#like in one scene he's tiny enough to ride a chicken and in another scene almost a size of a 8 year old child (that is too big to ride one)

[tickled-pink-64]

thinking about his laugh in the OP... 💝💖💕💓💗

so much i wanna gush about him (platonically) in general but basically: SUCH A WHIMSY SILLY LITTLE FELLA ONG! HE LITERALLY LAUGHS IN HE HE HE AND ESPECIALLY HO HO HO AS IF HE'S SANTA!

he's such an adorable guy

and he does this in the book too (and i know what y'all are thinking: don't joke about his name please it became incredibly unoriginal and unfunny to me at this point)

[ceruleanchillin]

5 Day Stay

| Or, Angel down bad for a week |

Angel x F!Reader

Warnings: language, infidelity, Angst (?), lil bit chili spice at the end

Mon:

Angel felt he was too young to consistently feel so bone-tired, yet that’s how his day had been ending for weeks now. Sometimes it was all he could do to get off his bike and make it to the door, only to have to rest his head against it to prepare to make it to the couch and collapse.

Tonight was one of those nights, and he wanted to be dead to the world until it dragged him back into it.

It was the smell of mixed spices that hit him first. It felt like he was in suspended animation, and slowly being released as different things started to register to him.

His TV was on, someone was rummaging through his kitchen, and music played faintly from his desk. Thinking back to the last time an unwanted guest was in his kitchen, he placed a hand on the holstered knife fastened to his back.

The fridge door closed, and you appeared in the window, eyes focused intently on whatever you were cooking on the stove.

He exhaled, feeling like complete shit. It only spoke to how weary his mind was that he could forget you were staying with him for the next week. Especially after the conversation that led to it.

“I don’t know Angel…really I can afford a motel for a few days.”

“Here? Rusted-through pipes will be the last thing your landlord is worried about when you bring back bedbugs and shit.”

Your eyes had widened at that, but still you brought up the thing that had been chained to your hesitation. “I mean….do you think it’s ok to do this? After we…Nails..Ang-“

He remembered a flash of irritation, more so at himself than you, when you said that. “Yes querida, fuck. If you’re so scared, I most likely won’t even be there the way things are going. Nails is out of town til’ next weekend…”

“Relax Ignacio.” you had cut your eyes at him, and he’d felt his dick jump like it did whenever you gave him attitude. “I’m just not trying to be a problem.”

Your voice calling his name brought him to the present. He caught the last part of your statement, that you didn’t know he’d be back.

“Yeah, we got in earlier than expected.”

“While you’re standing there like a weirdo, let me shame you real quick. How does a man in his thirties still have the kitchen of a frat boy?” You leaned on the sill of the divider. “You’re lucky I already knew you were sad in the kitchen. I had to bring my own tagine.”

He stepped into the kitchen, his stomach coming alive with interest. “One, I don’t know what that is, two, I can’t help it if the kitchen isn’t my preferred room of work.”

He peeked over your shoulder, but the unique pot kept him from seeing what you were making.

“Neither is the bedroom, unless that work is piling up dirty laundry.” you stuck your tongue out at him and turned back to your simmering dish.

“Ha ha. Dinner and a show, she does it all folks!” he collapsed at the table, the day catching back up with him. “Should put your ass on the club’s payroll. End the cashflow problem real quick.”

You turned to him, concern etched on your face. “I heard from Hank about that…sorry. I know now isn’t a great time for that at all.”

Things got awkward like they always did when you referenced the recent changes of his life. He wasn’t sad about getting another chance at fatherhood, this one more tangible than the last. However, he wasn’t entirely sold on everything he’d accepted along with it, and he was pretty sure you at least suspected that. It threw the previously comfortable confusion that was your relationship off track when it was touched on.

“No, it’s not.” was all he could manage.

It was quiet for a beat, the simmering of the food and quiet Neo Soul the only sounds.

“Well,” you started, turning off the burner. “At least you don’t have to eat like a ‘we got food at the house’ meme for once.”

He laughed, a genuine and needed laugh. “Ok, you know what? Keep talking about my pantry stocking skills, and I might take it personally.”

The rest of his night went that way. Anytime you and Angel got together, things were just…easy…better. You spent the evening eating in front of the TV (Angel getting all the way to thirds for what turned out to be olive chicken and roasted potatoes), trading jokes, and going over the finer points of Golden Girls. Angel learned you took it very seriously, and mocked you for being “old”.

It wasn’t until you were nodding off, and he was left with his own thoughts, that he realized he hadn’t enjoyed coming home this much since he moved in.

Tues:

Angel had dreamed he’d been back in his childhood home, but as a grown man. There was music coming from his parent’s room, and when he got to the doorway, his mom was at her dressing table. She hummed along to the soulful seventies music and smiled at him from the mirror. She said something, but he couldn’t make it out, and woke up in the frustration.

He jerked up from his position on his stomach, and slowly came to. With a grunt he wiped his hand down his face, glancing at his phone to find it was six in the afternoon.

It then occurred to him the music wasn’t just in his dream, it was coming from his bathroom. He got off the couch and followed the sound.

“Hey coma head.” you grinned at him from where you were doing your makeup.

He shook his head, trying to let go of the last vestiges of the dream, and how eerie the scene before him was.

He focused instead on the nightmare of products and alien looking tools surrounding you.

He kind of liked the mess, even if he couldn’t see the counter anymore.

“Hey hurricane Ulta.”

You made a face that was a cross between being amused and suspicious. “You sleep in your jeans and buy your shirts in pack form. Don’t act like you know what that is.”

He made a face of mock offense. “That’s so classist.”

This time you paused completely in you what you were doing and twisted your body to meet him. “Uh oh…let me find out you’re actually learning something from EZ.”

“Angel Reyes can know something about something, damn.”

You laughed, lowering your hands from where you’d been lining your eyes to avoid a mistake. “I’m only teasing you Angel Reyes.”

“Looks like you plan on teasing more than me. Some clown is gonna get his hopes and tiny dick up for nothing.”

“There’s this new club in the city that Belinda’s getting us into. It’s bad luck to buy your own drinks on the first night at a new place.” you adjusted the bodycon mini-dress for emphasis. “You doing anything?”

“Club shit.” he started picking through the products, sniffing them every so often. “Then I think I’ve got a call with Nails at some point.”

“You think?” you popped his hands when he got too close to the good stuff, or the things you were using currently.

“Yeah..I think.” he shrugged, only realizing how short he sounded when you winced.

He didn’t know why he got so annoyed when she was brought up around you. He wasn’t like that with anyone else, and he knew you were only trying to support his incoming changes.

“Ok..”

Awkward silence settled in before he found the words to break it.

“Why do you wanna know? You want me to be that clown?”

“Never.” you pinched his cheek, tone pure saccharine jest.

He muttered in Spanish, stepping around you to the toilet.

“Angel!” you exclaimed.

“What?! It’s my bathroom, I have to piss.”

“You better never make me angry Reyes, I could end your whole Casanova game with ease."

Wed:

“You holding on a little tight there mami!” Angel called over his shoulder with a laugh. “You said go fast."

“Shut up!” you giggled, but he wasn’t lying.

You’d asked Angel to take you to work on his bike since even though you spent so much time with bikers, you hardly got to ride one. You were going to the same place anyways. He had been all too happy to shake up his commute, but your speed challenge took it over the top.

He didn’t know how you were up so early, he personally felt like the bags under his eyes were like a PEZ dispenser. You’d gotten in at two am, and still got up with him at eight.

He loved watching you in the morning, you managed to be cheerful without being obnoxious, and it worked better than coffee for him.

He loved how much he was learning about you.

As he pulled onto the street beside the cafe you’d asked him to stop at, he felt your arms uncoil from around him. He may have pretended to shift just to make you pause and hold him a few seconds longer, but he wasn’t going to acknowledge that.

“I didn’t scream, and I’m not shaking, so you still have to buy my breakfast.” You unclipped your helmet, grinning the whole time.

You looked so pretty to him, with the sun hitting your eyes and hair just right. He could catch you at just the right moment, and you’d look so gorgeous, he struggled to believe you were real.

He cleared his throat, afraid his voice would crack if he didn’t. “Fair enough, come break my pockets then.”

You laughed, squeezing his chin and pointing out his pout. “You don’t even have to tell me once sir, I know my worth.”

Once inside, he trailed after you to the counter, using your head like an arm rest when you reached it. “That’s good.”

“Boy!” You swatted his hand away, and it was his turn to laugh at your adorable pout.

“New bet,” he stepped around you while the customer ahead of you wrapped up. “If I get your entire order just right, you buy lunch.”

“Deal.” you leaned on the counter, eyebrow raised at him in challenge.

Angel knew the best part of his day would be watching your expression go from smug to shocked out of the corner of his eye. He nailed every pastry, the iced coffee, and their preparation with ease.

The simultaneously impressed and amused barista looked to you for confirmation. She got a shocked nod in response.

“I know my worth too mama, so don’t skimp on lunch.”

“Fair enough.” You shook off your shock as you repeated his earlier words and shrugged. “Can’t complain I guess. I trained my work husband too well.”

He scoffed loudly, and the two of you went back to swapping smart ass barbs while he tried to ignore the lingering dip his stomach did when referred to him as “husband”.

Thurs:

Angel was a grown man, with years of grown man experience, yet he was sitting on the edge of his bed feeling like a teenager again.

The end of your stay was nearing, and every time he thought about you going back home, he felt weird. He was pretty sure that’s why he’d been a little snappy and annoyed easily at the club the past couple days. He just wasn’t ready to delve into that too much.

Regardless, he had to admit you had some growing effect over him. All morning, while he should’ve been resting and preparing for a charter visit, he was fighting off hard-ons thanks to you.

“Can I borrow your kitchen for the day Angel?” He mimicked your voice in a nasally mocking tone. “I’ll save you some when I’m done baking.”

He’d thought nothing of it when you asked the night before. Really didn’t even feel like you had to at that point.

He realized why when he saw that the desserts you were making for your friend’s brunch were elaborate as hell. The effort took all your attention, and unfortunately for him, his too.

You were baking a lot more than dessert and didn’t even know it.

Now he was hiding in his room, fighting off arousal he knew wasn’t appropriate. You weren’t his and he wasn’t yours.

That didn’t change the fact that you in a short silk lounge set, singing in French (how the hell did you know French?), doing domestic things in his home, did it for him.

He ran a hand over his hair, still damp from his cold shower, and forced himself to finish getting dressed. He had to be ready to face a room of dangerous bikers and prove his patched in worth. He couldn’t be thinking of weird little fantasies and parallels to his parent’s marriage.

He must’ve zoned out again, because you startled him enough to almost make him hit his wardrobe.

“Oh my god Angel try this! I think I did magic.” You excitedly thrust a red cookie his way.

Angel took the offered treat, and found it was a red velvet cookie. “It’s fucking good mi dulce.”

“Really?” You looked so hopeful, so beautiful, that he would’ve lied if the situation called for it.

“Yes, but you know you kill it in the kitchen.” He turned away to put on the flannel he’d fished out.

Now you were in his personal space, smelling amazing, and all his senses were under attack. He couldn’t trust Angel jr. at the moment.

“Baking is different. It’s a whole thing for me...I go all in.”

“I noticed your little Broadway production in my kitchen.” He kneeled down, pretending to look for his shoes as something to do while you were there.

“Don’t shame me.” You pressed your foot into his back, gently pushing him. “It makes for better results.”

‘shit.’ He cursed mentally at the contact.

Luckily, he heard you turn to leave the room. “Oh, EZ said to tell you to hurry up or pick up your phone.”

He rose up once you were gone and checked his phone. Sure enough, he had several missed calls and texts from Gilly, Coco, and EZ. He cursed aloud this time and finished getting ready, determined not to get distracted again.

Of course, his boys having to physically come in and get him when he did just that destroyed that promise.

Fri:

It had come down to the last night of your stay with him, and what he thought was a favor to a good friend, turned out to be more for his benefit.

The hell with the club seemed so far away when he was home now, and he’d laughed more times that week than he had the previous few months total.

Tonight though… Tonight had him so in his head he didn’t know if he was coming or going.

You, sensing something was going on with him, had invited EZ and Felipe to dinner. He didn’t know how you got the latter to agree, his dad had never even been in his home before, but you did it. It went over a hell of a lot better than the last time they tried it too.

The missteps that reared their head when his family tried to talk to each other at length were mitigated by you. You were the perfect buffer, able to get them to engage with you and then each other.

He saw his family in an unfamiliar, but favorable light. His father was actually enjoying his time with him in his house. He knew that night wouldn’t have happened if not for you.

Now, as he distractedly dried the dishes you’d washed, listening to you hit all of the high notes in Loving You, it hit him.

‘She should be my wife’ the thought came so quick, and was so loud he almost jumped, confused if it came from him or someone else.

“Hey dishwasher-less!” you nudged him with your hip. “Move those hands.”

“Why can’t we be a thing?” he blurted.

You dropped the silverware you’d been washing, eyes wide and focused on him. “Um..excuse m-…what?”

He knew that wasn’t the most tactful way to introduce his thoughts to you, but it was his way. Fuck…he didn’t even understand them fully himself.

“You heard me querida,” he put the dish down on the counter, turning to you. “When I stayed with you that weekend that my head was all fucked up-“

“Angel.” your tone made it a warning, but he kept going. He was never afraid of a challenge.

“I was inside you so much that weekend I forgot that’s not how I came in this world. I can’t believe I’m saying it out loud, but I felt home cause I was with you-”

“Stop it!” you hit the sink, rattling the contents.

“Fuck that!” he shouted back, startling you both. He stayed silent for a moment before speaking in a calmer tone. “Fuck that. Why can’t we talk about it? Why couldn’t we talk about it then?”

You didn’t say anything, but he saw your chest heaving with adrenaline, and realized you were just as affected by the conversation as he was.

“You just decided it didn’t matter and put it in this space we can’t touch now. It’s all fucked up!”

“Because,” you hissed. “If you remember, it was all over that Adelita chick, and I don’t know what kind of hold she has or had over you, but it was deep.”

He cringed at that, and turned his attention to the light fixture over your head, unable to meet your heated gaze.

“Whatever feelings I have for you Angel, I put them away in a place where I can still be your friend and keep things in perspective.”

“Feelings you have for me?” he latched on to the lack of past tense, hopeful.

You inhaled sharply. “You are having a baby and just got engaged. What is wrong with you?”

“Nothing..I mean a lot, but nothing to do with this. I know-“

“I know,” you pushed away from the sink and reached up to cup his cheeks. “That you’re scared Angel. You’re scared, because you’re gonna take two steps you’ve never taken before at once, and you’re trying to sabotage it.”

He shook his head, taking your hands from his face and holding them tightly in his own. “No..mi dulce, no. I’ve been struggling with this all week, longer if I’m being honest. Tonight sealed it.”

You snorted humorlessly, looking around the kitchen as if something in the room would help you get through to him. “I cook you some big boy meals, and treat your speakers to some musical taste, and you’re ready for vows?”

“Don’t put this all on me. Tell me you don’t feel it. Right here and now, to my face.”

He watched your expression soften, and let you put one hand back on his face, your thumb gently stroking his cheek. “Ok, I can’t do that, but I also can’t just fall into a situation with you either.”

He scoffed and shook his head. “We both know we didn’t just fall into anything. We sat here and let it build and didn’t say shit, and now I have to. This week just made it too real not to.”

He placed his forehead to yours, his own hands cupping your face. “Please…”

He watched you have an internal battle by your changing features before you finally leaned into him. The moment you did, his lips were on yours.

He knew it was more than just a kiss a few seconds in. Everything he’d felt that the previous week was alive and confirmed between you too. He could feel you telling him you had moments like his own.

He palmed your thighs under your sundress before grasping them tightly and lifting you up. He placed you on the counter while you two separated for air. Your chests heaved in unison, and neither of you had to say you wanted the other touching you again before it happened.

He gripped your hair, tilting your head back for access to your neck. The smell of vanilla and cocoa butter surrounded him as he worked his mark all over your skin.

Your legs wrapped around his waist, and you pressed yourself against his jeans.

He hated he couldn’t feel the heat he knew was emitting from your core through the thick material of his jeans, and slid his other hand up your thigh to your panties.

Your entire body twitched when he ran his fingers over you through the thin cloth. It wasn’t just hot it was soaked.

“You need me that bad mami?” he pulled away from your neck, satisfied with his work, and beginning to work at his jeans.

“And quick.” you breathed into his ear, your tone and the sensation making him shudder.

The ache against his jeans didn’t need to be told twice to find its way into your heat. He slid your panties to side and pressed his thumb against you. You jumped, whimpering your need again, and he pulled your panties way from you.

You’d gotten them around one ankle before he was inside of you, and they were no longer your focus.

You clung to each other so tightly there’d be evidence on both of you.

In the quiet, he wondered if your mind was racing with the same thoughts that his was. What now? How do we get this again?

He pressed kisses to your cheek just as he started to move. You inhaled, your nails sliding down his back. Not quite catching the skin, but enough to set him on fire all the same.

He mapped out a rhythm by your whimpers and how you grasped at him until he crafted the right one.

This was the conversation he’d needed. Every thrust from him, every cry from you, every bit of give and take to heighten the other’s pleasure. The two of you were admitting that everything that was between you was deeper, realer than you’d wanted to admit. He loved you, and you loved him, and you were engraving that on one another.

The flirtation, the way you could be yourselves around each other, the heatless jabs. Good friends was always a ruse.

Your face was buried in his neck, and when he felt dampness he knew came from your tears, he hiked your legs higher, moving deeper.

You cried out so loudly it echoed in the kitchen, drowning out the soft crooning of an eighties songstress.

“I know baby, I feel it too.” his voice was choked by the threat of tears of his own.

He’d never been here before. Not with Adelita, not even close with Nails. He was terrified. Terrified for it to end because he never felt so good. Terrified for it to end because it might never happen again.

“Angel..” your voice sounded so small, but it was strong enough to anchor him back with you. “I’m close, I’m so close.”

“Let go,” he encouraged. “Let me have it querida.”

Your body seized up with your release, his name the only thing he caught in your unintelligible babble.

You clenched up repeatedly in the aftershocks, and that drug him over the edge with you, biting your shoulder.

His vision tunneled, pinpricks of pleasure traveling up and down his spine. Your hands smoothed up and down the area, and he realized it was because he was shuddering.

He gripped the counter for support, pulling back slowly. He was searching for a way to ask if he’d changed your mind, but the act hadn’t made words for his thoughts any easier to find.

It didn’t matter, before he could even speak you stopped him. Your eyes were glazed over with tears that had nothing to do with pleasure this time.

“That was all that I can give you Angel. It’s not right, none of this is, but it’s all I can give you.”

AN:

Am I the only one who wishes she had reference photos for their home/club layouts? Lol, it’s such a weird non-factor thing, but still. From memory, I’m pretty sure Angel only has one bedroom though.

No shade, no hate but this was partially inspired by how over Nails Angel looked when she was putting her back into it….🥴

I played with a few canon-timeline things + knocked the dust off my smut writing ability (I’m going under my humiliation rock now, no calls plz)

[jeonjeonggukenergy]

Anti-Hero

summary ~ in search of wine at a party that’s so not your scene, you run into jungkook, the weeb from your film class, and become determined to learn just how much he lives up to his big reputation.

pairing ~ jungkook x reader

genre ~ fluff, smut - college!au

wordcount ~ 8.5k

warnings ~ 18+ only! smut, explicit discussion of kinks/sexual preferences (yay healthy communication), dom/sub undertones during both discussion and sex (dom Jungkook, sub reader), mentions of daddy kink and degradation but both are a no, marking, biting, hair pulling, spanking, they both have a srs pain kink lmao, brief oral (f receiving), penetrative sex, creampie

a/n ~ SO excited to finally have this chapter out for yall! it’s a huge one and i’ve been working on it for quite a while, this includes the first full smut scene for this fic and i would love to know how yall like it or any other feedback. i really enjoyed writing the character development in this chapter too! they’re so cute and whipped for each other already hhhhhh. thank you so much for loving this story so far, i’m really looking forward to writing the rest. hope you enjoy! ❣️

previous: chapter 1 | chapter 2 ~ next: chapter 4 (coming soon!) 

~ read on ao3 ~

CHAPTER 3 ~ particular, perfect

You concluded your walk home by ditching your shoes at the door, swinging your bag off your shoulders to the floor, and plopping down onto the couch immediately. Pulling all three nearby blankets over yourself, you realized you still weren't quite comfortable. You looked around for a second, puzzled, until an absentminded clutch of your boobs reminded you why. Triumphantly, you reached into a sleeve to untangle your bra and chucked it across the room with a deep stretch of relief. Okay, time to overthink again.

Jungkook? What the fuck?

Wait. A bag of chips on the kitchen counter caught your eye before you could descend any further into panic. The perfect emotional crutch. You clutched it to your chest like a safeguard against your own internal monologue, anxiously shoving handful after handful into your mouth. After about thirty minutes spent motionless on the couch with one hand shoved in the chip bag and the other distractedly scrolling through Twitter, your eyes suddenly widened and your hand froze, dropping your next bite of chips back into the bag. Fuck. You had just eaten nearly an entire family-size bag of chips before what could end up being your first fuck in over a year. Well, maybe this was part of why you hadn't gotten fucked in over a year. No, don't go there. You shoved down your own insecurity, knowing you'd just been too busy for a relationship and honestly, probably still were. But that wasn't going to stop you today.

You shook the chip dust off of your hands and got up to head to the shower, turning up your trashiest throwback playlist of getting-ready bops and resolving to at least shave your legs. Going in with no expectations was probably the best strategy here, but it never hurt to be prepared.

~

Having cleaned his apartment in record time, Jungkook was now at the gym. After triple-checking that his roommate Jin would be in rehearsal until 10pm at the earliest, he quickly scanned all the common spaces and his bedroom and realized he didn't actually have that much work to do besides politely closing the door to Jin's still-decent-but-somewhat-messier room. To be honest, Jungkook had mainly bought himself the time after class so he could shave just in case. But then he figured if he had to shower, he might as well hit the gym first. So here he was, burning off an unprecedented amount of nervous energy. Settling comfortably into the leg curl machine, he turned his music up and started on a low weight to put in reps until his thighs burned and his head felt pleasantly empty.

After completing his normal leg day rotation and dutifully stretching, Jungkook prepared to head home. He walked out of the gym feeling more energized and centered, barely even flinching when he switched his AirPods off to say bye to the nice girl at the front desk and the action accidentally blasted "Whistle" by Flo Rida from his phone speaker for the whole lobby to hear. As he walked back into his apartment, the kitchen clock let him know it was only 4:30. He had plenty of time. Jungkook hopped straight into the shower, shampooing his hair, shaving everywhere he normally did, and savoring several extra moments to relax his muscles under the hot stream of water. Finally, he toweled off to wrap up in the black t-shirt and cozy matching sweatpants he'd carefully stacked on the counter. Offhandedly singing to himself in the steamy mirror, he checked the time on his phone, deciding he might as well go ahead and text you before he got nervous again and did something stupid. Like chickening out completely.

hey its jk! im ready when u are :) my apt is 344 glencoe rd #1521 (yes its on the 15th floor sry D: )

His charming old-school smileys lit up your phone while you still had a leg perched on the bathtub's edge.

"Fuck!" you reacted. The hiss resounded, thanks to the too-good acoustics of your cramped bathroom. Your razor clattering to the floor, you paused your max-volume 2000s music to check the message, and then the time. Only 5! That wasn't dinnertime yet. Plugging his address into Google Maps, though, you realized it was a 15- to 20-minute drive from yours on the opposite end of campus. Even if you got ready at light-speed, you would get there closer to 5:30. Which was a bit more reasonable. He was being reasonable! You should be ready by now!

You leaned over to pick up your razor and cursed again as the water stream grazed the blouse you'd left on out of laziness. You'd showered this morning, so there was no need to repeat that with your shave, but now you'd have to change outfits completely. Feeling like an idiot, naked from the waist down but now all the way wet, you peeled the shirt over your head slowly to preserve your good hair day and glanced down at the dilemma you'd been facing. The patch of hair between your legs stared back at you like the final boss of stupid societal beauty standards. You'd only shaved down there once, as an anniversary present for your first boyfriend the summer before college, and it had been a fun, smooth novelty for about two hours and then itchy, red, gross-looking, and miserable for about three weeks. Also, it had kind of made you feel like a little girl, which creeped you out when you thought about why guys would prefer it. You'd been debating whether to try it again for the past fifteen minutes, because if there was ever a right time, this was probably it. But now you didn't have time, if you were going to be respectful and not keep Jungkook waiting. Well, this was the real you. He could take it or leave it.

Slathering a quick coat of lotion over your freshly shaved legs, you prepared to get dressed in a soft pastel sweatshirt and a flattering pair of workout shorts. Wait, should you wear lingerie? Was that too try-hard? You didn't really even need to wear underwear with these lined shorts, which could be a cool-girl move, you supposed. You settled on a cute white sports bra to go with the shorts, not wanting to deal with a real bra and hoping it still appealed to Jungkook's casual, athletic style. You checked yourself in the mirror briefly before grabbing your bag, confirming you looked chill enough but still felt like your best color-coordinated self. Heading out, you shoved a tin of chrysanthemum green tea in your water bottle pocket. Why not?

~

You whizzed over to Jungkook's apartment, yelling along to "Sex With Me" by Rihanna from your throwback playlist to hype you up in the car. When you knocked on his door after a nerve-wrackingly long elevator ride, Jungkook welcomed you with a "C'mon in!" amidst a mouthful of shrimp chips.

"It's not really dinnertime yet," (yeah, no kidding, you thought) "I went ahead and worked out but it's still kind of early, so I figured we could just have a snack and do the homework first."

