have the most uncanny ability to resign themselves to their fate. You’ve wondered time and time again whether it’s instinctive to ruin things—if humans couldn’t help but stumble and make a mess of the things around them.

You recall that thought process now with a weary sigh, as your eyes skim over the patient's name for the tenth time in as many seconds. Midoriya Izuku.

“Well? Are you gonna do it or not?”

You’ve been staring at the medical file for long enough that an uncomfortable silence has dawned upon your office. Two weeks prior, a villain named Catatonic used her quirk to force Deku into a comatose state, that which he has yet to wake from. Even after the liberal use of quirk inhibitors, countless visits from Eraserhead and the administration of various stimulants, Deku would not stir. Realistically he should’ve roused from the coma naturally as soon as the quirk was cancelled. But he hadn’t, and his doctors can only assume it’s because he can’t, or refuses to.

Thus the case in your lap. A last resort.

“I’ll do it,” you intoned, thumb flicking at the corner of the manila folder. There’s already a deep crease there. The file itself is the heaviest you’ve ever had in your hands. Dense in a way that makes you ache. You and Deku are good friends—the kind of friendship that forms mainly because you frequent the same places. That place in particular being the hospital, except you were there to work, and he was often wandering the hallways listlessly to burn off the dregs of whatever sedatives he’d taken or visiting with patients.

Awkward small talk eventually blossomed into real, fulfilling conversations, and you started to like him, a lot more than you should. You kept the memory of his small, sincere smile close to your chest; nothing like that dazzling grin he wore on duty, it was softer, something private, and you relished being on the receiving end of it.

He was skilled at talking around his injuries. Sometimes if you felt especially bone-weary after a shift you’d be so relieved to see him that you forgot to ask. That sits with you. Deku is a hero. A good one, the best one. He’s brilliant at what he does—keeping people safe, protecting them from harm. In the entirety of his career, it appears he rarely, if ever, turned that care and consideration onto himself. You’re not a licensed therapist, and barely a doctor. Still you contemplate his medical history with a cold sense of regret.

“You realise there’s a large possibility I’ll end up seeing a lot of confidential stuff while I’m in there”.

“Don’t care. S’not like you can tell anyone”.

“I don’t think you understand how invasive this will be. I’ll see personal things. Private things, Bakugo. He won’t be happy”.

“Don’t care. If he doesn’t like it then maybe he should fuckin’ wake up”.

“This might not work, you know,” you finish tiredly.

Bakugo arches his brow at that. Despite the shadows under his eyes there’s no defeated slope to his shoulders, only a fierce scowl. “Either you can do it or you can’t,” he says, voice unsteady as if reeling between rationality and outright aggression. “You’re supposed to be the best at what you do”.

“I am the best at what I do, Bakugo. I can promise you I’ll find him”.

“Then what’s the damn problem?”

The file feels heavier. It feels like a foregone conclusion. You swallow, your throat dry. You don’t bother attempting a smile. You’ve lost the will to maintain your professional veneer.

“I can’t promise he’ll want to come back”.

Dream walker.

At twelve years old you thought it made your quirk sound whimsical, and gentle, and not at all the invasive thing that it actually is. After all, your reach didn’t end only at dreams. You were able to project your consciousness into another’s mind if it pleased you, parse through every memory, ambition, fantasy, trauma and fear, and manipulate them however you liked. Back when your control was non-existent you would drift into people’s heads whenever you slept like some wayward soul and saw far too much far too young.

The need to understand yourself and your quirk is what drove you to studying medicine. Neuropsychology, mainly. You carved meditative techniques into the very recesses of your own brain and learned to keep your consciousness tightly moored but had no real ambition beyond that. After the war and the complete upheaval and reform of hero society, it was difficult to find your place.

Until Okumura Yukiko.

At the small age of eight, Yukiko fell under the effects of a severe nightmare quirk, and despite the quirk being canceled she couldn’t wake up naturally. You had carefully walked through the delicate threads that made up her young mindscape—quirk-infested by formless shadows with knife-sharp teeth and worse, eerie figures that wore the appearance of her father—you found her trembling inside her mothers figmental wardrobe, took her hand, and guided her out.

When you came to she was curled up in the swaddle of your arms, trembling still, but awake. Her timid incantations ring true in your ears even now. Those tiny little thank you, thank you, thank you’s inspired the person you are today. Not quite a doctor, or a therapist. A specialist for special cases.

Something in your gut told you that traipsing into Midoriya Izuku’s mind wouldn’t be simple. That it would permanently change things. This isn’t some stranger, or a patient you’d never cross paths with again. He’s important to you in a way others aren’t.

Your hand hovers over his face, fingertips brushing his temple. You push your fingers into his thick green hair, rich in colour and soft, no knots to catch on your knuckles. His friends have been visiting in shifts, keeping him comfortable and presentable.

Bakugo had managed to keep the Hero Commission at bay for the time being, but if you came back without Midoriya tomorrow there would be far more than one scowling man looming in your office. Though the possibility left a bad taste in your mouth you can admit, in the privacy of your thoughts, that you’ve contemplated prolonging his recovery for the sake of allowing Midoriya rest. There must be something keeping him under, his genuine reluctance or worse; you’ve been reassured repeatedly of All for One’s death and the absence of the previous quirk holders but it’s best to exercise vigilance.

Midoriya does not react, not even a twitch of his nose, but there’s a flutter beneath his eyelids and a sleepy-sweet warmth to him that has you smiling, fond. Tucking your feet around the legs of your chair, you scoot it forward and bend closer, elbows resting on the edge of the hospital bed. “I’m not sure you can hear me in there. Maybe not. But I hope you won’t hate me for this,” you tell him.

Midoriya’s face remains serene as ever—more so than you can remember. It makes you wonder how much pain and discomfort he’s been hiding throughout your interactions. The tension has been sapped from his expression, lashes fanning over his cheeks. You’re close enough to count each individual freckle. Lightly, your thumb taps the space between his brows. “There are a lot of people out here that love you. They’re waiting for you to wake up, so I’ll have to have a look around your head a bit. Okay?”

Nothing. Heartbeat monitor pulsing a healthy rhythm, broad chest rising and falling, Midoriya continues to sleep. You sigh and cast a final glance around the private hospital room. The clock reads 18:22. Outside the window you see a single cloud, wispy as a dandelion, slowly disintegrate across the dusky sky. You make a cradle with your arm, head resting in the crook while you take Midoriya’s hand and try to relax. Anticipation turns in your gut. Years of experience aside, you’ve never really acclimated to the feeling of that first step into another’s subconscious.

Pressure gathers inside your skull as your quirk activates. You inhale a quick, wounded breath at the sensation. Your eyes roll back, vision swallowed by abrupt darkness, and you jerk against the distinct sensation of falling as your stomach roils. You’re overwhelmed by a cacophony of images and sounds—a determination that happiness would come, then moored to the burden of expectation, any optimism muffled under exhaustion and pain, replaced swiftly by a sense of discontent, grief and regret that swelled over time.

And then everything stops.

Your arms feel empty. Your chest feels hungry. You ache with it, the disquieting loneliness. Fog leaks into the memory, surroundings concealed beneath a thick mist. Behind you is a small pond. There’s a notebook soaking in the water. The koi are mouthing curiously at the weathered corners, faint black tendrils of ink curling off the charred pages. Scrawled boldly across the top is ‘Hero Analysis for The Future: No. 13’. Your strikingly young reflection ripples as you plunge your hand in and fish it out, holding it at arm's length as you shake the excess away.

Sufficiently less soaked, you draw the notebook to your front and carefully turn the cover to read the first page. You can feel the slight indentations on the back where a pen has been pressed hard enough to score the words through the page. Written inside, smudged but undeniable, is Midoriya Izuku’s name.

“Uh—excuse me…” a shaky, pitched voice comes from behind you, belonging to a very familiar pair of teary eyes. Midoriya is not just small, he’s scrawny. His hair is longer, unable to decide on which direction it wants to grow, and his middle school uniform is slightly ill-fitting, as though his mother bought it a size bigger for longevity. He ducks into the higher collar to hide his reddened face when you look at him.

The urge to bundle him up and hide him from the world is fierce. The situation is odd, but you offer a smile and his blush worsens. “Is this yours?” you ask, holding up the notebook. You try not to grimace at your own childlike voice. Midoriya nods frantically. His hands flex around the straps of his backpack. Smaller than the broad palms you’re familiar with, neither scarred nor crooked, trembling where they motion to clasp around the notebook. Your fingers brush and he attempts to swallow the yelp that bubbles in his throat.

“Thank you,” he stammers, pressing the notebook flat to his own chest. Midoriya swallows. His gaze never strays from you, growing brighter with each passing second as the idea in his head takes shape.

“Do you go to school here?”

“Oh,” you blink and the shadows have elongated. The pond is now hugging a school building. You recognise it despite never having seen it before. Aldera Junior High. “I don't,” you answer, sounding sorry. He predictably deflates. “I live close by, though!”

Midoriya perks up again. He shifts his weight between each foot. Red faced and unsteady, he quietly asks, “Do you think we could be friends?”

Your mouth slacks a bit, answers dying in your throat. You look down at your hands, palms upturned and unblemished. The dappled sunlight passes through your incorporeal form. Interaction with anything aside from the true patient during your work is incredibly rare though not entirely unfounded; people who daydream in vivid detail or ruminate chronically on old regrets usually had false memories in excess. Their minds seem to naturally meld around your intrusion, but they never went so far as to seamlessly incorporate you. Which can only mean one thing.

You fit because Midoriya has imagined this numerous times before—befriending you as a child.

Before you can respond you’re being dragged abruptly into a memory, the echo of a blinding flash of pain rippling through you. A reflexive gasp has your chest heaving and you curse at your lack of control. There’s barely a shard of light. Behind you is a hard, jagged surface but below is loose, uprooted. Attempts to move are futile, and agonising. You slump into the displaced rubble, silt and icy embrace, and listen. From above there is only a haunting silence but only a few feet ahead you hear muffled crying and Bakugo’s strangely tinny voice.

Your vision adjusts in increments, from pure darkness to a soft outlined blob to a comfortingly familiar silhouette. Midoriya is poised like an Atlantean statue, holding up the creaking structure and keeping it from crushing the young girl cowered in front of him.

Another wave of pain washes over you as the rubble groans. Midoriya bites back a whimper. His body is sinew and bone pulled taut, skin stretched over a drum. Everything seemed to swell dramatically around him.

“We’re almost there, kid. Two minutes,” Bakugo’s voice spills jarringly from the bulky earpiece hugging Midoriya’s ear. “Now look at Deku for me. You lookin’?” the young girl does as he commands. You see her trepidation falter at the easy smile Deku is wearing. “Bet he’s got a big dumb grin on his face right now, yeah?”

“Y—yeah,” she echoes, clutching the dirtied hem of her dress.

“You think he’d be smiling if there was anythin’ to be scared of?”

Her shoulders slant, the tension released, and she offers a tremulous smile of her own, “No”.

But you can feel, quite viscerally, how scared Deku was in that moment. The nauseating pain in his arms has dwindled into numbness and he daren’t spare himself more than the occasional shallow breath, as if the bloating of his lungs alone might disrupt his balance. Not once does his smile falter.

The surroundings warp again. You struggle against the whiplash, flung unwillingly into another memory. Breath forced from your lungs, the echo of Izuku’s pain dissipates in a blink and you land on unsteady feet, coughing and spluttering in the middle of an eclectic café covered in tinsel.

A sign written in cursive above the chalkboard menu reads ‘Mean Mug’. Melodious Christmas music plays quietly overhead, and the bell above the door is soft enough to get lost in the smooth notes. You’re cocooned by heat and met with bold patterned wallpaper. The unifying palette seems to be warm-toned colours; red, orange and brown come together amidst the mismatched decor to create a cosy atmosphere.

A half heartedly disguised Midoriya shuffles awkwardly by the counter, looking up at the door with trepidation every time the bell chimes to signal another customer. He grins once Uravity arrives in a casual disguise of her own, eyes still bright beneath the shadow of his cap.

They order and settle in a quaint alcove away from the windows and any prying eyes. Neither hero notices your presence as you seat yourself at their table and listen to their conversation. There are things you don’t understand. Code words to be used when discussing sensitive matters outside of their agencies. Inside jokes that you weren’t there for. But most curious of all is the knowing look on Uraraka’s face when Midoriya mentions that he saw you at the hospital that day.

“You’re hopeless, Deku-kun,” she says, as fond as she is amused. “What was your excuse this time?”

Midoriya clears his throat. He grips his cup, pressing until his knuckles turn white. It draws your attention to the thin cast splinting his ring and middle fingers together. “I broke my fingers sparring with Kirishima”.

You remember that, though too entrenched in his memory to attempt receding into yours for details.

“So you leapt halfway across the city to have them stuck together despite the fact that your agency has an on-site infirmary,” Uraraka’s hair falls in a gentle swoop beneath her jaw as she laughs. Midoriya shrinks into himself ever so slightly and her eyes soften. She pokes at his forearm. “C’mon Deku—why haven’t you asked yet? Do you really think you’ll get rejected?”

Glancing back and forth between them, your heart beats a tattoo across the inside of your ribs. You feel as if you’ve both missed something quite important and heard too much. You push your chair backwards and fall away from the table, and the memory, before Midoriya can respond.

With renewed determination—and heat rising to your cheeks—you reign in your quirk, steering cautiously through Midoriya’s subconscious mind as you should’ve in the first place. Images flicker in and around your periphery, each as desperate to draw you in as the last.

You see Midoriya crying, bleeding, lashing out in anger. You see him in a sterilised room, lulled by monotonous beeps, flesh stitched back together. You hear the doctor's voices coalesce into white noise. You watch as he’s handed crudely drawn thank you cards, coffee-stained police reports and thick manila envelopes marked as confidential in large red letters.

You turn away as Eraserhead approaches, a solemn expression, a quiet clink accompanying his footsteps, unnaturally heavy to one side, a young girl with silver hair following right behind him.

Your heart leaps to your throat when he screams in agony. You look down. There’s blood running down the street in rivulets, skin coming apart like wet paper.

You close your eyes. Next you risk a glance All Might is there, thinner than ever. He’s sitting in a wheelchair by a large window swaddled in a thick knitted blanket, watching over the city, smiling.

You turn away, feeling a pang of grief. Midoriya is expressionless, examining his battered body in the mirror, condensation still lingering on the glass, tendrils of heat curling upward as the shower drain gurgles.

Then he’s in a dark room bringing a stranger's hand to his mouth, kissing the centre of their palm, drawing the finger into his kiss-bitten mouth and sucking with a hazy gleam in his eyes.

It’s overwhelming. You stumble and suddenly Shouto is eating across from Izuku. He brings his chopsticks to his lips, noodles hung limp between them. “It’s obvious you like each other. You should just confess,” he says before shovelling his food.

Too private. You turn on your heel and find a patient of yours on the bed, unresponsive. Izuku is beside you, muttering under his breath, thumb pressed to the shadow beneath his lip. He reaches back to brush your wrist and offers a tentative touch of reassurance. You watch yourself lean against him for a moment and then retreat, grateful for his consideration, unneeding of it, and desperately wanting it, all at once.

