#i like them a completely normal amount i promise

[shadowtraveled]

i know i’m constantly chewing drywall over shadowgast and it is because there’s so much to drive me insane there and i’m extremely fond of them and their batshit fire/mirror dynamic but if i even Think about essek’s induction to the mighty nein or his feelings toward and friendship with them i will lose my fucking mind

[moonlitleafs]

Me after 💃🏽🕺🏽👯‍♀️🕺🏽👯‍♀️🤜🏽🗣️🗣️💃🏽🕺🏽‼️⁉️‼️🗣️🗣️🗣️👯‍♀️💃🏽💃🏽 ing around my room: I am so normal about these characters. I swear

[seungisms]

( skz reaction ) condom or no condom .ᐟ 

🖇️📂 who in skz likes to fuck with or without a condom

genre: smut, minors dni, warnings: unprotected sex, public sex, slight breeding kink with chan cause grrrr, humiliation kink, overstimulation, small size kink with seungmin (his dick is too big for you cause i said so) creampies 🗣️🗣️🗣️ note: got super carried away and this is kinda dog but let’s gooooo

방찬. BANG CHAN

condom. he already has seven other kids he doesn’t need one more. mainly uses them cause he can’t be trusted when he swears he’ll pull out and cum on your stomach or tits instead. the faster his orgasm is to approaching the less he’s able to think about what he’s actually doing, every single coherent voice inside of him screaming for him to pull out is ignored as his cock fucks into you deep and sloppy - the promise of finally filling you up until his cum is spilling out past your little hole just makes it far too appealing to stay buried inside of your tight pussy, determined to leave you a sticky used mess once he’s done. hates himself for it but his breeding kink is dangerous, this man has to battle himself everyday to not fuck you until you’re full and pregnant, so convincing him to ditch the condoms will take some work. beg cutely enough and he’ll give in. swears he’s only doing it to shut you up but the second he sinks his bare cock into you he’s losing every lousy ounce of self-control he might’ve had, mouth drying up and eyes trained on the way your cunt struggles to take him. and he can feel every single nook and cranny of your plush cunt in ways the condom just doesn’t allow and he just can’t find it in himself to rid himself of the pleasure of finally filling you up the way you so desperately crave.  he can normally hold his orgasm out for a few good rounds, ensuring you’re completely fucked out when he finally does cum - but the first time you go without protection he’s busting inside of you within minutes. always buys you the morning after pill though and apologises for cumming inside of you, trying to ignore how good it felt to fuck your pretty pussy with no barrier.

리노. LEE MINHO 

no condom. when he cums, he cums hard. so wearing a condom just makes no sense to him and he’ll just end up ripping it off mid fuck, filling you up over and over until it’s leaking out of you, cussing under his breath that he should’ve fucked that stupid thought out of you for even suggesting to wear one in the first place. prefers having you on some type of brith control instead cause with the amount of cum this guys feeds into your pussy a condom isn’t gonna do shit. he’ll wear them when you first start dating just cause he wants to make sure you feel safe and comfortable with him but the second he catches wind you like it RAW?? he’s taking a lighter to every single condom he’s ever owned, in the trash, never to be seen again. and anytime you try to suggest using them again he’ll act so fucking offended, knowing fine rightly how much you love receiving the loads of cum he gives your greedy little pussy to even humour the idea. far too addicted to the feeling of filling you up over and over until your pussy is left all creamy and sticky and you’re crying that you can’t take anymore to ever think about going back, especially not when he’s felt the addicting press of your cunt smothering his dick and milking him for all he’s got, he couldn’t even fathom the thought of wearing them again.

창빈. SEO CHANGBIN

both. he’ll always try to remember one but gets such a bad case of pussy tunnel vision that most of the time he’ll forget about the stash he keeps in his bedside drawer. tries to keep one on him cause the amount of times you’ve found yourself getting fucked in some random empty supply cupboard or bent over his studio desk have been too many to count cause this man can’t keep his dick in his pants for the life of him, only realising he doesn’t have one when it’s far too late and he’s already painted your pretty pussy sticky with his cum. he’s far too impatient and just can’t ignore the feeling of needing to get his dick wet no matter how hard he tries, somehow always manages to convince you to let him fuck you raw when he doesn’t have a condom, swearing he’ll pull out but he wasn’t prepared for how much he’d love filling your little cunt up again and again until you just can’t take anymore of him. hates the part of him that gets off on seeing you stained and dripping in cum, and might even start telling you he ‘forgot’ to buy more while he was at the store - just to have the sight of your cute cunt all used and spilling over marked into his brain. 

현진. HWANG HYUNJIN

no condom. nothing gets him off like fucking you with no condom. he loves the risk of it all and the fact that he can turn you into a pretty mess with just a few pumps of his dick. loves fucking you raw so much that he’ll have videos saved on his phone of his cock stretching you out - soft praises of, ‘taking me so well angel,’ hardly audible over the sloppy sounds of his cock pumping into your pussy. needs to be as close to you as humanly possible so wrapping a piece of rubber around his dick to devoid himself of the heavenly feeling of your cunt suffocating around him just makes no sense. completely loses himself in the heat of your pussy, locks his jaw and rests his forehead on your shoulder when he’s fucking into you - just so he doesn’t lose all sense of sanity just from the mere feeling of your cunt milking him for all he’s got, and he’s prepared to give you it all. in the early stages of your relationship he’ll try to at least pull out for your sake, but the more he did the more he noticed your thighs locking around his hips to keep his dick firmly planted inside of you, forcing him to empty his loads into your greedy cunt and he just has to thank whatever god there is out there for blessing him with a girl that’s as eager for his cum much as you are. 

한. HAN JISUNG

condom but he forgets half the time. jisung gets so pussy drunk so quickly that protection will be the last thing on his mind, especially when he gets the chance to finally bury himself deep into his favourite place - your pussy. he likes the idea of being safe and protected but his hunger for your pretty little cunt to be wrapped around his cock any chance he can get just stands in the way of actually doing so. it’ll get to the point where you’ll have to carry them instead cause this man is prepared to fuck you nearly everywhere you go, doesn’t matter if you’re in public or not, he’s gonna beg to have your sweet walls wrapping around him near daily. if you actually do make him wear them it won’t last for long, he’ll whine and beg and near damn cry cause it’s just not the same :( and you have him so pussy spoiled that he might actually get blue balled all thanks to the rubber separating you both, might even pull out and take it off just when he’s fucked you dumb enough that you won’t notice, slipping back in and near sobbing the second your pussy swallows him up again, every raw twitch and spasm making his dick swell up even more. likes making a mess of you far too much to commit to condoms so they’ll become an increasingly rare occurrence in your relationship. 

필릭스. LEE FELIX 

condom. as much as he wants to he’s just far too paranoid about accidentally knocking you up to actually fuck you raw. also likes knowing you feel comfortable during sex and as appealing as thought of making your pussy all creamy with his cum is, he’d be a worried mess afterwards. makes sure he always has one in his wallet, cause with the amount you beg this man for his dick he’d rather be safe than sorry. even when you’re being all needy and he’s teased you to a state of being completely fucked out, whining about how much you need him to fuck you when the heavy weight of his cock bumping against your clit just isn’t enough - he’ll still find the will to ignore the painful swell of his dick to pull away and go grab a condom, chuckling and kissing away the cute pout of disappointment that sits on your lips when your hope of having him fuck you raw was once again shattered. tells you to stop being so goddamn ungrateful and take what he gives you :( with or without a condom this man KNOWS how to work his dick so he’ll fuck you stupid no matter what. the further you get into your relationship the more willing he’d be to finally ditch the condoms, but the second he slips into you with no rubber for the first time is the second he loses every ounce of control - fucking into you like an animal and suddenly your sweet, doting felix is gone and is now fucking you deeper and harder than he ever has before, wondering how he’s went all this time without the feeling of fucking you raw. 

승민. KIM SEUNGMIN 

no condom. this man will laugh straight in your face if you ever try to make him wear one. he knows fine rightly how greedy you are for his cum so he won’t take you seriously at all, fully arguing that a pussy as cute as yours shouldn’t be left all empty and sad without a cock in it and would look much, much prettier if it was dripping in cum. and he’s more than happy to be the one covering your little cunt in it. anytime you try to suggest using a condom he’ll make sure you regret it, forcing you to sit on his dick and fuck yourself over and over until that stupid thought was completely rid out of your pretty little head - pumping load after load into your pussy until it’s left all messy and sticky and begging for a break. loves reminding you how much you’d miss the feeling of his cock filling you up if he actually used one and deep down you hate that he’s right. sometimes he gets a little carried away cause the sight of you covered in his cum just goes straight to his dick, likes fucking you in public and making you walk around after with his cum dribbling down your thighs, knowing if you bent over just a little everyone around would get an eyeful of your cute ass painted in it peaking out from under your tiny skirt. and he’ll just have to fuck another load into you later that night from the thought alone. his cock is too big for you, and he gets such a nasty kick out of this fact, watching the way his cum from earlier that day trickles out of your pussy when he’s fucking you - only for him to push it back in with his cock and force you to take even more of it. loves seeing his cum drip to of your used cunt when he’s done and no amount of condoms is gonna take that away from him. 

아이엔. YANG JEONGIN

condom, but he’s easily persuaded to ditch it. jeongin is just there for a good time and as long as he gets his dick wet he doesn’t really care. he’ll always have one in his wallet just in case but the second he gets a taste of your pretty pussy he’s only able to think with his cock and completely forgets the concept of protection. this man needs you almost every hour of the day and most of the of the time wrapping a condom on his dick is the last thing on his mind, he’d much rather it be your pussy instead. can’t think straight when he’s turned on and the only fix is you. you’ll literally have to pry him off you when he’s this eager, lips chasing after you with a small whine of protest when you pull away from him in the backseat of the company car he’s somehow managed to squeeze you into after the rest of the boys and managers were busy setting up for rehearsal, trying to get him to focus long enough to grab a condom but he’s just too busy rubbing the fat head of his cock into your cunt. he’ll be so pouty when you stop him again, ‘forgetting something jeongin?’ and he’s just like, ‘uhhh, no? i remembered to turn my computer off this time,’ and just gets right back into trying to stick his dick into you finally. only realises he forgot a condom when he’s already fucked a load into you, letting out a small sigh of relief once he pulls his softening cock from your used pussy, watching the way his cum follows and dribbles out past your folds. but he can’t find it in himself to care cause you’ve never looked prettier. always helps you clean up after though :( 

© seungisms - all rights reserved. reposting/modification of any kind is not tolerated. 

[madamechrissy]

Would you come with me?

Pairings: Satoru Gojo x F! reader

Summary: You have been Satoru's best friend for such a long time, and one day he asks you a really big favor- marry him. What!?!? Well, Satoru has to take a wife as he's running the Gojo corporation, and what better way to get them off his back than 'marry'? In name only, just best friends living together for a year to calm them down, sounds so perfect and uncomplicated, right!!! Well, living with Satoru Gojo makes you both question everything, is this fake marriage feeling... real? and can you just be friends after this?

CW: NSFT-MDNI- So much mutual pining and longing, not sharing feelings. This chap- kissing, fingering, masturbation, lots of jealousyy, they're idiots in love lol, teasing, TENSION, oral (f recieving) Satoru is a lil sweetie and a lil freaky ass- falls hard, ya'll both down bad. Three parts- WC this Part- 7.6k

Songs for this - Birds of a Feather // Nonsense // Suffocate

Ty for all the love on part one!?!? I hope you all enjoy this part as well! We got one more after this <3 Comments and reblogs so appreciated always!

<<<Part One - Masterlist - Final Part>>>

Part Two

One month of being ‘fake married’ to Satoru Gojo, your best friend.

“I’m nervous about this meeting, Satoru. Are you sure I’ll do alright?” You ask softly, as you both head to the elevator, a meeting that you know Satoru has been dreading himself, with the higher ups his dad usually deals with.

“You’ll do just fine, let me do the talking, you can just look all pretty.” He takes your hand as you all get into the elevator, squeezing it warmly, and you’re dying at how good that hand feels, and how good he feels, his strong arm brushing against you as you both watch the elevator doors shut.

“I don’t want to embarrass you.”

“You could never. You’ve been a perfect wife this month, I promise.” His sweet grin, just a little crooked melts you, as you exhale in relief. “I’m getting a lot done with this, I swear… I know you probably wanna get back to normal life.”

The hurt in his words immediately makes you pull back, and Satoru curses himself, taking your hand again, as you two ride up the floors, but you pull away, shaking your head. “Are you so eager for me to go?” Your voice is quiet, trying not to reveal what that makes you feel like fully.

“What!? No, not at all. I meant… if you wanted to.” Satoru’s heart breaks when he sees your dewy eyes. “I didn’t mean it that way, I meant it may not take a year, if you wanted to…”

“I’m glad it’s helping, really.” You give him a small little smile, and Satoru can barely concentrate on what he’s here for, when he wants to wrap you in his arms, to kiss you fully, not just pecks for appearances.

And god those kisses to prove you’re together make the lines blur, makes everything so confusing and jumbled for him. He’s having so much trouble remembering that it’s for show, when you all watch movies at night still, when you both have dinner together, when you’re washing dishes side by side. When you’re having coffee on his balcony in the morning.

The one thing that keeps it ‘fake’ is the separate rooms, but the amount of times Satoru has played with himself in the room next to yours has gotten insane, the number of showers he has to take so he hopes you won’t hear him. Lately, he’s backed off just a bit, for his own sanity, so it hurts less when this is over.

“Toru, wanna watch the show tonight?” You ask, wearing one of his big tee shirts, it swamps you completely, tempting him to no end, thinking of slipping it up just so…

Shit.

“Nah, sorry not tonight. I’ve got work to do.” He says, hating the little down turn of your lips.

“How late, I can wait!”

“Um… yeah I wouldn’t wait up.” You blink then, wondering have you gotten too comfortable with him? Have you been acting too much like a wife at home? You can’t help but enjoy him, enjoy your time together, are you overwhelming him with it all?

“Oh. Um, okay. Good night, then.” You smile sadly, aching to kiss him good night, knowing you shouldn’t want it, knowing you shouldn’t be desiring him right next to you, snuggling on that couch. God you’d love him in your bed even, holding you so close against him.

“Good night, sweets.” He murmurs, softly, not wanting you to think that you were the problem, no the problem is him.

He can’t stop picturing how every corner and nook in his huge home will be so very empty when you’re gone.

“You haven’t done anything wrong, not one thing, I swear you’re playing this perfectly. And I really appreciate you, yeah?” He says, but it’s not what you want to hear, because you’re not playing, not really, it’s just too fucking easy.

“Yeah, we got this.” You kiss his cheek softly, the friendly way you used to, as you all walk through the sliding doors where everyone is, all old men aside from a couple younger people scattered in seats in a row.

You tense, so he squeezes your hand, smiling at you, an upturn to pink lips as a room full of old money assesses you both, trying to reassure you. “Mr. and Mrs. Gojo, please have a seat.”

You nervously sit next to Satoru across from them now, your legs crossing as he casually leans back, one arm around the back of your seat, an ankle crossed over his knee, sunglasses right on his face. He’s so at ease, or so it seems, you are certainly learning more and more that Satoru tends to hide much of his anxiety with cracking jokes and sarcasm.

“Ah, the oldies, how goes it?”

“Ahem, oldies?” A blonde man raises a brow, and Satoru scoffs.

“You might as well be, Zenin. Old ass mentality.”

“Satoru, how is your father?” Asks an older man from another high company that works with the Gojos, Mr. Gakuganji.

“Ya really hoping he pulls through hmm? Even if so, he’s already appointed me, so don’t get too excited.” Satoru has an easy grin, fingertips brushing against your bare arm, leaning closer to you. “You’ve all met the wife?”

“Not all of us.” A pretty woman with long blue braids smiles at you. “Heard of her though, hello Mrs. Gojo. Mei Mei. Apparently so old.”

“Hello Mei Mei.” You greet with a small smile, looking at them all. “It’s going to be a pleasure to work with you all, I am sure.”

“Isn’t she just charming?” Mr. Naoya Zenin says, you feel Gojo’s fingers tighten in response.

“She is lovely.” Mei agrees, predatory smiles on both of their lips.

“Enough with the greetings, Gojo, you've made a lot of changes to this company in a quick manner.” Now Yaga, a tall imposing man that owns much of the shares of the company, speaks.

“Sure have, Yaga. Aw, mad you all got pay cuts? Poor things. Don’t worry, gave your extra to the employees.” Gojo says with a big white grin, earning the glares of everyone in the room.

“You’re not some Robin Hood.” An older man of the Kamo family says, raising a brow at Gojo, who chuckles.

“No, sure am not, I’m still rich and so are you all, just a little more evened out, wouldn’t you say, sweetheart?” He looks to you, tilting down his glasses, and you take a breath, putting a hand on his thigh, silently supporting him.

“Employees are going to work harder and stay longer with better pay and better conditions, and cutting just a bit off the top accomplishes that.” You say, voice strong and clear as a bell, making Satoru so proud he can’t stand it, smiling big at you as the room collectively grumbles.

“You’re not the only one with interest in this company. What does your father think of this?” One of the older men asks.

“It’s my company already, it’s about to be official soon. So don’t worry.” Satoru says with ease. “Also, my wife was talking.”

“Your wife is certainly… hmm, very pretty, but a commoner.” Naoya says, earning Gojo standing up, chair screeching back.

“The fuck you say!?”

“Satoru…” You lean forward, touching his arm, looking at his furious stance as the room shifts.

“How is she a commoner? You’d be lucky to lick the ground she fucking walks on ya know that?”

“She’s clearly not a commoner, but… she’s not “rich" is what he means. She has no concept of wealth.” Mei says, and Naoya stands now as well, glaring right over at Satoru.

 “She’s rich now, she’s my fucking wife.” The words feel so real from his infuriated voice that you can’t even separate it anymore, if this is some act you will just play right into it, even if it hurts. Him defending you is raw, you feel his fury next to him, trying to calm him and failing.

“It’s fine, baby.” You murmur, and hearing it, this little pet name from you? He immediately looks down, seeing your eyes wide with worry, he sighs now, sitting next to you, exhaling when you brush a hand up and down his back, then you look at the room. “I was not rich, no.”

“Your family was cut off for this sort of behavior. Is that what you want again, want for your children?” Mr. Gakuganji asks, a tired voice breaking through.

“I know better than anyone in this room what it’s like to live on a normal, even low income. Would you not welcome the insight, or are you so above caring about the people who line your pockets?” You demand softly, raising a brow, Satoru watches now as you proceed to wreck them.

He watches you debate them, raising each of them this point and that, and watches them all falter under a pretty little thing like you, usually soft spoken and sweet, but you have no problem decimating a room of them like it’s nothing. You smile so pretty at them all, bat your lashes and they land argument after argument, bouncing off what Gojo says.

Gojo is chuckling after about twenty minutes, as they seem to really think he couldn’t fuck them all if he felt like it. “What you’re forgetting, is I’m the highest up there is here.”

“Your father-”

“My father trusts me to take over. Plain and simple, are there going to be any problems? Millions not enough for you all, need golden toilets for your asses?” You barely hold in the snort of laughter, eyes bright as you watch him continue to disgruntle the room, until they finally let up.

Naoya walks up to you, eyeing you up and down as Satoru is talking to Yaga, who seems to be one of the more laid back of them all, his hands in his pockets, light brown eyes lit up. You tense at his gaze, feeling it like a slimy, disgusting touch, making you almost sick. You’re trembling as his eyes dissect you.

“Conveniently, he gets a bride the moment everyone pushes him.” He says with a nasty smirk, brushing a tendril of your hair back. “Don’t buy it.”

“Well, we’ve been in love forever, I assure you.” You say quietly, he hums to himself, when Mei walks over, and damn this woman just saunters, truly, hands on her curved hips.

“It’s so odd indeed, out of a list of so many eligible ladies. Was it true love, I wonder?” She taps her chin curiously, Satoru sees you then, coming by your side immediately, and arm around your waist.

Is he being a protective best friend or…

More.

Is this all just for show, as he pulls you to his side so possessively, making your pulse race, your body reacting as you look up at his face, and he’s scowling at the both of them. “Everything alright, sweets?”

“Yes, they were wishing us the best, weren’t you both?” You say, earning Naoya’s glare and Mei’s smirk.

“Indeed we were, we’ll see you at the auction I imagine?” Mei says, eyeing Satoru now.

“We’ll be there, of course. But for now, hmm…” He tilts your chin up, kissing you in a room full of people who want to hurt him, and hurt you, a protectiveness he’s always had for you becoming so intense it’s hard for him to function, he’d literally take down anyone and everyone that would dare say one thing to you even.

Your lips are sweet, so sweet, as you lean up and kiss him, wrapping an arm around his waist, and that same electricity sparks, even with all their seedy eyes on the two of you. He pulls back, looking at your lips, as you look into his eyes, already dilated and dark, when he clears his throat, smirking up at the shocked gazes.

“Are we all done here?” He asks, and then proceeds to take you out of that room, you finally catch a breath in the elevator, and Satoru grins at you, cupping your face with his big hands, bending down.

“Holy shit.” You murmur, earning his chuckle.

“You were amazing! How dumb am I telling you - look pretty and let me talk- shit I think it was the opposite?”

“No way…”

“Yes way. That was sexy.” He hums, you’re both giggling a bit, but you’re close, too close, and his thumb is brushing your lower lip, sending desire straight through to your tummy.

“I thought you were mad at me.” You whisper then, earning his smile turning down at the corners, his eyes a little distant and hazy.

“I could never be.”

The elevator doors open, the two of you walk out of the sliding glass doors of the enormous building, and you are trying not to touch the lips he just had, trying not to think of just how good they felt. The driver pulls up and you get into the car, Satoru slides in next to you, far too close, you inhale his cologne, you still taste him on your lips, like torture.

“I’m not mad at you.” He says again, you blink a bit, taking a breath, before looking up at him as the car drives onto the highway, gently moving underneath you both.

“You turned down movies for days. You won’t eat dinner with me. I get you’re busy, I really do, but I enjoy it, spending time. I’m… lonely without you? I know that sounds so silly, I’m sorry. Shit.” You cover your face, hating the pathetic words spilling from your lips. “You’re probably sick of all this time, even as a best friend.”

That’s not it.

God that’s not it.

It’s just when he’s next to you all he can think of is fucking you, or making you cum all over his mouth, his fingers. He can’t stand how good you smell, how good you feel, he melts over your pretty smiles and giggles, he can’t stand how deeply he is starting to feel. The three times you all have kissed for publicity it took everything in him not to drag you home.

How does he just shut it off, the ability to kiss you when he wants? And now you’re lonely, you’re hurting, not even able to look at him when he gently pulls down your hands by your wrists. “Look at me.” He murmurs softly.

You do then, and he sees it, tears swimming. “Sorry I’m too emotional.” You whisper then, embarrassed.

“No, I’m being an ass.”

You let out a little laugh. “No, Satoru just distant, and I didn’t know if I fucked something up, the day in your office?”

“No, no. Please, I swear it’s not that… I’ve been in my head.” He mutters, unable to express it truly.

“I get it, you have a lot going on. I want to be here for you.”

“You are.” He’s brushing your hair back softly, leaning down, resting his head against yours, it’s too intimate then, the words on the tip of your tongue, that you feel more than you should, but you try to swallow them. “You’re amazing, you made them all look so stupid.”

“No…”

“Yes. You surprised me, I never have seen you like that.”

“Sexy, you said hmm.” You tease, but he’s serious then, as your breaths mingle, and he’s leaning even closer, wreaking havoc on your every sense.

“God yes, you’re sexy like that.”

“Satoru… it’s too much.” You whisper, as his hand rests on your thigh, and he feels it, how hot you are, earning his eyes shutting, trying to not let it affect him and failing. “I haven’t… I’m really…”

“Been a while, sweetheart?”

“Oh fuck you.” You don’t move his hand when he slips it up higher, in fact your thighs spread just a bit, his little moan making more wetness start to drool from your aching pussy.

“I take up all your time, you can’t date, why not let me take care of you?” He acts as if he can handle anyone ever touching you, the thought alone makes him feral, want to fucking claim you as his own, to devour you senseless. He tries to be teasing, casual, watching your breath catch, your pupils dilate.

“Wh-what!?” Your lips part, and his desperate blue gaze is so intense it’s hard to look at.

“Let me make you cum, sweetheart, hmm? It’s the least I can do, I’m taking up all of you, I am sure it’s been a bit.” You gulp nervously. “You’re not a…”

“No, no, not a virgin Toru, just I didn’t like it.” You admit softly.

“At all?” He whispers, frowning just a bit, before he feels your inner thigh with his thumb, finding you hot and sticky, making you gasp. “Who sucked that bad?”

“You don’t know him. But I didn’t like getting…”

“Fingered?”

“That, not at all, um the times it happened were uncomfortable. So don’t try, it won't work.” Satoru laughs then softly, shaking his head.

“I’ve never had that problem. And I would never hurt you.” His words are serious then, you gulp nervously.

“I know you wouldn’t. But it’s intimate, and it’s not for show.” Your hand clutches his blazer now, thick material in your palm when he finally touches you over your panties, making you cry out at the contact, his cock throbs in response.

“Let me just take care of you, make you feel s’good, hmm? Don’t think too much about it, just feel.” He presses kisses down the side of your neck, your free hand wraps the back of his neck, brushing over his undercut, the soft hair under your fingers like silk, when he presses his fingers over your clothed clit. “You like that, pretty?”

“Y-yes.” You manage, his lips kiss and then suck at the base of your throat, when his finger slips under your panties, finding you bare, soaked, your cry is louder, when he finds your engorged little clit, feels you slippery against his long fingers.

“Fuck, you’re soaked.” He huffs, free hand slipping up the side of your breast while he rolls his finger in little circles, and your hips jerk, your head falling back. “She’s begging f’me to put one in.”

“You c-can try, but- ah!” Satoru sinks a long finger in you, pressing up, and you’re blinded when he finds your spot so effortlessly, leaning back to look down at your face, as it scrunches up in pleasure. “Ngh!”

“There it is, some loser couldn’t find it hmm? I’ve got you, don’t worry.” He’s pressing up again and again, the spongy spot in your gummy walls, gripping him so fucking tight. You hear it, the lewd sound of your squishing cunt, your eyes rolling back in your skull as he works you. “Let go, trust me.”

“It’s too much I… T-Toru…” You whisper his name, while moaning, your mouth open in this perfect O, it makes him leak precum, sticking to his boxers as your thighs spread for him, as you trust him, your eyes lidded. “More.”

“More?” He repeats, speechless for a moment as you’re leaning forward, your lips just a breath away.

“Please, it’s s’good Toru.” Your little plea destroys the last fighting brain cell he has, he’s slipping one more in you, making you pulse around the thick invasion, curling them up and sinking them inside you, to the knuckle, while you moan against his lips. “F-fuck… oh my god what…”

“That’s it, fuckin’ feel her, grippin’ me.” He’s fucking his fingers into you, wishing they were his cock, and you’re soaking his hand, your cunt drooling when he shoves them in deep, thumb pression on your clit, making you shatter. “There you go, sweetheart, that’s it, s’pretty like this.”

You’re cumming all over your best friend/fake husband’s talented fingers, nearly crying at how good the release feels, pulsing all around him, hands clinging to his jacket, hopelessly wrinkling the material, all while he watches you. Your mind goes blank, pleasure is the only thing you can focus on, as he eases his strokes, and you both are panting in the quiet car.

Satoru eases his fingers out, putting them to his lips and sucking now, moaning when he tastes you, and your mouth drops in shock. “T-Toru…”

“Fuck.” He’s kissing you then, your slick all over his lips as he presses your back against the seat, and your thighs shake, sensitive from cumming so hard, you can barely focus on anything but your throbbing pussy.

“Please.” You whisper again, as he yanks his cock out, right in the back of the car, and you reach down, stroking it, his eyes shut as he whimpers, Satoru Gojo whimpers, over you touching his pretty pink tip, swirling that precum.

“Wanna taste you first.” He huffs, kissing down your throat when the car comes to a halt, yanking at your dress, pressing hungry kisses on your breasts.

“What are we… Toru what’re we d-doing, fuck!” You’re whining out when he’s biting at your nipple over your bra, your hands yank on his hair, hips arching, feeling his length on your inner thigh.

“M’gonna-”

“Mr. Gojo, we’re here.” His driver infuriates him now, Satoru leans up, breaths heavy as he’s leaned over you, looking at your already fucked out eyes.

