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always-just-red · 6 months ago

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I've been lookin for a writer who takes reqs for lnds 😭 Can i req sfw hcs/one-shot (choose which one u prefer more) for sylus & fem/gn reader?

I remember there was one call for zayne x mc where mc called zayne accidentally because mc was drunk & mc called zayne (accidentally) instead of booking a cab (mc did book a cab but w/ a wrong destination).

Can i maybe req what if the scenario is like that but it's w/ sylus instead? Feel free to tell me if this req is too much or if u wanna decline it, thanks a lot!

My first Sylus fic! Yay! (Don't look at me Rafayel 🥰) Anon your mind is so powerful! This prompt was so much fun to write, so thank you, hope you enjoy!

Wrong Number

Sylus x Reader 🩸

Summary: You're having a bit of trouble getting hold of that taxi you booked, but more trouble help is on the way...

Genre: fluff, kinda ends on an angsty note (sorry 😇)

Warnings/Additional tags: drunk reader, some swearing, humour, uses of 'sweetie' and 'kitten', threat of violence/death at the start, a slight bit of suggestion (it's Sylus, ok? He's having ✨fun✨)

| Word count: 2k | Masterlist | Opt-in to my taglist here!

Disclaimer: Characters belong to Love and Deepspace. All work is my own, so please don't repost or plagiarise!

“Mr. Sylus, please! It was an honest mistake— almost indistinguishable from a genuine protocore, I swear!”

Sylus is lounging back in a plush leather armchair, feeling thoroughly short-changed as he turns about a fake protocore with his fingers. He’s been listening to this noise for almost a full minute, growing awfully impatient, though he did like the last excuse.

“Say that again,” he drawls with a sinister smile.

“It was an honest mistake,” the black-market dealer stutters, tripping over his words. “It was almost indistinguishable from a—”

“Almost indistinguishable…” Sylus confirms. “Almost. Almost.” He’s savouring each syllable— tasting them like wine.

“It would have fooled almost anyone!”

“Almost anyone?” Sylus laughs, and it’s a wicked, dangerous thing. “Well yes, I rather think that’s the point. But it didn’t fool just anyone, did it? It fooled you.”

His smile is gone in an instant, his hand closing around the fake protocore, splintering it with a crack. He drops bloodied, sapphire fragments from his palm, red and blue, red and blue, and they skitter across the hardwood floor like rain.

“Please, Mr. Sylus!” the dealer pleads, desperate. “I’ll do anything! I will! I’ll make it up to you!”

“No, thanks.” Sylus studies his palm as it heals. “I’ve had my fill of fake protocores.”

“Sylus!”

The leader of Onychinus stands, drawing his gun with a customary apathy. Dark energy manifests, twisting around the dealer’s limbs, holding him still, while a lone tendril crawls around his mouth, holding him silent. He’s struggling, but he should know better. He should have known better from the very beginning. With a wistful smile, Sylus levels the gun with his head, and—

Something rings.

His red gaze shoots up, instinctively seeking Luke and Kieran, but they shrug from their station at the other side of the room. The sound is closer than that, anyway. Glaringly more familiar. Sylus’s spare hand goes to his pocket, and he draws out his phone.

“Mmm?” he greets, thumb sliding across the screen as he puts it to his ear.

There’s only one person who calls him at this time of night.

“Where are you?” your voice echoes from the other side of the line.

“That’s a question I prefer not to answer without knowing what motivates it.”

“Wha— Sylus?”

“Yes, sweetie,” he drones.

There’s a moment of silence. “Shit.”

It’s not the reaction he aspires to, but you sound agitated, so he’s going to let it slide. There’s a loud crackle from the speaker, followed by a few, harsher sounds, and he pulls the phone away from his ear, wincing slightly. His eyes are trained on the man at his feet, but he lowers his gun, distracted.

“What are you—” he begins, but then he identifies the sound. It’s a finger— your finger— jabbing away at a screen. “If I didn’t know any better, Miss Hunter, I’d say you were trying to get rid of me.”

“No…” you deny too quickly. It’s still there: the tapping. Like Mephisto, pecking furiously at a locked window from outside. A few more jabs, and then…

The call cuts out.

Sylus scoffs, looking down at his now silent phone in disbelief. He flops back into his chair, tossing his gun onto a side table before hitting the button to call you back. You know he’s not a patient man, but you don’t pick up the first time, and so he has to try again. He can be patient for you— he tells himself— as he thinks up some creative ways for you to return the charity. Speaking of charity…

His gaze drops to the dealer. “Get out,” he sneers.

The man doesn’t have to be told twice. He scrambles to his feet as his blood-dark bindings retract, practically throwing himself towards the room’s exit. Luke pushes open the door, the intense music of the nightclub beating through the gap, but Kieran’s being less helpful. He steps into the doorway, blocking any escape. He feints right. Then left. Behind the masks, both men are laughing.

Eventually Kieran steps aside. He shoves the dealer the rest of the way through the door as Luke kicks it shut, and they exchange a high-five.

Sylus pinches the bridge of his nose. His call connects.

“Hello?” You’re back. “Finally! Where are you? I don’t see you.”

“Still me, sweetie.”

“Sylus?” you actually whine. It’s adorable. “Why is it you? Go away.”

“No,” he lilts tunefully, and then he’s coaxing: “I want to help you, kitten. Won’t you let me help you? Tell me, who are you trying to call?”

Frustration spills from you— fake, exaggerated sobs tearing themselves from your throat. “The taxi, Sy,” you whine again. “The stupid taxi, ok? It’s not here. It’s meant to be here.”

“Where’s here?”

“Ha!” you exclaim like you’ve evaded a masterplan, and not a casually asked, run-of-the-mill question. “No. Nice try, but no. You wanna help me?”

“Yeah.”

“Then leave me alone!”

With— he can imagine— some sort of theatrical flourish, you deliver your phone a final, decisive tap. It beckons a fateful silence. Sylus brings his phone in front of his face, unmoved by the moment’s gravitas. There’s a pop-up on the screen. Kitten: requesting video chat.

He smiles to himself. Then accepts. “Hi sweetie.”

Your face is lighting up his screen, your cheeks flushed, your brow furrowed, and your eyes sharp with determination. “Why can I— wait, why can I see you? Get out of my phone, Sy!”

“My, my,” he tuts, but he’s smiling still, “look at you— the illustrious Miss Hunter. It is a relief to know the fate of Linkon rests in such… reliable hands.”

“What d’you mean?” you mumble.

“You’re drunk.”

“You’re drunk!”

He chuckles. “And there’s that infamous wit.”

You bite your lip as you ignore him, still fixated on trying to end the call. It occurs to him that you will eventually succeed; even a broken clock is right twice a day. “Listen to me, sweetie. Are you alone?”

His tone is sober enough for the two of you, and your exasperated eyes meet his. “Yeah.”

“Then be a good girl and send me your location. You remember how to do that, right?” He carefully enunciates each word of his plan. “I’ll come and get you, but I need to know where you are. Don’t go with anyone else. Wait for me, ok?”

You’re nodding away, the odd ‘mmhmm’ escaping your lips, but you’re not at all listening. He catches on after a minute. Trails off— realises your gaze is too vacant, and your focus? Wandering. You’re cradling your phone with both hands. His view is interrupted as your thumb passes over the camera; you’re… stroking the screen?

“You’re so pretty, Sy,” you murmur breathlessly.

His gaze softens. He sighs, “You’re pretty too.”

Then you make a sound he’s never heard before: you squeak, the phone’s audio almost cutting out. A blush is spreading through your cheeks, so much darker than the alcohol’s afterglow, and gods he wishes your face was in his hands. The vision is short-lived, however, because suddenly you’re gone.

There’s a circling view of a dark street, split by streaks of white light, as your phone careens through the air. It strikes concrete a moment later, stuttering to a stop, and Sylus’s grimace deepens with each jarring crack. Your screen has gone black, but he doesn’t think it’s broken. He’s face down, apparently— subjected to an unexciting view of the pavement.

“Oh, shit!” He hears you gasp.

Though your voice is far away, your phone is in your grasp again in no time. You’re turning it over, peering down at him, tracing the outline of his face with worry. “Sorry, Sy. Are you ok?”

“I’ll survive.” He raises an eyebrow. “You know, if you wanted to throw me around, you only needed to ask.”