"Sounds good," you affirmed. "I'm not really that hungry," (read: there's no way I can eat chips AGAIN right now, I'm going to bloat so badly) "but I brought tea so I can go ahead and make that if you want some too!"

"Oh cool, thanks!" Jungkook accepted. "Are you sure you're not hungry though?"

You almost gave into his sweet pout, but managed to convince him, and soon you both sat at the table with laptops open and twin cups of tea. You had a blast working together for the first time, acting out your "conversation" for the discussion board and pretending to respond spontaneously to each other's points like you hadn't already excitedly rambled back and forth through them in real life. You hit "send" five minutes apart, your idea to not seem too suspicious, and kept raving over Rear Window in between. As the sun lowered outside his living room window, you moved on to making the ramen.

After three offers to help Jungkook, all of which he denied, you simply made another steep of the tea, leaving a mug on the counter for him. Standing at the bar counter sipping yours, you enjoyed all the tiny, cute noises he made while chopping green onions and sprinkling extra garlic in the seasoning, like an anime character who came with his own sound effects. You could tell he made these recipe additions every time, because bulk quantities of the same simple ingredients lined the counters of his cozy kitchen. When he beat two eggs and dropped them into the pot, though, he couldn't seem to find a lid, and eventually settled on trapping the steam with a plate. You both waited on the egg for a silent moment, your foot bouncing under the bar while Jungkook restlessly acquired a slight wiggle. As he took a sip of his tea, a strand of hair fell over his eyes, and he yeeted it out of his face. Your inner language nerd cringed, but there really was no more apt word to describe the action.

You offhandedly said you liked his hair long, and he replied with a smile, "Maybe I'll have to keep it then."

"Do you like it too?" you wondered.

"Honestly no, it's kind of inconvenient."

"Oh, then why would you keep it?" you immediately asked back.

"Well..." he dragged out. "You like it? Maybe I should keep it if it looks better this way."

Your eyes crinkled appreciatively at his thoughtfulness, but then you backtracked. "Wait, no, it's okay! If you don't like it, don't feel like you have to keep it just because of something I said. You can do whatever you want."

"Hm, yeah." A demure smile tugged up the corner of his mouth as he lifted the plate from the ramen pot.

You watched him drag a chopstick through the floating, now-cooked egg to tear it into ribbons, then divide the noodles between two generously-sized bowls. He carefully wiped down the drips of broth from each bowl before sprinkling in his fresh toppings, then walked with you to the table.

Serving you with a pleased smile and a slight nod, he announced, "Dinner!"

"Wow," you mused playfully. "So gourmet."

"I'm really particular about my ramen," he admitted. "I have it down to a perfect routine at this point."

You took your first slurp of his particular, perfect ramen. "Well, it's really good. I'm impressed. And thanks for making me dinner, you didn't have to do all that."

"Oh, come on, it's instant ramen," he laughed. "Nothing special. And you brought the tea, so thanks. And thanks for coming over. And doing the homework with me. And...yeah." Rambling again. Why did he seem so...nervous? You were nervous. He couldn't be nervous. What reason did he have to be? But the twitch of his mouth under his wide eyes, his slightly reddened ears, his hand skittering over his neck—fuck—to ruffle his hair...every action turned another page of his open book. It felt infuriatingly unfair that genetics had assigned someone so sweet and shy and unsure of himself to that fucking body.

While you both ate and talked, you kept catching glimpses of any small flashes of skin you could find, as his long sleeves fell to expose his forearms and the wide neckline of his boxy black shirt gaped around his collarbones. What was wrong with you? Even if this did eventually turn into a dick appointment, the boy still had literally all of his clothes on. You tried to refocus on finishing your noodles, while your brain screamed at itself in shame that you could get this turned on by the sight of someone covered from neck to ankle.

Jungkook ate surprisingly slowly, probably because he kept pausing to excitedly explain his favorite things about the Cowboy Bebop episode you were about to watch together. You smiled into your tea through every out-of-context fun fact and "wait, sorry, that might have been a spoiler!"

Finally, he reached the bottom of his bowl and insisted on both taking your dishes to the sink and leaving them for him to clean later. "You sure you want to start on episode 2? Not 1?"

"Yeah, I remember well enough and your summary helped a lot too!"

"Okay, if you're positive!" he double-checked, grabbing the remote.

Gingerly lowering yourselves to the couch in sync, you avoided looking at each other as you both tried to calculate a comfortable distance between you. His hand looked ready to either hold yours or lower to your thigh, but he retracted at the last second, smoothing it over his own leg anxiously and still clearly itching to make a move. You shuffled closer to him until your thighs barely touched, and he shifted to slink an arm around you, letting your head rest on his well-muscled shoulder. After pressing “play”, he began wiggling slightly again, subconsciously grooving to the old-newspaper-style intro. Spike Spiegel appeared on the screen, his broad shoulders squared into a slouch as he listlessly watched TV. Jungkook kicked one leg over another and stretched his arms out symmetrically to echo the pose. Raising an eyebrow, he waited until you acknowledged him with a faux grimace and a hand to your ear, imitating the old man in a lab who’d just called up Spike for a new mission. You both burst into laughter and settled back into your former arrangement, Jungkook holding you imperceptibly tighter. Though you tried to stay staring straight ahead, wanting to genuinely appreciate the anime, you kept catching his doe eyes in the corner of your sight as you both giggled and gasped your way through the episode.

After avoiding eye contact too many times, you finally tilted your head for a cute sideways view of his face. He leaned toward you too, shyly closing the gap to touch his warm lips to your nose, then lower. You responded immediately, rolling your body with his so your chests met as he pulled you up into a full, deeper kiss. The longer you explored each other's mouths, the more Jungkook punctuated your movements with whimpers. He seemed hesitant to let his hands roam away from your face and neck, but his high, breathy moans made it clear that he was just as into this as you. Your hands had naturally found his taut waist, and at some point you started to bring them back up to his face too—but as your short nails grazed his chest, a particularly sensual, voice-cracking moan interrupted you. You drew back in slight surprise, blinking your eyes open to scan from his face to his body.

He followed your gaze, both slowly settling on the massive tent in his pants. You froze. Your breath grew heavier, confronted with evidence of his physical attraction to you, if nothing else. After regaining his composure, he laid a useless hand over his lap in a delicate attempt to distract you and brought his other hand up to tap your face lightly.

"Is this okay?"

His eyes glittered with equal parts hunger and concern.

"Yes!" you nodded, too quickly, too eagerly. "Yes, this is totally okay. Sorry if I'm being weird, I just...it's been a while." You cringed internally at your own words, but couldn't seem to avoid putting your foot further in your mouth. "I haven't really, like, hooked up like this before—like, I've had sex, but never really outside of a relationship. But don't worry, I get this is more your thing, and I'm totally down if you are. I just don't really know what I'm doing, and you clearly do."

Jungkook blinked at your admission, then his face twisted into something curious, inscrutable. Would he decide you weren't worth the potential for drama? His lips flattened out to a tight line, then pursed to speak, and you looked down at your lap, hoping he wasn't as embarrassed of you as you now were of yourself.

"Well, I've never had sex sober."

Your eyes flashed back up to his. A complex half-smirk offset the furrow in his brow as he exhaled in nervous relief. "So, I don't actually know what I'm doing here either."

You tried to delay your response as you processed the implications. "You mean..." You tilted your head for better eye contact, hoping to convey empathy but not pity while you silently contemplated how to proceed. "Never?"

"Yeah, I've always shown up to parties and the hookups just...happened. Nothing I didn't want, nothing bad like that, but always spontaneous. So I guess we're kind of meeting in the middle, because I've never really had to plan ahead for a situation like this and, uh, figure out what I want. Beyond, yknow, wanting to get laid in the moment, of course." Jungkook laughed off the end of his explanation, but the smile never quite hit his eyes.

"Well, okay, let's pause right there." You sighed. Something in his words didn't sit right with you. "What do you want? I want you to be sure about this, of course, but more than that, even—what do you like?"

"I..." he chuckled, sheepish, shaking his hair over his face again. "What, you want me to just tell you? Like, what I'm into?"

"Yeah," you shrugged, trying to project more confidence than you felt in hopes of encouraging him to keep opening up. "I want you to be able to communicate, I want you to be comfortable. And I want to know what you like, so I can make it as good for you as possible."

With your hands still laid flat on his chest, you felt his heart rate jump a tiny bit, and took the liberty of digging your nails in just slightly deeper. His breath caught him, and then he caught himself. "I don't know, I just want what you want."

Jungkook struggled to appear nonchalant as you rolled your eyes with an "Oh, come on," challenging his avoidance. Every instinct was telling him yes. He could hear his mind screaming at him to be intentional for once and let you take him, if not farther, then deeper than ever before. But he still hesitated, because being intentional in this case required him to be real. He had always been a fairly private person, but something about you made him feel so comfortable so fast that it counterintuitively made him more nervous. Of course Jungkook knew you weren't all innocent at this point, but the risk remained that you wouldn't really be down for everything he secretly wanted to explore. Even worse, though he didn't truly think you would, you could easily turn around and spin anything he revealed into yet another graphic rumor. Especially since you had no skin in the game yourself. He glanced down at your fingers, tensed into his chest, and narrowed his eyes.

"Why don't you tell me what you like first? And then I can tell you where we overlap," he grinned competitively. Your eyes widened as he tossed the challenge back your way. Not backing down, you flattened your hands and steeled yourself to settle the stakes.

"Fine—but only if you promise not to just go along with whatever I say. I'll let you know anything that's a hard no for me, but otherwise I want to hear at least one thing that's not on my list. I really do want what you want, that's how I am too, okay? So..." you paused to slide your fingertips over his collar and drag it down with a light scratch, now directly on his skin. You smiled with your eyes, enjoying the way he naturally responded with a hitch of his breath again. "Surely you can think of something specific."

He nodded quickly, before he could convince himself to back out. "Yeah. Promise."

"Okay," you confirmed, slightly nervous but determined to go through with this, for Jungkook's sake if anything. Seeing his body come alive with each new twist of the situation was building your curiosity, not to mention turning you on beyond belief. You could barely stand the warmth of his skin under your hands, so you drew them back to fold in your lap as you began. "So. Uh. To start. I've never really laid it all out like this either. I really like neck kisses? Like, a lot." Equally unused to this kind of directness, you wrung your hands together nervously, but sucked up the boldness to keep elaborating. "That's definitely, like, a big thing that turns me on...and then getting marked up and everything is really hot to me too. Like you can honestly go really rough with me on that, bite me even. I don't know if this is weird but even though it's annoying to cover up, I love taking off the makeup at the end of the day and seeing all the bruises on myself. Knowing I was walking around all day with that as my little secret." You swallowed shyly before continuing, but Jungkook interrupted the brief silence immediately with a hushed "Fuck."

You turned to face him fully and he didn't even move to meet your stare, eyeing the space above your sweatshirt's wide neckline like he was ready to devour you. Emboldened, your smile grew.

"So...yeah. I like being bitten, marked up. Mostly, uh," you rubbed a slightly trembling hand over your shoulder, "I'm just really into pain in general. Obviously not the bad 'I'm too dry and you're jackhammering me' kind of pain, or like, anal. Anal is a hard no. But things like biting, or hair pulling, or overstimulation. Or, like—I don't really know how to explain this, but...getting held too hard? That deep pain like when you get a massage when you're sore and it hurts but it's good, yknow?"

Jungkook looked like he was about to vibrate out of his skin, breathing shallow and rapid. His eyes flicked up to meet yours, just in time for you to whisper in conclusion:

"I love that feeling."

You suddenly looked away, reticent. A thick silence swelled between you, until he composed himself enough to punctuate it. "Okay. Yeah. Pain. So like, BDSM?"

"I mean, kind of? Sure? I don't have much experience with that and I don't really need the whole power dynamic aspect; I just like the, uh, physical pain. I wouldn't be opposed to trying further, but one thing I do know is I really don't like being degraded. And I'm not into the whole daddy kink thing either. I'm just not gonna call you that, sorry," you laughed, and fortunately he giggled too. "But I know that's not, like, necessary to the rest of BDSM, and the part about giving up control is still...interesting, for sure."

"Wait," Jungkook cocked his head, making a mental note of your last sentence before he went back to the previous one. "What do you mean, being degraded?"

You half-chuckled, half-cringed, never having needed to explain something like this, especially to a guy you hopefully were about to fuck. Cheers to better communication, you supposed.

"You know, how some people when they do dirty talk are like 'yeah, you little slut, you're such a whore.' I don't like being called any of that. Like it's fine that other people like it, there's nothing wrong with that, it's just really uncomfortable for me."

His brows knit together as you explained, and he shook his head so fast it almost looked cartoonish, like a little kid refusing vegetables. "Yeah, no. Don't worry, not really my thing either."

You sighed in relief. "That's nice. I feel like it's, like, weirdly common with guys. Maybe just the kind of thing people learn from porn."

"But you still like it rough, huh? Did you learn that...from porn?" he half-joked, trying to overcome both his shyness and his gritted-teeth arousal.

"No, I don’t like porn. Most of it’s really unethical. I learned from experience," you sassed back. "I don't have a whole lot, but enough to know what I like."

"Well. Hm." He worked his tongue over his teeth, poking one cheek out over his tensed jaw. You couldn't get enough of watching him grow fascinated by your every revelation, and you were preparing to keep pressing further when he beat you to it, posing a question. "Is there anything you haven't tried before, but really want to?"

Your face heated up instantly, tasting your own medicine. You looked back to your hands, breaking his intense eye contact to give yourself the courage to be even more uncomfortably honest. "I...I...um." Your first attempt at disclosing your fantasy came out as a squeak. Swallowing, you set your shoulders and tried again, selfishly reminding yourself Jungkook seemed so eager to please that this was 99% likely to get you exactly what you wanted. "I've always been, uh, really into the idea of, um, getting spanked. I've been, uh, too nervous to ever bring it up, before now obviously, but it's definitely one of the biggest kinks I've always wanted to try. Maybe being tied up too, I think I'd like it if I tried but I haven't thought about that as much. But, yeah...spanking, definitely."

"Fuuuuuuuuck."

A lengthened version of Jungkook's earlier under-breath exclamation made you peer up at him. Your thighs already pressed together from the tension of admitting something totally new, you found yourself needing even more friction just from the sight of Jungkook with his head thrown back on the couch, a veiny hand threaded in his hair to pull the long waves back from his forehead. The full reveal of his sharp eyebrows brought a whole new level of intensity to Jungkook's already beautifully carved features. He glanced over at you, then squeezed his eyes shut with a terse exhale. You couldn't place why, but you felt a deep attraction to the way he expertly restrained himself from acting on the lust written over his face—not under your control, but his own.

"Oh, fuck. What the fuck. How the fuck would you fucking know," he swore more in a single burst than he cumulatively had ever in your presence.

"What?" you toyed, heart rate still high but relaxed enough to enjoy agitating him. "Something ring a bell?"

Jungkook shuddered out a long breath, hand ruffling his hair as his other forearm still tried desperately to subdue his boner.

"Everything," he hissed, more willing to elaborate now that you had done the same, and especially now that he could tell you really did enjoy him being more assertive. "Shit. I...I want...I know you said not to just say this but I really do want everything you want. I can't wait to mark you up. I can't wait to hold you down and bruise your neck. I want it all, I want to make you hurt so good. And then—" Breathless. He looked almost embarrassed. "Then you had to go and somehow guess basically my biggest fucking kink, I can't fucking believe you." Both hands had come up to seize his long locks as he held himself back physically, while finally letting his guard down mentally to declare everything he intended to do to you. Letting out a short laugh, he finally met your eyes. "I wanna spank your ass bright red. Fuck. This is crazy. You're perfect."

Your core throbbed at every bold word. Leaning in close to him, you let your lips approach Jungkook's beautifully sculpted jawline as he panted, his chin tossed up to fully expose his neck. You stopped just short of his skin, in awe of how much you'd been able to work him up and still so tempted to take it to the next level. "Fuck," you echoed. "This is so hot," you murmured almost to yourself. Your eyes closing along with his, you dealt the final blow. "I love that we have so much in common. But come on, you promised. One thing that's not on my list."

Jungkook whined. You could tell he needed to touch you so badly, and no one was stopping him but himself. He had no way of knowing that if he cut the whole discussion and just took you, you wouldn't even try to resist at this point. Staring at his trembling mouth from below, you quickly averted your eyes when he opened his, pretending you hadn't been looking. He inhaled a short hiss, and then spoke.

"Okay..." He paused after just the first word, blowing air through the tiny "o" of his mouth as his eyes bugged slightly from nervousness. He couldn't resist a challenge, though, and his urge to please you overwhelmed his reluctance to peel back one more layer. "So, the pain thing. I think we, uh, feel the same about me giving and you receiving. But...I'm really into it for myself too. I don't know if you'd be comfortable with it, I know you maybe want me to be more dominant and I think I like that more too in general, but you can be as rough with me as you want back. I'd love that." Eyes still open but fluttering, Jungkook's tone grew breathier, heady as he confessed. You almost giggled at how bashfully he worded his desire to dominate you, to rough each other up, but the contrast was so hot you couldn't help sucking your bottom lip between your teeth, eager for him to continue. His voice lowered. "I love being scratched, marked, bitten...hit me, push me back, any kind of pain or any way you can hurt me, I want it." He shivered, but his voice firmed up even further. "I want it so bad."

You fought to stay motionless beside him, unable to even process how much more his honesty had turned you on. You felt helpless in your desire for him, your craving to give him everything he wanted and more. He noticed your charged stillness and shifted toward you, removing a hand from his hair to finally reach for your face. Threading his fingers through your hair instinctively like he had with his own, he tilted your head back to access your neck. Jungkook finally felt confident enough to tease you back as he skimmed his lips over your pulse point, tugging your skin between his teeth for a gentle first taste and grinning when you moaned. Seeing someone so satisfied, for reasons better than just his body or their pride, brought the most incredible rush of blood to his head. And his other head.

"And I get why you want it too," he finished with a whisper in your ear. "So trust me when I say I really, really want to give it to you."

In an instant, your hands yanked his hair down to bring his face up to yours, mouths crashing together. Feverish, restless, you kissed him, hastily attempting to straddle his thick thighs before he threw his body over yours and pinned you to the back of the couch. His hands wandered, intrepid, from your waist to a quick squeeze of your breasts before he spiraled you into his strong arms. Pressing your chest flush with his as your mouths meshed, he ground his hips into you shamelessly, enjoying the way you struggled beneath him to align your core with his rock-hard dick.

"Your room?" You rushed out the words.

Jungkook laughed a little, his tone half whine and half dare. "So we're done talking?"

"Come on," you pleaded back. He finally relented, pulling you up with him and dragging you across the living room and through his door, lips not leaving yours for a second. You backed him into the bed with your arms against his strong chest, and once he was sitting perched on the edge, you laid yourself horizontally over his thighs.

"What are you doing?" he murmured, curling a hand over the dip of your waist to hold you gently.

You angled your head back to make unsteady eye contact with him, flipping your shorts down boldly. His free hand automatically reached to slowly conform to the shape of your ass, so eager to touch you but tentative as he grazed your curves.

"Giving you exactly what you want."

"Fuck. Really? You're sure about this?" Jungkook held careful eye contact as you brought your arms back up, crossing your wrists over your head delicately. You nodded slightly and did your best to meet his gaze with confident invitation, convincing him how much you trusted and wanted him.

He smoothed his warm hand over your ass one more time, then brought it up and watched your thighs tighten at the loss of his touch. Breathing in, still a little shakily, he brought his hand down on your right cheek with a loud but mild smack. A grunt of satisfaction involuntarily left him when he saw your face flinch down into the sheets, subduing a small noise of surprise. He returned his hand to caress the light redness he'd left, checking in with you again. "Is this okay? Let me know if I should stop."

You replied with your face still tucked between your arms, muffled by the bed. "More than okay. Please don't stop."

He spanked you again, moving to your left cheek. This time you felt his dick twitch under you and couldn't help grinding down on him a little bit. "Is that as hard as you can go?" you taunted in low tones, brave enough to egg him on but not quite enough to meet his eyes again.

Jungkook's thighs and core tensed under you, and he squeezed his fingertips tighter, digging into the skin of your ass. "Not at all," he said simply.

Deep breath. A few seconds passed, and his hand came down, harshly. You cried out in shock, the timing unexpected and the sting far sharper, and he gave your other cheek a fourth hard smack before you could even process the third one. "Harder?" he tested. "Tell me."

Another spank. "Mmmf."

"You like this, huh?"

"Yes, I told you," you whimpered back, half-teasing even though you were in no position to do so. Immediately, he cut you off with a stinging hit across both cheeks, and you moaned.

"You really do," he breathed lowly. "Fuck yeah. Take it then."

He spanked you again, and again, then paused, tugging down your shorts all the way to your ankles to expose the crease right above your thighs. Rubbing your already sore bottom, Jungkook cupped the underside of its curve in his big, firm hand. Already anticipating your whine, he drew back his touch and hummed in harmony with you. He continued landing satisfyingly hard smacks, alternating to cover your ass evenly. His dick strained through his pants more and more each time you trembled under his touch. Never hitting you hard enough to do serious damage, he still clearly enjoyed his thorough reddening of your ass, and occasionally took a moment just to caress your skin as it warmed from the spanking. The pain lit your senses up from head to toe. Face burning with deep arousal, you mentally thanked yourself for going out of your comfort zone and unprecedentedly admitting your kinks before even venturing into your first time together. Amidst the thrilling sting of his hand meeting your soft curves, Jungkook eventually noticed your thighs clenching together, craving friction but not really wanting relief from the pleasurable burn.

"You're wet," he marveled, sliding two warm fingers up and down your slit.

"Mhm," you mumbled back as you tilted your hips into his hand. He gave you a light slap right on the folds between your legs, eliciting another soft moan.

"So good for me," Jungkook said softly, pulling you up into his lap by your waist. "You look so pretty like this. I wanna see all of you." He tugged your sweatshirt over your head, followed by your sports bra, thankful that it stretched over your head easily. Suddenly grinning, he wound up and shot it across the room like a rubber band, and you smacked his arm, giggling.

"What was that? You cheeseball," you teased, and he blinked, chuckling lightly back. It occurred to him that he'd never laughed, or made someone laugh, during sex before.

"It was so stretchy! Don't make fun of me," he blushed.

"You're so cute," you said, fingers sliding under his t-shirt hem.

"Cute?" His eyebrows rose in mock disbelief, and he reached around to land another hit to your still-red asscheek.

"Hot," you amended. Raising his shirt and finally getting a full glimpse of his enviable abs, you groaned. "You're extremely hot, and also really cute, and it's kind of ridiculous and I don't really know how to handle all of it at once."

His face scrunching up into a smile at the praise, he fell back onto the bed with his arms behind his head. "You are too, you know. Really cute, of course. But really hot too." As you discarded his shirt and moved on to easing his sweatpants down his hips, you held in a gasp as his erection sprung up from the waistband. He was big, thick, and painfully hard, his tip glistening warm with precum and a lone vein running prominently up his smooth shaft. Although you wouldn't be corroborating them, you had to admit to yourself that all the rumors were true. You instinctively curled a hand around it, barely covering half his length, and he winced at your slightest touch. Pulling off with a single slow stroke, you slid his sweatpants and briefs all the way to the floor and then stood, looking up from his legs to his blown-out eyes to take in the glorious sight of his fully naked body.

"You shave," you said, surprised by the clean skin under his arms and between his legs.

"Yeah," he demurred, self-conscious for some reason. He lowered his arms to fold them over his torso, somehow defining his biceps even more. "I'm on the dance team, and it's nice to feel all smooth for practice and stuff. I don't know, I just like it."

"Oh, that's cool! No worries, I like it too. And you don't mind that..." You looked down at yourself, still just standing naked in front of him. "...I don't? Like, down there at least."

"No, you do you!" he said quickly. With a shy smile, he admitted, "I actually kind of like it on you. I do this for me, anyway, not for anyone else," he playfully noted. Slowly, he was sitting up to take hold of your waist and lower you down to the bed with him. Pausing to kiss the sweet spot under your jaw, he continued. "So don't feel like you have to do anything, or not do anything, either."

Jungkook couldn't quite explain the nature of how his attraction to you had developed. Seeing how open and honest you were with him made it easy for him to be honest with you too, and just to feel comfortable being himself. He admired the way he could still tell you sometimes got nervous like him, but it didn’t stop you from getting real or going bolder. Unable to fully express it in words, he just hoped to ensure you felt as comfortable and respected around him as he did around you. He already knew that he wanted this to be more than just a one-time thing, and while he still hesitated to assume that you felt the same, he intended to leave no doubt by the end of the night.

You moaned as he nipped at the skin of your neck. It was so easy to get swept back up in Jungkook. You could barely handle the friction of his dick rutting against your wet folds from below, craving him inside you. "Ughhh. Wait, one more thing. I'm on the pill, are you clean?"

"Yes," he gasped, barely removing his mouth from your jaw. "Are you?"

"Yeah, so we don't need a condom. If that's cool with you!"

"Yeah! But, you're ready?" He seemed surprised.

"Aren't you?" you whined, beyond holding back. He felt so unbearably hard that his coherence and willpower kind of surprised you too. "Please, I want you so bad."

To your surprise, he lowered his head to the crest of your legs, dotting wet kisses down your torso. Keeping his big brown eyes on you, he teased your entrance with a finger and echoed your immediate groan at the welcome stretch.

