#it’s glorious it’s so precise and concentrated

[firelise]

See the reason Black Sails fucks so very hard is bc the writers know the end to which they are writing towards and they know how to write in beautiful circles within circles and close a motherfucking loop. I could stare at this renaissance painting of a show forever.

[violet-eng]

fem!reader studies Neuviotter! | Fluff 🧸 with Otter Neuvillette… 🔞with Human Neuvillette.

Summary: You're a Sumeru's researcher obsessed with Fontaine otters. So you basically adopt one... unfortunately it looks like that isn't an otter at all...

Warning: 🔞 MDNI. ALL SMUT IS WITH HUMAN NEUVILLETTE! Somnophilia, oral (fem! Receiving), p i v. Unprotected sex.

1.8k words.

Not edited.

⏜︵⊹︵⊹︵⏜︵୨୧︵⏜⊹︵⏜︵⊹︵⏜

The prestige of your research precedes you. A diligent student with a flamboyant gait, brilliant ideals and precise knowledge. You arrive at Fontaine from the Sumeru Academy with a precedent never seen before, with your lively, attentive eyes and your notebooks covered in leather the same color as your eyes.

Word spreads immediately that the wise y/n, scholar of the Academia, has come to Fontaine to study a creature that has captured your attention to leave the green land for that of the primordial sea. Could it be that you want to study a mythical creature that lives in underwater caves? Or perhaps a glorious bird has captured your thirst for knowledge?

How surprised your guides were when you shouted with excitement, unable to contain your joy like a little girl, when you spotted a little otter poking its head out of the crystal clear water. You jumped up and down, unable to contain your happiness, exclaiming how amazed you were to see one so close.

Alone, you photograph the otter and go so far as to dive underwater with it, surprised more by how clever it is than by your new curious ability to breathe underwater. What a joy it is to find a group of creatures frolicking with a clam in their midst, spinning in the water and turning to look at you. You may have been down there for an hour.

Back on the surface, sitting on a rock with your feet in the water, you jot down the details in your notebook, tracing with the vague lines of a sketch the elusive shape of the little animals. Concentrating on your task, on defining the details of its snout, you notice on the other bank an otter, different from the others, grooming its head with its small hands.

You watch it carefully, the creature seems a little larger than the others, slender and almost like a gentleman...

"A gentleman otter," you whisper, enraptured by the delicate and magnificent figure grooming itself in front of you. 

The otter makes sounds as he wipes his own face, lying on the surface of the water, carving his features and nose, while his two gnawing teeth peek through his pearly fur. Its small hands wash its own belly, almost ironing its fur as if it were the robe of a great lord. Deeply adorable. You hastily sketch the picture in front of you, not missing a tender detail of the cuddly toy floating carefree on the calm current.

The otter watches you with a lost look, black eyes that seem not to contain a single thought. The bliss of the ignorant. And you wave at him from your rock with a smile.

The otter swims toward you, and when he's within striking distance, he watches you, as if studying you. 

"How smart you look," you say, clutching your notebook to your chest, "and very adorable. Look at you," you show him the drawing.

The otter stares at the paper with a certain analysis, but his unmistakable expression doesn't change. Then he seems to comb an invisible curl out of his furry head and approves your sketch with a formal nod.

"What a gentleman," you squeal, climbing down from your rock and returning to get your things. The otter emerges from the water, shaking his body to dry himself from the water, though he remains fluffy.

"I thought you were waterproof," you laugh at the sight of the expressionless furball, seemingly oblivious to his adorable embarrassment, "you're different, aren't you?" you approach him with a rag, trying to dry him.

You pull him onto your lap, paws up and his belly exposed as you dry his chest with your cloth, as if he were a baby. Then you wipe his little hands and then his paws. His face is now dry. The otter played with your bracelets, making funny noises and showing his little pearly teeth.

"Do you like it?" you ask, putting it down. The Otter nods enthusiastically. "It would look very cute on you," you add, taking off one of your bracelets and placing it around his neck.

The elastic of the bracelet is lost in his white fur, and the pendant stands out as if it were the clasp of a breastplate. 

"You're missing a hat, and you could pass for another Fontaine gentleman," you exclaim, pleased with the result, as the otter poses like an elegant gentleman, his small chest puffed out, almost proud of how adorable he looks.

"It's getting dark, I should get back now. See you another day, Mr. Otter," you say, slinging your bag over your shoulder and waving your hand.

The otter hurries to follow in your footsteps, prancing subtly near you, his wet nose brushing against your ankle.

"You want to come with me, huh?" you kneel before him, and he touches your nose with his paw. "Fine, fine. We'll have a sleepover."

The place you're staying in is small but cozy, and it gets even cozier when you turn on the heat and put food on the table. The otter sits in a chair across from you, on a mountain of books, and tastes several of the snacks you've served him, though you see him going crazy over some consomme purete and the big glass of pure spring water you've served him.

"You like that, I noticed," you say.

"Burp," the otter replies with a burp that he seems to regret immediately.

"You have more manners than many people," you tell him, wiping his whiskers with a napkin.

"Okay, I'll brush your teeth and then off to bed," you say happily, with the idea of reading to the little animal before bedtime.

You sit him on your sink in front of the mirror, lift his jaw and brush his teeth with your toothbrush and toothpaste, first one side and then the other, make him drink some water and then spit it out, although he swallows it.

"Not your thing to waste water, apparently."

The otter nods.

Then you brush his head, chest, back, and tail, letting him groom himself, and when you try to remove the pin, he hides it in his small hands.

"Okay, okay... I'll leave it to you," you smile.

And then you lie in bed with him in your arms, illuminated by the dim light of your lamp, holding a book with an adventure story in it. You read aloud to him, stopping when you hear him whistling and snoring. 

"Good night, Gentleman Otter," you kiss him on the forehead before turning off the light and going to sleep. ....

You're not one to dream, not at all, but ever since you came to Fontaine, you couldn't help but have these nightly fantasies about Iudex Neuvillette. That stoic and serious man, how good his face would look contorted with pleasure as you sucked his cock.

You had dreamed of a similar situation many times, you had dreamed of him against you as he pinned your frail figure against his desk and thrust into you, biting your lower lip. You had had your first fantasy after a trial, thinking how manly he would look behind you, his cock buried in your ass....

All those dreams had been vivid fantasies, and tonight's took the prize.

You lay on your bed, him biting your neck as he rests behind you, his hands playing with your breasts at his whim, his tongue sliding over your skin, enjoying the nectar of your pure complexion, his cock swollen against your clothed ass.

"Mmmmhhhh, Monsieur~" you moan, writhing in his grip.

The wonderful thing about these dreams is that you don't know how you get into these situations, but you know how to enjoy them. Because from one moment to the next, the oh so taciturn Iudex Neuvillette has his face buried between your legs, tasting your folds and your clit with his trained tongue.

"Right there~" you moan, arching your back as you feel the desire well up from his mouth, his tongue drawing lustful strokes across your sex, his deep sighs stoking the fires of your passion.

His hands wrap around your legs, and for a moment you swear it's real, the way his nails dig into your skin, leaving reddened marks in their wake, and his thumbs sink into your thighs, anchored to you with no intention of letting go.

Then you feel him thrust into you, opening your silken walls in his wake, his thick cock making its way to your center, molding your walls to his erect, large form. You feel him rub against you as your insides embrace him with little restraint.

You hear him moan and feel your legs rise up over his shoulders, his cool hands at your ankles pressing down on you, thrusting slowly but deliciously, almost as if you were made for him. 

"Monsieur Neuvillette~" you moan, clutching the pillows, your hips bucking at the growing warmth in your belly, your hands seeking your own pleasure.

"Warmer than I thought," he whispers, "

it is almost like n your dreams... though this time it feels so real...

You look at him for the first time, his face sweaty, his cheeks flushed as his locks of white hair fall down your legs. His strong arms hugging you, his pecs rising and falling, holding breath... lower down, his chiseled abdomen twitching as his cock buries itself relentlessly inside you.

The sound of his balls against your skin blows your mind and makes you realize that it's not a dream, that Iudex Neuvillette is really fucking you (and very well, much better than you expected).

"Monsieur..." you try to sit up, but he has touched your cervix with his cock, and you do nothing but collapse under him, filled with the pleasure of his gentle thrusts.

"Do you want me to stop?" he asks you reverently, in a tone of sublime courtesy and lofty superiority, as if he were not mercilessly fucking you at his whim while you sleep.

"Don't stop," you whimper between words, not wanting to waste the opportunity you've been dreaming of since the first time you saw him, "damn it," you exclaim at the wave of heat surging through your chest and legs as you hear him chuckle under his breath, quite pleased with what he's managing to make of your body.

The orgasm hits you warm and rough, just as Neuvillette did with his cock, careful not to leave his seed inside of you. And your breath comes back as you feel him caress your back as if to reward you.

You feel his lips on your forehead, and the way his arms hold you beside him as your eyelids droop at the inevitable.

"How did you get here?" you babble, half asleep, caressing his chest as he draws soft circles on your arm. 

"You invited me," he whispers as he brings your hand to his neck where your bracelet encircles his skin and the charm falls to his chest.

"You'll explain it properly tomorrow," you murmur between confused shuffles...

[pocketseizure]

Kohga meets his hero in Tears of the Kingdom. Said hero, Ganondorf, has no clue who Kohga is. Shenanigans (shenaniganons if you will) ensue

The Demon King was perfect. Kohga had expected him to be perfect, of course, but not this perfect.

A chiseled face scowled above shoulders that could bear the weight of the full earth in all its fecundity. A magnificent cascade of flame-red hair framed his noble mien. Kohga was a fine specimen himself and not one to be daunted by even the most remarkable physical beauty, but it was difficult to concentrate with two necrotic phantoms clutching his arms behind his back in the inexorable grip of their malice-encrusted fingers.

Not that he was complaining. It was a stroke of sheer gorgeous serendipity that his latest foray into the upper troposphere had brought him down precisely into the sanctum of the legendary Demon King beneath Hyrule Castle. Kohga cursed himself for not having ascertained the location earlier, but he approved. Only a true genius would launch his attack from under the very feet of his enemies.

“What foolish creature dares to disturb me?” the Demon King demanded. “I await the Hylian hero, and you are not he.”

The phantoms clutched Kohga tighter. He could feel the searing burn of their grip through the heat-resistant fabric of his uniform, but he was not afraid. He considered it a glorious honor to be treated as a threat.

“I am Kohga, the leader of the Yiga Clan. We are your humble followers, my lord, and we have dedicated ourselves body and soul to your service.”

A deep frown creased the Demon King’s face, granting him an even more powerful appearance of masculine ruggedness. “I know all of my servants, from the lowliest Bokolin to the mightiest Frox, and I do not know you. Explain yourself.”

Nothing could have pleased Kohga more. “Since time immemorial, we of the Yiga Clan have sought to undermine the royal family of Hyrule to pave the way for the coming of your lordship,” he boasted. “We have yet to find the princess, but we of the inverted eye keep a close watch on her chosen knight, striking whenever the opportunity presents itself.”

The Demon King’s amber eyes narrowed. “So you say, yet still he walks this land.”

“You are not wrong, your lordship, but this is not a cause for concern. Our strength lies in numbers, and in probabilities. I have fought the knight four, no, five times myself, and we acquire valuable information with every confrontation. In our last battle, I perfected the rocket technology capable of blasting us into space! Well, I mean,” Kohga corrected himself, “technically into the stratosphere, but mark my words. At the rate we’re going, we’ll make it to the moon! Why, just the other day, I –  ”

The Demon King raised a hand to interrupt his monologue. “You survived your battles with the knight who wields the sacred sword,” he said, slowly curling his fingers into a fist.

“Y-yes.”

“Five times, you say.”

Kohga nodded, beginning to sweat under his mask. There was nothing he loved more than enacting performances of his battles with Link, but it only just now occurred to him that he may have accomplished a feat that not even the mighty Demon King himself had managed to pull off.

“Very well.” The Demon King nodded, and the magic of his phantoms dissolved in a gradual shedding of crimson light. “I’ve long wondered about what lies beyond the borders of this miserable land. Now tell me,” he continued, a devilish grin spreading across his divinely handsome face, “everything you know about rockets.”

[aruanimess]

Hi Myrtle!

I hope you're doing fine (and thank you a lot for your recent MYLYSW comment, thank you so much T^T)

As for the prompt list, how about fixing their clothes a little for them when noticing something is off with post-canon AruAni?

Have a great day!

