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zara-renata · 8 days ago

Note

Hello and good morning~ I was listening to RED by taylor swift while working and suddenly ALL I could think of was the Sylus series (and how MC thinks she was rejected). 💙❤️ Think this song fits them so well

I have been meaning to answer this ask since you sent it, but it gave me a little Scenario that I had to carry around in my head until I could figure out how to work it into a story. Your ask, in combination with a post by @leaderincrows about wanting to see Sylus collared and gasping pathetically, led to this story. I hope the result is enjoyable. Thanks so much for sending this ask, and I'm sorry it took 8 million years to answer!

Goodcat code, or how you learned to care for your catboy | ao3 | masterlist

Summary: Your crimelord boyfriend disappears for a week, you make yourself sad listening to breakup songs, you learn that he got turned into a catboy, you get assigned a mission on the worst cruise ship ever, undercover shenanigans ensue. Loosely based on the Sylus memory Goodcat Code.

Notes: Sylus x gn reader, sylus x mc, second person POV, some Sylus POV MC is referred to by they/them pronouns, intended as a placeholder for your preferred pronouns. Established relationship, can be read as a standalone. This story contains: profanity, activities of a sexual nature, violence, probably too much internal monologue and not enough action, too many feelings and not enough sexual activity, inappropriate use of a tail, an argument with your boyfriend, a happy ending.

You wonder if it’s because you trounced him in kitty cards the last time you played.

The silence.

For the past week, your phone has been pinging with constant notifications but none with My Sy listed as the sender. Just work, spam, Xavier asking if you want to go to the bookstore the next time you’re both free, Tara spamming you with pleas to go to some shitty club where her latest favorite indie EDM DJ is playing—why she thinks that her insistence that “He looks just like Skye, I promise!” is enough incentive for you to wade through loud, sweaty, touch-feely dancers as you can’t help constantly checking the exits, while simultaneously making sure a molly-rolling Tara doesn’t abscond to the bathroom with a mistake waiting to happen, while being subjected to mediocre beats from her artist-of-the week, is beyond you. “Skye” is gorgeous, yes, but you’d rather admire the real thing up close than squint through a fog-machine haze to look at a cheap knock-off.

Maybe Sylus’s snobbery is rubbing off on you.

Then again, Tara doesn’t know how up close you get to examine Skye on a regular basis, so perhaps you’re being unfair, because you’re in a terrible mood, because you haven’t heard from him for a week now.

Because maybe you won’t have the chance to see “Skye” up close ever again. Because all you have is a deafening silence from him, and it started the day after you wiped the floor with him at the kitty cafe playing kitty cards.

Could something so petty cause him to finally lose interest in you, the way you've feared ever since you allowed yourself to consider the possibility that Sylus may be romantically interested in you?

It’s not your fault that the longer you spend time with him, the more you have unraveled his mysteries. If he doesn’t want to be so easy to beat, he needs to try harder to be less predictable. You never would have thought, when you first met him, that you’d ever think the words “predictable” and “Sylus” in the same sentence, but the mercurial man is like clockwork when it comes to kitty cards.

He always, always offers you the chance to go first. Why on earth would you say no, and then lose the chance to play your inevitably shitty, low-value cards in the matching colored cups, just to prevent him from playing one of his inevitably high valued cards in the matching cup?

He grumbles, tries to give “helpful” advice about being patient and gambling on drawing a higher value card instead, all the while doing the exact same thing when it’s his turn and he has a shit hand. The condescending hypocrite. You stew a bit thinking about it.

And then, you’ve long since learned that the arrogant bastard is cheating while you play. He somehow marks the cards—you don’t know how. Something to do with his evol? He refuses to admit it outright, so you doubt you’ll ever know. But what you first thought was a generous habit of offering to give you two of his cards for one of yours, actually turns out to be an opportunity for him to offload his low value cards and give himself a chance to poach your higher value cards. You refuse his offers now.

And lastly, you’ve figured out that for all of Sylus’s skill, brilliant brain, and talent at strategy, the man has a few weaknesses that you are ruthlessly willing to exploit to gain the upper hand to beat him despite all of his dirty tricks.

Namely, he’s easily distracted by a few very specific things.

Your mouth being one of them.

So last week, you went first, played your shit cards in the colored cups, refused his offers to trade, and ordered a strawberry shortcake with extra whipped cream to enjoy while you played.

He leaned back in his seat at the kitty cafe where he was sitting across from you, manspreading as usual, arms casually draped over the back of the booth, the picture of casual, smug confidence. The dictionary definition of winner.

“Do you really have the luxury of splitting your focus between the game and your dessert, kitten? It looks like you need all of your concentration just to keep up, let alone win this round,” he drawled, secure in his five point lead over you. It was his turn, and yet he had time to taunt you.

You just shrugged, holding your cards fanned in one hand, dipping your finger in the whipped cream with your other. You brought it to your lips, pretending to think very hard about which card you’d play next when all of them were crap, and rubbed the cream over your bottom lip.

You heard a sharp inhale from the other side of the table, but ignored it. You “absentmindedly” flicked your tongue out, gathering the cream there before swallowing and biting your lip pensively.

“It’s good,” you murmured, not taking your eyes off your cards. “Not too sweet.”

Silence. It took all of your willpower not to look up to see what his face was doing. But you heard him place a kitty in a cup, its cute little meow signaling the start of your turn.

You let your gaze flick back and forth between the board and your cards. Good. It was working. He played a low value card in a white cup instead of drawing a new card like he should have.

You put your crap sage card in the last sage-colored cup. Sylus tsked and drew a new card.

This time, you picked up one of the glazed strawberries adorning the shortcake and placed it between your lips, sucking on it gently as you “thought.”

The groan coming from across the table was so low that you almost didn’t hear it over the sounds of the cafe—other players chatting, the meows of the kitties, the clink of cutlery and tableware. But you heard it, even through your tinnitus.

You played another low value card in a matching cup—the last one. Unless he had a six, this round is yours.

You finally dared to look up and find Sylus glaring at you, all while petting a beautiful, tawny colored cafe cat that had apparently settled in his lap while you were busy trying to distract him and beat his ass at this ridiculous game.

“Sy, you know the rules of the cafe—no petting the cats unless we pay extra!” You looked around furtively, forgetting the game, worried that the staff were going to get mad and kick you both out for this breach of etiquette. You pay first, then pet!

“I can’t help it if, unlike some, this particular kitty is straightforward enough to ask for pets from me,” he said pointedly. “Who am I to deny its desires?”

In response, you popped the strawberry fully into your mouth, closed your eyes, and bit down, letting out a genuine little sound of appreciation for the sweet fruit.

Suddenly there was a disgruntled mewl from across the table. You opened your eyes and saw Sylus with a death grip on the cat where he was previously petting it gently. The cat squirmed, trying to get off of his lap. He blinked and let go of the cat, which then bolted off of his lap like he had just yanked its tail—which he hadn’t, but Sylus’s grip was no joke. You would know.

He watched the cat, a rare apologetic look on his face, before turning to glare at you again. “If we get kicked out, it will be your fault,” he accused.

You just looked back at him innocently. “What on earth did I do?”

“Maybe I’ve been too soft with you, and you’ve gotten too comfortable with me—you grow more cunning by the day,” he said softly, almost like a threat, but he looked… pleased.

“Still have no idea what you’re talking about,” you hummed, taking a big forkful of the shortcake and shoving it in your mouth.

Sylus just groaned again. He lost every game the two of you played the rest of the evening.

When you parted ways with him, heading back home to sleep while he was heading to a meeting, he pulled you into his arms as you stood by your motorcycle. He breathed in your hair and sighed, and then pulled away, turning on his heel, and walking away without a backwards glance.

And that’s the last you heard from him since that night.

You sit at your kitchen table, staring glumly out into the chill fall night. Your phone lights up, but it’s just Rafayel sending a photo of a little crab brandishing a plastic spork captioned Lol littering humans suck but at least this trash is useful for this lil guy he’s got a sword now

You often wonder why both Rafayel and Sylus sometimes refer to humans as if they themselves are not also human. You text back.

You: he just needs a shield. give him a bottle cap and he can fight wanderers with me

Fried Shrimp: nope he’s my new bodyguard because you suck too and have been too busy lately to guard my body like you promised

You: you’re perfectly capable of guarding yourself you pyromaniac

Rafayel just responds with a poop emoji.

You consider his text. Rafayel may have a point for once—you have been spending every free moment that you're not working with Sylus lately.

Which is bad. You don’t want him to take over your life. You want to maintain a balanced, a healthy relationship with him, if possible. It would be so easy to let yourself be consumed by his charismatic, overwhelming presence in your life. But what happens when he disappears as quickly as he appeared?

You don’t want to think about it. But that point may have already arrived. You stare at your dark phone again.

You could… call him first. Or send a text. But you’re not to the point where you can bring yourself to contact him first. If he wants to talk to you, he isn’t shy about reaching out for your attention. He calls almost every day. To tell you that you need to expect a package. To complain about his bad luck at a poker game with business rivals. To pester you about when you’ll come visit him again. Mephisto hasn’t seen your face for two days, he’s starting to pout. The twins brought home ten different flavors of syrup for the espresso machine, look at what you’re doing to them, they’re going to get diabetes at this rate.

You don’t think you’re to the point of being able to handle being left on read by this man if you send a text first and he doesn’t answer.

It’s time to wallow. You reach for your phone, pull up your music app, and put Taylor Swift’s RED on repeat.

You’ll give it a few more days, and then you’ll put on Olivia Rodrigo. After another week, it will be Sabrina Carpenter, because you’ll probably have entered the anger stage of grief by then. After that, it will be Hozier, when you finally accept that Sylus will never be calling again and try to find the beauty in everything you’ve lost.

***

“Status report?” Sylus growls into the phone.

“Boss, I really think that you should reconsider this course of action,” Kieran’s voice is just loud enough for Sylus to be able to hear over the absolute cacophony of the closed cat cafe, which is considerable, even with his double, hypersensitive hearing due to his current… condition.

“I didn’t ask for your opinion, I asked for a status update,” Sylus hisses, and then clears his throat. He totally meant to hiss just then. His hissing has nothing to do with his current affliction.

“But I really must insist—” Kieran tries to argue, but he’s drowned out by the cat cafe’s OTTO.

“Caracal Butler! May I remind you that not only is your customer satisfaction rating in the negatives, but you are also not allowed to make personal phone calls on the kitties’ time!” The OTTO hovers menacingly in front of him.

“Oh, I’m so scared,” he responds, voice dripping with sarcasm. Even the robot should be able to discern his disdain.

“You should be,” it says, threateningly.

“Oh? And what are the kitties going to do that’s worse than what they’ve already done.” He flicks some cat hair off of his bespoke tuxedo. The fact that he’s going to have to get it de-haired and dry cleaned if he ever wants to wear it again just adds insult to injury, as he had been hoping to wear it with you to a Linkon City Symphony Orchestra’s performance soon. He had a matching outfit tailored for you at the same time he ordered this tux, so he has resigned himself to getting the damn thing cleaned when this... ordeal is over.

The OTTO jerks him out of his irritation with its nagging voice module. “It is protocol for this kitty cafe to act as a responsible caretaker for the kitties under our care. We require spaying and neutering of all kitties under this roof. You have not yet received such care.”

The threat in response to his sarcasm could not be clearer.

He narrows his eyes at the OTTO and feels his tail swish menacingly as his ears press flat to his hair.

“Come anywhere near my balls and I’ll fill this cat cafe with so many cat toys of the loud, exploding variety that there will be nothing left of either it, the cats, or you except a smoking crater.”

The OTTO flits backwards out of Sylus’s reach.

“Perhaps Caracal Butler may be allowed a limited number of private phone calls on the kitties’ time without repercussions,” it says, tone placating as it drifts quickly to the other side of the room.

“That’s what I thought,” Sylus growls again, and not because he’s been stripped of his evol and cursed with two fucking cat ears and a tail that betrays his emotions no matter how much self control he tries to exert, but because he meant to growl.

He returns his attention back to the phone as his patience wears ever thinner. “Status. Report.”

“Boss, I really must insist—” Kieran tries again, tone incredibly concerned, before being interrupted by Luke.

“Your hunter is listening to breakup songs and mopily staring at their phone every spare moment they get.”

Sylus’s ears swivel around to full attention and his tail thwacks a kitty climbing tower so hard it’s almost knocked off its base.

“Breakup songs? Why—”

“They obviously think you’ve ghosted them,” Luke continues. “Keep this up and you’re gonna lose them.”

Sylus tilts his head. Could you really believe that he’s capable of ever leaving your side before you tell him to leave and mean it? What an absolutely ridiculous notion. His tail swishes thoughtfully. He did not want you to see him like this—stripped of his power, kneeling to these demanding cats like a�� well. Like a fucking catboy butler. He has his pride, after all. He was hoping that the curse would fade quickly and you’d be too busy with work and your social life to notice that he has been absent for a little while. And you hadn’t reached out to him either, during this time. He runs his gloved hand along his bottom lip before realizing that he’s been touching cats all day, makes a disgusted face, and taps his temple instead. Why hadn’t you reached out to him? His mind drifts over memories of all of your interactions with him when you are apart and he's been forced to make do with communicating to you via phone and text.

This is not the first time that it occurs to him that you have never, not once, reached out to him first. He is always the one calling you, texting you, sending you packages.

