#its been more than 100 days and here i still am occasionally getting smacked in the fact by feelings like this

[halemerry]

Sometimes I'm still just struck by the realization that that happened. Like. Having a set of characters undeniably express their feelings for each other like this? When they didn't in the source material that so many people read and saw the subtext of anyway? Getting to be right? The Ineffables being a validation of queer subtext not being a reach or seeing something that isn't there? And being something visibly on screen in a language that is undeniable to even those who are trying so hard not to see it? And it having it done in a way that both puts such importance on that kiss without having it overshadow the entirety of their relationship or being something that invalidates aspec takes on them? It's so. I'm just. There aren't words for it.

[bratkook]

girls like you. (m) kth

‘swear to god she's a blessing and a curse, should’ve learned from you’

pairing. taehyung x reader genre. smut, some plot (not really) word count. 26k warnings. three separate smut scenes: masturbation in a public bathroom, handjob, exhibitionism on a bus, tae creeps on oc’s nudes, brief mentions of oc being a sex worker, dirty talk, messy sex, praising, grinding, pussy job, cum swallowing, overstimulation, forced orgasms, oral (m. receiving), fingering, begging, use of sex toys (hitachi), color system, use of safe word (yellow not red), crying, edging, choking, cockwarming, oc is very much straight forward and ‘in charge’ but def not a dom summary. girls like you were the ones he desired from afar. girls like you weren’t the girls you take home to mother. girls like you knew the power they had over a boy like him and fuck, did he love it. note. this is a reupload of an older story that i took down to be re-edited. it’s essentially pure filth with some plot and it’s mostly an excuse to write something where Taehyung is a little submissive compared to the reader. also 100% inspired by the song girls like u by blackbear. please let me know your thoughts on this thank u ilysm !!

The daily commute from his home to university was always long and boring to put it simply. The monotonous routine was something he could do with his eyes closed. It started the same every morning, waking up with sleep still heavy on his lids, grabbing a quick bite to eat from the convenience store by the bus stop, and waiting in the differing degrees of weather until the hunk of metal creeped up the street. 

There was one plus to dragging himself out of bed at the ungodly hour of five am in order to catch the bus on time—really why did he ever think choosing morning classes was the way to go—regardless, the blessing came in the form of a near empty bus the second he stepped on.

Considering he was one of the first stops for this route, he’s lucky enough to always snag a seat. It's the same seat every time and he’s almost positive the regular riders knew this by now. Snagging a seat meant he could tuck his headphones in, rest his head against the window of the bus and pretend the way his head bounced back from the potholes wasn’t killing the last remaining brain cells he had.

What difference would a few brain cells be in the grand scheme of things? He couldn’t care less, always more focused on whatever was on his phone. The brightness was dimmed to an appropriate setting to not burn his dry eyes, strands of hair covering his face as he looked down at his lap, fingers scrolling robotically through his instagram feed and then switching over to his twitter.

It must have been a sign from god that made instagram crash that morning, causing an influx of annoying ‘is instagram down for anyone else or just me’ tweets that made him roll his eyes and choose to lock his phone and lift his head up from its permanent downcast position. He was getting a mean case of tech neck anyways, rolling his head and shoulders to release the awkward tension lingering in his muscles.

That’s when he noticed the eyes staring right at him. Had he looked up more often he would have known that those exact eyes had been watching him intently for weeks now, sitting and hoping he would eventually look up. He’s half expecting you to look away, embarrassed by being caught blatantly staring at him but instead, you tilted your head slightly and gave him a sly smirk, almost as if you’re taunting him to look away. And that’s exactly what he does, his eyes darting away and apparently his whole head wanted to follow, ramming against the window with a nice whack.

Great. Good going man.

He could feel his face burning with embarrassment, refusing to look up because he could just picture you laughing at him. Hell, maybe you were recording him with the purpose to post once instagram decided to get it’s shit together. With that in mind, it didn’t take much debating before he decided that repetitive tweets were more entertaining than making eye contact with you again, unlocking his phone and beginning the endless scrolling once more.

The long ride allowed him to eventually push his embarrassment aside, eyes lazily skimming the words on his screen, not digesting anything he’s reading. It’s not until the bus jolted forward at his stop that he took a chance and looked over at you quickly, noticing you were already up by the front, waltzing out of the doors before he could even get himself up from his seat.

A double take out the window confirmed that he was in fact at the university bus stop, hastily shoving his phone into his pocket and hurrying off the bus before the driver could get annoyed at his slow pace. 

Your silhouette was slowly disappearing through the crowd of other students and he had to snap out of his small daze once he lost you entirely, shrugging his shoulders at the odd encounter before making his way towards his first class of the morning.

His university is pretty large, the amount of students here bordering on absurd and it’s the main reason he chose to take the bus to school instead of driving because the parking lot is literally hell on earth. With all that said, he still couldn’t help but wonder why he hadn’t seen you before this morning. Had you always taken that bus with him? Also, how long had you been staring at him? Maybe it was just today, but fuck, did that mean he had something weird on his face...or maybe his hair looked jacked up in order for you to just stare.

“You good?” The sound of Jungkook brought him out of the whirlwind of thoughts in his mind, coming to a screeching halt and settling back into the dust as he came back to reality. Once his eyes finally focused back in, he realized he’s been staring at some random girl a few seats down with a zombie like expression. No wonder she was now giving him a bizarre look.

“Fuck.” Too embarrassed to even attempt to apologize to his classmate, he averted his eyes and looked to his left where Jungkook sat, a concerned expression on his face as he took a giant bite out of his oversized breakfast burrito. “I’m good.”

Jungkook gave him a once over, narrowing his eyes as he chewed his food, a bit of egg lingering by his lip. “Bullshit.”

The look of disgust on Taehyung’s face was very evident, so Jungkook could only smile before taking yet another massive bite out of his burrito, making an absolute show of chewing the meal. 

“You’re fucking disgusting.”

“Thanks.” Jungkook laughed, blowing his friend a kiss before properly chewing and taking a gulp of his water. “You sure you’re good Tae? You were staring into the fucking abyss or something earlier.”

From first glance he definitely looked like he was really thinking about some deep rooted issues. His body had been slightly hunched over his desk, eyes zoned out on that poor girl but his mind was elsewhere. An array of emotions had played out on his face, features contorted into different forms of distress as he had a mental conversation with himself. So when Jungkook walked in and saw him in that state he just had to make sure he was alright.

“I’m fine, just had a weird morning is all.”

The next morning started off the same as always. Taehyung only had two morning classes today so he stayed in his sweats and hoodie, stopping by the convenience store to grab something to eat before getting to his bus stop. 

It was routine: his feet dragging along the sidewalk and coming to a halt beside the bench, mind still heavy with sleep, until a flash of a memory pops in so quickly it made him wince. 

That’s when he was reminded about you. 

You had left his mind after his first class yesterday, the stress of assignments taking over the part of his brain that was curious–and a little embarrassed–about your interaction. All that occupied his day was finishing that essay for his biology class, facetiming Jimin who needed help deciding between shirts before his date, and now the kimbap he currently had in his hand. 

But as he sat at the bench waiting for the bus, the only thing repeating in his mind was him smacking his face against the glass so hard his brain rattled, and unfortunately, his breakfast didn’t seem as appetizing anymore.

When the familiar hunk of metal pulled up in front of him he couldn’t help the small feeling of nerves bubbling up in his stomach. He felt a little stupid, how one situation was making him overthink little things when for all he knew you’ve been riding the same bus for months.

He shuffled down the aisle after swiping his bus card, head staring at the floor because he was a little scared to look up and see you on the bus already. Thankfully his usual seat was unoccupied—the last row at the back right next to the right window—so he made a beeline right towards it. 

Crinkling from his pockets filled the quiet bus as he finally settled into his seat, setting his backpack onto the floor right between his legs. Moving slowly in order to not draw attention, his hand reached in and pulled out the kimbap from his pocket, peeling it open and taking a bite off the corner. His eyes took a peek up, cautiously drifting over the few passengers on the bus with him and noticing that you weren’t on the bus yet.

Okay, my stop is before hers.

Taehyung’s body instantly relaxed into his seat, a small sigh leaving his lips. The creeping feeling of embarrassment faded away now, allowing him to fish his phone out of his pocket as he enjoyed his breakfast, fingers tapping as he scrolled and liked the occasional picture on instagram.

Considering it was a Wednesday morning all social media was pretty dead, so once he got to the end of everything, he locked his phone and just stared at the scenery blending together. 

Before he could fully zone out, something made his nerves light up. A small burning sensation coming from his left and he had an inkling of what it could be. Carefully, he lifted his head away from against the window and let his eyes travel over to where he just knew you were sitting.

Yup. There you were. A few seats closer than last time, sat in one of the single seats facing the aisles, staring right at him. His eyes trailed down from yours and couldn’t help but stare at the small bit of cleavage you had showing in your low cut shirt. A gold charm was resting between your boobs, cursive letters spelling out what he could only assume was a nickname. 

He only realized he was blatantly staring at your tits when the sudden movement of your hand coming up brought him out of his stupid fuckboy trance.

To be honest, he was expecting you to move your hand to lift your shirt up or flip him off, he wasn’t expecting you to tug your shirt down a bit further and lean over, placing your chin on the hand that was resting on your crossed leg. His wide eyes drifted up to your lips, seeing the gloss shining off of them, showcasing the little smirk you had on.

You were taunting him, seeing if he would look away this time or not, and surprisingly he hadn’t. He wasn’t looking at your boobs now though, his eyes were zoned in on your lips and the occasional pink bubble you would blow with your gum.

Deciding to take it a small step further, you leaned back a tiny bit and let your fingertips graze the top of your chest while maintaining your gaze on him. That was when his eyes shot down to your chest once more, seeing the heart outline tattoo on your pinky before quickly looking around the bus at the other riders who weren’t paying you any attention. 

When he finally got the courage to look directly at your eyes you just gave him a wink before leaning all the way back in your seat and deciding you were done with whatever the hell that was, leaving Taehyung sitting in his seat, slightly sexually frustrated and a little confused at how something so simple could rile him up.

When the bus jolted to a stop in front of the university you hopped up from your seat and headed off to your class with a hop in your step, satisfied with your little game. Taehyung could simply watch with a dumbfounded expression, immediately standing up from his seat and awkwardly holding his bag in front of him to try to hide his junk as discreetly as he could. 

This was embarrassing. Why was every encounter he’d had with you this far ended in him feeling embarrassed and you feeling accomplished?

Little did he know that’s how the majority of your encounters would go. The bus ride to school was now the leading cause of his blue balls and the highlight of your rather boring morning. He had now started to see you around school more often, whether that was because he was now looking out for you or purely coincidental, he wasn’t sure but he was certain you were taunting him. Especially with the outfits you would wear. They weren’t vastly inappropriate, but it seemed like every pair of shorts got a little shorter and every skirt a little tighter.

Obviously he knew he probably wasn’t the only dude who was on your radar, so it was a little self centered to assume you were doing this just to him, but it was definitely affecting him to the extent of his friends asking him what the hell was on his mind.

“Honestly dude, what’s your deal?”

“Hm?” he questioned, one hand on the lid of his coffee cup while his eyes stared at the table they were currently sitting around in the nearby coffee shop. Taehyung had been zoned out the entire time his friends had been talking about the upcoming party at Seokjin’s fraternity later this week. His mind just kept repeating the scene that unfolded on the bus earlier that morning with you, a skirt that was too short, and the way you let him catch a glance of your underwear when you accidentally opened your legs too wide when you went to cross them over.

“Like, what porn are you watching that constantly has you in a daze?”

“Yeah, send us a link or something!”

Taehyung frowned at his friends' comments, although they weren’t really too far off. He might not be thinking about porn exactly, but his thoughts were far from pure regarding you.

Jungkook was cackling obnoxiously as the rest of his friends cracked jokes about Taehyung being a porn addict, and honestly it was a shocker they hadn’t been asked to leave from the sheer volume coming from the group. Add the vulgar topic of porn to the mix and it was only a matter of minutes before the cute barista who had a huge crush on Yoongi would come over and shyly ask them to keep it down.

“Shut up,” Tae grumbled out, hand abandoning his coffee cup and aggressively rubbing his eyes. It was almost like he was trying to scrub the thought of you out of his mind like a dirty stain on his clothes.

Namjoon was the one who suddenly gasped like a child finding change on the floor. “Fuck, it’s not porn is it?”

That caused a couple of confused grunts to come from around him, choruses of ‘well if not porn then what’ and ‘no way don’t you see the difference in buffness between his arms he’s totally addicted to some weird shit.’

Taehyung sat up a little straighter, a small look of curiosity on his face as he glanced at Namjoon. Yes, his friend was the genius of the group in every sense of the word but he couldn’t have possibly figured it ou— “Who’s the girl you’ve been literally fantasizing over for weeks?”

Fuck.

Whoops and hollers were the next sound of choice from his immature friends, Hoseok going as far as violently shaking his shoulder while everyone teased him and that’s when Eunha finally walked over very timidly.  

“Hey Yoongi.”

Yoongi glanced up at the sound of his name, his smile growing a little softer when he noticed who it was coming from. Everyone knew she had a crush on him—including Yoongi himself—so they always tried to be as nice as possible to her. “Hey Eunha.”

She tucked a piece of her short hair behind her ear, her eyes drifting to everyone around the table before landing back on Yoongi. “Sorry, my boss is just saying you guys are being a little too loud and I don’t want him to kick you guys out so,” she pressed her palms together gently. “Could you guys just bring it down a tiny bit?”

“Shit, yeah. Sorry about that. We’ll keep it down, thanks babe.” A small blush tinted her cheeks at the pet name and she was only able to mumble out a meek okay before she scurried off with a giant smile on her face.

All of them watched her round the corner and slip into the employee only backroom, smiles on all of their faces until the door swung shut, and then they were back to all eyes on Taehyung. 

“So, who is she?” They all inched in a little closer at Jimin’s question, acting like fucking vultures, desperate for any bit of gossip Tae was willing to spill. They couldn’t be blamed though, they had witnessed their usual charismatic friend go from flirting with random girls and throwing jokes here and there to basically sitting in class in a weird zombie-like trance. But those were only the days where he had morning classes, so they just needed to find the connection between it all.

“Just some girl I ride the bus with to school.”

There was a beat of silence before Yoongi spoke up. “Okay, so ask her out?”

Now how was he supposed to come out and say that you and him had never really spoken, and he didn’t even know your name and you didn’t know his, and the only interactions you’ve had were very sexual in nature, but you’ve also never physically touched each other? He was stuck, only able to chew on his lips in thought, but luckily his friends took that as a cue to encourage him.

“Yeah man, ask her out or something! Especially if she’s got you this strung up.”

He wanted to laugh, really he did, but he also realized that he really didn’t have anything to lose when it came to approaching you. If he approached you and it didn’t go in his favor then he could just move on with his life. Pretty simple right?

That was how he found himself bolting up the second you did the next morning on the bus, standing a few feet behind you as the bus pulled up to the stop. You had chosen to simply stare at him every now and then during this particular morning, extremely PG compared to the other rides, so he thankfully didn’t have the majority of his blood rushing to his dick today. Because of this, he was hopeful he could actually say some words to you that didn’t make him seem like an asshole.

You stepped off the bus quickly, your heeled booties clicking against the steps and landing on the concrete smoothly, whereas his vans thumped the whole way down with a lot less grace in his haste, but he was able to catch up to you nonetheless.

He didn’t want to shout out your name because well, he didn’t actually know your full name aside from the cute charmed necklace you constantly wore, and what better way to garner more creepy points than to make it clear he stared at your tits. So he chose to jog up to you and place a hand on your shoulder, making your body come to a halt, but it was almost like you were expecting it with the half smile that graced your face.

“Hey, what’s your deal?”

Nice first words Taehyung.

You raised a brow at his remark, arms coming to cross under your chest as you watched him with clear amusement on your features. “My deal?” Your voice had him pausing momentarily, he was half expecting it to sound high and sweet but there was a slight edge to it, the sound a little lower in tone than he had mentally imagined.

“Uh yeah.” He let go of your shoulder and chose to fidget with the black beanie on his head instead, his palms going clammy. “You’ve been staring at me for weeks on the bus.”

You were staring at him intently, watching how nervous he was to even speak to you, not an ounce of shame on your face at being called out. The fact that he was even talking to you had caught you off guard. You weren’t really expecting him to ever say anything at this point since most men would have pounced for a chance to get a word in after the first time they had caught you staring at them.

“Does that bug you?”

“No!” He instantly shouted out, hands outstretched almost as if he was scared of offending you. “I just wanted to know why you…stare?”

You nodded along, your lips turning up at the corners slyly, tongue gently running along the bottom of your teeth as you smiled. “You’re nice to stare at.” His eyes widened at that and you couldn’t help but think how cute he looked in that moment. Why did he seem like he was so out of his element? 

“And,” you started as you pulled a slip of paper and a pen out of your small side bag, quickly jotting something down before folding it in half. “I’ve just been thinking about how cute you’d look between my thighs for the past couple of weeks, so message me whenever you want.” You reached down and picked up the hand that was resting by his side, your fingers opening his palm and sliding the paper into it before closing it and just walking away without a second glance.

How could you just waltz away as if you hadn’t made him combust internally, calling him cute while slipping in a filthy thought. You hadn’t even cared to get his name before you admitted to wanting to sleep with him, and if this were a frat party and Taehyung was absolutely wasted that’s exactly how he would approach a girl too, but being on the receiving end made him a little unsure of himself.

The tiny folded paper in his palm was spread apart and that’s when he finally learned your actual name, along with your number which was written beside it in black ink and finished off with a heart.

He never got the courage to text you.

Well, not until he saw you on the bus the following morning with a damn lollipop in between your lips. The way you slowly trailed it up towards your lips was just asking for dirty thought to cross his mind. 

That was exactly your reason for doing it though, this was like a game for you, he just didn’t realize it and that’s what enticed you to continue it, torturing him slightly since he had failed to reach out to you.

You let the green lollipop rest on your tongue momentarily before gliding it down and letting the tip of your tongue circle around it, seeing his eyes widen slightly at the provocative action.

Taehyung looked around at the lingering passengers to see if anyone was watching whatever this was going down but there was no audience, there never seemed to be one. The only passengers were gathered towards the front, all engrossed in their books or phones so they don’t see the way you swirl your tongue around the candy.

You clearly had the art of seduction down by how quickly he could feel his pants tightening but he couldn’t help it. His eyes were glued on your mouth, the way you were enjoying that stupid sucker was way too sexual and it didn’t help that your eyes were piercing into him. You knew exactly what you were doing to him. With how fixated his eyes were you could tell what thoughts were floating in his mind, especially by the way he shifted in his seat.

Taehyung was currently hating his life with all he had in him for wearing sweats, gray sweats to top it off. Those are surely going to show the nice outline of his half hard dick when he gets up.

He really should look away from you but every time he tried, flashes of you between his legs would entice him to keep staring. There has never been a moment where he felt more like a pervert than right now and he almost felt ashamed to be watching you. Almost.

This was just fun for you, you weren’t dwelling on this as much as Taehyung was. You only ever thought of him when you woke up for class and wondered how you were going to subtly torture him on the commute to school. You wanted to see how far you could take it before he reacted differently, whether that be him approaching you in person once more or finally shooting you a text.

Would he ever make a move on you? It was hard to tell considering he never reached out and what man would turn down an invite for casual sex if he was semi interested. Would he ever tell you to stop? You obviously would, but the way he denied being bothered by you giving him attention just led you to believe he was very much into it.

The subtle shift in his seat also showed you how much he was into the little show you had for him. He had pulled his phone out, tapping on a new message with your name being typed in.

Why are you doing this– he quickly deleted that, the little line flashing as it waited for the next words to be typed out.

Do you enjoy giving me random boners this early– nope delete that too.

The feeling of the bus coming to a stop made him lift his gaze from his phone and back to you, a small wink was shot in his direction before you were standing up and walking your way towards the front of the bus, your lollipop making your cheek bulge out as you let it rest on the side of your mouth. Taehyung just watched you standing there, one hand gripping the metal railing above you as the bus approached the stop. You gave one last glance over your shoulder to see if he had moved before you stepped off the bus, taking the sucker out of your mouth and giving him a wicked smirk before popping it back in and sauntering off to your first class of the day.

Taehyung once again had a boner pressing against the fabric of his pants and he couldn’t help the groan that left him because dammit, this was happening too often. He was tired of having to daydream about nasty shit to get it to go away while you just pranced off satisfied with how you left him.

He hesitated in his seat for a moment, debating whether he should hop off and head back home so he could calmly deal with the current situation in his pants or if he could suck it up and actually focus enough during his first class.

The bus driver looked at his rear mirror and gave him an irritated look, and with that his decision was made for him. Well a compromise actually, he wouldn’t be able to focus in class when all he was thinking about was your lips around his cock and the fact that you admitted to wanting to fuck him, but he also couldn’t leave school entirely because he had a test his next class and the bus ride back to his house and back to school was too troublesome to bother with.

So he was currently headed to the boys restroom in the building his first class was in, a little more pep in his step because he was finally going to fix one of the problems you caused. Did he feel a little shame in him? Yes. He did. But he was currently blocking that out entirely. All he was thinking about was how great the feeling of his hand around his dick was going to be, and that alone was enough to get him to walk just a little bit faster.

He entered the building and climbed up the stairs two at a time, clearly in a hurry but who could blame him. Luckily most classes were currently in session and if someone didn’t have a class they were usually lounging outside or getting coffee nearby so he knew the bathroom would be free of people, proven right when he swung the door open and saw no one inside.

Taehyung walked to the stall the furthest away from the door and deemed it worthy enough before stepping in and locking it behind him. He took a deep breath as he stared at the wall in front of him, having somewhat of a mental debate. Had he really gotten to this point where he had to resort to jacking off in a bathroom stall?

He let one of his palms rub down his face for a moment, but only a moment because he had a problem to fix and right now his throbbing dick was way more important than his morals. So he shrugged off his backpack and hung it behind him on the hook and slid his sweats down along with his boxers, the material bunching together around his thighs.

Taehyung shut his eyes, not being able to stare at the porcelain toilet in front of him as he wrapped his hand around his cock, the feeling making a shudder run up his back. A gentle tug started his motions, his shoulders dropping from finally feeling some sort of relief after the show you had put on for him. The way your pink lips were wet from sucking on your candy made it easy to picture you between his legs, your lips coated in saliva from giving him what he’s sure would be the best blowjob of his life, chin messy as you stuck your tongue out for him.

He could almost feel his hands in between your hair, tugging on your strands as you picked up the pace, so he mimicked it himself, stopping momentarily to spit into his palm to make the glide a little smoother. 

Fuck, he really should have texted you, maybe then he wouldn’t be doing something as filthy as this. Maybe—no he definitely would know what this would feel like in real life, but his hand would just have to do.

A groan left his mouth as he tugged on his cock faster now, eyes squeezing shut as he pictured you sucking on the tip of it, your eyes looking up at him in the same piercing way they always did. He’d like to think that you’d deepthroat him, or tease him, maybe even edge him because you definitely liked to torture him. His mind was flipping through a million and one scenarios as his pace sped up, now hunched over the toilet, the hand that wasn’t pushing him over the edge of an orgasm pressed against the wall in front of him.

His hips started thrusting into his hand, joining in on the motion, a whine felt at the back of his throat begging to come out because of how desperate he felt for his release. The pent up frustration he had for himself, and how badly he wanted to fuck you, paired up with his thumb focusing on his tip every time he stroked up brought him to his orgasm. A choked groan left his mouth as his hips stuttered, his hand continuing to stroke himself rather quickly as ribbons of white shot into the toilet. His groans turned into soft whines as he kept up the pace, the tingles he felt on his dick from the oversensitivity felt too good for him to stop, he was way too desperate for this and it was disappointing that it was over. It wasn’t until his hips and stomach continued to twitch that he finally pulled his hand away from his softening dick.

Taehyung leaned his back against the door, feeling the material of his backpack against him as he slumped down. His forehead was sweaty and his chest was heaving from his orgasm but he was content with himself now, mind no longer whirling with thoughts of you and that damn lollipop. He grabbed toilet paper and cleaned himself up before wiping down the toilet seat as clean as he could and flushing the evidence down the toilet.

He secured the strings to his sweatpants once again and stepped out of the stall, standing a little taller, glancing from side to side and letting out a breath of relief that no one was occupying the urinals or stalls. After washing his hands he stepped back out into the halls of his university and headed down the stairs to go sit in the quad to wait for his next class.

You were going to be the death of him. How was it that you had this much power over him and were so unaffected by it? He needed to do something about this, so he reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. Taehyung ignored the notifications on his screen from his friends and opened up a new message, typing in your name before staring at the blank thread waiting to be filled.

Taehyung 9:40am : I hope you’re happy with the problem you gave me.

Was that the best message to send? Probably not, but he wasn’t letting himself think about it too much before the spark of courage left him so he tapped send and immediately backed out of the message, choosing to pretend to occupy his mind by reading the texts he got from Jungkook. The typical ‘are you dead’ texts he would send him if he ever missed class, along with a random text from Namjoon asking if he’d made a move on the mystery girl yet.

Taehyung jumped so hard his phone almost fell out of his grasp when it buzzed with a new text from you. His fingers couldn’t move fast enough to open the notification but his smile dropped instantly when he saw your response.

Y/N  9:51am : Who is this?

How should he respond to this? Were you joking? 

His lips were pursed as he stared at his screen, waiting to see the three little dots indicating that you were still typing, maybe saying it was a joke but they never popped up so Taehyung decided to be rational and realize that he literally never gave you his name.

Taehyung 9:53am : It’s Taehyung.

Stupid. You wouldn’t know who that was so he went back and started typing another response only stopping when another one of your messages popped up.

Y/N 9:54am :???

Taehyung 9:55am : Boy on bus

He left the messages open, staring at the screen and grinning to himself when he saw the notification pop up under his text, letting him know you had read the message. But when you never replied as the minutes went on, he started to feel a little dejected, so he locked his phone and shoved it deep into his pocket as he tried to go about the rest of his day.

Taehyung liked to think he was a very easy going guy, someone who doesn’t let little things get to him, but that was just him lying to himself. He was relatively chill about 70 percent of the time, but that remaining 30 percent? Oh boy, that was the over thinking, over analyzing, Taehyung.

“Are you okay?” Solji, the girl who sat next to him in his environmental science class asked him. They hardly ever spoke unless they were exchanging notes for upcoming quizzes, but with the way his face currently looked she just had to make sure he wasn’t going through something serious. She tried once more but when he didn’t answer she just shrugged and decided it wasn’t her business.

He had his brows furrowed so deeply there was a small little indent in between them, his eyes focused on the corner of his desk while his mind was trying to think of every reason you hadn’t responded. You could have lost your phone, or better yet maybe somebody had snatched it from you the very second you had read his message. Or maybe, your phone—or his—glitched and you never got the message at all.

Little did he know you were currently sitting in your economics class, tucked away in the back corner with your phone in your hand as the professor lectured with the projector screen on in the dark room. You were purposely ignoring Taehyung’s message, turning your read receipts on just to torture him further.

He had finally messaged you and unfortunately it was not with a invitation to fuck. It did however paint a smile on your face because you knew he was very affected by you from the message he sent.

All you wanted was for him to be more forward. You knew he had jacked off at school, he had to, so why couldn’t he just go ahead and say that. Spice shit up a little and talk about what he was thinking about when he did it. It’s the little things really.

You clicked back onto his thread in your messages, choosing now to respond to him. Your fingernails lightly clicked on your screen as you typed out a response and snickered before hitting send.

Y/N  11:37am : Oh? okay.

Taehyung felt his phone vibrate in his pocket and his heart stopped, eyes widening to the point where poor Solji was once again concerned about his well being. She was gonna ask him one more time if he was okay but his sudden movement had her flinching back and avoiding eye contact as he shoved his hands into his pocket and pulled out his phone.

Oh fuck she responded. He thought to himself as he unlocked his phone to see the notification, he opened the thread and read the message, scrolling up and back down almost as if he was trying to refresh the page for more of the message to load because there was no way in fucking hell that’s all you sent him.

But it was. That much was made very clear after a few minutes passed and you didn’t send anything else.

It was almost like Taehyung’s mind was on autopilot. He had finished his test minutes prior, so he shoved his pencil and extra scantron into his backpack before he stood up and practically stomped his way out of the classroom.

He couldn’t take it anymore. He couldn’t handle the mystery that was you. It would be very easy for him to just text back and get to know you but this was the 30 percent, over thinking, over analyzing, not chill Taehyung, and that was just not the way he did things.

Not chill Taehyung decided it was appropriate to bail out on his current class as well as bail out on the plans his friends had all made after classes. He decided it was perfectly fine to hop his merry self onto the bus and head on home. The plan was not very thought out, at all, but as he rode the bus home he just knew he would have to do some lurking to find something about you. 

While he was doing that driving his mind into the gutter, you were leaving your current class, heading out to meet your friends for a late lunch.

You had your phone held in your hand, almost hoping Taehyung would text back with something a little exciting, but he didn’t. That was fine by you though, he was right in assuming he wasn’t the only guy on your radar and although something about him made you want to pounce on him, if he wasn’t going to act on it then you weren’t going to dwell on it.

“Alright girls so what’s the plan for tomorrow night?” Hani spoke up, rubbing her hands together evilly.

“Be a child of god and go to sleep on time because I have a test the following day.” A chorus of boos followed all around, Sunmi even going as far as tossing a crumpled up napkin at Chungha who only rolled her eyes.

“C’mon Chungha. Just come out for a little bit,” you pleaded, grabbing her hands in yours and giving her the saddest puppy eyes you could muster.

“Ahh, no! You always do this Y/N!” she whined, throwing her head back in frustration. “But fine, only for two hours and I can’t get wasted.”

The three of you cheered obnoxiously, knowing very well that she would end up as trashed as all of you were, but that was a problem for tomorrow night. A problem for tonight however just occurred in the form of a notification on your phone.

You stared at it curiously, it was a notification from your blog that you used on occasion so you opened it up and smirked at what you discovered.

Not chill Taehyung had obviously gone home and did his lurking on you. Nowadays it really wasn’t hard to find anything on anyone considering how open people were on their socials so Taehyung was able to find your instagram with ease, especially now that he had your phone number.

He had scrolled through your feed carefully, seeing group photos with your girlfriends at parties, and an abundance of slightly suggestive selfies. There was one thing that was clear, you definitely had confidence in your body and he admired that.

Instagram only showed him a glimpse of your life and it wasn’t enough for him. Considering Taehyung had an account for every social media made, he knew you probably did too. So he took to a generic search, and even a reverse image search because he was so desperate it was pathetic. But it worked, because one certain photo you had uploaded on your instagram of you in a bikini with your face cut off was also uploaded onto a blog online.

At first glance he assumed it was just a generic porn blog that had reposted your photo, but upon further scrolling he noticed all the photos on there were of the same girl. You. 

His first instinct was to exit out of the site and act like he never found it, feeling slightly creepy at what his lurking had uncovered. But the curiosity was eating him alive, so he continued to scroll, seeing simple photos of you in lingerie; never revealing your face or anything else besides your ass and boobs. Along with that were some questions you would answer and with that he gathered that you had quite a bit of fans online.

There was one photo in particular that really caught his attention. The image was a little low quality, showing you with a black heart choker on and a stringy caged bralette that let your boobs pop out, your fingers slicked with something he could only imagine as they pinched your pebbled nipples. The heart outline tattoo on your pinky is what confirmed that it was in fact you in that photo, and that was enough for him to click the heart button on the bottom right to save into his likes for later.

What he didn’t know was that you checked your activity quite often. He also didn’t know that his blog, unlike yours, was not anonymous and had a stupid selfie of him as the icon.

So as he sat in his room and jerked off while thinking about you for the second time that day, you sat in the restaurant and giggled to yourself a little every time he liked a new photo, letting you know exactly what he was up to.

“Are you on that money pile blog of yours again?” Sunmi asked as she chewed on a chunk of butter soaked bread.

“Yes,” you responded simply, taking a sip of your drink and smiling when your friends cheered you on.

“How much have you made with it?” Hani asked curiously, pulling her shirt's neckline out to inspect her boobs. 

You thought about it for a moment; you started that blog to help you pay for school and have some left over for yourself and with luck on your side, it took off pretty quickly. While you did post provocative pictures online, they were all pretty timid in nature, so it was only a matter of time before you started getting messages of people interested in purchasing personal pictures or videos.

There were quite a few older men willing to send you hundreds of dollars for simple photos or videos, but the majority of your buyers were people around your age who chose to purchase access to your private account for a monthly fee. It was always funny to you how some of these people went to your school and either had no idea it was you, or chose to pretend they didn’t know you.

“Enough to pay off my tuition this semester and put some away.”

Chungha nodded to herself, thinking it was impressive. “Get your coin girl.”

The following morning Taehyung hopped onto the bus with a feeling of guilt settling into the pit of his stomach, a nasty churning sensation that had plagued him in his sleep. It made him forgo his usual kimbap breakfast, afraid he’d hurl it up the second he made eye contact with you on this ride and the last thing he needed was another embarrassing moment to add to the list. 

He shouldn’t have touched himself to those photos that you hadn’t sent to him exclusively, and he definitely shouldn’t have saved them in his likes. Sure they were on a public domain, but still, it made him feel wrong.

