#like i am genuinely not trying to mean to you anon i am being very serious

[webanglikethat]

first of all, fuck you anon.

the whole "Radha wasn't groomed because she’s smart" argument is so incredibly stupid (I had no idea people THIS stupid even existed) and honestly, insulting not only to her character but to victim of grooming in general. just because someone is strong, smart, or independent doesn’t mean they are immune to manipulation, and to suggest otherwise is to completely misunderstand what grooming actually entails. do you know what grooming is? or did you just read some age gap dark booktok novel and think you know everything? you think because Radha is educated and knows how to lead, she’s impervious to manipulation? newsflash: that’s not how it works and to suggest otherwise is so foolish and fucking insulting. I hope you never meet a victim of grooming in real life, I pray for that — and I’m an atheist.

just because Radha’s mother, Vidya, taught her to be strong and aware of manipulation it doesn’t magically shield her from every predator who might come along. let me ask you this: do you think every smart, powerful woman is automatically immune to the nuanced, long-term manipulation that comes with grooming? do you think having a strong brain is all it takes? you will never get hurt? ever? spoiler alert: this is not about being naive, or stupid — it’s about power dynamics. age differences, control, and subtle psychological manipulation don’t always look like someone forcing you into a corner or brainwashing you into doing something. sometimes, it’s all about slowly wearing someone down and making them think they’re in control, even when they aren’t. according to psychologist Dr. Jennifer Freyd’s research on betrayal trauma, individuals who experience manipulation and betrayal, especially in close relationships, often suffer from a delayed recognition of the abuse. why? because the trauma is internalized so deeply that it takes time for the victim to even acknowledge they’ve been manipulated. mind you anon, I’m smart. I’m studying psychology. I can speak 5 languages. guess what? I was abused and manipulated. do I not exist in your world? am I not a victim? no seriously, do enlighten me.

the entire premise of grooming is that the victim doesn’t always realize it’s happening until it’s too late. and yes, Radha may have been aware of men using their power in the past, but this was a different kind of manipulation. Raj was clever enough to exploit the very things she thought were keeping her protected. and let’s not pretend the age difference doesn’t matter just because they both feel something. Raj is 30 and Radha is 18. no one is raising alarms?? so you want to tell me that a 30-year-old man, no matter how charming or appealing, is on equal footing with an 18-year-old girl trying to make her way in a world that already doesn’t want her to succeed? REALLY? do you even go to school, genuinely? like OH MY GOD. let’s make one thing clear: an 18-year-old has nowhere near the life experience or emotional maturity of a 30-year-old man, and that's exactly what makes this relationship so problematic.

at 30, Raj has had years of life experience, training, and wisdom (though apparently he’s not smart enough to realize what he’s doing is wrong). he’s been through the emotional ups and downs of adulthood, taught by the best, navigating the world who sucks his dick for simply being a man and having power, he’s most likely been through a bunch of relationships, and experienced different power structures in ways Radha—at just 18— simply hasn’t. he knows how the world works. he knows how to manipulate situations, how to get what he wants, and how to pull on someone’s heartstrings to make them believe they’re in control. no matter how strong or intelligent Radha is, she doesn’t have the same years of experience to see the emotional manipulation at play.

when you’re 18, and a man like Raj tells you he loves you, you believe it. why wouldn’t you? you haven’t been hardened by the disappointments and betrayals that come with adult relationships. at 18, love feels intense, all-consuming, and real—and it’s easy to mistake that intensity for something pure and meaningful. you WANT to believe it. you want to believe this man loves you for who you are. Radha, at 18, is still figuring out who she is. she’s in the middle of a MASSIVE transition: she’s learning how to step into leadership, abandoning childhood and entering adulthood, and figuring out how to exist in a world that already doesn’t give her the respect she deserves because she’s a woman (look at how people treat Devi despite being the heir). she is still trying to understand her own power, her own worth.

and here comes Raj, a man with years of experience, presenting himself as her lover, her confidante, and possibly her protector, feeding her the narrative she wants to hear. he knows exactly what to say to reel her in. he knows how to appeal to her vulnerabilities, how to use his experience to make her feel seen, heard, and loved in ways no one else has made her feel. and she, in her youthful exuberance and inexperience, believes every word of it. why? because she’s still learning what love should look like. for fuck’s sake I AM 18 TOO and guess what? I too am more likely to want to believe that someone older and wiser is acting in my best interest.

so anon, don’t sit there and pretend like this is some simple, equal partnership. the psychological power imbalance (hope this isn’t too complicated for your tiny brain) in this relationship is massive, and Raj knows exactly what he’s doing.

what you’re glossing over is the fact that Amrita’s fiancé is not some passive character in this scenario— he's a grown-ass man with agency. Raj is not some idk fucking helpless puppy who couldn’t help himself from falling for Radha. he’s an adult who made an active decision to continue a relationship with Radha while also being engaged to Amrita. you’re blaming Radha (18-23) for being involved with a man (30-35) who willingly pursued her and continued to do so despite being in a committed relationship. that’s on Raj. not Radha.

now, let’s talk about the so-called “friendship betrayal.” first of all, it’s never implied they’re close friends. just because you grew up around someone, it doesn’t make you close friends. this idea that Radha is some villain for having a relationship with Amrita’s fiancé is completely ignoring the bigger picture: Raj is the one who betrayed Amrita’s trust, not Radha. he is the one who made a COMMITMENT. the real question is: why is Raj still pursuing Radha while already committed to someone else? but hey, let’s just blame the teenage girl in the relationship and pretend Raj was a passive bystander who couldn’t possibly help himself, right? let’s blame the other woman! THE TEENAGER.

also, imo Radha’s decisions cannot be analyzed through a modern, 21st-century lens. she wasn’t in a position of true equality, free to make choices without external pressures. the fact that Radha is being criticized for a relationship with Raj, who is a much older man, completely disregards the power dynamics of their time. you think Indian women have it easy? the concept of a woman having autonomy over her body, her emotions, or even her relationships wasn’t something widely accepted back then, and still isn’t! (I’m desi, don’t try to argue).

AND. Oh. My. God. are you seriously going to sit here and say that making Radha a victim of grooming somehow makes her a “boring” character? that is the most tone-deaf, reductionist thing I’ve heard all year. congratulations, you won this.

-> so, what, the moment someone experiences harm or exploitation, we should just discard their emotional arc because it doesn’t fit some heroic, flawless narrative? that’s not how human beings work. just because a character experiences something painful or difficult doesn’t make them any less interesting. in fact, it makes them more multidimensional, because we’re seeing how they respond to those situations, how they grow from them, or sometimes how they struggle with them. Radha being a victim of grooming doesn’t flatten her—it makes her MORE interesting because we’re watching her navigate a complicated, manipulative relationship where she’s being used by someone more experienced and powerful and by the end of it, she even gets pregnant and WILL BE FORCED TO SLEEP WITH DEVI’S UNCLE.

the argument you’re making is essentially saying that only perfect, unscathed characters are worth caring about. that’s simply ridiculous. being a victim of grooming doesn’t make Radha “flat”. YOU are reducing her to some simplistic trope of the “innocent woman who doesn’t know better” and missing the point that her journey is about finding out what’s been done to her and coming to terms with how to reclaim her agency. THAT is the heart of character development. if Radha’s journey were simply about being a perfect, flawless leader without any emotional depth or complexity, that would make her boring.

and honestly, the fact that someone would even DARE to suggest that a character’s experiences of trauma or manipulation somehow reduce their value or depth shows an actual shocking lack of empathy. my bad for thinking you guys have a heart.

also back to “Radha is too smart to be groomed” // cults are an obvious example here — people in their 30s, 40s, and even older have been lured into these toxic environments and guess what? those people are often not some naive, uneducated “fools” but highly educated, well-established adults. I mean look at the many documented cases of people far older than Radha who have fallen victim to manipulative tactics. there are countless stories of educated, rich, established successful adults being groomed by people who know exactly how to prey on their weaknesses. manipulators don’t just target “dummies.” they target people who are seeking connection, people who are vulnerable to flattery, or people who have been conditioned to doubt their own worth or instincts. manipulation doesn’t care about your age or your IQ.

when we (and with we, I mean cunts like you) dismiss victims' stories based on ignorant assumptions—whether it's about their intelligence, age, or any other arbitrary factor—we're doing the predators' work for them. we are telling victims that their pain doesn’t matter, that their reality is somehow invalid, that they must have deserved it, or that they’re too smart to be manipulated.

so no, Radha isn't 'too smart' to be manipulated, just like no one else is 'immune' based on their age or intellect. you don’t need to be an idiot to be preyed upon. you just need to be human. so, before you throw around judgment, maybe take a minute to think about what you’re really saying about the victims of manipulation—because, honestly, the way you’re talking about Radha makes me wonder if you even understand what true strength looks like in the face of abuse or if you know what abuse even entails.

snippet from my wcs analysis

Okay so I saw the post about Radha, Raj, and Amrita and I want to say something about it but I am afraid to contradict some of the people because they seem a bit unreasonable and would attack you for your opinion. The also are insulting people who agree with it. So I am going to explain why that person said what they did or potentially why. This comes from somebody who is an avid reader I read visual novel games, fanfiction, and books I have 10 plus years of reading with critical thinking of details in stories and understanding of characters.

Okay let’s start with the whole Radha is groomed I am of the opinion that did not happen based on how the Basu family is described. You think Vidya, Doran, or Sara would allow Raj to live if any of them believed he manipulated and used Radha for his gain. Grooming victims are described as being naive easy to manipulate that is not Radha at all she is being taught how to become a leader in time when women in power were looked down upon. You think part of her education from Vidya wasn’t about being able to spot manipulations from men who would want to use her and manipulate her. You think Radha wouldn’t do anything to a man who thought he could use her as an example of why not to mess with her like what Sara did to Rati when Rati insulted Sara. To me to say that Radha is a victim of grooming by Raj is an insult to Radha and her intelligence and her capabilities of being a leader you are saying that when a good looking guy comes into the picture all of Radha’s training disappears. My interpretation of how this relationship started was that it happened when Devi was in Bombay which made Radha 18 when this relationship started I can’t find information on how old Raj is but the oldest I think he is is 30 which is not a great look but from the interaction that we see while they are at the mountain retreat is that Raj is trying to end their relationship because even though BOTH of them have feelings for one another it is not the time for their families bloodlines to unite Radha is the one who says no let’s continue this affair in secret because I am what you want and we should be together. In grooming relationships the groomer has all the power in this relationship it looks like equal partnership with them. Also we know that Sara and Radha believe that men are tools for their entertainment you think a women who think men are like animals for their amusement can be manipulated and controlled by one. You guys don’t think Sara wouldn’t kill Raj if he groomed and used Radha her twin Sara straight up killed someone to protect Radha’s secret which means that Sara knows that BOTH Radha and Raj went into this willingly together. I want everyone to know that in my opinion guys Vidya knows about Raj and Radha. When Vidya tells Raj you are practically like family to me she is saying that she knows Raj is the one who got her daughter pregnant and she is not happy at all. I believe that part of the reason there is tension between the Basus and Doobays is because Vidya knows about the affair and is mad at both Raj and Radha then that anger multiplies when Radha gets pregnant. I also believe the reason that Vidya is not passing the reins to Radha is because she knows about the affair with Raj and believes that Radha needs more training before she becomes leader of the dozen and the Basu family. Vidya loves her daughters and I get the impression that if anyone hurt or used her daughter she would kill them no matter what and I guarantee that Doran would be there to help Vidya.

Let us move on to another topic people who say that Radha owes Amrita nothing. You do remember that Amrita is/was friends with the Basu twins. Which means that Radha slept and had a relationship with a friend’s fiancé. I could never justify doing that to someone who was a friend to me. Also the reason that Amrita is not close to her friends is the fact she is engaged and is learning about her future role along with getting to know her future husband. I also don’t understand how Raj can get to know his fiancé as a person and continue seeing someone else. Raj has hurt Amrita she knows that Raj doesn’t love her and she will be trapped in an loveless marriage, but can you imagine the pain of knowing that someone who was friends with you was sleeping with your fiancé behind your back and your fiancé cares about them more than you. I also love Radha as a character but I can hate and be critical of her choices this is what makes her multi dimensional and a fascinating character making her a victim of grooming makes her more flat and not as interesting of an character. I also believe that everyone missed the point of what the poster of the post was saying Radha and Raj are BOTH to blame for this situation they both knew better but continued it and now there is fallout because of their actions. Radha and Raj both hold blame on this no one forced this relationship they both willingly went along with it. Raj being the older one who also wanted to stop his relationship with Radha should have stuck to his original intentions Raj is older and is already a leader he knew better then to continue the affair, but it doesn’t excuse Radha because when she became older and almost became the the official leader Radha knew better as well then to continue her affair with Raj. Amrita is truly the only one who has no blame in this and everyone loves to hate on her when in reality Amrita is a victim in this and is going to experience unbelievable pain and betrayal from this. Some people missed the point on the post both Radha and Raj deserve equal blame in all of this no one is saying Raj is an angel because he is not but not enough people point that out the fact that Radha is 23 when she gets pregnant she knows better then to continue this affair and face possible repercussions of her affair with Raj. People treat Radha like she was forced against her will to be in this relationship when she wasn’t at all Raj and Radha were equal partners in their relationship. Therefore the both hold equal blame for what happened. Radha is no angel and that is okay because no one is in this story is and that is what makes everything so interesting.

Well that's a big confession 🤯

Sorry but we cannot edit such a big confession, even if we try would be a mess ( fun fact: we did try and turn out to be 5 images 😬)

This is something to have in mind before sending a confession, the length of the confession shouldn't excess 100 words, thanks!

-mod lyn

[rouge-fauna]

I think you’re talking about these posts [here & here], I don’t know if there have been others.

I'm not gonna say what I did was right, you are correct I should probably just not respond to asks getting me to talk about other people. I will say for these two posts those people had already blocked me I’m pretty sure, so it’s kinda hard to talk directly to them in that case. And I was not doing so anonymously and had not blocked them so I wasn’t hiding what I was saying. I did not follow them, I am not part of the innitor community, and not that that makes it right but I do think it is kinda different. Though you make a good point, perhaps we should stop this pattern of responding to asks about other blogs and such.

Still, the biggest thing to me I realized, back in elementary school when I first dealt with this, was that honestly all the time we talk about people behind their back. Talking about people when they aren’t always in the room is kinda just inevitable and part of socializing, however I think the important part is how you are talking about other people. It’s when you are insulting them, talking negatively about them to people they know, spreading false information and so on that it becomes not okay. Hopefully that makes sense.

In these cases I merely focused on the lore. I didn’t insult them or talk shit about them, as a person, as a blog or say their takes were stupid or they are stupid or speculate about their trauma or mental history. I just talked about reasons why I disagreed, or saw things differently and why we might see things differently. They were also not the only ones I saw to say similar things so I think in my mind I was making more of a general discussion, not trying to target them specifically. I didn’t post beyond that about them. But you are right, regardless it was probably not the right way to go about things.

But just to be clear, if I am a hypocrite it is not my intention. I haven’t vague blogged anyone or meant to vague reblog anyone. I think this week is pretty much the first time I’ve ever been not naming, passive aggressively talking about blogs, and even then I’m not trying to insult them, trying to cancel them. I’m just expressing that before you go off about how I’m stupid and unable to have a discussion about it, the very least you could’ve done was give me an opportunity to try.

[fallout-lou-begas]

i've been meaning to watch pink flamingos for a long time but i heard it's one of those movies that tries to be really shocking and edgy intentionally so would you be able to give any content or trigger warnings for it so i can see if it's for me?

ohhhhh. hm. well, it. the thing is. well. hmm. anon, in all sincerity, i think that if you even have to ask this question then this absolutely isn't the movie for you

[babsaros]

How did you know you were gay?

ah, couple reasons i guess. some that only became obvious with like 15 years of hindsight, and only after pulling myself out of the deep dark pit of compulsory heterosexuality.

like. classic symptoms of lesbianism include shamefully staring at the floor when you pass the women's underwear racks in the department store, even though you're not quite sure why you're uncomfortable. that sort of thing.

i have memories from early elementary school of accidentally glimpsing down a girl's shirt at recess and then bottling up that feeling and refusing to think about it. any time i had a crush on a boy, it was from an extremely idealized and safely non-actionable distance. the one time i did have a boyfriend, it was just my guy best friend from middle school, we dated for barely a school year before i ended it and the most physical intimacy i was ever comfortable with was holding his hand when we walked to class. i went to a different school's prom because a guy i was kind-of friends with asked me, and spent the whole night uncomfortably avoiding eye contact.

basically i started questioning my sexuality towards the end of high school, when i noticed myself getting like. jealous about my guy best friend's girlfriends?? like. i wanted to date them. i wanted to steal them from him lmao. i thought girls were pretty and soft and nice and cute and i was too afraid of being a predatory creep to do anything about it besides have far-fetched daydreams, but there was no heterosexual explanation. like, i hugged a girl i thought was pretty one time and it did things to my brain. that memory got locked in for life.

i identified as ace/pan early on, but again- compulsory heterosexuality. the idea of being with a guy romantically or sexually was never actually appealing. i had just been told that was what i was supposed to want my entire life, and the movies do a great job of selling that fantasy. but really i was just a lonely depressed helpless romantic teenager that wanted to be loved lol.

a large part of why i identified as asexual was because i was so sex-repulsed by the idea of penetration, honestly? (which i have since gotten over, but specifically Only with girls. the idea of having sex with a man still icks me out, and my preference is definitely femme-presenting ppl) a bit of it was probably also because i hadn't unpacked gender yet either. it made it very difficult to actually imagine myself having sex with anyone ever lol. this is gonna sound so cringe to say, but reading gay smut did awaken things in me.

in conclusion, tldr, i just like to think about tits and kissing women sometimes, idk. thanks for coming to my tedtalk.

[ms-demeanor]

You posted about adhd and I was hoping to follow up to clarify something. I’ve explained to my partner a million times about how the borderline-hoarding mess of his space is very mentally draining to me, and he understands but we’ve both essentially accepted he won’t clean his mess because he can’t because of his adhd. You’re saying he’s actually being a shit head?

This isn't necessarily an issue of him being a shithead, but it also isn't a sustainable situation. It's not good for you and there's a level of clutter that's probably not good for him either.

Large bastard is a lot more clutter-y than I am. The solution we've come to is trying to keep our messes at least isolated from one another; he can have his messes and I can have mine, but he can have those messes in his spaces, not all over the place. Sometimes those messes migrate, and that's when it's important for him to make the effort to rein them in rather than trying and failing to make a daily effort to keep our entire shared space tidy.

I think when you say "we've both essentially accepted he won't clean his mess" what I'm hearing is resignation; you're not happy about this but you don't know what to do so you've thrown up your hands and he feels helpless and unsure of what to do to improve the situation. This is the kind of "it's fine" that isn't really fine.

I think it would be worthwhile for you to each separately think about the mess and talk about it together. Are there areas that YOU *need* to have not-messy? Both for utility and your mental health? Are there areas where you can tolerate more mess than otherwise? Are there areas that are going to be harder for him to keep the mess out of than others? Are there things he doesn't *know* about cleaning up the mess?

I'm obviously a big "communication communication communication" person so I'm going to recommend a lot of talking about stuff, which is probably going to mean a lot of thinking about and interrogating stuff. I'm going to say "talk to him about why the mess bothers you" which means you also have to really articulate to yourself why the mess bothers you (for instance I'm not actually *bothered* by a messy kitchen, but I know it's going to reflect badly on us - and me specifically b/c of presumed gender roles - if someone pops by and the kitchen is a disaster, AND a messy kitchen is going to be harder to use). Genuinely, sometimes knowing *why* something is a problem might make it easier for someone with ADHD to do something. And it's not that he doesn't care that it upsets you, it's just that "Oh if I don't wash my breakfast dishes Anon won't have clear counterspace to make lunch" might be stickier in his brain (and less hard to look at emotionally) than "this thing I forget to do upsets my partner so I should do it."

For the record, I think that people with ADHD should read up on Demand Avoidance and see if it might explain some of the issues that they have in their day-to-day life; I've seen some really unfortunate situations with friends where trying to do things that their partner needed became the subject of demand avoidance. *I* have experienced negative outcomes of demand avoidance. The solution to that, however, isn't to stop making attempts to do the thing OR to simply try harder to do as they're asked/told (which reinforces the demand), it's to work on setting up a situation where the partners' needs are not interpreted as a demand. This is fuck-off difficult and requires a lot of patience and care and many attempts to succeed and will be different for each person and relationship.

(Also for the record demand avoidance isn't *super* strongly linked to ADHD and it's not a definitive symptom; like Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, it is something that occurs in some number of people with ADHD and can be a useful lens through which to examine various behaviors; you don't need to have DA or RSD to have ADHD, and having DA or RSD also doesn't invalidate your diagnosis; they're symptoms. For me, DA often feels like "if I don't look at it, it can't get me" - If I ignore all the messages I've got they aren't real and don't have real consequences so I'll just ignore my texts. If I don't look at the vendor email about the order, the problem with the order isn't real and it won't get added to my task list. If I don't look at the requests in my inbox I can't let people down when I don't do them. It's a self-protective coping mechanism but it's *maladaptive* and I can't just ignore the vendor email or all my texts. I need to work on a way of doing the stuff that I'm avoiding in a way that makes it less stressful and doesn't hurt the people relying on me. That takes a lot of effort, personal insight, trial and error, and )

But before I dive into specifics I want to be really really clear about one thing: sometimes people are simply incompatible. Sometimes one person has such a low tolerance for "mess" and the other person has such a high threshold for "mess" that it can't be reconciled. It sucks that this can end up being a thing that people break up over, but it is MUCH better to acknowledge incompatibility as early as possible instead of spending years and years building resentment.

There used to be a great forum called MiL's Anonymous that I spent a lot of time on. It had a lot of people in a lot of difficult situations struggling to get by and hold their relationships together. The question that was used as a litmus test to approach each situation was simple: If you knew today that everything about living with this person would be the same in five years, would you stay?

Because you can't control your partner. You can't control the future. You can only control yourself and your proximity to situations that are harmful to you. If you knew, 100%, that things wouldn't get better in five years, would you be okay with staying in this relationship? If the answer is "no," then that's that. Don't worry about questions of whether or not your boyfriend is a shithead, start the process of ending the relationship because there's a good chance the situation is going to be exactly the same in five years.

If the answer is "yes," and you'd stay in the relationship regardless of whether or not things changed, then it's time to take actions to improve your life within the context of the relationship.

(No judgement on that yes or no, btw. If you would hate living like this for another five years, and you would feel like you'd wasted your time and hadn't done the things you wanted to with your life, get out. Bail. Go. It will be better for you and better for your partner if you split instead of spending half a decade building resentments and and problems that you'll have to spend another half a decade healing from.)

Also, a note: you describe your boyfriend's mess as borderline hoarding - is the issue *mess* or is the issue *clutter*? I have friends who are very tidy, but whose homes are very cluttered. They like things, they have many things, they keep many things around, but their houses are always clean and well-dusted and orderly, just with a tremendous amount of *stuff.* I am addressing all of this as though the issue is mess, not clutter. If your boyfriend's situation is clutter (the space is busy and packed with things but it is functional and clean) and your issue isn't with *mess* (things out of place, things not having a place, things that need to be cleaned up gathering in stacks, falling behind on regular chores like laundry and dishes and taking out the trash) then you definitely need to assess whether or not you are compatible.

For instance here's a room that is messy but not cluttered compared to a room that is cluttered but not messy:

That first room is a *mess* but it would be very easy to clean up in under an hour. The second room is fairly tidy, but would take significant effort to pare down and declutter. BOTH of these can be difficult to live with but the second one is not dangerous or threatening to anyone's health. (The second one is QUITE cluttered and if every room in a house looks like this it can be overwhelming to live with; this is actually harder to deal with in a relationship than the first one in a lot of ways. I don't have a lot of advice for what to do if your partner is a high degree of tidy-but-cluttered because I don't actually think it's a problem or wrong to have thousands of books or bins full of lego or a million kitchen appliances as long as you have the space and can keep it safe and well-maintained; this is a really significant compatibility issue)

Okay, all that out of the way, here's the hard work.

Talk about this shit

Talk to your partner and define "mess." Make sure you are on the same page about what you mean when you're talking about what a messy room looks like versus what a tidy room looks like. Gather reference pictures. DRAW reference pictures.

Explain not just that the mess upsets you, but *why* and *how* it upsets you. In this context don't think of it as your boyfriend's mess, think of it as an unpleasant roommate. Discuss this using "I-statements". "When I have to pick up laundry all over the apartment, I feel like a parent more than a partner." "When there are piles of miniatures all over the table, I feel like I don't have anywhere to do things I'm interested in." "When there are dishes in the sink, I feel frustrated because I have to clean before I can feed myself."

Discuss, frankly and openly, whether he knows how to clean. I'm not trying to make excuses for him here but a lot of people with ADHD have a lot of stress and avoidance around cleaning because they spent a lot of time getting yelled at for not knowing how to clean properly.

Discuss your needs, be firm about what you require but willing to compromise. You *need* some spaces to be clean, and some spaces may be harder for him to keep clean than others. It may be MUCH harder for him to keep a bedroom tidy than it is to keep a kitchen tidy; if you need a clean and empty bedroom with everything put away and he simply cannot do that, that is a compatibility issue. But perhaps you need *your* side of the bedroom to be very orderly and can tolerate a moderate level of mess and clutter on his side. Maybe you're really really bothered by a messy kitchen, but it doesn't bug you if the dining table is covered with projects and papers. Figure out something more workable than "his mess goes everywhere and i live with it because he's incapable of cleaning" because he probably is not incapable of cleaning and you deserve to have places in your home that are comfortable for you.

Reduce friction for cleaning

Sometimes the problem isn't cleaning, the problem is the many many steps before cleaning, or not knowing where something should go when you are done cleaning. One of the absolute best things I've done for myself for cleaning my space is getting a broom holder and mounting the broom to the wall. Sweeping is now essentially thoughtless. I don't have to find the broom or pull it out from a pile of fans or go scrounging around for a dustpan it's right there on the wall, frictionless. So here are some ways to reduce the barriers to cleaning:

Make sure you and your partner both know how to use your cleaning supplies and know where those supplies are. When I switched dishwasher soap I had to re-show Large Bastard where I was storing it and how it was used, because to him what happened was the dishwasher tabs just vanished one day and he didn't know what I was putting in the machine or the process I used. He sometimes puts tools away in places that I can't see (he's more than a foot taller than me) so sometimes I can't get started on a maintenance project until he shows me where he put the battery pack for the drill.

Consider making a how-to chart to or having him make a how-to chart to keep someplace accessible so he can reference it while cleaning. Goblin.Tools Magic ToDo is great for this. Basically a lot of the time people with ADHD have trouble knowing what to do from step to step even if they've done something before, so having a step by step guide can make it easier (I have notebooks full of step-by-step guides for everything from paying for my tuition to removing licenses for my customers to weeding my yard)

Remove obstacles; don't keep cleaning chemicals in the garage in a box that's behind a stack of parts, keep them in the room you'll be cleaning. Don't keep the cleaning supplies that you use to clean the bathroom in the kitchen. Sometimes this means buying two bottles of bleach solution and two scrubbers and two sets of cleaning gloves but having fewer steps (fetch the windex, fetch the paper towels, fetch the gloves) is often the key to getting things done (open under-sink cabinet and grab windex, gloves, and paper towels that are there instead of in the kitchen).

This sort of overlaps with the next category, which is:

Create Dump Zones

One thing that I've found that seems very different between people with ADHD cleaning and neurotypical people cleaning is that neurotypical people are good at getting to a point where the cleaning is "done." They have checked off their tasks and they have finished and it is over. There are *SOME* chores that are like this (taking out the trash is a binary state, the trash has been taken out or it has not) and some chores are perpetual (horrid cursed dishes) but I think with people with ADHD, some chores that are binary for neurotypicals are actually perpetual chores. For instance "clean off the counter" is not a one and done for me. "Clean off the counter" may involve a three day reorganization project. "Clean off the counter" does not mean "wipe down the tile and put dishes away" it means assessing whether or not I need to make vegetable stock and bleaching three tea containers and reconsidering whether or not the sharps container should live somewhere else and going through the mail and figuring out what needs to be responded to and taking out the recycling and on and on and on.

We have had company at the house for the last two weeks, so I asked large bastard to clean off the dining room table, which is largely a project zone for him. Cleaning off the dining room table meant putting away his meds (and since he's a transplant patient that involves a 30 gallon rubbermade tote), throwing away some trash, and totally reorganizing his workshop. It also incidentally involved picking up a table from facebook marketplace and moving my plants, which has now involved moving my former plant rack outside (moving buckets, finding and organizing planters and gardening tools) and taking the former table to the thrift store (not done yet) and cleaning the rug that was under the former table. So "either the table is clean, or it isn't" isn't really true for us.

