#low cost blinds

[pb-dot]

Film Friday: Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

After my last FF being of a slow burn indie movie of excellent pedigree, I figure it's time to talk about something big and (joyfully) stupid to even things out. I joke, but Dungeons and Dragons have been on my mind these last few days, so why not talk about the movie adaptation. No, not that one, the good one. Trust me, I will get to the Jeremy Irons Chewing The Scenery movie eventually, but today we're talking about Honor Among Thieves.

One of the greatest joy of the current era is that with the mainstream-approximate popularity of Actual Play shows like Critical Role, Dimension 20 and Naddpod, there's a wider understanding of the kind of storytelling that goes on in tabletop roleplaying games. The particular way these stories blend character-focused storytelling with a main plot that usually functions as a lens for said character focus isn't unique to roleplaying necessarily, but it is a central component that this kind of storytelling needs.

As such, Honor isn't a quest for a magical artifact to slay an evil wizard undertaken by brave adventurers, it's more the ongoing catastrophes of a bunch of walking disasters that also happen to feature some looking for magical artifacts and slaying some evil wizards more as a matter of consequence.

To wit, our story follows bard Edgin, Barbarian Holga, Sorcerer Simon (I SEE what you did there), and outcast druid Doric as they attempt to reunite Edgin with his daughter Kira, now the ward of former friend of Edgin, Forge. Complicating matters is that Forge turns out to be a lying, thieving, betraying backstabber who has teamed up with an evil red wizard to rule the town of Neverwinter, and he's not much keen on relinquishing his ward, so it's-a-thieving our adventurers must go.

When I say the storytelling follow the beats of a D&D campaign, that isn't only on the character focus stuff, it's down to the structure of the thing. The band of adventurers plans to preform a heist, but needs a magical artifact to do so, so they enlist a legendary warrior whose hyper-competence and cryptic advice makes him the most obvious GM PC I've ever seen, for the uninitiated is a GM PC is a NPC made to follow the rules of a player character, usually for the GM to get some vicarious playing thrills and/or wrench the plot back on track directly. Together with this hot piece of HP, our heroes fumble some puzzles, circumvent some puzzles and gets into moderate to severe peril, as is tradition.

There's a real sense of fun to the proceedings, and the movie is filled with the kind of gags that might arise from a table full of giddy nerds. Of course the bird-man Jarnathan becomes the most important character in the room for like ten minutes, that's the kind of character players latch on to. Of course, our players have a close call with a pack of Intellect Devourers, who it turns out have no interest in the group. For one nobody plays a class who benefits from high Intelligence, they're also idiots, not that they let that stop them of course.

All of this comes together to create this infectiously enthusiastic film. The action scenes are made somewhat more kinetic than the miniature and/or imagination-based fair it's based on, yes, but there seems to be some attention paid to structuring most of them like D&D fights. The final confrontation with the aforementioned evil wizard in particular has the distinct flow of a climactic campaign-concluding encounter. There's stuff to nitpick, of course, but show me a single D&D group who plays strictly "Rules As Written," and I will tell you that you've shown me some miserable gits that'd be happier playing a video game.

There's obviously a lot of love behind Dungeon and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, from the writing and directing choices above to using practical effects to show off some more fantastical humanoid races that they didn't really need to show off, although I would be derelict in my duties if I didn't remark that while Tieflings can indeed have human skin colors, it is highly unusual for a player to chose to be anything but blue, red or purple. I'm not saying Sophia Lillis should've been in body paint this entire time, but it could easily be justified.

[lisablack000]

No spend activities

Breaking the cycle of always buying things, being in malls and having to spend money to be happy is one of the best things we can do to set ourselves free from the blind consumerism that society is drowning in.

[whiskeyskin]

Love and Longing

Premise: When Elminster delivers Mystra's blessing to reprieve Gale from the Orb's volitile nature, there's a certain something he's been denying himself for over a year and he's finally alone in his tent 👀🍆💦

• Gale x gn!tav • 18+ • E/M Rating

Gale's POV, reader referred as "you", no mention of specific pronouns or genitals, porn without plot, male masturbation, fantasising, oral both recieving, penetration, jealousy, love, longing, horny!gale, fluff, lemons, Astarion x gn!tav referenced, marking if you squint

1.9k words

Gods bless you @wizardblood for this gifset we gladly receive 🥵✨

Part 2 here, if you like that sort of thing?

A/N: Y'all are making me UGLY CRYY WITH JOY AT THESE LOVELY COMMENTS 😭😭😚😚 Thank you for over 500 notes!! You beautiful, thirsty creatures 😏💜

A/N: 700 NOTES?! 🥹🥹 I love each and every SINGLE one of you 😚✨

_____________________________

Gale looked down at the solid protrusion currently causing his bedroll to tent, attempting to keep his breathing even.

It had been what felt like an age since he'd allowed himself to indulge in arousal.

He lay under the blankets, naked as a babe, anticipation crackling in the air around him.

After removing the charm on his underwear to suppress such feelings, it had all come flooding back.

Especially with you around.

His attraction to you was undeniable, however much he thought it impossible; especially after his heartbreak with Mystra. Nevertheless, his feelings for you grew with each step you took, every kind word and all the good you sought to accomplish.

You'd spoken in his defense passionately when Elminster had delivered Mystra's word; the fire in your heart had rivalled that of Karlach.

You'd vowed that there was another way to be found. That you wouldn't allow him to sacrifice himself.

And he loved you for it.

Gods dammit, he did.

He'd fallen hard for you.

He tried to deny it, of course.

It wouldn't lead anywhere.

He had to die.

It was his destiny to end the Absolute, whatever the cost.

No matter stolen glances across the campfire. Ignoring the heated moment of magic between you, where you'd shown him how you felt for him.

Besides, you'd taken Astarion to bed multiple times since the Tiefling party. He couldn't compete with the sultry advances of the Pale Elf.

His paultry offerings of affection wouldn't stand a chance.

But still, a part of him envisioned what life could be like if it was spent by your side.

Hearth crackling, the day's sun swooping low in the sky across the water, two arm chairs and a bottle of wine.. candle light and the smell of strawberries, sweat and arousal. The sound of your voice against his ear, the feeling of your wet, ribbed warmth welcoming him home after a long and stressful day.

Gale licked his bottom lip, his breathing heavy. He reached a hand under the sheets, in the privacy of his tent, to indulge in thoughts of you.

Gods, he wanted to use his mouth on you, he wanted to drown in your heady scent. He would press kisses against your inner thighs, teasing and tormenting, languishing tongue and teeth.

Your unfettered arousal evident before him as he would glide his mouth up your sex, tasting your sweetness and salt. You'd moan his name and wind a fist into his hair, sending sparks through his scalp.

He took the tip of himself in his first fingers, pre-cum had already gathered between the slit and dripped onto his stomach.

Taking a deep breath, he began to gently pulse the head. He hissed as blinding pleasure seared across his vision and sunk low in his belly.

"Ahhh.." he exhaled, with a widening, sinful grin.

Finally, he could touch himself after all these months.

He gritted his teeth against another groan that tried to escape. The sensation of oanism foreign to him but welcome, thoughts of you flooding his mind, as he fell into an old, familiar rhythm.

Oh, you would moan so sweetly underneath him, as he filled you to the brim with his cock. You'd envelop him to the root, sensually clenching your walls around his girth.

Gale replicated the feeling by adding a second hand to squeeze, imagining you enveloping him.

He moved slow and deliberate, like you were taking him for the first time. Every rib of his fingers torture against his sensitive flesh. He pumped his hands in unison, along the thick, veined length of himself, building up the pressure constricting his erection, increasing the speed and fantasizing that he was entangled in your loving embrace.

He'd hold your legs aloft, parted just for him. You'd bray like a wild animal in heat, with the need for his throbbing length to ride you to climax.

One hand clumsily slid to cup his testicles, to massage them and drive him closer to the edge. His hips gyrated at nothing, rutting against the thought of you.

You'd climb to take control and ride him like a stallion through the night. He would hear the salacious slapping of your cheeks against his hips, as he'd watch you bounce yourself in wanton bliss.

He'd hold on to your waist, fingertips digging in hard enough to cause contusions.

He wanted to bruise you, claim you as his own. He wanted to sucker his ownership right over Astarion's bite marks.

He had no right to this ugly and repulsive feeling of jealousy, he knew this.. but he couldn't help himself.

They both vied for your attention and he couldn't stand that Astarion had tasted you when he hadn't.

He wanted to hear your cries as he fucked up into you, slamming your hips down on him harder. Gods, he wanted his name on your lips.

Gale licked the sweat gathering on his top lip; he imagined it was you tasting him.

He fantasied about you using your beautiful mouth on him. You'd cover his body in long, wet, trailing kisses before you'd take him in your mouth. You'd gorge on his cock until he couldn't breathe. Your skillful tongue needy to please him. Your hands wielding a very different kind of weapon, sheathing it entirely down your spectacular throat.

You'd look up at him through lidded gaze, his hard length completely engulfed. The contact would be searing, it would burn him to the spot, it would ignite his soul and turn him to willingly to ash.

There would be love and devotion in your eyes, blissful happiness in your heart.

Gale swallowed and shook his head from side to side.

He wanted to see you.

Wanted you to see him.

See him like this for you.

Helpless and desperate for just a moment of you.

He wanted you to look at him with adoring eyes that turn lustful, when you see him abusing himself, with your name on his lips.

Gale uttered the illusion cantrip and you appeared on your knees beside him. He gasped and smiled brightly at you. He knew it wasn't real but gods he wanted it to be.

You smiled back at him, infatuation shining in your eyes.

"Gale.." softly came the only word he'd been able to summon you to utter. It was warped but it was still your voice. It was still you.

He threw back the covers so you could see him. See all of him. Naked. So you could drink in the sight of him stroking his thick, alert and wanting cock to the thought of you.

"It's for you. Only for you. Going to come for you-just for you." He managed, his voice husky from lust.

"Gale.." You whispered, licking your lower lip and gliding your hands up your strong thighs. You cup yourself through your camp garb and palm yourself in circles, "Gale.." you moan, throwing your head back slightly as you ground against your hand.

His hips twitched unconsciously at seeing your image pleasuring yourself for his enjoyment. That you felt this joy together.

A rumble started to build behind his cock, it tightened around his belly and coiled itself around his legs. It rose through his chest, painfully electrifying his nipples to stiff points, as it wound it's way to the base of his skull. There it gripped him, held him, allowed him to go no further.

He whined in frustration. Gods he wanted to come, it had been so long, so very long.

"Gale..?" Came your voice, he looked at you and his stomach flipped uncomfortably in desire.

You looked spectacular; hair mussed, eyes glassy and wide, lips pink and swollen from lust. Still touching yourself through your clothes, rocking vigorously against the friction.

You placed a hand on your heart and threw your head back in ecstasy. His body began to violently tremble in anticipation.

Oh gods, you looked resplendent on the precipice of orgasm.

"Gale!" You whimpered, sweat glistening on your skin, "Gale.. Gale.. Gale.." you moaned between breaths, your image replicating the noises he'd overheard when you'd snuck into the forest, and committed to memory. The reckless abandon of your heady moans of pleasure. Your face tightened and released, your mouth falling open to gasp.

The desire at the back of his head suddenly pulled taut, every muscle strained, pressure swelling behind his erection. His eyes rolled back in his head, before he came undone.

He jerked and thrashed on his bedroll, trying and failing to keep his ministrations to himself. Thick spurts of cum shot over his stomach, chest and neck, as he came hard for you.

"For you-all for you-only for you." He whimpered, his jaw tense, teeth bared.

He pumped raggedly, squeezing every single drop of his seed from himself. It was almost to the point of pain but the pleasure balanced it perfectly to make the suffering delicious. His muscles seized and toes curled to their fullest extent, as he huffed out a breath and lay feeling weightless on the carpeted interior of his tent.

Gale lay there breathing heavily, sweat damp on his brow. His softening cock still pulsating with after effects, within his loose grasp, as his brain buzzed with static.

His heart felt twice it's size and his entire being was in total elated relaxation, with a doltish smile plastered across his face.

He could quite happily lay like this forever.

It had been so long.

He couldn't remember release being like this.

It was.. dizzying.. violent.. euphoric.. transcendent.. monumentous..

sticky..

cold..

uncomfortable..

"Oh no." Gale groaned, as he looked down on his masterpiece.

Your image had disappeared; there was no way he couldn't have concentrated through that kind of orgasm, even if his life depended on it.. and Mystra's eyelids, the mess he'd made of himself.

His cum lay heavy on his stomach and chest, spattered up to his neck and jaw. Hells, it was even on the floor!

He internally grumbled to himself.

This was the not so fun part of masturbation.

The sharp thud back to reality and the clean up.

He sighed. Well, that was short lived.

Lucky for a Wizard, clearing away the stains of his growing shame, was painless.

Gale waved his hand and the evidence of his debauchery disappeared.

He suddenly felt empty and hollow. The euphoria of release gone all too soon. Slumping back on to his bedroll and bringing the covers up against the chill, he frowned to himself, a cavernous feeling in his chest.

Gale waved his hand, using his last spell slot to conjure your image again.

You appeared laid down with him, tucked closely, your stunning eyes soft and content.

His heart ached; he wanted this.

It didn't matter how much he denied it, he knew what love felt like in the beginning and this was it.

This wasn't because of a covetous, lustful haze from the urgency of ejaculation.

It was comfort.

It was safety.

It was love.

And it terrified him.

More than the thought of ending as a small blip in the farest reaches of the realm. More than dying alone in excruciating agony.

Falling in love with you scared him because it meant that now, he had something to live for.

You smiled sleepily at him and readjusted yourself to get comfortable beside him.

"Night." You whispered, blowing him a slow kiss, closed your eyes and curled in nearer to him.

He stared longingly at your resting form; you looked so peaceful. Wet stinging burned his eyes and he sniffed dryly.

He needed to get to sleep.

He really should..

You'd only last a minute.

He couldn't bare the thought of opening his eyes again without you there, laying beside him..

Tears fell from his eyes and dripped to his pillow, as he shut them tight, "Goodnight, my love."

***

Part 2

[butchmartyr]

bumper sticker manufactured in bulk elsewhere for an unspeakably low cost and shipped to the states: only TRUE RED BLOODED and HOMEGROWN GLORYBOUND PATRIOTS save our BEAUTIFUL NATION’S BEASTS

normal person: hey you gotta say it’s kind of funny how so many usamericans literally cannot stop regurgitating patriotism like this in every aspect of their lives and are basically blind to even addressing or noticing it’s there at all

guy who has spent his entire child and adult life in Ohio with no drive or plan to ever leave: wow, the online is really, rotting your head 😂 caring about animals is evil now? where do you even GET an idea like this 😂 and what is this pseudo intellectual jargon? “chauvinism”? “nationalism”? of these words are in the Bible dude 😂

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Prison-tech is a scam - and a harbinger of your future

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/14/minnesota-nice/#shitty-technology-adoption-curve

Here's how the shitty technology adoption curve works: when you want to roll out a new, abusive technology, look for a group of vulnerable people whose complaints are roundly ignored and subject them to your bad idea. Sand the rough edges off on their bodies and lives. Normalize the technological abuse you seek to inflict.

Next: work your way up the privilege gradient. Maybe you start with prisoners, then work your way up to asylum seekers, parolees and mental patients. Then try it on kids and gig workers. Now, college students and blue collar workers. Climb that curve, bit by bit, until you've reached its apex and everyone is living with your shitty technology:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#bossware

Prisoners, asylum seekers, drug addicts and other marginalized people are the involuntary early adopters of every form of disciplinary technology. They are the leading indicators of the ways that technology will be ruining your life in the future. They are the harbingers of all our technological doom.

Which brings me to Minnesota.

Minnesota is one of the first states make prison phone-calls free. This is a big deal, because prison phone-calls are a big business. Prisoners are literally a captive audience, and the telecommunications sector is populated by sociopaths, bred and trained to spot and exploit abusive monopoly opportunities. As states across America locked up more and more people for longer and longer terms, the cost of operating prisons skyrocketed, even as states slashed taxes on the rich and turned a blind eye to tax evasion.

This presented telco predators with an unbeatable opportunity: they approached state prison operators and offered them a bargain: "Let us take over the telephone service to your carceral facility and we will levy eye-watering per-minute charges on the most desperate people in the world. Their families – struggling with one breadwinner behind bars – will find the money to pay this ransom, and we'll split the profits with you, the cash-strapped, incarceration-happy state government."

This was the opening salvo, and it turned into a fantastic little money-spinner. Prison telco companies and state prison operators were the public-private partnership from hell. Prison-tech companies openly funneled money to state coffers in the form of kickbacks, even as they secretly bribed prison officials to let them gouge their inmates and inmates' families:

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/02/mississippi-corrections-corruption-bribery-private-prison-hustle/

As digital technology got cheaper and prison-tech companies got greedier, the low end of the shitty tech adoption curve got a lot more crowded. Prison-tech companies started handing out "free" cheap Android tablets to prisoners, laying the groundwork for the next phase of the scam. Once prisoners had tablets, prisons could get rid of phones altogether and charge prisoners – and their families – even higher rates to place calls right to the prisoner's cell.

Then, prisons could end in-person visits and replace them with sub-skype, postage-stamp-sized videoconferencing, at rates even higher than the voice-call rates. Combine that with a ban on mailing letters to and from prisoners – replaced with a service that charged even higher rates to scan mail sent to prisoners, and then charged prisoners to download the scans – and prison-tech companies could claim to be at the vanguard of prison safety, ending the smuggling of dope-impregnated letters and other contraband into the prison system.

Prison-tech invented some wild shit, like the "digital stamp," a mainstay of industry giant Jpay, which requires prisoners to pay for "stamps" to send or receive a "page" of email. If you're keeping score, you've realized that this is a system where prisoners and their families have to pay for calls, "in-person" visits, handwritten letters, and email.

It goes on: prisons shuttered their libraries and replaced them with ebook stores that charged 2-4 times the prices you'd pay for books on the outside. Prisoners were sold digital music at 200-300% markups relative to, say, iTunes.

Remember, these are prisoners: locked up for years or decades, decades during which their families scraped by with a breadwinner behind bars. Prisoners can earn money, sure – as much as $0.89/hour, doing forced labor for companies that contract with prisons for their workforce:

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2017/04/10/wages/

Of course, there's the odd chance for prisoners to make really big bucks – $2-5/day. All they have to do is "volunteer" to fight raging wildfires:

https://www.hcn.org/articles/climate-desk-wildfire-california-incarcerated-firefighters-face-dangerous-work-low-pay-and-covid19/

So those $3 digital music tracks are being bought by people earning as little as $0.10/hour. Which makes it especially galling when prisons change prison-tech suppliers, whereupon all that digital music is deleted, wiping prisoners' media collection out – forever (literally, for prisoners serving life terms):

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/08/captive-audience-how-floridas-prisons-and-drm-made-113m-worth-prisoners-music

Let's recap: America goes on a prison rampage, locking up ever-larger numbers of people for ever-longer sentences. Once inside, prisoners had their access to friends and family rationed, along with access to books, music, education and communities outside. This is very bad for prisoners – strong ties to people outside is closely tied to successful reentry – but it's great for state budgets, and for wardens, thanks to kickbacks:

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2021/12/21/family_contact/

Back to Minnesota: when Minnesota became the fourth state in the USA where the state, not prisoners, would pay for prison calls, it seemed like they were finally breaking the vicious cycle in which every dollar ripped off of prisoners' family paid 40 cents to the state treasury:

https://www.kaaltv.com/news/no-cost-phone-calls-for-those-incarcerated-in-minnesota/

But – as Katya Schwenk writes for The Lever – what happened next is "a case study in how prison communication companies and their private equity owners have managed to preserve their symbiotic relationship with state corrections agencies despite reforms — at the major expense of incarcerated people and their families":

https://www.levernews.com/wall-streets-new-prison-scam/

Immediately after the state ended the ransoming of prisoners' phone calls, the private-equity backed prison-tech companies that had dug their mouth-parts into the state's prison jacked up the price of all their other digital services. For example, the price of a digital song in a Minnesota prison just jumped from $1.99 to $2.36 (for prisoners earning as little as $0.25/hour).