He slid into his seat of choice and shoved his earbuds in, drowning out the small hum that filled the vehicle. Taehyung was so focused on trying to fry out the memory of your boobs from his mind by blasting music that he hadn’t noticed the bus stop and the sound of chunky platforms making their way up the aisle.

You sat down a few rows closer than normal, analyzing him for a moment; his dark hair was covering his eyes partially, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his grey windbreaker, and his jean clad legs bouncing rapidly made it so clear he was nervous.

Perfect.

A smile graced your lips as you slipped your phone out, opening up the thread you had with Taehyung, with your very uninterested message being the last thing you had sent him. It’s almost as if the tiny devil on his shoulder called his attention, convincing him to peer over, almost jumping in his seat when he realized you were on the bus and a lot closer than before.

When he saw your attention on your phone instead of him for once, he couldn’t help but think that maybe you had lost interest in this little game. Maybe he had taken it a bit too far and knowing he had jacked off at school to the thought of you had turned you off.

That is until his phone buzzed in his pocket. Sharp eyes darting up and locking onto his right after, a knowing smirk on your face as you raised your hand and waved your fingers at him.

Y/N 8:09am : Hi bus boy.

Oh god.

Why was he so fucking nervous to talk to you god dammit. His eyes drifted back over to you, seeing you still staring at him, your head tilted in curiosity at why he still hadn’t responded.

With slightly trembling hands he begins to type out a response.

Taehyung 8:11am : Hey bu—

His fingers stop when a new message slides up on the screen.

Y/N 8:11am : Thanks for liking my pictures on my blog.

Y/N 8:11am : Saving them for later?

His stomach drops, mind playing a nice little montage of him scrolling through your blog and pressing that damn heart button as fast as he could. How could he be so stupid in thinking he was being discreet?

Taehyung 8:13am : Fuck im so sorry

He couldn’t look back up, his eyes focused on the three dots indicating your typing. It seemed endless. Were you gonna send him a giant paragraph calling him a pig or some other insult, tell him you had blocked his IP address and would be filing a restraining order on him?

Y/N 8:16am : No, it’s my pleasure.

He stared at the text in mild shock, the kissy face emoji at the end taunting him. Were you fucking with him? It honestly seemed like it considering you had hopped up off your seat and walked off the bus, your hips swaying in the small skirt you wore which only taunted him some more.

Taehyung let out a groan as he rubbed his palms into his face in frustration. What the hell was his deal? He felt like a prepubescent boy who had never spoken to a girl let alone slept with one. Maybe he was losing his edge. Regardless, he was done suffering through this alone so he was going to suck up his pride and seek out the help of his friends.

That was how he found himself once again sitting around the table in the small cafe they all frequented. The six of his friends gave him intent stares at he finished off his story, “And my dumbass didn’t think to maybe not like the pictures for later and she sent me this text the next morning.” He paused to slide his phone into the middle of the table with the message thread lighting up the screen, “And now I don’t know what the hell to do.”

Yoongi pressed his lips together as he shook his head, fingers adjusting the olive green beanie that he had on. “You’re a dumbass.”

Taehyung gave him a shocked expression, the wrinkles in his forehead only deepening when he saw the rest of the guys nodding along in agreement. “What the fuck?”

“What?” Yoongi spoke in a monotone, his eyes playfully narrowing at his friend, taunting him to try to defend himself. 

“How am I a dumbass?”

Jungkook rubbed his hands together momentarily, looking around at the others to see if they were gonna speak up or if he was gonna have to be the one to do it. “Look dude,” he started off when he realized no one was gonna put Tae out of his misery. “You have this girl throwing herself at you, straight up telling you she wants to fuck you, and instead of acting on it you chose to jack off to the thought of her?”

Now that someone had said it outloud Taehyung did feel a bit stupid. 

This was so out of character for him, he was the kind of guy who hit on girls at frat parties and didn’t bother getting more information besides their name before he was taking them upstairs, and now that you were giving him that treatment, he didn’t know what to do.

“Not only are you stupid for not sleeping with her, but who the hell lurks and gets caught? What a rookie mistake!” Hoseok hollers out, causing Jimin and Namjoon to laugh along with him, and Taehyung could only feel his face redden in embarrassment.

Jin had Tae’s phone in his hand, scrolling through the extremely underwhelming messages you two had sent each other when suddenly, it dinged and a new image popped up at the bottom. “Oh wow!”

That caught everyone's attention, all of them leaning over to try to get a glimpse at whatever Jin had seen but he had already locked the phone, the screen turning black and blocking the guys from seeing the teasing picture you had sent Taehyung out of boredom.

“Aw c’mon, what was it?” Jimin whined, staring at the still locked phone that was now in Taehyung’s hands, hands itching to grab the device. 

Taehyung sighed. Did he even want to know?

One glance from Jin told him he sure as hell should, so he dimmed the brightness of his phone before he unlocked it to open up your message. His breath caught in his throat as his eyes made out the image, almost causing him to choke on his spit and make a bigger fool out of himself in front of his friends.

There, sitting all nice and pretty in your thread of messages, was a photo of your thighs spread open, your fingers lifting up the tiny skirt you had on today to reveal a small sliver of the black lace panties you had on. Very suggestive, clearly intent to tease him. 

‘Just for you’, was the only message you had written underneath, no indication that you would send anything else. Taehyung could only stare at the photo in awe, eyes trailing down the smooth skin of your thighs, desperately wanting to zoom in, but he knew his friends would only clown him further. It was pretty timid in nature but still just as sexy.

“Oh fuck,” he groaned out, locking his phone and letting his head fall onto the wooden table like deadweight. No one had any reaction to the rattle of the table, simply stabilizing their drinks as they observed their friend having what appears to be a mental breakdown. 

“What did she send him?” Yoongi whispered to Jin.

“Something mildly NSFW.”

At that, Yoongi reached over and jostled his whole body with force. “Get the fuck up you imbecile. Respond to her!”

“What am I supposed to say?” Tae slurred, cheek smushed against the table and muffling his words.

“Fucking anything is better than the silent treatment dude. Like she just took time out of her day to send you something. You gotta at least tell her she looks hot, or that you like the picture.” Jungkook rolled his eyes like it was the most obvious response, and honestly it was, this was sexting 101. 

“You’re right, I guess.” Taehyung lifted himself back up and unlocked his phone once more, staring at the screen with a distraught expression. “The fuck do I say though?”

Hoseok hummed in thought, tapping his chin as he stared at the lid of his cup. “Depends, what kinda photo was it? Full nude or like a tease?”

“A tease.”

“Oh! Tell her something like, she’s gonna be the death of you, or something along those lines. I’m sure she hears she’s hot all the time, so that's too basic.” Jimin speaks up proudly, his smile widening when Taehyung nods and begins typing out a response with slightly shaky fingers and hits send.

The little sound of the message being sent causes the whole group to let out a sigh of relief, slumping back into their seats and taking sips of their drinks.

“Who knew we’d have to resort to coaching Kim Taehyung on how to sext.” Namjoon snorts, earning a couple of laughs in return, and Taehyung couldn’t help but laugh too because honestly how ridiculous. 

The conversation flows easily once Jungkook starts talking, everyone momentarily forgetting about Taehyung’s situation, which he was grateful for. The current topic at hand was the party that Jungkook and Hoseok were having in a few days at their new apartment, but his attention was taken away from that when he shockingly received another text from you.

Y/N 7:36pm :Now we can’t have you dying on me.

Y/N 7:36pm : In the mood for some drinks? A couple of friends and I are going out tonight.

Y/N 7:37pm : You should come.

He stared at his phone in thought. Fuck, he wanted to go so bad, but because he had spent all day yesterday jerking off to the thought of you he had procrastinated an assignment that was due tonight. Not chill Taehyung was going to be his downfall. 

Taehyung 7:40pm : I wish I could, I have a deadline at 11

Taehyung 7:40pm : Next time?

On the other side of the screen, you were laying in bed in the same outfit you had on earlier, fingers playing with the hem of your skirt as you read his response, a small smile on your face.

In all honesty you weren’t even expecting him to respond to your photo anyways, so this caught you off guard.

Y/N 7:42pm : I’m holding you to that bus boy.

So as you went out with your friends, throwing back shots and dancing your life away to the song playing at the club you guys loved, Taehyung sat at home typing out a bullshit paper as his phone watched your instagram story from time to time.

By the time he was calling it a night after he turned in his assignment you were still posting videos of your friends dancing and pouring drinks into your mouth straight from the bottle. You clearly knew how to have a good time and he couldn’t help but feel a tiny twinge of regret at not going out when you had invited him to.

That same regret seeps into the following morning, rewatching your stories and imagining how much fun he would have had if he decided to forget his assignments and go out with you. It’s safe to say that he was honestly not expecting you to hop on at your usual stop, mainly because he knew from your posts that you didn’t call it a night until 4am and it was currently 7:20am. So, when he saw you step on the bus, he was slightly shocked.

The regular attire he was used to was missing, normally styled hair now up in a messy bun, a thick pair of shades on, and an oversized flannel barely hanging over your shoulder. It was very obvious that you had just rolled out of bed. 

His reaction time was a little slow, but when he saw you continue down the aisle and getting closer to him, he tensed up and held his breath, not releasing it even as you took it upon yourself to sit down right next to him. The two of you being the only passengers at the back of the bus.

“Hi,” you spoke out, turning to look at him as he tried his best to just face forward. A sweet smile passed between you when he finally turned towards you and gave you a small hello in greeting.

That satisfies you, so you wiggle in your seat to get comfy, your hands pulling out a book from your bag and starting to read it to pass the time. Taehyung visibly relaxes at that, happy that your attention was on the book instead of him because he wasn’t sure if he could make it through a conversation this early without embarrassing himself.

You take note of his relaxed frame, his head resting against the window and one earbud in his ear playing some song you couldn’t quite make out. That was when you decided to make your move, your eyes still trained on your book as you let your right hand trail up onto his thigh, letting it rest there for a moment to gauge his reaction.

His thigh tenses instantly at the sensation. “You can tell me to stop and I will,” you whisper, your hand already retreating. You knew he was attracted to you but you weren’t gonna do something to him if he was uncomfortable.

Taehyung sits there for a moment, having an internal debate, because fuck does he want you to touch him, but he’s also on public transportation and he’s not sure what the fine is for public indecency. The inner debate is splayed on his features, but in the end the pros outweigh the cons, so he reaches out and grabs your hand, placing it higher up on his thigh.

“No, keep going.”

It was genuine curiosity to see how far you would actually go, and when you told him to put his backpack over his thighs he knew you were being serious. He listened to your instructions and waited with baited breath as he felt your fingertips trail around his crotch, ghost touches sending a small shiver down his spine.

His dick was already twitching in his pants and you had barely even touched him. Your fingers tugged on the string of his black track suits and slipped behind the waistband of them, trailing down his skin and feeling his stomach twitch at the contact. You settled with palming him over his boxers, hearing Taehyung let out a small grunt at the feeling, his dick slowly hardening under your touch.

He was very responsive to your touch, thighs tensing up as he tried to fight back the urge to buck his hips for more friction and it fueled your excitement. 

Considering this was a risky move, you decided to stop torturing him with teasing touches and finally slid your hand past the material of his boxers, wasting no time in wrapping your hand around his thick cock.

Taehyung could feel the blood pumping in his ears as he dropped his head forward with a choked gasp, resting his forehead on the seat in front of him because he knew he wouldn’t be able to disguise his facial expressions if anyone were to look back.

Every jerk of your hand made his breath hitch. Your hands felt like magic, pulling up to twist around the swollen head and gathering his precum before coming back down. God, he wanted to rip his pants down so he wouldn’t feel so confined.

In the perfect display of nonchalance, you still had the book in your left hand, eyes cast down on the page as if your right hand wasn’t focused on his sensitive tip with determination to make him break down. On occasion, you would glance over and smile to yourself at his facial expression, seeing how his eyes were screwed shut as his forehead rested on the seat, alternating between chewing on his bottom lip or just licking his lips and leaving his mouth open as he tried to suppress the moans he wanted to let out. 

“Fuck.” The first crack to his exterior had him finally mumbling out as you picked up the pace, his eyes opening up and looking over at you for a moment, needing to solidify that he wasn’t imagining this. There would be nothing worse than coming face to face with his bed sheets as he awoke from a dream instead of you actually getting him off. 

But there you were, looking so at peace, staring at him with an innocent smile like you weren’t about to make him cum in his pants embarrassingly quick. “You close?”

He let out a small whine as he nodded, finally losing the final bit of self control and bucking his hips to meet your hand, hearing the small thump of your palm against his skin. “Cum for me. I wanna feel you make a mess.”

With eyes sparkling with mischief, you tightened your grip on him as you sped up, your bottom lip being chewed on by your teeth while you watched him come undone. His eyebrows were furrowed, a small frown on his face as he opened his mouth in a silent moan, something you desperately wished you could hear. Harsh pants of breath fanned across the back of the seat as he groaned, fingers gripping the material of his backpack to stop himself from digging his nails into his palm as he neared his release. With a few more pumps, his whole body tensed up as he finally came, stomach twitching while you milked his orgasm.

Taehyung vision blanks for a moment while aftershocks filled his body, dots of light flickering across his eyes until it all came back, and as he realized you were staring at him in awe he could have sworn he was gonna cum again. Your hand was still slowly pumping him, feeling his dick twitch at the overstimulation but he couldn’t get himself to tell you to stop, enjoying the small ache of sensitivity too much. 

It wasn’t until he started to softly grunt at the pleasure that turned painful that you pulled your hand out of his pants, content smile spread across your lips. Taehyung sat there limp, his body feeling like absolute jello, thighs still shaking from his climax. He can already imagine how unsteady his legs will be once it's time to get off the bus. 

You stared at your hand, eyeing the small milky beads of cum on your fingers and you didn’t think twice before popping them in your mouth and sucking on them as you stared right at him. “That was fun. Thanks bus boy.”

He watched in a daze as you stuffed the book back into your bag and got up from your seat, giving him a wide smile while you walked up to the front of the bus. It was only then that he realized both of you had arrived at your college, the boring commute speeding by thanks to your antics. With a spared glance at the displeased bus driver, Taehyung shot up from his seat, cringing at his still sensitive dick and the uncomfortable sticky feeling in his pants.

You were absolutely going to be the death of him

Taehyung was weak, bottom-of-the-food-chain, top tier simp material for you. All it took was one handjob for him to be stuck on you, constantly waiting for any form of interaction you would give him. It was pure infatuation—and a little pathetic—but he wasn’t sure how he felt about you. It was like his brain was torn between trying to get to know you in a more personal way, or just going with the flow and fucking you like you had originally offered. It just made him feel more confused, and a little naive, because it was so clear that you had no romantic feelings for him.

This experience had filled Taehyung with a small sense of guilt, he now knew how the girls he treated this way felt. The constant stringing along and nonchalant carefree aura he would have when he would hook up with girls who clearly wanted more, it was fucking frustrating being on the receiving end and even more frustrating because he knew if he really wanted it to stop all he had to do was ask.

But Taehyung couldn’t get himself to ask you to stop. You had a grasp on him, and you did it so easily, which is why when he didn’t see you on the bus the following day he felt his heart drop a little. 

Sure, he hadn’t noticed you prior but considering it had been a few weeks of constant contact in one form or another, he just found it a little odd now. His hand was twitching with the urge to send you a text and ask if you were feeling okay but he stopped himself in fear of sounding like a clingy mess. 

“Any progress on the mystery babe?” Jungkook asked as they waited in line at the fast food joint near school. 

Taehyung smirked a little at that, memories of yesterday's random handjob coming back to mind. “Sort of.”

Jungkook scoffed, “Sort of? Dude c’mon, just shoot her a text and tell her you wanna hang out, or be blunt and ask her to fuck.”

In retrospect that would be the typical route Taehyung would take, but there was something about you being so in control of this dynamic that had him so unsure of himself. “Look man, she’s different.”

“Oh no—“ And immediately Taehyung knew how that had come out. “Do not say you like her. You barely know her.”

He raised his hands in front of him, “No! Not like that Kook! I just mean that I don’t know how to act.” He let out a sigh, feeling annoyed with himself with this entire situation. “I hope I don’t sound like a total douchebag saying this, but I’m used to girls who let me take charge in situations you know?”

Jungkook nodded, staring at his friend as he spoke, “Girls that basically follow me around and let me decide if I wanna keep them around—and I hate how I sound speaking like that—but it’s the only way I can explain it.” He let out another defeated sigh, definitely something that had become a common form of expression for him. “She doesn’t do that shit, and I don’t know how to act like myself because of it.”

The younger man nodded again, knowing exactly what he meant. “I knew a girl like that, honestly the best two months of my life. Look dude, if she's making it clear that she doesn’t want anything serious then what's the dilemma? She’s confident in herself and you shouldn’t feel intimidated by that.”

Taehyung hummed at that, he was right as Jungkook continued, “And who knows, maybe she’ll help you realize that chains and whips excite you.”

And there was typical Jeon Jungkook. “I fucking hate you.”

Jungkook let out a cackle before turning his attention to the poor cashier who unfortunately had to hear the end of his statement. As he ordered for himself and Taehyung, the latter felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. He was half expecting it to be a message from Hoseok asking him some dumb question, so when he saw your name on his screen he thought he was hallucinating. 

Y/N 12:17pm : Hope you didn’t miss me too much today

Y/N 12:17pm : Come to this

Y/N 12:17pm : You promised me next time bus boy

Attached to the messages was a photo of a party flyer he was very familiar with. It was the silly flyer Jungkook had spent around 5 minutes making to promote their party tomorrow night, and the fact that you had come across it either meant it really got around or you had a mutual friend. 

He looked up momentarily as Jungkook tapped him, motioning for him to follow to an empty table as they waited for the food. Taehyung blindly walked behind him, eyes downcast on his screen as he typed a response. 

Taehyung 12:19pm : I’ll be there

Your response was instant and it caught him off guard because you usually lagged on messages. 

Y/N 12:19pm : I’ll be waiting

But it seemed like Taehyung would be the one waiting. He was standing at the corner of the living room with a drink in his hand and his phone in the other, waiting for you to text him as his eyes scanned the current room. 

Jungkook stood beside him, animatedly talking to a cute girl who had grabbed his interest, too busy to notice his friend eyeing the room like a hawk. Taehyung wanted to wander off and find someone for himself, but the idea that you would eventually be here kept him glued to one spot. 

It was nearing midnight and people were already making messes of themselves, passed out on the couch and some even on the front lawn. Jungkook and Hoseok’s new place was more spacious than their last, but it was definitely overcrowding so people were coming in and out frequently from the front to the backyard to get some fresh air.

“I'm gonna go get another drink.” He told Jungkook, who waved him off and continued his conversation while Taehyung made his way to the kitchen. 

He used the same cup he had in his hand and filled it up with vodka and cranberry juice, his favorite drink of choice right next to drinking it straight. Then suddenly, it was like a magnet forced him to look up and over his shoulder, and that's when he spotted you and your group of friends. 

You all walked in with big smiles on your faces, one of your friends walking over to Hoseok and giving him a hug, and that's who he assumed the mutual friend was. Your hair was flipped over your shoulder as you played with it with your hands, small crop top showing just enough cleavage and your stomach, and Taehyung could just feel himself staring. 

That's when your eyes met his, and they glinted with something he couldn’t pinpoint. Your target had been acquired, and as he saw you making your way over to him he choked a bit on his drink. 

“Bus boy.” Was all you told him, a smile on your face as you easily slipped beside him against the counter, elbows resting casually on the cool surface as you leaned back.

“Hey...bus girl.” he awkwardly responded, feeling like an idiot immediately after. You only giggled, your fingers wrapping around his own on the cup as you brought it from its place against Tae’s mouth over to your own for a sip. 

“Mm, vodka cranberry?” You licked your lips, and his eyes were glued on them. “How’d you know that's my drink of choice?”

“Lucky guess?” He slowly responded back, gently taking the cup back from your grasp when you handed it over, his eyes glancing at the sticky residue your gloss left on the rim of the cup.

You were analyzing him, watching him standing there with an aura of unsureness around him. You see, you knew of Taehyung, had a couple of friends who had hooked up with him, and this is not what they described him as. They always told you he was assertive, the first to make a move and once he had he was aggressive in bed in the best way. That’s why he had caught your attention, you wanted to see how hard it would be to crack him, break him down until he was begging and pleading since he was so used to taking charge. The possibility of having him on his knees, holding on to your every word, made this sick sense of pleasure creep up your spine.

Taehyung was handsome, that wasn’t up for debate, but you could see him biting his lips almost like he had a million things he wanted to say to you but was afraid they wouldn’t come out right. Cracking him might be easier than you thought.

“Did I miss all the fun?” The question hung in the air for a moment as flashes from the night played through his head. Jungkook kicking out some dude for trying to piss in the kitchen sink, Hoseok doing a line of who knows what off some girls boobs and her boyfriend trying to fight him, among a plethora of incidents in the span of a few hours. 

“No, definitely not. The night is still young.”

You only stared at him, waiting for his eyes to finally look at yours instead of pretending like he didn't notice you. And finally, they did, narrowing a bit in suspicion as he wondered what you were thinking in your head. 

“So,” you began, confidently grabbing his drink again. “Have you taken my offer into consideration?”

He was so focused seeing your tongue lick your lips to catch the remaining moisture of the drink that he almost didn't hear your question. “I’m sorry, what offer?”

A small laugh left your lips at his question. “You really forgot already?” You only gave him a moment of silence before you continued, “The offer that involves you fucking me, or are you turning it down?”

Taehyung froze, taking in your facial expression before answering. Your mouth held the same sinfully evil smirk it always had, head tilted slightly as you handed his drink back to him and shot him a wink before you sauntered off towards your friends who had watched the entire exchange go down.

They instantly tugged your wrist and yanked you towards the sliding doors that lead to the backyard where a game of beer pong was going down. Chungha was all giggles, not being able to believe the new person of interest in your eyes was Kim Taehyung.

Taehyung on the other hand just let his eyes follow your body until the sliding door was shut once more. He had taken too long to respond to your question, his mind had been shouting at him to just blurt out that yes, he had taken your offer into consideration and he one hundred percent wanted to fuck you. Too bad his mouth decided to sew itself shut. 

He took another swig of his drink, swallowing harshly with a bit of determination set on his mind. By the end of the night he had to make a move on you, that much was for sure. He was tired of you always having the upper hand with every interaction you had. This party was his element for fucks sake, he was a seasoned pro when it came to sleeping with random girls at house parties. The only difference this time was that none of them had come on to him as boldly as you had, but that wasn’t a problem at all.

Jungkook slapped a palm on his shoulder, making his drink slosh in the cup and catching him by surprise. When Tae looked away from the sliding door and over to his left, he could see Jungkook was also looking in the same direction with a knowing smile on his face. “Oh man, she’s trouble.”

Tae’s eyebrows wrinkled in confusion. “Wait, who?”

“Y/N, man. Who else?” He released his grip on the older one's shoulder, taking a sip of the beer in his other hand while he nodded his head in thought.

Taehyung was clearly out of the loop here, “How do you know her?” He mentally sorted through the girls he had seen Jungkook with in the past, even trying hard to remember any girls he had mentioned in passing and you had never come up.

Jungkook took another drink of his beer, wondering how to go about this carefully. He could be honest with Tae and tell him he had met you last semester at a club that was popular with the students at the university. How you had been the absolute best sex of his life for two steady months, and then suddenly dropped him without a care in the world—which would have absolutely crushed Jungkook if he let himself get attached but he hadn’t, he swore he hadn’t. He was kinda shocked and very amused that you had chosen his best friend as your new target, even if it was purely coincidental.

In the end, he decided being honest wasn’t necessary. “It’s not important, just know she’s pure trouble in the best way. Is she the bus girl you always talk about?”

That answer didn’t satisfy Tae but he was too busy thinking about how to make a move on you to dive deeper. “Yeah, she is.”

Jungkook nodded, hearing Jimin calling him from somewhere in the house with a very slurred voice. “Well, I hope you’re planning on making a move on her tonight or I’ll let all the guys know what a pussy you are.” He jostled Tae’s shoulders once more with a hearty laugh before running off towards Jimin who was surely drunk as fuck.

Outside of the house stood you and your friends, surrounding the beer pong game going on between Yoongi and Seulgi. Your eyes were peering behind you, staring through the glass doors as you watched Jungkook speaking to Taehyung for a brief moment. You smiled to yourself, knowing the small mess you might be causing between friends but not caring enough to stop it.

“This winning shot is for you gorgeous!” Yoongi shouted out, blowing a sloppy kiss out towards Sunmi before tossing the ping pong ball haphazardly towards the last remaining cup and somehow making it in. 

“That winning shot made me lose!” Sunmi erupted in laughter while everyone cheered at the end of the game. Seulgi rolled her eyes with a playful smile before chugging the last cup and walking back to your group.

“I don’t know how that fucker beat me considering his blood alcohol content should have his ass in a coma.” 

You laughed, throwing your arm over her shoulder and tugging her closer to you. “It’s because Sunmi told him that she’d give him her number if he got the winning cup. I guess desperation makes boys a little more sober.”

“Pigs.” She grumbled with a laugh, watching as Sunmi and Yoongi exchanged information, both of them looking like flustered children with blushing cheeks. “Anyways, are you gonna torture that poor boy inside all night?”

“Hm,” you hummed to yourself. “Is it really torture if I gave him a way in?”

“Oh please Y/N, has any boy ever taken to your advances that quickly? You’re intimidating as fuck, in the sexiest way possible. He’s probably not used to girls telling him shit like that so he doesn’t know what to do.”

“Yeah, but Yuna told me he was blunt as fuck with her when they slept together.” Your eyes peered back inside, no longer being able to see Taehyung.

“Yuna? Kang Yuna?” You nodded, looking up at Seulgi and seeing a look of disbelief on her face, “Dude, she’s the most timid, shy, submissive girl I’ve ever met. Guys eat that shit up. That’s what guys like Taehyung are used to. You spicing it up has him second guessing everything, so I say you keep it up. Be two steps ahead of him.”

You knew she was right, even though this was an exciting game of cat and mouse for you, you'd be lying if you said you weren’t slightly interested in him for more than just a one night stand. 

“You gonna play?” Chunga popped in beside you, a grin on her face as she held a white ping pong ball in her hands. You smiled back and gave her a nod, letting her tug you towards the table being set up.

Yoongi stood wobbling on the other side, claiming to want to hold on to his winning title but the boy was clearly close to passing out from the amount of alcohol in his system. That was when another boy stood beside him, his frame towering over Yoongi’s and a charming smile on his plump lips as he tried to coax Yoongi into going inside to drink some water.

Chungha hummed in approval as she took his appearance in. “Wow he’s...”

“Yummy?”

She snorted out, “Oh yeah, definitely yummy.”

Yoongi was bickering with said yummy boy until Sunmi approached him again and put on her best flirtatious look to get him to follow her inside the house. He was done for after that, handing his friend the ball in his hand with a lazy wave, his half lidded eyes trailing down Sunmi’s body as she dragged him behind her. He probably thought he would be getting laid tonight but Sunmi was in mom mode, so unless he was ready to down a gallon of water and sober up, the only thing he would be doing is going straight to sleep.

“Hey, yummy guy, are you playing or not?”

He looked startled by the nickname, his hand coming up to point at his chest in confusion. When you and Chungha gave him a look that said yeah you his mouth opened up slightly before he was smiling again. “Yummy? Wow, can’t say I’m opposed to being called that.” He started to laugh at that and Chungha sighed at the sound, yup she was a sucker. 

“I don’t have a partner to play against you two.”

You stepped back from the table with a shrug. “Don’t mind me, he’s all yours Chungha.”

They instantly started chatting with each other, playful threats and possible bets being made for whoever lost this game, but you weren’t planning on staying to watch this go down. The friends you had left on the sidelines watched you saunter away and they knew exactly where you were headed.

You wandered inside the crowded home and let your eyes scan the room, the kitchen was immediately to the left of you, a group of boys huddled around the alcohol as they made drinks, but no sign of Taehyung. Grabbing the lone vodka bottle from the counter, you took a quick swig before you resumed your hunt, ignoring the nasty burn to your throat. 

A few more steps inside towards the living room didn’t reveal him either, too many bodies moving together to some random beat playing through the speakers placed around. There was a hallway to the left and another to the right, you chose to go towards the right side, side stepping random cups left on the floor. 

A few voices were at the end of the hall, coming out of the only open door so you continued near them, desperate to see a familiar face until you came to a stop in front of the bathroom. You rested your shoulder against the door frame, seeing Jungkook leaning over his friend’s hunched form as he clung to the toilet bowl. Although this was a familiar face, he was not the one you were searching for. 

As if sensing your presence, he looked up and over at you, a gentle smile gracing his face when he saw it was you. “You got the invite I see.”

You smiled back at him. “I did. So did the rest of my friends, you know, from Hoseok.” The drunken friend on the floor dry heaved for a moment, making Jungkook look back down at them and pat their back. 

“He’s probably on the front lawn smoking by the way.” He spoke again, not needing you to explain who you were looking for, and you were grateful because you weren’t in the mood to play dumb. 

You pushed off the door frame and stepped back, hearing him shout out a sarcastic ‘I know you miss me’ as you walked away. “Save it Jeon!” You playfully shouted back. You knew he missed you, he had told you plenty of times ever since you decided to stop sleeping with him. 

Of course Jeon Jungkook had been a good fuck, having been one of your favorite switches. Very true to his reputation, he could fuck you all night long with no issues, bringing you to orgasm enough times until you were crying for him to stop, while also letting you tie him up until he was the one begging—but he’d gotten attached. 

He could deny it all he wanted, but you sensed the change instantly. It creeped up in moments where he’d ask you to spend the night instead of leaving after hooking up, seeping into him asking you to hang out in day to day life instead of just 3am booty calls. And that just wasn’t something you were interested in having at the time. It wasn’t a jab at Jungkook, he was a nice guy if you were being honest, but that was old news. 

So as the music blasted in the house, sounding muffled to your ears, you walked with a purpose, weaving in between people as you crossed the living room and reached the front door. 

The fresh air met you the second you pushed the door open, loud bass spilling out of the house and into the front lawn, dimly lit up by the porch light. It allowed you to instantly spot Taehyung, a barely lit blunt between his fingers as he spoke to a taller boy beside him. At the sound of the door opening they both looked over in your direction, the taller one offering you a smile while Taehyung took a drag and gave you a nervous wave. 

You weren’t going to bother talking to him out here, he turned into a deer caught in headlights whenever you did so you just walked over to him, plucked the blunt from between his fingers and handed it to his friend before wrapping your hand around his wrist and dragging him behind you. The two of you needed to be alone, not around drunk party goers, or both of your nosey friends. 

Taehyung didn’t resist at all, looking over at Namjoon and seeing his friend had a shit eating grin on his face as he got dragged inside. You clearly had a mission, shoving your way through the sea of bodies again as you trekked to the opposite hallway this time, going for the only room on this side of the house. 

The bedroom door got thrown open and thankfully no one was inside of it. Taehyung slammed the door shut behind him and locked it as you turned to face him, inches separating you and you let out a soft breath at the close proximity. “Do you want this?”

His mind fogged over briefly as he watched your fingers playing with the hem of your shirt, slowly inching it up to reveal more skin. “Yes, I do.” 

Those were the words to set it all in motion, hands yanking your shift off your body and tossing it aside, leaving you standing in your bra for him to ogle at. 

“Better than the photos huh?” you tease with a honey-sweet voice, reminding him of his deep dive onto your blog while your hands slid behind your back to unhook your bra and let it completely slide off. 

Taehyung couldn’t help but stare as your hands came up to give your boobs a squeeze. “Fuck.”

He stepped forward, wanting to finally touch you but you tsk in disapproval, shaking your finger at him and it just made him pout. Isn’t that what you wanted from him?

His breath hitched in his throat when you stepped even closer, tips of your fingers trailing from his shoulders to his chest, down to the hem, bunching the fabric in your grasp as you tugged it up and off of him. His arms raised up with no protest as you undressed him, wide eyes just watching your every move, ready to do whatever you asked of him. It was so out of character for him, but that much could be said about every interaction he’s had with you so he goes with the flow of it all. 

Goosebumps rose up on his tan skin as you trailed your hands down to play with the button on his jeans, fiddling with it to tease him. You wanted to cover his chest and stomach in hickeys, marking every inch of him up, bruising and teasing him until he was pleading for you to suck his cock. There was just something about him that made you want to see him flushed and desperate. 

He could see you lost in thought as you stared at his body, now hyper aware of the fact that he wasn’t absolutely ripped, but you liked that. His arms came up again in an attempt to pull you in to kiss you, but you stopped him once more, finally snapping out of your daze.

“Do you deserve to touch me?” His mind blanked at your tone, the slight edge he had heard the first time you spoke was back, and something about it made his body tingle. “Hm?” you hummed when he remained quiet.

That glint in your eye returned and his head shook without him realizing, no he didn’t deserve to touch you.

“Take it all off and lay on the bed,” you spoke sternly, the smirk on your face growing when he did as you said. His body hunched over and stumbled as he stripped out of his pants and boxers, his shoes and socks long gone beside them. Taehyung followed instructions and laid on the bed, feeling a little guilty that poor Hoseok’s bed would be defiled like this, but when you slid off your own pants and underwear he couldn’t find himself to care anymore. 

