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bokunoheros · 2 months ago

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LIPSTICK STAINS & MIRRORS

CHARACTER: SHOUTO TODOROKI

GENRE: FLUFF, SMUT

TAGS/WARNINGS: reader is gender neutral but written to be afab (shouto calls you princess once), reader is implied to be shorter than shouto, y’all are like 20+, married and live together, mirror sex, kissing, so much kissing, i love kissing, oral (m. receiving), fingering (reader receiving), inappropriate quirk usage (temperature play), shouto is a tease but in a loving manner, cervix kissing, chair sex, riding (reverse cowgirl), cumming inside, and aftercare, also kinda lazy ending?? bc i stayed up til 10am finishing this and wanna be done so bad

SUMMARY: you just ordered a bunch of new lipgloss and can’t wait to try it out — subsequently, your husband thinks you look beautiful, but doesn’t know how to verbalize it.

WORD COUNT: 7.7K

🦊’s A/N: this wasn’t actually going to be the first fic i posted here, but i DID just get a bunch of lipgloss i've waited a week and a half for, and would love to do the following <3 anyway shoutout judydoll they didn’t sponsor this but i wish they would. // also i pulled like two all-nighters writing this so i’m sorry if it like. starts unraveling a lil at the end i didnt actually proofread this god bless everyone thank you for giving this fic a chance

you had just ordered a bunch of new lipgloss you’d gotten in a buy 2 get 1 free sale, and it had finally come in the mail! after squealing excitedly and startling your poor husband, and highschool sweetheart, you quickly ran up to your shared bedroom and sat down in front of your vanity. fumbling with the box for a second, you get up to grab a pair of scissors from the bathroom before using one blade to cut through the packaging tape sealing the contents inside away.

once you’d managed to get your greedy little hands on the new products is around the same time shouto had wandered into the bedroom, where he stood leaning against the door frame, watching as you excitedly looked down at your lipstick and wondered which one to try on first.

hm……. maybe the more natural looking color instead of the red..? probably, since it's less likely to leave a stain, you think to yourself, oblivious to your husband's presence — until you caught a glimpse of him in the mirror, that is.

“oh! shouto, just in time,” you grin, waving him over. “which one do you think i should try first?” you ask, knowing he had always shown an interest in the process of how you did your makeup. not that he had actually verbalized said interest, rather, it was something you noticed while you were still in highschool. after months into the actual relationship, you two had finally had sex and you had stayed the night at his house. once this became an almost routine of sorts, you'd begin bringing stuff to stay overnight, and get ready for class in the morning, including a few makeup palettes. and so, shouto slowly took an interest in the way in which you’d do your makeup — be it just some eyeshadow/liner, or a fully beat face, he found it to be so…..interesting.

that being said, the youngest of the todoroki family takes a step towards you and away from the doorframe to look down at the lipsticks in your hands and picks the one in the shiny silver, almost holographic, tube and says this one.

huh, what do you know? he had picked the lipstain! guess it’s meant to be, then.

untwisting the cap, you shift in your seat slightly to better face the mirror as you pull the wand from the bottle, and find yourself face to face with the applicator you had been tweaking over for what felt like ever — a nice, smooth, iron tip! one of a kind, really, as you had never seen anything like it before! looking into the mirror, your gaze lingers on shouto for but a moment before focusing on your own lips and applying the stained lipgloss evenly — and then one more coat for good measure.

“what do you think?” you ask sweetly, turning around in your seat to face him.

what he thinks? obviously, he thinks you look stunningly, jaw droppingly gorgeous regardless of what you’re wearing, or if you have makeup on or not (save for the times you’ve ugly cried around him…), but god…. he can’t ignore the way his body suddenly feels flushed as he looks at your lips and the red-ish color currently staining them.

“i think — it looks nice,” he says simply as he takes a few steps closer to you, up until he’s directly behind your vanity chair and planting his hands on the back of it.

“just… nice?” your voice comes out softer than normal, and you sound audibly disappointed. at this, shouto begins to internally panic as he thinks of a way to get his admiration.

“very nice,” he corrects quickly, and you can’t help but let out a little chuckle at how rushed he sounded — you understood that your husband wasn’t exactly a stellar wordsmith, so you weren’t actually too upset with him.

“that’s it?” this time, you sound much more lighthearted, as you raise a brow at him and watch him speedrun the five stages of grief through his expressions and slight body language.

“....i think, you look very lovely,” he’s finally able to vocalize. even after all this time, he still got somewhat bashful when complimenting you — it wasn’t his fault! you just happened to render him speechless and left his dick hard every time you did anything! fuck… how should he go about this? maybe he should just show you what he thinks? yes…. that should work.

“stand up,” he says all of a sudden — he didn’t sound demanding or rude or anything, but there was a certain firmness to his voice that had you obeying without a second thought. without a moment of hesitation, shouto steps around to the side of the chair so he’s standing almost in front of you, and plants his large, calloused hands on your hips.

“shouto….” your voice comes out as a mere whisper as he pulls you closer toward him, left hand coming to cup your cheek as you look up at him.

“hm?” is all you get in reply as he leans in to kiss you tenderly.

tilting his head slightly to the side, he slots his lips over your painted ones in hopes of properly conveying his feelings on how he thinks you look. truthfully, as embarrassing as it may be, shouto wishes you’d put some lipstick on him so he could kiss you all over and leave a physical mark as you so often did to him. maybe one day he would have to sneak some of your lipgloss for himself to surprise you with? perchance… (you can’t just say perchance!) that being said, he takes advantage of the lipstick you’re currently wearing and hopes it transfers onto his lips.

and just like that, you’ve forgotten all about your new lipstick, or anything that wasn’t your husband, really. when you first met him, it was a little difficult to imagine shouto todoroki as a good kisser, and it was kinda true initially!, but after a little guidance and experience, he very quickly got the hang of it and used his newfound skills to turn you into nothing more than a panting mess.

swiping his tongue over the seam of your lips, he pulls away with a slight grin just as you part them for him.

“hey…..” you whine. “that’s not fair.”

“what isn’t?” he asks in a way that would’ve made you think he was playing dumb if he wasn’t….. well, like the way he was. you know your husband well enough to know that he was asking an earnest question, as he often teased you without meaning to or being aware of it.

“just… kiss me again, …please?” you ask in such a saccharine voice, shouto finds himself unable to resist for even a moment as he eagerly leans back in for another kiss.

god…. he was just so fucking weak when it came to You. he could never tell you no or deny you of what you asked for — hell, the first time you asked if you could kiss him (when he was still a kissless virgin), he accidentally bonked his head against yours in trying to copy the way you tilted your head to the side. …only, he had tilted his in the same direction as you, making for a very awkward, very laughable (but memorable) first kiss.

“mmh,” he hums quietly, pleasurably, as his lips work against yours — gently and tenderly, full of nothing but adoration for you, his sweet spouse.

there just truly weren’t enough words in the world for shouto to describe his affections for you, so instead, he often took to showing you exactly how he felt; more often than not, this led to fleeting but heated kisses throughout the day that left you on your toes and wanting for more. jesus, did he even realize the effect he had on you? (he did Nawt.)

this time, it was you to take the initiative to swipe your tongue over his plump lower lip before nibbling on it lightly and sucking it into your mouth. at this, the softest little moan slips past shouto’s throat at the feeling and he pulls you closer to him, so much so that your chest was now flush against his as the hand on your cheek leaves a cooling sensation against your flushed skin.

releasing his lip with a wet, almost schliiick kind of noise, you go to pull away from the kiss, just as he had done earlier, just to find the hand on your cheek had shifted to cradle the back of your head, and the hand on your hip had turned into an arm wrapped tightly around your waist as shouto’s tongue manages to slip into your open mouth.

you can’t help but giggle at the almost ticklish feeling of the wet muscle running around the inside of your cheeks before his tongue is suddenly ice cold and you’re squealing and trying to push him away.

“shouto!” you cry with no real irritation or upsetness — all he had done was catch you off-guard, really. okay, so maybe he could tease you on purpose every now and then..! it just wasn’t often that he did such a thing! he was typically kind of oblivious to a lot of things — not that it was his fault or anything; he hadn’t exactly grown up with the best social cues or …. uhm. family, in general, really….. (touya and enji i’m looking at you).

“yeah?” he breathes, looking down at you with stars in his eyes.

“what was that about?” you ask, trying to steady your breathing, chest heaving slightly as your hands find their way up to his chest, where they rest on his boo—well defined and muscled pecs.

“what was what about?” he echoes, tilting his head, actually playing dumb this time—he knew damn well what he had done this time around, and he couldn’t contain the little smile that tugged at the corners of his plump and almost pouty lips. he loved using his quirk to tease you — given, he’d been extremely hesitant about it at first, worried he might hurt you, or somehow cause some kind of permanent damage. thankfully, as the years went by, he gradually warmed up to it, and now? he couldn’t get enough of your reactions! like when he was fingering you, and suddenly his hand started to get a little too hot, or a little too cold, depending on which one he was using; it wasn’t enough to actually hurt or cause any damage, just some mild discomfort turned to pleasure once you got used to the feeling. and sometimes, whenever you let him cum inside or somewhere on you, his cum felt hotter than it should — sure, yeah, cum is warm, but…. his was just hot! it didn’t scald or anything, but it was definitely an added sensation that wouldn’t be possible without his quirk.

“you know what..!” is what you would have said had shouto not leaned in to kiss you again—effectively cutting you off and rendering you speechless. so maybe he knew he was a good kisser; he was highly observant after all, and would have to be a moron to not realize that he at least left you breathless every time! sure, he didn’t realize the full extent of the effect he had on you, but… partially aware is better than completely oblivious, right?

this time as you two kiss, the hand cradling your head moves back down to your hip, and before you know it, he’s picking you up and sitting himself down in the chair you were previously sitting on not too long ago.

“ah–!” you gasp at the sudden movement and change in position. now straddling his lap, with your back to the mirror, shouto begins trailing kisses down to your jawline and then the column of your neck. now, your husband wasn’t a particularly sloppy kisser. no, more often than not, he was very put together in almost every aspect of his life, and the bedroom was no exception. well, save for the occasions shouto just simply could not contain himself, and it was beginning to seem like one of those situations as he runs his freezing tongue over the sensitive skin of your neck, causing goosebumps to form as he nibbles at the junction where your neck and shoulder meet.

“sho–shouto—,” you breathe as he peppers kisses over your tender flesh. it had taken him a long while to be able to show affection so freely, and even now, he still had some trouble, but compared to the todoroki you knew in high school, he had improved by leaps and bounds!

your husband merely ignores your soft cry of his name—his dick doesn’t, though, and you can even feel it start to twitch to life beneath you. fuck. all you had done was put on a little lipstick, and?? now your husband was glued to your neck, nipping and biting along the way, even stopping in a couple places to suck against the skin there in order to leave a couple hickies!

“don’t tease,” you try to chide him, but it comes off weak and a little pathetic sounding as shouto finds a particularly sensitive spot on your neck and takes full advantage of it. jesus christ! his tongue was so cold!! it was such a contrast to the heat of his breath, you couldn’t help but pant at the feeling.

“‘m not,” is the only thing he says, it was more of a mumble, really, as he bites down harder than he had previously, and you can’t help the squeal that leaves you as his teeth sink into your skin.