Quiet acts of love prompts

Hello, Anna!! I'm doing... okay. (Distracting myself with cute prompts) Your chapter was lovely and you should know, no need to thank me! I hope you're having a wonderful day!

~~~

For what seems like the fiftieth time this morning, Armin checks his pocket watch. The numbers on the dial seem to mock him. Sure enough, they're running late.

They're meeting a delegation from Hizuru at 10 for a casual brunch before the official negotiations. His idea. He thought they could soften them up by entertaining them first, making them more accepting to the rather unfavorable terms he plans to present them with later. Talk over some coffee and pancakes, tell a few jokes here and there, get to know each other and then serve them with the bitter pill. Easy.

But Annie slept in, and now they're running late.

He taps his foot impatiently, but says nothing to urge her to go faster. He knows there's no point in that. As a matter of fact, he's happy that Annie is feeling comfortable enough to snooze for a little while longer.

When they first started dating, she used to wake up with the sun. A soldier's schedule. Now, she stretches languorously in bed, well past the alarm, yawns like a fluffy lazy kitten and turns to the other side for another nap. It's glorious. He doesn't want to ruin this by complaining about some boring diplomats.

The bedroom door slams open and Annie staggers in awkwardly, heels clicking precariously. Her hair is still wet from the shower, and she only has one sleeve of her suit jacket on. A pastry is hanging from her teeth.

"We'll eat there!" he can't help but exclaim.

In an impressive feat, Annie gobbles the pastry up in two swift bites. Without holding it, she tilts her head back and drags the sweet thing in her mouth by opening and closing her jaw like an oddly attractive pelican, as her fingers fidget with the buttons of her shirt.

Armin eyes her with some concern. "Do you need help with that?"

She shakes her head, still struggling. "I got dizzy by getting up too fast," she explains. "I couldn't leave on an empty stomach."

He smiles as he watches her hands flying over the buttons.

When she's done, she spreads her hands. "Ready," she proclaims proudly, but she's anything but.

Armin can't help it, he laughs. Hiccupy giggles roll past his lips and he wipes a lone tear of mirth from the corner of his eye. "Oh my god, sorry. Sorry," he flounders, "it's just... your shirt is buttoned wrong."

Annie looks down to her soddy buttoning and frowns. With less confidence, her hands move once again. Armin can tell she's trying her best from the concentrated wrinkle between her brows. Once she's finished, she squints at herself doubtfully as if she knows something is wrong but can't figure out what.

She shoots him a questioning glance and pouts.

Armin bites his lip, trapping a new wave of giggles. "It's still wonky," he says. "Here, let me."

He undoes her own haphazard work and pinches the ends of the fabric carefully, bringing the crisp cotton together in slow measured tugs. He lines up the holes with the buttons with ruler-like precision and tucks them into place one by one starting at the bottom and working his way up to her collar. His gaze, transfixed at his task as it was, finally lands on Annie's flushed face. There's a small, secretive smile curving up her lips.

"What is it?" he asks.

Her chin dips down, eyes falling on her shoes. "Nothing," she says. "You're good to me, that's all."

A blush rises to his cheeks, and he scratches his nose nervously. "You'd do the same."

She hums thoughtfully. "Perhaps."

He kisses the tip of her nose. "For sure." He smiles. "But we better run."

Annie nods quickly and they're out the door in five seconds flat.

The brunch goes great... up until the diplomats start ordering breakfast cocktails. Armin of course couldn't possibly refuse when offered the sparkly drink (the intention was after all to suck up to them), so he has more than a few refills. After that, the world becomes a little blurry around the edges.

He's returning to their table after a much needed bathroom break, when Annie walks up to him and cuts him off.

"What?" he says.

She leans in. "I'd return the favor from this morning, but I don't think you want me groping your crotch in public."

What in the world, he thinks. "Huh?"

Annie's gaze flicks down. "Your flies are open."

Armin's hands fly to his pants. Oh dear, she's not wrong. Keeping an eye on the delegation, he angles himself subtly and pulls his zipper up.

He takes Annie's hand in his and squeezes. "Thank you, love. You always have my back."

She hums noncommittally and leads them back to the table without commenting. She doesn't need to, though. Armin knows it to be true.

[wildlife4life]

WIP Wednesday

Tagged by @spaceprincessem @exhuastedpigeon @spotsandsocks @devirnis @lover-of-mine @sibylsleaves @hoodie-buck @loserdiaz @daffi-990 and @ladydorian05 Thank you all so much! I look forward to all your fics!

Alright, so yesterday I asked basically for permission to work on my Halloween fics instead of NFL Buck and many of you said to do it. So just for a short time, I will be pausing on NFL Buck. I promise it is still being worked on a bit, but most of my concentration will be on my Halloween fics, which I really hope I can actually get done before Halloween.

Also, I cannot promise that I will be posting much more for tag games this weekend. My daughter is having minor surgery on Friday that we are going out of town for (hospital where I am was a year out), so I will be making most of the weekend taking care of her. I will try my very best to post something, but no promises.

Now that I've caught ya'll up, I know I mentioned a possible werewolf buddie fic. Well that is not this today. Instead I am bringing back Jigsaw Buck, my serial killer fic based off the Saw films. Previous post can be found here.

Warning below the cut. Description of grotesque death and also Devon's suicide. ENJOY!

Pretending to care, to have those emotions that make him approachable and later ignored, is hard work. Buck slipped just a little once.  After losing Devon on the roller coaster.  Of course, Buck wanted him to fight for his life, to see how much better it could be after the game was won, but in end, it wasn’t enough. And that was on Devon. But his old fire captain somehow took his quick acceptance as a form of shock and sent him to department therapy. Buck hated therapists. They were of the few who had the power to peer past the layers, rip off the masks, and see the twisted bloody hunk of flesh that resembled what remained of his dead brother-in-law. Cold with no emotion to be found; just the void that demands the retribution of others. Thankfully (and somewhat unfortunately), Dr. Wells was too distracted by the shiny layer that is firefighter Buckley to actually do her job.  Sadly, she abused the small amount of power she held in her delicate, manicured hands and tried to sexually exploit the man she was supposed to help. When Buck dug around a bit and found her many other victims, well it was a good thing Dr. Wells had such a precise schedule. It was almost too easy grabbing her in the blind spot of her office’s cameras. Too bad the therapist spent most of her given time, screaming that she did no wrong. That those she exploited wanted what she forced upon them, that she didn’t abuse the power she held. And when those last few precious second ticked away, Buck stepped into the room, saddened by her reluctance to take the second chance, learn her lesson. “Game over.” He told her bluntly then turned away, unable to witness his masterful contraption drill into her skull. The whirring tool flung ringlets of bone, blood, hair, and brain matter across the room and onto the floor. The key to her freedom, sat unused in a box just a mere two feet away. The price…a single hand, relinquishing the power she held in it and a tool of her neglect.

Dr. Wells isn't the first or the last of Buck's victims. Spoiler: Eddie will be a subject to Buck's games as well. Mwhaha.

Tagging (no pressure): @callaplums @elvensorceress @eowon @rogerzsteven @hippolotamus @disasterbuckdiaz @thekristen999 @theotherbuckley @wikiangela @giddyupbuck @watchyourbuck @buddierights @cowboy-buck @jesuisici33 @fortheloveofbuddie @forthewolves @try-set-me-on-fire @eddiediaztho @eddiebabygirldiaz @thewolvesof1998 @lizzybizzyzzz @shortsighted-owl @homerforsure @monsterrae1 @911onabc @adiazhalloween @housewifebuck @honestlydarkprincess @bvckandeddie @arthursdent @glorious-spoon @bigfootsmom @athenagranted @rainbow-nerdss @gayhoediaz @gayedmundodiaz

[cobragardens]

Things I love about this:

Aziraphale's cloud-pattern vitiligo. Symbolically clever and original, visually lovely.

Crowley's freckles and moles. I've literally never seen a piece of art or media before depicting a character with skin with a pattern like mine as attractive. Or, like, at all. Also I really like the way the shading and highlights on Crowley's skin are done. They're so close to being blended together, but not quite. The skin looks luminous, the arms and hands especially. This is also a glorious depiction of Crowley as a natural redhead, and I feel like @bubblytonks has nailed both the amount and the precise hue of that lovely brick-orange ruddiness many redhead complexions have in them, especially over the scapula and the shoulder and at the right elbow.

The repetition of their contrast motif in their skin--the angel marked with white, the demon marked with dark.

Crowley's feminine gold jewellery is doing things for me on a style level, and also I love that it's a bright orange-gold, not just because it alludes to his eye color but because it just looks really gd good. The snake armband is beautifully drawn (I love that it's venomous), and the detailed scales are done with care and some reference to an actual snake and not just longing.

I love how perfectly Crowley is ambiguously gendered here: his jewellery, hairstyle, brow style, and top are all subtly to obviously feminine, and the top leaves the Adam's apple (which gender police have a thing about apparently) veiled, but Crowley's not wearing makeup or nail polish, and he's got sideburns. His shoulder is smooth and rounded in a way that says female on someone so thin, but there's some muscle development in the arm, and length to the lower arms and wrists, that says male; the hands could plausibly go either way. This Crowley and Aziraphale are clearly inspired by David Tennant's and Michael Sheen's performances in Show!Omens, but they are also just as clearly the artist's own creation, and I love all the choices they've made.

Aziraphale's eyebrow is perfect. I feel like his eyebrows are often ignored in fanart, which is a shame bc both seasons' makeup teams did an excellent job on them. Both the visible eyebrows in this piece are gorgeous. I love that Crowley's is groomed in a feminine style. Eyebrows are my favorite facial feature, so this is a Thing for me.

Aziraphale's hair! Lots of artists make it look feathery and ethereal and cloudlike, but @bubblytonks is the first one that's made it look like a texture I can imagine feeling. I don't mean they make it look real, because it's also stylized in a way that makes my brain very happy (those little filigrees and s-curves at the crown and back of his head? so visually satisfying): it's more like verisimilitude without an attempt at realism. Ditto Aziraphale's chest hair, and my friends, it is very difficult to get me to like chest hair, just so you know where I'm coming from on this.

The curved lines of Aziraphale's body. What I'm experiencing here is that sense of familiarity you as a viewer can get when a figure is well-drawn, so that you are simultaneously aware that it is a drawing but feel that it holds something real. Rrrgh, I am not explaining this well. But like, I've slept with several people shaped like this Aziraphale is shaped, that exact line to the shoulder and upper arm. This piece depicts that line so well that when I view it I can remember what that line feels like under my hand. I don't experience that with most art; most figures do not make me think in any experience other than the visual.

The specificity of the kiss. This isn't just a press of lips; it's not the beginning of this kiss. Crowley is involved in A Kissing Project: he's holding Aziraphale's face with both hands, his eyes are shut tightly like he's concentrating, and he's drawn Aziraphale's lower lip between his own. He is very much doing a specific thing with this kiss that he wants to be doing,

And my very favorite part of this piece, by a country mile, is Aziraphale's smile: the dimple and the little upward curve at the corner of his mouth pointing to it. It's the crown on a beautiful facial expression: joy pleasure and happiness, like he's tasting something wonderful, even though at this particular moment he's the wonderful thing being tasted.

they're in my head ahhhhh

[dizzyhslightlyvoided]

Jenny Over-There In: Who Laws the Lawyers?

Jenny Over-There receives a call asking for someone she can't find -- and she can't find the caller, either! Things spiral out of control from there.

The Multidimensional Finders Service: a place you could call if you wanted help finding anything. And by "anything", they meant "anything". No matter who you were, no matter where you were, no matter what universe you were calling from: if it existed, they could tell you exactly where to find it.

This was mostly all owed to one employee.

In the head office in Wales, at a desk with a red telephone, sat a young woman with scruffy reddish-brown hair and a bored expression. Her name was Jenny Over-There, and she was endlessly scrolling through her phone. Not through social media — she did her best not to succumb to that sort of doomscrolling. Well ... most of the time. But no, she was browsing through the app store, in the hopes of finding a game which didn't have a predatory business model, wasn't an ad-ridden mess, didn't deliberately try to cause gambling addictions, or some combination of all three.

She was just downloading the seventh or so Solitaire app when the Red Interdimensional Telephone on her desk rang. Jenny put down her smartphone so she could answer. "Hello, Multidimensional Finders Service."

"Greetings, Jenny Over-There," said an imperious voice which somehow called to mind an Egyptian pharaoh. "Would you like to become embroiled in a conflict of cosmic importance?"

This gave Jenny pause. "No, I'm just here to help you find things," she said, maintaining her customer service voice.

"All right," said the voice, without breaking stride. "Then, would you be so kind as to tell me the location of the descendants of my dear friend Randolph Carter?"

Jenny had the ability to locate any person, place, or thing that existed, no matter where it was in the multiverse. This was why she had been employed by the MFS to begin with. It was why she was the employee. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the question; there was some measure of "do what the person asking means" to her power, and so rather than trying to find every possible descendant of a man she'd never met in a universe she'd never visited, the image formed in her mind of two youths, a brunette young woman and a sandy-blonde young man, frantically driving in a small brown sedan, with an impression of their precise location in terms she could understand (and, usually, convey) ...

"They're driving towards lower Manhattan," said Jenny, "due west of where you are."

"Thank you," the voice purred, and hung up.

Jenny frowned. She made a note in the log book about having to deal with something of cosmic importance, but the phone rang almost before she'd finished.

She put her customer service voice back on as she answered. "Hello, Multidimensional Finders Service."

"Ah, hello!" said a frumpy woman's voice. "I'm looking for my keys."

Jenny concentrated, and found them immediately. "They're behind the blue couch under the window."

"Oh, is that where they landed," said the woman. "Thank you!"

"No problem!" said Jenny. She didn't bother wondering about the million or so questions this exchange had raised, because if she did that with every strange call, she'd never get anything done.

Moments later, there was another call. "Hello, Multidimensional Finders —"

"IT IS I, LORD GRALLYX!" roared a demonic voice. "TELL ME WHERE JENNY EVERYWHERE IS!"

Jenny Everywhere, the Shifter, who existed in every possible reality and could shift between them, and who in this universe worked for the glorious e-commerce website Kablamazon in order to undermine it from within. Jenny Over-There immediately felt a strain in her mind as her power tried to pull her perspective in a million directions at once.

Fortunately, this was the one question which permitted Jenny to get snippy with the customers. Putting the full weight of the headache into her voice, she snapped, "She's everywhere! It's right there in the name!" She slammed the receiver back down before Grallyx could respond.

It wasn't long, however, before the phone rang again. Jenny tried to shake herself out of the headache, went back into customer-service mode, and answered. "Hello, Multidimensional Finders Service."

"Where is Benito?" said an irritated, gravely voice.

Jenny Over-There hesitated. It sounded like some sort of cartoon villain as performed by ... yes, by famous actor/comedian/musician Dwight White. "As in ... Mussolini?"

There was the briefest of pauses on the other end. "Yes, Benito Mussolini," the voice said flatly. "No, you nitwit, the Italian copyright lawyer from Brooklyn!"

"Er ..." Oh. Right. Of course. Benito. The protagonist of Super Benito Siblings, one of the oldest extant video game franchises in this world. The de facto mascot of Kyujudo, a megacorporation which had started in the nineteenth century as an organized crime syndicate with ties to gambling; in the final decades of the twentieth century, it had metamorphosed into a video game corporation which prided itself in a carefully-cultivated family-friendly image, whilst being absolutely cutthroat with their lawyers. They were making a Super Benito Siblings movie with Dibbsy, which was approximately the same thing but with animated movies, and there had been posters of Mammon Mouse and Dollar Duck dressed up as Benito and his brother Giovanni. It was a match made in Lawyer Hell.

Jenny concentrated on the question.

Nothing.

What?

She concentrated again. Nothing continued to happen; the caller might as well not have asked. Jenny asked herself, where is the caller? Zilch. To all appearances, her power had simply stopped working.

"Hello?" said the voice on the other end.

"A-any store that sells video games," Jenny said hurriedly.

"... What?" said the voice, genuinely baffled.

"Er, technical difficulties, please stand by!" said Jenny, her heart thumping in her chest. "We apologize for the inconvenience."

"Wait!" exclaimed the voice.

She hung up and ran through the seemingly-endless labyrinthine hallways of the MFS headquarters to her boss's office. "Um, excuse me!! Sir!?"

Her boss, a nondescript man in equally-nondescript grey robes, quickly put down his smartphone. Jenny thought she recognized a particularly predatory Kyujudo game on the screen. "Yes, Jenny?" he said. "What is it?"

"My power isn't working!" Jenny said frantically. "I got a call, and ... and ... and it was as if my power just wasn't there!"

"Wasn't ... there?" said the Man in Grey, frowning. "That's very bad!"

"It really is, sir!" said Jenny.

The Man in Grey shook his head. "How will we do business like this!?" He looked up at her. "Right. Right. First, stop panicking. We have to test it."

"I'm NOT panicking!" shouted Jenny.

Quickly, the Man in Grey said, "Where is the Red Interdimensional Telephone?"

Reflexively, Jenny concentrated. "On the desk of my office ... wait."

"Where is Dynamite Thor?" said the Man in Grey.

"Uh ..." Jenny concentrated again, then turned around. "Oh, he's coming up right here."

A blonde man in a red, yellow, and blue superhero costume with an explosion-emblem on his chest was approaching: Peter Thor, alias Dynamite Thor, one of the multiverse's worst superheroes. His only power was an immunity to explosions, and he fought crime using his eponymous dynamite. He was an intern at MFS. "Sorry," he said, "I heard the commotion and I wanted to see what was up."

The Man in Grey was calming down. "Jenny had her power fail once," he said, "and she concluded that she had lost the use of it completely." He was usually at least a little bit of a mess, but he was very dedicated to ensuring that the MFS ran smoothly. ... Most of the time.

"Oh," said Dynamite Thor, nonplussed.

In the distance, the red telephone began to ring.

Jenny and the Man in Grey looked at each other. "I'd ... I should answer that, shouldn't I?" said Jenny. For some reason, she was feeling a certain level of disappointment that her power still worked. In some ways, having some kind of power meant she had the responsibility to use it. It was a bit of a bother.

"Please do!" said the Man in Grey, oblivious to her inner turmoil.

The trio made their way all the way back through the MFS hallways until they reached Jenny's office, and Jenny picked up the phone without bothering to sit down. "Hello, Multidimensional Finders Service."

"Finally," said a young man's voice. "Where's that DAMN fourth Shining Trapezohedron?"

Jenny narrowed her eyes, but concentrated.

Somewhere in New York City, in the same universe as a previous call, she found a man in a black business suit. He looked for all the world like Nicola Tesla as a young man, with the addition of a pharaoh's stylized beard. He promptly looked up at Jenny's point of view, smiled and gave her a little wave, and then reached into his pocket and produced a small oddly-angled stone — nearly black, with red striations, which seemed to have a faint but eerie light from within.

Oh. That must have been the previous caller. Jenny was fairly certain she hadn't seen him in this particular guise before, but she knew who she was looking at.

"It's in Lower Manhattan a few miles east of where you are," she said into the phone, unable to completely keep the weariness out of her voice, "being held by Nyarlathotep the Crawling Chaos." The pharaoh in her mind's eye nodded encouragingly.

The young man let out an exhausted and exasperated stream of profanity under his breath. "I'm going to punch Yog-Sothoth!"

"Dwain!" said the voice of his sister, or cousin, or whatever their shared relationship with Randolph Carter was.

"Uh," said the young man, "send the bill to Kadath!" He hung up again.

The Man in Grey was unable to hide his relief. "Well, Jenny, it looks like your power still works," he said. "It's just that one call in particular failed you."

"Yeah ..." Jenny sat down at the desk, and started filling out the entry in the logbook. "That ... is odd. But it is less worrying, I think."

"What was the call that failed?" asked Peter.

Jenny looked up at him. "It sounded like some sort of cartoon villain played by Dwight White," she said, "asking for Benito, as in the Super Benito Siblings."

"Dwight White," the Man in Grey repeated.

"... Yes?" said Jenny.

"Dwight White," said the Man in Grey, "who is presently playing the role of Benito's arch-nemesis Bonham in Dibbsy's Super Benito movie?"

"Huh." Jenny blinked. "Now that you mention it ..."

The phone rang again. "Ah!" Jenny quickly picked it up and tried to shift gears back into customer service. "Hello, Mul—"

"Now listen here, you brat!" said the Dwight White voice. "When I find you, I'll crush your entire finders service to the ground, along with everyone in it!"

Jenny furrowed her brow. "Will that help you find Benito?"

"... What?" said the voice, thrown off once again.

"I'm just saying," said Jenny, "if you kill us all, we won't be able to find Benito for you."

"Oh for darkness's sake!" he growled.

The Man in Grey whispered, "Where is Bonham?"

Jenny concentrated, then shook her head. Phrasing the question that way didn't find the caller, either. "Well, I'm sorry, sir," she said into the phone. "However he's hidden, he's hidden in such a way that even I can't find him."

"Useless fools!" said the voice, and hung up.

"So ..." The Man in Grey tapped his chin thoughtfully. "You can't find Benito. You can't find the caller asking for him." He frowned. "I don't suppose copyright would cause problems, would it? In this universe, he's presently under the jurisdiction of the two corporations with the deadliest lawyers in the world."

Jenny shrugged. Between the three employees of the Welsh MFS office, the Man in Grey was the one with the best meta-awareness, in stories with a permeable fourth wall such as this one. Well ... he was probably better than Jenny. Certainly more comfortable.

The red phone rang once again, cutting into Jenny's thoughts. She sighed, and picked up the phone. "Hello, Multidimensional Finders Service."

Silence.

"Hello?" said Jenny uncertainly.

"Where," said a squeaky voice with an American accent, "is Bunny Everyhare?"

Jenny glared at the phone. "Did you say 'Jenny Everywhere'?"

"No, no, no!" said the voice. "Bunny Everyhare!"

Jenny concentrated, then turned around in surprise. "'Right outside my window'!?"

The window shattered as a four-foot-tall figure somersaulted in. It was a brown-furred funny-animal bunny with a wiry build, wearing a Kablamazon delivery uniform, a red scarf, and orange-tinted goggles atop her head which didn't look like they'd actually fit over her eyes. She struck a pose and threw up her hands. "And now I'm in here!"

Jenny gaped at her. "What ...?" The local Jenny Everywhere had delivered a toaster a year ago, and this ... bunny ... was dressed exactly like she'd been.

"'Bunny ... Everyhare'?" said Dynamite Thor, who was even more dumbfounded.

The bunny grinned, light reflecting off her buckteeth with a ting! "That's my name, don't wear it out!" she said, winking with a xylophone note. "Or do wear it out, whichever one's funnier."

"We have a door, you know!" the Man in Grey barked. "Windows are expensive!"

