#needs a lot of tweaks to actually work

[ssaalexblake]

me: makes a tasty looking recipe from supermarket magazine 

me: makes correction notes on the recipe like i’m a spiteful teacher of 14 year olds out to make somebody cry so when i do it next time it’s a lot less shit 

[lord-squiggletits]

A tangent from the tags of my previous Pharma post (and I just thought about this so bear w/ me if it's hastily reasoned) is that the Autobots being generally sanctimonious is actually sort of a reason why I find a lot of IDW Optimus interpretations to miss the mark, specifically the accusations of calling him stuff like self-righteous, caring more about principles than people, etc. And I know that sounds really ironic, but out of every Autobot (and almost every character period), Optimus is one of the few people who has a very forgiving/humanistic perspective on life or at least has a political approach of "if we don't stop fucking fighting we're going to be at war forever and eventually just kill ourselves."

He very explicitly wanted a diplomatic end to the war and not a military victory/conquest. He extended multiple offers to Megatron personally to work together and end the war (Autocracy trilogy, which was pre/early war, and Chaos Theory, which was late/end war, so from this we can assume Optimus' stance was consistent the whole time). When ppl hated him so bad they rioted he removed himself from the planet rather than argue or fight to justify why his actions were the best he could do. Sandstorm starts murdering Decepticons and Optimus solves the murders and then throws Sandstorm in prison bc sparing one of his Autobots the consequences of his actions is less important to Optimus than keeping the peace and making sure anyone who threatens to ignite wartime hostilities is punished for it. There are multiple characters throughout the series that other people give up on as too far gone or too cowardly/evil/damaged to be worth helping where Optimus alone is the person who says "I think they can get better/they did bad things but they're still people" such as the Dynobots, Blurr, Prowl (despite how OP's patience with him hung by a thread by the end of it), Shockwave, and, yknow, fucking Megatron of all people.

And on top of that Optimus' internal thoughts most of the time revolve around feelings of guilt, responsibility, anger, hopelessness/barely hanging on to his ideals, and so on. Bro regularly has thoughts about how the entire Autobot-Decepticon war was his fault and is depressed to the point the thought of dying/martyring himself makes him feel relieved. So like. Idk guys I don't think those are the personality traits/actions of a self-righteous person who thinks he's correct about everything and everyone who opposes him or fails his moral standards is just evil or whatever.

[2-kamikou-1]

ok but no guys seriously how do you ask for reassurance in a way that doesn't make you look like a stupid yandere stereotype

[doomed-era]

dude this is so funny

[ace-with--a-mace]

rewatching house but you take a shot everytime they mention sarcoidosis lupus ms or cushings

[vargaslovinghours]

Y’all are being subjected to my Sims 2 tests, so there

The other set of Vargases came over for a visit and Scriabin picked up Shmee and started talking to Scriabin through him. Very normal, very usual

I downloaded some circle-glasses recolours and hghghh they look so good! Closer every day to his final details! Getting ever closer!

Edgar too! I made him a custom hair with a lighter undercut - I’m mostly happy with it, probably could’ve shifted it a shade closer to his skintone but the texturing was weird no matter what :P And his stripey shirt! I wish Body Shop didn’t have that hands-on-hips pose lol, it looks so much better in-game, but that’s all the better :)

I got some new clothes for Todd as well! As soon as I saw this ‘fit I was like “Oh that’s 100% Todd there he is.” Scriadad hug ♥ So cute

Foot-dancing together stopp it’s so cute!!

The way he looks at them stoppp <3 <3 They kept doing this right up til they left for home haha, Todd’s giggles are the cutest

Used SimPE to save him to the Body Shop, I now have infinite copies of The Boyyyy ♪

Moved him in with his “parents” as just shadow people basically, they’re not gonna matter in a bit as long as I remember how to get the Social Worker/Adoption process to work properly. Get her Todd!!

Wanna play? :D

Menacing :(

Look, Todd, your new dads are here! Initially I wasn’t sure who I wanted to adopt him, got lots of options; the first passes, the married couple with their own Todd, Johnny?? He definitely doesn’t have the facilities for a child lol But these are the ones that showed up on their own, so the married Vargases are the winners!

Scriabin cares more about him than his actual parents ;; A stranger off the street shows him more care! Not that it’s a high watermark

Look at him being a good dad!

Weh, he just wants friends ;; Poor baby

Best timeline, thank you

While we wait for CPS, let’s get some other interactions in! Nny is mean so he tended to prank the other two with a nose flick - mostly Edgar lol ♪ Now kiss

“Oh please don’t break all my bones~ :3” I love Todd looking up at them haha <3

Pffft, I think he was talking about the other Scriabin and just how attractive he is. Classic Scriabin. Alternatively, also funny to imagine him bragging himself up about how he’s just so handsome that Edgar can’t help but love him hahaha ♪

Allow me to tickle you with my KNIFE! >:D

Get a load of this guy lol

He ended up passing out at one point - I forgot which motives make CPS show up >.> - and completely 0%’d his comfort, but for some reason stargazing increased it?? It’s the same ground wh

Is two not enough to satisfy your butterfly bloodlust child?? He ended up with three, I had him release them before he was picked up by the Social Worker - success!

He rolled a new Want as soon as Todd was taken away - “Wants to see Ghost of Todd” Woah, dark! :0

And here he is on the married Vargases’ lot!! Success!! I did it right!! Heck yeah! :D Unfortunately they were uh, indisposed at the time. Good job guys pft

Goes right for Shmee, he really is Todd <3

[qsmprambling]

If cookie access is going to be a big concern with holidays and such coming up, maybe it's worth flagging it with the admins. Maybe add some kind of banker to the bakery that only eggs can access and parents can give cookies to? Or just make it easy and have it that everyone's cookies are worth 1 point.

[camping-with-monsters]

Concept doodles of a couple more characters for Duck Duck Goose.

Hansel and Gretel are witch hunters who take bounties who also happen to be candy people (maybe gingerbread?? Idk yet, no colors have been decided for them yet.). Not too much has gone into their development, but they seem to take deals seriously and enforce that something be in it for them no matter what costs. They’re pretty headstrong and occasionally brash, using their rock candy clubs as brutal weapons of choice to bash skulls and make heads roll. They both wear taxidermy foxes they fixed up themselves, originally being the carcasses of two foxes that apparently tried to eat them a long time ago, turning the spoils into scarves as prizes— and intimidation methods.

Pinocchio’s a little wooden boy who’s been heavily cast aside by everyone who knew him for his clear difference in not being “human”. Truly believing he not a nice thing to look at, he crafted his own costume to take the form of a swan, a naturally beautiful animal he has quite the fascination of for their grace. He’s quite deceiving, but usually for the be edit of others rather than his own, and when you get through his shell, he’s as sweet as any other kid, and honestly needs some direction.

[prosebushpatch]

ah... been struggling with a story I’ve spent so long developing the world for and I’ve just asked myself if this world actually fits the story I want to tell and buddy...

[nomaishuttle]

ohh butter lass i do wanna play sdv

[bf-rally]

wee today i managed to get stuff to start listing

[prokopetz]

With DND 5e being set up to cause DM burnout, can you give examples of tabletop systems that facilitate easy DMing? I love running a tabletop game but don't have the time to deal with 5e or homebrew anymore.

(With reference to this post here.)

This is an area where you're going to get a lot of bad advice, because there's no such thing as a tabletop RPG that's "easy to GM" in the abstract. Some systems make greater or lesser demands of the GM's time and skill, but the reason that Dungeons & Dragons has a massive GM burnout problem is a bit more subtle than that – indeed, D&D's GM burnout problem is considerably worse than that of many games whose procedures of play place much greater demands on the GM!

It boils down to the fact that games are opinionated. Even a very simple set of rules contains a vast number of baked-in assumptions about how the game ought to be played; in the case of tabletop RPGs, those baked-in assumptions include assumptions about what kinds of stories the game ought to be used to tell. The players of any given group, of course, also have assumptions – some explicit, many unexamined – about how the game's story ought to go. It's rare that these two sets of assumptions will perfectly agree.

Fortunately, perfect agreement isn't necessary, because tabletop RPGs aren't computer games, and it's always possible to tweak the outputs of the rules on the fly to better suit the desired narrative experience. In conventional one-GM-many-players games like D&D, this responsibility for monitoring and adjusting the outputs of the rules so that they're compatible with the narrative space the group wishes to explore falls principally on the GM.