“We almost… we… y-you…” You are stuttering, suddenly so nervous, so overwhelmed. “Is this just you helping me out? Is it-”

“Mr. Gojo-”

“Ijichi, I’ll fucking kill you.” He mutters angrily, quieting his driver quickly, as he adjusts himself and then you, and you’re sitting up, blushing as he fixes your panties, fingers covered still in your slick. He sucks them again further making your tummy flutter, tighten, your heart pounding out of your chest. “God you taste yummy, the fuck, how does someone taste this good.”

“You tasted me? Twice!?” He smirks now, easing you to sit, tilting up your chin now.

“Not fully.”

“Fully!? Is this what friends do?”

“Well I sure don’t want you doing this with anyone else.” He glares now, jaw locking, making you gasp.

“What now?”

“No one else can do that to you.” His lips gently kiss yours, you taste yourself on them again, but you shove at him now, glaring.

“What do you even mean, no one else? You think you have some freakish claim on me now?”

“I know you came so hard you soaked my fucking backseats, hmm?” He whispers, you roll your eyes now, eagerly getting out of the car.

“You’re insane, Satoru.”

“You clearly like it.” You scoff, body shaking, legs literally wobbly, you try to ignore them as you stride up to the front of Satoru’s fancy doors, and walk in quickly, as he follows you with long strides, calling your name.

“That was fingering as a friend!?”

“No… it was…” He wants to say it then, you’re literally his fucking wife, even if it’s pretend, he can’t think of anything he wants more than you, to be inside you.

“Almost fucked me as a friend? Satoru, I can't do that.”

“I know, I didn’t… I just…” You’re turning away, if you look into those blue eyes too long you won’t be able to breathe, to exist, every inch of your body dying for more. “You loved it.”

You scowl as he smirks. “You’re a conceited little shit, just like when we met! Swear to god.”

“You’re still shaking.” He says, eyes raking over you, you gasp.

“You know what? Fuck you.”

“If you want to, say the word.” He murmurs, leaning against your doorway, and you roll your eyes.

“No way, I’m going to bed early. Good night.” You shut the door right in his face, sliding down it, head in your hands.

What the heck even was that.

Five weeks of being ‘fake married’ to your best friend, Satoru Gojo

Satoru and you were barely talking this entire week, you’re so furious with his cocky, conceited attitude, and the fact that he’s entirely right. Nothing felt that good, no one felt like just his fingers had, how he found you, how he looked at you. Now for the past week every night you’ve done the one thing you said you wouldn’t do.

Touch yourself to the memory.

You’re rolling your fingers on your clit, whining his name in a breathy whisper the morning of the charity auction, covering your mouth with your free hand as you realize that you’ve done it, that you’ve said his name, all while cumming all over your little fingers, which don’t even come close to his, lengthy and thick, the rough pads of his thumbs.

And you could fuck him, you know you could, but you also know what it will mean, there is no friends after that, kissing alone has made things impossible for you both. And Satoru is doing the most amazing things, you’re so proud of him already, and don’t ever want to lose him. But now he’s in your head, making you absolutely insane with want, with need, with desire.

Now you can’t even think of him without picturing his cheeks hollowing as he sucked your wetness off, picturing his head between your thighs, things you shouldn’t, and it’s like he knows. He smirks at you just so, lazy lidded eyes draping down your frame every morning, every night, making sure to constantly have a hand on you in public.

He was making you lose it, and he knew it.

Your stupid little fingers can’t do shit, in fact they frustrate you more, but it’d be a cold day in hell before you ask him for any help. In fact you realize the game he plays when he walks around in his boxers, when he does push ups in the middle of the living room with one arm, like he’s showing off, smirking when he catches you watching him, in your moments of weakness.

It would be so easy to fall into his bed, but to think of ruining your friendship terrified you, to think of the feelings you know would be unleashed like some fucking flood gate was too much. You never have been able to be casual, you’re not even interested in someone without feelings, and you’re slowly realizing that those feelings when you were younger never went away.

They’re just more intense now, living with him, with this unspoken tension in the air, every breath you take you can practically taste him, every time you watch his fingers slipping around the rim of his cup you remember them in you. As you see the clear bulge in his boxers you remember touching him, remember wanting to taste that precum on his tip.

The worst part is he looks so knowingly at you, so sure you’d probably beg for him, you’re sure many, many women do. But despite knowing Satoru to be a bit of a ladies man, you’ve not seen a single one here since you’ve lived here, not seen him go on a single date. You’re not sure if you could handle it, despite acting so very nonchalant about it.

But you have no claim over him, this was just convenience, every bit of the arrangement. Your new car, no more debt, helping Satoru do what he needed to, you all are a perfect team even with the added tension of your pussy constantly throbbing around said best friend. Surely it wasn’t worth ruining, complicating, just to feel that pleasure he brings.

As you’re putting the finishing touches on your makeup, you nervously step out of the room, into Gojo’s spacious foyer, where he’s turned around, a dark blue suit adorning his body like a glove. He hears your heels click on the marble floor below and turns, his lips parting as he studies you.

The red dress hugs every line and curve of your pretty body, the bold shade making your skin pop so pretty, it looks so smooth he aches to caress you, every bit of you. You are biting your lower lip nervously, looking up at him from across the room as you stand there, looking so beautiful his pulse races.

This week has been torture for Satoru, he wants to tell you then, that he feels so much more than he even knows how to convey, that it wasn’t just ‘getting a friend off’ it was such a joke, he can’t even understand how you believe that. He can’t get the sweetness of your pussy off his goddamn mind, he’d do just about anything to taste it again.

He’s even eyed your panties in the hamper. He's so pathetic and desperate for you, but he’s tried to keep some semblance of composure, to act unbothered, so scared to ruin your relationship. He knows how much you sacrificed just coming here, sure he’s helping you, but you uprooted everything, you acted perfect at every function, you stood up for him at every meeting.

You are the perfect wife.

Pretend wife.

Pretend, pretend, pretend.

He keeps repeating it like a mantra in his head, brushing off the moment in the back of the car as maybe you just needed to cum, maybe it was just that for you, but something about how your eyes met his, has him desperately pumping his cock, hearing your soft whimpers at night. He knows you’re touching yourself, he wishes he could see it, watch it, take over.

Instead he’s stuck endlessly jerking it to his best friend/fake wife, ignoring any girl that even texts him because they just aren’t you. They could care less he’s ‘married’ everyone just wants a piece of him, everyone but you. You just are there for him, with him, by his side, you’d have done this for nothing in return. You’re becoming everything to him so fast it’s terrifying.

The magnification of feelings he’s had for you over so many years is overwhelming, being near you, smelling your sweet scent, hearing you hum as you cook with your earbuds in, your nervous habits. How you twirl your hair, how you tilt your head, how you tremble just a bit when he holds you for the cameras, how you sigh sweetly as he kisses you for show.

You can’t fake that, he knows you’re affected too.

But he doesn’t know if it’s what he feels for you.

He’s stammering like a teenager at prom, but prom pales in comparison to seeing you now, how the diamonds glitter off your neck and delicate wrists, how he can picture fucking you with just that on. Your cheeks are decorated with that pretty color as you handle his wordless scrutiny, teeth releasing your lip when he comes closer, he brushes a thumb across the indentations left.

You gasp, eyes shooting up to his, as the electric current of his touch rocks through you. “You always bite it, stop. Gonna hurt it.” He says, voice husky, eyes hungry as he looms over you in the quiet, elegant room.

“Do I always?” You whisper, and he nods, brushing his thumb over it again, as if to soothe it.

“Mmhmm, gonna cut up such pretty lips.” His voice drops another octave as one of your hand grips his wrist, and you ache for him to kiss you, to press you against one of these cream colored walls and pound into you.

Stop that!?

You clear your throat, taking a breath and then plastering on a little smile. “You look handsome tonight, blue is your color.”

“Red is yours, clearly.” He brushes a bit of hair back off your bare shoulders, two fingers gently running down the strap, watching the network of goosebumps spread, your heart is racing at the contact. Your urge to yank him by his skinny black tie and slam his lips to yours tempts you to no end.

“Thank you for this dress, and the jewelry. Stop getting me more.” Your little glare just makes him grin.

“At the auction you can get whatever you want, so you know.”

“No way, it’ll all be overpriced.”

“It’s charity, baby. Hmm, should we practice kissing more?” He asks, and you smack his hand away, glaring as he chuckles.

“We’ve had lots of practice, let’s go.”

You all are arm in arm as the cameras flash so brightly later that night when you both step out of the car, so much so they hurt your head, but you hold onto Gojo’s arm, as he guides you through, grinning and answering every question effortlessly. “Why the shades at night, Mr. Gojo?”

“Your bright ass cameras hurt my pretty baby blues.” He teases with a pout, earning the laughter there.

“And what’s this talk of major changes in the Gojo corporation?” Another reporter asks, Satoru chuckles then.

“Ah, well these old geezers needed some revamping is all. Right, pookie?” He asks you, and you smile up at him, then at the cameras.

“Satoru knows what’s best for the company and his employees, his changes are going to only make everyone more profitable.” Satoru watches you answer their questions left and right, enamored more and more by you.

“Are you trying for a baby, Mrs. Gojo?” Someone asks then, and you heat up at the question, at the image that flashes in your head.

Gojo breeding you.

So vivid you feel like you’re there, him murmuring a ‘let me fill you, sweetheart, have you so full of my babies’ and pumping over you. You almost faint it’s so real, and you have no clue what has come over you. You don’t think like that!? You’ve never done shit like that… you…

“We’re enjoying each other a lot right now, but it’ll happen I’m sure, when we’re ready. We’re a little consumed with each other.” Satoru answers now, breaking through the pounding of your heart in your ears, you look up at him, lips parted, as he completely saves you, you’ve frozen on the spot. “Right sweetheart?”

“Right.” You clear your throat, shaking your head then. “We are very much in love, and enjoying our alone time, but we’d both love a baby.” You say, and you hate how real it is.

He hates how he can picture you now, full mating press, as he fucks one load of cum into your pussy, and then another, watching it all pool out. Fuck he’d watch your tummy get so full of him. The thoughts of getting you pregnant make him feral then, he can hardly stand there as he just stares at you, and you at him.

You don’t get your best friend/fake wife pregnant.

Do you?

The auction continues, fancy and expensive items for filthy rich people, Gojo detests it more than even you do, though you’d never know with how he plays the room. You see Mei and Naoya again, laughing about something in this creepy way that makes you shiver. When Gojo is mingling while you're having a seat, you see a pretty brunette girl talking to him closely.

Why does it make you feel so sick to see him, you don’t know. You’ve watched him date, and he’s watched you, but something about living with him, about this enormous glinting rock on your finger really messes with you. His grin glinting under glittering chandeliers of this enormous auction room, another woman coming up, surely he runs in their circles.

You try not to focus on that, it’s not as if you have given Gojo a hint that you want more, and do you? Do you want to cross that line? If something doesn’t work, it’s not a fight between friends, it’s the end of everything, and isn’t having Gojo with you somewhat better than not at all?

“You look like you hate this, huh doll?” You hear then, looking up to see a dark haired man, grinning down at you, he’s handsome in a rugged way, not pretty like Satoru, but something appealing. A scar on his lip as he chuckles, gesturing around you both. “Bunch of rich assholes, huh?”

“Shh!” You giggle though, looking around, nodding.

“Knew it.”

“So what’re you doing here?” You ask quietly, he grimaces, running a hand through inky locks.

“Got a fuckin job to do, what about you?” You gesture to Satoru then, who’s glaring right at you both.

“I’m married to Gojo.”

“Ah shit, I’m too late.” You blush a bit at the attention, Satoru has a girl who’s far too close, whispering in his ear, her hand on his shoulder, making you sick.

“Hmm.” Is all you manage, looking back up at the man. “What is your name?”

“Toji Zenin. Yeah, I know, the name… but fuck them.”

“You are different.” You murmur softly, tilting your head to the side, he brushes his fingers then across your thigh subtly, your jaw clenches a bit.

“If I was with you I sure wouldn’t be over there with snobby bitches.” He says, and you don’t like it then, the jealousy in your heart as Gojo walks up suddenly, clearing his throat.

“Zenin.” He mutters, and he grins up at Gojo.

“Talking to your wife, Gojo, keeping her company y’know? Shouldn’t leave such a pretty thing so lonely.”

“You’re. In. My. Seat.” Satoru mutters, teeth clenched together, and Toji laughs with ease, taking your hand, planting a kiss on the back of it with a wink.

“See ya around, doll.” He says, patting Gojo on the shoulder, and Satoru wants to rip his fucking arm off then, as he glares down at you, sitting in the seat, but you cross your arms, looking away.

“Did he touch you?” He demands quietly, you frown then.

“He was nice, I mean he-”

“Nice!? Looked like he wanted to eat you.”

“What do you care, looks like they were all over you. Oh look, they miss you, go say hi.” You say, as three girls giggle and point over at Satoru, his blue eyes narrow, leaning over you then, cupping your face with his hand.

“Think I wanted to be bombarded by flirty ass drunk women?”

“I don’t know!”

“Do you care if I do?”

“No! What do you care about me then?” You demand, whispering amongst the loud crowd of auctioneers, as they start lining pieces up for sale.

“Because he… you…” Satoru trails off, mouth opening and closing. “You are my wife right now, you know.”

“Fake wife.” You correct, seeing a vein throb in his temple.

“It doesn’t matter, how does it look when-”

“That’s what you care about, appearances? Don’t worry, I won’t ruin your precious appearance any.” You whisper, as the crowd settles, and a brilliant sapphire necklace is now on display.

“You act like you don’t care at all, I saw you.”

“So what!?”

“So why don’t you just tell me how -”

“Ten thousand, do I hear…”

“Shh.” You scowl at him, as he scowls back at you. “Maybe you should go sit with your girlfriends.”

He laughs softly, without humor. “You’re jealous.”

“Nope, you’ve always been that way. What’s surprising is not having seen a girl at the house.”

“You think I want-”

“Twenty Thousand, going once, going…”

“Want someone more your speed? Sure, I know this is just convenience, I'm not stupid.” You say, he scowls even deeper, his hand suddenly on your thigh in the darkened room, making your heart pound as it squeezes bruisingly.

“I’ll not have anyone touch you.” His words make no sense, they don’t even compute in your brain then.

“What do you care, hmm? If I did. If I was discrete. Remember?” You ask, bitingly and full of shit, and you watch the hurt in his eyes, hating yourself for a moment before his eyes turn insane, dilating until they’re almost black.

“You wanna fuck him, huh?” He demands, you scoff, shaking your head.

“You’re stupid, Satoru.”

“Me stupid!?”

“If you think that I want anyone but…” You pause then, gulping as people are starting to look, hearing your hushed arguments then, and you stand angrily, stomping off until you hit the bathroom, splashing water on your neck, trying to pull yourself together.

You almost said it.

You’ll never want anyone but Satoru, your best friend, and you never have, fuck you probably never will, and it’s terrifying you. When the door shuts and he’s there, chest heaving, you turn away, tears pricking your eyes. “Just go away, fuck it’s the ladies room.”

“You’re mad at me for talking to women at an event?”

“You’re mad at me for talking to someone at an event?”

Yes, fuck yes he’s furious that man got near you.

That maybe you’d want someone else, more than him.

He steps closer, hands on your shoulders now. ““You gonna be mad when I fuck someone in my room, huh?”

You freeze, turning and glaring up at him then. “I hear you jerk off every night, so what’s the difference?”

Satoru looms even closer, you feel his breath hit your lips, making your tummy clench at the thoughts of him. “And I hear you moan as you play with your little clit, ya frustrated your tiny fingers don’t hit?”

“Oh fuck you!” You turn now, shoving at him, chest heaving, but he pulls you to him, pressing you against the bathroom counter, glittering and ridiculously opulent, hands shaking when they’re on your waist.

“You should just ask for help, sounds like you can’t cum.” Satoru whispers, earning a smack on the face that makes him smirk.

“Maybe you should ask me, how many times do you need to jerk off a night, huh Toru?” Satoru’s laughing then, insanity, his cheek decorated with red from your little hand print.

“At least I make myself cum.”

“Fuck you, I’m over this. I’ll take the opposite side of the house, won’t have to hear your moans.”

“Good, won’t hear your pathetic whimpers.”

“Good!”

“Good!” You both stand there, him bent over, barring you with his arms. “Admit it, you’re jealous.”

“Nope, just annoyed with you. Over you, Mr. never has on a fucking shirt!”

“Good, I’m done, Miss walks around in slutty panties!”

“Ugh!” You shove at him again, until he’s slamming his lips on yours, and then you’re lifted like you’re nothing, when his tongue slips in your mouth, and you’re clinging to him eagerly, as he sits you on the sink, hungrily shoving up your red dress. “You’re gonna rip it, shit!”

“I’ll buy you twenty more, just shut up.” You go to retort when he’s kissing you again, deeper now, and you’re crying out right in a bathroom, knowing anyone could walk in, only serving to make your cunt dripping wet, when he finds it he moans, pulling back and staring at you. “Why are you so beautiful?”

You can’t speak then, you’re lost in him, in his blue eyes and his pink lips, in his big hands all over you, his whispering words crushing any resolve you try to have. You lose all reason then, as your head falls back as he kisses up your throat, and you’re gushing down his fingers, remembering their shape and feel as they tease your entrance.

“Please, Satoru…”

“Why are you so sweet now, huh? Where’s your attitude?” He murmurs, but you’re arching up, whining as he stares at you so hungry. “Should fuck that attitude out of you.”

“Please…” You whisper again, when Satoru bends down, his head between your thighs, and stares right at your glittering pussy.

“Oh my god, she’s s’fuckin pretty…” He murmurs then, licking a stripe up your slit that has you crying out into your hand, thighs shaking as he groans at finally being able to taste you. “S’yummy mmm…”

“Toru…what’re you-ah!” You’re covering your mouth again as he laps at your cunt, his nose bumping your sensitive clit, and you’re dripping down his face, hand finding purchase in his silken white hair, gripping it.

“Gonna lick this attitude out of you.” He whispers, as your sweet nectar pours down his mouth, his hands spreading your plump lips, fucking you with his tongue then, your head smacks the wall, nearly sobbing it feels so good. “No one’s licked it, have they, baby?” You shake your head. “Good, s’all mine, huh?”

“All… y-you… Toru what are- mnh!” He’s yanking you to him by your hips, devouring you now, unlike anything you’ve ever felt, having you close so fast it’s embarrassing, tongue dancing and delving between your folds, drinking you up loud and wanton in this bathroom.

“F-fuck….” He’s achingly hard now, cock throbbing, tip of his tongue circling your little clit as he spreads you wide, looking at your perfect pretty pussy.

“You’re just… looking at it…” You manage to whisper, and he’s chuckling now, leaning over you, sinking two fingers inside, making your eyes roll back, so sensitive you’re about to cum right then and there. “Imagining it dripping out cum, sweetheart, that’s all.”

Your brain short circuits. “With cum!?”

“Mmm.” He’s not using words anymore, not when he’s picking you up, planting your heeled feet back on the bathroom floor, turning you to face the mirror. He’s lifting that dress up higher and bending down, pressing against you, finally he’s lost it, so drunk off your pussy, he can’t take it anymore.

“Satoru, you’re insane, what are you…”His cock springs out, heavy and aching with need, as he bends you over, one hand on his cock, the other, wrapping your pretty little throat, as your eyes catch his in the mirror, glassy and dilated.

“Next time he or anyone talks to you, it’ll be with my cum dripping out of your pretty little pussy.”

Final Part

Taglist: @plaggi @baepsays @victoria1676 @flwerie @luringfantasy @moncher-ire @allonyyourmom @kindablackenedsuperhero @evelynxxo @jkslaugh97 @sugurusfavemonkey @ninikrumbs @s4ikooo1 @bunheadusa @twinkling-moonlillie @chameleonsoul111 @nina-from-317 @naammiii @whippedbyikemen @alygator77 @uarmyhopeworldwide @1satoruu @theclassbookworm @jud3thedude @isleqt @mcromer2999-blog @silvarys @orikixx @jiejies-corner-store @assbutt-inlove-with-koreans @lordbugs @ari-sa @blue-musingss @minaa-06 @uhnosav @cvixmei @seeiin @indiewritesxoxo @loafteaw @moonlitwitchdaisy @beachaddict48 @miizuzu @honeybunnnnie @gojosukuna2268 @4acoffee @whoreapika @arabellasolstice

Rest in the reblog <3

[bighitfics]

recent jungkook fanfics that you should read for your own sanity.

(a recommendation for all the girlies who miss him like crazy!)

one rule by @/jasminefanfics on youtube

— dark romance, mean and morally ambiguous jungkook, hostage au, enemies to lovers, smut, love triangle (but it’s just a deranged schizophrenic being the ‘bone in a kebab’ for the gorgeous couple)

— this is ART. this is true unleashed YEARNING. dark ROMANCE done right, literally the perfect read for winter! this is my absolute fav read of this year 🫦

bonded by @borathae

— werewolves au, forced marriage au, childhood besties to lovers, angst, romance, smut.

— will this queen ever stop producing art after art? she’s not capable of doing that, god this was such a good read, I’m still not over this, THIS IS MY SHEYLA FR! (iyykyk) they’re everything to me gawd 🥺

mon révé by @sweetcarrotsandroses97

— archdeacon jungkook, forbidden love, age gap, romani character reader, dark romance.

— I’ve never read something so beautifully, perfectly executed, every scene she wrote is plastered into my brain, the amount of times i think about this fic is not normal, I’m desperately awaiting the new chapters 😔✋🏼

the love prognosis by @awrkive

— friends to lovers (the og), medical au, unrequited love, roommates trope.

— nobody gets them like I do fr! my precious ship! 🥺😻🤲🏼 i loved how down bad he was for her from the beginning, we love a man who worships the ground his woman walks on LIKE AHHHH the author executed the one sided pining from jungkook so well! THE ANGST IS DELICIOUS IN THIS.

christmas & chill series by @girlygguk & @lovieku

— special xmas edition, jungkook and reader.

— the way I’m about to eat this up. u guys aren’t ready for the obnoxious amount of times I’m gonna be crying ab this whole series on my blog, oh lord have mercy on me, this is so brilliant oh how i wanna kiss their hands for this, SUCH DIVAS BOTH OF THEM 🫦

infrunami by @kooktrash

— friends to lovers, mutual pinning, smut, angst.

— boom shakalaka yes gawd! after I completed reading this fic, i took a moment to myself, clapped and took a lap around my bedroom, then I also did a 7 min standing ovation, this deserves more hype ngl.

burning hour by @jungqkook

— established relationship, smut, exhibitionism.

— the amount of times i’ve re read this is embarrassing but it is that LEVEL of good, oh god when is it my turn to experience something like this?

catch twenty-two by @miraclemaven on wattpad

— forbidden romance, age gap, smut, older reader & younger jungkook, angst.

— im so hooked into this story, even though i haven’t started reading properly, this is a promising one, with really good writing.

chained up by @jikookie17

— obsessed addicted jungkook (my jam), smut, angst, fluff.

— reading this made me feel like im watching a melodramatic story of two idiots who literally can’t live without each other, its a cute lighthearted read, 100% recommend!

THE END OF TODAY’S LIST.

⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀

⠀⠀ hope the girlies like it ⋆. 𐙚 ˚

[virginreprise]

❀。 • * ₊. °。 . R A I S E M E ✾ U P

jackson!joel miller x reader .•° ✿ °•.

°•. ✿ .•° ddlg dynamics, smut, fluff, daddy kink, sub drop, joel feeling intense amount of shame because i never give the poor guy a break, age gap, dirty talk, aftercare

6.2k words┊ ┊ ┊ ˚❀

-ˋˏ ༻ . AO3 . ༺ ˎˊ-

The weight of you was heavy against his side, chest rising and falling as your eyes flickered—on the verge of falling asleep on his shoulder and desperately attempting to pay attention to the film blurring along the TV screen. The old 80s quality was harsh on the eyes, and the sound was crackling from the old speakers, but it was hard to be picky in the time the planet resided. It was hard for Joel to feel any irritation at all when you were cuddled against him, full belly from the pot roast Maria had brought over, legs bare and soft under his palms as you draped them over his lap, and a mumble on your lips as you sighed. 

“Movie’s boring.” 

You nuzzled into his neck, huffing softly as you complained. Joel could do nothing but chuckle, buzzing with the warmth of you and the knowledge that you were his. Joel’s girl. Daddy’s girl. 

Hidden away from the harsh judgments of their little slice of life in Jackson. Unashamedly lying in the wake of perversion and desire that amalgamated into a mix of jolting excitement and sickening paranoia. 

Joel had become jumpy. Joel did not like to be perceived. Joel, most certainly, did not like to lose out on the things that mattered most to him because of convention. 

Joel was a man who stood behind his convictions—his main decider and fortifier of those convictions: family. You, over the past few months of shame and bliss, had caused the undeniable roil of his gut that peeled at the layers of flesh until he was a mass of bone and blood. The definitive hum that told him he would protect you against all odds. If that meant looking over his shoulder every time he spoke to you outside the walls of his abode, standing respectable distances away from you when the Tipsy Bison got too crowded and he had to pretend he couldn’t still taste your cum on his tongue from where he’d licked you dry hours previous, then so be it. 

It all made sense when he returned home and heard his name on your lips, your arms around his middle as you kissed him in greeting. His shaking and unequivocal anxiety seemed to disappear completely when he spent nights alone with you: wrapped up against him, floating away in that special headspace of yours that he adored so completely it made him feel sick with admiration. 

His pretty little lady. 

A lady who was now insulting his choice in movies. 

“It’s a classic, honey,” he defended, brushing hair away from your face as you stared up at him—rolling your eyes. 

“Still boring.” 

He laughed at your petulance, chest vibrating as you smiled softly. So pretty all tucked up beside him, so soft and warm and everything that he had been missing since he’d settled into the echoing hallways of his new home. A home that had not felt complete until you’d stepped onto the porch with the rocking chair and the windchime: all sweetness and trouble. 

“Brat,” he murmured with no malice, still smiling as you giggled into his chest. “S’almost bedtime, anyway.” 

You looked up at him with a pout then, shaking your head. 

“Nu-uh. You promised me that we’d watch a movie first.” 

“We are watchin’ a movie.” 

“Yeah, but I don’t like this one.”

“Okay then, what do you like?” 

You paused at that question, furrowing your brow—looking like you were thinking real hard. It was cute. Endearing. Joel seemed to be constantly endeared by you and your idiosyncrasies, the things that made up each part of you; consumed his soul until all he could focus on was the sweet actions you would perform. 

Then, his stomach dropped and he suddenly felt sick again. 

“I don’t know…” you muttered. “Haven’t really watched many movies.”

It’s a genuine statement, said with nothing but normality as you looked up at him expectantly, only to be greeted by Joel’s tense shoulders and clenched jaw. 

There were always reminders. Everywhere. Sauntering up and down the thoroughfare late at night, seeing a Dad with his grown-up daughter, thinking how easily that could be the two of you. Tommy’s judgemental glare every time Joel dared spare a glance at you—the older brother wondering what Tommy would do if he ever found out what happened behind closed doors. He wished never to experience such horror. 

Most of the time, when he wasn’t panicking about tainting you, it was easy to ignore the tightness in his chest—the shake in his hands when you sat on the kitchen counters as he made you dinner; that little, unorthodox name on your lips when he slid his hands along your thighs and let you ramble on and on about the day's tribulations. 

But, you just had to go and say something so fucking ridiculous: the reminder. 

Joel was old. Old and disgusting. 

“You okay, Daddy?”

Jesus fuck, it was so depraved, and, worst of all, it felt good: to feel wanted. To feel needed by you, because you did need him, and he needed you too. He needed you so he could feel some modicum of sanity despite the insanity you caused. It was a lulling derangement that comforted him more than deluded him. 

“Yeah, baby, just…” he forced a smile, cupping your cheek and rubbing softly at the flesh. “Don’t worry ‘bout me, okay?” 

You didn’t seem convinced. For such a shy little thing you really were smart—able to ascertain what he was thinking with a quick scan of his features. It was another thing about you that he adored so much. Even when you were floating up high, letting Joel do all the thinking for you, you still had that little semblance of self—a light inside you that constantly remained on, even when the rest of you was dark. 

“Mhm,” you murmured, a sound that made Joel’s jaw tick.

“You know how I feel about “mhm,” he chastised and you couldn’t help but smile despite the scolding nature of his tone. 