As Paul Wright from the Human Rights Defense Center told Schwenk, "The ideal world for the private equity owners of these companies is every prisoner has one of their tablets, and every one of those tablets is hooked up to the bank account of someone outside of prison that they can just drain."

The state's new prison-tech supplier promises to double the amount of kickbacks it pays the state each year, thanks to an aggressive expansion into games, money transfers, and other "services." The perverse incentive isn't hard to spot: the more these prison-tech companies charge, the more kickbacks they pay to the prisons.

The primary prison-tech company for Minnesota's prisons is Viapath (nee Global Tel Link), which pioneered price-gouging on in-prison phone calls. Viapath has spent the past two decades being bought and sold by different private equity firms: Goldman Sachs, Veritas Capital, and now the $46b/year American Securities.

Viapath competes with another private equity-backed prison-tech giant: Aventiv (Securus, Jpay), owned by Platinum Equity. Together, Viapath and Aventiv control 90% of the prison-tech market. These companies have a rap-sheet as long as your arm: bribing wardens, stealing from prisoners and their families, and recording prisoner-attorney calls. But these are the kinds of crimes the state punishes with fines and settlements – not by terminating its contracts with these predators.

These companies continue to flout the law. Minnesota's new free-calls system bans prison-tech companies from paying kickbacks to prisons and prison-officials for telcoms services, so the prison-tech companies have rebranded ebooks, music, and money-transfers as non-communications products, and the kickbacks are bigger than ever.

This is the bottom end of the shitty technology adoption curve. Long before Ubisoft started deleting games that you'd bought a "perpetual license" for, prisoners were having their media ganked by an uncaring corporation that knew it was untouchable:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIqyvquTEVU

Revoking your media, charging by the byte for messaging, confiscating things in the name of security and then selling them back to you – these are all tactics that were developed in the prison system, refined, normalized, and then worked up the privilege gradient. Prisoners are living in your technology future. It's just not evenly distributed – yet.

As it happens, prison-tech is at the heart of my next novel, The Bezzle, which comes out on Feb 20. This is a followup to last year's bestselling Red Team Blues, which introduced the world to Marty Hench, a two-fisted, hard-bitten, high-tech forensic accountant who's spent 40 years busting Silicon Valley finance scams:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

In The Bezzle, we travel with Marty back to the mid 2000s (Hench is a kind of tech-scam Zelig and every book is a standalone tale of high-tech ripoffs from a different time and place). Marty's trying to help his old pal Scott Warms, a once-high-flying founder who's fallen prey to California's three-strikes law and is now facing decades in a state pen. As bad as things are, they get worse when the prison starts handing out "free" tablet and closing down the visitation room, the library, and the payphones.

This is an entry to the thing I love most about the Hench novels: the opportunity to turn all this dry, financial skullduggery into high-intensity, high-stakes technothriller plot. For me, Marty Hench is a tool for flensing the scam economy of all its layers of respectability bullshit and exposing the rot at the core.

It's not a coincidence that I've got a book coming out in a week that's about something that's in the news right now. I didn't "predict" this current turn – I observed it. The world comes at you fast and technology news flutters past before you can register it. Luckily, I have a method for capturing this stuff as it happens:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/

Writing about tech issues that are long-simmering but still in the periphery is a technique I call "predicting the present." It's the technique I used when I wrote Little Brother, about out-of-control state surveillance of the internet. When Snowden revealed the extent of NSA spying in 2013, people acted as though I'd "predicted" the Snowden revelations:

https://www.wired.com/story/his-writing-radicalized-young-hackers-now-he-wants-to-redeem-them/

But Little Brother and Snowden's own heroic decision have a common origin: the brave whistleblower Mark Klein, who walked into EFF's offices in 2006 and revealed that he'd been ordered by his boss at AT&T to install a beam-splitter into the main fiber trunk so that the NSA could illegally wiretap the entire internet:

https://www.eff.org/document/public-unredacted-klein-declaration

Mark Klein inspired me to write Little Brother – but despite national press attention, the Klein revelations didn't put a stop to NSA spying. The NSA was still conducting its lawless surveillance campaign in 2013, when Snowden, disgusted with NSA leadership for lying to Congress under oath, decided to blow the whistle again:

https://apnews.com/article/business-33a88feb083ea35515de3c73e3d854ad

The assumption that let the NSA get away with mass surveillance was that it would only be weaponized against the people at the bottom of the shitty technology adoption curve: brown people, mostly in other countries. The Snowden revelations made it clear that these were just the beginning, and sure enough, more than a decade later, we have data-brokers sucking up billions in cop kickbacks to enable warrantless surveillance, while virtually following people to abortion clinics, churches, and protests. Mass surveillance is chugging its way up the shitty tech adoption curve with no sign of stopping.

Like Little Brother, The Bezzle is intended as a kind of virtual flythrough of what life is like further down on that curve – a way for readers who have too much agency to be in the crosshairs of a company like Viapath or Avently right now to wake up before that kind of technology comes for them, and to inspire them to take up the cause of the people further down the curve who are mired in it.

The Bezzle is an intense book, but it's also a very fun story – just like Little Brother. It's a book that lays bare the internal technical workings of so many scams, from multi-level marketing to real-estate investment trusts, from music royalty theft to prison-tech, in the course of an ice-cold revenge plot that keeps twisting to the very last page.

It'll drop in six days. I hope you'll check it out:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

[weezardthewizard]

Folks have touched on a lot of ongoing gags in their versions of a scooby doo adult remake, but I haven't seen anyone talk about Velma's glasses.

Blindess is unique to each person, and not all blindness is complete blindness. Low vision is terribly underrecognized as a disability. Velma's glasses aren't just a costume, they're an intrinsic part of her character.

So where is blind Velma?

Velma, who couldn't finish her degree in forensics because the debris in her eyes made it impossible to use a microscope?

Velma, who holds on to Scooby to navigate spooky low-light warehouses?

Velma, who fearlessly confronts violent criminals despite knowing a hard hit to the head could ruin what's left of her vision?

Velma, who finds clues the others missed because she knows looking means more than just seeing?

And what about the gag itself: where she loses her glasses and crawls on the floor, alone with the monster, unaware of who hands them back to her? Disabled people aren't adult content, but horror is. A good director could easily transform this scene from goofy to bone-chilling.

Think of how scary that would be on Velma's end.

Velma doesn't notice the killer following her into the cellar, but the audience does. He wraps his hand around the dusty jar of liquid on a nearby shelf. The cobwebs don't make a sound as he pulls it free. She can't see him stalking up behind her. The string of suspense pulls taut... and then snaps as a sudden knock to the head sends her most important aid flying into the shadows. The glasses, which cost a month's rent due to Mystery Inc's complete lack of health insurance, clatter somewhere off to the side. He picks up her glasses and then watches in silence as she crawls at his feet. He replaces the jar and kneels down to hand Velma her glasses. She puts them on, slowly looks up at him... and smiles as he flicks on the light. "Oh, hello, Mr. Fressen! Thank you - I didn't hear you come in. I'm just looking for clues in your cellar." She stands, rubbing the goose egg on the back of her head. "My dear girl," he says, "did you hit your head? You must be careful of these low beams. Come up with me, I'll get you some ice." With a comforting hand at her back, he leads her up the stairs and out of the cellar. On the shelf, the murky liquid swirls in its jar and a human eye bumps up against the glass. It blinks.

Blind Velma. The brilliant, brave, capable, disabled mystery solver the horror genre needs.

*let me know if there is anything I can do to make this post more accessible to screen readers

[sizzleissues]

Idk thinking about it maybe Adrien is not just totally blind to other peoples feelings for him but it’s again a product of the low self-esteem wherein he doesn’t think anyone would ever love him sincerely. His fans ‘love him’ but they love the image crafted by his father. His mother loved him but she was taken away from him. His father probably loves him but he definitely likes to give and take it away at a whim. So surely that ‘I love you’ was platonic, I am nothing to love and she definitely meant that in a friend way, because who even am I?

I think he’d easily twist every confession into something that fits the narrative he tells himself, and that he’d never want to make someone uncomfortable by misreading their intentions so he just doesn’t read them at all. Like marinette acts weird around me a lot, she does stuff I’ve seen people with crushes do but surely thats just the way marinette is and it isn’t my business to push myself on her in case she’s just awkward because I’m a drag of a person blah blah blah.

Idk if I articulated that well but do you get the idea?? Even if you want someone to love you that way, if you do not know/like yourself you will reject the possibility someone does like you that way.

And Ladybug is delightfully unattainable so he can place her as the person whom he can imagine loving him because there’s no way LB would actually love him. Sure she’s his partner, their love is totally platonic and so he’s safe to love that way. The other side of his low-self esteem, the side that craves validation is shown here. As a civilian he cannot believe love can be given to him without price or cost and it’s probably something else, he’s mistaken. But the moment the love square reverses, he can’t see her attempts at wooing him as sincere. They’re a test or a joke, or an affect of the miraculous. Nope, she definitely doesn’t mean it. And adrienette only happens because he gathers a little self-esteem and he knows marinette likes him, it all comes to together for him finally, there’s too much evidence now and he likes himself enough to take a shot.

LIKE COME ON

Anyway I think that is interesting

[justanotherarmyfangirl]

Dark&Wild (6) His Obsession

You are an interpreter for international idols, but you soon realized their lavish lifestyle came at a cost, and somehow you became the price. The man who came to collect had a special kind of vendetta, and you, so foolishly, sparked his interest.

In this story Yoongi is the villain and you will hate him! Everyone else, well, the question becomes not if there are good guys or who will save you, but how will you save yourself?

yandere loan shark!Yoongi x blind!reader x bodyguard!Jungkook x idol singer!Jimin x idol rapper!Namjoon x idol singer!Taehyung x detective!Hoseok x detective!Seokjin

TW: 18+ only, dubcon/noncon, mental torment, physical torture, mind break, violence, Stockholm syndrome, reader is blinded before events that take place in the story, Jimin is an addict, Yoongi is a sadist, voyeur, fingering.

---

Alone in the bath was your favorite time. 

The warm water felt nice on your aching muscles, the relaxing smell of lavender helped calm your anxieties. 

You massage the suds into your skin, listening to the trickle of water, wondering where in this massive place your captor, Min Yoongi, might be right now. With your luck, he’s already in his bedroom, waiting for you.

HIS OBSESSION

You hated how even now, finally alone, you still thought of him. You couldn’t escape him, he was with you even when he wasn’t, and you feared no matter what happened in the future, you would never be able to get away, he would always be there, an irritating voice in the back of your head, low and raspy, taunting you. 

You were almost grateful you couldn’t see him, you couldn’t stand the thought of his face imprinted behind your eyelids, in your dreams like the way his touches were, the heat of his palm against your skin, against your throat, against your hip-

Min Yoongi…I’ll kill you…

You clenched your jaw in anger, ignoring everything else you felt when you thought of him. When he…

When Yoongi fucked you the white hot rage you felt deep in your chest and the heat of his unforgivable arousal in the pit of your stomach almost became indistinguishable. When you thought of those moments when he was on top of you, and the scorch of his tongue, the searing stretch in between your legs, it made everything inside you feel heavy, feel burning. 

It must be a sickness, the way your head feels hot every time you think of it, of him.

You sink lower and kick your feet out of frustration, splashing the water over the tub’s rim.

It’s quiet. There’s a small low voice that reminds you again, it’s been months now and you haven’t seen or heard of Taehyung, or anyone at all.

There’s a lingering thought to drown yourself as you splash aimlessly, and another defiant angry voice that screams you should be drowning Yoongi instead.

Oh you’ve tried to. 

To cope with your circumstances you rationalized, he was going to take what he pleases from you anyways, punish you for your continual combativeness, might as well give him a good reason to do it. Still, no matter what you do, overpowering the loan shark never works. 

So damn disappointing. 

You still remember the time you had stayed here until your toes and fingers became wrinkly, refusing to leave until Yoongi grabbed at you and you pulled him right into this nice large deep bathtub of his. 

After the initial shock wore off he easily overpowered you, took advantage of your slippery wet nakedness and fucked you like you hadn’t just tried to murder him. 

That time he wasn’t even mad you had soaked his designer suit, you remember how you could hear the smile behind his mocking words while you choked on soapy water, “If you wanted me to join you, you could have just asked.”

You almost managed to drown him again when he came, if you hadn’t needed to breathe as well.

You let the water slosh over the tub’s edge, dunking yourself under the bubbles.

And scream.

You don’t hear the knock on the door, too busy wallowing in your own lavender scented misery. A hand pulls on your shoulder, lifting your head before you can inhale water.

“What?!” you splutter, wiping your face.

“I…” Jungkook clears his throat, looking away from your nakedness, letting his initial worries subside. “You shouldn’t do that,” he mutters.

“Towel,” you say simply. Not in the mood to argue, you stand up. With Yoongi, you are used to his leering presence. He’s already seen every bit of you, and loves reminding you about it when he wants to make you feel humiliated. And now you’ve kind of let your indifference about your body extend to Jungkook as well. You knew he wasn’t going to try anything like the others might have, plus, you enjoy making the henchman stutter.

You feel soft fabric plop against your front, catching it before it falls into the tub. “Hold my shoulder so you don’t slip,” he says.

The edge of the towel exposes the side of you as Jungkook moves your hand to his shoulder. “I need-” His hand wraps around your soaking back, pulling you out of the tub and placing you on tile in one swift motion. “-t-thanks.” 

Jungkook hands you a silk robe, a pink short kimono style Yoongi chose for you that Jungkook already knows you’re not going to like. He can’t help but chuckle when he hears you groan, muttering about the thin article of clothing. You turn your head in his direction but you don’t comment on it. 

Jungkook leans in the doorway, hands in his pockets, waiting for you. 

He’s to deliver you to Mr. Min. 

Everyone has good and bad days, today is one of your better days, and also one of Mr. Min’s bad days. He’s had to kill someone, and that means, Min Yoongi is not getting his money and that pisses him off more than anything. That also means with almost certainty Yoongi is going to make today one of your bad days. 

Jungkook tries not to think about it as he listens as you hum contently, knowing what’s to come. He glances over at you. Jungkook tries to give you some modesty, but he’s still a man, and a curious one at that. He chooses to ignore that old saying as his eyes linger on your naked body as you dry yourself. As long as he doesn’t touch…

“Have you seen Tae?”

Jungkook might have ignored the question, he has ignored your questioning when it came to such matters, but he feels sorry for you, for what’s to come, and so, in hopes that you won’t let your day be ruined, Jungkook answers.

“Yeah, he came to one of our establishments the other night.”

“Really? Alone? Did you talk to him?”

“He was alone. Usually Mr. Park joins him, but not in a while,” Not since we took you. “He drank,” and fucked a prostitute, but Jungkook decides to leave that out. 

“Did he,” you pause, “Did he ask about me?”

You sound so hopeful. 

“Yes,” Jungkook says, still waiting by the door.

“He did?” you sound so excited, so happy. Perhaps if you had let his words sink in, you could have noticed the hesitation in his voice. “What did he say? Did you tell him what I told you?”

“He wanted to know how you were being cared for, that he and the others miss you.” Jungkook lies, telling you what he thinks you most want to hear. 

You stay quiet and he wonders if you see through his lies. “Did you tell him?”

“I wasn’t able to, Mr. Min was right there. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, it’s okay, next time.” You sound so hopeful, pleased, grateful to him. Jungkook never promised he would tell Taehyung anything for you, and he doubts that coward would do anything with the information if he did. But you still try, asking him sweetly every time, never getting mad when Jungkook gives you another excuse. Your hopes are too high, and Jungkook can’t be the one to destroy them.

You smile in his general direction. You can’t see him, so he lets himself smile back.

-

“We watch and bet, it’s just a couple of us that do it.”

“I want to listen! You have to let me!”

“You really like soccer that much?” Jungkook asks.

“Yes! The announcers are so animated! I can get the jist of it, and our company would hold these big parties on game day and get chicken and beer, just feeling everyone’s energy was so much fun.”

“Um I don't think it will be the same-”

“You telling me gangsters don’t know how to party?”

Jungkook laughs. “Okay okay, I’ll see.”

You laugh happily.

Yoongi can hear your laughter. It’s melodic and pleasant. However Jeon Jungkook’s laughter? Mixing with your own, tainting it? 

Yoongi’s short temper has already hit its fuse.

He watches your shadows before you enter the room and the way the larger shadow moves away slightly before you enter. You grip Jungkook’s bicep with one hand and hold his forearm with the other, using both hands, overly touchy…overly affectionate. Yoongi clears his throat. 

Jungkook leads you to the loan shark, until you are standing by Yoongi’s side. Only then does Jungkook leave you to take his spot on Yoongi’s other side.

You’re in his office, you presume. Your thigh hits the hard oak of his desk. Yoongi taps his phone. “Translate this.” He plays an audio. The volume is very low, you crouch down to hear it clearer.

“They were talking about their wives,” you frown. 

Fucking pigs, you think, and you hope their wives leave them.

Yoongi cracks his knuckles. “That’s it?”

“They were talking about their wives’…private parts,” you cross your arms, disgusted. “I rather not go into detail.”  

“Hmm, I thought they were going to double cross me.” He finally relaxes, pulling your body closer, he sets you into his lap.

You’ve learned a few things about Yoongi, the biggest revelation was that he was extremely paranoid. “Well they still could,” you note, poking at his paranoia. You lean your back against him, just to feel more comfortable, “but no, that conversation was not about that.” 

“We’re going back to Japan at the end of the month.” You stiffen in his hold. “Tokyo this time, we’ll be staying for a few weeks.”

“Two weeks? Are you setting up another parlor?”

“Close,” Yoongi clicks his tongue, amused by your curiosity of his dealings. “We have a few host bars there, just checking in. There are some regulars with high tabs we’re going to be…visiting. Need you there.”

You exhale, fingers fiddling with the string of your robe, “Okay.” 

Translating for a bunch of blubbering business men begging for forgiveness, or a longer extension, or just another chance at life, was such a stark contrast from the bubbly television interviews you used to do. 

But there was always a fakeness during press junkets that you really hated. All of it felt like such a shallow performance, and it made you feel like a circus animal at times, putting on a show, no matter how offensive the question, no matter how you felt, you had to smile and translate with a happy face. 

Hell, there’s no superficiality around you now, even if Yoongi’s targets sure put on a performance…

Traveling with the loan shark really showed you how dark the depths of humanity could sink. There was rawness and realness to the underground scene that you could just feel in the air, swirling amongst the cigarette smoke.

No bullshitting, no pleasantries, straight to business. It was one of the few things you didn’t actually hate about this predicament you were in, the few moments where you felt like you had some power. 

You were the voice of the most powerful man in the room, and by extension that meant your voice held power. The men in the room would, sometimes quite literally, be hanging on your next words.

If you didn’t like the men you were translating for, you weren’t afraid to make it obvious to the loan shark in your translations, and he would seem to punish them harsher for it. It’s happened so many times now that it was no longer a coincidence to you.

Now if only he would listen to you on other matters…

Yoongi drapes his hand over your front, under the opening in your robe. You don’t flinch like before, what’s the point in flinching? Yoongi will just grab at you tighter, make it hurt if you do.

“You smell good.” Yoongi’s nose tickles your neck.