His cock was already hard and twitching as it laid against his stomach, and he could feel the small pool of precum gathering under his belly button, leaving a sticky mess on his skin. You hadn’t even touched him and he was this riled up already, terrified he would cum the second you decided to touch him, so his hand came to grasp the base of his cock and gave it a firm squeeze.

That action wasn’t lost on you as you slowly approached him, your knees resting on the mattress while you shuffled towards his body. Your fingertips trailed up his thighs softly, going around his cock and up his chest where your nails lightly grazed his nipple. His body shuddered at the touch, and the way your teeth sunk into your bottom lip at the reaction made him nervous.

You swung your leg over his waist, hovering above his skin but not making contact just yet. Taehyung had never been patient, his eagerness getting the best of him, and just as his hands rose up—about to touch your hips and force you to plop down on his cock—your own hands reacted, grasping his before he could touch you and bringing them above his head, successfully catching him off guard. 

“You said you don’t deserve to touch me.”

His eyes widened in realization, his mouth opening and closing as he tried to think of a way to take back the words that he said earlier. Fuck, he wanted to touch you, he could see your pussy hovering inches over his cock, and he bet he could slide right into you from how wet you looked, already picturing the feeling of your warmth as he sunk into you. 

Your hands grasped both of his wrists, leaving his arms pinned above his head as your other hand reached down, and he held his breath. There was a brief moment where he thought you’d show him mercy, hoping you were going to grab his dick from between your bodies, but when he saw your index and middle fingers part your lower lips he let a groan escape him. You trailed them up your slit and back down to circle around your entrance with a quiet hum, bringing your fingers back up in front of Taehyung’s eyes, watching him stare at them in awe as you separated them and your slick strung across from them.

“It’s a shame.” Your eyes trailed up to his hands again, seeing them clenched together in your grasp. “I’d love to have your hands inside me, but maybe next time.”

“No,” he croaked out, hips desperately lifting up in hopes of grinding into your pussy but he fell short. “Please, let me touch you.”

The begging satisfied the sick itch you were hoping to scratch, leaving you grinning above him. You had just started, yet his eyebrows were already furrowed, eyes locked in a trance on your fingers that were still in front of his face. 

“Not today, baby. Do you want a taste though?” He was nodding the second the proposal left your mouth. Taehyung licked his lips in desperation, mouth opening up as you brought them towards his lips, his neck craning forward and wrapping his lips around your fingers to taste the remnants of your arousal. His tongue flicked between your fingers as he sucked like his life depended on it, the urgency displayed had more wetness gushing out of you, and when Taehyung’s eyes darted towards his abdomen, he saw that some of it had dripped onto the skin below where you hovered.

You pulled your fingers out of his mouth and brought them back between your legs to tease yourself further. “Fuck, this could’ve been you doing this to me Taehyung.” You gasped out as your fingers flicked over your clit repeatedly and he whimpered, head falling back to rest on the pillows because he couldn’t take watching you get yourself off above him while his dick lay hard and leaking right below you.

You snickered to yourself, finally deciding to take some pity on the man, reaching below you to grasp his cock. His neck tensed up at the action, head whipping back up to make sure he wasn’t imaging anything. But there you were, small hands barely wrapping around his thick cock as you gave it a gentle tug. Your fingers were covered in your slick, making the glide feel delicious, spreading your arousal around his length and mixing with his own in a sinful combination. 

Taehyung’s chest heaved slightly as you picked up your pace, your fingers coming up to play with his pink tip before going back down quickly, hands set to tease him. He was trying to stop himself from moaning, you already had his arms restrained, he didn't want to give you this much power over him, but when your hands came down to fondle his balls he couldn’t hold back the needy whine that left him. The desperation behind him just made your pussy clench, and you really wish he could fuck you, but you weren’t going to let him get his way this easily, not when he hadn’t worked for it.

“Keep your hands there.” You spoke firmly as you released your grasp on them, smirking at his obedience when his fingers chose to wrap around the poles of the headboard behind him instead. He wasn’t sure what you were going to do, but he was hoping your next move would be sinking onto his cock. 

“Wait,” he spoke up as you placed both your hands on his chest. “I don’t have a condom,” he admitted, face scrunching up when he saw you freeze in your action of dropping down on top of him.

“Oh,” you cooed, left hand coming up to cup his cheek tenderly. “Don’t worry about that.” His heart was torn because although he loved going without a condom, he didn’t know you enough to trust continuing without one. “You’re not fucking me.”

And now his heart was shredded, thrown into a dumpster, and set on fire. “What?”

Your fingers traced his cheek softly as you smiled at him. “Only good boys get to fuck me and you—“ you patted his skin in a gentle, yet firm, slap. “—haven’t been good.” 

A pout forms on his lips because now he’s desperate, and also confused. Why would you strip out of all your clothes just to tease him like this? Were you going to finish yourself off on top of him and just leave? He wasn’t entirely against that scenario because he’s sure it would be hot as fuck, but his dick was literally throbbing.

He was so caught up in his thoughts that he didn’t notice you had shuffled down a bit and rested your dripping pussy right on top of his cock, your lips parting slightly as you rocked your hips forward. And then he was gasping, his hands detaching from the headboard and instinctively wanting to grab your hips, but they stopped an inch or so away, catching his own mistake. His fingers remained trembling in the air, a moan finally leaving his lips at the feeling of you grinding on his cock, the relief of you not leaving him high and dry taking over.

Keeping your palms on his chest, you used them as leverage to help you move, a wicked smile on your face when you saw the internal debate he was having. He could touch you if he really wanted to, he could say fuck your rules and grip your hips so hard they’d bruise, but he didn’t. He listened to you, his shaking hands retreating back to the headboard with a groan of restraint.

“Good boy,” you spoke softly, his cock twitching at the praise. He liked this, the foreign feeling of being pliant underneath you, letting you call all of the shots, it was igniting a warmth inside of him that he never expected. 

Taehyung could feel his stomach becoming a sticky mess from his precum and your wetness dripping down from his cock, but he didn’t care, he loved when it was messy, loved hearing the squelching sound filling the room every time you rocked your hips. The fact that you were this drenched from teasing him just turned him on more, and he really wanted to say fuck it and ask you to sink onto his cock, but you told him to be a good boy so that’s what he would do.

“Feel good?”

“S-so good,” he whined out, breathy and strained, almost as if he didn’t want to admit to it. 

His thighs were tense and aching, forcing himself to not thrust forward in fear that you’d stop what you were doing, small moans leaving his lips when the tip of his cock would brush against your clit. He looked fucked out underneath you, eyes blown open as he locked onto the spot between you two, watching his messy cock peek out between your legs when you’d grind your hips back.

Taehyung had never cum from doing this, it was something he had never tried before; he was used to the quickness of fucking at parties, some fingering being involved before he slid in from behind. But he could feel himself edging closer to his release embarrassingly fast, the sinful moans leaving your mouth only aiding in pushing him over faster.

You had a good rhythm going, his cock trapped between his stomach and your pussy, and even though he was trying his best not to be vocal, you could see he was close to falling apart. His hands were clenching the headboard so hard they were paling, and if that wasn’t enough of an indication his face surely said it all. 

Leaning over his body, you let your face inch closer to his as you sped up your hips. At your proximity Taehyung finally spoke up, “Can I-fuc—” he shuddered, “—can I please kiss you?”

Your eyebrow cocked up at his request, not expecting that to be what he wanted from you. “You want to kiss me?”

Taehyung's dark hair bounced on his head as he nodded frantically. “Yes,” he gasped out, squirming underneath you as you bucked harder on top of him.

He wanted to kiss you, your lips looked so soft and shiny, and he wanted to feel them on top of his. Honestly what he really wanted was to flip you over and fuck you senseless—he had the power to—the weight of you on him was nothing he couldn’t overpower, but something about you being in control of his pleasure was doing things to him.

When your hair grazed his chest from you dropping down, his heart skipped but your lips chose to kiss his neck instead, small traces and licks on his skin as you trailed up towards his jaw until finally you reached his lips. They were tacky from your lip gloss but he didn’t care, they felt as soft as he imagined, and when you snuck your tongue into the mix Taehyung whimpered into your mouth. His eyes fluttered shut at the feeling, pleasure rolling over him in waves that only intensified when you wrapped your lips around his tongue and sucked. 

You could feel his body tensing up from underneath you, his climax creeping up on him, so you rocked faster, sinking your teeth into his plump bottom lip and tugging back. That was the final push before he was cumming, face screwed up the same way it was on the bus and a rough groan that you swallowed with another kiss.

Fuck, he was beautiful.

Another moan spilled out as you continued your movements, feeling his cum splashing up towards his chest from the force, some of it dribbling down his cock and settling onto your pussy. “Wow,” you mused, lips pulling back from his and looking down to see the mess he had made, his breathing continuing to shudder until you came to a stop.

Taehyung kept his grip on the headboard, a lot more limp than before, vision hazy from his orgasm and entire body tingling. You lifted up from him and shuffled further down, licking the trail of cum on his stomach with a grin when you noticed how his sensitive cock twitched at the visual. 

Trying to save face, he turned his head into his upper arm to shield himself, the small burn of embarrassment felt at the fact that he had just blown his load from you grinding on him in record time.

You weren’t finished with him yet though, your body still slowly sliding down him, fingers leaving feather-like touches on his skin that he mistook as you soothing his shuddering body, until they grasped his cock.

“Oh,” he winced, feeling your fingers grazing his sensitive dick, your mouth quickly enveloping it, making his back arch from the sudden sensation. It was no secret that Taehyung had a love for overstimulation, constantly toeing the line between pain and pleasure when he continued to jack off after cumming, but your warm mouth was new.

His sore fingers released the headboard, elbows straightening up because he had to watch this, had to burn this point of view into his mind forever. You were crouched at the bottom of the bed on your knees, ass up in the air as you swallowed his cock, your tongue swirling around it when you felt it start to harden again.

“H-hurts,” he admitted with his hips twitching, not sure if he wanted to thrust into your mouth or back away. Your hands rested on his hips to stop them from moving as his dick slipped out of your mouth with a pop.

“You want me to stop?” One hand was lazily jerking him as you spoke, his dick twitching in your grasp once more. 

No, no he was loving this. The pleasure was sharp but it was spreading a warmth throughout his body. Could he cum again?

He was clearly having a hard time deciding if he wanted you to stop or not, the wrinkles on his forehead deepening as he moaned softly, but Taehyung liked the pain, you could tell.

When your mouth took him in again he gasped lewdly, his elbows giving out and letting him flop back on the bed with a thump, fingers gripping the crumpled sheets beneath him. “No, no,” he whimpered again when you hollowed your cheeks and sucked. “Don’t stop, god.”

He could feel you smirking around his cock, your tongue coming out to flick the tip of his dick, red and swollen and once again dripping. One of your hands wrapped around the part you couldn’t reach, squeezing and tugging in time with your mouth; the other was dipped between your own thighs, fingers sinking into your cunt and thrusting them to match your motions.

Taehyung had his hands gripping onto the bed sheets to stop them from tangling into your hair and forcing you to take all of him, but his head peeked up, and when he saw you playing with yourself he sat back up, hips finally coming up to thrust into your mouth. Whimpers of pain and pleasure filled the room, the muscles in his neck pulled taut as he felt pressure start to bloom in his lower stomach. 

He wasn’t sure he’d be able to handle having another orgasm, every time he’d hit the back of your throat he felt the wind get knocked out of him, knees acting on reflex and shooting up to try to squirm away from your grasp.

The want to scold him was strong but you were getting closer to cumming, and seeing him losing control only made you moan around his cock. You pulled your fingers out of yourself, and with a few more flicks on your clit you were cumming. Taehyung watched in awe as your hips stuttered, and the moan you let out just urged him to keep thrusting into your mouth. 

His fingers were sore from the grip he had on the sheets and when he saw the drool leaking out of your mouth as you sunk all the way down, he finally felt the band snap, a throaty moan leaving his lips as he bowed his back into the mattress, the pain and pleasure blending together beautifully and bringing him to one of the best orgasms of his life. This load was a lot smaller than the last, but he was completely spent now, body lying limp on the bed as he tried to catch his breath.

Swallowing the cum on your tongue with a smirk, you took him in your mouth once more to tease, pulling back and placing a gentle kiss on the tip of his soft cock. 

“Such a good boy.” You teased as you made your way back up to him with a genuine smile on your face. Your soft lips pressed against his again, mouth opening up and he could taste himself on your tongue but he didn’t mind it. With a little hesitance, his hand came up to finally touch you, fingers tangling into your hair as he deepened the kiss, your teeth clashing together a few times because he couldn’t get enough. 

He watched as you pulled back from him, your tongue tracing your lips while you flipped your hair behind you again. “You know, you’re pretty when you cum.” And he doesn’t know why, but the statement made him blush. No one had ever told him he looked pretty when he came.

“Thank you?”

You giggled, still on top of him. “You’re welcome. I’ll be thinking of it when I touch myself later.” You gave him another quick peck before you got off of him and started putting your clothes back on. Taehyung was in a state of shock as he observed you, he had cum twice and still hadn’t fucked you, and you were very clearly getting a kick out of it. 

A final adjustment was done to your skirt before running your fingers through your hair, looking back at him still limp on his friend's bed, limbs resembling jello. It was cute, but you knew you had to trail him along further so you shot him a wink, opening up the bedroom door and waltzing out like you hadn’t just ruined him.

The haze that surrounded him whenever you were around him faded as you left and Taehyung sprung into action with a yelp, wrapping Hoseok's comforter around his naked body when he saw that you left the door open. Luckily no one was around, but he still rushed up with the sheets to close the door, legs feeling a little wobbly. With the door securely locked, he rested his weight against it, letting Hoseok’s ruined sheets fall from his body into a heap on the floor, his hand coming up to run through his messy hair.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” he groaned in disbelief, balling up the sheets and stuffing them into the small hamper by the closet, they barely fit but it didn’t matter. Taehyung felt lost and a little unsatisfied, he knew he wouldn’t be able to feel completely satisfied until he actually fucked you. All he had to do was say it, you were dangling it right in front of him and he was too tongue tied to tell you how he actually felt. It was like all vocabulary and sense of communication was wiped clean whenever you were within a certain radius of him.

He slid back into his clothes, grabbing the tissues Hoseok conveniently had next to his bed, and wiped the small residue that was still on his stomach before he put his shirt back on. When his heart stopped pounding and he thought he was decent, he exited the room. Taehyung was set on finding you and speaking to you like a normal human being, his mind now cleared after those orgasms, so he felt sort of confident that he’d be able to get out a coherent sentence without sounding like an insecure loser.

Jungkook spotted him as he emerged from the hallway, his bunny smile spreading across his face when he saw how disheveled his friend looked, and considering he had seen you exit from that same spot minutes prior he knew what had gone down.

“Hey buddy.” Jungkook cooed obnoxiously, hands coming up to squeeze Taehyung's cheek, his fingers rubbing off the leftover residue of your lipgloss from his skin. He was drunk, breath smelling like vodka and his eyes glazed over, the classic dopey Jungkook smile on his face. Taehyung swatted his hands away from him with a grimace but Jungkook just slid beside him, slinging his arm across his shoulders and dragging him to the kitchen to get even more alcohol.

“So you fucked her right?” Taehyung accepted the drink, taking a sip as his eyes searched the room for you just like they had earlier.

“Sure,” he responded, not wanting to tell his friend that although you were both naked on top of each other and you had forced two orgasms out of him, he had not in fact been able to slide his dick inside of you.

Jungkook was too drunk to comprehend that sure didn’t exactly mean yes so he whooped, throwing his arms in the air with a laugh, and Taehyung couldn’t help but smile at his younger friend. 

“Have you seen her by the way?”

Jungkook thought back to when he spotted you leaving Hoseok’s room, you had a look of satisfaction on your face as you walked through the house and headed for the backyard. You emerged back out with one of your friends beside you and you both laughed as you made a swift exit out of Jungkook’s house entirely. It was pretty obvious you wouldn’t be coming back.

“She definitely left.”

Taehyung could feel his heart sink at that. He should’ve spoken to you when you were both alone in the room instead of lying there in his post orgasmic glow. Too late. 

He slid his phone out and decided he had to text you. The black line flickered on his phone, taunting him, waiting for him to type anything out, but he was stuck. What was he supposed to say? Thanks for the orgasms with a stupid emoji tacked at the end?

Taehyung 1:48am : You left so fast, get home safe

That’s what he settled on, and his eyes stayed glued on the phone when he saw the notification that you read it, three dots popping up as you typed a response back.

Y/N 1:52am : Sorry friend needed to get home and I was her ride.

Y/N 1:52am : Think about me tonight yeah? Goodnight busboy.

Taehyung thought about you alright. He thought about you often, frequently replaying the events that had happened that night as his fist wrapped around his cock on those nights where he was beyond desperate to cum.

The both of you hadn’t spoken much since the night of Hoseok and Jungkook’s party, due to the fact that finals were approaching and as much as you enjoyed this game you had with him, you also knew you needed to pass the classes you had. Taehyung doesn’t fault you for that, he was on the same boat, and if you had continued to tease him on the bus or through text message while he was already on the verge of a mental breakdown, he wasn’t sure he could survive it.

So it came as no surprise that when the semester came and went, the communication was once again severed, no longer having the morning commute to share together as winter break started.

Taehyung still thought of you often, every time you uploaded something onto your social media he stared at it for a minute too long, fingers urging to send you a message and start a conversation; but considering everything that had transpired between you two had been purely sexual he wasn’t sure a ‘haha funny meme’ message was going to get him very far.

When the second week of break rolled around and Taehyung started to go out with his friends, you began to slip his mind, the small acceptance of whatever you two had going fizzling away from his thoughts. He wondered if you forgot about him already, maybe you were home visiting family and had your sights set on another person.

With that thought engraved in his mind he allowed himself to go out with Jimin and Namjoon on a Saturday night, the three of them being the few of his friends that lived in the city and weren’t going home to their family for the holidays. They stood by the bar of some club closer to Jimin’s apartment, deeper into the city, a place Jimin swore the hottest girls frequented and when Taehyung scoped the crowd he took notice that Jimin was right.

It only took two shots to loosen him up enough to ease onto the dance floor, and only a few more minutes until a pretty redhead spotted him and made her way over, her hands trailing up onto his shoulder as she moved her hips in time with his. He smirked down at her, her eyes gleaming up at him while her teeth sunk into her bottom lip, she’s definitely his usual type. The way she gripped onto him when he slid his thigh in between her legs, how she easily gave in to the way he kissed his way into her mouth, eager to let him have his way with her. It’s no shock that he found himself tucked away in a corner of the club, letting her hands roam his chest as she latched her lips onto his neck while he dipped his hands under the hem of her skirt to play with her covered slit. It’s messy and he’s the one leading the way, it's familiar for him, but he can’t stop the small craving inside of him for something else, something different.  

She whimpered into his mouth, not at all shy about being out in the open, and he can feel his cock throbbing at the thought of another girl that isn’t you for the first time—and you must have a sixth sense—there's no other explanation for him besides that when he felt his phone vibrate in his pocket.

The nameless redhead whined at the loss of contact when he pulled his hand back to grab his phone, but he shushed her with a kiss, telling her he needed a minute. And that's all the convincing she needed to continue sucking hickeys into his neck.

When his phone lit up and he saw your name on his lock screen he blanked, eyes roaming behind him when he looked back to check if maybe you were here and that's why you were texting him. But when he unlocked the phone and saw the message you sent, it was oh so obvious that you were definitely not at the club.

The revelation of the photo you had sent catches him so off guard, he almost drops his phone, the device slipping through his fingers until he reacts and slammed it against his chest so hard to not let it clatter to the ground. The action winded him, the sharp pain of his phone wacking his chest had him wincing and it got the girl's attention.

Leaning back as her curious eyes peeked up to stare at him, instead she found herself staring at his chest, her face oddly lit up. The realization settled within him now, noticing that he must have flipped the phone over when he caught it and she was now clearly looking at the photo of you naked. The jaw dropping nudes you had sent, showcasing your boobs with your fingers on your nipple, wet with your arousal; and the second photo of your pussy on display had taken his breath away, but all it got him was a glare and a shove to his chest from the red head, muttering out that he was a pig as she pushed her way back to her friends.

He gulped as he flipped the phone around and analyzed the photo, a deep groan leaving him, because god dammit he had just started to come to terms that whatever you had was old news. You were always keeping him on his toes, it was going to fuck with his heart and his health.

Taehyung turned around and squinted through the flashing lights to hopefully find his friends, spotting Namjoon with a drink in one hand, his other clutching onto a blonde as they danced together, and he made his way over to him. 

“I’m gonna head out,” he mumbled into Namjoon’s ear, ignoring the confused glance he gave him. The clear translation being: what the hell.

“We just got here.”

Taehyung knew this but he can’t hang around here with the thrumming bass and dance with other girls when you had just sent him these fucking photos. “Yeah, I don’t feel so hot. Don’t worry, I’m gonna take an uber just let Jimin know.”

Namjoon could only nod, not really wanting to separate himself from the cute girl he had grown fond of, but he would be forcing Taehyung to come out with them again next week. He just watched as his friend slipped through the crowd of the club until he stepped out. 

When the cold air hit him Taehyung gulped it down, hands pressing against his face as he sighed and walked towards the brickwall on the side of the club. He couldn’t do this anymore, and with the alcohol numbing his common sense he didn’t think twice as he pulled his phone back out and opened up your message again, rechecking that you had in fact sent him those photos. And when he saw that you had, obscene photos still filling up his screen, he clicked the phone button and gave you a call.

He swore you weren’t going to answer him as the ring droned out, but when it cut off and all he heard is silence, he held his breath, wide eyes focusing on the cars driving on the street in front of him.

“Hi.” 

Oh fuck.

“Why are you doing this to me?” He spoke out so softly, pleading into the phone as he grabbed a chunk of his hair in between his fingers.

“Would you rather I didn’t?” you hummed, phone pressed against your shoulder and ear as you lazily trailed a finger up and down your stomach.

“No!” he shouted, wincing when he saw other club goers give him an odd look. “No, but why me? We haven’t even spoken lately.”

“We’re speaking right now.”

He remained silent, not knowing how to respond to you, but he keeps the phone pressed against his ear, the soft sound of you breathing being the only noise he hears—until there's a small moan. It makes his blood run cold, eyes slipping shut as he imagined why you had made that noise.

“What are you doing?” He finds himself getting the courage to ask, enjoying the small laugh you let out as you admitted to touching yourself, so nonchalant and carefree about the fact that you were still the leading cause to his blue balls.

Taehyung was slightly tipsy, his mind whirling as he pictured your fingers sinking into your pussy like they had that night, the pretty sounds you had let out as your mouth was stuffed full of his cock and he groans. “Do you really enjoy making me suffer?”

“Oh, are you suffering?” you cooed into the receiver. “You know all you have to do is say it.”

He knew this, oh god did he know this and right now he’s way too lost in it all to even feel the embarrassment or unsureness he usually does when he’s around you, so he asks—no begs—to finally fuck you. “Please, please let me fuck you Y/N.”

Your own eyes shut as he said this, fingers coming back up to rest on your stomach while you sat up in your bed with a smile on your face, focusing on the object beside your bed. “Okay, I’ll let you, if you let me try something on you first.”

Taehyung doesn’t even care to ask what the hell you meant by that, his mind already set on fucking you, and when he agreed without a second thought you text him your address, your head whirling at whats to come.

Taehyung didn’t even realize when he got to your place, running on autopilot fueled by pure hormones as he got into the taxi and managed to somehow get to your apartment in one piece.

His fingers were shaking slightly as he punched in the code you had given him, the main door buzzing as it unlocked, and it's then that it hits him, he's actually here. He had actually voiced his want for you and now he was here, fuck.

You sat patiently on your living room couch, a soft oversized shirt on as you waited for him to make his way up. You had buzzed him in about a minute ago, so when you heard the soft thud of footsteps approaching in the hallway, you knew it was him.

The gentle knock against your door had you hopping up from your spot, slowly approaching it and pressing your eye against the peep hole to catch a glance at him. He stood a foot or so away, eyes squinting at his phone and back up at the number to make sure it was the right place, not wanting to embarrass himself in front of a neighbor. 

Once you pulled open the door, you could tell he was nervous, hair a little messy on top of his head and face looking slightly flushed, but he stood up straight and gave you a smile.

“Hi,” he utters out, walking into your place when you stepped aside and motioned for him to come in. He half expected your apartment to look like a sex dungeon, dark and dim, covered in leather with a sex swing in the corner, but its surprisingly normal.

The soft pastel pinks and oranges greeting him is definitely not what he imagined but he likes it, his eyes locking onto a watermelon plushie with button eyes tucked into the edge of your couch.

“Taehyung, do you want some water?” you offer, wanting to ease him into this, but he just shakes his head, turning back around to face you and it's then that he realized you’re only wearing a shirt.

“If you’re drunk we don’t have to do this right now.”

Taehyung heard you loud and clear, but he can’t look away from your chest, every time he blinks he could see the image of your tits thanks to the picture you had graciously provided him with. It’s killing him because he knew you were currently bare underneath the thin shirt you have on.

To be honest he wasn’t drunk, barely even tipsy, the small amount of liquor he consumed tonight was way less than his normal amount. He felt woozy enough around you on a normal day, but he knew he definitely wasn’t too drunk to do what he had come here to do.

“No, I’m good. I swear.”

The determination in his tone was very clear but you still waited for him to stop blatantly staring at the way your nipples poked through the fabric of your shirt, until finally his gaze locked with yours, following behind you as you led the way to your bedroom.

When he entered your room his eyes were drawn to your bed, fluffy and inviting, draped in a soft peach duvet with light pillows, but knowing the absolutely filthy things you most likely did on it killed the small sense of innocence he initially felt. Especially when he spots the hitachi wand resting pretty at the edge of the bed.

You were staring at his profile when he spotted it and you saw the way he swallowed, wide eyes bulging out as he analyzed the toy. Was this what you had been using when you answered his phone call? He wasn’t sure, he hadn’t heard anything in the background...maybe it was one of those fancy zero noise ones.

When he heard you giggle he snapped out of it, turning to face you with curious eyes. 

“Have you never seen one?” Taehyung remained silent as he thought, but it's pretty clear he hadn’t. There was never time for sex toys with one night stands in random houses, sure he had seen them in porn but real life felt different. He wished he had, he didn’t want to use this on you and fumble around and make a bigger fool of himself.

“I take it you’ve never used one then?” you ask again as you walk over to it, picking it up gently in your hands and approaching Taehyung thanks to the fact that it was wireless.

He could only shake his head, staring at it in your grasp as your fingers glided over the plastic handle, your thumb flicking it on and smiling when the low hum filled the room. It's on the lowest setting but that didn’t stop you from beginning to get excited.

“Would you let me try this on you Taehyung?”

He looked utterly confused by your question, not at all expecting to be on the receiving end of this. What did you mean by that?

“You mean like shove it up my ass?” He could see you trying not to laugh at him, biting your lip as you shook your head. 

“No, it's not a dildo Tae. Use it here.” You reached out until it was gently pressed against his crotch, the wand buzzing over his jeans. He let out a grunt at the feeling, head dropping down to stare at the white silicone head weakly vibrating on him, taking a moment to get over the initial shock. He chalked it up to being slightly under the influence, but he really wanted you to turn it up.

It was clear to see how mesmerized he was by the device so you flicked it up a level, relishing in the small gasp he let out as his jaw dropped. It was barely a flutter of pleasure, but something about it excited him, had him craving more so he looked up at you, glassy eyes and all. 

“You can do whatever you want to me.” He felt no shame when he told you that, groaning once more when you applied a hint of pressure against him.

The way your body reacted to his words was pure instinct, him admitting to letting you do as you please unhinged you. He saw it in the way you bit your lip, your eyes roaming his face until they dragged down his body, landing on his now half hard cock with the vibrating head of the wand still pressing against it.

“Fuck, please,” he begged, and when you retract the wand he almost takes it back. That is, until you were pulling him in, one hand tugging at his shirt until he's flushed against you, your lips meeting his in a frenzy, swallowing the moan he let out into the kiss. His hands stayed at his sides, not sure if he was allowed to touch you again considering you had told him not to last time, and you smirked when you realized it. Taehyung knew he would only be able to touch you if he deserved it, your words being engraved in his brain, and he was planning on earning that tonight.

“Good boy, you remembered.” you whispered out, lips brushing against his as you spoke. His eyes remained shut, the only indication that he heard being the small nod he gave you. Your hand inched up from the grasp you had in his shirt until you’re cupping his cheek gently.

“You see what happens when you’re good?” You kissed him again, pulling back once he started to press harder into you. “You get rewarded.” His breath shuddered against your face at the promise of being rewarded, and you smiled while reaching down to grab his hand and gently tugged him closer towards your bed, your right hand still holding the wand loosely by your side as he followed along.

“Do you want me–“ he paused to take a breath when you turned back around to face him. “Do you want me to strip?” His voice sounded so soft, unsure if asking you was the right thing to do, but him asking you this showed you that you’d managed to create another sliver in his outer shell. One step closer to cracking him.

You gave him another gentle kiss, nodding as you stepped back from him, eyes trained on his body while he began to tug at the black shirt he had tucked into his jeans, the material slowly sliding off his body and revealing his tan skin.

He didn’t feel uneasy at your staring this time around, being able to tell you’re clearly enjoying the view of him slowly undressing, your eyes focusing on his cock as it sprung out when he slid out of his briefs. Your hand clutched onto the wand a little tighter, fingers hovering over the power button with newfound enthusiasm, eager to make him squirm at the new sensation. And when he took  it upon himself to settle onto your bed without you having to ask, you withheld the urge to clap in excitement.

Taehyung waited with baited breath when you kneeled onto the bed, shuffling your way up his body and setting the toy by his side, his body flinching slightly when the cool plastic touched his skin as it rolled on the bed. Resting your weight on your left hand, settled by his shoulder while your right hand softly cupped his cheek as you inched closer. His eyes looked at your lips before looking back down to his own hands, an unspoken question hanging off his tongue.

“My hands?” Is all he managed to get out, the rest of the question dying when he made eye contact but you only raised your brows up, making him realize he needed to be more specific. “Do you want them grabbing the headboard again?”

Leaning forward to kiss him once more, you smirked, witnessing how such a simple question could embarrass him so much due to him being in a different position than he was used to. “Ideally I’d want them cuffed and behind your back.” He shut his eyes at your words, cock throbbing as he pictured himself the way you wanted him. “But not today. Just keep them on the bed. Can you do that?”

Taehyung felt your lips press against his again and he nodded. “Y-yeah, yeah I can.”

He could feel you hum against his skin, the hand that was cupping his cheek beginning to trail down his chest, passing his navel until you reached his dick, fingers wrapping around him and beginning to slide your palm up and down. “Good.”

He sighed into your mouth as your hands squeezed around the base of his cock, twisting as it came up in a slow motion, wanting to ease him into the pleasure of it so as to not scare him when you grab the wand again. It only took a few minutes until he’s kissing you more relaxed, body sagging into the bed as he grunt softly into your mouth whenever you focused on his swollen tip; and that's when you reached over to your bedside table, grabbing the bottle of lube you had with your lips still attached to him.

They separate with a light smack, and you rest back onto his thighs, taking a moment to take him in, the way he’s laid out on your bed, chest heaving slightly while his weeping dick sat against his stomach. He watched you intently as you uncapped the lube you have, dropping a generous amount into your palm and wrapping it around his cock again. Taehyung hissed at the cool sensation, stomach tensing when you began a fluid motion only set on spreading the liquid, but he still groaned because he knew what was next.

You tried not to let the overt excitement show on your face when you reached over and grabbed the wand once more, thumb flicking it on to the lowest setting and pressing it against his thigh first, observing the way he jumped slightly at the sensation. “I know you’ve never used this before,” you start, trailing the vibrating head up onto his stomach and back down to his other thigh, dipping down slightly towards the center but staying off his cock. “So, you need to tell me if you feel uncomfortable at any moment okay?”

His thighs are tensing up already, getting desperate to feel something, anything. “Like a safe word?”

“Sure,” you hummed, staring back at his face and seeing the distraught look on it. He wasn’t sure why the idea of a safe word sent his mind into a flurry, he had never used one and having to think of one that he’d remember seemed almost impossible at the moment. “Or we can make it easy. You know traffic lights?”

He nodded. “Great. If you say green everything's going good, yellow is if you start to feel uncomfortable or need me to slow down, red is if you need me to stop completely. You say these at any time.”

You’re continuing to tease him as you explained this and Taehyung rested his head back, not wanting to see you as you clearly avoided giving his dick any attention. 

“Okay, I got it. Green,” he groaned out, and you just chuckled, finally pressing the head of the vibrator against his cock. The low vibrations started at the base and his stomach tensed at the feeling, a tiny whine escaping him, hands having to resort to clutching your sheets again to stop himself from grabbing you and forcing you to switch it up a level.

The head of the vibrator bent slightly as you applied more pressure, thumb flicking it up two levels and enjoying the way he cursed, his head lifting back up to stare in awe as you slowly dragged it up an inch before coming back down, passing it right over his balls briefly. 

“Oh shit,” he keened, teeth sinking into his bottom lip, not being able to thrust up into it because you were still resting on his thighs.

“Aren’t you glad you told me yes?” you asked teasingly, sliding it up until it was nuzzled right against his frenulum before kicking it up another two levels. His reaction had you dripping against his thighs, arm muscles taut from how hard he’s grabbing the duvet, stomach caving in as he moaned out unabashedly. 