"You really are ready," he remarked, awed at the ease with which your wetness sucked the digit in. Frankly, you were in awe as well. It had taken your ex-boyfriend months to figure out how to get you this worked up. Jungkook either had even more experience than you'd heard from the grapevine, or he was a natural. Or maybe you were just really, ridiculously, primally attracted to him. He went on to curve his finger in you and lick a messy swipe up your folds, sucking hard once he reached your sensitive clit. You cried out at the delicious burst of stimulation and he rose up to catch your lips with his.

"I had to do that, just once," he grinned breathlessly. "But—"

"Let me suck you off," you interjected, unbelievably fucking turned on and dying to please him.

"No," he gasped with far more fervency than you'd think anyone could refuse a blowjob. "Please, I was about to say—" he choked out a high-pitched moan as you ran a single finger up his shaft in anticipation, sinking the nails of your other hand into his thigh. "—I think I'm gonna explode if I don't get inside you right this second."

So he did have a breaking point. "Fuck," you muttered, bringing your legs around his to tuck your heels under his tight ass as he lined up. He eased his tip in, keeping heavy eyes on you the whole time, and you could feel the hot, thick tension in his thighs as he struggled to hold himself back from just thrusting into your heat. Slowly, he drew closer into you until he bottomed out with a low moan. You whined at the perfect slight pain of the stretch, and Jungkook squeezed his eyes shut, gripping you by your waist. Watching the veins in his forearms stand out as he drove almost all the way out and back into you, you rocked your hips carefully against his with each smooth stroke, getting used to his fullness. When his balls met your ass again, he shuddered a bit and opened his eyes into yours.

You answered his question before he could even ask it. "Jungkook—you feel so good. You can go faster, it's okay."

A smile hit his eyes before his mouth, and he kissed you once, pressing his chest to yours and intertwining your tongues eagerly. You bit his bottom lip as he slowly drew away, tugging it between your teeth to pull a sweet little whimper from his throat. Grinning, he leaned back in to touch his forehead to yours and simultaneously slid a subtle hand under your ass to curve your hips up with his. The slight leftover sensitivity of your skin amplified his light touch, and Jungkook seemed to realize this, curling his fingers to tease you with the tips of his nails. Instinctively, you ducked to bite his neck, not even registering your move to pass the pain back to him until he choked out a beautifully half-restrained moan and snapped his hips into yours. Gasping, you encouraged him to lose himself in you, dragging your lips up to latch around his earlobe. He hissed and thrust into you sharply again, meeting the time of your movements as you swirled your tongue between each of his hoop earrings. Soon he was pounding you rhythmically, finally letting you feel the full force of his strength but keeping remarkable control over both his body and yours. Both of you had gone silent except for your heavy breaths, lost in the moment, but the flexed shivers of his thighs and twitches of his fingers in your hair told you all you needed to know. Suddenly yanking your strands to pull you back from the additional bruise you'd sucked beneath his ear, he earned a new set of scratches on his back as your hands dragged down the muscular expanse in reply. Jungkook switched places with you to draw dark clouds from your skin, a storm brewing under your jaw. Your face fell into pure bliss, eyes shut and immersed in the barrage of sensation from his hands, mouth, and big dick filling you. Already feeling the familiar tension that preceded an orgasm building through your whole body, you chased him closer to his climax too, grinding back roughly into every thrust and raking your hands over every part of his firm body you could reach.

You had really been fooling yourself when you thought you could try something casual for once. You wanted more of Jungkook, all of Jungkook, nothing but Jungkook ever again. Knowing he'd never even gone back to the same hookup twice sank slight anxiety into your stomach, a kind of future nostalgia for this moment you already feared losing. You knew you weren't anything special compared to the catalogue of gorgeous girls he'd had his turn with, but a deviant voice whispered from the back of your mind that you could be, because it was clear none had bothered to learn him like this. You'd still try your desperate best not to want too much from him, but you resolved to do whatever you could to make him crave more.

Rolling your hips in a smooth circle against him, you clenched around his dick and your hands tightened their fierce hold on his tiny waist. You felt his abs tense within your grasp as he tried not to stutter into you.

"Fuck. No." His voice cracked, but held an undertone of ferocity. "You come first." Jungkook rushed a hand to your clit, adding pressure in small, deft motions with a fingertip as he kept fucking you deep. You sank your teeth into his shoulder in response, drawing your hands up his back to clutch him closer to you, and Jungkook cried out. You left your mouth on his golden skin to stifle your moans as he sped up his fingers, and he tried to let you stay there but eventually couldn't help pulling you off him to see your face. Eyes narrowed and eyebrows turning up sharp at the ends, he watched you like a hawk to track the exact moment when he pushed you over the edge. Your face crumpled and you felt your whole body burn under his gaze as you came, squeezing around him in waves of pleasure while he fucked you through your high, unrelenting. Drinking up the bliss obvious on your features, Jungkook's eyes never left yours and his expression grew more and more fucked out. You marveled at how even as you lost control and energy to fuck him back, your body freezing in orgasm seemed to turn him on further. One last pulse of the tension leaving your core made his dick throb inside you, and you impulsively broke your eye contact to lean in and bite down slow but hard on his neck again. He gasped.

"You're amazing." Murmuring into his skin, you kissed the bite marks gently. Jungkook whimpered at the sweet contradiction and lurched into your hips even harder. You recovered to move with him, squeezing him deeper into you every time he bottomed out, and as his breathless moans escalated in pitch, his whole body shivered with each stroke. Pressing wet, heavy kisses all over his neck, you felt his jaw flutter while his lips hung open. His considerable strength spent, Jungkook shuddered one last hard thrust into you and finally let go, coating your walls from within. His hips lightly rocked against yours as he stayed deep inside you, still hard and savoring the euphoric release he'd held back for so long. You felt so incredibly warm and comfortable around his sensitive dick, relaxed but still holding him tight, and he couldn't help holding you up for a languid kiss before pulling out of you smoothly.

He briefly looked into your eyes, and you saw stars. The sun had continued to set outside, and it peeked between the blinds of his window to wrap you both in a warm, slivered glow. Staring down at his hands on your body, Jungkook took a deep breath and collapsed to your side, holding you close. You settled into him, cupping a hand over his head on your chest. With your fingers laced through his sweaty hair, you stroked his temple with your thumb, worrying for a second whether the gesture seemed too intimate but forgetting your fear when he snuggled up into your touch. You felt the need to say something, to figure out what the fuck was next after this, but stayed silent, not wanting to disturb the comforting weight of his frame. Heartbeat still racing, Jungkook stretched out to breathe a long sigh. As he sank back into you, you stretched under him too, letting his solid, warm body drape over you like a blanket. This couldn't be farther from what you'd expected with him, but you weren't about to make it stop. Surely, eventually, he would.

A minute passed. And then five. And then, before either of you could talk yourselves out of it, you were asleep, intertwined.

[peantutbutter]

69. “We are not going to steal someone’s dog.” with Michael, Gavin and Jeremy please!

 69. (nice) “We are not going to steal someone’s dog.”

Trigger Warning for brief mentions of animal abuse. Nothing is graphically explicit and everything turns out ok and the dog is rescued, but the thought of an injured animal is triggering or otherwise too emotionally distressing for you, go ahead and keep scrolling

The Mad Lad’s Animal Rescue Agency [ao3]

It’s odd.

As far as Michael knows, both Gavin and Jeremy are what he would consider cat people. Pets aren’t allowed in the penthouse, of course, but both get swept up in conversations about what they would name potential future cats, and both go out of their way to set out food and water for the strays of the city.

So when the two come to him cooing and gushing about a sweet looking pit bull they’ve met, Michael is a little astonished when they start telling him their plans for whisking her away in the dead of night.

“We’re not stealing someone’s dog,” he deadpans, and he can’t fucking believe that he has to say it.

“Awww, c’mon Michael, why not? Lookat her!” Gavin whines, shoving his phone in his face.

And, yeah, alright, she’s fucking cute — chocolate brown fur; a light pink tongue lolling out of her mouth; a tail that’s blurry because it’s wagging so fast; and large, shining brown eyes that are staring adoringly at Gavin in the selfie he’s taken — but Michael can’t just let his boys go off and steal a dog for no good reason. “Because it’ll shit all over the goddamn floor!” he argues. “Where are we gonna keep her, Gavin? We gonna make her ride an elevator every time she needs to take a piss?”

But the thing about Gavin is that once he gets something in his head, there’s really no stopping him. And with Jeremy involved, really, all Michael can do is hope to mitigate the inevitable collateral damage.

It’s ass o’clock in the morning when Michael pulls into what is possibly the most boring middle class neighborhood and parks across the street from a house that looks like the dozens of others surrounding it. He cuts the engine of their unmarked van and looks to Gavin and Jeremy making their last-minute preparations in the back. The entire vehicle smells like peanut butter and Gavin slaps Jeremy’s hand away from the bag of bacon he had fried up before leaving. “That’s not for you!” he hisses.

Jeremy pouts indignantly, but lets it be. They grab a pair of bolt cutters, while Gavin stuffs his pockets full of treats and clips various dog toys to his belt. A brightly colored rope dangles from his hips, and right beside it a squeaky chicken. He pauses for a minute, tennis ball in hand, and frowns thoughtfully, trying to figure out where to place it.

Ultimately, he sets it down, deciding that his skirt of toys is sufficient.

Jeremy pulls on a pair of gloves and grabs a leash dangling from a hook. They shoot Gavin an eager look, which he eagerly returns.

“You look like fucking idiots,” Michael says, because one: it’s true, and two: he apparently has a compulsive need to kill the mood if it’s stupid, like this one. Gavin and Jeremy just look at him, still smiling, mischief gleaming in their eyes. Michael rolls his eyes and waves his hand. “Go get the damn dog.”

The other two excitedly scramble out of the car and crouch-run their way across the street, like they’re on some sort of actual heist. Michael barely suppresses an eye roll. It’s not like the hazy moonlight or streetlamps are illuminating the street or anything. Idiots.

He watches them stealth their way to a chain-link fence. On the other side, Michael can make out what appears to be a ramshackle doghouse, and a tiny figure curled up just outside it. He can’t hear it, but he assumes Gavin whistles or does something to get the dog’s attention, because the figure’s head pops up and it pushes itself onto it’s legs.

Or at least it tries.

Jeremy is clipping away at the fence when Michael notices how the poor thing’s back paws are dragging uselessly along the ground. Her tail wags furiously as she crawls over to Gavin, but she isn’t moving very fast.

Oh. That’s why they’d been so adamant about doing this.

His knuckles turn white, and the steering wheel creaks under his grip. That familiar burn courses through his body, licking flames up and down his arms and legs. The vein in his jaw throbs, and he forces himself to take a deep breath. Going in and beating the owner senseless is tempting — “How does it feel, huh? How does it fucking feel? — but running in blindly, fists flying, would be reckless and stupid. And while he has his moments, tonight he’s the sensible one.

Or at least that’s what he tells himself. But when a light flicks on in the house while Jeremy is in the middle of unhooking the dog’s chain and latching their own, all of Michael’s self restraint leaves him. There’s a shadow moving throughout the house, and the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. He pulls the baseball bat from the passenger footwell and tears out of the van.

Gavin exclaims loudly as Michael rips past.

“Get the dog outta here, I’ll cover you!” Michael yells, and his lifetime of hopping fences pays off as he effortlessly scales the wire structure. His feet land on the ground with a soft thump and gets into position on the other side of the sliding glass door. He chokes up on the bat, ready to swing.

Jeremy finally manages to slip the hook of their leash through the loop on the dog’s collar just as the door slides open. The man inside is screaming angrily, but Michael doesn’t hear what he’s saying. He’s more focused on how he’s going to make this dickbag scream for another reason.

The guy steps outside, not seeing Michael where he hides just behind him, and he reaches for something tucked in his waistband. The second Michael realizes it’s a gun, he pounces, striking the guy in the back of the knees and bringing the bat down on the guy’s back with a satisfying crack.

He fucking whales on the guy, letting all that righteous anger course through him. Each strike shakes his bones, and he’s pleasantly reminded why this is his primary weapon of choice. There’s something so deliciously personal about taking a guy apart with a big stick. He keeps swinging until he’s sure Gavin and Jeremy have pulled the poor pup to safety. The bastard is curled into the fetal position, and his gun, which Michael had kicked away, lay just out of reach.

The horn of the van blares — one of his lads letting him know they’re clear — and Michael brings the bat down for a final strike. It makes a wet crunch against the back of the guy’s head. He’s not one hundred percent sure whether the guy is unconscious or actually dead. He doesn’t particularly care. He’s got no love for people who beat their animals, and, frankly, he’s killed for less.

His arms burn, and as he wipes blood from his face, he realizes that the lights in the surrounding houses are flicking on. The sound of an approaching siren kicks him into gear. He scrambles over the fence — a feat more difficult now that his limbs feel gooey with exertion — and books it across the street.

The engine revs as Jeremy puts the key in the ignition. Sirens are growing closer, and tired civilians are emerging from their homes to see what the fuss is about. The doors to the back are wide open, and Gavin, gently cradling the dog, yells at him to “Hurry up!”

Michael flings himself into the back of the van, and Jeremy takes off like a bullet, tires squealing against the asphalt, leaving behind the scent of burned rubber.

They fly out of the neighborhood, and Jeremy takes a few random turns, shaking any potential pursuers off their trail. All the while, Gavin is cooing at the creature in his arms. “Who’s a good girl? Who’s a good Bella?” he asks. “Who doesn’t have to worry about that mean old man ever again? Yes, it’s you!”

He pets Bella until she calms down, mindful of her legs, which rest gingerly on the seat. Slowly, her eyes drift shut, and she falls asleep under his touch. He smiles softly, and Michael can’t help but do the same at the scene before him.

Then Gavin turns to look at him. “Thank you, Michael,” he murmurs, barely audible over the hum of the engine.

Michael shrugs. “Don’t understand why you didn’t tell me why you wanted to steal this guy’s dog in the first place.”

“Ah, well…” Gavin pauses for a moment, trying to figure out what he wants to say. “Lil J and I kind of figured you riding out your rage would be the best cover in case we got caught. And that’s something that only really happens in the moment. So we needed you going in blind.”

Michael stares blankly for a moment, blinking slowly, trying to understand the reasoning. “You didn’t tell me,” he says slowly, “because you wanted me to be pissed off enough to attack a guy in case he caught you.”

Gavin presses his lips together and nods. “Yeah.”

Michael scoffs and rolls his eyes. “You two are fucking ridiculous,” he says. Then his gaze travels towards the peacefully sleeping dog. “What are you going to do with her?”

Gavin shrugs. “Gonna get our medic to take a look at her and see what he can do. After that…I dunno, try to find a nice place for her to live. Fredo’s been saying he wants a dog, so maybe he’ll be willing to take care of her.”

“So you never planned on her living in the penthouse, did you?” Michael asks.

“Of course not, Michael boy,” Gavin answers easily. His eyes sparkle with humor. “We’re not gonna make her ride the elevator every time she needs to take a leak.”

[ibtk]

Book Review: THE ANIMALS IN THAT COUNTRY by Laura Jean McKay (2020)

(Full disclosure: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review through Edelweiss and Library Thing's Early Reviewers program. Content warning for violence, including that against animals. Caution: this review contains a spoiler in the form of an excerpt.)

'Well, I’ve got a secret for you, Miss Kimberly Russo.' She digs her sharp little nails into my skin. ‘What is it?’ ‘This flu means people can talk to animals.’ Her head shoots up. ‘I want the flu, Granny. Don’t you?’ ‘Grown-ups don’t wish they had diseases, and neither should you.’ ‘But don’t you?’ Outside, Wallamina and Princess Pie are nose and beak to the sliding door, trying to press their way through. Eyes shining. ‘Course I bloody do.’

I can see the wild in her. She looks and acts like any dog. Plays, wags, stares into my eyes with her baby browns; does chasey, catch, begs for biscuits. Then the dusk comes and she lifts her neck and howls the saddest song in all the world, and there’s that wild. Dingo, owl, night thing — that sound is a warning. Loneliest you’ll hear. Wraps around your face, your sleep, your dreams. She’s saying: ‘Hey, hey. There’s something coming.’ The rangers here are always telling me, don’t talk like that. They say how dingoes are just establishing territory, checking on their pack. Dingo admin. But stand on the hot road that runs from the gift shop to the enclosures, and listen to the dingo in her cage call out to the packs on the other side of the fence. Tell me that’s not special. Tell me she doesn’t know something about the world that you and me haven’t ever thought of.

Jean Bennett isn't you're typical grandma - unless you're picturing Gemma Teller Morrow, that is. Jean drinks, smokes, swears, and sleeps around, usually all at the same time, and occasionally with her gay and committed coworker, Andy. She's got a tiger tattooed on her boob, and a dingo named Sue imprinted on her heart.

A lowly guide who dreams of becoming a ranger, Jean works at an Australian wildlife park, run by her son's ex-girlfriend Angela and owned by Angela's father. Jean and her husband Graham landed there years ago, after bouncing around the world for a while. Eventually Graham left Jean to shack up with another woman; their only child, Lee, jumped ship too, but not before hooking up with - and impregnating - Angela. Now Ange mostly keeps Jean around for the free child care (and maybe also because Ange feels sorry for her).

As for Jean, she stays stuck in this weird, awkward morass for her granddaughter Kimberley - one of the few people she can tolerate, let alone love. Jean prefers animals of the nonhuman variety, and the Park's residents/captives are her found family. She has a special place in her cockles for Sue, a dingo mix who she helped rescue as a wee little pup.

Jean's precarious life is already teetering on the edge of chaos when THE FLU arrives - first in southern Australia, then at the Park's gates, thanks to none other than an infected Lee, as charming as he is irresponsible.

Zoanthropathy (from Greek: zóo, “animal”, anthroponis, “human”, pathy, “disorder”), aka zooflu, otherwise known as "the talking animal disease," allow humans to understand and communicate with other animals:

'The strain known as zoanthropathy affects cognition in humans, and it is believed that enhanced communication between humans and nonhuman animals is possible. Zoanthropathy is hosted and spread by humans. [...] The disease is very high in morbidity and very low in mortality. Infected humans appear able to communicate (encode) and translate (decode) previously unrecognisable non-verbal communications via major senses such as sight, smell, taste, touch, and sound with nonhuman animals.'

When Lee runs off with Kimberley - to commune with the whales on the southern coast - Jean embarks on a cross-country road trip to find them. Riding shotgun is Sue, whose keen nose points the way to Tomorrow (Tomorrow being Sue's conceptualization of Kimberley. Jean is Yesterday, and Lee is Never There. Scathing, yet accurate.)

As with most potentially animal-friendly tales, I was equally nervous and excited to dive into THE ANIMALS IN THAT COUNTRY. As it is, the book both thrilled and disappointed me; I almost feel like it deserves two separate ratings, one for the idea and actualization of the dystopian zooflu future - which is breathtaking - and another for the human-centered plot that propels the audience's journey into this world - which is decidedly less so.

Let's start with the zooflu. It seems like it would be awesome to be able to talk to animals, right? Think again. I mean, really turn the idea over in your head, sit with the superpower, and try to envision what this might entail. Given that most of the nonhumans we encounter on the daily are exploited, oppressed, or otherwise negatively impacted by humans -

be it the 25 million farmed animals we create, torture, and kill for food every year in the US alone; the "wildlife" (read: free-living animals) we displace, starve, and kill through habitat loss; the dogs and cats we buy, neglect, and then abandon at shelters; or the animals we unintentionally hit with our cars (or the bugs we trod on just walking down the street); etc. x infinity

- we are weapons of mass destruction. To most of our nonhuman kin (and sometimes our fellow humans, too). Instead of words of wisdom and messages of hope, we'd be more likely to hear cries of terror. Confusion. Pain and agony. Hellfire, everywhere. Created and fueled by us and our own.

Heck, I'm not even sure it would be beneficial to always know exactly what our beloved, nonhuman family members are thinking. I have a fifteen-year-old dog named Finn who's going deaf and blind and battling dementia. More often than not, I suspect that being privy to his innermost thoughts would freak me the fuck out. Not to mention break my damn heart.

And then there's the mode of communication: not just just verbal, as we're used to, but all-encompassing: "sight, smell, taste, touch, and sound." Think pheromones, sound waves, scratches and ticks. The beating of countless tiny wings, all bombarding your brain and trying to tell you something. That kind of thing, coming at you uninvited and from all directions, is apt to drive a person mad. And it does, as evidenced by zooflu sufferers who stuff their orifices with whatever's handy to block incoming stimuli - or, at the more extreme end, the pseudo-religious trepanners who invite strangers to drill holes in their skulls in a misguided attempt to relieve the pressure.

Talking to animals sounds like the stuff of dreams - but in McKay's hands, it's a nightmare.

And a pretty trippy one, at that: fittingly, the incoming messages that Jean's left to decode aren't quite what you'd call straightforward. There's a lot of translation required, and Google hasn't yet caught up:

I’m reading her body like some language I barely remember from a high school textbook. Bonjour madame, connaissez-vous le chemin de la gare? Let’s go to the station. Or, where the hell is the supermarket? I can parrot the words, but the meaning is in scraps.

Copies of this book should be sold with a sheet of acid, or maybe some edibles. I kid, but also not.

If, like me, you assumed that increased understanding and compassion would surely spring forth from this newfound ability to communicate with nonhuman animals, you'd be wrong. While some people do indeed embrace the flu, many others lash out: animal-free zones are established, and hungry citizens start hunting former pets, since they make for easy prey (apparently they've never heard of fruits and veggies?).

There's one especially excruciating scene that I don't think I'll ever be able to forget. Jean takes refuge in a makeshift church, only to catch a glimpse of how the missionaries make their sausage (stew):

A small fluffy dog has pelted out a kitchen door, thin bit of twine tangled around its legs, body blonde fire, screaming, Hello. Please. Please bite its soft. Quick. Help me. I jump up, calling the poor little bugger, but the parishioners shriek louder, climbing on their chairs like that dog is the snake from the garden of Eden. The woman rushes for her daughter and hauls her by an arm out of the room. It’s funny, for a second, until the laugh dies in my throat. The little dog, too tangled in the twine to move, slumps panting in the aisle. It’s not just m e. Where’s other me. She’s still — The god-botherers are faster than me. They grab that dog with WWF wrestling passion, using real lumps of wood, real knives. The little dog has enough time to issue a thick whiff of terror from its undercarriage, Help her, before they’ve slit it ear to ear right there in the pulpit. There was no blood with Lee. He didn’t even look that drowned. He might have come alive any moment. He might be alive right now in his grave. This little dog, though, is bleeding out on the beige carpet. The door to the kitchen is open. Matthew the soup cook leans on the jamb, then turns back. A fluffy tail on a chopping board. The steaming pots. Pain like a stab to my guts — he stirs a soup very much like the one he was serving up in the park.

Of course, this scene is so repulsive to most of us - Jean included - only because the animal being killed and consumed is designated for "companionship" instead of "food," at least in this particular culture. Chances are you've known and loved a dog or two yourself - and so the doomed beast transforms from a something to a someone. Not an unfeeling object to be used and discarded at will, but a sentient creature with her own feelings, desires, and loved ones. Had it been a chicken or pig, the result wouldn't be quite so horrifying; Jean herself eats meat, and justifies doing so, on several occasions.

Yet an earlier scene - in which Jean comes upon an abandoned tractor trailer truck packed with pigs destined for slaughter - will hopefully challenge readers to expand their circle of compassion:

I’ve seen battery hogs before — of course I have. But not out and about. Not staggering around and trying to walk, calling to whatever they think is ‘more’. Glazed eyes that strain like they’ve never seen sunlight. Skin stretched over bodies fed to the point of bursting — something between swine and meat. Saw some animal liberationists on the street in the city one time, saying factory farms were the same as Nazi camps. I called them bloody racists too. The pigs clatter past me down the ramp, fucked-up eyes on the road ahead, calling, Hello is it more. Those animal nutters were wrong, but not in the way I thought. It’s not the same as the Nazis: that was us doing to us. What’s this? [...] A hurt sow sits on her haunches, then lies down on the verge, panting unevenly under the slathering sun. Another weaves blindly over the asphalt toward her, flies spinning around her head. They push their noses into each other. Send me a postcard, the sick one says. Postcard, indeed. What the fuck. I watch more closely. The meaning bright off that tight skin. All the little bits saying, Leave me, and, I’ll hear about it, and, Don’t you see it. Move on. There’s more. The ones that can walk stretch their legs, for, More, more, more. I stand at the top of the truck ramp watching them break into a group trot toward the next paddock. Skin rippling. Hooves carolling. Know that heart-in-your-mouth run. Know exactly what ‘more��� is. I’ve seen it in Lee and I’ve had it too, at times. These pigs are half dead, they’re stumbling around, blind, mad, and fucking hopeful.

Even if many of the characters in this book resist the humanity clearly evident in nonhuman animals, I hope that readers will hold these passages close - especially at the dinner table.

Sue, our main nonhuman protagonist, is a fascinating character; like many of the semi-domesticated animals in the park, McKay paints her as a series of conflicting impulses: safety or freedom. Hunger or satiation. Dingoes or humans. She is fiercely loyal, much to her own detriment. She has wants and needs of her own, and she's often satisfied to set them aside for the good of her (adopted) pack.

And I guess that brings me to the second half of this review: the humans, most of whom are awful. Jean, exponentially so.

Initially I thought that Jean would be my people: she's a hard-drinking, mold-breaking badass broad who gets on better with animals than people. She has a mini-rescue in her backyard where she keeps some of the park's doomed relinquishments. (The public treats the park like a rehab facility when in fact it's in the business of entertainment - old, sick, injured, and "common" animals are routinely killed.) She and Kimberley spend their afternoons together designing the animal rescue they hope to build one day.

