#tame cab

[sicksadmund0]

hi, im laura 20something

sh1tposting and divination are my game

likes

deathcab tame Impala

fortune telling colors

fancy food the black keys

crystals books

polyglot guitar

dislike

coconut fascists

ask and ill try to answer ❣️

[gravegoer]

Take a hint. ✿ part 2

my masterlist

sevika putting up with more oblivious reader!! this time, how does she react when her subtle ways of flirting don't get to you. every move she makes seems to bounce right off your head and land back in her hands !! [short little blurb at the end for the cute ending]

After your previous encounter with Sevika, you start to see her around more than you'd like. After having a few drinks with you and playing a game of cards (which you lost), you think you could even call the woman a friend.

You dont notice it, but she's gone soft. Specifically around you. Surprisingly, she didn't make you pay her for the forsaken poker game. Even more surprisingly, it seems as if you never had to drop a coin when you're in her presence.

Wanted a drink? It's on her. Ran into her when grabbing a snack? You just earned yourself a free pastry. Grabbing a ride home in the dark? She's got your cab. (And threatened the driver)

All of this in your eyes was simply nice deeds from a nice friend. In other peoples eyes, the undercities most threatening woman had been tamed.

She insists on walking you home after an encounter at the bar with the repeated saying, "I have nothing better to do, so I guess I'll do you the favor."

She glares at anyone who even tries to look your way. She knows you're a pretty thing, but she wants you for her eyes only. Obviously, this goes unnoticed by you as her nasty looks are sent over your head.

The people in Zaun are undoubtedly curious about your relationship. In a way, it almost scares Sevika, knowing that if the wrong person knows about you, you could immediately turn into a liability.

Having said this: she tried to keep her "affections" away from prying eyes, but she couldn't help but smirk when you asked questions about her arm or her job, even Silco, seeming genuinely curious. She'll answer with a teasing remark and an almost genuine smile.

Of course she does still have her guard up around you, only having known you for a few months. But one day caused her to be more vunerable with you more than she ever has to anyone since she was a kid.

A loud thud wakes you, its the middle of the night, what the fuck could that possibly be?

You glanced at your clock, the minute hand on 35, the hour hand on—two?? It was the ripe hour of two a.m., and you couldn't get some peace and quiet in Zaun. You almost rolled over to the other side of the bed before you heard an almost silent grunt from outside.

This prompted you to sit up and grab a jacket that was resting on your nightstand, still barelegged you made your way to the front door. The door creaked as you opened it, and you jumped at the sight of Sevika, on the ground, leaning against your doorframe. "You do know it's dangerous to open your door in the middle of the night to a stranger, right?" Sevika teased.

You panicked, "Sevika! What happened—I mean, why are you— did you plan on sitting on my doorstep if I wasn't awake? You're seriously reckless!" You tugged at her arm trying to get her up.

"Slow down, I just needed a place to sit and catch my breath thats all." She grunted at your motions, stumbling up but standing nonetheless.

"Catch your breath? Are you crazy?" You catch a glimpse at the blood seeping through her shirt, "Shit— are you okay?" You led her into your house, letting her plop down onto the couch with a grunt.

You told her to stay there (not like she could move) as you went to the bathroom to grab some bandages and other miscellaneous things you assumed you needed. You barely noticed your hands trembling when you opened the cabinet. You were worried. Extremely worried. I mean, you knew her job was dangerous, but like this? Damn.

As you re-entered the living room, Sevika was perched haphazardly on your couch, barely fitting with her size. She clutched her torso, where blood stained her shirt and dripped down her arm. You hurried over to her, dropping to your knees beside her left leg to move her hand and survey the wound. "Already on your knees for me?" She let out a strained chuckle.

You rolled your eyes at the crude joke, "Will you be serious?"

She went quiet while you pulled her shirt up and started to disinfect the wound. She hissed at the slight burning, but you continued. At a particularly tender spot, she grunted and grabbed your wrist for a moment but pulled away quickly.

"How did this happen?" You questioned, less shakey now that you had her on your couch, somewhat fixed up.

"Just some enforcers, trying to mess with Silcos people. He gave me the task of getting rid of them. The usual," She stared at you her gaze shufting to the goosebumps on your bare legs.

"The usual?" You muttered to yourself.

You motioned for her to scoot forward so you could wrap the bandages all the way around her exposed (but now clean) torso. If you were looking, you'd see the way her face contorted in embarrassment. But of course, you weren't.

"So...why my doorstep? Like, why not... I dont know— Silcos?" You shrugged.

"Silco? Seriously? You think I'd go to the guy who put me in this mess over you?" She scoffed, shifting in a way that wouldn't strain her wound. Then, she brushed her hand over your leg, trying to calm the coldness with the heat of her hand.

Humming at the warmth, you asked, "So what im hearing is you like me more than your boss?"

"Well yeah? You're—" She cut herself off when she caught your gaze, looking up at her through your eyelashes.

"I should go, I need to report back to Silco." She quickly gained composure again but made no move to get up.

"Back to Silco? Sevika, I think you can wait the night. You're hurt." You unconsciously leaned into her touch, her hand still resting on your thigh.

You got up, heading to the bathroom to put your leftover supplies away; leaving no room for disagreement.

You could hear her shuffling around outside and stand up to open the bathroom door. You open it to her standing closer than you expected, leaning on the doorframe. Her flesh arm balanced just above your head, mechanical arm on her hip.

"You're too sweet on me, y'know that?" The woman questions a hint of humor in her voice.

"Well thats what friends are—" She cuts you off.

"No. No more of that friend bullshit. Do you not see what im always trying to imply here?" She was now getting irritated.

"Sevika what the hell are you talking about?" Before you can barrage her with more questions she groans and clutches her torso, head falling onto her arm.

Your demeanor instantly shifts, now putting your hands atop her mechanical arm with concern. She pushes your hands away and groans either out of pain or frustration (probably a mix of both). "Let me help you." You wrapped your arms around yourself, sighing at Sevikas' sudden outburst.

"You've done enough. We are just friends, after all. You dont need to overstep." She started walking (stumbling) towards the front door.

You followed after her in frustrated strides, faster than her limping form. Standing in front of her, you blocked her path to the door, "Are you trying to imply we are more than friends?"

"No. I just said we are just friends? Did you hear me," She spoke shortly and with an obvious temper.

"Dont be smart with me," You pointed a finger in her face.

"I've been trying to talk you up, okay? I thought you'd notice, but i guess you're just as dumb as I thought you were," She stood motionless, waiting for you to speak.

"Wait..like the guy at the bar that you said tried to get into my pants?" You cocked your head to the side, making a face.

She almost growled at you, pushing you out of the way so she could get to the door. I mean, seriously? She's going to basically confess to you, and you twiddle it down to her wanting to get in your pants? She's no better than the guy at the bar, right?

Before she can even touch the knob you pull her by the shoulder, spinning her already weak body around (something you definitely wouldn't be able to do when she's at full health) and stared up at her. "I wouldn't mind it." You said a little too confidently.

You slid your hand down her mechanical arm and held onto her forearm. "You wouldn't mind.. me trying to get into your pants?" She cocked an eyebrow.

"Yep."

"Alright." She sighed, sliding her human hand down her face, "I just thought you knew. Since you're always doing shit like that, " She motioned with a tilt of her head to your hand on her prosthetic.

"Like what?"

"You know nobody else wants to touch my mechanical arm. Especially in the way you do." You recall all the ways you held onto it when you walked together or tapped on it languidly when you're bored.

"Well, im not scared of you, you know?" You spoke somewhat defensively.

"Yeah. I caught onto that." She grumbled.

"Can we just go sit down and talk about this?" You sighed.

Not letting you pull away, she latched her other hand onto the back of your neck and pulled your head up towards hers. She bent over ever-so-slightly to meet you in the middle and pressed her thick lips against yours.

Her mouth tasted like a burnt cigar and something bitter, but you leaned in nonetheless. Your free hand gripped onto her bicep and pulled her impossibly closer. A grunt escaped her mouth at that and you realized she was still hurt.

"I'm sorry did I hurt you—" You pulled away.

"No." She lied, trying to pull you back in.

You retaliated and giggled at her eagerness. "Can I sit you down and make you something to drink before we 'talk' about this?" You quoted yourself, knowing talking most likely wasn't needed for the next few hours.

thank you for reading :) i have to taglist yet, so pleasseee specifically, comment if you want to be on it ! for now, I'll tag the people that have commented on part 1 so far !! <3 im slightly new to this, so support, tips, and reuqests are ALWAYSSS appreciated

@lesbo-tuliplvrr @luvmei

and i hope you guys like this as much as i did <33 thank youuu kissessss

[mrs-weasley-reid]

SUIT JACKET

Aaron Hotchner x bau!reader ↳ part 2 here

Sypnosis: Aaron Hotchner seems to love his suit jacket on you. WARNING: nothing besides a few curses (I think) A/N: not my gif, ctto! This was also sitting on my drafts for almost a year and barely proofread, so I apologize for the errors.

Sunday, March 11, 2:04 AM

"Thanks, unibrow." You grinned drunkenly, smiling at your boss, SSA Aaron Hotchner, as you collapsed in the cab's backseat. His suit jacket kept you cozy and covered like a cocoon while you comfortably giggled at the applied inside joke of his new nickname.

With Penelope's constant peer pressure, your inhibition has reached rock bottom eleven shots, five cocktails, and two whiskey glasses ago. You downed liquor like water, easing your stiff shoulders.

Aaron only stared at you with the same impassive face he had and shut the door before the cold caught you. He hunched in front of the driver's window, "This woman is a federal agent, and if something happens to her, I'll hunt you down. Please, drive her home safely." He straightened back up, casually tapping the vehicle's roof.

The cab took you away only after Aaron snapped a picture of the cab's plate number. He sighed as the vehicle slowly disappeared from his line of sight. He twisted on the balls of his feet, met by his other children, agents drunkenly calling his name.

Tuesday, March 27, 10:14 AM

You scurried out of the elevator, weaving through the sea of agents in the bullpen and then to the conference room where everybody was already settled in.

"So sorry! There was this son of a b—" You closed your eyes and breathed deeply, clenching your fists. Then, you exhaled profoundly with a calm smile at the end. "I got in a car accident. Go on, Pen. Sorry for interrupting." You took a seat between Aaron and JJ.

JJ turned to you, "Are you okay?" Her hand gently landed on one of yours, giving you a worried squeeze.

You gathered a smile and raised a thumb, "Thick skull and strong bones. Nothing can break me, not even this unsub... whoa—" Your eyes widened a bit.

How ironic for your case to be about an unsub who performed a craniotomy on the victims. You smiled awkwardly, the similar tight-lipped smile that Spencer would always plaster on his face.

The other agents coughed a chuckle at your reaction while Penelope continued the debrief with the same horrified look.

Upon listening to the case details, you slowly felt colder, subtly rubbing the sides of your shoulders. You were so caught up in your anger towards the guy that rear-ended you you could've sworn your body was overheating. You left your blazer somewhere and were sure it wasn't in your wrecked car.

"Alright, wheels up in 30," Aaron announced, sending everyone to get out of their seats and grab their go bags and snapping you off your trance in the process.

You rushed to collect your file copy and headed for the door but halted when Aaron called you. You pivoted on your heels, "Yes?"

He was taking off his jacket, handing it to you as soon as it peeled off his body.

"I don't think dry cleaning your suit is part of my job description, Sir." You kidded as you stared at his black jacket.

Aaron rolled his eyes. It was so rare that you had to blink twice to ensure you didn't have a concussion from your minor car accident. "You're cold." He wasn't asking, plainly stating your slight predicament.

Your eyebrows knitted, mouth slightly opened. And as if the universe was mocking you, a sudden draft slapped you in a shiver. You snatched his jacket and mumbled a small thank you.

As you walked out of the conference room, teasing eyes bore holes into your being. Each BAU team member's narrowed brows held you captive, and their loud thoughts rang in your ears. You ignored all of it, though, taming your anxiety with the warmth of Aaron's jacket.

Wednesday, April 13, 1:37 PM

"Garcia, look for old cases with one young boy as a survivor." Aaron started, listing each task that everyone was to complete.

You were so focused on the case that your next movement caught you off guard.

Your back snapped straight from the slap of Minnesota air. It was brief. An officer merely opened and closed the door, but your body was nowhere near as warm as it was a few seconds ago.

The warmth of cotton fabric soon hugged your shoulders, along with the momentary weight of Aaron's hands, before he fully let go of his suit jacket.

He continued talking as if what he had just done was normal or anything close to casualty, "Morgan and Reid, try speaking with the victim's family one more time."

Emily exchanged looks with JJ, conversing silently while you obliviously sipped your coffee.

Friday, May 2, 5:04PM

"Capital O-M-G!" Penelope squealed, drumming on your shoulders as soon as she came close.

"Garcia, breathe," JJ gently placed her hands on Penelope's shoulders, modeling a regular breathing pattern.

Emily gave you a look as she sipped her coffee, which you returned with a shrug. Penelope was ever so eccentric. You've gotten used to it over the years you've been with the team.

"Okay, okay, okay. I'm good. Just that— I was— Ugh! Look!" Penelope shoved her phone in your face.

You saw a blinding blur, forcing out a sarcastic, "Wow! I can definitely see."

Luckily, JJ took it to herself to pull Penelope's phone away from messing up your eyesight and looked at the image plastered on the screen. A smirk immediately covered her lips, "Oh."

"What is it? Let me see—" Emily walked behind JJ. Her jaw dropped not long after. "Anything you want to tell us?" She cooed as she gave you the widest grin she had ever flashed, at least for that morning.

Your eyebrows clashed, and your forehead creased, "Whatever are you on about?"

"You're telling us nothing's happening between you and a guy?" Emily's grin only widened. You wondered how wide it could get, terrifying you in the process.

JJ flipped the phone to your end. The brightness of the screen stung your eyes a bit. "Want to explain this?"

Photo: It looked like the picture was cropped because you saw Derek's arm around you, but he was nowhere to be found in the image. Aaron's jacket was around your shoulders while he was behind you, glaring at Derek's arm.

"What about it?" The confusion was solid in your voice. However, you had a bit of an idea of what the three of them were insinuating.

Penelope stepped closer to you, "Uhuh, sure," she started as she zoomed in on the picture. "You're telling me you can't see Hotch's jacket on your shoulders, let alone Hotch glaring at my chocolate thunder?"

"He let me borrow his jacket because I was cold. Doesn't he always do that with everyone?" You innocently asked, looking at each one of them.

"Still doesn't explain him glaring at Derek." Emily chimed in a teasing tone, wiggling her eyebrows.

Your eyes widened, "You think Hotch was mad at me because I took it? He offered it to me, and I was cold. You think he was just being polite or?"

Penelope rolled her eyes and aimed her fluffy pen at you, "You oblivious profiler! He's jealous!"

"Uh-no," You chuckled.

"You don't believe me? Look at this."

Photo: This photo was older than the first one and might've been your third or fourth year with the BAU team. It seemed like all of you had just ended a case. You were snuggled on the couch on the jet. Aaron was draping his jacket over you.

"Who took that picture?" You queried.

Penelope raised her hand, "I was going to check in on everyone, then the camera spotted it, and I took a screenshot because I couldn't help myself. I was going to tease you about it but forgot for a very, very, very, very long time until I saw that picture from our last team night out." She wiggled her eyebrows, a playful smile on her lips.

"Looks like our boss has a favorite," JJ sang softly, looking at you with a knowing smile.

Emily nudged you, noticing the blush on your face. "You've gotta admit that's very sweet of Hotch. I think he likes you wearing his jacket." She teased, poking your sides.

"He does that to everyone, though," You reasoned. If you recall, he had offered his jacket to many people before.

"Nope, no!" Penelope shook her head vigorously with a tight lip. "He offers it to some but gives it to you."

"We had a case where it was biting cold outside. Hotch offered to help me if I needed a jacket. I said no because of politeness and shit, but he didn't insist. He didn't even offer his jacket. He offered to give me time to return to my room and grab my jacket." Emily grimaced, obviously still holding a grudge regarding the incident.

"I've known Hotch for years. Giving out his jacket was only for emergencies. If it's the only choice he had. We've had cases where a victim was a little too exposed, and his solution was to wrap them with the newspaper he conveniently found." JJ exclaimed, sorting the manila folders on her chest.

You gave it some thought and considered every possibility, but you shook your head. "He's just being nice because he's my boss. Plus, I'm still a bit tense around the team." You straightened yourself, fixing your top.

Emily cackled, "Getting flat-out drunk with us is definitely you still a bit tense around us."

"You know what I mean," You defended, blushing.

The three exchanged looks and shrugged. If you wanted to turn a blind eye, then it was your choice. But they had a perfect theory and tried to test it out.

Aaron was heading to the elevator as you exited the bullpen. The three of them grinned.

"Going for girls night?" Aaron quipped, raising his eyebrows.

JJ frowned, "We were, but she's feeling sick. I think the cold's getting to her." She gave you a pitiful hug.

Your eyes blew wide, jerking your head behind you where the other two stood with maniac grins. You knew what JJ was doing. It didn't take a second for you to figure it out. And as if luck was on their side, the elevator dinged.

You followed their figures as they piled in in the lift. You glared at them, but Emily focused on the man beside you.

You gazed at Aaron and were met with his jacket stretched out to you. Your mouth fell open, unable to breathe.

"It's cold outside this time of night. You'll feel worse if you don't layer up." Aaron cleared his throat, "Take it."

You reached for his jacket so slowly that he took it in himself to wrap it around your shoulders. "Thank you," Your voice quivered, hesitantly stepping inside the elevator.

He followed, standing beside you. You could feel the three devils behind you, preparing yourself for their constant teasing.

Unbeknownst to any of you, Aaron was holding his breath in the hopes that none of you would notice his blushing ears.

Monday, May 16, 8:12PM

The entire day has been a drag. Besides the unsub being disgustingly great at hiding his tracks in the safety of your local area, your stomach had been giving you the worst time of your life.

Later in the evening, in Aaron's orders, everyone was sent home to get some rest and start fresh the next day.

You were thankful. You needed to rest from all the stomach-emptying vomit you did in the restroom. Your acid reflux was having a field day and didn't let you get a breath. You practically lived in the toilet. You even had to call Derek and ask him to put you on speaker so you could contribute to finding the unsub. Luckily, they didn't question it.

Emily retracted away as she exited your hug, "Are you sure you don't want me to give you a ride home? We practically live in this building. I don't think they'd mind you leaving your car here for a night."

A warm smile brightened your drained face, "Yes, I'm sure. Thanks for the offer." You bid her one last goodbye before heading to your own car.

Your head was down as the day's exhaustion finally caught up. Your senses were off. You walked as if time stopped. You wondered if you should've taken advantage of Emily's offer.

With your loud thoughts and vulnerable senses, a heart attack almost killed you when a sudden cage of warmth engulfed your body. For a moment, your body wanted to fight, but it didn't take long for you to remember the familiarity of this warmth.

"What took you so long?" His voice was gentle and comforting enough to put you to sleep immediately.

You looked up at Aaron, who refused to unwrap his arms around you, "I didn't know you were waiting. I thought you went home already. Isn't Jack waiting for you? It's movie night."

Aaron smiled, "I'm taking you to the hospital to get checked. Captain Jack's orders."

You couldn't help but smile as well. He held the door for the passenger seat before jumping to the driver's seat. As you watched him go around, you noticed his scent lingered on your shoulders.

Aaron placed his jacket on yours.

"You ought to be careful," A chuckle passed your lips, "The gals are onto you."

"Why?" Aaron looked at you with a confused expression. His face made you giggle. The genuineness of his expression made you wonder his reaction if you had said the same thing two years ago.

A grin glistened on your face, "They say Agent Hotchner has a crush on me." Your voice danced with playfulness.

Aaron copied your grin and shrugged, "I'm surprised they haven't figured it out after all these years." He turned his body to face you, "So? Do you like him back?"

If only the BAU team knew how their unit chief, the SSA Aaron Hotchner, was a lot friskier than they perceived him to be, Aaron wouldn't last a day from all the teasing.

Then you wondered how the BAU team would react if they found out you and Aaron have been dating for the past two years and successfully kept it a secret from everyone except Strauss and Rossi.

Or the number of questions you'd be bombarded with when they learn that you recently moved in together with Aaron and Jack. You knew well enough that the ladies would be interrogating you like a serial killer.

You shrugged, "I heard he's got a fiancée." You fished the necklace well hidden under your shirt. A golden ring band shaped like vines with an oval-cut blue moon diamond dangled on the chain.

"Yeah..." Aaron held your hand and placed a soft kiss on the back of it, "You wouldn't want to be in the way of that." He smiled widely, an ever-loving expression you indulged yourself with for the past two years and soon... for a lifetime.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The most remarkable thing about antitrust (that no one talks about)

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in PITTSBURGH on May 15 at WHITE WHALE BOOKS, and in PDX on Jun 20 at BARNES AND NOBLE. More tour dates here.

It's hard to remember now, but for more than three years under Biden, it was possible to read the headlines every morning and feel excited that your government was taking big, decisive action to tame the corporate behemoths that rip you off, maim you on the job, and undermine our democracy.