You cough. “I just took a bath.”

He runs his hand across your suppleness, pinching your nipple.

He knows you are holding it in, staying quiet to spite him, it’s amusing to him, so he continues to play with you, letting your robe open wider and wider until he hears someone clear their throat.

Jungkook turns to leave.

“Jeon, stay.”

Jungkook was wrong. 

Yoongi wasn’t going to take out his anger on you.

He was going to take it out on him. 

“Why are you doing this?” you mutter, not used to an audience. Usually Yoongi isolates you to his bedroom when he’s home and he’s surprisingly quite professional when you’re out in company, even if everyone knew what he did to you behind closed doors.

“He is not bothered,” Yoongi turns his chair so he and you are facing Jungkook, “Are you, Jeon?” he asks the young gangster. He yanks one of your legs open.

“No.” It’s flat. It’s a lie. Jungkook knows Yoongi doesn’t want to hear the truth.

“Well I fucking mind!” 

You yell when he grabs you by the neck. “You don’t have to always do what he says, you know. You’re not like me,” you swallow, speaking to Jungkook. You’re not weak like me, you imply.

“Hohoho.” Yoongi laughs. “Hear that, want to rebel against your mean old boss, Jeon?” he hums. “Did you ever think all those nice things our Jungkookie does for you is because I ask him to? To keep an eye on you, you do your job better when you’re not a mopey brat. You should be on your knees thanking me for giving you a friend.”

“Fuck you.”

“What did you say? Say that louder.”

You stay quiet, head down.

“I could have made him be the one to dole out your punishments. Jungkook is skilled with a knife. He has a taste for blood, did you know that? People call him The Maestro…when we need someone to sing, we send him. After enough time, there's a certain pitch everyone gets to, of screaming. His favorite method is fileting his victims until they sing that tune. You know what that means? Pulling the skin back until you see muscle.” You shiver when he runs his fingertips across your arm. “That’s the kind of man he is.” Your stomach flips at his words. 

“Every bit of kindness is because of me.”

“I know,” you mutter.

“SO YOU SHOULD BE THANKING ME.”

“Thank you, Sir.”

“Can I go, Sir?” Jungkook speaks up.

“No. Stay right there,” he says, undoing the tie around your waist. “Jeon, like what you see?”

“No.” Jungkook knew better than to ever admit he had grown fond of what Yoongi deemed was his.

“No? But she’s pretty,” he says, uncovering everything, pulling your legs open wider. “And so tight.”

You cry out, wanting nothing more than to attack the loan shark for putting you on display like this, and it takes every ounce of restraint to not fight him…to not close your legs...

“Feel for yourself, touch her.”

“Sir?” Jungkook looks very displeased at being roped into this. 

“Come here and touch her.” Yoongi waits and smiles as he watches Jungkook hesitantly step closer. 

“Please, don’t,” you whimper.

“I thought you would enjoy this. Since you are so close now, chit-chatting and making jokes all the time, hm? Don’t you ever think about-” Yoongi puts his hand between your legs, “-what it would be like? You can’t see, but our Jungkookie is very handsome.” Yoongi’s lips brush against your ear.

“I only think about ways to please you, Sir,” you grit out very unconvincingly. 

Yoongi laughs. “You don’t want Jungkook to touch you like this?” 

You try to ignore the pressure of his fingers inside you. You couldn’t bring yourself to confirm such a thing in front of the young gangster, so you admit something just as horrible. “Just you, I just want you.”

Yoongi presses his lips against yours, so forcefully you feel your teeth knock against his and you yelp, pushing him away, clearly disgusted. 

You can’t hide your hatred for him when he does that, when he kisses you like that. Even with his hands groping you, fingering you, kissing Yoongi just feels worse, feels wrong.

Yoongi grabs your chin, pulling your head back to him. Yoongi eyes the man in front of him whose gaze hasn’t left a particular painting on his wall. Jungkook refuses to look at you like this.

That just won’t do.

“You know what I think? I think someone has a little crush. And I know it’s not you,” he murmurs in your ear.

Jungkook glances over to his boss. He has you spread over his legs, his fingers pressed deep inside your cunt as you shake against him. 

“You’ll say whatever sweet little words you can think of to worm your way in my mens’ good graces, so convinced they will help you escape eventually,” he says. Yoongi manages to keep the tempo in his ministrations precise, pressing into you deeper, thumb circling your clit in such a mind numbing way you feel like your body is catching fire.

“Why would I try something so stupid?” you grunt.

“They won’t betray me, you know.”

“Oh, I know. How nice it must be for you,” you mock. “How many men did you say you have killed for crossing you again?”

Yoongi’s temper rises as you hit a nerve for him. He pushes you off his lap, and you fall at Jungkook’s feet, knees scraping against Yoongi’s hard wood flooring.

You lean against Jungkook, curled into yourself, pulling your robe closed.

Yoongi watches as you move closer to Jungkook like a scared child looking for comfort. “Jeon, punish her.” He stands up, anger overflowing. “Hurt her, since that’s what she seems to want instead. NOW!” he yells.

Jungkook looks down at you and sighs exasperatedly. 

There are a million and one different things a man could do to a woman to hurt her…

What will Jungkook pick?

Jungkook lifts you to your feet by your hair, making you cry out in pain. He ignores it, whatever he is feeling. He’s done it so many times it’s come natural: dissociating from the situation.

“It’s okay, do it, I don’t blame you.”

Goddammit, Jungkook inwardly curses. Don’t you see how much worse you are making it for yourself? Why did you say that? To make Jungkook feel better about this frustrating situation he’s in? Jungkook doesn’t have any feelings…

Yoongi raises his brow and grinds his teeth, crossing his arms, waiting impatiently for Jungkook to do something.

Jungkook releases you and for a fleeting moment you believed he was going to refuse.

In that moment you actually believed he would go against Yoongi.

In that moment you were relieved.

And then you felt a stinging across your cheek, so hard you toppled over.

“Not her face!”

Before you can cry out, a fierce kick into your stomach knocks the wind out of you, once, then twice more. Jungkook has to make sure Yoongi sees he doesn’t care about what happens to you.

You bring your knees into your body and cradle your head, not knowing where Jungkook might strike next. You're sure he’s pulling his punches for you, but holy shit it hurts, and you can’t imagine just how strong he really is. You shake from head to toe, and finally your muscles decompress and you’re able to inhale and catch your breath.

You roll over on your back, waiting for what’s next as you take in deep breaths. Jungkook grips your robe, lifting your body.

This isn’t going how either men want. Jungkook stands over over, staring at the blood dripping from your lip, frozen in place. Yoongi can see the remorse twisting in Jungkook’s expression and how you are taking the beating in strides, lips pressed together in determination. 

You are an exceptionally annoying martyr. You sacrificed yourself for Jimin and now, Yoongi now sees with a sick realization, you think you are doing it for Jungkook. His Jungkook.

“Jeon…” Yoongi looks down at you, clenching his fist. “...leave.”

Yoongi will make you regret this. The loan shark really couldn’t help himself. It was going to be him and no one else…

Jungkook looks back one last time before closing the door, and sees a glimpse of your glowering expression as his boss stands over you and pulls off his jacket. Jungkook was always calm, always collected, yet in that moment, his heart rate jumps.

-

Yoongi got what he wanted in the end, Jungkook was keeping his distance from you now, ignoring you almost completely when he was around.

You’re annoyed, stuck having to listen to your new “handler” Jon explain in excruciating detail his recent trip to Phuket. He’s the only other one of Yoongi’s men you can stand to be around for extended periods of time, but if you have to listen to another pun involving fornication in Phuket you’re going to jam something in your eardrums!

“What about you?”

“What about me?” you hum bored.

“...so, miss y/n. I have to confess, I did some research on you after what we talked about,” he lowers his voice. “You’re kind of a celebrity. Can I have your autograph?”

You laugh. “Shut up! JTJ are the celebrities, I was just along for the ride,” you pausing. “Any recent headlines that I might be interested in?”

“Well, the hot news is that JTJ have postponed their next album.”

“Really? I wonder why,” you ask, concerned. “Have, um, are there any articles about…what happened?”

“Nothing, only a forum thread between their fans speculating if you got fired. Boss man really worked his magic.”

You sigh, flopping over on the couch.

“Jon, any chance you’d drop me off at the corner store no questions asked?” You have begged to be released so many times now your enthusiasm has all dried up.

“Sorry honey, but I intend to live a long life.”

You snort. “As a gangster? Good luck.”

“Ha!” Jon goes uncharacteristically quiet. “How much did you say that debt of your boy was?”

You snort at the implication that Jimin, the elusive idol, was in any way ‘yours.’ “Eight billion won, something like that,” you huff.

You suspect Jon’s wincing as he sharply inhales. “Ahh shit.”

“Yeah, shit.” You change the subject. “You coming to Japan with us this time?”

“That I am!”

“Wonderful,” you say, emotionless.

“Now about that autograph.”

“You’re joking-” you cough out surprised.

“I printed out a picture and everything!”

“You’re ridiculous!” you laugh. Your fingers run over a piece of paper Jon places in your hands. “What picture?” you ask unable to contain your amusement.

“Well, there was an interview in France, you’re wearing a bright orange dress, looking like a real bigshot, I took a screenshot of it.”

“Orange, really?” you grimace, you never really questioned what coordinators put you in and it’s not like you could see yourself but you still had pride in your appearance.

“You looked nice, you match the others.”

“JTJ?” you perk up.

“Yep, well…I cropped them out.”

You giggle. You hold the picture in your hands delicately. You wish you could see the photo, see how you look now and how you might have fit in with them.

“Yeah, I’ll sign it, you weirdo.”

A pen is placed in your hands. Any other day you would have thought to jam it in your eye and end it all. Today, you try your best to scribble your name down for Jon and feel like your old self.

---

“What’s this?”

“You don’t recognize them?”

“I do, but-” You believed Yoongi had destroyed all your things in his anger. “You kept them?” You rummage through a whole box of your books that Yoongi has unceremoniously dropped at your feet. 

“Yes. Here, some new books for you too.” Yoongi drops a few clean and crisp books into your lap, the pages not bent and worn from multiple readings like yours were. 

You want to question why now all of a sudden, but you were too afraid the temperamental man might take your questioning wrongly and take away his gift as quickly as he gave it to you.

“Thank you, Yoongi.”

“Pick one and come with me.” You let him lead you. You suspect he did this because you’ve become practically mute around him, refusing to speak to him until your trip to Japan.

Who knew the silent treatment would actually work. You hold the book close to your chest while Yoongi drives. It’s a long drive, you try to keep track of every turn and stop but it’s impossible. 

“What place is this?” It didn’t smell like smoke or alcohol or sweat, the regular scents that usually assaulted you when you went out with the loan shark. It smelled like…baked bread.

“Just read your book.” Yoongi leads you to a cushioned seat and hands you a drink, and when you place the straw to your lips you sip on something sweet and milky, a rich coffee concoction. Yoongi sits next to you, clears his throat and doesn’t say another word.

You flip through the first pages of your book. Is this some business thing…or is this another trick… You remembered the last time you felt disarmed like this.

You remain stiff, sipping on your coffee and slowly reading. The sounds and chatter around you could only mean you’re in a cafe. There’s thousands of cafes just in the city alone, who knows where you could be. Yoongi’s arm rests on the seat behind you, his fingers touching your shoulder every couple of minutes to remind you of his presence, as if you could ever forget him. 

You finish another page, flipping the paper. “Is there…someone I know around?” you ask, trying to sound uninterested, thinking this really was a scenario like last time.

“No, but if there was, what do you think you’re going to do?” He sounds just as uninterested.

“I’ll scream-”

Yoongi’s lips brush across your cheek. “Then I’ll kill him. Not now, but I will kill him.” He leans back again. “Maybe I just wanted a croissant, this place has the best in Seoul. Want to try?”

You grunt, too confused to do anything else but open your mouth when he puts the half eaten pastry to your lips. It’s flaky and buttery with rich custard and burnt sugar on the top, it really is one of the best desserts you’ve ever eaten.

Part of you almost played along. You were about to just succumb to whatever this was, an odd date between the two of you, and suck it up and enjoy yourself. You almost reached out to him, you almost thanked him.

“If you think doing this will make me hate you any less-”

“You are so very stubborn-”

“You are the most stubborn!” You hiss back, “I don’t understand you. I don’t want to be here with you, I don’t want to be around you- s-stop…” Yoongi grips your hand, thumb rubbing circles along your palm, and doesn’t stop even when you go quiet. 

“Just drink your coffee and enjoy your book,” he says. His deep voice holds none of his usual berating tone. You wouldn’t dare call it soft, but...

“Why am I here?” you persist.

“Didn’t you tell my men you wanted to go out? That you missed going to places like cafes?” You bite your tongue. Jon is such a snitch. “We can do this again, we can do this as many times you want-”

“The ruthless gangster will spend his precious time at cafes for me?” you ask suspiciously.

“Is that what you want?”

You didn't know if this was what you wanted, being with him, was it really better than being stuck in his home alone? At least this meant you might have a chance at getting away…

“How long do I get?” You finally relax into your seat, opening your book again.

Yoongi smirks. “We’ll see, I am in no rush today.”

Yoongi watches you read, glancing every once in a while and then staring at nothing else but you, unable to look away as you run your fingers along each page, slow at times and fast at other times, like you were trying to get to the end of the scene quickly, your lips would curl up and you would sit up straighter in excitement, and then your movements would slow and your fingers would go over a line once more as you quietly laughed to yourself. 

You had your head down at first, then you looked up and far away, as if you were imagining the story in front of you. Yoongi wondered what it was exactly that you would think of, how much could you still remember by your own memory. 

“I can feel you staring,” you huff, turning in his direction.

“Not me,” he grunts, lying.

“Ah,” you hum, head tilting, “Well, they will do that, or try to completely ignore me. There’s never really an in between with strangers I’ve noticed. I guess it’s a good thing I can’t see them staring… Two good eyes and can’t mind their own business,” you mutter. 

“Lucky for me, I’m sure you would call them out, probably try to start a fight.”

You snort. Eventually your fingers slowed to a stop and you dogeared the page, closing the book. You picked up your glass and finished the drink, ice now melted to the coffee and watering down the strong flavor. Shame, you liked it strong.

“Ready to go home?”

You looked anxious over the question. You tightened your grip on your glass. “We really came just to go to a cafe, no other places you had to go?” you ask suspiciously.

Yoongi crosses his arms. Of course, you would suspect ulterior motives from him, but this time, the loan shark really did not have any other preoccupations, he only wanted to see how you would react out in public with him like this, if you could be trusted with some freedom. You were not falling into line as the other men did, but you did seem more…tame.

He tests you. “Actually, we are going to make a stop at one of my clubs. Lets go.” You seem to relax at that, like you’ve just guessed the right answer to a question asked of you, like you knew all along Yoongi wasn’t really doing this just for you, but for him, confirming he was still the selfish loan shark you had grown to know.

“That was quick,” you deflate when Yoongi steps back into the car after reaching the location to his club. You were building up the courage to try to test the door before he was already back and starting the car. As Yoongi drove in silence there was a nagging inside you, a question you did not want to know the answer to when he had told you, you did not need to actually come inside with him. It sat in the pit of your stomach and flipped around when his hand moved to your leg and rested on your thigh. Did he really just want to go to a cafe with you after all? What did Yoongi want from you?

---

“What are you doing?”

You flinch, removing your hand off of Yoongi’s jaw. You didn’t know he had woken up.

“Trying to kill me in my sleep?” Yoongi grunts.

“Yes,” you say. It was a lie, you both knew it. You don’t know why you did it, or perhaps you just did not want to admit it. 

You had woken up with him tangled around you, your naked bodies interweaved together under sheets, his skin against yours warm. It was not overbearing, it was an inviting heat, enveloping you. 

You woke up still groggy from sleep and you didn’t think about how much you hated the man who was holding you softly. 

You reached out and touched him just to feel a little less lonely. You’ve felt so alone now without the few interactions from Jungkook you had grown so accustomed to. The loneliness, it had become gnawing at you horribly, and it was a cruel irony Yoongi was the only one who was able to lessen it for you.

Yoongi grunts and rolls on top of you. His hands wrap around your wrists as he lifts himself up to look at you. He studies your unease. You can feel his morning wood pressing against you. You hold your breath, expecting him to continue from last night’s activities, but he doesn’t, just drops down, letting go of your wrists, resting his head against your naked chest, deciding to go back to sleep. It surprises you. Yoongi must be tired…

You don’t know what to do with your hands, so you just keep them beside your head as you listen to his steady breathing.

You want to go back to sleep, so you don’t think about him…

So you don’t have to think about how you want to hold him…

The need twists in your gut, makes you queasy, makes you want to cry out in frustration, but you just lay there, unwilling to accept the same man who was causing you this turmoil was also simultaneously bringing you a comfort.

You will yourself to fantasize about ways to kill him instead, but your fantasies don’t seem to bring you as much joy as before, instead there is another unfamiliar twisting in your stomach, a pain stabbing you right in the center where he is laying.

And eventually you do fall asleep under his embrace.

-

“Anything else, Sir?”

Yoongi goes through the folder of photos his associate has handed to him. He holds up one in particular, studying the couple in front of him. “Find out more about her, the new girl. Get in close, use your charm,” he smirks. He holds the photo under the light of his lamp. Even if the picture is a bit grainy, the discoloration right under the sleeve of her shirt is unmistakable.

Jungkook, positioned at his right side, leans over. “So this is him?” 

“Mhm,” Yoongi hums, grin widening.

If Jungkook had any protests or questions, he didn’t speak them. It wouldn’t have changed the loan shark’s mind anyways. When blood is in the water, a shark can only think of one thing.

He flips through more photos, choosing ones in a different folder already on his desk. Very old photos, photos of a younger brighter face version of yourself. These photos you kept in an album tucked away in the back of your closet, in a box with your old wedding ring and other memories you weren’t able to part with, hoping someday you will be able to flip through the pages again with new working eyes. Then you could decide what memories deserve to be revisited and what memories deserve to be burned.

You must have liked swimming, there’s many photos of yourself at the beach with friends. Bowling and roller blading, activities you enjoyed in the past, told a story of the person you were before you lost your vision. Yoongi stares at the candid shots of you, staring at your eyes.

Other than the obvious, Yoongi notes there is something vastly different about you now. 

Yoongi likes you better now.

The younger version of you stares at him with light behind her eyes. You still have that, the light is just burning, glowing in you like embers. 

As a kid, Yoongi liked to poke at fires, stir the embers with a stick and watch the flames dance. When the fire would roar and crackle and burst bigger as a gust of wind blew the flames, and others would instinctively step back, Yoongi would instinctively step closer, mesmerized. 

He would feel that similar pull, that instinctive desire to be closer when that fire inside you would blaze and try to scorch him.

There are moments when you burn so bright, held tight in his arms. It was so hot, it was addicting feeling you. It was becoming something he needed, after a long day of dealing with frustratingly stupid people, dull and boring people, people like a Park Jimin, sheltered and coddled, weak fires that, in Yoongi’s opinion, deserved to be snuffed out.

Not like you. You were an inferno. 

After months with him you were becoming fevered as well, ignited by his stroking of you, his fingers around you and inside you. You would burn for him so prettily when he filled your heat and tightened his grip on you. 

There are moments when you let your instincts take over, when your pleasure is mounting, and he is angling his hips into you steadily and stroking your heat so perfectly, building you up to the point where you don’t think and don’t feel exactly how you wish, when you dig your nails into his arms, wrap your legs tight around his hips, when you don’t resist his heated kisses, when you kiss him back….

Those nights, he can taste you fully, sweet and soft and so hot. 

Like fire, it’s dangerous kissing you. 