He stops, tail and ears still. He has noticed it, but he hasn't thought about it deeply. He's willing to chase you to the end of time, after all. But now, he wonders what he's missing. He is almost entirely sure that you miss him as much as he misses you when you’re apart. You always pick up the phone. You always respond to texts. As for sending packages, you've grumbled about not knowing what to gift a man who has everything, but he always reassures you that he already has everything he wants, as long as you’re there.

So why is it that you have never reached out to him first? He flicks his ears. It would be nice, if you reached out first, every once in a while. He doesn't require it. But it would be nice. He tucks that thought away for further analysis after the current problem is fixed.

Time to assess the damage, and then engage in damage control.

“What kind of breakup songs?” he asks.

“Currently listening to RED by Taylor Swift.”

Sylus considers. Taylor Swift isn’t as bad as Sabrina Carpenter, or Hozier. Once you start with Hozier, Sylus will really be worried.

“Are you gonna stop being a big scaredy-cat and contact your hunter now?” Luke demands, sounding absolutely done with his ridiculous boss and his equally ridiculous partner.

Sylus values the intel they just provided, so he lets the insubordination slide. This time.

“I will remedy the situation. You’re dismissed from hunter observation detail.”

All he hears are twinned sighs of relief and then the phone disconnecting. He stares at it. What impudent henchmen.

He turns and wades through the meandering cats to the OTTO.

“I’m leaving, but I will be back to fulfill my contract once a personal emergency has been resolved.”

The OTTO, with his previous threats clearly still fresh in its memory, meekly allows him to pass without any fuss.

He steps out into the cold winter evening, the street lights and bright advertisements of Linkon City temporarily blinding him. Normally he would just teleport along rooftops to get to you as quickly as possible in such an emergency, but with this fucking curse, he has to make his way to your home like a regular human. His lip curls in disgust, but then he schools his face into its customary blank, intimidating expression as he notices people passing by gawking at his swishing tail and his cat ears. He’s drawing enough attention to himself without looking threatening while doing it. He quickly strides to where he parked his motorcycle, jams his helmet on his head, and breaks six different traffic laws trying to get to your place as quickly as possible.

***

You’re trying to wallow, snuggled into your bedding with a tray of some sad soup heated up from a can and a chunk of stale bread, when your hunter watch pings. You flick through the new assignment. Some asshole smuggler in biologically modified wanderers code-named “Snowy Owl” apparently needs to be brought down. You slurp some soup while you try to formulate a plan of action for snaring this new target, who has in turn snared many innocent wanderers to then sell them to shady collectors with who knows what kind of intentions for them.

This is just the sort of thing that you’ve all too easily grown accustomed to discussing with Sylus, due to his spiderweb of connections through the underworld. But isn’t that part of the problem? Where before you would rely on yourself and Association resources to arrange a mission of this kind, now you’re all too comfortable relying on Sylus for help. That sort of sloppiness is unacceptable, and the gaping absence he’s left behind in the last week only serves to drive that point home. You cannot let the blade of your skills dull because of reliance on your all-too-willing-to-help boyfriend. Maybe ex-boyfriend, you think miserably.

You sigh, leaning back, turning up the music that you had previously turned down to focus on the mission details. You’re trying to drown out all thoughts of the man who you need to get out of your head, only to find yourself yelping in surprise and flinging the tray with the soup at the tall intruder who has just silently appeared at the side of your bed—who you hadn’t heard at all, as if they had entered on padded cat paws.

Only to realize halfway through the soup’s trajectory that the intruder is Sylus and he’s wearing a very fancy suit.

All the previous times you have flung tableware containing hot liquid at him, Sylus has been able to dodge the container, if not its contents, because of his evol. But this time he’s struck square in the chest by both the soup and the soup bowl. It hits one big pec with a dull thud and then crashes to your floor. He stands there, dripping soup, looking down at his dress shoes.

“The fuck, Sylus,” you breathe, not because he appeared out of nowhere in your home, again, but because you can clearly see two twitching, incredibly real-looking cat ears—tawny, fuzzy on the insides, coming to a beautiful, regal black point at the top—swiveling through his gorgeous silver hair. As your eyes travel down his long, lovely body, they catch on a flicking cat-tail with the same coloring as his ears. Something about the fur strikes you as familiar, but you can’t quite figure out why.

“Darling. Dearest to my heart. My heart, in fact, beating within the safety of my ribcage. Could you, perhaps, in the future, try to refrain from assaulting me with molten liquid when I surprise you in your home.” His tail swishes, swishes, swishes behind him, and you’re utterly mesmerized. It takes a moment for it to sink in that Sylus is actually here. You want to scramble off the bed, climb him like a tree, the dripping soup be damned, and just hug him. Now that you’re seeing him in person for the first time in a whole week, you are able to actually feel how much you’ve missed him, instead of suppressing, repressing, pretending that the unending ache didn’t hurt so terribly much.

You’re about to launch yourself at him when you remember why you had been feeling this way all week. Where the hell has he been? And why does he have cat attributes now? Well, more than he already had to begin with, you snicker internally, until you remember that you’re still feeling heartbroken and wary of why he has shown up now after ghosting you all week. Are you being melodramatic? Are you being immature? Are you being unfair? Could you have called him to check in, when he didn’t? You eye his ears. His tail. Yes to all of the above, but it doesn’t change how you simply can’t bring yourself to go to him, and instead draw further back, away from him, on the bed.

He apparently doesn’t miss your movement, as his ears swivel forward as you move, and then flatten onto the top of his head as he assumes an aggressively bored expression on his face.

“Not going to answer me?” he growls. Actually growls, like a cat warning a naughty kitten.

You can’t help yourself. “Who’s actually the kitten now, Sylus?”

His tail flicks violently behind him.

“Careful, kitten. Perhaps you’ve forgotten in the past week that this cat has claws,” he says, low and menacing.

You just laugh at him.

“Mmmm, yes, your oh-so-so sharp claws, which are now covered in soup. What are you doing here?”

He narrows his eyes at your unimpressed reaction to his empty threat. “Do I need a reason to visit my heart?”

The more he acts like nothing has changed, as if he didn’t just disappear on you without a word for a week, the more wound up and jittery you feel. “What heart?” you ask, a little petulantly.

He lifts an eyebrow. “You know the answer to that question.”

“Do I? Not a very important organ, if you can survive a week without it,” you grumble.

His ears swivel forward, and his tail starts to… wag, but his facial expression doesn’t change.

You immediately regret revealing so much.

“Ah,” is all he says, but he sounds pleased.

You look away, out the window. But all you see is Sylus in the reflection, and the dark night beyond. You’ve said too much already.

“I’m going to change. And then we’re going to talk,” he announces, and it sounds like a purr.

You feel silly as you realize that Taylor Swift is still warbling loudly in your bedroom about loving him but losing him so suddenly, trying to stop when you’re already in free fall, loving him being like the colors in autumn, so bright, just before they lose it all. You flick off the music.

He’s here again. He’s here again, but for how long?

You hear water running in the bathroom as you go to the kitchen to grab some towels and return to your bedroom to mop up the soup, tidying your embarrassingly messy flat along the way. You return to bed and wait for him.

After a few minutes, Sylus emerges from your bathroom clad in one of the soft sweaters and silk sleep pants he keeps in your closet. You can’t help yourself again—you stare at where his tail emerges from under the sweater. The flexible waistband of the pants must have been pushed down a little over his ass to accommodate where his tail emerges.

He strides to the bed and pauses next to it. “May I?” he asks, tail flicking, ears twitching.

You nod, and he prowls onto your duvet on his hands and knees. Before settling next to you, however, he turns in a circle, once, twice, three times, before sinking down and pulling you into his arms, your back to his chest, curling around you. You let him, feeling the flood of safety and sense of wholeness that you always get when Sylus is touching you. You sigh. All of your worries seem so trite now. Why didn’t you just text him first? Why did you wait for him to reach out first? Why are you like this?

As if reading your mind, Sylus says, “Were you worried this week?”

His arms are wrapped tightly around you, he has one leg shoved between yours, and you feel his tail curl around your bare ankle. Its fur is so, so soft.

You nod.

“Why didn’t you call me, then?”

You don’t want to tell him how afraid you are of him finally not answering. Of him finally losing interest. It sounds so pathetic to even think it, let alone say it out loud.

“I’m sorry about your fancy suit,” is all you can say.

He hums, and his tail wraps tighter around your ankle. “It’s a tuxedo. And it can be cleaned.”

“Fancy suit, tuxedo—pretentious, overpriced pieces of fabric,” you tease him.

“My heart is a heathen,” he sighs into your hair. “It’s a tux that matches pretentious, overpriced pieces of fabric that happen to fit your body perfectly.”

“What use do I have for such fabric?” you ask, turning in his arms, lulled by his familiar humor, his still-unexplained tail wrapped around your ankle. You lie on your side, facing him. His ears twitch in your direction.

“There's a ticket to the Linkon City Symphony Orchestra with your name on it. You should note the date in your agenda.”

“What if my agenda is already full? I haven’t heard from you for a week.”

His ears flatten in his hair. “You’d replace me in just a week?”

You hum a little, reaching up to run a finger along one cat ear. He makes a purring sound, deep in his throat, closing his lovely eyes. “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to replace you, even if I wanted to,” you murmur, lost in his presence again, feeling safe now that he’s here again. But the week was long, and you really were afraid he’d left for good, no matter how silly it seems now. “But maybe I thought you had replaced me,” you admit, marveling at how soft the ear is, how good it feels to caress it between your forefinger and thumb. You want to kiss it, rub your face all over it. You lift your other hand and fondle his other ear.

His tail loosens on your ankle and begins drifting up your bare leg, the fur caressing your skin so gently, until it curls around one thigh and squeezes between your legs, right below where your thighs meet. You shiver at the sensation and forget to pet him for a moment.

“You should have more faith in your pet. Sometimes cats have business in the neighborhood that keeps them away for a few days, but they always come back home.”

“Did your ‘business’ have anything to do with your new accessories?”

He leans, shoving his head against your hands to remind you to keep petting him, and his tail drifts up, up, until it’s nudging between your legs. You gasp softly at the delicious pressure, but have enough presence of mind to keep massaging his ears.

“Yes,” he murmurs, a little breathless. “Like that.” You continue, and he continues teasing you with his tail. It’s not enough. You want more of him.

“How did you get the cat ears and tail, Sy?” you ask, trying to remain focused.

The tail nudges you a little harder—you can’t help the jerk of your hips which sends you rocking into him, where you’re met with his hard dick under the fabric of his pants. The sensation of his hardness against your front and his tail at your back is almost overwhelming.

“Your fault, kitten. You and that fucking strawberry last week,” he growls again, flexes his hips into yours. “That cat I was petting was unhappy with how roughly I handled it while you cockteased me with your cake,” he gasps as you grind back into him, as you widen your legs to let his tail do whatever it wants, restricted only by your sleep shorts. “The evol kitties cursed me for petting without paying, and for roughing up the cat.”

You can’t help it. Even through the pleasure, you burst out laughing.

“They cursed you with a tail and ears, and that’s why you avoided me all week?” It’s absurd. All that worry, thinking that he’d finally grown bored with you, because he was too, what? Embarrassed? to reveal that he’d been given such adorable attributes. “You mean we could have been doing this all week?” you ask, incredulous, as his tail rubs against your sensitive spots through your shorts, as it nudges you again and again, as Sylus loudly purrs from the pleasure you rubbing his ears and the friction against his big dick is bringing him.

He opens his eyes, half-lidded, lips parted, panting. One of his hands drifts down your back and takes a handful of your ass, pulling, bringing your hips against his cock again. He grinds you on himself, leans forward, licks a swipe up the side of your face.

“The biological markers that were affected by the ears and tail are tied to my own evol—I don’t have my ability to manipulate energy so long as this curse lasts,” he says, breath hitching with the movement of your bodies.

You lean forward, press your forehead against his, share his panting breath. “What does that have to do with not calling me?” you manage, even though all you want to do is rip his pants down, shove down your own shorts, and impale yourself on him.

“Didn’t want you to see me as weak,” he admits. He opens his eyes, looks into yours. He then kisses you with his full lips, soft, slow, in contrast to his tail still nudging you through your shorts at a steady rhythm, teasing, teasing, teasing.

You pull back from his kiss, catch his gaze again. “Even without your evol, you’re still one of the strongest people I’ve ever met,” you whisper.

He pauses, his ears flattening again. “Just ‘one of’ the strongest people you've met?”

You laugh. “I know a lot of strong people Sy. And your new bits are cute, just like you.” His tail firmly nudges you again, once, as if to warn you. “Don’t threaten me with a good time,” you tease him.

He just groans and kisses you again, his tongue slipping between your lips, his big hands moving to shove down your shorts. “I don’t make threats,” he says, low, smug. “I make promises.”

You roll your eyes, but neither of you talk any more after that.

***

Much, much later, after you’re thoroughly fucked out, muscles pleasantly sore, as Sylus purrs beside you in sleep, one arm flung over you, you lie awake thinking about his admission of worrying about being 'weak' in front of you. Of the vulnerability in his questions—why didn’t you call him if you were worried? Would you really replace him within a week?