“shouto!” if you didn’t know any better, or if you had married someone more… aggressive (katsuki)...., you might have thought your husband had drawn blood — he didn’t, obviously, as he would never intentionally hurt you, but he did like to toe the line of pleasure and pain often enough to keep you on your toes, just enough pain for it to be able to bleed into an acquired type of pleasure.

“yeah?” he all but hums in response, sounding pleased with himself.

he doesn’t give you a chance to respond, however, as he quickly pulls away from your neck to plant another heated kiss to your glossy lips. it doesn’t last very long, though, as he pulls away just far enough to look at you properly, and his eyes widen when he sees the way your lipstick had been smudged and it had spread slightly down to your neck (it was more like lightly red-colored patches in the shape of his lips peppered vaguely over your flesh).

“will you put on some more lipstick?” he suddenly asks, sounding out of breath.

giggling quietly at his request, you nod and oblige, shifting to turn around on his lap so that your back was against his chest, and your ass against his steadily growing erection. grabbing the tube of lipstick from your vanity, you untwist the cap and begin to apply more, focusing wholly on your lips during the process, completely missing the way shouto was eyeing you in the mirror.

after putting the cap back on and setting the silver bottle full of what felt watery liquid when you put it on, but wasn’t actually, back down on your vanity’s surface, you tilt your head to face your husband, who had wrapped his arms around your waist while you had been applying the aforementioned beauty product, and smile at him.

“better?” you wonder aloud, knowing it was much better indeed.

“mhmm,” he hums sweetly, one hand coming up to all but squish your cheeks, just without the pressure, to better tilt your head towards him as he himself leans in for yet another kiss. you swear, the first time you kissed shouto, a switch flipped in that poor boy’s brain, because ever since then, he’s been addicted to them like they’re crack—he needs your kisses the same way he needs oxygen to breathe or a therapist for his generations of trauma stuffed into a single, incomplete lifetime. (please….. please, go to group therapy with the rest of 1-a, i’m begging.)

shouto can’t help but smile against your lips as he pulls you flush against his chest and rolls his hips, and consequently, his hard-on, up against your ass. neither of you can contain the whimper or little gasp that slips past your throats, nor can you help the way one of your hands comes up to thread itself into his peppermint-colored hair as you part your lips needily, trying to shift around in his firm grasp.

despite the quality of your lipstick, it still transferred partially onto his lips, simply due to how fresh the coat was, not that your husband minds. he’d revel in the way he’d get to smear lipstick over your body, and — pause. his hands suddenly find themselves planted on your hips as he manhandles you to face him again, and meets your gaze for a moment before pressing a kiss to your forehead. but in that moment, you could see all the love and admiration in the world swirling around in his beautifully mismatched eyes, and you couldn’t control the wide-ass smile that had spread across your face—so wide, in fact, your cheeks hurt. even though it was such a simple action, you could truly feel his love for you in everything that he did.

“i love you—so much, y’know,” you practically coo, hands moving to cup his flushed cheeks as you simply just look at the man you had married. goddamn! he was so beautiful! taking in all the fine details of his face, you notice the faintest little dusting of freckles across the bridge of his nose, and the way even his eyebrows, and even his awfully long lashes (he got them from his mother), are different colors. his perfectly plump and pouty lips to match his overall softer facial features. how could anybody be so perfect-looking? it was just simply unfair! even with his ice burn scar and somewhat sparse left eyebrow growth, it didn’t change a thing in your eyes.

shouto feels his heart flutter at your words, and his grin stretches to be almost uncharacteristically wide as his hands shift lower on your hips, closer to your upper thighs, and his thumbs begin rubbing tender circles against the plush flesh there.

“i — love you more,” he whispers back. the words sound shy coming from him, but you can tell he means his words. you may have fallen first, but shouto fell harder. his smile softens a bit as his hands move up to cup your cheeks tenderly before pressing another kiss to your painted lips. god. he truly could not believe how lucky he was to have you — you, who brought him out of his shell back in highschool, you who showed him love can be tender and soft, you who taught him how to let love into his heart.

now, it was shouto’s turn to show you just how much he loved you.

sliding his tongue over the seam of your lips, he lets out a soft hum as he grips your thighs before sliding his hands slowly upwards and up under the t-shirt you wore—it was his, actually!—and over your bare ribcage. you can’t help the goosebumps that broke out over your skin at the feeling of his calloused hands against your much softer flesh, nor the chill that runs down your spine and causes your nipples to stiffen under the thin fabric—especially with the way he begins to palm and grope at your tits.

“mmnh,” you hum at the temperature difference of his rough hands, and let out a soft moan when it increases drastically all of a sudden, your right nipple freezing cold and the left a little too hot for comfort—even your body was unsure of how to react to such a feeling, but it sure does send a throb down to your clit, and you can feel a damp spot begin to form in the seat of your panties, which is all you happened to be wearing under your stolen shirt.

“shouto, please,” you whine, squirming around on his lap, and dragging your thinly clothed cunt over the erection in his stupid grey sweatpants that always drove you crazy.

“please what, love?” he asks, pulling away just enough to rest his forehead against yours.

“god…. just— fuck me,” is all your able to get out, but, lucky for you, your husband has something even better in mind than just that. sure, he couldn’t wait to get his dick wet—to feel the way your cunt wraps around his sensitive tip—god, he can feel himself leak pre-cum like he’s some excited teenager again, and he groans at the nature of your request.

“mm, …not yet,” he smirks, and, before he’s even processed what he himself is doing, he had already licked an embarrassingly hot stripe up the length of your neck.

“shouto!” you squeal. “what was that for?!”

“felt like it,” he replies simply before attaching his full lips to your neck once more, where he began nipping and nibbling at all your most tender spots, before he finds your sweet spot and bites down particularly hard and begins suckling against the skin there, determined to leave a mark of sorts. now, while shouto was not one to leave marks in obvious places—he was perfectly content with marking you in places only he could see—he just couldn't help himself for some reason..! maybe it was because he was feeling rather bold at the moment, or because he couldn't get enough of the sweet, quiet noises you were making as he nipped and sucked at your flesh until you were sure the skin was raw.

“sho—” you can’t help but wiggle in his lap, cunt grazing over his erection. when he groans at your actions, you repeat your actions, rolling your hips down against his as he marks your neck up in pretty blue and purple and reddish hues.

suddenly, an idea pops into your mind, and you find yourself melting off of his lap and onto your knees between his legs, eager hands reaching to unbuckle his leather belt and pull it off of him.

“wh–what’re you doing, baby?” shouto finds himself breathless with a flushed face as you begin to unbutton his pants and tug down the zipper, exposing his all-too-tight black boxers and the wet spot that had formed on them. you only grin and lick your lips at the sight, of course, eager to get your husband’s perfect cock in your mouth.

“what’s it look ‘m doin’, huh?” you look up at him with big wet eyes and pouty red lips. “now lift your hips f’me,” you instruct him, and he does as told, so you can tug his pants and boxers down in one swift go.

shouto hisses as his sensitive tip comes into contact with the cool air of the bedroom, and he looks down at you a little embarrassedly, biting as lower lip as you kissed his swollen and flushed head before taking it slowly into your mouth.

“ah–!” your husband moans as you suckle around his mushroom-headed tip and he can’t help the way one large hand falls down to rest on top of your head, long fingers burying themselves into your hair as he begins to set a moderate pace for you to bob your head. unfortunately, poor shouto still had trouble controlling his reactions whenever you gave him head — your mouth and tongue were simply too skilled for your own good! for his own good!

tilting his head back to look at the ceiling instead of you, in an attempt to not bust too early, he catches a glimpse of the lewd sight in the mirror and—oh god. his dick fucking twitches and he feels an embarrassing amount of pre-cum leak from his sticky tip and into your hot mouth.

“jesus christ—fuck,” your husband groans—it wasn’t too often that he swore, only when he was especially mad, passionate, or, in this case, especially horny. “take it easy, honey—please,” he whines, hand gripping your hair tighter, forcing your head further down his thick length despite his contradictory words. you pay his actions no mind, however, only doing your best to suppress your gag reflex and hollow your cheeks out around him before swallowing thickly; you even went as far as to deepthroat him all the way, uncaring of the way drool seeped past your lips and all around the base of his cock. swallowing around him again once his leaky tip hits the back of your throat, and shouto’s hand grips your hair a little too tightly—not that you minded in the moment. if anything, it made your pussy throb. as did the way he was panting and moaning softly above you. god…… his little noises were absolutely divine and each and every one sent a jolt to your clit.

much to his embarrassment, shouto is surprisingly noisy in bed — not exactly loud per se, but certainly unable to contain all his little huffs, puffs, and soft moans and quiet groans. but it wasn’t like it was his fault! how exactly was he supposed to stay quiet when you’re making him feel so damn good? jesus, it wasn’t fair! for him, anyway; for you, his sweet sounds only made you all the more hot and bothered.

his gaze falls down to meet yours, and then further down to his dick and the way your glossy lips wrapped around it and the fucking lipstick stains you were leaving around him. how was he meant to last like this? (here’s a hint: he wasn’t!)

pushing against his hand for a moment, he lessens his grip as you pull off him with a sickening schliiickk noise and wrap one hand around his base as you pant for air, looking up at him with doe-like eyes.

“shouto?”

“yeah?” his heart is pounding and he bites his lip as he looks down at your flushed face that now had a thin sheen of sweat over it, and he feels almost ashamed for the way he immediately craves your mouth back around him.

“i want you to cum in my mouth, okay?” you tell him with a soft smile, tucking a piece of hair behind your ear before taking him into your mouth once again, all the way down until your nose was flush against his mix-matched pubic hair and you had to actively breathe through your nose so you didn’t hurl. shallowly beginning to bob your head, your tongue laves over the underside of his veiny cock as the hand previously wrapped around him moves to cup his balls, fondling them softly before giving them a gentle squeeze.

“oh—sweetheart,” he moans, dick twitching violently in your mouth. “don’t stop,” he all but begs you, rolling his hips up, forcing himself further down your throat. you actually do gag at this, but are able to swallow most of your excessive drool down, only some of it spilling over and out of your mouth and onto to your husband’s dick, mixing beautifully with your lipstick stains, and poor todoroki groans at both the sight and feeling.

all it takes is a few more bobs of your head and another squeeze to his balls before they’re tightening and suddenly he’s cumming down your throat—just like you had asked him to. god, he swears you’ll be the death of him!

swallowing around his awfully sensitive length one final time, both to tease him and get his cum down, you pull off of him with another disgustingly wet noise before looking up at him oh-so-sweetly.

the hand that wasn’t still fondling his balls comes to wrap around his dick, pumping it slowly as you press a little kiss to his flushed and shiny tip, licking it playfully and swirling your tongue around it for a moment before you actually stopped teasing his cock with your mouth and just with your hand.

“baby, please—” his voice is uncharacteristically whiney and his hips buck up into your grasp. despite his natural temperature regulation due to his quirk, shouto finds his entire body feeling hot, so hot, thanks to your delicate touch. “just—ah!” he moans softly as your hand begins moving up and down his shaft slowly, moving up and up until you could place your thumb over the slit of his red and swollen head and run it over the horribly sensitive spot.

“god–damn, sweetheart—give me a moment, please,” he begs you, hips bucking upwards as his cock twitches simultaneously. shouto feels like he’s losing his mind as you pump his oversensitive length and he has to keep his eyes away from the mirror lest he nut again—no, the next time he came today, it would be inside you, his beautiful fucking spouse. “just let me breathe.” one of his large hands comes up to run through his hair and push his bangs out of his face just for them to fall right back in place once it exits his hair.

with a scoff and a roll of your eyes, you blow a puff of cold air over his cockhead and let out a playful okay.

