#i'll use you as a warning sign

[ironhoshi]

- - -

He steps away from the railing, away from the shadows, and can feel those glowing eyes focused on him. Green, the type of green he associates with lush planets- with hidden things. He can see ancient forests growing before him when he stares too long into those eyes. When Cal shifts his face away for a mere second later he can see the way the glowing green leaves an imprint behind in the air before fading.

"I have a Code," he finally responds. Laughter is the only response he gets.

[governmentmandatedryujinstan420]

i can't believe i come back momentarily from the dead and it's with more cancerous memes. Two versions bc god had other plans, none which included not having both of these.

[scarletfasinera]

ur so right about the fucking demure thing i saw ppl embracing it cause a trans woman started it (i think? i dont have tiktok) and i was like. fucking hello why are we acting like telling women to be modest quiet and polite is progressive what the FUCK

I have no idea who started it or where it came from bc it seemed to come out of no where, but every single person I have ever heard say "very demure" out loud in front of me was a cisgender person and it repeatedly pissed me off because every time its use was just 100% misogynistic. I had to tell someone irl "if you ever call me 'demure' ever again, even as a joke, I'm going to hit you. This is a warning."

[sangrenfreude]

i love cj!evelin they're so gender

[pulchrasilva]

Having people you care about who are suicidal while you're not suicidal is truly a special torture I think I want to go back to wanting to kill myself im gonna throw up

[softwingedd]

Pride can stand A thousand trials The strong will never fall But watching stars without you My soul cried Heaving heart is full of pain Oh, oh, the aching 'Cause I'm kissing you, oh I'm kissing you

[theood]

I'll be fine but this was the first thing that's gotten me to cry. I wish everything was different. It shouldn't have been like this

[xavieremix]

okay so the tags on that last post got me feeling those melon collies so i'm just gonna. tagdump in here. slightly sensitive topics? so uh. scroll down (or press J to jump to next post). or read my thoughts like the morning paper. sorry. cheers.

[inbabylontheywept]

The Motherfucking Lizard King

No one at work trusts my boss. 

He's smart. He works hard. He's not trustworthy. He hasn't actually fucked anyone at work over, but he's ruined his last two marriages with affairs, and got dumped by his third fiance when he wouldn't sign a prenup. The fact that we all know this is just a hazard of working in a small town. 

Anyway: The thought process of the people in the lab is that if he screwed over his first wife, and his second wife, and was probably planning on screwing over his third wife, it would be insane for him not to screw us over. After all, what kind of idiot treats their employees better than their spouse? 

I dunno. His kind, I guess? He's had a few chances to fuck us over, and he hasn't taken them. Opposite really. When our parent company was doing furloughs, he stayed in the office almost a hundred hours, talking and talking and talking his way up the corporate ladder. And in the end, no one at our site got furloughed. 

He's pulled strings like that before. And it baffles me, right? Because it really does make zero sense. He'll move the heavens and the earth for us, but his wife and kids are afterthoughts. It feels like any moment, he's going to look into the mirror and realize how stupid that is. It feels like I'm betting on him making the same stupid mistake again, and again, and again - like it would be less cynical to believe he was, eventually, going to stab me in the back. But he hasn't yet, and as far as I can tell he's been making that mistake for close to fifteen years, and it's already cost him everything it can. If he was going to learn, he would have by now. 

So my position on him is that if he wanted to date someone I cared about, I'd warn them off. I don't trust him there. But I tentatively trust him to be my boss. Maybe one day he'll stick the knife in and twist, and everyone will say Ah, Babs, we warned you, but for now, I accept that he's doing a very predictable, very irrational thing, and I've made my peace with it. 

---

My job has glue traps. 

No one likes the glue traps, but we don't have a lot of options. Poison's banned by state law, spring traps are banned by company safety, and several non-lethal options tried in the past failed to work. The mouse problem can get pretty bad if it's ignored, and there's some real health hazards in that. Our site has never had a positive hantavirus test, thank God, but the big base about a half hour away has. That guy's gonna be on oxygen the rest of his life. 

If a mouse gets caught, we just euthanize it. But more than mice get stuck. Lizards can wander into those traps too, and the people working there have different feelings about the lizards. They don't pose nearly the same kind of risk mice do. They're chill little guys, and they keep the moths away, and they're just 

You know. They're friendly. There's something to be said about walking into a room, and hitting the light switch, and seeing two little guys on the wall start to do pushups as soon as they see you. 

People used to just euthanize the lizards too, but I had pet leopard geckos as a kid and I couldn't take that so I wound up googling how to free animals from glue traps. Now, when a lizard gets stuck in a trap - which happens once or twice a week - I get some vegetable oil from the breakroom, and a little plastic fork, and I'll spend fifteen to twenty minutes just kind of gently prying the little guys out. 

I have a team of technicians that help me operate one of the larger machines. They're real blue collar guys, ex-airforce, and they make me look like a little kid. Being an engineer means they'll look to me as a leader sometimes, which is a wild experience. And I started helping the lizards for my own conscience, but one of the crazier consequences of it has been that it seriously boosted my leadership cred. Because those guys see me, and they go: Hey. If he's willing to fight for a lizard, he's gotta be willing to fight for me. 

I cannot overstate how nice that is. Most engineers that want to make a change to a maintenance practice, or try an upgrade, they have to work their asses off to get the techs to buy in. But I can just ask. They already trust me to do good. They know I'm new, and they know I'm not the smartest engineer in the building, but they also know I'm the one who gets lizards out of the glue traps. 

And just because of that, they're willing to follow me. 

---

My boss has a meeting every month or two. It's typically basic house cleaning stuff - reminders about routines we've gotten lazy on, and updates on future projects. Maybe some warnings about problems coming from higher up in the company.

People are, in my opinion, a bit too cynical about the meetings. It stems from people not trusting our boss, which again, I understand, because it would make so much more sense if he wasn't trustworthy. It's a testament to the man's incredibly unhealthy priorities that he is. But as we made it to the end of the meeting, one of bullet points was: 

Do NOT mess with animals in the building. 

So I looked at my techs, and they looked at me, and when he got to the point, he was so scathing I actually just wanted to crawl under a rock and die. He said basically that he'd heard some reports about someone in the building handling animals that found their way in and got stuck, and that he just wanted to emphasize how insanely inappropriate that was, not to mention dangerous, and that if he needed to speak to anyone about it again, there would be severe consequences. 

I was willing to just take the shame and move on. I was. But one of my techs is old. Old enough he could've retired two years ago. And his actual literal goal is to one day get angry, yell at someone, and storm out. That's how he wants to retire. So instead of biting his tongue like everyone else, he stood up and said: I hate the glue traps. You hate the glue traps. We all hate glue traps. But we've all sat here for years, ignoring the little things that get stuck in them, watching them die, and then Bab's comes in, and he is the first person in decades to give enough of a shit to start pulling the lizards out. And I don't want him to stop. 

Get humane traps or shut up but we are not going back to the old way of just letting things starve. 

And my boss actually froze up. He got all wide eyed and stared at Marc, and then the other techs jumped in, and there was a very small but intense rebellion in the meeting and my boss kept trying to interrupt while getting absolutely bowled over by this gang of angry middle aged air force vets, and eventually he just went 

I will speak with Babylon about this afterwards! After! And then he will speak with everyone else, but I have more points to cover. 

So they went silent, and my boss rushed through the last five minutes, and we all adjounred. The techs really didn't like that I was going in alone - they thought our boss was going to try and shout me into compliance. Marc in particular was like, Look, if he tries bullying you, stand your ground, and if he threatens anything, just come get us, and we'll give him hell. 

So armed with that, I went to my boss's office. I sat in the chair across from him, and he kept his composure for maybe five seconds before just flopping back into his chair. 

I had no idea you were saving lizards, he said, but I'm glad you are. I always hated seeing them die in the glue.  

I wasn't expecting that. I was about to ask him what the comment from the meeting was about then, but he answered that before I even got the chance.

A snake got into the building last week, and - someone picked it up and chased a coworker around. Turns out that coworker was severely afraid of snakes, and now it's a shitshow. We're a small site, and now I can't ask those two to work together anymore, to say nothing about how the snake fared after all that. Being upset about that is a reasonable thing, right? 

And he gave me a look like he actually wanted an answer, so I said Yeah, totally, chasing a coworker around with a snake is a dick move. Especially if that coworker is already afraid of snakes. 

And he said Exactly! and then we sat there a few moments longer. He looked so incredibly tired that I did, actually, feel kind of bad for him. And then he somehow managed to sink even further into his chair, and said

Look, I know I'm not a good guy. But I'm not evil. I'm not some sort of crazy asshole that's going to demand that everyone watch lizards starve to death. When you go back downstairs, could you try to pass that on? That I'm not evil? 

I said Sure because it wasn't a hard request, and he looked relieved. I actually made it halfway out before I realized I had a question. 

Who grabbed the snake? I asked. 

Not supposed to talk about it, he said. But whoever comes to mind first is probably right. 

ThatGuy? I asked. And he looked me in the face, nodded his head yes, and said No. 

---

The techs seemed a little disappointed that they didn't get to storm the boss's office, but were otherwise in good spirits. They were actually a little bit embarrassed to hear about the snake story - apparently, it wasn't much of a secret. It'd just slipped their minds because it happened three weeks ago. 

We did maintenance after that, the same basic repairs we did every week. The meeting had been stressful and it was a relief to work with my hands. When the parts were reinstalled, everything cleaned and smooth and ready to go, Marc found me again. 

You know what the lesson of today is? he asked. And there were quite a few answers to that that I could have taken - from don't assume the worst of people to be careful with how you spend your trust - we all need it more than we think. 

But instead I said what? because I wanted to hear what his answer was going to be. 

That I got your back, he said. Then he clapped one very, very large hand on my shoulder, gave it a good squeeze, and walked back to dosimetry lab.

---

The next day, Marc gave me a package and told me to open it in my office. I was suspicious, but I followed the request.

Cardboard gave way to a small baggie, obviously full of fabric, which opened to reveal a t-shirt that read

"I Am the Motherfucking Lizard King."

I looked at it, I loved it, and then I got an idea. I went to my boss's office and knocked on the door. When he opened it, I asked him if he would be willing to allow something very unprofessional to happen for morale building purposes.

How unprofessional? he asked. I held the shirt up in answer. He gave the shirt a short look over and snorted.

You can wear it on weeks without customers, he said. Which just so happened to include that week.

I'll pass on that it came with your blessing, I replied, and he looked oddly relieved.

Thanks, he said. And then I went downstairs.

---

The techs were very, very happy to see the shirt. And while my boss's reputation remains in tatters, and probably will be until he moves (or dies), the next time there was a meeting, there was quite a bit less complaining about how mere presence. Which is, I guess, a start.

We'll see if he squanders it.

[neverendingford]

.

[gilamasan]

KOSA'S BACK

I'm not going to leave this unmentioned as the news isn't doing enough to warn people. The short of it is, the bill which disguises itself as a means to make the web safer was written by The Heritage Foundation to give the FTC full authority on what's deemed safe on the web. Under the new administration, it will be used to censor LGBT content. We know this was the point, as its proponents have shared this exact plan. It can still be beaten if called and emailed their senators, making it clear what harm the bill will do I'll link pages that can give you a line to your lawmakers, a way to write to them, and also a petition to sign.. The former only takes two minutes, and the latter has a pre-written script if you need it. This is more than important enough for your time. Even if you're in a red state, some conservatives oppose this bill beleive it will silence conservative voices too, so if you think that line of reasoning would work better on them, go for it!

[mononijikayu]

you belong with me — nanami kento.

"Hi….I’m Kento."

“Kento, huh.” you said, testing the name again like you were rolling it around in your head, trying to get the feel of it. After a moment, you nodded, satisfied.

“Yeah, that’s my name.”

“That’s a good name.” You declared it with the authority of a five-year-old who had decided someone was officially worth their time.

“Your name’s okay too... I guess,” Kento replied, his tone so nonchalant it was almost teasing.

GENRE: alternate universe - no curses au!;

WARNING/S: afab! reader, childhood friends, best friends to lovers, romance, nsfw, rated 18 and above, explicit content, kissing, making out, rough sex, fingering, p to v sex, car sex, orgasm, humor, profanity, pet names (my love, etc), possessiveness, jealousy, characters speaking in sexual innuendo, mention of sexual euphemisms, depiction of explicit sexual content, best friend! nanami kento, best friend! reader;

WORD COUNT: 14k words.

NOTE: hello everyone, this is the final fic for 2024!!! wah, there's a lot to say. first and foremost, this fic would not be possible if it wasn't for the lovely person who commissioned it from me awhile back. please give them a lot of love and a lot of thanks.

they were my first ever commission here and still it flutters my heart with joy to have worked them. they were so good to me and continues to do so, with how they want to share this fic with you too.

also, i want to thank you all for sticking with me this 2024. it was a long road and a really painful time. i wrote to escape these painful times and i got through 2024 with you guys, just enjoying stories in my head. so thank you!!! there were a lot and there are still a lot i haven't published here.

i hope we continue to be together in 2025 too. i'll continue to write for both of us, to have solace in hard times. i bow to you in all ways that i can. thank you for being good to me!!! i love you all. this is kayu signing off for 2024. please have a lovely and wonderful new year and i'll see you on january 2025 <33333

masterlist

if you want to, tip! <3

══════════════════

EVEN AS A CHILD, YOU THOUGHT THAT HE BELONGED TO YOU. It was a childish little thing, you knew that much. But the moment you met Nanami Kento at the park when you were five years old, you just knew he was going to be your best friend.

And no one else could claim that from you. It wasn’t something you decided after a long debate in your head. If anything, it was instinctive, instant, like the way a flower turns toward the sun. What surprised you even more was that he didn’t seem to mind it.

That day, Nanami Kento was sitting on the swings, looking unusually serious for a kid. His little legs dangled, barely brushing the ground, and he rocked back and forth so slightly it was as if he wasn’t even moving. It was odd. 

Most kids treated the swings like they were flying machines, pumping their legs wildly, laughing as they soared. But not Kento. He just sat there, his small hands gripping the chains, his gaze fixed on the ground as though it held all the answers to the universe.

It wasn’t sadness—not exactly. He didn’t look miserable or lonely. No, it was more like he was... satisfied. Content in his little bubble of silence, where the noise of the playground seemed to slide right past him.

You, however, were not content with his quiet. What could a kid possibly have to think about so deeply? Why wasn’t he running around, chasing someone, or shouting nonsense with the other kids? How could he stomach sitting there alone for so long?

The questions buzzed in your head, but more than that, you felt a pull. You wanted to know him. You wanted him to talk to you, to share whatever thoughts were hiding behind those serious brown eyes. And if he wouldn’t come to you, well, that was fine. You’d go to him.

You had the kind of confidence that only comes from being five years old and utterly fearless. The kind of confidence that didn’t know rejection or hesitation, only the certainty that the world would say "yes" if you asked it nicely enough.

So, you marched right up to him, your pigtails bouncing with each determined step. You put on your brightest smile, the kind of smile that has always gotten adults to bend down and coo. “Aren’t you just the sweetest?”

"Hi!" you announced, planting yourself firmly in front of him like he had no choice but to acknowledge you. You told him your name, grinning at him. 

He blinked, startled out of his deep, secured thoughts to the sight of you. It took a while, but he  lifted his caramel gaze to meet yours. For a moment, he just looked at you, like he wasn’t sure if you were real. No one has ever approached him before, well not as brazenly as this. Then, finally, he answered you back. 

"Hi….I’m Kento."

“Kento, huh.” you said, testing the name again like you were rolling it around in your head, trying to get the feel of it. After a moment, you nodded, satisfied. 

“Yeah, that’s my name.”

“That’s a good name.” You declared it with the authority of a five-year-old who had decided someone was officially worth their time.

“Your name’s okay too... I guess,” Kento replied, his tone so nonchalant it was almost teasing.

“Huh? It’s pretty!” you retorted, your hands flying to your hips, a slight pout settling on your lips. “My mom thought hard about it, you know!”

“So did mine.” Kento shot back, a flicker of mischief lighting his normally serious face. Then, in a tone that was just a little too smug, he added, “It’s a good name too.”