You’ve been so wrapped up in your own insecurities, so busy trying to protect yourself from what you think is the inevitable pain of being abandoned, that you’ve never stopped to consider what Sylus may worry about. What his insecurities may be. He has always seemed so larger than life to you, from the very beginning. Invincible. Solitary and strong. But as you’ve gotten to know him, you’ve also had glimpses of his own tender heart, the same tender heart he warns you about having—a liability in his vicious world. The care he shows the twins, who he insists are just his henchmen but clearly love him like family. His meticulous maintenance of Mephisto, whenever the bird needs parts switched out, cleaning, or upgrades. His habit of masking his true feelings by maintaining a look of boredom, as if revealing such feelings is a vulnerability that even those closest to him could exploit. Even his tendency to cheat at kitty cards—his luck is so bad, and he works so hard to compensate for it in the best way that his brutal life has taught him. In the end, Sylus is just a person, like anyone else. Complicated. Layered. Strong and vulnerable, cruel and kind. You’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about him as something you crave, something you adore, as well as something you fear, a threat to your heart. Not always as just a person, with feelings of his own.

Feelings that include feelings for you, specifically. He has never hidden his care for you, not since those first days of knowing him. Even if he looks indifferent, the words coming out of his mouth are always achingly straightforward, and sweet in a way that sounds sarcastic but you have learned is actually simply the unvarnished truth. His actions—his gifts, his texting, calling, physical clinginess when you’re with him—in the quiet dark, with Sylus’s soft snores next to you, his cat ears twitching even in sleep, you realize how utterly unfair you’ve been to him. How one-sided this relationship has been up until now in a lot of ways.

You’re suddenly overwhelmed with the desire to show him how much you care about him too. How safe he is with you, just as he makes you feel safe whenever you’re together. You recognize that you need to do some work on yourself. That it’s not normal to go through life terrified of being abandoned. That the past does not predict the future. You can’t spend the rest of your relationship with Sylus, no matter how long or short it lasts, punishing him for the pain others have caused you.

You roll over in the dark and pepper his face with soft kisses, each one a silent apology for not calling him this week, when he probably needed to be reassured that you still care for the version of him with ears and a tail and stripped of his god-like abilities. How worried must he still be, moving through the world without such abilities, without his customary armor against a hostile world that wants him caged or dead?

As you lean over him, trailing your lips along his skin, his arms snake around you and pull you closer.

“Tell me what I did to deserve this, so I can do it again,” he says, voice raspy from sleep. His tail wraps around your waist.

“I’m afraid I can’t,” you whisper between kisses.

“A hunter’s trade secret?” You can hear his smile in the dark.

“A lover’s inability to properly articulate that all you have to do is continue being you.”

His tail tightens around you, and its end wildly thwacks your back. “That sounded pretty articulate to me. Your words are honeyed—is there a catch?”

You kiss him on his soft lips. His hands run along your hair, down your back.

“Only one way to find out,” you tease.

“I see you’re done pouting. Do I get any other rewards for just being me?” he asks, sly.

“Only one way to find out,” you repeat, nudging his nose with yours.

“Oh, I like surprises.”

“I know,” you say, because you do know that. You know so much about this man already.

He pauses, catches your gaze. “Keep it a secret, okay?”

Yet again, he’s showing you his weakness. Reminding you that he’s taking a risk by being here with you at all, just like you are risking your heart, and everything else, by being here with him. “Your secrets are safe with me, Sy.”

He holds you tighter in response, and you fall asleep in his arms. You don’t dream about anything at all.

***

In the morning, after you’ve made him coffee, after you’ve eaten breakfast and you’ve lounged on the couch with him, watching something stupid on tv while he browses online auctions, you tell him about your Snowy Owl mission. He’s heard of this person, but they’re not colleagues or rivals, moving in different circles. But he knows where to locate them, and you form a plan, inspired by Snowy Owl’s interest in modified wanderers and humans, and Sylus’s twitching ears.

“You want me to act as your catboy butler.” He says it flatly. “Boring.”

You nod. “And I’ll be your owner, willing to sell you to the highest bidder.”

His ears flatten against his hair, despite his bored expression, and his tail whips back and forth, back and forth, slowly. He really hates the idea.

“Do you have a better plan?” you ask.

“Better than you selling me off to someone else? I can think of a few. A carefully placed bomb on the cruise ship, for one.” At your look of discomfort, he continues. “You don’t even have to come. Just check off the mission as accomplished on your little Association to-do list.”

You scowl at him. “I’m supposed to bring Snowy Owl in, not assassinate them.”

“Boring,” he repeats.

“I’m not actually selling you to anyone, Sy. I just need a small distraction, much smaller than a bomb,” you cut him off as he opens his mouth. “While I plant a tracking device with them, once we pinpoint who they are.”

He leans over, rubs his cheek against yours. “What’s my reward for considering this utterly boring plan?” He drags your hand to the base of his tail.

You take the hint, grasping his tail firmly, and he groans. You pull a little, and he lets you, rolling onto his stomach on the couch. You straddle the back of his big, meaty thighs and begin palming his tail, starting at the base where it meets the skin of his lower back, circling your thumb and forefinger around it even though it’s thick enough that your fingers don’t meet. You pull, and pet, over and over again, and his purrs are so loud they start to vibrate the couch.

“Say yes,” you demand. “Put that tux and your new parts to good use before the concert.”

“Fine,” he gasps, as his hips jerk a little, pressing himself into the couch.

“Excellent!” You spring to your feet, heading to the shower. There’s not a moment to waste if you’re going to get this mission over with before his tail and ears disappear.

“Stingy!” he yowls. Literally yowls, like a big tomcat thwarted in his attempt at mating by a mean owner yanking him into the house from the alley where his would-be mate was waiting.

“Consider that the down payment. Upon delivery of your promise, you’ll get the rest,” you say in a sing-song voice, just to further annoy him.

“I want double!” he yowls again, but anything else he might be whining about is cut off when you let the bathroom door close behind you.

***

Sylus has been impeccable for the duration of your agreed-upon mission. Poised, elegant, obedient. He has tolerated you treating him like an object to be admired and dismissed on a whim, even when people approached you not just to express interest in your catboy butler up for bidding, but also when they showed interest in getting to know the mysterious owner of said catboy butler more intimately.

The only indication that he was perhaps not entirely pleased with his code name was a flick of his cat ears and one hard thwack of his tail against the rail of the cruise ship when you first said, “Please fetch me more of the strata, Mister Whiskers,” in front of the other guests on the dining deck.

Furthermore, he only tried to attack and eat one person’s pet parrot, and he dropped the seagulls he kept catching at each ordered “Drop it, Mister Whiskers!” from you every time.

All in all, you think that you’re having a harder time than he is. High tea is over, seagulls have been caught and released, and you’ve already collected a number of business cards and varying degrees of subtle invitations to further discuss your catboy butler. You’ve navigated each diplomatically, and are rather proud of yourself, but your own patience is wearing thin as you stand at a luxurious bar in a small lounge on one of the upper decks of the cruise ship. The floor to ceiling windows give a lovely view of the blood-red sunset over the water—it reminds you of Sylus’s eyes. The evening, and therefore the black market trading, is about to begin in earnest. You’re waiting for a mocktail—you’re on the job, and you are a professional after all—when yet another person sidles up to you. Sylus, who has been standing at a respectable distance from you at relaxed attention, hands crossed behind his back, looking coolly over the people scattered at elegant standing tables, ears swiveling at constant alert, looks toward the newcomer, but he makes no move to come closer to you. It occurs to you that one of the reasons you are feeling increasingly off-kilter is that you are so used to Sylus touching you, draping himself over you, maintaining at least a sliver of contact at all times, that this respectful distance makes you feel like he’s standing on the other side of a great canyon.

You turn to the person who is trying to join you at the bar. He’s handsome. Tall, muscular. Dressed nicely, with subtle style. Nothing like your boyfriend’s flashy jeweled necklaces and bold colors. His blue eyes are startling in contrast to his black hair.

“Hi,” he says, smiling a little ruefully, like he wanted to open with something better, but this is all he could think of. He knows that he’s handsome and can skate by on the bare minimum.

You smile faintly back at him, despite wishing Sylus would come closer. “Hi,” you say. You’re not going to do all the work, dammit. This guy wants something from you, not the other way around.

“You’ve caused quite a stir tonight with your… companion,” he says, dark eyebrows lifting, gaze darting to Sylus and back to you again. “It’s made for more entertainment than usual on nights like these.”

You lift an eyebrow in response. “Oh? How so?”

“Watching the sharks circling and getting into tussles about who will ultimately have your pet.”

Your stomach twists at hearing someone other than Sylus calling him a pet. He’s not your pet. He’s your partner. He’s a whole person—a complicated, vicious, funny, cruel, gentle man. You suddenly hate the appraising look this asshole is giving him. But you’re a professional, damn it. You smile wider, going for seductive, amused, haughty.

“No need to tussle,” you tilt your head. “It’s simple. Offer the highest bid, and congratulations, you’re the owner of a new, obedient, exotic pet.”

The fuckhead eyeing Sylus chuckles heartily, as if what you said isn’t disgusting but the height of rich-asshole humor.

“I like the idea of owning the obedience of such a big, powerful creature. Is he willing to do anything you ask?”

The way his gaze keeps flicking to Sylus, as if he can’t help himself, makes you want to remove his eyes with one of your knives and wear them as a warning to anyone else who dares look at Sylus with such depraved, cruel desire.

“Place the winning bid and maybe you’ll find out,” you say coyly, somehow controlling your homicidal urges. Barely.

“Something to consider.” He shakes his head, as if trying to break the spell Sylus seems to have over him. “In any case, after a while, all these events start blurring together. May I buy you a drink, to thank you for dumping new blood in the water?”

This guy is the pinnacle of rich guy ennui. He probably would enjoy dog fights or hunting other people for sport, anything to break through his privileged, seen-it-all, can-buy-it-all numbness. Despite sharing the same status of filthy rich elite, this piece of shit is everything that Sylus isn’t. You want to hunt him for sport. Your nerves are fraying, and it’s getting harder and harder to maintain your composure.

“Shame, I just ordered a drink.”

He leans closer, invades your space.

“Why not indulge? You can have two drinks. And after, perhaps you’d like to show me just what your cat can do… a sort of preview, if you will.” He leans even closer, tilts his head as if a new thought has just occurred to him. “Is there perhaps a possibility of bidding for the pair, instead of just the butler?”

You realize that he’s propositioning you as well as your catboy butler, but the fury you feel at the idea of using Sylus for this fuckhead’s viewing pleasure overrides even your indignation at the insinuation that you, too, are for sale.

Suddenly Sylus’s warmth is at your back and the effect is immediate. Your murderous rage settles inside of you. You turn to him, lift an eyebrow like the imperious owner you’re supposed to be, slightly irritated at your servant’s interruption of… whatever this asshole at the bar thinks he’s getting away with. “Speak,” you command, imitating the most imperious man you know. Sylus, as he has done the entire duration of your appearance in public on this ship, does not react at all to your obvious inside joke.

“My owner,” he purrs deferentially, dipping his head. “You asked that I escort you back to your cabin at 21:00 in order to properly prepare for the bidding.”

The asshole’s gaze drifts from Sylus to you and back again. “A possessive cat, I see. What will he do, when his owner abandons him to another?”

You shrug, as if you don’t want to pull this guy’s tongue out of his mouth and garrotte him with it.

“As I said, buy him and find out,” you breathe through the nausea, trying desperately to stay in character—you are the same ilk as this guy, here to pawn your broken, loyal manservant onto anyone who can afford him. “But he’s right. Thank you for the interesting �� offer, but the auction is about to begin. Tick tock, tick tock.”

“You’re a very good salesperson,” he smirks, as if pleased with the idea of depriving Sylus of his beloved owner and seeing if he can bend him to his will. You can’t see why you ever thought him handsome at all. “A raincheck, then, on the drink, and perhaps your own company.”

You just lower your head slightly, barely suppressing the urge to put this man on the ground and punch his smug smile until he is permanently unrecognizable, and the intensity of your renewed desire to hurt him for daring to even look at Sylus has you reaching for Sylus’s arm for support. He tucks your hand into his elbow and leads you out of the lounge.

When you finally reach your first class cabin on this pretentious floating black market, however, you see the strain that his flawless behavior has placed on your miscreant boyfriend.

As soon as the door closes behind you, he growls, deep in his throat, and spins, grabbing your wrist. He pulls you more roughly than usual through the elegant sitting room—the place looks like the interior designer was trying to recreate the staterooms of the Titanic—to the bedroom. Without letting go of your wrist, he yanks the scarlet velvet duvet and crisp white sheets from the bed and dumps them on the floor. The ocean glitters under the bright moonlight outside the bedroom’s window, the salt scent strong. The bed successfully stripped, Sylus now tries to jerk you onto the mattress, but you dig your heels into the plush carpet, feet dragging because despite your own strength, you can’t match his. You jerk your wrist from his grasp and whirl on him. You are willing to die for him, but you aren’t going to let him manhandle you like this.

“What is wrong with you?” you demand, rubbing your wrist.

“If I still had my evol, you’d be on the bed.” His voice is still calm, but his tail flicks angrily.

“If you still had your evol, I hope you wouldn’t use it on me when you’re this upset,” you glare at him.

He doesn’t respond, just begins to pace. Around the bed. Back into the sitting room. He veers into the bathroom and then returns to the bedroom. The anxious energy he’s giving off is palpable—you’ve never seen him this agitated in the entire time you’ve known him.

The longer he’s quiet, the more concerned you become.