“i guess,” you giggle, looking up at him from your spot on the floor. it’s true that your knees were starting to get a little sore, but you figured you were basically done anyway, so, naturally, you went to stand—just for shouto’s massive hands to land on your hips, up under your shirt, and turn you around so that you’re facing the mirror before tugging your panties down to your now reddened knees in one swift movement.

pulling you onto his lap, his painfully hard cock pressed into the crack of your ass, you whine and squirm in your husband’s strong grasp.

“b-baby?” you sound audibly confused and shouto can’t help but smile at your reaction as he presses a kiss to the side of your neck.

“shh,” he hushes you gently, one hand coming down between your legs to stop and rest on your clit.

“sho-shouto,” you can’t help but whine as he applies a slow but firm pressure to your achy bundle of nerves, gently starting to trace teasing circles over it.

“can’t i make you feel good, too?” he whispers into your ear, catching your gaze in the mirror. his heterochromatic eyes are glued to the reflection of yours and you feel a chill run down your spine as he nuzzles his nose against your neck as his middle finger dips down to your dripping slit before bringing it back up to rub against your pulsing clit.

“ah!” an airy breath escapes you and your back arches at his calloused touch. “fuck,” you hiss as he begins pressing soft kisses to the already brusing flesh of your neck and finger moves with experience over your slick button.

the first several times you two slept together, shouto was rather shy, and not particularly bold — always scared he was going to hurt you somehow or fuck up your pleasure, and then you’d want nothing to do with him; so it took a bit of instruction and teaching him what it is you do and don’t like, but shouto, ever the fast learner, quickly caught on and figured out what exactly he had to do and how he had to do it in order for you to feel good.

“that’s what i like to hear,” he mumbles, more to himself than to you, nibbling on the lobe of your ear before blowing a puff of cold air onto it. todoroki could never get enough of the noises you made — the same way you couldn’t get enough of his whimpers and whines — and would do anything in his power to elicit such sweet sounds from you.

“sh-shut up,” is all you’re able to get out, unable to think as he brings his middle finger back down to your slit and actually inserts it into you this time — fingering you in the lightest, most teasing manner possible, while he heats up his hand, his right arm wrapping around you tighter to keep you in place.

shouto just chuckles at your poor attempt at a quip as he licks a chilly stripe up the column of your neck, causing you to shiver as a devious grin stretches over your husband’s usually sweet face.

“oh, honey,” his voice is low and deep and admittedly makes your pussy clench around the single finger stuffed in it — god, you wish he’d add a second or third to actually stretch you out. and, almost as if he had read your thoughts, shouto curls his finger inside of you before pulling it out about halfway so he could slide another in until—he just stops, one finger half way in you with the tip of another barely poking at your entrance.

“sho–shouto?” you all but whine, hips wiggling futilely, wishing he’d just scissor your cunt open already!

“look in the mirror,” he commands softly. nodding hesitantly, you reluctantly look at your reflection and take in the lewdness of the scene: shouto had your legs spread out over his, keeping them open by borderline entwining your lower legs with his, with his thick ring and middle fingers positioned against your cunt, and his chin now resting on your shoulder, piercing gaze capturing your own.

as he finally begins easing his ring finger into along with the one already in there, you can’t help but squeeze your eyes shut, and just like that, any movement stops.

“i didn’t tell you to close your eyes,” he mutters, right hand coming up to slip under your shirt and pinch a nipple.

“ah! ‘m sorry!” your eyes immediately fly open as you try to focus your gaze on the sight in front of you as shouto’s fingers get progressively hotter the further they slip into you, and suddenly—you were burning from the inside out!

“mmh, shouto….” you whine, one hand coming up to tangle into his hair, giving it a light tug.

your husband merely ignores you as he focuses on pleasing you instead; curling his all too hot fingers at just the right angle, spreading them apart to scissor your pretty pussy, his eyes trained on your reflection and each little way you react to his touch—the way you flinch and try to close your legs, just for him to effortlessly prevent this by spreading his a little wider. god; he had learned to be a little too good at this for your own good.

“nngh—, c’mon baby, don’ be a tease,” is all you’re able to get out as your husband takes his goddamn time fingering you; this couldn’t even be considered as finger-fucking! the feeling of the calloused pads of his heated fingertips rubbing against your already hot inner walls as he pumps them slowly—your internal temperature felt like it was skyrocketing, when in reality, it was only one or two degrees higher, something shouto could easily remedy should he switch hands.

“i’m afraid i don’t know what you’re talking about, lovely,” he smiles gently, beginning to pepper kisses along your neck once more. fuck, you coudn’t stand when he played dumb like that — he had to have known what he was doing!! (and he did! that just wasn’t for you to know.) “if there’s something you want…. then you’ll have to ask for it directly, my dear,” he tells you cheekily, and you can physically feel his smile against your skin as he begins to suck against the junction of your neck and shoulder.

god! damn him!

“f-faster,” you whine, wiggling and rolling your hips against his slow moving fingers, just for shouto to pull them nearly all the way out of you. “sh–shouto! goddammit! please don’t tease me!” you plead, eyes beginning to lightly water over out of sheer frustration. tugging at his hair, you try to twist around enough to give him another kiss — just for him to avoid your lips, too!

“uh-uh,” he chides, his freezing free hand pinching one of your nipples, and you gasp louder than you would have liked to at the feeling. “watch yourself in the mirror ‘n ask nicely and you can have anything you want, princess,” shouto says softly, physically unable to stop smiling. sure, most of the time, his teasing was truly unintentional, the other half of the time (a little less than half, really, it was closer to 60/40) was completely on purpose, as hearing you whine his name or for him to touch you never failed to turn him on or bring a somewhat sadistic smile to his usually stoic face.

nodding, you refocus your attention onto the large vanity mirror, with the chair scooted far back enough so you could clearly see his fingers buried in your glistening cunt, and you physically can’t control the whimper that slips past your throat as his index and pinky fingers move to spread your slick folds apart so you could get a better view of what shouto thought was the most perfect pussy in the world—ever since you’d first had sex (despite his initial nerves), he had quickly grown addicted to the feeling of your cunt wrapped oh-so-snuggly around him.

finally, your husband finally began to finger you in earnest, crooking his fingers in such a delicious way so deep inside you—much further than your own fingers could ever reach, anyway—and suddenly you wish it was his dick filling you up, not just his fingers..! unbeknownst to you, this was both shouto’s brief way of giving his sensitive cock a rest so he could fuck you properly without creaming too early and making sure you’d get to cum twice, too.

“you’re so tense,” his voice has a saccharine lilt to it, and you feel goosebumps erupt over your skin as he watches the way his fingers pump in and out of you, and he can feel his length twitch and drool pre as he imagines your cunt fluttering around his dick instead of his fingers.

“‘s not my fault—you’re not exactly making it easy f’me to relax,” you complain, shifting around in his grip as you give his hair a light tug.

“oh? i’m not?” his gentle smile stretches into a shit eating grin as he slides his fingers out of you entirely before bringing his hand up to his mouth to lick your slick off the digits that had been nearly knuckle-deep inside you less than a moment ago, except—he only sucks off his ring finger, leaving the middle one for you to suck on instead, bringing it up to your plump, glossy lips whilst softly telling you to open your mouth. of course, you obeyed without a second thought, happily, and almost hazily, swirling your tongue around his finger in a similar manner you had done with his cock. the action reminded shouto of such, and he lets out a quiet groan at the feeling.

“mmh,” you hum pleasantly around the digit that was pressing down lightly against your tongue. you weren’t too pleased, however, about the lack of stimulation your pussy was receiving, and you decided to make this known to your husband.

catching his eye in the mirror, you let out a little whine and wrap both your hands around his thick wrist as you purposely let the drool in your mouth build up so it begins to seep down his hand and slowly trickle onto his forearm.

“baby, please. please just fuck me,” you mumble, tugging on his wrist to pull his calloused, slick finger from you spit-soaked mouth.

shouto really was planning to finger you to an orgasm, honest, but—when you asked so sweetly, he just couldn’t say no to you!

“fuck,” he groans, both hands quickly settling onto your hips in order to lift you enough to align your soaked slit with his flushed and achy cock. “y’know i can’t tell you no when you ask like that,” he says before letting you slowly sink all the way to the base.

“you feel so good,” he groans out as your puffy pussy wraps around him tightly.

“s–so do you,” you whine out, feeling his head kiss the entrance to your cervix. jesus christ, how was it possible to hit so deep? “s-so, so good,” you tell him, trying to look at the two of you in the mirror and the way your cunt envelopes him and—it’s just too embarrassing to look at!

squirming in his grasp, you try to turn around to better face him so you could plant a kiss to his plump lips. shouto, however, simply uses one large hand to squish your cheeks and hold your face in place to watch as he lazily fucks up into in the mirror. no matter how bad he wanted to kiss you (that would have to come (cum) after you), he just enjoyed that flustered look on your face too much to not indulge in it! besides, he was always so sweet to you, he’s sure you can handle some light teasing.

“aa–ahh! sh-shouto! fuck!” you cry as he begins bouncing you up and down his needy dick. you whimper at the way he throbs inside you and your cunt clenches tightly around him—making your husband groan loudly too. “sho–!” it’s all you can do to look into the mirror at the lewd sight, and embarrassingly enough, it only serves to turn you on even more.

“hmm?” it’s all he can do to hum out a response as he keeps you moving up and down, strong arms moving with ease as he rhythmically rolls his hips up into yours. “what—” he hisses from the way his tip hits against your cervix, with nowhere left to go. “what is it, love?” he does his best to answer coherently, needing you to be the one fucked dumb first. without a second thought, one hand abandons your hip to slide down your abdomen all the way back between your legs where he began rubbing slow, tight circles against your neglected clit.

“ah! f–fuck!” you moan as he soon sets a steady pace against your throbbing bud, steadily working you up to an orgasm, the knot in your stomach tightening.

it doesn’t take much longer before you’re quivering in shouto’s grip and whining about how close you were, and he can’t help but feel a sense of pride wash over him as he pushes you closer to the edge.

as your cunt clenches and flutters around him, shouto feels himself growing uncomfortably close as well, and soon finds himself asking if it’s okay if he came inside.

“yes, please, baby,” you whine and nod your head, one hand moving to entangle itself into shouto’s hair as he finally allowed you to kiss him once again.

and, with a few more thrusts, you find yourself cumming in sync as the horribly tense knot in your stomach finally snaps and you’re creaming all over your husband’s cock.

“oh fuck,” he groans, dick pulsing once, twice, before finally squirting his thick, hot seed deep into your womb, leaving you feeling both gross and contently full.

after rubbing your clit throughout the duration of your orgasm, shouto still doesn’t stop, even once you began coming down from you high, and you can’t help but jolt in his lap from the oversensitivity.

“sh-shouto, you can—you can st-stop!” you manage to spit out, biting your lower lip as you watch his calloused fingers rub steady circles against your poor clit.

“but—” he pants. “you only— only came once,” he tries to explain, rolling his hips up into you despite his own sensitivity, desperate to make you cum again.

