#i can believe Big Customer Service is making me do this

[saepiae]

ok im going to be honest. i dont get tip discourse like yea it’s a bit insane that many places tipping options start at 20% but just choose ‘leave custom tip’ or dont tip at all it’s not legitimately illegal to forgo a tip. and if you feel bad not tipping then go some place where you can afford a tip that you feel comfortable leaving. like there’s so many options and you are not required by law to do this so why do ppl complain abt it so much like complaining abt grocery prices makes sense i cant set my own price for bread and you can get arrested for stealing but nobody’s coming to lock you up if you leave a 5% tip on a seven dollar latte. complain abt the latte being seven dollars all you want but ppl always follow the complaint up with ‘and then tipping options are sooo high’, you didnt have to continue that thought theyre not exactly related

[no27-autonation-honda]

okay my one bitchy little personal post about the mess. Jesus fucking Christ why do I have to be in graduate school at the most annoying possible time.

[imsobadatnicknames2]

How can you consider yourself any sort of leftist when you defend AI art bullshit? You literally simp for AI techbros and have the gall to pretend you're against big corporations?? Get fucked

I don't "defend" AI art. I think a particular old post of mine that a lot of people tend to read in bad faith must be making the rounds again lmao.

Took me a good while to reply to this because you know what? I decided to make something positive out of this and use this as an opportunity to outline what I ACTUALLY believe about AI art. If anyone seeing this decides to read it in good or bad faith... Welp, your choice I guess.

I have several criticisms of the way the proliferation of AI art generators and LLMs is making a lot of things worse. Some of these are things I have voiced in the past, some of these are things I haven't until now:

Most image and text AI generators are fine-tuned to produce nothing but the most agreeable, generically pretty content slop, pretty much immediately squandering their potential to be used as genuinely interesting artistic tools with anything to offer in terms of a unique aesthetic experience (AI video still manages to look bizarre and interesting but it's getting there too)

In the entertainment industry and a lot of other fields, AI image generation is getting incorporated into production pipelines in ways that lead to the immiseration of working artists, being used to justify either lower wages or straight-up layoffs, and this is something that needs to be fought against. That's why I unconditionally supported the SAG-AFTRA strikes last year and will unconditionally support any collective action to address AI art as a concrete labor issue

In most fields where it's being integrated, AI art is vastly inferior to human artists in any use case where you need anything other than to make a superficially pretty picture really fast. If you need to do anything like ask for revisions or minor corrections, give very specific descriptions of how objects and people are interacting with each other, or just like. generate several pictures of the same thing and have them stay consistent with each other, you NEED human artists and it's preposterous to think they can be replaced by AI.

There is a lot of art on the internet that consists of the most generically pretty, cookie-cutter anime waifu-adjacent slop that has zero artistic or emotional value to either the people seeing it or the person churning it out, and while this certainly was A Thing before the advent of AI art generators, generative AI has made it extremely easy to become the kind of person who churns it out and floods online art spaces with it.

Similarly, LLMs make it extremely easy to generate massive volumes of texts, pages, articles, listicles and what have you that are generic vapid SEO-friendly pap at best and bizzarre nonsense misinformation at worst, drowning useful information in a sea of vapid noise and rendering internet searches increasingly useless.

The way LLMs are being incorporated into customer service and similar services not only, again, encourages further immiseration of customer service workers, but it's also completely useless for most customers.

A very annoyingly vocal part the population of AI art enthusiasts, fanatics and promoters do tend to talk about it in a way that directly or indirectly demeans the merit and skill of human artists and implies that they think of anyone who sees anything worthwile in the process of creation itself rather than the end product as stupid or deluded.

So you can probably tell by now that I don't hold AI art or writing in very high regard. However (and here's the part that'll get me called an AI techbro, or get people telling me that I'm just jealous of REAL artists because I lack the drive to create art of my own, or whatever else) I do have some criticisms of the way people have been responding to it, and have voiced such criticisms in the past.

I think a lot of the opposition to AI art has critstallized around unexamined gut reactions, whipping up a moral panic, and pressure to outwardly display an acceptable level of disdain for it. And in particular I think this climate has made a lot of people very prone to either uncritically entertain and adopt regressive ideas about Intellectual Propety, OR reveal previously held regressive ideas about Intellectual Property that are now suddenly more socially acceptable to express:

(I wanna preface this section by stating that I'm a staunch intellectual property abolitionist for the same reason I'm a private property abolitionist. If you think the existence of intellectual property is a good thing, a lot of my ideas about a lot of stuff are gonna be unpalatable to you. Not much I can do about it.)

A lot of people are suddenly throwing their support behind any proposal that promises stricter copyright regulations to combat AI art, when a lot of these also have the potential to severely udnermine fair use laws and fuck over a lot of independent artist for the benefit of big companies.

It was very worrying to see a lot of fanfic authors in particular clap for the George R R Martin OpenAI lawsuit because well... a lot of them don't realize that fanfic is a hobby that's in a position that's VERY legally precarious at best, that legally speaking using someone else's characters in your fanfic is as much of a violation of copyright law as straight up stealing entire passages, and that any regulation that can be used against the latter can be extended against the former.

Similarly, a lot of artists were cheering for the lawsuit against AI art models trained to mimic the style of specific artists. Which I agree is an extremely scummy thing to do (just like a human artist making a living from ripping off someone else's work is also extremely scummy), but I don't think every scummy act necessarily needs to be punishable by law, and some of them would in fact leave people worse off if they were. All this to say: If you are an artist, and ESPECIALLY a fan artist, trust me. You DON'T wanna live in a world where there's precedent for people's artstyles to be considered intellectual property in any legally enforceable way. I know you wanna hurt AI art people but this is one avenue that's not worth it.

Especially worrying to me as an indie musician has been to see people mention the strict copyright laws of the music industry as a positive thing that they wanna emulate. "this would never happen in the music industry because they value their artists copyright" idk maybe this is a the grass is greener type of situation but I'm telling you, you DON'T wanna live in a world where copyright law in the visual arts world works the way it does in the music industry. It's not worth it.

I've seen at least one person compare AI art model training to music sampling and say "there's a reason why they cracked down on sampling" as if the death of sampling due to stricter copyright laws was a good thing and not literally one of the worst things to happen in the history of music which nearly destroyed several primarily black music genres. Of course this is anecdotal because it's just One Guy I Saw Once, but you can see what I mean about how uncritical support for copyright law as a tool against AI can lead people to adopt increasingly regressive ideas about copyright.

Similarly, I've seen at least one person go "you know what? Collages should be considered art theft too, fuck you" over an argument where someone else compared AI art to collages. Again, same point as above.

Similarly, I take issue with the way a lot of people seem EXTREMELY personally invested in proving AI art is Not Real Art. I not only find this discussion unproductive, but also similarly dangerously prone to validating very reactionary ideas about The Nature Of Art that shouldn't really be entertained. Also it's a discussion rife with intellectual dishonesty and unevenly applied definition and standards.

When a lot of people present the argument of AI art not being art because the definition of art is this and that, they try to pretend that this is the definition of art the've always operated under and believed in, even when a lot of the time it's blatantly obvious that they're constructing their definition on the spot and deliberately trying to do so in such a way that it doesn't include AI art.

They never succeed at it, btw. I've seen several dozen different "AI art isn't art because art is [definition]". I've seen exactly zero of those where trying to seriously apply that definition in any context outside of trying to prove AI art isn't art doesn't end up in it accidentally excluding one or more non-AI artforms, usually reflecting the author's blindspots with regard to the different forms of artistic expression.

(However, this is moot because, again, these are rarely definitions that these people actually believe in or adhere to outside of trying to win "Is AI art real art?" discussions.)

Especially worrying when the definition they construct is built around stuff like Effort or Skill or Dedication or The Divine Human Spirit. You would not be happy about the kinds of art that have traditionally been excluded from Real Art using similar definitions.

Seriously when everyone was celebrating that the Catholic Church came out to say AI art isn't real art and sharing it as if it was validating and not Extremely Worrying that the arguments they'd been using against AI art sounded nearly identical to things TradCaths believe I was like. Well alright :T You can make all the "I never thought I'd die fighting side by side with a catholic" legolas and gimli memes you want, but it won't change the fact that the argument being made by the catholic church was a profoundly conservative one and nearly identical to arguments used to dismiss the artistic merit of certain forms of "degenerate" art and everyone was just uncritically sharing it, completely unconcerned with what kind of worldview they were lending validity to by sharing it.

Remember when the discourse about the Gay Sex cats pic was going on? One of the things I remember the most from that time was when someone went "Tell me a definition of art that excludes this picture without also excluding Fountain by Duchamp" and how just. Literally no one was able to do it. A LOT of people tried to argue some variation of "Well, Fountain is art and this image isn't because what turns fountain into art is Intent. Duchamp's choice to show a urinal at an art gallery as if it was art confers it an element of artistic intent that this image lacks" when like. Didn't by that same logic OP's choice to post the image on tumblr as if it was art also confer it artistic intent in the same way? Didn't that argument actually kinda end up accidentally validating the artistic status of every piece of AI art ever posted on social media? That moment it clicked for me that a lot of these definitions require applying certain concepts extremely selectively in order to make sense for the people using them.

A lot of people also try to argue it isn't Real Art based on the fact that most AI art is vapid but like. If being vapid definitionally excludes something from being art you're going to have to exclude a whooole lot of stuff along with it. AI art is vapid. A lot of art is too, I don't think this argument works either.

Like, look, I'm not really invested in trying to argue in favor of The Artistic Merits of AI art but I also find it extremely hard to ignore how trying to categorically define AI art as Not Real Art not only is unproductive but also requires either a) applying certain parts of your definition of art extremely selectively, b) constructing a definition of art so convoluted and full of weird caveats as to be functionally useless, or c) validating extremely reactionary conservative ideas about what Real Art is.

Some stray thoughts that don't fit any of the above sections.

I've occassionally seen people respond to AI art being used for shitposts like "A lot of people have affordable commissions, you could have paid someone like $30 to draw this for you instead of using the plagiarism algorithm and exploiting the work of real artists" and sorry but if you consider paying an artist a rate that amounts to like $5 for several hours of work a LESS exploitative alternative I think you've got something fucked up going on with your priorities.

Also it's kinda funny when people comment on the aforementioned shitposts with some variation of "see, the usage of AI art robs it of all humor because the thing that makes shitposts funny is when you consider the fact that someone would spend so much time and effort in something so stupid" because like. Yeah that is part of the humor SOMETIMES but also people share and laugh at low effort shitposts all the time. Again you're constructing a definition that you don't actually believe in anywhere outside of this type of conversations. Just say you don't like that it's AI art because you think it's morally wrong and stop being disingenuous.

So yeah, this is pretty much everything I believe about the topic.

I don't "defend" AI art, but my opposition to it is firmly rooted in my principles, and that means I refuse to uncritically accept any anti-AI art argument that goes against those same principles.

If you think not accepting and parroting every Anti-AI art argument I encounter because some of them are ideologically rooted in things I disagree with makes me indistinguishable from "AI techbros" you're working under a fucked up dichotomy.

[crayons-and-glitter-glue]

I think about Sun and Moon's original versions a LOT, and I don't get why people say they're not expressive!

Or perhaps, I do, and I just wanna ramble. Anyways! Big ol warning for lots of talking, some fursuit gifs and analyzation of body movement.

So, they have flat, immobile faceplates, right? Technically, yes!some argue that this makes them immediately inert and expressionless and opt to enhance their expressions. And this is a-okay! Do what you like!

But as someone who used to be a costumer, and wears a fursuit on occasion,

(Sorry, I love this gif so much)

BUT! When in a mascot costume, fursuit, or any other costume with a mask over one's face, the performer has to learn how to move in order to portray the emotions necessary for character engagement with the audience! Whether it's exaggerated head bobs, using your hands to talk, or making everything a bit of a spectacle, even the way you tilt your FACE can affect how you look.

Even MUPPETS do this with their limited range of expression. And we can easily draw those conclusions of how the boys were programmed to act in canon!

Take Sun's default animation in the daycare, just standing there.

It's very obvious here what he's trying to portray, and who his programmed audience is- little children! When costuming around little kids, you wanna use big gestures, and get on their level because you can seem HUGE AND SCARY to them! You wanna get down towards the ground, make big sweeping cartoon motions, and make sure all your movements are ROUNDED- not jabbing, sharp, or sudden- so that the kid isn't ever surprised, but rather delighted by your performance as a costumer. I'll show you an example by the amazing performer, Temba the Bat! (Made by Toxicoon, I believe.)

Big sweeping motions, slow without being too spooky, and generally friendly motions while swaying the head! Looks kinda similar right?

Another point is, though, these exaggerated motions don't really... turn off when feeling other things. Sun and Moon don't have a customer service mode, and that's WILD to me that their programming requires them to act like this all the time. Exhibit B: Sun's pain in the transformation scene.

He's making such exaggerated motions and movements to INDICATE he is in pain or holding something back. He's gripping his face like something is trying to come out of it, and even dramatically falls backwards to indicate a loss of control in his body. Whether the way the fall looks so cartoonist was intentionally programmed in, I couldn't tell you.

And then... there's Moon.

This is SO cartoon villain sequel, isn't it? The hands tapping delicately on the surface, the exaggerated head tilt, all of it is so wildly exaggerated in such a smooth way to let you know "Ah! I'm in danger! Great!"

And yet... he still is low to the ground. Still in that pose of going after someone SMALL. Performing for someone small. His evilness is almost completely exaggerated and, dare I say, fabricated by his programming. Of course, the virus probably had something to do with it but LIKE! Look at that range of motion!

Idk what the point of all this is, I just wanna say: it's totally understandable to make the boys super duper expressive in the artistic, flat 2d styles i see a lot!

But man I do hope someone draws them biblically accurate while expressing something else because that would be hilarious to see Sun throwing a temper tantrum by banging his fists on the ground and flailing while his face is just

:D

[i-am-church-the-cat]

I have a flower shop/tattoo parlor maxiel + loscar AU building from a tropical storm into a hurricane in my head so here are some thoughts

+ When Max hires him, this is what he says to Logan’s arrangement: “It is not the worst thing I’ve ever seen. I can make it better.” What he really meant was that Max could make Logan better, but he wouldn’t come to understand that until later.

+ There’s a phone that sits on the back wall of Max’s shop. The first time it rang while Logan was working, he’d mistakenly answered it. He’d watched Max’s face go bleach white from across the shop as Logan answered “Hello, this is Verstappen’s Floral, how can I help you?” The barrage of angry Dutch he’d gotten back in return had shocked Logan into silence, making it easier for Max to steal the receiver from his hand. Now, Logan knows to just let it ring.

+ Oscar is pretty sure Daniel only gave him an interview because their moms are in a book club together. The owner of Honey Badger Tattoos was always friendly and outgoing but he was notoriously possessive about his art. In the ten years the shop has been open, it’s had four employees. Daniel Ricciardo, the founder, Daniel Kvyat, Daniel’s partner who he bought out after the first year, Lando Norris who worked part-time at the front desk, and now Oscar.

“I’ve never had an apprentice before, I probably wouldn’t be very good at it,” Daniel says during his interview. He’d said he liked Oscar’s work and already showed an interest in teaching Oscar more of his signature American style. But the guy was still hesitant, fidgeting with excess nerves. “Just ask Lando.

Lando nods from his seat at the front desk which Oscar can see from the open door of Daniel’s office. “He doesn’t know what he’s doing half the time, I wouldn’t trust him to teach other people.”

Daniel does not look like that’s the support he was going for, wincing at the dry criticism but not arguing.

“That’s fine,” Oscar confirms with a shrug. He’s already done the majority of his apprenticeship under Mark Webber. But when the man decided he’d had enough of the South of France and was selling the shop and moving back to Australia, Oscar had to look for somewhere else to work. “I only have six months left before I can get my certification.”

Daniel doesn’t look very reassured. Oscar can take a hint so he decides to get out before he’s kicked out.

“Hey, it’s cool, mate, thanks for meeting with me anyway-”

“Can you start next week?” Daniel asks, leg bouncing up and down and rocking the desk he’s sitting behind. He sees Oscar’s confused expression and sighs. “I really need more help here.”

“Yeah,” Oscar decides, not looking a gift horse in the mouth. “I’ll text you my schedule.”

And that’s how he starts working for the Honey Badger.

+ “This is a tulip,” Max is saying in French, word draw out and pointing at the multi-colored bulbs. Logan has tried telling him that he’s lived in Europe for the majority of his life at this point and can do his job in English, French, and Spanish but Max doesn’t believe him. At least Logan’s starting to pick up more Dutch.

Logan is rescued from his impromptu language lesson by the bell on the door ringing. He turns towards the sound, customer service smile already in place.

“Hi, welcome to Verstappen Floral, how can I-”

“Oh, it is you again.”

Logan stops and looks at Max who is frowning at the guy who just came in. The man is curly-haired and tanned, with tattoos scrawled over the majority of visible skin. His grin is big and toothy when he shoots it at Max.

“Hey, Maxy, aren’t you happy to see me?”

Logan blinks in shock at the nickname. Even their regular customers don’t get to act that familiar with Max. Logan doesn’t get to act that familiar with Max.

Max crosses his arms, lips pursing. “For the last time, I do not know what these flowers mean. I speak four languages and plant is not one of them.”

“Always a ray of sunshine, aren’t you, Max?” The man asks, unphased by Max’s grouchy demeanor. He leans forward onto the glass counter, certainly leaving smudges behind, but Max surprisingly doesn’t yell at him about it. “Lando sent me to pick up his order.”

Lando is someone Logan knows. He comes in about every other week and talks to Max about streaming and video games that partly goes over Logan’s head. He always leaves with a red and white bouquet, though the flowers change each time.

“Why could he not come get them himself?” Max grumbles, heading in the direction of the cooler where they kept to-go orders. Daniel shrugs and wraps his knuckles against the glass.

"He was late for a meeting or something, you know I don’t ask about his other job,” Daniel supplies. He changes his focus to Logan and the blond is met with the full force of the man’s mega-watt smile. Logan blames his mom’s genes for how easily he blushes. “Hey, you’re the new guy, right?”

Logan opens his mouth to answer but Max is suddenly im between them, Lando’s bouquet in his hands.

“Yes, this is Logan, no, he does not want any of your garish tattoos.”

Daniel pouts at Logan’s boss. He wonders how it doesn’t look strange for a guy who’s at least 30 to be pouting.

“Don’t be mean, Maxy. I wasn’t even going to mention the tattoos.”

Logan racks his brain for tattoo shops nearby. They obviously have a close relationship outside of just Lando. And Lando did say he worked for an artist…

“Oh hey, are you the Honey Badger?” Logan asks, moving his head to be seen around Max’s wider frame. Daniel jerks his eyes away from Max’s, as if he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t. “I pass by there all the time. Not a lot of shops do American style out here.”

Daniel’s face lights up, looking between Logan and Max. “Max, you hired an American?”

Max sighs, more long-suffering than Logan thinks is necessary. “This is why I did not want you to speak with him. I knew you were going to be weird about it.”

“I’m not being weird!” Daniel argues. “I’m just surprised!”

Max and Daniel have another weird silent staring contest. Logan clears his throat reluctantly and they both snap to him.

“Um, where’d you learn to do that style?”

Daniel looks ready to excitedly burst into the story of his tattooing style and his interest in America, but Max cuts him off by pushing the bouquet into his chest.

“We do not have time for that, these are going to wilt. Take these to Lando.”

“Bossy, bossy,” Daniel murmurs, picking up the bouquet gently. He doesn’t sound annoyed by Max’s demands. Rather amused, actually. He shoots Logan another grin over Max’s shoulder. “I don’t envy you, mate. But hey if you want to talk tattoos, come by the shop sometime.”

“Definitely!” Logan agrees before Max can say anything else on his behalf. Daniel shoots him a one-handed finger gun before turning back to Max. His smile becomes a lot less joking and more sincere.

“See you later, Maximus”

Max loses some of his prickliness, voice soft when he says, “Goodbye, Daniel.”

+ There’s a man talking to Lando at the front desk when Oscar comes in that day. It’s neither of the two Oscar is used to seeing who come talk to Lando pretty regularly. Oscar’s pretty sure one of them’s his boyfriend and the other is his business partner but he can never tell which is which.