Bunny froze, and looked up at him guiltily. Then she somersaulted backwards out of the window, and the shards of the window flew up towards the frame, repairing itself. The instant it was intact again, Bunny strode in past Dynamite Thor. "Haha, 'we have a door'," she said. "Gotta respect the classics!"

"Why are you dressed like this world's Jenny Everywhere?" said Jenny wearily.

Bunny shrugged, glancing down at herself. "I always look like the nearest Jenny Everywwwwwwhy the hell is this a Kablamazon uniform."

The Man in Grey huffed. "Look, Miss Everywhere ..."

"Everyhare," Bunny corrected him.

He groaned. "What are you doing here?"

"Oh right!" Bunny hopped on her heels. "Have you guys seen anything ... strange recently?"

"Besides you?" said Dynamite Thor.

Bunny tilted her head backwards to look up at him. "Besides me, yeah," she said. "I mean like. Nonexistence existing for no apparent reason? Someone calling you up, right after you started talking about 'em, as if they only existed while you were thinking about 'em? Any Null-creatures from beyond the Void?"

"I got a call from Nyarlathotep the Crawling Chaos a moment ago," said Jenny, gesturing to the red phone. "Er, not the one on the Interdimensional Pride Council, a version from a different universe —"

"Nah, nah." Bunny shook her head. "Nyarlathotep, he's just your regulation eldritch cosmic-monstrosity god, y'know? Nothing out of the ordinary there. I'm talking about the, the Null, which is, like, it's beyond the Void Between Worlds."

"I didn't know the Void Between Worlds had ... creatures," said Dynamite Thor uncertainly.

"I said beyond it, Pete," said Bunny. "Uh, I'm explaining myself badly. So, like ..." She gestured with both hands. "... the Interdimensional Void isn't completely empty, right? It's chock full of non-Jenny-Everywhere dimensional travelers headed from point A to point B, and there's even a few landmarks!"

Jenny mentally asked herself where the Void was, and got a vague sense of "outside" the universe. As usual when she searched for the Void Between Worlds, the vision it supplied was of ... nothing. Not even a blank backdrop. Her power was working perfectly well, it did produce a mental image, and that mental image contained nothing. It gave her an entirely different headache from the one she got when someone asked where Jenny Everywhere was.

"Everyone here knows all this," said the Man in Grey impatiently. "Knowing how the multiverse works is part of the job."

"Yeah, Mig," said Bunny, "but there's more to it than that."

"'Mig'?" said the Man in Grey. "Oh. My ... 'initials' ..."

"The Void is non-Euclidean, and has more than three, uh, dimensions," said Bunny, as if he hadn't said anything. "You pick a notional direction that's 'away from any universe' and 'away from any landmark' — and if you go far enough, you eventually disappear into a dimensional stratum of absolute nonexistence, never to be seen again."

"And it does have creatures?" said Jenny, rubbing her temples.

"Technically, it doesn't have anything," said Bunny. "However, it also doesn't have 'nothing'. Which means that the waveform can collapse into 'something', and you get stuff coming out of the Null which are neither existent nor nonexistent." There was the briefest of pauses. "Null-entities can be eldritch-as-in-Nyarlathotep, though," she added.

Jenny reluctantly asked herself where the Null was ... and nothing happened. Okay, good, no further headaches. "I can't find the Null with my power," she said slowly.

"See?" said Bunny, nodding. "Exactly!"

The three employees of the MFS exchanged a look. "Well," said Jenny, "there were a couple of people a moment ago who I couldn't find, in exactly the same way I can't find the Null."

Bunny's ears perked up. "Lemme guess," she said, trying to play it cool, "it was Benito 'n' Giovanni."

"Er, close," said Jenny. "It was Benito and Bonham."

Bunny looked startled. "Wait, really?" she said. "That's ... hilarious."

The Man in Grey looked thoughtful. "Miss Everyhare," he said, "would I be correct in presuming that as a cartoon character, who obeys cartoon physics, you can do anything?"

"Only if it's funny," Bunny said promptly.

The Man in Grey nodded. "I wonder if it'd be possible for you to comically find them yourself."

Bunny snorted. "If Jenny freaking Over-There couldn't find 'em, what chance do I have?"

"A rather good one, I think!" said the Man in Grey, cajolingly.

Bunny gave him a hard look. "Please don't try to do the whole 'are too' 'am not' 'are not' 'am too' routine," she said pointedly. "I already did that with the first Jenny Everywhere I met."

"I'm not Jenny Ev— you know what, never mind."

"The what routine?" said Dynamite Thor.

"One of the classic comedy routines, Petey," said Bunny. "You're in an argument, right, going like 'Are too!' 'Am not!' 'Are too!' 'Am not!' But then you mix it up by saying 'Are not!' and they're so caught up in disagreeing with you they go 'Am too!' and you keep going like 'Are not!' 'Am too!' until they get fed up and —"

Fortunately, at that moment they were interrupted by a loud explosion coming from the front of the building.

The Man in Grey glared at Peter. "Thor, what have I told you about bringing dynamite to work!?"

Peter flailed. "It wasn't actually my fault this time!" he exclaimed. "Also, that didn't even sound like dynamite!"

The four rushed to the front of the building, just in time to see the front door get blasted off its hinges. Outside, there was a hovercraft resembling a red, white, and black bumper car with a jester's face on the front and a cannon affixed to the bottom that was clearly too small to contain more than a single shot and had no readily apparent means of loading it from inside. The pilot was a portly, mustachioed, blue-furred cartoon hare with beady red eyes, easily nine feet tall without the hovercraft.

Bonham. The arch-nemesis of Benito.

"Oh no!" exclaimed the Man in Grey. "Now we'll have to pay to get the door fixed!" Bunny facepalmed.

Bonham glared at Jenny. "So," he snarled, "the whelp finally decides to show herself!"

"Er, hi," said Jenny ...

... and that's when she noticed the faint dark mist that was rising off his body.

Except ... Jenny didn't want to say it was dark mist, because ... it wasn't dark. It wasn't anything, really — not dark, not pale, not medium, not colorful or neutral. It was just nothing, like the Interdimensional Void, except it was here in the physical world instead of coming from her power.

But no, in terms of what it really looked like, it definitely was dark.

"Just as I thought," Bunny Everyhare stage-whispered. "This guy's a Bunny Nullhare. A Null-creature that follows my whole 'cartoon character' idiom."

Dynamite Thor hurriedly ran back inside. "Stall him!" he exclaimed.

"What?" said Bonham.

"Um," said Bunny.

"... Huh." Jenny watched him go. She'd seen Dynamite Thor trying to be a hero. The notion that he had a plan of some sort did not fill her with confidence.

Still, at the moment, what else was there to do? She exchanged a look with Bunny and the Man in Grey, then turned back to Bonham. "Well, sir," she said, putting on her calmest and most professional customer service voice, "I'm not sure what you want me to do. What you are looking for is simply unable to be found."

"Such uselessness!" said Bonham, gesticulating wildly. "I'll destroy you all, I'll tear down this finder's service, and then I'll use it to find Princess Plum —"

"In that order?" wondered the Man in Grey.

"— and then I'll defeat Benito and his scrawny brother once and for all!" Bonham shook his fist at the heavens.

"I'm gonna have to stop you there, chief," said Bunny, stepping forward and producing a wooden mallet from behind her back which was bigger than she was.

Bonham stared down at her. "You!?" he said incredulously. "You and what army?"

Dynamite Thor rushed out, wearing protective plastic earmuffs and a utility-belt full of dynamite sticks. "I'm back!" he said. "Has he blown you up yet?"

Bunny glanced at him. "I mean I've got a superhero right here," she answered Bonham.

The Man in Grey groaned. "Please don't ... just ... er, please stay away from the building.

"Haw!" Bonham shook his head. "Who dares challenge Bonham, the King of Hoppas!?"

Dynamite Thor pulled out a dynamite stick, and posed dramatically. "Dynamite Thor, defender of justice, and intern of the Multidimensional Finders Service!"

Bunny twirled her mallet, causing it to clip through the ground. "Bunny Everyhare, the Sniffter ..."

"The what!?" said Jenny and the Man in Grey simultaneously.

"... and the third most powerful being in the entire multiverse!" Bunny finished.

The Man in Grey looked at her, nervousness warring with incredulity. "Who are the first two?"

Bunny shrugged. "Eye dee kay, I can't think of any answer which could possibly be funnier than just leaving it at that."

"Well," said Bonham, "I suppose I can take the time to obliterate a couple of would-be heroes before getting down to busin—"

Bunny hit him with the mallet, flattening his face and producing a cartoon crashing noise that didn't particularly resemble any sound that either a mallet or a face should make. Dynamite Thor lit the fuse on his dynamite stick and threw it at Bonham; Jenny and the Man in Grey hurriedly covered their ears. It sailed right past the hovercraft before detonating, rocking it slightly.

Bonham righted himself, his face back to normal. "THAT'S IT!" he roared. "I'm tearing you down!"

Jenny could have sworn she could hear boss music. ©Kyujudo, of course. She tugged at the Man in Grey's sleeve, and the two of them hurried inside. Cartoony and explosive sounds began to waft in from outside.

The Man in Grey frowned, more nervous than Jenny usually saw him. "Jenny," he said distractedly, "where is the most powerful entity within one hundred kilometers?"

Jenny concentrated, and her mind's eye zeroed in on Bunny Everyhare, who was wildly somersaulting back and forth to avoid Bonham's bombs. She landed, held up ber mallet defensively, and Jenny saw that the back of her Kablamazon uniform now had the text By A Gat Dang Lightyear embroidered in flowery cursive.

"It's, er, Bunny Everyhare," she said. "'By a gat dang lightyear', according to the text that just appeared on her back. I ... suppose we're in luck, then."

The Man in Grey frowned. "I don't know about that," he said, gesturing for Jenny to follow him through the hallways. "'As long as it's funny' ..." He glanced back at her. "Which outcome is more hilarious: 'the final boss of a video game gets soundly thrashed by a silly cartoon rabbit and —"

"I'm a hare!" shouted Bunny from outside. "Get it right!"

"— by a silly cartoon hare and one of the worst superheroes in existence'?" said the Man in Grey without missing a beat. "Or 'the self-proclaimed third most powerful being in the multiverse gets a game over from a fellow cartoon character'?"

"Er ..." Jenny thought furiously. "Well. We're ... we've got to think about the consequences, don't we?" She glanced over her shoulder. "If ..." She still couldn't quite say the name with a straight face. "... Bunny Everyhare loses, then that has connotations of 'and then Bonham blows up the building, kills us all, and ruins our business'. That wouldn't be very funny, would it?"

The Man in Grey looked slightly ill. "I should hope not!" he said. "But ... there are comedies where that sort of thing is acceptable. No, I really think we should try to find some way to tilt the odds in our favor." He led her into his office and sat down at his desk. "I don't suppose you have any ideas?"

Jenny frowned thoughtfully. She wasn't any kind of hero, and her one stint as the supervillain Lovebomber had been entirely at the behest of her "victim." And anxiety and fight-or-flight like this was not very helpful when you needed to think. But ...

Her gaze alighted on the Man in Grey's smartphone.

"Earlier," she said slowly, "you asked if copyright laws might be getting in the way of my power."

"I did," said the Man in Grey, looking up at her curiously.

"Bonham's arch-nemesis," said Jenny, "is a copyright lawyer."

The Man in Grey caught on. "And in this universe, he's copyrighted."

Jenny nodded. "And he follows 'the same cartoon idiom' as Bunny Everyhare!" she said. "We could get Kyujudo's lawyers to go after him!"

The Man in Grey practically wilted with relief. "Well done, Jenny!" he said. "I think that sort of 'anticlimax punchline' is just what we need!"

He unlocked his phone, grimaced, closed the predatory Kyujudo game, and opened the search engine. "Let's see ... the number for Kyujudo of Europe's copyright office ... Aha!" He slowly and ponderously dialed the number. "Hello ... ah, yes, I'd like to report a copyright infringement ..."

—

Bunny's mallet vanished, and she raised her hands. In a puff of smoke, five other Bunnies Everyhare appeared and leaped up to land on each other's shoulders, forming a stack six Bunnies high. With a cry of "Block this overhead!", the one on the bottom smacked herself in the backside, launching all of them into the air. Each of them suddenly had a wooden mallet in her hand, and all of them whacked Bonham in turn.

"Ouch — oof — argh — ugh — ow — gah!" Bonham wobbled, as all but the original Bunny vanished again (well ... probably it was the original). "Accursed lesser bunnies!" he roared, firing wildly in all directions. "Why won't you die!?"

One of the bombs hit Dynamite Thor. "Oof," he said simply. "Uh, I'm immune to explosives, sorry."

"And I'm a cartoon character," said Bunny. "Nobody dies in the 'cartoon physics' kind of cartoon. Mostly," she added under her breath. "Meanwhile, the feeling's mutual, like who the hell gave you so many hit points!?"

Bonham growled. "This is absurd!"

"Couldn't agree more, chief!" said Bunny.

"Uh, Bunny," said Dynamite Thor suddenly, "I'm starting to run out of dynamite."

Bunny frowned over at him. "Not good, Pete!"

"Wait," said Dynamite Thor, "why are you calling me ... that ... name?"

Bunny hesitated. "You're Peter Thor," she said. "You're only now noticing I've been calling you 'Pete' and stuff?"

Peter sputtered. "That's ridiculous!" he said. "How could you possibly — why would you even think that I'm him!?"

"Why would you even think it's a surprise!" said Bunny. "For god's sake, Pete, you aren't even hiding your face!"

Bonham, now equally distracted by this conversation, peered at Peter. "Surely you at least wear glasses or something in your civilian identity?" he said. "Change your posture, and all that, to make it less-obvious you're the same person."

"Uh, no," said Peter, honestly confused. "Why would I need something like that? I have perfect 20-20 vision. And I'm not wearing this costume when I'm in my civilian identity ..."

Bonham turned to Bunny and wordlessly gestured at Peter with an incredulous expression. Bunny shrugged, equally incredulous.

"... which isn't this 'Peter Thor', by the way!" Peter continued. "I don't know what either of you are talking about!"

Bunny rolled her eyes. "Okay y'know what, screw that for now. We need another plan. Uh ... Bobo here is copyrighted in this universe."

"I am?" said Bonham.

Bunny held her hand out to Dynamite Thor. "Could you lemme borrow your phone for a minute, Pete?"

"What?" said Peter. "Why?"

"So I can make a phone call, duh," said Bunny.

"I left my phone inside," said Peter. "Also, I'm still not over the fact that you're calling me 'Peter Thor' ..."

"Ugh, fine, I'll use my own." Bunny reached behind her back and produced a blocky smartphone with a cracked screen. Holding the mallet under her arm, she smacked the front of the phone accompanied by a cartoon splat noise, and it began dialing, as Bonham and Peter exchanged a confused look. "Y'ello! Yep, got a copy-vio on our hands near the Multiverse Finders Service in Wales! Bonham's making a not-sanctioned-by-Kyujudo appearance!"

"What the hell is Kyujudo!?" shrieked Bonham.

"Yeah, hear that?" Bunny continued. "He just cussed out, not a family-friendly use of your brand image!" She blinked. "Oh, you're already on it, cool, someone in this building's faster than I am! Uh, yeah, just follow the 'splosions!"

Bonham leaned down to Dynamite Thor. "Who is she calling and what is she talking about?"

"Uh ... I'm not sure," said Peter. "But I think she might be calling Kyujudo's copyright lawyers —"

"WHAT."

—

Jenny and the Man in Grey reluctantly poked their heads out of the ruined front entrance. Bonham and his hovercraft were flashing red as he furiously zoomed around, firing bombs; Bunny was giggling as she ran in circles, always just ahead of the explosions. Dynamite Thor stood awkwardly off to the side, bereft of explosives.

"This is ridiculous," Bonham was shouting. "Why can't I destroy you alreadyyyyy!?"

"Cuz it wouldn't be funnyyyyyy!" Bunny called back, imitating his tone.

"God DAMN it!" said Bonham.

At that moment, several plain cars were driving up to the MFS headquarters.

Bonham and Bunny stopped their fight, and turned. The former looked confused; the latter, triumphant.

"Here they are," muttered the Man in Grey.

The cars came to a stop, and men in plain business suits came out. Many of them carried briefcases. They all looked the same. Well ... they weren't identical, they weren't moving in lockstep. They simply had the same kind of austere, formal bearing and facial expressions. Their clothes didn't even have the decency to look stylish or conventionally good-looking; they were business-formal, not fashionable. They didn't even have sunglasses.

They approached Bonham's hovercraft with the self-assuredness of men who could not possibly be stopped. "Good afternoon," said one of them, a balding man in a dark brown suit who sounded like a particularly dry BBC commentator. "We are here to present a cease-and-desist, due in three hours."

"And just who are you?" snapped Bonham, but now there was apprehensiveness in his voice.

"We are the Legalmen Collective," said the man. "Currently, this subset of the collective represents Kyujudo Company Ltd., Kyujudo of Europe, and The Wilt Dibbsy Corporation. We're here about your unauthorized appearance in this reality ..."

As the Legalman continued, Dynamite Thor sidled over to Jenny and the Man in Grey. "These are just lawyers, though," he said. "Are you sure this'll work?"

Bunny inexplicably popped out from behind him. "Guaranteed!" she said. "It'll be smooth as glass!"

"YOU'LL NEVER TAKE ME ALIVE!" shrieked Bonham, on cue. His cannon fired a bomb at the Legalmen, because he was a video game boss and thus had only a limited repertoire of responses to problem-solving.

Most of the Legalmen jumped back, letting out various yelps of alarm. But the leader in brown quickly whipped a paper out of his briefcase. "Legal Immunity!" he shouted.

The bomb detonated, kicking up a cloud of smoke which obscured them all.

Bonham exhaled loudly. "Finally, someone goes down!"

"Yep, totally," Bunny deadpanned, nodding. "You can't see what condition those guys are in, which absolutely means they're definitely completely toast."

Bonham glanced nervously between her and the smoke. "Uhhh ..."

The smoke began to clear, revealing the Legalman leader still holding the paper out. All of the Legalmen were completely unharmed.

Bonham's eyes widened. "Uhhhh."

The Legalman summoned more papers out of the briefcase. "Civil Procedure: Legal Action!" He thrust his hand towards Bonham.

The papers flew forward, tearing through the hovercraft as if ... well, as if it was the other way around. Bonham screamed as the hovercraft was surrounded by a succession of identical explosions, before detonating in a loud crash which whited out everyone's view for a split second. He landed facedown on the ground; a screw which didn't look like it had actually been part of the hovercraft fell and bounced off his head.

There was a pause. The black mist rising from Bonham's body thickened.

"Okay," said Bunny, "that was even cooler than I was expecting!"

"Wow," said Jenny weakly, looking the Legalman up and down. "Remind me not to get on your bad side!"

The Legalman coughed, almost apologetically. "You are all open-source or public domain characters," he said. "We read this story up to the scene before our arrival, as well as all of the 925th Universe stories by the original author. As long as the Paragraph is used correctly and you aren't committing any other crimes relevant to our current task, we can't do anything to you."

The Man in Grey frowned, and gestured to Bonham's prone form. "So, then, I gather that that business only worked because he fell directly under the jurisdiction of the companies you worked for?"

"Of course," said the Legalman. "We're Legalmen, not policemen."

The Man in Grey put a hand on his chest and heaved a sigh of relief. "Oh thank god."

Bunny jerked a thumb at Bonham. "Mind if I take the Bunny Nullhare outta your ... hair?" she said. "I can just take him back to the dimensional stratum where he came from. That'd comply with the cease-and-desist, right?"

The group of Legalmen exchanged a few looks; Jenny got the impression they were communicating in some unseen manner, perhaps reading each other's minds like different instances of Jenny Everywhere. There were general nods of agreement. "Of course," said the Legalman leader. "As long as he is no longer in violation of Kyujudo's copyright, we'll consider the matter as finished for the time being."

One of the other Legalmen said, "It's like a web host taking down the offending material regardless of the actions of the user who uploaded it."

"Okay, sweet," said Bunny. "Later, gators!"

"What are your names, by the way?" said Dynamite Thor, as Bunny approached Bonham's prone form.

The Legalman looked vaguely affronted. "We of the Legalmen Collective don't need names of our own," he said. "We're sort of like Jenny Everywhere in that regard."

"Some Jennies Everywhere do have names," said the Man in Grey. "Jennifer Barbelith, Jenny Jacobs ..."

"Ah." The Legalman shrugged. "Well, we don't. At least, no one in this group."

—

Bonham woke up.

He groaned, and tried to push himself up to a sitting position. "This is ... exactly why ... I hate copyright lawyers!" he said to no one in particular. "Those fools ... they'll pay for this!"

More nonexistent mist roiled up from him as he struggled to get himself upright. "Why am I ... why do I feel like ... I'm at the end of my rope," he muttered. "I'm ... I'm the Grand Demon King Bonham! I'm Bonham the Great! I'm ... I'm ..." He collapsed facedown.

"None of those titles have been used since like 1987," said Bunny as she approached.

Bonham looked up at her. He felt as though he was seeing her for the first time. "... oh."

Bunny smiled, and held out her hand. "C'mon, Bo," she said gently. "Let's getcha back to the Null where you belong."

"Ah ... of course." Several illusions in his mind were starting to fade away. He wasn't really Bonham. He barely counted as the idea of "Bonham" reified into existence. There was no Benito for him to find.

"Right," he muttered, taking her hand. His form began to waver slightly.

Dark Null-mist began to rise up from Bunny, forming a shape which vaguely resembled massive wings. "If you like existing," she said, "we still got that space Jenny Everywhere made. We've got a sort of whole Bunny Town there!"

"Oh? ... Oh." Bonham wasn't exactly knowledgeable about the Jenny Everywhere in question; but then, being that he wasn't real, he wasn't ignorant, either.

He thought about this for a moment. "I think," he said, "that I'd like to take a break from existing for now."

"Er, what?" said one of the Legalmen in the background.

Bunny glanced over her shoulder. "We're having a moment here!" she snapped. She turned back to Bonham, and smiled. "Okay," she said. "You ever change your mind, you'll know where to go!"

"All right," said Bonham, moving closer to her. "Thank you. Let's go, then."

Her misty wings wrapped around herself and Bonham, and the two of them vanished. For a moment, they'd ceased to exist.

—

After going through what few pleasantries remained, Jenny, Peter, and the Man in Grey watched the Legalmen's cars leave, then turned back to face the MFS headquarters.

The entire front of the building was badly scraped and pockmarked, both by the bombs themselves and the shrapnel from other explosions. The door frame was completely ruined. "We're going to have to do a lot of expensive repairs," grumbled the Man in Grey.

"I should get back to the phone," said Jenny reluctantly.

The Man in Grey started. "Oh! Yes, the phone!" he said. "Er, you'll get time-and-a-half for this incident, and, and for the rest of the day."

Jenny nodded. This was less than she could have gotten, and more than she'd hoped for. She'd believe it when she saw it, though. "Thank you," she said diplomatically, and made her way back inside.

She sat down at the Red Interdimensional Telephone, and fiddled with her smartphone another moment before sitting back heavily. Work was work, it seemed, explosions or no. There'd been a few missed calls; she noted them in her logbook.

The phone rang, and she picked it up. "Hello, Multidimensional Finders Service."

"Hi again, Jenny Over-There!" said an unfamiliar woman's voice.

"'Again'?" said Jenny, frowning.

"Oh right, the, uh, the Super Carter Siblings destroyed my other avatar, you haven't seen this one yet," said the caller.

Jenny asked herself, where is Nyarlathotep?

An image appeared in her mind of a rooftop in New York City, centered on a blonde woman wearing a bunny-eared headband and a corset which prominently displayed a black-hole-esque logo with the text "The NULL", like it was the logo for some sort of nightclub. She was holding a Shining Trapezohedron to the side of her head as if it was a phone.

There was a pause as she met Jenny's gaze, her expression unreadable. Jenny peered at her.

"I was in a hurry," said the woman, in a tone which was so confident that Jenny actually accepted it for several hours. "I'm not a Bunny Nullhare. Now, could you tell me where the Carters are one more time?"

