#surveillance contractors

[gulfbusinessdevelopment]

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[mostlysignssomeportents]

How I got scammed

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/2024/02/05/cyber-dunning-kruger/#swiss-cheese-security

I wuz robbed.

More specifically, I was tricked by a phone-phisher pretending to be from my bank, and he convinced me to hand over my credit-card number, then did $8,000+ worth of fraud with it before I figured out what happened. And then he tried to do it again, a week later!

Here's what happened. Over the Christmas holiday, I traveled to New Orleans. The day we landed, I hit a Chase ATM in the French Quarter for some cash, but the machine declined the transaction. Later in the day, we passed a little credit-union's ATM and I used that one instead (I bank with a one-branch credit union and generally there's no fee to use another CU's ATM).

A couple days later, I got a call from my credit union. It was a weekend, during the holiday, and the guy who called was obviously working for my little CU's after-hours fraud contractor. I'd dealt with these folks before – they service a ton of little credit unions, and generally the call quality isn't great and the staff will often make mistakes like mispronouncing my credit union's name.

That's what happened here – the guy was on a terrible VOIP line and I had to ask him to readjust his mic before I could even understand him. He mispronounced my bank's name and then asked if I'd attempted to spend $1,000 at an Apple Store in NYC that day. No, I said, and groaned inwardly. What a pain in the ass. Obviously, I'd had my ATM card skimmed – either at the Chase ATM (maybe that was why the transaction failed), or at the other credit union's ATM (it had been a very cheap looking system).

I told the guy to block my card and we started going through the tedious business of running through recent transactions, verifying my identity, and so on. It dragged on and on. These were my last hours in New Orleans, and I'd left my family at home and gone out to see some of the pre-Mardi Gras krewe celebrations and get a muffalata, and I could tell that I was going to run out of time before I finished talking to this guy.

"Look," I said, "you've got all my details, you've frozen the card. I gotta go home and meet my family and head to the airport. I'll call you back on the after-hours number once I'm through security, all right?"

He was frustrated, but that was his problem. I hung up, got my sandwich, went to the airport, and we checked in. It was total chaos: an Alaska Air 737 Max had just lost its door-plug in mid-air and every Max in every airline's fleet had been grounded, so the check in was crammed with people trying to rebook. We got through to the gate and I sat down to call the CU's after-hours line. The person on the other end told me that she could only handle lost and stolen cards, not fraud, and given that I'd already frozen the card, I should just drop by the branch on Monday to get a new card.

We flew home, and later the next day, I logged into my account and made a list of all the fraudulent transactions and printed them out, and on Monday morning, I drove to the bank to deal with all the paperwork. The folks at the CU were even more pissed than I was. The fraud that run up to more than $8,000, and if Visa refused to take it out of the merchants where the card had been used, my little credit union would have to eat the loss.

I agreed and commiserated. I also pointed out that their outsource, after-hours fraud center bore some blame here: I'd canceled the card on Saturday but most of the fraud had taken place on Sunday. Something had gone wrong.

One cool thing about banking at a tiny credit-union is that you end up talking to people who have actual authority, responsibility and agency. It turned out the the woman who was processing my fraud paperwork was a VP, and she decided to look into it. A few minutes later she came back and told me that the fraud center had no record of having called me on Saturday.

"That was the fraudster," she said.

Oh, shit. I frantically rewound my conversation, trying to figure out if this could possibly be true. I hadn't given him anything apart from some very anodyne info, like what city I live in (which is in my Wikipedia entry), my date of birth (ditto), and the last four digits of my card.

Wait a sec.

He hadn't asked for the last four digits. He'd asked for the last seven digits. At the time, I'd found that very frustrating, but now – "The first nine digits are the same for every card you issue, right?" I asked the VP.

I'd given him my entire card number.

Goddammit.

The thing is, I know a lot about fraud. I'm writing an entire series of novels about this kind of scam:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

And most summers, I go to Defcon, and I always go to the "social engineering" competitions where an audience listens as a hacker in a soundproof booth cold-calls merchants (with the owner's permission) and tries to con whoever answers the phone into giving up important information.

But I'd been conned.

Now look, I knew I could be conned. I'd been conned before, 13 years ago, by a Twitter worm that successfully phished out of my password via DM:

https://locusmag.com/2010/05/cory-doctorow-persistence-pays-parasites/

That scam had required a miracle of timing. It started the day before, when I'd reset my phone to factory defaults and reinstalled all my apps. That same day, I'd published two big online features that a lot of people were talking about. The next morning, we were late getting out of the house, so by the time my wife and I dropped the kid at daycare and went to the coffee shop, it had a long line. Rather than wait in line with me, my wife sat down to read a newspaper, and so I pulled out my phone and found a Twitter DM from a friend asking "is this you?" with a URL.

Assuming this was something to do with those articles I'd published the day before, I clicked the link and got prompted for my Twitter login again. This had been happening all day because I'd done that mobile reinstall the day before and all my stored passwords had been wiped. I entered it but the page timed out. By that time, the coffees were ready. We sat and chatted for a bit, then went our own ways.

I was on my way to the office when I checked my phone again. I had a whole string of DMs from other friends. Each one read "is this you?" and had a URL.

Oh, shit, I'd been phished.

If I hadn't reinstalled my mobile OS the day before. If I hadn't published a pair of big articles the day before. If we hadn't been late getting out the door. If we had been a little more late getting out the door (so that I'd have seen the multiple DMs, which would have tipped me off).

There's a name for this in security circles: "Swiss-cheese security." Imagine multiple slices of Swiss cheese all stacked up, the holes in one slice blocked by the slice below it. All the slices move around and every now and again, a hole opens up that goes all the way through the stack. Zap!

The fraudster who tricked me out of my credit card number had Swiss cheese security on his side. Yes, he spoofed my bank's caller ID, but that wouldn't have been enough to fool me if I hadn't been on vacation, having just used a pair of dodgy ATMs, in a hurry and distracted. If the 737 Max disaster hadn't happened that day and I'd had more time at the gate, I'd have called my bank back. If my bank didn't use a slightly crappy outsource/out-of-hours fraud center that I'd already had sub-par experiences with. If, if, if.

The next Friday night, at 5:30PM, the fraudster called me back, pretending to be the bank's after-hours center. He told me my card had been compromised again. But: I hadn't removed my card from my wallet since I'd had it replaced. Also, it was half an hour after the bank closed for the long weekend, a very fraud-friendly time. And when I told him I'd call him back and asked for the after-hours fraud number, he got very threatening and warned me that because I'd now been notified about the fraud that any losses the bank suffered after I hung up the phone without completing the fraud protocol would be billed to me. I hung up on him. He called me back immediately. I hung up on him again and put my phone into do-not-disturb.

The following Tuesday, I called my bank and spoke to their head of risk-management. I went through everything I'd figured out about the fraudsters, and she told me that credit unions across America were being hit by this scam, by fraudsters who somehow knew CU customers' phone numbers and names, and which CU they banked at. This was key: my phone number is a reasonably well-kept secret. You can get it by spending money with Equifax or another nonconsensual doxing giant, but you can't just google it or get it at any of the free services. The fact that the fraudsters knew where I banked, knew my name, and had my phone number had really caused me to let down my guard.

The risk management person and I talked about how the credit union could mitigate this attack: for example, by better-training the after-hours card-loss staff to be on the alert for calls from people who had been contacted about supposed card fraud. We also went through the confusing phone-menu that had funneled me to the wrong department when I called in, and worked through alternate wording for the menu system that would be clearer (this is the best part about banking with a small CU – you can talk directly to the responsible person and have a productive discussion!). I even convinced her to buy a ticket to next summer's Defcon to attend the social engineering competitions.

There's a leak somewhere in the CU systems' supply chain. Maybe it's Zelle, or the small number of corresponding banks that CUs rely on for SWIFT transaction forwarding. Maybe it's even those after-hours fraud/card-loss centers. But all across the USA, CU customers are getting calls with spoofed caller IDs from fraudsters who know their registered phone numbers and where they bank.

I've been mulling this over for most of a month now, and one thing has really been eating at me: the way that AI is going to make this kind of problem much worse.

Not because AI is going to commit fraud, though.

One of the truest things I know about AI is: "we're nowhere near a place where bots can steal your job, we're certainly at the point where your boss can be suckered into firing you and replacing you with a bot that fails at doing your job":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/15/passive-income-brainworms/#four-hour-work-week

I trusted this fraudster specifically because I knew that the outsource, out-of-hours contractors my bank uses have crummy headsets, don't know how to pronounce my bank's name, and have long-ass, tedious, and pointless standardized questionnaires they run through when taking fraud reports. All of this created cover for the fraudster, whose plausibility was enhanced by the rough edges in his pitch - they didn't raise red flags.

As this kind of fraud reporting and fraud contacting is increasingly outsourced to AI, bank customers will be conditioned to dealing with semi-automated systems that make stupid mistakes, force you to repeat yourself, ask you questions they should already know the answers to, and so on. In other words, AI will groom bank customers to be phishing victims.

This is a mistake the finance sector keeps making. 15 years ago, Ben Laurie excoriated the UK banks for their "Verified By Visa" system, which validated credit card transactions by taking users to a third party site and requiring them to re-enter parts of their password there:

https://web.archive.org/web/20090331094020/http://www.links.org/?p=591

This is exactly how a phishing attack works. As Laurie pointed out, this was the banks training their customers to be phished.

I came close to getting phished again today, as it happens. I got back from Berlin on Friday and my suitcase was damaged in transit. I've been dealing with the airline, which means I've really been dealing with their third-party, outsource luggage-damage service. They have a terrible website, their emails are incoherent, and they officiously demand the same information over and over again.

This morning, I got a scam email asking me for more information to complete my damaged luggage claim. It was a terrible email, from a noreply@ email address, and it was vague, officious, and dishearteningly bureaucratic. For just a moment, my finger hovered over the phishing link, and then I looked a little closer.

On any other day, it wouldn't have had a chance. Today – right after I had my luggage wrecked, while I'm still jetlagged, and after days of dealing with my airline's terrible outsource partner – it almost worked.

So much fraud is a Swiss-cheese attack, and while companies can't close all the holes, they can stop creating new ones.

Meanwhile, I'll continue to post about it whenever I get scammed. I find the inner workings of scams to be fascinating, and it's also important to remind people that everyone is vulnerable sometimes, and scammers are willing to try endless variations until an attack lands at just the right place, at just the right time, in just the right way. If you think you can't get scammed, that makes you especially vulnerable:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[christinemarciablogs]

Protecting Your Home and Wallet: A Guide to Dealing with Dishonest Contractors While You're Away

Home renovations can be both exciting and stressful, especially when you’re entrusting contractors to work on your property while you’re away. While most contractors are reputable and reliable, the unfortunate reality is that dishonest individuals exist in every industry. To ensure the safety of your home and your wallet, it’s crucial to be vigilant and proactive. In this exclusive blog, we’ll…

[probablyasocialecologist]

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) contributes to the Gaza Genocide and Zionist settler colonialism in Palestine in at least two distinct ways. First, MIT laboratories on campus conduct weapons and surveillance research directly sponsored by the Israeli military. Since at least 2015, MIT laboratories have received millions of dollars from the Israeli Ministry of Defense for projects to develop algorithms that help drone swarms to better pursue escaping targets; to improve underwater surveillance technology; and support military aircraft evade missiles. Two of these sponsorships were renewed since October 7th, 2023, while one came up for renewal in December 2024. Second, MIT maintains institutional collaborations through the ILP, LGO, CSAIL, and MIT Energy Initiative programs with companies that sell vast amounts of weapons to Israel. These include Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest military contractor, as well as Maersk, Lockheed Martin, and Caterpillar. These collaborations grant genocide profiteers privileged access to MIT talent and expertise.

10th December 2024

[hungwy]

In a press release, the FTC said that "Ring deceived its customers by failing to restrict employees' and contractors' access to its customers' videos, using customer videos to train algorithms, among other purposes, without consent, and failing to implement security safeguards." In one case, an employee "viewed thousands of video recordings belonging to female users of Ring cameras that surveilled intimate spaces in their homes such as their bathrooms or bedrooms," the FTC said.

That allegedly occurred between June and August 2017 and invaded the privacy of at least 81 female users of Ring products. "The employee wasn't stopped until another employee discovered the misconduct. Even after Ring imposed restrictions on who could access customers' videos, the company wasn't able to determine how many other employees inappropriately accessed private videos because Ring failed to implement basic measures to monitor and detect employees' video access," the FTC said.

...

Amazon completed its purchase of Ring in April 2018. The FTC complaint says that in August 2020, "a whistleblower notified Ring that between March 2018 and September 2019, a former employee had provided Ring devices to numerous individuals and then accessed their videos without their knowledge or consent."

The complaint continued: When the employee left Ring in September 2019, the whistleblower alleged that he took copies of these videos with him—without the knowledge or consent of his unsuspecting victims and without Ring noticing that anything was amiss. In February 2019, Ring changed its access practices so that most Ring employees or contractors could only access a customer's private video with that customer's consent.

"Importantly, because Ring failed to implement basic measures to monitor and detect inappropriate access before February 2019, Ring has no idea how many instances of inappropriate access to customers' sensitive video data actually occurred," the FTC said. "Indeed, Ring only discovered the incidents described above through the good fortune of employee reporting, despite having given employees zero security training and no responsibility to engage in such reporting. It is highly likely that numerous other incidents of spying, prurient behavior, and other inappropriate access occurred entirely undetected."