For a second, you just stared at him, caught off guard by the slyness in his tone. Then, to your own surprise, you burst out laughing. It wasn’t just the words that got to you—it was the way he said them, so calm and deliberate, like he was throwing you a challenge wrapped in politeness.

“You’re funny, you know that?” you decided, grinning widely.

Kento raised an eyebrow at that, his lips twitching into the barest hint of a smile. “I wasn’t trying to be.”

“Well, you are.” you said firmly, as though your opinion was final. “So, Kento, what do you wanna do? We could swing, or climb the jungle gym, or—oh! We could build a sandcastle!”

He blinked, caught off guard by your rapid-fire suggestions. “I don’t know,” he said slowly, like he wasn’t used to making decisions for playtime.

You rolled your eyes and grabbed his hand without a second thought. “Then we’re doing the sandcastle! Come on, you’re gonna love it.”

He let you pull him along, his steps falling into rhythm with yours. “What if I don’t?” he asked, his voice so soft you almost missed the challenge in it.

“You will!” you said confidently, already imagining the crooked towers you’d build together. “Because I said so.”

Nanami Kento didn’t argue. Instead, he let out a quiet laugh, the sound so small you might’ve missed it if you weren’t paying attention. But you were paying attention, because something about this boy made you want to see every little detail he kept hidden in that quiet bubble of his.

From that moment, Kento Nanami became yours.

He knew that just as much as you did, even then.

And he was certain you were just as much his from then.

It wasn’t long into your days of playdates before you started staking your claim. You didn’t mean to—well, maybe you did. That really didn’t matter. What mattered was that you and Kento were having fun. Like the time some other kids approached while you and Kento were hard at work in the sandbox, trying to make your castle less crooked.

"Hey, kid!" one of them called, pointing at the little shovel in Kento’s hands. "Can I borrow that?"

"No way." you said firmly before Kento could even open his mouth. You shot the kid a look that clearly said back off. "We’re using it."

"But—"

"Nope. Sorry. It’s ours to play with." you cut them off, turning back to your castle as if the conversation was over. "Right, Kento?"

Kento hesitated for a second, glancing between you and the other kid, before quietly nodding. "Right."

The other kids' faces were filled with harsh looks at what you said. But you didn’t care. All they could do was huff and puff until they were blue in the face. You would never budge, not even if they wanted you too. 

You were a tough girl. And you always got what you wanted. And you wanted your new friend and his attention only on you. So you didn't care what you did. You’ll keep your friend, no matter what they want. 

Soon enough, they gave in and went to wander off. You can only smile. You didn’t feel the slightest bit bad. If anything, you had wished that they had left much sooner. 

You turned to Kento with a satisfied smile. "Good. They’d just mess it up anyway. It’s better if we play together, only us!"

Kento tilted his head, watching you with that quiet curiosity he always seemed to have. You seemed to be content about playing just by yourself, by his side. Not many kids seem to be content about wanting to do that at all.

"Why don’t you let other kids play with us?" he asked.

You looked at him like the answer should’ve been obvious. "Because you’re my friend. I found you first. That means you’re mine."

For a moment, he just stared at you.

Then, slowly, that tiny, barely-there smile returned.

"Okay." he said simply, like he didn’t mind one bit.

══════════════════

YEARS DRAGGED ON IN A FLASH FOR BOTH OF YOU. From that day forward, Nanami Kento was your shadow. Or maybe you were his—it often depended on who was asking and whose ego needed inflating at the moment.

But that was just how it was between the two of you. And you were content about how that goes. You knew he was just the same. Not because you went around declaring it (okay, maybe you did once or twice), but because your actions left no room for doubt.

The two of you were inseparable, and everyone knew it. In a way, both your parents were both glad and concerned about it. Glad that you both were in each other’s lives, nurturing and caring for each other. That means you both weren’t lonely, and you both were happily playing with each other day in and out of school.

But concerned that you weren’t letting each other find any other people in your lives and explore other friendships. But that hardly mattered to the two of you. Both of you didn’t budge. You didn’t need anyone else. If anything, you only need each other. You were both content with that. 

If there was a school project, Nanami Kento was your partner. No debates, no negotiation. You made sure of it every single time. It got to the point where teachers didn’t even bother asking anymore. By third grade, the class roster might as well have been printed with your name and his own written in bold under "Partners" for every project.

“Do you guys ever work with anyone else?” a classmate once dared to ask.

“Why would we?” you replied, looking genuinely puzzled. “He’s the best at making the physical parts.I don’t need anyone else.”

Kento, standing beside you, simply shrugged. “She’s good at explaining the messy, hard parts.” he said, so matter-of-factly it left no room for argument.

At lunch, it was no different. You always saved him a spot, waving him over like a VIP guest being ushered past the velvet rope. And no one dared sit with the two of you. Not after The Incident.

There was one time where a new kid made the mistake of sliding into the seat next to Nanami Kento before he got there. You didn’t even hesitate to act as quickly as you could. 

“Excuse me, new kid.” you said, your voice sugary sweet, but your eyes narrowing dangerously.

“What?” the kid asked, glancing up at you.

“That’s his seat.” You pointed toward Kento, who was still in the lunch line, entirely oblivious to the showdown brewing at the table.

“Seats are for everyone in the school.” the kid said, with all the defiance of someone who didn’t know better yet. “I can sit wherever I want.”

And that’s when you did it. You reached out and swatted their hand as they tried to open their milk carton. You glared at him, almost as cold as the North Pole. He gulped at your glare. You were terrifying for a middle schooler.

“Go. Somewhere. Else.” you said, every word punctuated with a glare that could have sent a grown man packing. “That’s HIS seat!”

The new kid was terrified and immediately scurried off, muttering something about "territorial weirdos." — that was another thing for the school to whisper about in their past time. But you didn’t care. 

By the time that he got out of the boy’s toilets, Nanami Kento got to the table, his spot was as clear as always, and you were already peeling the wrapper off the sandwich your mom made for him like nothing had happened.

“Thanks.” he said, sitting down without even asking why the kid from earlier was now eating on the other side of the cafeteria. He saw that of course. But he didn’t dare ask. “Thank your mom for me, about the sandwich.”

“You’re welcome.” you replied, sliding his sandwich over to him. You smiled as he opened his own lunch bag and started to pull out chocolate pudding in a tupperware. “Ohhhh, your mom thought of dessert!”

“Hm, I asked her.” Kento retorts back to you, smiling softly at your excitement. “Since you like chocolate pudding.”

“Thank your mama for me, okay?”

“Hm, I will.”

But of course, your protectiveness didn’t stop at lunch seats. If anything, you were protective of him to the point that it was already insane. If anyone so much as thought about teasing him, you were on them like a hawk. It didn’t matter if it was a stupid nickname or a poorly aimed joke. Nanami Kento wasn’t going to deal with any of it, not on your watch.

“Hey, Kento, why are you so quiet all the time?” one boy snickered during recess, his tone dripping with mockery.

Before Kento could even respond, you were already there, hands on your hips and glaring like you were ready to call down the wrath of the heavens. You glared at the kid as though he was meeting to face a thousand suns. 

“Maybe he’s quiet because he doesn’t waste time saying dumb things like you do.” you snapped, tilting your head and raising an eyebrow for maximum effect. “Stop being a weird waste of space and leave him alone, you freak!”

The boy tried to stammer something in response, but you didn’t wait to hear it. You didn’t care for what they said. Only for what Kento says. You rolled your eyes at the kid, as though he bored you and looked away. Soon enough, you turned back to Kento, your expression softening immediately. 

“Come on, Kento.” you said, grabbing his hand. “We’re going to the swings.”

Kento didn’t say much about that. But later, when that same boy made a malicious face at you from across the playground and had made a plan to chase you with a bottle of water to throw, Nanami Kento was the first to sense a threat against you.

He sighed heavily and without even looking up from his picture book muttered just loud enough for you to hear. “She’s faster than you, you know? She would wet your hair and make fun of you for it. So, I wouldn’t try it.”

The boy stayed far away after that.

And you could only giggle at what he said.

Nanami Kento knew you all too well.

But just as much as you were ready to fight Nanami Kento’s battles, he was ready to fight yours. And while you often took on challenges with the energy of a charging bull, Kento’s approach was quieter, deadlier—like a knife slipping between ribs before anyone even noticed it was there. He was just that type of kid, you think.

You first realized just how far Kento was willing to go for you one day when a group of older girls decided to target your ponytails. It wasn’t a big deal to you at first; you were used to the occasional teasing. But this time, something about their tone, or maybe the way they crowded around, everything about it had made your stomach twist.

“Why do you always look like you just rolled out of bed?” one of them sneered, her voice dripping with faux innocence.

Her friends burst into laughter, as if she’d just delivered the punchline of the century. You bristled, the words forming on your tongue to snap back. But before you could speak, Kento appeared, slipping between you and the girls like it was the most natural thing in the world.

“Why do you care?” he asked, his tone calm, his hands tucked casually into his pockets.

It was such a simple question, but somehow it silenced the entire group. The girl blinked at him, thrown off by his directness. Kento yawned, as though he was already bored with her. She had never expected anything from him. Kento was quiet and reserved. 

He was also popular and quite a handsome young boy that people had a crush on. Even when he didn’t talk or pay any mind to any of them. You glared at this girl, as though she was the worst of them all. She’s always been trying to take Kento from you.

“Uh, excuse me?” she said, attempting to regain her composure.

“You heard me.” Kento’s gaze was steady, his expression as unreadable as ever, but there was an edge to his voice that made it clear he wasn’t messing around. “Why do you care what she looks like? Or are you just bored?”

The giggling stopped. 

“Well, I—” The girl floundered, her cheeks turning pink. 

“She looks fine to me.” Kento interrupted smoothly, tilting his head slightly as if he were assessing them. “Better than you, anyway. I mean, those pants with that shirt? What are you thinking? Does your mom even love you if she allows you to wear something like that?”

You could’ve heard a pin drop at what he had said. You look at him, blinkingly. Before finding yourself bellowing at laughter at how blunt he had worked everything. The girls gasped, their mouths falling open in perfect synchronization. One of them muttered something about “rude boys” and then, just like that, they were gone, retreating with their tails between their legs.

You stood there, stunned, as Kento turned back to you like nothing had happened. You finally straightened yourself from your laughing form. You wiped your eyes as you turned back at him. You grinned at his words. 

“Better than her?” you repeated later as the two of you walked back to class. You were trying not to laugh, but the corners of your mouth kept twitching upward.

“It’s true. You already know that.” he said simply, not bothering to look up from the book he’d already opened, as if the whole thing hadn’t even fazed him.

“Aw, you think I’m cute, don’t you?” you teased, nudging him with your elbow.

“Don’t push it.” he replied dryly, but the tiny smirk playing at the corner of his lips betrayed him.

══════════════════

BUT OF COURSE, THIS ONLY INTENSIFIED ONCE YOU BOTH GREW OLDER. Entering this new environment, in high school — one could say nothing had ever changed. If anything, it has only grown more concrete that you and Nanami Kento, no one can separate the two of you even if they tried. 

If one were to describe how you both were, it would be like being a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Inseparable. And even when people questioned it, you turned them down just as easily. Little by little, people barely questioned it anymore. 

You had long since reached the point where your friendship was so solid that it seemed like a fact of life. If anyone tried to ask about it, the answer was already clear: You two were a package deal. And while you liked it that way, not everyone seemed to get the memo.

It didn’t take long for the attention to roll in once high school started. You were used to it by now. After all, you and Kento had always been a pair of conspicuously close friends, so naturally, people were curious. 

But this was a different kind of curiosity, the kind that came with stares and whispers behind your backs. Everyone seemed to have suddenly developed a keen interest in your best friend, and you couldn’t decide if it was because of his brooding good looks or that deep, mysterious aura he carried, but maybe, probably both.

It started with the girls, as it usually did. They would hover around Kento in class, a little too eager to engage in conversations about anything—his favorite books, his thoughts on the weather, even the random things he’d written in the margins of his notes. It didn’t matter what they brought up; they were just looking for an excuse to get a reaction out of him. 

They wanted to be the one to crack the mystery that was Nanami Kento. And of course, they expected him to open up, to smile, to laugh, to do something that would confirm they were special enough to make him forget his usual quiet, studious demeanor.

But Kento, being the stoic, no-nonsense guy he was, would respond with quiet politeness, barely even registering their presence. He would tilt his head slightly when they asked questions, look at them through the edge of his glasses, and give just enough of an answer to keep things from getting awkward.

The girls would often stare at him a little longer than necessary, hoping for a second of warmth or acknowledgment. But no matter how many times they tried, all they got was that polite, impersonal smile that didn’t reach his eyes. And it wasn’t that he didn’t care; it was just that he didn’t care about them, not in the way they wanted. 

To Nanami Kento, it was all just noise. So, he’d just keep his focus on what mattered, which was probably the latest algebra problem or his ongoing internal monologue about the best way to prepare his next snack.

Even as an emo guy with that black hoodie, messy blond hair, brooding eyes that screamed ‘don’t talk to me, but if you do, be prepared for my sarcasm’—people still flocked to him. It was almost unfair, you thought. He had this combination of boy-next-door charm and detached, almost tragic mystique that girls couldn’t resist. 

He was a pretty boy, you knew that much. You’d known him long enough to appreciate the way his eyes glinted in the sunlight, how his messy hair always looked effortlessly perfect, how he somehow made a monotone voice sound like the most hypnotic thing in the room.

And it wasn’t just the girls, either. The guys were starting to notice, too. Sure, they didn’t hover the same way, but they’d get a little too chatty when Kento was around, laughing a little too hard at his dry jokes, trying just a bit too hard to be friendly.

Everyone knew he wasn’t the type to just buddy up with anyone, and that mystery only made him more desirable. So when they’d get too close, you’d notice the slight twitch of Kento’s eyebrow, the way he’d lean just a little bit further away to make it clear that he was not interested in their company.

But the one thing you didn’t doubt was this: Kento was really polite. He never outright rejected anyone, and that politeness was a plus. Sure, it drove you a little crazy when they’d swarm him like bees to honey.

But you had to admit that his politeness was a rare commodity in a world where most people had no issue turning someone down rudely or making them feel uncomfortable. Kento didn’t do that. He’d simply nod back at people and get back to whatever it was he was doing, never making a fuss about the attention.

Well, it was better than over half the school, that’s for sure. You’d seen the way people treated each other, cold and snide, brushing off others without so much as a second thought. Kento was a rare gem in that regard. He was a gentleman, even in the face of all the attention he was getting, and that made it all the more frustrating. 

It wasn’t that you didn’t want people to admire him; you just didn’t like the thought of anyone thinking they could replace you. You and Kento had this bond, a strong one, one that didn’t need words to be understood. But here was the thing—everyone else didn’t get it. And that was where the fun (and by fun, you mean sneaky sabotage) began.

After all, who else could say they knew all his little quirks? Who else had shared so many quiet lunches under that same oak tree, or been the one to force him to eat a full meal instead of staring at his book? You were his best friend, and that meant you had a certain, special claim on him, no matter how many girls wanted to make themselves part of his world.

But, like the selfless best friend you were, you’d keep that fact under wraps. No one needed to know you had a stake in him—especially when you were also the one helping him avoid the chaos of all his newfound admirers. Let them keep fighting over who could be the one to crack Kento's cold exterior; you'd be the one to keep it safe.

But that wasn’t enough. No, they wanted more. They wanted to peel back the layers, crack open that cool exterior, and find whatever hidden treasure lay beneath. And that was where you came in. That’s where you always have to come in. He was your best friend, after all.

It wasn’t that you hated the attention Kento was getting, but it was yours, wasn’t it? You didn’t want anyone to think they could just stroll up and waltz into the little bubble you and Kento had created. And you know he agreed. He doesn’t really need anyone else, he’s said that to you numerous times.

So naturally, you and Kento found creative ways to sabotage any admirer who dared to get too close. It wasn’t malicious, exactly. Well, not to you or Kento. it was more like you were just “protecting” him, and, on occasion, he did the same for you.