“i– i know, but—’m sensitive, baby,” you try telling him, quickly feeling that familiar knot start to form again. “ple—please!”

despite your pathetic little mewls, your husband ignores you in favor of your excess pleasure, significantly warming up the fingers playing with your puffy clit.

it’s not long before you’re cumming one more time, evening out your total to two—equal to what you had given your oh-so-doting husband (even if you only went out of your way to actually give him a single orgasm—he just happened to cum a second time because you felt so good wrapped around him).

“fuck, baby,” you moan, back arching deeply as he slowly lessens the pressure on your throbbing clit. shouto never disappointed you in bed, or in this case, just simply in the bedroom, and for that, you were eternally grateful.

once you were done making a mess around the length of his dick, your back falls flush against his chest, and you both pant heavily for a long moment before either of you are able to recompose yourselves.

afterwards, shouto helps lift you off his softening dick, and into the bathroom so you could piss (always piss after sex, y’all), before going downstairs to get you a glass of water and then returning back to your shared bedroom to wait in your king sized bed. once you re-entered the room, your husband sits up in the plush bed, with his arms extended out to you, your water already on your nightstand.

with a smile, you make your way over to the bed, with only slightly wobbly legs, and curl up in your loving shouto’s strong arms, where he holds you close to him, resting your head against his chest, where you could hear his beating heart—a sound so soothing you were almost lulled asleep by it until you heard the quietest, faintest whisper of, “you’re so beautiful,” and you can’t help the grin that breaks out across your face as you tell him he is too, something shouto has never been too sure of how to process, but over time, as the compliments he received increased, he slowly learned how to handle and accept them properly.

“i love you,” you say in sync, and you let out a little giggle at this before saying jinx! and pressing a kiss to his cheek before nuzzling your head back against his chest and yawning deeply.

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girlwarlock · 8 months ago

Text

Someone at tumblr/automattic asked whether requests to opt out of "AI" data sharing would be honored retroactively (which seems important, seeing as tumblr has apparently compiled the user data they're going to send *before* giving any kind of opt-out option) and Automattic's head of "AI" Andrew Spittle responded:

We will notify existing partners on a regular basis about anyone who's opted out since the last time we provided a list. I want this to be an ongoing process where we regularly advocate for past content to be excluded based on current preferences. We will ask that content be deleted and removed from any future training runs. I believe partners will honor this based on our conversations with them to this point. I don't think they gain much overall by retaining it.

And I do not trust midjourney or openai in the slightest--their business models, by their own admission, depend on scraping art they don't have permission to use--so I do not believe that they will honor any requests to remove data already received when requests are made to remove it. So yeah. take that as you will.

Edit

about 20 minutes after I posted this, @staff put out this:

They do not acknowledge that they are definitely actually in the process of selling your data to third parties, but they have a setting which (they claim) will prevent them from sharing information with third parties, including "AI" training businesses.

I've turned it on, but tumblr has burned so much trust that I really don't have faith that tumblr will actually change the package of information that will be provided to these third parties based on the setting: tumblr/automattic must know that "AI" art theft is tremendously unpopular with a huge portion of tumblr, and that having this setting (even with a "you must know about it to use it" opt out setting) will result in a bunch of users setting their unintuitive "don't share with third parties" setting to "on" which will diminish the value of the sale.

I don't think tumblr will honor this setting.

#ai art theft #tumblr ai deal #tumblr ai #tumblr changes

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mostlysignssomeportents · 3 months ago

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Leveraged buyouts are not like mortgages

I'm coming to DEFCON! On FRIDAY (Aug 9), I'm emceeing the EFF POKER TOURNAMENT (noon at the Horseshoe Poker Room), and appearing on the BRICKED AND ABANDONED panel (5PM, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01). On SATURDAY (Aug 10), I'm giving a keynote called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE! How hackers can seize the means of computation and build a new, good internet that is hardened against our asshole bosses' insatiable horniness for enshittification" (noon, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01).

Here's an open secret: the confusing jargon of finance is not the product of some inherent complexity that requires a whole new vocabulary. Rather, finance-talk is all obfuscation, because if we called finance tactics by their plain-language names, it would be obvious that the sector exists to defraud the public and loot the real economy.

Take "leveraged buyout," a polite name for stealing a whole goddamned company:

Identify a company that owns valuable assets that are required for its continued operation, such as the real-estate occupied by its outlets, or even its lines of credit with suppliers;

Approach lenders (usually banks) and ask for money to buy the company, offering the company itself (which you don't own!) as collateral on the loan;

Offer some of those loaned funds to shareholders of the company and convince a key block of those shareholders (for example, executives with large stock grants, or speculators who've acquired large positions in the company, or people who've inherited shares from early investors but are disengaged from the operation of the firm) to demand that the company be sold to the looters;

Call a vote on selling the company at the promised price, counting on the fact that many investors will not participate in that vote (for example, the big index funds like Vanguard almost never vote on motions like this), which means that a minority of shareholders can force the sale;

Once you own the company, start to strip-mine its assets: sell its real-estate, start stiffing suppliers, fire masses of workers, all in the name of "repaying the debts" that you took on to buy the company.

This process has its own euphemistic jargon, for example, "rightsizing" for layoffs, or "introducing efficiencies" for stiffing suppliers or selling key assets and leasing them back. The looters – usually organized as private equity funds or hedge funds – will extract all the liquid capital – and give it to themselves as a "special dividend." Increasingly, there's also a "divi recap," which is a euphemism for borrowing even more money backed by the company's assets and then handing it to the private equity fund:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/17/divi-recaps/#graebers-ghost

If you're a Sopranos fan, this will all sound familiar, because when the (comparatively honest) mafia does this to a business, it's called a "bust-out":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bust_Out

The mafia destroys businesses on a onesy-twosey, retail scale; but private equity and hedge funds do their plunder wholesale.

It's how they killed Red Lobster:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/23/spineless/#invertebrates

And it's what they did to hospitals:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/28/5000-bats/#charnel-house

It's what happened to nursing homes, Armark, private prisons, funeral homes, pet groomers, nursing homes, Toys R Us, The Olive Garden and Pet Smart:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/02/plunderers/#farben

It's what happened to the housing co-ops of Cooper Village, Texas energy giant TXU, Old Country Buffet, Harrah's and Caesar's:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/14/billionaire-class-solidarity/#club-deals

And it's what's slated to happen to 2.9m Boomer-owned US businesses employing 32m people, whose owners are nearing retirement:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/16/schumpeterian-terrorism/#deliberately-broken

Now, you can't demolish that much of the US productive economy without attracting some negative attention, so the looter spin-machine has perfected some talking points to hand-wave away the criticism that borrowing money using something you don't own as collateral in order to buy it and wreck it is obviously a dishonest (and potentially criminal) destructive practice.

The most common one is that borrowing money against an asset you don't own is just like getting a mortgage. This is such a badly flawed analogy that it is really a testament to the efficacy of the baffle-em-with-bullshit gambit to convince us all that we're too stupid to understand how finance works.

Sure: if I put an offer on your house, I will go to my credit union and ask the for a mortgage that uses your house as collateral. But the difference here is that you own your house, and the only way I can buy it – the only way I can actually get that mortgage – is if you agree to sell it to me.

Owner-occupied homes typically have uncomplicated ownership structures. Typically, they're owned by an individual or a couple. Sometimes they're the property of an estate that's divided up among multiple heirs, whose relationship is mediated by a will and a probate court. Title can be contested through a divorce, where disputes are settled by a divorce court. At the outer edge of complexity, you get things like polycules or lifelong roommates who've formed an LLC s they can own a house among several parties, but the LLC will have bylaws, and typically all those co-owners will be fully engaged in any sale process.

Leveraged buyouts don't target companies with simple ownership structures. They depend on firms whose equity is split among many parties, some of whom will be utterly disengaged from the firm's daily operations – say, the kids of an early employee who got a big stock grant but left before the company grew up. The looter needs to convince a few of these "owners" to force a vote on the acquisition, and then rely on the idea that many of the other shareholders will simply abstain from a vote. Asset managers are ubiquitous absentee owners who own large stakes in literally every major firm in the economy. The big funds – Vanguard, Blackrock, State Street – "buy the whole market" (a big share in every top-capitalized firm on a given stock exchange) and then seek to deliver returns equal to the overall performance of the market. If the market goes up by 5%, the index funds need to grow by 5%. If the market goes down by 5%, then so do those funds. The managers of those funds are trying to match the performance of the market, not improve on it (by voting on corporate governance decisions, say), or to beat it (by only buying stocks of companies they judge to be good bets):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/17/shareholder-socialism/#asset-manager-capitalism

Your family home is nothing like one of these companies. It doesn't have a bunch of minority shareholders who can force a vote, or a large block of disengaged "owners" who won't show up when that vote is called. There isn't a class of senior managers – Chief Kitchen Officer! – who have been granted large blocks of options that let them have a say in whether you will become homeless.

Now, there are homes that fit this description, and they're a fucking disaster. These are the "heirs property" homes, generally owned by the Black descendants of enslaved people who were given the proverbial 40 acres and a mule. Many prosperous majority Black settlements in the American South are composed of these kinds of lots.

Given the historical context – illiterate ex-slaves getting property as reparations or as reward for fighting with the Union Army – the titles for these lands are often muddy, with informal transfers from parents to kids sorted out with handshakes and not memorialized by hiring lawyers to update the deeds. This has created an irresistible opportunity for a certain kind of scammer, who will pull the deeds, hire genealogists to map the family trees of the original owners, and locate distant descendants with homeopathically small claims on the property. These descendants don't even know they own these claims, don't even know about these ancestors, and when they're offered a few thousand bucks for their claim, they naturally take it.

Now, armed with a claim on the property, the heirs property scammers force an auction of it, keeping the process under wraps until the last instant. If they're really lucky, they're the only bidder and they can buy the entire property for pennies on the dollar and then evict the family that has lived on it since Reconstruction. Sometimes, the family will get wind of the scam and show up to bid against the scammer, but the scammer has deep capital reserves and can easily win the auction, with the same result:

https://www.propublica.org/series/dispossessed

A similar outrage has been playing out for years in Hawai'i, where indigenous familial claims on ancestral lands have been diffused through descendants who don't even know they're co-owner of a place where their distant cousins have lived since pre-colonial times. These descendants are offered small sums to part with their stakes, which allows the speculator to force a sale and kick the indigenous Hawai'ians off their family lands so they can be turned into condos or hotels. Mark Zuckerberg used this "quiet title and partition" scam to dispossess hundreds of Hawai'ian families:

https://archive.is/g1YZ4

Heirs property and quiet title and partition are a much better analogy to a leveraged buyout than a mortgage is, because they're ways of stealing something valuable from people who depend on it and maintain it, and smashing it and selling it off.

Strip away all the jargon, and private equity is just another scam, albeit one with pretensions to respectability. Its practitioners are ripoff artists. You know the notorious "carried interest loophole" that politicians periodically discover and decry? "Carried interest" has nothing to do with the interest on a loan. The "carried interest" rule dates back to 16th century sea-captains, and it refers to the "interest" they had in the cargo they "carried":

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/29/writers-must-be-paid/#carried-interest

Private equity managers are like sea captains in exactly the same way that leveraged buyouts are like mortgages: not at all.