But Jean is kind of a terrible person. To call her a misanthrope is half the story: she's also senselessly mean and cruel, especially when drunk, hungover, or frustrated (in other words, 90% of the time). I don't fault Jean for her substance abuse problem - alcoholism is a mental health issue and should be treated as such - but nor is it an excuse for being such an asshole. (There's even a scene where she trolls people discussing the zooflu online, like a fucking American redhat.) She's shit to everyone around her, except for Kimberley and Lee (Lee, who could use a good ass-kicking).

And then there's Sue: Sue, who followed Jean across the damn country when she should have been settling into a dingo pack of her own. Sue, who found Kimberley and saved Jean's life. Sue, who is nothing but good and true and trustworthy. Sue, who Jean assaults on multiple occasions: kicking her in the ribs, binding her with rope to prevent her escape, and even trying to shoot her (with a gun that's thankfully empty of bullets). At one point, she "forgives" Sue for saving her life - as if Sue's the one who needs forgiveness!

Despite the abuse, Sue continues to stick by Jean's side, which galled me endlessly. Towards the end of the story, following the attempted murder, Sue gets revenge of a sort, dominating a delirious Jean and forcing her subservience. However, the book ends shortly thereafter, cutting any sense of satisfaction far too short.

I really felt cheated with Jean: I thought she might be my avatar in this world - but she's just another terrible human who doesn't deserve the company of animals.

Likewise, the whole subplot involving Kimberley's parentage is way over the top dramatic and unnecessary; it seemed like we were being plucked from a dystopia and dropped into a soap opera for a minute there. Just, gross. So yeah, there are definitely some aspects of the book that I appreciated more than others. THE ANIMALS IN THAT COUNTRY may be imperfect - but I'd still wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone looking to explore our relationship to nonhuman animals in a dystopian setting.

[thebiasrekkers]

Star of Fate [Vampire!VIXX]

Plot: The longer you stare into darkness, the more you realize that something could be staring back. Even more so when that darkness doesn’t want to be brought into the light and will do anything to stay that way.

Rating: NC-17 // NSFW

Genre: Series | Vampire!AU | Angst | Romance/Fluff | Smut

Pairings: OT6 VIXX x OC(s)

Warnings: Graphic Violence (bloody violence), Heavy Language, Angst, Slow Burn, Smut

Additional Warnings: Office Microaggressions | Bullying | Toxic Work Environment

Previous Chapters: Prologue

Links: FAQ || VIXX Masterlist || Admin L’s AO3 || Admin L’s WP || [ REQUESTS ARE OPEN ]

Word Count: 2,682

AO3 | WP

Tag List: If you would like to be added to this list, just drop us an ask!

AN: So…I know we said this was coming soon and I’m very sorry that this got started so late! I hope to have this out every two weeks, maybe more depending on the future. So please give this a lot of love and we hope you enjoy the ride!

Chapter 2- The Ghost Woman and the Hunter

Calling on your sins you're here in my dreams a desert place I'm not alone Do you really want to be me?

Her eyes popped open, the realistic feeling of falling completely disorienting her as she shot up from her bed. It had felt so real to her that her body jerked itself awake. Light danced its way in through the blinds, chasing away all signs of shadow. Never had she been so glad that she hadn’t purchased black out curtains than in that moment. She needed to see the sun and all of its glory to help the dream fade away into existence. Well, at least certain parts of it. There was a wistful part of her that still wished that she could be on that dance floor again with the handsome and darker skinned man. 

“Oh my….FUCK!”

Lucky yelled as she looked over to her alarm clock, realizing that it was the source of the chimes that she heard in her dream. Throwing off her covers, she scrambled to get half-way put together so that way she wouldn’t be late to her job. She even called a cab to get her there faster which was unlike her normal routine. Unless there was inclement weather, of course. 

During the ride, she kept an eye on her phone--it lighting up every few seconds as she checked the time. She made it to her desk just in time to receive the stack of papers from some of the other people there. Normally she wasn’t such a space case, even showing up early to get whatever else she missed the previous day. Lucky was a hard worker, nobody could deny that but it was that fact others exploited hence the reason why the stack seemed to get larger and larger by the week. The world of office politics seemed to be much like high school but it paid well enough for her to put up with the majority of it. 

She straightened out her hair as best as she could with it being so long and settled down to start on her work. Most of it had been reports that she had to pencil push and correct, which was easy enough for her because all the information had been just sitting there inside of her head. However, the more difficult stuff came along when the Vice-President stuck his fingers into everything. She couldn’t help but groan when she looked at some of them, saving the majority of them for last so that way she could take extra time on them. 

“Job finally getting to you, Leonora?”

Lucky didn’t realize how long she had been working on them until the voice pulled her out of the zone she had settled into. Turning around, she saw another coworker standing right behind her with a slight smile on her face. No matter how many times she tried to be friendly to some of them, they insisted on resisting any attempts at professionalism and decorum. Well, unless someone higher up was around. Not to mention the fact that they also insisted on calling her by her government name instead of the nickname that she preferred. She gave the sweetest smile she could muster and stood up, green eyes twinkling. 

“Oh, there you are Nancy! I got so caught up in fixing your mistakes that I forgot to give you this folder back! Everything in there should be up to date now and I even took the liberty of sending off the final draft for you. It was the least I could do since I was the last one that had hands on it. You’re welcome.”

She gaped at Lucky for a moment and flipped open the folder to read what she had fixed. Nancy’s ears started to go red and her thin lips flattened as she pressed them together in anger. Lucky raised an eyebrow at her reaction, knowing that she saw what had been edited by her. It had only been a few mistakes but they were some that would have made their department look bad. Plus Lucky also added her name to the document as one of the contributing factors, more so because she went through the trouble of fixing everything. 

“I hope this teaches you to quit pushing your work off on me, Nancy. Have a good day.”

Lucky turned away from her and sat back down at her cubicle, leaving the sputtering woman there to be embarrassed. Even though she had her own computer there, they all had shared files that they could all access and she lived up to her nickname that she had the time to quickly edit everything before emailing it out. It had been one of the rare times that she was able to stick it to them and it honestly made her feel a sliver of satisfaction at the situation. 

Because she was just a little bit petty. 

The sudden ringing of her phone took her away from the moment, the voice of her boss calling for her. Lucky was a bit confused as she looked at the time as she wondered why he had reached out so early. It normally was after lunch that she would meet up with him to go over various things pertaining to her new position. Lucky had been promoted to be the Personal Assistant for the Vice President. Naturally, he had more than one that would work together with him being at such a high level but most of them had quit because of various rumors of his misogyny and unrealistic ideals. Hell, she was even friends with one of them when she found out that she no longer worked there. Rumors circulated with her leaving and even more when she was appointed in her stead. 

Now, Lucky was one of the very few left so that meant that she had been picking up a lot more work than normal. Not that she went out much anyways with the amount of work she had. 

She walked the halls to his office, only to be greeted by the desk clerk. The tiny lady handed her a folder and suggested she find something appropriate to wear. Confused, Lucky looked through the folder and saw that there were some instructions as well as some papers with details on the new VIP’s that they had recently joined with. 

“What the actual hell? Does he expect me to drop everything that I’m doing to go to this event with him? After hours, no less?”

The lady just shrugged and went back to her work. Lucky could feel her indignation rising but left before causing a scene. It was one thing if it was an actual work trip that she had to attend but that had been some sort of event to flaunt and rub elbows. There wasn’t a real reason why she needed to be there so why all the preparation? She returned to her desk and went through the folder in detail. The only promise that she would receive was an extra amount in pay if she went, something that actually interested her. She grumbled as she leafed through it but decided that it was just for one night and that if it happened again, she would put a stop to it. The bright side to it had been that she could take off early to prepare for the event. That was always something she could look forward to especially that day since she moved like hell to get there on time. 

The one person that she could freely talk to in the office came up to her with a grin on her face. She had originally been offered the position but declined it because of family reasons but she was nice to talk to regardless. 

“So Lucky.. I heard from a little bird that you’re going to the VIP event tonight with Mr. Randall.” She wiggled her eyebrows and elbow at her while Lucky just scoffed. 

“Yeah, I guess. I wonder how in the hell does crap go around here so fast? It’s like the freaking flu!” 

“You don’t sound so enthusiastic about it.”

“Ashleigh, I really don’t want to go but they’re promising extra pay this time if I do. I haven’t been sleeping well lately and now I gotta go to this… grandstandin’ event. I wish someone else could go.”

Her coworker leaned thoughtfully on the cubicle wall before leaning down to whisper. It was only times like that when they would get a bit of privacy. 

“You could always quit and get some more sleep? I heard that the other assistant quit as well. I thought, at first, that you had too when you didn’t arrive when you usually do. They’re saying that the abuse from the VP is to blame.”

“Yeah well, tell the handsome man in my dreams to quit bothering me so I can go by to my normal schedule and ignore some of these chickens.” Lucky’s hand motioned like a beak as they both had a laugh over that before returning back to work. However, Ashleigh’s words stuck with her. The VP hadn’t been shy about voicing his displeasure to her about various things, even requesting that she cut her hair but she respectfully declined his request. All she stated was that it was within the guidelines of the company and left it at that. Something that didn’t win her any favors. 

And if the other girl quit too, then the sinking feeling in her gut proved to be more of an ominous feeling. Either way, she would have to go and see how it played out. 

When time came for her to leave early, Lucky instead went shopping for appropriate attire for that night’s event. Even neatly braided her hair to keep it out of her face. Simple, neat and just a tad bit sexy in the red dress. Once satisfied with her result, she waited outside for the driver to come around and pick her up. Upon seeing the expensive car, Lucky suppressed a shudder when the door was opened to reveal Mr. Randall. It wasn’t necessarily seeing her boss after hours but more of a combination of the car and him. Small vehicles caused her a bit of stress since she was involved in an accident many years ago. Since then, normally she would either take the bus or bike when the weather was nice. 

Thankfully, her boss wasn’t too interested in making small talk with her once they got on the road. The city was left behind soon and various gas stations and trees zoomed by them. She didn’t put too much thought into it until the driver turned onto a long, paved road after a set of gates. The mansion that appeared made Lucky’s eyebrows shoot up, something picking at her brain. She couldn’t quite figure it out but it was as if she had seen that place before. She had to shake those thoughts from her head as she concentrated on remembering the information that was given to her earlier that day. 

Knowledge was power and she needed it to navigate that world if she didn’t want to embarrass or otherwise offend anyone. 

Upon exiting the car and entering the elaborate place, Lucky felt all the eyes in the world stare at them. Putting on a gracious face, she walked slightly behind her boss as they were greeted by some of the others there. A few moments chatting with some of them, she soon found herself alone in the area while the others mingled. She wasn’t anyone of importance and therefore not worthy of anyone’s time, for the moment. She would let her boss do all the talking. 

Lucky gravitated towards the hors d'oeuvres while everyone talked among themselves. Plucking a few to put on a plate, she watched the room for any sign that she would be needed. Several of the clients that were in the folder she received were there and they were laughing alongside everyone else. A couple even approached her, asking questions about the company and trying to get a little information from her about how to deal with her boss. She couldn’t honestly say anything to help in that situation because she usually just listened to him bark his orders before correcting anything she needed to. 

She was left alone for another time, only appearing at her boss’ side when needed as the night went on. Soon she felt herself grow tired of all the people and the politics of said beings. Lucky had several drinks before that point and was in the process of acquiring another when a voice nearly made her jump out of her skin. 

“They’re almost like vultures, are they not?”

She looked around and up at him as he was much taller than her, even in heels. The man knew he was handsome, smiling prettily at her as he held up his own glass of red wine in a toast. Lips full and round eyes, Lucky had to appreciate his looks before replying. 

“Well, I wouldn’t say that in particular.”

He gave a wide smile, eyes almost disappearing as they snickered at the rest of them. Lucky found herself talking more and more to the man who seemed just as bored as she was with the party. The more that she looked at him, the more that he seemed familiar to her and it dawned on her that he was one of the men from the folder. He had a nice voice, a bit higher than most of the men there but he didn’t hide it one bit. 

Lucky also noticed that the attention had been drawn to them just from them standing and talking to one another. He introduced himself as Jaehwan and they talked for another 15 minutes, slipping into easy conversation to keep themselves entertained. His jokes nearly had her spilling her drink, the folder not at all correct with the man before her. He was one of three men with his business, including one brother that rotated about in their company. 

Still, even with the jokes and the amicable banter between the both of them--her boss found that he had only missed the presence of Mr. Lee before her. 

“Ah. Leonora, I didn’t realize you had monopolized Mr. Lee’s time here tonight.” Her shorter framed boss then looked to Jaehwan with an apologetic look on his face, “Otherwise I would have saved you sooner!” Mr. Randall gave a laugh, expecting Jaehwan to laugh with him but didn’t. It surprised Lucky that her new friend didn’t go along with him on that but only sighed, looking to her in apology before speaking. 

“Leonora? And you said you were Lucky…” He grinned at her, ignoring her boss. She could see Randall’s face that he was growing annoyed, a face that showed up when things didn’t go his way. 

“Oh that’s just my assistant’s nickname that she tells everyone to call her even though we should be more professional. I’m her boss, Nicolas Randall. Vice-President of Nexus Assurance.” He held out his hand to shake but Jaehwan kept grinning at Lucky. His eyes suddenly were hyper focused on her, the doe eyed look that he did have--dissolved away. Almost like he had found something he really wanted.

“Uh well, I’ve been known to be lucky--hence the nickname.” She nervously laughed, highly aware that the tension was rising. Her eyes darted between Jaehwan as he continued to ignore her boss and the latter as he was getting more upset that the scene was even happening. That strange and ominous feeling was back, churning about the contents of her stomach. Jaehwan slowly turned from the friendly and open persona that he had while it was just the two of them, to something a bit more aggravated the longer her boss was there. There was a glint in his eyes that suggested something unfriendly was fighting its way out. 

Suddenly Jaehwan blinked rapidly before excusing himself but not before taking her hand and kissing it. Bewildered, Lucky watched him weave expertly through the crowd before taking a peek at her boss. 

And he was not pleased. 

[grim-faux]

21 - Hall of Rorschachs

The lift gave a harsh clatter against the steel rails, as the cables jerked the empty container back to the ground floor.  I twisted around and lunged at the underside in some pitiful attempt to latch on and ride up, or drag it back down if I must.  Even if there was doubt I had the strength to hold on, I was desperate.  But it was not to be, I was far from grasping the cart as it faded into the dark gullet of the chute.  The clatter of the carriage grew distant as I stood in the shadows gazing up, hand outstretched.  Begging.  My thoughts pleading.  No one was listening.  I returned my focus to the short corridor with the lamps that buzzed and dim whenever a surge slid through.  I was so set on getting out.  Ready to say my goodbyes.  I let my fucking guard down.  How typical.  How fucking typical.

I tried the call button beside the chutes entrance, but it required a magnet key.  I recalled the Asylum, and the numerous trials I endured to locate those damn cards.  I didn’t believe I would stumble upon one down here, since it was ‘Father’ Martin that had planted them for me.  God, even in death he’s still giving me shitty fetch quests.

