#i think it's an oversight more than anything

[blooddrinkingbartender]

"Sometimes, if, if it's for, for the better good, then, then sometimes it's, it's okay to break, break a rule," Russell said, "I'm sure you, you can talk about it though, when, when she's a bit, a bit more, a bit more with it again."

Russell was already thinking about what kind of tactics he might need to employ if they ran into Five again (because it was bound to happen.) He might need more than a baseball bat and Travis' muscles. Maybe he could find a way to hire some more people, to even out of the numbers.

Maybe Simon could find out about that too, along with what he was researching already.

"Oh, I was just, just adding the, the help I could," Russell said, before he nodded, "Sure, th-thank you, that, that sounds good. As I, as I said, I can help with that too."

"Would that make you a human buster in that case?" Travis said, still grinning, "I never thought about that idea, the humans being stopped from bothering the ghosts, I suppose if the ghosts aren't doing anything wrong, it makes sense."

"I'm very sure it will be me," Antonio said, "And I think he'll be paying Rook a little extra this month after I'm done. We'll just say it's the asshole tax."

"Thank you, Veronica. As much as I regret to give you more work, especially after you've just managed to return, I know I am not in the best condition to help right now," Leofric agreed, "I fully intend to let him know that I have not forgotten my days as a knight errant when we next meet."

"I'll be with you there," Antonio said, "Sorellina has us behind her all the way. No, if the roles were reversed, Rook, I might have done the same to my own dad. It was in the heat of that moment as well. I'm not blaming you."

He could never. Aside from it being an oversight in the orders he had forced Rick to abide by, Five was the one to blame for pursuing Rook in the first place.

"Oh, we're just having a..." Bill trailed off. He didn't want Rook to feel guilty about what had happened, especially when she had just woken up from all of this, "... little gathering?"

"It's a long story, Rook," Leofric then said, "And you might find it distressing. It's a lot to take in. You might want to wait until you're feeling a little better to hear it."

"It wasn't part of our agreement." Lucien insisted, "I would keep her name in case something exactly like this happened and I would stop her, but I might have overstepped the line."

He was ready to fight Five himself, if necessary. Still, he worried that he had made a mistake that could ruin their friendship. 'Any means necessary ' were very vague terms.

But he supposed he would have to ask Rook, once she was in the condition to have that conversation. Lucien sighed, giving a halfhearted shrug, "You fought valiantly as well. How does soup sound like to you?"

Erica grinned and took her hood off, taking a moment to let her eyes adjust to the light again, "That was my job after I ran from the horde. You know the Ghostbusters? It was something like that. I hunted humans before they could scare the ghosts."

After unloading a major part of her backstory, Erica went back to eating. She briefly looked over at Antonio, deciding he was busy scheming, thus shouldn't be bothered.

"We will see who prevails between the two of you." the ghost lady replied, before nodding at Leofric, "I'll take over for this last stretch so you can rest properly and be back on the field in top shape."

Regardless of what had happened, she felt more at ease knowing Leofric was keeping an eye on Rook when she couldn’t. Veronica nodded at the instructions, fishing out the right bottle, before checking her journal.

Rook rubbed at her eyes, not feeling like doing much more than that at the moment. Her head was pulsating and she felt like she got run over again, except that even her wings were hurting this time.

"I still shouldn’t have left that note. It was a stupid own and now they might use that against us." She squeezed her eyes shut. The light in the room was unbearable. "Why are we here anyway? I was taking a nap. Did I sleepwalk all the way here or something?"

[recurring-polynya]

I think the secret sauce of the Gotei-13--the thing that makes it such a compelling operation to me--is that despite being a magical ghost military, it works exactly like academia.

A bunch of deeply arcane information and skill held by thirteen people who are each responsible for their own succession plans and retention of knowledge

Each of the captains has one hand-picked '''successor''' (post-doc) who does basically all their work for them, gets paid peanuts, and is far more likely to die than ever making captain themself.

There's like two thousand other people wandering around (undergraduates). This is who most people consider "the Gotei", although they contribute basically nothing to the institution

The older the captain, the less likely they are to do any work

Bickering

Incredibly sloppy dating pool

Budget/oversight provided by a bunch of people who are not members of the Gotei and have only the vaguest idea of what it does

The people who manage to succeed are a weird mix of legacy families and highly driven individuals who are determined to come in and make a difference (they will not)

The department head/head captain still has to do regular captaining shit. No one likes listening to him but also they do out of fear that if he dies or quits they might be promoted to his job

Too much paperwork to ever actually get anything done

Nice library

[nothorses]

I understand that there is absolutely a reason for folks to argue that there are no "good enough" conditions under which religion just disappears, and I agree that it's an incredibly hateful and harmful position to hold in the first place. along with being, y'know, completely fucking nonsensical.

however

if your argument to this is "the thing that makes humans human is religion" respectfully I need you to re-evaluate with people who are not religious in mind & consider what kind of impact that has on a group that is already dehumanized. for not being religious.

[stinkrascal]

also this is spoilers but i saw this on reddit and now i must scream about it sooooo spoilers for the end of wyll's romance maybe idk

okay tbh i cant confirm if this is true cuz i havent even beaten the game yet HA but people wouldnt lie on the internet right.... but anyways i saw that someone said one of wyll's romance endings is that he becomes a duke and you guys get MARRIED omg... and it has been on my mind all day and now im having very intense aza/wyll thoughts but mostly aza though aha

listen. just. just listen. okay. picturing aza going from a painfully awkward and socially inept crypt keeper living underground among the dwarves and the deceased, to the wife of the charismatic, renowned grand duke of baldur's gate, UGH. learning to socialize properly with nobility, learning how to maintain small talk, adjusting to the sheer size of their estate, free of cold drafts and water leaks. and the SUNLIGHT? the way it shines through the windows every morning, to remind her another day has come? and how much more comfortable the beds are when they're made of fur and feathers, not stone. and the way she's obviously very out of place, especially as a tiefling living among the upper echelon of baldur's gate, i'm sure she sticks out like a sore thumb. i'm sure she's turned lots of heads while incessantly infodumping about the best way to preserve a dead body, not yet understanding that nobility often aren't fixated on such things the same way she is lol. she's still a little weird and unsettling and unsure of how to handle herself in such a new environment, but hey... it's a lot more fun learning the nuance of courtly dance than it is trying to get a wriggly tadpole out of your head! she'll take the fright of social anxiety over that any day.

anyways. dies

[eriexplosion]

If they wanted us to accept Tech's death all they had to do was actually kill him! Since he has instead fallen into the clouds and 90% of the time the only thing that ever gets referred to is his "sacrifice" and his "loss" while every other dead character just gets called dead, I will simply think he's likely to come back in whatever comes next. We have a lot to do in this era, why can't he come back? Nothing is keeping him dead.

One of my friends (who loves Bad Batch but isn't quite as obsessed as I am 😂) just asked me why I'm so dead set on believing Tech is alive, especially since I've never had an issue before in accepting character deaths.

My response: If the show's creators truly always intended for Tech to be dead and season 3 was seriously the best they could do to honor Tech's sacrifice under those circumstances, I would have a very hard time forgiving that; so, in order to keep crediting the show for its brilliance and enjoying season 3 at all, I have to believe he's meant to be alive.

If season 3 had properly acknowledged and honored Tech's sacrifice, I would have accepted him as being dead. Since the season instead seemingly went out of its way to ignore every opportunity they had to address it in a satisfying way, I just can't accept his death as being anything other than "presumed."

Besides, I'm happier when I believe Tech survived, so here we are 😅

[hyperlexichypatia]

This is a semi spinoff of this post, but really its own thought.

When a job pays less than a living wage, it generally attracts one of two types of employees:

Desperate people (usually poor and/or otherwise marginalized or with barriers to employment), who will take any job, no matter how bad, because they need the money, or

Independently wealthy people (usually well-off retirees, students being supported by their families, or women with well-off husbands*), who don't care about the pay scale because they don't need the money anyway.**

And sometimes, organizations will intentionally keep a job low-paying or non-paying with the deliberate intent of narrowing their pool to that second category.

People sometimes bring this up when discussing the salaries of elected officials -- yes, most politicians are paid more than most "regular people," but they're not paid enough to sustain the expensive lifestyle politicians have to maintain, and that's on purpose. It's not an oversight, and it's not primarily about cost-cutting. It's a deliberate barrier to ensure that only rich people can run for office.

The same is true, albeit to less severe effect, of unpaid internships -- the benefit of "hiring" an unpaid intern isn't (just) that you don't have to pay them; it's also that you can ensure that all your workers are rich, or at least middle-class.

When nonprofits brag about how little of their budget goes to "overhead" and "salaries", as if those terms were synonymous with "waste," what they're really saying is "All our employees are financially comfortable enough that they don't worry about being underpaid. Our staff has no socioeconomic diversity, and probably very little ethnic or cultural diversity." ***

This isn't a secret. I'm not blowing anything wide open here. People very openly admit that they think underpaid workers are better, because they're "not in it for the money." This is frequently cited as a reason, for example, that private school teachers are "better" than public school teachers -- they're paid less, so they're not "in it for the money," so they must be working out of the goodness of their hearts. I keep seeing these cursed ads for a pet-sitting service where the petsitters aren't paid, which is a selling point, because they're "not in it for the money."

"In it for the money" is the worst thing a worker could be, of course. Heaven forbid they be so greedy and entitled and selfish as to expect their full-time labor to enable them to pay for basic living expenses. I get this all the time as a public library worker, when I point out how underfunded and underpaid we are. "But... you're not doing it for the money, right?" And I'm supposed to laugh and say "No, no, I'd do it for free, of course!"

Except, see, I have these pesky little human needs, like food. And I can't get a cart full of groceries and explain to the cashier that I don't have any money, but I have just so much job satisfaction!

And it's gendered, of course it's gendered. The subtext of "But you're not doing it for the money, of course" is "But how much pin money do you really need, little lady? Doesn't your husband give you a proper allowance?"

Conceptually, it's just an extension of the upper-class cultural norm that "polite" (rich) people "don't talk about money" (because if you have to think about how much money you have or how much you need, you're insufficiently rich).

*Gendered language very much intentional.

**Disabled people are more likely to be in the first category (most disabled people are poor, and being disabled is expensive), but are usually talked about as if they're in the second category. We're told that disabled people sorting clothing for $1.03 an hour are "So happy to be here" and "Just want to be included," and it's not like they need the money, since, as we all know, disability benefits are ample and generous [heavy sarcasm].

***Unless, of course, they're a nonprofit whose "mission" involves "job placement," in which case what they're saying is "We exploit the poor and desperate people we're purporting to help." Either way, "We pay our employees like crap" is nothing to brag about.

[ifnotlovepersevering]

Trapped (Agatha Harkness x Reader)

Summary: in an attempt to get revenge on Agatha, you end up walking right into her trap

Warnings: NSFW, blurry consent, magic play, pet names, light d/s dynamics, oral sex (both receiving), fingering (R receiving), mentions of spit play, face-sitting (A receiving), overstimulation, mentions of violence, lovers to enemies to lovers again?!, minors DNI

A/N: breaking my hiatus by pulling together this horny filth from god knows what part of my brain 🖤 enjoy!

NSFW Tag List: @academiagaymess @musicalmemesandstuff @shinkomiii @vintagegoddess12 @agnessharknes @jesterofrohan @agathaharknessslut @nickalpatel @junaika21

As soon as you’d caught wind that the great Agatha Harkness had lost her powers, you were planning your route to Westview.

You’d been waiting ages for this opportunity - revenge for her betrayal. Agatha had drawn you in close before draining nearly every last bit of power from you, thankfully leaving just enough for you to survive. Though, that was likely an oversight rather than a show of mercy.

But you’d never forgotten. Over the years you slowly, painstakingly, built your powers back up to what they had been, and then even more. You were stewing, waiting for the chance to get the witch back for what she’d done.

Now you stood in her basement at the home she occupied in Westview, after transporting yourself inside. You crept up the stairs, staying as silent as possible. The dagger in your hand glistened as you eased through the door to the main floor.

You quietly stalked your way over to what seemed to be her office. But before you could step inside, Agatha’s voice rang out from behind you. “I was wondering when you’d get here.”

You spun around, seeing her standing in the living area. “Agatha,” you grinned.

The older witch eyed the dagger you clutched in your palm. “Hey doll,” she said nervously. “Whatcha got there?”

You began walking towards her as she stepped backwards. “Oh Aggs,” you smirked, using your old nickname for her. “Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for this?”

“Let me guess,” she let out a shaky laugh. “Since I juiced you?”

You clenched your jaw. “You bitch. I trusted you. It took me ages to grow my power back to what it was.”

Agatha scoffed. “Oh please. You were pathetic. A baby. You hardly knew how to handle all of that, I did you a favour.”

That’s it. You lunged forward, tackling the other witch to the ground. You straddled her abdomen, her arms by her side, keeping her pinned down. Digging your elbow into her chest, you brought the dagger to her neck. “Last words?” You smirked.

“I missed this view.” Agatha’s blue eyes bore into yours as her expression morphed from fear into a smile.

Her smugness was grating, and you pushed the dagger into her skin to silence her. But it wasn’t working. The flesh that should’ve been tearing under the blade remained smooth and undisturbed, no crimson emerging.

What?

“Oh Y/N,” she grinned at you, not at all worried about the dagger pressed up against her throat. “You’re almost as naive as the day I met you.”

You felt your body suddenly freeze up. “What the hell?” You exclaimed, trying to move your limbs. Agatha began laughing as the distance between the two of you increased. You were floating now, immobilized, and she was standing up in front of you grinning.

“You’re kidding me.” You groaned. You couldn’t move anything below your neck, let alone try and get your magic flowing. Fuck.

“No, no I’m not.” Agatha circled you, unashamedly basking in the glee of having you trapped like this.

You closed your eyes, thinking of what idiotic decisions led you here. “You were supposed to be…”

“Powerless?” Agatha smirked, standing in front of you now. “Come on, Y/N. Are you hearing yourself? Agatha Harkness, powerless?”

You cursed yourself internally. This was stupid. You’d been stupid, and cocky, coming here with no preparation but a stupid dagger and your stupid vendetta.

“Aww,” Agatha pouted at your expression, taking your chin into her hand, forcing you to look her in the eye. “Don’t make that face, bunny.”

You felt a small spark inside of you at her using her favourite pet name. Agatha was leaning in close now, and heat rushed to your cheeks under her intense gaze and the proximity. Yes, you hated her for what she did. But she also knew exactly how to push your buttons. The older witch made you feel things beyond just hatred and try as you might, that was something you couldn’t ignore.

“You know how witches are,” Agatha spoke softly, her eyes drifting from your eyes to your mouth. “Start a rumour, it spreads. And somehow I knew that little Y/N would come running once she heard the news.”

Her arrogance irked you. “I’m not the same person you used to know.” You spat.