“Did you leave Logan alone at the shop?” Lando is asking while Oscar sets his station up.

“Well, I had to do it at some point,” the guy says, his accent reminiscent of German or Dutch. “What is the point of hiring another employee if I cannot leave for a few minutes?"

“Daniel never leaves me alone here,” Lando points out, a tad resentful. Oscar snorts.

“That’s because he has control issues,” Oscar claims. Both of the men look at him, one in amusement and one in confusion.

“Who are you?” The mystery guy asks. Weird, Oscar was going to ask him the same thing. He looks to Lando who makes the introductions.

"Max, this is Oscar, Daniel's new apprentice. Oscar, this is Max, one of our neighbors."

Oscar frowns. "I thought Max was your..." he trails off, leaving space for Lando to fill in the blank. He waves his hand.

"Different Max. This is Max Verstappen, he run's Verstappen Floral."

The new Max is still looking at him strangely. "Daniel does not take apprentices. He says he is a bad teacher."

Oscar shrugs, not sure what to tell him. He doesn't know how he got the job either. Luckily, he's saved from having to respond by Daniel coming out of the back office.

"Oscar, good, you're here, I wanted to talk about-" Daniel stops abruptly when he sees Max standing in the lobby. His entire demeanor shifts when he says, "Max, hey! What are you doing here?"

Daniel is normally a friendly guy, sometimes too much in Oscar's opinion, but he's practically glowing as he bounds over to Max. While Max's expression doesn't shift, his body language opens up to Daniel like one of his blooming flowers.

"I am talking to Lando about our stream tonight," Max answers. "He has not been very forthcoming with the details."

Lando tries to protest but even Oscar can see that it's a lost cause. This new guy showed up and suddenly it's like nothing else exists to Daniel. His boss giggles at nothing and that's when Oscar decides to get back to work.

[bruciemilf]

Now I’m thinking of Alpha Martha scooping in like “is anybody going to love and cherish that omega” and not waiting for an answer. She uses every Wayne gala to flaunt her Omega and later, pup in Carmine’s face. The only reason she hasn’t killed him yet is that seeing his rage and sad plans to get Thomas back is amusing and if it ever comes down to that Thomas deserves the honors.

Gosh, I’m starting to fall in love with that concept. Just imagine stern browed, lethally beautiful Captain Martha Kane, infamously known for her service in the military.

She reeks of bloodied snow, and sweet pomegranate with a note of petrichor. Of gunpowder, grainy and dark and rich, and of something so alluringly nameless Thomas can’t shake off.

The rumors about her hawk like gaze aren’t just rainwater.

Her look is made of storms and winter and Thomas shivers when he sees her for the first time, walking aimlessly around Gotham’s museum. His mother’s museum.

Carmine’s now, legally.

She stops just besides him, — she’s tiny, for an alpha, and he’s big for an omega, and for a moment, Thomas feels vindicated. So they had anomalies, too. Good. They earned it.

“Beautiful.”

She’s referring to the exhibit they’re admiring together. She has to be. Thomas stays quiet.

“What’s your opinion about it? I’ve visited her hundreds of times and I just can’t understand it. Not correctly, I think.”

He scoffs, but otherwise, the silence continues to expand.

Of course no Alpha understands The Good Omega.

Right above them, exposed almost proudly, imprisoned behind a thin layer of glass with rose gold framing, with delicate ivory marbled in, The Good Omega displays an omega women kneeling by her alpha.

It’s not intricate, or complex in composition. It translates well, and it’s just detailed enough.

Her mouth is sewn shut.

It’s a blood painting.

“She used to be an artist, I believe, “ Martha continues, with just the barest twitch of discomfort in her face, but she doesn’t allow her attention to shift. “I thought maybe you’d have a better perspective about it.”

“I’m not allowed to speak to you. As you well know.”

She pauses for a bit. “I apologize. You have no collar on. Your alpha didn’t pick one yet?”

He hums. “He can collar me when I’m in the ground.”

Oddly enough, that answer satisfies her. Pomegranate blossoms on his tongue.

“It’s freedom,” he continues, not really caring about customs. He already defies them daily. “It means freedom.”

Martha listens, but she huffs, half confused, half incredulous. “That doesn’t look like freedom to me. “

“That’s because you’re used to it,” He grits, turning his own gaze on her. He’s been told he smells horrible when he’s angry. He hopes this tiny, beautiful alpha chokes on it.

“Suffering is the only freedom omegas have. It forces you to look, to awknolege. There’s no exits The freedom of existing, that’s all we got.” He scoffs, not even noticing she’s clingy to every little sound.

“ Enjoy it while you can. Its going in the junkyard next week.”

“The junkyard?” She echoes, almost offended by the idea, but the casual insult. “Who’d throw away something like this, omega? It’s too valuable. “

Omega.

Thomas wants to purr and he rages, almost.

His smile is nasty, and full of teeth, and he’s grown to love how alphas cringe at the sight of it. Not this one, thought. This little beast stares at it like it’s living art.

“The same people you fight for. Thank you for your service, alpha.”

Thomas turns, not bothering to bow, excuse himself, or make a respectful exit. One good thing about being a rich omega is that he follows no rules his alpha doesn’t specify.

Nowhere did Carmine say he wasn’t allowed to ditch gorgeous alphas.

—

“You’re back rather early, Madame,” Alfred greets her with a kiss on one of her brow, soft as anything, his like tea, blueberry and dark chocolate scent hugging her deeply.

He takes a whiff of her, frowns, both in intrigue and concern. “…Why do you smell like unhappy omega?”

“Alfred,” She says, “I want to retire. Would you be a darling and contact my lawyer?”

“Oh, thank heavens. Anything else?”

Martha’s gaze bleeds blue, her thighs buzzing with the sneer of Thomas’ anger still, “Can you ask him if I can legally kidnap a taken omega?”

[miraclewoozi]

HIGH FIDELITY, PT 1. -c.hs

getting back on the horse is hard, and failing to hit it off with the cute gamer guy you went for a drink with last night has the potential to be your love life’s last straw. but when up and coming rockstar VERNON unexpectedly canters into your life, you find yourself asking one very important question: do you have it in you to saddle up, one more time?

pair ; vernon x fem!reader.  content ; strangers to lovers.  up-and-coming musician!vernon x record store owner!reader.   fluff, angst, parts two and three will contain suggestive themes and smut. (MINORS DNI).  warnings ; drinking + alcohol is a big theme pretty much throughout. mentions of past relationship breakdowns. reader experiences a lot of stress, anxiety and feelings of doubt, reflected in self sabotage.  wc ; 13.5k ( ~35k total. ) disclaimer ; this fic was inspired by rob + liam in the series high fidelity and is therefore pretty influenced by the show. if you’ve watched it, you’ll probably see a lot of similarities! i just felt so drawn to vernon in this kind of role that i really wanted to try and put a spin on it. i do not claim that every idea behind this is original. notes ; been working on this one for a while. hope you enjoy it.<3

“What do you mean, no?”

Your best friend and longest standing employee Seungkwan turns his head away from the customer he’s serving to look at you with filth in his eyes. Unsurprisingly, his features don’t soften when you double down on your response to him.

“I mean, no,” you laugh. “I’m running on fumes, dude. I’m not going. No way.”

“But…” he whines, putting down the record in his hands. “No, come on. I told you about this weeks ago. You’re really gonna make me go on my own?”

“You won’t be on your own. Chan’s still going.”

Your younger friend, upon hearing his own name, whirls around from where he’s been rearranging the wall of cassettes and lifts an eyebrow. “Hmm?”

“You’re still going to that guy’s show tonight, right?”

“Are you kidding? Of course I am. Why?” Chan eyeballs your guilt-adjacent expression for a second before his face falls and he looks at Seungkwan with a curled lip. “What did you do? Why’s she not coming anymore?”

“I didn’t do anything!” Seungkwan barks. The customer he’s still not finished ringing up flinches at the lift in his voice, but he doesn’t notice. “Why is that always your first–”

“Shut up, don’t start this right n–”

“I’m not starting anything! You started–”

“Guys!” You interrupt, looking between the two of them and doing your best to smile apologetically at the poor lady fumbling through the cash in her fingers like it’s an Olympic sport. “Can we park this one? For five minutes? Please?”

The bickering pair fall quickly into silence and Chan sends one last glare at Seungkwan before he turns back to the cassettes, grumbling something under his breath. 

With a clearing of his throat the only giveaway, Seungkwan drops seamlessly back into his customer service voice and plasters a charming smile onto his lips. He checks the register and warmly tells the young woman her total, holding out his palm for her to place the money into. Even knowing him as well as you do, the switch-up gives you a little bit of whiplash.

The customer passes over her cash and accepts her change from Seungkwan’s hands before making perhaps the swiftest exit you’ve ever seen anyone make. No sooner has the bell above the entry to OFF BEAT Vinyl rung and the door has clicked shut, the two men turn once again.

But not on each other.

On you. And it’s the more gentle of them that pipes up first.

“Why aren’t you coming?” Chan asks, abandoning his little project and hurrying over to the desk with a frown. You’re sure it’s supposed to look sympathetic to whatever issue it is that’s changed your mind, supposed to fool you into believing that this has nothing to do with him still blaming Seungkwan entirely. But… you know him better than that. You know them both better. If Chan and Seungkwan weren’t both employed by you, you don’t doubt that they would have ripped each other to shreds within the first hour of meeting. Their dynamic is fascinating to watch — one minute, the best of friends, the next just seconds away from throwing fists; you’ve lost count of the number of times you’ve had to send them to different rooms to avoid having to clean blood and tears off your shop (and sometimes your apartment) floor. 

“I didn’t sleep so well last night, I just want to go to bed early. Is that… okay?” 

(This is an embellishment of the truth, but what they don’t know can’t hurt them.)

“No,” they both exclaim at the same time, but Seungkwan goes one step further and slams his hands down on the counter for good measure. You purse your lips and narrow your eyes at him, but he keeps his palms flat and doesn’t give any indication that he’s about to apologise, so…

“Okay — God.” You turn away from them, heading towards the little office out the back of the store to try and get a few minutes’ respite. “Whatever. Fight with the wall, you guys – I’m not going. Check in with me before you head out, okay?”

Behind you, Seungkwan dramatically calls you a traitor and says he’ll never forgive you for this, but you just shake your head and continue on your way. The world falls into silence as you shut the door after yourself and you lean back against it, letting out a deep exhale and pinching the bridge of your nose. 

Now, you did have an awful night’s sleep last night, and after how on-and-off busy the store has been all day today, the headache you woke up with this morning has only slowly gotten worse. But there are reasons for those things outside of what you’re going to admit to out in the main storefront. As close as the three of you are, there are some things that you’ve always thought it wise to keep… a little bit hushed. Especially at work. 

When Chan and Seungkwan start an inquisition into your private life, it feels like it may never end. And so sue you, you’d actually like to make it home at a reasonable time, today. 

True to your parting request, the two men close down the store for you while you sit out the back in your ‘office’, lights dimmed, pouring over both a new store playlist you’re trying to compile and a few less exciting — but actually important — tasks. Chan heads out first, all puppy-dog eyed when he pokes his head through the door and asking if you’re really not coming out. You shake your head, telling him to have fun and tell you all about it on Monday when he’s next penned in.

Seungkwan is slightly less easily brushed away. A few minutes after Chan says his final goodbye, your other employee slides into your office and shuts the door, sitting down in the armchair opposite you with his eyebrows scrunched together.

He doesn’t speak for almost a full thirty seconds, at which point, you look up at him from the small mountain of receipts you’re trying to organise and click your tongue.

“What?” you ask, leaning back in your own chair and crossing your arms. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“You know why.” Seungkwan shifts forward on the cushion until he’s sat almost entirely on the edge of the seat. “You might think you’re really good at hiding your shit, okay? But you’re not. Not from me.”

“Please,” you sigh. “It’s nothing. I’m telling you, I’m just tired today.”

“And I’m telling you that I know you better than that. Come on, talk to me.”

This is, unfortunately, something you can’t deny. It also seems to be his unfailing last line of defence every single time you’re stubborn over discussing your problems. One of these days, you’ll be ready for it — you’ll have a response sitting on the tip of your tongue ready to shut the conversation down, and he’ll be the one on the spot, and you’ll treat yourself to a pint of ice cream or something when you get home as a victory snack. But today? Isn’t that day; Seungkwan stumps you, once again, so you groan in defeat, cradling your head in your hands.

“I went on a date last night,” you say under your breath.

“What?”

Clearing your throat, you look up at him. You say, louder, “I went on a date last night.”

His eyes blow wide and if he could get any closer to you without actually sitting on top of your coffee-stained worktop, you think he would. Which is strange, if you really let yourself think about it, because Seungkwan is sort of an ex-thing, and talking so openly to someone who has quite literally been inside you about going out with other people… shouldn’t come as easily as it does.

But that was quite some time ago, and for three long months, you drove each other nuts. The two of you are way better off as friends. (Whether you’re better as colleagues is still up for review.)

“You what?” he whisper-shouts. It feels almost like he’s hinting to an invisible audience that this piece of information is extremely scandalous: all wide-eyed and open-mouthed. Which would be fine, except it’s not really that scandalous at all, and neither should it be a surprise: you’re single, you have been for a while, and you have an entire sub-folder in your phone dedicated solely to dating apps — you’re at perfect liberty to go out with whoever you like. You just continue to stare at him, refusing to repeat yourself for a third time. 

“You haven’t even been home, have you?” Seungkwan asks after letting the dust settle, the silence just on the brink of uncomfortable. “Oh my God. Tell me everything.”

“Shut up,” you groan. “His name’s Wonwoo. I met him on Hinge. And fuck you – yes, I went back to my own place.”

You pause for a second, taking a breath when his features cloud with the question he’s about to ask. 

“It’s just-... so did he.”

Seungkwan leaps to his feet and claps loud enough that your already tender eardrums feel assaulted, adding an ‘I knew it!’ for good measure. You cringe at his volume, rubbing your temples – you should’ve known telling him this wouldn’t calm him down, but a small part of you was still hoping. This time, he actually does circle around the desk, carelessly shoving a few bits of paper out of his way before sitting on the newly cleared wood. 

“Had you up all night, didn’t he?” Seungkwan asks. You shove his thigh, looking away from him, embarrassed. “What was the date?”

You just wish it was the kind of embarrassment that he thinks you’re feeling. Flustered, shy, giddy even. But it’s not any of those things.

“If I tell you, will you please turn it down a notch?” You ask, and Seungkwan nods, giddily kicking his legs over the side of the desk. With a sigh, you continue. “We just went for a drink. It wasn’t special, okay? It was bad. We had nothing to talk about, he was awkward, I didn’t even wanna be there – I took a bathroom break after like… a half hour, and I tried to bail but I’d left my phone on the table so I had to go back.”

“And how did that end up with him in your panties?” Seungkwan asks, thankfully a little quieter when he speaks this time. 

“Do not talk about my panties out loud ever again,” you grunt, drumming your fingertips on the arm of your office chair. You give a dejected sigh as you answer him properly. “I guess… It felt like a sign that I was trying to give up too early. So I stayed a little longer, told him the truth about how I was feeling. I don’t know, maybe it took the pressure off or something? But we got talking a little more, we found some stuff we had in common… It just got easier and he started cracking a few jokes, so…”

“So… he laughed his way into your—?”

“He doesn’t drink alcohol,” you interject slowly, narrowing your eyes. “I asked him if he minded driving me home.”

“You devil,” Seungkwan grins, lightly prodding your calf with the side of his foot. “Was he good? Was it big?”

“Seungkwan!”

“Did he make you–”

“He was gone this morning when I woke up.”

Your friend doesn’t say ‘oh, shit’ out loud, but he doesn’t have to. The silence he suddenly falls into speaks for itself, his newly adopted slack-jawed expression the exclamation mark at the end of his unspoken sentence. 

“Always the fucking ‘nice’ guys.” You push up from your desk and start to gather your things, shutting off your computer and grabbing your phone off the desk. You’re over it – you can deal with all this tomorrow.

Seungkwan hops down, biting the inside of his cheek as you pull your keys out of the pocket of your jeans. “Come with us tonight,” he tries one more time, laying a hand on your shoulder and sounding the kind of gentle that makes your skin itch. You swerve out from beneath his palm, shaking your head at him again. “Maybe it’ll take your mind off it.”

“I don’t need my mind taking off anything,” you insist softly. “I’m fine, I just don’t feel like going out. Gonna order in some food and get my ass to bed. Okay?”

Knowing he’s fighting a losing battle, your best friend finally stops pressing. He circles around you and flicks on the overnight alarm, letting you lead your way out of the office and then through the front of the store. He helps you pull the shutter down and tests the lock for you, as he so often does, before he holds both of his arms out in front of him. With a resigned roll of your eyes, you walk into his embrace for a couple of seconds.

“I’m okay, Seungkwan. Go without me. Have fun and let me know if this Vernon guy is any good, okay?”

“We’ll miss you,” he says as you pull away, and you clap him on the upper arm once before turning away, slipping your headphones on over your ears. 

What you neglected to inform Seungkwan, even after allowing yourself those rare few moments of vulnerability, is who you bumped into on your way to the bar where you met Wonwoo last night. The encounter that set the tone in the first place. The reason you were so cold with the stranger who sat across from you in the booth, the reason you tried to bail, and two-thirds of the reason you’ve felt so damn out of it all day. That’s a story for another time, you tell yourself on your walk home. Maybe. 

But… then again. Maybe not.

You’ve been marinating on your couch in a pair of sweatpants and a crisis hoodie for at least two hours and are currently on your second bowl of evening cereal when you hear a knock on your apartment door. You purse your lips and set the spoon back down inside the milky sludge, but you don’t set your ‘dinner’ to one side just yet. It’s probably just the old lady next door, asking if you’ve seen her cat, Houdini (you can’t help but feel like she was asking for trouble giving him a name like that) (in any case — no, you haven’t), or the middle-aged couple opposite asking you to turn your music down (you won’t) (it’s not even that loud).

You’re not getting up. All you have to do is wait for them to give up and away. 

Knock, knock, knock.

They’ll leave. 

Knock knock. 

Any second, now.

…

Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock.

You groan loudly as you haul yourself to your feet and skid over to the door, crossing your arms tighter over your chest to try and shield you from the chill that always lingers in the hallway.

“I’m sorry, Mrs P,  I haven’t seen H—” you start on exasperated autopilot, falling quiet the moment your eyes land first on Chan’s beaming smile, and second on Seungkwan’s guilty eyes. “How… the fuck did you guys get in here?”

“We followed someone in,” Chan tells you as he slides past, inviting himself into your haven and heading through to the living room where your favourite album is spinning on your record player. “That really tall guy – I think he lives on the second floor? Crazy hairline. Like, right back h—?”

“Cool,” you interrupt, except it’s actually everything but cool. Seungkwan steps through the door too, following behind you as you stalk after your younger friend. “Next question. Why are you guys in here?”

“You’ve been in a funk all day,” Chan says, tossing himself down onto your couch and nearly tipping your cereal all over the cushions. He eyes the glass you have on the side-table, raises a brow and looks back at you. “And you can’t deny that. You’re drinking rosè and eating fruit loops at 9pm on a Saturday. You need to get out of this apartment.”

“I don’t need to do anything,” you tell him, sitting down on the armchair to Chan’s left that only ever gets used when these two idiots show up at the same time. 

“One hour?” Seungkwan tries again, crouching down in front of you and taking hold of your hand. “You don’t have to be out late. And – and I’ll open tomorrow. You can stay in bed as long as you want.”

“Do you guys ever stop?” You ask them, and in tandem, the two men shake their heads at you. “I’m staying here. You’ve gotta go, or you’re gonna be late.”

Chan whines your name loudly, stomping like an upset toddler. “You know it won’t be as fun without you.”

“It’s gonna have to be,” you shrug, picking your feet up off the floor and resting them on the coffee table. “Come on. I’m serious. Get out of here.”

Seungkwan watches you for a moment longer but when you eye him sternly, he stands up again, giving your hand a squeeze and sending a nod to tell Chan to get up and follow him. First taking a long sip from your wine glass, the younger man does as he’s instructed, concern etching a frown onto his lips as he walks towards the door.