His voice has dropped, and he loves watching you notice. You stand from your crouch with a smirk, bringing him with you— a dark idea in your eyes. “Wanna go again?”

Before he can protest, he’s looking at the back of your head. Your arm is stretched behind you, gearing up to send him on another short flight.

“Ah, ah, ah,” he interrupts, panicking briefly, but you’d never detect it with all your wits about you, let alone none. He’s brought in front of your face again, and you’re frowning oh so sweetly. “I asked you to do something, remember?”

“You told me to do something.”

So pedantic. “What did I tell you to do, sweetie?”

You don’t say anything. There’s a short huff as you blow hair from your face, and then you’re concentrating. You have that look he likes: the one you get when you’re whittling away at your paperwork like a good little hunter. The same stubborn resolve, too, that makes you lean over it when he or Mephisto are conveniently behind your shoulder.

Your location comes through with a ping and his smile widens. He’s up in a heartbeat, telling you he’s on his way— that you did such a good job— and that you need to stay on the phone with him, ok? He spins his fingers as he passes between Luke and Kieran, a gesture they’ve long grown accustomed to and can easily translate.

I'm leaving. Clean this up.

…

“So then Xavier, like— well, you know Xavier— he was all, ‘I’ll tell you later,’ but he never did, Sy! Off he went, leaving Nero and I to do all the paperwork, and I asked Nero, and Nero was like, ‘ask Xavier yourself’, and I was like, ‘I literally just did!’, and he just shrugged, and it’s… driving me crazy, you know? Because where does he even go? Tara and I have this bet going, she thinks it’s because he—”

Your anecdote comes to a sudden stop.

“What does Tara think, sweetie?”

“Shh shh shh! Wait a second…”

You clutch your phone to your chest like it’ll somehow suppress Sylus’s voice. You’re sat, leaning back against a chain-link fence, but you rise as a black car pulls up in front of you. The windows are tinted. You squint, leaning forward to try to look through them anyway.

“I don’t like this, Sy,” you frown as you plant a hand on your hip. “There’s a car here.”

“Oh?”

“Shh!” you hiss again. It’s not the only car parked on the street, but it is the only one alive. The engine purrs and its lights are glowing like angry embers, refusing to be snuffed out by the dark. You take a step closer, then the engine cuts out. You take a bigger step back.

“What exactly are you afraid of?” Sylus asks, his tone so thick it’s practically bleeding through your phone. “Is a big, bad man trying to get you?”

“Well I don’t know what they look like, Sy. The windows are tinted, and I— AH!” you gasp.

A strong pair of arms wrap around you from behind, lifting you from the ground. “Got you, sweetie,” Sylus chuckles in your ear as tell-tale crow feathers settle around you. His breath is hot on your neck and it tickles, turning your panicked shrieks to laughter.

“Sylus!” you squeal as you attempt to wriggle free. You don’t think you’re trying very hard.

The man lowers you back to your feet, but his arms stay around you and he dips his head, resting his chin on the curve of your shoulder. “Hi,” he whispers.

“Hi.” For a little word, there’s so much fondness.

“Let’s get you home to bed, ok?”

You nod compliantly with a yawn, swaying a little as his arms retract and you’re having to stand on your own again. He chuckles as he steadies you— placing a hand on the top of your head— and you pivot, drawn by the sound. His crimson eyes find yours and they’re dark with something that stirs you, even with your mind swimming and nothing really making sense. You’re not sure of anything at all, except—

No-one has ever looked at you like that before.

And you won’t remember it tomorrow.

“Come on,” he prompts, nudging you towards the car, and you start to walk, though you’re dragging your feet. “I want to hear all of the association’s dirtiest secrets while I still can.”

“Tara has a crush on the new weapon specialist, you know.”

Sylus blinks, then laughs— a tender, comfortable thing. Completely enthralled. “You don’t say,” he beams.

No, you won’t remember it tomorrow.

#🖋rach is actually writing #sylus x reader #sylus #love and deepspace #lads sylus #lnds sylus #l&ds sylus #qin che #sylus x mc #sylus x you #lads x reader #lads #lnds #l&ds

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mapmydestination · 8 months ago

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jmdtaxiservice · 2 years ago

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mulloey · 14 days ago

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clever girl

mafia!seonghwa & mafia!yunho x undercover detective!reader. feat. mafia!ateez

words: 7.5k

warnings: dark content. extremely dubcon. depictions of gangs, violence, death (not you or ateez& not shown) and prostitution.

smut warnings: heavy dubcon, threesome, hard doms!yunho & seonghwa, exhibitionism, gun play, double penetration, anal, unprotected sex, sir kink, pet& degradation names, fear kink, some thigh slaps, mentions of pregnancy and breeding, death threats, humiliation, no aftercare, imprisonment etc

hate is deleted and blocked

“Detective.”

Your head darts up, gaze meeting that of your irritated looking boss. He stands above you with folded arms, a displeased expression on his face. “Sir,” you greet him. You struggle to keep your expression blank, a smile pulling at your lips; you know exactly what he’s mad about.

He slams a sheet of paper down on your desk. “Why did you request to do this mission alone?” He asks, wasting no time. “Have you lost your mind?”

You don’t need to ask what mission he’s referring to; though you, much to his annoyance, are known for choosing to go it alone, there’s only one mission on your roster right now that’s dangerous enough to make him this agitated. You sigh, rolling your eyes as you lean back in your chair. You stretch your arms out above you with a yawn before sitting back up, eyes on him. “I’ve been watching these guys longer than anyone else,” you say. “Before anyone here would even acknowledge they were an actual threat. I know how they work.”

“Yes, we’re all aware of your qualifications,” your boss snaps. “But I wasn’t asking about that. I’m asking why you want to do this alone.”

You nod, a small concession and certainly the most he’d ever expect from you. “It took me a long time to fully understand these men,” you explain. “They’re incredibly volatile and unpredictable, even for a gang.”

“Even more reason to have backup.”

“No,” you disagree, shaking your head. “Even more reason not to send officers to their deaths because they don’t know what they’re dealing with or how to deal with it.”

His mouth opens and closes, formulating a response. He frowns, tapping a heavy black boot against the floor. “You really think that’s what it’d be?” He asks. “You think we’d lose men?”

“I’m certain,” you say. “I can’t emphasise enough how dangerous these guys are if you don’t know the way they work or how to stay on their good side. But I do know those things, sir. I’ve studied them for six years.”

He hums. “And you actually think you can handle it alone?”

You smile, nodding confidently. The thought of finally meeting these strange men in person has you a little queasy, but you know you can get this done. “It’s simple intelligence gathering, sir. I’m happy to have backup stationed a good distance away, but I’m not sacrificing good people for something I can do alone.”

He stares at you for a moment, searching for any signs of uncertainty before he sighs, nodding in defeat. “Very well,” he says. “I can see there’s no convincing you. You can do this alone if you’re absolutely certain that’s the best course, but you will call for help when you need it. The moment you need it. Understood?”

You smile, standing up to shake your still hesitant looking boss’ hand. “Thank you, sir. Understood.”

On the other side of Seoul, in a dark office piled with weapons and supplies, a screen lights up, buzzing with a new message.

4:37pm

unknown number: she’ll be coming soon. alone.

A man stares down at the message, a thin smile on his lips. It’s finally happening. The girl he’s been watching, who’s followed him around corners and stared into his windows for years, will finally stand in front of him, and she’ll be completely alone. He couldn’t have asked for more.

He sighs, twirling a knife around sullied fingers. Come, little dove.

—

Five days later, a taxi drops you off just on the outskirts of what has become their unquestioned territory. It’s an unassuming area, not rich by any means but not outwardly dodgy, either, and to the untrained eye doesn’t seem at all like gang territory. But you know better, of course. You know what happens behind the doors that quickly close as you walk by; you know the terrors behind the eyes of the men who leer at you as you venture further away from safety. You know this place, and you know that as far as anyone who knows anything is concerned, you’re not in Seoul anymore. As much as your boss may claim to, try to believe differently, neither the law nor the police nor anything can help you now. Every step you take now is taken at the mercy of the eight men you’ve come here to meet. The Owners, locals call them. You’ve come to know them as Ateez.