Now, here's where the trouble starts: the larger the disconnect between the story the rules want to produce and the narrative space the group wants to explore, the more work the GM in a conventional one-GM-many-players context needs to do in order to close that gap. If the disconnect is large enough, the GM ends up spending practically all of their time babysitting the outputs of the rules, at the expense of literally every other facet of their responsibilities.

(Conversely, if that gap is large and isn't successfully closed, you can end up with a situation where engaging with the rules and engaging with the narrative become mutually exclusive activities. This is where we get daft ideas like "combat" and "roleplaying" being opposites – which is nonsense, of course, but it's persuasive nonsense if you've never experienced a game where the rules agree with you about what kind of story you should be telling.)

And here's where the problem with Dungeons & Dragons in particular arises. The rules of D&D aren't especially more opinionated than those of your average tabletop RPG; however, the game has developed a culture of play that's allergic to actually acknowledging this. There are several legs to this, including:

a text which makes claims about the game's supported modes of play that are far broader than what the rules in fact support;

a body of received wisdom about GMing best practices which consists mostly of advice on how to close the gap between the rules' assumptions and the players' expectations (but refuses to admit that this is what it's doing);

a player culture which has become increasingly hostile to players learning or knowing the rules, and positions any expectation that players should learn the rules as a form of "gatekeeping"; and

a propensity to treat a very high level of GMing skill as an entry-level expectation.

Taken together, all this produces a situation where, when the rules and the group disagree about how the game's story ought to go, the players don't experience it as a problem with the rules: they experience it as a problem with the GM. A lot of GMs even buy into this perception themselves, which is how you end up with GM advice forums overflowing with people telling novice GMs that they're morally bad people for being unprepared to tackle very advanced GMing challenges right from the jump.

(At this point, one may wonder: why on Earth would a game develop this sort of culture of play in the first place? Who benefits? Well, what we're looking at in practice is a culture of play which treats novice and casual GMs as a disposal resource whose purpose is to maximise the number of people playing Dungeons & Dragons. Follow the money!)

So, after all of that, the short answer is that there isn't a specific magic-bullet solution to avoiding D&D's GM burnout problem – or, at least, not one that operates at the level of the rules, because there's no particular thing that D&D as a system is doing "wrong" that produces this outcome; the problem operates almost entirely at the play culture level.

In practice, two things need to happen:

Placing a greater expectation on the players to learn and understand the game's rules; and

Selecting a system where the gap between the story the rules want to produce and the narrative space the group wants to explore is small.

It's that second one that's the real trick. In order to minimise that gap, we need to know what kind of narrative space your group wants to explore, and that might not be something you have a good answer to if you don't have good lines of communication with your players.

(As an aside, there's a good chance that we're going to see dipsticks cropping up in the notes insisting that their favourite system short-circuits this problem by being perfectly universal and having no baked-in narrative assumptions. These people are lying to you, and lending credence to the idea that there's any such thing as a universal RPG is a big part of how we got into this mess in the first place!)

[puddingworld1999]

everythings getting a full overhaul btw its all on The Rocks for now while i get everything sorted on paper first

[ms-demeanor]

Why reblog machine-generated art?

When I was ten years old I took a photography class where we developed black and white photos by projecting light on papers bathed in chemicals. If we wanted to change something in the image, we had to go through a gradual, arduous process called dodging and burning.

When I was fifteen years old I used photoshop for the first time, and I remember clicking on the clone tool or the blur tool and feeling like I was cheating.

When I was twenty eight I got my first smartphone. The phone could edit photos. A few taps with my thumb were enough to apply filters and change contrast and even spot correct. I was holding in my hand something more powerful than the huge light machines I'd first used to edit images.

When I was thirty six, just a few weeks ago, I took a photo class that used Lightroom Classic and again, it felt like cheating. It made me really understand how much the color profiles of popular web images I'd been seeing for years had been pumped and tweaked and layered with local edits to make something that, to my eyes, didn't much resemble photography. To me, photography is light on paper. It's what you capture in the lens. It's not automatic skin smoothing and a local filter to boost the sky. This reminded me a lot more of the photomanipulations my friend used to make on deviantart; layered things with unnatural colors that put wings on buildings or turned an eye into a swimming pool. It didn't remake the images to that extent, obviously, but it tipped into the uncanny valley. More real than real, more saturated more sharp and more present than the actual world my lens saw. And that was before I found the AI assisted filters and the tool that would identify the whole sky for you, picking pieces of it out from between leaves.

You know, it's funny, when people talk about artists who might lose their jobs to AI they don't talk about the people who have already had to move on from their photo editing work because of technology. You used to be able to get paid for basic photo manipulation, you know? If you were quick with a lasso or skilled with masks you could get a pretty decent chunk of change by pulling subjects out of backgrounds for family holiday cards or isolating the pies on the menu for a mom and pop. Not a lot, but enough to help. But, of course, you can just do that on your phone now. There's no need to pay a human for it, even if they might do a better job or be more considerate toward the aesthetic of an image.

And they certainly don't talk about all the development labs that went away, or the way that you could have trained to be a studio photographer if you wanted to take good photos of your family to hang on the walls and that digital photography allowed in a parade of amateurs who can make dozens of iterations of the same bad photo until they hit on a good one by sheer volume and luck; if you want to be a good photographer everyone can do that why didn't you train for it and spend a long time taking photos on film and being okay with bad photography don't you know that digital photography drove thousands of people out of their jobs.

My dad told me that he plays with AI the other day. He hosts a movie podcast and he puts up thumbnails for the downloads. In the past, he'd just take a screengrab from the film. Now he tells the Bing AI to make him little vignettes. A cowboy running away from a rhino, a dragon arm-wrestling a teddy bear. That kind of thing. Usually based on a joke that was made on the show, or about the subject of the film and an interest of the guest.

People talk about "well AI art doesn't allow people to create things, people were already able to create things, if they wanted to create things they should learn to create things." Not everyone wants to make good art that's creative. Even fewer people want to put the effort into making bad art for something that they aren't passionate about. Some people want filler to go on the cover of their youtube video. My dad isn't going to learn to draw, and as the person who he used to ask to photoshop him as Ant-Man because he certainly couldn't pay anyone for that kind of thing, I think this is a great use case for AI art. This senior citizen isn't going to start cartooning and at two recordings a week with a one-day editing turnaround he doesn't even really have the time for something like a Fiverr commission. This is a great use of AI art, actually.

I also know an artist who is going Hog Fucking Wild creating AI art of their blorbos. They're genuinely an incredibly talented artist who happens to want to see their niche interest represented visually without having to draw it all themself. They're posting the funny and good results to a small circle of mutuals on socials with clear information about the source of the images; they aren't trying to sell any of the images, they're basically using them as inserts for custom memes. Who is harmed by this person saying "i would like to see my blorbo lasciviously eating an ice cream cone in the is this a pigeon meme"?

The way I use machine-generated art, as an artist, is to proof things. Can I get an explosion to look like this. What would a wall of dead computer monitors look like. Would a ballerina leaping over the grand canyon look cool? Sometimes I use AI art to generate copyright free objects that I can snip for a collage. A lot of the time I use it to generate ideas. I start naming random things and seeing what it shows me and I start getting inspired. I can ask CrAIon for pose reference, I can ask it to show me the interior of spaces from a specific angle.

I profoundly dislike the antipathy that tumblr has for AI art. I understand if people don't want their art used in training pools. I understand if people don't want AI trained on their art to mimic their style. You should absolutely use those tools that poison datasets if you don't want your art included in AI training. I think that's an incredibly appropriate action to take as an artist who doesn't want AI learning from your work.

However I'm pretty fucking aggressively opposed to copyright and most of the "solid" arguments against AI art come down to "the AIs viewed and learned from people's copyrighted artwork and therefore AI is theft rather than fair use" and that's a losing argument for me. In. Like. A lot of ways. Primarily because it is saying that not only is copying someone's art theft, it is saying that looking at and learning from someone's art can be defined as theft rather than fair use.

Also because it's just patently untrue.

But that doesn't really answer your question. Why reblog machine-generated art? Because I liked that piece of art.

It was made by a machine that had looked at billions of images - some copyrighted, some not, some new, some old, some interesting, many boring - and guided by a human and I liked it. It was pretty. It communicated something to me. I looked at an image a machine made - an artificial picture, a total construct, something with no intrinsic meaning - and I felt a sense of quiet and loss and nostalgia. I looked at a collection of automatically arranged pixels and tasted salt and smelled the humidity in the air.

I liked it.