“If you change your mind, you know where we are, okay?” Seungkwan says and you nod at him. “See you in the morning.”

The door clicks shut behind them and you feel your shoulders droop, a long sigh leaving your lungs now you’re finally back on your own again. You roll your head side-to-side, relieving a tiny bit of the tension that you’ve been holding up in your neck all day, before relaxing back against the cushions behind you.

I’m not going out tonight, you tell yourself as you try to time your breaths to the beat of your music, letting it drown out the fact that the young couple who live two doors down have started arguing just outside your front door. It’s not gonna happen. 

There’s no way. 

The chill of an ice-cold glass meets your palm not even an hour later.

Chan and Seungkwan had been sitting on the stairs outside your apartment building, giving you fifteen more minutes just in case you happened to change your mind. To your credit, neither man had expected you to get out of your quarter-life-crisis outfit. Each gave a whistle of approval as you stepped outside into the air in a nice pair of jeans and a cute, long-sleeved shirt.

You all set off in the direction to the Arrowhead (so-called thanks to the venue’s unconventional triangular room shape) and both of your friends managed to successfully paint a few smiles on your face along the way. Once inside, Seungkwan dragged you by the wrist up towards the main bar space. Before you even had time to process the blurred faces that you walked by and the fuzzy neon signs all the way up the stairwell, enthused cheers and applause from the room ahead and the melodic strumming of a guitar drowned out the dread you’d been feeling ever since you woke up.

“This guy is not covering U2,” Chan says almost incredulously as he thrusts the drink he paid for into your hand. You manage to work your way through the crowd a little: it’s busier in here than you’ve ever seen it before, and certainly way more full than you would have really expected, but there’s still just enough movement room.

“Yeah, he is,” you say as you weave your way into a decent spot, where you can actually see the musician whose logo has been plastered on every notice board around town for the past month and a half. You even end up with a bit of breathing space, which is a rare, but welcome, treat.

But whatever you were about to say next – about how you don’t like U2, and how you’ve never really forgiven them for putting their entire new album onto everybody’s iTunes back in 2014 – dies a magnificent death on your tongue. You pause with your drink halfway to your lips as your eyes land on the main attraction, the man up on the stage; he has a small band up there, too, but all the lights draw your focus to him. His eyes are sparkly. Both his hands are wrapped around the microphone like he’s caressing it, his rosy lips brush over the metal as they move with each word that comes out of his mouth. Watching him quickly becomes almost hypnotic.

So. This is Vernon.

Long, dark hair sits low over his temples, perfectly parted and shaped in the middle to frame his brows. The top few buttons of his emerald satin shirt are popped open, sleeves rolled up past his elbows, the hem half tucked into his black jeans. He has rings on almost every finger. A silver chain around his neck. He looks good, but his voice?

I think I hated this song ten minutes ago, you think to yourself, but there’s something about Vernon’s deep, rough-edged tone that has you considering never listening to anything else. If you could stand to look away from the way he cradles his mic, and the way one of his eyes squeezes tighter closed as he lifts up into a higher note, and the way he moves on the stage like he was born to be on one, you might notice your friends (and everyone else around you) equally entranced by this gorgeous rendition of Beautiful Day as yourself. You can’t, though, so you don’t. 

You keep your attention locked on the singer and instead start to wonder just what he injected the air with when he stepped out from behind that curtain. 

Vernon’s eyes flutter back open right as he hits the final line of the song, a smile spreading over his lips. You realise only now that you’re hardly breathing, nor blinking — your body doesn’t remember to function in the ways it needs to survive, too caught up being immersed all the way to the last beat. You think he looks right at you from up on the stage, you swear one of his eyebrows lifts and his features twist into a satisfied smirk. You’re certain, because for half a second it feels like the world tumbles into slow motion and it’s like he’s reading every single one of your secrets, scouring every corner of your mind. 

And then… he looks away. He looks across the crowd applauding and cheering and whistling for him, before crouching low and taking a sip from the water bottle sitting on the floor beside his mic-stand. Only then does he speak. 

“Risky opener, I know,” he chuckles, his speaking-voice deep and smooth and wholly entrancing. The room erupts into soft laughter, a series of whoops coming from the crowd, everyone disarmed by his slightly awkward charm; the singer’s cheeks turn rosy and a gummy smile lights up his face before he continues. “Thank you guys for giving it a chance, though. If you didn’t know… I’m Vernon—…”

You’re hooked on his every word as he starts to introduce himself and the band behind him — everyone is, but you don’t care about the people around you. Despite being shoulder-to-shoulder with your two best friends and with every breath inhaling the overpowering cologne of the guy standing right behind you, it feels, in a way, like you and the singer could be the only two people in the entire room. 

The set lasts just over ninety minutes and is a carefully put-together mixture of mostly original songs and a couple of crowd-pleasing covers, a few slower ballad-types to offset the higher energy rock songs that he beams the whole way through. In-between, Vernon wins over the crowd with his dry sense of humour and a natural charisma that has you feeling mortifyingly warm, despite the fact that you know he isn’t speaking directly to you when he breaks to talk. You’ve been to more than your fair share of gigs in this venue over the years, but few performers have ever made one of their shows feel so genuinely intimate; by the time he says goodnight and heads off the stage, bidding everyone a safe journey home, it feels, in a weird way, like… you know him.

Most of the more local artists who play in the Arrowhead tend to hang around after their sets – sometimes they’ll have copies of EPs, others come with pins and badges showing off their logos, various cute freebies for people to take home. A few even just stand around in the bar and talk for a while, thanking people personally for coming, sharing information about their upcoming releases and future gig schedules. Unless you’ve been really blown away, this isn’t something the three of you often stick around for, though.

It’s therefore a bit of a surprise that when Vernon re-emerges some fifteen minutes later, you don’t even have to convince your friends to work your way into the crowd already starting to form. If anything, the look exchanged between you all establishes that wanting to praise this guy and say hello is very much mutual; the time that ticks by before you’re face-to-face with him really feels like no time at all.

The people in front of you move off to the side and you catch your first actual, unobstructed glimpse of him. He takes a sip from his glass and wipes his upper lip with the back of his hand before greeting you kindly. Somehow, he’s even more handsome up close. You really didn’t think it was possible. 

“Amazing set, man,” Chan says brightly, doing little by way of snapping you out of your trance. “Super fresh.”

“Seriously. So, so good,” Seungkwan gushes.

Vernon pushes away from where he’s leaned against the bar, pulling his other hand out of his pocket and extending it to your friends in turn. 

“Thank you so much,” he says. “Glad you guys liked it.” Another one of those easy, bright smiles spreads over his face. Maybe you entertain, for a second, that it grows a little more when he holds his hand out to you, too. 

You’re still stunned into silence by how breathtaking he is, but you put your drink in the other hand and wipe the condensation off your palm on the side of your jeans before shaking his hand, as well. He’s really warm, maybe even a little clammy, but when he squeezes with his fingers and looks straight into your eyes, this becomes a very negligible detail.

“Your vibe really reminds me of someone… God, what was his name-...” Chan starts to babble, clicking his fingers at lightning speed as if it’ll help him remember. “He was on that survival show-...”

“We’re sorry about him,” Seungkwan interjects after a few more seconds of nonsense and half-spoken, incorrect names, lifting a hand and covering Chan’s mouth. “He gets a little… it’s just when he’s excited.”

“No I don’t,” Chan huffs, swatting Seungkwan’s hand away. You inhale deeply, trying not to cringe as you watch Vernon’s amused eyes bounce between your two friends like he’s watching a tennis match. 

“Do too.”

“Do not.”

“Case in point—” Seungkwan starts, at which stage you lay one palm on each of their shoulders to try and get them to stop talking.

By some miracle, it works. At least, their mouths stop moving; there’s definitely a silent conversation ongoing in the filthy looks they continue to exchange, but they stop bickering aloud and that’s good enough for you, for now.

“Come on, let’s leave the poor guy alone,” you say, and Chan shoots Seungkwan a filthy look before he nods and takes a small step back from the altercation. 

Vernon’s eyes glitter under the venue’s neon lighting, wide and focused on you while you do your best to mediate. You only notice this when you look back at him, by which point it’s far, far too late to stop the eruption of butterflies in the pit of your stomach.

“You’re really good,” you compliment finally, a smile tugging your mouth up on one side. 

“Thank you.” Vernon grins, briefly dipping his head in your direction, but looking for a second as if he’s about to say something else. His chest rises with a breath, his lips push forward like they’re about to separate again, but before he can, Chan finds one more thing to come out with. Of course. (Seungkwan, regretfully, was right — he does get a little…)

“Do you like records?” he asks, pulling Vernon’s gaze away from you. The singer tilts his head, questioning. “Records. Vinyl – albums? Records.”

“Shit – yeah.” Vernon nods then. “Yeah, sorry. I um-... Sure. Yeah. Totally.”

“She owns a record store,” Chan says, jerking his head towards you. You feel your eyes blow wide and you’re tapping harshly at his back in an instant, begging him to stop. “OFF BEAT Vinyl. Not too far from here – it’s a cool spot.”

“No kidding?” Vernon says, glancing back in your direction, but you’re too busy silently pleading at Chan to shut up to realise.

“Mm. You should swing by, some time,” Seungkwan agrees, and all of a sudden, you’re overcome with the urge to fight him, too. “We all work there.”

“All right, let’s go,” you cough eventually, grabbing both men by the wrist and tugging. Vernon chuckles softly at the interruption; it’s almost as sweet a sound as his singing.

“OFF BEAT Vinyl,” he repeats, tasting the store’s name on his tongue, swirling it around his mouth like a wine he’s trying to savour. “For real. I’ll look it up.”

Chan grins proudly, finally letting himself be pulled away from the singer, and you manage to make exactly two paces before Vernon’s voice rings through your eardrums one more time.

“Hey, uh – what was your name?” he asks. It’s unmistakable who the question is aimed at (your friends don’t even entertain for a moment that he could be asking them), but regardless, it takes you a moment to let yourself believe he really wants to know. Vernon doesn’t push, though – he knows you heard him and he waits for your answer, leaning a little forward. 

So, you look over your shoulder and you tell him. You see his lips move silently as he repeats it to himself, just like he did with the name of the store. He tastes it. Plays with it on his tongue, remembers the way it feels. As if it’s something he really intends to remember.

“Cool,” he breathes, pushing his hair back and off his forehead and making it very difficult to feel in any way rational. “Well – it’s great to meet you guys. Thanks for coming out, again.”

Finally, you manage to get your friends away. One of them, at least – Seungkwan decides that he actually wants to grab a few copies of his EP (‘one for me, a few for the store’) and rushes back towards the singer; you tell him to just meet you back at the bar.

Then, with another round of drinks on order, you turn to Chan and land a gentle thump on his bicep.

“Dude,” you groan, and he looks at you incredulously, rubbing his upper arm with a pout. “Why did you do that?”

“Do what?” Chan asks. 

“Tell him about the store!”

“I mean – I didn’t think it was classified?” he says. “Shit’s slow right now, and he seems like the kind of guy to have a record collection. What’s the damage?”

Seungkwan appears behind you with his hands full of CDs, badges and a scrap of something that you’re reasonably sure is firstly, a napkin, and secondly, has been signed. So you rest your elbows on the bar and place your head in your hands, grumbling quietly about how you don’t know you’ve managed to survive this long knowing these two losers.

“Because you love us,” Seungkwan says, fastening a button to your t-shirt. “Stop trying to deny it.”

“Yeah, yeah,” you sigh, accepting the drink from the bartender and taking a long sip. “God, you better have been serious about opening up for me, tomorrow.”

(Well. You have to give it to him: he was.)

“It’s just my opinion!” 

From your perch on top of the store’s counter, you raise both of your palms in a display of your innocence. Chan stands in the middle of the R&B aisle, looking personally offended, fingers curled around the top of one of the wooden crates holding your stock. 

“Me saying ‘I don’t think Welcome to the Black Parade is the best track on that album’ is not me saying that it’s a bad song.”

“But how can you say that?” Chan groans, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Who’s hearing the opening note to Famous Last Words and feeling the same way as they do with the Black Parade?”

“Most iconic doesn’t mean the best,” you counter. “Besides – I never said you weren’t allowed to have it as your favourite. It’d be a boring game if we all had the same answer.”

“I cannot cope with you anymore,” Chan whines. “You know what? No. I don’t even believe you. You’re just being a contrarian.”

“Why would I do that?” you ask. 

“Because it’s the best song on the goddamn albu–”

The bell above the door chimes loud and clear through the store and both of your squabbling voices fall silent. Your head turns in the direction of the entrance, an autopilot greeting already forming on your lips, but you feel them fall slack the moment you realise who it is that’s just walked in.

It’s been five days. Though it would be a mistruth to claim you hadn’t thought about the singer since the night of his gig, it’s not one to say you didn’t think he would ever actually come into your place of work. 

Much less at 3 o’clock in the afternoon. On a Thursday.

He pops his wrists as he walks a little further into the store, glancing around. Barring one of your regulars who walks about with his earphones in all the time, the store is completely empty; an adrenaline spike prickles the hairs on your arms, all the tiny muscles beneath your skin pulling them to stand upright. 

“Hi,” he says once he deems himself to be close enough, stopping in his tracks and kicking the toe of his shoe against the floor.

“Hey,” you greet him in return. 

“I’m-... Vernon. We met at the show, the other night?” 

“Yeah — yeah, I remember you,” you smile. “I’m-... well. I’m still y/n.”

“Still y/n,” he says on a relieved exhale, grinning and glancing away from you. “I uh… I just had some free time. Thought I’d swing by and see what you guys had going on here.” Vernon adjusts the collar of his t-shirt, the silver of his rings glinting under the flickering yellow light overhead.

(It was definitely somewhere on your list of things to get fixed. Honest.)

“Sure, yeah,” you nod, swallowing hard and trying your best not to stare at him. It’s hard, though – in broad daylight, the way the flannel tied around his waist floats down over his hips and the way his jeans hug at his thighs is… you don't even have the words. “Let me know if you need help finding anything, okay?” 

“I will.” He starts to thumb through one of the wooden boxes, offering a small smile your way. “Thank you.”

You’re holding your breath a little as he pulls a few 80’s rock albums out, his lips downturned in surprised approval at some of the records you carry. He holds onto a couple as he moves around the store and the entire time, you can feel Chan and Seungkwan staring at you. If there wasn’t a very real danger of Vernon looking your way again at a moment’s notice, you know you would be showing them your middle finger.

Really, they come away lucky.

“You don’t even know how long I’ve been trying to find some of these,” Vernon says after a few minutes, sauntering toward the desk – you’re still sitting on top of it, your legs swinging in the air beneath you. “Might have to make this my new stop.”

And displayed beside you on the counter – right by the cash register – are a few of his albums. The ones Seungkwan picked up after the show; until about two seconds ago, you had forgotten they were even there.

Vernon’s face lights up when he notices, turning to Seungkwan. “Come on, no way. I thought you were kidding about that.”

“Deadly serious,” Seungkwan laughs. Out of the corner of his eye, he must see you start to freeze up: he keeps talking instead of letting the silence settle. “It was on the speakers yesterday. Four people asked us about you.”

“For real?” Vernon asks. When all three of you nod your heads, you see the beginnings of a blush start to creep up his neck. “Wow. Thank you – um. That’s really cool of you guys.”

“It’s good music,” Chan shrugs. “You’re super talented.”

You’re not sure what it is about the onslaught of passive praise that gets so deep into Vernon’s head, but he doesn’t seem to know what to do with himself other than repeatedly saying ‘thank you’. Relief comes in the form of another customer jingling the bell above the door and drawing the attention away from him for a few moments.

“I’ll take these,” he says breathlessly as he turns to face you again. You find yourself a tiny bit lost in the warmth of his eyes and it takes you a second to remember to swivel around and slip off the other side of the countertop. You do, though. Eventually. 

“Nice,” you say softly as you shuffle through them, ringing each one through. He’s got pretty decent taste, even if less than a week ago you were actively cringing at his choice of cover song. (It’s okay. That was before you knew better.) “Do you– need sleeves, or…?”

“I’m good. Thank you, though.” Vernon rests his hands against the edge of the counter and drums a quiet rhythm out with his thumbs as you tap away at the register. “Are-... you guys busy tonight, by the way?”

You look up from placing the records into a paper bag, glancing over to your colleagues who both rush to shake their heads. Vernon looks from them, to you, and you mirror their action. Even if I was, you start to think wistfully. I’d make time.

“I’m playing at the Orchid? Uh— it starts at eight thirty; I could get you guys on the list, if-... um…”

“That’d be awesome,” Chan says, nodding so hard you’re surprised his head doesn’t roll off his shoulders and start bouncing across the floor. 

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Seungkwan adds. 

Vernon grins at them both, humming softly, before turning back to you and fumbling with his wallet to take out his card to pay for his purchases. You turn the machine around to face him; he hovers with his hand just above it. 

“Maybe… I’ll see you tonight, too?” He says.

You can’t help the delight that rises inside you, as if it’s been injected straight into your bloodstream. It’s everywhere, all of a sudden. In your brain and your heart and your bones and in your lungs.

Yet, you somehow manage to keep your composure when you say, “yeah. Maybe you will.”

The payment goes through and you slide the bag over towards Vernon, your eyes never leaving his and his eyes never leaving yours. His fingers brush over yours as he takes it from you, the bite of the cold ring on his index finger a shocking contrast to the warmth the rest of his hand radiates. You hope your little gasp isn’t too audible, but… the way Chan whirls around to face away from the scene in front of him (presumably to poorly conceal his laughter), you know you haven’t gotten away with it.

“Cool,” he says, hesitating another second before finally pulling himself away. He bows his head in the direction of your friends, sending another of those irresistibly sweet smiles at you, and then he starts off towards the door. “See you, then.”

You feel your heart finally start to slow down as you grip the counter for dear life, setting out a long, drawn-out breath. What just happened? Why do you feel all… fuzzy?

“Maybe… I’ll see you tonight, too?” Chan asks in the deepest voice he can muster, snapping you out of your own head none too pleasantly. You turn in their direction as your other favourite moron feigns tucking hair behind his ear and flutters his eyelashes across at Chan.

“Yeah… Maybe you will.” And Seungkwan’s imitation of you is a little too accurate. Creepily so, and you want to curse him out for it. Instead, you scrunch up a bag to throw towards the pair of them, grinning despite yourself as they both swerve to dodge it.

“Oh my God, shut up,” you chastise them. You don’t have any bite, though, your brain still tingly and positively reeling and seeing Vernon’s dazzling smile every time you so much as blink. And when Seungkwan takes a running start and launches himself, full-force, into Chan’s unsuspecting arms? When Chan lifts him up and spins him around, and when they start making kissy-noises at each other between unearthly cackles? 

You know that the next few hours are going to be the longest of your entire life.

The rest of the afternoon goes by without much disturbance and with evening plans now in place, you make the executive decision to send the boys home half an hour early. The three of you agree to meet outside The Orchid at just after eight o’clock, giving you all a chance to eat, wash up and change before the show; your friends separate and head in the different directions to the places they call home, making a promise to text your group chat before you leave to coordinate the link-up time. You head back into the office to finish tying up your loose ends and manage to depart just an hour later. 

On your way to your apartment, you plan everything out to the minute in your head. You even allocate yourself twenty minutes to sit on the couch and decompress from your working day. So, when you settle down a little further into the cushions and put your head back, resting your eyes… when you tell yourself you’ll get up in just a minute and hop into the shower…

You certainly don’t expect to be woken up two and a half hours later as your phone vibrates on the floor of your living room.

With one eye still closed, you pick it up, yawning and stretching the lingering wisps of slumber from your body. Seungkwan’s contact name shows on your screen and you swipe to answer the call; on the other end of the line, a song you’ve never heard before is audible, but it’s accompanied by a voice you most definitely do know.

Everything snaps into place at once; in an instant, you’re wide awake, and you feel physically sick.

“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit,” you hiss into the speaker, scrabbling upright, tugging the phone away from your face to see the time. How is it already past 9pm?