HOWEVER "hang on we can't eat until the table is clear so let's drive to Pico Rivera to get that console table right now" isn't a workable plan, so you create dumpzones as areas of holding between the start and the finish of the chore.

A dump zone can be a laundry basket. It can be a craft bin. It can be a back room or under your bed. It is a place to put things that you are going to deal with later because if you deal with them now it is going to derail the thing you are actually trying to do, which is set the table for dinner.

Dump zones are vital to cleaning with ADHD and I recommend them for day-to-day cleaning as well. The day-to-day dump zones might be more for you than for your boyfriend. For instance, Large Bastard works with bullets and he sheds bullets all over the house. I used to get stressed when I found bullets when I was cleaning because are these work bullets? Are these recreational bullets? Are they in testing? Do they need to be pulled? Do they go in the workshop or the office or the garage or does he need these today so they have to stay on the counter? And the answer now is "that's not my problem naughty bullets go in the jar." Which is perfectly sensible because he gets to say "mystery yarn goes in the bin" and "art supplies go in the bucket."

I feel helpless when cleaning a lot of the time. I'm frustrated and lost and I don't know where stuff goes and everything I pick up spins off into three projects in my head and every step feels like a wall to scale. Dump zones help me with that when there's pressure or a reason for cleaning beyond day to day home maintenance. People are coming over? The bedroom is a dump zone, I'll deal with that later. I'm just cleaning up because I need to? Okay I can find a permanent home for this new dish soap.

AS A VERY IMPORTANT COROLLARY TO THIS:

Active projects do not go in dump zones while you or your partner are cleaning. This may mean designating a project sanctuary area like a corner of the table or one particular chair in your main room where a project can be placed so as not to be disturbed. (if my current crochet project ends up in the yarn bin, that may mean that I don't pick the project up for another three months, it lives on the windowsill behind the couch because that's where it'll get worked on)

Do not put things away for your partner, put them in the dump zone for your partner. Your partner has to be the one to put their own stuff away in a way that works for them. I tend to find that this naturally puts a limit on the time stuff sits in the dump zone, because eventually you'll go "hey where's my thing?" and will put stuff away. If that doesn't happen, it's still generally better to have stuff in a dump zone than all over the home.

Do not decide you know what things go together from your partner's stuff and try to "put like things together." The neurotypical urge to put like things together is the mindkiller(j/k). You do not know which things are "similar" in your partner's organization schema and attempting to organize things on your own is going to end up with all of the things "organized" being functionally lost forever from your partner's perspective. Large Bastard's mom would do this and it was infuriating, she'd say "oh I put all the electronics stuff in one box" and she would mean soldering irons, transistors, ham radios, HDMI cables, and cellphone chargers. We are *still* going through boxes of stuff that she "tidied up" when he was hospitalized in 2020 and 2021.

To prevent the need for quite so many dump zones over time, you can work on setting up landing zones and "homes" for projects and tools.

Landing Zones

Landing zones are places where things go when you come inside from doing various things. Sometimes your landing zone only needs to be a tray for your wallet and keys, sometimes your landing zone needs to be a place to take off muddy boots and put a trowel and gloves down before you shower.

To make an effective landing zone, consider what behaviors you're trying to minimize and whether the people using it are ACTUALLY going to use it. For instance I was tired of the corner of my hearth getting cluttered with random junk so I hung up some hooks and put a shelf and a basket there and it became a really effective landing zone for my bag and keys and the mail, but it was VERY ineffective for Large Bastard because it's by a door that isn't the primary door he uses to enter the house. As a result I always know where my keys and bag are but he has trouble finding his keys and wallet. He tends to enter the house through our bedroom and has an overloaded valet next to the door and that's usually where his wallet ends up. Mounting a shelf to the wall above the valet and putting a basket and a hook on it will be a better place for his stuff to land. It's not that he's not using the first zone because he doesn't know that it's there, or because he doesn't care about lost time when I'm searching for my car keys after he borrows them, he's not using it because it's not by the door he uses. That's all.

I have a landing space for when I come in for gardening that's different than the one when I come in from grocery shopping. I have a landing space for when I walk into the dining room instead of the kitchen when I get home.

Landing spaces prevent stuff from piling up all over the place because they are a limited functional space that should be used frequently. Mail ONLY goes in the landing zone. If you have mystery mail or if you're not sure it's safe to toss, you put it in the landing zone. You can't let the mail get piled up too high or you won't have a space for your keys. You can't let the change in your wallet tray get too deep or your wallet is going to slide off, etc., but you also don't just put change on the coffee table or your nightstand because the landing zone is right there.

Homes for items are just what they sound like. They're the place the item goes. It lives there. My meds live on my nightstand. You would not believe how poorly I did with taking my meds on my vacation because they weren't on my nightstand. A while back large bastard lost one of his sets of sorted meds and we tore the house up looking for them because he couldn't find them in his nightstand, which is where they live. *I* found them in his nightstand because I emptied out the entire top drawer (he had only looked on the top layer) and found them underneath a radio and a hammock. Even though they were *hidden* they were in their home, so they were findable. I recently needed ink for an art class. Art supplies live in a dresser by my desk. Ink lives in the art bin or the top left drawer. The ink was not in either of these places (it was on a cabinet in the dining room behind a teacup) so it took me weeks to find it.

Sometimes the reason that ADHD spaces are so messy is because objects have been assigned homes in places that are visible and if they get moved they get lost. This is a genuinely difficult problem that requires a lot of effort to solve and can involve a lot of trial and error for creating a tidy living space. For some people, open shelving and visible storage might be a good solution. For some people, assigning a VERY clear home and inculcating that location by habit is the only way to clean up a space. For some people one very cluttered corner to at least isolate the chaos does the trick (for me and large bastard open shelving doesn't work because anything in one place for too long becomes invisible; that means that I rely on assigning things homes and large bastard relies on having contained chaos and a general idea of where to search but what that DOES NOT mean is that he is clean or tidy. His spaces look like an explosion. But he can mostly find his stuff and do what he needs to do and as long as that's limited to specific places in shared spaces I can live with it; the dining room table can be a disaster, the kitchen cannot).

People organize things differently. It often takes a while for neurotypical adults to settle into an organizational style that works for them and ADHD adults may need to settle into a new system every few months for it to continue working. The cleanup and declutter is most likely going to be a permanent project that is always going to demand some level of attention from everyone in a shared space, but "my ADHD means I can't do it" is not really going to fly. Maybe his ADHD means that he can't keep his space tidy, but it doesn't mean you can't move stuff from shared spaces into dump zones or that he can't do stuff around the house.

If he's insisting that his ADHD means that he can't clean it is possible that he's not being a shithead, he just feels helpless and doesn't know where to start and has adopted the belief that he's a useless piece of shit who can't even keep a tidy space like a grownup because he's internalized a lot of shitty attitudes (hello, my internal monologue about keeping a clean house). But it's also possible that he's just being a shithead.

It's something that's worthwhile to investigate with him. If he's unwilling to make an attempt, then he's being a shithead.

It is also not your responsibility to rehabilitate another person. If he wants to clean and it's something he feels bad about and needs some help and support with the way that someone might need help or support for learning to use a mobility aid, that is fine but you don't have to be the one who gives him that support if it's detrimental to your health, and you don't have to be the one to teach him that stuff if it's not something you're capable of. And if he is NOT interested in working on making your shared living space more accessible for you, that is not your suitcase to unpack and you just have to ask yourself the question from the start: would I stay with this person if I knew the situation was never going to change?

IDK, I'm sure a lot of this reads like "anon you must take on the emotional labor of training your partner to be an adult" but it's really meant to be more of a way of assessing yourself and your relationship. If you created landing zones do you think he'd use them? Would he get angry if you assigned a laundry basket as a dump zone for his stuff while you tidy the living room? Is living with him long-term going to be comfortable for you if nothing changes? Do you have enough of a shared definition of "mess" that you're at least in the ballpark for what counts as a clean house?

anyway good luck, and a reminder to folks that I'm compiling a bunch of adhd resources and other information on my personal website, ms-demeanor.com. It's coming along slowly but it will eventually include stuff like ADHD cleaning tips and how to tackle a hoard, so maybe keep your eye on that space.

[bigfatbimbo]

haha I’m baaack! (oh god this is so convoluted. I’m the one who requested subspace bill, etc.,!!!)

PLEASE elaborate on how bill would be if he went into subspace with More Powerful being!reader. I will owe you my life. I am deeply intrigued, like seriously I love to see ur takes on this stuff!

- 🎩 anon!

a/n — I am so horny right now but i’m also bleeding like a stuck pig with alcohol poisoning an i ain touching allat #oversharing

warnings — NSFW, dom!reader, subspace, Bill being Bill

summary — How subspace would go with Bill and a powerful reader

⃤ I think an incredibly powerful reader would affect Bill subbing off the bat, because he would feel the need to overcompensate.

⃤ He would be trying to dom you so hard, and the only thing is, you have to power to shut him down, and flip the switch.

⃤ This is incredibly new for him, because no one dares, and even if they could, they wouldn’t. 

⃤ And it’s been billions, more maybe, of years since he’s let someone take the reins on anything in his existence, and the fact that you can infuriates him.

⃤ Your relationship would be very toxic for that reason, and very hot.

⃤ He would be bratting out so hard, fighting everything you’re doing, because of that dare. Put him in his place, no one else will.

⃤ If you didn’t fill him with immense, incomparable, pleasure he knows anyone less mighty could not, he wouldn’t put up with it. 

⃤ But, truth be told, you’re very intimidating, and maybe he is curious about how it feels to be at someone’s mercy. 

⃤ So yes, use your powers to suspend him in the air, spread his legs with your mind and make him as vulnerable as possible, see if he stops bitching.

⃤ Pluck at strings in his brain to fill him with awful pain and glorious, mind-numbing satisfaction, until his complaints drip down his leg and turn into whimpering mutters of your name.

⃤ Make him forget who he is, and what he can do, it’s meaningless anyways in the presence of a god.

⃤ His wise, ancient mind will fog and cloud, as his whining turns from quippy criticism to the same few words over and over again.

⃤ Keep toying with him, use all of the abilities your powerful being grants you and show him what you can do. 

⃤ Watching Bill get genuinely needy for you, his hands grasping for you, if they aren’t already touching you.

⃤ “Please” isn’t in his vocabulary, but maybe a small muttery one appears.

⃤ This has a greater chance of happening with a powerful reader because it truly doesn’t give him many choices, other than to give in to your might.

⃤ And he’d never do this is he had no other choice, right? Of course, that doesn’t mean stop. Nothing does.

⃤ Not even when his eye snaps shut and he shrieks for you to go easy on him. 

⃤ He doesn’t want you to, not really, anyways.

MIND THE TYPOS!!!!!

[diagonal-queen]

HELLO!! i keep requesting them sotty im obsessed but what about hunting dogs with a s/o who has a child😅😅i got silly again

Hunting Dogs with your child

♡ pairing: Fukuchi Ouchi, Jouno Saigiku, Tecchou Suehiro, Teruko Okura (platonic), Tachihara Michizou x gn!Reader

♡ synopsis: How do these goofballs fare as stepdads? (or, in Teruko's case, fun auntie?)

♡ cw: Swearing, unofficial stepfathering, unrealistically good stepfathering, reader's ex situation is not established but it's assumed that their baby momma/daddy is not in the picture (Tachihara), mentions of violence

note: I just haven't written anything in ages, and for that I apologise. Wow, being in university is time consuming! I've had block for months and it's been an absolute pain in the arse but I'm back babey! Keep your requests coming anon- I am the Hunting Dogs whisperer and I will write them till I die. Apologies for errors and I hope you enjoy x

Fukuchi:

My dude is so so so enthusiastic. You mean to tell him that he gets a beautiful loving partner AND a new little guy to hang out with?? Sign him tf up

This man buys your kid so many presents it's genuinely concerning. Your child is spoilt to hell and back by Fukuchi. You need to discourage him from this behaviour STAT

He constantly uses dad words like 'buddy' and 'pal' and 'kiddo' to refer to your kid and they eventually start responding to these nicknames lol

He would totally also do dad stances and just embrace the fatherly aura that is slowly overtaking him day by day (bro starts falling asleep on the couch while the game's on at 9pm)

He's actually surprisingly gentle with your child. If they cry he'll pick them up and comfort them very well. He's like a whole different person when your kid is scared or sad- it's the cutest thing ever

If your child ever gets him a Fathers' Day present he'll probably cry like old man tears of joy. In fact if your child ever does anything nice for him he'll be incredibly touched. Kinda reminds him what he's doing his job for :')

Tells your child great exaggerated (CHILD FRIENDLY) stories about his heroic achievements as a soldier before bed. It's genuinely super cute you guys

If the kid ever runs up to him in excitement when he arrives home in the evening he returns the energy and is like 'omg there they are! that's my kiddo! how have you been??' and picks them up and AUGH they're so cute

Just....🥺🥺

Jouno:

Your child is probably scared of him at first. Within their first meeting he probably makes them cry.

Sorry y'all 😭 but he doesn't exactly come off as much of a teddy bear...and nor does he really act like one with anyone else other than you in private

Jouno just isn't good with kids. Not in the sense that he's scared of them but that he doesn't really know how to interact with them without being intimidating or otherwise just detached

But he really loves you, and he wants to be a good parental figure to your kid, so he tries to warm them up to him by getting them a gift. That probably helps- he might not know much about kids but he's right to assume that they fucking love receiving gifts

Whatever your child's hobbies/interests are, Jouno genuinely does try to connect with them over it, and after a while it does work.

Soon enough your child and Jouno are inseparable and your child is spewing sadistic military rhetoric and oh dear god you've made a terrible mistake introducing the two of them

Yeah, Jouno probably teaches your kid all KINDS of horrible things. He will tell your child stories about times he's tortured suspects, or slaughtered gangs, and just stuff that is not family friendly. You have to nip that behaviour in the bud or else...

He's generally pretty good at taking care of your child, but like, if your kid cried because they were scared there was a monster under the bed, Jouno would probably be like "Yeah. There is. Good luck." and then turn off the lights and leave 💀

Just give him time. He'll learn how to be an emotionally available parent at SOME point

Tecchou:

He's not the step dad. He's the dad that stepped up

Tecchou is definitely very aloof and awkward around your child- like, he knows how to interact with you, but children are different. Children are frightening. And they are his biggest fear maybe

In spite of this, he is fiercely protective of your kid. He will make sure that child is as safe and calm as possible at all times, and he certainly prefers to show that he cares through actions rather than words.

He usually wouldn't initiate physical contact with your child but if they hugged him he would hug back, if they gave him a hi-five he would do it back, etc etc. he will never let your kid down

If your child likes make belief, you can bet you'd walk into a room and find your kid all dressed up, off their rocker in full theatre mode, while Tecchou is sitting on the floor, also dressed up, but looking more depressed than ever before

Save him from your baby. They are taking YEARS off his life

He probably accidentally sends your kid to hospital at some point because he cooked for them. Damnit Tecchou, how don't you realise that a child's stomach wouldn't be able to handle a combination of chocolate and beef

It's okay though, he does learn from this. Plus, he takes care of your child and buys them presents and hangs out with them until they're better <3

He might not join your child in the ball pit, but he would watch them swim around in there with the softest, faintest, most affectionate smile on his face. And that is all that matters folks

Teruko (platonic):

The funnest, meanest, coolest auntie ever

Teruko will lead your child down a dreadful path. Limit their visits to holidays and birthdays for your own sake and the sake of your young one

She's really more than happy to negatively influence look after your child if you need her to though, and they love her because she's super chill and lets them get away with all kinds of things (that aren't violent crimes against humanity)

Your parent says one cookie after dinner? Screw it, have six. I won't tell if you won't. - Teruko, probably

She uses her ability to entertain your kid sometimes- usually she'll decrease her age so she can join them in things like building pillow forts and playing on jungle gyms

I'm just picturing them playing at the park and some concerned parent coming up to them asking where their guardian is and Teruko just fucking transforms into a grown woman on the spot and goes 'WHO'S ASKING' 😭

Teruko is a super cool fun aunt. But she is very wise, and she really will give your kid good life advice on occasion.

She'll also cheer them up when they're feeling down, and if they're feeling scared she helps them step out of their comfort zones and confront their fears (in a safe way!!)

If your kid is like, getting picked on at school or something, Teruko will nag you to phone their school about it. If you don't, she does. If they don't do anything about it, she does. Bottom line is NOBODY fucks with your kid when Teruko is around

I guess technically she really is scary dog privilege lmao

Tachihara:

Help he's so nervous at first? Tachihara this is a child, not a wise sage- you can be normal around them

He just wants to make a good impression on the child okay he's doing his best

But (obviously) your kid immediately loves him, and thinks he's the coolest guy ever, and wants to hang out with him all the time

Tachihara has a bit of a concern that the kid will think that he's trying to replace their other parent, which is fair, but it's unfounded because your child absolutely adores him and does not care about that at all

If your child ever calls him 'Dad' watch his soul fucking transcend to a new plane, he's so surprised and honoured that this beautiful person's child would consider him their parent

Your kid has Tachihara wrapped around their tiny finger. He will oblige them with anything- if you've got a toddler who likes uppies and piggybacks, say your prayers for Tachihara's upper arm and back muscles because he will carry them for hours

You really need him to stop leaving weaponry around the house, though- the absolute HEART ATTACK you had when you saw your precious baby carrying around an unloaded pistol

Also, Tachihara, babe, STOP SWEARING SO MUCH AROUND THE BABY. I CAN'T HAVE MY KID SAYING 'FUCK' TO STRANGERS - you, probably

Doesn't really ever talk about his job(s) with your kid, all they know is that he 'kills bad guys', and they think that's cool as fuck

He's not perfect, sure. But he is trying so hard to be The Perfect Parent™ and, more importantly, he loves your child to bits

taglist~ ♡ @gettinshiggywithit, @fyodorhatr, @flower-of-darkness, @bejeweledgirl, @kokoenjiandco, @pinkiipeachiikeen

of course, thank you to anon for this req!

[pintrestgrl]

loved your bsf!jj drabble!!!!! maybe a little drunken love confession from bsf!jj … and reader thinks its lowkey too good to be true bc she’s been yearning forever… but when they both sober up jj is like !!! i meant wtf i said !

hi i wrote this and then it completely disappeared. sigh. also im sorry if this is bad, i was half asleep bc i spent forever writing it the first time.

also i’m sorry for being inactive yesterday i was so so stressed nd had cramps and was dying… but hi !! hope u like this anon 🥹

note: after writing this, i rlly don’t like it. but i pray u guys do 😞

drunk!bsf!jj x pogue!reader.

“here, drink this.”

you spoke, shoving a glass of water into jj’s chest, sitting down next to him on the couch of the chateau.

he was clearly very wasted, and you were only a slight bit tipsy.

you two had both went out to the boneyard together, the rest of the group out doing god knows what.

he rambled on about not wanting to drink it, before giving in and chugging the clear liquid.

“thank god, you’re annoying when you’re drunk.”

“no, ‘m not. you are.”

“at least i’m not sloppy wasted, unlike somebody.”

“whatever. guilty by association.”

he spoke, slurring his words and laughing drunkenly.

“i’m not associated with you, you wish.”

“you’re my bestfriend, of course you are.”

he spoke, rolling his eyes amused at your denying.

you managed to let out a fake chuckle, silently cringing inside as he called you that. were you really only his ‘friend’ to him?

you wished to be so much more, and he had no idea whatsoever.

you were snapped out of your thoughts by his voice, drunkenly rambling again.

“thanks for the water. that was like, kinda sweet.”

“sweet?” you question, laughing as you furrowed your brows.

“yeah. you’re a sweet girl, i swear.”

you opened your mouth to protest, before being interrupted before you got the chance.

“you’re kinda pretty too.”

you froze at his words.

pretty?

that’s the last word you thought jj would use to describe you; at least to your face.

“what?”

“actually, no. you are pretty. very pretty.”

“jj, you’re drunk.”

“yeah, i am. and you’re pretty. probably beautiful if i could think right now.”

“you don’t mean that.”

“no, i do. i definitely do. i don’t know why you don’t have a boyfriend. or why i’m too dumb to ask you out.”

you were completely baffled at this point, trying to find any truth in his words. and to your surprise, he sounded genuine. drunk, but genuine.

you had liked him forever, and this was the most he’d ever showed any reciprocation.

you were always too scared to say anything, afraid of his rejection and what it would do to your friendship.

so, you opted for having some of him, rather then none at all.

“do you even understand a word you’re saying?”

you spoke, desperately needing to know if he was just drunkenly saying bullshit, or revealing the truth of how he felt.

“yeah, i do. you’re a sweet girl who is too pretty to not have a boyfriend. i mean, god. your face is perfect.”

“jj, shut up. stop.”

“no, you shut up. let me talk. i think i like you.”

“i’d hope so, considering i’m your bestfriend.”

“no, no. like actually like you. like seriously.”

you desperately were trying to deny his words, convincing yourself this was a dream and you needed to wake up.

“you think you like me?”

“no, i actually know i do. like a lot.

“jay, you’re joking.”

he scoffed, rolling his eyes.

“can you let me be serious about one thing in my life? i mean, god. i’m not joking. i’m serious. serious about this, about you.”

you could tell he was probably getting agitated the way you kept denying him, the way his mood shifted from amusedly drunk, to pissed off.

“why don’t you sleep the ‘liking me’ off, yeah?”

it took a while, but you convinced him to just go to bed. and as he layed in the next room over, you couldn’t get over his words.

was he trying to get in your pants because he was wasted, or was he serious about liking you?

you knew the thought would keep you up all night if you let it, so you decided to drop it from your brain, drifting off to a light sleep.

next morning.

you woke up groggily, a slight hangover lingering on your body. once you registered everything, you decided to go to the room next door, consisting of a likely just as hungover jj.

you opened the door, sitting on john b’s his bed, silently shaking him awake.

you knew he’d probably get all mad, but you needed him to help you clear the lingering thought in your head.

he groaned, mumbling a sleepy short sentence.

“what do you need?”

“can we talk?”

“speak or forever hold your peace, stupid.”

you rolled your eyes at his tired insult, reluctantly continuing with your words.

“uh— last night, you told me some stuff. like that you liked me, thought i was pretty and stuff. were you serious?”

he shot up as the words spilled out, immediately sitting against the headboard.

“i told you that?”

“yeah, you did.”

“shit— um, well yeah. kinda. in a way.”

“kinda?”

“no. not kinda.”

he said, rubbing a hand over his face.

he spoke again, sounding embarrassed.

“yes. i did. i meant it. every word. ‘m sorry. i didn’t mean to— jesus, fuck.”

“no, it’s fine, uh— i ‘kinda’ like you too.”

you said, letting the words come out before you thought about their weight.

“kinda? you’re serious?”

“yes, i’m serious. and not kinda, i didn’t mean that. i like you a lot.”

“shut up.”

“i’m serious, i do.”

“well, why the fuck didn’t you tell me?”

“i don’t know. i was nervous.”

a silence filled the room, not awkward. just waiting for someone to figure out the right thing to say.

finally, jj spoke.

“uh— i’m like really hungover.”

you rolled your eyes at the subject change, finding it just like him to do something like that.

“that’s what your gonna say?”

“no, fuck—sorry. can you just sleep in here with me so i can think straight after?”

“you could’ve just said that.”

“well, i just did, didn’t i?”

“i guess. and yeah, i can. scoot over.”

he awkwardly listened to your demand, not used to the feeling of you knowing about his thoughts of you.

you both fell unconscious soon after, unknowingly shiftinging your bodies closer as you slept.

you slept for another hour or two, limbs tangled and intertwined together as your mind tried to decipher if this was a dream, or if your head was really resting on your bestfriends chest.

[soolh1k]

Not sure if your requests are open but could you do stray kids forgetting a date they had with (r) ? And maybe the aftermath of it? Thank you smm if you plan on doing this, I just really enjoy the way you right your angst.

- 🦴anon

🕸 umm... life 🕸

synopsis. when skz forgetting the date they had w you and the aftermath

pairing. bf!skz x reader genre. angst and fluff

a/n. Thank you so much for the request!!! I hope you like it and i am so glad that you like the way I write angst, means a lot to me ♡︎ love you 🦴 anon !! 🩷 english is not my first language so apologies for any misspellings or grammar. let me know if you'd like to be tagged !! YEAH AND SORRY FOR NOT POSTING!! I'LL BE BACK WITH MORE POSTS THESE DAYS LOVE UUU

✩ ── ⋅ ⋅ BANGCHAN

Chris was very focused on working on a new track. He wanted it to be perfect, and since he's someone who always finds flaws in things, he couldn't leave his studio until the new melody was flawless. Therefore, he wasn't even paying attention to his phone; he had it on silent just to finish that damn song. He didn't stop until he got frustrated because things weren't going as he wanted. So, he took a break to clear his mind and relax a bit. He picked up his phone and saw a ton of messages from you. It wasn't strange since you used to tell him everything, which he found adorable. However, he was surprised when he saw the messages you had sent him. Had he forgotten your date? No, that couldn't be true. He had it marked on his calendar, and he was genuinely looking forward to that day. He wanted to spend time with you; he missed you so much. He had messed up and needed to fix this urgently. He hadn't done it on purpose; he felt so guilty.

He quickly arrived at the apartment where you lived. He saw the food in the kitchen, and his heart sank. He barely realized how you must have felt sitting there alone in the middle of the night, waiting for him, excited to be only disappointed by him. The worst part was when he heard sobs coming from your room. You were crying because of him, because of his stupidity, and because of being a bad boyfriend.

He hurried to your room, making as little noise as possible. You were already lying in your bed, covered with your blanket up to your head. As soon as you felt your bed sink, something in you hoped it was Chris. When you heard his voice, you felt relieved but angry at the same time. You uncovered yourself and looked at your boyfriend with teary eyes, an action that hurt him even more. He didn't give you time to confront him; he already had you wrapped in his arms. All you could do was cry while holding him tightly.

"You're a fool, Chris," you said between sobs.

"I know, sweetheart, forgive me," he said, stroking your hair while still hugging you.

"I was so focused on my work that I never heard my phone, but I want you to know that my work will never be more important than you. You are my priority, beautiful."

"Do you promise it won't happen again?"

"It will never happen again, darling. Let's rest, okay? Tomorrow we'll have a lovely date. Sleep now, I love you."

✩ ── ⋅ ⋅ MINHO

He didn't know how much it hurt. Months without being able to go on a date with him. You didn't ask for much, not even for it to be a date outside the house. Just spending time together was enough for you. You just wanted to be with your boyfriend.

Minho hadn't even realized that you had sent him so many messages. He was trying to add new steps to the new choreography; the comeback was approaching, and he felt desperate to finish everything. He just wanted to rest.

It got really late; he was leaving the company around 1:30 am. When he reached the parking lot, the first thing he did was check his phone for any message from you. To his surprise, he had hundreds of messages from you, and the most concerning part was that the recent ones expressed disappointment towards him. What had he done wrong?

Slowly, he read each one and realized that you had a planned date today. He had completely forgotten, and he felt horrible. It had been months since you could go out or have a nice date. He put his phone aside and headed to his apartment. He needed to fix things with you; he knew you had been looking forward to this day for a long time.

As soon as he arrived at his apartment, he searched for you everywhere but couldn't find you. That made him even more nervous. He felt like he had lost you. However, he heard a sound coming from the bathroom—it was you, coming out after showering. At that moment, he breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe he had messed things up, but at least you were still there.

You were frozen; you didn't expect Minho to come home so late. You stayed up late because you couldn't sleep due to anger and disappointment. So, you decided to take a shower to release all those consuming emotions. Lost in your thoughts, you felt someone wrapping their arms around you. You wanted Minho to let go, but deep down, you needed a hug. In whispers, you heard explanations from your boyfriend about how the stress of the comeback was consuming him, and he spent a lot of time at the company, even though he wished all that time was invested in you.

"Forgive me, please. I completely forgot that we were supposed to go out today. I'm really sorry that you felt that way, sweetie. It wasn't my intention to hurt you. Tomorrow we can go out; I'll stay home. But please, forgive me." You just nodded and gave him a small kiss.

"I love you, Minho."

"I love you too."

✩ ── ⋅ ⋅ CHANGBIN

You were sitting in your chair, waiting for Changbin to show up. You weren't even angry; just sad because you had planned this outing so much. You were worried because he wasn't answering your messages. You knew he had a busy job, spending most of his time in the studio producing with his friends. But you were hoping for the day when you could spend the entire day together, despite both of your stress and worries.

As it got later, you felt more tired. Without hope, you went to your room to change and remove your makeup. Today, you looked and felt beautiful, but it seemed like all that effort had gone to waste. You sat at your vanity, looked at yourself in the mirror, saw how tired you were, and started crying. Your relationship was wearing you down in a way you couldn't describe, but you wanted to stay because he made you happy. Changbin rarely failed in your relationship. Honestly, at the beginning, you expected something worse, but no, Changbin was the perfect boyfriend. The only complicated thing was his work, but you knew it was his dream, so you felt happy for him. You turned back to the mirror, saw tears, didn't even realize you were crying, which made you cry even more. You really missed your boyfriend, but things were getting more complicated. You just kept sitting there, crying in front of the mirror, waiting for your tears to stop.

