#jute bag making

[juteproductartisans]

Jute For Life: Save Environment use Eco-Friendly Jute Bags

[1800titz]

THREE

The one where Y/N and Harry are neighbors in an apartment complex, he's got a bunny called Snuggles, he makes softcore porn spanking people (it's a REALLY LOUD HOBBY), and Y/N has definitely called the police for a domestic disturbance next door.

WEE third part and she's a big one, this is where the plot kind of heavily starts to differ from the OG. This one definitely gives more of a deep-dive into Harry's character to set things up in that aspect. Reblogs/feedback always super appreciated. If you like a fic, sharing the work with the reblog button and leaving a comment/sending an anon keeps writers motivated to keep posting on this platform for free! (ꈍ◡ꈍ) <3

FETISH masterlist : PATREON masterlist (316.7K+ words of content and updating) : MAIN masterlist

CONTENT/WARNINGS: rumors, a DIY pastry delivery service (flavor: apologetic), sexual undertones/smutty insinuations, impact playing/spanking mentions

WC: 13.3K

Some people collect souvenirs. Harry collects tote bags.

It’s not inherently a purposeful, curated trove of keepsakes— not in the same way an avid mug collector would eye one of those kitsch ceramic cups with a city name stretched across it on a trip abroad, and then add it to their collection. It’s just one of those things that keeps happening. A bookstore here; a street fair there; a pop up farmer’s market that sold homemade pepper jam and, incidentally, merchandise that could not be ignored.

He likes them. They’re convenient, and whoever had started the stigma against man-purses just had an agenda to steamroll practicality. As a child, he’d had the hardest time wrapping his mind around it— seeing his mother with a heavy purse perpetually slung over her shoulder, always assuming the practice was some normatively imposed hassle, rather than a beacon of functionality. As an adult, however, Harry can confidently admit, with full disclosure, that he was naïve, misinformed, and frankly, uneducated.

From the array, he has his go-to’s— a jute edition with a singular green sardine embroidered into the center (both a durable option and quirky in its minimal, offbeat design), and a cloth alternative with the word NO in plastisol ink. Simple, effective, all caps, midnight black lettering; it speaks for itself. The third option is another cloth variant, but it’s decorated with the outline of a steaming mug, and he’d picked the piece up from a poky coffee shop during a trip to France, years ago.

Most from the assortment, however, remain as untouched bundles of fabric stacked in the corner of his pantry as soft, vaguely judgmental relics of errands past. There are four tote bags that he hasn’t used in over a year. One is from a pop-up wine shop. Another has a sardonic quote about late capitalism on it, and he only ever reached for it when he was in the midst of a particularly antagonistic streak. One is too stiff to fold properly and therefore exiled. The last one— plain canvas, no print, worn soft at the corners— has inexplicably developed a smell he can’t quite place. Not bad, just faintly of old paper and maybe a foreign shampoo that’s never existed in his possession— something that feels achingly, too closely squeezed between nostalgia and a sense of impending existential upheaval. He keeps intending to throw the bag out, but there’s something threaded into its lived-in texture that feels a little too personal to discard. It’s been to all the best places with him. He once brought it on a third date with a girl whose name he can’t quite place anymore, and he suspects that’s part of the reason he’s held onto it for as long as he has; sentiment by proxy. The bag has stayed, for whatever reason, even as the woman it vaguely reminds him of has almost completely faded from memory— face, and name, and all. 

It’s the kind of thing Harry doesn’t notice has become a habit until he’s opening up his pantry door and discovering the tangle on the floor, shoved up under the lowest tier of the shelving unit. Something he’s reminded has calcified without his conscious awareness. The tote bags. The particular corner by the door where he deposits his keys out of muscle memory. The rhythm of casual consistency interacting with the other tenants carries: a nod in the hallway; cheerful smalltalk; one of those instances where one of the elderly ladies Harry has befriended in the complex— by the grace of God-given dimples and a sense of charm his friends scoff at— (Barb, who lives on the same floor, and Eunice, who resides on the seventh) ropes him into a conversation and ultimately hands off a plate of baked goods. It’s consistent— it’s comfortable. 

Which is why, Harry supposes, the shift in energy feels so loud. 

It’s been four days since Y/N had confronted him head-on with her grievous misconceptions— in the middle of the night, surrounded by a half-awake cohort of their neighbors, no less— and despite his upfront explanation, within those four days, the rumors have multiplied at a rate that defies science. 

Only a couple of days ago, he’d stepped out to water his plants and overheard a group of girls, unbeknownst to his eavesdropping— a circle of collegiate roommates, as far as he understands, given that he’s heard them discuss Kappa Sigma’s infamous Brett’s cock in disgustingly avid detail (is girth more important than integrity? The world may never know)— conversing out on the balcony right beneath his own. Once, he’d sat through four whole minutes of what sounded like an intervention about “the ethics of fucking your lab partner for Adderall.” The conversation wasn’t nearly enthralling enough to stomach more before he finished his joint and went back inside, but this time, the snippet he hears gives him pause. He stands still with his watering can in his hand, hovering over Monte (a bushy thing that’s tripled in size since he first acquired it from the plant nursery), and his pink mouth slowly settles into a grimace the longer he listens. 

“I heard he was on house arrest, but they removed the ankle monitor early.”

“No, no, he’s just in witness protection. But like, bad at it.”

“Wait, I thought he was an ex-cop?”

“No, he’s a dom.”

“…A what?”

“A dom. You know. A professional one.”

“Like a dominatrix?”

“Isn’t that just a woman?”

“I don’t know, I just know he runs one of those torture chambers and probably wears leather.”

“Holy shit, Jess.”

Oh, Jess. A 3.9 GPA— honestly, impressive, given that she’s spent more time scrolling GreekRank gossip forums and contemplating professor tier lists based on cuddle game than studying— and still, somehow, so, so off.

When someone else tacks on, after an awed pause, “…Do you think there’s a sign-up sheet we could hit?” and a peal of girlish giggles erupts, the man literally has to muscle down his eye roll. The last group of people he wants on his roster are a freshly-legal coalition of matching crop tops with vodka breath. It’s not exactly his ideal demographic.

Harry walks back inside off the balcony with a new understanding that day; according to the messy sorority circle in the apartment under him, apparently he’s a dom-for-hire. Which is also— he discovers in the oncoming days— probably one of the friendlier, more innocent assumptions.

It’s not overt; it’s not like anyone says anything to him directly, or plasters misdirected anger management flyers to the back of his door. It’s soft-burn, subtle things. Quieter than a simple dirty look pointed into his direction. 

For starters, the man in 9E, who unironically refers to him as buddy, in the way only a middle-aged dad does during a Superbowl party with an amicable shoulder-clap, doesn’t return much more than a brisk yep in response to some cordial, small-talky joke Harry makes in passing regarding a local sports team. It’s an instance that isn’t inherently suspicious, but when taken into consideration alongside the way the lady in 9G with the green glasses doesn’t smile back at him all of a sudden... well. It packs a little more of a punch. Even the yappy little pomeranian leashed around her knuckles— who typically opts for self-strangulation via collar in its pursuit to get closer to him and paw up at his knees— seems to hang back, sniffing at the air as he passes and choosing to chase its own tail instead. 

Harry doesn’t consider himself to be paranoid. Intuitional, contemplative— sure. Paranoia, though, that’s for the type of man that trims a duct tape square to stick over his laptop camera and tells someone that 5G will give them brain tumors. And yes, in theory, every semi-curt interaction he’s archived with his neighbors over the prior days could be chalked up to perfectly excusable coincidences in a collective bad experience, entirely unrelated to him, but Harry simply has awareness. It does not operate off of a tinfoil hat or a conspiracy rant posted onto a niche online forum— it involves that strange feeling in the pit of his stomach and dresses itself far better than delusion. A group of ladies stops and stares in the mailroom, huddled like an overly lip-glossed coven— all pristine acrylics, and Gymshark workout sets, and coconut dry shampoo— in a way where Harry can feel their eyes searing into the muscle along the side of his shoulder.

It’s not guilt. He knows that much. It’s not quite shame, though, either. No, he’s long past shame— that’s a mechanism he discarded a long time ago when he’d started wearing those tiny running shorts that ride high on the thigh and realized he didn’t particularly care who watched him haul a bag of frozen peas out of Trader Joe’s while donning them. 

It’s something worse.

It is a vague, creeping certainty that a version of him now exists that he can no longer control. 

It’s always existed, somewhere, at some point, he supposes. It varies— mutates— wears one face in a group chat somewhere, takes another shape in a soft-spoken recollection over a plastic coffee cup, one girlfriend to another. He’s been around— a… polite, genteel euphemism for the flyer miles he’s packing below the belt, Harry supposes— gotten around enough, to know that this piece of him lives like a shadow and occasionally reinvents itself through word-of-mouth. He’s self-aware. Probably alive as a screenshot and a one-sided story in a group chat or three.

The problem with this edition, though? It’s alive, and it’s false, it spores. It magnifies, and it reaches, and it’s current— it does not exist like a weak echo in a group text; it smears itself over his face like a clear film as he walks the halls, and he can’t wipe it. It is a version constructed out of silhouettes, and assumptions, and just enough circumstantial evidence to stick. 

He’s lost control of the narrative on a large scale, and he doesn’t know how to get it back. 

It’s not that he even cares what people think, not necessarily. He’s a grown man. He pays his bills on time and almost every lighting fixture in his home is bluetooth. He doesn’t crave approval from a bunch of twenty-somethings who, as far as he can tell, spend their nights screeching over which of their exes had the best dick game and arguing over whether or not a “real feminist” would get lip filler. He’s not interested in being a topic of conversation among girls named Kennedi and Tiffani with an “i.” He just… would prefer not to be accused of domestic violence in a vague, wafting way that only groupthink and mildly traumatic social media exposure can concoct.

The thing is, he can’t even find it within himself to be truly upset with Y/N for the fallout. Not in a sincere way, at least, like a burgeon of spite rooting in and gnarling into a grudge. He’s a little miffed, sure, (frankly, justified, given that having his reputation dismantled over adults exploring consensual bruising techniques was never exactly the ideal), but he doesn’t fault her for her vigilance. In fact, he would probably have similar assumptions and a similar moral dilemma; if only he wasn’t on the other end of the misinterpretation, and if he wasn’t aware that what sounded like violence was just a consensual implementation of a fairly aggressive fetish. 

He thinks he can pinpoint the incident that’d caused the spiral, vaguely, but really it’s a bit of a raunchy blur given the usual rotation, isn’t it? Really, it’s basically, probably Katy’s fault for being so loud in that session with the hairbrush over an overdue parking ticket (not quite short and sweet, but she’d literally asked for it, please and all), which in turn translates into it being his fault for not coaxing her to practice a little more restraint with her pipes.  

Anyways, he can technically retrace the steps and find the root of how a little agreed upon accountability has branded him into public enemy number one, but he’d at least like some benefit of the doubt (given that every unsmiling neighbor has entirely bypassed the fairly thorough explanation he’d given the girl). A little guilty-until-proven innocent action. It’s the bare minimum, really. 

The man stares up at the popcorn ceiling and a little frown envelops the pink corners of his mouth, tucking them down. Guilt is strange, he thinks, especially when he’s technically done fuckall wrong. It’s not that it’s a foreign emotion by any means, but so many times he’d resided on the other end of the equation, with the guilty party strung over his lap, or on her knees between his legs, or caught up between his fingers. He can’t fathom how the sensation coiling in the pit of his belly could ever be twisted into an aphrodisiac, but he supposes it’s a bit different when a power exchange is involved. 

Something taps his socked foot. Slowly, the man lifts his chin and blinks down from the angle where he’s craned his neck flat against the back of the couch. Snuggles climbs over his foot nonchalantly. 

It would blow over. Of that, Harry was grotesquely certain. Canceled Tuesday; forgotten by Friday. People, as a collective, mostly remembered rumors with the clarity of a windshield smeared in expired mayonnaise— foggy, patchy— and had attention spans mirroring all the longevity of a soap bubble in a hurricane. Right now, he’s become the unfortunate centerpiece in the monthly community scandal, but it would only take one yoga mom inevitably starting an affair with her personal trainer, and the spotlight would be diverted. Eventually, the soft-core cancellation would fossilize into one of those half-remembered stories, not nearly exciting enough to be retold, and the mythos rots. 

Besides, in a world where a man could get a sponsorship for reviewing moisturizer on TikTok while actively evading tax fraud allegations, Harry figures a mild spanking kink has ever been grounds for permanent exile. It’ll be fine, the man reminds himself. There is absolutely zero call for spiraling.

Y/N is spiraling.

As the days pass and the realization of what she’s done— what she’s managed to accomplish with a cracked moral compass and a sense of justice wired too tight— truly settles, the consequences, (uninvited, overdressed, in heels), anchor somewhere behind her ribcage. It does not crash. It glides in, quietly, like a cat with blood on its paws circling her ankles, and the young woman steeps in the tracks the longer she weighs it out in her head and picks it apart. Puts it back together. Picks it apart again. 

The little investigatory descent into his digital footprint had, shockingly, been for the worse after all— it’d only fostered a new dilemma. Because now, not only did she feel bad about the accusations, but she was catastrophically aware of his large hands and what they looked like doing pixelated, raunchy (terrible, horrible for whatever flimsy scaffolding of morality she was still clinging to, and his dignity, in that order) things.

It is with this vague sense of impending doom that Y/N decides she probably owes the man a formal apology. The only question— a daunting conquest she’s been left to unpack— is how. A note left stapled to his door, despite the efficiency, feels far too impersonal (given the… weight of her transgressions). A note slipped offhandedly into the envelope collection residing in his mailbox, on the other hand, feels downright intrusive and borderline stalker-ish. It’s soaked in the same energy of shoving love notes into locker grates in junior high, retreating with a whistling speed walk, and the sheer notion nearly puts a bad, familiar taste in her mouth. Surely if Zachary didn’t appreciate the method fifteen or so years ago, her next door neighbor wouldn’t, either. She doesn’t have his phone number, but sending a text would probably feel just as sterile as the first idea, chock-full of the same emotional sentiment as elevator music.  

Hey, so— sorry I accused you of being a felon! (cup-pong attachment). 

This conclusion, of course, is what leaves her clumsily following an apple pie recipe off of Pinterest on her day off, flour smeared across the crests of her sweaty cheeks and dusting the front of her Arctic Monkeys sleep shirt. The best way to express regret and make amends— the valiant, adult method— Y/N decides, is to confront the conflict head on, face to face, in the flesh; and the proper measures to decrease the likelihood of having a door slammed in her face would be the introduction of a baked good alongside her tight, awkward smile. A touch of sweetener.

The pie— honestly, as Y/N had pessimistically expected, despite the way she’d gingerly followed the digital instructions to the T— had dissolved into the kind of spectacular failure typically reserved for first-though tweets and mid-season AMC finales. 

The filling soaked through the undercooked base. The crust was too aggressively homemade— patchy in some places, too thick in others, with a venting cut-out that had vaguely resembled a uterus, or possibly a jellyfish. It was a shape that was hard to place. Ultimately, it was the kind of in-the-flesh reminder of her aggressively consistent inability to bake that had prompted her to opt for store bought treats. Namely, the cute little scones her cafe offered; partly due to the employee discount, and partly on account of how popular the menu item seems to be.