“Oh, hello to you, too!” Seungkwan has to half-shout to be anywhere near audible over the music. You can almost perfectly visualise the way he’ll have sandwiched himself in a corner of the venue, pinching the bridge of his nose, head resting against the wall to try and block out enough sound to hear you. “Good to know you’re actually still alive!”

“Dude, I’m so sorry,” you say, rushing through to your bathroom to check if you can get away with leaving the house as you are. (Jury’s out, but you don’t have much of a choice.) “I… don’t know what happened. I fell asleep – I’ll be there as fast as I can.”

Seungkwan chides you again, this time reminding you that he’s been on your ass about going to a doctor to get your iron levels checked for months, that your timekeeping is terrible and that you really better hurry. You promise you’re on your way and hang up the call, pocketing your (horrifically under-charged) phone and slipping into a pair of sneakers you keep by the door before you head out. You told him you’d be here. Seungkwan’s voice rings loud and clear in your ears as you lock up your apartment.

But of course, bad things never happen in isolation. Waiting on the street outside your apartment block, you find yourself being cancelled on by not one, but two uber drivers: by the time the third reaches you, and has to follow the world’s most inconvenient diversion to get past some construction work, it’s 9:35. You know it doesn’t matter how quickly you run down the last stretch of the street and get up the seemingly never-ending staircase: it’s going to be too late.

You only manage to catch the literal last two songs of Vernon’s set. You’re not sure he even knows you’ve arrived, and in a way, you hope he doesn’t. Maybe having him believe you were a no-show is better than him knowing you’re about as low-functioning as a grown adult can be. You just slip in through the door as discreetly as you can and hover at the very back of the room as he rounds up for the night; Chan slips an arm around your shoulders as you turn to the bar and order yourself a drink, but it doesn’t do much to reduce the guilt that weighs heavy in your chest. 

Which… is odd, really, you suppose. Seeing as you hardly know the singer much beyond his name and, now, a fraction of his record collection. Seeing as you certainly don’t owe him your presence at any of his performances. But there’s something in the way he made sure to ask you personally if you’d be able to make it, too, and you can’t shake it off, and… yeah, screw it, maybe you did want to be here. Maybe you did want him to notice. Maybe you do care what he thinks of you. 

Maybe… you hope he feels the same about you.

Your drink hasn’t even arrived yet by the time you hear a chain of ‘excuse me – sorry, can I just? Yeah, thanks – sorry, excuse me’ -s behind you. Your eyes fly wide and you almost choke on your own spit at the sound, growing closer and closer, somehow audible over the background music floating through the speakers, over the other chattering voices and shrieks of laughter in every direction. Part of your breathlessness, admittedly, is to do with how immediately you just knew who that voice belonged to.

“Excuse m–” it sounds again.

And then, softer: “Hey.”

You turn around on your bar stool, barely managing to bite back a smile. “Hi.”

Vernon grins at you from a few feet away, a dark singlet hanging loose on his frame, showing off his long, lean arms, displaying the few bracelets he wears on one of his slender wrists. You’re staring – you know you are; you don’t even notice the fact that Chan takes several steps away from you, or how he throws a side-along glance toward Seungkwan, nor the fact that your two best friends start talking quietly among themselves, leaving you and Vernon almost alone.

“I’m so sorry, I don’t know how I managed to…” But Vernon’s already shaking his head, coming up beside you at the bar, settling into the seat on your left. 

“Don’t worry about it,” he insists, glancing over at you where you’re sitting. “I’m just glad you’re here, now.”

Chan stumbles over to you somewhere around midnight and claps his hand down on your shoulder, interrupting Vernon’s very enthusiastic explanation as to why flying is totally a better superpower to want to have than invisibility. Your giggles fall silent and Vernon stops mid-flow, waiting to hear what your friend wants to speak to you about. Unfortunately, Chan’s words are barely intelligible; it’s only when a marginally-better-for-wear Seungkwan appears too a moment later that you’re able to make any sense of him.

“We’re gonna–” Seungkwan hiccups, covering his mouth with his hand and wincing, no doubt at the burn of everything he’s had to drink now sitting high in his throat. “Gonna head out. Are you coming? We’ll split a taxi with you.”

You find yourself glancing over to where Vernon is standing, propped against the pool table that you’re now leaning on the edge of. He just smiles back at you, lifting his shoulders.

“I think… I’m gonna stay here a little longer,” you say after chewing it over. “You guys go ahead.”

Seungkwan looks between the two of you and frowns slightly. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, yeah.” You nod. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Vernon gently pipes up from your side, sliding over a little so that his palm rests flat on the felt of the table, his forearm supporting your hips from behind. But it isn’t you he addresses, despite this butterfly-inducing contact. All deep and serious, he says, “I promise, she’s safe with me.” 

He takes his time to show it on his face, but ultimately this satisfies Seungkwan, who (despite being just about able to support both his and Chan’s weight in his current condition) has before, and still will, ignore his body’s demands in the name of ensuring your safety. But maybe he sees a trustworthiness in Vernon, or maybe he knows that you can and do handle yourself quite well. Whatever it is, he’s happy with this development, and your two friends bundle you in a hug so tight that it squeezes the air out of your lungs before they make their way towards the exit.

Once they’re out of view, you turn back to Vernon again, raising both brows at the man now closer to you than he’s ever been. But it’s far from claustrophobic – not as these things can so often be. No. No.

It’s addictive.

“Oh you promise, huh?” The tease comes out before you can do anything about it. You even end up batting your lashes at him for good measure. 

“Cross my heart,” he says with a small shrug of his shoulders. His eyes dip from where they’re boring into your own, glancing down a fraction, just for a moment, and you’re sure you see him start to lean. Drawn to you like an opposing magnet, like a moth to a flame — his breaths feel hotter as they fan against your skin, his cologne starts to smell a little stronger… then, his fingers on the other hand curl around the pool cue he’s been balancing on his side and he drags himself away from you. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not gonna kick your ass one more time.”

One more game of pool quickly turns to two, and it even threatens to become a third as you tease, again, that Vernon just got lucky and he flashes you another one of those looks that says ‘oh? Try me’. But as tempting as it is, you don’t think your pride can withstand any more losses. You resign yourself from the table with a huff when he rests his palms flat on the velvet covering, leaning towards you in that mouth-watering way he’s been doing for hours. The thing is, for the size of his pool-playing-ego, Vernon isn’t even that good. Not if you consider the number of completely missed shots, questionable connections and pocketed cues. But, because your own skill level leaves plenty to be desired, he doesn’t have to be up there with the big leagues. 

He just needs to be a tiny bit better than you.

Asshole.

An announcement for last orders from behind the bar tells you that it’s nearing one in the morning as he starts to circle around the table and makes his way towards you. The bar has emptied considerably since you arrived, the music has steadily started getting more and more cheesy, people in all four corners of the room have started draping themselves over one another like well-dressed blankets, having already chosen the individuals they’ve decided to take home tonight. By all accounts, it’s the perfect time to leave. If you head out now, you’ll miss the rush of people flooding into the street and, if you’re lucky, the surge in taxi prices. The really good takeout place around the corner doesn’t close for another half hour, too. 

There’s just one problem. You don’t want this night to end just yet.

“I think I’m gonna get some fresh air,” you say to Vernon, trying to stretch out a burning knot in your shoulder. “It’s like, a thousand degrees in here.”

Vernon nods. “Yeah – cool. I’ll come with you.”

And with your bag slung over the arm not causing you an ache, you start off down the stairwell. The doors are already open and the late night breeze has you feeling like you’re walking through the gates of heaven as you head outside. You inhale deeply, making the most of this very rare occasion of the city’s air not feeling thick with car fuel and cigarettes. Your eyes fall closed.

“I always liked being out at this time,” Vernon says as he joins you, leaning one shoulder against the brickwork of the outside of the bar. “Feels peaceful.”

“Sure,” you nod, craning your neck to look at him. His face is half-illuminated in the neon red of the bar’s sign above you. The harsh lighting and the shadows cast by his angular features have him looking… sort of sinful, in a weird artsy way that you can’t explain thanks to the pleasant buzzing in your brain. Straight out of an arthouse, indie movie. I bet he likes those, you think absently. 

He looks straight into your eyes, intense and focussed as if he’s trying to search them, though for what you’re not sure. Honestly, you think if he gave a few more flutters of those beautiful lashes, you’d bend in-half-and-half-again to give him anything he wanted, so in a way you’re interested to ask what he’s thinking about. You don’t end up saying anything, though. There’s something wonderful in these little unspoken moments with Vernon. Something raw. 

Something… unexplainable. 

Sitting at the bar and stealing tickled glances as the waitress fumbles and drops a tray full of glasses on the floor. Subtle winks of his right eye (always, you’re discovering, the right?) from across a pool table when he succeeds in making a shot he has absolutely no business pulling off. Standing opposite you in the store you own, waiting to find out when – not if – he’s going to see you, again –

“You know,” he starts, the tiniest edge of nervousness in his voice for the first time tonight. Is the performance adrenaline finally wearing off? Is he… maybe starting to feel a little shy? Whatever it is, your last train of thought melts away into the drain just to his right, and you focus on him as he continues down this new path instead. “I got a new coffee machine in my apartment last weekend and I haven’t had the chance to use it for anyone yet.”

“Is that so?” 

“Yeah.” He nods, swallowing. “I uh…” He bounces one fist in the palm of his other hand, searching for the right order to put the words into. “I mean, it’s not like, one of those super fancy ones, or anything… but it’s sorta retro looking? Which is cool, and—”

“Vernon?”

“Yeah?”

“You‘re a little out of practice, huh?”

He chuckles on an outward breath, bowing his head, a grin that threatens to split his pretty face in two taking residence on his lips. “That obvious?”

“A tiny bit,” you say. “It’s cute though.”

He glances up at you, head a little tilted. “Yeah?”

“Mm… getting less-so by the second,” you tease him. “You can just ask me to come with you.”

“I-…” he starts, but he takes a deep breath instead and corrects his posture, as if it’ll prepare him somehow. “Okay. Okay — do you… maybe wanna come back to my place, with me?”

Not without flashing him a look first that says ‘now, was that so hard?’, you find yourself nodding up at him. 

“I’d love to,” you say.

He pushes away from the wall and when you do the same, he falls into step, heading in the direction of his apartment. You try to discreetly roll your shoulder out again but it’s obviously not discrete enough; it draws his attention down to your arm, and he frowns slightly.

“Is that giving you trouble?” He asks. 

“It’s fine.” You wave him off, stretching the muscle as best as you can by tilting your head as you walk. “It’s been like this for years.”

He scrunches his brows. “Here — can I?” He asks, his fingertip looping beneath the strap of your bag. You look down at your shoulder, then back up at him, before raising one brow, dropping the other. 

“I mean — I don’t know if it’s your colour?” 

Vernon barks out a ‘ha’, easily slipping your bag down your arm, the tips of his warm fingers brushing against your comparatively cool skin. You make no effort to stop him. He positions it on his own shoulder instead, the one furthest away from you so he can still walk right against your side. 

“There’s a reason I wear all black, okay?” He says. “It makes everything my colour.”

His fingers smoothly slip between yours as he says it. It was quite the move, and for a second you’re impressed. At least, until it turns out that this simple action seems to jolt him back to his factory settings, because—

“I’m so serious about this coffee machine, by the way.”

“I know you are,” you laugh, bumping your weight against him and squeezing his hand. “I’m counting on it.”

“Okay, so,” you start, settling into Vernon’s couch and tucking one of your legs up beneath you. You cradle the mug of coffee he’s made you — admittedly, the retro-style machine was pretty cool — between both of your hands, a thumb brushing over the raised pattern on the ceramic. The fresh air from the walk here seems to have decently sobered you; barring a pleasant buzz, you feel almost like you haven’t drunk a thing. “How did you get into music?”

Vernon matches your posture play-for-play, biting the inside of his cheek before he answers. He drank less than you in the first place, but he seems steadier now, as well.

“Uh… a couple things, I guess,” he starts. “I mean, my parents are big into music. Sometimes they'd take me with them to shows and stuff, had a bunch of CD’s all over the house — all that. You know? I really grew up on it, so…"

You nod, tilting your head to gesture for him to continue. 

“Then… I don’t know. There’s- okay, I was kind of a loser in high school,” he goes on. You roll your eyes; Vernon nudges your thigh with his knee playfully, shaking his head. 

“I just mean, I didn’t have a lot of friends.” He pauses, pursing his lips. “So…, I mean, that’s— that’s whatever. The point is that I spent a lot of time on my own and I basically had an earphone in any time I thought I could get away with it, and–... and sometimes even if I couldn’t.” He chuckles. “Weird. Most of my teachers didn’t like me much either.”

You laugh too now, and Vernon bows his head a little; every single one of his handsome features brightens up and you don’t really know where to look. His never-ending lashes are so long they cast shadows down onto his cheeks, and the ambient lighting reflects off his eyes so beautifully that they look like they’re glimmering. 

He goes on, “there was one, though. My bio teacher? She was really cool. She had a lot more time for me than the others did. And uh, she called me into her office after school one day and just said… basically, my options were to start giving a shit about… cells, and mitochon– whatever, or start really working for this great big thing that I spent all my time daydreaming about. And it’s been a little up and down, but…”

He trails off, shrugging on one side.

“I think you’re doing pretty okay,” you chime in, leaning one arm against the back of the couch and resting your head in your palm. “I bet those kids would lose their minds if they could see you now.”

“Oh?” Vernon asks, setting his coffee down on the side-table. You click your tongue at him.

“Don’t– come on.”

“No, seriously,” he laughs. “What do you mean?”

“I mean-…” you start, shaking your head. “Okay. People go out of their way to listen to you. Everyone who comes to one of your shows… that’s an hour, two hours, whatever – of making people feel exactly the way you want them to feel. They... all want to understand you. Right?”

Vernon just looks at you, forehead a tiny bit creased — the cogs in your brain tick away trying to find a better way to explain what you mean, but he finally speaks. (You’re glad, because you were struggling to come up with anything else.) 

“Shit, I thought that was just an in to say you thought I was hot, or something.”

You push at his chest lightly, your palm lingering on his vest a moment longer than is, perhaps, strictly necessary. 

“Shut up,” you groan. But a second later… “I guess there’s that, too.”

He sits back a little, pushing his hair off his forehead with a chuckle. “I dunno, I mean — I sort of… is it weird if I don’t really think about it that way?”

“Of course not,” you tell him.

He gets that look back on his face again; the pensive one, where he appears like he’s seconds away from saying something else, something important. But he falters, and when he glances back at you, his engine stalls. 

Then, with a shake of his head, he says, “wow, okay, enough about me. I’m so sorry. Can I ask you a question?”

You take another sip of your coffee and set it down, too, nodding ‘yes’. To be honest, you were quite enjoying talking about him; at the same time, you know what it is to feel a little too perceived sometimes, so you let him move on without argument. 

“How do you just… own a record store?”

You laugh. It’s been a while since you’ve had to explain this one. (When was the last time one of your dates was interested enough to ask?)

“I’m not as good a storyteller as you are,” you preface, mirroring him when he rolls his eyes, pretending not to notice that he shuffles even closer. You launch into it easily enough — the old store owner was a friend of the family, he let you work there while you were in college, took you on full-time after you dropped out. When his eyesight started deteriorating, he chose to retire and told you it was yours, if you wanted it. 

“Place would’ve closed down, otherwise,” you shrug. “But I couldn’t do it on my own, so I brought the guys in to help. Two years later... yeah. I guess that's how.”

The whole time as you talk, his eyes don’t leave you. He’s quite expressive, you find — whether he’s lifting a perfectly shaped brow, nodding along to what you’re saying, smiling at you… you feel listened to. When he’s sat across from you, you feel heard; you feel known.

“Well, first — take it back. You’re a great storyteller,” he says. You feel your face grow warm and you nudge him with your knee, but you don’t argue — you aren’t convinced he’d let you win, anyway. “But that’s… really cool? Actually.”

“Oh yeah, I heard nine-to-five retail is the coolest thing you can do, these days,” you laugh.

Vernon scoffs at you. “You close at six thirty.”

(How on Earth does he remember that?)

To avoid thinking about it too much, and so you don’t have to try to navigate asking, you roll your eyes.

“You’re right,” you say to him. “That’s way better.”

“Do you like what you do?” He asks, and you tilt your head at him. “Well — okay. If you ignore the… boring, back-office stuff.”

“Yeah,” you say after a pause. “I guess I do.”

“Then it’s cool.”

Your coffees both go cold as you talk more, and more, and more — he asks about your life, and growing up, your friends, and he answers all of your questions in turn when you ask them. He has an interesting way of talking about himself outside of his job; it’s not so much that you have to pry for information, but he’s not super forthcoming. It’s as if he’s taking all of your questions at face value, like he doesn’t know how to go about expanding on them. 

Maybe he’s just more of a listener, you contemplate once he turns yet another of your questions back on you and you teasingly pull him up on it. It flusters him, which you can’t help but find very endearing. 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry — I just… you have such a pretty… voice?” he confesses, rubbing the back of his neck, ears burning pink. 

“Oh?” You ask, stumped for a moment as your heart lurches in your chest. When he nods, you find the gall from somewhere to say, “takes one to know one.” 

(You’re not sure how.)

And on it goes. On, and on, and on. More questions, more answers, more lighthearted shoves and lingering touches and shy glances away from each others’ scorching gazes as heat rushes to your cheeks. He even shows you his record collection and puts on one of his favourite albums for background noise before you settle back into the couch. It’s so natural, even when the vinyl runs to the end and the only noise from the player is a distant crackle. Being in his space and having mindless conversation after mindless conversation feels almost as comfortable as being in your own home. 

You notice something, as you’re rounding off a monologue about why your highschool math teacher was the worst person you’d ever met. A tiny hair on the apple of his cheek. One of those lashes you envy so much. Even as you try to focus back on your closing remarks, your eyes keep dropping to it and you trail off into silence a few words short.

“I’m sorry, you’ve-… got an eyelash,” you say, tapping roughly the same spot on your own cheek. 

“Mm. I have a few of them,” Vernon counters, wiping the heel of his thumb against his skin. He misses, though, and drops his arm back down with the lash still stuck to his face. 

You move before you can stop yourself, hand lifting up to his face and hovering just a few centimetres away.

“Can I?” you ask. 

Vernon nods, wordlessly. He goes cross-eyed and his lids twitch in a flutter as he watches you get closer; you brush the lash onto your thumb and he only breathes again when you rebalance it on the tip of your finger.  You hold it up to him, settling back into your own part of the couch; he just stares back at you. 

“Make a wish,” you prompt. 

His confusion is poorly concealed, head cocked to one side as he looks from the lash to you and back again. “Huh?”

“Don’t you…?”

He shakes his head. 

“Okay, wow,” you laugh, glancing down at your finger too. “You have to make a wish on your eyelashes when they fall out.”

“No, I got that part,” Vernon snickers. “I just mean — why?”

“I—” you start to explain, but you fall short of an explanation and frown instead, biting the inside of your cheek. “… I don’t know. It’s just what you’re supposed to do. I’ve always done it.”

The downturn of your lips doesn’t last very long, though. 

“Well, what if it’s not an eyelash? What if it’s like… one of my eyebrows, or something?” He asks. 

It's such a simple but off-the-wall response that you can't help but laugh, except it comes on so suddenly you start to choke on your own saliva. One of his hands circles around you and rubs soothingly between your shoulder blades as you cough, succeeding in bringing him even closer and failing to lower the fever you’re starting to feel creep up on you. By some miracle, you don’t drop the lash, even as you hack pathetically into the crook of your elbow; Vernon waits for it to subside, a weirdly fond look on his face all the while.

Now, when you turn your head, he’s right there. In your space. His arm still around your back, the glint of the bar pierced through his brow drawing your attention up away from those smiling lips. 

“I guess it just doesn’t come true? I don’t know,” you say, shaking your head. “I’ve never tried wishing on an eyebrow before.”

“I’m just saying,” he starts, falling back against the cushions now he knows you’re not suffocating. His arm doesn’t move, though. If anything, he sort of pulls you with him. “What if it ends up like a reverse wish. Whatever I ask for, the opposite comes true, or something.”