(emphasis is mine)

[souliebird]

[[addict]]

Series: Daredevil || Pairing: Matt Murdock x Fem!Reader || Rating Explicit

summary: Your life revolves around Matt. His does not revolve around you

Or: depression skews reality

wordcount: 5k

tags: depression, explicit sexual content, blood, angst, p in v sex, oral (male receiving)

---

Monday

You wake up alone. 

This is of no surprise to you, and you force yourself out of bed despite your desire to bury yourself into your covers and stay there. 

You stumble into the kitchen, feeling bleary and still half-asleep, and start the process of making coffee. You dump still warm grounds into the trash before filling the basket with your preferred blend and starting the little machine. You wash the mug lingering in the sink, then start making your breakfast. 

You don't need to think about your routine as you do it - you've done it hundreds and hundreds of times. You just do it. 

Coffee. Bagel. Orange. 

You watch the morning news highlights, listening but not taking in the various stories that flash on your screen. Fighting in Paris, all sorts of elections, Hollywood, and political scandals - it all washes over you without leaving an impression. None of it matters to you. None of it concerns anything Matt would be involved in.

Once you finish your small meal, you clean it up and switch your laptop over to your work VPN. 

It is nothing glorious. You translate legal documents from English into Spanish as a contractor for a handful of firms around the city. Very rarely is it anything of interest - a majority of it is human resources based - but it makes good money, and you don't need to commute. You stay in the apartment most of the day, trying your best to make it into a home.

As you think over word choice, you do chores. Laundry gets hauled down to the basement, the sink and shower get a deep clean to wash away any trace of blood, and you write out a grocery list. You dust and air out the apartment between paragraphs. You don't exchange many emails. You don't get any calls.

The hours pass in silence until your phone alerts you it is a quarter after five. You shut down your VPN and return to the kitchen. Chicken, rice, and vegetables will be tonight's dinner - you know it is a favorite and you've worked out the unspoken schedule to know this is the ideal day to serve it. You work quietly, half focusing on your knife work and half zoning out. 

Five minutes to the hour, the door to the apartment opens and Matt is home. 

“That smells wonderful, sweetheart,” he says as a greeting, dropping his things off at the front door. You can hear his practical movements as he puts everything in its right spot. 

“It should be done in ten minutes,” is your soft reply. That is just enough time for him to get settled in and drink about one third of a beer. It took you a few weeks to get the scheduling down right, but now you have it down to an art for various recipes. “How was your day?”

Without completely breaking attorney-client privilege, he tells you about the ongoings at the office and catches you up on whatever happened with Foggy and Karen over the weekend. As he does, he loosens his tie and takes a seat at the table. You place an ice-cold open bottle in front of him without fanfare, then flit back to the kitchen. 

Dinner switches the conversation to Daredevil. Matt tells you his plan for the night and you silently convert his words into future actions for yourself. He's going out with Jessica, which means more surveillance than fighting. You'll need to have ibuprofen ready, as spying tends to stress his senses rather than his body. 

You get a kiss before he goes to do his pre-Devil work out and another before he ascends the stairs to go into the night. He tells you not to stay up, but it's part of the script and you both know you'll be waiting for him right where he left you. 

Tuesday

“Foggy isn't going to believe me,” Matt grumbles as you gently pat concealer around his eye, covering the blooming bruise.  

“It's just absurd enough to be believable.”

“But it's the truth,” he huffs before his lips turn into a pout, “How does it look?”

You step back and examine the man in front of you. He has the start of a massive black eye and you can't help but feel bad for him. For once, this is not a Devil related injury - there was a freak accident with the shower. The water pressure in the building has somehow been cranked to maximum and your poor pipes are not equipped for that - the threads holding them together are barely there. They had no chance against suddenly being slammed into and there was no way Matt could have been prepared for the shower head to shoot off the wall and right into his face. 

You frown and your mood must shift because he deflates, “Foggy is not going to believe you.”

You set the makeup you specifically got to cover up his nightly hobby aside and push Matt's coffee towards him. He takes a long sip from it before throwing his head back with a groan.

��I've been doing so well,” he complains. There is some sort of swear jar-esque deal the two of them have going on about Matt's bruises, but you don't know all of the details. You do know Matt's lost a fair bit of money from it, though.

You pat his shoulder sympathetically before getting up and heading towards the kitchen to finish packing up his meals for the day, “This doesn't count.” 

“Will you tell that to Foggy?”

“I'll tell that to Foggy,” you promise.

You see him get up in the corner of your eye and disappear back into the bedroom to get dressed for work and you can't help but sigh. You'll give Matt's friends a heads up text so they don't freak out on him. Misunderstandings are bound to happen otherwise and they'll probably all have a laugh about it once the Devil's Pride is soothed.

You finish up packing lunch, a midday snack, and the ingredients for a hearty protein shake. Matt will be going to the gym right after work today, then from there will go out as the Devil. You aren't keen on him carrying his black suit around in his gym bag, but it's not something you're going to argue with him about. 

With how busy the office has been lately; he's been a bit scatterbrained about the smaller things. 

You've convinced him to at least drop off his bag on the roof as he starts his patrol, so he doesn't leave his day clothes at Fogwell’s overnight. You'll go up and collect them at some point, so they don't end up staying up there and getting forgotten about. 

You won't see Matt again until he comes home to sleep. 

You hope you'll be able to figure out how to fix the shower by then.

Wednesday

You put away the last of the clean dishes, then turn to face the apartment in front of you.

It's a beautiful day and light is streaming in through the windows, highlighting how stark everything is. Your laptop is waiting for you on the table, along with a mental list of things you need to get done today. 

But you don't want to. 

You don't want to do any of it. You don't want to do anything. You don't want to think. You don't want to feel. 

You just don't want to. 

So you wipe your hands on a dish towel, then make a bee line right back to bed and crawl in. You curl on your side, place your phone on Matt's pillow, close your eyes, and just Don't. 

You drift in and out until your bladder starts to demand you get up, so you do. You use the restroom then return to bed, checking your messages as you settle back in. 

There's one from Matt, asking if you would like Thai for dinner. You have no will to think about what you'd like to eat - honestly you don't want anything - so you tell him that Thai sounds great. You double check your alarm is set, then return to your nothingness. 

It's easy to get lost in Blankness. It's nice to not feel anything. The crushing negativity you are so used to is gone and all your disgusting thoughts are silent. 

You don't simmer in doubt that every action is wrong. 

You don't question why your life revolves around Matt. You don't think about how you would crumble without him or how he'd be fine without you. 

You don't consider what love is to him and how deeply rooted it is in just staying. You don't wonder if he just doesn't want to be alone again. 

You don't feel completely consumed in your feelings. 

You just are. 

Sometimes, you wish you could stay like this forever - suspended in emptiness. 

But then your alarm goes off and you have to be human again. 

You check your messages to make sure you really did get a text about dinner, then finally drag yourself to go shower.

You have to be presentable before Matt returns. 

He doesn't comment on your still wet hair or lack of conversation. You eat in mostly silence, occasionally commenting about the food. 

Karen calls as you're gathering up leftovers to go into the fridge. Whatever she has to say to Matt has him swearing and going to the wardrobe to start getting his suit out. You don't ask what is wrong, you simply gather up the dress shirt he tosses towards the couch as he begins to change. 

He doesn't kiss you as he rushes up the stairs.

He doesn't tell you to not wait up. 

The door slams shut as he disappears into his own Darkness, and you sit on the couch to await his return.

There is no silence. The city mocks you with each siren, scream, and honk. 

Thursday

You're putting away groceries when your phone alerts you to a text. 

It's from Matt and simply states, “I hate baseball bats.”

A small noise of sympathy comes up from your chest. He had gotten a few good whacks with one last night to the point he let you wrap his chest. Luckily, nothing had been broken, but it had not been a pretty sight. 

You've already put the ice packs in the freezer for when he gets home. You don't think he'll be going out tonight if he's actually admitting he is in pain. 

Maybe you can listen to the next few chapters of the audio book you've started together instead. The thought makes your stomach turn in a nervous hopeful way. 

You return his message with an inside joke of sorts, typing out the words, “Baseball bat emoji. Heart break emoji.”

He replies back seconds later with, “Sad face emoji.” 

It pulls a little smile to your lips, and you think about Matt dictating the text to his phone for the next hour. 

Friday

“You smell so good,” he purrs as he nuzzles against your neck, his scruff scratching you just lightly. 

You tilt your head to the side to give him better access and you can practically feel his pleased hum in your chest. His fingers dance at the hem of your shirt, pushing under to barely just feel your skin. He's got you crowded against the front door, so all of him overwhelms you while he teases.

He's been like this all night. As soon as you stepped into Josie's, he had his hands all over you - your thigh, your lower back, wrapping his arms around you from behind. He's only had two beers, but they have loosened up his tense shoulders quite a bit. 

You know what he wants and you're more than happy to indulge. You've been craving his touch. His attention. 

You don't care if it's a quickie before he leaves you to belong to Hell's Kitchen again, you just need something from him.

Anything. 

You dig your nails into the shoulder of his suit jacket and whine out your inner desires, knowing he'll give in when he's like this, “want to get on my knees for you.”

He moans in response, grinding against you to let you know how much he also wants that, and you lower yourself down to be trapped between him and the door. Skilled hands make quick work of his belt, and you don't bother to push his pants and briefs down. You get his half hard cock free of its confines only to swallow it.

Above you, Matt throws his head back his head, gritting out a long low, “Fuck.” 

You give him no time to adjust, knowing exactly what he likes in these moments, and begin to work him over. One hand grips his tree trunk of a thigh and the other loosely circles around the base of his cock - the first keeps you steady and the second from him slipping out of you. 

You focus on his head, pushing your tongue up as he slides out of the depths of your throat, then swirling it before you begin to suckle. He buries his fingers into your hair, swearing more, as you do so. That only encourages you and you begin to pump him as you work to get him to full hardness.

His musk is dotted with the saltines of precum, and your mouth begins to water. You do nothing to stop the drool gathering in the corners of your mouth and let it spill out as you enjoy yourself. 

Self-control is out of the question - the moment Matt’s hips begin to twitch, you encourage it, tugging at his thigh. He doesn't need to be told twice. 

You close your eyes and relax your jaw as he starts to fuck your throat. 

All of you becomes encompassed in him. He's all you feel, all you smell, all you taste, all you hear. 

He grunts and groans as he thrusts in and out of your mouth, holding your head steady so you can't chase him as you want to. You want to be held down; his cock buried deep in your throat until the heaviness of him is imprinted on your tongue. You want him to coat your insides with him, so you never forget his taste. 

You want him to use you and that's exactly what he does.

“Fuck, sweetheart, fuck,” he chants, and you don't want him to stop. He's not ruthless, but he isn't kind with it, barely giving you a chance to breathe between each movement, and making your brain start to blink in and out of awareness.

You feel him start to twitch and pulse along your tongue and you whine in distress around him. 

You don't want this to end so soon. You need him. You need this. 

Before you can process what is happening, Matt is pulling you back up into standing and directly turning you to face the door. Your brain automatically clicks with what he is doing, and you scramble to undo your pants. You barely get them unbuttoned before he is yanking them and your panties down your thighs. 

You arch your back with anticipation as he lines himself up. You expect him to tease you, to rub the head of his cock over you to spread around the juices you've soaked your panties with, but he doesn't. He pushes into you in one smooth motion and your eyes roll into the back of your head. 

He grabs you by the throat from behind, just under your chin, and turns his hand so he can also stick two of his fingers into your mouth and continue to make you drool. You're practically pinned to the door as he slams into you over and over, hitting that sweet spot each time. 

“So fucking wet,” he growls into your ear, squeezing your throat just enough to make your vision go spotty. “About to cum from just sucking on my cock. Don't even need to touch you, do I? You'd be happy being my little cock warmer.”

You would. You yearn for it - sitting under his desk while he works, keeping him happy. You just want to be with him. You need him. 

You need him. 

He breathes your name, then demands, “Cum on my cock.” 

Saturday

Matt has taken the spot at the dining table while you've curled up on the couch. You both have your respective workstations set up and have been buried in reading for hours. 

A strange, pleasant calm has washed over you and wrapped you up in a lightness.

These are the days you dream of.

Soft, quiet mornings where you can just be with Matt - there's no distractions or chaos or vigilantism. It is just the two of you, together. 

Whenever he has gotten up to get something, on his way back to his seat - he always makes sure to check in on you all and it sends your brain into an absolute tizzy. Acknowledgement from him makes you feel warm in so many ways. You don't think you could ever get enough of the way he says your name when he wants your attention. It's like an angel’s song - or the Devil's. 

You know it won't last long - he has a meeting with Foggy after lunch to meet some people who can't meet during the week - so you bask in what you have. You've been stealing glances all morning because you love to watch him work. He gets this little crease between his brow when he's listening to a transcript, and it really is the cutest thing. You just want to go over and kiss it and remind him to relax his forehead. 

But you know he's so very busy and you don't want to distract him with something so silly. He barely has enough time in the day as it is, between all the ways he helps the people of Hell's Kitchen, and lately he's just been adding more and more to his plate - more clients, more patrols, more everything except you. 