The scene ripples violently. A reporter is staring up at Izuku with sparkling eyes. Her hair cycles through an array of colours as she shakes with excitement. “It’s amazing, Deku-san,” she insists. “For your spirit to be so heroic that it physically steers your body… that’s special!”

Izuku conceded with a strained laugh, rubbing at the back of his neck. You feel how his stomach knots. “I used to think so too,” he says, sounding far away.

It’s the middle of the night somewhere when your search finally comes to a halt. You find you’ve landed on an empty street, in that dense, heavy darkness that makes you feel like the only person in the world who’s awake. There’s a tall residential building hugging the pavement. Intuitively, you know this is where Izuku lives.

Your footsteps are made heavy by Izuku’s lingering hurt and exhaustion. It’s disconcerting, the way he feels about his apartment. Coming home should be effortless. People come home in the same way they draw breath. But to Izuku, it's a weary, miserable journey that he must consciously think about and do. His perennial loneliness is overwhelming, a near physical force repelling you from opening the large glass door.

One foot in the lobby and the surroundings undulate. You’re dropped in the middle of his living room. It’s vacant. There’s a large box of case files tucked under the coffee table, an old takeout box left out on the counter, a blanket strewn haphazardly over the couch cushions. You pinch the soft fabric and rub it between your fingers, bringing it to your nose as you’re overcome by the urge to smell it. Izuku’s warm scent floods your senses.

Something thuds outside, followed by a tinkling of keys on a chain. Your blood runs quicker as the front door abruptly opens. Izuku looks harried as he ducks into the genkan, quite visibly frayed. The upper half of his hero suit is unzipped, pushed down to hang over his hips, littered with debris and dry mud. You hold your breath as he kicks off his shoes and lifts his head, meeting your wide-eyed gaze. The air around you is charged. Trepidation prickles at your nape.

Then the shadows over his stormy face recede. Izuku gentles, light returning to his previously empty eyes. “I’m home,” he breathes. “I missed you”. His voice shivers down your spine—you know in your gut that this is him, the real Izuku, but that fact is hard to believe while he’s looking at you like he wants you.

“Welcome home,” you smile back, slipping the blanket around your shoulders as you move toward him. “Hard day at—?”

Your intentions are to sit him down, keep him calm so as not to be ejected, and explain what’s happening, but before you have the chance his larger body crowds you against the wall—the dull impact reverberates through your ribs, knocking the breath from your lungs and he’s kissing you as if it’s something he always does.

Though it’s more of a collision than a kiss. The sensation is indescribable. Information spills into your mouth, your quirk reflexively absorbing his every fantasy, ache and want. Your knees almost buckle. The blanket puddles at your feet. Fingers snake into his thick hair, nails dig into his roots where skin becomes earth as you try to reciprocate his fervour.

Under your tongue you feel the cut on his lip, under your palms the dark swell across his cheek. You shake off the cloud of desire. Too many lines have already been crossed. “Izuku,” you whine. His name comes naturally now; you know him deeply enough. Blunt teeth graze at your jaw, your throat. You lean away for air only to catch a glimpse of another angry ivory-red bruise peeking from beneath his loose collar. “Izuku,” you tried again. Then louder. “Izuku, that’s enough”.

“What’s wrong? Did I hurt you?” Izuku rasps as he rears up from the crook of your neck with wide, glassy eyes.

“No—I’m,” your heart beats hard in your ears. Dread sinks low in your belly. “It’s me. I’m really here, Izuku. You’ve been away for too long. I had to use my quirk. We need to wake up”.

“Wake up? You’re… oh,” his eyes grow wider, then shutter closed on a shaky exhale. The cut on his bottom lip has started bleeding again. Rivulets seeped into the cracks between his teeth and stained his gums red. You yearn for the searing heat of his hands as he releases you and staggers backwards to scrub at his face. “Oh my god”.

“Wait. Please don’t throw me out,” you say quickly, reaching to clutch at his wrist in case he panicked. Izuku tenses at the contact only to relax a beat later, his fingers spreading over his eyes so he can get a peek at you. “It took me forever to find you here. There’s a lot of stuff in your head”.

“I won’t. I wouldn’t,” he mumbles. You could collapse in relief. He’s not angry, he’s embarrassed.

“Thank you. I promise I tried not to look at anything too private”. Your mind didn’t make it easy, you think. It was almost like he wanted me to see everything.

Izuku groans and lets his hands drop to his sides in defeat, revealing an entirely pink face. You keep your fingers curled around his wrist, his pulse light and fast. “Okay. I’m okay. We should probably sit down for this,” he eventually croaks, a tremulous smile working its way across his lips. “Drink?”

You pick up the blanket and make your way to the couch while he briefly disappears into the kitchen. Around you the apartment takes on a rosy sheen. A dull clink shudders through the silence as Izuku sets a cup on the coffee table in front of you. It’s your favourite work mug down to the smallest details.

“You remembered this old thing?”

Shaped like a cat, the handle curved in and away like a feline’s tail. It’s piping hot, steam already curling up from it like a crooked finger, like the invitation he meant it to be.

Izuku nodded awkwardly, perched so far forward that it stretched credulity to say he was on the couch at all. He tracks your movements with intensity when you lean to pick up the hot drink. The initial sting to your palms quickly dwindles into numbness as you bring it closer and realise what’s inside. Hot chocolate. The surface sprinkled with those small, cube shaped marshmallows that he likes.

You swallow and feel the warmth spread through your body. A smile pulls at the corner of your mouth as the thick, saccharine flavour floods your senses, washing back the bitterness and thawing your anxiety. You can hear the tension in Izuku’s shoulders snap as he slumps forward, arms hung over his knees and head low in relief. His reaction is oddly vindicating, if not contagious.

“How long have I been asleep?” he asks. “Time is weird here”.

“You’ve been comatose for over two weeks,” you reply. “They tried everything they could before Bakugo insisted on bringing me in. You have a lot of people waiting for you”.

Izuku inhales sharply. He makes an aborted motion to scoot closer before thinking better of it. Your attention strays to the nervous wringing of his battle worn hands. Endeared, you put your mug down and close the distance yourself. Pressed thigh to thigh, you envelop his tightly curled fists, bringing them into your lap. The shaky breath he takes is loud in the otherwise quiet room.

“Honestly I’m surprised you’re still working”.

He looks at you with an unsure, watery smile, sunlight caught in glassy eyes. His voice is thick as he asks, “What do you mean?”

You smile sadly and run your thumb over his knuckles. “You’ve been on patrol. I thought you might’ve locked yourself in your head because you needed a proper break—and who could blame you, really. But you’re working yourself thin even in your dreams”.

Izuku huffed a laugh, more breath than humour. “I love being a hero. It’s what I’ve always wanted,” he says, his voice tight. You sink into his side and feel his diaphragm stutter. “But it isn’t everything. It felt like I was suffocating and I needed something more. Something to come home to for a little while…”

His red-rimmed eyes quickly return to his lap when you meet them. “I still can’t believe you’re here. Your quirk really is incredible”.

You can feel the shame swatting at you like a summer-born heatwave, reminded of just how deeply you’ve invaded his privacy, and how easily you overstepped your bounds.

“I’m so sorry,” he continues, at the same time that you tell him, “I’m sorry, Izuku”.

“Please. Let me go first,” he murmurs like a question. You nod your assent. “I’m sorry I forced myself on you. I thought you were a part of my imagination, like the rest of this place. I should have realised you weren’t. I’m sorry,” he rambles on. “I wanted to be closer to you but I got carried away and I’m sorry”.

“You couldn’t have known. I should have told you it was me as soon as you walked in,” you firmly interject. Izuku doesn’t look any less stricken in your periphery, cheek sunken where he’s gnawing at the flesh. “And you didn’t force anything. I hardly pushed you away,” your brow wrinkles and you smile despite yourself. “I got a little lost in your head, too. Not my most professional moment I admit. But I wouldn’t want to leave either, if we were cuddled up in here all day”.

“Really?” Izuku blinks. Hope colours his cheeks. He clears his throat and shifts in place as he tries very hard to appear unaffected. “You don’t think it’s creepy—me picturing all this with you?”

You think of that young boy yoked with the burden of expectation and feel your heart crack. You can still taste his desires. They’re insipid, belying their age, as though they’d lingered long enough to stale. Izuku treasured his friends and fans', their love and loyalty; yet he felt guilty for allowing them to foster such a blind faith in his goodness. He was a man with faults like any other, capable of making mistakes, of inflicting harm. More than anything Izuku longed for someone to see the darker, uglier corners of his life, and make room for all of him. And you wanted to be the one to do it.

“I’ve imagined this with you. This and more,” bolstered by everything you’ve seen, the confession spills out with startling ease. Your eyes squint above the curve of your grin. “I like you too,” you coaxed his fist open as you spoke, mapping out the carved furrows, shallows and depths on his palm. “A lot”.

“Oh,” he exhales, slowly entangling your fingers.

You give an emphatic nod.

“How mad is Kacchan?”

“Pretty mad. But when is he not?” you laugh at his grimace. “I’ll be there as a buffer when you wake up. It’s my professional opinion that you need a few more days to recuperate and take me out for crêpes. So will you come home with me?”

There’s a gleam in his eyes—a combination of warmth and weight that tugs at your chest. His gaze flickers across your face, from your lips to your eyes in askance. You lean in and he kisses you again, sipping gently at your mouth, firm and slightly sticky with congealed blood. Strange. It feels so real. You suppose it is, in all the ways that matter.

“Okay,” he whispers after one last peck to your lips. You get to your feet as he stands and gestures nervously toward the genkan. “I, uh. I don’t really know how to get out of here so… lead the way?”

You laugh and take him by the hand. “Don’t worry. The way home is always a lot faster. It’s a little disorienting—watch your step,” you warn as he follows you through the front door. Rather than the lobby, or a stairwell, both bodies are swallowed up by darkness.

Spat out just as abruptly, your senses return to you piece by piece. Breathing through the vertigo you peel your eyes open to the rapid rise and fall of Izuku’s chest as he reorients himself. A crick in your neck, a knot in your spine. The clock reads 07:12. There are already nurses bustling around the hospital bed, likely alerted by the frantic heart monitor; that which does little to hide the way Izuku’s pulse stutters when you lift your head to get a look at him.

“I’m up,” he says, throat rough from disuse. There’s a shaky smile on his face. “I’m home”.

Your hands are still entwined, albeit a little sweaty. You smile, “Welcome home”.

#deku x reader #bnha x reader #mha x reader #midoriya izuku x reader #midoriya x reader #q’d

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gayforjessmckenna · 21 days ago

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I donate blood sometimes because why not, you know? And a while ago I was matched with a patient at the hospital who needs blood regularly. So now, every few months, whenever they’re doing something with that patient that requires blood (surgery etc) they call me and we set up a date for me to donate, a day or two before they need the blood. The only thing that’s different for me than before, is the specific time I go to donate.

Yet now I have this odd social engagement with someone who I will never meet. Both our schedules are dictated by this shared plan, carefully set up by nurses and medical administrators, with no direct contact between us. The last week or so before I donate I think about making sure I don’t catch a bug or eat something bad, knowing that my blood will soon be in someone else who needs my blood specifically.

Its the oddest non-relationship I’ve ever had. I don’t know who they are, I don’t know why they need my blood. As it should be; I don’t need to know. It’s not my business, after all.

I hope that being able to use my blood makes whatever is wrong with them easier to deal with. We’re not even strangers passing in the night, but at the same time, we’re linked together by our bodies.

I hope, whoever they are, they’re doing ok.

#tw blood

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opencommunion · 1 year ago

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please read & share on all platforms. Palestinian resistance groups have asked us to pay close attention to the plight of imprisoned Palestinians, as the occupation believes that since all eyes are on Gaza they can abuse and assassinate prisoners out of sight

Statement issued by the Office of Martyrs, Prisoners, and the Wounded of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, via RNN Prisoners:

“Horrific testimonies about the crimes committed by the occupation and prison administration against prisoners and detainees in its jails.

The information and data we receive from inside zionist prisons about the systematic crimes committed by the occupation's prison administration against prisoners, since October 7th, are terrifying. There is a systematic decision to assassinate the prisoners through punitive measures carried out by the prison service, and evidence of this is the martyrdom of several prisoners.

The magnitude of crimes, both collective and individual assaults on prisoners—which occur during the raids on sections and cells and which are continuously escalating—is alarming, in addition to the adoption of a starvation policy against them, as the prisoners only have tuna, corn, and sometimes inedible eggs as food.

The aggression against the prisoners began on October 7th. The prisoners face ongoing aggression, with continuous punitive operations and retaliatory measures affecting them and their families.

The Office of Martyrs, Prisoners, and the Wounded for the PFLP is closely following the issues of prisoners and detainees, which is challenging. We consider the silence of human rights, humanitarian, and international institutions unjustifiable. They must fulfill their humanitarian duty and what their conscience dictates, obliging the occupation to respect international laws and conventions established for this purpose. We hold them fully responsible for their lives.

The Office highlights the measures that the prison administration continues to impose on prisoners. The prison administration cuts off electricity to the prisoners' cells and rooms, deliberately cuts off their water supply, enforces a starvation policy, has withdrawn food supplies from prisoner sections, reduced meals to two times a day, closed the canteen, and deprived prisoners of other basic necessities.

Furthermore, heavily armed suppression forces raid all prisoners' sections and rooms, maltreat them, physically assault them, and use police dogs. They have escalated policies of depriving prisoners of medical treatment, forbidding visits from families and lawyers, and denying them treatment in hospitals, especially for sick prisoners. The prison administration also reduced the space available to a prisoner inside a cell, where the number of prisoners in one cell reached more than ten, and many prisoners were transferred to solitary cells. Solitary confinement was imposed on prisoners and some sections were isolated from others.

We note that the prison administration has removed available television sets and electrical appliances, destroyed all of the prisoners' belongings, confiscated their clothes, leaving only one change of clothing for each prisoner. They have also confiscated radios, blankets, and shoes from them, prevented them from bathing and going to the courtyard, closed the sinks used for washing, and carried out collective transfer operations, including moving prisoners from one section to another and from one prison to another.

We, in the Office of Martyrs, Prisoners, and the Wounded of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, want to reassure our people that the General Secretary of the Popular Front, the comrade, leader, and prisoner Ahmed Saadat, and his comrades are well. They are at the heart of the battle with the prison administration, and they will achieve a great victory over the jailer and will soon gain their freedom. We are closely following all the developments inside the prisons, as well as the ongoing communications and negotiations for a prisoner exchange process being carried out by the Palestinian resistance to empty the prisons and release all the prisoners.

Freedom to our heroic prisoners.

Glory and eternity to the martyrs.

Speedy recovery to the wounded.

Victory is the ally of our people, and the occupation will inevitably come to an end.”

#palestine #I’m so worried about the prisoners and my posts about what they’re facing consistently get a fraction of the notes on anything else I post #probably because white westerners are conditioned to view incarcerated people as disposable 🫥

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oddlittlestories · 2 months ago

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Thinking about Cuddy.

House is a genius. I’ve written about how Wilson is equally talented.

