#some would deliberately move away from that

[peppermintquartz]

Thinking about this post and I think the best way to get to primal fuckfest for bucktommy is via werewolf Tommy

--

Tommy who tried to belong to his family pack but was exiled when his mother ran away and he tried to track her against his father's orders. Tommy who turned his back on his wolf side completely in a bid to hide himself in the army, except his squad was ambushed and he had to revert to the wolf to defend them and save their lives, except the US Army has a strict rule against hiring half-humans in the first place so they send him off with an honorable discharge, the best his superiors can do for him as a thank you. Then he returned to the states to lick his wounds and decided to join the LAFD and he knew there are stations headed by werewolves, and so he ended up working under Gerrard, who was too happy to use his dominant status to bully and Tommy was too tired of fighting to challenge it. Sal was human and could only do so much.

And then the revolving door of captains - most of them human, all of them disinterested - until Nash came in. Nash who reeked of the death of innocent lives, yet was also decent and firm. The scent of old blood that clung to Nash always made Tommy's fangs itch and his hackles rise.

Tommy who decided, fuck it, he wanted to fly, because up there was freedom. Outside of nights with supermoons, he could control his transformation and still operate the vehicles; they just needed to stock up on wolfsbane extract.

And then Evan. Evan whose scent was intoxicating and fresh and clean and alluring. Evan who visibly bristled when Tommy shook Eddie's hand and practically wagged his non-existent tail when Tommy turned to shake his. Evan who smelled like he should be also be a werewolf but wasn't. Evan who seemed like he was trying so hard to mark his territory until Tommy realized that Evan wasn't doing that, he was trying to attract Tommy's attention.

Tommy was bowled over from the first kiss. He wondered how he could've mistaken the nature of the scent roiling off of Evan whenever he approached. Still, he backed away, gave them some space.

At their first date, Tommy told Evan that he was a werewolf, fourth-generation. Tommy did not tell Evan that he could smell Evan's arousal from the information.

At the hospital, Evan called him a beast in the hungriest tone Tommy had ever heard, and he knows hunger, he was always ravenous on the nights when there was a supermoon.

That night he fucked Evan so hard that Evan had to beg for mercy. And in the morning, Evan begged for more.

--

Once they moved in together, Tommy was perpetually in scent euphoria. It didn't take long for every surface to smell of Evan.

And whenever Evan worked out, his musk intensified. Turned it up to eleven. Tommy lived for those times when Evan returned from his workouts, drenched in sweat. Cats have catnip. Tommy had sweaty, smelly Evan. He would lick Evan wherever he could reach, practically ripping off all his clothes the second he could get Evan inside the door. Nose and mouth and tongue attack neck, pits, chest, feet, groin, balls, ass.

The one time Evan showered at the gym before coming home, Tommy refused to talk to him for the whole afternoon.

But Evan loved it, he loved the attention, and he loved the wolfish side of Tommy. He made it a point to leave a jockstrap or a gym towel on the floor next to the laundry basket, the deliberate act of inattention to household cleanliness and the intentional baiting of Tommy's scent kink triggering something deeply possessive inside the werewolf.

--

On the nights of the supermoon, Tommy would be off-duty, and Evan would take leave for the week as well. On those nights they would rent a place in the woods, and Evan would wait for the half hour before sunset.

And then he would run.

Once the sun went down, Tommy's claws and fangs would come out. He was fourth-generation; the claws were blunter and the fangs not as long. But he was still a werewolf, and his prey was out there, and all he had to do was give chase.

The scent would be unmistakable and unmissable. It would sing out to Tommy like a siren, and Tommy would lope along the trail, anticipation thrumming in his blood as he tracked the scent, and he would find his prey and claim him, right there and then under the open sky. They already knew what would happen when Tommy caught up.

Evan would give him a good chase. Evan would fight back. He would kick and claw and struggle. Then Evan would cry and beg and surrender.

And Evan would howl.

[takes1]

p.2 bokuto x inexperienced!reader

bokuto is so fun to write it's crazy. merry christmas eve 😋

warnings. nsfw themes, future nsfw, minors DNI

details. fem!reader / kuroo's little sister!reader / touchy!bokuto / flirty!bokuto / corruption kink!bokuto / virgin!reader / nerdy!reader / kuroo cockblocking / petnames / protective kuroo / praise kink!bokuto / brother's best friend trope / bokuto being a bad friend / bokuto crushing on you / 2.0k nsfw + future parts to follow, reply to be added to taglist

links. my masterlist. my ao3. more haikyuu. my request box. part one here.

"Why are you out?"

You can't help but guffaw at Tetsurou's accusatory tone.

There was no evidence to condemn you for instigating the whole Bokuto situation, except for maybe the deliberate change in attire before you decided to leave your room. You had to put something more skimpy on than your usual house clothes.

You had no plan, no real intentions other than the overwhelming desire for his friend's attention. Pacing around your room for hours had gotten old.

It wasn't too much, but it didn't help you make a strong case to come down from your 'tower' to Tetsurou - who was guarding the bottom of the stairs like a dragon.

"It's 5? I'm feeding your cats? Like I do every day--," You never let him get in your way or push you around before, and today would not be the first.

His hand flew to the other side of the railing. Thanks to his freakish arm span, he was successful in taking up the whole staircase, and then some.

"Fat chance. They're fed. Go back to your room, square."

"Eat shit-- and- die-!" You struggled to muscle your way around him, but it was accomplished- the only problem was that he had you by one ankle. He sat, leaned into the top of the stairs with his bodyweight.

You couldn't overcome a move like that, so you sat down too when he started to crawl, leading with only one arm and drag you back up the stairs. You were trying to use your weight to balance it out like he was, but he was older, stronger, bigger, and meaner, so you were slowly getting dragged up.

The whole ordeal was loud, thunderous because of the hollow floor beneath the even louder, creaky hardwood staircase.

Your head closest to the base railing, you made eye contact with some of his friends on the first floor, watching in giggly fascination at the struggle-, you sneered, rolling your eyes. You were getting so tired of his theatric bullshit making a clown out of you.

"Hey! Kuroo! That's not a fair fight, cut it out!" Somebody, somebody gracious and considerate, shouted to your defense.

Finally, an ounce of kindness.

It made his grip soften just enough for you, with the help of the railing, to take your ankle back.

You sighed and used your hands to pull yourself back up. The two of you were pissed off and out of breath, staring each other down.

"Yo! You almost ready?" Bokuto called from the first floor.

The two of you turned away from one another to look at him. He only spared a small glance towards Tetsurou, coming back down past you, before settling into an obvious, slow scan of your body in that new outfit.

His long arm stretched up the handrail, fingers waving toward you.

"Heyy, Prettyyy," Was gentle, brushing past his perfect lips.

He behaved as if he wasn't in your house, as if you hadn't met a few hours ago, as if Tetsurou's proximity didn't bother him in the slightest.

That was all you wanted. You leaned into your side, weak under his handsome stare, practically melting against the railing. A dreamy smile gave way for an absent giggle to follow, "Hii..."

Bokuto looked so perfect in his athletic clothes. You looked to your brother and realized he had his knee pads on. There was a hustle and bustle about the first floor and you instantly pieced together that they were going to play a game somewhere.

"Watch it," Tetsurou slapped the back of his hand on Bokuto's chest.

He held a firm glare between them for a moment. Bokuto didn't return the intensity until Tetsurou turned to address you. Only then did his brows drop, his frown grew a little darker. His airheaded, empty eyes narrowed with ill intention.

"Go on, go back upstairs," Tetsurou shooed you away like one of his cats.

"What?!" Bokuto scoffed, his friendliness was back in a flash.

He grasped for a quick argument, "We need a score keeper, man!"

It was a glorious opportunity to jump at and defend. No matter how much Tetsurou argued, he couldn't change either of your minds. In the process, you got a few other Nekoma guys to agree with you, and suddenly he was the odd-one-out, unable to make any solid case to keep you stuck at home.

You scrambled up to your room, thanking god for this one in a million chance, to grab a few things. When you barreled out the door, about to fly down the stairs, you nearly trampled over the only tolerable cat of your brother's.

"Woahh, sweetie,"

You stopped to let your door open so she could wander inside while you were gone.

Bokuto eyed you carefully from the first floor, thumb mindlessly brushing over his bottom lip. The little top you opted for was fucking glorious when you leaned down to pet her. He knew he couldn't afford to be careless with you, like most other things. But something about you sabotaged his already poor ability to keep his excitement contained.

-

That's why he squeezed a heavy arm around your waist once you had all made it to the gym- at first, nothing but an enthusiastic, friendly gesture.

Then that cute little laugh, the purity in your eyes avoiding his sharp-toothed grin, got his mind racing again, thinking about all the ways he could make you blush both on and off this court.

"You gonna watch me wrack up all the points today, babe?" Just flew out of his mouth before he could stop himself.

Akaashi raised his brow at both his confirmed suspicions and the cocky assertion.

It was natural that Bokuto was preoccupied performing for the only audience there. The attention whore couldn't get enough of your captivated reactions. The way you ogled at him and gasped at every impressive spike, block, receive fueled his ego so bad that he was getting into an annoyingly good groove.

Every time he did something he wanted to be worthy of praise, his eyes preyed off of you; validated with exactly the kind of reaction he wanted, needed to see.

Since there were so many players, they switched out almost as often as anyone on-court needed a break.

Bokuto stayed until he was drenched in sweat, ragged in breath, and too exhausted to shout anymore.

Usually, members of his actual team liked to switch him out more often than this game called for. But he was riding such a manic high from your feedback that he never crashed like normal.

It wasn't until Akaashi encouraged him to go talk to you on the sidelines did he accept the chance for a rest.

He sauntered to a stop so intimately close to you that it made you side-step away from him, sheepish, eyes firmly on the game.

You could tell he was tired in the way he held himself, hands on his powerful mid-thighs, back expanding and shrinking with uneven breaths. He would only stand upright to drink some water, just to let it spill down the corners of his mouth and onto his sopping shirt.

"(Y/n)! Point for us!"

A panicked flip of the score.

"Sorry!"

Maybe you hadn't been watching the game so well.

He stood up straight, finally rested enough with a big groan, "Aaagh-!"

You briefly caught Bokuto's eye when you looked up from his form-fitted shirt. Your heart nearly stopped. Arms crossed, chest filled with a big breath in, your worried eyes struggled to look straight forward.

His chuckling grew in volume at your mannerisms under a bitten lip.

"Don't worry so much, babygirl," Bokuto finally said something, hand rested right at the base of your neck as he leaned down to speak only to you, "I wantcha to watch me."

The lengthy bout of quiet between you may have given you the impression that he was deliberate in his words. But the reality was that nothing he said was very thoughtful. His petnames, his touches, his abundant and inappropriate honesty were all products of his failure to control himself.

Your head was swimming, overwhelmed at his touch and his words.

He was rubbing his thumb against the side of your neck, still bent to watch you closely. Of course, now you wouldn't look at him.

He noticed how, if he tried, he could probably wrap his hand all the way around your throat. His jaw worked, as his hardened gaze flickered from your chest to your lips.

The slam of a ball on the court spurred you to quickly move, turn the score again.

Bokuto straightened, clearing his throat, rubbing his face with intensity at your absence, "Shit."

He realized his team was getting behind when he actually looked at the score. Akaashi made eye contact with him from the court and motioned a switch-out.

In his reluctance to leave, the best idea he'd ever had crossed his mind and he couldn't help but verbalize it.

"How 'bout a good luck kiss?"

Your eyes widened at his suggestion. For a second, you weren't sure if he was making fun of you, so you looked more uncomfortable than anything. Half of your attention was on the game, the other was on him.

"No?" Bokuto looked downright depressed.

His massive shoulders stooped, his pouty eyes so pitiful it spurred you to comfort him.

"Well- waitwait, I- don't know," You were getting warm quickly, unable to tell him yes or no, "I--,"

"Just a peck?" He begged.

Time was up. You couldn't form a word, let alone an answer, under so much pressure.

"Airhead! Your setter wants you," Tetsurou called from the court.

That could've been a deliberate way to get him away from you, but Akaashi did legitimately need him. He trudged onto the court, looking less energized than when he left for a needed break earlier.

He played like it, too. It could have been argued that he was the very reason their slapped-together team ended up losing. His heart was not in it.

All the guys were satisfied and tired, so they called it there, ending on a low note for you, since your brother's team was automatically vilified in your mind.

Your presence was small, apologetic as you passed Bokuto the water he had abandoned.

He barely met your eyes. He was moody and feeling sorry for himself since he felt like a loser in a couple of different ways.

"Akaashi said I pressured you, earlier," Was so quiet that it surprised you. You had no idea he was capable of that volume.

He sighed through his nose, squinting around as he took a big gulp of water. It gave you the opportunity to look for the setter in question, grateful for the consideration, and that he had such a good friend in his life.

"So I'm- sorry," He struggled, eyes on you but not your face, "If I did."

You were holding yourself tight. Heat crawled up your neck and ears.

A small motion for him to come to you, presumably so you could whisper something in his ear. His brow raised, a cute, intrigued look across his face that made you want to swoon as he did so.

You controlled yourself for just long enough to press a gentle kiss against the corner of his mouth.

It felt foreign, like something you had to hold your breath for, being so close to another person. You were hoping you did it correctly as it shocked him upright.

His mouth hung open, his excitement enough to make you laugh under your hands.

"Dude!" He laughed with you, silly and so handsome because his grin fit his face just right, "Fuck yes!"

Bokuto couldn't help but to scoop you up off of your feet in a big bear hug and swing you in a circle, unable to control himself despite the fact that just about everyone left in the gym was watching. When Tetsurou observed this show of affection, he went to separate you.

Yet, in the process, he got picked up instead- and swung around in a similar fashion.

And to your surprise, it did help to shut him up. He couldn't quite remember what he was so concerned about, vision still spinning as he stumbled back, laughing.

"Akaashi! Come here, you're next!"

♕VIP♕

@integers @yuchacco

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@tuamadrequellavacca @dumbpuppyluv @raracha @jenerator10 @thisiswhereishitpostalot @feiwelinchen @loodleloodle @partyinthepants @ghostreader0307

my masterlist. my request box.

reply to be added for future parts!

[uhreo]

"rivius?"

the tiny voice of a young girl that held a hint of vulnerability behind it bounced around the walls of the empty room, it was devoid of any life except for the two kids who were inside hiding from the boisterous voices of other nobles outside.

despite the thunderous music that went on just outside of this little room the young demon still heard her voice that meekly called for him, his attention leaving the toys that he was tinkering with. "what is it? is something bothering you?" his voice was sharp and authoritative—as always—but there was an underlying softness and a veiled fondness whenever he addresses you but you don't seem to pick up on it. "I heard some of the adults talking– and i wasn't eavesdropping! I was just passing by and–...uhm.."

your face burned with shame but also with an emotion that you were scared to put a name on, your mouth couldn't seem to form the next words and rivius immediately picked up on your discomfort as his long ears twitched— a sign that he was listening and waiting for you to continue your words.

"I heard them saying something about how my family would be moving away from here and relocating in the human realm."

your mouth moved quickly to spout those words that you've been dreading to tell him about and receiving no reaction from him made you think that perhaps he had not heard what you had said.

but then his movements suddenly ceased and so was his tinkering, he looked to be frozen and you were scared that maybe you had offended him with your words.

"I'm still unsure though since my parents haven't told me any news about moving away and hey! maybe it isn't true and then we could just, you know, forget about what I just said–" your lips quivered as you desperately spewed out whatever came to your mind to try and comfort the boy in front of you that was still frozen, you didn't want him to think you were abandoning him—

"you're leaving?"

your train of thoughts was interrupted by the tense and irritated voice that thinly shrouded the immense anger and sadness boiling inside rivius' small body that made his ears twitch and his tail swish side to side in a distraught manner.

"w-well as I said before–" you were beginning to feel uneasy now with the way his head suddenly snapped in your direction and as you stared at his eyes, you couldn't deny that the emotional storm that was welling deep inside him that reflected through his eye made your hands start to feel clammy with sweat as you clenched your hands into a fist to control its shaking.

“you're not going to leave, I refuse to let you leave me. you simply can't just leave me all alone here.”

he stood up.

and you suddenly felt so small under his looming figure despite him being short— his dark eyes stared at you with such intense emotions that it made your heart beat faster.

you feel nervous—

no.

you were scared.

why did you suddenly start feeling so scared of him? of rivius? he was your bestfriend! he wouldn't harm you so why were you afraid to avert your gaze from his scrutinizing eyes that felt like it belonged to a predator and you were starting to feel like a defenseless prey that was about to meet its end once you take your eyes off him.

his slow deliberate footsteps echoed and not once did his eyes leave your own for a second, it felt like you were getting stalked by a predator and you just stood there frozen as cold sweat started dripping from your forehead.

“why did you suddenly go quiet? I'm not scaring you am I? no, that would make you want to leave me even more.”

... tbc?

@ backstage notes— this is going to be so long if i continue and it was just supposed to be a little short blurb to get me out of writer's block and I love rivius so much hahaha. this is going to be a full blown oneshot in the future, plot is supposed to be rivius having his childhood friend (you / reader) leave him > them meeting when they're adults > him finally having you by his side again by being his assistant. this is purely self-indulgent!! meaning none of this is canon to the oc's ( rivius ) story, rivius belongs to @2-dsimp !! also, both are kids / children in here hence why reader / you is easily intimidated by rivius but i tried to keep his fancy speech style but still make it fitting for a child.

[chasedeys]

I WOULD LIKE TO HEAR UR JOEMARR THOUGHTS ON JOE WEARING THE TANK 😊😊😊

IT'S REALLY NOT MUCH 😭😭 just cbat music going off in my head as i picture joe burrow finishing up his presser and standing up looking to the left to see ja'marr standing waiting propped up ready to take his place and deliberately making eye contact in his stupid fucking tank top and ripped hearts jeans and pale shoulders and red nose and pale eyes and isn't he fucking freezing is what i'm asking here how well insulated is the paycor stadium really.

anyway deliberate eye contact this is important we know how much joe toes the line between staring people down with uncomfortable intensity (that ja'marr has learned to just roll with over the years) and inability to stare at ja'marr for more than a few beats per minute when they're flirting (see: titans mic'ed up) and goes to step right on the edge of the podium right across from ja'marr trying to haul himself up it but he's kind of blocked by this already-taller-than-him-but-made-taller-by-the-podium douche who's taking way too long to move out of the way.

no idea how the height difference would be affected by the podium but let's say ja'marr's face is level with joe's sternum. he looks down and joe's offering up his pinky, answers it with his own but joe doesn't let go immediately. stares back up in askance but joe's still staring him down and ja'marr's just caught in his eyes immediately, unable to look away. and they just. spend a Moment staring into each other's eyes. in front of all those reporters. hobs is beside himself with joy. yeah.

the pr person in charge of them coughs loud and pointed and joe finally lets go and moves to get off the podium. makes sure to brush his bare arm not hard but purposefully against ja'marr's own clothed arm, makes sure his physical presence is felt and he can absorb some of the heat ja'marr puts out (again is he not fucking cold. the hell.).

ja'marr finally sits and greets the reporters and this might just be a coincidence lmao but he was kind of stone faced the first few minutes of the interview. hot and bothered no?

anyway walks out of the media room and the coast is clear which he's surprised at bc he's lowkey expecting to get ambushed like. within minutes. so that's a disappointing turn of events but he walks off to the parking lot anyway bc he's changed and all his stuff is in his car and boom when he gets there joe's in his car patiently waiting for him and fiddling with his radio.

'did you swipe my keys?' 'yeah, get in, why do you always take so long for pressers. quit having so much fun with it.' 'are you fucking serious. get out.' 'no way in hell you're driving me, get in.' 'it's my car what is the matter with you get out.' 'no just get in ja'marr i wanna fuck.' ja'marr gets in the passenger seat.

super hilarious idea that joe can pickpocket people with high success tbh. or maybe ja'marr's just used to his hands on him idk. his keys were in his back pocket so.

also there were several other teammates in the parking lot starting up their own cars to get home watching the interaction long-sufferingly lmao. you know how loud ja'marr gets.

[ryuunchi]

Caught Under the Mistletoe

P4 Jotaro Kujo x Reader Christmas Fluff with Joot because why not :) Merry Christmas Everyone, Enjoy!

It all started with a joke. You were decorating the house for Christmas while Jotaro, as usual, stayed off to the side, flipping through a book about marine biology. You’d been teasing him all morning, asking him to help you hang ornaments or arrange garlands, but his gruff responses made it clear he wasn’t interested in festive activities.

C’mon, Jotaro, it’s Christmas! At least pretend to be in the spirit, you said, rolling your eyes as you grabbed another string of lights.

He didn't even reply or even look up from his book that he reading.

That’s when an idea struck you. You’d bought a mistletoe ornament as a joke, not thinking you’d actually use it. But now, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to poke fun at your emotionally reserved boyfriend.

You grabbed the mistletoe, climbed onto a chair, and dangled it above both your heads. Oh no, look at that, you said, feigning surprise. “Looks like we’re under the mistletoe.”

Jotaro glanced up from his book, his eyes narrowing as he realized what you were doing. “Don’t even think about it.”

But before he could move, you leaned in and kissed him, quick and playful. His hat tipped slightly as you pulled away, grinning at his wide-eyed expression.

You’re so annoying, he muttered, pulling his hat down to hide his face. But the faint blush creeping up his neck gave him away.

Admit it Jojo you liked it, you teased, crossing your arms.

I didn’t, he said firmly, though the corner of his mouth twitched, betraying him.

Satisfied with your little prank, you went back to decorating, leaving Jotaro to brood in silence. Or so you thought.

The next day, something bizarre started happening.

As you walked into the kitchen, you noticed a mistletoe hanging in the doorway. “Huh,” you muttered, tilting your head. I don’t remember putting that there.

Before you could dwell on it, Jotaro appeared out of nowhere, leaning down to kiss you with unexpected fervor. Your breath hitched as his hands gently cupped your face, his lips warm and soft against yours.

When he pulled back, his expression was the same as always calm, aloof but his eyes sparkled with mischief. “Mistletoe,” he said simply, as if that explained everything. Then he walked off like nothing had happened.

You stood there, flustered, wondering what had gotten into him.