The antitrust surge under Biden was and is a truly remarkable thing: a sustained, organized, effective government policy that supported the interests of the majority of people against the interests of a tiny cohort of ultra-wealthy wreckers and looters. According to political scientists, that antitrust surge should have been impossible. In 2014, a pair of political scientists from Northwestern and Princeton published their landmark study, "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens":

https://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/jnd260/cab/CAB2012%20-%20Page1.pdf

The paper analyzes 1,779 US policy fights from 1981 to 2002, and conclude that the US only does things that regular people want if those are also things that rich people want:

Ordinary citizens… get the policies they favor, but only because those policies happen also to be preferred by the economically-elite citizens who wield the actual influence.

When ordinary people want something that rich people don't want, ordinary people lose. Even when 80% of us want something, we only get our way 43% of the time. This is antidemocratic in the most fundamental sense: rich minorities get their way at the expense of working people, nearly all the time.

And then there's antitrust. Ordinary people don't like having their wages stolen. They don't like having their rents jacked up by algorithmic collusion. They don't like having their air and water poisoned. They don't like being mangled or killed on the job. They don't like having to sign noncompetes that bar them from taking a better job if one opens up.

More to the point, working people are not made better off when stuff like this happens. On average, working people own either zero or nearly zero stocks, not even in a 401(k) retirement savings, because 40 years of wage stagnation and the near-abolition of employer based defined-benefits pensions has left most Americans with nearly no retirement savings (hence the panic over Trump and Musk's attempt to kill Social Security):

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/25/derechos-humanos/#are-there-no-poorhouses

By contrast, the richest 10% own 94% of all the stocks held by Americans. Even if you, personally, don't want to be locked up by a noncompete or have your water poisoned by frackers, if you're in the top 10%, you probably benefit when this happens. After all, businesses cheat and maim because it's profitable, not because they're sadistic (they may be sadistic, or they may be depraved in their indifference to the harms they visit upon the rest of us, but the reason they do it is money):

https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/stock-market-ownership-wealthiest-americans-one-percent-record-high-economy-2024-1

Antitrust systematically attacks the sky-high monopoly rents extracted by the largest corporations and redistributes them to working people and small businesses, which, for the most part, are not listed on stock exchanges or traded over the counter. In other words, antitrust is a way to clobber the policy priorities favored by the wealthy in order to benefit the rest of us.

That means that the antitrust surge is amazing. It's one of those things that shouldn't exist at all. It defies political science. What's more, antitrust fervor precedes the Biden administration. Some of the Biden administration's most important antitrust cases (like the Google case) started under Trump. Some were even kicked off by far-right state attorneys general, like Texas's cartoonishly corrupt AG Ken Paxton, who led a coalition of nearly every AG in American in suing Facebook.

Antitrust fervor isn't a US phenomenon – it's global. Take Canada: in its entire history, the Competition Bureau (Canada's answer to the FTC) filed only three merger challenges, and won zero of them. But last year, Parliament passed a massive, muscular new bill giving the Competition Bureau unprecedented powers:

https://www.parl.ca/legisinfo/en/bill/44-1/c-59

In the UK, the Competition and Markets Authority led the world in investigating and punishing Big Tech monopolies…and they did so under a succession of shambolic Conservative governments. Indeed, it was a Labour (or "Labour") Prime minister, Keir Starmer, who fired the head of the CMA and replaced him with the former head of Amazon UK:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/22/autocrats-of-trade/#dingo-babysitter

We've seen big, ambitious antitrust action all over the world: Germany, France, Spain, the EU, Australia, South Korea, Japan, and even China.

It goes without saying that there is no dark money org funneling billionaires' wealth into this project to destroy billionaires. This is a groundswell political phenomenon, it's global, and it's powerful. The fact that Starmer and Trump have gutted their wildly effective antitrust agencies is heartbreaking, but it's not the end. The reason the US and the UK pursued such an ambitious antitrust agenda is the public groundswell. Getting rid of the agencies doesn't kill that groundswell – if anything, it only makes people madder.

It's hard to overstate just how weird the antitrust surge is. We've been fighting for decades for even tiny concessions to the interests of working people – a modest, below-inflation rise in the minimum wage, say, or small-dollar efforts to improve public education, reduce student debt, or control the price of prescription drugs. These efforts have largely failed, and when they've succeeded, the victories were modest, or worse, merely symbolic.

But antitrust is the exception. Antitrust – again, a movement that is squarely aimed at neutralizing the power of the wealthy – is the most successful popular movement of the past decade. Companies worth trillions of dollars are facing breakup as a result of antitrust cases. Everyone from meat-packers to landlords to sea freighters to pharma companies have faced massive, multi-billion-dollar setbacks at the expense of the antitrust movement.

Like I said, the current antitrust surge kicked off under Trump. But of course, that doesn't mean the GOP power-brokers support it – rather, they were cornered into it by their own base. The same is true of the Democrats: Biden didn't appoint the most effective antitrust enforcers the US has seen since the 1970s because he opposed corporate monopolies. Remember, this is the guy who, on the campaign trail, told business audiences that "nothing would fundamentally change" under a Biden administration:

https://www.salon.com/2019/06/19/joe-biden-to-rich-donors-nothing-would-fundamentally-change-if-hes-elected/

Nor does the Democratic Party power-structure support this stuff. Remember when Harris's billionaire surrogates Marc Cuban and Reid Hoffman demanded that Harris fire the Biden administration's antitrust enforcers?

https://prospect.org/power/2024-07-26-corporate-wishcasting-attack-lina-khan/

The success of the antitrust movement happened in spite of the Democratic Party, in spite of the GOP. To the extent that either party embraced an antitrust agenda, it's because the people demanded it, so undeniably that the parties chose the public interest over the interest of the billionaires who call nearly every shot for them.

It's impossible to overstate what an anomaly this is. On today's episode of the excellent Organized Money podcast, hosts Matt Stoller and David Dayen reminisce with Jonathan Kanter, Biden's former DoJ antitrust boss, about a conference they attended together in 2017 where the after-dinner keynote speaker was Richard Posner, a judge who was hugely influential in the dismantling of antitrust in the 1970s and 1980s. According to Dayen, the substance of Posner's keynote was:

Antitrust. That's dead, isn't it? I don't know what you guys are even talking about. This is ridiculous. There is no such thing as antitrust law.

And Kanter, Dayen, Stoller and future FTC chair Lina Khan were all sitting around a table, listening to this in 2017. By 2021, Kanter and Khan were running the DoJ and FTC antitrust agenda, and they did more in the next three years than all their predecessors over the past 40 years, combined.

Khan, Kanter, and their colleagues (like Rohit Chopra at the CFPB) did incredible work during the Biden administration. There is no denying their skill, their competence, their commitment. But the reason they were able to bring all those virtues to bear in service to working Americans is the massive popular surge of rage at corporate dominance. In other words, the Biden administration's prodigious trustbusting accomplishments were the effect of the antitrust movement, not its cause.

The corollary is that just because Trump has dismantled the agencies that were buoyed up by the movement, it doesn't make the movement itself smaller or less powerful. If anything, the Trump regime's relentless pursuit of an agenda in service to the rich at working people's expense will only add fuel to the anti-corporate, anti-billionaire wildfire. Trump's tariff chaos might be bad for some parts of the ruling class, but as Van Jackson writes for Labor Notes, there's plenty of plutocrats who love the prospect of a deep recession sparked by global trade chaos:

[L]avish tax cuts, deregulation, and an environment friendly to union-busting are just as valuable to most CEOs as a growing economy. What they lose in the stock market, they will more than make up in surplus labor, a fire sale on distressed assets, and Trump’s promise to totally eliminate the capital gains tax.

https://labornotes.org/blogs/2025/04/viewpoint-why-oligarchs-want-recession?

American wealth is more concentrated today than it was in France on the eve of the French Revolution. People are pissed. That anger is out there, waiting to be harnessed by smart political movements:

https://twitter.com/highbrow_nobrow/status/1909607195961917687

To grab that anger and mobilize it, we need to show people that their rage over specific issues is actually downstream of excessive corporate power. Furious that one company owns every brand of eggs and has used the excuse of bird flu to make record profits? You're not angry about eggs, you're angry about corporate power:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/10/demand-and-supply/#keep-cal-maine-and-carry-on

Worried that the EPA has been put in an induced coma and that means your kids will grow up with asthma and lead poisoning? You're actually angry about corporate power:

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2025/04/air-pollution-trump-administration/682361/

The Department of Education is in the hands of a woman who took over her rapey husband's professional wrestling monopoly, a corporation that misclassified performers as contractors, leaving them without health care so they have to beg for pennies on Gofundme so they can die with dignity of their workplace-related injuries:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8UQ4O7UiDs

Trump's Secretary of Education is monumentally unqualified for her position. Not only is she is planning to fire teachers en masse and replace them with AI, she doesn't know what AI is and just gave a speech where she repeatedly referred to it as "A-1":

https://gizmodo.com/trumps-education-chief-linda-mcmahon-repeatedly-calls-ai-a1-in-school-speech-2000587329

Angry about this? Worried that your kids' teachers are about to be replaced with steak-sauce thanks to the incompetence of this fucking muttonhead? Me too. But you're not just angry at Trump or Linda McMahon – you're angry at corporate power.

In his book The Public Domain, the copyright scholar James Boyle talks about the political salience of the term "ecology." Boyle recounts how, prior to the rise of the word "ecology," there were many standalone issues, but no movement. Sure, you care about owls, and I care about the ozone layer, but what does the gaseous composition of the upper atmosphere have to do with the destiny of charismatic nocturnal avians?

https://thepublicdomain.org/thepublicdomain1.pdf

The term "ecology" welded all these thousands of issues together into a movement. When I look at the incredible, organic, bottom-up surge of antitrust energy, the only explanation I can find is that something similar is happening here. Concentrated corporate power is the common enemy of beer drinkers, surgeons, shippers, patients, farmers, grocery shoppers, social media users, any anyone who wears sneakers:

https://www.openmarketsinstitute.org/learn/monopoly-by-the-numbers

Something remarkable is happening, right under our noses. Nothing like this has happened in my lifetime. The world is terrifying, but this? This is exciting.

Smart political organizers have a once-in-a-century opportunity here. Trump's wildly unpopular destruction of the antitrust enforcement system opens up all kinds of opportunities for state enforcers (remember, states can also enforce antitrust law):

https://www.thesling.org/state-antimonopoly-enforcement-must-be-a-guardian-of-american-democracy-heres-how/

A massive political change that bubbles up from the bottom, aimed directly at the richest, most powerful people in the history of the human race, is an amazing thing. As bad as things are – and boy are they bad – this remains true, and important.

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/2025/04/10/solidarity-forever/#oligarchism

Image: umseas (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/snre/34605145761/

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

[gunwoo-bh]

The Night Shift - Part 2 [Min Yoongi x f!Reader]

MIN YOONGI x F!READER UniStudent!Yoongi AU SUMMARY: You chose a boring, quiet job at your campus's 24-hour library for a reason: it kept you away from drama, gossip, and parties. It was positively uneventful. Until it wasn't. Warnings: some more swearing, some fluff?, it's pretty tame, teasing (y'all i don't know how to do warnings, i'll learn) A/N: WOW! Everyone, thank you SO much for all the love on that first chapter?? (is that what I'm calling it, I'm not sure) I never expected that, and I'm so grateful so thank you so much! Here's a continuation. I don't know what I'm doing exactly with this, if it's gonna turn into a fic or something but I'm just enjoying it for what it is. Pardon the grammar mistakes, english isn't my first language!

THE NIGHT SHIFT

PART 2

Yoongi’s mother calls a cab for you, amidst your polite protest. She insists, and you relent. She’s far too sweet, but the mere idea of you staying in this restaurant any longer under Yoongi’s inquisitive stare is too much. He stands beside his mother, cleaning up behind the counter while listening to her end of the phone call to the cab company. He’s eavesdropping on whatever conversation you two may have once she finishes her call. You find it easier to stare at your own hands rather than have a conversation or make eye contact with him. 

“Taxi is on his way,” your attention snaps back to her, “and it’ll make it so much easier for you.”

You bow politely. “Thank you, I appreciate it.”

She playfully shrugs, “Nonsense. No way I can let you carry all of this by yourself.” Her smile is warm and kind. You can’t help but smile right back. She turns to her son, nudging him.

“Go help your dad.” His eyes meet his mom’s, nodding and hesitantly walking to the kitchen with one final glance to the both of you. She looks back to you with the warmest smile. “Do you know each other?” 

The question startles you, glancing from her to the spot Yoongi had stood a moment ago. “Oh. Oh! Well, not exactly. We just go to the same school. I’ve seen him around.” You try to make it sound as casual as you can and not like you had just spent breakfast that morning trying to figure out his name.

She kept looking at you like there was more she wished she could say, but you were not just someone who went to the same school as her son. You were a customer. So she held back. She perks up, looking over your shoulder, making you follow her sight line. The cab. A wave of relief washes over you, prompting you to grab both bags of food. She helps keep the door open for you, following you out until she has you safely seated in the taxi. Making sure the food is safe, you grab your phone with one hand to text your friends.

You [8:59 PM]: On my way back. You’ll never guess what happened.

You’re about to put it away when the text bubbles appear, snorting at your friend’s curiosity. 

Eunji [8:59 PM]: Don’t tease us. Unnie.

Hwayoung [9:00 PM]: You’re gonna wait to tell us until we’re home, aren’t you?

You [9:00 PM]: (shrugging and winking emoji) 

The taxi ride doesn’t take very long. Carefully, you bring the bags inside and up the elevator to your apartment. With some difficulty, you finally make it inside, kicking your shoes off and getting into your slippers. You can hear noise in the kitchen right around the corner, peeking your head around it when you meet Eunji’s eyes. She runs to help you, curiosity radiating off her while taking the bags out of your hands. You saunter to the kitchen island and lean on it while the girls start taking the food out. 

“So,” you start, “I’m gonna be dramatic for a second, but I will get over it.” They nod, mindlessly putting food out while simultaneously listening to you. “We can never order or send me in there because the people who own the place are, drumroll please, Min Yoongi’s parents.” Both girls have their mouths open in shock, the quietest you’ve ever seen them with news of this kind. “Okay, being dramatic? Over. But seriously, what are the odds? Oh, and did I mention I think he works there? How do I know? Because he was there.” 

You sigh dramatically, shuffling over to the couch. “So, what booze did you buy, and can I join?”

Your friends chuckle, knowing very well that, given the chance to drink, you will refuse it. “Also, let’s just get this movie night started. I need a distraction.” You all get ready to sit down in the living room to start your rom-com evening, trying to keep your mind focused on anything but the last 24 hours. 

Min Yoongi has a reason for everything. He’s practical like that. And that’s why he keeps things close to the vest except with a few people. But he never expected a freak out of this magnitude coming from his friends. He’s exasperated, glaring at Seokjin as he sits amongst his friends, listening to him go over what just happened. Yoongi usually goes to the library during the night when insomnia hits him because not only can he avoid the large crowds of students, but he also gets some time alone. 

When he went to the library this morning to get some work done, he had never anticipated his friend to find him at the crack of dawn. Yoongi should have known that glancing back to you, the pretty night shift desk clerk, would come bit him in the ass. Because since 6 AM he hasn’t stopped hearing about it, and it is nearly lunchtime now. Seokjin hasn’t stopped retelling the story the moment one of their friend joins the table.

“Yaaaaah…” Yoongi groans, rubbing his face. “Either tell it once but stop telling every single time one of them shows up.”

The boys laugh at their friend’s frustration. His childhood friend Namjoon rubs his shoulder, “They’re just teasing…you never get caught checking girls out. Let us have some fun.” 

Yoongi swore he would keep his somewhat silly one-sided crush on you to himself. Why? Because of this. He knows that they’re being playful, and if he was to be honest with them about his crush, they would most likely help him out. And that is exactly why he never wanted to say a thing. He didn’t need help. Because he didn’t want it. Yoongi never wanted to be given hope that his interest could be reciprocated, so watching you from afar made more sense to him. Until this morning. When Seokjin had to make a big deal of Yoongi looking back to you. 

He knows this will die down, at least for tonight, but he knows his friends better. Especially the few in their friend group who are more likely to involve themselves in playing matchmaker. He knows one thing. He loves these guys so much, he would be willing to do anything for them, but matchmakers? They are not. Seokjin and Namjoon may have girlfriends, but they never stopped wanting to set their friends up on blind dates or playing matchmaker at every turn. 

Yoongi watches them tease their other friends for being single, which then turns into the single guys teasing how sappy the taken ones have gotten since being in relationships. He licks his lips, trying to hide the grin threatening to grace his features, but he’s amused at how easily a subject is brought up and then forgotten. He knows he won’t live it down, but for the moment, he just might.

Now in his third year of university, he’s managed to keep a pretty low profile. He knows how lucky he is to have come into this with some friends, meeting a few new ones along the line, which now formed his tight-knit group of friends. He didn’t need more, but watching his closest friends enter relationships made him crave something similar. He’s happy for his friends, though. If anybody deserve to be happy in a relationship? It’s them. All of them.

He looks down at his phone and sighs, standing up, “Gotta go. Work.” 

Yoongi is clearing a table when he hears the door open and shut, his mother thanking the departing customers as he smiles fondly at her kind tone. No wonder she works the front and his father works in the kitchen, she has the best social skills of their entire family. Yoongi is lucky enough to have inherited some of her skills, although he prefers the kitchen with his father, too. 

Digging in his apron for his phone, he sighs before stretching his back and looking down at the time. He shakes his head when he realizes there are still a few hours left to the night. Grabbing the tray of plates and cutlery, he returns to the back to wash them while his father prepares a pick-up order. He stops midway through his task to help prepare the order, putting the food in the containers and making it look visually appealing. He and his father are working silently when his mother comes in the back.

“Honey,” both of them raise their heads, “the pick-up order is here.”

“Mhm~.” His father nods, and Yoongi begins bagging all the items. He ties the bags neatly, ensuring everything is ready to go. He slips a menu pamphlet into the bag and nods to his father once they are both satisfied. Grabbing both bags, he heads out of the back, nearly bumping into his mother, who immediately tries to reach for one of the heavy bags. He attempts to protest, but one light glare makes him concede, handing her the lighter of the two as he follows her. Carefully avoiding tripping over the step leading to the main counter, he looks up at his mother, but his eyes immediately snap to the young woman standing across from her.

It’s you. 

His entire body is rooted to the ground, staring ahead for what feels like way too long when you make eye contact with him. Shit. Why are his hands sweaty all of a sudden? He places the second bag on the counter, licking his lips over and over before busying himself with a task. Mindlessly, he grabs a cloth to wipe the main counter and display case, pretending to pay no mind to your conversation. Yoongi feels his heart pulsating as he listens to his mother call a taxi for you. 

As he attempts to get closer, barely reaching his mother’s side, he gets gently elbowed, which snaps his attention to her, “Go help your dad.” And just like that, he retreats to the kitchen with one final look over his shoulder at you. 

He releases a shaky breath, leaning against the wall before focusing back on the dishes he had abandoned earlier. He’s lost in thought when two hands come and rest on his shoulders, startling him. Eyes wide, he looks to his mother and releases a sigh of relief, “You scared me…” She hums but has a mischievous look, and he immediately shakes his head, “No,” he adds, “mom, don’t…”

His father looks up to mother and son, brows furrowed, “She said you go to school together…” 

Shaking his head, Yoongi sighs, “Mom, we just go to the same school…” 

His mom goes silent, staring at him as he avoids her eyes. She squeezes his shoulders affectionately and kisses the back of his head, “I’m going to lock the doors, why don’t you let us clean up, mhm? Go back home.” 

It’s his turn to grab her shoulders, rubbing them gently, “No, it’ll go quicker if I help you. Let me take some leftovers over for the boys; that’ll make them happy.” He feels her pat his head, making him grin. “I’ll start cleaning…”

2 AM in the library for sure is quiet. No disturbances. No chaos. Just silence and the occasional clicking of keys on a laptop, scribbling of pen on paper, or the occasional book dropping from a shelf. It’s all so familiar, and nothing about it catches you off guard anymore. Nearly a week has passed since your first meeting with Min Yoongi, and the excitement over the entire matter had finally dwindled. You hadn’t seen him again on campus, or at the library for that matter, and you can’t even lie to yourself; you’re mildly disappointed. 

You will note, though, that Namjoon has been reaching out to you while in your class. Well, reaching out is quite literally a reach; more like he has been saying hello to you, holding the door, or acknowledging you in the halls. It makes you wonder if this is just a coincidence, but letting your already overthinking brain rest seems like the best solution. No point in reading into something that just isn’t a thing.

Right?

You’re on your second lap around for the night, taking your sweet time since there is no homework waiting for you downstairs. You’re cleaning up a table, completely lost in your head, when you hear someone clearing their throat, startling you to twist your body around in one swift movement. 

No freaking way. 

“Hi.” Yoongi stands before you, and you’re mouthing the air, unable to find your words. “I need your help finding a book.”

Speak, damn it. Use your words. 

“Uh,” great start, “which one?” Your mouth feels so dry as he shows you the title on his phone. You lean forward a little to read it better, recognizing the textbook he was looking for. “Oh, wasn’t this what you were looking for last time?”

His eyes widen, shocked you’d remember, “Mhm. It is.” At your confused look, he adds, “It wasn’t there last time. So…” he trails off. 

You hum, biting the inside of your cheek, “Follow me?”

You abandon the stack of books on the table, walking towards the stairs to the third floor. You can feel him following behind you. Not only is your mind racing but so is your heart. You reach the third floor without any mishap like you tripping over your own feet. Yoongi follows closely behind you, keeping up with your fast pace as you whip past aisle after aisle. You know exactly where you’re going, and it’s obvious. 