But Cuddy is, too.

One of three(?) female deans of medicine in the country. One of the youngest. And every time the spotlight turns onto her, she does things no one else can do.

She has a kid by herself. Wilson points out that a man in her position would have a wife, two nannies AND two assistants. (She tries to hire an assistant and the job is so demanding they quit regularly.)

She consistently gets things for the hospital no one else can get and is the trump card only she can play. In 5 to 9, she gets (I think) 7%, which is far and away better than her opponent, her board, or anyone else but her thought she could get.

In season 1, iirc it’s implied SHE brings in Vogler, and she’s the only person who can stop him when he starts tearing the entire hospital apart to get at House.

In season 3, she ends the nonsense with Tritter.

She’s also the only person who can and will keep House on her team (no one will hire House or Foreman, other than her). And she’s the only person who can wrangle him, canonically (I disagree with canon, but Cameron does hand the reigns back to Cuddy with this exact statement). Moreover, she makes House an ASSET. In 5 to 9, she explains that PPTH is on the cutting edge, which includes their world famous ddx department.

And! Despite the fact that House routinely accuses her of being an administrator and not a doctor anymore, she still successfully treats patients from time to time. She helps ddx the babies in Maternity. She saves her patient’s baby in Fetal Position. In s5 Joy, she clocks that something is wrong with the mom when no one else does, and pushes until the diagnosis is made and saves both their lives. She figures out the diagnosis in Joy to the World at the same time as House, and is so kind and respectful to the folks caring for the baby, yet still makes sure she gives the baby what she needs.

I have to admit that I don’t remember s7-8 well enough to go through those, but it’s clear to everyone that Cuddy is a great doctor. Much like Wilson, she gets dismissed in part bc she gets too emotionally involved. And it’s also clear that no one really understands her work or how good she is at it. Everyone only sees their part, and she has to see all of it and make it all fit together, making sure everyone gets what they need. Her ability to flip between caring and hardass undermines her ability to seem tough, but it’s also necessary. If she couldn’t care, she wouldn’t take such good care of her people or patients. If she couldn’t toughen up, she’d let people walk all over her. It’s a unique style, and not without its pitfalls, but it’s all hers.

And like Wilson, she doesn’t get seen as a genius. In fact, she barely gets acknowledged as smart at all. A lot of her successes come from charisma and social intelligence. And those things often get dismissed in women, especially women who care as deeply and obviously as Cuddy does. The ability to juggle so many things gets dismissed as “basically being well-organized,” and also, no one really SEES what she does. It sometimes takes her a minute, but she reads people like THAT. She figures out and outwits that sociopathic drug dealer. She sees through most of House’s lies. She often settles with plaintiffs because of guilt, but she also often talks them out of suing the hospital in the first place.

Cuddy is just as good, and just as brilliant, at her job as House and Wilson. But she doesn’t get seen as a genius anymore than Wilson does.

#this isn’t quite as good as the Wilson one #but I got really tired of Cuddy not being included in thinkpieces #I too love hearing about how awesome she is #but I think we can go further with this one guys #the narrative doesn’t center on her #and often her story centers on House instead of her #but Cuddy is brilliant and richly developed too #and although I admit I don’t understand her quite as well #I’m gonna do my darndest to center things more on cuddy #lisa cuddy #house md #meta #bees meta #bee writes meta #my meta

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naamahdarling · 4 months ago

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Maybe it isn't that I actually hate medical professionals? They just suck and are weird sometimes, and a lot of them shouldn't be practicing, but I don't hate them as a group, like, personally.

What I hate is their ability to make my life harder in ways that are often completely opaque to me, and a lot of the crap things they do are not really possible to challenge. And I hate the fact that holding them responsible fort dogshit behavior in any way that will actually benefit me is almost always impossible.

And I also hate the fact that they have to do stupid things sometimes because that's how the system is set up, and those things sometimes mean patients actually get harmed. They aren't fond of that part either! They don't want the system to be the way it is! But they don't have a choice, so sometimes people like me get forced by bureaucracy into doing things that are re-traumatizing. And I can't imagine that feels good for them at all, knowing that their patients are sometimes only "consenting" because that bureaucracy will not let them be helped in any other way. Which isn't consent at all. I imagine that must be pretty traumatizing for them, too, sometimes.

If it were easier to actually access medical care without tremendous delays in this country right now I would have much less trouble finding providers who are good at what they do and are not horrible people, and who have clinic staff who can do their fucking job.

Oh and I also don't appreciate how evasive and unwilling to commit they are out of fear of being held to an answer that turns out to be inaccurate, but I can't make an informed decision about my own care unless they give me at least some information about probabilities and trajectories and typicalities. Genuinely, how the fuck am I supposed to navigate that shit. I get that some patients are really fucking difficult, but I should be able to get a special stamp on my file or something that says I understand that sometimes medicine isn't an exact science and the best answers that my doctors can give may not always prove to be accurate in the long term. I know they don't like being in that situation either.

A lot of medical professionals are fucking assholes, and unfortunately the ones who are not are still hamstrung by a system set up to actively prevent people from getting care.

I miss my old doctor. He gave no shits about anything that wasn't the patient. He prescribed scheduled meds based on what the patient needed and not based on fear of consequences potentially being imposed on him by the punitive patient-hostile drugs-are-bad moral panic machine developed to force suffering people into buying more dangerous drugs off the street in order to prevent far fewer people from maybe getting high off of drugs that at least weren't laced with lethal substances. (The purpose of a system is what it does.) Did he get sanctioned and become locally unhireable? Unfortunately yes he did. Does he now provide concierge care to rich people? Yes he does. He found a way to make it work, God bless him.

Everything about the medical system in this country is fucked. Hospitals, doctors, nurses, pharmacies, pharmacists, pharmacy techs, phlebotomists, clinic administrative staff, insurance companies, medical schools and schooling, licensing boards, drug advertising to both providers and patients, pharmaceutical reps, researchers, research, publishing, medical trials, pharmaceutical companies, manufacturers and distributors, medical equipment, charting software, billing and billing codes, diagnostic criteria, charity and low income services, accessible transportation, home care, the lack of independent individual patient advocates, dietitians and nutritionists, access to physical and occupational therapy and physical and occupational therapists, the massive bigotry of every kind rampant in every corner of the medical field, social work, senior care and assisted living, deprioritization of informed consent and harm reduction, disability applications, inaccessibility of medical records, especially psychiatric notes which are specifically allowed to be withheld from patients, lack of continuity of care for disadvantaged people, care that is equitably accessible to disabled people, telemedicine, patient portals, phone systems, clinic hours, every single aspect of inpatient and outpatient psychiatry, facility security, all sorts of things going on with therapists who are nevertheless probably the least malicious group of people in this entire charade, aaaaaand patients themselves.

Also hospital toilets that are too tall and make it literally physically impossible for me to poop while I'm there waiting for somebody to come out of surgery. I just needed to take a crap, guys. You didn't need to make the toilets so tall that my feet didn't even touch the floor. It is very clean but there is no shitting for short people at St Francis.

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foone · 2 years ago

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Random thought brought on by seeing a veterinarian sign on the drive to Coffee Land, but I think Jesus would really appreciate people localizing his parable of the Good Samaritan.

Because, like, it's a good story, right? When the administrator-guy and the holy man wouldn't help the injured, the Samaritan went out of their way to make sure the injured man was able to get the help they needed, paid out of their own pocket. And that's good and all, but what even is a Samaritan? Do you know?

Well, they're a ethnoreligious group from northern Israel who follow Samaritanism, which split from Judaism sometime around the 11th century BCE. There's only about a thousand of them left. But around the time of Jesus, they were not very popular with your average Hebrew. Remember the Seleucid empire that was oppressing jews? There's a yearly celebration about it, involving a candle that lasted for 8 nights. Yeah. So at the time the Samaritans had taken the opportunity to point out they're not Jewish, they're Samaritans, so they wouldn't be persecuted. So they were seen as, like, selling out their brothers and sisters in the faith. Then by the time the Romans took over the whole area, the province of Judaea contained Samaria.

So basically the Jews and the seen-to-have-sold-them-out Samaritans were stuck in the same province, thanks to some Romans consolidating the areas they'd conquered. Tensions between the two groups were high, and I don't imagine either of them liked each other very much at all.

To a Jew of the first century CE, a Samaritan is basically the worst kind of person you could be, and that's exactly why Jesus used them in the parable of the Good Samaritan!

The parable isn't about Samaritans. It's about how the worst person you can imagine is a better person than the people you idolize and uplift, if that person takes care of their fellow man. It's about how you should love your neighbor as yourself, and who is your neighbor? Everyone. All people are your neighbors. Help them when they need help!

And that's why I say it should really be localized. You should tell this parable differently than it was told in AD 29 or whenever. Do you hate Samaritans? Probably not! You probably barely know who they are, even after I did some explaining up there. So why use them as your example? If Jesus was here, I don't think he would have done that.

So like, if you were giving a sermon on the good Samaritan in the 1960s to a white church, you should be like "so the policeman walked past, and the pastor walked past, but then a poor black guy saw the injured man, and got him help at the local hospital."

In the 80s, his rescuer is Soviet. In the 2000s, they're a Muslim, from Afghanistan or Iran.

Today? Maybe they're trans.

As an American, there's been many times that "Mexican" would have been the best choice. Maybe even today, especially if you specifically make them an undocumented migrant.

But yeah, the point is that you pick the group of people most hated by the audience you're talking to, and make the point that THEY ARE A BETTER PERSON THAN YOU and ALL THOSE YOU UPHOLD AS PILLARS OF THE COMMUNITY if they help their fellow man. If your worst enemy is lying injured in the street, you call the ambulance, you pay their doctor, you get them help. That's what Jesus says you should do. That's loving your neighbor, that's the Great Commandment.

And in the Roman province of Judea back in the first half of the first century, when talking to a Jewish audience, that meant the rescuer was a Samaritan helping a Jew. That was just the context for that one particular telling of the story. It shouldn't be told the same way today, or in the future. It should be an evolving parable, always changing, always adjusting the nationalities and situations and genders and everything. It's not a story about a specific event, it doesn't pretend to be history, it's a metaphorical lesson about what makes you a good person.

This parable is basically in the form of an "X, Y and Z walk into a bar" joke, and just like jokes, it should be updated over time. Those don't stay funny though the decades, as cultural attitudes shift. And this parable hasn't been updated in nearly two millenia, so it's long overdue.

#Biblical ranting #I'm not a Christian but I was raised as one so I still occasionally have Bible Thoughts

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skyloftian-nutcase · 2 months ago

Text

Outbreak Pt 2 (LU in Healthcare)

Legend slurped on his energy drink, anxious to get to work. He and the entire night shift had been called in early to attend some training for this new virus that was potentially a problem. Administration mandated everyone attend to see how to don and doff personal protective equipment.

It was mildly exasperating, as it had cut into his sleep and he'd run out of time to really grab an actual breakfast. But whatever. He paid attention as best he could, leg starting to bounce with nervous energy. When his phone buzzed, he glance down, distracted.

The name Zelda was on the screen, and he immediately tuned out everything around him.

They hardly messaged each other, really. Birthday wishes, the occasional "are you alive" text, that was about it. It was hard to maintain much of a good relationship sometimes, given... well, everything.

Hey. So. I have this patient. Heart attack, CABG, pathway, blah. But he's got family who knows you?? I just want to make sure??? Like he seemed legit but still. Says he goes by Wild.

He... the heart attack patient from yesterday...

Shit.

Legend texted quickly, gaze flicking between his phone and the person wearing a gown in the front. Yeah, I know a few people named Link, so we go by nicknames.

His sister's reply was practically instantaneous. Still not over the fact that you call yourself Legend LOL you're so lame

Legend huffed, feeling his cheeks flush. THERE'S A REASON OK

Uh huh. Sure. So this Wild dude is legit then? I didn't let some random stranger into my pt's room yest right?

Sighing, Legend replied, Nah he's legit. Good guy. Wish he could've told me his dad was here.

Because it had to be his father, right? The more Legend thought about it, the more it made sense. The man looked just like Wild, except for being older and more worn out. He'd been reaching out to Wild, calling out his name, in a frenzy. Wild had been acting strange. The long drawn out gaze with Time. All of it.

"Legend."

Glancing up, the travel nurse saw Warriors standing over him, looking grim. "Uh... Wars, you good?"

"Hope you paid attention to the training," Warriors said. "That patient who got diagnosed with Arfy at the urgent care is here. You're taking him."

Legend blinked. "He's--he's here? Did he get worse?"

"Yeah. They're intubating him now."

Great. As if his stomach wasn't in knots already. Warriors gave Legend the room and said that would be his only patient to try and decrease cross contamination with other rooms. Legend ran the training demonstration in his head, now mildly panicked that he'd ignored some of it in lieu of talking to his sister, but it was fairly straightforward. Everyone was already masking as a precaution, he just needed to start wearing gowns and goggles and face shields too.

Time to get to work.

XXX

Wild paced in his bedroom, simultaneously annoyed and thankful that he had tonight off. Everyone had texted him by this point asking if he was alright, and while he appreciated the sentiment, he really had no way of conveying that he desperately wanted and needed to keep his past separate from his present.

He hardly knew his life before Castle Town. But what he did remember was enough. He couldn't--he couldn't go back to that life. He'd lost everyone, and it had been his fault. As his memories had come back, he'd doubled down on avoiding his past, including his family.

How could he possibly reconcile the old him with who he was now, after all? He just wanted to close that chapter of his life. He just wanted closure, period. He was terrified of seeing his family again. What would they think of him? How could he have left them like he had? How could he ever return to them?

He... he wanted to check on his father. But he knew by now the rest of his family was likely at the hospital, and he did not need to see them. Guilt twisted his gut as he stared out the window, watching the cows graze in the pasture.

Sighing, he went downstairs, catching sight of Malon watching the news. He distracted himself with asking her what was up, and she said, "There's ten more cases of Arfy in town."

Wild blinked. Ten? Hadn't there just been one yesterday?

That... didn't bode well.

Before Wild could comment, Wind skipped in, having mentioned he was dropping by for dinner. "Yo, you guys should see the picture Legend just sent me of this guy's chest x-ray!"

Wild and Malon both crowded around Wind's phone to look at th eimage, and Wild asked, "So what am I looking at?"

Malon hissed, staring at the image. "Those lungs look awful."

"Right?" Wind glanced up at the OR nurse. "I'm surprised they have any compliance."

Wild stared at the pair dully. "I take it it's bad."

"His lungs are shot," Wind emphasized. "Like... they look like they're rocks. Legend said they can barely get the guy to oxygenate."

Wild felt a new twinge of anxiety in his chest. This new illness had been tearing through some cities in the Gerudo Desert, and now that it was in Castle Town...

As if he didn't have enough to worry about. He sighed. Hopefully his father would get better quickly and his family would leave before anything truly terrible happened.

Hopefully nothing terrible would happen at all.