As the day went on, you kept encountering mistletoe. One in the hallway, one above the living room couch, even one in your bedroom doorway. And every time, Jotaro would catch you under it and steal a kiss, acting like he was just following the rules.

He shrugged, feigning indifference. Not my fault you keep walking under them.

By the fourth or fifth time, you were onto him. Jotaro, you said, hands on your hips.

“You’re the one putting these up, aren’t you?”

Oh, really? So who’s been climbing ladders to hang mistletoe in every corner of this house?”

His lips twitched, but he didn’t answer. Instead, he leaned in and kissed you again, effectively ending the conversation.

Later that afternoon, you decided to bake some Christmas cookies. The kitchen smelled heavenly, a mix of cinnamon, sugar, and melted chocolate filling the air. You hummed a tune to yourself as you rolled out the dough, completely engrossed in your task.

But then you felt it, that it's like someone watching you. Glancing over your shoulder, you saw Jotaro standing in the doorway, his arms crossed as he leaned casually against the frame.

You knew that look. It was his “mistletoe ambush” look.

Smirking to yourself, you quickly scanned the kitchen. To your delight, there wasn’t a single mistletoe in sight. Finally!

Turning back to your cookies, you grinned mischievously. What’s the matter, Jotaro? Looking for something?

He didn’t answer, but you could hear his slow, deliberate footsteps approaching. You could feel him standing right behind you, close enough that his warmth contrasted with the chill of the winter air.

When he leaned down, his lips hovering dangerously close to your ear, you turned to face him, raising a finger. Nope! Sorry, no mistletoe this time, you teased, pointing above the both of you. Looks like you’re out of luck.

Jotaro’s eyes narrowed slightly, and for a moment, you thought he might back off. But then he stepped back with a small smirk, muttering, “Yare yare daze.”

Before you could process it, the world around you shifted. The sound of the oven ticking, the hum of the fridge, even the movement of your own hands froze. Time had stopped.

You blinked, confused, as everything resumed just a moment later. Then you noticed it.

Above you, where there was absolutely nothing before, now hung a mistletoe, perfectly positioned.

“Wha—?” You gasped, pointing up. That wasn’t there! I swear it wasn’t!

Jotaro leaned back in, looking almost smug. “There’s a mistletoe. Looks like you were wrong.”

Wait a second—did you seriously just—

He cut you off with a small huff. “Rules are rules.”

You opened your mouth to protest, but before you could, he closed the gap between you. His lips pressed against yours, firm but gentle, his hand brushing your cheek as he kissed you.

When he finally pulled back, his expression was as calm and unreadable as ever, though the slight flush on his cheeks betrayed him.

Cheater, you muttered, glaring at him half-heartedly.

Don’t start something you can’t finish, he replied, his tone cool but his lips curling into a faint smirk.

Despite yourself, you laughed and replied to him.

Fine, fine. But next time, I’m the one who’s going to win.

Sure, he said, turning to leave. “Good luck with that.”

As you watched him walk away, you shook your head, a grin still on your face. Jotaro might not show his emotions often, but moments like this his subtle playfulness, his hidden affection reminded you just how much he cared in his own unique way.

And honestly? You wouldn’t trade it for anything.

By the time Christmas arrived, the house was practically a minefield of mistletoe, and you couldn’t take two steps without Jotaro ambushing you. Not that you were complaining.

As you sat together on the couch that evening, your head resting on his shoulder, you couldn’t help but smile. For all his gruffness and denials, Jotaro had a soft side, one he only showed to you in these quiet, private moments.

Merry Christmas, Jojo, you said, pressing a kiss to his cheek.

Tch. Merry Christmas, he replied, though his hand tightened around yours, his thumb brushing over your knuckles in a rare display of affection.

And just above your heads, yet another mistletoe hung quietly, a testament to the unspoken warmth between you.

[wild-at-mind]

Seeing some posts on my dash that are kind of in the wheelhouse of the stuff I was just posting about. I really like their posts normally and I don't want to unfollow but :/.

[starcurtain]

Teyvat's "Most Down Bad" Award Goes to Alhaitham for a Second Year Running

Seeing everyone making fun of Alhaitham for his "stalkerish" tendencies in this event is funny, because I feel like a lot of people missed that "Be literally everywhere Kaveh is" has been Alhaitham's MO from the day Kaveh appeared in the game.

From only grabbing his house keys after Kaveh returned from the desert (he couldn't have had both sets of keys at the end of the Archon Quest unless he went home and got Kaveh's copy) to ditching conversations to get back to his house only after Kaveh came home, to showing up without any warning or explanation in Kaveh's hangout with some ridiculous excuse about hearing his voice through noise-cancelling headphones... Refusing to offer any help in the Temple of Silence story quest other than staying in the library with Kaveh...

Since when does Alhaitham willingly cover anyone else's duties?

But this trend of "Be everywhere Kaveh is" didn't start when they were adults. It was already in place when they were still Akademiya students--and it's a trend that didn't end even when they had their fight.

Even when they weren't speaking, Alhaitham dogged Kaveh's every step through published responses to Kaveh's research articles in academic journals. He insisted on keeping a line of communication between himself and Kaveh open, even if the only way to do that was through very public ideological clashes. Pulling Kaveh's pigtails to get his attention lolol. It's implied that, for at least the few years between their fight and Kaveh moving in, this was the only communication between them--Alhaitham's refusal to allow their connection to entirely fade away. (And the fact that this is revealed in Kaveh's character stories--through his precious journal that records the moments of his life that had the most impact on him--shows just how deeply he values the fact that Alhaitham didn't give up.)

Another relevant side note: Alhaitham never asked Kaveh to give up his half of their house. Knowing half of it belonged to Kaveh, knowing that Kaveh may one day want to reclaim his part of it, knowing that it was listed as theirs, Alhaitham moved into the house and made zero effort to change its ownership. He was completely fine with living in "his and Kaveh's house." The stories suggest it was only months later (or even longer) that Kaveh even noticed he had the house, and he transferred away ownership of his portion without Alhaitham ever asking him (or even seemingly wanting him) to do so.

Please, let that sink in. Alhaitham actively left his grandmother's (presumably comfortable) house to move into "his and Kaveh's house," with no apparent explanation for why, and after doing so, he made no attempt to change that "his and Kaveh's" label. He moved into the house with no promise that Kaveh wouldn't show up on the doorstep the very next day and move in too. It almost feels like another deliberate provocation--I've moved into our house, are you going to come stop me? LBR, if Alhaitham had had his way, Kaveh would have been living there with him from Day 1...

There's also the fact that Kaveh literally can't write on a single message board anywhere in the entire nation of Sumeru without Alhaitham hunting his messages down and responding to them (which absolutely no one else does, by the way).

"NUH-UH!" "UH-HUH." "NUH-UH!"

Alhaitham's own character stories tell us explicitly that one of Alhaitham's defining character traits is "He is never where you need him to be," yet somehow...

Shot, and chaser:

Any time Kaveh is in the slightest bit of need or danger or just wants Alhaitham near, Alhaitham is "coincidentally" exactly where Kaveh needs him to be, whenever Kaveh needs him to be there.

Alhaitham didn't just "happen" to run into Kaveh in Port Ormos, an entirely different city from where he was supposed to be working. He didn't just "happen" to read the same terrible book as Kaveh when we know he otherwise would not waste a moment of his time on poorly-written literature...

He didn't just "happen" to appear when Kaveh was upset and needed a distraction in the House of Daena during Kaveh's hangout. He didn't just "happen" to be sitting around waiting when Kaveh needed answers after the Archon Quest. He didn't just "happen" to find Kaveh's academic publications and every single message board posting and respond to them at length and in public.

Which is exactly what Kaveh's mother told Kaveh he needed.

What level of down bad is "Abusing your powers as an Akademiya employee to keep tabs on your crush's library loans"? Just asking for a friend.

The only person for whom Alhaitham just "happens" to be available is Kaveh, over and over and over again--because he is very deliberately making himself a constant presence in Kaveh's life.

(Like, out of all things, I think people really underestimate the devs deliberately paralleling the romantic relationship between Kaveh's mother and father with Kaveh and Alhaitham's relationship. If you want to point to one thing that says "These two characters are intentionally queer-coded," it doesn't get any more obvious than this.)

Alhaitham, are you not embarrassed to be this transparent??? 🫣

[hoshigray]

reader flirting with some random guy for toji to fuck her senseless 🙏🙏🙏😭😭 really mean and sadistic toji with a really submissive reader

sorry for tbe filth im ltierally dying i want that man so bad

𝐚. 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐞: fuck yessssssss!! lmao not me writing this in a day

⊹ 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬: hard dom! Toji x fem! reader - explicit content; minors DNI - rough sex - Daddy kink - choking - spitting - impact play; spanking - degradation (bitch, cumslut, fuckhole, slut, whore) - minimal praise - missionary + backshots/leapfrog positions - dumbification - pinching - pet names (baby, good girl, mama) - Toji is a bit mean here - mention of blood and drool.

⊹ 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭: 1k

Toji didn’t like what he was seeing. 

You knew better, yet you still misbehaved. 

Your boyfriend sees you from across the pub, mingling with some random guy at the bar top. You were smiling and laughing at the dude’s jokes, prompting the man to treat you to some drinks. To say that the display left a sour taste in Toji’s mouth would be an understatement, especially with how you would place your hands on the chump’s arm or lean into him to rest your head. How brazen of you. 

Oh, but what really sealed the deal for him would be the occasional glances you’d throw his way. Your eyes honed on him briefly with a mischievous smile to complete the look before you went to your business — you knew what you were doing. And it made the older man’s brow twitch, rich green eyes observing your every move.

Just wait til’ we get home, brat. That’s all he can think of as you deliberately flaunt your autonomy. Because the moment you have your purposeful fun and return to Toji’s side, ready to go home, he takes you without a word. He doesn’t have to say anything, letting what will happen once you step inside the house speak for itself. 

“—Ahhch!! Fuhucck!! Harder, Daddy, harder…!”

Have you ever been choked while being fucked into like a toy? That’s the treatment you’re receiving as you lie on the bed, Toji’s tough, calloused hands wrapped around your throat to restrict your breathing while he pistons his cock into you with inhumane force. 

“Harder, they say,” he chuckles. “Who told you can boss me ‘round, huh?” His hold on your throat gets tighter, and the limitation of air becomes hard to avoid while turning you on even more with the clamp of your walls around his fat dick. “You got some nerve, actin’ like a real fuckin’ slut tonight, huh?”

The snap of his hips makes it difficult to respond to him appropriately, his girth stretching your insides so euphorically, and the scrape of your g-spot has you shaking. Fuck, it felt so fucking good, so rewarding to be used like this!

“Hahh…To’jii—Ehhck!!”

“Wrong name, whore.” His eyes narrowed, hands getting tighter and tighter that his fingernails pierced your skin, the pain adding to the suffocation.

Your watery orbs roll to the top of your head as dizziness creeps in. “Dad–dyy, I…can’t brea…” your lips agape, trying to gather whatever air you can. 

Toji sees your open mouth, and with a wicked snicker, he spits into it. Your eyes widen instantly, but Toji uses one hand to squeeze your cheeks roughly. “Swallow,” he demands with a dark glint in his eyes. There’s a bit of a struggle, yet he senses you gulp his saliva down from the bob of your throat, and a shiver crawls down his spine when you show your clean mouth. “That’s a good girl…”

Don’t get blinded easily because he is not finished with you yet. 

He’ll have your back faced to him, face down to the sheets, and butt up for him to plow. His hands keep your lower half to him at all times, rutting his pelvis so hard to your wet cunt that it rocks you against the mattress. Your asscheeks rebound with every smack of his hips, taking your breath away. 

“Ooooh, hoooh, mmaahhh!” There is no way you could even make out a proper sentence, Toji grinding into your soapy slit has you shrieking from his cockhead grazing those sweet spots your could never reach. 

Unbeknownst to you, the older man surprises you with a hard slap to your ass. The action pulls you out of your daze for a split second to scream, and your vagina inherently contracts onto his length. He hisses, “Hssshhiit, baby, fuckin’ grippin’ on me and making so much damn noise like a bitch in heat...Hey, I’m talkin’ to you.” Another smack to your butt for not responding to him, prompting a rushed wail to leave your lips. “Heh, damn slut, can’t even talk to me; all you’re thinking about is my dick, right?” He slowly pulls his cock back to hear your whining, a salacious grin grows by the inch when he snaps the limb back inside your warmth, and you grip the sheets. “Mmmph, fuck, this pussy is too crazy…”

Another slap to your butt makes you tremble and twitch, peering over your shoulder to look at the man behind you. Jesus, he looked so hot the way he was drilling his dick into you. The sounds of skin slapping against each other brings the room to life. “—Fuuahh, haahnn, Daddyyy…!”

The raven-haired man notices you observing him, chuckling before placing a hand on your head to smoosh it back down to the sheets. “Who the fuck told ya to look over here?” He strikes your ass once more, his fingertips stinging crescents into your hot skin. He's so rough with you that you know there will be blood from those scratches.

The weight of his hand on your head feels so strong, unable to move as his entire brawny frame has you submit to his bow. “Daddyyyy, ohh fuuuck,” you mewl for him to hear. “It shfeels sho g’ood…!” God, you sound so fucking stupid. Your brain dissolves into mush, and your body corrupted by his powerful dominance. “God, it sh’o gooood! Give me more, pleaseee!!” 

“There they go asking for more, fuckin’ fuckhole,” he groans under his breath, grinding his pelvis to your chasm to listen to your sweet begs for pleasure. “Easy there, mama; I’ll give ya what ya want...Hgghh…You wanna cum for Daddy again, right?”

Drool streams down from your lips to stain the sheets beneath. “Yesshhh, yes pleaseee…! Ohhh!” He slaps and pinches your asscheeks again; Good Lord, his strikes were not meant for the weak. 

“Then stay still, look all pretty, and keep wringin’ me out like the cumslut you are, got it?” You babble more sounds of agreement, thoughtless on whether they are actual words. You amuse him to remove his hand from your head and back to your hips, propelling you to stick to him again as his hips strike your ass with a hungry vigor.

“That’s my girl…”

requests/thirsts are open hehe~ 🧸

© 𝐇𝐨𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐲2024 – reblogs and comments are appreciated wholeheartedly ☆ header edit done by me + dividers by @/benkeibear.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Predicting the present

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/2024/12/09/radicalized/#deny-defend-depose

Back in 2018, around the time I emailed my immigration lawyer about applying for US citizenship, I started work on a short story called "Radicalized," which eventually became the title story of a collection that came out in 2019:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250228598/radicalized/

"Radicalized" is a story about America, and about guns, and about health care, and about violence. I live in Burbank, which is ranks second in gun-stores-per-capita in the USA, a dubious honor that represents a kind of regulatory arbitrage with our neighboring goliath, the City of Los Angeles, where gun store licensing is extremely tight. If you're an Angeleno in search of a firearm, you're almost certainly coming to Burbank to buy it.

Walking, cycling and driving past more gun stores than I'd ever seen in my Canadian life got me thinking about Americans and guns, a subject that many Canadians have passed comment upon. Americans kill each other, and especially themselves, at rates that baffle everyone else in the world, and they do it with guns. When we moved here, my UK born-and-raised daughter came home from her first elementary school lockdown drill perplexed and worried. Knowing what I did about US gun violence, I understood that while school shootings and other spree killings happened with dismal and terrifying regularity, they only accounted for a small percentage of the gun deaths here. If you die with a bullet in you, the chances are that the finger on the trigger was your own. The next most likely suspect is someone you know. After that, a cop. Getting shot by a stranger out of uniform is something of a rarity here – albeit a spectacular one that captures our imaginations in ways that deliberate or accidental self-slayings and related-party shootings do not.

So I told her, "Look, you can basically ignore everything they tell you during those lockdown drills, because they almost certainly have nothing to do with your future. But if a friend ever says to you, 'Hey, wanna see my dad's gun?' I want you to turn around and leave and get in touch with me right away, that instant."

Guns turn the murderous impulse – which, let's be honest, we've all felt at some time or another – into a murderous act. Same goes for suicide, which explains the high levels of non-accidental self-shootings in the USA: when you've got a gun, the distance between suicidal ideation and your death is the ten feet from the sofa to the gun in the closet.

Americans get angry at people and then, if they have a gun to hand, sometimes they shoot them. In a thread /r/Burbank about how people at our local cinemas are rude and use their phones in which someone posted, "Well, you should just ask them to stop." The reply: "That's a great way to get shot." No one chimed in to say, "Don't be ridiculous, no one would shoot you for asking them to put away their phone during a movie." Same goes for "road rage."

And while Americans shoot people they've only just gotten angry at, they also sometimes plan shooting sprees and kill a bunch of people because they're just generically angry. Being angry about the state of the world is a completely relatable emotion, of course, but the targets of these shootings are arbitrary. Sure sometimes these killings have clear, bigoted targets – mass shootings at Black supermarkets or mosques or synagogues or gay bars – more often the people who get sprayed with bullets (at country and western concerts or elementary schools or movie theaters) are almost certainly not the people the gunman (almost always a man) is angry at.

This line of thought kept surfacing as I went through the immigration process, but not just when I was dealing with immigration paperwork. I was also spending an incredible amount of time dealing with our health insurer, Cigna, who kept refusing treatments my pain doctor – one of the most-cited pain researchers in the country – thought I would benefit from. I've had chronic pain since I was a teenager, and it's only ever gotten worse. I've had decades of pain care in Canada and the UK, and while the treatments never worked for very long, it was never compounded by the kinds of bureaucratic stuff I went through with my US insurer.

The multi-hour phone calls with Cigna that went nowhere would often have me seeing red – literally, a red tinge closing in around my vision – and usually my hands would be shaking by the time I got off the call.

And I had it easy! I wasn't terminally ill, and I certainly wasn't calling in on behalf of a child or a spouse or parent who was seriously ill or dying, whose care was being denied by their insurer. Bernie's 2016 Medicare For All campaign promise had filled the air with statistics (Americans pay more for care and get worse outcomes than anyone else in the rich world), and stories. So many stories – stories that just tore your heart out, about parents who literally had to watch their children die because the insurance they paid for refused to treat their kids. As a dad, I literally couldn't imagine how I'd cope in that situation. Just thinking about it filled me with rage.

One day, as I was swimming in the community pool across the street – a critical part of my pain management strategy – I was struck with a thought: "Why don't these people murder health insurance executives?" Not that I wanted them to. I don't want anyone to kill anyone. But why do American men who murder their wives and the people who cut them off in traffic and random classrooms full of children leave the health insurance industry alone? This is an industry that is practically designed to fill the people who interact with it with uncontrollable rage. I mean, if you're watching your wife or your kid die before your eyes because some millionaire CEO decided to aim for a $10 billion stock buyback this year instead of his customary $9 billion target, wouldn't you feel that kind of murderous rage?

Around this time, my parents came out for a visit from Canada. It was a great trip, until one night, my mom woke me up after midnight: "We have to take your father to the ER. He's really sick." He was: shaking, nauseated, feverish. We raced down the street to the local hospital, part of a gigantic chain that has swallowed nearly all the doctors' practices, labs and hospitals within an hour's drive of here.

Dad had kidney stones, and they'd gone septic. When the ER docs removed the stones, all the septic gunk in his kidneys was flushed into his bloodstream, and he crashed. If he hadn't been in an ER recovery room at the time, he would have died. As it was, he was in a coma for three days and it was touch and go. My brother flew down from Toronto, not sure if this was his last chance to see our dad alive. The nurses and doctors took great care of my dad, though, and three days later, he emerged from his coma, and today, he's better than ever.

But on day two, when we thought he was probably at the end of his life, as my mother sat at his side, holding the hand of her husband of fifty years, someone from the hospital billing department came to her side and said, "Mrs Doctorow, I know this is a difficult time, but I'd like to discuss the matter of your husband's bill with you."

The bill was $176,000. Thankfully, the travel medical insurance plan offered by the Ontario Teachers' Union pension covered it all (I don't suppose anyone gets very angry with them).

How do people tolerate this? Again, not in the sense of "people should commit violent acts in the face of these provocations," but rather, "How is it that in a country filled with both assault rifles and unimaginable acts of murderous cruelty committed by fantastically wealthy corporations, people don't leap from their murderous impulses to their murderous weapons to commit murderous acts?

For me, writing fiction is an accretive process. I can tell that a story is brewing when thoughts start rattling around in my mind, resurfacing at odd times. I think of them as stray atoms, seeking molecules with available docking sites to glom onto. I process all my emotions – but especially my negative ones – through this process, by writing stories and novels. I could tell that something was cooking, but it was missing an ingredient.

Then I found it: an interview with the woman who coined the term "incel." It was on the Reply All podcast, and Alana, a queer Canadian woman explained that she had struggled all her life to find romantic and sexual partnership, and jokingly started referring to herself as "involuntarily celibate," and then, as an "incel":

https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/76h59o

Alana started a message board where other "incels" could offer each other support, and it was remarkably successful. The incels on Alana's message board helped each other work through the problems that stood between them and love, and when they did, they drifted away from the board to pursue a happier life.

That was the problem, Alana explained. If you're in a support group for people with a drinking problem, the group elders, the ones who've been around forever, are the people who've figured it out and gotten sober. When life seems impossible, those elders step in to tell you, I know it's terrible right now, but it'll get better. I was where you are and I got through it. You will, too. I'm here for you. We all are.

But on Alana's incel board, the old timers were the people who couldn't figure it out. They were the ones for whom mutual support and advice didn't help them figure out what they needed to do in order to find the love they sought. The longer the message board ran, the more it became dominated by people who were convinced that it was hopeless, that love was impossible for the likes of them. When newbies posted in rage and despair, these Great Old Ones were there to feed it: You're right. It will never get better. It only gets worse. There is no hope.

That was the missing piece. My short story Radicalized was born. It's a story about men on a message board called Fuck Cancer Right In the Fucking Face (FCKRFF, or "Fuckriff"), who are watching the people they love the most in the world be murdered by their insurance companies, who egg each other on to spectacular acts of mass violence against health insurance company employees, hospital billing offices, and other targets of their rage. As of today, anyone can read this story for free, courtesy of my publishers at Macmillan, who gave permission for the good folks at The American Prospect to post it:

https://prospect.org/culture/books/2024-12-09-radicalized-cory-doctorow-story-health-care/

I often hear from people about this story, even before an unknown (at the time of writing) man assassinated Brian Thompson, CEO of Unitedhealthcare, the murderous health insurance monopoly that is the largest medical insurer in the USA. Since then, hundreds of people have gotten in touch with me to ask me how I feel about this turn of events, how it feels to have "predicted" this.