Jenny concentrated. This time, the failure she got felt like something was specifically blocking her, and gave her a new type of headache altogether.

The next instant, the point of view of her mind's eye was suddenly surrounded by a conglomeration of iridescent orbs and dark tentacles. "Dwain Carter And Karolyn Carter Are In Kadath, Jenny Over-There," said a reverberating voice. "It Is Safe For You To Inform Nyarlathotep Of This."

Jenny blinked, and found herself back in reality.

"Er, they're in Kadath," she said weakly into the phone.

Nyarlathotep let out an exhausted and exasperated stream of profanity under her breath which was precisely identical to the one Dwain Carter had said earlier. "I'm going to punch Yog-Sothoth," she said, a great deal more cheerfully than he had, and she hung up just as abruptly.

Jenny sighed, hung up, and reached for the logbook. "Good luck with that."

The phone rang again. Jenny picked it up, and before she could say a word, Nyarlathotep said, "We Outer Gods make our own luck! But yes, thank you, much appreciated." She hung up again.

To the extent possible under law, Delilah H. Smith has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to "Jenny Over-There In: Who Laws the Lawyers?" This work is published from: United States.

The character of Jenny Everywhere is available for use by anyone, with only one condition. This paragraph must be included in any publication involving Jenny Everywhere, in order that others may use this property as they wish. All rights reversed.

The character of Jenny Over-There is available for use by anyone, with only one condition. This paragraph must be included in any publication involving Jenny Over-There, in order that others may use this property as they wish. All rights reversed.

You can just use the Man in Grey without any Paragraph or anything.

Dynamite Thor, Nyarlathotep the Crawling Chaos, and Randolph Carter are already in the public domain.

New characters unlocked!

The character of Bunny Everyhare is available for use by anyone, with only one condition. This paragraph must be included in any publication involving Bunny Everyhare, in order that others may use this property as they wish. All rights reversed.

The character of Bunny Nullhare is available for use by anyone, with only one condition. This paragraph must be included in any publication involving Bunny Nullhare, in order that others may use this property as they wish. All rights reversed.

The Legalmen Collective, Dwain Carter, and Karolyn Carter are available for use by anyone with no conditions, as this story is released under Creative Commons 0.

—

One morning as I was getting out of bed, I started wondering about a possible video game equivalent of Dibbsy Corporation and Mammon Mouse from Callum Phillpott's Jenny Over-There stories. My train of thought was basically "Hm, 'Ten-Eleven-Do' ...? Wait, no, I know 'nine' and 'ten' in Japanese, Kyu-juu-do!" I then spent half an hour looking up Italian names with one tab open to the Wikipedia article on katakana, and chose Benito (as a reference to Mussolini, the fascist dictator of Italy during World War II) and Giovanni (literally the only name besides "Luigi" I could find that ended with "I", had the right number of syllables, and worked just as well with katakana as "Luigi"). Their arch-nemesis ... 'Bonham' has the same etymology as 'Bowser' (in one draft his name was 'Goodman').

He also went from a turtle monster to a bunny monster — that is, from a tortoise to a hare. The clincher with that decision was when I decided to include Bunny Everyhare, whom I'd already been planning to introduce at some point, whereupon the plot basically wrote itself. In case it wasn't obvious from Bonham's ending and, well, everything to do with the Bunnies Nullhare, Bunny Everyhare is also a Null-creature herself! I have a half-written origin story for her which I'll release later. In the strictest technical sense, going by the intent of the original Paragraph as described by the Shifter Archive website, Bunny Everyhare is "a character related to Jenny Everywhere", so technically you don't 100% need to include Bunny's version of The Paragraph if Jenny Everywhere is already involved and you include her Paragraph, but it's more-or-less traditional to include all of them regardless; ditto the Bunny Nullhares with Bunny Everyhare's Paragraph.

As for the Null itself ... the Void Between Worlds itself didn't 100% have the exact properties I wanted, but "beyond the Void" is simple enough to explain and common enough in eldritch stories. (An early draft had it as "on the opposite side of the same coin" as the Void, but I decided that was too convoluted.) Null-entities which have somehow entered reality don't need to be cartoon characters; actually, in the strictest technical sense, they should be "nothing", but "nothing" cannot exist as such in reality — it's a contradiction in terms — and so they must instead be "something", which means that in practice they can be anything.

The Shining Trapezohedron is an artifact from HP Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, which is already in the public domain along with Randolph Carter and the Outer God Nyarlathotep the Crawling Chaos; the Trapezohedron has some sort of vague connection to Nyarlathotep. Randolph Carter is a recurring protagonist in Lovecraft's stories, in at least one of which Nyarlathotep was the antagonist. I figured it's like ninety years after Randolph's adventures, so let's give him some descendants instead. "Karolyn" just sprang to my mind randomly; "Dwain" is one possible anglicization of the Irish name "Dubhán", which has the ultimate definition of "little dark one". In other words, he's "Shadow the Carter", as in "where's that DAMN fourth Chaos Emerald?" Dwain "The Shadow" Carter. (I didn't actually know about Li'l Wayne, so I had to change the spelling from what I originally had …) Being that this story is released as Creative Commons 0, you don't need any permission to use Karolyn or Shadow Carter. Ditto Nyarlathotep's not-Bunny-Nullhare form.

The Legalmen Collective ... basically I decided to include lawyers with lawyer-based wacky superpowers (I came up with the idea of no-selling an attack while shouting lawyer-terms before I decided that they would be a whole Thing), and came up with the entire concept more or less on the spur of the moment. As the leader describes above, they can only actually use these wacky superpowers against someone if 1. the target falls under their current jurisdiction or a legal case they're presently working on, and 2. they have been called on to make a cease-and-desist or whatever, like in the current situation, or they're prepared to argue in court that the target is actually in violation of a relevant law. They're a hive mind, just like Jenny Everywhere, and can recall each other's memories. Really helpful for coming to decisions as a group. They are not, however, heroic: they serve whoever they're hired or assigned to work with, good or evil. These ones in particular are working for Dibbsy and Kyujudo, after all.

[myboiparkerimagines]

Villain - Wanda Maximoff x Reader

You break the rules and become the hero, I break the rules and become the villain.

She hadn't noticed you yet.

Wanda sat at the edge of your bed, absentmindedly tugging at the fabric of your comforter. In her moment of preoccupation, you watched your wife, drinking in her features. Despite her obvious lack of sleep, she was glorious. Her crimson hair sat atop her head, giving her an effortless look that somehow made you even more smitten. "Good morning, darling." "Oh," Wanda startled. "I didn't know you were awake. I'm sorry." “Don’t be sorry,” you insisted. “I was enjoying a moment of peace.” “That’s what that was, when you were watching me?” she smirked. “Precisely,” you smiled. “How did you sleep?” Wanda’s lips turned up into a tight smile, giving you all the indication you needed to know her next words were lies. “Perfect, as always.”

Wanda had perfected your morning routine. She would help you out of bed and to the bathroom as soon as you woke up. You were still able to move around on your own for short periods, so she was able to prepare a quick breakfast while you got ready. Even so, you groaned as she helped you to your feet, trying to fight off the sudden wave of vertigo that washed over you. “You okay, love?” Wanda asked, steadying you. “Yeah, the room’s just spinning. So nothing out of the usual,” you laughed. “Do you need me to stay with you up here?” she asked, pushing your hair away from your face. “No, I’m fine, promise,” you lied.

It took you twice as long as it normally did to do your morning routine. Every sudden movement was met with dizziness and every concentrated task took twice as much effort. Wanda was at the door when you finally left the bathroom. With far too much patience, she helped you down the long flight of stairs. When you first bought the house, the stairs were one of your favorite parts. You imagined children one day running up and down it, filling your home with life. Now, it only brought you pain.

“Here you go, sweets,” Wanda said gently, setting down a bowl of oatmeal on the table before you. “Thanks, darling,” you answered, staring at the only other dish on the table. A saucer sat just to the left of your breakfast, covered in drugs of various shapes and sizes. “Let me get you a glass of water,” Wanda said, placing a gentle kiss onto your temple. While she moved about the kitchen, your eyes remained fixed on the pills that were supposed to save your life. Instead, they were slowly ending it. Once they were in your system, you would be but a shell of yourself, unable to move more than a few inches lest the nausea overcome you. Even worse, the drugs simply weren’t working. The doctors hoped it would weaken the disease, but they only seemed to weaken you. “Wanda?” you called out. “Yes, my love?” she responded, immediately at your side. “I’m going to stop the medicine. I think it’s time.” “What are you talking about?” Wanda asked, her smile immediately dropping. “It’s not working anymore and it’s draining out all of the life I have left.” “Dr. Conners said it was natural for you to feel like that, it means the medicine is doing its job,” she reasoned. “No, Wanda. I’ve been taking it for months now and he’s confirmed I’m only getting worse.” Wanda’s eyes brimmed with tears. “I’m not ready to stop trying. I can’t lose you.” “I’ve lived a good life, Wanda, a very good life. I don’t want to spend the rest of it wasting yours. You deserve a good life, too.” “I have a good life,” she promised. “I would take care of you for the rest of my life if it meant we got to spend it together.” You grabbed her hands in yours, pulling them to your lips. “We both know I don’t have long left. I would happily give up a few extra months of suffering to get a few good days with you, Wanda. It’s all I want.” Wanda took back her hand, quickly using it to brush away the tears that threatened to fall. “You take those pills today, we’ll talk about it more when I get back.” “Where are you going?” “To talk to a friend.”

**

It was hours before Wanda returned. She had helped you back into bed before she left, making sure you were as comfortable as possible. In her absence, you spend most of your time sleeping. You probably could’ve slept for a few more hours, but you were jolted awake by the loud slam of the front door. Loud sobs rang through the house, followed by rapid breathing, and then quiet. Wanda deserved her privacy, so you feigned sleep as she opened the bedroom door. “I’m back, my love. Sorry I was gone so long.” You pushed yourself into a sitting position, fighting through the pain. “It’s okay. Who did you go see?” “Stephen,” she smiled. “I think he’s going to be able to help you.” “How?” In the months since your diagnosis, you had tried every remedy on the planet. It was costly, but thankfully Tony had set up the Stark Fund to protect ex-Avengers, whatever need be. “He knows of a girl who is able to travel across universes. There must be one out there that has the remedy to save you.” Your heart fluttered, filled with hope you hadn’t felt in months. “What’s her name?” “America,” Wanda smiled. “I’d love to meet America, to thank her for her help.” Wanda’s smile faltered. “There’s only one problem – she isn’t able to control her powers yet. I don’t know how long it would take to train her, but we really can’t afford that uncertainty.” “What are you going to do?” “I’m going to take her powers to use myself. It will be the fastest way to get the cure.” “You can do that?” “I believe so. I was able to harness Agatha’s.” “And America is okay with it?” you asked.

She remained silent a moment too long. “You can’t take this girl’s power against her will. It’s not right.” “No, what’s not right is allowing you die while I watch. You really think this girl’s life is more important than yours?” Wanda’s words turned your veins to ice. “What do you mean – her life? What are you going to do to her?” “What I must.” With every ounce of strength, you stood, grabbing onto your wife. “Wanda, please stop. My life is not worth that price.” Tears stung your eyes as you looked into hers. They were deadest, refusing to look anywhere but you. Her jaw trembled as she spoke. “Yes, it is.”

With a flick of her wrist, you were pulled back onto the mattress. The weight of her magic pushed you down, though you don’t know if you could even stand on your own. “Please, Wanda, don’t do this,” you cried out. Your words met deaf ears. “I love you,” she whispered, before exiting your room. You screamed until your throat was raw. When you were unable to scream, you cried, the tears flowing down your cheeks in neat tracks.

Despite the pain, you screamed when the portal opened. Wanda stood at the edge of the portal, fighting both Stephen and a young girl in a blind rage. Your screams caught her attention, distracting her long enough for Stephen to restrain her. “Let me go!” she screamed, squirming in her restraints. While Stephen restrained your wife, the girl’s attention landed on you. “Please don’t hurt her,” Wanda begged through sobs. She snapped her fingers, harnessing her energy into releasing you from your restraints. Even with all your power, you knew you wouldn’t be able to save yourself.

The girl stepped through the portal. “America?” you asked. “That’s me,” she answered hesitantly, stopping at the edge of your bed. “I’m Wanda’s wife,” you spoke, quickly adding on your name. “I figured,” she said with a small smile. “I’m sorry about all of this. She would do anything for me, even if I begged her not to.” “I understand. My moms were the same way.” Stephen’s voice carried through the portal. “I can’t hold her much longer, America.” “Wanda,” America called out. “What do you want?” she asked fearfully. “I’ll do anything, just don’t hurt her.” “You need to give Strange the book. It’s hurting you.”

A dark book fell from her waist onto the ground beside her. “Done. Now please, let her go.” America laughed. “I was never going to hurt her, Wanda. I’m going to save her.”

[armthearmour]

Book Review: A Great and Glorious Adventure

A Great and Glorious Adventure: A Military History of the Hundred Years War, written by Gordon Corrigan, was published by Atlantic Books Ltd. in 2013. This book sets forth an account of the events of the Hundred Years War from a military perspective, focusing on the military actions that shaped the course of the war. After a brief introduction, the book is divided into ten chapters.

The first chapter contextualizes the beginning of the war. Here, Corrigan lays the groundwork for the war, and outlines its causes. Much of this chapter is spent tracing the events of history which allowed King Edward III to press his claim on the French throne and wage a war that would last for over one-hundred years. The second chapter focuses on the beginning of the war, paying particular attention to the difficulties and distractions Edward faced prior to his invasion. Examining the financial difficulties Edward faced early in the war, this chapter traces the English King’s movements across Northern France and his forays into the Low Countries, up to the Papal induced truce in 1341.

The third chapter strays away from the author’s chronological account of events, and instead focuses on the professionalization of the English military. The first segment of this chapter concentrates on the nature of knighthood and the semi-professional military men who made up the “knightly class.” The focus then shifts to technological advancements such as stirrups, and places a particularly large emphasis on the development of the English longbow. This then ties into a discussion on tactics, and the shift in English military doctrine away from the heavy cavalry prevalent across Europe to a more infantry-centric model.

Chapter four returns the reader to the chronology of events, focusing on the infamous Crécy campaign. Edward’s route from his landing in Normandy to the siege of Caen is traced in detail, while the siege itself receives a lengthy treatment. Edward’s march towards Paris is then examined, with the chapter ending with another detailed account of the battle of Crécy on August 26, 1346.

Chapter five continues precisely where chapter four left off. As the English regroup after the battle, the fallout within the ranks of the French nobility is described. In just a few short days, the English chevauchée began again. The siege of Calais and its annexation to the English crown which followed are also treated in great detail, as are the Scots’ invasion of England and the battle of Neville’s Cross which caused it to fail. A final account of the great calamity which brought the Crécy campaign to a close is given: the arrival of the Black Death.

Chapter six briefly examines the years following in the wake of the Black Death, years which saw little major military action as both powers recovered from the tremendous loss of life, but which still hosted small-scale use of the chevauchée by the Black Prince from the English holdings in Aquitaine. The Black Prince himself is given much attention in this chapter, with the author going so far as to dedicate a few pages to a brief biography of the man. The events leading up to and following the battle of Poitiers are then accounted in great detail, as is the battle itself. The capture of King Jean II of France and the ensuing chaos which occurred in his absence are also given space here.

Chapter seven briefly covers the Treaty of Brétigny and the English and French receptions. Corrigan goes into greater detail regarding the Brittany War of Succession, which this author, along with many others, considers a sort of Anglo-French proxy war, as well as the War of Navarrese Succession, another “proxy” war. General French advances retaking territory which had been won by the English are then detailed.

The deposition of King Richard II by Henry IV begins the eight chapter. Much attention is given to the rebellions the new King faced in the early years of his reign, in particular the Welsh rebellions in which his son would be famously wounded. The Battle of Shrewsbury, the culmination of the Percy rebellion, is treated in great detail. The chapter concludes with a brief description of the civil war plaguing France at the time, the death of Henry IV and ascension of Henry V, and some of the issues the new King had to face in the early days of his reign.

The most famous of all medieval English military ventures is detailed in chapter nine: the Agincourt Campaign. From the preparations in England, following the English army’s trail through Calais and to the final battlefield at Agincourt, the author details the campaign in immense detail. The account of the battle itself consumes the majority of the chapter, which concludes with Henry’s victorious retreat back to Calais. Chapter ten traces the remainder of Henry’s campaigns in France, as well as the Treaty of Troyes, which named Henry heir apparent to the throne of France. Henry’s death, and the subsequent forty years of the war, are then summarized in the span of but a few pages.

A brief epilogue closes the book, which is followed by a list of endnotes rather than footnotes. The bibliography is also given, a very brief list of scholarly works all in the English language. Finally, an index is included.

Throughout this work, the author’s English bias is readily evident. Seven chapters are dedicated to the successful first campaigns of the war, with a full chapter each dedicated to the great English victories at Crécy, Poitiers, and Agincourt. Conversely, the French victories are discussed only in passing. The entire final section of the war, the great push by the French which permanently dislodged the English from mainland Europe with the sole exception of the city of Calais, does not even merit a full chapter, instead being relegated to the final few pages of the book. Combined with the author’s lack of any sort of primary source bibliography, and complete reliance on English language scholarship, this book is of little use to any scholar of history, or even any avid enthusiast. This book does not represent history, but rather the quasi-nationalist pop history clearly espoused by the author, and should find itself only on the shelves of those interested in a purely Anglo-centric telling of the events of the Hundred Years War.

[djarrex]

In Bloom

Captain Rex x f!Reader

masterlist

@rowansparrow saw it first. It's been too long since I've written for Rex ok and this came to me this morning so I had to :') This may or may not be inspired by one of the AUs Ro and I have been discussing

Explicit | 18+ only | about 570 words | unprotected piv intercourse, creampie, brief oral (f receiving)

"Fuck... that- that feels good, Rex."

His lips curl up at one corner - running his warm palms up and down your sides and passing over your breasts before securing them in place on your hips once again. With his knees planted on the bed and thick, firm thighs parted and holding you spread open, he rocks into you, precise and unhurried - the head of his cock angling down as it breaches you again and again and again -

"Yeah?" he confirms in a soft groan - ungluing his eyes from your blown-out ones, raking over your bare, pushed-out chest and landing to where he's steadily disappearing into you. "You always take me so, so well, Princess. The way your pretty labia blossoms around me - fuck - "

You whimper at that - tilting your head up to watch what he is so taken by.

Rex's one hand then glides along your waist to lay flat just below your navel, relishing the feeling of your soft skin under his palm give and protrude with each pierce - his wide thumb extended and the rough pad of it resting unmoving against your clit. He hums again, more gravelly now, and he picks up the pace - unable to maintain this languid rhythm. He watches the way your lashes flutter and eyes roll to the back of your head and how your mouth falls open as he suddenly presses at the nub beneath his thickest digit - the pressure in your core a rapidly approaching crescendo.

"Rex..."

He doesn't verbally respond, only offering a quickened dance of his thumb, knowing that you simply like to speak his name in that way - that drawn-out, breathy way - when you've ascended almost all the way to your peak. Your toes begin to curl and you grasp the offending hand sitting heavy against your mound - nails digging shallow crescents into his calloused skin.

You chant his name in a whisper between quickening pants.

"Rex...Rex...Rex...Rex..."

Once again, his eyes lock on to where you bloom for him - his dark brows pinched in concentration and lips parted.

"The most - aaaagh - beautiful flower I've ever seen."

Rex's cock swells then erupts into you, filling your convulsing cunt with everything his body has to offer. He stills - fully sheathed inside of you. You let out a weak laugh, dropping your head to the pillow beneath and absently brushing your thumb against his wrist bone of the hand that's still holding you tight. When he slides out of you, the squeeze of your vaginal muscles is almost immediate - the thick mixture of your combined releases dribbling from you and sliding down along your swollen tissue before landing on the sheets.

Sitting back on his haunches and running his tongue across his teeth and bottom lip, Rex chuckles.

Before you have a moment to react, he's readjusting his position on the bed - face hovering just before the apex of your thighs. His warm breath and the heat from your cunt radiates into one another - mingling within the small space between the two. Your head lifts and you watch him through hooded lids as his tongue - his glorious, skilled, fantastic fucking tongue - extends to prod right where his cock had just made a delightful mess of you.

"The prettiest flower in all the galaxy bears the sweetest nectar," Rex murmurs into you.

-

me, not adding tags this time

[thedevillionaire]

Something More Unusual

So, I meant to have this done by the end of 2021 but, uh… Anyway, happy New Year! Here’s a little porn. And my usuals: any questions, about anything, please do ask, and thank you from the bottom of my weird little heart for choosing to spend some of your time in my weird little world; it really does mean so much to me. 💘 --- Kia gasps at the sight.

Oh my g…

She sometimes almost forgets his incredible power. She rarely sees it on full display, and even more rarely like this – working with something he has to actually concentrate on, something that doesn’t come naturally. Far from it. Something that takes him genuine effort: the wielding of Ice.

Abandoning any pretence of continuing on her way, she stops in place by the chamber’s open door, attention fixed on Cerberus – midnight hair damp and haphazard, shirt semi-unbuttoned and sleeves rolled up, a magnificent strength intense and imposing, gods physical exertion suited him so well – creating ice sculptures of three-dimensional geometric fractal beauty in midair grandeur, intricate and delicate compositions hypnotic, ethereal. An arctic mathematical precision, constantly morphing in form and scale, elaborate patterns echoing themselves in a glittering array of starbursts, mirrors, diamonds.