“If you don’t want it, I’ll take it,” you say, starting to bring your finger closer to yourself. 

Quicker than you can blink, he reaches to you and lightly lays his fingers around your wrist, stopping you in your path.

“Wait,” he says, pouting a little. “I didn’t say that.”

Both of you glance down to this new point of contact. Two sets of lips stay parted but two identical breaths remain held, burning in both your lungs and in Vernon’s. His gaze shifts back up to your face, eyes wide and wholly serious and unblinking. 

“What do I do?” He asks on the eventual exhale. It reminds you to breathe again, too.

“Close your eyes.”

It takes him a second to obey, but he does. His eyes flutter closed and you clear your throat, lifting your finger until it’s just in front of his face. 

“Make a wish.”

A few seconds later, his brows relax and he nods. 

“Then… blow.”

His lips purse and he pushes a breath through them, lifting the stray lash off your skin and sending it out into the room. He opens his eyes, then, smiling in a manner that you can tell is absolutely despite himself. 

He doesn’t move away, and his cologne, fresh and citrusy, mixes tantalisingly with the sandalwood candle he lit on your way back to the couch a little while ago, both accented by the chewing gum he popped to get rid of the mocha aftertaste still lingering on his breath.

“What did you wish for?” You ask, dropping your hand back down to your side.

He frowns. 

“I don’t think I’m supposed to tell you,” he says. “Pretty sure that’s against like… wish laws, or something.”

“Boring,” you chide, slumping your shoulders, but he just grins at you, darting his tongue out over his lips.

Out of the corner of your eye, you see his Adam’s apple bob in a thick swallow and you can feel the gentle brushing of his thumb. The slow movements, up and down over the exposed area on your hip where your shirt has started to ride up, make you shiver, and you know your chest stutters when his fingers move to press wholly against your bare skin. You know he notices, because he does it again. And again, and again. 

It's maddening. You end up stuck in this never-ending feeling of falling head-first into his arms.

“Where do you think the laws stand on showing you, though?” He asks, inching a little closer.

You hold your breath, little more than anticipatory static flooding your brain. 

“I think they’re okay with it.”

You mirror, slowly, hooked in the gaze that has adrenaline dripping down the length of your spine like honey, and you can’t bring yourself to look away until you can practically taste him. He closes the space between you in half speed, but gently, like you’re both made of tissue, he brings his thumb and forefinger to your chin and touches his lips to yours. His nose presses against your cheek. 

It’s comfortable. It’s warm. It’s easy, it’s exhilarating, it’s perfect. You feel like your heart just might burst clean out of your chest—

But… you can’t.  

“I’m so sorry,” you gasp, tugging yourself away and clamping your hands over your mouth. “Shit — I’m-… I’m sorry.”

Out of nowhere, you’re fighting to catch a breath, head spinning in circles, and no longer in the good way. Have those beers finally come back to bite you in the ass? Or, deeper down, do you know your sudden intoxication isn’t alcohol related at all? Vernon shoots back from you like you’ve gone up in flames and he might catch, too — his eyes search your face as you scramble to get to your feet, and he looks… scared. 

“Are you okay?” He asks. You don’t respond right away, already looking around the apartment for where you left your shoes, already trying to locate your bag too. (As you try to swim towards the surface, you forget that it wasn’t you who still had hold of it when you came through the door and placed it on the loveseat back in the living room.) “Hey… is everything-…?”

“I’m fine,” you interrupt. You’re not. “I just-… I remembered-… I have to go.” 

You catch sight of your shoes, hidden behind the ones Vernon kicked off just after you, and you hurry across the apartment to get to them. 

No bag. Where’s your bag? Where did you leave it? But… ah, your keys are in one back pocket and your phone is in the other and maybe it’s not the end of the world if you never see that lipstick again—

“It’s really late,” Vernon says as you bend down to re-tie one of your laces, hovering just a few steps behind you. “Are you gonna be okay to get home?”

“I’ll be fine,” you rush. “I’ll get a cab.”

“Well, at least let me wait with you until it—”

“I said I’m fine,” you insist, you snap, only now looking up at him again. He tenses, but his eyes stay soft. It’s not in the same way you’ve seen them all night, though. Not in a nice way. Not glittering and full of intrigue. No. He’s hurt. And like a wounded animal, he takes several stiff, unsure steps back away from you, swallowing hard and looking anywhere, everywhere else. 

“I’m fine,” you say again, trying to sound a little quieter, a little calmer.  Even if that is miles away from the truth. 

“Okay,” he says, unconvinced and wringing his hands in front of his stomach. “If-… I’m sorry if that was-… I didn’t mean to make you-…”

You shake your head, standing back up to your full height, but you don’t close the gap between you. You don’t reach out to him, even though you want to. You just have to blindly hope he can read your mind somehow — there’s no way to explain it quickly enough without leaving you both in a mess, and right now... 

“Hey,” you say, forcing him to look at you once more. “It’s not-… it isn’t you. I just have to go, okay?”

He doesn’t seem overly reassured by this, but he nods anyway. “Can-… you text me when you get home?” He asks. Then, hurried: “Just so I know you’re back safe. That’s all.” 

You swallow hard. 

“Yeah,” you say on an outward breath, cringing at how exasperated it sounds. You don’t mean it to — you’re really not mad at him. “I will. I’ll message you.”

Biting the inside of his bottom lip, Vernon takes another step back. He doesn’t say anything else, just shoves his hands as far into the pockets of his jeans as he can and watches you. 

“I’ll message you,” you repeat, opening the door, speaking more to yourself than to him. “I promise.” 

Then, you’re stumbling out into his hallway. Hurrying down the too-narrow staircase. Leaning your back against the brickwork outside, a light drizzle of rain splashing all over your bare arms. The stone prickles through your t-shirt as you slide down, as you feebly try to suck thick, damp air into your lungs, as your head starts to ache, as a dull throb starts to reside behind your eyes. 

It takes ten minutes of staring into the empty road in front of you before you feel steady enough to attempt to wrestle your phone out of your pocket. No matter how many buttons you press, no matter how many times you tap it, the screen refuses to come to life and you only now manage to recall the ‘low battery’ notification that came through several hours ago. Briefly, it crosses your mind to go back upstairs and ask if you can request a ride on Vernon’s phone. You know he’d say yes. Hell, he’d probably throw a blanket over your shivering shoulders and fix you another cup of coffee while you waited, too. But you can’t. The look on his face as you slid out his front door is burned into your memory like a brand and there surely couldn’t be anything worse than having to go back in there and face him like this.

Five more minutes pass before you find the energy to stand, to stretch out your bunched up muscles, and start on the walk home. Another thirty until you’re trudging, sodden and blurry eyed and heavy-hearted, through your apartment door. Three and a half after that before you finally manage to text Vernon to say your phone died, but you’re back, you’re safe. That you’re sorry. 

Barely ten seconds tick by before it pops up that he reads your message. (Followed by ninety seconds of staring down at the bubble that says he’s typing, waiting for a reply that ultimately doesn’t come.)

And four hours later, you’re still wide awake, lying under your covers, staring blankly up at the ceiling. You think you ought to be giddy, squirming, hiding your smile in your pillow — that’s how first kisses are supposed to make you feel. Isn’t it? Alas, you’re flooded instead with visions of the last time a first kiss felt like it made this much sense; in place of all the endorphins you’re sure should be ricocheting off every inner surface of your brain, all you know is heartache and dread. 

So you stare, and you stare, and you keep on staring; even when your eyes start to burn, you stare a little more. 

thank u so much for reading, i hope you enjoyed it! as always, likes, reblogs, comments & feedback are so so appreciated. parts 2 and 3 are very nearly finished, as well, so stay tuned.<3

[kodamaghost00]

30 Lucifer Headcanons

———————————————————

[Disclaimer!!]

This post will contain: NSFW,Sfw, Fluff, Smut

It's also Genderless for the girls,gays and theys!You're a new resident at the Hotel in this scenario.

———————————————————

Let’s begin!

Calls his partner “Angel” or “Love”. But will come up with outrageous names to annoy you too.

Makes his loved ones custom ducks. And he gets really nervous showing you the finished product.

“So uhhh… I made this one for you.” He said quite nervously as he gave you your duck. “Oh it’s lovely Lucifer… thank you so much.”.

He looked at you flabbergasted “Wait really?! You like it…?”. You just chuckled “Of course I do!”

You were there for him when Lilith left him. He was so down but you cheered him up.

When Lucifer and Alastor had their little sing session he was so happy that you sided with him and not that red deer guy.

He thinks it’s adorable that you get along with Charlie. He loves the way you care about her, and believe in her dreams.

Besides his “calm” personality he gets quite protective over time. When he notices you get hurt by something/someone he is immediately there you care for you.

He makes unhinged comments and jokes without even noticing that they’re out of place sometimes.

Ever since angel called him a “Short king” the term has stuck with him. He casually calls himself that as well.

He tries to learn more slang from the other residents and tries them out on you… “You serve *snaps fingers*… the outfit slaps ngl.” You just laughed your ass off due to his stiff voice and lack of feeling.

He enjoys basin and cooking a lot. He prefers to have you as a helper.

He’s a ambivert who’s pretty good at masking. Not many people notice when he’s exhausted.

Definitely a hopeless romantic. He WILL take you on a date with roses and jazz in the background. And if everything goes well he maybe even take you to his place?

He likes to get dominated but he also loves to dominate. Whatever you’re up to actually, he’ll just go along with it.

Groans overall but whimpers and whines when he’s close.

When you ride on top of him he digs his fingers into your sides and it gets firmer and stronger as he finishes.

He is definitely very weak in the way that he can’t hold in for long. You do one right move and he’s cumming fast.

He also enjoys bondage very much. He’d fuck you while you hand from the roof with a gag in your mouth. In combo with a blindfold? Seeing you drool? He finishes faster than you can say “Bow chika bow bow.”

GREAT IN AFTERCARE!!! He will spoil you with sweet words and cuddles. “You did so great love… thank you.”

He bathed with his rubber duck. His favorite is probably an apple themed one.

He also wears a little make-up. Like going out without a little eyeliner? Nuh uh.

He made his cane himself. The apple on top is exchangeable with a Rubber duck, skull and a snake. He’s making new ones as well.

He is already autistic coded with a special interest in ducks. But imagine he invented them. Like imagine he said ”Hey God… I have this little idea, do you think you can make it work?”

He gets nervous if you two make eye contact for too long. He’d laugh it off though saying it’s no big deal for him.

So so done with life sometimes he just drinks 3 black coffees in the span of 3 hours.

He easily gets distracted by literally anything and everything. Also procrastinates a lot.

He loves hugs from the back. And hugs in general make him feel so loved by you.

His love languages are Physical Touch and Acts of Service. You making him breakfast and cuddles afterwards? He’s straight up in love.

“You made this all for me love…? Wow that’s so amazing thank you so so much…” he gets stressed easily so seeing how much you care for him makes him tear up.

———————————————————

MASTERLIST

Thank you all so much for reading my silly headcanons [And also 20 followers]! I wanted to say “Loves Eskimo kisses” but I remembered he doesn’t rlly have a nose (πーπ). But yeah anyways… if you have requests don’t be shy and ask! I’d be happy to work on requests! Have a great day/night!

- Your Ghost ༼ つ ╹ ╹ ༽つ

[deancaspinefest]

Another Kind of Memory

Author: FriendofCarlotta | Artist: Aggiedoll

Posting on Wednesday March 20

Since a traumatic incident six years ago, Castiel Novak’s face has been disfigured by a scar. He’s resigned himself to being someone people can barely stand to look at, let alone love. Except his heart doesn’t seem to have gotten the message. When Dean Winchester takes over the convenience store down the street from Castiel’s bookshop, Castiel falls helplessly in love with his new neighbor. To make matters worse, Castiel’s sister Anna is also interested in Dean. Believing that Dean could never love him, Castiel decides to help Anna win his heart instead.

Keep reading for a sneak preview!

“Hey,” Dean says. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. Just… wanted to say hi.”

“Oh. Hi,” Castiel says, one hand fluttering nervously down his face and across his hair in an attempt to ensure he’s looking presentable. The tips of his fingers catch on the ugly, jagged ridge of his scar, and he remembers that “presentable” stopped being an option six years ago. He clears his throat and arranges his face in the polite mask of a consummate customer service professional. “Anything I can help you find?”

“Um.” Dean looks uncertain now, as though it’s a question he wasn’t expecting — despite the fact that it’s easily the most predictable question one could be asked in a bookshop. “I don’t know. I was just gonna browse, I guess.”

This is the point in a customer interaction where Castiel would usually withdraw, because “I’m just browsing” is universal bookstore code for “leave me the fuck alone.” But Dean doesn’t give any sign of wanting to walk away. Instead, he simply hovers in front of Castiel’s armchair, eyes gliding aimlessly (and somewhat helplessly) across the shelves to his right.

“What sort of things do you like to read?” Castiel finds himself asking, because it’s impossible not to take pity on a grown man who is capable of looking so bashfully lost.

“Anything,” Dean says. One of his hands flies to the back of his neck, rubbing at it. There’s something terribly endearing about the gesture — perhaps the fact that it makes him look like a boy who’s been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

Belatedly, it occurs to Castiel that it’s his turn to speak. His prolonged silence appears to have made Dean nervous, because he’s speaking again, a little too quickly to be altogether natural. “I know that sounds stupid. Like those people who say they like all kinds of music — which I don’t, by the way, just to be clear. Big classic rock fan. Zeppelin, the Stones. Metallica too, which I guess is classic rock these days and fuck, that’s kind of depressing. But, yeah. Anyway. Pretty much anything. Love Vonnegut and Kerouac, but I’ve read just about all their stuff. I’ll read sci-fi, horror, mysteries… actually, I guess I should say I read all kinds of fiction. Non-fiction kinda puts me right to sleep. My brother, Sammy, he’s a big fan though. Crazy about true crime for some reason.” Dean blows out a heavy breath. He abruptly seems to realize he’s scratching at his neck and lowers his arm back down, fingers twitching as if unsure what to do with themselves now. “You probably didn’t need to know all that, huh?”

“No, this is helpful,” Castiel says, getting up. “I’ll show you the layout of the store so you can see which shelves you might be most interested in.”

Somehow, Dean’s shyness makes him feel more at ease. When he first laid eyes on Dean, he thought someone as handsome as Dean must be a smooth and confident conversationalist. But he doesn’t seem to be, and somehow, that makes it easier for Castiel to hold up his own end of the conversation.

Or maybe it’s just that Dean doesn’t know how to talk to someone like Castiel. He wouldn’t be the first one.

(continue reading on Ao3 on Wednesday March 20)

[wndaswife]

Please please make a drabble about Taylor Sloane being denied to cum by reader because she's been bratty all day 🥺

「 taylor sloane & gn!reader 」

tags: smut, fluff, fingering, edging, praise, daddy kink, sub!taylor sloane, dom!reader. MINORS DNI.

word count: 1848

summary: Taylor snaps at you for trying to get her to feel sorry for how she treated the waiter at the restaurant you ate at together, and instead of letting her cool off, you decide to teach her a quick lesson.

“Yeah, this wasn’t what we ordered,” Taylor bit at the waiter, looking up at him with an unamused expression. 

He turned back to your table and flipped through his notepad. “The… the shrimp fettuccine alfredo?” he read out loud, looking up at Taylor.

“I’m allergic to shrimp,” she said, pushing her plate towards him. “I wouldn’t have ordered that.”

You rested your forehead in your hand then looked out past the open balcony of the restaurant.

“I apologise for the misunderstanding,” the waiter apologised quickly. “Would you like me to take this away for you and come back with something else?”

Dismissively, Taylor replied, “Get the shrimp out of it. I want a new one.”

You heard the waiter take the plate from the table and scurry off.

“Can you believe that?” your girlfriend scoffed with the waiter still in earshot. 

“It was a mistake,” you said, straightening and looking down at your bruschetta.

Taylor adjusted the fork and wine glass on her side of the table as if cleaning up the restaurant’s poor presentation. “After hearing the good reviews of these guys, you’d think they’d at least be someplace that pays attention to their orders,” she complained.

Ignoring her continued whining, you picked up a piece of bruschetta. 

“Can I have a bite?” Taylor asked, leaning forward in her seat and smiling at you. 

You positioned the bruschetta forward in front of her mouth and she stuck her hand underneath it to catch its crumbs before taking a bite. She hummed satisfiedly as she chewed.

“That’s really fucking good,” she said when she swallowed. 

“Gonna post a positive review on your Instagram?”

She answered with a laugh, “No. They still got my order wrong.”

Now feeling irritated by her snarkiness, you said, “Taylor, it was an accident, Jesus. It’s still a perfectly fine restaurant.”

“When you have standing like I do on social media, then you’ll realise how important it is that I recommend actual good restaurants to my followers,” she replied, leaning back in her seat and looking over at the restaurant’s kitchen. 

Taylor had good intentions, truly, she did. That knowledge was what kept your head together when she acted out like she did at the restaurant. Here and there, you’d bring certain situations up again at home or somewhere private, expressing how she’d made you uncomfortable. She was mostly understanding and mostly apologetic. 

But not today.

“I didn’t love how you were behaving at the restaurant earlier,” you told her, setting down the house keys. 

Sometimes it helped to be honest with her. You’d discussed this together before, previously setting boundaries about each other’s comfort and prioritising honesty. 

Taylor scoffed and set her boots off to the side. “Behaving?” she jeered. “What am I, a child?”

“Are you?” you asked, following her into the living room where she sat down on the couch. “Because that’s how you were acting.”

She leaned forward, her hands on her knees. “Sure, okay, Y/N, then let’s just let them get away with having shitty customer service,” she retorted sarcastically, rolling her eyes and leaning back onto the couch. 

You sat down beside her and turned on the television. “I don’t know what the big deal is,” you told her.

Taylor sat up on the couch, straightening her back and leaning forward with her arms thrown up in the air. “It’s not a big deal!” she said. “You’re making it a big deal. It’s a fucking restaurant.” She slumped back down onto the couch and crossed her arms petulantly.

For a moment you considered just letting her cool off and find it in her to apologise at some point. She would have to apologise for being a bitch sooner or later, because it truly wasn’t acceptable for her to treat those people the way she did simply because they misheard her order.

You looked over your shoulder to her and she was practically pouting, looking over at the window with her arms still crossed.

Then an idea came to you.

You set the remote down, letting some movie the two of you had been watching before you left for the restaurant play in the background. You moved close to her, placing a hand on her knee.

“Come on, Taylor, you know I don’t like to argue,” you said. “I don’t wanna see you all pouty.”

That made her more upset and she pushed your hand away while protesting, “I’m not pouty!”

“Okay, fine. You’re not pouty,” you gave in. “But I know you’re upset.” You moved closer so you could wrap your arm around her shoulders, bringing her in for a hug.

She looked away from you stubbornly.

You coerced, “Don’t be so childish. Tay, come on.”

“I’m not,” she answered.

“Prove it. Give me a kiss to show you’re not being a brat about it.”

While considering your words for a while, Taylor didn’t respond. Then finally she turned her head back to you and pecked your lips. 

“There,” she bit. “Are you happy n-”

You wrapped your hand around her chin suddenly, keeping her face towards you as you continued to kiss her. With your free hand, you pulled her legs towards you so she was no longer balled up on the side of the couch. You carefully mounted her. 

Her protests were muffled against your lips as she pushed at your shoulders and tried kicking you off. Your lips found her neck and Taylor’s squirming ceased. She pressed her lips together tightly and tried her hardest not to show any indication of pleasure. 

But as you looked up at her from the soft slope between her shoulder and neck, you saw the way her eyes were shut tightly and felt the way her hand began to run up your back encouragingly.

Spoiling her a bit more, you groped her breast through her blouse, pulling the collar of it down slightly to slip your hand down beyond her bra, your fingers brushing against her nipple that hardened at your brief contact.

She shuddered beneath you and finally uttered out a quiet, “Y/N, please, more.”

“You want more, baby?” you asked, kissed her cheek.

Your girlfriend nodded quickly and her arms wrapped themselves around your torso. 