So, here she is; metaphorically twiddling her thumbs in front of his door on a Saturday afternoon with her knuckles curled around a paper bag of edible reparations, attempting to convince herself to just knock. 

Just knock. Just… knock.

She’s not entirely sure if the way she feels her pulse rabbiting (a steady, progressively intensifying thrum that makes her head feel a little light) in her throat should be credited to her general sense of apprehension addressing this, or the different lens she sees him through, courtesy of his video diary archive. She had always found the man next door attractive (it was unavoidable, really— she had a working set of eyes, after all), but the little research project had spun him up into a new light, and the lewd details still web across in the pit of her underbelly. For courage, Y/N puckers her mouth and blows out a deep breath, and then she lifts her free hand and raps her knuckles against the door. 

And for a long moment, there’s no answer. Shifting her weight from one knee onto the other, the young woman lets her eyes peruse over the crown molding that decorates the hallway. The only noise in the lull is the sound of the paper bag in her hand crinkling and the undeviating whir of the AC pumping along the floor. With all of the delicate, calm patience reserved for the waiting room in a dreaded dental appointment, Y/N casts a glance to her own respective door, only a few, short steps away. The stretch of lingering silence reminds her that he may not even be home at all, given that it’s a weekend, (and this whole thing is so impromptu, and strange), and—

Before the young woman’s paper-thin shred of courage inevitably combusts, the familiar sound of a door chain slipping open on the other side and then the door lock unfastening breaks through the haze of her thoughts. She freezes. 

As the door peels back to reveal her innocuous (tenderly sleepy-looking) neighbor— bare feet, sweats (the kind that cling to and hang from all the right places), conspicuously vulgar tee (Safe Sex!: two cartoonish, faceless lilac figures with their arms crossed and their hands fisting over the others’ phalluses), and gently sleep-mussed curls— Y/N can only blink up at him with all the words she’d rehearsed so meticulously lodged at the back of her throat. 

Finally, as if her sense of social awareness has kickstarted into recalibration, the young woman pastes a smile over her mouth, so flimsy she feels her lips wobbling as they curl around her teeth and so wide that her cheeks burn from the strain. The vague sense of anxiety coursing through her blood spikes, and the hammer behind her ribcage forces her numb tongue into motion off the roof of her mouth as her cheeks blister and her head swims.

“Hi. I, uh— I have scones. There’s, uh. Three of them, here,” Y/N launches, glancing down at the paper bag and nearly prying it open as she over-explains the unanticipated visit. “They’re not poisoned,” she tacks on, lashes fluttering as her nervous system forges on in overdrive, and the idiotic statement nearly has her gnawing her tongue in half the second the words slip off its textured, wet landing, “…don’t worry.”

With all the energy of a man limned in fatigue, facing a door dash delivery he’d never ordered, Harry blinks.

Y/N is a nice girl. Up until only a few days ago, in fact, Y/N had been just about the picture-perfect definition of Harry’s ideal next-door tenant; relatively reserved and just polite enough to bypass the awkward inconvenience that rode on the recurrent issue of their mail interchanging. There was, of course, the misaligned streak of vigilantism, but at her core, Harry’s sure that Y/N is still a nice girl. 

This theory in mind, the curly-haired brunette genuinely feels a little bad at the level of amusement swelling up within him as he watches her, with no apparent trigger, self-destruct in real time. Although, if he’s being entirely honest, it’s only a faint echo of a thought— all things considered— and is significantly outweighed by his mirth.

There’s a flavor of entertainment— a rare, emotional genre that lives in that exclusive umbra between secondhand embarrassment and morbid fascination, the kind that morally treads the same bandwidth as laughing at a video of someone getting hurt in an unpredictably ridiculous manner. And Harry— still fuzzy around the edges with the kind of creeping, misty stage of somnolence that dozing off midday entails (he’d been in the midst of a particularly important ritual; lying spread-eagled on the couch with one leg kicked up onto the back, half-engrossed in a documentary on luxury trains, eating dry cereal out of the bag when the drowsiness started settling like fog in the hollows of his limbs)— watches Y/N flounder with the same mild fascination he reserves for Youtube compilation videos of cats falling off of countertops. 

Her hair is slung up into a messy, haphazard updo, loose strands climbing out and stretching in soft static wisps to cup her cheekbones, and she’s wearing a short sleeve brown tee with a small Sip Happens logo embroidered over the left corner of her chest. It’s a coffee shop that the existence of vaguely lives in the dells of his memory, based on how often the man passes by it on his runs, and the wardrobe choice implies she’s either an avid punch-card user, or she works there. Tiny, almost imperceptible dry flakes of mascara cling to the soft skin of her under-eyes, like the layer of pigment has crumbled off her lashes over the course of the morning. Her cheeks are flushed as if she’s run a mile, and her grin (if it can even be called that) resembles trembling enamel more than friendliness. It’s cute in a way that probably shouldn’t be, doesn’t intend to be. Oddly endearing.

Apparently she has baked goods— scones, three of them, unpoisoned (which is a mildly relevant detail)— and she feels the need to announce it, so, based on context clues, he can only assume this element is related to her presence at his doorway. He thinks he can deduce what this is supposed to be (apology with a capital A; one that comes wrapped around café-sourced penance), but he hasn’t quite uncurled the warmth from the stretch of skin where his forearm had pressed into the couch for two hours too long, and her dewy pupils are cha-chaing behind her lashes like she wants something from him, so.

“Hey,” Harry murmurs, finally. His voice sounds thick (aggressively all too familiar to the kind of husky sounds she’s heard from the other side of the wall); vocal cords blatantly weathered in sleep, (verve cudgeled in sex, palm probably all sore and stingy from)—

The curly-haired brunette clears his throat, and Y/N simmers in the heat welling up under her skin. 

“Are these—“ Harry nudges with his chin, pointedly into the direction of the paper bag lodged under her clammy fingers, “…are you sharing?” 

“Yes! Yeah. They’re, well,” she holds the bag out to him, her tone laced with only the kind of over-enthused notes nervousness could conduct, “they’re for you, actually.”

Slowly, one of his hands reaches out, and as he locks his fingers over the side of the bag— right beneath where she’s got her own grip clasped over the haphazardly rolled top— the only thought that the young woman can conjure is a hysteria-laden mental-screencap of an image she’d rather not describe out loud.

As if entirely to dismantle Y/N’s sanity, the sheer size of his palms and the way they cradle the bag as she hands it off is enough to make her feel like something vile and wicked is clumsily somersaulting in her stomach. The indisputable fact is this: they are just hands. Long, delicately svelte fingers; colossal, massively, unjustifiably large hands, but hands nonetheless. 

The other irrefutable fact? These are hands Y/N has watched in incredibly obscene action. 

The thing is, by all technicalities, he is so soft, and his current state does no favors to dispute this impression. Right now, sleep-tousled and low-toned, words spilling like honeyed molasses in the languorous husk of his words, the whiplash spills through her like dense ink. Delicate tattoos reside over and under his kneecaps in fine lines, and in every other circumstance, a soft beam chisels dimples into his cheeks as he casually toes the line between real, alive man and fresco escapee. Behind the door somewhere, he’s got a rabbit called Snuggles, and that’s the brutal anomaly, Y/N decides. It is the foundation to which the geometric edges of her brain refuse to bend around. Because there is a fine, fine line in the way his soft, indigo-lacquered hands stretch out to accept an olive branch sown from overly-processed carbohydrates, and the way they move on camera; the way they plant flat, open-palmed blows on warm skin like bruising kisses, the way they trace the pink welts smacked alive in their wake with a delicacy reserved for reverence. They’re strong, rugged, steadfast, mean—

The young woman’s molars squeeze into the smooth, gummy lining along the inside of her cheek. There’s a little vein that runs up along his wrist, and that tendon bracketed by that jut of bone flexes in a manner so heavenly when he pauses to shake his fingers out. The bag, by no surprise, is dwarfed in his grip, and Y/N stands there with his eyes feeling like sticky, heavy inkpools drilling her into place. 

“How thoughtful,” Harry responds, eventually, faux musing, and an undeniable, little smile teases at the corners of his mouth on the latter fragment of the statement, “thank you for the… unpoisoned scones.” 

Sensing the man’s amusement at her awkward introduction, Y/N restrains the vivid sense of embarrassment that buoys to the surface, instead opting to tell him, “Right! Yeah. You’re welcome,” as her face flushes. With the original point of the delivery in mind, the girl clears her throat. “It’s… well, it’s actually, like, an apology-slash-please-don’t-sue-me gift,” she admits, gnawing into her lower lip. 

He leans a shoulder onto the doorframe then, brows shifting (rising) just a smidge, as an almost imperceptible symbolism of intrigue, before they settle back into place. “Is that hyphenated?”

Y/N stares. 

“Apology-slash-please-don’t-sue-me gift.”

“I— maybe?”

For a moment, her neighbor doesn’t say anything. Meaty arms crossed, paper bag hanging out from the hand that’s tucked under inky, smooth muscle, dark, cherubic ringlets coiling around his forehead. He purses his pink mouth like he’s biting back another simper, and then he sighs theatrically. 

“I won’t sue you,” he murmurs, faux-rolling his eyes playfully, as if the notion involves him being the bigger person and shedding a grudge, rather than letting her settle into a rightfully earned consequence. “Do you wanna come in, then? Miss Hyphens. I’ve got tea.”

His teeth— the front two, blocky and just a tad longer than the others— gently lodge over his plump lower lip expectantly. “Or coffee,” he tacks on, casting his gaze briefly onto her workwear. “Whatever goes with… scones.”

Y/N, for all the time she’s spent living next door to this man, despite sheer proximity, has never actually, fully held a conversation with him beyond simple mail-swap pleasantries. And for a man she’s so thoroughly defamed— a man she’s practically publicly sacrificed on the altar of assumption— he’s almost unexpectedly forgiving. Sure, the sweeteners are working just about as brilliantly as expected, but the invitation, unanticipated nonetheless, throws her so heavily that for a long beat, Y/N can only wordlessly blink at him from the hallway. That is, until her social awareness mechanism, sculpted by a handbook of socially acceptable etiquette rules hammered in from her from kidhood, kickstarts for— what? The third time? Maybe the fourth? In all honesty, she’s lost track, and frankly, it’s by no fault but her neighbor currently interacting with her. The thing is— he’s not even inherently doing anything. Just standing there, propped up against his own door frame, curls tufting around his ears, dewy eyes vibrantly taiga-like. And in all honesty, perhaps the only thing worse than dragging his good name through the mud, like a public medieval ritual, is the way she’d turned around right after the fact to sexualize him behind his back. That part? The softcore porn part? The way something low in her tummy had swirled, seeing him like that, rings denting faint shapes into skin? That’s something she will not— will not— revisit contemplating while standing in the radius of his jawline. It’s not even a jawline, she thinks. Not really. It’s a weapon. 

And despite however shitty of a person Y/N believes herself to be in this particular moment, libel and objectification and all, the rational fragment of her mind (chiseled by those social expectations), considers that accepting a warm drink from her neighbor when prompted— as opposed to wordlessly gawking— is the right choice. The normal option. Something a normal person would do. The alternative is spontaneous death on his welcome mat, and frankly, she doesn’t have the social stamina for that kind of posthumous legacy. There are only so many seconds a person can stand there, sweating through their coffee-stained work shirt, before offbeat, maybe semi-endearingly awkward takes a sharp pivot into the direction of downright strange.

And right now? He’s looking at her like she’s still in the former. 

So, with her face hot and her hands cold, Y/N blinks and nods, anchoring as much nonchalance into her voice as she can manage given the circumstances, “Yeah. Yes. Sure.”

The young woman is not entirely sure what she expects of Harry’s apartment. Not anything in particular really, beyond the fact that the layout should, in theory, be a mirror of her own home right across the drywall. What she discovers, inching quietly across her neighbor’s living room, is that while the general floorplan is almost a precise duplication in terms of spatial organization (that, while they share the same, pasty painted walls and worn beige carpet), the actual integrity of his design sort of puts her own to shame. On the granite peninsula that juts from the wall in the little kitchen beside the living room, in place of where Y/N has a stack of half-sutured envelopes— various bills, coupons, credit card offers, that one cancellation notice from her car insurance she’d received months ago (now resolved, but something she’d forgotten to bin)— there’s a stack of apartamento magazines with a half-burned Le Labo candle on top like a paperweight. In place of the barstools she’d picked up from a garage sale, there’s a record stand: wide, wooden, sleek, and by educated hypothesis, probably full and meticulously organized behind the doors. A tall shelf lined with books resides beside the sliding glass door to the balcony; classics, topics on philosophy, fiction, and self help. One book is all about failed utopias of the twentieth century, and another is on the cultural significance of soup. A hardback edition of the Kama Sutra is crammed into the corner. 

Y/N’s couch was a hand-me-down from a cousin. A ratty, jet black recliner that looked like it withstood the tale of time, surrendered over into her possession when said cousin’s wife finally convinced him into a new one after their ugly little maltese scratched up the leather. Harry’s looks like it’s a direct derivative from an Eames design catalog page. It stands facing the flat screen on the other side of the room, and beside it, there's a floor-level chair that, paradoxically, manages to somehow look both comfortable and like the stiffest resting invention to ever exist. In the center, there’s a dark, wooden accent table and on top of it there’s another pile of magazines, as if for the sole sake of decoration, and a stack of ceramic tile coasters with mismatched mid-century patterns, each one seemingly a different retro motif— abstract fruit, vaguely psychedelic squiggles. Beside the handful of other eccentric decorations Y/N notes (a framed architectural drawing on the wall, a marble fig with a chipped stem on the bookshelf, a tray with exactly seven multicolored lighters— three of them are red— an arc floor lamp with a tan paper-shade that dramatically arches over the couch), she can’t help but recognize that the apartment is painstakingly clean. Organized. Enough for her to gingerly toe off her non-slip sneakers by the door before she makes her way further into his home. 

Instead of immediately taking a seat, the young woman hovers. 

The first words out of her mouth are: “Where’s your bunny?”

“Probably off eating cardboard, somewhere. He’s a very… independent sort of bloke.”

Y/N nods, as if the admission is entirely in the ordinary. The man turns toward the television, operating on low volume, currently detailing some sort of video inside of what looks to be a carwash, with a close up of a mechanism being the shot that plays as he acknowledges it. His brows furrow. “Care to learn about the… wonders of carwash mechanics— I dunno what the fuck this is actually, I was watching something about trains.”

He looks up at her, a lopsided smile ticking the edges of his lips when he recognizes that she’s just lingering by the coffee table like she’s unsure of what to do with herself. “You can sit, you know.”

Y/N blinks like a deer in headlights as she’s called out, limbs unraveling from the way they’ve caged over her chest in universal symbolism of apprehension. “Oh. Thanks.”

She’s kicked her shoes off, and she’s standing in his living room in a fashion that implies she’s afraid to touch something (lest it break), and it’s a sight that’s still, from a morally dubious standpoint, sort of deliciously entertaining. But, he’s a decent host after all, and she did go out of her way to bring him baked treats, which is a considerate notion, so he’s not going to let her literally stand there and stew in her own awkward hesitancy, no matter how amusing the view is.

“You brought scones,“ the curly-haired brunette twists his chin over his shoulder as he passes into the kitchen, quipping playfully, “That’s at least fifteen minutes of hospitality.”