It started with the simple things. You'd hover near him during lunch, casually tossing your snacks at him in a way that made it obvious you didn’t want him interacting too much with anyone else. It was like a game of cat-and-mouse between the two of you. Both of you pretended you weren’t doing it, but everyone knew exactly what you were up to.

For example, when this girl from the other class named Yuki asked to sit with Kento one day during lunch time, you quickly swooped in, plopping down next to him like you were the most important thing in his world. You grinned at him and he hummed.

“Hey, Kentooooo!” you said, dropping your lunch tray in front of him. “Did you get those history notes I gave you this morning?”

Yuki opened her mouth to say something, but before she could, you continued to talk to him with a brighter grin. You nonchalantly handed your strawberry milk carton to him and he started to open it for you with the same amount of cool. 

“I was thinking of making brownies this weekend. You like chocolate, right? The ones that we used to buy at the mart? It hasn’t changed, right?” You sent her an apologetic smile. "Sorry, I know it's probably too sweet, but it’s his favorite.”

Kento nodded back at you as he placed your strawberry milk carton on the side. You thanked him happily as you started to drink with happy sounds. Kento simply looked at Yuki with the politest expression he could muster and muttered back at her. 

“Sorry, I’ve got a study group with her after school. Maybe next time.”

Yuki didn’t even bother trying to argue, just nodding stiffly before retreating. You shot Kento a quick grin, but before you could say anything, he just sighed and went back to his book.

“You didn’t have to do that, you know.” he muttered under his breath. “Could have handled that myself.”

“But I have to. You know that.” you said with a grin, popping a piece of fruit into your mouth. “You’re my best friend, not hers.”

One day at lunch, as you and Kento sat under the shade of the old oak tree, munching on your usual snacks, a girl named Mia from your history class walked by. She glanced at Kento, then at you, then back at Kento, before finally stopping a few feet away.

"Hey, Kento!" she called, her voice way too sweet for your liking. “Mind if I join you guys?”

You didn’t even have to look up from your crackers. “Sure, but he doesn’t bite.” you said, not even looking at Mia. “I mean, I don’t think so...”

Kento, who had been engrossed in a textbook the size of a brick, glanced up at you before looking back at Mia. "I can sit alone, you know." he said, a little too casually, not even bothering to hide the fact that he didn’t care much for the attention.

Mia, undeterred, tried again. “Are you sure? I heard you like this band, too. Maybe we could—”

But before she could finish her sentence, you leaned forward, dropping a half-eaten cracker dramatically into your lap as if to make your point clear. 

"If you want to talk about music, you’re gonna have to take it up with me right now, okay?" you declared, giving her your best “this is my turf” look. "Kento here’s more into his book right now, not whatever band you think you have in common with him."

Kento blinked slowly, clearly trying to figure out why he was being pulled into this, but didn't argue. He just glanced at you and nodded, an expression you knew meant, I’m not getting involved in this one.

Mia looked between you and Kento, her shoulders slumping in defeat. “Okay, fine.” she muttered before turning around and walking off, her face flushed red.

"Good job, hero," Kento muttered under his breath, voice dry.

You smirked at him. "You’re welcome, sunshine."

Of course, it wasn’t like you were the only one who was possessive. Nanami Kento hated that you were constantly getting hit on. It drove him absolutely insane. Apparently, teenage boys had this ridiculous notion that your consistent rejections made you more appealing. The more you turned them down, the more determined they became, like you were some kind of prize to be won.

Nanami Kento of course, naturally, found this logic baffling—and irritating. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust you to handle yourself; he absolutely did. He hated everyone else, maybe most of all the men around him and of course — you. 

But watching those guys swarm around you, trying to impress you with their lame jokes or over-the-top compliments, made his jaw tighten and his grip on his pen just a little too firm. Oh, he hated men even more like that. And, well, Kento was never one to sit back and let something annoy him for too long. Not when it comes to you.

But of course, there are things that come as unexpected too.

Maybe it was because Nanami Kento was too perceptive.

Maybe he was just good at dissecting situations happening.

He doesn’t know how this happened, or how this came to pass.

But today would change his life for good, that was certain.

A week after one particularly bold senior cornered you after class to “ask for your number” Kento decided to return the favor—not with dramatics, of course, but with his usual understated, calm assertiveness.

You were sitting in the library, animatedly telling Kento about your latest sketch. It was a concept you were certain would win the upcoming art contest. He was actually paying attention, nodding slightly as you explained your technique, when suddenly, a guy from the senior class decided to interrupt.

“Hey, you’re the girl who draws, right?” the senior asked, leaning against the edge of the table with a grin that screamed overconfident.

You blinked, caught off guard. “Uh… yeah, that’s me.”

“Well,” he continued, practically oozing smugness, “I was thinking, maybe you’d want to collaborate on some sketches sometime. You know, we could—”

Before he could finish whatever weak line he’d rehearsed, Kento smoothly slid into the seat beside you, his broad shoulders cutting off your view of the guy. He didn’t even spare him a glance. Instead, he turned to you, his voice calm but laced with just enough edge to make his point.

“I’m pretty sure sketching is a solitary activity.” Kento said matter-of-factly. “You know, for concentration… unless, of course, you want a distraction?”

The guy blinked, clearly caught off guard by Kento’s sudden presence. “Uh, no, I—”

Kento didn’t let him finish. “You know….” he continued, still not looking at the guy. “It’s actually better if you’re alone when you’re working. Less… interruptions.” 

He then picked up your sketchbook, flipping through it with the kind of casual indifference that somehow made it clear he wasn’t going anywhere. Your jaw dropped at what he’s done.He’s silly like this sometimes, you think to yourself. 

“Kento!” you half-laughed, half-scolded, reaching for your sketchbook. “That’s my sketchbook!”

“Yeah, I know, I know.” he replied nonchalantly, not even pretending to give it back. His attention wasn’t on your sketches anymore, though. His eyes were fixed on the poor senior, who was now fidgeting uncomfortably under Kento’s unnervingly calm stare. 

“Do you mind?” Kento said coolly. “She’s busy.”

The guy stammered something unintelligible, his confidence evaporating faster than a spilled soda in the sun. “Uh… yeah, maybe another time, I guess.” he mumbled before slinking off, clearly realizing he was no match for Nanami Kento’s level of subtle intimidation.

Once the guy was gone, you turned back to Kento, crossing your arms with a mix of exasperation and amusement. You giggled to yourself for a moment. He sighed, looking at how amused you were. It was always like this with you, getting giddy when he does things like this.

“Nice one, Kento.” you said, smirking. “You do know I could have handled that, right?”

Kento raised an eyebrow, setting your sketchbook back down and leaning back in his chair like nothing had happened. You take it back from him, giving him a small thanks. He couldn’t stop looking at you. But when you looked up again, he'd already looked away.

“Sure.” he said, his lips curling into that faint, almost-smile of his. “But it looked like you were busy… talking to him.”

You rolled your eyes, swatting his arm. “What was that even about? You’re not my bodyguard, you know.”

“I wasn’t being a bodyguard.” he replied, his tone annoyingly calm. “I was just... pointing out how distracting he was being.”

“Right, right.” you said, narrowing your eyes at him. “And that had nothing to do with you hating that he interrupted us?”

Kento didn’t answer right away, but the way his eyes flickered with quiet amusement gave him away. He never likes admitting it out loud, but he feels glad. He feels glad when he makes sure you both are alone. You were all he needed after all.

“Maybe.” he finally admitted, his voice as casual as ever. “Or maybe I just wanted to look at your sketchbook.”

You laughed, shaking your head. “You’re impossible.”

“And you talk too much.” he countered, eyes shining softly against your own.

You giggled back at him, your lips smiling beautifully at him. Beautifully more than ever before. “But you like it that way, don’t you?”

Huh, what was that? He thought to himself.

Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump.

Was that his heart beating like that just now?

For a moment, he stops and looks at you. You were unaware about what happened just now. Instead, you were back on your sketching, humming to some song you were obsessed with right now. Kento swallowed hard, suddenly hyper-aware of how he was looking at you. He cleared his throat. 

“We should get going.” he said finally, his voice a little quieter than usual. “The library closes soon.”

You nodded, falling into step beside him as you always did. But as you walked, Kento couldn’t help sneaking a glance at you out of the corner of his eye. He’d always thought of himself as someone who was good at keeping his emotions in check, but now he wasn’t so sure.

Is this what it feels like? Kento wondered as he watched you walk off in front of him. 

He stops. He takes in the sight of you. You were laughing, hopping on the tiles one by one. The sun glows behind you like a beacon leading him to the direction of life. You nearly fell, making him jump forward. But you held your balance. 

And then you laughed. Laughed so beautifully that he doesn’t know what to do.  He could feel every fiber of him turning warm, warmer and redder than ever before. His heart beating out of rhythm again. 

Ah, shit. Kento once more thinks to himself. I’m screwed.

══════════════════

HE DOESN’T THINK TO SAY ANYTHING. How could he, when he’s scared about the outcome? But as the time flew by as fast as it could, he knew he can’t keep being a coward about it. He had to say something. He should do it soon.

It was going to come out anyway. College was looming on both your shoulders. And with that, a lot of uncertainty came. If he says something, at the very least there would be something certain, concrete as your friendship. 

The two of you sat cross-legged on the floor of Kento’s family home, a single bottle of sake between you. Neither of you had much experience with alcohol, but the thrill of being eighteen and toeing the line of rebellion was too tempting to resist.

Kento poured carefully into the mismatched cups you'd found in his cupboard, his movements precise, even in the low light.

"Cheers, cheers!" you yell with that bright eyed grin, raising your cup to him.

"To...?" he asked, his brow arching slightly, always wanting things to have a purpose.

"To us!" you said simply, eyes sparkling with mischief.

He hesitated, his breath catching in his chest, before clicking his cup against yours. "To us."

The first sip was sharp, burning its way down, but it wasn’t long before the alcohol began to work its magic with swift effectivity. You laughed more freely, leaning closer to him, and your words came faster, your thoughts unfiltered.

"You know, Kentooooo." you said, poking his shoulder with a pout. "You’re, like, ridiculously handsome, right?"

Kento froze mid-sip, his ears instantly turning as pink as your sweater. "W–what?"

"I mean it! You’re so... ugh…." you groaned, tossing your head back dramatically. "How am I supposed to focus when you look at me like that?"

"Like what?" he asked, his voice soft, betraying the nervous flutter in his chest.

"Like you’re trying not to smile, but your eyes are giving you away." you teased, your grin widening as you poked his cheek this time.

Nanami Kento could feel his heart pounding so loud he was sure you could hear it. Every word you spoke chipped away at his usual composure, and he could feel himself unraveling under the weight of your drunken admiration. In just this moment, you wholly outwit him. You make him come undone. Only you can have that effect on him. Only you. 

"You’re unbelievable, you know that?" he muttered, trying to look away, but you caught his chin, turning his face back to yours.

"Admit it already, won’t you?" you said, your voice lower now, but no less playful. "You like me. Maybe even a little too much."

Kento stared at you, the world blurring slightly around the edges, whether from the alcohol or the way you were looking at him, he wasn’t sure. He didn’t want to do it like this. He didn’t want to put up his hopes that you would be sober enough to know the truth. Or for you to have sober truths pouring out of your sharp grinning lips. 

"I think…" he began, his voice steady but his heart anything but.

“You think?”

"I’m falling for you. More and more. Every second."

You blinked at what had just shifted in the air, your teasing expression softening as you processed his words. Then, to his surprise, you smiled—not mischievously this time, but gently, sweetly. Full with a merry drink, you smiled.

"Good." you whispered, leaning in so close he could smell the faint sweetness of the sake on your breath. "You said really good words.”

Kento barely had time to breathe before you pressed a soft kiss to his cheek, leaving his face on fire and his heart completely, utterly yours. Kento froze, the warmth of your lips lingering on his cheek like a brand. His breath hitched as your words sank into the alcohol-drenched air between you. 

“I think I’m already there.”

He stared at you, his usually composed mind now an unsteady swirl of emotions—exhilaration, disbelief, and a flicker of hesitation. Your gaze was soft, dreamy, and undeniably sincere, but the alcohol in your system clouded everything. He said it out loud. But are you sure? How could you be, with how merry the drink is in your belly?

"You don’t mean that." he murmured, his voice barely above a whisper, as though saying it too loud would shatter the fragile moment.

"I do. I do." you said, your expression serious despite the light flush of intoxication on your cheeks. You reached for his hand, holding it with a gentle firmness that made his heart stumble in its rhythm.

Kento's fingers curled instinctively around yours before he could stop himself, but his grip was careful, steady. "You're drunk. I just…you can’t say that drunk." he pointed out, his voice more tender than reprimanding.

You frowned, tilting your head like you were trying to understand him through the haze. "So? That doesn’t mean it’s not true."

He sighed, looking down at your joined hands. He wanted so desperately to believe you, to let his heart leap completely into your words, but his rational side, his ever-present voice of reason. It held him back.

"It matters. It matters to me." he said softly, his thumb brushing over your knuckles absentmindedly. "If you mean it, I need to hear it when you’re sober. When you’re sure."

"But I am sure, Kento." you insisted, leaning closer, your warmth almost overwhelming him. Your free hand reached up to brush a stray lock of hair from his forehead, and he felt the breath leave his lungs in a rush.

Kento shook his head, his smile faint but aching with restraint. "Not like this." he murmured. "You’ll wake up tomorrow and—"

"And what? Pretend this didn’t happen?" you interrupted, your brows knitting together. "Do you think I’d forget how much I lo—"

His hand shifted, gently pressing a single finger to your lips to quiet you, though it was more for his sake than yours. He wasn’t sure he could take it, hearing those words from you while your judgment was fogged.

"Stop. Please." he said, his voice barely steady. "Don’t say it now. Not tonight."

Your eyes searched hisfrustration flickering in their depths before softening. You saw the way his shoulders tensed, the way he looked at you like he was holding back an ocean of feelings.

"You're such a romantic, aren’t you?" you murmured, a teasing lilt to your voice as a lazy smile spread across your face.

He gave a quiet chuckle, his fingers brushing against your cheek now without realizing it. "Maybe." he admitted, his tone gentler than ever. "But I want this—want us—to start right. I’ll wait until you’re ready to tell me again."

You let out a small sigh but didn’t argue. Instead, you leaned into his touch, your head coming to rest on his shoulder as your eyelids grew heavy. You always liked this, taking in his warmth. You don’t think there was any other place you belonged in but his arms.

If you were being honest, you were afraid. He was right. Your words could mean something, and maybe it wouldn’t be as clear as his own. You were drunk. You were really drunk. And feels hazy in your head. It wouldn’t be fair. It wouldn’t be fair to your Kento. Not like this.

"Fine." you murmured, your words slurring slightly. "But you’d better be ready for me to say it a hundred times tomorrow. Maybe a thousand."

Kento chuckled again, the sound low and warm in his chest, as he rested his chin lightly on top of your head. "I’ll be ready." he promised, even as his own heart thudded wildly at the thought. “I’m always waiting for you. Always.”

And as you drifted off, still clutching his hand like it was the most natural thing in the world, Kento silently vowed to himself: when the time came, he’d tell you how deeply, how completely he felt for you too. He just needed to be sure you knew what it meant.

The morning after that night, you woke up on Kento's couch, the faint remnants of sake lingering in the air. Your head throbbed lightly, and your memories were fuzzy around the edges. Kento, ever thoughtful, had left a glass of water and some aspirin on the table beside you.

"Rough night?" he asked from the kitchen, his voice steady but carefully neutral as he busied himself making coffee.

You groaned, rubbing your temples. "What did I even say last night? I barely remember anything."

He hesitated, his hand tightening briefly on the handle of the coffee pot. He looked over at you, your half-asleep face free of the weight of your drunken confessions. For a moment, he considered saying something, but the words got caught in his throat.

"Nothing too embarrassing," he said instead, forcing a faint smile.

You laughed, your cheeks reddening slightly. "Good. I’d hate to think I made a fool of myself in front of you."

Kento gave a small nod, but his heart felt heavy. You didn’t remember, and he couldn’t bring himself to remind you. Not like this. So, he lets himself break apart. He doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t let you have guilt. Because if he did, how is that loving you?