And it's not like private equity is good to its investors: scams like "continuation funds" allow PE looters to steal all the money they made from strip mining valuable companies, so they show no profits on paper when it comes time to pay their investors:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/20/continuation-fraud/#buyout-groups

Those investors are just as bamboozled as we are, which is why they keep giving more money to PE funds. Today, the "dry powder" (uninvested money) that PE holds has reached an all-time record high of $2.62 trillion – money from pension funds and rich people and sovereign wealth funds, stockpiled in anticipation of buying and destroying even more profitable, productive, useful businesses:

https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/2di1vzgjcmzovkcea8f0g/portfolio/private-equitys-dry-powder-mountain-reaches-record-height

The practices of PE are crooked as hell, and it's only the fact that they use euphemisms and deceptive analogies to home mortgages that keeps them from being shut down. The more we strip away the bullshit, the faster we'll be able to kill this cancer, and the more of the real economy we'll be able to preserve.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/05/rugged-individuals/#misleading-by-analogy

#pluralistic #leveraged buyouts #lbos #divi recaps #mortgages #weaponized shelter #debt #finance #private equity #pe #mego #bust outs #plunder #looting

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steveseddie · 14 days ago

Text

sweet as pumpkin pie

steddie | rating: t | wc: 3,1 k | cw: none | tags: dustin & steve, dustin & eddie, eddie knows how to bake, steve has a crush, getting together, first kiss, steve pov

for @steddie-spooktober day twenty-four, prompt “pumpkin”

read on ao3

Pounding at the door has Steve scrambling to his feet and hurtling towards the front door. He glances at Eddie on the couch and is relieved to find he’s still napping soundly, unbothered by the noise.

Steve doesn’t want him to wake up, not when Eddie showed up an hour earlier looking exhausted after nightmares kept him up all night. The last thing Steve wants is for Eddie to lose any more sleep because whoever is at the door grows impatient and knocks harder.

So he fumbles with the lock and swings the door open to reveal–

“Dustin?”

“Steve, we have an emergency!” Henderson shrieks, his loud volume making Steve flinch.

His annoyance is immediately replaced by worry as the kid’s words register. His body tenses up, his fingers itch for his nail bat. “An Upside Down emergency?”

“Worse!” Dustin says. Steve’s stomach churns and he feels sick. He tries to think what could be worse than an Upside Down emergency– “A baking emergency!” He finishes before Steve can spiral.

He blinks at him. “A baking–” he starts in incredulity. “Henderson! Jesus fucking Christ, man.” He reaches over and flicks his stupid Thinking Cap.

“What?” Dustin protests, swatting Steve’s hand away.

“That’s not worse than an Upside Down emergency! Nothing is worse than an Upside Down emergency!”

“Fine, but it’s up there,” Dustin argues stubbornly.

“Whatever,” Steve says, pinching the bridge of his nose. He wishes Eddie was awake so that they could share an exasperated look. “What’s the matter, shithead?”

“You know my mom isn’t home this week, right?”

“Yeah, she’s visiting family or something.” She told Steve as much when she called and asked him to keep an eye on her Dusty.

“Right, well, the science club is in charge of the baking sale this week and she volunteered to bring something, but she forgot it was this week!”

Steve blinks at him, failing to see what the problem is. “So? She left you money, right? Just buy some cupcakes at Melvald’s and bring those.”

Dustin gasps, affronted. “Steve, it’s a bake sale! Not a store-bought sale!”

“Things at stores were baked at some point too, butthead,” Steve argues, but Dustin keeps looking at him like he’s being stupid. “Geez, fine, what do you want me to do about it anyway?”

“I need you to bake me something, duh.”

Steve snorts. “Sure, yeah, I’d love to, except I don’t know how to bake.”

Dustin frowns. “Bullshit! You cook for us all the time!”

“Yeah, cook like actual food, not pies and shit,” he says, crossing his arms and leaning against the door.

“It’s the same thing!”

Steve thinks back on the time he tried to bake brownies for Nancy and how he almost burned his house down in the process. “It’s so not,” he says in a bitchy tone.

Dustin groans, scrubbing his hands down his face. “But Steve, I need a pie!”

“Sorry, kid, you’re gonna have to ask someone else. Maybe Mrs. Wheeler or–”

“I can do it.”

Both of their heads snap towards the living room entrance where Eddie stands, rubbing his eyes sleepily.

Christ, he’s cute, Steve thinks, and immediately feels his cheeks heat up. He hopes Eddie is still too groggy from sleep to notice. “Do what, Eds?”

“Make Henderson a pie,” Eddie says, waving his hand at the kid.

Dustin blinks at him with wide eyes. “You know how to bake a pie?”

“Yup.”

Steve finds himself asking, “How?”

Eddie snorts amusedly. “We have ovens in the trailer park too, rich boy,” he snarks but his words lack any heat. “Though I might have to borrow yours for this, ours hasn’t worked since the turkey incident of ‘84.”

Dustin and Steve exchange a look, equally shocked by what they’re hearing.

“So,” Eddie goes on, clapping his hands together. “What kind of pie do you need, Henderson?” He asks as slides his Reeboks on, which he left by Steve’s door when he showed up. “Cherry, pumpkin, apple?”

“Uh, pumpkin?”

Eddie flashes him a dimpled grin. “My favorite,” he says, grabbing his car keys from the table at the entrance. “Let’s go then, shrimp.”

“I thought you were gonna make it here,” Steve says, confused by Eddie leaving.

“Gotta go shopping first, Stevie,” Eddie explains, van keys spinning around his finger. “And I gotta dust off the old recipe, it’s been a while since I used it.”

“Ugh, but I hate grocery shopping!” Dustin whines, earning a smack on the back of his head from Eddie.

“It’s your pie, Henderson. Suck it up.”

Dustin scoffs, crossing his arms over his chest.

Eddie turns to Steve, batting his long eyelashes at him. “You mind cleaning the oven for me in the meantime, sweetheart?”

Steve should protest that he didn’t agree to help, but with Eddie’s big doe eyes staring at him like that and him calling him sweetheart, all he can muster is a weak, “Yeah, okay.”

Eddie grins, throwing a wink over his shoulder as he grabs the back of Dustin’s neck and pushes him towards his van. “Be back in a few, honey!” He calls back to Steve. “And then we’re baking a pie!”

Steve watches them go and closes the door once the pair gets in the van.

He’s in the kitchen, ready to clean his oven for Eddie when his words register in Steve’s brain.

“Wait– we?”

***

Eddie and Dustin come back an hour later, carrying everything they need.

Dustin dumps his bags on the counter and immediately tries to retreat to the living room but Eddie moves faster. He grabs onto the handle of his backpack, pulling him to an abrupt stop, Dustin’s limbs flailing like a puppet on strings.

“Where do you think you’re going?” He asks, tugging Henderson back into the kitchen. “I told you, it’s your pie so you’re helping.”

“But my mom never forces me to help!” He protests, trying to shrug off his backpack to escape.

Eddie wraps an arm around his neck instead.

“Yeah, well. Your mom is a saint, I’m not,” he says, letting him go once Dustin stops struggling and handing him a whisk and a list of ingredients for him to mix.

Begrudgingly, Dustin accepts them and sets off to work on making the filling while Eddie and Steve work on the crust.

Steve has to focus really hard on following Eddie’s instructions correctly. Not because the instructions are particularly complicated or anything, mostly it’s just ‘add this’ or ‘measure that’ or ‘hand me those’. It’s because Eddie is very distracting like this– with his hair tied in a messy bun, the sleeves of his flannel rolled over his forearms, flour smeared on his face.

And then there’s the familiarity with which he moves around Steve’s kitchen after spending so much time here, helping Steve cook or just keeping him company. And the confidence with which he measures, mixes, and adds ingredients, or tells Steve to do it.

Steve always had a thing for competence. It’s why he was so attracted to Nancy, whether she was getting all of her chemistry flashcard questions right or shooting monsters in the face. It’s why he started crushing on Robin after she cracked that Russian code. Steve knows that if he had been there when Eddie played the most metal concert ever, and he had seen him shredding his guitar the way Dustin describes it, he would’ve been too busy drooling over him to fight Vecna.

Eddie knowing how to make a pumpkin pie from scratch is no different– and if it weren’t for Dustin, Steve probably would’ve already pinned Eddie against the kitchen counter to sloppily make out with him.

For now, Steve tries his best to pay attention to what Eddie asks him to do and not get distracted by thoughts of kissing him or dragging him upstairs or–

He realizes he fails when Eddie has to smear flour on his nose to get his attention.

“Hey,” Steve protests weakly, going cross-eyed trying to stare at the white powder on his nose.

Eddie chuckles. “There you are, I’ve been talking to you for like, five minutes.”

“Oh.” Steve must’ve gotten distracted staring at Eddie’s arms as he expertly kneaded the dough and rolled it into balls. He glances down at the counter and realizes he’s done already. Then he glances around the kitchen and notices it’s just the two of them.

“Where’s Henderson?”

“Well, the filling is ready and we have to leave these babies in the fridge for two hours,” he says, holding up one of the dough balls. “So I sent him to pick a movie for us to watch in the meantime.”

“Oh, okay,” Steve says, wondering how he could’ve been so deep in thought that he missed all of that happening. He grabs one of the dough balls while Eddie grabs the other one, following him to the fridge. “Do we need this much pie crust?” He asks as Eddie opens the door.

“I thought we could make two pies so I doubled the recipe. Henderson can take one and we can have the other,” Eddie says, sticking the dough in the fridge. “That way you can try it and I can take some back to Wayne. I don’t think we’ve had any homemade pumpkin pie since my mom died.”

Steve hums. “Is this her recipe?”

The smile Eddie gives Steve over his shoulder is a little sad. “Yeah, she taught me how to make it years ago.”

“I can’t wait to try it,” Steve says softly, knocking their shoulders together.

Eddie spins on his heels, leaning back against the fridge. “I just hope I didn’t fuck it up, it’s been a while,” he chuckles, hanging a hand from his neck.

Steve shrugs. “You can always blame me. Or Dustin.”

Eddie throws his head back, laughing. There’s a streak of flour on his neck and Steve has to fight the urge to clean it up with his tongue. “Nah, Stevie, you two are doing a great job,” Eddie says with a dimpled grin, “even the kid with his fucking attitude.”

Steve huffs, rolling his eyes. “Right? You’d think he’s doing us a favor.”

“Entitled little shit,” Eddie mutters, but the corners of his mouth tick up.

From the living room, Dustin yells at them, his voice dripping with annoyance. “You guys are gonna watch the movie or what?”

Steve and Eddie share a look and start laughing.

***

Two hours later the two of them are back in the kitchen, rolling out the pie crust.

Or at least, Eddie is. Steve keeps messing it up.

“Fuck,” he mutters as he screws it up again. “You know what? You do it.”

“Come on, Stevie, it’s not that hard,” Eddie says, knocking his bony hip against Steve’s.

Whatever protest Steve is about to make dies in his throat when Eddie leaves his perfectly rolled-out pie crust and moves to stand behind him, pressing his body against Steve and Steve’s body against the counter, his arms wrapping around him so he can guide his hands on the rolling pin.

“You gotta start at the center and work outwards,” Eddie says, speaking into Steve’s ear as he shows him how to do it. Steve can barely focus on anything that isn’t the entire length of Eddie’s body pressed against him. “Yeah, just like that.”

“Christ,” Steve mutters. Eddie’s words whispered lowly into his ear are making Steve’s head swim with all kinds of ideas. It’s a good thing that Eddie seems oblivious to it.