Moments later, when you were calmer, you heard gentle knocks on your room door, followed by Changbin's voice asking for permission to enter. Something inside you didn't want to see him; you felt and looked horrible.

"Can I come in, princess?"

"Not now, Changbin, I need time," your voice sounded rushed, trying to remove your makeup as best as you could, mascara running like never before.

"Please, princess, I need to talk to you," the man sounded desperate.

"Just give me a few minutes, please." Saying that, you went to your bathroom, washed your face, and once clean, you ran to open the door. Your surprised boyfriend could only put his head on your shoulder; he exuded such a sad vibe.

"Forgive me, please. Time flew by, and I never realized we were going out today. I didn't even hear your messages. I'm really sorry, princess," Changbin was on the verge of tears, genuinely repentant.

"I know, Binnie, it's okay, don't worry," you said while stroking his head.

"It's not okay, princess. You are my everything, and today, I failed you. Forgive me, please. It will never happen again," he said between sobs. You couldn't believe he was crying.

"Love, I know how difficult your job can be. You have to do many things, and it's okay. I understand, and I trust you not to let it happen again. I love you," you said while hugging him tightly.

"I love you too, and sorry again."

✩ ── ⋅ ⋅ HYUNJIN

You were angry, not even sad, just angry. You had been wanting to see your boyfriend for a while, and as soon as he told you he had some free time, you planned many things to spend time with him. You even prepared many things for him, cooked various dishes, bought a little gift, and even tried to paint something for him. It turned out beautiful, but your boyfriend never showed up to see your little gifts.

You were on your way home when you felt someone approaching you. It made you nervous because it was already dark, and someone approaching wasn't a good sign. You started walking faster, but you heard the footsteps of the other person accelerating too. You didn't want to start running because if you weren't fast enough, things would end badly. Besides, you were carrying the things you had taken to the place where you were going to meet Hyun. All you were praying for was to reach a street where there were more people to lose that person. However, your wish couldn't be fulfilled, and you felt the person following you grab you by the shoulders. You almost fainted right there, but upon hearing the person's voice, your soul returned to your body.

"Why are you walking so fast, my goodness," said Minho, trying to regulate his breath.

"Oh my god, Minho! I almost had a heart attack. I thought I was about to be kidnapped. I swear I won't survive the night," you said, speaking very fast. Your voice didn't even have an annoyed tone; you could only hear relief.

"I called you several times, but you never paid attention. You were in your own world. What did you want me to do?" he complained.

"Well, your friend, the idiot, stood me up and never replied to my messages," you complained with an annoyed tone.

"I know, that's why I came. Honestly, it wasn't his intention. As soon as he saw the messages, he tried to run out, but the idiot tripped and sprained his ankle," Minho explained.

"Oh my god, but is he okay?" you asked worried.

"Crying but yes, he's okay. If I were you, I'd go to the company to see him because otherwise, it's going to end up being a disaster," a sigh was all that came out of you, nodding your head. You accompanied Minho back to the company.

As soon as Hyunjin saw you, he started crying more, feeling guilty. But all you did was approach him, hug him, and tell him not to worry right now. First, his health was important, and then you could talk.

"Don't worry right now, Hyunnie. First, get better, okay? I love you, everything is fine," you gave him a little kiss on the head.

"Forgive me, I love you. I swear when I recover, I'll take you on a very nice date. I promise."

✩ ── ⋅ ⋅ JISUNG

Angry, frustrated, sad, humiliated— you felt like a sea of emotions. You told him how you felt, but you didn't know if it had been the best choice, or the right words, or the right moment. Maybe he was just too busy? But still, it didn't give him the right to stand you up. It wasn't the first time; if the times you went on dates were few, the times he actually made it to the dates were even fewer.

You felt tired, abandoned even. You hardly had the chance to see your boyfriend, and you knew his life was complicated. But there was always the need, the desire to spend time with him, to love him like the first time, to be loved.

Now that you had arrived home, you didn't know what to do. It was like reality had punched you. You realized you had said things that could be misinterpreted. Perhaps the last message would seem like you wanted to break up when that wasn't really the case. The words you said were spoken without much thought; you were just venting, but it wasn't the best. You were shattered. You couldn't even move from the entrance; you were crying oceans, clinging to the door. You didn't want to move; your head hurt, and you couldn't even breathe properly. At this point, you were hyperventilating. Meanwhile, your boyfriend was rushing to your apartment to find you. He didn't want things to end between you two; he loved you and was willing to make a great sacrifice for you.

He arrived in less than 10 minutes, even though your apartment was 15 minutes away. He knocked on the door with desperation, which snapped you out of your trance. However, you couldn't move; everything hurt. As you didn't answer, he became even more worried. He entered the code to the entrance and found you on the floor, in pain, struggling to breathe. He took you in his arms and tried to calm you down. After a long time, you were much calmer, just looking at your boyfriend with teary eyes.

"I don't want to break up with you. I'm sorry, Hannie," you whispered.

"Nor do I want to, my love. Please let me take care of you. I promise that from now on, I'll always be there for you. My work will never come before you. You are my priority. Forgive me, let me fix things. I love you. I'm sorry," he pleaded.

"I forgive you, my love. I love you too. Let's go back to how we were before."

✩ ── ⋅ ⋅ FELIX

You were already asleep in the room you shared with Felix. A few hours ago, you were supposed to have your wonderful date. Unfortunately, that didn't happen because your boyfriend was probably busy. Yes, you were angry, but more than that, you were disappointed and sad. You used to be a sensitive person, so these kinds of actions hurt your feelings a lot. Let's say you had to cry yourself dry to fall asleep.

Felix was on his way home, very nervous and disappointed in himself. He had forgotten about the date you were supposed to have, one of the few times you could have time for just the two of you. He suspected that you were either devastated or asleep because you weren't answering his calls or messages. They even said your phone was on silent. When he got home, he looked for you in the kitchen. He saw your dishes neatly washed, while his were still on the table. The table was decorated with flowers and a few candles. You even bought a pink wine for the occasion. He had really messed up this time.

In panic, he went to look for you in the room, praying that you were there. And yes, he saw your small figure hidden under the sheets. That made his heart squeeze tightly. Had he really hurt you? He knew you were a very sensitive person, like a porcelain doll. He had to handle you with care, and that was his favorite part—taking care of you. You were his everything. How had he been failing you so much lately? He wanted to cry right there. He wanted to leave his busy life to give all his attention to you. Slowly, he approached you and sat on the side of your bed where only your hand hung. He took it gently and caressed it. He gave you a small kiss while whispering how sorry he was, how much he felt for hurting you, for failing you. He didn't realize you had woken up, only hearing the sweet and sincere words he was dedicating to you.

You got concerned when you felt your hand wet, a sign that he was already crying. Carefully, you moved and, in a slow motion, sat on the floor with him, face to face. You took his face gently in your hands and gave him many kisses, tickling him, which made him smile.

"It's okay, Felix. I already told you that I understand that your life is difficult."

"But even if it is, that doesn't mean I can fail you. It hurts to admit that I completely forgot that we were supposed to have a date today. I know how hard you try to do things for both of us. Please, forgive me. I want to give my all for this relationship, angel. I want things to be like before when we were both so happy."

"I want that too, Lix. I forgive you, okay? For now, let's have dinner together. I left your plate on the table, but I guess the food is already cold." You got up slowly and then extended your hand towards your boyfriend.

"Thank you, beautiful. I love you more than you can imagine. Things will get better, I promise." He gave you a kiss on the cheek as you both headed to the kitchen.

✩ ── ⋅ ⋅ SEUNGMIN

You were clearly hurt, unsure how to react to what happened. Seungmin had stood you up at a restaurant, and now you had to pay for an inexpensively expensive bottle of champagne and a meal you didn't even bother to eat. Walking back home with your heels in one hand and a broken heart in the other, you didn't want to return to your shared apartment with Seungmin. But your feet and head ached, you were tired, so you stopped at a bus stop to rest for a while. You felt your eyes getting heavy, very sleepy, but you knew it wouldn't be a good idea to fall asleep on the street. It was dangerous, and you didn't want anything bad to happen. So, you called one of your friends to pick you up.

You patiently waited for your friend, and when they arrived, Seungmin called. You didn't really feel like answering, but you did it anyway.

"Where are you?" At that moment, your friend arrived in their car, so you quickly got in because you didn't want to make them wait.

"On my way home, I guess." You weren't sure if you wanted to go home, but it was the most likely option.

"What do you mean 'I guess'? Don't you want to go home?" He asked with a concerned tone.

"It's not that, Seungmin. Just a friend picked me up, and I wanted to spend some time with him. Yes, I'll go home, okay?" A somewhat annoyed tone came from your voice. You didn't want to sound like that, but you were very tired and just wanted to rest. Your friend turned to look at you, worried. You just signaled to them that everything was okay.

"Do you know what time you'll be home?" he asked worriedly.

"To be honest, I don't know. I hope before midnight."

"I'll be waiting for you here. I love you. I'm sorry, beautiful." You noticed a tone of regret in his voice.

"I love you too, Seung." You sighed tiredly one last time and ended the call.

You and your friend spent the time talking on the way to distract you from the bad experience. Despite having brought food, your friend suggested going to a fast-food restaurant and ordering something through the drive-thru, and it sounded like a good idea. So, you both had dinner in the parking lot, continued talking for a while, and decided it was time to go home. Your friend drove you back and waited for you to enter the building where you lived.

The moment you entered your apartment, you felt a heavy, sad vibe—something inexplicable. It felt completely weird because you expected Seungmin to come running to see if you had arrived safely, but none of that happened. So, you decided to go look for him. You found him in your shared bed, curled up, crying like never before, which crushed your heart. Slowly approaching him, once by his side, you started stroking his back, intending to help him calm down. However, that only made him cry more. He felt extremely guilty, but now you also felt guilty. You should have solved things earlier, but you chose to leave, making things worse than they were. You lay down next to him and hugged him, starting to comfort him, which this time worked. After a few minutes, he began to speak.

"Sorry, beautiful. I completely forgot that we were going out today, and by the time I realized, too much time had passed, and I couldn't find any way to fix it. Please forgive me. I promise I'll make it up to you." He apologized, turning around to face you.

"Of course, Minnie. I forgive you. I was just a little upset, but I know how busy your life can be. All I wanted was some time for us because lately, we haven't been able to go out like before," you said, stroking his cheek.

"I know, beautiful. But soon, I'll get some vacation, and if I don't, I'll take a few days off to be with you, my love." He hugged you tightly.

"Thank you, Minnie. I love you more than you can imagine. Forgive me too, and let's keep being happy together, okay?"

"Yes, silly. I love you much more."

✩ ── ⋅ ⋅ JEONGIN

After sending that message, you felt guilty because maybe it wasn't his fault, but it seemed like he wasn't putting in the slightest effort into your relationship. Every time something complicated happened in your relationship, it wasn't him who came to talk to you about it; it was always his coworkers. This bothered you a lot because it seemed like he was too cowardly to tell you things, either by message or face to face.

Right now, you didn't know whether to cry, get angry, or worry. You really didn't know what to do or how to act. What were you supposed to do? Wait and see if the man you love shows up, or if he's just going to back away again. These thoughts only made you more depressed. You even fell asleep while crying, so you didn't know what was happening around you at that moment.

When you woke up, you had missed numerous calls from your boyfriend, his friends, your friends—literally everyone. He had been looking for you for about an hour and a half, something that surprised you because you didn't even feel like you had fallen asleep, so you didn't notice the calls and messages they had sent you. Disoriented, you started reading messages from your friends saying that Innie had been looking for you for a while and seemed sad. When you began reading his messages, you realized you had messed up really badly. You had around 100 messages from Jeongin apologizing, asking you not to leave him, and begging to see you just to apologize properly. If you didn't want to be with him anymore, he said it was okay, but he just wanted to say goodbye properly. However, you didn't want to end it either; you only said it on a stupid impulse. He was and is the love of your life, and you didn't want things or the love between you to end. You quickly called him, praying that he would answer, and not even 3 seconds passed when a desperate Jeongin answered. You were about to speak, but he started apologizing endlessly, just saying words desperately, not even making coherent sense. He just didn't want you to hang up and say you no longer wanted to be with him. His desperation made you feel disoriented and sad, but at the same time, it frustrated you because he wouldn't let you talk. Therefore, you decided to raise your voice a bit to make him stop talking.

"Jeongin! Let me speak first, okay?"

"Yes, sorry."

"I don't want to break up with you. I know I said I couldn't take it anymore, and it's true, but I know being busy is not your fault. I just want you to communicate more with me. I don't want your friends always having to inform me. I want it to be you," you said with some emotion, finally able to express what you felt.

"Yes, love, I promise. From now on, I'll change for the better, but please don't leave me. I love you more than you can imagine. That's why from today, I'll be the person who makes you happy forever," he promised with a lump in his throat.

"If that's the case, come home now, Innie. I miss you. I want to fix things properly. I miss everything about you, please," you begged your boyfriend.

Tag list !!

@albaficaslover

@damselettism

[works-of-heart]

why do you ship elucien? im not trying to be rude its just genuine curiosity. to me elriel seems to be obviously canon and the author is writing them in a way that you'd genuinely find in romance with a very common misunderstanding trope. there have been so many hints to elriel being canon such as Azriel's mother being from Rosehall and the rose Symbolism with Elain. Given that Elain has shown nothing but contempt for Lucien, I just can't wrap my mind around why people will ship elucien and not elriel which appears to me to be endgame.

I don't mean any hate. I just can't understand why people would set themselves up for failure shipping a noncanon/fanon couple. I see so much in this fandom over the shipwars and wonder why the wars even exist. If elriel is canoon why do eluciens fight so hard against it? shouldnt we all be adults and accept it instead of flinging insults back and forth to each other? Not saying that you are but I see so many people go back and forth with these insults and it gets so annoying i thought we were all adults here. either way i hope you have a good day

Hi Anon! I appreciate the question, and the chance to gush about why I love Elucien.

First, however, let me start by saying anyone can ship anything and anyone they please regardless of canon or endgame. Shipping comes from the heart, it’s a feeling. Many people think of possibilities that two characters could have, or see their chemistry and enjoy it. For others, it’s the angst and connections that they have. A common trope is enemies to lovers, and that doesn’t always start off with a lovey dovey spark, but the tension and angst.

I feel that a common belief in fandoms now these days are that ships are only valid if they are canon or not, or, even more so, if they are endgame. A ships validity isn’t based off any of these factors, but how you feel about them. Crackships can sometimes evolve from a joke or meme, but then people sit down and actually find they love the idea of them and go onto creating some really awesome things for the ship! Even if it started as a joke, some may derive joy from it.

So you ship Elriel (I am assuming by context) and I ship Elucien. At the end of the day, one of them will be canonically endgame, but that does not mean people can’t still ship them. I promise, no matter what the book ends up to be, people will STILL ship who they want to, and that’s totally fine. Shipping wars have existed forever, genuinely someone will argue that one pair is better suited than their counterpart. I can understand that Elain gave Azriel some charged looks, I can see that she wanted to kiss him, and I understand why some other Elriel shippers like them. To be honest, I’ve shipped many a brooding boy with the sweet, energetic girl. The biggest example is Jin and Xiaoyu from Tekken who finally, after 25 years of teasing and build up became canonical endgame. Then there is Squall and Selphie from FF8, who did not become endgame, but I still ship them and love them.

We can all debate why we think one will be endgame over the other, some can concede and at least understand why people feel that way, others will choose to agree to disagree and stick to their grounds. One of the things I, as an Elucien hate about it is when an Elriel will call me, or my fellow Eluciens delusional for shipping a mated pair. For not seeing that Sarah is setting us up for failure when she’s played this game before. Girl likes guy, girl thinks she’s found her home, girl finds another guy whom she avoids who happens to be her mate and fights against fate. Girl spends time with guy she avoided to realize he is her equal, that he is a good male, that together they are a good fit. Girl struggles with her feelings and eventually chooses her mate who lifts her up and the two are happy in love. To be called delusional for seeing such connections and ship a pair that the author herself mated is very annoying. You do not have to agree with me, that is fine, but it does not make my ship any less valid.

Now, as to WHY I like Elucien? There are just… WAY too many reasons to list them all and this would be dreadfully long if I list everything. So I’ll name some of my top reasons.

Lucien and Elain are both underestimated. People brush off Lucien as someone who isn’t a Highlord, nor illyrian, so obviously he’s not as strong as Rhys as the Inner Circle. Elain is constantly talked down as plain, simple, peaceful and uninteresting. We haven’t been able to see Elain use her seer powers since Lucien last tugged on the bond, and with Lucien’s hinted heritage, I think we’re going to see these two show off a different kind of power.

The tension! There’s so much tension between Lucien and Elain, tension that we don’t have a full picture of. It’s clear that Elain is fighting against the bond, and Lucien, the man who promised to never love another, is now faced with a mate he believes does not want him. He’s dealing with the guilt of Jesminda while Elain is avoiding the bond. When both are faced with what the mother gifted them, finding the reason why they’re mates will be an emotional journey!

Home. People say that Elain belongs in the NC with her family, she even stated it too. However SJM seems to be showing that Elain might be a bit like Feyre in the way Feyre once claimed the SC was her home. There was a line about how the big poofy dress looked ridiculous on Feyre and how at odds she was with the place she once called home, with a man she once said she loved and made love to. The context of the book tells us that Elain is not where she’s meant to be, in fact, it was said over and over she was made for spring, she’d love spring, and her mate is currently there. I think these two are going to realize home is not a place, it is a feeling they get when they’re together.

Their potential. SJM said that Elain surprised both Lucien AND herself! There had to have been something that she saw between them when writing MAF that made her say “Yes, Mate these two instantly! Not only that, make it snap now!” Seeing that Elain is a gentle soul and Lucien is someone whose a bit of a smart ass, I’d love to see these two together. Elain would be the type of person to put him in his place, and Lucien wouldn’t baby her either, unlike how everyone else treats her! Their dynamic would be a treat to see on page.

There’s so much more to say about them, and I could go on and on! We have tension, and the possible healing and growth that was hinted at, the fact Lucien ventured with Papa A. and Elain was closest to him. There’s also the fact that Elain holds hope, she is light and warmth and Lucien who seems so hopeless, could find that in her. Elain craves light and sunshine, Lucien being the heir of Day, to having a blinding white light himself. The way when Lucien interacts with her, her powers activate. Not to mention the similarities between Solas and Cthona, Crescent City deities who are mates and lovers.

So to answer Anon, there are many reasons I love Elucien, and I will continue to ship them long after the series is over. Whether or not they’re in love right now, before either of them have a book has no bearing on their validity as a ship, or their possibility in their book. I think you’d find it easier to just let people have their ships and enjoy what they wish in peace rather than trying to tell others they can or cannot ship based off what the books tell us right now. Because as we all know from ACOTAR and ACOMAF, it doesn’t matter who you love at the start, not when you find home with your mate.

[lovebugism]

i am so sorry but reader talking about robin right before making out with eddie is like absolutely the best thing i’ve ever read i’m obsessed i genuinely can’t wait for anything else in that universe that you do

THE CUSTOMER'S ALWAYS RIGHT | god help the girl

summary: in which you come to terms with the fact that you're hopelessly in love with eddie munson. pairing: virgin!eddie munson x reader word count: 13k warning: phone sex, more discussions of shitty boyfriends, j*son c*rver name drop, talks of unhealthy eating practices, smut 18+ mdni! a/n: this ask has been sitting in my inbox for ages now, but i wanted to save it until robin made an appearance in the series! thank you, anon, for being so sweet! and for the few of you who've been waiting on me to finally post <3 hope you enjoy! xoxo

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They only met once, but it changed their lives forever. 

That’s what the movie cover reads at least, but the words have long blurred into a jumbled mess at your tunnel vision. John Bender stares you in the face, but all you see is Eddie — boyish and brazen and scowling because he thinks it makes him look intimidating, but nowhere near as cruel as he seems. 

He’s certainly got the hair for it, much longer and curls far wilder than Judd Nelson’s measly set of brushed-back locks. He’s got the terribly animated personality down pat, too; the one that either makes you laugh uncontrollably or squirm in discomfort when it’s pointed your way. And the style’s a pretty fine match also, though you’d argue that no one sports a leather jacket quite like Eddie Munson does.

Wallowing in your boredom at the empty Family Video store on Main Street — where your best friends slave over mundane work with aching backs and a lingering sense of gratefulness that no customer has been in in well over an hour — you find yourself analyzing each character pictured on the front cover of The Breakfast Club.

Robin would surely be Allison, you conclude rather quickly, because their deadpanned glowers are eerily identical. They’ve also got this sort of atypical aura to them, too, like a dark storm cloud or the promise of a long night. But strangely it sparkles — strikes of lightning or a sky full of stars. It draws everyone’s attention to them; even when they’re desperately trying to hide in the very back of a room.

And Steve would be Andrew, not particularly because of his affections for this Allison-Reynolds-Robin-Buckley hybrid you’ve concocted, but because "popular guy with daddy issues" is a trope that fits him far too well. He’s way more likely to get detention for trying to look cool in front of his assholes friends than for anything actually malicious of heart. But that would’ve been years ago now. He’s not that kind of guy anymore. 

He’s soft and sweet — a Brian Johnson sort of soft and sweet, if you will. If Brian wasn’t the brains, but the sweetest dumbass anyone’s ever met.

You realize then, that Jim Hopper would make a mean Richard Vernon. He’s impatient to a fault, almost too stern at times, but never enough to make you genuinely fearful of him. You’ve found that it’s virtually impossible for you to take him seriously when he’s so cartoonishly angry. It’s a match made in heaven, you find, though Jim might take offense to the comparison.

And if Eddie is Bender, then that’d make you the Claire Standish of the bunch.

She’s dreadfully stylish, a bit stuck-up at times, and perhaps a little bit more spoiled than the average person; but it’s not like she ever claimed to be perfect. And you wouldn’t either.

You’ll take more pride in your wardrobe filled with pretty pleated skirts and flouncy dresses than your somewhat glacial disposition. And you might not be drowning in daddy’s money, but you’re certainly spoiled in other ways — if only in the employee discount at Enzo’s that got you wine for cheap and your connections at Family Video that meant free movie nights whenever you wanted.

The bad boy and the princess was a tale as old as time itself. It’s a fairytale you wouldn’t mind living in if it ended how it did in the movies — with a kiss on the cheek and an exchanged diamond earring in the calloused palm of another. A soft pink smile and a celebratory fist in the air.

But you’ve met your fair share of John Bender’s and none of them had been particularly kind to you, let alone had fallen in love with you. 

Maybe that’s because you were no Claire Standish. Never pretty enough, never mousy enough, never pure enough.  You try and dissect why you’ve never been successfully loved, and all the signs point to you, you, you.

You hope Eddie’s different. You need Eddie to be different.

“Something’s wrong with me,” you blurt out of nowhere.

Well, it’s not totally out of the blue for you. You’d been stewing over that thought since you got there — since you left the woods with damp underwear and the scent of you on Eddie’s fingers.

But to Steve and Robin, who’d stayed relatively silent and locked eyes only once after they noticed how abnormally hushed you’d gone, it catches them quite off guard.

Steve lifts his heavy head from where he mans the counter. His tired eyes leave the computerized catalog for the first time in forty minutes, and he has to rub at them with the bottom of his palms to see you properly. Meanwhile, Robin crouches at your side, taking returned tapes from the bin sitting next to her and placing them back upon the shelf you lean against. 

She blinks up at you, deep ocean eyes swimming with apprehension, like she can sense the spiral you’ve just about twisted yourself into.

“What do you mean?” she wonders, ever the supportive best friend, as she plucks Heather’s, Pretty in Pink, and Weird Science from the bin and sets them onto their assigned rows in the Teen Drama section.

“Eddie won’t fuck me.”

Neither of them is particularly stunned by the unabashed nature of your admission.

Not only have they both fucked you at one point or another, but they’re your best friends — no one’s ever going to know you quite the way they do. It leaves little left unsaid between the three of you, with secrets you’ve all sworn to take to your graves. Steve once stuck a finger in his ass to see if he liked it (he did) and Robin sometimes gets off on her childhood teddy bear (rather ironically named Mr. Snuggles). 

So this? This was nothing. Especially in comparison to all the other shit you’ve confessed to them because god knows the whore of Hawkins has a plethora of stories to tell.

Steve is more shocked by the name that leaves your mouth than anything else. “Eddie Munson?” he repeats with furrowed brows, like he had to have heard you wrong.

You bring your chin to your right shoulder to look at him, then nod.

“Eddie… The Freak… Munson?”

You nod again, slower for him this time.

“You wanna fuck… Eddie Munson?” Steve reiterates once more, as though the idea was too appalling to be true. “Eddie Munson — The Freak?”

“Yes, Steve,” you huff in irritation.

His face contorts into a puppy-like confusion. A frown settles between his bushy brows and he cocks his head to the side, nose scrunching and his lip quirking slightly. He couldn’t look more disgusted if he tried.

“…Why?”

You groan and tilt your head back dramatically. “That’s not what’s important here, Steve. The better question is why won’t he fuck me?”

The boy’s lack of any actual assistance doesn’t surprise Robin in the slightest — his dumbfounded gaze and innate confusion are actually pretty on brand. It just puts all the burden on her, to help you wriggle out of the mess you’d tangled yourself into. 

It’s not like she isn’t used to it, though, nor does she mind doing it for you. She walks you through your emotions like a professional, squashing out all the burning orange embers for you before they have the chance to burst into flames.

“Well, what do you mean he won’t fuck you? Like… did he actually say that or does he just wanna, you know, take things slow?”

The latter would’ve been way too easy. Eddie’s always been nice enough to you. It’d make sense for him to want to stay unhurried and gentle with you, but those words weren’t exactly in your vocabulary. 

The first time you were alone with him, you were getting yourself off on his thigh after making him come in his jeans. The next time you saw him, after four days of him clinging to your consciousness, there wasn’t as much small talk so much as there were two of his fingers stuffed knuckle-deep inside of you.

You don’t know Eddie’s birthday, but you know how he likes to be touched — squeezed and not rubbed. You don’t know his middle name or how he likes his eggs in the morning or what his relationship with his mother is like, but he’s already made you come. Twice.

You are completely, utterly, and totally incapable of taking things slow. So it wasn’t that. It couldn’t be. So it had to be the other thing. The very scary, terrifying, boogeyman of a thing.

“I mean, I offered to give him a blowjob and he completely turned me down,” you lament in reply.

Robin and Steve wince. Like, physically wince. Their faces scrunch and their heads flinch from something invisible. Audible ooh’s fall from their mouths without them even realizing it, because you don’t get rejected. Ever. Especially not after offering to pleasure someone without much of anything in return.

They don’t mean to react the way they do. The visible shock that coats their features is involuntary more than it is anything, and it only adds to your fears.

“Exactly!” you exclaim.

“I hate to say it, but I think hell might be freezing over as we speak,” Steve half-jokes.

“Well, he was working, right?” Robin asks with raised brows. “Maybe he was just busy.”

“Sorry, Rob, but no guy’s too busy for a blowjob.”

“Real charming, Stevie.”

“Maybe he just has a small dick,” the boy concludes with a shrug.

“I felt his dick,” you shake your head almost immediately. The feeling of Eddie’s hard cock through his denim jeans, all rough and warm against your palm, hasn’t yet left you. “It’s not small.”

“Well, maybe he can’t get it up—”

“Yeah, that’s not a problem either.”

Eddie was rock hard when you left him, throbbing and aching and obviously needing some kind of relief. That’s partly why you’d been so ardent to return the favor, though the other half of it was purely selfish — you haven’t seen a more beautiful sight than Eddie Munson getting off. To deprive yourself of that masterpiece made you feel like you were starving.

You have a hard time imagining the raging hard-on just… dissipating after you’d left him. That means he probably jerked off in the back of his van and you missed it. And if he came, right after he promised everything was okay, that means he just didn’t want you to do it… right?

Steve seems to be caught in the same inner turmoil you’re currently stuck in; and for good reason. In all the years he’s known you, he can count on one hand how many times he’s had to turn you down. And every time, it was because he’d gotten back together with Nancy. It was never because of you. Not once. And sometimes he felt like it hurt him as much as it did you. 

As far as Steve’s concerned, you’re so out of Eddie Munson’s league that you’re not even in his fucking orbit — so the freak show, turning you down, doesn’t make whole lot of sense to him.

“Huh…”

“It’s me. It’s definitely me,” you conclude with the shake of your head. A bitter, almost hysterical laugh spills from your lips. “He thinks I’m fucking ugly or disgusting or something. It’s totally fucking me—”  

Robin completely abandons her basket of tapes then. She rises to stand in front of you, looking timid as she does so. Her raised brows form wrinkles on her freckled forehead and her blue eyes widen to reveal more of the whites of them. She looks like she’s approaching a wild animal. A bomb that’s about to explode.