New Objective:  Find another way out. I didn’t know what awaited down here, lurking.  Didn’t feel prepared to continue.  It couldn’t be worse than the twins or Trager, could it? I crossed to the set of doors and pushed one open, and was nearly blinded by the sterile light blazing over the pristine walls and floor.  Bright glaring lights, that reminded me of His cell.  I blinked the dryness away as I stepped into the hall, I could detect an immediate change in pressure.  Aside from the air having a dry and clinical property, I couldn’t explain the sensation, but I didn’t like it.  Bravo for intuition. The floor was polished and as bright and white as the cylindrical walls curved around the hall.  I wasn’t a geologist so my knowledge was limited, but if I had to guess I would say it was all chiseled from natural stone, from the mountain itself ”…something that had been waiting for them in the mountain.”  What the hell was this place? Now that I thought back on it, a colleague of mine had tried to relate a scientific matter to me concerning specific ores, and how it attributed to supernatural occurrences.  Truth of the matter I had been a piss poor student, and constantly teased her as she tried to educate me.  But I had listened enough. The paranormal was a genre she was interested in, and she was thrilled to tell me about a place she visited in Colorado (not Mount Massive).  Some ritzy Hotel, the Overlook I think was the name, its location built upon a cash of natural limestone.  Scientific observations were utilized to support theories, that paranormal occurrences could be attributed to high concentrations of limestone in the mountain.  Something in the mineral conducted electricity. It sounded a little too fantastic to me, but here and now, I was beginning to wonder if Murkoff had premeditated these findings.  Someone believed them.  In that case, the Asylum wasn’t target exclusively for the history or the seclusion.  It was elected due to the qualities of the region itself. Or maybe I was just tired.  I looked up at the symbol printed above the next set of doors.  I’d seen it before.  No, not the lockers in prison block.  The video the Priest had forced me to watch.  That symbol was on the floor when the MHS tacticals were throttled like chickens.  The atomic, molecular design?  Or could there be further religious affiliation? I pushed the doors open and stepped into a fresh scene of horror.  I knew this room, and my anxiety increased tenfold.  Blood streaked the floor, splattered on the white stone walls.  Bullet marks decorated steel and glass in random areas, the pieces of a gun had been scattered over the floor with black splatters.  Muscles and entrails glistened under the light as I moved from the doors.  Red had dried to the large crescent desk fixed at the rooms center, two large screens sat behind it, bright and cheery in contrast to the stew soaking into the stone.  One read Murkoff Corporation, the other sported the trinity Molecular design along with WALRIDER PROJECT in bold.  And the symbol on the floor streaked with blood.  That symbol was everywhere. With a sigh, I took out my camera and filmed everything.  It was giving me low battery warnings, but I had at least a half hour left if I didn’t run out of power for the night vision.  Unfortunately, there seemed to be plenty of light in this place. “Fuck.  Fuck, fuck, fuck.   Whoever finds my corpse – trust no one and tell everyone.  I am not crazy.  I know, I know, only crazy people say that.  But I am as sane as this world allows, with a camera full of evidence.  Don’t call it a gospel.  Call it a mockery of reason, let the world know it is Murkoff’s fault.  Bury these bastards with my mutilated dead body.” It took a few minutes for me to write.  My hands seemed steady at first, but when I put pen to paper, well….  Aside from the difficulty of holding my pen against my middle finger, it was almost unbearable to apply pressure to my index finger.  I dated the note and leaned back to view murder and rot surrounding me while I wrote.  I needed to get my priorities straight. A few plants dotted the room, but I knew they were fake without a glance.  Polished gray pillars encircled the lobby, they didn’t resemble any specific mineral.  Just general grade cement to support the dark blue ceiling.  The far side was comprised of a glassed portion of the wall, with thick pipes behind.  Water, gas, electricity, I didn’t care.  Beside the wall sat a short desk, out of place among the red streaks.  Two chairs had been set facing one another, and two mugs of coffee still sat on the brown wood. I averted my gaze to the opposite wall, where a purge chamber stood open to the room, black blood washed down its sides and soaking the floor.  The images came back clearly as I had seen them, despite the drugs swimming through my brain at the time.  I could envision the panicked militants shrieking as their bodies were ripped through the tiny crevices in the doors, and holes of the glassed in wall.  One man’s legs still lay a few feet from the pile of meat, a string of organs dried to the stone.   I stumbled back into the large desk and sat down on its surface.  My hand touched a folder beside me, and I looked down to flip through the pages.  It was nothing remarkable, nothing relevant I decided. From the personal records of Dr. Wernicke.  The Modern Prometheus Document: The Pride of Wisdom Schrodinger Wolfram “FRANKENSTEIN, or The Modern Prometheus” by Mary Shelley, published anonymously in 1818. Chapter 23, excerpt –  “Man,” I cried, “how ignorant art thou in thy pride of wisdom! Cease; you know not what it is you say."  I broke from the house angry and disturbed, and retired to meditate on some other mode of action. Well, it appeared they created man’s monster.  And it hath a wraith unlike no other being in our world.  I closed the folder and pinched the bridge of my nose.  It was apparent I had dug in too deep, I didn’t know if I could claw out of the grave I had lain in.  I suppose I had one choice.  Keep digging.  I didn’t know exactly where I was, but I had a strong estimate.  I was in the Basement of the Asylum. I looked to the security operative slumped in his chair, near where I perched.  Briefly, I wondered what would become of the remains of all these people?  Even if Murkoff wasn’t the shady bastards that they were, it was impossible to gather up the pieces to return them to their families.  The investigation? I slid off the desk and approached the blood splattered door of the cold purge chamber.  My breath hitched as I tried to inhale gently, but the pain in my rib couldn’t be negotiated with.  I didn’t know if I could do this all over.  I might need to find someplace to rest and if fate allowed, I would awaken before I died. The door panel sparkled embers from the torn wires, probably motion sensors detecting my approach.  The doors held silent, an eerie howl raised from the dark depths.  I raised the NV and reassured myself there was nothing, I was alone except for the dead.  The hair bristled along my brow.  God, why did I put that image in my head?   I shuffled forward into the cradle of the dark.  Above wires and cables ran the length of the tunnel, the walls were as they were in the entrance, chiseled and polished stone with occasional gaps that had been glassed off where additional paneling and vital equipment or systems were nestled.  The camera flashed a familiar image, I tensed as static buzzed through and waited until it cleared.  Nothing but shredded bodies, nothing but the secrets these people died with.  I listened to the silence.  For so long I was accustomed to the distant shrieks and mutter of people, behind doors I hoped to never open.  Now, I was buried deep in solid rock, with only the pulse in my bones to alleviate the sterile peace. Murkoff personnel were everywhere, lined against the walls, bodies torn inside out by a force I could never have a want to comprehend.  I doubt any two were slain in the same fashion, or the method of death so violent it was impossible to replicate.  As always, never footprints.  But what ghost had feet? Guts and lungs splattered up walls, I was unsettled by how fresh it appeared to be, but attributed it to the NV.  Thin lines marked the floor, I knew these prints that made long red through copious puddles.  I’d seen the same when I was pushed off an elevator by a lunatic.  They turned when the tunnel curved, ahead light swept into the shadows.  I clicked off the nightvision but hesitated to emerge.  I refused to trust the helpful presence of light, but for now it was welcomed while my camera demanded a fresh battery.  I dropped the old one and set the new one in.  The distant clatter that echoed was a solitary thing throughout the corridor. The wall along my right had the natural mineral trimmed away into flat walls, reinforced with cement, and steel in some areas.  The metal portions were fitted with slates, or shields, that same symbol from the lobby was printed besides the shields.  I stared down, the marks.  Those lines went through these panels, curving around the edge.  I debated the meaning as I took a deep breath and squinted my eyes. They looked like portals or panels that could be moved.  There was a set of powerful looking hydraulic hinges, but otherwise no handles or switches that could gain access.  Probably wouldn’t do me any good anyway.  I fit my fingers along the edge testing for a draft, but judged they were airtight.  Pressure sealed.  This facility was dedicated to science and clinical procedures, despite the butcher of the upper floors.  If there was a way out, hopefully I didn’t need to access it within there.  I could come back, once the rest of the Block was explored. As I resumed on my way, something came to my thoughts, it was a bit random.  In the report it was stated Billy had spoken to the Dr. Wernicke in a white room.  I spun around checking the walls and surrounding surfaces.  This place was pretty white.  But…that wasn’t possible. I looked up and watched a camera connected to the cables in the ceiling revolved slowly, catching all the action as it happened.  I glanced back at the doorway before I continued down the hall. A Block.  The large plate on the wall identified this as A Block, or the whole hall was?  There wasn’t much to it.  I was reminded of the Cell Block’s of the Asylum above – C Block, D Block.  Clearly this was as a part of the Asylum as the condemned sections of the Female Ward.  This didn’t surprise me.  But it could have been coincidence as well.  I’d go with that, since I was done with the conspiracy theories.   The next set of doors had pop marks across the glass and metal, bent out in small boils where bullets had lodged.  The bullets were fully visible in the glass, surrounded by the star shaped impressions that commemorate the battle.  I felt the shadows around me as I huddled in the garden, the branches cracking as something swept through.  That inhuman shrill.  In my ear screaming as the thunder laughs, and my vision fills with white.  Then I’m curled up in the room, the dry wood and cold plaster on either shoulder as I tremble and listen to the ringing in my ears.  The sensation that crawls through me, I can’t explain it.  I’ve lost something, yet, nothing is amiss.  I don’t feel right. I barely glimpsed the panel at my left.  Morphogenic Engine.  I stopped with my hand on the door and bent my head around studying the hall I had moved through.  You know what?  Fuck that.  I can’t conceive what it would look like, what exactly it’s supposed to do.  I don’t care.  I’ll come back!  I promise.  I’ll come back if I have too. That was probably a hollow promise, but my obligations had faded since I stepped off that damn elevator.  I had no luck with elevators. A series of large canisters greeted me on the other side of the doors, pressed to the wall on my left and out of the way.  The label read ‘saline’ substitute.  That sounded kind of weird, wasn’t saline a substitute?  I took in details of the hall, my camera held in no specific position as I walked.  The ceiling retained its natural rock, but the walls on either side resembled the interior of medical labs.  This all looked like existing cave before Murkoff came along and filled it with their nightmare science.  The idea brought me back to the theory of the mountains as the target rather the Asylum, and I wondered about the files I had found dating back before Mount Massive was shut down.  If not for the limestone, then the isolated region was more than worth the resources to insure the quality of their uninterrupted studies. I touched the wall on my left as I neared the doorframe.  The material was metal and possibly reinforced.  I don’t think it was meant for militaristic operations, though they clearly took precautions for their work.  For an invasion or ‘terrorist’ attack, a lot of good it did them. A thin red streak slipped between the open doors I peered through, blood was spread from ceiling to floor.  I blinked, staring.  The air was thick with copper and rot.  I was so tired of that smell, but I just couldn’t get away from it.  It was soaked into my clothing as it was soaking into the walls around me.  I stepped inside, careful of the pieces beside the counter that had once been one or two people.  Maybe three.  All of them spattered over the floor, organs hung in ribbons on counters, pieces of bone scattered over metal cabinets.   I scanned the labels visible through the glassed in shelves.  Most were filled with vials of fluids, many of which sported long, four syllable words with –ine or –phen on the end.  Files were scattered over the sinks and floors, reminders for injections and progress with patients identified by numbers.  I stood beside the rolling chairs and scanned over the room, debating if it was possible that materials remained that I could patch my hands with.  Something actually medical, rather the spare shirt that would be waiting for me in the jeep.   Pipes twisted around the edge of the ceiling.  I followed the sections around the room trying to recall something about pipes.  They were pumping the recycled air throughout the facility, they had to.  Couldn’t risk foreign contamination.  It sounded ridiculous in my head, but I preferred it that way. Revisiting the hall, I turned left.  The black stains of yet more Researchers coated the gray metal of Nitroglycerin tanks, scattered beside the wall.  He was probably in the midst of transporting them when it all happened.  A few tanks managed to stay on the wrecked cart against the wall.  I poked into the next room, the remains of staff had all but painted the walls.  I stumbled as I leaned on the door, just… everywhere I looked, the broken pieces of tissue and body parts was all over.  I have to emphasize the ALL OVER aspect.  I thought the Asylum itself was gruesome, but this was something else entirely. I looked from the doors of the room, shot up by bullets, to the large tank of unmarked gas or fluid.  At the other corner was a medical waste bin piled high with black bags, stuffed with unknown rubbish.  It was a clear violation of sanitation, but for whatever reason Murkoff began to lack in strict policies during its final days.  I was curious to what could be crammed in those bags but they sagged and were covered in unknown gunk, and the smell of residual chemicals did not encourage me.  It was subtle evidence of distress, though at the time this room from a glance gave the delusion of order and regiment.     I stared up as I leaned on the autopsy table bolted to the floors center.  Above, an arm hung from one of the pipes that lapped around the ceiling, dried muscle had peeled back to reveal white bone.  Threads of intestines stuck to files stuffed into the shelves, the jaw of someone was lodged into the space between a drawer and the countertops edge.  It looked like the fleshy tissue of the throat had remained attached. I shut my eyes and rested my weight to my free arm, when I opened my eyes, I noted the pages that had scattered from a folder stained with blood.  Under the harsh lamps the fluids looked fresh, almost new.  The battery in the camera itself was holding strong, I used it to snap the pictures as I skimmed through.  PROJECT WALRIDER  POSTMORTEM PRIMATORY REPORT MM1300921  (form note: all material herein to be transcribed and revised to fit legally binding requirements of Murkoff Corp. records. See form 4083)  AUTHOR: Jennifer Roland  NOTES: My fourteenth autopsy of a Walrider patient, showing no more signs of accepting the therapy than any of the others. There have been slight gains in cell migration and morphogenesis (including effects similar to Human Growth Hormone), but nothing to suggest the stable creation of a sentient, independent swarm. So tired. Doubting my judgment. Will submit another request for leave. The psychological cost of using such far gone and further provoked patients is more than I feel I can handle.  May suggest hanging less hope on the far-flung theories of a senile Nazi and move towards using a simpler mechanical engine based on major sperm protein.  Will definitely suggest harsher chemical restraints. Murkoff Security killed patient 923 after he overcame enough tranquilizers to put down a hockey team. I’m afraid the Hormone Therapy is interacting with our chemical restraints in a counterproductive manner. This file.  This file was very important.  It gave insight that had not been present in past documents.  The use of words in her text made it sound like…. Dr. Wernicke was still alive. I stared at the phrase she included which made the doctors status current, if it was not a mistake of word use.  But that would make him ninety years old, at the least.  I set the file down and looked upon the carnage, the violence, the death.  I corrected myself.  Wernicke had been alive.  I couldn’t imagine him surviving this.  I tossed the file aside and ventured through the door, turning to the corridors end.  Expulsion of gooey innards spread high on the wall, long red lines slid down before the liquid dried. More death, more bodies that had at one time been living people.  I pressed my hand to the wall as I took the right corner, avoiding the skin stretched across polished white floor.  I don’t know why I was self-conscious now, after I had traipsed through mounds of bodies in the Asylums halls.  I couldn’t even come up with a cheap theory.  Every corner, I saw red and wet entrails, black skin and orange puss.  The air was filled with its rancid vapor, from the methane released as the meat soured.  What would they do with all these bodies?  Where could you put them all? I didn’t reach the doors in my path.  I had to stop and lean on the wall, gazing at them.  Doors and more doors.  What would be behind them?  My liberation at last?  I didn’t care, I had to lie down, rest.  The ache in my skull was unbearable, if I took one more step I would fall.  I couldn’t go on like this.  I just kept seeing bodies and faces, images I couldn’t explain.  What was I seeing?  I wasn’t even hiding in the shadows.  The shapes were no longer trapped in my camera. The room spun, I kept myself from stumbling with my hand on the wall as I lowered down.  There was a shallow slant beside the floor, I propped my good side on this to keep the pressure off my ribs.  I kept the camera in my right hand and set it beside me.  I wasn’t planning on sleeping, just needed to give myself a chance to cut the ache.  The floor was cold but it felt so good to lay my head against it.  It didn’t even matter how bright the bulbs were above, I could turn my face into the collar of my coat and shut my eyes. Almost at once I felt my mind descending into a thick blanket of sleep.  I tried to stir from the tempting lull, but I couldn’t resist.  I was surrounded by the corpses of dozens of unnamed scientists but I didn’t give a damn, it was too hard to stay conscious.  I escaped the pain, I escaped the world, and I escaped the cold halls churning in my mind. As I felt my body slip into the illusion of safety, a painful spasm shot up my spine.  I was paralyzed.  The sensation was horrible, my muscles locked up and I couldn’t will them to relax.  It was as if the concept of mobility was ripped from my brain.  I was a prisoner in my body, fully capable of detecting the environment around me but unable to react to it.  I felt the camera in my hand as I slowly regained consciousness, but… I remained unable to rip free of the powerful vice that had seized my chest.  It was too painful to do anything less pathetic than cringe.  I whined as my ribs shifted in my side and gagged.  I was suffocating!  My eyes open drunkenly, dots whirling in my vision as my brain craved oxygen.  I saw something.  A dark shape leaning over me, staring into my face. I barked out a terrified sound and swung my arms out, clipping the wall with my left hand as I thrashed.  I scrambled over the floor struggling to escape thin air, until I was pressed back into the doors.  I stared wild eyed, disturbed and gasping for air, despite the odd tickle in my chest.  There was… Nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  The lights blazed down as fierce as when I had dropped, my head pulsed the same as before.  No change.  There was no demon here. The sharp sting returned to my finger as I recalled, I’d just smacked a stone wall with it.  I clutched the shaking hand to my chest, and curled my other arm around it and barred myself in with my knees.  I sat for moment fighting to forget the pain, while my filthy pants soaked up red drops.   “Nothing is here,” I whispered.  “Just a nightmare.”  My voice rattled against the walls, impossibly loud, overpowering briefly the dull buzz that hung over me.  I uncoiled and trusted weight on the bleeding hand to push me upright.  My body was uncooperative but my mental brawn won over. I shut the door behind me and scanned the long corridor ahead.  To my eyes it just went on forever.  Probably wasn’t too far off.  A thick pipe extended overhead, I saw no other visible wires and took this might have been the main electrical.  Beside it metal cabinets jutted from the walls, though the natural stone work remained in this tunnel, along with various protrusions.  Additions, such as flues were burrowed into the rock on either side, and another thick gray pipe extended along the ceiling. Electricity was in the air, I could feel it like the hum from a television when you first turn it on.  But it’s forceful, charged in the empty space but not in the walls themselves.  Maybe it was the lamps overhead.  I set my hand on the gray pipe testing the vibrations but felt none.  I ignored the marks of blood I left behind, as I walked and swayed around the huge tanks.  Many stood my height but none held clear labels, just a serial label printed on the metal top.   The sides of the floor were marked with caution strips, and other more descript warning lines marked the floor every few feet.  I skimmed over the large pipes bent and twisted along the corridor walls, of what they transported I couldn’t say.  Looked like aqueducts, but I doubted this.  Pallets stacked high with bags and covered with a blue tarp, had been abandoned in the hall. I tried to peel back the plastic cover and record what was beneath but the material was thick.  I also lacked the patience.  I slipped over the top rather crawl around. Judging by the layout of this tunnel, I could deduce this was not a main wing but dedicated to temporary storage hall.  Plans in the schedule might have included park the pellets in a more particle space, but that was before the shit storm hit.  Or this was another example of a lapse in protocol.  I winced when another thought hit.  Files existed that made note on the cutback in staff costs.  The man I had seen playing the piano.  Had he been a patient? I jumped when the camera sputtered, the noise echoed from the chiseled walls.  Damn it!  That scared the shit out of me!  I held it away as the visor cleared, and continued walking.  The files would be corrupt, I decided.  But I could still salvage them, I had equipment for that.  My shoulders shook on the thought of reviewing what I had recorded.  The sounds I made when I ran from Trager.  It didn’t even sound like me.  Was that really me? I said that allowed, and paused to glance around wondering if it was I that had spoken.  I barely began walking when I noticed to my left, a window.  I skid to a stop and backed up.  A window!  Transparent hand prints of red stained the surface, but beyond that sunlight.  Sunlight!  From the outside!  It was all clear golden sky, rolling hills.  No more storms filled with monsters shrieking with the thunder!  The outside world was still out there.  It was waiting just for me.   I was staring into a militaristic hangar, a few vehicles parked under the steel structure ceiling, the walls stretched around appeared reinforced.  Most important of all, there was no sign of life, no movement.  Just equipment, materials, large barrels of god knows what.  And that beautiful sunlight washed across the military jeep wedged in the doorway.  If I was viewing it from the correct angle, no one was going to close that door unless they packed some powerful explosives.  Or, had the key to the jeep.  I held the camera up and filmed what I was seeing, while trying not to get too close to the Plexiglas.  There had to be— Ah. Over there!  Far right wall, lit up like Christmas.  A purge gate.  From the distance and discoloration of the window, I couldn’t validate if it functioned or not.  But it didn’t matter, it was the first entrance/exit I had come across.  There didn’t seem to be any difficulty in dismantling those purge gates though.  How did I get over there? I tracked the hall that continued before me, with my eyes.  If I had a map, no doubt it’d have an arrow indicating this way led to the exit.  Large blue barrels sat in my path, I could view traces of blood on the walls just beyond them. Directly behind me, another set of doors clear and featureless.  Above the frame a green bulb, indicating they were unlocked?  I stared into the white hall within, while my mind hunted for escape.  I had visions of myself entering that small hall and an alarm going off, a steel shutter lowering like in some James Bond film and me stuck inside forever because I just couldn’t let go. Or maybe I was afraid to?  Could that be it? The doors parted automatically upon detecting my movement, the plastic panels issued a soft hiss as frigid air swept out.  I paused in the entrance, not doubting my fears, whichever ones I had.  I debated turning away and just leaving, working on that gate and my inevitable freedom.  But I really couldn’t have too much evidence. I said that once before.  But maybe I was right.  I was afraid. The short hall was cold, the air crisp, fresh.  One of the two doors was left open, which explained the drop in temperature.  It was a small room filled with freezers, all below zero temperatures.  I stepped around the right side trying a few of the doors, but they required access codes through key panels.  At the left side of the room a door had been smashed, the locking mechanism no longer active allowed numerous clear vials to spill across the floor.  Whatever the contents, they had dried and converted white limestone into varying shades of iridescent.  I kicked a few away with my foot and listened as the glass crinkled as I turned.  Along the back wall of the room sat lesser refrigerated cabinets, the contents exposed through foggy glass.   Beside them, a dry erase board.  I stood before it, my camera giving its usual complaint as I waited patiently for it to quiet.  It was some form of chemical engineering algorithm, exponents and a formula function I did not recognize.  All in blue marker, except for the title at the top, which was a simple label written in black.  

Morphogenic Engine

[pluviophile-bookworm]

AWAE 1x1 rewatch: thoughts and reactions

After two months of laughing, crying and every emotion in between, but most of all massive clowning, season 3 is in the past. Now, instead of being all sad about the cancellation - which is temporary, mark my word - time to rewatch every episode starting from day one. 

A lot of my reactions to season 1 will probably be “omg [insert young character’s name] was so tiny”. If you don’t like that, you’re welcome to block the tag #jnk watches awae; otherwise, feel free to come with me on this trip down AWAE memory lane. 

Horse riding parallels were very much a thing in season 3, but now I see they go back all the way to season 1. The premiere episode starts with Matthew riding a horse I could not identify, and 3x1 starts with Anne riding Belle. They’re even riding in opposite directions - as if towards each other. What can I say, I love Anne and Matthew’s relationship and I just had to find something even from before Anne arrived. 

Just as I remember, this episode (and most of the first season, really) is much darker and greyer than the later seasons - especially compared to season 3, where a dark frame signified something really dark was about to happen. I cannot help thinking this was not just because the first two seasons were filmed in winter and season 3 in summer. I think the dull, dark colours were emphasised on purpose to reflect the dullness of life in Avonlea before Anne arrived, as well as Anne’s own dark and difficult past and her fear of being treated the same as before once again. Am I looking too much into this? Yes. But AWAE is the kind of show that rarely, if ever, does anything by accident. So I’m probably on the right track. 

The choice to start off the series with Marilla and Matthew inside their home instead of Rachel and her point of view, as the book did, is a nice foreshadowing of the series’ emphasis on family. I love it. 

And, as the colours of the frame brighten for a second before going back to grey dullness, we get our first glimpse of Anne. Her face was ever so thin. Poor child has been through so much already... the whole situation just makes me think that her past combined with what her future holds is way too much. Way, way too much. 

Seeing the terrible memory of the abusive environment she was only recently taken out of, I cannot properly express my gladness at the realisation that in season 3, the sound of a crying baby no longer triggers Anne. Yes, she’s been through an awful lot, but life in Avonlea as part of a loving family has done her good. You know, these observations and the knowledge of all the positive changes in future seasons make it easier for me to rewatch these very triggering scenes. 

“I like imagining better than remembering” After all you’ve been through, of course you would. Who could blame you for that?

“Why are the worst memories the most insistent?” I’ve been asking myself the same thing for a long time now. 

Oh Anne, you have no idea... [image credit: kissthemgoodbye]

As if to confirm my theory, the colours are much brighter once Anne arrives at the train station. But now I have another theory: what if this brightening reflects  how Anne sees things? The hope, the potential for a better life in a new world...

“I can also imagine that I am already a disappointment to you” And she doesn’t even know they were expecting a boy... poor thing. This scene brings me to tears every time I think about it. And the whole period of time that Anne spends wondering if they’ll let her stay at Green Gables. I have no idea how I will endure watching that over again. But I set myself up for it and what got me through the first time is what will have to do it again this time - that is, the knowledge of what is to come. 

“You’re a sight for sore eyes, Mr. Cuthbert” I bet this is the first time Matthew has had these words said to him. Great, now I’ve made myself cry. Could it be that this is when he knew there was no way he was bringing her back to her old life? Those bright little eyes telling you how happy they are to see you... I am surprised Marilla took as much convincing as she did. 

“I’m so homely, nobody would ever want to marry me. Unless he was a foreign missionary.” First of all, no, you’re not. Second of all, I hereby give Gilbert Blythe his new nickname - the foreign missionary. It’s ironic to think that if post- season 3 Anne would remember saying that, she would definitely come to the same conclusion. I need a season 4 and a reference to this in it. #renewannewithane

Since this Rachel we see here is pre - 3x7 Rachel, I’m back to being annoyed at her every time she appears on screen. 

“... or some French ruffian.” I know full well Jerry is French- Canadian, not French-from-France, and yet I can’t help finding this extremely ironic. Like, thank heavens your new hired boy is not French... so what if he was?

“Well, we’re not getting a girl.” Oh yes you are, Marilla, and you will love her like she’s your own daughter, as much as you try not to. 

My theory is just confirming itself scene after scene. Both of my theories, really. When Anne and Matthew are riding along the White Way of Delight and past the Lake of Shining Waters, everything is bright and positively just as wonderful as Anne says it is. We’re seeing what Anne sees, the way she sees it. Also, at that point she’s thrilled at the prospect of living in Green Gables and she’s approaching it - so the scenery lights up. But it goes back to darkness as soon as she has another flashback of her past.

As Anne and Matthew enter Green Gables together for the first time, I’m having flashbacks of 3x9 - another Anne - Matthew parallel. I can’t help thinking of how vastly different the two situations are, especially with Anne wearing the very same clothes as Marilla (being an inalienable part of the family) and Matthew standing up to the people from the “White Man’s Burden” school (after years and years of barely speaking and never putting his foot down except for one thing - to keep Anne). 

Poor little Anne - she just wanted to be called Cordelia or Penelope for a couple of days before going back to her old miserable life... but I guess one can be satisfied with Anne with an E if Anne with an E has the chance to stay at Green Gables. Plus, I myself have always liked the name Anne.

“Girls can do anything a boy can do, and more” Why, Anne was just as much of a feminist back in the day as she is in recent episodes. She really is “ahead by a century”.

Why would anyone ever imagine they’re in the depths of despair? Besides, I don’t think anyone who has never felt that way would have the ability to imagine it, even if their imagination was as great as Anne’s. 

The Princess Cordelia scene reminds me an awful lot of the Beltane scene in season 3 and I’m not even sure why.

I cannot believe Marilla just threw that beautiful branch into the fire. I also cannot believe how much she has changed in the course of 3 seasons. I’m glad she has, but it pains me almost on a physical level to go back now. 

“You can’t make up family, only kin is kin.” In a show that goes on to have such a strong emphasis on found family. We have started from the very bottom, indeed.

Anne’s opinion of Matthew is my opinion of Matthew. I live and would die for that man. 

“Red-headed people can’t wear pink”? I have a few examples on my mind that prove otherwise. 

Anne saying she would never have a chance to be a child breaks my heart... it doesn’t mean just that she thinks she’ll never be someone’s child. It also means she’s spent all her childhood growing up too fast. This poor child deserves all the happiness in the world. 

I am terrified of dogs and this scene - the only one where we see a dog on screen, as far as I can remember, does not give me a single reason not to be. But I guess everyone in that scene is lucky that Anne’s nothing like me in that respect.

Even 1x1 Marilla is not cold-hearted enough to leave Anne with that awful woman and her poor babies. 

“I aught not to decide on anything without consulting him.” Well, that is new for certain. I see we’re improving already. 

Anne’s description of how she would pray makes me feel she’d make a very good pagan. The “come to me, Muse” in season 2 and the Belthane scene is season 3 are further proof of that for me. 

I’ve always loved that “Eggs!” scene... and the fact that Anne expected to be introduced to all the chickens had she not introduced herself to them... she really is a friend to all living beings.

Carrots... I had forgotten Rachel was the first to call Anne’s hair that. It sounds totally different coming from her than from Gilbert, that’s for sure.

Anne’s reaction to Rachel is my reaction to Rachel in this scene. She cannot be blamed for reacting that way, and yet she’ll be forced to apologise. It just so happens that this is not her last time apologising for telling the truth.  

Ah, I see we’re there. At that cliff, looking out at the great sea... in such terrible circumstances, though. There really are worse things than hurt feelings, and Anne has been through some of those, and yet she ends up in this place for the first time precisely because of hurt feelings. How poetic.

Anne’s apology has been a favourite of mine since I first read it in the book, and Amybeth’s delivery was absolutely splendid. But I have to say, Rachel did kind of redeem herself with that auburn hair story. 

Oh my, Jerry is there. Now Anne will really go off again.

I can’t, I just can’t even! Look at my baby, he is so tiny. Little did I know back when I saw him first that he would grow on me so much. His first interaction with Anne, though... once again, we’ve truly started from the bottom. And to think we almost went back there in 3x10...

That little tug at Anne’s sleeve... and the callback to it in 3x8... I just love Matthew and Anne’s relationship.

Mr. Barry is there. Oh my, oh my. I see the Barrys’ opinion of Anne used to be no different than their opinion on Jerry. I still cannot understand why accepting her, but not him, would ever be ok. 

I can’t even look. Those awful girls were... well, awful. I can’t even look at them.

My, Diana almost looks boring compared to her season 3 self. But it’s not her fault. 

I’m going to cry... I just witnessed, for the second time, the birth of DiAnne. 

The brooch storyline, however brief, is one of those that make me cry every time I even think of them... Marilla was way too harsh with Anne and she knows it now. 

The end of this episode is a perfect reflection of the beginning... except the beginning was hopeful and the end is desperate. I’m a sucker for framing devices, but not like this, no.

To sum up, in this episode we saw: the arrival of Anne literally lights up Green Gables; Matthew Cuthbert puts his foot down for once in his life; dreadful scenes of Anne’s past; Rachel sticks her nose in other people’s business - no surprises there; Anne is a feminist since day one; Anne’s opinion of Matthew and Rachel is most of the fandom’s opinion of Matthew and Rachel; Anne and Jerry are off to a bad start, which will change soon; Anne and Diana are off to a good start, which will, unfortunately, also change soon; a brilliant framing device, the first of many.

[brownstonearmy]

2020-09-25: Juiced! (Part 5)

August 7 (Friday midmorning)

After the events of the previous day, you'd think our lovely band of adventurers would catch a break. BUT YOU WOULD BE MISTAKEN! Messages, insights and calls to action proliferate throughout the party.

Lucky receives a letter from Miss Mavis asking for a favor:

"Lucky, can you and your friends help me find a crystalline energy amplifier? I need one for a restoration project. They're worth a hefty price, but I'll gladly reimburse if you find one."

Norm, meanwhile, has learned that Yance Elbereth is convalescing at SHART HQ. The time to strike against his assassination target is nigh!

Spleenifer has learned through meditation and spiritual attunement that the waterskin from the monk is a type of holy water and the decorative bowl is actually a bowl of Commanding Water Elementals. And on Spleenifer's first day of official work as Mayor Dunwall's assistant, she has been asked for her input how best to solicit donations to help the Mayor with reelection.

Q (going as Jay on this auspicious day) found a note under their door:

"From one bard to another, here's a piece of advice: never trust a Stout you can't drink. I have Stout problems of my own, if ever you want to meet for a pint at the usual bard hangouts. I'm easy to find, since the scales stand out. -Kadana Meristan"

Everyone splits up to start on their respective tasks, so let's follow one adventurer at a time and see where things lead!

Up first we have have Jay, and they strike out for the Juicy Lyre tavern to meet up with the mysterious author of the letter. Kadana, an attractive dragonborn, is nursing a pint while composing a song on the back of a playbill. After Jay takes a seat, she explains that Lawrence Stout was once her patron. But like Jay, she got into some hot water when things got a little too close between Kadana and Russell Stout. The younger Stout seems to have a habit of fraternizing with the arts (as the euphemism goes). But in Kadana's case, her arts funding got cut off as punishment.

Jay and Kadana muse for a bit on strategies to get back at Lawrence and/or Russell. The best way to strike back seems to be breaking up the Stout family businesses, but neither of them are quite sure how to go about doing that. Kadana excuses herself to attend to some other bardly matters, but it's clear that Kadana is playing this as a playful round of hard to get. Folks, we're seeing the beginnings of a beautiful friendship (and possible romance)!

But we must fade to black for now and pick up on Spleenifer's tale! She's back at the Mayoral Manor to discuss the upcoming election strategy. On the way over to the Mayor's place, she found a slightly-charred scrap of paper that probably fell out of someone's pocket during the events of last night. It reads: "You promised me I could use the ring to fix my problem. -Rooney"

Spleenifer stuffs the scrap in her pocket and focuses on the task at hand with the mayor. Since Zaribeth Quickfingers is mounting an unexpectedly strong campaign (though really, any campaign at all is probably unexpectedly strong against Dunwall), the incumbent mayor needs to take the special election preparations seriously. Spleenifer suggests mounting a spin campaign to solicit donations, but her methods are a bit... unorthodox:

"Make it say incontinent instead of incumbent!"

That'll surely take away from the discontent brewing about the mayor's presumed incompetence! What's a giant dung beetle to do? Approve the suggestion and blast it out across town, of course!

Now we switch POV to Lucky, who suggested at the start of the adventure that the party should investigate an unusual announcement in today's Brownstone Bugle where the Meyrick family was looking to hire someone to kidnap their daughter for ransom. But Lucky isn't abandoning Miss Mavis's task! In her words, she's gonna try to kill two stones with one bird.

Lucky is already familiar with crystalline energy amplifiers, and knows they can be found in certain naturally occurring crystal deposits. The catch is that only the biggest crystals (worth at least 1,000GP) can function as a proper amplifier, but she's got a lead on a potential source in a mine about 10 miles east of town. If Lucky can win the audition to kidnap the daughter, she could potentially stash her quarry in the mine while looking for crystals.

She knocks on the the door of the Meyrick estate, and the butler escorts her Mr. Meyrick's study. Mr. Meyrick is a skinny man with wild hair that is graying at the temples. If Gary Busey was a used car salesman and the characters knew what car salespeople were, that's what everyone would say the elder Meyrick looks like.

Mr. Meyrick asks Ms. Lucky Proudfoot what her plans for his daughter are, and she explains the plan. She also plans to scurry off to the mines in a mobile house on chicken legs for extra dramatic flair. The daughter can work in the mines hunting crystals while waiting for the ransom payment to arrive. Meyrick thinks this is an excellent plan and hires Lucky on the spot. He just needs some time to subdue his daughter before she'll be ready for the exchange. Come back later this evening, he says, and she'll be Lucky's problem for the next few hours.