“Oh?” Agatha arched a brow, a wicked smile on her face. “I beg to differ.”

She stepped back and began circling you again. The familiar hum of her magic suddenly began caressing you again. You looked down at your hovering form and now saw purple swirls of her magic climbing up your legs.

“The Y/N I used to know,” Agatha was behind you now, her mouth by your ear sending shivers down your spine. “Would make the prettiest sounds for me.”

The end of her sentence was punctuated by a purple tendril slipping under your top and caressing your nipple. Another joined right after, on your other breast, pulses of magic squeezing both your nipples perfectly.

You couldn’t even try and stop the moan that escaped you.

“Just like that.” You could tell Agatha was smiling even though she was behind you, her voice clearly conveying her excitement.

You felt another rope of magic snake its way up your thigh and into the waistband of your pants. You cried out as it surround your clit and begin pulsing teasingly. You squirmed, the sensation sending tingles of pleasure through you.

Agatha settled herself into the armchair across from you and waved her hand in a quick motion. You gasped at the feeling of cold air on your now-bare skin. “Mm,” her voice was low, her eyes raking over your exposed form. “That’s better.”

You could feel how wet you were getting between your legs, her purple magic still pleasuring you. “You know,” you started, getting breathless now. “That I came here to kil- ah!”

Your sentence was interrupted by what you could only assume was another extension of her magic teasing your wet entrance before pushing in. Heat rushed through you as your walls stretched and adjusted to the feeling.

“Oh I know hon,” Agatha smirked from her chair, watching you turn into a mess before her. Her blue eyes were tracing your form and you could see that her cheeks were flushed. “But keeping you to play with again is a much better option.”

The tendril of magic inside you began pumping in and out, pulsing gently against your walls. “Fuck,” you groaned, the pleasure in you building at a rapid pace now. Your eyes were half-closed, jaw slack, as Agatha fucked you with her magic.

“Though if you’d like me to stop,” Agatha’s voice made you open your eyes. “I can do that too.”

Another flick of her hand and all the magic pulsing in and around you stopped, causing the pleasure building in you to fizzle. “No!” You whined. “Please, fuck, please, Aggs.”

It was humiliating. You had come here to kill her, and instead you were naked and at her mercy, begging for her to keep fucking you.

Agatha seemed thrilled to see your resolve break. “There she is,” she chuckled darkly. “My sweet bunny.”

You moaned, a mixture of relief and pleasure, when her magic began again. You were approaching your orgasm quickly, filthy moans and profanities spilling from your lips as you reached the edge. But before the waves of pleasure you were aching so badly for could crash over you, the magic stopped again.

You whined in protest, at the brink of tears, as Agatha stood up and came over to you. “Oh I know, baby.” She pouted.

To your surprise, Agatha lowered you down so that you were standing in front of her now. Your legs were unsteady and she gripped your hip, pressing you close to her. “I just couldn’t let you come without tasting you first.”

Any thoughts about what you’d originally came here for were far gone, and you hungrily brought your mouth to hers. Your hands now free, it was your turn to magic Agatha’s clothes off, making her gasp against your lips in surprise. You traced your hands up her figure and began pinching and teasing her nipples. Both of you moaned as your tongues explored each other’s mouths. You nipped at her lower lip, sucking it into your mouth, making her groan approvingly.

Agatha’s fingers buried themselves in your hair and she pulled, drawing your head back so she could move her mouth to your neck. Her fingers teased your nipples as you felt her teeth bite down, gently, but hard enough that you were sure she was leaving a trail of marks on your skin.

“Lie down,” she breathed against your skin. You complied, settling on the carpet as she made the fireplace roar to life.

Agatha wasted no time lowering herself between your legs. She held your gaze as she spread your folds with her fingers before bringing her mouth to your center. Despite the time apart, Agatha clearly remembered how to turn you into a shaking mess. She picked up a pattern of circling and flicking your clit with her tongue, and she quickly had you writhing on the floor. “Agatha,” you groaned.

She switched to sucking on your clit as she slipped a finger, then another into you. The lewd sounds of your wetness filled the room as Agatha pumped her fingers into you, curling them up inside before drawing them out. “Fuck, fuck!” You cried out, spurring her on. Agatha moaned as she sucked your clit into her mouth, hard, making you arch your back off the floor as you came.

She didn’t stop there. She withdrew her fingers but her tongue continued its ministrations on your overstimulated clit despite your squirming. Agatha kept her eyes on you as she doubled down on her pace, her arms wrapping around your thighs to stop you from squeezing them together.

Her efforts brought you to the edge again, your body shaking with the waves of pleasure coursing through you. Finally, Agatha came up from between your legs, her grinning mouth smeared with your juices. You revelled in the feeling of her bare skin against yours as she slid back up to you.

“I’d almost forgotten how good you taste.” She said, before bringing her mouth down to yours. You moaned at the taste, her lips moving against yours sloppily. Agatha pulled back slightly to let a trail of saliva fall onto your tongue before wrapping her lips around it and sucking, moaning as she did. Fuck.

You could already feel yourself aching for more but you needed to taste her first. “Sit on my face.” You breathed in between kisses to Agatha, who was more than happy to comply,

She giggled as you helped her maneuver herself over your face. Lowering herself onto you, both of you groaned as your tongue made contact with her folds. Her taste was intoxicating, and you began lapping up her juices before flicking her clit repeatedly with your tongue.

You watched Agatha as she moaned from above you. “That’s it baby.”

You continued with your ministrations, splitting your attention between her clit and her opening which continued leaking her juices into your mouth. Wanting to taste more, you plunged your tongue into her hole, swirling before withdrawing, then entering again.

“Yes,” she groaned, throwing her head back. “Fuck me with your tongue bunny, come on.”

You could feel her getting closer, her hips were beginning to buck more wildly. Stealing a page from her book, you used your magic to send vibrations to her nipples while you moved your tongue back to her clit.

“Oh fuck,” Agatha grunted, her legs clamping around your head nearly suffocating you as she gripped the armchair near her for support. “Don’t you dare fucking stop, Y/N.” Rocking her hips against you, she cried out as first one, then another wave of pleasure tore through her.

Agatha dismounted, thighs trembling, before laying down next to you. You smiled at the older witch, panting with her eyes closed and forehead damp with sweat. Her mouth formed a lazy grin, “That was-”

Before she could finish her sentence, a loud bang could be heard from the basement, making both of you jump. You could hear clattering, as if something was fumbling around down there in the darkness.

Agatha laughed at the confused look on your face. “What, did you think you were the only one waiting to get revenge?”

You rolled your eyes, of course, as Agatha leaned in and pressed a kiss to your forehead. “None of them are you though, bunny.” She stood up quickly and waved her clothes back on.

“You’re not seriously going to-”

“I’ll just be a minute, doll.” Agatha smiled down at you. Her lips were swollen and her hair messy, but with her hands glowing purple, she looked every bit the formidable witch everyone knew her to be.

“Sit pretty,” she called over her shoulder as she made her way to the basement door. “We’re not done yet.”

You couldn’t help but laugh when you heard Agatha blast whatever poor creature had made its way into her basement.

[yuridovewing]

i understand that this fandom has a really bad problem with just taking everything moonkitti says as fact without forming their own opinions, but was i seriously the only one who watched her spottedleaf video and went “she’s reaching an awful lot right now”

if spottedleaf’s love for firestar was intended as a “retcon” and firestar’s crush was meant to be a one sided unserious thing that the fandom read too much into, then why was it a) not treated like that whatsoever in tpb (fireheart is consistently portrayed as a mourning lover and he never reconciles with that) and b) why didnt the narrative make it explicitly clear that spottedleaf didnt love him back? these books are for 13 year olds, they dont really have “lol subtle storytelling!” as an excuse for something as serious as this, especially when warriors is notoriously unsubtle about its themes and its characters. especially when tpb also has examples of uncomfortable age gaps that ARE glorified and accepted as normal. also why would the crush being a retcon in the first place mean that fans are being unreasonable when theyre uncomfortable?

at the very least, even if the “retcon” argument is true, the whole plotline is an extremely irresponsible thing to put in a childrens book completely unchallenged and i dont think the fans are being unreasonable when theyre criticizing that

[thedensworld]

My Woman | K.Mg

Pairing: Ceo!Mingyu x Directors!Reader

Genre: fluff, established relationship

Summary: Everyone in the building hate your leadership and start to think that you were only able to secure the position because of your husband, the CEO.

Been letting this one sitting in my folder for 6 months??? Anyway, enjoy!🧚‍♀️

Since you were appointed as the new director of Tasty Kim, a food label under Kim Group, the atmosphere in the company has been anything but welcoming. The former director, despite being demoted for money laundering from company production costs, was beloved for his friendly and tolerant nature. The staff had grown accustomed to his easy-going management style.

In contrast, you introduced a series of new regulations focused on discipline and time management. Your strict approach to auditing has caused considerable stress among the staff, who are struggling to keep up with your demands.

"I want the file on my desk tomorrow at 10," you demanded, your voice leaving no room for negotiation.

When it wasn't there, your frustration was palpable. "Why isn't it on my desk?" you asked sharply.

"You had 8 hours of work yesterday; what were you doing?" Your tone conveyed the gravity of their oversight.

"This isn't the first time, and I won't tolerate this kind of negligence. I'll be reporting you to the HR team. You can explain yourself to them."

The tension in the office is undeniable, and it's clear that your expectations are clashing with the staff's previous work culture. But to transform Tasty Kim into a more efficient and successful entity, you believe these changes are necessary, even if they are met with resistance initially.

And that's how people started to think you were only able to manage the position because of your husband, Kim Mingyu, the current CEO of Kim Group. Rumors began to circulate, whispering that your authority stemmed more from nepotism than merit. The staff's skepticism grew, casting a shadow over every decision you made. Yet, you remained resolute, determined to prove that your leadership was defined by your capabilities, not your connections.

Your professionalism was proven when you delivered your protest to none other than your own husband, Kim Mingyu, the current CEO of Kim Group. He had ordered every label under Kim Group to push revenue expectations while cutting costs. A heated debate ensued shortly thereafter. You explained to the board that cutting costs for Tasty Kim would only result in a decrease in quality.

No one knew how hard you worked for the company. Everyone just thought you were the queen of the Kim Group, a mere decoration to fill the space, a director without any competence to lead the company.

One day, you opened your email to find hundreds of hate messages, likely sent by disgruntled workers. Sometimes, packages would be delivered to you, containing nasty items that you knew were from your employees. Did you report this to HR? No, you chose to ignore everything, focusing solely on the company's needs.

But there was one person who always treated you like a human in this company. Mr. Song, the security guard, always greeted you with a warm smile, just as he had done for the past 15 years, when you still worked for Mingyu's father as his secretary till now. He might be the only person who truly knew who you were and how hard you worked for this company. Other workers had zero idea that you had been with the company since your twenties.

Mr. Song's small acts of kindness were a beacon of hope in an otherwise hostile environment. His understanding and quiet support reminded you that someone appreciated your dedication. Despite the loneliness and the endless challenges, those brief moments with Mr. Song gave you the strength to persevere.

You're not just Kim Mingyu's wife.

"You're not sleeping?" Mingyu asked, his voice soft as he entered your home office.

You turned your head to him, closing the file on your desk as you watched him approach. "Are they sleeping?" you asked, referring to your 5-year-old twin sons. He nodded.

"Still have work to do? Need help?" Mingyu offered, and you shook your head.

"I'm done. Just checking a few things," you said with a tired smile.

Mingyu sat on the couch near your desk. "Seungcheol hyung said he was visiting," he told you, and you hummed in acknowledgment.

"No, I actually called him to come," you informed him, and Mingyu chuckled.

"Just like I guessed. Is something wrong with the company? The last time I checked, Tasty Kim has been the most stable since you took over."

You rubbed your face, a gesture that concerned Mingyu. "I just need a few pieces of advice. I think I'm a cold woman."

Mingyu didn't deny it outright. "You are," he said carefully.

Your brow raised in surprise. "Really?" A pang of disappointment colored your face, and Mingyu immediately shook his head.

"No, I mean, sometimes you are. But you're a warm lover and mother."

Lover and mother. Those words echoed in your mind.

"Maybe it's been too long since I focused so intensely on the company," you murmured, a hint of doubt creeping into your voice.

"Why?" Mingyu asked, curiosity in his eyes, not fully understanding what you were referring to.

"Let's go to sleep," you told him, standing from your seat and reaching for his hand.

He took it, squeezing gently. "Alright, let's get some rest. We'll figure everything out together."

As you walked out of your home office, you felt a small measure of comfort in his words. Even amid the challenges and doubts, you knew you weren't alone.

*

Mingyu's disbelief turned to anger as he examined the photos of the gruesome package and the disturbing emails that Chan, your secretary, had detailed. His jaw tightened with fury as he realized the extent of the harassment you had endured since taking on the role at Tasty Kim.

"What is this?" Mingyu demanded, his voice laced with frustration as he glanced at Hansol for confirmation.

Hansol nodded grimly, showing him the evidence again. "These were sent to her office. It's been ongoing for months," he explained, his own expression reflecting the seriousness of the situation.

Mingyu's mind raced as he tried to piece together the implications. "Is this related to what you discussed with Seungcheol?" he wondered, his concern for your safety evident in his widened eyes.

He wasted no time in contacting Seungcheol, demanding an explanation. Seungcheol sighed heavily as he recounted the events that had unfolded over the past months.

"It's clear this is coming from Mr. Park's circle," Seungcheol explained wearily. "They've been spreading malicious rumors about her and now escalating to these actions. I've urged her to take action to track them down before it escalates further."

Mingyu's anger simmered as he absorbed the gravity of the situation. "We need to act swiftly," he declared, his voice firm and determined. "I want those responsible identified and dealt with immediately. This ends now."

Mingyu's mind raced back to the day he had to make the tough decision to fire Mr. Park. His audit team had uncovered illegal activities involving company funds, actions that nearly drove the label to bankruptcy. If not for your diligent efforts in handling the crisis at Tasty Kim—your first company role ever—Mingyu knew the outcome could have been devastating.

It had been six challenging months since you formally took the helm, but the results were undeniable. Under your leadership, Tasty Kim's performance had significantly improved. Your dedication and strategic decisions had turned the tide, restoring stability and fostering growth within the company.

As Mingyu reflected on the recent incidents targeting you, his resolve strengthened. He couldn't allow the malicious actions of Mr. Park's associates to undermine all the progress you had achieved.

Mingyu instructed Hansol to work closely with Chan to expedite the search for the culprits behind the malicious acts. His tone was resolute as he outlined the urgency of identifying and addressing the threats targeting you and Tasty Kim.

"We need to move swiftly on this. I want regular updates on the progress."

Hansol nodded in understanding, his expression mirroring Mingyu's seriousness. "Understood, sir. We'll start immediately," he assured, turning to leave the office with purpose.