I've been thinking about it for a few days now, and I gotta tell you, I have complicated feelings.

You've doubtless seen the outpourings of sarcastic graveyard humor about Thompson's murder. People hate Unitedhealthcare, for good reason, because he personally decided – or approved – countless policies that killed people by cheating them until they died.

Nurses and doctors hate Thompson and United. United kills people, for money. During the most acute phase of the pandemic, the company charged the US government $11,000 for each $8 covid test:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/06/137300-pct-markup/#137300-pct-markup

UHC leads the nation in claims denials, with a denial rate of 32% (!!). If you want to understand how the US can spend 20% of its GDP and get the worst health outcomes in the world, just connect the dots between those two facts: the largest health insurer in human history charges the government a 183,300% markup on covid tests and also denies a third of its claims.

UHC is a vertically integrated, murdering health profiteer. They bought Optum, the largest pharmacy benefit manager ("A spreadsheet with political power" -Matt Stoller) in the country. Then they starved Optum of IT investment in order to give more money to their shareholders. Then Optum was hacked by ransomware gang and no one could get their prescriptions for weeks. This killed people:

https://www.economicliberties.us/press-release/malicious-threat-actor-accesses-unitedhealth-groups-monopolistic-data-exchange-harming-patients-and-pharmacists/#

The irony is, Optum is terrible even when it's not hacked. The purpose of Optum is to make you pay more for pharmaceuticals. If that's more than you can afford, you die. Optum – that is, UHC – kills people:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/23/shield-of-boringness/#some-men-rob-you-with-a-fountain-pen

Optum isn't the only murderous UHC division. Take Navihealth, an algorithm that United uses to kick people out of their hospital beds even if they're so frail, sick or injured they can't stand or walk. Doctors and nurses routinely watch their gravely ill patients get thrown out of their hospitals. Many die. UHC kills them, for money:

https://prospect.org/health/2024-08-16-steward-bankruptcy-physicians-private-equity/

The patients murdered by Navihealth are on Medicare Advantage. Medicare is the public health care system the USA extends to old people. Medicare Advantage is a privatized system you can swap your Medicare coverage for, and UHC leads the country in Medicare Advantage, blitzing seniors with deceptive ads that trick them into signing up for UHC Medicare Advantage. Seniors who do this lose access to their doctors and specialists, have to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for their medication, and get hit with $400 surprise bills to use the "free" ambulance service:

https://prospect.org/health/2024-12-05-manhattan-medicare-murder-mystery/

No wonder the public spends 22% more subsidizing Medicare Advantage than they spend on the care for seniors who stick with actual Medicare:

https://theconversation.com/taxpayers-spend-22-more-per-patient-to-support-medicare-advantage-the-private-alternative-to-medicare-that-promised-to-cost-less-241997

It's not just the elderly, it's also the addicted and mentally ill. UHC illegally denies coverage for mental health and substance abuse treatment. Imagine watching a family member spiral out of control, ODing, or ending up on the streets with hallucinations, and knowing that the health insurance company that takes thousands of dollars out of your paycheck refused to treat them:

https://www.startribune.com/unitedhealthcare-will-pay-15-7m-in-settlement-of-denial-of-care-charges/600087607

Unsurprising, the internal culture at UHC is callous beyond belief. How could it not be? How could you go to work at UHC and know you were killing people and not dehumanize those victims? A lawsuit by chronically ill patient whom UHC had denied care for surfaced recorded phone calls in which UHC employees laughed long and hard about the denied claims, dismissing the patient's desperate, tearful pleas as "tantrums" :

https://www.propublica.org/article/unitedhealth-healthcare-insurance-denial-ulcerative-colitis

Those UHC workers are just trying to get by, of course, and the callouses they develop so they can bear to go to work were ripped off by last week's murder. UHC's executive team knows this, and has gone on a rampage to stop employees from leaking their own horror stories, or even mentioning that the internal company announcement of Thompson's death was seen by 16,000 employees, of whom only 28 left a comment:

https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/unitedhealthcare-tells-employees

Doctors and nurses hate UHC on behalf of their patients, but it's also personal. UHC screws doctor's practices by refusing to pay them, making them chase payments for months or even years, and then it offers them a payday lending service that helps them keep the lights on while they wait to get paid:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frr4wuvAB6U

Is it any surprise that Reddit's nursing forums are full of nurses making grim, satisfied jokes about the assassination of the $10m/year CEO who ran the $400b/year corporation that does all this?

https://www.thedailybeast.com/leading-medical-subreddit-deletes-thread-on-unitedhealthcare-ceos-murder-after-users-slam-his-record/

We're not supposed to experience – much less express – schadenfreude when someone is murdered in the street, no matter who they are. We're meant to express horror at the idea of political violence, even when that violence only claims a single life, a fraction of the body count UCH produced under Thompson's direction. As Malcolm Harris put it, "'Every life is precious' stuff about a healthcare CEO whose company is noted for denying coverage is pretty silly":

https://twitter.com/BigMeanInternet/status/1864471932386623753

As Woody Guthrie wrote, "Some will rob you with a six-gun/And some with a fountain pen." The weapon is lethal when it's a pistol and when it's an insurance company. The insurance company merely serves as an accountability sink, a layer of indirection that lets a murder happen without any person being the technical murderer:

https://profilebooks.com/work/the-unaccountability-machine/

I don't want people to kill insurance executives, and I don't want insurance executives to kill people. But I am unsurprised that this happened. Indeed, I'm surprised that it took so long. It should not be controversial to note that if you run an institution that makes people furious, they will eventually become furious with you. This is the entire pitch of Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century: that wealth concentration leads to corruption, which is destabilizing, and in the long run it's cheaper to run a fair society than it is to pay for the guards you'll need to keep the guillotines off your lawn:

https://memex.craphound.com/2014/06/24/thomas-pikettys-capital-in-the-21st-century/

But we've spent the past 40 years running in the other direction, maximizing monopolies, inequality and corruption, and gaslighting the public when they insist that this is monstrous and unfair. Back in 2022, when UHC was buying Change Healthcare – the dominant payment network for hospitals, which would allow UHC to surveil all its competitors' payments – the DOJ sued to block the merger. The Trump-appointed judge in the case, Carl Nichols – who owned tens of thousands of dollars in UHC bonds – ruled against the DOJ, saying that it would all be fine thanks to United's "culture of trust and integrity":

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/the-antitrust-shooting-war-has-started

We don't know much about Thompson's killer yet, but he's already becoming a folk hero, with lookalike contests in NYC:

https://twitter.com/CollinRugg/status/1865472577478553976

And gigantic graffiti murals praising him and reproducing the words he wrote on the shell casings of the bullets he used to kill Thompson, "delay, deny, depose":

https://www.tumblr.com/radicalgraff/769193188403675136/killin-fuckin-ceos-freight-graff-in-the-bay

I get why this is distasteful. Thompson is said to have been a "family man" who loved his kids, and I have no reason to disbelieve this. I can only imagine that his wife and kids are shattered by this. Every living person is the apex of a massive project involving dozens, hundreds of people who personally worked to raise, nurture and love them. I wrote about this in my novel Walkaway, as the characters consider whether to execute a mercenary sent to kill them, whom they have taken hostage:

She had parents. People who loved her. Every human was a hyper-dense node of intense emotional and material investment. Speaking meant someone had spent thousands of hours cooing to you. Those lean muscles, the ringing tone of command — their inputs were from all over the world, carefully administered. The merc was more than a person: like a spaceship launch, her existence implied thousands of skilled people, generations of experts, wars, treaties, scholarship and supply-chain management. Every one of them was all that.

But so often, the formula for "folk hero" is "killing + time." The person who terrorizes the people who terrorize you is your hero, and eventually we sanitize the deaths, and just remember them as fighters for justice. If you doubt it, consider the legend of Robin Hood:

https://twitter.com/mcmansionhell/status/1865554985842352501

The health industry is trying to put a lid on this, palpably afraid that – as in my story "Radicalized" – this one murderer will become a folk hero who inspires others to acts of spectacular violence. They're insisting that it's unseemly to gloat about Thompson's death. They're right, but this is an obvious loser strategy. The health industry is full of people whose deaths would be deplorable, but not unsurprising. As Clarence Darrow had it:

I’ve never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.

Murder is never the answer. Murder is not a healthy response to corruption. But it is healthy for people to fear that if they kill people for greed, they will be unsafe. On December 5 – the day after Thompson's killing – the health insurer Anthem announced that it would not pay for anesthesia for medical procedures that ran long. The next day, they retracted the policy, citing "outrage":

https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/05/health/anthem-blue-cross-blue-shield-anesthesia-claim-limits/index.html

Sure, maybe it was their fear of reputation damage that got them to decide to reverse this inhumane, disgusting, murderous policy. But maybe it was also someone in the C-suite thinking about what share of the profits from this policy would have to be spent on additional bodyguards for every Anthem exec if it went into effect, and decided that it was a money-loser after all.

Think about hospital exec Ralph de la Torre, who cheerfully testified to Congress that he'd killed patients in pursuit of profit. De la Torre clearly doesn't fear any kind of consequences for his actions. He owns hospitals that are filled with tens of thousands of bats (he stiffed the exterminators), where none of the elevators work (he stiffed the repair techs), where there's no medicine or blood (he stiffed the suppliers) and where the doctors and nurses can't make rent (he stiffed them too). De La Torre doesn't just own hospitals – he also owns a pair of superyachts:

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

It is a miracle that so many people have lost their mothers, sons, wives and husbands so Ralph de la Torre could buy himself another superyacht, and that those people live in a country where you can buy an assault rifle, and that Ralph de la Torre isn't forced to live in a bunker and travel in a tank.

It's a rather beautiful sort of miracle, to be honest. I like to think that it comes from a widespread belief by the people of this country I have since become a citizen of, that we should solve our problems politically, rather than with bullets.

But the assassination of Brian Thompson is a wake-up call, a warning that if we don't solve this problem politically, we may not have a choice about whether it's solved with violence. As a character in "Radicalized" says, "They say violence never solves anything, but to quote The Onion: that's only true so long as you ignore all of human history":

https://prospect.org/culture/books/2024-12-09-radicalized-cory-doctorow-story-health-care/

[rindreamery]

it's just instinct, all i want is you.

how long it takes for the blue lock men to realize you’re the one.

itoshi rin, itoshi sae, nagi seishiro, michael kaiser, oliver aiku

it takes itoshi rin 6 months.

rin likes to think that he’s slow and deliberate with his relationships— that he’s not the type to have such decisive thoughts about someone so early on. he’s spent years building up a wall to protect his feelings, and he’s not about to let a (potentially fleeting) person ruin what he's worked so hard to maintain. he's only been with you for 6 months, and he has his doubts about whether you would want to stick around. but all it takes is, “i’m so proud of you, rin,” and his world is completely tilted off its axis.

he tries to tell himself that it's nothing; he's been complimented by other people before.

you probably didn't even think much of it when you told him. it’s just a simple phrase, one of many that people say without thinking. but it's different, it's special, when it's coming from you. your words repeat in his head, like some mantra. it's like his senses are overwhelmed by you. he finds himself focusing solely on your voice, the way you look at him with such gentle eyes, the sincerity behind your words— you. it’s scary how much it affects him. it rattles something deep inside of him, and it shakes him to his core.

he doesn't want to hear it from anyone else, he quickly realizes. those praises don't mean much when it's not coming from you. they don't make him feel unstoppable, like he’s on some high that he’ll never be able to get down from. and he's hit with a jarring realization—

“say it again,” he's standing in front of you, ignoring the incessant flashing of cameras that surrounds him and the deafening cheers of the crowd. he's only looking at you.

“i’m so proud of you,” your voice is quiet, but all he can hear is you, “rin.”

—he's fallen for you, much deeper than he thought he would. he’d be damned if he let you slip away.

it takes itoshi sae 1 year and 3 months.

sae had no intention of falling in love with you. needless to say, his affection for you wasn’t some calculated move. the thought of liking you hadn’t even crossed his mind, and he’s not even sure if he’d ever considered you as a friend. you’ve just been around for long enough that he’s stopped questioning it, that he’s grown to tolerate your presence. at least, that’s what he tells himself. he lets you come over when you want, eat all the snacks in his pantry, use his netflix account— to everyone else, you’re basically a couple. before he knows it, you’ve settled into his life the way a familiar song gets stuck in his head without him noticing.

it’s hard to deny the noticeable shift in sae’s behavior whenever he’s around you.

the way the frown on sae’s face vanishes to a more passive state whenever he’s talking to you, and he's much less irritated at the aspect of having to answer your random (but stupid, in his opinion) questions. he’s not aware, but a part of him subconsciously looks forward to it. “would you still love me if i was a worm?” comes another one of your stupid questions, and he answers without thinking.

“yeah.” the expression on his face remains the same, he’s as indifferent as he always is. but his answer takes both of you by surprise. under his cool facade, his mind is scrambling to make sense of his answer, as if he hadn’t expected himself to say such a thing.

you’re flustered, and it’s evident in the way you stumble over your words. a part of you begins to wonder if that was simply a figment of your imagination, like some hallucination from sleep deprivation. “what— huh?”

so he plays it off, he acts as if he meant to say it. “you heard what i said.” he realizes his heart had decided on you longer than he’d ever been aware of.

it takes nagi seishiro 3 months.

nagi’s used to being alone— he’s used to neglecting himself and every aspect of his life because no one is there to tell him not to do so. he’s not used to having someone be a constant in his life, to have someone who isn’t thrown off by his apathetic and lazy attitude. sometimes he wonders if he acts this way to keep people out, and he wonders why you choose to stay despite. but slowly, you color your way into his bleak routine.

at first, it’s subtle. you linger around him, but your presence isn’t demanding for his attention. you’re there, but you let him be.

and then your presence becomes something a little more prominent. he starts to notice the little post-it notes you leave in his locker, and how you remember to sneak in his favorite snacks. or how his pillows start to smell like your shampoo, and the way he becomes used to having you there in his living room as he plays video games. or even the fact that he finds himself waiting by the gate when classes end, and how he doesn’t mind being pushed around by the crowd as he searches for you in the endless sea of students so he could walk with you. so he could be with you.

he starts to feel like he’s truly living, like there’s something to look forward to every day.

when you say, “see you tomorrow,” he deflates at your words. it’s a weird feeling— he feels weird at the thought that he doesn’t like being alone anymore. that he misses you in the way he misses his phone. he feels bored without you there, and a part of him feels so empty when he doesn’t have you beside him.

when he drops you off at home that day, he realizes it feels strange to be alone again— “can you stay with me?”— he needs to be with you.

it takes michael kaiser 7 months.

kaiser lets his ego get in the way of his relationships. he thinks he can have anyone he wants, and that's why he wholeheartedly believes that he's above the idea of yearning for someone. the idea of wanting someone so much that his thoughts would be consumed by them, and only them? it’s unimaginable. he’s used to being admired, worshipped even, by others. he doesn’t need anyone— he doesn’t need you.

so the prick of irritation he feels, when he sees you laughing at another man’s jokes, catches him off-guard.

it shatters his pride, and he tries to ignore the heat that bubbles under his skin. but he can’t ignore the feeling of possessiveness that washes over him at the sight. you’ve always been his— the heated touches, the way you wear his cologne on your skin, the way you linger around him like it’s natural. you're mine, he always thinks to himself, but he never says it out loud. he’s above yearning— but the idea of you being with someone else makes him feel sick. and he’s not about to let another man take you away.

“come with me.” his voice is sharp and demanding, his mere presence filling the space with an unspoken challenge. but before you can speak, kaiser’s gripping your wrist, pulling you into him without another word of explanation. you don’t fight him, you don’t fight the excitement that it brings you. there’s something in his gaze, something so possessive and raw, that makes you follow him wordlessly. you’re mine, the thought echoes in his mind and for the first time in months, he can’t deny the feeling that has been brewing under the surface.

he yearns for you, and he’ll never let anyone strip this feeling away from him.

it takes oliver aiku 4 years and 2 months.

oliver would never deny the fact that he enjoys having you around. but you’re simply his friend— nothing less, and definitely nothing more than that. you’ve been in his life for years now, lingering in his orbit in a way that keeps you both close, but so far. you’re a constant in his life because he doesn’t need to act around you. he never needs to impress you, never needs to win you over with sugary words. you’ve never given him the typical attention he’s used to, the type of attention that he naturally demands. and that bothers him in a way he won’t admit. yet, it’s this disinterest that pulls at him like gravity. it keeps him coming back, keeps him by your side.

but he doesn’t want anything more from you— he doesn’t need it. it’s these words that keeps him from tainting you.

he doesn't like the dangerous and greedy feeling of wanting to have more of you, wanting to see you in ways that no one else has, and that dangerous feeling that makes him want to devote himself to you wholly. and that’s what gets to him. he’s used to being the one in control, the one who dictates the terms.

it's a futile attempt, he realizes. it's always been you who's had the upper hand.

he can no longer deny that he wants you, more than he’s ever wanted anyone. no one else has his heart racing ‘til he can hear his heartbeat in his ears, no one else has him hooked in the way you’ve been stringing him along. and suddenly, all those meaningless flings feel like distractions, like he’s been wasting time when what he really wants is right in front of him.

it’s not about lust, not about the chase—he just wants you. and this time, he’s not about to let fear or pride hold him back.

note. desperate and yearning hcs next??? who knows

© rindreamery, 2024

[lexcys]

★ crimson tension rafe cameron x reader

summary: who knew rafe getting beat up and being vulnerable would end up giving him what he needed most - comfort

warnings: blood, wound description

a/n: ughh this took so long to write but it was worth it cuz I made myself giggle and kick my feet a few times. maybe this is a little cliche but I’m a sucker for these so sorry not sorry

loud music blasted over the speakers, laughter and unfamiliar voices rang around the manor, people spilled out from every room, clutching red plastic cups. the air was thick with the smell of beer and something sweet mixed with a faint undertone of sweat, the wide open doors leading to the cameron garden offered little relief, serving more as a passage to the outdoors than a true escape from the stifling atmosphere of tannyhill

the kitchen was a maze of half-empty bottles, red solo cups, and a few glasses perched on the edge of every counter. it was hard to believe none had shattered, considering the steady flow of people jostling past each other

right as you are about to take yet another shot you hear some barely audible shouting

curiosity overtaking your body faster than your mind and your legs start moving on their own accord, shot getting lost on the counter. making your way through the crowd but merely getting to the hallway as a mass of people block off the way and view to the living room, you hear a loud voice that undoubtedly belongs to rafe

whispers and 'oohs' pass through the crowd, before you notice rafe pushing past people with practiced ease, not bothering to acknowledge anyone as he moves forward. his focus unwavering, his movements deliberate as he makes his way toward you, a destination in mind

you catch a glimpse of the huge gash right above his eybrow - your eyes widen and you move towards him

after seeing his look and eyes you realize why he doesn’t react to you calling out his name - whatever substance he had taken prior was showing on his face, the haze clouding his expression, a disheveled look, glassy eyes with dilated pupils, fluoride stare as well as furrowed brows were noticeable as he brushes right past you

you glance around the room and the absence of attention on rafe doesn’t go unnoticed. you realise whoever had been on the other end of his rage must look worse - a chill runs down your spine imagining the ugly sight

being sarahs friends, tannyhill was not a foreign place for you so you knew where he was headed as he moved up the stairs

you hesitate but decide to follow him, once you’ve reached his room you rethink whether or not to knock, uncertainty creeping in but the worry gnaws at you too strongly - after calling out to him and getting no answer you enter the dimly lit room

the music dampens as you close his door. you pay no attention to his room, a already familiar space, your eyes immediately noticing him right ahead

the weight of the silence between you both grows heavier as you step closer, torn between reaching out and giving him space

he’s standing on his balcony, slumped onto the railing all though theres so much tension present in his shoulders that you can see it from a few meters away. his eyes are fixed on the ocean, the smoke lingering in the air making it evident that there was a cigarette resting between his fingers

he merely spares you a glance when you say his name again, turning around without muttering a single word

carefully you make your way toward him, situating yourself onto his right in complete silence, taking in the scene before you - the music has gotten louder and you look down at the people dancing below you, they payed absolutely no mind to rafe above them and in comparison to the loud laughs and voices the ocean before you was calm - the steady motion of the water, the endless horizon, seeming to soothe him

analysing his face you conclude that whatever fight had just occured - it was a heavy one - rafe had a busted lip, bruised knuckles, a bruise was already forming on his nose and the eybrow gash that was bleeding rather harshly. your face twists imagining how much his head must be throbbing

right now was not the time - but you also couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that he has never looked hotter

the moonlight hit his face just right, highlighting his tired eyes, making the blood adorning his face less unsettling, cigarette held between blood covered fingers, his knuckles bruised and bleeding, yet there’s something almost striking about the way his hands look, the way they’re still so perfectly shaped, even in their damaged state - his pain and his beauty so closely intertwined. even in this state, even with blood streaked across his face, there’s something undeniably captivating about him.

quickly pushing those thoughts aside you catch rafe looking at you for a second with a seemingly emotionless look, tension still present in his eybrows

you know he probably wanted to be left alone, his body language said it all. the desire to comfort him tugs at you, wanting to step forward and reach out, to brush your fingers along his jaw, to caress the sharpness of his stern yet tender face

''why are you here?'', he bites in a monotone tone, ripping you out of your thoughts

you clear your throat, ''I just wanted to see if you’re alright... maybe help you,” you say, the words feel awkward, out of place, like you’re intruding

his eyes snap to you, and for a moment, there’s a flicker of something sharp, almost like a reflex. then, it morphs into a cold, bitter look of disgust. “I don’t need any help,” he mutters

''rafe you’re bleeding - badly'', you utter throwing a glance toward the gash which, even in bad lightning, was clearly deeper than he realized as it had oozed so much blood that it had almost covered the right side of his face. ''I just-'' you falter before sighing, ''I didn’t know what happened and I was concerned''

you weren’t entirely sure why you were confessing your concern - it wasn’t exactly something that came naturally with rafe cameron. the alcohol in your system seemed to loosen the edge

seemingly bother by you answer, not even sparing you a look he replies, ''I don’t need your pity, run back to sarah or something'' he motions you away with his hand

you bite your lip, clearly fighting a mental battle whether or not to leave him alone. you notice his hands shaking, not sure whether it was from anger pain or something else

slightly tipsy you gather the courage to ask once again, pushing his annoyance aside because you so desperately want to help him, feeling your heart hurt seeing him like this

you try one last time, ''your hands are shaking, you sure you can patch yourslef up? I really just wanna help you rafe. but if you really want me to go say it - then Ill leave'', finishing you realize how pathetic you sounded, internally cringing but hoping it would convince him and make him see that you really did care about him

silence

rafe looks at you quickly noticing your concerned face filled with worry, even though his look was quick you notice that it changed, something changed, but before you can even get close to figuring out what he turns back around and takes a long drag from his cigarette, the smoke curling up in the cool air, his gaze fixed straight ahead, not meeting yours again

he exhales slowly, the smoke drifting up in a haze, but the tension in the air thickens instead of easing

defeated, you turn away, the weight of the silence too much to bear. you don’t say anything, no last attempt to reach him

suddenly you hear a quiet ''wait'' from rafe, so faint it wouldn’t have been audible if you had taken two more steps

you turn your head around quickly, trying to figure out if he really just said that but when you catch him putting out his cigarette into the ashtray you realise that he did

he turns around as you take a few steps towards him. his face barely visible from his dark room - only illuminated lightly by the moonlight and the soft glow from the party below - holds a stern and tense look, his jaw clenched with tension, vulnerability present in his eyes

rafe still hasn’t said another word but you’re easily able to read his expression and figure out what he wants you to do

relief washing over you you exhale a big breath, ''okay where’s the med kit?''