#writing #lu in healthcare #lu legend #lu wild #lu warriors #lu malon #lu wind #Wild's just a ~little~ stressed #Fable is demonstrating peak sibling energy in teasing Legend #honestly I would too if my brother nicknamed himself “Legend” LOL #lu fable

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faustandfurious · 6 months ago

Text

Medicine is such a thankless profession sometimes, and not in the way people think it is, because your patients will thank you when you spend those five minutes extra just chatting with them in the ward corridor, and the strict attendings with high standards will thank you when you invest that little bit of extra effort in becoming a good clinician, but everyone who works in the hospital administration will look at those five minutes of conversation with a patient and see a waste of time, and they’ll jam-pack your schedule to the point where you have no time and energy left over to learn new things or do anything more than a passably okay job, and then they’ll beg you to pick up extra shifts to the point where you’re working 70 hours a week and sleeping 5 hours per night, and months later, when you’re burnt out, they’ll berate you for not taking better care of yourself.

#faust.doc

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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year ago

Text

The conservative movement is cracking up

I'll be in Stratford, Ontario, appearing onstage with Vass Bednar as part of the CBC IDEAS Festival. I'm also doing an afternoon session for middle-schoolers at the Stratford Public Library.

Politics always requires coalitions. In parliamentary democracies, the coalitions are visible, when they come together to form the government. In a dictatorship, the coalitions are hidden to everyone except infighting princelings and courtiers (until a general or minister is executed, exiled or thrown in prison.)

In a two-party system, the coalitions are inside the parties – not quite as explicit as the coalition governments in a multiparty parliament, but not so opaque as the factions in a dictatorship. Sometimes, there are even explicit structures to formalize the coalition, like the Biden Administration's Unity Task Force, which parceled out key appointments among two important blocs within the party (the finance wing and the Sanders/Warren wing).

Conservative politics are also a coalition, of course. As an outsider, I confess that I am much less conversant with the internal power-struggles in the GOP and the conservative movement, though I'm trying to remedy that. Books like Nathan J Robinson's Responding to the Right present a great overview of various conservative belief-systems:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/14/nathan-robinson/#arguendo

And the Know Your Enemy podcast does an amazing job of diving deep into right-wing beliefs, especially when it comes to identifying fracture lines in the conservative establishment. A recent episode on the roots of contemporary right-wing antisemitism in the paleocon/neocon split was hugely informative and fascinating:

https://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/know-your-enemy-in-search-of-anti-semitism-with-john-ganz/

Political parties are weak institutions, liable to capture and hospitable to corruption. General elections aren't foolproof or impervious to fraud, but they're miles more robust than parties, whose own leadership selection processes and other key decisions can be made in the shadows, according to rules that can be changed on a whim:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/30/weak-institutions/

Which means that parties are brittle, weak vessels that we rely on to contain the volatile mixture of factions who might actually hate each other, sometimes even more than they hate the other party. Remember the defenestration of GOP House Speaker Kevin McCarthy? That:

https://apnews.com/article/mccarthy-gaetz-speaker-motion-to-vacate-congress-327e294a39f8de079ef5e4abfb1fa555

Even outsiders like me know that there's a deep fracture in the Republican Party, with Trumpists on one side and the "establishment" on the other side. Reading accounts of the 2016 GOP leadership race, I get the distinct impression that Trump's win was even more shocking to party insiders than it was to the rest of us.

Which makes sense. They thought they had the party under control, knew where its levers were and how to pull them. For us, Trump's win was a terrible mystery. For GOP power-brokers, it was a different kind of a nightmare, the kind where you discover that controls to the the car you're driving in high-speed traffic aren't connected to anything and you're not really the driver.

But as Trump's backers – another coalition – fall out among each other, it's becoming easier for the rest of us to understand what happened. Take FBI informant Peter Thiel's defection from the Trump camp:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/11/12/silicon-valley-billionaire-donors-presidential-candidates/

Thiel was the judas goat who led tech's reactionary billionaires into Trump's tent, blazing a trail and raising a fortune on the way. Thiel's support for Trump was superficially surprising. After all, Thiel is gay, and Trump's running mate, Mike Pence, openly swore war on queers of all kinds. Today, Thiel has rebuffed Trump's fundraising efforts and is reportedly on Trump's shit-list.

But as a Washington Post report – drawing heavily on gossiping anonymous insiders – explains. Thiel has never let homophobia blind him to the money and power he stands to gain by backing bigots:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/11/12/silicon-valley-billionaire-donors-presidential-candidates/

Thiel bankrolled Blake Masterson's Senate race, despite Masterson's promise to roll back marriage equality – and despite the fact that Masterton attended Thiel's wedding to another man.

According to the post, the Thiel faction's abandonment of Trump wasn't driven by culture war issues. Rather, they were fed up with Trump's chaotic, undisciplined governance strategy, which scuttled many opportunities to increase the wealth and power of America's oligarchs. Thiel insiders complained that Trump's "character traits sabotaged the policy changes" and decried Trump's habit of causing "turmoil and chaos…that would interfere with his agenda" rather than "executing relentlessly."

For Trump's base, the cruelty might be the point. But for his backers, the cruelty was the tactic, and the point was money, and the power it brings. When Trump seemed like he might use cruel tactics to achieve power, his backers went along for the ride. But when Trump made it clear that he would trade opportunities for power solely to indulge his cruelty, they bailed.

That's an important fracture line in the modern American conservative coalition, but it's not the only one.

Writing in the BIG newsletter, Matt Stoller and Lee Hepner describes the emerging conservative split over antitrust and monopoly:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/is-there-an-establishment-plan-to

Antitrust has been the centerpiece of the Biden Administration's most progressive political project. For the left wing of the Dems, blunting corporate power is seen as the necessary condition for rolling back the entire conservative program, which depends on oligarch-provided cash infusions, media campaigns, and thinktank respectability.

But elements of the right have also latched onto antitrust, for reasons of their own. Take the Catholic traditionalists who see weakening corporate power as a path to restoring a "traditional" household where a single breadwinner can support a family:

https://www.capitalisnt.com/episodes/when-capitalism-becomes-tyranny-with-sohrab-ahmari

There's another reason to support antitrust, of course – it's popular. There are large, bipartisan majorities opposed to monopoly and in favor of antitrust action:

https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/Antitrust_Policy_poll_results.pdf

Two-thirds of Americans support anti-monopoly laws. 70% of Americans say monopolies are bad for the economy. The Biden administration is doing more on antitrust than any presidency since the Carter years, but 52% of Americans haven't heard about it:

https://www.ft.com/content/c17c35a3-e030-4e3b-9f49-c6bdf7d3da7f

There's a big opportunity latent in the facts of antitrust's popularity, and the Biden antitrust agenda's obscurity. So far, the Biden administration hasn't figured out how to seize that opportunity, but some Dems are trying to grab it. Take Montana Senator John Tester, a Democrat in a Trump-voting state, whose campaign has taken aim at the meat-packing monopolies that are screwing the state's ranchers.

The right wants in on this. At a Federalist Society black-tie event last week during the National Lawyer's Convention, Biden's top antitrust enforcers got a warm welcome. Jonathan Kanter, the DOJ's top antitrust cop, was praised onstage by Todd Zywicki, whom Stoller and Hepner call "a highly influential law professors," from George Mason Univeristy, a fortress of pro-corporate law and economics. Zywicki praised the DoJ and FTC's new antitrust guidelines – which have been endlessly damned in the WSJ and other conservative outlets – as a reasonable and necessary compromise:

https://fedsoc.org/events/national-press-club-event

Even Lina Khan – the bogeywoman of the WSJ editorial page – got a warm reception at her fireside chat:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FwdAxOSznE

And the convention's hot Saturday ticket was "a debate between two conservatives over whether social media platforms had sufficient monopoly power that the state could regulate them as common carriers":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwoO7bZajXk

This is pretty amazing. And yet…lawmakers haven't gotten the memo. During markup for last week's appropriations bill, lawmakers inserted a flurry of anti-antitrust amendments into the must-pass legislation:

https://www.economicliberties.us/press-release/fsgg-approps-bill-must-support-enforcers-not-kneecap-them/#

These amendments were just wild. Rep Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI) introduced an amendment that would give companies carte blanche to stick you with unlimited junk fees, and allow corporations to take away their workers' rights to change jobs through noncompetes:

https://www.congress.gov/congressional-report/118th-congress/house-report/269

Another amendment would block the FTC from enforcing against "unfair methods of competition." Translation: the FTC couldn't punish companies like Amazon for using algorithms to hike prices, or for conspiring to raise insulin prices, or its predatory pricing aimed at killing small- and medium-sized grocers.

An amendment from Rep Kat Cammack (R-FL) would kill the FTC's "click to cancel" rule, which will force companies to let you cancel your subscriptions the same way you sign up for them – instead of making you wait on hold to beg a customer service rep to let you cancel.

Another one: "a provision to let auto dealers cheat customers with undisclosed added fees":

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BILLS-118hr4664rh/pdf/BILLS-118hr4664rh.pdf

Dems got in on the action, too. A bipartisan pair, Rep Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Rep Lou Correa (D-FL), unsuccessfully attempted to strip the Department of Transport of its powers to block mergers, which were most recently used to block the merger of Jetblue and Spirit:

https://www.congress.gov/amendment/118th-congress/house-amendment/640

And 206 Republicans voted to block the DoT from investigating airline price-gouging. As Stoller and Hepner point out, these reps serve constituents from low-population states that are especially vulnerable to this kind of extraction.

This morning, Jim Jordan hosted a Judiciary Committee meeting where he raked DOJ antitrust boss Jonathan Kanter over the coals, condemning the same merger guidelines that Zywicki praised to the Federalist Society:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/7jxc8dp8erhe1q3wpndre/GOP-oversight-hearing-memo-11.13.23.pdf?rlkey=d54ur91ry3mc69bta5vhgg13z&dl=0

Jordan's prep memo reveals his plan to accuse Kanter of being an incompetent who keeps failing in his expensive bids to hold corporate power to account, and being an all-powerful government goon who's got a boot on the chest of American industry. Stoller and Hepner invoke the old Yiddish joke: "The food at this restaurant is terrible, and the portions are too small!"

Stoller and Hepner close by wondering what to make of this factional split in the American right. Is it that these members of the GOP Congressional caucus just haven't gotten the memo? Or is this a peek at what corporate lobbyists home to accomplish after the 2024 elections?

They suggest that both Democrats and Republican primary contesters in that race could do well by embracing antitrust, "Establishment Republicans want you to pay more for groceries, healthcare, and travel, and are perfectly fine letting monopoly corporations make decisions about your daily life."

I don't know if Republicans will take them up on it. The party's most important donors are pathologically loss-averse and unwilling to budge on even the smallest compromise. Even a faint whiff of state action against unlimited corporate power can provoke a blitz of frenzied scare-ads. In New York state, a proposal to ban noncompetes has triggered a seven-figure ad-buy from the state's Business Council:

https://www.timesunion.com/state/article/noncompete-campaign-raises-state-lobbying-18442769.php

It's hard to overstate how unhinged these ads are. Writing for The American Prospect, Terri Gerstein describes one: "a hammer smashes first an alarm clock, then a light bulb, with shards of glass flying everywhere. An ominous voice predicts imminent doom. Then, for good measure, a second alarm clock is shattered":

https://prospect.org/labor/2023-11-10-business-groups-reflexive-anti-worker-demagogy/

Banning noncompetes is good for workers, but it's also unambiguously good for business and the economy. They "reduce new firm entry, innovation by startups, and the ability of new firms to grow." 44% of small business owners report having been blocked from starting a new company because of a noncompete; 35% have been blocked from hiring the right person for a vacancy due to a noncompete. :

https://eig.org/noncompetes-research-brief/

As Gerstein writes, it's not unusual for the business lobby to lobby against things that are good for business – and lobby hard. The Chamber of Commerce has gone Hulk-mode on simple proposals to adapt workplaces for rising temperatures, acting as though permitting "rest, shade, water, and gradual acclimatization" on the jobsite will bring business to a halt. But actual businesses who've implemented these measures describe them as an easy lift that increases productivity.

The Chamber lobbies against things its members support – like paid sick days. The Chamber complains endlessly about the "patchwork" of state sick leave rules – but scuttles any attempt to harmonize these rules nationally, even though members who've implemented them call them "no big deal":

https://cepr.net/report/no-big-deal-the-impact-of-new-york-city-s-paid-sick-days-law-on-employers/

The Chamber's fight against American businesses is another one of those fracture lines in the conservative coalition. Working with far right dark money groups, they've worked in statehouses nationwide to roll back child labor laws:

https://www.epi.org/blog/florida-legislature-proposes-dangerous-roll-back-of-child-labor-protections-at-least-16-states-have-introduced-bills-putting-children-at-risk/

They also fight tooth-and-nail against minimum wage rises, despite 80% of their members supporting them:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/04/04/leaked-documents-show-strong-business-support-for-raising-the-minimum-wage/

The spectacle of Republicans in disarray is fascinating to watch and even a little exciting, giving me hope for real progressive gains. Of course, it would help if the Democratic coalition wasn't such a mess.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/14/when-youve-lost-the-fedsoc/#anti-buster-buster

Image: Jason Auch, modified https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Antarctic_mountains,_pack_ice_and_ice_floes.jpg

CC BY 2.0

#pluralistic #trustbusting #antitrust #schisms #infighting #conservativism #millionaire on billionaire violence #jim jordan #lina khan #jonathan kanter #federalist society #trumpism #class struggle #labor

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cvlutos · 2 years ago

Text

TWISTED WONDERLAND: MAFIA AU

Overview:

Night Raven City.

A beautifully rotten city, ruled by crime and all the bad things within the world. Where the government and police are merely pawns to the real owners of this horrid city.

NRC is divided into seven mafias. Seven mafias that operate in different parts of the city and need each other to maintain balance. There are few places in which the seven don't rule, and you happen to live within the said place. Which is known as The Ramshackle. Home too many that want nothing to do with the powerful groups. And one rule within the Damshackles is, "Do not stay out beyond midnight." Nothing good happens after the clock chimes 12.

Mafia Heartslabyul:

Heartslabyul, also know as the Queendom of Roses, is strict and as long as laws and rules are followed, you wouldn't even believe that you were within mafia territory. There's rarely crime's rarely crime, and the mafia doesn't bother the people within its territory unless said people are up to no good. Which causes a public showing of punishment, to deter others from crossing the Rose-Red Mafia.

Directly in control of healthcare and portions of the Law. All Hospitals must pay the H.M [Heartslabyul Mafia] taxes and go through them before working with anyone that could want to work against the mafia. As well as portions of the law are decided by people that are tied to the crimson group. Most simply pay what's owed and follow the strict rules within his district, unless you don't, which is like signing your own death certificate. Next thing you know, you'll find your head not attached to your neck.

༺❘✦Boss [Godfather]: Riddle Rosehearts

Title: Red-Rose Tyrant

Age: 22

The Boss is the head of the family, usually reigning as a dictator, sometimes called the Don or "Godfather". The boss receives a cut of every operation. Operations are taken on by every member of the family.

The Heartslabyul Mafia works similarly to a Kingdom, with the next boss being chosen from birth. Passed down from his mother, then from her mother. Riddle is the first son after nearly 50 years of being run by women. He's seen as hot- headed when mad, but also extremely reliable. Placing the concern of his people first.