Slowing down, you start looking up until your eyes light up when you see exactly what it is you’re looking for, and the sight makes the corner of Yoongi’s lips curl in the slightest. You reach up at the very tip of your toes to grab it, looking it over to make sure it was the right copy and also in one piece. You remember his presence when you face him and extend the book to him, Yoongi reaching to grab it from you, fingers brushing in the exchange. 

“I’m sorry it was out for so long. I hope you didn’t have an urgent need for it.” He shakes his head while you speak.

“No, it’s mostly personal curiosity.” This makes you smile. “And boredom.” You giggle, and the sound makes his chest tighten. He did that. He made you laugh.

“Well, glad I could help.” You both stand there in the middle of the aisle, him holding onto that book like a lifeline and you with your hands now in the pockets of your cardigan, playing with your student ID to keep yourself from freaking out. 

He steps aside after a moment, letting you move first as you both begin your descent back to the main floor. You tell yourself you’ll get a moment to breathe when he checks the book out and leaves because that’s all there is left to do. He hesitates when he walks past the main desk. You’ve settled back in the chair, pretending not to care that he’s still around. But you watch him at the self-checkout counter, strands of hair falling in his eyes while he digs out his student ID to scan it. 

He’s handsome, and you hate how your focus moves from his face to his broad shoulders, lean but athletic physique, to his hands. You feel just how fast your heart is beating when you press your hand against your chest. The familiar ‘ding’ of the self-checkout catches your attention as he steps back, waiting on the small piece of paper printing. He snatches it and slips it between the pages of the book, glancing back to you. 

For a moment, you think he’s just going to continue turning around to leave, but he instead walks toward where you are sitting. Your mouth goes desert dry until he stops just shy of walking straight into the desk, “Uh,” he starts, “wanted to say thanks for the help.”

All you do is nod for a moment, humming, “Yeah, of course…anytime.”

Your eyes are trained on his lips and the way he’s chewing them, but you notice the way his brows furrow while looking down to where your laptop is, “What are those?” You quickly look to where his focus is, noticing the remnants of your previous adventure to the vending machine.

You immediately blush, mildly embarrassed, “Oh, uh, those are what’s left of my cheap attempt at a snack. I left home in a hurry, I forgot my lunch…” you admit. 

He doesn’t say a thing, but he remains focused like he’s in the deepest train of thought before nodding to himself, “Well, thanks again. You have a good night.”

You sit up in your chair, mouthing the air, “Oh, yeah, you too…”

And just like that…he’s gone. 

And you wish he wasn’t. What an odd feeling it is to want a stranger’s company. 

You’re absent-minded for the next little while, lost in your own thoughts. You’re overthinking every single minute of that interaction with him to a point where the only way you can distract yourself is to take a walk around the library to take your mind off of it. You return to the second floor to finish the earlier task Yoongi interrupted, lazily returning the books to their rightful spot. Anything becomes a task to distract yourself. You don’t even notice the time pass until you get a text, phone buzzing in your pocket. Instead of looking at it, you snap your head to the clock on the wall. 

You gasp. 5 AM?! 

That much time had passed since 2 AM. You put the book cart away and head downstairs to do one final check. In absolute disbelief that you lost so much time being in your head that you don’t notice the new item sitting on your laptop. Only when you return to pack your things do you finally take notice. 

The first time you walk past it, you don’t clock it, you think, but the second time, the bright orange colour catches your attention from the corner of your eyes, enough to make you stop, frown, double take, and step up to your laptop. Placed right in the middle of it sits a fruit. 

A tangerine. 

You’re confused, looking around to see if anyone you know could be the reason why this fruit is sitting there, but your attention turns to the blue post-it note under the tangerine instead. Grabbing the fruit in your one hand, you take the note in the other and read the message left on it. 

Your breath catches in your throat.

Your skin suddenly feels warm, heat rising from your chest to your neck and, finally, your face. If you were to look at yourself in the mirror right now, you’re certain you’d look funny to anyone walking by. You immediately cover your face with the hand holding onto the note, looking at the tangerine in the other. You do a full 360 to make sure no one is looking at you while you’re standing there, giggling to yourself before you take one final look at the note. 

Night shifts are tough…tangerines are good for energy, and for a snack. 

MYG

Again, thank you everybody and I hope you enjoy this part too!

Post separator credit to @hyuneskkami

[gutsby]

Playing Dangerous

Pairing: Detective Dixon x Reader

Summary: Working undercover in a seedy part of town, homicide detective Daryl sees you in your skimpy club attire and mistakes you for a hooker. A wrongful arrest makes for a funny way to foreplay, but you’re still game.

Warnings: NSFW. Thigh riding. Brat taming. Daddy kink. Dubcon elements vis-à-vis power imbalance and forceful facefucking, plus some dark-ish dirty talk, face slapping, overstimulation where Daryl keeps making you cum after you say that you’re finished (all meant to be consensual).

Notes: Big big thank you to @dilfsandmartinis for this filthy lil idea!! 🫣🩷 Requests are always welcome :-)

Shitty was an understatement.

This was a full-blown, top-notch terror of an evening, rivaled only in its sheer lethality by the time you once broke your nose and got arrested twice in the same day.

Tonight was likely to be a close second, though.

You’d spent all of ten minutes in the center of that hot and sweaty club, fighting madly not to drop your drinks or lose your purse, when suddenly, simultaneously, it seemed every guy around you had lost the power of self-control. You were prodded and groped like a shiny slab of meat ripe for any man’s hands—and no matter how hard you elbowed each offender, you couldn’t find reprieve. You were constantly being grabbed.

You’d grumbled as much to your friends, and they’d told you to ‘lighten up’ and ‘not be so surprised when you were wearing something like that.’

Something like what? A super mini skirt and a bustier?

You promptly informed each member of your party they could kiss your ass, and left.

That had been almost half an hour ago, and you were still currently stuck outside the club waiting for a lift. In the snow. With no jacket, or adequate covering.

Every time a taxi passed, you’d wobble over to the street corner and wave your hand, but on each endeavor, without fail, its driver would shoot you a dirty look and speed right off. Like you had, ‘I’M GONNA ROB YOU’ written on your forehead or else smelled of rotting flesh.

You were mystified, distraught, and supremely pissed off. You didn’t know what you were doing wrong.

The second you saw a semi-reputable looking Dodge Charger pull up to the curb, you decided you’d had enough. Uber or not, you needed a fucking ride.

You stalked over to the vehicle, already seeing its passenger side window creeping down on your approach. Your arms were quick to fold over your chest as you bent down and scowled,

“Could you please take me home?”

The man you saw inside looked polished. Well-groomed.

You hardly had more than a second or two to inspect his appearance, though, because in an instant, he was leaning over the center console to shoot you a smile.

“How much, hon?”

You heaved a sigh of relief. Finally, someone was taking you seriously.

You reached for the door handle and tumbled right in.

“Any price, just name it,” you groaned. You rubbed your face with both hands and leaned back in the seat. Almost unable to believe your stroke of good fortune after so many failed attempts, you let out a shaky, but grateful, breath and spread your legs just a little to get comfy.

“Good,” the man to your left said, calmly, evenly...then, “Now put your hands where I can see them.”

You lowered your hands from your face and gave the stranger a puzzled look.

“What?”

“Hands, show me hands,” he said, voice raising ever slightly in volume.

What the fuck was he on? Staring you down with that stupid, self-righteous face, lip curled in a melodramatic snarl like he could’ve been one of those lousy fuckin’—

“Police,” he barked. Louder, this time. Flashing a badge before your panic-stricken eyes and clenching his jaw.

Your hands flew up instinctively.

Was it illegal to hail a cab now?!

You didn’t have time to think, or blink, or do much else besides breathe when the well-dressed man got out of the car and instructed you to do the same. Your hands and feet seemed to move of their own accord as you gingerly slipped out from the front seat of the car to the cold wintry night outside. You were pushed to your knees on the concrete sidewalk and made to kneel.

To your right, you saw a gaggle of college kids strolling by—some pointing, others laughing, but all watching in muted awe as the undercover cop circled to your back.

“You have the right to remain silent—” he started, reaching for the handcuffs on his belt.

“Excuse me?!” you hissed.

“—anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law—” he continued. A couple gentle clinks and suddenly your wrists were in chains.

“What’d I do? What the fuck did I do?”

“You have a right to an attorney,” he droned on, heedless of your cries as he read your Miranda rights, “If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you.”

You felt tears spring to your eyes as both cuffs locked into place and you were being hauled back onto your feet, sniveling and sobbing before throngs of amused onlookers. Your face burned with embarrassment.

“I didn’t know it was a crime, officer— I didn’t know, I swear— I-I-I’m so fucking drunk!” you blubbered as he guided you swiftly to the rear of his car. You practically bawled when he opened the back door.

“I just really needed a taxi!” you wailed, legs shaking as he started to lower you into the vehicle.

At that, he stopped.

He tugged you back on your feet and spun you around.

“A what?” he asked.

“A taxi,” you cried, “All the other drivers kept— kept driving away, I thought, I-I don’t know, I thought you might be another Uber driver or something.”

The man’s expression betrayed a change, though you couldn’t decipher just what that was through your tears. You sniffled and tried to wipe your cheek with your shoulder but ended up smearing more makeup in your line of sight. You whimpered at a pathetic pitch.

“Taxi,” the police officer repeated, seeming to mull over the word in his mind like it was the latest addition to the English language. He frowned.

Through your tear-streaked vision, you could just then detect the faintest trace of affliction…even remorse? His eyes wavered between your face, your ensemble, and the ground below, making a couple quick circuits before finally settling on your wet, bleary gaze.

His voice sounded strained to you now.

“You weren’t…trying to have sex with me?”

Your breath caught in your throat. You coughed, blinked, looked the man up and down and hardly knew to even shake your head with how blind-sided you felt.

“W-What? What?”

“You’re not…a prostitute?” the man said, almost pained.

That query threw you for a loop just the same. You pressed your weight on the car and sensed a strange unsteadinesses seize your limbs. This undercover cop thought you were a hooker—and a cheap one at that, game for any price the man was offering—and presently, you felt queasy. You looked down at your outfit.

It surely wasn’t that revealing, was it? He couldn’t have been so easily convinced of your profession by a...pair of glossy go-go boots, latex skirt, and lacy top, right?

Okay, you looked a little bit like a hooker.

Worse yet, you noticed a wad of cash stuffed between your left tit and armpit, from the time you tried to bribe the bouncer for a ride while leaving the bar. A loose cigarette stuck behind your ear, two hickeys suckled into the skin of your neck, and a teensy bag of blow to boot, tucked haphazardly between an assortment of Trojans and Magnums strewn lazily throughout your purse.

Alright, you could’ve been cast in the next Pretty Woman remake, but who cares? Half the girls in the club were dressed just as scantily, if not more so.

You somehow mustered the strength to squeeze your hands into frozen little fists behind your back and gave the officer a brazen look.

“Think I don’t have anyone better to fuck?” you scoffed.

The detective’s expression went from inscrutable to uncomfortable in fewer than two seconds. He seemed hardly able to look you in the eye any longer, casting sidelong stares at the crowd growing larger on the sidewalk. Collective curiosity piqued at the sight of a cop and a would-be streetwalker making small talk outside of the club, he knew he had to get out of this. Quick.

“I’ll, uh, take ya home, ma’am,” he said under his breath.

Before you could either accept or reject his offer, he had your cuffs undone—discreetly—and your body shuffled hastily inside his car. You heard the door slam shut and saw the officer make quick strides toward the driver’s side. You raised both brows as soon as he re-entered.

“That’s it?” you quipped.

“What?” he returned as he started the engine.

“You make that hot-shot unlawful arrest in front of all those people, and you’re not even gonna say sorry?”

The man made every effort not to shoot you a look in the rearview mirror. Slowly, he pulled into the street.

“Well...y’know, you do look the part. But I’m sorry.” Proffering one of the most pitiful apologies you’d heard in your life, the detective fixed his gaze on the road.

You knew he was bluffing. The man was humiliated as shit, too coy to come clean with the fact that he’d just made an egregious error, and now offering you a ride all to make himself out to be the good guy—and quite possibly avoid a wrongful arrest lawsuit.

Maybe it was the residual amounts of alcohol still coursing through your veins or else the cocaine, but you couldn’t let the dipshit get off that easy. You scrambled your way up to the front of the car.

It was at that moment Detective Dixon sincerely wished he’d driven the squad car—complete with a cage, of sorts, to keep inmates locked away in the back seat—rather than his unmarked vehicle, to be making arrests that night. He stifled a groan when you plopped down in the passenger seat next to him.

“What do you mean, ‘looked the part,’ hm?” you quizzed, burning a hole through the side of his head with how intently you were watching him.

“Put yer seatbelt on,” the man rolled his eyes, attention never straying from the long line of cars ahead of him, “And where do you live?”

“Over on ‘Fuck 12’ Avenue, Officer...Dixon?” you answered sarcastically, scanning his chest for a nametag.

“Detective,” he corrected, “Friends call me Daryl.”

“Detective Dixon, I am not your friend.” You smirked, and for the first time, you thought your discomfited front-seat companion might be tempted to crack one too. You watched him fight his base instincts, however, and force a frown instead. Still not tearing his gaze from the road, he reached over, blindly, for your seatbelt.

“C’mon now, buckle up,” he urged, echoing the words of a concerned father but somehow making it sound far more sexy when he said it. You swallowed a giggle and swatted his hand away.

“Detective!” you feigned an offended gasp.

“Ah, hush up, will ya?” Daryl muttered as his broad, veiny hand continued fumbling for the seatbelt, “You know it’s against the law to— shit!”

The two of you simultaneously leapt in your seats with near-identical sounds of...shock. You, feeling his fingers accidentally graze that tender spot between your legs and him, in turn, finding it unclothed. And soaked.

Detective Dixon retracted his hand just as fast as he’d sunk it in place, only holding it up in the air for an instant—but that was all either of you needed to see that his digits were glistening. You clamped your legs tight together and sucked in a breath.

Under any normal set of circumstances, you would’ve been much more in tune with the way your body was reacting to external stimuli. With all the commotion of your almost-arrest and the subsequent desire to exact revenge on the undercover detective, you hadn’t even realized how physically aroused you were.

Still reeling from his touch, you sank back in your seat. Suddenly more conscious of your bodily fluids than ever before, and embarrassed.

“I’m so sorry,” Daryl blurted out in a hurry. Gripping the steering wheel and pretending not to notice the slight wet slip of his right hand.

You couldn’t speak. He wouldn’t dare to venture a look to see if you might.

Now this would make for one hell of a career-ending lawsuit, Detective Dixon thought with a grimace. Wrongful arrest, soliciting sex on the clock, making unwanted advances on a woman who was technically, in a sense, being detained in his car while he—

Jumped, again, the second he felt your hand on his own.

You were pulling his arm over to your side of the car.

When Daryl turned his head, he paled the instant he saw you bring his hand to your mouth. Watched you pucker your lips and move them over his still-damp fingertips. Then suck them inside your mouth, three at a time.

He nearly swerved off the road and took out six civilians.

“Eyes...on the road, detective,” you murmured quietly, words garbled by the obstruction of his fingers.

Daryl swallowed thickly, and then, reluctantly, turned his attention to the street. He didn’t see much of what was in front of him.

“13 Peachtree Place.” You plucked his fingers out of your mouth just long enough to tell him your address. Then you went right back to suckling down the skin, letting your tongue glide gently over the tender, slick digits.

Daryl stifled a groan. There was no fucking way this was happening.

Guided by the faintest idea of where your neighborhood was located, he pulled off onto a side road and tried hard not to let out a sound when you sucked his three fingers to the back of your mouth—and felt your throat seize just a little at the sudden intrusion.

You pulled him out of your mouth with a wet pop and started over his lap.

You, yourself, were hardly more aware of what you were doing than why you were doing it, a slave to your sensory impulses and a sucker for a man in brown slacks. You crawled across the lap of the plainclothes officer who’d accused you of ‘selling yourself’ just minutes ago, only to show him what you were happy to do, free of charge.

It wasn’t your most gloriously feminist moment, to be sure, but then again, when were you going to get another chance to fuck the police and get off scot-free like this?

You palmed Detective Dixon through his pants and smiled when he whined just a little.

“Bet you wish I was selling, huh? Wish I was some pretty little thing for you to use at your convenience?” you purred, stroking over him gently.

Daryl gritted his teeth but said nothing in return. He brought the car to a stop under a red light.

You didn’t like the quiet types. You squeezed him harder in your hand, felt his erection grow even larger between your fingers, and moved up to press a kiss on his neck, tasting tiny beads of sweat there.

“How badly did you wish I was a whore, detective?”

When you leaned in for another couple light kisses, you were startled to feel a hand at your own throat, jerking your face up to his.

“Already knew you were the second I saw you.” he returned, deadpan, before your wide and unsuspecting eyes.

When the light turned green, he released your neck and reached for the back of your head. You let out a muffled whimper as he shoved you down against his crotch, stiff as a rock underneath your cheek.

“Why? Does a whore wanna suck it?” he asked, pressing his foot on the gas.

At a moment’s notice, you were robbed of your slight dominant edge and made to grovel under his touch like a bitch in heat. Daryl rubbed your plush lips over the mound in his pants like he was proud to make you feel it. And you, yielding as ever, made no attempt to keep from being manhandled because, if you were honest with yourself, you knew that you wanted it that way. You smiled against the cotton blend of his trousers and made a soft moan along the fabric, letting him drag you by the hair any way that he pleased.

When he yanked your head up and the car came to another stop, you weren’t surprised in the least by the trail of saliva that followed your lips. You locked eyes with his steel blue set and grinned again, quite stupidly.

“Well?” Daryl pressed, giving your hair a sharp tug.

You thought the sight of your watering mouth and blissed-out expression would have sufficed for an answer, but clearly, he wanted more. You worked gracelessly over the belt buckle and zip beneath your chin, and had his cock freed in seconds.

The car sped up again. Detective Dixon’s grip tightened on your scalp.

The second your lips latched onto the head of his dick, you knew you’d be in for a bumpy ride. He hissed as soon as the warmth of your mouth enveloped him, gripped the wheel like a vice, and made sure to spare your throat no expense the second he came to a sloppy halt.

Either your car was in bumper-to-bumper traffic, or the man couldn’t drive for shit while getting road head. You’d put a large sum of cash on the latter if you had it.

Regardless, you bobbed your head up and down and tried your best to suppress the urge to gag when you could. It was tough work, flattening your tongue down his length, gripping his cock at the base, sucking hard until your cheeks hollowed out, and then bump went the whole fucking car, and suddenly your throat was forced to take four more inches in the span of a second.

You lifted your head to protest but were swiftly met with a firm hand holding it down. Keeping it down.

“You’re done sucking this cock when I say you’re done,” Daryl informed you sternly, sucking a breath through his teeth when you gagged around him once more.

He pulled you off just long enough to breathe—and answer a question.

“You live over by McGinty’s? Or MacManus’?”

“McVeigh’s,” you supplied in a shaky voice. No one ever got the Irish pubs around you right.

Daryl hummed and shoved you right back onto his dick, pretending to take no notice of the way you gripped his thigh or tried to groan, ‘Fucker’ against his shaft. Your oral cavity was presently flooded with cock, pre-cum, and saliva, and the longer you sucked, the harsher he got to pushing your head up and down. Your eyes stung with tears.

“In through yer nose, darlin’, almost there,” he hummed, smug as ever. Whether he meant you were close to your house or he was about to cum down your throat, you couldn’t be sure. Your mouth slipped and squelched gently over the man’s throbbing member and made tiny whimpers when you felt you might climax any minute.

In a clandestine act, you moved one hand down your body while you continued blowing Daryl’s brains out. You were half-cockdrunk and hardly more sentient than a sex doll, it seemed, but you could’ve sworn you were quite discreet about the endeavor between your legs. You had just grazed the slick wet seam of your slit, about to press two fingers to your clit, when a hand jerked at a clump of your hair. Hard.

As soon as your mouth was disconnected from his shaft, Daryl landed a tart slap on your cheek.

“My baby need something?” he said, almost tauntingly.

You blinked up at him, failing to understand, until he reached down and pried your hand away from your heat.

“If tha’ wet, greedy cunt needs sum’n, ya better tell me.”

You were amazed how deftly he appeared to maneuver the car now, just pinching your face between forefinger and thumb as he veered down winding streets. When you paused a second or two to answer, you were punished with another slap.

“Just wanted a touch,” you whined, trying to rub the cheek that was stinging and finding yourself outmatched by Daryl’s grip. He squeezed you even tighter.

“Then you say that next time. With your big girl words,” Detective Dixon grunted, bringing the car to a sudden halt and hauling you into his arms.

You looked small splayed across his lap. Perhaps even tinier just straddling one leg, as you were, body writhing beneath his touch and moans and whimpers bubbling up your throat one at a time.

When you looked around, you realized you were home.

Part of you wanted to bolt, for a second. Go sprinting up the lawn toward the safety of your home and jump straight under the covers, a place where you would be free to touch yourself as you pleased—no smug homicide detective breathing down your throat.

But, as you straddled his wide, beefy thigh and felt one gentle pulse of the muscle underneath, you knew you were done for. He saw just as clearly as you that your body was in need of release. Not from your fingers, not from his tongue, perhaps not even from the fat, throbbing cock that had been fucking your mouth the whole way home.

In this moment, all you needed was for him to bounce you on his thigh, let you ride, and make you cum.