Quick to oblige, your free hand ran down her stomach while you met her soft lips with your own, feeling her moan and exhale against you as you undid her shorts and slipped your hand into her panties. 

Your fingers came into contact with her already-wet cunt and you ran your fingertips through her folds languidly. 

“Oh, my pretty girl, this is all for me now, is it?” you inquired, giving her breast a harsh squeeze. Her body arched from the couch and with her hands flattened against your upper back, she pulled you against her so she could feel you close.

“Mhm,” she answered. “Always for you, Y/N.”

You kissed her lips and took her bottom lip between your teeth, tugging at it teasingly before letting go and pressing your lips to her temple. You drew circles against her opening with the pads of two fingers then after a moment, you slid three digits into her.

Taylor moaned and she buried her face in your neck. 

“That’s my good girl,” you praised and felt her clench around your fingers at hearing your words. 

Your thumb began flicking at her clit as your fingers found a pace to fuck her with. The confines of her jean shorts only allowed you to pull out so much, so you supplemented and thrusted your fingers back in with a certain force you knew she liked.

She began to massage her own breast while you worked on the other, clumsily pulling down her bra and collar of her sundress underneath her tits to allow her to tug at her nipple. 

You parted your fingers inside of her, spreading her soft walls apart. You peppered her neck in kisses, moaning against her skin and letting her hear how much you loved she way she felt, how much you loved fucking her pussy. 

“I’m close, daddy, please,” she pleaded, running her fingernails down your clothed back in desperation.

You lifted your head and released her breast to cup her cheek, making her face you. You kissed her swollen pink lips now removed of her lipstick and spoke against them, “I want to see you come for me, baby.”

Taylor was a wonderful lover in bed, simply because anything she refused to tell you you’d always be able to map out with her body. Oh, and how you loved shaping her with your hands, uncovering her secrets with her body and communicating in a language only the two of you knew.

You felt her as she grew close to her orgasm; she hugged you tighter, her breath hitched and nearly caught in her throat, her walls clenched around your fingers, she lifted her hips up and chased that flicking of your thumb against her clit.

You pulled out of her within a blink of an eye, leaving her to pant and catch her breath, feeling the way her heart beat wildly in her chest and the way sweat dripped down the back of her neck. Finding that it would’ve been cruel to laugh at her confused expression, you repressed your laughter and simply kissed her forehead as you pulled her bra and sundress back up and buttoned her shorts.

She stuttered as she sat up, “N-No, but I-I wasn’t… I didn’t-”

“I know,” you answered simply then pecked her lips. You slid your fingers into your mouth, tasting her juices and sitting back down in your previous spot. 

“Better than the bruschetta, really,” you teased once you licked the last bit of her from your fingers.

But Taylor wasn’t even listening to the joke she certainly would’ve playfully kicked you for. She sat up onto her knees and leaned against you, tugging at your sleeve and arm.

“Please! Please, Y/N!” she begged.

But you just replayed the last fifteen minutes of the movie, seemingly having moved on.

“Please, I apologise, okay?” she supplemented desperately. “I’m sorry for being such a bitch at the restaurant. I’ll… I’ll write them a good review on my Instagram, even. Y/N, please!”

You couldn’t hold back your laughter and you looked over at her, trying to pull your arm away. But she had a pretty tight grip on it. “Taylor, oh my god,” you laughed.

“Please!”

Meeting her eyes, you saw the genuine remorse for her actions somewhere past her crazed libido. Not that you were surprised, because like you’d always known, Taylor did have good intentions despite her habit of being a bit of a brat.

Damn.

She had you wrapped around her finger.

Seriously.

You placed your hands on her hips and lifted her onto your lap, uttering a playfully begrudged, “Fine.”

Taylor cheered and hugged her arms around your neck, kissing your face all over. 

“Oka-ay,” you whined. “Arms up. I gotta take your dress off.”

She obeyed quickly, but not before pecking your lips again.

──────── ⋆⋅✧⋅⋆ ────────

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Big Tech’s “attention rents”

Tomorrow (Nov 4), I'm keynoting the Hackaday Supercon in Pasadena, CA.

The thing is, any feed or search result is "algorithmic." "Just show me the things posted by people I follow in reverse-chronological order" is an algorithm. "Just show me products that have this SKU" is an algorithm. "Alphabetical sort" is an algorithm. "Random sort" is an algorithm.

Any process that involves more information than you can take in at a glance or digest in a moment needs some kind of sense-making. It needs to be put in some kind of order. There's always gonna be an algorithm.

But that's not what we mean by "the algorithm" (TM). When we talk about "the algorithm," we mean a system for ordering information that uses complex criteria that are not precisely known to us, and than can't be easily divined through an examination of the ordering.

There's an idea that a "good" algorithm is one that does not seek to deceive or harm us. When you search for a specific part number, you want exact matches for that search at the top of the results. It's fine if those results include third-party parts that are compatible with the part you're searching for, so long as they're clearly labeled. There's room for argument about how to order those results – do highly rated third-party parts go above the OEM part? How should the algorithm trade off price and quality?

It's hard to come up with an objective standard to resolve these fine-grained differences, but search technologists have tried. Think of Google: they have a patent on "long clicks." A "long click" is when you search for something and then don't search for it again for quite some time, the implication being that you've found what you were looking for. Google Search ads operate a "pay per click" model, and there's an argument that this aligns Google's ad division's interests with search quality: if the ad division only gets paid when you click a link, they will militate for placing ads that users want to click on.

Platforms are inextricably bound up in this algorithmic information sorting business. Platforms have emerged as the endemic form of internet-based business, which is ironic, because a platform is just an intermediary – a company that connects different groups to each other. The internet's great promise was "disintermediation" – getting rid of intermediaries. We did that, and then we got a whole bunch of new intermediaries.

Usually, those groups can be sorted into two buckets: "business customers" (drivers, merchants, advertisers, publishers, creative workers, etc) and "end users" (riders, shoppers, consumers, audiences, etc). Platforms also sometimes connect end users to each other: think of dating sites, or interest-based forums on Reddit. Either way, a platform's job is to make these connections, and that means platforms are always in the algorithm business.

Whether that's matching a driver and a rider, or an advertiser and a consumer, or a reader and a mix of content from social feeds they're subscribed to and other sources of information on the service, the platform has to make a call as to what you're going to see or do.

These choices are enormously consequential. In the theory of Surveillance Capitalism, these choices take on an almost supernatural quality, where "Big Data" can be used to guess your response to all the different ways of pitching an idea or product to you, in order to select the optimal pitch that bypasses your critical faculties and actually controls your actions, robbing you of "the right to a future tense."

I don't think much of this hypothesis. Every claim to mind control – from Rasputin to MK Ultra to neurolinguistic programming to pick-up artists – has turned out to be bullshit. Besides, you don't need to believe in mind control to explain the ways that algorithms shape our beliefs and actions. When a single company dominates the information landscape – say, when Google controls 90% of your searches – then Google's sorting can deprive you of access to information without you knowing it.

If every "locksmith" listed on Google Maps is a fake referral business, you might conclude that there are no more reputable storefront locksmiths in existence. What's more, this belief is a form of self-fulfilling prophecy: if Google Maps never shows anyone a real locksmith, all the real locksmiths will eventually go bust.

If you never see a social media update from a news source you follow, you might forget that the source exists, or assume they've gone under. If you see a flood of viral videos of smash-and-grab shoplifter gangs and never see a news story about wage theft, you might assume that the former is common and the latter is rare (in reality, shoplifting hasn't risen appreciably, while wage-theft is off the charts).

In the theory of Surveillance Capitalism, the algorithm was invented to make advertisers richer, and then went on to pervert the news (by incentivizing "clickbait") and finally destroyed our politics when its persuasive powers were hijacked by Steve Bannon, Cambridge Analytica, and QAnon grifters to turn millions of vulnerable people into swivel-eyed loons, racists and conspiratorialists.

As I've written, I think this theory gives the ad-tech sector both too much and too little credit, and draws an artificial line between ad-tech and other platform businesses that obscures the connection between all forms of platform decay, from Uber to HBO to Google Search to Twitter to Apple and beyond:

https://pluralistic.net/HowToDestroySurveillanceCapitalism

As a counter to Surveillance Capitalism, I've proposed a theory of platform decay called enshittification, which identifies how the market power of monopoly platforms, combined with the flexibility of digital tools, combined with regulatory capture, allows platforms to abuse both business-customers and end-users, by depriving them of alternatives, then "twiddling" the knobs that determine the rules of the platform without fearing sanction under privacy, labor or consumer protection law, and finally, blocking digital self-help measures like ad-blockers, alternative clients, scrapers, reverse engineering, jailbreaking, and other tech guerrilla warfare tactics:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

One important distinction between Surveillance Capitalism and enshittification is that enshittification posits that the platform is bad for everyone. Surveillance Capitalism starts from the assumption that surveillance advertising is devastatingly effective (which explains how your racist Facebook uncles got turned into Jan 6 QAnons), and concludes that advertisers must be well-served by the surveillance system.

But advertisers – and other business customers – are very poorly served by platforms. Procter and Gamble reduced its annual surveillance advertising budget from $100m//year to $0/year and saw a 0% reduction in sales. The supposed laser-focused targeting and superhuman message refinement just don't work very well – first, because the tech companies are run by bullshitters whose marketing copy is nonsense, and second because these companies are monopolies who can abuse their customers without losing money.

The point of enshittification is to lock end-users to the platform, then use those locked-in users as bait for business customers, who will also become locked to the platform. Once everyone is holding everyone else hostage, the platform uses the flexibility of digital services to play a variety of algorithmic games to shift value from everyone to the business's shareholders. This flexibility is supercharged by the failure of regulators to enforce privacy, labor and consumer protection standards against the companies, and by these companies' ability to insist that regulators punish end-users, competitors, tinkerers and other third parties to mod, reverse, hack or jailbreak their products and services to block their abuse.

Enshittification needs The Algorithm. When Uber wants to steal from its drivers, it can just do an old-fashioned wage theft, but eventually it will face the music for that kind of scam:

https://apnews.com/article/uber-lyft-new-york-city-wage-theft-9ae3f629cf32d3f2fb6c39b8ffcc6cc6

The best way to steal from drivers is with algorithmic wage discrimination. That's when Uber offers occassional, selective drivers higher rates than it gives to drivers who are fully locked to its platform and take every ride the app offers. The less selective a driver becomes, the lower the premium the app offers goes, but if a driver starts refusing rides, the wage offer climbs again. This isn't the mind-control of Surveillance Capitalism, it's just fraud, shaving fractional pennies off your paycheck in the hopes that you won't notice. The goal is to get drivers to abandon the other side-hustles that allow them to be so choosy about when they drive Uber, and then, once the driver is fully committed, to crank the wage-dial down to the lowest possible setting:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

This is the same game that Facebook played with publishers on the way to its enshittification: when Facebook began aggressively courting publishers, any short snippet republished from the publisher's website to a Facebook feed was likely to be recommended to large numbers of readers. Facebook offered publishers a vast traffic funnel that drove millions of readers to their sites.

But as publishers became more dependent on that traffic, Facebook's algorithm started downranking short excerpts in favor of medium-length ones, building slowly to fulltext Facebook posts that were fully substitutive for the publisher's own web offerings. Like Uber's wage algorithm, Facebook's recommendation engine played its targets like fish on a line.

When publishers responded to declining reach for short excerpts by stepping back from Facebook, Facebook goosed the traffic for their existing posts, sending fresh floods of readers to the publisher's site. When the publisher returned to Facebook, the algorithm once again set to coaxing the publishers into posting ever-larger fractions of their work to Facebook, until, finally, the publisher was totally locked into Facebook. Facebook then started charging publishers for "boosting" – not just to be included in algorithmic recommendations, but to reach their own subscribers.

Enshittification is modern, high-tech enabled, monopolistic form of rent seeking. Rent-seeking is a subtle and important idea from economics, one that is increasingly relevant to our modern economy. For economists, a "rent" is income you get from owning a "factor of production" – something that someone else needs to make or do something.

Rents are not "profits." Profit is income you get from making or doing something. Rent is income you get from owning something needed to make a profit. People who earn their income from rents are called rentiers. If you make your income from profits, you're a "capitalist."

Capitalists and rentiers are in irreconcilable combat with each other. A capitalist wants access to their factors of production at the lowest possible price, whereas rentiers want those prices to be as high as possible. A phone manufacturer wants to be able to make phones as cheaply as possible, while a patent-troll wants to own a patent that the phone manufacturer needs to license in order to make phones. The manufacturer is a capitalism, the troll is a rentier.

The troll might even decide that the best strategy for maximizing their rents is to exclusively license their patents to a single manufacturer and try to eliminate all other phones from the market. This will allow the chosen manufacturer to charge more and also allow the troll to get higher rents. Every capitalist except the chosen manufacturer loses. So do people who want to buy phones. Eventually, even the chosen manufacturer will lose, because the rentier can demand an ever-greater share of their profits in rent.

Digital technology enables all kinds of rent extraction. The more digitized an industry is, the more rent-seeking it becomes. Think of cars, which harvest your data, block third-party repair and parts, and force you to buy everything from acceleration to seat-heaters as a monthly subscription:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

The cloud is especially prone to rent-seeking, as Yanis Varoufakis writes in his new book, Technofeudalism, where he explains how "cloudalists" have found ways to lock all kinds of productive enterprise into using cloud-based resources from which ever-increasing rents can be extracted:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/28/cloudalists/#cloud-capital

The endless malleability of digitization makes for endless variety in rent-seeking, and cataloging all the different forms of digital rent-extraction is a major project in this Age of Enshittification. "Algorithmic Attention Rents: A theory of digital platform market power," a new UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose paper by Tim O'Reilly, Ilan Strauss and Mariana Mazzucato, pins down one of these forms:

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/public-purpose/publications/2023/nov/algorithmic-attention-rents-theory-digital-platform-market-power

The "attention rents" referenced in the paper's title are bait-and-switch scams in which a platform deliberately enshittifies its recommendations, search results or feeds to show you things that are not the thing you asked to see, expect to see, or want to see. They don't do this out of sadism! The point is to extract rent – from you (wasted time, suboptimal outcomes) and from business customers (extracting rents for "boosting," jumbling good results in among scammy or low-quality results).

The authors cite several examples of these attention rents. Much of the paper is given over to Amazon's so-called "advertising" product, a $31b/year program that charges sellers to have their products placed above the items that Amazon's own search engine predicts you will want to buy:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola

This is a form of gladiatorial combat that pits sellers against each other, forcing them to surrender an ever-larger share of their profits in rent to Amazon for pride of place. Amazon uses a variety of deceptive labels ("Highly Rated – Sponsored") to get you to click on these products, but most of all, they rely two factors. First, Amazon has a long history of surfacing good results in response to queries, which makes buying whatever's at the top of a list a good bet. Second, there's just so many possible results that it takes a lot of work to sift through the probably-adequate stuff at the top of the listings and get to the actually-good stuff down below.

Amazon spent decades subsidizing its sellers' goods – an illegal practice known as "predatory pricing" that enforcers have increasingly turned a blind eye to since the Reagan administration. This has left it with few competitors:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/19/fake-it-till-you-make-it/#millennial-lifestyle-subsidy

The lack of competing retail outlets lets Amazon impose other rent-seeking conditions on its sellers. For example, Amazon has a "most favored nation" requirement that forces companies that raise their prices on Amazon to raise their prices everywhere else, which makes everything you buy more expensive, whether that's a Walmart, Target, a mom-and-pop store, or direct from the manufacturer:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/greedflation/#commissar-bezos

But everyone loses in this "two-sided market." Amazon used "junk ads" to juice its ad-revenue: these are ads that are objectively bad matches for your search, like showing you a Seattle Seahawks jersey in response to a search for LA Lakers merch:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-02/amazon-boosted-junk-ads-hid-messages-with-signal-ftc-says

The more of these junk ads Amazon showed, the more revenue it got from sellers – and the more the person selling a Lakers jersey had to pay to show up at the top of your search, and the more they had to charge you to cover those ad expenses, and the more they had to charge for it everywhere else, too.

The authors describe this process as a transformation between "attention rents" (misdirecting your attention) to "pecuniary rents" (making money). That's important: despite decades of rhetoric about the "attention economy," attention isn't money. As I wrote in my enshittification essay:

You can't use attention as a medium of exchange. You can't use it as a store of value. You can't use it as a unit of account. Attention is like cryptocurrency: a worthless token that is only valuable to the extent that you can trick or coerce someone into parting with "fiat" currency in exchange for it. You have to "monetize" it – that is, you have to exchange the fake money for real money.

The authors come up with some clever techniques for quantifying the ways that this scam harms users. For example, they count the number of places that an advertised product rises in search results, relative to where it would show up in an "organic" search. These quantifications are instructive, but they're also a kind of subtweet at the judiciary.

In 2018, SCOTUS's ruling in American Express v Ohio changed antitrust law for two-sided markets by insisting that so long as one side of a two-sided market was better off as the result of anticompetitive actions, there was no antitrust violation:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3346776

For platforms, that means that it's OK to screw over sellers, advertisers, performers and other business customers, so long as the end-users are better off: "Go ahead, cheat the Uber drivers, so long as you split the booty with Uber riders."

But in the absence of competition, regulation or self-help measures, platforms cheat everyone – that's the point of enshittification. The attention rents that Amazon's payola scheme extract from shoppers translate into higher prices, worse goods, and lower profits for platform sellers. In other words, Amazon's conduct is so sleazy that it even threads the infinitesimal needle that the Supremes created in American Express.

Here's another algorithmic pecuniary rent: Amazon figured out which of its major rivals used an automated price-matching algorithm, and then cataloged which products they had in common with those sellers. Then, under a program called Project Nessie, Amazon jacked up the prices of those products, knowing that as soon as they raised the prices on Amazon, the prices would go up everywhere else, so Amazon wouldn't lose customers to cheaper alternatives. That scam made Amazon at least a billion dollars:

https://gizmodo.com/ftc-alleges-amazon-used-price-gouging-algorithm-1850986303

This is a great example of how enshittification – rent-seeking on digital platforms – is different from analog rent-seeking. The speed and flexibility with which Amazon and its rivals altered their prices requires digitization. Digitization also let Amazon crank the price-gouging dial to zero whenever they worried that regulators were investigating the program.

So what do we do about it? After years of being made to look like fumblers and clowns by Big Tech, regulators and enforcers – and even lawmakers – have decided to get serious.

The neoliberal narrative of government helplessness and incompetence would have you believe that this will go nowhere. Governments aren't as powerful as giant corporations, and regulators aren't as smart as the supergeniuses of Big Tech. They don't stand a chance.

But that's a counsel of despair and a cheap trick. Weaker US governments have taken on stronger oligarchies and won – think of the defeat of JD Rockefeller and the breakup of Standard Oil in 1911. The people who pulled that off weren't wizards. They were just determined public servants, with political will behind them. There is a growing, forceful public will to end the rein of Big Tech, and there are some determined public servants surfing that will.

In this paper, the authors try to give those enforcers ammo to bring to court and to the public. For example, Amazon claims that its algorithm surfaces the products that make the public happy, without the need for competitive pressure to keep it sharp. But as the paper points out, the only successful new rival ecommerce platform – Tiktok – has found an audience for an entirely new category of goods: dupes, "lower-cost products that have the same or better features than higher cost branded products."

The authors also identify "dark patterns" that platforms use to trick users into consuming feeds that have a higher volume of things that the company profits from, and a lower volume of things that users want to see. For example, platforms routinely switch users from a "following" feed – consisting of things posted by people the user asked to hear from – with an algorithmic "For You" feed, filled with the things the company's shareholders wish the users had asked to see.

Calling this a "dark pattern" reveals just how hollow and self-aggrandizing that term is. "Dark pattern" usually means "fraud." If I ask to see posts from people I like, and you show me posts from people who'll pay you for my attention instead, that's not a sophisticated sleight of hand – it's just a scam. It's the social media equivalent of the eBay seller who sends you an iPhone box with a bunch of gravel inside it instead of an iPhone. Tech bros came up with "dark pattern" as a way of flattering themselves by draping themselves in the mantle of dopamine-hacking wizards, rather than unimaginative con-artists who use a computer to rip people off.