You aren't jealous. You know how needed he is and you are grateful to be in his life at all. You get to be the one to take care of him and be in his bed at the end of the night, even if you spend many of those nights alone. 

It just makes moments like these so much sweeter. 

So, when he gets up again and heads to the kitchen, you can't help but turn and watch him. He starts another pot of coffee, and your eyes just go heart shaped as you admire how his shoulders move under his shirt. 

“Anything interesting?” He asks with a bit of cockiness, and you know he's aware you aren't focused on your work.

You place your chin on the back of the couch and hum, “This company has one of the best sick leave policies I've ever seen. Think I might quit my job and go raise plants in Arizona.” 

Matt snorts at your answer and teases, “Do you know anything about raising plants?”

“For three weeks guaranteed paid vacation and two paid sick days a month, I'll learn.” 

He turns to face you, tilting his head to one side in disbelief, “Two paid sick days a month? What is the catch?”

You nod, then pretend to huff, “You have to live in the middle of nowhere Arizona.” Matt makes a face of disgust, and you laugh into your hand, a smile blooming across your face, “That's why I'm only considering.”

“I'm glad, I'd prefer it if you stay here. I'd miss you too much if you were in the middle of nowhere Arizona.” 

You spend the rest of the day practically glowing over Matt admitting he'd miss you. The words will live in your heart and head forever.

Sunday

You've never been stalked and hunted by a wild animal, but this is what you imagine it would feel like. 

The Devil has come home earlier than expected and it looks like he crawled his way out of Hell. He's in his black suit, or what's left of it, and is covered in his own blood. His nose is dripping, probably broken, staining his mouth red. His shirt is barely hanging together and various fresh shallow cuts litter his torso. His Muay Thai ropes are dirty with grime and what you expect to be others’ blood.

He slowly came down the stairs from the roof then began to circle around the couch, each step deliberate and calculating, and he has not let up. 

The air in the room is so heavy. You can't breathe because you don't have a protocol for this. You can't tell if he's angry or upset - he hasn't said a word and he's not expressing himself in any way, but Danger is exuding from him. 

You sit straight backed on the couch as the Devil continues his path around you, his head tilting in different directions ever so slightly. You don't know if he's tracking something or waiting for some sign. You can't tell when he's like this. 

Finally, he stops in the spot halfway between the couch and the bedroom, only partially angled towards you. He begins to undo the ropes stabilizing his wrists, letting them drop to the ground without acknowledgment. You watch them like they are snakes, ready to slither at you with an attack. His gloves quickly join the pile, but then he raises a hand towards you, palm up like he wants you to take it.

He confirms his intentions with a low, “Come here.”

You're worried and confused with how he is behaving, but you don't dare disobey the Devil. 

You slip out of your seat and make your way to him in silence, reaching to take his hand when you get close enough. To your surprise, he brings it up to his face and places a light kiss to your wrist, over your pulse point. 

“Do you know who I am?” He asks, voice low and laced with an unsaid promise. 

A shiver runs up your spine and you manage to answer, breathing out, “Matt Murdock. Daredevil.” 

He pulls his lips back into a snarl and you fear you've got the question wrong somehow. 

Keeping your hand in his, he steps towards you, one achingly slow step at a time, until you are practically chest to chest. He dips his head and brushes the tip of his nose against your neck. You can hear him inhale. 

“I hear their frightened little whispers. I hear what they call me - not just the Devil of Hell's Kitchen. King of Hell - this is my territory and I protect it with a ferocity,” he whispers into your skin. You close your eyes and try to keep your breathing from going shaky. 

It is not just fear and confusion coursing through you now. His words, his rasping, is going straight to your cunt. You haven't encountered The Devil in so long you've forgotten what it does to you.

He presses his free hand against your lower back, moving you so you are flush against him. Your hand goes to his chest, just under his shoulder where his shirt is still intact and not sticky with who knows what. 

“Do you know what that makes you?” he growls against you and all you can do is shake your head.

You don't interact with many people, and you doubt anyone in Hell's Kitchen is talking about you. 

You are of no interest to anyone. 

The Devil bumps his nose against your earlobe before giving it a light nibble and telling you, “My Queen of Hell.”

Air catches in your throat and it feels like your entire being short circuits. What does he mean, you're his Queen? 

You've never done anything to deserve such a title, but you aren't going to disagree with him. If he wants to call you this, you will relish in it. 

As you are still trying to process things, you are suddenly lifted into the air by your thighs, and you have to quickly wrap your legs around the Devil so you don't start flailing. Like you weigh absolutely nothing, you are carried to the bedroom and with care you do not expect, laid out on the bed. 

The Devil, mask, boots, batons, and all, crawls over you, going straight for your throat. He starts with his lips but quickly dissolves into dragging his tongue and teeth wherever he can get. It's slow, methodical, like he has a goal with his lavishing. 

You don't care about his intention - you are melting into the bed under him, desperate for him to not stop. Whatever he is doing, whatever has got him in this mood, you want more of it. 

Hesitantly, fearing you might disrupt the atmosphere, you wrap your arms around the body above you, one hand going to scratch at the back of his neck, trying to silently encourage more attention to your neck. He obliges and teeth scraping against you turns into biting. He wastes no time in leaving his first mark on you, then another, and another. 

“You're mine,” he tells you as he starts on the other side of your throat, “Belong to me. You're mine.” 

You arch at the words, cunt clenching around nothing. He is correct. You are his - you've belonged to him the moment you met, and you will until the day you die. 

He is your everything.

“I'm yours,” you agree, barely above a whisper. 

The Devil drags his lips from your neck only to crash them into yours. It's like being pulled under by a wave - a force you can only just accept and go with. He tastes like smoke and copper, but you don't care. You only want more.

You want to be consumed. 

And it feels like that is what he does. You kiss until you feel like you can't possibly breathe any longer, then he is pulling away to start moving down your body. He pushes your shirt up to start a trail of kisses and bites towards your stomach.

“My Queen,” he growls, and you can only throw your head back with pleasure at his words, his actions, “My Persephone. Mine. Whatever you want, it's yours. Anything. Give you Fisk's head on a platter. Or do you want his heart? I'll rip out his throat with my teeth for you.”

You want to comment it looks like he already has, with the state he came in in, but all you can manage to say is the truth.

“I just want you.” 

Your shirt is pulled off and tossed to the side before he is on you again, biting at your lips as he does what you want. He grinds his cock into you, and you can feel just how hard he is. You tug at the remains of his shirt, and it is also quickly discarded. 

You can feel him moving over you, probably trying to get out of the rest of his armor, but you don't pay attention. All your focus is on the way his mouth is moving with yours - dominating and controlling and firm but in no way actually hurting you. 

Nothing to ever hurt you. 

When he pulls back, he does so enough to sit up. 

You whine at the loss of his touch, but it is balanced when he finally removes his mask, and you can see his beautiful face again. 

It's a little sick, but you like him like this - bruised and battered and bloody. You like the physical reminders of who he is and what he is capable of. 

You reach up to press your hands to the mottled skin around his ribs, still healing from the baseball bat. He hisses at the contact, but his now free cock gives a violent twitch. You know which reaction to trust. 

Your sleep shorts and panties are unceremoniously removed, and you and the Devil are left nude. You are hauled up to be on your knees with him and once again you are held against his chest. He cups your jaw with both hands and kisses you firmly.

“Take such good care of me,” he mumbles between nips and bites, “Let me take care of you, my Queen.”

You want that. 

You want that.

 You want him to take care of you - to focus on you - to be his everything. You desperately nod against him, shaky whispers of “please” coming from you. 

He lays you back down and guides himself into you with far more care than you'd expect in the moment. It's steady until he's fully sheathed in you, then he is over you again, burying his face into your neck. 

“Mine.”

“Yours.”

He starts moving then, slow, steady, and deep, like he's trying to savor every roll of his hips. 

It's heady and with the way he's back to worshiping your neck, you're quick to sink into a place of pure bliss only he can send you. 

He starts to mumble against you as he devours you. You hear catches of your name and ‘my Queen’ and ‘mine’, but you hear something about Sin and love and need. Your brain refuses to link the words together and you don't need it to understand them right now. 

You just need Him. 

You roll your head to the side so he can dig his teeth into a new spot and through half lidded eyes, you spot the mirror you've added into the room. Using it, you watch the Devil make love to you, his body half shrouded by shadows. 

He's so fucking beautiful.

As your thighs begin to tremble and pressure builds up in your core, you notice smears of darkness on your face, your neck, and your arms.

It is the same darkness that the Devil is drenched in. 

He's covered you in his blood. 

You're coated with him. 

Inside and out.

The realization sends you over the edge and you scream his name for all your subjects to hear.

Monday

You wake up alone.

This is of no surprise to you.

a/n:

I see this with multiple interpretations ;)

a/n2: theres not a baseball bat emoji

[zepskies]

Hey! I was wondering if the requests are still open? I’m so obsessed with BMD💗✨ I was wonder how Ben would react to his gf having cramps during her moon cycle✨

Tysm for sharing these awesome stories with us hun🫂💗✨Hope you’re healthy and happy💃🏻❤️

Hey there!

I'm so glad you love BMD. 🥰 I’m slowly but surely working through my inbox of requests! And because I’m currently on my “moon cycle” as I’m writing this [last week. I was suffering for four days], I just had to do this prompt. So thank you for it, lovely!

And you're so very welcome. It's my pleasure. I hope you're healthy and happy as well!! ❤️❤️

AN: This one is set in the Break Me Down-verse, but can be read as a stand-alone. Considering where we're going next in "Strong as Blood," I thought it'd be good to release this first lol.

Pairing: Soldier Boy/Ben x F. Reader

Word Count: 2,700 Tags/Warnings: Period talk, of course. Hurt/comfort, fluff, grumpy Ben.

Imagine: How Ben reacts to his girlfriend having cramps during her period.

You really were going to die this time.

The thought was both a conviction and a deranged mantra as you stood hunched over the bathroom sink. Nausea and pain warred for dominance as you pressed a clammy hand over your forehead.

Jesus Christ, end me please. I beg of you.

Meanwhile, your boyfriend was in the bedroom getting ready for work. Both you and Ben worked at Supe Affairs now, with Butcher and the rest of the team.

You were one of the top agents in the Surveillance department, while Ben was considered a “contractor,” catching rogue supes and dealing with the remnants of Vought.

He was just about to undress from his shirt and sweatpants and start getting his supe suit on, when he heard the toilet flush in the bathroom…for the third time now. He realized then just how long you’d been in there.

He went over and knocked on the closed door.

“Hey, you planning on going to work today?” he said, with a teasing note to his voice. “Or making breakfast, for that matter?”

“Not now, Ben,” you replied, barely stifling a groan.

A frown tugged at his lips. “What’s wrong?”

“Debating if I’m gonna start my day by throwing up last night’s pot roast,” you replied sourly.

Ben’s brows crunched when he heard the strain in your voice. But at the same time, he couldn’t help smiling.

“What, are you pregnant?” he asked.

He heard your dry huff from the other side of the bathroom door.

“Most definitely not,” you said. “But at this point, I’d much rather be knocked up.”

Ben didn’t like the sound of that. He twisted the doorknob and let himself in, just to see his girlfriend locked up with pain. He read the misery written across your face. You were still in your pajamas (one of his old shirts that hung almost to your knees).

“Tell me what’s wrong,” he repeated gruffly. He rested a heavy hand on your back, between your shoulders. You let out a breath.

“Move that hand lower?” you requested. “My period came early this month. Hit me out of nowhere with a vengeance.”

His brows crunched a bit, but he obliged you, moving to your lower back. His hand was warm, as usual, and the weight of it was a small relief as he rubbed back and forth into your aching muscles.

You let out a deep breath and briefly closed your eyes. Finally, the nausea was starting to pass. And if you dawdled any longer, you were going to be late for work.

“Okay,” you breathed. “I need to get ready.”

You tried to straighten up, even though what felt like your entire lower body protested.

“You can barely move,” Ben said. “How’re you gonna work like that?”

“The way all women have managed to do for centuries,” you tartly pointed out. “With a buttload of painkillers and a heating pad under my desk…speaking of, where is that thing?”

You moved past him to look for said object. You knew you put it somewhere…

Ah! You found it in the top drawer of your nightstand. You plugged it in just to make sure it was working, but to your frowning suspicion, it didn’t turn on.

“Oh, you gotta be fucking kidding me,” you said. You pressed the “on” button several times, but it didn’t light up. You touched the fluffy heating pad on both sides, but it was still cold. “Damn it. Don’t tell me this thing’s broken!”

You were about ready to tear the thing apart with your bare hands, when a sudden cramp spasmed in your lower belly. You inhaled sharply and held a hand there with a wince. Your back bent forward on reflex, and you grabbed onto the nightstand to steady yourself.

“All right,” Ben said. He took the defunct heating pad out of your hand and guided you to sit down on the edge of the bed. He went over to his side to grab his cell phone where it sat on his nightstand.

When you twisted to see what he was up to, you raised a suspicious brow. “What are you doing?”

“You’re not going to work,” he said. His tone was matter of fact, and your brows rose even higher.

“What? Ben—”

He ignored you when whoever he was calling finally answered the phone.