“Sylus?” you ask, softly. “Are you okay?”

“Oh, I’m Sylus again? Not Mister fucking Whiskers?”

You stare at him. Your boyfriend, who is always up for teasing pet names and playful banter, is looking at you like he’s genuinely angry about the silly code name.

“Sylus—?”

His tail is thrashing back and forth as he continues to pace, ears flat against his hair. “Are you sure you’re interested in hearing how Mister Whiskers is doing now? You didn’t seem to be too interested when you were being fawned over by your suitors.”

You stare at him. At the tension he’s holding in his body, the wild movements of his tail.

“Sylus—”

“This was a boring plan to begin with, and now it’s even less interesting. You already have a mountain of gifts from my bidders—leave. Go through them to see if Snowy Owl has taken the bait so we can get this charade over with,” he snaps, effectively dismissing you. He sits on the side of the bed and puts his head in his hands.

With each harsh word, you feel your insides folding in on themselves. He hasn’t spoken to you like this since he held you captive when you first met. He promised he’d never treat you like that again, but you realize he never promised to never speak to you like that again.

Normally, how he’s talking to you—if it were any other person, you’d be out the door. Gone, ghosted. You speak to yourself cruelly enough every day in your own head, you don’t need that shit from other people. You’re even more shocked that it’s coming from Sylus, of all people. The Sylus who has cared for you so patiently, through all the time you’ve been together since that first auction. Who kills with his bare hands, but touches you with those same hands as if you’re made of glass. Until tonight.

You are tempted to run as the betrayal, confusion, and fear of the inevitable end course through you. To just stuff the gifts waiting for you on the sitting room’s coffee table into one of the big duffels you brought, move to another room, and wing the rest of the operation without Sylus. You can pose as a fucking waiter once you figure out Snowy Owl’s identity. You don’t need him for this mission. And you don’t need him in your fucking life, if this is his true self.

As you’re almost to the door leading to the hallway, reaching for the handle, you suddenly remember your promise to yourself, just a few nights ago—the night Sylus came to your place and you learned why he had gone silent for a whole week.

Your resolution that you wouldn’t give in to your fear at his expense anymore, that you would show him you care for him, just as he has done so for you through all of your time together. Even when he witnessed your worst moments, he did not walk away from you. He stayed, even as you pushed him away.

You think about how he was afraid for you to see him stripped of his power, as if you’d ever think him weak, and think less of him for something outside of his control. If I still had my evol, you’d be on the bed. How unnerving must it be for him to be in this shark’s tank without his ability to protect himself beyond his own body? It suddenly occurs to you that if he gets injured while his power is suppressed, he won’t heal like he normally does. The idea that he could get seriously hurt while here, helping you on a mission that has nothing to do with him, hurts a hundred times worse than the words he just snapped at you.

Weren’t you just furious with that fuck from the cocktail lounge for talking about Sylus like he was an object, instead of a person? Sylus is a human being. He’s not a god. He’s not perfect. He’s just a complicated man, a complicated man who hurt you with his harsh words tonight, but who has steadfastly shown how much he cares for you in the best way he knows how. Who could be expected to act normally, to be their best self, if one were to find oneself fundamentally changed, stripped of a lifetime of skill and ability, experiencing strange new urges, and to top it all off, thrown into a dangerous situation?

You turn and walk back through the sitting room, to the bedroom where he’s sitting, head still in his hands. You stand in front of him.

“Sylus.”

He doesn’t respond. You reach out, gently grip his chin, and lift his face.

He lets you, docile. His cat ears are drooping.

“Tell me,” you order.

He refuses to look at you. His tail swishes petulantly behind him.

“Tell. Me.” You tighten your hold on his jaw.

His eyes flick to yours, but he keeps his face turned away. “Caracal’s hate water.”

You gaze into his beautiful eyes, fire-lit gems. “And a caracal is the type of cat that you’ve partly mutated into?”

He nods, just a little movement of his head.

“And I brought you onto a boat, surrounded by water.”

He finally turns his head to face you, gazing at you but not responding.

“What else?” You relax your hold on his jaw, moving your palm to cup his cheek and bring up your other hand into his hair, running your fingers through the soft strands.

“Each person who shook your hand, who handed you their business card, who leaned too close to you… their stench is all over you.”

You run your fingers through his hair until you reach one of his cat ears and gently begin to rub it. He closes his eyes and he leans into your touch.

“What else?”

“If this plan goes sideways, I won’t be able to protect you.”

With each admission, his shoulders relax. His face softens. But there’s still something bothering him. You search his beautiful face. His tail flicks, flicks, flicks.

“What else, Sy?” You lean down, rest your cheek against his soft hair. His ears are velvet against your skin.

He reaches out and clasps the backs of your thighs to pull you closer to him and rests his forehead against your chest. “Even if it’s just for the mission, are you really okay with letting someone else have me?”

It takes you a moment, but when you realize what he’s saying, you’re floored.

Sylus has spent the whole evening watching you laugh off multiple peoples’ offers to take over ownership of your catboy butler. He watched you tell that little bitch at the bar, more than once, to buy Sylus to find out how obedient he is, how he’ll react to being parted from his beloved owner. Each time, you responded in character, like the idea didn’t bother you at all. Because that’s what the mission required.

You realize that this entire ordeal has made him insecure. He wants you to be jealous. He wants you to be possessive of him. The thought never once crossed your mind that he would be bothered by the cover you planned for this mission. He is always so self-assured, only hinting at flashes of jealousy in playful, dismissive terms. And yet he doesn’t want you to be okay with the idea of him being possessed by another, no matter how briefly, no matter how falsely.

You continue to pet him as you let everything he just admitted sink in. The water, other peoples’ scents on your body, his lack of power at the moment, your lack of jealousy at the mere idea that another would have him.

After all the times Sylus has comforted you, cared for you, solved problems for you, it’s now your turn to do the same for him.

You drop your hands and he looks back up at you with such raw longing that you almost can’t step away. But you must.

“Would you like to abort the mission?”

He looks at you in confusion. “Don’t be ridiculous. This is your job.”

You smile down at him helplessly. “Don’t you realize by now that you’re more important to me than my job?”

He sucks in a breath.

“How else could I be with the most wanted man on the planet?”

“The only reason I have been able to repress my instincts through this whole shitshow is reminding myself how important this mission is to you,” he breathes, closing his eyes.

“Your instincts?”

“You have no idea,” he says through clenched teeth. His tail is violently flicking again. You can’t bear to see him so distressed.

“Yes or no. Forget what you think I want. If it’s too much, we leave right now.”

Eyes still closed, ears still flattened to his head, he shakes his head no.

“Okay.” You turn, but he reaches out and grabs your wrist to stop you leaving. You put your hand over his. “Since I can’t remove the ship from the water, I’m just closing the window and the curtains so you don’t have to see it.”

He reluctantly releases your wrist. You do as you promised, and when you’re done you return to stand between his legs.

“What do you need to do about how I smell?”

You don’t have to repeat yourself. He grasps your wrist again, pulling your closer. He grabs the hem of your outfit and pulls, tugging it over your head, lifting your legs one by one to tear off your shoes, tossing everything into the farthest corner of the room, until you’re standing in front of him in your underwear. He then pulls you down onto the bed with him, rolling you under him. He presses his face into your neck and rubs, rubs, his tail wagging behind him, his ears brushing against your skin again, their softness making you want to grab them and pull, pull, the cuteness aggression difficult to contain. You satisfy yourself by running your hands through his hair, gripping slightly, tugging, releasing.

As he rubs his cheeks all over you, he pauses to lick your skin, runs his hands along your shoulders, your arms, your waist.

After a long time, his manic movements slow and he inhales deeply. “You have no idea how hard it was to resist the urge to piss on your shoes while you were talking to that bastard in the cocktail lounge.”

You freeze. “Piss… on my shoes?”

“Didn’t you know? Cats urinate to mark their territory,” he licks your skin again, purrs. “And you’re my territory, sweetheart.”

You don’t even know how to feel about his admission. “Well… I might be willing to die for you, but I draw the line at letting you pee on me. So thank you, for not giving in to your caracal urges.”

He pauses, lifts his head. “Don’t fucking say you’ll die, ever again,” he growls. “I forbid it.”

You laugh, a little breathlessly. You decide it’s not a good time to point out that you will, in fact, someday die. Probably sooner than the average human, with your job. So you just say “Okay.”

He looks mollified and his tail begins to swish playfully again. “So that’s a no on watersports, in the future?”

You scowl at him. “Just try to piss on me and see what happens.”

“That sounds like a challenge. And you know that’s like catnip to this big cat. Are you sure you aren’t actually interested in golden showers?”

All you can do is laugh, and pull him down to you, and kiss him so he’ll shut the fuck up about peeing on you.

After a few minutes of mauling him, you groan and pull away.

“If we don’t want this entire thing to be a waste, we need to check the contacts we made today and finish the mission before the auction is over.”

He rests his head against your shoulder. “I know, but I don’t want to get off you. No one can hurt you as long as you’re under me,” he grumbles.

You stare at the ceiling and run your hands through his hair again, fondling his cat ears. “I survived before I met you, because I’m a fucking badass. I’m strong enough for the both of us, especially for a covert mission like this. We go through the business cards and gifts, pinpoint Snowy Owl’s room, you distract them for ten minutes while I plant surveillance, we get the fuck out before the auction’s over.”

“You and I both know how quickly plans get fucked,” he murmurs into your skin.

“And you and I both know that I am skilled enough to unfuck it. And with you here, even without your evol, it’s going to be okay.”

His tail lifts, curls up your leg.

“Fine.” He rolls off of you reluctantly, and you immediately miss his weight. “But the reward for going along with your plan is now tripled.”

“You can have anything you want, when this is over,” you promise, sliding off the bed and gathering your clothes from the floor.

“Even a golden shower?”

You throw your shoe at him. He just catches it and laughs, relaxed again.

After you’re dressed, the two of you tear into the gifts people sent hoping to gain your favor and therefore an advantage in the auction for your catboy butler. Sylus, the spoiled creature that he is, tosses multiple priceless trinkets aside like they’re trash, complaining about being bored out of his mind. However, he bats at a feathered butt plug before realizing what he’s doing and then tosses it as well. The only other thing he expresses even a passing interest in is a little spray can with DOCTOR SLEEPYTIME printed on the side, with the caption reading, “A stalker’s new best friend! Never worry about your target waking up too early again! Ten fewer side effects than chloroform!” You squint at it. The legal disclaimers are a solid block of text underneath the caption. Apparently, one of the side effects that it still shares with chloroform is death. You don’t comment when you see Sylus slip it into the breast pocket of his tux, not even wanting to know what he has planned for it. Finally, you open a small box and realize that the weird little thing inside matches the description the Association provided you of Snowy Owl’s calling card.

“Got you,” you whisper triumphantly, pawing through the packaging to figure out which room it came from.

Sylus stands, prepared to play his part in this little ruse, but you stop him before he opens the door. “Wait a second,” you say, running to the bedroom, throwing open your luggage in the cabin’s closet, and pulling out what you had hastily prepared in anticipation of this mission.

You return to Sylus with the item hidden behind your back.

“You asked if I’m really okay with the idea of sending you to someone else.”

He just watches you in silence, ears twitching in curiosity, tail swishing behind him.

“Of course I’m not. You don’t know how badly I wanted to slit that fucker’s throat who talked about you like you’re not even a person. I feel sick at the idea of anyone else looking at you with anything less than respect and admiration, let alone as some kind of object to be owned. I can’t even stand the thought that I own you. You are wholly your own person, and I’m just happy that you want me by your side, and allow me to adore you.”

His tail swishes faster the longer you speak, but stills at your last sentence. “But you do own me. Body and soul.”

You swallow through the thickness in your throat. You’re not going to cry at his absurd, devoted answer.

“Then perhaps you will do me the honor of wearing this while we’re apart.” You show him the soft black leather collar. “It can only be placed on you, and taken off you, by a person whose pheromones match those of your owner. Your true owner.”

“So this was your trump card,” he murmurs, tail thwacking against the door so hard that the door vibrates.

You shrug. “You don’t have to wear it.”

He flattens his ears against his head. “Nonsense. Put it on me,” he commands imperiously.

You try to hide your smile, but probably fail. “In that case, I hope it will remind you that I am definitely not okay with sending you to someone else. But none of this is real, and when we’re off this boat, I’m never going to ask you to do something like this again.”

He reaches out and wraps his hand around your wrist. “How many times must we go over this? You can ask anything of me.”

“Just because I can, doesn’t mean I want to.”

Without waiting for his answer, you unclasp the collar and lift onto your tiptoes to thread it around his neck. He growls softly, in annoyance or exasperation, and sinks to his knees in front of you.

As always when Sylus kneels before you, you’re overcome with a sense of wrongness. But he seems to want to give this to you, to drive home the point that anything he has is yours for the taking. You can’t find it in yourself to refuse him by insisting that you could have reached his neck just fine without him having to kneel.

You lay the collar against his neck, thread the end through the buckle, and tighten it. His eyes are half-lidded, the glow of his irises spilling from between his eyelashes. He seems to be enjoying this so much that you tighten it just a little bit beyond what is necessary, just to see his reaction. He lets out a pathetic little gasp, and you loosen it, worried you’ve hurt him. But his chest expands and his ears droop, almost as if he’s disappointed. So you tighten it again. “Yes,” he breathes.