These For You algorithmic feeds aren't just a way to increase the load of sponsored posts in a feed – they're also part of the multi-sided ripoff of enshittified platforms. A For You feed allows platforms to trick publishers and performers into thinking that they are "good at the platform," which both convinces to optimize their production for that platform, and also turns them into Judas Goats who conspicuously brag about how great the platform is for people like them, which brings their peers in, too.

In Veena Dubal's essential paper on algorithmic wage discrimination, she describes how Uber drivers whom the algorithm has favored with (temporary) high per-ride rates brag on driver forums about their skill with the app, bringing in other drivers who blame their lower wages on their failure to "use the app right":

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4331080

As I wrote in my enshittification essay:

If you go down to the midway at your county fair, you'll spot some poor sucker walking around all day with a giant teddy bear that they won by throwing three balls in a peach basket.

The peach-basket is a rigged game. The carny can use a hidden switch to force the balls to bounce out of the basket. No one wins a giant teddy bear unless the carny wants them to win it. Why did the carny let the sucker win the giant teddy bear? So that he'd carry it around all day, convincing other suckers to put down five bucks for their chance to win one:

https://boingboing.net/2006/08/27/rigged-carny-game.html

The carny allocated a giant teddy bear to that poor sucker the way that platforms allocate surpluses to key performers – as a convincer in a "Big Store" con, a way to rope in other suckers who'll make content for the platform, anchoring themselves and their audiences to it.

Platform can't run the giant teddy-bear con unless there's a For You feed. Some platforms – like Tiktok – tempt users into a For You feed by making it as useful as possible, then salting it with doses of enshittification:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilybaker-white/2023/01/20/tiktoks-secret-heating-button-can-make-anyone-go-viral/

Other platforms use the (ugh) "dark pattern" of simply flipping your preference from a "following" feed to a "For You" feed. Either way, the platform can't let anyone keep the giant teddy-bear. Once you've tempted, say, sports bros into piling into the platform with the promise of millions of free eyeballs, you need to withdraw the algorithm's favor for their content so you can give it to, say, astrologers. Of course, the more locked-in the users are, the more shit you can pile into that feed without worrying about them going elsewhere, and the more giant teddy-bears you can give away to more business users so you can lock them in and start extracting rent.

For regulators, the possibility of a "good" algorithmic feed presents a serious challenge: when a feed is bad, how can a regulator tell if its low quality is due to the platform's incompetence at blocking spammers or guessing what users want, or whether it's because the platform is extracting rents?

The paper includes a suite of recommendations, including one that I really liked:

Regulators, working with cooperative industry players, would define reportable metrics based on those that are actually used by the platforms themselves to manage search, social media, e-commerce, and other algorithmic relevancy and recommendation engines.

In other words: find out how the companies themselves measure their performance. Find out what KPIs executives have to hit in order to earn their annual bonuses and use those to figure out what the company's performance is – ad load, ratio of organic clicks to ad clicks, average click-through on the first organic result, etc.

They also recommend some hard rules, like reserving a portion of the top of the screen for "organic" search results, and requiring exact matches to show up as the top result.

I've proposed something similar, applicable across multiple kinds of digital businesses: an end-to-end principle for online services. The end-to-end principle is as old as the internet, and it decrees that the role of an intermediary should be to deliver data from willing senders to willing receivers as quickly and reliably as possible. When we apply this principle to your ISP, we call it Net Neutrality. For services, E2E would mean that if I subscribed to your feed, the service would have a duty to deliver it to me. If I hoisted your email out of my spam folder, none of your future emails should land there. If I search for your product and there's an exact match, that should be the top result:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/platforms-decay-lets-put-users-first

One interesting wrinkle to framing platform degradation as a failure to connect willing senders and receivers is that it places a whole host of conduct within the regulatory remit of the FTC. Section 5 of the FTC Act contains a broad prohibition against "unfair and deceptive" practices:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

That means that the FTC doesn't need any further authorization from Congress to enforce an end to end rule: they can simply propose and pass that rule, on the grounds that telling someone that you'll show them the feeds that they ask for and then not doing so is "unfair and deceptive."

Some of the other proposals in the paper also fit neatly into Section 5 powers, like a "sticky" feed preference. If I tell a service to show me a feed of the people I follow and they switch it to a For You feed, that's plainly unfair and deceptive.

All of this raises the question of what a post-Big-Tech feed would look like. In "How To Break Up Amazon" for The Sling, Peter Carstensen and Darren Bush sketch out some visions for this:

https://www.thesling.org/how-to-break-up-amazon/

They imagine a "condo" model for Amazon, where the sellers collectively own the Amazon storefront, a model similar to capacity rights on natural gas pipelines, or to patent pools. They see two different ways that search-result order could be determined in such a system:

"specific premium placement could go to those vendors that value the placement the most [with revenue] shared among the owners of the condo"

or

"leave it to owners themselves to create joint ventures to promote products"

Note that both of these proposals are compatible with an end-to-end rule and the other regulatory proposals in the paper. Indeed, all these policies are easier to enforce against weaker companies that can't afford to maintain the pretense that they are headquartered in some distant regulatory haven, or pay massive salaries to ex-regulators to work the refs on their behalf:

https://www.thesling.org/in-public-discourse-and-congress-revolvers-defend-amazons-monopoly/

The re-emergence of intermediaries on the internet after its initial rush of disintermediation tells us something important about how we relate to one another. Some authors might be up for directly selling books to their audiences, and some drivers might be up for creating their own taxi service, and some merchants might want to run their own storefronts, but there's plenty of people with something they want to offer us who don't have the will or skill to do it all. Not everyone wants to be a sysadmin, a security auditor, a payment processor, a software engineer, a CFO, a tax-preparer and everything else that goes into running a business. Some people just want to sell you a book. Or find a date. Or teach an online class.

Intermediation isn't intrinsically wicked. Intermediaries fall into pits of enshitffication and other forms of rent-seeking when they aren't disciplined by competitors, by regulators, or by their own users' ability to block their bad conduct (with ad-blockers, say, or other self-help measures). We need intermediaries, and intermediaries don't have to turn into rent-seeking feudal warlords. That only happens if we let it happen.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/03/subprime-attention-rent-crisis/#euthanize-rentiers

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[thatbadadvice]

Help! Death is inconvenient!

Dear Prudence, Slate, 6 December 2022:

Q. Bothersome Burials: Is it appropriate to hold a funeral on a Saturday? I have recently noticed that funerals are more frequently being held on Saturdays instead of weekdays and I think it is bad etiquette. On most Saturdays, we already have plans for weddings, baby showers, birthday parties, ski trips, softball tournaments, etc. and I am perturbed when we are expected to change those plans to attend funerals. It seems to me that when you lose someone very close to you that you should be taking time off of work anyway rather than waiting until your scheduled day off to have a funeral and grieve. When you lose an acquaintance, or perhaps do not know the deceased but still want to support your friends and family, you should be able to limit it to a few hours during the week and not give up your weekend plans. Also, it seems inconsiderate to make the funeral home and cemetery staff work on a Saturday. I believe that Saturdays should be off-limits, am I mistaken about this?

Dear Bothersome Burials,

Funerals should absolutely never be held on Saturdays, for all of the excellent reasons you describe. It is inconsiderate in the extreme to interrupt people's ski trips even for legitimate reasons (whatever they may be — nothing immediately springs to mind, but the Bad Advisor is sure someone somewhere will be able to drudge up an example). To derail a romp on the slopes for something as inconsequential as a community gathering to grieve the departure of a beloved friend or family member from the plane of existence as we know it frankly defies comprehension. For the snuffing out of one's mortal lamplight to cause scheduling conflicts around more minor commitments such as weddings and baby showers is naturally a lesser infraction — attendees can always simply RSVP to the next one, or the one after that — but nevertheless impolite. Of course, few will share your deep concern for the wellbeing of those death professionals who work on Saturdays despite undoubtedly being, as you are, shocked by and entirely unprepared to accommodate the customs and traditions surrounding the inevitable fate, old as life itself, that awaits all of us. But your selflessness is noted here nonetheless.

If you are mistaken about anything, it is in failing to interrogate the cause of these breaches of etiquette. There was a time when people treated each other with just a little more consideration — when we left our doors unlocked, our unvaccinated children played together barefoot in the streets until dawn, and we dropped dead when and only when it was convenient for people's busy weekend schedules. My mother would have rather died than shuffle off the mortal coil just before Little Maydelayne's big softball tournament! Sadly, people these days think only of themselves, their own needs, and their own petty concerns — to say nothing of their unwillingness to sacrifice a day of fun and fulfilling work to attend the final celebration of life for some douchebag who had the gall to kick the bucket without checking their second cousin's day-off calendar first. Grief is already experienced for only those fleeting moments we spend attending funeral services; it is unseemly to defer our limited 40- to 90-minute mourning periods until such a time as we can gather together in meaningful community.

Alas, that's the world we live in today! We can lay much of the blame on the obvious culprits — video games, reefer, and heavy metal music — but we would be doing ourselves a disservice if we did not admit that we are responsible for making time for what matters. The next time a cherished friend, loved one, or colleague sets off on that long, mysterious journey to the undiscovered country, we must prioritize the apres-ski reservations at the lodge bar.

[pascaloverx]

Rewrite The Stars

Chapter Four

Summary: One photo changes your whole life, when you accidentally bump into a celebrity and the world starts to believe that you are a couple.

chapter three chapter five

Pedro Pascal is a man of his word. The next day, a man mysteriously handed you an envelope with the new contract. It looks like this fake relationship is going to work. Along with the modified contract were instructions and a packet. In the instructions you had a specific place to go, your old place of work and in the package there were two options for dress, makeup and shoes. You were almost feeling like someone who was important. You got ready by putting on one of the dresses while wondering how whoever chose this for you knew your clothes and shoe size. When you finish getting ready, it's time to go to the restaurant. You have been instructed not to try to hide so you drive your car to the restaurant which was once his work environment. Inside you feel victorious to be returning as a customer but at the same time, you know that this is fake. Like a fairytale.

"You look beautiful darling." Pedro Pascal speaks as soon as you arrive, placing his hands on your shoulder to take off your coat.

"Darling?" You question as if you want to think about the nickname.

"Honey?" Pedro asks as we are heading to the table.

"Maybe sweetheart?" You suggest making fun of him. You just want to know how many nicknames you can make him say.

"What do you think babe?” He says as he holds the chair for you to sit.

"Do you want me to call you Papi in return?" You speak as he is sitting down and can see his surprise when you suggest this. It almost looks like you're going to give him an early heart attack.

"Maybe it's better to just say daddy, right?" You say laughing while waiting for his reaction, he tries not to smile but can't. You managed to get a smile from Pedro Pascal. Soon after the waiter appears to take orders.

'"I'll have the chef's suggestion and we'll have a bottle of your best red wine. My girlfriend is still choosing what to order. " He says, extending his hand under yours and stroking it lightly. If he thinks this will rush you, he's wrong.

"I'll have the same thing as him. Thank you for your service." You speak to what you imagine to be your replacement.

""I think I'll keep calling you girlfriend, it works better than any nickname." He says looking at you with such subtlety that you even notice how charming his eyes are. The power of big brown eyes.

"So maybe I should really call you daddy." You says, knowing that leaving Pedro Pascal embarrassed could be one of the best wonders of the world.

"Do you wanna dance?" He changes the subject, standing up and placing his hand in front of you. There is a group of violinists lightly playing romantic music in the background and you shake your head saying that you wanna dance.

"I can't guarantee I won't step on your feet, I'm a terrible dancer." You say holding his hands while one of his hands holds your waist.

"Just follow me and count the steps, one.. two.. three." He guides you and without you realizing it, he's dancing. Your closeness is getting closer and closer.

"It was a good idea to come here. It must be full of photographers outside right now." You say, bringing your head closer to his shoulder. It's such a smooth movement that you automatically do it.

"I think you're being a good girlfriend so far by the way." He compliments you and you are surprised but happy.

"You're not so bad either, boyfriend." You then rest your head on his chest as if you were resting your head. His company is so peaceful.

"Before we have dinner we have to have our first moment as an official couple." He says stopping the dance. You lift your head and wonder what this moment would be. Until he gets closer and you close your eyes waiting for the kiss you imagine will happen.

"What are you doing?" He whispers close to your ear and you shiver.

"Waiting for the kiss?" You respond, starting to question if that's what he meant.

"Extend your right hand to me." He commands and you extend without further questions.

"Y/N, would you do me the honor of being your boyfriend?" He says holding your hand and putting a ring on it. You finally open your eyes and see the most beautiful ring you've ever seen in your life.

"The honor is all mine." You say afterwards, hugging him, pretending to be euphoric. And then he finally kisses you. Not a movie kiss with a lot of passion but a soft kiss, as if he already knew your lips. You returned the kiss, feeling in your heart that it would be difficult to remember that this was all a lie.

tag: @wanniiieeee, @hungrhay

[tenshinokorin]

TnK's Trigun Fic Listing

Ok now that I've got 15 fics out for Trigun (so far) and at least a couple of those are upwards of 20K and some of them are sequels and followups and ongoing, I thought maybe I should do a proper list of things, to make it easier for people who want to read in some kind of order. I'm terrible about talking up my own work but this is also for my own reference so that's fine, right? ^^; All fics are Vashwood-centric (I will get to Nai in a minute I have a backlog) and ratings vary from Gen to Explicit, though all are intended for an adult audience. This list is complete as of September '23, I will update it periodically as needed! 

NB: I'm lucky enough to have gotten fanart for some of these and sometime when my head is not full of mud I'll go in and add links to those where I can. (Or please drop a link in the replies if you are one of the wonderful artists in question!) 

THE BIG THREE STORYLINES: 

Someday Out of the Blue & I Believe in the Kingdom Come

Trigun '98 canon. Reincarnation fic. The first one is a story I started writing over 20 years ago and quit after a chapter because I was just too heartbroken (and did not know it, but was also too young). Picked it up and finished it this April (2023) after Stampede clobbered me and I fell off the "we don't talk about wolfwood" wagon. The second story is a direct sequel to tie up some loose ends from the first one, and also to indulge my need for a proper happy ending. (I think a lot of folks don't realize Someday has a sequel but it does!!) 

Black is the Color and Mysterious Ways

Trimax Canon. Resurrection/Fix-it/Angstmance with a much shorter, sillier, smuttier epilogue. Three years after the end of Trigun Maximum, Vash is having some trouble laying his ghosts to rest. (You may have seen this incredible artwork which has gotten around a bit and boosts the story better than any summary of mine possibly could.) Weird things happened when I was writing this, I don't mind telling you. Mysterious Ways was mostly an excuse to explore some of the more interesting concepts brought up by the first one, but saying anything more would be spoilery. 

Eyes of the Storm

(Mostly) Trimax canon. Cryptid Vash AU, slowburn romance, ongoing. When Nicholas D. Wolfwood gets roped into being the new caretaker for the now-abandoned orphanage where he spent his childhood, he soon finds out that his own hidden memories are not the only thing haunting him. (What the fuck is a Typhoon?) Wolfwood, Vash, Livio, Elendira, et al. This is the one currently in progress at six chapters out of ??. Pretty SFW so far BUT NOT FOR MUCH LONGER CAVEAT LECTOR. 

List continues with standalone and shorter fics below the cut!

Honeymoon

Generic Trimax/98 setting. Plant Heat, Wingfic, Tentacle Fic, What the fuck is Hay Fever. Wolfwood offers to help Vash out with a personal problem and gets a little more than he bargained for. 

Strange Powers

Generic Trimax/98 setting, comedy/smut/potato jokes/fisting with a loaded prosthetic. What if Vash and Wolfwood (accidentally) got really, really hella high? 

Hurricane

Trigun '98 Canon. 

Vash: Make money? As a priest?

WW: Well. *mysteriously* Not only that. 

Vash: (oh my gosh he's a prostitute)

Shortfic. Wolfwood tries to figure out how to offer his services to someone he doesn't really want to be a paying customer. Short and smutty while also demolishing Wolfwood's professional boundaries.

Skin Tight

Generic Trimax/98 setting. The Infamous Red Dress. PWP, Wolfwood needs to be in the Vash Sensory Deprivation Tank, Vash in high heels, the dress gave its life for this fic you should read it and honor its sacrifice. Look. This is just porn, guys. You want the porny fic? This is the porny fic. (just kidding most of them are porny fics but this one is especially so.) 

Secondhand Secrets

Generic Trimax/98 setting. Introspective/Vignette/Wolfwood POV. Vash's artificial arm always moves in his sleep, and Wolfwood wonders what he's looking for.

Personal Jesus

Badlands Rumble canon (post-film), Wolfwood has poor emotional coping strategies, hurt/comfort (Wolfwood provides both), first-time. That red hotel minifridge never stood a chance. 

A Fool From Any Direction

Trigun '98 Vash's weird horny schtick is a front, and self-respect doesn't save lives. Which is too bad because when Wolfwood finds out what Vash is planning next he's gonna kill him. 

Benediction

Trimax but could also be '98; Sometimes being a hero is not all it's cracked up to be. Or maybe Vash is the one cracking up. Hurt/Comfort, Wound Care & Bible Quotes, Noman's Land is a bitch of a planet. Shortfic, feels, non-explicit/no sex. 

A Bit of a Tight Spot

Generic Trimax/98 setting. Costume Porn, PWP, No corsets were harmed in the making of this fic. I feel like this one gets missed a lot which is MADDENING because you guys. WOLFWOOD'S DOUBLE Ds IN A CORSET. And like, in a gender euphoria way, not in a comedy drag kind of way (though comedy drag does make a small appearance). I don't know how the good minister tightlaced in cuban stockings while giving Vash a blowjob in front of a mirror in the attic of a whorehouse can get so often overlooked, maybe my title or summary is lacking, but it's one of the hottest things I've ever written and its engagement is just in the basement? When (emphatic baffled hand motions to Nicholas D. Wolfwood wearing a garter like a thigh-holster). Anyway. 

The Quick and the Bed

Trigun '98 Comedy, Romance, First Time. The single bed trope. Drunk Idiocy. Wolfwood's vows are in serious danger. (Wolfwood does not have vows.) Readers have let me know that they find this one amusing. Roommates of readers have sent me threats of bodily harm due to badly-stifled hysterical laughter at 3am. 

THAT'S ALL FOR NOW MORE STORIES WILL BE ADDED AS THEY OCCUR!

SMALL DISCLAIMER: I'm a full-time working writer and my fanfic is something I give away for free out of love. Please don't copy, alter, plagiarize, feed to AI in any form, fold, spindle, or mutilate. I'm not in the market for concrit, but if you like my stories please feel free to leave me a comment/kudo, download/print/fanbind for personal use, or let other readers know!

[sp1rit-realm]

༻¨*:· 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐅𝐓 ·:*¨༺

༻¨*:· summary ·:*¨༺ you hate remus lupin, and he hates you. what happens when you get stuck in a lift together?

༻¨*:· notes ·:*¨༺ 𖦹 hour three!!!!! 𖦹 enemies to ?? 𖦹 forced proximity 𖦹 fem!reader 𖦹 i did not proofread this bc i'm lazy ⎝(ˊᗜˋ)⎠ 𖦹 thank you for all the support on this series eeeekkkkkk you guys are the best

༻¨*:· word count ·:*¨༺ 𖦹 809

prologue / hour 2 << pt. 4 -- hour 3 >> hour 4

༻¨*:· 𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐑 𝟑 ·:*¨༺

Remus holds his cheek, "I said no slapping hard! What the fuck was that?"

"Oh, stop being a baby," You scoff, "I didn't even hit you that hard."

"Did too!" He argues.

"Did not!" You argue back.

"Did—" Remus is interrupted by his phone ringing.

"Hello?" He greets, and you see what he means when he says 'customer service voice.'

"Shoot," He sighs—it's funny hearing him try not to swear, "I forgot to tell you. I'm kind of stuck in a lift." He smiles worriedly, all wonky and wobbly.

'What a cute smile,' You think. Whiplash—that's what you get from looking away so fast. Where the fuck did that thought come from?

"I'm being genuine, Marty. I am stuck in a lift." Remus grimaces, and you can only assume his boss is yelling at him, "Well, what do you want me to do, Marty? Pry my way out of here?" He pauses, "No, that's not an actual option!"