When Y/N takes a seat on the couch, hands gluing to her knees— opting for the safe choice (she’s not quite ready to discover whether the leathery, pillow-looking togo chair on the other side will sculpt to her posture or annihilate her tailbone)— she discovers that this seat, at least, is more comfortable than she’d anticipated. She’s still not quite sure what to do with herself though. What to say, whether she should launch into an apologetic monologue on the misunderstanding (given his unexpectedly cheery disposition, she supposes she won’t have to grovel for forgiveness, which is a reassurance). Meanwhile, her neighbor busies himself in the kitchen, picking up an electric kettle from the counter and propping the lid open with a button on the handle, filling it with water from a filtered container beside the sink, and then setting it back onto the heating base that’s plugged into the wall. The process takes an entire, silent fifteen seconds.

“I like your place,” the young woman settles on, eventually, her eyes still wandering over the expanse of his decor. Her gaze ends up resting on a little bear statue on the TV stand. “It’s… nice. Like, quietly cozy.”

“Surprisingly no screaming women,” Harry responds nonchalantly, still turned away with his back in her direction. 

The comment catches her off guard, and the squeezy, sick feeling coils up her stomach at the reminder. Right. The monologue was… probably the correct choice, after all.

“Oh, God.”

“You said ‘quiet,’” Harry pivots, still only half-facing her (granting her the sight of his hulking shoulder), but he sounds far more amused then disdained, like he’s muscling it down and teasing, and a dimple presses into his cheek like punctuation before it fades out, “Not me. Tea? Coffee?”

“Yeah, please. Tea. I’m… sorry. That was— I don’t even know.”

Y/N wants to bury her face in her hands. She doesn’t. She keeps them very politely sealed over her knees, because that’s a new level of self-pitying pathetic she won’t let him witness, but she can’t bridle her grimace as she contemplates what had happened, nonetheless. It’s like a… bad memory she can’t burn out from behind her skull. 

Pulling open the kitchen cabinet across from him, Harry retrieves a plate alongside two mugs. One is a deep shade of blue, hand-glazed, with just enough imperfections to insinuate he���d either picked it up as one of those hand-made junk-donations from a thrift store or wheel-thrown it himself. The origin is the latter; he’d sculpted the creation in a little pottery shop downtown with a group of friends, years ago, and, admittedly, the shots the cohort had taken before taking on the crafting experience shows through its craftsmanship. The other is a white mug with a little doodle of an orange jellybean on one side, and it has a chip on the rim. Not sharp enough to cut, but just misaligned enough to require constant lip navigation. From the same cabinet (different shelf), he also culls a sealed cardboard cylinder of loose-leaf black tea that he prefers to order online. He reserves the chipped option for himself and carefully shakes out a serving into each cup.

“Hm, yeah. Horribly offensive,” Harry murmurs offhandedly, his voice laced with faux-disappointment as he twists the lid back on, “You should be flogged. But I’ll accept the scones as a plea deal.”

Despite the way the joke is delivered with no openly coy motive, spoken with the same energy as a jesting “jail” comment (no intended innuendo), something twists deep in Y/N’s belly when it lands. Something distinctly different from the shame that’s been bubbling. 

A nervous bark of laughter squeezes at her vocal cords, scraping its way out from the back of her throat before she clears it and pivots the topic of conversation sharply. She is not going to soak in that inadvertent double entendre or attempt to dissect what the suggestion means. 

“What do you do, um, for work?”

As the kettle continues to heat to the required setting, with the tea stored back into its spot and the cabinet door softly closed, Harry turns back to face his guest and reaches for the bag of scones he’d set onto the peninsula.

“I’m a videographer.” For a moment, his features crinkle up, green irises skating to the ceiling as if in brief thought, then smooth, “Well. Kind of. I was, now I just mostly stick to the editing side. I do, like, real estate listings for social media.”

“Oh,” Y/N says, genuine notes of intrigue coloring her tone, “that’s awesome.”

One of his shoulders rides up in a shrug, like the job is what it is, as he one-handedly spills the packet’s contents out onto the plate he’d earlier set aside— scones, three of them, unpoisoned. Although the job itself is comfortable and remote, with a wide spectrum of clientele (courtesy of his networking abilities), it has its difficulties as much as its perks. The man sets the plate up onto the peninsula as he discards the bag into the bin. “It’s alright. I used to do weddings and I always thought groomsmen choreography was tragic, but I’ve learned that you don’t know despair until you’re working with a realtor that looks like they’re being held at gunpoint because there’s a camera in their face.”

Last week, he’d been sent a collection of files in which, in the most polite terms possible, no clip was any better than the last. While technically filmed well (given that he partners with other reputable videographers he’s worked with before, usually borderline unemployed college kids looking for gigs, comfortable taking a cut of the profit— Harry had realized early on he couldn’t handle directing camera-shy gen x-ers without feeling incredibly drained by the end of the day, and honestly preferred the almost entirely remote work), it was the behavior of the agent being filmed that had made him cringe. He’d sat there, one hand dug into a bag of Hippeas and the other on the mouse, with the monitor screen providing the only light source as he watched through the attachments on the drive. It genuinely took so little effort to forge some drive into whatever pre-scripted spiel they were giving— check out these custom cabinet handles! or this gorgeous flooring, genuine wood, dates back to…— and flash a few smiles into the direction of the lens that Harry was sure just about anyone could do it. And watching some of the horror-show clips he’d received back left him slightly unsure of how exactly some of these clients managed to make a living to begin with. In theory, these people should already know how to sell a house, and the entirety of the process should be even easier given the fact that there are no limits on exactly how many clips are taken. And still, somehow, Harry had sat through about nine of the same— similar enough— recordings of an agent completely demolishing what little hope Harry had for the industry. 

Some involved long pauses and mispronounced words. Others involved awkward body language through the delivery— hangs swinging nervously, eyes lingering to the side where he imagines cue-cards were held up. Every clip involved the same lifeless tone and the same uncomfortable posture. A genuinely dismayed, semi-disgusted sound had spilled from his mouth as he witnessed the fallout before he’d plucked another puff from the bag and chewed. The thing is, yes— Harry can alter the footage. Cut any awkward breaks, sew clips together seamlessly enough if anything doesn’t work. But he can’t actually alter whatever the person is doing on the clip, and when every sentence sounds like someone is threatening them from the other side of the camera, he can’t even opt for voice-overs over b-roll. 

Needless to say, sixteen hours of editing later, Harry had a semi-presentable product to send off, but he also had a headache and a distinct mental note to never work with that man again. 

“That sounds… unreasonably bleak for a job involving marble countertops and voice overs.” 

“It is,” Harry admits, deadpan, “It’s like if HGTV and a hostage video had a baby.” 

He turns back to the kettle as it chimes, signifying the water has heated to the optimal temperature, and then lifts it off the base to pour water into both mugs and let the tea steep. 

“And I’m gonna assume,” he says, twisting his chin over his shoulder at her in acknowledgement as the water trickles, plumes of steam seeping up from the tops of the mugs, “you’re a barista? Lucky guess?”

Y/N blinks, batting her lashes at him from the couch at the assumption. “Why do you think that?”

With the kettle back in its spot, Harry turns slightly, one hand planted onto the counter and the other situated on his hip. The one on his hip motions out as he pretends to mull it over, brows furrowing, “Well, you’re either the Sip Happens unofficial brand ambassador, or you work there.”

He blinks and nudges his chin pointedly at her choice of wardrobe, a slow smile unfurling over his lips as the girl glances down and the realization hits her. She’d forgotten, for a moment, that she was still wearing her uniform from the morning shift, and she blinks back up at him with sheepish recognition swelling in her features, a little half-smile cresting her mouth. 

“Oh. Right. Yeah.”

“Milk?” his pointer taps against the granite, “Sugar?”

Y/N takes a deep breath. “No thank you and yes please.”

As the man turns on his heel and picks up a jar of sugar situated beside the kettle and then pulls a spoon out from a drawer, Y/N swallows and clears her throat again. The sound of the metal spoon clinking against the edges of ceramic overlaps with her inquiry as he mixes the sugar into her respective cup. “How did you get into videography?”

“I went to school,” Harry answers once the sugar’s been mixed into the hot beverage, and the leaves are in the process of settling to the bottom, swirling around in the liquid. He sets the utensil into the sink, and takes a mug in each hand. “And then I realized that law felt like a… very expensive way to slowly rot from the inside out. Just about as soul-sucking as everyone promised.”

The proximity between them decreases as he explains, and by the end of his statement, he’s stood ahead of her in a way that has her chin tilting up to meet his gaze. His fingers are cupped over the rim of the mug in a purposeful way— to have the handle readily available for her to take. She glances down at the offering, gingerly curling her fingers over the curved attachment so as not to burn her skin on the heated ceramic, murmuring a quiet thank you as he hands the tea off.

“Don’t worry,” he assures, voice low and teeming with low grade playfulness, “It’s also not poisoned.”

“Ha,” Y/N responds flatly. Despite the molten heat spilling through the ceramic and the way it stings at her fingertips when she touches it, she takes the mug by the handle and grazes the other side with the opposite hand. The heat, to some extent, grounds her. 

That same nervous edge itches into her veins as she watches him pick a coaster up from the stack on the accent table and set it down ahead of her. Then, he sets the plate of scones into the center, on top of the magazines, plucks one up, and takes a seat on the togo chair with his own respective mug. 

“What about you?” Harry asks, motioning out with the treat between his fingers before he takes a bite, “Caffeine always been your calling?”

It’s a good scone, he’ll give her that. He can almost taste the notes of apology sewn into the blueberry flavoring as he chews. He watches her shoulders sag as she breathes, her gaze skidding to the side in thought before it settles back on him.  

“Surprisingly enough, it’s incredibly hard to find anything besides museum curating or glorified church janitor work with a bachelors in anthro,” Y/N nods, a little simper gracing her mouth before she cups the mug up to her mouth and puckers her lips into a soft ‘o’ to blow over the heat. 

He takes another thoughtful bite, chewing slowly as his brows furrow before he swallows the mouthful. “Church janitor work? You need a degree for that?”

As Y/N takes a sip of the beverage, she raises her eyebrows over the top of the mug in response before she answers softly, “It’s technically a historical monument.”

“Hm.”

The third bite is the final one, and he works it over for a longer, quiet beat. And he looks so sexy like that, is the thing, Y/N thinks— carved jaw flexing, thighs split wide, gaze pensive, off to some corner of the room as if in deep thought. It has her head swimming, and simultaneously, the self-awareness has her pulse thumping heavily in her throat. She peels her gaze away from him, opting to sling it onto the television instead, where some stocky male is discussing something about car washes, and she buries her mouth against the mug as she tips it for another drink. It burns her tongue a just a tad, but the way the warmth spills down into her chest is a solid enough distraction from whatever is going on in the chair beside her. 

The silence, of course, doesn’t last. 

“The girls downstairs think I’m a dom-for-hire,” Harry comments with little to no warning, and the admission is so sudden that it catches the young woman off-guard mid-sip and causes her throat to close up around the heated liquid.

She presses the backs of her fingers to her lips as she chokes on the mouthful of scorching liquid, all to prevent coughing and spewing tea all over his carpet and his nice accent table. Summoning every morsel of strength to inhale through her nose and swallow the rest down, Y/N clears her throat as she glances over at him. She thinks he might be fighting down a grin, but it’s hard to say.

“I’m… sorry.”

“That’s alright,” Harry tells her as she clears her throat again, lifting a shoulder. She thinks he might be done. But then he says, offhandedly, like he’s just nursing this odd icebreaker and not currently wringing her guilt like a twisted wet shirt, “I reckon it’s a nicer thought than what some of the others must think.”

Y/N frowns, glancing down at her tea, where her own shiny, wounded-eyed reflection meets her over the burnt umber depths. Sincerity bleeds into her cadence, and she meets his gaze earnestly to repeat the words, “I’m sorry. I really do feel so horrible about it.”

There is, typically, something so oddly delicious in hearing a pretty girl say sorry. Watching it; in the right context, of course. It’s a strange predilection, really, and sort of sounds oddly cruel, but in all honesty, it’s because of how doughy they get. Because they become all doe-eyed, dewy; soft. It doesn’t have anything to do with some weirdly misplaced remorse in actuality, or genuinely negative emotion. Of course, that’s only in the right context, and seeing Y/N, truly frowning, a little ruckle creasing its way between her brows— the posture of her shoulders folding in just slightly as she holds his gaze and then apprehensively casts it down to the hot tea cupped between her palms— has a little burgeon of… not pity, it’s not quite that. It’s more cautious, and it blooms apart in that soft space between his lungs and his ribs. As misguided as his neighbor had been in her assumptions, his intent wasn’t to pestle her down over it, or contrive some sort of revenge by any means. Really, his intention was only to tease the girl, and he tucks as much earnestness as he can manage into his soft tone as he blinks and meets her eye, ducking his chin a bit.

“I’m just messing, yeah?” Harry tells her then, shaking his head, “It’s all good, really. I understand where you were coming from. And I’ve already accepted your scones as a plea deal,” his lips twitch, “remember?”

Y/N doesn’t immediately respond, and for a moment, Harry thinks she might start crying— God forbid— or something equally as uncomfortable, and then he’d probably truly be fucked, because what does he even do in that situation besides awkwardly side-glance? He’s already starting to mull it over, he remembers he might have a pack of tissues still tucked into the coffee table somewhere, courtesy of… things (whichever direction one would like to think in: probably yes), and—

“Do you think,” Y/N’s soft voice breaks him out from his thoughts, and he redirects his sight from the corner of the floor he’d reluctantly driven his eyes into to avoid the fallout in its full, uneasy glory. She’s looking at him from under her lashes, her short nails scratching over a divot in the sculpt of the mug, “they could work as a rebrand? A mass baked goods handout?”

The quip catches him so off guard that it takes him a second to respond. And then he recognizes that she’s attempting to jest— he pauses, intrigued, settling with his back fully against the backrest as he pretends to ponder. 

“Damage control in the form of a baked goods giveaway… I like it. I figured we let the press cycle cool down, first.”

“Right,” Y/N ducks her chin into a nod, “Standard protocol. Lay low. Tasteful radio silence. Avoid the balcony.”

A slow-splitting grin shapes its way around his teeth, dimples engraving into his cheeks, “Exactly,” and then he schools his features into a mask of mock-seriousness, draping himself in fabricated contemplation once more, “Maybe leak a blurry photo of me donating books to an underfunded library.”

“We can give you a rescue dog to hold,” Y/N offers, holding one hand out, palm up. 

“You’ll need to be seen crying on a bench,” Harry muses, raising his eyebrows and directing his index at her, before he rubs his palm down his jaw in consideration. “Something tasteful. Cashmere coat. Glossier skin tint. A latte you’re too tired to drink. Public remorse, but chic.”

“Strategic vulnerability,” Y/N nods, chock-full of agreement, as if they really are on the same wavelength, and then her brows pinch together, “What about a pinned instagram post? Empty chair, caption starts with something like, ‘I don’t owe anyone an explanation, but—‘“

“No, that’s too deflecting,” Harry waves out with his hand, reciting the plan as if he’s got the whole thing figured out to the minor details, “We draft a joint Notes app apology. Story post. You take full responsibility. I forgive you graciously.” 

“And I’m assuming…” one of her brows climb as she talks, “I’m writing this?”