She stands mesmerised by this glorious conductor and the breathtaking creations he weaves, how he moves like both dancer and warrior, but also…oh, also at how he sniffles alongside this majesty, the price that performing it deals him. The briefest of shivers. The loaded pauses in which his brow creases, those little will he/won’t he moments, and her heart trips a little; this, the only fight she ever wishes him to lose…

His sharp intake of breath, irritated frown, unsteady exhale holds Kia’s own breath stilled; with crisp headshake, determined sniffle and some forceful nose rubbing, however, he manages to delay the rising urge.

They’re both well aware of how temporary a delay it is.

Cerberus forcibly steadies himself against another, deeper shiver, and reconfigures the beautiful sculptures into a row of sleek, viciously pointed spears, from art to weapon in less than seconds, and sends them with violent redoubled command towards the wall at speed, where they shatter in an explosion of crystalline winter. He snarls a little, sniffles again, and immediately transforms every remnant icesplinter into flame before evaporating the lot into no more than wisps of smoke.

He doesn’t need to concentrate for that.

But with the exercise over and any need for concentration done, when the coredeep chill sends another shiver through him – harsher, colder – this time he submits absolutely.

He buries his face in crooked elbow, and with deep inhalation and utter surrender he all but doubles over as the buzzing irritation he’s so far resisted becomes too much. “HuhTSCHuu! hh-h-HH…hhAATSCHH-uu!” A weighted pause, another staccato escalation of breath, a sotto voce curse, expectant.

Kia, rapt in marvel at how his power is intrinsic in everything he does, everything, as

oh

the hiatus of anticipation culminates insistent in need for release, his focus falling away as

“hhhAAHTSSSCHuu! AHHETSCHUU!”

he sneezes again – and OH mmm that all-consuming possession, absolute commitment; how no matter what it is that he’s doing, it is everything he’s doing. How he gives himself over so entirely. Nothing comes in half measures with this man, and Kia loves every aspect of it.

With a richpurred near-reverent “Bless you!” she smiles as she moves to meet him.

“*SNF!* Hm?” Cerberus turns swiftly at the sound of her voice, noting her presence for the first time. “Oh, darkling, I... *snf!* Thank you. Pardon me. I… hh-HH… I didn’t …”

He frowns, he knows what’s coming and he raises a finger for necessary pause, turns from his bonded as he does so.

“Hh-AHTSSCHHuu! Gods, this ridiculous element! *snff!* I ought to be able to ban it, you know,” he mutters, Creating a handkerchief and blowing his nose, Mindsending an apology simultaneously.

:Shh. No need: Kia Mindsends as she snakes an arm around his waist. “That was… Mmm.” Her smile is the very essence of wanton. “That…was incredible.”

Everything.

The frisson of dissonance not yet faded, Cerberus rubs his nose. “Thank you, love, but…” He gives her a wry smile as he sniffles again, sharply, and to no avail.  “Entirely irri—” His breath catches and he rolls his eyes at himself. “—irritating business,” he manages to conclude before he’s resolutely overtaken once more. “Ahh-HEHTSSHhuu!”

A determined sniffle in recovery as he flicks disarrayed ebony from his eyes and meets Kia’s gaze, mildly exasperated. “And it makes me sneeze.”

“Well—” She trails a slow hand down his chest, her tone undisguised flirtation. “—then I guess it’s lucky—” With a wink and a quick, carnal grin, she pushes him back onto the nearby couch, straddling him. “—that you—"­ Her fingers weave through his hair and she kisses his neck, lingering. ­“—sneeze—” And another kiss, this time to the tip of his nose. “—beautifully.”

“I wha…”

Her next kiss claims his mouth, silencing him and stealing his thoughts as she presses against him with burning urgent craving and desire.

His eyes widen briefly in mild surprise at her fervour but he’s…more than happy to just go with it, and indeed does so, wrapping a firm arm around her waist and drawing her closer still. :You have the strangest line in compliments, love.:

Kia laughs softly. “Oh, like you’re shocked,” she teases, and echoes one of the very first things he ever said to her. :You said from the start I was something quite unusual.: She flashes him the quickest wicked grin, coquettish wink as she unbuckles his belt. “I love everything about you, how about that?”

“Something… Mm!” Cerberus snarlgasps as she slides her hand down his pants, her touch deliciously covetous, caressing, dissolving all his focus. ”Something like that,” he murmurs

Something more.

and gods he barely remembers how they got here at this point and it doesn’t matter to him just what got her so in the mood anyway. It’s unimportant. He fell in love with her idiosyncrasies long ago; what, after all, is another one?

---

[angrydebater]

THE BEST MAN SPEECH AT JILY'S WEDDING

"Good evening everybody! I'm the best man or-better-the hottest of the marauders. I've known James since we were just eleven years old kids, being stupid on the hogwarts express. He is the family that i've always longed for. A brother, or, to be more precise, a mother. He welcomed in his house a runaway from a pureblood supremacist family, who's a reckelss disaster, a scrawny 6 feet tall nerd who's afraid of his own shadow, and shy baker kid who's always anxious for something, and gave us the best summers we've ever had. The perfect person to start a family with it's him. And the perfect person to do that with James, is Lily.

I vivdly remember the day James and Lily first met. It was the first of september of 1971 and he saw her flaming locks flying around when she passed in front of our carriage. James actually said:" i'm gonna marry that one." Yes james I guess you did. After that, so many years passed in which james tried to "woo" her -yes that's the excact word he used-. And i think the most hilarious memories I have of this 7 years are actually the disastruos attempts of James to woo her.

With the help of my other fellow marauders i tried to recollect the most embarassing ones. To the adults in this room i shall say: prepare yourselves for some revelations.

Let's set ourselves into the year 1974. The mind behind all of our glorious pranks, mr. Moony, was studying in the hogwarts library with the now mrs. Lily Potter. James of course had to intterrupt their concentration trying to invite the redhead to a date in Hogsmeade. he wanted to lean himself against the bookshelves to look more cool. Unfortunately, because of the distraction provided from the beauty of the former Miss Evans, he actually fell into the bookshelves making them fall behind as well. I'll leave to your imagination Madam Pince's reaction.

A year later, a certain drunk captain of the gryffindor quidditch team -yes Minnie and Euphemia "drunk",- during a party for the victory of the cup, grabbed his broom and fled in the common room, and throughout the window. I wasn't sober either so I couldn't pick him up, but our saviour Lily took a broom (even though she isn't able to fly) escaped and brought him down in the fields. I will also leave to your imagination lily's reaction.

But the best is yet to come. We were all in cornwall for the summer, and James was trying to astonish Lily with his muscles . He was in the ocean, swimming proudly, -too proudly i dare say- with Lily. But he was too much occupied with the "Oi Evans!" -which everybody in this room has heard at least once in their life-. So he couldn't see a big wave coming down on him in time for him to jump. Lily didn't see that too because she was too occupied admiring James' pectorals -don't worry Lily we undestand you, we all have been through that-. So she nearly drowned and James too in an heroic attempt to save her. When they both emerged from the water he had an enormous jellyfish attached to his back. then lily did a wandless wingardium leviosa and saved James again.

It is with this story, that describes perfectly your relationship- with james that wants to protect lily but failes miserabily, and lily that in the end protects herself-, that i wish you a long life full of hilarious stories that I will be able to tell. To the Potters, guardians of the outcasts, parents of the marauders, but most important the best brother and sister i could ever imagine."

[darklove9314-blog]

Are You Ready for Me?: A Nessian Fanfic (NSFW)

Welcome to Day 9 of Nessian month! Prompt:Handcuffs (prompts are on @illyrianet page)

Cassian lowered his body, his wings outstretched for her as he smiled that cocky grin at her knowing how she longed to touch him, but knowing she could do nothing about it. Perhaps asking him to handcuff her and giving him full control of what he wished to do to her body hadn’t been the best idea, but she was still willing to learn where he was going with this.

“Are you still sure about this sweetheart?” He asked. She nodded.

“I want to fuck me as you wish.“ She stated.

“If I do anything you don’t wish me to do let me know.” He said as she looked up at him through her lashes.

“That kind of defeats the purpose of you having control.” She said.

“I don’t want the control if I do something you’re not comfortable with. What use is having control of both of us aren’t enjoying ourselves.“

She nodded her approval as she sank further into the mattress pressing his body over hers, his wings still spread over them as he caught her mouth in a kiss dipping his tongue in and exploring her mouth making her moan in pleasure.

“Do you like when my tongue is in your mouth Nes?” He asked kissing her once more, that gods dAnne’s tongue of his doing wonders.

“I like it when you’re tongue is in other places too.“ She replied, a heated glance sent in her direction at the words.

“Luckily for you, my tongue will be in those places soon enough.“ He promised, His kisses growing more hungry as he pried his mouth from hers, “But I want to make sure that I’m well fed when I get down there.“

A mischievous grin crossed Nesta’s lips, knowing that he could scent how aroused she was for him, that he’s be more than well fed if he feasted off of her, but he was in control of this narrative and she would willingly give it to him if it meant they’d both found their ecstasy.

His lips pressed to her throat making her feel weak in her knees as he bit down on her neck making her gasp slightly. She felt his lips curl on her neck as he sucked the skin there. Giving her a thrill that he would leave his mark on her. The strands of his long hair brushing against her neck making her yearn to touch it. To find ways to touch him without the use of her hands.

She brushed her lips against his hair, his face. Anywhere she could while he was working on her neck leaving trails of those glorious marks on her neck.

Staking his claim on her, letting others know exactly who was in her bed pleasing her night after night. The thought thrilling her as he made his way to her breast. already exposed for him. Her naked body laying under him except for her underwear. He had asked her to keep those on for whatever reason.

“It’s a good thing you’re mostly bare for me. It would have been difficult to discard your clothes with those cuffs on you.” Cassian claimed taking one of her nipples in his mouth making her gasp slightly as he rolled his tongue around her nipple before sucking on it hard. until she was nice and pebbles in his mouth before concentrating on her other breast repeating the motion while pinching the other nipple to make sure it stayed hard, her hips thrusting upward to meet where his hard length was pressing against her, begging him to take her.

“Patience sweetheart that will come soon enough, But I plan to take my time on you first. I plan to make sure you’re dripping wet for me before sliding into that nice and inviting cunt of yours.”

Her toes curled at his words before his mouth returned to her nipple, her breathing becoming more rapid as pleasure coursed through her body.

He pulled his mouth from her nipples, nice and hard for him as he kissed the valley between her breast, pressing soft kisses along the trail of her stomach as he got to where her underwear was knowing that he could scent her arousal there as he messaged her hips with his thumb.

“Cassian.” She moaned, his hazel eyes latching onto hers as he nestled between her legs. licking her through her underwear as she moaned slightly,

“I love my name on your lips, it makes me want to do such promiscuous things.”

“Then do so.“ She challenged, a wicked grin her only answer as he pulled away surprising her.

“Cassian, I didn’t-“

Before she could get another word out, he knelt on the floor pulling her body to his so her ass hung off the bed spreading her legs wide for him as he licked her through her underwear once more.

She moaned as he rested her feet on his shoulders working up her underwear until he was at the tops of her underwear grasping one of the sides with his teeth and pulling them off of her without the use of his hands. traveling down until they were at her ankles as he kept the there binding her ankles with them so that both her hands and feet were tied up,

He was still between her legs, She was still wide open for him as he grinned at her knowing that he would be down there until he had his fill of her.

Her breath grew rapid, before he lowered his mouth, his tongue sweeping over her folds getting his first taste of her.

She moaned as his tongue swept up circling her clit before licking it, he sucked at it causing her to cry out, she felt him smile in satisfaction as he licked her again feasting upon her like she was his favorite meal, His tongue lapping at her center as she ground into him riding his face.

He gave a low laugh, “Already Nesta, I expected you to hold out for longer.” He teased with a shrug, “I guess it just means that I’ll have double the fun when I’m inside of you.“

Before she could comment, Cassian‘s tongue plunged into her, hitting her deep as he fucked her with his tongue, causing her to cry out for him. She wanted him inside of her so desperately.

“Keep doing that sweetheart and I’ll finish inside my pants before I finish inside of you.”

His tongue made a sweep at her again, consuming her wetness. Gods. She wanted him.

She felt the silkiness of his hair brushing against her stomach, his warm breath on her. She wanted to do something to please him as well as she met the motions he made with his tongue.

She looked at his wings again, smiling to herself, but then remembering that her feet were bound by her underwear. She wanted to make him feel good.

He made another pass at her adding two of his fingers to her entrance as his tongue tasted her clit again. Gods he would have her undone in no time if her kept doing that.

She rode his hand as he looked up at her, gazing upon her face as of remembering exactly what she looked like at this precise moment.

“Cassian.“ She moaned, wiggling her feet as much as she could manage, signaling that she wanted him to take her underwear off all the way so they could really play this game of his.

Cassian grinned licking her one last time before pulling her underwear off completely as he dropped his underwear stoking his cock at the sight of her.

“Have it your way sweetheart.“ He rasped before lowering himself back down to his knees. “Let’s see who could make the other come first.”

Nesta smirked at the challenge as Cassian resumed his exploration of her licking at her, his tongue plunging back into her deeper this time.

She gathered her composure, mind set upon pleasuring him in the way she knew made him hungry for her. In the way she knew would get him to lose so much of that control of his that he would be fucking her cunt so hard that she would be feeling him between her legs for days.

Her feet traveled down the length of his wings tickling him. her touch so light and soft that she instinctively knew it felt good for him.

Cassian pulled her closer to his mouth. His grip tightening on her, encouraging her to continue as she made another pass at his wings, his moans of pleasure on his tongue radiating through her center as his tongue entered her anew.

She cried put for him once more as he consumed every last drop of her. Leaving no trace of her unconsumed upon his tongue, His teeth lightly nipping at her clit to increase her pleasure. Gods she was close and be damned well knew it too, could feel how she was tightening around him, could scent the change within her as he tasted her on his tongue.

She stroked his wings remembering specific spots he had showed her. crying out from her pleasure as her body begged for her first release.

She couldn’t hold back as the noises of her pleasure feel from her lips, riding her orgasm on his tongue letting him taste every bit of her he could manage as she kept stroking his wings hoping he was close to his release as well.

When her body was limp with pleasure. Cassian lifted his head up, running a hand through his hair, her release still shining on his lips.

He strokes himself for her, hungry eyes still on her and her sated body.

“Did you want my first release inside of you or do you want to taste it?” He asked her eyes flickering to his cock. beads of moisture already close to release as she purred.

“I want to taste you like you’ve tasted me,“

“In that case sweetheart, you better swallow all of it. I don’t want you being wasteful.”

“We wouldn’t want that now would we.“ She purred her heated gaze on him. Now come over here and let me taste you.”

Before she could say anything further, Cassian moved onto the bed soreading his legs so they were on either side of her shoulders, lifting himself to where his weight wouldn’t be on her body as his aching cock entered her mouth.

She licked his tip swirling her tongue around his head as she looked at him through her eyelashes. placing him in her mouth taking him as deep as she dared to as a groan awarded her effort, she lightly ran her teeth over his shaft, she could tell he was holding back from doing what he wanted and she wanted him to do it, yearned for him to do it, as she slowly released his cock from her mouth looking at him with yearning,

“Did you want to fuck my mouth, General?” She offered. His only answer was a smirk as he wrapped his hand in her hair shoving himself back in her mouth and thrusting into it with great vigor. She matched his fast paced strokes happy that he wasn’t holding himself back from her as she tasted the first splashes of his release on her tongue. Savoring his taste as she swallowed every last drop of himself he gave her like he had instructed her to do,

When he had spent the last of his release he pulled his cock from her mouth running his finger over her lip,

“I’m going to fuck you so hard that you’ll be screaming my name off these mountains,“ He rasped kissing her, as she tasted both of their releases.

“Promise?” She purred.

He leaned down, lightly nipping at her earlobe,

“Promise.”

Her eyes flickered to his cock, his length hardening again at the thought of claiming his mate. She relished in that thought meeting his scorching gaze as he kissed her hard, his hands in her hair, laying his body a top of hers as he lined himself up at her dripping core, His eyes looking at her with a lustful glance.

“Are you ready for me, Sweetheart?” He asked voice low.

“Yes General.“ She smiled, He cocked his head to the side. observing her naked body before him. thinking of all the ways he could make her come before him.

A slow, seductive look passed his face, as he pressed a kiss to her forehead confusing her slightly. before he looked her in her eyes and stated,

“You’ll be calling me than general when I’m done filling that pretty cunt of yours with my seed. There won’t be a single inch of that sweet sex of yours that won’t be covered in me.“

Her breath hitched up as he rammed into her entrance, She cried out in surprise wishing that he would do it again as he held himself there. What was he doing?

“Should I start from right here?” He asked, she felt as if the question was rhetorical as he pulled out of her, he flipped her onto her stomach bending her forward as he sheathed himself deep inside her causing her to moan out even louder for him,

“Or right here.” He inquired, pulling out again, her breath heavy. Her need for him trying to claw out of her. as he laid on his back positioning her so she was on top of his cock as he slammed her down onto it, She made a half gasp, half cry as his smirk returned.

She felt so full in this position. She had always loved riding him, impaling herself on that massive cock of his, but without her hands.

His eyes went to hers, as he thrusted up into her again making her cry out yet again. She knew he would not be gentle. She didn’t give shit if he wasn’t,

“Now thats the sounds I want to hear.” He growled, “Move your hips with me, mate.”

She let out a breath, as he slammed into her again, moving her hips with his hands, gripping her ass so she could move with him, Move on his cock the way he wished. The pleasure of it feeling like utter bliss as his name feel from her lips making him thrust harder. Her cries of pleasure turned into sobs.

“Cassian! Cassian!“ She cried out “I’m about to-“

“Come sweetheart. Come for your mate.”

Her sobs of pleasure flew from her mouth as she felt him come with her, She threw her head back feeling his seed deep in here as she milked him with her own release making noises that she didn’t know she could as they both rode their orgasms as she collapsed on top of him, her pants flowing through her as she pressed her head to his chest listening to the racing of his heart.

He grabbed the key from their bedside table, taking the cuffs off her and rubbing her wrist,

“Are you alright?” He asked. She nodded.

He kissed the top of her head, running his hand through her hair.

“I love you Nesta Archeron.”

“I love you too.” she smiled as she listened to the beating of his heart as she laid with her mate knowing That she would do this again,

[uni-seahorse-572]

Day 6: Wanderling

Warnings today for violence, albeit not very graphic, along with major character death. @gay-otlc @rainbow-frog-earrings

~

~

Your girl is a soldier. War lives in her eyes and shapes the callouses of her hands, and even you cannot pull her away from her battle.

Every mission, without fail, Maruca’s the brave one. She narrows her eyes with perfect focus at their plans and lists out strategies without faltering.

Biana watches her with silent eyes. Her fingers tap-tap-tap on the table and her concentration on the Collective’s words is only as steady as ocean waves.

She isn’t scared for herself. Just the people she loves.

Maruca isn’t scared at all.

Your girl is a warrior. She could tell you what the inside of an explosion feels like. Fear does not know her, does not trouble the firm set of her jaw.

They march out not long after. Biana jokes around with her girlfriend as they strap on their weapons, debating exactly what they’d want their Planting to be like with more and more ridiculous answers—Biana wins with the statement that she wants her Wanderling to be carved with insults towards her killer and everyone at her funeral to pretend she was lost under mysterious circumstances. The sweet sound of Maruca’s laughter is more than enough distraction from what the blades she tucks in her boot will be used for.

They kiss. Not like it’s the last time, not like it’s the first, but they just kiss. It doesn’t last long enough but they’re still giggling against each other’s lips and their hands entwine together as they head out.

Your girl is a lover. Her heart is open as it is sharp. She reaches out her hand, palm open and worn, invitation written into its creases and confessions smeared across her lips sweeter than her cherry chapstick.

In combat, Maruca stays steady. As the rest of them give way under the adrenaline, acting without thinking and clawing only for survival, her face takes on a steadfast peace. She is at home here, even if she doesn’t want to be. She will not give in.

Biana cannot say the same.

She loses control.

Without fail, her own movements become foreign to her. She ducks and dodges and weaves and strikes. She blips in and out of visibility, her weapons whirling, relishing the rush of adrenaline and the satisfying sound of her knives hitting home.

She’s a predator. This is her hunt.

Your girl is a constellation. She will teach you her every star if you watch closely, and you will learn to steady yourself by reciting all their names one by one by one and all of them are glorious. She is eternal—the wisdom in her eyes and grace in her limbs has been here since the beginning of time, and she last long long long like the stars ever-bright above or a slowly-weathering statue.

Biana loses control.

She isn’t careful. She can’t be amidst this chaos.

She blinks into being and looses a flurry of throwing stars, all leaving her outstretched fingers with deadly precision. She isn’t looking, not really, not everywhere—too focused on where she’s aiming—

But the blade from behind doesn’t strike true buried in her chest. Because Maruca’s there, shoving her out of the way, face serene, moving with the motion too.

And it would be okay. If not for the throwing stars, sent flying by her own hand, that thud into Maruca one by one—her throat her heart her forehead—and all it takes is a moment, that’s all Biana has to scream, and after that it’s a haze haze haze and she comes out of it clutching Maruca’s blood-soaked corpse to her chest.

Maruca’s face is still peaceful, horribly so. She’s still. Stiff.

The battle is done.

They won.

Your girl was a fool. She trusted wholly, surrendering herself to your careless hands, leaping over every cliff’s edge and waiting for the safety of your shaking arms. She was too blinded by her own mistaken love for you to see the depths of your desolate brokenness and every day you curse the fact that she had to pay for everything wrong with you.