“Okay… You’re starting to spiral, alright? So let’s just try and take a few deep breaths—”

You don’t listen to her. 

Actually, you do quite the opposite, as you begin to blurt every fleeting thought that crosses your mind.

“I’ve made out with nearly everyone in this stupid town— I’m pretty sure I’ve fucked almost half— and you’d think Eddie would wanna take advantage of that, the way everyone makes him out to be some sort of freak, right? But he hasn’t and at this rate, he won’t, and I just don’t understand why,” you ramble without taking in a single breath. “Usually being a slut is a huge turn-on for guys, you know? But what if Eddie thinks it’s gross? I mean, it is gross— I’m gross—”

You only stop for air when Robin takes your shoulders in both hands. She looks less apprehensive and more stern, as she forces you to look at her.

“Look. I love you, but you need to get a hold of yourself, alright? I know you’re not used to being told no, and I know how much it sucks, but shit happens. I’m willing to bet all the money I’ve ever seen that whatever is going on with Eddie has nothing to do with you, okay? And if it’s making you this upset, maybe you should just talk to him.”

“But I don’t wanna seem like I’m too eager, that’s gross—”

“Then find someone else to fuck,” she offers with her signature Robin Buckley half-smile. “I’m sure it would take you less than five minutes to find a willing participant.”

“Yeah, right here,” Steve jokes from the counter with the pathetic wave of his hand and a dumb grin on his lips. 

You don’t hear him over the voices in your head — half calling you crazy for letting a boy drive you this mad over nothing, and the other half bitterly affirming each of your deep-rooted insecurities.

Your face screws up, like the thought of being with anyone other than Eddie upsets you — it does upset you.

“I don’t want anyone else.”

“Then what do you want?” Robin yells in your face, shaking you by your shoulders.

“I want Eddie!” you shout back without thinking. The words seem to spill out of nowhere. It takes you of all people by surprise. No one in this rat trap town would ever expect the whore of Hawkins to want to settle down, least of all the harlot herself. It’s strange; it’s riveting; it’s really fucking scary. “…Fuck.”

The brunette smirks, proud of herself. “Well. There’s your answer.”

“I hate when you’re right,” you mumble to yourself, pouting as she crouches back down again.

“I know.”

It was a terrifying thought, to know that you were head over heels for someone else. You try to come to terms with what that means. 

Sometimes you think you fall in love with a new person every day. A cute guy holds the door open for you, a pretty girl compliments your outfit — they never think about you again, but they’re on your mind for days. It was so easy to develop such meaningless infatuations, especially when you were bored.

But Eddie was different.

He was a nice guy. A nice guy that was sweet to you just for the sake of being sweet to you; not because he secretly wanted something in return. That made you fall for him at first, but then you just… kept on falling. Eddie Munson was an infinite void you couldn’t crawl your way out of even if you wanted to, even if you tried.

And that’s what frightened you the most.

Because if you really thought about it, you’ve only truly been in love a handful of times. And, sure, it didn’t work out — that was normal — but some of them fucking ruined you. 

You’re still trying to figure out who you are without all of the people that have broken your heart. You’re still fighting like hell every day to recognize the person you see in the mirror, while Billy Hargrove fucks off with a new girl every other week like he didn’t totally destroy you.

But, even still, Eddie was completely different. No one’s ever made you feel the way he makes you feel. And it’s more than the stupid heavy petting — it’s more than anything. It’s never been like this before; not even with the blonde mulleted asshole who ripped your heart to shreds. 

And you’re scared that if you get hurt again, you’ll never be able to come back from it.

“Steve, do you have another copy of Fast Times in the back?” you suddenly ask the boy, tossing him a look over your shoulder.

It’s your last ditch effort to rid yourself of the ponderous, gray doom and gloom surrounding you like some storm cloud. Your comfort movie solves all of your problems — or, at the very least, Phoebe Cates does — but it seems everyone else in town has developed a similar fondness for minute fifty-three of the film and got all the tapes off the shelf before you could get your hands on one.

“You know I keep on in stock for you,” he answers quietly.

He reaches below the counter to pull out a spare copy for you, and your heart swells with the rays of a thousand rising suns and the songs of every morning bird.

Steve told you some time ago that he could change. And back then, all it did was piss you off, because he didn’t want to change for the town slut — for the girl he put through the goddamn ringer. He wanted to change for Nancy. The princess bruised his brittle ego a little, and then he realized what an asshole he’d been to everyone, to you.

But as angry as it made you, you never believed him. “Once the King of Hawkins High, always the King of Hawkins High,” you remarked bitterly.

You wouldn’t say it to his face, for the sake of keeping his ego from inflating all over again, but you could tell he was really changing.

He was kinder, he was softer. He stopped caring about what everyone thought about him, about what not caring would do to his reputation, and started giving a fuck about the people worth giving a fuck about. 

Apparently, you were one of them.

“…Really?”

He nods with a subtle shrug. Like it was no big deal. Like it wasn’t one of the sweetest things he’d ever done for you — keeping your favorite movie on hand so you’ll always have a spare, knowing that it’s the only thing that gets you out of a deep, dark funk sometimes.

“Stevie… You’re gonna make me blush,” you lilt with a grin as you saunter over to him, hands innocently laced behind your back. “You need to be careful, Harrington. I’m gonna start to think you actually like me.”

He scoffs. “I do like you.”

“Yeah, when it’s convenient.”

It’s obvious your joke hits him where it hurts. It serves as a bitter reminder of the asshole he used to be, the douchebag he’s trying like hell to grow out of. He looks up at you with a sheepish, honey-tinted gaze before ducking away again.

A year or more ago it would’ve made you feel good, to know that you hurt him just a fraction of the way he hurt you. But you know that that isn’t the same man standing in front of you now, that he’d rather die than make hurt your feelings, and it makes you feel like shit for saying it in the first place. 

“Sorry,” you apologize with a scrunched nose. The palms of your hands dig into the edges of the counter as you lean against it. Your shrug. “It just kinda came out…”

The barcode scanner in his hand beeps as he passes the thing over the back of the tape — never charging you, just getting the movie out of the database.

“So, uh…” he starts before clearing his throat. He focuses his gaze on the computer and types on the bulky keyboard with the tip of his pointer finger. “You really like this Eddie guy, huh?”

“Maybe. I think so.”

“And he’s not, like… a total freak or anything?”

You can’t tell if he’s trying to look out for you or if he just wants intel on what it’s like trying (and failing) to bang the local weirdo. Either way, it makes a smile tug slow at your lips as you joke: “Not in the way everyone thinks.”

“Jesus,” he winces at the obscenity of your words.

“Sorry,” you apologize again, though the laugh that bubbles from your lips after cancels out any hint of actual sincerity. “You don’t need to give me the talk or anything, Steve. I can take care of myself.”

“…Can you?” he half-jokes.

It makes you falter. “Well… With you and Robin and Hopper constantly on my ass, then yeah.”

“Just don’t want you to get hurt,” Steve finally admits, soft and suddenly shy as he hands the VHS over to you.

“That’s rich coming from you—”

He jerks back the tape before you can take it from him, leaving your hand reaching for thin air. His cinnamon eyes glimmer with a foreign seriousness, not completely unkind, but lacking their usual blithe. “That’s why I’m saying it. I just… I want you to be okay.”

Steve is one of the rare ones, you conclude right then in there — in the liminal emptiness of Family Video, beneath fluorescent lights that cast sharp shadows upon his already chiseled features. He was a mythical creature of a man, one who breaks your heart and does everything in his power to mend it again.

He hasn’t forgotten about what he did to you, not like Billy did, and he won’t. Not ever. He saw what he did to you and he never moved on from it, just matured enough to make sure it never happened again. And he won’t let another unworthy douchebag hurt you like he did. Not if he can help it, at least.

And he did try to warn you about Hargrove, to be fair. You were just the dumbass that didn’t listen.

“Well, me and my Phoebe Cates wet dream are golden, Pony Boy,” you promise. He hands you the tape again and lets you snatch it from his grip this time. “Don’t worry your pretty little head, Stevie.”

Steve Harrington was right. 

The fleeting thought flashes across your mind for half a second, and you quickly realize that those words have never been uttered in the same sentence before now. But he wasn’t wrong in what he’d said about you, just before you left — you were completely, totally, absolutely, and implicitly unable to take care of yourself.

You nearly passed out in the bathroom after taking the hottest shower of your life, feeling too woozy to slap on anything other than moisturizer because you failed to remember to actually eat something that day. It wasn’t totally your fault, though; if anything, it was because of Eddie and all the butterflies he’d given you that made food the very last thing on your mind.

You half-heartedly dry yourself off, keeping your hair in a towel, while you slip on a cotton set of underwear you’ve had for way longer than what's likely acceptable. Damp and half-naked, you prance into the kitchen to fix Bowie her bowl of dinner before you feed yourself.

You fork a can of wet food onto a flower-shaped plate and let her eat on the counter — because you’re an adult now, and you can do that sort of thing.

The calico purrs while she feasts, but your stomach thunders with negligence. You peek into your mostly bare refrigerator and make a mental note to go grocery shopping when you get paid next week. 

With a lack of food and an even lesser will to cook something, you settle for the half-eaten chocolate bar you keep stashed in the very back of the fridge; kept only for the most special of occasions — when you’re reveling in your loneliness and trying to convince yourself that you can make it on your own.

It was practically the size of your forearm when you first bought the thing at some too expensive candy store in the city. Now it’s no bigger than your hand.

You eat the thing in bed, even though you know you’ll get crumbs everywhere and that it’ll make sleep agonizing for you — if you get any, that is. You’re bound to feel like a total zombie by the time the sun rises and the late-night sweet will likely make its appearance on your skin by then, in a red and raging blemish of a consequence.

You’ll feel empty and starved and surly, a snapping grouch instead of an actual person, until you get some actual food in your system.

And you’re more than aware of all of these things, but you don’t do a single damn thing about them.

You’re nothing but a sulking lump upon an unmade bed, lying in a pitch-black darkness that’s evaded only by the static-y television across your room, trying your best to pretend like you aren’t waiting for Eddie’s phone call. It’s hard to remember to forget him, though, when the movie you’re watching is practically a feature film of him and all the ways he makes you feel.

Spicoli and his terribly inebriated friends slur as they chorus “No shoes, no shirt, no diiiice” and you swear you can feel Eddie’s shoulder bump softly against yours as he laughs, hear every sound of his melodic chuckle in your ear that made you giggle right along with him. The low bass of Moving in Stereo plays in the otherwise empty silence of your bedroom, and every beat feels like the rhythm of your thrusts against his thigh.

Eddie Munson is all-consuming.

Even the thought of him feels physical.

Phoebe Cates all but undresses herself in front of you, but you’re stuck thinking about some guy who lives in a trailer park across town, deals drugs for a living, and can’t graduate high school. You’re a total fucking goner.

Your eyes flutter shut, and instead of the backs of your eyelids, you see Eddie’s trailer. Your lips start to tingle as they kiss his for the first time — hungry, yearning, needing. His thigh is pressed snugly into your cunt, denim jeans rough against your soft cotton panties, and you have to bite back a moan when he tenses every time you squeeze his hard, covered cock.

You can feel it, all of him, like he were here with you now. 

You wish that he were.

His fingers would feel far better, leave far more sparks of electricity in your belly, than the ones as you sneak through the hem of your underwear.

You try and take things slow with yourself, to be as gentle as he had been with you earlier in the woods, but it feels strange to treat yourself with so much tenderness. To touch your pussy like it’s the first time it’s ever been touched. Like it’s a beautiful thing you need to be sweet to.

Maybe you find it so foreign to be careful with yourself because no one has ever been careful with you.

No one, except for Eddie.

Your touch doesn’t rival his. It doesn’t even come close.

No matter how tightly you squeeze your eyes shut or how hard you try to pretend that they’re his fingers inside of you, you can’t make yourself feel as good as he did.

Your fingers aren’t as rough as his guitar-string-scarred ones and they don’t caress your clit with the same methodical care. They don’t fill you quite the same either, nowhere near as satisfying as his much thicker ones.

And you’re no stranger to masturbation, not by any means. Sometimes it’s the only way you can guarantee an orgasm for yourself when you’ve got a partner who cares so little about your own pleasure. But Eddie was different. Eddie cared — so much so, that he’s gotten more orgasms out of you than you’ve gotten from him, which is something you’ve never said about anyone else you’ve been with.

It’s rare and unfamiliar, a bouquet of all things refreshing and terrifying and strange, tied together with a pretty little ribbon.

You know that you can make yourself come. It’ll just take way too long to actually be worthwhile and won’t be nearly as mind-blowing as you need it to be. You won’t be left with trembling thighs and nearly numb legs — just a pitiful excuse for an orgasm that you could get from any one of your exes with half as much work.

What you need is Eddie. 

And you hate that. You hate how much you need him and you’re terrified of what that means.

As far as precedent goes, right when you start needing someone is usually when they start to leave. It’s like fucking clockwork most of the time — like everyone knows that you’re a ticking time bomb and eventually it gets too risky to stand too close to you. 

You’ll just have to keep Eddie at arm's distance. So he won’t see the grenade that you are.

You pull your fingers out of your wanting cunt, still slick and throbbing with a need that you can’t give it, when the phone rings.

The high-pitched shrill in the quiet makes you tense like it’s the first time you’ve ever heard the damn thing. Your breath catches in your throat, first out of fright and then at the inclination of who waits for you on the other line.

Suddenly, you’re scrambling to collect yourself. As though there was any possibility that Eddie might be able to see you through the phone line.

You wipe your wet fingers haphazardly on the cotton of your underwear and sit up straighter from your ungracefully lazed position. Then you count to five — one mississippi… two mississippi… three — so Eddie won’t think you’re some kind of crazy person who doesn’t have anything better to do than wait for his call. 

So he won’t know that’s exactly what you are.

You lift the ruby red rotary from its hook at your bedside table and stretch the corkscrew cord to press it to your ear. “…Hello?”

“Yeah, hi. I’d like to order a pizza. Half pepperoni, half hawaiian.”

You roll your eyes at his dumb joke, even though the familiarity of his voice makes you smile. It warms you like a home-cooked meal, like you were high-pitched and starving before and now you’re on the soothing comedown of finally being satiated.

“Yeah, sorry, we’re closed.”

“Then why’d you pick up the phone, huh?” he teases back. You swear you can hear the grin in his voice. You didn’t know a smile could be so audible. It makes you wonder if he can hear yours — if you’re doing a real shit job at pretending. You anxiously twirl the cord with the pointer finger of your free hand.

“Because I’ve been waiting for you to call me all night, dummy.” 

Your answer is more honest than either of you were expecting. 

Eddie’s sigh crackles through the shoddy reception. “Yeah. Sorry ‘bout that, sweetheart. I’ve been working all night. I only got home, like, five minutes ago.”

You can hear the heavy exhaustion in his voice. “Rough day?”

“Kinda,” he answers with a shrug. You can hear the grating squeak of his mattress as he plops down onto his bed. “I dealt to one of Jason’s goons today… They always give me a hard time.”

“I’m sorry,” is all you can think to answer. 

Eddie’s been the brunt of every joke since seventh grade — people made fun of too big clothes, his too wild hair, his too loud music. But he took it all in stride, laughing with everyone else before volleying a harsher joke back in response. You almost started to think that he liked it. That, somewhere deep down, he was fond of all the attention he got from people who supposedly couldn’t stand him.

But it hurts to know that it hurts him.

“Don’t apologize. It’s not like you did anything,” he assures with a soft laugh. He makes the bold decision to be honest then, too. “You, uh… You made my day a whole lot better, actually.”

You don’t know if he’s talking about the brief fling in the woods or the phone call you’re sharing now or if you particularly care either way. Your heart flutters like it’s been kissed by the wings of a butterfly.

“Really?”

“Yeah. I mean… I don’t know— I couldn’t stop thinking about you, you know. And, knowing that I was gonna get to talk to you again kinda got me through the day, I guess… And, yes, I am fully aware of how lame that sounds, but—”

You don’t get to hear the rest of his excuse, of why what he just told you totally isn’t lame, because you’re covering the receiver with your palm and turning to squeal into your pillow. A far more pathetic sight, in your humble opinion.

There hasn’t been a more fulfilling feeling than this one, to know that he’s been feeling the same way you’ve been feeling about him this whole time. It’s better than all the orgasms he could give you combined, to be loved so wholly.

“…You okay?” you hear his muffled voice ask after you’ve gone suddenly AWOL.

You press the phone back to your ear and nod like he can see you. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m good. The phone… fell— you said you just got home?”

“Uh, yeah. I met with Hellfire for a bit at school. We’re almost at the end of the Cult of Vecna, so they’re kinda on my ass about it. The little shits are obsessed.”

“Well, they should be. It’s a really good campaign, Eds.”

“Thanks to you,” he mutters. You can almost picture the glimmer in his button eyes and the shaky half-smirk he always looks at you with when he gets all shy.

“That was all you, Eddie Spaghetti,” you retort. “I still have no idea how you did it.”

“Did what?” he wonders, chuckling a bit at the nickname.

“Make something so beautiful out of thin air.”

Lying in the depths of his bedroom, blanketed by the darkness and bathing in streams of moonlight, Eddie feels his breath catch in his throat. 

For the first time in his life, he doesn’t have a joke to spew out on the spot. He’s speechless, just for a moment, a quick blink of a second, with nothing to say. Because, if he really thinks about it, that’s sort of what happened with you.

You were just his customer and he was just your dealer.

You were a loyal client and then a girl way out of his league that he developed a too big a crush on. Then you made him come in his underwear and washed the sticky stains out of the denim for him. Now you’re on the phone with him. You let him tell you all about his shitty day and apologize like you weren’t the only good thing about it — like you aren’t the only good thing, period.

It’s not the most cliche love story, nor is it the most beautiful, but it has his cynical little heart beating like the wings of a hummingbird.

Then, when all the mushy mess fades like fog, he finally thinks of something to say.

“It’s the witchcraft, sweetheart,” he shrugs to himself. “Didn’t you hear? I’m a devil-worshipping freak.”

“You know that’s not it, Eds,” you retort with the roll of your eyes.

You know that it’s hard, to be a metalhead from the wrong side of the tracks in the eighties — at the height of the Satanic Panic and all the delusional craze. That shit’s followed him since freshman year. Even still, it nips at his ankles like rabid dogs.

Maybe you were never naive or bored enough to believe all the rumors, but Eddie Munson was always more than that to you.

“No?”

“You can blame it on being a freak show all you want, but I know it’s because you’re one of the funniest, smartest, most creative guys I’ve ever met—”

“You must not know a ton of guys then, sweetheart,” he interjects playfully, like he couldn’t stand to hear you compliment him any longer. You’d give anything to see his blushing cheeks just now.

“…You’re kidding right?” you giggle in response.

“Sorry— that’s— I didn’t mean it like— It was— I was joking,” he stammers, frightened that he might’ve offended you in some way. 

It only makes you laugh harder. Both of you know you lost count of all the guys you ‘know’ a long, long time ago. You do imagine it’s somewhere near ‘a ton’, though.

“I know, Eds,” you assure with a contented sigh. “I was just teasing.”

“Oh.”

“The slut and the freak… Who would’ve thought?” you wonder all dreamily, like it’s a fairytale as old as time itself. That’s what it feels like, sometimes.

Eddie isn’t sure what you mean — who would’ve thought you’d be friends? Two people caught in that in-between stage of platonic and romance that’s complete agony and total, total bliss? A couple of kids falling in love—

“It’s sort of kismet, huh?” he answers.

“I think so.”

“So, uh… What are you up to?” Eddie wonders then, equal parts curious and eager to keep the discussion going. He’s frightened any lapse in conversation is going to lead to saying goodbye. 

He wants to stay on for hours, until both of you are fighting to stay awake, and then listen to the sound of your heavy breathing when you inevitably lose — like that isn’t the creepiest thing anyone’s ever wanted. He’ll fight Wayne about the bill if it comes to that, he doesn’t care, he just never wants to stop being this close to you.

“Do you want the real answer or the fake one?”

“Uh… Both?”

“Well, I’d say I was doing something super productive with my night, you know, catching up on all the boring adult shit, but then I’d be lying. And I don’t wanna lie to you, Eds,” you tell him with a teasing lilt playing at the edge of your voice.

Eddie swallows thickly, fearing he’d somehow been caught in his own lie — or rather, his half-truth. He moves on quickly, though not exactly full of grace. “Right. Yeah. Totally.”

“Honest answer is, that the only productive thing I’ve done tonight is shower, and now I’m in bed watching Fast Times and eating all the chocolate in my house, because I can’t cook for shit and I have nothing else better to do with my night,” you admit to him, picking at the thread of your comforter.

“Oh, don’t tell me I missed the ‘Moving in Stereo’ bit,” he agonizes.

“Just.”

“Well, correct me if I’m wrong, sweetheart, but it sounds like you’re having loads of fun tonight.”

“I’m having a lot more fun now,” you assure him.

“Glad I can be around to make you laugh,” he retorts like he’s not all too happy to do it.

“You’re a total comedian, Eddie Spaghetti.”

“If I’m the jester, you’re the queen, sweetheart,” he promises, a grin evident in his voice.

Your breath catches in your throat something fierce; you’re almost worried that he’s heard it. His words pierce your heart, a stroke of lightning or a blade of steel. He’s joking, but it’s so strangely profound, the kindest thing anyone’s ever said to you and it’s dripping in sarcasm. 

It’s sort of Eddie’s love language, you’ve come to understand, to say something so sweet but coated in venom to make it sour again. It makes you feel special, loved, almost.

A fire builds behind your rib cage, sharp and distant and all-consuming.

“Are you alone, Eds?” you ask him suddenly.

The sudden curve ball in the conversation takes him by surprise. “Uh, yeah, Wayne’s at work right now… Why?”

“Because I want you to talk to me…”

“Oh?” is all he can say because isn’t that what he’s been doing this whole time?

“And I want you to say things that… maybe other people shouldn’t hear,” you explain slowly to him.

“…Oh.”

He’s heard about this only once before, the whole phone sex thing. 

It was from Andy in the back of Ms. O’Donnell’s class a year or more ago, though Eddie never called him by that name. Andy, in all actuality, was Jason Carver’s right-hand man, and he meant that in every sense of the phrase. Eddie was more than convinced that the guy was so obsessed with the blonde haired, blue eyed douchebag that he was giving him handjobs on the regular.

But it seemed the dick brigade couldn’t function properly without their leader and Eddie had the misfortune of hearing all the mindless bullshit they were spewing behind him — basketball, parties, girls; in true white bread fashion.

His friends gathered around him like he was telling some sort of secret, though it was loud enough for anyone in a three foot radius to hear. Eddie, caught directly in the line of fire, heard all about Chrissy’s older sister, Wendy, who was two years older and off at college. 

He’d gotten her number from some party he’d crashed. At least that’s how he told it, right before telling everyone that she swore like a sailor when she came and that she told him all the dirty things she wanted to do to him while she did.

“It was like her hand was on my dick, dude, I’m serious. That shit was crazy, bro,” he’d laughed after retelling the whole conversation in excruciating detail.

Eddie rolled his eyes to himself then, inwardly jealous that he’d never get to meet Wendy — or any other girl that would be willing to have phone sex with him, for that matter. His phone only ever rang for telemarketers or a rogue Dustin Henderson calling to annoy him.

But, here you are now, the most wanted girl in Hawkins, offering it to him on a silver platter. He wonders if you’ve done this before, surely you have — oh god, he thinks to himself, what if you’ve done this with Andy?

“We don’t have to if you don’t want to,” you assure him after his unusually long silence. “I know you’re probably busy and tired and everything—”

“No! No, yeah, I— I want to. I totally want to.”

“Okay,” you nod. Petals of a flower begin to bloom in your chest as you lie back in bed, settling further into the mattress. The movie, already long forgotten, serves only as light and background noise. “So… What are you wearing, Eds?”

“I feel like I should be asking you that,” he laughs. 

On the other side of Hawkins, in a trailer in the middle of nowhere, Eddie rises from where he’d originally flopped back onto his bed with the notion that it was going to be a semi-normal night. He props himself against his headboard. His fingers twitch at his thigh.

“Beat ya to it, Munson.”

“Well, I’ll have you know that it is very sexy, sweetheart. I’m wearing the same Hellfire shirt you saw me in, I don’t know, five hours ago — except now it’s got a rip in it because I totally ate ass on the way back to the van.”

He tells you this to make you laugh — it works — but he prays you don’t ask any questions. Because he got it while hurrying back to his van mere minutes after you’d left him, so hard he thought he was going to burst, with no more than seven minutes until his next client arrived.

 Thankfully, he only needed three.

“I love that shirt,” you respond in place of saying what you really want to — ‘I love how that shirt looks on you’ — how it clings to his lean torso and reveals his midriff whenever he stretches his arms over his head.

“She’s a lit-tle worse for wear now, sweetheart,” he lilts.

“I’ll stitch it up for you.”

“And I’ve got on a pair of boxers that are so old they’re practically see through because I’m pretty sure they used to be Wayne’s back in… I don’t know… the eighteen-hundreds.”

Eddie was right. It was sexy, though, for the exact reason they weren’t supposed to be. 

There was something so domestic about it all. You can picture him lying in his bed, in the most comfortable clothes he owns, in the one place he can feel at peace. Like a renaissance painting, something familiar and comforting and beautiful — fuck, you’d give anything to be next to him.

“…I think that means it’s your turn now, sweetheart,” he teases.

“Is it?” you mock in return.

“C’mon. Don’t leave me hangin’ over here.”

“It’s nothing, special,” you assure. Your eye flits down to peer at your own body — nothing special, indeed, you think to yourself. The lilac cotton set came from the grocery store downtown on the clearance rack you so often frequent. “I just have my underwear on. It’s very boring, I’m afraid.”

It’s not boring. Not to Eddie — the boy who prides himself on his insanely active imagination. He might not be able to pass english with his brain, but he can certainly create worlds with it, and it’s too easy for him to picture you. He imagines you, freshly showered, and smelling of the warm lavender-vanilla scent you always smell like, mostly bare and lazing upon a fluffy comforter.

He swallows thickly. “Oh, that’s— that’s really, uh— that’s really sexy.”

His thankful that you don’t seem to mind his poor excuse for dirty talk.

“It’s only because I was too lazy to get into actual pajamas.”

“I’m glad you didn’t.”

“Yeah?” you press, smiling to yourself and caging your bottom lip between your teeth.

“Yeah.”

“Can I tell you a secret, Eds?” you wonder, made brave enough by his own admission.

“‘Course you can.”

“Before you called…”

“…Uh-huh?” he eggs on, intrigued at the way you trailed off, sounding suddenly shy.

“I was…” The thought of telling him what you were doing mere seconds before he called makes you nervous. It wasn’t like you were ashamed of touching yourself or anything, nor is the art of dirty talking lost on you, but something about Eddie makes you timid.

“You were… what, sweetheart?” he wonders gently, with a too audible grin.

“I was touching myself.”

That’s all you tell him. The words linger and hang in the air of your separate bedrooms and you cling to the silence — almost mortified and anticipating his reply. Eddie, meanwhile, feels like his tongue has swelled in his mouth and all the air has been punched out of his lungs.

“Oh...” he tries to respond without the breath to accurately do so. “…Yeah?”

“You know what Phoebe Cates does to me,” you try to joke.

His laughter crackles through the receiver. “Yeah. I kinda have her to thank for the other night, don’t I?”

“Give yourself some credit, Eds. The hottest guy in Hawkins was sitting right next to me, what was I supposed to do?”

“No way you think I’m the hottest guy in town,” he scoffs. “Everyone knows you’ve got a thing for pretty boys.”

“Pretty boys?” you echo with a giggle.

“Uh-huh. The Steve ‘The Hair’ Harrington type, you know?”

“Well, I think you’re a hundred times prettier than he is.”

“Really?” he scoffs cynically, obviously not believing you.

“He wasn’t the one I was thinking about with my hand shoved down my panties,” you admit, immediately quelling his self-doubt. “That’s gotta count for something, right?”

Eddie clears his throat and then stammers, “I— I guess so— yeah.”

“Are you hard, Eds?” you ask in a breathy whisper.

And he just nods to himself at first, too stupid to answer audibly. He can feel himself stiffening in his boxers, only halfway hard now, but getting firmer by the second. Soon, he’ll be aching. 

“Yeah…”

“Can you touch yourself for me?”

Eddie would rather take a bullet to the chest than say no to you — at least, he figures that’d probably hurt less — so he slips his fidgeting fingers through the band of his boxers and takes his warm, stiffening cock in his hand. He squeezes himself just enough to make his stomach tighten.

“Want you to touch yourself, too,” he admits, neither asking or demanding it, just telling you.

“Yeah?” you tease.

“Well, I think it’s only fair, sweetheart.”