“You’re head of PR,” Harry deadpans, blinking, “It’s literally your job.”

To stifle her smile, the young woman buries her teeth into her lower lip. She clears her throat and then asks, “Do I get health benefits?”

“No,” Harry responds, eyeing her over the rim of the mug where he’s hiding the beginnings of his own grin. He takes another drink, swallows, and then asserts, like it’s all common sense, “You get tea.” 

The duo settle into a comfortable silence, then. The kind of comfortable neither would have really anticipated, but with Y/N’s feelings on the matter clearly regulated and with the man’s (Y/N has assumed) issues on the manner squared, both parties feel as though they can breathe and just co-exist. Tentatively, Y/N is the one to shatter the lull this time.

“How did you, um. Get into that?”

A gust of air spills out from his nostrils, something like an almost-laugh. “Fake press management or the alleged spanking enterprise?”

Y/N raises an eyebrow once more, this time pointedly. “…Alleged?”

Behind the mug, a little smirk paints over the man’s mouth. “Very delicate segue.”

Harry had never really been a fan of labels. Titles. 

Roleplay-adjacent nomenclature; whatever the grand performance of slipping on a new skin before climbing into bed (or worse, therapy-scented kink discourse spaces) is called. Labels— well, those are cementing. Not in the warm, anchored, adult-in-therapy sort of way, but in the slowly-filling-sandbag-on-his-chest kind; the kind that wouldn’t let him wriggle out even when he’d decide he changed his mind.

They’re too serious. Too official altogether, and there was always something about the label-happy subculture associated with kink, in particular, that made him a little itchy. Acronyms, micro-identities, moniker-wrapped semantics, all to take the form of raunchy, glorified LARPing, clad in latex knee-highs, bull-whip draped around a nape like an explicit rendition of a loose winter-wear accessory, specifically tailored for those who liked to edge others just to see them cry— 

He just didn’t identify with it. Dom-status. Disciplinarian— he doesn’t like that one. It’s a word that, in his opinion, belongs more to the musty back corner of a Catholic prep school than to anything involving arousal. Something with chalk dust in its teeth and a ruler clutched in one authoritarian fist, the kind of persona that comes with polished oxfords and an aggressive disdain for late homework. It wears a waistcoat and has strong opinions on proper trouser ironing techniques (he doesn’t particularly care how many people say it’s hot— there’s nothing remotely erotic about a title that sounds like it comes with a pocket watch and a library card).

It just wasn’t him. Isn’t.

And still, somehow, he now exists, tangled several years deep into an increasingly absurd, niche pattern of carefully arranged connections with women who want one very specific thing from him: structure, and the inevitable sting that follows when they break it.

He likes spanking. That’s the clean-cut version, at the very least, that doesn’t devolve into the complexities surrounding why arousal and red-hot bruises go hand in hand. That’s all. That was how it started, and how it remains— more or less— though the logistics have evolved into something far more complicated and softly bizarre, the way simple shrubbery mutates into a crawling jungle over time. And the way it all began? It wasn’t even his idea, really. It hadn’t been a lifelong compulsion, or some neatly traceable fixation formed in adolescence that sharpened over time into a clean-cut kink identity. It wasn’t that profound. Or that romantic, or nearly as organized. He didn’t find kink through an orphaned copy of the Story of O left on a bus seat, or through anything nearly as intentional as looking for it. Instead, looking back, it was something that had settled over him slowly, then all at once, until he couldn’t remember a version of himself that hadn’t been holding the reins. He’d fallen into it in college, the way people fall improv groups or casual coke habits in that weird semi-adult stage where nonchalant self-destruction masquerades as self-discovery. Accidentally; socially. 

It started with an ex, naturally. One of those shitty apartments he was renting on the outskirts of his university with mold along the bathroom ceiling and a sink that groaned like it resented being used. The air always smelled vaguely of canned soup and boyish delusion, and the windows didn’t shut all the way, which meant everything— relationships, tea, existential spirals— happened against a soundtrack of distant sirens and someone else’s Spotify Premium echoing through the wall, including the throwaway comment about whether he’d ever considered putting someone over his knee. 

The ex in question was a second-year film major with a horizontal tongue piercing. She wore thrifted leather boots year-round, almost perpetually had this little patch of chipped red polish on her index finger that drove him weirdly mad, and once insisted she could tell if someone had divorced parents based on how they held a cigarette. (Apparently, Harry was obvious. He still refuses to comment on what kind of emotions that psychoanalysis stirred up). 

There were exactly three tattoos on her body: one was a poem for her mother, another was a joke no one else understood, and the third was just the word reminder in verdana font, tiny and delicate in that soft spot along the inside of her elbow. She claimed that last one literally served as a reminder for whatever trivial detail she needed to remember in the humdrum of a day, and offhandedly commented that the pain getting it done had felt strangely good, which in hindsight, should have been… an indicator.

Harry’s usual type had always been a tragic amalgam of self-titled tender parasite and art-soaked amateur philosopher.

Usually at least mildly broken. INFP’s, typically, because— yes, MBTIs carry more rational bearing than star signs. There was something vaguely magnetic about their (usually) self-imposed torment, the way they pressed into an old, metaphorical bruise on themselves like they wanted to feel the ache again. Creative types with unresolved emotional turmoil. It’s not that he has knight syndrome— he doesn’t feel the need to be needed and he’s never been compelled to fix anyone. Maybe it’s the fascination. Maybe, without ever acknowledging it, he has more in common with them than he’d ever be willing to admit. But maybe? It’s just easier to justify the fallout when it was always partway broken.

It’s always worked like this: he chases, coaxed by some deep itch inside of him he hasn’t quite ever been able to dissect, and they meet him halfway. And for some reason or another, he’d always seemed to gravitate toward something usually halfway to collapse. 

Emotionally battered baristas with bite, who’ll flirt by mocking his order and blushing when he tips; the Etsy shop entrepreneur with an anxiety disorder, hand-stitching lingerie as she watches true crime. Bookstore clerks with a collection of expired bus passes, calmly annotating erotica with a pencil behind the desk. Music school girls with frayed cuticles and a pack of nicotine gum next to their crumpled sheet music. 

And back in the day, a film major with snake eyes and a bruised peach of a laugh? She went right in the drawer of Harry’s mental taxonomy marked bad decisions with excellent legs. There was this trick she had with the tip of her tongue during oral (probably courtesy of the snake eyes— apparently wildly controversial in the piercing community) that, without fail, made his toes curl into the carpet like he was grappling to keep himself physically grounded. It was euphoric. 

They’d been seeing each other for a few months. Maybe less. Time was slippery in college—measured more in backlogged assignments and 2 AM curry fries than any real emotional awareness. It didn’t happen during sex, which— statistically speaking— would’ve made more sense: a bit of rough play, a tap that landed harder than expected at an awkward angle, a moan into his mouth in response. No, when the actual conversation happened, they were sharing a tea bag between two chipped mugs, and she was still waiting on the third coat of polish to dry on her toes with two of those stupid-looking foam-spreader things on her feet, and she’d asked the question the same, nonchalant way someone might ask for a stick of gum.

“Would you ever spank me? Like, for fun. Or, well— like, not for fun, too.”

It was spoken politely, offhandedly, like it was just another item on the grocery list. Eggs, coffee, a handprint across her ass. It was asked like this particular inquiry wasn't about to rearrange the way he saw sex, power, touch, and trust in the span of one aggressively under-furnished semester. Harry genuinely doesn’t remember the exact reaction he’d had, but the word spank had hit him square in the dick like a cartoon piano falling out of a third-story window, and logically speaking, he was probably weird about it. He was twenty. He still got flustered when someone made eye contact while eating a popsicle. He was weird about everything. He was still getting off to whatever suggestions existed in the first three queues of the Pornhub homepage, and had no sexual creativity, and he thinks he might have settled on something eloquent like, “Uh.”

He probably tried to be cool after that. Said something like, “Define spanking,” in that insufferable way he was just learning to mold flirtatious, which was an important development considering he’d only recently learned how to avoid burning scrambled eggs and still called his mother with a debrief of how his week was going every other night. 

He’s not entirely sure what it was even about him that didn’t just make her scoff and roll her eyes, but maybe he should give his past self more credit. 

Anyways, he did it, despite the entirety of the awkward preamble. He was careful, moving through the motions wearily, like he thought he might break something. Which, to be fair, was entirely the right, justified instinct— only the thing is, he’d missed the mark a bit by assuming it was her body that needed caution. It wasn’t. It was his own.

Because something in that moment short-circuited. Not in a cartoonish, lightning-strike way. More like a slow-burn short fuse in the recesses of his brain, something cellular, and ancestral, and alarmingly simple— he liked it. Maybe too much. More than he’d anticipated. It didn’t feel dark, or deviant, or devouring. No. It felt… focused. Singular. 

Harry didn't plan for it to become a recurring motif. It was never intended, from his perspective, to anchor him, and it certainly wasn't there to define him. At the time, he'd thought it was a one-time thing, like waxing his chest, or trying hot yoga, or letting someone gaslight him into believing that olives don't just taste like someone preserved despair in brine. At best, he'd figured it would be a strange, mildly entertaining story to pull out after drinks with a select, close-knit group of attendees. It'd fall in line somewhere between the one about the dentist with the singular nipple piercing and the time he'd mistakenly crashed a wake because the GPS rerouted him through a church parking lot.

And then she called him Sir.

One minute he was perched awkwardly on the edge of the bed he'd snagged off of Facebook marketplace (suspiciously low price tag— maybe haunted), wondering if tilting her too far would result in blunt force trauma via nightstand, and the next, she was twisting her chin to look at him over her shoulder, voice low and syrupy-sweet, eyes half-lidded as she was saying it— Sir— with this kind of reverence that made him feel like someone with gravity. Purpose. Like he was something more than a financially unstable, sleep-deprived undergrad sporting a semi; like something cracked open in her ribs every time she used it, and he was the only one who could crawl inside.

He remembers the sex was really good after. Her on top, nails digging jagged, rosy pink lines into his pectorals, her warm ass in his hands. Somehow, it made him cum harder, holding onto that; the warmth there. Feeling that. And after, she fell asleep on his chest, like she didn’t short-circuit the last decade of his sexual development in the span of a singular afternoon. 

Retrospectively, that was the beginning of the end.

A kind of slow-brand over the pit of him that he wouldn’t recognize had fundamentally changed his outlook until it was just… his norm. 

Anyways, of course he went to the party. 

Not a sex party— he wasn’t that interesting yet. Party was a form of loose, glorified nomenclature for the impact play mixer said film major later dragged him to. A very specific, curated event deep within the subgenre swamp of the kink community was a fairly unconventional idea for date night, but at the time, most of their dates consisted of glassy-eyed coffee stops between study sessions or makeout intervals on a creaky couch with something random on the TV in the background. He thinks it might have been called Spankapalooza, or something equivalently tragic, and it was held in a borrowed warehouse that smelled like spilled spearmint lube and leather conditioner. There was a registration table and color-coded wristbands. There were demo tables and a table spread of gluten-free baked goods.

He didn’t play. Just watched. Took mental notes while people negotiated scenes like they were unionized actors: pacing, tone, tools, aftercare methods. Someone got lectured in a New Zealand accent about not cleaning the kitchen counters. Someone else got paddled, smiling and bound, with a toy that was being handed around a group of three other people. It was all very adult in a way that felt mildly deranged and weirdly beautiful.

It was also, oddly enough, incredibly peaceful. Everything negotiated. Everything explained. Nothing creepy, or secret, or shameful. Just people with wristbands, and name tags, and decades of learned wisdom about which parts of the body bruise best and why it matters whether someone uses a bath brush or a frat paddle. One man— Gene, possibly the most soft-spoken person Harry had ever met— casually mentioned that he typically tasked his submissive with picking out a switch from the backyard if she forgot to charge her phone overnight, and (wow! Okay! moment) Harry had to physically sit down for a second just to process that reality (it was the only incident, to date, that ever managed to top the first time he’d had a threesome and had just ended up starfished on a beanbag afterwards in a state of catatonia).

And here’s the thing: he liked it. Not the performative bits. Not the leash-wielding, collar-clanking theatricalism of it all; it was the honesty. The focus. The moment of contact, the sting, the way a breath hitched when someone realized they were being paid attention to, thoroughly and with care. It felt like the kind of intimacy no one admitted to craving. It felt like holding something steady while the world spun stupid around him.

What struck him most wasn’t the spectacle. It was the precision. The ritual. The unblinking sense of acceptance, because this was normal, and attainable, and safe, and something that made him feel like he was on fire and so strangely serene all at once. The structure didn’t take away the heat— it was the heat. Like edging, but emotional. Like someone had found a way to turn boundaries, and sadomasochism, and niche methods for conflict resolution into foreplay. It made everything feel deliberate. Made the intimacy feel earned. 

It was an intimacy in and of itself.

When he and the film major broke it off, eventually, inevitably— blocking each other on social media but staying logged into the same Netflix account for the next three years— she was gone, but the idea of it, of this, had already imprinted itself somewhere deep in his wiring.

And the rest? Well. That’s as they call it, history. 

The blog was an offhand thing. Not entirely intentional. He’d launched it a year later with another girl he was seeing, and it was her idea, yet again. They filmed it (without their faces) because watching it back made her wet. It was grainy, and shot on his old iphone 4S with poor lighting. There was some animal documentary on in the background and the camerawork was shit in his shaky hands when he picked the phone up off the dresser to film the color her skin bloomed into. But then came a comment about branding sex in a cinematic light, something-something authentic kink education— her words, not his— and he’d laughed and said something noncommittal. They put it up. 

Eleven million profile views later it's just a thing. Another collection, like the totes, only this one is intentional— personal, and feels far more like an art form than a pile of cloth sacks in his pantry. It’s a folder of observations. A quietly color-corrected archive of records. Documentation of the way someone melts when they’re understood through restriction like it’s softness. The quiet smugness in knowing exactly what someone needs and how to deliver it in increments of five. 

When his casual flings rotated out like seasons, the blog stayed, and so did the growing name. The brand. The requests. Women kept showing up. People he’d meet at events, or friends of friends, recommending him through the grapevine like a sordid new lunch spot to hit up: “Have you tried Rings&Paddles? They have really good… service.” Although that analogy sounds far more prostitutional than it’s ever been, and he’d like it to be known— officially, on the record and all— that orgasms are not an actual menu item, readily available for order. More of a secret menu arrangement type-deal. What he does, according to the fact that the only currency he takes is obedience and punctuality, is basically just civic duty. 

Charity work, practically, according to the young woman who once messaged him on FetLife to say his videos made her feel "more emotionally regulated than therapy," which was both flattering and a sign that the world was very, very deeply broken.

He never labeled himself a dominant. Still doesn’t. The title feels too large, too performative, like a costume two sizes too big, even with an excel spreadsheet detailing his usual churn of dynamics, rules, preferences, timestamps, and all. The more rule-heavy type stuff, the kind that leans into that prep school punishment cosplay he’s actively disavowed? That didn’t come until later, and wasn’t inherently by his own volition, anyways. It escalated, as these things do, somewhere between a girl getting a recommendation from a friend for a method of mild catharsis (because she had a shitty receptionist job and little to no coping mechanisms) and the way he’d let her sit on his lap after and cry into his hoodie for twenty minutes like his loungewear was baptismal cloth for her emotional exorcism. 