“Now you do it,” Eddie says, letting go of Steve’s hands and holding Steve’s waist instead.

Steve’s movements are a little jerky, but he manages to finish rolling out the pie crust successfully, even with Eddie standing behind him the entire time.

“Great job, Stevie,” Eddie says, hooking his chin on Steve’s shoulder to look down at the counter.

Steve makes the mistake of turning his head, leaving their faces only a few inches away from each other. Steve’s breath hitches and his heart starts jackhammering against his ribcage. It feels like it might explode out of his chest when he notices Eddie’s eyes unmistakably flicker down to his lips.

And of course, that’s when Dustin comes barreling into the kitchen.

“Are you guys done?” He asks, his arms crossed over his chest, his foot tapping on the floor impatiently.

Steve drops the rolling pin and Eddie jumps back a few steps. Dustin’s eyes dart curiously between the two.

Eddie clears his throat. “We’d be done sooner if you helped us,” he says, his voice coming out a little strangled.

Dustin gives them an innocent look, eyes wide like he’s never done anything wrong in his life. “But you're doing such a great job, Eddie.”

Eddie doesn’t fall for it. He snorts, throwing a kitchen cloth at his face. “Shoo, you gremlin!”

He doesn’t wait for Eddie to tell him twice, hurtling towards the living room. Steve watches in silence as Eddie carefully places the pie crust on the pan and pours the filling Dustin made.

“Now we wait?” Steve asks once both pies are inside the preheated oven.

“Now we wait,” Eddie says, smiling at Steve. His eyes catch on something and then he reaches out to wipe flour from Steve’s cheek, his thumb lingering on his cheekbone for a second too long.

His eyes flicker to Steve’s lips one last time before he goes to join Dustin in the living room.

***

“I present to you," Eddie starts, spinning around on his heels, holding the pie in his hands, “your pumpkin pie, my good sir.”

Dustin grins, letting out something between a laugh and a snort. “Dude, it looks so good!”

“I told you I could bake,” Eddie says, grinning smugly.

“Hey, we helped,” Steve says with a pout, crossing his arms over his chest.

Eddie sets the pie down on the counter so he can crowd Steve against it. “Oh, I know, baby, I could never have done it without you.”

Heat builds up in Steve’s cheeks. It’s a good thing that Eddie gets distracted by Dustin rounding the counter and wrapping his arms around his middle in an unexpected hug. “Thank you, Eddie.”

Eddie ruffles Dustin’s curls. “You’re welcome, kid.”

Before Steve can protest once again that he helped, thank you very much, Dustin lets go of Eddie and hugs Steve too. “Thanks, Steve.”

“Of course, buddy.”

“I’ll tell Mom to have you both over for dinner when she comes back,” he says, adjusting his Thinking Cap.

“Hell yeah,” Eddie says, licking his lips like he’s already tasting Mrs. Henderson’s cooking. “You just earned yourself a drive home, mister.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, no way I’m letting you ruin my–” Steve clears his throat, “ our pie by taking it home on your bike.” He grabs Dustin’s shoulders, and once the kid grabs the pie, he steers him in the direction of the front door. “I’ll come back to help you clean up,” he tells Steve over his shoulder.

“You better.”

With a wink, they disappear through the kitchen archway, leaving Steve alone with his thoughts.

And he can’t help but think about Eddie– his eyes on Steve’s lips, his thumb softly brushing over Steve’s cheekbone, his chest pressed against Steve’s back.

He forces himself to start cleaning up, just so he can stay busy and not drive himself crazy thinking about what might happen when Eddie comes back, now that Dustin won’t be here.

He’s elbow-deep in rinsing water when he hears the front door open, followed by Eddie’s whistling as he makes his way to the kitchen.

“Stevie, Stevie, Stevie,” he says, waltzing in, “I told you I’d help!”

Without turning around, Steve shrugs. “Grab a cloth, you can help me dry.”

He hears a cabinet open and close as Eddie presumably looks for a clean kitchen cloth but when he appears next to Steve, he’s got a plate with a slice of pumpkin pie on it.

Steve purses his lips. “That’s not a kitchen towel,” he says matter-of-factly.

“Nope, but I couldn’t wait to try it,” he says, leaning back on the counter, facing Steve.

Steve gives the slice of pie a pointed look. “Well?”

Eddie grabs a forkful of pie and shoves it into his mouth while Steve stares expectantly at him, waiting for his reaction. It comes in the way of a sinful moan that makes Steve want to shove his head into the water to stop the heat from creeping up his cheeks.

“I- uh,” he clears his throat, “I take it we didn’t fuck it up?”

Eddie licks his lips, and Steve’s hands tighten around the bowl he was rinsing. “Nop, it’s perfect. Just like my mama used to make it.”

Steve smiles at Eddie’s smug little tilt of his head as he shoves another forkful into his mouth.

“Hey, I wanna try it too,” he says, nudging Eddie’s side with his elbow.

He expects Eddie to feed him some pie since his hands are still under the rinsing water and it’s probably what Eddie intends to do, he scoops some pie up with his fork–

But then he hesitates.

His eyes dart over Stece’s face, searching for something. He either finds it or gives up, dropping the fork back onto the plate and placing it on the counter next to him.

Steve cocks his head, puppy-like, but before he can get a word out, Eddie grabs his cheeks and kisses Steve square on the lips.

He instinctively kisses back– or does his best to do so considering his hands are still in the water. He moves his lips against Eddie’s and when Eddie laps at his bottom lip, Steve opens his mouth, letting Eddie’s tongue slide inside.

He tastes like pumpkin pie, is Steve’s first coherent thought, followed by– holy shit, I’m kissing Eddie.

It’s that realization that makes Steve retrieve his hands from the sink, dripping water all over the floor, to wrap his arms around Eddie’s shoulders. He kisses him more deeply, chasing after that taste of pumpkin pie, and smoke, and cinnamon, and Eddie.

They pull back when they finally need to come up for air but stay wrapped up in each other.

Steve’s eyes dip down to Eddie’s lips, red and slick with spit. He hears them moving but realizes he didn’t hear whatever Eddie said from the blood still rushing through his ears.

“Sorry, what?”

Eddie chuckles a little breathlessly. “I said, what did you think of the pie?”

“Oh, um. Good, it’s–” Steve licks his lips. “It’s good.”

Eddie’s mouth twitches with a hint of a smirk. “Yeah?”

“Mhm but, uh, I think I need– I need to give it another try, you know?” Steve stammers out, watching as Eddie’s eyes go a little dark at that. He licks his lips and Steve does his best not to let out a whine.

“Come here then, pumpkin,” Eddie says, pulling Steve forward, mashing their lips together.

Neither of them points out it would be easier for Steve to grab a forkful of pie– they’re too busy chasing after the taste of it on each other’s mouths to even try.

#steddie #steddie fic #stranger things #stranger things fic #for once i am Not late for this! woohoo #well technically i am because this was supposed to be for the baking prompt but i finished it until now so. pumpkin it is #steve harrington #eddie munson #dustin henderson #monse writes #steddiespooktober

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13thdoodle · 1 month ago

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[ EctoberHaunt 2024 Banner ]

Hi hiii~ I get to draw the banner again for @ectoberhaunt this year~ It was a lot of fun :DD

I wasn't sure how to incorporate the gold and silver at first but I think it turn out pretty good

Also thank you to Enn for helping me with the flats I would've pewished ksjadnaksj Sketches and some ramblings under cut

Here's the initial sketch for the banner. I tried my best to keep it close to the sketch or at least have the same energy (hopefully qwq)

As you can see, I drew Sam and Tucker riding a scooter bike originally. But the banner, I try to get as close to canon design as possible. I could not for the live of me remember what episode has the scooter bike. And.. turns out I might've just misremembered the scooter as a motor bike? so I just draw the scooter lol

(This is from the Killer Garage Sale episode btw. I couldn't find the scooter's pict on the wiki so I gotta screenshot it from the episode)

Also speaking of couldn't find reference pictures in the fandom wiki,

I couldn't find pictures of the college trio full body screenshots there. Only the Vlad leaning into the portal while Maddie and Jack looked away. Very useful references, yes.

I used to think that Jack was the worst one here about lab safety (considering he was the main reason the portal exploded on Vlad's face), but Maddie is no better after watching the episode again. Girlie wear big round earrings and leg warmers in the lab. Pretty sure that's... not very safety. Vlad is not better since he does lean very close into the radiation portal so... lol

Anyway, I tried to incorporate their dynamics in the banner. Jack the very excited one and leading the ghost hunt, Maddie following along with more ghost gears, and Vlad... well, I was thinking Vlad could be the 'rational' of the trio and like brings stuffs the other two wouldn't have thought to bring out of excitement (i.e. flashlights in case they need to go through pitch black tunnel so they don't fall off etc etc)

But... you know, that's giving Vlad too many points than he deserves lol. So, I draw Vlad still bringing the bag of extra stuffs, but it's not fully closed so some stuffs fell off on their trails. They all should share braincells and Vlad does not get a turn lol

Also changed Maddie's clothes and give her the teal suit to match Jack and also looks better when she's running

There's not much I can say about the main trio process? I mostly just want Sam to be the one driving the scooter while Tucker handles the navigations or sth. They get to ride scooters to catch up with Danny~

Danny and Tucker's colors a bit ashy bc I color picked them from low res screenshots askjdnaksj I fixed em on the final tho so yea

O yeah, I don't know if it's visible on the final art, but I initially try to give the kids warm shadings and cold lighting (Silver), and the college trio cold shadows and warm lighting (Gold) to fit the themes.

Also the light source.. sorta? The adults has the light source from behind them bc they are in past/past the age in the drawings? And the kids has their light source from in front of them, going into the future and the many things ahead of them kajsdnaksd

#13thcat art #13thdoodle #danny phantom #sam manson #tucker foley #jack fenton #maddie fenton #vlad plasmius

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tarotwithavi · 1 year ago

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Mercury in the houses

Mercury in astrology represents communication, intellect, and the way we process information.

For entertainment purposes only!

Mercury in the 1st House

People with Mercury in the first house are usually chatty and outgoing. They express themselves readily and might come across as talkative or even a bit animated. They've got quick minds and love to engage in intellectual conversations. They often have a witty and clever way with words.With Mercury in the first house, they make a strong first impression. They're articulate and can be quite persuasive when they want to be. These folks are curious by nature. They're interested in a wide range of topics and are always eager to learn something new. Communication plays a big role in their lives. They're good at conveying their ideas clearly and might even excel in fields like writing, public speaking, or journalism. Sometimes, they can't turn off their racing thoughts. Their minds are always buzzing with ideas and plans, which can make it challenging to relax.They're not afraid to speak their minds and often have their own unique perspective on things. They value their independence in thought. Their appearance often reflects their communication style. They might have a sharp, well-groomed look that complements their articulate way of speaking.They can be influential in their social circles because they know how to communicate effectively. Others often turn to them for advice or guidance. They adapt their communication style to different situations and people. They can be serious and professional when needed or fun and lighthearted in social settings.Their active minds can sometimes lead to restlessness. They might have a hard time sitting still for too long or focusing on one thing for extended periods. Their natural ability to communicate and lead can make them excellent leaders in various fields. They're not afraid to take charge and make things happen.