Mingyu tucked the twins into bed as he always did, Han mentioned something unexpected. "Mom was crying, I saw her crying in her office," Han whispered softly, his eyes wide with concern.

Hoon quickly covered Han's mouth and leaned in close. "Mom said not to tell Dad," he whispered urgently.

Mingyu's heart clenched at the revelation. He hadn't expected to hear this, and the thought of you in tears weighed heavily on his mind. He finished tucking the boys in, trying to keep his expression calm despite the turmoil inside.

After tucking the twins in and assuring them everything was alright, Mingyu quietly made his way. As he entered your room, he found you slumped over your desk, fast asleep amidst scattered reports and documents. Mingyu's heart sank at the sight of your exhaustion, etched deeply in the lines of your face. Gently, he gathered the papers into a neat pile and carefully lifted you into his arms.

You stirred slightly as he carried you to the bedroom, your head resting against his shoulder. Mingyu laid you down on the bed, pulling the blankets over you with tender care. He brushed a strand of hair from your face, his heart aching with the desire to protect you from any further distress.

The next morning, Hansol hurriedly informed Mingyu that Chan had located the culprits and had them gathered in the conference room. Mingyu's expression hardened with determination upon hearing the news.

"Keep them there. I'm on my way," Mingyu replied briskly, his voice tinged with controlled anger.

He swiftly made his way to your company, each step echoing his urgency to address the situation. Mingyu entered the conference room where Hansol and Chan stood solemnly by the door, waiting for his arrival. Inside, the culprits sat uncomfortably, their uneasy glances exchanging silent admissions of guilt.

Mingyu entered with a commanding presence, his gaze sweeping over the group with intensity. His jaw was set, a silent testament to his resolve to confront those responsible for causing distress to you and disrupting the company's harmony.

"You've caused significant harm to this company," Mingyu began, his voice steady but stern. "Your actions have not only targeted my wife unfairly but have also undermined the trust and morale of our team at Tasty Kim."

He paused, allowing the weight of his words to settle in the room. The culprits shifted uncomfortably under Mingyu's piercing gaze, realizing the gravity of their actions and the consequences they now faced.

"I want each of you to explain yourselves," Mingyu continued, his tone unwavering. "Justify why you thought it acceptable to engage in such disgraceful behavior."

One by one, they offered fragmented explanations, some stumbling over their words while others struggled to meet Mingyu's unwavering gaze. He listened intently, his disappointment palpable as their excuses fell short of justification.

"This ends now," Mingyu declared firmly, his voice cutting through the tension in the room. "Effective immediately, you are terminated from Tasty Kim."

The culprits exchanged nervous glances, realizing the severity of their fate. Mingyu turned to Hansol and Chan with a nod, silently instructing them to escort the individuals out of the room and off the premises.

Mingyu turned as he heard the distinctive click of your heels approaching. He straightened, a mixture of surprise and admiration crossing his features as you walked toward him with purpose. You bowed politely, a gesture of respect that momentarily caught him off guard.

"What brings you to this company without notice?" you asked, your tone calm yet curious, as you stood before him with unwavering composure.

Mingyu's gaze softened as he looked at you, struck by your strength and determination even in the face of recent challenges. "I needed to ensure everything was handled," he replied, his voice filled with a mix of concern and gratitude. "And to support you."

You stood before Mingyu, your expression serious yet composed. The click of your heels echoed faintly in the hallway as you spoke, addressing him directly but respectfully.

"I appreciate your swift action in handling the situation," you began, your voice steady. "However, these individuals are my team members. I understand the severity of their actions, but I believe termination may not be the only solution."

Mingyu regarded you thoughtfully, sensing the underlying tension in your words. "They have caused significant harm," he replied, his tone firm yet open to discussion. "Their actions were detrimental to both you and the company."

You nodded, acknowledging the seriousness of the situation. "I agree that their behavior cannot be condoned," you continued, choosing your words carefully. "But I believe there may be alternative measures we can consider—perhaps disciplinary actions or retraining."

Mingyu's frustration was palpable as he listened to your response. He had expected solidarity in his decision, given the severity of the situation. Yet, your stance on considering alternatives to termination seemed to undermine the gravity of the offenses committed against you and the company.

"Your compassion is commendable, but these actions cannot go unpunished," Mingyu stated firmly, his voice tinged with disappointment. "They crossed a line that jeopardized everything we've worked for."

You met his gaze evenly, understanding the weight of his words but steadfast in your belief. "I agree that consequences are necessary," you countered, your tone measured. "But I believe in second chances and rehabilitation, especially when it comes to our team members."

Mingyu sighed, running a hand through his hair in frustration. "This isn't just about rehabilitation," he argued, his voice slightly raised with emotion. "It's about setting a precedent. We cannot allow such behavior to repeat itself."

You maintained your composure, sensing his frustration but staying firm in your conviction. "I understand your concerns," you replied calmly. "But I believe we can address this while still upholding our values of fairness and redemption."

Silence hung in the air for a moment as Mingyu processed your words. Finally, he nodded reluctantly. "Fine," he conceded, though his expression remained stern. "But I expect strict monitoring and zero tolerance moving forward."

You nodded in agreement, relieved that he had accepted your approach, albeit reluctantly.

After the tense discussion in the hallway, Mingyu expressed his desire to speak with you privately. Without hesitation, you nodded and gestured for him to follow you to your office. The click of your heels echoed softly in the corridor as you led him through the bustling office environment.

Once inside your office, you closed the door behind you, creating a brief moment of privacy amidst the hectic day. Mingyu stood near the window, his hands clasped behind his back, his expression a mix of frustration and concern.

Mingyu's demeanor softened when he stare at your eyes. His shoulders relaxed, and a flicker of relief crossed his face as he turned towards you. Without a word, he closed the distance between you, his arms enveloping you in a comforting embrace.

Surprised but touched by his gesture, you leaned into his embrace, feeling the warmth of his presence and the reassurance it brought. Mingyu held you close, his touch conveying both support and gratitude for your partnership in navigating the challenges they faced together.

In that moment of shared understanding and solidarity, the tension that had lingered between you dissolved. Mingyu's embrace was a silent affirmation of trust and unity, a reminder that despite any disagreements, you were a team united in purpose.

Mingyu's concern was evident in his expression as he spoke softly, his voice tinged with a hint of vulnerability. "Why didn't you tell me about what was happening?" he asked gently, his eyes searching yours for an explanation.

You met his gaze evenly, appreciating his genuine concern. "I wanted to handle it," you replied honestly, your voice steady. "I didn't want to burden you with the details, especially when you have so much on your plate already."

Mingyu nodded slowly, understanding your perspective but still feeling a pang of regret. "You're not a burden," he assured you earnestly. "We're partners, and I want to support you through everything."

You sighed softly, feeling the weight of his words and the comfort they offered. "I know," you replied sincerely. "But I thought I could handle it on my own."

Mingyu gently touched your arm, his touch reassuring. "We're stronger together," he reminded you gently. "Next time, please don't hesitate to share."

You nodded, grateful for his understanding and support. "I promise," you replied, a small smile touching your lips. "I won't keep things from you again."

With Mingyu's hand still on your arm, you both shared a moment of quiet understanding and solidarity.

*

A year later, Tasty Kim celebrated its 35th anniversary with grandeur and nostalgia. Mingyu stood proudly on stage, addressing the gathered crowd with a mix of reverence and pride. Behind him hung a large portrait of his late father, the founder of Tasty Kim, symbolizing the legacy that had brought them to this milestone.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Mingyu began, his voice carrying a tone of deep respect. "Today marks a significant milestone for Tasty Kim. Thirty-five years ago, my father founded this company with a vision of excellence and innovation in the culinary world."

He paused briefly, his gaze sweeping over the audience before settling on you, seated among the distinguished guests. A warm smile graced his lips as he continued, "I stand here today not only as the CEO of Kim Group but also as a son honoring his father's legacy."

Mingyu's voice filled with emotion as he acknowledged your pivotal role in their journey. "I would be remiss not to mention the woman who has been my colleague, my business partner, and the mother of my children," he said, his words carrying a depth of gratitude and admiration. "She has been my rock, guiding Tasty Kim with wisdom and grace."

The audience applauded warmly, recognizing your significant contribution to the company's success. Mingyu continued, his voice unwavering with pride, "Together, we have faced challenges and celebrated triumphs. Today, we honor not just the past but also the future we continue to build together."

As Mingyu concluded his speech, he stepped down from the podium and walked over to where you were seated. With a gentle smile, he took your hand in his, a silent gesture of appreciation and unity that spoke volumes about the partnership and love that had shaped their journey at Tasty Kim.

*

"Mr. Kim, we need to report this to the HR team," you insisted firmly.

Mr. Kim raised his hand to stop you. "No, Ms. Ji," he said calmly. "It's alright."

"I took this as feedback from my workers," he continued, his tone resolute.

Confusion etched on your face, you met his gaze. "What? This is crossing the line, Mr. Kim," you countered.

He shook his head, his expression serious. "They must have had a reason to do this. I'm glad that the people I work with didn't stay silent when something went wrong."

"Find them for me," Mr. Kim instructed firmly, his voice carrying a blend of authority and understanding. "Let me have a talk with whoever did this."

Later, you discovered it was a new security member who had incidentally seen his payments reduced due to new regulations on security members whenever items went missing from their secured areas.

"His name is Mr. Song. He has been here for five months,"

[prone-to-fleeting-obsessions]

I could see Sunday being such a hypocrite when it comes to you

He's been trained to see everything, to catch every little flaw in his own appearance in order to appear calm, collected, and perfect, so it's obviously he sees those flaws in others, too

Poor posture, wrinkled clothing, fidgeting or avoiding eye contact, any form of non-eloquent speach... It eats at him, distracts from everything else

He picks up on everything in order to better read the people he's negotiating with, and behind that pleasant expression, there's sharp piercing judgment, indiscriminately sinking its claws into everybody he looks at, with one exception

You, his darling, can do no wrong

Any small oversights he'll just smile happily and fix himself, meticulously combing through your hair with gentle fingers while praising how pretty and soft it is, cupping your face to analyze those pretty eyes when you look nervous with nothing but his own loving worry reflected back, and your amusing little turns of phrase only make you more endearing, he's just so hopelessly smitten

We've seen how he's no stranger to sticking with a belief, even when heavily refuted against, even if it actively goes against his other morals, and you're no different, he'll happily warp his thinking for you

It would simply be impossible for him to see you as anything less than his perfect darling who he adores so thoroughly

[castellankurze]

Here's the thing that interests me about the dueling scene in Gideon the Ninth. Yeah, the narrative phrasing Harrowhark rose to the occasion like an evening star is peak and the line "Death first to the vultures and scavengers" is pure fire but why is she in that position to begin with?

The situation is thus: Camilla Hect has just won a duel against Marta Dyas attempting to claim the Sixth House's necromancy challenge keys, but she was wounded in so doing. Naberius Tern, backed by Ianthe Tridentarius, is pressing a dueling challenge against the injured Camilla in a flagrant bid to beat Camilla down and take the keys for the Third House while she's already recovering from one match. Gideon is standing by watching things unfold and, to her relief, Harrowhark steps up to put Gideon in the ring as a substitute for the injured Camilla and thus shut down Naberius' vulturing.

Except...why? You'd think that in anything like a polite societal dueling code (I know, I know, but go with it-) Camilla and Palamedes would have the option to demure, saying something like "the Sixth House cavalier just fought a duel and is wounded to boot, piss off for a day and we'll see then." But that's not even floated as an option. Palamedes isn't a dumb guy - far from it - and even if he were out of his element, you'd think someone else could just lean in and say 'dude tell them to shove it.' Judith Deuteros objects by saying "There are rules" and Ianthe shuts that down by pointing out she pressed Marta's duel on incredibly flimsy pretext, so that seems to be an objection on the grounds for presenting the challenge, rather than probing for an option to refuse. If Harrow and Gideon (or Jeannemary, jumping on the bandwagon) hadn't interceded, Camilla was about to fight her second duel back to back.

(Even in the first dueling challenge, the tone of onlookers seems to be that people want Palamedes to default and hand over his key to the Second House to spare Camilla the fight, because they assume the Sixth House is weak and don't know how good Camilla is.)

To sum up: the Sixth House seems to have no recourse but to either accept the repeated dueling challenges or default; with no way to decline except to give the Third House something they want (in this case, a Canaan House key).

That's insane.

And if that's deliberate, rather than an oversight on Tamsyn Muir's part, that suggests so much about the Nine Houses' dueling culture. It suggests that a challenge from a cavalier primary can't be refused; you have to either throw down or roll over as if they won. It speaks to a distinct lack of value placed on human lives, that the cavaliers are forced to accept a challenge on pain of their house losing face at best, something material at worst. The defending house can only negotiate to a degree that the attacking house is willing to let them. This is, depressingly, fully in keeping with the series' characters' treatment of the cavaliers. The subsequent books and short stories (especially The Unwanted Guest) really hammer this idea in, that the cavaliers are nominally viewed as a source of blades and shields in the hands of the necromancers, even if the laypeople of the setting don't know all the reasons behind the traditions.

In real life, formal dueling typically had customs and rules for negotiation and ceremony, with multiple exit points for parties to back out of a potential threat to life without losing face. Only truly aggrieved parties would press a suit to the point of confrontation. The Nine Houses say screw that, put up or shut up. They've more or less raised up the informal tradition of 'swords now motherfucker.'

To steal a phrase from another tumblrite, 'congrats god that's the worst anyone's ever done it.'

[umemiyan]

𝙋𝙊𝙎𝙏𝙈𝙊𝙍𝙏𝙀𝙈 / 𝙋𝙊𝙎𝙏𝙋𝘼𝙍𝙏𝙐𝙈. — 𝖯𝖠𝖱𝖳 𝖨𝖨

𝘗𝘙𝘌𝘝𝘐𝘖𝘜𝘚 𝘊𝘏𝘈𝘗𝘛𝘌𝘙 ･ 𝘕𝘌𝘟𝘛 𝘊𝘏𝘈𝘗𝘛𝘌𝘙 ･ 𝗠𝗔𝗦𝗧𝗘𝗥𝗟𝗜𝗦𝗧 ･ 𝘛𝘈𝘎𝘓𝘐𝘚𝘛

𝗦𝗔𝗧𝗢𝗥𝗨 𝗚𝗢𝗝𝗢 𝗫 𝗚𝗡!𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗗𝗘𝗥. ⌇ sfw, but minors dni (nsfw future chapters likely) / an interpretation of "came back wrong" gojo (he's not necessarily wrong, just different) / yandere!gojo vibes / disabled-coded gojo with reader acting as caretaker; it's essentially a learning curve for everybody involved / some dubcon physical affection moments, but nothing serious / 3.4k words

well... we have made it to a second chapter!! this overall idea just really resonated with me, and after learning how it affected others as well, i just knew i had to do my best to keep it going. this is the first ever "part 2" of anything i've ever written, so i beg for just a shred of mercy! i'm trying my best, and thank you to everyone who has said kind things about this story so far. i hope you enjoy <3

The winter air is brisk and a little volatile, but you feel blessed to have it whirl past your skin—even more blessed to watch Satoru’s flesh prickle at the sensation. Alive.