“Yes?” came Grace Mallory’s steady, but slightly incredulous voice. Ben never called her, nor did he want to. But he didn’t have your manager’s number and didn’t feel like scrolling through your phone to find it.

“She’s not coming in today,” Ben said, without preamble.

"Ben," you tried. Again, he ignored you.

In his ear, Grace spoke your name, both a question and a clarification.

“Yeah, she’s sick. Get someone else to fill in,” he said.

Grace sighed. “…All right, but just so you know—”  

Ben hung up the phone before she could finish. He then tossed it onto the bed. You shot him a wry, questioning look.

“What did she say?” you asked.

“It’s fine. You’ve got the day off,” he said. “Just relax.”

You sighed. Going above your manager to call Grace wasn’t the protocol for taking PTO in the slightest, but you couldn’t help but smile.

You beckoned him over with a hand. "Come 'ere."

A smirk tugging at his lips, Ben came back around to your side of the bed. You pulled him down by his shirt until he sat next to you, and you wrapped your arms around his neck in a hug. Maybe it was a small thing, but sometimes your boyfriend surprised you with the ways he showed that he cared.

“Thanks, baby,” you said softly. You carded your fingers through his hair, rested them at the back of his neck.

“Mhmm,” Ben nodded, rubbing your back again. “I gotta get going.”

“If you must,” you sighed. You pulled away enough to see his face, and something occurred to you. “Oh, can you get me some more feminine pads on the way home? And some Midol, and a new heating pad?”

Ben raised a brow at you. This was where he drew the line. He wasn’t about to be caught dead browsing through pads and tampons in some pharmacy aisle. God for-fucking-bid, some kid would be there with a camera phone. He’d learned about the internet, and it was worse than the tabloids used to be.

But you read the pullback in his face. You implored him with your eyes, and your gentle fingers in his hair.

“Please?” you asked. “I’d do it for you.”

Ben’s frown deepened.

“I’m not the one with the…” He gestured at you vaguely. “Monthly problem.”

You grinned a little. The way he reluctantly phrased it amused you. Despite his deplorable sense of humor, and often vulgar language, not to mention his blatant love of pussy, you supposed his fragile male disposition wouldn’t allow him to say the words.

Period.

Menstrual cycle.

Bleeding from the vagina.

“Exactly,” you countered, and you leaned up to once again snuggle your face into his neck. “Please, baby. You don’t know how much it hurts right now. You really want me to go to the store like this?”

Ben held you back with a terse sigh. You were somehow ready to go to work a minute ago, yet you couldn’t drive around the corner to the drug store?

“Fine,” he groused. His voice was nearly a growl, but you still smiled behind his back. You laid small, sweet kisses into his neck. When you leaned back, you pressed a lingering kiss to his lips.

“Thank you,” you said between kisses. Ben just shook his head when you were done bribing him with affection.

“Yeah,” he dully replied. The things I fucking do for you, said his tone.

He finally withdrew from you to continue getting dressed, leaving you to crawl back under the covers and try to find a comfortable angle to lay down. You used all the pillows on the bed, even dragging his toward you. That one you rested your head on, as it still smelled like him.

Ben watched you settle in out of the corner of his eye, like a cat curling up in her bed. A smile tugged at his lips when you sighed in relief and turned on the TV.

He didn’t see so much pain in your features anymore. You seemed in a better mood, relaxed as you held his pillow like an anchor.

So that’s how he left you. However, it wasn’t until he got to the Supe Affairs building that he saw your text pop up on his phone:

Here’s a picture of the pads I like. If you don’t see them, call me and I’ll help you. And don’t forget the heating pad! 😘

He rolled his eyes in annoyance.

By the time he got home that evening with takeout and a plastic bag (filled with the things you'd asked for), he spotted an empty cup of yogurt in the kitchen.

It meant you’d gotten out of bed at some point, at least. He set down the takeout bags on the kitchen counter and made his way up the stairs.

He found you in the same place he left you: in bed, in your pajamas. And you were crying while watching a movie.

Ben frowned. He stood in the doorway in his supe suit with the pharmacy bag.

“What’s the matter?” he asked. You looked up and finally noticed him.

“Oh, hey.” You paused the movie. “I’m okay. It’s just…Marley & Me.”

“What?”

“It’s this true story about a dog…just, don’t ask. It’s ridiculously sad,” you sniffed and wiped your eyes.

He raised a brow at you.

“Sure it’s not just your uh…situation, making you all weepy?” he asked.

You narrowed your eyes at him. “You did not just say that.”

Was he really calling you hormonal right now?  

His lips pursed, but he held up the bag.

“Before you start blowing your top, I got your female shit.” He ventured into the bedroom and laid the bag in your lap.

Giving him some annoyed side-eye, you peered into the bag. You nodded in approval at the correct brand and size of the pads you wanted, and a new pack of Midol. You then had to smile, as he even got you a couple of Twix bars. Your favorite chocolate covered candy.

“Admit it, I did good,” Ben said with a smirk. Your side-eye was begrudgingly amused this time.

“Color me surprised,” you replied, but you still treated him with a genuine smile. “Thanks, baby. This is perfect…”

Though you realized something was missing. Ben’s smirk started to fade as he caught on.

“Wait.” You sorted through the bag. “Where’s the heating pad?”

Fuck, Ben thought. He forgot.

His expression slackened, making you sigh in disappointment.

“Okay, it’s fine,” you said, ripping open the box of Midol. This would have to be enough to relieve your pain (but it never was). Even now, your cramps were starting back up again.

Ben nodded in response. You were no longer looking at him though.

He let out a sigh. Didn’t he get credit for fucking trying here?

Without another word, he started unzipping his supe suit and disappeared into the bathroom for a shower.

By the time he returned, you were nearly in full fetal position. The Midol had only put a dent in your pain. The First Wives Club movie from the '90s was playing on the TV, but not even that could make you laugh, let alone relax right now.

You were truly miserable, and Ben saw it as he got dressed in a clean pair of sweatpants and a shirt.

“Hey, you hungry?” he asked. He wasn’t sure about the last time you’d eaten anything.

You paused the movie and moved your head enough to meet his eyes.

“Not really,” you admitted. “You go ahead and eat.”

Oh, he was starving. After the day he’d had, rounding up another telekinetic that tried to trash Midtown to evade capture, Ben could go for about five burgers. But there was a part of him that…didn’t feel right, leaving you like this.

Still, he needed to eat. He went downstairs and grabbed his meatball sub out of the takeout bag. He also took your sandwich along too, just in case the sight of food managed to make you hungry. He brought it all upstairs and sat next to you in bed. Though he was also kind of behind you, the way you were curled up.

You'd felt when his body dipped on his side of the bed. His presence both soothed and annoyed you. The former, because you did love your man. The latter, because he forgot the most important thing you'd reminded him not to forget.

You reached back blindly, eventually finding his hand that wasn't occupied with holding his sandwich. You placed that hand on your lower back.

"Massage, please," you grunted into your pillow. (Well, his pillow, but semantics.)

He sighed through his nose and a mouthful of meatball.

"I'm eating," he replied.

"What, you can't multitask?" you quipped.

Ben's gaze hardened with annoyance at the back of your head.

Still, he found himself reaching over and rubbing across your lower back. He applied gentle, but firm pressure with the heel of his hand. You sighed in appreciation.

“Thanks,” you murmured. Ben nodded and continued to polish off his sub while watching the movie. He usually wasn’t into chick flicks, but Bette Midler was hilarious, and Goldie Hawn was hot as fuck.

“I got you turkey and provolone,” he said. You nodded.

“Thanks. I’m still not hungry though.”

“Are you nauseous?”

“No…just in pain.”

Ben frowned…until he got an idea. He crumpled up his trash and tossed it onto the nightstand for now, along with brushing off the crumbs from his chest. He grabbed a couple of your pillows and propped them up behind him, against the headboard.

You shot him an annoyed look. “Hey!”

“You’re like a little dragon with her hoard a’ gold,” he remarked, smirking. Before you could start getting all huffy, he reached for your arm. “Come ‘ere.”

“What?”

“For once, just do what I'm telling you," he said. His lips twitched at your narrowing eyes. "I’ve got an idea."

With a loud sigh, you reluctantly (and slowly) uncurled and turned towards him. Ben laid back against the headboard, and he guided you to lay on top of him. You often complained that his skin was too hot at night for summer. Sometimes you woke up sweating.

It was a result of the power that emanated from his chest. Ben couldn’t exactly control the heat; at least, not when he was sleeping. But he was sure you were going to appreciate it more when winter came.

Not to mention, right now.

He positioned you just right, with your knee curling around his hip and your head resting against his chest. His large hand once again soothed against your lower back, underneath your shirt, and his fingers massaged into your skin.

You smiled as you realized what he was doing. You felt the warmth emanating from his body as it seeped into yours. Along with his calming touch, it slowly managed to relieve your pain.

After a few minutes, you let out a deep sigh and pressed a soft kiss to his chest, before you went back to resting on him fully. You couldn’t see it, but Ben smiled.

“Better?” he asked.

You closed your eyes with a soft smile. “Yeah. My new heating pad’s working wonders.”

Ben huffed a bit at that.

Just then, your stomach growled fiercely. Your eyes popped open.

You met your boyfriend's wry look, biting your lip. He smirked and reached down into the bag that still laid beside the bed. He retrieved your foil-wrapped sandwich and handed to you. You took it and happily began breaking through the foil.

Ben looked down at you, both fond and resigned. You clearly had no intention of getting off him. Which meant you were about to try and use him like some kind of makeshift man table.

You eventually took a bite of your sandwich, your eyes lighting up as you hummed in appreciation. You glanced up at his raised brow with a happy little smile.

“So good!” you said, still with your mouth full.

Ben restrained the urge to roll his eyes. Instead, he thumbed at a bit of crumb on the corner of your mouth.

“Just don’t get mustard on my shirt,” he said.

AN: Lol I hope you liked this! I had fun with it, even though I don't have a body heater for my cramps. 😭

(It's fine. I bought a new heating pad online. ❤️‍🔥)

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[queenshelby]

An Illicit Affair

Part 20: FILMED

Pairing: Cillian Murphy (46) x Reader (23)

Warning: Age-Gap, Taboo Relationship, Infidelity

The following day, just as Danielle had planned, Max went to Cillian's apartment to let the cable company inside, telling them to close the door behind them once they were done.

"Will do," said the contractor engaged by Danielle before getting to work and installing cameras and sound equipment in the master bedroom and living room. 

He hid them securely behind paintings on the wall and furniture, while making sure that they were connected to a secure server online.

"There, I think that should cover most areas," he said confidently, tightening the screws one last time, attaching the final device, before finally calling Danielle and giving her the access codes.

When he provided the information to her, he reminded her again that she was breaking boundaries by installing surveillance devices in her own home to spy on her husband, but she did not seem to care.

"You get paid well for this kind of job, don't you?" she chuckled over the phone, rolling her eyes and brushing off his concerns. "So, don't worry about me," she said. "I'll handle the consequences," she insisted before hanging up on him. 

The technician shrugged in agreement, but the conversation lingered in his mind long after he left the apartment.

Luckily for him, he also left just in time as, on the way out, he saw Cillian enter the building. 

His shoot had been cancelled and he arrived back home much earlier than expected. He had done some shopping on the way, intending to cook dinner for you before you were set to arrive at his place between seven and eight. 

***

As usual, you were right on time, arriving at Cillian's apartment just after seven following a long day at work.

Expectedly, by this point and following your sudden departure from his apartment last night, the anticipation of seeing him had grown significantly, and your nerves were starting to show signs of weakness.

Just last night, you admitted your feelings to him after he had done the same and whilst you had lots of talking to do about how you might be moving forward with this affair, for now, you were simply desperate to be close to him.

You had been fantasizing about Cillian all day after last night's rendezvous was being cut short and hoped that, tonight, you would not be interrupted so unexpectedly again.

You wanted to be completely lost in each other without any interruptions and that was all you could think about when stepping into the elevator, taking you up to Cillian's apartment where he was already waiting for you. 

***

"You cooked?" you asked with surprise soon after he opened the door for you, causing him to nod apprehensively. 

"I did," he replied softly before giving you a quick kiss as if to say "hello", following which you smiled gratefully, appreciating the effort he put into preparing dinner for you.

"I hope you are hungry," he then said and you nodded eagerly.

"I am starving," you responded sincerely. "Although I thought that we could start with dessert first," you continued teasingly, playfully batting your eyelashes as you eyed him flirtatiously. 

"Well, did you bring dessert? Because I didn't make any," he winked, a hint of mischief sparkling in his eyes. He knew exactly what you meant by dessert but played along nonetheless. 

"What do you take me for? Of course, I did," you grinned back as you slowly unbuttoned your coat, beneath which you wore nothing but a set of black lingerie that left little to the imagination.

As you let your coat slide off your shoulders and onto the floor, leaving you only in your lingerie, Cillian couldn't help but raise an eyebrow in surprise.

"Well, that looks quite delicious," he chuckled, feeling himself grow increasingly aroused.

"Thank you Cillian, I tried my best," you winked before pulling him in for a kiss.

In response, his lips met yours gently, and you could feel his body stiffen slightly beneath his clothing. As you pulled away, you noticed the hunger in his cerulean gaze. His hands found a hold of your waist, pulling you closer until there was hardly any space between you two. The scent of freshly prepared food filled the air around you, mingling with the scent of cologne that hung in the atmosphere. It was intoxicating.