Mercury in 2nd house

These folks often think a lot about money, possessions, and their personal values. They may have a strong desire to acquire and manage material resources. Their communication tends to be practical and focused on tangible matters. They're good at discussing financial plans, budgeting, and investments. They place a high value on their words and might be careful about what they say, especially when it comes to money matters. They believe that clear communication can lead to financial success. Mercury in the 2nd house individuals are usually financially savvy. They can analyse financial situations well and may have a knack for making money through communication-related skills, like sales or negotiation. They're resourceful thinkers who can come up with innovative ways to manage their finances and assets. They're not afraid to explore different options. They might have a strong attachment to their material possessions. The idea of security and stability is closely linked to their belongings.Their ability to communicate effectively can directly impact their financial situation. Good negotiation skills can lead to better deals and financial gains. Many of them highly value education and may invest in it as a means to increase their earning potential. Lifelong learning is a theme for them. They can be sensitive to criticism about their financial choices or values. Negative comments in this area might hit them harder than in other areas of life. In relationships, they may have possessive tendencies, particularly when it comes to shared resources. This can lead to conflicts if not managed well. They often have strong opinions about what they consider valuable, and they're not easily swayed by others' ideas. They trust their judgement when it comes to money matters.Money and how they manage it can tie into their sense of self-worth. Achieving financial stability can be closely connected to their self-esteem.

Mercury in 3th house

They're naturally talkative and love to engage in conversations. Whether it's with family, friends, or strangers, they're always up for a chat.Their curiosity knows no bounds. They're eager to learn and explore new things, and they often have a wide range of interests. The 3rd house is associated with siblings, so these individuals might have close and communicative relationships with their brothers and sisters. They enjoy sharing ideas and stories with them. They're keen on exploring their local neighbourhood or community. You'll often find them knowing all the ins and outs of their town or city. Mercury in the 3rd house folks thrive in social settings. They're skilled at networking, making connections, and maintaining friendships.They have a sharp mind and can think on their feet. This makes them great problem-solvers and adaptable in various situations. They might excel in various forms of communication, from writing to speaking to using technology. They're comfortable with words in all their forms.These individuals might frequently take short trips, whether for work or leisure. They enjoy the change of scenery and the opportunity to meet new people.Learning never stops for them. They're often taking courses, reading books, or engaging in activities that expand their knowledge.While they're great communicators, they might sometimes struggle with being too scattered or overloading themselves with too much information. They have a knack for explaining things clearly, which can make them excellent teachers or mentors. They can break down complex topics into understandable bits. On the downside, they might be drawn into gossip or spreading rumours if they're not mindful of their words. They should be cautious about what they say and to whom.

Mercury in 4th house

These individuals often think and communicate in a way that's closely tied to their family and home environment. Family matters, traditions, and memories play a significant role in their thought process. They are natural caregivers and nurturers. When they speak, it's often with a sense of warmth and care. They excel in making others feel comfortable and understood. Emotional bonds with family members are a big deal for them. They may have deep, sentimental attachments to their childhood home or the place they grew up. People with Mercury in the 4th house often prefer staying at home or within their comfort zone. They might enjoy activities like cooking, decorating, or simply relaxing in their familiar surroundings. They have a sentimental streak, treasuring mementos and keepsakes that remind them of cherished moments from the past. Old photos and family heirlooms hold special meaning. Traditional values and customs are important to them. They might enjoy participating in family traditions and passing them down to the next generation. This placement can also indicate strong communication with parents, especially the mother. They may rely on their parents' advice or be in frequent contact with them. Privacy is a big deal. They might be selective about who they let into their inner circle and value a safe and secure home environment. Mercury in the 4th house folks enjoy reminiscing about the past. They often engage in conversations about their childhood, family history, and shared memories. Some of them might be interested in real estate or home-related businesses. They have a knack for understanding what makes a house feel like a home. Education might also be closely tied to the home environment. They could be homeschooled, or they find it easier to study and learn when they're in a comfortable, private space. Creating and preserving happy memories with loved ones is a top priority. They might go to great lengths to ensure family gatherings and events are special and memorable.

Mercury in 5th house

These folks are born with a flair for creativity and self-expression. They often use their words to entertain and captivate others, making them great storytellers, writers, or performers. They approach life with a playful and youthful intellect. They might enjoy games, hobbies, or activities that stimulate their mind and bring out their inner child. The 5th house is associated with love affairs and romance, so these individuals tend to communicate their feelings in a romantic and charming way. They're the type to write love letters or plan elaborate dates to impress their partners. When they're in love, they're not shy about expressing it. They might be the ones to shout their feelings from the rooftops or shower their partners with affectionate words. Drama and theatrics often play a part in their communication style. They can be a bit dramatic at times, whether it's for effect or because they genuinely feel things deeply. They approach new ideas and projects with childlike enthusiasm. This can make them passionate and excited learners and creators. The 5th house also relates to taking risks, so they might not be afraid to speak their mind, even if it means pushing boundaries or challenging the status quo. Many of them have a strong affinity for the arts, whether it's painting, acting, dancing, or any form of artistic expression. They find joy in creative outlets. They often make great teachers because they infuse fun and creativity into their lessons. Learning from them can be an enjoyable experience. They have a natural charm and flirtatiousness in their communication, which can be both entertaining and enticing. Since the 5th house is associated with recognition, they may have a deep desire for their ideas and talents to be acknowledged and appreciated by others. They value leisure time and often use it to engage in playful activities, whether it's going to amusement parks, enjoying a night out, or simply having fun with friends.

Mercury in 6th house

These individuals pay meticulous attention to details. They thrive on organising information and often excel in jobs or tasks that require precision and accuracy. They take their work seriously. These folks may have a tendency to become workaholics, dedicating a lot of mental energy to their job or daily responsibilities. Mercury in the 6th house people are excellent problem solvers. They have a knack for figuring out practical solutions to everyday issues and can troubleshoot effectively. Their communication style at work is clear and efficient. They prefer straightforward and practical conversations, making them great in roles that involve instruction or management.This placement often makes individuals health-conscious. They pay attention to diet, exercise, and overall well-being, as maintaining good health is a priority for them.They thrive on routines and schedules. They like to plan their days meticulously and might get flustered when unexpected disruptions occur.The 6th house is associated with service, so these individuals often find fulfilment in helping others or working in service-oriented professions such as healthcare, teaching, or customer service.They analyse situations thoroughly before making decisions. While this trait can be useful, it can also lead to overthinking or hesitation at times. They have a perfectionist streak and may struggle with feeling that nothing is ever quite good enough. This can be a source of stress for them. They excel at tasks that require repetition or attention to detail, like data entry, research, or quality control. Their communication style at home might be more practical and focused on daily chores and responsibilities. They prefer to keep their home life organised. They can be prone to worrying about their health, work, and daily responsibilities. Learning to manage anxiety is essential for their well-being.

Mercury in 7th house

These folks have a gift for gab when it comes to one-on-one interactions. They're smooth talkers who can charm the socks off almost anyone. The 7th house is all about partnerships, and with Mercury here, communication is central to their relationships. They thrive on intellectual connections with their partners.nThey're drawn to partners who stimulate their minds. They want someone they can have deep conversations with, and they won't settle for superficial connections. They tend to be open to different viewpoints and are willing to listen and learn from their partners. This open-mindedness can make them great collaborators.Mercury in the 7th house people have a knack for negotiation and compromise. They can smooth out conflicts and find solutions that work for everyone involved. When tensions arise in their relationships, they're skilled at using words to defuse the situation. They avoid harsh confrontations and opt for diplomatic language.They often have an extensive network of friends and acquaintances. They enjoy socialising and making new connections, which can benefit their partnerships. Their relationships tend to start with a strong mental connection. They need to have intellectually stimulating conversations to feel connected on a deeper level. They may have idealistic expectations when it comes to love and partnerships. They believe in the power of communication to overcome any obstacles. Sometimes, they can come across as flirtatious even when they don't intend to. Their natural charm can be misinterpreted by others.They may attract partners who are talkative or involved in communication-related fields like writing, journalism, or public speaking. Balancing their own needs and desires with those of their partners can be a lifelong lesson. They might struggle with being overly accommodating at times.

Mercury in 8th house

These folks tend to have deep, intense thoughts. They're drawn to topics like psychology, the mysteries of life, and anything that delves beneath the surface. Mercury in the 8th house people can be quite secretive in their communication. They may not readily share their thoughts and feelings with just anyone; trust needs to be established first. They have a natural curiosity for uncovering hidden truths. Whether it's researching a mystery or diving into complex subjects, they love to dig deep. These individuals excel at research and uncovering information. They're like natural detectives when it comes to finding answers or solving puzzles.When they do speak, their words can carry a lot of weight. They have a knack for getting to the heart of matters and can be very persuasive when they want to be. Many with Mercury in the 8th house have an interest in the occult, astrology, or other esoteric subjects. They're drawn to the mystical and hidden aspects of life. Their intuition is often spot-on. They can sense things on a deeper level and might have premonitions or gut feelings that guide them. They're not afraid to tackle intense and transformative conversations. They can help others confront their fears and heal through communication. Privacy is a big deal for them. They may value their own privacy fiercely and respect the privacy of others.They have a complex and sometimes mysterious way of thinking. They're not satisfied with surface-level explanations and are always seeking the deeper meaning. In financial or business matters, they often have an interest in shared resources, joint ventures, or investments. They're good at managing other people's money too. They can have a talent for understanding the depths of the human psyche, making them great therapists, counsellors, or researchers in psychology-related fields.

Mercury in 9th house

These folks have a natural curiosity and love for exploring new ideas, cultures, and philosophies. They're like mental adventurers, always seeking knowledge and expanding their horizons.They often engage in deep, philosophical conversations. You might find them pondering the meaning of life, the universe, and everything in between over a cup of coffee. Mercury in the 9th house individuals are open-minded and accepting of different beliefs and perspectives. They're not quick to judge and are willing to hear diverse viewpoints. They have a way with words. Their communication style is often eloquent and persuasive, which makes them great debaters and storytellers. These folks have a strong case of wanderlust. They might love to travel, explore new cultures, or engage in higher education abroad. Their minds are always on the lookout for the next adventure. They tend to be optimistic thinkers. Even in challenging situations, they see the silver lining and have faith that things will work out for the best. Education is a big deal to them. They might excel in academia and have a thirst for knowledge that keeps them lifelong learners.They often think big and communicate ideas on a grand scale. They're not limited to the details; they want to understand the bigger picture. Learning and speaking foreign languages might come naturally to them. They're drawn to the richness of different cultures and enjoy breaking down language barriers. Some of them might have a knack for the law or working in fields related to ethics and justice. They can argue their case convincingly. Their minds are rarely at rest. They're always seeking intellectual stimulation and might get bored with routine quickly. Along with their love for knowledge, they might be interested in spirituality and the metaphysical. They seek to understand the spiritual side of life.