I don't think that all AI art is ugly. I don't think that AI art is all soulless (i actually think that 'having soul' is a bizarre descriptor for art and that lacking soul is an equally bizarre criticism). I don't think that AI art is bad for artists. I think the problem that people have with AI art is capitalism and I don't think that's a problem that can really be laid at the feet of people curating an aesthetic AI art blog on tumblr.

Machine learning isn't the fucking problem the problem is massive corporations have been trying hard not to pay artists for as long as massive corporations have existed (isn't that a b-plot in the shape of water? the neighbor who draws ads gets pushed out of his job by product photography? did you know that as recently as ten years ago NewEgg had in-house photographers who would take pictures of the products so users wouldn't have to rely on the manufacturer photos? I want you to guess what killed that job and I'll give you a hint: it wasn't AI)

Am I putting a human out of a job because I reblogged an AI-generated "photo" of curtains waving in the pale green waters of an imaginary beach? Who would have taken this photo of a place that doesn't exist? Who would have painted this hypersurrealistic image? What meaning would it have had if they had painted it or would it have just been for the aesthetic? Would someone have paid for it or would it be like so many of the things that artists on this site have spent dozens of hours on only to get no attention or value for their work?

My worst ratio of hours to notes is an 8-page hand-drawn detailed ink comic about getting assaulted at a concert and the complicated feelings that evoked that took me weeks of daily drawing after work with something like 54 notes after 8 years; should I be offended if something generated from a prompt has more notes than me? What does that actually get the blogger? Clout? I believe someone said that popularity on tumblr gets you one thing and that is yelled at.

What do you get out of this? Are you helping artists right now? You're helping me, and I'm an artist. I've wanted to unload this opinion for a while because I'm sick of the argument that all Real Artists think AI is bullshit. I'm a Real Artist. I've been paid for Real Art. I've been commissioned as an artist.

And I find a hell of a lot of AI art a lot more interesting than I find human-generated corporate art or Thomas Kincaid (but then, I repeat myself).

There are plenty of people who don't like AI art and don't want to interact with it. I am not one of those people. I thought the gay sex cats were funny and looked good and that shitposting is the ideal use of a machine image generation: to make uncopyrightable images to laugh at.

I think that tumblr has decided to take a principled stand against something that most people making the argument don't understand. I think tumblr's loathing for AI has, generally speaking, thrown weight behind a bunch of ideas that I think are going to be incredibly harmful *to artists specifically* in the long run.

Anyway. If you hate AI art and you don't want to interact with people who interact with it, block me.

[keferon]

Part 3! Ratchet and Deadlock time.

The ray of sunshine has left, leaving us in the cold dark of the angst.

Ratchet works through some stuff.

———————————————————————

Ratchet hadn’t actually meant for the conversation to start with Roddy.

The medic had wanted to fully explain why he’d left the Mecha Program for awhile. His outburst earlier cementing the fact he needed to get it off his chest, or he’d start lashing out at the wrong people.

Again.

The Kid deserved to know what staying with him could drag him into. Ratchet kept his hands busy cleaning his bowl in the shop sink.

Hot Rod, Ratchet realized, was a good enough bridge into the topic. Someone Deadlock could put a face to. Not just nameless pilots upon pilots.

“There’s a condition called Congenital Insensitivity to Pain. CIP for short. The abbreviated explanation is sometimes humans can be born without the ability to feel pain or that the sensation of pain doesn’t translate correctly to the brain. It’s a very dangerous condition to have since it means that the person doesn’t get the usual warning signs that’s something’s wrong.”

The bowl was completely clean but so long as Ratchet didn’t turn around, he could pretend he was just training a med student.

“So that question about “weird pressures”. You were checking for damage Hot Rod doesn’t know he’s sustained due this CIP condition?”

Kid was smarter than he gave himself credit for. Ratchet thought for not the first time. He almost got it right.

“Hot Rod doesn’t have CIP. Not actual CIP.”

Ratchet put the bowl down, his hand not moving from the faucet after turning it off.

“He wasn’t born with it. Because I caused it.”

—————————

“I was so damn proud.” Said Ratchet.

At the time, he was. The integration process for recruits to become pilots was horrific. Excruciatingly painful. And something out of a science fiction movie.

In order to condition the human nervous system to work with the mecha neural interface, it necessitated mapping out every nerve and neuron in the pilots body.

While conscious.

Orion came up with the best analogy for it once: You could create a perfect 3 dimensional map of an entire ant colony’s nest. Provided you poured enough molten lead down the hole.

Ratchet wasn’t one to standby watching friends or strangers suffer, so he rolled up his sleeves and set his mind to fixing the whole damn thing.

On the line between man and machine, Ratchets role in the mecha program was right on the fence.

Specifically, he’d started very close to the fence on the side of the machines, and during the course of the program, picked up enough extra PHD’s to hook a leg over said fence to reach across and start smacking the shit out of some particularly stupid doctors handling the men.

Ratchet worked for years along side Pharma and Shockwave to make the integration process less permanently damaging.

Common long term side effects were: Blurry Vision Jazz, Disassociation Swoop, Memory Loss Sludge, Paralysis Snarl, Nerve Damge Slag, Internal Hemorrhaging Grimlock, Altered Personality Shockwave, and Brain Death Orion.

There were dozens more faces Ratchet could pair with any given symptom.

Eventually, Ratchet got his lucky break. A fresh batch of recruits to try his tweaked integration process on. Hot Rod was one of them.

Ratchet had thought he’d hit a breakthrough. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t publish it yet. Not until he was sure.

Hot Rod aced the physical and mental exam. The rest of his test group did pretty well too. They weren’t cream of the crop. The higher ups didn’t want to risk loosing more valuable pilots to an experiment. When Pharma had already established an “acceptable level of care” that nicely suited them.

Ratchet personally watched the lot of them like a hawk. Just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

It didn’t come. Hot Rod was fine. The whole group was fine.

He was so damn proud.

The pilots went straight into mecha training and then-

They dropped like flies.

It was on the bad end of the bell curve for pilot fatalities. Ratchet thought it had to be the new series of mecha that had been built at the same time. He’d switched into engineering mode to rectify that. They had glaring safety issues where the flamethrowers and thrusters intersected. Plus, it wasn’t unusual for the mecha program to just have particularly rough seasons. The tentacled fucks were out in swarms. And by god was that a bloody summer for everyone.

It happened three days after the last big fight. Pretty much everyone who came back alive came back with some sort of injury. Except for Hot Rod, who Pharma gave a clean bill of health.

Ratchet was in his corner of the medical wing, looking over his proposal for the new integration method when Jazz dragged Hot Rod into his office.

Red flag number one: Jazz was a nightmare patient who avoided the med wing like a bear trap.

He tried. Goddamn it if Jazz didn’t try, but he was physically incapable of getting through medical procedures without being heavily sedated. The last time Ratchet tried to do minor stitches with only a local anesthetic, Jazz panicked and damn near broke his arm.

Jazz and Hot Rod were both wearing shorts, t-shirts and sneakers. Judging from the smell, they had just gotten here from the rec room. Probably basketball or maybe dodgeball.

Ratchet had gone through a full medical checklist before they finished coming through the door. Neither looked sick or injured. Nothing was obviously wrong beyond the clear look on Jazz’s face that said “Something is actually very wrong.”

Jazz wheeled Hot Rod in front of Ratchet.

“Show him.”

Hot Rod looked more embarrassed than in desperate need of medical attention.

“I’m fine Jazz, I probably just need to stretch.”

Jazz waved his hand cutting him off. Ratchet would usually start telling them off by now but something stopped him.

“Hot Rod raise your arms above your head. Both of them.”

The red headed pilot reluctantly obeyed. His right arm lifted straight up above his body. His left. Hot Rod made a face of concentration, as his left arm refused to go any higher than his head.

Three days.

Hot Rods shoulder had been dislocated for three days and no one fucking noticed.

Ratchet chewed out Jazz at first thinking he’d caused it. Then he chewed out Hot Rod for not coming to medical as soon as he knew about the injury.

And then, something very cold settled into his stomach the more and more Hot Rod swore he didn’t notice. That it didn’t even hurt.

“Ratchet, I’m fine!”

He should have been in pain. In agony after three days.

Later, Ratchet would go through each medical file of every pilot he had been responsible for. They had all had ailments in their files. Minor visible injuries that were all taken care of. Major ones went surprisingly smoothly. Patient notes praising the med staff for keeping them so comfortable. Praising him. Not one pilot had made a single pain med request since going through the integration process. On his files, there was one surviving active duty pilot from the same integration process.

Ratchet’s integration process.

————————

“Hot Rod said he forgave me.” Ratchet laughed. A little too wet and little too rough.

