#how the fuck have we not had a female president

[heavenlywonder]

when obama became the first black president it was so revolutionary for the time.. when we get the first female president it’s gonna be like ok yeah whatever, how did this not happen decades ago we suck so fucking much

[queenerdloser]

whiplash conversation with my mom where she told me of her own volition that she plans to vote harris in november (she's republican) bc "no one likes trump" and she also admitted he was basically incoherent and untrustworthy (in the past she's admired him). which then turned into her saying that she didn't see the big deal about harris being the first female president was and that led into. full on big blowout fight about whether or not the patriarchy exists and if we live in one. i was full on yelling. so enraged i was near tears. all while fucking DRIVING. jesus christ.

[hussyknee]

Trying to explain what the fuck just happened in Lankan politics today.

The leftist party has won 159 seats out of 218 in the Parliamentary elections. The single biggest landslide win since we broke from the British and achieved universal franchise in 1948.

Any party achieving a super majority in the executive and legislative is, objectively speaking, bad. It disables checks and balances, which is a catastrophic thing for any democracy, and the only two other times it's happened for us has irrevocably eroded the fabric of civic rights and democratic freedom. Also, the reason the NPP won the North and East is that the colonized, genocided and subjugated people there have no faith in electoralism anymore. The way this government has engaged minority issues has been utterly abysmal and now they've been rewarded for it.

On the other hand:

The winners. Are all. Grassroots. Candidates.¹

We have voted out every single career criminal that's been barnacled into the Lankan political arena since before I've been alive. The fascist party has only three seats.² The other fascists didn't win a single seat. The neoliberal legacy party won none. There are only forty people in Parliament that represent any sort of dynastic political legacy. After 76 solid years of nothing but political dynasties.

This is barely five years after the Rajapaksas swept in and absolutely glutted the Parliament with their family members and cronies end to end.

This is the illegitimate interim government we had for most of the last 18 months. We literally, physically, chased the Rajapaksas out of the country and this fucking demon set up a puppet government just so he could finally sit in that goddamn chair and be the despot he'd always dreamed of in exchange for letting them all come back. He's now gone. His entire circle is gone.

THEY ARE ALL FUCKING GONE.

In US terms, just imagine that, five years from now, when Trump's GOP has control of everything, the entire GOP and the worst of the Dems are all purged from Congress and Senate, the Green Party in control of all three branches of government under a pro-union left-wing President and an unmarried female LGBT rights activist Vice President, and the Dems reduced to barely 20% of the House.

This is my anthropology professor. She joined politics from the small nascent leftist coalition to help keep the government accountable. She's now the Prime Minister and the most popular Parliamentary candidate in the nation's history. (Edit: She was knocked off first place by a dude in the final result. Boo.)

(On the other hand— the woman who helped make me a radical anarchist and literally helped write a book on political dissent and resistance...now is the state. Uh.)

But there are so many women in Parliament! We had the lowest female representation in a South Asian Parliament and some of them were from the list of seats reserved for parties rather than elected ones. Most were either anti-feminist conservative embarrassments, widows and daughters of elite politicians and neoliberal shills. It's still only an increase of a few percentage points (Edit: from the previous 5% to 10% in the final result!) but now we have elected academics, feminist advocates, activists! There Is a representative for Malaiyaha Tamils in the Central Province for the first time in history and it's a young woman! (Edit: now it's two female Malaiyaha MPS!!) This is the plantation community that still live in conditions closest to the slavery the British forced upon them two hundred years ago!

I'm like. Completely mindfucked. To be very very clear, the NPP coalition formed around the nucleus of the JVP that used to be communist but haven't been in 30 years, they're now just social democrats who are left of places like the US and UK, whose "left" is now center-right. They're only threatening to the Western mainstream media for some reason who can't stop bleating about how we have a "Marxist" government now. In reality, the actual chances for radical reform are still quite low, and the opportunity for further erosion is quite high with a super majority government regardless of affiliation.

On the other hand:

What the fuck.

Sometimes living through historical events is really damn amazing.

---

¹ Well, nearly. There are a few career politicians and a nepo baby but they aren't so bad either.

² Goddamn it, Baby Rajapaksa and Sri Lanka's answer to JD Vance have wormed their way in using the list of Constitutionally reserved party seats for non-elected members. FUCK the National List.

[threeacttragedy]

Entry 11: The One About the Heart of the Ocean

My father is a big history buff. He fancies himself a bit of an expert about the U.S. Civil War, U.S. Presidents, and World War II. In fact, he’s gifted me with the Useless Knowledge of which four U.S. Presidents were assassinated while in office (Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and Kennedy – you’re welcome for that little addition to your own Library of Useless Knowledge).

But, more importantly, my dad has instilled in me the importance of a timeline. The idea that, if you’re collecting information, it’s vital to keep it in chronological order, that way you can look at it, (try to) understand it, and theorize about what happened before and after an event. If the facts are out of order, the conclusion you reach may be in error.

My father and I also like to solve True Crime together. When he visits, we spend hours on the porch studying some random, usually cold, true crime event. We timeline the shit out of it, connect the puzzle pieces together, and exclaim in the end, “We’ve solved it!” I suppose that is part of what keeps me interested in Lukola – not that there is anything criminal in Lukola, except perhaps the “Single White Female” that pops up behind Nicola from time to time – I just enjoy the game of trying to put the pieces together.

Lukola has become a rather intriguing puzzle, don’t you think? It’s definitely one to which I do not have all the pieces. I do, however, enjoy collecting the information and chronologizing it, and now I find it enjoyable to scribble my thoughts out on Tumblr.

So, how did I get here?

Well, it started with boredom and ended with a timeline.

My first entry to the timeline?

July 20, 2024.

What happened on that date?

Well, nothing spectacular really, except JVN posted ��

HOLD UP!

HOLD THE FUCK UP!!

OH SHIT!!

YES!

YES, you guessed it! After blowing JVN off for at least three, maybe four, posts in a row, I’m finally getting around to dedicating an entire entry to Their Royal Highness.

JVN is such a fascinating creature. I mean, you get beautiful, witty, and intelligent wrapped into one human being. Oh, and they are kind of a catty bitch, too, and who doesn’t love one of those? That’s why they're the Heart of the Ocean on the USS Lukola; they just give off this very rare blue diamond vibe. Well, that, and because something they did marks the focal point – the heart – from which the rest of my timeline branches.

*I will cut in here to note that I am referring to JVN as they/their in this entry as their Instagram bio indicates they accept “they/he/she.”

Okay, back to July 20.

On that date, JVN posted to TikTok their version of the Charli xcx “Apple” dance. You know that annoying TikTok trend that took over our summer? Yeah, that’s the one – the same one Antonia tried doing – she just couldn’t pull off the JVN version of it. Dear girl couldn’t come close to matching JVN’s “enthusiasm,” and JVN’s version was only made more enjoyable in that they were seemingly mocking Antonia!

But, all’s fair in love and war, right?

JVN’s bestie, Nicola, had already spent the entire summer subtlety combating Antonia over social media. The vibe in the fandom was that Antonia was always trying to one-up Nicola, with Nicola always coming out the victor. I’m sorry, Antonia, you just can’t beat some perfectly timed BTS drops.

So, why did JVN’s TikTok post intrigue me? It wasn’t because it was that amusing. It was because they’d done something I hadn’t noticed before – they’d taunted Antonia on a public forum.

Curious, that.

Now, I’m not saying it was the first time JVN mocked Antonia, but July 20 was the first time I noticed it. That date is the heart of my timeline, but it does not have to be the heart of yours. We can all start at different times but still reach the same conclusions, so long as we keep the information in order.

You would think one wouldn’t mess with the “girl friend” of your best friend’s “best friend,” at least not publicly. But, here was JVN shamelessly mocking Antonia on TikTok. And, just so we’re clear, the public opinion of what JVN was doing with this TikTok is available to view in the comments of their TikTok post. It wasn’t just me that came to this conclusion – and JVN has left these comments up for four months at this point.

JVN’s “Apple” dance was only made more interesting the following day – July 21 – when they included it in their Sunday Dump post on Instagram.

And, Nicola liked it.

Hmm, things were becoming curiouser and curiouser.

Let’s not even pretend that Nicola isn’t street savvy and didn’t understand the context of that video. And, let’s definitely not underestimate the length of her claws.

To be honest, I hadn’t paid too much attention to Lukola since mid-June. It was an “it is what it is” thing for me. Even though I believed the relationship between Luke and Nicola was complicated (see my first blog for that story), Luke had also apparently disappeared into the summertime sun with his friend group, which included Antonia.

Something about JVN openly making fun of Antonia, and Nicola, at the very least acknowledging it with an Instagram like, made me realize something in Luke’s situation must be shifting.

What have I said about little changes? That deviations in modus operandi are what make people start giving the side-eye to a situation.

And, side-eye I did!

I started paying attention to JVN and, on July 25, they posted a series of photos on TikTok and Instagram showcasing “What I would wear if you invited me to your…” We will fast-forward through all the slides until we get to the last one, which read, “…just got dumped and going to take 8 shots dinner at Lupe’s in SoHo.” Was it possible that JVN was hinting at a dumpster fire at the Soho Farmhouse?

If you don’t know what the Soho Farmhouse is, it’s the place where Luke and his friend group, including Antonia, frequented, probably on Luke’s dime (*insert wicked laugh – oh, and a disclaimer that this is all speculation).

Funny that Nicola liked this post on Instagram, too, and it wasn’t even buried in a Sunday Dump.

At this point, JVN had really sparked my damn interest. Like, dear one, what are you hinting at?

On July 29, Deux Moi creeped out from under its rock and reminded the fandom to hate Luke by rehashing Papsmear. Thank you, we needed that. I mean, half of us almost forgot how much we hated him! That’s me being a sarcastic tart, by the way. If we were to fast-forward to today, I’d argue that Luke was the most darling thing to come out of Bridgerton.

Any ways, again, thank you, Deux Moi, for those suspiciously timed Papsmear pictures because they aligned perfectly with the pap pictures People dropped the following day – July 30.

Yep, I am talking about those strangely awkward pap pictures of Luke hanging out in the murky waters of Sorrento with Antonia. Oh, and let’s not forget the video footage of that encounter, which I am sure still upsets and confuses people to this day. In fact, I know it does because, as I was researching this, I had a couple of people get annoyed after I asked them to view it. Funny thing is, that shit never bothered me (I didn’t say that it didn’t later confuse me!). The first time I saw them, I was like, “Luke is not into that girl at all,” and my next thought was, “I wonder how old these pictures are because I would have sworn JVN was hinting at something.”

Now, this story wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t address the rumor portion of it.

First rumor? That Antonia set up the entire Italy pap photo-op because she seemingly knew where to find the cameraman. So, let’s discuss that video everyone seems to hate to acknowledge exists. In the video, you can see Antonia maybe looking in the direction of the cameraman. She then leans into Luke, either to whisper something to him or to reach for something behind him. In my opinion – and this is strictly my opinion – it looks like she’s pretending to reach for something over his shoulder. Still shots of this interaction are the photos People published, presumably because Luke and Antonia looked like they were cheek to cheek.

Okay, notice I said, “first rumor,” because, yeah, there’s a second rumor, too! But, it fits snuggly into that first rumor. Almost immediately – because that’s how fast the Lukola Sleuths get to work around here – rumors began to circulate that Antonia was following on Instagram the photographer that took the Italy pap pictures. In fact, several people I’ve spoken to swear that they witnessed during a TikTok Live a host prove that Antonia was following this photographer. That’s a bit suspicious, isn’t it? Yeah, it fucking is.

Let’s keep moving.

That same day, we had that video drop of Luke watching fireworks, at night, with sunglasses. Speaking of sunglasses, I guess Luke found those motherfuckers because he sure as shit didn’t have them while floating around in that dirty ass water. Any ways, at the end of the video, Rory appears behind Luke, looking in the direction of the camera and smiling like a condescending, sneaky little shit. Now, who was the cameraman? Well, a possible suspect would be Antonia since she was not seen in the video. Go figure.

Alright, so that day finally ended and on July 31, JVN posted to TikTok a cutesy video of themself at the market titled, “When you catch someone trying to sneak a pic but you were born for these moments.” They prance around the market and randomly look at the cameraman (Mark) with a smile and a pose. The caption reads, “I welcome sneaky pics but I can’t guarantee I won’t sneak some back or put on a show for you.”

WAIT A MINUTE!

Did JVN just inexplicably confirm Luke was getting papped by his own friends?

Yeah, I kind of think JVN did.

And, Nicola liked this one as well when JVN posted it to Instagram on August 8.

Didn’t I tell you JVN was a fascinating creature? And, to be honest, JVN only gets better as this Lukola ship continues on its voyage.

Oh, strangely enough, a few days after the Italy pap crap, Luke returned to London alone. The friend group became unsettlingly silent, and Nicola started to get really, really loud – Chaos Week was incoming! And, so were some more JVN crumbs (and nicely timed clap backs).

[justagalwhowrites]

Bane of My Existence - A QZ Joel Miller One Shot

You and Joel Miller have never gotten along, always at odds whether working together or avoiding each other. But when a smuggling job goes bad, you discover that there might be more to his harsh demeanor than meets the eye.

Pairing: QZ Smuggler!Joel Miller x Female Reader

Warnings: Enemies to lovers; Joel is bad with emotions; hurt/comfort; canon typical violence; injury that's probably poorly handled because I don't medicine; vague threat of SA (not by Joel, not made to reader); unprotected vaginal sex. Joel carries reader but look... My Joels are all 6'5" and strong as hell, especially in life threatening situations. Man can carry anybody. I'm in love with him because he's a big strong man. No description of reader.

Length: 8.9k (sorry)

A/N: A lil one shot gift for my beautiful bestie @dundienominee :)

Full Masterlist | AO3

“Hell no.” 

Of course Joel Miller said hell no to working with you. Of course he did. 

You weren’t surprised at Joel’s reaction when his smuggling partner, Tess, brought you to their safe house in the QZ. He’d never been the president of your fan club. 

“Joel,” she sighed. 

“Fuck no,” he said. “Not bringin’ her anywhere, she’s a goddamn liability.” 

“Joel,” she said again, sterner this time. 

You, however, just smirked, watching him pace and glare at you, his face getting flushed as he did. 

“She takes stupid fuckin’ risks,” Joel said. “She’s cocky, she’s…”

“Saved your ass from infected?” You asked, raising your eyebrows. 

You knew you were adding fuel to the fire. Tess glared at you for it. Your smirk grew. 

“Wouldn’t have been near the fuckin’ infected if it weren’t for you,” he snapped. “Not. Goin. With. Her.” 

“Well, you don’t have a choice,” Tess said, standing up a little straighter and crossing her arms, staring her partner down. “She’s the one with the contact, they agreed to two people meeting them and she has to be one of them…” 

“How the hell’d you make a contact?” Joel turned his full attention to you, his eyes molten hot and angry. “Anyone you touch ends up fuckin’ dead…” 

“Oh fuck off,” you snapped before you regained your composure. “Don’t get pissy with me because big bad Joel Miller isn’t the top of the smuggling heap in the QZ…” 

“I ain’t pissy!” 

“…Not the top of the heap in anything at all, really…” 

“That’s it!” Joel stalked over, looking like he wanted to slug you. Instead, he just put his finger in your face, a slightly unhinged look in his eyes. “You think I’m doin’ a goddamn thing with you…” 

“You don’t have a choice, Texas,” Tess came and stood beside you, her arms crossed as she looked to Joel. “You burned the bridge we had with the FEDRA officer I need to buy off to get our next round of pills inside, I can’t go on this run because I have to deal with the mess you made when you couldn’t keep your shit together. We want to actually be set before shit gets snowed in for winter? We need her connection. So. You’re going, you’re leaving tonight, and you’re not going to fuck this up. Got it?” 

His jaw tightened. 

“Got it.” 

“Good,” she looked to you. “Your contact knows you’re coming?” 

“They do,” you said, serious now and completely ignoring the wall of muscle who was still standing uncomfortably close to you. “The walk back is going to fucking suck but it should be worth it. Good with the split?” 

“Good might be a strong word for 60/40,” Tess said, shaking her head a little but grinning all the same. “But I’ll take it.” She looked between you and Joel. “Trusting you two to not kill each other out there. Don’t make me regret it. See you in a few days.” 

She left the two of you there in the threadbare apartment without another word, Joel’s glare practically drilling a hole into your skull. 

“Together again, eh Miller?” You smirked at him. 

He didn’t respond. He just went and sat heavily on the worn couch before lying down and closing his eyes. 

“What, didn’t get enough sleep?” You asked, going and standing over him. 

“Slept fine,” he said, eyes still closed. “Just would rather spend the few hours we have before we leave the QZ not listenin’ to you.” 

You rolled your eyes but took a moment to look at Joel when he wasn’t glaring at you. 

It was a rare occurrence, seeing him when he wasn’t scowling and pissed. He let himself relax down into the cushions and the lines in his face eased. As much as you hated to admit it - and you did hate it - Joel was beautiful. Frustratingly so. What’s worse, he’d somehow gotten better looking in the years you’d known him. Jerk.

You’d first met him before you came to the QZ, almost 10 years ago now. You were holed up in your own little corner of Boston, doing your best to stay out of the way of FEDRA, infected and raiders alike. 

It was basically a full-time job, even more so since you’d become the last person standing. A job that you failed at the day you met Joel Miller. 

And, as much as he liked to blame you for it, he was the one who showed up in your corner of town. You’d been napping through the worst of the afternoon heat in mid-July when you heard a clatter: someone tripped one of your alarms. 

“Fuckin’…” 

He swore loud enough that you heard him from your perch and you watched him shake glass out of the wrinkles of his shirt. 

“Someone’s here,” the second man said, much quieter. “That ain’t no accident…” 

The two men moved slowly, cautiously, their rifles raised as they searched for whoever it was who set that trap. When you thought they were far enough away, you started to move, slowly and quietly, going to sneak up on them and take them out before they could do the same to you. 

But as you drew close, you heard it. The clicking. 

You gasped, close enough to the strange men that they heard it and close enough to the clickers that they did, too. 

“Move!” The larger man snapped out of his moment of shock first, shooting forward and grabbing you and throwing you to the side before shooting at the incoming infected. You scrambled to get back up, fumbling to get the knife you’d been readying to thrust into that man’s back. 

It turned out, you didn’t need it. At least, not for the infected. The two men made quick work of the clickers and turned to you, your knife raised and ready to take at least one of them down with you. 

“The fuck are you doin’ out here?” The larger man said instead. 

“The fuck do you think?” You snapped. “Go on, do it! Kill me, take my shit, whatever it is you’re going to do…” 

“Don’t much like killing women,” he said, looking to the other man, their guns still in hand but pointed to the ground. They looked alike, these two. Like they could be related. 

“What, because I’m a woman you think I’m not a threat?” You asked, brows raised before realizing that you probably shouldn’t be egging on the large, armed men in front of you. 

“Not really, princess,” the younger man said, voice teasing, and you considered throwing your knife at him. 

“Should count yourself lucky that we don’t,” the older man said. “Why don’t you come with us, out pickin’ up just a few things and then headin’ back to the QZ…” 

“Right,” you scoffed. “Because I really wanna live under fucking FEDRA.” 

“Guessing you want to live,” he said. “Got news for you, princess. Even we’re steerin’ clear of this area of Boston after this. Lot more infected than we bargained for. Your little hideout ain’t gonna be safe much longer. Assuming you want to keep on living, QZ’s your best bet.” 

“And you’re just, what, inviting me along out of the goodness of your heart?” You scoffed. “Please.” 

“Don’t much like killing women and don’t much like leaving people to die, either,” the other man said. “Seem capable enough. Come with us, at least out of this part of the city. Would rather not have you added to the infected population.” 

You ground your teeth for a moment, considering. They could easily over power you. You were out numbered, out gunned and they were both large and strong. 

But… you had been noticing more and more infected lately. You hadn’t left your hideout in almost two weeks and you were low on supplies. Part of the reason you hadn’t dared venture out in so long was the seemingly constant press of infected you could see from the best vantage points in your building. You’d been starting to worry that you wouldn’t have a good opportunity to leave for supplies again. And, if you did, you were starting to worry your home would be overrun when you got back. 

These two were the closest thing you had to a safe option out. 

So, you took it. The pair introduced themselves and you were right, they were related. Joel and Tommy Miller, smugglers who lived inside the Boston QZ. They were strong, smart, capable. Handsome, too, not that it really mattered. What mattered much more was your ability to keep each other alive. 

And, it turned out, you were useful to them. Enough that they wanted you around as help for other runs outside the QZ. It made sense, you knew certain corners of the QZ better than anyone else seemed to. It had been your territory - at least, in some way - for a long time. 

Then, it happened. You’d taken to calling it ‘the incident’ for lack of any better word. You were out on a smuggling run with Joel and another man, Harvey. In spite of the fact that you’d been working together for years, Joel had never really warmed up to you. He tolerated you at best and it seemed like growling was his preferred form of communication where you were involved but you always made it back to the QZ in one piece when you went out together. You watched each other’s backs - you were proud that your kill count was higher than his and that you were almost positive he’d be dead by now if it weren’t for you. 

The three of you were at the edge of the city, heading to rendezvous with someone from a small settlement in New York State when you heard it, the first, distinctive shriek of infected. 

Suddenly, there were dozens of them, maybe more than 100, far more than you were capable of handling even if you had unlimited ammunition. 

And, like a fool, you froze. 

You’d scouted ahead and saw no signs of them, no indication of anything more than one or two strays that had been ambling around. You had no idea where they’d come from or how they’d come to be here but that didn’t matter. They were here, they were bearing down on you and you couldn’t seem to make your body move, the shock of the sight making you completely shut down. 

It was Joel who saved you. 

“Move!” He’d grabbed you by the collar of your shirt and thrown you behind him as he fired at the infected, pressing back as quickly as he could while laying down cover fire. Harvey joined him, their guns up and blazing as you tried to force your body to listen to you. “Fucking run!” 

Your limbs decided to obey then and you moved as quickly as you could, turning and firing behind you when it felt like you had a moment to spare. 

But you misjudged that moment once. Just once, but that’s all it took. Infected were closer behind you than you realized and Joel dove in between you and the reaching, groping thing. 

“Joel!” You shrieked, desperately trying to get a shot off that wouldn’t hit Joel as he strained to hold back the runner who was snarling near his throat. You were about to shoot when Harvey tackled the creature, knocking it off of Joel but into the mass of infected that was closing in quickly. 

They swarmed him and he screamed and you took aim as Joel scrambled to his feet. He shoved you on before you could fire and you stretched to shoot around him but he nearly threw you away from the swarming monsters and your screaming companion. 

“He’s gone!” Joel yelled as you stared at him, aghast. “He’s gone, we have to fucking move, now go!” 

You kept turning, looking back toward the sound of the snarling and the screams. 

“We have to go back!” you said. “We can’t just leave him like that, we have to at least shoot him we can’t just leave him, we…” 

“You should’ve thought of that before you fucked up!” He kept pushing you forward, toward the QZ. “No point in gettin’ us killed to save a man who’s already dead.” 

Joel had gone from seemingly finding you to be a nuisance to hating you then. He refused to even be in the same room as you let alone leave the QZ with you again. 

It took you a long time, after that split, to figure out how to survive. You’d become dependent on the cards you got from smuggling to get by but you couldn’t leave the QZ on your own and expect to make it back in one piece, not with how things had devolved with raiders and infected in recent years. You found a small group who was going out from time to time - which is how you met Tess - and you cobbled together a living. 

You never worked with Joel again. 

At least, not until now. 

You sighed and perched in the window, watching the QZ go by and thinking of the best way out of the city once the sun went down. You tried not to think about the likelihood that Joel would kill you while you were outside. 

It was a long walk ahead of the both of you, 30 miles each way through infected no man’s land, not that raiders hadn’t been trying their damndest to get a foothold. But you had a connection there who had been growing marijuana and had a hell of a crop they were willing to trade for plenty of ammunition and antibiotics. You’d been orchestrating this trade with Tess for weeks, both of you carefully avoiding the sore subject of Joel. The initial plan had been you and her heading out but then Joel beat the shit out of a FEDRA guard for some imagined offense and they were suddenly without the connections they needed and suddenly, Joel became part of the plan. Lucky you. 

Once darkness started to fall, you picked up a little stone that was stuck in the frame of the cracked window. You took careful aim and flicked it, watching it sail to hit Joel square on the forehead. He twitched in his sleep, grimacing, but he didn’t wake. 

You looked around a moment, searching for something else to use against him. You found it in the form of a wad of paper that you had to stretch to reach but you did. You tightened the ball and aimed, throwing it. It didn’t make it quite as far, bouncing off his hands as they sat folded at the base of his chest. He didn’t even flinch at that. 

“Dammit,” you muttered, looking around again. You found a rubber band then, perking up a little as you picked it up. You arranged it carefully on your fingers, pulling it back and aiming it like a gun, targeting Joel’s nose. His oddly beautiful nose. Not that you ever really thought that way about him, of course. You shot the rubber band and it flew, snapping right where you’d aimed it. He jerked awake and you turned quickly so it seemed like you were just looking outside into the night. 

“Wha…” He mumbled. 

You turned your head to look at him as he sat up, seemingly disoriented. 

“You hit me with somethin’?” He asked. 

“What would I hit you with, Joel?” You asked. “I was about to come wake you up, though. Can’t get a late start because of your lazy ass…” 

“Show you lazy…” he muttered, hefting himself up off the sofa. “Let’s move.” 

You gave Joel this much, the man was efficient. You’d forgotten just how efficient in the years it had been since you’d last worked together. He cut through the QZ quickly and smoothly, the knowledge of routes run by FEDRA guards seemingly innate as he knew exactly when and where to avoid and how to do it. In what seemed like no time at all, you were outside the walls and starting into the ruins of the city. 

“Got a safe house about an hour’s walk,” he said, setting an almost punishing pace as you moved alongside him. “We get there, wait for daylight, press on in the morning.” 

“Oh, because you’re the decision maker?” You asked, brows raised, even though you agreed with him. “Just expect me to fall in line…” 

“You know what, princess?” He rounded on you, forcing you back into the wall of a building you were passing. “You’re lucky I came out here with you after the shit you’ve pulled…” 

“Shit I pulled? I fucked up!” You all but yelled at him. “I know it! I think about that all the fucking time, that he’d still be alive if it weren’t for me! I don’t need you to fucking remind me, I know what I did and I’m sure you’re fucking perfect and that no one’s ever died because you fucked up…” 

“You don’t know a goddamn thing,” he growled, pressing closer to you for a moment and his eyes were dark and dangerous. For a moment, you thought he might kill you. Or kiss you. He didn’t do either. Instead, he just stepped back, looking you up and down once. “Keep your shit together this time. Don’t want to die because of you.” 

Tears burned your throat and eyes and you swallowed them and walked a few steps behind Joel, trying to keep an eye out for signs of infected and raiders and trying to make sure that Joel didn’t die. Even if it was just out of spite. 

The next day was easier than you expected, too. You made it quickly out of the safe house in the morning and dodged a hoard of infected, skirting around the writhing mass of them lying on the street. You didn’t really feel like you could breathe until you were outside the city, where the air was cleaner and you didn’t feel the specter of what happened years ago looming over you. 

You and Joel mostly ignored each other, watching the tree line as you kept an eye out for whatever might be lurking for you there. But, every now and then, you thought you caught Joel looking at you out of the corner of your eye, his head snapping around the moment you seemed to take notice. 

After walking for most of the day and covering 20 miles, the two of you stopped and made camp, Joel deeming it safe enough to make a small fire. You watched him after the two of you had eaten and settled, the light casting flickering shadows on his face. 

Joel, you were almost loathe to admit, was an incredibly good looking man. There was a roughness to him that you found almost comforting in the world you were both trapped in but there was beauty to him, too. The symmetry of his features, the plush of his lips, the cut of his jaw. You wondered what he was like before all this, not just when he was younger but before this world had a chance to sink its teeth into him. Maybe you would have been friends then. Maybe something more than friends. 

“How’d you end up smuggling?” You asked, not able to keep sitting here in silence any more. 

“What?” He asked, looking up from where he was cleaning his gun. 

“Smuggling,” you said. “Doubt you were born a smuggler and you don’t seem like you were a drug mule or something in the before times. How’d you end up doing it?” 

“How does anyone end up doin’ anything?” He asked. “Needed cards, people needed drugs. If people want to pay me for ‘em, I’m not about to argue.” 

“So that’s it,” you said. “You woke up one morning and thought to yourself ‘I think I’m going to tell FEDRA to fuck off today by running drugs’ and started a whole new career.” 

He sighed but didn’t say anything. 

“I don’t buy it,” you continued, sitting back against the tree you were propped against. “There’s something else…” 

“Not your business if there is.” 

“So there is something else!” You said, almost smug. “I’m on the right track, excellent.” 

“You always this nosy?” 

“Usually,” you said. “Let’s see… Maybe Joel Miller just likes an excuse to hit things.” He scoffed but didn’t say anything. “Not that? Interesting… Maybe Joel Miller gets off on breaking the rules. Is that it? You have authority issues?” 

“Can we go back to not fuckin’ talking?” He asked. 

“Not authority issues then,” you nodded, ignoring him. “Well, that leaves just one other theory.” 

You were quiet, looking away from Joel and fighting the urge to smirk as you did. It only took a minute of silence before he sighed. 

“Goddammit,” he said. “What. What’s your theory.” 

You let the smirk happen then, looking back at him. 

“That Joel Miller doesn’t feel alive unless he’s about to die,” you said. “And that Joel Miller needs to feel something so he decides to do the thing that almost kills him because what else is there to have?” 

He watched you for a moment, his eyes hot and angry, before he looked back at his gun. 

You laughed once. 

“So predictable…” 

“And why do you do it?” He asked, looking up at you, the rage barely contained on his features. “Must have a reason, right? Livin’ outside the QZ as long as you did, fuckin’ around outside it now, what is it? You got some kind of death wish?” 

“Yes,” you said, looping your arms around your knees. He blinked at you in surprise for a moment and you laughed a little. “I’m not nearly as mysterious as you, it’s not some secret…” 

“Why?” He cut you off, gun set aside now. You frowned but he pressed on. “You got a life, why do you want to just throw it away…” 

“You call what I have a life?” You asked, brows raised. “Never thought you’d be so generous in regards to anything related to me…” 

“Ain’t it?” He asked. “Sure, it’s not what it was before, can’t just do what we did then but…” 

“You think that’s it?” You gaped at him. “That I miss being able to go to fucking happy hour with my coworkers or grab dinner at Chili’s so I might as well drop dead?” 

“That’s not…” 

“I lost people, Joel,” you snapped. “I know everybody did but when I say I lost people, I mean I lost everyone. By the time you and Tommy found me, there wasn’t a single person left on Earth I knew. My parents turned in the outbreak, they bit my brother and his wife and their daughter. I survived with my fiance for a while but he got shot by a FEDRA officer when we were trying to make our way to the fucking QZ and then I was alone. I stayed out there because, what, was I supposed to go live with the people who killed him? No thanks. What the fuck is there? So yeah, you know what? I smuggle shit. I like the risk. I like telling FEDRA to fuck off. I like being able to handle myself because I’m the only thing I can count on. Don’t act so fucking surprised that I’m not thrilled with life in the QZ just because you brought me there.” 

Joel was quiet for a moment and you just squared your jaw and looked away, arms crossed tightly over your chest. You knew you shouldn’t let Joel get to you the way he did - especially not after you’d picked at him and pushed him here - but he got under your skin the way no one else left alive really seemed to. You hadn’t spoken to anyone about your fiance, not in years. It was a wound you’d long set aside, a casualty in the war on humanity that had hollowed you out so much that it seemed like you couldn’t really feel anything unless you were on the edge of your own destruction. Or, apparently, picking a fight with Joel fucking Miller.

“Could be worse,” he said eventually. 

“Yeah, well.” 

“M’sorry.” 

You looked at him then, brows knitted together. 

“What?” 

“Said I’m sorry,” he said, voice a little gruff. “Didn’t… didn’t know. Wasn’t trying to… I’m sorry.” 

You blinked for a moment, trying to get your bearings. Of everything you’d expected to hear out of Joel Miller’s mouth, I’m sorry wasn’t it. 

“I’m sorry, too,” you said eventually. “If you want to talk…” 

“I don’t.” 

“Right,” you nodded. “Well…” 

“I got first watch,” he said, picking his gun back up. “Get some sleep.” 

The next day, you reached the trade you’d arranged, the woman you’d run into a few times when outside the QZ there with her partner. They hauled so much marijuana out - wrapped tightly in old newspaper - that they had to use wagons to carry it all. You unloaded your haul and the trade went smoothly, Joel lurking toward the back and standing guard, keeping a surly watch over the whole proceeding the entire time. It took some doing to pack all the pot into your bags but you managed it, thanking the couple and starting back toward the QZ. 

You were close to where you’d stopped the night before when it happened, the snarl of infected crawling over your skin. 

“Fuck,” you slung your rifle down from its place over your shoulder and turned to where the sound was coming from, seeing a cluster of at least a dozen infected moving for you. You shot, catching the first in the head and you watched it drop. 

“Go!” Joel yelled, planting his feet and taking aim. 

“Fuck you!” You snapped, ignoring him and shooting. “I can handle myself.” 

He growled at that but didn’t say anything else. Instead you stood with him, side by side, trying to pick off the group that was charging for you. For a moment, you thought you’d done it, that you were in the clear. 

And then, Joel’s gun jammed. 

You realized it when you didn’t hear any more gunfire coming from beside you as the remaining infected drew closer. 

“Joel!” Your eyes darted his way and you saw him trying to force the lever back, to no avail. He looked to you and the infected and back to you, his jaw squared. 

“Get back to the QZ,” he said, not giving you a chance to respond. Instead, he charged forward, gun held not like a firearm but a staff and he swung it, hard, so the butt of it slammed into the skull of an infected as three others dove for him. 

“Fuck!” You yelled, ignoring him again. Like hell he was going down out here like this, like fuck you were letting this asshole die for you. You took careful aim, taking down infected that you were confident you could headshot without putting Joel at risk, just one bullet going wide and exploding on the bark of a nearby tree, the rest finding their mark. And then he was on the ground, just one infected left, too close to him for you to be able to shoot and it wasn’t that you chose to do it, not really. It was more like instinct, flying forward, shedding your backpack and dropping your gun as you did, wrenching your knife from its place at your hip and jumping onto the back of the creature, your arms going around its neck as you yanked back on it, hard. 

Your weight threw it off balance and it shrieked, starting to claw at you, twisting in your hold to see if it could sink its teeth into your skin. It bit as best it could at your arms but the thick of your coat kept it from getting any further and you struggled to adjust your knife to drive it into the thing’s neck but you couldn’t get it, not without letting it go.

“Goddammit!” Joel was panting for breath and you could barely see him out of the corner of your eye as he scrambled to his feet. You tightened your grip on the infected, the stink of the rot of it from the inside out making you gag, and it slammed you back into a tree, catching you off guard. You barely registered the sound of your skull hitting the wood before you passed out. 

***

You didn’t listen. You never fucking listened, why could you never fucking listen? 

You were the single most infuriating person Joel had ever met. Stubborn as hell, independent to a fault, seemingly desperate to pick every fight you could find. Of course you didn’t fucking listen to him. You never had before, why would you start now? 

Seeing you that close to infected - again - was terrifying. 

This was why he didn’t want to go out like this with you. This, right here. Because he knew you wouldn’t listen, he knew you’d wind up in this situation, knew he’d have to deal with the fear and the pain of you dying when it was his fucking fault why couldn’t you just fucking listen?

He’d thrown himself at the infected to give you a chance. One of you was probably going to die out here and he wasn’t about to let it be you. Not when he’d already done so much, gone so far to try to make sure you fucking survived. Because dammit, if he couldn’t make sure one of the few people he actually cared about actually lived, what was the damn point? 

But did you take the chance he was giving you? No. Of course you didn’t. 

And all he could do was watch in horror as the thing you’d jumped on top of slammed you into a tree with a sickening thud, one he could hear above the snarling and snapping of jaws. Your body went limp and you slid from its back to the earth, landing in an unnatural looking way. No one who was in control of their limbs fell like that. His blood was ice and he moved without considering, roaring as he ripped his knife from his belt and tackled the infected who was turning to go after your throat. He hit it so hard he rolled with it, the creature’s mouth reaching for him as he held it back. They came to rest on the ground, that thing on top of him and Joel slammed his knife into its neck again and again, until it went quiet and still and Joel was bloodied and panting for breath. 

He shoved it off him and he half crawled to you as he got to his feet, not willing to wait until he was standing to start moving. You were still when he reached you, your head thrown back, half on your side, mouth open. 

“No, no, c’mon,” he pulled your coat open to get at your chest to try to do what he thought was CPR - not like there were fucking certifications for it in the QZ - but, when he did, he realized you were breathing. He lowered his head near your mouth and could hear the soft, shallow sound of your life and he sat back on his heels, taking a deep breath. 

So he hadn’t gotten you killed. Not yet, anyway. At least there was that. He let himself sit with the relief for a moment before checking you over, looking at your throat and wrists for signs of a bite but didn’t find any. Another lucky moment. 

“Alright princess,” he said, tapping your cheek lightly. “C’mon. We gotta get movin’, let’s go.” You stayed still. His stomach twisted. “Know you like to fuck with me but now ain’t the time, we need to get out of here, time to wake up…” 

He half expected you to respond then. You’d love this, the fact that he was damn near panicking because you were hurt. He knew you’d want to draw it out. 

But you wouldn’t be stupid about it. You wouldn’t put them at risk, not really. 

“Fuck,” he swore, adjusting your limp body as best he could before lifting you to his chest. The hair at the back of your head was matted with blood. He tried not to think about what that might mean. “S’alright. You’re gonna be fine, just… You’ll be OK.” 

He kept thinking that, over and over, as he carried you, looking for somewhere he could protect you for a while. 

It took him time to find it, a farmhouse with overgrown fields that looked like it hadn’t been touched in years. The door was hanging open, creaking on its hinges, and Joel brought you to the kitchen island, setting you gently on the dust-covered formica. 

“Stay there for a minute,” he said, leaning against the counter to recover his strength and his breath for a moment. “Gotta… gotta make sure we don’t got company.” 

He went through the house room by room, barricading the doors on the ground floor and pleasantly surprised to find most of the top floor intact, no holes in the roof or broken windows. He gathered some blankets from the main bedroom and carried them down to where he’d left you. He propped your head up gently, pouring some water on a cloth and cleaning the cut there with care before covering you with a quilt and pulling a kitchen chair up beside you. He checked to make sure you were still breathing before sitting down, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, hands folded almost in prayer. 

He should have told Tess to fuck off. He knew better, when it came to you. There was a reason he’d avoided you ever since that day everything had gone wrong. Hell, he’d been avoiding you before that, too. 

From the moment he’d met you, he liked you a little too much. You were the exact kind of woman he’d gone for before, one who was capable and strong and a total fucking smart ass. He liked a woman who challenged him, one who made him think. You did those things, you did those things like it was second fucking nature, all while being one of the most beautiful women he’d ever seen, before the outbreak or after. 

He knew he had to keep his distance from the beginning, that he’d get too attached if he let himself. But you were a valuable partner, so he did his best to keep you at arm’s reach while going on runs with you and his brother. He thought that had been enough, that he’d done a good job of protecting himself from the disaster that waited at the end of any form of attachment in the life he led now. 

And then he saw you freeze in the face of infected. 

He was so afraid in that moment that it shocked him how fast he made the call. The decision to put his body between you and the infected was an easy one. He wanted to make it back to the QZ, to his brother he’d found some reason to live for over the last few years, but he wouldn’t want that if you didn’t come back, too. But you didn’t fucking listen then, either, too busy trying to do the same damn thing he’d have done in your position. If you hadn’t been with him, he’d have tried to save Harvey. He was a good man, he’d watched Joel’s back plenty, Tommy’s too. He deserved a better end than the one he got. 

Joel just couldn’t risk it. He couldn’t risk you. 

He let himself rage at you about it. Even though it wasn’t your fault, none of it had been. He’d known it then but even more so after. Years later, outside the QZ, he watched as a large hoard worked its way south for the winter, just passing through. You couldn’t have seen them coming, no one could have. 

He never told you that. Because, after the day you froze, he was far enough away from you that he wasn’t going to have to watch you die and he wasn’t going to have to carry the blame if you did. He couldn’t do that again. He knew that much of himself, he knew what he wasn’t capable of surviving. If you were out of reach, he’d have room to breathe. 

But you were still leaving the QZ. He hadn’t known that, at first. He’d just assumed you’d stay put and take the shitty jobs FEDRA offered to get by. He hadn’t even known that Tess knew you, not for years. It wasn’t even her that told him you were still smuggling, it had been a FEDRA guard. He’d overheard your name when Tess was handling a trade and put two and two together. He damn near marched over to your apartment that second and demanded to know what the fuck you were thinking. But he didn’t. He kept it together, he kept listening for news of you, kept waiting for the day that he knew was waiting for him, the one where you didn’t come back and he’d find out about it from some other smuggler or some asshole guard who found out when you didn’t show up with his supply of pills.

And then your name came up when he was trading with a FEDRA guard. It was a small deal, some pills for cigarettes and liquor, just enough for one guy. He was a new client of Joel’s, one he was happy to have. His demand was low and he was good leverage for bringing shit through the gates, turning a blind eye for a good deal on drugs. He just hadn’t seemed to learn quite yet that Joel wasn’t a friend. 

“You know other smugglers, right?” He asked, glancing at Joel as he counted the pills out in his palm. As though Joel was stupid enough to short change a fucking FEDRA officer. 

“Suppose,” Joel shrugged. “Why?” 

“There’s this one…” he talked about a woman who was coming and going, one who was cocky and beautiful and hadn’t caved to his demands for sex the last time she came through and he tried to blackmail her. Joel ground his teeth but kept quiet as he prattled on, eventually pocketing the pills and handing over the cigarettes and booze. “Anyway, wondering if you think she’s the type who’ll give in or should I stop wasting my time and just take it?” 

Joel’s hands curled into fists. 

“Take it?” Joel asked. “Take what, exactly.” 

He looked at Joel, incredulous. 

“C’mon,” he said. “You know. They never fight too hard against a uniform but it’s more fun when they’re at least a little willing.” 

Joel’s punch came so quickly the man didn’t have time to put his hands up. He took him to the ground fast, blow after blow raining down on the man’s face until the air smelled like copper and his knuckles were split. The man gargled on his own blood below him, desperate gasps that sounded something like “please” but he couldn’t be sure. Joel grabbed him by the collar, his head lolling limply to the side as he tried to breathe. One of his teeth was hanging on my a thread.

“Keep your fuckin’ hands to yourself,” Joel panted. “Tell your fuckin’ friends. I hear about any of you messing with women around here? I’ll kill you.” 

Joel dropped him back to the ground and flexed his fingers. He thought he might have broken part of his hand. Wouldn’t be the first time. At least this one was worth it. 

“Pleasure doin’ business with you,” he said, fishing around in the man’s pocket and taking a pill from him. He popped it in his mouth, chalky and bitter on his tongue. “For my trouble.” 

He left the man there in the alley, knowing full well that he’d just shot his whole team in the foot. He didn’t much care. 

The irony that it had landed him here, outside the QZ with you unconscious and your haul on the forest floor was almost too biting. Maybe he deserved it. Maybe he’d been doing this wrong all along. 

You groaned and Joel’s head shot up as you started stirring on the counter, your hand going to the injured part of your skull. 

“Easy,” he said gently, getting up slowly so he wouldn’t startle you. “Took a nasty hit to the head, you were out for a while.” 

“Ow.” 

Joel laughed a little at that. 

“Glad you think it’s funny,” you said, sitting up. He rushed to help you and you gave him an incredulous look as his hands found your back and your hand. “Jesus, I feel like I got put through a meat grinder…” 

“Well, s’long as you ain’t bitten, think we can handle that,” he said, taking his hands back now that you were sitting up. 

“Amen to that,” you said, stretching a bit before looking him over and then looking around, a small frown on your face. “Where are we?” 

“Farmhouse,” Joel said, shoving his hands in his pockets just to give them something to do. “Think about a mile from where we were. Can find our way back OK. I’ll have to, your pack is still out there.” 

“Shit,” you said. “Yeah, we can’t afford to come back without it, I traded my entire stash for my share of the pot…” 

“We’ll find it,” he said. “Don’t think anyone else is comin’ through here any time too soon.” 

You nodded slowly before looking back to him, your eyebrows knitting together before you flinched, your hand going to the back of your head again. 

“Will you actually listen for a change and take it easy?” He asked, going to check the wound. “Jesus, bane of my fuckin’ existence, not doing a goddamn thing I tell you…” 

“Why are you still here?” You asked, ignoring him yet again, fingers finding the gash on your head and tugging at it until it started bleeding again. Joel sighed before pulling your hand away. “Hell, why’d you bring me here at all? You just said I’m the bane of your existence, why the fuck did you go through this much trouble? You could have just left me there, taken my pack, kept all the haul for yourself…” 

“You really think I’m capable of that?” He asked, brows raised. He knew he hadn’t exactly been kind to you over the years but fuck, he didn’t think it was that bad. He pressed the wet cloth to your head again, watching as the red filtered over it. 

You shrugged. 

“Jesus,” he muttered. “Yeah, alright, you piss me off more than… shit, about anyone else I’ve ever met. You’re the bane of my existence…” 

“So…” 

“Will you let me talk?” He snapped. “Fuck, woman, always gotta be right, always gotta have the last damn word, always gotta do whatever’s gonna get you into the most trouble…” 

“Oh, I’m so sorry that I managed to save your fucking life today,” you snapped back. “Please forgive me!” 

“I don’t want you saving my life if it costs you yours!” He yelled. 

You pulled back from him sharply, eyes wide as you blinked at him in shock. He shook his head and pulled the cloth away from your skin. At least the bleeding had stopped again. 

“Don’t fuck with it anymore,” he said, dropping the bloody fabric to the counter. “Gotta leave it alone so it can start to heal, head wounds bleed like a motherfucker…” 

“Joel,” you said quietly, watching him. 

“What.” 

“Joel,” you said again, eyes still on him. “You… What did you mean you don’t want me saving your life if it costs…” 

“I don’t…” He cut you off before he took a deep, centering breath. “I don’t want anybody dying for me but… Christ, it can’t be you. Yeah, you’re the bane of my existence, you piss me off so much sometimes I swear it’s like you got a goddamn degree in just how to do it but you make me feel more alive than anything else left and I can’t…” His heart was pounding so hard it felt like a bruise. “I can’t lose you, especially not when I could stop it. Not when I could save you. I need you to stay alive, OK? I don’t want anyone else to piss me off the way you do, I want you to be the one getting under my skin every goddamn day…” 

“Joel…” 

“Still not gonna let me finish?” He gaped at you. “Fuck, I’m tryin’ to…” 

You didn’t let him finish that time, either. Instead, you kissed him, your arms going around his neck and pulling him roughly against you, your lips so soft and warm and demanding on his that it felt like you were trying to swallow him whole. 

It was like the logical part of his mind only worked for half a second after that. He knew, in that moment, that he should probably hold you back. Talk things out, make sure you didn’t hurt yourself - you’d just had a head injury for fuck’s sake - but that part of him vanished, consumed by you and the way you kissed him like you were trying to climb inside his skin. 

His arms went around you, pulling you to the very edge of the island so your pussy was pressed tight against his quickly hardening cock. 

He couldn’t help but grind himself against you, the zipper of his jeans harsh contrast to just how soft he knew your pussy would be and the last bit of resolve he should have held snapped. Your fingers fumbled at the snaps on his coat, pulling it open before going to the buttons on his shirt and he did the same, desperate to get at your skin and suddenly not caring that it was nearly freezing or that the two of you had nearly died not all that long ago.

His hands found your breasts, sliding inside the cups of your bra to cradle the soft warmth of them and you moaned into his mouth when his thumbs found your nipples, gently brushing them before working them in little circles as they pricked against his skin. 

Joel had tried to not think about this with you. It was tempting, always tempting, but he knew better. He tried to limit his thoughts of you to frustration and anger but he often failed at that. He had failed at it often enough that he had an idea of how you would feel in his hands, how you would taste on his tongue. He thought he would have known enough to be prepared for it if it ever happened. 

He wasn’t. 

You were, somehow, so much better than he’d ever let himself imagine. You were so goddamn soft, like the whole of you had been spun out of silk, tenuous and tender. There was something almost inherently wrong in how he was touching something as soft as you but he shoved that nagging guilt aside, too obsessed with feeling more of you. If this was how your tits felt in his hands, how your lips felt on his, how your hands felt in his hair, he had to feel inside you. He wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to think about anything else if he didn’t get to be inside of you, his mind would always be trying to create the way you would feel, to know how warm you would be, how safe he would feel in you and how calming it would be to know that you were safe, too, because nothing could reach you if he was there inside you, nothing. 

His hands reluctantly left your breasts and slid down to your waist, finding the button on your jeans. You quickly, clumsily kicked off your boots and lifted your ass from the countertop so he could slide your jeans and panties down, leaving you all wet and swollen and bared for him. 

“Fuck,” he panted, looking down at you for a moment before reaching one callused finger forward and almost reverently tracing your dripping slit. You groaned, your head going back in pleasure, your hips almost jumping toward him. 

“Joel,” you whispered, voice so goddamn needy. The sound went straight to his cock, skin stretched tight and balls aching. “Please…” 

“I’ve got you baby,” he said, opening his pants and tucking his jeans and underwear below his throbbing sex. “Make you feel so good, just…” 

He took his cock and brushed the head against you and you looked down to where he was about to push inside you and gasped. 

“Holy fuck,” you panted, looking at him, your eyes wide. “Joel, you’re… Are you going to fit?” 

“I’ll fit, baby,” he said, looking down again and notching the head of him inside your wet heat. You groaned as you stretched around him, fingers digging into the skin at his nape. He pushed the first inch of himself inside and stopped, looking back to you. He took your face his hand and your eyes searched his, desperate longing written there. “Just watch me, I’ve got you.” 

You didn’t say anything, you, just nodded quickly. His other hand went to the small of your back, angling you just so as he started to thrust into you, pushing in a little and then pulling back before going again, claiming more and more of you with each stroke until he was fully within you. He stilled inside you and pressed his forehead to yours, your eyes on his own, close enough that he could feel the warmth of your breath on his skin. 

He’d been right. Inside, you were fucking perfection. He could feel how you stretched over him, how your body perfectly took and held his own. You were so soft there it seemed impossible, like the world should have destroyed anything this delicate and supple. But you felt so like you, too. The heat of you was almost overwhelming, the strength of you sharp and clear when your cunt fluttered over him, already nearing your orgasm with telltale little spasms holding him tight.  He wanted to consume you and be consumed, devour and be devoured and he needed to fuck you deep and hard and leave part of himself inside of you or he might never think of anything else ever again. 

“Fuck, Joel,” your breaths were sharp and shaky. “I’m so… you’re so big, I’m so full, I… You have to move, I need you to fuck me, please fuck me, please, I need…” 

“I’ve got you, baby,” he said, gently angling your head just so. “Give you just what you need.” 

He kissed you as he started fucking into you, setting an almost punishing pace as he moved inside you. He drank down your desperate groans, savored the way your fingers scrabbled over his shoulders and neck and back, got lost in the spread of your thighs as you kept trying to take him somehow deeper. As if there was more of you for him to take, as if there was more of himself to give. 

Your channel grew tight over him and he knew he wasn’t going to last once you came but he was afraid he wasn’t going to even make it that far. He’d already given up on pulling out, he’d deal with the whatever fallout came from filling you up, but he had to feel you come when he was inside you. He was desperate for it, needed to feel how you’d draw so tight over him and pull his come from his body into yours, he needed it. He drove deep and found the spot inside you that made your legs clench a little tighter, fingers clutch a little harder. He pressed into it and held himself there, more rocking into you than fucking into you, grinding the head of him into the very softest part of you as your cunt drew tighter and tighter over him and you pulled away from his lips to cry out as you came. You throbbed around him and he could feel every part of you there, the pulsing of your body and the satisfaction of your cries damn near ripping his own orgasm from him. 

He pulled you close and tight as he came, feeling like his whole being was pulled down low and sharp inside him as he spilled deep into you. Your arms loosened on him but you still held him gently as he all but collapsed into you, his head on your shoulder as he panted for breath. 

“Fuck,” he managed after a moment, still deep inside you. 

“Yeah,” you laughed a little. 

He sat back from you, eyes searching yours again now that you’d both started coming back down to Earth. You reached up and ran your fingers through his curls, brushing them back from his face as he started to notice the cold air again for the first time. 

“Bane of your existence, huh?” You asked, teasing lightly. 

“Yeah,” he said, smiling a little. “My whole damn existence.” 

You smiled a little back. 

“Think I can work with that.” 

[chuuyascumsock]

Where Gay Goes to Die || Minors DNI

Summary: I have no words, and no apology because this actually slapped so hard. Let’s go lesbians lmao. Happy pride month.

Tags: Female! Chuuya Nakahara/Reader/Fem! Osamu Dazai, Afab reader, Threesome, Brief Voyeurism, Pet Names (Baby, Doll, Belladonna, Love, Pretty Girl, etc.), Classic Dazai-Chuuya Bickering, Fingering, Nipple Play, Hair Pulling, Face Sitting, Squirting, Strap-on Use, Slight Bit of Aftercare, Hints of a Poly At The End, Idk Maybe I’ll Make a Part Two, Haven't Decided, Honestly Downright Filthy Smut, Literally Wanna Be Stuffed Between Them Like a Sub Sandwich.

How you ended up in bed between your co-worker and her ex-partner from the mafia was a mystery to you. 

One minute you were having drinks with the ADA earlier that night before slinking off to grab another drink from the bar. And the next you were being complimented by one of the five mafia executives herself who was sitting nearby, Nakahara Chuuya. You’ve never had anyone so boldly eye fuck you while smoothly commenting on the way you fought during one of your missions— and against their organization no less. Chuuya was ethereally beautiful, her russet tresses fell over her freckled shoulders, sleek dress hugging her physique tightly to reveal her curves. The most captivating characteristic of hers had to be her heterochromatic eyes, soft blue and brown that sealed your fate as she dragged you away from the bar shortly after your interaction.

Dazai had only noticed your disappearance after she was finished with her Sake. Whining and complaining to Kunikida about how much she missed you, Kunikida scoffed and fixed her glasses. “The last I saw her was talking to the bartender.”

Dazai was quick to jump to her feet and trail off to the bar, only to find no one but the bartender there. When asked, the bartender nodded his head off to the back door that led to an alleyway with a small warning that you had left with a woman described way too familiar with Dazai. Not only was it Dazai’s ex-partner back in the mafia, but you had fought against her just the other day. Dazai felt off when approaching the door, weary of what to expect.

Entering the alleyway, Dazai hadn’t been expecting to see Chuuya feeling your soft body up with her gloved hands while shoving her tongue down your throat and vice versa. 

It took minutes for either of you to notice Dazai’s presence, too caught up in one another to see her staring you down as Chuuya had her way with you. The woman had tugged at the neckline of your tight dress, freeing your breasts to the cold air for the brunette to see before cupping and squeezing them. Your soft and cute mewls had both women wanting more as Chuuya’s lips captured yours again in a sloppy kiss.

Something in Dazai snapped and she knew that there was no more hiding her want for you behind sweet, charismatic smiles and adoring looks from across the office. She cleared her throat, a small gasp of surprise leaving you and not much of a reaction from Chuuya. 

“The hell do you want, shitty Dazai?” Chuuya nearly rolled her eyes as she kept your plush tits groped and spilling between her gloved hands. 

“What are you doing here?” You timidly ask, embarrassed for getting caught, especially with someone who was supposed to be the agency’s enemy.

Dazai kept her composure. “You were gone for too long so I came looking for you— but I see that you’re busy.” She completely ignores Chuuya for the time being.

“Sorry…” You whisper bashfully, head tilting down in shame.

“Well she’s perfectly fine, so you can leave now,” Chuuya grumbles, leaning forward to litter your throat with more hickies.

“I don’t think so�� it’d be a shame for the president and Mori to find out what’s happening right now. Why don’t we talk about this at your place, hm, Chibi?” Dazai was clearly planning something.

And that something ended up with you sandwiched between both women in Chuuya’s king sized bed— Dazai’s long, manicured fingers stuffed in your cunt to the knuckles while Chuuya’s tongue entangled with yours, her calloused hand pinching one of your nipples between her fingers.

The loud squelching of your pussy around Dazai’s fingers makes your ears burn as you moan into Chuuya’s mouth, kisses growing messy and mostly tongue filled. Dazai grins in satisfaction as she presses a thumb to rub at your throbbing clit, enjoying every second of your soft walls clenching around her fingers. “Look at how cute her pussy is, Chuuya. Such a needy little slut— wanting both of us at once.”

Chuuya’s lips disconnect from yours, leaving a small string of saliva to break apart from your panting mouths. “Can’t you keep your big mouth shut for three seconds? You’re ruining the mood with your annoying voice,” She mutters in irritation at Dazai’s voice while looking anyway, her gaze glued to your slick pussy as Dazai’s fingers thrust back inside. Chuuya bites into her bottom lip at the scene momentarily before moving back to marking your neck up with love bites.

Dazai blissfully ignores Chuuya’s snippy comment, curling her long fingers to rub into a certain spot that makes your thighs quiver. “She’s so soft, I bet she tastes good too.” The brunette hums thoughtfully, her eyes trailing from your soaked pussy up to your eyes. “Do you?” She smiles mockingly, watching you stumble incoherently over your words into a muddle of whimpers. Her bottom lip juts out into a small pout as she continues to taunt you. “Oh, poor baby… can’t even talk— do my fingers feel that good?”

There’s a small wince as you feel Chuuya sink her teeth into your shoulder just slightly harder than the other bites when Dazai talks, most likely annoyed by how much more she was doing. Wanting more attention, Chuuya growls out, “Oh please, she’ll be crying over my strap compared to your lousy fingers.” 

“Toys? A bit of a cheater, aren’t you, Chuuya? Can’t satisfy her on your own?” Dazai finally responds, mockery evident in her tone.

“Keep talking and I’ll throw your ass out to walk home in the cold.” Chuuya glares at Dazai before she moves away from you momentarily to crawl over to her nightstand to grab out a bottle of lube, harness, and a relatively long dildo. 

Your face must’ve shown just how intimidating the size of the toy was as Dazai gives a light laugh. “Too big for you, darling? Bet you wanna keep my fingers,” She says in a sing-song voice, curling her digits once more. It’s enough to distract you momentarily from their bickering as you feel a familiar feeling building in your lower tummy.

“Relax, doll. It��s only eight inches,” Chuuya sighs nonchalantly, already strapping the harness around her hips and prepping the silicon toy with a thick glob of lube. The sight of Chuuya slicking the toy up with her hand only makes you clench tighter around Dazai’s digits.

“Well some of us aren’t as loose as you are, Chuuya-dear.” Dazai gives a faux innocent smile, malice clear in her eyes and tone. Her fingers falter a bit at Chuuya’s next words.

“You’ve got to be out of your damn mind to talk— you should be considered a fucking graveyard at this point with how many bones you’ve had in you.” Chuuya scoffs, slapping Dazai’s hand away from you as she grabs one of your ankles with her other hand to drag you to her.

You give a small whine, eyes hazy as your orgasm was ripped away from you. 

Chuuya’s gaze falls back to a softer expression as she looks down at you, “I got you, doll.” Her hands move over to grab your hips and lift them until your lower back and ass are resting on the tops of her thighs, bright purple dildo resting between your ass cheeks.

“Well now you’re just being unfair,” Dazai complains, voice pitchy as she gives Chuuya a nasty look.

Before Chuuya could make a snippy remark about her leaving, you reach to lightly tap the brunette’s knee, signaling her to straddle your head. “Just so no one is left out…” You murmur, flustered.

“Well aren’t you just a sweetheart?” Dazai’s mopey expression washes away quickly as she shifts to make her way across the bed to straddle her knees on either side of your head. Her head tilts down to look at you, lips pulled back into a grin and lithe fingers threading into your hair. “You look cute between my legs, ‘donna…” 

Your eyes lull as your gaze drops from her face to her  cleanly shaven pussy, folds practically drooling with arousal which makes your mouth water. You nearly forget about the strap-on nudging against your entrance until it’s pushing in with no warning, the bulbous tip stretching you back open, though not as much as Dazai’s fingers had been. As your lips part to gasp at the sensation, Dazai is lowering herself down until your mouth is enveloping her, your tongue pushing through her folds and labia to lap along her tight hole.

You think you could drown in these women and let them fuck you until you’re nothing but a mindless, pussy-drunk slut for them, your hands coming up to grip into Dazai’s bandaged thighs and your hips jerking to take Chuuya’s strap deeper. And they don’t even keep it from you, letting you have your way as Dazai settles her weight fully onto you and Chuuya shifts to slip deeper into your aching core, walls greedily clutching around the dildo. Your moans are muffled by Dazai, your tongue laving through her succulent pink cunt, clit throbbing wildly against your muscle. She isn’t sweet like how it’s always described, a musky arousal evading your senses— but it isn’t unpleasant and it has you slurping noisily at her sloppy pussy loudly, making her moan and buck gently against your mouth.

It’s overwhelming how they both selfishly take as much as they give, Dazai’s free hand reaching behind her to rub your clit as she rides your face and Chuuya is sinking into you to the hilt and pulling away to create a tortuous pace, her hands gripping into the flesh of your hips. Your ears are muffled and you can’t tell if it’s from the pleasure or Dazai’s thighs pressing to your ears, hips rolling down to hump against your wriggling tongue.

“O-Oh, fuck, look at you… made for eating this pussy, huh, ‘donna?” Dazai groans, her fingers tightening in your hair painfully which causes you to gently scrape your teeth along her clit. She gasps and releases your hair slightly, fixing it almost apologetically and pets it down, her other hand now resting to cup your mound, middle and ring fingers gently rubbing circles into your clit.

You don’t let the stinging sensation in your scalp bother you when Chuuya’s pace picks up and her hips are slapping against yours, thighs jiggling each time she fucks the dildo deeper into your sopping pussy. That and Dazai’s insistent rubbing against your clit has that coil tightening in your lower abdomen once more. You wish you could see the way Chuuya thrusts into your eager pussy, the loud squelching of the dlido fucking into you being all you had to know how good she was treating it. 

“Shit… look at you taking it all, dollface— your pretty pussy is sucking me in so. damn. tight,” Chuuya growls, hips slapping harsher with punctuated words, your body jolting with choked breaths. 

“Don’t be so rough with her,” Dazai chides, not really caring about her being rough, but wanting to piss Chuuya off.

It works as Chuuya glares at Dazai and only picks up the pace, thighs stinging with each thrust as you feel her skin slap against yours and her grip grow tighter on your hips. “Don’t tell me how to fuck my girl, shitty Dazai.”

“Your girl?” Dazai humorlessly laughs out before letting out a small moan from your mouth sucking at her clit again. “Please— after this, she’s with me. I’m just nice enough to share this once.”

“Like hell, I made a move first, go find someone else to whore around with,” A huff leaves Chuuya, but her pace doesn’t change and neither does Dazai’s fingers against your clit. It has your mind reeling and body twitching, nearly teetering the edge of a climax— not that either woman noticed as they continued to bicker. 

“Well I SAW her first, I called dibs. Besides, she works at the agency with me so that means that she’ll be coming back with me anyways. You lose, face it, Chibi.”

“Doesn’t matter if you saw her first, you’re just mad that I acted before you did. You’re such a petulant child, can’t even handle losing to me for once.”

“That’s because I didn’t lose, she’s mine.”

“Oh, you fuckin’ bitch—“

Their arguing is cut off by a loud muffled whine from you and an orgasm that has your body shuddering deeply, your pussy creaming all over the purple dildo. A small, frothy ring of your cum forms around the base with each thrust, leaving the two women to finally quiet down as they watch, movements faltering to a slow pace momentarily.

“Fuck… I wanna make her squirt now,” Chuuya exhales quietly.

Dazai nods slowly before murmuring, “Finally, something we can agree on.”

You pick up on their muttering and let out a muffled groan into Dazai’s pussy in attempts to disagree, not sure if you were able to take another orgasm, but it falls upon deaf ears and their movements pick back up to a frenzied mess now.

You squirm beneath them, eyes squeezing shut and limbs spasming as they overstimulate your flushed pussy, folds puffy and clit thrumming as Dazai adds even more pressure to your sensitive nub. You try so hard to focus on Dazai’s rutting against your mouth, but it’s difficult when they’re double teaming you like this and Dazai takes over, allowing her hips to grind down on your face. Her clit bumps against your nose and your tongue occasionally slips into her clenching hole, serving her just enough as she tries to desperately reach her own climax.

“C’mon, hun, let go for us, yeah? We know you can come again— wanna see you squirt, baby,” Dazai pants out, her bangs sticking to her forehead from the sheen of sweat she was working up. You can’t see Chuuya, but you know she must look similar to Dazai’s state.

Your head feels like it’s underwater and you can’t help but give into what the two women want, thighs clamping around Chuuya’s waist as your eyes flutter closed and your second orgasm crashes over you more intensely to the point your ears start to ring. A stream of arousal squirts out, splashing against Dazai’s fingers and Chuuya’s lower abdomen. A soft gasp slips from their lips and Dazai can’t help but come at the sight, her viscous cum coating your tongue and slipping down your throat like honey. It’s a pleasant feeling and tastes almost like nothing with a hint of her scent, making you moan weakly against her as her hips falter to slow down but refuse to let up from your mouth, insides pulsing against your tired tongue.

It’s a couple minutes until you gather your bearings and Dazai finally lifts her hips, breath hitching at the string of your saliva and her cum connecting your mouth to her pussy that breaks when she pulls away. It nearly gets her worked up enough for another round, but she presses the feeling down and moves to lay beside you, clinging to your side and burying her face into your neck. 

Chuuya pulls out of you shortly after, slipping the harness off her hips and begins to clean up. She disappears off into the bathroom momentarily and returns with a small rag to clean your face off first of Dazai’s cum and then between your legs. The mafioso pecks your lips gently in comparison to her rough treatment earlier and glances at Dazai, throwing the rag at her lazily without a care. “Clean yourself up, would you?”

“What?” Dazai whines out, “How come she gets the princess treatment and I’m treated like a peasant?”

“Because you are one, you’re lucky I haven’t kicked you out at this point,” Chuuya clicks her tongue and turns her attention back to you and scoops you up into her arms. “I’m starting a bath, I don’t give a damn if you join or not,” She says to Dazai over her shoulder, leaving the brunette to complain about the unfair treatment she’s getting as she stumbles up to follow after the both of you. 

With your arms looping around Chuuya’s neck lazily, a small smile curls in your lips, knowing that this wouldn’t be a one time thing.

[qqueenofhades]

I think the Aaron Sorkin fic people are writing about the convention to be extremely silly. It's going to be Biden. And if Biden's health takes a downturn and he feels the need to step down its going tk be Harris. This fantasy where we skip over her to whip up two random white guys(or like maaaybe Witmer) and somehow cruise to victory instead of fragmenting the party months before the election is simply not going to happen.

Look, I'm just saying, I got an email from the Biden campaign this morning where they seemed pretty darn happy with the actual (i.e. not-bloviating media) results of the debate: $38 million raised in 4 days ($30 million from individual small-dollar donors), 10K new volunteers in a week, 3x surge in campaign volunteers for battleground states, essentially no change or even a modest boost in the polls. So I think at this point, we can cautiously conclude the following things:

The debate looked bad for Biden, perhaps, but doesn't seem to have hurt him nearly as much the incredibly bad-faith BIDEN NEEDS TO STEP DOWN NOW takes being pumped out by the NYT and its other compatriots would suggest. Especially when these same media outlets have been gleefully sabotaging Biden at every turn for years already and whose fake-sanctimonious hand-wringing "for the good of the nation" pieces honestly should get them dropped into Superhell for Bad Journalists;

Biden went to Raleigh NC right after the debate and gave a fiery rally speech that was very well received. Now, I don't know why we didn't have that Biden at the debate, but it was the same night and there clearly was not any "cOgnItiVe dEcLinE" happening there (also Biden has a stutter and has for literally his entire life, and had a cold on debate night, so it was just an unfortunate confluence of factors)

There are very few actually undecided voters in this election (once again: HOW???) and those who tuned into the debate were largely already convinced of which candidate they were voting for and this didn't do much to change their minds. Just like, you know, pretty much every other debate in the history of presidential elections.

Ordinary voters, and not mainstream media outlets with BIDEN IZ BAD goggles clamped over their eyes, were able to see Trump's insane Gish gallops, lies, and full-blown dementia; this isn't going to get any better for him when he's already lost 20%-25% of GOP voters in every state primary and still is going to be sentenced in his criminal trial;

The D.C. political elite screaming about how Biden should step down (FOUR MONTHS BEFORE THE ELECTION) and leave the Democrats to start from scratch with some Star Chamber-selected candidate with no money and no incumbency record and no organization apparatus and a divided party are either fucking weapons grade morons or working secretly for Trump, because that IS in fact the best way to lose the election;

Such speculation seems to fall chiefly on Gavin Newsom, who (to his credit) has shut down any and all suggestion that he should try to step in and take the place of an incumbent who has won every state primary with 90% or more, because he's remotely sane and understands that this year is too important to fuck around with;

I've somehow never seen any suggestion that Biden should step aside for the duly elected (brown, female) Vice President, because everyone seems to think some Young Miraculous White Guy is coming and/or should step in;

All this while SCOTUS is clearly so confident of Trump getting back in that it's willing to grant him Absolute God King status pre- and post-emptively;

Yes, Biden needs to up his game before the next debate (though that's on Fox News iirc, blargh), but I think it's far enough post-debate that we can say it was bad but did not sink him, and if anything, reinforced the fact to many ordinary, non-brainwormed voters that Biden is old (which has been the number one chief theme of news coverage for four years and is no surprise to anyone) but is a decent and principled man doing a good job, while Trump is an absolute gibbering insane orange shitmonger fascist. I don't think he did himself any favors in that regard.

....anyway. The point is, do not be fucking insane people, Biden is not going to step down and frankly shouldn't, don't read the NYT (as noted, they've openly admitted to sabotaging him for personal ego reasons so I don't know why the hell anyone would listen to what they have to say about him), this is still an eminently winnable election, and let's go get those motherfucking fascists. I want Trump in jail and all of SCOTUS and the MAGAGOP fucking crying over it because they fucking suck. Let's go.

[ally-writes-many-things]

Dicking you Down (L. Kennedy) 18+

Summary: just pure smut. Little to no plot

Words: like 2k?

Warnings or A/N: MDNI. Female receiving. Male receiving. P in V. Fingering. Eating out. Just finished watching a play through of RE2R and RE4R and I couldn't get Leon out of my mind. My first Leon fic. Hopefully it wasn't too ooc for him.

For what felt like the hundredth time, you couldn't help but roll your eyes at Leon. His cocky attitude seemed to have multiplied tenfold ever since he rescued the president's daughter. Some of the newer employees, hired during his mission, were openly ogling him. "Do you ever fucking stop talking, Kennedy?" you finally snapped.

The room fell silent as everyone turned to look at you in shock. "Oh, please. Don't act surprised. We all know it's true," you added, unapologetically.

You faced Leon directly and spoke your mind. "Enough with the hero act for rescuing Ashley. Any of us could have done it if given the chance. Many of us have faced far more dangerous situations than saving a teenage girl from parasite-infested kidnappers," You declared, rising from your seat and striding out of the room.

☣

Hours had passed since the encounter, and now you were back in your office. Admit it or not, you secretly wished for the same longing looks from Leon that he was giving those new employees. You'd be lying if you said you didn't crave his attention. The way his clothes hugged his muscular frame, driving you to distraction. Your thoughts wandered to how his strong arms would feel wrapped around you as he fucked you, imagining his touch and taste.

As you tried to focus on the reports sitting on your desk, the image of Leon kept invading your mind, causing a warm sensation between your thighs. You shook your head, trying to clear your thoughts, but they kept returning to him.

A knock at the door interrupted your thoughts, and you looked up to see Leon standing there. "What do you want, Leon?" you asked, crossing your legs under the table.

"I want to know what your deal is," he replied, entering your office and making himself comfortable in one of the chairs.

The way he sat only fueled your desire. With one arm casually draped over the chair beside him, his broad chest was on full display as his legs spread slightly apart.

"You want to know what my deal is?" he asked.

"Yeah, I do," you replied.

You uncrossed your legs and made your way to the door, shutting it firmly and turning the lock. Though you were fairly certain you were the only ones left in the building, you couldn't be too careful.

You approached Leon and straddled him, feeling your dress ride up your thighs as you held his chin to meet your gaze. "My issue is I want you to fuck me," You confessed.

Leon's hands eagerly grasped your thighs, lifting your dress. "I thought you couldn't stand me," his voice was low.

"I never said I hated you. Sure, you can be annoying, but that doesn't change the fact that I've been craving you for a while," you admitted.

After a moment of silence, Leon pressed his lips roughly against yours.

Your fingers weaved through his hair as he roughly guided your hips to grind against him.

He bit on your lower lip, wanting access. You obliged, parting your lips as his tongue explored your mouth, deliciously savory flavor that filled your taste buds.

His lips traveled along your neck, sending shivers of pleasure down your spine. He slowly licked from the top to the bottom of your neck, before biting down just above where your neck met your shoulder. As his teeth sank into your skin, you couldn't help but buck against him, eliciting a moan from his lips. Breathless, he asked, "Are we really doing this here?"

"We're the only ones here, aren't we?"

"Yeah.”

You slipped off his lap and your hand slid up his pants, feeling the outline of his boner. "Do you want to go back to my place, yours, or just have me right here, right now?" "Fuck, you look sexy on your knees for me," he breathed.

"So, do you want it now?"

Leon nodded in response.

You flashed a smile at him before popping open his zipper and freeing him. You proceeded to lick the entirety of his length, causing him to moan. You took him fully into your mouth and started to bob your head on him.

He forcefully grabbed a handful of your hair, pushing himself deeper into your mouth. You gagged as he reached the back of your throat, eliciting a response from him. "Fuck. That sounds amazing," he moaned as he repeated the action several times.

After briefly holding your head in place, he released you, allowing you to take a quick breath before resuming sucking his dick. Your hands work in sync with your mouth to pleasure him. You could feel him getting closer to his release, his moans growing louder and his hips thrusting slightly. Finally, with a loud groan, he filled in your mouth, the salty taste flooding your senses. You swallowed it all.

Leon pulled himself out of your mouth and gripped your neck, urging you to stand before he pressed you against the desk. Releasing his hold on your neck, he tugged at the hem of your dress, pulling it over your head and tossing it to the ground. With a swift motion, he tore off your panties.

He lifted you up and sat you on the desk before dropping to his knees in front of you, his gaze fixed on your form. "Now, that's a sexy sight. On your knees for me," Leon said with a smirk. "I'll gladly get on my knees for you,"

With your legs draped over his shoulders, he lowered his head to your core as he started to lick you.

His warm tongue flicked and teased, sending shivers of pleasure through your body. Each motion was deliberate and skilled, expertly finding every sensitive spot and driving you closer to the edge. You let out a loud moan as his tongue worked its magic, taking you higher and higher into a state of pure ecstasy.

Your hands reached down to grasp his silky blonde hair. His movements grew faster and more desperate, his desire matching your own as you both chased the release that was tantalizingly close.

He was aware of how near you were, so he used both hands to pull your ass closer to the edge of your desk. With one finger inside you, he began a slow, deliberate movement that made you arch your head back in ecstasy. "Yes, fuck, yes," you moaned.

After a few rough pumps with just one finger, he decided to add a second, intensifying the sensation. Each time he reached deep within you, he skillfully curled his finger, hitting that magical spot that sent waves of pleasure throughout your body. "Just like that. Keep going," You moaned.

With a final, deep plunge of his fingers, you felt the wave of pleasure crash over you, your body arching in blissful ecstasy. He continued to lap at you, drawing out your pleasure until you were left breathless and completely satisfied.

You pulled him up to meet your lips, tasting yourself on him as you kissed. “Get the fuck in me now,”

“Eager? Are we?”

"For you, definitely," You gasped, spreading your legs for him.

Leon chuckled as he stroked himself, then rubbed himself against your pussy. A sharp moan escaped your lips as he entered you. "You're so tight," he whispered.

"You're so big," you replied breathlessly.

Leon began to move slowly, but you didn't want it to be gentle. "Fuck me like you want it, Kennedy.”

Leon pulled out of you completely before plunging back in with force. A cry of pleasure escaped your lips as Leon established a rough and relentless rhythm.

His hands gripped your hips tightly as he pounded into you, each thrust sending waves of pleasure coursing through your body. The sound of skin slapping and your cries filled the room, mixing with the primal grunts and groans escaping Leon's lips.

You wrapped your legs around his waist, pulling him closer as you matched his movements, meeting each thrust with equal fervor. The intensity of the pleasure building between you was overwhelming, each sensation heightened by the primal connection you shared in that moment.

As Leon's pace quickened, you felt a familiar tightening in your core, signaling your imminent release. With a final, powerful thrust, you reached your breaking point and came all over him. He swiftly withdrew and pushed you back onto the desk. With your elbow supporting you, he pumped himself a few times before releasing a deep groan and coating your boobs and stomach in his cum. He admired his handiwork with a grin, as if it were a masterpiece.

"Not the last time we do that," you remarked, locking eyes with him.

"If you were craving me dicking you down that badly, all you had to do was ask. We could have been doing this much sooner," He replied with a smirk.

[woman-respecter]

I'm really heartbroken for American women.

I'm feeling it extra hard because it is a "norm" for women in my country to get beat up by their husbands, killed, etc and all it does is get worse. Women have to leave to America for basic human rights.

Why do Americans take their rights for granted? You can hate the West and recognize your privileges by upholding those rights. The solution isn't to let everyone get punished.

I feel so sick. Women from my country and many others hide from men in America. When America's done where else is there? What's left for women? Who's going to fight for us?

I'm sorry but as a brown woman I've had to fight with other brown women who expect us to shut the fuck up because "Palestine is the focus". If you can't care about both or expect women to just take this shit because "there's worse", than something is fucking wrong. I'm tired of hearing I'm a white feminist for CARING ABOUT WOMEN. I refuse to be silenced. I'm tired of everyone putting us last what the fuck.

I know those fucking pricks on here are going to respond to the election results by saying "focus on Palestine" even though they're all complicit. Palestine has the worst "allies". It's all a tragedy. We will never have a female President any time soon.

And when miss Chappell Roan opens her mouth....ouu idk what to say.

Love you all ❤ I hope we find the strength and bravery to continue.

literally it must be so fucking annoying for women in developing countries to watch western women who can’t even imagine how oppressed you are throw away their rights for whatever stupid reason they have.

[peaxhygirl]

𝙰𝚁𝙼𝙰𝙽𝙳𝙾 𝙰𝚁𝙴𝚃𝙰𝚂 𝚇 𝙵𝙴𝙼𝙰𝙻𝙴 𝚁𝙴𝙰𝙳𝙴𝚁 - 𝙼𝙰𝙼𝙰 𝙸'𝙼 𝙸𝙽 𝙻𝙾𝚅𝙴 𝚆𝙸𝚃𝙷 𝙰 𝙲𝚁𝙸𝙼𝙸𝙽𝙰𝙻

: ̗̀➛𝚃𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚒𝚜 𝚊 𝙱𝙻𝙰𝙲𝙺 𝚏𝚎𝚖𝚊𝚕𝚎 𝙾𝙲

: ̗̀➛𝚂𝚞𝚖𝚖𝚊𝚛𝚢: Inspired by Britney Spears x Criminal

: ̗̀➛𝙰𝙽: This is done in a universe where Armando is a teenager, the female reader is also a teenager. There is no adult/minor play in the passage and I do not write that.

Sixteen-year-old Yara was a good girl, never broke the rules, never back talked her parents, and was a straight A student. President of the Debate team, captain of the cheer team, and on student counsel, she was every parent's wet dream. That was until she met Seventeen-year-old Armando Aretas. A guy she kept away from to the best of her ability, but he always seemed to be around. Now, he was in her veins and well, it caused for a rather contentious environment in her home.

"Yara, have you still been seeing that boy?" The booming voice of her father cut through the silence of her room right along with the slamming open of her bedroom door. Grateful that she'd even gotten her door back after having it taken away for a month, she decided to play it cool. "No." Her eyes remaining trained to her phone screen, voice monotone and lacking it's usual emotion. "Well then why the hell is he outside my house?"

Yara's deep black curls bounced as her head swung towards her window. Her body basically moved on autopilot as she went over to her bedroom window. Her heart thumbed so intensely that she felt it in her throat, her ears rung, and her body trembled a bit as she stared at him out the window. There he was, stationed on his shiny black motorcycle that she was still somewhat terrified of. Even in the dark of the night it still shined. He removed his helmet, their eyes locked and it hit her that she'd given up probably the most intense love she'd experience all because her parent didn't like him.

All because of who his family was. The Aretas' weren't known for being the most law abiding, safe and friendly people. They had a strong hold on the drug market in Mexico and it was well known that they didn't care who knew this about them. They operated off the fear that forced people to respect them. Something thar kept her away, but God he pulled her in.

"Yara, don't even think about it." Her father was firm as she spun around. Her brown eyes darted across the room, looking for the best way to get out. "Young lady, you will not be associated with that criminal!" "God, will you just shut up! I stayed away from him; I did what you said. I let him go for you and look how you're treating me!"

For the moment, her father froze in pure shock. It was the first time he'd ever even heard her raise her voice, let alone at him. What kind of influence was this boy having on his perfect daughter. He didn't have much longer to think, because Yara went bolting out her bedroom door heading for the steps.

On the way down, Yara caught a glimpse of her mother, a look of worry and dismay present on the face idetical to her own.

"Yara, honey. Please, this isn't you. It's him its-- that influence." She pleaded running down the steps behind her daughter. This caused Yara to roar in frustration.

"It's not him!! It's you. You guys want me to be this perfect kid that I'm not! I have issues just like everyone else, but you guys don't even give me the space to express them and learn-- I don't have the space to be myself. With him..I do." The knot that formed in her throat was filled with the frustration she'd felt since childhood. The pressure put on her was incomprehensible. "With him, I can be me. I don't have to pretend that I'm ok and I can be flawed. I'm finally allowed the space to-- to just fucking relax!"

"Yarina." Her parents resorted to her full name. "You better watch yourself young lady. Like we said, you will not be associated with that thug." Her wide eyes gazed over her parents. She loved them dearly, but she couldn't continue like this. "Yara, please." Her mother's voice was much softer in comparison to her father as she stepped forward to take her hand, being immediately met with Yara moving backward.

"I'm sorry, but I'm in love with him." She offered one final apology before she quickly turned to exit the home. She wore nothing but pajamas, no shoes, socks, or even a sweater to keep her warm. "Yari." The teenage male rasped as his girlfriend approached.

"Where's your clothes?" His brows furrowed, hopping off his bike to remove his hoodie and pull it over her body. He glanced past her, seeing her parents standing in the doorway. "Let's go." He murmured, handing her his helmet. She knew he'd argue with her about her needing it more than him, so she put it on. Climbing on his bike behind him, wrapping her arms around his torso.

She didn't know what would happen with her parents, but she knew it wasn't her concern for the moment as he pulled off and she opted not to look back.

[teamfreewill2pointo]

Tumblr won't let me share the audio clip of Misha answering the last question from Crossroads, so here's a transcript.

[Fan] Um, it's kind of about Destiel so - [Misha] Perfect last question really

[Fan]So there's a show called 911 and - It's about firefighters and it's been going on for about seven seasons now. And recently in seven seasons it moved networks from Fox to ABC. And um, one of the main characters, he's a man named Buck and- he kissed another man and it's been said that by the actor who plays Buck on the previous network Fox, they wouldn't have been able to do that. So when they moved, they thought, okay, we can do it now because it's on a different network. So my question is, do you think if Supernatural had a new networks earlier on, or if the show was made later something like this could have happened between Dean and Cas? [Misha] If think that if the CW- [Fan 2] Fuck them! [Misha] had not been- Had not been so homophobic- [Audience cheers] [Misha] Dean and Cas would have been balls deep. [Audience cheers] [Rob] I think you just made a headline. [Audience cheers and laughs]

[Misha] I will tell you- I will answer that question um- in- in part earnest. I, I think that there's been a sea change in culture um broadly. When I joined Supernatural and- and- Destiel became this very like hush-hush thing on the internet that we weren't even supposed to talk about. Um, there was no way on God's green earth that anything like it, uh, a consummation of that kind of relationship would make it to the screen on our show. And by the end of the series, we had lasted for so long that the culture had changed and there had become an acceptance of the possibility that that kind of, like, Declaration of Love could happen. Um, I- I- I mean... When I was growing up, um, we used the word f*g as a filler all the time. It was like, just want to insult one another, and f*g, homo, like, that's what everyone was saying in elementary school. My kids see two dads or two moms dropping their peers off at school and it does not faze them at all. And there's none of that language in their schools. Now, I know that [Audience claps and I can't understand a few words due to clapping] we're decades away from eliminating homophobia in our society. But we've come so far and so I think the answer to your question is, yes, like had to show happened later on and had another 10 years to evolve who- who knows what could've happened. Um, I think that there would have been a lot more representation on the show, in general. We would have had more female directors. We would have had more female leads on the show. We would have had more people of color. A lot of things would have been different on the show, um, if it had just been 10 years later. Um, and there- and of course, like you know, the pendulum always swings. There's always a reaction to Evolution and, you know, in our country, we have the far right emerging and Neo-Nazis like, honestly taking, you know, like, seats of power and potentially, you know, for a second time, the presidency. It's- It's a pretty scary time.

[Rob] Book burning happening, you know? [Misha] What's that? [Rob] And book burning happening. [Misha] Yeah [Rob] You know, watching the show too- watching the rewatch podcast that I do with Rich, like- [Cheers] You see how much things have changed. There are certain things in the show where like, oh, then you wouldn't do that now. You know? [Rob] Like they use the word bitch all the time in the show and it's like- eugh- a little cringy, right? You know. [Misha] Yeah. Um, a lot of- there were a lot of things that we did that I don't think would stand the test of time at all now. But, um, we try to be better. [Rob] Also, I would just say, like, one thing I love about these rooms that this- this, um, family that we're here, in the Supernatural family, is like everybody is welcome and everybody's okay whoever you are, whatever you are, however you are- like, it's this is a safe space.

ETA: so it turns out that the enforcement at Starfury is different than the rules at jibcon or CE and I will not be sharing the audio clip. Jibcon officially has a no recording rule, which almost everyone in fandom ignores. Starfury is different.

[foone]

One thing I think about a lot is that how omegaverse is a sort of meta-setting that can and has been applied to many different fandoms, right?

So there's "omegaverse supernatural" (because that's where it started) and "omegaverse star trek" and "omegaverse Frasier" and "omegaverse Batman" and "omegaverse US presidents".

You can basically easily apply it to any fandom with lots of men in it, which turns out to be most of them. (and you can apply it to the rare female-majority fandoms with a bit of extra work).

But the interesting thing to me is that omegaverse depends on characters having subgenders: alpha/beta/omega are effectively gender roles on top of the regular male/female ones, but they're ones not specified in the original fiction, right? (I mean, not usually).

So like, you can watch NewsRadio and it makes it pretty clear Dave is a man, but it never specifies if he's an alpha or omega, because why would it? Also, why is my go-to example of a random sitcom one from 1995?

Anyway. So you've got a bunch of characters with canonical genders (not that that has ever stopped fans from headcanoning them as different! Dave is a trans man, Lisa is a trans woman, and Bill? All Phil Hartman characters are closeted trans women, so jot that down), but you don't have canonical subgenders.

So fans have to decide which characters in a fiction are alphas and omegas and so on. They tend to be pretty consistent for most characters, actually.

But the part that interests me despite not really reading omegaverse stuff is just those headcanons.

Like, I can take a show I know well, like say Star Trek: The Next Generation, and find out what the fans think their subgenders are.

Like, I'm gonna guess that Riker and Worf are alphas. Picard could go either way. LaForge is an omega, Data is... An android, but he's had sex, so... I'm gonna guess alpha? O'Brien is an omega, but that's mostly going off DS9. Maybe he wasn't in TNG yet? Wesley I'm guessing gets headcanoned as omega.

And see, now I can go look at ao3 and see what other people think for these! And for some reason that's way more interesting to me than just reading any omegaverse fic.

I think we should do more of this sort of shit. I mean, I guess we kinda do for things like top/bottom, dom/sub, trans/cis, but I demand more subgenders! Subgenders that aren't depicted in the fiction but fans have to headcanon.

I kinda want to make a sort of wiki website which works by scraping ao3 tags and assigning alpha/beta/omega to characters from shows, basically a fan vote on how people headcanon the subgenders of these characters.

Anyway I checked and oh boy yeah everyone says Wesley is an omega. Apparently Zefram Cochrane is an omega too.

And the one fic I saw with Data in it made him an omega. Huh. Interesting.

I dunno. It's weird: I've got no interest in reading a fic where these characters fuck in their weird omegaverse ways, but I can't not be interested in knowing how fans headcanon them.

[imagineredwood]

Summoned

Summary: The guys all share you, their perfect girl, but when Bishop requests you first thing in the morning and finds out that someone has already gotten to you early, he's not exactly thrilled.

Pairing: Bishop Losa x female reader

Warnings: Free use implied, oral sex female receiving, overstimulation, quite literally flicking the bean 🫘

Word count: 1K

A/N: ........not requested, I’ve just had this in my brain and drafts for a long time and have been holding off, not sure if this was gonna land well but I finally said fuck it and found the courage to post it and now we’re here. Probably going to turn it into a series like the Crybaby one

The hand on your lower back was warm as it touched you gently. You paused pouring the coffee into the mug and turned, finding EZ standing there with a smile. He leaned down and pressed a kiss to your cheek near your eye, your lashes ticking him as your eye fluttered closed.

"Bish wants to see you."

You nodded, a small bashful smile coming to your lips. EZ used the hand on your back to usher you towards the Templo door and you went, knocking gently even though you were requested.  His voice was muffled when it told you to come in but you still heard it. You slid the door and walked in, Bishop's eyes on you as soon as you appeared. His eyes raked over you.

Taking in the sway of your hips as you walked.

The way your breasts looked so soft in your top, your nipples slightly visible. They weren't hard, but you had long since stopped wearing bras in the clubhouse when it was just the boys and you. He watched your thighs as they led out of your shorts, smooth and begging to be bit. Bishop was gentle with you, mostly. But he could also be harsh sometimes. Deep bites and sharp spanks. Especially when he felt undermined or disregarded.

And this week he had been made to feel both plenty.

You walked all the way up to him, hands folded neatly in front of you as you looked at him, waiting. He simply took a long drag from his cigar, eyes dark and lusting as they stared up at you.

"Shorts off. Sit in front of me."

His other hand tapped the table right in front of him and you nodded, shimmying out of your shorts and hopping up onto the table. You sat there still, legs slightly spread, hands resting on the table on either side of your knees. Bishop continued to smoke, eyes on you.

"Lean back a little."

You listened and moved your hands behind you, propping yourself up a bit as you leaned back.

"Good girl. You always do what you're told."

You smiled softly, the tiny breath you let out at the praise running straight to the President's cock.

"Because that's what you are. Right? You're a good girl for us? You take whatever we give you with a smile?"

You nodded again, your eyes bright and Bishop could tell all your thoughts were melting away.

"I can't hear you."

"Yes, Bishop."

He took a deep drag again before putting the cigar down to rest on the ashtray, leaning forward. His fingers were warm as they trailed over the front of your panties, running up and down along your slit. He watched your breathing quicken but he kept up with his teasing for a handful of minutes before he finally hooked his index finger in the corner of the fabric, pulling it to the side and exposing your pussy to him. It was puffy, more so than usual, and he chucked, knowing exactly what had taken place.

"Angel ate you out this morning, didn't he."

You giggled breathlessly and nodded.

"Uh, yeah. He woke me up."

Bishop nodded, knowing exactly how your sensitive skin looked when the bearded man eagerly ravaged you with his mouth. They all did. Angel would pin your hips down with his forearms and you had nowhere to escape from the scratch of the coarse hair nor his unrelenting tongue. Bishop chuckled and tapped his finger against your clit, getting the exact jolt from you that he was expecting.

"Poor little thing. Must be so sensitive."

You nodded and bit your lip as you looked down and watched him. You knew him well enough to know the sympathy was inauthentic. His hand reared back and delivered a slap, your thighs closing slightly of their own volition. It wasn't a hard slap, but the sensitivity heightened the feeling. He did it again, and again, then once more, chucking darkly at your soft whimpers. He cupped you with his hand and then rubbed along you, using the palm of his hand to dig into your lips and clit each time his hand reached your mound. He removed his hand then and you sighed, thinking that maybe he was done with the torture. Instead, he used his fingers to spread you open, your clit bare and fully exposed. You swallowed, eyes trained on him, wondering what he was going to do next. You expected maybe another slap. Perhaps a kiss if he was feeling generous.

You weren't expecting the sharp direct flick that had you squealing. Your thighs instinctively tried to close but Bishop wedged his shoulders forward, forcing them open.

"If I didn't know any better, I would think you were playing favorites."

You shook your head feverishly, eyes trained on him.

"No, no. Of course not."

The President stared at you for a handful of seconds more, your eyes pleading. For what exactly, you weren't sure, but he nodded once and then placed his hands on your hips, dragging you closer to his mouth. He didn't say anything else after that, simply burying his face into you. He attacked your clit on purpose, knowing Angel had likely not taken it easy on you.

Neither would he.

He kissed and sucked and moaned and growled and laved his tongue against you, hands preventing you from getting away as your hips bucked and writhed. It didn't take long for you to reach the edge, hands gripping his forearms, your nails biting into his skin as you came. By the time your vision had returned, he was sitting back in his chair again, cigar between his lips once again. You sat back upright and he chuckled at the state of you.

Eyes glazed over. Mouth hung open ever so slightly. Cheeks warm. Chest heaving. He admired you, drinking in your beauty as you sat before him trying to gather yourself. You were wrecked and he hadn't even taken his cock out yet. 

Yet.

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[hadesoftheladies]

too many people view (uncritically, esp when it comes to feminism) separatism as this isolating, individualistic thing where people who don't want to participate just pack their bags and move to a far off country. that isn't what it is at all.

separatism is about re-centering the individuals of a certain community so as to strengthen the community. so that a community focuses its energy and resources on itself rather than on outsiders. it is, quite literally, about building and expanding community. it's not merely about escaping men or banning men, it is about relying on women, building a community of women, centering women, making it so that women are not dependent on men because women got them. you see how that's qualitatively different right?

like it's not so much about cutting off your father or brothers, but about spending deliberately more time fortifying your relationships with other women in your life. whether helping them out financially, donating books, giving advice, buying their stuff, giving energy.

when it comes to revolution of any kind, they die quickly without a strong sense and presence of community.

one of the biggest wrenches patriarchy has thrown into women's liberation is poisoning female community. consciousness-raising is difficult because every new generation of women is cut off from the one preceding it. younger girls are taught to resent women and view women with suspicion. they are male-centric in that they believe males will protect, love, provide for and cherish them only to have a rude awakening sooner or later.

bridging that disconnect is going to take practicing varying degrees of separatism. for sharing of knowledge between women and girls is hampered by male presence. you've all seen this happen. when a man or boy enters the picture, conversation between women is crippled. we start censoring ourselves.

censorship is a huge issue feminists face at every turn, and it's worse because we experience this censorship not just via government or public forums where men are in charge, but in our interpersonal relationships. and not just in our interpersonal relationships, but by our own selves. only female community brings out the honesty in us and gives us the courage to speak out and think freely. we all know this.

separatism is not only imperative to women's health, it is imperative to consciousness raising. it's not about living in a male free utopia but about centering women in all things so that women's community is strengthened and prepared to take on their oppressors and patriarchal society (and so that it survives retaliations). girls don't need to be totally isolated from males. they need to have predominantly female (not feminine) influence in their lives. they need to be in a place where they do not depend on males or cater to them. they need to be female-centric. learning female-philosophy and perpetuating authentic female culture.

that's separatism.

and the good news is that feminists are not the first oppressed group to employ separatism. black liberation movements employ this as well and are strengthened when they do. it's how they won some of their most vicious battles. lgb communities also utilize(d) separatism and it strengthened their communities. they had to de-center the narratives of their oppressors and rely on each other instead of begging their oppressors for scraps. they won because they gave themselves to each other as a community.

separatism works. over and over again. liberation takes time, but it has always needed separatism.

i just keep thinking about how communities can disrupt and change society, y'know? like how even in the throes of capitalistic/imperialist/white supremacist greed, small communities find a way to take care of each other financially and physically. culture predates economy, even while economy can beget culture or poison it. i love how small communities can just say "fuck you" to the presiding ruler and create within themselves micro-economies to keep each other alive. economy is just, after all, a social agreement/condition.

women are the ones who will liberate women. keep investing in that and it'll pay off.

[qqueenofhades]

I understand how important it is to be able to criticize the President, and am not at all of the belief he should be beyond critique, but the critiquing of Biden makes me so nervous. (That's not to say I agree with every decision he's made - I absolutely do not). But I feel like people see things he's done wrong and decide they won't vote for him because of it. I'm not sure if enough people have the ability to see that he's done things wrong but also is our only hope of staving off literal fascism.

So many people talk about how sick they are of it constantly being a lesser of two evils situation, constantly having to vote for a candidate they hate because the other side is worse (I heard it in 2020, 2022, etc), and I guess I just- I don't really get it? We're here because they didn't do that in 2016. All of this could've been avoided had the result been different then. I just feel like people don't comprehend how different of a place we'd be in if Hillary won and engage in all this cognitive dissonance to make themselves feel better about being part of the reason she didn't.

Like.... this has been a long-running topic of discussion on my blog, not least because it is so inexplicable and maddening. It also shows how terribly shallow most people's understanding of the American political process is, and how toxic the "I can only vote for a candidate if every single personal belief/position of theirs matches mine" belief is, as well as how much damage it has done to American democracy even (and indeed, especially) by people who technically don't identify as right-wing. Yell at Republicans all you like (God knows I do, because they're the worst people on earth) but they vote. Every time. Every election. Every candidate. Whereas the Democratic electorate still holds out for Mister Perfect, and it very definitely is Mister Perfect. The amount of "evil HRC!!!" Republican-poisoned Kool-Aid that so-called progressives drank in 2016, and then afterward when they insisted they could have voted for someone like Elizabeth Warren and then didn't do that in 2020, is... baffing.

Frankly, I don't care if Hillary Clinton's personal positions on XYZ issue were the most Neoliberal Corporate Centrist Shill to Ever Shill (and Online Leftists' intellectual skills being what they are, I seriously doubt that they were using any of those words correctly and/or accurately). American policy is not made by "personal dictate of the ruler," or at least it shouldn't be, because we are not an absolute monarchy. We rely on the operation of a system with input from many people. As such, if Hillary had been elected, we would have 2-3 new liberal justices on SCOTUS and have secured civil and environmental rights for the next generation. Roe would be intact, and all the other terrible rulings that SCOTUS has recently handed down wouldn't have happened. We wouldn't have had January 6th, the attempt to stage a coup, all the tawdry scandals, our national security being at risk because of Trump stealing classified documents and probably selling them to Russia and/or Saudi Arabia, etc etc. If you think that's in any way an equivalent amount of evil to what would have happened if Hillary was elected, or if she was "still evil!!!," then I honestly don't know what to tell you. She could fucking murder puppies in her spare time if she had preserved SCOTUS for us, WHICH SHE WOULD HAVE, BECAUSE SHE WARNED US EXACTLY WHAT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN.

(Hoo. Sorry. Still steamed. 2016 war flashbacks, again.)

In short, Hillary would have been a solid continuity Democrat and she would have signed whatever legislation a Democratic House and Senate passed, not to mention been hugely inspiring as the first female president. But because it's so important to the Online Leftists' moral sense of themselves that BOTH PARTIES ARE THE SAME!!!, they can't possibly acknowledge that ever being a factor, and/or admit that they have any culpability in not voting for her in 2016. It's like when you read the British press about any of the UK's equally numerous problems, and they BEND OVER BACKWARD to avoid mentioning that Brexit might be a factor. They just can't mention it, because then that means they might have made the wrong choice in pulling for it as hard as they did, and blah blah Sovereignty.

Basically, if HRC had been elected president, everything would be so much less terrible and terrifying all the time, we would be talking about her successor in 2024 as someone else who could be the "first," we could explore handing the reins over to Kamala as a Black/Asian woman, we could promote Buttigieg as the first gay president, etc etc. But because 2016 was so catastrophically fucked up, we are in damage control mode for the immediate future and every election is just as pivotal. And yet, because people think that the only thing that matters is a presidential candidate's personal views, we're stuck having the same old arguments and desperately begging people over and over to please vote against fascism, since that somehow isn't self-evident enough on its own. Yikes on Bikes.

[slaymitchabernathy]

Enjoy The Show

Coriolanus Snow is less than happy as he walks through the arched entrance of the Capitol zoo.

He hasn’t visited the zoo in years, not since he was a small child who was easily entertained by the silliest of things such as odd looking animals.

Animals that are now all dead.

Once the war started, feeding animals was the last priority for most people, especially when they could hardly afford to feed themselves.

Still, he keeps his head held high as they make their way down the paved pathway, the crowd dispersing once they see him. He parts the crowd like the sea.

“Honestly, they couldn’t have picked a hotter day to do this,” his mother mutters behind him. Even though it’s the beginning of July and the weather is scorching, Coriolanus is still wearing the expected attire. Burgundy trousers, a white button up with a burgundy suit jacket over it. The complimentary rose is of course, pinned to his lapel.

His golden curls are on display, his black leather shoes shine brightly as the sun beats down on them.

He looks like a Snow.

“We can not control the weather darling,” his father reminds her, “once we get a good look at his Tribute, we can determine if there’s any point in spending a cent on her or if we can just sweep this entire thing under the rug.”

Coriolanus hopes it’s the latter. Prays for it in fact. He has been furious when he was assigned the female Tribute from District Twelve to mentor.

Twelve.

Not One or Two. You’d think being the President’s son would garner him a decent District but no, fucking Dean Highbottom was clearly out to get him, to taint his pristine reputation and this was a clear message about his true intentions.

Coriolanus hadn’t even bothered to stay for the Reaping itself. Not after he saw his parents leaving Heavensbee Hall, his father just as mad as he was.

“Casca has gone too far,” he had boomed once they returned home, “plaguing my son with some underfed runt girl. He should count himself lucky that I don’t personally see to the stripping of his title and all that he’s worth.”

Coriolanus has agreed with his father entirely. This was unfair, he wouldn’t even have a chance at his Tribute winning, not when the upper Districts always won, more so the boys than the girls.

But, he couldn’t act like a sore loser. Not before the Games had already begun. So, he decided he would put a spin on it, make this years Games the one to remember.

“I’ll show him what happens when you give a Snow a challenge father,” he had told him, “I’ll get her to the finish line, get everyone to root for her.”

His father had looked doubtful and Coriolanus couldn’t blame him one bit. Father had sighed and then nodded before giving him a stern look, “It won’t be about her son. No. It’ll be about you. She belongs to you. Make it about Coriolanus Snow, use her to win, to land on top.”

They had shared a knowing look before Coriolanus repeated the phrase that had been ingrained into him since birth.

“Snow lands on top.”

꧁ ꧂

Mother is right about one thing though, it’s dreadfully hot today. Coriolanus wishes he could forego the suit jacket but it would be a sign of weakness and showing weakness isn’t what won them the war.

He keeps his gaze forward as they push through the crowd. Well, as their security detail pushes through the crowd. Many people stop and watch, whispering to one another. Coriolanus has grown more than used to it. His classmates treat him normal for the most part although certain ones like Festus Creed and Livia Cardew love to tease him about his father’s job.

“She should be in the last cage darling,” mother says, “all the way in the back.”

It’s just his luck that his Tribute has been kept in the back, faraway from the crowds where no one will notice her or pay her any attention. How can he win this thing if no one knows she exists?

When they pass the cage that belongs to her District counterpart he can’t help but glance inside and swallow at the size of the boy. The male Tribute who has been assigned to Lysistrata Vickers is nearly as tall as Coriolanus. He’s got a mop of brown hair that swoops over his brow and his skin is tan. He’s got this wild look in his eyes that makes Coriolanus glad he wasn’t assigned this particular Tribute.

Not that any of the Tributes are decent human beings but being assigned a girl gives him certain advantages. The first being that all women are below men. He’ll be able to manipulate her easier, coach her, train her. Trying to convince a boy to give the Capitol a good show would be much more difficult but with a girl he can easily persuade her with his famous Snow charm.

He’s always been good with the ladies.

He slows his approach when he spots the small cage his Tribute has been assigned. It looks like it used to be a bird cage. He certainly never paid it any attention when he visited before the war. The bars are rusty and there are several small swings hanging from the ceiling for the birds to perch on.

There’s a rather large swing in the middle, most likely designed for several birds to sit on at once and perform a song or two. He thinks he can recall the zoo putting on little shows with the birds, training them to chirp little melodies for the visitors.

Instead of a bird he finds his Tribute sitting on the swing, her hands wrapped around the iron rods that hold it up.

Coriolanus is beginning to wish he stayed for the actual Reaping. At least he’d know what she looks like. He can only see her from behind and she has long blonde hair that falls to her waist. There’s a pink ribbon tied in the back but it’s a bit lopsided, like she hasn’t had the time or energy to fix it.

He can see that she’s wearing a pink dress, it’s short, and it looks like it’s made of tulle. It’s dirty but that’s no surprise. He walks around the cage and listens to her hum, she sounds quite good if he’s being honest. Much better than his own mother who only sings once she’s got enough alcohol in her system.

When he finally reaches the front of the cage he’s at a loss for words. She’s pretty. She’s very, very pretty.

She’s got a small face and it’s covered in freckles. Her skin is as tan as her male counterpart and she’s got the most startling eyes he’s ever seen. They look almost blue with a mix of gray if that’s even possible.

She looks as surprised to see him as he is to see her but she recovers smoothly and slowly stands up, dusting off her dress. It’s light pink and has two thick straps of tulle holding it up. She’s also wearing high heels which is a rather strange choice of footwear. If he knew there was a possibility of going into the arena, he’d be sure to come to the Realing dressed to fight.

She brushes her hair behind her ears and just as she goes to approach him, she shrinks back.

Coriolanus furrows his brow, confused as to why she’s hesitating but one look over his shoulder is more than enough to explain. His father.

She absolutely knows who Crassus Xanthos Snow is. President of Panem. The man who ended the war.

She’s probably had nightmares about him.

Coriolanus looks back at her, he has to look up since the cage is slightly elevated on a slab of cement but she doesn’t look too tall, even in heels. She looks skinny, not underfed but skinny. Her days in the zoo certainly won’t help with that though. She won’t last long in the arena is she’s starving.

“Let’s go,” his father calls, seeing no need to waste another moment on this girl.

Coriolanus can’t seem to tear his eyes off of her but he nods, slowly turning on his heel before finally looking away and starting at the back of his parents heads. “She won’t last a day,” his mother says with the shake of her head. His father grunts, “That’s if she makes it to the arena.”

Coriolanus feels a small frown tugging on his lips, the least he can do is make sure she gets to the arena. But that might mean actually helping her, feeding her, looking out for her. And he can’t do that.

Can he?

꧁ ꧂

“What did you think about your Tribute Snow?”

Coriolanus looks up from his notes to find Festus Creed looming over him with that sky grin he’s always wearing, “There wasn’t much to think about Festus,” he replies. There really wasn’t. Not when he couldn’t get her to talk or even get relatively close to her.

Festus leans against the desk in front of him, “Yeah, my Tribute is pretty promising. Her names Coral, you know, since sh fishes, I guess it makes sense. But she says she’s good with a trident. But who the hell used a trident?” Coriolanus furrows his brows, he hadn’t thought that other Tributes might have advantages due to the work they do on a regular basis. District Twelve was known for coal.

“I didn’t get to talk to my Tribute yet,” he admits and the surprise ls face on Festus says it all. “But you saw her didn’t you?” Coriolanus nods and tosses his pencil onto the desk, “I did. And then my father decided that no time or money shall be wasted on her. He doesn’t even think she’ll make it into the arena.”

Coriolanus hadn’t said anything to his parents since they got back from the zoo yesterday. He went straight to his room to try and devise some sort of plan but kept coming up short. It was hard when he knew nothing about her and he couldn’t rely on his father for help.

“Why don’t we go to the zoo today?” Festus asks, “I was gonna go visit Coral, maybe bring her something to eat.” Coriolanus had forgotten that he did in fact have free will and didn’t need his father’s permission for everything but still, he hesitated.

Festus caught onto it immediately and gave him a toothy grin, “It’s not like she can get to you through the bars Snow. I’ve seen your Tribute, you could snap her in half if you had to.”

Well, he has a point.

“Alright,” he decides, “we’ll stop by the zoo after school today.”

꧁ ꧂

After a rather unpleasant interaction with Dean Highbottom, Coriolanus and Festus took off for the zoo.

“I really can’t see what that guys problem is,” Festus says as they approach the familiar sight of the zoo, where the crowd is much smaller than it was yesterday, “I mean, if you hate kids then why work at the Academy?”

Coriolanus gives Festus a knowing look, “Because he’s dead set on making everyone around him miserable, including the students.”

Dean Highbottom might be the pettiest man alive and Coriolanus just knows that his Tribute assignment is living proof of that.

“Well, I’m gonna go find Coral. Good luck with your Tribute,” Festus calls before veering off to a different path. Coriolanus gives him a wave before shouldering his satchel and making his way to the back of the zoo.

He spots the boy from Twelve in his cage and he seems to be talking to someone. He’s grabbing the bars and his back is facing Coriolanus. This boy might just be a top contender for the Games considering his sheer size.

As Coriolanus gets closer, he realizes that the boy is talking to his Tribute. The girl is also standing in her cage, her fingers wrapped around the rusting bars. They’re not too far apart in their cages but both of them have to speak loudly to clearly communicate and Coriolanus only catches the last bit of their conversation.

“…keepin’ us out of the way.”

“Well, what did you expect Jessup? It’s not like we’re anything special.”

So his name is Jessup. An interesting name although Coriolanus is well aware of his name and its own difficulties. Jessup turns the second he senses Coriolanus and glares down at him from his cage. Coriolanus doesn’t take it to heart, mainly because he’s not the one locked in a cage that used to belong to a bear.

His focus is solely on his Tribute who’s watching his approach. She still looks pretty but she’s gotten a bit dirtier since yesterday. She watches as he slowly approaches until he’s right in front of her.

Neither of them seem to know what to say.

“I’m your mentor,” he finally says.

The girl tilts her head and looks across at Jessup before looking back down at Coriolanus, “My mentor?” She repeats and her voice is so heavenly. Like sweet honey rolling off the tongue. Coriolanus nods, “Yes. I’ve been assigned to mentor you through the Games.”

That seems to register something in her brain because she lets go of the rusted bars and walks away, “Well I’m afraid you won’t be much help. I won’t win.”

Coriolanus doesn’t think she’ll win either but she doesn’t need to know that. She needs to know that she has just as much of a chance as any other Tribute. He follows her around the cage to the front where he saw her yesterday, “You don’t know that,” he says, “you don’t know that you won’t win.”

The girl laughs and shakes her head, “Look, I’ve seen your arena. There’s no place to hide. I’m not gonna win, but thanks anyway.” Coriolanus feels somewhat defeated and he’s not even a player. How can she give up so easily? He’s going to have to turn to other tactics. He reaches into his satchel and pulls out a sandwich he’s wrapped in wax paper, the sound alerting her of something maybe worth her while, “Well, you might as well have something to eat,” he offers, holding it up to her.

The girl hesitates to step towards him but his father isn’t behind him like last time. All that stands between them are the iron bars of her bird cage. He pushes his hand through a bar, a risk since she could easily grab his arm and force it against the iron bar, breaking it.

But she doesn’t seem like the type to resort to violence, and she certainly doesn’t look too strong. She’s limber, not lean.

“Come on,” he says, nodding towards the sandwich, the sandwich he smuggled out of the dining hall like some damn fugitive. He can’t let all of his hard work go to waste. “You’ve got to be hungry by now. How long has it been since you last ate?”

The girls swallows, her eyes flitting to the sandwich then back to him, “Since the Reaping,” she finally says, her tone softer than it was before, less resentful and more reserved.

“Then you should definitely eat something. Please, take it, free of charge,” he insists, his arm beginning to grow tired.

The girl finally gives into her hunger and approaches him, crouching down to pluck the sandwich from his hand and their fingers brush up against one another and he feels a small shock roll through his body.

The girl begins unwrapping the sandwich, her nimble fingers working quickly on the wax paper.

Coriolanus takes this as a moment to study her up close, noting how smooth her legs are or the fact that her heels look quite uncomfortable. Her dress looks so soft, making her look quite elegant for a District girl. Coriolanus doesn’t even realize that he’s reaching out to touch her dress until they’re both frozen, staring at each other without a clue as to what they should say.

The girl finishes chewing and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, “It’s my momma’s”

Coriolanus blinks once, twice, pulling his hand back, “Sorry?”

The girl gestures to her dress, “This dress was my momma’s before she passed away. Feels like she’s wrappin’ her arms around me right now, keepin’ me together.”

Coriolanus has never heard such a clear District accent before. This girl has such a distinct twang in her voice and yet it feels like a warm drink after a long day, like she could sing him a lullaby to make all his worries melt away.

“What does your father do for work?” He asks, not wanting to get into the death of her mother. The war took many lives and he can only assume that her mother’s was one of them.

The girl gives him a wicked grin, like she knows something he doesn’t, “My daddy’s the Mayor of District Twelve.”

Coriolanus can’t stop his mouth from dropping.

He had assumed that she came from the nicer part of District Twelve, if that even exists, but to be the Mayor’s daughter adds a whole new level to this. Coriolanus can’t imagine what it would be like to draw your own daughter’s name out of the Reaping Bowl and then read it out loud for everyone to hear.

No wonder she looks so much better than the other Tributes. Her pretty dress and high heels are more than enough to proclaim her status to the world.

And yet here she is, locked away in a dirty bird cage within the Capitol zoo.

“Yep,” she says, taking another bite, “guess the odds weren’t exactly in my favor. But I guess someone’s gotta take one for the team of Mayor’s kids. Guess you saw how heartbroken he was on the television.”

Coriolanus scratches the back of his neck, it’s getting hot and he’s getting a bit personal with her now which can’t be a good sign. “I actually didn’t stay,” he admits, watching her eyes widen in surprise and maybe…betrayal?

“Why not?” She asks, tilting her head, “Didn’t feel like I was worth stickin’ around for?”

Well my father didn’t feel like you were worth sticking around for, he thinks to himself while shaking his head, “I had previous engagements that I had to attend to,” he smoothly lies, watching her raise her her eyebrows, “Did you now? I thought it was mandatory for everyone to watch the Reapin’ ceremony, but I guess I was wrong.”

Coriolanus shrugs, Reaping day can be dreadfully boring by the time they reach Twelve. “Well, when you’re the Presidents son…”

“They make exceptions,” she concludes, biting into the last bit of her sandwich, “well, thanks for stoppin’ by, I appreciate the sandwich. Maybe you’ll get luckier next year and get a better Tribute.”

A frown tugs on his lips because she’s not going to get to the arena with that attitude. He grabs onto the bar nearest to her face, leaning in a little bit, “I could help you,” he whispers even though no one is around to hear them, “help you in and out of the arena if you let me. I can get the people who live in the Capitol to fall in love with you if you want, make them do everything in their power to keep you alive in and out of the arena.”

There’s only so much that can be done for her once she’s in that arena but that’s on a need to know basis. And she doesn’t need to know.

The girl mulls over his proposal for a moment before shaking her head, “I can’t win, I’ve seen the other Tributes, they’re bigger and strong than me. I’m not even dressed for the arena,” she pulls at her tulle dress. She’s got a point.

“But you’re dressed for a show,” Coriolanus tells her, watching her face morph into one of confusion, “part of the Games is getting people to like you. Putting on a show. Do you have any talents? Anything that can capture peoples attention?”

The girl looks around the barren cage she’s trapped in and bites her lip, “Not at the given moment no,” she admits, “only got my charms to live by I suppose.”

She is very pretty but that can only get her so far.

Coriolanus looks her up and down for a second, trying to formulate a good strategy for them to get her to the arena at least.

The Games will be a different story.

“Can you sing? I heard you humming when I first saw you,” he recalls. It had been a short lived interaction but she sounded pretty good.

“Kind of,” she mumbles, brushing her hair behind her ears, “not much of a show bird though.”

Coriolanus points at the giant swing she was sitting on when they first saw each other, “But you can be a songbird right? If you start singing then I bet people will start listening. They’ll come over here and you’ll start to get attention. No one comes over to this part of the zoo.”

The girl rolls her eyes, “Yeah, I’ve noticed that. Jessup seems to be keen on scarin’ them off.”

Jessup seems to be a problem where Coriolanus is concerned.

He cranes his neck to look over at the bear cage and finds Jessup watching them, watching him more specifically. “Is he…are you two friends?” He asks carefully, not wanting to uncover some hidden romance if he can help it.

He doesn’t want to get too involved.

The girl laughs, a genuine laugh and it does something to his heartbeat, “Are you asking’ if he’s my boyfriend?”

Coriolanus holds his hands up in defense and rises back to his full height, “I’m just trying to get my story straight in case any reporters ask me any questions about you two.”

The girl looks over at Jessup, a small smile on her lips, “No, we’re just friends. An unfortunate pair the two of us but there’s nothin’ between us.”

Coriolanus nods, that’s all he needs to hear.

“Well, maybe try and convince him to let some people come over to you. I promise they won’t bite.”

A bittersweet smile grows on her face and she stands up too, “No, they’re not the ones in cages now are they?”

Coriolanus manages to look somewhat sympathetic, he does feel a little bit bad about her predicament being the Mayor’s daughter and all but it was probably long over due for someone like her to be sent to the arena.

“No, they’re not,” he agrees, “but they’re the ones you’ve got to impress if you want a better shot at winning,” he sticks his hand through the bars again, “do we have a deal?”

She contemplates it which slightly pisses him off because she should be jumping for joy at the chance he’s giving her. Sure she won’t win, but she’ll make him look better and that’s all that really matters at the end of the day.

She finally comes to a decision it seems and her small hand grabs his large one, giving it a firm shake, “You have yourself a deal Mr. Snow.”

Coriolanus grins, “Mr. Snow?” He teases.

Most people in the Capitol simply address him by his first name, only public servants use a title such as that one. But one day, he’ll be President Snow.

A much better title in his opinion.

She shrugs and smiles sweetly at him, “Didn’t know if we were on a first name basis yet.” Coriolanus chuckles and reaches into his satchel, pulling out a small water bottle, “I’d say we’re partners now, so I’ll allow it.”

He hands her the water bottle and watches her down the entire thing within seconds, maybe she really hasn’t eaten since the Reaping.

“They don’t feed you in here?”

She shakes her head and pulls the bottle away with a gasp, screwing the cap back on, “Gave us somethin’ on the train ride here but the rats got to it before we could. I suppose they don’t really care what condition we enter the arena in.”

But they should, he thinks, if they wanted a real good show then the Capitol would do well to ensure all the Tributes were somewhat healthy.

“I’ll stop by with more food tomorrow,” he promises, “if people like you then they might give you some food as well.”

“Sounds great,” she says sarcastically, swaying on her feet a little bit. Sweat is shining on her face, she must be so hot, so tired and dehydrated. It makes him a little bit angry, she’s the Tribute of Coriolanus Snow and she’s wasting away in this bird cage.

He ought to make sure she’s well taken care of until the Games, to ensure people can see how wealthy the Snows are, how generous they are that they’d waste their time and their money on some lowly District girl.

“You should get some rest,” he suggests, “it’ll get cooler in the evening.” She nods, grabbing onto the bars again, “Alright, I’ll see you tomorrow Coriolanus Snow.”

He grins, shaking his head at her teasing, “I’ll see you tomorrow…”

He still doesn’t know her name. He would if he stayed for the entire Reaping, but alas, here he is.

“Soarynn,” she finishes for him, “Soarynn Nightingale.”

Soarynn, what a pretty name for a pretty girl.

“Soarynn,” he tests it out, liking how it rolls off the tongue, “I’ll see you tomorrow Soarynn Nightingale.”

She gives him a small nod, “I’ll be here.”

She certainly will be. And Coriolanus finds himself enjoying that fact as he strolls out of the zoo, knowing that she’s going to be right where he left her.

Safe and sound.

In her bird cage. His songbird.

| Part 1. |

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