══════

✦Underboss: Cater Diamond

Title: Tyrant's Lap Dog

Age: 23

The Underboss, usually appointed by the boss, is the second in command of the family. The underboss often runs the day-to-day responsibilities of the family or oversees its most lucrative rackets. He usually gets a percentage of the family's income from the boss's cut. The underboss is usually first in line to become acting boss if the boss is imprisoned, and is also frequently seen as a logical successor.

Cater Diamond was chosen by Riddle's mother to be his Underboss, and he has kept that position since Riddle has deemed him reliable enough to stay. Cater is seen as the only real person within the Mafia, and he's persuasive.

✦Consigliere: Trey Clover

Title: Tyrant's Right-Hand

Age: 24

The consigliere is an advisor to the family and is sometimes seen as the boss's "right-hand man". He is used as a mediator of disputes and often acts as a representative or aide for the family in meetings with other families, rival criminal organizations, and important business associates. In practice, the consigliere is normally the third-ranking member of the administration of a family and was traditionally a senior member carrying the utmost respect of the family and is deeply familiar with the inner workings of the organization. A boss will often appoint a trusted close friend or personal advisor as his official consigliere.

Trey Clover has been friends with Riddle since childhood, as well as he's family has been involved with the Heartslabyul mafia for generations, which makes them basically family. Trey is extremely reliable and everyone within Heartslabyul view him as family, with his kind appearance.

✦Caporegime [Capo]: Deuce Spade

Title: Tyrant's Guard Dog

Age: 19

A caporegime (also captain or skipper) is in charge of a crew, a group of soldiers who report directly to him. Each crew usually contains 10-20 soldiers and many more associates. A capo is appointed by the boss and reports to him or the underboss. A captain gives a percentage of his (and his underlings') earnings to the boss and is also responsible for any tasks assigned, including murder.

Deuce Spade was brought into the Mafia due to him messing with the wrong crowd and angering Riddle, so in order to not die, he pledged his loyalty. Over time climbing up the ranks from soldier to a Capo within 2 years. Many are conflicted with Deuce's sudden joining, but it isn't look down upon to join the Heartslabyul Mafia.

✦Associate: Ace Trappola

Title: Tyrant's Ace Card

Age: 19

An associate is not a member of the Mafia but works for a crime family nonetheless. Associates can include a wide range of people who work for the family. An associate can have a wide range of duties, from virtually carrying out the same duties as a soldier to being a simple errand boy.

Due to his father's business, Ace basically grew up running errands for the Mafia, and that hasn't changed. He works with his brother and has slightly closer ties to the Mafia due to his friendship with Deuce.

══════ ♡ ════════════ ♡ ══════

Mafia SavannaClaw:

SavannaClaw District is damn near lawless and follows the rules of their mafia and the mafia alone. The Government and Police are basically useless. They represent the wild, with a lot of natural landscape, yet believe heavily in the idea of keeping women and children safe. Majority of the SavannaClaw mafia is made up of women. Crime happens often within their territory but is often handled with right away by their own civilians. The women of SavannaClaw don't involve themselves with average crime and hold a lot of power throughout all seven territories. No one dares to prevent them from getting justice.

SavannaClaw is directly in control of food resources and recreational places, such as parks, zoos, and nature parks. All stores and recreational places go to him directly and must pay the S.M taxes, as well as any other Mafias must pay S.M unless they have special permissions. SavannaClaw prides themselves on being fair and non-discriminatory. As long as you are respectful to them, if not, you'll find yourself within the lion's den.

༺❘✦Boss [Godfather]: Leona Kingscholar

Title: King of Beasts

Age: 26

Another Mafia that works similarly to a Kingdom, but also follows the circle of life. Issues that happen within the district of SavannaClaw will be solved by those who live within SavannaClaw. Many retreat there for safety, even despite its dog-eats-dog world.

══════

✦Underboss: Ruggie Bucchi

Title: Heart of SavannaClaw

Age: 23

Ruggie also acts as both Underboss and Consigliere, due to Leona wanting no one else as his Consigliere, which gives Ruggie many jobs to take care of, but also an extremely reliable part within SavannaClaw. Some say before Ruggie, Leona had a Consigliere, who was a different man, a huntsman, only for said man to leave Leona for another Mafia.

✦Caporegime [Capo]: Jack Howl

Title: Lion's Blood Hound

Age: 19

Jack Howl purposely chose to join Leona's mafia, after leaving Pomefiore once the current Mafia Leader took over. He enjoys the real atmosphere and enjoys the freeing atmosphere that Pomefiore couldn't grant.

══════ ♡ ════════════ ♡ ══════

Mafia Octavinelle:

Octavinelle is one of the most dangerous parts of the city. Violence and crimes at all times, there are truly 2 parts to Octavinelle. Uptown and Downtown. Uptown is where the richest and wealthiest are, where the best restaurants are, the best stores, and the best everything. If you have the money and style, you can live the best life within Octavinelle.

Downtown Octavinelle is the exact opposite, dirty and grungy, the worse of the worse and the Mafia will simply turn a blind eye. Crimes happen often and no one solves them. If you're dead, then you're dead. Better luck next time. This Mafia is truly ruthless and isn't for the faint of heart. The police within its territory is as dangerous as the mafia, often paid to simply slack around, not to do their job.

Octavinelle gets most of its profit from restaurants, and stores, as well as making deals luring people into debt. His deals are super influential that not even the other six mafia bosses can intervene, except to tell others to be completely wary of him. There is no true honor code, aside from written agreements. Break his deal, and you'd possibly find yourself drowning.

༺❘✦Boss [Godfather]: Azul Ashengrotto

Title: Merchant of the Deep

Age: 23

One can view Octavinelle as a large capitalistic corporation, and Azul takes full advantage of his people without any trouble. He continues to try to expand his territory and plans to have Ramshackle under his jurisdiction.

══════

✦Underboss: Jade Leech

Title: Calm-Headed Sadist

Age: 23

Jade has also taken control of the position of Consigliere for his own liking and is quite busy. Seen almost all the time in all places. Yet he isn't loved, he's absolutely feared. If you see Jade Leech around you, it's better to simply pray that he isn't there for you.

✦Caporegime [Capo]: Floyd Leech

Title: Sadistic Eel

Age: 23

Floyd is almost as equally disliked as Jade. He's known for his aggressiveness and is often in charge of any major incidents that involve murder. It's best that if you see him, to walk the other way and look boring enough that he'll leave you alone.

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Mafia Scarabia:

The 2nd most violent district, after the new Mafia Boss, became in charge. Scarabia, also known as Scalding Sands, is beautiful in the land, and the people are genuinely sweet and kind, yet the violence is never checked, due to said kindness. Scalding Sands is also one of the largest district. The first largest SavannaClaw, aka the Sunset Savanna, 2nd is Octavinelle, aka the Coral Sea, and 3rd is Scalding Sands. This is an extremely rich mafia group, one of the largest due to its economy.

Scarabia gains profit from the selling of seasonings, oil, and rare minerals. Which gives Scarabia the nickname, The land of Gold. The Scarabia Mafia is tied closely to the Government, influencing them directly. Those that outright disrespect Scarabia, this will definitely leave you stranded in the desert.

༺❘✦Boss [Godfather]: Kalim Al-Asim

Title: Silly Sultan

Age: 22

Kalim was appointed by his father and is generous and kind, which is the primary cause for the heightened crimes and violence, due to his blind optimism and clear unawareness of the suffering of his people.

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✦Underboss: Jamil Viper

Title: Level-Head Right-Hand

Age: 22

Jamil, in some circles, is seen as the true Boss of Scarabia, with his level- headedness and trying to actually help Scarabia. Though many more are loyal to Kalim. Some say that Jamil is a snake hidden, waiting for the best moment to strike.

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Mafia Pomefiore:

Pomefiore, once known as the Shaftlands, the Entertainment District, is filled to the brim with Models, Actors, and anyone that wants to be a star, famous, and beloved. This is the best district to live in if you want forever entertainment, even though it's extremely dangerous and fake. Following strict rules, especially if you want to succeed. This industry is cutthroat and not just anyone can be famous, especially since the Mafia controls the media. During the day it's a picturesque aesthetic, the same as the night sites. But if you're simply the average person, it's dangerous. Many escaped the tyrannical rule of the Pomefiore Mafia.

Pomefiore is in charge of NRC's entertainment and tourism, and NRC relies heavily on it, bringing in large amounts of the city's money. Pomefiore is one of the most aesthetically pleasing Mafia, that is a constant presence, that in some parts, seen as an honor to be graced by the mafia, in others, is a complete nightmare that could leave you poisoned.

༺❘✦Boss [Godfather]: Vil Schoenheit

Title: The Fairest

Age: 24

Vil rose to power due to his fast popularity, taking over Pomefiore single- handedly and modeling the District into his own. Many love him, while others are scared of him and ran to escape.

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✦Underboss: Rook Hunt

Title: The Queen's Hunter

Age: 24

Rook Hunt, at one point, worked for the Mafia Boss of SavannaClaw, before the two Mafia Leaders clashed and Rook chose Vil over SavannaClaw, taking the position as Vil's Underboss and Consigliere. Many view Rook as weird and often avoid him as a whole. If you ever see Rook, that will absolutely be your last time alive.

✦Caporegime [Capo]: Epel Felmier

Title: Pretty Boy

Age: 19

Epel was forced into the Mafia after causing some trouble with a group of kids. Vil liked the way Epel looked and forced him to train and work to become his capo. Epel hates it and actively disrespects him.

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Mafia Ignihyde:

No one knows much about the Ignihyde District, aka the Underworld. It is genuinely a ghost town during the day, and anyone you do see immediately runs. The city is operated by machines until the sun sets and Ignihyde is alive. With events and parties, with stores open and bright lights. Unlike the foggy day, where you can barely see 3 feet in front of you. Violence is extremely rare, due to the fear of getting chased by Ignihyde Mafia's robot dogs, which are extremely violent, and most people that interact with the dogs don't come out alive.

The majority of Ignihyde's income comes from the selling of technology and weapons. From security systems to machine guns. There is no project too difficult to complete if the amount of money is high enough. Ignihyde, though, is extremely protective of their machines and if you're caught tampering with one, it will lead you 6 feet under.

༺❘✦Boss [Godfather]: Idia Shroud

Title: King of Underworld

Age: 23

Idia was chosen by his parents and has been boss for as long as anyone could remember, though most have never seen what he looks like. Many believe that they have to be worthy enough to look upon him. They wouldn't believe that he's a huge, anxious introvert.

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✦Underboss: Ortho Shroud

Title: Sibling of the King

Age: 16?

One of the youngest within the Mafia to have such a powerful position. He's both the Underboss and Consigliere and is constantly seen running any errands, big or small. Ortho is extremely friendly, yet if you disrespect Idia, you disrespect him. So, any ill speaking of Idia ends with your soul in the afterlife.

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Mafia Diasomnia:

Diasomnia District, aka Briar Valley, is the quietest and often forgotten, even though it has the most influential power. Many don't ever leave the Diasomnia District and never interact with the Mafia, so it's an honor seeing the Mafia in person. Similar to Heartslabyul, which Diasomnia is inspired by, so has various similarities to, it's an honor to be within the Diasomnia Mafia, and many love their existence. It's orderly and most of the people within Diasomnia have amazing influence and power. Little to none chaos or violence occurs, and is one of the safest districts, with slight problems due to discrimination.

Diasomnia has major control over everything and is super influential. Their money comes from everywhere and anyone, even if that means doing unsavory things. No one dares to talk bad about the Diasomnia mafia, lest you wanna be put into an endless sleep.

༺❘✦Boss [Godfather]: Malleus Draconia

Title: King of Briar Valley

Age: 28

No one has ever seen Malleus but knows of his strength within the Briar Valley, which is the for the Diasomnia District. Everyone fears, yet absolutely cherish him and never wants his reign to end.

══════

✦Underboss: Silver

Title: Sleeping Knight

Age: 22

Silver is unique out of the Mafia. No one knows where he came from, nor why he's important enough to be underboss, but he is. Having been raised to someday take the position.

✦Consigliere: Lilia Vanrouge

Title: General

Age: 32

Lilia is scary. Frightening. Yet acts like that of a child. He's weird and his behavior is odd. Most remember him to have a more serious appearance, than the boyish one he has now, which confuses many.

✦Caporegime [Capo]: Sebek Zigvolt

Title: Cap' Croc, Yapping Crocodile, & Most Loyal Knight

Age: 19

His title, Yapping Crocodile was created by Leona from SavannaClaw, due to his constant yelling in defense of Malleus, which stuck with him as he rose the ranks to Capo. Silver calls him Cap' Croc, cause it's also funny. Sebek is like any other member of the Diasomnia Mafia, is to prove himself.

Information:

Magic exists, yet is rarely used. Outdated. And in some places, frowned upon. The existence of beastman, fae, and merpeople, as well as humans still exists. Immorality is still a thing—aswell as overblots. Mafia Leaders are still the only ones who use magic on a regular bases.

Each of the mafia districts had an original name. For example, The Heartslabyul District, but their district was originally named Queendom of Roses. This is due to the overarching power that the Mafia holds, that each district is named after the Mafia instead of its original Name. They are still identified as they're old names on maps, but they're lost to those inside the Districts, depending on their mafia.

Ramshackle isn't considered a district, even though it's big enough to be one, but is rather large and runs on its own, and is located on the outskirts of NRC. Ramshackle isn't under the control of any Mafia.

All 7 districts meet surround a circle of NRC, where the Government is mainly based as well as those rich that can afford to be outside of the Mafia but are still reliant upon them.

Anyone can visit different districts, though many choose not to unless they have written documents that allow you within other districts, as well as paying a small fee. Some Districts are harder to get into than others.

For example, SavannaClaw requires valid documents and as long as they're valid and you carry them with you at all times, you're completely safe and welcome. But if you want to go to Octavinelle and you don't live there, you're required to pay a fee of nearly 50 dollars ~ 100 thaumarks to simply visit, and if you want to leave, it requires months' notice. In some districts, it's better to stay than to try to leave.

Not all districts get along, though some are more respected than others.

For example, Pomefiore is one of the first and longest existing mafias within NRC, with Heartslabyul the second longest, having a deeply rooted influence that lasts generations. So Pomefiore and Heartslabyul highly respect each other.

Rivalries Exist. Due to the participation in sports, Each District has its own sports teams that compete with each other and the best players move on and can join NRC's main team. Though these competitions are extremely political and determine various things.

NRC Government:

Controlled by Dire Crowley, who decided years ago that instead of continuous Mafia and Gang wars, they would merely allow the Mafia certain territories and districts in order to keep the peace and it has been that way since. Though many view him as unreliable and a coward, Crowley has prevented the deaths of many, to the best of his abilities, limiting the spread of the seven mafias. Forcing them to act only within their district and stopping them from spreading to other cities.

RSA Heroes:

RSA is a neighboring city that's been directly impacted by NRC's growing problem. The RSA Heroes are a group of people that actively fight against the Mafias, and aid those that want to escape NRC, which has gained the popularity of those within Ramshackle and has caused problems for the seven mafias. Some mafias which that personally want to get rid of the Ramshackles and force them to live within the Districts.