Despite his inflated reputation and the nature of the hobby, less of these things were actually sexual than not. Not every session led to something carnal. Not every dynamic cracked something open beyond this deeply intimate genre of connection and, ironically enough, casual politeness afterward. Some girls showed up, got spanked, said thank you, and left like they were clocking out of a very niche part-time job. Some messaged him twice a month like it was a recurring dental appointment. A few never made it past one session, deciding— respectfully— that it just wasn’t their thing, or that Harry wasn’t their particularly-sought flavor of authority, and that was fine.

He didn’t push it. He didn’t chase it. The structure (or the psychological purge, depending) was what most of them came for. The sex, when it happened, was entirely incidental. But he did make friends along the way. Eventually, he’d sit with a repeat visitor after and discover they both liked the same music, or had the same disdain for couples matching roman numeral tattoos, or some equally surface-level interest that whittled a genuine bonding moment. 

And that? Those evolutions, probably alongside the whole mechanism of aftercare paired with vulnerability— incredibly important step to the whole process, in his opinion— started to foster something new. Just an… unacknowledged softness. An edge of rawness that started showing up in the way they wrote to him.

More emojis. More thank you’s. One of them left him a voicemail once— completely unprompted, completely uncalled for— just to say that he was helping her feel like a person again, that no one had made her feel this safe in years. That she didn't know how to explain it, but it mattered.

Harry had listened to the recording exactly once, standing in the cereal aisle at Trader Joe's, staring down the shredded wheat like it had personally wronged him. He'd paused it, locked his phone, and then bought two boxes of something sugary and chocolate just to reassert control over his own autonomy. It didn’t help.

Initially, Harry didn't like the feeling. It was strange, being mistaken for someone capable of that kind of generosity. He wasn't safe— he was consistent, and that was only because he was a stubborn creature of habit that was allergic to change. But the girls kept coming. Kept asking and saying things like, "Would it be okay if I told you when I mess up?" and "You don't have to reply, I just like knowing you're there."

And what was he supposed to do? Say no? Say, "Sorry, I'm only emotionally available when someone's bent over my lap with their skirt hiked up and a very clear safeword system in place" or, "Actually, I'm more of a benevolent pervert than a real support system, but thanks for the vote of confidence"?

He just said, "Sure."

And then he added a new tab to his spreadsheet, and then he re-sorted it by name and infraction type and timestamp. He never meant to become a fixture in anyone’s story, but apparently, structure— when delivered with a calm voice and a little spectacle— sticks. Even when the rest of it doesn’t. He was good at it. That was the problem. He was too good at it— too good at tone, at pulling someone across his lap and delivering a scolding that made them blush before he ever lifted a hand. He was the type of person who didn't make things weird. Who could calmly say things like that's ten for the attitude and two more for being late, isn't it? and could make a girl feel like following some arbitrary rules was the fun part, but breaking them, just a little, just enough to get his attention, was even better.

It’s sort of a bit like very hands-on therapy, in a way. Nowadays, only a handful of them, if that, are rule-heavy (and looking back, it was always that way— a full spread kind of catering project, instead). Not all of them are punishments. He tailors. Sometimes someone wants routine emotional regulation. Other times, a girl he’s been fucking basically asks for glorified lovetaps and his nails lightly trailing over the backs of her thighs before his fingers find their way between her legs. It’s not about control. It’s about closeness, the quiet calm that settles into his bones. The way he knows he’s giving the other person the same.  

But he likes spanking. All kinds. Silly, giggly bratting that ends in threats and cherry-red skin. Lazy, indulgent swats between kisses. Stern, structured correction with lectures, and safewords, and someone blinking up at him like they need to hear it— that what they did mattered, that someone’s paying attention.

And when it is disciplinary— when it’s not about sex, or flirting, or fun— he expects to be called Sir, because every man needs a little gravitas to offset the fact that there is a hungry holland lop roaming the same living room, between their feet, like an equal shareholder in every square foot of the property. It’s not about the title. It’s about the shift. The mutual recognition that they’re stepping into something together, something that requires structure, presence, follow-through. Something that says, I will hold you to this, because you asked me to, and I care enough to do it right.

So, that’s the story. There’s no deeper meaning. No psychosexual backstory he’s ready to unpack in therapy. And sometimes… 

Harry sits up and stretches over the table to reach for the next coaster available, setting his mug on top of it as he gives his palms room to motion. Folding his hands and his lap and pursing his lips as he stares down at a piece of the carpet across the room, he chews over where to begin. Eventually, he meets her eye. “So, there’s this girl in uni, right?”

Sometimes, when it’s late and the room is warm and someone’s looking at him like they trust him to know when enough is enough, he lets himself think that maybe that strange little corner of connection is the closest thing to intimacy he’ll ever not run from.

Read the next 8.3K here now or > access on tumblr 06/02/25 sign up with a browser (not the app) to save money!

[totaly-obsessed]

Sunset Strolls

Alexia Putellas x reader Blurb

-> navigating a city's chaos for groceries, and stubbornness

-> Based on THIS post by @carolineshairtie (and Ale's hands...)

-> Word count: 640

➳ Masterlist

•─────⋅☾ ☽⋅─────•

The streets of Barcelona were busy with people in a rush to finally get home after a long day at work. The trams were filled to the brim by tired faces squeezing into a small space, hoping for a smooth journey, while the sidewalks transformed into a runway - one person overtaking the next, running into each other and bumping into mothers pushing strollers.

In the midst of the chaos were you and Alexia, making your way to the grocery store. Your girlfriend had been at training until afternoon, and after getting home she had joined you for your daily nap. But then the realization of an empty fridge and even emptier cupboards set in - making for a rude awakening.

Training had been mostly in the gym for the day, and Alexia wanted to enjoy the last rays of sun with her favorite person - So you had walked to the store. The way wasn’t too far, and it was safe to say that both Ale and you had been enjoying just spending time together, sun on your faces and intertwined hands swaying back and forth.

The actual time spent at the local store was fun as well, Ale completely ignored your list and just went for it. Any box you touched was being loaded into your cart, and you needed to remind her multiple times that you had in fact walked there and that you would need to carry everything back home.

The young woman working the register was incredibly amused to see you and Alexia fight over who would be the one paying. You had been trying to argue that Ale had already bought the groceries last week, but your girlfriend didn’t want to hear it, saying that you deserved to have anything you wanted.

The blonde had finally won the fight, slamming her card down on the contactless card machine, holding you off with the other hand, before she gave you the empty bags she had pulled out of your handbag.

“I pay, you pack.”

That seemed fairer than just standing there, so without a fuss you started packing your newly acquired things into jute bags, which quickly started to run out, leaving you to stuff everything in, hoping that it would fit.

Alexia shook her head, an entertained smile on her lips as, before she took the bags from the counter, leaving you empty-handed once again.

“Hold the door amore?”

With a pleasant humm you did, keeping the heavy glass door open so that your girlfriend could walk through, heavy bags in her hands. “Mi alma, please!” your hand was extended towards her, trying to take some of the baggage off her. The walk was now slower than before, much more of a nice stroll.

“No, I’ve got it, you go ahead.” As stubborn as a mule -  but you don’t think it’s possible to love someone more than you did love your girlfriend, even with her incredibly strong-willed character.

The sun had started to set, the shadows much colder than they had been before. Not a lot of people were left over on the streets, trying to make it to the next bar or still trying to make it home. Restaurants started to turn on their ambient lights as people gathered.

You still had a good way to go before you would arrive at your shared apartment. Quietly, your hand that had been holding onto Alexia’s lower arm, started to make its way down, trying to take the bags out of her hand.

The blonde's head shot up, aware of what was happening. Your nice walking pace came to a sudden halt as Ale adjusted, your hands still extended to take them.  Now all the bags were in one hand, some slung over her shoulder, as she took your hand in hers.

“That's not what l- okay.”

[meli-writes]

Mechismo - No. 7 /// Payload

(Read on AO3) /// (First) / (Previous)

/// CW: light peril and implied threat of sexual assault. ///

"Nah, this is too good to be true," the merc-rebel-something mutters. She turns, twiddling the combat knife in her hand and stopping only to point it at you. "You wanna tell me what trap i've walked into, sweetheart?"

You eye the databox, stuffed with weeks and months of upcoming junta plans; and more besides. Enough intel to butcher hundreds of their bootlickers, least until they figure out they're compromised.

"I have it — for my own reasons," you taunt like the bellow of rotten, felled tree. "Making my mark, if you have to know."

"Is daddy-dictator's special girl staging a rebellious phase in her twenties?" the merc mocks. "Smuggle a bunch of data to what? Sell for tattoo money?"

You didn't plan an answer for a question like this, and it's hard not to just gawk and fumble at your cuffs.

"Maybe — if it's not a trap — the intel lasts a week," she continues. And besides that, you urge in your own head. "That's the only part with access dates in years. Rest is outdated crap."

"W-what do you—"

You shut your mouth when she stalks up, lifts your chin with the little blade's point with just enough force to dip it in red.

"You living out some little fantasy right now?" she asks, as much curioused as annoyed. "Because I really think that'd be a mistake."

It takes a lot not squeal. "I-I'm a valuable hostage, my family will pay well."

"They will," the merc muses, "and I think you knew that." In a glance she's seen right through, smiles at the confirmation you haven't realised you just gave away. "You leaked your convoy's route didn't you? Playing hero. Thinking you're gonna make us a pretty penny and then waddle back to your parties and soirées."

You buck up above the point of the knife, "You think I like being around them? They're monsters. And I have to pretend to be one, and you have no idea what that does to you."

Her brow raised, she stays quiet, listens.

"But i stood up, just like you did. I'm doing what I can."

And she laughs.

"Ah-hahaha! Oh saints, how many years you been saving up that little speech, sweetheart? Or bleeding-heart I should say."

"Too many," you spit.

"Hmm. Good answer," she smirks, putting a hand on your shoulder and hoisting you towards her own mech. "You're staying restrained."

"B-but i'm helping you!" you gasp.

"Your round ass for ransom helps me — you don't," she makes clear, enunciating it with a squeeze that presses into your collarbone. "And I don't trust you, so i'm not interested in giving you the chance to try anything. Don't think I haven't killed prettier things than you.

Don't think I regretted it either."

---

The merc bags your head first. Stuffs a mule-bit in your mouth overtop of it, so you're forced to swallow the loose fibres under your teeth as you gnaw on it in cortisol and pothole-induced chatters.

This isn't the edible part of the plant. You remember a 'land exchange ceremony' where you had to a drink a thick, green bowl of its stewed leaves and were sure the locals were making a joke about how bitter it was. You vomited it out-of-sight, sure your father would fucking shoot one of them if he saw it. Mostly because you hated the sound. the loud screech, and the crying after. The palace was far enough away to forget that was just part of the production process here.

Jute. It's called jute, you remember. 11.768MG from this entire continent, and about half of what it's allowed to produce. The other is raw minerals, shipped without care to the extra weight because it makes sure there's nothing here worth rebelling over. Makes sure no one can make anything out of it processed.

That's the theory at least. Doesn't explain who's paying for her. She doesn't look like one of the locals, like the people she pulls your hood off to, after 4 hours of trying not to vomit again as you rattled about in her scout mech's storage bin.

"Now youse believe me? Little Miss Junta, out of daddy's palace for a stroll in her smoking convoy," the merc purrs.

Her hand slips over your shoulder, through your heat-fucked hair and over your cheek, where the yanking of the bag has scratched a peace garden into the tear-stained makeup under your still-blinking eyes.

You stumble, lose your footing but only fall an inch as another hand sinks into your gut. It reminds you of one of those tree-cutting attachments, used for clearing land for plantation.

"There there, I got you sweetheart" she murmurs mockingly, slipping the bit back in before you can say—

You're not sure what you should.

You don't know these people. But it's hard to meet their stares for more than a moment, slash-and-burn fires in their eyes. The fires that throw up smoke you can see from a hundred miles away from behind ten layers of razorwire and a line of autogun implacements. Where this plan felt much more predictable.

You're not sure if you want her to explain it either.

She knows better, you're sure. The longer you've spent on this world has only made you feel like you know less and less.

"You waiting for a fucking bonus? A round of applause, perhaps?" one of them asks, an officer — or leader, if that sort of formality doesn't match. His pushed-back chair scrapes across the floor, pushing aside rotting fibres strewn across it. "You're paid for each contracted period; 50% at start, 50% at end, that's it."

"Can start with telling your man to fix my piece," your captor demands, or offers. It's hard to tell. One of the men at the table seems to hover around throwing his cards down. "There's a lot of dead men to clean out of the toe pads."

The 'officer' doesn't signal the sitting man to move. "You'll go with him then, yeah?" he asks.

Your eyes are adjusting now. It's only a moment before they've locked with his. You can't tell what your captor is doing but she's not moving either. He continues, "She can stay—"

"You're forgetting Section 16. Exceptional duties," she interrupts. "Think i'm at least due for a cut on the ransom. Besides, you're getting her databox for free. There's months worth of good intel there."

There's not. She said—

"It's free because it's useless to you." Unlike you. He circles the table, his hand hovering over loaded guns and dice. Maybe the merc is more predictable than them. Profit-motive alone is a little more... clean. "You radio'd that the convoy looked underarmed but normal. And you chose to engage it while on regular patrol, right?"

"Yeah," the merc grits past your ear, like the speckled concrete chips that have clawed under your dress from being made to crawl in them.

"Then it's not exceptional. Doesn't matter who the fuck she is." He's standing in front of you both now, taller. "Now show-and-tells over. You can supervise repairs while i look over my intake."

Your gut's squished a bit tighter. "And leave you here with her?"

It all clicks a little too quickly, and a little too late.

The officer's hand wraps around the little of your arm that shows in front, still drawn behind to raw wrists in junta cuffs. His thumb presses till your flesh turns whiter than it already is.

He leans over to whisper it in the merc's ear, "the fuck you think we're going to do?"

She yanks you back, head bouncing between pilot-suited tits. "Kidnapping her is escalation. That's Section 33, escalated scenarios, which means anything routine activity from here counts as Section 16," she non-answers. The words cock in her mouth like a loaded gun that hasn't fired yet.

It's just profit-motive. That's all it is. All it is. Your ransom must be worth a dozen of her contracts. She must figure they're testing to see if they can cut her out—

"You knew where to grab her!" the officer shouts. The less-drunk half of the table scrambles to their feet, but no one's armed just yet. You try to keep still, pretend like somehow he won't notice you're there even as he's screaming about you. "How long have i been paying you? trusting you? All that fucking risk. So why're you pulling this, huh? Wanna tell me what's going on? Don't think i didn't see the same stupid tip--"

"Hey! Merc-bitch," the table pipes up, the more-drunk half of it, with few chips and a lot more bottles where he's sitting. "You wanna piss off and let princess play with her new daddies?"

This one's looking at you. It's worse than hate, and twists at whatever face you're making. You can't even tell. Stupid passenger in your own— what? What is this now? Own body except not anymore. Your own plan except it's the merc's now.

Your own punishment?

Hh you are so fucking stupid. 'Your' punishment. Ha! Except your father will do so much worse than just shoot someone for bad leaf soup. The humiliation of it. His own daughter. Almost as bad as stealing one of the tin medals off his chest. If he could keep count of those either. Stupid as he is. And now without autoguns and razorwire and razorwire and more-fucking-razorwire to compensate.