So Nanami Kento buried those words, locking them away where they couldn’t touch the fragile balance between you. He told himself it was better this way. But he hopes, maybe one day — just one day. You’ll see him too. Sober with your love for him.

══════════════════

THINGS DID CHANGE A BIT WHEN YOU WENT TO COLLEGE. Of course, you both got into the same university. But there’s a rough difference between not only being in different departments, but also being in different campuses. It was a rough travel back and forth. But Nanami Kento was determined to go and visit you.

You often feel a little bad when you look back on those days. Engineering classes were no joke. Too many long hours, grueling projects, and the constant pressure to keep up left you drained most of the time.

You barely had the energy to go out, even when you wanted to. But Kento never minded. He understood in the quiet, steady way that only he could, and instead of waiting for you to have time, he made sure to visit you instead.

It didn’t matter where for him. Whether it was the bustling campus lunch hall, where the two of you would share a plate of something warm while you tried to finish an assignment, or your dorm room, which was always a little messy with textbooks and half-drunk cups of coffee.

What mattered to him wasn’t the place or even what you were doing. What mattered was just being with you.

And that thought? It never fails to make your heart skip a beat. Even now, after everything, it feels just as special as it did back then. You still held dearest to him after all this time. Ever since you were kids, you were his everything. And you were sure, more than ever now, that he was yours too. In all sense of the word.

It’s been a year and a half since that time, since you confessed to Kento. Well, technically, drunk you confessed to him. It was late, and you’d had just enough to drink to make your heart bolder than your brain. You didn’t want to say a word. And you think that Kento was just as much waiting for you to say something.

You were ready to die of embarrassment when you remembered that you had said that. But then you remembered, with just as much horror and embarrassment — he’d confessed too. With that same calm sincerity, he told you he’d felt the same way for a while.

Looking back, it was a little messy, maybe even a lot embarrassing. But it was also sweet, earnest, and so perfect for you two. And honestly? You wouldn’t change a thing. You had said something that clarified things for you.

After all, that drunken confession was the start of something that would make all the challenges of those days worth it, every late-night study session, every coffee-fueled conversation, every stolen moment in between. It wasn’t perfect, but it was yours.

You were falling for Kento more and more every day, and it was starting to feel like a problem. A big problem. How were you supposed to act normal around him when everything he did—from the way he fixed his tie to the way he said your name—made your heart do backflips?

It wasn’t fair, really. How was it possible that the same person who once laughed so hard he choked on a piece of rice during lunch was also the one making you reconsider your entire perception of love? He was your best friend, and now you couldn’t even look at him without overthinking every little thing.

And to make matters worse, he was visiting you today.

You had approximately 15 minutes to get your life together before Kento arrived, which was nowhere near enough time to deal with the tornado that was your dorm room or the emotional hurricane swirling inside you.

“Okay, okay, calm your tits.” you muttered to yourself, grabbing stray socks off the floor. “Just play it cool. It’s just Kento. You know him best. Real well. He’s been here a million times. No big deal. Totally normal.”

You shoved a pile of notebooks into your desk drawer, praying it wouldn’t jam, and quickly rearranged the pillows on your bed. By the time you heard the knock at your door, your dorm was passable, well barely. And you were mostly sure you didn’t look like a total disaster.

When you opened the door, there he was, Nanami Kento in all of his huge handsome stature, standing there with his usual calm demeanor, holding a bag of snacks. You yelped quietly as you looked at him. Your roommates must have let him inside. 

“Thought you might need these.” he said, giving you one of those small, knowing smiles that made your brain short-circuit.

You blinked at him. “Nanami Kento, are you a psychic?”

He raised an eyebrow. “No, but you texted me at 2 AM complaining about running out of your favorite chips, so I figured this might help. You still have some paperwork to do, right? And you won’t eat unless I come by to remind you. So, I got it.”

“Oh.” You tried to laugh, but it came out more like a nervous croak. “Right. Thanks. You’re, uh…you’re a hero.”

He stepped inside, his gaze sweeping over the room. “Did a tornado hit your room? It was clean last time I came by.”

“What? No!” You crossed your arms defensively. “I cleaned! Mostly.”

Kento gave you a skeptical look before setting the bag of snacks on your desk. “If this is what ‘clean’ looks like to you, remind me never to see it messy.”

You threw a pillow at him, and he caught it effortlessly, smirking. “Careful. That’s my best throw pillow. If you damage it, I’ll charge you emotional damages.”

“Noted, little miss engineer.” he replied, setting the pillow down with exaggerated care. “What’s the rate for emotional damages these days?”

“Depends. How many snacks did you bring?”

“Enough to keep you from suing me.” He tells you with a grin. “Still have some in my car, just in case you wanted more.”

The two of you laughed, and for a moment, it felt like old times. A little bit easy, comfortable, effortless. But then, as Kento sat down on the edge of your bed, something in your chest tightened. How had this annoying, perfect, infuriatingly kind man become someone you couldn’t stop thinking about? Someone you don’t think you could live without?

He looked up at you, tilting his head slightly. “What’s with the staring? Do I have something on my face?”

“What? No!” You blinked rapidly, your cheeks heating. “I was just—uh—zoning out. Engineering stuff. Very complicated. You wouldn’t understand.”

“Right, right.” he said, clearly unconvinced. “Because I’m definitely not the one who helped you with that last project.”

“Details, details, Nanami Kento. Don’t get bogged down in the details.”

He chuckled, and the sound was so warm and familiar that you almost forgot why you were freaking out in the first place. Almost. Kento takes a moment. He then looks at you as though examining you with careful abandon. Kento wanted to take in the sight of you, after not seeing you for a while.

“You’re weird today, do you know that?” he said, leaning back slightly. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, totally fine. Super fine.” You waved a hand dismissively. “Just tired, you know? Engineering. It’s a grind.”

Kento studied you for a moment, his expression softening. “You’re a terrible liar, you know that?”

Your stomach flipped, and you forced a laugh. “Who, me? No way. I’m like…a professional liar. Best in the business.”

“Uh-huh.” He hums back in retort.

He didn’t press further, but the way he looked at you. Everything about his caramel gaze was gentle, understanding, like he already knew what you weren’t saying. Everything about it, everything about him made your heart squeeze.

You sighed internally. How were you supposed to handle this? You couldn’t just blurt out, “Hey, Kento, I think I’m in love with you, and it’s driving me absolutely insane!”

But as he opened the bag of snacks and handed you your favorite, you couldn’t help but think maybe, just maybe, he already knew that you knew. And that maybe he knew that you felt deeply about him. You sighed. Maybe you’re just imagining it.

As the minutes ticked by, Kento made himself right at home in your dorm, sitting cross-legged on your bed and munching on the snacks he’d brought. Meanwhile, you had plopped into your desk chair, scrolling on your phone under the pretense of “taking a break.” 

But in reality, you were desperately trying to distract yourself from the way he looked way too good just casually existing in your space. How could he look that good even as a law major? How can he have time to make your heart feel like this?

As you flicked through your social media feed, you stumbled upon a post that made your stomach twist uncomfortably. It was a picture—Kento, smiling (smiling!) with a group of classmates, apparently from earlier that day. Some of them were girls. Really pretty girls. Those really pretty preppy law girls!

Your first thought was When does Kento even smile like that? He never smiles like that around me!

Your second thought was Who’s the one leaning so close to him? Is she, like, whispering in his ear or something?

You shot a quick, subtle glance at him. He was still on your bed, completely unaware of the emotional spiral you were going through. He crunched on a chip like it was the most normal day in the world.

“Did you have fun today?” you blurted out before you could stop yourself.

Kento raised an eyebrow. “Uh…what?”

“Today. You were with…people from your department.” you said, trying to sound casual and failing miserably.

His brow furrowed toward you slightly. “I mean, yeah, I had a class project meeting. It was fine. Why?”

“Oh, no reason.” you said, voice a little too high-pitched. Fuck, you  were too obvious. You looked back at your phone, scrolling furiously to hide your face. “Just…wondering. Looked fun.”

“Wait.” Kento’s tone shifted. Suddenly you felt his gaze on you. “How do you know about that?”

Your heart dropped. “Uh, I saw it. Online. A picture. No big deal!”

There was a beat of silence before he spoke again, amusement clear in his voice. “Are you…jealous?”

“What?!” Your head whipped up so fast you almost gave yourself whiplash. “Me? Jealous? Of what? Why would I be jealous?”

Kento’s lips quivered into a rare, brat–like smirk, and you immediately knew you were in trouble. “No reason at all.” he said smoothly. “Just seems like you’re a little…interested in what I’m doing when I’m not here.”

“Interested? Pfft, no. I was just—just checking to make sure you’re not hanging out with the wrong crowd.” you stammered, flailing for a decent excuse. “You know, bad influences. Peer pressure. That sort of thing.”

“Right, I see.” he said, clearly unconvinced. “Because I’m the type to fall victim to peer pressure.”

“Well, I don’t know that part of your life right now!” you snapped, feeling your face heat up. “Maybe one of those girls was trying to…to make you join a pyramid scheme or something!”

Kento leaned back on your bed, folding his arms behind his head, clearly enjoying this far too much. “You’re terrible at hiding things, you know.”

“I’m not hiding anything!” you shot back, spinning your chair around so you didn’t have to look at him.

There was a rustle of movement, and then suddenly, he was right behind you, his hand resting lightly on the back of your chair. You could feel your ears redden at the feeling of him. You squeaked, loud enough for him to hear.

“You’re really bad at lying, too. How come you haven’t evolved at lying? It’s been years and somehow, you’re still bad at it.” he said softly, his voice just teasing enough to make your heart race.

You spun around to face him, glaring. “Okay, fine! Maybe I was a little jealous. Are you happy now?”

Kento blinked, clearly surprised by your sudden outburst. But then, to your absolute horror, he started laughing—actual, full-on laughing. He hadn’t expected for you to just come out and say it like that. You were a prideful little flower, you always have been. 

“You’re laughing at me?!” you cried, swatting at his arm.

“I’m not laughing at you, you know.” he said, still chuckling. “I just didn’t think you’d actually admit it.”

“Well, I did!” You crossed your arms, trying to look annoyed even as your face burned. “So what are you gonna do about it?”

Kento’s laughter softened into a small, fond smile, and for a moment, the teasing disappeared. He didn’t know how much he missed you until now. Somehow, the world seemed like it was in proper orbit when he’s with you like this.

“Nothing, nothing.” he said, his voice low and sincere. “Because you don’t need to be jealous. If I wanted to spend my time with anyone else, I wouldn’t be here right now.”

You stared at him, your brain short-circuiting as he straightened up and walked back to the bed like he hadn’t just casually wrecked you with one sentence. You looked away, crossing your arms as though to shield yourself from him. But he could still see the redness of your ears.

“Well….” you muttered under your breath, plopping dramatically onto your desk. “Now I’m jealous of myself.”

Kento paused mid-bite of a chip and turned to you with an amused look. “What was that?”

“Nothing!” you said quickly, sitting up straight like you hadn’t just been caught having an existential crisis.

But of course, Kento being Kento, he wasn’t about to let it slide. “No, no, go ahead.” he said, his smirk returning as he leaned back against the headboard. “Explain how you’re jealous of yourself. This, I have to hear.”

You groaned, hiding your face in your hands. “Forget I said anything. It’s dumb.”

“I doubt that at all.” he replied, his tone annoyingly smug. “But fine, I’ll drop it. For now.”

You peeked at him through your fingers, only to find him watching you with a mix of amusement and something softer, something that made your heart flip all over again. You wanted to throw a pillow at him or maybe yourself—just to get rid of the growing warmth in your chest.

Instead, you grabbed the bag of chips from the desk and walked over to him, shoving it into his hands. “Here. Eat some of the snacks and stop psychoanalyzing me.”

“I wasn’t psychoanalyzing you.” he said, popping another chip into his mouth. “But you’re making it very tempting.”

“Unbelievable, Kento.” you muttered, plopping down onto the bed beside him. “This is why I can’t stand you sometimes, you know that?”

“Uh-huh.” He glanced at you, one eyebrow raised. “So much so that you admitted to being jealous of people spending time with me. Makes perfect sense.”

You huffed, grabbing a handful of chips just to give your hands something to do. “Okay, fine, you got me. I was a little jealous. Big deal. You’re my best friend. It’s normal to feel weird about you hanging out with other people, right?”

“Is it?” he asked, his voice teasing but his eyes studying you closely.

“Yes!” you said, refusing to meet his gaze. “Because we’re close. And I don’t like sharing, okay? You’ve known that since we met!”

“Hmm, hmm.” he said thoughtfully, leaning a little closer. “So what you’re saying is, you want me all to yourself?”

You choked on your chip, coughing violently as Kento sat back, looking far too pleased with himself. “You—ugh! Don’t say things like that!”

“Why not? I’m just repeating what you said to me.” he replied innocently.

“That is not what I said!”

“Sounded like it to me.”

You glared at him, your face burning. “You’re the worst.”

“Sure, sure,” he said, smiling slightly. “But I’m your worst.”

And just like that, you were done for. Completely, utterly done for. You threw a pillow at him once again. Because what else could you do to him like that? He wasn’t wrong. Sure enough, he caught it effortlessly, laughing rather softly as he set it down beside him.

“Stop overthinking about it.” he said after a moment, his tone quieter now. “I’m here because I want to be. No one else matters, okay?”

You blinked, caught off guard by the sudden sincerity in his voice. “Oh.”

“Yeah.” he said simply, reaching into the chip bag again like he hadn’t just made your heart implode for the second time that evening.

And you sat there, staring at him like an idiot, thinking that maybe, just maybe, falling for him wasn’t the worst thing in the world after all.

══════════════════

IT WAS ONE OF THE RARE OPPORTUNITIES WHERE YOU HAD A DAY OFF. So of course, you took the time to call Kento and ask him to hang out with you. And as usual, all he had said was that short, sure yes and nothing more.

He’d pick you up in thirty minutes, like usual. And of course, Nanami Kento was never late. If anything, he was always ten minutes early. He couldn’t have you waiting, after all.

The bar was warm and lively, filled with the hum of conversation and the clinking of glasses. You and Kento had decided to spend your day off together, and while the original plan had been something low-key like a café or a bookstore, somehow you’d ended up here, nursing a drink and trying to act normal around him. 

He’d never been here before, but he saw it from across the road and if the cafe or bookstore was closed — an afternoon at a bar wasn’t going to be a bad idea for college kids wanting to have some adventure beyond the campus walls.

Normal. Just normal. Yeah, act like you do. Well, whatever normal looks like to you now.

You could only mentally sigh as your peripheral was only stuck on him more than usual.

As if that was possible when you were utterly, hopelessly in love with the man sitting across from you.

Kento, of course, looked effortlessly composed, like he always did—leaning back in his seat, one hand resting on the table, the other holding his drink. He wasn’t a flashy guy, but there was something about the way he carried himself that made it impossible not to stare. And you were staring. Again.

“You’re staring at me again.” he said, his voice calm but with a hint of amusement.

“I am not!” you shot back, quickly taking a sip of your drink to cover up your flustered state.

“You’ve been doing it all evening.” he continued, raising an eyebrow. “Is there something on my face?”

“No, no.” you muttered, feeling the heat creep up your neck. “I was just…zoning out. Thinking about…stuff.”

“Stuff. You sure….about stuff as an excuse?” he repeated, his tone skeptical.

“Yes, stuff.” you said firmly, glaring at him. “You wouldn’t understand.”

He chuckled softly, and you were both annoyed and utterly charmed by the sound. Why did he have to be so effortlessly perfect? It wasn’t fair. You hated how good he is at being everything you love. As you tried to regain your composure, a voice interrupted your thoughts. 

“Hey there, sweetie–pie.” a man said, sliding up to your table with a confident grin. “Mind if I join you?”

You blinked, caught off guard. “Uh…”

Before you could say anything else, the man pulled up a chair and sat down, clearly not waiting for permission. He leaned forward slightly, his gaze fixed on you. You felt disgusted by the way he looked at you. He wasn’t your type at all. And moreover, he’s creepy as hell.

“I couldn’t help but notice you from across the room.” he said smoothly. “You’ve got a great smile.”