Noble Bell City:

An equally corrupt far-off city, that often meets with the mafia leaders of NRC, yet views them as brash. NBC isn't different from NRC, except for their current governor, Rollo Flamm, who controls all of NBC, which makes it a toxic and dangerous city. Has attempted to lure Ramshackle and make it part of NBC, which angered Diasomnia.

The Ramshackle District:

This is where you live. There's a rather healthy community of people helping people, and even if it's old and dirty, you love it. You live here with your cat, Grim, who you found digging in your dumpster. You work a simple job, running different errands, that often have you visiting multiple different districts, yet never once have you run into the Mafia. Simply cause you follow one rule, "Do stay out beyond midnight."

Now, you love your home within the Ramshackle, your lil hovel, and your small garden with your cat. You love it, truly you do. You love your neighbors, and you love the festivals that the Ramshackle holds. You love it all.

Your leather satchel hangs off your hip, filled to the brim with different letters and papers from your most recent trip. You just returned from Scarabia, having a good easy delivery for the old man that lives up the street, and after a long day, you're finally home. You push past the old rickety iron gate, and up the stone pathway, eyes searching along for your familiar feline friend. He usually waits for you.

Hopping the old creaky steps, until you stop right in front of a card. Perfectly placed with gold decor. 'For Ramschackle's Perfect. You're invited to Crowley Hall' written directly on the front. Ramshackle's Perfect was only a joke type name among the people that lived in, said Ramshackle. Who else would call you that?

You pick up the letter, glancing around the porch, before slipping inside your home, and closing the door behind you. Crowley Hall, also known as the Grand Dinner Hall, a place where all important events took place, especially the meeting of all seven mafia leaders. Why would someone invite you with no other information? You flip the card, there's nothing else. Your shoulders slump, you shouldn't go. Yet, you stare at the words once again. It could be important or lead to trouble for the other people of Ramshackle. Your eyes drift over to your clock. It was only 7 pm.

You had five hours.

You glance back at the thick fancy card. Five hours before 12. You feel a familiar purr, and glance down at your cat, Grim rubbing against your legs. Five hours, and well, as long as you're back before midnight. You'll be fine.

Right?

#mafia au #t.manor.horror.stories #yandere twisted wonderland #twisted wonderland smut #twisted wonderland x reader

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crippled-peeper · 10 months ago

Text

every time I read about the recent $14.5billion sent to Israel by the Biden Administration I think about how in the hospital I used to work in in New Mexico, we had patients whose parents, being in the poorest and most rural communities in the country, would sometimes be forced to legally surrender their children to the state so they could get the chemotherapy and surgeries their parents couldn’t afford or didn’t have insurance for

I also think about how INTERNATIONALLY BASED rural healthcare organizations have had to intervene in New Mexico, a state in the richest country on the fucking planet, because access to healthcare is so bad for the people living there

we are the perhaps the shittiest country ever I think

#it makes me violent and it makes me want to (redacted)#personal #cancer #ableism #classism

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defectivevillain · 5 months ago

Text

watching you (watching me)

pairing: Percival Graves/Reader

the reader's race and gender are ambiguous; no pronouns or physical descriptors are used.

summary: Just as you begin to think you’re getting to know Percival, he starts acting strange. When you come across him in the hall, he doesn’t return your small smiles; when he meets with Seraphina, he walks right by you as if you aren’t even there. You don’t want to read into those minute gestures too much, so, at first, you don’t. But the fact that he pivoted from purposefully stopping by your desk to inquire about your day…to walking past you without so much as a lingering gaze… is concerning. Plus, his rumored treatment of his employees seems uncharacteristic. While you've never worked under Director Graves, you’ve heard from several different people in multiple departments that he’s a great person to work for. So why is he so different all of a sudden? What changed?

word count: 4.5k | ao3 version

warnings: canon-typical violence, abduction, unconsciousness, hospitals, implied malnourishment & injury

Sometimes, you think you can never truly leave your life as an Auror behind.

When you graduate from Ilvermorny, you eagerly join the Auror training program—and pass years later with flying colors. You soon find yourself regularly participating in missions and tracking down Dark wizards. The job is incredibly fulfilling, but it’s also extremely exhausting. Your work follows you into your personal life, to the point that perpetrators invade your dreams and you can’t ever relax. You manage to push through for a while, but eventually, you find yourself experiencing too much burnout to enjoy the job anymore.

Then you’re approached by Seraphina Picquery with a one-of-a-kind proposition. The Chief of Staff position recently became available after the previous employee retired, and Picquery—Seraphina, she tells you to call her—is looking for a replacement. It’s a rather high-up position—an administrative aid to the President of the entire organization. The salary is nearly double what you’re making as an Auror and you’d still be handling important work. In fact, you might even be awarded more responsibility in that role than your position as an Auror. It doesn’t take you long to get back to her with a confirmation that you’ll accept the position; within a few weeks, you have a desk right outside Seraphina’s office.

Through your new position, you gain exposure to much more of the organization—as you’re communicating with nearly every executive-level employee. You meet Emily Limus, the Federal Identity Commissioner; Malcolm Carneirus, Captain of the Aurors; and even Bernadette Williams, the executioner. (She’s a kind woman, but you sincerely hope you don’t have a reason to see her again.) You don’t exactly meet Percival Graves, the Director of Magical Security. Rather, you sort of… crash into him.

You’re in a bit of a rush, power-walking down the hall, when you turn the corner and collide with someone. The stack of papers in your hands goes flying and you wince. “Sorry, sorry-” You quickly say, looking at the person you just bumped into. It’s none other than Percival Graves, the Director of Magical Security. You’ve seen and heard plenty about him, but you’ve never actually met him before. He’s somehow even more handsome in person, with inky black hair styled back to reveal tinges of silver hair on the sides of his face. He has deep brown eyes and looks rather intimidating, what with the formal attire he’s wearing.

“It’s alright,” the man responds with an understanding smile. “You must be the new Chief of Staff.” He introduces himself and extends a hand. You think the thought is rather nice. He could’ve easily just assumed that you’d heard of him, but he instead went through the effort of introducing himself to you in a friendly and personable manner. You immediately decide you like him.

You introduce yourself in return, before shaking his extended hand. “Pleasure to meet you.”

“Likewise,” Director Graves responds. “Can I help you with those?” He motions to the floor, where your paperwork rests in a disorganized pile. You grimace down at it, dreading the thought of organizing it all over again.

“Ah, that’d be great, thanks,” you then say, crouching down to pick up the scattered papers. He crouches down too and collects a few papers, placing them in a neat pile and handing it to you. You thank him and get to your feet once all your papers are in order.

For an awkward moment, you’re lingering silently in front of him. He doesn’t immediately dismiss you or move to depart. Rather, the man regards you with another look. “Seraphina isn’t running you too ragged, is she?” Director Graves asks.

“No, no,” you’re quick to say. “She doesn’t know I’m doing this, actually.” You motion down to the papers and grimace, hoping the man can keep a secret.

“My lips are sealed,” Director Graves says with a small smile. You feel a smile rising on your own lips at the sight.

There’s that awkward silence again; this time, it doesn’t seem like the man is going to break through it. You take a deep breath and try to manifest some composure. “It was nice to meet you, sir,” You say.

His brow furrows. “Please, call me Percival,” Director Graves responds.

You blink for a moment, surprised at the invitation. “Okay,” you agree. “It was nice to meet you, Percival. Sorry, I have to get going…” You glance down the hallway behind him, praying Seraphina hasn’t gone into her meeting just yet.

“No worries,” Percival responds easily. “I’m sure we’ll be seeing each other again soon.” The two of you part ways and you find yourself smiling as you pace down the hall, a new spring in your step.

Indeed, you do begin to see Percival Graves rather frequently. You sit in on the meetings amongst the higher-level officials in the organization and he always has something to say about recent Dark wizard captures or other concerns. He’s pretty nice to you, too—always going out of his way to greet you when you enter the room. You feel like most of the other directors are keen to dismiss you, but Percival doesn’t. You hate to admit it, but he makes those stuffy weekly meetings infinitely more bearable.

Percival also greets you whenever he walks past your desk to enter Seraphina’s office. His short greetings may seem virtually insignificant, but they go a long way to making you feel more welcome in the workplace. You tell him as much one time, and have the honor of watching his cheeks flush ever so slightly pink. After that conversation, he starts stopping at your desk and asking you about your weekend, your work day, and anything else going on. It’s safe to say that Percival quickly becomes your favorite person to work with—other than your boss, of course.

But just as you begin to think you’re getting to know Percival, he starts acting strange. When you come across him in the hall, he doesn’t return your small smiles; when he meets with Seraphina, he walks right by you as if you aren’t even there. You don’t want to read into those minute gestures too much, so, at first, you don’t. You write these occurrences off as flukes and continue as normal.

The meetings amongst the executives are tenser than usual, though. Percival seems to be dominating the conversation, purposefully steering it in the directions he chooses. He possesses a self-importance that you didn’t seem to notice before. You have to wonder if you were wrong about him. In the past few weeks, he’s been acting entirely differently than when you first met him. If he’s showing his true colors, then… you’re not very happy about it.

It seems you aren’t the only one to notice his weird behavior, however. Seraphina repeatedly remarks that he seems a bit off, and she soon abandons their weekly meeting schedule in exchange for biweekly meetings. You also hear from the Aurors that the man is exhibiting a rather bad temper. He’s been lashing out at recruits for easy mistakes and working the senior Aurors to the bone.

You soon find yourself growing wary. These changes in behavior are complete switches from what he exhibited previously. And the fact that he pivoted from purposefully stopping by your desk to inquire about your day…to walking past you without so much as a lingering gaze… is concerning. Plus, his rumored treatment of his employees seems uncharacteristic. While you never worked under Director Graves, you’ve heard from several different people in multiple departments that he’s a great person to work for. So why is he so different all of a sudden? What changed?

You attempt to have another conversation with him in the coming days, only for him to brush off your questions and effectively dismiss you. You’re left wondering if you’re even speaking with the same person: if the Percival Graves from before was conjured by your imagination. The man you’ve interacted with recently is just far too different from the man you crashed into in the hallway all that time ago.

A dark thought crosses your mind as you’re contemplating Percival’s strange behavior. What if… he is a different person? What if this Percival Graves, the one who mistreats his employees and seems completely uncaring of the feelings of those around him, is a different man? You immediately huff a laugh under your breath for even considering such a crazy idea. There has to be a rational explanation for his behavior. Maybe he’s going through something right now—a death in the family or a bad breakup. You dismiss your doppelgänger idea as nothing more than a desperate theory.

But that same desperate theory keeps you up later that night, tossing and turning restlessly. It’s a foolish thought, a crackpot theory. Who would possibly have the power, skill, and evasive ability to disguise themself as the Director of Magical Security? How would that even be possible? They would not only have to be capable enough to at least get by in Percival’s position, but they’d also have to overpower him somehow. Percival is the Head of the Aurors—he’s an extremely talented duelist and quick on his feet. No doubt there are only a select handful of people who would even be able to stay alive in a duel with him, let alone triumph and render him incapacitated. Who would even want to do something like that? What purpose would it serve?

Well, if a person wanted to invade the Magical Congress and gain access to highly privileged information, you suppose that would be a clear-cut path to getting it. Percival is one of the highest-ranking officials at MACUSA, other than Seraphina herself.

But you find yourself struggling with the practicality of such an act. Again, only an incredibly powerful wizard would be able to pull something like that off—someone like Albus Dumbledore or Gellert Grindelwald. Obviously, Dumbledore wouldn’t have any reason to do something like that. But Grindelwald, on the other hand… The Dark wizard’s whereabouts have been unknown for a while now, and everyone knows that he’s gathering strength and support. You suppose one of his more loyal followers would embark on such a mission for his benefit.

After spending an hour thinking through the idea, you realize you can’t shake it off—and promise yourself to consider it more in the morning.

In the morning, you do far more than merely consider the possibility of someone else being disguised as Percival Graves. Instead, you find yourself hatching a plan. You think that, if you can lure Percival into a conversation, you’ll be able to ask him questions that only he would know the answers to. From there, you can determine if he’s real or a disguise maintained by someone else.

It sounds ridiculous and utterly inane. But what’s the worst that can happen? At worst, you’d just look foolish in front of the real Percival. That’s something you can deal with. You also get the sense that this disguise theory will weigh heavily on your mind until you try to establish or refute its validity.

Fortunately, you get the chance to enact your plan later that same day. When Percival walks into your office a few minutes early, you manage to rope him into a conversation. He is very clearly fed up with you, despite the fact that you haven’t been talking for more than a few seconds. That’s your first clue. You also think that you see his eyes glimmer blue for a fraction of a second. His attire is the same as always, but his posture is different—perfectly straight and poised with an air of pretentiousness.

You can’t keep yourself in suspense any longer. “How did we first meet?” You finally manage to ask. It doesn’t take you very long to recall how you first met—you crashed into Percival as you were walking down the hall; he helped you pick up the papers dropped and you eventually parted ways. If he says something along those lines, then you’ll know it’s him. If not…

“We met here, of course,” the man responds. There’s hardly any emotion on his face. It feels like you’re looking into a void. Your heart begins to roar in your ears as you realize that he just tried to avoid the question.

“I said how, not where,” you realize aloud, your suspicions confirmed. You point your wand at him. “ Revelio. ” You watch in mute horror as Percival’s face melts into an entirely different one. His right eye glows and morphs into a grey-blue color; his hair grows into a spiky white style. Gellert Grindelwald tilts his head and stares at you curiously.

“Clever.” He remarks. Your heart races in your chest and you quickly remember Grindelwald’s reputation: his dueling prowess, his extremely strong grasp of nearly all branches of magic, his incredibly quick reflexes. He allowed you to cast that spell just now, but it’s clear he won’t allow any further opposition—judging from the malicious gleam in his eyes.

Grindelwald’s gaze is piercing, sending shivers down your spine and goosebumps across your forearms. “But not clever enough.” He says, clicking his tongue and disarming you with a nonverbal spell. In the blink of an eye, his wand is pointed at your chest. “Avada-”

The door bursts open and a veritable mass of Aurors infiltrates the space, surrounding Grindelwald. Seraphina walks in after them, a furious expression on her face that she quickly smooths into indifference. Suddenly, Grindelwald is immersed in battle. To your discomfort and fear, he seems to be overpowering the Aurors—despite the odds being nearly twenty to one. For a few awful moments, you’re entranced by his elegant movements. Then you remember everything he’s done and snap out of it, casting a Stunning spell on him. Somehow, by some trace of dumb luck, your spell ends up being the one to send him crumpling to the ground. Seraphina immediately places Admonitors on his wrists, before ordering the Aurors to take him away. You and your boss are left standing in Percival’s office in disbelief.

“That was… anticlimactic,” you choke out.

Seraphina nods in agreement. You raise an eyebrow at her, silently asking her how she knew that Percival wasn’t himself. “Director Graves has never been late to a meeting, in the several years I’ve worked with him,” she explains. Seraphina then regards you for a long moment. “Nice work.”