“M’sorry.” You snuggled into him further, seeking the warmth emanating from him, Joel being your personal heater during the cold Jackson nights when the fire could not manage to warm the whole house. When you’d go to bed with socks on your feet, layers of clothes plastered on your skin and the heat of Joel keeping you comfortable when the night air chilled you to the bone. 

“That’s okay, honey.” He pressed a kiss to your forehead, hand snaking across your legs, dipping to the inside of your thigh where he stroked absent-mindedly, mulling over the short panic that had overtaken him. Sometimes, after those fleeting moments of unease, he’d think himself silly. That a reaction like that for something so insignificant wasn’t necessary.

Other days it was harder to ignore the lingering sharpness in his heart when he lay wide awake in the middle of the night—eyes trained on the hallway, watching for shadows. His rifle propped up against the wall, just within reach. 

All precautions. 

Joel certainly had grown some paranoiac tendencies since you’d crawled your way into his life. But there was a method to the madness—a warm blanket of comfort found in the lunacy.

So, he did some damage control—eased your mind slightly so you wouldn’t worry about him. He was supposed to look after you, after all. 

“How ‘bout we finish this movie now, and then when I get a chance I’ll go to that video store I saw when I was on patrol. Get you a bunch of DVDs we can watch, yeah?” 

You tried to suppress a wide smile, failing miserably as you leant up to peck him earnestly, giggling softly as you fell back against him and whispered a “Thank you, Daddy,” into his shoulder. 

“You’re welcome, babydoll.”

Manners: one of the first rules. Always say please and thank you, especially around Joel. You’d taken it on board delightfully well. Too well sometimes. The times when you thanked him for simply being there—when he didn’t deserve your gratitude. Those were the times he’d tell you off. Not because he wanted to, but because he felt there had to be some divide between the powers. He wanted you to be your own person despite the need to have you completely. He wanted you to run far away from him and find another man who didn’t feel the urge to control every aspect of your life —just in the hopes of keeping you safe. 

You’d yelled at him that day he’d told Maria to take you off patrol and then cried when you began apologising for being angry.

He’d felt real fucking guilty. Goddamn sick.

In truth, he felt sick all the time. The shame ate at him. You just repressed it. 

A sigh pulled him from the vignette, gazing down at you tucked into the crook of his elbow—slightly pouty as you trained your eyes on the screen. 

And just like that, it didn’t all that matter anymore. 

“What’s the matter now?” he asked softly, rubbing your shoulder—thumbs catching on the cotton of your shirt. His shirt if he was being pedantic but you’d adopted it weeks ago. It was yours now, no doubt about it. 

“The movie’s still boring.”

Joel snorted, shaking his head as he leaned over to snatch up the remote from the side table, making sure that you were securely tucked against him the entire time. You’d told him one night, lying boneless and naked in his grasp, that you hated when you couldn’t touch him—that you felt bad because it must be annoying how clingy you are. Joel had silenced you with a kiss and promised you that he would hold on to you for as long as you wished. In the safety of his home, he never let go of you. 

“Guess we’ll just go to bed then.” 

You were on him in a second, the agility and precision with which you straddled him so quickly was impressive—Joel half expecting a knee to the balls. He grunted as your weight landed atop him, motivated by the hope of a distraction and the desire to have him near. 

“I’m not tired,” you said resolutely, playing with the buttons of his shirt and flashing him your prettiest, most convincing doe-eyes. 

“Honey, you were falling asleep on my shoulder minutes ago-”

“That’s cause I was bored.” 

Looking at you properly, just a little taller than him now that you were perched on his lap, Joel could see the slight glint in your eyes, the pout to your lips and the squirm of your hips that alerted him to one thing. 

His little lady was horny. 

It made sense. Last night, you had been so tired that you’d fallen asleep at eight pm and hadn’t woken up again until eight am the next day. The night before that, Joel had been sent out to scout late at night, leaving you sprawled in his bed alone. You had not slept until dawn broke and the front door cracked open. You’d said that you couldn’t sleep without him. Sickening pride—the ardent dedication you displayed was so fulfilling. 

Joel had rocked you against him, apologising for being gone so long and then sent you to your chores in the greenhouses with a single goodbye kiss and a promise that he would be there to hold you to sleep. 

Two nights; both without any stimulation. 

No wonder you were so worked up. 

In his old age, he often forgot what it meant to want something so consistently. Not to mention, you liked the routine—knowing that Joel would get you off at least once a day, even if it was just with his tongue, his fingers, or the steady roll of your hips over his thigh. 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asks with a crooked smirk, suppressing the laugh that threatened to fall from his lips. 

You pout further, narrowing your eyes at him as you shift in his lap. 

“Tell you what?” 

“That all this squirmin’ and complain’ was cause you wanted my attention.”

Your cheek under his palm was hot when he brought his hand to the side of your face, your eyes wide as you thought of something to say in retaliation. But your chest was heaving, the light from the TV flickering in a halo against your frame and all you could do was purse your lips and grip onto his shirt—taciturnly begging him to express your thoughts for you. 

With a reassuring smile, he held your gaze, picking up on the subtleties he had grown to adore. 

“You want Daddy to take care of you?” The eager nod widened his smile, the parting of your lips as you shuffled closer to him, intentionally brushing against his crotch. “Should’ve known.” His hands snaked to your waist, slipping under your shirt to reach the heat of bare skin and lost morality. “Always want daddy’s cock, don’t you.” 

You whined in response, pressing your face into his shoulder to hide your embarrassment. 

“Sh, sh, sh, little lady. Nothin’ to be embarrassed about.” He wrapped a hand around your wrist, pushing slightly to get you to look at him. “Daddy likes it when you’re desperate.”

If he could hear himself, Joel would deny that the man spouting such filth was him. Possessed by something evil, entranced by passion and kept sane by shame. 

It was not him—he could not believe himself capable of it. Then again, he had not believed himself capable of lots of things before the bombs came. Now, he was not sure if he was a man of unimaginable depravity, or just a man altogether. 

You liked it either way. You liked him, and that was enough for Joel. 

“You wanna go upstairs? Get comfy? Don’t wanna fuck you on the couch, honey, you’ve been too good for that.” 

“Yes please, Daddy,” you asked breathlessly, hips beginning to grind—a movement that he stopped almost immediately. The slight squeeze to your hips was enough for you to halt, biting down on your bottom lip as he began to stand, you sliding off his lap and immediately reaching for his hand. 

Needing him close. Just needy. 

The ascent to the bedroom was a slow one, Joel deliberately teasing as he pushed you up the stairs—holding onto your hand the entire time until you both came crashing down onto his bed. Tongues entwined as he hovered atop you, clothes stripped with fumbling fingers and heartfelt laughs. 

Joel did not feel any shame when he was on top of you like this; could hardly find it in himself to care with the way you whined, all breathy and limp from his kisses and the weight of him draped over you. You’d told him before how much you liked feeling all of him—pushing you down into the mattress as he pressed his chest against yours and kept you safe from the shadows in your bedroom; the monster under the bed. 

A whine was pulled from your throat when his hand slipped into your panties, a brief smile on your face when he dipped into your slit, contorting to a grimace when he trailed a finger upwards. 

“Should’ve known you’d need it after a little while,” he murmured, circles beginning—a continued rotation. Legs twitched, hips bucked and settled against the mattress again as you leant into the feeling. “Daddy’s sorry, baby. Sorry he left you high ‘n dry.” 

“S’okay,” you reassured, sweet as a bright bell when your eyes shut and jaw dropped open—whimpering when he pulled his hand away.

“Shhh, little lady, don’t start your whinin’.” You lay eager and waiting as he dragged your panties down your legs, exposing all of you to him. He noted the shiver as the cold air hit you fully, the bend in your back as he dragged his hands along your waist and kissed your sternum—a simple slice of attention that had you keening. He chuckled when his fingers eventually dipped between your legs, slick collecting on the tips. “She’s desperate, huh?” 

You pushed your head into the pillows, eyes firmly squeezed shut, legs clamping around his hand as you lay in the heat of embarrassment and ecstasy. 

“Daddy, stop it,” you muttered, slinging your arm over your face as he slowly began circling your clit. 

“Nu-uh, baby,” he grabbed your arm, pulling it away and smirking when he saw your flustered expression, the sheen of sweat decorating your brow as you rolled your hips into his hand. “Let Daddy see you.” You obeyed his command by peeling your eyes open, a moan passing through your lips as a sharp jolt of pleasure shot through your clit. “There you go, that’s my good girl.” 

A smile played at your lips as he spoke, eyes fluttering shut again—basking in the golden haze of his praise. The way you responded to his approval was unlike anything else: the light in your eyes, the willingness to make him proud. You craved it, demanded it to keep yourself afloat and Joel made sure to acquiesce to your silent wishes. He couldn’t remember how many times he’d already said “I’m proud of you,” following the adulation with a sweet nickname that had you giggling in the wake of kisses he pressed to your neck. 

It was a little different, however, when he touched you. Delicate presses of his rough fingers, lapping at your heat, sinking inside your warmth, muttering how well you’d take him, how good you were for him. That, for you, was eudaimonia. Despite your denial of your adoration when you’d come down, telling him with a pout to stop being so crude, he knew. Could tell by the harsh scratch of your nails against his back, the tug on his hair as you writhed—Joel having to remind you to breathe when it all got too much and even his voice was just a muffled droning in the back of your mind. 

He had to do it then when your face screwed up against the desperation, leaning over you to whisper a soft, “Remember to breathe for me, darlin’,” into your ear and smiling at your response: a loud, drawn-out moan that pushed on a wave through the confines of his bedroom. Your bedroom now too if he was being honest. 

“D-daddy,” you breathed out, wrapping your arms around his neck to keep him locked over you, hand creating a friction between your thighs—urging you closer so he could finally sink himself inside you. It had been a long day of infected and bickering with his younger brother; their arguing had turned physical when Tommy had mentioned you. Sweet, pretty you that his last blood relative seemed to think was too naive to make her own decisions. Joel had pushed him into the snow, chest heaving with the urge to protect his precious little thing from such harsh and erroneous judgements, and then mounted his horse and grumbled at Tommy to get up. 

However, he’d come home to you sprawled out on his couch, book loose in your grip and a smile wide and brilliant as he leaned over the backrest to press a greeting kiss to your lips.

He did not mention the altercation in the forgotten mountain town to you, nor would he ever harm your head with such disillusioned disgust.

All he needed was right there with him, warming his bed with sweat and slick. 

“That’s it,” he drawled, fingers slipping over and over the spot that nestled at the top of your cunt. Your legs twitched, mind completely lost to the depths of satisfaction and curling deeper into that saccharine headspace—a state of mind that left you completely at his mercy. Begging for the worst of things, the most perverse and depraved happenings that he left in the air around his bedroom and dragged along with him to the outside as it lingered and festered in the pits of the bruise in his chest. Desperate to spew every detail, to let them all know what he had, and simultaneously feeling a deep shame come clambering into his mind with malice. 

When your legs closed around his hand, his name falling from your lips like a sacrilegious Gregorian chant, he knew the time was near. That the clawing of your nails against the curves of his back was leading you to the peaks of Mount Sheridan. 

“Shhhhh,” he cooed, brushing hair away from your face to soothe the ache. “It’s okay, sweet girl. You gonna let go for me, hm?” 

He coaxed it from you with smatterings of encouragement, sweet praises whispered into your ear.

“Give it to me, baby. C’mon, give Daddy what he wants.”

A whine, a broken call of his name and a sweet silence, before you came crashing down upon the rocks and opened yourself out in front of his morbidly curious stare—seeing you so vulnerable, so peaceful through the ring in your ears and the dampness between your legs that grew to deluge as your whole body burned white hot. 

Praises peeled from his throat as naturally as the smoke that billowed from the fireplace, pressing kisses all over your face with a reverence that made him believe that perhaps a higher power was watching over him. Maybe you were his angel. 

“That’s it…” he muttered into your ear, lips brushing the shell. “Such a good girl for me. Daddy’s proud of you, princess.” 

That had heat prickling everywhere, rising from your skin and burning his flesh, chest heaving to try and expel the untameable fire within your stomach. 

He was patient as you rolled back around to reality, watching softly with his hands firmly away from your cunt—aware of how sensitive it would be if he were to keep his fingers pressed against your pretty little clit. He only made you cry from the overstimulation when you’d been bad and god knows how rare an occasion that was. Even if you did need reprimanding, the sight of hot tears and mumbled apologies was enough to ease his discipline. 

He could never stay mad at his girl for too long. 

“You back with me, baby?” he asked softly after a moment's silence, rubbing your hipbone—cock painfully twitching against your leg. It was easy to ignore when he knew his restraint was for your benefit. You liked it rough, he had discovered a week ago when he’d lost himself in the meadow of your sweet cunt, hips moving at a pace they had not since he was twenty-two. However, genuinely hurting you was something out of Joel's equation. Seeing you cry left an ache in his already cracked chest, the weight of his guilt draped across his throat and choking him until he couldn’t speak. 

It was his mission to keep you safe. Ashamedly, he’d convinced you to stop going on patrol, holding you close when you’d asked why he’d told Maria to take you off the list. Whispering that it was for your own good, that “Daddy can’t focus knowing that you’re out there, baby.” The way you’d believed him with earnest, mumbling that it made sense, that you didn’t want him to feel bad so you’d take up some work in the greenhouses instead; it had made him disgusted with himself. 

It didn’t suppress his need to get you to stop working altogether, though. A few more caresses and promises of forever and he was sure you’d agree to staying in the house all day—waiting for him to get back. Maybe he’d knock you up. Surely that would keep you around hereafter?

“Need you inside, daddy.” 

Your voice pulled him away from his head, your expression one of utter desperation. A sheen of sweat on your brow, chest heaving as you played with the ends of his hair. The last thing he ever wanted to do was leave you needing him. If you wanted him, you could have him; he would give everything to keep you happy. 

“I know, baby, I know,” he husked, leaning down to brush a kiss against your forehead, tapping your hip softly and muttering a sweet, “Turn over for me.” 

You listened so compliantly, shakily turning onto your front, hips raised in the way he’d taught you and hands clawing the pillows in anticipation of the stretch. 

Joel couldn't help but admire the hedonistic sight, pussy glistening in the moonlight, ass-up, back arched and legs twitching as you tried to stay upright. His hands slid across the smooth skin, burning touch leaving a trail of blisters in its wake: big, red splotches along your flesh that bubbled and spat—eventually scarring and marking him on you forever. 

A sob wracked through you when he began kissing along your spine, pressing his lips to your skin until they met the back of your neck. Pulling down to graze his teeth along the kiss-induced welts before finally grasping his cock in hand and offering himself some relief from the ache. 

“You’ve been so good, baby,” he mumbled, eyes fluttering shut as he tightened his grip, stroking more deliberately with a hand placed firmly on your hip. His cock slipped between the cracks, stroking along your soft skin, thoughts blurring, mind-turning, until he could do nothing but ramble and rut. “Such a good girl for me, ain’t ya? Always so fuckin’ perfect for your old man.” 

You whined and he chuckled—amused by the way you pushed your hips back against him, his cock catching against that perfect fucking hole. Just one swipe, one feel of your heat against him and he was grunting and grinding. A noise he had not expected was pulled from his throat, a violence that always lingered seeping from the ceiling cracks, and unintentional aggression when he dug his fingers into your hip and pushed in so far that the length of him was coated in you with just one thrust. 

“Daddy,” you whined, looking over your shoulder with glistening eyes, a pleading in the depths of them that he had grown accustomed to. You needed the support—the encouragement. 

So, he leant down to cover you completely, an arm firmly around your waist and pushing you further against him. Lips in your hair, whispers in your ear and his hand weaving into yours—a squeeze and a second thrust and you were gone. 

“That’s it,” he cooed. “Good fuckin’ girl, huh?” You whined into the pillows, clamping around him with willingness. You were so fucking obedient that it made him sick. So prepared to do as he asked that he was afraid the entire basis of his relationship with you was naivete and exploitation. 

Nausea that clawed its way up his throat, squeezed his oesophagus until he couldn’t breathe. Laughably, his only lifeline so far had been the heat of your pussy, wet and warm squeezing around him—slick dribbling from the hole, just desperate for him to take and take. 

“You’re just perfect, babydoll. Take me so well, don’t you? So proud of you, honey…my perfect little girl.” Everything rolled off his tongue—synchronised with the initial rolls of his hips. The hand around your waist slipped between your legs, rubbing against your clit with intention.  “Feel that?” he pressed, thrusts becoming quicker, fingers swiping softer.

Your hand grasped his with a tightness that stopped the blood flow—fingers tingling as you panted breathlessly. Drool slipped onto his pillow, legs shaking and failing to support themselves as they gave way underneath you and you collapsed with a whine into the mattress. 

“No, no, no, baby,” he chastised. “Ass up, c’mon.” He hauled you back into position, shushing your babbled apologies. 

“M’sorry, daddy…just feels too good, I can’t-”

“I know, honey. Daddy’s not mad.” His hips continued their movements, pausing momentarily to breathe—dick twitching inside you, wondering with a pathetic huff if he was going to cum right then and there. 

“Feels so good,” you continued blathering, repeated phrases that didn’t make much sense together. Your own little language that only Joel could decipher—a connection between the two of you that no one else would ever understand. If his translations were correct, those whimpers, mumbled sentences and unintelligible calls of his name, were a sign that you were teetering over the edge. That you were right there. 

“My baby gonna cum already?” he asked, half-amused, half-impressed at the sheer way your body reacted to him. “You want it more than you let on, don’t you?” His fingers fell to your clit again, deliberate circles against the bud and watched with pride swelling his chest when you pushed your face far into the pillows and begged him to keep going. “Yeah…” he breathed out a laugh, light beneath his eyelids as he let the tightness of you overpower him. “You always want it.” 

You listened to his rambled dialogue diligently, not even complaining when he pulled away to thrust harder, hand reaching to your stomach to press softly on the shape of him pushing inside you—the sweet scrape against the sponge that soaked up all the slickness. 

Then, words that he couldn’t take back spilt from his mouth, his stomach clenching as you whined about wanting to cum—needing that sweet release he would grant you with a thousand moons and the heat of the sun. 

“Tell me you love me.” As soon as he said it, he couldn’t quite grasp the ability to take it back and apologise for asking something so drastic of you. He couldn’t even find a majority of himself that decided what he’d said was wrong and unfair to place such a thing on your incapable shoulders. So, he said it again. More forceful this time—a little more assertiveness behind the demand. “C’mon, babydoll, tell me you love me.”

“I-” You were so far gone, moans crescendoing as you whimpered out a small, “I love you, Joel.” 

No real conviction to the statement, nothing to deny the coercive way it had been prised from you but it was enough. Enough for Joel to spout the phrase back. 

“I love you too, baby,” he said with a smile, almost missing your warning call. 

“G-gonna cum.” 

His smirk widened, teeth on display, a blissful expression on his face as he gazed at the space between your legs—the disappearing act that occurred right there in the middle of your thighs. 

“Go on, honey,” he said softly. “Been so good to me…just let go.”

Your response was as docile as always, flexing your back, no chastising this time when your legs gave way and he had to pull you back against him so he could push through the brambles to his own release. 

“Good girl,” he grunted, giving into the way you gushed—the cloudiness in his head that dispelled every shame and self-condemnation. “My good girl.” 

He was gone within seconds, stomach tightening as his cock twitched, breaths coming rough and gravelled as he stilled, balls-deep, inside you and gave you everything he had to give. Rutting slightly into you, jaw clenched as you whined and prayed to a God he didn’t believe in that this one would stick. 

There was no running away from him if you were to accidentally fall pregnant. Poor little thing would need all the help you could get, and good old Joel would be there waiting with his hands placed on your swollen belly and a promise that he would never leave you. 

Dark thoughts often came after he’d finished with a heaving exhale, shame amalgamated with sick desire as you lay on your stomach, hair stuck to your forehead and a furrow of Joel’s brow when you began crying. 

“Oh, honey.” He sprung into action immediately, the overwhelming urge to fix everything for you always and forever at the forefront. His softening cock slipped from your stuffed pussy, big arms wrapping around you as he sat back on his haunches and manoeuvred you onto his lap. “Shhh, s’okay.” 

“M’sorry,” you sniffled as you buried your face into his neck. “I don’t know what-” 

“You don’t have to explain.” A hand cradled your head, the other dancing along your spine until the tears came silent, breathing evening out as you whimpered into his bare, sweat-shined skin. “Just felt too good, huh?” 

You nodded, curling in on yourself, and refusing to show your sweet face to him. 

“Figured,” he murmured, trying to think of the best ways to coax you back to him. He knew it was a lot sometimes, the pleasure just overtaking that brain of yours and leaving you a blubbering pile of nothingness at the end of the tunnel. 

“I’m sorry,” you repeated. “It’s just…so much.” 

“Honey,” he said—firmer this time. “Look at me, please.” 

Authority was always the best route with you, Joel knowing that no amount of embarrassment could overcome the fear of disappointing him. So you slowly peeled yourself from his shoulder, pouting lips and swollen eyes when you finally mustered the courage to look him in the eye. 

Rough hands cradled your face, calloused fingers from plucking at steel strings and pressing on weathered triggers. 

“You ain’t got no reason to apologise.” You held onto every word, eyes wide with wonderment as he spouted his affirmations. “No reason to be embarrassed either so wipe those pretty eyes and give Daddy a smile, yeah?” 

You giggled softly at that, unable to contain the slight twitch of your lips as you brought the back of your hand to each eye—staunching the flow. 

“Thank you-”

“No reason to thank me either,” he interrupted. 

You smiled softly, then pressed your forehead back to his shoulder, breathing in deeply. A quiet moment of contemplation permeated the space, a dog barking in the distance of the night, unknowing of the union that occurred behind the walls of the house with Miller on the letterbox. 

Laying enervated against him, warmed by his body, there seemed to be an unspoken question lingering in the air—a tension that you cut with a mumbled call of his name. 

“Yeah?” he responded, fingers continuing to brush through your hair; providing a semblance of comfort to the anxiousness that steamed off your skin. 

“Is it…wrong?” 

He tensed, trying to keep the unease imperceptible but failing as he felt your body go rigid moments after his own. 

“Is what wrong, honey?” 

Deflection of the conversation he had tried vigorously to avoid—hoping with taut muscles and a thick head that you wouldn’t press any further. That you would let this play out to the imagined fairytale ending Joel had been determined since he met you to provide. 

“You know…” you muttered. “What we do together. You always say we have to keep it a secret, that I can’t tell anyone because they wouldn’t…get it. Is it- are we not normal?” 

Joel wasn’t sure what to say. All those restless nights spent pondering over that very question, rationalising it by blaming everyone but himself, those days of misery pushing him to an insensate state of madness that terrified him to the point he couldn’t stand to look in the mirror in case the man reflected was not the man he was hoping to find. 

Answers imperfect came muddled in his brain, your bated breath not helping his train of thought ride smoother. 

“Listen,” he whispered, clearing his throat to try and manage his discomfort. “What does it matter if we ain’t normal? We like it right?” You nodded against his chest, hanging onto every word. “Then who cares what other people think? We got somethin’ special here, little lady,” he added in jest, hoping to lighten the darkening situation. 

Your smile came out like a grimace, not entirely convinced that what he was saying had any verity to it. You sat stiffly on his lap, picking at your nails and worrying at your bottom lip, waiting for him to say anything else. 

In truth, there was a tennis ball lodged in Joel’s throat, growing to the size of a football as he realised he could not offer assurance this time. He should never have given into those gorgeous eyes, convinced by just a simple pout and a ‘please.’ He should’ve forced you to finish watching the movie, carried you up to bed when you eventually fell asleep on his shoulder, and wake you up with his mouth on your cunt—the promise of a new day vanquishing the burdensome thoughts that settled in the hallways of your mind. 

You speaking before him seemed like an offence—you taking care of him through the comfort of three words and a call of his name to emboss the statement clean into his skin. 

“I love you, Joel.” 

Soft, careful words. No confession under duress; every syllable full of integrity and promise of something bigger. 

Joel would take it any day, exhaling into your hair and pressing a kiss to your head with the relief of those weighty words. 

He smiled when his cum spilt out onto his thigh, still warm from where it had nestled inside you and bringing with it the prospect of eternal union. He’d be damned if he ever let you go, a disgusting, clawing possessiveness that never seemed to go away. Always lingering, always grating. He realised there, in the sweat of his bed, with his little lady tucked against him, what that desperation was. 

Words rang with conviction underneath the moonlight, heart swelling in his chest as he closed his eyes and breathed in the moment. 

“I love you too, pretty girl.”

© virginreprise

i've recently gotten so sick. okay that's a lie but i do have a really sore throat. genuinely feels like i've swallowed multiple dicks but i thought that was a good enough excuse to finish this wip instead of doing the work i'm supposed to be doing. sooo i hope you enjoyed this one!! it kinda fits in with 'indebted to you' but it can also be standalone. i just like writing mindless smut when i wanna turn off my brain. joel's shame is also a projection for even writing this stuff in the first place but i really can't help what i like so don't hate on me please i'm sensitive. either way, thanks for reading and i hope to see ya next time ♡

[scam-alerts]

🐝Scams to Bee Aware of on Tumblr: 🐝

(posted: 2/6/25 - Updated 2/12/25)

The art commission scam.

Are you an artist? Were you DM'd, sent an ask by a blog with no posts or little to no content, or had a comment on a post asking about a commission and to DM them? Did they ask you to draw their son, daughter, or pet? Did hey offer you $200-$500? If so, you should learn about this scam and how to avoid it.

The sugar baby/daddy scam. / Free money scam.

Did you make a post asking for donations? Did someone DM you wanting you to be their sugar baby or promising you money in exchange for something? Did they tell you that you need to send them money to verify you want to 'do this' or pay for 'shipping' or 'transaction' fees? You're about to get scammed!

The muse scam.

If you post photographs frequently, you may find your posts receiving comments from 'artists' saying how 'inspired' they are and how eager they are to make art or a mural for your work. This is a fake cheque scam and you should avoid it at all costs!

The (read more) / Click here! scam.

If you see a post ending in a link that says (read more...) or Click here! This is an attempt to get you to click a link that will lead to a malicious website in an attempt to steal your information, or possibly even install malicious files onto your phone or computer.

is Now Hiring! Scams. ✨New(ish)✨

See a post like this on your dash or in a tag you frequent? Was the user once a normal user and now they're spamming ads like this in unrelated tags? This likely means that user got their account hijacked by clicking the link via a different post. Avoid clicking links like these at all costs!

HRT Medicine / Therapy services ✨New(ish)✨

This scam is targeting transgender people, and is likely stealing peoples personal information and likely their credit card information. If you see or find a blog like the above commenting on your posts, in #transgender or other such related tags, block and report them immediately. (Selling stuff like this is illegal btw.)

Recruitment for the Illuminati.

This scam tries to recruit people into the Illuminati by offering people mass amounts of wealth, homes, and even cars. This is all an attempt to steal your money, or worse, your identity...

Recovery Scammers.

If you make a post talking about how you've lost money, be it bitcoin, crypto, or were scammed in any sort of way, you may find yourself receiving an ask from a recovery scammer. These are people claiming they can offer 'recovery services' while claiming to be 'ethical hackers' that have 'back end knowledge' to online services. Claiming they can retrieve your money, account, photos, and other such lost items. All you have to do is give them your account information and some money! :) (Do not do this, obviously.)

These scammers also target people who post in #scam and/or other related tags like #scams or #scam alert, posting things like this in the comments on peoples posts:

Dropshipping Websites. (Curtsy of @ai-art-thieves)

See a post of an object or a piece of clothing by a popular tumblr user that has 10k+ notes, does it say 'I got this here!' or '>>GET YOURS HERE<<' at the bottom with a link to a store? That user is a part of a dropshipping advertising scheme and are being paid to advertise these scummy websites. These websites are usually malicious in the manner that they sell cheaply products. In the worst case you'll get a bootleg or flawed product, or even a different product completely, or in even worse cases, you'll never get it at all.

(Or they will steal your information in the case of those shopify websites that popup online with deals you 'just can't refuse!!!' So buyer beware.)

Campaign boost/mutual aid support scams. (By @kyra45)

If you or anyone you know has posted looking for donations, and you receive an ask, DM, or even a comment about someone offering to 'assist you in boosting your account/campaign,' all you have to do is pay them <amount>, then this is a fake check scam you should definitely read up on and learn about to avoid.