“Just like that.”

When’d he start shaking?

Ratchet still didn’t, couldn’t look the Kid in the eyes. “I left, not long after. There’s so much fucking more that was happening. That was the last straw, because when I told Shockwave and Pharma, those heartless fucks wanted to make it standard across the board. Soldiers that can’t feel pain? Of fucking course they wanted that. Didn’t matter the fatality rate was nine times as high.”

Ratchets voice was getting worse. But he couldn’t stop. “I thought I could fix it all from the inside. I thought as long as I stayed I could be some, fucking moral compass to a bunch of greedy, prideful, fucking deranged people. I was an egotistical IDIOT that thought I could somehow save every doomed kid tricked into walking into that “necessary evil.” I actually believed I could-”

Ratchet was abruptly cut off from his ranting as two massive hands grabbed him around the waist and deposited him on a ledge, at eye level.

“Kid, what-“ Deadlocks eyes looked shiny.

“I-I can’t keep looking down at you.”

The two of them sat in silence.

Neither seemed to know or want to start talking again right away. Ratchet was used to stewing in regrets on occasion. That had felt more like putting those regrets into a blender and then forgetting the lid.

Deadlocks plating was pulled tight. Ratchet had almost forgotten what he looked like when he was stressed. He wanted immediately to take it all back. Make it better. See him laugh drunk and cozy again like yesterday.

“Kid, I’m sorry. That- that was too much to put on you.” Deadlocks hands weren’t gripping him anymore but resting on either side of the ledge. Ratchet pet small circles on a thumb that twitched slightly under his hand.

Deadlock straightened and looked at him with a steely expression, mouth tense, eyes determined.

“You are one of the most intelligent, stubborn, and caring people I’ve ever met. Nope.” Deadlock corrected himself, lifting a hand. “THE most intelligent, stubborn and caring person that exists.” He dragged out the syllables of that last word.

“You!” He poked Ratchet in the chest. “Saved me. And I’m fragging terrible.”

Ratchet took offense to that, “You’re not terrible and you’re worth saving!”

Deadlock grinned, “The worst thing you can possibly say about yourself is that you care too much to put up with some kind of slagged up torture facility. Which, by the way, I am still fully offering to blown up.”

“Still full of innocent people kid.”

“Okay kidnapping then. I say we nab Hot Rod first.”

Ratchet leaned back against the wall and made one of those desperate chuckles you only hear when someone has their face buried in their hands. “Kid. The quintessons.”

That took a little wind out of his sails.

“The system is fucking broken and trust me I want to see it all burn someday. But we’re in a goddamn war. And as much as I hate the mecha program, it’s the best shot at survival we have.” Ratchet watched Deadlocks finales pin back again.

He offered a palm to Ratchet, who after a moment’s consideration, not very gracefully scooted on. Instead of lowering him to the floor, Deadlock brought him to his face. His eyes closed and he gently bumped his medic with his forehelm.

“Whatever you need. Just ask. Please.”

Ratchet sighed and rested his own forehead against the cybertronian. “I want you take care of yourself. I told you all that stuff so you understand why I’m fighting giants here and you can decide to back out. They can hurt you kid. Kill you. I don’t even want to think about what would have happened if Shockwave found you instead of me.”

Deadlock snorted, “Please, do you think any of those suits could handle me?”

Ratchet tapped his hand to put him down, which Deadlock obliged. He hummed.

“Well I can think of three candidates off the top of my head, but one got lost in space and the other might technically be a zombie.”

“What’s the third?”

Ratchet started shrugging on a coat, “Hot Rod.”

He smirked a bit as Deadlocks finales snapped up in offense. “What? Absolutely not. No fragging way that little rust spot can beat me in a fight.”

Ratchet began packing a go bag of medical supplies, “Well I was going to keep it to myself, but part of the reason I brought him in was because I asked Hot Rod to look out for you where I can’t.”

He slung the heavy bag over one shoulder. “Plus, I knew Hot Rod was going to love you. He sees the best in people. And kid?” Ratchet paused at the door.

“You’re someone special.”

———————————————————————

It’s always darkest before the dawn. This…has become a four parter. Dang. Good news is the ray of sunshine will return in style next time.

Some extra tid-bits, I got a head canon that the main side effect Jazz got from the integration process (other than PTSD) is blurry vision. He can see fine while hooked into a mech but can’t get his eyes to focus properly as a human. So Ratchet whipped up a visor that tricks his eyes into thinking he’s still looking through a mecha so he can see normally.

Also, a lot of you guys guessed correctly what was going on with Roddy! Good job everyone!

Lastly I have nothing personal against the dinobots if you love them I’m very sorry.

The next (last?) part will be much brighter. Because the suns coming back.

- SSTP

Oh.....oh fuck....wait WAIT THIS HAS SO MUCH MORE LAYERS THAN I WAS EXPECTING OH MY GOD

I was like. Okay huh. So Roddy can't feel pain right? He must be having this rare condition and? I don't really see where this is going? Huh. Guess it's time to find ouUUUUUH FUCK.

Please. Oh my god. The fact that Ratchet was the one who made him to be like that??? This gives both of them and their dynamic more layers than in a freaking onion. And Roddy didn't just suffer from Ratchets actions. He forgave him. Because OF COURSE he did, he's always giving everyone a second chance I LOVE THIS CONCEPT SO MUCH YOU HAVE NO IDEA

[starlightkun]

⇢ word count: 6.9k ⇢ genre: fluff, established relationship, secret relationship, office workers!jisung & reader, holiday themed, a bit of a crackfic (everyone in this is slightly unhinged and you should NOT act like them in your actual workplace PLEASE), appearances from absolute nuisances nohyuck (mainly hyuck being a nuisance and jeno being a desk candy bowl thief) and chill boss johnny (he’s actually the only normal one around this office fr), part of my 2024 hallmark movie marathon ⇢ warnings: lots of discussions of sex/sleeping together (nohyuck have an absolutely unhinged plot to have reader hook up w jisung w/o realizing that they’re already dating, shenanigans ensue) ⇢ extra info: this was originally going to be part of want from me, but i felt like i was losing the plot a bit, so i tweaked some stuff and made it its own fic instead this is part of my 2024 hallmark movie marathon, three short, unrelated fics starring jisung all with cheesy hallmark christmas movie-esque premises. there’s no continuing plotline between fics in this series, they’re all standalone fics ⇢ author’s note: ok i may be stretching the concept of a ‘cheesy hallmark movie’ in this one, but there’s a holiday party. sue me. ⇢ 2024 hallmark movie marathon

“You need to fuck Jisung.” Donghyuck sat on your desk the following Monday, nearly knocking your cup of pens over.

“What happened to hello? How are you?”

“I get why you didn’t want to tell anybody when I was interviewing,” Jisung sighed as you adjusted his tie for him. “But don’t you think everyone’s formed their own opinions about me by now?”

“You told me Mr. Kang called you Joosung yesterday,” you pointed out. “We agreed after your three-month evaluation, remember?”

“That’s next month!”

“Two weeks. December tenth, to be exact, will be three months since you started.”

“I know, I know.” He pulled you closer by your hips, burying his face in your neck. “Thank you.”

You rested one hand on the nape of his neck, the other stroking his hair. “I hate it too. I was in the bathroom yesterday and overheard a couple of the women from budgeting talking about you. Apparently one of them wants to ask you to the holiday party.”

He lifted his head up, squinting with confusion. “Wait, was it Song Minji from budgeting?”

“Yes…”

“Yesterday she asked me if I was going, I said yes, then she asked if I had a date, and I said no, and she said she didn’t either. Then she just stared at me. It was really awkward, so I told her I had to get back to my spreadsheets and walked away.”

You burst out laughing, covering your mouth as your boyfriend continued looking down at you with absolutely endearing confusion. Patting his cheek, you informed him gently, “She was waiting for you to ask her to the party, baby.”

“Well, even if I knew that, I wouldn’t have,” he huffed.

“I know, Sungie,” you kissed his cheek. “I know.”

“Good.”

You glanced at the time on your bedside clock, tapping his arm indicatively. “We’ve got to go.”

“Y/N, someone from bookkeeping will be over to pick these receipts up today,” Mr. Suh, your boss, informed you, setting a large banker box down on the ledge behind your computer monitor.

You nodded. “You sure you don’t want me to just take them over there now?”

Bookkeeping was on the same floor as your team, just on the opposite side of the large office building.

“No, I’ve got six more boxes in my office. They should be coming with a dolly. I’ve got a lunch meeting, then I’m on-site at a build. Can you make sure they get them all?”

“Of course. See you tomorrow, then.”

“Thank you. See you tomorrow.” He smiled and reached into your candy bowl, securing a chocolate for himself before heading off towards the elevator.

As you continued working up your reports, another figure approached your desk.

“Hi.” Jisung smiled down at you from over the banker box.

“And what is a bookkeeping gremlin doing over here?” You teased, having already spotted the bright orange dolly next to him. “They let you guys out of your cages?”

“Just me, because I’m on a mission.” He did a little mock salute, making you giggle. He then looked between the dolly and the box. “But I don’t really think this was necessary…”

“There’s six more boxes in Mr. Suh’s office,” you informed him happily, pointing to your boss’ door.

“Oh.”

Two of your team members, Donghyuck and Jeno, congregated around your desk then as well, Jeno zeroing in on your candy bowl as always, and Donghyuck snooping at what you were doing on your screen.

“Boring!” Hyuck declared, hitting CTRL + S on your keyboard to save it for you before exiting out of the program. “Lunchtime!”

“Hey, I was working on that, you know,” you protested, keeping up your usual banter with your work friend.

“Now you’re not,” he shrugged.

“Actually, you were chatting with…” Jeno trailed off, looking at Jisung expectantly.

“Jisung,” your boyfriend filled in.

“—You were chatting with Jisung when we got here,” Jeno finished, popping another chocolate in his mouth and tucking it in his cheek to talk around it. “So you weren’t really working.”

“She was telling me where the other boxes of receipts were,” Jisung explained quickly, gesturing to the dolly. “I’m supposed to pick them up. I’m from bookkeeping.”

Hyuck scanned him from head to toe. “You’re new, right?”

He nodded.

“Come to lunch with us.”

“No, Hyuck,” you snorted, cutting up your food as your coworker attempted to show you a picture of another one of his friends over lunch. “The last asshole you set me up with stood me up, remember?”

“I told you, Jaemin got a stomach bug!” Hyuck insisted. “And that was like, over a year ago!”

You looked at him pointedly. “And he could text you but not me? Think about it.”

“Okay, so he was a flake, but Mark is like, a really good guy!” He elbowed your other coworker next to him. “Jeno, back me up!”

Jeno shrugged. “Eh, he seems like the kind of guy to call you ‘bro’ in bed.”

“Not the kind of back-up I meant!”

“Am I wrong?”

“Why are you thinking about what Mark would call you in bed, Jeno?” You snickered.

He stuck his tongue out at you, and you mimicked him.

Hyuck pushed on in his seemingly never-ending pursuit to set you up with his also never-ending pool of single friends. “Ignore him, Y/N. Will you at least consider? For me? Your bestest friend?”

“I never see you outside of work functions,” you pointed out.

“Please? Pretty please? Pretty pretty please?”

“Whatever. Send me his CV,” you said noncommittally, taking a bite of your food.

“On it!”

“Wait, he’s applying for a job?” Jisung finally spoke from his seat beside you, his confusion apparent.

“No, that’s just what they call whatever information Hyuck sends her about the guys he tries to set her up with,” Jeno explained for him. “It ends up being pretty much the same stuff that’s on a résumé, though.”

Hyuck then focused in on a new target. “Jisung, what about you?”

He froze. “What?”

“Are you single?”

“Uhm—”

“Lie if you have to,” you advised. “Once he smells blood, you’re done for.”

“I’m not a shark!” Hyuck took great offense to this comparison. “I’m-I’m like Cupid!”

You let out a derisive laugh at that, stabbing your fork into your food and lifting your next bite to your mouth.

“I’ve got a girlfriend,” Jisung answered hurriedly.

Hyuck narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “So you’re bringing her to the Christmas party.”

“I-I don’t know, we uhm—we just started seeing each other.”

“You’ll bring her to the next monthly mixer, then?”

“I’m pretty sure this is workplace harassment,” you stepped in on Jisung’s behalf, giving Hyuck a disapproving look. “We had a seminar, remember?”

“You’re not curious?”

“No, I don’t care to see you bother poor Jisung for the rest of our fleeting lunch break.”

“Fine, I won’t disturb Y/N’s precious lunch break,” he gave in melodramatically. “But I want to hear about her when we get back to the office, Jisung.”

When you and Jisung got home that evening, you waited until the two of you had gotten out of your work clothes to address the pout on his lips that had been present ever since lunch.

“What’s wrong?” You asked, sitting at your dining table with him.

He started unpacking the to-go food. “Why did you tell Donghyuck to send you that guy’s info?”

“To get him to shut up about it. He would’ve done that for our whole lunch break, Sungie.” You shook your head, watching as he avoided your eyes. “Are you jealous? It’s not like I’m actually going to do anything with it.”

“I know, but I still don’t like that he’s sending you dating résumés, and it’s apparently been a regular thing?”

“Okay, I know we made it sound like it happens all the time,” you agreed. “This is like the third time, including the guy who stood me up last year. When you and I started dating, I told Hyuck not to bother anymore. But then he heard that I wasn’t bringing a date to the holiday party, and he started his little matchmaking thing again. That’s why I never told you, because there never was anything to tell.”

“I’m sorry if it sounded like I was accusing you of something, baby,” Jisung murmured, reaching for your hand over the table.

“Do you want me to block him or something?”

He sighed. “No, of course not.”

“Damn it, I was hoping you’d say yes. I’ve been looking for an excuse for years.”

He finally chuckled at that, a small smile pulling at the corners of his mouth.

“Here.” You brought out your phone and stood behind him, maneuvering your arms around his shoulders so he could see your screen as you opened your texts with Hyuck and started deleting the most recent ones debriefing you on his newest eligible bachelor for you.

“Wait a second.” Jisung stopped you before you could delete all the pictures that Hyuck had sent.

“What?”

To your surprise, your boyfriend actually opened one of the pictures of the guy.

“Jeno was right,” he snorted, closing out of the picture.

“Wh—Oh,” you started laughing. “Yeah, absolutely.”

You finished deleting everything about the guy, then shut your phone off. “All gone. Can’t even remember his name.”

Jisung pressed a kiss to your cheek. “Thanks, baby.”

“And I’ll tell Hyuck no more in the future. Sound good?”

“No, maybe it’s for the best. I don’t think you need to be subjected to the interrogation I went through today.” He leaned his head against yours affectionately.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I trust you.”

“Aw, thank you, Sungie.” You kissed his hair then hugged him properly. “I knew that. It was cute to see you get jealous, though.”

“You need to fuck Jisung.” Donghyuck sat on your desk the following Monday, nearly knocking your cup of pens over.

“What happened to hello? How are you?” You blinked up at him incredulously, rescuing your writing utensils and pushing them to a far corner.

“No time, we need to save our new favorite little bookkeeping gremlin.” He quickly saved your project and closed the window on your computer.

“And you think having sex with me is the cure for cancer or something?” You snorted. “They really wasted their money on your slot in that workplace harassment seminar.”

“No, look, he’s in an awful, awful situationship. I know he said she’s his girlfriend at lunch the other day, but he doesn’t have any pictures of her, he didn’t want to show me her social media. He said she probably wouldn’t be able to come to the mixer because of her ‘work schedule’—” Hyuck used finger quotes around the words ‘work schedule’ “—but the way he said, it sounded like he was just preemptively making excuses because he knew she would turn him down. I asked him about their first date, and you want to know his answer?”

“What?” You asked dryly.

“That they don’t really do ‘that stuff!’” More air quotes.

“Okay?”

“Then I asked what stuff they do do, and he turned bright red!”

“So he’s lying about having a girlfriend to get you off his back.”

“Mm, she sounded pretty real.”

“Okay, maybe he’s twisting the truth and he’s got a fuckbuddy and he still doesn’t want you playing matchmaker,” you suggested another alternative. “Either way, you should leave him alone.”

“No, look, I’ve got this all figured out. He needs to be reminded that there’s women other than this girl—”

You narrowed your eyes at him. “How do you have a rotating roster of men to throw at me, but somehow the only woman that comes to mind for your braindead plan is the one in your immediate line of sight? This is confirming my suspicions that you get no bitches, Lee Donghyuck. Have you talked to a single woman other than me and your mother?”

“Listen, it has to be you so nobody catches feelings!”

“So you’re saying I’m unlovable?”

His eyes widened comically as he went to backpedal. “No, of course not! I meant—Jeno, back me up!”

Jeno, who had been silently leaning against the ledge behind your computer monitor this whole time, happily snacking on the red and green Hershey’s kisses in your candy bowl, slowly finished off the one in his mouth before speaking. “Here’s the thing—”

“You condone this?” You scoffed.

He shrugged. “It’s like, his second-worst idea. Marginally better than setting you up with Na Jaemin.”

“Why do I bother asking for your back-up?” Hyuck muttered.

“But he doesn’t think you’re unlovable. He just knows that you’re a professional, and Jisung is still a newbie and works in a different department. So obviously, there’s like no risk of catching feelings if you guys do… Because work, you know?”

You sat back in your chair, glancing between the two of them dubiously. “Do you two think these are normal things to say to people? At work? To your coworker?”

They looked at each other with wide, horrified eyes, beginning to stutter apologetically.

“I’m in,” you declared abruptly, watching their jaws drop. You then focused your next sentence at Hyuck specifically. “If you’ll stop trying to set me up.”

“Done,” he agreed immediately.

Jisung had excitedly told you about the results of his three-month evaluation to you over dinner that evening, and as you two cleaned up after, you relayed your conversation with your coworkers to him.

“I finally got Hyuck to stop setting me up. Permanently,” you announced in a sing-songy voice, drying the last dish Jisung had just handed you before putting it up in the cabinet.

“Really? Did you find out he killed someone or something?” He asked, shaking the water off his hands over the sink before grabbing the towel hanging in front of it to start drying his hands.

“Nope, he just asked me to do something.”

“Oh, and who do you have to kill?”

“Nobody.” You wrapped your arms around his waist from behind him. “You see, he’s very concerned that this ‘girlfriend’ of yours doesn’t like you as much as you like her.”

“I know we’re literally coworkers, but he needs to get a job,” Jisung retorted.

“Why did you say we didn’t go dates when he asked about our first date?”

“I was afraid you might’ve mentioned it before and I didn’t want him to connect the dots if I told the same story.”

“You couldn’t come up with a fake first date? Carnival? Arcade? Dinner?”

“I was panicking!”

“Anyway, he thinks you’re in a toxic situationship, and that the only solution is for me to sleep with you.”

“Wait what?!” His muscles flexed and contracted under your hands with his words, and he seemed almost oblivious as you continued roaming them over his front.

“Because we would never catch feelings for each other, obviously,” you informed him with mocking seriousness, making him scoff.

“I assume you told him to fuck off and stop setting you up anyway?”

“Nope.”

“Huh?”

You finally put a hand under his shirt to touch his bare skin, and he shivered and jerked away instinctively.

“Ah! Cold hands, baby,” he whined, but made no further moves to get away.

“Then let me warm them up, Sungie,” you giggled, pressing your fingers more intentionally against his skin. “Anyway, why would I pass up the perfect opportunity to fuck with Hyuck and fuck my hot boyfriend at the same time?”

“I don’t think I like how similar that phrasing was.”

“Sungie,” you dragged out the last vowel pleadingly.

“So you’ve got a scheme?” He asked knowingly.

“A fun one,” you promised, kissing his neck. “In multiple senses of the word. But it means everyone finding out we’re together a few days later than we planned. Is that okay?”

He let out a deep sigh. “Alright. What’s first?”

“I’ve got to hold up my end of the deal, of course.”

Donghyuck and Jeno were quick to swarm you first thing in the morning. They at least brought you a coffee this time. There was no work up on your computer yet for Hyuck to close out of, so he just made himself at home on top of your papers that were on your desk instead.

“Okay, we need to brainstorm,” Hyuck got right to business as Jeno dug into your candy bowl. Well, not the business you were actually sitting inside of, but his plot. “The holiday party is on Friday. I’m thinking if you start being a little flirty leading up to it, like casual, you know, not too much, that should warm him up.”

“The more planning you put into this, the creepier it gets,” you informed him, taking a sip of your coffee.

The elevator dinged then, and Jisung stepped off, eyes focused on his feet as he hurried off towards the break room. The elevator opened towards your side of the floor, while bookkeeping was on the other side, and the breakroom, storage closet, and copy room were situated at the midpoints on the floor.

“Jisung’s late?” Jeno commented, bewildered. “Didn’t he say he always gets here ten minutes early to make his coffee before everyone else?”

Hyuck looked at this as well, eyes narrowing. He turned back to you and Jeno. “Did you guys see that big hickey on his neck? Now he’s running late and wearing the same tie as yesterday? This is why we need to help him. Anyway—”

You shifted in your seat then, readjusting your blazer so that it ‘accidentally’ pulled your blouse just enough to show off a love bite situated on your collarbone.

Hyuck actually froze in place, staring at you as he short-circuited. Jeno gave you a quiet, short round of applause.

“Damn, you work fast,” he commented.

You looked down at where Hyuck was staring, as if belatedly realizing your mistake, moving your neckline back up to cover it again.

“You really…” Donghyuck trailed off, blinking rapidly as he began rebooting.

You shrugged. “Didn’t want to announce it like we were in a locker room.”

“He’s walking over here,” Jeno coughed under his breath.

And sure enough, Jisung approached your desk. He looked uncertainly at Donghyuck sitting next to you, and ended up standing by Jeno behind the ledge, finally looking you in the eye.

“H-Hi, Y/N,” he stuttered nervously.

“Morning, Jisung,” you greeted him brightly. “Kiss?”

“Huh?!” He squeaked.

“Hershey kiss?” You pointed to the bowl that Jeno was grabbing another candy from. “They’re caramel filled.”

“O-Oh. Sure, thanks.” He took a green one. “S-See you later.”

“Bye.”

With that, Jisung skittered away, back off towards bookkeeping. Hyuck and Jeno both turned to you with wide eyes.

“I’ve made a grave miscalculation,” Hyuck whispered.

“That boy is pussy whipped,” Jeno whistled lowly.

You rolled your eyes at them. “Or maybe you guys were looking at the two of us with flashing ‘I KNOW YOU HAD SEX’ signs over your heads.”

“Oh, did I forget to leave that at home again?” Hyuck replied snidely, mockingly swatting just above his head. He then leaned in to whisper-yell at you, “Do you actually have the cure for cancer in there because what the hell was that?!”

“Good morning, Mr. Suh!” You chirped at your boss as he walked by.

Hyuck sat up straight, saluting to your boss. “Good morning, Mr. Suh!”

“Mornin’, Mr. Suh,” Jeno said through a mouthful of candy.

“Morning, morning, morning,” Mr. Suh greeted each of you in turn, then yawned. “Ugh, is it Friday yet?”

“Not quite, unfortunately,” you chuckled.

At home that night, you were keeled over with laughter on your couch, clutching your stomach as you and Jisung recalled the looks on your coworkers’ faces this morning.

“Who knew you were such a good actor, Sungie?” You choked out through laughter, wiping at your tears.

“I just had to act like I was madly in love with you, that wasn’t acting, baby,” he smiled fondly, wrapping his arms around you and pulling you closer. “I’ve had to act every day at work except today.”

“So smooth, Park Jisung,” you giggled, kissing him.

“It’s the truth.”

“I know. You’ve never been smooth, just honest. And I love that about you.”

“Ouch, and also thanks?”

You snickered and kissed his pout. “Ready for tomorrow?”

Stepping off the elevator in the morning, you didn’t spare another glance to Jisung, who had ridden up with you. Typically, you would take separate elevators, one of you waiting for the next one, but today, you broke that rule. You dropped off your purse at your desk before going to the break room and making your usual cup of coffee.

Jeno and Donghyuck were already waiting for you at your desk. You rolled your eyes at them. “You two have your own desks, you know?”

“You and Jisung got here at the same time,” Jeno stated.

“Is there a question in there?” You raised an eyebrow at him, taking a sip of your coffee.

“Did you get a new shampoo?” Donghyuck asked, leaning forward to sniff the air around your head.

You swatted at him. “Personal space?”

“That doesn’t smell like a woman’s shampoo…” He went back in for another sniff.

“Quit it, freak!” You rolled away from him.

“What’s happening?” A third voice had joined you all, right on time. Jisung was at your desk, cup of coffee in hand.

“Nothing, Jisung.” You threw on a bright smile, scooting back up to your desk. “What can I do for you?”

“I-I just uhm, I wanted to say good morning. And I brought you some coffee.” He offered the cup out to you.

“Aw, thanks,” you said sincerely, then looked down at your own cup on your desk regretfully. “But I already got some.”