"Do you need to turn the oven off or something?" you gasped, feeling his erection press against your lower stomach.

"No," Cillian murmured against your lips, his voice husky with desire. "Dinner is sitting on the bench. We can heat it up later. Now, all I want is you," he whispered heatedly, his grip tightening around your waist.

In response, you leaned in close, pressing your lips against his. The taste of passion swirled between you both, sending shivers down your spine. Your heart thumped faster, matching the rhythm of the growing tension between you. As you kissed, Cillian pushed the strap of your bra aside, exposing one breast. He took it gently in his hand, grazing it with his thumb before sucking on your nipple. You moaned softly, arching your back, inviting more.

"Hmm," you gasped. "More," you then demanded. Cillian obliged, his tongue tracing circles around your nipple and then trailing downwards across your chest towards your navel. Your breath hitched, and you clung onto his arms tightly, not wanting him to stop.

"Lets take this to the bedroom," Cillian suggested huskily, breaking the spell of pleasure that seemed to envelop you both.

Without hesitation, you grabbed his hand and led him to the bedroom for what would undoubtedly be a night of intense passion. Once inside, Cillian closed the door behind you, locking out the world for just you two. You stood near the bed, gazing intently at each other. The fire burning within you both grew stronger.

"Take off your clothes," you told him firmly, feeling the heat rise to your cheeks.

"As you wish," he responded cautiously, already halfway undressed. You watched as he removed his shirt, revealing his lean freckled torso.

His muscles rippled slightly as he reached for his belt buckle, loosening it before sliding his pants down to reveal his black CK briefs. He paused momentarily, meeting your gaze, a smoldering intensity igniting in his eyes. You felt a growing warmth pooling between your legs, and your nipples hardened under the thin lace fabric of your bra.

"Let's get rid of these as well," he murmured, reaching for your bra clasp, gently opening it before allowing the garment to fall of your shoulders. The sensation of your breasts bouncing free sent a jolt of excitement through you.

You let out a soft sigh as Cillian cupped them gently, running his thumbs over your nipples, causing you to arch your back in ecstasy. He leaned in close, his warm breath fanning across your skin as he teased you with soft kisses. His fingers slowly slid down your stomach, tracing lines across your belly button. You felt a shiver run down your spine and a throbbing need begin to build deep within you.

He then hooked his fingers into the lace hem of your panties, gently easing them down over your hips and thighs until they pooled around your ankles. The cool air caressing your most intimate parts caused goosebumps to break out along your skin. His gaze locked onto you as he lifted his head to meet your eyes, a slow smile spreading across his face.

"I've been looking forward to this," he admitted softly, his voice thick with lust. You swallowed nervously, unable to tear your gaze away from his. The room suddenly felt hotter, and you knew it wasn't just the fire blazing in the fireplace.

"Now lie down for me and let me taste you," Cillian commanded, his voice low and seductive. You obeyed without question, eager to feel his skilled touch.

Your heart raced as you lay down on the bed, your pulse pounding in the silence of the room. Cillian kneeled beside you, his eyes dark and full of desire. He moved closer, his warm breath brushing against your neck, sending shivers down your spine.

"God you are beautiful," he whispered as he traced light patterns along your inner thigh, drawing ever closer to your center. \

Your breath quickened, and you could feel your heart pounding in your chest. When his finger finally touched you, you inhaled sharply, biting your lip to suppress a moan. Cillian licked his lips, watching your reaction closely.

"You're so wet," he observed, his voice hushed yet insinuating. "You really want this, don't you?"

"Always," you nodded, too nervous to speak. He dipped a finger inside you, testing your readiness.

You cried out softly, your muscles clenching around him. A small smirk played on his lips, and he withdrew his finger, licking it once before repeating the process. This time, he added another finger, stretching you open.

"Oh God!" you whimpered, squirming beneath him. "Please, Cillian!"

He looked up at you, his eyes shining with lust. "Please what?" he taunted, smiling wickedly.

"Tell me what you want," he demanded. 

"I want you to kiss me," you groan, unable to resist anymore.

"Kiss you where?" he asks, his voice dripping with sultry confidence.

"Right here," you plead, motioning towards your throbbing core.

Cillian smiles devilishly as he lowered his face between your legs. You gasped, arching your back as his hot breath washes over your sensitive flesh. He paused just long enough to tease you before diving in, kissing and licking every inch of your sweet spot.

"Fuck, yes!" you screamed, digging your nails into the bedding as Cillian's mouth hungrily worked on you. His tongue darted in and out, expertly flicking against your swollen clit. Each flick brought you closer to the edge, your entire body quivering with anticipation.

"That feels so good," you panted, throwing your head back and forth in sheer bliss. 

You felt his tongue pause for a moment, the tip lightly grazing your engorged clitoris.

A surge of raw desire coursed through you, your pussy clenching spasmodically around his fingers. Cillian's eyes sparkled mischievously as he dragged his lips up your inner thigh, kissing the sensitive flesh just below your crotch.

"You're so fucking sexy," he breathed heavily, his voice vibrating against your trembling skin. "I've wanted you since the first day I saw you," he admitted, causing you to moan even louder. 

"Oh god, Cillian, please!" you begged, thrashing around on the bed. "Don't stop now!"

With those words, Cillian's tongue resumed its assault on your pussy, plunging deeper and deeper inside you. The sensation was overwhelming, and you felt yourself rapidly approaching orgasm. Your breathing became ragged, and your body shook uncontrollably beneath him.

"I'm gonna cum!" you screamed, gripping the sheets tightly. "Just like that, Cillian! Yes!"

The room filled with the sounds of slurping and groaning, punctuated by your desperate pleas for release. Cillian's talented tongue danced around your clit, making you writhe helplessly on the mattress. You wanted to come so badly, but he kept edging you, refusing to give you the satisfaction you craved.

"Fuck, please!" you screamed, clutching at the sheets beneath you. "I need to come!"

Cillian's eyes gleamed mischievously as he shifted his attention upwards, planting soft kisses against your inner thigh. With each new sensation, your need for release intensified, your body craving satisfaction like never before.

"Not yet. Not until my cock is buried deep inside you," Cillian growls against your skin, his tone thick with lust. His words send a wave of electricity through your veins, causing your heart to race and your pussy to clench. 

"Are you ready for me?" he asked, his voice rough and commanding. Before you can even respond, he pulled away, leaving you panting and begging for more.

He stroked his cock, slick with pre-cum, before aligning it with your entrance. "Look at us," he murmured, guiding your head to look down at the sight of you both. "We're perfect together," he then groaned, watching his cock tease your wet pussy. 

His words drove you wild, and you bit your lip to stop from screaming. Instead, you wrapped your legs around his waist, pulling him closer, letting him know how much you wanted him.

"God, I want you inside me," you moaned, the anticipation building within you. " I want you so fucking bad right now," you whimpered, his fingers slipping easily inside you again, reminding you of how incredible he made you feel.

"Then beg for it," Cillian teased, his fingers moving in a tantalizing rhythm before withdrawing them again. 

His cock then pressed against your wet folds, almost penetrating you, but stopping just in time to maintain the exquisite torture.

"Cillian, please fuck me," you pleaded, your voice barely audible, strained with desperation but Cillian simply chuckled, his voice dark and husky, filled with raw lust. 

"I need your cock, please," you begged, reaching out to grab his shaft. "RIGHT FUCKING NOW!"

"Fuck you make me so hard Y/N," Cillian rasped, his voice husky with longing. 

You heard yourself moan, the sound echoing in the room around you. Cillian was a master of control, and he knew exactly how to draw out your pleasure. You arched your back, thrusting your pelvis upward, silently begging for him to fill you.

But Cillian continued to torment you, sliding your lubricated juices over his cockhead.

"Ah," he groaned, pumping his dick, coating it with your slick essence. He was determined to make sure you were ready for him. And oh, you were. More than ready. Your whole body yearned for him. But still, he refused to enter you.

"You're driving me crazy," you moaned, clawing at his arms, trying to pull him inside you. "Please, stop fooling around and just fuck me!"

Cillian merely chuckled again, his deep voice sending a shiver down your spine.

"Alright, alright," he cooed before slowly pushing his cock inside you. You gasped, biting your lip, as you felt yourself stretch around him.

"Oh, fuuuuck," you moaned. "Yes, yes, yessss... That feels so good," you sighed, closing your eyes and savoring the feeling of being filled by him.

He responded with a low, guttural growl, squeezing your hips tightly. His cock pulsed within you, filling you up completely. You could feel the steady throb of his member, rubbing against your most sensitive spots. It was pure bliss.

"You're so tight," Cillian whispered, burying his face in your neck. "I can't believe how good you feel every time we do this," he moaned before he pulled out slightly, only to thrust back inside you with force.

You gasped sharply, your nails digging into his arms. By this point, neither of you knew that you were being recorded, the hidden camera in the corner of the room capturing every passionate moment.

"God, I love you," Cillian murmured, his words muffled by your skin.

"I love you too! Fuck!" you moaned, reveling in the feeling of his cock pulsating inside you.

"Harder, Cillian," you begged, grabbing fistfuls of his hair and pulling him closer. "Fuck me harder!"

Cillian complied, increasing the speed and power of his thrusts. Your bodies slammed together, creating a symphony of skin slapping against skin. Each movement sent waves of pleasure radiating from your core, threatening to consume you entirely.

"I am so close Cillian," you whimpered, tightening your grip on his shoulders. "And I want you to cum deep inside me."

Cillian responded with a low, guttural growl, squeezing your hips tightly. The throbbing sensation intensified, his cock pulsing within you, grinding against your most sensitive spots. "I'm going to explode inside you," he grunted, burying his face in your neck.  "Fuck," he cursed, his movements becoming erratic.

You could hear the desperation in his voice, the frantic pace of his thrusts escalating with urgency. "Come with me," he panted, his voice hoarse. "Cum for me, baby."

You held him tighter, your nails digging into his skin. The familiar sensation of an orgasm building within you overwhelmed everything else. You cried out, your voice blending with Cillian's, rising to a fever pitch as you both neared completion.

"I'm coming!" you cried, your body convulsing around him as he thrust harder, deeper, and faster, each stroke bringing you closer to the edge. The pressure built within you, intensifying with every passing second. Your grip on his shoulders tightened, nails digging into his skin. you shouted, your voice hoarse. 

You came hard and fast and Cillian redoubled his efforts, his cock slamming into you with renewed vigor. Each thrust sent a jolt of pleasure shooting through him, finally sending him over the edge. He groaned loudly, his body stiffening as he emptied his seed deep inside you.

"Ah," he gasped, collapsing on top of you, his sweat-covered body heavy and sticky.

After catching his breath, he pulled out of you, his cum mixing with your juices as it dripped onto the sheets.

"Damn," he muttered, kissing your shoulder. "That was amazing."

You could only manage a weak smile, exhausted from the intense encounter while, unbeknownst to you, a hidden camera had recorded your every move.

Still, lying beneath Cillian, you remained blissfully unaware of the intrusion, instead focusing on the residual sensations coursing through your body.

"You okay?" Cillian asked, concern evident in his voice.

"Yeah," you managed to reply weakly, still struggling to catch your breath.

"Good, because I am not done with you yet," he teased, propping himself up on his elbows and staring down at you with a mischievous grin.

"Oh no," you laughed, playfully pushing him away. "How about dinner first and then we you can fuck me all night long," you teased, wriggling your eyebrows suggestively. Cillian chuckled deeply, his eyes twinkling mischievously.

"It's a deal," he agreed, planting a quick kiss on your forehead before helping you up from the bed.

"Come on, let's go eat," he urged, leading you out of the bedroom and back into the kitchen.

To be continued...

Tags:

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[gulfbusinessdevelopment]

How ICT & ELV Systems Enhance Operational Efficiency?

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Make sure you are receiving value for your money by comparing the specific quotations you receive. Modern infrastructure must include ELV and ICT installations since they increase operational efficiency, communication, and security. Selecting the best installation business requires assessing their cost-effectiveness, technical expertise, experience, service offering, and customer support.

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[dragonnarrative-writes]

Kinktober Day 1 - Voyeurism

Kate Laswell x Bricks (CIA Asset OC)

CW: Dub-con/Non-con voyeurism (one person is not aware they are being watched), surveillance, sex work, dirty talk, degradation, impact play, daddy kink, too many mirrors, too much setup and an abrupt ending, big dogs

“Got me Watcher?” Bricks covers the movement of her mouth by touching up her lipstick in the mirrored wall of the elevator.

“Coming in clear,” Kate answers. “Go ahead and run a final calibration on the lenses.” She marks the edges of the camera range as Bricks sweeps her eyes in a practiced pattern to confirm the fit and function of the contacts. When she crosses her eyes and sticks her tongue out, confusing the feed, Kate chuckles. “Save it for Mendoza.”

“Please,” Bricks snickers. “My best is wasted on him.”

The doors open. Two large men, Mendoza’s bodyguards, usher Bricks forward. Real professionals, Kate notes, neither of them letting their eyes linger on stunning legs or exposed cleavage. One waves a wand over her, hair to heels, and the other takes the clutch from Bricks’ hand. He rifles through it, then doesn’t give it back.

