#thanks so much for the unintended reference!

[catcze]

?? Oh my god thank you for 4k on this !! 💕💕💕

Imagine being Boothill’s sweetheart before everything went up in flames… he didn’t think you survived, but you did somehow, and you managed to get away from the terror and the flames. And he meets you again, in some far corner of the galaxy.

He’s a galaxy ranger now, with a body made of metal and a core where his heart should be. But he still feels something click when he looks at you, even from the corner of his eye. He doesn't believe what he's seeing at first— he thinks that it must be some bug in his system. Some trick of the light. But despite his doubts he feels his feet move from under him, walking first, then running, until he's pushing other people out of the way and damn near sprinting to get to you before you disappear.

And oh, when he manages to reach you— manages to stop you with a hand on your shoulder, he almost can't believe his eyes. He takes his hat off and presses it to his chest, the same way he had done when he asked for your hand a lifetime ago.

If he could cry, he thinks, he’d be a blubbering mess. 

Because it is you. Because he'd recognize the curve of your cupid's bow and the shine in your eyes even from across a cosmos. Because you're here, against all odds and despite every nightmare he's had. You're here, and you're just as lovely as the day he lost you.

[nichuuu]

Paper Houses

Cho Miyeon x M reader

(1st instalment of The View Between Villages)

Word Count: 18k+ Special thanks to @defmaybe for helping to draw out the best version of this fic.

(All the details? Really? Oh wow. Okay…)

(I’m gonna dissociate myself from this so… “you” is gonna appear a lot. Don’t sweat it cupcake—you’re not actually the one in this mess. 

It’s just a bad habit of mine, that’s all.)

--

(You’re lucky. You get the sweet start to it all. For what it’s worth: sweetness is a fucking deceiving concept when you have rose-tinted lenses.)

“You know: out of all the men I’ve dated, you cook the best.”

You raise an eyebrow as you flip the grilled cheese in your skillet. Frankly, there’s nothing to be impressed about over grilled cheese and tomato soup. Cheese sandwiched between two evenly buttered slices of bread, grilled till golden brown and served with a side of hot tomato juice in a bowl. Literally everything has been prepared for you and packed neatly into some package in a grocery store. All you did was heat it up and add a few of your own ingredients.

“Is that a compliment or a flex?” you ask, turning your gaze away from your skillet momentarily to look at Miyeon as she replies. Her face isn’t gonna add value to her answer, but you just like looking at her. She is hot after all. 

She scoffs and takes a sip of her coffee. “Jeez… Can’t a woman compliment her boyfriend in peace?”

You’ve had this conversation before, but you like to entertain her.

“This woman can’t,” you tell her, making sure she can see the smirk on your face as you turn back to the sandwich. You wave your spatula in the air as you speak, almost like you’re referring to PowerPoint slides. “She’s too weird about everything. Never take her seriously.”

“Oh, so we’re just gonna call me weird and neglect the fact you keep your butter in that?” she exclaims, pointing at the butter bell on top of your fridge. It was a Christmas gift from your mom last year, and even though you did think it was weird at first, you have not gone back to keeping your butter in blocks. 

“You keep my fucking butter bell out of this,” you warn, and it’s half joking and half serious. 

(No one fucks with your butter bell.)

Miyeon chortles. You don’t need to look at her to know that she’s raising her hands in the air when she says, “jeez man. Didn’t know you guys were tight like that…”

And it’s stupid exchanges like this that make you appreciate her company by bounds. It’s lonely in the apartment when she’s out being famous; really nice to have her around for the holidays, albeit for a short time. It’s been a while since she’s been back. There’s much to catch up on over an 11 am brunch. You don’t know why she’s up so damn early today, cause normally you guys sleep till the late afternoon, then go figure out what to eat for dinner before lazing around in the apartment.

So with cheese falling from the corner of her lip, she gives you the latest developments in her life. Then it’s your turn, and you're glad to say that nothing’s really of interest in either of your updates. That’s usually for the better: sometimes the news you give each other can be a little heart-attack-inducing, so it’s better that your lives are pretty bland.

“You know,” she says as she wipes her mouth. “I might just keep dating you for your food,” she tosses her tissue onto the dining table and lets out a sigh. “Fucking delicious.”

You scoff and sip on your coffee. “Bet you told that to all the guys,” you reply wryly. “Probably gets them real excited, huh?”

She grins. It’s cheeky, mischievous, maybe even a little naughty. “Not telling.”

“You don’t tell me a lot of things,” you chuckle, and you’re low-key unsurprised to hear a little bit of unintended bitterness in your voice. “Not that it matters or anything… I just value communication.”

Oh, you’re petty. So fucking petty that it makes your skin crawl a little.

Miyeon’s unfazed. 

“Don’t get your tits in a tussle, pretty boy,” she muses. She folds her arms and leans into the table. “You’ll know more when I trust you more. For now: I’ll give you information as I please.”

And you kick yourself because you forget she can be a bit of a handful herself.

“Ugh, what will I ever do with this mysterious woman?” you smirk, resting your elbow against the table as you lean in as well. To be perfectly clear: you’re not mad at her. Her secrecy just bugs you out a little, and she knows it. “Such little knowledge on such a hardened beauty… must be tough to really crack her open and figure her out.”

You love her eyes, and you love to make them roll (in multiple contexts). They kinda gleam as she tilts her head. “Fine… I’ll give you something since you’re so damn desperate,” she drums her fingers against her cheek while her chin nestles itself into her palm. “What I’m about to give you is gonna change your life in so many ways. It’ll probably redefine your whole damn existence.”

You express your interest by leaning in a little more. Miyeon checks her six—like she isn’t in the comfort of her own home—before leaning in. She’s all clandestine. You have no idea what for. 

“You ready?” she checks. And you know she isn’t expecting an answer, but you nod nonetheless. She checks her left and right for good measure. You never know: maybe your lamp is listening.

“I’m aching for cock right now.”

And you guys don’t even make it to the couch.

It’s on the floor next to your table where she has your face in her hands, and she’s kissing you aggressively. She’s properly kissing you, and it makes you knock the back of your head against the floor a little, but it’s really not too big of a deal. 

She lifts her lips off yours and smirks. “For the record: it’s your fault that we aren’t fucking on the couch.”

“Yeah, and I actually paid rent early for once,” you shoot back sarcastically. “And would you mind helping me clean the yacht I most definitely own on my luxurious salary? Thanks a bunch, honey.”

She scoffs and rolls her eyes. She knows you’re full of shit, but she’s full of the same shit as you. Form a shit pile or something, maybe even a shit mountain if you feel like it. You could really go on for a while about how you two can talk for hours, but that’s not the main event.

The real deal comes when she has her hand beneath the waistband of your pants, slithering down to the very thing she aches for. She has that smile on her face, the one that kinda says “Oh I’m gonna love this” or “you’re gonna love this” or maybe even both. There are ways to distinguish the messages by looking at her eyes, but you’re a little too lazy to go figure it out right now. And before someone calls you a bum, you can’t help it: she has her hand on your cock and a piercing gaze trained on you. How about you try and focus on discerning implicit messages when there's a hot woman touching you in the right places?

“How are you hard already?” she asks, a hint of a giggle in her tone as she presses your shaft against your body. There’s barely any space down there, yet she makes it work so easily. “I didn’t even, like, do anything yet.”

“Well,” you hum, just as she starts to squeeze your member, appling that toe-curling pressure to your tip and smiling as you strain a little. “I can kinda see your tits through your shirt.”

Miyeon raises her eyebrows. She doesn’t even look at her shirt. “Oh?” and she starts to pump. “I didn’t notice that…”

“Totally,” you grunt. “Like how you don’t notice that your shorts are barely shorts?” you continue, but there’s something more bugging you. “And at least pull my pants down if you’re gonna jack me off, would you?”

Miyeon snorts, but compiles nonetheless. She gets your pants and boxers off with ease. It’s one swift motion (it’s practiced grace really), and she gets back to the task at hand before she was so rudely interrupted. 

“What does seeing my tits have anything to do with you?” Her motions are languid and fluid, steady and flowing like a stream. She doesn’t need to look. She doesn't need to guess. She knows you like the back of her hand. “Does it turn you on? Excite you?”

You have it in you to roll your eyes before they shut. “Stop asking these fucking ridiculous questions.”

“It's a basic inquiry.” She laughs in this aloof tone that you know is paired with the most devious of smiles. “So you won’t let me compliment you and you won’t let me ask questions? Tsk. Chivalry is dead.”

Miyeon goes a little faster, adds a twist of her wrist. This is just her hand, mind you, and it’s already ruining you in a way that only she is capable of. The tender touch of Cho Miyeon is something no woman you’ve met could ever replicate, and it takes you to places that you can only visit with her. Those fingers are magic, that mouth is magic—hell, everything about her is magic. 

“Please,” you manage to quip past the jolts of magic being sent through your system. “We both know that you have the answers to all the questions you just asked.”

She giggles—playfully, you might add. This is all a part of the game you play with her; this is the way Miyeon’s cookie crumbles. “Maybe I do, maybe I don’t. Who cares?”

You care: not a lot, but enough to make this as humorous as you want it to be. You kinda only give two shits because it lets you be kinda petty with her, but not that you externalise it or anything. You just have it pent up in you for the fun of it.

“Anyway,” she muses, halting the strokes of her hand to your cock. “Have I told you about how much I wanted you to fill me while I was filming?”

You take a moment to breathe. “No… But do tell.”

And gets to that, but not before ridding herself of her shirt first. By technicality, it’s your shirt, but it shrunk in the dryer at some point, so it just became hers. She gets into the details, the nitty gritty; tells you exactly what she’s imagining during the filming of her Music Video all while you kind just sit there and ogle at her chest. She takes her time, covers the stuff that you don’t really need to know but it’s kinda hot to know — things like “ugh, I needed you to bend me over the hood of that car and just fuck me at that point…” — because you admittedly get off knowing that she ever thinks about you that way and… God, you’re rambling aren’t you? Still pretty fitting though: it’s the way Miyeon talks when she’s thinking nonsense.

“Ugh. Now I’m wet,” she mutters. She speaks as if it’s your fault that she went on rambling about her fantasies with you. “You know you make me like, really horny right?”

“Oh no… Whatever will I do?” you’re really just rolling with it. Not because you want to, but because you want to get this bit where you tease each other over and done with. It’s kinda like marinating meat in the way it makes the sex a little hotter. Truthfully: you’re aching for her. Really: you want nothing more than to just get her pinned beneath you and writhing on your wooden floor. 

And frankly? You could do all of that right now.

So it’s with a bit of grace (and some dexterity) that you flip the positions: now you’re kneeling over her while she is the one that lies on the floor, if that makes any sense. Miyeon isn’t shocked by your sudden movements, more so delighted by the fact that you finally gave in to your carnal urges and just went for it. She smiles, knowing full well that she’s done something that's gonna give her that fuel she needs for the week. You know: sex that’s the opposite of soft; some shit that fulfills some wild thoughts. 

“Gotta say, you’re quicker than usual,” she has that cocky smirk on her face. You wanna wipe it right off her face, and you know just how. “Normally you’re all talk, no– Oh…”

You like that it really only takes a finger pressed against her panties to shut her up. It’s not much, but it’s enough to make her shut her eyes and shut up for a moment. The spot you press on is damp, soaked in that sweet slick. Gently, you trace the outline of those swollen folds. “You were saying?”

She has it in her to laugh—a breathy chortle. “Fuck you.”

“I’m working on that,” you fire back. Your cock twitches a little when you see her jolt in response to your touch. Your finger pressed down on that one spot that makes her weak, and it really works wonders: an airy gasp slips past those thin, luscious lips. The number of times you’ve kissed those lips swollen is not a number countable with 10 fingers.

Miyeon sighs, and it’s a mix of pleasure and frustration in her breath that humors you. She relaxes into the floorboards, her hips rock, her cunt rubs against your fingers. She's searching for some friction — sweet release in lewd movements. You let her move for a bit, watch her shake like the bough of a willow tree as she pleases herself against your fingers. 

“Enjoying yourself?” you quip. 

“Yeah..” she hums. “Passing time while you’re still not taking these shorts off me.”

Of course… How could you be so forgetful?

You stop for a moment to help her wriggle out of her clothing. It isn’t one of her most graceful moments, but it quickly passes. The shorts join your pants on the floor. Her panties are pink — not that subtle shade of pink or even like a darker version of pink. It’s Barbie fucking Pink.

“So we’re feeling loud today, huh?” you ask, letting your finger trail the lacy parts of the fabric. Miyeon smiles.

“Sana gave them to me,” she explains, not the least bit sheepish that her damp spot is visibly darker than the rest of her underwear. “Hope this doesn’t affect you in your work or anything…”

You feel the corner of your lip turn up. “No, no… Of course not,” you assure her, all while you let your hand slip between the fabric and her skin. You can feel her shudder, then you feel the heat of her cunt at the tip of your fingers. “You caught me on the right day actually… Pink’s in my rotation of favourite colours this fine morning.”

“Right,” her voice has a lilt. It’s shuddering a little too. “I knew that… Definitely had that in mind.”

You laugh. Your index fingers slip between her folds. She moans. 

You lower yourself, capture a swollen, taut nipple in your mouth. The sweet suction you deliver makes her gasp. Her hand finds itself in your head.

It’s all quite rhythmical, almost like a routine for the two of you. The way your bodies react to each other feels so natural that you think it might just be second nature at this point. You know her body: you’ve memorised the dips and curves and tender spots; the hot spots, the warm parts and the best parts. She knows you—the way you think, the way you talk; the way you play with her and the things you want to do with her. It would be safe to say that you guys practically have PhDs in the subject of each other, but that’s not a fair statement because you’re both a little more complicated than you let on. That keeps the sex exciting; it makes you crave each other a little more than last time. 

“One or two?” you whisper, letting your finger dip in and out of her lips and getting it all wet in her slickness. She takes a moment to think, or maybe she’s taking a moment to really soak in the teasing. Either way: she takes some time to reply. 

“Two,” she shifts herself a little lower, her clit pressing into the base of your middle finger. It makes her sigh — a low, kinda sonorous escape of air through her lips. “I hope you trimmed your nails this time.”

“That last time was a minor mishap,” you admit. You kinda want to pull your hands out to double-check, but you’re too mired in the moment to assuage your worries. “Don’t worry. I’ve got it all under control.”

She beams like the damn sun. “Good. I like it when you’ve got the reins.”

And that makes you suck in some air through your teeth. 

(God, does she know how to try you on.)

Your digits push themselves inside of her. They’re wrapped in her tight warmth, snug as a bug in a rug or whatever. You love the way her abs kinda flex as your fingers introduce themselves to her insides. It makes the best parts of her pop. Her chest rises a little more than the last time, her breaths becoming a little longer and more drawn out as your fingers explore her like always. The way she jolts when you get to that one spot at the roof of her pussy tells you that she has been primed and ready for this moment, loaded up like a shotgun and the trigger is really just any part of you that makes her cum. It could be your fingers, your tongue, your dick, your thigh—any part of you that can get her to that sweet high. Of course: you’re more than happy to assist. And so your mouth latches itself back onto her breast, tongue licking and swishing and flicking the swollen nipple atop her small yet generously sized breast. You relish the way it feels in your hand as you cup it—not too firmly and not too gently—and give it a squeeze, enjoying how the flesh spills out a little between your fingers but still fits in the palm of your hand.

“How do you only get better at this?” she hisses through her teeth. “I mean, I just saw you last week but… Oh god…”

You remove her nipple from your mouth. “Art is honed. This is art.”

She laughs, then throws her head back to let out a moan. “Well I’ll be damned,” her eyes close as she speaks, resting themselves for a bit so that she can enjoy the feel of your fingers in the best part of her slick. “Paint me like one of your French girls then.”

And you kinda have to kiss her after that. It’s a good line… and she’s, like, smoking hot right now.

You can’t track the exact moments where she starts to blue screen on you, but you can guess it's somewhere between you pinching her nipple and when you slide a third finger into her. The pressure, the stretching—it’s, like, everything she wants as of right now. She lets out this choked-up cry that you like to hear, the supple curve of her back growing more defined as she arches just a little more. She doesn't hold back, she never does. When you’re making her feel good, you can bet some good money that she’ll let you know. She’ll find her own way to express herself, be it through sound or action or words—sometimes a combination of all three. 

The way she feels around your fingers—delicate squeezing and sweet pressure around your digits as they stretch her to new lengths—is nothing short of enthralling. You can feel her pulse around you, the dull throb of her heartbeat as it beats for the sole purpose of getting all that blood rushing into the right areas. Your hand is kinda messy, fingers coated down to your knuckles in the sweet substance from her heat. Miyeon starts to writhe, squirm. A whine leaves her mouth. It’s followed by another, and another, and another—keeps going till the whiny stream ends with a guttural moan. 

Her legs close around your wrist. Her throat bobs.

“Mmph… baby…” her hand flails a bit as she tries to search for you. She catches your shoulder and her nails dig in. “Your mouth… I want your mouth on me.”

You always loved how forthcoming she is. 

“Miyeon…” you drawl, and this next bit is really just for the fun of it. “What’s the magic word?”