''bathroom'', is the only thing he says, voice low, eyes still focused on you - unwavering

you turn around and step into the bathroom, the small space a contrast to the size of his bedroom. quickly you begin searching the cabinets, your mind already running through the steps you’d need to take. already thinking about where would be the best place to clean and dress his wound, somewhere where he can sit down, somewhere you can work without too much trouble - before finding the med kit under his sink

a subtle warmth creeps up your neck, and you can’t shake the feeling that you’re being watched. you turn around noticing him standing in the doorway, leaning against the door - watching you with those empty yet pleading eyes before his gaze flickers over to the mirror - he’s lost in his reflection for a moment, studying himself

rafe stands there for a moment, seemingly lost in thought. then, with a quiet click, he closes the door behind him, fully stepping into the bathroom. the music muffles and the air between you tightens. you swallow, heart racing - you try to focus on the medkit in your hands. he moves past you slowly, sitting down on the toilet lid

right now, in the bright light of the bathroom, you’re finally able to see the full extent of his wounds as he holds his head up, avoiding your gaze. examining his wounds you settle on tending to his eyebrow first

you can tell that he’s not ready to talk about the fight or whatever happened. the air is heavy and something in his silence tells you not to push. so, you don’t, you stay quiet. setting the med kit down on the counter searching for the right tools, you feel suffocated by the silence, so awfully aware of every, rigid and nervous, breath you took

ready you turn back to rafe whose gaze is set onto the ground, still lost in thought - you try to clear your throat to catch his attention, to notify him that you’re ready and willing to tend to his wounds

he looks at you with a look, a look so vulnerable and hurt that it pulled at your heart. whatever he was just thinking must’ve hit him hard - the weight of it is there, written across his face, and you feel it in your chest. rafe’s eyes still carry that glassy, fluorid stare, as if he's still not fully aware of everything around him, making you wonder if he even realizes how much he’s letting slip

you figure that however you were to approach this - it would be awkward either way

you looked at him with a nervous look, alcohol-soaked cotton pad in hand - standing right in front of him, you hesitated as your eyes met his. he lifts his head a little farther up for you to get better access to his wounds. rafe is leaning forward, legs spread with his forearms resting on his knees, crossing his hands slightly in front of him infront - still at an awkward length until he fully uncrosses his hands, resting them on his knees. you waited, unsure if you’re allowed to enter the space, looking for a look of approval in his distant eyes. he nods - the faintest movement of his head, barely visible

his eyes carry a look that’s hard to read, an expression that makes you wonder if there’s a storm raging inside his mind or if he’s drifting into an unsettling emptiness

settling in between his knees - still trying to keep some sort of distance, unsure what was or wasn’t crossing the line, you bring the cotton pad up to his face. you gently start cleaning off the, mostly already, dried blood before moving on to his gash. the second it hits his skin again his eyes - which have been avoiding yours from the second he nodded - close, his jaw clenching pain evident although he tried not to show it, putting up some sort of barrier to, even in this vulnerable state, seem unbothered - strong

while cleaning you notice his hands, resting on his knees, and fingers lightly grazing against the fabric of your shorts, the lightest of touches—almost like a subconscious gesture. it’s a small movement, barely noticeable, but the tension it creates fills the space between you

you focus on your task, but it’s harder now, your hand faltering slightly with each light graze of his fingers

the delicate movement of his fingers almost like a distraction from the physical discomfort he’s trying to hide so well. it makes you wonder if he’s trying to ground himself, or if he’s just too lost in the moment to notice what he’s doing

after cleaning everything off in the best way you could you apply some zip stitches to at least momentarily close the wound. his breath hitches as you press the last stitch into place, but he doesn’t move or make a sound, the mask of stoic restraint still firmly in place

you couldn’t figure out if rafe was actually aware that he was pulling you closer to himself

by the time you were ready to clean his lip the distance between you was so minimal that you could barely clean it properly. the closeness making every slight movement feel amplified now, the soft brush of his breath, the faint tension in his jaw, the way his eyes flicker between avoiding yours and briefly meeting your gaze

you gently press the cotton to his lip, your fingers grazing his skin in the process. the way his gaze flicks up to meet yours for a split second makes your heart skip, throwing off your rhythm.

you hesitate for a moment, your heart racing in the silence between you. the closeness is overwhelming, and you know you need to steady yourself, to find a way to regain control. your fingers tremble slightly as you lift your hand, almost instinctively, and you gently place it on the side of his face. the warmth of his skin is a shock, he lets out a soft exhale which you wouldn’t have noticed if you werent holding his face with your hand - but he doesn’t pull away.

you angle his face just enough to get a better view, but the movement feels more like an anchor for yourself, the subtle pressure of your hand on his skin keeps you tethered, even as the air between you thickens with something unsaid

you press the pad to his lip slowly, careful and deliberate, but your fingers linger on his skin longer than necessary, your thumb lightly brushing the edge of his jaw. his breath brushes against you, warm and shallow

it’s hard to focus with the way his gaze lingers on you, the way your hand feels on his face

his lips part quickly as you tend his wound - the area lightly swollen, thankfully not comparable to his eyebrow gash

you finish tending to his face, placing a last small plaster, hurting at the loss of contact. you take a look back and admire your work and him. the quiet stillness between you both feels oddly heavy, but the comfort of knowing he’s patched up - protected for now - settles in

you dread saying the words a loud, not wanting to lose this moment, not wanting to end it - not sure what it even was

''done''

the hands behind you tighten their grip, slowly pulling you even closer, eliminating the space between you. your body freezes for a second - caught off guard. his head reasts on your upper body, sending a wave of warmth through you, and for a moment, you're aware of every breath, every beat of your heart

his breath is steady, slow, but there’s an unmistakable force in the way he holds you, a quiet urgency that makes your mind go blank

his grip, though firm, isn't forceful - more like an unspoken invitation, urging you, pleading you, to stay within the space he's created. he held on with such a purpose - it made it seem like you would evaporate the second he let go

you place one hand gently in his hair, testing the waters, seeing if he'd be comfortable with you running your fingers through it. the other one rests on his back

rafe flinches when you tryto pull him closer, putting pressure on his back

you let the moment linger for a few seconds more before speaking up, breaking the comforting silence which rested between you, ''rafe let me see your back''

he pulls back and looks at you for a second, his look completely unreadable. this time he complied. he stands up with a slow, deliberate motion and turns around. he lifts his shirt as far up as he could, pain clearly holding him back. gently taking hold of the shirt from his hand, you ease the fabric upward, careful to avoid causing him any more pain as you lift it higher

his back is painted with all sorts of colours - some bruises worse than others. you flinch at the sight, although you’re a little relieved to see no cuts

seeing there is nothing you can do you let his shirt fall back down, very carefully smoothing it on his back - hoping to provide some comfort with the soft touch

as you move next to him to rest a hand on his bicep, you ask him with a hushed voice, ''can I get you a new shirt'', meeting his gaze, ''yours is full of blood''

fully aware that the line that was not to be crossed has now become blurred

rafe nodded

you leave his side, moving to his drawer - your fingers fumble slightly as you sift through the clothes, searching for a shirt. you pick out a loose one, one that would not press against his back too much or that would be a struggle to put on

he now sat on his bed, patiently waiting for you, watching you

you turn back to him, seeing his eyes, his expression. a storm of thoughts no longer visible, only exhaustion

''is this one okay?'' you questioned. he nodded before clearing his throat and lowering his gaze, ''can you help me put it on'', clearly exhausted

you pull hisshirt up slowly, carefully and for a moment you’re stunned, staring in silence. the sight that greets you is just as shocking as it is heartbreaking - his chest is as bruised as his back

rafe is clearly avoiding your eyes, looking to his left with a tense jaw

without saying another word you pull the other shirt over his head, standing before him, ''are you gonna go back down?''

he replies with a shake of his head, ''no''

you quietly stars at him for a few seconds more, debating how to continue then letting your legs carry you towards the bathroom to clean up. but just as you turn to leave, you feel his hand snap out, gripping your wrist with a force that sent a jolt through your body. the touch was immediate, urgent, as though he couldn’t let you go. but then, as quickly as it had come, his grip softened, the tension draining away as he loosened his hold

your eyes flicker back to him

“stay”

[fanaticalthings]

Most children, once they've grown up and moved out, sometimes come back to visit their parents to use their house as a sort of personal grocery store

And with Bruce being a literal billionaire whose house is always stocked with food and supplies, the batkids (that aren't living in the manor) definitely visit just for the purpose of taking shit for themselves.

---

For Dick, it's just small things, food and maybe some utensils. Bruce is barely in the kitchen so he never notices dishes go missing, and there are like 10 other children in his house so literally any one of the younger kids could've stolen food in the middle of the night, so he doesn't bat an eye at all.

Babs probably steals Bruce's hardware or his tools from the batcave. Sometimes, if she's nice, she'll leave a note.

Steph probably takes shit that no one will notice at the time but will absolutely be annoyed about when they need said thing. Stapler, soap bars, the microwave plate, etc...(Taking after Jason, she steals the hub caps off the batmobile's tires)

However, for Jason, once his relationship with Bruce is somewhat decent, of course he's gonna be petty and start stealing the more expensive shit in the manor for his apartment. Jason's microwave is broken? The next day, the cave's self-made and enhanced microwave made by Bruce for convenience is just gone.

Jason's feeling a coffee maker for his place? The one in Bruce's study disappears, too.

---

At first, Bruce thinks he's just sleep deprived, but then much bigger things start to go missing, like the whole TV and couch set in the living room. He assumes the younger kids are just playing pranks on him (sounds like something Stephanie would do) but then Bruce notices that the thief deliberately avoids stealing things from the kitchen, which is where Alfred is most of the time, and suddenly Bruce has an irritated clue on who the culprit is.

At first, he doesn't say anything, until one day he comes back, tired from a patrol, and is about to log in all the info on the computer only to realize his batchair is gone. That's when he texts Jason a blunt "If you really need things for your place, you can just ask me. I'll buy them for you." (As if Jason himself isn't loaded from his totally legal activities)

---

So now Jason's pettiness levels increase tenfold, and oh, wouldn't you look at it, his bike needs some new tires, and he knows a great place to get some more.

One night, Bruce is just blearily getting up for a late night snack, only to see Damian scamper away with a...lamp? So Bruce immediately follows him into the foyer only to see ALL of his kids (sans the ones not living in the manor), trying to haul two arm chairs out the window, and they just stop dead silent to stare at him until someone whispers a nervous "Crap"

Bruce doesn't even have any energy to fight, he just pinches his nose and is all "What is the meaning of this" in his tired dad voice. And Duke meekly responds with "we wanted more chairs at Jason's place"

And suddenly it all makes sense. Not once did Bruce wonder how the HELL Jason managed to lug a whole 60in TV and a full couch set on his own in one night. Of course, he had accomplices. Bruce just turns right around and goes right the hell back to his room to sleep. He'll deal with this in the morning.

[hurlingdown]

thinkin’ about . . . exhibitionism with attention whore gojo satoru. it all started with a hand between his thighs . . .

tags. sub! afab! gojo, stranger! reader. exhibitionism, crossdressing, degradation, mild dub-con. groping and fingering his pussy on the subway while jerking off to that sweet ass.

satoru knows he looks good. he’s wearing a cream-coloured cardigan, cropped right above his stomach to display his slender waist, with the tiniest pink mini-skirt to match. there’s only a sliver of skin left between that and his white lace stockings, perfectly showing off the plump curve of his ass. 

there wasn’t anyone paying attention to him on the subway, though, everyone being too busy tapping away at their screens. he gives a soft huff at the sight. stupid fucking phones. the train doors slide open with blaring music, the new crowd of passengers shoving him deeper into the cart. pressed against the closed train doors, he suddenly feels something stroke his inner thigh. 

the doors close. the train starts moving. he freezes, looking around, but no one’s paying attention to him. an accident? likely. 

it doesn’t stop there, though. seconds later, he feels something stroke the same spot on his thigh again, this time brushing up until it rubs against the clothed slit of his pussy, back and forth. deliberately. satoru bites his lip, feeling himself get wet. 

perhaps someone was paying attention to him, after all. 

he pushes his ass back experimentally, gasping lightly when he feels the solid swell of an erection, now wedged firmly between his asscheeks. he hears a faint, amused mutter of ‘fucking slut’, and he bites down a whine at the sudden arousal shooting through him. 

“did y’really think no one would notice?” a voice mutters in his ear, and satoru gives a soft whimper as the front of his skirt lifts, cold air hitting his soaked panties. “dressed and actin’ like some cheap two dollar whore. yer just beggin’ to be groped.” 

your hand creeps up his cardigan to fondle his supple chest, pulling and twisting at a nipple, while two fingers manage to find his clit, now messily rubbing it through his underwear. he arches his back, biting his lip harder as his legs begin to shake, breaths slipping out in steamy pants against the window. “f-fuck. slow down.”  

it’s dirty, being touched and groped like this in the middle of a train ride. his panties being pulled to the side so that the stranger can press a finger inside his wet, aching pussy. the hard swell of a cock behind him, the mutter of filthy words and promises. all of it is dirty, and he’s fucking addicted to it. 

satoru chokes on a moan when he feels a second finger slide inside with the first, and he clenches around them with a slick squelch, grinding his ass back. 

“close,” he whispers shakily. the speakers announce the train’s rapid arrival at the next station. a green light blinks from above, signalling that the doors were going to open on his side. his heart pounds in his chest at the relevation that they’re all going to see. 

the hand fondling his chest leaves him, and he hears the faint rustle of clothes from behind. fuck, is he jerking off? to me? he moans softly at the thought, slick gushing out. 

“shut up and keep quiet f’me.” satoru obediently clamps a hand over his mouth as he humps your fingers with renewed urgency, feeling his release closing in. the train’s starting to slow down now, the station blurring before his eyes, and he gives a loud, desperate whimper into the cup of his hand as he cums all over your fingers, shuddering at the warm splatter painting his skirt and rear—

the train music blares. 

he gasps, shoving his skirt back down in a hurry as the doors slide open, but the new crowd of passengers don’t seem to notice his dishevelled state. 

satoru’s never been so thankful for the stupid fucking phones before. 

masterlist!

[lovesculprit]

Kinktober Day 4 - Brat Taming with Ryomen Sukuna

contains: nsfw content:(mdni), fempov, pnv (unprotected), creampie, spanking, orgasm denial, oral (reader giving), v brief breath play, no aftercare, this is consensual but it might seem dubcon at times so i'll say that just in case

˚₊‧ for more kinktober here - wc:- 7.3k (sorry!)

an: if you saw this yesterday, tumblr ate most of it, so this is the proper version with the full 7k

The air was tight in the luxurious chambers, thick with the underlying current of power and danger that came with being near Sukuna. You knew it all too well, and still, today you chose to push the boundaries.

Maybe it was the way his attention had moved onto others, or maybe you just wanted to feel his power focused on you. Either way, your defiance had earned you more than a few sharp looks throughout the day.

He had been so patient at first, watching as you deliberately disobeyed his orders, meeting his gaze with a silent challenge in your eyes. It was a dangerous game, one which you knew would only end one way, but a small part of you relished it, even craved the inevitable punishment that would follow.

Piqued annoyance now danced in his expression as you stood before him in the dark-lit room. The light of the candles danced across his tattooed skin as he leaned back into the cushion, arms over his chest, eyes intent on him-like some sort of predator sizing his prey.

"You have been bold today, haven't you?" Sukuna said, his voice low and almost a purr, but beneath the smoothness lay a warning. Crimson eyes shone with something dark and predatory as he watched you with unsettling intensity.

You didn't move, not as your heart raced in your chest; your eyes still flashed defiance, though it wavered a little under his gaze. Sukuna noticed, of course-he noticed everything.

He laughed darkly, the sound rumbling through the room like distant thunder. "What's the matter? The little concubine thinks she can disobey her king?" His voice was thick with mockery, but beneath it lay an unmistakable edge of menace.

You still wouldn't back down, even as the chill ran down your spine. "I'm not scared of you," you said-the defiance in your voice, a lot stronger than the quiver in your chest.

His smirk only widened, eyes glinting in the low light. "Is that so?" He pushed off from the cushions, standing to his full height in a fluid-almost graceful-movement. Sukuna towered over you, the suffocating presence of his power that made the air around you thick and heavy.

He took a slow, deliberate step toward you, each step echoing in the chamber as he never so much as broke gaze with yours. “You forget your place, little one. And I think it’s about time I remind you exactly who you answer to.”

You swallowed hard but stood your ground, your heart pounding while he drew nearer. He was testing you now, pushing the limits of your defiance, testing how far you would go. But you couldn't halt the quickening of your pulse in anticipation, the thrill coursing through you despite the danger.

Sukuna stopped only a few millimetres away from you, his giant physique casting a shadow over your small frame. He cocked his head as he reached out, crimson eyes shining with dark humour, and brushed one of his hands against your cheek, the touch feather light, deceptive.

"You've been a brat all day," he mused, the soft low tone of his voice a direct contrast to the danger swimming inside him. "And I'm not fond of brats. You know that."

And before he could receive a reaction from you, the other hand shot out, clutching at your chin in a firm grip, making you look up at him. His touch wasn't gentle anymore; it was commanding, dominant, a silent reminder of who was in charge here.

"You really think you can challenge me?" His voice now a dark growl, his eyes narrowing as he watched you struggle to hold his gaze. His thumb brushed over your bottom lip, teasing, almost mocking, as he leaned down closer. "You forget who I am, don't you?"

You shivered, but the stubborn fire in your eyes remained, even as his grip tightened slightly, his thumb pressing against your lip until you parted them with a soft gasp; he smirked, clearly amused despite himself.

“I could break you,” he murmured, his voice low and dangerous as his lips hovered just above yours. “Make you beg for me. But I can also make you wait… draw it out until you remember who’s in control.”

The heat between your bodies flared and he held you there, so close yet still out of reach. The tension was palpable, a heady mix of desire and fear as the resolve within you started to crumble under the fierce stare that bound you against your will to him.

When he finally moved, it was with brutal precision. Sukuna spun you around, pressing your front to the cool wall of the chamber with ease, one hand tangled in your hair as he pulled your head back slightly. "You wanted my attention, didn't you?" he said, his voice a dangerous whisper in your ear as his hot breath danced across your skin, his hand trailing down your back. “Well, now you have it.”

You gasped, your body arching instinctively into his touch as his hand slid lower, gripping your hips possessively. “Don’t think for a second that you can get away with this behaviour” he growled, his voice a dangerous promise as his fingers dug into your flesh.

Sukuna yanked your hips back against him, his body pressing firmly against yours as he leaned in, his lips brushing the shell of your ear. “You’re going to regret testing me,” he whispered darkly, his breath hot and heavy against your skin. His hand slid around to your front, teasing you just enough "Now," he growled huskily, the scent of dominance emanating s he leaned in closer, his lips grazing your neck and nipping the sensitive skin there to set fireworks, something he could so easily do with a mere touch. "Beg me to put you back in your place."

You knew he was playing with you, waiting for you to submit again, but you couldn't help how your body betrayed you-the pooling of heat so low in your stomach as his words fired up something deep inside. Caged in his grip, cornered against the wall, you still couldn’t refrain from pushing once more.

“No.”

“No? Okay.” he chuckled darkly, his tone shifting from playful to deadly serious. “Strip.”

You briefly turned your head and looked at him, unsure and as you hesitated, he added with a wicked smirk, “Do it or I’ll do it for you.”

The thought of him tearing the delicate fabric from your body sent a thrill through you. The weight of his gaze bore down on you, and you felt the pull of his dominance wrapping around you like a shroud. Your heart raced with the thrill of the challenge, but a deeper part of you—a primal instinct—began to ache for his approval.

With a deep breath, you decided to relent, knowing that fighting him any longer would only provoke him further. You turned your back to him and slowly began to slide the silk off your shoulders, letting the fabric slip down your arms. The dress pooled at your feet, baring your skin to him. The cool air brushed against you, sending goosebumps cascading across your body as you stood looking vulnerable before him.

Yet despite that, his eyes never wavered to admire your body, it wasn’t like he hadn’t seen you naked before but right now he didn’t seem the least bit interested.

You faced him, expecting praise or the usual good girl, but he said nothing. The silence stretched between you, heavy and charged, making your heart race with both anticipation and confusion. Sukuna’s gaze was piercing, roaming over your exposed form, and you could feel the intensity of his scrutiny igniting something deep within you—a desperate yearning for his approval.

You swallowed hard, the heat pooling in your stomach igniting a mixture of shame and desire. Sukuna was playing with you, aware of your need for his validation, and you felt yourself teetering on the edge of submission and rebellion.