You can’t help but notice how breathy he’s gotten — how it shakes on the inhale and hitches on the out. He’s got his hand shoved down his underwear and you’re jealous of the fingers that get to wrap themselves around his cock. You wish they were yours. Both of you will have to settle, it seems.

“Whatever you want, Eds,” you answer playfully. 

You obediently slide your hand back into the warmth of your panties. Your fingers slot between your lips and collect the slick that had gathered there since before you’d even answered the phone. You bring it up to your clit, circling the pads of your fingers there until you twitch, then dragging them down to press into your opening. They slip in with ease. 

Both of you have turned into lovesick idiots, separated by so many miles, and missing the other most ardently. Lying in the depths of your bedrooms, basking in a velvet loneliness, building with a mutual pleasure with nothing but yearning hands and longing sighs.

Eddie’s eyes flutter shut at the sounds of your low moans and fragile whimpers that crackle through the static — beautiful still, but certainly no match to the ones you were breathing in his ear just hours ago. 

His lashes dance across his cheeks as he tries to remember how you’d felt against his fingers, soft like velvet and delicate like silk, weeping and pulsating with need. 

He drags his hand from his boxers and lets the band snap against his pelvis. He spits into his palm and wets his cock with it, sighing as he tugs at himself without much friction.

“Are you wet, sweetheart?” he asks, though the words threaten to get stuck in his throat.

“Yeah,” you whisper back like it’s some kind of secret. 

You work yourself open with your middle finger and slip your pointer in next to it without much trouble. Your walls flutter around them while you fight to find the spot the makes you keen. You’re only able to tease it, fingers not quite long enough to caress it completely. Your thumb keeps working at your clit, though, to make up for the lost pleasure. 

“I’ve been wet since I left you,” you admit through labored breaths. “Haven’t been able to… to stop thinking about you, Eds.”

“Glad I’m not the only one whipped over here, sweetheart,” he manages a laugh.

“No one’s ever made me come that hard before. Not just with their fingers,” you tell him mindlessly, dumb on pleasure, as you feel yourself climbing that peak.

“Really?”

“Never,” you promise, then whine. “Doesn’t even feel as good now… Can’t get as deep as you can—”

Eddie hangs on your every word as he works his palm up and down his stiff cock, squeezing at the base and swiping his thumb over the head with an expert hand. His face scrunches as his stomach starts to tighten, he’s close to coming — too close for his liking. He doesn’t want this to be over so quickly.

“You’ve ruined every other guy for me, Eddie Munson,” you confess, more than pleased to hear how it makes him whine. It sounds like it comes from the depths of his chest, the way it crackles low and needy through the receiver.

“Good,” he grumbles through his pants after he’s gathered himself all over again. “Don’t want anyone else to have you, sweetheart.”

This time you’re the one letting out the most pathetic of whines. It makes a smile flicker at the corners of his lips.

“You like that?”

It sounds so dirty, but you can tell by the sincerity of his tone that it’s genuine. So you answer with a longing truthfulness, a delicate “yes”entwined with a yearning moan.

“You just wanna belong to me, don’t ya?” 

Now, this is dirty talk. The teasing lilt of his tone — it’s almost degrading —  and makes you clench around your fingers. “Yes, please,” you whine, all but pleading for him now.

Eddie’s close, so dreadfully close, with a pleasure so tangible he could taste it. Your words make his cock twitch in his hold as the fire builds in his belly. 

Through your whole-hearted promises and wanting moans, he can hear the sound of your slick through the receiver. The static reception doesn’t do it justice, but the wet click of your fingers working you open was unmistakable.

A moan grumbles in his throat as he digs the crown of his head back into his pillow. “Holy fuck— I can hear you, baby.”

“I’m so wet for you, Eds,” you tell him through fragile slurs, like it wasn’t inherently obvious. 

You were wrong before, about wanting to hide from him. You couldn’t conceal your need for Eddie if you tried. The honey you drip, all sweet and just for him, wouldn’t let you keep it a secret.

“I know, baby, I know,” he nearly coos. “Are you— fuck, please tell me you’re close?”

“Yes,” you promise in a whine. Your thumb presses harder into your clit. It makes your thighs tense until they’re shaking.

“You rubbing your clit for me, sweetheart?” he asks like he knows. “I know that’s what you like.”

You whimper, working at the spongy spot within you as your hips buck off the bed. “Yeah.”

“Keep rubbing yourself like that for me, okay? Want you to keep going until you come for me.”

If he keeps talking to you like that, it’ll come a lot quicker than he’s prepared for. 

It’s too soft to be much of a demand, but you listen obediently anyway, rubbing at yourself though your sensitivity keeps building. It grows like a morning tide, rising and flowing like white waves on an ocean, stirring something fierce in the depths of your stomach.

“Eddie,” you sigh out his name, broken through staggered pants.

You hear his stuttering breaths, too. “Y—Yeah?”

“I’m about to come,” you promise through a whine when the familiar crescendo sends a shock through your body.

“O… Okay,” he responds, pathetically, then whines, even more so.

“Want you to come with me… Please…”

“Fuck— okay. Shit, sweetheart, I’m almost there.”

“What are you thinking about?” you ask him.

“Your pussy,” he answers without thinking — he’s not doing a whole lot of that anymore. “Wish I’d gotten to taste you earlier. Wanna feel you… fuck… Wanna feel you come on my tongue.”

“Holy shit, Eds,” you moan at his words, at the vivid picture they paint in your head.

“And you get so… God, you get so fucking wet. Just want you to drench me, baby.”

It feels good, to be complimented for something boys used to make fun of you for, to realize for the first time that’s it’s sexy — that you’re sexy — and that Eddie is more than happy to drown in you. The feeling almost rivals the impending orgasm that’s bound to hit you like a tidal wave.

“I’m thinking about how I coulda took you on that bench… Just, fucking, get on my knees for you. Shove my head between your legs. Hold your— shit, baby— hold your thighs open, keep you exactly where I want you,” he rambles but then cuts himself off to moan at his own words. “Goddamn, sweetheart. Wanna taste you so fucking bad.”

The moan you let out is pitiful. It leaves your mouth in the most delicate cry. 

No picture has ever been clearer than the one of Eddie between your thighs, your hands knotted in his hair to move him to exactly where you need him most and forcing him there. You can feel his fingers digging into your hips, his rings pressed against your burning skin, and the way your legs tremble on either side of his head.

“Yeah. Keep— Keep doing that. Keep moaning for me,” Eddie tells you. “I’m about to… holy fuck, I’m about to come.”

“Wanna feel your tongue in me so bad, Eds,” you whimper, egged on by the moan he lets out. “Want your cock even more.”

That’s what does him in, the assurance — the promise — that you want him just as bad as he wants you. 

He tightens his fist around his cock, achingly hard and raging a crimson at the tip, trying to imitate the way you’d feel around him. It’s not all that close, not nearly as wet as the honey you’d be dripping for him, but his imagination does the rest of the work for him. 

All at once, you’re on top of him, riding him for all he’s worth, your pussy threatening to swallow him whole. You’ve drenched him, just like he’d begged for, and that wet schlick noise still echoing from the receiver is the evidence of each of your assured thrusts over top of him. 

You’re still pleading for him anyway — for more, for his tongue, for his cock — and he wants so desperately to give everything to you.

“Oh god, baby—” he sputters. He grips the phone in a white-knuckled, fist trembling. “Oh, fuck, I’m coming, baby.”

“Please, Eddie. Please come for me,” you plead over the low sounds of the forgotten film playing across the room and all the dirty wet sounds your pussy makes against your fingers. You sound like you need it, like you want his orgasm more than your own.

“Want you to come with me… Can you— Can you do that for me, sweetheart? Please?” It’s not dirty talk anymore. He’s actually fucking begging you and doesn’t feel the least bit ashamed to do so. 

He wants to hear all the pretty noises you make when you come — that initial cry that stems from the depths of your soul, the high-pitched whimpers that come when the sensitivity builds, and the whines that leave you when it ebbs.

He wants to hear it over and over and over again, like a worn cassette, and play it until the tape spins out.

“Yes…” you promise through a set of stuttering breaths.

There’s no talking when either of you come. Eddie’s long forgotten to talk you through it, but you would barely hear him if he had. The phone slips out of your hand when your grip slackens and it falls to the pillow beside your head.

You chase your orgasm full throttle, working through the crescendo and the strikes of lightning, focusing only on his muffled moaning and the pretty sounds he makes as he comes. 

The breath of your name whimpered through a tight throat is what does it for you. Your body has hardly any time to warn you before you’re gushing all over your fingers, twitching every time the pad of your thumb rubs over clit.

That cry, the one you always let out as you come — all wet and full of need — makes Eddie orgasm right alongside you. 

He swipes his thumb over his head again, collecting the pearls of precum gathering there and sliding them down the base to squeeze himself there like he’d been doing this whole time. He clutches harder this time, imagines it's your cunt locking him in a vice-like grip, and whines in his throat when he comes.

Several loads of it spill onto his cotton boxers, most of it gathering along the side of his hand and dripping down his knuckles. His breath staggers as he works himself through his high, praising you through the phone like you’re the one who brought him to it. 

“Fuck, baby… You’re so good… So fucking good.”

You’ve long settled from your own orgasm, still tingly and numb in some places, but not as gone as you had been just moments before. You still float on a cloud, getting lost as you stare through your window at the half-hidden stars sprinkling the night sky and feeling as though you could reach out and touch them.

You can feel the satin moonlight bathing you, and the jittery static of the neon of the television screen. You can feel everything and somehow nothing at all. 

“I don’t know how you do it, Eds,” you confess, hardly thinking about the words spilling from your mouth when you lazily bring the phone to your ear again.

“Do what, sweetheart?”

“I don’t know… You always make me feel good. Even when you’re not here… Even when we’re not getting each other off.”

“I feel the same way,” he promises you, all mushy, even though he feels like a slob for wiping his hand off on his discarded jeans on his bed. “Just… wish you were here.”

“I wish I was there, too… Wish I could clean you up.”

Eddie’s eyes shut tight as his head tilts back to his pillow at the thought. “Fuck… You’re gonna make me hard again, sweetheart.”

You perk up suddenly as an idea sprouts like a flower in your head. A smile blooms on your lips, and you rise up onto your elbows, glowing with an unanticipated excitement. “How long would it take you to get ready?”

“…Get ready?” he echoes.

“Yeah,” is all you say.

“I mean, I— I don’t know. I figure if I put on some new underwear and a fresh pair of pants, I’ll be good as new... Why?”

“You wanna do something?” 

“Yeah. Sure. Anything,” he answers clumsily in place of saying, ‘Anything to not have to be without you.’

“I wanna go to Skull Rock.”

“Skull Rock?” he repeats. 

Legend has it, you and Steve made that place a local landmark. People have always said that Hopper caught the both of you one too many times up at Lover’s Lake and the Quarry, that you needed a more hidden place to fuck. So you’d stumbled around in the middle of the woods until you found a place the chief wouldn’t think to look for you.

You’d certainly found it. Then every other horny high schooler did too.

It’s the place you go to fuck, the most private place in all of Hawkins — hell, maybe even Indiana entirely for teenagers who can’t get the house to themselves. And as appealing as it sounds, to take you beneath a sky of twinkling stars, Eddie doesn’t want his first time with you to be on dirt or in the middle of the woods. That’s how all the horror movies start, don’t they?

So, needless to say, your answer takes him by surprise.

“Yeah! You can see all the stars really good from there. It’s too hard to see them so close to town.”

Eddie’s heart swells all at once at how sweet you are, like sugar poured directly onto his tongue. You’re not eager to be without him either, it seems, and that thought is as gratifying as it is thrilling. 

You’re an adventure he’s about to go on, without a map or a way out, a journey he’s happy to go into blind as long as you’re holding his hand the entire way through it.

It breaks his heart to hang up the phone. He practically begs you to do it for him, and it makes you laugh — a kind giggle entwined with a tease ‘you’re such a baby.’ It rings in his ears long after the receiver clicks.

Most of all, he hates all the stoplights that separate your place from his. He hadn’t known where you lived before now, not until you uttered it over the phone. He makes a mental note to figure out a quicker way, somewhere through the winding back roads that his old van can speed through to make the distance less daunting.

He pulls into your apartment complex, a quaint two-story thing on the quieter side of town, where the woods are plentiful and the street lamps far fewer. He turns his radio down out of respect for all your neighbors that he’s sure he’ll never meet and spies you through the neon orange porch lights. You shut and lock your door in quick succession, then scurry across the way to meet him.

Eddie leans over to unlock the passenger side door for you, already beaming, and finds you’re smiling too when you climb in next to him. The grin you shoot his way outshines the night sky and makes a bright yellow sun of the girl sitting in his passenger seat.

“Hi,” you’d greeted him, all shy like you didn’t just make him come all over his hand thirty minutes ago.

“Hi, sweetheart,” he volleys back like he always does, with that big ol’ smirk and teasing lilt as he cock his head to the side — using his playfulness to cover up the bashful mess you so easily reduce him too.

Neither of you had gotten particularly dressed up to see each other. All he did was put on fresh under and pajama pants. You succumbed to a smilier laziness it seems, haphazardly brushing through your half-damp hair, throwing on a too big t-shirt, and calling it a day. 

The cotton hangs low at your chest, stretched out and obviously well-loved. It falls well past your thigh, though you spend much of the drive anxiously tugging it down. 

It makes him wonder what you’re wearing beneath it. If you’ve tugged on a pair of shorts or if you’re in the bra and (undoubtedly wet) underwear you’d told him you were wearing over the phone. 

Eddie winds himself up all over again while you sift through the flimsy case of endless cassettes he keeps tucked in the glove compartment that never quite shuts all the way.

“How do you now have any ABBA tapes?” you wonder like it’s baffling, with an Iron Maiden tape in one hand and Cinderella in the other. Metallica plays lowly, nearly inaudibly, from the stereo.

Eddie laughs and darts his eyes from the darkened back roads to look at you, all smiley and bathed in moonlight, before turning back to the road again. “Uh, because I’m not a thirty-year-old woman. That’s the shit moms listen to.”

“Moms and hot girls,” you retort jokingly.

“Right, moms and hot girls listen to ABBA — of which, I am neither, sweetheart. Sorry to be the one to break it to you… Besides, it’s not like you walk around listening to, fucking, I don’t know— Van Halen or whatever.”

“Hey. I listen to Van Halen,” you shoot back.

He scoffs. “Yeah, right.”

“It’s got what it takes!” you sing suddenly, not quite catching the rhythm of the song, but smiling anyway as you reach for his forearm resting on the center console. “So tell me why can’t this be love!”

“Oh, my god— that’s literally their worst song,” Eddie chuckles through the widest grin you’ve ever seen from him. 

It makes you smile big too, looking like an idiot who’s totally head over heels for the boy next to her. And of that, you’re happily guilty of.

“Not true,” you shake your head defiantly. “I love that song.”

“So that means it has to be good, right?” he retorts playfully, shooting you a teasing look, though his beam is more than sincere.

“Obviously,” you answer with a scoff that makes Eddie roll his eyes.

He knows he’s going to start to love it, though, if only because it’s the only Van Halen song you halfway know.

He’s going to hear that song on the radio and he’s going to want to turn it, but he’s going to remember this moment now — the one with you reaching for him while you sing the lyrics to a song he can’t stand, sitting pretty in his passenger seat, while the moonlight blanches your smile and the bare skin of your thighs.

Eddie Munson is going to love that goddamn song for the rest of his life.

He parks as close as he can to Skull Rock, knowing his van can’t work its way that far into the woods. The two of you are forced to walk the rest of the way, not exactly minding it, though Eddie’s incessantly worried you’re going to get cold. 

He’s already forced his jacket upon you, which you took with little fight. It warmed you almost immediately — with his cozy heat and musky cologne.

You make mindless conversation the entire way there, about music and then about his band and then what animal you’d want to be in your band if that were the least bit possible. Eddie chooses a sheep without any hesitation, though you’re confident that a penguin would be far cooler. 

You keep a careful distance between you, at first, like both of you are too scared to initiate the first move. That is, until you trip over a raised branch and nearly eat ass on the forest floor. Then Eddie’s holding your hand the entire way, keeping you close.

“If you wanted me to hold your hand, you coulda just said so, you know?” he jokes. “Didn’t have to go through all the dramatics, sweetheart.”

You try and yank your hand out of his grip in protest then, but he doesn’t let you. In fact, he pulls you closer and twirls you into a bear hug that you happily relax into.

He feels your sigh fan against his collarbone as you rest your head at the nape of his neck, his arms wrap around your shoulders as yours settle at his waist. He rocks you back in forth, in a moment that’s too almost sweet to make fun of.

Eddie finds a way, of course, “See?” he singsongs. “I’ll hug you like this all the time, if you want. You don’t have to almost kill yourself to get my attention, babe.”

“All I did was trip,” you laugh at his theatrics.

“Death by tree root… What a gnarly way to go.”

He holds your hand the entire way to Skull Rock. 

He doesn’t let you go once, not until you’re ascending the large boulders to plant yourselves at the very peak of them. He’s grabbing you again once you settle, though, and the two of you just sit there, for several long moments, just gaping at the stars that dance with life above you. They sprinkle an infinite void with enough light that manages to touch you, trillions of miles away.

There’s a subtle beauty in that Eddie never would’ve appreciated before now.

“Shit, babe,” he breathes through a whimsical existential dread. “You were right. The stars are really fucking pretty out here.” 

You love how much he loves this, to come to Skull Rock with you and count the stars. Any other guy would’ve had their tongue down your throat by now, stuffing your hand down their unbuttoned jeans.

But not Eddie.

He just holds your hand because he likes the feeling of his fingers entwined with yours, grasping tightly onto you while he gazes at an infinite universe — like you might float off right along with it.

His neck is stretched to gape at the night sky. You catch his adam’s apple bobbing every time he swallows. You want so desperately to kiss his milky white skin and sprinkle blotchy red bruises there.

His curly locks fall over his shoulders. He shakes his head to get his bangs out of his eyes while the chocolate buttons of them dart around the endless void.

He’s more beautiful than every star in the sky combined. You can’t be sure of how many that is, of course, but it’s a whole bunch if you had to guess. It makes sense, though, for the prettiest boy in the whole damn galaxy.

“Told ya,” you answer with a smile, leaning over to nudge his shoulder with yours. “You come out here often?”

You’re asking if he takes girls here and he knows it, but it’s not like you’re being inconspicuous about the whole thing. Eddie gauges it almost immediately, the subtle jealousy hinting at your tone — something no one else would’ve caught — and he squeezes your hand in reassurance.

He shakes his head. “No… Never.”

“Never?” you press with raised brows, like his answer shocks you.

“Ever. It’s not really my scene, I guess… But what about you, sweetheart? Never seen you around these parts before.”

You knock his shoulder again, harder this time.  “Shut up. You already know the answer to that.”

“Yeah…” he nods to himself, eyes darting back and forth as he reminisces on something. “You and Harrington, you and Hargrove. Hell, I think I heard about you and Jason one time—”

“That was a long time ago,” you argue. “Before I even knew you, okay?”

“I’m just saying,” he shrugs in defense. “You totally have a thing for pretty boys, sweetheart.”

“I never said I didn’t, Eds. Just that you were pretty, too.”

“Whatever,” he scoffs and rolls his eyes like he isn’t glowing red beneath the moonlight.

“You’re better than all three of them, Eds,” you confess with a sudden softness that catches his attention almost immediately. He turns his attention from the sky to look at you properly again. His breath catches at you sad you look — all beautiful and coated in shades of blue.

“…Yeah?”

You nod and drag his hand into your lap to fidget with his fingers. You trace the skeleton heart on his middle finger, subverting all your attention there because it’s easier than having to look at him now. “Better than all of them combined— not even just them, you know? Out of everyone. No one’s ever been this nice to be before.”

“Me neither, sweetheart,” he confesses with a morose grin. “The freak of Hawkins High attracts a lot of assholes, believe it or not.”

“Is it bad?” you wonder cautiously, like you’re scared to hear the answer. In some ways, you are. 

You hadn’t known him in high school, not really. For obvious reasons, you ran in very different circles. You never even had classes together. There was never any excuse to be close to each other before now, never a reason to become friends. So you didn’t.

You grew to know him as a freak, and he knew you as the town slut. Then somewhere down the line, he became your dealer and now… here you were. 

But you’ve graduated now and he’s still army crawling towards a diploma. You couldn’t save him from the hell of Hawkins High even if you wanted to.

“Nothing I can’t handle,” he shrugs. “Jason and the dick brigade just wanna make my life hell, that’s all.”

“I hope they aren’t,” you respond shyly.

Eddie scoffs then shoots you a smile. “Oh, of course not. Look at me. I’m at Skull Rock with the most wanted girl in Hawkins. I’m living the dream, sweetheart.”

“So you don’t care?” you wonder, peering at him through your lashes, as you twist the silver cross around his finger.

“Care about what?” 

“That I’m a slut,” you laugh like it’s obvious.

Eddie doesn’t think it’s all that funny. “Don’t say that.”

“It’s not like it isn’t true, Eds,” you retort with a trembling smile. “I mean, that’s literally what people call me — most people don’t even care to call me by my real name anymore.”

“I don’t care,” Eddie shakes his head. “I don’t care about that. I don’t give a shit about what people say about you. If everyone cared about what everyone said about everyone, neither of us would be here right now… Because you’d think I was some devil-worshipping freak and I’d think you were too busy getting it on with Chief Hopper.”

You screw your face up immediately at the thought. The mere idea was repulsive. The asshole was practically your father these days. Jim Hopper was in that small bunch of available people you would never fuck, and happily so. 

“I’d never stoop that low,” you joke.

“I like you, how you are, right now,” Eddie promises. “Don’t want you to change a damn thing.” 

His brown eyes twinkle with a sincerity that rivals the stars above you. All of a sudden, you don’t care about a bunch of heavenly bodies light years away from you — you care about this man, the one sitting beside you now, holding your hand even though your palms have gone all sweaty.

It’s too good to be true — the way you looks at you, the way he talks to you, the way he treats you. You’re scared that it’s a dream, that you’ll wake up and find that none of this was ever real. Or worse, that he was, and that he just didn’t care about you the way you cared about him.

It’s almost irrational. Almost. 

But it’s happened before. 

And it’s left you a scarred and mangled mess.

You shake your head to yourself and scrunch your face as you turn to look him. “Have you ever done this before, Eddie?”

“Don’t what?” he wonders with furrowed brows.

“I don’t know…” you shrug. “Any of this? With anyone else?”

He’s grateful he doesn’t have to lie. Or tell some clumsy half-truth for the sake of saving his own skin. He realizes tonight is perhaps the most honest he’s ever been with you, baring his pale soul beneath a silver moonlight. 

“Never,” he answers, unwavering, with a firm shake of his head.

“Really?”

“Really,” he nods, then swallows thickly at a gut-wrenching realization. “I’ve never felt his way about anyone else before.’

“Me neither,” you promise. 

It’s a tad more meaningful coming from you than from a boy who’s never had someone to love and to love him back.

You’re experienced, you’ve found what you like and what you don’t like. You’ve been with guys who have given you the world and guys that have ended yours altogether. And out of all of them — all of the assholes in Hawkins you could’ve picked — you’ve chosen the freak. 

You want him. 

You want Eddie.

The revelation makes him grin. “Promise?”

“Cross my heart, Eddie Spaghetti.”

[sailoryooons]

Lights | Episode 1 | jjk (m)

❀ Pairing: Idol!Jungkook x Producer! F. reader

❀ Summary: Meeting Jungkook was a chance of fate. A moment frozen in time, eyes meeting across a room full of lights. The more the two of you advance in your career, the more lost in the lights you become. What if you never find your way back?

❀ Word Count: 15,069 

❀ Genre: Heavy angst, Idolverse, strangers to lovers, eventual smut

❀ Rating: 18+ Minors are strictly prohibited from engaging and reading this content. It contains explicit content and any minors discovered reading or engaging with this work will be blocked immediately. 

❀ Warnings: Discussions of manipulation in the music industry, there are gentle hints at the potential for Jungkook and reader to be addicts, general topics of competitiveness between kids growing up, recreational drinking, references to people using sex as advantage, allusions to topics of promiscuity, recreational drug use (weed), reader’s agent straight up trying to get her to have sexual relations with people, implications of using people, reader is aggressively goal-oriented, Jungkook and reader are a little naive and sort of love-at-first-sighting, explicit language, explicit sexual content, three sex scenes, sex in a public place (restaurant bathroom), oral (m. and f. receiving), spit play, spit in general, light degradation, rough sex, sex under the influence of alcohol (both are able to consent and want it), Jungkook drives after drinking (not implied or referenced that he’s drunk but he is driving after having glasses of wine), nipple play, vaginal fingering, reverse cowgirl, ass play (f. receiving), missionary, fucking from the side, a little bit of come play, voyeurism if you squint, a hint of possessiveness, literally so many bodily fluids like a ton, reader kind of being in something like subspace and being fucked stupid/to sleep basically, aftercare referenced, implied toxic relationships with past coworkers/current coworkers, references to vicious/toxic work industry, light depictions of cocaine use (not explicitly seen) by a side character, honestly Jungkook and reader are a lil cringe in this and moving very fast but they have addictive personalities idk what to tell you, there are hints to their addictive personalities, talk about social anxiety needing medication/alcohol to take the edge off (not good to do people!!!), very light hinting at traits that will be a problem 

❀ Published: October 6, 2023

❀ A/N: This might be the most gratuitous thing I have ever written - it actually might be too much sex? At what point is it too much and just too much come and kissing and the word c*ck, genuinely? Anyway, my goal with this chapter wasn’t so much plot as it was to introduce how volatile these two have the potential to be. If you’ve ever known someone who has struggled with addiction, you will notice the little innocent behaviors that have the potential for utter disaster. These are two people who are wildly native and very much think they are in control of their life, but who are a little reckless. It will seem like they get together fast because they do with like.. Very little regard for anything else. I really hope you enjoy this story. I think it will become sort of a little thing for me to put parts of past traumas I have into it to finally let them go, maybe! Also - I am using the western naming pattern in this with first name last name because of the ambiguity of where this story takes place. ❀ A/N 2: This story was originally named ‘Hiraeth’ but after chatting with a kind anon, I realized that the definition and translation of the word did not fit and lost cultural context from its original meaning and thus changed the title to Lights. Thank you @here2bbtstrash for the loyal beta read and @gimmethatagustd for helping me get VERY unstuck multiple times by letting me talk in circles and offering words of wisdom.

❀ Disclaimer: All members of BTS are faces and name claims for this story. This is entirely a work of fiction and by no means is meant to be a projection, judgment, or representation of real-life people. Any scenarios or representations of the people and places mentioned in works are not representative of real-life scenarios. This series does not attempt to paint a realistic depiction of idols, or the industry, or draw comparisons. None of the scenes or elements in this series in any way reflect how I perceive the music industry and do not represent any opinions. This is not intellectual commentary, it is just straight-up fiction. 

Series Masterlist | Masterlist | Ask | Lights Playlist | Previous Episode | Tag Lists | Next Episode

Jungkook looks like sin. It’s the first thought you have as you pause at the bottom of the stairs, eyes nearly blinded by the twinkling lights above. But there he is, standing in the glow of flashing purples and pinks, looking right at you.

He’s standing at one of the booths on the far end of the club, which has been rented for an event that you don’t remember the details of. His eyes land on you, and though you’ve never met, you suddenly feel a connection snap into place, something magnetic. For a moment, everything goes quiet, like in those romance books you used to read when you were a teenager.

Before, it used to seem a little silly. You didn’t think it was possible to suddenly see no one else in a room full of people except one person.

Now, it doesn’t seem that preposterous. You’re only able to take in a fraction of information in the second that your eyes connect with his: round face, long, wavy hair, and an arm full of tattoos with a drink held in his hand. 

He is stunning. You already knew that from the other two times you’ve caught a flash of him at events, but every time you see him in person, you’re awed all over again by the effortless way he catches the eye.

The tension between the two of you breaks as someone knocks into you and you stumble, trying not to twist your ankle with the high heels you’re currently wearing. Too short to see over the rest of the crowd, you lose sight of Jungkook. Music comes rushing back to you, the vibration of the base and the hum of synth making it nearly impossible to hear what your agent says next to you.

“What?”

“Do you remember the list I gave you?” Mila demands, grabbing your wrist and pulling you through the crowd. It hurts a little as she drags you along, impatient after arriving at the event late because you had a problem with your wardrobe for the evening. “That list is imperative.” 

“Yes.” 

The list is impossible. You have memorized at least two dozen people that your agent expects you to talk to and rub elbows with tonight. Some of them are certainly doable - people at your own company, artists you’re familiar with. Others are ridiculous, including idols that are several calibers above your station as a newly promoted producer at ILIA. 

Sure, you have the new glow of recent popularity after some surprising award wins and being likable on social media - which matters to your company as much as producing award-winning records - but you know what they all think. You know that they think your parents paid someone or that you fucked your way out of being a junior producer. 