You walk with your head down, trying not to catch any more attention than being a lone woman at this time of night already commands. One hand is stuffed in your jacket pocket, fingering at your gun for reassurance while the other hangs at your side. Beneath your jacket, the black dress you’ve chosen to wear hangs just above the middle of your thigh. You hate the feeling of it, shorter and far less comfortable than the pants, jeans and shirts you’ve become accustomed to as a detective, but it’s all that was available for the very specific tactic you’ve chosen.

From your interviews of Ateez’s associates, or at least the ones who you’d managed to catch before they did, you know that they are extremely and understandably stingy with their information. Their personnel, operations and other intelligence is closely guarded on a completely need-to-know basis. It’s what makes trying to capture the lower-level members of the organisation such a pointless task; the majority of them don’t even know who their bosses are, let alone any useful information about them. In fact, the chances of actually meeting the men themselves are very slim even for people looking to do business with them; from several accounts you’ve ascertained that even trusted partners and allies will work with the organisation for years without ever meeting its leaders. No, the only people who get anywhere near the leaders and, more importantly, the information they possess, are the women who come and go from their penthouse on a quickly rotating basis, and according to your informants, always seem to emerge looking even more terrified than they’d entered.

As such you’d formed your plan; you’d enter as one of their hookers, with the clothes and parts to match, find out as much as you could, bug every inch of the penthouse, and leave with your satisfied clients none the wiser. A simple enough plan, but as your years on the force have taught you, not one that’s likely to go exactly as you expect. You just hope that you come out in one piece. Or that you come out at all.

You pull the jacket further across your chest, holding it tightly against yourself. Mercifully, the inconspicuous, but for you instantly recognisable building belonging to the organisation soon comes into view. By design it doesn’t stand out, except for the fact that it is quite a bit taller than its neighbours, but you know what goes on in there; or at least, you’re about to. You take a deep breath before biting the bullet and quickly stepping inside.

The interior of the building is just as uneventful; relatively clean but stained in places with substances you’d rather not think about. A few men shuffle around silently, looking up briefly when you walk in before quickly averting their gaze when they realise what you’re here for. It’s a well-known rule, apparently, that no one is to even think about a girl the leaders have had, even after they’ve discarded her. And with such a fast employee turnaround, it’s no mystery what they do to people who violate even the smallest of rules. The leaders — particularly the eldest two, you hear — run a tight, disciplined ship, and think nothing of throwing anyone overboard. Except each other, apparently; the one thing that every single one of the informants had vouched for is the tight, indestructible bond of the men at the helm of this operation.

A man approaches you nervously, asking why you’re here and you quietly whisper the name of one of your informants; miraculously you’d managed to turn one of the men Ateez frequently used to procure their companions, and he’d agreed to hand you over to them, essentially guaranteeing your authenticity; basically, he’d promised to vouch for you not being the exact thing you were— a snitch. A cop, at that. The man you speak to nods in understanding and directs you where to go and, thanking him with a smile, you make a note to thank your informant the next time you check in with him.

The further you venture into the building, your heart pounding heavier with each step, the nicer it becomes. When you step into the elevator, far nicer and more richly decorated than the front of the building, it becomes clear that the first part of your mission — breaching the restricted area — has been successful.

You step out on the top floor and the difference is obvious; polished floors and hallways lined with mirrors, paintings and flowers show you this is a part of the building few will ever see. This is the bosses’ world. Ateez’s world.

Breathing shakily, you knock on the doorbell the way you’d been instructed — five times, with a gap between the third and fourth. You hear voices before the door opens seemingly on its own, revealing the lavish interiors of the leaders’ apartments. It’s richly decorated with a dark, oak theme, and there’s not a person in sight.

“Hello?” You call out. Your voice almost seems to echo in the vast emptiness of the penthouse. “I’m here to see the Owners? Binwoo sent me.”

Silence abounds and then, just as you start to worry this has all been a big set-up to take out the only detective who’s gotten remotely close to the group, someone emerges. You recognise him instantly as the leader, Hongjoong. You’ve only seen him in surveillance, and very scarcely; the only time he ever seems to leave this place is when someone pisses him off so badly he decides to deal with them himself, so naturally the majority of your surveillance of him has been of torture and murder and pain. Seeing him in front of you now, not as tall as he looked from afar yet somehow even more imposing, those images of him — the things you’ve seen him do — play on repeat in your head.

When he raises a hand to wave at you, all you can picture is the black leather gloves he wears while he brutalises, covered in blood. Your blood, if this doesn’t go well. There’s a reason, you think, that the employees who don’t know this man’s name and thus resort to nicknames, have settled on The Butcher.

You gulp as you wave back. You hope he doesn’t notice the way your hands shake. “Hello, sir,” you greet. You bow politely, trying not to let on to the fact that you have any knowledge of who this man is or what he’s capable of. “I was sent by Binwoo to entertain you.”

He cocks an eyebrow, staring you up and down. “He did say he had someone for us,” he says. This is the first time you’ve heard his voice clearly, and you have to stop yourself from looking surprised at how… normal he sounds. Like a regular guy in his 20s, really— certainly not the monster you know him to be. In another situation, you think you’d quite like his voice. It’s gentle and welcoming and you could even see yourself getting flustered by it; but instead the voice, the man, everything about this moment, fills you with terror.

“Yes, sir. That was me.” You try your best to sound seductive, or even normal, but you’re not sure if he buys it.

He stares at you for a few seconds, eyes narrowed. “Take off your jacket,” he orders. Fear pulsates as you obey; you note that his voice is deeper than before. You hope it’s arousal— or even just curiosity. Anything but what you’re fearing it to be.

You take off your jacket as quickly as possible, hanging it up on the hanger next to the door as he instructs you. You stand in place, hands by your sides like your informant, Binwoo, had told you he teaches his girls to do. Wearing only your dress and heels, you feel more exposed and vulnerable than ever.

He stares at you for a moment before nodding, satisfied. “I’m Hongjoong,” he smiles. “What should I call you?”

You don’t think about your answer; you’d come up with a name while planning this mission, just as you always do. “Mira.”

He cocks an eyebrow, sceptical, but nods. It’s not uncommon for prostitutes to give a fake name, particularly in circles like this, so your obvious moniker shouldn’t be a problem unless he figures out the real reason you’re using it. You pray he doesn’t.

“Very well, ‘Mira’,” he grins. “I’ll take you to the others. They’re waiting for you.”

You follow him down the hallway; dark, ambiently lit, almost cosy. The sound of your heels on the wooden floor breaks the silence into small seconds, giving you a rhythm to follow and cling to as you walk towards what could very well be your doom.

Reaching the door to the dining room, Hongjoong spares a second to look back at you, offering a thin smile that could almost be reassuring before pushing open the door. The room is bigger than you could have imagined and impossibly lavish; more suited for royalty than a criminal syndicate. Along one side of a long, oak table that stretches much of the length of the room sit seven men, arranged to face you in an intimidating formation.

You recognise them all, each face unnerving you more than the last. It’s true, they’re all stupidly handsome — even more so in real life, you realise — but all you see on their faces are the countless, endless amounts of blood on their hands. You’ve seen some of it yourself, more than enough, but the stories are even worse; men, women, children, anyone who stood in their way, slaughtered like sheep. You could swear you hear the faint ringing of screams in your ear as they look up at you.

“Gentlemen,” Hongjoong says. “This is Mira.”

They greet you with interest, a few of them offering a smile while the others simply stare you down. “Turn,” one of them says — San, you think. You stare unsuredly at Hongjoong and he lifts an eyebrow; a silent order to obey. Slowly you turn around, letting them see your back side before facing them once again. They look pleased.

“She’ll do fine,” another, Wooyoung, says with a grin.

Your gaze catches his and you gulp, unnerved. Wooyoung was the person you were most nervous to encounter; though his demeanour is friendly, enthusiastic even, the stories you’ve heard about him are the worst. He kills, massacres people with ease and he does it with that same grin on his face. It’s more terrifying than the more calculated, stoic members, because while they’ve probably killed and maimed more people than him in the long run, they at least treat it with the seriousness it deserves. Wooyoung ends lives without consideration and treats it all like some kind of game.

“Um…” you start. “What would you like me to do now, sirs?”

“Unless anyone has any requests,” Hongjoong starts. He looks around at the others and when no one speaks up, he continues. “You may put your bag on the table then come back here to present yourselves to us.”

You nod, voicing a quiet ‘yes, sir’ before nervously making your way over to the table. Your grip on your bag is iron and you’re hesitant to let it go; your bugging equipment lies in a secret compartment at the bottom hidden beneath the makeup and toys you’d brought to make yourself more convincing, and to leave it with them feels like giving yourself away. But even if they check your bag, you think, they have no reason to think there’d be any kind of secret compartment. You’re safe. You just need to get this done and then you’re safe.

You walk back to where you were, alone this time — Hongjoong has gone to take his seat next to the oldest member, Seonghwa, and now you’re eight-to-one.

Seonghwa speaks for the first time and his voice is surprisingly sultry. “Take the dress off,” he says calmly. His eyes are narrowed. “I’d like to see what I’m working with.”

With shaking hands you remove the dress, carefully unzipping the expensive (for a detective’s salary, at least) fabric and sliding it down off your body. Clad only in black, lacy lingerie, you feel a deep flush across your face; you’ve never been so exposed in front of a man before; certainly not multiple men and certainly not dangerous, notorious criminals. A whistle sounds across the room, though you’re not sure who it came from, and you blush deeper. You feel the weight of their gazes as eight pairs of eyes hover over every inch of you, inspecting and scrutinising you silently. Seonghwa, the closest to you and with the sternest expression, can’t seem to draw his eyes away from your breasts. You swallow, feeling vulnerable and smaller than you ever have before.

“Turn,” Seonghwa says, voice commanding. “Let me see the back.”

You nod, turning once again, taking your time to give them the opportunity to rake their eyes up and down the back of you; no doubt hovering on your ass, globes cleverly exposed by your lingerie. You hear a few whispered comments and try to keep your composure; you almost feel the touch of their hands on your ass, squeezing and slapping it however they like. You know they want to; you hope they will— it will mean you’ve convinced them enough for them to let their guard down.

“That’s enough,” Seonghwa says. “Turn back.”

Relieved, you turn back to face them. You’ve passed one obstacle, you think. Seonghwa stares at you for a moment, expression unreadable before he curls a long finger, bidding you closer. You take a few steps before he raises his palm, stopping you, and you still yourself. His eyes rake over your torso again before he nods. He stares up at you with dark but interested eyes and a smile breaks onto his face before he speaks.

He says it so casually you almost miss it. “I know what you are.”

His voice is so soft you only just hear him and the words take a moment to hit you. When they do, your reaction is sudden and visceral; you heart drops into your stomach like stone, blood rushing to your head at a dizzying pace and you almost pass out. But you do your best to keep your reactions internal; you know the only way to make them more certain of why you’re actually here is to freak out and panic at the mere suggestion. No. You can play this one off. You’ve trained for this. You just need to de-escalate.

You clear your throat, tapping your foot against the floor. “And what’s that?” You ask, trying to sound sultry; your voice almost breaks on the last word but you catch it in the nick of time. “A whore?”

Seonghwa’s lip quirks. “You know,” he says. “That’s not as far off as you think. But no.”

You almost want to huff at the jibe he’d thrown at you, but you remember your situation, the danger you’re in and choose to stay on his good side.

“What am I, then?”

“We don’t really need to say it, do we?” Hongjoong interjects. There’s no anger in his voice; he sounds somewhere between bored and amused. “We both know already.”

You reach up to your chest, to the chip you’d hidden in your bra in case you needed to call for backup, but a loud laugh stops you.

“Are you calling for backup?” Wooyoung grins, confirming what you already knew — they know exactly why you’re here. They’ve figured you out.

“I don’t know what you mean,” you say, still fighting your case. Your voice starts to falter as you speak, composure beginning to crack. Some small, stupid part of you still seems to think there’s a way out of this, but you know there’s not. They know your secret. And even if they were wrong, if you were innocent, this is their territory and their house— if they say something is so, there’s no arguing.

“You are,” Wooyoung laughs.

“And that backup,” Hongjoong interjects again, “they wouldn’t be the officers we found in vans on the next block, would they?”

You feel your heart drop into your stomach, jaw dropping in disbelief. No. The next block? Does no one listen to a fucking thing you say?

“I—”

“I wouldn’t bother calling for them,” Seonghwa says. You hear a few chuckles from the others, clearly enjoying this. “I don’t think I need to explain why.”

No, you think, he doesn’t. You know what they do to spies and traitors — what they’ll do to you. You can only hope they killed your colleagues quickly. If you somehow ever make it out of here, you’re going to do the same to your boss — you told him to station backup far away and this is why.

Starting to panic, you begin to back away but your pathetic attempt only takes you a few steps before Seonghwa barks, “Grab her!”, and the two men nearest descend on you.

Your years of combat training are no match for the strong, probably better-trained men, and within seconds they have you fully restrained. You struggle in their hold and the taller, Mingi, harshly grabs your hair, yanking it back to force you to stare the others straight in the face.

You expect to see anger, even bloodlust when you meet their gaze, but you don’t. Other than Seonghwa, who seems irritated at your attempt to escape, they look… unbothered. It doesn’t make sense, you think. Not with what you were trying to do and especially not with how painfully close you came to doing it. For having almost had their entire network penetrated by one terrified looking woman, they look strangely calm, like they’re entirely unsurprised by this development, and you don’t know why. Unless…?

You hold back a groan as the realisation hits you. “You knew.”

Hongjoong smiles, amused. “We’ve always known, Mira. You think we wouldn’t realise we were being watched?”

You bow your head. You’re still terrified, knowing these men have killed countless people with the blank, unbothered expressions they wear now, but right now the overwhelming, crushing emotion is just… embarrassment. You feel like a rookie again; cocky and confident with your badge and gun until you fuck up for the first time and it all comes crashing down.

You shrug. “I don’t know.”

You hear someone snort and look up to see Wooyoung, giggling almost gleefully to himself. “Aren’t you meant to be the smartest on the squad?” He laughs. You hear a few others chuckle too. “Didn’t you tell your boss you ‘knew everything about us’? But you didn’t consider the fact that we might know you?”

He makes a good point, you realise. But while you figured they’d know they were being watched, with your high-tech surveillance equipment and ability to blend into a crowd, it had barely crossed your mind that they might know who was watching them — certainly not that they’d somehow know the exact things you’d said about them. They must have bugged you, you think, or somehow gotten a spy into the department to listen in on your discussions on them. You guess you owe them more credit. And a lot more fear.

“I’m sorry,” is all you can think to say.

“I’m certain you are,” Hongjoong says. “Now you’ve been caught. Are you keen on proving it?”

You look up, confused, hopeful and terrified all in one. You thought you’d be dead by now, shot on sight. And if they intended on killing you slowly, torturing you for information before finally letting you die, you figured they’d have started by now. Or at least made any attempt to move. They could still do it, of course, but they don’t seem in the mood for that. They look… curious.

“P-prove it?” You stutter. “How?”

A few of them smile, mouths curling into thin smiles and you shift uncomfortably. The two oldest share a look before Seonghwa nods and seemingly out of nowhere, Hongjoong pulls a gun, setting it carefully but loudly on the table. He keeps a hand on the trigger and his eyes on you as he speaks. “Firstly,” he says. “Don’t try to run. I’d hate to stick a bullet through your pretty face but if you bolt, that’s exactly what I’ll do. And I know you’ve seen yourself how excellent my aim is.”

You gulp. Hongjoong’s right. Through the lenses of your binoculars you’ve seen him — all of them, in fact — make some almost impossible shots. Certainly more impossible than a woman in heels trying to escape from a locked room. There’s no point trying to run. You’ll leave when — if, you think with a shiver — they allow you to.

You feel yourself deflate, nodding defeatedly. “Okay.”

“Alright,” he smiles. “Mingi, Jongho, let her go.”

The men holding you stare almost petulantly at their leader but he raises an eyebrow and they relent, releasing their grip. “Not a fucking toe out of line, Mira,” Mingi whispers in your ear. He says your ‘name’ like it’s diseased.

Despite being released, your body refuses to move; it stays paralysed in the same position, too terrified to even shiver. A blessing in disguise though, you suppose; Hongjoong looks pleased. “See,” he smiles. “It’s so easy to just be good for us, isn’t it?”

You try to respond but all that comes out is a small, pathetic squeak. A few chuckles sound out across the room and your gaze catches Yunho, who, though appearing calm, in his eyes looks just on the edge of feral. You gulp.

Seonghwa is the first to move; he says your ‘name’ lowly, curling a finger towards you. “Come here,” he orders.

You approach him as slowly as you can excuse, soon enough ending up inches away from him. He looks you up and down, inspecting your body with dark eyes.

”You’re shivering,” he says softly.

You manage to force out a few words. “I’m cold,” you reply. “And…”

“And scared?” He asks. You don’t respond, but you flush pink and he chuckles. “Clever girl,” he says. “You should be scared. I’ve never liked the way you seemed so… fearless about us.”

He wraps an arm around your waist, eyes flashing when you jump in surprise. “So flighty,” he mutters. “Sit on my lap.”

You don’t know if you would resist if you could but that doesn’t matter; your body, seemingly in survival mode, moves of its own accord to straddle him. His hands settle on your waist, just above your ass and he smiles.

“Still shivering,” he chuckles. “Good girl.” He leans in close enough that only you can hear as he whispers; “San’ll be much nicer to you if you stay this terrified.” You gulp, eyes flickering in the direction of the man mentioned; he’s watching you intently, face blank but he’s clearly not one to mess with. He’s so much more intimidating in person.

“Now,” Seonghwa says, and you turn your gaze back to him. “Let’s see what you can do for us, hm? Open your mouth.”

You hesitate briefly, but quickly obey, parting your lips slightly. Seonghwa runs his thumb across your bottom lip before he tugs at it to open your mouth further; before you know it a wad of spit lands on your tongue, and he closes your mouth again. He taps your cheek. “Swallow,” he says.

You pray your boss never finds out about this; straddling your enemy’s lap and swallowing his spit on his command. Then again, you’d be lucky to see your boss again at all. You don’t particularly trust that they’ll spare your life just because you let them fuck you. This feels more like playing with their food.

Seonghwa pushes two fingers into your mouth, ordering you to suck. They push to the back of your throat, making you gag but you keep them inside, sucking them desperately and trying to ignore the way your body screams at you to get them out. “Sucking me so good,” he grins. “You’re gonna look so pretty with our dicks in your mouth.”

You can’t help the moan that slips out; nor the flood of relief that washes over you at the praise. Maybe they will let you live after all.

Seonghwa thrusts his fingers lazily in and out of your mouth, letting you choke and gag on them as your throat slowly adjusts to the intrusion.

“I must say,” he says. There’s curiosity and knowing in his eyes; a knowledge of something you think is secret. It unnerves you even further. “You’ve come around to this remarkably quickly. I really thought you’d put up more of a fight, petal.”

Noises of agreement sound out, the men chuckling to themselves. “Pathetic,” you think you hear Yunho say.

“You know, Seonghwa,” Hongjoong says. You turn in surprise at his voice— sitting in Seonghwa’s grip, those dark eyes burning into you, it’s easy to forget there’s anyone else in the room. Hongjoong smiles amusedly at you before he continues. “It’s almost like she wanted to fail. Like she wanted us to realise what she was because she knew that’d mean we couldn’t let her leave.”

You manage to stop yourself from scoffing— thank God, you think, because the pistol on the table in front of Hongjoong is ever present and you’ve seen him use it on others for a lot less. But come on. That’s ridiculous. You’ve been after them for years, never for a moment with any intention other than locking each and every one of them up for good. You try to protest but Seonghwa clamps his palm over your mouth, shushing you. “You might be right, Joong,” he smiles. “That would explain why she came here so poorly prepared. Like a lamb to slaughter.” He removes his hand from your mouth; his fingers brush over your lips and linger a little longer than you can justify.

Hongjoong chuckles. “Is that it, little lamb?” He asks. “Were you hoping for this?”

You shake your head, determined to refute him but to your horror, part of you starts to wonder if there might be some truth to his words, if you… no. No way. Of course you weren’t hoping for this. Still, your hesitation tells them more than you want them to know. “I…”

“She was,” Seonghwa grins. “Naive little girl.”

You frown, brows furrowing. “I’m not—”

Before you can finish your sentence, a deep voice you recognise as Yunho sounds out, silencing you. “Will you stop fucking talking back,” he snaps, almost shouting. He leans over to where you’re still held firmly in Seonghwa’s grip, eyes dark. “I swear to God,” he whispers.

“Yunho,” Hongjoong replies before you can, tone warning but amused. “Don’t be mean to her. She must be so scared right now, hm?” He turns back to you, narrowing his eyes. “And maybe something else?”

“She’s horny is what she is,” Yunho snorts dryly. “Dripping for us yet still with so much attitude.”

“She can’t resist,” Seonghwa says. “It’s in her bones, isn’t it?” He strokes your face with a gentleness you’d never expect from him; but the knowledge of how easily he could and might still kill you makes it a lot less comforting. “She wants to hate us, knows she should but this feels so right, doesn’t it? So good.”

You whine, shaking your head; you know you’re past the point of resistance now but you can’t bear to fully submit. There’s no coming back from that. Seonghwa sighs, stroking your hair. “As soon as you give in,” he says, “this will get so much easier.”

“I—”

“Hm?” He asks. “What? You can’t?”

You shake your head and he smiles. “You can, Mira,” he says. “You will.”

You groan, squeezing your eyes shut as if you could make this all go away just by blocking it out. You hear them chuckle, then before you know it you’re being lifted up; you open your eyes and see Seonghwa has stood up, still holding you in his arms, before laying you down on the table with your legs hanging over the edge. Your stomach twists as you realise the position you’re in; completely exposed and at their mercy. Ripe for the taking. Your hands are lifted above your head and you look up to see Yunho, holding them together firmly in one hand. Seonghwa’s hands come to rest on your hips again.

“Open your legs.”

You whine, shaking your head squeezing your thighs together. Seonghwa scowls, displeased and wraps a calloused hand around your plush upper thigh. He stares you down, eyes dark as he starts to squeeze. His sharp nails dig into you, piercing the skin ever so slightly under the pressure. You whimper, squirming a little but he doesn’t react.

“Open them.”

Cold metal touches your temple. You don’t need to look to know that Yunho is holding a gun to your head. You swallow thickly, trying to stay calm. At this point, you’re not disobeying on purpose; you’re not stupid enough to think that would work. But in the thick of adrenaline, where your body had once obeyed of its own accord, now… it won’t move.

Seonghwa gives Yunho a pointed look and then the gun leaves your head. Now in the elder’s hand, he puts it down for a moment before, with one hand on each thigh, he spreads your legs open with ease. “There we go,” he hums.

The steel of the pistol is ice cold against the warmth of your inner thighs as he moves it slowly up your legs until it points directly at your pussy. Covered by the thin black fabric of your panties, you nonetheless feel entirely exposed, like he can see right through them.

The end of the gun comes to press up against your panties and you feel the cold steel through the fabric; but where it presses against your clit, pressure slight but noticeable, it’s almost nice. It doesn’t move; Seonghwa keeps his hand still in place, watching with a small smile as you try to conceal your pleasure. He pushes it against you slightly, making you gasp, and gestures to your panties.

“Take those off,” he says. “Quickly, if you want the safety to stay on.”

You scramble to obey, tugging them off and discarding them next to you. With a small smile, Seonghwa picks them up and stuffs them in his pocket. You bite your lip. “Sir,” you whisper.

He hums, cocking an eyebrow before placing the gun back where it was before. This time he presses it more firmly against your clit and you squirm. “Nice and still for me,” he murmurs.

Turning your head, you see the other men gathered around the table. They’re just… watching. No one looks affected, no one’s touching themselves; they’re just watching their friends take you apart with entirely blank, focused expressions. Like it’s a clinical procedure.

Unnerved, you turn back to face Seonghwa just as he slips the gun ever so slightly into your pussy. You gasp, almost crying out but Yunho quickly shoves his fingers into your mouth, silencing you. “Now, now,” he cooes. “We don’t want to make them angry, do we?” His voice is sickly sweet and condescending and the most terrifying thing you’ve ever heard. You shake your head, still gagged by his fingers and he chuckles. “Good girl.”

Then the gun is gone as Seonghwa pulls it away— a string of wet, sticky liquid following in its wake. He smiles knowingly and you wish the earth would swallow you up. You’ve creamed on a fucking gun, shoved up your pussy by your worst enemies. You’ll never come back from this.

“My, my,” you hear Hongjoong chuckle. You turn to meet his eyes and he tilts his head, smiling innocently. Seonghwa grabs your face to force your gaze back to him. “Stop looking away,” he says. “I’m the one fucking you.”

The gun clatters down and without warning Seonghwa’s long fingers are penetrating you; two, you think, maybe three. He doesn’t ease you into it (why would he, really?), just quickly stretching you out on his fingers. And then Yunho’s there too, standing next to the elder and watching him work you open with dark eyes.

Soon they swap places, and while Seonghwa’s fingers are certainly large, Yunho’s are something else entirely. His fingers pump in and out of you efficiently; your pleasure clearly isn’t what’s on his mind, but rather, working you open for something bigger. He certainly pays no mind to your reactions; even as you whine and cry his eyes never move from your pussy as you come more and more undone around his fingers. He’s focused, dangerously so.

Once his third finger sits comfortably in your pussy, he pulls them all out, leaving you gaping and empty. You whine at the loss and he chuckles before he picks up his gun again. He runs it up and down your thigh with light, teasing touches.

“Want it in you?” He asks.

You nod, desperate. At this point, you wish you felt shame— you wish you were embarrassed and humiliated to be debasing yourself like this for your targets; but instead you’re just aroused. Completely, overwhelmingly, suffocatingly aroused. “Sir,” you whisper again.

He grins, twirling the gun in his hand. The ease with which he handles it is a stark reminder of where you are, who these men are. It does nothing to lessen your desperation.

“Very well,” he says. “Stay still, Mira. Wouldn’t want the safety coming off accidentally.”

Accidentally. You almost scoff. You’re a detective; you know a thinly veiled threat when you see one. And this is barely veiled. Still, you do as he says without complaint, keeping your legs spread and pussy open for access as he presses it against your entrance. It goes in surprisingly easily; lubricated by your gushing pussy and it’s as humiliating as it is exhilarating. You make a noise of discomfort, biting down on your lip until you taste blood; half of pleasure and half of pain.

The steel is cold and inhuman and the edges push painfully against your walls and it’s degrading and terrifying. Yet at the same time it feels so good to be used and demeaned in this way; to be fucked open not for your pleasure, not even his pleasure, but purely for his own amusement. You know every noise or face of pain you make is making him harder and it’s a rush you’ve never even felt from sex. Fuck. What is wrong with you?

At this point, you don’t even know who’s talking; people and voices blur into one distant, surrounding haze.

“She’s loving this,” someone says.

“Sick bitch,” another spits, then, “we should keep her.”

Then the gun is gone, and you’re suddenly empty, your walls clinging to nothing— briefly. Within a few moments something else nicer, warmer, better is sliding into you; you look up, meeting Seonghwa’s gaze as he pushes into you. He’s large and thick, bordering on this side of too much, but it feels… good. Fuck. You’ve never felt like this in your fucking life; neither, it seems, has he.

“Fuck,” he choked. “Tight little whore. So fucking good.”

You squeeze your eyes shut, lost in a fog of pleasure and clinging to the rhythm of his quickening thrusts. Half of you wants to forget who it is that’s doing this to you, making you feel so good; the other half thinks this is the only dick you want for the rest of your life. But with each thrust of Seonghwa’s dick deep inside you, slamming against your cervix each time, you become less and less able to think of anything at all— except the waves of painful pleasure washing over you, and your desperate desire for it to never, ever stop.

It’s just your luck that, just as you feel yourself approaching your climax, Seonghwa pulls out without warning, leaving you empty and leaking. You’re about to cry out in protest when you find yourself flipped over, pressed down and bent over the wooden table. You feel the two men behind you, kneading your ass, and a sharp slap lands against it before Seonghwa pushes back into your pussy again.

“Hwa,” Yunho says. “I don’t think she’s full enough.”

Seonghwa slows his pace, and you feel his stern, scrutinising gaze on you. “You’re right,” he says. He spreads your ass cheeks, making you gasp, and he chuckles. “Look at that little asshole clenching. I think it wants to be filled.”

Yunho makes a noise of agreement, pressing a finger to your rim and making you jump. “Think she can handle my cock in there?”

“Does it matter?”

“Not really,” Yunho says nonchalantly. “But I’d rather not break her completely. She’s too tight, it’d be a waste.”

“Fine,” Seonghwa says, slowly starting to thrust again. After a few moments, he pulls out, and you feel Yunho’s long fingers enter your pussy. You whine, confused, but a slap of Seonghwa’s hand against your thigh silences you. Yunho’s fingers pull away, replaced with Seonghwa’s dick again, before Yunho’s fingers are on your asshole, pushing into the rim with— oh. He’s… he’s using your slick as lube.

“Dirty girl,” he mutters. It takes embarrassingly little time before he manages to fit all three fingers in there and he stills. “You ever been fucked here before?”

“N-no,” you gasp, squirming under the two men’s grips on you.

“Good,” he says. “Hold still.”

The feeling of his cock pushing past your rim makes you scream— it’s fucking maddening; painful and pleasurable and pretty much every adjective you could use to describe anything. You don’t even recognise the sounds you’re making now; you barely sound human, squealing and crying like an animal.

“Yeah,” Yunho grunts. “Bark, bitch.”

You’re fully sobbing now, a broken, dripping mess as two cocks pump in and out of you. Seonghwa’s fingers are digging into your hips, no doubt leaving bruises to match those blooming under the impact of your colliding bodies each time they thrust. Yunho’s hands are in your hair, tugging your head backwards; it stretches your neck painfully, but you doubt he cares; the only thing on either of their minds is using you for their own satisfaction. Only the sound of laughter reminds you of the presence of the other six and you crane your neck to look at them.

“Look at her,” Jongho laughs. “Taking it like a fucking whore.”

Emboldened by his comments, Yunho speeds up, thrusts getting quicker and harder by the second. You feel your walls clenching around his cock, squeezing him each time he moves.

Seonghwa’s thrusts are just as fast, hitting you just as deep, but in the more familiar cavern of your pussy, they’re not quite as overwhelming as Yunho’s. You can tell by their tightening grips on you when they’re close, slowly losing their control.

“I’m gonna fucking cum in you,” Yunho growls. “I’m gonna get you pregnant and fucking keep you here. Our little breeding bitch.”

You cry out, half pleasure half pain, and it pushes you over the edge; with a shout he releases inside you, hot load filling you up and leaking out around his dick before he pulls out. Seonghwa follows quickly, unloading in your pussy before pulling out, leaving you fucked out and leaking onto the floor.

“Disgusting bitch,” someone says.

Seonghwa touches your hip almost gently, and you find yourself crumpling to the floor, unable to hold yourself up anymore. Sat in a pathetic heap, you faintly see the men surrounding you.

��You did a good job, Mira,” Hongjoong says, and he almost sounds fond. “A maid will take you to your cell.”

Cell. The word hits you like bricks crashing down; knocking the wind out of your chest and dropping you back into your reality— you tried to beat them. You failed. You’re trapped. You know they see the terror creep back onto your face. You imagine they enjoy it.

Seonghwa pats your head, and for a moment it looks like he wants to kiss you; instead he just smiles, nodding curtly before following his brothers as they walk away. Hongjoong is the last to exit, leaving you alone, still crumpled on your knees and covered in cum on the floor of the hall. Before he closes the door, he turns back to you; his eyes hover over your shivering form and a smile flickers.

“If you can keep this up, Mira,” he says, “we’ll probably let you live.”

The slam of the oak door echoes around the room.

thanks for reading! i think this is darkest fic i’ve ever written. i’m trying to start branching out into more plot-heavy fics along with the usual smut, so this is something of an attempt in that area. your feedback is much appreciated and motivates me to write more. reblogs and comments are appreciated. requests open. love🖤🖤🖤

taglist open!

#ateez smut #ateez hard hours #kpop smut #ateez x reader #ateez hard thoughts #seonghwa smut #yunho smut #mafia ateez #ateez au #ateez fanfic #dom seonghwa #dom yunho #mulloey writes

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mostlysignssomeportents · 4 months ago

Text

Prime’s enshittified advertising

Prime's gonna add more ads. They brought in ads in January, and people didn't cancel their Prime subscriptions, so Amazon figures that they can make Prime even worse and make more money:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/10/amazon-prime-video-is-getting-more-ads-next-year/

The cruelty isn't the point. Money is the point. Every ad that Amazon shows you shifts value away from you – your time, your attention – to the company's shareholders.

That's the crux of enshittification. Companies don't enshittify – making their once-useful products monotonically worse – because it amuses them to erode the quality of their offerings. They enshittify them because their products are zero-sum: the things that make them valuable to you (watching videos without ads) make things less valuable to them (because they can't monetize your attention).

This isn't new. The internet has always been dominated by intermediaries – platforms – because there are lots more people who want to use the internet than are capable of building the internet. There's more people who want to write blogs than can make a blogging app. There's more people who want to play and listen to music than can host a music streaming service. There's more people who want to write and read ebooks than want to operate an ebook store or sell an ebooks reader.

Despite all the early internet rhetoric about the glories of disintermediation, intermediaries are good, actually:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/12/direct-the-problem-of-middlemen/

The problem isn't with intermediaries per se. The problem arises when intermediaries grow so powerful that they usurp the relationship between the parties they connect. The problem with Uber isn't the use of mobile phones to tell taxis that you're standing on a street somewhere and would like a cab, please. The problem is rampant worker misclassification, regulatory arbitrage, starvation wages, and price-gouging:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/29/geometry-hates-uber/#toronto-the-gullible

There's no problem with publishers, distributors, retailers, printers, and all the other parts of the bookselling ecosystem. While there are a few, rare authors who are capable of performing all of these functions – basically gnawing their books out of whole logs with their teeth – most writers can't, and even the ones who can, don't want to:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/19/crad-kilodney-was-an-outlier/#intermediation

When early internet boosters spoke of disintermediation, what they mostly meant was that it would be harder for intermediaries to capture those relationships – between sellers and buyers, creators and audiences, workers and customers. As Rebecca Giblin and I wrote in our 2022 book Chokepoint Capitalism, intermediaries in every sector rely on chokepoints, narrows where they can erect tollbooths:

https://chokepointcapitalism.com/

When chokepoints exist, they multiply up and down the supply chain. In the golden age of physical, recorded music, you had several chokepoints that reinforced one another. Limited radio airwaves gave radio stations power over record labels, who had to secretly, illegally bid for prime airspace ("payola"). Retail consolidation – the growth of big record chains – drove consolidation in the distributors who sold to the chains, and the more concentrated distributors became, the more they could squeeze retailers, which drove even more consolidation in record stores. The bigger a label was, the more power it had to shove back against the muscle of the stores and the distributors (and the pressing plants, etc). Consolidation in labels also drove consolidation in talent agencies, whose large client rosters gave them power to resist the squeeze from the labels. Consolidation in venues drives consolidation in ticketing and promotion – and vice-versa.

But there's two parties to this supply chain who can't consolidate: musicians and their fans. With limits on "sectoral bargaining" (where unions can represent workers against all the companies in a sector), musicians' unions were limited in their power against key parts of the supply chain, so the creative workers who made the music were easy pickings for labels, talent reps, promoters, ticketers, venues, retailers, etc. Music fans are diffused and dispersed, and organized fan clubs were usually run by the labels, who weren't about to allow those clubs to be used against the labels.

This is a perfect case-study in the problems of powerful intermediaries, who move from facilitator to parasite, paying workers less while degrading their products, and then charge customers more for those enshittified products.

The excitement about "disintermediation" wasn't so much about eliminating intermediaries as it was about disciplining them. If there were lots of ways to market a product or service, sell it, collect payment for it, and deliver it, then the natural inclination of intermediaries to turn predator would be curbed by the difficulty of corralling their prey into chokepoints.

Now that we're a quarter century on from the Napster Wars, we can see how that worked out. Decades of failure to enforce antitrust law allowed a few companies to effectively capture the internet, buying out rivals who were willing to sell, and bankrupting those who wouldn't with illegal tactics like predatory pricing (think of Uber losing $31 billion by subsidizing $0.41 out of every dollar they charged for taxi rides for more than a decade).

The market power that platforms gained through consolidation translated into political power. When a few companies dominate a sector, they're able to come to agreement on common strategies for dealing with their regulators, and they've got plenty of excess profits to spend on those strategies. First and foremost, platforms used their power to get more power, lobbying for even less antitrust enforcement. Additionally, platforms mobilized gigantic sums to secure the right to screw customers (for example, by making binding arbitration clauses in terms of service enforceable) and workers (think of the $225m Uber and Lyft spent on California's Prop 22, which formalized their worker misclassification swindle).

So big platforms were able to insulate themselves from the risk of competition ("five giant websites, filled with screenshots of the other four" – Tom Eastman), and from regulation. They were also able to expand and mobilize IP law to prevent anyone from breaking their chokepoints or undoing the abuses that these enabled. This is a good place to get specific about how Prime Video works.

There's two ways to get Prime videos: over an app, or in your browser. Both of these streams are encrypted, and that's really important here, because of a law – Section 1201 of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act – which makes it really illegal to break this kind of encryption (commonly called "Digital Rights Management" or "DRM"). Practically speaking, that means that if a company encrypts its videos, no one is allowed to do anything to those videos, even things that are legal, without the company's permission, because doing all those legal things requires breaking the DRM, and breaking the DRM is a felony (five years in prison, $500k fine, for a first offense).

Copyright law actually gives subscribers to services like Prime a lot of rights, and it empowers businesses that offer tools to exercise those rights. Back in 1976, Sony rolled out the Betamax, the first major home video recorder. After an eight-year court battle, the Supreme Court weighed in on VCRs and ruled that it was legal for all of us to record videos at home, both to watch them later, and to build a library of our favorite shows. They also ruled that it was legal for Sony – and by that time, every other electronics company – to make VHS systems, even if those systems could be used in ways that violated copyright because they were "capable of sustaining a substantial non-infringing use" (letting you tape shows off your TV).

Now, this was more than a decade before the DMCA – and its prohibition on breaking DRM – passed, but even after the DMCA came into effect, there was a lot of media that didn't have DRM, so a new generation of tech companies were able to make tools that were "capable of sustaining a substantial non-infringing use" and that didn't have to break any DRM to do it.

Think of the Ipod and Itunes, which, together, were sold as a way to rip CDs (which weren't encrypted), and play them back from both your desktop computer and a wildly successful pocket-sized portable device. Itunes even let you stream from one computer to another. The record industry hated this, but they couldn't do anything about it, thanks to the Supreme Court's Betamax ruling.

Indeed, they eventually swallowed their bile and started selling their products through the Itunes Music Store. These tracks had DRM and were thus permanently locked to Apple's ecosystem, and Apple immediately used that power to squeeze the labels, who decided they didn't like DRM after all, and licensed all those same tracks to Amazon's DRM-free MP3 store, whose slogan was "DRM: Don't Restrict Me":

https://memex.craphound.com/2008/02/01/amazons-anti-drm-tee/

Apple played a funny double role here. In marketing Itunes/Ipods ("Rip, Mix, Burn"), they were the world's biggest cheerleaders for all the things you were allowed to do with copyrighted works, even when the copyright holder objected. But with the Itunes Music Store and its mandatory DRM, the company was also one of the world's biggest cheerleaders for wrapping copyrighted works in a thin skin of IP that would allow copyright holders to shut down products like the Ipod and Itunes.

Microsoft, predictably enough, focused on the "lock everything to our platform" strategy. Then-CEO Steve Ballmer went on record calling every Ipod owner a "thief" and arguing that every record company should wrap music in Microsoft's Zune DRM, which would allow them to restrict anything they didn't like, even if copyright allowed it (and would also give Microsoft the same abusive leverage over labels that they famously exercised over Windows software companies):

https://web.archive.org/web/20050113051129/http://management.silicon.com/itpro/0,39024675,39124642,00.htm

In the end, Amazon's approach won. Apple dropped DRM, and Microsoft retired the Zune and shut down its DRM servers, screwing anyone who'd ever bought a Zune track by rendering that music permanently unplayable.

Around the same time as all this was going on, another company was making history by making uses of copyrighted works that the law allowed, but which the copyright holders hated. That company was Tivo, who products did for personal video recorders (PVRs) what Apple's Ipod did for digital portable music players. With a Tivo, you could record any show over cable (which was too expensive and complicated to encrypt) and terrestrial broadcast (which is illegal to encrypt, since those are the public's airwaves, on loan to the TV stations).

That meant that you could record any show, and keep it forever. What's more, you could very easily skip through ads (and rival players quickly emerged that did automatic ad-skipping). All of this was legal, but of course the cable companies and broadcasters hated it. Like Ballmer, TV execs called Tivo owners "thieves."

But Tivo didn't usher in the ad-supported TV apocalypse that furious, spittle-flecked industry reps insisted it would. Rather, it disciplined the TV and cable operators. Tivo owners actually sought out ads that were funny and well-made enough to go viral. Meanwhile, every time the industry decided to increase the amount of advertising in a show, they also increased the likelihood that their viewers would seek out a Tivo, or worse, one of those auto-ad-skipping PVRs.

Given all the stink that TV execs raised over PVRs, you'd think that these represented a novel threat. But in fact, the TV industry's appetite for ads had been disciplined by viewers' access to new technology since 1956, when the first TV remotes appeared on the market (executives declared that anyone who changed the channel during an ad-break was a thief). Then came the mute button. Then the wireless remote. Meanwhile, a common VCR use-case – raised in the Supreme Court case – was fast-forwarding ads.

At each stage, TV adapted. Ads in TV shows represented a kind of offer: "Will you watch this many of these ads in return for a free TV show?" And the remote, the mute button, the wireless remote, the VCR, the PVR, and the ad-skipping PVR all represented a counter-offer. As economists would put it, the ability of viewers to make these counteroffers "shifted the equilibrium." If viewers had no defensive technology, they might tolerate more ads, but once they were able to enforce their preferences with technology, the industry couldn't enshittify its product to the liminal cusp of "so many ads that the viewer is right on the brink of turning off the TV (but not quite)."

This is the same equilibrium-shifting dynamic that we see on the open web, where more than 50% of users have installed an ad-blocker. The industry says, "Will you allow this many 'sign up to our mailing list' interrupters, pop ups, pop unders, autoplaying videos and other stuff that users hate but shareholders benefit from" and the ad-blocker makes a counteroffer: "How about 'nah?'":

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/adblocking-how-about-nah

TV remotes, PVRs and ad-blockers are all examples of "adversarial interoperability" – a new product that plugs into an existing one, extending or modifying its functions without permission from (or even over the objections of) the original manufacturer:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability

Adversarial interop creates a powerful disciplining force on platform owners. Once a user grows so frustrated with a product's enshittification that they research, seek out, acquire and learn to use an adversarial interop tool, it's really game over. The printer owner who figures out where to get third-party ink is gone forever. Every time a company like HP raises its prices, they have to account for the number of customers who will finally figure out how to use generic ink and never, ever send another cent to HP.

This is where DMCA 1201 comes into play. Once a product is skinned with DRM, its manufacturers gain the right to prevent you from doing legal things, and can use the public's courts and law-enforcement apparatus to punish you for trying. Take HP: as soon as they started adding DRM to their cartridges, they gained the legal power to shut down companies that cloned, refilled or remanufactured their cartridges, and started raising the price of ink – which today sits at more than $10,000/gallon:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/30/life-finds-a-way/#ink-stained-wretches

Using third party ink in your printer isn't illegal (it's your printer, right?). But making third party ink for your printer becomes illegal once you have to break DRM to do so, and so HP gets to transform tinted water into literally the most expensive fluid on Earth. The ink you use to print your kid's homework costs more than vintage Veuve Cliquot or sperm from a Kentucky Derby-winning thoroughbred.

Adversarial interoperability is a powerful tool for shifting the equilibrium between producers, intermediaries and buyers. DRM is an even more powerful way of wrenching that equilibrium back towards the intermediary, reducing the share that buyers and sellers are able to eke out of the transaction.

Prime Video, of course, is delivered via an app, which means it has DRM. That means that subscribers don't get to exercise the rights afforded to them by copyright – only the rights that Amazon permits them to have. There's no Tivo for Prime, because it would have to break the DRM to record the shows you stream from Prime. That allows Prime to pull all kinds of shady shit. For example, every year around this time, Amazon pulls popular Christmas movies from its free-to-watch tier and moves them into pay-per-view, only restoring them in the spring:

https://www.reddit.com/r/vudu/comments/1bpzanx/looks_like_amazon_removed_the_free_titles_from/

And of course, Prime sticks ads in its videos. You can't skip these ads – not because it's technically challenging to make a 30-second advance button for a video stream, and doing so wouldn't violate anyone's copyright – but because Amazon doesn't permit you to do so, and the fact that the video is wrapped in DRM makes it a felony to even try.

This means that Amazon gets to seek a different equilibrium than TV companies have had to accept since 1956 and the invention of the TV remote. Amazon doesn't have to limit the quantity, volume, and invasiveness of its ads to "less the amount that would drive our subscribers to install and use an ad-skipping plugin." Instead, they can shoot for the much more lucrative equilibrium of "so obnoxious that the viewer is almost ready to cancel their subscription (but not quite)."

That's pretty much exactly how Kelly Day, the Amazon exec in charge of Prime Video, put it to the Financial Times: they're increasing the number of ads because "we haven’t really seen a groundswell of people churning out or cancelling":

https://www.ft.com/content/f8112991-820c-4e09-bcf4-23b5e0f190a5

At this point, attentive readers might be asking themselves, "Doesn't Amazon have to worry about Prime viewers who watch in their browsers?" After all browsers are built on open standards, and anyone can make one, so there should be browsers that can auto-skip Prime ads, right?

Wrong, alas. Back in 2017, the W3C – the organization that makes the most important browser standards – caved to pressure from the entertainment industry and the largest browser companies and created "Encrypted Media Extensions" (EME), a "standard" for video DRM that blocks all adversarial interoperability:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/09/open-letter-w3c-director-ceo-team-and-membership

This had the almost immediate effect of making it impossible to create an independent browser without licensing proprietary tech from Google – now a convicted monopolist! – who won't give you a license if you implement recording, ad-skipping, or any other legal (but dispreferred) feature:

https://blog.samuelmaddock.com/posts/the-end-of-indie-web-browsers/

This means that for Amazon, there's no way to shift value away from the platform to you. The company has locked you in, and has locked out anyone who might offer you a better deal. Companies that know you are technologically defenseless are endlessly inventive in finding ways to make things worse for you to make things better for them. Take Youtube, another DRM-video-serving platform that has jacked up the number of ads you have to sit through in order to watch a video – even as they slash payments to performers. They've got a new move: they're gonna start showing you ads while your video is paused:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2024/09/20/youtube-pause-ads-rollout/75306204007/

That is the kind of fuckery you only come up with when your victory condition is "a service that's almost so bad our customers quit (but not quite)."

In Amazon's case, the math is even worse. After all, Youtube may have near-total market dominance over a certain segment of the video market, but Prime Video is bundled with Prime Delivery, which the vast majority of US households subscribe to. You have to give up a lot to cancel your Prime subscription – especially since Amazon's predatory pricing devastated the rest of the retail sector:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola

Amazon's founding principle was "customer obsession." Ex-Amazoners tell me that this was more than an empty platitude: arguments over product design were won or lost based on whether they could satisfy the "customer obsession" litmus test. Now, everyone falls short of their ideals, but sticking to your ideals isn't merely a matter of internal discipline, of willpower. Living up to your ideals is a matter of external discipline, too. When Amazon no longer had to contend with competitors or regulators, when it was able to use DRM to control its customers and use the law to prevent them from using its products in legal ways, it lost those external sources of discipline.

Amazon suppliers have long complained of the company's high-handed treatment of the vendors who supplied it with goods. Its workers have complained bitterly and loudly about the dangerous and oppressive conditions in its warehouses and delivery vans. But Amazon's customers have consistently given Amazon high marks on quality and trustworthiness.

The reason Amazon treated its workers and suppliers badly and its customers well wasn't that it liked customers and hated workers and suppliers. Amazon was engaged in a cold-blooded calculus: it understood that treating customers well would give it control over those customers, and that this would translate market power to retain suppliers even as it ripped them off and screwed them over.

But now, Amazon has clearly concluded that it no longer needs to keep customers happy in order to retain them. Instead, it's shooting for "keeping customers so angry that they're almost ready to take their business elsewhere (but not quite)." You see this in the steady decline of Amazon product search, which preferences the products that pay the biggest bribes for search placement over the best matches:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/06/attention-rents/#consumer-welfare-queens

And you see it in the steady enshittification of Prime Video. Amazon's character never changed. The company always had a predatory side. But now that monopoly and IP law have insulated it from consequences for its actions, there's no longer any reason to keep the predator in check.

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/03/mother-may-i/#minmax

#pluralistic #amazon #enshittification #ads #prime #ad-tech #discipline

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