The Wanderling pokes slowly through the soil. Biana’s curled with knees tucked tight against her chest not far from it. Above, the light is fast fading.

The Planting wasn’t long ago. It was just an ordinary one, she believes. Nothing to commemorate the depths of this loss.

She didn’t go. Among the mourners, she’d be a fraud. She’d be at fault.

She never thought much about Wanderlings before. She can’t help it now. It seems so meaningless. What can a tree do to replace what’s gone? What can anything do?

Council. She doesn’t need a memorial to the girl she loved and lost. She needs someone to sweep through her mind and make it okay again, make it not her fault, at least. She needs to forget Maruca’s sharp gasp as she fell and the pattern of the dried blood on her forehead, the chill and weight of her corpse in Biana’s arms.

But remembrance is a curse, and it’s one she must take it upon herself to bear.

She’s the reason, after all. Maruca’s mistake was trying to save her and Biana can’t even fault her for it.

Your girl was a guardian. She could stay standing in the strongest storm, build a shelter out of her own body and save the world with it. Sacrifice came like second nature to settle heavy on her shoulders and she bore it well, taking on the mantle of everyone else’s safety but never her own.

Biana measures time in a tree’s height now. It never feels like long but it’s taller than her now, trunk starting to grow thick as it loses the reediness of its adolescence the way Maruca never fully would, now.

When she can, she’ll sit under it for hours, doing everything or nothing. Mourning. No one knows. The guilt’s still too thick—it clogs up her throat and stops up her mind until it leaves one single thought like a litany: why did you do it, Maruca? Why would you? How could you?

Her back rests against the deep brown bark. The tree envelops her, hanging leaves shielding her from the world. Its branches arc protectively above her and it stands so firm as if in defiance. It dares the world to challenge it and cradles those who rest beneath it.

Of course it does. Maruca, protective even in death.

“I hate you,” Biana murmurs over and over until it becomes a sob and she’s crying, finally, crying and crying and crying. She wishes it didn’t have to be like this. She wishes so many things. “Mar, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, just come back—”

The wind just rustles through the Wanderling’s leaves.

Your girl is a ghost. She whispers to you from the shadows, in the trace of her fingers along your spine and the cold remnants of her embrace that cling to your skin like burrs. You lose yourself to her so fully—she’s real when the world is not and she beckons you home.

Your girl is calling. She gave it all up for you and you still don’t answer. ,

[mimisempai]

I will always find you

Summary:

End, continuation and fixing of the episode 6, Loki is facing Mobius who does not know who he is and Mobius does not know where to look for Loki. Will they manage to find each other?

Notes:

I had to fix it, it's done. End of The story of Loki and Mobius - Season 1 series on AO3 I'll begin soon a whole rewriting of the season 1. Follow my other series for more Lokius oneshot post-canon.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/32584870

3008 words - rating G

He was back at the TVA.

Mobius!

He was about to rush to find him when he stopped abruptly.

Sylvie... the kiss...

Now that the adrenaline from the fight had worn off, thinking about the kiss gave him such a weird feeling.

He didn't know what had made her kiss him, if it was a desperate attempt to change his mind or if it had been to betray him.

He had not even answered the kiss, too shocked to react, and she had taken advantage of it to send him here, at the TVA through a Timedoor.

Mobius, he had to find Mobius. That was his only thought.

He ran through the hallways in a desperate manner. Everywhere there was turmoil.

He came to the archives, between the familiar shelves, and there he saw him, next to Hunter B-15, finally.

It was like coming home, the sight of the familiar face and stance giving him an unimaginable feeling of comfort, the impression that everything was going to be alright, that anything was possible despite the disaster.

Mobius seemed flustered and as Loki went on, he heard their conversation.

"That's, what, 63 new branches in this unit alone?"

"Does he want us to just let them all branch?"

"At this point, how are we gonna stop it?"

Loki shouted, "We can't!"

Mobius looked at him surprised, "What? What'd you say?"

Loki shouted back, "It's done, Mobius. We made a terrible mistake."

Loki wondered why Mobius didn't react, why he seemed so distant, as he asked him, "What's done?"

Loki answered hastily, "We freed the Timeline. We found him beyond the storm. A Citadel at the End of Time. He's terrifying. He planned everything. He's seen everything. He knows everything. It's complicated. Okay?"

Mobius replied, bewilderment on his face, "Right."

Loki continued, "But someone is coming. Countless different versions of a very dangerous person. And they're all set on war. We need to prepare."

Mobius tried to soothe him, but something wasn't right, "Take it easy. You're an analyst, right? What division are you from?"

"What? What are you talking about?"

It was Loki's turn not to understand as Mobius asked him, pressing, "Who are you?What's your name?" and that Hunter B-15 was calling for reinforcements, "Boots on the ground now. Archives."

To Loki's dismay, Mobius asked again, "Who are you?"

Loki felt the same pain break his heart as when Mobius had been disintegrated before his eyes. Panting, he slowly turned around and his eyes fell on the spot where the three timekeeper statues normally stood. Instead, there was a statue of the man, the demon, he didn't know what to call it, the one who was in the Void.

Loki understood.

It was not his TVA, it was not his Mobius. It wasn't him!

As the guards came towards him, he felt hope returning and the wheels of his brain turning at full speed, he had to find a way to get back to the TVA from the main timeline.

———————

Meanwhile, Mobius and Hunter B-15 watched the main timeline split into hundreds of timelines.

Mobius, more than a little worried, said aloud, "No turning back now."

Hunter B-15 replied, "Who said anything about turning back?"

"For all time."

"Always."

One sentence remained while the uncertainty was complete.

"Mobius! Mobius!"

Mobius turned at the call of his name. Casey was beckoning him over. He quickly rushed toward him.

"What?"

"You told me to tell you as soon as I had access to data about Loki! I found it! Because of the multiplication of timelines, we now have access to the Void's timeline. We can see what's going on there! Look at it! There he is! Loki is here!"

Mobius pulled up a chair and sat down next to Casey, his eyes focused on the screen, deaf to everything going on around him.

Sylvie and Loki seemed to be in a castle or building and across from them stood an unknown man who spoke, "Better hurry. Timeline's already branching."

Sylvie seemed to look surprisingly aggressive as she addressed him, "So, what are you suggesting? That we think about it. And what precisely is there to think about?"

Loki turned to her, looking almost imploring, "Weren't you listening to what he was saying? That's the gambit. Remove the dictator and what fills the void?"

The way the screen reflected the image, he couldn't see Sylvie's face, but he heard the animosity in her voice when she said, "Ah. You want the throne?"

Oh no...After all that Loki had done to become better, how could she say something like that?

Loki replied in an urging tone, "No, that's not it. No."

"I don't believe you." Sylvie's tone was unmistakable. Mobius, who knew Loki perfectly could read all the distress on his face as he tried to convince Sylvie.

"Sylvie, the universe is in the balance, everything we know to be true. Everything. I know the TVA has hurt us both. But what if by taking him out, we risk unleashing something even worse? All I'm suggesting is we just take a minute to think about it. I promise you from my heart this isn't about a throne."

Of course not! I always knew it. Only you didn't know it Loki, you thought that's all you could be, that that was your glorious purpose. I always knew you were capable of much greater things.

Sylvie insisted, " What was I thinking trusting you? Has this whole thing been a con?"

Mobius' heart broke for Loki who answered her, his voice clearly strained, "Really? That's what you think of me... after all this time? Sure. Why not? Evil Loki's master plan comes together. Well, you never trusted me, did you? What was the point? Can't you see? This is bigger than our experience."

Sylvie, completely unmoved by Loki's argument, answered him, "Why aren't we seeing this the same way?"

Loki replied, looking defeated, "Because you can't trust... and I can't be trusted."

Oh yes Loki. You can be trusted. I trust you with my life, without hesitation, without even thinking for a second. Don't you see that you are not the same as you were?

"Then I guess we're in a pickle."

After these words, Sylvie attacked him. On the screen it was impossible to follow the whole fight, but it was clear that Loki was only defending himself and refused to go on the offensive, until he magically placed himself between Sylvie and his target. Mobius saw with horror Sylvie's blade on Loki's throat. a.

"Stop. "I've been where you are. I've felt what you feel. Don't ask me how I know. All I know... is I don't wanna hurt you. I don't want a throne. I just…" Loki sighed deeply before continuing, "I just want you to be okay."

Sylvie lowered her arms and suddenly kissed him. Mobius' heart sank as the kiss dragged on and suddenly Sylvie stepped aside and said, softly, "But I'm not you." before pushing Loki through a Timedoor.

"Where is he? Casey, where is Loki now?"

Casey didn't have time to answer, as the screen blurred and Loki was back on the screen. This time the surroundings were much more familiar.

"It's the Time Theater!" shouted Hunter B-15.

Mobius started to run, arriving at the door, he opened it and called, "Loki!"

Nothing. The room was empty.

"Mobius! Mobius!" Hunter B-15 was coming running in, "You need to come back and see this! Right now!"

"What?!"

"Hurry up! Come on!"

He rushed up behind her and they reached Casey's office area again. Hunter B-15 showed him the screen.

Loki was walking the hallways of what appeared to be the TVA, the ones past the time theater, but Mobius knew that couldn't be the case, they had just passed through.

"Casey, are you sure this is happening now?"

"Yes, we're in real time!"

Loki was now in the archives, and seemed to be looking for someone, maybe him, Mobius, between the shelves.

"Mobius!"

Mobius gasped, in front of Loki a few shelves over were himself and Hunter B-15.

"What? How?!"

"Wait, wait, wait!"

On the screen, Loki continued to advance toward their duplicates, and they heard Mobius say, "That's, what, 63 new branches in this unit alone?"

Hunter B-15 answered, "Does he want us to just let them all branch?"

"At this point, how are we gonna stop it?"

Loki intervened, shouting, "We can't!"

Their two doubles looked at him in surprise.

As he watched Loki try to explain what was going on to the two stunned doubles, Mobius' brain began to race, trying to pick up clues from what he was hearing.

63 branches in this unit alone. 63 branches in this unit alone.

This unit alone. That means there are several. Think Mobius. Think!

He began to speak aloud, "The main timeline branched, that means there are a lot of timelines now, what if each timeline has now a TVA? Could it be that..."

On the screen he looked at Loki and asked, "Who are you?"

Loki, looking shocked, slowly turned around and began to breathe heavily before releasing a gasp, which Mobius and those around him in front of the screen repeated in echo.

Where the statues of the three timekeepers should be, there was a single statue, that of the man Loki and Sylvie were with before.

"Casey! keep looking, cross-reference the data, try to figure out what date it is, I need my Tempad!" Mobius ran to his office.

_____

Loki looked back at the one who was not his Mobius and did not answer, quickly assessing the danger, he had to find a way to find the TVA he knew, but first he had to escape since Hunter B-15 seemed to have called a squad to stop him. He concentrated, closed his eyes, and saw the room he wanted to teleport to, the one he had arrived in. He felt the suction, then reopened his eyes, he was there, the relief short lived, because it would not take them long to find him. Still, he summoned a spear to put across the door, to at least delay their arrival in the room.

Think about it Loki, you're not supposed to be here, but now that the timeline is branching, how can they find you? Everything is chaos...

Spinning around in the room, he sighed, wondering how the situation could have slipped away from them like that. In fact, he knew, they had never been in control of the situation, their enemy was ahead of them.

Sylvie... who had not hesitated to betray him while he for the first time had found a "glorious purpose" that was greater than him, in fact it had nothing more glorious, because he no longer needed glory, he had discovered that it was much more rewarding to fight for a cause greater than himself. But now...

Mobius... His Mobius, where was he? How to find him? Did he get through it? Had he been able to warn all the other agents? He missed him so much, his reassuring presence that had the power to calm him down. How he had developed such a strong bond in such a short time was something that still amazed Loki. In Mobius, he had found someone who had believed in him when he had only seen the worst Loki was capable of, who had seen beyond what Loki was showing the world.

He had told Sylvie that love was not real, but in the end...love had a name.

Mobius…

"Mobius...", lost in thought, he didn't realize he was saying his name out loud.

When suddenly the now familiar sound of a Timedoor opening made him turn around. Summoning his sword, he braced himself ready to attack.

The Timedoor was just forming, when he heard the door to the room trying to be forced open, as voices shouted at him to open it from the other side.

Suddenly a figure he knew well stepped through the time door, "Loki! It's me Mobius!"

Loki, suspicious, did not dare to let his guard down. What if it wasn't his Mobius? How could he be sure?

The man in front of him looked uncertain and did not move forward. He lowered his hands in surrender as the banging on the door grew louder and louder.

"Loki, it's me, Mobius, the real one."

"How can I be sure?"

"Ask me a question. Something only the two of us would know."

Loki began to think quickly, what question to ask? Then suddenly he knew.

Cheeks slightly flushed, he asked, "Where did our first kiss take place?"

Mobius shook his head and smiled fondly, "The elevator."

Refusing to give in to the relief that washed over him, Loki asked another question to be sure, "Why?"

Mobius sneered, "To shut you up."

"It is really you, my Mobius!" shouted Loki before rushing into his arms. Mobius closed them on him. In an instant they reconnected with the emotions and sensations of their last embrace. Once again Loki felt like he was home.

"Yes, it's me." The door rattled, interrupting them. Mobius let go of him, took his hand and pulling him behind him, he led him to the Timedoor saying, "Quick, let's get out of here first, the explanations will come later."

They rushed through the Time Door, which closed on them as the door to the room gave way to the guards.

It was odd because they ended up in the same room, but in the TVA that Loki knew, there was the table and chairs from the last interrogation before Mobius went to join Loki in the Timecell. It seemed like only yesterday that Mobius had refused to believe him, blinded by jealousy as he himself had said."

"You-"

" How-"

"You first," Loki told him.

"Come on, let's go sit down," Mobius told him. They did, but instead of being face to face, separated by the table as they had been every time they were in this room, Mobius slid his chair next to him.

After an awkward silence, Mobius began to speak, "So, you and Sylvie..." then he stopped, aware of what he had just said.

Loki raised his head, shocked. "You... you saw?" he didn't even give him time to answer, "Mobius! I swear I didn't mean to kiss her, I didn't even respond to the kiss, I don't even know why she kissed me, I've never felt that way about her, never, you know that, Mobius, it's you I love, I know we haven't really had time to talk about our relationship and I'm not the kind of person who can be trusted and I've lied in the past, but please, you have to believe me, I would never- Hmph"

Mobius had not let him finish and had crashed his lips against those of Loki. He kissed him in the same way as their first kiss in the elevator, the difference was that it was no longer their first kiss, it was a kiss of reunion, of familiar sensations, of shared intimacy.

When they separated to catch their breath, Mobius murmured, his lips against his, "This is really the best way to shut you up..." and laughed softly.

"Hey!" Loki pushed him gently. Then he got serious again, because he wanted to make sure Mobius believed him, "Mobius, I'm serious."

Mobius took his hand and replied, "I'm not going to lie to you and tell you that I didn't feel jealousy, I'm human after all, and seeing the man I love kiss another woman was pretty hard to watch. But I also chose to trust you, that means all the time and not just when it suits me. So if you tell me that kiss meant nothing to you, then I believe you."

This time it was Loki who barely let Mobius finish his sentence and who put his lips on his, settling astride Mobius' knees and putting his arms around his neck. This time, they took their time, the kiss was soft and slow, then they caught their breaths, their foreheads pressed one against the other, neither of them wanting to be separated more than by a few centimeters.

Suddenly Loki kissed Mobius again, this time forcefully, he was shaking, his hands clutching Mobius' back, holding him tightly. Mobius, feeling a wetness on his cheek, pushed him gently.

"Hey, hey easy Loki, it's okay, it's okay now."

Loki " I-I, I really thought I had lost you, when your double asked me who I was, I thought you had completely forgotten about me."

Mobius wiped away the tears with his thumbs, letting his hands linger on Loki's cheeks before kissing him gently. Then he cradled Loki's head on his chest, resting his chin on his head as he hugged him tightly, Loki's arms wrapping around him again.

"Never, you hear me, never will I forget you. And even if I did forget you, I'm sure you'd find a way to get my memory back."

They stayed like that for a few more moments, tasting the relief of having found each other again and of having once again overcome an obstacle. Together.

Then Loki came down from Mobius's lap and held out his hand to help him stand up.

"I guess there's a lot to do now that the timeline is branching out."

"Thanks for the reality check... but yes you're right, as nice as this interlude has been." replied Mobius, keeping Loki's hand in his.  Then he continued, walking towards the door, "Come on, it's time to introduce you as a member of the team."

At those words, Loki had a strange feeling, something like belonging, and asked with a smile, "What's the TVA's motto again, For all time...?"

"For all time. Always." answered Mobius.

Loki squeezed Mobius' hand as he continued to walk forward. When Mobius opened the door, he repeated softly, "For all time. Always. Together."

They didn't know what was going to happen, but one thing was certain now, they would face it. Together.

_____

Whole series : The story of Loki and Mobius

As always, bear with me as it is not beta'd I hope you enjoyed it 🥰

[sugar-petals]

Your First Date With Baekhyun

:: bbh x sm apprentice!reader

words. 10k

warnings ⚠️ idol au hc, pining, brief angst, eventual car sex 👀, tw light injuries bc baek is clumsy in love, oral fixation, finger sucking, rough sex, making out

↳ NOTE. here we go again with the slow burn ✊🔥

It all starts with a divine act of clumsiness. 

An accident, completely out of the blue.

Who is surprised, what else could it be.

Ever since Baekhyun violently bumped into you from behind in the SM cafeteria to avoid Mark spilling red hot Americano on him… life has never been the same. 

That you walked in on him walking around mighty topless, with you wanting to clear the dance practice room many hours after work three times already does not help.

It’s always the same chain of events. He practices for longer than the others and gets sweaty, pulls off his shirt, pauses the music for a five-minute break. That’s unintentionally making it seem like everyone is already gone and the room is empty — you are deceived by it every time, and he almost gets a heart attack himself. We know how easily embarrassed Baekhyun is with showing skin by accident, outside of any shower stalls that is, let alone being caught stripping by himself. 

The first time he screams and you scream, off you run after quickly shutting the door. He tries his best to cover himself up with his hands, but to no avail. Lucas, Kai, and Johnny are no longer the only Magic Mikes under this rowdy fucking roof anymore. Even if you turned around fast, you saw more than a whole lot. 

You know how scared Baekhyun is by surprises, he gets all fidgety. Even after four whole minutes, he still sits with the music off breathing harder than he did from powering through four jointbreaking ligament-snappers I mean EXO choreographies. 

Lot of thoughts on his mind, lot of blood pumping through him. Baekhyun can hear a pretty hefty heartbeat pound in his ears. Eventually, he shakes his head at himself and does switch the music back on. But even that doesn’t distract him, nor can he concentrate on the moves. He keeps on asking himself — what the hell is wrong, what is this, why does he act like that? 

So, he ends up sneaking out of the room to call it a day. You were waiting in the nearby corridor to do the cleaning after he left. But now, you hide behind a shelf with props and miscellanea to avoid him. 

Of course, Baekhyun comes to grab a water bottle from said cupboard. Well, oh shit. He has his shorts on, and his calves are literally 20 inches away from you. He doesn’t see you crouching down there, but your pulse is going through the roof now, too. 

In fact, not even the days when Taeyong is walking around the company in a sexy as hell crop top could cause you such a panic. And that is the highest possible bar already. The average apprentice almost faints.

There’s pungent sweat that can knock you out of your socks… and then there’s sexy sweat scent mixed with men’s deodorant. Baekhyun leaves the latter after rushing out of the corridor. It’s even more intense in the practice room, if not absolutely unbearable. Oh boy. Pheromones, please no.

It’s almost as if you’re taking a bath in cologne. You’re getting nauseous and tingly from how it gets to you. You can hardly focus on scrubbing the mirror. If only the guy knew what horniness he is causing just by infusing the air, what the fucking fuck.

The second time, he jerks up again, but tries to explain himself. But so do you, ending up with a mutual, stuttering word spill in sync. 

Neither of you understood what the other was saying because you were too busy with a knee-jerk dialogue. Anxious all over, you quickly leave and eventually end up hiding behind the cupboard again. The new comeback track blasts even louder in the practice room. 

The third occasion, you no longer flinch at each other and laugh a little, mighty embarrassed still, but apologize with knowing eyes. This time, you enter the room after a small „Can I?“ and at least manage to clear some noodle boxes and unused towels from the backup dancers away, and pin a new schedule to the door. 

Baekhyun quickly pulls over his plain white tee and keeps on mumbling sorry, sorry like he’s Super Junior, practically scraping the ground with his hair because he bows so deep. 

You’ve never seen him this awkward. Instead of his usual one-liners and most effortless conversation starters, he resorts to switching on the music again after frantically looking everywhere but in your direction. He sings his lines right along, getting back into the routine’s intricate steps. 

Strange. 

Very strange.

All day, he is impulsive with lightening up just about any situation. One sentence, hook line and sinker; the mood alleviates. Not this time. He’s ignoring you now that you’re in the room.

The truth is: Baekhyun can’t help but set his pupper eyes on you in all other occasions already, especially when you’re busy at a distance. And it’s making him crazy. Next day at the cafeteria, he deliberately arrives late so he can queue way, way behind you. 

For the first time in all glorious epochs K-Pop history, he would let Sehun enter the line before him so he would have a shield. „Maknaes first“ is his brief comment, and Sehun thinks that Baekhyun must squarely confuse today with his birthday.

And fate says… sike. Two minutes later, a teary Mark rushes toward you and loudly apologizes for the Americano disaster. „Baekhyun was not being impolite, it was me!“

As he says just that, he turns, points right at Baekhyun’s tomato red head peeking out from behind Sehun’s shoulders, and bows to him. 

The whole cafeteria is witness, including Lee Soo Man.

And SHINee, who will have gossip material for five weeks because of this. Key is already taking notes. 

And BoA — who’s giggling because she’s seen it all in the business and knows exactly what’s going on with Baekhyun and you. Oh. Lord.

Baekhyun wants to sink into the ground right then and there. He’s been found out again. Of course he has to step out from his lair now and bow back to Mark, take the blame and explain the whole incident all over, and comfort him with a string of appeasing words. Which he hates for four reasons at the same time. He embarrassed Mark, himself, disturbed you the way he bumped into your back, and now you saw him hiding from… precisely you. Little does he know you did, too. 

Baekhyun quickly retreats to sit next to Sehun once again after Mark has calmed down and he, being the senior as always, has performed another 180° bow to you in front of the entire staff and idol audience, causing his oversized shirt to slip downward, way to his armpits. 

Goodness gracious.

BoA is this close to shouting „get a room“ upon seeing Baekhyun stand in front of you with his stomach all bare until he has hastily tucked his shirt back into this place. Fast as it happens, you can’t hide your reaction face. 

Chanyeol, sitting at a nearby table, does a telling reaction noise himself, and you can tell he’s read the situation to a T. Even worse, he’s whistling. You can fool a lot of people, but not Park „Radar“ Chanyeol. He’s a himbo incarnate, but this guy’s emotional intelligence is too damn strong, and he knows Baekhyun inside out. Oh shit, man.

The next ten minutes are fraught with a weird, sonorous mumbling in the room. Lee Soo Man doesn’t really get it, thank God. But the meaning of Baekhyun silently cowering behind Sehun while eating his kimchi stew is more than obvious to half of the people around. Baekhyun never fucking acts like this, even when he’s sad.

It’s like something is pushing the two of you into humiliating situations like that ever since you started to work at SM since last May. Literally Baekhyun can’t stop apologizing to you all day because he’s suddenly clumsy or the strangest situations happen.

Nope, he doesn’t do it on purpose. But yes, he finds himself enjoying your attention. So what is he going to do? This keeps being stuck on his mind. Especially because half of EXO, NCT, and SuperM is asking him what the hell is going on in three raging group chats at once.

And you? I don’t have to tell you how it feels like when Baekhyun stumbles over to squarely plant his cutesy baby face into your back. Firmly wrapping his hands around your waist on top of that not to fall over entirely. That feeling is locked into your muscle memory. And now, seeing him stripped down for the fourth time already? Goodbye to your sleep.

Special thanks to a jittery Mark for making this first hug I mean collision out of nowhere happen. Just to be sure: Mark really didn’t spill his coffee on purpose, nor did Baekhyun want to bump into you this hard. And we know Mark’s reflexes are usually fast enough to save the day. But he was about to host his first variety show all by himself, so you can imagine how shaky and distracted he was. And nobody will resent him — this is only all about you and Baekhyun… being the most repressed motherfuckers.

Baekhyun constantly almost-crashing into you somewhere or basically crawling on the ground before you makes for a second very shaky guy. What the hell is pulling him towards you wherever he goes? It’s even worse than Minseok moving one inch and accidentally smacking Baekhyun in the face.

It just goes on and on.

Following the second cafeteria embarrassment, the next Friday after lunch, you run into each other at the ground floor elevator exit so you would drop your fries. Yeah, extra crispy ones, with the best mayonnaise. Baekyhun has been feeling so guilty about his curse at this point that he orders extra fries for you at the cafeteria two times a week with his card. Which makes Chanyeol know dear Eros struck particularly hard. Because if he didn’t care, Baekhyun would pay it five times a week like he does for NCT every now and then. But if he does it only two times, something is at stake. He doesn’t want it to be apparent.

Baekhyun can’t even look you in the eye when he puts them on your tray. Instead, he quickly bows three times in a row and then disappears. This guy is a small puddle of blush. 

Lee Soo Man cites him into his room to say what’s wrong soon, but all Baekhyun can blurt out is that he didn’t sleep well and the comeback song won’t get into his head. Which is not a direct lie, so.

Whatever you do, Baekhyun appears out of the blue and falls to your feet. Only two days later, he returns from shooting an MV and slips right in front of your office. Pretty much because his feet stumble over his own pants. You put the paperwork aside and check what the hell is going on outside. A dizzy Baekhyun straight-up hit his head at your door. He declines you helping him up because he knows that your touch is probably gonna make him fully insane. He walks around with a forehead patch during the comeback stage and people online think it’s the latest trend.

Somebody save this man.

The universe just keeps on arranging the silliest things to make shit happen, huh.

At this point, Baekhyun developing a full-blown apprentice crush is as obvious as Lucas being tall.

Now, the reality is. This man is Hitch, the Date Doctor. He notoriously handles crowds, can get along with anyone he’s put together with on camera, helps the other members to juggle their love life whenever they have a problem. Chen is probably a married man because of Baekhyun in one way or another. He isn’t really shy normally in his own words. But when it comes to his own crushes — classic case of everybody’s cupid who gives good advice they would need the most. 

That Baekhyun is helpless with anything that digs beneath the surface of his usual interactions will show to you very soon. There’s tough Baekhyun, there’s cute Baekhyun, and then there’s an utterly speechless little bean who has an internal meltdown when you do as much as take the stairs together. The difference is staggering. He’s fidgety, tense, makes himself even smaller and first and foremost: Is impressionable to an extreme.

In short: Baekhyun has fully converted into a fake maknae.

It’ll show in staff meeting conversations on trivial things about the schedule that he wing-mans everybody but himself when shit hits the fan. He stutters in your presence. Baek’s a mess. Chanyeol takes Baekhyun to the side and raises his brows at him at least five times a day, as in wanting to say: „Are you ever going to do something about it?“

Baekhyun dodges the answer each time and preoccupies himself with social media. Fans will later say that he hasn’t uploaded as many Twitter replies, Youtube videos, and Instagram snapshots in his whole career. And Baekhyun is already quite active online so you can tell how much he’s spamming.

Secretly… hoping you see his online activity. Which you do. 

You’ve memorized his five latest vlogs down to the cute little sound noises he’s making. Still, you hide behind the cupboard, and he is hiding behind an unsuspecting Johnny. Because Sehun is already grumbling about becoming a human shield, and Chanyeol would tease Baekhyun to the hell and back whenever you’re around.

Why does all of that happen? Why is he trying to escape? 

The answer is, Baekhyun feels an overpowering respect towards you. He doesn’t know where it’s coming from, it’s something you exude. To the point where he isn’t able to clown you the way he does with others. It’s literally that bad.

On top of that, Baekhyun is frustrated that whatever extroversion he can switch on during broadcasts, fan meets, and with the other members is suddenly failing him. He tries hard to fall back to his usual humor, but you being around makes him act much more erratic. And, surprisingly reserved, believe it or not.

Eye contact will make him break whatever character he’s trying to tune into for the sake of keeping it together. The exact opposite will happen. All the blushing and boiling hot sweat gives him away. Your own heated af face he doesn’t even notice.

In his mind, he’s going through any possible way of mannerisms to get your attention all while not embarrassing himself. He gives confident SuperM leader Baekhyun a shot, comedian Baekhyun, too, and he will don a pokerfaced version of himself as a last option whenever you are close. 

All unsuccessfully. He can’t keep the façade for long; he knows he’s acting strange and inconsistent that way. Do you even realize what you merely sitting in the same practice room is doing to this guy?  

As you can tell…

It’s up to you to hit on him. Finding an unmistakable balance between being breathtakingly forward and overly subtle. The right way to ask him out is somewhere in between. The way you gauge it, Baekhyun is turned off by all kinds of brazen approaches, but doesn’t want to be nudged with satin gloves and feathers either.

However, you end up playing too lowkey at first try because you’re just as nervous. You think, maybe it’s good to find out how interested in me he will admit he is. Which, given how much he tries to conceal his feelings, turns out to be a difficult idea.

And — Isn’t is crystal clear he likes you a whole lot by the way he tries to retreat from everyone but you? Recently, fleeing to stand behind Lucas. Who has the most hiding surface and won’t question what Baekhyun is doing there all the time, unlike Johnny.

So, how do you learn that your plan is a bad idea? You try to involve yourself in NCT’s Friday night truth-or-dare where Baekhyun always joins to mess with everyone.

But that weekend, he interestingly excuses himself to „practice English, it’s urgent!“. Off he goes as soon as he sees that you are part of the lineup, looking like he’s seen a ghost. 

So, that mission failed. You get Taeyong, Haechan, and Yuta twerking against you at the same time while wearing sailor moon outfits as a dare instead. 

However: You still learned something from this. The way that even Haechan’s wild gyrating and arguably great ass did not have a single effect on you tells you that you really want someone else really damn bad. Hell, if Yuta Nakamoto winds against you and you feel nothing—

And, something else has become apparent to you.

Professional he is, Baekhyun establishes rapport even with people he dislikes or feels neutral about, but when his more vulnerable feelings are in the game, he runs from them. 

Beside Chanyeol and BoA, you’re smart enough to begin seeing what clockwork ticks inside of him. When Baekhyun doesn’t try to get close to someone that’s around him so frequently, something is mighty wrong and his opinion about that someone must be an intense one. And it’s not because he hates that person, the opposite is the case. 

He’s almost less afraid of you than his worries of ruining it. 

But through what, you’re wondering, seriously. 

On the other hand, you get why Baekhyun keeps a viable distance. He knows it’s difficult to be associated with him in the way he wishes you were. Since people were looking at him and you so strange in the cafeteria, he even stopped practicing in the after hours. 

Two weeks later, he even quits buying you fries for lunch and eats in the recording studio instead. Chanyeol remains correct: Much is at stake.

After the truth-or-dare fail, you sit down in sobriety and go through your options. You get all sorts of grand ideas to reveal your feelings, but dismiss the majority of it. You have to start small, really small. This needs the utmost care. Especially because you don’t want to compromise him by accident any further, nor are you anywhere near as ballsy as you believe someone hitting on Byun Baekhyun needs to be. 

Truth be told: BoA would kick your ass for thinking that. And letting so many opportunities pass, as if you aren’t beating yourself up for it enough. Idol mode Baekhyun, well, he would be hard to approach indeed. But what is currently going on… he’s literally showing you his underbelly. He’s begging you to do something.

That he avoids even the lightest touch: More than telling to BoA’s knowing eye. He would be so easy to sway with just one sentence. She knows that at this point, Baekhyun is desperate. His yes would come so fast. You’re far from having faith in this. But you still try. You want this man.

Eventually, you rack your brain for anything understated you could do. 

Then, you get the idea. 

After a schedule briefing, Baekhyun recently said he dearly wishes he could eat fried noodles in the early evening because he’s craving something savory, meanwhile flashing a split-second glance at you. Maybe… You can discreetly bridge the gap by getting him food.

You’re part responsible for doing things like that in the company already so nobody will question you driving around with your little motorbike. 

If you think about it: That’s a good excuse to approach him frequently and visit his apartment. The move is calculated, but it’s what the situation requires. You can’t tell how Baekhyun will react, but if he looked at you this way, it’s worth a shot.

And so, you dare the impossible. You show up with a deliberately small portion of noodles after the last comeback stage, knock twice. He does open. You’re frozen up.

Uttering a hopefully neutral „You said you wanted this. I’ll also bring it tomorrow if you want,“ and then drive off again without even waiting for a reply from a very surprised-looking Baekhyun in PJs. 

Sweating like crazy, thank God your helmet and the upcoming dark of the night was hiding your red cheeks. Shit man, that was robotic as fuck! is what you’re thinking for the entire ride home. Another fail, you sure won’t return tomorrow. Now you can’t look him in the eye, either.

Meanwhile: 

The meal not only saves the day of Baekhyun’s usually very lackluster diet mood that comes out when he is by himself. It also makes him flustered and grateful, curling up on his couch. He couldn’t even remotely try to say no out of politeness or concerns for his food plan. Baekhyun breaks the chopsticks right away after closing the door. Today, his dog’s with him. Mongryong excitedly jumps up and down next to Baekhyun. Your visit was short and sweet, but it made two beans very happy.

In fact, he rips open the box and shoves a quarter of the content into his mouth in the blink of an eye. It’s not just how hungry he is. He’s also overwhelmed that you came to his house. He feels like it’d be the highest level of disrespect to throw it away to begin with, no matter how spartan his eating habits are supposed to be. 

He almost views this little take-out box as a part of you. He imagines how you listened to him talk, decided to drop by, bought it with your own money, and carried it all the way to him. All that extra effort and attention he spins back and forth in his head for the whole next week.

And, on the spot, Baekhyun is so taken aback that he starts deep cleaning his apartment at midnight as soon as he finishes his noodles. 

To your own initial shock, he also drops an envelope with money under your office door the next day. And you thought someone was sending threats.

You get the underlying message, though. This is something just between the two of you, and the envelope is a yes. For another meal. Actually, more than that. There are 30 sorted bills in it, each to buy one box since he knows where you get the food from and what the standard price is. 

Payment for one month in advance. Meetings for one month in advance. This fucker. 

And you thought your sweaty scene at his apartment left him confused or weirded out. Nope, he decided he wants this times thirty. Something you have to let sink in.

The next day you drive along at the same time, there’s nobody there. 

Because Baekhyun has left the door open. Now you can’t just speed away again. Nor do you really want to, for God’s sake. 

After putting your helmet down in the small entrance room, you find an anxiously waiting Baekhyun on the extremely cleaned up living room couch, sitting there with fidgeting feet like it’s a porn casting. 

The tension could kill. You put the box on the table before him like it’s England’s Crown Jewels. You want to calm him down so desperately, but don’t know how.

Given his sparkly eyes set on the food, that he wants to devour what you brought him right away is not hard to overlook. But he still seems hesitant. Insecure. Baekhyun doesn’t manage to say a full word which is the most surreal thing. You work up your voice and pass him the chopsticks in their paper packaging. „Pig out. You didn’t eat since 7AM.“

Again, he breaks the chopsticks. Trying hard not to do it too fast.

You sit opposite to him and revert back to professional mode. Talking about statistics from the comeback that Baekhyun hummingly acknowledges the way he does when you talk to EXO in meetings. 

He stuffs himself like his life depends on it. No stable eye contact from him. 

Both of you know that it’s not what you want to say. But even ten minutes in: Nothing about the cafeteria, the fries, the envelope, the topless incident, the forehead patch, nothing. Just you going on about details from work and him listening, nodding, chewing, making brief little remarks and using all his standard corporate phrases. „Ah, yes, EXO surely benefits from that.“ But it’s a start. You begin small. 

So far, so good. With every evening, the conversation becomes more and more two-sided and the meals bigger. A second envelope soon enters your office, covering the extra costs for the XXL boxes, your fuel, and another month worth of meals. Note: Only one and a half weeks in. 

Fuck, you got yourself into something big. Is it because his dog likes you?

You are starting to like babying him like that, even if you both keep it serious. Unusually so, but at least you don’t get into any more accidents with that suspense off your either shoulders. 

It’s not like that cute little face would leave you any chance in the first place. Baekhyun smiles shyly around you. His big laugh is sweeping, but the small things… lethal. Absolutely lethal.

His manager doesn’t like it, but his genius idol’s mochi factor is increasing since you bring him spicy, richer foods. Baekhyun declines most snacks he’s offered at work, hardly eats up at the cafeteria and gives it to Foodcas Xuxi instead, and even the stylists wished he would gain more weight without any results in their convincing acts. But when you bring him a large portion of extra al dente spaghetti or — as of recently — self-made black bean noodles, Baekhyun would consider it rude not to follow the call of the carbs. 

Interesting.

He eats even more aggressively when he knows you made the food yourself. 

Quickly enough, he pays either for take-out or ingredients meant for not one, but two people. You usually eat a little earlier than he does, but you would not trade the best luxury meal in the world eaten by yourself with being together in Baekhyun’s flat. To the average Joe, this would be the biggest hassle, but to you… there’s no way you can get enough of being around him so privately. You enjoy taking the time to buy food for him. Taking the time in general.

You’re not the only one.

I don’t have to tell you how Baekhyun has to fight getting a vicious hard-on with sitting opposite to you with your motorcycling jacket peeled down to the hip, right inside a staring-not staring-staring-not staring match while you both slurp on your noodle soup pretending to be apprentice and idol.

It’s… bizarre. And hot. And bizarre. And frustrating.

You both don’t know where to take all of this. You end up making it a rock-solid daily routine, but not going any further than that because you are afraid. The excuse: Never change a running system.

In the meantime, Baekhyun works out even more. Not to compensate for the calories or to get rid of the increasingly chubby cheeks. Nope, it’s to impress you and show his fitness, plain and simple. At times, the music once again blasts in the practice room after everyone left. You come in to clear the room with Baekhyun in one of his very tight tank tops. 

You greet each other softly smiling. The familiarity really does begin to show. While you sort and organize, he writes you a little note on what to get for food tonight. He scribbles a little „:3“ emoji underneath. 

You think about that for at least two hours before you drive to his apartment.

So, yeah. Something is going on with him regardless of both of you trying to keep your routine stable and CIA-level secret. 

He finds himself cringeworthy when he carries seven stacked up chairs to a group meeting at once just because you’re attending. But something in him can’t help it, for the love of God. At least in this regard, he thinks, something is running on autopilot in terms of flirting methods. Meaning, he really does hide less and less. 

Meanwhile, Lucas’ eyes are falling out because Baekhyun is mustering new levels of strength nobody suspected he had. In the most random situations, even. Baekhyun’s fitness trainer is also living one hell of a life because his protégée is so eager these days. Mastering everything from weights to pilates. Hormones are one hell of a drug.

Kai frequently remarks that Baekhyun is different. „He’s nagging much less, what’s going on, why, why!“ he says to Taemin on the regular, and they invent all kinds of theories.

Since Baekhyun doesn’t want to miss out on your daily evening visit nor spend 8 hours in the gym, that means: He increases the intensity of the work-outs. For two and a half weeks, he is completely knocked out afterwards.

And so… it happens.

Baekhyun falls asleep before your visit. The door he has opened beforehand as always, but you enter a dim room with dozing Baekhyun splayed on the bed in his red carpet outfit from earlier that day. He worked out in the morning, did some hosting, talked his soul out in an interview, attended an award show, drove home, and eventually collapsed in the sheets. Lights out.

You put the rice box and cake slice you brought along on his desk. He looks so cute when he dozes, but you also hate disturbing his sleepy angel hours. Especially because you know how worn-out his schedule has left him and you feel sorry for it. 

You feel weird for standing there with your take-out and want to hurry outside as fast as possible, but leave a note. 

For the first time in weeks, you eat dinner in your own flat.

After forcefully waking up at 3AM due to his usual sleep cycle being off balance, Baekhyun falls into a spiral of regrets. Once it dawns on him what time it is and he must have missed your visit, he buries his face in his palms sitting at the edge of the bed. 

He resents himself for neither cleaning up his bedroom properly nor staying awake even more so, no matter how eventful his day was. He imagines how you must have seen him sleep, probably in the most humiliating, unflattering position and with terrible hair, judging him for being rude, forgetful, unattractive, messy, and probably a thousand other things.

Until… he finds the note. That one gives him a second almost-heart attack, but an adrenaline-fueled one this time. He stumbles back onto his bed and reads it twenty times over.

„Rest well and dig in. Don’t worry. Text if you’re okay. 03304 68010113.“

After three typos in your number, almost choking on cold rice because he eats so passionately, and several minutes of going back and forth on sending something, he kicks his own ass and writes a little „I’m ok, I’m very very sorry! I’m an idiot 😭“. After you reply that he has no reason to apologize, he rambles on about how he wishes that he’s not being an inconvenience to you with a whole row of sad and dejected emojis. 

You hate that Baekhyun feels put on the spot and obliged because of you this way and try to think hard about how to solve the dilemma. You won’t try to stop the rain of his apologies by telling him to calm down because you know it’ll make it worse, and instead decide it’s time to get going.

The opportunity is now, and there’s only one.

‚So, I have an idea—“

Going to the groovy little underground pizza restaurant downtown is something that Baekhyun immediately accepts as a suggestion. He wants to compensate for his dozing, but he also knows that this is a whopping chance more than anything.

And… a covert first date. 

He knows that’s what it is. It’s about leveling up now.

Before you can write that you’ll treat him and he can relax, he gets firm with insisting that you will pay not a single dime. You know that it’s not just his overworking conscience speaking. It’s also the only way Baekhyun gets an occasion to express that he takes this very seriously via text. 

That he wants to repay you and aims to get the most out of meeting up is something you realize when he steps out of the wardrobe room the next evening after everyone in the company has gone home. 

The stylists he has told that he needs to try this particular outfit on for some time to get used to it. „I need to dance in this, so.“

Actually, it is meant for EXO performing at the Oscars next week, but he got away with the excuse and a promise to take care. 

And… he really did the rest of the styling all by himself. He’s turned into a glamorous neat freak. Every shiny hair glued into its desired place, freshly dyed honey blonde with soft brunette roots. 

In fact, who walks at you is a wholly different Baekhyun in a dark, reddish-violet satin suit, pointy black shoes, matte black tie, mature sultry eye shadow, black square sunglasses pushed up into his hair, his signature lipstick, with a distinct statement tote bag, and black lace socks. I repeat: Lace. This is the fanciest anybody has ever headed to eat $6.50 pizza at a tube station. I mean wow, just wow. The tailored shoulders and how tight the tux cinches in at the waist is on par with Kai’s Obsession crop top. 

Even the much more expensive award show outfit from last week looks like a potato sack compared to how much he dolled himself up and reinvented literally every inch about himself. Like you have to prevent yourself from drooling.

Yep. He. Means. Business.

Funnily enough, Baekhyun realizes his zeal and just how much he is trying to impress you at all costs when you turn up with your standard khaki trench coat, bunny print umbrella, and casual white sneakers that have seen World War 1 and 2. You know, just the way you always come to his apartment and the way it’s inconspicuous. 