It helps that neither is true. It doesn’t help that you would have done it anyway, if it meant feeding the simmering hunger inside of you that never seems to fade, your desire to win outweighing everything else. 

“You should catch up with your old friend Luna, she should be easy. You trained with her in the early building stages of ILIA.”

“Yeah,” you mutter faintly. “I remember her.”

You remember almost all of them. Something about spending your formative years with a bunch of teenagers being pitted against one another to be the best has made their faces and names permanent. Even the ones who didn’t make the cut or quit on their own.

Quitting is a foreign concept to you. It’s not as foreign as Mila kissing the cheek of some manager at some company you don’t know, pushing you toward them. You don’t care about who he is. There’s nothing he can offer you if he’s not someone who makes music. And as far as you’re concerned, you’re under the careful and powerful tutelage of the Suga. 

Yoongi is a better connection than almost everyone in this building and you know it. 

Suddenly you regret turning down his offer to stay at the studio and work. Yoongi has the agency to say no to scheming agents and public relations teams. He’s already paid his way to be able to do whatever he wants. Specifically, he’s paid in manipulation, blood, sweat, tears, and drama.

You are fresh meat swimming alone in shark-filled waters. Still, you look people in the eye as you shake hands and force smiles all night, going through your mental rolodex of names and achievements. You exchange phone numbers with a few actresses, promising to get drinks. You’re sure they wouldn’t want to if you weren’t fresh off an award-season win. Still, it’s something. 

You spot Jimin in the crowd, feeling relief as you step up toward the series of booths that you spotted Jungkook near earlier. 

“Finally someone tolerable,” Jimin yells when he sees you, tossing back the rest of his champagne. He has kohl smudged around his eyes, making his gaze far more intense as he gives you a once-over. “You look ravishing. Are you sure you don’t want to take me up on the offer to come home with me?”

It would be a lie to say you both haven’t flirted with the idea. There’s something genuine in your friendship, though. Something difficult to find, a twin-flame soul that you’d be hard-pressed to ruin for a bit of publicity. Even if Jimin is the most divine creature you’ve ever laid eyes on. 

It’s out of the question, though. Jimin has become your safehaven in a house of cards world.

Looking him up and down, you let out a long whistle. His hair is freshly dyed bubblegum pink, glittering earrings looped through his ears that scatter the light. Tight black pants with a designer belt and a silk shirt tucked into the waist make him look elegant, the textured Chanel blazer cut perfectly to his narrow frame. 

“Honestly, Mila doesn’t care whether we fuck or not. She still sells that rumor to the press. Doesn’t matter if it’s true. ”

Jimin makes a face at your agent's name. He glances over to where she’s talking up someone from X Entertainment. “She’s a fucking snake.” 

“Well, she’s the snake assigned to me. It’s not like I picked her. As soon as they saw me as marketable, there she was hissing at my door and telling me I have to get in glam to wipe my ass.”

“So bite back. I know you have it in you.” You grimace and reach for a glass of champagne from a tray as it passes you. Jimin sighs as he looks you up and down. “I know you have fangs, little monster.”

You sip the champagne and make a face. It is far too sweet, fizzing on your tongue. “A dragon does not kill the sheep because it feels threatened. It kills when it pleases.”

“My girl. Let’s go around the room, shall we? I want to keep those rumors going.”

With a laugh, you take his hand and let him lead you around the room, passing Mila who grins at you as you go. You try not to leer at her, irritated with her obsession with your relationship with Jimin. When she first noticed that you and Jimin hit it off, she surprised you with an entirely new designer lingerie line. Just because, she had said. A girl should feel powerful and sexy. 

After a few attempts, Mila has finally learned you’re not a dumb little lamb. You’ll take her advice when you want it, but you refuse to let it be at the expense of the single person you trust outside of Yoongi, though Yoongi does not entirely count. As your mentor and senior, he would be horrified to hear you call him a friend. 

After nearly an hour of fake smiles, forced laughter, and far too much champagne, you’re tired and buzzed. You’ve talked to at least ten people on Mila’s long list of celebrities, execs, investors, and influencers that she’s pushed onto you. Another member of that list is standing a few feet away from you, laughing loudly at something Jimin says as she puts her manicured hand on his arm. 

As you contemplate whether or not you should bite the bullet and risk saying hello to Luna, someone behind you says, “She hates you. I think she still holds it against you that you got a producer deal without debuting.” 

Whirling around to identify the voice, you stop short. Jungkook Jeon stares down at you, his eyes just as dark and alluring as they were earlier when you made brief eye contact from across the room. This close, he is taller than you expect. His skin-tight white shirt leaves nothing to the imagination, showing the defined muscles of his stomach and chest, and his perfect, tapered waist. 

It’s a face you’re familiar with, pasted across fashion campaigns and media outlets as he talks about his new single. Your heart is pounding as you drink him in. Soft lips, round cheekbones, and gentle eyes that darken considerably when he watches you look him over.

“Yeah,” you say back, swallowing the rest of your champagne. The carbonation catches you by surprise, making you cough as you swallow the sweet liquid the wrong way. 

He laughs and takes the flute away from you, sticking it on a tray as a server passes by. “Bad swallower?” Instead of answering him, you put one hand on your chest as you cough and the other on his arm, steadying yourself as you lean over and cough, clearing your throat. “Damn, Mozart. You okay?”

“Yeah,” you rasp, feeling your face warm in embarrassment. You remove your hand from his arm and ask, “Mozart?”

“Don’t you do all that composing and shit?”

“I do that producing and shit, yeah.”

“It’s about the same. You’re Min’s prodigy, which means you’re Mozart. And he’s Haydn.” 

“I’m sorry, you know the names of classical composers?”

He smirks. “I know your name.”

“Well, I’m afraid I don’t know yours.” 

It’s a lie. You both know it is, and the grin that spreads across his face is downright devilish as he sticks his hand out. “Jungkook,” he says. You shake his hand, admiring his tattoos. And his fingers. But mostly his tattoos. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Pleasure is mine.”

“I would love to make that come true.”

You raise a brow. “Is this how most of your conversations go? Telling people that others hate them, name-dropping classical musicians, and making sexual innuendos?”

“Honestly? No, but I am having a great time. I will, however, drop the innuendos if they’re not your style.”

You smile. “I didn’t say that.” 

His answering smile makes your stomach flip.  “Want to get a drink?”

“Depends. Are you going to tell me about all these people who hate me?”

“This is my promise to you that I will only ever be honest with you. So yes.”

You gesture toward the bar. “Lead the way, then.”

Bodies press against you as the two of you snake through the crowd. Jungkook turns a few times to check on you and flashes you a quick smile to reassure him that you’re okay. It’s cute, you think. You don’t know much about him, but you’re impressed thus far. 

And perhaps a little intimidated by his star power and reputation. 

At the bar, the crowd pushes you closer, knocking your arm into his. He steadies you, keeping his hand on your elbow. “What’s your poison?” 

“Vodka soda!” you shout back to him. He nods and leans against the bar, giving your order to the bartender. Jungkook draws attention like moths to a flame, people looking at him and whispering behind manicured hands. “Thank you.”

“Anything for you.”

You narrow your eyes as he waits on the drinks, one elbow propped on the bar, his other hand still on your arm. He bites his bottom lip, staring at you. “One might try and say you have something up your sleeve.”

“Nope, just my heart on my sleeve. You’re cute and I’ve heard nice things about you from Jimin. We grew up together.”

“Wait, really?”

That is a surprise to you. Jimin has never mentioned growing up with Jungkook or being remotely friendly of the sort. You frown as you think about it, wondering if Jimin left it out for a reason or felt that it was an unimportant fact. 

“Mhmm.” Jungkook hands you a drink, the glass already sweating from the humidity of the club. “What, Jimin doesn’t brag about me?”

“We don’t gossip about people in the industry.” 

Carefully, the two of you navigate back toward your section. Jungkook finds an empty booth and slides in, patting the seat next to him. You sit down and lean back, kicking your legs out in front of you and crossing them at the ankle. Your dress is short but remains modest, enough to keep people guessing. You take a sip of your drink, the burn making you hiss.

“I so rarely see you at events,” Jungkook says after a sip of his dark drink. “I’ve wanted to introduce myself for a while and then you came in and it was like we had a moment.”

“You mean you wanted it to be a moment.”

“Maybe I did.” He smiles. “So where have you been hiding?”

“Legend of Zelda isn’t going to play itself. I come to the events I feel like are worth it.”

Actually, you come to whatever Mila drags you to. Jungkook doesn’t need to know how most of your time is spent in a music studio with the caffeine shakes trying to perfect songs to make sure you don’t get tossed out on the street.  

He narrows his eyes. “Tears of the Kingdom?”

“Obviously. I’ve been building weapons of mass destruction for days.” 

Jungkook tilts his head back and laughs. “What other games do you like, Mozart?” 

Talking to Jungkook is a pleasant surprise. He isn’t at all what social media makes him out to be. You find he’s incredibly kind, certainly flirty, but also wildly endearing. You feel a little guilty at assuming his veneer would be thin and made of plastic like the rest. 

It certainly doesn’t feel like you’re talking to someone who went number one on Billboard the week prior. Jungkook doesn’t talk about other people he knows or ask about work. He flits through topics like a curious bird, quizzing your interests, scrunching his nose, and pouting when you say something he doesn’t like. 

It’s cute. He’s cute, and you’d be lying if you said that the longer you sat next to him,  you haven’t started to think about what it would be like to taste him. Even if he moves on the next day like his reputation has led you to believe. 

But… there’s something there. A spark, though perhaps a trick of the lights.

-

“You want me to what?” you ask, lowering your voice as you lean into Mila’s ear. 

A raucous chorus of Happy Birthday is being poorly sung on the dance floor. You hadn’t even realized this event was for someone’s birthday, and you have half a mind to ask who the hell you should be wishing a happy day of birth to, but Mila is bitching you out in front of the building’s restrooms. 

Even tucked away in the hall outside of the bathroom, you speak in hushed tones, worried someone will overhear her scheming. She looks down her beaky nose at you, eyes like an eagle. “Fuck him,” she repeats slowly, drawing out the syllables like you’re a toddler. “He’s into you and it would be great for publicity.”

“I’m sorry, but since when do you dictate my sex life?” 

Not only are you a little too buzzed to have this conversation, but the very implication that your agent thinks she can make you fuck Jungkook is hilarious enough to have you start giggling hysterically. Mila watches you with narrowed eyes as you cover your mouth, laughing behind your hands. 

“You are not a naive little girl,” Mila hisses at you. “He wants to fuck you, so let him. He’s attractive, he has influence, and he’s with one of the big four companies. It would be good press.”

“You and the fucking press, you’re obsessed!” 

“No, I’m right. My job is to be right and to tell you what to do, and right now I’m telling you that Jungkook is already known for sticking his dick in anything he can. He’s been staring at you all night. You’d be doing yourself a favor.”

You take a step back from her and hold up your hand. “If I fuck him, it’s because he’s hot and I want to. Not to play political chess for you, understood?”

“In my experience, you either become interesting or watch your career fade. Your time of being interesting is ticking. Your call. I’m getting out of here. Do what you want, like you always do.”

What Mila says hurts but you refuse to let it show, holding out a hand to gesture the way out of the hall. She walks by you brusquely, sweeping her blunt, black hair over her shoulder as she goes. You stand in the dark, the door to the bathrooms opening and closing, flashing bright light and then leaving you in with colors pulsing in front of you as your eyes try to readjust every few seconds. 

A loud group of girls startle you as they stumble out of the bathroom, laughing raucously. They’re a tangle of legs and heels and sweet-smelling perfume, nearly running you over as they sway, a collective mass of bodies. They look exactly like the women you cut out of magazines and pasted in your journal as a kid, dragging your finger over the pretty dresses and the designer names listed in the captions.

Luna stops short when she sees you, straightening and brushing her freshly dyed silver hair out of her face. She is cherubic and beautiful, her round cheeks flushing naturally and doll mouth always rosebud pink. You feel trepidation as she regards you, the girls in her group hanging back a bit as she assesses you.

“How are you?” she questions, settling on polite while flashing you a pointed smile and holding out her arms. 

Fake. Fake. Fake. Fake.

You feel a flicker of anger at yourself as you let her pull you into a hug, resentful that you must play this game. She smells like vodka and vanilla, and when she pulls away, you see the barest hint of white on her nose. You brush your finger back and forth on your nostril. 

“Oh.” She wipes it off with the back of her hand, giving a short, shallow sniff. “Thanks.”

“You look nice,” you offer stiffly. Your tongue is heavy from drinking and you scramble for compliments to say, even if they aren’t true. “I like your new song.”

“Thanks! I have the best producers and writers available out there. They really know exactly what they’re doing.” 

You feel the strain in your smile tighten. Moves and counter moves. “That’s good.”

“My team is great. I’m so thankful I had the opportunity to be with S3vn.”

Luna’s voice is polite. Happy, even. But you hear the double meaning in her words. Remember the way she cut your hair before a major review day when you were sixteen. She’s become better at being mean in a nice way. And you have become better at being unaffected, knowing it is her least favorite response.

“It’s nice to see you, Luna.”

Her smile drops when you don’t get upset. You turn and leave the hallway, palms sweaty and head spinning. Swallowing thickly, you wipe your hands on your exposed thighs and walk back to where Jungkook is sitting, surprised to see Jimin has joined him. He narrows his eyes as you approach, but his expression is overall unreadable.

You sit back down silently on the other side of Jimin, staring off into space. The room feels like it’s spinning. You’re toeing the line of buzzed and drunk, so you sip some water, letting yourself go silent as you absently stare into the crowd, watching the cascading lights, a little lost in them.

Jimin waves his hand back and forth in front of your face. “Are you listening?”

You blink a few times, turning to see him and Jungkook looking at you. “What?”

“Jungkook invited us to an after-party. J-Hope is having some people over.”

“Oh.” 

Chewing on your lip, you let your eyes drift to Jungkook. He gives you a tentative smile, nodding his head in encouragement.

“You should come,” Jungkook encourages with a coy grin. “I’d have fun with you there.”

“Do you want to go?” you ask Jimin quietly, looking back at him. He still has a vague expression, one you can’t figure out. “I’ll only go if you do.” 

“Sure,” he offers. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

-

“So you’re Yoongi’s prodigy? No shit!” Hoseok asks, looking at you from the front seat of the van. City lights blur on the other side of the window and it’s hard to hear him over the screeching singing in the car and the blaring music. “You’re about as hard to meet as Yoongi is!” 

J-Hope - Hoseok, as he has asked you to call him - gives you a bright smile. You just stare at him, shocked that he has any idea who you are. You make a mental note to thank Yoongi for even mentioning your name to him. Hoseok is an absolute powerhouse and someone you’ve followed for years. It’s a good connection.

“Told you that you’d want to meet her,” Jungkook says, voice deep. 

Jungkook’s body presses against yours in the packed-tight vehicle. His hand is on top of your knee. His cologne smells like amber and sandalwood, making your eyelashes flutter as you breathe in. You lay your head back against the headrest of the seat, letting it roll to the side a little to test his reaction when you place your head on his shoulder.

He turns his head toward you, his breath fanning against your forehead. You smell his mint gum. If you look up at him right now, your mouths would be close enough to kiss. “Hi,” he says softly. 

“Hi.”

“You have pretty eyes.”

“I grew them myself.”

Jungkook’s laughter is abrupt. You grin at his mirth. He has a cute laugh, totally at odds with the edgy tattoos and the way he carries himself. The paradox intrigues you.

“That wasn’t very smooth, was it?” 

He shakes his head. “It’s honest. I like it. Your reactions are probably the most genuine thing I’ve seen all night. I like genuine.” 

“There’s not a lot of that to go around.”

“I know. That’s why I’m glad we locked eyes from across the room.”

You roll your eyes. “Okay, The Lonely Island.”

Hoseok lives in a luxurious apartment on the east side of the city. The entrance is private in a parking garage, away from wandering eyes. Everyone piles out of the car and when you slide to exit, you find a tattooed hand waiting to help you out.

Grinning, you take Jungkook’s hand. Your fingers tingle where they’re interlocked with his, warmth spreading across your palms. Once you’re out of the car, you start to let go. Jungkook squeezes his fingers tighter, urging you to look up at him. There’s a question in his eyes, gaze flicking down to where your hands are clasped. 

A small grin lights up your face and you squeeze his hand back. He leads you toward the elevator, swinging your hands back and forth. You know this game well: Jungkook is priming you. The hand-holding, the compliments, and the staying near you all night are all his signals to you that he wants you to go home with him.

You want that too, but you also don’t want it to come easy. It’s a risk to make him work harder for it, but you want to see if he will.. 

“Cute,” Jimin mutters, raising a brow as he walks next to you. 

Hoseok’s apartment is a dream. It makes sense for someone with as many writing and choreography credits across the industry as him, in addition to having two top charting albums, a clothing partnership with a popular designer, and countless brand endorsements. 

It’s much nicer than the small but flashy apartment ILIA has put you in. Where your apartment feels like a model home that you can’t leave fingerprints in, Hoseok’s feels authentic. There are hand-selected pieces of art on his walls, a towering bookcase of awards and plaques, blankets and pillows thrown over the couches, books and video game controllers on the coffee table.

Someone gets control of the speaker system and starts pumping hip-hop through the two-story apartment. You navigate to the kitchen where you run into Hwasa pouring drinks. She screams when she sees you, abandoning her bartender duties and making everyone in the kitchen flinch and turn in your direction. You let go of Jungkook’s hand, casting your arms open.

“Helllooooo?!” She grips you tight, kissing your forehead and both cheeks. You laugh, immediately feeling yourself relax having seen a familiar face. The greeting is a little more than you expect, but she’s drunk and happy. You take it in stride. “I cannot believe you’re here and with… well isn’t that new?” 

“Hello, Hwasa.”

“Jeon,” she greets, narrowing her eyes. She tucks you into her arm, pointing a finger at Jungkook. “You better not fuck with this girl, understand me? She is way too cool for your bullshit.”

He rolls his eyes. “What bullshit?”

“I’m so serious. I like her.”

Hwasa lets you go and laughs it off, giving Jungkook a quick kiss on the cheek before going back to her drink-making. Jimin is nowhere in sight, having drifted off to a corner of the living room to chat with Hoseok, leaving you with Jungkook. 

Jungkook scratches the back of his neck awkwardly. “Sorry about that,” he ventures.

“It happens.”

“Still awkward.” 

“It is,” you snark. You bring your fist up to your mouth, speaking into it like you’re giving an interview. “Jungkook, how does it feel to be put on blast for your spicy endeavors right when you walk into the party?”

You hold your fist out to him, offering him the mic. “Spicy endeavors?” 

“Promiscuous has negative implications and we are sex-positive here.” 

“Wow, such forward-thinking media. I’ve never heard of that before.”

“You never will again, I’m afraid.”

Jungkook shakes his head and chuckles, gesturing to the drinks all over the counter. “You want a drink?” 

“I do.”

With a drink in hand, you both return to the party. There’s dancing going on in a corner of the living room, a card game going on in the dining room, and a smoke session going on around the couches. Jungkook sits on the arm of the couch next to Jimin and another girl you don’t know.

You freeze up a little, unsure where to sit. Jungkook doesn’t seem to notice, reaching a hand out as he joins the conversation around the coffee table. You hesitate for a second, a little caught off guard before placing your hand in his and letting him pull you against him, leaning onto his thigh with your hips pressed together. His arm loops around the back of your thighs, hand resting on the outside of your leg. Your hand drops on his shoulder as you lean into him. 

People you know stop and say hi, their eyes lingering for a long time on the way you and Jungkook lean into one another. You ignore them, content to let them wonder how it is a little producer from ILIA got her claws into Jungkook for the night. 

When a weed pen is passed to Jungkook, you watch with curiosity to see what he’ll do. He takes it but looks up at you, raising his brow in question and holding it out like he’s asking for permission. You’re surprised but you nod - you don’t control what he does.  It’s sweet. Surprising, but sweet.

Jungkook takes two short pulls, blowing the smoke in the opposite direction from you. The girl next to him whines, swatting at it and smacking his leg, giggling. You pay it no mind, unworried about the flirting. He’s not yours, and even if he was, it’s your waist he has pressed against him.

Jungkook holds the pen up to you and you make a face. “I don’t know whose mouth has been on that.”

He snorts. “Alright, Mozart. I have my own. Would you prefer that?”

“Yes, I would.” 

Rolling his eyes but smiling, he passes it over to someone else and stands, your hand falling from his shoulder. “Come on, brat. We’ll go to the balcony so we don’t have to share.”

“Thank you, that’s what I deserve.” 

He giggles. “You can’t even say that with a straight face.”

“Imagine if I meant it.”

Jungkook navigates the apartment easily. You follow him, not unaware of the gazes and whispers that pass. You lift your chin. Let them talk. The only opinions that matter to you are those of your bosses, Yoongi, Jimin, and occasionally your mother on a good day. 

Right now, nothing else matters. 

It’s cold outside. You shiver while Jungkook shuts the sliding glass door to the balcony just off the bedroom. Light floods in from the hallway into the room, casting a golden glow behind you. Jungkook leans on the railing, pulling a weed pen from his pocket and waving it in front of you like a prize. 

You snatch it from him, sticking your tongue out. Bringing it to your lips, you suck gently on the tip, filling your mouth with acrid smoke as you inhale. It burns a little, making your eyes water as you let the air and remaining smoke out before passing it back to Jungkook. He echos your movements. 

Leaning against the railing, you look out at the city. It is dazzling from this high up, a home made for a god to watch over their creation. Silence hangs between you, occasionally passing the pen back and forth. The wind feels good, though a little cold. And you appreciate how quiet it is, the sounds of the party muted through the windows. 

Down below, the street looks mostly empty. It’s so far down that you’re not really sure. Your high starts to hit, dulling the edges of everything and making you feel a little soft and floating. You grip the railing a little tighter, looking at Jungkook from the corner of your eye. 

Fuck if he isn’t beautiful. 

“What?” he asks, a smile in his voice as he side-eyes you. “You’ve got a look on your face.”

“Nothing.”

“Mm. Not nothing. What?”

“You’re not what I expected. It’s a really nice change of pace.”

“Ah,” he answers, ducking his head. You grin, realizing that he’s blushing and trying to hide it. You poke his arm, laughing as you prod at him. “Stop, you’re making me shy.”

“You? Shy?” 

“Oh yeah. I am a mess around people. I might seem good at it, but it takes champagne and sometimes a Xanax to get me to operate at a level that’s normal with everyone else.”

“And then do you stay up all night re-thinking every single interaction you had and punishing yourself like why the fuck did I say this very weird thing?”

“Yes!” he exclaims, frowning and tilting his head up toward the sky. “It is exhausting. Sometimes I’m so worried I’m going to embarrass myself that I skip an event altogether and take the fucking verbal beating from the company.” 

“Ugh, Mila would fit right in.”

“She’s kind of a snake, huh?”

You hum. “Jimin called her exactly that earlier tonight.” 

“My agent hates her. Says she’s a total control freak and vicious.” You snort. That is an understatement. “Makes her successful, though. She has some of the world's biggest names under her.” 

“Yeah, but I didn’t choose her. She was assigned to me. Honestly, I don’t think she thought I had any potential to bring her success and be a household name until I won that award for producing Hwasa’s song.” 

“It was a good song.”

You smile distantly, looking out at the hazy lights of the city. Everything feels a little slow and dreamy, your thoughts fluid. “I liked it. I want to do better - be better. A lot of it’s about connections though and I… am not great at that part.”

“I think you’re doing pretty okay.”

Jungkook shifts closer. He’s turned to you, so near that you’re almost touching. He looks down at you through long lashes, watching for your reaction. You look up at him, a little starry eyed and dizzy at his proximity. This close, you can see the freckle just under his mouth. You want to kiss him, but you hold back, feeling your insecurity worm its way in.

“Yeah?” you ask, a little breathy. “Are you saying there’s a connection here?”

“Uh-huh.” He tucks his bottom lip between his teeth. He reaches a hand forward and brushes the underside of your chin, tilting your face up toward him even more. “Come home with me.”

The breath leaves your lungs. You’re not surprised that he’s asked, and yet your body still reacts, adrenaline taking over. His gaze is hungry as he watches you, waiting for your response, finger still propped under your chin like he might kiss you.

“Take me on a date,” you assert. Perhaps it's the drinks and the weed that makes you so bold, but you want more than anyone else has had from him. You want to be different. “Dinner.”

He tries to fight a smile, tonguing the inside of his cheek. The action is wildly attractive for some reason, nearly making you waver and let him take you home now. “Do you like Italian?”

“Yes.”

“Good,” he says. “Tomorrow.”

“The day after. I’m busy tomorrow with work.”

He narrows his eyes. “Damn. Gonna make me wait in agony, huh?”

You grin. “I’m worth waiting for.”

“You very much are. Day after tomorrow at eight. Wear something nice.” 

“Fine. Wear those necklaces you wore for your Vogue shoot.”

He cocks his head to the side. “Oh?” Jungkook purrs. “You like the necklaces?”

“I like to imagine what they look like dangling above my face.”

He shakes his head. “You’re gonna be the fucking death of me.”

“Good. The day after tomorrow.” You take a step back, a wicked grin on your face. He drops his hand, staring you down. “Don’t be late.” 

-

Jungkook isn’t late and you wish that he was. Cursing over and over again, you pull the knee-high boot up your leg, thankful for the supple, flexible leather that fits your calf. You nearly fall over tugging on the next, finally getting your boots on and standing up straight in front of your mirror out of breath and flustered. 

The outfits had not gone according to plan. Something about going on a date with Jungkook has you feeling all out of sorts, going through enough outfits that your bed is now covered in them. You refused to tell Mila that you were going on the date, knowing that if she caught wind of it, she’d send paparazzi. As it is, Jungkook has assured you he’s gone through the hoops for a private dinner at an upscale Italian restaurant near the river. 

Turning in the mirror, you decide that the short, black dress over sheer black pantyhose paired with platform boots and a long, black peacoat will have to do. Grabbing your phone, you text Jungkook back quickly that you’re coming downstairs, apologizing for the delay.

Jungkook: Like you said, you’re worth waiting for. 

Me: Oh, I can take longer… 

Jungkook: Don’t make me come up there. 

Jungkook: Actually, on second thought, make me come up there.

As you pass your kitchen, you double back and run to the alcohol cabinet, pulling a bottle of tequila down quickly to shoot back a quick swig. It burns your throat, making you cough and squeeze your eyes shut as you hack for a moment, corking the bottle and gasping for air. 

At least it will take the edge off. 

Wiping the traces from your chin, you rush out of your apartment, letting the tequila burn its way through you to set the first layer of calm. In the elevator, you take in a slow, deep breath for five seconds. Exhale for five seconds. Inhale for five seconds.

The elevator dings, making you flinch. Clutching your purse to steady your trembling hands, you step out onto the ground floor of the parking garage where you find Jungkook parked illegally and leaning on the side of the vehicle. 

Slowing your steps, you appreciate the boy and then the car. Jungkook is dressed in black slacks with a belt at the waist and a black, tight-fitted turtleneck. The material of the shirt forms to his body, showing his defined arms and toned chest. 

Jungkook’s hair is slicked back, a single dangling earring on his left lobe paired with the rest of his signature hoops. You have no idea how a single piece of jewelry changes everything about his energy, but your heart rate skyrockets as you approach him, a little shy. 

He lets out a low, slow whistle. “Fuck. You are a knockout.” 

“You look pretty good yourself.”

“Nah, Mozart. You look…” He shakes his head and scratches the back of his neck, laughing a little. “You’re gonna fucking wreck me.”

A nervous laugh escapes you and you chew the inside of your cheek as you stop in front of him, hands crossed in front of you. He pushes off the car, which is a sleek Porsche, and sticks his hand out to you. Tentatively, you place your hand in his. 

Leaning forward, Jungkook places a kiss on your cheek. Your lashes flutter, skin warm. He pulls away with a small smile. “You look beautiful. I mean it.” 

“You’re making me nervous.”

“No kidding, I feel like my heart is about to come out of my chest.”

He’s going to be the death of you. It’s endearing, how honest he is, letting what he’s thinking pour out of his mouth. You’re unsure if it’s part of his game or if it’s genuine, and it puts you a little on edge, trying to guess what’s going through his mind. 

Lacing his fingers with yours, Jungkook escorts you around the car and opens the passenger. The interior of the car smells clean and is lined with white LED lights and red leather seats. You raise your brows as you slide inside, your coat protecting you from the cold leather. 

Jungkook closes your door and rounds the back, slipping into the driver’s side. He turns to you, tilting his head to the side. You fiddle with the buttons on your coat. “What?”

“Kiss me,” he says, sounding breathless. “Kiss me so we don’t have to be nervous anymore.”

“You just want me to kiss you.” 

Jungkook puts his elbow on the center console and leans forward. He looks down his nose at you, eyes focused on your mouth. You squeeze your thighs together, trying to fight a shiver of adrenaline threatening to take over. “So what?”