Now's the perfect time to switch over to Norm, who's sneaking his way to where Yance is staying. The recently-concussed trader of illicit antiquities is laying on a cot staring at the ceiling. Norm applies some of the St. Ignatius's Re-Dead Juice to his dagger and moves in for the kill. But Yance rolls over just as Norm enters the room and makes eye contact.

All is not lost, though! Norm shifts into playing the part of an ally who is checking in on him after the concussion. "How many fingers am I holding up?" Norm asks. He goes through a series of simple tests and then "checks for bumps" on the back of Yance's head. That's when Norm makes a tiny nick at the base of Yance's hairline with his poison-coated dagger. Yance passes away seconds later, peacefully slumping back onto the cot.

Sounds of a loud scuffle erupt outside, and from Norm's vantage point, it appears to be a fight between five drunken sailors and a sober-seeming ship's officer. Despite being split up, the rest of the party is close enough to hear the sounds of the brawl and everyone converges on the scene.

Lucky triggers a wild surge and casts Suggestion on one of the sailors, telling him to "make love, not war." Every time she blinks, a duck appears nearby. The sailor under the influence of Lucky's Suggestion grabs a fellow sailor by the arms and pulls him over for a deep kiss. The sailor on the receiving end of the kiss is surprisingly receptive to the romantic gestures, and they stumble away from the fray to keep the passion burning.

Norm exits his building, dashing through alleyways so as to make it look as though he came from a completely different building. There's a drunken brawl and a separate manly make-out session and at least a dozen ducks by this point. What the heck is happening here?

Spleenifer, having been a sheltered woman of faith, has never seen men kiss before. She grabs a duck and announces to her newfound companion: "Let's watch together!" Regardless of the duck's opinion on the matter, it's along for the ride. The passionate pirates are flattered by Spleenifer's audience, but their ships don't really sail that way, if you catch their drift.

While all this chaos is unfolding, Lucky has a bit more fuel to add to the fire. She drops her suggestion and casts invisibility on two pirates and the officer. It's hard to fight when you can't see each other, right? Well, it does stop the fight for the most part, as the two invisible pirates stumble off to rob a bank with their newfound invisibility powers.

The remaining pirate is lifted up by an invisible force (spoiler: it's the captain) and slapped. Now the captain's visible again and orders him to return to the Rising Howl, their ship that is currently docked until the river rises high enough to let them sail. Spleenifer grabs another duck from the flock (now called Prongle), while still restraining the original duck (now named T'Pam) in her sturdy arms. She manages to coax them into pecking at each other like they're kissing.

Norm dashes over to where the sailors were fighting and is nearly overpowered by the stench of alcohol. He pulls out a match lights it to see just how much of a drunken cloud the sailors left behind. Lucky adds a little pizzazz to the situation with a little bit of flammable luck, and the cloud ignites in an impressive cloud of flame in the air that leads in the direction of the fleeing sailors. Jay leaps in front of the two kissing sailors to shield their love from the explosion.

Once things calm down (always only briefly in this town), the party swings by the general store for some pickaxes for their upcoming mining expedition. Not wanting T'Pam and Prongle to feel left out, Spleenifer fashions some miniature pickaxes out of twigs to give to the ducks. Lucky snags a caterpillar cocoon (foreshadowed magical purposes!) on the way to contact the lizardfolk to borrow their house.

At the Meyrick estate, Mr. Meyrick greets the party and directs them to a wagon containing a tied-up sleeping giantess (technically half-giantess, but still LORGE). Once their "hostage" is safely aboard the house, the party contemplates what to do.

"I've never done kidnapping before," asks Lucky "but is it reasonable to ask for her emancipation?" But that is soon answered once the giantess wakes up. Lucky is able to communicate with her, and learns that the giantess's name is Tina. She's well-spoken and her family loves her a lot. This whole kidnapping thing is a publicity stunt to get some sponsorship deals. The house gallops toward the mine, reaching the entrance after about 20 minutes.

Tina agrees to help the party mine for crystalline amplifiers and takes up a pickaxe along with the rest of the party. Lucky uses the cocoon to transform herself into an umber hulk with a sweet, sweet burrowing speed. But after some time has passed, a group of eight drunken brigands arrives at the mine's entrance to hide out.

Norm puts down his pickaxe and sneaks toward the boisterous brigands to assess the situation. One of the group has a rucksack full of books, while the rest carry sacks of more conventional treasure. As Norm listens in from the shadows, he learns that the treasure comes from their recent break-in of Salem's.

The sound of picks against stone catches the attention of the brigands, who drop their spoils and tread deeper into the tunnels. A massive chunk of crystal has just been unearthed, and it could function as a quality crystalline amplifier if it can be completely excavated. However, that's the time the drunkards show up. One of them makes obscene and probably physiologically incompatible advances at Tina and a fight soon breaks out.

Smites, spells, and sneak attacks smash into the metaphorically-smashed sailors. Lucky's burrowing triggers a small tunnel collapse, and her confusing gaze disorients even more of the sailors. Spleenifer smacks at the base of the crystal to uproot it before the tunnel collapses further, and soon the party emerges victorious.

Mr. Meyrick arrives to collect his daughter just as the last brigands flee into the night. He mentions that the sponsorship deal fell through, though he still brought the promised ransom. Maybe they'll be able to collaborate on another scheduled kidnapping in the future? Who knows!

The party searches through the stuff left behind by the brigands and finds wealth of many types. Material wealth in the form of gold and gems is most obvious here, but there is also informational wealth. Among the books that were stolen from Salem's is a copy of Zaribeth's accounting ledger. As in, the true version that depicts all the shady stuff going on with Zaribeth's businesses.

With that realization, the adventure concludes for the night and everyone advances to level 12. Stay tuned next time for more!

[bruciewayne]

mess you up

firefighter/detective au

its a lot less complicated than tony thought it would be

“Pep. Pep, I can’t do it, he’s too hot,” Tony muttered, eyes glued to Steve, continuing his Romeo and Juliet forbidden-romance, epic love story in his head. He supposed, halfway through choreographing a fight scene between Steve’s Chief and his Captain in his head, that the was being slightly, maybe, too dramatic. Not about Steve being too hot, because that man managed to look good no matter what. Literally no matter what - Tony had once seen him with most of his clothes burnt off, running on 5 hours sleep over three days, barely standing and half an eyebrow singed off, and he still looked fucking edible.

It hadn’t helped that he decided to notch his eyebrow after it grew back and he drove a motorbike and he wore a leather jacket. Fuck, he was so, so hot.

But that wasn’t why Tony was being dramatic - the ‘forbidden’ part of their romance was that Steve worked for the FDNY and Tony worked for the NYPD. It wasn’t legally forbidden, but he would be castrated socially if he admitted to having a crush on being vaguely attracted to his face, body and personality. Kinda. Not really. No-one cared.

Tony had hoped that it would be basically career suicide to date someone from the fire department so he’d never have to actually ask him out, but, unfortunately not. Which meant that he had no reason to not ask him out.

It would be very, very different if Tony just wanted to have sex with him - he would flirt, back off if he wasn't interested, if he was - go to his place, leave before the sun came up and then never see him again, but Tony was fucking head-over-heels for this man.

They’d met maybe six months ago on an arson case and, ok, they had a rocky start, but as soon as they stopped being prinks (courtesy of Barnes and Nat) to each other, they actually got along, solved the case (jealous pizzeria owner - surprisingly rare), exchanged numbers and somehow became ridiculously close friends very quickly and then becoming something a little more.

Over the last couple months Tony had learnt that Steve was not only just hot (genetics) and brave (his job) but he was kind and funny and stupidly stubborn and ridiculously passionate about everything he believed in, the important stuff (the horse in the national hospital) and things that, ultimately didn’t matter (baseball), and he was an artist. The last one shouldn’t matter as much but last month, for Tony’s birthday, he’d given him a painting of Dum-E that somehow reminded him of Wall-E enough to make his eyes water slightly (he swore someone was cutting onions somewhere, fucking Ramsay). He loved him so fucking much.

To his shock, according to Barnes, via Nat, Steve was equally as head-over-heels for him, but, according to Barnes (via Instagram DM) he was ‘too chicken-shit to do anything about it’ and he has ‘a plethora of other insecurities’ concerning Tony actually liking him back and first of all; Tony was surprised that Barnes knew long words - the mini-Steve, that had taken residence inside his head around February, scolded him for being prejudiced against firemen but logically, Tony knew that he would call Barnes an idiot if he was an astronaut or an assassin, so shush, mini-Steve.

All of this brought him here - at some dumb function the district threw every year, he knew he shouldn’t call it dumb (thank you mini-Steve), it was for charity after all, but, but, it was June in Brooklyn, inside. Which meant that Steve wasn’t wearing a jacket and he had his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows, he somehow didn’t understand that he was beefed as hell and over six foot and not the tiny bean-pole thing he was in highschool (Steve lost a bet, his mom was ready and willing to embarrass him) or someone forgot to tell him because his shirts were always at least a size too small, usually two, and looked pretty much painted on. Tony wanted to tear them off his ridiculously toned… everything.

The blue dress shirt he was wearing was no exception, Tony watched as he shifted his stance and crossed his arms and those seams were the strongest thing in existence, damn. It did not help whatsoever that over the course of the night he’d loosened his tie and his hair had gotten slightly messed up - he was borderline debauched and it made Tony want to shove him against the wall and kiss him until he was completely debauched and fucking wrecked.

Steve caught his gaze and waved at him - stupid fucking adorable golden retriever man - and oh shit made his way over. Tony turned to Pepper for help but she just patted his arm, wished him good luck and walked away.

“Hey Tony,” Steve greeted, smiling, tugging at his collar, “you, uh, clean up nice,” he stuttered, eyes sweeping over Tony. How on earth he managed to be breathtakingly beautiful and hot, and a stuttering mess at the same time was beyond him in so many ways. Tony grinned back at him and said, softer than he meant to, “Not to bad yourself, Rogers.”

“I thought we were on first-name basis, Stark,” Steve teased, after clearing his throat and pushing his sleeves up and oh wow Steve smelled good, and they were incredibly close, have his eyes always been so blue and bright?

Fuck it.

Tony grabbed Steve’s hand and tugged him outside, the cool air rushing around his red ears, the brightest stars just about coming out, the soundscape of the city echoing around them and the chatter of people inside floating out but all Tony could focus on was Steve.

“Steve, stop me if you want, but, I like you, in more than a friendly way and I-mmf-” Steve never got to hear the rest of his sentence because he pushed him against the wall and kissing him, trying to pour every ounce of emotion he felt towards him into every swipe of his tongue, arms coming to wrap around Tony’s waist.

Tony reciprocated, pushing up into the kiss, tangling his hands around his neck and raking the tips of his fingers in his hair. They were both panting when they pulled away, a light flush on both of their cheeks.

“Your place?” Tony asked, still trying to catch his breath, not at all helped by Steve who was kissing very distractingly down his neck. “Your place is closer,” he mumbled, softly biting his earlobe. Tony could feel that smug fucker smiling against his skin when he gasped and his hips bucked against Steve’s involuntarily. Yeah, Tony would not have made it back to Steve’s place.

“You gonna - fuck - let me go so I can drive us to mine?” Tony asked as Steve found out all the sensitive spots of his neck. He drew him in for another kiss, this time Tony was the one in charge, experimentally tugging on Steve’s hair and smiling as he gasped and shifted impossibly closer to him - he’d always suspected that he was a kinky motherfucker.

When they pulled away, Steve looked slightly dazed and his pupils were huge - the science and logic part of Tony’s brain told him that it was because they were in the dark but the slightly possessive side told him that Steve was like that because of him. Tony liked that theory more.

“Nah,” Steve said, smirking and then generally made life difficult for him by kissing him. It wasn’t that difficult. Tony kinda liked it. (He liked it a lot.) ((He liked Steve a lot.))

He lied. Steve Rogers was evil. Sexy, hot and fucking adorable, but evil. Steve had caught on - the intuitive fellow - that Tony liked the debauched, dishevelled look on him and spent the entire car ride back messing himself up.

“Stop it,” Tony saud, eyes fixated on the road - like a good driver - very obviously Not Watching Steve fiddle with his sleeves, mess with his hair and tug on his tie.

“Stop what?” he asked, fairly innocently.

“Nice try, Rogers, your homeless-puppy-dog look stopped working a long time ago,” Tony said (it definitely hadn’t), thankful to have a slight upper-hand in the situation.

“Back to last name basis?” Steve teased as Tony pulled into his driveway.

Tony harrumphed and reached over the console to completely untie Steve’s tie and smoother it out over his chest, Steve smiled softly at him and kissed the corner of his mouth sweetly. Tony held his gaze for a couple seconds and then grabbed the ends of his tie and pulled him in for a harsh, bruising kiss, tongue sweeping into his mouth.

When they pulled away, Steve was breathing heavily, breath blowing over Tony’s lips, his irises were barely-there blue slivers, his lips were bitten red-pink and his hair was so, so messed up, flopping all over his face at the front and in ridiculous spikes at the back.

Steve blinked at him, dazed, “Fuck me,” he muttered, fingers flitting over Tony’s hips, slipping under his shirt.

“That’s the plan.”

all fic masterpost

[hongkongdramas]

Flying Tiger

Firstly can I say how exciting this entire drama is... Okay I’m kinda late to the show but the final action scene was so damn crazy and intense! HOLY. 

I really really like how the story unfolded and how they link the sub-plots to the main plot. They even place one sub plot at the beginning followed by the main story and ended off with another small sub plot.

The first sub plot was sufficient enough to get me hooked. The Ko Yat Tai issue and how they made use of this sub plot to introduce the our main villain Lo Man La. And I have to say what an amazing actor Hugo Ng is. Like the moment he confronted Michael Miu’s character and having Ron Ng to arrest him. The emotions and his facial expression can’t deny how much effort he has put in to drive himself into the character. And that entire scene was so emotional. The 4 actors (Michael, Hugo, Bosco and Ron) in that particular scene did a terrific job. Look at how amazing the sub plot already is so do i really have to say how great the entire drama is...?! 

The main plot comes in when Long finally infiltrated the U384 and started working undercover. On a side note, I pity Ko Ka Long so much that he had to check up secretly on his mother immediately after finding her and also losing contact with everyone he loved just for his job as a police man. What a huge sacrifice. There were so many exciting stuff during the main plot that I don’t know which to talk about. It was just like a roller coaster ride throughout the entire drama. But I have to commend how great Oscar Leung was in delivering his character Kenny. Omg he did such an amazing job! The crazy and addicted-to-violence Kenny was so fun to watch when portrayed by Oscar. He is such a talented actor and I always remember him in Line Walker always standing with his legs shoulder-width apart with the metal tag in his mouth while he talk and shake his body like a gangster.. LOL so funny. Really like him here in Flying Tiger too. Anyway, throughout the main plot, I remember myself complaining how dumb and annoying Ko Ka Chun was. He is just some workaholic guy that keeps on trying to climb up the promotional ladder and prove how smart he is at doing things. But seriously?! All he does is to screw up so many things. Well, but I can’t blame him coz he doesn’t know that his bro is working undercover.... And also.. It was so weird that he fell for Ling Man Lok.. Did he actually like her?? Or is it that he pities her so he decided to lend his “love” to her...? 

Whichever the case, I wasn’t rooting for the Ron-Grace couple but LOL I find myself rooting so much for Bosco-Venus couple >< LOL I dunno...Well, I just find them damn cute... But it was so sad that there wasn’t much scenes with them coz Long was working undercover and Fei resigned from SDU following all the issues. But i was sad there wasn’t much scenes too even after the main plot. All there was were just that proposal scene in the ambulance and the chicken congee and the wedding... Meh.. saddddd.

The next sub plot was the part where they went against Red Wolf and trying to arrest Bun. Oh, I thought of one part which I didn’t enjoy much and that was the scene where they were discussing on all the stock market and economy thingy. Maybe people may find it necessary but I was kinda bored out at that part. I guess maybe it was just me not following what they were talking about coz it was confusing... It felt like the part in Fist Fight talking about stocks and blah blah.... ew. Anyway, the sub plot was still exciting but not as much as what has happened coz much of it was all the discussions on how to transfer fire arms, forcing bankers to help and planning operations blah blah. But I really like a few of the tiny lil’ scenes. It was really minor but to me, it delivered such a huge message. Firstly was the part where Chun’s mother slapped Long and after which reminded both of the brothers to take care of each other during the operation. Secondly was when Chun called Shuen and his mom to speak with them before he heads off for the operation. Thirdly was when Fei and Long dared each other on the operation and whoever wins will treat just before they head off to their respective vans for the operation. Lastly was the scene Fei reported to his Dad because his Dad wanted to tell her how much she means to him and she was his angel right before Fei goes off for the operation. Can we just appreciate how amazing and important family ties are. How strong the feeling of love can be where we just wish our loved ones would stay safe and come back in one piece. Gosh.. i really how these tiny scenes can be so impactful. 

The last wedding scene was okayyy I guess. (Even though I was taken aback at how fast the relationship between Chun and Shuen escalated.. It came just out of the blue imo...) BUT!  Where is Sis La?!?! She said she wanted to witness the wedding!!! She should at least make an appearance! Unless police doesn’t allow that... =((

All in all, one of the greatest HK action drama I’ve watched. (with a great ending... *hinting at Ruse of engagement...*) I literally watch like at least 1 episode everyday and can’t help myself to binge watch the last 5 in a day. Looking forward to part 2 even though I was sad to not be able see the entire of the original cast in 2. (Coz no Long and Fei =( ) 

[baronessblixen]

Dashing Through The Snow

Day 11 for @thexmasfileschallenge: sleigh ride. And tagging @today-in-fic. Set after “Emily”. 

It had snowed all night.

Scully tries not to trip on the grayish white leftovers that cover the streets as Mulder surges ahead in long, confident strides. It was his idea to have lunch in the city and get some fresh air. In the five years she's known him, he has never uttered these words. Still, she packed her things and followed him without a question. Mulder wolfed down half a chicken while her salad went mostly untouched. Her appetite had been lost in a hospital on the other side of the country. Was buried right alongside a little girl that never had, and never would, call her mommy. She could tell that Mulder wanted to comment on it, ask. But he swallowed each and every question and for that at least she was thankful.

"Mulder, can you slow down a bit?" He's clearly never walked in high heels in weather conditions like these. She doubts he's ever walked in high heels, period. But he doesn't hear her. Or he doesn't care. Scully huffs and picks up the pace only to crash into Mulder's back.

"Scully, look." Maybe it's because his voice is full of wonderment that she does follow the direction of his finger. The park across the street looks like a tiny winter wonderland with its snow-touched trees and meadows. That's not what Mulder means to show her, though. Scully watches as children of all ages sled down a small hill and she'll blame the cold wind for it, her eyes start watering.

"We need to get back to work, Mulder." She doesn't want to see this. As she takes a few steps, her knees wobbly and her feet uncertain, she wonders if Emily had liked snow. If she'd ever even seen it. Played in it. She tries to recall the little girl's laughter, but her imagination fails her; she had never heard her daughter laugh.

"You just told me to slow down," Mulder's voice and matching smile are as warm and comforting as chamomile tea, "I have an idea. Follow me." He takes her hand, doesn't wait for her to complain, and drags her with him.

"Mulder, work."

"Yeah, later."

"Mulder, I'm not wearing the right shoes for whatever you've got planned." She is ankle-deep in freezing, wet snow. It's only noon; how is she supposed to sit at her desk the rest of the day with wet feet? Mulder turns to her, looks her up and down as if he were appraising her, then he puts his arms around her waist and tries to lift her up.

"What the hell are you doing?" She shrieks loudly and he lets go for the moment.

"I don't have any spare shoes on me, Scully. I'd give you mine but I'm thinking they won't fit." He has the audacity to grin.

"What are we even doing here? Mulder, there is work to do back at the office." He nods, but takes her hand again to lead her over her over to the hill where the children are having fun in the snow.  

"When was the last time you went sledding, Scully?"

"I don't know, Mulder. When I was a child, I guess." Her eyes land on a small girl who can't be more than four or five years old. She's all bundled up in pink and purple colors sitting on her sleigh and grinning at her father who drags her around the snow making all kinds of silly noises. She can't look away.

"That's what I thought. Come on, Scully." But she is frozen in place, her eyes unable to move on from the scene in front of her. She barely notices Mulder's absence or how the cold creeps into her bones.

"Scully?" Mulder touches her arms and she shivers.

"Huh?"

"Don't leave me," he whispers with a sad smile that she returns with a gentle shake of her head, "You're going to love this."

"Love what?" She watches as Mulder whips out his badge and shows it to a young boy. The child's eyes grow wide and he reaches out to touch it.

"You can hold on to it for me if you lend me your sled." The boy considers the offer as his eyes longingly stare at the badge. Scully has to suppress a chuckle. She knows she should stop this; it's wrong on so many levels, but she just watches. The boy nods and snatches the badge away. More children flock around him and Scully is not sure Mulder will ever see his badge again. She's used to him losing his cell phone, even his gun every once in a while. She wonders what he'll do if he manages to lose his badge.

"Hop on, Scully."

"You're kidding."

"Hey, this sled wasn't cheap. Hop on, Scully."

"Mulder, I'm not sledding down a hill!"

"Why not?"

"Why not?" He sits down on the sled. It reminds Scully of the ones from her childhood; sturdy wood, indestructible. That does not mean she wants to sit on it and speed down a hill. She is not dressed for the occasion. They're too old, she thinks; unlike the sled they're not indestructible. But Mulder grins and he doesn't look old at all. Crazy, though. He does look crazy.

"Scully, just one time. What's the worst that could happen?" His eyes are pleading with her and when that's not enough to melt her, he puts on a pout. She sighs, her breath a cloud, and rolls her eyes. Then she climbs in behind Mulder. He is lucky she decided to wear pants today. This would not have worked with a skirt.

"Get closer," Mulder tells her over his shoulder, "and hold on tight." Scully scoots forward until they're touching everywhere. She wraps her arms around his chest and finds that she feels quite warm. She leans her cheek against the wool of his coat. He smells good and for a moment she forgets what they're about to do.

"Ready?" Mulder says, but he doesn't wait. Before she knows what's happening, they're speeding down the hill. She tightens her hold on Mulder, closes her eyes. The wind howls in her ears as the wind slashes her skin.

"Hold on!" Mulder yells and then they come to an abrupt stop, the sled tips over and they fall to the side. Mulder is face down in the snow and Scully crawls over to him, her clothes wet, her skin cold.

"Mulder?" She runs her hand through his hair. His whole body is quivering. She tugs and pushes at him and finally he turns around. He's not in pain, not at all: the idiot is laughing.

"What was that?" Scully yells, hits his shoulder. Her hand half frozen it hurts her more than it hurts him.

"Fun." Mulder grins, laughs even more. Scully watches him, feels her lips twitch, her stomach somersault. Then something inside her breaks and she's laughing with him. Mulder drags her over his body, to keep her away from the snow, or maybe just because. She's lying on top of him and it should be uncomfortable, it should be awkward. It's neither.

"Are you all right?" He asks her. This is not about the sleigh ride; she can see it in his eyes. As another child shrieks in the distance, happy and carefree, she understands what he's tried to do. One day she'll tell him how thankful she is. Maybe they can talk about Emily, come up with weird ideas about how her daughter would have been. One day when the pain is not as present.

"I will be." Scully tells him and means it.

[coll2mitts]

#47 The Muppet Movie (1979)

Welcome to Muppet week!  There are 7 Muppet movies on this list, so instead of watching them in the order they appear (and having to pay for several months of Disney+), I’m going to present them chronologically.  I’m curious to see how they evolved over time, and if their quality diminishes.

For watching my fair share of The Muppet Show as a kid, I’ve never had the privilege of watching The Muppet Movie.  Let me tell you straight off - it is a gem.  The first scene shows the Muppets attending a screening of the movie you’re about to watch.  Statler and Waldorf call the movie studio a dump, Professor Honeydew comes at Fozzie with a great burn (Well, then you’ll have to get another apartment, won’t you?), Sam Eagle displays his stoic patriotism (Does this film have socially redeeming value?), Gozno cuddles with a chicken - it’s all there.  When the movie finally starts, we are treated to Kermit singing the iconic “Rainbow Connection”.

The first 5 minutes of this movie are a great indication of what the rest of it holds in store.  It balances slapstick humor, puns, social commentary, 4th wall breaking gags, and emotional beats that catch the viewer off-guard in their earnestness.  I lost my shit laughing one moment, only to tear up in the next.

The story is an approximate retelling of how The Muppets were formed.  After serendipitously running into an agent in his swamp home, Kermit decides to travel to Hollywood and audition for a casting call looking for a talented frog.  On the way, he runs into Fozzie, who Kermit tries to save from some unruly patrons of the El Sleezo Cafe by distracting them with a snazzy dance.  Fozzie pulls the ‘ol “drinks on the house” gag, which sends the mob up to the roof so Kermit and him can sneak out.  They decide to drive Fozzie’s Uncle’s Studebaker (his natural habitat) on a cross country road trip adventure so they can pursue their dreams of making millions of people happy.

We are then treated to the most jaunty song - I was literally bopping to it the minute it started.  Kermit and Fozzie perform their best comedy duo gags, and it is intensely joyful.

But, of course, Kermit and Fozzie’s trip is immediately derailed by the pursuit of Doc Hopper, who wants Kermit to be the mascot for his frog leg restaurant chain.  This is disturbing for a wide variety of reasons, of which Kermit vocalizes in the best line of the movie...

Kermit reiterates to Doc that his request is heinous, but Doc will not take no for an answer.  This leads Fozzie and Kermit to employ unconventional means to try and evade him, including having Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem paint the Studebaker to blend in exactly with a billboard advertising a soda.