You had done your best to rummage through the expanse of his closet to find a suitable coat for him to wear—one that would cut the chill of an afternoon breeze when it inevitably brushed across his body. January could be unforgiving at times—the harshest of winter moths. You wondered how cold death must’ve felt.

“Satoru, where are your shoes?” You inquired, voice muffled in his closet as you sifted through garments, multitasking in an attempt to compose an outfit for him.

He sat at the edge of his bed, eyes fixed on your movements as they often were, mind turning at your question for a moment. He stood then, paced towards the shoe rack that stood outside the closet door, and reached gently for one of your busied hands. Satoru points your fingers towards the collection of shoes.

You paused your movements, eyes curious as they followed his guidance before landing upon their intended target. “Oh, that’s right,” you said with a small shake of your head, bearing a self-defeating smile and feeling rather silly for your oversight. 

It was a challenge to become acquainted with someone else’s home amidst everything else, responsibilities stacking upon responsibilities. However, Satoru continued to prove that he could recall more than you initially thought, that he could act as your guiding light when called upon. A little ironic, you think. A little pathetic, too? No, you are human, after all. Just as he is.

He smiled in return. You swore there was even a hint of a familiar light-hearted, teasing glimmer in his eye, unless you were seeing things.

(You weren’t.)

For once, you are grateful for the rather serene nature of the school’s grounds as you stroll across them side-by-side with him, much like in days from a not-so-distant past. The remaining fallen leaves from the trees dressing the mountains rustle with the wind, colored by the touch of death but still beautiful all the same, just like something else you know.

“We can always go back if it gets too cold,” you say as a reminder to Satoru of his agency, his home on campus easy to circle back to should you take the notion. You fear he might choose to freeze himself into another early grave if that’s what you wished, and you can’t fathom the idea of making him suffer simply because he thinks it pleases you to do so. Your happiness is somehow his, and although this is a new quality you have yet to decipher, there’s still something about it that strikes you as indulgent and rather characteristic of a gluttonous Satoru Gojo.

He doesn’t respond, gaze flitting across his surroundings as he walks, nerve endings and six eyes absorbing a litany of information. A silent Satoru used to be a rare occurrence but is now the default, the air somehow punctured by the lack of his voice riding along it. However, his presence is still stark, his being brimming with energy as if to make up for the words he can no longer speak. 

Unbeknownst to you, he communicates with you not only with his physical body, but with his feelings, too—waves of energy that he projects outward on instinct, hoping you’ll have the means to grasp what he is trying to say even if he isn’t always sure what it is. It has been rather unsynchronized and sloppy thus far, but with each day that passes, your ability to hear him grows.

You can hear him now even with the only sounds being the breeze rushing in your ears and leaves crunching beneath the soles of shoes. There is something somber about him, more than usual, mixed with that same sense of being lost in a world that feels brand new. 

All of it is familiar to Satoru on a physical level—the paths, the buildings, the foliage—but what prickles his mind is attempting to piece together the myriad of strange feelings that arise as he is faced with more and more reminders of a past that he can’t fully recall. 

It’s as though the memories are trying to surface but can’t quite fuse into something tangible, something concrete, like when you feel a word forming just at the tip of your tongue but it never arrives. He can sense them deeply in his body, almost experience a brief image flashing like lightning through his mind before it disappears. Satoru’s frustration is palpable, and he reaches for your hand.

Icy-cold fingers nipped by winter intertwine with yours, tethering him in place as his fractured mind aches with the burden of obscurity. His physical affection is new to you, but you allow it—welcome it, even. As much as the earnest displays contrast with his previous tiptoeing around connection, it is yet another thing you can’t bear to turn down, not after everything that’s happened. 

You hope it isn’t simply guilt of all things compelling you to accommodate him, but wouldn’t it be equally bad to do it for selfish reasons? Could one misconstrue it as taking advantage, of feeding off his need to satisfy some part of you that had always wanted him?

The various implications make your head swim with conflict, so you force yourself to shut them down for the time being. Satoru is only holding your hand, nothing more, at least for the moment. There had of course been instances of his lips pecking against your own, wandering down to your neck, his hand settling on your waist as if to draw you closer… but you’d always managed to divert his attention in one way or another, severing the connection before either of you could become too engrossed in it. He never seemed overly perturbed to shift direction, but you couldn’t help but wonder just how long his patience might last, and if you’d be able to figure out what you even were to him before then.

Needless to say, nothing could have ever prepared you for something like this. What drives you forward more than anything is your contentment with the fact that he’s here walking the earth with you, as whole as he can be after having been stolen from the arms of death. And despite the abundance of challenges, part of you can’t help but feel special for being chosen to face them.

When your feet bring you near the school’s entrance, gates opening way for a path down the mountain, Satoru stops dead in his tracks, alert like an animal that’s suddenly caught a scent. His grip on your hand tightens, heart plummeting into his stomach as something takes hold of him, something he likely couldn’t put into words even if he had the ability to speak.

You turn to check over him with your gaze, concern etched upon your features at the immediate change of pace. “Satoru…?” you call softly, yearning for a chance to be able to peek into his mind. All you can do is feel the chill of his demeanor.

His name drifting upon your voice earns a split second of his attention, but he is, for once, captivated by something else.

Pierced gut. Blocked throat. Summer sun and the sounds of buzzing.

It’s a memory that lives in his body but not his conscious mind, an instinct telling him to heed the surroundings for a threat that once was. He relives it with a rapid heartbeat, knows it bears importance, but he can only recall shreds of information that don’t merge together to form a full picture. He simmers in mounting frustration.

Black hair. Sharp eyes. Boiling blood—the brink of death.

Satoru turns on a dime and faces a figure in the distance, on guard and brimming with a sort of defensiveness you’d never quite seen before, at least not coming from him. Muscles rigid, he squeezes your upper arm as if to warn you, to keep you close, his extraordinary senses absorbing information quicker than you can even pivot to see what it is he’s looking at.

From around the corner of a building emerges Megumi, clad in warm clothes and a mellow disposition. His distinctly unruly hair makes it easy to identify him even from where he appears down the path, hands in his pockets as he strolls towards you upon recognition. 

Satoru’s mind runs through calculations as the young student approaches, attempting to distinguish and fill gaps and create something he can take hold of as a semblance of fact.

Black hair. Sharp eyes. Something… different? 

Megumi’s cursed energy burns in a recognizable way, striking Satoru as peculiar as he instinctively studies it with the six eyes. But it makes sense to him—it’s familiar, even if he struggles to trust it in full. This is someone he hasn’t met since his awakening, but someone his eyes have certainly seen before.

You can sense the fear radiating off Satoru’s being and into yours, the presence of someone other than you agitating his already troubled state. You must act.

“Look, it’s Megumi,” you say softly with an encouraging smile, encasing his hand with your palm and hoping that your pleasant reaction takes the edge off. Satoru is reluctant to avert his gaze, but does so anyway, blue darting in your direction to witness the happiness written in your features. You appear to trust this person, and he trusts you, so despite the pounding in his chest, the sorcerer relaxes his grip.

You guide Satoru to take a few steps forward with you to meet Megumi as he draws nearer, a tired but welcoming smile turning your lips upward to greet him. It’s nice to see the boy alive and well in the aftermath of his own debacle—or at least as well as someone could possibly be. You wish there had been something more you could’ve done to help him recover, but it was known to many that you happened to have your hands full at the moment. Hopefully he will understand.

“Hey,” Megumi utters quietly, eyes scanning over your face and then his teacher’s, trying to briefly assess your individual states.

“Hi, Megumi,” you respond, appraising him yourself. He seems to be all in one piece, which you had been informed of, but had yet to see yourself. It’s nice to have visual confirmation. “How are you?”

“Fine,” he replies quickly, flatly, minimizing himself as usual. His voice is more sincere when inquiring about your wellbeing. “And you?”

You grin, finding a way to sum up your experience without overwhelming him. “Hanging in there,” you muse with a breathy chuckle. There’s no use in worrying him with all the details of Gojo’s current condition and how it has subsequently flipped your world upside down, but Megumi is shrewd, and you’re sure he can come to some sort of conclusion, especially when briefed by the others who have eyes on the situation.

Megumi awkwardly rubs at the back of his neck, skirting around vulnerability and concern as his next question arises. “Gojo-sensei… how are you doing?”

Satoru has been silent all the while, of course, but sorting through every detail while you and his former student exchange pleasantries. Neurons fire, rewiring frazzled connections, giving him a glimpse at how this boy is not the same as the one he bears a resemblance to.

Megumi isn’t sure what sort of response to expect; in fact, he feels silly for expecting one at all, posing a question that he’s fairly certain can’t be answered directly. But how else was he meant to conduct himself in such an interaction, to show that he cares? To speak as if Gojo weren’t even there would feel like even more of an insult.

You’re caught in the middle, watching Satoru’s face and seeing the gears turning in his head. “I think we’re all just… learning how to adjust to things, y’know?” you reply with a rather vacant smile, turning back to Megumi who understands your subtext with ease. Rather than speak for Satoru, you’ve made a blanket statement to provide just the slightest bit of feedback, and Megumi is well aware.

The student nods his head with a short hum of acknowledgment, doing his best to see his mentor in this new light—one he never thought would be possible, not when it came to someone who had always claimed to be so strong. But at least there is a light at all.

The wind tosses leaves around between the three of you, filling the silence with its quiet whispers. You wish there was more to be said. You wish you had a solid grasp of how well Satoru really was doing.

“I think Ieiri said she wanted to see you soon,” Megumi states, acting as a courier, trying to fill the space with words.

You nod. “Yeah, we’ve been in touch. We’re actually meant to meet up with her tomorrow.” 

Shoko, while expectedly rather removed, had been one of your primary contacts and supports thus far, apart from Ijichi who shouldered the burden of several essential tasks you hadn’t been able to complete on your own. You felt guilty for sending him out for groceries and back to your apartment for extra sets of clothes, but how else would you manage to make it by? Leaving Satoru alone or in the care of someone else wasn’t currently an option, and taking him outside the school grounds didn’t sound like an optimal idea either at the present moment. So you had to make do in the meantime, and you were truly grateful for the help, but you couldn’t help but hope that things would eventually fall into place. Maybe Shoko would have answers.

“That’s good,” Megumi replies with a sparkle of hope in his tone, then reluctantly adds, “and, uh… just let me know if I can do anything to help, okay?”

You respond to his gesture with a warm smile. “Thank you, Megumi. That’s very kind.” You don’t have immediate plans for taking the young man up on his offer, but you appreciate the sentiment regardless. He deserves to rest and seek peace, not fight any more battles for the sake of others.

A twinge of pink colors the apples of Megumi’s cheeks, and he recedes into the scarf wrapped around his neck, unused to accepting grace from others without feeling inclined to quarrel about it. He is at a loss for words, somewhat eager to make his escape before the vulnerability has the chance to further consume his dignity. You take that as something of a cue.

“Well, we—” you start, preparing to make a closing statement and depart, before being interrupted by a sudden movement to your left—Satoru, breaking free from his fixed state to perform a familiar gesture.

As if finally making a connection, he grins and mimics the Ten Shadows hand configuration for summoning the Divine Dogs, clapping his palms together and examining Megumi’s reaction with ardor. The student is startled out of his mild embarrassment, somewhat baffled by the sudden communication attempt and the implication that his mentor perhaps actually remembers who he is. It’s a pleasant surprise to you both, and a moment or two is required for it to sink in.

Your face lights up with glee, heart warmed by the simple action in a way that’s difficult to express. Megumi appears to be in a similar boat—taken aback, but ultimately stricken with joy.

A modest smile creeps upon Megumi’s lips as he softly mirrors the motion with his own hands, acknowledging Gojo’s revelation. “Yeah…” he says, voice faint but pleased. “Divine Dogs.”

Every brief glimpse into Satoru’s thoughts feels like a blessing, and this is certainly no exception. It’s refreshing to watch him have a moment of sincere connection with someone other than yourself, and it leaves you glowing with hope for the future as you bid Megumi farewell and make your way back home.

“Head back, Satoru.”

Water splashes into the bathtub as Satoru cranes his neck to peer up at the ceiling as per your request, a cup full of liquid streaming over his hair and carrying shampoo suds along with it.

After returning from your walk, you’d prepared something for dinner and eventually urged Satoru into the tub for a bath before bed—yet another activity that seemed to get a little easier every time you did it.

Figuring out how to get him to bathe had initially been quite the challenge, but you had managed to devise a method that had gotten the job done quite well thus far. He might’ve looked rather awkward sitting cramped in the shallow bath with a pair of swimming trunks on while you rinsed him with an old plastic cup you’d excavated from a cabinet, but it was the most effective way to get him clean and preserve both your dignities while doing it. Though you were the only one who seemed to be concerned with such things.

Satoru blinks when a few soapy droplets backslide into one of his eyes, causing him to squint, scrunch, and rub it with his fingers until the uncomfortable sensation eases. He looks at you, almost as if to say, “Hey! That burns!”

You chuckle and shake your head with a playful roll of your eyes. “That’s why you’re supposed to close your eyes, goober.”

He wants to submerge in a pout, but your playfulness rids him of the inclination. Satoru instead shifts his focus to the beauty of your frame perched upon the edge of the tub, a beacon of divinity as you cleanse him with care and devotion. He takes the notion to express an inkling of gratitude by leaning forward and placing a kiss against your lips, lukewarm water rippling around him as it gradually cools.

You’re somewhat stiff and unresponsive, the sudden gesture catching you by surprise as it usually does, but you don’t chastise him for it; in fact, it takes a certain level of concentration for you to avoid letting your thoughts linger on his current state: hair slicked back; flesh exposed and glistening with droplets of water; lips warm, wet, and eager for reciprocation…

Your mouth receives his but does not encourage him for more than a split second, pulling back gently from his advance until you can see Satoru shiver as the water chills his body. His eyes are glued to your face, waiting for a reaction as you prepare to make one more pass over his hair with the cup to see that he is fully rinsed, this time using your hand to shield his eyes from any backflow (and from your expression, which is surely indicative of your now rapid heartbeat).

The action is enough to distract him for the moment, but Satoru is still on edge, teeming with infatuation and need. He is unsatisfied with your response—or lack thereof—and is frustrated with his inability to express it, but your hands carefully wiping drops of water from his face act as a temporary soothing agent.

“Alright, let’s get dried off and ready for bed,” you say, standing to fetch his towel from the rack and bring it back to him before reaching down to trigger the tub to drain. “We’re going to talk to Shoko tomorrow.”

Satoru is less concerned with the meaning of your words than he is with how lovely you sound while saying them. He is once again caught in your spell, entranced by the need to be closer but settling for the scraps that you give him—for now.