You stand there, with this gorgeous, half-feral man at your feet, fingering the pendant of the collar. You couldn’t afford the platinum that you think Sylus deserves, so silver had to do. But you did splurge a little to have your initials engraved on the inner side of the pendant, so that it’s pressed against his skin where no one else can see it. Your little secret against his pulse.

“We need to get moving, Sy,” you whisper, regretfully.

He rises gracefully to his feet.

“If you want it taken off, just ask.”

He gives you a disdainful look, his only response a tsking sound on his tongue. He leans down, kisses you, once, hard, and then straightens. He turns, throws open the door, and disappears down the hallway.

The rest of the mission goes off without a hitch. When you arrive at Snowy Owl’s door, you pick the lock easily, slip into the empty room, leave a variety of tracking devices in their possessions, and slip out again unseen.

You return to your room, prepared to wait for Sylus, trying to suppress the worry that he’ll have to put up with yet another handsy asshole all because he doesn't want to jeopardize your mission.

However, when you open the door, you find your big, beautiful cat already lounging on one of the sitting room’s ornate love seats, examining his nails and humming leisurely.

At his feet is the asshole from the cocktail lounge, bound, gagged, and clearly roughed up, his bloody nose dripping into the fabric of his mouth gag.

“The fuck, Sylus?” you ask.

Sylus rolls his head to look at you, lovely eyes glowing in the light of the tiffany lamps on the tables on either side of the love seat.

“I brought a gift for my owner,” he says, ears twitching between you and the asshole who started to struggle at your entrance, making little pleading whimpering noises. “I could tell how much you hated this waste of oxygen the whole time you had to endure his attention at the bar.”

“A… gift?” you repeat.

“You have no idea the self control it took to suppress the instinct to bring him to you as a corpse, as nature intended, when I was done playing with him. But I assumed that would make my owner mad,” he says languidly, but his tail is flicking in agitation.

“Okay,” you draw out the word, trying to process this… gift. “And Snowy Owl?”

“Passed out in a janitor’s closet in the ship’s casino,” he shrugs. “Doctor Sleepytime is true to its claims. A great improvement over chloroform,” he drawls. “I’ll have to leave a good review on their website.”

Relief floods through you. You’re done. The mission is almost complete. All that’s left is to get the fuck off this floating cesspool.

“Thank you,” you murmur. But you’re still left with the problem of what to do with Sylus’s ‘gift.’ “But Sy, what the fuck am I supposed to with… this.” You can’t help but sneer a little at the asshole still struggling on the ground.

“Whatever you want, my heart,” Sylus responds. “He’s wanted in Linkon City by at least three different agencies. But we could just dump him over the railing and be done with it. In fact, I’d prefer that,” he says, perking up.

You march over to him and slip a finger under his collar.

“No! Bad kitty,” you scold, pulling a little on the leather, intending to simply tease him for his outrageous suggestion.

Sylus just gasps, eyes going half lidded again. You stop in surprise at the clear pleasure your rough treatment is causing him, but he wraps his hand around your wrist and moves your hand again, tightening the collar against his neck once more.

“If I’m a bad kitty, you better keep a tight hold on me to make sure I don’t drag home any other unwelcome surprises,” he says, voice low and rough.

“Oh?” You marvel at how lovely he looks, cheeks flushed, mouth slightly open, breathing hard. “Maybe my bad kitty needs to be punished, so he stops suggesting I murder wanted criminals instead of bringing them to justice like a professional.”

The man on the floor who is forced to witness this flirtation struggles harder, his whimpers ranging from disgusted to terrified. You ignore him.

“Oh nooo,” Sylus says, voice dripping with sarcasm. Then he narrows his eyes. “You better make good on your promise. Or are you just full of empty threats?”

You lean down and press the heel of your hand onto his hard cock straining against his zipper, hard. He moans, eyelashes fluttering.

“Get us to the getaway boat without causing a scene and you’ll find out what I’m full of. Or what I’m about to be full of, if you’re a good kitty for me,” you breathe into his ear.

The man on the floor gags a little.

Sylus stands, lifting you in one arm, grabbing a full duffel bag you hadn’t noticed with the other.

“What’s that?”

“Your bad kitty helped himself to a cat treat,” he purrs.

“What kind of souvenir?”

“The loud, prone-to-exploding-if-you-shake-it-too-hard-kind.” He grins at you, canines flashing.

You can’t help yourself. You burst out laughing.

It may have started with trouncing your crimelord boyfriend at kitty cards, but it ended with you learning how to better care for your catboy boyfriend. It also ended with the arrest of both Snowy Owl and the poor bastard who had to listen to you 'punish' said boyfriend from inside the duffel bag that he was stuffed in after Sylus cut the engine of the getaway boat halfway to your destination, too impatient to wait till you both got home to claim part of his reward for being such a good, good kitty.

#love and deepspace #sylus x reader #sylus x mc #my fanfic #love and deepspace sylus #sara answers

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criibibi · 1 month ago

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Synopsis: After losing so much, Spider-woman learns to just keep moving. Only for her to end up somewhere far from home. Her first agenda is figuring out where she is, and how to get back. The only problem is that she ended up somewhere fictional (to her). Playing hero with Batman was not in her bingo cards this year. Hopefully she will be able to make it back home before she catches unwanted attention.

Masterlist: Prev; Next;

Chapter 3 - Weak and Alone

The hairs on your body stood up for a good while before you could relax again. You didn’t know meeting the yellow bat would be this fucking terrifying. Like, c’mon man! You fought many weird, crazy, dangerous, and scary things in your life as a hero, why was coming into contact with one of this world’s heroes that terrifying?

And besides this guy was just- is just a human, not a mutated creature or even an alien, just a regular human like you. But something about him just- put you off.

Crime in the mornings are so rare, how bad was your luck for it to happen when you were there? Wrong place and time, maybe? Or your luck is just shit and that’s that.

You don’t even question how this guy found you-er the robber. Even if he was in the area, Oracle or the other Robin must have been on surveillance duty or something. If you recall only two of Batman’s wards are mostly the “man in the chair” type. Oracle because of what happened to her with the Joker and one of the Robins because he’s one of the smartest ones. Or something like that.

Regardless, you’re okay now. That’s all that matters.

Hands in your pocket you remembered you looted the guy earlier. Taking out some cash you realized this guy had money. He had three-hundred, so why try to rob a convenience store? Well, whatever, not your problem.

You’ve become really good at pushing your problems to the back of your head.

What is now your problem is finding a library. Lifting your mask back on your face you continue to march forward, regardless of direction. Picking a random bar from your snack bag, you begin to eat it under your mask to calm your stomach so you can think.

“Okay, cheap food and non perishables are what I will live off of.” You don’t plan to stay in this wack world for long, so saving money is key. “Next, find layouts, maps, anything to get a semblance of where I am and what I can do. I need information, and lots of it. Third, I need a generator to power my gizmo. Finally, supplies to build a GHM. ‘Go-Home’ machine.”

So far things are looking very bleak but that's okay. No worries. Um, on the bright side, you haven’t glitched at all, so your gizmo watch isn’t totally off the record. As long as it’s still connected and alive, you’re sure Miguel can find your signal.

You did just suddenly disappear during a fight that was basically your mission that Miguel sent you on. That means Miguel already knows of your unfortunate case and should most likely be looking for you, right?

He wouldn’t abandon you, right? He’s the one that recruited you after all! He came to you. He knows of your existence and predicament. You have somewhat of a mentor and student relationship for fucks sake! He wouldn’t leave you stranded in favor of his issues with Miles…right?

You’re not getting forgotten… right?

You matter…right?

No! You can’t think like this! You also can’t put all your spiders in one web. You need more options, alternatives. Whether Miguel is looking for you or not (you choose to believe he is), you need to find a way to either go home or get in touch with him.

You gotta do things your own way.

You’re smart, resourceful, use your brain!

You’re good at improving, inventing, and repairing- a tinker if you will. Taking things apart, fixing what’s broken, or building things. That’s one of your strong suits- it’s time to use that big beautiful brain of yours to find out what’s wrong with this watch.

So in order to do that, you need materials. So how would a broke but smart pretty woman such as yourself find materials that won’t catch the eyes of the batsonas? Simple. One man’s garbage is another man’s treasure.

That’s right baby!

A junkyard.

Now to find a junkyard, you need a map. So to a library you go!

With newfound determination and energy, forgoing any unsavory thoughts and focusing on buildings and landmarks.

Getting pretty far into the city you managed to find a public library and mentally fell to your knees begging to all the gods to not run into any and all of the bat family here.

So you pass through the automatic doors and immediately feel relaxed. Honestly being in this world makes it hard for you to even feel safe when everything and everyone could be a potential danger to you.

Not to mention how quickly and easily some of the criminals can escape. You reeeeeally don’t want to face the villains of this world. You’d rather your own Vulture than their Scarecrow or whatever.

Giving the librarian an award winning (and non suspicious) smile, you made your way over to the row of computers. Sitting further away from the camera, you sit down and stare at the dull desktop.

“Okay, good, I’m here, no bats in sight, now what?” Feeling slightly overwhelmed you took a deep breath and then checked the date and location.

Reading the latest news was beneficial, now you know just who is in Arkham and who’s free at the moment. Thank the gods that the Joker is locked away. You really aren’t ready to face the big bad baddies of this world.

Soaking in as much information as possible, for hours you learned the latest news, Batman sent the some criminals to Arkham, Bruce Wayne hosting a charity event in a couple of months, Dick Grayson is coming to Gotham (why?), Lex Luther’s recent scandal, Superman saves the earth (again), Damian Wayne’s anticipated art museum opening. Wow, nothing interesting.

Nearing four hours just sitting there, you decide to call it quits and pull up maps one last time. Double checking your information you make sure that everything was like you never touched it and thensome.

Waving good-bye to the librarian you headed off to the large junkyard you found. The walk was pleasant and free of crime. Fuck you daylight robber. Though you know it isn’t true, crime happens everywhere and anytime, just some are quieter than others.

Arriving at the junkyard, you realized just how ginormous it is. Walking around you spot an abandoned warehouse, where equipment usually is stored and you jump with glee. Knowing there are no working cameras around here, you rest easy knowing you can just go ham on tinkering to your heart's desire.

Setting your bags down, you look around. There are tools that were left behind and you were ready to kneel and thank the gods. Looking at the equipment and workbench, you’re thoroughly pleased with what you have to work with. Shedding your hoodie, you step outside and into your paradise.

Finding many useful and discarded materials you quickly get to work in picking apart metals and material. Dragging them inside the spacious warehouse you go back and forth picking and dragging materials.

And the day flew by, just like that. It’s already late afternoon and you looked over your work.

You’ve made great progress with gathering materials. Having a mountain inside the warehouse to work with and on the workbench there was already something in the making. You’re building what is essentially a charger and beacon for your web watch.

This will give out a signal for Miguel to latch onto and discover your location. The only issue is if Miguel is looking for you, this will help greatly. The other issue is, you need energy, and lots of it. Sunlight here would suck with how gloomy Gotham can be.

So direct sunlight can’t be its only source.

Regardless you’ll fix and create the panels anyways. For now, since it’s late, you’ll take a break and fix this place up.

Sike, you just make a web hammock on the ceiling and web your bags to the wall next to you. After discovering the owner of the motel tried to get inside your room (that you fucking paid for) while you managed to finally catch some Zzz’s, it was decided to just leave.

Though you still need food and a place to do your necessities. Maybe you just have to suck it up and go through the centers here.

Sighing in the silence, your mind began to spiral.

The warmth and comfort of uncle Ben as he took care of you when you had nightmares, the gentle embrace of aunt May when you had succumbed to fevers, and the loving presence of Peter Parker when you were at the brink of it all.

You miss them, god you fucking miss them! You hadn’t felt those things in years, not after closing yourself from everyone when you lost them. Sure you had the mentor and student relationship with Miguel, but you never let yourself get close.

Not with Miles and the others, because you felt like a protector, a role model, someone who can’t show weakness.

Not with the hundreds of other Peter Parker’s either. Those Peter’s are just as smart, charming, dorky, and special as your Peter Parker. But they aren’t your Peter Parker. And they never will. Your Peter was even more special, more smart, more charming, more dorky, more charismatic, more everything! He was everything! And then… he left.

No, he didn’t leave.

You just couldn’t save him. You must not have been enough for him. You had seen the signs! You could have done something! But you didn’t. You got complacent, cowardly. Afraid to lose what you have.

Uncle Ben’s death taught you to treasure what you have before it’s taken away. Aunt May’s death taught you to keep things as they are, so they don’t break. You vowed to never make those mistakes again.

So when you met Peter Parker, you made sure he knew just how much he meant to you. How special he was, and how important he is to you. You weren’t blind, you noticed the painted smiles he wore at times. How life seemed to be dragging him down. But you were too afraid, too complacent. You didn’t want to tip the scales and possibly break something too fragile. You never pushed, or prodded because you knew if someone did that to you, you’d leave.

But the most important thing was that Peter isn’t you. Peter was strong, faaaar stronger than you, he isn’t glass. He held on for soooo long, and still tried to hide his pain from you. But you knew. You also knew that Peter knew that you knew. You just never pushed.

Peter Parker’s death demonstrated just how powerless you are. How much of a coward and paranoid you became. If you just talked to him, maybe he would still be alive.