They soon after run into, literally, “The Prince of Plumbers” Gonzo and his chicken Camilla, and the 4 of them head to the state fair.  With all those show chickens walking around, Gonzo gets a bit of a wandering eye, which triggers Camilla’s jealousy.  They observe a beauty pageant awards show where Miss Piggy is crowned (of course), and Kermit falls in love with her at first sight.

In order to appease Camilla after his previous digressions, Gonzo buys every balloon in the joint, which sets him aloft, sailing about 7 knots away from the fair.  The gang follows after him in a panic, but Gonzo can only appreciate the view from on high.

After a car chase scene between the newly formed gang and a shotgun-wielding Doc Hopper, Gonzo comes crashing down after a billboard pie hits the pursuing vehicle.  Miss Piggy (who doesn’t know what’s going on) convinces the car to stop somewhere for the night, and she puts the big moves on Kermit, exhibiting all the traits of her extra self.

Right when things are starting to get hot and heavy, Miss Piggy is called by her agent, abandoning Kermit at the table.  He commiserates with Rowlf, only to find out that Doc has kidnapped Miss Piggy and is holding her ransom. 

Much like The Muppet Show itself, this film is packed full of celebrity cameos, including (but not limited to) Lillian from Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Reuben from Oceans 11, Bob Hope, Richard Pryor, and Steve Martin.  The most entertaining bit may be Mel Brooks’ portrayal of a mad German doctor who is only interested in lobotomizing Kermit for funsies.

After Kermit’s failed rescue attempt, Miss Piggy decides she’s had enough of this damsel in distress nonsense, and kicks the everliving shit out of her captors, with the craziest eyes I’ve seen on a puppet since Meet the Feebles.

After a brief patriotic interlude (presumably to appease Sam), a flat tire forces the gang to pull over and sleep by the side of the road around a campfire.  Without help, Kermit is disheartened that he and his friends will not be able to make the audition in time.  Gonzo, who is a little like a turkey, sings a song that perfectly articulates everyone’s feelings about finding other people who share the same dream, and their quest to live it.

“There's not a word yet for old friends who've just met. Part heaven, part space, or have I found my place? You can just visit, but I plan to stay. I'm going to go back there someday.”

The songs do a great job at illustrating the characters’ personality, and they change genres depending on who is singing it.  Gonzo is weird, but he’s a mushball at heart, which is reflected in the quiet sincerity of the song.

After Kermit’s very important introspective conversation, The Electric Mayhem show up, informing Kermit they were inspired by his journey, too, and they can give everyone a lift to Hollywood.  But not before heading into a ghost town to have one final showdown with Doc Hopper, who has now amassed a gang to take Kermit and his friends out.  Animal eats their new friend Honeydew’s conveniently presented growing potion and scares away Doc Hopper and his group of bandits. 

The Muppets successfully make their Hollywood audition, and the studio head takes one look at Kermit and decides to offer him the “standard rich and famous contract”.  Kermit and his friends immediately start shooting a movie, reveling in the fact they found each other, and now they are doing what they love.

The amount of love put into this movie shows in every aspect.  The story itself is referential to the feelings of Jim Henson and his team, and the end scene where all their puppet creations are singing a revised version of “Rainbow Connection” hit me straight in the feels.  The craft aspects of the movie, too, are just impressive, and there were several scenes I was amazed by:

Kermit playing a banjo in the swamp

The wide shot of Kermit riding a bicycle, and the adorable faces he makes

Kermit and Fozzie dancing at the cafe (2-3 KICK!)

When The Electric Mayhem play in the church, every shingle, floorboard, window, and plank of wood holding it together moves with the beat of the song.

Gonzo sailing across the sky like the original Carl Frederickson

The entire set recreation of the plot of the movie, only for it to be destroyed by a crazy light technician a minute later

The costumes, of course, are amazing.  Miss Piggy’s constant wardrobe changes, especially in the romance montage, were stellar.  I appreciated they made Doc Hopper look like a discount Colonel Sanders.  Also, I want Gonzo’s hat with the tiny little faucet on it.

I really can’t chat up this movie enough.  This is my peak aesthetic, and I’m glad this project forced me to watch it.  This whole thing might be worth it for the mere fact this movie is now in my rotation.  

I have a feeling it can only go down from here.

[adashofniallandasprinkleoflunacy]

Champagne Mixed with a Bit of Adrenaline [h.s.]

A/N: this was a request from an anon and I finally got it done! It’s meant to go with this amazing piece of art. :-)  this piece is dedicated to the amazing @tiostyles because Brianne kept it from getting lost in the void LMAO. her support inspired me to finish it so thanks Brianne ilyvm :-) sorry for any mistakes or typos! Drop by my inbox with opinions bc I’m kinda?? Iffy on it?? Anywho, enjoy!

Harry likes to think he has stamina. He’s proven it countless of times before and he’s sure he will continue to prove it until the end of his days.

A great example would be that one time on the tour bus when he had popped a stiffy around 9 PM and couldn’t do anything about it, since no one was planning on going to bed yet, so he couldn’t sneak away to handle it. He’d had to wait until well after 1 AM, when the snoring elephants known as his band mates were conked out cold, to sneak into the bathroom with his Astroglide and rub out a quick one to a picture of Y/N wearing nothing but a pink, sheer silk button-up with the word “Styles” embroidered on the chest pocket.

Or the time when he and Y/N had attended a family get-together that his mother had thrown at his old house in the new pool she’d had built. Y/N had gotten the brilliant idea to grope him during a game of water volleyball and he’d had to play actively, all whilst doing his best to make sure no one saw the raging boner tenting his Gucci lion-printed swim trunks. After the underwater fun was over and the barbecue was done, his mom had condemned him to stay and help clean up. Washing dishes with his dick leaking wasn’t exactly his idea of a good time.

After that long night, Harry had given his mom a quick kiss goodbye and ignored her comments about how it was odd for his jacket to be tied backwards around his waist. He’d dragged a grinning Y/N to his car, setting route to their apartment but somehow ending up in an abandoned mall square, fucking in the backseat of his Rover.

And don’t even get him started on the time he lost three rounds of Go Fish to Y/N and, as retribution, had to wear a vibrating cock ring to Lux’s birthday party. Trying to explain to a four year old why his lap was vibrating, all while maintaining a cool composure, should’ve been made into an Olympic sport because the sheer amount of concentration and determination needed was truly out of this fucking world. Not only that, but fucking in a bathroom the size of a coat closet wasn’t necessarily prime, either. Lou had been having her upstairs bathroom remodeled and the one in the living room was too obvious, so they’d had to sneak down to the one in the basement. It was tiny, cramped, and smelled way too much like lemon-scented Lysol. His left leg had fallen asleep, but as if that wasn’t bad enough, Y/N had decided to up and leave halfway through and left him horribly blue-balled. Giving a toast to his goddaughter’s coming-of-age wasn’t really fluent when casually trying to cover up the bulge in his jeans with a Hello Kitty placemat.

However, all throughout these situations, Harry had managed to keep an unfazed, calm façade and had not given in to the woes of the intense exertion that was required of him. So, yes, he most definitely likes to say he has stamina. He’s entitled to say it. With all of the shit he’s been through, it’s the least he deserves.

But tonight, his hardcore ability to sustain such troubles has decided to fail him. And, hell, did it fail him.

Harry’s not quite sure what happened, but he knows that it’s likely do to all of the post-performance adrenaline that has been bubbling and toiling through his veins since he set foot off stage after his surprise LA performance at the Troubadour. It had been quite the show, considering he’d had Stevie bloody Nicks accompanying and dueting with him. Every nerve-ending on his body was set to full throttle, every hair standing to the very tip with excitement-induced electricity, and as he stepped outside the building, the cool night air burned his simmering skin like acid (which he’s pretty sure cool air isn’t supposed to do).

He was sweating buckets from the stage lights and the close proximity of the venue, but he loves the intimacy of it all. He felt more connected to his fans this way, so he thinks it to be worth it. His body, however, begs to differ.

Right after they’d disappeared backstage, Stevie had immediately demanded that they all go out for drinks to celebrate Harry’s blooming career, and how could he say no to her? Two Fiji waters and a limo ride later, they ended up in a classy joint that Harry didn’t care enough to try and interpret the name of because it was in a language he didn’t know (French, maybe? Or Italian?), and he was oh-so very wired. The champagne was bubbly and silky smooth against his sensitive taste buds, the dim miniature chandelier above their booth casting just enough shadows to hide the itchy flush that is crawling up his neck.

His sheer black shirt is sticking to a thin sheen of sweat that has materialized down his back and he’s fairly certain that his golden-glitter pants weren’t this tight when he got them tailored. His feet feel as if they are floating in pools of sweat, the leather Gucci shoes not doing his heated body any favors. And that’s when he feels it.

Harry shifts slightly in his seat as Mitch slides in next to him, nudging his elbow off the table in a best-mate-rivalry type of way. His body instinctually bends forward slightly as all of his upper weight loses the support of the red oak surface, torso reeling to the side as he giggles and elbows him back, and that’s when it hits him like a bus. He feels his dick twitch against his damp thigh, his jerky movements combined with the frenzied nerves from the performance setting every comatose hormone in his blood on fire.

A small yip of surprise escapes past his lips, eyes wide as his thighs give a hard clench and his fingers tighten around his champagne flute. Stevie had been speaking about a concert she had done a while back in Georgia when Harry decides to have this teeny spectacle, his not-so-manly squeak slicing through the calm, cool atmosphere of the bar. Everyone looks over to him, eyebrows raised here and there in concern.

Harry swallows down his unsteadiness, forcing a tiny, soft smile across his stinging cheeks. He lifts his hand a bit higher in front of himself to draw attention to his drinking glass, swirling the golden liquid around for emphasis. “It’s the champagne. Sipped too fast.”

His voice comes out strained, but he manages to cover it up with a faux hiccup to give his whole act a touch of authenticity. Everyone seems to buy it as they return their attention to the other singer at the table, intrigued by her story. He hears Jeff mumble, “lightweight” under his breath, a couple of the guys snickering along with him as Harry pins the man with a death glare.

“You sure you’re alright?” Mitch’s soft voice hitches Harry’s ears, dragging his attention away from his producer. “You’re sweating and the lights are barely even on.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. Just taking me a little longer to wind down. Since I sung with a legend and all, y'know?”

But he’s not fine. Not fine at all. If anything, he’s doing the opposite of winding down. He’s winding up– a glance at his lap easily confirms that. He hears blood starting to pound in his head, toes starting to go numb as he feels his balls tightening in his briefs. An annoying piece of hair keeps falling into his eyes and he contemplates ripping it off, but wagers against it since that might be considered too much of a scene. The back of his thighs are chafing in the thick material of his sequined bottoms and he’s positive he has some killer pit stains going, but he can’t will his body to stop. So he does the next best thing: He snatches the champagne bottle and pours himself another glass.

Harry’s not sure how much time passes by. It’s a blur of fizzy liquid, bright laughter, low lights and a swelling dull ache in his groin. He’s not necessarily drunk but he is buzzed, the alcohol having smoothed out the rough edges of his craving. His upper lip itches every now and then as sweat accumulates on the faint hairs he’s grown out and he has to constantly wipe at his face as nonchalantly as possible to avoid detection. The lack of personal space around the table only grates at his nerves even more because he can feel the heat of all the bodies absorbing into his clothes, turning him into the most sparkly-pantsed rotisserie chicken to ever exist. And the most irritated, at that.

But Harry will be damned if he passes up this iconic opportunity to have drinks with an icon herself. He’d been dreaming about such a moment since he could walk and he refuses to let a boner destroy one of the best to-be memories of his life. At this crucial state, he calls upon all of the times he had managed to power through similar situations and uses them to pump himself (pun intended) up, getting it through his tipsy skull that he can do it. He covered a hard-on with a Hello Kitty decoration, for fuck’s sake. Anything is truly possible!

Unfortunately, after a few more minutes lull by, Harry apparently will be damned.

He thinks he’s finally got it under reign when he sneaks a peek under the elegant maroon serviette in his lap, watching his pride crumble beneath his slightly-clouded eyes. His dick had leaked through his briefs and into his flared pants, the patch of cloth over his crotch noticeably darker than the rest of the material. His eyes squeeze shut as his nails dig into the palm of his hand through the napkin, biting down on his tongue as he feels his cock decides to give up on the slow burn and rather starts to throb sharply under the table.

Fuck his hormones for deciding to make him be a horny fourteen-year-old today, fuck his post-performance adrenaline for choosing to whip him up into a mess rather than dissolving away quietly like usual, fuck the champagne for making his eyelids droopy and his tongue heavy (although he will credit it for helping take the edge off), and most of all, just fuck himself for believing he could progress through this little get-together without bursting at the bleeding seams.

And apparently the universe agrees with him because as Harry sits there, seeing angry flashes of blue and yellow behind his screwed eyelids and wallowing in his self-hatred, Stevie calls his name from across the table.

“Harry?”

His head snaps up, eyes flying open in alarm as he attempts to calibrate himself back into the setting. A tight, croaky “hm?” thrums in his throat as he focuses on the blonde women across from him, her expression one of curiosity.

“Are you alright? You’re really pale, honey. And you seem kinda off a bit.” Stevie leans forward, setting down her almost-empty champagne flute and eyeing him thoughtfully.

Everyone’s attention turns to him, all of the separate conversations that had been going dying down to soft murmurs and silence. Harry’s not one for stage fright (his career had beaten that out of him ages ago), but he’s pretty sure this is how it feels. It feels like every person around him is seeing straight into his soul and he’s never wanted to disappear into thin air more than at this moment.

“I’m fine!” He swallows thickly, nodding weakly and he’s honestly trying to convince himself more than anyone else.

“S'just the rush of having you here is still…” he motions around the air with his arms to suggest an aura of excitement, “it’s still circulating– hasn’t piped down. It’s a dream come true and the starstruck feeling hasn’t stopped lingering. Plus, all the jumping around I did is really coming back to bite me in the ass. Never wear heels, guys. Huge mistake.”

The entire table bursts into a chorus of light laughter, Harry smiling sheepishly as he pushes the hair back from his face, ignoring how damp his scalp is. He chuckles quietly as his friends begin to take digs at his wardrobe and nearly faints when Stevie comes to his rescue, threatening to break one of the drinking glasses over Jeffery’s head for attacking Harry’s “unique and renowned” sense of style.

After a bit more banter, Stevie excuses herself to go use the loo. He sees her walking around to his side of the rounded booth, leaning down to talk beside him.

“I can tell you’re really out of it at the moment. Y'look really tired. Why don’t you go ahead and go rest up and me and you can do lunch tomorrow? You’ve been kinda detached the whole time and I’d really like to get to know you a bit more. Maybe even talk a collaboration. Who knows?” She pinches his broad shoulders playfully in a way that reminds him of his mom, patting him on the back. “I’ll text Roger to set up a reservation at Cafe Habana. Heard you fancy it?”

Harry nods so fast he feels whiplash lick at the back of his brain. “Yeah! It’d be an honor.”

“Alright. See you then.”

He watches as she walks away, rounding a corner to the restrooms and he immediately turns to Mitch, who’s in the middle of actively listening to Jeff and Sarah’s conversation about a Discovery Channel documentary over mermaids.

A tap to the shoulder gets Harry his designated attention and he speaks quick and breathless. “I’m going back to my hotel. Tell everyone I was feeling really tired, will you?”

Harry manages to wriggle his way out of the booth without embarrassing himself, leaving the trusty serviette behind as he sprints for the glass doors of the bar, socks damp in his loafers and that stupid piece of hair flopping against his forehead. The cold late night air runs the simmering stiffness from his skin (but leaving it as is somewhere else), swirling into his lungs and refreshing his mind. He has a driver on the phone in a split second and is getting into a limo the next minute, headed for his hotel with the window down and the wind sifting its fingers through his curls, helping air out all of his pent up frustration.

Before he knows it, Harry’s fumbling with the key card to his king suit, cursing under his breath as it gets jammed and squinting angrily at the tiny red light that flashes on the silver mechanism. As soon as the door pushes open, he surges through, kicking it closed and tearing down the column of buttons on his expensive silk shirt. His mind immediately begins to weave out a fantasy, the fingers that are popping open his shirt molding from his own into Y/N’s. And just like that, she’s there with him. She’s there, sponging her gentle, warm lips against the racing pulse on his neck, licking down his collarbones and biting at the the tight muscles of his broad shoulders as she roughly rips the sticky shirt down his arms.

Harry’s breathing is ragged as his fingers fly to his belt buckle, fumbling with the clasp and seeing nothing but her taunting, lust-filled eyes as she’d sharply yank the leather strap from around his slender hips, undoing his zipper as he toes off his squeaky shoes. His pants are discarded in a pile by the couch and he’s rummaging through his Nike carry-on for his trusty bottle of Astroglide, positive that he’d tucked it into the inside pocket of the bag. He comes up fruitful, whooping silently in victory as he paces to the humongous bed across the elegant room, feeling her imaginary presence looming behind him as he crawls onto the fluffy comforter.

He momentarily wagers whether he should call up Y/N for some help because having her voice is better than having to envision it. He weighs against it, knowing that since it’s 1 AM here in LA, it’s around 9 AM over in London and she’s more than likely not even up yet considering she loves sleep almost as much as she loves him.

Harry sits with his back against the tall headboard, shimmying out of his dark red CK briefs and spreading his legs wide open, sighing in relief as he feels his balls settle beneath him onto the mattress. He hadn’t realized the true extremity of how wound up he had been until now.

He thumbs the cap of the lube open, wiping off the crusty dry bits against the duvet and squirting some onto his palm, shivering at how cool it is. After some shifting around and stacking a couple of pillows into a plush mountain, he gives his cock a few leisurely tugs, worrying his lip between his two front teeth and hissing out all of the accumulated stress from the entire night.

It doesn’t take long for him to get a set rhythm, his rings scraping softly against his prick as the lube squishes in between the cracks where the metal and the skin of his fingers meet.

Harry’s head leans back again the cold mahogany surface of the bed frame, his hand working up and down his engorged length as he gulps down the screams that are threatening to overcome him, mewling her name out into the dimness of the room. His translucent skin is bumpy with green and blue veins, the head of his cock a dangerous shade of reddish purple as a tiny river of precome leaks out steadily. It runs down and over his fingers as he pumps himself, mixing with the lube to form a cloudy mess. His toes are curling against the sheets and his back muscles are contracting against the headboard as his body bends all out of shape in order to produce an orgasm.

His huge hand squeezes himself snugly, breathy whimpers and quick, low moans streaming from his mouth without control because he just doesn’t care anymore. He doesn’t care because Harry can see her– sees her as she is pressed up against his side with one of her legs holding his own wide open, her small hand stroking him messily as she sucks love bites onto his chest and tweaks his puffy nipples, breath gooey and warm and so fucking hot as she mumbles praises against into neck. “God, you’re so fucking big, Har. All thick and warm inside me and nice and heavy in my mouth, yeah? Wanna make you come. Can you do that for me?”

Long, drawn-out “ohs” and “ughs” fill the stale air around him, wet slapping sounds bouncing back from the paisley-printed walls of the large room as Harry nods his head, not caring whether she’s here or not to see it. His face contorts into expressions of sheer bliss, eyebrows raising and scrunching in pleasure as his jaw hangs loose, head rutting back against the surface of the frame as cracked whines drip endlessly from his swollen, rosy lips. He thumbs over his sensitive cockhead, massaging circles into the skin and jerking against the mattress as he feels a boiling warmth pooling in his tummy, getting ready to explode at any given second.

Harry’s chest is flushed a dull red as he urges himself not to come, wanting to make this last as long as possible. Sweat stings every pore across his skin and he pretends it’s Y/N’s nails scratching memories across his torso. She’s everywhere; plastered across the ceiling and the walls of the room, all over his twitching body, her smell burning his nose and her pretty lips and doey eyes deeply rooted into his brain. It’s her own hands that are cupping and working him towards release as she licks sloppily at his tip, sucking gently every now and then while keeping direct eye contact with him. She spits on him just how he likes it, twisting her fist around his circumstance to give the handjob an array of new sensations.

His own hand mimics the fantasy, teeny mewls of, “oh, shit” and “fuck, it’s so good” rawing his jugular. He slows his pace, working down his cock gruelingly, pulling the foreskin down to reveal the shiny tip to the chilly air. He reaches down between his itching thighs, cupping his balls and fondling them, thumb pressing into the fleshy bit in the center and he can’t stop the stuttered sob that scrapes from deep in his lungs. Her ruby-red, bow-shaped lips are sucking a new sense into him, his eyes hazing over with the image of her kissing down his prick all the way to his balls and taking them into her palm, tugging and sucking fervidly.

Harry can feel his insides pass the boiling point, his abdomen and thighs giving foreshadowing clenches as he sinks down into the mound of feather pillows, torso twisting and thrashing as he crosses into dangerous grounds of stimulation. The cushions close around him as his dives deeply into them, swelling around his head and hugging his arms and sides, the light tickling sensation urging him to come undone. He’s breathing fast and spastic from his mouth and nose at the same time, tears squeezing from the corner of his eyes as he makes a variety of embarrassing, uncontrollable noises ranging from deep, choking grunts to high-pitched, sputtering whimpers.

And, of course, she’s there. The softness of the linen against his oversensitive body turns into her wandering fingers. The violent jerks of his fist melt into the warm velvet of her walls as she rides him. The rubbing of the pillow covers against the back of his head molds into her hands yanking and twirling at his matted, damp curls. And lastly, the caresses of his inhales and exhales as they leave his lips dissolve into her own breaths pushing into his mouth as her lips suck and chew at his, feeding bits of her intoxicating taste into his system to form a tight ball of sensual gratification at the pit of his stomach.

“Fuck, Y/N, fuck me. You’re such a good fucking girl fo’ me, aren’t you? Y'just feel so good…” Harry knows it’s borderline insane to be addressing her when he’s alone but he doesn’t care because he just has to get it all out somehow. In the cage of his mind, her voice responds to him, which is all that truly matters.

“Want you t'come, H. Wanna feel you fill me up.” It’s as if she’s hovering over him, staring right into his soul with those wide, innocent eyes as she bounces on his cock, tiny gasps leaving her swollen lips as not-so-innocent words slip freely from her mouth. “C'mon, Harry. Know you can be a nice boy and come for me, baby. Jus’ a little longer, yeah?”

The hand that was massaging his balls flies up over the pillow around his face, shoving the fluffy material into his mouth so that he can bite down all of his wails. The heels of his feet dig into the springy mattress, causing his back to buck off its surface. Harry’s chest heaves with every rattling gasp, teeny mewls of pleasure squeaking from his throat. His arm is taut with the effort he’s putting into his violent tugging, tattoos glistening with sweat in the dim light of a single bedside lamp. He throws his head back as far he can, tendons stretching tight and veins chiseling into existence down his neck and across his temples. A warm sensation suddenly inflates across his entire being and he can hear his teeth grinding down hard as his climax takes the reigns, thundering over his body without remorse.

When he bursts, it’s messy, to say the least. It splutters out in thick milky ribbons that splatter across his stomach and chest, his prick twitching nonstop in his clenched fingers. Flashes of red, white and yellow form webs behind his eyelids, bursts of brighter colors overlapping the spidery strands. He feels like it’s never going to stop– like he’s going to be squirting out forever because he can still feel the knot writhing in his stomach, demanding to be let out all at once. But he can’t take it; if he doesn’t stop, he thinks he’ll pass out.

Harry’s heart is hiccuping in his chest, the intense thumping suggesting it is trying to slam free through his ribs. His ears feel as if they were clogged with gauze, the only clear sound being the blood rushing through his head. His nose is the first thing that starts to go numb, the jittery sensation spreading across his whole face and crawling down his neck, taking ahold of every one of his nerve-endings. After the feeling has washed down his thighs is when he stops coming, his cock slowly going limp against his pelvis. After it’s spread across all ten of his toes is when he releases the wet fabric of the pillowcase from his aching teeth. After it’s dissolved away down to his chest is when his back muscles untangle themselves from each other, his whole torso slumping comatose into the elegant duvet. And, only after the feeling barely lingers in his fingernails and barely tickles the back of his skull, is when Harry’s eyes finally flutter open.

His head lulls to the side so that his chin presses against his left shoulder, gaze focusing on the neon green numbers of the digital clock on the polished nightstand. 1:17 AM.

He’d lasted seventeen minutes.

It’s quite shameful, he’ll admit. He usually lasts at least thirty solo and can work his way up to an hour with Y/N (with breaks, obviously). But he’d spilled in just over fifteen minutes, all because of a couple glasses of Billecart-Salmon Brut Rosé and some post-concert adrenaline.

Harry lays there for a while; how long, he’s not sure. He entertains his sleepy body with threading his fingers through his moppy hair, feeling small grainy bits of hair spray still sticking to the fluffed up mess. The sweat has dried to his skin, making the light breeze from the air vents feel cooler than normal and causing him to burrow under the thick comforter. The humungous flat screen on the wall in front of the bed shows his reflection with crystal clearness: He looks like he just went three rounds with a grizzly bear in an episode of Naked and Afraid. Except the name Naked and Fucked Out seems more appropriate. Or Naked and Covered In Jizz. He wipes himself down with some fancy rose-oil-infused tissues from a box inside one of the nightstand cabinets, setting the wad of napkins on the table to discard later.

After about ten more minutes of recovering, Harry kicks off the sheets, swinging his legs around the edge of the bed in order to get up. His movements are lazy as he takes his sweet time standing up, raising his arms above his head and stretching out the kink in his back until it cracks. He grabs the duvet, wrapping it carelessly around his hips and holding both sides together in one fist at his hip. For some odd reason, he doesn’t feel like walking around naked– he thinks it to be that the air conditioning has kicked in at full blast.