You cover your mouth in an attempt to distort your voice, "Sir, the maintenance crew will be there in about five hours."

He shoots you a weird look, and then his boss says: "Okay, obviously you're stuck. You better come to work tomorrow, though!"

Remus grins, "Will do, Marty. Will do." 

He turns to you, bewildered, and asks: "Did you just... help me?"

"It's only because I can't stand how whiny you sounded," You cross your arms and stick your nose in the air.

"Well, I appreciate it." His voice is delicate, and your heart beats faster and faster and faster and— "I owe you one."

Your head snaps to him, "You do realize what you just said, right?"

He nods in full confidence.

"You owe me one. Am I hearing that right?" 

"Yup. I owe you."

You bask in it, grinning. 

Remus Lupin is making you grin, and you aren't bothered by it.

Remus finds himself grinning with you, and he—like you—doesn't care.

And then, you burst into laughter. It's music to Remus's ears, and he regrets not hearing it more. He regrets not being the cause of it. He regrets so much when it comes to you, but you'll never know that. That's what he decides.

He laughs with you, "What's so funny?"

"I think I'm going insane," You giggle, "Cos, well, I'm not minding you here," You take a deep breath, "Let's play a game."

Remus tilts his head, quirking an eyebrow, "A game?"

You gasp, "Let's play twenty questions!"

"...Okay. You go first."

"Are you a dog or cat person?"

Remus thinks for a moment, "Cat, I think. Okay, my turn." He puts his finger to his chin, "What's your favorite color?"

You tilt your head this time, but, unlike Remus, it's in confusion. "You know my favorite color," You smile at him with a weird, contorted expression.

He shakes his head.

"Yes, you do," You insist, "I told you."

"When?" He crosses his arms on the defense.

"At Lily's birthday. Remember? Back when we were..." You wave your hands around, "Not this."

He shakes his head, "No recollection." But his mind is screaming at him. He knows your favorite color—knows what shade. Hell, he knows the fucking hex code.

"Oh," You look at your shoes.

"It's not like you know mine. It's not a big deal."

"Green," You mutter, "Your favorite color is green." You still won't look at him, too scared of his reaction.

"How do you know that?"

You roll your eyes, piercing him with your glare, "'Cos you told me. You've told me plenty of things, believe it or not."

He laughs humorlessly, "When?"

"About a week after we met, you got really wasted and blabbed to me for about two hours." Your gaze returns to your scuffed shoes, "Also, Sirius wouldn't shut the fuck up about you before we met."

"What did I tell you?" Remus heats up with embarrassment at the fact that he doesn't remember—he needs to know what ammunition you have against him.

. • ☆ . ° .• °:. *₊ ° . ☆

"Just the person I wanted to see!" Remus shouts when you walk into the little pub you all frequent. You smile at him; he's holding a pint of beer, wearing that stupid smirk of his.

"Yeah?" You ask with a laugh, "I'm just the person you were looking for?"

He nods dramatically, "You heard it here first, babe."

. • ☆ . ° .• °:. *₊ ° . ☆

"You really don't remember?"

He, once again, shakes his head.

"It was the last day you were nice to me." You're not sure what prompts you to say it. Maybe you actually were going crazy—confessing things that you swore to never speak of.

And then, all the memories flood back into his brain. He flashes through the night in fractured seconds, catching glimpses of your smile and how pretty your hair looked. For a moment, he swears he's back there. Back when everything was simple for you two.

me when its getting good *evil smile*

lmk if u wanna b tagged!

@queerpumpkinnn @ay0nha @knaveism @whennyxfallsinlove @freezing-my-brain @starlit-epiphany @inkluvs @t3rritorial-piss1ngs @starsval @little-snow @bubybubsters @zvdvdlvr @venzami-burst @rosalyn-s @ttulipwritezz

[sjsmith56]

Customer Service

Summary: Bucky’s former girlfriend helps him buy a new suit, but he’s there for other reasons. First part of a two part series.

Length: 3.6 K

Characters: Unnamed OFC, named minor OFC, Bucky Barnes, Sam Wilson.

Warnings: Bucky showing up unannounced at her workplace, OFC remembering the not so good times, anxiety.

Author notes: Once upon a time I worked retail. An ex-spouse or lover showing up unannounced was always problematic. I’m not terribly knowledgeable about what men’s suits go with an athletic build, although my research did lean to a preference for the Hugo Boss and Calvin Klein labels.

🥾 👔 💔

“There’s a customer here that wants to speak to a manager,” said Lynette, the clerk at the customer service desk, sticking her head in the door of the office. She had a big smirk on her face. “I’m just warning you to be careful.”

I pulled my glasses off to glare at her as I really didn’t have time to deal with a grumpy customer. She shrugged.

“That’s why you get paid the big bucks.”

I followed her out and turned the corner where the most beautiful man I had ever seen leaned on the counter, someone I knew well and hadn’t expected to ever see again. Tall, broad-shouldered, with soft dark brown hair, rugged good looks, and a pair of blue eyes that pierced me as sharp as a knife. He had a smirk on his face as if he knew exactly the effect he had on me.

“Good afternoon, sir,” I said, trying to modulate my voice so that I didn’t give away that I knew him. “How can I be of assistance?”

He looked at me in surprise. I was going to be like that was I? Well, two could play that game.

“I would like to return these work boots,” he said, in a manner that indicated he wasn’t going to take no for an answer. “They fell apart the first time I used them at work.”

There was a black garbage bag on the counter that I assumed held the boots in question. Before I looked in it, I looked at him, trying to gauge if he was going to be one of those customers to me, in front of a witness. You know the type, someone who buys something to replace the worn-out ones he already has, then tries to pass the worn-out ones off as the newer model in order to get his money back. It’s a scam, and I could always pick out the type of person who would do that, which he wasn’t but it would be just like him to push the boundaries, trying to make me react to his being there. Internally I really hoped he wouldn’t go this far to punish me for ending it with him but his manner, although brusque, had none of the tells of someone who was trying to make life hard for me.

“Do you have your original receipt, sir?” I asked politely.

He nodded, pulled his wallet out of his jeans and opened it, revealing a carefully folded receipt that he handed to me, from his gloved hand. Lynette noticed the glove but stifled her reaction to it, except I could tell he noticed, as his eyes narrowed slightly, as if he was a little bothered. Briefly, his eyes flickered to mine. Had I not told anyone about us?

Swallowing, I opened the bag and looked inside at a pair of boots that had definitely seen better days. Although the top portion of them and the tread looked fairly new it was obvious that whatever mission he used them for was too much for the boots to handle. In several places the top part of the boot had pulled away from the sole. The stitching had also split in several of the stress points. I could only imagine what he went through that had caused this much damage to the boots. It was one of the reasons we broke up; nights of imagining the mission, wondering if he was alright but not hearing from him, not until he walked through the door all bruised and battered, sometimes still bleeding because he didn’t want to bother the medical staff. Meaning that I had to patch him up and deal with the stoic suffering he inflicted on himself by not believing he was worth being looked after.

“May I ask what line of work you’re in?” I asked politely. “These were new but seem to have been subjected to a lot of ….” I didn’t want to say the abuse word. “Um … stress.”

“I have a stressful job,” he answered, still playing the part of the customer who was a stranger to me. As if he hadn’t ever touched me in ways that no other man had; had never told me he loved me, who hadn’t argued with me sometimes just for the sake of arguing and liked seeing me all fired up because it meant the makeup sex after would be incredible. “It sometimes involves a lot of … running, jumping, kicking, and often moving through uneven terrain of all types.”

“Okay,” I replied, taking in a breath and deciding I couldn’t do this anymore. “I’ll authorize the refund, since your receipt shows you’ve only had them a week but obviously this brand won’t stand up to the pressures of your job. I would suggest you try a specialty footwear store that can provide something sturdier for you.”

His face changed when he realized I wasn’t going to prolong this moment anymore. Mentioning he should buy elsewhere could also be taken that I didn’t want to see him come back here, to where I worked. I entered the refund in the cash register, asking him to insert his bank card to finish the procedure, then had him sign our copy of the new receipt. I looked at the signature, J.B. Barnes, then at him.

“Is there a problem?” He looked at me with his eyebrows raised; as if he was willing me to say something, anything that he could respond to.

“No, no problem.” I made the mistake of getting caught by those eyes, becoming a little lost in them. It wouldn’t have been the first time those eyes made me change my mind, but not this time. “You have nice handwriting.”

“Thank you,” he smiled sadly, making my heart flutter a little. “I appreciate the good customer service.”

“You’re welcome,” I replied, then smiled my customer service smile as he turned around and walked away.

That should have been the end of it, except he turned around and looked at me one more time when he met up with Sam Wilson. He almost waved at me, but Bucky shook his head at him, and instead he just put his hand on his friend’s shoulder, in support. I heard Lynette gasp.

“That was Captain America,” she exclaimed. She grabbed the receipt that he signed. “That meant he was Bucky Barnes. He looked at you.”

“Of course, he looked at me. I was processing his refund.”

She wouldn’t stop talking about it, so I went out on the floor, wanting to get away from her incessant blathering about how I should go out with Bucky as it was obvious to her that he was sweet on me. Although I normally worked as a manager in the clothing department, I sometimes acted as customer service manager when that person had a day off. I still had a duty to walk around the store, making sure everything was working the way it should. That’s when I saw him again, Bucky, that is. He and Sam were in men’s wear, looking at shirts. By the sounds of it they were having a disagreement.

“Can I help you with something?” I asked.

They both turned to look at me then shared a look that can only be described as polar opposites. Sam grinned at Bucky, who scowled at him.

“He needs a dress shirt,” said Sam, playing along for the benefit of the male clerk on duty in men’s wear. “There’s a little problem in that he thinks a button cuff will be too tight. But he hasn’t worn a French cuff since the 1940s and thinks they’re old fashioned.”

“On the contrary,” I replied. “A French cuff is very fashionable. Personally, I think it offers a classy look to a man. Are you wearing a suit or a blazer?”

“Suit,” said Bucky, who seemed taller now that he wasn’t blocked by the customer service counter, taller than the last time he held me; broader than the last time I placed my head on his chest and listened to his heartbeat, sexier than the last time we made love.

“What colour of suit and what colour of shirt do you want?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I don’t even have a suit yet.”

“What’s the occasion?”

“A formal event that he doesn’t want to go to because he doesn’t have a date,” smirked Sam. Trust him to be blunt.

“Sam,” glared Bucky. He turned to me, looking a little flustered. “Sorry, I really don’t know what I want. He’s right. I haven’t bought a suit since the 1940s and the one suit I had then was what I could afford.”

He looked a little lost, not that I could blame him. Outside of his missions, his wardrobe consisted of black jeans, blue jeans, long and short sleeve T-shirts, and Henley shirts, and those plain black combat boots that he wore constantly. He never wanted to go out anywhere that required a suit; always saying that he just wanted to stay in, as I was all the entertainment he needed. It was nice until it became stifling. The male clerk was helping another customer, and I suddenly didn’t want Bucky to leave. When we were together, I offered to help him buy a suit, but he always turned me down, saying he didn’t want to be my customer. But if this was the only way I could show him that he would be more than that then I was going to take my shot.

“Would you like me to dress you?” I blurted out.

“Excuse me?” His eyes opened wide. “What do you mean?”

“Sorry,” I smiled. “What I mean is, would you like me to help you find the right suit and shirt for this event?”

“I don’t want to take you away from your manager duties,” he answered, still looking unsure.

“Our store prides itself on its customer service,” I stated. “It would be my pleasure to help you find the right clothing for this event, Mr. Barnes.”

“She knows what she’s doing, Bucky,” said Sam, in a low voice. “I think you should listen to the lady.”

“Alright.” Bucky’s acceptance of my offer was said softly but loud enough for both me and Sam to hear.

I called up to the office to advise them I was helping a customer in men’s wear, taking measurements for a new suit so I wouldn’t be available for the next half hour. Then I pulled a card out of a drawer and wrote James Buchanan Barnes in the Customer Name portion.

“I’ll mark all of your measurements here,” I said. “That way, you won’t have to be measured again if you ever decide to buy another suit with us. It will also mark your preferences in suit style, shirt style, colours, and shoe size.”

“Shoe size?” he asked.

“You will need a pair of dress shoes,” I replied, looking down at his combat boots, all worn and scuffed. “Those won’t exactly complete the look you’re going for.”

“No, I guess not,” he agreed. “What do you need me to do?”

“Well, we can start with taking your height and weight measurement,” I began. “We have a scale here, unless you’re pretty sure of what you weigh.”

His eyes went soft. “6 feet even, 220 lbs., it doesn’t change.”

I wrote it down. “We need to take your body measurements; in one of the dressing rooms if you want privacy as you’ll have to take your jacket off and your Henley. We can choose a shirt first then wear that while I take the suit measurements, so the jacket fits properly.”

“Let’s do that,” he agreed, and waited for me to lead him to one of the larger dressing rooms.

He took his jacket off, then his Henley. Sam took them while he sat in a chair. I got the measuring tape and stood in front of Bucky, before wrapping it around his neck, taking the neck measurement.

“How are you?” he asked, in a low voice meant just for me.

“Managing,” I answered, getting a slight grin from him at my pun. “You?”

“Existing,” he replied, making me look up at him, and noticing how tired he seemed.

I took his arm measurement and wrote both measurements down on the card. “So, what type of shirt would you like? Classic fit, with room for your shoulders? Close fitting to display your physique? Button cuffs, French cuffs?���

“Why don’t you pick out some suitable choices, so I can see them on me?” he suggested.

Nodding, I left him and Sam there and went out to our selection, looking for some candidates. I picked white ones, thinking that if he wanted a coloured shirt, he could grab one with the same size and features. Taking them into the dressing room I was surprised to see he had his T-shirt off.

His physique never failed to impress me. His vibranium arm and shoulder had been made to match his right arm and shoulder, and the Wakandans had done a superb job of duplicating the musculature of that limb. As I removed the updated classic look shirt from its package, then removed the pins holding it together, he watched me, standing close enough so that I was aware of his scent. That mixture of citrus and sandalwood, from a cologne I gave to him on his birthday, brought back memories of burying my face into his neck during our more intimate moments, breathing in his unique essence. Fumbling with one of the pins, I stopped and took a breath, recenterring myself before handing the shirt to him. Without a word, he took it and put it on then buttoned it up. I handed him some cufflinks to go with the French cuffs. Taking the glove off of his left hand he attached that cufflink first, then the next one before standing in front of the mirror and taking in the fit.

“That’s almost perfect,” I said. “The length is enough to tuck in, without the threat of it coming out. The shoulders are snug enough to show your form but roomy enough for your muscles to move. The French cuffs give you a tailored look with enough room not to bind your wrists.”

Sam coughed and we both looked at him, at his timing. “I didn’t say anything.”

With the shirt on I began measuring Bucky for the suit jacket, starting with the chest, over arm, neck, and sleeve length. Then I continued with the shoulders, waistcoat length, jacket length, bicep, wrist and stomach. The next set of measurements were for the pants, waist, hips, thigh, knee, then the rise, running the tape from the front of waist down over the crotch and up to his back. We both glared at Sam who pointedly looked elsewhere for that measurement as well as the inseam measurement, before finishing off with the out seam.

“We can go look at the suit styles,” I said. “I think with your broad shoulders and slim waist that you should stick with Hugo Boss or a Calvin Klein suit. They’ll need minimal tailoring to be fitted properly. You can leave the dress shirt on, while you try the jacket on the sales floor.”

Both men came out and I showed them the suits, not surprised when Bucky gravitated towards the black ones. Colour was hard for him, as he always thought it made him too visible. The arm already did that, in his opinion. He tried on several jackets in his size before he found one that he liked, nodding his head as he looked at himself in the mirror on the floor. I found his waist size in the matching slacks and draped them over my arm.

“Ties?” I asked, walking towards our display. “You have your choice of plain, patterned, paisley, stripes.”

“Plain, black,” stated Bucky. “Could I try a black shirt as well?”

As much as I wanted him to experiment a little, I also knew he would look stunning in a monochrome suit ensemble of black. I found a black shirt to match the white one he wore then took them back to the dressing room. While he put them on, Sam came with me to the shoe department to find a pair of shoes. As soon as we were some distance away, he stopped and hugged me.

“How are you?” His eyes were full of concern. “This must be hard for you.”

I shrugged. “I miss him, even with all of his quirks. He can’t just show up here unannounced. Why is he really here? He wouldn’t even step foot into the store before even though I offered to help him find clothes many times.”

“I know.” He looked back towards the men’s wear department. “This formal event is mandatory for him. We’re going to the White House to receive a commendation and attend a banquet. It’s made his anxiety level go up through the roof. You always had a way to keep him level. It was my idea to come here and hopefully get your help. The work boots still had to be returned. He just bought them on impulse when he came here by himself the first time to ask for your help but couldn’t find you.”

I began walking to the shoe department; suddenly angered that Bucky was only here so I could make him feel better. Sam hurried after me.

“Seriously? You thought I could give him an emergency psychological bandage to get him through an anxiety episode? You’re better than that, Sam.”

“He needs you. He’s pretty lost without you.”

I could feel the need to cry bubbling up from my stomach and stopped at a display of men’s shoes, plain black Oxfords. Picking up a pair I held them up to Sam.

“What do you think? He’s going to look great in the suit and these will be just the thing to finish it off.”

“Yeah, he’ll like them,” replied Sam. “Size 12.”

I went in back to find the shoe, taking the moment to compose myself before coming out with the box. We began walking back to men’s wear when Sam stopped me again. With a sigh I looked at him, feeling almost at the end of my tether.

“Tell me the truth, are you happier without him?”

What an unfair question to ask. I wasn’t happy. I was miserable but I just didn’t know if I had it in me to put up with everything else. The moodiness, the lack of communication, the emotional withdrawal that happened around every anniversary of his fall, the possessiveness … the good things we had never seemed to outweigh the negative. Without even answering Sam knew what I would say, and he touched my arm, then nodded his head sadly. As we stepped into the dressing room Bucky stood there in the suit, wearing the black shirt, with the black tie, and the black pocket square poking out of the chest pocket. I took the shoes out of the box, doing up the laces, then kneeled in front of Bucky, helping him on with the shoes, before pinning the length of the trousers to fit the shoes and stepping back to look at the almost finished product.

“There you go,” I said. “You look great.”

“I feel good,” he replied. “Thank you.” His eyes flickered to Sam.

“You do look good,” said his friend. “The all-black look suits you.”

“I’ll take it,” said Bucky. “All of it, and the white shirt as well, with a tie of your choice. Just so I have two looks.”

“I’ll pick something out while you get changed,” I said. “Then I’ll meet you at the desk. The slacks can be left here for our tailor to shorten. They’ll be ready in two days.”

I found a tie, a paisley design, black with silver and gold accents, that matched the colours of his vibranium arm. There was even a pocket square to match, and I tossed that on the pile. I entered the information of the suit on the card. It would be entered into our database so that anyone could help him find what he needed in the future.

Sam came out with the suit, shirts and shoes, placing them on the desk. Bucky came out a few moments later, seeming a little more withdrawn. After entering the work order for the slacks, I handed him a claim ticket. It seemed odd that in this digital age we still used paper claim tickets, but it was what our customers liked, as part of the service. I tallied up the total, presenting the amount to Bucky, and he didn’t bat an eye as he pulled a black credit card out of his wallet. It seemed the superhero business had finally started paying off. As he entered the code on the terminal, I placed the suit jacket and shirts into a suit bag, the shoes and ties in a paper shopping bag. Then the receipt was handed over, and I looked at him, wanting to say something other than my usual customer service ramble.

“You should launder the shirts before you wear them, just so they’re softer on your skin,” I suggested. “In the shoe department are some protective sprays that will help keep them looking good in wet weather. You can also polish them with regular shoe polish.” Those blue eyes met mine, boring into me, maybe for the last time. “I hope your event goes well. You’ll look great and you’ll be fine.”

“Thank you for your help,” he smiled softly, seemingly accepting that it was over.

He gathered up his bags and stood awkwardly for a moment before turning away. This time he didn’t look back.

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