With you…

Maybe, you would have accepted his confession once you mustered up the courage to take a leap and accept his feelings for you.

Just maybe.

But, there is no maybe anymore. There will never be Peter Parker and You. Because there hasn’t been another you so far.

And you live with that guilt and hatred towards yourself. But if Peter’s death taught you anything else, it’s to keep moving.

You have to keep going, for Peter’s sake. And for your sanity.

Because the more time you spend in this universe and not in your own, where you can visit Ben, May, and Peter’s graves, you are slipping ever so slightly.

You’re losing your fucking mind.

You just want to go home.

“Nothing Bruce. It’s only been a day but so far nothing.” Catwoman’s sharp voice cut through the silence.

Batman doesn’t reply in acknowledgement but nods and leaves the rooftop, leaving Catwoman peeved.

“I told you I’d keep looking, maybe it was nothing. You’re just too paranoid.” She huffed before going her separate way.

Batman felt his eyebrow twitch. First, this disturbance that apparently leads to nothing (that’s not true, he can feel it.) Then it’s news about a freak who caught two crooks beating a civilian. At first he didn’t pay it any mind until they kept spouting about a person in a suit shooting a sticky substance.

Gordon couldn’t get a sample because of how sticky the substance was and only for it to dissolve thirty minutes later. Jim Gordon also couldn’t add anything to this person’s claim because it was night and dark and he could only see the silhouette of the person.

But then again, that’s just two things that were off. A coincidence sure, but he doesn’t really believe in coincidences. Not in Gotham.

Placing his hand on his earpiece he spoke, “Anything?”

“Nothing to note. Maybe she’s right. What if this shift was just a coincidence?” Oracle replied.

“Not likely,” He heard her huff, and he sighed. “But not impossible either.”

Oracle would take that over a paranoid Batman any day. It’s the closest thing to an agreement then she will ever get. “I’ve been scanning the whole day but so far, nothing. Not even something similar.” She mumbled to herself.

Just as she takes a small break and sips on water, she hears footsteps approaching.

“How can I help you, Duke?”

“Hey, sorry to bother you if you're busy. Looks like you could use a break.” He replied.

“Honestly, yes. With the whole issue near the East End, I need it.” Barbara swirled her chair around to face Duke.

Duke rubbed his neck in apprehension. “Did you-”

“Find anything?” Oracle finishes for him. He nods. “No. Scanned her face and everything but nothing came up. Then I checked beyond, outside of Gotham. Truly nothing. She’s a ghost.”

“Or, maybe a survivor?” Duke proposed.

“Possibly. Many trafficked survivors and escapees have made it to Gotham.” Barbara entertained the idea.

“Do you know where,” after a hesitant pause he let his hand fall to his side, a slight glint in his eyes that went unnoticed. “She is staying?”

“She was staying at a motel near Park Row. She hasn’t returned since.” This was cause for alarm for Duke but he kept it in.

“Where-” He tried.

“Relax Duke. You know most would call this- what’s the word, ah, stalking.” Barbara teased, causing Duke to flush slightly.

“You’re right. I just…” He straightened up before he chuckled at his memory of you. “I never got her name.”

“That’s cause she never threw it. Not even the guy from the store got it.”

“Alright, thanks though.” Duke nodded and headed out.

Barbara bid him well and returned to the screen. Wondering how you, a random civilian, caught Duke’s attention. But then again, after scanning your face on the screen she too couldn’t help but find herself unable to look away.

And yes, you could say that you’re pretty, she can see that, but there is just something about you that makes you different and she can’t figure out why. Just what about you has her curious. But then again you are a civilian and she won’t mix personal interest with work.

Despite parading that Bruce was being paranoid about the disturbance in the air. It was strong enough to send an alert to her, and it could be something dangerous. But it happened so fast that you could blind and you would miss it.

For now, the thought of the pretty civilian will be put on the back burner, but not forgotten. She’ll get to you when she solves this stupid case in front of her. That and the mysterious spider person that three people (not including her dad) apparently saw.

“Coincidence? Probably not.” typing the keyboard she clicks enter and watches the monitor scan Gotham for the same frequency as the disturbance to see if she can put up anything, even a trace.

Nothing.

Clicking enter, she watches the screen again.

Prev; Next;

I realized have like ZERO outline for a fleshed out story sucks balls. Well, let's see where this goes together. I ordered some Signal/Duke comics and I am excited to see them arrive. Anyways, which new bat person do you think you'll meet next? There is only one right answer and it isn't Duke.

You're name isn't Tinker, but it's probably what I'll use as your alias.

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mindfulstudyquest · 8 months ago

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“ dopamine detox ,, and why you should delete all your social media right now

"just five more minutes" and then you end up scrolling on instagram or tiktok for hours. i know that feeling. even if you know rationally that focusing on the really important things ( such as studying, working, learning from books or whatever ) is much healthier for you and your future, you can't help it.

you know that start studying for the exam you have next week will benefit you much more in the long run, but you still prefer watching tiktoks and scrolling on instagram. you could say that is pretty obvious: one activity is easy, and doesn't require much effort, whereas the other one is difficult and implies that you are focused.

but it's actually like this? so then why some people manage to be consistent in studying, or working, or exercising? they simply just have more motivation than you? and how can you start having the same motivation as them?

to answer this question, we have to take a look to a very important molecule produced by our brain: dopamine.

dopamine is often considered a pleasure molecule, but it's a false belief. dopamine is actually the molecule that makes us desire things, and it's that desire that gives us the motivation to complete every kind of task. for example, your brain doesn't release dopamine while you're eating a cheesburger, it releases it while you're going to mcdonald's to buy it, because you anticipate that the food will make you feel good, even if it actually makes you feel worse.

to your brain, it doesn't matter if the high-dopamine-activity is damaging to you.

your brain organizes priorities based off how much dopamine is expecting to get:

if an activity releases too little dopamine, you won't have the motivation to accomplish it.

if an activity releases a lot of dopamine you'll be motivated to do it, and repeat it over and over

so, which activities releases dopamine? basically, any activity where you can get an immediate potential reward releases an high amount of dopamine. but if you know that there's not an immediate reward invoved ( such as in studying, where the reward is in the long run ) your brain will not expect to release much of it and you'll be less motivated to do that task.

nearly everything releases some amount of dopamine, even drinking water when you're thirsty, but the highest amount of it is released when you're getting a reward randomly, for example while playing on a slot machine. even if you loose money, you eventually expect to get a bigger reward.

therefore it is not so surprising that the most additive social networks ( tiktok, instagram, pinterest ) are designed as slot machines. you don't know what the next post or video will be, but you expect something great, so your brain releases a large amount of dopamine.

in today's society our brains are overloaded with stimuli that induce an unnatural production of dopamine ( scrolling on social media, playing video games, watching internet pornograhy, etc. ).

it's frightening that people don't know how harmful this lifestyle is: our bodies have a biological sistem called homeostasis, which means that our bodies keep the internal physical and chemical conditions at a balanced level, whenever an imbalance occurs, our bodies adapt to it, for example, when it's very hot our body temperature rises and we start sweating to cool down.

but homeostasis manifests through tolerance too. for example, someone who hardly ever drinks alchool will be tipsy after one beer, on the other hand, someone who drinks alchool on a regular basis will need two, three, four beers in order to get drunk, because their body has developed a tolerance to it. it's not much different with dopamine.

so if you get used to large amounts of dopamine, you won't be able to do the things that you did before, because they don't produce as much dopamine and it's more difficult to motivate yourself to do them. once your dopamine tolerance gets too high, you are no longer able to enjoy low dopamine activities.

as if you were a drug addict, there's only one way to get out of it: you have to perform a dopamine detox. you have to avoid all high dopamine activities in order to allow your body to adjust to a normal level of dopamine production and start finding motivation again in the things that improve your personal growth.

it's not easy, you will be nervous and frustrated, maybe you won't make it through a full day without social media, but day by day it will get better and better, and eventually you'll be able to appreciate small things again.

imagine that you're eating your favorite food - for example, chocolate cake - every single day. after a while, chocolate cake doesn't taste good as before, even if it's literally the same cake. on the other hand, if you eat it once a month, it will taste great, because it's not something you've gotten used to.

this is exactly what dopamine detox does. be safe guys, and start recovering now.

[ source: https://youtu.be/9QiE-M1LrZk ]

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solecist · 10 months ago

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more context for 악어(acau)'s translation (troubles? future troubles?)!

@blockgamepirate mentioned pronouns in context of translation in a reblog and that got me thinking about a bunch of things lmao but mostly about 반말 (banmal).

악어 decided really early on into his experience with the translator to try to use banmal bc he felt like the translator was picking up on it better, and he probably thought this because of two things:

banmal is usually shorter than 존댓말 (jondaemal) which is the polite/default way of speaking. and when i say default i mean my parents sometimes use it to refer to each other. it's more than just politeness, it's also a certain amount of respect? with younger people (high school, college, maybeeee graduate student age) people tend to use banmal with friends. older people use banmal to talk to children, and children use banmal except when talking to older people. i think the easiest way of showing just how much shorter banmal is, is to use "안녕" (korean "hello") as an example. "안녕" (annyeong) is actually banmal! you absolutely wouldn't say this to someone you've just met - you would say "안녕하세요" (annyeonghaseyo) which is jondaemal. but do you see how the second is three syllables longer? there's more of a margin of error with three more syllable and that's why the machine translator doesn't work as well with jondaemal.

The most casual way of speaking banmal uses pronouns. korean doesn't have gendered pronouns really, and the pronouns it does have seem. rude? generally? children use pronouns a lot and adults use pronouns when speaking to children but otherwise.... if you're not friends (and young honestly have yet to find an midsized (40+) adult regularly use pronouns) calling someone "you" is like. an insult. it works (that is, it doesn't feel like an insult) in 악어's stream for me because it felt like he was speaking in a significantly simpler/slower register after a while? like the register you'd use for kids. but i did want to put it out there! because if you're trying to learn korean through 악어's stream, you're probably listening to him use banmal! and that's just something to be aware of.

more pronoun thoughts! in terms of gender - korean doesn't have gendered pronouns. the closest you get in third person is something like "that girl" so machine translate will almost never get it right. it will default to masculine (in my experience) or the first person ("i" "me") so that's something to keep in mind. honestly my dad often defaults to masculine third person pronouns because he forgets pronouns are gendered in english and that there's more than one of them lmaooo. korean does gender relationships A Lot (oppa is the one that most people will know - brother from female speaker to older male listener) but pronouns wise there's. no gender oop.

i just wanted to put this out there because as 악어 becomes more a part of the qsmp community, we'll probably slowly pick up on the more regular patterns of awkward machine translation from an east asian language to english, and more specifically from korean to english. and if it's confusing that's ok! assume good faith - 악어 from what i can tell isn't a streamer who'll use insults a lot or curse, and his normal way of speaking to his audience is very soothing/polite/jondaemal, so i hope that people keep watching him throughout this introduction period!

#qsmp 악어 #qsmp acau #qsmp translations #korean language #honorifics #cultural difference!#in the language!#qsmp korea

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midnight-shadow-cafe · 16 days ago

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The Perfect Blend

Pairing: Johnny “Soap” Mactavish x Plus Sized! reader

Warnings: FLUFF WITH SOME SPICE, mentions of insecurities but don’t worry, Johnnys got you

Authors Note: I hope you enjoy, Johnny is a flirt

Word Count: 1.1k

Masterlist

MDNI18+MDNI18+MDNI18+MDNI18+MDNI18+

Working at the local café, you’d grown used to the ebb and flow of regulars, but John “Soap” MacTavish was something else entirely. He started coming in daily, his presence impossible to miss. With his mohawk, sharp jawline, and unmistakable Scottish accent, he wasn’t exactly inconspicuous in your quiet town. He ordered a black coffee and whatever pastry you had on special, always giving you a grin that felt like a secret shared.

By the third day, you found yourself looking forward to seeing him. And by the end of the week, he’d struck up a conversation.

“Dinnae worry, lass, it’s no’ gonna bite ye,” he teased, watching as you wrestled with the coffee machine.

“Oh, yeah?” you shot back, grinning as you finally got it working. “I’d like to see you handle it, Mr. Action Hero.”

He chuckled, a mischievous gleam in his eyes. “Ye think I can’t take on a wee machine?”

Setting his coffee in front of him, you raised an eyebrow. “Pretty sure my job’s safe, but thanks for the offer.”

It surprised you how easily you could talk to him, even with the little voice in the back of your mind reminding you of how you looked. You knew you weren’t exactly the “type” most men chased after, and sometimes you’d catch yourself wondering if he was just being friendly. But each day, Soap peeled back more of your usual defenses. You learned he was in the military, though he kept the details light, and he discovered your passion for baking and your dream of turning the café into a full-blown bakery. You found yourself feeling more comfortable around him, even daring to hope that he might actually see you as more than a barista.

One morning, while the café was unusually quiet, Soap looked at you intently, a warm smile softening his face. “Ye know, I keep comin’ here fer more than the coffee, lass.”

Your heart skipped a beat, but a doubtful thought crept in. You forced a chuckle. “You don’t have to say that, you know.”

Soap leaned in, his eyes holding yours, steady and sincere. “I mean it. Ye’re somethin’ special—honest, strong… and ye make a mean scone. It’s rare to find someone like ye.”

The way he said it felt like he saw past all the worries and insecurities you tried to hide, and for a moment, you let yourself believe it.