He shuffles hazily out of the bedroom section of the grand suite, all the way over to where his bottoms lay in a rumpled pile on the floor near the couch, leaning down to fish out his phone from the back pocket. Harry surfs through his notifications as he slowly walks towards the bar on the other end of the room, only really paying attention to a message from Jeff confirming Harry’s lunch with Stevie tomorrow. He walks around the marble counter of the bar, opening up the mini fridge and sifting through an assortment of colorful alcohol bottles. He hisses out a victorious, “Sick.” when he sees a bottle of Brachetto d’Acqui Rosso, his favorite sweet wine. He’s not up for anything strong at the moment– just something light and fizzy to sedate the gnawing in his stomach.

Harry snatches the most graceful glass he can find, using his teeth to rip open the crimson wrapping around the cap of the bottle and being thankful that it is the type he can unscrew. After pouring out half a glass, he leans forward on the counter on one elbow, sipping lightly and pulling up Y/N’s contact on his phone. As the line rings its toll, he licks at his lips patiently, savoring the hints of black cherry, raspberry and rose in his drink.

“Hello?” Y/N’s thick, drowsy voice crackles through the speaker and he immediately feels bad for calling her. He knew she hadn’t been awake but he just really wanted to hear her voice.

“Morning, love. How’s my favorite girl?”

“I was good until you woke me up.” She grumbles, the ruffling that comes through the line suggesting she is shifting around the bed and he imagines her rolling onto her side, tucking an arm under her head as she holds the phone to her ear with the other.

A fond smile twitches Harry’s cheeks as he tips back the glass again, letting the tangy yet silky liquid send a tingle through his tastebuds. “So you’re well? Nice. ’M good too, thanks for asking.”

Y/N sighs irritably, but he can tell she’s faking it. All she could talk about recently is how much she misses him, especially in the morning because it’s when she’s most cuddly. He knows she’s thrilled to hear from him and he’s happy to say the feeling is mutual.

“So, how’d the concert go?” She asks, excitement twinkling in her groggy voice.

“It was fucking amazing. Stevie’s just…wow. That’s it. Just wow. She even said she loves Two Ghosts and I nearly shit myself on stage!” Harry responds, setting the now empty class on the counter and filling it up some more, watching the effervescent liquid slosh around as Y/N sniffles on the other end. Her nose could get pretty backed up during the night due to her allergies.

“That sounds incredible, Har. You really deserved this. You’ve worked so hard for it.” He can hear the proud smile in her voice.

“Thank you, pet. Means the world, y'know? Actually, Stevie invited me to lunch tomorrow! She even knew that I liked Cafe Habana. Can you believe it?” Harry can’t keep the childish giddiness from his voice, his entire face lighting up at the thought.

Y/N’s bubbly laugh crackles through the phone. “That’s great, baby. So happy for you!”

He smiles timidly into the glass, blushing up a storm and he can never understand how Y/N has him so whipped without even trying. “Thanks. Again.”

Harry hears the sound of running water start up on the other end and he guesses she is up and about, probably brushing her teeth or washing her face.

“So,” her voice is muffled, confirming that she indeed is brushing. He can see her, standing in her Garfield pajamas with her hair up in a messy bun, her sparkly blue toothbrush hanging out of the side of her mouth as foam wets the corners of her lips. “Are you gonna tell me all the juicy details of the after party or not?”

He chuckles softly, hiking the duvet up his hips as it had begun to slide down. “Wasn’t really a party. We just went out for some drinks, s'all.”

“Oh, that’s nice! How did it feel to have Stevie Nicks toast to you? Y'know, since you love having your ego stroked and all.” Her teasing tone pokes at his self-proclaimed narcissism, but all he can truly think about is how she used the word “stroked” and it causes him to giggle at the coincidence.

Harry sips at his wine, eyeing the unkempt bed on the opposite side of the room and smirking to himself knowingly. “It was absolutely satisfying.”

[slamsams-blog]

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service - #24WeeksofBond

1969 certainly must’ve been a wild time.  For the first time ever, Bond lovers and general movie goers were to go see a Bond movie starring the first “new Bond”.  After 5 movies, Sean Connery simply had enough with the character, the franchise, and the main producer Albert “Cubby” Broccoli.  So how in the world do you step into a role that had been created and branded into the minds of the fans by Sean Connery?  Why even carry on the series without Sean Connery?  I wonder what people thought of the concept of a “new Bond” back then?  Now a days, it’s a right of passage.  We all know that an actor playing Bond has a shelf life, and that they will eventually leave the role only to be replaced by another.  In today’s world, for Bond fans, this moment can be a very exciting thing.  While I LOVE Daniel Craig, I am very anxious to find out who will replace him.  But back in 1969, the thought of a new actor to come in and just carry on the role like nothing happened?  There must have been tons of criticism, skepticism and curiosity.

Enter George Lazenby, the man with the distinction of being the first “new Bond”.  Lazenby was a legit no-name with a care-free, “fly by the seat of your pants” personality.  He was a male model who only got into modeling because someone thought he had the look for it and gave him an opportunity - so he went and did it.  Then the role of Bond came along, and with Lazenby’s natural good looks and cavalier attitude - Lazenby literally just walked into the audition room un-announced and told the directors that they were looking at the man they needed.  Lazenby got the part.  Those actors who had their 2 contrasting 3 minute monologues ready were probably furious.

Back in the day when my brother and my best friend were playing “Goldeneye” on the N64 non-stop, and learning about Bond and all it’s history and the previous actors that came before Brosnan - we had learned that there was a guy who only did one movie.  We didn’t know the man’s name back then, so we always referred to him as “Zachary Dumbhead” when discussing Bond.  As funny of an anecdote that is to me, I must say that Lazenby deserves a little more respect than that.  This was a tough position to be in.

Lazenby may look a bit goofy, and his undercover role of Sir Hilary Bray doesn’t do anything for his overall bravado - but Lazenby plays the role of Bond with a sense of fearlessness and charm, much like how I imagine he was in real life.  

Also, nobody throws a harder punch than Lazenby. Sheesh!  

I simply cannot imagine Connery playing Bond here, especially given how pivotal this Bond movie is to the rest of the series before they hit the reset button with Daniel Craig.  I just don’t think Connery could’ve convinced Bond lovers that he was legitimately in love.  A fresh take on the role would’ve made it easier to buy into the love between Bond and his soon to be wife Contessa Terese di Vincezo (Diana Rigg) or Tracy as she would be known in the film.

I love Lazenby and Rigg’s chemistry, I think these two pull off a believable performance despite their off screen distain for each other.  Yes, it is widely known that Diana Rigg did not care for Lazenby’s childish attitude and over confidence and it created friction while filming.  There is a pretty famous story of Diana Rigg purposely eating food with lots of onion and garlic right before their love scenes so her breath would stink.  If you have time to watch the documentary “Becoming Bond” I suggest you do that - it’s pretty much a doc on Lazenby.

Let’s talk about this plot, this strange, fear of chickens curing plot.  This movie starts out with Bond bailing out who we would come to know as Tracy on a couple of occasions.  Saving her from her trying to drown herself (I think?) and giving her financial help when she blows it at the casino.  We come to find out she is the daughter of the European, generic brand version of Blofeld named Draco (Gabriele Ferzetti).  He brings Bond to his office in forcible fashion and tells him that he’ll give him a million pounds if he marries Tracy.  Bond is like huh?  Bond thinks about the offer because Draco has connections to Blofeld himself, and if he got some info he just might go along with it.

Tracy sniffs this out right away and forces her papa to give Bond the info he desires, so he does.  But here’s the twist, Bond still pursues Tracy...not because she has any other info on Blofeld (which is Bond’s only thing he looks for in a mate) but because he just has an infatuation with her.  So then we see a montage of the typical things two people do while discovering a love for one another...riding horses, sitting by fountains, and what not.  2 minutes of Louie Armstrong later, and boom, they’re officially in love...at least she is.  But now it’s time to work.

Bond follows the lead given to him by Draco and finds where Blofeld is and finds out that Blofeld is bringing a genealogist up to his location to dub him as a count.  Who knows why...Bond meets the man who is supposed to go meet him and quickly learns all there is to know about the subject and comes up with an uncanny impersonation of him.

This is where “OHMSS” really starts getting weird.  We take a break from Bond’s love story with Tracy to go to the Swiss alps where Bond or “Sir Hilary Bray” is to meet Blofeld.  But in doing so, he discovers that he is housing a harem of women to try and cure their allergies by making them eat their allergies for dinner and hypnotizing them every night.  The real plan being that Blofeld is designing a virus to halt all crops from growing and using the girls to distribute the virus.  Of course the ladies love the new man on the block and Bond has a few encounters after-hours.  You sure know how to pick em Tracy!

The odd thing about this is the fact that Blofeld doesn’t recognize Bond right away.  Maybe it’s the Superman effect, where instead of glasses being the difference between Superman and Clark Kent - it’s a Kilt being the difference between James Bond and Sir Hilary Bray - who knows?  Blofeld finds out it’s Bond, not because it’s so obviously Bond, but because he made a tiny slip in the details of the history of his ancestors.  What a Sherlock.

Bond’s discovered, and escapes by ski and some entertainingly bad green screen work and bumps into Tracy again who saves him from the bad guys where they finally escape in a horse barn where they will spend the night.  This is where Bond finally confesses his love for Tracy and asks her to marry him.  I think this scene is beautiful and both actors do a wonderful job.  It’s so simplistic, spontaneous and romantic.  

The bad guys catch up, Tracy gets captured after being swallowed up by an avalanche and Bond goes against M’s wishes and enlists the help of Draco and his henchmen to storm the castle and destroy Blofeld’s headquarters.  This complete with an iconic shot of Bond sliding over the ice on his stomach, gun in hand, and shooting the villains.  Great stuff.  But more horrible green screen work to follow.  Bond catches up to Blofeld during a bob sled chase and hangs him up in the branches.  The objective seems to be complete.

The final scene is where Bond gets married, and as they are driving away, Blofeld and his hench-women Irma Bunt drive by and shoot at Bond, killing Tracy in the process.  Say what you want about Lazenby’s performance, but his final dialogue to the cop about Tracy is heart wrenching.  Lazenby does a fantastic job grieving the loss of his newlywed, and this would be one of the only consistent pieces of Bond’s backstory that we hear throughout the rest of the series.

OHMSS is a good Bond flick, although it is a bit odd with the plot, the unusual casting choice of Telly Savalas as Blofeld, and Lazenby’s random insertion in the role - it is a very important piece of the Bond puzzle and up until Daniel Craig, we don’t see Bond this full of raw emotion ever again.  It also has lots of fun callbacks to the previous five films with the gadgets he pulls out of his desk, the janitor whistling “Goldfinger”, and even Bond saying before the title sequence “This never happened to the other fellow”, which makes Bond theorists believe that James Bond is just the name given to the man who holds the 007 number.  I’m sure it was just there to call out the elephant in the room and break the ice with the skeptical audience.

As important as this film is to the series this is not one of my favorites given a lot of factors that just bother me.  Lazenby does a hell of a job, but he simply just did not care for the real life Bond lifestyle which caused him to break from the role.  Lazenby was told to present himself as Bond where ever he went to keep the mystique alive, but at the premier, Lazenby showed up with long hair and beard and did not please the studio execs.  Lazenby was just too care-free to be a celebrity, but he does admit that he wished he had knocked some sense into himself back then as it could have made him for the rest of his life.  Instead, he is just a blip on the radar and you have to wonder how the next film would’ve have done with Lazenby at the helm.

We will never know.

That’s all for me, hope you enjoyed it tonight!  Let me know your thoughts!

Reviews from Friends:

My Mom

I’ve decided it’s really hard to follow a high action film like 007 s in two parts. Started it late last night and fell asleep somewhere in the Swiss alps while watching a group of girls getting hypnotized. Who knows maybe I was drawn in to the relaxation technique. Tonight I resumed so it really lost some luster. This James Bond never really filled the role for me. He was kind of sweaty and goofy. Not the cool calm character he is supposed to be. The chases were fun from the Volkswagen bug to the horse drawn sleigh to the bobsled scene. Not to mention the harrowing ski chases amid avalanches. Wow. And of all the choices this girl was THE ONE for James? I did get a better perspective though after reading your review Sam. You are a very detailed critic. Great evaluation.

Dan Perch

Love the review!! Admittingly It took me a long time to watch OHMSS because lack of interest in George Lazenby. However, when I came around to it I fell in love with the movie! It was So (not so) subtly over the top throughout the whole movie. Lazenby was actually pretty good throughout, and certainly had some cringing lines “call me Hilly”😬 haha! From the sweet 1960’s villain pad, the way he smokes his cigarettes, and how he manages to stunningly excel in all winter sports, Telly as Blofeld is my favorite of all time!! (That bobsled gif had me rolling laughing😂 cinematic gold!) He finds a way to ‘best’ Bond at absolutely everything in this one (strong booking) then right when you think Bond goes over... what an ending! Lazenby delivers that line, and the credits start to roll, Had me speechless! One of my favorite movies from the 1960s Telly was the man!

Jake Benrud

LOL. I forgot all about "Zachary Dumbhead". I honestly have never watched this whole movie. Or at least, I didn't remember it. The plot is strange with the hypnotized girls releasing bioterrorism agents. If I were Blofeld, I would have invested in a helicopter to chase down Bond after he escaped instead of going skiing after him myself. Just a thought. There's a lot I didn't know about George Lazenby until I did some searching on him recently. Apparently he never signed a contract during the whole filming of this movie. Unreal. He also didn't want to play ball with the studio with maintaining the look of "James Bond" outside of work after filming. Interesting guy. Devastating ending to the movie, but we all knew that 007 the playboy couldn't stay married for long.

24 Weeks of Bond will return next Monday with - 

You Only Live Twice

[bridgetteirish]

@xxtorchxx made this gorgeous manip and it lit a fire of inspiration in me.  She was kind and generous enough to allow me to lend my words to her perfect image.  Just bask in this brilliance for awhile.   As should go without saying, do not repost, re-use or claim this work as your own.  If you like it, use that little reblog button in the bottom right corner of the post.

A million thank-yous @xxtorchxx for your talent and creativity and for your thoughts on this little fic to complement it.  

Thanks to @reginalovesemma for the edits.  As always, you elevate my work.

A note about this little fic.  Mon-El was never Kara’s boyfriend.  In this little world, he was the funny, goofy, sidekick pal we all deserved him to be.  Kara misses him and does have to deal with the loss of a friend, but he did not have the dominating presence in her life he was given in canon.

Please enjoy!

She was glad it hadn’t been anything tragic.  When she’d sped off the CatCo balcony with Cat’s whispered “Go get ‘em, Supergirl” still ringing in her ears, she said a brief prayer to Rao that her city would not see any more pain this day.

She wasn’t supposed to hear it, but they both knew she had.  Kara’s superhearing was well-attuned to Cat.  It was long-past time for them both to acknowledge what had never really been a secret between them.

She could see the flames and smoke rising into the air almost as soon as she left the balcony.  Evidence of the events of the last few days was everywhere as she flew over National Boulevard and she stretched her arms and sped up. When she arrived at the scene, Kara and the NCPD worked in tandem, putting out pockets of flames and pulling terrified citizens from the buildings.  They worked low, Kara worked high.  Her last save was a little girl, clutching a stuffed bear and crying.  Kara wrapped her cape around the shaking girl and flew her to the ground before laying her on a gurney.  The girl, Mandy, she’d said her name was, gripped her hand and asked her to ride with her in the ambulance.

“I have to stay here and make sure everyone else is safe, sweetie.  But you’re being very brave and strong and I promise, when the doctors and your mom and dad say it’s okay, I’ll come visit you, alright?” 

“Okay, Supergirl.  I’ll be brave and strong like you.”

Tears sprang to her eyes.  “Braver and stronger, Mandy.  I believe in you.”

The little girl smiled as the medic fitted an oxygen mask over her mouth.  They loaded the gurney into the ambulance and Kara turned back to the scene.  Everyone else was mostly fine;  a few people coughing or limping, some bumps and bruises and mild burns.  Mandy’s father had a concussion from being hit by a falling beam, but the medics assured Kara he would be fine.  Kara ensured the ambulances were en route before giving the firefighters and EMTs a nod and flying away.

She flew back to CatCo to gather her laptop and purse, hoping, though not expecting, to see Cat again.  She didn’t want to examine that hope too deeply.  Cat’s presence had always been comforting, but having her back after so long away felt like a salve on an ancient burn.   

By this time of day, when the sun was sinking towards the horizon and the National City sky was painted with the purples and yellows of twilight, most people would be home, cooking dinner or catching up on television or watching the sunset over the ocean or any number of wonderfully domestic things  So many nights Kara flew across her city, wishing she could be a part of it; wishing she could do all of those normal, small things that added up to a life, added up to a human life.  Like Miss Grant had said.  “It isn’t what you do.  It’s who you love.”

Kara had intended on heading straight home.  Her heart felt a bit heavy with wondering where Mon-El’s little pod was now.  He’d been goofy and impossible and irritating most of the time… but he had been her friend, and she would miss him.  As she flew past the familiar, arty Gateway district on her way to her own beloved little neighborhood, she noticed the lights on in the penthouse that had been dark for almost a year, and the diminutive, shadowed figure, head bowed, moonlight shining off unmistakable blonde locks.

She changed course and landed as silently as possible on the balcony several feet from Cat.  “Long day?”  She wanted to sound cavalier and brave and heroic.  What came out instead was tentative, more Kara than Supergirl.  But then, that was okay, wasn’t it, now that the secret, whispered as she had walked away, was no longer being kept between them.

“Just… thinking…” Cat was usually not contemplative.  She was decisive, bold, a whirlwind of action and fearlessness, but as she looked up from where her hands were folded over the balustrade, Kara caught tears shining in her eyes and a worry behind her smirk that created a small crease in her forehead where none usually appeared.

Kara smiled and walked to stand next to her.  “Thinking, huh.  A year in a yurt and you become a cloud-watcher?”  She was teasing, hoping Cat would tease back in that irresistible, infuriating way that reminded Kara she’d never be able to keep up, nor would she want to.

But she didn’t tease back.  The frown deepened and Cat backed away from the balcony’s edge and made for the door.  “I’ve come to appreciate a good sunset.  Good night, Supergirl.”

“Cat, wait.”  Kara was relieved when her voice was enough to stop Cat and get her to turn.  She didn’t return to her spot but rather leaned her back against the glass wall and crossed her arms, waiting, so Kara continued.  “What’s wrong?”

“Oh, Kara, Kara, Kara.” Kara tried not to shiver at the sound of her name coming from Cat’s lips again and again.  “You do not need to worry that pretty little, perfectly coiffed head about me.”  She tilted her head to the side sizing Kara up.  Cat waited a few beats for Kara to fumble out her usual insistence that Cat had her all wrong, but Kara remained silent.  Cat pressed.  “No denials?  No tricks?  No throwing me off the track?”

Kara shook her head.  “I heard you earlier,” she confessed.  “Calling me Supergirl when I left.”  She kicked at a tiny stone laying on the balcony floor.  She wondered curiously how it got there and she avoided Cat’s eyes by crushing it under her boot until it was a tiny pile of dust.  “I wanted you to know, Cat.  So many times.  But you left before I found the courage and…” She blew a large breath through her lips.  “Every time this past year when I wondered where you were, if you were happy, if you would ever come back, I wished I had told you, that night we said goodbye.”  She looked around the balcony and stepped forward so she was under the eave where Cat stood.  “I stood on a balcony so much like this one and you asked, in your own way, and…” she shrugged.  “I chickened out.”

She waved her hand noncommittally.  “Well, I know now.”  She picked at the edge of a fingernail.  “Water under the bridge.”  She was avoiding eye contact and Kara began attempting to meet her gaze, unsuccessfully.  She took another step forward and her proximity startled Cat enough for her to lift her head and look at Kara.  Kara registered the pain in her eyes and a tiny lump formed in her throat.  As quickly as the hurt passed Cat’s eyes, the mask was back and Cat shut down again.  “Go on, Supergirl.  Surely there’s an entire city waiting to congratulate their savior once again.  I know you had to say goodbye to one friend today, but your others are probably wondering where you are right about now.  And I have had an exhausting couple of days.  If you’ll excuse me.”  She made to leave again.

“Stop it!”  Kara immediately regretted her tone and Cat stopped and turned in surprise.  “Sorry,” she backed off a little.  “Sorry, it’s just that…” she found her ire again and stepped closer.  “Was it all bullshit?”

The confused look on Cat’s face drove her to continue.  “All that talk of love being the answer and how it isn’t about what we do.  That all sounded great, Cat, but you sat in your office today for over fourteen hours, working and yelling at people, just like you did before you left.”  Kara crossed her arms when Cat became visibly uncomfortable.  “Nothing’s really changed, has it?  You talk a big game, but when it comes right down to it…”

“When it comes right down to it, I don’t have anyone.”  Cat leaned back against the window, crossing her arms in a mirror image of Kara’s stance.  “I sat in a yurt, Kara, and found the meaning of life… but I have no means by which to fulfill it.  Having the answer doesn’t erase the loneliness.  I could never regret CatCo or the choices I’ve made, but… I’ve spent years alienating people.  I don’t exactly have a line out the door.”

“Carter?” Kara asked curiously.

“He’s very settled with his father,” she answered smoothly.  “I chose to go away and I can’t just…”

“You have me,” Kara filled in quickly.  “I’m not just your project or your minion anymore.”  She strode forward and took Cat by the shoulders.  “I. Am. Your. Friend.”

Cat let out a mirthless laugh and lifted her eyes to the stars.  “Friend, yes.  My good friend, Kara.”

Kara tilted her head to the side.  “What does that mean?”

Cat deflated.  “Nothing.”  She shook her head.  “Nothing.”  She met Kara’s eyes.  “Go home, Kara.”

“No.”  Kara was scared.  This Cat was new to her.  Where was her unwavering confidence, her surety that she sat on top of the world?  Where was the woman whose unshakeable faith just that afternoon gave her the courage to face her mortal enemy?  She knew Cat would want to flee, but Kara’s hand still rested decisively on her shoulder.  She gave a light squeeze to keep her in place. “No.  I won’t leave you.  Not like this.  I am your friend.  I can dole out advice too… unsolicited as it may be.”  Kara smiled but Cat pressed her lips together and didn’t respond.  Kara pressed on.  “You won’t find love in the same office that was making you so restless, with the same people, day in and day out.  And you won’t find it in a yurt in the mountains.”  

Her hand on Cat’s shoulder moved a bit higher, to cradle Cat’s neck.  Kara’s heart was racing.  Cat’s proximity and the intimacy of what she was being allowed to do right now was causing riots in her brain.  But she had to make Cat understand how special she was, how worthy of love, how capable of love she truly was.  Cat had always been the one to lift her up, to remind her of what she was capable of.  Hadn’t it only been the other day that Cat sat in a dark alley and told her that finding love was everything?  She wasn’t following her own advice.  “If you want love, Cat, you have to go where people can be allowed to love you.”  She searched Cat’s eyes and found just a hint of amusement there.

Cat cleared her throat.  “And if the person I love is in that office?” she asked innocently.

“Well then you can’t just hide away in your…”

Cat shook her head and barked out a mirthless laugh, looking above Kara’s head to the sky beyond.  “Idiot.”

“What?”

“You’re an idiot, Kara Danvers.”  Cat pulled back as though she was going to sweep right out of Kara’s arms and away.  Instead, Kara’s hand moved up further still, almost of it’s own volition.  She watched, fascinated that Cat was allowing this.  There was no explanation in Kara’s mind for how her thumb gave Cat’s cheek a distracted little stroke and her fingertips found their way into the soft hair behind her ear.  It just happened, almost as though Kara wasn’t in control.  Her heart raced and her hand tingled where her fingertips brushed against the base of Cat’s skull.  She was mesmerized by the contrast of the deep blue of her suit against the pale glow of Cat’s skin and she felt herself go a bit weak at the knees when Cat’s heartbeat picked up a bit too.  She was reeling from the closeness of Cat, her scent, her softness.  But it was the sadness she caught shining from her eyes that compelled her to keep her close.

“Don’t go.  I don’t… I don’t understa…”  Cat gave Kara’s hand a tiny nuzzle with her cheek but looked down.  Realization dawned on Kara’s mind like the sun across an open field.  “Wait… me?”

Cat’s hand tucked itself around Kara’s waist and gave a squeeze.  She sighed.  “Look who just caught up.”

“I never thought… I never dreamed… All this time?”

Cat gave her a tight-lipped smile.  “A year in a yurt couldn’t remove you from my heart, so I had thought maybe I should just… try letting you into it.  But with everything that’s happened, Kara, you aren’t --”

Kara pressed a kiss, surprising and warm, to Cat’s lips, cutting her off.  “I am,” she breathed when she pulled away, just a hair’s breadth, words landing against Cat’s lips and making her tingle.  “I am,” she breathed again before capturing Cat’s lips again and again and again.  Their kisses were long and deep and sweet.  Kara’s head spun like sugar when she felt Cat clutch her cape, her hand soft against her back.  When they separated, after long minutes, Kara’s thumb gave Cat’s cheek another light caress.

Cat looked up at her and a radiant smile spread across her face.  “Well, Supergirl.  What do we do now?” She teased, with a tiny squeeze to her waist and a brush of their noses.

“Oh, Cat.”  Kara ducked her head and brushed one more chaste kiss against Cat’s lips.  “Don’t you remember?”  She tucked Cat’s head beneath her chin and wrapped her arms fully around her.  “It’s not what we do… it’s who we love.”