You aren’t convinced of his comprehension of what you say, but nevertheless, you use the sweetened tone to deflect from the overwhelm of watching him stand and observe your every move as you help to dry his chiseled body. Satoru is tall and looming, scarred in the midriff, but compliant with your ministrations; however, his easygoing nature doesn’t keep your hands from wanting to shake against the towel that repeatedly caresses his physical beauty. You wish you could torch every thought in your mind, switch your brain off to preserve the strength and sanity that remains. 

You aren’t sure how long you’ll be able to remain steadfast and maintain this cycle of “temporaries” until something eventually changes. And what if it never does?

You suppose the only thing you can do for now is try your best and wait and see what the future holds. It certainly can’t be any worse than what you’ve already been through, especially now that Satoru is by your side once more. That is something you’ve realized you wouldn’t trade for anything.

[fixyourwritinghabits]

Post NaNoWriMo - Now What?

So if you've only been loosely paying attention, the NaNoWriMo organization has collapsed in a controversy of mismanagement, lack of oversight, abusive forum moderation and a whole host of issues that's resulted in souring the whole thing for a great deal of people. While the spirit of NaNoing will probably continue, a lot of people understandably don't want anything to officially do with the organization anymore.

But you - like I have - still think NaNoWriMo has been very useful to get writing done. Here's some ideas on how to keep going.

How to Get Started

Think Local - All those places you used for NaNo events, libraries, schools, cafes, etc - may be more than willing to launch something similar with enough interest. Just because it won't have the NaNoWriMo name slapped on it doesn't meant it can't continue. My local library has started a monthly write-in event, for example.

Take the Initiative - If you know of a group that you usually NaNo with, it's never too late or early to reach out to them about create an alternative plan. You probably aren't the only one thinking about it!

Talk to your (former) ML - Many Municipal Liaisons I know feel burned by NaNo and won't join it again, but they did love running the event. My local ML is continuing our group under a different name, and yours might appreciate getting assistance or sharing resources about how to run a month-long writing event if you ask.

Find Your People - If you're in school, new to an area, or just not good at reaching out, I feel you. But if you do nothing, you get nothing. Reach out to people you know. Online Discord or Zoom meetings can work just as well as in-person events if you're too remote or broke to meet.

What to Use to Get Started

Shut up and Write provides quick and easy ways to find local groups or form your own to carry the write-in momentum all year round.

MyWriteClub copies the writing tracking method of NaNoWriMo to keep track of your wordcount.

Pacemaker Planner offers multiple ways to track your writing.

Regular old Excel. Or LibreOffice if you'd prefer to wash your hands of Microsoft. It's not as exciting, but a regular spreadsheet with an AutoSum of your daily progress can work just as well as a fancy website.

You can keep going with the NaNo energy without the official name. My local library has started a monthly write-in, and I know many people who have found success with Shut Up and Write. Look into what works for you!

[aealzx]

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Update Post

Prologue | AO3

Previous Next

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“So…Let me just summarize to make sure I understand,” Jazz requested, feeling a little overwhelmed by all the new information Bruce, Barry, and Leslie had explained to her, but at least not so overwhelmed to the point of breaking down anymore. She’d just never heard of something like hemoperfusion before, so it had been a lot to take in. “Danny has blood blossom toxin throughout his blood stream, and since blood blossoms don’t exist here there’s no antitoxin to inject him with. And since developing one would take too long and be too risky, you want to try hemoperfusion. Which is like hemodialysis, except it removes toxins instead of fluids. And since hemoperfusion is known to cause a mild decrease in various common blood components, you want to have a blood donation from Danielle to offset that. Because she’s the only one here who also has ectoplasm in her blood, and you don’t want to dilute that in Danny since he’s already low…Did I get all of that?”

“Yes,” Bruce answered simply, giving a small nod. He was ready to go over anything they needed to again, a tablet in his hand ready to be used to open any of the files he’d already shown Jazz a second time. She had reacted to the information about Danny’s condition with anxious fear, but overall she was managing to remain significantly calmer than earlier that day.

Jazz was silent as she ran through everything she could remember just one more time, as well as trying to think of anything that they may have missed. Either because it was an oversight, or they simply just didn’t know. But she couldn’t see any risks other than the ones they had already told her they were aware of. She honestly wasn’t sure she would have caught the risk of diluting the ectoplasm in Danny’s blood herself. Amity always had an abundance of ectoplasm leaking everywhere, so even when Danny has spent a lot he’d always been able to recover some from the ambient. It, and the way they had addressed this situation, was enough for her to finally look to Bruce and nod. “Okay. Go ahead.”

Bruce was admittedly pleasantly surprised at the response, but kept his response in check other than a content smile. Barry’s shoulders sagged with his sigh of relief, and he barely waited for Bruce to give him a nod before he dashed from the room in a blink.

“Barry and Wally will take care of getting the supplies. We’ll test the types of resin with the blood samples we already have to make sure we use the correct one. But it shouldn’t take too long. Is it alright if we inform the rest of your family of what’s going on?” Bruce requested, not wanting Sam, Tucker and Danielle to be left out just because his own children were doing a good job keeping them occupied. Barbara had come over to meet them already, and she and Tim were indulging Tucker’s questions as well as getting some of their own answers. Then Stephanie and Cass had spent some time letting Danielle pick out some different clothes before they had joined Wally in the gym. Danielle had been ecstatic to find out about Wally’s abilities, and all four of them were having fun showing off and messing around together. Which left Sam talking with Duke, Damian, and Alfred about some of Duke’s adventures, Damian’s menagerie of pets, and Alfred’s recipes and food sources. The news would be an interruption to their fun, but Bruce had confidence that his team could help them stay occupied and taken care of instead of relying only on Jazz.

“...Sure,” Jazz agreed once more, giving another nod. They had already told her that they would have Danielle stop by the room to draw her blood, so having the three of them back in the room for a bit wasn’t a bad idea.

It didn’t take long at all for Barry and Wally to return with the equipment, getting it set up in record speed next to the bed before Barry joined Bruce back in the lab to test the different resins. They were simple tests that could all be done at the same time, so they were back upstairs soon after Leslie had finished drawing Danielle’s blood.

“Here’s the lucky winner,” Barry chimed, holding a second canister of the resin that they had found cleared the blood blossom toxin from Danny’s blood while having minimal effect on the important parts that needed to stay.

“Woah… I was expecting something bigger,” Sam admitted, watching Barry from where she was hovering near Danielle.

Barry just chuckled as he headed to the machine and popped the canister in. “It doesn’t need to be that big. We’re only pulling a tiny amount of toxin from him and putting the rest back after all.”

“Fair enough,” Sam accepted, attention shifting slightly as Danielle flexed her arm and moved around to make sure she wasn’t dizzy or anything.

“And you’re sure it’s going to work?” Tucker asked, his nervous nature prompting him to reach for reassurance despite the procedure not being used on him.

“It’s not as common as dialysis, but it’s still something that’s been used thousands of times on thousands of different people. I’m sure it’ll get most, if not all of the toxin,” Barry assured, stepping out of the way so Leslie could proceed to get Danny connected to the device. Unfortunately the IV needle that had been used was too small, so Leslie couldn’t use it for one of the tubes, even if it had been in the right place. So it was simply pinched closed, and disconnected to use again later while the other two tubes were inserted.

The others continued to chatter lightly, but Jazz was more focused on what Leslie was doing. How she was prepping Danny’s arm, where she put the tubes, trying to guess what she was looking for. She didn’t think this would be the last time Danny, or Danielle got poisoned, so she felt she should learn as much as she could while she could. It also helped her feel like she was being useful. Adding to her skillset to maybe use later instead of just sitting and being worried. It certainly helped even though once Leslie finally started the machine nothing seemed to be happening. It was a good thing though. No immediate adverse reactions, no sudden drop in vitals. Nothing but the quiet hum of the machine added to the soft beeps of the heart monitor and puffs from the oxygen tank.

Within an hour the others had gotten bored enough to easily be lured away by the rest of Bruce’s family once again.

Thirty minutes after and Jazz was the only one left, having moved to sit on the floor at the side of the bed. She wanted to be close to Danny, but she felt in the way if she sat on the bed. There were too many tubes now. Before he could have been mistaken for just sleeping. But now he really was looking like a coma patient. It made it hard to watch him, even though she refused to leave.

A short time later Jason was knocking on the doorframe to announce his presence, causing Jazz to look up.

“...Hey,” she greeted, a little confused.

“Hey,” Jason returned, “Just checking in. You need anything?” A half lie. He’d actually volunteered to hang out for a while to make sure the hemoperfusion process was going well. Luckily it looked like Danny’s vitals hadn’t changed much from two hours ago.

Jazz blinked in mild surprise at the offer, but even after thinking for a moment she couldn’t come up with anything. Part of her knew there were probably a multitude of things that she should be at least curious about, but mostly she just felt tired. The near quiet of the room while she knew everyone was okay and having fun was nice. She was content to just relax as well as she could for now. “No, I’m good,” she responded.

Jason didn’t quite believe her, his brow raising. “Says the girl sitting on the floor wearing random spare clothes borrowed from someone else, and doing nothing but stare at the other side of the room,” he commented dryly with a half smirk, stepping into the room and taking a seat on the floor near Jazz.

The comment caught Jazz off guard, but she could only give a small giggle. She probably did look at least a little unwell huh. “...I guess I just haven’t fully realized I’m safe yet,” she admitted. “It’s hard to think about anything.”

“Fair enough,” Jason accepted, being able to understand the feeling. “...Do you mind if I ask you something then?”

Another mild surprise, but Jazz just nodded after a moment. “Sure.”

“You mentioned before…” Jason started, thinking back to something Jazz had said before lunch, “that your parents tried to hurt Danny before they knew….” The reminder was potentially a very unhappy topic, but it was prodding he felt was necessary. Were they safe at home? Were they runaways? Were their parents involved with the ones that had hurt Danny recently? They needed to know if it was a good idea to try and get these kids back to their family or not. And if he was going to keep Jazz company and monitor the hemoperfusion process he didn’t feel like spending the time in silence.

“....Yeah… Our parents used to be ghost hunters,” Jazz admitted, a sorrowful smile as she stared at her hands. It seemed she was in the mood to talk, for she continued unprompted. “We grew up with their crazy antics. Making machines that could track down and destroy ghosts. Always talking about dissecting them, or using them as a power source. They had so many studies supporting the idea that ghosts were just residual emotions from people, given human form, but not actually human. So many things that convinced others that ghosts weren’t people anymore.”

“And yet… all it took was them finding out that Danny was half ghost, half dead, and it made them rethink everything they had developed. He was fourteen when… And I didn’t find out until a few months later. I didn’t even tell him I knew, because I knew if I did he would get scared. Why wouldn’t he, after all? With the idea that his mom and dad might cut into him just to satiate their curiosity looming over his head. It was an accident that they found out, and I was so scared he was going to run away. But mom just tried her best to treat him like Danny, and nothing else. Dropped her gun and told us we should go home and get a snack, because we were probably hungry. It…. it was enough to keep him home, but it wasn’t enough for everything to be okay. It was like everyone was trying to pretend everything was normal, but we all knew it wasn’t. They stopped doing their experiments. Started pretending they were oblivious to anything related to ghosts. It was awful. I felt so… so useless.”

“It was months of this stupid, awkward fake normal family facade before it finally broke. Danny accidentally got burned when mom was cooking, and she had a breakdown. We found out that our dad was okay with everything, but mom was having a hard time because she couldn’t believe that she had hurt Danny before. Even if she didn’t know it was him. But, after she had a really long talk with my brother, things started to look more normal again. Only this time, instead of being ghost hunters my parents dove headfirst into trying to figure out how to help ghosts. We realized we couldn’t take Danny to the doctors anymore, so my parents and I tried to make sure we could fill in that role. Mom would try all sorts of new, ectoplasm rich meals for him, making sure they tasted good to him. She started making smoothies for him every morning once she found ones he liked. On top of helping him study for school every day when there weren’t other ghosts causing trouble. There’s so many nights I found them asleep together on the couch. Danny was always mom’s favorite, and I think dad got jealous about how close they got. Until Danielle came back from her world exploration adventures and Danny convinced her to officially meet my parents. Then Dad and Danielle latched onto each other so quickly, and became inseparable.”

The retelling had seemed a little painful at first, but it was easy to see that Jazz was at least content with the way her family life was now. It wasn’t perfect, but then again families never were. Jason couldn’t help notice the tone of voice she took when talking about her parents favoring her siblings. She didn’t seem too upset, but there definitely wasn’t complete indifference to the facts. “...Does it make you upset? Having your siblings be your parents’ favorites?” he couldn’t help asking.

Jazz could only snicker at the question, falling quiet for a beat before answering. “Sometimes,” she admitted, then looked over with a mildly mischievous grin that made Jason semi think of Danielle. “But then I remember I’m Danny’s favorite, and I’m usually okay.”

The proud declaration made Jason snicker, glad to hear she had at least one thing keeping her from devolving into jealousy. She didn’t seem to want to talk much more though, and Jason wanted to leave the conversation on a happier note and therefore didn’t ask about the ‘Guys in White’ Danielle had mentioned before. So instead, after another stretch of quiet, he just chose to reassure her. “... He’ll be okay.”

Jazz didn’t answer immediately, drawing in a sigh and letting it go. She seemed to be doing much better as the day had stretched on, handling the news that Danny had poison throughout his bloodstream much better than the suggestion of drawing his blood. And being reassured that he would be okay, she gained a smile. “... He better be,” she commented, gaining a glint in her eye that Jason had seen in others he knew. “Otherwise the government back home will have to deal with a new super villain family.”

The comment only caught Jason slightly off guard, eyes widening just for a moment as he looked at Jazz before bursting into a hearty laugh. “Fair enough,” he agreed. The son of a family getting killed by the government was a legit enough back story for super villains in his opinion.

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lil bit of home situation dump and hopefully the last bit of the part that was giving me trouble. Nice to get to draw Jason without the suit XD though I almost forgot to draw the bandage on his fingers.

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Tag list: @galaxy-sharks-and-bottled-ships, @starscreamlover, @nerdynonnativenarnian, @dragongoblet, @megacharizardx99

@bellathecatastrophe, @cj-ghostemoji-destielpie, @asexual-insomniac, @wolfeyedwitch, @tkiesai, 

@fanaroff, @raven1508, @nebulainajar, @serasvictoria02, @oliocelottafanfics,

@honeysuckletook, @omniithe-deer, @wolf-under-the-stars, @gingernutcalo, @that-random-fangirl,

@op-sys-chaos, @kirasigncomics, @ehobep

[unholyhelbig]

oversight part 6 ??