Your expression must have looked exceptionally pathetic when you tried stirring your hips and felt two hands stop you cold in your tracks.

“What did daddy just say about big girl words, hm?” Daryl’s voice took on a tender lilt so unlike anything he’d said or done before that you almost didn’t hear the word ‘daddy,’ or think it strange at all. It seemed so natural playing off of his tongue.

“I need you, daddy,” you whimpered.

To say you were putty in his hands was still something short of the truth. You were damn near liquified underneath his touch, half-limp and wholly yearning as the man steadied you in place and began his delicate ministrations like you’d never experienced before.

The once callous, largely cruel law enforcement figure took on something of a gentle affect as he ran his hands up and down your body and let you ease yourself into his touch. There were kisses, caresses, and all sorts of soft little touches on your skin that made you feel pampered and prized, even precious in his eyes. Was this really the same man whose cock had been choking you to the point of tears just minutes ago?

Daryl hiked your skirt up your hips until the sight of your bare, needy cunt was all he could see. Still, he stayed cool and trained his eyes up to yours.

“How’s that feel, honey?”

Even as still as a stone, you felt sparks of hot energy fly up from your center. Remembering your big girl words, you replied, ‘So good, daddy, I just need some more.’

Daryl seemed happy to oblige his good little girl and made sure to shift his knee a little to the right. At the slightest bit of friction, you moaned.

“Oh, daddy,” you whined, leaning in to that praise-heavy dynamic Daryl seemed keen to play out. When he bounced his foot once or twice, shaking your whole body as he did, you sucked your bottom lip between your teeth and grabbed hold of his thigh. Even rolled your hips right back to his movements.

As light, tender sounds tumbled past your lips with increasing frequency, so too did Daryl’s mouth impart more gentle kisses and dirtier words for your ears to hear:

“Such a pretty little thing, ridin’ daddy’s thigh like tha’.”

“Grindin’ tha’ needy wet pussy all over my leg.”

“Gonna make a mess fer daddy? Show me how much my sweet girl’s been needin’ a good fuck?”

You loved every last filthy syllable. You braced hard against his leg and rutted up and down, in circles all around until you thought you could’ve soaked his whole pant leg. Meanwhile, he was bouncing his thigh, stroking your sides, and making sure you were never wanting for affection or praise as a soft swell of pleasure came dimly into view.

When he flattened one palm across your tummy and told you to lean back, you knew the end wasn’t far from sight.

Daryl took hold of your hips and made an even quicker cadence with his leg, bouncing you fast and hard and hopelessly tight against his thigh as he drank in every one of your moans coming out.

You pressed one hand to the window—long since fogged up and opaque with the hot breaths you were panting—and placed the other on Daryl’s shoulder.

You could tell by the glint in his eye and the grin on his face that he loved you like this. Spread out and desperate for release as you rocked your hips a vicious course over him, using his body for leverage as you fucked his leg for all it was worth.

“Tha’s my girl,” Daryl beamed, practically scintillating with joy.

He watched you rut your hips again and again in the most obscene sort of fashion, riding his thigh with a moan never far from your lips. You squeezed his shoulder.

“Daddy, I—” you started, only to swallow your words with a whimper the second Daryl started bouncing his foot even faster.

“Daddy what?” he teased, pretending not to notice the elevated pitch to your whines.

“Fuck— you know what!” you cried.

“Nah, pretty baby, I ain’t got the slightest clue,” Detective Dixon was exuberant now, grinning from ear to ear as the pleasure visibly mounted inside of you, “Fuck my leg a little harder and tell me how it feels.”

You did. He helped. Even gripped your hips and moved them for you, keeping that breakneck pace as you moaned and writhed and sank your nails into his shoulder as the feelings just got to be too much.

With one last strangled cry, you came all over his thigh.

And, whether that climax lasted two seconds or two hours, the man beneath you didn’t really care—he kept bouncing his leg as you finished, and long after you had, as well.

You seized both of his shoulders this time as you tried to slow his movements. He made no such effort to oblige, only flashing a smile and nodding his big, dumb head as he said:

“I want one more.”

What? No fucking way, you thought, communicating as much through your frantic eyes and the shake of your head. Daryl kept right on moving his leg and holding you firm to that mile-wide wet spot on his thigh, which only grew larger and larger the longer you rode him.

As a bizarre, unfamiliar feeling sank to the pit of your stomach and twisted, you weren’t sure whether to laugh, cry, or cum all over again—luckily, your body decided for you and graced you with yet another orgasm. You gritted your teeth and tried not to scream as a wild wave of a new sensation washed over your senses…

And Daryl kept bouncing that fucking knee.

Mind-numbing waves of ecstasy came crashing closer and closer than ever before, and frankly, you couldn’t quite tell how, or when, you’d ever cum again until you did it, you felt it: walls clenching back and forth while your vision blurred with pleasure. A sound wavering somewhere between a scream and a plea—Daryl, keep that goddamn knee to yourself, for fuck’s sake!—tore out of your chest and prompted you to sink all ten nails into flesh that told your sly detective it was time to stop.

Your whole frame was shaking by the time his foot came to rest. If you hadn’t been so fucked-out and sensitive, you just might’ve jumped out of the car the second it did.

But you didn’t. You stayed frozen in place, let your vision return apace, and didn’t let your eyes stray an inch from Daryl’s smug face while your third orgasm subsided.

Fighting every urge to giggle when he squeezed your ass and begged for another.

“Fourth one’s gonna cost ya, asshole.”

“Oh yeah?” Daryl said, grinning, “What’s your price?”

[jeonggukwritingrecs]

Completed Wattpad Fic Recommendations (Authors a-f)

Hi everyone, I am not sure how many parts this will be, there is a lot of material I read. Enjoy! Also, note that some reading material will be OT7, I will let you know which Gold Dust - aiemramona His Cruel Revenge - AlmightyBob

Jungkook: The Friendly Ghost - AnnieDD

Trouble - aqsaedwards

Winter Flower - aqsaedwards

He's a Demigod - Atlantaes

P r o s e c u t i o n - AWeirdFangirl51

Euphoria - BadassBangtanBabe ** OT7

Still With You - BadassBangtanBabe **OT7, Sequel to Euphoria

Bad at Love - BangtanBae33

How to tame a bad boy - bitchtaekookie

Waiting For You - BeeFinch

Inseparable - blackbunny-

Changed - BOKEkaytBOKE

Flux - BreBangtan

My Single CEO Dad's Adorable Love - Bts_Internation_Army

All Grown Up - btsgotjams @btsgotjams27

This is us - btsgotjams @btsgotjams27

I Kissed a Stranger in the Back of a Cab - btsximajin

Childhood Sweethearts - BTS7MyLIFELINE

Red - bubbletaeu

Worth the Risk - bunnyluvr0613

Single Dad - caroenne

The Night We Met - chinguine

Colour Vision - dappleddaisies @alphabetboyluvr

Habits of a Clandestine - dappleddaisies @alphabetboyluvr

ICARUS - dappleddaisies @alphabetboyluvr

Night Crawlers - dappleddaisies @alphabetboyluvr

You Up? - dappleddaisies @alphabetboyluvr

Hidden Hearts - darlintayy

Here's to a New 'We' - Dina-soar

Reminder - dollfaceksj

Still Don't Know My Name - dollfaceksj

Golden Time - Emmy_Rose_alternate

Déjà vu - enasthetic

Fuckboy - erasedbangtan

Submission - fanficsanonymous1

XL - Felixtarts

[bitterrfruit]

Wild Cherries | Chapter 2

John Price x f!Reader tags/cw: modern western AU, cowboys, mean!John Price, chasing, spanking, light sadomasochism, age gap (ish), brat taming, dubcon if you squint, smut wc: 7.1k 18+ mdni

In which you step over the line, and John shows you what crossing him will earn you.

✼ Read the full chapter on Ao3 ✼

John wiped an open hand down his face as he sped along the dirt drive, white-knuckled and stiff. 

The road was clear and bright ahead of him, glowing by virtue of the blinding sun, and yet he could not focus on it. His vision was blurred by the image of you standing winsomely among the wildflowers. By the sight of the harsh sunlight unveiling you, the thin cotton of your dress failing to conceal the shadows of your soft nipples, blissfully unaware they were revealed to him so vividly. 

His palm still stung red and hot, tingled under his skin like needle pricks in the aftermath of his ruthless discipline. He knew he should feel guilty. That he should be chastising himself for assaulting you, for unleashing his long-caged fury in an eruption of rapacious torment. 

But he didn’t. He felt not an ounce of shame. 

Instead, he felt angry. Angry at the knot that was tight and wrenching in his stomach, at the heat that flared in the back of his neck. Angry that he could still smell you in the cab of his car, your berry-scented shampoo and the animal musk of your frightened sweat, drawn out by the chase. 

Angry that he fell for your bait, that he gave you the satisfaction of retaliation for your insolent behaviour. 

Christ, some satisfaction he gave you. 

Despite all valiant effort he could not dispel the picture of your tiny, frilly knickers. Worn under your sheer frock, so visible in the sunlight, as if to purposefully entice him upon their reveal. The delicate fabric turned so dark where it was sodden, it demanded his attention even if he attempted to ignore it. His compulsion to touch between your legs was undriven, and he could not resist it - he had to check, to know for certain, that such an abasement had filled your cunt with eager nectar, so much of it. That your body responded to its punishment as praise, to its degradation as pleasure. 

Such knowledge ridded him of any guilt, even if it should have done the opposite. But it did little to temper his indignation. Now, he understood what compelled you. The fuel for your delinquency. 

Is it a lack of attention, sweetheart?

Did you yearn for somebody to notice your misdeeds? For someone to care to penalise you?

[ellaa-writes]

Do you mind making a fanfic where König slowly falls in love with the reader that's the team medic. And can it be smut towards the end that's more vanilla than rough?

Hiii! Thank you for the request. Also sent back in November. I always get carried away with these. CW; alcohol consumption but over all its very tame and a little fluffy :)

Working for Kortac wasn't always easy but it sure was awarding. Being the team medic/doctor had its perks. You mostly worked on base, or different outposts. You rarely experienced field work, but you weren't completely useless. The rest of the team wouldn't allow it, specially the Colonel.

You train with them, eat with them, shower with them, cause you are one of them.

As well as going out after a successful mission, when everyone is preparing for there leave. A nice hooray before a break.

You've been with Kortac for little over a year now, you made friendships with almost everyone. The Lifesaver they call you, out of respect and also taking the piss. Getting a nickname meant you were really family.

You don't talk about your personal life, no one does and no one asks questions. But it's not like you want to talk about your failures and joining the military was you lose ditch effort to pursue your dreams. Working in the hospital wasn't ideal anymore, the mundane day after day was draining you. And your tremors destroyed your opportunity to your goal as a board certified surgeon.

Wearing your civvy clothes, nothing special. Your favorite pair of jeans, a simple top and chunky boots. It's a tad chilly so you threw a warm leather jacket over it to tie it all in. Taking a cab with Roze to the local bar. Chatting about plans and wants. Roze using her leave to go climb a mountain. Telling her you wish you had her ambition and discipline. And her telling you that she could teach you some time.

The cab stopped in front of the bar, a fairly busy night. A small group of people were gathered around chatting and smoking cigarettes. Some of them you recognize as your teammates, and the Colonel. He made you dizzy, every time your eyes find him every cell in your body buzzes. Like flies to a street lamp.

Like a million butterflies in your tummy, beating against the inside tying to break out. You waving back to the ones that waved to you, making your way into the bustling bar. Leading the way to the bar, Roze close behind.

"We should find a both, I'm not being stuck at a fucking table." Roze gritted into your ear, remembering the last time you two went out with the boys. "Go find one I'll order our drinks. The usual?" you offered. She gave you a big smile and squeeze to your upper arm. "You are a doll, do you know that?" she yelled as she made her way through the crowd.

You finally flagged down the busy bartender, ordering Roze her vodka soda and your old fashion. Looking out into the crowd trying to find the others. Spotting them at a big booth in the back, a big screen rght above playing some sort of football game.

With a loud clink the bartender dropped the drinks in front, snatching the change out of your hand before turning away to help another. Carefully making your way through the crowd to the others, watching has Roze and Hutch lively convo. Setting the drink down before sliding it over to Roze who mouthed a silent thank you to you.

You slid into the other end of the both the faced out towards the bar, right up to a very tired looking Oni who looked unintereseted in whatever Horangi was saying. "What's up cool cat." he cooed to you, his big arm snaking around to give you a tight hug. "Getting drunk." you cheered raising your drink, the two cheering in agreement as they clinked their glass against eachother.

"Room for one more?" his thick deep accent purred for behind you. Colonel König sliding in beside you, taking up the rest of the both. Causing you to shift over to Oni to your right. "You smell like shit." Horangi exclaimed, raising his glass towards König. Causing the giant to bark with laughter, raising his pint towards the Korean. Causing some to slosh to the side and drip in front of you.

Indistinctively making you jump back to not get any of the stinky lager to get on you. "Sorry about the doll." his rumbling voice reached your ears. Making you blush and say "It's all good sir." taking a big gulp of your drink. Shrinking back as the others talked, stopping once in a while to include you.

König's leg brushing up against yours every now and than. If you were any the wiser you'd think he was doing it on purpose. Downing the last of your drink you plopped it on the solid table with a clank. König eyeing the empty glass while he finished his own. Kindly taking it with him as he went to get another fill.

Roze gave you an odd look from across the table, you just shrugged it off. She's been trying to convince you that the Austrian has been pinning for you. You brush it off as him being kind, but he's never that kind. Small things like bringing you things he found that reminded you of him. Small like trinkets and tchotchkes, either hand delivering them himself or leaving at your door.

Always being the first on the team, even before the muscle. Having first pick over any new recruits, a small luxury. Like you said, he's just kind. And very straight forward and to the point. A confident and cocky man, that knows what he wants and always gets it. And it's definitely not you.

It wasn't long until the Colonel returned with his drink and yours, setting down a colorful fruity drink in front of you. Causing a laugh from the others, but you just blinked at it. "I think this is yours." as you shifted it across the table to Hutch. Who gladly took the free drink cause booze is booze baby. "Aw Koni pal, you shouldn't have." he nearly had it to his lips before König thick hand grabbing Hutch's wrist, giving it a light squeeze before saying "It's not yours." in his husky accent. Bringing it back to you, holding it out. "Do you not like?" he asked curiously.

You weren't sure what was happening, was this some joke that you just didn't understand. "No." you said flatly, eyeing Roze for some help but she just eagerly gulped down her own ignoring you. "Can you excuse me." as you brushed passed the giant now looking at the drink in confusion.

Going to the bar you ordered two shots of the strongest liquor they had. Taking them down like a champ you asked for another old fashion. Feeling a warm hard body brush up next to you, seeing the Colonel standing beside you with that stupid drink still in his hand.

"I'm sorry Katze, I thought you would like." he started to explain. The bartender interrupting to give you your whiskey, taking a quick sip before König moved the drink so it was next to you. "It reminds me of you, that's all." he finished. You snorted into your glass and nearly choked on the smooth amber. Huffing out a coughing laugh.

"I'm sorry sir, but how does that remind you of me?" you giggled, finally feeling the alcohol settle into your worn bones.

"It's colorful like you." he said confidently and also confused at how you dont see it. "I'm colorful?" you asked, taking the drink from his hand. Your fingers lightly brushing against his, bringing the liquid to your nose before downing the whole thing in one try. And setting it back into his hand that remained in place.

König eyes widened at your bold display, a fire burning into them as he watched you lips grip the rim of the curved glass. The way your necked bobbed as you swallowed the sweet liquid. The fire burning a path straight to his pants. Feeling himself grow to life and strain against the front zipper.

"It's nice to see you like this sir." you blurted out and immediately regretting it. Ok, last drink and your leaving, you scolded yourself. "What do you mean?" his curosity peeked. You waved his answer away, getting embarssed by your loose lips. "Dont get shy on me now." he pushed. Moving hs big body into yours more, pining you to the bar stool.

"It's just, your so human." you whispered. A little nervous to his reacton, but instead he leaned his head back and barked out a laugh. Causing people around to jump at the sudden loud sound. A few moving away from the big man.

"That was a good one Katze." he leaned further down to your face. "I like seeing you like this." his hand slowly running from your wrist to your neck, holding it in place. "Like what sir?" you mummured, eyeing his lips as they moved closer to your own. "Flustered." he breathed into your mouth, closing the gap and kissing you deeply. His hand moving to the back of your head to keep you in place. Your lungs seizing to produce air as you felt his soft lips move against yours.

He pulled away slowly, moving his hand to your face, running his thumb over your bottom lip. Your lungs screamed, finally sucking in a deep breath. You could feel the heat rise to your face, you must look like a tomato right now.

"So damn cute." he continued, looking away from you to your abandoned drink at the bar. "Are you done?" he questioned. You were buzzing, almost right out of your skin. So light headed all you could do his shake your head yes. König took that as his sign to make a move, so he lead you out of the bar into the cold night.

"This way doll." as he pulled you to the direction of the quiet street, you could spot the bmw shining under the moon light. "I'll drive us back." he reached the passenger door, holding it open for you as you climbed in. Closing it softly as he jogged to the drivers side, climbing in and the car roared to life.

The drive back to the base passed in a flash, König nearly dragging you through the building towards his own room. His high status warrants his own private quarters. A small living and dining area, followed by his bedroom and attached bathroom. He unlocked the door with haste and pulled you in. Spinning you around so you were pushed against the back of the door.

His strong body on yours, you heard the click of the lock slide into place. König lips once again on yours, nipping and sucking. Making a trail down your neck, pulling the zipper of your jacket down and off your arms. Tossing it towards his table, his hands finding your ass and hauling you up. You legs mindlessly wrapping around his waist, tugging him into your core more. Earning a low moan, vibrating from his chest.

He yanked at the collar of your shirt, a clean tear running down the front exposing your breast to his mouth. Pulling a yelp from you as he nipped at the sensitive skin. He turned you both around and towards his room, kicking the door open and dropping you on the bed.

"Sir-" you tried to let out but König's lips swallowed your words. "Shhh, baby. Let me make you feel good. Ja." he whispered into your mouth, making you melt into the bed. All you could do was shake your head has you fully leaned back, closing your eyes.

König made good with your clothes, leaving you only in your panties. You watched has he removed his shirt and shoved his jean and brief's to the floor, kicking them away as he climbed back on and slotted himself between your thighs.

Pining your spread knees to your stomach, rubbing his face against your clothed core. His big nose carding its self along your slit, building pressure against your clit. Pulling moans from you, throwing your head back.

König took his time, running his face up and down your thighs. Kissing from your ankle to your inner thigh, over your soaking core, and down the other leg. Licking path across your skin and blowing on the wetness, goosebumps spreading across your body.

Pulling your hard buds into his mouth, swirling his tongue around and sucking. His teeth grazing on the sensitive nipple and lightly nipping. Relishing in the noises hes drawing from you. Humming in approval, slowly pulling down your panties and letting them get lost on the bed.

His fingers find your center, the thick heavy digits ghosting up and down. Gathering the wetness that pushed through, pressing his wide thumb right against your clit. Making you buck into his hand more, König's mouth still on your tits.

He worked his thick middle finger into you, slowly opening you for him. Working knuckle by knuckle, whispering praises into your ear. Pushing another finger into you, making you whimper at the stretch.

"Ko, please." you pleaded with him, feeling his low chuckle. His hot mouth against your ear, cooing "Patience love." as his fingers pump in and out of you. Feeling your slick slide down your ass and onto the sheets.

Whining at the loss of his fingers, but feeling the head of his dick running up and down. Collecting your wetness and spreading it over him before the tip catches you needy hole. Snapping his hips fowards ripped a cry from your throat. Your legs clamping around him and tightening.

"Shh, shhh. Quiet now pretty girl. I'm sorry, I'll be more carefully." and he kept true to his word. His cock slowly stretching you open, your warm folds inviting him in. Squeezing and pulsing around him, König cherished every moment.

Sensually thrusting in and out, lazily rolling his hips. Making sure he pulls orgasm after orgasm from your body.

Not stopping until your begging and pleading with him. Incoherently going on about it being too much, too sensitive.

König could lose himself in you, deeper and deeper. Holding back to not scare you. Wanting to make it all about his sweet little medic. The moment he laid eyes on you he was hooked. Those sweet eyes and kind smile, how quick and smart you were. Such a soft thing, you shouldn't be in this line of field.

Finally letting himself go, he buried himself deeper. Releasing pressed right up against your cervix, shoveling as much as he could to your core. Letting out one last guttural moan as he collapsed onto you, only rolling over when you started banging against his back. Taking you with you, you settled on his chest.

König laid out completely satisfied, head back and eyes closed. He could feel you staring at him.

"Sleep" he commanded. Hearing your giggle as you continued to stare.

[iced-nct]

Greedy NJM

Pairing: CFO Na Jaemin x F Reader Word Count: 4.5k Warnings: Suggestive, occasional swear, jealous Jaemin Synopsis: Jaemin knew the second you walked into his office to interview for a sales role that he needed to hire you. Incredibly well spoken and driven, you reminded him a lot of himself in some ways. Except he didn’t want you for a sales position. Oh no. He wanted you as his personal assistant. Promptly after meeting with you, he let go of his current assistant to hire you for it instead. If Jaemin is going to be stuck at his desk for ten hours a day, he’ll be damned if he doesn’t have a pretty thing to stare at just outside his door. Maybe you’ll be able to tame the infamous office playboy. 

a/n: just casually dipping in to drop a 4.5k Jaemin Apply Within fic that I have been working on for like years lmfao. Anyway, I hope you all enjoy! I promise I'm going to be more active with my fics again!!!

Jaemin’s secretary blinked slowly at him, as if to process what she had just heard. “You are… firing me? Did I do something?” 

“No, I just needed a change of scenery! And I’m not firing you, I am just relocating you to a different department” He chirped in response, his voice cheerful though his eyes were dark and expression firm.

Jaemin turned his back to her to head into his corner office, “oh. One more thing.” He turned, one palm pressed firmly against the door frame as he leaned back. “I need all your things moved by tonight. My new secretary starts tomorrow morning” He winked before slamming his door closed.

-

Today could not have been off to a worse start. First there was the hole in your favorite pair of stockings, then your coffee machine decided to have a meltdown, and finally you had missed the bus that would allow you extra time to grab coffee on the way to the office. As far as first day’s go, this was not your best. Having to settle for a pair of plain sheer black tights to wear under your skirt and ordering a taxi, knowing full well the extra money was well worth having time to grab a cup of coffee. You hurried out the door, laptop bag and purse in hand, just hoping as you hustled into the back of the cab that the day wouldn’t get any worse.

The line at the coffee shop was surprisingly not horrendous, it only took about 10 minutes before you were holding your iced coffee and making your way through the entrance to Neo Dream. Jaemin’s office was on the 20th floor, you remembered this from your interview. As you moved to get off on your floor a solid chest made contact with your cup, spilling coffee all down the front of yourself and the stark white dress shirt in front of you. 

“I am so sorry! I was in such a rush, I should have paid better attention” You rambled, hoping that this stranger wouldn’t chew you out for such an accident.

“Miss Y/n?” You looked up to see Jaemin smiling down at you. “First day jitters?” He asked, a playful tone in his voice.

Your cheeks flushed with heat, “I am very sorry Mr. Na. I will clean this up right away” 

“Don’t bother, I will call the janitorial staff to clean up. We should get started with your tour, after we get changed” He tilted his head, indicating for you to follow.

The view from Jaemin’s office was stunning to say the least, the sun was almost up now but you could imagine the sunrises and sunsets that could be viewed from these windows.

“Yes, the view is lovely isn’t it?” You turned to find Jaemin, a sliver of his chest just barely exposed to you as he buttoned up a black dress shirt. “I apologize, I seem to have run out of women’s blouses, but I do have a knit sweater that may work” he jested while handing you a gray wool sweater. 

It was clearly men’s, but this would have to make do for today. Just as you were about to slip the sweater on over your stained blouse a hand stopped you. 

“If we don’t send these off to the drycleaners, the stain will set and ruin your shirt. I can’t have that, and I don’t want you to either. Just wear the sweater and I’ll send your shirt off with mine” His smile was charming, almost knee weakening. 

“Oh okay… but is there somewhere else for me to change?” Your head tilted in question.

Jaemin’s eyes widened with realization “Yes, oh gosh I’m sorry, I will turn around. You let me know when you’re decent”

You turned your back to him and began unbuttoning the shirt. Unbeknownst to you, Jaemin could make out the reflection of your chest in the window beside him. Not much could be seen, but the way the black lace of your bra held you had him wishing you allowed him to watch. Just as Jaemin’s dress pants started to get a little too tight for his liking, you cleared your throat, snapping him back from his thoughts.

“Thank you for the sweater! What should I get started with today?” You asked, whilst handing over your stained shirt. 

“You can get started on unpacking your desk and setting yourself up. I have some afternoon meetings that I will be in today, so I doubt we will see eachother very much. Just answer the phone if it rings and book in meetings for this week” You nodded at the instructions and headed out, closing the door behind you.

You paused to lean on it, breathing slowly as the picture of that small sliver of Jaemin’s defined chest floated around in your head. In the office behind you, your boss sat down at his desk, taking all the effort in the world to not call you back in to help him deal with the situation beneath his desk right now.

-

Days had turned into weeks, and though nothing of note had happened after that first eventful morning. You had settled in wonderfully, making friends with people on the finance floor, accompanying Jaemin to the occasional meeting to take notes for him when he didn’t feel like it, and canceling meetings he had with Mark just because it was funny to watch them squabble. There was lots of extra chatter throughout the office as everyone buzzed with excitement for the first annual company gala. A newer finance colleague had asked you to the gala a few days ago, and you had gladly accepted, assuming that it was a friendly gesture from one newbie to another. Excitement filled your chest as you thought about how much fun it would be to attend this company gala. The excitement was cut short however, when the door to Jaemin’s office swung open. Your boss stood there staring daggers at you, dread rushed in as you mentally went through every file you placed on his desk today, every meeting you had booked. What could you have possibly done wrong?

“Y/n. Come in here please.” Jaemin’s voice was deadly cold as he strode back towards his desk.

You slinked in, he gestured for you to close the door. “Did I do something wrong?” You asked, hesitating to turn around to face him.

“Have a seat, we’ll talk about it” He nodded to the chair in front of his desk for you to sit.

Despite sitting, the load on your shoulders felt ten times heavier under Jaemin’s stare. He slid a small pink envelope across the desk to you, your name scrawled in ink on the front. 

“What is this?” He tapped the envelope with his middle finger.

“I’m not sure, I haven’t seen that before” You answered, and truthfully you hadn’t seen it before.

“It was in the files you brought me this morning, just tucked between some reports. Imagine my surprise when I opened it and found out my trusted secretary is having an office romance with one of my junior finance employees” the smile that hung on Jaemin’s lips did not reach his eyes. 

Your eyes widened “office romance? No no you’ve misunderstood. He just asked me to the gala last week, that's all. I have no idea what the letter is and I- wait. You opened it?” 

The smile faded as he processed your words. Oh Jaemin would not have his secretary on the arm of anyone other than him, and he would make sure of that. Despite the other women around the office, who Jaemin had been making his way through, you managed to get under his skin in all the right ways.

“Sorry, I thought you knew” He started, propping his head up on his hands “secretaries are required to escort their managers to the gala. Mark’s rules” Jaemin grinned lazily.

“Oh! So I’ll still be working, right?” you thought about all the extra things you would need to prepare in this case, starting with a much bigger clutch to keep all Jaemin’s business cards in.

Jaemin smirked, “That’s correct Y/n. You have to be by my side all night. Make sure you let me know the color of your dress so I can plan my tie accordingly”

You nodded, your boss’ phone began to ring echoing throughout his large office. “I’ll bring you a swatch tomorrow morning” You spoke softly as you stood to leave the room.

Jaemin only nodded in response before picking up the phone “Mark!! How goes it over in-” His sentence cut off as the door shut behind you.

“What an odd day” you pondered while sifting through the hundreds of emails in your inbox. Mark had taken the liberty to have Haechan set up all Jaemin’s emails to duplicate so you had copies of important things as well. Unfortunately this also meant you got to see all the emails that lovestruck employees sent him without knowing you could see the confessions as well. After deleting what must have been the 20th email love note, you came across a thread that caught your eye. The email was from another female employee, detailing things she and Jaemin had done the previous night. From the sounds of it, you weren’t the only one engaging in an alleged “office romance”. There were quite a few more like that email, all talking about how they loved it when Jaemin did that “thing”. You weren’t sure what the “thing” was, but from the way he had these ladies begging for him via email correspondence you couldn’t help but be curious. It didn’t help that some had described certain acts in such detail, it was only natural that your head drifted away from work causing you to think about Jaemin’s head between your-

The thought was cut short by a loud thud from the elevator. Upon inspection you could see the finance junior who asked you to the gala had dropped a box of their belongings on the floor. The security guard who was with them helped gather their belongings back into the supply box before giving them a reassuring pat on the shoulder. You thought about going over to ask what happened, but a ping from your inbox beat you to it. ‘I WAS WRONGLY FIRED BY NA JAEMIN” was the subject line, there was no body to the email. Just that one subject line that left chills down your spine. You glanced to your boss’ door then back to your computer screen, the email was sent to everyone on the finance floor. It wasn’t long before chatter began amongst your colleagues on the floor. Everyone was curious to know about their former colleague scorned, making incredibly obvious passes by the now barren desk that once housed the junior finance employee. Jaemin seemed unbothered by the office bustle, opting to send you a teams chat asking for you to accompany him out of the office for his suit fitting for the gala. 

-

The interior of the store was full of mannequins decked out in name brand clothing that had your bank account near tears. Though you were only here to keep an eye on Jaemin’s emails and schedule for the day, he kept asking for your input on the suits he chose. The swatch you had at home would have to wait for another day, though he assured you it would be no hassle to have a tie ordered into the office in the correct color. 

“Well? Does this make me seem intimidating enough?” He turned his head over his shoulder to ask you. 

There was simply no denying the fact that Jaemin WORE the clothes, they did not wear him. He looked stunning in everything, so much so that you kept catching your mind slipping off to imagine the things he could do in the dressing room. Your eyes must’ve lingered for too long without speaking, as Jaemin chuffed a laugh. 

“I’m so sorry, yes it looks great!” you smile warmly at him, just as another ping comes through on his work phone. An email from Mark asking about the firing of the finance colleague and why he is now receiving multiple emails from the distressed former employee.

Jaemin cocks his head, one brow raised in question “Something the matter?”

You lock the phone quickly and look up at where he stands on the pedestal for his fitting. “Just Mark asking about an employee who was fired earlier, apparently he is now receiving emails stating that he was wrongfully terminated.” You stare, waiting for a reaction from him that never comes. 

“Ah yes, he was fraternizing with other employees. Can’t have my department become a cesspool now, can I?” His answer is cold as ice, his face revealing no indication of what he is thinking.

You can’t help but laugh at his reference, as if he hadn’t been sleeping with multiple employees from different departments. “What seems to be so funny, Y/n?” 

“Oh, nothing. Just your cesspool reference was funny” You roll your eyes, not expecting him to continue prodding. But he does just that.

“And why, pray tell, is it funny? Is my finance department a joke to you?” His eyes narrow, the shop steward who was pinning the suit even stops momentarily to give you a glance.

You need a moment to collect your thoughts. To try and decide just where you should begin with this. “You know Haechan set up my email so that I get duplicates of all the emails sent to you, right?” 

Jaemin nods thoughtfully, before his eyes widen in realization. “You get all my emails?” 

You bob your head “every single one of them. Mark insisted it was set up that way so you can never say you just missed a meeting invite in your swaths of emails.”

He pinches the bridge of his nose, eyes closed in frustration. “Y/n, what have you been seeing?” his foot tapping against the stained wood of the pedestal.

“Just the usual. Multiple emails from Mark about meetings, Renjun sending gala updates, Haechan providing timelines for software updates, Jeno sending memes that he has made instead of marketing campaigns, Jisung sending you meeting schedules with investors for the week, Chenle sending selfies mostly.” You shrug, pleased with your answer. 

“That’s it? Nothing else?” His tone is tense and his eyes are fixed on you, gluing you to the spot on the bench.

“Finance employees sending you updated reports too. Oh! And just the casual love confession, or excruciatingly detailed emails from your lovers” You smirk at him.

“I see.” Jaemin steps down, shooing the shop steward away as he strides towards you, “and tell me, Y/n. Do you read all of those excruciatingly detailed emails?” He leans down slightly, your faces mere inches apart.

You wet your lips, noticing Jaemin’s eyes flick down to your mouth before coming back up to meet your gaze. “Yes.”

He straightens back to his full height, now towering over where you sat. “Interesting indeed” he mutters before turning back to the shop employee to continue with his fitting.

-

The next morning you had a large iced americano sitting on the edge of your desk for your boss, along with the fabric swatch. It was odd, seldom did you beat Jaemin to the office. But today you felt extra jittery, especially after how hot his eyes had felt on you yesterday during his fitting. In fact, it was a shock that you managed to get a few hours of sleep. You had tossed and turned all night, thoughts of Jaemin taking you in the dressing room after your conversation had taken your mind hostage. A few times throughout the night you had awoken in a cold sweat, finally deciding to just get up at 5am instead of trying to get a few more hours of rest. That was how you ended up at your desk at 6:30, a large cup of tea clutched in your hands as you sifted through more meeting invites and emails. 

“Good morning Y/n. You’re awfully early.” Jaemin smiled warmly, a glint of something else shone in his eyes.

You gestured lazily to the cup of coffee on the edge of your desk “That’s for you, the swatch too”

His smile dropped as he stared at the coffee and the swatch “your dress is red?”

“Yes” you nodded before adding “I hope that’s alright”

“That will be just fine, I just so happen to have a tie that I think is the same color.” Jaemin fixed a tight smile before heading into his office and closing the door.

A few hours later a gorgeous intern from accounting came by, stopping at your desk “I have an appointment with Mr. Na” She smiled.

“Sure, just a moment” you returned her smile while getting up to knock on your boss’ door. 

“Send her in.” Jaemin said through the thick oak door before you could even let him know his one o’clock was here. 

-

She left an hour later, hair messier than it was when she arrived and her stockings had noticeable runs down both legs. All you could do was cock a brow as she breezed past with her blush stained cheeks. ‘I’m sure I’ll get an email about that later’ you thought, mentally rolling your eyes. Moments later your boss appeared at his door, fixing his tie nonchalantly. 

“Y/n, take the rest of the day off before the gala tonight. I’ll pick you up at 7 tonight, alright?” His voice was cold and detached, much like it had been at the store.

“Sure, thank you. I will see you then” It was no use putting up a fight. And it was certainly no use to ask him what had been on the tip of your tongue since yesterday. All you wanted was to know why that employee had been fired, and if their claim had any merit.

-

True to his word, Jaemin arrived at 7 on the dot. A swanky black car pulled up outside, the driver meeting you by the door for you to get in. After the door was shut you noticed Jaemin’s eyes fixated on you, suddenly the tight red dress you opted for felt all too revealing. 

He licked his lips slowly before speaking “I get the feeling there’s something you want to ask me, Y/n?”

“Why did you fire that employee that asked me out and gave me that letter?” You asked, Jaemin just stared at you in shock, clearly not expecting that to be the question.

“I- well. He had falsified a few reports so I was going to let him go anyway, but…” He trailed off, turning to look out the window instead of at you. “I thought you were going to ask about the escort from earlier” 

You nearly choked on your own breath “Escort? I thought she was from accounting!”

Jaemin hung his head in defeat “I know, I know. I’m sorry. I was never good at processing things. Instead of thinking though the issue I jumped straight to numbness, and I apologize” 

You simply could not believe your ears, you had figured that’s what was going on. But somehow it still took you by surprise. “Wait, why are you telling me all this?” you couldn’t help but ask.

“When I interviewed you for that sales role, I had such bad thoughts. I decided to tell you I needed an assistant instead. But I had one already. I fired her to give you the role. I just wanted that pretty little ass outside my office. I wanted to rub it in everyone’s faces that I had the hottest secretary. But then you got that letter, and I noticed you starting to get a little too much attention than I liked. And I didn’t expect to like you this much and-” He rambled on before stopping abruptly to look at you. 

Tears welled in your eyes, threatening to fall “two people lost their jobs because of me?” Your voice felt raw.

“Technically only one, the other guy was getting fired for fraud anyway. It was just a coincidence. And I didn’t fire my former secretary, I relocated her to another department. That was poor phrasing on my end” Jaemin reached for your hands, you foolishly let him hold on.

This was an enormous pill to swallow. “So let me get this straight.” You squeezed Jaemin’s hands. “You removed your secretary, hired me because you think I’m hot, got jealous when I was getting attention, forced me to be your date for this gala, and then hired an escort to take out your frustrations instead of just coming clean and talking to me?”

“That’s about it, yeah” Jaemin nodded enthusiastically.

“I quit.” You pulled your hands back to your lap.

Jaemin’s smile fell, his eyes showing the panic he was feeling. “No, no you can’t quit. Who’s going to read my emails to me and copy down all the meeting notes that I don’t feel like doing?”

You shrugged “I’m not sure, Jaemin. I just know it won’t be me.” 

The timing was lovely as the car had pulled up to the venue, the driver was already opening the door to help you out. Jaemin clutched your hand desperately. “Please, Y/n. Please just give me the night to make things right.”

You brushed him off “I will accompany you tonight, but tomorrow morning I will be packing my things. I’m sorry”

Jaemin led the way into the gala, his shoulders slumped in defeat. To anyone else, you were sure he looked angry, but you knew the truth. The first hour of the gala was spent greeting fellow colleagues and investors. You stopped to chat with Renjun, praising him for how incredible the party turned out, to which he agreed with a small smile and flushed cheeks. 

“He’s into the party planner he hired” Jaemin leaned down to whisper in your ear.

The sudden closeness took you by surprise, but you couldn’t help but slightly lean back into his chest. The countless champagne flutes did not help the situation, no matter how much you wanted to not be around Jaemin right now, your other desires had taken over. Jaemin’s hand was placed firmly on your hip, holding you in place. 

“I think it’s time we get you home sweetheart” He spoke softly, looking around to find the nearest exit.

You could only nod, agreeing that it was in fact time to head home. Jaemin kept his grip on your hip as he escorted you through the crowds of people, stopping only once to whisper something to Mark before continuing to the exit. Just as it had been when you arrived, Jaemin’s car and driver were stationed out front. The car door was already open for you two to get in, he helped you into the car and you slumped against him.

-

Sun had streamed in through the large windows of your bedroom bright and early. You cursed yourself for not remembering to shut the curtains before getting into bed last night. Wait, you didn’t have curtains, or the luxurious silk bedding, or a king sized bed. Realization hit you, Jaemin must’ve taken you home. But when you looked over to the other side of the bed you found it still untouched. You were thankfully still in your dress from last night.

After gathering up some courage and taking the Advil that was conveniently left on the nightstand you took off down the hallway of the apartment. On the couch you found your boss, drinking a cup of coffee while leisurely flipping through reports.

“Good morning sleepy girl” He cooed at you.

You squinted back at him “lest you not forget, I quit last night. And you upset me.”

“I recall. I also recall you chirping at me in the car that you wanted me to bring you here and ‘do the things from the emails’ to you” He chuckled, blush crept across your cheeks. 

“I am very sorry. I will head out now.” You started towards the door.

“Y/n. Wait.” Jaemin rose from his place on the sofa, his long strides reaching you quickly. “Now that it’s not a conflict of interest, I was wondering if you would allow me to take you on a date?”

You stared at him, dumbfounded. “A date? Jaemin, you only hired me because you thought I was hot! I’m so pissed off at you! I thought I had merit, I thought I was good at my job!” You were stopped short by Jaemin’s lips on yours.

The kiss seemed to have surprised you both. Both of you stood in shock, just staring at each other. 

“You are” His voice was soft.

“I am what?” Your brows furrowed.

“Good at your job. Mark requested we send you off to another department that needs a manager. I said no, because I need you to keep me organized. I have never made it to so many meetings!” He grinned at you, placing his hands on your shoulders.

“Could I move to a different department to be a manager?” Your head tilted in question.

Jaemin breathed a sigh of relief “Yes, you absolutely can. I can always bring back my old secretary in your place”

“Then I will.” You beamed happily.

“You will what? Move departments?” Jaemin’s hands squeezed your shoulders in anticipation.

“Well yes obviously.” you rolled your eyes. “But also, I’ll let you take me out.”

Jaemin pulled you into another kiss, this one much less abrupt than the last. His lips were soft against yours, and his hands worked their way down your body. Your fingers combed through his hair, stopping occasionally to tug slightly. 

“Oh we have to stop. I still think about your first day when you had to change in my office.” He confessed.

You smirked at him, “That’s alright. I think about it too.”

“I’ll have the driver take you home and I’ll pick you up tonight. Wear something red again. It looks stunning on you.” He kissed you one last time before sending you off.

-

The next week was a do over of your first day, but this time as a manager for partner relations. But instead of taking an Uber, you arrived with the CFO in his personal car. 

“I’ll see you after work sweetheart. Let me know if I need to fire anyone for you” Jaemin winked before placing a kiss on your lips before exiting the elevator onto the finance floor. 

“Ugh, you are so lucky” another employee in the office wined before exiting at the next stop.

The doors closed, leaving you alone in the elevator. The biggest grin plastered across your face as you thought aloud “Yeah, I am pretty lucky, aren’t I?”

[zorrasucia]

Promptober 4. Temperature play 

from @carmenberzattosgf list

Reader x Carmy Berzatto (The Bear FX)

Rating: Explicit (1.2k)

Tags: Smut, Porn with a little plot, Fluff, Established Relationship, Temperature Play (but they're really tame about it), Fingering, Cockwarming, Both Carmy and Reader have a bit of a praise kink

It was a cold evening. The forecast predicted snow during the night and you actually believed it. You laid on your couch, heating turned up and a blanket on your legs; you were comfortable and warm.

Suddenly, there was frantic knocking at your door - when you looked through the peephole, you saw Carmy.

"I didn't know you were coming tonight," you said while you unlocked the door. "Oh, shit."

Carmy was hugging himself and shaking with cold. He was wearing only his white t-shirt and his work slacks. His pale skin was red from the wind.

You dragged him inside, giving him the blanket you were using and started boiling water for tea.

"Fuck, Carm, what happened?" you rubbed his arms, trying to warm him up.

"J-just so fuckin' st-tupid," he managed, teeth chattering. "Got lock-locked out of my car. My c-coat, my keys, my wallet, my phone, everything was inside."

"Shit," the keys to his apartment, and his car, and the restaurant. You realized all at once just how fucked up his situation was.

He nodded. "No cabs. Thought I could just walk h-here," he kept shaking. "Only five blocks away f-from my place, right?"

"Oh, Carm," you fixed his hair. "Let's get you out of these clothes. You're freezing."

You helped him get undressed, leaving him in his boxers, the blanket wrapped around him, sipping tea from a chipped mug.

"See, you wouldn't have to be naked if you had a change of clothes here," you said, jokingly stern as you placed them near the heater. "Maybe my sweatpants will fit you?"

"I'll be f-fine," he insisted.

You sat on the couch next to him and took his hand. "You're still too cold," you mumbled with worry.

You climbed on his lap, holding him close, his face on your collarbone. After a little while of hugging him, he stopped shaking. Once your worries about hypothermia dissipated, it was easier to think about Carmy's muscled back and meaty thighs, and about his cold fingers tracing pictures on your back.

"You know, I just remembered I read somewhere that it's easier to share body heat skin on skin," you said.

Carmy looked at you with a frown. "Yeah?"

You nodded and stood up.

Staring right into Carmy's eyes, you took your t-shirt off, then your sports bra, and your sweatpants and underwear all at once. His pupils dilated and you went back to straddle his lap, bare, every inch of his cool skin making you shiver.

"Where do you feel cold?" you asked, tilting your head.

"My nose," he replied.

You cupped his face, and guided it to burrow in the crook of your neck, the tip of his nose drawing lines along your collarbone, tickling and making you arch your neck. Carmy used the opportunity to place a line of chaste kisses up your throat, warming his lips in the process.

"Where else?"

"My hands," he offered them to you, palms up, and you placed them over your breasts, your nipples hardening immediately at his touch, getting goosebumps with every squeeze he gave. You hummed at the sensation.

"My fingers are still cold," he prompted, playing along.

His knuckles rubbed up and down your sides, and he grinned at the way you squirmed. He ended up tracing a sinuous path from your ribs down your hips and to the insides of your thighs.

You gasped.

"Can I warm them up here?" Carmy asked, his index ghosting over your mound enticingly.

"Yes."

His index, middle and ring fingers separated your folds, the difference in temperature more notorious there than anywhere else on your body. He swirled his fingers around your pussy, leisurely coating them in arousal, unearthing new sensations with every movement, unlike anything you had felt when he had fingered you before. When his fingers were almost as warm as your core, and you thought he was done playing with you, he changed his hand. It was cold again, and his thumb pressed on your clit this time.

"Fuck, Carmy," you moaned and pulled on his hair.

"You're so wet," he marveled and kept teasing you, pressing a bruising kiss to your lips.

"Yes," you panted.

"Don't think I can fuck you right now," he lamented, kissing your neck apologetically. "I'm numb everywhere."

You knew this. Other than his hands, and maybe the bit of his thighs that you were sitting on, he was still extremely cold.

"It's okay. You don't need to fuck me," you whispered. "I just need you inside me. Get you warm."

"Okay."

You reached inside his boxer briefs and took out his cock, barely half hard despite all your efforts, and almost as cold as the rest of Carmy's skin. You guided him to your entrance, sitting on him slowly. It tickled you as it went in, awakening every nerve inside you all at once. You let out a shaky exhale as Carmy held you close, arms rounding your back.

"You're so fucking warm, baby," he rasped. It was like he melted in your arms, relaxing as you carded your fingers through his hair and caressed his shoulders. He was mumbling sweet nothings into the skin of your neck. "You're so soft, smell so nice. Thank you..."

You smiled, liking this gentler side of Carmy, his soft praise heating you from within. You stayed like that for what seemed like a very long time, your breathing syncing up.

"Feeling better?" you asked; your desire had settled down.

"Mhmm," he nodded, tickling your chin with his curls.

"I'm glad. I'm going to see if your clothes are warm now so you get dressed, okay?" you kissed the top of his head and shifted on his lap to dismount but he wouldn't let you move, holding you tight. "Carm?"

"You've taken such good care of me," he said. "Let me take care of you?"

You frowned. He had fingered you and touched your body, and you enjoyed it so much that it made you beg to sit on his cock. How else was he going to take care of you? Still, he was looking at you with those wide, beautiful eyes so you simply nodded.

"Alright."

He gave you a lopsided smirk and kissed down your breast, slowly, giving special attention to your nipple, licking at it, sucking on it. You moaned low. He moved to the other side, giving it the same treatment, making you squeeze your pussy around his cock.

"That's it, good girl," he praised and it made you clench again.

He kissed up your neck and jaw, mouthing and licking, thawing whatever cold bits he had left before.

"Carmy," you whined, feeling your belly warm up and tingle once again. "Fuck."

It was odd. He was giving you pleasure everywhere except your pussy and still you could feel it building, the smallest shift of his cock against your core was making your heart beat faster.

"Kiss me," you pleaded. And he obliged. He kissed you adoringly, his tongue gentle - his hands were still caressing your breasts.

It was a tender thing, a sigh against his lips as your pussy fluttered around him, and you surrendered in his arms. When you opened your eyes, he looked sleepy and soft, pliant under your touch.

"Carmy," you kissed his temple. "I love you."

"I love you, I love you so much," he replied.

[wickedsmille]

batman, robin, sentient super suits, oh my! part 2

Here's Part 1 and somehow there's going to be a part 3 too because I'm apparently incapable of doing anything short. Just ain't made for it. I've become resigned to my fate. But, hey, here's part 2! ;3

----------

“What is going on with this thing tonight,” Tim murmurs harshly with an irritated huff. 

Jason would like to know, too, since Tim’s comms patched into his private line without Jason’s say so. It could’ve been the Red Hood fucking with him again but the suit has been tame. Well, okay, as tame as his suit gets. Which is suspicious all on its own but that’s a problem for a later time. Right now, he has an unsuspecting Tim on the line. 

“Come on you stupid piece of shit,” Tim whispers like a man at the end of his rope.

“Woah, woah, language there, RR,” Jason chides him because he can.

Tim makes a noise somewhere between a squeak and a grunt which would normally have Jason laughing except Tim chokes off the sound and mutters, “Uh oh.”

He’s never liked uh oh’s. 

“What?” he demands, feigning annoyance but honestly a little worried. 

“So,” Tim starts hesitantly. The rest of the words spill out of him in a rush when he says, “I was trying to get a hold of Batgirl because I’m on a stake out that isn’t a stake out anymore and I’m currently hiding from about thirty heavily armed and trained mercenaries but all the exits are covered so I can’t exactly sneak out.”

Tim trails off while Jason’s stomach churns. “You’re what?” Jason responds, this time truly annoyed. 

“If I have to repeat myself and I give away my position,” Tim warns him absently. There’s another pause and Jason much prefers Tim’s word vomit to the ominous sound of Tim’s measured breathing and the growing din in the background. “Uh oh” Tim says but with more feeling this time. 

“Don’t you fucking uh oh me. Where are you?”

“It’s the home goods warehouse southeast of the docks. 1334 Har-." Tim doesn’t get a chance to finish rattling off the address. If Jason has to guess, he would say it has something to do with the sudden sound of gunfire.

This is not happening. He got butt dialed into a backup call and now the littlest bird is a sitting duck in a den of lions. With only Jason to lean on. Who isn’t even sure where he is. It’s not like the actual contents of Gotham’s warehouses isn’t ever shifting between legitimate goods and illicit ones or anything. Property rights and leases exchanging hands between asset management teams and gangs. Money is money after all. The area around the docks is all warehousing and logistics so, over all, Tim has been completely unhelpful. 

He knows better than to divide Tim’s attention when he’s in the middle of a serious fight. One wrong word and Jason could be the reason Tim gets a bullet to the brain or pushed off a two story catwalk. It doesn’t exactly leave him with very many options other than immediately changing his trajectory to take him over to the industrial center by the docks. It’s a quiet night. He should be able to hear the gunshots. 

Turns out, he doesn’t have to waste valuable time playing Where’s The Fire Fight? because Red Hood has it handled. Or Tim finally made use of one of the many panic buttons he’s sure are sewn all over his less-than-stellar, non-magical-mystical-whatever suit. No matter how, Jason gets a ping on his HUD and a map of Gotham pulls up into the corner with a neat little red dot for Tim’s location. Now knowing where he’s going, Jason pushes himself to hurry the fuck up.

Getting back to his bike is a blur but he’s ripping down Gotham’s streets as soon as he gets the engine started and kickstand up. One irate cab driver has the audacity to honk at him when he blows through a red light so Jason gives him the middle finger and few choice words. The guy must be new to the city if he doesn’t know to look both ways for high speed vigilantes. Jason would be more than happy to teach him the lesson if he didn’t have places to be and things to do. 

Thanks to his incredible driving skills and his innate ability to not turn himself into a pavement pancake, Jason gets to the warehouse in record time. If only Guinness had been watching. He would’ve gotten a medal or whatever it is they do when someone breaks one of the many, many pointless world records the books have immortalized. 

Since all the doors and exterior windows do appear to be fortified and armed, Jason grapples himself to the roof and is delighted to see the unsecured skylight. Whoever these guys are, they must be from out of town too. Any Gotham-ized gangster, goon, villain or otherwise knows to board those up first. Out of towners, he swears. No problem, the cab driver got him primed for a teaching moment so he’s about to take these motherfuckers to school. 

Handling Vigilantes 101:

-Never leave your skylights or exterior vents unattended.

-Before engaging in criminal activity, make sure you have active health insurance.

-Prepare to get your ass pounded into paste by some douchebags in tight leather (and not in the fun way).

In true Bat-fashion, Jason makes his dramatic entrance via ziplining through the skylight after cracking the glass with the steel-toe of his boot. He’s already got a gun out by the time his feet touch down with a jarring thud. The total amateurs, by Gotham standards, startle enough Jason has ample time to start putting them down. A flash of red and black from the corner of his eye lets him know Tim has darted out to either pull some shifty, sneaky shit or find better coverage than the shot to hell crates he’d been keeping between himself and a .22 to the dome. 

Even when the mercs gather up their wits and retaliate against the new threat, the Red Hood does its job. About a minute of getting shot at, knowing he’ll be sporting a myriad of bruises from it but trusting his suit to keep anything fatal at bay, and the idiots start second guessing their current line of attack. 

What’s a bruise or two for the ghost tales that’ll get spread around about the Red Hood being impervious? Jason may be all too human but the Red Hood allows him to pose himself as something more, something greater. Obviously unnerved, the shooting stops as the guys start back pedaling. Too bad Red Robin is there to greet them when they turn tail to make a run for it. 

Jason watches as Tim neatly dispatches the leftovers. He might not have been able to properly appreciate it before, but Tim really is good with that stick of his. Liquid grace in motion, slipping under the mercenaries’ guards easily and transitioning from one opponent to another with a little flair and a lot of skill. Bits and pieces of it Jason can recognize from his own training regimens as Robin, some of it from a couple people he’s run into as Red Hood and can’t help but wonder how Tim met them. The weird amalgamation is all Tim though in the way he takes the best from what he’s learned then takes the discordant moves and shapes them into a symphony of movement. And pain cause, hot damn, Tim isn’t playing. Jason swears he sees one guy's molars get smacked right out of his head. 

One of the assholes groans from where he fell at Jason’s feet  after getting hit with a couple rubber bullets point blank so he kicks him in the head to shut him up. Jason is appraising his ally’s fighting skills, thanks. People can be so rude sometimes.

Tim downs the last merc and, with a satisfied smirk that has Jason’s gut twisting, he leans against his staff with his hip cocked. The tight fabric of his suit is clinging to him like a second skin. Enough so to make Selina and Dick proud. His cape falls in a wave at his back, held in place by the bandoliers crossing his chest. The damn things make Tim’s tiny waist painfully obvious. Small mercies Tim decided to ditch the cowl a few months back. The elegant fall of his too long hair suits the whole Red Robin look a lot better than the gimp cowl.

“Are you going to help secure them?” Tim asks, frowning and looking over his shoulder at Jason as he zipties one of the guys starting to wriggle around.

Jason’s higher thinking kicks back in. Tim does make a good point. They should probably truss up the trash before they’ve got another scuffle on their hands. He hadn’t even realized he drifted off a little bit there. Weird but it has been a long, strange night. Brushing it off, Jason crouches down to start hog tying the mercenaries closest to him. 

Nothing, nothing, will ever beat the hilarity that is criminals awake and wriggling while they’re literally hog tied. Tim may not have approved while he was doing it but, standing next to each other on an adjacent roof to make sure the GCPD carts them off as they should, Tim isn’t saying a bad word about it. In fact, his lips are pinched together like he’s trying to hold back a snicker. One of the mercenaries jolts awake when an officer takes their arm to start hauling them away. The man startles hard and starts grunting and thrashing. 

Tim loses it and, man, Jason has never heard him laugh. Like really laugh. It’s a good look on Tim. 

“I’m not saying you should’ve,” Tim pushes out past a couple more chuckles.

“I’m sensing a but,” Jason says, his grin all charm and completely wasted since Tim can’t see his face because of the helmet. 

“But,” Tim parrots, “that was pretty funny.”

Jason bows with a flourish which has Tim laughing anew though it is softer, quieter this time. In the middle of drinking up the delicate lines of Tim’s face and the curve of his smile, Jason’s HUD goes dark. Totally dead. There’s a couple emergency lights built inside since small, dark places don’t mix well with him anymore. Otherwise, nothing is working.

The Red Hood isn’t subtle one goddamn bit and the stupid suit is lucky he bothered with slapping a domino on before he went out tonight. Quickly undoing the security panels on the underside of his jaw, Jason pulls the helmet off. He shakes out his hair and swipes at the sweat beaded along his brow. A couple strands are stuck to his head and refuse to move so Jason reaches up and musses his hair in an attempt to not feel grungy and gross. 

When he looks up, Tim is staring at him so, without the barrier of the helmet, he whips back out the ol’ Jason Todd charm, smiling wolfishly. Then Tim sort of, freezes up. Jason looks over his shoulder to make sure some new big bad isn’t lurking nearby that they missed. But, nope, nothing there. As he turns his head to meet Tim’s gaze again, he’s back to normal. Tim’s approximation of normal at least. 

He’s tapping a hand against his thigh and looking off towards the cityscape of downtown Gotham. His other hand is settled firmly on his waist while he rocks back and forth on the balls of his feet. 

“Alright, well, thanks for the backup. Talk about a happy accident,” Tim says after clearing his throat a couple times. 

“Don’t mention,” Jason tells him. “But really, don’t mention it. I don’t want all the Bats breathing down my neck.” 

They’re a give an inch, take a mile bunch. If he green lights as a solid reach out for back up, the next thing he knows he’ll be on the main comms listening to inane chatter. Probably have a shadow or two trailing him on patrols like he needs help running his happy, shitty section of the city. Invitations to the Cave will shift to dinners and movie nights. As pleasant as that all sounds, he’d like to avoid it at all costs.

Tim nods easily and readies his grapple. “Fair. Well. Have a good night?” The awkwardness of Tim’s polite goodbye has Jason laughing and shaking his head. Tim bristles as he shoots off his line. “Or not, whatever,” Tim mutters. 

“Yeah, alright, awkward bird,” Jason calls out to him as Tim swings away. 

Next time, it’s Jason reaching out to Tim. Not even Red Hood calling out to Red Robin. He’s literally phoning Tim's personal cell on one of his burners and asking for a favor. There’s a little cell of nasty drug traffickers from down south with their sights set on Gotham. Although he could wait for them to make the egregious mistake of coming onto his stomping grounds, Jason has decided to gift them the honor of a house call given the sheer viciousness they’ve been using to move their product. 

Problem is, he doesn’t know how long he’ll be undercover snuffing them out and Crime Alley rarely rests even with the Red Hood’s impressive shadow looming over it. If he goes dark for more than a week all hell breaks loose. Usually Roy will step in for him and his suit has been accommodating to the temporary trade off in wearer. That’s not an option this time with Roy otherwise occupied. As are his second and third options so he’s had no choice but to ask for help from the Bat he can best stand. 

He didn’t even need to threaten or bribe Tim after promising a rubber bullets only policy would be fine. The agreement may have come readily but Tim did sound distracted. A niggle of doubt has him pacing his apartment as he waits for Tim to show up. For all he knows, Tim might’ve been less present in the conversation than he thought and not show up at all. 

The knock at his window comes as a mild surprise. Twisting his head around, hand twitching towards the gun he has lying on the counter next to him, Jason relaxes when he sees Tim standing on his fire escape clad in dark clothes with the hood of his sweatshirt pulled up. Tim waves at him and gestures to the window with a raised brow. 

Jason doesn’t scramble to open it but he might do it a little too eagerly. Thankfully, Tim doesn’t comment on it as Jason steps back to let Tim in. 

“Are you sure this is going to work?” Tim asks dubiously once he’s standing in the middle of Jason’s living room with his hands jammed in his pouch pocket. 

“Oh yeah, definitely,” Jason responds without actually being sure. The Red Hood could always reject Tim. Only one way to find out though. “Follow me,” Jason says as he gestures Tim down the hall to his bedroom where he keeps his suit stored.

“Alright. Sorry I’m late, by the way. My suit has been giving me issues lately.”

“Like what?” Jason asks curiously as he pushes open the door to his room and goes to unearth the Red Hood.

Tim shrugs and absently looks around Jason’s room. It’s uncomfortable to have Tim here, for him to see where Jason lives. He does his best to ignore it as he spreads the suit out on his bed. Approaching slowly, Tim takes his hands out of his pocket so he can run a finger down the chestplate. The whole thing does a little shimmy shake. Jason has a bad feeling about this. 

“I’m not exactly your size,” Tim drawls, looking Jason up and down. 

A spark of molten heat sparks deep in his core so Jason smothers it with extreme prejudice. “If you’re not lookin’ like a kid in daddy’s clothes then we’ll be fine. It’ll adjust. If it likes you.”

“If it likes me,” Tim murmurs. 

There’s a sad, bitter edge to Tim’s expression as he stares down at the suit. Once more, Jason realizes he has stepped on a sore spot for Tim. The same one even. Let no one ever accuse him of being great at interpersonal relationships. 

Tim banishes whatever he has going through his mind with a shake of his head. His face shifts to one of determination as he shucks off his sweatshirt. And his shirt. Then he hooks his thumbs into the waistband of his pants.

“Enjoying the show?” Tim questions sarcastically.

Right. Right, he was staring. When he shouldn’t have been. 

“I want a refund,” Jason throws out to cover his folly. Tim snorts so Jason takes it as a win. “I’ll leave you to it. Let me know if the suit gives you a hard time. It’ll listen to me sometimes.”

“Sometimes. That’s comforting.”

“I try. Now get your tiny ass in it.” 

Jason excuses himself from the room, shutting the door, before making his way to the kitchen where his open duffel bag is already stuffed with the essentials. To keep himself busy, Jason checks over the contents. Then double checking and tossing a couple other things in the bag. Once satisfied, he zips it up and pats the thick canvas of the bag. When he looks up from his distraction, Tim is there in the hallway.

I fucked up, Jason bemoans internally.

Not because the Red Hood is being antagonistic and obstinate in letting Tim help. The stupid suit must not have a single qualm with letting Tim wear it. Everything fits so damn well. There’s only so much reshaping the suit can usually do given the difference in size between himself and others but whatever bullshit gives the suits a brain has pulled out all the stops to make it work. 

Tim looks good in it. Still short although the heels on the boots are higher. The extra armoring pads Tim’s form, making him look bulkier than he is but the suit nips in at the waist. He’s pretty damn sure the tac pants aren’t supposed to be that tight, either. Tim tosses the helmet from hand to hand under Jason’s scrutinizing eyes before popping it on.

“Wow, okay, I want one of these,” Tim says through the voice modulator. The mechanical growl has a shiver running down Jason’s spine. Because he keeps his apartment cool and there’s a draft somewhere he hasn’t fixed yet, of course. “The tech in this thing.”

“Great for concussion prevention, too.”

“I’m hoping to not put that to the test.”

“Yeah, try not to. You’re still smaller than me, shrimp, so keep moving and maybe nobody will notice.”

Pulling the hood off, Tim glares at him. “I’m not that much smaller.”

“You’re like, what, a buck forty soaking wet?”

Huffing, Tim puts the helmet on again. “Excuse me while I prove that doesn’t matter.”

“Go off,” Jason cheers flatly. 

Tim flicks him off while he walks back towards the window. “Just getting in character,” he says as he gracefully slides back out onto the fire escape. 

I am so very, very fucked, Jason thinks with no small amount of dismay. There’s only so much a mantra of ‘Don’t stress, repress’ can do and it’s getting really hard to ignore the way he’s been responding to Tim. Doesn’t mean he’s not going to keep trying to savagely squash what he’s starting to suspect may be the beginnings of attraction. 

It all comes to a head when Tim asks him to partner up on a counterfeiting case. The request shouldn’t have surprised him. After Tim successfully patrolled Park Row as Red Hood, reporting no issues, they’ve been crossing paths more often. On one occasion, the tracker Jason stuck to a mobster’s car brought him to Tim instead. By some stroke of luck, Tim was tailing the same guy so, aside from the momentary hiccup, the takedown went smoothly. Then Tim’s grapple jammed when they were set to part ways another night after running into one another. Jason ended the night red faced and unable to think of anything but Tim’s arms wrapped tightly around his neck, hanging on for dear life, as he flew them back to Tim’s bike. 

A few weeks ago, he’d ended up battered, bruised and bleeding in some dark, dank alley in the East End. Willingly, Jason hailed Tim for an assist. Tim got him to a safe house and patched him up efficiently. The weird thing is, Tim’s cape was being weird. Sure, that makes him sound slightly insane and maybe a civilian would think so but Jason has been a mask for what seems like half of forever now. He knows these suits. So, the way Tim’s cape had fallen around them, stretching itself so it covered the both of them to create a safe, quiet space all their own, was suspicious. Then it got really suspicious when Tim tried brushing it aside to get some better lighting while doing the stitches but the cape kept somehow slipping over his back to go back to embracing the both of them. 

There isn’t a single doubt in Jason’s mind that Red Robin was a plain,ol’ regular mass of fabric when Jason got it. None. He’s starting to suspect that isn’t the case anymore which is only cemented when they walk into the hotel room they booked for the night to serve as a base of operations in New York while they follow a trail of counterfeit money. 

See, Jason was right next to Tim in the car when he called the hotel and made the booking. He personally heard Tim ask for a room with twin beds and the front desk agent confirm there was one available. Then Tim had tossed his phone into his bag, the same one with his spare clothes and suit, and they’d blared hyper pop and grunge on the radio without a second thought. Jason vividly remembers pulling into the hotel parking lot and Tim grabbing his bag, fishing his phone out and frowning thoughtfully that the screen was on with his email open. After a cursory check, he’d shrugged it off and they got out to settle in. 

Getting comfortable is going to be a Herculean challenge for Jason since there’s only one queen bed in the room. 

Tim pauses in the entryway and blinks before glancing down at his key card, backing up to look at the room number and back down at the card again. “They must’ve made a mistake,” he says blankly. 

Before Jason can put his two cents in, Tim shoves his bag into Jason’s arms and snatches up Jason’s key card. Tim books it back down the hall towards the front desk. Which, okay, that’s fine. All’s the better because Jason will literally go insane if he has to share a bed with Tim. Years of freezing on the streets taught him to gravitate towards whatever heat source possible. Including people he trusts in his general vicinity when he’s sleeping. He simply won’t survive waking up with Tim as his personal teddy bear. 

Storming into the room, Jason throws Tim’s bag onto the bed and yanks it open. He opens the hidden pocket where Red Robin is neatly folded and glares down at it. 

“I don’t know what your game is, but cut that shit out,” Jason hisses at the suit. It doesn’t move but Jason gets the distinct impression it’s smug. Or he could be projecting. Can regular suits gain consciousness? Is that a thing? Doesn’t matter, not like anyone is around to judge him for talking to a maybe, maybe-not inanimate costume. “Seriously. I brought you into this world, I can take you out of it.”

Jason doesn’t get the opportunity to further threaten the Red Robin costume. A harried looking Tim pops back into the room, two key cards in hand. When he looks at Jason, he seems a little lost. 

“This was the only room they had left,” Tim tells him, tone carefully calm and even. “There’s some business conference going on.”

He swallows hard and nods, remembering a couple news articles he’d read through on it before leaving. “Okay, yeah, no problem.” There’s no couch either. Just a dresser, nightstand, bed, desk and one of those armchairs with cushions hard enough to use as a bludgeoning weapon. “I’ll take the floor?”

Tim doesn’t look at him but his face pinches in distaste at the idea. “No, it’s fine. We can share, right?”

“Nah, it’s alright, I’ll take the floor,” Jason insists.

Now Tim looks him in the eye and the steely determination takes Jason by surprise. “I can’t even fathom what the stains on this carpet are and there’s no padding. You’ll wake up an aching mess and be useless on the mission tomorrow. We can share the bed,” he says firmly. 

Well, what is Jason supposed to say to that other than, “Good point. Bedfellows it is.”

The time they spend organizing their things and then getting ready to lie down is just as awkward as Jason thought it would be. On no fewer than five occasions, Jason nearly calls the whole thing off. There were other hotels in the area, right? Not all of them could possibly be full from the corporate HR consulting conference being held in town. Anything would be better than the fragile silence between them. 

He doesn’t though. The thought of backing out like a yellow bellied coward had his gut souring and his mood shifting from placid dread to irritation. Each time the impulse comes up, he kicks it to the recesses of his mind along with every budding fantasy of what the night may bring. It’s getting pretty cluttered in that dark corner of his mind. 

Tim doesn’t appear to be quite as affected. Some of his movements are stilted and he’s giving Jason a wider berth than normal but otherwise he does his own thing while Jason does his. If Jason weren’t harboring an incredibly inconvenient crush, he’d even say things were companionable. But he is, so suffocatingly uncomfortable atmosphere for him. Woe is his life, seriously. 

Those feelings of giddy anticipation and mounting horror go sharply into focus as he and Tim, dressed down for bed in sleep shirts and comfortable pants, stare at one another from either side of the bed. Tim has a corner of the blanket in his hand, fiddling with a loose thread on the side of it. Otherwise, he’s completely still and everything he’s thinking is locked up tight behind the pale blue of his eyes. Jason can’t help but fidget too, shifting his weight from foot to foot as he feels a prickle of embarrassment slithering down the back of his neck. This is the weirdest game of semi-gay chicken he’s ever engaged in. 

Jason breaks first if only to end the game. Grabbing the edge of his blanket, Jason tosses it back before flinging himself onto the bed. After a brief shuffle, he gets himself covered up to the chin with the blanket and his back facing Tim. Carefully, slowly, Tim crawls in beside him with much less flair and flourish. The blanket tugs for a second before settling again. While the bed is a good size, Jason isn’t exactly your average guy. Despite his best efforts to get as far away as he can, he can still feel Tim’s warmth brushing against his back like a phantom caress. 

Man, sleep isn’t happening. He may as well get up and do some more research on the case or something. Screwing his eyes shut and gritting his teeth, Jason wrestles with himself on if he should ditch the idea of sharing the bed and how he can get out of it without being overtly disrespectful.

[quillsandcravats]

Middle of the Night | Benedict Bridgerton x fem!Reader | Ch. 1: My House of Stone

Summary: The year is 2025. When you move into Bridgerton House as its new curator, you don’t expect to fall in love with Benedict—a charming, enigmatic artist who seems to belong to another time. But as your connection deepens, the house begins to whisper its secrets, and you uncover a devastating truth: Benedict died over two centuries ago. Bound to the estate by betrayal and an unfinished life, he is forever thirty, a love you can touch but never truly hold. And when the past finally catches up with him, you must face an impossible choice. Pairing(s): Benedict Bridgerton x fem!Reader Rating: M Warnings: modern!AU, paranormal!AU, ghosts, hauntings, major character death, paranormal romance, angst, whump, descriptions of violence, death/dying, grief, trauma Crosspost: AO3, do not repost my fics anywhere! A/N: Here is Chapter 1 of a fic I cannot stop thinking about. I haven't felt this passionate about writing a multi-chapter fic in years. I hope you enjoy! Thank you to my beta @monaskydancer <3 SERIES MASTERLIST

“This is Bridgerton House.”

The taxi driver's loud voice snapped you out of your half-asleep daze in the backseat. You jolted upright, your mind still groggy and fuzzy, and ran a hand through your messy hair, attempting to tame it back into place.

"Thanks," you mumbled, rifling through your purse for a tip. You handed it over through the center console and quickly pushed open the door.

When you stepped outside, your gaze immediately fixated on the imposing and elegant structure towering before you. The red brick walls were lovingly adorned with wisteria vines, exactly as they appeared in the photographs. It was clear that the Bridgerton Foundation had poured their heart into nurturing those vines, letting them thrive and blossom year after year. Nearby, a plaque adorned with a delicate bee and an ornate, swirling 'B' was affixed to a metal stand beside the green door, its weathered paint peeling and chipping away.

As you lifted your eyes to the towering structure, a flicker at the edge of your sight snagged your attention. It seemed as though a pair of eyes were fixed upon you from one of the distant windows. But, as you inhaled sharply and tried to focus, they disappeared.

‘Seriously? Calm down, y/n. It was a trick of the light, or maybe a curtain that caught a breeze. Think rationally - you cannot walk into this house paranoid,’ Your inner monologue rambled on.

The cab driver placed your bags beside you, drawing you back to reality, and carefully lowered the cat carrier next to them. The bulk of your belongings had already been shipped from your old apartment —a modest collection, since your new place came furnished. The idea of settling in seemed doable; as long as you had your smartphone, your espresso machine, and Mr. Darcy, you figured everything would be just fine.

Just then Claire Watts, the CEO of the Bridgerton Foundation stepped out of the front door. As a proud descendant of Viscount Anthony Bridgerton, her gait seemed to echo the legacy of her esteemed lineage. She wore a tailored camel coat that highlighted her slim figure, with a fitted turtleneck underneath and a chic black pencil skirt. A sparkling, jewel-encrusted bee-shaped brooch added a touch of flair to her outfit. Every detail of her look was perfect, with nothing out of place.

You suddenly cringed at your clothing choices, wishing you could magically switch out of your sweatshirt, leggings, and Crocs like Cinderella prepping for the ball. Luckily, you had remembered to refresh your deodorant after touching down at Heathrow.

She sauntered down the sidewalk towards you. "Y/n! Welcome! It's so great to meet you face-to-face finally," she said, reaching out for a handshake.

You grinned, "It's good to meet you, too. I'm super excited to check out the house in person, and to be here, of course.”

Claire smiled softly, her eyes drifting to the pile of your luggage at her feet. "There's no elevator in Bridgerton House, I'm afraid," she said, a hint of apology in her voice.

"Oh no, that's okay!" You chuckled, adjusting the strap of your shoulder bag. You reached down and picked up Mr. Darcy's carrier and hoisted one of your suitcases. "I'll just have to make a few trips, I guess."

Claire shook her head, her expression turning determined. "Oh, no, that's okay. I'll help you."

"And here are your quarters," Claire announced, her hand firmly pressing against the door, which creaked in complaint as it swung open. The wooden door unveiled a medium-sized room, bathed in the glow of the afternoon sun filtering through large windows. A queen-sized bed stood proudly in the center, its quilt neatly folded at the foot. Against one wall there was a polished dark oak desk paired with a matching dresser.

"You'll have full access to the bathroom down the hall," Clare continued, motioning towards the hallway. "It's fitted with a claw-foot tub, but be warned—the plumbing has a mind of its own and is overdue for another update." She hesitated before adding, "And you have a kitchen available, though it's situated on the opposite side of this wing."

"That’s all perfect. Thank you again for the tour.”

As you spoke, your nose suddenly tingled with an unexpected scent. It wasn’t necessarily unpleasant, but it was reminiscent of aged leather, smoky and musty, like the inside of an old library. Confusion washed over you as the aroma shifted, morphing into the rich, earthy scent of tobacco, then transforming once more into the sharp, pungent tang of turpentine. You coughed lightly, your eyes watering as they tried to adjust to the sudden assault. It dawned on you that the paint on the walls might be quite aged, which could explain the turpentine.

"Oh, the smells," Claire offered you a knowing smile. "People complain of these smells that come and go. They’re harmless; the team and I think it is because of the ventilation system we’ve been trying to get set up," she explained.

You nodded, attempting to buy her words. "Right, right," you chuckled, stepping into your room.

‘Weird smells and messed-up electricity. It’s giving ‘Amityville Horror’, you thought as you chewed your bottom lip nervously.

"Well, it’s getting quite late," Claire mentioned, glancing at her Apple Watch. She sighed as a text message illuminated the small screen. "And I’ve got to take my daughter to her ballet class, and I have pilates during that, so…" Her voice trailed off.

"Of course, of course, go right ahead," you encouraged. "I’ll try to get the WiFi set up."

Claire nodded a hint of relief in her eyes. "Good luck. The electricity can be a bit unpredictable in here. Every time we try to set up the Internet, it goes haywire. We can’t figure it out. Maybe you can help us with that?" Her words lingered in the air as she typed out a message on her phone before dropping it into her large designer bag.

"Yeah! Totally," you replied with a bright smile, watching as Claire waved and turned to walk down the hallway. Her heels clicked against the floor, creating an echo that lingered even after she disappeared from view. Mr. Darcy meowed softly at your feet, weaving himself in graceful figure-eights around your legs. "Okay. Okay, I know, you need to eat," you said with a sigh.

Later that night, you laid curled up in bed with your dog-eared copy of Little Women nestled in your hands. The cover was faded and the spine was cracked, evidence of how many times you had read it. You had propped up your pillows just right, forming a cozy nest, and were snuggled under a pile of mismatched blankets. You never tired of following the March sisters' lives. You could probably recite entire passages from memory by now. With all the change swirling around you, having something so familiar and comforting felt needed.

Mr. Darcy was on your lap, his rhythmic purring vibrating through the fabric of your pajamas. Suddenly, a loud crash shattered the tranquility, as if someone had dropped a stack of plates in the kitchen. You jolted, sending your cat scrambling off your legs with a yowl. His fur bristled, but you had no energy to acknowledge him as your heart raced.

"Hello?" you called out. You got to your feet, hesitantly inching toward the door. You debated whether or not to grab your bedside lamp as a weapon. You chose your phone instead, flicking on the flashlight feature as you headed into the hallway.

Mr. Darcy darted under the bed. It was unlike him to be easily spooked, but you figured he was still adjusting to the new environment. You walked slowly down the hall, bypassing multiple sets of doors. In some ways, the house felt like a labyrinth.

You heard the floors creaking around you, the noise echoing ominously from the last room on the right. "Screw this," you muttered under your breath, shuffling forward hesitantly toward the door. Gathering some courage, you pushed it open, your hand frantically flipping on the light switch next to the wall, ready to confront an intruder. Instead, the room was empty, except for a window slightly ajar, letting in the soft night breeze.

"Of course, it was just the wind," you said out loud, relief evident in your voice as you switched off your phone flashlight.

As your eyes got used to the room's lighting, a feeling of awe hit you. The walls were adorned with incredible portraits. Faces from history gazed back at you, their tales woven through time, stretching over generations. You moved in for a closer look, feeling the coolness of the hardwood under your bare feet. You glanced up, absorbing the intricate details of each portrait. First, you focused on the portrait of a young brunette couple. You observed they were surrounded by seven children, not eight.

As the memory of the Bridgerton family history unfurled in your mind, you quickly connected the dots: the distinguished gentleman with the poised demeanor must be Viscount Edmund Bridgerton, and by his side, the graceful presence of Viscountess Violet Bridgerton. Edmund had passed away before their youngest, Hyacinth, was born, indicating this portrait was likely painted about two years prior. The cherubic infant in the painting was unmistakably Gregory, the family's second youngest.

Strolling through the gallery, your eyes danced over the various portraits lining the walls until one captured your attention. It depicted a young man exuding an air of refinement, his posture upright and his expression serene yet commanding. He was dressed impeccably in a high-collared white shirt, adorned with a finely tied baby blue cravat, and a tailored navy blue waistcoat. The painting was so expertly rendered that it seemed to breathe with life.

You leaned in closer to the painting, your gaze tracing the intricate interplay of light and shadow across his face. The artist had masterfully captured the sharp angles of his jawline and cheekbones, which stood in striking contrast to the gentle curve of his lips and the soft arch of his brows. His eyes, painted in a deep, almost mesmerizing shade of blue, seemed to lock onto yours with an intensity that made your heart race. The fullness of his lips was accentuated by a subtle hint of rosy pigment, suggesting a warmth that softened his otherwise cool demeanor. You couldn't help but let your eyes rest on those lips, lingering a moment longer than you had intended. Your gaze then drifted upwards, taking in his hair, deep brown strands that tumbled in a thick, slightly wild mane, as though his fingers had just tousled it.

As your fingertips brushed against the intricate patterns of the ornate frame, a tingle traveled down your spine, making the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. The temperature in the room seemed to plummet. You shivered slightly, reminding yourself that Bridgerton House’s heating and cooling system was still a work in progress, and attributed the sudden cold to the draftiness of the old mansion.

Leaning closer, you squinted at the small brass plaque affixed below the portrait.

"Benedict Charles Bridgerton, Born 1786, Died 1816," you read aloud. "You were only thirty," you murmured with a furrowed brow, half-expecting the painted eyes to blink in response.

The scent returned, a heady mix of tobacco, turpentine, and aged leather lingering in the air. You sniffed again, turning on your heel to pinpoint its source, your footsteps echoing in the silence. Just then, a faint creak resonated from the distant shadows of the hall. The sound sent your heart racing, and you stifled a scream when, without warning, the lights flickered out, plunging you into the suffocating blackness of the portrait hall.

series taglist: @monaskydancer @dorianellle @benophiepie @folkwh0relover13 @whatcjdidnext (message me to be added to the tag list!)

[testingthewatersss]

One day I'll get a request and keep it short, but uh, not today because this could've easily been a series. Under 4k is good for me though, so that's a win.This is my first time consciously shooting for a G/N reader in a long time so, bare with me.

Floodgates Usual Winter Solider context warnings but this is pretty tame tbh Bucky Barnes x G/N Reader Imagine 3830 words Fluff, mild angst. 18+ MDNI Requests open for a while via messages check masterpost for updated availability.

Everybody knows that Bucky is touch-starved. It's the unspoken truth that's used by everyone to excuse his irritable demeanour. It's the reason why nobody minds leaving the common rooms empty when he passes out on the couch in the middle of the day and Steve doesn't let Sam jab at him too much for how sweet he is on you. 

The hope that had flourished when you'd made your relationship a little more public was quickly dying out though. When all the inhabitants noticed that Barnes was still a grouch. If anything, he was more jumpy when people got too close. 

It was Bruce who suggested that the reason might be that the only person who didn't understand this blatant link between being kept isolated for the better part of a century and not tolerating mundane forms of contact might be Bucky.

After a lot of hushed discussion, Natasha was the one who decided to address it. Not being able to stand the undercurrent of gossip, but also not wanting to provoke any kind of intense reaction, she bided her time and cornered you. 

"Does Barnes know he needs some skin on skin, or is he still takin' the long way round figuring it out?"

Coffee catches in your throat. You're in a Starbucks, you've just run a stupid 5k route that you hadn't wanted to and she's asking you this, now?

"Of course, he knows" You reply after a beat, "I mean, we all know, but he really knows."

She looks unsurprised, offers you a brown sugar packet and sits back on her stool. 

"You know, couples-"

"Are you about to give me a sex talk?" you cut her off, humour making your lip quirk, "Please do not give me a sex talk"

"I wasn't talking about sex, we all know you're havin' plenty of that-"

You scoff at her, not bothering to ask how or why that's a topic of discussion at all. 

"-I know exactly what you're talking about..." you decide to say, tone a little more serious now, "...It's delicate, Nat"

"That's why I'm talking to you" she replies, "I want to stop hearin' about it, and the only way I can get Rodgers to stop talkin' is to stop him from worryin' and the only way to do that is give him something."

You consider her words for a moment before nodding. 

"He knows, I know- We all know, but it's difficult for him and I am not going to rush him into anything" You tell her, "but that doesn't mean I'm not keepin' an eye, and for what it's worth, he's gettin' better with the whole thing."

"His attitude didn't seem better this mornin'-" she counters from behind her paper cup, "He nearly Wilson put through a wall-"

"-for trying to get him to go to a couples therapist with Steve." You remind her smugly, "He told me all about it."

It's her turn to scoff then. 

"Any other personal things you want to ask me?" you press, half a challenge. She grins before making her expression intensely serious-

"So, about the sex-"

You don't linger in the cafe for long, and you definitely don't run back. You call a cab, much to Romanoff's dismay. The break from the serious atmosphere of the tower has done wonders for her mood though, and by the time you make it home your arms are ladened with bags. Fast food for everyone and clothes and some new kind of tablet thing that Tony had insisted he can turn into a portable holo-deck.

Bucky is waiting in your suite. 

The second you see him the conversation you'd had about his attitude seems ridiculous. 

He beams up at you so wide that he gets creases by his eyes, and all he can do is chatter about everything that's happened since you left.

Steve annoyed him by out-lapping him on their run. 

Wilson annoyed him, by well, breathing apparently. 

He's finally figured out how to fix the dishwasher, so he doesn't have to call maintenance anymore, and he's finished packing his bag for the mission he's leaving on in the morning, and, he tells you proudly- he's made dinner. 

It's some kind of soup, at least, you think it's meant to be a soup. But, whatever it is, it's good. And he's still smiling as you wash the dishes, bumping his hip against yours when you make a snarky comment about him still not using the dishwasher he's so proud of fixing.

And then he gets quiet. 

You're sitting together on the couch, the same way you have been for hours, with your legs barely touching but with his warm, flesh fingers wound tightly through yours. You think about asking why he's suddenly turned mute, but then you notice the time. 

"When do you leave?" You ask, stroking the back of his palm with your thumb.

"Four" he mumbles unhappily, giving your palm the lightest squeeze, "You're stayin' here, right doll? You're gonna wait for me?"

You laugh silently, pulling your legs up beside you to curl into his side. 

"Don't I always?" you tease, grinning as he reaches over with his metal hand, guiding your lips to his. 

"I'll be back before ten" He promises, "Steve promises"

"Oh, does he?" you murmur, lips still ghosting his, "You know he's driving Natasha crazy"

He quirks a brow, even so, close to his face you can see curiosity shining behind his eyes. 

"Aparently you're a jerk because I don't give you enough skin on skin"

He rolls his eyes, laughing as your fingers find his cheek.