“My second best lipstick is in there,” Bricks protests, half-heartedly. “I’m gonna want that back, later.”

“You’ll get it back when you leave,” the man grunts. “Come with us please.”

“Give me doors,” Kate instructs as they proceed down the hall. The cameras flick almost aimlessly as her asset strides between her escorts, but Kate is ready. “Left again,” she murmurs, quickly tagging frames for review. “Good girl.”

Once Bricks is handed off to Mendoza, the real work starts. Dinner goes as expected. Mendoza brags and paws. Bricks is charming, flirty, and teasing. She plays every bit of her part while Kate half listens and reviews data on the guards. Contractors, she notes as Bricks titters about something. Mendoza is just oggling her tits, so Kate continues reading the dossier. Contractors, good ones. Ex-military, but unlikely to see Bricks for the threat she is. The only problem will be-

“Puppies,” Bricks coos, as two Rottweilers come trotting up to the table. “I love dogs. How old are they?”

“They’re trained as part of the security detail,” Kate states as Mendoza goes on about pedigree. “German commands.”

Bricks kisses one of the dogs on the snout. “Do they know any tricks?”

“They’re trained killers,” the mark brags. “Only listen to me and designated handlers.”

“The handler command is folge mir,” Kate provides. Luckily, Bricks isn’t able to comment on her abysmal accent. “Ruhig. Geh runter.”

It doesn’t take long for Mendoza to send the dogs away, tired of not being the center of attention. And Bricks plays him like a fiddle, drawing him all around the penthouse to give Kate sight lines, the layout, and an unobstructed view of the server room through the kitchen.

When he finally catches her, Kate cant help but snort. “Is he as bad a kisser as he sounds? Your not usually this all over the place."

Bricks doesn’t bother to hold back a soft laugh. Mendoza lifts his mouth from her neck with an almost affronted grin. “What’s so funny?”

“Sorry,” she giggles, with a peck to his lips. “Ticklish, and I just feel good with you.”

“Can I make you feel better?”

“Here’s hoping,” Kate mutters as she counts server racks in Bricks’ periphery. The woman’s laugh rings off the marble counter tops.

Kate doesn’t bother watching the feed as Bricks kisses Mendoza down the hall, eyes closed to avoid any chance he might notice her contacts. When she opens her eyes again, Kate stifles a groan and pulls out her cigarettes. Mendoza’s bedroom has an entire wall of mirrors, and another on the wall above his headboard. Bricks kisses him some more, but in no time, she’s bent over the bed, looking at her own breasts nearly spilling from the top of her dress.

She’s there for… a lot longer than Kate expected. Whatever Mendoza is doing, she looks as bored as she ever does when she’s in character. Kate decides to step in when she moans, rote.

“Oh no,” Kate chuckles, grinning when Bricks’ eyes snap to her reflection. “I know you can do better than that. If I have to watch you have sex, you’re going to make it worth my while. Get that ass in the air, lets’s see if Mendoza can’t be good for something.”

Bricks’ next moan is much more resonant. Mendoza echoes her as he bends over her back, no doubt pressing his cock against her barely there panties.

“Ask for a spanking,” Kate commands, lighting a cigarette. “Ask nice, the way I like.”

“Please spank me, daddy,” Bricks moans, holding eye contact with the mirror, staring directly at Kate.

“Good girl, there you go,” Kate purrs, over Mendoza’s tiresome noises. “Too bad he’s going to be such a shit lay. You’re right, your best is wasted on him. Say thank you.”

Bricks hisses after Mendoza gives her three quick, sloppy strikes. “Thank you, daddy.”

“Fuck, you’re a slut, huh?” Mendoza flips her, and Kate laughs to see the mirrored tiles on the ceiling. “I can be your daddy, baby girl.”

“I’m tired of hearing his voice,” Kate scoffs. “Put his mouth to use.”

Bricks opts to grab a fistful of his hair and drag the man down her body. Kate gets to enjoy the view of her, chest heaving and disheveled as she winks up at her reflection. There’s no rolling eyes - there’s nothing of interest in the room, really, and Mendoza is apparently all noise and no skill.

“Touch yourself,” Kate commands. “Give yourself a show, beautiful.”

Bricks draws the fingers of her free hand down her neck, toying with her necklace before pushing the fabric of her dress down beneath full breasts. Kate makes an appreciative noise when she pinches a nipple. The woman in the mirror moans and arches her hips into the mouth between her thighs. Her eyes go half-lidded, when Mendoza pulls away to pant against her, one hand working its way up to prod at her. He groans something about “wet” and “tight,” like he had anything to do with the first and doesn’t understand the implications of the second.

“Please,” Bricks moans at her reflection.

“Oh,” Kate chuckles, “Is he really that good?”

“Roll over,” Mendoza growls as he stands. He’s dropped his pants and underwear.

“No,” Kate snorts. “I’m not watching your bored face as you compare him to Ghost. Ride him.”

All it takes is one skilled twist of Bricks’ hips before Mendoza is lying on his back, groaning under the woman Kate could command to kill him at any moment.

But Kate simply sits back in her chair. “Finish him off before I finish this cigarette, and I’ll let you come.”

Bricks narrows her eyes at the mirror. Kate can almost hear her calculating how long it’s been since she heard the click of the lighter. And then she balances on the balls of her feet and Kate grins as she watches the woman tear Mendoza’s orgasm from him with brutal efficiency.

“Good girl.”

[mostlysignssomeportents]

VW wouldn't locate kidnapped child because his mother didn't pay for find-my-car subscription

The masked car-thieves who stole a Volkswagen SUV in Lake County, IL didn’t know that there was a two-year-old child in the back seat — but that’s no excuse. A violent car-theft has the potential to hurt or kill people, after all.

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/2023/02/28/kinderwagen/#worst-timeline

Likewise, the VW execs who decided to nonconsensually track the location of every driver and sell that data to shady brokers — but to deny car owners access to that data unless they paid for a “find my car” subscription — didn’t foresee that their cheap, bumbling subcontractors would refuse the local sheriff’s pleas to locate the car with the kidnapped toddler.

And yet, here we are. Like most (all?) major car makers, Volkswagen has filled its vehicles with surveillance gear, and has a hot side-hustle as a funnel for the data-brokerage industry.

After the masked man jumped out of a stolen BMW and leapt into the VW SUV to steal it, the child’s mother — who had been occupied bringing her other child inside her home — tried to save her two year old, who was still in the back seat. The thief “battered” her and drove off. She called 911.

The local sheriff called Volkswagen and begged them to track the car. VW refused, citing the fact that the mother had not paid for the $150 find-my-car subscription after the free trial period expired. Eventually, VW relented and called back with the location data — but not until after the stolen car had been found and the child had been retrieved.

Now that this idiotic story is in the news, VW is appropriately contrite. An anonymous company spokesman blamed the incident on “a serious breach” of company policy and threw their subcontractor under the (micro)bus, blaming it on them.

This is truly the worst of all worlds: Volkswagen is a company that has internal capacity to build innovative IT systems. Once upon a time, they had the in-house tech talent to build the “cheat device” behind Dieselgate, the means by which they turned millions of diesel vehicles into rolling gas-chambers, emitting lethal quantities of NOX.

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

But on the other hand, VW doesn’t have the internal capacity to operate Car-Net, it’s unimaginatively-named, $150/year location surveillance system. That gets subbed out to a contractor who can’t be relied on to locate a literal kidnapped child.

The IT adventures that car companies get up to give farce a bad name. Ferraris have “anti-tampering” kill-switches that immobilize cars if they suspect a third-party mechanic is working on them. When one of these tripped during a child-seat installation in an underground parking garage, the $500k car locked its transmission and refused to unlock it — and the car was so far underground that its cellular modem couldn’t receive the unlock code, permanently stranding it:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/15/expect-the-unexpected/#drm

BMW, meanwhile, is eagerly building out “innovations” like subscription steering-wheel heaters:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/02/big-river/#beemers

Big Car has loaded our rides up with so much surveillance gear that they were able to run scare ads opposing Massachusetts’s Right to Repair ballot initiative, warning Bay Staters that if third parties could access the data in their cars, it would lead to their literal murders:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/03/rip-david-graeber/#rolling-surveillance-platforms

In short: the automotive sector has filled our cars with surveillance gear, but that data is only reliably available to commercial data-brokers and hackers who breach Big Cars’ massive data repositories. Big Car has the IT capacity to fill our cars with cheat devices — but not the capacity to operate an efficient surveillance system to use in real emergencies. Big Car says that giving you control over your car will result in your murder — but when a child’s life is on the line, they can’t give you access to your own car’s location.

This Thu (Mar 2) I’ll be in Brussels for Antitrust, Regulation and the Political Economy, along with a who’s-who of European and US trustbusters. It’s livestreamed, and both in-person and virtual attendance are free. On Fri (Mar 3), I’ll be in Graz for the Elevate Festival.

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

 — 

Upsilon Andromedae (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/upsand/212946929/

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[Image ID: A blue vintage VW beetle speeds down a highway; a crying baby is pressed against the back driver's-side window. In the sky overhead is the red glaring eye of HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey, emblazoned with the VW logo. The eye is projecting a beam of red light that has enveloped the car.]

[funnywizard3000]

Sleeper oc I concocted for playing in a citizen sleeper cbr+pnk trrpg :) adaptation :)

Loong yap abt them under the cut ↓

This is their backstory LOL I wish that I could condense things better and be more concise but I'm not a writer so bear with me

____

TLDR:

Sopping wet cardboard beast (emotionally). Sleeper hunting sleeper, escaped once, brought back, did hunting contract work under a predatory agreement with essen-arp after their OG body died in stasis, and has decided to run again. Very emotionally torn up about all of it but is dogshit at recognizing that. Stomach ache warrior.

----

My idea for them originally came about when we were playing the cs2 demo and I thought that it would be so fucked (and narratively interesting) to have a sleeper that does essen-arp 'asset retrieval' (sleeper hunting) work, and they snowballed from there.

They don't have a name, and they find the subject to be quite a sore spot. They are pretty old for a sleeper, evidenced by the obvious alterations/deterioration/fixes that make up their body.

(assumptions warning: there's a lot that isn't outright stated about the sleeper program or essen-arp so I did act on the assumption that people put into stasis for sleeper-emulation are actually kept alive. But it's not like we ever hear anything about people who have come out on the other side of the program, not that they would willingly admit to that.)

They escaped the first assignment that they were put on as a sleeper, and made it off-world and nearly out of the system. During this first adjournment they were directionless, only aiming to run as far as they needed to. Eventually they took up contract tracking/hunting jobs to make ends meet (they were in a largely corporate-owned system. which severely limited what jobs were available). This is what got them caught.

After working enough mercenary contracts, they gained a reputation. And it's not like essen-arp could ignore a couple echos about a sleeper merc in a corporate railway town (idk what a good scifi term for this would be without sounding stupids. Freight vector system). And so they got caught, while on a job, out on the furthest moon on the most distant planet in the system (they remember the moon's name, Valence, but can't remember any of the other names) and were dragged back to the closest essen-arp hub.

But! Sometime between when they were sent to their original job to the end of their time away, the human that they were an emulation of died in suspension. Instead of immediately terminating them (which, is what the company would have likely done, if there were no outlying circumstances) they were given the choice:

Continue working for essen-arp, but as a hunting contractor, and receive the basics to support themself on successful completion of capture jobs

Or

Forfeit their (second) life.

Obviously they went with the former, and essen-arp kept to their word. They had inadvertently demonstrated their hunting competency, and essen-arp felt that this was a good compromise (they didn't want this sleeper to blackmail them, keeping any word about a death in the sleeper program out of the media and off the airwaves. The company was unsure of the sleeper's connections that they made while away, and didn't want to risk the integrity of their scheme).

As long as they completed jobs in time, they would be in (precariously) good standings with the company, and would receive stabilizer. The threat of termination still loomed over them. They understood that essen-arp had no reason to keep them alive, so they perfected their skills - even installing an augment that allows them to track/locate electronic sources (sleepers and other tech) at the expense of becoming electronically unprotected, identifiable, or even a relay of information between their sensors and essen-arp's surveillance.

All of this weighs heavily on their conscience and emotional well-being, but they figure that throwing themself into their work is the best way to blot out any of that nasty existential regret. Up until the run, they had subconsciously hoped for some sort of allowance - something that would validate their repressed desires of freedom, and desires to stop perpetuating the control of essen-arp.

This accumulated and eventually they found themself at an emotional tipping point, the desire to run again weighing the same as their desire for routine and adherence.

At the current point in their story, they have just successfully completed a run with two others, a human thinking about entering the sleeper program to resolve debts, and a hopeful newly escaped sleeper.