“Ask me nicely,” you murmur, leaning toward him. You look him in the eye, trying to still your hummingbird heart. This close, you see the flecks of gold in his irises, swirls of brown and caramel. They’re beautiful, framed by silky lashes. “I’ll take it into consideration.”

“Please kiss me.” 

“Hmm?”

“I am begging you to kiss me.”

“Almost…”

“I need you to kiss me.”

So you do. 

Jungkook’s mouth is soft. He laughs in surprise but leans into the kiss, slotting his mouth against yours firmly. It’s innocent and sweet, just a gentle brush of lips. You pull away, noses bumping against one another as he rests his forehead on yours. 

It’s quiet and cold in the interior of the car, only the sound of your shallow breathing and the hum of the engine audible. Something electric courses through your veins, ignited by the feeling of his mouth against yours and you immediately want more. You’ve never felt this sudden, carnal desire before. This need to fall into him. 

For a second, you fight it. Then, you give in. 

Leaning forward, you catch Jungkook’s lips in a real kiss. It’s slow at first. You catch him off guard but he’s quick to keep up, sucking your bottom lip into his mouth greedily. Dizziness makes your world spin. You press up against the center console, sliding your tongue gently against his. Jungkook reaches a hand up to your face, cradling you as he deepens the kiss. 

His mouth tastes like spearmint gum. Your skin is overheating, and you suddenly feel  stuffy and constricted in your jacket. Jungkook breaks the kiss, panting against your lips as he presses chaste kisses to the side of your mouth and lips. 

“Did you drink tequila?” he asks, voice husky. He starts kissing your jaw and your head lolls to the side, eyelids fluttering. “Tastes like it.”

“I was nervous,” you pant, almost moaning as his tongue flicks out to lick at your skin. “So I took a shot.”

“I make you that nervous?” His teeth pull at your earlobe. You sink further into the seat, starting to turn boneless. You feel like you’re melting at the joints, abruptly unable to string together a sentence under the attention of his greedy, warm mouth. “Cat got your tongue?”

“You’re supposed to take me to dinner.”

“Oh, I am. And then we'll order ice cream, and then we’re going home.” 

“Oh?” 

“My home. I have necklaces to show you.”

“Fuck.” 

Reluctantly, Jungkook pulls away. His lips are wet and a little dark from kissing you, his eyes wild. You watch him from where you’re sunken in the seat, a little wrecked from just kissing. You realize that Jungkook has the potential to ruin you. To crack you open and devour you.

And you let him. 

Reaching across the car, you cradle his face, thumb pulling at his bottom lip, damp with your lip gloss and spit. “Pretty,” you murmur. His tongue darts out, laving across your thumb. You grin. “Dangerous.” 

“Not with you.” 

“I’ve heard that before.”

“Well, I mean it.”

“We barely know each other.”

He shrugs. “I don’t care. I have a sense for these things.”

“Mmm.” You drop your hand from his face. “Dinner, then. And ice cream. And then home.” 

-

Jungkook’s first lie is that he’s not dangerous with you. He nearly kills you several times on the way to dinner, leaning over at almost every stoplight to bring your mouth to his again. His mouth is addictive, each kiss intense and intended to make you fall further and further into this waking dream you’re in. 

By the time the valet opens your door to a private entrance at the restaurant and helps you out, you think you might be entirely drunk on Jungkook’s kisses alone. He laces his fingers with yours, pulling you close as you walk up toward the back of the restaurant.

Inside is a dark hall, barely lit by fixtures in the ceiling casting gold light. It takes a moment for your eyes to adjust as Jungkook gives the host his name. To your right is a curtain with the soft hush of diners and piano music. To your left is another curtain with no sound coming through. 

“Thank you for choosing us, Mr. Jeon. Right this way.”

The host bows his head slightly, guiding you to the left curtain. He pulls it open and gestures for you to enter. You step through after Jungkook, raising your brows when you realize it’s a private dining room. It looks reserved for events and parties perhaps, but the room is furnished with a single table and rich, mahogany chairs. 

Velvet drapery covers the walls and a large, crystal chandelier hangs over the table. The heels of your boots click on the hardwood floors as Jungkook leads you to your seat, letting go of your hand to pull out the chair. You flash him a smile, sitting as he helps you scoot in. 

He sits across from you, adjusting his shirt sleeves. Your eyes momentarily get sidetracked when you realize he has on the layered necklaces you ask for, and you grin before averting your attention to the host who instructs that the chef and the sommelier will be with you momentarily to talk about your dining options for the evening.

When he leaves, it’s just you and Jungkook with the soft sound of piano trailing from somewhere distant. You level your gaze on him, watching him watch you. The setting feels intimate, leaving you a little overwhelmed but in a good way. You’ve gone on dates, but not like this. 

“What?” he questions gently. “You have a look on your face.”

“I’m just impressed, is all.”

“It only gets better from here. I have so many ideas for dates.” 

“Oh? Plural?”

“Mhmm.” He leans back in his seat, tonguing his cheek. “If all goes well, anyway.” 

“So far so good.” 

The sommelier and the chef arrive together, hands tucked behind their backs. It’s hard to pay them much mind. Jungkook is distracting, even as he gives them his full attention, nodding along and answering their questions. He looks to you for input, but you feel a little useless, barely listening to what they’re saying. 

“Trust me enough to order?” he asks, leaning over the table conspiratorially. 

“Well, you’re with me, so you must have good taste. I trust you.” 

His foot nudges your ankle under the table playfully. He orders a round of appetizers and wine. When the sommelier asks you to sample it, you follow Jungkook's lead, inhaling the dark red lightly. It smells strongly of cherries and something sweet, making your mouth water. The taste is lush and wonderful, pleasing to the palate. 

The sommelier bows and leaves the two of you alone, vanishing behind the curtain. Jungkook lifts his wine glass to you, smiling. “Here’s to our first date and many more.” 

“Cheers.” 

After a sip, you set your glass down and look at Jungkook from across the table. “Was it absolutely painful, waiting for today?”

“I hardly survived, to be honest. All day yesterday I lay in bed dreaming of today.”

“Hmm. Is that all you dream about?”

His gaze darkens. “Careful, Mozart. I dream very vividly.”

Jungkook does impress you. With his knowledge about a wide variety of topics, with the charming expressions he uses as he speaks, with… him overall. He’s multifaceted in a way you rarely get to see with others, and you feel giddy as you listen to him.

Though you have a similar experience getting into music, it’s nice to hear Jungkook’s story. You keep it light, avoiding the darker parts of going through trainee programs and how competitive and hard it was to be a kid, growing up while working. 

He asks you about music. Not just the music you work on, but the music you grew up listening to, your favorite genres, and the technical aspects of making music. Jungkook is intelligent and familiar with the mechanics of making records. He asks questions and nods along, interested and curious in learning. 

You can’t remember the last time you had a conversation go this well, even outside of dates. When you urged Jungkook to take you on a date, you weren’t sure you’d end up liking him. Now though, as he lets you take the last stuffed mushroom because you can have whatever you want, you realize that you like him. 

It is such a dangerous game to play, especially with the rumors you hear about him. 

Instead of thinking about it, you enjoy dinner. You both finish the bottle of wine and he orders another. You’re feeling loose and warm, laughing more often and giving him lazy smiles. Even without the wine, you want to drag him to the bathroom and get on your knees. Now with a few glasses in, you’re thinking about it more and more. 

Dinner sobers you up a little, but it doesn’t remove the heat between your legs and the growing desire to kiss him again. You think about the way his mouth moved against yours, tongue gentle and talented. Your mind wanders into places less innocent, especially after dinner comes to an end and ice cream is brought out, as promised.

Jungkook carves the spoon through the dessert, leaning forward with it held out. You smirk, leaning to meet him halfway to let him slide the ice cream into your mouth. Cold vanilla melts on your tongue. It’s good and creamy, but you hardly pay attention to the taste, eyes fastened to Jungkook’s. 

“Good?” His voice is deep, soft. “I want to taste.”

You pick up your spoon, picking up a small scoop. You hold it out to him and he repeats your motion, bending to meet you. His eyes don’t leave yours as he eats it, tongue running over the bottom of his lip after to catch any extra. 

“Fuck.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, getting up abruptly. He holds his hand out to you and you place yours in his. He hoists you up and surprises you by pulling you into his chest. “We’re going.” 

You lean up on your toes, stealing his lips with yours. They taste like the wine you’ve been drinking. Your mouth tingles as you kiss him and your thoughts are cottony and slow, only focused on the way he hums, leaning forward to swipe his tongue eagerly into your mouth.

The kiss turns a little messy. You’re woozy, letting him bend you backward as he steals the breath from your lungs. Jungkook is intoxicating, your hand dropping his to wrap around his neck. You thread your fingers through the waves at the nape of his neck. They’re silky soft, sliding between your fingers. You tug a little, pulling a groan low in his throat.

“Careful or I will fuck you here,” he pants, spit-slicked mouth moving against yours. You run your tongue along his bottom lip, tasting more wine. “Devil.” 

“What’s stopping you?” 

Jungkook pulls away from you, holding you at arm's length. You stare up at him, eyes heavy. You feel arousal pool in your stomach with the way he looks at you, his mouth wine-stained. 

“That’s how you want it?” His tone is threatening. Laced with something carnal. Your stomach flutters as you nod. You’re not thinking about anything but him, not worried about anything. “Fuck.”

Without hesitation, he grabs you by the hand and pulls you across the floor. You follow him eagerly, heart hammering as Jungkook all but kicks the private bathroom door open. He yanks you inside and spins you, pushing you toward an elegant sink.

The bathroom is dark. The walls are painted black and the gold-fixtured lighting is dim. It would be romantic if Jungkook wasn’t flicking the lock behind him and advancing on you. Just as he reaches for you, you surprise him, dropping to your knees and looking up through your lashes. 

He raises his brows, looking down at you, heat behind his eyes. You lift your hand to the zipper of his pants, slowly pulling it down, pausing for permission.

“Go ahead, baby,” he murmurs, nodding. “Take what you want.”

Licking your lips, you do exactly that. Your fingers are nimble as you undo the button at the top of his pants. You pull them down a little, just enough to get them out of your way. You eye the hardening outline of his cock against his briefs, breath catching. 

You look up at him. “You have a huge cock, don’t you?”

He sticks out his tongue between his teeth. “Why don’t you find out, hmm?”

Leaning high up on your knees, you lick the outline of his cock, watching as he shivers. You run your tongue to the tip of his cock, stopping to mouth at it. He curses, hips twitching as you soak the fabric with your mouth, placing your hands on his thighs.

Muscles twitch under your palms. You dig your nails in and scratch upward, the fabric hissing underneath your fingers. Reaching the waistband of his briefs, you pull down agonizingly slow. Jungkook’s fingers twitch at his sides, but he lets you do what you want, breathing heavily through parted lips. 

Jungkook’s cock springs out. You feel your mouth water at his thick length, already hard from the barest stimulation. Pearly beads of precum decorate the dark tip. You hum, contented as you stick your tongue out and give a quick kitten lick to the base of his shaft. 

He hisses, hips twitching forward. Teasing him, you trace your tongue along a vein on the underside of his cock until you reach the tip, circling the swollen head with your tongue generously. Jungkook closes his eyes, his head falling backward.

You grip him firmly, gathering saliva in your mouth before spitting on his cock. He moans out loud and you grin, pumping him slowly while ducking under your hand to lave your tongue across his balls. He curses and a hand shoots to your head, not pushing you, but fingers pressed tight against your skull.

“Fuck, you like being a little slut?” he growls. 

“Mhmm,” you answer back, pulling his cockhead into your mouth. His salty precum melts on your tongue. 

Jungkook fills your mouth. You feel the stretch on the sides of your lips as you take him in properly. You let spit pool on your tongue as you slide down his cock, slurping gently as you do. It’s messy and wet and a little clumsy, the wine making you uncoordinated. 

It doesn’t matter. His fingers press into your hair as you set a rhythm, bobbing your head and sucking gently while your hand pumps what you can’t fit in your mouth. Jungkook pants above you, his soft moans echoing off the tile. 

The sounds he makes spur you further. Drool runs down your chin as he succumbs. You watch him through misty eyes, the crown of his cock kissing the back of your throat as you try to take him further than you can manage. You feel your throat constrict, coughing a bit as you pull off of him, twisting your wrist as you work him and gasp for air.

Spit and precum connect your lips to his cock in a thick string. It breaks when you cough, eyes stinging. 

“Yeah?” he asks, gritting his teeth. “Like choking on that fucking cock?”

You run the flat of your tongue over his frenulum, making him wine. “Like hearing you moan,” you admit. The slick sound of your hand stroking him makes you squeeze your legs together. “It makes me so fucking wet.” 

“Show me.”

Jungkook’s hands go to yours. He pulls you up by the wrists. Your knees feel wobbly but he holds you steady, pressing you against the counter. He steals a searing kiss from you that is more tongue than lips, hands skimming up your arms and down your sides until he’s at the hem of your dress where he pauses. 

“This okay?” Your eyelids flutter open. His nose is pressed against yours, eyes steady. “We can stop whenever or if you’re too drunk.”

“I’m not.” It’s true, you’re a little drunk off the wine, but your head is clear. You know exactly what you want and your thoughts are concise. There are no hesitations and you don’t care that you’re in a bathroom, face wet with mixed fluids. “Want it.”

“Mmm.” 

Jungkook slips a hand under your dress, fingers brushing over your soft thighs. It feels good, his dragging touch enticing. Your head tilts back, allowing him to press hot, wet kisses on your throat. His fingers pick at the garter belt secured to your pantyhose, making him groan.

“I wanna see these later.”

“You will.”

He licks your neck. “Good.”

You close your eyes, enjoying the feeling of his mouth sucking gently at your throat while his hand slides to your underwear. He presses the pads of his fingers over the silk, just enough to make your thighs close around his hand, gasping. 

“You are wet.” There’s a smile in his voice. He moves his fingers in a gentle circle, applying pressure to the damp spot on your underwear. “Sucking me off did that?” 

“And the ice cream.”

“Oh? Watching me eat ice cream, huh?”

“Sorry about it.”

“Don’t be.” He hooks a finger and pulls your panties to the side, touching your sticky folds properly. A moan slips out of your mouth. You can feel your heart slamming in your chest so hard you think you might have a cardiac episode. “You can watch me eat your pussy later.” 

Between the implication that there is a later and thereby more after this, and the way Jungkook’s fingers slip up and down your heat, you’re a goner. It feels so good, some of the pressure between your legs relieved as he teases your clit.

Spreading your legs wider, you lean hard into the bathroom counter. It hurts where it presses against your spine but you ignore it, content to let him push you until your head hits the mirror. 

Jungkook’s fingers tease your hole, leaving your cunt clenching. You whine, bringing your hands to his face to pull him off your neck and to your mouth, biting his lip playfully. 

“Fuck me,” you ask between kisses, mouths smacking loudly. “Wanna feel you stretch me out.”

“Can’t even wait until we’re home?”

“You can fuck me there too.”

He laughs darkly. “Demon.”

Jungkook removes his hand from between your legs and bends at the knee, grabbing you behind the thighs. You jump lightly and he lifts you, putting you on the counter. Your dress hikes up, baring your glistening cunt to him, underwear still pulled to the side. 

Balmy air kisses your skin. It’s hot in the bathroom as he cages you in, tattooed hand pumping his cock. You’re bent out of shape, spreading your legs and feeling the strain of the straps on your garner belt as you stretch them. 

Reaching between your legs, you pull your underwear farther to the side, ensuring they won’t be in the way. He shakes his head, eying your heat hungrily as he runs the tip of his dick up and down your messy folds. It feels good but it’s not enough, making you squirm and whine audibly. 

He tuts at you, sliding his hand up to press the head of his cock into your dripping hole. Your eyes roll back, feeling the pressure of him splitting you open as he sinks in. The stretch of him aches in pleasure-pain, your pussy opening up for every inch that he feeds you.

“Shit you’re tight,” he gasps, falling forward to rest his head on your shoulder. His back muscles strain against his shirt as he pushes in the rest of the way, bottoming out until you’re stuffed full, walls fluttering around him. “God, I could come just like this.”

“Pussy whipped?” 

“Fuck, I’m gonna be.”

One of your hands goes around his neck, nails pressing into his skin. He sucks in air sharply. Your other hand drifts to his ass, grabbing him and squeezing. “Please make me come. I need it.” 

Instead of answering verbally, he starts to fuck into you. It’s not a slow build or something passionate. It’s needy and heady and desperate. He sets a brutal pace and you can’t help but let out a loud moan, the shape of his name escaping you.

The feeling is addicting. You cling to him, jostling against the sink as he fucks you. The wet sound of your cunt around him is loud and lewd, backtracked by your breathy moans getting louder and higher-pitched. You feel yourself shaking, fingers digging into him as he grabs your hips, holding you down to the counter.

Jungkook’s breath fans your neck, his face buried there. He curses, occasionally biting your tender skin, making you squeal. You can feel the ghost of a smile against you, his tongue soothing your stinging flesh. 

Grabbing one of your thighs, he hikes your leg higher. You slide into the sink, nearly bent in half as he changes the angle. He hits your spot on the upstroke, almost sending you into an orgasm immediately. The tension in your stomach is so tight you think you’re going to unravel. 

Instead, it climbs higher and higher. You can barely breathe as he straightens to fuck you even harder. The faucet digs into your back. You don’t care, grabbing the counter as you cling to it for life, babbling. Nothing that comes out of your mouth makes any sense and just when you think you can’t take it anymore, you come. Hard. 

Everything in your body locks up. You spasm around him, squeezing his cock for everything it's worth. Your orgasm is swift and powerful, taking the breath from you for a long moment before you finally manage to gasp for air, sagging against the sink. 

With a few messy pumps, Jungkook comes with a loud curse, head tossed back, hips slamming yours. You can feel your release between the two of you, sticky and running down your thighs. His thrusts slow until he’s left softening inside of you.

Come leaks when he slowly pulls out. The drip is obscene but you’re too fucked out to care, looking up at him in a daze. It smells like sex in the bathroom and a light layer of sweat covers your skin. 

Carefully, Jungkook tucks himself back in his pants before ripping paper towels out of the dispenser to gently wipe at your thighs. You laugh and let him take care of you, grateful that he does. He swipes one greedy finger up your pussy and pops it into his mouth, making your jaw drop.

“Fuck, I can’t wait to eat you out later.”

You chew your lip as he finishes wiping the mess from your lower half. “So there is a later, still?”

He looks dubious. “I told you that you were coming home with me.”

“I know I just thought maybe…”

“That I was gonna fuck you in a bathroom and that would be what I wanted?” You nod. “I told you, I want more dates. Something about you, Mozart. Also, you letting me fold you in half in a bathroom makes me want to drop down on one knee.”

It pleases you to hear that more than you care to admit. 

With Jungkook’s help, you ease off the counter. At a glance in the mirror, you burst into hysterical laughter. Your mascara is smudged, your mouth is wet, and you look wrecked. He laughs too, caging you in and reaching around you to turn on the faucet, running the tips of his fingers underneath and bringing them up to gently wipe under your eyes.

You smile at him as he attempts to make the running makeup less noticeable. When he finishes, he turns off the faucet but remains pressed to your back, arms looped casually around you. He has a small smile, staring at you in the mirror.

“What?” you ask, laughing.

“This is going to sound stupid,” he prefaces. “But I just feel something here. I don’t know how to explain it.”

“Post-nut clarity?”

He presses his pelvis into you. “No. It’s just like this really silly… I don’t know. Crush. But it just feels right.”

Surprisingly, you understand what he means. This spark you feel with him is new to you. There’s never been anyone else you feel so natural with, so immediately attracted to. Certainly not enough to throw inhibition to the wind and suck them off in a bathroom. 

Something about Jungkook lights you up, a candle catching fire and burning through the wick hot and fast. People might call it reckless and immature, but you don’t know how else to explain this innate desire to jump in head-first with him. 

“I feel it too.” 

He kisses the back of your head. “Come on. I’m not done with you yet.” 

-

You feel lost in the lights on the way home. Jungkook’s hand settles on your thigh, thumb brushing back and forth. He’s a little subdued, focusing on the road. You don’t distract him, content to adjust the air conditioning so that it cools you off, your skin on fire from the wine and Jungkook. 

The night certainly went in a direction you weren’t planning, but you don’t mind. Jungkook excites you. Perhaps it is a little rash and naive, but you don’t care, enamored by the layers of him. You want to peel back more, to dig to the core until he’s yours. 

Whatever the madness is, it appears to be equal. When Jungkook pulls into the luxury apartment building known for high-profile celebrities and government officials, he’s on you again, pulling you across the car to meld your mouths together. 

Dull pain blooms in your mouth, lips bruised from kissing him. You don’t care, eager to slot your tongue against his, brushing against the wet-rough feel of it. 

“Come on,” he whispers, tugging your bottom lip with his teeth. “Let’s go upstairs.”

It should not surprise you when Jungkook swipes a key fob and selects the penthouse apartment, but it does. It shocks you even more when the elevator opens into a four-level home. Your mouth drops open a little as you enter, Jungkook’s fingers laced with yours. 

Floor-to-ceiling windows stretch the entire four-story home. From where you stand in the entryway, you can see multiple open-concept rooms, each ornately decorated with a modern style and neutral tones. Nothing about what you can see screams Jungkook, suggesting that his label has put him here - has the money to put him here.

The thought itself is staggering, momentarily reminding you who you just let fuck you senseless in the bathroom at an upscale restaurant. Letting Jungkook’s hand go, you wander into the main room of the apartment, stepping down into the sunken living room with large, curved couches surrounding a coffee table.

Above you, a massive glass artwork of floating lights hovers. They’re turned off, but it looks like a sculpture project most likely commissioned by a wildly expensive artist. Jungkook joins you in front of the towering windows overlooking a wide terrace. The sheer curtains do nothing to hide the twinkling lights of the city. 

It gives the illusion that you’re among the stars. Jungkook leans over and presses a button on the remote. The curtains quietly begin to roll open, revealing the view in full. It is breathtaking, much more magnificent than the view from Hoseok’s apartment. 

“They really pulled out all the stops for you,” you murmur, turning to look at him. He toes the carpet, twisting his mouth as he blushes. “This is insane.”

“It’s too much.”

“A little bit. But it’s cool.”

He smiles and reaches a hand out. “Let me show you the rest tomorrow after breakfast.”

You take his hand and let him pull you along toward the winding staircase. “I want waffles.” 

“And in the morning, I’m making waffles!”

You both dissolve into laughter at the Shrek reference. Jungkook pulls you up the steps until you’re on the top floor, which is made up of a spacious bedroom with windows that overlook the city, an ornate bathroom you can only see the door to, what you assume is a walk-in closet, and an additional terrace with an infinity pool, firepit area, and bar. 

The bedroom is more of Jungkook’s style. It’s not nearly as pristine, the sheets and blankets rumpled, all dark grey tones. There are shoes by the closet door and a shelf in the far corner with action figures and collectibles that you don’t recognize. 

In the middle of the room stretches an impossibly large bed with modern sconces on either side. Medication, a glass of water, and a watch are on the nightstand next to the bed. And no signs of other suitors, you notice, but you push the thought out of your mind as Jungkook pulls you backward toward his bed, smiling.

This time you’re slower. He sits on the bed, pulling you by the waist to straddle him. Your knees sink feather-soft into the mattress on either side of him, settling yourself on his thighs as you draw him in for a kiss. You hold him gently by the jaw, fingers spread and pressing warm into his skin. 

Jungkook’s hands skate around your hips to your ass, squeezing gently as your tongues dance together. Your buzz from the wine is gone now, replaced with desire burning through you, hot as a torch. It doesn’t feel needy and crazed now, but a little softer. More intimate. 

Carefully, Jungkook leans backward, taking you with him. You squeal into his mouth as you land on top of him, arms giving out. You crash into his chest, though not too hard. 

“Sorry,” he mumbles. He places his hands on your waist and precariously rolls over, managing not to knock heads and limbs as he places you under him. His knee slots between your legs, hands leaving your waist to bracket your head. “God damn, you are beautiful.”

It’s strange. You feel beautiful - or at least, you feel desired under him. Perhaps it is not the same thing, but the way Jungkook looks at you with swollen lips and starry eyes, you feel powerful. Godly, even. 

He dips back down, pressing a kiss to your mouth and one to your jaw. He leaves a wake of heat, stealing your breath away. Leaning back, you give him access to map the tender flesh of your throat and collarbones, threading your fingers through his hair. 

Eyes closed, you let the world spin. His mouth is the finest delicacy, pressing kisses that are butterfly-soft all over your heated skin as he pulls the straps of your dress. You help him by slipping your arms out. He gathers the fabric and pulls down, sitting up as he does so.

Silk rolls against your skin. It’s cool in his bedroom, making you shiver as he reveals your lacy bra and matching garter. He tosses the dress, sitting high up on his knees as you lay splayed out for him. 

“You know,” he ventures. “Normally I don’t like lingerie.” His fingers trace the swells of your breasts. Your chest rises and falls rapidly, goosebumps breaking out on your skin from the tantalizing touch. “But I could get used to it on you.”

“I only wear it on special occasions.” 

Jungkook lowers himself, planting a wet kiss on the top of your right breast. “What’s the occasion?” 

“I needed something to hold up my pantyhose.”

His laugh cools the fresh trail of spit he leaves on your skin, earning a violent shiver from you. He notices, eyes flicking up to look at you. They’re endless pools of dark, watching your every move as he slow-drags a finger up your stomach to the top of your bra. He hooks his finger over the top of the cup and pulls gently, the fabric scraping your over-sensitive nipple. 

Everything he does feels overwhelmingly erotic. You watch, hypnotized and out of breath as he sticks out his tongue, circling your nipple lazily but not giving it attention directly. You let out a wavering moan, voice gone. 

Oh so slowly, Jungkook flicks his tongue over the hardened peak of your nipple. You bow up into him, wanting more. He tsks at you and you go flat on the bed, fisting the sheets tightly to ground yourself as he grins, delighted. 

“You listen well, huh?” You nod, head heavy. You can’t think of any words, thoughts bleeding together like liquid spilled across a watercolor canvas. “Is that how you like it? Being told what to do like a good girl?”

“Yes.” You suck in a sharp breath as Jungkook scrapes his teeth generously over your nipple. 

“You weren’t a very good girl when you got on your knees and swallowed my cock whole in the bathroom.” He flicks his tongue back and forth, sending your eyes to the back of your head as you squirm underneath him. “You were quite the dirty girl, huh?”

“Both.”

Instead of answering you, Jungkook envelops your bud fully, sucking gently. Pleasure rolls through you, your pussy beginning to slow ache with arousal. Your head falls to the side, and you’re only able to pant and dig your nails into his sides where you grab him, either to hold him to you or push him away; you’re not sure.

Jungkook’s mouth is wicked, lavishing your tits. He sucks greedily, noisy as he slides his tongue from one breast to the other. When you look at him, you see sin. Your chest shines in the glowing light of the city with the evidence of his oral fixation, turning you on even more. 

Your underwear sticks to you uncomfortably and your toes curl. It feels so good but you need so much more, dripping in a way that is maddening as he starts to trail his mouth downward. He is so so slow, tasting your skin, hands skimming your sides, scraping blunt nails across your sensitive flesh. 

He’s hardly done anything and yet you’re shaking underneath him, more sensitive and turned on than you’ve ever been. You cannot recall ever being this close to falling apart from just having someone touch you and play with your tits.

But it’s the way Jungkook looks at you. The movements of his hands on your skin. The way every single brush of his tongue and every drag of his teeth scraping over you seems perfectly timed. Attuned. 

It feels like Jungkook already knows every part of your body, and something about that both terrifies and excites you, kicking your adrenaline into high gear, heart rattling, pulse beating in your neck. 

With hooded eyes, you watch Jungkook unclasp the garter belt. He is gentle and methodical, pulling every layer of clothing off with a touch so reverent that it can only be holy. He is solely focused on his task, tasting your skin when his mouth draws near enough to feel you. 

When he has you naked and shaking, he sinks to the floor in front of the bed, hands pressing your thighs open. You feel how much of a mess you are, slick and cold as the air hits you. You whimper, pussy aching to the point of madness. 

Jungkook chuckles. “Yeah? Does it ache, baby?”

“Uh-huh.”

He blows cool air right onto your pussy. The sensation is a pleasure-sting, making you twist in his hands, trying to angle away from him to escape the cold. He laughs again, pinning your hips firmly to the bed while he presses hot-mouthed kisses to your inner thighs. 

“Eyes on me,” he murmurs into your skin. “I told you that you were going to watch me eat this pussy.” 

With effort, you lean up on your elbows, watching with your mouth parted as Jungkook tilts forward agonizingly slow to run the flat of his tongue up your cunt. Your fingers squeeze the sheets, thighs flexing under his firm hands. It feels so good but it looks even better. 

He smirks, dipping down again to slow-lick you from top to bottom. You’re hypnotized, feeling your stomach lurch violently at how good it feels and how good he looks sliding his tongue through your wetness. 

“Taste just as sweet as that ice cream,” he murmurs, sliding his hands closer to the apex of your thighs to hold you open. He catches your clit with his lips, sucking softly. Your head falls back as sparks explode under your skin. “Mmm. Like this so much better though.” 

“Feels so good,” you rasp, lifting your head to fixate your eyes on him again. “Fuck, Jungkook.” 

His tongue dips into your hole, tasting you further, drinking you in. “How do you like it?” he asks, tongue slowly zigzagging upward to circle your bundle of nerves. You’re trembling under him, fingers going numb with how tight you hold the sheets. “Slow? Fast? Messy?”

“Messy.”

He hums and brings his entire mouth to you, sucking greedily, tongue laving back and forth. You fall backward, unable to support yourself as he complies with your request. You bring a hand up to cover your face, trying to catch your breath. 

“Shit,” you gasp. 

Jungkook presses his face into your cunt, licking and slurping at you. The sounds are pornographic and you don’t care, your other hand going down between your legs to card through his hair, pulling gently. He grunts in appreciation, fucking his tongue into you, wiggling expertly. 

You feel thoroughly fucked. Your limbs are heavy, the world spinning as he devours you. He lets your hips cant against his face, encouraging you with soft little hums, mouth smacking against you. 

“This fucking pussy,” Jungkook swears, sucking harshly at your folds. “Fuck.”

“Wanna taste,” you beg, thoughts sticky. “Lemme.”

“Fuck.”

Jungkook’s tongue slides through your folds before he stands up, leaning over you. You turn to look at him - his eyes are blown, the bottom half of his face shining with your juice. You whine and open your mouth, sticking your tongue out eagerly. He follows your lead, grabbing your jaw and squeezing as he gathers your slick and his spit in his mouth before letting it drip into yours. 

You can barely taste yourself but you fold your tongue in anyway, closing your mouth to swallow. He seems dazed, pupils dilated and wild as he crashes his mouth to yours. Your teeth click together and you lick into his mouth, tasting yourself properly for a moment before he breaks away and drops back down, attaching his mouth to your pussy.

This time, Jungkook is vicious. He pulls you to the edge of insanity, your thighs closed around his head, his grip on your legs iron. He whips his head back and forth, tongue pressed hot and heavy against you. You climb climb climb climb -

You break. 

Everything in you seizes. You writhe in his hands, coming hard against his mouth. He doesn’t stop, mouthing you through your orgasm until you’re screaming and pushing at his forehead, the stimulation morphing from white-hot bliss to pleasure-laced pain. 

Jungkook lets you push him away only for him to climb up your body, ripping his shirt up as he goes. Your arms feel heavy and sluggish as you pull at his belt. Your fingers fumble, unable to work the button and the zipper, making him laugh.

“I got it,” he whispers, leaning forward to steal a brazen kiss. “You good?”

You nod, unable to form words. You are good, but you’re still dizzy from the orgasm. 

Still, seeing him strip off his shirt has you ready to go again. You lean forward, hand running up the flexing planes of his abs as he shuffles out of his pants. His body is beautiful - cut lines meeting soft skin, whorls of ink staining his arm and chest. His thighs are powerful, flexing as he kicks off his briefs, freeing his hard, heavy cock. 

You reach for him, grasping him in your hand and guiding him toward your messy heat. Jungkook groans as you run his swollen head up and down your folds, making his cock shine with your arousal. 

“Just like that,” he rasps, nodding his head. “Make it nice and fucking wet.”

After a few shallow thrusts, you take the tip and press down into your entrance. You feel a slight ache as he stretches you open despite having fucked you less than an hour ago. You pant through it, watching between your legs as he presses in until his hips are flush with yours. 

It is a tight fit. Full. But so, so good. Jungkook leans forward, placing his hands on either side of his head. You look up to see his necklaces dangling in your face, making you grin. You tug on them, bringing his mouth down to yours for a slow, gentle kiss. 

When he pulls away, he smiles. “Wore them just for you.” 

“Mmm good. Fuck me, please. Feels so full.” 

Jungkook’s left hand goes down, hiking your leg up around his waist. This time is different. He sets the pace slow, pulling all the way out and then gliding back in. You’re drenched enough to make the slide easy, your walls stretching around him the more he fucks you, setting a steady rhythm. 

Pleasure spreads from your cunt outward, unfurling like a blossom. The gentle drag of his cock is mind-numbing, your hands sliding up your stomach to cup your chest, squeezing your tits. He groans in appreciation, picking up his pace a little, the wet slap of skin against skin backtracked by your loud, heavy breathing. 

Sheets cling to your damp skin. You feel your chest heaving, Jungkook’s skin sliding against yours as he pulls you closer. You raise your hips, rolling into him, meeting his thrusts. Your hands slip on his arms, trying to find purchase on anything to ground you. 

“Fuck,” he gasps, trying to catch his breath. 

He pulls away and grabs both of your legs, making you slip. He’s careful not to pull out, pressing your legs together and hooking them side-by-side over his right shoulder, leaning in. The strain on your thighs feels good and the angle hits deep. 

You bring a hand to your mouth, biting into your knuckle. The pain is like a relief, an outlet to channel the pent-up orgasm building like an indestructible storm inside of you. 

Soft, deep moans drip from Jungkook’s mouth. Your feet flex, your body curling as the pleasure spreads. It’s like you can't sit still, every part of you exposed and raw, sparking with electricity as he drives his hips forward relentlessly. 

Your sweaty calf slips off of his shoulder. He slows and taps you on the leg. “Wanna ride me, baby?”

“Yeah. Wanna sit on it.”

“Good girl.”

You preen under the praise. He pulls out, leaving a wet trail of fluid as he does. You’re both a little fuck-drunk and uncoordinated, switching places as he tosses himself on his back, reaching up to grab pillows and stuff them under his shoulders and head.

Facing the windows, you throw a leg over his hips, surprising him by turning your back to him. He growls and slaps a hand on your ass, the sound loud in the room. You moan, spurred by the sting as you shift down to his hips. 

Grabbing his wet cock, you hover over the tip, carefully sinking down his shaft. This angle makes him so much deeper - you swear you feel him in your stomach. Speared to capacity, you take a moment to breathe, overwhelmed and overheated. Jungkook doesn’t mind, content to knead your ass and hips, fingers pressing into muscle and relieving tension. 

“That feels so nice,” you sigh, head rolling to the side. You close your eyes, pussy twitching and stuff full. 

“Yeah? I’ll give you a massage this week.”

“You’re promising me so many things.”

“Have to keep you on the hook.”

“And on your cock?”

He squeezes the globes of your ass. “Definitely on my cock. Feel so good wrapped around me.” 

Leaning forward, you put your hands on his shins, using him as leverage to slowly lift yourself. The drag feels delicious, and when you drop back down, it feels like the air is punched from your lungs. You fuck yourself on him at your own pace, listening to the sound of him falling apart, occasionally his hands cracking your cheeks. 

Biting your lip, you drive yourself to the edge of madness, shaking as your head falls forward between your arms, his name dropping from your mouth. Jungkook slides his hands under you, adding his assistance as he lifts you up and down his cock, helping you bounce. It’s wet and nasty and you don’t care, enjoying every second of it.

“Can I play with this pretty little asshole?” he asks, voice rough. 

“Uh-huh.”

Wet fingers slide between your cheeks. Jungkook presses a finger to your tight rim, not enough to breach but just enough to give mind-melting stimulation. You grind yourself in his lap, focusing on the way it feels every time you roll your hips. Jungkook’s finger circles your asshole in time, making you nearly sob as you work yourself to an orgasm, so fucking close to coming for the third time that night. 

He encourages you softly, come on, baby, and yeah just like that, get yourself off dripping from his lips. It’s like honey to your ears, sweet and syrupy. You work him faster, fingers going tight in the sheets as you hit your stride, arching up toward another release. 

It builds and builds until you’re right on the edge, so so so close that you’re nearly screaming, eyes squeezed shut, breath held, legs shaking. 

You fall over the edge, barely able to keep your rhythm. You feel your pussy flood around him. You’re gulping down air, hips still moving, broken cries interrupted by mindless babble. 

When you start to slow, Jungkook sits up. He nearly knocks you over but he catches you, carefully laying you flat on your stomach. You go boneless, barely there, and floating. Your last orgasm makes everything watery and opaque, Jungkook’s voice is like syrup when he speaks.

“You okay?” You nod vigorously, sticking your ass up a little bit. You’re a little bit useless, but you want him to come, want him to use you. He notices, laughing as he spreads your legs a little, mess running down your folds. “Such a good girl for me, giving me this swollen cunt to use. Fuck, you’re perfect.” 

Tired and spent, you roll your head to the side, closing your eyes, just content to breathe as Jungkook starts to fuck you with abandon. It still feels good, making you tremble underneath him, bordering overstimulation. You toe that line of electricity, fingers twisted in the blanket, breath hissing. 

Jungkook chases his orgasm, bending down to press a hot kiss onto your shoulder as he comes, tongue licking over the sweat and salt of your skin. 

Time moves differently then - at least it feels like it. You don’t know how much passes between Jungkook’s orgasm and him pulling out, or him finally getting up and waking you up. You’re dizzy when you look at him, head cottony and full of almost-sleep. 

Wordlessly, he takes you to the bathroom. You don’t have the mind to look at your surroundings or pay attention to what anything looks like, content to let him pull you into the shower and turn on the hot water. You’re barely there, lost between exhaustion and a post-bliss aura that makes you soft. 

When Jungkook kisses you in the shower, it’s not with the intent to start something else, but it does wake you up. You become a little more lucid, kissing him sweetly, innocent. Afterward, Jungkook wraps you in a fluffy towel and guides you through his bedroom to another room in the house, too tired to change his sheets.

You crash down in the bed together, heavy-limbed and sated. Jungkook pulls you close, already half asleep, eyes shut and mouth parted. You curl into him, realizing you fit perfectly into the curve of his body. Like you were made for him. 

Quickly you fall asleep, your last thought being that perhaps Jungkook is made for you.

-

Morning comes with a brush of a gentle mouth against your shoulder. You hum, turning your head toward the source of the touch. Jungkook’s lips press against yours, morning-slow, tired-soft. You’re sore everywhere - most notably between your legs - but you let him drag you into a lazy makeout session.

Neither of you are really awake. The sun has not come up yet, the world awash in dark grey. Warm blankets wrap around you, heat trapping between your body. Jungkook’s hand slides down your waist and dips between your legs. You part them, sighing as he swipes his fingers through you and groans when they come away wet.

No words are spoken. Only butterfly-soft breaths and gentle gasps of air as he sinks two fingers into your heat from behind. You open yourself up to him, falling into the feel-good stimulation of his touch as it brushes your G-spot.

It doesn’t matter that you’re tired and sore. You want more of Jungkook - cannot get enough of him. Already you’re thinking about the next time you can have him. Even as he lines his cock up with your entrance, pushing in slowly until he’s snug to your core, you’re thinking about how many more times you can take him. How many more ways you want to. 

You’ve barely started and you’re addicted. Craving him. Reaching a hand around behind you to cradle his head to the back of yours, feeling his warm breath fan your ear as he fucks you slowly. Delicate. Far too intimate for the two of you, almost strangers. 

If someone had told you two days ago that your night would start with locking eyes with Jungkook, a world-renowned artist, and end with securing a date that led to this moment, trembling in his arms as he makes you come again, you’d have thought they were crazy. 

Now, you can’t imagine it turning out any other way. Can’t imagine not feeling him shift his hand around to play with your clit, bringing you swiftly to another cresting orgasm, leaving you shaking and broken and near weeping in his arms, coming down from your high as he finishes himself off, cock twitching inside of you. 

Jungkook’s hand leaves your pussy, sliding up your stomach until he reaches the underside of your jaw. He grabs you, turning your face to his, stealing your mouth in a sloppy, searing kiss. 

“Mine,” he mumbles against your mouth between kisses. “Mine.” 

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[yourlocaltreesimp]

The First to be Forsaken

been in the works for a while!! This was actually a request that got deleted.

So to the anon who requested a reader who was cursed by Hylia like Eda in the owl house, this is for you!

tw: chronic illness, death

۵♡۵

The ache in your hands never lessened and the maring cracks in your skin never healed. It made for a rather ugly sight, all considered. The creeping vine-like scars showing in rather gorey details the tainted flesh.

No medical salve nor healing spell could rid you of the malice that poisoned your blood. And according to the words of the fairies themselves, it’s latched to your very soul. It festers, feeding off of your energy until you’ll be left as a husk. A puppet with no one to pull its strings.

It’s not pleasant knowing you’re going to die, but it’s less so knowing that no matter how often you pray to the goddess it will not be fixed. The divine never needed to give reason for why they shunned that which gives them power. Still, the chain did what they could, and for that you had many thanks.

Wild always had hearty food to replace the energy stolen from you, Legend let you wear whatever charmed jewellery you wanted, Time would never let you take night shifts, Warriors would carry you on the days you were too fragile to walk, Twilight doubled as a bed and his pelt as a blanket, Four made braces for your brittle joints, Hyrule was always testing different mixes in hopes that one might lessen your pain, Sky would hold your hand and talk to you on the days you could walk to make sure that you had something to distract from the crying of your nerves, even Wind spared some of his grandmother’s soup in hopes that of it didn’t rid of pain, it might ease your distress. Your Heroes were funny like that, sacrificing whatever they had for anyone that needed it, no matter how precious their time or belongings are. Certainly not a coincidence they act this way. They’ve seen what’s become of you under the neglect of the gods. And you’ve seen the familiar ache in their eyes, the recognition of themselves within you.

The newest hero, First —well perhaps then he’s the oldest— was in many ways similar. He too would offer you stories and ballads from his time, forgotten by the time the next era rolled in. His words had a majesty that had the whole camp turn an ear to follow whatever tale he recalled. And by the time it came for you to lay your head and rest, your woes would be far off from the front of your mind.

He’d sweep you off your feet both in the figurative matter and the literal. With only the gentlest graze of your skin and only the sweetest words that could be uttered did he regard you. He did not hold you to a sense of pity, as was common among many who knew of you, but a genuine care. A care for you beyond measure that he’d shown on many occasions that he would stop at nothing to ensure that if you could not be comfortable, you could be content.

And currently you were, despite it being a bad day.

The champion watched over the cooking pot carefully and the traveller flicked through one of his journals, looking for a combination of herbs that might be of help to you. The two passed questions back and forth in an effort to find an overlap of medicinals they haven’t already tried.

You had Twi’s pelt, Sky’s sailcloth and First’s scarf to try and dull your cold flashes. You leaned back against the First hero as his arms warped around you and his face buried into your shoulder. You shiver as the next cold wave hits, wincing. The moment sits in silence before his arms around your abdomen gently pull you closer.

“I am sorry for what she did to you, My beloved.” His voice was deep and poetic as usual, the unwavering strength he displayed to the world melted to softness at your touch. Through the staticky emptiness that settled in your brain, the question stood, alone and without any real context nor answer.

“What do you mean?” Your brows furrow and you look over at where he rests his head on your shoulder. He draws a heavy breath, mumbling something into your layers of clothing.

“Hylia- all of this because of her vanity. I am sorry you fell victim.” There is a pain in his voice, a guilt he’s held for long. Shackles upon his wrists that he’s not willing to let himself be freed from. You suppose it is him where their united care for the world came from, no matter how unrequited. He’d bleed himself dry for the world if it meant that it’d be better.

“I don’t mind being here with you all” You hear the distant rowdy laughter of Wind and Twi, and you find it in yourself to bask in this one moment, “It’s certainly worth it. To me, at least.” He grumbles happily, kissing the nearest place of unscathed skin he can find, right below your jaw.

“I am glad, Dearest. But that-“ His voice wavers as another chill wracks your body. You can only find a wince as you try to block away the ever advancing chill.

“That is not what I meant. I- It’s because of her that you cannot find rest. It is she who whittled down your bones and set alight your nerves” You find nothing to say as you stare at him, urging for more. “She thought it was wrong for me to love you, to long for your care and yearn to hold your heart. So, she tainted y-“ You wish to hear his words. A muse longing to read the poets works, and yet-

The words grow fuzzy as the gloom within you swells, gnawing painfully at your bones. It seems that you had forgotten exactly how brittle you were. It was always hubris that killed heroes, wasn’t it? But that didn’t make sense. You were no hero. How could it be hubris if you never meant to taunt the gods. How could that be- you weren’t dying, are you?

They said you’d be ok.

You’ll be ok right?

Everything will be ok?

The pressure in your head doesn’t stop growing and your stomach hurls.

The sun is so bright.

It hurts.

She’s taking you again, isn’t she?

[nothorses]

I noticed that you reposted something that is along the lines of proship

I agree with leaving media alone but I think its incredibly disgusting when people ship, for example siblings, because what it feels to me is that they have an incest fetish or something

I know just because someone writes about murder doesnt mean they support it, and I believe that. but usually when people write about murder it's in a negative context, obviously showing how it is so incomprehensible to outsiders about how someone could do that, or showing how we need to get these people help.

trying to apply this to, for example, incest, if someone ships an incestuous relationship then it seems like it would be in a good context, and it seems like they support it should it be in real life. that's how I view this all. (itd be different if they shipped siblings as a strange headcanon and talking about how it's bad... this reasoning I can understand the most to the point where I can let myself ignore it)

how am I supposed to learn to not care? especially when they are really outward about it?

okay.

I do not participate in shipping discourse because I do not participate in shipping. I'm not really In Fandom anymore like, generally. I don't... care.

Because of this I had literally no idea what you were referring to in this ask. I had to scroll. So far back. To get to this post, which also doesn't refer to shipping discourse.

I also have not talked about incest here, and the post in question doesn't talk about incest.

It's about murder. And gore. Which you say here is fine.

Literally why did you send me this ask.

And like... there's a fair chance this is just bait, and there's also enough of a chance that you're genuinely asking that, like, fuck it. I'm gonna get shit no matter what I do, so I may as well try to do a little good.

You use the words "feels" and "seems" a lot in this ask. And I'm really glad you did, actually, because I think it's honest; you're operating on your feelings and assumptions, and that's really important to keep in mind.

And your feelings on this are valid! It's normal to be uncomfortable with certain content, and it's normal to not want to see or engage in it. You don't need to feel any differently about those things. You don't have to consume incestuous content, you don't have to be okay with it, and you don't have to be around it.

But ask yourself: you assume that other people engaging in this content means they support it in real life, but what if they don't? What if you're wrong?

Maybe they're saying it's wrong in a way you're just not picking up on, or that you don't recognize. Maybe they aren't saying it's wrong; maybe it's in the context. Maybe it's in a genre trope in a genre you're not familiar with. Maybe it's irony or satire that you aren't picking up on. Maybe they aren't saying it at all, but that's still what they think, and they just chose not to put it in that content for... who knows what reason. Maybe they're literally just bad at writing.

What then?

Sometimes you're going to feel or assume that something is going on, and you're just gonna be wrong. And you could ask who's fault that is- did you fail to pick up on something you should have been able to, or did they fail to communicate it well enough?- but like, what are you going to do with that information?

Sometimes people are not very good at literary analysis, and sometimes people are not very good at writing, and that's just part of learning. Do we tell everyone not to attempt to talk about certain topics unless they're "good enough" to do it "right"? How do we know when someone's "good enough", and how do they get to that point without practice? Do we just ban those topics altogether? What topics do we ban- where's the line? How do we enforce it? How do we prevent that from being weaponized against marginalized people?

Anon, you asked me how you can "not care" about these things existing. And I think that's a valid question; you feel there is injustice, and you want to stop it. That can be a very noble impulse, and it can be harnessed for a lot of good.

But it can also be really, really toxic- not just to the people you hurt because you act on assumptions and impulses that are incorrect, but to yourself. You can't control everything. You can't control how other people feel, whether or how they engage in certain topics, or what they do or say. You just can't. And trying, or wanting to try, or thinking you should try- it's going to drive you nuts.

So here's how not to care:

Remind yourself that you might be wrong. Take a moment to think about all the things you don't know for certain, and the things you would need to know to be absolutely, 100% sure that you're right.

Consider how important this is to you. How close is this person to you? How important is this issue? What would it feel like to let this go- would it continue to impact you? Do you have other options? (removing yourself from the situation, blocking tags/posts/people, etc.)

Consider what you can do, and what you should do. Think about the tools at your disposal, the power you have in this situation, and how likely this person is to listen to you. Think about whether those tools are ethical. Again, what if you're wrong? Is there any reason you might regret your actions?

If you still feel like it's worth addressing, start by asking questions. Make sure you really know what's going on, and if (and when) the situation changes with new information, walk through this process again. Repeat back what you believe is happening until they confirm that you're right, decide again whether this is worth it, and then proceed.

Sometimes it's more effective to just vent to someone else, or to make a post about the issue generally without confronting that person- especially considering your assumptions might be wrong! Maybe it's worth it to talk about what you thought was happening, but you don't know that what you thought was happening is what was actually happening. You can still talk about it, just, y'know, without making it an attack on someone else.

And again, I don't give a shit about fandom discourse. This is important to me because these are themes that crop up in regular-ass media all the time, and disagreements that crop up in regular-ass relationships with friends and family and loved ones. I think it's important that people have the skills to navigate disagreements, unintentional harm, and perceived slights in healthy, productive ways.

You can't live your whole life demanding that everyone agree with you on everything, or blaming other people for everything you misinterpret or assume incorrectly. You cannot assume that everything that hurts you was designed to hurt you. You can recognize that these are assumptions and feelings, and that's great! And I hope you're being honest when you say that you want to learn to let things go.

[lemotmo]

I am clapping

Q. A Tommy heavy episode and you have answered and posted several opinions trying to sound unbiased but your very loud Eddie/Buddie bias is showing.

A. I have spent most of the day stating very clearly that the show has established Tommy as a perfectly fine guy. A perfectly suitable choice for Buck. I have said that in multiple posts and answers today. But perfectly fine doesn't mean right, and I'm going to keep saying that because that's also clearly being established by the show. And if you genuinely watched last night's episode, or any episode that has featured Tommy, and came away with any other opinion then you didn't actually watch the episodes. But that's fitting for your pattern over these past months. None of you are actually bothering to watch the show. You're watching only his scenes, and not even pretending to pay attention to the actual point of any of his scenes. You're watching in order to fan girl over him on Twitter in the hopes that he will acknowledge you. End of story. This next part is going to piss you off, anon. I'm going to give you the business reasons why Tommy is not viable long term, and then I'm going to give you the storyline reasons why he's not viable long term. With today's media most viewers watch the episodes on some sort of streaming service after the live episode airs because the Netflix generation has no idea how to consume traditional weekly serials. They want the ability to skip commercials and other aspects of the show that they may not be particularly interested in. That's just the way it works nowadays. With that came an entirely different way of marketing. Shows depend on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and other social media platforms to promote their product. There is a reason why Buck/Eddie/Buddie is used for promotion by 911 more than any other aspect of their show. Without question and without hesitation their fanbase is by far the leading force behind their social media presence. And it's not particularly close. The cast overall is very popular with their audience. The main cast are all liked by the viewers, which is a rare feat for a television show. Everyone likes the couples on the show as well. But the Buddie fanbase are the viewers who actively engage in the marketing the most. And everyone involved in the show, Tim. Oliver and Ryan included, knows this. The show cannot afford to alienate or lose that fanbase. It's an undeniable fact. They make up too much of the viewership. Right or wrong, fair or not, that's the way media works nowadays. Clicks and likes equals money. It's the entire reason why you all tried to pretend you were thousands and thousands of people instead of the roughly few thousand people you actually turned out to be. And that's a generous number now. You're aware of how it works. You just don't have the numbers to actually compete. Everyone figured that out relatively easily. It's why you all turned to threats and bullying.

On paper Tommy is the love interest who they should have been able to make work. And had he been introduced in seasons 3 or 4 as a love interest he might have had a chance, but it's too late now. That's the real root of the problem the show finds itself in. It's too late to introduce other options for either Buck or Eddie that the audience will care about at all. No one else can compete with what they create together. It's that simple. And last night's episode was the perfect example. Talk to any viewer, any consistent viewer, that doesn't classify themselves as a shipper, and they're on Twitter just like everyone else, then read all the reviews, not just from the Buddie jurnos, and the overwhelming opinion of his scenes was that he wasn't necessary. He felt out of place, which the show intended by the way. Anything Tommy is there to do most of the audience believes Eddie can do better. And that opinion would go for Buck as well if we were talking about an Eddie love interest. It's too late, anon. And I think the show knows that as well. Any chance they had at not doing it is long gone. And not doing it at this point is going to cost them. But I think the plan is to pair them together. I don't know if they will have Eddie label himself as gay (though I'm a demi Eddie truther) because they doubled down on his Shannon love too long to try and undo that now, and I don't think they should undo it anyway. I think as far as the show goes he'll have been in love with Shannon and now he'll be in love with Buck. I think that's partly why they've compared Buck and Shannon when the opportunities have presented themselves to do so. Ryan did it several times in interviews during the off-season as well. I don't know how they plan to get them together story wise, but I do believe they're going to do it. And I don't really care how they do it. It's the right way to go. It's the best way forward story wise for both characters. And it really is their only option. The show is 3 for 3 on their endgame pairings and Buck and Eddie are too beloved to be stuck with endgames less than that of their peers. I'm sorry mine and other's media literacy have made us biased, anon. It's the burden of actually understanding what we're watching.

Thank you Nonny! Much appreciated, as usual!

As to this post? YES, YES and YEEEES! I completely agree with everything here. Everyone of us just keep repeating the same facts. It's nice to see all of these facts compiled and explained so nicely in one post.

I'm just posting this as it is. I've got nothing to add.

IMPORTANT! Please don't repost this ask and/or a link that leads straight to my Tumblr account on Twitter or any other social media. Thank you!

Heads up! For anyone who is giving me the shifty eyes for reposting Ali's updates instead of reblogging. Read this.

Remember, no hate in comments, reblogs or inboxes. Let's keep it civil and respectful. Thank you.

If you are interested in more of Ali’s posts, you can find all of her posts so far under the tag: anonymous blog I love.

[lottieurl]

PLEASE do share your thoughts on Jackie's parents 👀

THANK YOU for the encouragement. this might get long

let's start with how a while ago i got an anon implying that jackie was pampered by her parents BASED on the scene with adult shauna and them on jackie's birthday. which was the first time it ever occurred to me that people watched that scene and saw something completely different from what i saw. absolutely incomprehensible TO ME to even imagine that because i remember watching it for the first time and thinking that jackie's parents are straight out of a horror movie. there is something so sinister about how they treat shauna all while essentially replacing jackie WITH shauna. shauna gets jackie's gift and i believe (although i'd have to rewach the scene to make sure) shauna blows the candles on JACKIE'S cake and shauna is there with jackie's high school boyfriend. jackie's mother went to her wedding!! the show is not subtle about them putting shauna in the role of the daughter they lost. so why treat her so horribly? when they have no reason to because they don't know she was sleeping with jeff before plane crash before it's revealed to them in that very scene

so what that tells me and how i interpret it is: that's how they were treating jackie when she was alive. there is this insidious sort of cruelty that's masked by fake kindness? but constantly puts you down in ways that's hard to shake off. and jackie was probably Never good enough no matter how much she tried. she only became the Perfect Daughter after death when they could start treating shauna the way they treated jackie. like WHY is jackie such a deeply deeply insecure character? why does she crave validation sooooo bad? and we know she doesn't have a good relationship with her parents from how she talks about her mother when she gives shauna the pills on the plane (and implies her parents are neglectful) and when she says she has curfew and it's very much implied her parents would react badly vs shauna saying she has curfew too but being so unbothered by it she finds time to fuck jeff on her way home lmao. and to me people who fail to notice that are fooled by the appearances. jackie's parents have money and a big house and AFTER JACKIE IS DEAD idealize her. but what they seem not to notice is that the purpose of talking about how perfect jackie was is to belittle shauna. this isn't grieving parents who miss their daughter to me

and now actually let's talk about how i think that interpretation influences jackie as a character. we see how in moments of insecurity she does say things that are... i suppose a mix of self centered and not INTENTIONALLY mean but still hurtful to shauna. but she does usually backtrack and says sorry and her (many many MANY) moments of kindness always come off as genuine to me like she's starved for approval, she craves being loved. i think she keeps coming back to jeff just because even tho she doesn't want HIM she wants to be wanted and wants to be seen as someone who's wanted. but so much of her kindness sometimes feels. how do i put it. anxious? and so i imagine how living with her parents was for her. you're a kid and your parents keep finding ways to belittle you and to shame you but in ways that aren't very obvious especially to a child. you're a kid! you want their approval! so you learn HOW to be and HOW to act to maybe get it. if i am sweet and compliment them and i become the perfect daughter maybe they'll love me. and then you start applying that behavior to all your relationships and you're not even self aware about it. you're a teenager and you're trying so hard