Title: The Oversight [Part 6/7]

Ship: Female!Reader x Natasha Romanoff

Wordcount: 6237

Warnings: SMUT UNDER 18 DNI, oral (r recieving), Dom/sub dynamic, slight mommy kink if you squint, fingering (r recieving), and horrible grammar

[A/n: This took literally all day because I hadn't started it until this morning, and it's now 12am. Good thing it's -15 degrees outside and I physically cannot leave my home. I haven't written Nat smut... ever. Go easy on me.]

[ Part one | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six | Part Seven ]

Main Masterlist | Read my stuff on AO3 | Leave Requests

Natasha Romanoff knew how to handle a gun. She tested its weight; the mix of metal and plastic was familiar to her as lungs were to breathe. As ocean was to water, as sky was to rolling thunder. Handling a gun, especially while loaded, was a delicate process. She’d stroke the trigger, ghost her fingers over the barrel and expertly tease the weapon into doing exactly what she wanted.

Natasha Romanoff was not one to do anything without calculation, not one to do something without complete control. But, the soft noises that escaped your throat as she nipped across your jawline and licked over the burning bites to soothe the smallest bit of pain made her stop thinking. Stop calculating. It threatened to take her control.

Your back was up against the cool mahogany of her bedroom door. You’d barely gotten a chance to close it before her hands were all over you, and that floral scent invaded your lungs. You were frantic to pull her as close as possible, to feel her body fully against yours. You needed Natasha Romanoff more than you needed life itself. You needed her inside of you.

She seemed just as beside herself. Her nails ran up and down your sides, brushing against the exposed skin that the slit in that beautiful emerald dress provided. You were enamored with it earlier in the night. Now you were grateful for all the exposed parts of you, the hot touches and breathless kisses.

“So needy, malyshka” Natasha whispered between kisses. “You need me to take care of you, don’t you?”

Yes. You wanted that more than you could vocalize. Instead, you let out a groan that was muffled by her lips against yours. You understood the irony, feeling so safe with a woman who was one of the most feared within the city.

She reminded you in a gentle growl “words, baby, use your words.”

“Please, I need you.”

Natasha didn’t need another green light. She hauled you into her arms in a feat of strength, backing you onto the bed. The sheets were cool against your bare legs. The last time you’d been in this bed, you were in much worse shape. You preferred this, coming undone with Natasha’s wandering hands and damp kisses.

You hungrily pushed her jacket from her shoulders, brushing the pads of your fingers over her defined muscles. She smiled against your lips, throwing the expensive garment to the floor. You made quick work of the buttons down the front of her waistcoat, barely exposing the curve of her chest before her fingers reached up and grabbed yours.

“You’re far too clothed, darling.”

The objection was soft, and you were quick to comply when she pulled the dress up to expose your thighs. You lifted your hips and she moved the dress the rest of the way over your head, tossing it to the side. Her eyes raked hungrily over your dips and curves, hands caressing your sides, watching as your pulled air in and let it out in excitement.

“You knew this was going to happen?” Natasha said with a wolfish smile as she took in the lacy bra and panties that you wore.

“Hoped, really.”

“Do you have a safe word?”

“Do I need one?”

Her smile widened as she expertly slid the buttons from their proper place and pulled her waistcoat off. You were met with tanned skin, with a toned stomach and breasts that you itched to palm. She started to kiss along your neckline, down your chest, and the very start of your stomach. Expertly, she unhooked your own bra, tossing it in the same direction as your dress.

Natasha bit and sucked in the right places and your back arched in eager response. It distracted you from her wandering hands. You shuddered as she pushed past the elastic of your underwear, she brushed her finger up the length of your slit, and a breath got stuck in your throat.

“So wet already, just from a little teasing.”

“Natasha,” You moaned her name.

You squirmed as her touch moved lower, she kissed along your waistline, moved your underwear down your legs until you were fully exposed to her. She let out a content breath that was hot against your center, you fought the urge to press against her.

“Zaychik, I have a few rules,”

“Anything, just… anything.”

She kissed against your thighs, ever so close to you. It was driving you nuts, and while you trusted Natasha with your life, with your sanity, it was you who was struggling with control. You craved her touch and then resented how much you relied on it. You had never wanted anything more in your life.

“You belong to me. And that means, you can only cum when I give you permission.” You whined under her soft ministrations, bucking your hips forward. She bit hard against the expanse of your skin, enough to bruise. “Am I clear?”

“Y-yes, yes. Clear. Crystal. Baby please.”

Natasha hummed against you. “Good girl.”

Your cheeks heated at the positive reinforcement and your fingers curled into the expensive sheets. A gasp escaped you when her tongue met your folds. She licked expertly across the length of your center and an entirely pornographic noise left your throat when she stopped at your clit, sucking softly.

You could feel your heartbeat in your chest, pounding against your ribs in a perfect rhythm. Natasha slid a singular finger into you. It was painfully slow, and far from enough to fill you up. You resisted the urge to grind further into her. Another finger, another soft noise.

A combination of her quick movements and attention mouth brought you close to the edge embarrassingly fast. You had thought of this moment for months, how skilled she was, how your naked body would be writhing under her touch exactly as it was now.

When Natasha added a third finger, your mind started to grow foggy. You had known for awhile that you would do anything for her. It wasn’t a feeling that you shied away from in the slightest. Excitement was building in your core, breath coming quicker, sweat slicking against every inch of your body.

“Remember your manners, baby girl.” Natasha’s words vibrated against your core, making your squirm. “Not until I say.”

Her fingers curled inside of you, your walls tightening expertly around her. It took everything in you not to give in to her. There was an impossible pressure building inside of you. You gasped in as much air as you could muster.

“Who do you belong to?”

“You,” the answer came without hesitation. “Only you,”

“That’s right. You’re all mine, my little toy.”

Her words only worked you up more. You wanted to take care of her, wanted to worship her. You’d do anything she commanded. The word slipped past your lips without a second thought. She was working so hard to undo you. “Natasha… mommy”

Natasha let out a moan at the title, her pace increasing. She returned her hot mouth to your clit, circled it with your tongue expertly. She mumbled against you, words vibrating. “You can cum, princess.”

She didn’t’ have to tell you twice. You tightened around her fingers, arching off the bed as pure extasy washed over you. You clenched every part of your body, groaning into the crook of your arm to muffle the noise. Pleasure rolled over you, through the pit of your stomach.

Her mouth continued to work throughout the lingering pressure of your orgasm, threatening to build to another one. Natasha pulled her fingers from you with a wet noise. She breathlessly moved herself next to you, kissing your neck, your jawline. Natasha pressed her fingers against your lips, and you were eager and ready to accept them. 

You could taste yourself on her, sucking them as she nipped at your earlobe. She whispered, feeling hot against your skin. “Such a good whore, so willing and ready to suck anything. Take anything. I can’t wait to give you a strap.”

Your heart began to race at the thought, and she smiled against you, clear that she could feel the increase of the rhythm from your closeness. Natasha removed her fingers, she kissed you hard, and you kissed her back with just as much passion, pulling away slightly to stifle a yawn.

“Tired already, Zaychik?”

You chuckled “you wear me out. Though, I’m not too worn out to make you feel good.”

“Mm, you’ve already made me feel good. I think we should get some sleep.”

You wanted to fight her on it, body still trembling from the rolling orgasm she had given you. But exhaustion was fighting too and Natasha readjusted you both until you were settled gently into the crook of her neck, one arm lazily over her midsection. She was gentle and attentive with her movements. Brushing strands of your hair behind your ear. Who knew Natasha Romanoff was a cuddler?

A spring storm had taken full effect by the time you had crossed back into the city, but it seemed that nothing could dampen your mood. The clouds that formed in dark clusters and released sheets of rain were something of beauty, not despair. The day was still warm, the breeze cold to cut through the sweat that formed on your brow. You’d cracked the window, allowing stray drops to cool your skin.

You stopped by the mailbox on the bottom floor, wiggling the smallest key on your ring into the lock until it opened. You barely checked the mail and it was stuffed full of coupons, advertisements, and the occasional statement from Veronica’s after-school daycare.

You tucked the papers under your arm and started the long ascent to your floor. You avoided the nails that stuck up through cheap wood. The spots in the carpet that had been soaked through with water damage. None of it seemed to bother you.

“Good morning, Miss Baxter.” You mumbled to the older woman who always perched in front of her door in a busted lawn chair. She had a perfect view of her neighbor across the hall. Her little, crusty white dog barked in morse code at you.

“What’s so good about it? Raining buckets and everything in this godforsaken place leaks.”

“Well, I suppose that’s where the buckets would come in handy.”

She made a disgusted noise in the back of her throat but you were already a good portion of the way up the final flight of stairs. You pressed your shoulder tactfully against your apartment door pushing it open before you threw the mail on the table and flicked on the kitchen light. The air conditioning chilled you to the bone, drying the damp spots on your clothes.

There was a click in the far side of the room, one that was unfamiliar from the ticking of the air unit, or the settling of an old building. You were used to those noises. This was entirely too human for your liking, so you drew your gun in a fluid movement, much like the other night.

Without hesitation, flicking off the safety and aiming.

Darcy was sitting in the beaten recliner in the corner. There was an upturned book on the side of the chair. You weren’t sure how long she had been sitting there, but from the bags under her eyes, the way her hair was pulled up into a messy bun, you knew it had been awhile.

You instantly lowered the weapon, hands suddenly shaking. “Darcy, what are you-?”

“I… I knew that something was up these last few months. I thought you had started seeing someone, a regular at the diner, or, or God forbid the dude who works behind the grill. But when I went to the diner you weren’t even there. They said you hadn’t been there for months. And can you please put that thing away?”

“Sorry, I’m sorry” your words were pinched as you rebolstered your weapon. “I can explain.”

“Can you?” She stood, closing the distance between you both now that there wasn’t a loaded gun in the middle. You straightened up, heart pounding haplessly in your chest. “Because Monica Rambeau came up to me at work the other day and told me that you were lying. She… she wouldn’t tell me what, just that you weren’t being truthful, and I defended you, y/n.

“I defended you because you’re my best friend. You have been for years. I’ve stood by you through everything. Through meeting Ronnie’s father, and getting pregnant and comforting you when he left you- because he did leave both of you!”

“Darcy,”

“No. Let me finish. Let me finish. I’ve been here for you every step of the way. Every single step and the only thing that I’ve ever expected from you is honesty. Don’t you think I deserve that? Don’t you think Ronnie deserves that?”

You swallowed the lump in your throat, watching her carefully as she caught her breath, and her bearings. You had only seen Darcy this angry once, and it had been years ago. Sophomore year of high school when her parents decided to split, and her father tried to get her to move to Washington state with him.

She fought and fought because they waited until the last minute to tell her. They weren’t truthful, and you hadn’t been truthful either. More importantly, in both situations, she had been right.

“The y/n I know, can’t draw a gun like that, and doesn’t come home covered in bruises, and doesn’t flinch into action at every little noise. The y/n I know wouldn’t have lied to me in the first place. So, what is going on?”

“Can we… sit?”

You didn’t entirely trust the strength of your legs right now. Parts of you were sore, you had realized that as you climbed the stairs. You could feel them trembling now and fought the urge to curl up on the carpet that was right under your feet.

“I’m fine standing.”

“A drink, then? It’s uh, it’s five somewhere, right?”

“y/n.”

“Right, yes. I know.”

And you did know, but only to a certain extent. If Monica hadn’t gone to Darcy, would you have? It was a single night of drunken lovemaking followed by a less-than-graceful exit into the cold of autumn. There was a tightness to seeing her again, and the underlying fear that this would happen. But so many things were happening.

“I am sorry that I haven’t been truthful with you, but you have to believe me, it was for your own safety. For Ronnie’s safety. I would never lie without a good reason.”

“Well, that’s subjective, isn’t it?” Darcy’s breathed “You always think you know what’s best for me, what’s best to hide from me. But you don’t know what I can handle.”

Okay, you absolutely needed that drink. Darcy wasn’t going to leave now, not without answers she was pushing so hard for. Ronnie was getting too tall for her own good, so you hid the good liquor in the cabinet above the fridge.

Bourbon, warm or not, was your choice and right now you couldn’t bother with ice, just a mug that you had gotten from a thrift store. It was from Cabo and had a little white sand beach and a flamingo wearing sunglasses on the front. You’d never been to Cabo.

The first sip went down burning, and the second soothed the first. “I took a loan.”

“Like, from a bank?”

“From a shark. Technically. They don’t call them that, but that’s what they are. I didn’t realize it at the time, or else I wouldn’t have, but I was already two months behind on rent and I refused to ask you to cover me again. That’s not your responsibility. You already do so much for me and Ronnie.”

She opened her mouth to object, to rush in and say that she would have given you anything and you knew she would. But that didn’t change the fact that you wouldn’t have asked her in the first place.

“I didn’t pay them back in time and they weren’t very lenient. They took me under their custody to persuade me into coming up with the money.”

“Persuade? Their custody?”

“Kidnapped… beat within an inch of death. Whatever way you look at it, I was on their bad side.”

With horrible judgement you filled up another two fingers of whisky, only swallowing half but making eye contact with Darcy as you had done so. Simmering behind her deep blue stare was a mix of pity you were desperate to avoid. It soon dwindled back into discontent and that made you want to continue.

“I was spared on account that I wasn’t their usual clientele. Natasha, she called me… shit, what was it? An oversight? I was a blip in the system. I wasn’t supposed to happen and for that reason, and that reason alone, she offered me an ultimatum.”

Darcy sidled up to the counter that rested like a drawn line between you both. Her fingers tapped nervously on the surface but some of the tension had drained from her shoulders. “Natasha? That.. woman from the fair? The one with Clint?”

“Oh, Clint, you remember?” You smiled.

“He’s strong. Rugged.” She shrugged, frowning “That’s not the point. You’re telling me he’s a part of this sharking business? You’re telling me you let a known criminal that close to your daughter? To me?”

“I get how that sounds bad, Dee, but he’s really not a horrible guy. He’s a father himself and you’re right. You’re right. It’s not the point.” You swallowed the second half of your drink and placed the novelty mug in the sink to stop yourself from polishing off more of the bottle. “They gave me an ultimatum.”

“An ultimatum?”

“I could kill myself working at the diner everyday for the rest of my life. Twelve-hour shifts with most of the funds feeding right back into their palms. It would take decades to give back the money I took from them. Or, I could work for Natasha and pay off my debts in a quarter of the time.”

Silence filled the room. The only type of silence that you knew, that was filled with the sounds of the city. Your neighbors to the left were having a fight that seemed bigger than the one you and Darcy had now. A boombox blasted reggae music across the street and certain beats bled through the thin glass windows.

You swallowed the acrid flavor on your tongue. “For the last four months instead of the diner, I have been with Natasha. With Clint. They’ve been teaching me, and at first, I hated every single second of it. I was scared for… for weeks. But, Darcy, I’m starting to enjoy it and that scares me more than anything.”

“I need to sit down,” She mumbled.

“I offered,”

“I know.”