They've decided to run again, but they'll need help. Their years of hunting experience will help them evade capture, but they don't know how to Live (frankly, the concept scares them)

Smile 😁

[bioethicists]

hm i really hope that someone has said this better than me but the betterhelp ads (specifically the video ones, as the podcast ones tend to be less scripted) are such poignant examples of alienation + the role of 'go to therapy' in perpetuating that alienation. keep in mind that, if you personally found a therapist who is genuinely healing for you + that therapist happens to be through betterhelp- i'm genuinely happy for you + that experience does not invalidate anything i have to say below! (but jsyk they're trying to sell your shit to facebook lol)

starting strong w/ the fact that betterhelp is essentially the uber of therapy (aka using an independent contractor model which is harmful + predatory towards its providers), rushing in to fill the market on largely uninsured and/or uninformed ppl who want the ease of a concierge system without the cost + lacks a meaningful supervision system (which led to one gay man being recommended a conversion therapist when he asked for someone to help with his identity struggles, btw!). smarter people than me have written about the ways in which these trendy independent contractor apps strip people of labor rights, fail to provide adequate wages, + in the case of healthcare apps, increase digital surveillance + decrease accountability demanded from providers while exploiting the failure of the US healthcare system in order to churn a profit w/o actually creating sustainable, equitable change.

the betterhelp video ads all circle around a theme- a millennial starts talking about some form of emotional pain or worry, usually relatively standard existential worries ("do you ever think nothing has meaning?") or life worries ("i hate my job" "i think i'm gay"). their friends or the ppl around them respond blankly + coldly, looking at them like they're crazy. while i understand these ads are supposed to be tongue in cheek, they demonstrate the crushing reality of our alienation from one another- the solution to your friends responding to your evident pain with confusion + apathy is to confine that pain to a therapy session! nobody wants to hear your struggles or understands them- come generate profits for us by facetiming a newly graduated 24 year old who can barely make rent!

this theme fits well with what already put me off about betterhelp's marketing- their goal has never been to provide access to therapy for those who want it or to altruistically fill in some healthcare gap. their goal, bolstered by the rise in emotional suffering following, you know, the worldwide pandemic, is to generate + increase demand for therapy as a commodity. their earlier podcast ads focused on convincing others that therapy "isn't just for crazy ppl" + "everyone should be in therapy". regardless of if you personally agree with that statement, it should be evident that this is a blatant marketing tactic in which therapy is a commodity to be peddled, not an offer of support or healing. in fact, they're probably actively shying away from treating "crazy people", bcuz their flimsy support systems could not possibly handle an influx of ppl regularly in crisis or experiencing breaks with a common reality. their target audience is your average millennial under late capitalism + post COVID - anxious, lonely, vaguely depressed, unhappy with their jobs, worried + hopeless about their futures.

i'm not here to tell anyone not to get therapy. that's a personal decision + is none of my fucking business. it's about questioning the total alienation we feel from one another, such that pouring our heart our unexpectedly to a friend + being met with a blank stare is framed as "haha you need therapy" + not "it's crushing that this is how distant we are from one another". it's about a company noticing that (unfortunately very real) distance + fear of vulnerability + using that to direct our emotions into the confines of a business transaction under abusive labor conditions. it's about a world in which we are not engaging with one another emotionally (despite, or i guess bcuz of: widespread suffering, recent mass death, class warfare/untenable working conditions, increased pressure of fascist politics, generational trauma + abuse, etc etc). commodifying therapy isn't going to make that loneliness go away- it's going to normalize it.

[delicatebarness]

The Mercenary’s Daughter | Chapter One

Summary: Nick Fowler is tasked with the elimination of a well-protected weapons broked. He learns that the target may be connected to Lloyd Hansen.

Warning: Implied Violence/Assassination | Underground Dealings | Mention of Weapons | Organized Crime | Corruption

Word Count: 685

Support: Ko-FI

Series Masterlist | Previous Chapter | Next Chapter

A/N: The book club read the prologue of Cry Baby back to me today so out of embarrassment, I wrote another chapter of this. - Please feel free to leave feedback or let me know where and how you want the story to continue, this is just as much yours as mine. - B

The Mercenary's Daughter: Let me know if you'd like to be tagged | @soelstress | @that-one-fangirl69

Everything: @hallecarey1 | @pattiemac1 | @uhmellamoanna | @scraftsku35 | @ozwriterchick | @sapphirebarnes | @rach2602 | @thetorturedbuckydepartment | @lanabuckybarnes

Neon and noise filled the city, but Nick Fowler tuned it all out as she stood in the small, dimly lit bar on the edge of town. He hated meeting in a crowded area, but his handler insisted on meeting face-to-face for this mission. Nick wasn’t in the business of asking questions.

The door creaked open, and a man sat on the stool beside him—a middle-aged, cheap-suited, and slight-framed man—Nick’s handler, Elijah. He always had a way of blending into the background. No one would give Elijah a second glance, which was exactly why he was good at what he did. 

“Fowler,” Elijah greeted, placing a thick envelope on the bar with a nod. 

“Clarke,” Nick replied, side-eyeing the envelope. It was always business with the pair, no small talk or pleasantries. 

Sliding the envelope closer, Elijah tapped it once with his finger. “We need someone with your particular skill set. A high-profile target.” 

Nick flipped through the papers inside as he lifted the envelope. His blue gaze scanned the contents. It included a name, blurry surveillance photographs, and a list of recent movements– the standard information. He knew this target was protected, well protected, and heavily involved in the underground dealings overseas. 

“The weapon broker?” Nick asked, his voice flat as he paused on a few details in the file. 

“Among other things,” Elijah replied. “Supplying hardware to the groups we try not to speak of. And, other intel suggests there are plans of a major deal within the next month, and we want to intercept him… discreetly.” 

Already mapping the logistics in his mind, Nick nodded along. “Where is he?”

“France, there’s a private compound in Chantilly. Security is tight– high walls, and heavily armed guards. No one gets in or not without the right level of clearance.”

Nick took a sip of his drink, raising his brow with a smirk. “Sounds like my kind of job.” 

Elijah’s expression remained serious. “Fowler, this isn’t a typical job. A source says the broker is working closely with someone we’ve been watching– Lloyd Hansen.” 

Something shifted in Nick’s expression as he looked up. Lloyd Hansen was a whispered name within their circles and an air of mystery and menace. He was a dangerous man to cross– a former military contractor, rumored to have high-level contacts and a network of operatives. 

“Lloyd’s got a stake in this deal?” Nick asked, intrigued more than ever, now. 

“We aren’t sure for now,” Elijah retorted. “It is reported the broker is close to him. It’s believed that if we can take the broker out, it could disrupt any of Hansen’s plans and force him to make a move.” 

The pieces of the mission slotted into place in his mind as Nick processed the intelligence. He had heard all of the rumors, hundreds of times– the elite soldiers who were trained to move in shadows, their loyalty bound only to him. Most governments could only dream of the kind of network he had created, and Hansen was a master at wielding it like an empire. 

“So I go in, eliminate the broker, and see if Mustache rattles?” Nick questioned, more to himself than Elijah. 

“Exactly,” the man replied, his voice steady. “We hope that if Hansen is invested, he’ll come out of the shadows.” 

Closing the file, and placing it back in the envelope, Nick gave Elijah a brief nod. “Consider it done.” 

“Good.” Elijah narrowed his eyes. “And Fowler– watch your back with this one. Lloyd Hansen is not the kind of man to take such interference lightly.” 

A smile tugged at the corners of Nick’s mouth. “I’m counting on that.” 

Elijah rose, leaving the bar without another word and disappearing into the crowded city. Rubbing his hand down his face, Nick let the weight of the mission settle over him. France, a fortress compound, and a target tired to one of the most dangerous men. The job was risky, there was no denying that. But, that was what made Nick interested.

Pocketing the envelope, the agent finished his drink and slipped out. He had a flight to catch.

---

Series Masterlist | Previous Chapter | Next Chapter

[kneelingshadowsalome]

Scorpio Curse (König x F!OC)

Part 2/3 of Valkyrie

(Part 1 here)

Summary: König gets an order to make a female SpecGru sniper talk, but König doesn't want to hurt women.

Category: Smut 🔞, angst, fluff

Tags & warnings: Explicit mature content +18 audiences only, strangers to lovers (slight enemies to lovers), dubious consent, threats of rape, virgin!König, size kink, size difference, p in v, multiple orgasms, cunnilingus, squirting, hugs and cuddles, super fluffy ending. König will be named in later chapters. 

Part 2: Mostly König who is in desperate need of a hug (don't worry, he will get it soon enough :*)

A/N: KorTac and SpecGru are rivaling military contractors, Conor is König's superior (and a huge villain), and I just wanted to write angsty smut featuring our favourite Austrian boi. 

"You should've come to me, König."

He was still here.

No one had told him to leave his stuff and sign the papers and get the fuck out.

He had been called to see the team leader, though.

Immediately.

"It's true that we don't do that shit. Especially with the SpecGru, not after everything that already went through."

He told his side of the story, and apparently, the command agreed that Conor had made a mistake.

"Your superior officer slipped, but that doesn't mean you have the right to do whatever the fuck you deem more appropriate."

The leader's cheeks were red, and his voice traveled from peaceful, tired account to a booming loud yell.

"To tell you the truth, König, you're good at what you do. But pull this kind of shit again, and the KorTac will ensure you lose your rifle for good. They'll make sure you'll get spat in the face in every fucking PMC on this fucking planet, you hear me?"

He was surprised he didn't catch spit flying right now.

"Sir."

"Now go fix that goddamn fence."

"Yes, sir. Right away, sir."

König, former weapons sergeant of the Jagdkommando and current operator of the special forces known as KorTac, felt like a fresh recruit when he turned heel and marched from the office. He thought about asking whether the surveillance tape would be destroyed or if it was already but sensed that this was not the best moment to ask questions. The leader's tired voice followed him as he walked away with cold sweat tingling down his back.

"Jesus. Where did you even get those bolt cutters.."

He worked half a day to get it right. Repairing the fence was easy, but fixing it so that it wasn't a weak spot in the area's defense was not. He had kneeled down in this exact same spot less than 24 hours ago, with a tense, silent cargo thrown on his back in a fireman's carry.

He had yanked the door to the surveillance room open to let the men know they could get a coffee break while he watched the prisoner — only to find that there was no one there. He had been played twice the fool, and she had paid the price. He wasn't man enough to tell her it had been all in vain when he went to get her.

He certainly wasn't going to tell her that he would still do it all again.

She stayed mute the whole journey to the fence, remained quiet even when he placed her gently on the ground and showed her the hole he had made on the chain link fence for her to crawl through.

"There you go, little Walküre."

She stared at his work for a while, sniffed, then looked up at him.

"You think you can fit through that?" He asked, although he had made sure the hole was big enough for even him to go through.

"Yeah…" she uttered her first words since forever before reaching for her road to freedom. Realizing she was still tied, she pivoted back.

"My hands.." she started, but he was already kneeling on the ground with his combat knife pulled out. With utter care, he cut her loose. She caught him after it was done, and he glanced at those tiny fingers that barely reached to close around his wrists.

"Thank you."

He raised his stare, and her eyes bored into his as she ensured her words had sunk in. Then she turned, dived for the hole… but turned back again.

"König."

He had enough time to discover that the naked pain in her eyes was of the exact same kind as the agony spreading in his heart before she leaped to him, threw her arms around him — and suddenly, he was home.

"Don't get yourself killed." Her voice was a muffled sob that hit his skin through the mask as she pressed her face against his neck and squeezed him with a surprising amount of strength. Dumbfounded, he raised his arms but wasn't sure if she would welcome the touch. He didn't want her to think he would seize her just when she had been offered a way out.

"Promise that you won't get killed."

He knew that he would probably get maimed for this. At the very least, he would lose his contract. But he hadn't even thought about it when he made that hole and carried her here.

She released him and pulled back. Her eyes were pure attention, a time-halting awareness that seized him without warning. It didn't matter that he was loaded with gear, that he had a helmet and a mask on. She could see him. All of him. And she smiled.

Then she reached for his mask.

He did nothing to stop her as she grabbed the hood and started to lift it. His vision went black with the ascending cloth for the longest second…

And then he could see again — see her wide eyes roam his face. The silence was pierced by a few raindrops, the first of an impending heavy rain. They landed on his helmet and on his arm guards, specked on her cheeks as they fell from the heavy clouds above them.

"Wow," she breathed, with parted lips and eyes that sparkled.

She grabbed his helmet through the cloth and pushed both the hood and the piece of metal away. The bundle landed somewhere next to him with a soft clunk a second before her lips pressed against his.

Rain fell, and with it, the paint from around his eyes — all the black he had surrounded himself with ran down his cheeks and neck, all the way under the collar of his shirt and over his heart that thumped like a maniac. They were in a warm August shower together, and she pulled him by his neck, threatened to swallow him, and he could do nothing but melt and surrender and answer with the same gentle hunger.

Her fingers swept across his chin; they caressed his temples, brushed his scalp, and tugged at his hair, not hindered by the fact that there wasn't much to grab hold of in the classic military undercut. They slid down his neck, grabbed his tactical vest, and pulled him deeper into the kiss. She sucked his lip, kissed the raindrops away, and he was hard as a rock even in the pants that were soaked and cool.

When she relented, all too soon, he would've given everything to freeze time and stay there. Under that hail, kneeled in that mud — with her, forever.

"I can't go through that fence unless you promise me," she panted in his mouth, and every single fiber in his body told him not to promise anything. He wanted to grab her instead, take her back, tuck her somewhere safe, and keep her as his own.

"Ok," he whispered.

A gush of hot air landed on his face as she gave a short laugh.

"Ok what?" She smiled against his mouth, her teeth colliding with his lips.

"I… promise."

"'Atta boy," he felt the words before he heard them, and she kissed him once more, and he could've drowned in that kiss. In those words.