The second you actually touch him, though- the laughter dies. He has to focus all of his energy on not moaning at the contact. 

You feel him tense and lessen the pressure, letting him move instead, pressing another kiss against your lips as he goes back to looking at you, this time, though, there's nothing but adoration behind the blue. 

"you do plenty" he whispers, before moving quickly, standing and pulling you up with him, carrying you effortlessly, "I'm fine."

"I know" You hear yourself agree, although you think he'll hear the doubt in your tone, "But- if you do ever want something, you know I'm here, right?"

What Bucky wants he thinks, is totally irrelevant. 

He wants to lay in your lap for hours, he wants to fall asleep and stay that way for hours because your fingers are in his hair. He wants to cry and not have to hide in a shower to do it. But you deserve better.

You deserve normal.

As normal as he can give you anyway. 

Not that that's much, but he can't control that he reminds himself sternly, what he can control, however, is this.

He can keep the floodgates closed. He can do what he does best and keep it down. 

He can make do with fleeting points of contact. With your hand in his, and your body in the same bed. The warmth of you is more than enough. You being there, smiling safe and lovely is more than enough. 

And when he places you on the soft mattress and watches you start to tangle yourself with the covers, he's once again certain that that is all he needs. 

What would I say, anyway? he thinks sadly, taking his place on the side of the bed that always seems too cold, How could I even bring that up without openin' a whole can of worms? 

His cheeks burn hot with embarrassment, and as he thinks tragically about how much he wants to just reach out and feel you, his eyes start to sting.

"You doin' alright, sweetheart?" you ask, already knowing that he's not. He nods though and forces a smile you recognise. 

"Tired" he mumbles unconvincingly. 

Before his cheeks can get any more pink, you decide to smile back. It works to settle him. So does the way you reach out to take his hand again. 

"I'll try not to wake you up" he promises quietly, "I'll see you tomorrow night"

"Tonight" You correct, looking over at the clock on his nightstand, "It's 1, you're leavin' in 3 hours, you better try and get some rest."

You don't know whether he does or not. He's gone when you wake up, reaching out for the fingers you normally fall asleep holding. He's left a note, telling you he loves you, and that he'll see you soon. And you tell FRIDAY to send him a message wishing him luck. When you don't get a reply, you decide to keep yourself busy. You order a delivery of food, which Bucky needs more than he realises, the state of his small built-in kitchen is shameful it's at best and depressing at its worst. 

In all fairness, a punnet of pulmbs, some milk, 2 carrots and half a loaf of bread is far from that- but still. A stock-up isn't going to hurt anything.

And then you still haven't heard, and the tower is creepy when it's empty. 

Like a school at night, you muse, walking through the walls, chattering to FRIDAY just to have some background noise.

Aside from assuring you that everyone's vital signs are fine, she can't actually do much to distract you, so in the end, you abandon her too and settle for sitting in your suite, on the bed, exactly where Bucky had left you. 

You fall asleep reading and only wake up when you hear the door click open. You beam, rubbing tiredness from your eyes as you wait expectantly for him to come in and greet you. 

He doesn't though. You can hear movement but it's not coming towards you, so you decide to just go to it instead.

"Hi, sweetheart-"

Your happy greeting dies as soon as you see him. Flushed with adrenaline, and tugging at his belt, which is still laden with grenades. When he finally rips it free, tossing it to the floor with such reckless abandon that you can't help but cringe, you walk towards him. 

He's pulling at his vest now. Metal fingers pulling desperately at the straps that hold it in place, growing more and more frustrated as he can't quite get them loose-

"Here" you whisper, hating the look of anguish he's wearing, "Let me help"

His arm snarls as you reach out to replace his fingers with your own. But to his great surprise, you don't even flinch. You just hush out a soft breath and guide the metal palm away. 

"You're fine" you promise, seeing the way he's relenting. 

His brow meets the window as he leans against it, both arms falling lamely to his sides as he focuses on breathing. 

On staying still and not just taking off running until his legs give way beneath him. 

"You're back late" you muse, flicking a glance at the wall, where the time is being projected by what you're assuming is Tony's version of a wall clock.

11: 33

"Not too late though, huh?" you continue, knowing he likes the background noise, "Is anyone hurt?"

Bucky gives a short shake of his head. 

It hurts. The movement sends daggers through his eyes. But still, he bites his tongue and tries to keep still.

He needs the vest off. He needs the layers of heavy, bulletproof padding, gone. He needs to not feel like he's dressed for battle, and he needs the ringing in his head to stop.

"Just you then" you murmur, more to yourself than to him.

"'m fine" he mutters, knowing you won't argue- especially since it's exactly what you've just told him.

You hum in quiet disagreement instead. Tugging the last of the straps free before letting the rough weighted vest fall to the ground with a dull thud that makes you wonder if you should've checked it for explosives first. 

"Better?" 

Your voice cuts through the pulsing in his ears, making him hyper-aware of the way he's still resting his head against the cool glass of a window of all things. 

Is it better? he thinks, rolling his shoulders unhappily. 

"Yeah" he murmurs, "Yeah, thank you, sugar"

And then he turns to you, wearing the fakest smile you've ever seen, and you can't help but reach out and stroke his cheek. 

He flinches. He physically recoils back into the glass with a look so sad that you miss the false grin. 

"They-uh" he coughs, embarrassment burning through his chest, "They shouted my words out through a speaker" he confesses, "I- I probbaly shouldn't even be here- Steve, Tony, they all, all say I'm okay, but I- I might... I, I just wanted to see you"

Your phone is already in your hand. Typing frantic questions to Natasha, to Tony and Steve and feeling your whole chest relax as replies start flooding in. 

The words are deactivated, as deactived as they can be, anyway. He's not a danger, not that a different answer to that question would've changed anything, and everyone knows where he is. When he'd bolted from the Quinn-jet in irritable silence, the entire team had let him go because they knew exactly where he was going, and considering the fact that he's physically uninjured, fighting to get him to go to Med-bay would've been a waste of everyone's energy. 

They still might've tried, in fact, Steve definitely would've tried, if they hadn't all been exhausted already. 

When you look back up at him, your heart cracks straight down the middle.

He's just, waiting. 

Eyes closed, brow on the glass,with his breath making it fog up by his face. 

His back is heaving too, shining in the dim lights of the room. His back is shaking like he's crying, but his jaw is locked tight. 

"What do you need, huh?" you wonder softly, not moving to touch him again, "Sweet, sweet boy- you got off that plane, and you ran- you ran all the way here, and then you stopped in here, why?"

His eyes flicker open, red and sore. 

"I" he swallows, "I had to get it off"

You quirk your head, not understanding, and then you see the vest by his boots and nod. 

"It hurts" he mutters to himself, "It's always hurt. I needed it off"

You know he's not talking to you, but you nod all the same, hoping that it might at the very least encourage him to keep his eyes open.

And then you realise what he's saying, and you can't keep quiet anymore.

"What hurts?" you ask softly.

His cheeks are hot again. He knows that he's embarrassed. That he should be, that it's right that he's burning with shame, but with the way his head is splintering he really doesn't care.

"The vest," he tells you quietly, "My skin, it- uh...it's always... the scars they uh... I- I needed to get it off..."

He looks at you, expecting to see a hint of something. Disgust, maybe? Or pity. What he doesn't expect, is the way you just nod again, expression understanding as you inch closer towards him. 

He bites back a whimper, using all the strength he has left to not just collapse in your arms. 

Keep the floodgates closed.

"Its off..." you remind him mildly, "Your home, it's off... so, what else do you need?"

Bucky blinks, sniffing to try and stop tears from forming as he stares at you.

And then, he hears you sigh, and his chest tightens so much that he can't catch a breath. 

A sigh is never good. He thinks. He's done it. He's finally done it. He's done something that has made you realise he's a lost cause. 

He's the lost cause. 

But, when he forces himself to look back at you, wanting to memorise your face before you leave his world forever, no matter how painful it is, he sees you smiling. Leaning against the window, only inches away from him. 

"I want to help" you promise softly.

A disbelieving scoff bubbles up through the tightness of his throat, and for a second, you think he looks like himself again. Even if he's a little rough around the edges.

"You did..." Bucky reminds you quietly, "I couldn't get it off, and you helped me"

The urge to roll your eyes at his gratitude is quickly tempered by the genuine affection in his tone. You settle for nodding instead. 

"So what else do you need?"

This time, when your hand meets his face he shivers. Feeling something deep in his chest snap as he starts to lean back into the contact. 

"C-could you..." he gulps, desperately shy now, "God, doll- could you just, touch my hair?"

"Your hair" you murmur, love drenching every word as you slowly trail your fingers up past his temple, stroking through the tangled length so gently he wants to scream. 

"Please" he shudders, "don't pull-"

His frantic request chokes off incomplete, the heat in his cheeks making his jaw lock petulently.

"You don't like havin' your hair pulled?" you muse, tone light in contrast to his, "Noted."

"Does anyone?" he wonders bravely, adjusting to the slow, trailing warmth across his head.

You laugh at that, further coaxing him out of his embarrassment.

"Sure they do, Buck," you tell him conversationally, "people like all kinds of things..."

He's melting. He's sure he's physically melting into your fingers. Into the gentle tug and pull, into the wonderful, brilliant sting of human contact.

All you hear is the softest hum. It's content though, so you take it as a win. 

"So since this definitely a winner..." you drawl, bringing your free hand down to his, letting him grasp your fingers in reflex, "What else do you like?"

The part of his brain that isn't purring like a cat, stuttering to a halt at your question. His eyes focus, as he blinks at you, face full of such total adoration that you feel like you should probably look away, but he's so beautiful that you can't quite manage it. 

"You"

That makes you laugh, small and flattered as you shake your head.

"You've got me, Barnes." You remind him lightly, "If we could be doin' anything, anythin' in the world, right now what would we be doin?"

The smile he gives you then is the most precious one he's ever worn. Your whole body flushes with affection as he chuckles silently reaching up and pressing a kiss against the back of your hand, as you scratch your free knuckles against the back of his head.

"I have no idea" he mumbles honestly.

Your brow quirks, before you move, pivoting and opening your arms to coax him in.

He freezes, staring at you with longing as he offers a sad shake of his head-

"I can't- darlin'-" he stammers nervously, "I want to- I- I really- I-"

"You" he hears you whisper, "can do whatever you like."

He shakes his head again, stubborn this time.

"Not that" he mumbles, "Not to you"

"To me" you repeat, curious.

His lips tighten and then part, breath shallow as your thumb finds his cheek.

"I won't be able to stop" he explains, voice quiet like he's sharing a secret, "If I start, I won't ever be able to stop and you- you're-you're everythin' to me and I- I can't put that on you- because I really- I mean it- I don't-"

Your head is already shaking, your arms are moving, pulling him into your chest. 

"I don't think I'll ever be able to stop" Bucky feels his words melting into your shoulder, he feels the heat of your body against his. His bare chest burning against the thin fabric of your vest. The feeling of your skin against his threatening to make his knees buckle. "I- I won't be able to stop"

You shake your head, hushing him as his resistance fades away to nothing. As he goes pliant in your arms, head falling to the crook of your neck. 

"I'm sorry" he whispers, "I'm so sorry"

"You're never listen" You mumble in reply, letting his hand go so that you can hold him tight against your front, "I just told you, sweetheart..."

Bucky pulls away just enough to look at you, and when you see tears brimming in his eyes, you can't help but hush him again, noting the way his hands are wound tight into the fabric you're wearing. 

His lower lip pouts, he tries to avert his gaze but it doesn't work. He just can't manage to tear his eyes away from you. From the way you're looking at him, full of affection. Full of patience and kindness and-

"Didn't I just tell you, huh?" you murmur, smiling a little again, "You've got me"

He blinks, still not understanding. 

So you do the only thing you can. 

You kiss him. You kiss him until he pulls back, until he dips back down into your arms, tired and aching and pressing his own kisses against the skin of your throat.

"I'm not goin' anywhere" You remind him gently, "We don't ever have to stop"

We don't ever have to stop.

Your sweet words rattle through his mind all the way to the bedroom. 

If it weren't for the aching in his knees and the awful cold of the room now that he's not hidden in your front, he might not've even noticed the journey. 

He's too tired, now. His head aches, and his adrenaline is well and truly shot. But the hope of you, of more of the wonderful warmth of you, is more than enough to keep him moving through it. 

I've done worse for less, he reminds himself with every wounded step. 

We don't ever have to stop.

And then there's the bed. The edge of the bed against his calves, and he knows his hands are free and that he should be doing something but he can't think of what, no matter how hard he tries.

You remind him, your hands on his belt, your feet nudging his boots so he remembers to kick them free before finally lowering himself onto the covers.

For a minute the familiar coolness jars him. His head spins and throbs and pulses and then, 

and then your fingers are back in his hair. Your arms are wrapped around him, and all he can feel is warmth. 

Warmth and pressure building behind his eyes. Incredible pressure that finally spills free as his eyes overflow. As he surrenders and clings onto your back with all the strength he has left, and cries.

He sobs, silently at first, tears melting into your chest as you stroke his back. Whispering soothing words that you know he can't hear. Letting him finally just be. 

And then, he's asleep. And so are you, a tangle of limbs and covers and heat. The kind of heat that makes you drowsy, that makes Bucky drowsy. 

Drowsy enough to sleep through whatever nightmares were bound to have been triggered by the missions, drowsy enough to keep him that way for hours in a row. And when he does wake up, for the first time in... well, a long time- he's smiling.

[221beloved]

"I can't find it."

(Link to ao3)

"Oh crap!"

"Keep still," Sherlock tutted, his knuckles brushing against the skin of John's neck.

"But we forgot the gift," John protested, trying to bat Sherlock's hands away from the collar of his shirt.

They'd been invited to Sarah's wedding, the letter had reached them four weeks ago. And the invitation had specifically said Sherlock and John. Not John Watson plus one, but Sherlock and John. Well, John guessed he'd been fairly obvious.

John and Sarah had kept in touch. They'd met for coffee sometimes, on birthdays or other occasions. They'd gotten along well enough after all, so they'd kept their friendship alive. John had been the first to learn about the engagement with-- god, what was his name again? He was getting more and more like Sherlock…well.

And apparently, even though John had never actively mentioned the development between Sherlock and him, she'd noticed. Not that John was complaining.

The invitation, however, was responsible for the fact that they were currently standing in their living room, both in three piece suits, fighting with John's bow-tie.

Well, John was fighting with it, Sherlock had just tried to do it for John, when the matter of the missing present had turned up.Sherlock pulled on John’s shirt.

"We didn't forget, we bought them the wellness voucher, don't you remember?"

"Yes!" John squirmed and finally succeeded in getting away from Sherlock's hands.

"But I can also remember that I can't recall where we've put it."

Sherlock shoved his hands into his trouser pockets petulantly.

"We've put it--"

He stopped, looked at John just a little helplessly.

"You've put it away. You said it was a special place so we'd know where to find it."

John grimaced. "Yes, I do recall that. But... It must be upstairs, I think. Only reasonable place to store it, right?"

Sherlock shrugged. "I'm not the one to ask about such things."

"Yes, right. Will you just go upstairs and get it?"

"But your bow-tie, John--"

"Yes, yes, I'll just have to do it myself. We're late already, so would you just go and grab the damn thing."

Sherlock glowered at him but turned and went up the stairs.Standing in front of the mirror, fighting with his bow-tie, John could hear Sherlock rummage around upstairs.

"You fucked up piece of shit," he hissed at the fabric that was somehow tangled around his neck. His uniform had always been flawless, back when he'd been a soldier, and his room had always passed inspections, when he’d still been the one to endure them, clothes folded and bed made neatly. Yet he couldn't tame that... thing, the one time it counted.

He ripped the fabric off completely again and started a new attempt.

"I can't find it!" came Sherlock's voice from upstairs.

"Shit... shit shit shit!" John muttered under his breath.

"Did you look on the shelve?" he shouted back.

There was a loud bang, as if something heavy had just hit the ground. From a considerable height, at that.

"Yep," came Sherlock's voice shortly after.

"And?"

"Nope."

John sighed. But where else should it be?

"Can I come back down now?" Sherlock's voice floated down the stairs again. Did he sound petulant?

"Yes!"

John pushed the fabric of his bow-tie through the loosened knot, tightened it and inspected his work in the mirror. Well, it was a knot. He smirked.

"What have you done?" Sherlock asked in horror from behind him, staring at John's reflection.

"I tied it. I don't understand why you're so fussy about it anyway. Don't you hate them?"

Sherlock grabbed him at the shoulders, violently turned him around and all but ripped the bow-tie from his neck.

"I don't like to get strangled, yes, but I have standards, as you should know by now."

"Can't we just do it in the cab, Sarah will kill me," John begged.

"If you’d just keep still I would be done in a minute. Now," Sherlock scolded and began binding that thing again.

John sighed in resignation and closed his eyes to think. Were had put that sodden gift.

"See, all done," Sherlock said before the minute was passed. He folded down John's collar and tucked at his shirt.

"There's your present, by the way," he said, nodding towards the bookshelf.

"What?"John turned around, just to see the neatly wrapped box, indeed standing on the shelve. At eye level.

And now he did remember how he’d put it there, so he could always see it and remember to take it with them.

"Worked out perfectly," Sherlock teased, holding out John's suit jacket.

"Did you know it was there the whole time?" he sighed while shrugging into the jacket.

"Saw it again when I came down the stairs," Sherlock admitted and gently pulled John towards him on the belt loops of his trousers to close the upper button of his jacket.

"You look handsome," he whispered into John's ear.

"Do you know how I feel around you all the time?"

"You're used to it. But I think I could get used to you in a suit as well."

"Forget it," John chuckled, leaning up to press a gentle kiss on Sherlock's lips.

"That's reserved for special occasions."

He stepped back from a pouting Sherlock, grabbed the little box and opened the door.

"Come on, let's at least pretend we even tried to be on time."

--Please tell me if you want to be added or removed from the list!

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[have-you-seen-my-sanity]

OI characters with tourette s/o headcanons

This has been a request but I wasn't able to find it again. :(

Featuring: Poe Dameron, Duke Leto Atreides, Marc Spector, Steven Grant, Jake Lockley

Poe Dameron: Poe would be the most caretaking of you. This man puts you above anything else, even important meetings with Leia.

Whenever a tourette tic happens, (depending on what the tic is) and how much it may affect the people around you, he will take you into his arms, telling you how nothing should make you feel out of place, especially not your tourette.

If Poe can't be with you at the moment, he would ask BB-8, Finn or Chewie to look out for you. It breaks his heart knowing he can't be with you.

Whenever you feel particularly shy to go under the crowd out of the potential fear of getting weird looks or worse, Poe takes you out for a trip in the Millennium Falcon, visiting all your favorite places and planets.

If Poe and you aren't sharing quarters, he'd send BB-8 into yours for whenever you need some comfort. Ask BB-8 to get Poe and the droid will zip out to get him.

Poe wouldn't spare even a fracture of a second if you'd ask him to stay for the night. Has you in his embrace within a second.

Jake Lockley: Jake fights the urge to pull out a gun everytime he would see people looking at you in the wrong ways.

Jake always carries some meds for you if you think you'd need them.

If some of your tics causes something against him, Jake's face softens, his heart sinks down inside his chest at seeing your regretful gaze looking back at him. Will calm you down, wrapping his arms around you and telling you how strong you are.

Whenever you had a specifically bad day he would drive you around in his cab with comforting music, and if you fall asleep will carry you bridal style back inside your place.

If you think you don't deserve Jake with how good he's treating you, Jake will always prove you wrong, showing you the opposite.

Jake may be the ruthless menace working under Khonshu, but with you he is tame and understanding. Even Khonshu is surprised by how soft Jake could actually be if he really wants to. That stupid god won't understand anyway.

Steven Grant: This man has a whole row of books dedicated to tourette and how it may affects you.

Steven will try his absolute best in making you forget you even have tourette. If you're having your tics(again, depending how strong they are), he slowly calms you down, one hand on your back and the other holding your hand.

“'s okay love, breath with me. Breath. It's going to be alright, 'm here.”

Whenever you're having strong tics or getting looked at, Steven takes you into his arms, wanting nothing more than to shield you.

Just in case, Steven carries your meds and depending if some tics cause even harm to yourself, he has first aid always near him.

He won't get hurt or mad if you insult him because he knows it wasn't your intention to do it, then tries to comfort you.

Marc Spector: He literally is a mix between Steven and Jake. Marc himself has some trouble/drama going on in his life, so seeing you struggling with your tourette is tugging on his heart strings.

Just like Jake, he's ready to throw hands if someone makes a comment about you. Marc hates people insulting others for something they have no control of.

Marc does the same breath in-calm down with you like Steven does, mainly because it helps him with some situations too.

He knows life itself can be a pain in the ass sometimes and your tourette may make things harder, so he's always supportive of you no matter what.

Goes with you to the doctor and makes mental notes of everything that will help you.

Kindly reminds you to take your meds if you haven't already(they all do by the way).

Leto Atreides: Leto will spend 99% of his freetime with you. If he can't, a servant will take care of you, though he prefers to have a doctor near you if something happens.

Leto's guards will keep you safe and make sure no one even gets the thought of saying something bad to you.

The good behaved leader that he is, Leto has strict rules for his guards and servants if you're near them, especially the servants, he wants them to carry the best medicine.

He will always re-schedule his meetings for you, he knows it can be tough for you having those tics, so Leto stays with you all night, all day.

Leto tells his troops to not only defend house Atreides, but also you.

---------------------

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