She flopped down onto the sofa that folded out into a bed. You’d slept there for a month when Darcy’s apartment was being fumigated and you refused to make her take the couch. It was hell on your back, but Ronnie had never been happier to wake up to the both of you each morning.

It carried a familiar clean scent. Darcy pulled a blanket into her lap and ran her fingers over the bumps in stitching. You cautiously lowered yourself down next to her, starting to feel the effects of an empty stomach and too much liquor for the afternoon. You were suddenly nauseous and starving all at once.

“There’s more,” Darcy said, “What you just told me was a lot, but there’s more. I know you, y/n, and I’m giving you an opportunity here to tell me everything.”

You sighed, slumping on the couch. You could feel the bar in the center of the couch push against your spine. There was a crack in the ceiling next to a gray and brown water stain that looked like a Rorschach test.

“Natasha. I think I’m in love with her.” You could hear Darcy turn her head with a dizzying quickness. “I’m not supposed to be, it’s the last thing I’m supposed to be. I’m supposed to be protecting her and that’s incredibly hard to do when I’m distracted by her eyes.”

Darcy was laughing and it lightened the mood in the room. The tension was still thick enough to slice with a knife, but it was enough to get you to look at her. “You’ve got it bad, huh?”

“The worst.”

“You really think this is what’s best, huh? Putting yourself into the line of fire like this? Handling a gun?”

“I do. I really, really do.” You picked up her hand, relieved that she didn’t pull away so you squeezed it, just to make sure that it was real. That she hadn’t run at the first sign of trouble. “I always tell Ronnie that I’d get us out of here one day. All of us. And I never knew how to do that on $2.00 an hour.”

Darcy sighed heavily; she leaned her head on your shoulder. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“I know. But some risks you just have to take.”

The sun had broken through the clouds for the first time in days. It streamed through the windows of Natasha’s private office, nestled at the back of the large house. In the past week, you had been here twice and each time your heart thudded impossibly fast.

This time, she had summoned you before you were through the doors for your normal shift. There were no extra caveats. You weren’t meant to head down to the docks, or to one of the many storefronts that were rented from the Romanoff family. Instead, you were simply meant to be here.

The home was empty, you knew from the lack of cars that were outside. Natasha’s was the only one in the lot besides yours. There was a certain quiet to the day and the French doors that led to her private office were ajar to strengthen the airflow.

She was focused on the work in front of her, hair in a messy bun and two strands falling from her haphazard job. There were black frame glasses on her face. Her face was scrunched up in a frankly adorable expression. It softened when she glanced up and saw you, the ghost of a smile on her lips.

Much to your dismay, she removed her glasses “Come in, close the doors behind you.”

You did as you were told, letting them fall with the subtle shake of the blinds. They’d been closed but a small stream of golden light was splayed across Natasha’s desk. It caught the intensity of her eyes, the sharp green color that only came out when she was surrounded by these walls.

“Sit,”

Obediently, you moved to do so, pulling one of the leather chairs out from its spot on the other side of the desk. You felt shame, despite last night. She was still your boss, still the person you were meant to protect. That’s what you were being altered for.  

“Not there.”

You lifted your eyebrows, halting in your spot. Natasha pushed back in her rolling chair, ever so slightly. She gestured vaguely to her lap. She can’t be serious? This had to be some type of test? It didn’t seem like one. You certainly wouldn’t mind having her arms wrapped around you, her scent enveloping, intoxicating.

Cautiously, you did as you were told, lowering yourself onto Natasha’s lap. There was an overwhelming warmth, a destined comfort to being in her arms, so much safety in the simple gesture of her pulling you close.

She guided your chin until your lips were close to hers, not quite touching. “Hi, baby.”

“Hi,” You responded before closing the distance. She hummed into the kiss, her tongue running over her lips, against the roof of your mouth. You could taste her morning coffee and a hint of mint.

“I missed you.”

“It’s been two days,”

She hummed, pressing her cold nose against your throat. The weekends were reserved for relaxation, and as much as you wanted to stay with Natasha in this giant house, you had a life within the city; a daughter, friends, responsibility.

“I don’t want you work for me anymore.”

You frowned and pulled slightly away from her, your arms still circling her neck. This certainly had to be a test but there was no indication to such on her face. She had nothing but a tender expression, a quiet one that left no room for argument, but you weren’t built like that.

“What?”

“I,” Natasha dipped her gaze, pressing her forehead against your cheek. Her words were a whisper. “I don’t want you to get hurt. You can’t get hurt if I don’t put you in the line of fire.”

There were a few moments of silence aside from the large clock on one of the bookshelves that clicked with each passing second. Natasha had never been vulnerable with you like this. There had been moments of soft expressions, but never this.

Gently, you lifted her chin, forcing her to look at you. “Natasha, I can’t do that. I can’t just stop protecting you. It’s all I’ve been training for these last months.”

“I want to offer you something more, y/n. You and Ronnie both. I want you to have a home here… with me.”

You breathed her in, your forehead against hers. Your eyes were closed, but you could feel her watching you for any kind of reaction, anything that would give your feelings away. She tucked a strand of hair behind your ear, the gesture making your shudder against her.

“I want that too. But more than anything, I want to keep you safe. I still want this. I still want to be there for you like I have been. Behind you every step of the way.” You chuckled sadly, “While being a trophy girlfriend sounds amazing, I want to earn my keep.”

Natasha smiled at you, “Girlfriend? That’s quite the title.”

“I mean it,” you played with her necklace, an equally as small gold chain. “I want to keep training. Girlfriend or not. If you’re going to keep me around.”

She moved forward, kissed against the small expanse of skin behind your ear, down the side of your neck. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Mmhm, but I was serious about you and Ronnie.” She pulled back, brushing her thumb over your flushed cheek. “I like you, y/n. You make me happy.”

Before you could respond, her lips were against yours again, her hands tracing up your sides. You were well aware of how close the two of you were, of how easy it was to get heated in this position, of Natasha’s cold fingertips as they ghosted under the hem of your shirt.

“I brought pizza from that place on the corner that you like,” You balanced the large and greasy box on your hip. It wasn’t your favorite place, the man behind the counter was always rude and the line was out the door. But it was for good reason, you had to admit, because the food was always delicious and made you forget about all the complications.

Darcy ate pineapple on her half the pizza like a criminal. You and Veronica were content with pepperoni, but you’d have to sprinkle extra parmesan cheese on her slices, cutting them into small pieces and providing her with a fork.

There was quiet to Darcy’s apartment. One that reminded you of the many times you had pulled your weapon in preparation. Your hands were full with the box, with a plastic bag filled with off-brand soda and two-dollar movies that were on the shelf at the corner store.

You struggle to swallow your own fear at the sight that lies in front of you. The television is muted, but a cartoon continues to cast the living room in a pale, blue light. Darcy is sprawled on the couch, her chest rising and falling in what seems to be a heavy sleep.

The light above the oven is on and the kitchen table is far from unoccupied. Ronnie looks up at your entrance, content with the array of markers, colored pencils, and crayons that are scattered in front of her.

Carol Danvers sits in an adjacent chair, working on staying in the lines of her own picture. You weren’t close enough to see what she had drawn, but based on her track-record you were sure it was something ghastly.

Monica Rambeau sat in the recliner, a mug of something steaming in her hand. Her eyes were trained on the television despite the lack of sound. They didn’t flick to you when you entered. She was confident that you weren’t going to make a move. Cocky.

“Is that from Ginos?” Carol asked, capping the marker that she was using. “God, they have the best pizza.”

“Yeah, it is.” You whispered.

Cautiously, you let the door close behind you. With an almost domestic way about you, you set the box and the bags down on the counter before wiping the sweat on your jeans. You made quick eye contact with Monica. She nodded at you, regarded you quietly.

“Sit, I was just telling Veronica that she’s very good at coloring. You’ve got a real artist on your hands, Y/n.”

“So, I’ve been told.” You sat down, keeping both of your hands on the table. Kate told you that it was a sign of trust. That if you were quick enough, and she was sure that you were, it wouldn’t matter how far away your weapon was. “What did you do to Darcy?”

“Oh, she’s just so exhausted. Sometimes working a nine-to-five will just take it right out of you. She’ll wake up tomorrow morning after some much needed rest.”

You nodded; mouth incredibly dry. Carol was watching you carefully. She had scribbled something that looked like a mass of color but the more you stared, just like the stain on the ceiling in your own apartment, the more it looked like something more.

She laughed, shaking her head “I’m afraid I’m not as good of an artist as your daughter.”

Ronnie looked at you, her eyes searching your face. It was easy to read her. You had for years. There was curiosity there, but no fear. Carol had probably led with something along the lines of I’m friends with your mother.

Or maybe it had been Monica who forced her way in first. She’d wandered into the kitchen and opened the box of food. Her nose scrunched up at the prospect of fruit on pizza, but she made quick work of picking off the offensive items.

Carol pushed the sheet of paper close to you. “Tell me, y/n, what do you see?”

“I… I don’t know. It looks like a duck.” She lifted her eyebrows, looking or more, and you confidently pointed to each element. “The beak is right here, and the eye is here.”

“Right.” Carol made a swift movement and flipped the photo. “What does it look like now?”

For someone that claimed not to have a good eye for art, Carol sure had a high opinion of a diagram she’d created with a few waxy crayons. It wasn’t the best drawn creature, but you got the general idea.

“A rabbit.”

Carol beamed at you and it made you feel sick to your stomach. “Clever one, aren’t you? Do you see how the world can be viewed in more than one way? To you, this could be a duck, or a rabbit, or just a poorly drawn abstract painting.”

“It’s very well done.”

“Don’t flatter me. I know what I’m capable of. I know what I’m up against. More importantly, I need you to know that sometimes, perspective can change everything.” She leaned back in her chair, rolling a crayon under her fingertips. “The Romanoff family is on the wrong side of an ongoing war, and by association, so are you.”

Veronica got out of her chair then, finally losing interest in the activity that was given to her. Monica and Carol tensed, as did you. But your daughter gave you a look that indicated television. Something else to occupy her mind. You let out a shaky breath.

“Sure, baby. Keep it low, okay?”

She nodded at you and scrambled over to the living room. There were soft noises from the cartoons afterwards. She sat patiently close to the screen to she could hear. She minded you well, hugging a throw-pillow close to her chest.

“It was very easy to track you down. Did you know that? Almost as easy to get in here, to have full access to your life. The life you had before you met Natasha Romanoff.” Carol reached into her coat pocket, she pulled out a business card. “You need to choose a side. If you’re going to stick around in this town, you need to choose a side, or get better locks.”

She left it on the table along with the smattering of art supplies and her crudely drawn photo that was supposed to teach you about perspective. Though, you were certain you knew all you needed to. There wasn’t even a question.

Carol stood and gestured for Monica to follow. She clapped you on the shoulder before she left, her words just the quietest of whispers. “I understand her allure, y/n. But there’s more than one force to deal with in this city.”

[Taglist🕷♡: @dumbasslesbi, @lostremind, @toouncreativeforausername @autorasexy @eringranola @mikookaaaaaao @marvelwoman-simp @pacmanmiles @mostlymarvelsstuff, @mrsrushman, @milfsandtittyenthusiast, @random-raccoon4, @ravenromanova, @mysticalmoonlight7, @ahintofchaos@cowboyboots236 @lissaaaa145, @natsxwife @a-spes]

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Conspiratorialism and the epistemological crisis

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me next weekend (Mar 30/31) in ANAHEIM at WONDERCON, then in Boston with Randall "XKCD" Munroe! (Apr 11), then Providence (Apr 12), and beyond!

Last year, Ed Pierson was supposed to fly from Seattle to New Jersey on Alaska Airlines. He boarded his flight, but then he had an urgent discussion with the flight attendant, explaining that as a former senior Boeing engineer, he'd specifically requested that flight because the aircraft wasn't a 737 Max:

https://www.cnn.com/travel/boeing-737-max-passenger-boycott/index.html

But for operational reasons, Alaska had switched out the equipment on the flight and there he was on a 737 Max, about to travel cross-continent, and he didn't feel safe doing so. He demanded to be let off the flight. His bags were offloaded and he walked back up the jetbridge after telling the spooked flight attendant, "I can’t go into detail right now, but I wasn’t planning on flying the Max, and I want to get off the plane."

Boeing, of course, is a flying disaster that was years in the making. Its planes have been falling out of the sky since 2019. Floods of whistleblowers have come forward to say its aircraft are unsafe. Pierson's not the only Boeing employee to state – both on and off the record – that he wouldn't fly on a specific model of Boeing aircraft, or, in some cases any recent Boeing aircraft:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/22/anything-that-cant-go-on-forever/#will-eventually-stop

And yet, for years, Boeing's regulators have allowed the company to keep turning out planes that keep turning out lemons. This is a pretty frightening situation, to say the least. I'm not an aerospace engineer, I'm not an aircraft safety inspector, but every time I book a flight, I have to make a decision about whether to trust Boeing's assurances that I can safely board one of its planes without dying.

In an ideal world, I wouldn't even have to think about this. I'd be able to trust that publicly accountable regulators were on the job, making sure that airplanes were airworthy. "Caveat emptor" is no way to run a civilian aviation system.

But even though I don't have the specialized expertise needed to assess the airworthiness of Boeing planes, I do have the much more general expertise needed to assess the trustworthiness of Boeing's regulator. The FAA has spent years deferring to Boeing, allowing it to self-certify that its aircraft were safe. Even when these assurances led to the death of hundreds of people, the FAA continued to allow Boeing to mark its own homework:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8oCilY4szc

What's more, the FAA boss who presided over those hundreds of deaths was an ex-Boeing lobbyist, whom Trump subsequently appointed to run Boeing's oversight. He's not the only ex-insider who ended up a regulator, and there's plenty of ex-regulators now on Boeing's payroll:

https://therevolvingdoorproject.org/boeing-debacle-shows-need-to-investigate-trump-era-corruption/

You don't have to be an aviation expert to understand that companies have conflicts of interest when it comes to certifying their own products. "Market forces" aren't going to keep Boeing from shipping defective products, because the company's top brass are more worried about cashing out with this quarter's massive stock buybacks than they are about their successors' ability to manage the PR storm or Congressional hearings after their greed kills hundreds and hundreds of people.

You also don't have to be an aviation expert to understand that these conflicts persist even when a Boeing insider leaves the company to work for its regulators, or vice-versa. A regulator who anticipates a giant signing bonus from Boeing after their term in office, or a an ex-Boeing exec who holds millions in Boeing stock has an irreconcilable conflict of interest that will make it very hard – perhaps impossible – for them to hold the company to account when it trades safety for profit.

It's not just Boeing customers who feel justifiably anxious about trusting a system with such obvious conflicts of interest: Boeing's own executives, lobbyists and lawyers also refuse to participate in similarly flawed systems of oversight and conflict resolution. If Boeing was sued by its shareholders and the judge was also a pissed off Boeing shareholder, they would demand a recusal. If Boeing was looking for outside counsel to represent it in a liability suit brought by the family of one of its murder victims, they wouldn't hire the firm that was suing them – not even if that firm promised to be fair. If a Boeing executive's spouse sued for divorce, that exec wouldn't use the same lawyer as their soon-to-be-ex.