Yoongi is becoming obsessed. 

He picks up his ledger, going back to business, the photos of you still scattered across his desk. Jungkook tries to keep his eyes from wandering, but he is a curious man. 

“Should I get y/n for you?” Jungkook suddenly asks. He wants a reason, he wants an excuse…

“No,” Yoongi mutters, “let her rest.”

-

Now when Yoongi leaves you alone, he doesn’t lock you in his room, he is becoming lax with you finally. Perhaps he thinks you have really given up, that his methods have finally chained you mentally enough that he no longer needed real chains. 

His mistake. The loan shark rarely makes them, but in your case, he’s had some…misjudgements.

Once you leave Yoongi’s room, if you turn to your right and follow the wall, you’ll eventually end up at the stairs. You pass by four doors before then, one you believe was the room you used to have, and another you think might be Jungkook’s room, as the young gangster is always in this house somewhere, like he must live with the loan shark. You’ve tried to jiggle the handles a few times on your trek to see if a door might open, but the rooms on the second floor are usually locked. 

Downstairs is more complicated, you’ve tried to make sense of it, but there is always someone to stop you before you can explore too much. You know exactly where the kitchen is, because it is the one place it seems you’re not allowed to be under any circumstances. Anytime you would get close to the area, someone would offer to get you food instead, or lead you to a bar stool to wait. 

The sounds of cooking are far from where they sit you, too far for you to run and try to open a drawer and search for a knife without getting caught. And the thought will only rarely cross your mind now, you would much rather have some good food. 

Tonight however, you had overheard Yoongi was going to be out until tomorrow evening, so you try again to search for an escape. 

What’s the worst thing that could happen? 

-

Jungkook scrolls through his phone, his one leg propped up on the small side table he is leaning on. He looks up as he hears a faint click coming from down the hall.

He sees a hand reach out cautiously before you reveal yourself, pressing yourself against the wall before moving slowly closer.

You reach the next door and grip the handle. It doesn’t budge and you sigh, moving along.

‘All locked,’ you think disappointedly before spinning around. “Who’s there? I know someone is there!” You whisper. After a long silence you slump against the wall. “Am I hearing things now?” you mutter to yourself. You wait at the top of the staircase trying to hear for voices or movement, any indication someone might be awake like you.

Well, no stopping now. You move back and forth down the stairs strategically missing all the creaky steps you’ve hit on previous occasions.

Jungkook follows your pattern, only two steps behind.

Okay, now you are definitely feeling spooked. A shiver runs down your spine. Is it because it’s night time? Is this house haunted? Just how many people have been killed here?

You hesitate half way down. You still can’t hear anything downstairs, so you take your chances. You’ll explore as much as you can, learn as much as you can, and then, figure out an escape plan!

Even if you could go for a late night snack, you avoid the kitchen. Learning what else might be downstairs is more important. This house is massive, there’s an echoing to voices sometimes. Yoongi must not have it very furnished. Despite his greedy nature, Yoongi never seemed to be too extravagant with such things. 

If you go to the left, you’ll reach the kitchen. If you go forward, you’ll find a sectional where Yoongi’s underlings will be lounging about during the day. You’ve never ever heard a television, instead you’ll hear the familiar slaps of playing cards, another game you could no longer play without a special set you were too prideful to ask for.

You couldn’t risk going forward and to the front door. You’re sure a man like Yoongi had a security system. But maybe, maybe if you could find a window… So you move toward the only direction you have yet to explore. 

What’s this? It’s sleek, it’s too big to be a window. Is it a door to the backyard?

You feel the rush of excitement and fear pump through your veins as you find the handle, but you have to be cautious, doors could set off the security system he might or might not have. It frustrates you how many things you have to speculate about, how many things you don’t know. 

For all you know there are probably cameras watching you at this very moment! Yet, no one has tried to stop you. Should you just risk it and try to run before he sends someone to collect you?

No, you decide to keep searching.

You finally find an open door. You step inside and follow the walls around, a window! It’s covered by a drape. You bend down, running your hands over the window sill. Finally.

You stand up and keep moving, curious what else you can find before you attempt to open it. You move towards the room’s center. 

It’s a table, but you don’t see it for what it is, your legs hit the edge and it reminds you of Yoongi’s desk in his office and you panic, thinking of how much trouble you will be in if he found you there, and you stumble backward.

You stumble backward into a warm body.

Hands wrap around you, cover your mouth before you can scream, and pin down your arms. 

You breathe heavily into his palm, frozen in fright.

“Shhh.”

You swallow down tears, catching your cries in your throat. He holds you so tight around the waist it stings. You can’t move or scream, so you wait, expecting the worst. The worst is what always happens.

“I’m going to let go now. Don’t scream.”

Jungkook?!

“Hey!” Jungkook lets you go and you shove him away.

In your panic, you’ve decided to just fuck it, and run to escape.

You stumble, shoulders hitting the door frame, falling when your foot hits what you think is a chair leg. You scrape your palm bracing yourself when you hit the floor. You can hear Jungkook right behind you. He’s going to bend down and grab at you, you are already expecting it, so you kick your leg out. 

He grunts in pain so you know you’ve gotten a good kick in and you scramble to your feet, knocking into walls and furniture, searching for the glass door you felt before.

You click the lock down and yank the door open, security system be damned!

You start to run. The soles of your feet hit jagged concrete, and then…air?!

Nope, that’s a pool, you realize as you fall into water. Dammit.

You swim to the surface and hear another loud splash as you wade in water. 

Did he just jump in?!

That was dumb of him. You swim hastily, a second surge of energy rushing through you, you search for the pool’s edge. Your tiny dress still feels like it weighs a ton when you heave yourself over the edge, knees scraping as you crawl out. 

You can hear him already mimicking your actions as he pulls himself out of the water quicker than you thought possible. You crawl quickly away from the noise, using every bit of the energy left inside you, you dig your heels and palms into the earth.

Suddenly, Jungkook’s entire weight is on top of you, stopping your crawl to freedom.

Jungkook grabs your wrists as you claw at dirt. “Stop!” he grunts, yelling, “There’s a ledge here, you’re going to fall off of it and die!” He moves one of your arms out above your head, letting you feel the steep slant of earth downward.

In that moment, you don’t care. This is the closest you’ve gotten to freedom in so long! It’s been so long since you’ve felt grass and dirt and earth. You used to go hiking with Namjoon all the time, you used to breathe in the cool fresh morning air almost every weekend with him. 

Your heart aches when you remember the way he would lead you over steep rocks, his fingers interlaced with yours, the way he would explain the scenery and overlooks and sunsets and sunrises to you so animatedly, you could hear the reverence of what he could see in his voice. You cry with your head buried in the tall grass thinking of Namjoon and the freedom you had. In that moment, you would rather throw yourself off a cliff.

“Don’t take me in, please. Just let me stay outside a bit longer,” you hiccup.

Jungkook rests over you until you both calm down, until he finally rolls off of you, sighing, looking at the night sky. “You know…” he pauses. “If you want to go outside, you can just ask-”

“I don’t want to–” you grit out angrily. “I don’t want to ask for permission like a child. I don’t want to be let outside like a dog! I don’t want– I can’t– Jungkook,” your bottom lip trembles as you suck in air. You let the grass blades tickle your face as you hold yourself together, “I feel like I’m not myself anymore. I-” you can’t continue, you won’t dare admit to him what sick feelings that have grabbed a hold of you.

His cold wet hand touches your cheek, why does it warm you up so suddenly? 

“Where have you been?!” you cry, fist hitting what you assume is his chest. Yoongi, that bastard was right, Jungkook was the closest thing you had to a friend here. You didn’t want to believe he was just as cruel as Yoongi, you didn’t want to believe it!

“It’s safer for you if you stay away from me,” he says softly. Or bluntly. How could you ever really know if you can’t see the longing look he gives you? 

You stay quiet, holding in your objections. You aren’t going to argue with him, you were a fool to care at all about someone who didn’t care at all about you; a criminal; one of your captors. Your eyes sting as Yoongi’s words replayed in your mind, Jungkook saw you as a job, he was being nice because Yoongi told him to, he didn’t want to be around you.

You shiver, hugging yourself. You pull at the tall blades of grass, thinking of Namjoon instead, letting yourself be carried far away from here. Your body couldn’t escape, but your mind could. You hum to yourself.

It was a tune Namjoon played over and over for you, a song of his that didn’t make the cut, it was too soft and sweet, didn’t fit with his persona, yet it was your favorite.

Jungkook sits in his wet clothes uncomfortably, watching you, listening to your sad soft humming as the night starts brightening, and he has no choice but to act. He lifts your defeated body into his arms. “We’re not going to tell anyone about this.”

“About what?” you grumble, shivering in the cold.

-

Jungkook sets you in the bathtub, in your clothes, the wet fabric of your dress clinging to you and leaving nothing to the imagination. You can hear the knobs squeak as he turns on the warm water. You reach out and grab his soaking jacket, gripping it tight. 

“What are you doing, y/n?”

“You’re cold too.” Jungkook pulls away but you hold on tighter. 

“I can’t be in here with you.”

“If you leave now, I swear I will drown myself.” You know you shouldn’t force him to be here with you, but you were desperate, lonely, you didn’t care how uncomfortable you were making him if it meant you felt a little less insane.

Suddenly Jungkook moves closer to you, entering the large bath. He grips your knee, bending your leg.

“W-What are you doing?!” A flood of emotions rush through you, so many at once you don’t know what you’re feeling when he begins to touch you.

“You’re bruised everywhere,” he mutters, gripping your elbow and turning your arm. “I’m going to have to tell him you tried to escape.” 

He sounds frustrated. You accept your fate but it doesn’t make it any easier, knowing Yoongi will lock you up once again, no doubt find some creative way to torture you for trying to leave.

The bathtub steadily fills with water, and the uncomfortable weight on you lessens as the water surrounds your bodies. 

You haven’t let go of him, but you move your grip slightly, feeling for buttons, and once you find them, you start to unbutton his shirt.

If someone were to ask you why you did it, you wouldn’t have been able to articulate a reason, your fingers were working of their own accord, listening to something inside you you couldn’t even hear yourself.

Jungkook hasn’t moved, he holds himself up, gripping the tub’s edges with both hands until you reach the end and push away the fabric. By now the water has filled the tub enough that you float against him. You push both his shirt and jacket off his shoulders.

You place your palm on his chest, you can’t feel the tattoos etched across his skin, you weren’t aware of the extent of his ink markings, but you can feel the cold metal of his nipple piercing and you let out a small gasp in surprise.

Jungkook hasn’t moved, so you let your hand travel down his torso, fingers running along the contours of his muscles, until you reach his belt, his pants, your palm laying along his zipper. 

Jungkook is stiffening under your palm and you gasp louder.

Jungkook finally moves, pulling your wrist away. He holds it tight against the cool ceramic of the tub. “Don’t…don’t make me hurt you.”

You were so used to pain, his warning didn’t deter you how he expected. You wanted him to hurt you. You wanted someone, anyone else, other than Yoongi to think about.

Even when he tightened his grip until you could feel the pain sting into your bones, you didn’t flinch, you didn’t tell him to stop. You let out a silent gasp this time, arching your back against him, and Jungkook saw you were more dangerous than he had believed.

If you could have seen him you could have ruined him.

You gently run your other hand down his body, let your legs wrap around him, listening to his breathing grow louder.

He stands up suddenly. “Wash the chlorine out of your hair, don’t tell Mr. Min anything.”

You pause, “Tell him what?”

Dangerous. Jungkook clears his mind of you, focusing on cleaning the house of da what happened.

When later that day, Yoongi teased you about falling down the stairs, you knew Jungkook did what you had been waiting for, for so long…

…He lied for you.

-

-

-

“What’s this?”

You hold the sleek piece of technology in your hand. 

Is this…a cell phone?

“You’re going to say hello and tell her you’ve taken a job out of the country, and you’re going to make it sound convincing. And if you don’t, if she doesn’t believe you, I’m going to go to her tiny one bedroom Gangnam apartment off of Inchon-ro and I’m going to kill her.” Yoongi says coldly.

You hold your breath. What? Who? What?!

Yoongi crouches down to your level, watching you so close he could see each of your individual eyelashes as you blinked rapidly. 

According to Taehyung, for some reason, one of JTJ’s makeup artists, the girl who used to help you with your makeup, has started asking about your whereabouts. 

She’s questioning other staff, wondering why you haven’t answered any of her calls or texts, with incessant suspicions upon why you have suddenly disappeared without any warning. She’s causing others to wonder as well. 

Even if you had quit on bad terms like what they’ve been telling her, you would have still answered her! It just doesn’t make any sense, she thinks, you were so happy the morning before, making plans with her and the others to have dinner the next day-

She even wanted to get in contact with your family, Taehyung told him worriedly.

“Okay,” you nod. 

Her ringtone, JTJ’s first chart topping song plays in your ear as you try to settle your breathing. 

“Hello?” she answers. Your heart rate suddenly jumps and the pounding is all you can hear as you recognize her voice. 

Yoongi grips your leg, fingers digging, shaking it. “Minah?! Hey, it’s y/n-”

“Y/n!” she gasps, “Oh my god! Oh my god! Girl, what the hell? What happened?! Where did you go?” 

Yoongi grips your knee tight. “I’m fine, I’m okay. Sorry, I’ve just been setting up my new place, I-”

“You haven’t answered my calls, not even my texts,” she says, hurt. “They told me you quit? What happened?!”

“Y-Yes. I did, I uhh, I know it’s gonna sound crazy, but I was offered this amazing job-”

“What?! Where? With who?!”

“In J-Japan, it’s a really good job, I get my own office and everything. After that tour, I just really couldn’t do it anymore, it’s just a lot, you know, that lifestyle.” You pray she doesn’t try to get you to answer her other questions.

“What?” she sounds even less convinced, pausing. “Is this your new number?”

“Y-Yeah, sorry for missing all your calls, my cell was from the company, so I had to surrender it. I really wanted to call you sooner, but it’s just been so hectic…” You hope she believes your lies.

“Anytime I bring you up, the boys act…weird. You just d-disappeared, I-I thought something horrible happened-”

“I’m fine! I think they are just upset, it was such a sudden thing-”

“It was!” She sounds mad. “They told me you were sick when you didn’t show up for our celebration dinner, and then when you weren’t on the plane, they told me you just…left?! No one knew why!” She sounds even angrier.

“Yeah. Yeah, I left, I’m really sorry I didn’t say goodbye.” The words catch in your throat and come out stilted and choppy. You have to get it together.

“But why-”

You take a deep breath, terrified for your friend. 

“Listen, Minah, that night I got into a big fight with Jimin, and I just thought it was best for me to just leave. I really didn’t mean to worry you, b-but this is a once in a lifetime job,” you swallow, trying to keep your voice light and happy. “I had to take it.”

“Oh, okay.” Your lie seems to answer some of her worries. “Have you talked to Jimin since then? He’s just been so…he doesn’t seem like himself since you left. I think he really misses you.”

“Oh, really? No, I haven’t gotten the chance to talk to him.” Your heart is pounding.

“Yeah, talk to him, please! I think he finally realizes what he lost. Everytime I bring you up…no wonder… I told you, didn’t I! He likes you!” she says, sounding happier. “Japan is not too far away, you should go for it now that you’re not under the same company! He is totally heartbroken over you.”

You laugh awkwardly. “Jimin is like my brother!”

“Yeah yeah,” she laughs, sighing. “You two are both hopeless I guess. I miss you, promise me we’ll meet up next time JTJ has a schedule in Japan.”

“I’m s-so busy, but yeah.” Your hand trembles so badly you’re worried the phone will slip between your fingers at any moment.

“Promise!”

“I, um, promise. I miss you, Minah.”

“I miss you too!”

“I really miss you.”

“You okay? Do you like your job? They haven’t gotten a new translator since you left! You could come back, honestly, I’m sure they would take you! Joon has been translating for everyone and I’m sure he would love you back,” she jokes.

“I love my new job.” God, you hope she can’t hear the shake in your voice. “But I really have to go, I am glad I got to talk to you. I might not be able to talk for a while though, but I’m okay!”

“Yeah?”

“Oh! Can you tell Taehyung something?”

“What?”

Yoongi’s presence is suddenly everywhere as you stutter out your last sentence. “It’s about that Blue Moonlight song he’s been working on with-”

The phone clicks as Yoongi snatches it away, and you feel the coldness of loneliness creep back into your body.

“You better hope she’s as dense as she sounds,” he threatens.

“Don’t you dare touch her!”

“You know what? I think we should take a visit to Taehyung then, and listen to that new song of his,” he says, gripping the back of your neck.

You swallow, excitement and fear swirling in the pit of your stomach and rising the bile into your throat.

-

-

Yoongi leans against his Rolls Royce smoking a cigarette.

The door opens and someone sits next to you.

“Y/n.”

“T-Tae?!”

You try not to burst into tears. You frantically reach out to him, and his slender fingers wrap around yours, gripping your hand tightly as he scoots next to you. Then you really burst, crying against him.

You quickly try to pull yourself together, whispering, “Did you get my message?”

“Um, yeah. Blue Moonlight, I’m guessing it's more than just a song title?” He whispers.

“Moonlight Blue.” You repeat the phrase in Thai. “Are w-we alone?” you whisper.

Taehyung eyes the shadow against the window as Yoongi lights up another cigarette. “Yeah, yeah.”

“It’s a club in Thailand. If you take a detective there, in the women’s restroom, inside the second bathroom from the door, my DNA should still be on the door stall, I doubt they cleaned it well. You might be able to get CCTV footage too to show that I’ve been kidnapped, or maybe someone took a picture of it-” you say hastily.

“Of what?”

“My name, I wrote it with my blood,” you say rather proudly.

Taehyung grips your hand tighter. “What? Blood?! He’s made you bleed?!”

You nod hastily. “He’s d-done w-worse,” you stutter, this time you hold in your tears.

Taehyung swallows, resting his head against the car’s seat, feeling sick.

You reach both hands out until you find his shoulder and squeeze. “Taehyung, I have the money saved for my eye surgery in my bank account, I-I’ll give it to you if you help me. Please, please.”

He takes your hand in his again. “I’m not taking your money, y/n.”

“You won’t help me?” you cry desperately. 

He grips your other hand tight, holding them close to his chest. “I’ll talk to Joon and Jimin, we’ll figure something out. Our last album just hit platinum, we have stocks in the company now. We’ll find a way to help you.”

“We’re leaving for Japan right now. Right now, Taehyung. Please hurry.” You can’t tell whether it’s you trembling now or the scared singer. Taehyung brings your hands to his mouth and kisses your knuckles and you do the same, welcoming his comforting affection. 

-

Yoongi watches as you and the singer cling to each other. He rolls his eyes and flicks his cigarette to the ground, stomping out his frustrations into the tarmac pavement.

“Well?” he asks once Taehyung steps out and shuts the car’s door.

“Midnight Blue.” He says the name in accented Thai. “The club you took her to in Thailand, Blue Midnight.” Taehyung gulps.

“Ahh fuck, you’re right. But why-”

“She thinks if I can get CCTV footage, we can use it in a case against you.”

“Huh really? Most of them don’t even work in that area, but I can have my men check.” Yoongi runs his hand through his hair. “Anything else?” Taehyung shakes his head, unable to look the loan shark in the face. 

“You two were talking for a long time, what else?” He grabs the singer by the collar to make a point, shoving him against the door. You flinch inside.

“She told me you cut her, made her bleed there in Thailand, is that what you did?!” Taehyung pushes against the loan shark, shoving him away.

Yoongi cocks his head to the side, looking confused. “Eh?” He rubs the back of his neck, trying to remember, “Oh, it was one of my men. I took care of it.”

“Are y-you hurting her?”

“Why do you suddenly care?” Yoongi crosses his arms, “Are you gonna stop me if I am?” he asks, challenging the singer.

“She’s done nothing wrong, It’s not her damn fault, it’s Jimin’s, if you had just killed him instead-”

“You would have liked that, huh?” he tuts, “Wanted to go solo that bad, now you’re stuck with those two idiots and your album is on hold,” he rolls his eyes. “If you’re not making money, you’re gonna be in the same boat as Jimin, and you don’t have anyone to save your ass-”

“Just let her go then!” he hisses, trying to keep his voice down so you don’t hear. “Make Jimin pay you whatever he owes you!”

“So she can go to the police?” Yoongi crosses his arms, snorting.

“Min, I-I don’t understand. What are you going to do, keep her forever?!”

“Maybe,” Yoongi says dismissively. “Why?”

“Are you s-serious?!” he stutters.

“It was the deal-”

“S-She didn’t understand-”

“She’s a grown woman, she made her choice.”

Taehyung looks at the loan shark with disbelieving eyes. “Please, Y-Yoongi-”

Yoongi grabs the singer again, done with arguing, “Want to take on Jimin’s debt on top of what you still owe me instead, yeah? Go get her, take her.” He’s met with silence. “Then shut the fuck up.” He signals for his men, who have been waiting to board. “Send me Joon’s schedule, I’ll deal with him when we get back to Korea.”

“Okay,” Taehyung mutters defeatedly. He places his hand on the car’s window. You don’t notice him of course. He says his goodbyes silently, to himself to ease his mind, like a coward.

-

Yoongi didn’t need to keep a low profile in Tokyo, the city was too big, so many tourists and locals crammed together, he and his associates became just another mean face in the crowd. He bought out a few penthouses in an expensive hotel for the week, with a kitchen and a private hot spring and all the amenities you could ever want. 

It was your lavish prison cell.

“What’s wrong with her?” Jon asks, setting plastic bags of Japanese convenience store food on the counter. Jungkook shakes his head, sending him a look that reads, ‘Please just shut the fuck up about it.’

Jon clears his throat, he looks around, turning on a lamp, fiddling with the shade until he’s happy with the amount of light before leaving you and Jungkook in Yoongi’s private penthouse.

Before he leaves, Jon steps in front of you, studying you with the same scrutiny as he did the new area. He lifts your head up, a crooked finger under your chin. Your eyes are bloodshot, your lids swollen from crying. “Hey, don’t give up.” 

Easy for him to say, that man acts like he doesn’t have a care in the world. You bite your lip, making sure to keep your head up no matter how heavy you feel. “Give me a reason not to give up,” you grumble softly.

Jon stays silent. He steps away from you and nods towards the younger man.

Jungkook sings in his head to drown out your crying as he unwraps the food for you.

You hear the clanging of a glass plate set in front of you.

You raise your hand, hovering over it. Jungkook puts his hand over yours. This is the most he’s interacted with you since your last altercation.

You can’t take it. You can’t take this anymore. You can’t!

“What are you doing, y/n?!” Jungkook grips your other hand quickly, before you can do any more damage. The plate lays shattered under your fist.

“J-Just let me have this, so I can hurt him.”

He yanks the glass plate shard out of your hand.

“Listen to me,” he whispers. “You’re not going to hurt him. Because you can’t hurt him. You’re lucky Jon wasn’t still here, or anyone else for that matter-”

“I’m not with anyone else. I’m with you.”

After a long silence Jungkook finally lets go of your hand, wiping the mess off the counter and into the trash and pulling more food out for you now that you’ve shattered your plate to pieces. “You're testing my patience. Yoongi is mad at me because of you. If you try anything else, I will hurt you again.”

“Hurt me, then. Kill me. Do it.” You reach out, searching for his arms and clumsily put them to your neck. “Kill me, please! I’m not going to fucking do it anymore!”

Jungkook watches you cry. Despite everything you continue to rebel. No matter how small. You refuse to let Yoongi change you.

It stirs something inside him. A question he’s never spoken aloud.

You notice his sharp intake of breath so close to your temple. Is he smelling you?

“J-Jungkook?”

“I will only kill you if Min asks me to.” Soft, chapped lips brush against yours so quickly you question if you imagined it. “Listen to Jon, you’ve made it this far, don’t give up.”

“No.” You tremble, “You’re going to help me get out one way or another, Jungkook.” 

You feel him move away and reach for him again in desperation. His fingers are back around your throat, shoving you into hotel kitchen cabinets and lifting you off your feet in his anger.

You struggle, unable to breathe. You let your hands follow down his arms until you reach his face. And instead of what Jungkook thought you were going to do, what he would have done: tried to retaliate, fight against him, you hold his cheeks in your palms, thumb running soft lines across his face and over the scars you remembered.

Jungkook lets you drop, shuddering. You cough, inhaling air quickly.

Jungkook is a trained killer. His hands don’t shake, yet…

He looks down at you, silently crying on the floor.

He lets out a slow breath.

“Eat.” He mutters.

“I’ll only eat if you stop ignoring me,” you choke out, glaring in his general direction.

It makes him smile. “Okay, okay.”

You end up eating on the floor with the young gangster in silence, who has his body pressed up against your side. He hands you bites you take reluctantly. Jungkook pulls out his cell, opening a video he took, and you listen to soft cheering as the second half of last week's soccer match plays on his device. You quietly cry and nibble on food until you get caught up in the match, gasping along with the crowd over the very last play.

-

-

“You did well today,” Yoongi says, undoing his tie. 

You pull off your heels, frowning. “I’ve been with you for months now, so I want to know exactly how much left I owe-”

“Owe?”

“Yes, the amount. Of Jimin’s debt, I want to know exactly how much I have left! You’ve made hundreds of thousands of won on deals I helped facilitate, haven’t you? That counts for something, doesn’t it?!”

Yoongi wasn’t prepared for your outburst, but he knew it would happen sooner or later. And it didn’t stop him from becoming furious with you. “Any other demands you want to make, want a pension plan?” He goads.

You bite back your retorts and take a deep breath. “I want to know exactly how much longer I have to suffer here with a monster like you.”

“Suffer? You ate Wagyu steak today, the jacket you’re wearing is Givenchy.” His finger pokes into your shoulder so hard you almost lose your balance. “Which, by the way, will be deducted off your earnings, of course-” 

“What?!”

“That’s right,” he says lowly.

“I didn’t ask for this!” You yank off your jacket and throw it on the ground at his feet. 

He’s in your space again, his body walking into yours with no intention of letting you move away from him. You would have fallen over if he hadn’t grabbed the front of your shirt. “Going to give me back this shirt too?!” Yoongi rips the buttons off as he yanks the front open. 

You yell and grab at the pieces and hold them over your chest. “Haven’t you learned anything?” he screams in your face. Yoongi holds your head in his hands. You close your eyes out of instinct as tears well up in the corners, breathing through your mouth so you don’t have to smell his cologne, clenching your jaw to keep yourself silent. “You wanted this. Remember that? When you begged Jimin to let me have you? You’re mine, y/n.”

“I’ll never be yours,” you grit out.

“You’re already mine. And I can do whatever I want with you,” Yoongi rasps out with just as much vitriol. 

And then he does what you hate most, he presses his lips against yours. His hand keeps you from pulling your head away, his lips pressed to yours tightly, so you’re forced to inhale him, so you can’t help but gasp in air and open your mouth for him.

You reach for his neck, you try to choke him, fisting his hair and pulling, but it only seems to rile Yoongi up even more as his tongue invades your mouth. 

He finally lets you breathe, pulling your hands away from his throat and securing them behind your back, mouth moving to your jaw and down your neck as he holds you tight. “Mine,” he nips your neck.

It snaps something inside you, you caught yourself before you slipped away completely, and you snapped back, fighting against him. “Get off me!” 

You squirm your way out of his hold and push him away and to your surprise, he doesn’t push you back. He is no longer in your space.

You wipe your mouth and straighten your clothes, unsuccessfully trying to put your shirt back together.

Yoongi stays quiet. You know he’s there, somewhere, watching you, but he’s so quiet! Where the hell is he?

Yoongi watches as you frown and hesitantly reach your hand out in front of you.

You flinch when Yoongi hand smacks your hand down, and swing your fist out in anger, hitting air.

Yoongi laughs tauntingly to your right.

“I’m not yours,” you finally mutter out. Your head is pulled back as Yoongi yanks you by the hair and then shoves you forward. You cry out in pain, knee hitting the corner of something hard. 

Yoongi stays quiet instead of arguing back, he is trying to drive you crazy and it’s working, it’s maddening, you bite back tears as you breathe in sharply.

You stumble, moving around furniture and bumping into a wall. You frantically search for something to grab. 

You throw your hand behind you on a hunch that the loan shark was leering behind you, and he catches it easily, pulling you off balance again. 

You scream out in anger, “You think because you force yourself on me, I’m yours? I can’t stand you, I hate you! When you touch me, I think of someone, anyone, else! You think because I’m blind, I can’t see how hideous you are? How miserable-” you choke on your words as he grabs you by the neck and his grip tightens on your throat. 

He shakes you, moves you around so quickly you stumble backward, terrified he is going to make you collide into something, you have to grip him back to you from falling. 

You struggle against his advances until he’s over you, pinning you into couch cushions. “You disgust me.”

“Yeah?” Yoongi doesn’t believe you. You are trying to anger him, you’re trying to hurt him. He’s played this game before, he knows this game. “But if I was Jimin, or Taehyung, or Namjoon, you wouldn’t be disgusted, that right?” He yells in your face. Why does he always have to bring them up?!

He moves his leg in between yours, pressing his knee against you harshly. “You would happily spread your legs, give them whatever they want because they’re famous-”

You push as hard as you can against his shoulders, yelling, “What?! They would never take advantage of me! They saved me,” you grunt. “You have no idea-”

“I have no idea?” he laughs at you. “I grew up with Taehyung in Daegu, did he forget to mention that to you during your little reunion? I know them. I know Jimin is back to getting high again, he tried to clean up his act for a hot second, but like always, he cares more about his own self gratification than anything else. What do you think will happen after he burns through all his money?” 

Yoongi runs his thumb across your dry lips. “Do you think he’ll come back groveling to me, or do you think he’ll try to convince someone else to fund his addiction? Do you think if I offered him all the drugs his heart desires he wouldn’t hurt you for it? You’re so sure he won’t, are you?”

You have your eyes closed again and he doesn’t like that. Even if you can’t see him, he likes watching your deep irises. Even if you can’t see, your eyes still redden with tears and your expression darkens for him, blazes for him. “And Kim Namjoon, is he the one you think about? When he could care less about you? He’s no knight in shining armor coming to rescue you, and you’re sure no damn princess!”

Yoongi snakes his hand between your bodies and inside your pants, letting out a deep breath when you struggle and he realizes why. “If this isn’t mine, then why does it get so wet for me? Fuck…you’re so wet…”

You feel the last threads of your sanity breaking, and you want to hurt him the only way you can now, you can’t stop yourself, “No, I don’t think about Namjoon, I think about Jungkook,” he hiss.

You try to claw at his face, which stops his advances momentarily. Yoongi pulls his hand out of your pants and holds your wrists down until you stop struggling, and then he yells, “Jeon!”

You hear the door open as someone walks in.

“…S-Sir?”

“Come here and hold Miss y/l/n’s hands down.”

It’s deathly quiet until you hear movement again as Jungkook crosses the room. Yoongi’s grip lessens for only a moment until it’s replaced, your hands pressed above your head. You start to cry.

The pressure of Yoongi’s knee is gone as he moves down your body.

Your belt is unbuckled.

Your zipper is pulled down.

His hands reach around your hips and you kick out, attempting to hurt him when he pulls your pants and panties off your legs.

“Stop, stop this!” You’re begging Jungkook, but his grip on you doesn’t lessen. Jungkook’s fingers might as well have been shackles as you try to pull free.

“Who are you thinking about now, y/n?” Yoongi slips his fingers easily into your heat.

You clench your teeth so hard your molars feel like they might crack under the pressure. “You’re pathetic, you know that?!” You let yourself be overcome with anger, a much more agreeable feeling than the hopelessness you felt. “You must be really hideous if you can’t find anyone else to fuck! Is that why you went into this business, huh? Couldn’t get any decent woman so you surround yourself with strippers and prostitutes, and they won’t even fuck you?!” You scream out in frustration as his steady pace quickens inside you unrelentingly.

Yoongi chuckles at your outburst, his body weight pressing on your legs. “Ahh now we both know that’s not true.” He says cockily. You chose to ignore the way the girls at Yoongi’s establishments would address him, the flirtatious tone in their voices when the courageous one would ask him if he needed anything, offering their “services” up to him.

“Then why me?!”

“Because I want you.” 

Yoongi drags his two fingers out of you, and presses three fingers inside when he enters you again, his thumb rubbing across your clit. 

Your heart beats so fiercely in your chest you think you might suffer a heart attack, you hope you do when you feel the heat inside you rise, unable to stop your whimpers no matter how hard you clench your jaw.

Yoongi knows your body now, he knows the pressure that makes you shake, the movement you can’t resist. He rocks his hand into you steadily and precisely as you try not to tremble, as you try to think of anything other than what he was doing to you so you aren’t overcome.

But it only takes a few more minutes before you are overcome, unable to stop your body arching and muscles locking, and your breath stuttering and a moan escaping.

The hands around your wrists disappear and in the next few moments you hear the door slam shut.

“Jun-” Yoongi’s hand presses over your mouth.

Yoongi doesn’t want to hear whatever you have to say, something that would surely make his blood pressure sky rocket. Yoongi looks at the closed door. He has a choice to make. Should he go after Jungkook? No, he will let the young gangster cool down. 

That’s not the only choice he has to make. He looks down at you. You look exactly how he feels, a fierce mixture of fury and puzzlement and anguish twisting at your brows and behind your unfocused glare.

He removes his hand from your mouth, gripping at your neck instead to hold you still.

Rather than letting your emotions take over you again you try to think this through. He is still over you, body in between your legs, fully clothed despite your almost nakedness. You had a choice to make.

“You upset him.” You’re met with silence. “Do you think you can treat people like this forever and they will just take it?” His hand tightens around your throat as he pushes your head back. You yell in pain, but keep trying. “Go ahead, you’ll end up all alone just like you deserve,” you gasp.

“Like you?”

His words feel like a cold shower. When you freeze, Yoongi takes the opportunity to switch the subject of conversation. He brushes his lips across your jaw, finally calming down, “Want to know what you owe me now? Nothing. And nothing you could do or say would ever make me let you go,” he says gently, licking across your neck. 

He moves his other hand back down your body, achingly slow, pushing the broken pieces of your shirt away from your chest and tugging at the uncovered flesh. Why does he have to do this to you? Why? You hate how his touches twists your emotions and you hate how he knows it too. “Like I said, y/n, you’re mine now,” he says huskily. His mouth captures your nipple as he sucks and licks across your chest.

You feel rooted against him, unable to move as you process his words. You can’t fully however, his touches making it impossible to concentrate on anything but his harsh sucking and fondling. 

“Wait-”

“No.” 

You let your muscles relax and stop fighting against him, why should you? It never works, it never ever works. 

-

You rest your palm on the window, the glass is hotter than the surrounding air, and you move closer until your nose touches the glass, soaking in the warmth of the sun outside.

Yoongi’s voice is behind you, still in bed. “Come here, you’re giving everyone a free show.” You must have woken him up when you left the bed.

You rest your forehead on the glass. “I want to go outside today, take me to a cafe.” You don’t ask him, you tell him.

Yoongi studies your naked figure framed by the just risen sun.

He clears his throat, “I’ll have Jeon take you later-”

“I don’t want to go with him, I want to go with you.”

Yoongi pauses. “Why? He was just following orders.”

Facing the sun, the brightness allows you to see the most light possible. You don’t know if it's your imagination at this point, but you like to believe it really is orange and yellow you’re seeing in the otherwise blurry darkness.

“I want to go with you,” you say.

“I’ll see…I’ll find some time.” Perhaps it’s the tiredness still in his voice, but his tone seems to soften.

“Okay.”

“Come here.”

You close your eyes, let the darkness settle in, focus on the heat at your fingertips.

You spent the night dissecting what Yoongi had said to you and everything that’s happened to you since finding yourself in the loan shark's service. You had been too distracted, too focused on your own desires of freedom to notice Yoongi’s desires.

You didn’t want to believe it either, that he might have become more than just fond of you. It didn’t make sense, but now that you were really picking apart his actions, it was there, twisted and dark, his own particular kind of affection...for you.

You should have realized this sooner, but you didn’t even want to accept your own twisted emotions. If you had, you would have also figured that it would make sense he was going down the same dark path.

You asked yourself all night, now what should you do? 

You have decided now, turning to him and letting your body relax.

You were going to use it against him.

---

Previous Chapter | Next Chapter: Reunion (Update Goal: 500 notes)

Tell me what you liked, and what you hated (is it Yoongi? lol)

[seat-safety-switch]

"EXPENSIVE CANDY," screams the hand-lettered signage on the side of the windowless Ford Econoline van slowly travelling around my block, aiming a high-powered directional antenna at my house. "DO NOT APPROACH," it warns further. "FOR ADULTS WHO LIKE PAYING EXTRA TAXES ONLY."

Far be it from me to question the state surveillance of my overhumble home, but things used to be a lot higher class. Maybe they're just stretched thin, like everyone else is. The news tells me that nobody wants to work anymore. Can't argue with that: I wonder why it took everyone else so long to figure it out. Newsreaders are still working, jawing away in their little studio with their perfect smiles and their plastic hair. Someone has to tell us what their bosses broke in the world today.

It's something like this observation that got me in trouble in the first place, I reckon. Picking at a problem until I could no longer ignore it and had to take action. It would be nice if the feds would at least tell me what they're investigating me for this time. That way, I could save them the trouble and just refer them directly to my attorney, rather than doing this whole song-and-dance routine where I pretend not to be doing massive crimes just because I'm being obviously wiretapped.

Like I said, I've been surveilled before. The novelty wears off really quickly, and then you no longer feel so much like a young mafia boss, as you do an old and tired mafia boss. Not to mention the tail whenever I leave my house, no doubt to see if I am meeting with any of my associates. They'll follow me all over town, but the second I blow a hole in my radiator or run out of gas, they won't stop to help. What am I even paying them for?

The whole thing is enough to make you want to stop doing crimes entirely, I tell myself as I kick off the plasma cutter and help myself to the delectable Ford 8.8" posi-trac rear axle underneath their van. Really, they could have sent a second squad to take over while these guys are napping during their stake-out. That's that low-class, blind cost-cutting for you.

Don't worry, I'm doing this in the safest way possible: I put their shit up on the neighbour's jackstands before I started cutting. Less evidence in the trial, plus his jackstands probably still work.

[yutahoes]

Caramel

(Part One)

characters: stripper! Yuta x female! Y/N genre: chaptered, smut, fluff, angst word count: 2.5k words summary: Y/N has everything in her bitter life, not until she meets a sweet-looking stripper. warnings: matured theme, stripper au!, third person POV, rusty writing, curse words, shirtless guys, degrading words

Bachelorette parties. 

If there is any event that Y/N hated going to, this would be it. 

The girl hated to socialize. Hated mingling with girls her age, even younger than her, who wouldn’t stop talking about finding a nice husband or the newest Birkin from Paris. 

But bachelorette parties are better than attending board meetings. 

This is much better than the blind date her mother kept on pushing her through. 

That was the thought running through Y/N’s mind as she drank the pink bubbling liquid in her champagne glass, settling on one corner of the huge hotel room. She knew very well that it wasn’t champagne. And she was smart enough to know not to drink alcohol in these crazy events. 

The star of the night, a rich family daughter - although Y/N forgot whose daughter she was - was dancing non-stop along to the music. Y/N drank her juice to hide a smile. She knew that type very well, certainly a wild child. 

It wouldn’t be a surprise if a man in a police outfit entered the room and started stripping.

As if on cue, one of the girls entered the door giddily and announced that ‘the main event is here’. Y/N had to chuckle to herself, how predictable. 

One guy, with dark hair and tall height, entered wearing a black jacket without a shirt underneath. He started swaying his body along the sultry music which earned the excitement of the women around. Well, he has a nice muscular body. Another guy, wearing a sleeveless leather tank top, entered and started grinding his body at one of the bridesmaids. This guy is handsome.  

Wow, Y/N thought, they managed to book two strippers. How extravagant. 

The music got louder along with the screams of the girls at the party just as another guy with blonde hair entered the door. Unlike the other two who were dancing with the girls, he entered the door and took the center. The same as the first guy, who completely removed his jacket, he was wearing a leather jacket with no shirt underneath. His body was rolling, hips seductively swaying against the music. He isn’t even that muscular. Certainly, Y/N had seen better. But the way he projected himself, the way he felt himself along the music is rather sexy. Erotic, perhaps.

The girl found herself focused on the third man, watching his toned skin and taking note of the butterfly tattoo peeking from his waist. He is rather handsome, almost the same as the second guy. Where did they manage to book these guys? They don’t seem like low-class strippers like from other bachelorette parties she had been to. Instead, they look like high-class escorts. If there is something like that. 

Y/N shrugged, shaking her head, then finished her juice. 

Before she came here, she thought this bachelorette party would give her a reason to hate these events more. Watching the sensual performance in front of her, she was thankful that she chose to be here rather than elsewhere. 

—-----

“And tell the manager that we’ll be back tomorrow,” Johnny claimed, which made Yuta nod. “Yuta, be careful when going back to the club.” He rolled his eyes at that. He’s not a kid. He can go back himself. 

While heading down to the lobby, he started counting the money he had. One-third of the payment from the dancing gig and some cab fare. He’ll probably reach home, right? Why did the club decide to send the three of them to this far-flung place? When coming here, he saw how far the hotel building was from the entrance. And he doubts, at how high-class this establishment is, that there would be cabs waiting in the lobby. He could ask for a car, but that would cost so much, and Yuta hated to let go of his hard-earned money. 

To be real, he wouldn’t be in this job if not for Lee Taeyong. When he came from Japan with nothing but his dream to be a dancer, his friend helped him by offering to be a dancer in a strip club. It wasn’t the dream but it’s not too far from it. Besides, it gives him food on the table and a roof above his head. But all he does is dance, no extra services, unlike his two friends who left him alone. 

Yuta felt that he had been walking for some time now but all he could see was the endless road ahead, the lush gardens, and the lights of the hotel building. Who made this establishment? Why is it so anti-poor? It also doesn’t help that it’s late at night and he’s wearing tattered jeans with a shirtless jacket. Will there still be cabs outside the hotel at this late hour? Should he just book a hotel room? But that would cost so much. 

He’ll just continue this walk and pretend that he’s hiking like he does in Japan. 

He was startled when a midnight blue car stopped at his side, stylish and looking really expensive. The driver put down the tinted window, “Do you want to ride?” He was more surprised that it was a female driver. “It’s a long walk. I can drop you off at the gate.” Yuta glanced at the long road ahead then at the driver who was only looking at him in question. It is a long walk and she’s heading that way anyway. Nothing bad can happen, right? 

The guy gently opened the door and entered the car carefully before putting on his seatbelt. Even if this woman decides to kidnap him, he doesn’t have any money to give her. And she looked well-off. There isn’t anything else that he can offer to her. The girl might have sensed his nervousness as she lightly chuckled, “Are you really planning to walk that far? You didn’t have a ride coming here?” 

Yuta shook his head, “We took a cab here.”

“We?” The girl repeated before lightly glancing at him. “Oh, you were one of the dancers earlier.” 

“You were there?” The girl nodded. Damn, she really is well-off. 

Yuta felt like shrinking in his seat. What is he doing in this car? And knowing that she had seen him earlier, made him embarrassed. “Why are you alone?” She asked to cut the silence. 

Maybe she doesn’t know anything about his line of work. Or maybe she’s testing him. “They have a booking.” The girl repeated his term in a questioning manner, “Some girls from the party booked them for tonight.” 

“To dance?” 

“For sex," he blurted out loud before hissing at himself. 

“They can do that?” Yuta wondered if she was really innocent. Or maybe she’s part of the population who never cared. But her amusement is rather refreshing. “Then why aren’t you part of the booking or whatever you call that?” He bit his lip to prevent himself from smiling. She’s adorable. “I’m sorry. I’m too curious, aren’t I? You don’t have to answer that.” 

He cannot help but release a chuckle at that. “It’s fine,” he claimed, shaking his head. “I don’t do extra services. Besides, those two were more famous with girls.” 

The girl had to lightly glance at him before making a small sound of wonder. “Really? I thought you were more famous than the two of them.” Yuta had to raise an eyebrow at that. “I mean you were a great dancer, you’re as handsome as the guy with the cap, and you have a nice body. A complete package.” The sides of Yuta’s lips curled up at the compliment. That’s such a confidence boost. “And you have such a nice smile. If it was my bachelorette party, I would have paid for your extra service.” 

“Then will you book me for your bachelorette party?” He then stopped before staring straight at her, “If you haven’t had one.” He tried to check if she had a ring on her finger then sighed in relief seeing that there wasn’t. 

She laughed wholeheartedly and Yuta thought that she was very pretty at that moment. “I’m sorry but there will be no bachelorette party. Please don’t jinx it.” Yuta shrugged. He’s not in the position to ask but why? She’s pretty, she’s rich. And to be honest, she’s hot. Guys would surely go to war for her. He definitely will. 

To his dismay, he can see the gates of the hotel nearby which means that he had to get out of the car. But he’s still enjoying talking to her. 

—---

The night was so dark. Y/N never realized that it was this late. There weren’t any cars around which is typical in this part of town. The headlights of her car kept blinking as she waited for the man earlier to get a cab or any ride to where he was heading. “You can leave me here. Thank you for the ride.” He insisted but she shook her head, reasoning that the CCTVs of the hotel saw her taking him, and if something happened, she would be the prime suspect. He laughed in response, making her swoon at the mischievousness of his smile. 

“Where are you heading anyways?” she asked, shouting through the whole passenger seat between them. She was seated in the car in front of him by the curb. The man pointed at the direction to the left and she giggled. “I can drive you. That’s also my way home.” But it was he who kept on shaking his head, not wanting to bother her. “Come on. You might not get home and I can’t just leave you here.” 

In the end, he went back in the car and promised to pay her the cab fee. The man claimed that he’s heading to their club named Neo as she hummed in answer. She remembered passing by that club once. And it made it pretty clear that they are some high-class strippers. “I’m Yuta, by the way.” he introduced. 

That was a nice name, Y/N thought. Japanese? Maybe a codename. “I’m Y/N Y/L/N.” 

“Y/L/N? Are you related to the owner of the Mozart Museum?” She nodded, whispering that it was her mom. “Wow,” he exclaimed. “You are rich rich.” 

“My parents are.” 

“That’s what rich people always say.” The girl giggled at that. “So what do you do in life, Miss Y/N?” 

She had to drum her fingers along the steering wheel while waiting for the traffic light to turn green. “I work in a research company.” Yuta only gave her a questioning look, “I oversee the company.” 

Wait, isn’t that…? “Like a president of the company?” 

“More of a manager,” she claimed casually then flashed a timid smile. “My dad is still the president.” Once again, an exclamation of awe can be heard coming from Yuta’s lips. “Hopefully, I can achieve his position soon.” 

She’s not just pretty, hot, and rich, she’s also very successful. God damn, she is truly the complete package. “And you are still single?” The girl gave him a knowing smile. How is she still single after all that? And the thought of not wanting to have a bachelorette party, meaning not wanting to be married, made Yuta think that it was a waste. “Don’t you feel lonely?”

Oh shit! That came out wrong. But it was too late to take back those words. She obviously heard it, evidence was the way she gripped the steering wheel. “Sorry. You don’t have to answer that.” 

The girl bit her lip before breathing heavily. “I think it isn’t that lonely. I have the freedom to still do whatever I want.” The muscles of her face eased as she smiled. “And trust me if you encounter those rich spoiled mommy’s boys, you’d rather be single.” Yuta giggled. He knew a few and he could attest to it. 

It was weird how Yuta felt like he could empathize with the world above him, the world of the rich, with every second he talked to this girl. She doesn’t seem like those stereotypical rich trust fund babies who would check their hair and make-up at all times and yap about finding rich husbands. She’s a well-established woman who knows what she wants. Totally admirable. 

Y/N, on the other hand, thought that she knew everything about the world. In her line of work and the society she belonged to, she obviously met a lot of interesting and intriguing people. But nothing prepared her for the mystery named Yuta. If he truly is Japanese, why is he here? What does he do for work? Dancing? Stripping? Why is he so humble and inferior when he looks way more handsome than those narcissistic men who were products of plastic surgery clinics? He is such a wonder. 

The girl pulled the handbrake of the car when they reached the front of a lighted building with a huge marquee that reads Neo. “It’s fancy,” Y/N claimed that made Yuta laugh, nodding. 

“Have you been inside?” The girl shook her head. “Do you want to go inside?” 

“I’d rather not. It’s late and I have some appointments tomorrow.” That’s too bad, Yuta thought. He doesn’t mind working a little extra tonight. 

The guy started fishing his wallet from his pocket, handing her some cash. “It isn’t much but thank you for driving me back.” But the girl shook her head, rejecting his money and claiming that it was not a big deal. Yuta felt embarrassed. Of course, she’s rich. This money would be nothing to her. Why did he offer it in the first place? “But I don’t like owing people anything.” 

The girl smiled warmly, “It’s fine. Think of it as saving me from worrying about someone tonight.” The guy laughed. “Besides, it was nice talking to you.” 

He asked for some pen and paper which she reached out from the glove compartment. Yuta started scribbling something on a piece of paper, “Then, if you feel lonely. Please come by the club and I’ll drink with you.” He handed her the piece of paper, “Free of charge.” 

“A lap dance?” She asked, reading his note. 

He smiled shyly. “That’s the only service I can offer that would allow me to use the private rooms. I can’t let a rich manager drink publicly in a stripclub, can I?” Y/N gave a small giggle before folding the paper and putting it in her handbag. “Just give the paper to the club manager and look for me. You do remember my name, right?” 

“Yuta.” she answered quietly. 

“Yuta Nakamoto.” 

Is that his full name? Then he must be really Japanese. And aren’t they using codenames in the strip club? Does his parents know his job? She lightly shook her head to stop the questions forming in her mind as he exited the car. What is it to her anyway? “Thank you for the ride, Ms. Y/N Y/L/N. Have a safe trip home.” 

“Thank you, Mr. Yuta Nakamoto. Have a good night.”

“See you later?” 

“Later.”

And she sped off with him waving goodbye like a small child. Yuta smiled to himself as he started walking to the strip club. 

This night was so bizarre.

Part Two

[ciwzing]

the first time you suggest kei to wear contact lenses instead of glasses was when a volleyball ball had accidentally landed on his face hard, leaving an indent of his glasses around his eyes and a cruel bruise on his left eye that made him sat on benched for a few match.

Though he refused with a furrowed brows, and a little shake of his head saying "I doubt an accident like that would happen again." and that's that.

the second time was when he whined and complained about the sunlight and why he can't wear sunglasses since he won't be able to see shit anyways, you had said first "why not just have those transition lenses" you heard him scoff and see him rolling his eyes by your words.

"it's impractical and cost more" he retorted back, you look at him dumbfounded, he say it's expensive but doesn't blink an eye to spend money if it's buying you things. "then wear contacts instead" you said to him, you could only hear grumbles under his breath and words of refusal.

you sighed and asked him why he was so disagreement of wearing contacts, he only stayed silent not answering your question, he didn't want to admit that the thought of something like contacts touching his eyes scares him, he cringes at the thought of putting contacts and touching his eyes to get it out. Besides that it takes a lot more effort to put on than glasses,

the third time was a finally the time you had successfully convinced him to put contacts, though you weren't the one who asked but him instead surprisingly.

he had watched you get ready in the morning sitting in front of your mirror, clipping your hair back to put on your contacts. he eyed you in amusement as you successfully put on your contacts on the first try, that's where he got up from your guys bed, still shirtless only wearing loose sweats that's hanging dangerously low on his hips, showing off the band of his boxers.

you watched him through you mirror as he approached you from behind, you greeted him good morning earning you a low hum from him and a raspy morning. bending down to your sitting position to give you a small kiss on your cheek, eyeing both of your reflection in the mirror.

"mind putting contacts on me" with his words, your mouth went agape, looking at him if he was sure and it wasn't his sleepiness just talking. seeing that he was dead serious, you smiled brightly before standing up from your seat and drag him to sit on it instead, opening a drawer to grab another set of contacts. sitting on lap to have a better view of his face.

he grumbled saying you hadn't need of sitting on his lap but his hands that's already resting on your thighs is enough for you to know he doesn't really mind.

"Don't look at me like that, I won't be able to focus and put this on you properly"

"What do you want me to do then? Close my eyes"

"You know what, shut up instead"

Kei concluded that if it means you can sit on his lap everyday to put those stupid contacts on him, he might just wear those instead of his glasses instead.

________________

Bonus!

"Fuck, I wouldn't ever trust you going near my eyes again, I feel like im gonna go blind any second"

"Don't be dramatic, you were moving you eyes so much thats why I had to put it so many times"

"I wanna go back to my glasses.."

[edensdahlia]

༊*·˚ Until I Say So

CHARACTERS: John Price x M! Reader (F! Reader here)

RATING: NSFW

CONTENTS: Military reader, canon typical violence, Price thinks reader needs a little extra training after they get compromised during a mission, may be inaccuracies in the fighting, porn with plot because I can’t write it without, established relationship, relationship with a superior <3, sparring as foreplay, unprotected sex, semi-public sex, voyeurism (?), multiple orgasms, nicknames used: muppet, darling, love

ೃ⁀➷ WORD COUNT: 2K

“--How copy?” Price’s voice crackled through the comms, rough in all the right places and with just the slightest bit of worry buried deep beneath his impassive tone. It couldn’t be helped, worrying about you came naturally to him, like donning a second skin he couldn’t seem to shed no matter how hard he tried. He really did try. In his line of work, he couldn’t afford to worry, it was a distraction when he needed to be anything but. Distractions could cost a life.

Subconsciously, Price tightened the grip he had on his rifle, trying to convince himself the sudden tension in his body was from the mission itself and not you. Although he really shouldn’t have been tense over that either. The operation was a simple two-person job with him acting as overwatch while you mapped out the interior of a warehouse suspected to be owned by a high-profile cartel. During debriefing Laswell had confirmed that the warehouse would be empty until the following week when shipments would first start arriving.

Meaning it should have been an easy in and out. Childs play really, and yet the silence seemed to stretch eons as he continued to scan the windows of the warehouse, searching for any sign of movement. For any sign of you. The sound of static filtered through the air, startling him, and then your voice came through, low and slightly breathy.

“All good so far Captain. Warehouse appears empty.”

Your voice was like a shot of comfort directly to his nervous system. The tension in his body seemed to fade. His grip slackened but remained steady as he continued searching the windows. “Good. Map the layout and get out. Quickly yeah?” There was the sound of static again and then your hushed laughter- more an exhale than an actual laugh.

“Sounds like you’re worried sir.”

He was. Of course, he was.

“Focus Sergeant.” It wasn’t a direct command but it had the same effect regardless. On the other side of the comms, you fell silent returning your attention back to the objective you’d been given. Eventually, finally, he caught sight of you, moving with the efficiency that had been drilled into you as a rookie.

Price watched as you dipped in and out of side rooms his heart seeming to still until you came back into the focus of his scope standing just in his line of sight. Your head was tilted up towards the window as if you could see him and the thought sent a secret thrill up his spine.

“All finished here sir, heading back your way.”

“Good work, Sergeant.” The praise fell from his lips easily. Like a secret only you were privy to. His words hung briefly between you two disappearing like mist on a summer day as something flashed behind you, a streak of silver turned a blinding white by the moonlight cast through the cracking windows. 

The warehouse was supposed to be empty.

The shadowy figure behind you crumpled to the ground, dead by the silent bullet Price had put through his brain. A moment too late. Just a moment. You looked up through the shattered glass one hand around your neck attempting to stop the blood that leaked through your shaking fingers.

♡ 。 。

Price loomed above you his legs bracketing your hips, keeping you pinned firmly to the floor in a position that was vaguely familiar. He smelled of cigar smoke and sweat, a combination you would have found comfort in had you not been wrestling with him for some semblance of control. You thrashed in his grip fists coming up to connect harshly against his chest. The force of it drew a small wheeze from him that morphed into a growl as he dug the blunt edge of a knife unceremoniously against your neck. It rested just above the jagged scar splitting your throat and when he pressed down just a bit more you felt the warning behind it, gaze finding his in defeat.

He shook his head at the look withdrawing from you, watching as you rolled over, panting from exertion and the vaguest hint of something else. Sweat collected near your hairline and dripped slowly down your nose leaving a dark stain on the mat below you.

“Get up muppet.” The words fell from him, in a harsh bark that had your mind dizzy with the possibilities of what else he could command you to do. Weakly, every bone in your body aching with the movement, you pulled yourself to your feet, stumbling slightly to the side.

“Can’t we take a break Captain?” You wiped the sweat from your brow with the edge of your shirt, the movement revealing a strip of scarred skin. His gaze flickered to it unthinkingly. “I just got dismissed from medical you know.” Your shirt dropped back in place and he frowned simultaneously at the loss of such a sight and your words.

“And why were you put there in the first place Sergeant?” Price challenged. You sighed through your nose and he took that as a sign of defeat gesturing with the plastic knife in a ‘come on’ motion. “Again.” His gaze remained steady on yours as you circled the mat together, each waiting for the other to make the first move.

Taking initiative you lunged for him, your dominant hand swinging out in a messy hook. Price ducked easily beneath the arm you had thrown out, pivoting so he could slam his foot into the back of your knee. You crumpled to the ground hands coming out to catch you, but he dragged you back with his forearm secured around your chest and the knife flat against your throat.

“Compromised again Sergeant.” His voice was a whisper against the shell of your ear. “You’re getting sloppy.”

You squeezed your eyes tightly together trying to fight off the arousal you felt aching between your legs. It’d been there since he’d first walked through the training room doors wearing a compression shirt that showed everything off in just the right way and sweatpants that hung dangerously low. With each press of your bodies together- each struggle for control it’d only intensified turning into a burning heat you needed so desperately to satisfy.

“I’m tired.” You offered in weak defence. The hard muscle of his thigh sat temptingly between your legs and you slowly let yourself relax in his grip, allowing you to subtly grind against his leg.

“Tired eh?” Price brought his thigh up pressing harder into your semi-hard cock and drawing a whimper from your lips as you met him halfway. Maybe not so subtle then. The knife tumbled to the floor as he settled his hands on your hips helping assist in the slow grind of you against him. Your chin dropped towards your chest at the sensation, thighs burning with the effort of keeping you upright. Price slid a hand beneath your jaw forcing your head up and turning it towards him so he could bring your mouth to his in a heated kiss. It was lazy on your part, your body sluggish from the training you’d gone through, and when you pulled back your eyes remained half-lidded.

Price smiled at the look. “You truly are a sight for sore eyes darlin’.”