Your merc's wrapping you closer, till your heels start to fall off. You don't even realise how much you were moving till you're forced to stop.

The officer's in his table-piper's face, pied with alcoholic blush, "Shut. The fuck. Up."

He's just trying to control the situation too. Yeah. You're the fucking bad guy here. Daddy's done what they're just joking about. Joking. Because you're the bad guy. You deserve a little of the risk for once.

"I'm just saying—"

"Just stop saying."

"Let me handle her," your merc offers, firm enough to make it obvious it isn't one.

She's pulling you more into her side, hand on your hip in a show of clamatory suggestiveness. She's less risk. You still want less risk.

"It can be payment for 16," she continues. This doesn't help her and now you're leaning into her. Her voice lilts a bit louder, "And if she needs a daddy, i've given her some guidance already."

You can her scar-splitting smile through the corner of your eye. You've seen enough smiles at those fancy balls to spot the bullshit ones, and spot the way she scans for if her comment satisfied or not.

You play your part and whimper.

Pitched just like your empty shell of a prop boyfriend likes and doesn't question. A fear that swirls with pleasure, water down the oil cap of an engine. She squeezes your hip bone in response, and you cow. There's still plenty of room to ruin this even as a prop yourself.

"You stays on your side of the camp," the officer finally says. "Keep her locked down, not my fault if she gets out." He sidles in closer one last time. "Keep her quiet. Not my problem if someone else gets in."

You know what you'd said now. Between the bit and her legs if you have to.

I promise you won't regret this. I promise I promise I—

All she says is, "let me know when you've got a line," and turns, "come on sweetheart. I wanna hear you say daddy."

You'll say that too.

---

(Masterpost) / (Next)

[flea--circus]

Hello hello! Poe plushies have been out of stock for a couple years and it's time to bring these guys back!

Like my very first project, there will be stretch goals for freebie items that I'll be including with every pledge!

Last time those freebies included stickers, washi tape, a button and magnet, a notepad set, a patch, an enamel pin, and a little Poe's Delivery Service jute bag to hold it all!

I need to gather a LOT of support to reach all of those stretch goals so if you're interested please make sure to sign up to be notified when the project launches

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP TO BE NOTIFIED WHEN THE PROJECT LAUNCHES!!

There will be early bird discounts for pledges on the first two days!

Thank you~!

[hell-much]

Waking up to this nice round subscriber number on my AO3 stats page this morning really made me smile.����

Thank you so much to every single one of you! ❤️❤️❤️

Commemorating with a quick little sneak peek into the next chapter of For Once In My Life that I'm on the verge of concluding.

.

Her duffle bag fills at a steady pace. It’s the same one she arrived with four month ago. Four months ago the most important items in her life fit into a duffle back that wasn’t even completely full. When she closes the zipper now it’s filled to the brim, that yet only make for the smallest portion what she collected here in these past months.  

Her eyes dart to the set of clothes that hangs on the closet door. A simple turtleneck and a pair of cord pants. Both neatly pressed, with sharp creases that won’t survive an hour of travelling. She should get dressed. She should stop stalling. Only all her willpower is occupied with suppressing the urge to turn that duffle bag upside down and empty it.  

She doesn’t want to leave. She shouldn’t leave. Leaving now, feels like giving up, like running.  

“You’re going to be late if you don’t hurry.” 

Sansa strides into the room and Margaery watches her wearily, tries to shake the notion that she can’t wait to have her gone. It’s not that, she knows it, but the never ending back and forth of the last week left her thin-skinned. 

A knot forms in her stomach when she sees the bulky jute bag in Sansa’s hands. It’s not the same she tried to send her off with four months ago, this one is newer, nicer, has a colourful print. Peeking inside Margaery finds three stacked Tupper containers and a large thermos.  

“You can have breakfast on the train,” Sansa says. 

Margaery nods. No, it’s not the same. Only it feels exactly the same.  

When she yet doesn’t move, Sansa pulls her travel attire off the hangers, towers above her holding them out to her. “Come on now.” 

Instead of taking the clothes, Margaery clamps both hands around Sansa’s wrists. “It’s not too late to change your mind you know. You could still come.” 

“You know I can’t.”  

She pulls free, leaves Margaery clasping onto fabric still warm from the iron and wondering if it’s not the same after all. It feels the same. It even sounds the same.  

She shouldn’t go. She doesn’t want to go.  

It's just a four-day trip, a short visit to Highgarden for her grandmother's eighty-third birthday.  Margaery never planned to go, never intended it.  Allowing her mother to book her a flight was nothing but a knee-jerk reaction to Sansa's relentless efforts to push her away—a defiant and childish that’ll-show-her. 

It showed her nothing. Sansa took it with the same stoic indifferent expression she spots through all their arguments and now that Margaery sits her next to her packed bag, she wonders if the whole thing isn’t about to blow up in her face.  

It’s only four days, yes. She’ll be back by Sunday night, but she can’t help but wonder what she’ll come back to. Her apartment cleared and all her belonging put into boxes? That fear is perhaps exaggerated, but it wouldn’t be the first time Sansa presented her with a fait accompli, and in her current state she trusts her judgement less than ever before.  

She tried to talk Sansa into coming with her, knows she had her on the verge of considering it a couple of times, too. Not too long ago, Sansa promised that they could do a long weekend away together, that she’d find an excuse for Jon. Now she’s acting like it was always impossible altogether.  

The worst thing is that she knows it would do Sansa good. A couple of days away to clear her head, to distract herself and recharge.  

She observes Sansa for a moment, how she stacks pressed clothes into the dresser. There’s a nervous energy thrumming from her every motion, that has Margaery's stomach churn with unease. 

Setting her travel attire aside, Margaery closes the distance and wraps her arms around her to try. Ignoring the tension that comes to Sansa’s body she presses a kiss to her neck. “I’ll miss you.” 

“It’s only four days.” 

Margaery forbids herself from telling her that four days was all it took to change the course of their lives once before. Instead, she holds her yet a bit tighter and nuzzles her face to her skin. “Four hours would be too much.” 

Sansa’s torso expands in a deep breath, like she barely keeps herself from shrugging her off. She barely tolerates her touch lately; a touch even just close to her stomach will have her pull away.  

She’s keeping her at an arm’s length, both physically and emotionally and it’s wearing Margaery out; to the point where she thinks that some time away from Sansa will do her good, all while fearing what that time apart will conclude in.  

[juteproductartisans]

Jute for Life: Empowering Women and Promoting Eco-Friendly Living

In the heartland of India, an extraordinary initiative is taking root, aimed at empowering women and promoting eco-friendly living. Jute for Life: The Jute Artisans Guild Association, a voluntary non-profit organization, is weaving a tapestry of hope and sustainability in the rural districts of Barabanki and Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh. This remarkable endeavor has garnered support from the National Jute Board, Ministry of Textiles, Government of India, and is nurtured under the SFURTI scheme with guidance from NMIMS Mumbai as its technical mentor.

Let’s delve into the key aspects of this transformative association through the following subheadings.

1. Introduction: Weaving Hope and Sustainability

A Glimpse into Jute for Life: The Jute Artisans Guild Association’s Mission

At its core, Jute for Life: The Jute Artisans Guild Association is committed to uplifting the lives of rural women. It offers them not just a source of livelihood but also a path to sustainable and eco-conscious living. By harnessing the potential of jute, often referred to as the “golden fiber,” the association aims to reduce plastic hazards and contribute to environmental conservation.

Government Support and Key Initiatives

This noble endeavor has received significant backing from the government. The National Jute Board, Ministry of Textiles, Government of India, supports the association under the Jute Technology Mission IV. Additionally, the Ministry of MSME and the Khadi & Village Industries Commission serve as the Nodal Agency through the SFURTI scheme, providing a strong foundation for its activities.

2. SFURTI and the Lucknow Multi Products Cluster

Leveraging the SFURTI Scheme for Women Empowerment

The association’s heart and soul lie in the Lucknow Multi Products Cluster, established under the SFURTI scheme. This cluster is a vibrant platform where more than 740 women jute artisans showcase their talents and craft an array of stunning jute products. It’s a testament to the dedication and vision of the association, providing a space for these women to thrive.

NMIMS Mumbai: The Association’s Technical Mentor

To enhance the skills and creativity of these artisans, the association has sought guidance from NMIMS Mumbai, serving as its technical agency. This mentorship enables the artisans to innovate and continuously improve their craft, ensuring the quality and marketability of their products.

3. Training and Artisan Engagement

Empowering Women through Jute Bag-Making

Diversified Jute Products: From Seminars to Industry

Beyond jute bags, over 900 women jute artisans are actively engaged in producing a range of diversified jute products. These products cater to various needs, from stylish jute bags ideal for seminars and conferences to eco-friendly packaging solutions for industrial purposes. It’s noteworthy that these artisans are not just impacting the local economy but have also gained a foothold in markets across the country.

4. Going Global: Exporting Eco-Friendly Solutions

Spreading Eco-Conscious Creations Nationwide

With its own import-export code, the association facilitates exports effortlessly, enabling the reach of these sustainable products to extend globally. The commitment to eco-friendly living knows no borders, and the association is making its presence felt far and wide.

Navigating International Markets with an Import-Export Code

This import-export code streamlines the process, allowing the association to export its products without any hassle. It’s a testament to their dedication to promoting eco-friendly solutions on a global scale.

5. Jute as a Golden Fiber: Crafting a Sustainable Future

Harnessing the Potential of Jute

At the heart of Jute for Life: The Jute Artisans Guild Association’s mission is the golden fiber itself – jute. This natural, recyclable material is at the core of their creations, transforming into an array of designs that serve both official and industrial needs.

Market Insights and Trendspotting at Fairs and Exhibitions

The association ensures that the artisans remain updated with market trends and preferred product designs by actively participating in fairs and industrial exhibitions. This firsthand exposure provides them with invaluable insights into what customers seek, enabling them to craft products that are not only eco-friendly but also appealing to a broad audience.

6. Rising Demand for Eco-Friendly Utility Products

Plastic Hazards and the Growing Demand for Sustainable Alternatives

Jute for Life: The Jute Artisans Guild Association as a Beacon of Change

In conclusion, Jute for Life: The Jute Artisans Guild Association is not just an organization; it’s a beacon of hope, empowerment, and sustainability. Through their dedicated efforts, they are transforming the lives of rural women in Uttar Pradesh, offering them a path towards economic independence, while simultaneously championing the cause of environmental preservation. Their work serves as a reminder that small steps can lead to significant changes and that by choosing eco-friendly alternatives, we can collectively work towards a brighter, more sustainable future. This association is not just crafting jute products; it’s weaving a sustainable future for generations to come.

[socialistmary]

Devil on my back; prologue

Pairing: Reader x Joel Miller

Warning: NSFW, 18+ ONLY, MINORS DNI, implied smut & ✨actual✨ smut further down the line, age gap (Joel's in his 50s & Reader's in her late 20s), cheating, delicious catholic guilt, afab!reader, pet names (no use of Y/N), no outbreak!AU

Summary: Joel Miller vividly remembers the day you moved next door, a captivating vision of religious boundaries he can't wait to break

Word count: 1.6k

Author's Note: not sure yet what this series will look like, but this heathen needs to get it out before her innards explode 👁️👄👁️🌸✨

Joel remembers the day you moved in years ago, though the exact date escapes him. By this age, memories in his mind were more like a gallery of images and sensations brought forth by triggers of varying intensities, rather than words and numbers. He remembers the sweltering heat of the day, the smell of scorching sun and dry earth, the gritty feeling of dust settling on his sweat-soaked skin, all etched into his consciousness. That and Tommy’s complaining about how everything was just sticking together too much. It was downright miserable. 

The lemonade Sarah had brought out ten minutes ago already reached body temperature, ice inside succumbing too easily to the heat. Joel took a sip, pulled a face, and almost dropped the glass back down on the table. Mouth dry and eyes wandering, he watched mildly curious as a white “Jackson’s Moving and Delivering” van pulled into the driveway right across the street, shiny blue Toyota Corolla in tow. Joel looked at his own truck, red colour darkened by time and dust, wheels muddied after a particularly inconvenient thunderstorm last week. He hadn’t bothered giving it a wash - hell, he couldn’t even remember the last time it had an intentional wash. He furrowed his eyebrows and stared ahead waiting for people to pour out of the cars, vaguely aware of Tommy doing the same and Sarah coming out to have a look herself, eyes straining against the sun. Great, now everyone was curious, everyone's looking directly at them, and Joel knew they all looked like a gaggle of gossiping housewives. 

And there you were, first one out, hair pulled back in a high ponytail – a practical choice battling the Texas heat – dark sunglasses shielding your eyes, and a bright, dazzling million-dollar smile that had Joel squinting a little harder, as if to capture every little detail from afar. The others had yet to emerge from their cars, but you were already talking and waving your hands with enthusiasm, looking surprisingly thrilled to be in that little shithole of a suburb he’d moved into all those years ago. His ex-wife had insisted on the great schools in the area before fucking off to who-knows-where. 

Everyone kept watching as you gracefully maneuvered around the cars, captivated by your confident movement. You stopped in front of the door, no doubt searching for the keys to your new little home through that cute little jute bag. Joel couldn’t help but notice how delicate you seemed underneath the confident strides, entranced by your womanly curves, round ass, and the three-inch yellow heels you were prancing around in. He inhaled a sharp breath when he became awfully aware of his age.. and yours. ‘Just what I needed,’ he thought half amused.

Joel watched as you threw the blue Corolla a triumphant smile, wiggling a pair of house keys around with one hand and making a playful come-hither motion the other, sending a thrilling shiver down his spine, followed by a hard swallow. ‘Must be getting a heatstroke,’ he joked to himself and turned his attention to the cars, trying his best to get distracted. Jackson’s movers were already out of the van and hard at work distributing furniture, plants, and boxes across the lawn with practiced efficiency. The scene unfolded like a well-choreographed dance, Tommy and Sarah watched curiously, trying to make sense of the wrapped furniture and house goods. As they cranked their necks looking for questionable couch prints or weird-looking family heirlooms, like the creepy dead-eyed cat statuettes grandma used to have around the house, Sarah thought with a shudder, Joel’s focus kept drifting back to you. He watched discreetly as you chattered away with the movers, your charm and warmth unmistakable even from a distance.

The driver seat door of the Corolla opened to reveal a man your age, hair neatly cropped and face cleanly shaven, clothes looking soft and stiff at the same time, worn but with a like-new quality. He smiled a tight smile at you, clearly not feeling as comfortable as you looked. Hand on his hip, looking a little queasy, he surveyed the house behind dark sunglasses and made a lazy hand gesture for the keys. You walked to him with the keys, throwing a knees-weakening smile that seemed to have no effect on him, much to Joel’s surprise.

That’s when you turned around and noticed the Millers watching you from a few yards away. A hint of surprise flitted across your face, quickly fading into a bashful smile, Joel noticed, when Sarah gave you an enthusiastic wave. He tried to ignore the way his pants grew slightly tighter and his mouth a little dryer when he saw you bite into your bottom lip as you returned the wave. Even more so, he could swear he felt your burning stare on him behind your sunglasses, making his skin prickle in ways it hadn’t for a long time. Get it out of your head old man, he thought. Goddamn Texas heat.

“Hi, welcome, I’m Sarah!” Sarah greeted a little louder than she meant to, making you jump slightly and clasp your hands together in front of you as your smile grew wider. Joel easily noticed the way your cheek flushed to match a stunning set of pink rosy lips that will have him thinking pure filthy things later that evening. You’re jus’ a shy little thing, aren’t ya, he thinks to himself as you approach, keeping a respectful distance. Behind the dark sunglasses and that bright smile, behind the confident strides you take in those cute yellow heels, you’re just a little bundle of nerves, writhing in place with every bit of foreign attention. Realising this, Joel went to sit up a little straighter in his chair, remembering where he left his confidence. He's suddenly feeling a lot more at peace with his age than he did a second ago. He’s a fifty-year-old man, there’s literally no reason for him to feel intimidated by you. In fact, he wonders crossing his arms in front of his chest, maybe you should feel a little intimidated by him.

And you do; from this close, he feels like you do. Despite the sunglasses framing your face and hiding your eyes from view, Joel found himself keenly attuned to your nuances just by watching you across the road. Your mouth was a complete canvas of emotion, revealing your thoughts and feelings more than you probably realised. It was as if your lips were a window into your mind, just begging Joel to decipher their sweet, subtle cues, and right now, from this distance, they were telling him everything he needed to know.

Without the luxury of sunglasses to hide his eyes behind, Joel thought it wise to just make a point of meeting your gaze whenever he felt your eyes on him, allowing his own to wander down your form, looking at you up and down, taking in every detail, appreciating the way your body responded to his presence. A slow, lazy smile spread across his face. That’s it babygirl, he thought to himself as he watched you swallow, subtly wet your lips and nibble into the side of your lower lip, all within the span of 3 seconds. It all made him shift slightly in his seat, electric charge of desire coursing through the air.

In that fleeting instant, the world seemed to shrink, leaving only the two of you trapped in a bubble of heat and unspoken yearning, skin prickling and electricity buzzing in your ears. Or maybe it’s just heatstroke.

A mixture of nerves and desire washed over you as you tried to maintain your composure. For a moment, your mind went blank, unsure of what to say or why you even approached them, when you should've just - freakin' - waved. It felt as though you’d cave in from the intensity of his gaze. You struggled to keep your focus on Sarah and ignore the way his eyes on you made you feel so deliciously exposed and vulnerable. As you spoke, your voice naturally a little deeper, raspier than he expected, sent an icy-hot thrill down his spine and a satisfied groan only he could hear escaped his chest.

“Hiya,” you managed to greet with a smile and wave, one leg going behind the other, clasped hands moving to your back, your body instinctively shifting into a slightly more timid posture. You didn't seem like you went out much, or even talked to that many people, despite your big mouth. Joel could see you more clearly now and found these nervous gestures all too endearing. Taking all of you in, Joel’s eyes roamed over your body, over the sky-blue sundress hugging your figure, your sun kissed shoulders bared in the warm breeze, and he almost lets out another groan when he notices the outline of your white, good girl panties underneath, sight only intensifying the swirling desire he feels pooling low in his body.

Joel had to shake his head to get rid of the thoughts of you writhing underneath him, skirt of your dress hiked up past your hips, mouth slack and eyes rolling back into your head with pleasure, when he noticed Corolla guy coming over, looking slightly more at ease than earlier. From the gold wedding bands on your ring fingers, Joel immediately clocks Corolla guy as your husband. He felt confusing mixture of unwarranted jealousy painting his vision green and a stupid, childish thrill stirring inside him, both at the same time.

“This is Dax, my husband,” you introduced him with a radiant smile, clasping your husband’s hand in yours and looking at him like the Sun shined out of his ass. Seeing your obvious affection for your husband and that dainty little goddamn cross around your neck should’ve made Joel back down. And usually it would’ve, but this time it only somehow intensified the complexity of his emotions, made Joel really wonder what you're made of. His stupid desire for you was a little too consuming, tempting him, pushing him into territories that would've usually felt very un-Joel-like. “We just came down from Dallas,” you continue, and Joel can’t tell if you’re talking to all of them, or only to him. "Dax gets a little car sick and you won't catch me drivin'," What kinda name is "Dax" anyway??

[thedecorcircle24]

Corporate Gifting in India: Sustainable and Eco-Friendly Gift Ideas

Corporate gifting has become an essential part of building business relationships in India. However, with growing environmental concerns, many companies are now shifting towards sustainable and eco-friendly gifting options.

This article explores innovative, green corporate gift ideas that align with corporate social responsibility (CSR) goals and leave a lasting impact on clients, employees, and stakeholders.

Why Choose Sustainable Corporate Gifts?

1. Environmental Benefits

Reduces waste and carbon footprint by using biodegradable materials and eco-friendly packaging.

Promotes recycling and upcycling, extending product life cycles and reducing landfill waste.

Supports sustainable production practices that minimize resource consumption and pollution.

2. Brand Image and CSR Initiatives

Enhances corporate reputation by showcasing a commitment to environmental responsibility.

Aligns with eco-conscious business practices, meeting the expectations of green-conscious clients.

Demonstrates commitment to sustainability, reinforcing corporate values and ethical policies.

3. Thoughtful and Long-Lasting Impression

Unique, high-quality gifts that recipients appreciate and use for a long time.

Creates a sense of goodwill and loyalty by showing thoughtfulness and care.

Top Sustainable and Eco-Friendly Corporate Gift Ideas in India

1. Reusable Bamboo and Wooden Products

Bamboo coffee mugs and water bottles that are lightweight, durable, and biodegradable.

Wooden desk organizers and stationery made from responsibly sourced materials.

Bamboo toothbrushes and cutlery sets for reducing plastic waste in daily use.

2. Organic and Sustainable Gift Hampers

Organic tea and coffee assortments packed in recyclable containers.

Healthy snack boxes with nuts, dried fruits, and seeds for guilt-free indulgence.

Ayurvedic wellness kits featuring herbal skincare and immunity-boosting essentials.

3. Eco-Friendly Office Supplies

Recycled paper notebooks and planners that minimize deforestation.

Seed paper pens and plantable stationery that grow into plants when disposed of.

Jute or cork laptop bags offering a stylish yet sustainable alternative to synthetic materials.

4. Sustainable Home and Lifestyle Products

Reusable cloth bags and tote bags replacing single-use plastics.

Handmade soy wax candles free from toxic chemicals and artificial fragrances.

Upcycled home decor items crafted from reclaimed materials.

5. Indoor Plants and Green Gifting

Air-purifying plants like Snake Plant, Money Plant, and Aloe Vera improving indoor air quality.

DIY gardening kits encouraging sustainable home gardening.

Seed balls for tree plantation initiatives, making gifting more impactful.

6. Handcrafted and Artisanal Gifts

Khadi fabric apparel and accessories supporting rural artisans.

Ethically made terracotta and ceramic items promoting traditional craftsmanship.

Handwoven scarves and eco-friendly textiles made using natural fibers.

7. Zero-Waste Personal Care Kits

Natural and organic skincare sets free from harsh chemicals and synthetic additives.

Handmade soaps and shampoo bars reducing plastic bottle waste.

Biodegradable bamboo razors and combs offering an eco-conscious grooming solution.

How to Choose the Right Sustainable Corporate Gift?

1. Understand Your Audience

Identify recipient preferences to ensure gifts are appreciated and used.

Ensure usefulness and practicality by selecting items that fit their lifestyle.

2. Prioritize Sustainability Certifications

Look for eco-friendly labels (FSC, Fair Trade, Organic) ensuring authenticity.

Check for biodegradable and recyclable packaging to reduce waste.

3. Support Local and Ethical Brands

Choose gifts made by local artisans and small businesses to support sustainability.

Ensure fair trade and ethical labor practices for socially responsible gifting.

The Future of Corporate Gifting in India

Increasing demand for eco-conscious corporate gifts as businesses embrace sustainability.

Growth of sustainable gifting startups offering innovative and green solutions.

Greater emphasis on ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) policies in corporate gifting strategies.

Conclusion

Sustainable corporate gifting is more than just a trend; it’s a responsibility. By choosing eco-friendly gifts, businesses can build stronger relationships while making a positive impact on the environment. Whether it’s bamboo products, organic hampers, or handcrafted goods, sustainable corporate gifting in India is here to stay.

FAQs

1. Why should companies opt for eco-friendly corporate gifts?

Eco-friendly gifts help reduce environmental impact, enhance brand reputation, and align with CSR initiatives.

2. What are some budget-friendly sustainable corporate gifts?

Affordable options include seed paper stationery, reusable cloth bags, and organic snack hampers.

3. How can businesses ensure the sustainability of their corporate gifts?

By choosing certified sustainable products, minimizing packaging waste, and supporting ethical brands.

4. Are eco-friendly gifts well-received by employees and clients?

Yes, they are thoughtful, practical, and align with modern sustainability values.

5. Where can businesses source sustainable corporate gifts in India?

Many online marketplaces and local brands offer eco-friendly corporate gifting solutions.

[forestofforever]

Artair brings Crow a small gift. It isn't for any particular reason, but the crow has given him several things, including the brooch now pinned to his bag. He has the pearl as well, tucked safely at home amongst his collection of stones and other natural trinkets. Which is what gave him the idea.

So he approaches the Crow with a small box, one made of paper and folded into shape with origami, hardly the size of his palm. The material is a plain, and he's chosen this paper because it is made of natural materials and will degrade and provide for the woods even if discarded. He's too excited, and his good arm is already held out, already, so that the Crow can take it and undo the ribbon tied around it, made with jute braided with a little geometric diamond pattern.

Once it is undone and the lid is lifted, inside is a spiral shell that seems to be made of stone. On one side, it is solid with a white and brown and coppery leaf-like pattern on the smooth surface. The other is hollowed in small chambers, smaller and smaller further down the spiral, each one glinting with opalized colors.

"It's...not special. Or magic." Artair shrugs. But.... it's an ammonite. A fossil? Which is like.... a creature that lived a long time ago and it's pretty and shiny, so I thought you might like it. It's cut in half so you can see the septa-- those chambers on this side-- pretty clear. Those patterns on the other side are called sutures. It looks like leaves because of the type of ammonite. They're related to octopi and squids as creatures-- if you know about those I guess hahah....."

Artair rubs at his neck. "A-anyways. It's not magic or anything. But...it's from my collection? I collect rocks and stones and stuff like this. And I thought you might like it too. And..... I thought it'd be nice, to give you something. Something from my collection. So it's like.... a part of something special to me is with you? I hope you like it, but it's really okay if you don't."

The Crow is rather surprised to be receiving another gift. He's done nothing to deserve it, and he could never begin to repay the kindness of the previous gift... so then why? Why is Artair giving him anything at all? He has already done so much for the Crow...

The Crow hesitantly reaches out and takes the small package in his hands. He rolls it over a few times, glancing over at Artair for confirmation that he is allowed to open it, before carefully pulling onto the ribbon to open it up. Artair is wrong, it is special. It is to the Crow, anyway. He produces a soft clicking noise in appreciation as he holds the object, his gaze focused solely on the shiny spiral as Artair explains. It's a fossil, an ammonite. A creature that lived long ago and that has now become...well, this. It's pretty and quite interesting, and the Crow is positively thrilled to have received something like this.

"Squids...and Octopi." He repeats softly, still staring at the ammonite. "They have tentacles, yes? Live in the...sea? A big lake...but salty?" He finally manages to move his eyes back to Artair, and he seems to look his way to make sure that what he's saying is accurate. He isn't really sure how he knows these things, he's never been anywhere near the sea, but the information freely flows into his mind. "There was a group of people that traveled through the forest once. They had fish with them. And squid. They gave me some. It was odd. Difficult to eat. Hard to chew."

He tilts his head as he looks at Artair, furrowing his brows a little. "Why would I not like it? It means something to you and you gave it to me." He considers that reason enough to like it. "I do not just like it, I love it. Very much." He wraps his arms around Artair. Then, in a barely audible whisper:

"And you too."

[infantisimo]

lutyens' piss

she, by the moving car, moving bus, moving bike, moving scooter, moving feet; squats.

her private parts inches from the dust of the footpath. behind her the rivulet of piss she expelled, reaching further and further to make a new map of this civilisation. astride the urine river, she looks like a discarded jute bag that once had cargo. the eyes looked away, the pedestrians' pace brisk but she still squats. if she be plucked and put back in judea. would jesus have washed her feet. would he have insisted that her grimy barnacled hands broke the bread that was his body and pass the pieces among apostles and traitors. the stream spilled further still, grey concrete staining black, but she still squats. how many times must she have starved in the street day. how many times must she have been assaulted in the street night. had she received one dose or two of the covid vaccine. the power of me: the giver the saviour the reformer: in her palm as alms would i drop a five rupee coin or ten? behind her the piss becomes flood, breaching the gates enclosing the 7 crore apartments, irrigating the city that was last lutyens' and always against the poor; the piss now streaks through the corridors of power, past the CISF cordon, the parliamentary VIP lane, into the chambers of parliament. the rank stench of ammonia invades the nostrils of the elected representatives. the house is adjourned. she whose frame is an empty jute bag, squats a moment; a shudder, she gathers her petticoat and hoists herself up from her haunches, walks off the footpath to the road beyond which is the flyover, the abode of the homeless. i move towards her and foist a fifty into her palms. money means food, perhaps a shelter in the night houses. money in my pocket means nothing. money to her also means nothing. the fisted crumpled note tossed in the dust motes of the evening traffic light. money doee not mean dignity. she carries herself across the road, onto the cardboard bed and a blanket of tarpaulin.

not once did she look back at her river that feeds the capital.

[fishingaqualife]

Pattarai Karuvadu’, a unique process of making dry fish in Rameswaram:

‘Pattarai Karuvadu’ is made by treating the fish with salt and turmeric powder and keeping it buried in the sand for 10 days. The fish caught in hooks is used because the flesh will be in good condition. Salt is collected from salt pans to ensure that no iodine is added.

‘Pattarai Karuvadu’ is a contradiction in terms. ‘Karuvadu’, or dry fish, is normally made by drying the excess catch under the sun. But the making of ‘Pattarai Karuvadu’ follows the process of treating the fish with salt and turmeric powder and keeping it buried in the sand for 10 days.

fleshy fish species such as ‘Vanjiram’ (seer fish), ‘Parai’ (Trevally), ‘Soorai’ (tuna), ‘Thirukkai’ (stingray), ‘Koduva’ (sea bass), and ‘Sheela’ (barracuda) would make better ‘Pattarai Karuvadu’.

After removing the entrails of the fish, Dheena and his friend would treat it in turmeric and salt. They would first cover the fish in a jute bag. The bag will be wrapped in a layer of palm leaf mats. They will again cover it with a jute bag before burying it in the sand. “’Pattarai’ refers to the pit we dig to bury the fish.

Dehydration, salting, smoking, pickling, all these methods have been employed since time immemorial to preserve food of all sorts. Whether it's India’s classic mango achaar or Scandinavian pickled fish, there are instances all over the globe of using natural techniques to preserve and extend the shelf life of various food types.

In the coastal city of Rameshwaram in Tamil Nadu, where fishing is one of the primary occupations, locals have been following their own methods for preservation which align with the region’s climate and resources.

This process, also known as "paadam" (meaning preservation), involves treating fish with turmeric powder and burying them in mud. This method is particularly suitable for large, blood-rich fish species such as Kingfish, Vanjaram, Seer fish, Ribbon fish, Mackerel and Leather Skin Fish.