"I'll never forget this," she said, lips wet with all that rain, eyes blinking through the drops that slithered down her face and got caught in her lashes.

I'll never forget you.

"No problem."

"No problem…? God. Could you get any more charming?"

She thought he was charming…

"Just one more thing, hero."

She bit her lip, looked down on the soaked grass, then up at him, and smiled.

“What’s with the hood? I really don’t get it. You look super nice.” She winked an eye at him. And then she turned and crawled through that hole and vanished into the darkness.

He was left alone in the descending rain, and there he had remained ever since.

He was convinced he still had her scent on him. He never washed that shirt he had been wearing the day he lifted her in his lap. He tried to catch her from it, and for a few days, he thought he actually did. But then that scent became only a memory.

Nevertheless, it followed him everywhere. No one knew that he was encompassed by it. That he was shrouded with her as he walked the base or rose on the plane.

Days passed by, and he still felt her lips on his own. Her taste in his mouth. Felt her legs around him, her soft walls surrounding him.

He replayed the frenzied vision over and over again in his head to remind himself that he had truly been inside her. That he had made her produce all those sounds. Made her clench around him and smell like honeydew and summers by the lake. He realized that he had started to truly live only after he had opened the door to that bleak room full of her. And then his life froze like a movie that was pressed on an eternal pause as he saw the soles of her boots push against the muddy ground to get her through that fence and away from him.

Three weeks passed — three weeks without her.

He did his job, went on missions, and executed orders to the letter.

But mostly, he was in his thoughts.

Mostly, he thought of her.

He thought of her when he had a rifle in his hand during ops. He thought of her during briefings, when he did deadlifts, racked a barbell after bench press, or sparred with training knives.

He thought of her in showers, in the mess hall, and most of all, in bed at night when he stroked himself to a release that eased his sleep.

He had never been so virile, not even as a teen. His libido was off the roof as the only thing he could think about was how he could get to jerk himself off in the shower stall or in his bunk after the day was done. Thoughts of her were his reward, the only thing that seemed to sustain him.

She was the most radiant thing in his life: everything else had faded away, turned to gray and black. Monotone, lifeless, empty. The pain faded for a while every time he came into his fist. Then it hit him with an even more crippling force as he realized that she wasn't real; she wasn't here.

Still, he fantasized what it would be like to hold her after, how they would drift off to sleep together. He envisioned her skin, her scent, her hair. The top of her head against his chin, her little hands around his neck, her laugh, all of it.

Sometimes when he had a hard day, he fantasized how her body would press softly against his back, and she would slide an arm around him, and it would disappear beneath his shirt. Her palm would come and rest right where his heart was, and she would just hold him.

On the worst days, he cried. He thought of the bullies and what they would say and how they would laugh if they saw him now, curled up in the soiled sheets with a cock in his hand, falling asleep on a tear-soaked pillow.

After a few months, he started to dissolve.

He got reckless on the field — jumped out of the helo before it had even landed properly, was all sloppy with his cover, wasted bullets, and revealed his position for the sake of getting up close and personal, for having the satisfaction of killing his opponents with a knife or with his bare hands.

People complained. Hutch complained, Fender complained — even Zero complained.

Some said it was just good old König, that he didn't care. Medics said he had a guardian angel with him when he never got hit, got barely even scratched when at the same time, some of the best operators were severely injured.

And some saw right through it.

"He fell in love with that sniper bitch. That's what's wrong with 'im," Conor had said.

He had nearly attacked the man for what he said — what he had called her. His angel.

But he knew that's what Conor wanted: to taunt him into making a mistake that would result in his dismissal from the force. Would probably destroy his chances to continue a career anywhere in the military. And then he would quickly find himself in civilian life, where he had never quite fit into.

"Promise me you won't get killed."

He had promised her to stay alive, and he couldn't disappoint her. So it became a prayer. Every night he made an offering to her, so she would keep him safe. No bullet could touch him. He knew that somehow she could feel his longing, the love he had for her. She would protect her like the war maiden that she was. And even if he caught that bullet, he knew it would only take him to heaven. She had already carried him there.

Six months without her, and people started to fear him.

His teammates looked at him with dread as he geared up for missions with the secret knowledge that he was practically immortal. The team leader said he resembled a machine, and he took it as a compliment. Even Lieutenant kept his mouth shut and looked at him with something akin to respect.

But he got even more time off when he wanted the exact opposite. He was pretty sure that there was a note in his file now. Right after the screaming red words released a prisoner without the requisite order from a superior officer. A comment that said he was behaving wrong, that he was unstable or something. They offered him cognitive therapy, sleeping pills, meditation groups, ice baths, even acupuncture. He turned it all down, knowing that it was no use.

And so they sent him home more and more often.

It was even worse there. He never wanted the leaves, but KorTac was firm in their protocol. Contract soldiers needed time off duty to prevent "substantial impairment concerning the operator's ability to work." Even if he wanted to, he couldn't stay in the barracks and get every mission he could get his hands on.

He sat in his apartment, slept late, went for a swim, went to the gym, and came back to sit and sleep. He thought of her when he walked the streets with a hole in his chest, a hole as deep as the Mariana Trench. He saw her in all the women of the same height and weight as her. At some point, he realized he had never paid so much attention to women as he did now.

"Go get a pint and a girl, König. Just get it out of your head."

Zero meant well, but he could've punched him too for saying that.

He didn't want a girl; he wanted her.

Pint sounded good, though. He had visited the nearest pub only a few times before, but the place had only reminded him that he was not home and that pubs were different from bierstubes. But right now, he didn't want to go back to that cold, dark flat to stare at the ceiling and wait till sleep would come.

He pushed the door open and stomped his feet on the mat even though it didn't rain outside. He walked further into the dimly lit hall and saw that early evening wasn't the busiest time in this place: more than half of the tables were empty.

And then he looked for the counter and saw her.

His Kriegsmädchen was there.

His Walküre was here.

She was here and looked just the way he remembered her — no, even more luminous. Glowing.

Perhaps he had finally lost it. But he kept looking, blinking, and saw her fingertips curl around a glass, saw the hair she had tied into a high ponytail, the smile that spread across her face just before she laughed.

The angelic sound went straight between his legs and stabbed a hole in his gut, and he was bleeding — months and months of pain, right there in the hallway of a quiet pub.

She was alive and safe, laughing, and so lovely that his hands started to tremble just as they had when his bullies approached him back in school. It was odd because she was everything but. He took a step, heart thumping and palms sweating, like he was approaching an enemy he knew he had to finish with his bare hands.

He walked to the counter in the eye of a storm, and she evaded his gaze and tried to act like she didn't even notice that some man was striding toward her.

Did men approach her often?

Of course they did. And she tried to look like an immovable stone, a prey that wouldn't draw attention.

"Walküre?"

And only then did she turn her gaze, eyes filled with both fear and hope.

Her mouth opened, and she drew a sharp breath, shoulders tense. He had to fight tooth and nail to not grab her and press her against that counter or kiss her, devour her while he carried her off out that door...

"... Valkyrie?" Her friend repeated sarcastically, with a birth of a laugh on her lips, staring at him like he was a circus attraction. He didn't spare even a glance her way.

Couldn't, because he was mesmerized by the most soothing gaze in the world.

"Hi," she breathed, voice almost breaking.

His eyes went straight to her lips as she said it, the sound far too similar in his mind to the breaths that had escaped her in that dull, grey room.

She cleared her throat and swallowed.

"Kate, this is… Siegfried. A friend from my old job."

He knew he should move, look to the side, and say hello. Act normal. But he couldn't move, couldn't even blink.

She pursed her lips and looked down at her drink, at her friend, and then back up at him.

"Nice to meet you," her friend spoke, and he finally managed to turn his eyes toward her and nod slowly.

“You must be the battering ram.” She took a sip of her drink with a flash of eyebrows.

He heard a sharp inhale from beside him and only wanted to ignore everything and everyone else in the room except for the one who gasped like that.

“You know, the one they send to charge through doors?”

“Done that too.”

The friend called Kate's eyes widened from the stare he knew made most people uncomfortable.

"What are you doing here?"

His angel spoke, and he turned. She was looking even more beautiful with flushed cheeks. It was strange to see her like this: sitting gracefully on that bar stool, wearing jeans and a bit of mascara. She wasn't covered in dirt and sleepless nights and fear, and he realized that he never wanted to see her like that again. He wanted her safe and sound, and happy; even if she had come on this earth to fight, just like he, even if she was deadly with a rifle. Even if she was a more able-bodied sniper than he ever could be.

"To get a lager."

"No, I mean," she laughed, sending warmth between his legs, "Why are you here, here?"

After a blink or two, he realized she meant the town.

"I'm on leave. I live here."

"Oh." She bit her lip. "Kate, um. Would you… Would you mind if we catch up a bit?"

He saw from the corner of his eye that the woman looked him up and down, and then a smile started to creep up her face.

"You know what June, I think I'm gonna head home. You two catch up for as long as you need and I'll see ya later, ok?"

Her name was June.

Like midsummer fests and seagulls and Radler.

Honey and raindrops…

"I'll go grab a table," he declared, thinking how odd that sounded, thinking whether his English was somehow off. As if he was going to physically grab a table and raise it in the air...

Kate chuckled behind his back as he turned and headed for a darker, more private corner.

"Jesus Christ, June… I knew you did some special commando shit, but that guy is -"

"Will you keep your voice down?"

"I mean… If you catch up all night, I doubt you'll be able to walk tomorrow."

"Kate…! "

The rest of the exchange of words faded as he reached the table and adjusted the chairs to be able to sit down.

Then he noticed that he was still wearing his jacket and got up to take it off. He saw her coming with her drink in hand, and she flashed a smile at him as he threw the leather bomber across the chair next to him.

"Nice jacket."

He looked down at the dark brown leather, worn and looking mostly what people called vintage or something.

"You gonna go get that beer, sweetie?"

Sweetie.

Sweetie.

"Ja," he nodded, turned, and marched back to the counter.

He ordered a beer, then asked what the lady over there was having.

"I think she, ah… ordered a mojito." The bartender extended his neck to the side to glance at their table. "Yeah, that's a mojito."

"One of those as well."

The man gave him a look that distinctly said You really think you're gonna get some of that? He didn't know what it was in his aura that told people he was a loser. Or a menace. And he didn't know which of those looks made the pain worse. But all of it faded instantly as she greeted him with a shy smile when he returned to the table with the drinks.

"Oh, you shouldn't have… I haven't even finished this one." She raised those lovely eyes at him, smiling, smiling… "Thank you, König."

Her fingertips brushed his as he gave it to her, the glass sweating with tiny cold drops of condensed water. She had pale pink, almost nude nail polish that made her nails look shiny and pure, her hands even more delicate. She watched as he scoured through the chairs to take a seat, pick a coaster and place his own glass on the table.

"A big one."

She then turned those playful faerie eyes on him, and he was suddenly grateful that he had picked the loose, black cargo pants to wear today… and that he was sitting.

"This is considered a small beer where I come from."

"I'm sure it is," she chuckled. The tight, white t-shirt she wore reminded him of the first time he had seen her, even though it was not one of those heavy cotton, military shirts. He grabbed the beer to do something, anything, and raised it to his lips, almost pouring the liquid all over him when he took a sip. She watched him gulp and smiled even wider. He was half hard at that point and had to spread his legs to accommodate and conceal what was happening in his pants and under the table.

"What about you, Walküre? What are you doing here?"

"I'm helping a friend -uh, Kate. She had an awful breakup."

He nodded and kept picking up his beer, drinking a small sip and trying to hit the center of the coaster as he set the glass back down.

"You're not with SpecGru anymore?"

"I signed off one week after… After. You know."

"I'm sorry to hear that," he said, even though he wasn't sorry at all. At least, not for the fact that she was out of harm's way.

"Nah, don't be. It was for the best. I'm able to sleep at night and everything."

She had trouble sleeping? Maybe that's why she looked even more radiant than before. She had slept well.

"I was worried about you."

"Really?" she tilted her head to the side, and her eyes started to shine even brighter.

"... that you might not find your way home."

"I'm a big girl. Trained with the Green Berets and everything.. But it warms my heart to hear that. I worried about you, too."

"You did?"

"Yeah. Sure, I mean… I was afraid you'd get into some trouble because of me."

Someone laughed at the next table, but the unexpected sound reached him through a comfortable haze; like he was sitting underwater. The battlefield wasn't nearly as distressing an environment as this peaceful pub - or any other place he rarely visited. But this time, with her, it was not too bad. His senses were blown wide, but he wasn't afraid.

"Also ja… They did yell at me."

"That's horrible. I could never yell at you."

He felt himself nearly choke on the beer, tried to breathe through his nose, and forced the liquid down with an audible gulp.

"You kept your promise," she said in a low voice, her smile fading slightly. Her eyes locked with his, and he basked in the warmth.

"Natürlich."

I prayed for you every single night, Kriegsmädchen.

She gave him a small, sad smile and looked down, swirling her ice-filled glass.

"You know I…" she started, took a breath, then another. "I've missed you, König."

He squeezed the tall glass before realizing that it might actually break at some point.

"I've missed you too, Walküre."

He looked at his beer, still halfway full, and then at the completely untouched drink he had brought her.

"You want to go to my place?"

Part 3: