#nyu continues to disappoint

[baby-girl-aaron-dessner]

[rafesfavgirl]

with a broken heart — r. cameron

part 1. something a little more lighthearted to make up for breaking y'alls hearts :)

series: every few lifetimes

❝ i was grinning like i'm winning  i was hitting my marks 'cause i can do it with a broken heart ❞

pairing: ex-bf!rafe x fem!reader

context: after getting your heart broken, you pack your bags and leave the obx, only to come face to face with rafe again, eight years later.

words: 2.4k+

warnings: rafe and reader are aged up (26/27), old flames, FLUFF

"now remember, this client's a big prospect," your boss says as you follow him out of the office car and into the building you were scoping out today. "i guarantee if you can close this deal, you'll be well on your way to becoming the next junior partner."

"hank, are you serious?" you stop in your tracks and he looks at you. 

when you first left the outer banks for new york, you went to nyu without a clue on what you wanted to do with the rest of your life. somewhere along the way, you graduated magna cum laude and pursued law school at columbia. your first year, hank took you on as an intern, and by the time you graduated, you had a job lined up for you at one of the biggest real estate agencies in the world. and though you knew how well you did your job, becoming junior partner as a second-year associate was way beyond where you thought you'd be—it was nothing short of a dream come true.

"don't think what you've done for this company has been lost on me, y/n," he tells you. "you're an asset. i knew it since that first summer i took you on as an intern."

a smile comes across your lips. "well, i can't disappoint," you say. "let's close this fucking deal."

"that's what i like to hear, come on," he continues leading you through the building, until the two of you reached a tall guy with a buzzcut wearing a navy blue suit scoping out the place.

"mr. cameron," you don't miss the familiar name when you and your boss stop behind him, your breath hitching when the guy turns around to greet you both. "this is-"

"y/n," your name rolls off rafe's tongue the same way it always did, your heart beating so hard you feared it'd jump out of your chest.

hank's eyes shift between the two of you, as he shakes rafe's hand. "you two know each other?"

"yeah," rafe nods, his eyes set on you—he couldn't believe that you were actually standing in front of him. a part of him thought that when you left the obx he'd never see you again. "we uh— we went to high school together."

"well that's wonderful," hank smiles. "no need for the awkward introduction then."

except— it was awkward. you didn't just go to high school together. you fell in love in high school. and two months before you chose to go to nyu, rafe broke your heart.

"y/n here will be the one walking you through the contract, and hopefully setting you up with one of our best architects," hank explains to him, while you continue trying to process the fact that he was actually here.

what were the odds that he was the client you needed to win over in order to make junior partner? 

—

"so, does that all sound good to you?" you finish going over the contract for the building and look at rafe.

the two of you hovered over a table in the empty space that you'd spread out all the documents on.

"yeah, y/n, it all sounds great." the smile he throws your way makes your stomach turn in the worst way—making you realize that the piece of your heart that never stopped beating for him still existed. "where do i sign?"

"uh— right here," you pick up your pen to draw x's on all the lines he had to sign on, before holding it out to him.

he takes it from you, and you watch as he leans over to sign on each and everyone of them, your eyes trailing over how well his suit fit him.

he must hit the gym at least four times a week, you thought. he's grown quite a bit since you last saw him.

"there you go," rafe hands the pen back out to you, and you take it from him with a smile.

"thank you," you say. "you won't regret it."

"oh, i know," he nods, eyes scanning over your face. "i'd never regret anything that involves you."

you feel the heat rise on your cheeks, but you keep it professional, gathering the files on the table back into your folder. "well then, i'll leave you with the contacts of our architects and if you have any further questions, you can reach out to hank or any of the other executives."

"yeah, okay," he replies, hiding his disappointment in the fact that you didn't tell him to contact you with any questions he may have.

"it was a pleasure doing business with you, mr. cameron," you hold out a hand to him for a handshake and he stares at it for a second, before reluctantly placing his hand in yours.

"it sure was," he smiles. "but you know you can just call me rafe, don't you?"

"this is how i address all my clients," you tell him. "it's just the professional thing to do."

"yeah, yeah, i get it," he nods. "guess i'm just not used to it coming from you."

you crack a smile at his somewhat nervous stance—you weren't used to seeing him this way. "it was nice to see you again, rafe. good luck with everything."

"yeah," he grins. "you too."

you turn to walk away, while rafe stays back, scratching the back of his head in contemplation before calling out to you. "hey y/n?"

"yeah?" you ask, stopping to look at him again.

"you got any plans tonight?"

"rafe, i-"

"oh, come on," he cuts you off, slowly closing the distance between you two. "there's no reason we can't be friends, right?"

wrong—there were many reasons. one being that you spent years piecing yourself back together after he decided to give up on you. 

"let's catch up," he persists, his blue eyes locking with yours. "get a drink with me tonight."

despite your head screaming no, you agree. "one drink," you say, causing a smile to spread across his face. "ten o'clock. meet me at the bar on fifth."

—

the second you walk into the bar, rafe rises from his stool at the counter and waves you over. he had gotten there 30 minutes early to make sure you weren't left waiting for him—you'd done enough of that.

"hey," he seems nervous when you reach him, wiping his hands on his slacks before reluctantly wrapping his arms around you in a hug.

you resist the urge to giggle—it was kinda entertaining to see this six-foot-two tall man get nervous around you—and briefly return his hug.

"have you been here long?" you ask, taking off your jacket and taking a seat in the empty stool beside him.

"nah, just about five minutes or so," he lies, shrugging and giving you a lopsided smile, as the bartender walks up to greet you both.

"anything i can get you?" she asks, eyes lingering on rafe for a little longer than you.

"just a glass of whiskey for me," rafe tells her. "neat."

"and i'll just have a glass of pinot noir," you say, when the girl turns to look at you. "thank you."

"and you can just put it on this," rafe reaches into his back pocket for his wallet, and you cut in. "rafe, you don't have to-"

"nonsense," he shakes his head at you and slides his black amex across to the bartender. "i invited you out. it's on me."

the bartender picks up his card, and gives him a smile. "rafe cameron. i'll remember that."

subtly, rafe rolls his eyes and you hold back a snicker. "please don't."

the bartender huffs as her eyes shifts between the two of you, but walks away without another word to get your drinks and charge rafe's card.

you kink a brow at him. "you get bartenders flirting with you a lot?"

"i guess it happens every now and then," he shrugs.

"it's definitely the buzz," you tell him, as a different bartender brings over your drinks and hands rafe back his card.

"thank you," he briefly acknowledges him, before turning his attention back on you, an amused smile on his face. "you think?"

"yeah," you nod, bringing your wine glass up to take a sip. "it makes you look older— more mature. it suits you."

he cracks a smile, a small chuckle slipping out from between his lips. "and being a lawyer suits you."

"you really think so?"

"yeah," he nodded, taking a sip of his whiskey. "you looked so cute all dressed up in your little suit," those words make the heat rise on your cheeks, and you hide it with your wine glass. "i've never seen you more in your element. what made you choose law?"

"well…" you trail off, wondering whether or not you should tell him the truth. oh, fuck it. "after we broke up, i found out got into nyu. i was so… mad and hurt over you ending it that i packed my bags and i left, without looking back. during the summers, i stayed here and worked internships with the school just so i'd have an excuse not to go home."

he listened intently, a look of indifference falling across his features. a part of him was hurt at hearing that he'd broken your heart so badly you felt the need to leave, but the other part was proud. you really did that. figured your shit out and made a life for yourself—just like he always knew you would.

"after my second year, i worked an internship with a property management company in brooklyn. we scoped out places all around the city, and i don't know… i kinda just fell in love with it. seeing how happy people got when we'd found them the right apartment or the right space for them to start their business just made me feel really good. so i declared real estate as my major junior year and decided on law school," you continued.

"doll, that's amazing," he smiled, blue eyes twinkling. "which law school did you go to?"

"columbia," you reply, his eyes only widening in amazement. no words could describe the amount of pride in his chest right now. "but enough about me. what about you?"

"oh— uh…" he started and set his whiskey down on the bar. "after you left, i went to rehab. went in and out of that place for about two or three years… i mean, you knew how bad it was— wasn't easy."

you frown upon hearing his struggles with rehab and relapsing, but nod along as he continues.

"been clean for about four years now though," he shrugs, as if it wasn't some big accomplishment.

"rafe, that's amazing," you tell him, setting your glass down on the bar. "good for you."

"i had to," he nodded. "not only for me, but for dad, too. he was starting to talk business and expanding the company, and i just… i couldn't let him down. especially not after i let you down."

you glance down, no longer being able to meet his eyes. you knew that your past together had to come up at one point, you just weren't ready for it. mainly because even after all this time, there was still that little piece of your heart that never stopped belonging to him. it would always be his. "rafe…"

"i hope i'm not being too forward when i ask you this but…" his hand reaches out to touch yours, and you look up at him. "are you seeing anyone?"

"no, i'm not," you shake your head. "after we broke up, i didn't really date much. and even when i did, nothing ever really stuck."

that was enough to have a smile crack across his his, eyes brighter than you'd seen them in a really long time. "guess that makes two of us."

"guess so," you shrug, thoughts running through your mind a hundred times a minute as you try to find a way to change the subject. you weren't ready for where this conversation was about to go. at least, not yet. "but, uh— tell me about cameron development, how's that going?"

he chuckles at your eagerness to change the subject, as you sipped on your wine, but goes with it. he'd break you down again. eventually.

—

after finishing your drinks at the bar, rafe offered to walk you home since your apartment was only about a block or two away, assuring you that he'd just get a cab back to his hotel afterward.

and while a part of you screamed at you to say no, that little piece of your heart that still beat for him won over, and you agreed.

"well, this is me," you say, stopping in front of your apartment complex and looking at him. "it was really nice to see you, rafe."

"so that's it?" he asks, catching you off guard. "this just ends here?"

he takes a step towards you, making your heart pitter-patter, as his eyes scanned your face.

"rafe-"

"don't you ever wonder…" he cuts you off, his gaze lingering on your lips for just a moment before his eyes shifted to meet yours. "what we could've been? what we could be?"

"i-"

"i know i fucked shit up with you, a'ight?" he said, hand coming up to tuck a piece of hair behind your ear.

the gesture threatens to make your eyes flutter close at the feeling of his familiar touch, but you keep your composure.

"i was young and i was stupid, and i thought you deserved better," he continued. "but y/n, there isn't a day that has gone by in the last eight years that you haven't crossed my mind. i think about you all the time, just hoping for the day you'd finally come back to the banks."

your breath hitches at his confession, that tiny piece of your heart that held onto him, growing three sizes.

"i know i don't deserve a second chance, i know that," he told you. "but i'm not the guy i was back in high school. i'm clean now, and i've turned my life around. i can be that guy for you now. the one you needed me to be all those years ago."

"okay," you whisper.

"what?" he musn't have heard you right.

"i'd be lying to myself if i said i haven't thought about you either, rafe," you say.

a small chuckle falls from his lips, which spread into a smile. "seriously?"

you nod. "come pick me up at seven tomorrow. let's give it a chance."

part 3 coming soon!!

i'm rooting for them tbh

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[munson-blurbs]

Living After Midnight (Failed Rockstar!Eddie x Motel Worker!Reader)

♫ Summary: Apologies were in order when Eddie's true whereabouts were revealed, but would a rainy evening bring forgiveness or an even harsher storm? (4.6k words)

♫ CW: slowburn, strangers-to-lovers, angst, misunderstanding, anxiety, self-deprication, parental conflict, poverty, jealousy, brief touching, eventual smut (18+ only, minors DNI)

♫ Divider credit to @hellfire--cult

chapter eight: mind your own business

A simple conversation changed everything.

Admittedly, it was not your conversation, but one you had eavesdropped on. 

You had turned in the final exam for your Experimental Psych class, ruminating over any possible wrong answers as soon as your paper touched the pile on your professor’s desk. Did you get an abnormal amount of Cs in the multiple-choice section? Were your short answers detailed enough?

And then you overheard two guys talking in the hall, one sounding like he’d just chain-smoked a carton of cigarettes. 

“Dude, what the fuck happened to your voice?”

“Lost it at a concert the other night. Totally worth it, though.”

“What concert?”

“Death’s Echo.”

You froze, hoping your sudden stop didn’t draw any attention to you. Death’s Echo had a concert? Where was it? Is that where Eddie was on Monday night?

Potential exam mistakes forgotten, you strode over to the guys on a quest for information. “Excuse me.” Your lips curved into your best customer service smile. “Did you say you saw Death’s Echo?”

The hoarse-voiced one nodded. “Yeah, why? You like them?” His eyes narrowed in assessment; you clearly didn’t embody his expectations of a punk music fan. A fair enough judgment, because you certainly weren’t. 

“Where did they play?” You pressed, ignoring his question. 

“Webster Hall,” he coughed, and his buddy laughed at his apparent pain. “You listen to them?”

“Yup,” you lied easily, not wanting to stick around and have him find out why a “fan” didn’t even know about a local gig. “Um, feel better!” You hurried out of the building, head spinning with this newfound knowledge. 

Webster Hall. It was just over an hour to get there, which meant that the concert must have started late; a practice not unheard of for more up-and-coming bands. The prime time slots went to the headliners who brought in the most money. 

If Eddie had gone to the concert on Monday, why wouldn’t he tell you? Did he think you’d be angry? Disappointed?

Or maybe he just didn’t want you to know he was blowing off work for a concert, you reasoned, and your opinion beyond that is irrelevant. 

Should you ask him about it tonight? Could you? He might hole himself up in his room, ignoring your knocks and only coming out after your shift.

Maybe that was for the best. 

His harsh words from last night continued rattling around your brain, barely taking a reprieve during the test. Honestly, you were grateful you wrote down actual psychological terminology instead of I am a total hypocrite over and over until self-deprecation filled the pages. 

Tomorrow was your last official day of your undergraduate career, your own personal deadline for confessing the truth to your parents, and yet you were no closer to being ready than you were when you first made that silent promise. 

The problem spun a web woven from neurons and synapses, its delicate threads slowly taking over your mind and catching the most daunting tasks. 

NYU Essay revisions Graduation The motel Eisen’s Eddie

Too much. It was all too much, but you couldn’t shake them from their entrapment. You wanted to squeeze your eyes shut and only open them once everything had been resolved. 

You had a fleeting thought of boarding the bus and remaining seated as it rolled past the motel, leaving it all behind and reclaiming your sanity. Running away was always an option, in theory; realistically, you would be overwrought with guilt before the bus made it to the next stop. 

What you’d once considered loyalty was now stained with splotches of cowardice. 

Maybe one day, you would be able to see yourself the way you wanted to be seen: as a trailblazer, a go-getter, a woman in pursuit of her dreams. 

Today was not that day. 

Rain streamed down from the clouds in thick sheets as though compensating for the week’s idle threats of stormy weather. It pelted against the motel’s windows like a steady drumbeat that wouldn’t be drowned out by your clock radio cranked up to its maximum volume. 

Darkness loomed in the night sky, heavier than usual. Wind accompanied the rain, jostling the power lines and making the lights flicker. 

If the electricity went out tonight…

You couldn’t finish that thought, not when the front door swung open to reveal Eddie, drenched from head to toe. His curls clung to his forehead, his cheeks, the back and sides of his neck; his chest heaved beneath a faded Black Sabbath t-shirt that was saturated with rainwater. 

He stood in the doorway for a moment, unmoving and catching his breath. 

This was your chance to apologize. To admit what you know—what you might know. The timing of the Death’s Echo concert could have been a coincidence, but your intuition told you it wasn’t. 

Another awkward smile that didn’t reach his eyes, a tentative “hey,” and he was trudging past you without attempting to stop.

Opportunity went as quickly as it came. Every word you had planned had been scrambled like a tornado swept through your brain and left gibberish-laden debris. 

The version of you that had confidently confronted him about smoking pot a few weeks ago would have scoffed at the way you failed to utter a simple apology. But this was much more complex. 

Eddie’s forgiveness—if he forgave you—was only half of the battle. His blatantly false accusations about your work ethic had cut too deep to ignore. 

Did he really think that little of you? Or was that his own defensiveness rearing its ugly head and taking over?

Then came a cry from down the hall.

“Of fuckin’ course!” Eddie boomed loud enough to be heard beyond his closed door. “Goddammit!”

You abandoned the desk, grabbing your essay papers and bolting to his room. He was at the window, violently pushing down on the pane, but it remained open. The shirt he’d been wearing earlier laid right next to the door as though he’d peeled it off as soon as he stepped into the room. 

Your eyes landed on the dusting of hair that was now plastered to his pecs, another effect from the weather, the soft brown tendrils partially obscured by his demon head tattoo. 

This wasn’t the first time you’d seen him bare-chested. The night he had arrived, he answered your knock in only his Calvin Klein boxers. He was wearing Fruit of the Loom tonight, the elastic waistband exposed from the weight of his rain-sodden jeans. 

Heat burned in your belly, a sensation you hadn’t experienced in a long while. 

“Little help?” Eddie grunted impatiently, and you nodded, tossing the essay onto his nightstand among a sea of his own handwritten papers. 

Had he caught you staring? 

He moved over, bringing both of his hands to the right side so you could press both of yours to the left. The combined force was enough to smack it closed, the resulting burst of wind sending the papers airborne. They floated to the ground, paragraph-laden parachutes, but all you could focus on was the patch of carpet beneath you. It was completely soaked, visibly darker where the rain had seeped in, and it squelched under your sneakers.

“I’ll grab towels.” You started towards the door, pausing to scoop up a sheet of looseleaf that had landed near your feet. It was obviously Eddie’s; his was not as meticulously curated as yours, full of scratch-outs and barely legible, but the words you could make out were enough to pique your interest.

Want what I can’t have

She’s got me mixed fucked mixed up

You couldn’t read any more of it without him noticing, and you certainly did not want to get caught snooping after upsetting him, so you placed it on the bed as casually as you could.

There were extra towels stored in the supply closet, and you jogged back to the lobby, mentally calculating how many you’d need to sop up the mess. Taking as many as you could carry, you perched your chin atop the oversized pile and lumbered into Eddie’s room, dropping them to the ground. 

To your dismay, he had put on a new shirt, but it did nothing to temper your thoughts of running your fingertips over his inked skin. 

The air was now rife with the scent of burning tobacco, the cigarette between Eddie’s lips already smoked halfway to the filter.

“Thanks.” It was muffled and gruff, hardly an olive branch, but it was enough to tug the corners of your mouth in a tepid smile.

You wanted to stay, wanted to ask about what he had been writing, but Eddie snatched up your essay papers from where they’d scattered before you could ask. He shoved them towards you, leaving the edges creased where they crinkled under his grip. 

“Don’t worry, I didn’t vandalize them,” he sneered. A gray cloud whorled from his lips as he spoke, but it didn’t hide his sarcastic grin. 

You steeled your gaze and forced yourself to look just above the glowing ember and into his eyes. “I’m sorry.” You let your apology float downwards, watching for any indication of a softening expression, but he remained tense. 

“You didn’t even bother asking where I was,” he spit. 

“I’m sorry,” you repeated, less abrasive this time. “I assumed...because you were so mean to Ben…” Any further explanation felt too much like an excuse, so you left the sentence unfinished.

Eddie’s chest deflated slightly, his bravado extinguished. He’d been expecting a fight, you realized. 

You refused to give him one. 

“Were you at Webster Hall?” Your voice deliberately turned up at the end, careful to pose it as a question rather than a declaration. Certainly not as an accusation. 

Eddie flinched, his forefinger and thumb quickly pinching his cigarette to keep it from falling. “What?”

“Monday night,” you said. You pushed your right foot into the mound of towels, hit with a sudden bout of antsiness. “Was your errand seeing Death’s Echo play at Webster Hall?”

He said nothing, just looked at you. Really looked at you, assessing whether or not you deserved to know the truth. 

The admission came out gradually, as if it was being met with resistance, pulled from a place so deep he had forgotten its existence. 

“Yeah.” 

“Why?”

Eddie took another drag from his cigarette. He held the smoke in his lungs until forced out with a cough. “Wanted to hear how they sounded with their new, ah, frontman.”

Lower lip tucked snugly beneath your front teeth, you nodded. “And how did they sound?”

“Great. Really fuckin’ great.” His wry smile held more sadness than amusement. “Better than when I was with them.”

Your heart lurched. Without thinking, you reached out and took his hand, giving it just a little squeeze before letting go. “I know that’s not true,” you said. “I heard you playing on Sunday, and you’re good, Eddie. Not just anyone could pull off playing Metallica without an amp, but you did.” 

You wished he could see himself from your perspective, see the man whose talent was too vast for a dingy subway station, whose music deserved to be heard by sold-out crowds at The Garden.

Eddie didn’t agree, but he didn’t disagree, either. His face remained neutral, and given the circumstances, you considered that a win.

“I can work tonight. Hang the new wallpaper.” A lightning-speed subject change, but you were becoming accustomed to seamlessly shifting tracks to follow his train of thought. “I’ll be back out as soon as I finish this.” He lifted the cigarette to his mouth again and you nodded, closing the door behind you.

Part of you expected him not to return. If his brain worked like yours, he would overthink the conversation, replaying it over and over until he’d wrung out all the positives and left it saturated with the negatives. He’d opt to stay in his room and smoke out his pack, leaving the wallpaper job unfinished. But you heard the door hinge creak and his footsteps pattering into the lobby.

One thousand words flooded your brain to form myriad sentences, from a joking long time, no see to a much more serious who were you writing about?

Ben thought Eddie had feelings for you, ones that stretched past the platonic confines. But he’d only met him once, briefly. He didn’t really know him. 

Want what I can’t have She’s got me mixed up

Did you really know him?

Eddie had an endless list of things he couldn’t have, which often was the case for people facing poverty. As for the girl who had him mixed up, you couldn’t narrow that down, either. The only women you’d seen him interact with were Phyllis (an unlikely muse, but it wouldn’t be the most bizarre case of unrequited love you’d ever heard of), your mom (again, not likely), and you. 

There was no doubt you had him mixed up. Maybe even fucked up, as he’d written and crossed out. But had you had enough of an effect on him to warrant poetry or song lyrics–

Song lyrics.

It all clicked into place: The band; more specifically, the drummer who happened to be his ex-girlfriend. He’d gone to see them play. He could have spoken to her, and maybe realized that a spark was still present. A real spark, not whatever pathetic flicker you might have felt that night when he’d held your hand as you removed wallpaper, or when you’d exchanged gentle touches after his unfortunate wasp’s nest encounter, or when he’d loomed over you in the subway car and a delicate dip in your belly made itself known.

You decided that this explanation, the one in which you had little to no involvement, held the most logic. His inspiration was his past love–potentially his current love–and your argument was a mere distraction from a much more complicated situation.

A natural silence fell over the lobby, a healing balm over the wound you’d taken turns picking at and reopening. It was the perfect setting to finish editing your essay, and yet you found the task impossible. Any threatening grammatical errors paled in comparison to the slight movements of Eddie’s back muscles, visible through his white cotton shirt as he smoothed down the wallpaper panels. 

The pronounced flex of his tricep as he drove the paper cutter above the moldings with utter precision. 

The soft grunt that escaped his lips as he pressed on his thighs to stand up and admire his handiwork. 

You didn’t know how long you’d been staring at him before the slamming front door snapped you out of it. 

“L-Looks good,” you managed, throat suddenly bone-dry. 

Eddie crossed his arms, took a small step back, and nodded. Wide brown eyes scoured the wall for any uneven edges or unglued seams, his lips pursed in concentration. “Not my best work but, uh, it’ll do.” He smirked at you, then jutted his chin to your left.

A middle-age man stood beside the desk, rainwater dripping off of the slope of his nose. He held an umbrella, turned inside out and rendered useless by the wind. 

“Sign out front says ‘vacancy.’” He grumbled and swiped at his bushy eyebrows, revealing a sliver of beer gut when he raised his arm. “Just need a room for the night.”

“Mhm, of course.” You found your footing with a polite smile and collected the stranger’s money, just as you always had, just as you were supposed to. Because you were at work, and that was your job–not watching Eddie hang wallpaper.

As you scanned the wall behind you for a key, a warm whisper tickled your ear, breath tinged with a smoky aroma. A shiver reflexively wiggled down your spine as Eddie spoke, your body unused to this level of proximity.

“Put him away from my room. He looks like a snorer.”

You tucked your lips into your mouth to stifle your laughter. Eddie was right; you weren’t quite sure what it was about the man, but he did look like he snored. Loudly. 

You meant to look over your paper after your shift, but sleep was too seductive to resist. Just one more day, one more final exam, and then you were done. At least until August. 

Summer stretched before you, and though you would still be spending nights behind the desk, your days were wide open. 

Days that might be spent alongside Eddie. 

There was no formal apology from him last night, a fact that nagged at you throughout the bus ride to school and prevented you from looking past the first page of your essay. That, and the burdens of shame both you and Eddie carried: yours from the blatantly wrong accusation, his from…what, exactly? Why was he embarrassed to tell you where he’d been?

The wound was still too raw last night to press on it, to ask further questions; instead, you kept the conversation light and airy. The only foray into dangerous territory came from Eddie himself when he asked about the vandalism at Eisen’s. You couldn’t answer fast enough before clumsily pivoting the discussion to the warming weather.

And maybe it was your inner people pleaser that craved reconciliation, needed it to unfurl and bloom like a budding rose, that lowered your guard and bade you to talk with him. But people-pleasing didn’t explain the warmth that crept through your body, lazily winding through your veins, when he laughed at your jokes.

That laugh–the gentle nose scrunch it evoked, the lightheartedness it exuded, how it chiseled away at the remaining iciness between you. It was all you thought about that night, your heart relaxing as the friendship was no longer in limbo. 

But when you got to class and flipped through your essay one last time, that newfound homeostasis meant nothing. Yes, there were ten pages present and ready to be stapled, but unless your conclusion focused on angsty song lyrics, you were missing the final page.

Dread’s chill pricked at you, followed by an overbearing wash of heat. The granola bar you’d scarfed down threatened to make a reappearance. 

Stupid. How could I have been so careless? All I had to do was check before I left home, but I was too busy thinking about Eddie to do the bare minimum.

It was a bad dream; you’d wake up and find yourself in bed with your full essay safely stored in your bag. All you had to do was wake up and page ten would be a continuation of psychological development in infancy. 

Your eyes opened hopefully, but you were still in the classroom, and the page still beared Eddie’s sloppy scrawl:

I’m the castle She’s the queen Can’t be a king I’m too obscene

The lyrics a few lines down stopped mid-sentence:

Crushed beneath a broken dream Failed to launch now I

You were wasting precious time. If you left now, you could probably make it home and back before the professor left. You’d have to fork over the money for a dollar cab and forgo your afternoon coffee, but it was a sacrifice you needed to make. 

Stupid stupid stupid—

Your name being called drew you from your pit of self-loathing. It wasn’t Nora; the voice was too masculine and too far away for it to come from beside you. 

It was someone with the same name. Just a coincidence. 

And then you heard it again. Loud enough so it echoed down the hall, but not frantic. And yet your heart fluttered in your chest. 

Eddie. 

There was no way; he couldn’t be—

You squeezed past Nora and thundered towards the door, trying to quell your hopes before they rose too high. 

But there he stood, sweat pasting his hair to his forehead. His chest heaved beneath a white cotton undershirt that was tight around the biceps. Deep brown eyes lit up when he spotted you in the doorway, his lips curving in a triumphant smile. 

“I have your paper!” Sure enough, your conclusion paragraph was clenched in his calloused hand.

You could have cried with relief. Fueled by gratefulness and residual adrenaline, you flung your arms around him. Your hands found his back muscles; at first tensed, almost reflexively, but quickly relaxed. The paper crinkling between your torsos jarred you out of the moment, and you took a step back before he could return the gesture—if he even would have. 

“Sorry, I…” Words suddenly evaded you, eviscerated by the musky scent of his deodorant. He didn’t appear to be uncomfortable, all soft doe eyes and lazy grins from his unlikely heroism, but…still. Your relationship now teetered between employee and friend, and you couldn’t afford to knock it off-balance. “How did you get here so fast? And how did you find me?”

Eddie exhaled a chuckle. “Took a cab. And when I got here, I asked every other person where the psychology classes were.”

“You walked from where the dollar cab dropped you off?” How many blocks was that? No wonder he was sweating. 

His cheeks, already flushed from exertion, tinged a deeper shade of pink. “N-No, I, um…it was a regular cab.”

Sheer disbelief widened your eyes. He must have dipped into his meager savings to shell out the money for an actual cab, putting him even farther behind in his journey home. 

“I…” There were one thousand ways to finish your sentence. 

I can pay you back. 

I can’t believe you did this for me. 

I am so sorry I ever doubted your character. 

I wish we’d hugged just a moment longer. 

You finally settled on a string of words that required no courage at all, just a genuine thankful smile. “I have your lyrics. Let me turn in my paper and I’ll grab them for you.”

Eddie’s timid expression shifted into one of amusement. “Shit, yeah,” he said with a laugh. “Was wondering where those went.”

Opportunity splayed out in front of you, tempting you to ask him about the woman who had him mixed up. Every cell in your body ached to know if she was the same queen he’d placed on a royal pedestal, unattainable despite his valiant efforts. 

Was it fear or politeness that held your tongue? You weren’t supposed to see the lyrics in the first place; how could you justify your questions? Sorry I read your innermost thoughts without permission, but could I pick your brain about them?

Any doubts about your intentions were confirmed when he took the page from you, cocked his head, and asked: “What’d you think?”

There it was. Your opening. You could see it, practically touch it, your fingertips brushing the chance to admit that the songs’ mysterious inspiration gnawed at you—

But then he might ask why you wanted to know. And, quite honestly, you lacked the energy to figure it out for yourself. The desire was too strong to be nosiness, too personal to be gossip. 

Not to mention the inexplicable sourness that burned your esophagus when you’d considered the high probability that he’d written them about his ex-girlfriend. 

“Really good,” you managed. “I can’t wait for the finished product.”

Coward. 

“Me, too,” he agreed with a laugh. “I’m sure the folks at the train station are dying to hear it.”

“The rats’ll give you a standing ovation.”

He snickered. “My biggest fans.” 

A hand squeezing yours prevented you from getting lost in the slight dimple that appeared when he smiled. Nora now stood beside you, expression innocuous to Eddie or any other man, but her dark brown eyes silently asked, are you okay?

I’m fine, you replied with a squeeze of your own, grateful for someone who swooped in seeing you with a man she didn’t know.

“Nora, this is Eddie,” you introduced her. “He’s–he’s my friend who’s been helping us out around the motel. Eddie, this is Nora, best friend and study buddy extraordinaire.”

“Ahh, Wallpaper Boy.” Nora furrowed a brow. “You go to school here?”

Eddie cleared his throat and scratched the back of his head. “No, I…she left her paper, so…” He trailed off as though embarrassed by his chivalry. 

“So now she can graduate!” Nora wrapped you in an embrace so tight that you briefly worried about your shoulder dislocating. She leaned in knowingly, her tone teasing with an air of seriousness. “And keep me company at the ceremony, right?”

You rolled your eyes, acutely aware that Eddie was watching the entire interaction. The last thing you wanted was attention drawn to the fact that you weren’t attending graduation. “Maybe,” was all you said, and Nora left it at that.

There was an awkward beat before anyone spoke again, and it was Eddie who eventually filled the silence. “Heading home now?” He asked you, already starting towards the building’s doors. 

“No, I’m going to Eisen’s. I promised Ben that I’d help clean the graffiti.” You braced yourself for a volatile reaction, or at least something akin to annoyance, but his response was more surprising than any snarky remark. 

“I’ll come with.”

Cocking a disbelieving brow, you did your best to keep your tone free of judgment. You were waiting for the gotcha, but you couldn’t let him know that. “Seriously?”

Eddie nodded. “Yeah, why not? I’ve got the day free, and I have some…expertise in graffiti removal.” He relented with a shrug when you and Nora exchanged curious glances, a hint of a smirk tugging at his lips. “My trailer got hit a time or twelve back in the day. The tragic life of a Satan-worshiping freak, y’know?”

“But I bet the vandalizers were upstanding citizens.”

“Keys to the city and everything.” Eddie stuck out his hand, palm up, and you could see the details etched into his pale skin. Calluses decorated the pads of his fingers; you’d assumed they were mostly from guitar playing, but now you could add physical labor to their origins. He looked down at his hand, then back at you. “Shall we?”

Your own hands were suddenly slick with anxious perspiration, like a middle school student on her first-ever date. Even that juvenile scenario held more significance than this—two friends scrubbing down a hardware store was a far cry from the Sandra Brown romance novels you secretly devoured in high school. 

And yet, you felt it—that soft electricity that crackled through your whorls of fingerprints when you slid your palm against his, the jolt of energy as he tugged you forward and laced his fingers with yours. If he noticed the nervousness that embarrassing seeped from your pores, he didn’t mention it. 

Nora, ever astute, excused herself with a story about not wanting to miss the bus, but not before whispering in your ear, “he’s cute.” An approval that would almost certainly be followed up with a phone call later to discuss the fine details of the afternoon’s escapades. 

There are no ‘escapades,’ you reminded yourself. You’re removing graffiti, not embarking on a Parisian vacation. 

Eddie led the way until he reached the building’s doors, blinking as his eyes once again adjusted to the sunlight. “I, uh, I have no idea where we’re going.”

You laughed at his candor. “Follow me.”

It was an opportunity to break the grasp, to unleash the anxiety that threatened to cleave you and Eddie back into two separate pieces. He was dangerous because he was temporary; if you allowed him in even farther than you already had—beyond the confines of friendship—his inevitable departure would destroy you. 

Let go. Let go. Let. Go. 

And yet you kept holding on, adjusting only to take the lead. Eddie’s thumb brushed against yours, pausing just at the knuckle to press down in subtle acknowledgment. 

Hi. 

You pressed back with an accompanying smile. 

Hi. 

This time when you reached the subway station, you both jumped the turnstile. 

--

taglist (now closed ♥):

@theintimatewriter @mandyjo8719 @storiesbyrhi @lady-munson @moonmark98 @squidscottjeans @therealbaberuthless @emxxblog @munson-mjstan @loves0phelia @kthomps914 @aysheashea @munsonsbtch @mmunson86 @b-irock @ginasellsbooks @erinekc @the-unforgivenn @dashingdeb16 @micheledawn1975 @yujyujj @eddies-acousticguitar @daisy-munson @kellsck @foreveranexpatsposts @mykuup @chatteringfox @feelinglikeineedlotsofnaps @sapphire4082 @katethetank @sidthedollface2 @eddies-stinky-battle-jacket @mysteris-things @mrsjellymunson @josephquinnsfreckles @the-disaster-in-waiting @eddielowe @hugdealer @rip-quizilla @munson-girl@fishwithtitz @costellation-hunter @cloudroomblog @emsgoodthinkin

[sanaxo-o]

When they see your self harm (specific members)

Requested (Bermuda and Canada line + nyu)

Warnings: self harm. Like…yeah. If uncomfortable do not read it 🧍‍♀️.

Hyunjae

Standing in front of the mirror you stared at your bloody arms. Touching the new wound's slightly you hissed when it burned. It was nothing new to you. Hurting yourself was like your own pleasure. No matter how much you tried to stop yourself you kept doing it. Like a endless cycle. It was like a addiction. A addiction you are not able to get rid off no matter how hard you try.

Opening the cupboard which was in your washroom you took out your first aid box. Sighing you started dressing up your wounds as tight as possible. And covering them up. While covering the wounds you failed to hear the shoutings coming from outside. It was until the door was harshly pushed open making you flinch.

"Gosh I have been calling...what happened to your arm Y/N?" Looking down you tried hiding your arm but he had already seen it. Taking slow steps Hyunjae stood in front of you as he gently held your arm in his as he traced the uncovered wounds. "Did you do this because of me? Was I...the reason?" He asked in such a low voice you could barely hear it but it was so quiet that it was easy to catch on it.

Shaking your head violently you held Hyunjae's hands in yours. "No...no. What I did is not because of you. Please don't take the blame for something I did.." "Will you keep hurting yourself?"

The question he asked caught you off guard. You tried finding words but it's like they were stuck in your throat. You could not look him in the eye because you knew that if you promised him right now to not hurt yourself it would just be a mere lie which will be broken. Looking down you shook your head.

What you did not expect was for Hyunjae to hug you. "I don't know what is going on with you right now but I hope in the future you will be comfortable enough to tell me..now come. I will dress your wounds.."

Juyeon

Getting home you removed your jacket you were wearing the whole day. Throwing it on the couch you went in the kitchen to get some water. As you were getting yourself some water your gaze went to your wrist making you put down the glass of water and bring the wrist to your eye level.

You knew what you were doing was not right. Doing self harm was not a good sign. Acting like you were happy was not a good thing. You also knew that Juyeon already knew that you were hurting yourself but he just acted as if he did not know.

He tried everything he could do to make you happy but...things were just not going the way you wanted them to. Drinking water was no longer in your mind as you went in your shared bedroom to patch the cuts up.

As you were removing the first aid box you heard the door open. Knowing who it was you did not look back and continued what you were doing.

"Wait....let me help you.." you heard Juyeon's voice. When he came behind you, you stepped aside as you went and sat on the bed.

"So....how was your day?" You knew he was just trying to make a small talk while taking care of the cuts. You stayed silent as he took care of them. Hearing no answer from you Juyeon looked up at you.

"Why are you acting like this is fine when it is clearly not? Do you not feel ashamed of me? Seeing your girlfriend hurting herself despite having everything she could ever want? Are you not angry that I keep on hurting myself?" You kept on blabbering as tears left your eyes "Were you not hurt when you got to know that I hurt myself? Do you not get disappointed when you know that I am just acting happy?"

You heard him sigh as he closed the box after putting everything inside. He got up from his knees as he held your hand in his. "I will never be ashamed of you Y/N. I don't know why you're hurting yourself but all I know that is...I will always be by your side. No matter what. You don't have to pretend to keep on smiling. I also don't want to pretend that I don't know that you're hurting yourself. I want you to know that....when you feel like you want to talk to someone about something that is hurting you....I will always be here. I was hurt and sad when I got to know that you were hurting yourself but not because of you. I was hurt and disappointed that I did not know that you were going through something to the extent you thought of hurting yourself. Having everything does not mean that you have to pretend to be happy....come on now. I bought your favourite food. Let's eat that and go to sleep." Juyeon stood up as he pulled you with him to the kitchen.

Younghoon

Getting out of the washroom you pulled your sleeves down to cover your arms. Entering the cafeteria you searched for Younghoon. Seeing him sitting at the far end of the cafeteria you went towards him as you kissed his cheek when taking a seat beside him.

"What did you order?" You asked once you settled down. "Your favourite. They had soup dumplings today." Younghoon replied as he gave your forehead a kiss. You just smiled slightly at his gesture as you did not speak any further.

Younghoon noticed how awfully quiet you were today. To cheer you up he held your hands in his as he pulled you closer. You flinched at the sudden contact making you push him away from you. Younghoon noticed your behaviour as he gently held your hands again "Is something wrong?" He asked in his usual sweet voice as he held your arms to make you face him. As soon as he held your arms you hissed in pain as you pushed his arms away. "What happened? Did you get hurt? Did someone hurt you?" He asked while he pulled your sleeves up a bit. Immediately stopping midway he stared up at you when he saw the wounds on your arms. Pulling your sleeves down he looked around to check if someone else saw it.

Putting his attention back on you he asked you in a softer voice as he rubbed his thumb on your hand in a comforting manner. "Did someone do this to you..?" Younghoon asked in worry. Shaking your head Younghoon looked at you as he understood that you did this to yourself "Did..you hurt yourself..?" Younghoon asked cautiously as he looked in your eyes with nothing but worry. Nodding your head you let your tears fall down "I...I am sorry. I wanted to tell you about this numerous times but I just couldn't get myself to tell you about this and why I was doing it. I get it if you don't want to date me anymore or if you think that I am a freak. You will now want to break up with me. See this is why-" cutting you off Younghoon hugged you tightly as he patted your back in a loving manner. "Shhh...calm down. I will never break up with you. I love you. I would never leave your side. So what if you're doing this? I know that there must be a reason behind this and I want you to know that...when you feel like you're ready to tell me the reason I will always be here for you with open arms to listen to it. Never think that you're a freak, okay?" He pulled away as he wiped your tears. In the meantime your order also arrived making you both stop the conversation as you both dwelled in your own world which consisted only the two of you.

Kevin

You sat in front of Kevin as you both were having your dinner. It was silent mostly, exchanging words here and there, mostly Kevin. You just gave him short answers.

"I wanted to ask you this...why are you always wearing long sleeved shirts? Don't you feel hot?" Kevin asked out of nowhere making you stop your actions as you stared down at your plate trying to get yourself together before answering. He cannot know the reason behind this. You don't want to burden him. Plus what you’re going through is just something silly. He must be going through something way worse…

"Ah...no I just feel cold nowadays. Nothing much..." you replied quietly as you reached out for the bottle of water across the table not realising that your sleeve rode up revealing your wounds you still had to treat.

"Is...is that? Y/N are you...?" You looked at Kevin in confusion as you followed his gaze. You panicked when you realised that he saw the marks. You immediately pulled your sleeve down as you mumbled "It's nothing. Don't worry.." you went back to eating as Kevin stood up from his chair and walked towards you.

He stood beside you as he gently took your hand in his as he pulled the sleeve up revealing your burn marks. "Are...are you hurting yourself?" He asked in such broken voice that you could not even look in his eyes. "Was it because of me? Did I do something? Is it something else? I am so...so sorry I did not notice you struggling before." Kevin kept rambling making you stare up slightly as you shook your head. "No...no none of this is your fault. Don't blame yourself..." you replied as you held his hands in your. "You know that you can tell me anything right? I am always there for you. If you're not comfortable telling me yet then I will wait but please don't hurt yourself. I...I.." Kevin did not even complete his sentence as he broke down...he came close to you as he hugged you tightly while resting his head on your shoulder.

Jacob

Sitting on the chair which was by the dinner table you poured yourself another glass of beer as you drowned yourself in your own world which was filled with sadness, anger, little to no amount of joy and of course blood.

This was your everyday routine. Coming in the kitchen to drink till you pass out after cutting yourself and then waking up on the table with a paining back and neck just to live your everyday life with a fake smile on your face.

You were so self absorbed in your own world you did not even notice someone entering the room and taking a seat beside you. That was until they spoke up "Hey....you alright? You looked pretty lost there..." you heard the voice say, you wanted to reply but you could not. Hearing no reply the person grabbed your arm where there was a fresh burn and cut. The sudden contact to your hurt skin made you hiss out in pain as you pulled your hand away out of instinct and reflex.

"You alright? Did you get hurt...." The voice trailed off. You looked to your side and saw Jacob sitting beside you. He was staring at your arm with concern and worry written all over his face. Looking down you tried covering and hiding your arm but it was too late. It was already in his grasp as he pulled up your sleeve and stared at your arms.

"Did...you do this to your self?” He uttered out slowly as he grazed his thumb over your wounds. You could not lie to him anymore nor could you get yourself to speak up to him about this so you just simply nodded your head. "Why...? Why did you not tell me? Are...are you not comfortable with me? Do you...not trust me?" Your heart broke when Jacob uttered those words. That was not the reason at all.

You immediately shook your head as you spoke up "No....it's just that...I did not want to burden and worry you with my problems...and it’s not that big of a deal anyways..” you could not even finish your sentence as Jacob hugged you tightly. You could feel your shirt getting wet but that was the least of your worries. "Come. I will dress up your wounds. You can tell me why you did that if you're comfortable with it...and it is a big deal. I don’t know why you think like that but whatever hard time you’re going through never think that your problem is not that important. You’re important to me Y/N..” he pulled away as he softly smiled at you and pulled you up from your seat.

Chanhee

Checking the temperature of the water you sighed as you stared down at your arms and legs which were covered in bruises and scars. Your bruises were still healing so you could not really take a shower or wash your hair since the past few days. Your hair had become so dry and their condition was just not it.

You just stood in front of the shower as you thought about what to do when the door opened and a head peeked inside making you give out a small smile.

"Need some help in washing your hair?" Chanhee asked as he let himself come in the bathroom. He leaned against the basin as he stared at you with nothing but love and affection in his eyes. Despite the bruises and scars all over your body Chanhee never judged you or made you feel bad for it. In fact he did nothing but show you the love and affection he has for you and by also respecting your boundaries and not trying to make you talk to him about things you were not comfortable enough to tell yet. You were just so grateful to him for that.

You nodded at his words as he walked towards you and brushed your hair so that there would not be any tangle when washing them. Leading you towards the bathroom he made your hair wet as he poured some shampoo on his hands and started applying it on your hair.

You started slowly relaxing in his care as you closed your eyes when he started giving a massage to your scalp. Once he was done he washed your hair in lukewarm water and applied conditioner on your ends. When he was done washing your hair Chanhee led you towards the mirror as he started drying your hair.

You just stared at him as he focused on your hair and applying some serum and oil on them once they were dry. "Thank you....for everything." You said in a small voice as you smiled at him. Chanhee just smiled at you "I will do anything for you..." he replied as he combed your hair "No but like...thank you for still loving me despite you know...these bruises..." you mumbled while looking down. Chanhee immediately gripped your chin as he made you look at him in the eyes "I don't care if you have bruises or those scars. I will love you however you're.." you nodded at his words as your eyes welled up in tears "I love you..." you said to Chanhee as you hugged him tightly. He hugged you back as you let his fingers go through your hair in a loving manner while his eyes were closed.

(This is for a special someone~ hope you like it! <3 @haet-sal )

Tagging: @deoboyznet

[womanexile]

Kinda curious...

How Harry Styles Became the World’s Most Wanted Man

Rolling Stone Magazine

BY BRITTANY SPANOS

"In person, Styles looks more like your best friend’s cute, sporty older brother than the gender-bending style icon he’s become. He’s left the boas and sequin jumpsuits in the dressing room, opting instead for a blue Adidas track jacket, gym shorts, and Gucci sneakers. His hair, often described as “tousled,” like he’s a renegade prince in a romance novel, is clipped back with a hair claw, a signature day-off accessory. "

"Those post-Wembley showers were especially gratifying. When One Direction, which Styles casually refers to as “the band,” played the stadium in 2014, he ended up with tonsillitis on the day of the show. “I was miserable,” he recalls. “We played the first one, and I remember I came off, got in the car, and just started crying because I was so disappointed.”

rollingstone.com/music/music-features/harry-styles-harrys-house-dont-worry-darling-my-policeman-cover-1397290/

Lol, her HS description- on purpose? Same person taught TS NYU class too. Pics nice.

Taylor Swift Course Launched at New York University’s Clive Davis Institute

Varety Magazine

BY Jem Aswald

02.22.2022

New York University’s Clive Davis Institute has introduced its first-ever course on Taylor Swift, which launched on Jan. 26 and continues through March 9.

"Taught by Rolling Stone’s Brittany Spanos, the class will cover Swift’s evolution as a creative music entrepreneur, the legacy of pop and country songwriters, discourses of youth and girlhood, and the politics of race in contemporary popular music, according to a rep for the program, who noted that the course has a long waitlist. Swift has been invited to speak to class, although the status of that request is still pending.

Chaired by veteran music writer and musician Jason King, the Davis Institute has included classes taught by Questlove,“Dilla Time” author Dan Charnas, Q-Tip, legendary producer-engineer Bob Power and many others."

She also provided the NYU transcript

Read Taylor Swift’s Inspiring Speech for NYU’s Class of ’22

"Today, you leave New York University and then you go out into the world searching for what’s next. And so will I," superstar says at Yankee Stadium

BY BRITTANY SPANOS

rollingstone.com/music/music-news/taylor-swift-nyu-speech-1355121/

Rolling Stone journalists know a lot more than what they write. They see the things we don’t. But they’ll keep an artist trust so that artists will continue to work with them.

[magicshopaholic]

A Guide to the OCs of the Idolverse (with faceclaims)

This guide to the OCs consists of my personal faceclaims for them. These are not accurate, in that no living person on Earth (that I know of) can replicate the exact images of them I have in mind, but these ladies are pretty close. You can also refer to this post for a more detailed description of their appearance.

If you have different images of them in mind and don't want to ruin those, you can check out the guide without faceclaims. Feel free to picture them as you like - and I'd love to hear your versions as well :)

(I'm also shit at graphic design of any kind so please excuse the super amateur-ish edits; they were just fun to do)

Kaya Madaan is South Asian-American and grew up in the suburbs of Connecticut with her parents. An only child, she lost her father in a car accident when she was in high school and her mother has since never remarried. During her senior year at NYU, a few months before graduation, she was assaulted on campus, an experience she doesn’t talk about but has shaped many future decisions in her life. After completing her masters in London, she moved to Amsterdam to do her Ph.D. during which time she met Namjoon in Seoul while visiting her Korean aunt (her father’s adopted sister) and her family.

She lives by herself in a studio apartment, content with her independence and solitude. Her close friends largely include select people from college and university, and later Taehyung’s on/off girlfriend, Dilara, as well. She tends to be a bit of a workaholic and in the process becomes a bit scatterbrained and ends up being absent-minded about other things. Being the one of the youngest doctoral students in her program, she’s very conscious of coming across as mature and capable. She takes a lot of pride in her intelligence and is not shy about disagreeing with opinions.

(Naomi Scott as Kaya)

Nari grew up in Anyang, Gyeonggi province, as an only child. Sometime in early middle school, she and Seokjin met in the same class and formed a life-long friendship. Her dream as a child was to always become a doctor, though her focus on surgery developed years later when she dated a classmate whose older sister was studying to be a surgeon. She currently works in Seoul as a surgical resident and lives alone in an apartment a block away from the hospital.

While Nari is secure in her skills and her career path, she finds it difficult to devote an equal amount of time to her personal life which sometimes leads to insecurities, especially when she sees her old classmates and other people her age move on with their lives. She also tends to forget to take care of herself when she’s caught up in the chaos of her job, leading to missed meals and an occasionally unhealthy diet of food and alcohol.

(Im Jinah as Nari)

An only child of a business tycoon father and an ex-model mother, Miso grew up in the Gangnam district of Seoul, in the Cheongdam-dong neighbourhood alongside equally wealthy and affluent peers. Her family keeps appearances and status above all else and as a result, Miso attended school with children of her parents’ colleagues and neighbours, most of whom grew up to be heirs and heiresses to businesses and fortunes.

Miso left Seoul for university in Australia, where she spent four years getting her degree in business management and two additional years working various jobs, including bartending and music managing a pub, before she was forced to return to Seoul. She current works as an assistant music producer at Big Hit, where she keeps her parentage and connections quiet.

Miso does not enjoy or show interest in going down the same road as her peers, much to her parents’ disappointment. She makes an effort to distance herself from them as well as her parents’ unhappy marriage, and has since high school earned the reputation of being “unfriendly”, which has continued into adulthood as well.

(Park Sodam as Miso)

Chaeyoung grew up alongside her older brother, Chanyeol, in Gwangju. She lost her mother at a very young age; three years later, her father married Soyeon, whose attempts at building a relationship have been resisted by Chaeyoung. As a result, she spent a lot of her time growing up with her friends and classmates, including her brother and his best friend, Hoseok. While Chaeyoung and Chanyeol were always close as children, they naturally grew apart as they became older.

Chaeyoung currently works at a publishing house as a junior researcher, a job she Ioves. She’s outgoing and charming and enjoys meeting new clients and talent, even if she sometimes feels inadequate and anxious about her performance. Due to her young age and surrounded by so many people older than her, she can tend to be a bit impressionable and prone to be taken advantage of. She lives with a senior from college, Sungmi, who has a questionable social circle but later becomes friends with Sooah, whom she meets at yoga class and looks up to as an independent, single working woman in Seoul.

(Danielle Marsh as Chaeyoung)

Sooah grew up in Busan and later moved to Seoul, the only child of two doctors. She realised as a teenager that her parents' marriage was an unhappy one and sometime during her early teens, discovered that both were having quiet affairs with other people. As a means of escaping her home, she threw herself into extra-curricular activities and her friends circle, choosing to be around people as much as she could. Captain of the girls' volleyball team, Sooah was a popular girl in high school, had a large group of friends and a string of short flings that extended into college and her adult life, the only exception to this being Park Jimin. She currently lives in Seoul and works at an event management firm.

Sooah is confident and outgoing and still maintains an eventful social life, staying in touch with friends from school and college that are now acquaintances. She still harbours insecurities, however, aware of her lack of deep friendships and the reputation she had when it came to dating. She eventually forges a friendship with Chaeyoung, who she secretly admires for being far more put together in her early twenties than she herself ever was.

(Nam Jihyun as Sooah)

Dilara was born in her mother's native country and spent her first few years there before leaving for the UK, due to the stigma she and her mother faced for being and having a child out of wedlock respectively. Her mother met Rudy Komyshan in London when Dilara was in her early teens, and Dilara officially took his surname when she turned fifteen. At a young age, she discovered a love for both dance and racing but eventually chose the latter as her career path. Being in a heavily male-dominated environment, Dilara at times had to prove her worth by going over and above what was expected of her and seeming outwardly tougher to blend in with her peers.

She is the first female F1 driver in the history of the sport and is currently signed with Red Bull, alongside Dutch prodigy Max Verstappen. She sometimes faces unwarranted sexism from journalists and fans of the sport that she is learning to deal with, and copes with the help and support of her friends Lexie (also her trainer), Chris and Fred. Having travelled the world and working closely with people of various nationalities, she has a deep appreciation and interest in different cultures. Dilara is competitive by nature and a bit of a perfectionist, staying for hours on the simulator to perfect every move. She's also a bit of a gym rat, finding it therapeutic to work out alone or with a friend.

(Ananya Panday as Dilara)

Lia grew up in Incheon with her parents and a younger brother. When she was in high school, her parents went through a peaceful and amicable divorce. They were open about the process with their children and didn't hide anything from them, something Lia is forever grateful to them for and since holds communication in the highest regard. Lia was a studious teenager, involved in extra-curriculars and student council activities, as well as a part of the girls' basketball team. She did not give much thought to dating in high school, despite catching the attention of many fellow students. She attended college in Seoul and started working there after graduation, sharing an apartment with her long-time best friend, Dal.

Despite the demands of a corporate career, including the workload and the politics, Lia enjoys her job and is a fast learner. She is able to stay very focused and, like Kaya, doesn't realise her tendency to become a workaholic. She does struggle with stress, especially with the fast-paced environment she works in. This sometimes extends to her personal life as well, despite her efforts to become more laidback.

(Han Sohee as Lia)

~

[daviddshiki]

The Tales of David Dashiki-of an African American Hero- IT'S YOU!

This year is particularly significant to me as I have reached a milestone. It is a joy for David as each year he has to consume tales of my youth. Each Year and Every Year. This is such a special year for me I wanted to do something unique for my son. My thoughts carried me back to my childhood and a special friend who impacted my life in so many ways. I'll call him J J or Johnny. I do not have his family's permission to describe in detail the kind of person he was. Thus, I will not exploit his life. I wanted to chat about my friend to my son. There are insights and much wisdom to describe for our young people. Some months ago, I fondly recalled the life of Johnny and sought the pages of Wikipedia in the hope of contacting him to explain what I intended to do in this year of my milestone. It was then I discovered he died. That inspired me even more so. The day came and the revelations regarding what made Johnny so intriguing flowed non - stop from my heart and mouth.

Afew of you might remember Johnny. If you do please be patient with me. You will not be disappointed. Johnny was a magnet. He was loved by everyone. He made it his private and secret mission to cultivate friendships. JJ loved people. I often said I would need a score sheet to maintain an accurate account of the friends he made on any particular day. In elementary school, he was the chosen monitor. Dressed like a scholarly journalist, he was immaculate, shiny as a brand new quarter and articulate in his speech. When Johnny entered, the whispers permeated that particular classroom. First, the girl chatted about his cuteness. The teacher observed and spoke about his greeting and professionalism in carrying out tasks. He attended Brooklyn Technical High School. Then, the teachers and friends spoke about his scholarship. His academic prowess blazed brighter when he was selected as a full scholarship football player at NYU. A year later, NYU closed its football program. Students and fans cried at its loss. We all worried about Johnny. He, on the other hand, had cultivated so many friendships among students, professors, and alumni that his scholarship continued (and for some others) in a sport which no longer existed at the university. Finally, he changed majors which afforded him the opportunity to coach under the tutelage of his former coach who labeled him a .pisser' because he fumbled in a game which cost his team a victory. The message was clear for all to witness. Johnny did not quit in adversity. He later became the mentee for that same professor and coach. He worked with him until that professor retired and wrote the recommendation which convinced high schools to hire Johhny as their head coach. His subtle charm and integrity afforded him many opportunities to coach in the New York area for many high schools and many years. Johnny was always working. He was always employed and loved, honored and respected in those high octane jobs. Every place he worked, the legend of his character and charisma were engraved into the concrete and green of the campus. No, people did not love him, they adored him. He cherished friendships. Therefore, the unions were mutually beneficial. How did JJ do it? Why would he spend so many days of his life making friends? What I knew and What I witnessed was the wisdom of kings in the hand of a social genius. He worked not for personal gain. He loved people and his honesty in the effort paid him richly throughout his life. Here is my milestone gift wrapped and sealed for your ANXIOUS opening . These jewels you are to know, feel, practice and implement. I call this segment of the presentation...IT'S YOU!

[back-and-totheleft]

"They say wars are to defend democracy and that is a lie"

Oliver Stone has never had a problem saying whatever he wants. That sincerity may even have hurt him at some point in a Hollywood where every statement has to be measured. Stone has always gone against the grain . With his enfant terrible aura about him, he came into an industry full of good kids and turned it upside down. He had been in Vietnam and knew what it was like to truly suffer. All that pain and trauma he took out of his guts in the form of wild scripts like those of Midnight Express and Scarface; and, above all, as a director in films like Salvador or Platoon.

His political activism - including his documentaries interviewing Hugo Chávez or Fidel Castro - have placed him on that list of Hollywood 'reds' along with Jane Fonda or Susan Sarandon. McCarthyism no longer exists, but the industry is always more accepting of someone who stays out of trouble than those who take advantage of their position to change things.

An activism that, in Stone's case, does not come from home. His father worked on Wall Street and Stone even voted for Reagan, as he reveals in his memoir, Chasing the Light (Kultrum Books), where he looks back at the first 40 years of his life. What's in the pages is a review of a life marked by two major events: the divorce of his parents and the Vietnam War, whose wounds continue to throb in him and in the United States. In between, the book is a merciless X-ray of Hollywood, drugs and an industry where he was always a fish out of water. He spoke about all this with elDiario.es by video call.

Why have you decided to publish your memoirs now? I don't know if it was your wish or an offer from a publisher.

No. It was my wish. I wanted to be a novelist when I was young. I wrote this book [pulls out an old copy from his table], A Child's Night Dream, when I was 19, before I became a filmmaker. It was about my life up to that age. I was selfish at that time. What I wanted to know was who I was and I didn't know. I wanted to know where I was. The basic questions that I think we all ask ourselves or should ask ourselves. Socrates already asked himself: “Do you know who I am?” But at 19 years old I was very confused, very depressed at that time because my parents had divorced, and it was a painful divorce because I was an only child and the family was really destroyed. It was much more turbulent than I had been told, and that was quite disappointing.

That took me away from the US for a while. I left Yale University abruptly after a year because I wasn't happy and I wanted to see the world because I didn't know much about it. I went to Vietnam as a teacher and worked there for two school terms. Then I joined the merchant marine and eventually returned to the US. Then I signed up again and then wrote a book. Later, I enrolled again at Yale University, but could not continue. I didn't feel like it and I finished the book. It was rejected, rejected, rejected… And that hurt me. I no longer wanted to be a novelist. I hated that world. Everything came to a head and I returned to Vietnam as a soldier, wanting to discover the truth about who I was. And if not, they would kill me. That's how I saw it. I was very fatalistic, but I survived, I came back and… well, you already know this because I imagine you have read the memoir.

Yes, of course. You then ended up at university, where you had Martin Scorsese as a teacher.

Yes, I ended up at NYU. I had wonderful teachers, including Martin Scorsese. They inspired me a lot with their passion and I realized that I wanted to be a filmmaker and not a novelist. But I never lost my desire to write, so as a screenwriter I tried to shape it. I wrote about eight, nine or 10 scripts over the years and tried to get into the film business that way. And finally I did it.

Reading your memoirs I wonder if, if you had not gone to Vietnam, you would have been a film director. I don't know if there is a direct relationship between those two events.

I write about that in the book. If you're in the jungle and you're a point man, you always have to pay attention and you feel things differently. It's intense. It's in three dimensions. You have to know what is around you. And something like that is what a director feels when he directs. When I was working at NYU, I felt like the camera was like my eyes and that was the world I was describing. I made two short films and and one of them was praised by Marty [Scorsese].

That inspired me to believe I could be a filmmaker, which led me on a nine-year journey of trying to direct, but without giving up writing. At that time, screenwriting was not seen as necessary because of the New Wave. There was a feeling that the scripts could be improvised, which I didn't do. I always respected screenwriters and I don't think that was the case at NYU, which was more of an auteur school. All the young students wanted to be directors.

Your life has been marked by your parents' divorce and the Vietnam War.

I think the divorce affected me more when I was younger, because I thought my parents were happy together, and they weren't. I learned what lies are. I saw that everything was a lie and the lies grew. As you get older, you start to realize that lies are told all the time. I went to Vietnam and the American Government told us lies about that war. They told us that it was a war that the communists caused, that they provoked us and that we were the good guys. And I lived through all that shit and that propaganda. All my life I have suffered from propaganda.

My father was conservative and against the Soviet Union. And I also lived through all that talk that the Soviet Union is about to invade the United States, that they are everywhere, in our schools, our unions… It was all bullshit. Everything was bullshit. But we keep going. The Cold War was an invention to militarize society, to maintain the army, the Navy, the Air Force and to spend the money there. Our economic prosperity is the result of the war. That's all. Some people think not, but that was a myth they sold us. The organizing principle of society is war, as Donald Sutherland says in JFK, and that seems to be true in the case of the United States, but it doesn't have to be like that. But that's how things are. The situation became increasingly worse after World War II. It grew and grew and grew and grew. And now it's a monster. It's a huge monster.

Do you think that the wounds of the Vietnam War are still present in the US and the world today?

Yes, because the US has never told the truth. I think Platoon was one of the first movies that really showed some kind of reality about Vietnam. It showed that it was a much uglier war than people believed. It was racist in many ways. We were fighting people we thought were inferior to us. We had much better technology. We killed many of them, three or four million of them, and many were civilians. Many of us had no regrets about it. And now the US has made some efforts to be Vietnam's ally against China, which is a typical American thing, becoming your friend only when you join us militarily. But it doesn't work that way. Life doesn't work that way.

The scars of Vietnam are there. They were never healed because we go to war again and again. And even when I did Platoon, we attacked Panama illegally and bombed the civilian population to extract Noriega. And then we went to war in Iraq two years later, in 1991. So my life has been opposed to those policies from the beginning. It has gone from bad to worse; and from worse to worse, and still continues. But my position has not changed. Wars are justified by saying that they are to defend our freedom and our democracy... and shit, that is another lie. I fight lies, including the lie that happened when I was young, the Kennedy assassination, another lie. But I didn't realize that until many years later: all that Warren Commission shit about a sniper, one man doing everything.

I found it very funny when in the book he says that when you met Jane Fonda, you thought that you were conservative next to her.

That was in the 70s, and I was in transition at the time, because I had returned from Vietnam and I was changing. When I returned from Vietnam I was not politicized, I was not an activist at all. I just wanted to get away from that. There was a time in the US where we were very polarized. Nixon was the one who did it. I would say that with Fonda… at that time, she was a hero to me. She was fighting against the Vietnam War. And I admired her for it, but of course, I don't know if you've seen my documentary on nuclear energy that I released last year...

Yes, I saw it at the Venice Film Festival.

Well, she is completely antinuclear. I think she is wrong and that she is hurting everyone with that because, if we nuclearized, we wouldn't have a problem with climate change. It's surprising how you can be right about one thing and wrong about another, but I admire Jane Fonda.

In the book you talks openly about drugs and your addictions, yet it's a topic that remains taboo.

Of course, because there is a lot of hypocrisy about drugs for people who enjoy them. They don't talk about it. They are smart because they don't want to go to jail, and countries are conservative on that matter. I have to be honest, because marijuana, cannabis and hashish helped me in Vietnam. They helped me get through that war. We didn't take them on the battlefield, but afterward. I got to know the black soldiers very well, they used them and it helped me remain human. That's very important in a war, because you get depressed. You become more coarse. It makes you meaner. Drugs helped me lighten the load. We had a lot of fun in the rear. We needed to laugh a little. We needed to smile and I will always be grateful for that. I've never denied it.

But then I liked them and took psychedelics. I thought it would be very helpful in raising my consciousness. Mushrooms, psychedelics… all that. But then I got into cocaine, in Hollywood, in 1978, and that wasn't good for me. I got hooked, I became addicted and I didn't like it because I was a slave to it. That didn't help my career at all. It made me stupider. My brain was stupider. Ironically, I later got revenge on cocaine when I wrote Scarface sober. I did the research completely high, but when I wrote it, I quit drugs completely. Well, not completely. But I never became an addict again.

You have mentioned the hypocrisy with the issue of drugs. Do you think that this hypocrisy is also in Hollywood, where everyone consumes them, but there is a double standard towards them?

Of course. But not everyone takes drugs, although some should do it to get the sticks out of their asses (laughs). It's something no one wants to admit. I had problems with the law, but I'm glad I expressed what I feel. I'm honest about it.

In your books, in your interviews, you don't mince words. Has that sincerity harmed you in Hollywood?

Yes. If you talk too much, you're making a mistake in this city and in life in general. My father always warned me about that, but I try to be honest with myself. That's why I wrote the book. I wrote this book and I'm going to write one last book, because this one only goes up to 40 years old. I'm going to write another memoir covering being 40 years old until now. That's all I can do. We only have one life, and it's short, and if you can afford to, it's better to be honest, because not everyone can.

In the book you mention Avatar, and in your list of the 10 best films in history in Sight & Sound you also included it...

The first one is wonderful, very visionary.

I think you say it is much more political than what James Cameron says.

What does he say?

Well, that it's ecological, about climate change, and not so political. 

Well, I can't understand that, because it's clearly a metaphor for the US, and if he says that it's because he doesn't want to piss off anyone. You want to make as much money as possible. You're not going to tell the people of America that it's about the American empire, are you?

In Spain it also happens that many directors say 'my film is not political'.

Already, many say that 'it's just a movie'. What bullshit, you are responsible for your movie.

In the book, you say that your cinema fights against capitalism.

No, I'm not saying that.

I can't tell you the exact page, but I swear it says your first films tried it. 

My father worked on Wall Street. I am a capitalist. I believe in the profit motive. 

Weren't your first scripts against capitalism?

No. I think you're exaggerating. I think Gordon Gekko [the protagonist of Wall Street] was an extreme form of capitalism and that he became evil because he also made money destroying companies. They call it creative destruction and it strengthens companies. But it's also a jungle. Dog eats dog, and sometimes that is very cruel. Capitalism can work if it has regulations. If there is a balance, there is moderation. But when things get out of control, when they become excessive and people live like Gordon Gekko... that's not good. Greed is not good.

Well, I'm going to try to quote a phrase from the book again, I hope I get it right. You say that “no one tells the truth” in this society. 

There is some truth there, but I cannot say that no one tells the truth, because the truth is told, some people say it. But I think I know which part you are referring to. The lie in our culture has its roots in our failure in Vietnam. Give me a second [picks up his edition of the book, looks up the exact passage about the atrocities that were committed in Vietnam and reads it word by word]. I had no idea there was so much death. Cambodia was partially wiped off the map because of our bombs. We really did a Holocaust. At that time there was a Holocaust in Asia. We talk about the Jews in World War II, but we don't talk about the Holocaust we caused in Southeast Asia.

In the book you talk about several scripts that were not filmed, what is the script that you have written and not filmed that you would like to do?

Oh, I'm quite old, that takes away a lot of energy.

You're not that old.

I don't know if I could go out and make that physical effort. I wrote a script, and was actually going to direct a film about the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. I was also going to do a script about Martin Luther King. I worked quite a bit on it. In fact, I worked on many scripts. There are about 10 that I worked on for more than six months. There are more failures than successes in the movie business.

-Javier Zurro, "They say wars are to defend democracy, and that is a lie," ElDiario, Nov 22 2023 (translated)

[steamishot]

redlands

this is the most invested we were for any job opportunity that matt has received since last year. we were thinking, talking and stressing about it for two whole weeks. i was venting a lot to my poor friend K. however, after assessing the contract, we noticed some discrepancies with what was said verbally over the phone. they mentioned the contract was for 2 years, with a 30 day notice for termination; yet, the contract stated 3 years with a 180 day notice. they refused to state exactly how often matt will be working at each of the two hospitals he would be assigned to. when asked about the relocation package, it was like pulling teeth to get an answer. i understand that their company was just bought out by UHG so there may have been some honest misunderstandings - however, the discrepancies didn't sit well with us.

i also work with physician contracts and we spell everything out pretty clearly (including hospital assignments and specific job duties) and are responsive if they have any concerns or questions. in regards to his job search, i learned that i get invested too quickly, create all these scenarios and expectations in my head, and set myself up for disappointment. this was a whole roller coaster ride. in the future, i told matt that he should only apply to larger hospitals, preferably teaching hospitals or kaiser. i am okay with living a bit further away from LA if that means his working conditions would be better. the whole point of taking the NYU job was for it to open doors at other academic settings.

we talked about continuing to do this semi-long distance situation, where i am in LA 3 or so weeks at a time, until he finds something. obviously, it's not my ideal situation. i look forward to the days where we don't hop on a plane as often and can have an easier life. i feel the pressure to move forward with our lives - to get married, settle down, have kids, etc. due to our ages. however, it is all perspective and how i choose to approach a situation. it also helps to hear from older friends that i don't have to be in such a rush. in the grand scheme of things, we're still young and at least are financially stable and moving in the right path. though it is also difficult personally to also not feel like life is "passing us by" because of ties to this medical journey.

living in LA has been detoxing. the quietness, slower paced life, and living with my semi-retired parents and grandma and babysitting my baby niece (who in general have little worries) is like a retreat. i almost have reverse culture shock and feel anxious due to how slow people move here. i need decompression time like this in order to face the hustle and bustle of nyc.

to recap one on year since attendinghood life:

started tracking our finances via ramit's CSP; lots of progress made and we have a positive net worth. matt's catching up in his retirement accounts and HYSA

took countless vacations and small trips to find out that we now prefer the relaxation/nature vacations. we're already overly stimulated in our daily lives and it's not as enjoyable to vacation in another big city. crashed and burned at the 6 month mark as a wake up call

completed my BS in accounting degree (oops, i haven't used it - should look into getting a CPA) and got a promotion whoo

we learned a lot about how to live more mindfully and healthily (still a work in progress). time off > more money - though this is something that matt still struggles with. i really do believe that environment matters so much.

we both benefitted a lot from therapy (still work in progress). though i realize that therapy is almost a replacement for having friends/family and like a band-aid for living in such a stimulating city. it makes sense that therapy is more needed when we are in NYC versus in LA.

MORE friends and social time

lots of hot yoga

lots of stress about job searching in LA

LA stuff

finally getting a transvaginal ultrasound at 4pm today (which i am quite nervous about). i hate getting things inserted into my vajayjay lol, but hopefully this will provide some peace of mind about my feelings of tension

got a haircut in chinatown, and will get my eyebrows done before I&I's wedding

BBQ at someone's house this saturday with my family

lunch with G & M and getting ready at M's place before I&I's wedding

working out at home, and taking walks/mini hikes at elysian park by myself

[talbottoabbott]

I'm glad I exist

“I’m starting to believe that I’ve thought about this - about life - all wrong… I sat in Elsewhere Espresso, started my book and enjoyed the background noise of rain pattering on the plastic roof, general conversion, and I almost teared up at the “sheew” car tires make in the rain. I had forgotten how nice these sounds were. I lost track of time walking back to my apartment and I couldn’t help but think about how much happier, more satisfied with life, in these moments, these tiny moments with tiny details, than I ever have been with major moments in my life. But overall, I realized, I’ve been assuming that to be happy in life I have to be doing something momentous, when I’ve been missing the fact that it’s quite the opposite, that these small glimpses of beauty in mundane life are what make the hardships and disappointments that the major moments in life cause all worth it.”  Journal entry, March 24, 2021.

On March 24th, 2021, 4 years after I had decided to dissolve my commitment to compete college gymnastics for North Carolina, 2 years after I decided to come to NYU, and one year after I started therapy, I had this epiphany. After years and years of being told and truly believing that the only way to be happy was to be successful, this realization rocked my world, and through the next two years whenever I felt the despair creep back in, I would find ways to enjoy the things I knew would always be there: The sound of the car tires “sheew”-ing in the rain. Waking up at 10am on a warm spring day to the smell and sound of the grass being mowed. The smell of a marley floor. The stage of exhaustion where everything is funny. When you and your friend can communicate through the smallest lift of an eyebrow. 

The last two years as I continue to try and come to terms with the big moments of trauma I have from my life before, I’ve lived my life holding onto these little moments, and I’m glad I exist strives to represent the outcome of that struggle. The photographs are snapshots from my life that capture seemingly mundane moments in which I was finding joy in the little things. I strive to capture the connection and spiritual stillness I feel in these moment. Many of the photographs get close to the subjects or even have aspects of the photo cut off to focus on the central feeling the image should provoke, taking inspiration from Fransesca Woodman’s work. The four images of my sister on the grass focus on specific aspects of the experience that contribute to its feelings of simple pleasure, such as the feeling of grass between your toes, the sun hitting your face or stomach, and laying back on a blanket to enjoy a bright day. The few wider shots continue this connection and stillness but are representative of happiness that came from watching other people experience the little moments in life just in the same way, at the same time, that I did. The image of the man picking the flower, for example, came at a time when my sister and I had just been sitting amongst the flowers ourselves, taking in their beauty, and I was thrilled to look over and see another family enjoying the same experience of simple pleasure that I was. 

The photographs are collaged in a journal which extends to become one long page. As the book is opened, the photographs parallel a sort of timeline with each new page adding more to the story, representing how small moments can quickly add up to a life full of happy moments. I’ve titled each of these pages using a section of the poem “The Orange” by Wendy Cope, a poem I feel accurately puts to words my belief in the power of simple pleasures. Its final line reads “I’m glad I exist.” This statement has become an affirmation that I put at the end of each of my journal entries, contrasting the ending of my past journal entries which too often ended with the note “I’m just so fucking tired.”

[bigfan-fanfic]

The House of Love (Aphrodite!Reader x Percy Jackson)

Requested by @operabooknerd68 for  Percy Jackson and his Aphrodite cabin boyfriend just start dating after the bitter break up of Percy and Annabeth and they both started college at NYU. M! Reader is worried that the reputation of the Aphrodite cabin will make Percy assume things about him, because of his sisters, and he has little to no dating and sexual experience and doesn’t wanna disappoint Percy.

Changed it up a little - Percy and Annabeth don't need to have a bitter break up; I feel like they'd be mature enough after a few years of peace to decide mutually they'd be better as friends.

"Hey there, Y/N. I could use a sparring partner, if you don't mind. I, uh, barely trained all year cause school was really beating me up."

Who could have predicted that these would be the words that sparked your relationship with the love of your life.

You had known Percy a while now, since before his relationship with Annabeth began at the end of the Titan War, and since their breakup a few years after the Giant War. Some of your siblings had been disappointed that their separation was mostly-drama-free, but you reminded them that Aphrodite was the goddess of love, not of soap operas.

You spent a lot of time with Percy that summer. He was almost 21, you a year younger, and with so many demigods living to adulthood, he had started a movement to create a Grecian analogue to New Rome, so that other demigods could live in peace, to start families and lives.

It was in the celebration after the ceremony in which Percy broke the ground on the site of the future city of Arcadia that, while walking through the strawberry fields, he kissed you.

"I-I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to do that without ask-!" Percy begins to apologize, but tumbles backwards with you in his arms, as you kiss him hard to continue the outburst of love.

"That was, uh... my first kiss with a guy." Percy chuckles, holding you tight as you both stargaze.

"That was my first kiss with, well... anyone." you sheepishly reply.

"Oh. Well, now I feel even worse about ambushing you like that."

"It's okay. I'm, uh... glad it was you."

Percy smirks. "Can I be your second kiss too?"

"You can be as many of my kisses as you like."

It's a great first night, but once the party atmosphere and the ambrosia wears off, you're terrified.

I mean, Percy's dated Annabeth. The legendary Architect of Olympus. How do you compete with that?

You've never even gone on a date before, let alone... other things.

What if he's disappointed?

Worse, what if he's scornful?

You know he won't be, but it's hard to shake these fears, so you end up retreating whenever you see him, until Percy ends up knocking on the Aphrodite Cabin door.

"Y/N, I know you're in there!"

You step out, appreciative of the concerned glances from your younger brothers and sisters. "Uh, hi, Percy."

Percy frowns, more out of worry for you than annoyance. "Look, I thought we had a nice time last night, you know? If I did something wrong, please let me know. I never want to hurt you."

"I just... I got scared."

"Scared? W-why? I'm not scary, am I?"

You laugh a little. "No, it's not... look, Percy, I'm not... there's a bit of a... Aphrodite kids have a reputation."

Percy raises an eyebrow. "Silena Beauregard nipped that in the bud way back when she became counselor for the Aphrodite cabin. And Piper cut out that 'rite of passage' crap entirely."

"Percy, you were my first kiss! Ever! And I'm still, like... you know, a virgin. I just... I don't want to disappoint you."

Percy laughs. It's a sweet and clear sound, and it's accompanied by a warm hug. "Y/N, do you really think that'd be an issue? That I'm some kind of sex god or something?"

You glance down, your face heating up.

He snickers. "Look, Y/N, I've kissed a total of two girls in my life, not counting my mom and my baby sister, and Annabeth and I never really got around to the sex thing, you know? We just didn't feel the need to do anything more than be around each other. So, yeah, I'm a virgin too. It's not something you need to be ashamed of or worried about. And hey, even if I had had tons of wild and crazy college sex, I'd still want to be with you, okay? Isn't having feelings for each other more important than sex, anyway?"

You kiss him for that and you can feel him smile against your lips.

"So what do you say, Y/N? Wanna be my boyfriend?"

You grin. "Only if you'll be my fourth, fifth, sixth, and so on kisses."

"You got yourself a deal."

[binkszamsstuff]

A touch of pink

Summary: sweet, innocent y/n had her school principal wrapped around her pinky. If only she knew.

Warnings: praise kink. Daddy kink, size kink, sumt. Age gap (reader 18 bucky 35) soft dark bucky! Manipulation

Dark! Soft! Principal bucky barnes x innocent shy reader

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Bucky watched the kids linger in the halls of dexter high school. Some on their way to class others stopped to talk. But one girl out of all of the hundreds of students stuck out to principal barnes: y/n y/l/n, her sweet smile and caring tone. She was dripping in innocence, bucky practically counted the days till she turned 18. And today here she was standing outside his office talking to May one of the office ladies. It was the last day of school, soon buckys favorite girl would go. He hated today, he tried to soak up as much time he could with her. Calling her in his office for random pointless taskes, she never said no "hi! Mr. Barnes! Since it's the last day of school I brought you guys some cookies!" She squealed, her arms full with a tub of her special home made cookies and cupcakes. Bucky loved when she would bring them to school to share with her classmates and teachers. There wasn't one person in the school who didnt like y/n. Yes her cookies where to die for, but that's not the only reason he loved when she would bring them in. When she did bucky would find himself imagining y/n as his little house wife.

Her coming in to his work to bring him cookies and to spend lunch with him. Bucky was in love with the young girl -no it was more then love. Possessive over her obsessed with y/n, he knew his time with her was running thin. He needed her to stay in the small town they called home, make her stay and not let her run off to college. And he knew the perfect way.

"Oh my little bunny, these are my favorite" he said before he took bite of the vanilla cupcake. Bucky let out a long moan as he chewed, y/n's cheeks going red did not go unnoticed by bucky. "Thank you" she said bashfully. Bucky set the cupcake aside for a moment while he took his plan into motion.

"Y/n my dear where are you attending college?" He asked in a cold and stern tone that he knew made y/n feel like she did something wrong. Such a innocent and gullible girl, she blindly trusted him -and he loved it. "U-um NYU sir" said y/n her voice shaky with the fear of disappointing him.

She didnt know why principal barnes had such an effect on her, it's not like he's her parent or anything. She didnt know why she craved to satisfy him so much, but she did and she knew that the feeling would never go away.

Bucky couldn't and wouldn't have his lovely little bunny hop away from him. She was his, he would make her his, every day of the week for the rest of time body and soul all for him.

"Y/n after school today I'd like if you could meet me in my office"

🌸

Y/n sat there all day trying to keep her cool, she couldn't help but feel anxious about why principal barnes wanted her to stay after school in his office. The clock hit 2pm the other students with smile on their faces ready for summer, y/n too but she was more focused on her meeting with the principal. She and bucky have been 'friends' since her freshman year after she was his T.A. she knew school stuff wasn't really supposed to get that close to the students but principal barnes told her many times that it was 'fine' and 'okay' that they continue their close friendship.

There y/n stood outside his door, taking a deep breath then pushing the door open to reveal bucky sitting at his desk. "Hi, principal barnes" said y/n in a shy tone. Y/n was prepared for the worst, ready for him to say something horrid. Even though she knew she did nothing wrong his gaze on her made her feel small. Like a bear and a bunny. "Hi bunny, how was your last day?" He asked in a dry tone.

"Good" she squeaked. "Good I'm glad, come here little bunny" he patted his leg. Y/n froze she was inteirly confused. "What?" His beautiful blue eyes were filled with a dark deep passion: lust, power, hunger, her

"I said come here" he stated once again cold and unforgiving. Y/n quickly made her way to him sitting on his lap, bucky griped her hips, his soft plump lips met her neck and jaw kissing up and down. "U-um principal barnes this isn't okay" she mumbled scared. "My baby, you dont call me principal barnes anymore you call me daddy..dont worry your pretty head it's okay." .

Bucky hit y/n's sweet spot in her neck, causing her to moan out. Buckys cock hard and needy for his flower.

"You ever been touched like this bunny" y/n swallowed a thick wad, "no, never" bucky smirked, god she was just perfect for him, all his to take and love. He turned her around where she was now straddling his lap, bucky lifted her skirt pulling her panties to the side. Pulling his cock out he slowly put his tip in her dripping wet hole. Both of them moaning out "its gonna hurt sunshine but soon it'll feel good. Daddy promises" all she could do was nod her head. Her pussy stretching with every inch of him, bucky let her adjust to his monster size. He was balls deep, she felt even better then he imaged.

With slow and soft thrusts the pain went away and was replaced with pleasure. "Ohh that feels good" y/n squealed moaning his name over and over again. "Oh baby.. FUCK you feel so good for daddy. This pretty pussy his mine do you understand. You and this pussy belong to me." he stated picking up his pace her moans louder and louder. "Yes daddy, I understand..AahhhHHAAHhh" her moans and screams made bucky so horny for her even more.

Her warm wet cunt bouncing on his dick. Bucky quickly took off her top. her boobs bouncing in his face, he took her right tit in his mouth her moans and short breath telling him she liked it. he sucked and sucked on her hard nipples, going back and forth between the two. He couldn't wait till she was swollen with his baby, boobs heavy all for him and his child. He couldn't wait suck her sweet milk while fucking her into their bed. The home they would share.

"Oh you like that bunny, your my good girl you know that. Do you know that your daddy's good little bunny" bucky words made y/n feel that coil in her snap her orgasm washing over her. Her pussy squeezed and clenched around him, "ohh god baby, I'm cumming" buckys white hot cum shooting in her dripping down her thighs.

"Oh baby you did so good for me" bucky kisses her forehead lovingly, "thank you daddy" y/n laying on his chest trying to catch her breath.

🌸

3 months later...

"Bucky, I'm pregnant" buckys plan had worked he would spend all summer making her fall in love with him then by the end right before she was about to go away for college he would knock her up insisting that she stay and mother his child marry him and stay. And y/n did because she loved bucky with all her heart, that summer was the best thing to ever happen to the both of them. So she stayed got married to him and birthed a happy little girl.

The small town went crazy about the news about the young Innocent beloved y/n pregnant with the principals child. But they didnt care they let them talk because they loved eachother, because bucky owned y/n body, soul, and mind he could never let her go and he didnt. So there they lived in a nice White House with a big backyard and little kids running around and their sex life was only getting better with time just like their love for one another.

The end

This stories ending was rushed I will go back and make it longer/edit it. I just thought y'all would want it now🤷‍♀️ okay love you!

[mypoisonedvine]

Tattletale | (dark)stepbrother!Sam Wilson x reader

summary: your step-brother was kind enough to let you stay at his apartment just off-campus when you began your freshman year of college where he was a senior.  unfortunately, his kindness ran out when he learned about your secret side-hustle.

word count: 4.7k

warnings: smut!! (noncon/heavy dubcon and stepcest, they’re not biologically related but were raised from adolescence as siblings), facefucking, slapping, choking, degradation, coercion, DP (with a toy), anal play, possessive behavior, unprotected creampie, lots of crying/implied dacryphilia

this is a dark fic containing triggering topics, please do not read if this would be triggering for upsetting for you in any way.

Your step-brother (and roommate… and technically your landlord) wasn’t usually home when you got back from your Econ class, so you jumped a bit when you saw him nursing a beer in your shared living room; apparently, he was waiting for you.

“Hey, Sammy,” you greeted sheepishly, suddenly feeling self-conscious when his eyes raked over your body— it was hot out, so you just had on a tank top and cut-off shorts, but now you wish you’d covered up more.

“Hey,” he nodded back, setting the beer down and leaning back on the couch, “you got time to talk for a minute?”

His tone made you a little nervous, but his casual body language set you at ease.  He probably just wanted to ask if you could stay somewhere else over the weekend so he could have a girl over, or maybe he needed your help with one of his more difficult assignments— though frankly, you probably couldn’t help much with a senior-level project.  “Sure,” you shrugged, setting your backpack down and slipping off your shoes to join him on the couch.  “What’s up?”

“Nothing, really, I just feel like we don’t talk as much as we used to,” he explained with a little sigh.  Something about the way he glanced to the side for a moment made you wonder if he was being completely transparent.  “Remember when we were younger and we talked all the time?  Or when I moved away to start here and we called every day?  I miss that…”

You smiled a little, moving closer on the couch to rest your hand on his.  “Me too,” you admitted.  “I just figured you saw me as your annoying little sister.”

“I do,” he laughed, “but, you know, we used to be really close!  You used to tell me everything.  And now… now I don’t think you tell me everything.”

Your suspicion that this was more directed than he let on was growing, but you wanted to be close again, too, so you let it continue.  “Well, we’re older now so it’s not quite the same…”

“I guess it’s normal for siblings to grow apart when they’re adults, but, I don’t know… I guess I just didn’t see it coming with us.  And now that I’m letting you live here I thought it would be like old times; to be honest, that was part of why I had you move in in the first place.”

Just as you started to shift away, he flipped his hand and grabbed your wrist, stopping you from pulling away.  “Sammy,” you whispered in shock, leaning back as much as you could even as he moved in closer.

“I think it’s the least you can do to be honest with me, sis,” he hissed.

“I— I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you protested, your gut sinking in fear of being reprimanded by him.  He was so friendly 99% of the time, but you were still terrified of those few memories you had of him getting angry with you.  Disappointing him was one of your greatest fears.

Sam laughed, but he didn’t exactly seem amused.  “Stop playing dumb, honey, I think you know what this is about.”

“I… I don’t…” you stammered, your heart dropping further when he reached for his phone.

“Got a text from Steve today,” he explained as he unlocked it.  “Wanna guess what it was?”

You swallowed dryly, more sure than ever that it was what you dreaded most.  “I don’t know, Sam…”

“I’ll give you a hint,” he grimaced, reading something from the screen.  “Kinky virgin horny for cock, 18, freshman at NYU.”

You looked away but he instantly grabbed your face and turned you to look at him.  “You know, I let you live here while you were in college so you could get an education.  Not be a fucking slut.  Did you think I wouldn’t find your OnlyFans?  Steve found it first, god knows what he did with these pictures before he sent them to me.  Is this what you wanted?  Any guy— even a guy we know— to get off to these pictures?”

Your shoulders slumped and your chest deflated as you started to cry.  “I’m s-so sorry, Sammy—”

“Don’t call me that,” he sneered.  “How stupid are you?  Did you think these would stay private?  Guys trade these all the time, they’re never secret for long.  How long have you been doing this, huh?  Must’ve been a while considering the sheer magnitude of content.  Looks like your first post was on your 18th birthday— Jesus fucking Christ, you couldn’t wait a minute could you?  I was there that day… when did you sneak off to take this little number, huh?”

You didn’t want to look as he turned the phone to you, but his hand tight around your wrist was a reminder not to struggle too hard.  You remembered taking the photo, and it had been during your party.  The idea of how wrong it would be to strip down in your parent’s bathroom to snap a picture in the mirror had only been more encouraging at the time.  For some reason you hadn’t considered that someone would find it; you cringed at the idea that Steve saw you entirely nude, let alone your brother.  It was humiliating.

“And what about this one, huh?  How fucking slutty are you?” he spat, pulling up another picture and shoving the phone in your face as you were confronted with the image of you on your bed with your legs spread, fingers toying with your clit.  “You really don’t leave anything to the imagination.”

“Sam, I didn’t— you weren’t supposed to—”

“Just stop talking.  I can barely look at you right now,” he shook his head.  “This stuff is seriously depraved, sis.  The idea of all these guys drooling all over my little sister… and you actually encouraged them, the fuck is wrong with you?”

Tears poured down your face, and you felt like the anger radiating off of him would burn your skin somehow.  

“And don’t give me some stupid fucking sob story about how you’re doing this to pay for school when I know damn well that mom and dad pay for your classes and I pay your fucking rent.  You didn’t do it for money; you did it for fun.  You did it ‘cause you’re a shameless fucking slut.”

“‘M not,” you denied, “Sam, really— I’m still a virgin, I don’t— you know I don’t do that.”

“You just fantasize about it.  And chat with strangers online about it.  And make videos going on and on about how bad you wanna get fucked.”

You shuddered as you realized: “You watched one of my videos?”

He grinned and pulled you closer.  “Baby… I watched all of them.”

Completely at a loss for words, you silently tried to squirm away only for him to wrap his other arm around you and pull you closer, ignoring your sobs of fear and confusion.

“You’re actually sorta talented, for a dumb little virgin who had no idea what she’s getting herself into,” he purred against your ear, starting to push up your tank top.

“N-no,” you whimpered, “Sam, stop— I’m sorry.  I’ll delete the account, I’m sorry.”

“Too late for apologies, little sis,” he cooed, “it’s not just the account.  It’s that you made those posts from my apartment, you took those pictures in the room that I gave you.  Not to mention the way you walk around in these tight clothes, teasing me just because you can.  This goes way deeper than a few dirty pictures, sweetheart, and you know it.”

When you tried to wriggle away again, he seemed to exert nearly no effort at all to be able to spin you around and pull you down into his lap, where the shape of his hard cock pressing against your ass was obvious.  “Sam, s-stop, this isn’t funny.”

“Damn right it isn’t funny, I’m dead fucking serious,” he growled against your ear.  “What was it that you said in your most recent video, the one where you were wearing a collar and using that gaudy pink vibe on your clit?  ‘I need your cock to ruin my hole, daddy’... am I remembering that right?”

Hesitantly, you nodded, and he laughed darkly against your ear as he pulled your hips into his.  

“Say it, then.  Like you said it in the video.”

“Sam, no—” 

“No?” he repeated incredulously.  “You can’t say no to me, honey.  Cause if you do, I’m gonna send all these pictures and videos to mom and dad, tell them all about how their precious little angel is selling her ass on the Internet with the phone they pay for and the laptop they bought.  What are they gonna say to that?  Think they’ll take you back after that, let you stay with them when I kick you out?  As if.  So unless you think one of these creeps online is gonna give you a place to stay, seems like I’m your only option.”

You choked on a sob as you cried harder, hating that he was right.  

“So you need to start doing what you’re told, or you’re gonna end up doing a lot worse with someone much less generous than me, got it?”

Terrified of him but unable to imagine the alternative, you nodded.

“Then.  Fucking.  Say it.”

“I…” you began, sounding weak and weepy compared to the original video you were quoting, “I need your cock… to ruin my hole… daddy.”

“Eh, needs improvement but it’s a start,” he shrugged, throwing you down onto the couch and climbing on top of you.  When you tried to protest, or at least turn around to face him, he slapped your ass harshly and it stung even through the denim shorts.  “I have needs too, sis.  Can’t hardly get any when you’re here all damn day being a fucking cockblock.  And frankly, since you started dressing like this and acting like a whore, I haven’t even been able to think about anybody else… can’t get hard for anyone but my slutty little sister.”

He leaned down to press his body against yours, pinning you against the cool leather by your shoulders.  

“Steve told me about your account weeks ago, babe… I’ve been getting off to your cute little pictures ever since.”

It made you wince, but it made him laugh.  Shame and fear and disgust swirled in your gut and made you nauseous, his grip on you tight enough to leave a bruise as he dug his fingertips into your skin.  When he sat back up, he started pulling at your jean shorts roughly, ripping them slightly as he shoved them down to your thighs.

“Wow, look at this pretty little ass,” he groaned.  “A thousand guys have seen it, but it’s better in person.”  He slapped you again on either cheek, hard enough to make you yelp.  “What’s the matter, sis, I thought you liked being spanked?  You talk about it all the time.  You talk about how you want me to spank you raw and leave marks all over your body, hurt you and break you and claim you.”

“I— I wasn’t talking about you,” you defended, remembering how you always addressed the viewer when dirty talking in your videos, but keeping it generic enough that any guy could imagine it was him.

“Then who did you think about when you got off?  Who was it that got you wet for your videos?” he pressed.  “Because you’re wet right now… and I’m the only one here.”

You shook your head, you tried to speak to deny it, but words escaped you as he flipped you around and hovered above your face.

“Do you get wet for anybody, baby, is that it?  Will you spread your legs for any cock?  Or do you just have a special place in your cunt for your big brother?”

Your stunned silence earned you a slap to the face, sending your head spinning to the side as your cheek stung and burned.  Just as the heat of the impact really started to get to you, he hit you on the other side, and again, until you finally gave him an answer: “You!” you yelped suddenly.  “You, Sam, just you!”

He laughed a little, leaning down and capturing your lips in an unexpected, dominating kiss.  It was awkward and sloppy, exactly the sort of kiss one would expect when it was forced; just as passionless and confused on your end as a kiss to your step-sibling should be.  But he moaned against you and forced his tongue deeper into your mouth, hands coming down to grope your tits through your tank top and bra.  Trying to push him away was beyond useless, and he slapped you again without even breaking his lips away from yours.  Soon he was reaching to pull down your top— no, wait, he was tearing through it, and your bra snapped like a rubber band against his strength.  When he grabbed your breasts again, without any clothing in the way this time, your nipples were hard and sensitive between his fingers; it was so obvious that he smiled into the kiss, biting your lip playfully.  “Wow, you really do like this.  Your step brother’s forcing himself on you and you’re such a whore that you’re actually into it.”

He slapped your breast, just hard enough to sting, and you cried out; he did it again and your back arched.

“Yeah, I knew you just needed to be put in your place, little sis.  Just needed me to fix your attitude, that’s all.”  He wrapped his hand around your neck, not squeezing enough to cut off airflow but obviously threatening it, before leaning down to whisper in your ear: “get on the ground, on your knees.”

Even for what was left of your virginal innocence, you knew what he wanted.  Wordlessly, your only sounds the weak little sobs that shook your chest, you slipped out from beneath him and onto the floor by the couch.  He shifted to sit in front of you with wide legs, thick thighs spread as he looked down at you with an expression of anticipation.  

“Get on with it, honey, I know you know how.  Seen you choke on your toys a thousand times.”

After taking a stabilizing breath to cope with what was happening, shivering from the cold air on your exposed upper half, you sat up slightly and reached for his belt.  You’d felt it pressed against you before, but now you could see the shape of his cock threatening to burst out of his jeans, so thick and long that you were confident he heard the little gasp you let out.  And yet, you knew you had to trek forward, so you began to unclasp his belt before unzipping his fly.  He lifted his hips to help you pull his pants and boxers down, but other than that he was too busy stroking the side of your face with his fingers in a move much too delicate for the situation.  You stopped breathing for a second when you saw the size of him, his cock bouncing up when you released it to slap against his stomach.

“Sam, I can’t,” you sighed, starting to back away, “I’ve never— it won’t fit.”

“Nah, baby, it’s okay,” he encouraged gently, pulling you closer, “you can take it just fine.  Just open your mouth, sis…”

He guided the tip of his cock between your lips, still swollen from his bruising kiss, and you whimpered when you felt his warm skin against your tongue, tasting the salty pre-cum that leaked out slow and steady.

“Yeah, just like that, now go ahead and suck on me,” he instructed, groaning when you closed your lips and hollowed your cheeks, using your tongue to tease the slit like you’d read online was a good thing to do.  He chuckled and bucked up into you, holding your head as he started to pump his hips and slowly fill your mouth to the brim.  “See, you can do it— now choke on it.”

When he pushed in until you gagged, your first instinct was to push on his thighs and try to get away for air, but he held you down as he hissed through his teeth.

“I know you can take all of me in your throat if you just stop fucking fighting,” he hissed, slapping you one more time which caused your throat to open up in shock— and it was just enough for him to shove in deeper, groaning at the feeling.  “Yeah, that’s it… fuck…” he sighed, moving his hips faster.  The struggle for air made your eyes water (although you hadn’t really had much of a chance to stop crying in the first place) as your grip on his thighs tightened.  “I bet your pussy is getting so wet for me right now,” he chuckled, “I bet you love choking on my cock, huh?”

You tried to shake your head but you couldn’t really move much; he pulled you off of his length by your hair, just in time to give you a much-needed sputtering gasp for air.

“Fuck, I’d love to fill that pretty throat with my come,” he smiled— a sinister sort of grin that made you shudder as you looked up with him, feeling spit and pre-cum on your lips and chin— “but I know what you want.  Since you’ve spent all year begging to lose your virginity on the internet, I figure I’ll be nice and give you what you’ve been asking for.”

Before you could even begin to consider a response to that, he hoisted you up and threw you back onto the couch, spreading your legs as you looked away in shame.

“Yep, I was right, you’re fuckin’ soaked,” he laughed.  “You nasty little slut, are you actually getting off on this?  Wow.”

A renewed sense of ‘dear god this cannot happen’ shot through you as he leaned down and slid his cock over your folds, teasing your clit with his swollen head.  “Sam, stop, please…”

“I’m kind of getting tired of you begging,” he hissed as he leaned down, glaring right into your eyes as you froze beneath him.  “I’m obviously not going to stop,” he explained as his hand slipped around your throat, “you dumb fucking bitch.”

Your ability to fight back was taken with your opportunity to breathe, his strong fingers cutting off blood flow to your head quickly as he clamped down on your neck.  Instantly you clawed at his hand, your vision starting to go a little spotty, and he laughed at you coldly before letting go.  And when he finally did, his hand moved instead to hold both your wrists above your head while the other guided his cock into your pulsing entrance.  When he pushed his hips forward, the air was punched from your lungs as your back arched, a sharp pain reverberating over your body from the stretch of him inside you.

“Fuck!” he groaned, pushing in deeper, slow but consistent.  “You’re tight, baby, you really did need a cock to ruin this hole, huh?  Fuck, ‘m gonna, just hold still…”

But how could you hold still, when every instinct had you moving your hips to try to push his cock out, your hands tightening into fists as they tried to fight against his strength.  Of course, now that he was inside, he had a second arm to hold you down with, but the terrifying thing was that he really only needed the one.  “Sam!” you sobbed, your own voice sounding foreign with the way it wavered and cracked.

“Yeah, baby, that’s me inside you,” he purred, “that’s your big brother’s cock tearing up this little pussy…”

When he roughly shoved the rest of himself inside, the tip of his cock found the end of you and your eyes shot open.  He smiled down at you as he examined your face; twisted in pain, and glistening with tears turned greyish-black by your mascara.

“None of your toys ever went this deep in you before, huh?  Poor thing, should’ve known you were all talk… you don’t even know how to take those big cocks you drool over.  I can’t even imagine what you’ll be like when I put this in your ass.”

He cackled at the pure terror that danced over your expression, and the way your walls tightened around him briefly.  

“Relax, sis, not today.  I’m just sayin’, if you want me to keep my mouth shut to mom and dad, you’re gonna have to keep me happy.  Lucky for you, I’m very happy right now, snug inside this sweet little cunt of yours…” he trailed off, leaning down to kiss your cheek and moving to suck on your ear, bite your neck, lick up and down over your pulse.  He was waiting, you realized, for your body to relax so he could move inside you with less resistance.  You were a little surprised he didn’t just jackhammer into you with no regard for your pain, but you had a feeling that part was coming soon anyways.

He reached down to pull your legs up, guiding them to wrap around his hips, and the new angle forced his cock a little deeper which made you squeal.  The sound morphed into a stuttered moan, however, when he pulled back out of you slowly, savoring every detail of your walls as he sighed against your skin.

When he slammed back home, your nails dug into your own palms.

“Baby,” he whispered, “you’re close, aren’t you?  Just from this.  You always came so fast in your videos…”

Irritatingly, he was right; your walls were flexing as more slick coated his thick shaft, dripping down until you could hear the wetness whenever his hips slapped into yours.  You couldn’t help it, considering how he pushed right into your g-spot with every stroke inside you, hitting every sensitive place harder and better than any toy ever had.

“See, baby?  We were made for each other,” he cooed.  “You were made to take this cock.  You were meant to be my little fucktoy.”

You hated the way his words only added to your pleasure, pushing you right up to the edge— which his cock slamming all the way into you one last time finally sent you over.

“Oh, fuck,” he gasped when he felt the force of your orgasm, smiling pridefully as your eyes fluttered shut and your head fell back against the couch.  “So sensitive, sweetheart, and so fucking wet for me…”

He fucked you faster and— somehow— deeper, chasing his own release with aggressive thrusts into you.  Each of his low grunts against your ear sent shivers down your spine, your legs around him tightening to pull him closer.

Just as you thought he might find his rhythm for a while and maybe, if you were lucky, be finished with you soon, he pulled out quickly and patted your thigh.  “Hands and knees, baby,” he instructed, watching you shakily turn around and lift yourself on weak arms.  It was short-lived, though, as he pushed your face back down into the couch cushion, forcing your back into a dramatic arch that made you feel like your body was on display for him.  As if that wasn’t nerve-wracking enough, you couldn’t even see him much anymore, which meant you had no idea what he was reaching for when he leaned back— but you heard what it was when he turned it on.  “Oh, you recognize this?” he mused.  “It was my favorite of everything I saw you use.”

He rubbed the vibrator over your folds slowly, chuckling a little when you jolted each time it brushed against your clit.  You didn’t really understand why he would want to fuck you with a vibe when he seemed to have been enjoying doing it himself; but then he slid it up a little higher, to your other hole, and you gasped.  “S-Sam,” you pleaded.

“I know you took it here before.  I watched you do it.  I even heard you the night you filmed it— these walls are thinner than you think, sis.”

Shame burned on your face as you imagined him listening to you put something up your ass for the first time, only for him to see the video the next morning when you uploaded it.

“Do you think it’s gonna feel different when I put it in while I fuck you?” he mused, pushing the vibrating tip of it into your hole.  Thankfully it was pretty slender, so the stretch wasn’t bad, but the vibrations were strong enough that you could feel them everywhere, and you realized he would be able to feel them, too, while he was inside you.  “You’re gonna be so fuckin’ full, sis, stuffed to the brim just like you wanted.”

He pushed the toy in deeper until your hands clutched at the sofa beneath you, which was apparently his cue to guide his cock back into your drenched pussy.  Just as he promised, you felt so full that you had no idea how to cope with it, your legs shaking as you tried not to collapse beneath him.

“Fuuuuuck,” he groaned, moving himself and the toy at alternating paces inside you as you mindlessly drooled onto the cushion, your overstimulated body barely able to handle the sensations he was forcing upon you.  “You like being my little fucktoy, don’t you?  You’re so pretty like this, so pretty being used just like you deserve.”

“Sammy, please,” you sobbed, barely intelligible as you couldn’t really string your thoughts together anymore.

“You want more, huh?  Needy little slut,” he snarled, but the way he said it almost sounded like a compliment.  It certainly made your heart swell as if it was.  He fucked you faster, then, and pushed the vibrator as deep into your ass as it would go until you were sobbing and blubbering and basically just a complete mess beneath him.  “Keep squeezin’ me so tight and I’m gonna come inside you, sweetheart,” he moaned.

Some part of your brain was still aware enough to know that that was not a good idea, but you didn’t even really think to tell him not to because you knew he would anyway.  Finally, you had accepted that he was going to do whatever he wanted with you and your resistance only brought out his crueler side.  

“Fuck, come again for me,” he demanded, “come on my cock while I come inside you— that’s it, cream on my fucking cock while I fill you up, slut.”

It was jarring, the way his words suddenly knocked you over the edge again as you cried out, fresh tears filling your eyes and joining the damp spot beneath your face on the couch.  You felt both your holes clenching around the intrusions he had filled them with, your head going fuzzy and your limbs going numb from the intensity of your peak; waves of warmth washed over you as you slumped down a little bit, the distant sound of his praises just barely reaching your ringing ears.

His free hand held your hips tightly while the other kept pumping the vibrator into you, and even through all the overwhelming stimuli going on at the moment, you could feel his cock beginning to flex deep inside you.  Each pump of his come painting the deepest parts of you coincided with a low moan from him, the sound so cruelly perfect and forcing your channel to clamp down on him, weakly, one last time.

“Fuck, baby…” he groaned as he caught his breath, turning off the vibrator before slowly pulling it out of you and tossing it aside.  He kept his cock inside for longer, though, as he rubbed your ass and back gently.  “You’re gonna be such a good little fucktoy for me, sis, I just know it.”

He let you drop when he pulled out of you, your spent body limp and leaking on the couch as he stared down at you.

“I think you need a shower, sweetheart,” he chuckled.  “But first, you need to give me the password to your OnlyFans so I can help you delete it, okay baby?  We don’t need anybody else looking at what’s mine.”

[swanlake1998]

Article: For transgender dancers, progress can't come fast enough

Date: March 8, 2020

By: Avichai Scher

Sean Dorsey was tired of being the only transgender dancer in the room. So he took the bold step of starting his own company, the San Francisco-based Sean Dorsey Dance, and become the first openly trans director of a full-time dance company. It was a milestone for transgender and gender-nonconforming dancers and choreographers, and Dorsey hoped it would lead to a more inclusive dance world.

The company is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year, yet Dorsey remains the only openly trans artistic director of a full-time dance company in the country.

“We’ve definitely made progress since I started, when there was really no context for institutional or social support of trans dancers,” Dorsey said. “But there’s still a major lack of representation across the dance world.”

Dance, especially older forms such as ballet and modern dance, is mostly structured around strict gender lines. While the growing acceptance of transgender people in the United States has extended somewhat into the art form, trans dancers are often forced to choose between being their authentic selves and career opportunities.

Issues start in training

Dorsey’s choreography often deals with trans issues, and he is committed to being an advocate in the dance world for transgender people. But even in his own company, Dorsey is the only trans performer.

“In San Francisco, at least, I don’t have the luxury of holding an audition for trans dancers,” he said. “There just aren’t very many at the professional level.”

Dorsey said this is largely because barriers for trans and gender-nonconforming dancers start at a young age — as most training programs are gender-specific.

Jayna Ledford, 19, made headlines when she came out as transgender in an Instagram post in 2018. She was studying at the Kirov Ballet Academy at the time, a traditional ballet program in Washington, D.C. It was the first time a dancer at an acclaimed ballet school had publicly come out as trans.

Classes at Kirov, like most ballet conservatories, are generally separated by sex assigned at birth, and when students are combined, teachers offer different steps for men and women. Ledford, however, found ways to get the training that matched her gender identity, including dancing on her toes in special pointe shoes, which is done almost exclusively by women and requires unique training.

“I wanted to do what the females were doing,” she said. “I’d do it on the side and not pay attention to what the guys were doing. I’d also stay after class and practice pointe technique with my female friends.”

She hadn’t had the training other females at the school had, but she was hoping to transfer from the men’s program to the women’s.

“I knew I had a lot of catching up to do in terms of pointe work,” she said. “But just being in the room with the females, that’s what I wanted.”

The Kirov Academy told Ledford she could not join the women’s program unless she physically transitioned. Ledford was not ready for that, so she left the school. She was disappointed but now says she understands the academy’s position. The school confirmed Ledford’s account but declined to comment.

Maxfield Haynes, 22, who is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns, said the large, prestigious ballet school where they trained was not supportive of someone presenting as male wearing pointe shoes.

It wasn’t until Haynes enrolled at Tisch School of the Arts at New York University that they were able to explore the more feminine aspects of ballet technique. Ledford also found higher education to be more supportive than a conservatory. She now studies at Montclair State University and practices pointe technique daily.

Lack of professional opportunities

After NYU, Haynes chose to dance with Complexions Contemporary Ballet partially because the company is explicitly supportive of gender fluidity, and even had a specific role for Haynes that is gender-nonconforming. In the David Bowie tribute piece, “Stardust,” Haynes dons pointe shoes and was partnered with male dancers.

“It was everything I could have dreamed of,” Haynes said of the role. “As nonbinary, I like to get to show all aspects of gender. I don’t think about dancing like a man or a woman, just myself.”

Opportunities to dance roles that are gender-nonconforming are rare in the concert dance world, even if dancers are becoming more open about being gender-nonconforming in their offstage lives. And those who want to physically transition face a stark choice, as none of the major dance companies in the U.S. currently have openly transgender dancers on their rosters.

Alby Sabrina Pretto recently made the difficult choice to begin physically transitioning with hormone replacement therapy at the expense of her performing career. She was a dancer with Les Ballet Trockadero de Monte Carlo, an all-male comedy troupe, for eight years. While she got to dance in pointe shoes, the style of the company is rooted in the comedy of men portraying women, which ultimately wasn’t how Pretto identified.

“There were moments I wanted to do things like a ballerina would and be ethereal and pretty,” Pretto said. “To dance like a woman.”

She knew that physically transitioning would mean she could not continue with the company.

“I wanted to have a career, and that slowed down my decision to transition,” Pretto said. “I waited until I felt like I had done what I wanted to do there.”

Liz Harler, general manager of Les Ballet Trockadero, said in a statement that transitioning does not disqualify dancers from the company.

“Dancers who expressed interest in transitioning to female have been told that their job would not be in jeopardy, though none have chosen to do so while continuing with the Trocks’ rigorous dancing and touring schedule,” Harler said.

Both Ledford and Pretto hope for the day when they can attend an audition and be hired without having to explain their gender identity.

Ledford said. “I’ll audition as any other woman. If I get in, then I’ll sit down and talk with them.”

Ledford is “optimistic” that this can happen in the next few years, but Pretto isn’t so sure.

“I am not naive, I know I cannot just audition for a major ballet company and join the female corps de ballet,” Pretto said. “But I would love for that to happen for me. It’s the ultimate dream.”

Her skepticism is partly based on the experience of her former Trockadero colleague, Chase Johnsey, who is gender fluid. He made headlines in 2018 when he was cast in a female ensemble role in the English National Ballet’s production of “Sleeping Beauty,” though it was not on pointe, and the heavy costume concealed his body. No additional female roles came his way afterward.

The question of who gets opportunities as a dancer often comes down to the taste of directors and producers and what they imagine their audiences want to see, not just ability.

Pretto danced a couple of character roles recently with Eglevsky Ballet, a growing ballet ensemble on Long Island, New York. The director, Maurice Brandon Curry, said he would consider Pretto for a female ensemble role next year, because her pointe work is “excellent,” though he wonders how some in the audience will react.

“Casting Alby in a female role would not be about passing as female, but I’d be lying if I didn’t acknowledge my concern about an audience member who was offended,” Curry said. “But art is not prejudice; it’s about inclusivity and open minds. If someone is not willing to have that experience, they don’t have a legitimate place in our audiences.”

Signs of change

Dorsey said that even having discussions about gender identity in dance is progress from when he started, and he’s encouraged by changes he’s seen: Most theaters either already have gender-neutral restrooms or create them for his company’s visit; trans and gender-nonconforming students attend his workshops in various cities and share with him their efforts to be accepted in their dance communities; the San Francisco Ballet persuaded him to lead a training session on gender identity in dance; and he was on the cover of Dance Magazine.

Ledford was recently a “Gaynor Girl,” a spokesperson for the popular pointe shoe brand Gaynor Minded. Pretto said she worked up the courage to use the ladies' locker room at one of New York’s busiest studios, Steps on Broadway, and no one seemed to mind.

Still, the art form has not yet caught up to reflect the audience, Dorsey said. His company has worked in over 30 cities in the U.S. and abroad, and he is usually the first trans choreographer a theater has presented. But he said the response from audiences is almost always positive.

“Dance audiences are ready and hungry for trans voices,” he said. “It's our dance institutions that are still catching up.”

[magicshopaholic]

A Guide to the OCs of the Idolverse (without faceclaims)

You can also refer to this post for a more detailed description of their appearance or visit this post to see their faceclaims.

Feel free to picture them as you like - and I'd love to hear your versions as well :)

Kaya Madaan

Year of birth: 1993

Occupation: doctoral candidate in Economics

Originally from: Connecticut, USA

Current residence: Amsterdam

Kaya Madaan is South Asian-American and grew up in the suburbs of Connecticut with her parents. An only child, she lost her father in a car accident when she was in high school and her mother has since never remarried. During her senior year at NYU, a few months before graduation, she was assaulted on campus, an experience she doesn’t talk about but has shaped many future decisions in her life. After completing her masters in London, she moved to Amsterdam to do her Ph.D. during which time she met her boyfriend, Namjoon, in Seoul while visiting her Korean aunt (her father’s adopted sister) and her family.

She lives by herself in a studio apartment, content with her independence and solitude. Her close friends largely include select people from college and university, and later Taehyung’s on/off girlfriend, Dilara, as well. She tends to be a bit of a workaholic and in the process becomes a bit scatterbrained and ends up being absent-minded about other things. Being the one of the youngest doctoral students in her program, she’s very conscious of coming across as mature and capable. She takes a lot of pride in her intelligence and is not shy about disagreeing with opinions.

~

Choi Nari

Year of birth: 1992

Occupation: surgical resident

Originally from:

Current residence: Seoul

Nari grew up in Anyang, Gyeonggi province, as an only child. Sometime in early middle school, she and Seokjin met in the same class and formed a life-long friendship. Her dream as a child was to always become a doctor, though her focus on surgery developed years later when she dated a classmate whose older sister was studying to be a surgeon. She currently works in Seoul as a surgical resident and lives alone in an apartment a block away from the hospital.

While Nari is secure in her skills and her career path, she finds it difficult to devote an equal amount of time to her personal life which sometimes leads to insecurities, especially when she sees her old classmates and other people her age move on with their lives. She also tends to forget to take care of herself when she’s caught up in the chaos of her job, leading to missed meals and an occasionally unhealthy diet of food and alcohol.

~

Kang Miso

Year of birth: 1991

Occupation: assistant music producer

Originally from:

Current residence: Seoul

An only child of a business tycoon father and an ex-model mother, Miso grew up in the Gangnam district of Seoul, in the Cheongdam-dong neighbourhood alongside equally wealthy and affluent peers. Her family keeps appearances and status above all else and as a result, Miso attended school with children of her parents’ colleagues and neighbours, most of whom grew up to be heirs and heiresses to businesses and fortunes.

Miso left Seoul for university in Australia, where she spent four years getting her degree in business management and two additional years working various jobs, including bartending and music managing a pub, before she was forced to return to Seoul. She current works as an assistant music producer at Big Hit, where she keeps her parentage and connections quiet.

Miso does not enjoy or show interest in going down the same road as her peers, much to her parents’ disappointment. She makes an effort to distance herself from them as well as her parents’ unhappy marriage, and has since high school earned the reputation of being “unfriendly”, which has continued into adulthood as well.

~

Kang Chaeyoung

Year of birth: 1998

Occupation: researcher at Conde Nast

Originally from: Gwangju

Current residence: Seoul

Chaeyoung grew up alongside her older brother, Chanyeol, in Gwangju. She lost her mother at a very young age; three years later, her father married Soyeon, whose attempts at building a relationship have been resisted by Chaeyoung. As a result, she spent a lot of her time growing up with her friends and classmates, including her brother and his best friend, Hoseok. While Chaeyoung and Chanyeol were always close as children, they naturally grew apart as they became older.

Chaeyoung currently works at a publishing house as a junior researcher, a job she Ioves. She’s outgoing and charming and enjoys meeting new clients and talent, even if she sometimes feels inadequate and anxious about her performance. Due to her young age and surrounded by so many people older than her, she can tend to be a bit impressionable and prone to be taken advantage of. She lives with a senior from college, Sungmi, who has a questionable social circle but later becomes friends with Sooah, whom she meets at yoga class and looks up to as an independent, single working woman in Seoul.

~

Kim Sooah

Year of birth: 1995

Occupation: event planner

Originally from: Busan

Current residence: Seoul

Sooah grew up in Busan and later moved to Seoul, the only child of two doctors. She realised as a teenager that her parents' marriage was an unhappy one and sometime during her early teens, discovered that both were having quiet affairs with other people. As a means of escaping her home, she threw herself into extra-curricular activities and her friends circle, choosing to be around people as much as she could. Captain of the girls' volleyball team, Sooah was a popular girl in high school, had a large group of friends and a string of short flings that extended into college and her adult life, the only exception to this being Park Jimin. She currently lives in Seoul and works at an event management firm.

Sooah is confident and outgoing and still maintains an eventful social life, staying in touch with friends from school and college that are now acquaintances. She still harbours insecurities, however, aware of her lack of deep friendships and the reputation she had when it came to dating. She eventually forges a friendship with Chaeyoung, who she secretly admires for being far more put together in her early twenties than she herself ever was.

~

Dilara Komyshan

Year of birth: 1996

Occupation: Formula 1 driver

Originally from: London

Current residence: London (later Monaco)

Dilara was born in her mother's native country and spent her first few years there before leaving for the UK, due to the stigma she and her mother faced for being and having a child out of wedlock respectively. Her mother met Rudy Komyshan in London when Dilara was in her early teens, and Dilara officially took his surname when she turned fifteen. At a young age, she discovered a love for both dance and racing but eventually chose the latter as her career path. Being in a heavily male-dominated environment, Dilara at times had to prove her worth by going over and above what was expected of her and seeming outwardly tougher to blend in with her peers.

She is the first female F1 driver in the history of the sport and is currently signed with Red Bull, alongside Dutch prodigy Max Verstappen. She sometimes faces unwarranted sexism from journalists and fans of the sport that she is learning to deal with, and copes with the help and support of her friends Lexie (also her trainer), Chris and Fred. Having travelled the world and working closely with people of various nationalities, she has a deep appreciation and interest in different cultures. Dilara is competitive by nature and a bit of a perfectionist, staying for hours on the simulator to perfect every move. She's also a bit of a gym rat, finding it therapeutic to work out alone or with a friend.

~

Cheon Lia

Year of birth: 1994

Occupation: marketing manager at HYBE

Originally from:

Current residence: Seoul

Lia grew up in Incheon with her parents and a younger brother. When she was in high school, her parents went through a peaceful and amicable divorce. They were open about the process with their children and didn't hide anything from them, something Lia is forever grateful to them for and since holds communication in the highest regard. Lia was a studious teenager, involved in extra-curriculars and student council activities, as well as a part of the girls' basketball team. She did not give much thought to dating in high school, despite catching the attention of many fellow students. She attended college in Seoul and started working there after graduation, sharing an apartment with her long-time best friend, Dal.

Despite the demands of a corporate career, including the workload and the politics, Lia enjoys her job and is a fast learner. She is able to stay very focused and, like Kaya, doesn't realise her tendency to become a workaholic. She does struggle with stress, especially with the fast-paced environment she works in. This sometimes extends to her personal life as well, despite her efforts to become more laidback.

~

[felicitysmoaksx]

before the beginning for the writing ask game? 💗

Hi Nova! Thanks so much for the ask! Here is before the beginning of my Sarah Reese and Kelly Severide are step-siblings au!

"I'm going to Northwestern for medical school," Sarah told her mother during their phone call. There was a pause, and then a heavy sigh that just oozed disappointment. "Did Kelly talk you into that? Honestly, mine and Benny's marriage has been over for four years. "

Sarah could feel herself start to bristle. Andrea Reese had made her feelings more than clear on Sarah's continued relationship with her ex-husband's son. "He's not your brother, Sarah."

"He is," Sarah told her mother firmly, continuing over her mother when she started to protest, "He is more my brother than you are my mother. He was there through everything that you weren't."

"Sarah-"

"I was ten when you and Benny got married and then left me by myself, alone in Chicago. Kelly was sixteen! It wasn't his job to stay, it wasn't his job to raise me. But he did. He was there when my appendix burst when I was thirteen. He was there when I had chickenpox and would only eat broccoli and cheese soup. He was at my high school graduation. He helped me move into my college dorm at NYU. He was at my college graduation. None of it was his job, but most would argue it was yours. He stayed when you didn't because you didn't want to."

Andrea scoffed, trying to argue again. But Sarah was done listening. "So after everything, he is my brother. The question of whether he is or not because your marriage ending doesn't matter. Goodbye, mother."