A week later, Soap finally asked you out. After agreeing to meet him at a nearby restaurant, you spent the afternoon trying on outfits, feeling a bit ridiculous for being so anxious. You’d always been self-conscious about your size, and though you knew how to dress in a way that made you feel comfortable, a part of you worried if you’d look good enough standing next to him. Soap was so handsome and fit, the kind of man who could make anyone do a double take. As you caught sight of yourself in the mirror, that old, familiar doubt crept in.

But when you met him at the restaurant, his face lit up in a way that made some of your worries fade. He greeted you with a warm smile, eyes soft as he looked you over. “Ye look beautiful, bonnie,” he said, so genuinely that you almost believed it.

“Thanks,” you managed, feeling a bit shy under his gaze.

Once inside, though, the attention he attracted became hard to ignore. People’s gazes seemed drawn to him, admiring and a little starstruck. And standing next to him, you felt more aware of yourself than ever. You noticed the way others’ eyes slid past you and lingered on him, and though he stayed focused on you, a knot of insecurity twisted in your stomach.

After the food arrived, Soap caught the way your gaze drifted down, shoulders tense, hands fidgeting with your napkin.

“Ye alright, lass?” he asked softly, reaching across the table to squeeze your hand.

You mustered a weak smile. “I’m just… not used to this kind of attention, I guess.”

His expression softened as he took in your discomfort. Without another word, he squeezed your hand again, his voice gentle and reassuring. “Tell ye what—how about we get the food to go, aye? We’ll head back to mine, and we can eat in peace.”

You felt a weight lift, and a real smile tugged at your lips. “That sounds perfect.”

Back at Soap’s flat, he made you comfortable on his couch, draping you with a warm blanket and setting out your takeout on the coffee table. The night drifted into easy conversation, shared laughter, and soft moments as you both settled into the comfort of each other’s company. With him there, you began to forget your insecurities, feeling more like yourself again.

As the evening wore on, Soap’s gaze grew warmer, more intent. He leaned in, his thumb brushing softly along your cheek. “Ye know ye’re incredible, aye?” he murmured.

A blush crept over your cheeks, and you glanced down, feeling a bit shy under his gaze. “I’m just…me.”

Soap’s hand slid to cup your face, lifting it so you met his eyes. “Ye’re so much more than that, bonnie. Every bit o’ ye—yer kind heart, yer strength, the way ye light up a room… and aye, ye’re beautiful.” He brushed his fingers along your shoulder, his gaze traveling down with a look of genuine admiration. “Every curve, every smile… I wouldn’t change a thing about ye.”

The sincerity in his words washed over you, and you felt yourself softening, the doubts easing. Slowly, he leaned in, pressing a tender kiss to your lips. It was gentle at first, but then his arms wrapped around you, holding you close, and his kiss deepened, filled with a warmth and affection that made your heart race.

In his bedroom, his touch was reverent, every caress slow and purposeful, each movement designed to show you just how deeply he cared. His fingers traced down your arms, across your back, lingering over the curves you’d always felt so self-conscious about, yet he treated them with such tenderness that you felt truly cherished.

“Ye’re perfect, bonnie,” he whispered, his gaze full of admiration as he took you in, letting you see just how much he meant it.

That night, every touch and kiss was a quiet reassurance. He adored you for who you were, without reservation. And with each passing moment, you felt that love settle, knowing that, in his eyes, you were everything he wanted. In his arms, every doubt melted away, replaced by a warmth that felt as deep as it was unshakeable.

Hope you enjoyed! Please consider liking and reposting! -Midnight💜

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cosmossystem · 2 months ago

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running list of things i've learned from making my patch pants:

if you use canvas for your patches, the edges will start to fray. this is inevitable. i'm sure there is some way around this but i haven't figured it out yet. i'm thinking maybe a glue stick or fray check along the edges right after cutting the patch could work. of course, that might be part of the look you're going for, so it might not bother you too much (personally idc lol)

don't bother with fabric markers. they bleed and they won't show up on black fabric and they look like shit. acrylic paint markers are a GODSEND, use them. some are better than others, so try around to see what works for your fabric. i use top notch in white and it works for me.

also, if you use acrylic markers, be careful of it seeping through your material and onto the surface behind. i've ruined my desk this way.

no markers? try just regular ol' acrylic paints. works pretty good too, just keep in mind that it will make your patches stiffer and crack a lot more. also might not be waterproof--but who cares, really.

don't want to freehand all that text? USE STENCILS!!! you can make your own with tape and an exacto knife (apparently, i've never tried) or you can do what my lazy ass does and just buy a bunch of premade letter stencils. it also makes working with acrylic markers much easier.

if your material is black, or if you have a lot of black areas, you can use a sharpie to fix any mistakes. i usually do this to make my edges sharper. go over the area several times if you need to. it smells horrible but it works.

your patches will inevitably start to come off, especially around areas that crease (for pants, that's hips and knees.) that's part of life. there's a few things you can do to make them last longer. if you use a sewing machine, try using something other than a straight stitch, like a zig-zag stitch. if you stitch by hand, try doubling up your thread or double-sewing the edges using a combination of different stitches. i've had the best luck with a very close whipstitch. of course if the patch is beyond repair, you could always just take it off and replace it with something different (ship of theseus that thang!) you could also maybe get away with using embroidery thread but depending on your patch material, it may make it harder to work with.

also, i know this is kind of cheating, but you don't have to just decorate with patches. i added a bunch of safety pins and it adds a bit of Flare. that also means i have a free safety pin whenever i need it! (often)

these rules are not set in stone and you should experiment to see what works for you!!!

if you have anything to add on please feel free :)

edit for the love of GOD stop mentioning hemming in the notes. like i said, i specifically didn't want to include it in this post because hemming is A) a pain in the ass, and B) not accessible to everyone. i mentioned alternatives to hemming in my reblog, but here they are again:

a lighter or fray check (be careful with this and make sure you won't accidentally ruin your material or set something on fire. also please research how to do this correctly. don't blame me if you set your jacket on fire)

glue stick or liquid glue (this one might depend on what kind of glue and fabric you use as well)

interfacing (thank you to someone in the notes for mentioning this because i totally forgot about it and interfacing isn't my specialty)

liquid stitch or other forms of fabric glue (i actually had no idea this existed, thank you to the notes again)

again, stitching the patches on very closely. i use a close whipstitch for mine.

similarly, a blanket stitch on the edges before sewing the patch on (technically this is a form of hemming, but i'll allow it)

#💙 cass #💜 mike #idk what are the tags here?#battle jacket #battle pants #punk patches #<- whatever

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smellslikebot · 9 months ago

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"how do I keep my art from being scraped for AI from now on?"

if you post images online, there's no 100% guaranteed way to prevent this, and you can probably assume that there's no need to remove/edit existing content. you might contest this as a matter of data privacy and workers' rights, but you might also be looking for smaller, more immediate actions to take.

...so I made this list! I can't vouch for the effectiveness of all of these, but I wanted to compile as many options as possible so you can decide what's best for you.

Discouraging data scraping and "opting out"

robots.txt - This is a file placed in a website's home directory to "ask" web crawlers not to access certain parts of a site. If you have your own website, you can edit this yourself, or you can check which crawlers a site disallows by adding /robots.txt at the end of the URL. This article has instructions for blocking some bots that scrape data for AI.

HTML metadata - DeviantArt (i know) has proposed the "noai" and "noimageai" meta tags for opting images out of machine learning datasets, while Mojeek proposed "noml". To use all three, you'd put the following in your webpages' headers:

Have I Been Trained? - A tool by Spawning to search for images in the LAION-5B and LAION-400M datasets and opt your images and web domain out of future model training. Spawning claims that Stability AI and Hugging Face have agreed to respect these opt-outs. Try searching for usernames!

Kudurru - A tool by Spawning (currently a Wordpress plugin) in closed beta that purportedly blocks/redirects AI scrapers from your website. I don't know much about how this one works.

ai.txt - Similar to robots.txt. A new type of permissions file for AI training proposed by Spawning.

ArtShield Watermarker - Web-based tool to add Stable Diffusion's "invisible watermark" to images, which may cause an image to be recognized as AI-generated and excluded from data scraping and/or model training. Source available on GitHub. Doesn't seem to have updated/posted on social media since last year.

Image processing... things

these are popular now, but there seems to be some confusion regarding the goal of these tools; these aren't meant to "kill" AI art, and they won't affect existing models. they won't magically guarantee full protection, so you probably shouldn't loudly announce that you're using them to try to bait AI users into responding

Glaze - UChicago's tool to add "adversarial noise" to art to disrupt style mimicry. Devs recommend glazing pictures last. Runs on Windows and Mac (Nvidia GPU required)

WebGlaze - Free browser-based Glaze service for those who can't run Glaze locally. Request an invite by following their instructions.

Mist - Another adversarial noise tool, by Psyker Group. Runs on Windows and Linux (Nvidia GPU required) or on web with a Google Colab Notebook.

Nightshade - UChicago's tool to distort AI's recognition of features and "poison" datasets, with the goal of making it inconvenient to use images scraped without consent. The guide recommends that you do not disclose whether your art is nightshaded. Nightshade chooses a tag that's relevant to your image. You should use this word in the image's caption/alt text when you post the image online. This means the alt text will accurately describe what's in the image-- there is no reason to ever write false/mismatched alt text!!! Runs on Windows and Mac (Nvidia GPU required)

Sanative AI - Web-based "anti-AI watermark"-- maybe comparable to Glaze and Mist. I can't find much about this one except that they won a "Responsible AI Challenge" hosted by Mozilla last year.

Just Add A Regular Watermark - It doesn't take a lot of processing power to add a watermark, so why not? Try adding complexities like warping, changes in color/opacity, and blurring to make it more annoying for an AI (or human) to remove. You could even try testing your watermark against an AI watermark remover. (the privacy policy claims that they don't keep or otherwise use your images, but use your own judgment)

given that energy consumption was the focus of some AI art criticism, I'm not sure if the benefits of these GPU-intensive tools outweigh the cost, and I'd like to know more about that. in any case, I thought that people writing alt text/image descriptions more often would've been a neat side effect of Nightshade being used, so I hope to see more of that in the future, at least!

#reference #ai art #ai discourse #not sure how else to tag this #long post

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thezombieprostitute · 3 months ago

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Tech Tuesday: Lloyd Hansen

Summary: It's your first week on the job and you find yourself having to deal with a very angry higher up.

Warnings: Power imbalance, Yelling. Please let me know if I missed any.

Tech Tuesdays Masterlist

You were grateful for the minimal fallout from the ticket you apparently shouldn't have accepted. When you talked to Syverson the next day you learned that Mr. Hansen has a mean reputation and only more experienced IT personnel were to respond to his tickets. Thankfully there was no retaliation from Johnny either. He took the lecture from Syverson and apologized to you for putting you in that situation.

They had both given you confused looks when you assured them it hadn't been so bad. Yes, he was very loud and very angry, but it wasn't anything too bad and the anger was rarely directed at you. Really you were just grateful there wasn't any ill will from Johnny because you were a goody-two-shoes or tattletale. You'd had more than enough of that in school.

After a few days, Mr. Pine visited you. "We have an interesting note from Mr. Hansen. On his latest ticket he added a note to 'send the Maestro'. Would you know anything about that?"

"Um, well, Mr. Pine, um, when I fixed his laptop, he, um, mentioned something about me being a maestro."

His eyebrows raise in surprise, "that is quite unexpected. Not that you're so talented, but that he's so complimentary."

Not really knowing how to reply, you simply shrug your shoulders.

"This will certainly be coming up as a good thing on your performance review," Mr. Pine continues. "But I don't know that having you answer all of his tickets would be good policy. With your permission, I'll add you to the roster for dealing with Hansen, but it certainly wouldn't be fair to have you be the sole person responsible."

"That make sense, Mr. Pine. And thank you."

"Not a problem," he nods. "Looking forward to your insights on that upcoming project for the CFO."

You get back to focusing on your work until lunchtime. You've have to set alarms to remind you to eat. It's irritating to get startled out of your focus, but it really is healthier to take regular food and bathroom breaks. The exit to the break room takes you past Mr. Pine's office. There's some very loud yelling coming from there and it looks like Mr. Pine's assistant is almost in a panic.

Not wanting to get in trouble you walk faster towards the little kitchen for your lunch. Keeping an eye on the time you sit and try to enjoy your simple sandwich with a side of grapes. Not much, but it's satisfying and healthier than relying on the vending machines.

"Maestro! There you are!"

You head shoots up, eyes wide open as you recognize Mr. Hansen's voice. "Y-y-yes, Mr. Hansen? Sir? H-how can I help you?"

"Pine might decide that others answer my tickets but you're going to take all of them. Tell the other minions in your department that you'll take the tickets I create. I don't doubt they'll happily let you do so."

"Sir, Mr. Hansen, I really can't do that," you entreat. "I work for Mr. Pine and Mr. Syverson, not you. I have to follow their orders, Sir."

You see his mustache twitch in irritation, "let's see if we can fix that." You're at a loss for words as he storms out of the break room.