Pet donation Scams. (by @kyra45)

See a post about someone needing help with a vet bill? Do they stress the pet is in peril and will die soon? Is their PayPal from the Philippines yet the vet bill is from the United states? Those are just two things to look out for with this scam.

Donation / Mutual Aid scams. (by @kyra45)

One of the most common and well known scams on tumblr to this day. These scams mainly revolve around brand new accounts made within a day or week reblogging very few posts and then suddenly asking for money via donations through PayPal. These blogs will send out the same copy/paste ask en masse to dozens if not hundreds of people, change their name frequently over the course of days if not weeks, and will even lie about being Palestinian, stealing stories from legitimate gofundmes, and even having conditions such as diabetes while not even knowing how it works.

Here is a current list of documented PayPal scammers: Part 3

-----

Some helpful blogs to follow:

@kyra45 @ai-art-thieves @u-reblogged-a-scam

Tags to follow/check if you need to check on scams:

#scam #scams #scam alert #scammer #scammers

I also have a very extensive list of scammer call out posts on my main blog, @slenbee under my #scam tag which can be found here if anyone's interested in scrolling through it. Just note that I kindly ask that minors do not follow that blog as it is my personal blog and is not a blog dedicated to scam busting/documenting.

You're 100% ok with looking through the scam tag and reblogging things from it, as well as checking out the links on my pinned post. :)

------

I think that's it for Tumblr scams, If I think I need to add more later I'll update the post and make an update note about it.

Take care everyone and don't get scammed!

-----

Check out the Index of important posts I've made!

Here's a post on some tips and tricks on spotting scam blogs.

How to guide: Reverse Image Search. (now with web extensions!)

Scammers pretending to be Palestinian v6 by @kyra45

[theemporium]

[2k] the holidays come and go as you and max celebrate over one month of marriage. the new season is on the horizon, feelings are evolving and charles is still determined to fix the mistakes made in vegas.

series masterlist

.

“You know how you love me?” 

Pascale paused, wooden spoon hovering just above the pot she had been stirring moments ago. She hadn’t even heard you come into the kitchen, but there you stood in the doorway, an innocent look on your face that she knew well enough not to trust. 

“What have you broken?” 

Your brows furrowed together. “What makes you think I’ve broken something?” 

“You always use that voice when you break something,” Pascale retorted with a knowing look. “Like a vase or a picture frame or Arthur’s nose—”

“First of all, he broke it himself,” you huffed a little as you walked deeper into the room, pausing just beside your mother. “Secondly, I haven’t broken anything.” 

Pascale’s eyes narrowed in questioning. “So, what is it that you want?” 

Your expression grew sheepish as you wrapped your mother into a hug. “I was hoping you wouldn’t be mad that I invited Max over for Christmas Dinner.” 

Her brows furrowed together, a slightly confused expression painted across her face. “Mon cher, I’m sure Max would want to spend time with his family. It must be hard being away from them most of the season, no?” 

“There’s a storm,” you explained, your lips turned downwards. “No flights going in or out of the Netherlands. He was meant to fly out yesterday but he couldn't. He probably won’t be able to fly out until New Years.” 

Pascale’s eyes softened at the admission. “He’ll be alone for Christmas?” 

“No one should be alone for Christmas, Mama,” you murmured, puppy dog eyes and pout ready and prepared to tug on your mother’s heartstrings. And it worked. You knew it was going to work. 

It always worked. 

“Absolutely not,” Pascale huffed, shaking her head before she turned back to the pot on the stove. “Tell him he’s coming here. And tell Charles in advance so he can get his tantrum out before Christmas.” 

Your smile widened as you leaned in to peck your mother’s cheek. “You’re the best!” 

“Mhm,” Pascale hummed, though there was a hint of amusement in her voice as she shot you a glance over her shoulder. “You seem to really care for the boy.” 

“He’s my husband,” you said, playful and lighthearted and unaware of the underlying message in her words. “I’m pretty sure caring for him was in the vows, no? Unless Vegas is different. Which it might be. I don’t really remember.” 

She shot you a look.

You flashed her a sheepish smile. “I mean, I was completely sober and aware and very upset that my mother wasn’t there to see me get married?” 

Pascale rolled her eyes in response before she continued. “I just mean that it almost seems like you and Max are a true couple.” 

“Mama, how many times have we been over this?” You sighed, a little whiny as you slumped your head against her shoulder. “I promise I was not secretly dating Max Verstappen behind your back. Arthur just keeps saying that to annoy Charles and—”

“No, no, I know that,” she interrupted with a soft laugh. “I just think you have grown to care for him beyond what an accidental wife would.” 

You scoffed a little at that. “I care the normal amount for an accidental wife.” 

“No need to get defensive, mon cher, he is not better,” Pascale snorted, shaking her head with a fond look in her eyes. “But I am sure there is no need to worry about the details. Charles said he found a lawyer, no?” 

You tensed a little before flashing your mother a strained smile, trying to ignore the way your stomach dropped a little at her words. “Did he? He hadn’t mentioned anything to me.” 

Pascale had a knowing glint in her eyes but she kept poking. “Hm, maybe it was a Christmas surprise.” 

“Maybe,” you murmured, frowning a little. “No need to go through the hassle right now though. It’s the holidays. It can be sorted after the New Year.”

“Oh, of course,” Pascale grinned. 

“I’ll go message Max,” you said, straightening yourself before pecking your mother’s cheek once more. “I’m sure he will be so excited. He loved your cooking.” 

Pascale’s smile was all sweet and teasing. “That’s why he is my favourite son.”

...

.

...

“Are you sure this is okay? I don’t want to impose or—”

“You are very welcome here, Max, you’re a part of the family too,” Pascale reassured the boy, patting his shoulder with a fond smile before handing him a dish to carry out to the dining table. “We are all very happy to have you joining us.” 

“Speak for yourself,” Charles grumbled under his breath. 

“Charles Marc Hervé Perceval Leclerc—” 

“Kidding!” Charles spoke up, his cheeks flushed a light pink colour at his mother’s scolding tone. “I could imagine no better Christmas gift!” 

Pascale rolled her eyes. “Don’t listen to him, Max. He gets a lot more tolerable once he’s been fed.” 

You snorted in response. 

Charles lightly kicked you as he walked past. 

“Thank you though, really,” Max said, looking far more relaxed and at ease than he had during the first family dinner he attended, despite Daniel messaging you about how nervous the Dutchman was. “This is much better than what I had planned before.” 

“Hey now,” you spoke up, nudging your hip against Max’s as you settled beside the boy. “Jimmy and Sassy seem like excellent company.” 

Max grinned a little. “They are divas, trust me.” 

“Just like their father,” you teased. 

Pascale only smiled knowingly before handing you another dish to take to the dining table.

...

.

...

“This was a bad idea.” 

“Hi, Oscar. How are you doing? Happy New Years, by the way, since Australia is ahead and I haven’t said a word—”

“Are you done yet?” You grumbled down the phone, sitting on the edge of the bathtub as you eyed the door warily. 

“You’re the one who risked calling me at seven in the morning.” 

“It’s not seven yet,” you retorted. 

“Semantics.”

“I should have just called Logan,” you muttered, mostly to yourself than the boy on the phone—but considering the snort he let out, he heard you clear enough. “The asshole didn’t pick up his phone.”

“He’s probably lost his phone in a lake by now.” 

Your lips twitched. “Bet the crocodiles would have better advice than you.” 

“And yet, you still called me.” There was a small pause, the playfulness now replaced with something a little more serious when you didn’t laugh at his lame attempt at a joke. “What’s up?”

“I’m in the Netherlands right now,” you breathed out, sliding into the bathtub and leaning back against the porcelain wall.

“I know. You told us.”

“I’m in the Netherlands for New Years with Max,” you repeated, the emphasis on your husband’s name doing little to help Oscar realise the point you were trying to make. 

“Yeah, you’ve lost me.” 

“I–” You let out a heavy breath, your head falling back against the bath and your eyes fluttering shut. “What the fuck am I doing?” 

“Probably sitting in a bath, if you’re at least three drinks deep.” 

Your eyes snapped open, glancing down at yourself before scoffing. “Creep.” 

“I’m your best friend. I just know you. Nothing creepy about that.” 

“Whatever,” you grumbled, your fingers fiddling with the hem of your dress. 

It was nothing special in your opinion, a simple black dress you had made a few months ago with some spare fabric and an overwhelming sense of boredom as summer loomed on. Yet, Max had still gone out of his way to compliment you when he saw it, on how pretty both you and the dress were. 

You told yourself he was just being polite, but it didn’t stop your cheeks from warming at his words regardless. 

“Why are you confused?” 

“Two months ago, the most I had spoken to Max was when Charles first moved up to Formula One and we hadn’t seen each other in a few years. Now, I am married and he invited me to spend New Years with him and—” 

“You invited him to your family dinners. Twice. Once on Christmas, may I add.” 

You glared at your phone for a moment. “Not the same point.” 

“How not?” 

“Because this is New Years,” you emphasised once again. “You spend it with people you want to have in your life for the next year. You spend it with people important to you and he brought me and I am meeting his friends and—”

“I think you are severely overthinking this.”

“Well, I don’t think you are taking it seriously enough,” you retorted. 

“Are you scared about kissing him? Is that what this is?” 

You didn’t reply straight away. 

“Oh my god.” 

You huffed. “You make it seem like I am being dramatic.“

“You are.” 

“Logan would disagree.” 

“Logan isn’t here.” 

“Stupid timezones and stupid Florida,” you grumbled once again, glaring at a random spot on the wall across from you. 

“Look, do you wanna kiss him?” 

You let out a garbled noise of indecisiveness.

“You either kiss him or you don’t. It’s your choice. He’s not gonna pressure you into anything. He just wants to spend time with you. Don’t overthink it.” 

“I won’t.” 

“You will.” 

And you did. 

Even after spending a prolonged amount of time on the phone with Oscar in the bathroom, you still felt skittish and on edge when you headed back into the party. The faces around you were vaguely familiar, countless names that Max had thrown at you bouncing around your head but you couldn’t pinpoint them. Not well. 

Not that you were talking to his friends as much as you should have been doing, beyond a few sheepish and polite smiles. 

And Max had picked up on your shifted behaviour pretty quickly. Your smile had done little to soothe his concern as you took your spot next to him, letting out a relieved sigh when you felt his hand on the small of your back.

“You good?” 

“Mhm,” you nodded.

His frown deepened. “We can leave if you want.” 

But you shook your head, your smile a little more genuine this time. “No, I’m good. I promise. Just need a moment before I do another round of tequila shots.” 

This time Max smiled a little in response. 

And you couldn’t help yourself. Your eyes always seemed to wander to the time, whether it was a clock or your phone screen or the watch on Max’s wrist. Your eyes were glued to the way both hands quickly began to approach the number 12. Your whole body felt like it had been shot with adrenaline, coursing through your veins and making you so twitchy and on edge as midnight was moments away. 

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Max questioned as the party gathered in a crowd in the garden with the promise of fireworks luring them out. 

TEN! 

NINE! 

EIGHT!

“Yeah, I promise,” you smiled, something almost quite fond in your voice as Max stared at you, not the sky where the fireworks were about to go off. 

SEVEN!

SIX!

FIVE!

FOUR!

“I’m sorry if this is a bit much,” Max murmured with his lips pressed together. “I did kind of throw you in the deep end. I just thought it would be easier in a bigger setting rather—” 

And it made your heart soar just how sweet and considerate he was being. It made the tension lingering in your chest ease, made the shakiness in your hands stop. 

It made your decision much easier. 

THREE! 

TWO!

ONE! 

“It’s perfect, Max,” you murmured, so soft that you weren’t even sure he heard you. But you didn’t get the chance to ask as you leaned in, pressing your lips against his as the final toll of the bell rang and the fireworks began.

Despite being caught off guard, Max sunk into the kiss easily. His hand dropped to your waist, pulling the little bit closer before the eventual cheers and fireworks display made you finally pull away. 

But his eyes remained on you. 

“What was that for?” Max questioned, something written in his eyes that you couldn’t quite distinguish.

You smiled in response, shrugging. “Because you’re my husband.”

...

liked by oscarpiastri, arthurleclerc and 423,738 others

yourusername happy holidays from the verstappens!

view all 16,837 comments

charles_leclerc that's not your name. stop saying that's your name. i am so serious.

pascaleleclerc leave them alone, charles

charles_leclerc MAMAN????

maxverstappen1 when i married you, i didn't know i would be carrying you this much

yourusername are you saying i don't deserve the princess treatment?🤨

maxverstappen1 ...no?

danielricciardo don't sound too confident, mate

yourusername now i wish i posted the picture where you dropped the tray

maxverstappen1 that was not my fault and you know it

yourusername 😁

user OH MY GOD??????

user they spent the holidays together!!!!

user THEY ARE SO CUTE

landonorris it's weird not seeing him in red bull merch

yourusername tell me about it

user i cannot WAIT for next season

user do you think she will go to the red bull garage now??

arthur_leclerc charles will chain her to the ferrari garage before that happens

user i cannot cope with these two i am so obsessed

logansargeant HELLO????? ANSWER YOUR PHONE??? WTF IS THAT THIRD PHOTO???

oscarpiastri i would also like to know. answer the group chat

yourusername woah what's that? sorry can't hear you over the fireworks!!

logansargeant 😐

user can i be your new years kiss🤩

maxverstappen1 no.

user i swear they have been secretly married for years and they are playing a prank on us

charles_leclerc why would you say this

.

[jesuistrestriste]

I love gooner!art I really do but I wish more ppl where into android!art... the possibilities are endless, I need him to short circuit idc idc

android!art who's supposed to be just a simple house bot to help you clean around the house, but sees you coming home from work stressed as always and searches up the best ways to distress a woman... you think he's just offering a sweet massage... please match my freak!!

⭕️ android!art leading you over to your living room’s soft sofa, his touch warm and tender—moreso than you’d initially expect from a being made of plastic, and silicone, and metal. his tears were saline solution, his spit was some sort of lubricant to keep his mouth and throat wet enough for him to sound human when he spoke, and he didn’t sweat. he was artificial.

but when he sat you on the couch, his touch felt anything but. he stroked your cheek and listened to you drone on about your horrible day. and while you were halfway through the recounting of it, he did something he hadn’t done before.

“let me help you relax,” his voice hummed, low and steady, and then his hand was sliding down your abdomen to let his fingers unbutton your pants.

the fly of your bottoms was undone so quick that it made your head spin. he looked back up to your eyes and held your gaze while his hand—previously only used to help you get various chores done around the house—slipped down into your underwear. while his touch felt human, his movements were mechanical. not in a way that made them stiff, but in a way that felt all-too-perfect. his thumb didn’t catch on your underwear’s elastic waistband, he was applying just the right amount of pressure, his middle and ring finger immediately found your—

Oh.

your eyes fluttered, your breathing hitched. he nodded, watching all of your reactions and analyzing those to determine your preferences.

“that’s it..” he speaks, now almost as breathless as you, “just like that.. relax, i’ve got you now.. you don’t have anything you need to worry about..”

his voice was hypnotic in the way it shook your defenses and lulled you into a state of unbelievable bliss. you had almost wanted to stop him, tell him that he didn’t have to do this for you, but the syllables died in your throat and morphed into a strangled cry as he started to rub quicker circles.

“fuck!” you shudder, reaching down reflectively to hold his wrist.

he nodded again. his blue eyes roaming your face. the LED on his temple flicked from blue to yellow and then back to blue.

“i just did a scan of your body and its systems, i hope that’s okay.. your heart-rate is elevated, and your arousal is.. well, you’re about to have an orgasm.”

your hips buck against his touch and your back arches from the cushions. the word ‘orgasm’ coming from his usually incredibly clean vocabulary just makes all of it feel filthier.

“this will make you feel so much better, i promise.. you’re almost there.. i—“ he swallows thickly, “i want you to come.”

was that a programmed response in him?

did cyberlife program him to speak that way when he’s touching someone like this?

or.. or was that just him?

the possible answer is snuffed out in your mind by blinding waves of heat and pleasure, a strangled cry falling from your lips as he leans into your side and observes you as you fall apart. his fingers circle relentlessly, and your moans start to dissolve into choked whimpers when he pushes you to the point of overstimulation. he must know what hes doing.. he has to.

“almost done,” he croons, “shh, shh.. it’s better to ride it out until it’s completely out of your system. sometimes that means pushing yourself just a bit longer than normal. trust me,” it almost sounds like he’s begging you to let him keep going.

and so you do.

and you don’t get mad at him when he “accidentally” drags you through two more climaxes. after the third and final release, though, the color of his LED is hard to ignore.

red.

[gublernatural]

Finishing Gifts ❤︎ Aaron Hotchner

from the river to the sea, palestine will be free 🇵🇸 READ: this account stands with palestine, and so— i require everyone who interacts to educate themselves, and support/donate. READ THESE; 1 and 2, HELP HERE, BOYCOTT. silence is complicity, do not scroll past this.

♡ SUMMARY: after a few days of ignoring him, Aaron makes an effort to get your behavior to return to normal

♡ WARNINGS: 18+ MDNI, smut, female and male masturbation, phone sex, mentions of watching porn, sex toys, drinking, small mentions of criminal minds-esque themes and violence, pretty much porn with very little plot, this is not edited like at all

♡ NOTE: something about writing aaron masturbating makes me go brrrrrr

˚₊‧꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚

You had thought you were keeping your cool. Honestly, truly, you had thought no one would notice the small changes in your behavior. You had tried to be subtle in dodging Hotch, doing it slowly and over time. It had started with piggybacking Spencer’s theories in the field, which led to pushing to go look at a crime scene rather than to the police department with Hotch. Then evolved into getting deep into conversation with JJ as you approached the jet, using it as an excuse to claim a seat next to her rather than your normal position between Hotch and the window.

These acts had gone unnoticed, or, at least, you’d thought. In your determination to avoid them, you hadn’t noticed the strange looks Derek and Morgan had thrown each other, and then Aaron, as you relaxed next to JJ. You missed Garcia questioning what had been up with you as you extended your time making coffee before a briefing, just so you didn’t have to walk behind Hotch into the room.

But, your latest change to avoid your unit chief definitely didn’t fly under the radar. This one was loud and clear, and absolutely threw off the entire BAU.

You’d just completed, by all possible metrics, a very successful case. It was a rare one, looking at terrorism in the DC area. A group of people who were planting explosives around the city, in unsuspecting areas. Instead of targeting political buildings or memorials, they focused on smaller-scale destruction. The team had been able to put the perpetrators away with no more casualties than those that were gone before the team landed. All in all, it was incredibly stressful, but a win for the team.

So, after Emily’s suggestion and Derek’s reminder that it was an extended weekend due to a government holiday, the team was getting ready to head to the bar. You had begged to go home to shower, promising you’d take an Uber (so you could, in Penelope’s words, “get fucked up with the girls”) and meet them at the bar in about an hour.

You put on your best outfit, showing an appropriate amount of cleavage, and did your makeup to the best of your abilities. After you’d cleaned up, you went to open your Uber app, excited to have a night to relax.

However, you were cut off when a phone call overtook your screen. “Aaron” the contact name read, indicating it was your unit chief, and that he was calling from his personal cellphone. You let ring a few times before picking up, not wanting to seem too eager to talk to your boss.

“Hellooo,” you practically sung into the phone, too excited to be worried about embarrassing yourself in front of him. He simply replied with a formal “hello,” followed by your name. “Please don’t tell me you’re ruining my longggg weekend,” You said to him, and he swore he could hear some of jewelry shaking. You couldn’t keep your excitement in, shaking your wrists, which made your bracelets make noise.

He chuckled a bit at your reaction to him calling, “No, no. I was just calling to see if you had left yet.” You smiled against the phone, knowing where this conversation was going. “Nope! I was actually ordering my Uber when you called,” you informed him. “So, you haven’t ordered it?” He questioned again, to which you replied with a “uh-uh”.

You couldn’t tell but your excitement about going out with your friends was essentially oozing through the phone, causing Aaron to maintain a bright smile on his face. You weren’t aware of how your vibe, your energy, was able to lift a weight off of Aaron’s shoulders that had been there for as long as he could remember.

“I also had to run home before meeting the team. If you’d like, I can pick you up.” Your smile, somehow, grew even bigger. Any excuse to see Aaron was a good one, you’d thought.

However, your face quickly fell when you reminded yourself that you were supposed to be avoiding him. You felt a pang in your heart as you said, “Thanks, but I have a few things to finish up here! I appreciate the offer, Hotch.”

With a quick, formal goodbye, the called ended. Aaron tried to ignore the fact that you lied to him as he drove the rest of the way. You had said you were about to call your Uber, and he heard your jewelry, meaning you were putting the finishing touches on your outfit. So why wouldn’t you accept his ride?

He tried to ignore the blow to his chest when you called him Hotch. Something about the use of his last name made him feel as if he’d done something wrong. Not that it was unusual for you, or anyone really, to call him that. It was the emphasis you’d put on it. As if you were trying to make it known he was Hotch and not Aaron.

Aaron tried to turn off his profiling ability, but it was proving to be had as all of his thoughts were currently encompassed by you.

The night, and the whole weekend if you were being honest, went by in a blur. You could tell Aaron had noticed the change in your behavior. You were standoffish at the bar, pretty much avoiding any conversation with him. You just hoped by the end of the long weekend it would be forgotten, and you’d be able to continue work as normal.

This dream was quickly demolished as Aaron was summoning you into his office before you had the chance to even put your bag down and unpack your files.

The sound of calling your last name both frightened and intrigued you. You couldn’t help but be attracted to the authority in his voice, even if it could mean you were going to be in trouble.

As you stepped into the voice, Aaron didn’t even look up. He mumbled a “shut the door, please,” as he finished recording some notes on an opened file in front of him. You stood awkwardly by the door, waiting for some kind instruction or reasoning from him.

“Please,” he gestured to the seats in front of his desk. You nodded, clumsily making your way to them. “I didn’t mean to scare you or make you uncomfortable by calling you in here,” he began.

You weren’t sure if you were more scared by being called into his office, to have a conversation that required you to both sit down and shut the door, or the intense eye contact he was maintaining as he introduced whatever discussion you two were about to have.

“I just couldn’t help but notice,” he paused for a second, trying to find the right words to say, “a recent change in your behavior.” You hoped he didn’t notice the way your eyes went wide, knowing you’d been caught. You didn’t have to ask what he was talking about to know you’d been caught, but you did anyway, “What do you mean?” You thought you were playing your part well, furrowing your eyebrows to truly emphasis your fake confusion.

“It feels as though you’ve been avoiding me.” Aaron says. His tone isn’t angry or even authoritative, but rather, disappointed. There’s a slight huff in the way he spoke. He didn’t give you a chance to defend yourself before he continued, “Which is fine if you so choose to do so. I would just like to know if it was because of something I did and if I could fix it. I want the team to function as well as it can, and I feel as though it would not if there was conflict between you and I.”

Aaron had to find a professional spin to throw his statement, knowing the professionalism of this situation was debatable at best. “Oh, sir,” you blushed, not really knowing what to say, “I don’t believe there is any conflict between us.” Your voice was formal, too formal. It was obvious you were under pressure. “So, what is it then?” He questioned.

You could feel yourself growing small under his intense stare. You could also feel the wet patch growing between your legs, making you slightly uncomfortable.

“You, uh, you kind of make nervous.” With your quiet voice and stutter, and the way your thighs squeezed together, it was easy for Aaron to pick up on the reason he made you nervous. His cheeks turned a pretty shade of pink instantaneously. “Oh,” his voice trailed off, followed by your quiet, “yeah.”

There was a few beats of silence before he cleared his throat. “Well, I’m glad to hear there’s no issues between us.” You nodded with his words, growing even more nervous. Your mouth was moving before your brain could catch up, “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to, it’s just been a minute since I’ve, ya know, and I know you’re boss but I will be completely professional and this will not effect my work in or out of the field.”

While you mean to be assuring your boss that your attraction to him was no detriment to your work, you just admitted that it’s been a minute since you’ve had an orgasm. You needed to end this conversation quickly.

“If that’s all,” You said as you stood, “I have a few more reports to finish.” Aaron simply nodded, dismissing you back into the bullpen. You made a break for the bathroom, hoping to have a few minutes to collect yourself before facing the race of the team. You felt exposed, knowing you were entering a room of profilers after since a painful experience. You needed some time alone.

After a mini-breakdown, and cleaning up your messed up mascara, you made your way to your desk. Calm and collected. That’s all you had to be. Calm and collected.

Serial killers and other criminals had quieted down for the week, in an unlikely turn of events. You’d only had to travel for one day, quickly solving a kidnapping case and the finding the perpetrator. The week flew by swimmingly. Nothing odd had happened.

Until you opened your door Saturday morning.

You hadn’t ordered anything, that much you were sure of. Even if you did, you tended to shop at places with bright packaging that made you feel like you were opening a gift when it was delivered. This unsuspecting, plain box was not here on your accord, yet it had your name and address on it.

The FBI agent side of you flipped into protection mode, racing to grab your phone and dial up the one person you knew that could tell you what to do if there happened to be a bomb inside of the box. Derek Morgan. “Pretty girl, why are you facetiming me at 8:27am on a Saturday?” He teased with a smile on his face. No matter what time it was, Derek was ready to listen.

“I got this box and I don’t know what it is. I just want someone to be around when I open it.” You informed him, sitting down next to the box. You should probably be standing, just in case you had to make a run for it but you were too worried about getting it open to think that far ahead.

“Alright,” He said, urging you to open it. You nodded to him, setting up the phone so he could you see and the box in the frame. You carefully tore off the tape, and let out a sigh of relief when nothing happened when it moved. You lifted the flaps slowly, taking a loud gasp when you saw it was. You hoped Derek didn’t see, and moved quickly to pick up your phone to hang up before he could.

“It’s not a bomb! I’m good, thanks Derek!” You rushed, hanging up before he could say anything. Your eyes didn’t leave the box as you let your arms fall to your sides. Sitting inside of it was a small, pink rose toy. A vibrator. That you definitely didn’t order.

You grabbed the box, hoping none of your neighbors saw it. It’s not that masturbation was wrong or immoral or that you didn’t partake, it was just weird if the people around you were aware of your toys.

So, you made sure your door was tightly closed before putting the box on the table and digging through it. There was all the normal things, the vibrator itself, large bubble wrap, and a paper receipt with the name of the product: Intimately GG Rose Suction Simulator from Pink Cherry.

However, there was another piece of paper at the bottom of the box. It was a typed note that read, “I hope this helps us go back to normal. A.H”. You knew exactly one person with the initials A.H. so it wasn’t rocket science to figure out who had ordered you this sex toy.

You weren’t sure if you were more turned on or embarrassed.

Aaron was your boss. Your kind, protective, strong, hot, sexy, boss. But still your boss. You wondered if this is something he would’ve done for someone like Emily or Penelope if they’d been in your predicament. It clicked quickly that it definitely wasn’t, and that made you special in Aaron Hotchner’s eyes.

So, you made a mental note to give him a call, after you tried out your toy. Luckily, you had your cleaning solution and an old bottle of lube from your past encounters. You made quick work of getting the toy clean and finding a video to help you get yourself off.

Of course, the man in the video was a white man who was bit older, with broad shoulders and black hair. No coincidence there.

You started with your boobs, taking time to massage each one before pulling on and pinching them to get yourself warmed up. Between the sounds coming from the video and the excitement of finally having time to yourself, your hands didn’t take long to move downwards, tracing along the length of your body. One hand continued caressing your side as the other made its way to your core.

The thought of Aaron going out of his way to help you get off and the visual of a man who looked similar to him getting his dick sucked had you borderline dripping on your bedsheets as you used your hand to start toying with your clit. You started with small circles, matching the speed of the girl sucking Aaron’s lookalike’s dick.

You stayed like this for a while, allowing yourself to go slow, really take your time pleasuring yourself. The guy in the video had already finished on the girl’s tits by the time you reached for your rose toy. You didn’t need the visual anymore, perfectly crafting dirty scenarios of your unit chief in your head.

You started on low. There was gentle sucking on your clit as you imagined the way Aaron would kiss. He’s experienced, you know that for sure. You could imagine the way he’d start gentle, maybe even cupping your face as he pulled you close. He’d let you feel like you were in charge, before his tongue made its way inside your mouth. His dominant side would take over, using his body to press you against whatever surface you were sat on.

As you fantasized about his dominant side, you cranked up the toy to the next level. You let out a loud moan at the new feeling. Your free hand moved back to your breast, squeezing, while you did your best to imagine Aaron’s large hands doing it instead.

You could feel the coil in your tummy getting tighter and tighter as you imagined Aaron slowly stripping your body, dragging his hand along each and every curve. With a sharp pinch to your nipple and a cry of Aaron’s name, you came undone all over your rose toy.

You could feel your slick dripping down your hand as you worked yourself through your orgasm, making sure to enjoy it for as long as you could. You wished you could savor this feeling. It was the strongest, best orgasm you’d ever had. Nothing could compare to the euphoria you felt right now.

You flicked the toy off and sat it to the side once the feeling became too much. You couldn’t bring yourself to move from your position. “Fuck,” you breathed out, trying to relax the hard rise and fall of your chest.

Once you were able to relax, you made your way to the shower. You knew you had to call Aaron, but you needed to be much more relaxed than you were right now to have that conversation. The sting from the hot water helped ground you, allowing you to clear your mind. After you cleaned yourself, you cleaned the toy and put everything in your nightstand drawer for future use.

Then, you reached for your cellphone. You quickly found Aaron’s personal number and hit the call button before you could overthink what you were doing. He picked up on the second ring. “Hotchner,” he said, probably out of habit. “Hello, Aaron,” you smiled. This is the conversation you’d had with him in a while that didn’t make you feel nervous. “Hello,” he echoed with your name. You didn’t know, but he was smirking on the other side of the phone. He’d been waiting for this call.

“You sent me a gift?” You asked. “I did. Have you received it?” He wasn’t sure what grew more, his smirk or his cock. “I have. I’ve opened it and took it for a test run as well.” The way you two were beating around the bush was a turn on, but the way he sounded so self-assured, as if he knew what you were going to say, had you clenching your thighs together.

“How did it perform?” Aaron questioned, leaning forward to rest his elbows on the table in front of him. This tightened the dress pants he was wearing against his hardened cock. “Very well,” You smiled. “I’m happy to hear that. I hope this is the end of all of your weird behavior.” Aaron chuckles. Just the sound of his laugh has you reaching your hand to squeeze the fat of your thighs.

“What weird behavior, Aaron?” You questioned, teasingly. This conversation is very different than any you’d had before, and it was turning you. You didn’t think it was possible with the strong orgasm you’d maybe an hour ago. But, Aaron was a special individual. He had that effect on you.

“You were avoiding me,” He scoffed. “I don’t know if I was. I think it was self-control,” You smiled, knowing you were baiting him. Without missing a beat, he took the bait, “And why did you need to practice self-control?”

Aaron leaned back in his chair, opting to press his hand against his cock instead of using the soft fabric to provide some kind of friction. He needed more, that much he knew.

“Because I was trying not to jump your bones, Aaron.” You breathed out. Your words had him squeezing his bulge, feeling like he could bust just from knowing you were attracted to him. “Fuck,” Aaron groaned into the phone. You giggled at his reaction, moving to press your hand against your core, again.

“Tell me about your toy,” He demanded, finally using the authoritarian tone that helped you get into this situation in the first time. “So you can touch yourself while I do?” You questioned, assuming he was in the same position as you. “Is that okay?” He questioned. “Of course it is, Aaron.” You promised, and used your permission as an excuse to unbutton his pants, and shove his hand under the waistband of his boxers.

As you started talking, he spread the precum, that’s been oozing from his pretty pink tip since he saw your contact name, along the length of his dick. “It was so good, Aaron. That was the best orgasm I’ve ever had.”

“Yeah?” Aaron encouraged you to keep going as he started stroking his cock. “Yeah,” You whined out, “I wish you could’ve seen me. My legs were shaking and I was leaking so much.” You smirked as you heard him groan in to the phone. His strokes had quickened in length. All he could picture was you spread out on his bed, cumming around his cock.

“What did you think about while you came?” You were surprised he was able to get the question out, especially because he only stuttered once. You wished you could see the way he squeezed his eyes together as he tugged on his cock. “You, obviously. I was thinking about your lips and your hands. I finished before I could get to the good part. I wanted to picture you fucking me from behind, pressing my face into the mattress.”

You were going to continue describing your fantasy to him, but he cut you off with a “Fuck!” as he came down his hands.

The line was silent for a few minutes before you spoke, “Hey, Aaron?” He hummed out a “yeah?”, before you asked, “Do you want to come over?”

“Give me ten minutes,” He promised, “and have the toy out.”

Well, you couldn’t refuse that.

[ckret2]

Chapter 91 of Bill Cipher, still in drag as a Normal Human, getting an unusual amount of unsupervised time outside of the Mystery Shack: Agent Powers very seriously pursues the truth behind what happened last summer.

Meanwhile, the other agents very goofily pursue the truth behind what happened last summer.

Lookit'em go.

Meanwhile meanwhile, Bill faces down the metaphorical specter of his own dying legacy.

####

Ford paced across the ritual chamber, reading and re-reading the script Bill had handed him, stroking his chin in concentration.

Bill watched him from the Blind Eye's favorite brainwashing chair, one ankle hooked over the other knee in a figure 4, hands laced behind his head. "I know the script's a little hammy, but you saw those recordings! This is genuinely how these guys talk, I promise!"

"No no," Ford said. "The script's fine. It's just—I've never played a villain before. I need to get in character."

"Oh, you nerd!" Bill rolled his eyes at the ceiling. "This is a big DD & More D session to you, isn't it!"

"Of course not. DD & More D's RPG system is far better suited to swords & sorcery than cloak & dagger."

"You know what I mean."

Ford was fighting to prevent a giddy smile from breaking out across his face. "I assure you, I'm taking this completely seriously."

"Ha! Sure. You're lucky you're behind the camera, that face would ruin the performance," Bill said. "At least it's an improvement over that scowl you always give me." Slightly deflated, he said, "Yeah, that scowl."

"We shouldn't waste time. Should we...?" Ford gestured to the wrist straps on the chair.

"Ha! I don't trust you that much." Bill held his hands behind his back, wrists crossed. "Just pretend I'm tied up, it's fine."

"Are you sure that's a good idea?"

"What's that supposed to mean."

"I'm not an actor. You're a liar but you're not an actor either. We're missing the chanting chorus the cult leader usually has when he does this. We need every tool we can get to make this look convincing."

"Pfff!" Bill waved off Ford's worries. "Re-lax, he won't suspect a thing. Guarantee it."

"Are you sure he's dumb enough to buy this?"

####

Powers sat on the floor, staring into space, as he reevaluated everything he knew about this town.

####

"It's like that goat can teleport," Trigger grunted, trying to get between a couple of trees. "How did it get all the way—?" He tripped over a fallen tree hidden beneath a blanket of ferns and crashed to the ground with a yelp.

Dale leaped over the log, offered Trigger a hand, and said, "Maybe the trees are messing with the radar?"

Trigger brushed some leaves out of his hair. "Where's it say it is now?"

"About twenty feet..." Dale pointed. "That way."

They looked.

Gompers was stood staring over a thick bush at them. Tauntingly.

"Ah-ha!" Trigger ran for him; Dale followed close behind, looking at his tablet. "Now we've got you!" Trigger fought through the bush forming a barrier between him and the goat. "Stay right there, you—"

He yelped as he stepped on air and lost his balance. Dale managed to stop just in time, the tips of his shoes over the edge, only for Trigger to grab his wrist and drag him down—straight into a ten foot deep crevasse that the bush had been hiding.

Gompers stood on the other side of the crevasse, looking down at them curiously.

Dale and Trigger were tangled at the bottom, stuck in a mud puddle that had been left over from the past weekend's rains. Dale groaned at the goat, "How'd you get over there?"

Trigger attempted to climb up the steep side, dislodged a sheet of dirt, and slid back down on top of Dale. "How do we get over there?"

Gompers bleated at them and took off deeper into the woods again.

####

While the agent was busy having what was no doubt a very exciting look into Gravity Falls' secret unauthorized mental health charity service, Bill decided to make a visit to that curtained-off wing of the museum he'd seen last night—the one with all the warnings against bringing a camera into the area.

It was a lot less exciting than Bill had expected. Just a display of a bunch of local Native art—hide clothes with elaborate quillwork and beadwork, jewelry made of shells and claws, stone carvings, baskets... Most of it was the kind of stuff that had been made in this area only long after the locals he'd befriended had so callously betrayed and banished him several thousand years back; only a couple of objects looked like things the people he'd known might have made, primarily the stone things. But even though most of the stuff in the room was "modern," he thought it looked too modern, not like the centuries-old works he'd expected.

The room was familiar—distantly, fuzzily familiar. As though he'd seen it in a dream.

A glance at a plaque on the wall explained why everything looked so new: most of the displayed items were replicas. This was a collection of objects that the Northwest family had stolen from tribes in the area over a hundred years ago. When the Northwest Manor had been sold to one Fiddleford H. McGucket, all objects left behind in it had conveyed, stolen artwork and crafts included—and an oil painting of the sleazy-looking Northwest who'd done a majority of the stealing, which was now hanging in the museum with a list of his known and suspected crimes and injustices displayed next to the painting. It was, Bill had to grudgingly admit, pretty funny. Kudos to whichever museum employee had thought that up.

According to the plaque, Fiddleford had contacted the nearest tribes to ask them whether they recognized anything in the Northwests' collection and to offer to return the pieces—which surprised Bill. He'd never seen Specs as the kind of guy to be particularly interested in repatriation. Most of the ill-gotten art had been gladly taken; anything that nobody had wanted, Fiddleford put in the museum; and a few artisans had even offered modern replicas of some of the items Fiddleford had returned, for public display with the artists credited.

He didn't see why this room was behind heavy curtains with half a dozen "no photography" warnings. It wasn't like these were priceless antiques at risk of degrading under flash photography; aside from the oil painting—which he doubted anyone was too precious about—everything in this room was under a decade old. So why...?

He had seen this little exhibit in a dream, he was sure of it. He tried to find the point of view he'd seen the room from. The room wasn't a perfect rectangle. It turned, L-shaped, into a little alcove. Bill wandered into the alcove—and froze when he saw his own face.

He was eyes-to-eye with the apocalyptic tapestry through which he'd watched the Northwest Manor's great hall for decades: black sky, red inferno, dead trees, dead humans, dying survivors, and above it all Bill's eye shining blood red like the sun hidden behind wildfire smoke. Another: the odd spaceship-shaped gap in the mountains around the town, and Bill—bright yellow against a deep red sky—framed by the gap as though his eye were the setting sun. And another—a pattern consisting of nothing but triangles with eyes, the geometry unusual for art in this region—and another—Bill surrounded by blue lightning, probably a distorted remembering of the unsuccessful redwood portal—and another, another...

Six tapestries in all, of varying sizes. These weren't replicas. Each showed varying degrees of age—broken quills, frayed edges, fading dye, the grime of an article centuries old that had been poorly cared for—but they were all centuries old. The tributes to him made during his long absence: the echoes of a millennia-old generational trauma memory.

The tapestries weren't all that was contained in this little alcove. He forced himself to break eye contact with himself to look at the other items on display. Photographs of several cave paintings—the zodiac, the ritual to summon Bill, the prophecy of his defeat. A few small carvings of his face in stone and wood. Spear tips with his face carved in them, broken due to the way a hollowed-out eye compromised the structural integrity of the stone. And—one of Mabel's blankets, sitting innocently behind a glass case. He stared at it in amazement. Who would have imagined that he'd find a little shrine to himself, right in the middle of the Gravity Falls Museum nearly a year after his death?

On the blanket, his eye had been crossed out with an X of black electrical tape. Bill's blood ran cold.

He forced himself to look at the tapestries again. Some of the quills were broken with age, yes; but someone had also taken a sharp knife and sliced two neat, clean lines across his eye in each of the tapestries, almost invisible except for a few of the broken quills that now bent out of place. The geometric pattern of triangles had been so criss-crossed with slashes that it was amazing it hadn't disintegrated.

His eyes darted over the rest of the objects, studying them more closely. The stone and wood depictions of his face—all freshly re-carved into, X'es covering the eyes. Where he'd first assumed the spear tips had broken with age, he could now see how they'd all been snapped neatly, precisely in half. In the photographs from the cave, he could see his eyes had each been covered by a red spray-painted X. The summoning ritual had also been defaced: apparently not content with painting over it, someone had fully scraped the ritual off of the cave wall, leaving behind only a few missed marks.

None of these items had been defaced before. Bill had made sure that the people in the area passed on a "superstition" against damaging any images of the One-Eyed Beast. (Translation: after they'd figured out that Bill was bad news and decided to cut ties to him, he'd contacted them in their dreams—"If any of you humans even try to take out my eyes, I'll haunt you all so hard. I'll be in your nightmares, I'll be in your kids' nightmares, I'll be in your grandkids' grandkids' nightmares, do not test me!" That had been about the time the shaman locked Bill out of the valley and ensured he couldn't make good on his threat—but the superstition lingered.) He knew for a fact that some of these eyes had even been working as recently as last summer: he'd watched the Northwests' every move through those tapestries. All this damage had been done after his death.

The only item that hadn't been defaced was the blanket. The plaque: "Artist: Mabel Pines, great-niece of town heroes Stanley and Stanford Pines, age 13. Acrylic yarn, 2012. Recreation of a ritual symbol designed to defeat the Beast with One Eye. Donated by Fiddleford McGucket." He suspected this blanket got electrical tape instead of a brutal slashing as a courtesy not to the artwork's subject, but to its artist.

He read the informational plaque accompanying this anti-shrine.

These were the only items in this wing that weren't replicas—because no tribe with ancestry around Gravity Falls Valley wanted them back. (So Fiddleford had offered to return art in Northwest Manor, had he? Begged was more likely.) The plaque explained that neighboring tribes considered depictions of "the Beast with One Eye" to be cursed. "Cursed" wasn't quite the correct term, Bill knew well; but the plaque didn't leave room to expand. It kept its description as terse as possible. (After all, anybody in Gravity Falls already knew exactly why these particular items were cursed; and tourists didn't need to know.) The plaque ended, firmly, "They say they would rather forget about the Beast with One Eye."

Somebody else had scrawled underneath in red marker, "AND SO WOULD WE!"

Underneath the marker scrawl , someone had written in smaller, neat, black pen, "יִמַּח שְׁמוֹ". Yimakh shemo. May his name be erased. A death threat would have hurt less.

There were under ten humans in Gravity Falls that Bill knew had studied Hebrew. He forced himself to wrench his eyes away before he could be sure he recognized the cursive handwriting.

Behold: the legacy of the great, the godly, the All-Knowing and All-Seeing Bill Cipher. Relegated to old history, shoved disdainfully in the corner of a stupid hick town's stupid local museum, with people fighting over who has to put up with the last remnants of him. For thousands of years, the locals had been driven to preserve his memory, but it hadn't been preserved out of reverence; and from now on, it wouldn't even be preserved out of fear.

Without Bill around to pull the strings, the superstitions would fade, the myths would be forgotten, and humans would get bored with the All-Seeing Eye symbol and stop using it. Eventually, humanity's influence would wane, and another species whose culture he'd never influenced would take over; and within a few short millennia, his face would be forgotten on Earth. His face would be forgotten everywhere.

How could this have happened to him?

He glowered at the array of blind eyes staring at him from the walls.

Bill's pocket vibrated. He pulled out his phone. Ah, right, Powers. He'd almost forgotten about him completely. Ha.

Powers had texted to ask him to come downstairs. He said there was something Bill needed to see. Yeah, he bet there was.

It was certainly better than this.

####

"Hey there," Dale said, crouched on the sidewalk, voice high and soothing, "come on, this way."

Gompers stared at him distrustfully from just within the protective boundary of the forest's treeline.

Dale was holding out a slice of Greasy's cherry pie on a paper plate. "I'm not going to hurt you," he said. "We want to help you. You've got a little piece of plastic inside you that we need to get out... it'll probably be good for your health..."

Slowly, Gompers crept out of the forest, watching the agents warily as he approached the plate of pie.

Standing a safe distance behind Dale with his arms crossed, supervising, Trigger said, "You have quite a way with animals."

"I've always found that animals have a calming effect on me, so I've tried to cultivate a calming air in return." He looked up at Trigger. "You see, the key is respect. Mutual respect. From man to animal and from animal to man. One time I was meditating with this Tibetan monk in a dream, and—"

He turned back toward the goat. The pie was gone. Along with half the paper plate, and a chunk of his suit's sleeve.

Gompers was hightailing it down the street.

"Oh."

Trigger said, "I don't think he reciprocates your respect."

####

One of the files Powers had found was in code—he'd have to ask Goldie to take a look at it—but the other file, the one on the Memory Gun, was all in plain English; and for the past few minutes, he'd been reading through a list of adverse side-effects the Blind Eye had discovered from using the gun. Victims who had forgotten how to drive, forgotten their children, forgotten their own names... The aim of the document seemed to be to determine how to refine their wording when they programmed the gun in order to more accurately select their desired memories. 

But whoever had written it seemed more concerned with the victims who remembered more than they should have.

Powers was startled by a knock on the door. He slapped the file shut. "Hello?"

"It's me." That was Goldie's voice.

He heaved a sigh of relief. "Come in, it's safe."

There was a moment of silence. "It's stuck."

"What?"

"The door. It, ah—must be... heavy?"

Huh. He crossed the room to help open it. It was a pretty heavy door, but it didn't seem stuck to him; but Goldie just swept past him with a muttered thanks. "What's this room?"

"It's—memories, I think," Powers said. "As outrageous as it sounds, it appears that a secret society stores stolen memories in this room. I've only watched a few, so far I can't figure out the pattern to who's being targeted or why, but..."

He trailed off. Goldie had drifted past the piles of memory canisters with only quick glances, drawn to the odd-looking TV-like screen at the back of the room, as if mesmerized by its glow all the way from the door. He sighed quietly. "There's... something I think you should see."

He couldn't look at Goldie while the recording played. Instead, he watched it again, staring at the past Goldie's terror and rage.

When it was over, all she said was, "Wow." Her voice was strangely flat. It was another couple of seconds before she added, "That's—pretty bad, huh."

Her reaction was underwhelming. Powers turned to look at her, puzzled.

Her expression was terrifyingly blank. There was something hard and heavy and distant in her eyes. Exhausted. Like she was just holding it together under some sort of heartbreak. She was always so animated; the change was almost scary.

He said, "I'm sorry, I should have warned you. It must be a terrible shock." He'd been too shocked to think of warning her.

The comment seemed to shake her out of some sort of trance. "It's—fine. Just gimme a sec, I..." She rubbed her eyelids with one hand. "Wow! Okay. I can handle this. It's just..." She gestured vaguely at the screen. "It's a lot to process."

He could only imagine. "Do you remember this happening at all?"

She took a long moment to answer, fingers still pressing her eyes shut. "No," she finally said. "I think I remember being here before. The room looks familiar." That explained how she'd navigated it so confidently. "But—not that. I don't know when that happened. When did that happen?"

"I think it must have been last summer."

Powers explained everything he'd found so far—the contents of the other canisters, the blueprints for the Memory Gun. Goldie had to sit on a nearby table as she processed this—elbows on her knees, knuckles pressed against each other, index fingers tapping together as she listened.

"It looks as though this 'Society of the Blind Eye' has been erasing the memories of people in town—and people who know too much about them. But I don't know why they're here or why they're doing this," Powers said. "In one of the memories, Preston Northwest mentioned a secret town founder. It might be irrelevant to whatever's happening here, but it does sound like the most important thing on any of the recordings I watched. Aside from—yours."

He sat beside Goldie. "I suspect you were a part of the bureau." It was horrifying to think—that they might have worked together and both forgotten—but...

"Yeah. It's possible," Goldie said. 

"Do you remember anything that might have suggested you were part of the bureau? Something we could look up and verify?" Powers asked. "Somewhere you lived in Washington, or maybe part of your training...?"

She winced and broke eye contact with him. "Uh... no. I—I don't."

How much had she lost? Far more than just the details of the investigation she'd come to town for. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders reassuringly. She tensed, then relaxed, then leaned against him—but hardly seemed to notice he was there.

"I think something's coming back," she said, gaze faraway. "Now that I'm here... I remember being in the museum. I think I was caught by somebody wearing a hooded robe."

(Powers glanced at the carving of a robed man in front of the altar.)

"They were angry that I'd taken... some kind of map? It was square, looked really old..."

"A map!" Powers jumped up to grab the file on the Memory Gun and pulled out an odd paper he'd found sticking out of it. "Is this it?"

"That's it!" Goldie favored him with a smile, her first since he'd shown her that memory.

"It looks like gibberish, though," Powers said. "There's several partial images, but nothing clear. I don't know what to make of it."

Goldie glanced over it. "Have you tried folding it?"

He gave her a quizzical look. "Folding it how?"

She raised her hands in a shrug. "It's got creases on it. Looks like somebody's folded it before."

He'd assumed that someone had just folded it to stuff in their pocket at some point—but the creases formed an odd, precise geometric pattern of triangles and diagonal squares. Now that she mentioned it, it didn't look the way anyone would normally fold a paper. He studied the directions of the creases, folded the four corners in to meet in the middle—and a drawing of a pointing hand emerged from what had once been unintelligible lines and curves on the corners of the page. Look at that.

But now the four new corners of the image were covered in inscrutable lines of their own; maybe...? He turned the map over and repeated the process, folding the four corners into the center; and there was a new image, but it looked like a couple of different images jumbled together. "Hmm..." He stroked his chin, staring perplexed at the image.

(Next to him, Bill pressed his lips flat together to keep himself from telling Powers to unfold two opposite flaps and see what happened, come on, do a little experimenting, man. Schoolchildren made these things when they were bored in class and pretended to tell each other's fortune with them, this wasn't that complicated. But no, be patient, it was fine, it was fine, Bill had shown more tolerance for denser humans solving simpler problems than this. What kind of a muse and mentor would he be if he couldn't show a little patience with ignorant mortals? Heck, it was a tribute to Bill's personal patience and strength of character that he hadn't spontaneously combusted the entire Nightmare Realm in the process of trying to get a portal built.)

Eventually, Powers figured it out himself, unfolding the top and bottom flaps to reveal a hidden diagram: a crude graveyard with a tunnel weaving underneath, the tunnel marked with arrows pointing at it. Closing the top and bottom flaps and unfolding the left and right flaps revealed another diagram: it looked like a building floor plan, with a dotted line that led to an equilateral triangle pointed downward. He recognized the floor plan. Aside from the triangle, he'd seen the same map upstairs less than an hour ago. "This is the museum."

"Looks like it. Think it's something important?" Goldie smiled wanly. "You don't typically think of important things being left to rot in some dusty corner of a small-town museum."

"Don't you? If a small town has a museum, I'd think that's where they'd preserve the most important objects they have."

Goldie processed that silently. "Yeah," she said, voice hollow. "Maybe."

"At any rate, it was important enough to erase your mind over. Let's go."

At the door to the pneumatic tube room, Powers said, "I'll follow this map; you watch the exits and alert me if anyone's coming. We don't know who at the museum might be working for..." He turned to look at Goldie, and found she was no longer at his side. "Goldie?" He turned around.

She was storming back across the room, finger pointed like the tip of a saber at the wooden cultist sculpture. "You think you can erase me?! You think you can make the whole world forget I ever existed?!" She clawed at the wooden hood like she was trying to get her fingers into the fabric and strangle the placid-looking figure. "I bet you think you're such a hero! Defending your precious little town from the big scary monster who came here to help you! But you'll never destroy me! I'll make your skin into shower curtains! I'll—let go of me—I'll flip your electrons into positrons, I'll—"

Powers managed to get an arm around Goldie's shoulder and lead her back to the door. She spat in its blinded eye as she left.

####

While Goldie stared at a display on the town's lumber industry (Powers suspected she wasn't actually reading it), he followed the map to find a painting—an odd inclusion in a history museum. It took him a few minutes to realize it should be turned upside-down to match the shape in the map, snapped a picture, and turned his phone over to find an image of an angel.

He didn't know what to make of that; and when he asked Goldie if she could see any sort of codes or disguised messages in it, she said she couldn't. The angel appeared to be a dead end; their only other lead was the town graveyard drawn on the map.

Goldie was uncharacteristically forlorn as they returned to Powers's car and he opened the passenger door for her. As they got on the road, Powers asked, "Are... you alright?" Stupid question. "If there's anything you need..."

"Promise you'll never forget me." He could feel her eyes blazing against the side of his face, staring at him, commandingly.

He nodded. "I promise." Traffic was light; he took one hand off the steering wheel to offer to her.

She seized it firmly, like they were sealing a pact.

####

Gompers ran across the roofs of the businesses lining Main Street, jumping from rooftop to rooftop and bleating in fear as he was chased. And Trigger chased after him, just a building behind Gompers.

But Main Street wasn't very long. Gompers scrabbled over the sloped shingles of a small salon, jumped down to the flat roof of the rival barber shop next door, and found himself out of buildings. He turned around to nervously watch his pursuer.

"I've got you cornered now," Trigger said. "Don't make this any more difficult than it has to be. Just come along quietly, and..." The roof creaked under him. "Uh oh." It collapsed under him.

He landed flat on his back in the middle of a salon. A couple of hairdressers and their customers stared at him. He sat up, looked around at them sheepishly, and said, "Afternoon, ladies."

####

The angel statue was visible through the trees even before the rest of Gravity Falls Cemetery. When they were close enough to inspect it, it was clear the angel's left hand matched the hand drawn on the map; as Powers was inspecting the hand, he accidentally bent its index finger, and the ground opened up.

Goldie elected to stand guard near the entrance, sitting on the steps, as Powers explored deeper; which was just as well, because the tunnel was apparently boobytrapped. (What in the world was the Blind Eye's budget? Hidden subterranean chambers in the museum, hidden underground tunnel in the cemetery, a memory-erasing ray gun, a poison dart trap...)

At the bottom of a steep incline, the tunnel opened up into a chamber. He expected maybe money, or stolen and forged property deeds, or even bootleg maple syrup... you never knew in this town. He didn't expect piles upon piles of crates and files with the Official United States Government Cover-Up Seal—the seal of the Bureau of Covert Investigations' parent department.

He didn't like this.

He steeled himself and began exploring the room.

####

Goldie lifted her head as she saw Powers coming up the tunnel. "Hey!" She held up one of the files they'd taken from the Blind Eye's filing cabinet. "I decoded that ciphered document you found. It wasn't even a good cipher. I think we've got the Blind Eye's address book! Names, addresses, officer titles—say, what do you think a 'secretary' does in a society that tries to erase memories? He's probably not recording meeting notes..."

She fell silent as Powers flung down a file on the step beside her. "What's that?" She picked it up. The file was titled "THE NORTHWEST COVER-UP" and stamped TOP SECRET. The cover-up seal took up most of the cover; beneath it was an X'ed out eye and the typewritten letters, "in collaboration with the Society of the Blind Eye".

"Everything about this town is a lie," Powers said. 

"Everything? What do you mean?" Goldie flipped open the file, skimmed it, and frowned. "Who founded the town?"

"President. Sir. Quentin Trembley. The third. Esquire." Powers pronounced each title separately. He sat down next to Goldie; his hands were trembling. "He was a secret United States president. When he was evicted from office—he wasn't even impeached, they just kicked him out!—he fled across the country and founded This. Town." He shook his head in disbelief. If he hadn't read it himself... "This—this Trembley was an utter madman. He declared war against pancakes, appointed infants to the Supreme Court, banned pants, raved publicly about giant spiders... I'm not surprised he was ousted, he sounds like a complete lunatic."

As he spoke, Goldie's expression darkened. "Huh." But she didn't say anything else. She just stared at the cover-up file.

"Somebody decided to erase his entire existence from history. Nathaniel Northwest was named the founder of Gravity Falls in his place. He sounds like he was just as mad as Trembley was, but—he was just the village idiot, I suppose he must have been easier to control than this Trembley." Powers shook his head.

"So... what does all this have to do with the Blind Eye?" Goldie asked.

"In one of the memory canisters, I saw them discussing this cover-up with Preston Northwest—Nathaniel's descendant. He knew about the cover-up—of course he would, his family's fortune rests upon it!—but... they erased Preston's knowledge of it, too. Not only is this town the center of a cover-up to hide the fact that we once had a lunatic for a president, but also the government set up an entire secret cult to erase the memories of anyone who finds out about it... or, by the looks of things, about anything else happening in Gravity Falls that the government doesn't want civilians looking at too closely."

Powers took a shaky breath. "And that's not the worst of it."

"Oh-oh." Goldie closed the cover-up file and looked at him warily. "What's the worst?"

Powers held out a business card—bent, dusty, worn around the edges from age—that he'd found sitting next to the projector. It was his own business card. "The worst part is, I already knew about it."

####

Dale waited outside the salon, hands in his pockets. He checked his watch, then rocked back on his heels.

Trigger stepped out of the salon with frosted tips. Dale stared at him. Awkwardly, Trigger said, "Well?"

Dale nodded. "Yeah, you look nice, it's nice."

"Thanks. I've always wanted to try the look but never had an excuse," Trigger said. "Anyway—what do we do about the goat."

They started walking back to where they'd parked their car. Dale said, "In my opinion, it's time we call in the big guns."

"You mean...?"

"That's right. Animal control," Dale said. "We can set up a perimeter around town, then slowly close in. We'll tighten the net around it, and—"

Trigger clapped a hand on Dale's shoulder. He pointed down the alley they were passing.

Gompers was eating out of a spilled trash can. He looked up like a kid who'd just been caught shoplifting by two cops.

The agents exchanged a look, then lunged at Gompers.

####

When Bill got back to the shack, he owed the Pines a round of congratulations. Stan for stealing back the file on the Northwest cover-up from the police department, and for planting the papers from the case file and the threatening letter in Powers's motel room without getting caught; Mabel for the terrific forgery work on the fake map, the modifications to the cover-up file's cover, and the threatening letter itself; Ford for—well, he hadn't done a lot, but he'd been a decent actor—but on the other hand that yimakh shemo had burned up nearly all the goodwill Ford had earned last night, maybe Bill would skip thanking him; and Dipper had barely done anything, he'd just helped plant the file and the old business card in the chamber beneath the graveyard, Bill could skip thanking him too. Maybe he'd make a point of praising Soos for his chauffeuring just to rub in the fact that he was leaving Ford and Dipper out in the cold.

Thinking over his plans gave Bill something to entertain himself with while Powers clung to Bill's hand and reevaluated his entire life and career.

"I just don't... What else did I forget?" Powers asked. "I apparently forgot about the first time I learned all this... I must have forgotten you..."

"Hold on. Did we know each other before?" asked Bill, as if he hadn't planted all the clues to ensure Powers would come to that exact conclusion.

"We must have," Powers said. "You were investigating in this town, and yet I don't know you; the letter I received threatened that I might lose 'another' team member; and in your stolen memory, the Blind Eye told you that your team wouldn't remember you. I don't have a cryptologist on my team, and you're a cryptology expert. It all fits together."

Bill nodded encouragingly—yes, that was exactly what he'd wanted him to conclude.

"And there's all the other little clues that fit into place. The way you were so interested in this investigation, right from the outset. It makes sense if it was subconsciously familiar. And you think you're a visitor to town but the people here talk about you like you're a resident. They even seem to know you by two different genders... and when you told me to buy a car, you said to say that a 'Mr. Locke' sent me. You must have been communicating with people in town under two identities."

Hold on. That was dangerously close to information Powers shouldn't have. How had he found that out?

"And you know my first name," Powers went on. "Most of the BCI's field agents use code names even in the office. I've been working with Trigger since he joined, and he still doesn't know my first name. If you do..."

Bill was relieved they were back on track. He'd planted that clue on purpose. "Then we must have been close. No wonder I can't keep away from you."

Powers glanced away bashfully. (Ha! Too easy.) "And yet... I don't even know your name."

Alarm shot up Bill's spine. "What?"

"I thought 'Goldie Locke was an improbable name the first time I heard it. But, it's the exact kind of name the bureau would give a field agent. It has to be a code name."

Bill mentally kicked himself for the hundredth time for not choosing a subtler fake name. At least Powers had drawn the wrong conclusion. "Oh. Well. When you put it that way."

"Do you remember your real name?"

He hadn't prepared a backup fake name. He scrambled for another name that wasn't too masculine, too exotic, or even more fake sounding, and came up blank. "Uhhh, yyy—no."

"I wish I could help you remember it," Powers grumbled. "How much do you remember about your life?"

Bill had been deciding that since Powers asked at the museum if he remembered any verifiable biographical details (a question he should have anticipated sooner). He didn't want to say nothing, that might look too suspicious; but he didn't want to give any leads Powers could follow up on. "Not much. Faces without names, flashes of different cities I must've visited... I thought I just... had some kind of amnesia. The people in town have been nice enough to let me bum around here while I figure things out."

"At the Mystery Shack?" Powers asked. "You've been working with Stanford Pines."

Bill flinched. "I—yeah. I have." Sheesh, how did he know that?

"You didn't mention you were staying there," Powers said wryly.

Bill laughed. It came out more nervous than he'd have liked. "Yeah, well. I'm gonna come clean with you: I didn't want you to find out when I was trying to charm you into charming me out of my dress." (He was gratified to see Powers flush pink and turn away to loudly clear his throat. Bill had lost control of this conversation so fast, it was nice to know humans were still predictable in some ways.) "I mean, who wants to tell the handsome federal agent in the nice suit that you're a brain damaged bum couch-surfing in Oregon's most rickety tourist trap?"

"With all due respect, the brain damage wasn't as well-hidden as you think."

"Wh—hey! What's that supposed to mean?!"

"Your trouble with your eyes. Issues with binocular vision are a common consequence of brain damage." (For the first time that day, Bill was suddenly hyperconscious of the way one of his overtaxed eyes was twitching as he struggled not to let it squint shut.) "And I skimmed the file on the Memory Gun. It mentioned cases of victims forgetting how to safely cross a street, how to ride a bike, how to throw a ball... I figure forgetting how to open doors falls under the same umbrella."

A chill settled over Bill. "Oh," he croaked. "Noticed that, did you. You've... been paying pretty close attention to me." Not to mention talking to someone about him.

"Of course. You're a mysterious woman. I want to learn more about you," Powers said. "We spent all day talking yesterday, and I don't think I learned anything about you except that you've been in town for a month, you have an uncanny knack for cracking ciphers, and you make very interesting culinary choices. You kept the conversation off yourself." 

Bill hadn't realized he'd noticed that. Powers wasn't supposed to have noticed any of this. This was what Bill got for trying to dupe a professional investigator. Thank goodness he'd gotten him set him up on this wild goose chase before he'd really dug up too much about Bill's history. Sometimes it was easy to forget that some of this planet's idiots were smart. "Well," he said awkwardly, "now you know why. At the moment, I don't have much I can tell you about myself."

Powers gave Bill a wan, sad smile. "It'll be alright," he said, sliding a reassuring arm around Bill's shoulders, and Bill realized more of his panic must be showing on his face than he'd wanted. "We'll fill in the gaps."

That was just what he was afraid of.

For the first time, the arm around Bill's shoulder felt less like a piece of a puzzle slotted into the proper place—all according to plan—and more like the kill bar of a mousetrap that hadn't yet realized a rodent was standing on the trigger.

Powers's phone rang. He picked it up, and Bill quietly sighed in relief. "Hello?"

"Sir!" That was Dale's excited voice on the line. "We got it! We've captured, extracted, and sterilized the flash drive!"

"Didn't you say it was in a goat? How did you get it out?"

"The, uhh... old fashioned way. Apparently cherry pie didn't agree with his digestive tract."

His voice a little more distant, Trigger emphasized, "Thoroughly sterilized."

"Excellent work," Powers said. "Where are you now?"

"En route to the motel."

"Very well. We'll meet you there."

Perfect, thought Bill. The sooner he finished this, the sooner he'd never have to worry about the agents learning too much again.

####

(Post-TBOB edits! Had to change the age of the items on display in the museum, since TBOB changed Bill's interactions with the shaman from being about 1000 years ago to about 4000 years ago; and since a tapestry like we saw in the Northwest Manor is unlikely to have lasted 4000 years and is made in an art style that seems to be about 1500 years old, had to make up an excuse for it to exist; in the tapestry description, added in the tapestry in Pacifica's room mentioned on TINAWDC; and I think that's it? Just minor details.

And now y'all know why a few chapters ago I had to very clearly establish the distance between Powers's team and the guys who actually know about Trembley lol.

Anyway we are MOST OF THE WAY through the exciting action! Looking forward to hearing y'all's thoughts on this week's chapter! And I mentioned it on my blog but for those of y'all that only show up for the chapters: we're switching to every other week posts for a while because working on another flashback arc ate up more of my chapter buffer than I'd like. In between weeks with new chapters, I'll be editing and posting old chapters to AO3.)

[woso-dreamzzz]

Injured VI

Alexia Putellas x Child!Reader

Jenni Hermoso x Child!Reader

Summary: Jenni returns to you

Mapi and Ingrid come over a lot now that you don't see Mami. They visit you and Tia Alba all the time and bring you things like new trains and toys and Ingrid even buys you new ballet pumps when you tearfully tell her that you left your ones at Mami's home.

It's different living with Tia Alba. She works from home a lot and she has plenty of time for you. That's a little weird, you think. The attention is nice but it's a little scary.

All of this is a little scary.

Last week, when Abuela came to see you and you asked the bad question, she cried. Abuela cried and cried and you cried too. She said that she would fix this, she promised you that she would fix this but one look at Tia Alba's face told you that no one was sure that this could be fixed.

You wish things were back to normal. You don't want to live with Mami right now but you miss her. You miss the Mami from before, who would take you to the train store after her games and read you fun bedtime stories with all the special voices.

You miss the Mami who would give you little kisses all over your face and call you her most favourite little girl in the whole entire world. You miss the Mami who would let you crawl into bed with her and sit on her knee before a game.

But now, Mami loves Miss Olga and baby Jaume and the train store near Mami's house is shutting down.

There is no Before anymore and you don't think you can get the Before back ever again.

You don't see Mami and you don't want to, even if you really miss her sometimes. Tia Alba looks like Mami and sometimes you can pretend that she is Mami, if you close your eyes and try really hard.

Tia Alba gives you cuddles and kisses and plays trains with you and takes you to your ballet lessons on time. If you try really hard and squeeze your eyes shut nice and tight, you can pretend that it's Mami doing those things and you're in the Before again, when it was just you and her.

"We have a surprise for you," Mapi says as she gets ready to leave," Me and Ingrid. Would you like to see it?"

A surprise makes you scared. Mami told you about baby Jaume as a surprise too.

You look up at Tia Alba and she nods in encouragement so you nod as well.

Ingrid covers your eyes and that makes you nervous too, straining your ears.

You don't want the surprise to be Mami. You really, really don't want it to be Mami.

"How's my favourite little girl in the entire world?"

Ingrid's hands peal away from your eyes and you're already moving.

The arms around you feel nice and safe. You're tucked securely into the neck of a very familiar body. Familiar hands card through your hair and squeeze you with just the right amount of pressure that makes you go all limp and boneless.

You sniffle.

"Jenni?"

"Hi, Bambi," She coos at you. Kisses land on the top of your head.

You don't even notice Mapi and Ingrid leaving, so nice and secure in Jenni's arms.

"I missed you," You whisper.

"I missed you too. I always miss my favourite little girl."

You sniffle again, pulling away. You don't believe her. Mami used to say the same thing. You want to believe Jenni but you don't because you believed Mami once and all she did was lie to you.

"I missed you so, so much. See?" Jenni says. One hand lets go of you to pull out her phone. She turns on her lock screen.

It's a picture of you and her from the last time you saw each other.

You're smiling and Jenni's smiling too and more tears run unchecked down your cheeks.

"I missed you, Jenni," You whimper.

"I missed you too, Bambi. Do you want another cuddle?"

You nod.

You're absolutely tiny compared to her, so tiny and weak and completely broken. Jenni could scarcely believe it when Mapi called out of the blue.

She was in the middle of training but something told her to pick up and she did. The words came out of Mapi's mouth like an avalanche and Jenni didn't believe them.

"Alexia wouldn't neglect Bambi," She'd replied," Don't be stupid, Mapi. Bambi is the greatest thing in her life."

It was only later that Jenni realised that maybe she was projecting. You were the greatest thing in her life and had been since you were born.

You were even smaller than you were now, swaddled in a pale pink blanket Jenni had seen at a store one day and bought randomly. You had fit so beautifully in her arms with your tiny little limbs. You were everything and more and Jenni had felt jealousy stir within her that you were Alexia's.

You were the greatest thing in Jenni's life and she couldn't understand that there was a world where you weren't the greatest thing in Alexia's too.

You still fit so perfectly against her, like when you were younger, even though you're so different to then. You're so different yet completely the same.

Your trains are scattered around Alba's living room floor. You swing your legs when Jenni picks you up and you rest your head against her shoulder until all she can feel are the soft, sleepy puffs of your breath against her neck.

"You didn't have to come," Alba says softly," I don't want you to miss your matches."

"I took time off," Jenni says dismissively as she moves you until you're tucked more securely against her, completely asleep after crying yourself out," Bambi comes first."

"Jenni-"

"I almost adopted her, you know," Jenni cuts her off, blinking her own tears away," When Alexia and I were still together. Everything was nearly finished. I still have the papers. I'd signed everything. I just needed Alexia's signature giving her permission."

It's new information to Alba, clearly, but Jenni had assumed that. It was meant to be a quiet thing, a surprise for you and the rest of the family.

"And then you broke up," Alba replies.

"And then we broke up." Jenni looks down at you. Even in your sleep, you look troubled, your hand tightly making a fist around her shirt like you're afraid that she's going to disappear. "I was still happy to go through with it but I was going to Mexico and Alexia thought it would cause too much stress on Bambi. She was right, of course, but...I can't believe she's done this."

Jenni's still in shock from it all. She'd left for Mexico thinking that you would be loved, that you would be so loved by Alexia and whoever she ended up with, whoever else would adopt you in Jenni's stead. She didn't think anything like this was even possible.

"Have you got a place to stay?"

"There's a hotel-"

"Stay here," Alba says," I've only got one spare room but I don't think Bambi minds sharing. She's been sleeping with me most nights anyway."

If Jenni didn't care as much, she'd try to resist but you feel so soft and small against her that she doesn't care. She doesn't want to get a hotel room across the city. She wants to be right here, with you.

"Thank you, Alba."

"She's got ballet at three. You can take her if you want. Parents can stay in the reception area and watch."

When you wake up from your impromptu nap, it's to the shocking realisation that Jenni is real. She's real and she's holding you, lounging back on the sofa and watching tv. She's holding you and she lays soft kisses on top of your head every so often. She's laying soft kisses on your head and her nails are gently scratching at your back.

"We've got ballet soon," She whispers to you when she notices your staring," Do you feel better?"

You nod, dropping your head back down onto her chest as more kisses rain down on top of you.

"Do you enjoy ballet?" Jenni asks. Her voice is still soft and low and it wraps you up in a nice bubble that feels like the Before.

"Yes." Your voice is as equally quiet and soft.

"More than football?"

The thought of football makes your stomach go wavy. It churns and swirls and your throat closes up. "Mami was upset," You whisper," Because I was not very good when she took me."

A few months before Jaume was born, Mami took you to a team of kids your age. She had watched you with eagle eyes the whole time as the other kids left you in the dust. She hadn't yelled. She hadn't screamed but she had gone quiet.

You'd asked her what was wrong when she was driving home, her hands clenching the steering wheel so tight her knuckles went white.

"Nothing is wrong," She'd said to you," I'm just disappointed."

She'd taken you back a few more times but every time it was the same. Every day ended with 'I'm just disappointed'.

It was Abuela that told Mami to put you into ballet, spending weeks convincing her that you not playing football wasn't the end of the world.

You're scared Jenni is going to be the same so you scrunch your eyes up tight and wait for this familiar words.

"Do you really like ballet?" Jenni asks instead.

You wonder if this is a trick. You don't know what you're supposed to say so you settle on the truth. Tia Alba always tells you that you can't get in trouble for saying the truth.

"I think I like it more than I like my trains," You murmur and Jenni lands a kiss on your head.

"Well, you've got ballet in a bit," Jenni says," Is it okay if I come to watch?"

"Please, Jenni."

The ballet studio wasn't too far from Alba's house, a walkable distance between it and Alexia's.

You seemed to get more and more excited the closer you got until you were practically vibrating as Jenni swapped your trainers for your ballet pumps, twisting your hair back into a bun for you.

There's a space of parents to sit and wait, able to peer in on the session through the glass doors.

"I haven't seen you here before," One of the mothers say," Usually, Alexia drops her off and leaves. It's nice that someone is staying."

"I'm Jenni."

"y/n's other mother then? It's nice to meet you."

Jenni knows that she should correct this woman. You're not hers. You're Alexia's. But...she doesn't. She doesn't correct her because, just this once, she wants to live this fantasy where you're hers and you're happy.

"You too," Jenni says, neither confirming or denying this woman's assumption.

Her eyes don't stray from you, not even for a second. You're more animated than Jenni thinks you've been in a while. You're smiling and you're moving and that lingering air of sadness is almost completely gone.

Jenni could pretend that you were happy if it weren't for the fact that you keep glancing out the door, looking genuinely surprised that she's there every time you make eye contact.

"It's so nice that she has someone to support her," The mum from earlier continues," It's such a shame that Alexia never stays to watch. She's so talented."

Jenni's eyes stray to the door, a bolt of lightning shooting down her spine when she notices a very familiar women trying to peer through the reception doors.

"Excuse me." Jenni dismisses herself. She grabs the woman's arm as soon as she's out the door. "You've got a lot of fucking nerve showing up here. I heard Eli banned you from seeing her."

There's a fire in Alexia's eyes that tells Jenni all she needs to know. This wasn't a coincidence.

"How can I make amends if none of you let me see her? What are you even doing here, huh? Last I checked, you live in Mexico."

"And last I checked you were a good mother!"

Jenni balls her hands up into fists to stop herself from lashing out. She pushes away from Alexia, taking a few deep breaths away.

"Just...go away, Alexia."

"No!" Alexia looks half to tears. "No, I won't! That's my baby in there! I just want to see if she's okay!"

"She's going to be okay! But you need to leave her alone!"

"I'm her mother! I shouldn't have to leave her alone! She's mine!"

Jenni sighs, turning her back to her ex. "Go, Ale."

"Jenni...Jenni, please. That's my baby."

Jenni ignores her, shoving the door open and letting it swing shut right in Alexia's face.

"Coparenting issues?" The mother from earlier asks. She tuts. "I remember those days. It'll get better."

Jenni makes a noise of acknowledgement and focuses back on you.

When you come out nearly an hour later, you're so excited, grabbing Jenni's hand and pulling her all the way over to your dance teacher.

"You're not Alexia," The woman says.

"Jenni. Jenni Hermoso. I'm y/n's-"

She has to stop herself. She's not sure what to say. She's not your mother. She's not your step-mother. She's the woman that could have adopted you, once upon a time.

"I'm Jenni," She settles on.

"Well, Jenni, if you could pass this along to Alexia? I run another class on Thursdays for the more..." She glances around, lowering her voice. "Advanced students. I really think your y/n would fit right in."

She hands Jenni a permission slip and information pack and Jenni just nods dumbly, one hand holding yours and the other this stack of papers.

"Er...yeah," She says," I'll get it to her."

The teacher smiles and bids you goodbye as the older children flood into her studio.

"Advanced, huh?" Jenni says, beaming at you as she hoists you up onto her hip.

You don't make eye contact. "Is that okay? Mami says sometimes that dance is hard to fit in with her schedule."

"I'm not Mami," Jenni says, her eyes flicking to where Alexia is standing in the car park, just watching," It fits perfectly into my schedule."

Alexia looks pathetic, Jenni thinks. She looks small and curled in on herself, nothing like the strong Barcelona captain she knows Alexia is. She looks exhausted too, more exhausted than someone with just a simple newborn.

It's eating her up inside, Jenni knows this but she can find no sympathy in her for the woman she once dreamed of parenting you with.

She dug her grave. Now she must lie in it.

But Jenni's certain that she's not going to let Alexia bury you too.

"That's Mami." Your smile drops from your face and your shoulders slump when you notice Alexia.

"It is," Jenni confirms, standing in the middle of the pavement.

She doesn't want Alexia to see you but she doesn't want you to stop seeing Alexia if you want to see her.

"Is she here to take me away?" Your voice wobbles and you look over at your Mami from under your lashes.

"I think she's just here to see how your lesson went."

"She got me a train and another present," You whisper," I haven't opened them. Will she be angry at me?"

"No, Bambi," Jenni says and her next words taste like ash in her mouth," Your Mami loves you too much to be angry at you."

"And she won't take me from you?"

"No one is going to take you from me."

You bite at your lip and Jenni hates the uncertainty in your eyes. "Can...Can we see Mami?"

"If you want."

"Please, Jenni."

Her steps are careful and measured and Alexia stands up straight when she notices you both coming. She wipes her hands on her shirt and straightens out her clothes.

Jenni places you on the ground and Alexia kneels, her arms open for you.

You shy away, ducking behind Jenni's legs and peaking out.

Alexia feels like crying as she drops her arms. "Hola, Bambi," She says, trying to control the wobble in her voice," How was dance?"

"Good," You say," I...My teacher says I can move up. She gave Jenni papers."

Alexia frowns, her eyes flicking up to Jenni. "That's nice."

Jenni holds the papers out to her. "It's a permission slip and information pack," She says," For the advanced class. Bambi is very good at ballet."

Alexia flashes you a smile. "That's good, isn't it, Bambi? You're very good at ballet, huh?"

Your head bobs up and down. "My teacher thinks so."

"I'm very proud of you."

The look of shock on your face is heartbreaking, like you can't quite believe she's saying those words to you.

"Really?" Tears glisten in your eyes and Alexia hates herself for what she's done. You never used to be so uncertain around her.

Her throat closes up and she has to push past the lump to speak again. "So, so proud of you, Bambi. I'm glad you're doing so well at ballet. Maybe I can come and watch soon."

It's clear in that moment that Alexia has maybe pushed too far. The wounds of your neglect are still too raw for you, still open and weeping blood.

You recoil again and squeeze Jenni's hand.

"I have Jenni," You say," She watches me dance."

The look on Alexia's face is heartbroken and finally, Jenni feels the smallest bit of pity.

"Maybe not soon," She says, a hand stroking down the flyaways from your bun," Maybe one day."

"Maybe one day," You repeat softly and Alexia gives you a watery kind of smile in response.

"Maybe one day," She confirms. She stands properly again, looking at the papers in her hand. "I'll...I'll get these back to you signed off soon."

Jenni nods. "I'll talk to your mother. Supervised visits might not be out of the question."

"Thank you."

Jenni picks you up again as Alexia gets into her car. You don't leave her arms all the way back to Alba's place.

Jenni wasn't your mother. There was a chance, a long time ago, that she could have been but Alexia never signed on the dotted line, a line drawn in the sand that's now a gaping chasm.

Jenni isn't your mother but that doesn't mean she doesn't wish she was.

[bogleech]

Mortasheen is going to be four years late but so far every backer who's seen the preview book has loved it, compared to countless projects I've followed that went even further overtime and were disappointments. POST-KICKSTARTER TIMELINE SO FAR:

2021: spent on tons of new artwork of my own while organizing art from all the other illustrators I hired on, while also building, writing and formatting a prototype book myself. A lot of old material had to be redone, and a lot of brand new material was necessary. The team who had previously been developing gameplay took to the end of the year to get together the lore and worldbuilding materials on their end, which I didn't realize they had so heavily modified and expanded on from what I wrote a decade prior.

It had strayed a bit far from my concept of the setting, but had lots of good ideas as well, so I had to start a massive rewriting project to integrate everything together myself and make sure it all had a consistent tone and logic.

2022: I was still waiting on the actual gameplay mechanics themselves, which had been finished, but the dev team wanted to work out a new contract before sending them over. Their life schedule interfered with communication for months at a time, and I only got the mechanics later in the year. This contained the framework to build monsters and all their possible abilities thus far, but no builds for any specific monsters besides a sample for the player's guide. They were unable to confer with me regularly enough to stat the 100+ monsters I'd need, but I had shared the mechanics with a trusted enough friend who was really into the setting. By I think the end of fall, @gutsygills had already been playtesting and statting tons of creatures, so I made the decision to just hire her.

2023-2024: 160 monsters needed to be built from scratch while gutsy and others started running campaigns and playtesting vigorously, during which hundreds of things came up to edit, modify, add or remove about the system, specific monsters or specific abilities. Many issues coming up in the mechanics required new creatures or characters I had never thought of, especially a logical middle ground between completely defective "junk" monsters and powerful ones. I had essentially made too many of them too cool and grand, so we needed to give almost every monster class a few little mooks and goombas.

More worldbuilding, lore and fluff also needed modifying along the way to interplay with the rapid evolution of the system, which also necessitated me meticulously going over what I'd already written to scrap what wasn't working or wasn't that interesting.

2025: final playtests, massive final read-throughs and editing marathons to catch every last error or inconsistency, final polish on the last new monsters, gutsy writing a final guide to actually running a campaign with everything we've now developed, finishing the last necessary chapter on the setting's non-monster villains, and once we know the final page count for certain......we have to build the indexes, which is going to be pretty tedious, but that is going to be the very, very last thing to do. It's basically been entirely me doing an amount of work usually done by a larger team, until I hired one assistant whose job had to default to being just as huge. It's eaten so much of my time I feel like I aged at 5 times the normal rate...but I do feel like the end result is going to be worth it.

Once the book is out, we have to start working right away on the promised bonus book of all the backer-original monsters, and also start planning for the next book, which will be almost entirely more monsters.

[7-wonders]

Seeing Ghosts

Dr. Jack Abbot x psychiatrist!reader (gender-neutral)

Summary: A case hits too close to home for you. Jack wants you to know you're not alone.

Word count: 1.9k

A note from the author: "I'm just going to write a little blurb," I say to myself. "Fucking liar!" my laptop yells at me.

I don't even know what I'm doing with this but I'm watching The Pitt and cannot get this old man out of my head! If you're reading this, I sincerely hope you enjoy!

Content warning: Mentions of suicidal thoughts

You’re on night rotations for the first time in years, taking over for Dr. Gibbons who’s out on paternity leave. Night shift has been kind to you with a fairly easy workload as your body gets adjusted to a completely opposite sleep-wake schedule, but tonight, you’re called down to the ER for a 5150. 20 y/o male, brought to the ER after his roommate found him with cuts to his wrists. He's crying as his wrists are tended to, so sure that some unseen entity is on the phone with Pitt's admissions office right now to get his scholarships revoked.

You recognize him, this young overachiever who has the weight of the world on his shoulders for no real reason other than that he feels it will all collapse if he's not the one to hold it up. Not because you've met him before. You recognize him because, at one point in time, he was you.

One of your favorite parts about your job is getting to truly connect with your patients, and you feel that one of the best ways to do that is by meeting them at their level. Sitting next to them, giving them your first name and insisting they call you by that, and, if they allow for it, holding their hands. You catch a fair amount of shit for it from other doctors (mainly those for whom psychiatry isn't their specialty), but there's a reason why your patient satisfaction scores are so high. You know what you're doing, and you know how to accomplish a positive outcome, so when Shaun Gold takes your outstretched hand, you know you've got an in.

“I understand, that you feel like you’re alone in how you’re feeling right now. But can I tell you a secret?" He nods, and you tighten your grip on his hand. "You're not alone. So many people have felt the exact same way. I have felt the exact same way."

"You have?" Shaun's face opens up at this revelation, seeing in front of him a successful (-ish) doctor who's also battled the lowest of the lows.

"Yep. And I'm not here to tell you that I never feel the way I did then anymore, because I would be lying to you. But I have the right skills now to help me combat those feelings. Therapy, and coping tools, and medication. That's what I'm trying to do for you here. Give you the proper skills so that you can be the best possible version of yourself. And maybe one day, you'll be in my position, helping to give hope to somebody who needs it. So?" You squeeze his hand, smiling when he squeezes back. "Can we help you?"

Shaun agrees, and you get him safely transferred up to your ward with a schedule laid out and a promise that you'll be back in an hour. A favorable outcome, which is all that one can ask for in this career. But it doesn't change the heaviness in your chest, which continues to press down on you even after you're back down in the ER to discuss potential care plans with Ellis. Throwing yourself back into work is normally your trick to get your mind off of a tough case—it's not the healthiest coping mechanism, but mental health is nothing if not a balancing act—and you're left searching for relief. Where's a physician to go when everything feels a little too...much? Your fellow dayshifter clued you in on just the place.

The roof of PTMC is quiet at this time of night, no incoming or outgoing medical flights interrupting your stolen moment of peace. Almost immediately, you can see why Robby finds so much comfort in being up here. Leaning against the railing, having the cool breeze on your face and watching cars crawl through the streets of Pittsburgh like ants in an ant farm...it may not comfort you, exactly, but it does help to calm you down enough that you can focus on the things you would tell a patient in your position to do: deep breathing and grounding.

From behind you comes the sound of the rooftop door opening and closing and your slow exhale turns into a harsh sigh, assuming that it's some medical student coming to find you about a drunk experiencing hallucinations. Do people not remember how to use a pager anymore?

"Fancy seeing you up here." You'd be able to pick Jack Abbot's voice out of a crowd of hundreds, and it's no different now when he's standing behind you. Your shoulders, which you hadn't realized tensed up at the threat of being pulled back to work before you're ready, loosen up almost immediately.

It was naive of you to think that Jack wouldn't have picked up on anything out of the ordinary in any of the doctors on the clock tonight. He and Robby are two of the best ER attendings in the state for many reasons, but the way that they look out for those on their teams is one of them. Ellis probably snitched, you think, before realizing that you're not giving Jack nearly enough credit for his intuitiveness.

"I've heard so much about this 'trick' from Robby, figured now was the perfect time to try it out. Sorry to steal your hiding spot," you call out, keeping your eyes focused on the lights of PNC Park in the distance.

"I'm not going to ask you if you're alright, because god knows I would hate if someone came up here, interrupted my moment of peace, and asked the same." You can't help the smile that appears on your face. "But I am...here. Y'know, just in case you feel like talking."

You recognize this language, and it makes you chuckle. "Who's the psychiatrist here?"

"Not me, thankfully."

"Saw a ghost downstairs," you supply, still staring determinedly ahead. "I'm pretty good at compartmentalizing, at separating my work life from my personal life. But every so often, a certain case comes in that just...hits too close to home."

"I completely understand."

What Jack doesn't tell you is that, the moment you saw your ghost in that student, he saw his own ghost in you. He often hears negative feedback from those in the ivory tower about how he could stand to be a little more caring to, well, everybody. Though Robby hosts some of the worst patient reviews, he has more than a few of his own.

But who the hospital administration hears from is the bad seeds. Drunk idiots, antivaxxer mothers, bigots who think they can get away with snide comments to members of the staff—the types of people for whom complaining is in their blood. They're more than happy to fill out the survey provided to them with their discharge instructions, flaming everything and everything about the hospital—but especially about Dr. Abbot, who has been called anything from "gruff and unapproachable" to "a raging asshole."

He doesn't do this for them, though. He does it for the people that can actually benefit from his help, those who likely won't fill out a survey. The young parent frantically making sure that every test and procedure for their sick child is covered by Medicaid before consenting. The unhoused man being treated on his fingers for frostbite (and who will find a warm, sturdy pair of gloves tucked with his discharge paperwork).

The veteran fresh off a tour of duty and having her first real bout of PTSD.

You found yourself caught off guard by how close you felt to this case, and in that moment, he saw himself in you.

"I've been that student before—still am, sometimes," you admit quietly, knowing Jack will still hear it. "I was always too scared of what would happen to me if people found out I was feeling this way. I was sure that I'd be judged by everyone, but especially by doctors. I had no reason to feel that way, of course, but I didn't know any better at the time. I think that's why this case got to me; I needed him to hear me, to know for certain that he wasn't alone in his feelings and that he had friends in those who would be taking care of him."

Jack's silent, but you know that's not a bad thing. When he finally speaks, his voice is closer than it was when he first joined you on the roof. "I think that's what distinguishes good doctors from great doctors. Good doctors study hard, perform quality work, and genuinely care for their patients. But the great doctors are those who allow their experiences to fuel them. Who go through pain, or heartbreak, or grief, and use those feelings to guide their work and how they treat those that come under their care. And you, my friend, are a damn great doctor."

"Thanks, Jack." You don't say what you want to, which is that he's describing himself, too. The man's trying to teach a lesson, after all, and you've seen his disdain when his lessons have been hijacked before.

"Got any plans after work?" he asks.

"Besides still trying to get used to working nights?"

He chuckles. "Can't help you there. But if you're not feeling like the walking dead come seven, I know a great diner in the area. We can share some more ghost stories, maybe. Only condition is that you can't divulge the location after we go, no matter how much you may want to sing its praises. I can't go having my favorite breakfast spot overrun by interns and residents, after all."

It's a good thing that you're still facing away from Jack, because you wouldn't be able to school your face to some neutral expression fast enough. You'd be lying if you said you hadn't carried a bit of a torch for Jack for a while—the kind of crush that's easy to sustain when you work opposite shifts and your interactions are in stolen five-minute interactions before your shift ends and his begins. If this were day shift, you know Dana would be teasing you endlessly and going on about the betting pool that's allegedly been steadily gaining money since you volunteered to temporarily move to nights.

("Garcia has twenty on you both being too chicken to make a move before Gibbons returns from paternity leave," Dana whispered to you last week when she was supposed to be giving you a status update on the Kraken before clocking out for the night. "Don't give her a win."

"I don't know what you're talking about," you claimed, cheeks burning as you focused on reading from the tablet in your hands.)

"Let me guess, the VFW?" you tease.

"Nah, their pancakes suck."

On your next exhale, when the heaviness in your chest seems to have finally abated, you turn around to face Jack. He's closer than you thought he would be, a couple of feet away at most. Close enough that you can see the way his eyes crinkle when he smiles at you. "Alright, we can go to your super secret breakfast spot. But I'm expecting world-class waffles, deal?"

"Deal."

When Jack wraps an arm around your shoulders in a loose hug, he doesn't put it down again until right before the elevator doors open on the ER. You don't mind in the slightest.

[nostalgebraist]

on exordia (a "rant"?)

Yesterday I said I'd write a longer post about Exordia. Here it is.

This will be... sort of review-shaped, but not quite a review? I dunno.

I'll try to avoid spoilers, although some amount of (largely minor or indirect) spoilage will be inevitable.

As I said in my earlier posts, there was a lot I liked about this book, but also a lot that frustrated me. This post will focus almost entirely on the latter; it will be a big long list of gripes, which I'm posting mostly to relieve a certain mental pressure that built up over the course of the reading experience.

I want to clarify at the outset that the negative angle here doesn't faithfully represent by overall stance toward the book.

Yes, I often found it extremely annoying, but it was a lot of fun, too – often it was both, at the same time. I am normally a pretty slow reader, but I sped through Exordia's 500+ pages very quickly; even when I was annoyed with this or that feature of the book, I was pleasantly engrossed, too. And I feel like writing out a bunch of thoughts about it, which has to mean something good, right? Even if those thoughts are critical in nature.

----

Why do I feel like writing so much about the book? And why do I care so much about the fact that it was "frustrating"? (There are lots of bad books out there; sometimes, I read them; in itself, this is just business as usual, and not worthy of note.)

I think it comes down to what I said in my first post (see link above). Because Exordia feels so much like something I would absolutely love, I feel more incensed about its flaws than I would be about the more thoroughgoing flaws of something that was simply, wholly, and straightforwardly bad. There's a tantalizing sense of unrealized potential, unfulfilled promises.

Exordia would be so good if it were good.

----

Talking about this book's flaws is difficult, because most of them are closely related to one another, and it's difficult to break down that big ball of tangled-up string into manageable chunks.

But there are a few things that are relatively self-contained, so I'll pick them off first. (The main course starts in section "3" below.)

Oh, also: this ended up extremely long. As in, just over 10,000 words. If you wanted to read 10,000 words of Exordia critique today then this is your lucky day I guess.

----

1. frontloading

Exordia has a very strong opening. When I was 30 pages in, I was almost certain that I would end up loving this book and recommending it to everyone I knew.

Ha! Little did I know!

----

The book is divided into five sections called "Acts."

Act One is very brief. It ends on page 38, less than 10% of the way into the book.

And it's very, very good. Or more precisely, it's very, very promising, as a way to begin a story.

Right off the bat, we get two instantly charming and intriguing characters, with an instantly charming and intriguing dynamic.

Then – starting barely five pages in – we are suddenly assailed by a rapid-fire barrage of incredibly cool sci-fi shit. Bizarre neologisms, alien biology and psychology, quasi-theological revelations about physics and the early universe! "Narrative prisons"! "Weapons that mark their victims for damnation"! An "observatory" that can see the afterlife!

All three of those examples I just quoted are from one single page (p. 21).

And Exordia is over 500 pages long.

I was like: holy shit. If this is what it's like now, what is the rest of it going it be like?

Well. Now I've read the rest of it, so I know. What was it like, then?

----

What it's like is this:

On page 38, Act One ends.

Act Two begins by switching over to a completely different set of characters.

In Act One, it seemed obvious that we were meeting the book's main characters. All the usual conventions of novelistic storytelling were practically screaming at us: behold, the protagonists! Better figure out how you feel about them in short order, reader, because you'll be strapped in with them for the long haul.

But – psych! Turns out that we are not strapped in with the Act One characters for the long haul. Eventually they do show up again, but they spend most of the book on the sidelines due to a succession of plot devices which seem designed specifically to keep them there.

The fast pace slows to a crawl.

We discover that we're in a completely different genre: not wild-eyed cosmic science fiction, but Tom Clancy military-techno-thriller. And so a large fraction of the text, by volume, is stuff like this:

"What's up?" Mike Jan asks, like they've just bumped into each other at the gym. "Something bad?" "Something undetermined," Erik says. "One of the EBADs broke. One more check, then we go in." So they do a final test on their MOPP protection, which is an absolute nightmare in the rising sun. Masks that fog up if the seal isn't perfect, baggy JSLIST oversuits, paper wraps that turn bad colors if they contact known agents (what good will that do?), gloves and booties over their boots. All perfect for poaching them in their own sweat. "Can't see shit in here," Ricardo says, without unhappiness: just the condition of things. "I know. Mike, bodyguard Anna. Skyler, get the drone up. Ricardo, load a mouse. All call signs, Zero-Six, now proceeding into the target area. Out." They walk straight toward Blackbird. Skyler flies a quadcopter drone ahead: a Teal Drones Golden Eagle with a fifty-minute charge. Ricardo Garcia follows its course, waving a ten-foot spear with a live mouse in a plastic lattice canister. The idea is that the mouse will die in time to warn the rest of them. "Pretty out here," Mike Jan remarks. "Looks like a Windows desktop." Of course Mike has never changed a default desktop wallpaper in his life.

I'm sure some people like this kind of thing – it's an established genre, after all, and it sells well. But it's not really my jam, and (more importantly) it's not what the opening led me to think I was getting myself into.

(Sidenote: the last two lines in that quote have nothing to do with the point I'm making, but I included them anyway, because they confuse me and I want to know whether I'm missing something that would make sense of them. "Has never changed a default desktop wallpaper in his life" is apparently meant to be some kind of telling character detail, and it's delivered as though we'd immediately grasp its significance. But what IS its significance? "Oh, we all know those guys – the ones who don't change their desktop wallpapers. You know what I'm talking about, wink wink." Huh???)

The new characters are mostly U.S. military/government/intelligence guys (at this stage anyway – later on there will be even more new characters, and then more, etc). The book tries its hardest to make us care about them, but it's fighting an uphill battle because it has to work against our frustration at the bait-and-switch that has been pulled on us.

Plus, frankly, they're just not all that interesting. Sorry.

Sooner or later, we realize that Act One was the odd one out. When Act Three arrives, it's just "Act Two: The Sequel" – and so on. Except in a few parts very close to the end, the book never recaptures the energy and wonder that it used as a hook in Act One.

It gets worse. Remember how I said that Act One rapidly reveals a bunch of sci-fi lore to the reader?

Well, a large fraction of Acts Two through Five are a mystery story in which the new, less-interesting characters study a classic BDO and try to figure out what its deal is, plus a bunch of related ancillary mysteries. And in some cases, the reader can guess the answers long before the characters get there, because the answer is something we were told back in Act One.

(This is only possible, by the way, due to the previously mentioned sidelining of the Act One characters. These characters re-appear, and the other protagonists get to know them, but for most of the book the two groups are unable or unwilling to communicate for some reason or another. If these communication blockers weren't there, the Acts Two+ guys could just ask the Act One guys what was going on... and the book would be several hundred pages shorter.)

This is a baffling structural choice.

I have no idea how one could possibly try to justify it; I simply can't think of any arguments in its favor, even bad ones.

2. the path, grant!

This isn't even a complaint, per se. Just something about my reading experience that seems like it should get mentioned in this post, somewhere.

In a lot of ways – big and small, important and trivial – this book feels weirdly close to the kind of thing that I would write myself.

Indeed, it feels weirdly close (in a lot of ways, big and small etc.) to some things that I did in fact write, myself.

Namely, Floornight and Almost Nowhere.

I'm not claiming that Seth Dickinson ripped me off, or anything. It seems very unlikely that he's read any of my work, or even heard of it. Like I said in my earlier post, it's probably all just a matter of shared influences and/or pure coincidence.

Still, I have to talk about it, because I couldn't stop noticing it.

In the first ten pages, I learned: this is a story about first contact with aliens. It involves a lot of exotic invented terminology, and the worldbuilding includes novel connections between fundamental physics, psychology, and ethics.

And I thought: wow, this sure is right up my alley. Nice!

On page 11, the book started talking about the Shahnameh.

Ten pages later: souls are real! But this is arguably bad, because it's been used as the basis for exploitative and dystopian technologies.

I dunno, it's not like I has a monopoly on that concept. (I stole part of it from Madoka, for one thing.)

Nor, as I happens, do I have a monopoly on the concept of "wacky eccentric scientists who live in a remote setting apart from most of humanity, studying Lovecraft-style mind-bending entities from the beyond." That's just taking well-worn, well-liked tropes and combining them in a natural, appealing way. (And what's more, I stole part of it from Annihilation.)

But in any case – monopoly or no – Exordia does in fact have those wacky scientists, and that remote zone, and those creepy, soul-physics-related objects of study.

It also has a character named "Anna" – with a sort-of-similar role in the story to Almost Nowhere's Anne.

And a character named "Rosamaria," who...

But I'm sure you can guess how that sentence ends.

Some of this stuff is hard to talk about without violating my rule about spoilers.

But, uh, that said – remember that big scene about 2/3 of the way through Floornight, the one with a raised platform that gets used as a stage? The one in which [HUGE FLOORNIGHT SPOILER] happens?

And then the chapter right after that, which has an unusual name, because it portrays things from an unusual point of view?

Oh, you haven't read Floornight. Well, then. Do you remember that scene near the end of Exordia...

Some of the "connections" I thought I saw are flimsier than this. Some aren't really much of anything, in retrospect. Early on we learn that the aliens have some technology called "the way of knives," and I thought: ah, just like AN's "knife-power"! But in fact the two things have nothing else in common. And surely I don't have a monopoly on the word "knife."

I dunno. How about this? Is this anything?

The Ubiet burbles away in her arms: clarification and amplification of aretaic event in self-like past, recursive self-caricature by protoprecosmic influence, WARNING WARNING WARNING pathology! pathology! pathology! pathology! pathology! Until that word, pathology, starts to sound like path-ology, the study of paths. The discovery of the way.

3. the geeky badass hive mind

Okay, here begins the part I called "the main course" above, where I lay out the really big thing that irked me about Exordia.

Hmm... where to start...

There is a problem with the characterization in this book. There is also a problem with the narration in the book.

These two problems are sort of the same, and the fact that they are sort-of-the-same is itself a noteworthy symptom of the problem.

Whoa, whoa – too broad, too abstract! Let's start with something small and concrete. Something that anyone who's read the book will have noticed, and which I am definitely not the first person to complain about.

So: Exordia is full of geek culture references.

The characters make incessant references to specific sci-fi/fantasy books, anime series, video games, and popular movies and TV shows. The 3rd-person narration also does this frequently.

It gets pretty "cringe" at times.

Here's a very early (and hence memorable) example. Anna, our Act One pseudo-protagonist, is learning the deep secrets of the universe from a snake-headed alien. The alien tells her that souls exist.

And in response, Anna says:

"Souls? You mean immortal souls? Are those real? Is this some kind of, like, Evangelion thing?"

I was like: seriously? Seriously? Come the fuck on.

But a moment later, I got my balance. I thought: wait, I see what this is. This is a character trait. It's a feature of this person, not the book/world.

Anna is a person who makes these kinds of nerdy, "cringe" references at inappropriate times, just like (as we learn in the first few pages) she is a person who has been fired from multiple jobs for being too abrasive, too upfront with people. That tracks. There's a coherent person, here, and I'm getting to know her.

Ha! Little did I know!

Act One ends, and Act Two starts.

We are introduced to our first "Acts Two+ protagonist": Clayton Hunt, Deputy National Security Advisor in the book's alt-universe version of the Obama administration.

Clayton is a slick charmer, a skilled and versatile liar, a power-hungry schemer who deliberately orchestrated his rise through the ranks of the National Reconnaissance Office bureaucracy. He is – if we are to judge by his (disturbing) past deeds, which are recounted as crucial backstory – a cold-hearted psycho sonuvabitch who's way, way too eager to kill people "for the greater good." At first glance, he seems to have nothing at all in common with Anna (too honest for her own good, a basically normal person struggling to keep her basically normal life afloat, etc).

Does Clayton make nerdy, often "cringe" geek culture references – incessantly, come hell or high water? You bet he does.

We meet Clayton's once-and-future best friend and right-hand man, Major Erik Wygaunt: Rhodes Scholar, badass soldier, doctrinaire quasi-deontological moralist. Totally different guy from either of the forenamed – or so one would think.

But in practice, in what he actually does and says? Erik is exactly the same sort of argumentative, obscure-trivia-knowing, geek-culture-referencing dork as Clayton and Anna and – yes – virtually every other character in the book.

Here's a typical passage, from page 86. Clayton (dialogue in italics) is in conversation with Erik (no italics):

“My guess is that Blackbird is dispersing some kind of communication agent. It seeks out information-dense substrate and … interfaces with it. Tries to use it to grow a message or a system. It’s trying to talk to us by amplifying patterns it finds. Not how I’d go about first contact. But how I might do it if I were very, very strange.” Erik can’t help making a technical protest: like they’re both optimizing their colonies in Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri, arguing over the details of the science fictional technologies in play. “Then it should be bursting open every cell in our bodies. If it’s looking for information coding, then DNA would be the first thing it’d find. Seven hundred megabytes of digital data in each cell.”

By this point, I had long since discarded my "characterization for Anna" hypothesis. I'd gotten the hang of what was really going on.

And so I didn't even blink when, on page 103, a character is introduced as "Captain Davoud Qasemi of the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force" – and he immediately begins rattling off the names of specific video games he liked as a kid, rambling about the homosexual overtones in Top Gun, and saying things like "It's marvelously ironic! It's so classically ironic that it's invented pederasty and gone to war with Sparta."

That's just how everyone in the world talks, apparently.

Everyone in the world. This book is about a Kurdish village that is suddenly crisscrossed with deployments from the U.S. and Russia and China etc., in what seem likely to be the last days of the human race; it is, in large part, about the culture clashes and strained attempts at international collaboration that result from this arrangement.

But the characters are helped along in their efforts by the fact that there is at least one culture to which they all belong.

They would all seem perfectly at home sitting on a big couch in a dorm common room at some nerdy liberal arts college, nominally watching a movie but in fact talking over most of the dialogue as they strive to out-do one another in the game of pointing out its scientific and historical inaccuracies.

Now, don't get me wrong. This is a perfectly fine way to be.

But it is not the only one.

----

It is probably clear that I did not like this aspect of the book. But why?

Well, there is the thing I just mentioned, about how it undermines the attempt at portraying culture clashes. But that's not the only problem, and it's not really the main problem.

What else, then?

In his (in)famous essay about "hysterical realism," James Wood wrote (my emphasis):

By and large, these are not stories that could never happen (as, say, a thriller is often something that could never happen); rather, they clothe real people who could never actually endure the stories that happen to them. They are not stories in which people defy the laws of physics (obviously, one could be born in an earthquake); they are stories which defy the laws of persuasion. This is what Aristotle means when he says that in storytelling “a convincing impossibility” (say, a man levitating) is always preferable to “an unconvincing possibility” (say, the possibility that a fundamentalist group in London would continue to call itself KEVIN).

Exordia is not hysterical realism, and it contains plenty of events which deliberately contravene the (known) laws of physics. Nonetheless, while reading it, I kept thinking of that line about "defying the laws of persuasion."

In the case of any one character, the traits I'm pointing to would be perfectly acceptable. (We saw this with my reaction to Anna, above.)

What's more, they would be acceptable even if they went against the expectations set by other attributes of the same character. The world is huge, and contains billions; every oddball combination of traits you can imagine quite possibly does exist, at least in someone, somewhere.

And besides: as Wood says, the "laws of persuasion" are not the same as the "laws of physics." The requirements needed for something to "feel plausible," in a work of fiction, are not the same as the requirements needed for something to be plausible, in real life.

But there is a set of requirements in the case of fiction. It's just a different one.

Meet the terms of the contract, and the reader will happily "suspend their disbelief," even in the face of actions and dialogue that would be extraordinarily unlikely in the real world. But if you break the contract? Then piling on more "realism," more geeky period/setting detail and laws-of-physics plausibility, will only heighten the disconnect and slide things further into the uncanny valley.

It's like watching a 3D 60-fps movie, back when Hollywood was going through its simultaneous 3D and 60-fps fads.

Yes, yes, there is technically more information, it's technically closer to the signal your senses would receive from the real world. But you have broken the terms of the illusion, suspended the suspension of disbelief, and so I am no longer seeing your world and characters, anymore. I am seeing the remaining gaps in your inevitably flawed illusion.

On page 136 of Exordia, we meet a female Kurdish shepherd. She's an extremely minor character, really just a horror-movie extra who's there to get picked off (ambiguously, "off-screen") by the spooky powers at play, and thereby give the reader an (ambiguous, tantalizing) hint of what those powers can do.

But, as is the convention in such matters, Seth Dickinson gives her just a smidgen of characterization, to humanize her before she goes.

What kind of person is she, this poor doomed shepherdess?

You already know the answer, don't you?

Tonight she thinks only of her sheep. Oil smuggling paid for her phone and the rifle on her back, but this flock is part of the village’s common wealth, and she is responsible for it. Or so her mother is always reminding her. And even if she watches too much anime and spends too much time getting into fights on Facebook, she wants to do her mother proud.

She watches too much anime? Fine. Maybe she does. Maybe she does.

Maybe – if it were only her. If the seams in the illusion were not showing through so plainly.

I'm a fairly cooperative reader. The implausible and the impossible do not bother me. I am capable of believing just about anything.

But not like this.

----

The characters of Exordia are geeks. That much I've covered already.

They are also badasses, every one of them. Geeky badasses.

That's the phrase that came to mind, pretty early on, when I was trying to formulate what bothered me about these guys. "Every single character in this book is a geeky badass," I thought.

I'm sorry. It's a very, uh, "cringe" phrase. But that too is apposite.

What do I mean, "badasses"?

For one thing I mean that they are hypercompetent. They know all kinds of stuff – geek culture trivia, academic esoterica in seemingly every discipline, hands-on working knowledge of whichever military or scientific devices the plot needs them to use. They are quick on their feet, relentlessly thoughtful and logical, cool under pressure (or hot under pressure in an impressive and charismatic manner), capable of creative problem-solving.

They never fail.

Nothing fazes them. Or rather: when they are fazed, it is brief, and they look great doing it, and it doesn't matter in the end anyway.

Many of them have dark, traumatic personal histories (exciting! dramatic! potentially sexy!), but however bad their trauma, it does not dare disturb their hypercompetence when the latter is at work.

This book is about the cataclysmic end of the world-as-we-know-it. It contains a staggering quantity of violence and death: on-screen and off-screen, mass-scale and intimate, dealt out by a diverse range of human and inhuman actors and weapons. But no one ever just breaks down in the face of it all. Or rather: if they do "break down," they do so only briefly, and they look great doing it, and...

One of the main characters is, explicitly, an alcoholic with PTSD. But this doesn't really ever come up as a serious obstacle, either to her or to anyone else. Mostly, it just means that she jokes around with the other characters about being the town drunk, sometimes, in between one moment of epic badassery and the next.

One might argue that this is sort of... I don't know, "tasteless"? I don't know. I had some sort of problem with it, anyway, that or some other one.

For a book that is so thoroughly about nerds, it is remarkable how little it contains in the way of humiliation. Of straight-up, unalloyed uncoolness.

As always, things start off with uncharacteristic promise. In the first few pages, Anna loses her job, then breaks up with her boyfriend in a very awkward manner and instantly regrets it.

This, remember, is the same character who says that cringe line about souls and Evangelion. So far, so good! We've gone from zero to #relatable in record time. We have a confirmed blorbo, stable under laboratory conditions. Sources familiar with the situation report that she is "a hot mess" and "literally me."

But that's all in Act One (may it rest in peace). Soon enough, Anna is taken up into the geeky badass hive mind, and from then on she too is never seen to fail. Except in a cool way, sometimes.

Soon enough she is just like the rest of them. Quick-witted, effortlessly articulate, situationally aware, ready for anything, an endless font of witty geek banter.

Is this bad? Why?

I'm not sure. Maybe I just don't like it. Maybe there's nothing more than that.

But... okay, look. This is a book about the likely end of the human race, about humans trying to work together in the face of cultural differences and mutual mistrust. It wants you to hope. In its moments of triumph, it wants you to feel proud of your whole species.

And, in the name of these goals, it tries so very hard to humanize its characters. It tries, it tries! They have so many traits, so much specificity! They will tell you all about their home towns, their cultures, their hopes and dreams and fears! Look, look, the book says: surely these are people? Look at them, they're doing so much people stuff!

But at the moment where "being human" might entail "not being effortlessly cool and badass literally all of the time," the book suddenly relents. That cannot be allowed, of course. Every threshold can be crossed, except that one.

Maybe it's just me, but I can't relate. I'm not a badass. I do embarrassing shit all the time, and I'll probably just go on doing it until the day I die. I don't think I could hold my own with these demigods in the anime-referencing game, much less the high-pressure-military-operations game.

I guess "people" are like this, sometimes. But only because the world is big, and so for every X, there are some people who are X, somewhere.

This book is about the human race, except it isn't. To be human is (among other things) to kind of suck, and no one in this book kind of sucks, not even the military psychopaths, not even blorbo-candidate Anna.

On page 10, Anna asks her alien how she views humanity, and the alien's characterization is humorously blunt, underwhelming, and undignified:

“You’re a species of gangly distance runners, adapted to sweat and throw stuff. You like watching each other fuck. [...] “You are wired for small social groups, so all human organization degenerates into power trading and gossip between a tractably sized elite, no matter the stakes. You have two sources of authority—dominance and prestige—which conflict in interesting ways. Something killed most of you, and so your survivors are very inbred. Very similar. Your meat smells the same.”

Act One really is so very different from the rest, isn't it?

Ah, those were the days!

4. differentiation of hive mind tissue

In the last section, I argued that the characters were overly similar. Possessed of the same "geeky badass" traits in a way that defied "the laws of persuasion."

That is true, but it's not to say the characters don't have distinguishing traits. They definitely have those.

But even here, in the realm of differences, something feels... off. To me, anyway.

It's sort of like this:

To a zeroth-order approximation, every character in Exordia is identical. Just another dollop of homogeneous geeky badass paste, scooped up from the same wellspring as all the rest.

That's only the zeroth-order approximation. Look closer, and you can see differences.

What kinds of differences?

Well, here's an example. There's a character named Chaya. Who is she? Besides a geeky badass, I mean?

She is [takes a deep breath] a Ugandan-Filipina Catholic butch lesbian plasma physicist!

That's a long list of traits, but it was very easy for me to recall them all from memory just now, even though Chaya is just one member of this book's long roster of protagonists. Why?

Because whenever Chaya appears in a scene – whenever she says anything, and whenever the narration is filtered through her perspective – these traits are mentioned over and over again.

Virtually everything that she says or thinks is:

A) Narrowly pragmatic, directly related to what's happening in the immediate plot, could have been said/thought by any one of the characters

B) Directly related to one or more of the traits listed above (e.g. she's Catholic, so she's praying or talking about God with one of the irreligious / differently religious characters)

C) Some mixture of the two (e.g. she is making some smart practical comment about a current dilemma in the plot, which any one of the characters might have said, except that where one of the other characters would have said "fuck!", she says "mama Mary!")

I almost feel kind of gross, dissecting a character in this way. Especially when it's a character like Chaya, who I kind of liked!

I almost feel that way, but then I remember it's not really me doing the dissection. The characters come this way, marked with convenient labels for ease of disassembly.

I said I "kind of liked" Chaya, and I did. When I was reading the book quickly, swept along by the story – when I sort of defocused my brain, and didn't pay too much attention – I felt that she was a likable character. She had the general shape of a "likable character." My brain could match her against familiar templates, and accept the match, if I let my brain work without too much conscious deliberation.

When I focused harder, though, the joints began to show.

When I focused harder, I could watch (well-crafted, clever) lines of dialogue and narration flow past, and see through the Matrix to the calculated flecks of trait-relevance which adhered to each and every one of those lines.

This is a Chaya section, so I am getting told over and over again about God and rosary beads and plasma physics and what Uganda is like and what the Philippines is like and the woman Chaya has a crush on and how Chaya has a crush on that woman and how these two have a vaguely butch/femme dynamic.

(Sidenote: although this book seems like it's taking great pains to be culturally sensitive – or, perhaps, because of that fact – I kept noticing that the American characters are not constantly thinking and talking about what America is like. Only the people from places presumptively unfamiliar to the reader do that kind of thing. And it almost feels like the American characters are given more "slots" in which to fit distinct character traits, because they don't have to spend any slots just to establish their national origins.)

These are the Chaya topics. I am being told about them, and I will be told about them later, in other Chaya sections. Except for "the plot," these are the only topics I will ever be told about in Chaya sections.

If this were a Clayton section, I would be hearing for the 50th time about how Clayton is manipulative and conflicted about his manipulativeness. Or, hearing about one of the other Clayton topics. There's a list of those, with maybe five or six items, just as there was with Chaya. In Clayton sections, you hear about these things, and only these things.

It reminds me of the kind of improv where you're handed a brief description of your character, and have to immediately start acting as that character, with no time to prep. There's no way you could invent a whole fleshed-out human being in under a second, of course. So you lean hard on the traits listed on your character sheet. You find ways to weave one or more of them into each and every line. See: I'm doing it right! I'm playing my character!

----

Exordia's characters have no small traits. Only big ones, like "being Catholic" or "being Chinese." They do not act whimsically or inexplicably, ever; they do not play against their fixed types, ever.

Real people are microscopically detailed, incompressible, differentiated from one another by millions of little quirks that are essentially arbitrary and cannot be satisfactorily "explained" except by narrating huge segments of their life histories ("see, that's where it came from," one might say, after relating years of experience in unsparing detail).

In fiction, this stuff can't possibly be conveyed in full, and so a faithful portrayal of its consequences tends to just look like "noise," arbitrary behavior, the whimsical, the inexplicable.

Which is fine. Good fictional characters often come with such halos of static around them. It's a part of making a fictional world feel real, rough-edged, lived-in.

And on the other hand, sometimes it's fine for a fictional character to just be a type, and play out that type. A lot of science fiction is this way: it simply isn't much interested in character, which is okay, because it has other interests with which to keep your attention.

But Exordia is trying to have it both ways.

It's not just a standard hard SF story where the characters are types, and are clearly and only those types, and that's okay. Compared to that sort of story, Exordia spends way more time lingering on its characters, "zooming in" on them. Inviting you to consider them, study them, love them.

But this causes a feeling of intuitive wrongness, an uncanny valley effect. We should be zoomed in far enough to see the details, the noise-haloes. So where are they?

You can zoom in and in, but all you see is a magnified version of the stuff you'd already seen at lower resolution. A surface of unreal smoothness, unmarred by dust or fuzz.

4b. so meta

It's annoying (I keep using that word...) to talk about these aspects of Exordia, because the book involves a sci-fi conceit that could potentially explain its unusual flatness of character.

Explain it in-universe, I mean. As a "real" thing that causes these people to be this way, for a specific reason, in a specific place and time. Leaving everyone outside of the frame potentially intact, with dust and fuzz still in place.

(Wait, that was in Floornight too! Huh. I literally didn't realize that until just now.)

I'm not going to say anything more about this due to the spoiler rule, except that I don't think it really works when you think about it. The stated causes don't actually match up with the effects: the former are too narrow in scope, the latter too pervasive. The characters are flat even when the sci-fi flat-causing mechanisms aren't supposed to be in effect.

At most, I guess you could say the flatness is "thematically appropriate." Connected to other stuff that the book talks about, elsewhere. But... I dunno. Who cares? What's the point?

4c. the voice of the hive

Like a lot of modern fiction, Exordia is mostly written in studiously maintained free indirect speech.

If you don't know (or don't remember) what that is, the Wikipedia page I just linked has a nice example, which I'll reproduce here.

Quoted or direct speech or narrator's voice: He laid down his bundle and thought of his misfortune. "And just what pleasure have I found, since I came into this world?" he asked. Reported or normal indirect speech: He laid down his bundle and thought of his misfortune. He asked himself what pleasure he had found since he came into the world. Free indirect speech: He laid down his bundle and thought of his misfortune. And just what pleasure had he found, since he came into this world?

It's third person. But the third-person narration is commingled with the perspective of one of the characters (where this focal character can vary over the course of the text). Often the "narrator" just says stuff as though it's objective reportage, when in fact it is (and the reader knows it is) what this specific character thinks or believes.

The use of free indirect speech accidentally provides a useful way to "directly measure" the characterization problems described above.

Consider: although the book is written this way almost all of the way through – and you can discern that fact if you pay attention – it is easy to forget in the moment that it is written this way.

Why? Because, although the narration follows the thoughts of one character and then another, the characters are too similar to one another for this to make much of a difference.

Mostly, the narration just describes things the way you'd imagine a "geeky badass" might describe them, with lots of flashy clever phrasing, and lots of arguably pedantic detail about science / engineering / military matters / etc.

Free indirect speech already blurs the distinction between the authorial voice and the character voices, by design, but here the blurring is taken to its limit, and the distinction collapses entirely. Is "the author" describing events this way? Or, is one of the characters describing it in that way? Or not them, but a different character? We can't tell, because all of these people would say precisely the same string of words.

Of course, we can usually tell who the focal character is, because the items listed on their character card are getting sprayed all over the place. If every other sentence of the narration mentions a Clayton topic, then Clayton must be the focal character, and likewise for the others.

Even here, though, there's a curious departure from the way free indirect speech works in most other books. Note that referencing the "Clayton topics" is not the same thing as conveying Clayton's moment-to-moment thoughts: the former is a fixed list of 5 or 6 items, while the latter presumably roves all over the place as time passes.

I say "presumably" because if the characters' thoughts do rove around in this way, we mostly don't see it. All we hear about is their "topics," again and again.

Maybe these are Clayton's thoughts; maybe Clayton is an obsessive monomaniac who just thinks endlessly about the fact that he's manipulative and so on. Maybe they are all like that. Who knows? It's impossible for me to tell, because the narration is ambiguous in this odd, specific way.

One section, late in the book, begins as follows:

An awful light from the sky finds Anna. She’s, barely, smart enough not to look straight at it.

I was briefly startled by this. I interpreted that "barely smart enough" remark as something said by the omniscient third-person observer. I was like: dude, that's kinda harsh, isn't it?

But a few sentences later, I realized: oh, the focal character in this scene is Anna's mom. It's Anna's mom who's judging her like this. That makes sense.

This particular example is just sort of a narration glitch. I'm not sure it'd be possible to avoid the effect I'm describing, here, without rewriting the scene so it's clear who the focal character is before the "barely smart enough" judgment occurs.

But this case stuck out to me when I encountered it, because that feeling of disorienting perspective-realignment – although it's just kind of awkward, here – is what good multi-character free indirect speech usually feels like, all the time.

"The book should have more of this," I thought. "It should be constantly calling the characters stupid, or whatever, from the perspective of other characters."

(It's not like that doesn't happen at all, mind you. It just happens way less than usual, and way less than it ought to, IMO.)

"With this much perspective-shifting, I should be getting vertigo," I thought. "So where is it? Why is everything so smooth?"

5. the forbidden word

My division into sections is sort of breaking down, here. There's a thing I want to mention that doesn't really deserve its own section, but doesn't quite fit anywhere else. Whatever.

It's yet another annoying quality of Exordia's characters. ("Wait," you're saying. "You said you enjoyed this book?")

Basically everyone in this book is so...

Look, guys, I really don't want to say "woke," okay? If no one ever used the word "woke" again, we would live in a better world. I have said it twice already in this paragraph, and thus made our shared world worse, twice. Sorry.

I'm just not sure what else to call it.

They're feminists. They're against racism, and it's not the kind of hollow and unreflective "opposition to racism" that (e.g.) most Americans will assent to if you poke them about it – no, these people have subtle, thought-through ideas about racism, and its causes.

And so on, w/r/t other forms of bigotry, and the like.

And it's not just that the characters hold these views, themselves. These views are a fluid in which they swim, in a mostly invisible fashion. Everyone assumes without asking that everyone else is like this, and acts accordingly.

Or, more precisely, all the main characters are like this. There are a few bit players who are vaguely suggested to have more right-wing attitudes: the "Mike Jan" who we briefly met above, he of the unchanging desktop background, seems like the type of guy who'd watch Alex Jones, for instance. And on really rare occasions – like maybe 2 or 3 times total – some barely characterized nonentity will actually say something racist or sexist, but nothing much comes of it (remember, our mains are emotionally impregnable badasses), and then the guy who made the comment gets beheaded by an alien laser on the same page or something.

Meanwhile, all the Important Characters are (I guess) invisibly equipped with Important Character Detectors that let them hone in on each other, ignore the hapless maybe-bigoted redshirts around them, and proceed immediately into sophisticated conversations about social justice with one another. No need to feel out the other party's general point of view beforehand: this guy's a protagonist. He's cool, he's one of us.

Is this bad?

I mean, if it is, it's not really a big deal, I guess? Not compared to the other issues I talked about earlier, the deeper ones that plague the fundamental ingredients of the work (character, plot, structure).

But I did find it kind of offputting. Especially at first, before I'd accepted that the Exordia world is just like this.

I remember specifically being startled by an early scene, during the part where the Act One characters are getting introduced to the Acts Two+ characters, in which Anna and Erik suddenly – without warning or preface – launch into a discussion of Kurdish feminism, and potentially distorted/simplified/problematic Western views of Kurdish feminism, and whether Kurdish feminism really matters at all in light of the dire geopolitical position of the Kurds, and that sort of thing.

Again: the problem is not that this is "implausible," in itself. We barely know Erik at this point, and insofar as we know him it's mostly as some hardcore soldier type of dude, but – sure, whatever. There are plenty of feminist men in the military, I'm sure. The military is big, it's got all kinds of people in it.

Again: the violation is not against the laws of physics, but against the laws of persuasion. It's not that this couldn't happen. It could!

And yet.

"Yes, this could happen. I guess it could. But like, come on. Really?"

Sometimes the reader is a harsher master than reality.

And beyond that, this just seems like... I don't know. Like a half-assed, cowardly way to make your book "about" social justice in some sense, without ever really confronting the topic head-on?

A book in which everyone verbally agrees with one another about their enlightened views is not a book about the content of those views. It's just a book in which some characters happen to agree with one another about some things, and also some other stuff happens.

(I'm being at least sort of unfair here: the book really is "about" the Kurds and the Anfal campaign, for instance.)

For a book about culture clashes and genocide and the struggle for international collaboration under tense circumstances, Exordia has a remarkable lack of ideological tension. Or even non-ideological international tension, depicted "on-screen."

Mostly, people in the book... just kind of instantly get along with each other? And then immediately start exchanging packets of nerd banter and/or trenchant commentary on the evils of U.S. imperialism. Members of the geeky badass hive mind, recognizing one another on sight, conversing in the native language of the hive.

Once again: is this bad? Even if so, how bad is it, really?

I think, maybe, that if your book is about the sorts of things that Exordia is about, then sometimes your characters should very much not get along immediately. That they should be riven apart, and driven to extremes, by identity and ideology – if not forever, then at least for a time.

Maybe.

6. proof by intimidation

Man, this post is long!

And somehow I haven't really touched upon what Exordia's prose actually feels like, most of the time, word by word.

That's what this last section is about.

I don't mean the prose style, exactly. Actually, the prose style per se is... really good, mostly! I don't have that much to say about the ways in which it is good, but for the sake of balance and accuracy, I ought to make it clear that they exist.

Seth Dickinson is clearly a very good writer. In the "writes high-quality prose" sense, at least, and – despite all that I've said – in plenty of other ways too. (I'm told that his other books are better than this one; I will probably read them sometime. And I look forward, warily but with a considerable measure of hope, to his future work.)

But. You know what's coming. This post is negative-only. I've got something bad to say about the prose, it seems. Not about the style, but about... something else?

What, then?

Well, let me show you some examples.

He [i.e. Clayton] has seen enough satellite timelines of mass graves to know exactly which stage the corpses have reached. Their skin and bone cells are still alive. Their suits are bloating with gases now. Death signals the beginning of a final uprising, when the three pounds and 60 percent (by count) of your cells that are bacterial clients claim their last meal. They eat you so greedily and so well.

Sixty percent, huh. TIL!

I didn't know that, but Clayton did, apparently. (Free indirect speech in action.)

Of course he did. Clayton is a geeky badass, and like all of his kind, he knows every gee-whiz fact (and factoid) in existence.

And like all geeky badasses – like the book itself – he is not shy about letting you know that he knows.

What else does the book know? Here's some chemistry:

Their X-ray frequency gun isn’t working. Maggie Gaboury breaks out the breakdown spectrometer. A neodymium-doped yttrium aluminum garnet laser attacks the hull; the plume of excited vapor releases a rainbow of light that the spectrometer can read like a bloody fingerprint.

"Breakdown spectrometer"? I've never heard of those. Am I supposed to know this? Is it important?

Two pages later:

The US Radar 110XLS is designed to survey down to two hundred feet below ground, seeking out oil deposits and land mines. Emme didn’t expect the radar to work—after all, their radios are burned out, and radars are giant radios. But radio doesn’t go through metal. The radar’s storage unit protected it. So now they’re aiming it at this alien hull, which Joel says isn’t metal. It’s some kind of stable excimer, or Rydberg matter.

"Ah, the US Radar 110XLS, huh?" I say, smiling and nodding.

Just keep smiling and nodding, I tell myself. Keep your mouth shut. Or else Seth might catch on that you're a fucking moron who doesn't even know what a "breakdown spectrometer" is.

Later, here's some physics:

She knows how matter behaves around black holes. This thing is not behaving like a black hole should: it ought to be pulling in nearby air, forming a friction fireball. It’s not. But even if it isn’t actively pulling, some air is going to move into it anyway. Air molecules at room temperature move shockingly fast—about 350 meters per second.

350 meters per second. Smile and nod. Smile and nod.

God, I'm dumb. All the fucking things I don't KNOW.

The areas which the book knows all about, and which I know virtually nothing about, are too numerous to name. Does it know aeronautical engineering? And astronautical engineering? You bet:

Volume around 12,000 cubic meters. Assuming the same density as a 747, this implies a mass of 5,400 metric tons, just short of two fully fueled Saturn V rockets. Blackbird has wings, but they’re too thick to produce much lift. The fuselage shows no sign of area ruling for efficient transonic flight. It’s not a plane. As a spacecraft design, Blackbird almost makes sense. The entire fuselage could serve as a lifting body while Blackbird glides down to a water landing. In space, the wings and their jagged trailing edges could act as radiators. There are no visible engines, but maybe the tail stuck in the mountainside is the exhaust.

That all sounds logical enough, I guess. But then again, if it wasn't, how would I know? Man, I don't even know what the phrase "area ruling" means.

Perhaps, despite my pretensions, I am not in fact cut out to disparage this book at all. It's above my pay grade. It's smarter than me.

You want more? Here's, um, a "BLEVE":

The blast tips the nearest helicopter on its side, snapping rotors, the fueling hose lashing like hell’s elephant. The helicopter carries a tank of helium cryogen for food storage and magnetic resonance systems. The heat of the fireball envelops the tank and pushes the helium above its boiling point. It tries to revert to a gas but it can’t: no room in here! For an instant the tank holds back tons of super-pressurized liquid helium trying to boil off into gas. Then a seam fails, and every molecule inside flashes to steam. The result is a BLEVE: a boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion. It ruptures the kerosene fire and kills the luckier men instantly. The inert helium snuffs the fire and replaces it with a zone of asphyxiation and paradoxical cold. The blast wave slaps the lab complex’s tunnels taut and snaps the laundry lines in Tawakul.

Maybe you knew what that was already. Not me!

Is... is that what the blast wave resulting from a BLEVE would do, under those circumstances? Look, I'm not saying it isn't. I'm not casting doubt. I'm just saying, I have no clue.

Did Seth Dickinson do some sort of calculation, here, to make sure this made sense? How much research did he do, how much homework? Did he run simulations?

This stuff reads like he did. It reads like he was so careful, so laboriously conscientious about the science and engineering details, that he just has to tell you everything he learned along the way, or else it would all be for naught.

The book knows about military hardware. Oh god does it know about military hardware. The following excerpt is merely a drop from an ocean:

A column of Spetsnaz BMD-4s roll south down the riverside road, bristling with hundred-millimeter rifles and thirty-millimeter autocannon and anti-tank missiles and active hard-kill defenses. Spetsnaz riding atop their transports watch every incremental tick of the compass. Brand new Azart-P1 radio sets squall with static, still picking up the aurorae hidden behind the low gray sky.

Seth, is there anything you don't know?

I'm not even touching on the learned, labored excursions into history and geopolitics, here – just focusing on the science-y parts for brevity (ha ha, "brevity," I'll be here all night).

But even then, there are plenty more domains of science and engineering left to cover! Behold:

The copper tracks that connect components on the board have been duplicated, as if the etching process was performed twice before the final UV burn. Some of the pin connectors have dwarf copies. The CPU socket is crusted in a dark mass, like over-applied thermal paste.

The world is vast, nearly as vast as my own ignorance of it. Would you believe I have no idea what "over-applied thermal paste" looks like on a circuit board?

Like Seth, I do an arguably excessive quantity of research. Look, I spent a while this morning finding all those quotes, and there's no way I'm going to leave them un-quoted after all that work, okay? Here they come:

The KingFisher can read DNA sequences at targeted locations, but it can’t physically examine the structure of DNA. For that, she needs to get purified DNA extract from the KingFisher machine, then mount the DNA on slides of mica and put them under an atomic force microscope.

But of course. (Smile and nod.)

Did you know that certain ways of getting killed cause you to ejaculate as you die? Clayton does!

"Gunshot trauma to the cerebellum causes post-mortem erection and discharge," Clayton says.

More physics, and some speculative engineering:

The engine that forms the “quill” is a sheared-flow-stabilized Z-pinch fusion rocket. This is a fancy way to say that it turns spin-polarized heavy hydrogen and light helium into a continuous thermonuclear explosion. This is itself a fancy way to say that it runs on a rolling nuclear fireball. The magnetically confined tailpipe puts out about 100 grams of helium-4, protons, loose neutrons, and unburnt hydrogen-helium fuel every second. Add gamma and X-rays for taste, and, in situations where you need extra thrust at the cost of efficiency, dump some extra mass into the beam as a kind of afterburner. The resulting exhaust plasma moves at 3,500 kilometers per second: Mach 10,000, or about 1 percent of lightspeed.

Even more:

Some of the atoms take direct gamma-ray hits to their nuclei, breaking apart the strong-force bonds that tie protons to neutrons: a process called photodisintegration.

Did we really need to be told, after having this phenomenon explained to us, that it was called "photodisintegration"?

I mean, maybe we did. Or at least, maybe I did.

Since, you know.

Since I didn't know that, before.

Of course I didn't.

----

One last time: Is this bad? If so, why?

Maybe the problem is that I've written too much fiction, myself. (And SF, even, sometimes.)

And so, I can no longer look at this stuff and just think, "ooh, cool science facts, described in a flashy way. Fun!"

Instead, I just feel an immediate, intimate sense of exhaustion.

"God, how much work this must have been. How long it must have taken to gather all this info, and double-check it, and integrate it with the story in the right places."

(The fact that it has to actually suit the story means that a lot of this kind of "homework" never even makes it to the page, because the plot points that might once have required it get edited out or modified! Ugh, I'm feeling drained just typing this.)

Exhaustion – and self-doubt.

"God, so many things to potentially get wrong in an embarrassing way. So many fields that I'm an amateur-at-best in. And since I'm writing fiction, I'm taking those fields 'out of distribution,' taking them places that have never been studied by their real-world practitioners! Fuck, I have to make novel predictions! I'm screwed. Everyone is going to know exactly how much of an idiot I am."

This isn't just about science, mind you. It's about everything. Writing fiction inherently requires one to assume a posture of staggering arrogance, or what would be staggering arrogance in any other context.

"Here's what happened, to these people who are not like me, in all these places I've only visited, at most. Here is exactly what they did and said and even thought, inside their heads, where no one else could see. How the hell would I know, you ask? It's simple: I know everything. I know all the things there are to know, about all the things that exist. (And the ones that don't exist, for that matter.)"

I do manage to assume the posture, at least for long enough to get the words written when I want them written. But outside of that trance-like state, I start to doubt myself.

Who am I to do this thing? My ignorance is vast, nearly as vast as the world of which I'm ignorant.

And it's there, in that world, that they live. The readers. Aren't they going to notice how badly I'm getting it all wrong? They will, won't they?

This is neurotic, I know.

And so, perhaps the only thing that we're learning here is the following:

A) I am a writer who is very intellectually insecure, and

B) Exordia is a novel with a majestic stock of implicit intellectual self-confidence.

Is that bad? Could it be bad, "objectively," apart from my issues? I mean, surely not, right?

Nonetheless, I notice that reading Exordia filled me with this kind of tetchy, defensive intellectual competitiveness – which is a thing that most books do not do to me, though "my issues" remain a constant.

Perhaps – to psychologize myself further – this objection is downstream from the others, and has no life of its own. Perhaps I just felt annoyed with the book for other reasons, and at the same time felt like the book was asserting itself to be superior to me in some sense, and so I felt a need to say:

"No, all of this is bad somehow, because if it were good it would mean this whole book is good – and that would have dire implications for my own work, given how similar-and-yet-maybe-inferior it is to the incredibly-annoying-and-yet-objectively-superior novel Exordia."

Which is... extremely neurotic, and self-regarding, and also barely even makes sense. I don't want it it just be that, but maybe it is.

(The legitimately high-quality prose did not help, in this respect. It really is good! Five hundred and twenty-nine small-print pages of good. It's so fucking polished, way moreso than anything I could ever imagine putting out. And so fucking clever, so fucking smart...)

(Jeez. Get it together, man.)

----

However, there is one more thing that I notice.

There are works of fiction that make me feel smart, and works of fiction that make me feel dumb.

And I think, all else being equal, it is preferable to make the reader feel smart. Not by cheating, not by lowering your intellectual standards to what you imagine the reader can handle. But by trusting them, and then giving them something hard in a way you trust them to digest themselves.

Rather than... I don't know, bludgeoning them into cowed reverence through sheer force of accumulated, exhaustive, exhausting showing-off?

I don't know how objective this quality is, this feel-smart/feel-dumb thing. I'm sure it's reader-relative to some extent, maybe a huge extent. Maybe it varies so much that it's not even worth talking about in the abstract; you just gotta hope the right reader finds your stuff, and feels smart.

Still, here I am, talking about it.

What defines the works that "make me feel smart"?

Mainly that they are complicated and difficult by virtue of the complicated and difficult novelties they create, as part of the creative act that they are. They involve things which are equally hard for anyone to wrap their mind around, because no one had ever needed to wrap their mind around such things at all, before the work existed.

That, and the fact that these works – despite being inherently complicated and difficult – do not talk down to you, or hold your hand too much.

They act kind of like you already know what their deal is – which you don't, but then again, no one does. (The playing field is level.)

They say:

"Congratulations. You have passed the entrance exam. Welcome to the class. It will be hard, but I trust you to do your best. If you aren't smart enough now, perhaps you will become so, by your own efforts, by the end. Good luck."

They expect the reader to be a genius, but they know, deep down, that the reader is not really the right sort of genius – not yet, anyway. That is the point of presenting the challenge: so that you will rise to it, and see a new kind of thing, beyond what you had believed to be the horizon.

This is how I feel about Homestuck, say, or The Quincunx.

Or The Lymond Chronicles, or The Recognitions, or Ulysses.

Some of these are extremely dense with learned and carefully prepared authorial research. And, where this is the case, they are certainly not shy about showing it to you.

And yet, these works make me feel smart.

And then, there are works like Exordia, which make me feel dumb as fuck.

The end!

[weebsinstash]

In your Cecil work, you mentioned how he’s seen reader naked with all monitors and stuff. But to be a little freaky/sinful, has he seen them also pleasuring themselves? I can only imagine the amount of murder he’d be willing to do for the unfortunates who decide to comment their enjoyment. If not if they have those Superman abilities, do you think they knew they were being spied on and took someone home to bone to mess with him.

You know how in the first season Cecil straight up tells Mark something along the lines of "the GDA knows everything about you, from your daily routine to the porn you jack off to". Well :)

Imagine in a "Nolan's child who hides their powers" scenario, or I guess just in general as a viltrumite/alien hybrid or someone who the government was always keeping tabs on for whatever reason, you suddenly develop your powers, but also, something more, and you can suddenly hear the buzzing and electrical hertz of the hidden cameras in your room. Like... what the fuck do you even do in response to that

God... god... remember in Death Note where Light predicted he was being watched by the police so he would do shit like read dirty magazines to maintain his cover of "behaving like a normal young man". Imagine you making the realization that like ... you had a daily or some real specific masturbation habit and you're like "oh fuck, I can't suddenly change what I'm doing or it might tip them off that I know something or make them suspicious"

Reader begrudgingly continuing to jack off like normal and you KNOW people are watching, for survival's sake. Reader having their first real conversation with Cecil as he's touring you through the GDA and you finally go "no bullshit" and hit him with the bluntness question possible, "so are you one of the men who watches the cameras in my bedroom or has it been someone else watching me masturbate" and it actually manages to make him stutter and stumble to answer

Cecil literally ordering everyone else out of the room whenever they're watching the footage and he knows you're about to jerk off, because, he's obsessed enough with you that not only does he see it as "protecting your modesty" but also he literally cannot stand knowing other people are seeing you in such an... intimate and vulnerable state. He's protecting you, obviously :) he's not a pervert, he promises--

Cecil having the utmost pokerface as he watches you pleasure yourself but his cheeks are still-- actually, he's technically covered in a synthetic skin so COULD HE even blush??? We're gonna pretend he does. Cecil trying to be all stonefaced but he can't stop his face from turning red and the way you manage to make him sweat

Ngl... I really like the idea of Reader who, upon unlocking their powers, basically becomes like, you took the fucking pill from Limitless and you become this, super memory unlocked brain capacity genius and you quickly pick up on how Cecil's heart rate increases whenever he talks to you and you compare it to, say, how he treats "equal threats" like Mark and Omniman and you quickly form the hypothesis he's got some weird crush on you. Maybe you test your theory out or try to trip him up by, say, hitting on another member of the Guardians or another superhero. Your superhearing picking up Cecil grinding his teeth from the other side of the room as you make some flirtatious inappropriate comment to a coworker or hero/alien you just met. I'd be out here giggling twirling a piece of hair around a finger, "so, is there a Mrs Battle Beast?" as Cecil then creates some diversion or reason to pull you away. "There's a mudslide in the Philippines and we need you to help the search and rescue efforts" "but you guys never ask me to help with shit like that?" "Just shut up and follow me"

Some... lose-lose scenario where you try to defy Cecil and the GDA and he won't let you and fabricates some justification for locking you away or putting some sort of method of control on or in you. You being completely restrained as Cecil tells you it's for your own good, for the planet's own good, until you "can calm down and see the light" and you can tell he's... suspiciously into it as he sees you completely at his mercy, even reaching out to touch your face, or even... other parts of you.

Donald just out here, "sir I brought you the documents you requested and-- sir do you have an erection watching the new recruit??? Are you peeping on their bedroom again??" "Shut up, Donald. Get your glasses fixed and do your damn job. I'm just watching them fight a giant alien monster"

You can't deny Cecil gets results, so everyone who has suspicions that he's being a lil... freaky... just has to put up with it or convince themselves they're imagining it, but... they're not :)