His face fell. “O-Oh. I guess I’ll—”

“Hold on, Jisung!” Donghyuck stopped him from leaving, hopping off your desk. Jisung froze in place as your coworker grabbed his arm. First, he took the coffee from his hand and set it on the ledge behind your monitor, then he grabbed your boyfriend’s collar and yanked him down to take a deep whiff of his hair. Jisung yelped at the rough treatment, arms flailing until Hyuck let him go, giving him a loud slap on the shoulder. “That’s all. Thanks for the coffee.”

“Lunch later?” Jeno offered to him. “All four of us.”

“S-Sure,” he looked at you and blushed before hurrying away.

You crossed your arms as you glared at Hyuck. “You literally just assaulted him.”

“And you—” He pointed at you dramatically, “—slept with him again. That’s his shampoo that I was smelling on you.”

“I think my extracurriculars are none of your business.”

“Mm, Jisung’s more of a co-curricular, don’t you think?”

Jeno snickered.

“I think it’s still none of your business.”

“This wasn’t the plan, Y/N.”

“I did your stupid plan, Hyuck. Why are you so obsessed with Jisung’s sex life? Is it because you’re not getting any?” You taunted.

“Nice attempt to deflect, but the plan was to get him to stop being strung along by that other girl. Not for you to start stringing him along.”

“You make me sound like an evil witch.”

“So you’re serious about Jisung then?” Hyuck gasped mockingly. “Adorable. Gonna be each other’s date to the holiday party? When are you meeting the parents? Have you picked a ring yet?”

You bit down on your lip and looked at your lap to avoid laughing, which he thankfully seemed to interpret as guilt on your part.

“Exactly as I thought,” he said smugly.

“The puppy love thing is cute now, but it’s probably best for working together in the long run to just let him down easy sooner,” Jeno gave some surprisingly wise advice through a half-eaten Hershey’s kiss.

Having composed yourself, you finally let out a contemplative, resigned sigh. “Yeah, you guys are probably right.”

“Always are,” Hyuck tsked.

Lunch was honestly kind of fun—It felt like being a kid with a crush again, sneaking glances at Jisung, trying not to be too obvious about your flirting, and playing innocent when your coworkers would shoot you pointed looks every time Jisung did something totally head-over-heels for you.

Mid-afternoon, and Jisung was back at your desk. He had a few papers in his hand, some flimsy excuse of questions about the receipts he’d picked up last week, but really, you two were just talking. Discussing what to make for dinner, additions to the grocery list, what you were working on, little things.

The sound of a door opening caught your attention, and you looked over to see Mr. Suh coming out of his office. He’d just been on a phone conference, and had his empty coffee mug in his hand.

“Hi, Mr. Suh.” You sat up a little straighter. “Afternoon decaf?”

“Yep.” He lifted the mug in greeting as he walked by, heading for the breakroom.

“I’m going back to my cage with the other bookkeeping gremlins,” Jisung murmured. “Don’t want him to catch me still here when he gets back.”

“Laser beams aren’t going to come out of his eyes and incinerate you on the spot if he does, you know,” you giggled.

“How do you know?” He tapped your desk rhythmically, then mouthed, ‘See you later.’

You mouthed it back, contentedly watching him walk away. You were back to working on your reports when Mr. Suh returned from the break room. He drifted over to your desk, however, standing against the ledge conspiratorially.

“Was that the new kid in bookkeeping?” He asked lightly, taking a sip of his coffee.

“Yeah, Park Jisung,” you informed him. At your boss’ inquisitive lean forward, you gave a little more context, “He picked up those receipts last week and Hyuck ended up inviting him out for lunch with us.”

“He seems to be over here quite a bit recently.”

“We chitchat sometimes.” You paused, then widened your eyes. “Is that a problem? Nothing’s been late or anything, has it?”

He gave you his usual easy-going smile. “It’s fine, Y/N. Your work has been great as usual.”

“Okay, good.”

“Hi, baby,” Jisung greeted you brightly that evening from your usual meet-up place after work. If neither of you had to stay late, or had an errand to run after work, you would meet up outside a cornerstore a couple blocks away from the office.

“Hi, co-curricular,” you beamed back, leaning into the kiss he was pressing to your cheek.

He pulled away with an adorably confused pout on his face. You laughed, taking his arm in yours as you started down the sidewalks together, relaying your conversation with Hyuck and Jeno this morning.

“I don’t know what’s funnier, the idea of me genuinely ‘stringing you along’ or your new nickname,” you giggled, squeezing his arm.

“You already changed my phone contact, didn’t you?”

“I put a heart next to it!”

“The rumor has spread to bookkeeping, by the way.”

You blinked at him in mock surprise. “You guys have office gossip over there?”

“Yeah, we finally invented the wheel and have time to gossip now,” he snorted, rolling his eyes. “Huang Renjun told me he heard Song Minji and Park Chaeyeon talking about it in the copy room.”

“That’s how it breached containment,” you tutted. Chaeyeon was from your department, but you knew she and Minji were office friends. She must have overheard it from your area—Hyuck wasn’t exactly the quietest man you knew, and there was no way your other coworkers hadn’t noticed Jisung’s frequent trips to your desk if Mr. Suh had.

“Uh-huh.”

“What exactly were they saying? Did Renjun tell you?”

“Some stuff he didn’t want to repeat about you—” He cleared his throat. “But mostly, he wanted to ask me what, if anything was true. I felt bad lying, I like Renjun.”

“Yeah, he was my favorite bookkeeping gremlin before you started.”

Jisung elbowed you, obviously offended. “I still did bookkeeping before I worked here! I just did it somewhere else!”

“He was my favorite at this company before you started. Better?”

“Much.” He smiled as you leaned in to kiss his nose. “I told him the rumors weren’t true.”

“That wasn’t a lie!” You reminded him emphatically. “We’re not just coworkers with benefits, or co-curriculars, or recently started secretly dating, or whatever!”

“I’m just glad we only have two more days of this.” He laced his fingers with yours. “I want to be able to have a picture of us on my desk, and talk about you to everyone, and show up and leave together.”

“Me too,” you agreed, fond smile on your lips as you approached your front door. “It’s been fun, but the best part will be when everyone knows you’re mine. For real.”

This was weird. You had been at work for thirty minutes and hadn’t seen nor heard Hyuck or Jeno. Maybe today would be normal for once. As soon as that idea had crossed your mind, they came beelining for your desk, and you knew that would be impossible.

“Good—” You couldn’t even get a friendly greeting out of your mouth, Donghyuck fully sitting on top of your keyboard, entering a bunch of random characters into the email you had been writing. “Uhm, you know, that email to Mr. Suh wasn’t important, actually…”

Yanking your keyboard out from under Hyuck, you deleted the gibberish and saved the draft email before setting it aside to deal with whatever was going on. You looked at your coworkers expectantly.

“Y/N…” Jeno surprisingly took the lead. “How did you go about letting Jisung down easy?”

You blinked in surprise. “What are you talking about? I just told him we should keep it professional and not see each other anymore…? And that was it.”

“And how did he take it?”

“Fine?” You glanced between their extremely serious demeanors with increasing worry. “Why? What’s going on?”

“We just had to comfort a crying Jisung in the men’s room for the past thirty minutes, that’s what’s going on!” Hyuck finally hissed. “I don’t think your easy is very easy!”

You leaned away from him in utter shock. That was definitely not part of the plan today, and now you were genuinely worried about why your boyfriend was apparently crying in the men’s room—he definitely wasn’t a good enough actor to do that on the spot.

“Woah, I didn’t—”

“Well, you did.”

“You don’t get to pin all the blame on me here,” you shot back immediately. “Whose stupid fucking plan was it for me to sleep with him in the first place anyway? If I recall, you never found him crying in the bathroom with his last girl that you were so concerned over.”

“You diverted from the plan and he got attached!”

“Okay, it’s everyone’s fault!” Jeno cut in decisively.

“What’s everyone’s fault?” Mr. Suh stopped by your desk, briefcase in hand as he had just gotten into the office. “There’s been an awful lot of whispering going on over here. Something I should know about?”

“No, Mr. Suh!” Hyuck chirped brightly. “Lunch plans fell through, we’re just rescheduling.”

Your boss looked at you skeptically, waiting for confirmation. You nodded hurriedly. “Yeah, lunch plans.”

“Alright.” He shrugged. “There’s a good sandwich place a block over. If you’re looking for recommendations.”

And with that, he went into his office.

Turning back to Hyuck and Jeno, you whispered, “I swear to God, I wasn’t expecting him to be crying. Okay?”

“We’re being a little harsh on you,” Jeno admitted quietly. “We should all just leave Jisung alone, I think.”

He took a candy out of your bowl and departed your desk without another word. Hyuck followed, still shaking his head. You quickly brought your phone out, immediately texting Jisung.

[you: BABY SOS]

He texted back immediately

[co-curricular 🩷: IM HERE]

[co-curricular 🩷: WHAT’S WRONG????]

[you: im fine but are YOU okay?!]

[you: jeno and hyuck told me they found you crying in the bathroom]

[co-curricular 🩷: oh nonono im okay baby i promise]

[co-curricular 🩷: im in the copy room, can you come so i can explain?]

[you: omw]

You hurried from your desk to the copy room, relieved to find it devoid of any coworkers except Jisung, who was attending to a copy machine, placing documents on the glass, closing the lid, and copying them in a steady rhythm.

“Sungie,” you breathed out in relief, darting over to him, needing to see his face for yourself.

“Hey, baby, hey,” he said soothingly, letting you wrap an arm around his waist and lean into him affectionately. “I’m okay, I’m okay.”

You stepped back, cognizant of the fact that any of your coworkers could enter at any moment. “So what were Hyuck and Jeno talking about then?”

“When we got in this morning, the temperature change from the cold air outside to the heat inside the building was making my eyes water and my nose run,” he explained, gesturing to his face. “I went to take care of it in the bathroom. Donghyuck and Jeno ran into me while I was cleaning myself up and assumed I had been crying. Nothing I said could convince them otherwise, and they of course also assumed it was connected to their advice to you to let me down easy. So I played along. I know it wasn’t part of the plan, but I couldn’t get them to let it go.”

“I was almost feeling bad about lying to them, but they do this to themselves.” You crossed your arms, leaning against the wall next to his copy machine. Your tone softened as you added, “I’m really happy you’re okay, Sungie.”

“I’m happy you checked on me so quick, baby.” He smiled, taking a step closer to peck your forehead. He lowered his voice to say, “I love you.”

“I love you too,” you murmured, looking up at him, fighting the urge to just grab his suit jacket and kiss him. “Lunch later?”

His nose wrinkled with distaste. “Are Hyuck and Jeno coming too?”

“Just us? At home?”

“Oh?”

“I miss you.”

He nodded. “I miss you too.”

It was finally Friday, finally the day of the office holiday party. You just had to survive work and lay the last couple breadcrumbs, then it would all be over tonight.

You were making your morning cup of coffee in the breakroom with Hyuck and Jeno, and went to engage them in conversation. “Are you guys bringing anyone to the party tonight?”

“Nah.” Hyuck poured his own cup.

“You’re not beating the ‘no bitches’ allegations.” You clicked your tongue.

“I think it’s a bit weird to bring someone you’re not like… properly dating to a work event and introduce them to your coworkers,” Jeno answered, rooting through the employee fridge.

“So that’s a no?”

“Correct,” he mimicked your taunting tone of voice.

Jisung, who had been quietly measuring out sugar into his own cup of coffee at a far counter, apart from your conversation physically but definitely within earshot, inserted himself then, “I’m bringing a date.”

Jeno hit his head on a shelf in the fridge. “Shit—! Huh?”

“You are?!” Hyuck blinked at him, utterly shocked.

You slowly turned around to face Jisung, cocking your head. “Oh, me too.”

“Since when?!” Hyuck snorted.

“Just because I didn’t tell you about it doesn’t mean I haven’t had one,” you hissed.

He rolled his eyes. “Whatever.”

Jisung nodded, and you saw the corner of his lips twitch, ever-so-slightly, too small for anybody who didn’t know him as well as you to catch. “Guess I’ll see you and your date tonight, then.”

“Same. You, as well.” You nodded curtly, watching him pivot on his heel and stride out of the breakroom.

“You don’t have a fucking date,” Hyuck stated dryly as soon as he was no longer in eyesight.

“That was hard to watch,” Jeno said, opening a Tupperware of food that definitely had somebody else’s name on it.

“And neither does he,” Hyuck continued, pointing to the doorway that Jisung had disappeared through. “No way he’s found somebody in a day. Unless…” He looked at Jeno with alarm. “Oh no. You don’t think…?”

Jeno squinted. “What?”

“What if he brings his toxic situationship to get back at Y/N?” Hyuck gasped. He then turned to you, “Look, I guess I can see if Mark’s free tonight—”

“No,” you cut him off firmly. “I’ve already got someone in mind.”

“So beautiful, baby,” Jisung murmured, taking one of your hands and kissing your knuckles.

“Hey, I’m trying to fix your tie clip,” you laughed, pulling your hand back from him to continue adjusting his tie clip that had gone askew thanks to his seatbelt.

The two of you were standing outside the venue of the office holiday party. You were fashionably late, as part of the plan. You had to make sure Hyuck and Jeno were already there, so they could see you arrive together, wearing your coordinated outfits. Jisung’s tie was of course a complimentary shade of the color of your dress—not too matchy-matchy like kids at a grade school formal, but clearly together, not accidental.

“There.” You smoothed out the lapels of his suit jacket, smiling up at him. “So handsome.”

He kissed your cheek. “Thank you.”

“Are you ready?”

“More than.” He grinned, lacing his fingers with yours.

Walking in, instrumental Christmas music was playing over the speakers and a steady hum of conversation filled the room. There were a few familiar faces near the front, but nobody you were overly friendly with. You grabbed Jisung’s shoulder for support as you went to talk to him over the din of the crowd. He hunched over slightly to listen to you better, holding you steady with a hand on your hip.

“Want to get a drink first?” You suggested.

“Sure,” he agreed, keeping his hand on your lower back as you moved through the sea of people.

There was a special cocktail for the night, ‘Mistletoe While You Work,’ which you ordered out of curiosity. Once it was in your hand, you took a sip, and you were pleasantly surprised. Not too sweet, and you couldn’t taste the liquor at all.

“Hey, baby,” you smirked, holding your glass up between yours and Jisung’s faces. “Uh-oh, we’re under mistletoe… kinda.”

Jisung laughed, and you put the glass down to watch his face crinkle up and his nose scrunch in all its adorable glory. “Mm, hard to argue with that.”

You were still smiling as you pressed your lips to his in a short but sweet kiss. He kept you close when you broke apart, an arm still wound around your waist.

“Uhm, Merry fucking Christmas to you guys, too,” Hyuck announced himself, standing off to the side, his own drink in hand and Jeno of course with him.

“Oh, hey guys,” you greeted them nonchalantly. “Merry Christmas.”

“What happened to your dates?” Jeno cut right to the chase.

You and Jisung pointed to each other, making nearly identical faces as if you were oblivious to why Jeno and Hyuck were confused.

Hyuck started buffering as he tried to process the situation. “What…?”

“We’ve been together this whole time,” you finally put them out of their misery, watching as their jaws dropped simultaneously.

“Since before I interviewed, actually,” your boyfriend added.

“Over a year, to be exact.”

“You guys are sick in the head,” Hyuck jabbed an accusatory finger at you both.

“Who was making a whole convoluted plan for me to sleep with one of our coworkers that you barely knew?” You immediately fired back. “You’re lucky we did this instead of reporting you to HR.”

Jeno quickly threw on a wide smile, clapping Jisung on the shoulder. “You fit in great here, Jisung.”

“Glad to have you on the team.” Hyuck went to hug Jisung, making him stiffen up at the unexpected affection. Your coworker then gestured to both of you, putting a hand over his chest. “You two are so adorable together. What a great couple. I’ve said that from the beginning, right, Jeno?”

“You thought they would’ve had awful chemistry.”

“Would it kill you to back me up for once?” Hyuck turned his ire on your other coworker.

Mr. Suh walked up to the bar then, putting his order in with the bartender before greeting you all. “Ah, hello, everyone. Merry Christmas.”

A chorus of hellos and Merry Christmases rang out in response.

“Was Mr. Suh in on it?” Jeno asked you.

“Whatever ‘it’ was, no, but now I wish I was,” Mr. Suh answered, clearly intrigued by this conversation.

“Y/N and Jisung are dating!” Hyuck immediately tattled, and you rolled your eyes at his childish tone.

“There’s nothing against the rules,” your boss said calmly. Then, he added with a mischievous twinkle in his eye, “Especially if the relationship predates one of you working here.”

You and Jisung exchanged a surprised look, making Mr. Suh laugh.

“Okay, I had a hunch, but that was the confirmation I needed,” he chuckled. “When I’d see Jisung at Y/N’s desk alone, I don’t know—you two seemed way more comfortable around each other than two people who had only talked for the first time a week ago. No matter how much you liked each other.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Hyuck gawped.

“It didn’t seem like any of my business.”

⇢ 2024 hallmark movie marathon

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