“Please,” you whispered, desperate to shift the balance back in your favour, to spark that glimmer of approval in his eyes. “I just wanted—”

“What?” he interrupted, tilting his head slightly, that smirk still firmly in place. “Attention? Affection? Or perhaps you wanted to remind me how unruly you can be?”

The words were both exhilarating and terrifying, as you recognized the game he was playing. Sukuna knew exactly what you craved and was determined to toy with it, twisting your desires into something that left you vulnerable.

“You should know by now,” he continued, leaning closer until you could feel the warmth radiating off him. “My favourite concubine doesn’t act like this.” he whispers as his hand cups your face. “She knows her place—knows how to please me.”

Your heart clenched at his words, the subtle reminder of your position stoking the embers of your longing. You craved his approval, his affection, and each taunt felt like a jagged edge against your pride. But the harder he pushed, the greater the need for his acknowledgment became.

"Look at you, practically begging for it," he teased, his voice low as his fingers brushed over the uncovered skin of you. "But you'll learn, in time, that defiance only leads to disappointment."

With a predatory grace, Sukuna shifted, his gaze never leaving yours as he sat down on the edge of his royal bed, the dark fabric of the covers contrasting sharply against his skin. The way he was sitting-relaxed, yet commanding-sent a shiver of anticipation running down your spine.

"Come here," he ordered; it was an order reverberating with a sternness that was impossible to disregard. Your heart racing, you moved closer until the space between you two was charged with tension. "Get over my knee," he said, the corners of his mouth raising into a sly grin. The words were spoken as though this was a test, a test of how well you'd do.

The heat in your cheeks flared as you hesitated, caught between pride and the undeniable desire to submit. But the need for his approval was overwhelming, and as you moved closer, the thrill of obedience battled against your rebellious spirit.

Sukuna’s gaze held you captive, eyes glimmering with amusement as he patted his knee, the gesture both inviting and authoritative. “I won't ask twice," he warned, his voice low and full of promise.

You swallowed hard as you took a deep breath and realised it was your call. You leaned over reluctantly, laying across his lap and positioning yourself, your hands resting on the coolness of the sheets-a sharp contrast to the heat emitting from your body.

“There we go” he murmured, his voice dripping with satisfaction as he rested a hand on your back, keeping you in place.

As you settled over him, a rush of vulnerability coursed through you, yet beneath it lay a profound sense of longing for his approval, making it impossible to feel anything but exhilarated. In that moment, you knew there would be no escaping the power he held over you/

His hand travelled further up your thigh, fingers teasingly close to your ass but never quite crossing that line. It was an intentionally deliberate choice, placing you on edge, and you could feel that anticipation, coiling in your belly like a spring, ready to burst.

"Remember," he warned, his voice dropping to that low growl again, "Just because I'm kinder to you than the rest does not mean I won't punish disobedience." You swallowed hard as your heart began to pound with what was to come. You could feel the power dynamic shifting, the game the two of you were playing getting heavier with every passing second.

Sukuna's hand came down sharp against your ass, the loud smack reverberating through the room and slapping you back into reality. A gasp escaped your lips, half in surprise, half in delight at the sting that suddenly fired into your skin. It was a delicious concoction of pain and pleasure, which left you short of breath as you adjusted to the sensations that swirled around you.

"Count," he instructed, his voice firm, yet laced with underlying humour. "Loudly. I want to hear you."

"One," you exhaled the word as it tumbled from your lips, your heart racing wildly as you fought to steady it. The thrill of it all, mixed with your need for his approval, had you wanting each strike more than the last.

Sukuna's hand lingered on the curve of your ass for a moment before falling again in a sharp slap, the sound echoing off stone walls. You gasped again, a mixture of shock and thrill racing through you as the sting blossomed into a warm ache.

“Two,” you gasped, as you fought against the swell of emotions within you.

He lifted his hand, but this time he held back just before the strike, making you tense in anticipation. The sudden hesitation had you bracing for impact, but then he only gently smoothed his palm flat against your skin, teasing you with his warmth.

But before you could even acknowledge it, a sudden one came down on your other ass cheek.

“Three,” you managed to say, voice trembling slightly, the sensation catching you off guard as he switched up the rhythm.

“Good,” he replied, and the next strike came almost immediately after, catching you off guard. “Four!” you exclaimed, the sound of his hand meeting your skin sending shockwaves through your body.

He continued this pattern, alternating between sharp slaps and moments of tension where he would simply tease you, leaving you breathless and on edge. Sometimes, he would deliver a strike that felt harder than the last, and other times he’d pull back, letting you feel only the ghost of his hand as your body quivered in anticipation.

You felt yourself teetering on the brink of overwhelming sensations as you counted up to ten, each strike igniting a fiery mixture of pleasure and pain that coursed through your body. Each impact left you breathless, the rhythm of his hand striking you creating a melody of desire that echoed in your mind.

“Eleven” you finally gasped, the word escaping your lips as you savoured the ache that lingered in your skin.

Sukuna paused, letting the silence stretch between you, and you could feel the weight of his gaze on your back, assessing and possessive. The air was thick with tension, and you could sense the power dynamics shifting once more.

“Are you sorry?” he asked, his voice low and teasing, sending a thrill down your spine.

You bit your lip, a mix of defiance and longing swirling within you as you processed his question. The sharp sting of his earlier strikes still pulsed against your skin. The heat emanating from your skin, a reminder of your rebelliousness, yet the way he held you—firm, possessive—made your heart race with exhilaration.

“Sorry?” you repeated, tilting your head slightly to look at him over your shoulder. You could see the smirk playing on his lips, the amusement dancing in his eyes. The challenge was palpable; he wanted you to say it, to acknowledge your submission in a way that would give him satisfaction. Yet all that came out of your mouth was…

“I don’t know yet-”

“Do you even know what you want?” he pressed, his voice smooth and taunting. “Because I can give you everything, but you seem intent on making this harder for yourself.”

“Do you want my approval?” he asked, his voice a sultry caress that made your heart race. The question hung between you, laden with implications that sent a shiver down your spine. “You know I could give it to you if you just admit what you truly want.”

As if sensing the conflict within you, he slowly guided you off his lap, the absence of his warmth leaving you yearning for more. You hesitated for a moment, caught in the limbo of desire and pride, before he leaned back slightly, a glimmer of challenge in his gaze. “Get on your knees,” he commanded, the authority in his voice making it impossible to resist.

The command was a double-edged sword, igniting a rush of eagerness and vulnerability in your chest. There was something intoxicating about being at his mercy, and even as the thought of submission sent pangs of uncertainty through you, the need for his love and approval surged stronger than your pride.

You swallowed hard, the weight of his gaze heavy on you as you knelt before him, the coolness of the floor contrasting sharply with the warmth that enveloped your body. Sukuna watched you, a predator sizing up his prey, and you could feel the intensity of his scrutiny as you knelt there, heart racing and breath shallow.

“Good girl” he praised, the words wrapping around you like silk, soothing yet igniting a fire in your core. “This is where you belong—submissive, yearning for my affection.” His voice was low and sultry, and you could hear the satisfaction lacing his tone as he took in your posture, his eyes gleaming with approval. “But you have to earn it. Tell me what you want.”

You hesitated, the vulnerability of your position mingling with your desire to please him. “I want… I want your approval,” you murmured, the admission spilling from your lips almost involuntarily. “Your love”

His smirk widened, revealing a hint of satisfaction that made your heart flutter. “And how do you plan to earn it?” he asked, his voice smooth and seductive, coaxing you into deeper submission. “Show me how desperate you really are for my love.”

With deliberate slowness, he shrugged off his robe, letting the luxurious fabric cascade down his broad shoulders and pool around his waist. The movement revealed the powerful contours of his body, muscles coiling under his skin, each movement exuding confidence and dominance. You couldn’t help but feel your breath hitch in your throat as you drank in the sight of him—strikingly captivating and impossibly alluring. His cock sprung free, dauntingly big, thick and girthy with a prominent vein running along the underside of it.

As you positioned yourself at his feet, your heart raced with anticipation. You looked up at him, and in that moment, you could see the mixture of dominance and desire reflected in his gaze. You knew exactly what he wanted you to do, and the thought of it sent a shiver of excitement coursing through you.

“Go on,” he urged, his voice dropping to a husky whisper, “show me just how much you crave my approval.” The challenge ignited something deep within you, urging you to submit fully to his will.

You reached forward, taking his cock in your hand at first, feeling the heat radiate from it as your fingers wrapped around his length. The sensation sent a jolt of electricity through you, awakening every nerve ending and amplifying the intensity of your need. You could feel his gaze boring into you, an intoxicating mix of desire and power, and the weight of it only fueled your eagerness.

Sukuna watched you intently, his expression a mixture of approval and amusement as you began to stroke him slowly.

You leaned in closer, your breath hitching as you pressed soft kisses along his shaft, savouring the taste of his skin and the intoxicating musk that enveloped you. With each kiss, you felt a thrill of exhilaration at your submission, and the thought of earning his approval made you more eager to please.

“Keep going,” he encouraged, his voice low and demanding.

You could hear the satisfaction in his tone, and it spurred you on as you took him deeper into your mouth, your tongue swirling around him with fervent devotion. Every now and then you’d pull back and focus on the tip, only to resume taking his cock in as deep as you could, using your hand for what you couldn’t fit. The world outside faded away, leaving only the two of you—his dominance and your willingness to submit completely to him.

As you continued, you could feel his hand find its way to your hair, fingers tangling in it as he guided your movements, controlling the pace with a delicious authority. The mix of his control and your surrender sent waves of heat pooling in your core, and you could feel the ache of longing building within you.

The warmth of his body radiated against your skin, intensifying the sensations coursing through you as you leaned in further, taking him deeper. Each careful stroke of your tongue was met with a soft, approving grunt from Sukuna, his fingers tightening in your hair, guiding you with just the right amount of pressure. You revelled in the way he took charge, the way he made you feel both desired and utterly submissive.

“Such a good little pet,” he praised, his voice smooth yet commanding, sending tremors of excitement through you. “You’re desperate for my touch, aren’t you?”

You couldn’t deny it, the words igniting something primal within you, and you nodded as best you could with him filling your mouth. The mixture of your eagerness and his control heightened the stakes, pushing you to give him everything you had.

His hips shifted slightly, guiding your rhythm as he pressed deeper, the sensation making your head spin. You could feel the tension building within you, a mix of longing and excitement as you became more attuned to his desires. The slick warmth of your mouth enveloped him, and each movement you made was deliberate, an offering of your devotion.

“More,” he demanded, his voice thick with pleasure as he tilted his head back slightly. “I want to hear you.”

You moaned softly around him, the sound vibrating against his skin, eliciting another low growl from deep within him. The noise made your core throb with need, the desperate ache for him only growing stronger as you lost yourself in the rhythm of your actions.

He couldn’t help but want to set the pace himself, the next time you went to pull back, he guided your head further, forcing you to take him deeper until your nose was pressed up against his pubes. You sputtered, unable to stop yourself from gagging as he held you there for a moment before pulling back and letting you pull off and catch your breath. You coughed a little, a string of saliva connecting from his cock to your lips.

His hand tightened in your hair, gently pulling your head up for a moment so he could meet your gaze. “Look at me,” he commanded, his eyes darkened with lust and satisfaction. “I want to see your pretty eyes.”

As you surrendered fully to him, the heat pooling in your core became unbearable, a delicious reminder of just how much you craved his approval. The world outside faded further, leaving only the intoxicating connection between you—his power and your submission—and you knew that you would do anything to keep that connection alive.

You gazed up at him, his commanding presence making your heart race. As you took him deeper, this time by your own choice, a rush of exhilaration surged through you, and with a playful impulse, you let your teeth graze lightly against his length. The sensation was meant to tease, to elicit a reaction, but the moment you did, a sharp intake of breath escaped him, followed by a sudden yank of your hair that pulled you away.

Sukuna’s eyes flashed with a mixture of surprise and warning, the intensity of his gaze locking onto yours like a steel trap. “What did I say about behaving?” His voice was low, tinged with authority, but there was an unmistakable edge of desire laced within it. You felt a thrill race through you, the tension in the air thickening.

You looked up at him, trying to read the storm brewing in his eyes. His grip on your hair was firm yet controlled, a reminder of the power he wielded over you. The sharpness of his warning sent a jolt through you, igniting a mix of fear and excitement.

“I... I’m sorry,” you stammered, your breath shaky as you tried to regain your composure. “I didn’t mean to—”

“Do that once more and I won’t touch you again, I’ll give you to one of my men. Do you want that?”

The weight of his words settled heavily in the air, a reminder of the stakes involved. You could feel the heat of embarrassment flooding your cheeks, but it was quickly replaced by a deep-seated need for his approval. The thought of disappointing him was far more terrifying than the idea of punishment.

“Now,” he said, releasing his hold on your hair but still leaning forward, his presence overwhelming, “Show me that you can be the good girl I know you can be.” There was an edge to his tone that made your stomach flip, a challenge wrapped in a promise.

Nodding slightly, you took a deep breath, reminding yourself of the delicate balance you had to maintain. You could do this. You could earn his affection and approval. You leaned in closer once more, eyes locked onto his, feeling the pulse of desire thrumming between you.

With renewed determination, you took him back into your mouth, moving slowly at first, allowing your tongue to swirl around him in languid strokes. You could feel the tension in the air, the silent understanding that every movement you made was a testament to your willingness to submit completely to him. You focused on doing it right, savouring the way his body reacted, the way his breath hitched as you worked your mouth around him.

You couldn’t help but grin slightly as you ran your tongue along his shaft.

“You think this is funny?” he murmured, his thumb brushing over your lips with a possessive touch. “You think you’re in control here?” The amusement in his voice was gone, replaced with a low, simmering intensity that made your pulse quicken.

Before you could respond, Sukuna yanked you up, pulling you to your feet with a force that left your heart racing. He spun you around again, pressing your back against the wall, his chest flush against your front as his hands roamed over your body. The roughness of his touch sent shivers down your spine, your skin tingling with the mix of pleasure and dominance that radiated from him.

“Let’s see how long you can hold on to that defiance,” he whispered in your ear, his breath hot against your skin. His hand slid down to your waist, pulling you closer until you could feel the full weight of his cock pressing against your stomach. “You’ll break eventually. You always do.”

Your body responded instinctively to his dominance as you clenched your thighs together. Sukuna was testing your limits, pushing you to the brink of submission, and you knew that the game you had started was far from over. The tension between you crackled like electricity, the air thick with the promise of what was to come.

He grabbed your wrists, pinning them above your head with one hand as his other hand travelled down your body, his touch rough and demanding. His smirk widening as he saw the way your chest rose and fell with quick, shallow breaths, your defiance crumbling under the weight of his dominance.

"Is this what you wanted?" he growled, his voice thick with lust and dominance. "To be at my mercy? To feel my power over you?"

You could only whimper in response, your body trembling with desire as Sukuna’s fingers danced over across your breasts, playfully rolling your nipples between his fingers, tugging them slightly, teasing you but never giving you the satisfaction you craved. He smirked, clearly enjoying the way you squirmed beneath him, the control he held over you absolute.

"You don’t get to decide when I reward you," he grumbled, "I do."

Sukuna’s hand tightened around your wrists, his grip firm but not painful as he leaned in, his breath hot against your ear. "Tell me who you belong to," he growled, his voice low and dangerous, filled with an authority that made your heart race.

You swallowed hard, your defiance wavering under the weight of his dominance. "You," you whispered, your voice trembling with a mixture of fear and desire. "I belong to you."

Sukuna’s lips crashed down on yours, the kiss rough and demanding, filled with the intensity of his dominance. His teeth grazed your bottom lip, pulling a moan from your throat as he claimed your mouth with brutal precision. His hands explored your curves, gripping your hips, your thighs, your ass that was still sore, as if he was staking his claim on every inch of you.

With each deliberate breath, you steadied yourself, your heart racing as you mentally prepared for the brutal onslaught of his strength. You knew what was coming—the way he would thrust into you with a force that left you gasping, the raw power behind every movement. The pleasure and pain that would mingle into a heady mixture, overwhelming your senses until there was nothing left but him.

The anticipation was almost too much to bear, your body aching for the release you knew only Sukuna could give. His fingers trailed down your back, a possessive touch that claimed you inch by inch, as if reminding you that you were his to do with as he pleased.

And then, without warning or any preparation he thrust into you with a brutal force that knocked the air from your lungs. Your hands clung to his shoulders, struggling to maintain your balance as Sukuna’s body slammed into yours, the sound of flesh against flesh echoing in the chamber.

You were thankful that seeing him like this had you already soaked, else that stretch would’ve been a lot more painful with his size.

He didn’t hold back. Each thrust was powerful, relentless, his hips driving into yours with a ferocity that left you gasping. The intensity of it was overwhelming, his movements claiming you completely, pushing you past the point of pleasure and into a realm where pain and ecstasy became one.

Your body rocked against the wall, your breath coming in ragged, desperate pants as Sukuna’s pace only quickened. The sheer force of his movements left you clinging to the stone for support, your legs trembling with the effort of keeping yourself upright. He hooked a hand under your leg as he lifted you up slightly to get a better angle, your walls clenching around his cock every time he drove it in.

"Look at you," he growled, his voice thick with satisfaction. "Already falling apart."

His hand tightened on your hips as he leaned down, his lips brushing against the side of your neck. "You’re my favourite," he hissed, his breath hot against your skin. "So don’t give me reason to neglect you."

Every punishing thrust sent waves of pleasure crashing through your body, building higher and higher until it was almost too much to bear. The heat between you intensified, your bodies moving in perfect, brutal sync, the rhythm of your connection raw and primal.

"You feel that?" Sukuna’s voice was a low, dangerous growl in your ear as he brought his other hand to your belly, his hand over the bulge he was causing. "You will never feel this anywhere else.”

He drove into you with even greater force, his body demanding your submission with every movement. And as the pleasure built to a fever pitch inside you, your mind blanked, consumed by the sheer intensity of what he was doing to you.

Sukuna’s thrusts became more brutal, more relentless with each passing second. The intensity of his movements left you breathless, your body barely able to keep up with the raw, savage force of him. The cold stone of the wall pressed against your back, and his hand on your leg, the only thing holding you upright as Sukuna claimed you with an aggression that sent shivers through your entire being.

His hands gripped your hips with a bruising force, pulling you into him with every movement, demanding your full surrender. The overwhelming pleasure mingled with a burning ache that left you trembling, each sensation more intense than the one before.

"Is this what you wanted?" Sukuna growled, his voice thick with both anger and lust. "You wanted to test me? Thought you could defy me, hmm?"

His tone was sharp, laced with danger, and each word only made your pulse race faster. You could feel the fury in his movements, the way he drove into you with a punishing rhythm that left you gasping for air. Your mind spun, the pleasure so overwhelming it was hard to think straight, but through the haze of sensation, you realised the truth: you’d pushed him too far.

"I'm sorry," you whimpered, your voice barely audible over the sounds of his body slamming into yours. "I'm sorry, Sukuna… I didn’t mean—"

Before you could finish, he thrust into you harder, his hand yanking your hair back so that your head snapped up, forcing you to meet his eyes as he leaned over you. His gaze burned with fury and satisfaction, and the sight of it made your stomach flip.

"Oh, you’re sorry now, are you?" he hissed, his breath hot against your ear. "Begging for forgiveness already? Pathetic."

His hips slammed into yours again, the brutal pace leaving you reeling, the sheer force of his movements pushing you closer and closer to the edge. You cried out, your fingers digging into the stone wall as you tried to brace yourself against the onslaught of pleasure and pain.

"Please," you gasped, your voice trembling as his relentless thrusts made it hard to speak. "I’m sorry… I shouldn’t have… I didn’t mean to—"

But Sukuna wasn’t interested in your apologies. If anything, your desperate pleas only seemed to drive him further, his pace quickening, the heat between you growing unbearable. His hand snaked around your throat, gripping it just tightly enough to make you aware of his control, his dominance over you absolute.

"You think I care about your sorry little words?" Sukuna growled, his voice low and dangerous. "You think an apology is going to stop me now?"

His grip on your neck tightened just enough to make your breath hitch, and you could feel your body responding, the ache between your legs growing more intense with every punishing thrust. His pace was faster now, the rhythm of his hips brutal, leaving you no time to catch your breath as he took you harder, faster.

Your body was on fire, each thrust pushing you further into a dizzying spiral of pleasure that made it impossible to think of anything but him. Every time you tried to form words, they were swallowed by gasps and cries of pleasure, your mind barely able to keep up with the sheer intensity of what Sukuna was doing to you.

"I’m sorry," you whimpered again, your voice breaking as he pounded into you, the force of his movements overwhelming every sense. "I… I won’t disobey again… I promise…"

Sukuna’s hand moved from your throat to your waist, pulling you back into him with a bruising grip as he sped up even more, the wet sound of your bodies crashing together filling the air. His breathing was ragged now, and you could feel the heat of his skin against yours, the way his body enveloped you, completely dominating you.

"Is that so?" he snarled, his voice thick with satisfaction as he drove into you harder. "You’re sorry now… but it’s too late for that."

His hips slammed into yours with a ferocity that made your legs shake, your entire body trembling as he took you mercilessly. You could barely keep yourself upright, every muscle in your body tensing with the effort of staying grounded under the relentless onslaught of his thrusts, your pussy welcoming him in with every movement of his cock, it was embarrassing how much your body betrayed you.

"I’ll make sure you remember this," he growled, his breath hot against your skin as his pace became almost punishing. "Next time you think about disobeying me, you’ll remember exactly what happens."

Sukuna's grip tightened as he drove into you with merciless abandon, his pace unrelenting as your body quaked beneath him. The overwhelming sensation was pushing you closer and closer to the edge, your muscles tensing in anticipation of release. But just as you felt that familiar surge of pleasure coil tighter, ready to snap, Sukuna suddenly pulled back, leaving you teetering on the brink, your pussy clenching around nothing at the loss.

Your breath hitched, a desperate whimper escaping your lips as the pleasure was ripped away from you. He slowed his movements, rolling his hips with an agonisingly deliberate pace, teasing you with just enough sensation to keep you trembling but never enough to send you over.

"S-Sukuna," you gasped, your voice trembling with need, your body aching for the release that had been so cruelly denied. "Please... please, I—"

He cut you off with a low, mocking laugh, his fingers digging into your hips as he held you still, his chest pressed against your back. The heat of his body was suffocating, his presence overwhelming as he leaned down to speak directly into your ear.

"You really think you deserve to come after all that?" he murmured, his voice dripping with amusement. "After the way you acted? You don’t get to have what you want."

You whimpered again, your body trembling with frustration as Sukuna slowed his thrusts to a maddening crawl, each movement deliberate, calculated to keep you on edge without ever granting you the release you so desperately craved.

His hands moved from your hips to your thighs, spreading you wider as he pushed his cock deeper inside, filling you completely with slow, torturous strokes. Your breath came in shallow gasps, every nerve in your body strung tight with anticipation, but no matter how hard you tried to chase that elusive climax, Sukuna remained in control.

"I’m the one who decides when you get to come," he growled, his voice dark and commanding. "And you haven’t earned it today."

He increased the pace only slightly, enough to send another wave of pleasure through you, but still holding you just at the edge of satisfaction. You could feel him nearing his own release, his breathing becoming heavier, his thrusts more forceful, but even as his body tensed with his impending climax, he refused to let you finish.

"Look at you," he mocked, his voice filled with dark amusement. "Begging for something you’re not even worthy of."

Sukuna’s rhythm grew faster, his hips snapping into you with an intensity that sent you reeling. The heat between your bodies built to a fever pitch, his ragged breaths mingling with your gasps as you clung to the edge of control. You could feel yourself spiralling toward the brink of release, your entire body tensing, desperate to fall over that edge. But just as the pleasure began to crest, Sukuna let out a low, guttural growl, his thrusts becoming erratic as he neared his peak.

With one last deep thrust, he groaned, his body stilling as he spilled into you, his grip on your hips tightening with possessive force. His cum shot out, thick streams of white painting your walls, a neverending load it felt like with how prolonged it was. His breath came in hot, uneven pants against your skin, his chest rising and falling rapidly as he rode out his climax. You could feel the heat of him inside you, the weight of his release, but the moment your own release seemed within reach, Sukuna stopped moving completely.

You whimpered, the need still burning fiercely in your core, your body quaking with the intensity of being left teetering on the edge. You tried to grind against him, desperate for that final push, but his hands clamped down on your hips, holding you in place. The realisation hit you hard — he really wasn’t going to let you finish.

"Sukuna... please," you gasped, your voice strained, body trembling with unfulfilled need. "I-I need to—"

He chuckled darkly, pulling back just enough to look down at you, a smug grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. "Oh, you thought I’d change my mind?" His voice was thick with amusement, utterly unapologetic. "Not this time."

You moaned in frustration, your body still pulsing with the aftershocks of his rough pace, the pleasure so close yet just out of reach. Sukuna’s grip on your hips remained firm as he leaned down, his breath hot against your ear.

"You're lucky I let you have this much," he growled, the tone of his voice sending shivers down your spine. "Maybe next time you’ll think twice before misbehaving."

He pulled out slowly, his absence leaving you feeling unbearably empty, your body still throbbing with unsatisfied need. He watched you squirm beneath him, clearly revelling in your frustration, a twisted smile playing on his lips.

Sukuna’s dark chuckle echoed in the room as he loomed over you, watching the frustration play across your features. You could feel your body trembling with the intensity of everything left unresolved, a quiet whine escaping your throat as you tried, one last time, to reach for him. But before you could make any move, he shifted, his hand coming to rest atop your head.

The touch was shockingly gentle, a contrast to the roughness you’d just endured, as he stroked your hair almost… fondly. You glanced up at him, confusion flickering across your face, but Sukuna’s expression was one of twisted amusement.

"Don’t pout," he murmured, still smirking as he patted your head in that condescending way. "I’m not so heartless as to leave you completely unsatisfied." His voice dripped with mockery, but there was an underlying promise there—something dark and teasing.

You bit your lip, your heart still racing, unsure what he meant. Did he intend to give you an orgasm after all? Yet instead of returning his hands to your body, he let them slide away, leaving you even more bewildered.

With a casual shrug, Sukuna stood, towering over you, clearly savouring the sight of your needy, trembling form sprawled before him. As he moved toward the door, you caught his last remark.

"I’ll let you sleep in my chambers tonight," he tossed over his shoulder, his tone almost dismissive. "Consider that a kindness."

His words hung in the air, thick with his typical arrogance. Sleeping in his chambers meant you’d be close, within reach of him, and perhaps he’d allow more later. But it also meant the control still belonged to him, and you would have to wait, to endure.

He looked back at you once more, that cruel, satisfied grin still etched on his face. "See? I’m not entirely heartless," he teased, the sarcasm in his voice unmistakable.

Then, without another word, he turned and walked out, leaving you to gather yourself, the heat of your desire still thrumming in your veins. His presence lingered even after he was gone, the promise of what might come next hanging over you like a heavy, tantalising shadow.

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[hoshifighting]

famous poker player ! jeonghan x famous poker player ! reader

— Synopsis: Jeonghan, the untouchable poker legend, meets his match in you, that spent years watching his every move, studying his poker game, waiting for the perfect moment to strike, shattering his ego in and out of the bedroom. As you leave him wrecked and humiliated, he’s left questioning everything he thought he knew. The game’s no longer just about cards. — WC: 8.9k — WARNINGS: angst, smut, manipulation, gambling, alcohol consumption, mentions of cheating, ego destruction, heartbreak (reader uses jeonghan's past heartbreak as a manipulation to win), rough sex, dirty talk, dom!reader + sub!jeonghan (his first time being a sub), power play, chocking, hair pulling, gagging, humiliation, degradation, oral (f. receiving), masturbation (m. receiving), body fluids (cum), cock riding, overstimulation, nipple play, jeonghan sucks your fingers and etc.

Jeonghan leaned back in his chair, fingers lazily curling around his glass of whiskey. He couldn’t help but scoff when the whispers about some new poker prodigy reached his ears. His lips twisted into a smirk, eyes rolling as he tipped the glass toward his mouth. 

Really? Better than him? That’s what they were saying?

 He glanced around his lavish apartment, the expensive art on the walls, the sleek black car parked downstairs, and the designer clothes hanging in his walk-in closet. Who the hell was this person, thinking they could come into his world and steal his crown?

He heard how you took the big names down one by one, storming through the tables like a tornado. Maybe they had a point. But better than him? He wasn’t convinced.

As he buttoned up his black shirt, leaving the top half undone, he thought about what they said. He liked his shirts that way, just enough to show off his chest, always a little provocative without trying too hard. The sunglasses perched on top of his head held back his long hair, and a Rolex gleamed on his wrist. He liked to dress like this—clean, sharp, unbothered.

The whiskey burned his lips as he sipped, plumping them slightly from the alcohol. His head tilted back, gaze narrowing at the ceiling before pushing out a breath. So, this sensation was gonna sit at his table tonight. Fine. He wanted to see what all the fuss was about. He set the glass down and made his way to the poker room.

The place smelled of money and desperation, just the way he liked it.

— // —

You knew the moment you stepped into the room, all eyes would be on you. It wasn’t the dress, although it clung to your figure in a way that left little to the imagination despite its attempt at being ‘discreet.’ It wasn’t even the necklace, though anyone who knew their jewelry could tell the diamond hanging from it was worth a small fortune. No, it was the fact that you walked in with a purpose. Like you owned the damn room, because in your mind, you already did.

You’d been watching Jeonghan for a long time, standing in the shadows while your father pointed out the way he played—strategic, patient, never letting emotion cloud his judgment. You’d learned from the best. And now you were here to take it all. Just like he did, over and over again, watching others lose everything while he walked away with the spoils.

The poker room buzzed with energy as you made your entrance, the soft click of your heels barely audible over the hum of conversation and the clinking of glasses. And there he was, Jeonghan, sitting at the table with that lazy confidence that made him so irritatingly attractive. Black shirt half-buttoned, a glass of whiskey hanging from his fingers, his lips soft and plump from the drink. Sunglasses held his long hair back, giving him that laid-back, don’t-give-a-shit aura.

The dealer froze, eyes flicking between you and the table. “We’re missing one,” she announced.

Jeonghan’s eyes finally darted your way, trailing up your form with a slow, deliberate sweep. You could practically feel his curiosity, maybe even a hint of amusement. You gave him a brief glance, then turned your attention to the chair that was waiting for you.

“Well,” Jeonghan drawled, “Guess we’re starting now.”

You slid into the chair, ignoring the stares from around the table. Emotion? Distraction? None of it touched you. You had one focus. Winning.

The game started slow, with each player eyeing the table as if the cards themselves could tell secrets. You already knew what Jeonghan was up to; you’d seen it a thousand times before. He was the type to play people, not just cards. He watched everyone, but he never let on how much he was paying attention. Those sharp eyes darting from one player to the next.

You glanced at the woman on the other side of the table, her mirrored glasses catching the shady light. Amateurs. You could see her cards in the reflection—oblivious, reckless. A snort almost left your lips, but you held it back. Instead, your brows furrowed, unable to comprehend how someone could be that careless.

Jeonghan noticed too. His eyes flicked toward the woman, then shifted back to you. He caught the disgust on your face and had to suppress a laugh, a short breath escaping his nose. It was barely noticeable, but you didn’t miss it.

That’s how he played—small reactions, little observations. He wasn’t just studying the cards. He was reading the room. But that’s where most people faltered. Poker wasn’t just about reading your opponent; it was about mastering yourself. Turning off every feeling, every twitch of emotion. You weren’t here to feel. You were here to win. And to win, you had to make choices that seemed heartless to everyone else. But for you, it was all part of the plan.

Jeonghan, on the other hand, was searching for something. His eyes scanned your face, looking for any sign, any crack in your composure. But there was nothing. Your expression was stone-cold, eyes devoid of the shine he’d seen in others. Where most people’s emotions played out on their faces—joy, fear, anger—you gave him nothing. Your gaze was lifeless, almost opaque, like you weren’t really there. You were present, but distant, your mind somewhere else entirely.

And for once, he couldn’t figure someone out.

In poker, most people give themselves away without even realizing it. The way their breath catches when they get a good hand, or how their fingers tap when they’re bluffing. Some people can’t hide a damn thing, spilling their favorite music, their past traumas, their entire soul with a single look. But you? Jeonghan couldn’t even tell if you were a real person sitting across from him. You were like a ghost—untouchable, unreadable.

He detested that.

Still, he didn’t let it show. He leaned back in his chair, eyes narrowing as he raised the stakes. His movements were plotted, but you could tell his focus had shifted. He was no longer playing to win. He was playing to figure you out. Watching the way your fingers hovered over the chips, how you folded your cards with meticulous, emotionless care.

You saw it. The way he tried to bait you. He’d push, then pull back, testing the waters, throwing small bluffs, but never fully committing. That was his game—slow manipulation, never giving you too much, always keeping you on your toes.

But you’d already seen it. You’d watched him do it time and time again. You weren’t fooled by the charm, the calculated nonchalance. You knew exactly what he was trying to do. He wanted to get inside your head, unravel whatever mystery he thought you were hiding.

The game stretched on, cards dealt, chips thrown in. But as the final hands approached, something strange happened. Neither of you was winning.

Jeonghan was too wrapped up in his obsession with breaking you down, and you? You were too focused on figuring out his game—confirming every theory you’d ever had about how he played. His tells, his habits, the way his fingers always lingered a second too long on his cards when he was bluffing. You knew him. Inside and out.

But that didn’t help you win. Not tonight.

The dealer called the game. Neither of you took the pot.

Jeonghan leaned back in his chair, a slow, lazy smirk curling on his lips. “Guess we’ll have to do this again sometime,” he said, though you could tell he wasn’t as calm as he wanted to appear.

You just looked at him, eyes still flat, still unreadable. “Maybe,” you replied, voice cold and detached. “But next time, focus on the cards.”

For a moment, he just stared at you, trying one last time to peel back the layers. But he couldn’t.

You are going to be a pain in his neck. 

[...]

Jeonghan had been searching for you everywhere—tax records, statements, social media, anything that could give him a glimpse into who you were outside the poker room. But nothing. 

And the irony of it all? You were right under his nose, standing behind his back in the past, unnoticed, more times than he could count. Just another face in the crowd, a "normal" girl, blending into the background while making small talk with the people who mattered. Someone important, someone worth impressing—but not you, not in his eyes. He never paid enough attention to connect the dots.

That was Jeonghan’s weakness. He could size up the players at the table, but in the real world? He let things slip. You remembered when you caught him, the moment he faltered at the table—a time he lacked patience, maybe it was the alcohol, maybe he was too sure of himself, but his fingers twitched when he was about to bluff too big. You’d hissed under your breath, watching him give himself away with that tiny tell. He was good, no doubt, but even the best had cracks.

There was also that time, years ago, when he had a girl by his side. A classic, picture-perfect trophy—long legs, expensive clothes, hair and nails done like she was auditioning for a role in some gangster flick. She was the stereotypical “pimp’s wife,” hanging off Jeonghan’s arm while he gazed at her with those stupid, love-drunk eyes. 

You had rolled your eyes so hard they almost got stuck. 

The entire casino buzzed with rumors about her—the way she’d swindled money under his nose, how she was there for the money, for the benefits. And Jeonghan? He didn’t even see it coming. Too wrapped up in the fantasy, too blind to notice how she played him. Eventually, she broke his heart in the most humiliating way possible, leaving him behind with nothing but those pathetic rumors, the gossip about his downfall trailing after him like perfume.

Tonight, though, things were different. This game wasn’t in the usual place. No, it was on a luxury cruise, far outside any regulations, outside the safety of controlled territory. Here, anything could happen, and everything was allowed. You made sure your presence was felt before you even sat down. A bigger diamond hung around your neck tonight, matching the heavy stones on your earrings and the glint of the ring on your finger. It was subtle, but anyone with half a brain could tell what you were signaling—wealth, power, danger. A quiet boast that you could bury anyone at this table if you wanted to.

As you sat down, you noticed the last game’s winner strategically choosing the seat next to yours, clearly hoping to ride the wave of luck or maybe get a read on you. A smile tugged at your lips. Not today, ma boy. He thought he had an advantage? Not even close. You glanced at him, knowing full well that every smile you gave, every tiny reaction, was another move in the game. But you were always three steps ahead of them all.

Across from you sat Jeonghan, his gaze as slutty as ever, eyes dragging over you with zero shame. You knew that look—he wasn’t even trying to hide his interest. But you didn’t bite. You didn’t act on impulse, never did. Every move you made was calculated, every risk weighed and measured long before you stepped into this room. That’s how you won. While everyone else was still trying to figure out the rules, you’d already written your own.

The game started, tension building as the cards hit the table. You could feel Jeonghan’s eyes on you, trying to catch something, anything, but you gave him nothing. He was good, but you were better, already mapping out his play. You watched his fingers, the way they tapped against his chips when he was thinking. 

But what really caught your attention was the way he murmured under his breath, almost absentmindedly, when he was sizing up his opponents. It was like he was narrating his own game, whispering little clues while doing the opposite of what he wanted people to think.

He was messing with their heads, giving them false signals while slipping in moves they didn’t expect. You could see the way the other players were starting to falter, misreading his intentions, stumbling over their decisions as Jeonghan fed them just enough to confuse them.

But you weren’t fooled.

You knew his game too well, knew the way he liked to play with people’s minds. He was trying to throw you off, make you second-guess yourself. But every look, every murmur, every bluff was something you had already anticipated.

Jeonghan was talking too much.

He always did this when he was trying to manipulate people—narrating his moves, acting like it was just him thinking out loud. But tonight, it was getting under your skin in a way that made you want to roll your eyes so hard it hurt. Every word that spilled from his mouth, every cocky smirk, every calculated glance was just noise. Too much noise.

And you were done with it.

So, with a calmness that could make ice seem warm, you leaned back in your chair, eyes narrowing as you shuffled your chips between your fingers. Then, with a voice that cut through the air like a knife, you asked, “Mr. Yoon… how’s your ex?”

You didn’t miss the way the room collectively held its breath. Players around the table stilled, the soft murmurs from the crowd fading into a stunned silence. People thought it was just a curious, innocent question, maybe a playful jab at his famous love life. They didn’t know the weight of it, the way it pierced straight into him.

But he knew.

You had crossed a line. A very delicate one. And you did it with a smile, like it was nothing. Like stepping over the line was as easy as stepping over a crack in the sidewalk. And that’s what set it off.

Jeonghan froze, his hand hovering over his cards. For a moment, he didn’t move, didn’t speak. His mouth opened slightly, but no words came out. It was as if your question had punched the air right out of his lungs. His cool, confident conduct cracked, just for a second, but enough for you to see the split.

That girlfriend. The one who crushed his heart into dust and didn’t even look back. She wasn’t just a sore subject—she was the wound he never let anyone touch. And you? You didn’t just touch it. You pressed down hard, twisting the knife until the pain reflected in his eyes.

“She… uh,” he stammered, trying to regain his footing, fingers twitching around his cards. His face didn’t show much at first—Jeonghan was too practiced for that. But it was in his hands. The way they fumbled for his chips, the way his thumb nervously tapped against the table.

His mind was unraveling, and you watched it happen in real time. The words you’d thrown at him weren’t just a blow—they were a ticking time bomb, going off in his head over and over again. He couldn’t focus. Couldn’t pull himself back together fast enough. You’d cracked something in him, and now all those emotions he usually buried deep were flooding to the surface.

"She’s good," he finally managed to mumble, forcing a shrug, his attempt at brushing it off. But it was too late. He had faltered, and everyone saw it.

You smiled, your eyes cold and sharp, watching as he tried to hide behind that stupid grin of his. But the damage was done. You had used his own tactics against him—poking and prodding at the weaknesses until he couldn’t help but crumble. Only this time, it was worse. He wasn’t used to being on the receiving end of this kind of mind game.

Jeonghan tried to refocus, pulling his attention back to the cards. But his hands were shaking now, and he made a mistake. He matched a bet he shouldn’t have. His stack of chips was dwindling, and everyone at the table could see it.

You caught the twitch in his fingers when he was about to bluff, the way his eyes darted to the side, just for a split second. He wasn’t even aware he was doing it, but you were. You watched every tiny movement, every subtle tell he gave away as the game went on. He was unraveling, and you were loving every second of it.

As the rounds continued, his frustration became more and more apparent. His jaw clenched, his mouth pressed into a thin line, and his usual smooth talk started to falter. His voice was quieter now, unsure. Every time he looked at his cards, you could see the doubt in his eyes. He was playing on autopilot, too distracted by the question still gnawing at his brain.

How’s your ex?

The question echoed in his mind, louder than the crowd, louder than the sound of the cards being dealt. It was a constant hum, a reminder of his failure, both in love and in the game. The more he thought about it, the more mistakes he made. He couldn’t shake it, couldn’t compartmentalize the way he usually did. You’d crawled under his skin, and now he was lost in his own head.

The more uncomfortable he became, the more the game tilted in your favor.

And then, it happened. His final misstep. Jeonghan threw in all his chips on a hand that he was convinced would win, but his bluff was too obvious, too desperate. You saw it from a mile away. With a slow, deliberate smirk, you laid your cards on the table.

Straight flush.

The room gasped. Jeonghan’s face went white, his jaw literally dropping as he stared at the cards in disbelief. His mouth hung open, but no words came out. His brain was still trying to catch up, still reeling from the question that had taken him out of the game long before the cards were even dealt.

You leaned forward, your smile turning into something sharper, more vicious as you pulled the massive pile of chips toward you, raking them in with your arms. “Better luck next time,” you said.

Jeonghan just sat there, stunned, watching as you claimed victory without even breaking a sweat. He wasn’t used to losing, especially not like this. Not when someone used his tactics and twisted them until they cut deeper than he ever intended. He tried to say something, anything, but all he could do was stare at you, his mind still spinning, still trying to figure out where it all went wrong.

But you already knew. You’d gotten inside his head, turned the tables on him, and left him gutted, just like his ex had done.

Jeonghan couldn’t stop. After that first loss, he played again. Then another game. And another. Each one worse than the last. Every time, he thought he could regain control, pull himself together, get back into his rhythm—but no. He was spiraling, his thoughts spinning out of control. His hands trembled with every bet, his bluffs grew weaker, and his confidence bled out with every chip that slipped through his fingers.

At one point, his friend—a familiar face, someone who’d watched him dominate this scene for years—touched his shoulder, giving him a sharp look. “Stop, Jeonghan. You’ve lost enough.”

But he couldn’t stop. He needed to win something. He needed to claw back even a shred of his dignity, anything to remind himself he was still Jeonghan, the legend. But the more he tried, the deeper he dug his own grave. Every hand was a humiliation.

By the time the final round ended, Jeonghan wasn’t even sitting anymore. He stood, arms crossed, shoulders tense as he watched the game from the side, a silent observer. He didn’t need to say it—the shame on his face was clear enough. He never had to stand and watch. It was beneath him. But tonight, he was left with no choice, stripped of everything he had worked for.

And you? You rose from your seat like it was nothing, your body language as casual as if you had just finished a friendly round at a small-stakes table. You didn’t even bother to look at him, didn’t care about the people whispering around you, the ones who were still buzzing over the fact that you had won every round. You walked out like the night didn’t matter. Like it was just another game.

For Jeonghan, though, it was devastating. His ego lay shattered, a million pieces scattered on the floor. The heartbreak from his ex? That pain had dulled over time. But you had ripped open that old wound, making it raw again, bringing back every piece of humiliation he had tried to bury. He felt himself fumbling, trying to grasp something solid, but everything was slipping through his fingers.

And then he saw you.

Like some kind of devil on his shoulder, you were there, watching him as you stood by the bar. You didn’t even need to say a word. The sight of you—so calm, so unbothered—made him feel sick. You ordered a drink, took it in hand, and with a quiet smirk on your lips, you started walking towards your room.

Jeonghan couldn’t let it go.

His feet moved before his brain even caught up. He followed you, his pulse pounding in his ears, that familiar swagger of his long gone. He didn’t even know what he wanted from you—answers, confrontation, something—but all he knew was that he needed to speak to you.

You walked into your room like you knew he’d be behind you, the door clicking shut behind him as he entered. There you were, standing by the window, holding your drink like nothing had happened, like you hadn’t just ripped his ego to shreds in front of everyone.

Jeonghan's voice was low, strained, almost shaky. “What the hell was that?”

You turned, eyes cold, that same infuriating smile tugging at the corners of your lips. “What do you mean?” you asked, sipping your drink slowly.

“Don’t play dumb with me,” he snapped, stepping closer, his fingers curling into fists at his sides. “You knew exactly what you were doing, bringing her up like that.”

You shrugged, unfazed, as if his anger meant nothing to you. “It was just a question.”

“Bullshit.” His voice cracked. “You—you went there on purpose. You knew it would mess with me, and you did it anyway.”

Another sip. Another smile. You didn’t even blink as you watched him unrave. “Isn’t that what you do? Get inside people’s heads? Push their buttons until they break?” You leaned against the window, eyes gleaming with delight as you spoke. “I thought you’d appreciate the effort.”

Jeonghan let out a bitter laugh, shaking his head. “This was different. You crossed a line.”

You tilted your head, the smile widening. “Oh? And what line is that, Jeonghan? The one where you keep your emotions locked up and pretend they don’t exist? Or the one where you think you’re untouchable?”

He stared at you, his chest rising and falling with shallow breaths. There was a heaviness in the atmosphere between you two, viscous with stress—anger, yes, but something else too. Something he didn’t want to admit was there. His eyes flicked to your lips for a split second, before he forced himself to look away.

“You don’t get it,” he muttered, his voice quieter now. “That wasn’t just about the game.”

You raised an eyebrow, sipping your drink again, taking your time. “No, Jeonghan. I get it more than you think.”

His frustration spiked, fingers twitching at his sides as he fought to keep his voice steady. “What is this? Huh?” He took a step closer, his body tense, looming over you. “What do you want from me?”

You didn’t back down, didn’t flinch. If anything, you seemed to enjoy the way he was coming undone in front of you. “Nothing,” you said, your voice soft. “That’s the problem, isn’t it? You want to matter, you want me to care, but you don’t. You’re just… there.”

His jaw clenched, eyes narrowing as the words hit him like a punch to the gut. “You’re full of shit.”

“Maybe,” you said with a light chuckle, finishing your drink and placing the empty glass on the table beside you. “But you’re here, Jeonghan. Following me, like some lost puppy, hoping for… what? Closure? An apology?”

He opened his mouth to speak, but you cut him off, stepping closer, your voice dropping to a whisper. “You wanted to get inside my head, Jeonghan. But look at you. You’re the one who’s a mess. You’re the one who’s crumbling.”

You could see it in his eyes—the conflict, the way he was battling with himself. The fury, the frustration, the desperation. And underneath all of that? The craving. The way his gaze flickered to your lips again, the way his breathing hitched every time you moved just a little closer.

But you stayed cold, unfeeling, watching him with that same smirk on your face, enjoying every second of his discomfort.

“Go on,” you whispered. “Tell me how much you hate me. How much I’ve fucked with your head. Tell me I’m the problem.”

Jeonghan's lips parted, but no words came out. He was shaking with rage, with something else, his hands twitching as if he wanted to grab you, shake you, do something. But he didn’t.

Because he couldn’t.

Because you had won. Again.

But through it all, there was one that kept circling back to the same question:

Who the hell are you?

“I don’t even know you,” he spat, his voice cracking. “I don’t know who you are, where you came from, or why the fuck you’re doing this to me.”

You raised an eyebrow, that infuriating smirk still playing on your lips. “Don’t you, though?” Your voice was calm, icy, as if his unraveling in front of you was nothing more than a spectacle for your amusement.

“No.” He shook his head, stepping closer, his face inches from yours now. “I don’t. You—” His words stumbled, caught in the whirlwind of emotions he couldn’t make sense of. “You show up out of nowhere, tear me apart in front of everyone, and then act like I’m supposed to—” His voice wavered, almost pleading. “I don’t even know your fucking name.”

You chuckled, a low sound that made him shiver. “That’s the thing with you, Jeonghan. You don’t know anyone, really. Not unless it benefits you. You see people as pawns, tools to get what you want. All these years, you’ve played your little game, always one step ahead of everyone else. But you never bothered to look around, did you? Never noticed the people who were watching you.”

His brows furrowed, confusion flickering in his eyes. “What the hell are you talking about?”

You leaned in just enough that your breath brushed his skin. “I was always there, Jeonghan. Watching. Learning. I’ve seen you win, lose, fake that stupid smile when things don’t go your way.” Your eyes darkened, voice dropping as your lips curled into a mocking smile. “But you? You never noticed me. Not once.”

Jeonghan’s breath hitched as your words sank in. His mind raced, trying to piece together fragments of memories, moments, faces in the background. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t place you. “You’re lying,” he said, his voice shaking, though he wasn’t even sure who he was trying to convince anymore.

“I’m not.” Your voice was cold, cutting through his defenses with ease. “You were too wrapped up in your own world to notice anyone who didn’t directly serve you. That’s your problem, Jeonghan. You think the world revolves around you, and anyone outside your little bubble? They don’t exist. You never cared to look at anyone unless they were a threat to you. Unless they had something you wanted.”

His jaw clenched, anger flashing in his eyes. “You don’t know a damn thing about me.”

“I know enough.” You stepped closer, your bodies barely an inch apart now. He could feel the heat radiating off you, the way your words slipped under his skin, pulling at every insecurity he had buried deep. “I know how you ignored the signs when your ex was using you. How you let her walk all over you because you were too blind to see her for what she really was. I know how you couldn’t keep your emotions in check tonight, how I got into your head so easily because you’re weak.”

Jeonghan’s breath came out in shallow bursts, his chest heaving with each one. He was crumbling, and he knew it. But he couldn’t stop himself from spiraling, not with the way you were tearing him apart piece by piece. “Shut up,” he whispered, voice barely audible—as if he was afraid of how much truth was in your words.

You didn’t stop. You pressed on, your voice softer now, but no less cutting. “That’s why you don’t remember me. Because I didn’t matter to you. Because I wasn’t something you could use.”

Jeonghan's gaze flickered to your lips, the pressure between you two thickening with every word that passed. He wanted to hate you. He wanted to scream at you, push you away, do anything to get you out of his head. But he couldn’t. Instead, he found himself leaning in closer, drawn to the coldness in your eyes, the way you seemed to see right through him.

“And now?” he muttered, his voice hoarse, almost a growl. “What do you want now?”

You tilted your head, a wicked gleam in your eyes as you smiled, your voice dripping with condescension. “I already got what I wanted.” You reached up, your fingers ghosting along the side of his face, barely touching him, yet it sent a shock through his entire body. “You. Like this. Completely wrecked. Fucked, because of me.”

His breath hitched, and before he could think, his hands shot up to grip your waist, pulling you flush against him. It was a desperate, reckless move, one born out of frustration, anger, and something else he didn’t want to name. But you didn’t flinch. You didn’t pull away.

Instead, you smirked up at him, your eyes glinting with something dark, and whispered, “You’re so predictable.”

“Shut up,” Jeonghan hissed again, but this time, his voice was strained, thick with something deeper than just anger. His fingers tightened around your waist, holding you in place as if he was afraid you’d slip away if he let go. He hated how much power you had over him, how every word out of your mouth only made him want you more.

You raised an eyebrow, that same infuriating smile still plastered on your face. “Make me.”

That was all it took for him to snap.

And then, he kissed you like he was trying to take back control, like he needed to prove something—to himself, to you, to anyone watching. But deep down, he knew it was a losing battle. Because you weren’t kissing him back with desperation. No, you kissed him like you had already won and this was just another part of the game.

His hands roamed your body, fingers digging into your skin as if he needed to ground himself, to feel something real in this moment. But even as he kissed you, even as he lost himself in the heat of the moment, that nagging thought stayed at the back of his mind.

You were still in control.

And that thought only made him kiss you harder, more fiercely, like he could erase it if he just tried harder.

“You’ll never figure me out,” you murmured against his lips, a smile tugging at the corners of your mouth. “And that’s why you’ll always lose.”

He hated you. He wanted you. And he couldn’t tell which feeling was stronger.

His hand tightened in your hair, fingers tangling in the strands as he yanked your head back hard. The hurried pull sent a harsh jolt of pain through your scalp, but instead of a wince, what came out of your mouth was a quiet, throaty laugh. “You—such a bitch,” he growled, but you could see the flicker of disbelief in his eyes, watching you—fucking laughing at the pain.

The corner of your mouth curled up, lips parted as you let out a quiet moan. “You think that hurts?” you taunted, maybe challenging. “Do it harder.”

Jeonghan’s grip tightened, a growl thundering from his chest as he yanked even harder, and this time your head jerked back, the pain shooting through you in a way that only made you smile wider. The way he watched you, eyes wide, mouth salivating, had you lit up inside.

His lips crashed down on yours again, rough and biting, teeth dragging across your bottom lip as if trying to draw blood. You hissed into his mouth, but he didn’t let up, kissing you harder.

 But this wasn’t just some kiss. It was a battle, and he was losing.

Your hands gripped the back of his neck, nails digging in as you pulled him closer, deepening the kiss, swallowing the moan that escaped his throat. When he bit down hard on your lip, you cursed at him.

“Fucking do it right,” you spat between heavy breaths. “Or don’t do it at all.”

Jeonghan’s eyes dimmed, his jaw clenching as he pushed you back against the nearest surface—a column that was inside the room. His free hand sliding down to your thigh, roughly pulling it up to hook around his waist. “You think you can just order me around, huh?” By his tone… Yes, you think. 

You smirked, breathless but still in control. “I know I can.”

He didn’t waste any more words. His lips moved to your neck, biting down hard enough to leave a mark, and you hissed, arching against him. His hand slid down between your legs, fingers brushing against the edge of your panties before yanking them aside, not giving a single fuck about being gentle.

“Is this what you wanted?” he growled, his lips brushing against your ear as his fingers slid over your wetness, the folds doing a warm caress on his fingers, teasing you just enough to make your breath hitch. “Tell me.”

You didn’t answer him, but your body betrayed you, hips pushing toward his hand, craving more. He noticed, of course, because he always did. But this time, he wasn’t the one in control, and he knew it.

“Say it,” he demanded, his voice rough, almost strained as his fingers barely grazed over you, enough to drive you insane but not enough to satisfy.

You let out a breathless laugh, your eyes meeting his, still cold but twinkling with fun. “I want you to shut the fuck up and make yourself useful.”

That did it. Jeonghan dropped to his knees, yanking your dress up as he settled between your legs, not wasting any time. His fingers dug into your thighs, spreading them as his mouth hovered just above your heat. His breath ghosted over your skin, and you could feel the tension in him, feel how much he wanted this, but you weren’t about to give him the satisfaction of asking.

He pressed a hard, open-mouthed kiss just above your clit, his teeth grazing your skin before he moved lower, his tongue flicking out just enough to make you gasp. “Still want me to shut up?” he murmured against you, his voice full of smug.

But before you could answer, his mouth was on you, and any retort you had died in your throat. His tongue was merciless, moving over you making your legs tremble. You bit down hard on your lip, trying to suppress the sounds threatening to escape, but it was impossible. A low moan tore from your lips as his mouth worked you over, his tongue circling your clit before sucking it into his mouth with just the right amount of force.

Your hand instinctively shot to his hair, gripping it tight as you tried to control your trembling legs. But he wasn’t slowing down. His tongue moved faster, harder, sending wave after wave of pleasure through you until your whole body was quivering.

He bit down, just enough to make you hiss, your nails digging into his scalp as you cursed him under your breath. “Fuck—” you gasped, body arching toward him. “Don’t stop.”

Jeonghan didn’t need to be told twice. His hands gripped your thighs harder, holding you in place as his tongue moved faster. Every flick, every swirl was straightforward, designed to make you lose the command. And you were, piece by piece. The cold, detached front you’d kept up was slipping, crumbling under the warmth of his mouth, the way he devoured you like it was the only thing that mattered.

You could feel it, the edge approaching fast, and you let out a low moan, your hips moving against his face as you chased it. “Fucking hell, Jeonghan—” you gasped, your voice leaving like a whisper as the orgasm hit you hard. Your body tensed, legs trembling as the orgasm ripped through you, leaving you breathless, your mind blank except for the overstimulating sensation of his mouth still on you.

He didn’t stop, didn’t let up until your body finally relaxed against him, spent and slaked. Only then did he pull back, his lips swollen and slippery with your arousal, his eyes meeting yours with triumph

You looked down at him, chest still heaving, but your smirk was back in full force. “You slacked at the table tonight, Jeonghan.” The words rolled off your tongue with conscious slowness, each one cutting him just a little deeper. “But down there… between my legs? You were such a good boy.”

He froze, still so close to your cunt. You could feel and see his breath hitch at your words, his whole body tensing, and that only made your smirk grow wider. As you lower down, you let your fingers lazily trail down his chest, feeling the way his muscles twitched under your touch.

“You know,” you continued, voice leaking with mock sweetness, “maybe if you put as much effort into the game as you do into this,” your hand moved lower, brushing over the waistband of his pants, “you wouldn’t have lost everything tonight.”

His face faltered for a split second, the confidence in his eyes flickering as he processed your words. You could see his jaw clench, his pride taking the hit. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me.” You chuckled softly, your hand slipping further down, squeezing the bulge in his pants, feeling the tension there. “Look at you,” you whispered, “so obedient when it counts. Such a good boy.”

His lips parted, his breath coming out in shallow bursts, but he still didn’t say anything.

“Tell me,” you continued, eyes glinting as you applied a little more pressure, “was it worth it? Throwing away your pride at the table just so you could be on your knees for me?”

He swallowed hard, his hands twitching at his sides like he didn’t know whether to grab you or push you away. His ego was bruised—no, shattered—and here you were, rubbing salt into the wound, reminding him exactly how far he’d fallen.

Your hand tightens around Jeonghan's neck, your fingers pressing into the soft skin as he chokes, his breath cutting short. The sound that escapes him is desperate, needy, a cough that barely finds its way through the pressure you've applied. His body tenses, his muscles straining.

"Get up," you command.

He stumbles, one hand on the floor, the other grasping for something to steady himself as he rises to his feet, eyes lost, clouded over in a haze of confusion and submission that he’s trying so hard to fight. 

Your grip on his throat loosens just enough for him to take in a sharp breath, but you don’t give him much relief. Instead, your fingers trail from his neck to his chin, tipping his face up so his eyes meet yours. His lips part instinctively, searching for air, but you take that as an invitation, sliding two fingers past them, pushing into his mouth without warning.

His eyes widen in shock, but he doesn’t pull away. Instead, his lips wrap around your fingers, mouth warm and wet as he takes them in, his breath coming in short, shaky bursts through his nose.

"Suck," you command, voice sharp, leaving no room for hesitation.

He complies, but it's tentative, unsure, his tongue brushing over your fingers but lacking the enthusiasm you expect. You press your fingers deeper, feeling the resistance in his throat as he gags, eyes watering slightly. 

“Do it right,” you growl, eyes narrowing as you press harder into his mouth, your fingers curling against his tongue. "Suck them right."

This time, he obeys. His lips tighten around your fingers, and his head bobs forward slowly, drawing you deeper into his mouth as he begins to suck properly. His cheeks hollow out as his tongue swirls around your fingers, slick and wet, saliva coating your skin as he works. His eyes, though filled with defiance, are beginning to show something more desperate, more submissive.

Your smirk widens as you watch him, completely captivated by the sight of him on the edge of breaking. You can feel the heat building inside you, the wetness pooling between your legs as you watch him, his mouth obediently working over your fingers, his body betraying the fight he's trying to put up.

"Good boy," you praise as you feel him sucking harder, as if the praise makes him crave more.

With your other hand, you move to his belt, your fingers working swiftly to unbuckle it, the metal clinking as you pull it loose. His body stiffens, but he doesn’t stop sucking, not even when you move to his zipper, yanking it down in one quick, sharp movement. The fabric of his jeans parts, revealing the hard line of his cock straining against the black briefs beneath.

You press your wet fingers deeper into his mouth, pushing them to the back of his throat as you slip your other hand inside his jeans, gripping the base of his cock. The contrast of sensations makes him jolt—your fingers choking him, while the other hand wraps around him, stroking slowly.

He gags around your fingers, eyes wide as he looks up at you, and for a moment, you think he might pull away. But then he doesn’t. Instead, he adjusts, his throat contracting as he fights to keep sucking, his lips tight around your fingers as you press them deeper.

"That's it," you purr, your voice low and sultry, watching him struggle to keep up, to please you. "Take it all."

Your hand moves in rhythm with his sucking, your fingers wrapped around his cock, stroking him slowly, teasingly. He lets out a muffled moan, the sound vibrating around your fingers as his hips jerk forward slightly, desperate for more, but you keep the pace slow, torturous.

He’s trying so hard to hold onto his pride, to resist fully submitting, but you can feel the cracks widening, see the way his body reacts, how his mouth moves more eagerly over your fingers now, desperate to please. His cock twitches in your hand, and you can feel the tension building in him, the way he’s teetering on the edge of giving in completely.

You pull your fingers from his mouth with a wet pop, strings of saliva still connecting them as you smirk down at him. His lips part as he gasps for breath, his chest heaving. You use your now-wet fingers to stroke his cock, the slickness making each movement smoother, more intense.

"Look at you," you tease as you watch his hips buck into your hand, his body betraying him completely. "So fucking desperate."

Jeonghan’s eyes flutter shut for a moment, his breath coming in short, shallow bursts as he struggles to hold on, but you don’t stop. Your hand moves faster, stroking him with purpose now, your wet fingers sliding over his length.

“Open your eyes,” you command sharply, your grip tightening around him. “Look at me.”

He obeys, his eyes snapping open, wide and desperate, his lips parted as soft gasps and whimpers escape him. 

"Good boy," you murmur again, watching the way his cock twitches in response, how his breath catches in his throat. "Now, don’t stop until I tell you to."

Your hand moves faster, the slickness making each stroke more torturous. He lets out a broken moan, his hips jerking forward into your hand as his body trembles with the effort to hold back. 

"You’re gonna finish when I say," you whisper, your lips brushing against his ear as your hand moves faster, your grip tightening. “Not a second before.”

Jeonghan’s breath is ragged, his body shaking with the effort to obey.

Your grip on his cock tightens as you pull him closer, dragging him by his phallus, his body stumbling into yours with a strangled moan. His head falls onto your shoulder, his breath hot and ragged against your neck as his hand shoots out to grab your arm, desperate to steady himself—like you’re about to knock him out.

You guide him toward the bed. “Can’t even walk straight Jeonghan?”

He lets out a weak sound, something between a moan and a groan, as you push him onto the mattress, his back hitting the sheets. His eyes are glazed over, his chest rising and falling rapidly, his cock standing stiff and red, twitching. You smirk as you climb onto the bed, straddling him, your knees pressing into the mattress on either side of his hips.

You hover over him for a moment, savoring the sight of him laid out beneath you, completely at your mercy. His hands twitch as if he wants to touch you, but you pin them down with your knees, shaking your head with a wicked grin.

“Don’t even think about it,” you say. “You don’t get to touch until I say so.”

Jeonghan lets out a soft whimper, his lips parted as he struggles to control himself, his body aching for more. 

You reach down, grabbing the hem of his shirt and pulling it up, just enough to expose his chest. His skin is flushed, his nipples hard, and you let out a low chuckle as you pinch one between your fingers. He jerks beneath you, a strangled moan escaping his lips as his back arches slightly off the bed.

“Sensitive here too, hm?” you tease, giving his nipple another sharp pinch. His hips buck up into you, desperate for friction, but you press him back down with a firm hand on his chest, keeping him in place.

His breath is coming in short, shallow bursts, his cock twitching against your thigh as you tease him, dragging the moment out, savoring every second of his desperation.

Finally, you lift your hips, positioning yourself over him. You guide his cock to your entrance, lowering yourself just enough for his tip to slip inside, the stretch slow and torturous. He gasps, his hips jerking up instinctively, but you slam them back down with a firm grip on his waist.

“Don’t. Move,” you command, your voice sharp.

He bites his lip, his head falling back onto the pillow, chest heaving as you sink down onto him, inch by agonizing inch. The way he fills you completely, the feeling of him trembling beneath you as you take him in, slowly, savoring every second.

You stop halfway, smirking as you grind your hips in slow circles, teasing him with the promise of more. His eyes snap open, his lips parting in a desperate gasp as he looks up at you, pleading.

“Please,” he groans. “Please, I can’t… I need it.”

You chuckle softly, your fingers trailing down his chest, pinching his nipples again just to watch him squirm. Without warning, you slam down the rest of the way, taking him fully inside you. His mouth falls open in a silent scream, his body jerking beneath you as the pleasure hits him all at once. You bite your lip, your own breath catching as the sensation washes over you, the fullness, the stretch, the way his cock throbs inside you.

You start moving, riding him hard and fast, your hips slamming down onto his with every thrust, the sound of skin slapping against skin filling the room. His hands shoot up to your hips, but you slap them away, pinning them above his head as you fuck him, using him for your own pleasure.

“You feel that?” you hiss, your lips brushing against his ear. “That’s what it feels like to be used.”

Jeonghan can only moan in response. You lean back, riding him harder, faster, your hands gripping his wrists, grinding down on him with every thrust, feeling the tension building inside both of you.

“Fuck,” he groans, his head tossing back, his eyes squeezing shut as he bites down on his lip, trying desperately to hold on. But you know he’s close. You can feel it.

Jeonghan’s breath hitches, his eyes fluttering open for a moment, wide and desperate, before they squeeze shut again, his body trembling violently beneath you.

You lean down, your lips brushing against his ear as you whisper, “Cum for me.”

And with that, he breaks. His body tenses, his back arching off the bed as he lets out a strangled moan, his cock twitching violently inside you as he comes, the pleasure hitting him like a freight train. You ride him through it, grinding down on him as you chase your own release.

You lean forward, your body pressing down as your clit grinds against his pelvis. Jeonghan's cock is still deep inside you, and you can feel every inch of him twitching, overstimulated and helpless beneath you. His eyes roll back, lips parted in a messy gasp, his hair splayed out on the mattress like a fallen angel. The way his face twists, dumb with pleasure, is almost enough to push you over the edge by itself. His eyebrows furrow in a compound of pain and ecstasy, and the moans slipping from his throat—whiny, breathless, and downright filthy—send a rush of heat pooling in your belly.

You can feel it building, that pressure inside you, tighter and tighter with every grind of your hips. You’re losing control too, your moans spilling out, desperate and raw, betraying the power you’ve held this whole time. It doesn’t even sound like you’re the one in control anymore. You’re chasing that release, grinding harder, faster, your slickness making it a mess between your legs, each movement slippery, loud. The wet sounds of your bodies sliding together are filthy, and the sensation of the mess you’ve made splashing against your thighs only adds to the intensity building inside you.

Jeonghan’s eyes flutter open just as you're on the edge. He looks up at you, pupils blown wide, as though he's watching a divine vision unfold in front of him. The sight of his ruined expression—those parted lips, the way his chest heaves as he tries to catch his breath—sends you crashing over the edge.

You let out a broken moan, hips jerking forward as the orgasm tears through you. Your body trembles, thighs clenching around him as you ride out every pulse of pleasure, the mess between your legs gushing onto him, soaking his skin, your breath coming in desperate gasps. You grind down on him one last time, milking every second of it as you feel his cock twitching inside you, overstimulated beyond belief.

“Fuck…” Jeonghan whimpers, his voice raw as his body jerks beneath you, unable to handle any more. His belly caves in, the muscles trembling under your relentless pressure. 

After what feels like forever, you slowly lift yourself off him, his cock slipping out with a wet sound, leaving him twitching and trembling. His body is sprawled out on the bed, his chest heaving, hair stuck to his forehead, completely undone. You stand up, your legs weak but steady enough as you smooth down your dress, the fabric hugging your curves again as if nothing happened. You fix your hair, eyes never leaving his limp, exhausted form.

Jeonghan’s gaze follows you, his breath shallow, and his face still slack from the overwhelming high. His eyes are half-lidded, but there’s a glimmer of curiosity, or maybe disbelief, flickering behind them.

"Has anyone ever dominated you like that before?" you ask casually, as if this is a normal conversation after completely ruining him.

He shakes his head, still too breathless to form words. No.

You smirk, tilting your head as you adjust the straps of your dress. “Thought so.”

You step closer to him, leaning down just enough so he can see the wicked gleam in your eyes. “Next time, maybe try not to let your guard down so easily. You’re a mess, Jeonghan.”

He blinks up at you, lips parted, still trying to process everything that just happened. You give him one last amused glance, standing tall and smoothing your dress again before turning on your heel.

“Enjoy the rest of your night,” you say with a mocking sweetness, smirking as you walk toward the door. Just before leaving, you look over your shoulder, adding, "I’ll be at the party if you ever want to lose again.”

[moonlight-records]

Rich Boys Don't Have Hearts | LN4

pairing: Jock!Lando Norris x Nerd!Reader

summary: Formula Ivy Academy, or FIA for short, is the most renowned private in the world who takes such a select few. Usually those from wealth with status and secrets and so much to lose. Yet, you are selected to join the FIA on a full scholarship. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain scares a lot students, especially their star athlete who will do anything to protect those he cares about. Though, he didn't expect you to have as much of a...bite to you for a little nobody.

warning: cursing, bribery, jealously, angst (ig???), possessive!lando maybe??? def ooc Lando at points i know it, leclerc & reeader are besties, open ending??? maybe???

fc: none!

wc: 4.4K

current | part 2 | part 3

Formula Ivy Academy was the most renowned private school tucked away in Monaco for the brightest people. Whether that was inventors, politicians, artists, thinkers, or athletes was anybody’s guess since FIA was very hush hush about what happens behind their walls. Which, in theory, should be the first sign not to get involved with a school like that. With the amount of money, fame, and reputation of how secretive this academy was, why the hell would anybody want to go there?

Well, anybody who wanted to be anybody, obviously.

Everybody and anybody tried to get in. Thousands of applications went in every semester. Most applications that were submitted were from those that came from wealth that expanded to celebrities and even royalty applied and were rejected.

The rest of the world only dreamed of going there and some had the balls to apply though they knew that they would be rejected. They didn’t have the funds to cover even a quarter of the tuition cost. The only way most people would be able to get in was on a full ride scholarship and according to rumors, full ride scholarships to FIA was like winning the lottery. A one in a million chance for most people. It seemed that FIA was painfully selective about who they let in.

Yet, you were that one in a million person who got accepted into FIA with a full ride.

“Who is she?”

“I think that’s the new girl.”

“Really? She’s really pretty, how come she’s never been here before?”

“Rumor is she’s not from wealth.”

A few gasps erupted, “What?! How did she get in?”

“Full. Ride.” There were some murmurs, “apparently she was valedictorian at her high school and she applied and the school was impressed. She has to keep her GPA at least a 3.5 to keep her scholarship and,” there was a pause and throat cleaning, “she needs it if she’s going to stay.”

You roll your eyes hearing these girls before shaking your head. Casting your gaze at them the group quickly realized that they were talking much louder than attended and quickly scattered. You sigh softly while shaking your head because it was tiring.

You’ve been listening to the whispers and murmurs about yourself for almost a month straight since moving into the dorms back in August. The only places you found peace was in your dorm, since FIA had been so nice to accommodate you with a single room dorm so you can avoid that whole roommate thing, and the vast walls of the library but alas, instead you found yourself walking through campus as more people look and whisper.

You’re cutting through the green to get to your dorm building when a larger pair of Jordan clad feet fell into step besides yours. The pace was deliberate and rhythmic to match yours. You didn’t have to look over to know who it was. You stayed silent and forced your neck to look the other way though it’s no use. Everyone is looking at you and the new found walking partner though when you met their gaze they looked away. You let out a silent huff before craning your neck like a flower turning to the sun but the sun was actually the most annoying boy to ever roam campus who was 1 of FIA’s 20 star athletes and apparently, you’re upstairs neighbor that you try to avoid the best you can. He’s smiling, curly hair unruly, green and white jersey with his lucky ‘4’ on the front and his iconic gray sweatpants.

“Well, if it isn’t ‘Miss Popular’. You know I was getting a bit worried that you had already left before I got the chance to really know you.”

“First off, don’t call me ‘Miss Popular’ because I’m not,” you roll your eyes, “second you can’t get me to leave that fast. I’m sure the whispers and rumors about me are going to die down rather fast considering I think people are realizing that there really isn’t a lot going for me.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I don’t have wealth like that nor do I care. I’m here to get my degree, make connections, and get a head start on my career and I plan to make sure that happens,” you glance at Lando then forward again, “There’s not much to me.” You shrug as you enter the building and you head down your hall towards your room.

“Bullshit.”

You scoff and look over at Lando, “excuse me?”

“I said bullshit. I don’t think that’s the real reason you’re here.” Lando stares down at you, “I doubt you’re just some random insanely smart person who got in with an amazing application. Celebrities and even royalties themselves get rejected but they let you in? Full ride? Just because they like you?” He scoffs. “But fine. Let’s go with that story but I highly fucking doubt that you’re going to keep your head down and just mind your business for the next four years. There’s a lot that happens here at FIA, a lot that would be rather dangerous if it got out. A lot of reputations on the line.” Holding out a stack of cash, “Maybe it would be for the best if you left, don’t you think?”

You stare at Lando in disbelief. Lando’s known as one of the friendliest athletes on campus. He’s always smiling and laughing and making everyone feel welcomed. Even you, the rare times you spoke before this moment but it became crystal clear in this moment that it was nothing more than a ruse to bribe you out of this school and this life. For what? Protecting the students' reputations? You could care less about your classmates and what they do in their spare time. It was none of your business and honestly you probably would forget about most of them and any scandalizing thing they do now.

But Lando wouldn’t believe that and it upset you more because it made sense. You were a nobody who got accepted into the most renowned school that was super selective. Everyone here had three things: money, power, and secrets. You have none of those. You are just a simple person with a simple life that really just wanted to further your education and make a better life for yourself so you didn’t have to worry when you grew older. Pay your parents back for all the sacrifices they made for you. Give back to your friends who saved you when you were drowning…or jumped in so you weren’t drowning alone. Unlike everyone else who had everything to lose and nothing really to gain, you had nothing to lose and everything to gain.

You stare at the stack of cash in Lando’s hand trying to mentally count how much was there, “How much—”

“100,000 in USD,” Lando finishes, “more than enough for you I’m sure. Unless you want me to just pay for whatever school you transfer to, I can do that as well.”

“No, no, the cash is fine—”

Lando smiles wider, “I th—”

You reach out for the money before slamming your hand down. The bills go everywhere as they fall from Lando’s hand and the Brit is stunned. His eyes widen as he stares at you in pure shock before his face darkens.

“IF I was shallow and had no self respect,” you snap back, “how dare you try to bribe me? You probably wouldn’t believe this but I actually do not give a single care about you or any other student on this campus. All you guys care about is your fame, your wealth, and the carefree lifestyles that you all get to have. Unlike you all, I actually have to work for my shit and I will continue doing that. I don’t have time to collect evidence of all these scandals and sell them to news outlets. Besides, I need connections so the last thing I want to do is ruin that chance by breaking the number one unofficial rule of FIA which is what happens within FIA walls stays within FIA walls. What do you take me for? A shallow tool?” Looking Lando up and down, you sneer slightly, “You know what you can do for me, Lando?”

“What?” The Brit snaps.

“You can take your cash and shove it up your fucking ass right along with the lacrosse stick that’s been wedge up there,” you give him a mocking smile, “have the day you deserve.” You turn, flipping Lando off as you continue down the hall before going into your dorm, slamming it behind you. Finally, tears spill past and you clamp a hand around your mouth to silence your cries. You stumble to your bed, vision blurry before crumbling against it, hiding your face into your comfort, sobbing as the weight of Lando’s words settles.

Nobody wants you here. Nobody trusts you nor likes you. To them, you’re nothing more than an outsider who was going to ruin all their reputations. Obviously, someone like you just could not be here to further your education and take this chance to connect and get a huge head start down your career path. That was all just some ruse to really make a quick buck off the rich and their bullshit drama. That you will never be accepted by them and you should quit while you’re ahead. Another sob rips out of your throat as you bury your face further, body shaking, trying so hard to will yourself to stop crying but it was so hard as a month worth of worry and pains had manifested as the cold hard truth and the reality was heartbreaking.

Then it dawned on you. It wasn’t bullshit. What was bullshit was the fact Lando thought you were so shallow. Actually, it was bullshit the entire campus thought you were that shallow. Are they so self absorbed that they really assumed you had applied just to expose what goes on behind the walls of FIA? God, you needed money but you weren’t that desperate for money. Unlike them, you actually gave a fuck about what you wanted to do in life. Especially because you were happily picking something that wouldn’t be destroyed so easily by mere rumors or a single photo to destroy your entire reputation. You didn’t care how much you got to gain to expose all of them, especially Lando after that lovely chat, because that’s what they expected of you. Instead, you were going to completely ignore them. Prove them wrong. Prove Lando wrong.

Settling, you sit there for a bit before slowly lifting your head. You ignore the oncoming headache or the fact your face is wet and puffy. You sniffle softly before patting yourself down and pull your phone out with slightly shaky hands. Arthur Leclerc was a rare friend you had. Well, you assume anyway but now you weren’t sure as you text him.

Do you hate me?-YN

Y/N, how many times do I have to tell you that I don’t hate you. Nor does Mick, Ollie, Kimi, or Charlie.-AL

Well, Lando just tried to give me 100K in USD to get me to leave the school since everyone hates me and nobody trusts me and that I’m here to expose everyone for money and not for my education and to get a head start of my career.-YN

…He fucking did what?-AL

Yeah.-YN

Oh my god. I’m going to punch him at practice. Actually, I have piano so I won’t be at practice—I’ll have Charlie do it. No, he won’t—Kimi will-AL

No-YN

Don’t ‘no’ me! Y/N! You just told me that Lando bribed you because the rest of the school doesn’t trust you for some stupid fucking reason! Also, I know that you were actually warming up to Lando for this to be the reason? Oh god I should tell the couch! I’m going to tell coach—AL

No. No, I don’t need any more issues than already. I just…I just need reassure that you actually like for who I am-YN

Of course I do Y/N. Me, Charlie, Mick, Ollie. We adore you. You’re a breath of fresh air to us, really. You remind us that not everyone is stuck up and snooty and loves to be careless and wild because money and fame will save them. You remind us to slow down and enjoy the moments. You remind us to do things that we love even if nobody else cares because we enjoy the things we love. I promise, we wouldn’t trade you for anything in the world.AL

Arthur…that’s so sweet I might cry again but I won’t.-YN

It’s okay to cry!! I can come over with ice cream and blankets for cuddles-AL

No no, it’s fine. I don’t think I have any tears left. I kind of let out a month’s worth of sadness just out, so, I’m good but I might take you up on the offer for ice cream and blankets after your piano practice-YN

Okay, yeah. God Y/N. I’m so sorry this happened to you.-AL

It’s fine. I’m kind of upset Lando did this privately because the look of shock on his face when I smacked the money out of his hand was priceless.-YN

You WHAT?! Oh my god! You didn’t tell me that!!!-AL

Yeah well, I’m done being sad. I’m angry now.-YN

Anyway, yeah he basically found me. Walked me to the dorms asking if I was avoiding him and stuff. I had said that I just wanna focus on my education and get a jump start at my career and he literally was like ‘bullshit’. I was like ummm what?? Yeah so he goes on about how im a threat and all this—me, the nobody but whatever—and he was giving me cash or offering to pay the tuition of the school I would transfer to in full if it meant leaving since I’m just a wee peasant who’s only here to gossip and get paid by the news and get the school shut down. So I was like, “oh no the cash is fine”…-YN

Oh my god. What did he say?-AL

Oh he was gonna go on that I was making the right choice before I smack the money out of his hand. Man he was pissed-YN

I could imagine.-AL

Arthur, when I tell you watching his face darken out of anger was—kinda scary. Though mama ain’t raised a bitch so. I went off about how I can’t believe he thinks I’m shallow and that I truly could care less about my classmates and that I need these connections so why would I risk losing those connections by outing everyone, ya know???-YN

Oh I know.-AL

Thank you! So then I was like “you know what you can do for me” and he was like “what?!” all snappy and shit. I told him he can pick his money up and shove it right up his ass along with his lacrosse stick and have the day he deserves and the I flipped him off as I left…then I broke down and cried and now we’re here-YN

I AM SO PROUD OF YOU FOR THAT!!! AS YOU SHOULD! Oh my god, I am buying you dinner for that because that is amazing. Also, Lando can go fuck himself and I will personally make sure it happens at practice.-AL

Arthur!-YN

It’s fine! I already laid out that Charles is just to make Lando go a bit insane. No physical harm, all mental.-AL

…Fine. Only because there’s no way I can convince either of you to not do anything-YN

You’re learning! Okay, I have to run but I will see you later tonight. You don’t have to, considering how news gets out around here but, Charlie would like to see you at some point just to make sure you’re okay so, just show a sign of life to him? Please? I’ll cover the ice-cream if you do-AL

I will, promise.-YN

Alright, see you see y/n!-AL

You too, Arthur.-YN

It’s only been 20 minutes since your conversation with Arthur and you really didn’t want to leave your dorm let alone the field after everything that happened. You had finally found the energy to climb into bed curled up under the comfort while staring at the wall before frowning. You know that if you didn’t Charles would go insane with worry and blow up both your phone and Arthur’s and you really didn’t want to upset the only rare few people in your corner. Sighing, you force yourself out of your bed and go through your closet.

The school had uniforms that students must wear to classes. Outside of classes, students were free to wear whatever they wanted and you chose a baggy hoodie with a t-shirt underneath and fuzzy pajama pants that had snoopy all over them. Sliding your crocs on, you grabbed your keys, phone, headphones, and lanyard with your ID before heading out of your dorm and to the field. Putting your headphones on, you gently bobbed your head to the beat of the music as you crossed the green towards the field. Seeing the empty bleachers, you make your way up the ramp as you look out at the field.

There were the two lacrosse nets at the opposite ends of the field. The boys were lingering around the benches as they all chatted among themselves with five minutes to spare in this break. You scan among them, thankful that none of them spotted you. Expect the one that was sitting on the bench away, staring at a small group down. You saw the ‘16’ on the jersey and knew exactly who it was. You straightened up slightly when the player turned and saw you before lighting up like a child on Christmas and scrambling over to you, almost tripping over his own two feet.

“Mon chérie, there you are. I was worried you weren’t going to show that I was about to start calling for a sign of life,” Charles grins as he stands below the bleachers laughing softly. You can’t help the small smile that appears on your face as you lean over the edge of the bleachers looking down at Charles.

“Sorry, I was just—gathering myself.”

“I could imagine,” Charles frowns. “I truly am sorry that happened to you,” Charles whispers. “Just say the words and I will tell the coach or I can punch him. Really, I am angry enough to go through with it.”

“No you don’t have to punch him or tell coach,” you reassure Charles, “I think me slapping the money out of his hand, telling him off, telling him to shove the money up his ass, and flipping him off while telling him to have the day he deserves is probably enough.” You smile, “besides, I have no plans on transferring at all. Especially not after this. Him having to see my face should be enough of a hell for him.”

Charles laughs breathlessly while smiling up at you, “You truly are something else Y/N.” He grins while shaking his head, “Arthur mentioned something about ice-cream and blankets?” He questions.

You go to answer but feel someone just staring at you. Casting your gaze up you lock eyes with the sea green eyes staring at you. It seems that you and Lando are in a stare off that neither of you intend to lose but you only forfeit when you hear Charles scoff below you. “Charles,” you murmur softly and Charles looks up at you, a slight pout on his face, “please be nice so you can join Arthur and I and probably the others for ice-cream and cuddles. That’s what we mean by blankets.”

Charles gasps softly, “and I can join?!”

“If,” you start, “you leave Lando alone.”

Charles narrows his eyes at you and weighs his options, “okay, deal.”

“Leclerc!” Lando shouts, voice clipped, “lets go! No more talking!”

“Duty calls,” Charles murmurs and you shake your head, murmuring to Charles that it’ll be fine. You sit in the stands and switch between watching the practice and looking at your phone. You stand up when the coach blows the whistle to have the team come in to wrap practice up. You make your way off the bleachers and linger at the entrance of track as the team all heads to the bench to gather their things. You watch Charles swiftly grab his water bottle and bag before making his way over to you.

“You did it!” You applaud happily, “you survived practice and didn’t kill him.”

“I know, I know. Took a lot of self control,” Charles murmurs as he steps closer, “I’m pretty sure he was targeting me after seeing me talk to you. The audacity of him, can you believe that?”

“I could, sadly,” you roll your eyes, “he’s an ass. Just ignore him. Why don’t you get change and I’ll wait here and we can then head back to my dorm together?” You offer, “Arthur said he’d bring the ice-cream and Mick would bring the blankets.”

“Okay, I’ll be right out!” Charles says and is off.

You watch him leave and smile slightly before looking away and nearly jumping at Lando who just spawns in front of you. You look up at the Brit and all the emotions from early claw at your throat for an escape. You want to scream. You want to cry. You want to curse him out. You want to ask him why. There are so many questions in your head and you know that no matter what, you won’t get any answers so you settle for this stare off with Lando, even if your neck gets a cramp.

The silence is finally broken by Lando, “What were you talking to Charles about?” His voice is cold and icy. It almost seems uncharacteristic of the Brit but then again, he was full of surprises!

“None of your business.”

“I think it is my business since he’s a teammate of mine and I am also co-captain, so,” he lets his voice trail off as if indicating his importance, “kind of my responsibility to make sure our players are accounted for and safe.”

“Oh? Is it because he’s with me? Cause if you were really concerned, I doubt you nor Max would really be okay with the heavy partying that happens. Then again you two would be hypocritical.” You retort.

That strikes a nerve. He clenches his jaw and stares down at you in anger though he stays silent because he can’t really argue with you. Instead, Lando takes a deep breath while glaring, “well, is coming back to your dorm?”

“Why do you care?”

'“Cause I really don’t need you being so fucking loud and distracting me.”

“Seriously? You’re rarely in your room. When you are, you’re doing anything but homework. The only thing I might give a damn about is your streams for the poor people that watch you.” Crossing your arms over your chest, “but if you need to know since apparently hell has frozen over with you doing homework, I am having a few guests over and Charles is one.”

“Who else?”

“You don’t get names,” you snap. “First off, it’s not your business. Second, you don’t care because I’m just a nobody who’s here to gather intel and sell the secrets and make so money and get the school shut down instead of learning more and making connections and wanting a better future for myself since I’m not privileged like that,” you mock before scowling at him, “you think I’m dumb? No way am I giving out the names of the few genuine friends I have here.”

Lando goes to argue before Charles cuts in, loud and clear, “Oh mon chérie!” Charles stops next to you and glares at Lando who glares back at you, “Oh. Am I interrupting something?”

“Yes. You are.”

“No, you’re fine.”

You and Lando stare at each other before you turn to Charles who slings an arm over your shoulder, “Ready to go then?” Charles asks you, smiling and you nod. “I am.”

“Well. Have a good evening, Lando,” Charles tells him as you just turn and start walking off, leading Charles with you.

Your gut twists and you can’t help yourself even with Charles talking your ear off since you stopped so Charles could tie his shoe. You’re about to look back at Lando until Charles tells some stupid story which gets you to laugh loudly and you nudge Charles when he stands saying that it was a good story.

You hear a thud or something which gets you to turn.

Lando is standing there holding with his head of the lacrosse stick now snapped off. He’s got Max and Oscar on either side of him both concerned and worried while trying to talk to him but Lando is staring at Charles as if he’s trying to strike Charles down mentally before finally looking at you before. He stares at you for a moment before looking at Charles and scowling before turning sharply and heading to the locker room with Max and Oscar trying to figure out what the hell just happened before following Lando.

You stand there watching the trio head off. Your eyes fall on the broken lacrosse stick head. You can’t wrap your head around why Lando was so determined to figure out who was hanging out with you. Was it to turn the little friends against you? Was he just upset that you weren’t bending to his will and made a fool of him earlier today? Why was he like this

“Y/N?”

“Hm?”

“Are you okay?” Charles asks softly.

“Yeah, yeah,” you shake your head and smile, “I’m okay. Just…distracted, that’s all. Come on! I’ll race you,” you start and take off, giving yourself a head start as Charles is cursing and scrambling after you.

Even if Lando wanted you to leave and threw the world’s biggest tantrum as it seemed, you were quite comfortable staying here since you added a new life goal to your plans. It was a very simple life goal.

Make Lando’s regret trying to bribe you.