Sure, it takes specialized knowledge and training to be a lawyer, a judge, or an aircraft safety inspector. But anyone can look at the system those experts work in and spot its glaring defects. In other words, while acquiring expertise is hard, it's much easier to spot weaknesses in the process by which that expertise affects the world around us.

And therein lies the problem: aviation isn't the only technically complex, potentially lethal, and utterly, obviously untrustworthy system we all have to navigate. How about the building safety codes that governed the structure you're in right now? Plenty of people have blithely assumed that structural engineers carefully designed those standards, and that these standards were diligently upheld, only to discover in tragic, ghastly ways that this was wrong:

https://www.bbc.com/news/64568826

There are dozens – hundreds! – of life-or-death, highly technical questions you have to resolve every day just to survive. Should you trust the antilock braking firmware in your car? How about the food hygiene rules in the factories that produced the food in your shopping cart? Or the kitchen that made the pizza that was just delivered? Is your kid's school teaching them well, or will they grow up to be ignoramuses and thus economic roadkill?

Hell, even if I never get into another Boeing aircraft, I live in the approach path for Burbank airport, where Southwest lands 50+ Boeing flights every day. How can I be sure that the next Boeing 737 Max that falls out of the sky won't land on my roof?

This is the epistemological crisis we're living through today. Epistemology is the process by which we know things. The whole point of a transparent, democratically accountable process for expert technical deliberation is to resolve the epistemological challenge of making good choices about all of these life-or-death questions. Even the smartest person among us can't learn to evaluate all those questions, but we can all look at the process by which these questions are answered and draw conclusions about its soundness.

Is the process public? Are the people in charge of it forthright? Do they have conflicts of interest, and, if so, do they sit out any decision that gives even the appearance of impropriety? If new evidence comes to light – like, say, a horrific disaster – is there a way to re-open the process and change the rules?

The actual technical details might be a black box for us, opaque and indecipherable. But the box itself can be easily observed: is it made of sturdy material? Does it have sharp corners and clean lines? Or is it flimsy, irregular and torn? We don't have to know anything about the box's contents to conclude that we don't trust the box.

For example: we may not be experts in chemical engineering or water safety, but we can tell when a regulator is on the ball on these issues. Back in 2019, the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection sought comment on its water safety regs. Dow Chemical – the largest corporation in the state's largest industry – filed comments arguing that WV should have lower standards for chemical contamination in its drinking water.

Now, I'm perfectly prepared to believe that there are safe levels of chemical runoff in the water supply. There's a lot of water in the water supply, after all, and "the dose makes the poison." What's more, I use the products whose manufacture results in that chemical waste. I want them to be made safely, but I do want them to be made – for one thing, the next time I have surgery, I want the anesthesiologist to start an IV with fresh, sterile plastic tubing.

And I'm not a chemist, let alone a water chemist. Neither am I a toxicologist. There are aspects of this debate I am totally unqualified to assess. Nevertheless, I think the WV process was a bad one, and here's why:

https://www.wvma.com/press/wvma-news/4244-wvma-statement-on-human-health-criteria-development

That's Dow's comment to the regulator (as proffered by its mouthpiece, the WV Manufacturers' Association, which it dominates). In that comment, Dow argues that West Virginians safely can absorb more poison than other Americans, because the people of West Virginia are fatter than other Americans, and so they have more tissue and thus a better ratio of poison to person than the typical American. But they don't stop there! They also say that West Virginians don't drink as much water as their out-of-state cousins, preferring to drink beer instead, so even if their water is more toxic, they'll be drinking less of it:

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2019/03/14/the-real-elitists-looking-down-on-trump-voters/

Even without any expertise in toxicology or water chemistry, I can tell that these are bullshit answers. The fact that the WV regulator accepted these comments tells me that they're not a good regulator. I was in WV last year to give a talk, and I didn't drink the tap water.

It's totally reasonable for non-experts to reject the conclusions of experts when the process by which those experts resolve their disagreements is obviously corrupt and irredeemably flawed. But some refusals carry higher costs – both for the refuseniks and the people around them – than my switching to bottled water when I was in Charleston.

Take vaccine denial (or "hesitancy"). Many people greeted the advent of an extremely rapid, high-tech covid vaccine with dread and mistrust. They argued that the pharma industry was dominated by corrupt, greedy corporations that routinely put their profits ahead of the public's safety, and that regulators, in Big Pharma's pocket, let them get away with mass murder.

The thing is, all that is true. Look, I've had five covid vaccinations, but not because I trust the pharma industry. I've had direct experience of how pharma sacrifices safety on greed's altar, and narrowly avoided harm myself. I have had chronic pain problems my whole life, and they've gotten worse every year. When my daughter was on the way, I decided this was going to get in the way of my ability to parent – I wanted to be able to carry her for long stretches! – and so I started aggressively pursuing the pain treatments I'd given up on many years before.

My journey led me to many specialists – physios, dieticians, rehab specialists, neurologists, surgeons – and I tried many, many therapies. Luckily, my wife had private insurance – we were in the UK then – and I could go to just about any doctor that seemed promising. That's how I found myself in the offices of a Harley Street quack, a prominent pain specialist, who had great news for me: it turned out that opioids were way safer than had previously been thought, and I could just take opioids every day and night for the rest of my life without any serious risk of addiction. It would be fine.

This sounded wrong to me. I'd lost several friends to overdoses, and watched others spiral into miserable lives as they struggled with addiction. So I "did my own research." Despite not having a background in chemistry, biology, neurology or pharmacology, I struggled through papers and read commentary and came to the conclusion that opioids weren't safe at all. Rather, corrupt billionaire pharma owners like the Sackler family had colluded with their regulators to risk the lives of millions by pushing falsified research that was finding publication in some of the most respected, peer-reviewed journals in the world.

I became an opioid denier, in other words.

I decided, based on my own research, that the experts were wrong, and that they were wrong for corrupt reasons, and that I couldn't trust their advice.

When anti-vaxxers decried the covid vaccines, they said things that were – in form at least – indistinguishable from the things I'd been saying 15 years earlier, when I decided to ignore my doctor's advice and throw away my medication on the grounds that it would probably harm me.

For me, faith in vaccines didn't come from a broad, newfound trust in the pharmaceutical system: rather, I judged that there was so much scrutiny on these new medications that it would overwhelm even pharma's ability to corruptly continue to sell a medication that they secretly knew to be harmful, as they'd done so many times before:

https://www.npr.org/2007/11/10/5470430/timeline-the-rise-and-fall-of-vioxx

But many of my peers had a different take on anti-vaxxers: for these friends and colleagues, anti-vaxxers were being foolish. Surprisingly, these people I'd long felt myself in broad agreement with began to defend the pharmaceutical system and its regulators. Once they saw that anti-vaxx was a wedge issue championed by right-wing culture war shitheads, they became not just pro-vaccine, but pro-pharma.

There's a name for this phenomenon: "schismogenesis." That's when you decide how you feel about an issue based on who supports it. Think of self-described "progressives" who became cheerleaders for the America's cruel, ruthless and lawless "intelligence community" when it seemed that US spooks were bent on Trump's ouster:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/18/schizmogenesis/

The fact that the FBI didn't like Trump didn't make them allies of progressive causes. This was and is the same entity that (among other things) tried to blackmail Martin Luther King, Jr into killing himself:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_suicide_letter

But schismogenesis isn't merely a reactionary way of flip-flopping on issues based on reflexive enmity. It's actually a reasonable epistemological tactic: in a world where there are more issues you need to be clear on than you can possibly inform yourself about, you need some shortcuts. One shortcut – a shortcut that's failing – is to say, "Well, I'll provisionally believe whatever the expert system tells me is true." Another shortcut is, "I will provisionally disbelieve in whatever the people I know to act in bad faith are saying is true." That is, "schismogenesis."

Schismogenesis isn't a great tactic. It would be far better if we had a set of institutions we could all largely trust – if the black boxes where expert debate took place were sturdy, rectilinear and sharp-cornered.

But they're not. They're just not. Our regulatory process sucks. Corporate concentration makes it trivial for cartels to capture their regulators and steer them to conclusions that benefit corporate shareholders even if that means visiting enormous harm – even mass death – on the public:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/05/regulatory-capture/

No one hates Big Tech more than I do, but many of my co-belligerents in the war on Big Tech believe that the rise of conspiratorialism can be laid at tech platforms' feet. They say that Big Tech boasts of how good they are at algorithmically manipulating our beliefs, and attribute Qanons, flat earthers, and other outlandish conspiratorial cults to the misuse off those algorithms.

"We built a Big Data mind-control ray" is one of those extraordinary claims that requires extraordinary evidence. But the evidence for Big Tech's persuasion machines is very poor: mostly, it consists of tech platforms' own boasts to potential investors and customers for their advertising products. "We can change peoples' minds" has long been the boast of advertising companies, and it's clear that they can change the minds of customers for advertising.

Think of department store mogul John Wanamaker, who famously said "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half." Today – thanks to commercial surveillance – we know that the true proportion of wasted advertising spending is more like 99.9%. Advertising agencies may be really good at convincing John Wanamaker and his successors, through prolonged, personal, intense selling – but that doesn't mean they're able to sell so efficiently to the rest of us with mass banner ads or spambots:

http://pluralistic.net/HowToDestroySurveillanceCapitalism

In other words, the fact that Facebook claims it is really good at persuasion doesn't mean that it's true. Just like the AI companies who claim their chatbots can do your job: they are much better at convincing your boss (who is insatiably horny for firing workers) than they are at actually producing an algorithm that can replace you. What's more, their profitability relies far more on convincing a rich, credulous business executive that their product works than it does on actually delivering a working product.

Now, I do think that Facebook and other tech giants play an important role in the rise of conspiratorial beliefs. However, that role isn't using algorithms to persuade people to mistrust our institutions. Rather Big Tech – like other corporate cartels – has so corrupted our regulatory system that they make trusting our institutions irrational.

Think of federal privacy law. The last time the US got a new federal consumer privacy law was in 1988, when Congress passed the Video Privacy Protection Act, a law that prohibits video store clerks from leaking your VHS rental history:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/07/why-vppa-protects-youtube-and-viacom-employees

It's been a minute. There are very obvious privacy concerns haunting Americans, related to those tech giants, and yet the closest Congress can come to doing something about it is to attempt the forced sale of the sole Chinese tech giant with a US footprint to a US company, to ensure that its rampant privacy violations are conducted by our fellow Americans, and to force Chinese spies to buy their surveillance data on millions of Americans in the lawless, reckless swamp of US data-brokerages:

https://www.npr.org/2024/03/14/1238435508/tiktok-ban-bill-congress-china

For millions of Americans – especially younger Americans – the failure to pass (or even introduce!) a federal privacy law proves that our institutions can't be trusted. They're right:

https://www.tiktok.com/@pearlmania500/video/7345961470548512043

Occam's Razor cautions us to seek the simplest explanation for the phenomena we see in the world around us. There's a much simpler explanation for why people believe conspiracy theories they encounter online than the idea that the one time Facebook is telling the truth is when they're boasting about how well their products work – especially given the undeniable fact that everyone else who ever claimed to have perfected mind-control was a fantasist or a liar, from Rasputin to MK-ULTRA to pick-up artists.

Maybe people believe in conspiracy theories because they have hundreds of life-or-death decisions to make every day, and the institutions that are supposed to make that possible keep proving that they can't be trusted. Nevertheless, those decisions have to be made, and so something needs to fill the epistemological void left by the manifest unsoundness of the black box where the decisions get made.

For many people – millions – the thing that fills the black box is conspiracy fantasies. It's true that tech makes finding these conspiracy fantasies easier than ever, and it's true that tech makes forming communities of conspiratorial belief easier, too. But the vulnerability to conspiratorialism that algorithms identify and target people based on isn't a function of Big Data. It's a function of corruption – of life in a world in which real conspiracies (to steal your wages, or let rich people escape the consequences of their crimes, or sacrifice your safety to protect large firms' profits) are everywhere.

Progressives – which is to say, the coalition of liberals and leftists, in which liberals are the senior partners and spokespeople who control the Overton Window – used to identify and decry these conspiracies. But as right wing "populists" declared their opposition to these conspiracies – when Trump damned free trade and the mainstream media as tools of the ruling class – progressives leaned into schismogenesis and declared their vocal support for these old enemies of progress.

This is the crux of Naomi Klein's brilliant 2023 book Doppelganger: that as the progressive coalition started supporting these unworthy and broken institutions, the right spun up "mirror world" versions of their critique, distorted versions that focus on scapegoating vulnerable groups rather than fighting unworthy institutions:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/05/not-that-naomi/#if-the-naomi-be-klein-youre-doing-just-fine

This is a long tradition in politics: hundreds of years ago, some leftists branded antisemitism "the socialism of fools." Rather than condemning the system's embrace of the finance sector and its wealthy beneficiaries, anti-semites blame a disfavored group of people – people who are just as likely as anyone to suffer under the system:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_is_the_socialism_of_fools

It's an ugly, shallow, cartoon version of socialism's measured and comprehensive analysis of how the class system actually works and why it's so harmful to everyone except a tiny elite. Literally cartoonish: the shadow-world version of socialism co-opts and simplifies the iconography of class struggle. And schismogenesis – "if the right likes this, I don't" – sends "progressive" scolds after anyone who dares to criticize finance as the crux of our world's problems as popularizing "antisemetic dog-whistles."

This is the problem with "horseshoe theory" – the idea that the far right and the far left bend all the way around to meet each other:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/26/horsehoe-crab/#substantive-disagreement

When the right criticizes pharma companies, they tell us to "do our own research" (e.g. ignore the systemic problems of people being forced to work under dangerous conditions during a pandemic while individually assessing conflicting claims about vaccine safety, ideally landing on buying "supplements" from a grifter). When the left criticizes pharma, it's to argue for universal access to medicine and vigorous public oversight of pharma companies. These aren't the same thing:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/25/the-other-shoe-drops/#quid-pro-quo

Long before opportunistic right wing politicians realized they could get mileage out of pointing at the terrifying epistemological crisis of trying to make good choices in an age of institutions that can't be trusted, the left was sounding the alarm. Conspiratorialism – the fracturing of our shared reality – is a serious problem, weakening our ability to respond effectively to endless disasters of the polycrisis.

But by blaming the problem of conspiratorialism on the credulity of believers (rather than the deserved disrepute of the institutions they have lost faith in) we adopt the logic of the right: "conspiratorialism is a problem of individuals believing wrong things," rather than "a system that makes wrong explanations credible – and a schismogenic insistence that these institutions are sound and trustworthy."

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/25/black-boxes/#when-you-know-you-know

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