She laughs softly through the pleasure, lets a smile grace your eyes. She doesn’t fight it; she wants it—wants you. She just wants you in any shape or form. Any version of you will do; she’ll take all the different sides of you in a heartbeat. All she needs is you. “Please.”

You’ve never found so much delight in hearing that word. Kinda makes you want to hear it again.

“I can’t hear you,” your thumb presses down onto her clit. Her thighs start to twitch. 

“Please!” she yells that magic word in the form of a shout this time. Your cheeks hurt from how widely you’re beaming.

You retract your fingers. They come up to your mouth so you can taste her off of them. She’s nothing short of delicious, and you can kinda tell that she knows it because she’s smirking as she watches you clean off yourself.

“How are we feeling about the samples?” she has that proud gleam in her eye. “Pineapple’s been in my diet as of late… Just wondering if anything’s different.”

You smack your lips. “Picking up on a little tang here… Can’t be sure though.”

Her hands slide down to her hips, thumbs hooking into the band of her panties and pulling them down her thighs. “No worries. There’s more where it came from.”

The gall of this girl is insane, you’re thinking, smirking as you assist the journey of her underwear down her slim, milky legs. Like all your other clothing, it’s tossed aside. 

Miyeon spreads thighs, bends her knees so that her feet are flat on the floor.  You get in position, let your palms slide down her body with careful consideration: run your hands over the sensitive parts of the stomach, skim that one portion of her inner thigh that makes her shiver. She watches—waiting and anticipating while failing to keep her excitement off her face. 

She is glistening, swollen and plump to your eyes, kinda far ahead considering that you just used your fingers. She’s eager, unashamed and more proud than embarrassed about her arousal. Her legs shift a bit. She looks at you, a fingernail between her teeth as she exhales sharply when your thumb traces the outline of her pussy, careful in its endeavor as you feel the muscles around her slick tense up in response. Oh she’s so damn impatient right now, but she lets you get away with all of this because it gets her off a little harder; the teasing is just part of the show and the climax will probably follow pretty soon, fast and hard

“You’ve been looking forward to this, huh?” you remark, watching as her eyelids flutter when you put a little pressure with the pad of your thumb. 

“Mhm…” she replies. It’s a low hum, one that resonates in her throat rather pleasantly. “You have no idea…”

You laugh. Your eyes roll towards the ceiling then set themselves back on her. “Please… We both know I have some idea,” you stop your thumb on her clit, and you begin to draw small circles around it. “You did tell me” —and you have to pause for a bit to use your other hand to press down on her pelvic area, stopping her from jolting her hips up to get that sweet sensation of your thumb rubbing her swollen nub. She whines a little, a soft plea following suit— “about all the things you wanted to do with me.”

She desperately tries to shift herself, press herself a little more against you. The smooth wooden floor hinders her, the lack of friction failing to aid her. Her brows furrow. She’s frustrated. “Yeah, well, if you know what I want so much, why aren’t you fucking getting to it?”

You wink. “Relax. I’m just letting the meat tenderise.”

“Oh shut it you fucking—  Mmmph!”

And the way you part her with your tongue, it’s like she’s butter and you’re a hot knife slicing her open. You're slow with it, and you don’t stop when Miyeon’s thigh stiffens against your palm, or when she squirms a little and almost got your tongue derailed from its track. You know what makes her tick, what makes her hit the octave and gets her nice and messy for you. If anything gets Miyeon going more than actually fucking—it’s definitely gotta be when you get your tongue on her folds. 

“You’re never gonna let me finish my sentences, are you?” she laughs breathily. You watch her abdomen as it rises and falls together with the quick breaths she takes.

“Dunno…” you nuzzle your face in her folds for a little, giving her time to say whatever she wants for a bit. “You did say that chivalry is dead.”

From your bottom up view of her, you can tell that she just rolled her eyes. “No comment. You won’t let my finish it any— oh my fucking god.”

Now it’s the flat of your tongue against her clit that stops her dead in her tracks. Her juices have begun to lather your tongue in their addictive taste, drawing you into her just a little more with each lap of your tongue. You suck on one of her folds, then your tongue is inside her, and she moans, her hand finding a spot on the back of your head that she can grip on to. She calls you crazy, calls you baby, runs her fingers through your hair. Your tongue dips in, circles, laps; your nose brushes against all the right spots of her skin and it draws out these almost sob-like, quiet sounds from her chest and she’s… Fuck, she’s amazing.

“I might take a while,” she whispers to you. You call malarkey, but play along nonetheless.

“Fuck yes,” your tongue swipes the entirety of her in a long, broad stroke. “Please, by all means princess. Take your time,” you don’t think you could ever sound as enthusiastic as you did right now. She pushes you down a little harder onto her slit, and you delight in how she squirms when you push your tongue a little deeper between her folds.

Her nails start to dig into your scalp a bit, and she starts pushing you down onto her cunt a little more.

“You know,” she speaks with this half-whisper-half-gasp, the type of tone that tells you that she’s fighting to stay in control of her own body. “I— mmph… Sometimes I lock myself in the changing room and just get off to the thought of you eating me.”

You suck on the other fold that you neglected earlier. “Oh yeah?” and you get a finger inside of her. She cries out, abdomen flexing deliciously as she turns pliant under the pressure of your finger getting a hold of that sweet spot. You can feel the heat—it feels like your skin is gonna melt. “Bet you get off real hard to it, maybe even harder than you will in like, two minutes.”

“Two?” she tries to sound a little defiant, but her voice is cracking and it’s really not working out in her favour. Your finger is barely pushing up by the way, yet it seems like she’s got thousands of pascals of pleasure weighing down on every part of her being. “Don’t put yourself on a fucking pedestal… I am nowhere close.”

You hum in reply, saving your energy to suck on her clit. And it’s almost like she’s spring-loaded in the way her thighs clamp around your ears immediately after. Her fingers eat into your scalp, a light, searing pain growing across your head as you kiss her right fold, then her left. You can tell that there’s liquid burning heat running through her body, spilling all over her. Miyeon tries to hold on, tries to prolong this for a little more by getting her nails deep in your scalp. But she’s falling apart, coming undone with each second.

“Baby.”

“One minute left,” you put your lips back around her clit. Her head thumps against the floorboards.

“I—can’t.”

“Ugh. Hate it when you lie.”

“I’m sorry—”

“Just fucking cum.”

And she ruins herself. She loses sense of the world for a bit—convulsing and twitching on the floor while you continue to lick her. No cry leaves her mouth; a strained, choked up phonic gets caught in her throat and refuses to dislodge. Her back arches, her thighs flex. Her world fades for a bit. 

Give or take: she takes a minute or so. When she gasps for air, you know she’s come back down to earth. You welcome her with a kiss to her abdomen as you rise up. Her cheeks are rubicund—flushed and making her glow as she smiles at you. She softly captures your cheeks in her hands.

“Okay,” she huffs, taking deep breaths as she strokes your face with her thumb. “Out of all the men I’ve dated: you can cook and eat the best.”

“Twenty dollars says that you’ve said that to at least four guys,” you muse. “Maybe five if I’m generous.”

She closes her eyes for a moment. Inhales. Exhales.

“Hand on my heart,” she uses one hand to push some hair out of her face. “I’ve only said this to you.”

Ignorance is bliss. Believing her is a sort of ignorance.

You willfully let yourself be blissful because you can.

--

(Then fast forward a little. Maybe like, three hours? Or however long it takes for you to have a nap and a shower to get ready to go out.)

“Are you seriously going out in that?”

And you have to stop at the door. You know that tone all too well.

“What is it this time?” you grumble, turning around to face the bed so that she can get a full biopsy of your outfit. It isn’t a bad outfit in your honest opinion, and you’re no stranger to horrible (unintentional) attempts at making fashion statements. Colour-blindness is a hereditary curse; it’s not your fault that you can’t tell that this shade of blue doesn’t work with that shade of grey and whatnot. “I swear I wore this a week ago and you said nothing.”

Miyeon slips out from under the covers. In your T-shirt, she saunters with purpose and urgency as she makes her way over. She stops in front of you and takes your tie into her hands. “It’s either you lose this tie or do something else to this already god-forsaken outfit.”

You consider the options for a hot minute. You’re kinda proud of this outfit—it took a lot of time and vetting through Miyeon to get it planned out and everything. The tie was kind of a staple piece—as important as the shirt or trousers. To hear that (in essence) you looked like shit admittedly dealt a blow to your ego, but why be petty when you can be cavalier?

“Whatever,” you reply, making no effort to stop her from trailing a nail up your shirt. “I couldn’t really care less about how this woman perceives me tonight. Not even into her anyway.”

Miyeon chuckles. The finger on your chest wraps itself around the top of your tie. “That’s an option as well,” she adjusts the knot, though it doesn’t look like she’s doing it to make you look better. “But can I give you one more alternative?”

“By all means, princess.”

She tugs on your tie, pulls you close. Your lips are just centimetres away from hers. You get a whiff of her scent. She’s using the shampoo you bought her. 

“Stay home,” she makes sure that her voice is kinda breathy, tickles your face as she lets the phonics dissipate into warm air. “Skip the date. You have a smoking hot girlfriend to fuck anyway.”

Oh and it takes you just about everything to stop you from grabbing her by the face and just kissing her. It's so easy: reach forward, get her face (or waist) in your hands and just smash her lips against yours. You know she’s thinking the same thing; but she’s waiting on you, anticipating what you’re going to do next. It’s a sick little game the two of you play, but it’s fun as hell and really doesn’t get boring in the near future.

“You know what my mom would say…” you begin, and you know she’s gonna stop you.

“Say you're sick”—bingo motherfuckers. She owes you five bucks—“tell her that you got the cold and so you can’t show up.”

“Expended on that one… And the work emergency one too,” you regretfully inform her. “And no: I will not be telling them that we’re actually a thing—“

“Cause you want to protect me and blah blah…” she interjects yet again, her fingers moving up and down, closing against her thumb in mimicry of a mouth moving. It’s petty, kinda frustrating—but it’s Miyeon. She’s a handful to deal with at times, but at least she’s your handful to deal with. “Been running the same jig for a little too long, tiger. I know your game.”

“I know,” you admit. “I’m a one-trick Pony and my carrot is you. What’s new?”

She chortles at that, and you take that moment to really get a good look at her because by god is she beautiful. Head-turner, eye-widener, heart-racer — not to be a bore, but again: it’s Miyeon. There’s a lot more about her that you could synthesize into words, but you won’t (not because you don’t want to or anything; but it’s more about the fact that you probably don’t have enough time to get someone to understand her.)

Cause here’s the thing (about her, you and both of you): she’s just as human as anyone, and that means she’s just about as complicated as anyone. You’ve got a story, she’s got her’s, and the two cross somewhere to form a midpoint before they start running parallel to each other before meeting again and running together and… You get it, don’t you?

No? Fuck. 

Okay. She may or may not be able to hold down a relationship; and you may or may not have been able to secure a relationship. You kinda get drunk with her over this revelation one night and you may or may not have joked over the fact that maybe you should get together. And then you may or may not have had the hottest sex you’ve had in years before you may or may not have realised that she’s the best thing to happen to you. It’s all kinda hypothetical to you cause you’re still processing the fact that this is all real. Still wondering if it’s a fling cause it’s only been about 3 months since this started.

(Calm down cupcake, no one likes a party pooper who prods on details in the midst of a story. It’s just… Ugh. The story behind how the two of you know each other is so boring and complicated—full of unnecessary exposition like this whole bit really. It hurts to retell it, so here’s a summary: she used to date your roommate, roommate moved out after they broke up, she stayed and hanged around you, here you are now. Fuck the details, there’s no room for it really. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.)

“Save the charisma,” she tells you, really putting on some breath behind her words. “I prefer it when you use it in bed.”

And you kinda have to kiss her after that. It’s a good line… and she’s, like, smoking hot right now.

The kiss kinda blurs the line between passionate and sweet (if there even was a line to begin with). It’s quite aggressive, a little tender but also a wee bit emotional. It makes you a little bitter, but don’t get it twisted: you love this girl with all your heart and you’d do anything to stay with her. It’s just that you’d love—more than anything—to lose the shirt and pants you’re wearing to make out with her, and then let things flow as they do. Unfortunately, your parents really want you to meet this girl, and you have to get going or you’ll probably get cut from the will or something.

She tries again. “Stay…”

“Miyeon—”

“I fucking need you… Please.”

It’s just so fucking tempting…. But there are only so many lines you can cross before you find yourself in trouble with border patrol. And if there's anything you hate more than lectures, it’s lectures from your mother.  

Her lips graze yours, hovering just millimeters away. She wants to kiss you—bite your lower lip and pull you into an undoubtedly sloppy lip lock. That will end with your hand somewhere on her body that gets the ball rolling (and we all know where that ball goes). She has it in her to do it; she has the right, the means and the fucking autonomy (and audacity). She’s just waiting on you, seeing what happens when she plants the seed of an idea in your head and waters it a little. 

Unfortunately for her, you’re too damn terrified of your parents to let that seed grow.

“I‘ll see you later,” you whisper, albeit a little reluctantly. “Call me if anything comes up.”

She understands that she’s lost. Doesn’t stop her from giving you that kiss though. “Don’t keep me waiting tonight… I love you.”

Ugh. She’s one hell of a woman, isn’t she?

--

So get this: this woman that your mother found for you is possibly the most boring person you’ll ever meet. She’s beautiful and all, but she has the personality that has just about the same amount of flavour as food in the west before spices.

She spends the meal talking about her job, and you kinda just fix her with a hundred yard stare and tune out. You couldn’t give a shit about computer security really—never was and never will be into that shit. It doesn’t help that your phone is kinda blowing up at the moment. It’s buzzing all over your thigh in your pocket. Pretty trippy, kinda makes you wonder if Miyeon had just slipped one of her vibrators into your pocket.

You excuse yourself to the bathroom at some point. You’re not sure how long she’s been yapping your ear off for, but it kinda doesn’t matter. All you’ve gotten from this meal is really just a handful of nonsense and a migraine. 

Anyway: it’s in the confines of the bathroom store that you check on the ruckus in your pocket. The screen lights up and you find that the spasming of your phone was caused by a combination of posts from a news outlet and from Miyeon. She takes precedence over the news.

Miyeon//8:01 pm: I swear to you I have no idea what’s going on 

Miyeon//8:01 pm: I’m getting this at the same time as you

Miyeon//8:02 pm: I don’t know what’s happening. Please come home.

And the way you open your news app almost instantly makes you feel like you’re all too familiar with this. It’s not a headline, but it might as well be from the way it makes your eyes widen and your breath stop for a second. 

You blink. You blink again. 

The words don’t change. 

Suddenly, you have a valid reason to get out of this dinner.

(How you get home is a little fuzzy, but that’s not really the important part. 

What? The headline? Oh you know it, don’t you cupcake? It was literally the only thing on people’s minds for some reason, as if an idol dating an actor is something unheard of.)

“What the fuck?” you ask when you step through your apartment door.

She sighs as you remove your coat and hang it behind your door. “Look… I’m just as confused as you are—”

“An actor?” you interject. You’ll admit that it’s a little rude, but you’re really just trying to make sense of this as fast as possible. “How long have you known this guy?”

“That’s the thing. I don’t,” she huffs. “I swear to you, hand on my heart and the other on the bible, I am not in love with that man.” She says. “I barely even know the fucker, never talked to him in my life.”

It’s a little hard to look at her right now. You have lots of things to say; lots of feelings and lots of thoughts. If you’re really gonna be honest with yourself: you’re scared, hurt and a little confused. Miyeon’s good at lying—a little too good for your liking. Pair that knowledge with your insecurities, and congrats: you’ve just given birth to multiple insecurities. They’re like little demons running amok in your chest. It’s suddenly hard to breathe.

You can’t do this with her now. Not when all this is all so fresh and new. 

But she catches your arm as you try to walk past her. Her grip is firm, pleading. 

“Please,” she utters, letting her hand slide down your arm to let her fingers wrap around your hand. “Trust me on this.”

You want to. You really want to. And so it hurts you to ask, “Am I just another fling?”

You can see it in her eyes when she realises the motivation behind the question. She doesn’t take long to come to the epiphany—just a little less than a second before her eyes soften and her lips part a little. Her expression scares you. You want to run from this all together and leave it to another day, but God knows that you won’t be getting any sleep with this weight in your head. It’s comical, almost hilarious if it weren’t for the fact that it’s your relationship with her on the line.

You like to think that she can’t express her answer into words, so she kisses you instead. You’ll never know why she chose to kiss you, but it's sweet and so powerful that you can kinda live with that gap in your knowledge. You may or may not have teared a little, and you may or may not have melted into her lips a little too quickly. What you can say for certain: when you find yourself back in those eyes, panting with your face between her hands—the words ‘I love you’ escape your mouth faster than you can think. You don’t say it for the sake of it; you say it cause you mean it. You want her to know that you’ll fight for this relationship, that you’ll fight for her.

And it makes her smile. 

“I’m like, in love with your goofy ass,” she mutters, thumb tracing a path along your cheek. “So don’t you ever think that I’d drop you for some slick-back fuck face.”

That’s more than enough for you. Her smile is contagious as you hold her waist. “Crude. I love you, Miyeon.”

“Yeah. I heard you the first tim—”

Of course: you don’t wait for a finished reply to kiss her. It’s a practice, almost a common tongue at this point.

Miyeon lets her hands fall, gets her arms around your neck while you reacquaint your lips with hers. She’s lovely, fucking divine and maybe even a little addictive—straight up dangerous if you���re to sum it up. You wonder, for a second, if you’re being manipulated, and it’s really only for a second because she’s got her teeth in your bottom lip and she’s dragging them towards her. She wants more—more of you and less of this need to prove her love. She touches your chest, palm flat against your flesh as she deepens the kiss. Ignorance is bliss. Believing her is a sort of ignorance. Kissing her deepens that ignorance, makes you all the more blissful.

“I need you,” you breathe, unashamed by your blatant desire to have her right now. Really: you can’t get enough of her smell right now. “Please Miyeon… Let me be the only one.”

She smiles softly. She runs her fingers through your hair. “Baby, you already are.”

You press your forehead against hers. “I know. But can we just…”

You can’t really verbalise what you want out of this. You want Miyeon, but you don’t just want the idea and concept of her. You long for that connection with her, that union and that closure, not just some fleeting, superficial feelings. This woman is quite literally one of your dreams. It’s selfish to say this, but you want that security—something tangible to know that you’re really hers and she’s really yours, a piece of her that you can hold on to that helps rid your heart of those little demons. You hope she can understand this through your closed eyes.

And something about the way she fixes your hair tells you that she does.

“It’s okay,” she assures you, her other hand finding that one spot on your chest. It feels like it’s touching your heart directly, calming it. “I get it,” her fingers wrap around the knot of your tie, loosening it till it unravels completely. “You’re hurt and scared. Frankly, so am I.”

Miyeon wraps the tie up neatly in her fist. Her hands cross over each other as she reaches down to grab the hems of her shirt. It slips off her, a layer peeled away. Then the tie rolls down from her hand. 

“I want you to know”—she drapes the tie around her shoulders, the thin portion ever so slightly shorter than the broader portion as they hang on either side of those perky mounds—“I will do everything I can to protect you and us.”

She tosses the smaller end across her body, cloth flying over her left shoulder and dangling behind her arm. The broader end is wrapped around her neck—once, twice. 

Miyeon steps closer and takes your hand. The broad end of the tie gets slotted into your palm. 

“And even though I might have to be seen with him,” she coos, and she’s a little clumsy as she reaches for the thin end behind her, but she gets it on her second or third try. “Even though I might have to hold his hand in public,” she slips it between her skin and the loop she’s made, ties it off. “You should know: I am yours.”

She shocks you into silence as always. You know what she’s insinuating. You know that she knows what she’s insinuating. Your eyes search her for consent, and you find that it’s the only thing you can make out behind the veneer of a tender gaze. She checks the makeshift leash she’s made. It’s not coming off anytime soon.

You wrap some of the tie around your hand. Your fingers close around the silky fabric. 

(Just so we’re clear: the tie may look horrible on you, but she looks amazing in it.)

You pull.

And it’s just that. 

Clothes come off, lips meet, sighs fly through the room. Her hands explore you, grab you, pump you; your kisses find the best parts of her, the parts you love the most and the parts she loves attention at. The tie never leaves your hand, and you give it a tug or two when you get your digits in her on the couch. You’ll never forget the way she looks when her head is forced up just after it whips back, the glassy look in her eye as she begs for you, keens for you. Never in your life has anything this debauched been so intimate. You’ve never heard sighs out of you and her so luscious. 

“Princess,” you quite literally growl as you address her. It’s not necessary, but the squelching of your fingers in her slick brings out something in you—a part of you that’s wild and somewhat untamed. “I fucking love the way you moan.”

Miyeon bites down on her lower lip, hard enough to draw blood. “Yeah? She husks, her eyes going half-lidded in pleasure when you get your fingers in the same, soft, tender spot on the roof of her pussy. “It’s all for you. Ngh— A-All yours…”

And you don’t know how you can not believe her at this point.

You pull at the tie. She almost straightens completely. You kiss her. Her moans send pleasant vibrations down your windpipe.

It’s all so perfect. And it somehow gets even more perfect when she cums—waves of heat burning through her system; eyes shut and mouth agape; hands around your neck and your name spilling from her lips in a mix of curses (that mostly contain the word ‘fuck’); body convulsing and twitching in ways that make a low grunt emerge from the depths of your chest as you watch her. She’s beautiful—your beautiful princess.

When it’s over, you let the tie go slack. She crashes against the couch, forcing air back into her lungs with deep breaths. There’s sweat on her face, her body. Your hand finds its place on her tummy as you place small kisses on the corner of her lip, her jaw. Her skin is moist and sticky.

“Have me,” and it’s more so of a demand than a request. “Take me. However you want, wherever you want,” she runs her hands through your hair, “You’re the only one I want.”

You let out a low hum. It lightly vibrates at the base of your throat as you catch her earlobe between your lips. 

“Has anyone told you how fucking beautiful you are?” you can’t help but ask. She searches your face or a minute, then she chortles.

“About half the world,” she replies. “But it means the most coming from you.”

(Oh… That line really means the fucking world to you.)

You kiss her, hard. It’s messy, sloppy, and at some point you guys are scrambling to get on top of each other. She wins at one point, and so she rides you—dropping and rising hard and fast on your cock like a lewd merry-go-round carriage. She’s relentless, letting your cock fill her while she blanks out and just lets herself cry and moan like you don’t have thin walls in your apartment. You let her please herself, throw herself down onto your cock again and again till you decide that it’s your turn to have some fun. The tie is your friend, and you use it to pull her real close to not too kindly hiss your instructions into her ear. 

You’d kill to see the look in her eyes again.

And so you have her against the nearest wall in less than a minute, her back flushed against it and one of her legs bent in the crook of your arm. She reaches between your bodies, grabs your throbbing shaft and rubs your tip against her slit. You feel the heat of her pussy—the desire and depravity that burn in her core. You can’t believe she’s yours.

“I’m gonna put this in me,” she narrates her course of action, all breathy and silky. “It’s gonna fill me, fuck me… Maybe even cum in me.”

“I wouldn’t get ahead of ourselves here,” you whisper, your hand wrapping itself back in the fabric of the tie. “That last part? I dunno… Seems a little optimistic, don’t you think?”

She pushes your head in between her folds—not all the way, but enough to part them. “And why is that?”

You pop your hips, push yourself in a little more. She inhales sharply. 

“I only cum inside good girls.”

The smile that creeps its way onto her face is wicked.

“Trust me,” her hand finds purchase on your shoulder, pads of her fingers digging into the muscle. “I’ll be the best you ever get.”

She puts her weight onto the leg in your arm. You slide into her.

And you both take a moment to enjoy the unity—the feeling of the two of you being joined as one; your out of sync heartbeats that feel like pattering raindrops around your shaft. You want to say something witty, a quip that will get a nice chuckle out of her.

All you can really manage is, “Fuck.”

And in response: “Talk less. Fuck more.”

You draw back, push in. There’s the sopping sound of your shaft going in and out of her, wet pushing into warm flesh. You groan. She sighs. 

Tight, hot, wet, divine.

And it goes without saying: when you pick up the pace, she lets you know that she loves the feeling—the stretching, the filling, the push and pull. It comes to you in the form of pure filth: words that have very little consideration for propriety and no room for decency, something along the lines of “I can’t believe you feel this good. I can’t believe this cock is mine” or “That’s it. Keep filling me. Keep fucking— Oh” or maybe even a mix of both. You can’t be certain, because between you and her, you both know that the undulating of your cock into her tight, creamy heat and the almost torturous pressure around your dick is taking you under by the second. It’s not hard to lose yourself in her when she’s basically a little piece of you. 

Like always, she let her pleasure be known through desperate noises and choked up words. “Keep going, please, fuck—don't stop,” and it sounds like it hurts but you know it’s the other way around. Her pleasure coated tongue makes the lust in her words undeniable, her half-lidded eyes ruining the argument that she’s in any pain whatsoever. You yank on her tie, her body curves closer. You need a better look at that face.

(Trust me, it’s a face you don’t want to forget. 

For lack of a better word: it’s porny as fuck.)

It's a blissful dance – the rhythmic, almost metronomical give of her thighs as you slide yourself home again and again steadily and firmly. The smacking of sweaty and sticky skins colliding is almost evenly paced, sighs and grunts filling the spaces between slaps. She follows your lead, rocks her hips accordingly, angles herself and adjusts so that she can feel you in the deepest parts of her cunt. You lift her leg a little higher, spear yourself a little deeper. You listen to your body, she listens to hers. You give in to your desires.

You don’t mean to blurt it. You don’t mean to make the sex more complicated than it already is. But it happens—it fucking happens and you can’t stop it. 

“I love you,” your voice is nothing more than a rasp. She feels so fucking good around you — squeezing, pulsing and doing every little thing that makes your jaw tighten and you legs tense. “I fucking love you, Miyeon.”

She holds your gaze, then smiles, then nods. She nods vigorously, enthusiastically. “I know… It’s all I’ve ever known.”

Your hand on the tie releases it from your grasp. You catch a bouncing breast in your hand, squeeze the tight and taut nipple with your fingers. The tie shakes violently like a snake writhing, bouncing and swaying with each firm impact against Miyeon’s skin. She mewls, pulls you in, kisses you. She lets herself come undone with her chest flushed against you and your hearts aligned as she lets the cries transfer from your mouth to hers. You pump yourself faster, harder, faster, harder. Your finger digs into the flash near her knee. Your blood is boiling, molten metal spilling over and washing over you—gold rush, acid flux, saturating you in this bliss that numbs you out. You can’t tell where your thrusts start and end. They’re blurred by the heat washing over your eyes. You can’t get enough. The way you fuck her—it feels relentless, merciless, a fire that only burns brighter and can’t be put out, fuelled by the heat of Cho Miyeon flushed against you and the sublime squeeze of her slick heat. Everything about this is hot; everything about her is hot. 

“Don’t you ever let me go,” she hisses. “Fuck— don’t ever leave. This cock is mine. You are mine.”

“Princess, I’d never,” you nuzzle yourself into the crook of her neck, pepper her nicely with kisses. “You. Only you.”

“Yeah,” and her breath is hot on the nape of your neck. “Cause I can’t ever fucking imagine anyone else filling me this fucking good. No one has ever filled me this good.”

And her fricatives feel like acid: Aqua Regia—melting straight through solid gold just to get to you. It makes you burn a little hotter, fuck her a little harder. Your heart burns at the thought of her; your brain melts at the sight of her—glassy-eyed and mouth agape while cock pumps her full of pleasure and want. She finds a spot on your shoulder, whispers her proclamation of love— “I love you I love you I love you— Fuck—”—before she buries her face into your shoulder blade. Her love is an animal call, cutting through the darkness and bouncing off the walls, reaching a soft spot in your heart that you hold for her. Nothing in this world is gonna stop you from turning her into a messy little fucktoy. 

It’s hard to think. It’s hard to breathe. She’s become your world, the only thing you ever want to think about. Anything that isn’t her tight little pussy is irrelevant; what isn’t her thin lips pressed against your shoulder is invalid; no pair of eyes will ever match the glassy, lust-fogged ones that Cho Miyeon possesses. Your pulse is rushing, your head is reeling, your face is flushing. You want her—all of her. You suck hard on the milky skin you’ve caught between your lips, marking her, claiming her. She has no qualms nor worries; she tilts her neck to give you better access to that lovely patch of skin that becomes your canvas. She mewls, presses her forehead harder into your body, grounding herself in the sensation of her skin on yours. 

“I’m gonna fucking fill you, Miyeon,” you drawl. “I’m gonna cum inside this pretty little pussy and make a mess out of you,”

“Yeah, yes,” she’s barely holding it together at this point. “Please. Oh god please.”

Your hips move on their own now, taking liberties without signals from your fried brain as you pump yourself into Miyeon with the sole goal of piping her full of your hot seed. For long, wordless minutes, you're thrusting into her in a mindless, fervent fashion, giving in to your desires and your depravity and fucking her like she’s a doll. You relish the feel of her skin in your palms; the feel of her hands pressed against your chest; the sheer, strained phonetic atrocities that rise from the depths of her throat. Your shaft glistens in the light of the room, slick with her sweet juices as it slips in and out of her hot cunt, spearing into her with depth, making her legs weaker by the second. Miyeon cups your cheek, moans your name. You bury your nose deep in those silky locks of jet black hair. You need every last part of her to be close to you.

She's whimpering, eyes squeezed shut, toes clenching; she’s a coiled up spring, a bundle of nerves waiting to be released. Her bottom lip is between her teeth, her throat bobs. She's coming undone, breaking a little more with each thrust of your cock. You know that she’s cumming before she announces it, and when you fuck her over the point of no return, it’s bliss.

Miyeon melts, head whips back and thumps against the wall, positively combusts on the spot and ceases to hold on to the last bits of herself. She lets herself fall through the pleasure, orgasm almost ripping through her system as she shakes in your grasp. She’s such a precious thing, yet she can look like lust itself when she’s busy cumming all over your cock and whining like her life depends on it. She’s tighter, wetter, even better to fuck. 

She really is the best you’ll ever have.

“Miyeon–”

“Just fucking cum.”

Your line; same effect. You fill her, make a creamy mess of her cunt because you can. You fuck her through it, push your load deeper with each thrust. Your cock pulses, spasms, shoots load after load after load into her pussy till you can’t take it anymore and jitter to a halt, and there’s nothing left but a filthy mess flowing out at the base of your cock where her lips are splayed the widest. It’s a sight for sure. 

(And there really isn’t a word for the moment that the two of you share in that wrinkle in time, that moment where it’s just all warm and fuzzy and you have your forehead pressed against hers.)

You cradle her in your arms, kiss her chest, her jaw, her lips. It’s tender, it’s gentle.

“We’ll figure this out,” she pants through closed eyes. “I promise you: you and me, we’re gonna figure this all out.”

Somehow, you don’t doubt it.

--

(Still here? Great. We’re getting to the good part. Get your special sock out or something.)

So the newest rage of the K-pop scene is the photo of Miyeon kissing him in a car.

It's a publicity stunt—the whole damn relationship. They are supposed to appear in love according to Miyeon, and it was his idea to kiss her. She never consented and he just did it. It’s a pretty lewd photo: up close and personal and all. You can see his lips on hers, his hand on her breast and they’re like, clearly getting it on in three. Pretty steamy if you do say so yourself,

(...)

Oh fucking hell. Who are you kidding describing this photo like you’re just viewing an artwork. It makes your blood boil, and speaking to her after seeing this photo feels like dancing to alarm bells when you feign ignorance and just talk with her like it’s a normal Wednesday. You’re gonna hurt yourself at this rate, but she really means too much.  

She told you that he forced his lips on hers, you believe her to the best of your ability. You kiss her, tell her it’s okay, that she’s doing what she has to do to protect the two of you. She says she’s sorry, that she feels like she’s failed you. You kiss her again—albeit a little half-hearted—and assure her once more that it’s okay. You want to nurse her pain, but you also have your own problems to deal with.

And as if this fucking actor hasn’t interfered enough with your relationship, he has the audacity to call during the make up sex.

Her phone starts to ring when she’s on her hands and knees on your bed, and you’re fucking her into the mattress like she’s some pliant plaything. There's a rage inside you that hasn’t been quenched, and you don’t realise that it’s bringing out that dark side of you till you spank her ass a little harder than you intended to. It doesn’t help that you kinda twitch when you hear her yelp, and it really doesn’t help when she tightens after the second spank. The phone only continues to vibrate next to her head.

“Baby,” she rasps. “My phone…”

“Pick it up,” you hiss. “Pick it up and let whoever the fuck it is hear how you’re being fucked like a slut.”

Degradation has never really been a kink of yours, but you know she’s kinda into it. Even so, you’re not calling her a slut because you consciously want to. You feel like an asshole for being angry, kinda hate yourself a little for not being able to accept that she’s doing what she needs to do. And then you kinda hate her for making you hate yourself and— Ugh. It just gets more complicated the more you try and rationalise it. You can’t stop the hot blood from coursing through your system, fuelling your firm strokes into her tight heat like you’re trying to inject all the hate in your body into her. 

Her hand that was once clawing at the sheets now reaches for her phone. You keep thrusting as she flips it over, keep thrusting as she shows you the caller ID, keep thrusting as she looks back at you with a gaze that says “are you sure?”. You hope she isn’t met by that dark look you often see when you look at yourself in the mirror after a new headline about them hits your screen. It’s funny how one person can flip the idea of make-up sex on its head—turn it from something so tender and beautiful to a spite-fuelled fuck fest that’s gonna make things more complicated. She hasn’t even picked up the fucking phone, but you can hear his sick voice in your head as you drive yourself deeper into her cunt, fuck her harder and faster than you knew you could. She’s in no state to answer the phone, yet her finger taps on the ‘accept call’ button. 

(She would’ve rejected it if she could, but she got into some deep shit the last time that happened. Must’ve been threatened or something for her to pick up the phone while she’s getting fucked.)

“Hello?” she does her best to steady her voice, and she’s doing pretty well considering how loud the smacking of skin against skin is. She presses the phone a little tighter against her left ear. You don’t intend on stopping. Let him hear her being owned by you for all you care. “T-This is a bad… a bad time.”

Damn straight it is. 

Your hand caresses the curve of her ass. You spank her again, making sure that it’s loud and it leaves a red patch on her smooth, creamy skin. She contacts around you, gasps a little as you bend down and pin her down with your weight on her back.

“W-What?”—and it feels like she’s talking to both of you. You hiss into her other ear. “I’m going to fuck you like this,” your voice is actually a snarl, a dark one. Your body is energized by the promise of taking and ravaging the helpless, prone woman beneath you, your words dripping with loathing and your thrusts brimming with spite. “I’m going to fuck you hard and rough, and you’re gonna keep him on the fucking line so he can hear it.”—“No I’m… Jogging.”

She’s terrible at lying. You let her know through each thrust—hard and deep, uncaring for her pleasure or her comfort or anything other than your need to bury yourself again and again inside her body. There’s the need to dominate her, the need to make her yours. You hope this guy can act like he doesn’t care that his supposed girlfriend is being prone-boned by another guy, act like he isn’t totally aware of the fact that Cho Miyeon’s body is never gonna belong to him at any point as long as you’re alive. 

(Keep this between us: but with the way you're going down on her, it feels like the message is being transferred to her and not him.)

You hear indistinct chatter. Miyeon bites down on her lower lip, undoubtedly holding back the stream of cries and sighs and lyrical monstrosities that threaten to burst forth. With her eyes she begs, challenges you to do more. You could be reading her wrong by like, a hundred percent. Doesn't matter, not when you can take every liberty with her body because you couldn’t give more of a shit. There’s more indistinct chatter on the other end of the phone; Miyeon says something along the lines of “no. Don’t buy the choker for me”. You give her a choker—raise yourself up and reach around her to wrap your fingers around her throat. Her whole body tenses when you apply pressure around her windpipe. In no universe does this guy not know what’s going on right now.

Cause she’s there—right there, all choked up and struggling to breathe while the fucker keeps yap-yap-yapping away like he’s some fucking guard dog. It irritates the hell out of you. At some point, he kinda has to hear a squelch or smack or two, maybe even a moan or a cry as well. But he stays on the phone, and not once does Miyeon ever have to address the question of whether she’s being fucked on the other end of the call or not. You thought you were ignorant, but this guy is a whole new fucking level of blissfully ignorant. It feels like his sole purpose is to drive a wedge between the two of you, to make you hate her because you hate him. Again: it’s kinda complicated to say exactly what it feels like to be in this situation. 

And you can imagine the moans she wants to let out. They’ll tumble out of her lips like water down a waterfall, and they’ll mix with the sound of your lips smacking against her skin as you lean back down to kiss her neck, stopping at one spot that you know will be good to mark her and sucking hard. It feels like getting back at her—doing all the things you want to do while she can't speak her mind freely (and you know how tortuous it is for her when she can’t moan while she’s being railed like this). You’re not sure why you would ever need to get back at her when she’s done nothing wrong, but I guess it helps to synthesise and dumb down the emotions you’re feeling at the moment.

“Tonight?” she asks. Then she buries her head into the sheets because she can’t hold back this moan that almost explodes from her chest. You’re not squeezing really hard around her throat, mind you—only enough to make her a little uncomfortable, like a tie has been wrapped around her neck. She's getting off on it though: her walls squeeze you a little tighter; her breaths become more ragged and short. Honestly, she's taking your cock so well, and you communicate this to her with a growl. It makes her shudder a hell lot. 

Her other hand clutches the sheets, spasms. She’s pliant, she always is, but it feels like you can wrack her tiny body with so much more pleasure as you keep a hand around her throat and keep your dick pumping in and out of her. You wish you had a mirror to see that pretty face warping under the heat of her lust. You kinda forget that she’s still calling him when she speaks again, cause she follows up with, “I can’t— I can’t believe…”

And if that damn phone call wasn’t happening, she’d be saying something along the lines of “I can’t believe that you’re fucking me this good”.

“Sorry. I got cut off,” she pants. “Yeah… It’s harder to hear me when I’m running.”

Now she's talking to you. The reply is to him, but she’s addressing you. You take her up on it, and the slapping and squelching start to ricochet off the walls and ceiling. What you’re doing should be considered as a whole sin in itself. Technically, it’s adultery, but you’re not too sure if you can even classify this as something that simple. This is jealousy, hate and love mashed into one—a mix of things that kinda shouldn’t go together when you have a woman who’s quite literally like putty beneath you. It doesn’t help that she's this hot, this tight, this wet. She’s straining her moans, and it’s so cute that you want to choke her a little harder. You don’t do it (just clarifying some doubts here), but you almost do. 

“R-Really?”—you’re almost certain that what comes next is gonna be addressed to you. You can imagine her signing your name off on it—”wow… That must be so fucking good.”

Bingo. Gotta say: she’s kinda smooth with it.

“I’m fine. Out… Out of breath” you don’t know how she manages to keep her voice steady. “Y-yeah… I’m gonna come… Don’t worry.”

You hope that she can hold on.

You don’t know how long more you fuck her for while she’s on the phone. It’s a blur; you kinda only see red and you’re still choking her out even after she hangs up. It’s only when she goes, “Oh, fuck, daddy—!” with this breathless, perverse, pleading tone and a voice that’s so loud; her body unable to do anything other than gasp and moan and urge you to really give it to her, and when she says “fuck me, fuck me, fuck me!” like you’re not doing just that (and only that) at the moment that she’s hung up on him. Now she has every facility available to focus on the rock hard meat she’s receiving. You feel filthy, like you’re doing something wrong.

But hey: the sex is hot and Miyeon’s kinda into it, so you keep going. You keep fucking her into the bed—the same way you would if you were fucking her against the wall or in the shower or against any flat surface, really. It’s twisted, it’s dark, it’s hot; the angle her body is at lets you drive yourself deeper and faster and harder into her wet, tight and hot pussy like you never have before. You’re experiencing a novelty, a new chapter.

(Caveat: is it kinda messed up that you call her a cocksleeve? Not really? Huh.)

“God Miyeon…” you feel like the voice that comes from your throat is not your own. “You’re such a good fucking cocksleeve for me,” and you may or may not be tightening the grip around her throat as you speak. “So tight and wet for me. You’re such a good fuck.”

“Oh daddy, fuck you’re so big and deep in me,” she gasps. She has lots to say, even though air is like a fucking luxury for her. She rarely calls you Daddy, yet she’s using her precious air to do so now. “Fuck, fuck me as hard as you can, daddy! Do whatever you want with me! Own me! Take me!”

You barely recognise the woman she’s become: depraved, sordid and one hell of a hot mess. You love it. It’s fantastic. Fucking fantastic.

And she falls apart under you not long after, writhing and moaning and twitching as this beautiful mess of a woman you’ve made out of her. You want to cum in her, really own her; but your thoughts are fueled too much by the hate in your heart that they're wilder than anything she can ever imagine. 

You pull out of Miyeon, your shaft glistening in the dim light. You get off the bed, pull her away with you. Her mouth opens to say something. You kiss her—shut her up. She moans into your mouth, and you swallow it, bite her lower lip, and it's not rough, but enough to get her attention.

“You’ve gotten enough loads inside your pussy,” you husk. “Get on your knees. I want your mouth.”

She nods, and you relish the disappointment in her eyes. You push down firmly on her shoulders. She goes with the motion, and you're not sure if you can ever get over the image of Miyeon on her knees with her pretty little princess face staring at you with anticipation. You think about fucking her face, letting your cock thrust into the back of her throat over and over and over till you paint her face in a messy spray of cum. 

And you know what? You’ll do just that.

Of course, Miyeon perfectly understands what has to be done. You step up to her. She parts her lips and takes your cock right into her mouth, grasping the base of your cock and pumping it with one hand while she gently cups and squeezes your balls with the other. The pace she launches into is hard and fast; blurring her chocolate hair and your vision—taking the top half of your cock in and out of her wet mouth with rapid urgency while her fingers work your shaft in a corkscrew motion. The suction of her mouth is almost lethal, the seal sublime; and the audacity she has to look up at you while she takes your cock in and out of her mouth is so exhilarating that it makes you weak in the knees. She’s gorgeous, even more so when she’s got cock in her mouth.

Your hand finds a clump of her black, sweaty hair, and you close your fingers around it, holding them in your fist. You push her head down onto your cock, pop your hips and start thrusting with firm, slow strokes. She exceeds every expectation you ever had, adapting to you, changing to please you. Your eyes shut involuntarily. Your brain blocks out all sensations that aren’t the wet, hot cavern of Miyeon’s mouth sealed tightly around your shaft. With the first entry into her mouth her wet tongue is pressed tightly against the underside of your shaft, lathering it with her spit. The backstroke is somehow even better, that pretty little mouth endeavoring to suck you right back in when you draw yourself back out. It feels like time stands still, but Miyeon’s still in motion, and she’s the one making you feel like all the natural laws in the world are being defied.

A small part of you knows that you have to see it happening in order to truly believe it’s all real, so you force your eyes open to watch the spectacle unfolding between your legs. Smoky eyes glazed with pure lust staring right up at you, watering, projecting perverse pleasure with a gaze; hollow cheeks and a seemingly unhinged jaw to accommodate your length; spit leaking from the corners of her mouth, dribbling down her chin.

“Fuck I—” is all you manage to say (or maybe ‘grunt’ is a better word) before your orgasm takes the reins to your body. It overwhelms your senses, but you force your eyes open to watch as you pull Miyeon off your dick just in time. Thick, glistening cum erupts from your tip to land on Miyeon’s face, on her cheeks and nose, painting her smoky features with pearlescent, warm ropes. You paint her face with your hot white seed, and it’s far from an elegant piece of art. She doesn’t look anything like one of the French girls she wanted to be painted like, but the look of utter lust on her needy features is still breathtaking—mouth open, tongue out, eyes closed in delight and bliss.

Ugh, she's one hell of a woman, isn’t she?

And when it’s all over, she takes your cock in her hand and licks off the drops that she’d been deprived of. 

“If you ever do that again.” you love the raspy touch to her voice. The lilt in it is doing wonders too. “I’m gonna make sure that you’ll be calling your mom the next time I blow you.”

You roll your eyes and sigh. “Whatever you say, princess…”

The hate seems to fade. Your heartbeat slows.

Maybe this relationship is salvageable. Maybe you guys can last.

You talk to her about it afterwards and apologise sincerely. She says that she didn’t think much of it when it was happening. Then you guys are at peace again.

(What do you think? How long does the honeymoon last? A month more? 

Two?

Generous.

Try one. Fucking. Week.)

--

“Okay. Hands down: this is the best Jjamppong I’ve eaten.”

The growing pile of clam shells beside her bowl tells you that you did something right. It’s the first time you've made this dish, and there’s always that lingering worry that you fucked up somewhere along the way when you eat it for the first time. The soup seasoning is a little off in some places (you don’t know where exactly), but it’s nothing a dash of fish sauce and some chilli flakes can’t fix.

“I mean,” Miyeon continues, speaking between small yet generous mouthfuls of noodles. “You only get better and better at cooking. I don't know how you do it.”

You give a half-hearted smile. Your noodles have kinda gone cold by now: you’ve been stirring them around with your chopsticks for the past five minutes or so. Appetite has become a luxury for you these days, and it’s one of those days where a new article about him and her comes out, one of those days where you both agreed to put a pin on it and just enjoy life. “Well… It’s a lot of love and care, I guess.”

“You can say that again,” she smiles. “Thank you for making dinner. No one cooks like you.”

“Thank you for cutting scallions,” you say. “No one cuts them like you do.”

She laughs and waves it off, then takes another slurp of her noodles. “I honestly don’t know if I like your tomato soup over this.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. My tomato soups have always been the peak of my cooking prowess.”

“I really don’t know!” she tells you, grabbing another clam from the centre of the table. “This stuff is all smoky and tasty… It just feels like home and I—”

You drop your chopsticks into your bowl. Soup splashes onto the table.

“How do I keep living like this, Miyeon?” you ask. There are only so many pins in your possession and you feel like you’ve used all of them. “I’d love to sit here and talk to you about how I made this meal like everything’s okay, and this is just Thursday and maybe we’ll get ice cream later… But it’s not like that right now.”

Miyeon takes your hand in hers. 

“I can’t pretend like things are the same when everything’s… different,” you close your eyes, take a breath. “I love you, Miyeon. You’re like, the best thing that’s ever happened to me and… I’ve never loved anyone the way I love you.”

You can hear her take a breath to start speaking. You really want to let her, but there’s too much on your chest. 

“I know you’re doing what you have to, for me, for us,” you want—oh so badly––to just bury your face in your hands right now. But once you do that, the tears will inevitably come and your ability to speak your mind will disappear faster than you can regain yourself. “But it hurts. It hurts to see you holding his hand, walking around and… and kissing him.”

Your heart stings when you see the tears welling in her eyes when you find it in you to look at her. The last thing you want is to see her in pain. This next bit hurts you even more to say, but you know that it’s better to tell her how you feel.

“I feel like I’m an open wound… and you're just pouring salt on me,” and you start to choke up a little. “I’m sorry to put it that way but—”

“No,” she interjects. “No. I get it… I-I understand.”

And for a moment, it feels like everything's okay for a bit.

Then she comes around the table to kiss you, and hell’s bells start ringing all over again. It hurts to kiss her, but it feels so right.

Miyeon leans into you. She kisses you. She pulls you close. She lets you run your hands across her body, down her back. You stand. Your tongue pokes into her mouth. One of you says I need you and you don’t know who it is.

And like when things were okay: you guys don’t make it to the couch.

You get naked. She gets naked. The sex isn’t about pleasure or thrill. It’s the aching within the both of you that drives your shaft into her cunt, rocks her hips as you fuck her. You quite literally make love with her, your strokes passionate and fervent; her cries are earnest and wanton, full of longing. For long moments when her chest is against yours, your hearts are aligned. You wish that you could fuse them together, take away the pain by making the two of you one singular person there on the floor. It feels possible when your dick is throbbing inside of her, pumping her slick with rock hard meat again and again and again.

But the thing that sucks the most is that you can’t do that. You’re two separate people with two separate problems that kinda overlap at the same point.

You have her bent over the counter, propped up on the kitchen sink—anywhere you could reach was a surface for you and her. And normally you’d be a bit of a party pooper about fucking on these surfaces, but today you really can’t give more of a shit. You want to feel like everything’s okay again, like you’re not fighting for your life to hold on to this relationship that’s being torn apart day by day, night by night.

And you may have pieces of each other deep within your souls, but they don’t seem to fit anymore.

When it’s all over and you’re panting against the dishwasher, reality hasn’t changed and you’re still torn. You have a wound that only you can heal through acceptance, yet you can’t find it in you to accept that this is the life you have to lead. You want to love her. You want it so bad. But you can’t find the will in you to love her when there’s another man in the picture, albeit that her love for him isn’t even minimally a concept. You can’t nurse her injuries either, and it hurts to know that as her delicate hands cradle your cheeks. Her touch is perfect, her breaths are soft on your skin. The two of you have tried so hard to make it work, yet you’ve only come so far. The solution to this problem is like thousands of hot fire pokers stabbing you simultaneously, and it only hurts because it’s the only way forward for the both of you. 

“Miyeon,” you can’t quite believe what you’re about to say. The tears streaming down your  cheeks aren’t making anything easier. “Let’s break up.”

(And this isn’t for pity: but you cry yourself to sleep after she leaves that night. Ain’t it fun being heartbroken? You would know how it feels, right cupcake?)

--

Three months, two weeks and one day (about 105 days if you really want to be fully accurate. Go write that down somewhere) pass uneventfully—and by that you mean, you never picked up any of the 138 calls that came from Miyeon. It would have been 140 calls if you hadn’t picked up two of them when you were drunk. But hey, she was drunk too. So it kinda cancels out… at least you like to think that it does. It does, doesn't it? Two negatives make a positive? 

(No?)

Ah well. Anyway,

(Okay, caveat, again: you’re thankful that she hadn’t showed up to the apartment once throughout this period. You’ve been stuck between your anger and a blame that you can’t face because you don’t know if you blame yourself or her or him. Drinking doesn’t help to lighten the ache in your chest, so you tried exercising: running, swimming, even pilates; you tried to pick up music—bought a guitar and everything. Your fingers still hurt when you play chords, and you’re considering giving up at some point; you tried to learn how to make those pain in the ass French desserts, and now you have a fire extinguisher permanently installed in your kitchen because you somehow managed to set fire to macarons; and you tried to write. That didn’t go well. 5 Wattpad users politely asked you to kill yourself. Not fun.

One way or another, your thoughts would end up drifting back to Miyeon, and you’d have to sit in place and kinda stare into the distance for a little. And yes, you did question your choice to end things with her many times if anyone is asking. You kinda hate yourself a little for not trying to make things work, and you also kinda hate her for not insisting on staying to make things work. 

It took two of the three months for you to realise that you were both kinda in the wrong. But it’s already too late by then.

You couldn’t get a grip of yourself and fight off your internal demons; she couldn’t stop doing what she thought was right to protect the two of you. Net-net: it’s a loss for the both of you in the business of love. Now you have to look for a way forward through this grey-area mess that you’ve made, learn to live with the fact that maybe you guys just weren't meant to be in the grand scheme of things.

The updates on Miyeon’s relationship with that damned actor kept coming, but it stopped as of late. But for a while, they were all the rage for gossip blogs. Every now and then, a shitty title like “Cho Miyeon stuns with her visuals on her date” would pop up, and you have to swipe away quickly before you accidentally tap on the notification and see her holding hands with him. You’ll admit that you opened some of the articles just to get a look at her face, then smile to yourself for a bit before you fight the urge to punch the spot next to her where Squid Game wannabe is smiling. You’ve succeeded so far.

You kept away from Jjampong and tomato soup with grilled cheese too. It’s hard to take your butter bell down from the fridge without tearing a little, and the fish sauce and chilli flake panacea for food doesn't apply to a broken heart by the way (it’s just really salty and spicy. You don’t know what you were thinking. Probably drunk. 0/10, please, please, please do not try). The two dishes are too homely; their tastes remind you of her.

Okay. Let’s ‘anyway’ for real this time.)

Yeah, so uh, remember how you said that sometimes the news you give each other can be a little heart-attack-inducing, so it’s better that your loves are pretty bland? Yep… Sad to say that the same confirmed hypothesis still stands, even when you guys are on day 106 of your break up.

This time the news comes in another headline—and you mean like front page, breaking news headline—on Tuesday night. Wonderwall isn’t treating you too well. You’re pretty sure that your finger tips might be turning purple. Your phone buzzes next to you like crazy, just like it did that night, and it’s like having an iPhone seizure. You don’t think too much when you put down the guitar and pick up your device. 

And you only read the first six words to give yourself a valid reason to reset your miscall streak with Miyeon.

Idol Cho Miyeon Slapped In Public…

(The title was a lot longer than that. You should know it since you’re here in the first place.)

It’s in moments like this when you kinda wish that speed dial was still a thing. (I mean there's siri and all, but do you really have time for that right now?) In a blur of great clumsiness, you open your contacts and experience no difficulty in locating her number again. She’s on the top of your miscall list, so it really takes no wizard to figure this out.

You hate that she’s letting it ring for so long. Every brr brr makes you tremble a little more in your seat. If your mum could see you now, you’d probably get an earful for your bad habit of biting your nails.

She finally picks up the phone. It’s good to hear her voice. “Hey…”

Your mouth opens, closes, opens again. Now you realise that in your hurry to check on her, you’ve yet to rehearse what to say to her. The debate between your head and gut almost tears you in two. 

“You okay?” you finally manage to blurt after some struggle. “I saw the news… Just wanted to check if, you know, you’re still up and kicking���”

You hear that familiar scoff from the other side of the phone. “Please. You know that it takes more than that to take me down.”

If your ears don't deceive you, you can hear a bit of a strain in her voice. She hates it when you jump to conclusions though, so you leave it as it is for now. “That’s… That’s great.”

And it’s silent again. If you were in the business of losing her interest, you’d be making crazy profits right now. Okay, better end this fast.

“Well uh,” you begin, stopping for a second to swallow some saliva to soothe your semi parched throat. “I guess—”

“Can I come over?” 

Like she always does, she shocks you into silence. Your throat dries up. Your mouth is the Sahara. 

“I… I miss you… if my miss-calls weren't clear enough about that,” she chuckles. You swear you hear a sniffle. “I’d like to see you again,” and you can hear your heartbeat in your ears, “for closure of course… and maybe tomato soup?”

Your heart joins the debate between your head and gut. It wins.

Minutes later, your butter bell is open, a knife scraping out the last bits of creamy butter out of it so that it can be used to evenly butter the other side of your bread. You’re moving on instinct, with glee and excitement. You’re not sure why you’re happy. You’re just happy—happy that you’re gonna see her; happy that you can prepare this dish again without the knowledge that you’re not gonna see her when you turn. It isn’t till the doorbell rings that the joy fades, and in its place comes that familiar tension of a two tonne weight wrapped around your chest. 

You aren’t sure why she rings the door when you haven’t changed the passcode to the lock. If she’s trying to be polite? You appreciate it. If she just forgot the pin? Well… you wouldn’t put that past her either, really. Your gut, head and heart agree you that it’s most likely the latter, and you kinda have to remind yourself as you open the door that she's just as forgetful as anyone else.

“Hi,” you catch yourself staring at her. You don’t mean to look at her dress first, but it’s the first thing your eyes are drawn to; it's been a while since you’ve seen her in anything other than a t-shirt and shorts. The white dress she’s wearing is bedazzled out, the light that’s reflected off of it catching you and making you a deer in headlights for a bit. Then you snap out of it. Your gaze travels up to her face and… “You look… Fucking terrible.”

You love her eyes and you love to watch them roll. “Thanks. You look not bad yourself. Gained some weight?”

You try not to stare. You fail—horribly you might add. 

But in your defence, it’s hard not to look at the purple spot on her milky skin. 

Miyeon covers her cheek. She looks down at your feet like there's something really interesting about them. “Are you, you know, letting me in? Or are we just gonna keep standing here?”

You blink. “R-Right.”

And soon she’s settled into her usual seat, nibbling on some grilled cheese while you ladle out her tomato soup into a bowl. It feels like nothing has changed, but you know that’s not true. Both of you know that everything’s different, that you can’t just give her tomato soup and peck her on the cheek.

“So you play guitar now?” she catches you off guard as the bowl makes a small thunk against the table. It’s in the same spot she always places it, and you know because a woodring has formed in that area. You follow her gaze and see that she’s spotted your Fender on the couch. 

“Sort of?” you reply, a little uncertain in how to rate your abilities. “Just basic stuff, you know?”

She smirks and picks up her spoon, starts chipping away at her soup “So you’re finally digging up the singer-songwriter in you… Good on you, man.”

Again, you find yourself staring at the bruise. It’s a deep shade of purple, splotchy and a sight for sore eyes. From the looks of it, he hit her hard. There’s a burning in your chest—a mix of grief, pity and anger as you watch her eat her food. You wish that you could’ve been there to stop it. You wished that you could’ve just dated her under different circumstances so that maybe, just maybe, you could’ve gotten that ending you wanted. You don’t know how she’s ever gonna cover that up when—

“If you’re gonna get something for this thing, go do it,” she mutters. “Chivalry hasn’t died completely, right?”

You nod and scuttle off. It’s easy to lose track of how long you’ve been staring when you’re lost in your thoughts. Is it scary how this feels like just another conversation between you two? 

The ice pack from when she bought that ice cream cake was still in the freezer, and it’s chilly in your hands as you grab it and return to the table. She has finished her soup—not a single scrap left inside the bowl. She must be starving.

Her grilled cheese is half eaten in her hand; she stares into the distance as she chews. 

(And she’s as beautiful as she can ever be, by the way. A lot of people haven’t seen her the way you see her, and you’re kinda glad that you get to witness that tender part of her that she rarely shows to cameras. It’s… It’s hard to describe what it means to know that someone like her finds it this easy to be herself around you, but you know it’s an honour and a blessing.

But when you're looking at her with your rose-tinted lenses stripped away from you, the notions you hold towards vulnerability become contradictory, because on one hand you know that she’ll never hurt you the way she did, but on the other you know that she’s not the same person when she’s not around you. So at the end of the day, you’re just kinda left figuring out which side of her is the real her. Do you believe what the Cho Miyeon you know tells you? Or do you believe what the Cho Miyeon the world knows? It gets confusing, makes you wonder why she ever has to put up two fronts in the first place. 

Then again, it’s not exactly her fault: she does what she has to so she can stay afloat. No industry is free from dirt. Some are just filthier than others.

I guess what I’m getting at is that… she’s this contradiction in my mind. I want to believe her, but I can’t, yet I still love her like she’s just a regular human and our lives are just a little messy. I know there's this whole argument about the fact that idols are humans too and all, but I guess it’s kinda… undermined? Yeah—undermined by the fact that they can’t exactly lead ‘normal’ lives once they’re famous. Look at me, using these big words.

So I guess… I guess dating her was like the worst of all blessings and the best of all curses. Does that make sense?

…

Ugh. I’m blabbering. 

Sorry cupcake, I’ll get back to it.)

And maybe you forget that she isn’t your girlfriend anymore, or maybe you just kinda blank out in the moment, or maybe you just wanted to do it. For whatever reason: you call her name, and when she turns, the ice pack in your hand is gently applied against her face. You don’t think much of it for like, three or four seconds. But when her wide eyes finally register in your head, there’s a moment where your breath is caught in your throat. 

This is important, so you should know: the silence is fucking deafening. 

She swallows the bit of sandwich in her mouth. “I refused to sleep with him, and he hit me like a girl. Fucking embarrassing on his part,” and there’s that smile on her face as she speaks, the same one that she loves to flash your way when she told you that she loved you. “Barely felt it. Light work.”

You can’t resist—your other hand cradles her unblemished cheek. “Miyeon…”

She closes her eyes. She knows that tone you’re using, the one that’s like ‘don’t lie to me’ or ‘it’s okay, you can tell me’. “Look: when the man that loved you the way no one else loved you breaks up with you, nothing can be more painful than that,” she whispers. Her throat bobs a little. She furrows her brows as her eyes squeezed themselves shut themselves a little tighter. “And that man is you by the way…” her voice cracks, her eyes open, “don’t know if I was clear enough.”

And you kinda have to kiss her after that. It’s a good line… and she’s, like, smoking hot right now. She always is.

The familiarity of her lips against yours almost makes you melt. The ice pack drops from your hand, your palm taking its place on her face. You kiss her like you used to. You kiss her like you want nothing else but her. You kiss her like you want nothing else but her because you want nothing else but her. She’s home – Jjamppong and Grilled Cheese with Tomato soup — and you don’t ever want her to leave again.

“I’m sorry,” she croaks, and you wipe the tear trailing down her cheek. “I should have never… We should have never—”

You shush her with your lips. She lets herself melt into you, her hands running through your hair the way she would sometimes when she called you crazy or baby. You don’t realise how much you’ve missed her touch till now.

“We were both wrong,” you tell her once you break away (rather reluctantly). “So how about we just call it a truce?”

She nods, and she does it enthusiastically. “If it’s cool with you…”

You scoff. “Why would it not be?” and your thumb gently caresses her bruise gently. You want to kill him, but you’ll save that for another time. “I’m the one who suggested it… Guess Chivalry is not all dead, huh?”

And it’s good to hear her laugh again.

“Come here you big idiot,” she giggles, and she kisses you again. 

Then you dive down to her collarbone when you can’t take it anymore. And the rest is history repeating itself.

You know: it feels like you’ve been picked up from the ground. Miyeon has come to get you… she's come to get you.

Maybe everything’s okay after all.

--

(And uh… The media covers the rest. What was it? Like, two weeks later? 

Ah whatever. You know what happens, don’t you? It’s pretty crazy, made headlines and all.

CUBE has some really good lawyers… And liars. Almost the same thing.)

--

“So that’s the story?” 

Nursing your third bottle of cider, you chuckle. You’d thought by fleshing out whole smuts in verbal form would have chased her away by now, yet here she is. Then again: she is an old friend of yours, so you guessed that she’d be rather adjusted to your bullshit. “Are you sure you’re an investigative journalist?” you question her, “I thought you’d ask something more along the lines of ‘what happens after?’.”

From across the booth seat, Chou Tzuyu shoots you a smirk. 

“The news covered it. Why should I pour salt into old wounds?” she admits. Her glass of wine swirls, manipulated expertly by her delicate fingers. “Anyway, I think I got… The main gist of it. Unless you have more information regarding the restraining order filed against you by CUBE, I have no further questions.”

You roll your eyes. No, you do not have any new information about why CUBE decided that you were a danger to Cho Miyeon, and you’ll never know if Miyeon knows either. She was out of town when it happened, and all she knows is what the news reported: you’re allegedly a stalker and hence a threat. You only know that she called and texted you frantically after, but…

You know what? Maybe you’ll think about this another time.

“You do know that, like, you're kinda bad at this right?” and you set your cider bottle aside, letting it join the almost empty whiskey bottle you bought yourself. You fold your hands and lean into the table. The world spins a little. “I don’t know why you’re prying, but I’m guessing that you heard something from the grapevine that you were itching to hear more about. Either that or you’re just… Could it be that you’re desperate to get something fresh, Miss Chou?”

She sips on her wine, leaves the question hanging in the air for a little as she swallows. 

“Keep this between us: I can’t trust Shuhua sometimes,” she muses. “If I’m gonna write about this, I’m gonna have to make sure that all the information I’ve gotten from her can be corroborated,” she pushes a wisp of hair behind her ear. “And for the record: I am not bad. I do my research as thoroughly as anyone else would—enough to know that you are someone who tells the truth.”

“So you’re saying that you trust me as a source?” you can’t help but scoff. “Me, the very guy that got fucked over by CUBE? I could be bigoted and biased for all you know. Or even worse: I’m lying.”

She smiles knowingly. “Respectfully, you have too much… personal voice in this recount that I might as well write an autobiography on your behalf.”

And she stuns you into silence. It occurs to you that you're a little drunk, and you’re pretty sure that you called this woman ‘cupcake’ multiple times. You’re not too sure; you don’t even have half a mind to know what you’re doing or saying.

Tzuyu gulps down the rest of her wine before she rises from her seat. 

“I best be going,” she opens her purse and fishes something out of it. She hands you a card, an address and a phone number handwritten onto it in what looks like a felt pen. “If you want your story to be heard, give me a call… Or a text. Whatever strikes your fancy. I’ll need a version of this that doesn’t include all the fucking and your drunk blabbering,” she shoulders her purse and smiles. “Can’t promise that I’ll buy you a drink to make you talk again, but I can treat you to some really good Chinese dumplings. Maybe we can catch up a little too. It’s been a while.”

You stare at the card, tracing the hooks and curves that form numbers and letters. Your eyes fix back on her. “Why are you doing this?”

She shrugs, and it’s not a “I dunno” type of shrug, but more like a “the proof’s in the pudding, open your fucking eyes” type of shrug. 

“I want to report the truth, and I know you well enough to know that you want that too.”

That's right. Another series. I know I'm doing everything but finishing up Beats Me, and you can go cry a river in my asks if you want. Just kidding, I love all of you, but I want to write what I want to write. Let me have my fun, would you? Also, for the record: I did not finish this 5 days after Beats Me 7. Beats Me 7 was finished before I vanished from tumblr for a bit. This has been brewing since December. You can thank long drives and Noah Kahnan for this.

Anyway, another big thank you to @defmaybe for being such a great sport and reading through the 39 page document that showed up in their discord DMs one fine day. This fic would have been full of typos and horrible grammatical errors if it weren't for them.

Stay safe, Nichu

[loovser]

the guy she was interested in wasn’t a guy at all - chapter 1

synopsis turns out the cute guy from the cd store is actually… a girl.

cw: heavily inspired in the manga with the same title if you couldnt tell, for obvious reasons ellie is often referred to with masculine pronouns (💔) just on reader’s direct thoughts about her or as she is talking about the guy from the cd store. cursing, ellie is down baaaad, cheap flirting (quite literally lol), conflicting thoughts, miscommunication.

wc: 2.9k

you found yourself at the same damn cd store you’ve been to the last five days, which is the amount of time you’ve acknowledged its existence. since you did, something — actually, someone — has been drawing you towards it day after day. you tell yourself it’s not that serious, you just need another rock band cd. who cares if you already bought four of them? you definitely don’t.

as the little bell above the door announces your arrival, ellie’s attention drifts to you. it’s like she’s been waiting for you to show up today, too. and she has. just like she waits for you to show up at the classes you both attend in college — not that she would admit it.

your heart flutters in your chest. you’ve never been this interested in someone before. like, ever. you’d even wonder if you are really into guys at all. but you never gave it that much thought, since you’ve never really been into any girls either… plus, you had other things to worry about.

but now? now, it’s different. there’s something about this guy that works at this cd store that has you wrapped around his finger. even though you’ve never seen his full face — because if you had, you’d know she’s a girl. that’s so fucking pathetic. is what you think every time and yet you can’t seem to get away from the grip those green eyes have over you.

“let me guess- another deftones cd?” is what she asks when she approaches you.

“actually… do you have any recommendations? i’ve been wanting to try something new.” smooth. you are proud to have come up with this excuse while thinking about how to get to know her better, during some random class. her eyes narrow a little and you imagine her smiling under the face mask.

“yeah, um… have you ever heard of sick habit?” she asks, leading you towards one of the smaller cd shelves. you follow, asking yourself how can his voice be so damn soft? which, honestly, just attracts you even more.

“i’ve never, actually.” you chuckle lightly and ellie almost gets stuck on the way you look when you do it. just like she did the other times she’s seen it in class.

she clears her throat, grabbing a cd from the bottom of the shelf, your chuckle still echoing inside of her head. “they’re great. you should give ‘em a listen”

“i definitely will.” your cheeks burn when your fingers brush as you take the cd from her hand. “how much is it?”

“it’s on the house. just tell me what you think about it after.”

your eyes widen at that. he’s giving it to me for free?! the thought makes you smile and ellie watches your reaction — silently thanking the universe that you can’t see how pink her cheeks turned under the mask.

“i… really?” she nods. “thank you! i’ll come back when i finish listening to it.”

she wants to ask why you don’t talk to her in class, but she keeps it to herself. “i’ll wait for it.” it’s what she goes for, instead. you’ve seen each other in class twice since you started going to the store, maybe you were just… shy? or you didn’t recognize her?

she watches as you smile at her and leave the store after thanking her once again. ellie didn’t want people from college to know she works there, — hence the face mask — but she wouldn’t mind it if you did. during classes she’s just someone that no one else seems to notice. and she likes it that way, it’s peaceful, doesn’t draw attention.

you, on the other hand, are the complete opposite. you draw attention everywhere you go, even if it’s unintended. you are popular in college, having your own group of friends and lots of guys drooling over you. not that you pay any mind to them, as you know what’s worth your time and what’s not.

as you walk to your apartment, you know exactly where your attention is going to be for the next few hours: sick habit’s whole discography. you were so excited about her giving you the cd for free that you barely said bye, not trusting yourself to be around her without stuttering or doing something stupid.

it’s so weird to think that someone you barely know can have this kind of effect on you. i know nothing about him! is he even a him? i never asked his name, never saw his face. he’s always wearing oversized shirts or hoodies and pants. i haven’t even seen his whole hair, always hidden in hoods or caps. is it short? is it long? you groan. overthinking is a bitch.

it feels like you are going crazy. maybe it’s all this mystery that attracts you. is it even healthy to be this obsessed over someone? you know it’s probably not, but at this point you don’t care anymore.

as you finally reach your apartment, discarding your shoes by the door, you sigh, quickly getting in and throwing your purse on the couch. there are so many things you should be doing instead of this. like the visual effects paper you kept postponing and is literally due tomorrow.

you huff, already plopping down on the floor, in front of the cd player. maybe you could ask that girl in your class, that sits next to you, to help you with it. or you should just be responsible for once and do it right now.

however, as soon as you press play and the guitar chimes in, starting the first song, you are sure that there’s no way you could stop now.

ellie is late. that’s actually an understatement, given the current situation. she missed her first class and is really late for the next one. which is VFX — visual effects. the only class that she shares with the film major students today.

which means, the only class she shares with you.

not that it matters, right? i mean… is she really that eager to see you? if someone asked it to any of the poor souls that have almost been dragged with her while she rushes through the dorm’s hallway, the answer would be yes. if someone asked her, though? of course not!

her wrinkled flannel and skinny jeans combo turns out to be quite comfortable for a little marathon, as she runs towards the class’s building. she spotted jesse, one of her only friends, near it. he mouthed a clear ‘what the fuck are you doing’ but she just signaled that she would text him later, entering the building and fleeing up the stairs to the second floor.

by the time she arrived the classroom, she was a panting mess, totally out of breath, hands on her knees as she tried to compose herself before opening the door. through the little glass window, she could see some students. she saw you.

big mistake, she felt even more out of breath. you looked so pretty, writing something down in a rushed manner, sitting on your usual spot. her chair, next to yours, empty.

she took a deep breath, running her hand through her short auburn hair as she entered the classroom, murmuring a tiny ‘excuse me’ and going to her seat.

of course she has to smell great, too. is what she thinks as she sits down, trying not to throw any glances at you. would you talk to her today? she hoped you would.

but as the class went by, you haven’t said anything. she couldn’t stop throwing glances at you. you caught her twice, the second time offering her a soft smile, which almost made her melt in her seat.

when Mr. Barbosa finished the class everyone started gathering their things to leave. ellie was no different — until one of your friends nearly yelled, making her freeze on her spot as she heard it.

“he gave you the cd for free?!”

he…? they must not be talking about her, right? she tries shaking her thoughts away, but couldn’t help hearing the conversation.

“that’s totally flirting! i can’t believe the guy you’ve been drooling over for days just hit on you during his shift.” your other friend adds.

what the fuck? it can’t be. you thought she was a guy? i mean… yes, she doesn’t dress all girly. and you can’t really see her face with the face mask on. but still… a fucking guy? really?

“you should ask for his number! what is the cd about again?”

“mmm… it’s from a really cool band. sick habit. i kinda listened to all of their discography on spotify, too” you explain, shyly. but genuine. ellie’s heart is beating so fast that she is having trouble hearing anything besides it, but she heard you.

she wanted to hear you telling her that later, on her shift. but she was so confused… she should just clear this all up. and that’s what she would do. she couldn’t lead you on, it would be so cruel. are you even into girls?

“you have such a weird music taste.” one of your friends say, giggling.

you don’t usually care about other people’s opinion, but somehow, when it comes to music, you’ve always felt so different from everybody else in your circle. they always point it out, too, which makes you uncomfortable.

“crap, leah, we have to meet jake at starbucks, like, right now. he’s got our stuff” your other friend pointed and they both said bye to you, rushing out of class.

ellie watches it all — the way your smile fades a bit when your friend says you had a weird taste in music. you really don’t. she thinks your music taste is fire.

she wanted to comfort you, somehow. her mind was a mess, not knowing if she should stay away from you or give in to her desire to get to know you better.

then, she sees it. your wired earbuds, dropped on the floor. she grabs them, getting closer to you. you get slightly startled, until you realize it’s her. ellie, the girl that sits next to you. she has green eyes, you would always see them through her glasses. cute freckles too, all over her cheeks and nose. and a lip ring.

you noticed her, sometimes. like, really noticed. she was pretty. but you barely talked. not because you didn’t like her, she was just usually very quiet. you even thought about asking for her help with your VFX paper, — which is still unfinished — but you didn’t.

she leans forward a bit, putting something in your ear. your earbuds. you didn’t even realize you had dropped them, since they are still connected to your phone, as ‘loser’ by beck is blasting through them and can be faintly heard by the both of you.

her fingers brushes at your ear, as she looks down at you. you freeze. her eyes, for a moment, really reminded you of the guy from the cd store.

“you dropped it.” she flashes you a crooked smile. “this song rocks, by the way.”

and with that, she’s gone. leaving a starstruck you behind.

you check your reflection in the mirror one last time, making sure you look good. you like the way your clothes fit on your body. you’ve worn this outfit a lot already — never to the cd store, though.

the time has come. finally you would go back there and see her again. it’s been so long (less than 24 hours). to be honest, time really seems to pass slower when you crave to see someone. and she hasn’t left your mind for even a second.

meanwhile, ellie was at the store since her classes ended. joel asked her to come a little earlier today to help him unpack the new arrivals and that’s what’s been keeping her busy all afternoon. which is great because she was almost going insane in her own head, thinking about what she should do about your… situation.

it’s way more complicated than she thought. because, even if she didn’t like to admit, she did care about you. so what if you barely know each other? you’ve always been nice to her — at least at the times you spoke to each other.

also, you guys share classes together. three, every week. she sits next to you in two of them. it would be so awkward if she just revealed herself to you. she tried imagining doing it naturally, just taking the mask off at some point. but she never did that, so it wouldn’t feel natural at all.

to be honest, she didn’t even know if she wanted you to know she is actually a girl. not a random girl, but your classmate. what if you stopped going to the store? changed your seat? just out of embarassment. ellie didn’t want that to happen.

she sighed, rolling her hoodie’s sleeves up, as she grabbed another box of cds to put on display, approaching one of the many shelves and kneeling down on the floor. she put the box down and took the nirvana cds, organizing them on the shelf.

the store is very cozy. there’s just something about it that makes her feel like she’s home. maybe the fact that her dad owns it? yes, that could be it, indeed. but she would like to work there even if it wasn’t joel’s.

music has always been a part of her life. a big one. all of her childhood memories are filled with songs. mostly rock ones. when she was little, joel and her uncle, tommy, were always playing something for her, letting her sing even if she didn’t really know the words. she grew up playing instruments and being surrounded by melodies.

since they opened Firefly, a few years ago, she would play among the cd shelves all day long, after school. the regular costumers adored her. some still do, visiting every now and then. she was so lost in those nostalgic memories that she didn’t even hear you arriving.

you recognized ‘tonight, tonight’ by the smashing pumpkins playing through the store’s speakers. not too loud, just loud enough to be comfortable and settle into the background. you smiled to yourself when your eyes laid on the figure knelt down in front of a shelf.

adjusting your purse, you made your way towards her. you took in her clothes, noticing something you didn’t see before. a tattoo, on her right forearm. a moth and fern? damn. it’s beautiful.

“i didn’t know you have a tattoo.” you say softly, making your presence known.

oh fuck. your words take ellie out of her thoughts, she turns to look at you. “you like it?”

“yeah, it’s beautiful.” you get closer to her and she nearly panicks, standing up.

“i was waiting for you.” it blurts out before she can stop herself. she wasn’t supposed to flirt with you, god. she should tell you the truth.

you blush at her bluntness. “have you, now?” you chuckle. “guess i couldn’t leave you hanging.”

“im glad you didn’t… so, did you like sick habit?” ellie asks, even if she already knows the answer.

“a lot. i had to listen to their discography on spotify after i finished the cd.”

“couldn’t get enough, huh?”

you almost shiver at the answer. why does he sound so good? “i guess not. in fact, i came here to buy another cd from them.”

“so you didn’t come to see me?” she teases, mentally facepalming herself right after. why the fuck can’t i stop flirting with her?

but then you chuckle shyly and she knows exactly why. she just can’t get enough of you, apparently.

“well, i… also want your number.” you shrug, trying to act nonchalant but your heart is beating like crazy. so hard you hope she can’t hear it.

talking about hearing things, you definitely didn’t miss the hoarse chuckle that escaped her lips. muffled by the face mask, but still there. your stomach might just fly on its own by now.

she pretends to ponder for a moment, just to tease you. she couldn’t really say no to you, could she?

“fair enough. do you know which cd you want to take today?”

“their second album.”

apparently, it was right next to your head, on the shelf behind you, as she gently sticks her tattoed arm next to your face, taking the cd and murmuring “great choice.”

you swallow hard as you stare at each other. it feels like everything around you just froze. her green eyes piercing through yours like she’s seeing inside your brain.

“there’s a girl in my college that reminds me of you.” you say, simply.

not imagining the turmoil it causes in ellie’s head. cursing internally and praying that you didn’t recognize her. but also…

she remembered me?

is what she thinks, before clearing her throat and answering “she must be pretty, then”

“cocky much?” you tease, but you are not denying it.

ellie laughs and your heart swells. “it’s $9,99” she hands you the cd.

you give her ten dollars. she writes something down and hands it to you. one cent.

and a card with her number written on it.

next

end notes: OKAAAYYYY so this was nerve-wracking 😅 this is my first work EVERR and english is not my first language so pls be nice 🤓 i hope you liked reading it tho, lmk if you did 💘

[tennessoui]

wip pi-day

Rarely, if ever, does Anakin emerge from the newly established mind healing wing of the Halls of Healing with a smile on his face. But this time, it’s absolutely called for, and he holds his prize in careful hands beneath the sleeves of his robes as he moves through the corridors of the Jedi Temple.

Obi-Wan is exactly where he knew he’d be, which in of itself feels a bit like a prize—to know the other man’s ins and outs and routines and patterns. To have been allowed to learn them and then allowed to stay through their shiftings and their changes.

It’s early in the morning still on a Friday. When he has the choice, which Anakin’s mindhealer likes to stress to him that he always does, Anakin prefers mind-healing sessions very early in the morning. Criminally early, Healer Chanirie, who is not a morning person by nature, had grumbled once into her caf before seeming to remember that that word could hold a bit too much unintended weight for someone like Anakin, who narrowly avoided a criminal trial of his own given his role in Sidious’ downfall—also referred to in some circles as the Supreme Chancellor’s cold-blooded murder.

Obi-Wan, who has found a handful of things to feel an intense sort of snobbery about—also referred to in some circles as pride and a healthy appreciation for a higher standard of quite achievable quality, thank you, Anakin—tends to scorn the refectory meals at the end of the week in favor of sneaking out—I am a Jedi Master, Anakin, of quite a few years now, I’m not sneaking anywhere—to the markets in the Mid-Levels of the Coruscanti Primaeri district to gorge himself on—purchase and snack on, really, and where I spend my credits is of no concern to—honeyed pieces of pastry rolled in a salty and sugary nut mixture.

So that’s where Anakin catches him, in the Southern entrance hall of the Temple with honey-sugar still stuck to the tips of his fingers. It’s incredibly convenient that Obi-Wan’s passing by a small alcove when Anakin reaches him because he doesn’t think he has the wherewithal to stop himself from kissing the sweet traces of his master’s contraband breakfast from his knuckles, even if they are in plain sight of any wandering eye.

[beannoss]

SxF RA 2025: volume 1! (pt 3)

My last post on volume 1, just some additional general observations I had in the re-read! Just a head's up that where the other two posts had no spoilers for future manga chapters, this post does have a few vague and also one or two more specific references to chapters not yet animated.

I was super curious if Twilight's motif of ash floating around him would be there from the start and it absolutely is! The motif is of course especially utilised in Twilight's backstory, but I'm thrilled by the tragedy ❤️‍🩹 that it's been in play since the very beginning.

Once again I look up what Strix means and once again it leaves my brain immediately because I don't understand how it's connected to the mission (from wiki: "a bird of ill omen, the product of metamorphosis, that fed on human flesh and blood") Actually now having typed that and pasted in what it is, I'm like: ... okay so probably this is referencing war and the toll taken on all the Forgers and those they're working to protect in their respective country's pursuits thereof. And then the mission itself is to seek prevention of more. GOT THERE IN THE END maybe

I was intrigued that Twilight is directed to look out for "seditious" activity from Donovan, given WISE is a Westalian organisation... It makes me wonder if maybe WISE's goal/first choice is actually to try and bring in Ostanian authorities to deal with Donovan, assuming they can find the evidence they need for it (and something that Ostanian authorities would actually act on, seeing as they seem fairly inclined towards fascism themselves)

I've talked a fair bit about Twilight's first thoughts about a spouse and family (on the right) but now I'm hung up on the next reference (left) that eluded me when I did my first analysis. Liabilities, huh. Bounces off of Yor's strongly held belief that a happy home life and family to cherish make her better and strengthen her resolve...

Endo may change things of course, but I also snagged on the description of Anya's abilities as an "unintended consequence." To me that potentially implies telepathy wasn't the pursuit of experimentation, which also potentially means Donovan was not pursuing telepathy either, for himself or as a tool. (however, with chapter 111, I suppose it can't be ruled out entirely...)

Anya noting that if anyone found out about her powers, she would have to run away... I wonder... foreshadowing...? I very much hope not but... 😬

I already talked about chapter 2 a fair bit, but this made me laugh. Random dude in the back is so right 😂 they're both odd balls 😊

Loved that chapter 3 gave us a li'l taste test of what it would be like for the Forgers working together. Yor into immediate action; Twilight puzzling things through; Anya giving the missing piece. Moments of emotional sweetness. It's all there! We're only missing Bond!

To Hemlock's point in this most recent chapter, I wonder how accurate his read was... after all, this was only days after Yor had met Twilight and Anya... She definitely has grown and changed and is increasingly thriving as herself, but I find it hard to believe that Yor wouldn't have done this before... Maybe the difference is how much she's now looking at the world around her and engaging with it?

Of course they're all motivated by multiple things, but in line with thinking about Yor & normality & acceptance, I'm now also pondering this panel, and Twilight wanting more recognition than he gets...? (I wonder if this moment also informs how often he thanks Yor for things 👀)

Sharon at the Eden Academy interviews! I don't think I noticed her before!

Henderson's face here made me laugh out loud gjdasklgjksa

I wouldn't be me without a TwiYor note, and I am once again fixating on... well several things here but most especially the circled thing in the left-most panel and Twilight's phrasing specifically... "isn't even" is doing a lot of work there already... the mutual affinity between them really was strong right off the bat, eh? We see it most with Yor but yeah, this is a pretty loud admission!

Also on the above, whether intentional or not, Spy x Family has also 100% always been to a degree about gender and queerness (if only insofar as: "not normal" -> non-normative -> queer) for every member of the family. It is one area also where I wish I better knew Japanese cultural norms and societal philosophical underpinnings. It's a story clearly informed by collectivism, but there are blatant underpinnings, frequently made explicit, about liberation from societal expectation and pressures and... ahhh I'd love reading a Japanese feminist's take on the series.

and finally this gag, from Chapter 1 "hundred faces" chapter 4 "thousand faces" I, alas, don't think it continued onto million, billion, endless faces but I sort of wish it would XD

<- part 2

[raconteur-wanpi]

One Piece 1130

Here comes another review / reaction!

Starting with the Yamato cover stories again, it seems whoever is the suspicious kidnapper is also trying to steal Yamato's katana! Or at least, I'm assuming it's the same person. I feel like this means we're going to find out who it is rather soon. Is my bet on Perospero going to be completely and utterly debunked? We'll just wait and see.

Franky and the rest of the strawhats remaining on the giants' ship seem to have decided to call off the search! It's certainly the right decision, because as we'll see later, the rest of the crew is indeed already on Elbaf. It's interesting to see Franky specifically showcasing determination and speaking out the decision, I kinda love it. You have to remember he was the leader of the Franky Family for a long while, nice seeing that element of his again.

The rest of the New Giant Pirates are starting to show up! I remember both Gerd and Goldberg, but getting more dialogue from them is nice, they seem like genuinely charming characters and I love both their designs. They even showed up in Vegapunk's flashback, helping out Saul pick up all the books in Ohara. They seem to not like Rodo very much, which is kinda funny but makes total sense. It's also worth mentioning that apparently, according to Linlin's childhood flashback, Loki, Rodo and Goldberg were all born on the same day, or at least very close to each other! (From chapter 866)

The strawhats unfortunately don't recognize these two, who are certainly their allies, so instead they hide away from them.

This panel of all of them making their escape from Rodo's weird creepy dungeon is pretty cute, I always love seeing the strawhats casually interact. Sanji saying he used to cross a rope bridge like this is very interesting to me, surely there was one in Germa, right?

* Edit: oops, turns out that's Chopper saying it! Big thanks for the corrections in the replies. It's really hard to tell, but that makes more sense, we do see that in Drum Island.

Anyway, Luffy seems to spot something that catches his interest during this walk-away.

Meanwhile, back on the ship with the Giant Warrior Pirates....

Dorry and Broggy have been framed for the Egghead incident by Morgans also! Well, they did go against the government, so it's to be expected. Their bounties increasing to such numbers seems to actually align with real life inflation rates, Oda did his research.

Aaaandd here it is, one of the biggest things in this chapter. Vivi left a message to the strawhats!!!!!!! Being with Morgans, she was obviously able to draw the marking on the photo before it started getting reproduced for publishing. Everyone predicting Vivi joining the strawhats this arc is probably correct, hopefully! Please let it happen. Go get your girl kids!!!!!!

OK, this is the other huge (pun unintended) thing revealed this chapter. More information on Loki and, well.... the revelation Harjudin might be his brother!? They're both the King's sons, right? They both get referred to as princes here, aren't they!?

King Harold is referred to as Loki's father here, so it's safe to assume he was Harjudin's father also. If this is the case, Harjudin going after the Flame Flame Fruit in Dressrosa makes more sense.

Hmm, this narrative is pretty interesting, Loki getting called things like "cursed", "the shame of Elbaf" "not right in the head" etc, it feels like pretty cruel words. Even if he is indeed a horrible and dangerous person, something tells me we're meant to be wary of people being spoken about that way, so it might be a case of the people of Elbaf taking their measures against this guy too far and pushing him into what he eventually turned into.

One Piece loves this narrative, when you have things like Wano's unjust treatment of the Kurozumi Clan or Doflamingo's treatment when he was a child. Yes, Orochi and Doffy did turn out into terrible, horrible people, but the implication of those narratives is that it's the systems that failed them that created those monsters. It's not to feel sympathy towards them or anything, they really don't deserve that at this point, but rather to understand how they were created, and that the people who unwittingly turned them into such dangers were in many ways in the wrong as well. After all, Tama is also a Kurozumi, for example, and Wano needed to get over their treatment of entire clans for the crimes of a few. We even see that with Yamato being hazed for his father being Kaidou in the cover stories, only for Denjiro to scold the younger generation for this behavior. Not to mention, "the shame of Elbaf" does immediately make me think of "the failure of Germa" and such similar things. In fact, if we wanna push that parallel further, Loki being almost married off to the Charlottes' in a similar way, might have in fact been an attempt at "getting rid of the failure" and letting someone else deal with him, rather than an attempt at making amends with Linlin. I do think it's most likely that Loki will be a bad guy, but I think there will also be a narrative on how cruelty breeds more cruelty. Oda's favorite!

And here he is, the "accursed prince". Wow, what a panel! This is such a good drawing in sense of scale and danger. Incredible artistic work. Immediately leaves such a strong impression on who this character is, it's quite the introduction!

[rei-ismyname]

Hypothetically, say that evidence of Hank's actions on X-force got out to the masses along with the complicity of the Quiet Council, what would be the repercussions for something like that?

Sheeeeit. Pretty damn severe I think, at first.

By 'the masses' I'm assuming you mean globally while Krakoa is still a state, though it probably amounts to the same thing if it's just Krakoans that find out. I think the initial repercussions would be mass protests and political pressure from opportunists while the council scrambles to distance themselves from Hank and spin their complicity into him going rogue. I think they'd be successful in that though Krakoa's standing would take a big hit. The countries that are already planning military action with ORCHIS would keep doing that. They were always going to come for them.

Every country has security apparatus and sad to say, most of them wouldn't care about a tiny South American country, for instance. There's a term in the intelligence community called blowback, referring to negative unintended consequences. That's pretty much what Hank does except on purpose. Dude was a disaster.

The way I see it, most governments hate Krakoa anyway, they're already funding ORCHIS, and Hank didn't do anything the USA etc wouldn't or hasn't. As long as Krakoa has their pharmaceutical leverage, they're temporarily pretty safe from outside actors (as safe as they usually are anyway.) It would absolutely be a scandal, because usually atrocities come out decades after the fact, but it's manageable by throwing him under the bus and careful politicking.

Krakoans would be pissed. I'd like to say that it'd lead to grassroots organising demanding government reform and accountability, but a people with all their needs met can turn a blind eye to a lot, especially if it's happening to people far away that they don't know. The Quiet Council got away with a lot in OT.

That's me answering in real world terms. The comic book answer is 'something ridiculous, probably involving giant robots.' Though as I mentioned, that was already happening.

I'm not a political expert, more of an interested amateur, so if anyone else has opinions I'd love to hear them. Thanks for the ask!

[four-loose-screws]

Hi so I was wondering something about Fogado. One change that I pretty much never see anyone bring up, is how instances of him mentioning of not being able to swim were replaced with him mentioning that he’s not able to fish. Presumably this was done to avoid any unintended parallels with a stereotype of black people not being able to swim which has some rather … less than favorable origins let’s just say. With the only remnant of this remaining in English is him always being off to the side of the pool in the Swimming Activity. However it doesn’t appear that fishing was just thought up by the localization team, as his Ally Notebook in Japanese appears to mention that one of his dislikes is fishing, which is presumably where the localizers got the idea from. However I would like to know for certain that “fishing” in the JP notebook is indeed referring to the activity we know as fishing, not anything else. Thank you!

In Fogado's list of dislikes in his Japanese Ally Notebook entry, 釣り (tsuri) is indeed included! While this word does have secondary meanings like the English word "fishing" does, it is first and foremost used to refer to fishing for fish. Without other context to tell me otherwise, I'd always initially assume 釣り is referring to fishing for fish.

For objective proof, if you google 釣り, you'll get pages and pages of information about fishing, pictures of people holding up the fish they just caught, and little else.

His Japanese dislikes also include 泳ぐこと (oyogu koto), which is swimmming. The localization removed this entirely from his Ally Notebook entry.

This confirms that the changes the localization made were a simple swap, rather than inventing something new to replace Fogado's dislike of swimming and inability to swim.

Thanks for asking the question, this aspect of Fogado's character is not something I had picked up on at all yet! I almost always learn something new about FE with each Tumblr Ask I get, even though I'm the one providing the answer.

[jennifersminds]

bestie what Lana Del Rey songs fit tvd characters or just tvd to you?

my bestie, my love, thank you so much for this ask !!!

as someone who's endlessly obnoxious about both tvd and lana del rey this is quite literally a dream come true so-,

SONGS FITTING TVD AS WHOLE

Video Games

"It's you, it's you, it's all for you. Everything I do, I tell you all the time"

tvd at it's core is about people doing unjustifiable things for 'love'. Whether i choose to read some relationships as more of a predatory obsession, the crux of this show is damaged grieving people sacrificing and further damaging themselves and others in the pursuit of it, see the mikaelsons with eachother and the salvatore's with Elena and Elena with basically everyone. And I've always read Video Games as both one of the most beautiful love songs of all time but also as an acknowledgment of codependence and lost potential. The song romanticises monotony and mundane life, which is fair. but there's a touch of melancholy beneath the surface of picture perfect normalcy. much like tvd itself.

Love

Look at you kids with your vintage music Comin' through satellites while cruisin' You're part of the past, but now you're the future Signals crossing can get confusing

...

Look at you kids, you know you're the coolest The world is yours and you can't refuse it Seen so much, you could get the blues But that don't mean that you should abuse it

following that theme,

"part of the past but now you're the future," Could refer to any of the vampire's in the show but I personally love it when thinking of Elena and the doppelganger's before her. In the background of all of history but with an endless future before her. "You could get the blues, But that don't mean that you should abuse it," EVERY FKN KID ON THAT SHOW. And yes I mean kid, the MF gang were children. And they did, in fact, get the blues and abuse it.

ELENA

Norman Fucking Rockwell

"you're just a man, it's just what you do, you're head in your hands as you colour me blue."

Anyone who's read my endless rambling before knows where I'm going with this but, jfc the salvatore's !!! Both Stefan and Damon (and canon as a whole but wtv) view their mistreatment of Elena as something unavoidable. Following the theme of horrific acts in the name of love from earlier, Stefan didn't have a choice in entering Elena's life. To him, it was his right, his purpose. (he had to know her).

Despite Elena being a grieving child who did not need any more bullshit in her life. He had too. And when that later caused even further turmoil, both from his own actions and indirect, unintended consequences. He metaphorically put his head in his hands, it wasn't just her suffering but him. In fact, if he really thought about it, later in canon, that is. It was almost equally her fault what happened. From his POV atleast.

Damon basically follows all the same beats but is more open about it, bemoaning his own lost chances with Elena as something completely disconnected to his very purposeful and avoidable choices to cause her pain. He's impulsive, it's not his fault.

"Goddamn, man child You act like a kid even though you stand six foot two"

Damon could only dream of being 6'2 but you get it.

Pretty When You Cry

"I'll wait for you, babe, you don't come through, babe You never do, babe, that's just what you do"

For one, she is very pretty when she cries, and two, see above.

ELIJAH (essentially every 'she fucked that old man' song in ldr's discography)

Million Dollar Man

"Someone as dangerous, tainted and flawed as you,"

"You're screwed up and brilliant Look like a million dollar man So why is my heart broke?"

He is screwed up and brilliant and he does break my heart.

BONNIE

Season of the Witch

Obviously, like... (also Davina, I never talk about her but that's my girl)

Pretty When You Cry

"I'll wait for you, babe, you don't come through, babe You never do, babe, that's just what you do"

Similarly too Elena, she's also pretty but the thesis of Bonnie's character is unfortunately being let down by the people around her. If tvd hadn't had jplec as a showrunner we probably would've gotten some proper character arc about that before season eight but...

ELEJAH

Cinnamon Girl

"There's things I wanna say to you But I'll just let you live Like if you hold me without hurting me You'll be the first who ever did"

kill me. literally fucking kill me like it's them fr.

BEKLENA

Doin' Time (yes it's a cover but Lana owns it tbf)

"Me and my girl, we got this relationship I love her so bad, but she treats me like shit"

The toxic girlfriends I deserved but wtv.

"I'd like to hold her head underwater"

Because she drowned her.

REBEKAH

Old Money

"But if you send for me, you know I'll come And if you call for me, you know I'll run I'll run to you, I'll run to you I'll run, run, run I'll come to you, I'll come to you"

Stuck in an endless cycle of finding freedom and falling back to help Klaus when he needs it.

"The power of youth is on my mind Sunsets, small town, I'm out of time Will you still love me when I shine From words but not from beauty My father's love was always strong My mother's glamour lives on and on Yet still inside, I felt alone For reasons unknown to me"

Never ending quest for humanity and mortality, her eventual fate of taking the cure. The loneliness of her thousand years etc

Honorable mentions for, Young and Beautiful (pretty much everyone's mortal x immortal ships anthem but specifically the Klarolines fuck with it so hard which I repect). Say Yes to Heaven, also works for literally every ship but it's always very Kolvina to me.

[wil-o-wispy]

The Wife, the Lover and the Bastard Son - Part 3

Pairing: Chris Redfield x FM! Reader (but not in this part)

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 (You are here) | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

Summary: One year after running from your feelings for Chris Redfield, an oddly familiar face emerges from the shadows.

Contents: Small spoilers for RE6, mentions of vomitting from seasickness, canon typical violence/swearing, Jake banter, canon typical puzzle bullshit, LORE. Reader is referred to as 'Doc' and is the wife of (dead) Albert Wesker and is a former Umbrella scientist.

a/n: Jake is literally one of the best characters in RE6 it is CRIMINAL that he's not in more fics. Be the change you want to see in the world. The plot is plotting in this part and I got a little carried away with descriptions but we're rolling with it. Also many thanks for 100+ likes on this series already. Enjoy!

w/c: 7.1k

1 Year Later:

Don’t puke. Don’t puke. Don’t puke.

That’s all you can think of under the black hood. The last thing you need right now is to puke on yourself. You should be thinking of ways to escape your current predicament, but your stomach lurching with the irregular rise and fall of the boat you’re handcuffed to, the indiscernible shouting of your kidnappers, the sweat all over your body from the unbearable heat and seasickness, and the sickeningly strong scent of fish and salty air is making that near impossible.

How the hell do I keep getting caught up in this shit? Don’t fucking puke. Breathe in through the mouth, out through the nose.

You’d had terrible seasickness since Albert kept you on that tanker for so long until Africa happened. After the second time trying to escape him and being mildly successful, he wanted to make damn sure that it didn’t happen again. Therefore: boat timeout. A boat prison meant it would be more difficult to escape. More resources needed, more planning required for a chance at walking on dry land. The chronic seasickness was an unintended side effect you’re sure, but it only gave another weakness for Albert to leverage against you. ‘The sickness will cease if you listen to me dearheart,’ didn’t sound like a compelling argument on its own to inject Uroboros in your veins, but presented as a solution to vomiting constantly because of the ocean’s movement for four years, it was pretty damn tempting some days. If you didn’t already know that virus was a death sentence, you might have given it a shot.

You’d even insisted that any transportation involving sea travel be explicitly prohibited while you were consulting/in protective custody with the B.S.A.A. Travel by air and car were far more convenient anyway, or at least that’s what Chris assured you. The man witnessed you puking your guts out the day he rescued you from that tanker. Of course he’d back up your request.

I wonder if he knows I’m gone yet. Deep breaths. Don’t puke.

It’s likely, considering it’s been some hours. Even though you’re considered part of B.S.A.A Europe now, you’re still willing to bet that Chris still got important updates about you considering your history. Higher-ups wouldn’t think twice about their favorite soldier wanting updates about the widow of Albert Wesker.

You know better.

His interest is much more personal than that.

As much as you would like to entertain a relationship, you can’t bring yourself to finding out what the aftermath of Chris’ professional life would be if you did. You felt guilty about leaving so quickly and not even telling him, but you figured if you had told him before you left, he might have convinced you to stay. You’d sent him a text wishing him well when you got to your new apartment an ocean away, which is better than nothing you suppose.

You hope he’d get a kick out of the security footage at least. You managed to aggressively elbow one of your kidnappers in the jaw and make them stagger back before you were overwhelmed, restrained and thrown in the back seat of a car. Surprisingly, there weren’t any physical consequences to that besides a mildly sore elbow. Whoever wanted to take you wants you all in one piece, which can either be really good or really bad. It’s the world’s most shitty game of roulette; is it a job offer to work for a terrorist organization? Or is it one of Albert’s disgruntled business partners wanting to use you as a test subject for revenge? Both were unpleasant in their own ways.

With all the circumstances surrounding your transfer to the Germany B.S.A.A. lab, everything was going surprisingly well. Too well. You should have known it wouldn’t last forever. Nothing good ever does in your life. Chris had tried to reach out a few times wanting to talk, but you always dodged his calls blaming the time difference, your workload, or the near-constant stream of outbreaks that always required your professional attention. You didn’t mind. Keeping busy meant less time to think about Chris’ wounded expression the last time you saw him. The attempts at contact eventually slowed in frequency and you only saw him in the occasional group video call regarding major outbreaks. The North American branch rarely had a reason to visit your particular station with it only being a lab and having nothing to do with the B.S.A.A.’s military operations. A small blessing in your eyes.

Germany was a far away dream at this point. There’s light piercing through the fabric of your hood, so you know it’s the next day. It was night when you were taken. You didn’t get a good look at your kidnappers, but you heard them speaking some sort of Asiatic-related language before they bagged you, as well as throughout your journey to wherever ‘here’ is. All you know for sure is that you were in a car for a long time, a plane for an even longer amount of time (that you somehow slept through most of), and this boat for what feels like an eternity.

Mercifully, your hear shouts from the shore and the movement of the boat changes from a straight choppy line to a diagonal jerky tug and pull. They’re docking the boat. You hear an announcement from an old-sounding speaker in that same unfamiliar language close by, followed by an ear grating buzzer. The words from the speaker echo around the space, giving you the impression of a rocky and unforgiveable terrain.