Mercury in 10th house

These folks are often highly focused on their careers and public reputation. They take their work seriously and are eager to communicate their ideas and ambitions to climb the professional ladder. They excel in public speaking, presentations, and written communication related to their job. They know how to convey their thoughts clearly and persuasively, which can be a valuable asset in the workplace. There's a strong desire for success and recognition in their professional life. They're not afraid to voice their goals and aspirations, and they're willing to put in the effort to achieve them. Building a strong network is a priority. They use their communication skills to connect with influential people and expand their professional circles, which can open up doors of opportunity. Depending on other factors in their birth chart, they may be drawn to careers in public speaking, politics, media, or any field where they can be in the public eye. They might find themselves in roles where they're seen as authorities on communication, such as teaching, writing, or media commentary. They often value honesty and integrity in their professional dealings. They want their words and actions to align with their public image. Balancing work and personal life can be a challenge. They can get so wrapped up in their careers that they may neglect other aspects of their life, including relationships. They're acutely aware of how they're perceived by others in their professional sphere. A tarnished reputation can deeply trouble them. Success is a big motivator. They set high standards for themselves and work diligently to meet or exceed them.They can adjust their communication style to fit different professional situations and personalities, making them versatile in various career environments. Some may excel in public relations or marketing roles, where they use their communication skills to shape and maintain a positive public image for individuals or organisations.

Mercury in the 11th house

These individuals are often intellectually inclined and love to connect with a wide range of people. They thrive in group settings, enjoy brainstorming, and often have a diverse circle of friends. Mercury in the 11th house folks are excellent communicators within their social groups. They can convey their ideas clearly and persuasively, making them great team members and leaders. They have a futuristic outlook and are drawn to innovative ideas. They may be involved in cutting-edge fields or have a passion for technology and social change. These individuals are open to different perspectives and are non-judgmental when it comes to the beliefs and ideas of others. They value diversity and inclusivity. Many of them are passionate about social causes and may actively participate in humanitarian or community-oriented projects. They want to make the world a better place. Collaboration is their forte. They work best when part of a team where they can share and exchange ideas freely. They're also skilled at mediating conflicts within groups.Building a broad network of connections comes naturally to them. They know how to use their social contacts to their advantage, whether in their career or personal life. They often have high hopes and dreams for the future. While this optimism is inspiring, they may need to ground their aspirations in reality at times. Their mind is a treasure trove of inventive ideas, and they're not afraid to share them. They can be the ones who suggest unique solutions to problems.Some Mercury in the 11th house individuals may have unconventional or niche interests that set them apart from the mainstream.They value their intellectual freedom and may resist conforming to traditional or rigid ideologies. They're more likely to embrace progressive and forward-thinking concepts.These folks love attending social events, gatherings, and parties. They thrive in environments where they can engage in stimulating conversations.

Mercury in the 12th house

These individuals tend to keep their thoughts and ideas close to the chest. They might not readily express what's on their minds and prefer to operate in a more private and secretive manner.They're introspective thinkers who ponder the mysteries of life and the universe. Their minds are often drawn to profound and philosophical questions. Mercury in the 12th house can grant them strong intuition and psychic abilities. They have a knack for picking up on subtle energies and may experience vivid dreams and premonitions. This placement can give rise to a strong connection with the subconscious mind. They might be interested in psychology, dream analysis, or other fields that delve into the depths of the human psyche. Expressing themselves verbally can be a bit challenging. They might struggle to put their thoughts into words or find it hard to articulate their ideas to others. They often have hidden talents and abilities that they might not even be aware of until they delve deep into their own psyche. These talents can emerge as they explore their inner world. Many develop a keen interest in spirituality, mysticism, or metaphysical subjects. They're drawn to the mystical and seek to understand the unseen realms. They're excellent listeners and can offer a compassionate and non-judgmental ear to those who need it. People often confide in them because of their empathetic nature. When life gets overwhelming, they might escape into their imaginations or immerse themselves in creative pursuits like writing, art, or music to find solace. Some find their calling in healing professions, such as psychology, counselling, or therapy. They have a natural ability to connect with others on a deep emotional level. They're attuned to subtle cues in their environment and can pick up on things that others might miss. This can make them excellent at reading between the lines. Sometimes, they might hold back their thoughts and feelings out of fear of vulnerability or judgement. Opening up can be a gradual process for them.

These are just my observations/opinion on Mercury through houses. They may or may not resonate. You're free to criticize just be nice about it.

#saturn astrology #mercury aspects #mercury in 6th #pick a card #venus astrology #astrology #astro community #astro notes #astro observations #mercury astrology #mercury in 12th house #mercury in astrology #vedic astrology #spirituality #birth chart #natal chart

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the-offside-rule · 8 days ago

Text

Jude Bellingham (Real Madrid) - Dorada

Requested: no

Prompt: Jude couldn't make it to the Ballon D'or, but Y/n brought it to him

Warnings: none

The night sparkled in Paris. Photographers flashed their cameras, calling Y/n's name, hoping for a radiant shot of the footballer nominated for the Women's Ballon d'Or. She was flawless for the cameras, dressed in a shimmering dark blue gown. As the interviews began, she felt the familiar weight of Jude's absence. Real Madrid's sudden boycott meant he couldn’t be by her side tonight. She kept her head up, flashing that confident smile she’d mastered over the years. One of the reporters stepped forward with a curious look. "Y/n, tonight's a big night, and we all know you’d hoped to share it with Jude. Is there any reason he couldn't make it tonight?"

"You get to interview a Ballon D'or nominee and thats the question you ask?" She chuckled, earning an approved laugh from her captain, Alexia beside her. Y/n took a deep breath and gave her rehearsed response. "It’s just a decision that’s out of my hands. It isn’t the time to focus on that. I'm here to talk about my football, about my season, and if all goes well, hopefully my first Ballon D'or." Her voice remained calm, her smile unwavering, though inside she felt a pang.

As she moved along the red carpet, she caught whispers of fans and reporters speculating. There were murmurs about a breakup, suggestions that the long distance between Barcelona and Madrid had driven a wedge. She could feel the weight of it but chose to brush it off. Tonight, she was here for her dream. Jude would understand.

Finally, it was time. The ballroom filled with anticipation as the names were called, leading up to the grand announcement. "And this year’s Women’s Ballon d’Or goes to-" The pause ate away at her. It felt like forever. Who won? Who won? "Y/n Y/l/n, FC Barcelona!" A mix of shock and joy washed over her. The room exploded with applause, her teammates standing and cheering as Y/n made her way to the stage, trying to process the enormity of the moment. She turned to smile, holding back the tears and simply trying to think of what to do, what to say. Her hand was shaking as she accepted the golden trophy, its weight somehow grounding her. She barely registered the applause as she stood before the room, her teammates cheering her on, her eyes welling up slightly as she approached the stand. She was handed her trophy, the one trophy she was missing.

She stepped up to the microphone, her voice steady but tinged with emotion. Gripping the golden trophy, Y/n began her speech. "Wow, um, I didn’t expect so many people to be here." The crowd laughed as she calmed herself down. "Alexia and Aitana make this look so easy." Another laugh. She finally felt calmer. "I've been thinking on what I would say all week if I won this prestigious award and honestly, all the practiced speeches are just-" She waved her hands. "Gone. They're gone." She smoothed out her dress and placed the ball onto the stand. "Firstly, I would like to thank my club, my coaches, and to the girls who make every match something I look forward to. You guys make every training, every game, every win and every loss worth it and I am so happy to be alongside each and every one of you. It is truly an honour." The room.erupted into claps as Y/n thought of what to say next.

"To my family back home, who believed in me from the beginning. To the culers who watch us at home, to the culers who follow us around the globe, I dedicate this to you. Thank you for making my jersey sales so high." The room laughed once again as she found a new confidence in herself. She took a moment, gathering her thoughts. And then, with a gentle smile, she continued. "And to the silly little boy I met all those years ago in Dortmund, thank you for cheering me on tonight from Madrid. I love you, and I am so sad you couldn’t make it. I know you would be taking photos of me for my instagram, so maybe it's the thought that counts." She waited for the crowd to quieten once more so she could deliver the most important part in her opinion.

"And finally, to all the little girls out there watching. To the little girl who will one day stand up here and win this award, don't you ever give up! Keep going, and enjoy the journey. Visca el Barça!" She smiled, raising the trophy and wiping her tears away as she walked down back towards her teammates. The crowd cheered, and Y/N stepped off the stage, her heart a mix of pride and longing. She knew Jude was watching, and she couldn't wait to tell him everything.

♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

As the celebrations continued, her phone buzzed. It was a video notification. Opening it, she saw Jude's mom had posted a clip on Instagram. The video showed Jude’s face lighting up as her name was announced, pride etched all over his expression. He cheered loudly as she walked up the steps. "That’s my girl!" Y/n laughed, her heart feeling warmer than it had all evening. She wanted nothing more than to see him. Turning to her good friend, Laia from Atlético Madrid, she pulled her aside. "Laia, would you mind if I joined your flight back to Madrid?" She asked, biting her lip. Laia grinned, immediately understanding. "Of course! You want to see your boy, right?" Y/n nodded, a bit shy. "Yeah… I need to be there. Tonight wouldn't feel complete otherwise."

♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

It was late when she arrived, but the city lights twinkled as her cab rolled through familiar streets. Thank God she had brought Jude's hoodie with her to Paris or she would have froze to death. She carried the golden Ballon d'Or and her luggage up to Jude's door. She barely had time to knock before the door opened. She had messaged Denise that she was coming sos he could surprise Jude, so she was happy to see her boyfriend's mum at the door to open it. "Comgratulations, darling." She whispered, hugging Y/n gently. "Thank you so much!" Y/n replied, before the pair walked in and up the stairs to Jude's room.

She sat down on his bed, still holding her trophy in one hand. Her other reached up to his cheek to caress his face. He stirred, his eyes flickering open. "Babe?" Jude whispered,his eyes now fully open. "Did someone order a Ballon d'Or?" She said with a grin. Jude laughed, pulling her into his arms, hugging her as if he’d never let go. "I did! Took long enough to arrive, though." He teased, eyeing the trophy she carried.

"I am so sorry I wasn't there. I wanted to be there. You know that, right? That I hated not being there?" She sighed softly. "I know. I wanted you there, but I understand why you couldn’t be." He wrapped an arm around her, his voice warm with affection. "You deserved every moment up there. It was all you." She looked at him, her gaze soft. "Not all me. It was partly you, too, Jude. You’ve been with me through everything, even if we’re miles apart."

Jude chuckled, shaking his head. "A whole Ballon d'Or winner, calling me a ‘silly little boy’ on live TV." He laughed, nudging her playfully. She grinned. "Well, it's the truth. The boy who used to kick balls at me during training just to get my attention." He pulled back, beaming as he looked down at her. He shook his head with a grin. "Look where that got me." He murmured, leaning over to kiss her forehead. They both laughed, the months of long distance and tonight’s worries melting away. She handed him the trophy, watching as he held it with reverence. "It’s lighter than I thought it would be." He murmured, grinning. "Oh, really?" She challenged. "I didn’t think you’d get to hold one just yet." She winked playfully, knowing that her banter would fire him up. "That was far." Jude said, looking towards his mum who was laughing by the doorway.

Jude laughed, feigning shock. "You just wait. You give me a year." His gaze softened, and he ran a thumb over her cheek. "I’m so proud of you, though. You deserved every bit of that." Pulling her close, Jude took out his phone. "Okay, one last thing. Let’s get a picture. Just so we can recreate it when I win mine." She rolled her eyes, leaning in and making sure to show the shiny trophy. They snapped a quick selfie: Y/n in Jude’s hoodie, cuddled up with the Ballon d'Or shining between them. She gave a goofy grin while he kissed her temple, pride and love written all over his face.

As he posted the photo, the caption silencing those who whispered all evening.

Finally got to celebrate my girl, the Ballon d'Or winner, up close

"That long-distance stuff?" He murmured. "We’ll make it work. No one’s stopping us."

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