Going by his face… he starts to overthink his esteem. You can see how his expression becomes mortified. You promptly decide to put an end to his self-conscious back and forth through taking him by the hand. 

„You’re the best-looking man in the world and I’m asking you for a date. Are you comin’ or are you not?“

You then make it particularly clear to him that if anything, this right in front of you is very much authentic Baekhyun and not someone else you’re in for after all. And, that you’re both in your genuine form tonight the way it’s gotta be, the way you know each other and the reason why you decided to do this. Boom.

Four-step Greek style sermon for tonight: Delivered.

Now he’s gaping at you too much to beat himself up. That mission is very much accomplished. Modern problems apparently require ancient rhetoric. You’re in a kick-ass mood tonight. I dunno, anybody would be, Baekhyun’s accentuated sense of style has the historic potential to make girls reckless.

Baekhyun’s hand is heated like an Icelandic geyser and his heartbeat rate would make the average rabbit look like an amateur. Believe it or not — it’s the first time you’re deliberately touching. It’s ridiculous.

You head to the company garage, he churns out five jokes in a row on how he must look like a Korean Elton John on the way to his best-of concert, you laugh… Baekhyun feels better. Three times as nervous compared to when you usually come to his flat, but better nevertheless. And he drives, so. 

He feels like he’s catching up and giving something back, no matter that you feel he doesn’t have to, but to him, it’s important. 

You joke back to him how it’s a little bit funny — Elton John pun intended — that you saw every inch of Baekhyun’s apartment at this point already but this is the first date. The world is upside down, but it’s SM Entertainment, so. Things get started in different ways, but they do.

That realization is getting to him, too. Baekhyun’s peacock alter ego emerges to bolt over the motorway like a lovedrunk Lewis Hamilton with a foot glued to the gas pedal, but also checks fifty times for how you feel in the passenger seat. Asking about how you like it, if the A/C is set to how you want it, whether your seat is tilted the way you enjoy it. Damn, he really is on edge. 

On top of that, said alter ego maneuvers him right into a 3-kilometer outer ring traffic jam before his innocent self even realizes it. More time to chat… more time to sit so close… more time you get to savor the comfort of his luxurious car. So that was a Freudian slip with a steering wheel right there.

You already know that Baekhyun has never tried as hard to make somebody like him. You compliment his taste in cars vice versa to take that pressure off before he turns into a nervous wreck entirely. And then, also adding that you could get used to this which makes Baekhyun feel like a billion Won. His eyes are downcast, his cheeks are beaming. Figures, light superpowers and such, we know the deal.

Meanwhile, that you really like him already and for a long time is something you challenge yourself to make more than apparent to him. If he’s still this desperate about pleasing you and unsure about how he comes across, there’s some work to do. This guy needs a sign. A football field-sized one. If Baekhyun’s demon is his self-worth tonight, yours is being a lot more demonstrative. You’ve been far too indirect with him all day every day.

That you’re outside of both your professional spheres actually helps: Big fucking time.

Easing him into a conversation happens surprisingly smooth when you recount visiting his apartment and seeing him sleep so beautifully. Which you say was the most gratifying thing which is the truth. It’s been on his mind, hearing about your relief makes a lot of things plague him less. 

You also add how you enjoy bringing him food just because. That he’s nice and good company, even when he sleeps. That assures Baekhyun and makes him laugh.

And yes. He ends up serenading you throughout the entire traffic jam. And yes. When Baekhyun is in love, his singing is particularly on point. You can hear the cherry on top in his registers. No need for the stereo, you can ask him to sing any song you like. 

The traffic jam disperses after 20 minutes, Baekhyun has interpreted your entire favorite playlist at this point. Arriving feels like way too soon. 

You put your trench coat over Baekhyun while he exits the car. There’s hardly anyone around in this part of the town but who knows, making sure not to mess up his hair in the process. Both of you hurry to the stairs leading underground. Meanwhile, the car is parked quite stealthily behind a closed-down fish restaurant with dusty windows.

It feels good to walk around with Baekhyun right by your side. 

The surroundings are cluttered with trash and only few people wait at the tube station that opens up before you with every step downwards. It’s actually perfect as a getaway. There are mostly older businessmen on shift at first glance. 

It’s colder out in the open and surrounded by surfaces of concrete, the car was like a spa by comparison. Baekhyun takes the initiative to put the trench coat back onto your shoulders. You feel flattered and you smile at each other, and walk on with synchronized steps. The pizza bar is almost within sight. In the meantime, the digital board announces the tube arriving in five minutes. He takes your hand.

And then… some real bullshit goes down.

A group of seven scraggly-looking teens lounge on a bench, roughly 200 meters before the pizza bistro. You have to pass the bench close-by given how narrow the walking space next to the train tracks is. 

One of them, the tallest of the bunch, coarsely shouts at you. „How much did that prostitute cost and where does he keep his money, huh?“ He sticks his wriggling tongue out right along. The others are ogling Baekhyun’s shoes and chest pockets, preying and laughing and sneering. It dawns on you that you should’ve asked for one more song in the car.

The mood tips. One of the boys sitting on the left side of the bench starts fiddling with a 3-inch switchblade. And then, something flicks the switch inside you, too. Your Kyoong-protect-o-meter goes through the roof faster than Baekhyun can get his car to the speed limit. 

Cue She-Hulk transformation. In an onslaught of your inner wrestling diva claiming her rights, you take matters into your own hands by hurling Baekhyun’s glitzy designer bag at the guy’s surprised face. Sorry Versace, it had to be done. The whole group gasps out loud. While they’re still caught off guard, you go on to lunge forward and furiously whack greasy knife guy and two other approaching attackers with your Roger fucking Rabbit umbrella using a windmill-motion martial arts technique you came up with from scratch. Baekhyun doesn’t even have to duck… being smol has its advantages. 

The switchblade is sent flying into a bin. Point landing. You proceed to rip into the group to helicopter your improvised weapon in circles until it threatens to plow down the better of them and they back away squealing and pleading. Britney would be so damn proud of you, I’m telling ya.

Needless to say, the mortally terrified group runs and disperses into the arriving tube, probably booking their therapist appointments for Monday morning already. You pick up the bag for Baekhyun a little breathless, dust it off, and say a prayer. Holy shit. 

What the hell just happened. Literally, what the fucking fuck.

An entirely wide-eyed Baekhyun still can’t believe that a whole group of sleazy guys twice as tall as him took an unhinged windmill beating by you to prevent a robbery, and meanwhile he is the martial arts champion. Like, hello? He’s been a Hapkido instructor with several gold medals. How many black belts does the guy have again? He could mow down fifty of that kind and pulverize anyone of them with a mere NCT-style kick. This is ridiculous. He’s mighty impressed.

A few businessmen at the station are looking at you from afar with open mouths. You wave and give a thumbs up signalling all is okay. The security personnel reviewing the CCTV the next day is down for a ride. You hope that there are no headlines with pictures of this. Tube brats get their ass busted by cartoon bunny at 2:15 AM. K-Pop star Baekhyun defended by mysterious umbrella wielder gone wild.

You take a deep breath, brush off your coat. „Um. Moving on I guess.“ Then, interlink arms with Baekhyun, strolling on toward the restaurant. Looking around everywhere, still a little shocked. Walking off your relief helps, as is looking forward to eating. Damn, you do outrageous things when you’re hungry.

The restaurant is the size of the practice room at best, lit with white neon and decorated with Italian flags in every corner. The empty seats are designed like in an American diner from the 80s.

The lanky six-foot-something waiter, Luigi Roberto Maranello Salvatore (his nameplate is really in-depth about this), hurries to the door when he sees how Baekhyun is dressed and probably thinks the King of Korea just arrived. Which he, in fact, did, but that’s beside the point. 

You sit at the very back and get comfortable after breaking your last sweat. An enthusiastic Luigi presents to you the latest ‚delicious couple menu options’ and promises to use the best toppings he can offer. You instantly trust him, Luigi has the most accurate mustache you’ve ever seen.

Baekhyun and you share a huge plate of the curiously named ‚Pizza Puppy Love‘  that might be better described as a circle-shaped late night gala buffet. You dig in because damn, fighting thugs makes hungry, and Baekhyun stuffs himself given how it’s his favorite meal. Luigi sees that you are avid eaters and way too busy looking at each other, so he disappears in the kitchen, proud of setting the mood just perfectly.

In the meantime, Baekhyun says that he thinks of hiring you as a sasaeng protection machine. You muse how the umbrella is sturdier than you thought and you wouldn’t hesitate to use it again now that you think about it. Being Baekhyun’s Jarvis is not a bad thought, actually. Beating up rascals for him is your newly discovered love language.

In fact: Whatever took over inside of you and made you lose your chill, Baekhyun is mighty curious about. He thinks that was very sexy. You get the feeling that this guy could like dangerous women. He might have picked that up from Taemin, credits to him.

After Baekhyun has dramatically recounted the umbrella incident at least five times, the conversation goes on about your embarrassing hiding stories, how hilariously over- and underdressed you are as a unit, and you teasing him about „speeding on the highway, are we“. Baekhyun teases you back about how you acted like his manager with your trench coat over his head. He kind of has a point and you call it a tie.

Seeing Baekhyun all full with his beloved pizza and acting so carefree in his Oscar suit is a cute sight. You take the liberty to cut a particularly large slice out of the puppy pizza UFO and feed him. 

If it’s a couple menu, you gotta act like it.

Baekhyun is making some mighty heart eyes at you, and so — you decide to take it a little further. This whole fight thing made you forget you’re on a goddamn date after… a whole year of eyefucking and that it’s about time to close the gap.

Luigi is wholly busy making order in the kitchen and Baekhyun has some tomato sauce stuck at the side of his mouth. Convenient. You take the chance to wipe it off with the tip of your right digit. 

He realizes what you’re doing and promptly grabs your hand to keep it right where it is. Uh-oh. His tongue darts out, he licks right across your finger. To top it off, he starts to suck it, too. With a typical nonchalance. Seeing how you almost combust, he takes another finger into his hot mouth. And sucks a little more. His lipstick smudges onto your hand. His eyes are like hot coals and the pupils are all blown. Oh my, my, my. 

If you’re just playing, don’t you ever give Baekhyun anything to escalate on like that, ever. The way you were ready to knock down the seven guys, he is ready to get physical once the first step is done. Though, the thing is. You’re not playing. It’s exactly the type of fodder that you’ve been craving to give him. Baekhyun’s oral fixation is something else.

The rest of the pizza is gone in five minutes…

…and Luigi gets the tip of his life.

You walk to the car in much faster steps than before. Even if it’s later than late, nobody is around anymore except a sleeping beggar on the other side of the station. No danger in sight whatsoever. There’s a different reason to get going like that this time and there’s no way you can mentally prepare yourself for what’s coming.

Back to the fish restaurant, back to the car spa. Nobody on the streets, anywhere. This night, Baekhyun does not feel even remotely tired, though.

After you put your umbrella in the trunk — you will honor it much more from now on — the driver’s and passenger’s seat stay empty for half an hour and a little more. Now, the actual stereo is on. There’s a lot to catch up with on the backseat.

Baekhyun puts Delight on repeat, and queues City Lights just because. Guy knows what good music and singing sounds like. You interlock hands and call him pretty. Baekhyun is flustered, but all the more eager. 

It takes barely a minute until you get serious with making out on top of him and grind on his lap like the world ends. The satiny fabric is too tempting not to gyrate all over it in your jeans. Lord knows his legs are great. You know what you signed up for. Those thighs are so delicious to straddle, you can’t even imagine. 

Baekhyun gazes at you so intently and ready, whispering his little you-can-do-anythings and tell-me-all-you-wants, it’s like magic.

To top it off, kissing his little pouty lips has got to be the best thing, running your hands through his sexy hair — even more so. Your mouth and fingers have been begging you to do this. Begging. 

From there, your hands go places. His neatly razored nape of the neck, his waist, the chest. His suit, all that expensive fabric, his gentle skin, it’s so nice to the touch. He smells so hot. Bergamot, cinnamon, and sweet, deep, rich and soothing sandalwood. „Girl, I’m your Candy“ gets a whole new meaning. Practice room memories. As if you aren’t wet enough already. 

By the last minute of the second track, Baekhyun is already hooked kissing your neck and does some very daring acrobatics with his tongue. And you thought the pizza would satiate him. Nope, he eats you up like a whole salad bowl of black bean noodles with three pounds kimchi and ten fried eggs stacked on top. In his own words I mean lyrics: Game over.

The desperation and nervosity adds even more sloppiness and hunger. These have got to be the lewdest slurping and sucking noises you’ve ever heard. You can’t help but curse the ugliest things. Something’s pretty damn hard through the front of his tux already. 

Baekhyun feels that you feel it and the kissing becomes even more frantic. His whole body says: Grind more. Please. Please.

By the time the fourth track starts, Baekhyun’s entirely wet mouth wanders upward. Here goes the French kissing madness. You glide your hips back and forth on his bulge, and his tongue is already winding inside of you like it’s advanced singing lessons. It’s so unreal that you have to grab hold of his upper arms to stay in place. Shit, this guy. 

You can tell that this… is his absolute forte. Nobody can fuck with Baekhyun when it comes to outrageous mouth and throat technique. Your tongue gets a sense of how confident he is in his lip service and works his way into it. Now you know how it feels when Byun Baekhyun pays back your attention. Holy Luigi’s Cannoli, he has so much fun. Way, way too much fun. Like Sir, this is a Wendy’s.

And that’s the last damn straw. Really, the last one. You can’t do this shit anymore. You ask for condoms. 

After freezing up for at least ten seconds, he nods his little head about ten times in a row. It’s as if he can’t actually believe it and didn’t just kiss the shit out of you with the hardest dick in history.

„Okay, I’ll—“

Baekhyun keeps them in a yellow puppy-shaped bag under the driver’s seat and takes three torturous minutes to get them from there since it’s underneath and behind other random things. Which means you get to look at his ass for said time because he is bent forward between the two front seats. It’s not like you’ve never seen Baekhyun from behind, but never this close nor in a suit as tight since he usually wears baggy things. So. He’s not just big in the front, then. For his build? That is Korea’s ass.

And the condoms? You expected they were in his tote or his suit within one reach and rip. Nope, Baekhyun did not leave the company building with intentions. He’s been managing this raging boner for a whole year and did not make any moves on you in his apartment where he could have had you on any available surface in two minutes. Baekhyun wasn’t close to even remotely ask for literally anything. He just sat there on the couch with restless legs, ruffled hair, and an open mouth while hearing you talk. You don’t want to imagine how intensely he must have gotten off. Which he, in fact, did. 

He didn’t deliberately plan sex in a specific place for the first date either. Instead, he was prepared for— what exactly? A slight eventuality? Now that you think about it: Going by how he dressed himself, what Baekhyun probably thought he could get out of this was: A compliment. Even if all of your evening visits were nothing but hardcore sexual tension and this was the chance to bring that to an end. Let that sink in.

This guy’s self-control is not only astronomical, but also completely astounding given his usual character. In fact, you thought he would be entirely sovereign with this. How could he not? He’s Baekhyun!

Going by all that… You conclude that Baekhyun must really feel like he does not deserve you. His shame and self-denial must go through the roof. Given how his deeper insecurities have been in plain sight, it actually makes sense. Looks like you’re the one bringing them out, whatever it is that you do. It’s pretty tough knowing that you rouse something as vulnerable in him but it’s as good as it is bad. You find him very brave and incredible for letting it show. Honestly? It’s better than pushing through all of this pretending.

Plus — You really must have given him the impression that he can look but not ever touch. While that’s the entire opposite of what you want. 

To be fair: Having Baekhyun openly touch you in the company would have been a dangerous act. Even more so than say, you touching him, (which would have been somewhat possible, look at stylists and managers casually or work-relatedly doing skinship). Because that means that the availability his profession suggests to the world is no longer a thing and his mind is set on one person. Which, in his field, is social death. 

That’s why Baekhyun could only ever touch you by virtue of circumstances and whatever higher forces arranging accidents where he bumped into you. Talk about indirect ways. The universe gave you what you wanted, but in a way where there was always the excuse of bad luck and no possibility of other people finding out about your feelings. Risky love breeds risky circumstances.

The same with showing his body or knocking at your door to get your attention. He knows he can’t do that, can’t ask for it. So what happens? You accidentally walk in on him, or he crashes against your office entrance after slipping.

The same with treating you, spending time together, getting taken care of by you. Baekhyun found himself wishing for it. So it happened that you spilled your fries and he bought them for you all over, and he was begging for fried noodles so the opportunity to meet surprisingly came about. The accidents themselves both of you didn’t want nor deliberately stage, but you very much wanted the results of them. Directly you could not express your feelings, not even Baekhyun. That’s how it all came to be and now you see just how much he wants to be close to you in so many ways.

That he feels ashamed and undeserving — that shocks the living hell out of you. 

So, all right then, keeper. Time to show you otherwise. 

It’s crazy how he thinks you’re the one off limits and not him. Then again, he’s not the guy with the savage umbrella technique.

Since his hand is too shaky, you slip one on him and start to ride him without any further ado. You’re already leaking so what’s left to fiddle around about. No wasting any time here. 

The deal is as good as sealed. He feels fucking great inside of you and his wide eyes are the most rewarding thing. Whatever dimension Baekhyun just broke through, the level of whipped is not possible to be described with any human words. His hands are roaming over you pretty much without aim, you can tell your body is too much for him.

After he’s begging you to do it roughly, you grab him by the collar and fuck his soul out until he’s all gasping because his dick hurts. The song’s called Are You Ridin’ with good reason.

Baekhyun’s brains are long screwed out at this point, if not reduced to absolute green and purple jello. Is there actually any mind to lose at this point after you had your fingers in his mouth? Like literally, his favorite thing? Probably not. 

He bites down into his sleeve. Baekhyun is all knocked out by you by the time you get to your second orgasm, and reclines on the backseat bench to starfish the rest of the thing with his mouth hanging open at you. Hormone overload. His entire body shut down except the will to keep it up and not come. Yum, he is fit. Where he takes that godly strength from, only higher powers can tell. The Tree of Life, Zeus, Ten Chittaphon, I don’t know. 

He just has the kind of dick you can really bounce on. Really. Fucking. Hard. You are one spark of insanity close to run on autopilot. I don’t think anybody’s growled like this on him before. Nor was Baekhyun’s cock this close to falling right off, ever. 

This is not sex, it’s a crazy as fuck pounding, with Baekhyun on the verge of being blacked out with drool on his chin and his eyes rolling back. His fingers are absentmindedly trailing down your upper back and all he can utter is a small, yearning „please, please“ and gritting „don’t stop, please don’t stop…“ between his teeth. And hell, you have not a single reason to. Cue Captain America, I can do this all day.

When other people say smashing, whatever they’re referring to is not as smash as this. This must be the dirtiest, wettest slapping noise you’ve ever heard, and Baekhyun’s entirely uncontrolled moans will be forever etched into your memory. So melodic, so goddamn excited and desperate and all fucked out. He’s groaning so well, it’s like it’s meant for you.

By the third time you come, he’s crying and whining and has to cover his mouth not to scream out loud. You have no idea what your body is doing, but whatever it is, it’s taking Baekhyun out. Even you tire after some time, but you keep going. You imagine that every thrust is the meal and attention you wanna give to him.

That’s a lot of fucking and edging you get done in half an hour. Baekhyun’s tongue is hanging out afterwards and you went through a whopping three condoms. So much frustration finally released. Baekhyun’s gonna be emptier than Suho’s wallet after Sehun ordered a lifetime supply of bubble tea. 

You squarely avoid oozing your own cum onto his backseat with one hand. Good lord that creampie would ruin everything if he didn’t wear a condom. You’ve come a long way since colliding in the cafeteria, not gonna lie.

And thank God you’re not fucking somewhere in the company and the Audi is close to soundproof because this guy is LOUD. You need some good eardrums to handle these moans. Unhinged is an understatement. If this becomes a contest outwhoring each other, he’d win by a landslide. 

By the time you slip off, Baekhyun is on the verge to the dreamland, you milked every last drop out of him. Which means… 

…you get to drive an expensive as fuck Audi through Seoul. Your beatdown with the tube thugs you try to refrain from boasting about, but this one you are tempted to brag about to yourself for the next week. Well, in your mind. Just a little bit. It’s a great car. And you feel giddy in your body all over. That’s what sex with Baekhyun does to you. 

Seoul traffic is tame around this time. Half in his sleep, Baekhyun hums and sings on the driver’s seat. He’s all sober, but you made the guy act a lil’ drunk, huh. In his element, he talks and talks and talks and talks a little more. Then, does his tiny 'ㅅ' pup face and dozes for half the ride. Sleeping angel hours.

You can’t really scold him for passing out so fast in the slightest. As always, he went who knows how many extra miles just for you. That includes vowing to hand-wash his Oscars suit because it’s fucking ruined. Since the stylists are guaranteed to flame him, you send the fashion department a message how Baekhyun has to wear a different suit because he’s simply too dummy thick for this one, especially as far as the pants are concerned. Which is almost no lie and they will believe you. 

Much like his name suggests, Baekhyun does go hundred. At his apartment, you basically have to carry him into the bedroom. He says he doesn’t want to sleep. But you won’t kiss him goodnight after you pull off your jacket without a strong word on how his health has to be priority. He gets the point when you say you wouldn’t have had a first date without Baekhyun dozing off before your evening visit.

Sweet baby Jesus, you’d still be awkwardly slurping noodles without Baekhyun’s faux pas. If you look back at it: It’s all a story of accidents that turn out beautiful.

Sleep being Baekhyun’s reset button, that’s the best thing to do in order to give the night a good conclusion. Being alone in his apartment together, you don’t have to discreet about sleeping next to him after setting the alarm clock.

Mark Lee’s piping hot Americano is the culprit for all of this, but you thank him.

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