The compliment did nothing but fuel your desperation. You arched further into him, nose brushing the skin of his throat. “I need you.” It was a quiet plea. A beg for him to relieve you of your own painful arousal. His hand slid beneath the band of your sweatpants teasingly and you thought for a moment he just might, but his fingers skimmed across your clothed cock with barely-there touches.

“Now?” He applied the slightest bit of pressure and you squirmed, hips rocking against his hand desperately. “Where anyone could see you?” You nodded pathetically, grinding yourself downwards in search of something more but it wasn’t enough.

“Fuckin’ tease.” Price chuckled as he hauled you off his lap, repositioning you so you were laid out flat on your back. He slid your sweatpants and underwear down to your ankles, revealing more of you to his hungry gaze. Every inch of your skin was intoxicating, each scar and blemish stirring something in him.

His cock was heavy in his hands and unsurprisingly hard as he angled it against your entrance. You grabbed for the back of his neck nails scraping against the short hair there as he entered you. It wasn’t slow by any means and it burned with every inch he forced forward but it was good. So good. Your eyes fluttered closed nails digging into his scalp as he rocked against you. It was rough, needy almost. His fingers dug into your sides pulling you in, each thrust opening you further.

“I was worried about you.” Price confessed on a particularly hard thrust that had your eyes rolling back into your head. “Bloody bastard should have never touched you.” His voice was thick with emotion, a sound so rare it had your eyes blearily finding his.

“Wasn’t your fault-” You whined attempting to lift your head up but failing miserably as he fucked you harshly into the mat. Clumsily you sought out his hand squeezing it reassuringly, the touch the best you could offer when he was filling you so completely. Price seemed to understand though. He leaned down and pressed a kiss to your temple, his beard scraping against your skin.

“Won’t happen again yeah?”

There was a sureness to his words, a casual confidence that left no room for argument. Although- you certainly were in no position to argue as it was. Price somehow sensing your impending orgasm soothed a hand down your sweaty face, eyes crinkling at the corners as he smiled down at you. “Go on love, I know you’re close.” His words and the look on his face were horribly tender, a startling contrast to the way his hips snapped against yours, rough and without mercy.

Your legs tightened around his waist drawing him closer to you as you came. Price didn’t slow in the slightest bit. If anything he picked up in pace watching the way your eyes flew open. Overstimulation drew you up onto your forearms, one hand shooting out to steady yourself on his shoulder.

“John!”

He chuckled the sound lost in the skin of your neck. Each drag of his cock felt like heaven and hell all at once. The overstimulation was bringing you back up to that previous peak quicker than you could form the words for. It didn’t help either the way he continued to stroke your cock, drawing his thumb in lazy circles across the leaking tip and delighting at the pitiful sounds it drew from you. You were already hard again. Painfully so.

“You gonna come again, love?” You nodded chest heaving with the effort of drawing air into your poor lungs. Price nipped at the junction between your neck and shoulder smiling. “Good.” He continued rutting into you, the slick sounds of his hand around your cock obscene in the empty training room. At this point, you were halfway into his lap and each thrust imprinted the shape of his cock to your insides leaving you a stuttering mess of his name.

Exactly how he liked you.

Your second orgasm was stronger than the first and had you clenching around his cock almost painfully. Price cursed lowly slowing his thrusts to help draw it out, until you finally collapsed against him, legs twitching and breaths coming in short puffs. He lifted you slowly off him and you sighed in relief. His cock brushed against your stomach still leaking precum. Lazily you reached between your bodies intent on finishing him off with your hand but he swatted it away.

“On your stomach love. Ass up.”

The fucked out haze of your mind swirled curiously trying to process his words. You lifted your head searching his eyes in confusion. “Sir?” You asked voice shaky, looking every bit the fucked out mess you were.

Price couldn’t help the sick satisfaction he felt at being able to reduce you to such a state. “C’mon Sergeant,” He eased you up and then pushed you onto your stomach, your face pressed uncomfortably to the mat. “I’m not done with you yet.”

A/N: I’m honestly not too happy with how this turned out but it’s been sitting in my draft for like a month lmao. As always though thank you so much for taking the time to read this mess- have a lovely lovely day

[thatbitchery]

BTW I tell y'all I have severe ADHD once every ten seconds because i want you to know I'm a low performer. I procrastinate on important matters for months and sometimes, most times really, it costs me opportunities and relationships and peace of mind because I'll know I'm supposed to do X but have no willpower whatever to do X. I want you ladies to know that's sometimes I hyperfixate on things with no importance whatsoever and that takes away my energy from things that are important. Hell, just last week I spent 8 hours on my laptop reading on bears and watching beat videos when I had work to do. That I have time blindness and sometimes am extremely late or extremely early or just get days mixed up and do Thursday things on Wednesday because I thought it's Thursday or forget it's Friday and not do Friday things and it costs me, dearly. Expensively. That I am inconsistent as they come and even a machine gun to my head can't get me to do something that my brain rejects. That sometimes I cry for hours because I feel pathetic and sad and too small with dreams too big. That somedays I wake up with the energy of a thousand Suns and start 58868 projects, create a brand new goals list for things I'll do in my life and go strong for three days then just- dump it after the energy falls. Then hate the hell out of myself because what the hell. That everytime I want to pick a new hobby or buy something or make a decision I hesitate because , do I really want this or is it dopamine and I'll dump it after 6 working days, because I have too many WIPs that Im yet to complete but can't bring myself to. That I need 168979 watches with alarms and a digital to do list and a manual to do list and sometimes I'll still get nothing done. That I try, so hard, and sometimes, just can't. And everyone that's supposed to help has the same recycled tips that just will not work for me. That I had medication for a while that worked but my body got used to it and overpowered it, so now even the option for medication is out of the picture - so I have to live like this for the rest of my life. That sometimes I run purely on ego because my self esteem is on the floor. That everytime I get a new opportunity I panic a little because what if I give up midpoint and ruin my reputation?? What if? That I self isolate because when I have too much energy I can't sit still and I interrupt everyone and need to run or I'll combust. That I self isolate because I have low social awareness and could easily say the wrong thing at the wrong time. Because I'm not normal and that feels shameful sometimes. That even CBT hasn't been able to set me straight, but I worked so hard to make money for therapy and medication and it's not working so I've also lost my will to work because what is it even for?????

I could Grammarly and AI my posts and have them professional looking but I want the ADHD girls with a brain faster than their hands to know it's okay to leave some words out because your brain is 6 words ahead of your hand and you're trying to keep up. I want the dyslexia girlies to know you can still write even when you're not sure if that thing makes sense, the people that mind do not matter and the people that matter do not mind. Because I want the 'english is not my first language' girls like me that struggle with adverbs and nouns and tenses and spelling to know hey it's okay, just write. You want to write, write. Do it for you. Forget the rest. I could polish all my posts, I do it for my work and official documents but if I do what will the girlies that need to know they're not stupid, English is just a language and spellings don't matter that much and you can communicate outside perfection see to reinforce their desire?? What will the autistics that want to try blogging but feel scared because they can't arrange their thoughts in a comprehensive manner and get lost in side stories sometimes look at and go oh my god- we exist and it's okay because we can still influence.

I tell you ladies every three seconds that I am a dark skinned black 5'4 slim immigrant in a white supremacist country because I want the girls that fit neither the beauty standards or the stereotypical standards to know they can chase their dreams and it doesn't matter. So the girlies of color that watch news and movies and social media and see people that look like them being murdered and disrespected and read the comments to know yeah, you can still do it, get on that plane. If I don't what will the girls that know for a fact that was unfair treatment look at when they need to know they can still rise above and make it??? If I dont tell you that actually I'm not where I am because I'm the hardest working in the room- I'm actually hella lazy- I'm where I am because I manipulate cheat claw gaslight blackmail my way how will the girls that work hard and still not achieve know that it's not because them it's because the world is unfair and you win by being unfair. I could play good girl , I could, I could tell you just work hard and go for it but then what will the girls that did all that and still failed look at to make sense of the world around them? Justify how things got here when they did everything they were supposed to? I say be a bitch so the girls that are demonized for not taking it lying down can be bitchier. I say learn the patriarchy and fit the beauty standards as much as you can and cosplay what's likeable not to conform but to cosplay and manipulate so that the girls that know it's wrong realize that you should just play them the way they play you - that's real feminism. That's real equality, learning the game to learn how to cheat and win because you were born to lose, the rules aren't made with you in mind so why would you stick to them, and fighting them is futile, you'll lose. I say being feared >> than being loved for the girls that got manipulated used trashed in the name of love. I tell you people are animals that survive by low balling each other so you can make a little sense of your trauma and forgive yourself for what you had to become to survive.

This blog is for the outsiders, actually. The girls that do not see content made that make sense for them, the girls that are born into a world that has no space for them and couldn't fit in if they tried because it's impossible. I'm here as proof you can make it. Autistic dyslexic ADHD black female , ticking all the wrong boxes and still making it. That's why I'm here, to show you how. To show you, you can. It's okay, you're okay. In fact, you're- better.

[fleur-bbyy]

mornication /// katsuki bakugo

rating: 18+

wc: 3.5k

warnings: sex (minors DNI), pet names, unprotected sex w/ no mentions of birth control (please be smart), mentions of drunken sex (please be smart here too), phone call during sex, afab! reader (i try to not be descriptive about skin colors so all can read, but if I slip up please let me know so I can correct it), bakugo with an eyebrow piercing, hockey!au, college!au, quirkless!au, pre-established situationship, slight breeding kink, characters aged up to 21+.

just wanted to thank everyone who liked and reblogged my work in the past week! when I decided to finally post some of my writing here, i was a bit NERVY, but seeing how many people actually like and appreciate it has me giggling and kicking me feet. so thank you from the bottom of my lil heart :’)

“i cant believe we did this again.”

the room was spinning when you opened your eyes after hearing the low grumbling the male voice beside you. the rays of sunshine streaming through the blinds made it almost impossible for you to open your eyes all the way, leaving you to squint as your eyes wandered around the room. all you could pick up was that you were in some hotel before you registered your pounding head and groaned into the pillow, throwing your face down in it to try and block out the world from your eyes. some details of last night came back to you, just a few, though.

all you could remember was that katsuki and the guys won their hockey game against the school’s top rivals and that caused the after party at the club near the hotel you were staying at to be crazier than usual. you also remembered agreeing to share a hotel room with a certain sexy blonde to cut down the cost. you told yourself that you guys could keep it in your pants for one night of drinking.

clearly you were very wrong.

you were almost asleep again when the bed shifted, scaring you awake from any sleep you were about to get. you turned your head out of the pillow and looked up to see the back of the man you had shared yourself with last night.

the man you had shared yourself with for multiple nights.

he was still naked. colorful kt tape adorned his back, making little ‘v’ shapes in between his shoulder blades and lower back. after the rough game he played last night followed by an intense after party, you knew he had to be sore. you watching the way his powerhouse muscles rolled and rippled as he bent down to pull on his boxers and sweatpants over his taut ass.

your mind took over and you couldn’t resist reaching out smacking his butt while it was still naked. he jumped a bit, clearly not expecting the sudden contact. he smirked down at you as he looked over his shoulder.

“‘bout fuckin’ time you woke up.” he said as he continued dressing himself. sadly covering up his ass you were simply fascinated with and covering his upper half with a tight, wife-beater black tank.

“wish i wasn’t awake. my head is pounding.”

“mine was too. left pain meds and water on your nightstand for when you woke up.” you smiled at the thought of such a sweet gesture coming from a brash man like him. you flipped over again to face the side your nightstand was on, eyeing the horse-pill sized medication and now-melted ice water. you didn’t realize you were still naked until the blanket slid from your body as you sat up. nipples hardening as soon as they hit the cold air all hotels insist on keeping circulated throughout their rooms. you quickly took the gigantic pills and drank half of the water before flopping back onto the bed, boobs bouncing from the action. it didn’t go unnoticed by katsuki.

“nice tits.” he plainly stated, as if he were complimenting something mundane like a shirt or shoes and not a private area of your body.

“thanks, nice dick.” staring at the imprint his cock left in his sweats was like something out of a porno. even soft, the man still managed to look hung. you never thought the saying ‘third leg’ was a real thing until you met katsuki. he gave a light laugh at your reciprocated banter.

“care to tell me why you were up so early after a rough game, mister?”

“can’t let myself get behind, athlete’s gotta train, sweetheart.” your face and neck began to heat at the little pet name.

“maybe if you gave yourself a break, you wouldn’t have to doll yourself up in the pretty-colored tape.” he laughed at you again and sat down next to you, removing the part of the blanket that still covered your lower half and lightly stroking your bed head.

“then i wouldn’t have a good excuse to get you to touch me while you patch me up.” he still had that darkened look of lust in his ruby red eyes and you assumed he either didn’t have enough of you last night or you were both too intoxicated to remember. it’s not like you guys went out of your way to fuck when you were drunk, it just happened to play out that way. you couldn’t help that you both turned into to horny-fucking-bastards when you drank.

he removed one of his hands from your hair and trailed it down to one of your breasts. kneading the fat and pinching at your already hard nipple. you felt arousal start to build up in your core as you softly moaned under his touch.

“y’know,” you said in between whines, “we’ve never had sex sober.” you both gave it some thought as he continued to absent-mindedly play with your chest. you were right. every time the two of you ended up stumbling into bed together, you were always either both tipsy or completely sloshed, making it hard to remember fine details of the night’s event the morning after. all you know is that you were usually left with sore legs from whatever crazy positions your tainted heads came up with. bakugo furrowed his eyebrows as he thought about it too, the metal of his brow piercing reflecting the light. his face softened again as he looked you deep in the eyes.

“we’re sober now, aren’t we?” his pretty, infectious smile sending more jolts of pleasure down to your now-aching clit after so much teasing with you nipples. you gave him a devilish smirk as you grabbed the soft skin of his cheeks and pulled his lips down to meet yours. soon after, his tongue snakes out of his mouth and into yours. saliva mixing and rolling out of your mouth and onto your chin as the two of you shoved your faces together as close as they would go. you bit his lower lip and pulled it away from his mouth to get closer to yours, satisfied to hear that lovely groan come from his pretty lips.

you whined into his mouth when he moved his hand from your chest, your disappointment not lasting long as he moved his hand to where you really needed it. rubbing lazy little circles on your clit that lit your entire body alight. you were dripping so much that tiny droplets flew every time he completed a circle around. you were panting like a bitch in heat under his touch, already getting so desperate for release.

his pace quickened and he was able to slide a curious finger into you when he moved his body to lay atop yours. his thumb doing most of the work on your clit whilst his middle finger repeatedly hit your sensitive g-spot, making you see stars. no, the entire universe, because of his touch.

“you gonna cum f’me baby? i know you got it in ya. don’t worry about messin’ up the sheets, we’re leaving today anyways.” you felt yourself beginning to come undone from his magically skilled fingers and still-raspy morning voice. the tight, but sloppy circles on your clit sent a wave of pleasure straight to your hole every time he completed a rotation, causing your pussy to clench down onto his fast, skilled finger as that fire burning in your stomach only grew.

“kats… baby i can’t hold on for much longer.” you mewled at him, breathlessly. he kept up his pace. never moving slower or faster. determined to have you come undone at least once before he fucks you again.

“then cum f’me, sweet girl. I wanna feel you drip down my fuckin’ fingers.” his words set the fire in your stomach ablaze to unspeakable heights. you finally let go around his hand, your orgasm blinding and earth shattering. thighs shaking so violently that katsuki had to use his free hands to try and soothe them to a relaxing point.

“atta girl. you did so damn good baby.” he praised as he attempted to give you a moment to catch your breath.

“fuck me. wan’ you s’bad.” your words slurred together as you were trying to come down from the ecstasy his fingers just brought upon you. he laughed in your ear, lightly slapping your thigh as he lifted himself off from being over you and flipped you onto your stomach and into the jockey position. you felt him shuffling behind you as he pulled his cock out from the confines of his clothes and lined himself up with your inviting entrance.

“i’m gonna take care of you. don’t move a fuckin’ muscle.” and with that he pushed all the way into you, a shared moan leaving your lips and his. your eyes were heavy from your previous orgasm and from the fact you were already sleepy to begin with. the vicious pace katsuki had already set with his hips kept you from even thinking of falling back asleep. his pelvis became flush with your ass and his heavy balls kissed your abused clit with every thrust in. your warm walls sucked him in so good, as if you guys were two puzzle pieces that were always meant to be put together. your liquid arousal dripped out of you and onto him, making him loudly groan at the sight. your cute little moans made him want to bust in you already.

the pair of you were quickly pulled from your euphoric state when katsuki’s phone began buzzing so violently it almost vibrated itself off his nightstand. you both tried to ignore it, but the unrelenting buzz buzz buzz sound began to ruin your pleasant morning.

with an annoyed growl, bakugo reached over to grab his phone, his pace inside you never once faltering and he continued to pound into your sweet cunt like his life depended on it. he turned the screen to face him and saw that half the team had been blowing his phone and his personal group chat with his friends and you (you always kept them on dnd because they distracted you too easily) also ringing to life. he pulled the little half-slide trick to read the messages without them knowing he read them and found that they were looking for you both. some of them genuinely wondering if katsuki was dead because he was never sleeping in this late. he roughly slapped your juicy ass to elicit another sweet moan from you as he slid open the chat all the way.

hey man, everyone’s looking for you. wya?

yeah, we’re beginning to get worried, kacchan

and where’s sparks?

sparks. that silly little nickname given to you on your twenty-first birthday when you drunkenly tried to stick a fork in an outlet. “for science reasons” you said. nobody ever let you live it down and they still never let you around metal when you guys were drinking.

katsuki was once again pulled from his thoughts by his phone buzzing again, denki calling him now, and by the feeling of you pushing your hips back to meet his dominating thrusts. he reached down to wrap his hand around the front of your throat, “i said don’t. fucking. move.” the last three words punctuated by rougher thrusts into your sobbing, sopping wet little cunt. his ringing phone still in hand when he got an idea.

“since these extras won’t get the hint, i’m gonna answer them. think we can play up a little show, angel?” you breathlessly moaned out a “yes” before throwing your head into the pillows. your gummy walls beginning to clamp down on him harder, you were close.

he devilishly grinned as he pressed the ‘answer call’ button on his screen and put his phone on speaker, throwing it near your head so your friends could hear you loud and clear. the influx of voices bled into the air.

“thank god you answered dude! we were really beginning to freak! thought you were de- wait… what the fuck is that sound?” it was kaminari talking on the phone, but he could definitely hear the voices of kirishima and midoriya next to him along with some other voices he couldn’t quite identify in the background. he could hear the loud hum of the air conditioning, so he assumed they were still in someone’s hotel room. katsuki quickened his pace and reached around under you to rub your clit and bring you even closer to the edge. your moaning was louder, unrelenting. ready to give him all of your sweet juices.

“well? get on with it? ya really gonna interrupt me ‘n my girl having the best fuck of our lives and just go silent? or do you guys enjoy being nasty fuckin’ pervs?” my girl. his girl. your heart and pussy both fluttered at the two simple words that left his mouth. your lips breaking into a sweet, sleepy smile.

the grip his free hand had on your ass cheek once again pulling you out of any sweet thoughts you could have and back into the filthy ones. so close to release, you were teetering off the edge. the tight coil of pressure building in your stomach, begging to unravel around the thick cock of the muscular man behind you.

“c’mon, baby, show these nasty extras what you sound like when you cum on my cock.” that one perverse sentence was the one to finally throw you off the edge. white hot pleasure overtook your spent body. practically screaming his name as clear liquid splashed onto his toned stomach and dripped down his sweat pant-clad thighs and your naked ones, seeping onto the plush mattress and ruining the sheets. he held his tight black top up to avoid getting any of your messy release on it.

katsuki let out a guttural growl, “fuck yes. you hear that boys? hear how my nasty fuckin’ slut just squirted all over me?” you hated to admit it, but the thought of your shared friends listening into the two of you fuck like a digital peep show was so exhilarating to you. it was by far the dirtiest thing you’ve ever done during sex. by the pride in katsuki’s voice, you could tell he felt the same way.

his thrusts started to become sloppy and rougher, signaling that he was very close to his own release. his hips quickening as the sound of skin slapping skin also got louder and filled the thick air.

“fuck baby fuck baby.. ‘m gonna fuckin’ bust so hard. want to me cum in you? want me to fill this slutty fucking pussy?” his deep voice was laced with desperate groans as he so badly wanted to let himself go. you feverishly shook your head ‘yes’ at him, still moaning and yelling at the overstimulation.

the thought of his friends still listening in filled katsuki with a sense of pride that he’d never felt before and the sight of your naked body so weak under him making him so close to release that he could practically taste it. he began to feel his balls tighten and constrict, signaling that he was just a few thrusts away from a mind blowing orgasm. the straw that broke the camel’s back was the sight of your peachy little ass rippling and bouncing every time his hips thrusted in. a loud groan ripped from his throat as he pushed in one final time and painted your pretty walls white. the two of you were covered in a light sheen of sweat, little bits of his hair stuck to his wet forehead. some of it dripped down onto you and he used his thumbs to try and wipe some away. the feeling of rough hands performing such a gentle gesture just for you made your heart swell.

he was about to reach for his phone that still had the call going, when you lazily reached out for it instead.

“hope you enjoyed the show, boys, we’ll be down in a few!” somehow you made your sleepy voice sound so sultry it made katsuki’s softening cock twitch inside you again, like he could already go for round two. he was pulled from any thoughts of fucking you again when you wiggled your hips as a signal for him to pull out and he reluctantly did.

“what? done with me already?” he teased.

“never, just don’t want to leave them waiting for too long.” you weakly pushed yourself up and got out of the bed to head to the bathroom.

“we can leave them waiting as long as we fuckin’ please after the show we just gave them. and don’t forget to pee, i’ll have your ass inna chokehold if you get a damn infection!” he had to slightly yell the last part so it could reach your ears behind the closed bathroom door.

“whaddya think i’m doing in here, dimwit!” you yelled back. you loved being one of the few that could tease the temperamental man without having to worry about it being your last day on earth if you do. he chuckled to himself as he searched for another pair of pants to wear, now that his current ones were tainted with your juices.

you exited the bathroom as he finished redressing himself. he could tell you had just brushed your teeth due to the scowl that was always on your face after you did. he knew you abhorred the taste of toothpaste. hell, you were still using children’s toothpaste when he met you and teased you into being an adult and ditching the strawberry sparkle flavor you could actually tolerate. he nudged your shoulder and pointed at your still half full glass of water, telling you without words to drink it to get rid of the taste.

you finished the glass began to pick up your clothes and dress in silence. you both loved the domestic feel in the room after you made love. this time, though, you would actually be able to remember it since you guys weren’t drunk of your asses.

“can’t believe we did this again.”

“you’re telling me. call me crazy, but i’m beginning to think you actually like me or something.” you stated with fake shock in your voice.

it took both of you until now to admit it, but you were both tired of just being a drunk hookup buddies. trying to make this situationship or whatever clearly wasn’t happening since you were always yearning for something more. yearning for more time together. yearning to be something bigger, better than just fuck buddies.

“well miss, i don’t believe you’re crazy. just a little stupid.”

“hey!” you swatted at his thick bicep.

“y’know i’m just playing, princess.” he walked around to your side of the bed to help you pack your clothes together as his were already done, leaving a soft kiss on your cheek as he bent down to get your leftover things.

“I don’t know mister, I think you’ll have to take me out to prove that you’re just playing.”

“take you out now?”

“yes sir!” you ruffled his pretty, blonde locks and gave him a playful salute. he shook his head and took your bags from you. insisting that he carry yours and his. your heart pounded a little faster in your chest at the sweet gesture.

“‘s a date then,” he smiled at you as he gathered your key cards and left them on the table where they were when you arrived, “and stop calling me sir before ‘m forced to take you again.”

“you don’t have the energy to do it again!” you teased, sticking your tongue out at him.

“oh yes i sure ‘s hell do. one look at your ass and ‘m ready to go again.” he playfully smacked your ass and wolf whistled at you, causing a light yelp to escape from your lips. even though he carried both of your bags, he still managed to open the hotel room door for you.

“okay. I guess I can be good for you, sir.” you said, slyly as you walked through the opening and out into the carpeted hallway.

“you’re on thin fuckin’ ice, sparks.”

“as long as i’m with you on the ice, i couldn’t give two shits.” you got on the tips of your toes to kiss his soft, pink lips. he moved his mouth in tandem with you, neither of you wanting the lovely moment to end.

you ended up pulling away first after losing your balance from staying on your tiptoes for too long. he offered you his available hand to help you gain your footing, but even after you were stable again, he didn’t let go.

“ready to face those extras downstairs?”

“readier than ready.” you said with a slight giggle. you weren’t easily embarrassed by sex. with all honesty, the thought of your friends getting flustered by hearing to two of you made you want to either cream your pants or physically laugh out loud.

you trickled out of your thoughts when you noticed that katsuki’s hand was still intertwined with yours, still not attempting to pull himself away for you.

you smiled and quietly sighed with delight as you kept walking down the hotel hallway to reach the elevator. you didn’t let him go, either.

[ghouljams]

Spare Warmth Rating: G tags: Hesh x reader, established relationship, snowed in(sort of), Hesh being handy, domestic fluff Summary: You and Hesh take a trip up north to enjoy the ice and snow, everything is perfect. Except that your rental is a little... colder than you expected.

There's a little cabin in a wide dense forest, just butting against a lake. Snow covers the roof and sticks to the needles of the ever green trees that surround it. It's cozy, but old and a little run down. Still, it's beautiful, picturesque in a way you only see in paintings. When you got here yesterday you couldn't believe your eyes, couldn't fathom that somewhere like this existed outside of your imagination. The frozen lake sparkled in the blinding sunlight, and your breath puffed excitedly in front of you. Hesh had pulled your knit cap further down over your ears and tugged you inside to get the place warmed up.

It's funny, he grew up in California, moved to Texas after his military career, he's never really known the cold. So why he wanted to go north and see the snow for Christmas was beyond you. If anything the man should be avoiding the cold at all costs, but it's sort of sweet. Just the two of you, playing house.

You wake up to thick, heavy, arms holding you close and Hesh snuggled against your back. The little cabin you rented is just on the wrong side of chilly, and your nose is cold where it sticks out over the quilts. You wiggle back down under the blankets, back against Hesh who only hums and hugs you tighter. You tug the blanket up over your ears and enjoy the trapped heat of your bodies. Until Hesh pulls away to scratch his nose and a rush of cold hits you. You shiver and curl a little closer in on yourself.

"Fuck it's cold," Hesh grumbles, turning to grab his phone and check the temperature outside. You're honestly more worried about the temperature inside, but you suppose one informs the other. Hesh lets out a low whistle and turns back to you so you can get a look at the screen. Minus 15(-26 C). Ouch.

Hesh tosses the quilts aside as he gets up and you yelp at the frigid air. He laughs and tucks you back in nice and snug, kissing your forehead with a gentle apology. "Gonna check that the heat's on, be right back." He tells you.

"Take a jacket," You mumble from under the blankets. He kisses you again, properly this time, when you tip your head back and pucker your lips. His skin is already starting to get cold. "And hurry back," You smile when he pulls away.

"Always." He promises.

You sneak your phone under the covers as he leaves the room, your warm fingers scrolling over the cold screen. You stretch your legs out into the cold part of the sheets and then pull them back to the warmth. You can hear Hesh fussing about in the little living area at the front of the cabin, muttering to himself in the silence before you hear the click of the front door.

The front door? You sit up in bed, almost immediately shiver against the cold of the room. Fucking hell it's freezing in here. You tug the quilts around your shoulders, wrap yourself up in the warmth as best you can. The snow outside the window seems impossibly deep and cold, not the sort of weather your man should be going out in.

You fish around over the side of the bed for a pair of socks and carefully slip out with your blanket cape. You pad into the living area and see Hesh tramping around past one of the big windows. He's got his coat and hat, warming his fingers against his mouth as he kicks snow by the cabin wall. You settle on the couch to wait, and grab an extra flannel blanket just for the trouble of getting out of bed.

There's a lot of banging going on outside, and at one point Hesh disappears, only to reappear looking significantly dirtier. His hands have black on them when he makes his way back inside. He spots you on the couch and grabs his leather gloves off the kitchen table, a little sheepishly.

"Furnace is out of oil," He tugs his gloves on, flexes his fingers, "I'm gonna grab some wood for a fire, then head to the gas station."

"You want me to put a kettle on?" You offer. He gives you a grateful glance.

"Coffee, you know how I take it."

You nod and hop off the couch to start your kitchen prep. You might as well make something warm while you're up. No sense in being cold and hungry when you can help it. You tap an egg against the cast iron pan you'd found, grateful the furnace didn't seem to impact the gas stove. It takes maybe 15 minutes for you to get a decent breakfast together, and Hesh still isn't back yet. You frown, glancing out the window, and decide to brave the cold(just a little) to find him.

You tug on your boots and shuffle out the door. The snow crunches wonderfully under your feet, and you follow Hesh's footprints around the house, careful to keep your blanket from dragging in the snow. It's definitely worse out here than inside, but not by much. You hear the thunk of an ax as you turn the corner to the back of the house. Hesh looks up from the thick stump his ax is lodged in and a smile splits his face.

"Look'it you," He laughs, grabbing the split wood on either side of his ax. "Here, make yourself useful baby," He holds the wood out to you and you hurry forward to grab it, picking up the bucket he offers you as well. It looks like plenty for a fire, it's certainly heavy enough. Hesh tugs the ax free and follows after you back to the front door. You wonder where he found that thing.

"There's breakfast," You let him know, shaking off some of the snow clinging to your boots as you walk up onto the little porch, "eat while I get the fire started." Hesh shakes his head but beelines for the kitchen as you haul the wood over to the little wood stove in the corner of the living room.

It's easy busy work feeding wood and kindling into the little iron mouth of the stove, striking a match and making sure the flame catches before stuffing your starter in with the rest of the mess. Fires are easy, you're good with fire. You still sit in front of the open door to make sure that the fire actually catches on the wood Hesh broke up before closing the stove up. Amazing how quickly that little thing can heat up the room.

You glance over your shoulder to find Hesh watching you. His eyes sparkle over the rim of his coffee mug, absolutely smitten with you. Another man might complain about the heat going out, or being forced to fix it on his vacation, but not him. It's nothing worse than he's dealt with in the military, and you're here.

He sets his mug down on the table and comes over to kiss you. You tip your head back, not bothering to get up off the floor as he leans down to meet your eager lips. He's wonderfully warm from the coffee, and you can taste its bitterness when his tongue slides against yours. You can weather any storm as long as Hesh is here with you. What's a busted furnace up against the two of you?

You still call the rental people when Hesh leaves, you doubt one canister of gas is enough for the furnace and you'd rather not go the rest of the week without heat. You might not notice the cold when you're wrapped up in your partner's arms, but you certainly notice it when he leaves. You can't spend all week being held, or- no, no you should get the heat on. Then you can just... turn it off as needed.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Humans are not perfectly vigilant

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in BOSTON with Randall "XKCD" Munroe (Apr 11), then PROVIDENCE (Apr 12), and beyond!

Here's a fun AI story: a security researcher noticed that large companies' AI-authored source-code repeatedly referenced a nonexistent library (an AI "hallucination"), so he created a (defanged) malicious library with that name and uploaded it, and thousands of developers automatically downloaded and incorporated it as they compiled the code:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/28/ai_bots_hallucinate_software_packages/

These "hallucinations" are a stubbornly persistent feature of large language models, because these models only give the illusion of understanding; in reality, they are just sophisticated forms of autocomplete, drawing on huge databases to make shrewd (but reliably fallible) guesses about which word comes next:

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3442188.3445922

Guessing the next word without understanding the meaning of the resulting sentence makes unsupervised LLMs unsuitable for high-stakes tasks. The whole AI bubble is based on convincing investors that one or more of the following is true:

There are low-stakes, high-value tasks that will recoup the massive costs of AI training and operation;

There are high-stakes, high-value tasks that can be made cheaper by adding an AI to a human operator;

Adding more training data to an AI will make it stop hallucinating, so that it can take over high-stakes, high-value tasks without a "human in the loop."

These are dubious propositions. There's a universe of low-stakes, low-value tasks – political disinformation, spam, fraud, academic cheating, nonconsensual porn, dialog for video-game NPCs – but none of them seem likely to generate enough revenue for AI companies to justify the billions spent on models, nor the trillions in valuation attributed to AI companies:

https://locusmag.com/2023/12/commentary-cory-doctorow-what-kind-of-bubble-is-ai/

The proposition that increasing training data will decrease hallucinations is hotly contested among AI practitioners. I confess that I don't know enough about AI to evaluate opposing sides' claims, but even if you stipulate that adding lots of human-generated training data will make the software a better guesser, there's a serious problem. All those low-value, low-stakes applications are flooding the internet with botshit. After all, the one thing AI is unarguably very good at is producing bullshit at scale. As the web becomes an anaerobic lagoon for botshit, the quantum of human-generated "content" in any internet core sample is dwindling to homeopathic levels:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/14/inhuman-centipede/#enshittibottification

This means that adding another order of magnitude more training data to AI won't just add massive computational expense – the data will be many orders of magnitude more expensive to acquire, even without factoring in the additional liability arising from new legal theories about scraping:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/17/how-to-think-about-scraping/

That leaves us with "humans in the loop" – the idea that an AI's business model is selling software to businesses that will pair it with human operators who will closely scrutinize the code's guesses. There's a version of this that sounds plausible – the one in which the human operator is in charge, and the AI acts as an eternally vigilant "sanity check" on the human's activities.

For example, my car has a system that notices when I activate my blinker while there's another car in my blind-spot. I'm pretty consistent about checking my blind spot, but I'm also a fallible human and there've been a couple times where the alert saved me from making a potentially dangerous maneuver. As disciplined as I am, I'm also sometimes forgetful about turning off lights, or waking up in time for work, or remembering someone's phone number (or birthday). I like having an automated system that does the robotically perfect trick of never forgetting something important.

There's a name for this in automation circles: a "centaur." I'm the human head, and I've fused with a powerful robot body that supports me, doing things that humans are innately bad at.

That's the good kind of automation, and we all benefit from it. But it only takes a small twist to turn this good automation into a nightmare. I'm speaking here of the reverse-centaur: automation in which the computer is in charge, bossing a human around so it can get its job done. Think of Amazon warehouse workers, who wear haptic bracelets and are continuously observed by AI cameras as autonomous shelves shuttle in front of them and demand that they pick and pack items at a pace that destroys their bodies and drives them mad:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/17/revenge-of-the-chickenized-reverse-centaurs/

Automation centaurs are great: they relieve humans of drudgework and let them focus on the creative and satisfying parts of their jobs. That's how AI-assisted coding is pitched: rather than looking up tricky syntax and other tedious programming tasks, an AI "co-pilot" is billed as freeing up its human "pilot" to focus on the creative puzzle-solving that makes coding so satisfying.

But an hallucinating AI is a terrible co-pilot. It's just good enough to get the job done much of the time, but it also sneakily inserts booby-traps that are statistically guaranteed to look as plausible as the good code (that's what a next-word-guessing program does: guesses the statistically most likely word).

This turns AI-"assisted" coders into reverse centaurs. The AI can churn out code at superhuman speed, and you, the human in the loop, must maintain perfect vigilance and attention as you review that code, spotting the cleverly disguised hooks for malicious code that the AI can't be prevented from inserting into its code. As "Lena" writes, "code review [is] difficult relative to writing new code":

https://twitter.com/qntm/status/1773779967521780169

Why is that? "Passively reading someone else's code just doesn't engage my brain in the same way. It's harder to do properly":

https://twitter.com/qntm/status/1773780355708764665

There's a name for this phenomenon: "automation blindness." Humans are just not equipped for eternal vigilance. We get good at spotting patterns that occur frequently – so good that we miss the anomalies. That's why TSA agents are so good at spotting harmless shampoo bottles on X-rays, even as they miss nearly every gun and bomb that a red team smuggles through their checkpoints:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/23/automation-blindness/#humans-in-the-loop

"Lena"'s thread points out that this is as true for AI-assisted driving as it is for AI-assisted coding: "self-driving cars replace the experience of driving with the experience of being a driving instructor":

https://twitter.com/qntm/status/1773841546753831283

In other words, they turn you into a reverse-centaur. Whereas my blind-spot double-checking robot allows me to make maneuvers at human speed and points out the things I've missed, a "supervised" self-driving car makes maneuvers at a computer's frantic pace, and demands that its human supervisor tirelessly and perfectly assesses each of those maneuvers. No wonder Cruise's murderous "self-driving" taxis replaced each low-waged driver with 1.5 high-waged technical robot supervisors:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/11/robots-stole-my-jerb/#computer-says-no

AI radiology programs are said to be able to spot cancerous masses that human radiologists miss. A centaur-based AI-assisted radiology program would keep the same number of radiologists in the field, but they would get less done: every time they assessed an X-ray, the AI would give them a second opinion. If the human and the AI disagreed, the human would go back and re-assess the X-ray. We'd get better radiology, at a higher price (the price of the AI software, plus the additional hours the radiologist would work).

But back to making the AI bubble pay off: for AI to pay off, the human in the loop has to reduce the costs of the business buying an AI. No one who invests in an AI company believes that their returns will come from business customers to agree to increase their costs. The AI can't do your job, but the AI salesman can convince your boss to fire you and replace you with an AI anyway – that pitch is the most successful form of AI disinformation in the world.

An AI that "hallucinates" bad advice to fliers can't replace human customer service reps, but airlines are firing reps and replacing them with chatbots:

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20240222-air-canada-chatbot-misinformation-what-travellers-should-know

An AI that "hallucinates" bad legal advice to New Yorkers can't replace city services, but Mayor Adams still tells New Yorkers to get their legal advice from his chatbots:

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2024/03/nycs-government-chatbot-is-lying-about-city-laws-and-regulations/

The only reason bosses want to buy robots is to fire humans and lower their costs. That's why "AI art" is such a pisser. There are plenty of harmless ways to automate art production with software – everything from a "healing brush" in Photoshop to deepfake tools that let a video-editor alter the eye-lines of all the extras in a scene to shift the focus. A graphic novelist who models a room in The Sims and then moves the camera around to get traceable geometry for different angles is a centaur – they are genuinely offloading some finicky drudgework onto a robot that is perfectly attentive and vigilant.

But the pitch from "AI art" companies is "fire your graphic artists and replace them with botshit." They're pitching a world where the robots get to do all the creative stuff (badly) and humans have to work at robotic pace, with robotic vigilance, in order to catch the mistakes that the robots make at superhuman speed.

Reverse centaurism is brutal. That's not news: Charlie Chaplin documented the problems of reverse centaurs nearly 100 years ago:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Times_(film)

As ever, the problem with a gadget isn't what it does: it's who it does it for and who it does it to. There are plenty of benefits from being a centaur – lots of ways that automation can help workers. But the only path to AI profitability lies in reverse centaurs, automation that turns the human in the loop into the crumple-zone for a robot:

https://estsjournal.org/index.php/ests/article/view/260

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/01/human-in-the-loop/#monkey-in-the-middle

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

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Jorge Royan (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Munich_-_Two_boys_playing_in_a_park_-_7328.jpg

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

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