“Thanks,” you respond blankly, still reeling from what just happened. Admittedly, you wanted to tell Seraphina about your plan, but Grindelwald would’ve been suspicious if Seraphina joined you for the conversation. You knew he would underestimate you—seeing you as a mere office assistant—and you decided to take advantage. You take a deep breath and try to refocus—you have more important things to be concerned with at the present moment. “Where do you think Director Graves is?” You ask.

“I’m not sure,” Seraphina frowns. “We’ll get someone from Major Investigation to look around in here.”

You look around, an ugly feeling growing in your chest. You have the weirdest conviction that Percival is nearby, and you can’t explain why. “Actually… We may not have to.” You murmur in response to Seraphina’s remark. She looks at you questioningly, but you don’t think you can explain your reasoning. You instead study the room around you once more, eyes gliding across a lacquered armoire and past his desk.

Wait. A lacquered armoire? You take a slow breath and step over to the misplaced piece of furniture. The more you look at it, the more you realize that it sticks out like a sore thumb in comparison with the rest of Percival’s unassuming office. You take a deep breath and tug at the handles, unsurprised to find that it’s locked. You cast Alohomora and try unlocking it again. It doesn’t work. You try once more, willing the cabinet to open. To your surprise, your effort works and the doors fall open with an exaggerated bang.

Seraphina gasps. You’re not as shocked as you should be—there’s something horribly ironic about Grindelwald concealing the real Percival Graves in his office, only a short distance from his disguised form. You stare at the magically expanded space, your stomach turning uneasily as you see Percival Graves stuffed into it—leaning against one of the interior walls with a dazed expression. His wrists and ankles are bound together and there’s a gag in his mouth. You quickly bend down and free him.

“Percival,” you say, pulling him out of the armoire and to his feet. You state your name and remind him of your position, because he looks incredibly disoriented. The longer you look at him, the more worried you get. His hair is unkempt and messy; his eyes are bloodshot and bracketed with dark circles underneath. Percival looks gaunt—his skin stretched tight across his bones. For a moment, you think he doesn’t recognize you—then, suddenly, he lurches forward and wraps his arms around you. You instinctually stiffen in surprise, before hesitantly returning his embrace.

Seraphina sends a Patronus to the Healers, detailing where you are and requesting medical help. Within moments, a few Healers are running into the room. You try to break away from Percival, self-conscious that there are people watching, but he doesn’t seem to want to let you go. Eventually, the Healers manage to pull him off of you. They’re asking him questions, but his eyes look glazed over. Within moments, he’s slumping into their arms as he falls unconscious. You watch worriedly as the Healers exit the room. Seraphina takes one look at you and promptly tells you to follow after them. You try to protest, but you don’t get very far before she’s gently pushing you out of the room with the promise that the investigative team will wrap up any loose ends in the office.

You manage to catch up to the Healers, who are now levitating Percival’s unconscious form as they rush to the Healing ward. When you arrive, Percival is whisked away into a room—and you’re left to haunt the waiting room.

You’re not sure how much time you spend staring off into space on an uncomfortable sofa before there’s someone standing in front of you, proclaiming that you can visit Percival. As you follow after them, the Healer reassures you that he will make a full recovery—stating that they have him on all the necessary nutrient supplements that will help him regain his strength.

“He isn’t awake just yet,” the Healer explains as they open the door to his room, revealing Percival reclined in a hospital bed. He looks uncharacteristically vulnerable now—his eyes closed as he evidently rests. There are bandages along his arms and wrists. You frown and take a seat in the chair situated in the corner of the room. “I’ll be back in a bit to check on him.” They promise. You thank the Healer and they leave with a sympathetic nod.

In the wake of everything that just happened, you’re exhausted. You wouldn’t be surprised if your encounter with Grindelwald drained some of your magic temporarily. The stress of the entire affair coupled with your poor sleep last night makes your eyelids sting and burn with fatigue. You desperately try to keep awake but, at some point, you’re dozing off in the chair at Percival’s bedside.

When there’s a gentle tap on your shoulder, you ignore it. But just as you’re about to drift off into sleep again, there’s another tap—slightly more insistent than the first time. You blearily open your eyes, your blurry vision slowly clearing to reveal Percival staring down at you. “I didn’t mean to scare you,” he grimaces apologetically. You stare at him for a moment, still processing. Then you remember everything that just happened: Grindelwald disguising himself as Percival; Seraphina and you finding Percival bound and gagged in his office; Percival falling unconscious; you choosing to wait in his room for him to wake up. Now he’s awake—and he’s out of bed.

“You shouldn’t be up-!” You quickly say, forcefully guiding him to return to his bed. He grasps your forearms as you lower him back onto the bed; the movement sends a shiver down your spine. Even once he is situated, he doesn’t seem keen to let you go—as his grasp momentarily tightens and he looks at you imploringly.

“How’d you know?” Percival asks, his voice raspy from disuse. You don’t need him to elaborate further—you know what he’s referring to. His hands slip from your arms and you contemplate the question. It doesn’t take you long to find an answer.

“Grindelwald was a convincing actor,” you admit. You stare at the wall behind him. Eye contact feels difficult right now, in the stuffy silence settling in the air of the hospital room. “...But he wasn’t you.” You break off, not trusting yourself to go into the details without slipping up and revealing something untoward.

“I was worried no one would find me.” Your eyes snap back to Percival; the sincerity written all over his face is heartbreaking. Then a grimace rises on his lips. “I… apologize for the way I acted,” Percival then says. You stare at him in confusion. You’re not sure what he’s apologizing for, and he’s looking at you expectantly. Eventually he sighs. “It was unprofessional of me.”

“What?” You ask. Then it comes back to you: the relief written all over his face, the way he rushed to embrace you without hesitation. “Oh, when I found you? You were in captivity for months, don’t be so hard on yourself. I would’ve done the same thing.”

Percival frowns at that. “If it had been you who Grindelwald took…” He trails off, before vigorously shaking his head. “I don’t even want to think about it.” You remain silent, unsure of what to say or how to say it. Fortunately, Percival is comfortable with keeping the conversation going. “What I mean to say is… thank you—for your determination, and… for seeing what no one else did.”

“There were a few others who were also suspicious,” you inform him, feeling slightly uncomfortable with the idea of taking all of the credit. Sure, you may have been the one to act first—but whispers of Percival’s uncharacteristic behavior had been spreading like wildfire. You’re certain someone would’ve figured it out, if you hadn’t acted. As to whether Percival had that much time left… you’re not sure. And you don’t really want to think about it.

Somehow, this makes Percival frown again—as if he thinks you’re trying to brush off his gratitude. “Regardless, I appreciate it,” he maintains. “And I admire your courage and bravery. I’m sure it was difficult to stand up to a supervisor.”

“Ordinarily it wouldn’t be,” you admit before you can contemplate the consequences. Percival’s brows climb up his forehead. “I’m comfortable being honest with you.” You clarify, before breaking off so you can’t indict yourself further. You’ve already said far too much.

“I appreciate that,” Percival responds. He looks a little lighter—the tension seems to have slowly slipped out of his shoulders. “And I echo the sentiment.” He says with a quick nod. There’s an appreciative smile on his face and your heart starts racing. If you don’t leave soon, you may do something you’ll soon regret.

“I hope you recover quickly, sir,” you remark, taking a step back and turning towards the door. There had been a tense silence stretching across the space, indicating that the conversation was over, so you have no qualms about departing now.

“Wait.” Percival says, just before you can leave. You freeze and turn around to face him once more. There’s a torn expression on his face.

“What’s wrong?” You ask.

“This is going to sound pathetic and selfish,” Percival admits, steadily avoiding your gaze. You raise a brow. From what you’ve seen, Percival is the furthest thing from pathetic or selfish.

“I’m sure you’ve seen your fair share of me being pathetic,” you deflect, a small smile on your face. Percival shakes his head with what can only be described as fond disagreement. You’re thrown back into the memory of your first meeting, into your hands shaking beneath your stack of papers and your heart thrumming steadily in your chest.

“...Will you stay here a while longer?” Percival asks, breaking you from your thoughts.

“Of course, sir,” you respond. The formal address is more for you to maintain your own boundaries and remind yourself that you don’t get to associate with Percival in anything more than a strictly professional sense. But he seems to react negatively to it—as his brows furrow and he studies you for a moment. You take mental note of that reaction and abandon the formality. Percival just went through hell and back—spending months slowly fading away in that armoire in his office, perfectly out of sight but so achingly close to freedom. If there’s anything you can do to make him feel better, you’ll do it. And not only does that include sitting at his bedside a while longer, but, apparently, it also includes negating to call him “sir.” You don’t think those are very tough tasks to undertake.

You’ll end up accidentally spending the night in his hospital room, and you’ll wake up to another slight tap on your shoulder and a back ache. Percival will be looking down at you again; you’ll admonish him for getting out of bed; he’ll thank you again for keeping him company. Eventually, he’ll practically force you out of the room with a reassurance that he’ll be fine. Normally, you wouldn’t believe him—but the determined expression on his face suggests that he’ll bounce back just fine.

Indeed, within a few weeks, Percival will be back at work. He’ll continue to stop by your desk and talk to you—to the point where you’ll have to ignore Seraphina’s relentless teasing about it. He’ll maintain that he owes you something—to which you’ll consistently remind him that he would do the same for you.

And Percival does end up doing the same for you. At some point in the foreseeable future, when you’re injured in an Auror mission, Percival will be the one waiting at your bedside. You’ll jokingly point out how worried he looks and he’ll only frown more, before admitting that those few hours when you were unconscious were nearly unbearable. Percival will admit that his feelings for you “far surpass professionalism.”

You’ll try to answer with your own confession, but Percival will quickly interject with the promise that you can give him an answer once you’re feeling better. When you finally get the chance to speak to your feelings, you’ll just barely finish speaking before Percival is pulling you into a kiss. His hands will slip down to your hips and you’ll feel sparks running up your skin and a smile rising on your lips.

“How long?” Percival will ask breathlessly when you first break apart.

“Since you crashed into me,” you’ll admit.

“Don’t you mean when you crashed into me? ” Percival will emphasize.

And you’ll roll your eyes and lean closer to kiss him again.

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farfromstrange · 11 months ago

Text

Do No Harm

CHAPTER TWO: Imposter Syndrome

Masterlist | Series Masterlist

Pairing: Matt Murdock x F!Reader

Summary: You've been trying your hardest to focus on your work, but there is something else that is bothering you. Claire decides to give you a call and check up on you. It seems like both of you are keeping secrets of your own, and then there is this handsome lawyer who refuses to leave your mind after he quite literally burst your little bubble of solitude...

Warnings for this chapter: Slight angst, mentions of domestic violence, Reader's POV, use of reader's fake name

Word Count: 4.3k

A/n: It took me a few tries to finish this chapter because I couldn't, for the life of me, settle on a plot, but I think I've got it figured out now. I didn't do the classic "this scene from another POV", I switched it up a bit, so what happened in chapter one isn't repeated word for word. I think it flows better like this. I hope you guys like it, and thank you for your support so far! I really appreciate it.

Read Chapter 2: Imposter Syndrome on AO3.

The human body holds up to six liters of blood. Without saline or a blood transfusion, losing more than two liters can be fatal—and every drop lost after that decreases your chance of survival. A paper cut won’t kill you, but a gunshot wound might. It’s a simple equation that doesn’t require a medical degree to solve.

If the human body experiences trauma though, everything is on the line. A nicked vessel or artery can lead to a bloodbath. Trauma to any of the major organs can lead to internal bleeding and cause the body to suffer fatal consequences. You could lose too much blood too fast, or the blood could travel to your brain, and you could herniate.

Depending on the place of injury, trauma can lead to a large number of complications that are therefore a threat to life. But it’s not just blood that the human body needs to survive; oxygen is another vital player in the game against time. Without it, the brain dies, and if the brain is dead, there is nothing anyone can do to bring you back.

Many things could kill a human being, and many complications could occur in a split second, and that makes trauma an unpredictable event.

Your fingers instantly stop moving over the keys of your computer when the black phone on your desk starts screaming. At first, your eyes switch to your phone, but you have any non-emergent calls silenced. That explains it.

You flinch. You suddenly become painfully aware of the city’s lights shining on you from behind, the blue light of your laptop illuminating your face and causing your pupils to shrink, and the bulb in your desk lamp that is flickering every so often, reminding you that you need to switch it sometime soon.

You pinch the bridge of your nose, then press the acceptance button. You answer the phone. “This is Doctor Clarke at Metro General,” you say. “How can I help you?”

“Jesus,” the familiar voice reaches your ears, and you let out an almost annoyed sigh. “You sound like hell,” Claire answers.

“And you don’t sound sick,” you retort.

You aren’t sure what to make of her sudden mystery illness, or why she didn’t tell you and you had to find out from the hospital administrator who was losing it over the fact that her favorite nurse called out sick that morning.

The phone goes silent for a short moment before she says, “It’s complicated.”

“Hey, we all need sick days sometimes,” you shrug. “Just took us all by surprise, is all.”

“Are you trying to turn this around on me so we won’t have to talk about you?”

Your lips part in a dry chuckle. “Is this about me?” you ask, even though you know very well that it is. You’re the one trying to deflect.

“You silenced your phone.”

With another sigh, you push the stack of papers you’ve been working on aside and take the next folder from the pile. “I’m fine.” You hold the X-ray picture up to the light, squinting your eyes. “Just... splendid, yeah. You want me to do a psych eval? Urine sample? My social security number?”

You can physically hear her roll her eyes at your comment. “Can’t I just be worried about you without you taking it like a personal attack?”

It’s a loaded, rhetorical question asked in a tone that you are more than familiar with. It is a train wreck waiting to happen, but Claire is your friend—a very caring friend, too—and she hardly ever lets loose when she wants to know something.

She knows you better than anyone, after all. She knows everything, even the parts you swore to never talk about again—parts you swore you would take to the grave.

That is the purpose of a new life, isn’t it? Forgetting the past ever happened, then moving on? If that could actually heal trauma, life would be so much easier. Unfortunately, denial tends to make the wounds bleed faster. You will die faster if you keep it all bottled up, but it’s easier said than done when it comes to reality. Sometimes, denial is the only luxury you can afford for yourself, even if it slowly kills you.

You have seen your fair share of traumatic injuries pass in and out of the emergency room over the years. Not just physically but mentally as well. There is only a small margin of error in an even smaller time frame in which traumatic injuries can be treated without lifelong consequences. The scars though, they remain forever.

“Look,” Claire continues softly, “I’m worried about you. I know you hate talking about yourself, but every once in a while, I have to make sure you’re alright and not... falling apart or something.”

You swallow thickly, the lump slowly starting to hurt your esophagus. “Why would I be falling apart?” you question, but your voice no longer has the same level of conviction in it.

Feigned confidence doesn’t go a very long way, you’ve noticed. You can’t stand your ground when you don’t believe in where you’re standing.

“A little birdy told me you had a bad day. That’s why.”

In the halls of a hospital—any hospital—word travels faster than lightning. You roll your eyes, but you don’t know what to say. She isn’t wrong. You did have a bad day. Your blood is still boiling. Everything in you feels a hundred pounds heavier. You may not be falling apart because there is not much of a foundation left to fall apart, but the feeling is eerily similar.

You used to be a beloved surgeon at a prestigious hospital for all five years of your residency, but with each year that passed, what had once been just a spark turned into gigantic flames that slowly began torching your skin. They burned your flesh and dragged it down to your fragile bones. Your body went into shock over the years. You became septic. And it almost killed you, too.

Your heart froze in place before it miserably cracked. It didn’t take long before the inferno took over every last crevice of your life. It burnt out everything that was remotely good for you. You were so dependent on something—someone—that was slowly poisoning you.

You ran for months. You moved from State to State, you changed your name and your whole identity twice. You tried everything to get away, but your demons kept haunting you. The distance between you and your old life grew bigger until eventually, you reached the other side of the country, hundreds of miles from the hell you escaped from. There was nothing left in your past to exist for, so you became someone else. You lost yourself and gained a stranger’s identity in return. Someone who wasn’t scarred from a battle that she almost fully lost.

You thought it would be easy to pretend to be someone else, someone without the same wounds that have been inflicted on you, but that turned out to be the wrong thing to believe.

Claire’s voice rings out again. “What’s going on with you, Liv?” she asks.

You’re not really present at the moment, but this time, you hear her.

You shake your head. “Nothing.” It’s a blatant lie, but it rolls over your tongue so easily, you are tempted to believe it yourself before your friend even can.

“You keep zoning out,” she says. “You’re not helping your case.”

“It’s been a long day, that’s all. What’s going on with you?”

Her lips part in a soft exhale. You hit the nail right on the head. “Nothing’s going on with me. I just had to take a sick day. Migraines, you know? I get them sometimes.”

You don’t buy it. Her voice sounds strained, but more like she is forcing herself to sound sicker than she is. Not that you are allowed to judge, it simply strikes you as odd, considering that she isn’t usually like this, and it makes you wonder what else she is keeping from you.

A pregnant pause follows. “I heard about the girl,” Claire says then, changing the subject. You’re both way too good at that. You’re hypocrites.

“Annie,” you cut her off. “Her name’s—was Annie.”

You keep replaying it over and over in your mind. From the moment you received the page to the ER to the little girl landing on your operating table, you retrace all of your steps. You rethink every decision you made, every uttered order, every cut, and every stitch. Every time you do, you come up empty.

Annie was six years old. She got hit by an oncoming car. It was a gruesome sight, but you kept telling yourself that it could have been worse. She was stabilizing when you took her to the operating room. All the tests suggested that controlling the damage could buy some valuable time for the specialists to do their jobs. In your mind, the path was clear to a full recovery.

Everything you did to save her life ended up doing absolutely nothing.

It elicited a feeling that you are more than used to—inadequacy. You know that it is utterly selfish to think that way; this isn’t even about you. The feeling wraps like a noose around your heart, but you can’t allow yourself to make this about you. You’re not that type of person.

Claire takes your silence as an answer. “I logged into the hospital server and took a look at the X-rays,” she says. “That aortic tear was irreparable, as much for you as it would’ve been for the world’s best cardiothoracic surgeon. This wasn’t your fault.”

Your throat tightens. “You don’t know that,” you argue. “I could have caught it earlier. I could’ve… I could’ve done something.”

“No, Liv, you couldn’t have. But I think you know that.”

You search the depths of your mind for the right words to say, but you come up with none. “Who blabbed, anyway?” you ask.

In this case, though, the question is, who didn’t? Everyone must have heard about Annie by now, and the people around you care too much. It was bound to reach Claire’s ears eventually. You just didn’t think it would happen so soon.

Claire holds off on her answer for a moment. “Doesn’t matter,” she answers. It’s the kindest choice. “What matters is that you can’t beat yourself up for something that wasn’t your fault.” Her voice suggests that she’s smiling.

“I…I’m fine,” you lie.

“I know you’re not.”

“You’re the one who called in sick but clearly isn’t. You don’t see me bugging you about it.”

That shuts her up for a moment. “This isn’t about me,” Claire tries to talk herself out of it, but you see right through her.

“Are you sure?” you ask.

“I—” She sighs. “I promise you, if there was something going on, I’d tell you.”

You should return the sentiment. You should tell her what you’re really thinking, but you’re mute. When it comes to your own feelings, all words in the English dictionary elude you.

Still, the feeling that Claire is lying to you keeps eating away at you. She has no reason to. Or maybe she has, but it’s none of your business. You’re curious, maybe a little worried, but you can’t expect her to tell you every little thing about her life and then refuse to do the same because you can’t possibly ask for help with something you don’t even understand yourself.

You’re miserable enough as it is. You would rather suffer through it alone than bother her with your chronic overthinking and the fear of failure.

“I’m still cat-sitting for Jenny,” she breaks you out of your thoughts.

You chuckle slightly. “But you’re allergic to cats,” you say.

“I know, but…” She stops herself. “The point is, I still have an almost full bottle of white wine in the fridge and there’s this deliciously cheap pizza place around the corner. Their breadsticks are to die for, trust me. You could come over after your shift and we could look after that stupid cat together. Maybe. Just until we both feel better.”

Until you both feel better. You feel like it would take more than wine and pizza to make you feel better.

You need to sulk. You need to marinate in your misery. That way, you can suck it up and be better next time. Everything else seems like too much of a waste of time.

You shatter what little hope she had about you agreeing to her offer like a full wine glass on a white cloth, sure to leave stains. Your hand momentarily motions toward the stack of paperwork, but then you remember that she can’t see over the phone. “I wish I could,” you say, “but I have to finish my surgical reports by tomorrow.”

Claire nods slowly. “Are you sure it’s the paperwork?”

“I promise.”

She accepts defeat. She can’t change your mind. You’re stubborn, determined, and a pain in the ass most of the time. She still loves you, but she has long given up on forcing you out of your shell.

Sometimes, which is more often than not, you prefer to be miserable because you have no idea how to be anything else.

“Well, I tried. So… at least call me if you need anything,” she says.

You offer her a smile, but it doesn’t quite reach your eyes. You’re tired. Your heart is pounding from all the caffeine and the frustration of the unknown. You have paperwork. As long as you have paperwork, you’re occupied. It’s as good a reason to avoid talking about anything that could be considered even remotely personal.

“Thank you, Claire. For everything,” your voice is barely above a whisper. “Take care of yourself. I’ll talk to you later.”

You hate that you’re like this, but you can’t change who you are now or what all those years of suffering have made out of you. You can’t change the fact that underneath Olivia Clarke, it is not who you are. And it will never be who you are because her identity is a fraud.

You may have escaped the worst time of your life and traded it for a fresh start, but that doesn’t take away the paralyzing fear that still sits deep in your bones, making it impossible for you to sleep at night. It may be a fresh start to a new life, but the slate is far from clean. There are bloodstains that you can’t get out. Stains that will haunt you forever.

Every day and every night that you spend at the hospital, you’re reminded of the terrible past that threatens to overshadow your future whenever you set foot outside. Your name may be Olivia Clarke, but that will never be your real name, no matter how badly you try to pretend it to be. And on some days, it breaks you just a little more when you fail at the one thing you have always excelled at. The one thing you have dedicated your life to. To do something good, to be worth something, and to prove the cruel monsters in your mind wrong about their assessment of you.

You don’t want to be a coward. You don’t want to be weak. You don’t want to be dependent on anything or anyone ever again. You forgot how to be happy. You became someone you’re not because the person you used to be was broken by someone she thought she could trust.

He took everything from you, and he took all that you are. Olivia was never taken advantage of.

Claire saved your life. She knows the truth, but facts aren’t enough. She’s your only support system, the only one who knows who you truly are, deep down, and yet she knows nothing at all.

Long after you’ve hung up the phone, you start wandering the halls of Metro General. You haven’t quite figured out what you’re looking for yet. You want to be alone. You want to be not needed. You want to exist somewhere that isn’t here. And you don’t want to be found, just for a little while.

When you get settled on an empty bed in one of internal medicine’s abandoned hallways that had to be emptied after severe budget cuts affected the hospital, the tears start pouring out without warning. You barely manage to stifle the sobs that slip past your lips. You hate crying. You used to believe that it was a sign of weakness, but tears have become as much of a partner in crime to you as the pain has.

It’s not as easy as it used to be to hold all of those treacherous feelings in—feelings you don’t even understand yourself—and that makes you hate yourself enough to cry even harder. Because you try, try, and you try even harder as you give all of yourself over and over again to be someone you never thought you would turn into, and still, you find yourself failing more times than you could possibly count.

Your life ended when you met the man who ruined you; ever since then, you have only been a shell of the person you used to be, and there is seemingly nothing you can do about it other than accept that Olivia Clarke is who you are now, and she is all you can be.

You didn’t expect another lonely soul in need of an escape to find his way to your little haven. This hallway isn’t even on the hospital map anymore, but he still somehow found his way here.

Your eyes switch to his cane, the red glasses, and the way he so awkwardly carries himself when he seems to realize that he, in fact, isn’t alone. You know that feeling of instant disappointment all too well, and he just caught you crying, which only makes matters worse.

After the initial awkwardness has dissipated and you get to talking, you take a moment to appreciate him. His name is Matthew. He is a defense attorney. He is unlike any man you’ve ever met before. You’re cautious when it comes to new people, but there is something almost calm about him. He’s funny, charming, and he’s respectful. He made you feel comfortable from the start.

There is a mystery surrounding him. You know all about mysteries. They draw you in. They make you feel less alone in a way. He is the biggest one you have encountered so far.

People tend to consider you an enigma, too. Most of them are wary of you because you barely share anything about yourself. You’re still learning, even after two years, to be someone new. You’re constantly reinventing yourself because all you were before is gone now. You lost yourself in the fire. So, most people you meet don’t talk much when they do; you’ve gotten used to having only one friend. It keeps your identity safe, as guarded as you are. It’s the safest bet for everyone involved—or everyone not involved.

Matthew is different. He seems genuinely curious, but he doesn’t pry. And that makes you open yourself up to him, even if it is just your body language. He’s sitting right next to you, his calm voice like a gentle symphony in your ear. He serenades you every time he speaks. That is a dangerous quality. He’s an attractive man, and you can’t keep your eyes off of him. You can’t stop listening. He’s like a work of art—a damaged work of art.

The man before you is broken and bruised. That’s what makes him so mysterious. The hesitation you showed when he introduced himself, indirectly asking for a piece of you in return, shows when you ask about his injuries.

You have seen all kinds of injuries, including those on a blind man who fell down the stairs. Matthew doesn’t fit the profile, and that only makes him more mysterious and therefore more interesting to you.

You have to stop yourself before you ask too many questions. You don’t want to push him away, but you also can’t draw him in. You can be nice, but that is as far as you are willing to go. You hold your walls so high that no one can break through them, no matter how fascinating or attractive they are.

Matthew is a dangerous man because he makes you feel things that you have long told yourself never to feel again. But it’s hard when he makes it so easy to like him.

You patch him up. It’s not just professional courtesy; he seems like he desperately needs someone to look after him. You are being nice to him, that is all. You keep telling yourself the same thing.

You’re still disappointed when you get paged to the emergency room and you have to leave him behind. The chances that you will see him again are low, and they shrink to zero when you return to the hallway four hours later and find it dark and empty again. The plastic packaging of the bandages you used on him is still lying around, but that is all that is left of him. All you have is a memory of a very unexpected encounter that will probably never occur again.

But maybe that isn’t such a bad thing, after all. At least like this, you can’t make the mistake of falling for a guy claiming to be nice. At least like this, you can keep your fragile and already broken heart safe from enduring the same kind of pain ever again.

You pass the nurse’s station in the emergency room on your way out. Dropping the chart of your last patient on the counter, you wish everyone a good night.

“Liv, before you leave–” One of the senior nurses stops you dead in your tracks, “Someone left a card for you,” she says.

You turn around, frowning at her. “A card?” you ask. “Who did?”

Her lips curl into a mischievous smile. “Handsome fella. And he had good manners.”

Your mind reels. There are only a handful of people that would fit that description. Every time someone leaves something behind for you, your first response is to panic. Your blood pressure spikes. You can feel your heart beating up to your throat and your vision blurs. You’re not a fan of the suspense or knowing grins, and it’s obvious.

The nurse’s smile fades and she rummages through the stack of papers next to the computer. “He only knew your first name and his blindness made it a bit harder to figure out who he was talking about, but thankfully we only have one excellent trauma surgeon named Olivia,” she says, her eyes still twinkling. She can’t help it.

You let out an audible exhale. Your body relaxes. Your heart rate slows down. You can finally see her clearly again, and she slides the card across the counter for you to take. You want to apologize for the hostility, but her face tells you that she understands.

The next time your heart starts beating faster, it isn’t out of panic. You look down at the names on the card and the distinctive number on the back, and your brain releases a sudden rush of dopamine. It’s late, you’re tired, but somehow this little gesture puts a surprising smile on your face.

You shouldn’t be as excited as you are. Your plan for this evening has been tossed far out of the window in an instant.

“So,” the nurse asks, “who is he? A patient? A friend?” She wiggles her eyebrows. “A guy from Hinge?”

You shake your head. “Just… a guy I met,” you answer.

If he were an official patient, this would be highly unethical and you would have to toss his number into the nearest trash can.

The blood has permanently settled into your cheeks. You’re not usually the kind of person who blushes. It’s infuriating.

With a chuckle, she leans over. “Well, either way, the guy was smoking. Said you should give him a call. I hope for your sake that you do.”

You keep twisting and turning the card. “What else did he say?”

“Not much. Just said that I should give this to you and that you should call him if you want. You must’ve made quite the impression.”

Your teeth dig into your bottom lip. You would’ve never suspected this. You are essentially still a stranger to him, and he still left you his number. He wants you to call him.

It makes no sense, and yet it flatters you like nothing has in quite a while.

You let out a soft sigh before stuffing the card into the pocket of your coat. Looking up, you meet the nurse’s curious eyes.

Your mind is taking its time to process your thoughts and the feelings connected to your thoughts.

She chuckles at the bewildered look in your eyes. You must look like a fool. “Where does one meet a specimen like that anyway, if you don’t mind me asking?” she says. “‘Cause I desperately need me one of those.”

A beat of silence follows. Then, you wet your lips and answer, “Abandoned hallways. Way more effective than Hinge, apparently.”

The subtle joke makes her laugh. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

You put in the effort to fake a smile with your nod. “Well, thank you,” you say. “You guys have a good shift. If you need anything, page me.”

“Will do,” she says. The other nurses nod. Of course, they listened in on your conversation.

With another small wave in their general direction, you make your way outside into the cool night air. You retrieve the business card from your coat, your eyes roaming over the names carefully printed on it, and the Braille that has been added for obvious reasons.

Nelson & Murdock. Attorneys at law.

From what he told you, this is probably the only somewhat expensive thing he and his partner afforded for a semi-successful marketing plan for their practice. It almost makes you chuckle.

Matt Murdock is a very fascinating man, though as you stare at the card and the number on the back you can’t help but feel a slight hint of unease bubble up in your chest, and you ask yourself, what did you get yourself into?

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