“Fuck,” he gasped, “yes, I am.” Taehyung had no idea something like this could feel so good, he was so accustomed to hearing women talking about vibrators and he thought it was a load of shit. Clearly he had been very, very wrong. 

Even though you’re focusing it on the underside of his tip, slowly raising the levels up until he’s squirming, he felt like his whole lower body was vibrating. The telltale signs of his orgasm creep up on him, the feeling only increasing when your fingers wrap around his shaft and you hold the vibrator against his swollen tip. The fluttering feeling of pressure building up becoming more consistent, his breath leaving him in huffs as he tried to force it away.

You can tell by the way his body started to tense up, your finger turning it up another level to push him further. “Are you gonna cum already? I thought you wanted to fuck me?”

He whined loudly, desperately trying to sink his hips into the bed to ease the pressure but your hands followed his movements, his head whipping to the side as he scrunched his face up. “Fuck, I do–I do want to fuck you, god–“ he gasped out when you started to circle the head of the toy around his tip, the rolling pleasure becoming too much. “Unghh, please let me f-fuck you.”

His stomach began to shudder more aggressively, hips wiggling around and you smirked down at him, his face finally turning back up to stare at the ceiling, his brows pulled together tightly with unshed tears prickling his waterline. “Hold it Taehyung.”

He nearly sobbed at your demand, taking in a deep breath as he shut his eyes once more, forcing himself to try to tune out his nearing release. His heart feels tight in his chest, blood thrumming so loud in his head, eyes burning as the tears finally spill over. But it’s too late, the tingling feeling had started to spread throughout his body and he knew he was a few seconds away from blowing his load.

Taehyung let out a pained moan. “Fuck I can’t, y-yellow, yellow!” You let go of his cock, the vibrator lowering in intensity before easing off and going back to trail on his stomach and thighs as his close release faded away, letting him whimper as he tried to catch his breath. “I’m sorry.”

After a moment you switched the toy off entirely and set it aside on the bed, soft hands running along his skin to help calm him down, reaching up to gently wipe away his fallen tears. “Don’t be sorry, you did good.”

He sighed in relief, glad that he hadn’t ruined it by not being able to hold off his orgasm, he tried the best he could but the only way he wanted to cum was after he sank into you.

You gave him another minute to come down, easing off of his thighs to tug your shirt off of your body, the material landing in a heap on the floor and that grabbed Taehyung's attention. He looked at your body with desire, wanting to reach out and grab you, kneading your flesh as he cupped your tits and ass, but he's done so well so far so he holds himself back. The only daring touch he allowed is his thumbs gently rubbing against your knees as they rest on either side of his thighs.

You let the touch slide as you bent forward and kissed him, reaching over to the bedside drawer and pulling out a condom. Leaning back from him, you tear it open with your teeth and slowly ease it onto his throbbing cock, hearing him groan when your hands add a bit of pressure at his base once it's fully rolled on.

“You okay?” you ask softly. He looked dazed out, no longer tipsy from his earlier adventure but his mind was working on overdrive, the abundance of fantasies he’s had of you are coming to fruition. He was finally going to know what it felt like to actually fuck you, and he was scared his excitement would make him cum a minute in, especially after he had forced his last orgasm away.

“Yeah, just–“ he swallowed harshly, letting his head fall back into the plush pillows. “Give me a minute please.” You smirked at the slightly pained expression on his face, but you hummed anyways, letting his dick lay back above his stomach as you leaned forward and opted for kissing him softly, fingers slowly trailing through his hair to help calm him down.

Taehyung shivered as your nails gently scraped down until you reached his neck, his hips beginning to rut up against you, clearly being ready to continue.

“Please,” he starts again, groaning as you tugged his lower lip between your teeth, letting it snap back gently. “Let me fuck you. I’ve been good right?” He still felt his face flush at his own words but a strange sense of pleasure also coursed through him when you nodded in response.

Your hand reached down between your bodies, grabbing his cock to tease around your entrance. “Yes Tae, you’ve been very good.” He held his breath as you started to ease down onto him, the both of you groaning at the pleasant stretch of your walls, his jaw dropping while he kept his eyes glued at the sight of his thick cock parting your lips.

“Holy shit,” he gasped out when you fully sank onto him, giving him a moment as you rested your hands on his chest, biting your lip at how full you felt.

Kim Taehyung’s dick lived up to its name, long and girthy with the prettiest veins running along the underside of it, the slightest curve of it allowing it to gently nudge along the sweet patch inside of you. It filled you up perfectly, leaving you stunned above him as you adjusted to his size. 

When his breathing evened out, you peeked a glance at him, his forehead slightly damp from the earlier teasing. He looked so utterly fucked out and desperate and it urged you on; you were determined to crack him, show him how great this could be, and so far he seemed more than willing to let go of control.

As you start a slow rhythm, you wished you could bind his wrists behind his back, strapped into a chair, wrapped up in the pretty red rope you used to use on Jungkook, or even drape your favorite blindfold over his eyes like you used to with Hwasa;  but you didn’t want to push him further, you were letting him dip his toe into this.

Taehyung was so used to being in control, so used to being the one in charge of giving for himself, and when he had heard the way you spoke to him: praising him for behaving, all giggly and soft after you had made his mind blank from an orgasm, he wasn’t sure he wanted to go back to his normal.

His thumb was still grazing your knees, every time he flicked them upward on your skin he could feel your muscles tense as you lift yourself off of him and snap back down, the sound of your skin slapping together filling up the room. They mixed in with your soft moans, nearly concealing how affected you were by this, hiding the small cries of pleasure felt from the tip of his cock nudging the sweetest spots deep within you. 

Taehyung could feel his blood buzzing in his ear, the feeling of being buried inside of you going beyond what he ever thought, his heart continuing to pound when he felt you tighten around his length.

“Is this worth you leaving whoever you were with earlier tonight?”

Your words caught him off guard for a moment, having to clear the heady feeling in his brain, and he took a moment to wonder how you knew he was with someone, but then your fingers came to prod at the hickeys littering his neck.

Half moons marked his skin as your nails came down to his chest, lightly digging into his skin and he hissed, hips thrusting up slightly. “Shit, I–“ he whined when you began to grind against him, slow rocks of your hips letting him feel the glide of your walls against his cock. “Yes, so worth it.”

You let yourself lean more against his chest, tits pressed along his skin as you brought your face closer. “Do you think she would’ve been able to make you feel this good?”

He doesn’t even have to think about it, immediately shaking his head. “No—fuck, just you.”

You pressed a kiss directly underneath one of the hickeys, leaning back again and cupping your breasts, fingers pinching and rolling your nipples as you resumed bouncing on top of him. Sinful slaps of your skin connecting fill up the room like it belonged there, arousal gushing out of you when he whimpers at the visual of you riding him. 

The whiny pleas he let out proved he’s edging close to his release again, making a heat pool in your gut, and he shocks you when he requests for you to place your hands around his throat. He had always been interested in choking, albeit he always imagined he’d be the one with his hands wrapped around someone but this felt right, your thumb and middle finger pressing into his carotid artery had all the stars aligning in his eyes.

Your eyes widened at his reaction, not expecting him to be bold enough to ask for this considering it took him this long to tell you he wanted to fuck you, but you’d take it. You’d take his half lidded gaze as you applied pressure on his neck, his stomach caving in slightly everytime you slid back down on his length, your walls squeezing him deliciously as he neared his end; you’d take all of it. .

He could feel his mind going hazy, drifting up as every nerve in him tingled, hyper fixated on the repeated raunchy, wet sound of you riding him. Taking note of his floaty appearance, you sped up your pace, tightening up around him as you leaned forward and kissed his cheek softly. “You feel so good Taehyung, cum for me.”

He shivered slightly at your words, your hands squeezing a little tighter against his neck, and suddenly he's cumming. His body was set alight as the feeling caught him by surprise, eyes bulging out and a choked gasp leaving his mouth when you released his throat.

He let out a loud moan of your name, rutting his hips up into you as his dick twitched and filled up the condom, spine sparking with pleasure as you continued to rut against him. “Oh fuck,” he cried out, his hand coming up to tangle into his hair while the small after shocks of his orgasm hit him.

When you reached over to grab the forgotten hitachi wand, his mind blanks, seeing you continuing to grind against his still hard dick as you pressed the head of the wand against your clit had him at a loss.

Fuck you’re hot.

When you smiled down at him, your mouth dropping open slightly when you found the sweet spot, he realized he uttered that out loud. Another groan of his spilled out again when he felt the vibrations against his own cock from how high you had the settings.

You give up on fucking him, letting his cock stay nuzzled deep inside of you as you pressed one hand against his ribs while you hunched over and moaned. The intensity of the vibrator had your whole body trembling, buzzing directly against your swollen clit with precision, making your velvety walls pulse around his sensitive cock. 

The feeling of your orgasm came on strongly, your hand pressing the toy harder against you, and Taehyung felt like he could cum again as you tightened your walls around him, the sensation making him softly rut up into you.

“Oh god, fuck Taehyung,” you gasped out, throwing your head back as your orgasm finally hit you. All Taehyung could do was stare at you in a daze as you came undone, small whimpers leaving your lips as your hips twitched, chasing the pleasure until you were sighing and shutting off the toy, body still trembling from the aftershocks. 

When you tossed it aside you stayed sat on him, breath heaving as you hunched over him slightly. His hands that were on your knees fully came up onto your thighs to gently massage them, wanting to comfort you, the mutual understanding that he was allowed to touch you after sex being passed between you. 

After a minute, you slowly eases yourself off of his soft length, pulling off the condom and tossing it into the bin beside the bed.

Taehyung was entirely spent. Tonight had felt like the longest night of his life, and his eyes were drifting shut when he felt you straddle him again, your arms resting on his chest as you stared up at his sleepy form.

His eye cracked open and he grinned at you when he saw the look on your face; it was the sweet smile you wore when you were up to no good. The fingers on your left hand gently spelled your name on his skin, leaving goosebumps in their wake, your chin rested on top of your arm and you laughed when you saw his eyebrow raise up in question.

“What?” he asked. You were clearly out of the mood that made you want to bind and tease Taehyung until he was crying, wanting to reassure him and make sure he was comfortable after doing things you knew he wasn’t used to with your soft touches.

You hummed softly as you stared into his eyes. “Kim Taehyung is into choking huh?”

His face flushes immediately as he replays his request in his mind, and you pat his chest to get him to stare at you, a small frown on your face at his clear embarrassment. “Hey, it wasn’t a tease. It’s hot.”

Taehyung raised both brows now, staring at you like you had said something absolutely foreign to him. Tonight was a night of firsts and realizations, who knew Taehyung loved the feeling of a vibrator on his cock, and who knew he had a kink for your hands around his throat. “Really?”

“Oh yeah,” you mused, lifting up slightly to inch closer to his face. “Seeing you squirming while I choked you was the hottest thing.”

He could only stare at you, the gears in his head turning as he thought of what just happened. He never imagined he’d be into giving someone control like that. Taehyung knew it was minuscule, but this was all new to him and he loved it already, his brain wondering how much further you could take it.

“You know, I’m kinda into it.” He looked away from you as he said this, still not confident in admitting it and he knew it was silly, especially when he could see how much hearing these words lit your face up.

Your eyes shut when he admitted to this; it always felt like finding gold when you got a man to confess to enjoying this. So many men were always afraid to admit to liking how it felt when a girl took control over them, no matter how subtle, and Taehyung was someone you thought would be a little harder to break down.

“Are you?”

He hummed, his hands finally coming up higher to touch you and his warm grip caught you off guard. But he takes his time as he trails his fingers up and down your sides, gliding across your back, sliding them into your hair and tugging you closer until he’s kissing you, the first time he’s ever taken control of any situation.

He relished in the small gasp you let out as he licked the seam of your lips, his tongue slipping in and massaging against yours slowly for a brief moment until he’s pulling back. Taehyung realized that this is the longest conversation you two have had in person, and the first one where he didn’t feel like a babbling idiot.

“Is there more we can try next time?” he wondered softly, nudging your noses together and kissing you again briefly.

Your mind was already picturing how he’d look tied up, cock swollen and dripping with a cockring sat snuggly around his base, maybe a thick collar around his neck. You could ease him into trying out some of the floggers you have, or tempt him into wax play, maybe ice cubes if he was wary of the wax. So many ideas that had you squirming on top of him with anticipation, and when he saw that look on your face he found himself smiling with you.

“Oh, there's so much Taehyung. You just have to tell me what you’re comfortable with.” Your fingers are raking through his own hair now as he leaned into the touch. “Can you do that?”

When your fingers tugged the strands, he sighed and nodded. “Yeah, I can do that.”

Pressing your lips against his again, he feels you smirk against his skin, the small sharpness of your teeth sinking into his lip making him groan. “Good boy.”

[legobiwan]

could you do 18 and 100 for the trope mash up thing? (And if you want two characters, Obi-wan and Hondo?- I got a little confused with your added instructions to the trope mashup)

Circus AU / Accidentally Saving the Day (Hondo & Obi-wan)

Anon, I had to WORK for this one and even did a little research into circus history since I am woefully undereducated about the topic. I think I’ve found an interesting way of weaving these all together and giving a little bonus at the end. Stick with me here, I need to do a bit of an introduction to get this whole idea going. 

For the purposes of this AU, please assume that the Clone War and all the events surrounding it happened directly after Naboo, meaning everyone is about 10 years younger than they are in canon. Also assume that Qui-gon was not killed on Naboo, although that has little bearing on this particular story.

THIS GOT OUT OF CONTROL. I was expecting to write a fun little 1,000 word thing, not a whole AU concept. But here we are, so….uh…

We’ll see what everyone thinks? Enjoy. And good luck  :D

—-

“How are they doing?” Szimon Tesdak asked, thin, long mustache bobbing up and down at the ends.

The other man patted the Pamaradian prancer’s neck, running his fingers through the thick mane of her hair. The prancer shivered, eyes darting back and forth, hooves tapping nervously on the durasteel floor. The man known as Whisp spoke softly in the creature’s ear, the words foreign to even Szimon’s cosmopolitan ears. A few moments later, the prancer settled, nuzzling her snout into Whisp’s shoulder. 

Whisp turned to face Szimon. “They’re restless,” he said. “Fourteen hours in a cruiser is a bit much for anyone to take.”

Szimon waved the veiled criticism away with a flick of his wrist. Yes, it had been a long journey, but the payoff would - hopefully - be worth it. And they needed the credits - or whatever these people were going to pay. 

“An hour more and we’ll be there,” Szimon said with false confidence.

Whisp stood, crossing his arms tight against his chest, the black-and-crimson fabric of his worn travel tunic wrinkling with the gesture. There was a hint of beard on the young man’s chin, something that, when it grew in, would likely age him a good ten years. The man peered at Szimon with grey-blue eyes like he was trying to ace one of those vision tests at a local spaceport agency. Always looking for hidden meaning, he is. 

And sometimes he finds it. 

At least with the creatures, that had been the case. Two years Whisp had been working for Szimon and never had the older circus master figured out the man’s trick. Szimon had spent his life in the circus, from his childhood on Thybaar right up the grand days of the bright Coruscant lights to his now-ramshackle operation held together by thread, petty theft, and the occasional cashing in on favors owed. 

Szimon had seen it all - and more,  but nothing like Whisp and his ability to communicate with the creatures, like he was reading their minds. “The Whisperer,” the other members had taken to calling him. The moniker had stuck, albeit in shortened form, Whisp’s real name - whatever it had been - long forgotten.

“Remind me again why we’re flying out to the Outer Rim for a show? Seems a bit of an expense when we could just as easily round up a few smaller venues for far less hassle,” Whisp said.

“Ah, Whisp, ever the cynic,” Szimon clapped a meaty hand on the other man’s shoulder. “Don’t think of it as a hassle,” he waved a dramatic hand, as if unveiling something from a behind a curtain. “But as an expansion of our operations.”

Whisp cocked an eyebrow. “Hardly difficult seeing as our operations comprised of three planets the past month, two of which we never actually got to land on.”

Szimon snorted. Well, yes, business had been down because of the war. Szimon himself cared little for the politics of the Republic or the Separatists. A government was a government, with all its little games and corruptions, mazes of betrayal, and endless mountains of datawork. No, Szimon Tesdak would never be chained behind one of those desks. 

But many others were, shackled to unfulfilling jobs and lives, stuck in a desert of mediocrity and boredom. That was where Szimon came in. Unhappy citizens tended to breed unhappy revolts. But give them a nice circus, something to laugh at, a little magic that was absent from their day-to-day existence?

It didn’t really matter who was in power. The problems, the outcomes -they were always the same in the end. 

Still, the war had been disruptive to his business and over the past few months, the “Great Thybaarian Traveling Show” had been forced into semi-refugee status as planet after planet was devastated by the conflict between a mechanical and clone army. Circuses were part of avoiding war, not conducting it.

Szimon shook off the dark thoughts with a wide smile. “Come on now, Whisp. We’re going to make great friends on the Outer Rim. My benefactor has promised a large sum, maybe even a sponsorship if we play our cards right.”

“I thought they were pirates,” Whisp retorted, half-smile playing on his face.

Szimon made an airy gesture, chuckling. “Pirates, embezzlers, Hutts. As long as we get paid, I’ll work for the Sith themselves.”

Whisp tightened under Szimon’s arm, which was wrapped around the thin man’s shoulders. Some unreadable emotion passed over his face, a premonition of a storm. After a moment, he spoke, hesitant. 

“I suppose.”

“That’s the spirit!” Szimon exclaimed, shaking Whisp. “Come on, we have to make preparations for landing and I’m not letting Battlebuzz near those controls again.“

—–

“That was a very impressive show, my friend,” the pirate known as Hondo Ohnaka sidled up to Whisp, unceremoniously dropping into the seat next to him, tankard full of green ale. 

Whisp looked up from his own mug, half-consumed, eyeing the pirate warily. “Thank you,” he replied, adding, “I think,” after a moment’s hesitation. It never hurt to be too cautious around pirates. 

“All those acrobats, all the flips and whooshes.” Hondo made an extravagant gesture with his arm, nearly taking Whisp’s head off. “And the beautiful women dancing to such music, it shouldn’t be allowed!” he grinned, giving Whisp a knowing look. ”My men, they enjoy that - some of my women, too!” Hondo cackled, downing the entirety of his pint in one go, wiping his mouth with his sleeve.

“But you, my friend - with the creatures.” The pirate’s voice turned a shade serious and several parsecs more calculating. Whisp bit his lip, steeling himself to steer another drunken conversation away from this dangerous territory. “Yes, the creatures,” Hondo continued, nearly singing. “Now that was something I’ve never seen before. Most beast tamers use weapons.” The pirate made a few motions mimicking a whip. “They use fear and intimidation but you!” He pointed a finger that almost went up Whisp’s nose. “Ah, it was almost like you talked to them with your mind.”

Whisp gave a forced shrug, his pulse starting to race. He needed to stay calm. Needed to focus on the present, not his anxieties. He laughed to himself, bitter, wholly aware of the gross irony of that statement. “Just an ability I’ve had since my youth,” he said, voice flat. “Better me in the circus than those brutish weapons-wielding tamers you mentioned.” Whisp scowled. That much was the truth. Whisp couldn’t abide by their methods, couldn’t stand the way the pain and fear radiated from the abused creatures. He knew he couldn’t save them all, but if he could give a second chance to even a single Borcatu, if he could find a home for those who had been cast out -

Anger trilled at the back Whisp’s brain, a sensuous, lush melody more tempting than any of the ribald pirate ballads in the background.

Hondo beckoned at another Weequay, grabbing two pints from a serving tray, setting one in front of Whisp in an unspoken command. “Yes, your youth. Tell me about that. Your accent is polished, very posh, very Core World.” Very monied. If only, Whisp rued.

It had been too much effort to try and tame his accent, which stood out amongst Szimon’s motley crew of performers like a neon bell weed in the desert. 

Whisp took a long sip of his beverage, smacking his lips together. The new alcohol was a step higher in quality than the dredge he had been drinking before. He peered to Ohnaka on his right, wondering if he was about to be drugged, kidnapped, or worse. Oh well, he thought, drinking some more of the beverage. Might as well enjoy while I can.

“I was brought up in the Core,” Whisp recited, setting his glass down, not even needing to think about the words he had said them so many times. “My family, unfortunately, abandoned me, so I took to farming in the Mid-Rim as a means of sustaining myself. It was there I discovered I had an affinity for creatures and then did some work in healing clinics before the war broke out. The Republic Army took over all the planetary clinics so I was forced into finding…” Whisp bobbed his head, “more creative ways to apply my talents.”

“Interesting,” Hondo noted, his gaze greedy as he looked Whisp up and down. Whisp’s other hand moved to his waist. So much for enjoying. He fingered the blaster he had hidden under his red and silver vest, neatly tucked away in a shoulder holster. 

Hondo held out a hand. “I don’t mean to cause you alarm, my young friend,” he said with a laugh, sitting back in his chair, kicking both feet up on the table. “You can put your blaster away, I only want to talk business.”

Whisp’s hand tightened for a moment before he raised an open palm in a universal gesture of surrender, his brow furrowed.

“What type of business?”

“What type indeed?” Hondo hummed, rocking his feet back and forth in time to the bawdy, clangorous music. Somewhere on the other side of the room, Tergallian and Lopisa had gotten into a knife-throwing contest with some of the pirates. Whisp had a feeling the Weequay had bet on it and that the pirates were about to lose their shirts, pants, shoes, and who knew what else in the deal. Might have to make a quick getaway if there’s enough of a ruckus, Whisp thought, eyeing the locations of the exits and the best strategies to get there without being shot. 

Again, he winced. 

“Oh, you won’t make it out, I promise” Hondo commented, his expression still jovial. “All the exits are under full guard and I guarantee there’s no other way out unless it’s by my command.” He pressed a finger into the table, all traces of humor gone from his voice. “Unless,” he began after a moment, “you are a Jedi.”

Whisp was off his stool in an instant, blaster in hand. Not wanting a direct confrontation, he pointed it towards the ground, the table hiding the weapon from the view of most of the other pirates and circus members. Off in the corner, Szimon’s eyes grew wide as he made a series of furious movements in Whisp’s driection.

“I’m fine,” Whisp signed back in the strange language of gestures known only to those in this particular circus, an easy way to communicate on stage while looking artistic and also a not bad method of either avoiding trouble or sometimes finding it - if their pockets and stomachs were empty enough.

Hondo clasped his hands behind his head, looking unconcerned. “I did not mean to upset you,” he said, lips quirking upwards as if he had just figured out some baffling puzzle. “Only warn you about my security system. But let us not talk of such things, as they disturb you and as my dear mother always said - “ Hondo raised a finger. “Son! You catch more apidactyls with honey. And if that doesn’t work, you can still catch them with a blaster.”

Not worth the fight. Not even sure I’d win this fight, Whisp sighed inwardly. Knowing when he was outmatched, or at least when to choose his battles, Whisp retook his seat with a muttered curse. 

“Fine, then. What do you want from me?”

Hondo smiled. “Ah, now we talk business,” he shrugged. “Nothing much, my friend. And nothing - mostly - to do with your little traveling show. But the circus isn’t going to pay you forever and a man of your many talents - ” Hondo leaned forward, putting both forearms on the table. “Could fetch a pretty hefty payday if he found himself aligned with the right people.”

Whisp’s eyebrows rose. “Are you offering me a job?”

Hondo raised both arms. “Maybe, if you are willing to - “

“Hondo!” A large, burly man came barreling into the room. At once, the music stopped with a zippered rip of a holodisc jarred from its needle, pirates and circus members alike turning to the wide-eyed, heaving pirate. 

“We got trouble out there!”

Immediately, Hondo came to his feet, blaster in hand. “What kind of trouble?”

“I think it’s the Republic! Looks like them, at least. They’re tryin’ a fall back to our compound!”

“We’ll see about that,” Hondo growled, raising his weapon. “No one takes over Hondo Ohnaka’s compound without my permission!”

—-

Blaster fire rang out from all sides, a multicolored lattice of deadly energy. To Whisp’s surprise, Hondo was near the vanguard of the pirates, shooting at the incoming wave of bright, white uniforms with terrifying precision. The pirates were good, Whisp had to give them that, the transition from unruly drunkards to semi-disciplined guerrilla fighters more seamless than Whisp thought possible. 

“Any ideas?” Szimon asked next to him, the pair huddled behind a large boulder, just out of range of the real fighting. Whisp knew Szimon didn’t care one way or another about who won this particular battle - one of thousands Szimon had witnessed over the years. But their ship - their livelihood and home, not to mention only asset - lay just beyond the front line of what Whisp was pretty sure were the infamous clones. If their ship was damaged, or, even worse, destroyed - they were all done for. 

Whisp took in the scene, applying his natural affinity for tactics that had been first discovered early in his tenure with Szimon, an awkward encounter with the Ruuthian mafia, a highly successful performance, and a jar of…requisitioned heeble eggs belonging to Ruuthian mob boss. It had been his quick thinking that had gotten them out of that mess, a plan so crazy it couldn’t do anything but work. From that point on, Whisp had earned the nickname, “The General,” much to his dismay.

Carefully, Whisp extended his senses, not only his eyes and ears but his other senses, the ones he kept locked away from everyone else - everyone else except his creatures. The creatures didn’t care what his status or title was, if he had succeeded or not, if he occasionally broke some moral law that had been branded into his mind as a child. The creatures didn’t judge - they had never judged and found him wanting.

It wasn’t good. For all of Hondo’s firepower, they were still in the bottom of a cereal bowl in the sandy crevasse, the clone troopers above holding higher ground as they advanced on the compound. It didn’t escape Whisp’s notice that the troopers’ blaster bolts were consistently going wide, aimed to injure or impede, but not kill. Some strange long-buried instinct rose in Whisp’s chest as he watched the men, sensing their similarities, down to a genetic level. Was he was supposed to be on their side? Supposed to be fighting with them, supposed to -

An explosion rocked the compound, bringing down metal, stone, and all kinds of debris on the pirates. Hondo barked out more orders, a line of men running to set up what looked like a short-range missile while the rest of the pirates resumed their firefight. 

I’m supposed to be getting us out alive, Whisp fumed at himself. No more distractions. Szimon’s face was covered in dust and sand and for a moment Whisp almost laughed. The circus master looked the spitting image of the Great Lady Devonna in her full makeup. 

“Are you alright, Szimon?” Whisp asked, helping the other man to a seat. 

“I’ve seen worse,” he growled, swiping debris from tassled gold epaulettes perched on bright red shoulders like two Felucian retrine sparrows. “Just do something, Whisp, I’m not getting any younger here.”

Right. Whisp looked again at the fight, the positioning of the men, their ship. The pirates weren’t going to win an all-out firefight, not like this and Whisp had to assume there would be reinforcements coming sooner than later. It was now or…

Whisp frowned. They could wait for the clones to take over the compound and beg for lenience. But knowing the Republic, they’d probably confiscate the ship. And send them to prison. Besides, Whisp’s own presence might raise too many uncomfortable questions, ones he had no desire whatsoever to revisit.

So much for that idea, he rued, while surveying the scene. The clones were all faced towards the fighting, Hondo’s forces feisty enough to keep them fully engaged. There weren’t that many of them, not a full battalion, for certain, which meant it was likely Szimon’s ship was wholly unguarded and not even considered a threat, as it had no visible weaponry. If he could just…

Whisp closed his eyes, feeling for the familiar energies, the outlines of the creatures he cared for, from the smallest snitmouse to the largest morak. Yes, he thought, connecting his mind with the stampede creatures. They would never see it coming. 

A moment later the earth rumbled, the fighting slowing to a small drizzle of blaster fire as the line of clones turned to the oncoming dust storm that hid the three moraks, now prodded on by Whisp, feeding off of his repressed frustration and anger with the representatives of the institution that had driven him to this life in the first place. Of the people who were trying, again, to deprive him of a home, of a place where he belonged.

Unaware the opaque cloud hid anything living, no less animals whose shells repelled most blaster fire - a well-kept secret known not even in the fancy universities on Coruscant - the clones fired to no avail as the moraks descended, sending bodies flying in every direction with desperate shrieks, the remainder of the forces too startled to return fire efficiently. Three bloody minutes later, the remaining clones ran, retreating, leaving the bodies of their fallen comrades as the only evidence of the failed ambush. 

Cheers rose the pirates as they lifted their weapons in glee, somehow manifesting mugs of ale in their hands only a scant minute after they had been involved in a full-bore battle. Whisp slowly climbed from behind the rock, pulling Szimon up with him. The Thybaarian looked at Whisp as if it was the first time he had ever seen him. 

“Was that you?” he asked, eyes trying to pierce through years of layers, of hidden secrets that were the only true skin of the man known as Whisp.

Whisp laughed, uncomfortable. “What? No, I mean - “ 

Szimon shook his head, still dazed. “I always had my suspicions, you know. Not just the creatures, although I’ll grant you that’s one hell of a trick.” He paused, his expression unreadable. “I figured there was some reason you weren’t up with them in that fancy tower, figured it was none of my business, but now - “ Szimon’s eyes turned calculating. “This isn’t just some parlor trick, is it, it’s - “

Whisp backed away, palms splayed in front of him, as if trying to stop the words from entering his space. “No, I’m not. I - “ he looked around, wild, feeling just like one of his creatures, feral and trapped. He was going to lose his home again, once they found out, it was all going to be over. “I never - “ Something snapped, then crackled with inside of Whisp, like the breaking of an invisible, electric bone, sparking flying everywhere.

“I never was one, okay!” he yelled, stomping his foot. “Never was, never will be! That man - that child - died over ten years ago. This -” Whisp gestured angrily at himself. “Is what I am. Nothing. More.”

They had been certain leave Whisp with that message. Nothing more. Just nothing.

“A fascinating story, my young friend,” a low, baritone voice intoned from behind them. “I would be curious to hear more of it.”

Whisp spun around. The man was - there was no other word for it - regal, imperious, commanding the attention of every being in the valley, as he moved towards Whisp and Szimon, long brown cape billowing in the wind, deep violet outfit a perfect fit on his broad chest. Hondo’s troops paused mid-swig, ale running down their necks, and even Hondo himself craned his head forward to get a better look at the newcomer. 

Fifty blaster rifles rose at once.

The man stopped, surveying the ends of the weapons pointed at him with a disaffected gaze. The compound held its breath, sinews tightening around triggers as an unworldly clarity came over the canyon, as if each atom, each sound wave could be made manifest as a physical, tangible reality. And then the man smirked, wholly unconcerned with his vast disadvantage in the situation as the world returned to its customary blur. Whisp and the others exhaled, noisy phlegm crackling up their lungs, dust tingling in their throats.

The stranger took an unhurried step forward raising one hand. 

“You may lower your weapons,” he addressed the pirates, voice betraying nothing but absolute confidence. It occurred to Whisp then that the man had never been at any disadvantage at all. “I intend no harm,” he added in his deep, patrician voice.

Hondo took an equal, ambling step forward, hands clasped behind his back. He circled the newcomer, a hound sniffing for possible quarry, gazing him up and down, as if he were a incoming shipment of contraband. Then, after a moment, Hondo gave a nod, and the blasters summarily disappeared. 

“My, my we are popular today,” the pirate began amiably. “To what do I owe the pleasure, Mister…” Hondo gestured at the other man in question.

“I am here for three reasons,” the stranger announced, ignoring Hondo’s unspoken inquiry. “The first was unwelcome, but unsurprising. My ships were caught unaware, en route from a trade post in the Outer Rim to Jybosti. I carry the identification cards and manifest if you desire proof of my claim. The Republic forced our hand, causing us to land here and engage in an unwanted ground battle which regrettably involved your forces.” The man turned to Hondo, giving an apologetic gesture. Hondo answered with cool regard, his skepticism echoing through the enclosure. Whisp had to agree. No one just happened to go by a place like Florrum without reason. Especially someone like this. 

Still, it wasn’t the stranger that had been one shooting at them. Maybe he was telling the truth. Or at least a part of it.

“Secondly,” the man continued, opening his arms, “I would like to thank you all for, how shall I say - “ He paused for dramatic effect, lifting his chin slightly. Whoever this man was, he knew how to hold a crowd, perhaps even better than Szimon. “Saving the day, however unexpected your heroics may have been.” 

“Yeah, heroes!” One of the pirates bellowed, raising both his blaster and ale mug, several others echoing his enthusiasm with chants of “Heroes!” which quickly devolved into far less elevated rhetoric.

“And thirdly?” Hondo asked, after the raucous had died down. 

“Thirdly,” the man drawled, turning his full attention on Whisp. “I would like to know further details regarding this young man’s story.”

Whisp’s eyes went wide as he took an involuntary step back. “There’s not much more to tell, I’m afraid,” he said, trying to keep his voice even. The words were automatic, a defense mechanism so perfectly tuned, it was nearly instinct. But the strange pressure that had been growing at the back of Whisp’s brain spiked with the lie, leaving a dark, velvet shadow in its wake, something immensely powerful yet a balm to his frayed emotions. It was something…

Whisp gasped, eyes locking with the other man. 

It was something familiar. 

The stranger smiled, all edges as he clasped his hands behind his back, addressing Szimon. “This young man is in your employ?” he asked, brusque, nodding towards Whisp. 

Szimon straightened his jacket and his posture, already sensing a deal in the making as he slipped into tell-tale ringmaster persona. “Yes, sir, best creature tamer I’ve ever seen.”

“Interesting,” the man commented, drawing out the word. “And if he were to leave your employ, how would that affect your operations?”

“Well, I daresay it would be quite the inconvenience,” Szimon began, his confidence building as he fell into the familiar patter of a sales pitch. Whisp barely heard the words, disbelief rising like an angry, red ocean. Would Szimon really do this to him? Now? After everything? 

“…so you see, unless I would be suitably compensated for my losses…”

The grey-haired man leaned forward and whispered something in Szimon’s ear. Szimon’s eyes went moon-wide, his mouth dropping open, words tripping from his mouth. 

“I trust that would be satisfactory?” the man asked.

“I - ah - “ Szimon sent a half-apologetic glance over to Whisp, eyes gleaming with barely-contained avarice. “I think that would be more than fair.”

“Excellent,” the man articulated, ignoring Szimon’s half-gasped ‘thank yous,’ now directing his full attention back to Whisp, drawing himself up to full height. “And you, who are about to enter my employ. What is your name?”

So that was it. No offer, not even a perfunctory question, Whisp’s future once again dictated by the whims of others. Whisp clenched his teeth agains the injustice of his very existence. “Whisp,” he answered, barely keeping the venom from his voice, fists tightening into balls, nails digging into his palms. 

“Your real name,” the man growled. Behind him, Szimon gaped, now looking on with unabashed curiosity, a faint patina of guilt oozing from his sweat-beaded forehead.

Long-buried memories, banished ghosts relegated to an afterlife he had not yet experienced rose in Whisp. He squeezed his eyes shut against the assault of emotions, of the sharp knives of betrayal, the deep pools of loss that threatened to overwhelm him. Had it been so long since he had uttered his own name?

Forcing a noisy breath between his teeth, he steeled himself, meeting the icy gaze of the other man, who considered him with keen, intense interest. 

“My name is Obi-wan Kenobi.”

For a brief second, the Force surged in a strange, dark elation as the stranger’s eyes glimmered with satisfaction. 

“And I am Yan Dooku of Serenno. Come, Obi-wan,” he said, putting an arm around Whisp’s shoulders, leading him away from the confused and quiet scene of pirates, of the doe-eyed stares of what had - for a brief, happy moment - been his family. 

From one family to the next, always a visitor. First the Jedi and Qui-gon Jinn, then Bandomeer. Then clinics, then circuses, and now this. 

With Dooku.

Something settled in Obi-wan’s gut, not unpleasant. For the first time in years, he allowed himself to open to the Force, wholly and without constraint. This felt right, more right than anything else had in Obi-wan’s life. 

“Come,” Dooku repeated, voice warming ever so slightly. “We have much to do.”

[dork-empress]

Coffee Shop AU

Part of my ‘100 Dragon Prince Aus’ Oneshot Collection

Read on Ao3

Callum has a new job at the coffee shop, but his friends come to play a visit.

Sorry for the radio silence, Work decided to rabbit kick me in the face. And now I'm realizing its Sunday, and I usually do the Sequel Sunday. Fudge. I'll see if I can do another one today. Again. Enjoy.

“‘Get a job,’ he said,” Callum muttered to himself angrily, “‘It’ll be good for you,’ he said.”

“Are you muttering to yourself again?” Rayla asked from her spot at the cash register.

“Maybe,” He said, groaning, “I’m not even 16! I shouldn’t be working yet.” He lifted one foot off the ground in the hopes of providing it some relief, but that only put more pressure and pain on his other foot. “Stupid step-fathers…”

“I thought you were making an effort to call him ‘dad’ these days,” Rayla said, mindlessly playing with the tip jar.

“When he forces me into child labor, he’s my step-father.”

Rayla snorted, “It’s not THAT bad,” she said, “it’s not exactly like we’re busy.” She gestured to the empty shop, except for one person on his laptop, a regular named Corvus.

“You’re biased,” he accused her. He was right, her father owned the coffee shop. And was the one responsible for hiring Callum in the first place, even though he was too young to legally use most of the machines. Mostly all he could do was pour things into the cups. But hey, minimum wage was minimum wage.

“Maybe,” She said, “But it’s still nice. You could be working at Starbucks.” She whispered the last word. As the word Macbeth was to the stage, Starbucks was to Moonshadow Coffee, at least in the eyes of Mr. Runaan, who took the making of coffee very seriously. In fairness, his recipes WERE like magic.

“True,” Rayla admitted, “but come on, don’t lie and say you don’t like being known as the latte art prince.”

Callum harrumphed. He’d always liked drawing and sketching and such, and had seen some techniques on YouTube for doing latte art, so he decided he’d start trying it out, much to the enjoyment of his customers. Corvus, for instance, had a nice tree done in his cup. Rayla always got a bunch of berries, sometimes with leaves if Callum was feeling fancy.

The bell rang and Callum and Rayla looked up, backs straightening like a string had been pulled and they suddenly became professional to greet the incoming customers.

They relaxed back down to a more friendly slump when they saw who it was, though. “Ezran!” Rayla said, beaming. Callum loved his brother very dearly and was quite protective of him, but despite knowing him less than a year, Callum was starting to wonder if Rayla loved him a bit more. He had to be on the lookout, if he turned his back too long she might try to adopt him away.

“Hi Rayla!” Ezran said, flanked by his neighbors and probably babysitters, Claudia and Soren, “We came to visit you guys!”

“Yeah, had to see how the step-prince was doing!” Soren sneered. Soren and Claudia were old enough to remember when Callum and his mother had moved in next door. Callum didn’t directly, but Soren tried to ensure he never forgot. He just meant it as teasing, Soren wasn’t a bad guy really, just a little dense and occasionally needed a smack to the head.

Which is what Claudia was for, and did. She got him with a good whack to the upside of his head. “We came here to be nice,” she said, “to SUPPORT Callum while he’s working.”

“I am!” Soren said, “I JUST asked how he’s doing!”

Callum, Rayla, Claudia, and Ezran all rolled their eyes as one. They were all used to Soren’s antics by now. Ezran approached the counter, “Callum, can I have one of your latte’s please.”

“Aren’t you a little young for coffee?” Rayla asked, “You don’t want to drink too much or you’ll be this height forever.” She reached across the counter to boop his nose.

“But I want latte art too!” Ezran protested.

Callum snorted, “I’ll make you a hot chocolate, bud, how about that.” Ezran sighed, but nodded.

“Two lattes for us, please,” Claudia said, “I want it as dark as my soul.” She put her hands on the counter and stared Callum down.

Callum lifted a mug from the stack, “So...Extra cream and sugar?”

“Yes please!” Claudia said, her stare melting into a bright smile.

Callum chuckled again and got to work, while Rayla rang them up, Claudia and Soren having their usual argument about who was paying, while Callum tried to decide what to make in their cups.

Ezran was easy, Callum did a depiction of his pet toad, Bait. Callum wondered for a second about Claudia, but quickly did a wolf depiction. Now for Soren….He really wanted to do something to pay him back for the Step-Prince comment…

He smiled, and then called up their orders to be ready. Ezran and Claudia beamed happily at their cups. Soren, however, looked down for a moment, really taking in the dick Callum had drawn. He nodded at Callum, “Respect, kid. Respect.”

[superpotatesme00]

(Pidgance Fanfic) by AIR

Notes:

I’m back guys! I am so sorry for the wait...Please forgive me:(

Read: [Previous] || [Next] || [AO3 Link]

SO HERE IT IT^^

Becoming Aware

Chapter 6/7:

Misinterpretations and Far-Fetched Ideas.

Somewhere deep in his conscious Lance knew that karma would go for a B-line and strike him right in the gut. The funny thing is he never expected Shiro to be the punishment on Lance’s day of judgment. Of course, although seemingly out of nowhere, in the moment Lance was met with the force of Shiro’s still human hand, he knew it had to do with Pidge. Female’s intuition?? No, just Lance’s life flashing before his eyes. Of course Keith would argue that Shiro didn’t use ALL his force. That much would’ve sent Lance right back into one of the healing pods. No, this was the brute force of Shiro’s disappointment in the teenage boy and utter sense of protection over the sole female member of the paladins, and her name was Katie.

Lance felt his butt smack the ground but could only look up at Shiro in horror.

Oh quizznack. I’m done for.

Hunk’s wide gaze slowly rose from the fallen Lance to meet the black paladin’s taller than normal self looming over them. Keith's face didn’t change much. He stood as he had been, arms crossed with just slightly arched eyebrows not expecting Lance to end up on the ground.

“Hey, Shiro?” Keith knit his thick eyebrows together and turned to Shiro out of concern.

“Not now Keith.”

Panting, Allura and Pidge reached the control room just above the training deck.

“Allura! Pidge! What’s going on?”

As they held their knees in exhaustion Coran couldn’t help but interject, “This dosen’t look good! Its like a squirgal ready to kill a yelmore!”

Lance had managed to pick himself up only staggering slightly at the unwavering fire that was Shiro’s anger. Shiro only watched and although, now standing, the tall lanky boy was still shorter than the latter.

Lance brought his hands up in an easing manner attempting to calm Shiro, but before he could sound anything out he was cut off.

“You think this is funny Lance.” Shiro stepped forward a bit as the boy’s eye widened in confusion.

“Wait, no. Shiro let-!”

“What were you trying to do to her.” None of these sounded like questions. Shiro’s heavy steps drew intimidatingly closer to Lance.

“Nothing! I-ii I swear!” Lance’s hands felt weak in front of him and his legs unwillingly paced back away from the threat. Sweat was forming on his nape and he felt his breath hitch and crack as he spoke.

“Nothing? That’s why you fucking had that out!?” Lance’s lips sucked in so hard he thought the oxygen had evaporated from his lungs. Shiro’s head gestured to Lance’s lower region.

This definitely had Keith and Hunks undivided attention now. Both their ears twitched and their eyes lit with curiosity and a bit of mischief. Keith’s arms came down out to his sides and both he and Hunk let out a simultaneous “What????”

Keith drew towards Shiro and Hunk whispered down to Lance. Not really…whispered, but attempted.

“Dude, Lance. Did he mean your cash ’n prizes???”

Keith spun away from the fuming Japanese man, “What were you doing?”

More curiosity than expected filled Keith’s usually brooding self as the amusement in Hunk’s voice giggled out, “Ohhhh mann! Were ya caught mid jerk-!”

“WHAT? Oh god! Nononono no!”

The entertainment for the boys was short-lived and abruptly decimated by Shiro.

“Enough!”

Lance felt his life-span shortening exponentially and that no amount of self-care would fix this heart wrenching experience.

“Why were you anywhere near Pidge’s room at night?” Each word made Lance’s neck burrow deeper into his shoulders. All eyes were on him, and to his dismay, Shiro’s hands had found their way to Lance’s collar, holding him up right with unbearable strength.

“She is young, and GOD I knew you had a stupid flirtatious attitude but…I never thought you'd cross the line.” Shiro’s head had dropped down and with a painfully deep sigh as he emphasized the syllable “god.”

Before Lance could even react to his current apprehension or even the innuendo Shiro was hinting at, Keith and Hunk blurted togther, “HOLY CROW!” “No way.”

“Did you guys actually-?”

Hunk pushed into Keith and gestured with his hands, “You and Pidge, Pidge and YOU, hooked -?!”

Up in the observation deck things were beginning to make little to no sense to the Alteans. While Pidge’s face had lit up like a ripe tomato they had been reasonably lost in the colloquialisms that the earthling paladins were using.

“Uh. Number 5. I know this seems to be affecting you quite a bit but uh…I don’t seem to quite understand what is going on here…” Coran was caressing his mustache in deep thought and only turned a bit to glance at Pidge.

“Yes, it seems that way Coran.” Allura face was formed into an unruly contortion.

“What does it mean to ‘hook up’, also does it have anything to do with Shiro’s and the boy’s constant gestures towards Lance legs???”

“Huh? Uh-hhh no no! Um well you see hooking up is-!” Pidge fidgeted in place and poked at her glasses. Her face never ceasing it’s flushed color. “Well, I mean! It means to…ya know?? Ahh what would you guys understand?? To mate i guess? Yeah! and uhh-!”

Oh no…

She could feel the exasperation rising in her voice, the bubbling words and composure she wouldn’t be able to contain.

“BUT I MEAN LIKE ME AND LANCE!!! PFFFTTT NONO NOWAYTHATYOULDHAPPEN! I HAVE NO IDEA HOW THAT LEAD TO THAT?!?!? AH HA HAHAHA!” Pidge’s nervous laughter had the two Alteans exchanging rather quizzical looks.

She desperately looked for an out of this conversation and could only keep looking back to the threatened blue paladin down below.

“Ok WOW that took a weird turn. I mean like a more correct way to say it would be se- “ Her head was spinning and each utter of a word that left her mouth seemed to be drawing the curiosity of the Alteans more.

“Woah woah! Wait me n PIDGE? I’d never-!” Pidge felt a sudden pang in her chest. She had to resist swallowing at the painful lump in her throat.

“Shiro, I wasn't going to, I mean I didn't DO anything to her it was an accident” Shiro’s grasp remained resilient around Lance’s collar.

“You think that just because your ridiculous antics don't work on your preference you can just turn around and take advantage of whatever is female around you?!” Pidge felt the ache once more, clutching her fist at Shiro’s words.

Whatever’s…female…

“If you lay one hand on Pidge I swear I will-!” Lance’s face had drained completely of blood but was quickly distracted by the sudden static of the intercom.

“He-He! Did NOT take advantage of me! And as I said before, it was an accident! Maybe you would have heard that if you weren’t having your ridiculous dad freak out right now!” Pidge’s words were sharp and her eyes burned a fierce copper, burrowing into the now reciprocated gaze of the black paladin.

Shiro turned to glare at Lance, still unconvinced. “An accident. Perfect. Then you wouldn’t mind telling me exactly what happened.”

“Ah haha it’s funny that you ask that, see I don’t remember exactly how I got to the bathroom-“

“Lance.” Pidge sternly urged him to get on with it, feeling her heart beat at 100 miles per second.

Lance chokes back a whine, attracting the still eager ears of the Alteans and the viewing paladins. He is able to quickly retell the story, with exception of his occasional stutters and embarrassed laughter.

Just when Pidge thinks the heat in her cheeks has left and the throbbing in her chest has subsided she hears Lance release a massive sigh, “It’s not like I was too thrilled to have Pidge see ALL my shit either.”

The heartache causes her to wince a bit this time. She doesn’t understand. Why was he so uncomfortable with HER seeing him like that? Would Allura or Nyma have been a thrill for him? Was it so hard to imagine ANYTHING going on between her and Lance?!

She swallows sharply at the bitter taste in her mouth, “Wasn’t too impressed by what I saw either.”

Hunk and Keith stifle their chuckles, only barley able to cover their mouths as Shiro turns an annoyed brow to them.

“Ah Shiro. I do not have a full grasp of the situation but Coran and I are having a hard time understanding why exactly it is you are so upset?”

“Yes. It is common for accidents to happen on Earth is is not? Also why would such an accident make you believe that out of everyone, these two paladins were…intimately involved?”

This time Allura’s ears twitched a bit to Coran’s words. She knew not everyone was aware of her feelings but surly the disbelieve would dampen Pidge’s hopes…

Allura re-evaluated the situation, having remembered Lance and Shiro’s exchange before quietly turning to the young girl.

“Pidge…” He voice came out quiet and gentle, obviously meant only for the ears of the green paladin.

She was met with silence and the down cast shadow covering the expression on Pidge’s face. Allura noticed her clutched fist and opened her mouth to console her.

“This is stupid. Of course nothing would go on between Lance and me. That would be gross.” She quickly turns to leave. Coran and Allura’s gazes following her distancing silhouette.

“Princess?”

It felt like a long moment of silence as Shiro’s face remained unchanging, hiding whatever it was that he was thinking. Everyone, but Keith, was pretty affected by the figurative sound of crickets in the background. But soon everyone’s anticipation was met with Shiro’s low and crisp, “Oh.”

Shiro’s gray eyes quickly scanned the whole room to his now realized audience. He attempted to nonchalantly straighten his back and clear his throat. It did little to ease the awkwardness of the his ‘misinterpretation’.

“So. That’s how it is.” Lance flinched as Shiro released his death grip and gently patted down the wrinkled collar. A mere attempt to fix the disheveling his anger had caused.

“Just…Just be more careful, ok Lance?” Lance could only nod, hoping to not trigger any more of the black paladin’s fury.

“Well. I’m going to go…train now.”

All heads turned to watch the rigid and obviously embarrassed Shiro march out of the training deck. Some would’ve sworn they caught a glimpse of flushed red tinting his ears and neck.

Of course that wouldn’t happen. It’s not like I wanted everyone to think that would happen.

Pidge violently shook her head.

But would it be THAT hard to believe? Lance and me? Me and Lance…? Yeah…it just doesn’t add up…

Pidge had managed to make her way to her lion’s hangar. She was intensely gazing at her screen as numerical codes ran by at lightning speed. Her eyes followed just as fast, but…she wasn’t reading any of it. Instead her head swirled with nothing but Lance, and everyone’s words.

Then she remembered Allura and her attempt to console Pidge. That look on the princess’ face.

Pity.

She hated the whole two syllables of it. She didn’t want to be pitied, not over her brother or her father and even over her stupid feelings for Lance. Yet, no matter how hard she tried to NOT think about any of that, it came crawling back in. Her teeth were clenched and she felt her shoulders trembling with what she could on describe as frustration. Her small nails were beginning to dig into her palm and just as her anger peaked her screen flashed an error code.

“Man their crazy! I mean sure what happened, happened. But it could’ve been anyone. Like…..Allura???”  The thought made him uneasy, “Ugh! Who would haha I mean *pft* me and Pidge? HAHAHAHA!”

He quickly searched to see if anyone had seen him talking to himself.

Lance’s thoughts spewed out like explosive spaghetti. He was all over the place, and even after awkwardly watching Shiro leave he just narrowly escaped everyone’s questioning eyes, or in Hunk’s case-real questioning.

Hunk nagged him to tell what was really going on. But, what was there to tell? What happened was the truth…Nothing more. He and Pidge had NOTHING going on.

‘Nothing.’

That sudden thought made his stomach feel empty and a gloom rose over his head.

Is it really nothing? I mean…Pidge is…

His thoughts fell back to everyone’s misunderstanding.

They thought we were ‘together’ together…like more than just friends…

He remembered Pidge’s unbearably cute face from that day. Her eyes wide and golden burrowing into his own blue irises. Her soft fluffy hair, her pale skin that couldn’t hide any bit of pink that shown on her cheeks, nose, lips…legs…His imagination wandered down to the bare dainty legs that lay sprawled by her fallen self.

He would’ve overheated with embarrassment right there if he hadn’t suddenly felt the cold hard edge of a wall smack into his face.

“Ah what the hell-?!” If anyone could start a fight with a wall it’d be Lance…and maybe Keith. His anger was short lived by the sudden groan coming from the open room just next to him. His eyes immediately fell on a small figure standing at a computer within the green lion’s hangar.

His steps felt upbeat and whatever smidgen of unease he had vanished as he approached Pidge.

“ARGH!” Her small fist loudly shook the table with a bang causing Lance to squeal like a little girl.

He flinched as she paused and turn towards him.

“Pussy.”

“Woah. First of all, rude. Second, Lancey Lancey makes great company!” He stuck his signature finger gun and confident smirk.

A good few second passed with him like that, only to have Pidge turn away from him. He slumped with the taste of bitter rejection on his teeth.

Curiosity drew him closer. He peered over her small body to see, not that his height made it difficult to see over her anyway. Normally, in the past, he would’ve slumped an arm over her, but as of lately he decided against that. It made him uncomfortable, the reason unknown to him. Instead he took it upon himself to lighten the mood, having noticed Pidge’s crankier and usual self.

“Man, can you believe everyone back there? I nearly got my head taken off for a stupid accident!”

“Yeah, honestly Shiro can be a total pain when he loses his temper.”

“No kidding! I mean he should’ve just listened to me.”

“Obviously, that wasn’t working.” Lance dropped his annoyed gaze at the blunt remark.

“Well, yeah. But, honestly it so crazy that any of them would think that! Like, are you kidding, you and me?” Pidge’s ears twitched slightly.

“Ha ha. Yeah. They’re crazy. To think they honestly thought WE would be a thing?”

“RIGHT?! Geez! That’s fuckin’ crazy talk! Crow, like we would never do shit like that! *Blegh*!” Her eyebrow twitched this time, and with that she actually turned to face him.

Lance was dense and Pidge’s angry smile completely hid the steam seeping from her ears.

“Yeaaahhh, me interested in YOU is crazy enough, but us ACTUALLY being a thing and doing shit. That’s just gross.” This time Lance’s upper lip twitched.

‘Gross’…?

Whatever remnants of a smile he had turned malicious and annoyed, “I wouldn’t say ‘gross’ is the word.”

“Nah, I think it’s pretty spot on if you ask me.” He nonchalantness winged at his patience.

“You know what? You’re right! I’m offended they hadn’t noticed my type, tall and gorgeous.”

“Oh yeah? That’s fine with me, frankly I need someone with a little more brain cells than an empty paper weight as a head.”

“Empty-Wait did you just call me stupid?!”

“Doesn’t take a genius to figure that out.”

“You wanna play it like that? At least, I don’t have to jump to reach shit around here, or anywhere in general!”

“At least, I can count to 10 WITHOUT using my fingers!”

Shiro was a sight for sore eyes but honestly Allura didn’t expect him to be such a pain in the ass when he lost his temper. The whole situation was ridiculous and Shiro’s interference definitely made things worse.

Much like Lance she had been lost in thought and unknowingly paced down the corridor in search of Pidge. That was until a voice startled her, “Allura?”

She turned quickly to see Coran on the ground hugging his knees.

“Coran? What on Earth are you doing?”

“Eh well, I had been planning to talk to Pidge, but I wasn’t quite sure why…Then I decided that I should figure out why and I haven’t been able to decide if it was a good idea or not. In my predicament I ended up as so…” Coran’s reasoning failed to make any sense to the princess.

“Okay…I was actually going to go see Pidge my self. There are somethings I need to talk to her about.”

“Ah! If that’s the case I will join you!” Before Allura could protest Coran had jumped to his feet.

“Right…Pidge is probably in her lion’s hangar.”

Just around the corner the two Alteans were met with an open door and the undeniable voices of Pidge and Lance.

“At least I don’t have a bird’s nest for hair!”

“At least I don’t get cuffed to trees for thinking with my DICK too much!”

Allura and Coran cautiously peered in through the open door.

“At least I don’t get confused as a BOY for a whole goddamn year!”

“At lest I don’t get my ASS handed to be by a mullet wearing hothead!”

With a loud gasp Lance protests, “TAKE THAT BACK!”

“MAKE ME.” They both stepped closer to each other.

Sweat was beginning to drip down the worried pale faces of the observing Alteans.

“My neck hurts just from looking down at you so much.”

“You sure it isn’t cuz of other reasons?”

“Wh-what? What’s that supposed to mean?!” His face burned with anger and embarrassment.

“Dumbass!”

“SMARTASS!”

“SEVENTH WHEEL!”

They were almost butting heads, and the tension was causing the spying Alteans to tremble.

Oh no.

Lance felt his anger bubbling and although he was usually good at calming down, that last comment sent him over the edge.

“NO SEX APPEAL!”

Shit.

With that the room fell silent, although the buzz of rage still reverberated through the walls. There they stood, each standing their ground, golden eyes burning into blue ones.

To the Alteans minimal relief the fight had not gotten physical, but once the two paladins had dismissively walked away from each other, neither Coran nor Allura found the bravery to call out to either of them.

With the room empty the two were left speechless.

“oh dear…”

“This is not good…”

Due to unexpected events that had happened literally just a few moments ago, Lance was now stomping down the corridor towards his room. If anyone were to be in his way, they would’ve been run over. All that blackness he felt hurt and ached the more he repeated her words, and most importantly his words. He remembered his family, he remembered similar anger from the times he had fought with siblings or times he had fought with his parents. His mother was a open minded but feisty and boy could she stand her ground. And his father, although stern at times was mostly the calm and gentle, always capable of turning an angry child into a giggling mess after he talks them down. That’s why EVERYONE in his family was genuinely happy, his parents kept them together.

“Hay qué saber hablar…’

He remembered his parents word. Communication was key and growing up he had always lived by that, and in this case…he let them down. His steps slowed. Pidge was important to him. And he screwed up. Obviously, he was still hurt by Pidge’s words but he knew how she was, how she reacted when she was angry. He just wasn’t sure what he had said to make her so angry…

Not cool…

A sad sigh left his lips.

‘No sex appeal?’ What the fuck was I thinking….

He found himself in front of his door, slid open by his presence to show a bed that seemed anything but relaxing to him at the moment. An idea popped into his head and he eagerly gathered his things to make his way to his new destination, lion slippers and all.

He removed and form of clothing he had been wearing. Lance calmly wrapped the towel around his hips, not before eyeing himself,“You started all of this.”

The steam covered his face like a blanket almost immediately. His quiet footsteps echoed a bit Exhaustion over took him and he couldn’t resist the urge to yawn and rub his eyes.

“Was wondering who came in.” Lance’s hand stopped short and slowly lowered to his side.

“Aw man…You gotta be kidding me.”

Keith gave no response as the steam cleared up to reveal the communal bath.

“Huh, RUDE! I’m in here too!” Lance’s face lit up a bit with relief once he saw Hunk hidden beneath a mountain of bubbles.

“Oh thank god…”

“Quit it guys.”

“Hey hey look! Who am I???” A small tuft of white bubbles clung to Lance’s forehead.

“An idiot?” Keith chuckled to himself, arms remaining crossed in the water.

“Funny. No, I’m Shiro.”

“Oh oh! Yeah I see it!” Hunk gathered more bubbles and turned away, fumbling with his hands.

“Check it out!” Hunk snapped back around and enthusiastically displayed his bubble mustache.

Both Keith and Lance stared blankly at Hunk before bursting into laughter. Clutching their stomachs before Lance fell back into the water. The other two were still giggling when Lance resurfaced, lightly splashing Keith.

Curiosity struck him, “Hey Keith, I’ve never seen you in the baths before. Decided to take a shower for once?”

“Yeah, good one. And no, I do come in here once in a while but just when no one’s around.” He combed his raven hair back easing it into a stubby ponytail.

“Yeah he does! I’ve seen him in here a couple times!” Hunk sleeked his hair back with wet hands.

Lance watched them completely unconvinced, “Hmmm.” He scrutinized them with his squinted gaze.

“Has it ever occurred to you that I purposefully avoid being in the same room as you?” Keith taunted him and lifted a bemused brow.

Lance put his hands up shrugging, “Hey, no offense taken here. But seems to me like you’re just scared to have people see how little jimmy is.” The corner of Lance’s lips perked up into a wide smile, obviously proud of his joke.

“What??? Why would I? I got nothing to be embarrassed about!” Keith’s voice rose in a fluster. Rising more after seeing Lance’s smug smile.

“Screw you Lance. Not like you got much to be proud of!”

“Not that I care, but based on Pidge’s comment, you’re all talk and no show.” Lance wouldn’t have been offended if it weren’t for Hunk’s giggling.

His cheeks turned tomato red.

“Aw no sweat Lance, it’s just a joke!” Hunk draped a heavy arm over Lance’s shoulder. To Lance’s surprise Keith pat his back.

“Yeah, no worries dude, I mean there are other things that can make up for it,” Keith and Hunk did little to stifle their laughs, as Lance sunk into the water.

“Fuck off guys!” Lance pushed them off of him only gaining more laughter from the naked teenagers.

Lance felt the urge to strangle the too bumbling bozos. Nothing weird, just 3 idiot teenager, roughhousing butt-naked.

“What’s going on here?” The boys stopped mid roughhouse to see a hazy figure amongst the steam.

“I’m pretty sure the bath is for relaxing not fighting.” The steam cleared a bit to reveal the undeniably impressive physique Shiro had, as well as the towel that did nothing to hide another rather impressive aspect to him.

The boys were at a total loss for words. Shiro shied a bit under their stares, “Is everything ok?”

Hunk was the first to nod and come back to reality but the other two simply stared until Shiro stepped into the water. With one last look both Keith and Lance hung their heads low in defeat.

Shiro was right, the baths really were meant for relaxation. The boys were all lazily leaned against the edges of the bath. Lance had a warm wet towel draped over his eyes and forehead. He thought the slowly cooling towel would help clear his mind, but it did everything but that. His mind wandered and wandered. It went from his family, back to the Verdadero Beach where he used to swim every weekend, to the thought of Pidge having at some point possibly been in this very tub. The very thought embarrassed him so much he felt the towel starting to heat up again. His hand reached up to remove it.

“Lance.” Lance’s hand stopped mid air.

“I just wanted to say that I am really sorry about what happened earlier.” Lance moved to take off the towel and looked at Shiro in bewilderment.

“It was out of line what I did. You are a member of the team and I am not Pidge’s father. I jumped to a conclusion and threatened the balance of the team…I’m sorry.”

The sincerity in Shiro’s voice lifted goose bumps on Lance neck. He didn’t know what to say. His idol and leader of Voltron was apologizing to him. His mind fell back to Pidge and a lump swelled in his throat.

“No…It’s okay Shiro. I know you care about Pidge. I know how much her family means to you and I know you want to protect her, us too, but her-out of respect and consideration for her brother.” The thoughtfulness in his words had the attention of Keith and Hunk now as well.

“I respect Pidge too. I care about her a lot and believe me nothing happened. It was a total fluke. Not intentional at all. I’m not that sick. I…I’d never hurt Katie…” Lance had met Shiro’s eyes but wavered as he mentioned ‘Katie’.

Hunk and Keith observed Lance, interested in his calling Pidge ‘Katie’.

Lance kept his gaze low and bit his lip before continuing, “I mean, why would any of us want to hurt her? She’s great. Even back at the Garrison Hunk and I knew that. It wouldn’t matter if she was a boy, Pidge is Pidge. She’s wicked smart, sarcastic and funny and man can she fight!” He lifted his gaze, “She’s a great pilot…better than me…And honestly I don’t want everyone thinking she’d ever have a thing with me. Someone like her…can get any guy she wants.”

The red and yellow paladins exchanged a look before Lance continued.

“Argh!” He groaned to himself.

“But I fucked it up bad this time!”

“How so?” Shiro’s voice was filled with sincerity.

“I-I got in a fight with Pidge…I just wanted to see how she was doing and we ended up saying some shitty stuff to each other. I can’t take any of that back…”

A gentle hand held Lance by the shoulder, “You’re right. You can’t take it back. But you can make up for it. Pidge is great. She’s an amazing pilot and an part essential of this team. But, so are you.”

Lance looks up to meet Shiro’s encouragement.

“We aren’t just a team now Lance. We are all we have, we are family. And I know Pidge thinks you’re just as important.”

Lance can’t help but smile at Shiro’s gentle words.

“Go talk to her dude.” Keith shows a rare smile, sincere and gentle.

A sudden wave of confidence washes over Lance and he immediately stands up to wrap his towel around him.

“Yeah! You guys are right! No time for sulking around!”

As he makes his way over the ledge he slips and face plant onto the ground, his towel coming undone in the process.

The guys all let out a sigh as Lance whimpers.

“Poor Pidge…” Hunk can’t help but sympathize.

The silent squeak of mice can be heard down the corridor. As usual Allura is having her hair done up but the enthusiastic and adorable rodents.

“Oh! You would not believe-! Everything was going so well! Well…not exactly, but it wasn’t a disaster!”

The mice speak in response, mostly focusing on Alluras unruly white hair.

“Then Shiro had to on a rampage and-!”

The squeak of the pink mouse interrupted her. It batted its eyes and gestured to Allura.

“What? I mean well yes…It was exciting seeing him get angry…BUT that’s besides the point!”

The mice giggled at Allura’s noticeably pink cheeks.

“ARGH! I just really wanted to help Pidge! I think they both share feelings for each other and no one can convince me other wise!” Allura dramatically slumps her chin into her hands.

The mice all look at each other, squeaking and contemplating the princess’ words, until finally they nod in accordance. The smallest of them scurries to Allura side, nudges her elbow. Allura meets the mouse’s eyes as it squeaks a series of what must be words that only the princess could understand.

Allura’s eyes lit up at whatever the mouse told her, and she rushes to the door, “I must tell Coran!”

Once she find the mustached man she quickly beckons his ear to hear her whisper. He looks at her as a sly smile forms on both their faces, “That might just work!”

****

THANKS FOR READING! Stay tuned for Chapter 7/8! :D

Read: [Previous] || [Next] || [AO3 Link]

[i-d-k-man]

If I’m Being Honest...

[Tododeku, BNHA]

A03 Link

Chapter 1

Bright sunlight made Todoroki squint as he stepped through the hospital’s automatic doors.  

It was a beautiful day - surprisingly cool for June - with a pleasant breeze tossing Todoroki’s bangs.  Even the hospital had seemed cheerful, his mother smiling softly as Todoroki opened her window, then laughing behind her hand as the wind caught the curtain and smacked her son in the face.  

She had been laughing more and more lately, each giggle (and occasional snort) threading one more stitch across the fractures of the past between them.  After all, Todoroki had heard that broken bones grow back stronger.

Closing his eyes leisurely, Todoroki basked in the sunlight.

A short buzz in Todoroki’s pocket interrupted his musings, and he pulled his phone out.   Midoriya Izuku , the screen read.  Speaking of broken bones...

As Todoroki typed in his passcode, another buzz rattled the phone, also courtesy of Midoriya Izuku .  A perfectly suitable contact name, intentionally dull so as not to raise any suspicion.  Kirishima had more than provided a cautionary tale last year, when Ashido had discovered that his contact name for Bakugou was “BakuuuBabe”, accompanied by a rather unfortunate string of emojis (the water droplets especially stood out).   For nearly a month, a chorus of “Bakuuu!”s chimed whenever Bakugou entered a room or hallway, like some occult ritual.  

A couple charred streaks remained on the hallway floors to this day.  Needless to say, Todoroki wasn’t about to go putting Midoriya’s contact as ‘light of my life’, ‘reason green is my favorite color’, or any of those other intrusive thoughts that spun right ‘round like a record through Todoroki’s head whenever he was around the boy.   Midoriya Izuku was proper, professional.

(Midoriya Izuku somehow still managed to send a pleasant chill up Todoroki’s spine.)

>> hey man, u still wanna join us or should we just go ahead and start ? 

 Todoroki glanced at the time, 10:37.  Ah, he was running late.  The unofficial little “Men of Class 1-A Weekend Workout Squad” (or “Swole Team 6,” as Kirishima called it) usually started an hour or so before lunch.

 << Count me in, if nobody minds waiting.  I should be back on campus in half an hour.

 >> great !!    Midoriya replied almost immediately.    see u there, Freezer Burn :) 

 ‘Freezer Burn’, huh?  That was a new one.

It really was a beautiful day, so Todoroki let the butterflies flit freely within him as he basked in the sun at the train stop.  He liked when Midoriya called him nicknames.  Or called him his real name.  Or looked Todoroki’s way in general.  It didn't take much, with Midoriya.

The breeze smelled like roses.

A couple minutes passed, and the train pulled into the station, rumbling to a halt.  The doors slid open, revealing an angry couple, screeching hysterically.  The warmth of the sun dissipated as Todoroki boarded and found a seat, as far from the racket as possible. Todoroki sighed - the peace had been nice while it lasted.

“Don’t even try giving me that bullshit again, Subaru!”  some lady was yelling, her eyes cocooned in black eyeliner and long nails glittering in the fluorescent light.  “I’ve seen the way you look at her, it’s like a dog drooling over a piece of meat.  Or its own vomit.  You’re disgusting, Subaru, a fucking disgrace!”

A man - presumably Subaru - threw his arms up in frustration.  “For the last time, Mitsubishi, I told you that she’s just a friend.  I’d hang out with any of my friends at 3 am, that’s no big deal!  In fact, I’d love to go out late with you, but you insist on sleeping before midnight, like some senior citizen.”

“Yeah, so I love sleeping.  Sue me!”  Mitsubishi was really fuming now - it reminded Todoroki of someone, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.  “At least I do it alone.  Unlike you, you fuck!”

Bakugou!  The answer clicked in Todoroki’s head.  That’s who Mitsubishi reminded him of.  It must be the homicide in her eyes.

“T-that’s ridi- I can’t believe you’d say-!”  Subaru stammered.  “Mitsubishi, I would never.”

A wicked smile uncoiled across glossy red lips.  “Is that so?  Then why don’t we make ourselves 100% certain?”

Dread eclipsed Subaru’s face, and he began backpedaling both literally and figuratively, retreating into Todoroki’s personal space.  Great.  “N-now, there’s no need for extremes, babe.  Have I mentioned how sexy you look in that lipstick color?  Why would I ever even look at another girl when I have you!”

“Let’s find out,” Mitsubishi menaced, eyes positively sparking with ill-intent as she stretched out a hand towards her (soon to be ex, in Todoroki’s opinion) boyfriend.  Her expression was downright murderous - had Bakugou mentioned having an aunt in the area?

Any musings surrounding Mitsubishi and possible relation to Bakugou were dispelled as Todoroki felt his phone vibrating on his knee.  Midoriya Izuku.  Ahhh.  Todoroki put the phone up to his ear.  “Hello, Midor--”

Three things then happened at once.  

1)  The train cabin shuddered suddenly without warning.  

2)  Mitsubishi, caught off guard, lost her balance, desperately grabbing Todoroki’s shoulder in order to stay upright.

3)  A violent bolt of nausea crackled through Todoroki, and his head swam painfully.

Thankfully, the train returned to its original course as quickly as it had left it.  Todoroki’s stomach smoothly unwound, the nausea disappearing completely.  He breathed heavily, eyebrows knit in confusion as he rubbed his shoulder where Mitsubishi had speared him with her nails.   What the hell was that about?  Had he eaten something bad?

A loud gasp tore Todoroki from his thoughts.  Mitsubishi looked downright horrified, her hands slapping over her mouth.  “Oh shit, shit, shit!  Fuck, do you feel sick at- hey, wait.”  Her heavily outlined eyes popped even wider, if possible.  “Are you that Todoroki kid, from U.A.?”

“Yes,” Todoroki replied, curiously quickly.  He normally tried to avoid drawing attention in public.

“Oh, I see you all over Twitter!  You were so cool in the sports festival last year - I was totally rooting for you, by the way.”  Mitsubishi beamed widely, a small blotch of lipstick disrupting the glare of her white teeth.  Todoroki nodded weakly.  To think, just a minute ago he had been calling her a relative of Bakugou.  

Still smiling unnaturally wide, Mitsubishi beat a hasty retreat.  Subaru, for his part, looked even more horrified than before.  He opened his mouth, but Mitsubishi sent him another Bakugou glare, yanking her thumb and pointer across her lips harshly in the universal ‘zip your lips’ gesture.  

Todoroki frowned.  What was that about?  And wait, what was up with that whole nausea thing?

Todoroki opened his mouth to inquire as such, but Midoriya chose that moment to conduct his own questioning.  “Todoroki?  Are you there?  You stopped replying!”

The warm crackle of Midoriya’s voice, as always, quickly monopolized all of Todoroki’s brainpower, and soon enough, all thoughts of Mitsubishi and possible food poisoning had vanished.

“Yeah, I’m here.  Sorry, the train got a little bumpy for a second…”

Todoroki exited the train station as carefree as he had entered it.  It really was a beautiful day.  

An hour later, Todoroki walked into the men’s locker room, a towel and water bottle in tow.

“Hey, bro!”  Kirishima looked up from where he was tying his shoes, grinning.  “Glad you decided to come!”  

“Of course,”  Todoroki replied a bit awkwardly, unsure of what to say.  Kirishima always greeted him like it was Todoroki’s first time working out with them, while in reality he attended nearly every week.  Todoroki had actually been one of the founding members of the group (along with Midoriya and Iida), despite actually preferring to exercise alone.  

Working out in groups was great, is all.  Very important for both mind and body, building camaraderie.  And if Todoroki had had an ulterior motive for forming Swole Team 6, then nobody had to know.  

“Took you fucking long enough to get here, asshole,” Bakugou grumbled with a scowl, and in retrospect, Mitsubishi’s harshest expressions seemed downright welcoming.

“I’m so glad you could make it!”  Midoriya, the ulterior motive himself, beamed.  “Taking the train can be such a pain.”

Todoroki only allowed his mind to dwell on gooey thoughts concerning green hair and bright eyes for a moment before he forcibly ejected them.  “Thanks for waiting.  So, what are we doing today?”

Iida raised his hand and sprung upright.  “I would like to present an idea!  Last night, I had a dream about Mr. Aizawa, and--” 

“--Wow, how scandalous of our very own class president!  I never knew you liked older men, Iida,”  Kaminari interrupted, waggling his eyebrows.  

Iida glared at Kaminari sternly, adjusting his glasses.  “Not that kind of dream.  Which should go without saying.”  Another pointed glare.  “In it, I forgot to turn in a large assignment, and Mr. Aizawa erased my quirk forever as punishment.”  Iida shuddered.  “It was an unpleasant dream.  However, I began thinking about my abilities without my quirk, and I realized I’d like to work on my hand to hand combat skills without quirks.”  

“That’s not a bad idea,”  Tokoyami nodded.  “We should always be prepared for scenarios where our quirks are disabled.  Darkness surely lurks behind every corner.”  

The entire locker room chimed in agreement, collectively ignoring Tokoyami’s last comment.  Kaminari pulled a die from his pocket.  “We can use this to pair up.”

“Why..are you carrying around a die?”   Midoriya asked.

“I use them to do magic tricks,”  Kaminari winked.  “The ladies love them.”

Todoroki wasn’t so sure.  

After a couple minutes, the group had split up.  Todoroki ended up paired with Midoriya - of course he did.  Why would the universe ever cut him a break, especially when his self-control was already on the wobbly side, crippled by changing in the same room as Midoriya?  Sparring with his crush was a double-edged sword if ever one was forged, and there was no way he’d escape without any nicks.

“Hey, partner,”  Midoriya jogged over to Todoroki.  “This will be great training, don't you think?”

“I think. Yes, I do,”  Todoroki babbled, a little thrown off by Midoriya’s radiance, then wanted to die when he realized what he'd said.  God, there was no way he'd survive this, at this rate.  The sword was already unsheathed.   

Yet, impossibly, with 15 minutes past, Todoroki had managed to avoid any overtly self-incriminating actions.  The sparring session couldn't make up its mind between rapture and torture.  

A pro:  Midoriya unconsciously licking his lips in concentration.

A con:  Todoroki taking a hit every time Midoriya unconsciously licked his lips in concentration.

Pro:  getting to ogle Midoriya’s neck when he tossed his head back to drink water.

Con:  resisting the urge to kiss Midoriya’s neck when he tossed his head back to drink water.

Pro:  falling on top of Midoriya on more than one occasion, their bodies pressed close.  

Con:  desperately reciting mathematical formulas in his head to avoid a more, ahem, prominent reaction when Todoroki fell on top of Midoriya, their bodies pressed close.

Pro:  practicing hand-to-hand combat technique, one of Todoroki’s rustier skills.

Con:  Todoroki was not focusing on his hand-to-hand combat technique, one of his rustier skills.

Stars twinkled in Todoroki’s skull as Midoriya landed a particularly nasty right hook - Aoyama would have been delighted.  

“C-crap, Todoroki, I didn’t mean to hit you that hard!”  Midoriya’s eyebrows were knit in concern.  “Does it hurt?”

“No” , Todoroki lied - or at least tried to.  Somehow, the word wouldn’t come out.  Todoroki frowned.  “No”, he said, more firmly.  Still, nothing came out but a raspy exhale.  

Something akin to panic began rising in Todoroki.  Had the punch fucked with his vocal chords?  There was no way, right?!  He was just overreacting.  

Midoriya, meanwhile, was wringing his hands anxiously.  “T-todoroki?  Oh my god.  Please don’t tell me I gave you a concussion.  Do you feel alright?”

Crap, he hadn’t meant to worry Midoriya.  Todoroki took a deep breath, forcibly calming himself.  Just say ‘Yes.’  He took one last deep exhale, focused, and…

An empty huff croaked out of Todoroki as agony suddenly cracked through his skull, and nausea slammed his body like a [door in Paranormal Activity].  Holy fuck, was he having an aneurysm?  Todoroki groaned as a fresh wave of pain bowled him over, his head on the verge of imploding.  

Midoriya appeared to be panicking, grabbing Todoroki’s shoulders.  Todoroki yelped again, his side splitting.  Fucking hell, he could hardly even see Midoriya through this haze in his head.  His stomach tweaked in all the wrong ways.  

“No!” Todoroki shouted desperately, completely involuntarily.  Midoriya’s eyes, all watery, widened in confusion at his outburst.  “No, I don’t feel ‘alright’.”

And just like that, all traces of pain vanished.  What the hell?!  

“Todoroki?  S-shouto?”  Midoriya’s voice and eyes wobbled in unison.  “Can you hear me?”

“Yes,” Todoroki whispered, with complete ease.  Huh?  Unease settled in Todoroki’s bones.  He had absolutely no idea what was happening to him.  

Absently, Todoroki caught a vague scent of smoke, and a breeze tickled his side.  Shit, he must have partially singed through his shirt because of the pain.

“Do you feel stable?”  Midoriya implored, hands tightening their grip on Todoroki’s shoulders.  

“Yes,”  Todoroki replied again, perfectly fine.  

“Oh my god, thank heavens,” Midoriya sobbed, wrapping Todoroki in a desperate hug.  Todoroki could feel the boy’s heart pounding through his charred shirt, which was, well… If Todoroki didn’t feel so freaked out, he certainly would’ve ascended to cloud 9 by now.  

“I’m so, so sorry, Todoroki!”  Midoriya squeezed him even tighter, hands balling up against Todoroki’s back.  “Y-you just normally dodge those right hooks, and I banked on that and put too much force into it, and then you started grabbing your head and smoking and curling up and oh my god it was so terrifying, and I’m so sorry, and I would never ever hit you that hard on purpose, you know that right??”  

Todoroki nodded, Midoriya’s soft hair tickling his chin.  He focused on the warm, solid body pressed up against his and melted into the embrace, pulse relaxing.  Whatever the hell that episode had been, it was over now.  

Except-- the beginnings of a headache began unfurling in Todoroki’s temples and he stiffened.  As soon as he opened his mouth to suck in a nervous breath, however, he found himself murmuring “Of course I know that, Izuku” into Midoriya’s hair.  

Todoroki’s burgeoning headache dissipated as his confusion returned in full force.  He hadn’t meant to say that, even though it was true.  And wait, had he just called Midoriya ‘Izuku’?

A slight flush rose in Todoroki.  He really hadn’t meant to say that.  What was happening to him?!  Maybe I do have a concussion...    

Todoroki broke the hug, taking a few tentative steps back.  He still didn’t entirely trust his body to not belly flop into a swimming pool of agony at any moment.

Specks of ash from Todoroki’s shirt stuck to Midoriya’s own.  The boy picked at them absently.  “You, uh, did you just call me ‘Izuku’?”

“Ah, um, yes.”  Todoroki flushed further.  “I wasn't thinking.  I'm sorry.”

“No, no!”  Midoriya’s hands waved in protest.  “It's..nice.  You should call me Izuku all the time.”  

“Huh?”  Todoroki breathed, quite eloquently.    

“I said,”  oh man, apparently it was now Midoriya’s turn to glow bright red,  “that you should call me Izuku.  If you want.”

“Oh,” Todoroki replied, lamely. “I do want to. And call me Shouto. -only if you want to.  Too.”

“Whatever you say, Shouto,” Midoriya grinned, and began gathering his things. “I think we’ve done enough for today. I'll see you at lunch!”

“Yeah. See you.”  

Midoriya looked expectant.  Oh.  “...Izuku.”

The name melted pleasantly in Todoroki’s mouth, like cotton candy, and Midoriya bounced on his heels.

“And just so you know-”

Todoroki paused with his water bottle halfway to his face, glancing at Midoriya.

“Just so you know,” Midoriya repeated, eyes flickering down.  “You should, uh, put on another shirt before lunch. Yeah. Bye!”

Midoriya left, and Todoroki looked down at his tattered top, only half remaining.

The walk back to the locker room was occupied by Todoroki berating himself for allowing himself to think that Midoriya’s cheeks had glowed ever-so-brighter with his parting comment.

If wishes were fishes, Todoroki could open a goddamn aquarium.

Back in the locker room, Todoroki mindlessly slipped on a fresh shirt, as if his brain had subconsciously labeled Midoriya’s suggestion as it's top priority.  

It wasn't far fetched.  

Todoroki’s stomach surged softly as his mind replayed his inexplicable agony earlier, and a cold sweat broke out over his sweaty skin.

Too freaked out to shower just yet, Todoroki collapsed onto a sink in the locker room, knuckles white as they clenched the porcelain.  What’s wrong with me?  How can the headaches appear and disappear so quickly?

Mismatched eyes found themselves in the mirror, and Todoroki stared intensely at the glass, imploring his own reflection for answers.

Does the pain only activate with questions, like some strange cousin of Shinsou’s quirk?  But the pain only happened twice, and Izuku definitely asked more than two questions.

Unfortunately, Todoroki’s reflection seemed just as confused as he was, and offered no solutions.  The glass fogged as Todoroki sighed in frustration.

Is it even the work of a quirk in the first place?  I could just be getting random headaches...  Midoriya did hit me pretty hard.

“Checking yourself out, Todoroki?”  Kirishima’s grinning face joined Todoroki’s in the mirror, creating a pretty decent rendition of the comedy/tragedy mask.  Todoroki stiffened - he hadn’t heard his classmate enter and wasn’t quite in the mood for conversation.  

“I, I wasn’t checking myself out.”  Todoroki felt the strange urge to clarify.  Thankfully, no tendrils of pain began unfurling in his head.  So it's not question-based?

“Sure you weren’t,”  Kirishima grinned even wider.  “Besides, I’m pretty sure that the entire rest of the class has got that covered.  Hell, more like the entire rest of the country.”

Well that was...generous.  “Thanks?”

“Don’t mention it, Pretty Boy.”  Kirishima crowded closer to Todoroki in the mirror, eyes scanning Todoroki’s reflection.  “Damn dude, speaking of that iconic face, what the hell happened to your jaw?  That’s shaping up to be quite the bruise.”

Ah, Kirishima was right - only then did Todoroki notice the throbbing along his jawline.  “I accidentally let my guard down during Midoriya and I’s spar.  It was a stupid mistake.”

Kirishima clapped an arm around Todoroki’s shoulders.  “Don’t be too hard on yourself there, Stud Muffin, everybody loves a guy with some battle scars.  It shows moxie.  Besides, I know exactly what you're talking about.”  Kirishima winked.

Todoroki simply nodded, a bit lost.  

“So tell me, Hot Stuff - or should it be Cold Stuff?  I’m gonna go with Lukewarm Stuff.  So tell me, Lukewarm Stuff, just what did Midoriya do to cost you that bruise?”  He winked again.  Kirishima seemed to like winking.  “My bet is he got hot and took his shirt off.”  

Speaking of getting hot, the air in the room suddenly felt quite oven-like, and Todoroki desperately battled three scrapbooks’ worth of mental images.  Midoriya did tend to shed clothing when warm, a fact that reflected quite poorly on Todoroki’s faint, gay heart.  

Todoroki gripped the sink even tighter, refusing to encourage Kirishima with an answer.  

Kirishima bulldozed on, encouraged.  “Don’t worry, man, there's no shame here.  I of all people understand the deadly combo of shirtlessness and sweat.  It’ll really get ya.  For a while I’d nearly turn Katsuki down if he asked to spar because I knew I'd end up ogling and leave with a game of connect-the-bruises across my body.”  Kirishima hummed.  “Plus he's just really fucking good at hand-to-hand.”

Todoroki didn’t even have a chance to become flustered before that terrifying, now-familiar flutter of nausea laced through his gut.  His jaw throbbed as he grit his teeth in apprehension.

Kirishima seemed to notice his unease.  “Woah, dude, I’m sorry if I went a little too far there.  I really am!”  The nausea grew, becoming just this side of excruciating.  “In my own dumbass way, I was just trying to let you know that I’ve been in your situation and I’d be more than happy to-”

“His pants were tight!”  Todoroki spit out, feeling the nausea recede.  “Midoriya was wearing these ridiculous pants that started clinging everywhere when he sweat, and…”  

A palm swung up to stop Todoroki.  “Say no more, Dreamboat.  We’re more than on the same wavelength.  Katsuki likes to wear these thin tank tops that really fuck me up.”  Kirishima sighed fondly.  “In a good way.”

The mirror, helpfully, supplied Todoroki with knowledge of just how lost he looked, and Kirishima blessedly took mercy.

“I'm oversharing, aren't I?”  He scratched his neck sheepishly.  

Flatly:  “Yes.”

“That's my bad.  Again, I just want you to know that I've been there, and I get it.  I know you like Midoriya for way more than that sort of thing, don't worry.  Mind above the gutter, yeah?”

Todoroki opened his mouth to demand how Kirshima had figured him out, to deflect, to agree - practically anything except what actually came out.  “Not all of the time, no.  I fantasize about Midoriya quite regularly, sometimes even in my dreams.”  

Oh god, oh hell no.  Why did he keep saying stuff like this, stuff that was way too...personal?  And true, disgustingly true.  Kirishima, bless him, just laughed awkwardly.

Todoroki turned red and away from Kirishima, snatching up his things.  “I’m.  I'll be in my room.  Alright bye.”

Kirishima didn't even protest.

Outside of the locker room, Todoroki collapsed against the wall, clutching his water bottle to his heaving chest.

Just what - to reiterate - the actual fuck was going on?

Thanks for reading!  :D

[packernet]

New Post has been published on https://www.packernet.com/blog/2020/01/17/the-nfl-isnt-rigged-were-just-better-than-you/

The NFL Isn't Rigged, We're Just Better Than You

Today’s episode of the Packernet Podcast looks at some news and notes, Shrine practice news, and some of the nonsense being spewed on the Twitters.

Transcript

8s – 1m 8s

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome once again to packernet podcast. I am your host at a resident panelist. That’s always Ryan Schlitz. Check it out online packernet.com. Find me on Twitter Pack underscore data. So today, we’ve got a good amount of stuff to talk about since we clear the board yesterday will follow the normal or today of getting the news and notes. She kind of stuff out of the way first and then getting to the juicy stuff after so there is a little bit of potential free agency news will get to injury news for the Packers and 49ers couple more meetings for the Green Bay Packers at The Shrine Bowl. We’ll talk about those couple of characters had some questions in the Facebook group that I was able to answer and then finally and again, this is a lot so I don’t know if we’re going to get through all of it, but the 49ers fans have been getting a little chippy and also had a Bears fan kind of pop off a little bit and that kind of went a little crazy. So

1m 8s – 2m 8s

Do you know why a big part of the reason I’m able to have a podcast cuz people don’t do the simple stuff like Googling it makes my job so easy because I just walk around and there’s this massive fist fight and I walk up and I’m like well, well what was going on here fellows and they’re like, well, he said this and I think this is what I think this has anybody looked it up and you look kind of threw their information like well, I wonder if there’s some information. Let me Google it. I’ll look here’s information that neither person seems to be bringing up in this argument look through the comments. Nobody’s mentioning. This number was mentioning this nobody looked it up. Nobody 74 comments plus the original fight. Not one person has Googled it. I’m so happy. Thank you so much. It just it just it makes it I’m serious. It makes me so happy. It’s what we call in the industry job security cuz as long as people start screaming about their feels I’m going to be

2m 8s – 2m 10s

how to do this in perpetuity

2m 11s – 3m 11s

There ain’t no end in sight. So by all means please whatever you do. Don’t Google anything. Let me be the ultimate Arbiter of all things. I let me be Google. If you ever have a thought don’t think let me just look it up just think what would pack daddy say and then ask me I’ll Google it and I’ll get the answer and then I’ll sound like a genius. I figured I’d take that route rather than just being condescending. I don’t think it’s pretty good. Right? I mean I was a little condescending but it wasn’t it was like indirectly condescending to baffling though. I don’t know. I had a tweet yesterday that you know, I don’t usually get a lot of traction on Twitter, but if you know, like several hundred retweets pay got the point. I literally do deleted the Tweet cuz I felt bad for the guy for the Bears guy who said something dumb and I like smack them with, you know Google and then I was like several hundred likes and retweets don’t like. Alright. Listen now, it’s just now I just feel bad. Let’s stop cuz that’s that’s the guy I am I’m all about Twitter until something starts to go viral and then I’m like, nope. Delete.

3m 11s – 4m 9s

Not doing this viral stuff. That’s the opposite of what you’re supposed to do, but I don’t care and I understand he’s a Bears fan and he deserved it. But at some point so I can write he gets it. He’s been kicked enough delete. So anyways another great resource by the way for information is the Packer that podcast Facebook groups and make sure you get in there people not afraid to give you their opinion sometimes rudely. So so if you’re into that not most of the time but it occasionally they’ll grow on you just get in there and ask question also packing a podcast Facebook page. So she would like over there something else. That’s cool. And I don’t know how long it’s going to continue but I found a very very cool way to get this these podcast transcribe and that has me so unbelievably excited. I can’t even tell you so as long as I’m able to do what I’m going to do everything I can to trim transcribe all 668 podcast living I deliberately didn’t tell anyone that episode 666 was a few days ago.

4m 10s – 4m 20s

Didn’t want anybody not listening cuz they’re superstitious but I’m going to get them all transcribed why I want the ability to look up stuff. I’ve said in the past go find those clips and be like, here’s what I said.

4m 21s – 5m 21s

Four and a half months ago super excited about that. If you want an example of that. I just posted an article on packernet.com. You can find it. It just has packing a podcast. It was from 2 days ago and there’s a way you can listen to it and then there’s the whole transcription right there. So you’ll actually be able to kind of do that not quite as easily, but if there’s something that I said if I do this and put it all on Packer now, you can say I remember he said this this one time you can search it on packernet and maybe it’ll come up and you’ll find the episode. I don’t know. I just I’m excited about it and I can tell him extra Ramsey today and I apologize what else patreon.com underscored adding a special. Thank you to Quinton for jumping on board with that. Remember I am doing a giveaway at the end of the month. So if you jump in or or give in anyway, $1 is 1 in to be able to go into the packet, I podcast store and take whatever you want one thing only but whatever you want otherwise iTunes 5 * iTunes review or sit review or whatever kind of review would be very greatly appreciated.

5m 21s – 6m 7s

And again, if you’re listening to this podcast look at your phone or whatever device you have if it does not say packernet podcast, please go find the pack and a podcast And subscribe to it. That would help me very much and lastly regardless of what happened Sunday regardless of what happens in the Super Bowl if we win on Sunday, I would just like to encourage you to please stick around because the podcast doesn’t end and the NFL season does not end by the way right after the Superbowl and I promise we’re not going to spend a lot of time on it will spend a little bit of time talking about it, which is probably not good for the XFL because they should be kind of typing this up. You got like 3 weeks dude. How does mr. Hype man? Jim McMahon not know how to Hype up the XFL. I don’t know. I haven’t seen it but the draft

6m 8s – 6m 13s

Free agency all kinds of goody. Anyways, that’s it. Let’s take a break and get a lot of stuff to get through.

6m 15s – 7m 14s

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7m 14s – 8m 14s

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8m 15s – 9m 15s

I’m sorry, that was a low blow but really it’s just it’s it’s the ultimate just relax kind of vacation as much as I love the whole Disney thing and and the go go go theme park stuff. Just get out somewhere where it’s peaceful and you can relax just beautiful outdoor scenery baseball music great food fresh air and air that doesn’t hurt your face. If any of that sound appealing to you. I would encourage you to at least check out visit arizona.com spring training and see if it appeals to you. All right, so we’ll start from least important to most important number one. It is basically and it kind of was a foregone conclusion already, but apparently, you know that the other cool thing about stuff like the shrine game isn’t just the appeal to the draft. It’s the collection of media members and Scouts and everything else and you get certain people next to certain people and rumors start this world when you get some cool fun information apparently both sides.

9m 15s – 10m 15s

Both Le’Veon Bell and the Jets have come to the conclusion that it would be better off if Le’Veon Bell left. So it’s basically done and I get we kind of had a feeling that at the very least the Jets head coach didn’t want and apparently the Jets organization has back their coach and Le’Veon Bell has kind of come to the conclusion as his agent that they don’t want to be there anymore. So that’s something to watch out for now, you know, I don’t think this is going to impact the Packers directly in terms of him coming to Green Bay. That would be silly got a massive contract. The question is where is he going? And is it going to negatively affect us? Cuz the fact of the matter is Le’Veon Bell going to the judge is a good thing because the Jets are far away and we never really see them. Now. The great thing about Le’Veon Bell is he has a mass of contract so that the general thinking is if you’ve got a team with a very expensive quarterback and or a very expensive pass-rusher, you probably not going to want to pay a ton of money for a running back. So if we just thinking of C North we can rule out the pack

10m 15s – 11m 15s

Hours for the most part is that silly and we do have a very expensive quarterback in a fairly expensive pass-rusher. But I mean, you know, not that expensive Khalil Mack what two years ago set the market at like 25 million siderius got 17, but still when you when you couple the two it’s expensive the Minnesota Vikings unless they decide I mean it it just don’t have much money and the end and from what I’m hearing and we’re going to get into it. They’re kind of to the point now where they’re starting to look at cap casualties and bringing on guys like levy on Bell probably wouldn’t be that beneficial cuz they pay a ton of money to Kirk Cousins and there’s not a lot of wiggle room unless they extending which could happen if they extend him essentially they could chop up this fully guaranteed say offer him something that’s a little more flexible, which I’m assuming they could write Kirk Cousins just want a contract of some kind and the Vikings are kind of on the fence. Anyway, I don’t know. I just I don’t think that’s going to make it and they don’t need it right the light.

11m 15s – 12m 15s

Potentially could but they’ve got a guy that they like they have a fairly expensive quarterback. Although who knows what the future holds they’re the only team that maybe semi would make sense of the Bears or the Bears contract situation isn’t very good either and they have Khalil Mack so cuti end up on a team that we end up playing that could hurt us possibly. I don’t think he comes to the NFC North and that’s kind of the only thing I care about I’d like him to stay with the Jets cuz I get there just nothing team and Le’Veon Bell’s career is just going to not going to die there which you know, I don’t wish anything bad on Le’Veon Bell, but you know Packers come first, I’m sorry. He’s making money. That’s ultimately the goal. Right? So he’ll be fine. He’s out in New York is got a bunch of money life is good. He’s not bothering us but he’s probably going to be on the Move will see where he ends up and no he’s not coming to Green Bay the other things by the way to keep in mind is this is a pretty loaded running back draft class. So the Jets have a really tough sell. Here’s this running back who decided that he’s not going to stay with the Steelers win.

12m 15s – 13m 15s

Whether or not that was his fault that it does matter point is that’s going to appeal to not many people then he came here and didn’t produce which could be our fault but it’s still another Mark against him and he has a mass of contract and he’s getting older for a position where you have a very limited shelf-life and there’s a lot of options and running backs typically are cheap. I just I don’t know how you sell Le’Veon Bell. I just don’t it’s got to be a really bad team with a no running back situation in a ton of money and I will explore that a little further. But at this point it’s not that important something that is a little bit more important. It was reported yesterday and end in it. I understand this is one of those things where a columnist and we see this all the time in Green Bay were a writer for the Packers will say I’m speculating that this will happen and then it gets blown up all over the Internet saying this is going to happen right and insiders. It’s not an Insider. It’s just a reporter was going on around here is three things that might happen in the offseason. But anyways, there is a growing belief that the

13m 15s – 14m 15s

Kings after this you will let Riley reiff walk. I’ll be honest that would surprise me a little bit not here sort of the the problem and it’s a problem that a lot of teams have faced in a lot of positions. I think I talked about it yesterday at quarterback. Although I think it was probably at work. So you didn’t hear me say the problem that a lot of teams have is when you get to that point where you’re not worth the money, but we can’t afford to not have you in the Vikings have built a nice little reputation of retaining their guys and being willing to overpay for guys just because we want to keep our guys and the fact of the matter is, you know, if you look at PFF grades Riley reiff might not be the best left tackle, but Riley reiff and Brian O’Neill on the offensive line the left and right tackle are the only guys that grated basically in the seventies, which would me good night and I understand grades especially offensive line people don’t care, but I’m just letting you know the PFF scouting Department if you will has has determined that first of all, the offensive line has somewhat improved, but the only really good offensive linemen are they left?

14m 15s – 15m 14s

Right tackle if you lose your left tackle, you kind of start back at Ground Zero meaning you have to draft a tackle like have two or possibly find somebody in free agency but to find somebody better than Riley reiff for less than the 10 million dollars you have to pay him is basically impossible. So I am just going to go out on a limb and although you know, I would assume this is from the Saint Paul Pioneer Press Mizu mean that they are following this closer probably have maybe possibly some inside information. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that’s not true. Now the way that they phrase this they did this is from Rotoworld said unsurprisingly reefer made one of the least worst left tackles in 2019. I mean again, he’s not great but League’s worst when I guess if there’s only 32, we could be a little loosey-goosey with that phrase PFF greater than as the 30th best tackle in football, which you figure there’s sixty four if you include left and right plus there’s been some guys coming in and out. He’s given up five sacks this year, which isn’t that bad. Brian block is given

15m 15s – 16m 14s

4 by carries give enough to but I mean, that’s bakhtiari. I mean total pressures 25 total pressure is really really low. That’s really low crime blog has given up 26 David bakhtiari is going to 35 pressure. So the sack percentage might be a little bit high as far as total pressure is he does not allow a lot of people to get the cousin he does have eight penalties which is fairly high but bakhtiar, he’s got 11, I mean statistically he’s not that bad. He’s not a very good run-blocker, but nobody is I should say nobody but it’s and it’s a rare quality of amongst offensive lineman in 2020 2019. He’s just he’s not that bad and they look the fact of the matter is 10 million-dollar as much as you might not want to play it for pay it for a guy that’s you know, 30th overall getting a really good tackles hard in the Vikings above it more than anyone maybe except for Seattle should realize how hard it is to acquire a good offense of line. If I’m the Vikings I’m paying Riley reiff the 10 million dollars to keep a and I’m going to work on the interior a little bit, but I hope they’re right because if they lose their

16m 15s – 17m 14s

Tackle, their offensive line is going backwards, even if they nail the first round pick and get a really good one then basically they had to use up a first-round pick just to upgrade their left tackle a little bit. And what is he going to give up three sacks instead of 5 I doubted a rookie left tackle. I doubt it. So, you know by all means going to get rid of them Vikings fans really don’t like their their offensive lineup notice. There’s a lot I can tell you they will but they they think they’ve got the best running back of the VIP quarterback. They are all about the man you get him started on that offensive line and they are real low, maybe not so much Garrett Bradbury because everyone’s excited about the rookies, but specially Riley reforzar, they just despise the guy that’s really weird. But again, that’s fine. Go ahead and call him looking at the injury report. It looks like both teams are pretty much up to full strength as of Wednesday. You had Jimmy Graham and Ryan Grant not practicing for personal reasons. It’ll veteran rest for Jimmy. You had something personal for Ryan Grant otherwise Geronimo

17m 15s – 18m 14s

It was sick as of yesterday though. Everybody was full or limited Preston has limited with an ankle injury, which could be a problem and he’s going to play but it’s something to monitor marcedes Lewis. Just getting that veteran. Allen Lazard is limited with an ankle also. But again, he’s going to play Jimmy just limited to visit vet veteran rest. Can he still resting that back a little bit but we already know he’s going to play play the last time you can play again and then for San Francisco, they did have Dee Ford and George Kittle not practice it Dee Ford is limited. He’s got a quadricep hamstring issues so that they’re just keeping them he’s practicing but he’s limited otherwise Kwon Alexander George Kittles back to full participation Kwon Alexander’s limited with a package you but I’m sure he’s going to be fine. So basically it looks like both teams pending any illnesses or injuries, which by the way it says Geronimo has an illness just get him out. I’m serious. Send him to California now just get him out away from everybody. I don’t want him getting people said we we we I’m dead serious about it. We not sending them to California, but we played with

18m 14s – 19m 14s

Right tackle last week because he got to keep caught a sickness that was going around quarantine, Geronimo Allison get him away from everybody. I don’t need Aaron Rodgers get in this horrible 24-hour flu on Sunday. I’m not even kind of kidding if if Geronimo sick lock him away somewhere until he’s feeling better and then go pressure wash steam clean shampoo the carpet just suck every germ out of the air that you can the multi multi multimillion-dollar operation. Keep the guys healthy, please and thank you. But otherwise he added it doesn’t look like there’s going to be any real big changes going on here. Just I guess. I think his full strength, which is probably the way it should be which is probably part of the reason Matt on Twitter ask me a question about why the line hasn’t move it was at 75 or 7.575 my goodness. Why isn’t a move it it it might have a lot to do with this. Nothing’s changing. You know that they’ve got a lot of information.

19m 14s – 20m 14s

They plugged it into their Vegas super computer came up with 7.5 and in really they’re just kind of waiting on any kind of changes shifts and Amelie’s illness injury and everybody just seems fine. So, you know, if there’s nothing that’s change does no super big reason the line should move by the way man. I don’t know how I missed your last four messages. I didn’t have never I’m just looking at it now, like what? How did I miss that? Don’t even know what you’re referring to sounds bad though. Yeah, that’s that’s that’s kind of all I’ve got that goes out of say he’s insulted by the line in and I wasn’t planning on talking about it now, but since we’re talking about it, let’s let’s bring it up now. So yeah injuries. Nobody’s injured Todd in the Facebook group asked I’m wondering if there’s ever been a 14 and 3 team starting as a touchdown Underdog in NFL playoff history. Well found an answer to that. So let me start by saying there was the last time there was this big of an underdog in the NFC Championship. It was Green Bay Seattle Seattle in this was the 2014 2015 season was

20m 14s – 21m 14s

8 1/2 Point favorite over Green Bay Seattle won that game 2822 in overtime. I’m sure I don’t have to remind you how that game went. But that was the last time we’ve seen this big of an underdog and it was the Green Bay Packers interesting ly enough the time before that there was this big of an underdog it was packers-giants except it was the Giants. So the last three times in the NFC championship game that there has been an underdog of 7 and 1/2 points or more at is involved the Green Bay Packer twice against the Packers once in the Packers favored to answer your question. Neither of these teams were fourteen when teams going into the game the Giants be underdogs were let’s see what they were 13 Winton has been several 13 win. So they they were 10 and 6, but they beat the Buccaneers and the Cowboys. So I guess they were 12 wins in ended up being didn’t get the 14 weeks until they beat the Patriots in the Super Bowl. Let’s put it that way, but they were at 12 winning team and eight point dogs the Packers when they were 8 point underdogs against Seattle worth

21m 14s – 22m 14s

13 winds so they were quite fourteen, but it was kind of talking about the same thing. So basically the last time this has happened the Packers were 13 4/8 Point underdogs against the Seattle Seahawk the time before that you want to hear something super egregious. There was a 12 win Tampa Bay Buccaneers team. They were 14 and 1/2 Point underdogs to the St. Louis Ram every single one of these favors one with the exception of the Green Bay Packers being a point favorites against the giant the giant slot or one that game. I don’t know not looking over at the AFC or the more massive lines against San Diego is a 13 wind team back in 2007. The New England Patriots were 14-point favorite New England did go on to win not by 14, but they won but the only team I can find that had at least 14 wins, and I’m only going back to 2000 and you said by a touchdown cuz even though the line 7 and 1/2. I’m going by your standard, which is 7.40.

22m 14s – 23m 10s

Wins and was a seven-point underdog was the 1999 Tennessee Titans the end of the season 13 and 3 then they went on to beat the bills and the cold and were 15 and 3 going up against the Jacksonville Jaguars. Jacksonville was 7 point favorites in that game. By the way, they lost that game 33 to 14 what other kind of close one the 12:00 and 5 New England Patriots were ten point underdogs to the Pittsburgh Steeler. Not only do they beat the Pittsburgh Steelers 2417. They won the Super Bowl that year. So there you go. That’s what I found. It is fairly rare. It’s one of the few times that it’s really ever happened for a 14 or greater team. Again, the only one I could find since 2000 and we’re talkin about the 99 to 2000 season was Tennessee at Jackson Hennigan. Tennessee went on to. Ali beat Jacksonville. Would absolutely destroy them. So, there you go.

23m 11s – 24m 11s

I also forgot to add after the injury thing. Apparently according to Matt LaFleur. Raven Greene is looking a lot better this week. The Packers are going to give it a couple more days to see how he’s doing. But they do have an open spot on the roster have got 52 guys currently. So they’re they’re leaving a spot open in hopes that he can come back and play I’m always a little skeptical when somebody’s been away this long a special were talking about an offense and a defense that’s been really clicking and in the biggest part of their success comes from things like communication and just really understanding the scheme and all this kind of stuff. I’m sure Raven Greene has been in the meeting rooms and all that but it did that comes with time but you know, they really like Raven Greene. I think I’ve said before Mike Pettine I think is beyond enamored with Raven Greene. He seems to really really like the guy so I think if he’s he’s ready to go they’ll put him in at least situationally, but that’s going to be a wait-and-see thing and it’ll be a couple more days. Probably not today. Maybe tomorrow we’ll get more official word on whether or not he’s going to be activated and then I say

24m 11s – 25m 11s

Do one more thing will look at the shrine. MTG Packers have met with two other prospects. They met with another quarterback this time Princeton quarterback Kevin Davidson 6ft for 2:25. So again, another guy that’s just really really big through for 20 touchdowns set a School record was 7 scoring passes against the Bucknell probably one of the best small-school guys, which kind of makes sense right again of the primary reason that you meet with these guy is to get more information when you’re a small school guy maybe one of the things are doing is you’re trying to understand gauge him mentally, right? Because it’s a massive leap from the mental processing of the college game to the pro was especially when you’re a smaller School quarterback. It’s an even bigger early. So they met with the second time. They met with a quarterback now, so perhaps what they are doing is looking at something they’ve done a lot which is late-round undrafted free agent quarterback trying to find that diamond in the rough quarterback to taysom Hill if you will something that they do a lot

25m 11s – 26m 11s

Do you want to hit on it? And he’s really doing his homework. That’s not to say they’re not going to do a quarterback in the first couple days of the draft. But more than likely again there doing their homework on sort of the later rounds to undrafted type quarterback. Probably looking to refresh our backup roster. Otherwise, they met with Washington State Cougars wide receiver, Desmond Patton, six-foot-four 228. So seems to fit the mold of what the Packers like it wide receiver big tight end looking dude. He was at Washington state with Mike Leach so they had an Air Raid Offense 48 reception 689 yards seven touchdowns this past season through 11 game, but in all for his size of running around to 458 blazing speed, but again, when you’re built like a kind of in between the wide receiver tight end frame in your that big 458 isn’t that bad? Remember davantes like a 455 got which after all these years. He’s probably around four five eight. Now another guy that’s expected to be an undrafted free agent so I can just do Jill due diligence right you go.

26m 11s – 26m 33s

Do this kind of stop? This is something that Ted Thompson by the way was the master up really struggled in the early round, especially the first round I should say, but you get into those later rounds and undrafted free agents and Ted Thompson did a really good job. It just seems like they’re doing a lot of their due diligence here. We take our final break and then we’ll get into some of the more I want to see controversial but argumentative type things.

26m 34s – 27m 34s

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27m 34s – 27m 42s

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27m 43s – 28m 43s

So I had another question from Mr. Ludlow on Twitter and I don’t really have a ton of insights or thoughts behind the information. But since I did the work I figured I’d relay the information to you as well. The question was essentially how often have the Packers lead for the entire game this year until I went looked at it. Here’s what I came up with it in the bottom line is the Packers have had the lead a lot in for a lot of games. They took the lead and never lost it so here is the season and what took place during that sees versus the Bears the Packers trailed three to nothing in the first quarter after that. They took the lead and never lost it against the Vikings. The Packers had to leave the entire game against the Broncos. The Packers had to leave the entire game against the Eagles the Packers went up 13-7 lost the lead at the end of the second quarter got back to at i-27 227 and then lost the lead and lost the game against Dallas. The Packers had to leave the entire game against the Lions hilariously. This happened in both game.

28m 43s – 29m 43s

Packers didn’t have a lead until they were two seconds left in the game. And the other game it was 3 seconds. So in both games combined the Packers had to leave for 5 seconds against the Raiders Oakland lead for eight minutes in the second quarter, but never regained it. So that’s it that 8 minutes of a lead and aside from that. It was a Packers all the way against the Chiefs. The Chiefs did Leaves lead 17 to 14 in the second quarter, but lost that lead at the end of the third and never regained it against the Chargers the Packers were never even close to having a lie. That was just a ridiculous blowout against the Panthers the Panthers lead until the 9-minute mark in the second quarter Packers went up 14 10 in the Panthers never regained lead 49ers game again, they never were close to getting Elite than the Giants the Packers let the whole game the Redskins the Packers let the whole game the Bears the Packers or the whole game against the Vikings the Packers took the lead was two minutes left in the third and just began to pull away from there. And then again the Lions you had the three seconds against the Seahawks Packers led the entire game some of these games kind of interesting things tend to Strike Force.

29m 43s – 30m 43s

And don’t lose the leaf which obviously speak strongly of the defense but it’s is cool because it doesn’t feel like it, you know, just saying the Packers let the whole game against Seattle. It didn’t feel like it but they did but the bottom line is they get into the position of power of control and they maintain control and although it feels out of control and it feels like the Packers are about to lose. It feels really close. Right the Redskins game all that was terrible to think they were in the lead the whole game. I think maybe a lot of this is that things feel more out of control than they are and and it’s relatively true that you know, if if the Packers begin to get a lead the defense kind of gives up, maybe that’s a change in Penn’s play calling to kind of be more conservative which leads to more points, but the point is although it doesn’t feel like it I think a lot of times the Packers are in control for most of or the entire game and although it doesn’t feel like it they are there they take control they maintain control they win the game. So that was an interesting little side project. If you have any thoughts like that you can pass it along to

30m 43s – 31m 43s

Promise I’m going to do it. But if it sounds interesting enough for are interesting enough, I will try it out and I if you are a patron by the way, do you want me to do a project again? I can’t promise it but it’ll probably put your list to the put you to the top of the list of preface it and just let me know because I don’t know your patreon by your Twitter handle or whatever else. So just just say it by the way, I’m on Patron and I want you to do that. Try it out will see. All right. So let’s look at one of the things in this is just tiring right to the Packers are you know always getting helped by the wrap and there’s this chart out there that show something from 2010 to 2019 teams that have been most helped on third down by the rain. It’s it’s really really specific which one you’re super specific is a lot of variables for when it when you’re really broad. There’s a lot of variables but then when you’re oddly specific in a certain way that there’s just too many variables in there and it’s not an honest way to actually ask

31m 43s – 32m 43s

The question very simply. I just took the premise that the Packers are helped by the refs more than any other team and then somebody went on even further to say that while this is because the NFL needs to prop up the Packers because the market can’t sustain itself unless they’re winning. So I just took that promise and said, okay, let’s look at this and see if there are any signs of conspiracy penalties against the least penalized teams in order. Would you like to know what they were the Colts the Panthers the Giants the Dolphins The Bangles the Patriots the Vikings the Chargers the Bears and the Green Bay Packers. Those are the top 10 least penalized team. Like I said package or 9th least it turns out that nevermind. That’s something else we’ll get there. The Packers are penalized 10th lease in the hilarious thing is that the Bears are penalized less and the Vikings are penalized less than two franchises that are always screaming about how the Packers or the rest love the packer.

32m 43s – 33m 43s

Actually penalize less but you can say well no, that’s not what we’re talking about. It’s not that you don’t get penalized me. That’s just that’s just discipline. If you’re not penalized you get the most calls in your favor. Okay. Well luckily for you. I have those numbers as well the biggest beneficiary of play calls. Let’s just do it in order the top 10 ready the most penalties called in their favor the Titans the Falcons the Eagles the Chiefs the Bengals the Broncos the Texans the Lions and the 49ers now if we’re going with the conspiracy theory thing, what is the trend here is it that they love, you know, high-flying teams like the Chiefs the Packers the the Patriots know cuz how do you explain Tennessee Atlanta Cincinnati Denver Houston. Nobody cares about these things Detroit, by the way, the Packers are in the top 10 you want to know which team so here’s the top 10 teams getting the least amount of calls in their favor. The Raiders the Vikings the Redskins.

33m 43s – 34m 43s

Saints the bills the Cowboys the Ravens the Jaguars the Packers and the Rams the ninth least penalties in their favor in the NFL. What conspiracy theory are you talking about? No, I will say relative to the amount of penalties. They get a lot of yard, but that only has to do with the types of penalties that were talking about in terms of penalty yards in their favor, which were talking about a really grand scheme Air Force and I want you to not call a lot of penalties for the Packers so that it doesn’t look Shady but make sure you call a lot of like big play penalties were talking about what pass interference and like personal fouls. 15-yard penalty, whatever but here let’s let’s also be specific in terms of the beneficiary of yards from penalties top 10. Here’s the list ready not Packers number one hits the Steelers then the Titans and the Dolphins then the Falcons and the Eagles and the Broncos and the Cardinals then the Colts.

34m 43s – 34m 47s

Then the Packers than the Bangles there’s no correlation here.

34m 48s – 35m 48s

There’s nothing that points to any kind of grand scheme or to even first of all conspiracy. Theories are dumb just from the standpoint of how many people have to be involved without saying anyting the fact that we believe that this has been rigged and you got players and coaches and Reps and people that have come and gone and not one person has decided to write a book that would make him a multi multi millionaire saved. By the way. I have inside information. We used to rig games. Not one person has come out and said that can you break we how much money do you think these refs make them? It’s a good amount of money. But if you’re making $200 a year and you can sell a book it makes you about 20 million dollars. I’m thinking you might pull the trigger bottom line is it just isn’t there? And by the way, we were talking about a lot of yards. We’re talking about 9ish yards per penalty on average when the Packers have a penalty in their favor. It’s almost ten yard on average which when you have a quarterback that likes to throw the ball deep you’re going to get a lot more penalties that are

35m 48s – 36m 48s

Pass interference penalties that are further down the field which really Rex this average has nothing to do with the conspiracy. It has to do with the fact that more of their penalties are big yardage penalty probably coming by way of pass interference so that the information is right here. It’s readily available and it’s listening it varies. I looked at this is called NFL penalties., They’ve got a really comprehensive list of stuff PFF has slightly different numbers are there was another side I look at it. Don’t remember slightly different numbers, but I’m at work talking about a variation of penalties called against the Packers between 100 and 103. Probably some kind of a discrepancy between in a whether it was accepted or what. I don’t know exactly how you mess up counting these but whatever it’s it’s a very small variation and in no way is there ever going to be a site that you can find. This is the Packers are the least penalized team and have the most penalties going in their favor and then the argument devolves into anecdotal evidence while there was that one play dude. Let me tell you right now for all the

36m 48s – 37m 48s

Bears and Vikings and lions fans that want to complain about the Packer if the only bad call that win against your team was against the Packers. I think the rest are biased in your favor if that’s the only thing that happened to you. And by the way, if it’s not the only bad call then you’re a liar you’re lying because you know bad calls go for and against you all year long because the referees don’t do if super great job all the time and pretty much every single game you wash is a controversial call every single one including last week. The Seattle Seahawks fumble the ball the Packers clearly recovered they gave the ball back to Seattle because they said we couldn’t quite clearly see it even though you can clearly see the guy recover it and then it’s blurry and then at the end of it the guy who recovered it handed the ball to the ref meeting. He still had it but we don’t have any clear evidence that could have easily lost the Packers the game. Does anybody care know because we’re at a point to that one time when I guess the Lions you had one of their pass-rushers constantly pushing up into David bakhtiari is neck. What a day.

37m 48s – 38m 48s

Technically touches face mask even though you can see he’s pushing up into his head and his head is jerked backwards and David bakhtiari. By the way was talking to refs a Duke watch. This guy keeps pushing my head back. And so the rest saw him do it and I got another anecdotal think there was a fumble by a packer I think on on a kickoff you fumble the ball in the Bears are covered until I call that was a clear recovery, but they said it was a hit to the head or something. I don’t know but the point is USA live action and tell me that that doesn’t look like a hit to the head. Of course it never even agree just calls against the Packers. These are all calls that in in really quick time that you’re just watching it. You don’t slow down and I don’t watch it seventy-five thousand times and you was like little technology and everything else to try to see specifically where it was and how technically kinda sorta it is a good call. I don’t know of any super agree just calls against the Packers. I’m sure there have been some but again, it happens to everybody and if you’re saying the only bad call you’ve had was against the Packers then I think the rest.

38m 48s – 39m 48s

Bias in your favor cuz it’s half of the Packers a lot and it’s happened. A lot of other teams. A lot of us watched it happen every time I watch a game it’s happening and I got the fact that we keep here at all member that one time like do do you remember last week or the week before that or the week before that? Why are you lying pretending? You don’t see these thing fact of the matter is the Vikings lost. The Bears are now garbage again in the lions are still guarded and the best argument you have about why the Packers don’t deserve to be where they are is because the refs have had a couple bad calls in their favor and we’re going to pretend that it’s somewhat agree just going to pretend they get less calls anybody else and more calls in their favor than anybody else ever attended. Our team doesn’t have any calls go in our favor and just lie lie, lie, lie lie to create up this this completely indefensible lie that the Packers have this relationship with the Packers cuz you don’t Aaron Rodgers hug the rest before a game which by the way lots of coaches and players know these guys, especially veterans Tom Brady’s doing the same thing not because they’re best friends then maybe

39m 48s – 40m 47s

Because they’ve gone back a long way. These refs have been here for the same 15-20 years that Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers have yes, they know each other by the way, a lot of Packers players shake hands with players on other team has no collusion there. They just know each other. They’re shaking hands like hey, whatsup? So stop lying stop crying. Stop trying to make excuses that all three teams in the NFC North. Day in the Packers have potential Lions. No less than most but you got money and you got early draft picks and you can turn this thing around 49ers did it but if you keep spending all your time Looking Backward, you’re not going anywhere you spend some of your energy focusing on how to fix things out next year. You can be better than the Packers actually beat them this this defeatist victim mentality, but we can’t get ahead because of the worlds out to get us, you know, how pathetic that is. We’re not winning cuz the refs Trey’s rig man in the system is rigged, you know, you’re a loser but this was not rigged nothing’s rigged. But because your face

40m 48s – 41m 48s

Lunges cuz you have obstacles look really supposed to be a better play do a better job in coverage sack the quarterback. It’s in your control. If the entire argument for your team comes down to a half an inch. But by the way, he at 100% had a first down maybe you just didn’t do enough in life and in football making lame excuses in blaming Society or the refs or whatever else you’re not going anywhere. I promise you you go nowhere in life grow up if you want something go get it. If you want your team to get better. It’s not going to be from Looking Backward and say it’s a joke. That’s fine. I get it. I played along with the joke the Packers in the wraps and hahaha. That’s funny. If you actually believe it that’s pathetic the fact that you actually have to go to conspiracy theories to help you sleep at night to believe that your team isn’t actually that bad and the Pea.

41m 48s – 42m 48s

Aren’t that good? Because it hurts your feelings so much. It hurts your emotional state of mind so much to actually believe the Packers are a good team. We’ve got to come up with their frauds and and they cheat and that is so pathetic. How do you verbalize these things and not feel like less of a human being for actually saying these things out loud. It’s so embarrassing and I joke around say about the Patriots but it’s a joke. So good football team the granted they have cheated in the past, but it’s not going to lie. I Promise You The Bangles could record anything and everything that they want. They’re not winning Super Bowls Of course, it’s a good team. Of course Bill Belichick is a good coach. Of course Brady’s a good quarterback is the difference between joking around and teasing and having like a fun little rivalry and actually believing that the NFL is rigged against your team. And that’s why they can’t go to get ahead. Now, you’re just supporting incompetence. Your team is bad because your GM is trash cuz your coach is not good enough cuz your quarterback is to

42m 48s – 43m 27s

Stop blaming. Everything else have higher expectations for your team drives me nuts. And yes, I’m I’m half talking about football and 1/2 talking about life in general cuz I’m just tired of hearing it is out to get you man up get a life already crying all day long Twitter is just crying crying crying attacking and crying attacking and crying. I seriously did delete that tweet cuz everybody just wants to buy a lot of sarkic of the guys, like look. I just wanted to give some information. This is getting stupid. Now, there’s no reason for that. There’s no reason for him to say stuff that is fake and lying and crying and being a whiny little baby about the Packers are cheaters in the Packer fans are bragging about it.

43m 28s – 44m 23s

What’s a pack of ants coming into just kick him in the face over and over again is like this is I’m out of here. This is weird and horrible kicking and crying. That’s all Twitter is I can’t get ahead. And by the way, I hope you die. If I could say it was a tagline for Twitter. That would be it life’s unfair and I hope you die Twitter and again Google does exist. So feel free to find this information out yourself before you start whining and crying about how hard it is and it’s not fair Google it by the way the argument that the Packers have a small market and this is the favorite special Chicago Bears fans because everything is wrapped up in the fact that there are big city and they think that just afford them some kind of credibility. I don’t know what it is, but you know, they they’re just annoyed with how much in love with people tend to be with people from Wisconsin with the state with the Packers me to talk about Wisconsin and Green Bay and whatever else people

44m 28s – 45m 28s

Me too, cuz I like dude big city supposed to love us. We’re supposed to be the best in Soviet the argument of all their this tiny little Backwoods. Redneck bababababa. They can support themselves. I hate to tell you this Hoss the Packers brought in more money in 2019 than the Bears did this small tiny little market has no problem sustaining itself because how do you make money while you sell jerseys and things right? You can sell merchandise you think the Packers have a problem with that then one of the largest fan bases around the world you sell tickets, which the Packers sell out and despite the size of the Town. What we’re talking about now is not selling out tickets in the town. We’re talkin about selling tickets in the stadium. They have one of the bigger stadiums in terms of size and they sell it out which means Revenue also, there’s television and because they are good and yes just has to do with them being good witch could technically support your argument, but there’s no reason to because anybody could be good and then make that much money, but they get a lot of prime time.

45m 28s – 46m 28s

Television Revenue, right they they draw audiences. So if you wanted to make an argument, it wouldn’t be that there was a small Market if you’re trying to follow this conspiracy theory thing. It has nothing to do with a small Market what you would say is because they have a massive fanbase and the NFL wants to capitalize off that they want to prop up this massive fanbase but Bears fans can’t get themselves to say that because that takes away everything that they believe it’s the last thing they have to hold on to it was this big city they have and as I’ve said a thousand times I got this little man complex because I’m not nobody cares about Chicago. Nobody cares about their food. Nobody cares about the size of their City. Everybody talks about New York and La nobody talks about Chicago or cares about it. Nobody goes on vacation to Chicago. They go to New York to go to La they go to all kinds of big city to go to go to Dallas and Houston and Austin all the biggest 75 big giant cities in Texas. You might even go to Atlanta typically people are not going to be like who I want to go on a vacation to Chicago cuz the only thing anybody ever knows about Chicago the only thing you guys get credit for is a massive amount of shooting.

46m 28s – 47m 27s

You have sorry man. That’s just the way it is and you have a smaller fan base than the Green Bay Packers and your team despite having a massive market and a massive amount of money in your city actually bring it less money than the Packers do so you can argue this if you’re willing to acknowledge that the Packers have a bigger Market. I’m talking about in terms of revenue from the fan base than the Bears do what you’re not going to do that are you cuz that hurts your feels too much. I know I get it. Anyways, there was another question and another argumentative thing that happened on Twitter, but also not only out of time but I’m getting a little too riled up for my own good. So I will just leave it at that. She’d like to do me one more favor for the day. Please don’t pollute Twitter with kicking and crying please find something else to do go get excited about the Packers in a way that is not yelling at 49ers fans ignore them. He wanted to be want to make a mad. The easiest way to do that is to just brag about your team. It’ll drive them.

47m 28s – 47m 34s

Insane let them go off and be bad people. That’ll be our goal for today. No crying, and no kicking.

47m 35s – 47m 42s

You want to do a little bit in the Facebook group? That’s fine. Anyways, you folks have ourselves a fantastic day. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Have a good one. Bye. Bye.

[canaryatlaw]

Alright, I’m sitting on a train heading home from nyc to my parents’ place. Today’s been wild, to put it mildly, lol, so lots to explain there. To begin, my alarm went off at 3:45 am this morning, at which point I had to convince myself that I did actually want to get out of bed, then proceeded to do so and get dressed, throw my toothbrush in my bag and confirm that Jess was ready to go before calling the Uber. It was a few minutes out but I wanted to be ready, so I walked down the stairs in my apartment building and about three steps short of the bottom my brain somehow short-circuited, probably because I was still half asleep, and decided that there were no more steps there, so instead of walking down the rest of the steps I just took a giant plunge forward which landed me smacking my knees into the ground just in front of the door with a giant OW. My first observation though was relief it was just my knees that hurt from getting smacked and not any other parts of my body (like a foot or wrist that are known to break) that had been injured and could’ve been a much bigger issue. Don’t need one of those derailing the day to say the least, the amount of ice that’s been on the ground lately has made me really skittish about slipping and falling outside so that’s been on my mind a lot.

But I picked myself up and proceeded to actually leave the building and enter the Uber that pulled up a minute later. Picked Jess up and was on our way to the airport. I rolled my sweatpants up to check my knees, I had a fairly large scrape on my left one but my right one was ok, it wasn’t really bleeding though thankfully and I’m prepared for everything so I had bandaids and bacitracin within reaching distance. So I patched myself up a bit and we were on our way. Made it to the airport and since we had our boarding passes printed out and weren’t checking any bags (we were flying Spirit so just doing a backpack each) we just went straight to security, which proved to be a bit of a longer work than initially predicted, but once we got through successfully we saw we had no need to worry because the plane was not going anywhere fast lol. We ended up being a bit delayed, and then there was a whole hoopla where the lady on the speaker initially said we needed 23 people to switch to another flight that was leaving soon after and that there was gonna be a $250 voucher available for every person that switched, which led to a large amount of people rushing over to try to claim this, only to be followed up with a minute later that oh wait, actually there’s no voucher available but we still needed 23 people to switch to another flight. So naturally that put a bit of a damper on people’s willingness, but eventually we figured it out and actually did get onboard. Once we were onboard the pilot got on the speaker and explained that the issue had been that they had overfilled our plane’s fuel tank and that instead of removing fuel they instead transferred the weight of the extra fuel (apparently about 23 people’s worth) to another flight to make up for it, which made a lot more sense because I was like even for Spirit overbooking a flight by 23 people is wildly irresponsible, so I felt better knowing that didn’t occur. Once we were in the air I took out my make up bag and proceeded to do my make up, and when I was done with that I just closed my eyes while listening to music and didn’t sleep but at least rested my eyes for most of the trip. We ended up making decent time, got there at like 9:20 when our initial landing time was supposed to be 9, so not bad.

Once on the ground we headed to the nearest bathroom where we both changed our sweatpants into jeans and Jess did some make up before we left. Headed to the taxis (because easier that Ubers in NY) and gave them the address for Juniors, which was serving breakfast until 10:45, and headed there. The ride wasn’t bad, had to eat the midtown tunnel toll which was like $6 but that was unavoidable. But we got there pretty soon and waited for about ten minutes before getting seated and having breakfast. I had an omelet for the first time in quite a while, not because I don’t like omelets (because I do) but generally when given the option I preferred something breadier and sweeter (so pretty much waffles and French toast, occasionally with pancakes thrown in) but they had a corned beef omelet and you can’t get that every day so I went for that. They were good and fast of course, they know what their gig is and they play it well. After that we headed out and ended up going to a stuffed animal store on the corner that apparently was featuring the stuffed animals from the members of BTS which Jess is like obsessively against (she’s an anti-fan, basically) so we had to go and check that out and see all the very, very weird products they had (and they were very weird) and eventually took a picture with a giant teddy bear at the front of the store. We didn’t have much else to do at that point so we went to the Forever 21 in Times Square and ran around there for a while, Jess grabbed a few things and while we were checking out there were like best friends matching keychains that we were joking at and we were like oh if they were something more relevant to us maybe we’d get them, and under them they just had normal keychains of like a pineapple I lifted one of them which revealed an avocado keychain which then caused us to freak out because this was clearly Fate, so now we own best friend avocado keychains that weren’t supposed to be a best friend thing but they are now.

Once we finished there we really didn’t have anywhere else to go, so we ended up just chilling in the Starbucks on 47th until it was closer to the show time at which point we walked to the theatre on 43rd and stood in line briefly before getting to our seats. We were in the literal last row of the orchestra, where I have been before but have never complained about because I knew the important part was being in the orchestra to begin with, even the last row are good seats. And then it was time for the play (a bit of a change since we generally do musicals, but for Harry Potter you change things up) and so we were off. When the script had been released I had heard reports that it was very weird and a lot of people didn’t like it, but I had it on good authority that the play version was worth watching, so there we were. And oh, it was very much worth watching.

Heavy spoilers from here on, obviously, because I’m gonna freak out about how good it was now. Like, agh, all of it was done so well. I totally see how it wouldn’t transfer to paper well in the means where people were expecting to read it like a novel but plays aren’t meant to be read they’re meant to be performed, and this definitely needed to be performed to reach its full artistic genius. The technical effects were excellent, but unlike shows like King Kong and Spider-Man (the musical!) the effects didn’t far outshine the story but only served to elevate the story (as they should). They used music for a lot of the transitions, not unlike a musical except of course nobody’s going to start singing at some point. Everything was done very smoothly and they often left you with a “how did they do that....” as the scene goes on (and I mean, I’ve seen a lot of effects, but there were several I was quite taken with). Storywise of course I’ll only go through this for the first half of the show since it’s split into two actually separate shows (like first starts at 2 second starts at 7:30, each of which had an act one and act two). Okay so, act one. We open on the well-known scene that is pretty much all we know about the future of the HP-verse up until this point: the epilogue. We see Albus Severus talk nervously about potentially getting sorted into slytherin, then goes on the train with his cousin Rose (Granger-Weasley). Much like the opening of the original (as Rose points out was where their parents met) they come across one Scorpius Malfoy in his train compartment. I hadn’t imagined Scorpius as much other than existing from the epilogue up until this moment, yet I instantly recognized he was nothing like what I would’ve expected from him and was also 100% as he should be. The actor playing him was fucking hilarious but made it work with so much more than just the funny lines. So Rose gets sorted into gryffindor and Albus gets sorted into slytherin, where him and Scorpius become best friends. There’s also the establishment of a crucial plot point, being that there were rumors that Draco couldn’t get his wife pregnant and to keep the Malfoy line going they used a time turner to go have a love child with Voldemort and Scorpius is actually Voldemort’s child, something he gets teased about and Draco is trying to get Harry to tell people the ministry destroyed all the time turners but Harry won’t get involved.

We get shown a few scenes indicating the passing of the years, Albus having a deteriorating relationship with his father who can’t seem to relate to his middle son, up until right before he’s starting his 4th year. Harry, who works for the ministry, gets a visit at home from old Mr Diggory who is fairly unhinged and is begging Harry to use the time turner that just showed up at the ministry to go save Cedric. Albus is listening from the stairs in the back and gets introduced to Delphi, Diggory’s niece who is taking care of him in his old age. The scene ends, Albus and Harry have a fight where not nice things are said (mostly by Harry), Albus decides on the train the next day he was done with this crap and convinces Scorpius to abscond with him on a mission to steal the timeturner and go save Cedric. Now, some character commentary. Albus and Scorpius are fucking great together. From the first scene I legit just leaned over to Jess and was like GAYYYYYYYYYY because they’re legit just the entire plot and all of it was just them basically being in love with each other (🤷🏻‍♀️).

So the show up at the old wizard’s center Diggory is at And they run into Delphi who they conscript into their adventure to save her cousin. They manage to break into the ministry and do manage to steal the time turner, where they plan to go back to the first task of the tri-Wizard tournament which is of course flawed thinking because they only would’ve needed to intervene in the last one, but there had to be a whole show here. So they go back and interfere, they steal his wand and when they come back Ron and Hermione aren’t married and Albus is sorted into gryffindor, apparently the result of some prodding from Ron’s son he had had with Padma Patil. Meanwhile there’s parental angst and Harry tries to keep them apart because he thinks Scorpius is a bad influence on Albus. So these lovable dorks are like let’s go back again and interfere with the second task (again, not the point), but when they get back Albus is gone and Scorpius is greeted by headmaster Umbridge, who explains Harry died at the battle of hogwarts and the wizarding world is under Voldemort’s control, close curtain end of part one. So that was wild.

After the show we went back to Juniors and had more food, then ended up going back to the theatre because it was cold outside and back to the story because that’s where we wanted to be. Meanwhile in the theatre they had switched all the merch and stuff over to the dark insignia (not the traditional dark mark, a new snake thingy) because it’s all under that now. So the play opens, everything’s very militaristic, under a despot, and Scorpius is VERY STRESSED, he keeps getting hassled because he was asking about Harry, and talking about Cedric, where he is able to find out Cedric was so humiliated by his terrible loss in the second task of the triwizard tournament he went down a dark path and became a deatheater, but “wasn’t even very effective because he only killed one wizard, some loser named Neville Longbottom.” Oh. The future of the free world rests on Neville Longbottom. That tracks. So he eventually goes to Snape who’s still a teacher at the school and spills everything, including him knowing about Snape loving Lily from the other world, which leads Snape to take him into the room of requirement (didn’t spell that right) where we find Ron and Hermione and that’s about it, there’s a whole confrontation with the dementors which they did much more effectively than the movies, that basically led to all the adults sacrificing their lives in this reality so Scorpius can go set it right in the real world (at which point I was like legends season 2 finale much??), which he manages to do and yay Albus is back! So everything is good except Harry’s scar has been hurting and there’s some issue going on.

So they make the adults think they lost the time turner but Scorpius then reveals he had it and wouldn’t give it back to the adults because they would just lie and keep it again and since he had seen the true horror he knew they had to destroy it. So Albus sends an owl to Delphi because she was there with them to begin with and she should be there to see them destroy it, and manages to get the time turner from them and upon hearing of the alternate reality Scorpius was telling of she reveals she’s actually the child of Voldemort and is actually a very powerful witch who takes them back to the night of the final task of the tournament where they’re supposed to be stop Cedric from winning so he’ll become a deatheater, something about a prophecy, she’s crucio’ing Scorpius so Albus will comply but they manage to get away from her, for a second ACTUAL CEDRIC shows up and gets her away and I swear to fuck I fucking cried it was beautiful and so I’m home now and didn’t mean to get into explaining this much plot shit because as you can see it gets quite complicated and takes a lot to explain but we’re here now so I guess we’re going the rest of the way home. So the boys are missing again and parents are distraught again, they manage to foil her plans for that night but then she grabs them and takes them to a day and then smashes the time turner so they’re stuck. Meanwhile parents figure out who Delphi is and they go to her room which looks normal but when you turn the lights out there’s like glow in the dark words written all over about the prophecy except instead of just being on her walls they were all over the entire theatre like under the balcony right back where we were sitting EVERYWHERE it was so good and also Harry was having weird flashback dreams that never happened that mostly just consisted of him going weird places with the Dursley’s but one of them was at his parents’ graves and there was a jump scare that scared the shit out of both of us, so that was fun.

So boys figure out they’re stuck the day before Voldemort tries to kill Harry as a baby so they figure Delphi’s gonna stop him from getting destroyed, so they stake it out and with some creative choices they manage to get a message back to Harry and everyone about where they are and Draco reveals his dad had been hoarding a much better quality time turner (at which point I just leaned over and was like “a very potter sequel?”) so the adults (meaning Harry, Ginny, Ron, Hermione, and Draco) all go back and find the boys and make a plan to corner Delphi when she shows up, but then they figure she’s waiting for Voldy to show so she can introduce herself, so Harry transfigures into Voldy and tricks her into where they all were except it starts failing at the last minute and so they’re fighting and at first she manages to lock everyone else out so it’s just her and Harry and she got his wand so he’s fucked but Albus is tiny and like climbs through a grate in the floor (they’re supposed to be in the old church in Godric’s Hollow), gets his dad his wand back and lets everyone else back into the fight where they defeat her. It was revealed when she was talking to fake Voldy that apparently she was the love child of Voldemort and Bellatrix LeStrange born before the battle of hogwarts and raised by Rodolphus LeStrange when he was apparently let out of Azkaban (because that happened for some reason) and was basically confunding old man Diggory and tricking everybody into thinking she was his niece and nurse (there was a confrontation with Draco and Harry and Diggory where they’re like “we know they’re with your niece!!” and Diggory is like “I don’t have a niece, I was an only child and so was my wife????”) and then once they have her defeated actual Voldy comes in and they have to watch his parents get killed (we hear it and see them watching) which was very sad. But then they get back to the present where they get yelled at a lot by McGonagall (well-deserved) and then some eventual cheering and improvement in father-son relationships for both boys and like, I’m sure the plot I just explained sounded really nuts but it was honestly such a sweet and sincere story that was so incredibly well-executed. If Angels in America hadn’t been playing on broadway last year, I’m convinced they would’ve swept the (play) Tonys, and while AiA won the actor focused awards (for best leading and featured as Andrew Garfield and Nathan Lane, because of course), cursed child won for best play, best director, scenic design, costume design, lighting design, and sound design, which is honestly a huge feat in itself so they should be very proud, though I maintain Scorpius’ performance very much deserved a Tony (upon consulting with British friends since almost all the main cast was taken from the original west end production the actor did in fact with the Olivier for the role so that brought me comfort). But yeah, that was wild.

And since then, we left, walked back to penn, chilled at shake shack until the train was ready to go, rode the train home where I started writing this, and I’ve since gotten off the train, into an Uber, back to my parents house, got ready for bed, and am now sitting on my bed with the lights out ready to go to sleep as soon as I finish writing this, it’s almost 2 am so I think it’s safe to say this is a good spot to finish. Goodnight loves. Hope you had a wonderful Saturday as well.

[nedsvallesny]

How Not to Acknowledge a Data Breach

I’m not a huge fan of stories about stories, or those that explore the ins and outs of reporting a breach. But occasionally I feel obligated to publish such accounts when companies respond to a breach report in such a way that it’s crystal clear they wouldn’t know what to do with a data breach if it bit them in the nose, let alone festered unmolested in some dark corner of their operations.

And yet, here I am again writing the second story this week about a possibly serious security breach at an Indian company that provides IT support and outsourcing for a ridiculous number of major U.S. corporations (spoiler alert: the second half of this story actually contains quite a bit of news about the breach investigation).

On Monday, KrebsOnSecurity broke the news that multiple sources were reporting a cybersecurity breach at Wipro, the third-largest IT services provider in India and a major trusted vendor of IT outsourcing for U.S. companies. The story cited reports from multiple anonymous sources who said Wipro’s trusted networks and systems were being used to launch cyberattacks against the company’s customers.

Wipro asked for several days to investigate the request and formulate a public comment. Three days after I reached out, the quote I ultimately got from them didn’t acknowledge any of the concerns raised by my sources. Nor did the statement even acknowledge a security incident.

Six hours after my story ran saying Wipro was in the throes of responding to a breach, the company was quoted in an Indian daily newspaper acknowledging a phishing incident. The company’s statement claimed its sophisticated systems detected the breach internally and identified the affected employees, and that it had hired an outside digital forensics firm to investigate further.

Less than 24 hours after my story ran, Wipro executives were asked on a quarterly investor conference call to respond to my reporting. Wipro Chief Operating Officer Bhanu Ballapuram told investors that many of the details in my story were in error, and implied that the breach was limited to a few employees who got phished. The matter was characterized as handled, and other journalists on the call moved on to different topics.

At this point, I added a question to the queue on the earnings conference call and was afforded the opportunity to ask Wipro’s executives what portion(s) of my story was inaccurate. A Wipro executive then proceeded to read bits of a written statement about their response to the incident, and the company’s chief operating officer agreed to have a one-on-one call with KrebsOnSecurity to address the stated grievances about my story. Security reporter Graham Cluley was kind enough to record that bit of the call and post it on Twitter.

In the follow-up call with Wipro, Ballapuram took issue with my characterization that the breach had lasted “months,” saying it had only been a matter of weeks since employees at the company had been successfully phished by the attackers. I then asked when the company believed the phishing attacks began, and Ballapuram said he could not confirm the approximate start date of the attacks beyond “weeks.”

Ballapuram also claimed that his corporation was hit by a “zero-day” attack. Actual zero-day vulnerabilities involve somewhat infrequent and quite dangerous weaknesses in software and/or hardware that not even the maker of the product in question understands before the vulnerability is discovered and exploited by attackers for private gain.

Because zero-day flaws usually refer to software that is widely in use, it’s generally considered good form if one experiences such an attack to share any available details with the rest of the world about how the attack appears to work — in much the same way you might hope a sick patient suffering from some unknown, highly infectious disease might nonetheless choose to help doctors diagnose how the infection could have been caught and spread.

Wipro has so far ignored specific questions about the supposed zero-day, other than to say “based on our interim investigation, we have shared the relevant information of the zero-day with our AV [antivirus] provider and they have released the necessary signatures for us.”

My guess is that what Wipro means by “zero-day” is a malicious email attachment that went undetected by all commercial antivirus tools before it infected Wipro employee systems with malware.

Ballapuram added that Wipro has gathered and disseminated to affected clients a set of “indicators of compromise,” telltale clues about tactics, tools and procedures used by the bad guys that might signify an attempted or successful intrusion.

Hours after that call with Ballapuram, I heard from a major U.S. company that is partnering with Wipro (at least for now). The source said his employer opted to sever all online access to Wipro employees within days of discovering that these Wipro accounts were being used to target his company’s operations.

The source said the indicators of compromise that Wipro shared with its customers came from a Wipro customer who was targeted by the attackers, but that Wipro was sending those indicators to customers as if they were something Wipro’s security team had put together on its own.

So let’s recap Wipro’s public response so far:

-Ignore reporter’s questions for days and then pick nits in his story during a public investor conference call. -Question the stated timing of breach, but refuse to provide an alternative timeline. -Downplay the severity of the incident and characterize it as handled, even when they’ve only just hired an outside forensics firm. -Say the intruders deployed a “zero-day attack,” and then refuse to discuss details of said zero-day. -Claim the IoCs you’re sharing with affected clients were discovered by you when they weren’t.

WHAT DID THE ATTACKERS DO?

The criminals responsible for breaching Wipro appear to be after anything they can turn into cash fairly quickly. A source I spoke with at a large retailer and Wipro customer said the crooks who broke into Wipro used their access to perpetrate gift card fraud at the retailer’s stores.

I suppose that’s something of a silver lining for Wipro at least, if not also its customers: An intruder that was more focused on extracting intellectual property or other more strategic assets from Wipro’s customers probably could have gone undetected for a much longer period.

A source close to the investigation who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the news media said the company hired by Wipro to investigate the breach dated the first phishing attacks back to March 11, when a single employee was phished.

The source said a subsequent phishing campaign between March 16 and 19 netted 22 additional Wipro employees, and that the vendor investigating the incident has so far discovered more than 100 Wipro endpoints that were seeded with ScreenConnect, a legitimate remote access tool sold by Connectwise.com. Investigators believe the intruders were using the ScreenConnect software on the hacked Wipro systems to connect remotely to Wipro client systems, which were then used to leverage further access into Wipro customer networks.

Additionally, investigators found at least one of the compromised endpoints was attacked with Mimikatz, an open source tool that can dump passwords stored in the temporary memory cache of a Microsoft Windows device.

The source also said the vendor is still discovering newly-hacked systems, suggesting that Wipro’s systems are still compromised, and that additional hacked endpoints may still be undiscovered within Wipro.

Wipro has not yet responded to follow-up requests for comment.

I’m sure there are smart, well-meaning and capable people who care about security and happen to work at Wipro, but I’m not convinced any of those individuals are employed in leadership roles at the company. Perhaps Wipro’s actions in the wake of this incident merely reflect the reality that India currently has no laws requiring data owners or processors to notify individuals in the event of a breach.

Overall, I’m willing to chalk this entire episode up to a complete lack of training in how to deal with the news media, but if I were a customer of Wipro I’d be more than a little concerned about the tone-deaf nature of the company’s response thus far.

As one follower on Twitter remarked, “openness and transparency speaks of integrity and a willingness to learn from mistakes. Doing the exact opposite smacks of something else entirely.”

In the interests of openness, here are some indicators of compromise that Wipro customers are distributing about this incident (I had to get these from one of Wipro’s partners as the company declined to share the IoCs directly with KrebsOnSecurity).

from Technology News https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/04/how-not-to-acknowledge-a-data-breach/

[jennifersnyderca90]

How Not to Acknowledge a Data Breach

I’m not a huge fan of stories about stories, or those that explore the ins and outs of reporting a breach. But occasionally I feel obligated to publish such accounts when companies respond to a breach report in such a way that it’s crystal clear they wouldn’t know what to do with a data breach if it bit them in the nose, let alone festered unmolested in some dark corner of their operations.

And yet, here I am again writing the second story this week about a possibly serious security breach at an Indian company that provides IT support and outsourcing for a ridiculous number of major U.S. corporations (spoiler alert: the second half of this story actually contains quite a bit of news about the breach investigation).

On Monday, KrebsOnSecurity broke the news that multiple sources were reporting a cybersecurity breach at Wipro, the third-largest IT services provider in India and a major trusted vendor of IT outsourcing for U.S. companies. The story cited reports from multiple anonymous sources who said Wipro’s trusted networks and systems were being used to launch cyberattacks against the company’s customers.

Wipro asked for several days to investigate the request and formulate a public comment. Three days after I reached out, the quote I ultimately got from them didn’t acknowledge any of the concerns raised by my sources. Nor did the statement even acknowledge a security incident.

Six hours after my story ran saying Wipro was in the throes of responding to a breach, the company was quoted in an Indian daily newspaper acknowledging a phishing incident. The company’s statement claimed its sophisticated systems detected the breach internally and identified the affected employees, and that it had hired an outside digital forensics firm to investigate further.

Less than 24 hours after my story ran, Wipro executives were asked on a quarterly investor conference call to respond to my reporting. Wipro Chief Operating Officer Bhanu Ballapuram told investors that many of the details in my story were in error, and implied that the breach was limited to a few employees who got phished. The matter was characterized as handled, and other journalists on the call moved on to different topics.

At this point, I added a question to the queue on the earnings conference call and was afforded the opportunity to ask Wipro’s executives what portion(s) of my story was inaccurate. A Wipro executive then proceeded to read bits of a written statement about their response to the incident, and the company’s chief operating officer agreed to have a one-on-one call with KrebsOnSecurity to address the stated grievances about my story. Security reporter Graham Cluley was kind enough to record that bit of the call and post it on Twitter.

In the follow-up call with Wipro, Ballapuram took issue with my characterization that the breach had lasted “months,” saying it had only been a matter of weeks since employees at the company had been successfully phished by the attackers. I then asked when the company believed the phishing attacks began, and Ballapuram said he could not confirm the approximate start date of the attacks beyond “weeks.”

Ballapuram also claimed that his corporation was hit by a “zero-day” attack. Actual zero-day vulnerabilities involve somewhat infrequent and quite dangerous weaknesses in software and/or hardware that not even the maker of the product in question understands before the vulnerability is discovered and exploited by attackers for private gain.

Because zero-day flaws usually refer to software that is widely in use, it’s generally considered good form if one experiences such an attack to share any available details with the rest of the world about how the attack appears to work — in much the same way you might hope a sick patient suffering from some unknown, highly infectious disease might nonetheless choose to help doctors diagnose how the infection could have been caught and spread.

Wipro has so far ignored specific questions about the supposed zero-day, other than to say “based on our interim investigation, we have shared the relevant information of the zero-day with our AV [antivirus] provider and they have released the necessary signatures for us.”

My guess is that what Wipro means by “zero-day” is a malicious email attachment that went undetected by all commercial antivirus tools before it infected Wipro employee systems with malware.

Ballapuram added that Wipro has gathered and disseminated to affected clients a set of “indicators of compromise,” telltale clues about tactics, tools and procedures used by the bad guys that might signify an attempted or successful intrusion.

Hours after that call with Ballapuram, I heard from a major U.S. company that is partnering with Wipro (at least for now). The source said his employer opted to sever all online access to Wipro employees within days of discovering that these Wipro accounts were being used to target his company’s operations.

The source said the indicators of compromise that Wipro shared with its customers came from a Wipro customer who was targeted by the attackers, but that Wipro was sending those indicators to customers as if they were something Wipro’s security team had put together on its own.

So let’s recap Wipro’s public response so far:

-Ignore reporter’s questions for days and then pick nits in his story during a public investor conference call. -Question the stated timing of breach, but refuse to provide an alternative timeline. -Downplay the severity of the incident and characterize it as handled, even when they’ve only just hired an outside forensics firm. -Say the intruders deployed a “zero-day attack,” and then refuse to discuss details of said zero-day. -Claim the IoCs you’re sharing with affected clients were discovered by you when they weren’t.

WHAT DID THE ATTACKERS DO?

The criminals responsible for breaching Wipro appear to be after anything they can turn into cash fairly quickly. A source I spoke with at a large retailer and Wipro customer said the crooks who broke into Wipro used their access to perpetrate gift card fraud at the retailer’s stores.

I suppose that’s something of a silver lining for Wipro at least, if not also its customers: An intruder that was more focused on extracting intellectual property or other more strategic assets from Wipro’s customers probably could have gone undetected for a much longer period.

A source close to the investigation who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the news media said the company hired by Wipro to investigate the breach dated the first phishing attacks back to March 11, when a single employee was phished.

The source said a subsequent phishing campaign between March 16 and 19 netted 22 additional Wipro employees, and that the vendor investigating the incident has so far discovered more than 100 Wipro endpoints that were seeded with ScreenConnect, a legitimate remote access tool sold by Connectwise.com. Investigators believe the intruders were using the ScreenConnect software on the hacked Wipro systems to connect remotely to Wipro client systems, which were then used to leverage further access into Wipro customer networks.

Additionally, investigators found at least one of the compromised endpoints was attacked with Mimikatz, an open source tool that can dump passwords stored in the temporary memory cache of a Microsoft Windows device.

The source also said the vendor is still discovering newly-hacked systems, suggesting that Wipro’s systems are still compromised, and that additional hacked endpoints may still be undiscovered within Wipro.

Wipro has not yet responded to follow-up requests for comment.

I’m sure there are smart, well-meaning and capable people who care about security and happen to work at Wipro, but I’m not convinced any of those individuals are employed in leadership roles at the company. Perhaps Wipro’s actions in the wake of this incident merely reflect the reality that India currently has no laws requiring data owners or processors to notify individuals in the event of a breach.

Overall, I’m willing to chalk this entire episode up to a complete lack of training in how to deal with the news media, but if I were a customer of Wipro I’d be more than a little concerned about the tone-deaf nature of the company’s response thus far.

As one follower on Twitter remarked, “openness and transparency speaks of integrity and a willingness to learn from mistakes. Doing the exact opposite smacks of something else entirely.”

In the interests of openness, here are some indicators of compromise that Wipro customers are distributing about this incident (I had to get these from one of Wipro’s partners as the company declined to share the IoCs directly with KrebsOnSecurity).

from https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/04/how-not-to-acknowledge-a-data-breach/

[amberdscott2]

How Not to Acknowledge a Data Breach

I’m not a huge fan of stories about stories, or those that explore the ins and outs of reporting a breach. But occasionally I feel obligated to publish such accounts when companies respond to a breach report in such a way that it’s crystal clear they wouldn’t know what to do with a data breach if it bit them in the nose, let alone festered unmolested in some dark corner of their operations.

And yet, here I am again writing the second story this week about a possibly serious security breach at an Indian company that provides IT support and outsourcing for a ridiculous number of major U.S. corporations (spoiler alert: the second half of this story actually contains quite a bit of news about the breach investigation).

On Monday, KrebsOnSecurity broke the news that multiple sources were reporting a cybersecurity breach at Wipro, the third-largest IT services provider in India and a major trusted vendor of IT outsourcing for U.S. companies. The story cited reports from multiple anonymous sources who said Wipro’s trusted networks and systems were being used to launch cyberattacks against the company’s customers.

Wipro asked for several days to investigate the request and formulate a public comment. Three days after I reached out, the quote I ultimately got from them didn’t acknowledge any of the concerns raised by my sources. Nor did the statement even acknowledge a security incident.

Six hours after my story ran saying Wipro was in the throes of responding to a breach, the company was quoted in an Indian daily newspaper acknowledging a phishing incident. The company’s statement claimed its sophisticated systems detected the breach internally and identified the affected employees, and that it had hired an outside digital forensics firm to investigate further.

Less than 24 hours after my story ran, Wipro executives were asked on a quarterly investor conference call to respond to my reporting. Wipro Chief Operating Officer Bhanu Ballapuram told investors that many of the details in my story were in error, and implied that the breach was limited to a few employees who got phished. The matter was characterized as handled, and other journalists on the call moved on to different topics.

At this point, I added a question to the queue on the earnings conference call and was afforded the opportunity to ask Wipro’s executives what portion(s) of my story was inaccurate. A Wipro executive then proceeded to read bits of a written statement about their response to the incident, and the company’s chief operating officer agreed to have a one-on-one call with KrebsOnSecurity to address the stated grievances about my story. Security reporter Graham Cluley was kind enough to record that bit of the call and post it on Twitter.

In the follow-up call with Wipro, Ballapuram took issue with my characterization that the breach had lasted “months,” saying it had only been a matter of weeks since employees at the company had been successfully phished by the attackers. I then asked when the company believed the phishing attacks began, and Ballapuram said he could not confirm the approximate start date of the attacks beyond “weeks.”

Ballapuram also claimed that his corporation was hit by a “zero-day” attack. Actual zero-day vulnerabilities involve somewhat infrequent and quite dangerous weaknesses in software and/or hardware that not even the maker of the product in question understands before the vulnerability is discovered and exploited by attackers for private gain.

Because zero-day flaws usually refer to software that is widely in use, it’s generally considered good form if one experiences such an attack to share any available details with the rest of the world about how the attack appears to work — in much the same way you might hope a sick patient suffering from some unknown, highly infectious disease might nonetheless choose to help doctors diagnose how the infection could have been caught and spread.

Wipro has so far ignored specific questions about the supposed zero-day, other than to say “based on our interim investigation, we have shared the relevant information of the zero-day with our AV [antivirus] provider and they have released the necessary signatures for us.”

My guess is that what Wipro means by “zero-day” is a malicious email attachment that went undetected by all commercial antivirus tools before it infected Wipro employee systems with malware.

Ballapuram added that Wipro has gathered and disseminated to affected clients a set of “indicators of compromise,” telltale clues about tactics, tools and procedures used by the bad guys that might signify an attempted or successful intrusion.

Hours after that call with Ballapuram, I heard from a major U.S. company that is partnering with Wipro (at least for now). The source said his employer opted to sever all online access to Wipro employees within days of discovering that these Wipro accounts were being used to target his company’s operations.

The source said the indicators of compromise that Wipro shared with its customers came from a Wipro customer who was targeted by the attackers, but that Wipro was sending those indicators to customers as if they were something Wipro’s security team had put together on its own.

So let’s recap Wipro’s public response so far:

-Ignore reporter’s questions for days and then pick nits in his story during a public investor conference call. -Question the stated timing of breach, but refuse to provide an alternative timeline. -Downplay the severity of the incident and characterize it as handled, even when they’ve only just hired an outside forensics firm. -Say the intruders deployed a “zero-day attack,” and then refuse to discuss details of said zero-day. -Claim the IoCs you’re sharing with affected clients were discovered by you when they weren’t.

WHAT DID THE ATTACKERS DO?

The criminals responsible for breaching Wipro appear to be after anything they can turn into cash fairly quickly. A source I spoke with at a large retailer and Wipro customer said the crooks who broke into Wipro used their access to perpetrate gift card fraud at the retailer’s stores.

I suppose that’s something of a silver lining for Wipro at least, if not also its customers: An intruder that was more focused on extracting intellectual property or other more strategic assets from Wipro’s customers probably could have gone undetected for a much longer period.

A source close to the investigation who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the news media said the company hired by Wipro to investigate the breach dated the first phishing attacks back to March 11, when a single employee was phished.

The source said a subsequent phishing campaign between March 16 and 19 netted 22 additional Wipro employees, and that the vendor investigating the incident has so far discovered more than 100 Wipro endpoints that were seeded with ScreenConnect, a legitimate remote access tool sold by Connectwise.com. Investigators believe the intruders were using the ScreenConnect software on the hacked Wipro systems to connect remotely to Wipro client systems, which were then used to leverage further access into Wipro customer networks.

Additionally, investigators found at least one of the compromised endpoints was attacked with Mimikatz, an open source tool that can dump passwords stored in the temporary memory cache of a Microsoft Windows device.

The source also said the vendor is still discovering newly-hacked systems, suggesting that Wipro’s systems are still compromised, and that additional hacked endpoints may still be undiscovered within Wipro.

Wipro has not yet responded to follow-up requests for comment.

I’m sure there are smart, well-meaning and capable people who care about security and happen to work at Wipro, but I’m not convinced any of those individuals are employed in leadership roles at the company. Perhaps Wipro’s actions in the wake of this incident merely reflect the reality that India currently has no laws requiring data owners or processors to notify individuals in the event of a breach.

Overall, I’m willing to chalk this entire episode up to a complete lack of training in how to deal with the news media, but if I were a customer of Wipro I’d be more than a little concerned about the tone-deaf nature of the company’s response thus far.

As one follower on Twitter remarked, “openness and transparency speaks of integrity and a willingness to learn from mistakes. Doing the exact opposite smacks of something else entirely.”

In the interests of openness, here are some indicators of compromise that Wipro customers are distributing about this incident (I had to get these from one of Wipro’s partners as the company declined to share the IoCs directly with KrebsOnSecurity).

from Amber Scott Technology News https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/04/how-not-to-acknowledge-a-data-breach/

[terabitweb]

Original Post from Krebs on Security Author: BrianKrebs

I’m not a huge fan of stories about stories, or those that explore the ins and outs of reporting a breach. But occasionally I feel obligated to publish such accounts when companies respond to a breach report in such a way that it’s crystal clear they wouldn’t know what to do with a data breach if it bit them in the nose, let alone festered unmolested in some dark corner of their operations.

And yet, here I am again writing the second story this week about a possibly serious security breach at an Indian company that provides IT support and outsourcing for a ridiculous number of major U.S. corporations (spoiler alert: the second half of this story actually contains quite a bit of news about the breach investigation).

On Monday, KrebsOnSecurity broke the news that multiple sources were reporting a cybersecurity breach at Wipro, the third-largest IT services provider in India and a major trusted vendor of IT outsourcing for U.S. companies. The story cited reports from multiple anonymous sources who said Wipro’s trusted networks and systems were being used to launch cyberattacks against the company’s customers.

Wipro asked for several days to investigate the request and formulate a public comment. Three days after I reached out, the quote I ultimately got from them didn’t acknowledge any of the concerns raised by my sources. Nor did the statement even acknowledge a security incident.

Six hours after my story ran saying Wipro was in the throes of responding to a breach, the company was quoted in an Indian daily newspaper acknowledging a phishing incident. The company’s statement claimed its sophisticated systems detected the breach internally and identified the affected employees, and that it had hired an outside digital forensics firm to investigate further.

Less than 24 hours after my story ran, Wipro executives were asked on a quarterly investor conference call to respond to my reporting. Wipro Chief Operating Officer Bhanu Ballapuram told investors that many of the details in my story were in error, and implied that the breach was limited to a few employees who got phished. The matter was characterized as handled, and other journalists on the call moved on to different topics.

At this point, I added a question to the queue on the earnings conference call and was afforded the opportunity to ask Wipro’s executives what portion(s) of my story was inaccurate. A Wipro executive then proceeded to read bits of a written statement about their response to the incident, and the company’s chief operating officer agreed to have a one-on-one call with KrebsOnSecurity to address the stated grievances about my story. Security reporter Graham Cluley was kind enough to record that bit of the call and post it on Twitter.

In the follow-up call with Wipro, Ballapuram took issue with my characterization that the breach had lasted “months,” saying it had only been a matter of weeks since employees at the company had been successfully phished by the attackers. I then asked when the company believed the phishing attacks began, and Ballapuram said he could not confirm the approximate start date of the attacks beyond “weeks.”

Ballapuram also claimed that his corporation was hit by a “zero-day” attack. Actual zero-day vulnerabilities involve somewhat infrequent and quite dangerous weaknesses in software and/or hardware that not even the maker of the product in question understands before the vulnerability is discovered and exploited by attackers for private gain.

Because zero-day flaws usually refer to software that is widely in use, it’s generally considered good form if one experiences such an attack to share any available details with the rest of the world about how the attack appears to work — in much the same way you might hope a sick patient suffering from some unknown, highly infectious disease might nonetheless choose to help doctors diagnose how the infection could have been caught and spread.

Wipro has so far ignored specific questions about the supposed zero-day, other than to say “based on our interim investigation, we have shared the relevant information of the zero-day with our AV [antivirus] provider and they have released the necessary signatures for us.”

My guess is that what Wipro means by “zero-day” is a malicious email attachment that went undetected by all commercial antivirus tools before it infected Wipro employee systems with malware.

Ballapuram added that Wipro has gathered and disseminated to affected clients a set of “indicators of compromise,” telltale clues about tactics, tools and procedures used by the bad guys that might signify an attempted or successful intrusion.

Hours after that call with Ballapuram, I heard from a major U.S. company that is partnering with Wipro (at least for now). The source said his employer opted to sever all online access to Wipro employees within days of discovering that these Wipro accounts were being used to target his company’s operations.

The source said the indicators of compromise that Wipro shared with its customers came from a Wipro customer who was targeted by the attackers, but that Wipro was sending those indicators to customers as if they were something Wipro’s security team had put together on its own.

So let’s recap Wipro’s public response so far:

-Ignore reporter’s questions for days and then pick nits in his story during a public investor conference call. -Question the stated timing of breach, but refuse to provide an alternative timeline. -Downplay the severity of the incident and characterize it as handled, even when they’ve only just hired an outside forensics firm. -Say the intruders deployed a “zero-day attack,” and then refuse to discuss details of said zero-day. -Claim the IoCs you’re sharing with affected clients were discovered by you when they weren’t.

WHAT DID THE ATTACKERS DO?

The criminals responsible for breaching Wipro appear to be after anything they can turn into cash fairly quickly. A source I spoke with at a large retailer and Wipro customer said the crooks who broke into Wipro used their access to perpetrate gift card fraud at the retailer’s stores.

I suppose that’s something of a silver lining for Wipro at least, if not also its customers: An intruder that was more focused on extracting intellectual property or other more strategic assets from Wipro’s customers probably could have gone undetected for a much longer period.

A source close to the investigation who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the news media said the company hired by Wipro to investigate the breach dated the first phishing attacks back to March 11, when a single employee was phished.

The source said a subsequent phishing campaign between March 16 and 19 netted 22 additional Wipro employees, and that the vendor investigating the incident has so far discovered more than 100 Wipro endpoints that were seeded with ScreenConnect, a legitimate remote access tool sold by Connectwise.com. Investigators believe the intruders were using the ScreenConnect software on the hacked Wipro systems to connect remotely to Wipro client systems, which were then used to leverage further access into Wipro customer networks.

Additionally, investigators found at least one of the compromised endpoints was attacked with Mimikatz, an open source tool that can dump passwords stored in the temporary memory cache of a Microsoft Windows device.

The source also said the vendor is still discovering newly-hacked systems, suggesting that Wipro’s systems are still compromised, and that additional hacked endpoints may still be undiscovered within Wipro.

Wipro has not yet responded to follow-up requests for comment.

I’m sure there are smart, well-meaning and capable people who care about security and happen to work at Wipro, but I’m not convinced any of those individuals are employed in leadership roles at the company. Perhaps Wipro’s actions in the wake of this incident merely reflect the reality that India currently has no laws requiring data owners or processors to notify individuals in the event of a breach.

Overall, I’m willing to chalk this entire episode up to a complete lack of training in how to deal with the news media, but if I were a customer of Wipro I’d be more than a little concerned about the tone-deaf nature of the company’s response thus far.

As one follower on Twitter remarked, “openness and transparency speaks of integrity and a willingness to learn from mistakes. Doing the exact opposite smacks of something else entirely.”

In the interests of openness, here are some indicators of compromise that Wipro customers are distributing about this incident (I had to get these from one of Wipro’s partners as the company declined to share the IoCs directly with KrebsOnSecurity).

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Go to Source Author: BrianKrebs How Not to Acknowledge a Data Breach Original Post from Krebs on Security Author: BrianKrebs I’m not a huge fan of stories about stories, or those that explore the ins and outs of reporting a breach.