Tagging @alicedopey; @delicatebarness; @ellethespaceunicorn; @icefrozendeadlyqueen; @jaqui-has-a-conspiracy-theory; @late-to-the-party-81; @lokislady82 ; @peyton-warren @ronearoundblindly; @stellar-solar-flare

#tech tuesday #tech tuesday: lloyd hansen #lloyd hansen x female!reader #lloyd hansen x reader

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peppermintquartz · 5 months ago

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Some headcanons:

Buck hates Tommy's habit of leaving his mugs around the apartment/house. He's found mugs in the bedroom, the living room, the garage, next to the sofa, on top of the washing machine... This bad habit leads to their first fight, where Buck says something pretty cutting about Tommy not giving a shit about how he leaves messes for others to deal with

In the end Tommy has one single large mug with his name on it that he drinks out of at Buck's place, and he has to circulate the house before he sleeps to put away his mugs if Buck's staying over at his place

Tommy hates when Buck puts down one of Tommy's hobbies, even if Buck doesn't mean it at all. It feels patronizing when Buck's all "I think there are better ways to spend a weekend than see a bunch of sweaty guys in spandex pretend to fight" when Tommy asks if Buck wants to watch WrestleMania with him

Tommy ends up watching it with Eddie and happens to mention this when Eddie asks why Buck isn't there, and Eddie picks up on the underlying upset. He tells Buck that sometimes, what seems stupid to him is just Tommy's way of asking to spend time vegging out together, and that Buck should have at least given it a shot before shooting down the suggestion

They each get annoyed by the way they fold the laundry. Tommy does it army style, Buck does it Marie Kondo style, and to keep the peace they sort out the clothes into respective piles before folding them

Channel surfing. Tommy knows what he enjoys so he has just those few shows that he watches at specific times, and if there are MMA fights or NBA matches he wants to watch, he marks them out on his schedule. Buck's interested in lots of stuff and just surfs through all the channels until something catches his eye. Usually it doesn't bother Tommy much but this one occasion, Tommy's like "can't you pick something and stick with it?" And it's the critical tone that ticks Buck off, and that leads to their second fight, where Tommy snaps that Buck never seems to know what he wants

Maddie gets the brunt of Buck's rants (over the phone or in person), Eddie a close second, while Tommy works it out of his system by pummeling a heavy bag and then he calls Chimney (and later Bobby) to ask how to explain himself in a way that Buck would understand

They know exactly how they can hurt each other because they've learned a lot about each other. And they both give each other the cold shoulder after their arguments but they also can't bear not seeing each other on their days off

The good thing is, they're both mature enough and know the danger of their jobs enough not to hang on to their resentment for too long. Usually, they apologize a maximum of two shifts later

Makeup sex is fun, but they both agree that's only in small doses. Regular happy sex is better

#bucktommy #tevan #tommy kinard #evan buckley

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whatsa-bi-as · 6 months ago

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3 months

GN!reader x Kim Seungmin

plot; Seungmin falls for a local barista not knowing that they fell first

genre; fluff

warnings; reader is described as wearing a dress and having tattoos. Heavily implies that the reader has seasonal depression

word count; 2.6k

networks; @kflixnet and @k-labels

proofread; by me

masterlist is here

There was no worse pain than the sharp winter wind. It cut across your thighs like knives and left every part of exposed skin feeling frostbitten. That’s without mentioning the rain that fell constantly; not a day would go by without drops of ice water melting into your skin and leaving your hands red.

In between the rain and the cold, it was also dark. The sun already set as you were on your way to work, forcing the streets to be lit only by fluorescent streetlights. It was an ugly scene. The cold, dark streets held no laughter despite being filled with smiling people only three months before.

Three months can be a long time but when you’re in the monotonous routine of, class, work, home, repeat, the days begin to bleed together meaning that the high of summer feels like yesterday and the darkness of winter seems never ending.

When you were living at home three months felt like forever. It was 90 days of family dinners, laughter, and chaos. Now you’re on your own? It was 90 days of dark and quiet. 90 days of no sleep, of stressing about deadlines, of dealing with things you never thought you’d have to. It’s odd how 90 days could mean so much, feel like so much time, but now it’s just gone in what feels more like 90 seconds.

Work was not much better; being a barista was exhausting. Always having to smile, having to deal with people who barely see you as a person, it was enough to drive anyone insane, but you had to pay the bills, so here you were clocking in for your 7th shift in 8 days. You had been put on the close shift, so hopefully it would go quickly, and you’d be able to put some music on and focus on getting the tasks done.

The tables were cleaned, chairs were stacked, and it looked like you’d be able to lock the doors as soon as the clock hit seven. That was until four boys came through the door. They looked like nice people but that wasn’t enough to stop the annoyance from rising as they had come in at 6:52 pm. Eight minutes, that was all, a tiny blip in the 129,600 minutes that had melted together over the past few months.

One of the boys looks around and his face just drops.

“Are you closed? We are so sorry if you are!”

You look around, tempted to say yes, to get them to go so you’ll be able to leave early, but all of them look so awful about the possibility of being an inconvenience.

“You got here just in time. We close at 7.”

It was definite that the customer service smile didn’t hide your annoyance, but it was a good enough attempt.

“Thank you! We’ll make it quick.” The taller one replied.

And they did make it quick. Ordering four drinks, paying with one card to save time, leaving as soon as they got their drinks. They were the perfect late-night customers; you couldn’t complain about the interaction at all. Did it take you a little longer to close? Well, yes, but that was mainly the coffee machine so you could just go on your phone.

After that night, those four boys became regulars, sometimes they would bring other people but there would always be at least one of them there to say hello. You didn’t really give it much thought but after a couple weeks you realised that the feeling of impending dread had lessened. The wind was still as bitter, and the cold was still cutting but the feeling you got when you saw them was like the one that the sun brought in the spring.

You had realised what they had come to mean to you, as much as almost strangers can mean to someone, because you had learnt their names. It was never really a priority for you to learn customer names, you could recognise regulars from their faces, and you would only remember other people if they were rude. This was only a job, you didn’t see any point in putting in that much extra effort, but these boys felt different.

There was Hyunjin, he’s the tall one, very nice but can be incredibly chaotic. Dances everywhere he goes to the point you think he might try and get you to do a Tik Tok with him next time they come in late.

Then there's Felix. He has these adorable freckles and the brightest damn smile you’ve ever seen. He only laughed when you tried to do an Australian accent after you heard his so he might be too nice for his own good.

Next is Han. His name is actually Jisung, but you have never heard any of the main four call him that. You only know what his name is because he came in with some other people, who were equally as nice. He is just as chaotic as Hyunjin, but Jisung is just worse at hiding it while in public.

The final one of the four was harder to pin down. He was cute, nice, and the perfect customer but he never really joined in when the other three were messing around. You knew that they were all the same age but that was about it. He was the cutest by far and you’re not afraid to admit that you had a bit of a crush on the mystery man.

From what you’ve learnt his name is Seungmin and he’s a singer. That's about it. The other boys have called him ‘puppy’ but that's just confusing, so you let that one go. Ironically it's the one that you want to know the most that you know the least about.

The boy continued to be a mystery as winter turned to spring. Flowers bloomed and the sun shone bright, but you knew next to nothing about Seungmin.

Your mom would say the change in seasons brought change in the times, it sounded like superstition or star signs, but it gave you hope that as the days grew longer your relationship with him would grow stronger.

That said the warmer weather did bring a warmer attitude, you were happier and that could be seen through the way you treated others with kindness no matter how they first approached the conversation. You complimented little girls in summer dresses, made small talk with other tired students, and even chose to take the high road against a few particularly difficult customers. It was a complete 180 from how you had been for the past few months, but it was a welcome change.

This made someone look at you in a different way. The boy had never really thought of you in more than a friendly way but seeing you smile, and watching as you took the everyday into your stride, well he started to reconsider your place in his life.

Seungmin was happy on his own. He never really bothered with relationships, instead he watched the ones around him. He saw how Hyunjin was able to get any girl he wanted but chose not to take things too far, how Jisung could make anyone laugh just by being himself, and how Felix could make someone's heart flutter by smiling. It made him slightly sick watching girls fawn over his best friends, but it was just part of life.

That's not to say Seungmin couldn’t get girls, if he tried to he definitely could, he just didn't want to. There was no reason for him to go on dates and try to find ‘the one’ when he had so much life left to live.

But there was something about the way your eyes sparkled when your coworkers made you laugh, how you excitedly showed how your dress has pockets every time someone gives you a compliment; there was something comforting in how happiness just seemed to pour from every part of you.

He remembered when you had first met, that late night where the boys had spent far too long practising for a competition, desperately needing coffee. You had looked so done, ready to curl up into a ball and sleep for eternity, but you still let them order even though you closed in eight minutes. It was that night Seungmin knew that you were a good person, but he was not prepared for the way you would make him feel just a few months later.

Smiling when he saw that you were, laughing at the jokes you made, wishing he could talk to you more, he knew what this all meant. In spite of him being fine alone, Seungmin wanted to be with you. He wanted to hear you sing from the kitchen on a Saturday morning, he wanted to see you in his clothes, he just wanted to be yours and for you to be his.

It had been three months since the sun began to shine again. There were still days where the wind cut into your soul, but it was healed by the bright blue of the sky. The rain fell but it was a welcome coolness against the heat that beat down; the days had gotten brighter and longer, and you could feel the darkness leaving. You were living in light, and it made you shine even brighter than the sun.

You had grown closer to the boys you would now class as friends. You found out that they were all dancers, that Felix was bilingual and was teaching the others, and that Seungmin was single. That last piece of information was the most interesting and your reaction brought out some teasing from Jisung and Hyunjin.

“Someone’s gone shy. Does someone have a thing for little Seungmin?”

Of course it was Jisung who had to bring it up first.

Trying to keep your cool and not make a complete idiot out of yourself at work you keep your hands busy making their drinks before you reply.

“And what if I do? Would it really be that bad?”

The boys were slightly stunned, not really expecting you to admit to having feelings for their friend. For two very chatty people they were left speechless; do they try to set you two up? Or is that just meddling? Do they push him to make a move? Or would that just drive him away? There was so much that they could do but they weren’t sure that any of it would be a good move to actually get you guys together.

“No. I think you guys would be a good couple. You’d balance out his grumpy pretty nicely.”

“Seungmin’s not grumpy he’s just an introvert Jisung, not everyone can be friendly all the time.”

By this point you had finished their drinks and knew that this conversation was coming to a close.

“I think I know you guys pretty well by now and that if you’ve decided to meddle then there's not much I can do about that. Just, don’t make me look like an idiot, whatever you guys decide to do.”

The boys took their drinks and shared a look,

“Don’t worry no matter what we do we’ll look like idiots. Well, Jisung will at least.”

“I would be offended but that’s just true. I can’t really disagree with that.”

After that day Seungmin seemed to always be with them and even introduced you to the other members of his dance team. Chan, Minho and Changbin were so sweet you didn’t know how they dealt with the younger four that you had met before. When you met Jeongin you began to see why. It’s as if the younger five took all of the chaotic energy that eight boys would create. It was a weird dynamic but seeing the difference in the way they acted made you laugh every time more than one of them came in.

They were all so nice, and cute, but it was Seungmin who had your full attention every time he came to the shop. When you heard the door open and saw his face you knew that your shift was going to be a good one because he was there, even if it was just for fifteen minutes.

It was when summer reached its peak that you began to get closer. You would talk about whatever came to your mind; he asked you about your tattoos and you’d ask about why he chose that hair colour. It was a nice routine that you had made.

That was until one hot June day he went quiet and very shyly asked.

“So… are you dating anyone?”

You guys had never really talked about relationships, it was just not something that had come up over your friendship.

“Oh um, no. I’ve had a thing for someone for a while, but I don’t really know what to do about it.”

“Does this person know that you like them?”

It was odd to hear that from the boy you liked but you weren’t sure if you should give anything away, so you tried to stay calm

“Well, some of his friends know but I don’t think they’ve told him anything. At least I hope they haven’t.”

He stayed quiet for a while; it looked like he was taking a moment to think things over. It was a nerve wracking 30 seconds.

“Why don’t you tell him? What's the worst that could happen?”

“You really think I should tell him I like him?”

He smiled at you, and you felt your heart skip a beat. His smile was the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen.

“I think you never know what could happen. Take a chance and see what comes.”

Looking in his eyes you could tell he wasn’t lying. He just wanted you to take a chance, to see what would happen if you threw caution to the wind.

“Alright then. I like you. Like a lot. I have pretty much since you came in that night.”

All he did was smile. He stayed quiet but there was no pity or sympathy in his eyes, he looked happy. After a minute he got up, still smiling, and asked for your number.

“Why?”

“So that we can organise a time to go out. On a date.”

“Oh, okay then yeah!”

After that day you and Seungmin’s relationship flourished.

You officially began dating in September, just as the leaves turned orange and the wind began to chill. So as autumn turned to winter you didn’t feel the cold the same way you did the first time you met your now boyfriend.

The wind was still sharp, the rain still cold, but when you went home you knew that Seungmin would be waiting for you. The boy could make the coldest weather warmer, his hands warmed yours and his hoodies kept you comfortable wherever you went. The boy you had met in the darkest three months you had ever experienced was able to change your life.

The next time it felt like there was no hope he was there to remind you that there is. He made your flat feel like home, and the days that were once silent were loud with laughter and music. He warmed your soul in the coldest time of the year.

You never thought that a barista job would mean you’d meet your soulmate but it’s odd how life can change in just a short amount of time. Three months can feel like forever, but with Seungmin by your side three months disappears in a blink of an eye.

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