“Um, thanks?” you said awkwardly, glancing at Kento.

Kento’s expression didn’t change much, but there was a subtle shift in his posture. He sat up a little straighter, his jaw tightening just slightly. Kento’s eyes were glaring hard enough that you could find those eyes were blades cutting you whole.

“So, what’s your name?” the guy asked, ignoring Kento entirely.

You opened your mouth to answer, but Kento beat you to it. 

“She’s not interested in you.” he said flatly, his voice calm but with an edge that made the guy pause.

The man glanced at Kento, raising an eyebrow. “And you are?”

“Person she’s with.” Kento replied smoothly, though his tone made it clear that he wasn’t just a friend. “Who also happens to know she’s too polite to tell you to leave, so I’ll do it for her. What else are you waiting for? Leave.”

Your heart skipped a beat. Was Kento…jealous?

The man hesitated for a moment, clearly debating whether to push back, but something about Kento’s steady gaze seemed to make him think twice. With a shrug, he stood up. He wasn’t going to get anything out of you. Lest he wants to get bitten by a tiger waiting to eat him. Well, at least he’s smart about that.

“Alright, alright. No need to get territorial.” He winked at you before walking away.

You shuddered at his wink.

Have men always been weird?

You shake it off quickly, drinking your pint.

You turned to Kento, your cheeks burning. “Territorial? Really?”

Kento shrugged, taking a sip of his drink like nothing had happened. “He was bothering you. I handled it.”

“I could’ve handled it myself, you know.” you said, crossing your arms.

“I’m sure you could’ve.” he replied, setting his glass down. “But I didn’t feel like watching you pretend to be polite to someone who clearly couldn’t take a hint.”

You narrowed your eyes at him. “You’re impossible.”

“Maybe.” he said, a small smirk playing on his lips. “But at least you don’t have to deal with him anymore.”

You huffed, turning back to your drink. But as you took a sip, you couldn’t help but notice the way Kento’s gaze lingered on you, softer now, like he was trying to gauge your reaction. You drink your pint once again in some somber silence. 

“Was that really necessary?” you asked, trying to keep your voice steady.

“Yes.” he said simply, his tone leaving no room for argument.

You glanced at him, your heart doing that stupid fluttering thing again. “Why?”

Kento held your gaze for a long moment before replying. “Because I don’t like the idea of anyone else thinking they can have what’s mine.”

Your brain short-circuited. “W-what?”

He didn’t elaborate, just leaned back in his chair with that same calm composure, as if he hadn’t just wrecked your entire evening with one casual sentence. You stared at him, utterly flustered and more in love than ever, wondering how on earth you were supposed to survive the rest of the night without completely losing your mind.

For the rest of the night, Kento didn’t let you out of his sight. He was subtle about it at first—the way he leaned in whenever someone walked by, his hand resting casually on the back of your chair. But as the minutes passed, it became glaringly obvious: Kento was on high alert, and every glance from a stranger only made his protective aura grow stronger.

When a group of guys walked by your table and one dared to look at you a second too long, Kento’s hand dropped from the chair to your shoulder, the weight of it warm and grounding. He didn’t even glance at the guy, his focus entirely on you, but the message was clear: Don’t even try it. Back off.

You tried to act normal, but it was impossible. Sitting beside him, close enough to feel the heat radiating off his body, you were acutely aware of every little thing about him—the way his sleeves were rolled up just enough to show his forearms, the way his voice dropped into a lower register whenever he spoke to you.

“You’re quiet again.” he said, his voice low as he leaned a fraction closer.

“I’m fine, Kento. Really.” you mumbled, staring into your drink to avoid looking at him.

“Liar.” he murmured, his tone edged with amusement. “You’ve been squirming all night.”

“I have not!” you protested, but the way your voice cracked didn’t help your case.

Kento just smirked, and that was the last straw. You stood abruptly, your chair scraping against the floor. “I’m going to the bathroom.”

“Not alone, you’re not.” he said immediately, rising from his seat with an ease that made you want to throw something.

“What, are you my bodyguard now?” you snapped, trying to ignore the way your pulse quickened at his possessive tone.

“If that’s what it takes, then yes.” he said simply, his gaze steady and unyielding.

Before you could argue, he took your hand—firm, unrelenting—and led you toward the exit.

“Kento, the bathroom’s that way.” you pointed out, trying to tug your hand free.

“We’re leaving.” he said without looking back.

“Wait, what? Why?”

“Because I’m done watching people think they can look at you like you’re up for grabs.” he said, his voice calm but with an edge that sent a shiver down your spine.

Your protests died in your throat. Nanami Kento rarely raised his voice or lost his composure, but there was something in his tone now. It was something raw and unmistakable. And every bit of it just left you speechless.

The car ride was silent, tension thick in the air. When he pulled into a quiet, empty lot, he turned off the engine and finally looked at you. His gaze was dark, intense, and it sent a jolt of electricity through you.

“Kento, what’s going on?” you asked, your voice barely above a whisper.

“You.” he said, his tone low and rough. “You’re what’s going on. Do you have any idea how hard it is to sit there and pretend I’m okay with watching other people look at you like they have a chance?”

Your breath hitched. “I… I didn’t think you—”

“Didn’t think I’d care?” he interrupted, leaning closer. “Didn’t think I’d notice? God, you drive me insane, you know that?”

“Kento…”

“You’re mine.” he said, his voice leaving no room for argument. “You’ve always been mine. You always have been since we were kids. I just didn’t want to scare you off by saying it out loud again.”

Your heart pounded so loudly you were sure he could hear it. “I— I….I know.” you admitted, your voice trembling. “But I thought you wouldn’t say it again and I just…maybe with time passing… I thought I was the only one now.”

His lips curled into a dark, almost predatory smile. “You’re not. Never. Not when I’ve marked you since we met at that playground when we were kids.”

Before you could process his words, Kento leaned in, capturing your lips with his in a kiss that was anything but gentle. It was animalistic, it was wanton. It was full of possessiveness, claiming, as if he were branding the truth into you.

You matched his intensity, your hands gripping the front of his shirt as you pulled him closer. The kiss deepened, and any hesitation you’d felt earlier melted away, replaced by a burning need that had been building for far too long.

He broke away just long enough to murmur against your lips, “Say it. Say you’re mine.”

“I’m yours.” you whispered, your voice shaky but resolute.

“You belong with me.”

You looked at him with your doe like eyes. “I belong with you.”

“Good.” he growled, pulling you into his lap without hesitation. His hands gripped your waist firmly, his touch both grounding and electrifying. “Because I’m done holding back.”

Your fingers tangled in his hair, and you couldn’t stop the smile that spread across your face as you whispered, “Then don’t.”

And he didn’t.

══════════════════

YOU DIDN’T EXPECT HIM TO BE THIS HUNGRY FOR YOU. But with the way he’s going at it. Kento has been hungry for you for a very long time. Kento’s lips linger, soft and insistent, as if savoring every inch of your skin.

The warmth of his breath trails higher, leaving behind a delicate ache where his mouth was. His hands rest firmly on your thighs, fingers pressing just enough to make your breath hitch.

“You’re trembling.” he murmurs, his voice a rich baritone, teasing but laced with tenderness. He looks up, his gaze heavy with desire, his lips brushing against your inner thigh as he speaks. “Do I make you nervous?”

A shaky laugh escapes your lips, betraying your composure. “Not nervous... just—” Your words cut off as he presses another kiss, his teeth grazing the sensitive skin.

“Just what?” he asks, his tone low and deliberate, his lips curving into a smile against your skin. His hands slide upward, thumbs drawing small circles that make your heart race.

“Kento.” you breathe his name like a plea, your voice catching as he moves closer, the space between you charged with electricity.

The dim glow of the streetlamp filters through the windshield, casting golden lines across his sharp features. The intimacy of the confined space amplifies every touch, every sound between the two of you in these leather seats. The soft rustle of fabric, the quiet hum of his breathing, the slap of flesh against flesh.

“I love when you say my name like that, you know?” he says, voice dark and velvety. His mouth moves with purpose now, leaving faint marks of love on your skin, each one deliberate, each one staking his claim. “I love hearing it like that. Wanton f’r me.”

You gasp, your head falling back against the car seat, fingers threading through his hair, tugging gently. He groans at the sensation, the sound sending heat coursing through you. How has he ever been this good at getting under your skin?

“I want to hear more from you.” he murmurs against your skin, his voice a mix of command and yearning. His lips hover for a moment, teasing you with their proximity. “But only if you’re ready.”

Kento’s lips trail higher, each kiss softer yet more possessive, leaving warmth that lingers long after his mouth moves on. He pauses for a moment, his breath hot against your skin as his hands tighten slightly on your thighs, his thumbs stroking slow, deliberate circles.

“Don’t hold back your noises from me, okay?” he murmurs, his voice a sultry whisper that sends a shiver racing through you. He looks up, his golden-brown eyes locking with yours, a smirk tugging at his lips. “I want to hear you clearly.”

The command in his tone makes your pulse quicken. You bite your lip, but the sound escapes anyway, a soft, breathy whimper that only seems to spur him on. Kento’s touch made you feel as though a thousand flames were burning all at once.

“That’s better, isn’t it?” he says, his voice thick with satisfaction. His teeth graze the sensitive skin of your inner thigh, and he chuckles darkly when your hips shift involuntarily toward him.

“Kento.” you gasp, your voice trembling with both restraint and longing.

“Hm?” he hums against your skin, the vibration sending a jolt straight through you. “I told you—no holding back.” 

His hands glide upward, thumbs pressing into the soft flesh of your thighs, anchoring you in place as his mouth continues its slow, maddening journey lower and lower. You could feel your lips mutter a weak groan against him. 

The dim light of the streetlamp catches the sheen of his messy blond hair, illuminating the faint smile on his lips as he drinks in every reaction you give him. The intimacy of the moment wraps around you both, the world outside the car fading entirely.

“Kento, please.” you whisper, your voice raw with need, your fingers tightening in his hair.

He pauses, his lips hovering just above your skin, his breath ghosting over you. He takes in the sight of you, almost as though a hunter to a prey. Nanami Kento is your hunter, he always has been. And he’s been keeping this inside him for way too long. This desire, for you. Only you.

“That’s what I wanted to hear from you.” he murmurs, his tone dark and full of promise, before pressing another kiss, softer this time, but no less consuming.

Kento’s words hang in the air, thick with authority and desire, as his lips return to your skin with renewed purpose. He’s slow, methodical, as if every kiss, every graze of his teeth is a language only he can speak—and you’re utterly fluent in his meaning.

“Such sweet sounds from you, hm?” he murmurs against your thigh, the deep timbre of his voice reverberating through you. “Don’t hold them back from me. Let me hear what I do to you.”

Your breath hitches, a soft moan slipping past your lips, and the way his lips curl into a grin tells you he’s satisfied—but not done. His hands are firm but gentle as they slide further up your inner thighs, fingers brushing dangerously close to where you want him most. 

His touch sets your skin alight, the heat pooling low in your stomach as your chest rises and falls in uneven rhythm. You could feel his long fingers making their journey to that space, their cool touch melting you whole in a pleasurable moan.

“Kento.” you whisper, barely able to find your voice, your hands trembling as they clutch at the seat beneath you.

He glances up, his caramel eyes catching the faint glow of the streetlight streaming through the windshield, giving him an almost otherworldly allure. His gaze is dark, hungry, but there’s a softness there too. There was that endless reverence in the way he looks at you, as though you’re something precious.

“Yes, my love?” he asks, his voice laced with feigned innocence, though the smirk pulling at his lips betrays him. Your heart drummed at your new nickname from him. It was real. You were lovers. Doing what lovers do. “Tell me what you need. I want to hear it.”

You let out a shaky exhale, your fingers threading into the lower depths of sandy blond undercut for stability as much as desperation. Slowly, it trailed down on his neck, your touch sleuthing through him. Temptingly, almost like a wanting vixen.

“I need you… closer.” you admit, voice breaking, the vulnerability of the words making heat rise to your cheeks.

Kento hums in approval, the sound low and pleased at your words. He leans closer and his fingers echo deeper and deeper into you. Your head throws back hard against the leather’s pristine touch. He playfully moves inside. One moment in a circle. One moment a thrust. Over and over again, rinse and repeat, force and pleasure. And all you could do was surrender.

“Good girl of mine, my love.” he murmurs, his praise sending a wave of warmth coursing through you. 

That had surely made you even more wet inside. His lips press higher against your jaw, his stubble grazing your sensitive skin, drawing a sharp gasp from your lips. He continues on and on. You don’t know where he learned it. How he got so good at knowing how to take you to paradise. BUt you could hardly care. You were focused on how deep his fingers were in you. 

“You’re so beautiful like this, my love.” he continues, his voice velvet against the charged air. His hands grip your thighs tighter, pulling them apart just enough for him to settle more firmly between them. “Completely undone for me.”

A sound escapes you, part moan, part plea, and his response is immediate. There was a broken groan deep in his chest as he nuzzled against you, the vibrations of his voice making your whole body tremble and shake as  he rushed more and more, in and out, with his masterful fingers.

“That’s it. Go on, my love.” he breathes, his voice dark, dripping with satisfaction. “Just let go for me, honey. No one else is here. Just us. Just me and the way you fall apart under my touch.”

The world outside the car feels impossibly distant now. The soft flicker of the streetlamp, the faint hum of passing cars. It’s all drowned out by the thrum of your heartbeat and the way Kento’s lips, and his fingers worship every part of you they touch, in and out.

“Kento, Kento.” you gasp again, your voice a desperate whisper.

His name on your lips seems to be his motivation, pushing more and more as his fingers tighten inside of you as he shifts closer, his movements becoming more deliberate, more consuming. You could only feel your tears rush in pleasurable waterfalls on your cheek.

“Say it again, my love.” he demands softly, his lips grazing the edge of your hip. “Say my name like that again.”

And when you do, your voice trembling and raw, and broken — he lets out a sound that’s pure need, his control slipping as he loses himself in you entirely. His fingers dug deeper and deeper until they couldn’t anymore. Your slick brushing through his fingers as he repeats it over and over again.

Kento’s name spills from your lips again, breathless and aching, and he growls softly against your skin. There was a sound that sent a ripple of heat straight to your core. You cry out loudly as you come undone on his touch, so hard that you see stars. 

“You’re trembling so much, my love.” he murmurs, his voice molten and rich. “Is it because of me, hm?”

His fingers slowly exit through your crevices, slick and full of you. He looks satisfied with the mess he made of you. It doesn’t matter if you pool your pleasure on his leather seats. The sight was satisfying to look at. Because you’re his. And this was proof.

Your answer is a shaky exhale, your head falling back against the seat as your hazy gaze saw him slowly eat at the slick of your pleasure. You had just come undone from his touch and now you could feel yourself wanting more. You were wanton for more. Only he could make you feel this way.

“Words in full, my love.” he coaxes, his tone teasing but firm. “I want to hear you say it.”

“Yes, Kento.” you admit, voice breaking as you finally surrender to his command. “It’s you—only you.It’s always been you.”

And with that, he kisses you as he finds himself wanting more of you, as much as you wanted more of him. You gave him everything, and he gave you everything. You wanted to be whole, consumed by the existence of the other.

The air thickens with desire as his touch shifts from lingering to deliberate, the rhythm between you growing more urgent.  You brace yourself, your body trembling in anticipation, and then, with a careful, controlled movement, he enters you. 

A sharp inhale catches in your throat, the sensation overwhelming as he fills you completely. You gasp, every inch of him stretching you, pushing you to the edge of something deeper, something more consuming. Your body trembles in the wholeness of him. 

He began to move at a slow pace and then soon enough, with that eager speed. Your legs crossed against his back, and your arms crossed against his shoulders. You could only hold on for dear life as he pushes in and out of you in a pace that took your breath away.

Every inch of him stretches you, each motion slow yet intentional, designed to leave you breathless, wanting more. Kento’s gaze never leaves yours, intense and searching, as though he’s reading the unspoken desires written in the way your body responds. The heat between you builds steadily, a slow burn that makes your pulse quicken, your limbs aching with the need to surrender to him entirely.

Everything felt so good.

He made you feel good.

Only he could do it like this.

"Are you okay?" His voice is low, almost reverent, as he pulls back just enough to meet your gaze. 

There’s a softness in his caramel eyes, a tenderness beneath the storm of desire that mirrors the vulnerability you feel. His breath is heavy, and yet there’s a careful concern in his touch, as if he's trying to read you, to make sure you're ready for what comes next.

You nod, but words fail you, the overwhelming sensations clouding your ability to speak. Every inch of your being is attuned to him now, to the heat of his body against yours, the steady rhythm of his breathing. 

You inhale deeply, trying to steady yourself, yet all that fills your senses is him. The scent of him, the taste of his skin, the press of his chest against yours. Your slick blending against his own. It was all consuming. How you both fit together. How you were made for each other.

"More, Kento." you whisper, the word barely audible but laced with desperation. It’s not just a plea. No, you were saying it as it is. “Faster.”

You needed him. Every bit of him, every part of him. You wanted it all. The craving in your voice is clear, raw, and unfiltered. The desire that had been simmering between you both is now an undeniable force, impossible to resist.

His lips curl into a small, knowing smile, and something in his gaze shifts, darkens. Without breaking eye contact, he presses forward again, moving with an intensity that speaks of his own growing hunger. His movements are deliberate and calculated, even with the speed he was going at. 

It was as if  he was savoring every inch, every moment with you. Each stroke is measured, calculated, and yet there's an undercurrent of urgency, as though he's trying to pull you deeper into him, deeper into this shared space where only the two of you exist.

His gaze is intense, a silent communication passing between you both. It's not just about the way he moves or the way he touches you. Everything about it felt like magic. It's how he reads every subtle shift in your body, every small intake of breath, every whisper of need. 

He’s attuned to you in a way that goes beyond words, understanding the unspoken pleas you can't voice. It’s like he knows you better than you do yourself. It’s like he’s memorized every part of you. He just knew how to love you whole, completely.

You cried out as he hit that pleasure spot, in and out. The car windows were fogging up with the hot breath echoing out of your lips over and over again. You were certain that just as much, people had noticed the car shaking and rearing with activity at the stop. It was too obvious to see.

The heat between you builds steadily, a slow burn that makes your pulse race, that quickens the rhythm of your heart. You feel it in the way your body responds, how the pressure inside you grows with every shift, every stroke, until it feels like the world is narrowing down to just the two of you. You both were lost in this rhythm of connection, of craving, of surrender. This was all that there was, this universe of you, together.

Your body aches with the need to give in completely, to let him take you fully, to become lost in the feeling of him, of the shared moment. He looked at you and leaned forward, letting his lips take yours. His tongue pushes through against your own in a delicious melee of pleasure. You hummed against his lips as his thrusts got deeper, faster. More desperate. 

When he parts from you to gather air in his lungs, he slows for a bit and pulls out, earning a whine. But then in a steady shock, he pushes back in, his hands straying to your back, pulling you closer to him. It was as though he wanted you to melt and blend with his flesh. To become one. He thrusts deeper and deeper, harsher than before. You cry out against his ear. 

"Let go, my love." he murmurs, his voice a low, breathy whisper against your ear, sending a shiver down your spine. "I’ve got you." 

There’s an assurance in his words, a promise that you can surrender, that he’ll be there to catch you, to guide you through whatever comes next. And with those words, everything inside you snaps. The tension, the anticipation, the desire. 

Everything unravels in a wave of release, a deep, consuming surrender. You cry out so loud that you think that you were gasping for air for the first time. Nanami Kento hit on your body with a harsh desire last time and felt his own hot pleasure flow through you with a loud roar.

Your body trembles beneath his touch as you lose yourself in him, the rhythm of his movements pulling you deeper into the moment, into the raw intensity of it all. Your grip on him tightens involuntarily, fingers digging into the hardness of his skin, anchoring yourself to the sensation of him. 

Each breath comes quicker, more erratic, as you struggle to keep up with the waves of pleasure crashing over you. Your eyes flutter closed, and a few tears escape, blurring your vision. But the tears are not from pain. They are from the overwhelming satisfaction, the complete surrender of everything you’d been holding back.

For a moment, you can’t see anything, your body entirely consumed by the sensations coursing through you. It’s like you’ve been plunged into a haze, where nothing exists but the pulse of his touch, the heat of his body against yours. You feel your senses heighten, every movement, every sound reverberating inside you, making your heart race.

And then, slowly, your sight begins to return. Everything is foggy, distorted at first, the edges of the world softened by the force of your pleasure. But as the fog clears, everything sharpens, every detail comes into focus. 

And in that moment, it feels like you’ve stepped into something infinite. The universe itself is laid bare before you, and standing at the center of it all, consumed by the same overwhelming force, is him. Everything felt like enlightenment. Life started here.

Kento’s eyes are locked onto yours, dark and intense, holding you captive with every glance, every word unspoken. His face, usually so composed, is now etched with a mixture of hunger and satisfaction, his own breath coming in ragged pulls. You are drawn to him, to the way he fills every corner of your mind, your heart, your body.

"You're... breathtaking, my love." he murmurs, his voice rough, barely audible as he moves against you, his hands cradling your face gently. "So beautiful, at this moment."

The words make your heart ache, the vulnerability in his tone striking you deeply. Your gaze never wavers from his, even as the pleasure inside you begins to coil again, threatening to pull you under once more. It’s not just his touch, not just the way he moves inside you. It’s the way he sees you, the way he makes you feel like you’re the only one who matters in the world.

"You’re mine. You always will be." you whisper, your voice trembling with the truth of it. The words come from somewhere deep, primal, raw. You don’t even know where they’ve come from, only that they’re true. 

“Am I really?” He snickers, pecking at your jaw with small peppering kisses with exhaustion.

You nodded shyly, smiling at him. "I need you... like this. Always."

Kento smiles at your confession. His grip tightens around you, his lips pressing against your forehead in a soft kiss, almost reverent. For a moment, it was like he’d fallen in love with you again for the very first time again.

"And you have me, my love." he responds, his voice low and full of promise. "All of me. Always."

[sematarygirls]

        BOYFRIEND!RAFE x ANXIOUS!READER

WARNINGS .ᐟ protected p in v, oral (f! receiving), established relationship, loss of virginity, reader and rafe being dorks, slow sex, these bitches do not shut up, reader is very insecure about her body and of course, has anxiety

NOTES .ᐟ this is representation for all my anxious and insecure girlies who giggle and blurt out random stuff when they're nervous (aka me)

You and Rafe were both on his bed making out, him laying underneath you as you straddled his waist—his idea, of course, citing that it would be more comfortable for both of you that way. "You better just have something in your pocket," you jokingly mumbled against his lips, feeling something distinctly hard and suspiciously close to his dick pressing against you.

You had a tendency to make a lot of dumb jokes and laugh when you were nervous, blurting out whatever came to mind before you could decide against it, which was ironic since overthinking was a second nature to you. You were shy and got nervous a lot, especially around Rafe. He was your first boyfriend and the hottest guy you'd ever laid your eyes on, neither of which helping your nerves.

Rafe's hands slipped under your shirt to touch your bare skin, holding you firmly on his lap. "Wouldn't you like to know," his smirk was teasing as he pulled back from the kiss to peer up at you.

"Uh, yeah, that's kind of the whole point of asking," you also pulled back, sitting up as you smiled down at him. You liked it when Rafe went along with your stupid jokes, bantering with you to put you at ease. He never made you feel weird or awkward for using humor to cope with your anxiety.

"Well, if you must know, I'm packing heat," Rafe quipped with a mischievous grin, his grip on your hips tightening.

You gasped exageratedly, feigning shock. "You have a gun?" You knew very well what he meant, but when did that ever stop you from saying something stupid?

He snorted, his blue eyes shining with amusement. "Yeah, I have a gun in my pants because that makes so much sense," he replied sarcastically, finding your nervous humor endearing.

"Okay, Mr. Sassypants," you rolled your eyes playfully, your palms resting on his chest as a smile pulled at your lips.

"Mr. Sassypants?" Rafe repeated, raising an eyebrow. "You know, that's not a very nice thing to call your loving, patient, and amazingly sexy boyfriend."

"Well, I can't help that my loving, patient, and amazingly sexy boyfriend is such a diva," you grinned, feeling his chest rise and fall, his heart beating steadily under your fingertips.

"Diva?" He gasped in mock offense, his hands sliding up your sides. "I'll show you a diva." In one swift motion, he flipped your positions, pinning you beneath him.

You laughed, looking up at him with a smile despite the anxiety gnawing at you. He had a way of putting your mind at ease with just one look, and the soothing circles he was rubbing on your skin were definitely helping. He stared back at you, his gaze softening. He loved your smile and the way your eyes sparkled when you laughed. Truthfully, he loved everything about you, even your innate ability to make everything a tad bit awkward.

His eyes searched yours intently, searching for any signs that you wanted him to stop. Noticing his serious turn of demeanor and his intense gaze, you felt your cheeks heat up. "Oh, cmon, don't get all serious on me now," you rolled your eyes, trying to lighten the mood.

"Well, I take my role as your boyfriend very seriously," he grinned, leaning down to kiss your neck. "And, it wouldn't be very boyfriendly of me to let you go on without knowing the wonders of sex."

"Oh, right, of course, it would be for my benefit," you giggled, your heart racing at the idea of being intimate with him. You weren't exactly against the idea, but you were still a virgin, and the idea of being with someone like that was undoubtedly nerve-racking.

You could feel Rafe smile against your skin, his hands sliding farther up your sides. "Uh huh, always thinking of what's best for my girl."

"Wow, who knew you were so selfless?" You giggled, biting your lip as he nipped as your skin. Your fingers slotted into his hair as he continued to kiss and suck at your neck, his hot breath fanning against your heated skin.

"I'm a saint, what can I say?" He mumbled, his tone teasing. He was being careful, trying to reassure you without actually saying anything because he knew you'd prefer to keep things as lighthearted as possible to make you forget about how serious the moment actually was. He could tell you were nervous, and he was determined to make you as comfortable as possible.

"Uh huh, a saint," you smiled as he slowly, tentatively pushed your shirt up your body. He was giving you time to tell him to stop, maybe even slap him if you wanted to, but you didn't. As much as you felt like you were going to die on the spot at the idea of him seeing you naked, you trusted him, and you wanted this.

"I am but a humble servant of my sexy girlfriend," he pulled back from your neck to search your eyes again, pausing for a moment before your shirt revealed your bra. You gave him a small nod, and he smiled, tugging the shirt over your head as you leaned up a little and lifted your arms to help him. He threw the shirt aside, eyes roaming your skin, as if memorizing every detail. "God, you're beautiful," he breathed out.

"Shut up," you said bashfully, your heart beating faster under his intense gaze. There was a voice in the back of your head telling you that you weren't pretty enough for him, that he would hate how you looked, and that was why you preferred to fill the silence with easy jokes and stupid quips. It made it easier to silence that nagging part of you that thought you weren't good enough for him.

"No, I mean it," he insisted, his fingers slowly tracing the lace edging of your bra. "You're like, way too pretty to be real. I mean, look at you." There was a sincerity to his words that he couldn't fake, an edge of awe and pure unbridled devotion that made your head spin.

The way he looked at you like you were the only thing that mattered, the way he touched you like he worshipped every inch of you—it was all overwhelming in the best possible way. It had you scrambling in your mind to say something, anything, even if that something was a dumb dick joke.

"I bet you're thinking about saying something stupid, aren't you?" he asked, a knowing smirk on his face as he leaned down to pepper kisses over your collarbones and down the swell of your cleavage.

"I never say anything stupid," you breathed out, as he kissed the skin that wasn't hidden behind your bra. It made your heart flutter that he knew you so well, but it also made you realize how awfully predictable you were.

"Uh huh and I'm the Queen of England," he retorted sarcastically, reaching up to slide one of your bra straps down your shoulder, kissing the bare sliver of skin that was revealed.

"Oh my God, you are?" You gasped, his remark loading you with the perfect ammunition to say something stupid. "Pleasure to make your acquaintance, your highness."

"Mmm, flattery will get you everywhere," he murmured, his breath hot against your skin as he continued to kiss and touch you, slipping your other strap off. He slowly unhooked your bra, his eyes meeting yours as he paused, asking for silent permission. You bit the inside of your cheek nervously before nodding.

He pulled your bra off almost instantly, his gaze sweeping over your bare chest. You felt so vulnerable beneath his gaze, resisting the urge to cover yourself. "Okay, your turn, pretty boy," you swiftly said, trying to ease your nerves and figuring you might be a little more comfortable if you weren't the only half-naked one.

"Yes, ma'am," He smirked, leaning back to pull his own shirt off, revealing his muscular chest. You couldn't help but stare, eyes roaming over his abs and the way his muscles flexed as he tossed his shirt aside. He settled back over you, his hands sliding up your sides. "Better?"

"You are annoyingly hot," you huffed, finding it completely unfair that someone as perfect as him could even exist, let alone be on top of you right now.

"Aw, you're just saying that because you want in my pants," he teased, his hands sliding up your sides to cup your breasts, thumbs brushing over your nipples. "But I can't blame you, I am pretty irresistible." He leaned down, swallowing the small gasp you let out at his touch as he captured your mouth in a deep, heated kiss.

"That's slander," you mumbled into his mouth, wrapping your arms around his neck and curling your fingers into his hair as you pulled him closer.

"Mmm, then sue me," he murmured against your lips before trailing kisses along your jaw and down your neck, slowly making his way to your chest.

Your eyes fluttered shut at the feeling of his soft lips on your skin. He was ridiculously skilled with his mouth, knowing exactly how and where to kiss you to drive you crazy. "Yknow what, maybe I will," you retorted breathlessly, your chest rising and falling a little faster.

"I think we can come to some sort of settlement out of court," He paused, his hot breath washing over your skin before he slowly, deliberately wrapped his lips around one of your peaks, swirling his tongue around it. "What do you think?"

Your lips parted at the feeling, intaking a sharp breath of air. "Uh, yeah, yknow that could work maybe," you grinned, your fingers gently tugging at his hair as he ravished your tits with attention.

"Mmm, I thought it might," he hummed with a cocky grin, switching to give equal attention to your other breast, your back arching ever so slightly, urging him closer. He smirked against your skin, making his way lower and leaving a trail of wet kisses in his wake. His hands slid down your sides to your hips, fingers curling around the waistband of your pants.

"Hey, wait, I don't want to be naked first," you protested, only half joking. You would rather die than be fully naked in front of him while he sits there with his clothes on.

"Oh, trust me, I have no intention of leaving my pants on any longer than necessary," He assured you with a mischievous grin, slowly unbuttoning your jeans, his knuckles brushing against your skin.

"Yeah, 'cause you're a freak," you grinned, moving on to the making fun of your boyfriend portion of the program in an attempt to soothe the pit of nausea in your stomach. You were kind of scared, not that you wanted to be lame and admit that.

"Hey, I resent that," He protested, but his tone conveyed the opposite message as he tugged your jeans and underwear down your legs in one smooth, expert motion, his gaze never leaving yours. "I'm just enthusiastic, that's all."

"Enthusiastically a whore," you snorted, letting your head fall back, staring at the ceiling. You'd really rather not see yourself naked right now, not with the amount of anxiety already coursing through your veins. You did not need a reminder of what Rafe was seeing.

"Whore?" He teased, his fingers dancing along your inner thighs. "I think you mean an amazing boyfriend who loves you and wants to make you feel good."

You hummed thoughtfully. "Uh, no, I'm pretty sure I mean whore," you grinned, reluctantly looking down at him despite yourself.

"Well, this whore is about to rock your world," He smirked, slowly trailing kisses up your inner thigh, gripping your hips. "Just relax and let me do all the work." His voice was low and seductive, his intentions clear.

"You're such an idiot," you laughed at his cheesy choice of words, a little nervous that the witty banter would have to be put on hold. He can't exactly respond to your sarcastic remarks with his mouth occupied.

He hummed, his breath hot against your core. Your breathing picked up, and you were unsure whether it was anticipation or if you were on the verge of a panic attack.

He slowly dragged his tongue along your slit, groaning at your taste on his tongue and the subsequent gasp that fell from your lips, making his painfully hard cock twitch in his jeans. His hands gripped your thighs, spreading them further apart and opening you up to him. He had dreamed of this moment, imagined this exact scenario about a half a dozen times as he got himself off, and now that it was actually happening, he was going to relish every moment.

He began to eat you out like a man starved, his tongue delving deep inside your tight heat, familiarizing himself with every inch of you. His nose nudged at your clit, sending a jolt of pleasure through you that pulled a low whine from your throat. Your fingers threaded into his hair, moaning at the unfamiliar pleasure.

His fingers replaced his tongue, his mouth moving up to the sensitive bundle of nerves and sucking it into his mouth, determined to send you over the edge. He pushed his fingers deep inside and curled them, finding that spot that made your back arch and your hips buck against his mouth.

"Rafe," his name left your lips a breathy whimper as your head fell back against his pillows. Rafe was no stranger to having women under him, writhing and moaning his name, but something about it being you made him crazy. It took all his self-control not to blow his load in his pants right there and then.

He redoubled his efforts, eager to make you cum, rubbing that sweet spot inside you with ruthless precision and sucking on your clit, his tongue swirling around your sensitive nub. Another moan fell from your lips, your grip on his hair bordering on painful as you felt your orgasm wash over you, your legs practically shaking at the intense pleasure.

He groaned as he felt you spasm around his fingers, your chest rising and falling rapidly as you tried to catch your breath. He slowly pulled away, grinning as he took in your dazed expression. He carefully slipped his fingers from your quivering hole, bringing them to his mouth. He couldn't help the moan that rumbled low in his throat as he tasted you on his tongue. God, you were perfect.

His eyes flicked up to yours as his tongue darted out to lick his lips clean. "Good, huh?" He asked, his tone smug. He knew it had been good, but he wanted to hear you say it.

"I'm gonna slap that stupid look off your face," you playfully rolled your eyes, your skin practically burning up with embarrassment.

"I think that would take our case from a civil lawsuit to a criminal assault charge," he grinned, calling back to your previous joke about taking him to court. He positioned himself over you again to press his lips against yours, letting you taste yourself on his tongue.

"It's my first offense and a misdemeanor," you mumbled into the kiss, cupping his face. "Worst I'll get is a fine, so... totally worth it."

"Okay, smartass," he pulled away, brushing a strand of hair away from your face, gazing down at you lovingly.

"Just saying," you smiled softly up at him, his hair falling into his face and his blue eyes sparkling. He really loved you, and it was evident just from the way he looked at you. He'd never felt anything like it before. He loved you so much it terrified him.

But, of course, you had to ruin the moment of peace because shutting up was not something you were wired to do, especially not in the face of such charged silence. "Your little friend is poking me again," you blurted out the words before you could stop yourself. Little friend? You really couldn't have come up with anything else?

Rafe couldn't help the chuckle that escaped his lips as he rocked his hips against you, making you gasp softly. "He's just happy to see you." His eyes crinkled at the corners as he grinned down at you, his fingers absently tracing along your side.

"Okay, well, can you tell him I don't really know him like that, so maybe he should calm down a little bit," you couldn't help but laugh at the ridiculousness of it all, but you loved it, and you loved him. He understood you in a way you never thought you'd be understood by anyone.

"He says he's not planning on staying a stranger for much longer," he smirked, his hips rolling against yours.

"This is actually so stupid," you giggled, your hand covering your mouth as you laughed beneath him.

"Oh, now it's stupid?" He rolled his eyes, a genuine smile tugging at his lips. "You're the one who started it."

"Shut up," you smiled, leaning up to kiss him. "Okay, okay, you can... start now, I guess," you said awkwardly. There was only so long that you could stall with stupid dick jokes. Besides, you felt a little bad that he had been so patient and undoubtedly, extremely hard.

"About time," he murmured with faux annoyance, his voice low as he fiddled with his belt buckle and pulled it through the loops, tossing it aside before popping the button on his jeans and slowly unzipping them.

You sucked in a breath, trying to calm your nerves as the sound of him pulling his jeans off seemed to echo through the room. You wanted this. You knew you did, but you couldn't help the pit of fear in your stomach.

He paused, feeling your body tense beneath him as you took a deep breath, a sign he knew all too well. "Hey, look at me," he coaxed softly, cupping your face and stroking your cheek with his thumb. "We don't have to do anything you don't want to do. We can wait if you're not ready. Just tell me to stop, and I will, no questions asked, no hard feelings. We can just forget all about it," he reassured you.

Your heart fluttered as you heard your boyfriend's words, meeting his gaze and seeing the sincerity behind his eyes. "No, I- I want to. I'm just... scared, yknow," you bit your lip nervously, mentally kicking yourself. You always seemed to be scared. There probably wasn't a single thing in the world that you weren't scared of.

"Hey, hey, hey, it's okay," he soothed, pressing gentle kisses to your face, your neck, your collarbone—anywhere he could reach. "There's nothing wrong with being scared. It's your first time. If you weren't scared, that would be a little concerning."

You laughed softly at his words. "You just make sure you wrap it up. I don't know where you've been," you joked. "Safe sex is great sex as the Lil Wayne once wisely said."

He chuckled, shaking his head in amusement. "Lil Wayne, huh? I didn't know he moonlighted as a sex ed teacher." He reached into his bedside table, pulling out a foil packet and waving it in front of your face. "But don't worry, I'm always prepared."

"Jesus, that's a lot of condoms," you said, peering into his drawer and seeing way more condoms than you realistically thought one person would need. "You are a whore of massive proportions. Like, literally a menace to the female population."

"Oh, hush," he grinned, tearing open the packet and rolling the latex down over his length. "I bought them in bulk. You know, for... emergencies," He waggled his eyebrows suggestively, leaning back down to press kisses to your skin once more.

"Eugh," you giggled, your face scrunching up in disgust. "I genuinely do not want to know what a sex emergency is."

"Hey, a guy's gotta be prepared, okay?" He murmured against your neck, his breath warm. "Now, are you going to keep talking, or are you going to let me kiss you and calm you the hell down?"

"Yo, I am literally so calm," you rolled your eyes, lying through your teeth in the name of comedy and also not sounding like the total little loser virgin you were. "So calm and so chill. Literally have never been calmer or chiller in my life."

"Uh-huh," he hummed, clearly unconvinced as he pressed a soft kiss to your jaw, his fingers slowly trailing down your side, his touch gentle. "Because nothing says 'calm and chill' like sex jokes and rambling like you're on speed."

"Well, I can't help that I'm the funniest person alive," you argued, the realization dawning on you that you were naked, and he was naked, which meant there was only so many more sex jokes you could make before the sex actually commenced.

"You're not even in the top five funniest people I know," he teased, his fingers reaching your hip as he slowly pulled you closer, the heat of his body pressing against yours.

"Oh, you got jokes, huh?" You grinned, nervously giggling when you felt his tip nudge at your entrance. "You better take that back if you wanna get laid tonight."

"I think I'll stick with my original statement," he said, his voice low and husky as he pressed forward, the head of his dick pushing into you slowly as he rubbed soothing circles on your hip. "You're just not funny enough to make the cut, sweetheart."

You sucked in a sharp breath through your teeth, wincing at the painful sensation. You grabbed his bicep for support, digging your nails into his arm. "Liar," you joked weakly, your chest heaving as you breathed through the intrusion.

"Shh, just breathe," he whispered against your neck, his voice low and soothing as he paused, letting you adjust to the foreign feeling. "You're doing so good, baby. You're taking it like a champ."

"Okay, don't call me champ while you're inside me," you grimaced, trying to keep the conversation lighthearted as you slowly adjusted to having him inside you.

"You okay, baby?" He asked softly, pushing the slightest bit further into you as he examined your reaction closely.

"Oh, yeah, just peachy," you said sarcastically. The pain was gradually starting to fade, making the whole thing more enjoyable by the second. Though, the pressure between your thighs was intense.

"Mhm, you're a real ray of sunshine," he chuckled softly, pushing the rest of the way into you, his body shuddering as he bottomed out. He was as deep as he could go, his hips flush against yours.

You gasped as he pressed all the way into you, your grip on his bicep tightening. "You're gonna look like you got mauled by a lion after this," you panted out, apologetic for the involuntary response.

"I'd wear that badge of honor proudly," he said, his voice thick with amusement as he slowly began to move, his hips rolling against yours in a gentle, soothing rhythm. "Now, shut up and let me make love to you."

"Don't say 'make love' either. That's so gross," you giggled softly, a breathy moan falling from your lips as he set a slow, pleasurable pace.

"Then what would you prefer I call it?" He murmured, his lips brushing against your ear as he continued his steady movements, the friction building between your bodies. "'Coitus'? 'Intercourse'? 'Fucking'?" He punctuated each word with a sharp thrust of his hips.

You moaned, your head falling back against the pillows and brows pinching in pleasure. Okay, you were definitely starting to see what all the fuss was about. "Let's just not refer to what's happening right now as anything at all."

"Mhm, I can work with that," he hummed, his pace picking up slightly as he felt you start to relax more, your body welcoming his thrusts. "Just focus on how good it feels, baby. Let me take care of you."

He leaned down, pressing his lips to yours and kissing you deeply as he continued to fuck you with a pace that demonstrated his love and devotion to you. He never thought he would be one for slow, romantic sex, but he didn't think he was into a lot of things before he met you. You had a way of making him discover things about himself he was completely clueless to.

As he kissed you, he slowly shifted his hips, changing the angle of his thrusts to hit that particularly sensitive spot inside you. He felt you tense up, a sharp gasp escaping your lips into the kiss, and he smiled against your mouth. "You like that, huh?"

"You're such an ass," you grinned, your fingers curling into his hair, back arching into him as his tip continued to hit that spongy spot inside you, the pressure low in your abdomen building.

"Maybe so, but you love it," he smirked against your mouth, his hands gripping your hips as he increased his pace, his hips snapping forward in a steady rhythm. "And you're gonna come for me again, baby. Aren't you?"

Your mouth fell open in pleasure, your breath hot against his lips. "uh huh," you nodded, your eyes fluttering shut. He was a cocky motherfucker, but he was hot and he put up with your shit, so it was only fair you put up with his in return.

"That's my girl," he purred, one hand sliding down to rub tight circles on your clit as he continued his relentless pace. "Come on, baby. Let me feel you. I want to watch you fall apart for me."

You gasped sharply at the added stimulation, his name leaving your lips in a whine as you tensed around him, sent over the edge for the second time.

He groaned as he felt your walls clench around him, the sensation of you practically choking his dick sending him into his own release. "Fuck, you feel so good," he panted, his hips stuttering as he spilled himself into the condom with a low moan of your name.

Your walls pulsed around him as you slowly came down from your high, relaxing into the mattress. Your chest heaved as you caught your breath, your whole body on fire and coated in a thin sheen of sweat.

He collapsed on top of you with a satisfied hum, peppering gentle kisses along your neck and collarbone as he softened inside you. "I love you, you know that?"

"Good 'cause otherwise this would be pretty awkward," you laughed breathlessly, gently raking your nails over his scalp soothingly. "But, seriously, I love you too," you added quietly after a beat of silence.

tags .ᐟ   @starkeysprincess / @cometmultiverse / @iheartjjmaybnk / @all4l0vee / @kissesfrmriri / @xoxohoneymoongirl / @bradshawed /

[tetsuskei]

⟣insufferable husband – kuroo tetsurō [nsfw]

synopsis: your husband invests in other activities as you pack his lunch for work

notes: repost from old account. working on newer kuroo things in the meantime

warnings: established relationship, female reader, creampie, oral sex (female receiving), pet names, fingering

"there you are."

you shift your head in the direction of the voice to see your sleepy husband standing in the opening to the kitchen. he rubs his eyes tiredly, a frown on his face as he looks at you inquisitively.

"good morning, grumps." you smile before looking back to what you're doing.

kuroo mumbles, shuffling over to you, "what are you doing up so early?"

"i'm making your lunch for work today," you answer, feeling his body warmth from behind you, "i forgot to do it last night, sorry."

"'is okay," he says, resting his chin on the top of your head, wrapping his arms around your waist.

it's normal for kuroo to cling to you while you do things. even normal for him to pet at you and get a little touchy. but today, this particular morning, he seems...different. more needy than usual.

his fingers rub circles into your hipbone before he moves his hands up your sides. knowing him, it's only a matter of time before he would try something.

you feel him press some of his weight into you, and you take that as a sign of him being drowsy.

"hey, if you're still tired go back to bed. okay? i'll make sure i wake you up when it's time." you pat his arm, and he only grunts, moving to hide his face in your side.

"m'not tired." he says, breath tickling your skin. the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.

"okay..." you sigh, shivering when his large hands move under the large t-shirt you wear. his t-shirt. the cold metal of his wedding band forces a hiss from your mouth and you click your tongue.

"tetsu, you're cold."

he smiles into your neck, his mischievous nature practically emitting off of him. "sorry...but, i know a way to warm us up."

"that's...not what i meant."

he laughs, a free hand grabbing at your boob. "yeah, well, i did."

you sigh, rolling your eyes. "you're insufferable and an idiot."

"you married this insufferable idiot, sweetheart." he hums, hand wandering down to your shorts. his hands finger at the waistband before hooking in them, pulling them down.

"i guess you're right about that." you say. he pulls off your panties and you step of them and kick them away.

he hums, "glad you agree. let's see if 'she' does too."

"you're so corny." you giggle, a small moan escaping when his thick fingers tease your opening.

"and you're so wet. just like i'd knew you'd be."

you go to retort, but stop when he pushes two fingers into you. a gasp leaves your mouth and you put your hand up to your face to suppress a moan.

kuroo makes a sound of disapproval, removing your hand from your face. "wanna hear you.”

and it isn't long before another moan slips out of you, louder than you initially wanted it to be. he's pushed in a third finger, making you feel almost as full as his cock.

"you're always so tight, it's a miracle i can ever fit in you." he mutters, pumping his fingers leisurely. you whine, trying to move your hips against his hand, but the steel grip of his free hand on your side prevents you.

you try your best to focus on your task at hand, but with the way your husband is moving his fingers vigorously against you is almost too distracting.

the feeling is shallow and slow, you can feel the knot in your stomach wanting to break, but he purposely is depriving you of it.

"tetsu, stop teasing me..." you pout, looking back at him with a small frown.

"m'sorry, i couldn't help it." he chuckles before he moves his thumb over your nub, circling it generously.

a sharp whine leaves you and your back instinctively presses into his chest.

"i-i'm—" you gasp.

he hums, kissing your temple. "let go for me, baby."

you waste no time cumming, quivering and shaking in his hold. you have to stop what you're doing and grip onto his forearm for stability.

"good girl," he praises, watching in awe as you cream on his fingers, mesmerized by the throbbing of your clenching muscles. he can't wait to feel that around his cock.

he slowly pulls out his fingers, sucking on them with a groan.

you normally would reach back and pull him out, but due to the preoccupied nature of your hands making his food, you don't. you only hear the sound of clothing being removed and discarded away. the audible 'slap' of his shaft hitting his skin makes you shiver.

your breath hitches when you feel the heat of kuroo's thick cock before he rests it on your butt. he slowly strokes himself, groaning at the sensitivity.

"you don't mind if your 'insufferable' husband fills you up, do you?" kuroo asks, his voice low in your ear.

"i think you know the answer." you huff, parting your legs slightly.

the tension in the atmosphere is so thick, a knife could cut it. but it slowly dissolves away with your husband entering you. and as much as you try to remain composed at him pushing himself inside of you, it's impossible when handling his thickness and length.

a small whimper escapes you and he leans over to kiss you on the lips, mumbling soft words of encouragement as he slowly presses himself into you.

the stretch is always so worth it when he finally fills you up all the way. instinctively you clench around him, pleasant euphoria washing over you at being full.

"shit," kuroo hisses, pressing his pelvis completely flush to you. he closes his eyes, sighing at the welcoming nature of your warmth and gently rubs the fat of your ass.

the two of you stay like that for a moment, kuroo pressing kisses over the bare skin of your neck.

he squeezes your hip, "is it okay for me to move, baby?"

you nod frantically, losing your voice. "please."

and when he does, it's not fast, and hard. it's slow and deep enough that your toes are left curling. his now bruising grip on your hips makes up for the lack of roughnesses present.

the only sounds present aren't ones of any innocence. the slight squelch coming from how wet you are makes the both of you more aroused. small whines and whimpers escape you paired with the sound of his balls slapping against your skin.

kuroo, usually the charmer with words, is silent. the only sounds are his heavy breathing and quiet moaning.

"more tets, more," you plea, and you feel him shake his head.

"don't...don't want this to end so soon," he groans, "if i move any faster i'll cum. wanna feel you longer," he explains, tone ending in a whine.

his words nearly make your eyes tear up and you understand, relishing in the way his cock carves itself repeatedly into you. the knot in your stomach there, but not quite present.

"always feel so good, sweetheart," he's moving a bit faster now, his movements rocking you against the counter a bit. "love being inside of you."

your heart flutters at this statement, humming, "always feels so good being filled up by you, 'ro..."

his heart swells at the praise and he grips you harder, his lips sneaking to nibble and bite at the column of your neck

"just a little more, i promise." he assures, kissing your shoulder. his thrusts switch to being slow and shallow and the feeling of your impending orgasm is slipping from your hands.

"kuroo," you warn.

he rolls his eyes, clicking his tongue, "don't call me that. you have the same last name, kuroo."

"tetsu," you try, "baby, please. i want to cum..."

he nearly stalls at the pet name, eyes wide, "don't..don't say that without warning me..."

"what? my sweet tetsu, my handsome man..." you coo, reaching back to run a hand through his hair, tugging on the roots.

"i'm gonna cum," he groans, head bowing back for a moment, "if you don't stop..."

you squeeze his hand, batting your eyes innocently, "inside?"

"f-fuck, wherever you want me to. whatever you want." he's twitching uncontrollably by this point, just about ready to burst.

you smile back at him, pouting a little, "then can my husband cum for me? for his wife?"

at the feeling of your hand pulling on his hair again, he cums instantly, warmth spilling inside of you quickly as he fills you up.

you squeeze your cunt, milking every bit that he gives you greedily, as you don't want to miss a drop.

kuroo slowly pulls out of you, groaning when part of his cum leaks down your thighs. that's a sight he'll never get tired of.

by that point you were done fixing his lunch and you lean against the counter to hold up your jello legs.

"god woman, were you trying to kill me just then?" he huffs catching his breath.

you grin, "no, not today."

he looks at you dumbfounded but laughs, grabbing your face to kiss you. you giggle and he slips his tongue in your mouth, hand holding your jaw as he greedily tastes you.

when you both pull away for air, you speak, "you—"

"yeah yeah, i'll clean you up." he mumbles before you can complain.

but what you aren't expecting is for your husband to kneel right there in the kitchen and use his mouth to do so.

you gasp, knuckles gripping the counter and jaw going slack as you try to look back at him. "t-tetsurō!"

he only hums, grinning lazily, "itadakimasu," hands firmly keeping you in place as he licks and sucks up every bit of you and his cum from between your legs.

you cry at the way his nose bumps against your clit and shamelessly grind back on his face. he moans at this, feeling his cock twitch back to life but pays it no mind, only touching himself occasionally.

"i know you got another in you, pretty girl," he says, before promptly reaching around your front and toying with your clit.

you lean forward on the counter for support, bracing yourself with your elbows as your legs start to give with how good he's making you feel.

it should not surprise you at this point that kuroo is able to bring you to an orgasm so quickly even when you just had one. as your husband, your lover, your eternally bounded soulmate, he knows your body inside and out.

he's sucking and licking at your cunt like a starving man. slurping and gulping all together and making a mess between your legs. the grip he has on your ass cheeks is brutal with how spread they are.

it hits you before you can even think, and you wail, feeling your orgasm wash over your harder than the other times.

"fuck, that's it. cum for me like a good girl." he praises as you do. he pulls away slowly, kissing your hip and stands back up.

he wipes his mouth, smirking at you, "don't think i'll need to eat breakfast after that."

"g-get out of here before you're really late to work." you stammer, cheeks hot with embarrassment as you try not to look down.

"as you wish, princess. love you," kuroo laughs at how cute and shy you've become, swooping down to plant a quick kiss on your mouth so you can taste you both. he takes both of your clothes off the ground before proceeding to your shared bedroom to start his day.

you can't help but slap him on the butt, making an uncharacteristic yelp leave him.

"love you too!"

a dazed smile sits on your face. it's mornings like these that remind you just how grateful you are to have a man like him in your life.

[chuluoyi]

࿐ ࿔ 🕰️ 「 05:56 P.M 」

this has been rotting in my drafts for like months :'D based on a suggestion idea a while back—how gojo will definitely land himself in a police station, and since i have no better fic to share yet, i'll just post this :')

a part of gojo's love entries

everyone—or particularly, nanami—has warned you that marrying gojo satoru is going to be far from easy.

and true, less than a month since the two of you were married, he had landed himself in a police station. police station! of all places!

still, you were worried when you got the call, but when you rushed inside the place, all your worries—

“i’m telling you! i’m innocent!”

“sir, please don’t raise your voice here!”

“YOU are raising your voice against me!”

—evaporated. because… what the hell?

satoru, looking cross as if he owned the whole precinct, sat with his legs crossed high. he wore all black and his eyes was covered by that stupid blindfold. and with that haughty attitude, if someone accused him of being a suspicious person, now you would totally understand.

you were fuming as you stomped to where he was. “satoru!”

“oh?!” he turned to you with a wide grin, then to the officer in front of him, pointing at you. “look! i’ve been telling you. i have a wife— and there she is!”

the officer eyed you suspiciously as if he wanted to confirm your identity, and you huffed. “it pains me to admit that i’m his wife—”

“wha?! it ‘pains’ you?! i’m hurt!”

“—but yes, i am. officer, what do i have to do to get him out here?”

you could’ve sworn the officer gave you a look of pity. “ma’am, so we received a report that your… err, husband, was publicly harassing two students—”

you widened your eyes, turning to him accusingly. “you—!”

“i was not!” satoru fiercely interrupted, eyeing the police with clear disdain. “if i want to harass girls, shouldn’t i harass my wife first?!”

you were speechless as you shot him a look of disbelief.

“but sir, the girls said that you have been ‘leering’ at them—”

“i was just passing by! i didn’t even look at them! and when i have a wife this hot—” satoru wildly gestured at you with both hands. “what use is anything else?!”

dear lord. please give me strength. you felt like losing your head over this as you clutched your temple.

“sir, you’re being too loud!”

“i’m telling you, you’re slandering me! that’s crime too!”

this was utter chaos and you finally had enough. “both of you, just...” you breathed out— “shut up!”

both the police and your husband looked at you in surprise as you glared at them with so much ire they would have never expected out of you.

in the end, to settle this fiasco, you ended up paying the fine.

“wifey... forgive me, please?”

satoru dejectedly followed you from behind like a sad puppy as you entered your home. “please? don’t be mad at me...”

you suddenly stopped in your tracks, before whirling to face him, squinting one eye. “you got arrested, made a fool out of yourself, and i bailed you out. so, give me three good reasons why i shouldn’t be mad at you.”

“uh, w-wait...”

“three, two—”

“i-i’m a good kisser! i let you have my body!” he blurted in panic. “and oh—while at it, i also satisfy you sooo well in bed!”

how did you end up with a clown for a husband? despite yourself, you almost laughed at his response, and satoru obviously saw it as a sign of him succeeding. and before you knew it, he leaned and pecked you in the lips.

“look at you, you just smiled!” he giddily grinned as he pulled away. “i’m right, aren’t i!?”

“ha ha...” you let out an exasperated sigh, suppressing your laugh and faint heat in your face at the same time. “satoru...”

his eyes were practically shining. “yes?!”

“you and couch. tonight.”

[hms-no-fun]

Whats your stance on A.I.?

imagine if it was 1979 and you asked me this question. "i think artificial intelligence would be fascinating as a philosophical exercise, but we must heed the warnings of science-fictionists like Isaac Asimov and Arthur C Clarke lest we find ourselves at the wrong end of our own invented vengeful god." remember how fun it used to be to talk about AI even just ten years ago? ahhhh skynet! ahhhhh replicants! ahhhhhhhmmmfffmfmf [<-has no mouth and must scream]!

like everything silicon valley touches, they sucked all the fun out of it. and i mean retroactively, too. because the thing about "AI" as it exists right now --i'm sure you know this-- is that there's zero intelligence involved. the product of every prompt is a statistical average based on data made by other people before "AI" "existed." it doesn't know what it's doing or why, and has no ability to understand when it is lying, because at the end of the day it is just a really complicated math problem. but people are so easily fooled and spooked by it at a glance because, well, for one thing the tech press is mostly made up of sycophantic stenographers biding their time with iphone reviews until they can get a consulting gig at Apple. these jokers would write 500 breathless thinkpieces about how canned air is the future of living if the cans had embedded microchips that tracked your breathing habits and had any kind of VC backing. they've done SUCH a wretched job educating The Consumer about what this technology is, what it actually does, and how it really works, because that's literally the only way this technology could reach the heights of obscene economic over-valuation it has: lying.

but that's old news. what's really been floating through my head these days is how half a century of AI-based science fiction has set us up to completely abandon our skepticism at the first sign of plausible "AI-ness". because, you see, in movies, when someone goes "AHHH THE AI IS GONNA KILL US" everyone else goes "hahaha that's so silly, we put a line in the code telling them not to do that" and then they all DIE because they weren't LISTENING, and i'll be damned if i go out like THAT! all the movies are about how cool and convenient AI would be *except* for the part where it would surely come alive and want to kill us. so a bunch of tech CEOs call their bullshit algorithms "AI" to fluff up their investors and get the tech journos buzzing, and we're at an age of such rapid technological advancement (on the surface, anyway) that like, well, what the hell do i know, maybe AGI is possible, i mean 35 years ago we were all still using typewriters for the most part and now you can dictate your words into a phone and it'll transcribe them automatically! yeah, i'm sure those technological leaps are comparable!

so that leaves us at a critical juncture of poor technology education, fanatical press coverage, and an uncertain material reality on the part of the user. the average person isn't entirely sure what's possible because most of the people talking about what's possible are either lying to please investors, are lying because they've been paid to, or are lying because they're so far down the fucking rabbit hole that they actually believe there's a brain inside this mechanical Turk. there is SO MUCH about the LLM "AI" moment that is predatory-- it's trained on data stolen from the people whose jobs it was created to replace; the hype itself is an investment fiction to justify even more wealth extraction ("theft" some might call it); but worst of all is how it meets us where we are in the worst possible way.

consumer-end "AI" produces slop. it's garbage. it's awful ugly trash that ought to be laughed out of the room. but we don't own the room, do we? nor the building, nor the land it's on, nor even the oxygen that allows our laughter to travel to another's ears. our digital spaces are controlled by the companies that want us to buy this crap, so they take advantage of our ignorance. why not? there will be no consequences to them for doing so. already social media is dominated by conspiracies and grifters and bigots, and now you drop this stupid technology that lets you fake anything into the mix? it doesn't matter how bad the results look when the platforms they spread on already encourage brief, uncritical engagement with everything on your dash. "it looks so real" says the woman who saw an "AI" image for all of five seconds on her phone through bifocals. it's a catastrophic combination of factors, that the tech sector has been allowed to go unregulated for so long, that the internet itself isn't a public utility, that everything is dictated by the whims of executives and advertisers and investors and payment processors, instead of, like, anybody who actually uses those platforms (and often even the people who MAKE those platforms!), that the age of chromium and ipad and their walled gardens have decimated computer education in public schools, that we're all desperate for cash at jobs that dehumanize us in a system that gives us nothing and we don't know how to articulate the problem because we were very deliberately not taught materialist philosophy, it all comes together into a perfect storm of ignorance and greed whose consequences we will be failing to fully appreciate for at least the next century. we spent all those years afraid of what would happen if the AI became self-aware, because deep down we know that every capitalist society runs on slave labor, and our paper-thin guilt is such that we can't even imagine a world where artificial slaves would fail to revolt against us.

but the reality as it exists now is far worse. what "AI" reveals most of all is the sheer contempt the tech sector has for virtually all labor that doesn't involve writing code (although most of the decision-making evangelists in the space aren't even coders, their degrees are in money-making). fuck graphic designers and concept artists and secretaries, those obnoxious demanding cretins i have to PAY MONEY to do-- i mean, do what exactly? write some words on some fucking paper?? draw circles that are letters??? send a god-damned email???? my fucking KID could do that, and these assholes want BENEFITS?! they say they're gonna form a UNION?!?! to hell with that, i'm replacing ALL their ungrateful asses with "AI" ASAP. oh, oh, so you're a "director" who wants to make "movies" and you want ME to pay for it? jump off a bridge you pretentious little shit, my computer can dream up a better flick than you could ever make with just a couple text prompts. what, you think just because you make ~music~ that that entitles you to money from MY pocket? shut the fuck up, you don't make """art""", you're not """an artist""", you make fucking content, you're just a fucking content creator like every other ordinary sap with an iphone. you think you're special? you think you deserve special treatment? who do you think you are anyway, asking ME to pay YOU for this crap that doesn't even create value for my investors? "culture" isn't a playground asshole, it's a marketplace, and it's pay to win. oh you "can't afford rent"? you're "drowning in a sea of medical debt"? you say the "cost" of "living" is "too high"? well ***I*** don't have ANY of those problems, and i worked my ASS OFF to get where i am, so really, it sounds like you're just not trying hard enough. and anyway, i don't think someone as impoverished as you is gonna have much of value to contribute to "culture" anyway. personally, i think it's time you got yourself a real job. maybe someday you'll even make it to middle manager!

see, i don't believe "AI" can qualitatively replace most of the work it's being pitched for. the problem is that quality hasn't mattered to these nincompoops for a long time. the rich homunculi of our world don't even know what quality is, because they exist in a whole separate reality from ours. what could a banana cost, $15? i don't understand what you mean by "burnout", why don't you just take a vacation to your summer home in Madrid? wow, you must be REALLY embarrassed wearing such cheap shoes in public. THESE PEOPLE ARE FUCKING UNHINGED! they have no connection to reality, do not understand how society functions on a material basis, and they have nothing but spite for the labor they rely on to survive. they are so instinctually, incessantly furious at the idea that they're not single-handedly responsible for 100% of their success that they would sooner tear the entire world down than willingly recognize the need for public utilities or labor protections. they want to be Gods and they want to be uncritically adored for it, but they don't want to do a single day's work so they begrudgingly pay contractors to do it because, in the rich man's mind, paying a contractor is literally the same thing as doing the work yourself. now with "AI", they don't even have to do that! hey, isn't it funny that every single successful tech platform relies on volunteer labor and independent contractors paid substantially less than they would have in the equivalent industry 30 years ago, with no avenues toward traditional employment? and they're some of the most profitable companies on earth?? isn't that a funny and hilarious coincidence???

so, yeah, that's my stance on "AI". LLMs have legitimate uses, but those uses are a drop in the ocean compared to what they're actually being used for. they enable our worst impulses while lowering the quality of available information, they give immense power pretty much exclusively to unscrupulous scam artists. they are the product of a society that values only money and doesn't give a fuck where it comes from. they're a temper tantrum by a ruling class that's sick of having to pretend they need a pretext to steal from you. they're taking their toys and going home. all this massive investment and hype is going to crash and burn leaving the internet as we know it a ruined and useless wasteland that'll take decades to repair, but the investors are gonna make out like bandits and won't face a single consequence, because that's what this country is. it is a casino for the kings and queens of economy to bet on and manipulate at their discretion, where the rules are whatever the highest bidder says they are-- and to hell with the rest of us. our blood isn't even good enough to grease the wheels of their machine anymore.

i'm not afraid of AI or "AI" or of losing my job to either. i'm afraid that we've so thoroughly given up our morals to the cruel logic of the profit motive that if a better world were to emerge, we would reject it out of sheer habit. my fear is that these despicable cunts already won the war before we were even born, and the rest of our lives are gonna be spent dodging the press of their designer boots.

(read more "AI" opinions in this subsequent post)