#driedfish #food #fish #foodie #foodporn #seafood #danggit #yummyfood #foodstagram #breakfast #pinoyfood #pusit #sarap #supportlocal #almusal #lami #driedfishph #angpambansangulam #tinapa #piersdriedfish #cheersfrompiers #pier #tasteandseethegoodness #meetyouatthepier #spanishsardines #onlineseller #stockfish #crayfish #smokedfish #foodphotography

[ecobravouk]

Brilliant Eco-Friendly Products to Transform Your Home

Looking for ways to make your home more sustainable? You're in the right place. We all know that reducing our environmental footprint is important, and it’s easier than ever with eco-friendly products. By making small changes, like switching out everyday items for greener alternatives, you can live a more sustainable lifestyle without compromising convenience. In this guide, we’ll dive into some of the best eco-friendly products to have around the home, helping you live more sustainably in every room.

What Are Eco-Friendly Products?

Eco-friendly products are designed with the environment in mind. They are made from sustainable, renewable, or biodegradable materials and often replace single-use plastic items. Unlike conventional products, these eco-friendly alternatives minimise waste and use less energy during production, making them better for the planet.

Why Choose Eco-Friendly Products?

Switching to eco-friendly products has multiple benefits:

Reduced Waste By using items that are reusable or biodegradable, you can dramatically cut down on the waste your household produces.

Less Environmental Impact Eco-friendly items are often made with renewable resources and low-impact manufacturing processes, leading to fewer emissions and less harm to the environment.

Healthier Choices Many traditional household products contain harmful chemicals. By opting for natural alternatives, you’re making a healthier choice for yourself and your family.

Top 10 Must-Have Eco-Friendly Products

Ready to make the switch? Here are some of the best eco-friendly alternatives you can introduce to your home today.

1. Reusable Shopping Bags We’ve all been guilty of using plastic bags, but they’re one of the easiest things to replace. Reusable bags made from natural materials like cotton or jute are durable and far better for the environment. They also fold neatly into your handbag or car, so there’s no excuse for forgetting them!

2. Bamboo Toothbrushes If you haven’t switched to bamboo toothbrushes yet, now’s the time. These toothbrushes have handles made from biodegradable bamboo instead of plastic. They’re a great way to reduce the millions of plastic toothbrushes thrown away each year.

3. Natural Cleaning Solutions Conventional cleaning products are filled with harsh chemicals. Instead, try natural cleaning solutions made with ingredients like vinegar, lemon juice, and baking soda. These not only reduce chemical exposure but also cut back on the plastic packaging that typical cleaners come in.

4. Reusable Bamboo Fibre Kitchen Cloths If you’ve been using single-use wipes or plastic-based sponges, consider switching to reusable bamboo fibre cloths. Bamboo is naturally antibacterial, making it perfect for cleaning your kitchen and home. These cloths last much longer than synthetic sponges and are biodegradable when they’ve worn out.

5. Reusable Sanitary Products Menstrual products contribute to a significant amount of waste. By switching to reusable sanitary pads or menstrual cups, you’ll help reduce this waste and save money in the long run. These products are easy to clean and made from natural, comfortable materials.

6. Wheat Straw Bowls Wheat straw is a by-product of wheat production that’s now being used to make durable, biodegradable products like bowls and plates. They’re lightweight, eco-friendly, and make a fantastic replacement for plastic dishware.

7. Reusable Coffee Cups Disposable coffee cups are a huge source of waste. By carrying a reusable coffee cup made from stainless steel, bamboo, or glass, you can help reduce the number of single-use cups that end up in the bin. Many coffee shops even offer discounts when you bring your own cup.

8. Jute Shopping Bags Jute is a natural fibre that’s strong, biodegradable and requires minimal water to grow. Jute bags are a perfect alternative to plastic bags, ideal for shopping, carrying groceries, or even as a stylish tote. They're durable and will last for years.

9. Natural Fibre Kitchen Towels Ditch the disposable paper towels and invest in reusable, natural fibre kitchen towels. Made from cotton or hemp, these towels are absorbent, machine washable, and a great eco-friendly alternative to throwaway kitchen paper.

10. Stainless Steel Food Containers Say goodbye to plastic food containers that stain and warp. Stainless steel food containers are durable, long-lasting, and fully recyclable. They’re perfect for storing leftovers, packing lunches, or even taking snacks on the go without relying on plastic.

Making the Switch to Sustainable Living

Transitioning to an eco-friendly home doesn’t need to be overwhelming. Here’s how to ease into sustainable living:

Start with Small Changes Focus on one area at a time. Perhaps start with the kitchen and swap out single-use plastic for reusable options. Once you’ve made changes in one room, move on to the next.

Use What You Have Before rushing out to buy eco-friendly products, use up what you already have at home. Repurpose jars, reuse old shopping bags and finish off existing cleaning products before buying new alternatives.

Support Sustainable Brands Look for companies that prioritise eco-friendly practices. Many brands now focus on sustainable production, offering products made from recycled materials or renewable resources.

Get Friends and Family Involved Share your new eco-friendly lifestyle with others! Encourage friends and family to make simple swaps in their homes too. By spreading the word, you can help create a larger positive impact.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Are eco-friendly products really worth the investment?

Yes! While some eco-friendly products might cost a little more upfront, they are reusable and often last much longer than their disposable counterparts, saving you money in the long run.

How can I check if a product is genuinely eco-friendly?

Look for certifications like Fair Trade, FSC (Forest Stewardship Council), or organic labels. These ensure that the products are made using sustainable, ethical practices.

Can wheat straw bowls be used in the microwave?

Most wheat straw products are microwave-safe, but it’s always a good idea to check the label to ensure proper use.

How can I convince others to adopt more eco-friendly habits?

Lead by example and share how easy and effective eco-friendly products are in your home. Sometimes a simple demonstration of how convenient they are is all it takes to inspire others to make the switch.

What’s the most important swap to start with?

Start with something you use every day, like a reusable water bottle or shopping bag. These simple swaps are easy to implement and make a noticeable difference.

By introducing these eco-friendly products into your daily routine, you’re taking meaningful steps towards a more sustainable lifestyle. Small changes add up over time, and each swap you make reduces waste, saves resources, and helps protect the environment. What eco-friendly changes have you made in your home? Share your thoughts and tips below—and don’t forget to share this guide with others to inspire even more sustainable living!

Discover more sustainable products and eco-friendly tips at Eco Bravo.

© Eco Bravo

[rosepais]

Who taketh thy Purse?

It was the year 2009, Niki was all set to be engaged to this person who is irrelevant in this story. The invitations were out, and the family were expecting relatives to stay back at their place. Considering the budget constraints, the relatives decided to stay one night and leave soon after the ceremony. This would mean less cost and not imposing a lot of trouble on the bride’s family.

Niki is a sweet girl; She worked hard and saved up 10 years just for her big day. it was her favourite month. October, her engagement celebration would be clubbed along with her birthday and Diwali all on the same day, she was thrilled and over the moon.

On the day of the ceremony, Niki woke up very early for a change since there was make up to be done. She found her green jute purse lying on her table and she decided to keep it aside safely because the house was full and there was a lot of money and cards in it. Almost everything she owned was green. Her favourite colour, so much that her toothbrush, the paint on her wardrobe, the paint of her room, purse, handbags, and her engagement dress. All green.  

The ceremony went well. All the relatives were so caring, and gaga over her appearance. Some never left her room, they were constantly hovering over her looks, what we wore, and questions about the future while she dressed. She wished for some privacy but being kind was her thing.

All were so tired post the function that her father forced the relatives to stay the night and leave the next morning. Everyone tiredly obliged. Next morning, it was the usual chaos at home. Everyone packing, the kitchen is hustling with steam and something hot cooking, the bathrooms are full. It was a 2-bedroom house, with 1 toilet and over 30 people housed all at once! It was chaotic but fun, there was laughter and talks about the ceremony. Niki felt very happy, to see the support of her aunts and uncles. Her cousins served her with fresh family gossip and her mother was in the kitchen cooking her favourite breakfast. Niki was delighted to see a house full of happy people, since she grew up with only 2 people in her house. Her father, mother, and her. Silently she wished for the party to never end.

Niki was in her room looking for her purse since she had to pay off the decorators. At first her movement were calm, she moved every bag around, opened every drawer. The momentum increased with a little stress in her tone of speech. Moments later, she could not think straight and finally panicked and screamed.

The happy relatives took offense when she asked if anyone saw her purse. They suddenly decided to end the giggle party and start packing and leave. Within an hour, the house that was roaring with laughter and noise, became silent with only Niki and her mother crying in one corner of her room.  They searched and searched but in vain. After about a week, Niki confirmed that one of the relatives had done it, but she could not figure out whom.

The relatives were so offended with Niki questioning them, they never spoke to her again. They decided to stay in a hotel the next time they visited which was for the wedding. Some ignored her totally and did not even wish her on her big day. This was the same set of people who were in her room who could not get enough of her just few months ago.

Niki had to buy a new purse, apply for new cards, she had some memories stacked up in the purse which would miss forever. She cried thinking she would never see her cute little blue pebble which picked up from a beach when she first went to Goa. That pebble was part of her life and purse for years for no apparent reason. It was just cute and blue. She missed it, although while it was in her purse, she hardly noticed it in there. She sat and wondered what else was in the purse and what else did she lose apart from the money, cards, blue pebble, and some passport size photographs.

3 years passed. With time, Niki forgot all about the purse, with time the relatives were back to normal and with time, Niki learned to be more careful with things. Her parents found a new place to live and wanted to move. Niki was there to help them pack. She was in her room, packing all her beloved stuff which she could not take to her in-law’s house. She opened her green wardrobe, which now holds some plastic covers and junk which fall under the “we may use this” category.

She opened her drawer to see if she left out any jewellery in there. It was empty. While she put her hand deep inside the drawer to check the corners, she felt a small opening. She quickly took back her hand, like she had touched something dangerous. She was afraid to explore it again with her bare hands. She brought a torch and her mom to look. It was a small safe inside a safe and she saw something from a distance, and it suddenly struck her where she hid her purse before the ceremony to keep it safe from theft.

Embarrassment gushed down her face, and her mother gave her a look of disgust, because one among the relative Niki blamed was her mother’s cousin too! Niki was very happy to have her green purse back and everything in it. She remained silent and did not inform anyone that the lost was found.

The next big function was around in the family and the relatives were around. Uncle asked “Niki, any idea who took your purse?”

Niki and her mom exchanged glances and she shrugged her shoulders and said “No”.

This blog post is part of the blog challenge ‘Blogaberry Dazzle’ hosted by Cindy D’Silva and Noor Anand Chawla

[onlinesikhstore]

Sikh Sarbloh Kara Smooth Design Singh Kaur Khalsa Kada Bangle Kakaar 5Ks New DD3 Sikh Sarbloh CHAKRI Kara Smooth Design Singh Kaur Khalsa Kada Bangle Kakaar 5Ks New. Kara Ref: DD3 Width is approx 8.3mm Thickness from inner side of Chakri to the edge of Chakri is approx. 12.3mm Weight Approx 110-155g (Variable due to size) Handmade design - therefore each kara is a Unique design Please note these Pure Sarbloh Kara are very hard to find and is a customised design exclusive to OnlineKaraStore  These karas are from the Holy City of Amritsar (Golden Temple/Darbar Sahib).  KARA Size is the internal diameter of Karas measured in CMs.  There may be little bit rust present which is seen commonly in all SARBLOH KARAS due to purity of the metal/wrought iron. Cuts, dings and scruff Mark's may present as these kara are hand made and transported in Jumble in Jute bags. However, our kara will be near to perfection as we get these manufactured on demand and use bubble wraps to transport these.  Please read below more Information about Sikh Kara:  A kara (Punjabi: ਕੜਾ (Gurmukhi), کڑا (Shahmukhi) कड़ा (Devanagari)), is a steel or iron (sarb loh) bracelet, worn by all initiated Sikhs. It is one of the five kakars or 5Ks — external articles of faith — that identify a Sikh as dedicated to their religious order. The kara was instituted by the tenth Sikh guru Gobind Singh at the Baisakhi Amrit Sanskar in 1699. Guru Gobind Singh Ji explained:  He does not recognise anyone else except me, not even the bestowal of charities, performance of merciful acts, austerities and restraint on pilgrim-stations; the perfect light of the Lord illuminates his heart, then consider him as the immaculate Khalsa.  The kara is to constantly remind the Sikh disciple to do God's work, a constant reminder of the Sikh's mission on this earth and that he or she must carry out righteous and true deeds and actions, keeping with the advice given by the Guru. The Kara is a symbol of unbreakable attachment and commitment to God. It is in the shape of a circle which has no beginning and no end, like the eternal nature of God. It is also a symbol of the Sikh brotherhood. As the Sikhs' holy text the Guru Granth Sahib says "In the tenth month, you were made into a human being, O my merchant friend, and you were given your allotted time to perform good deeds." Similarly, Bhagat Kabir reminds the Sikh to always keep one's consciousness with God: "With your hands and feet, do all your work, but let your consciousness remain with the Immaculate Lord." The basic kara is a simple unadorned steel bracelet, but other forms exist. It was historically used like a knuckle-dusterfor hand-to-hand combat. Battlefield variations include kara with spikes or sharp edges. Sikh soldiers of the British Indian army would settle disputes by competing in a form of boxing known as loh-musti (lit. iron fist) with a kara on one hand.  PLEASE NOTE: Please measure/check size of your kara/bracelet first while ordering to avoid any hassle or posting it back to us and paying extra for p&p for exchange and swap of karas with other desired sizes.  There will be charge of £5 p&p towards exchange/swap of Kara for any size issues for UK buyers and £12 p&p for international buyers that needs to be paid by PayPal in advance or interested buyer can send us pa repaid self addressed envelope for any exchange/swap along with the original item in its original packaging and buyer should also return us the gift item/bags sent along with the item for appreciation of purchase. We may post back gift items/bags along with the swapped item.  P.S. Colour of item may slightly vary due to camera flash and light conditions. Some Karas may have negligible small black grinding mark on the kara joint. This is always seen on all karas as most of the Kara making/shaping work is done by hands. However, this do not affect the quality/look of Kara. #Kara #KaraforLife #SikhKara #SarblohKara #Sarbloh #5Ks #SinghKara #SikhBracelet #KhalsaKada #Kada #SinghisKing Brilliant finish and very decorative. Ideal gift item for loved ones on any Occasion. Please follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter @OnlineSikhStore #OnlineSikhStore Free Royal Mail Postage in UK.  Postage discounts will be given to International buyers for multi-buys. Any questions please do not hesitate to contact us. P.S. Colour of item may slightly vary due to camera flash and light conditions. Size is approximate it and may differ by few mm from Kara to Kara or because of Digital Vernier Calliper errors. There may be rust present or marks of rust present as rust is natural characteristic of pure iron/sarbloh. These kara do require cleaning with Sharp Sand or Brasso Polish. These are usually treated with coconut oil to maintain shine after cleaning.

[harshitajoshi28]

From the sturdy top handles to the detachable strap and distinctive jute weave on canvas, this adorable iteration of Jute Weave Tote Bag features everything we have come to love about this functional range. It offers ample space to hold everything you need in a day and more. Plus, the lovely colorway makes it incredibly versatile piece that will match easily with almost any outfit.