You still feel wobbly when you’re practically dragged from the boat by your handcuffed wrists, but you manage to walk in what you think is a straight line towards wherever your destination is. The hollow echo of walking on wood underneath your feet turns into the gravely sound of small pebbles, then morphs into solid concrete. The overwhelming fish smell also grows weaker the farther you walk inland, although you can still barely smell it if you focus on your kidnappers. They’re talking boisterously and laughing. You can hear them on either side of you, in front of you, and behind you. The desire to rip off your hood, bodycheck the goons next to you, and run off into God-knows-where was strong, but it was also a rash, stupid decision.

Don’t lash out immediately, know the enemy first.

You’d always been told to comply with kidnappers until the B.S.A.A. could get to you, but on the other hand you’re just too proud to blindly do everything they tell you. You always operate on the assumption they won’t find you in time. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. So, you do what’s become natural at this point: observe and take mental notes.

After a few more paces and a comment from the leader in front of you that the other three belly laugh at, you hear a metallic click, then the metal on metal symphony of a large factory sized door slowly opening a few yards in front of you. There’s a moment of silence between your kidnappers. Then, the ringleader in front of you tugs on your cuffs so hard that you nearly stumble to the ground, but you manage to barely keep your balance. He says words where he sounds like he’s smiling. A joke like before? But the other three aren’t laughing this time. The one on your back right says something quietly, and the ringleader holding your cuffs barks something back angrily.

Then it hits you: these guys are nervous. They haven’t been here before. They’re hesitating to go into the unknown entrance in front of you. These guys are probably a hired third party. The man holding your cuffs shouts something else, startling you and breaking your train of thought. He pulls the cuffs forward as he walks and you’re forced to follow. You hear three pairs of hesitant footsteps behind you.

It only takes a few seconds for you to realize why three of the four men got cold feet at the door. It’s dark in here. The sunlight that was able to pierce through the dark fabric of the hood lessens in intensity the further you’re dragged into the room. As the sounds of the ocean outside get further and further away and you’re questioning what kind of building could possibly be this large.

There’s nervous dissent among the three kidnappers behind you when the big metal door starts closing, but another angry remark from the leader shuts them up. You’re led further and further into the room. You hear yours and your kidnapper’s footsteps echoing around the cavernous room, but the sound gradually reverberates less and less the closer you’re led to bright lights on the other end of the room. The darkness under your hood lessens and grows surprisingly brighter until you’re forced to stop. The ringleader in front of you clears his throat, and pushes you forward slightly. He speaks like a game show host presenting the grand prize, the forced showmanship feeling out of place in the empty environment. A higher pitched, lilting male voice responds over a speaker overhead. Unimpressed. The ringleader tries to keep up the act, but is quickly shut down again.

You hear the higher pitched voice bark out something that sounds like an order, you hear a huff from the leader next to you, then the black hood is ripped off your head. Your eyes are immediately assaulted with bright, military grade lights pointing in your direction. You try to blink away the blindness, but even after getting used to not being in almost complete darkness, you can only make out the silhouette of a wiry man and a bulkier man with some kind of rifle standing next to him in an observation chamber above you. You see the wiry man nod his head in approval. He leans forward and you hear a polite, lightly accented higher pitched voice over the speaker.

“Welcome Doctor. It’s truly a pleasure to meet you.”

You don’t recognize the voice, so you elect keep your expression neutral. “It’s a pleasure to be here.” You reply flatly, clearly wanting to be anywhere else.

“I do apologize for your long journey. But some things just can’t be helped. These kind gentlemen will show you to your accommodations.”

At first, you think he’s referring to your kidnappers, but then you see two soldiers walk out from the darkness in front of you. They’re dressed in black, military style gear and wear something similar to a gas mask on their faces. They’re also holding electric batons. You look around. Your kidnappers are dressed in street clothes and appear close to middle age. Maybe you should have taken your chances with them outside. As the soldiers walk out of the shadows, the lead kidnapper holding you by your cuffs, the oldest by the looks of him, gestures to the wiry man above you all and starts almost shouting in a firm tone while alternating between rubbing his fingertips together and an ‘okay’ symbol. Payment.

The wiry man’s silhouette presses a button on the console in front of him in the booth, and more lights come on to your left. Crates. Lots of them. You don’t know what’s inside from this distance, but judging by the smile on the lead kidnapper’s face the payment is more than satisfactory. The previous nervous tension among the four men is completely eradicated. The nervous one that spoke before tosses a small set of keys to one of the soldiers, the lead kidnapper pushes you forward towards the other soldier, and all four of the men head over to the crates to check out their bounty.

You see the soldier with the key place it in one of the pockets on the front of his uniform and walk back towards the darkness, while the other places you in front of him with a firm hand on your shoulder and walks you forward. You’re in complete darkness for a few paces before you’re blinded again by a pair of industrial elevator doors opening and shadows walking towards you.

You realize the two escorting you are guards at best, not soldiers. The squad in front of you is armed with much more deadly weapons; you recognize pistols and semi-automatic TMP’s as the group marches past you back into the warehouse-type room with your original kidnappers. You don’t have long to wonder why they’re marching back into the room. Just as the doors to the elevator are closing, you hear the confused shouts of your kidnappers get cut short by rapid gunfire.

No witnesses. That’s never good.

You’re not in the elevator for long. The doors open to reveal a long hallway with more industrial style architecture. The guard in front of you starts walking forward and the guard behind you lightly pushes you to follow. His presence behind you makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.

As you’re ushered forward, it feels like you’re walking through a cross between an old factory and one of the old Umbrella labs. Some things appear to be 40 years old or more, and other things, such as the doors, have been updated to be futuristic sliding electric doors with keypads for additional security. The wheels are turning in your head on what this place of operations could possibly be, but you don’t have enough information to make any solid conclusions yet.

The guard in front of you scans a key card on the panel next to the door, it beeps, then the door gracefully slides open to reveal another hallway similar to the last one, but completely renovated; bright white and futuristic. The architect clearly took inspiration from the old Umbrella labs.

About halfway down the new hallway, you realize you don’t feel the presence of the guard behind you anymore. You look over your shoulder and stop in your tracks when you see the guard unconscious on the ground a few feet away.

Huh. How’d that happen?

When you stop walking, the guard in front of you turns around, probably to get you to keep moving to whatever cell these people have prepared for you. But as soon as the guard turns around, you see a gray blur drop from the ceiling out of the corner of your eye. The gray blur, a ginger headed man, punches the guard, which makes the guard stumble but he regains his footing quickly. They exchange a few attempts at hitting each other; the guard tries to swing the electric baton but the mystery man dodges the attempted strike. The mystery man gets a few good punches in and successfully disarms the guard, but the guard is able to catch the man’s wrist, the guard then uses his forearm as leverage to pin the man to the wall. It looks the guard is trying to cut off the mystery man’s air circulation, but the man has enough strength and fighting know-how to not get knocked out.

For a moment, you don’t know what to do. You don’t recognize the new man. The only thing you know is that he’s a skilled fighter, and the other guard isn’t going down easy. You also know you can’t escape by yourself, and the B.S.A.A. doesn’t know where you are.

Help the stranger it is.

You run over to the unconscious guard and grab his electric baton and grip it the best you can with your hands bound together. The mystery man is still pinned to the wall by the guard and is trying to wiggle free.

You sprint down the hall, wind up the prod, and smack the guard on the side of the head. The guard doesn’t go down like you hoped, but the shock of you hitting him with the baton gives the mystery man enough time to grab the guard with both hands and ram him into the wall, knocking him out cold.

“You good?” You ask, somewhat out of breath.

The man stretches his neck and arms, nodding his head. “Never better. Thanks for that.”

Now that the man isn’t brawling with the guards, you get a better look at him.

A nagging sense of familiarity emerges in the back of your mind. You’re positive you haven’t met this man before. You couldn’t have. You would have remembered the large diagonal scar on the left side of his face that stretches from the junction of his cheek and nose all the way down to his jaw, or the buzzed ginger hair. Those features aren’t exactly forgettable, yet some detail that you can’t put your finger on in the moment keeps tugging at your memory.

You shake off the feeling. You can sort that out later, but right now you have more binding things to focus on. You hold out your wrists, still bound in the cuffs.

“No problem. Mind returning the favor? The key’s in his chest pocket.” You point your chin to the guard that you shocked.

“Sure thing.”

Jake saunters over to the guard, rolls the unconscious body over to unzip the front pocket to grab the key, then walks back over to you to start undoing the locks on your cuffs. Jake’s eyes flicker between the lock and your face as he does so.

“So… you’re the hot shot scientist.”

It’s more of a statement than a question. You narrow your eyes. Jake easily unlocks the first cuff and begins to work on the second one.

“That depends… who’s asking?”

“Name’s Jake.”

Knowing his name doesn’t help you place this man’s face. You stay silent and wait for Jake to keep going and give you a last name or the company he works for, but instead he unlocks the second cuff and tosses them away, looking at you expectantly with an easy smirk.

“This is the part where you tell me your name.”

“Not before you tell me why you’re here.” When in doubt, be on the side of caution. Just because this man helped you, doesn’t mean he’s on your side. You rub your wrists, trying to get rid of the sting of the cuffs being on your wrists for so long.

“Just a little… preventative maintenance for a friend. You got a name?”

You purse your lips, trying to get a read on what Jake means by ‘preventative maintenance.’ He took out the guards, so unless he’s going for a long con, he doesn’t work for the people who took you. Most mercenaries wouldn’t rescue someone on a job unless it’s in their contract, although any good murder for hire would know what their target looked like before accepting the job. You’re willing to bet his intentions are most likely in line with your own. You relax your shoulders.

“Just call me Doc. And yeah, I’m the virologist.”

The cavalier attitude Jake is exuding shifts slightly and for a moment you think he’s connected the dots on who you are, but instead Jake’s attitude morphs into optimistic determination.

“You know the periodic table?”

You stand there, confused and trying to figure out why he’s thinking about something so out of left field, but coming up with nothing. You answer honestly. “Uh… yes?”

A satisfied smirk stretches across his face. “Good. I could use your help. C’mon.”

Jake strides over to a specific section of wall and presses an unassuming panel on it. A keypad pops out and Jake starts to type on it while you stay in your spot processing what just happened.

“Excuse you, I don’t remember volunteering my expertise!”

“What’s the hold up Doc?” Jake finishes inputting the number sequence and you hear a hiss, something metal releasing, the panel of wall that you now realize is a hidden door sliding back a couple inches, then the wall panel sliding to the left to reveal an industrial staircase winding downward. Jake turns back to you, a cavalier expression on his face. “You got something planned already with sleeping beauty over there? Or are you coming with me?”

Jake gestures to the guard you electrocuted on the floor. You look at the guard, then the other one further down the hall, then back to Jake. “Lucky for you, my plans just got canceled. Let’s go.”

It only takes a few minutes to figure out that Jake knows his way around this place. The staircase leads to another series of dingy hallways that Jake saunters through with confidence. Either he’d already figured out these sections weren’t closely guarded, or he’d taken measures to make sure he wouldn’t have to worry about surveillance. Either way, you’re relieved to be in the presence of someone who knows what they’re doing and isn’t trying to hold you hostage.

“So… you didn’t say who you work for.”

Jake thinks about his answer, then shrugs and keeps walking. “I consider myself an independent contractor. But right now, I’m on the B.S.A.A.’s payroll.”

“Really? You don’t strike me as B.S.A.A.” You know for a fact that the B.S.A.A. recruits almost exclusively from armies around the world. Army life causes soldiers to have a certain disposition. A certain disciplined way of carrying oneself resulting from years of drills and training. Jake’s body language felt much too relaxed for that lifestyle.

“I’m consulting.”

You give the man a half smile hearing that. The way Jake said that made it sound like he wasn’t exactly happy about it, but accepted the job nonetheless. Something you could easily relate to. “What a coincidence, so am I.”

“For viruses? You some kind of expert on bioweapons?”

You shrug and keep following Jake. “I’ve got a good amount of practical experience.” It’s a true but vague statement. Jake doesn’t need to know the details of why you know so much. Any mention of your past with Umbrella or Wesker never ends well with strangers.

Jake looks over his shoulder with an eyebrow raised. “Don’t give me that humble bullshit.”

You scoff and smile. Definitely not army. “Okay. You’d be hard pressed to find someone who knew more. Better? What do you need to know?”

“Give me a rundown of the G-Virus.”

You don't answer for a long moment, stunned. “The G? These guys went through the trouble to get me here for that?” Your tone is incredulous.

“What?” Jake doesn’t sound confused at your reaction. Only curious.

“It’s just… unstable and obsolete compared to other bioweapons. It’s not exactly competitive against strains nowadays where infected can tell the difference between enemy and ally.”

“Obsolete huh? What’s your theory on why they have it all the way out here then?”

“They’re… low on funding and have limited options? Or they didn’t care what they’re buying.”

You pause, realizing Jake can fill in some missing information for you. “And who are ‘they’ and what is ‘here?’ I didn’t get a good look at anything on my way in.”

Jake chuckles and shakes his head. “You must piss off a lot of people.”

You roll your eyes at Jake’s comment and keep following him. “You don’t have to be an ass about it.”

“Not judging, I respect it. I’m on a fair share of shit lists myself.”

“If you don’t know the answers, you can just be honest about it.”

“Alright alright. Technically, we’re in Japan, but it’s more of a small as shit island in the Pacific. I was told this was a former Umbrella research outpost.”

You scrunch your brows in confusion. “I didn’t know they had labs this far out from the mainland.”

“Neither did I, but ya learn something new every day.”

Eventually, the dingy hallways and platforms lead to another mechanical door that reveals another white hallway not unlike the ones you remember from Umbrella’s previous headquarters in Raccoon City. You don’t have much time to reminisce as you follow Jake to a door at the end of the hall.

The room you enter is somewhat dated. The equipment here looks like it came straight out of the 90’s, but with some modern updates in a few choice sections. Jake ignores all of that in favor of leading you to the other side of the room where a mechanical door and a keypad are waiting. The door is notably one of the only things in the room that’s been updated.

“Mind taking a crack at this Doc?”

Jake hands you a note with an Umbrella header on it:

Pierre if you’re reading this, I’ve changed the password to the specimen room. I know it impedes business to change it so frequently, but the boss insists on the highest level of security due to the nature of the special project. The new password is your namesake element on the periodic table. Just type in the atomic number and weight in that order. Don’t mess it up again. That damn alarm will lock everything down and Aimi nearly blew a gasket the last time I had to get the security key to disable it again.

“You brought me here for this? Seriously?” You look at Jake like a disappointed mother. Do schools not teach the manmade elements in chemistry anymore? In your mind, you think that Jake went a little overboard bringing someone with a PHD to solve a periodic table puzzle. Jake doesn’t react to your question. He just keeps up the cavalier attitude.

“So you can solve it.”

“You know Google exists, right?” You reply, deadpan.

“No service in the middle of the ocean. Are you going to help me out or not?”

You scoff at the comment, then hand the note back to him and stride to one of the bookshelves. “Yes. It’s Curium.” You thumb through the spines trying to find a chemistry book of some kind.

“But his name’s Pierre. You sure?”

You find a ratty chemistry book with university library stickers all over the spine. Bingo. You pull it out and flip through the back pages, finally finding what you were looking for: a periodic table.

“Pierre Curie and Marie Curie discovered the element. That’s the answer. Type in 96247.”

You snap the book shut and you hear Jake typing in the code on the door. Now that Jake’s errand is almost done, it’s time to get the hell out of Dodge. Or the ocean in this case.

“After you run your maintenance we need to find a radio, or a ride out of here. I don’t want to be in the middle of nowhere longer than I need to be.”

“I’m no travel agent, but I think that can be arranged.”

You turn to join him, but a logo on some papers scattered around on the desk by the bookshelf catches your eye; a Tricell logo. Your eyebrows scrunch together. Albert partnered with Tricell for the Uroboros project and the company has been defunct since Africa happened four years prior. Why is that logo here of all places?

You hear a beep behind you and a mechanical door sliding open with a soft hiss as you pour over the documents. They’re copies of internal documents relating to the development of the Africa strain of Plaga parasites with yellow highlights all over them. A large label that reads ‘G – U’ stuck on a keycard is blocking one of the notes so you move it to the side. More concerningly, the only things you see highlighted are locations of labs and sites of infection with handwritten margin notes in Kanji that you don’t understand.

“Hey uh, Doc?” Jake is calling you from inside the room that was unlocked.

“Hm?” You respond, still half-focusing on the Tricell documents.

“I don’t think these guys had limited options.”

A sense of dread starts to form in the back of your mind when Jake says that. You speed walk over to the now accessible room. It’s a large, white room with rows of what look like display cases. You see Jake looking through the glass and into display on the other side of it. You walk up next to him to look for yourself and your heart drops to your stomach when you see what he’s talking about.

On the other side of the glass, you see a complete family of Plaga parasite strains. As you walk down the aisle, you see the original strain from Spain, all the way to the newest strain that popped up in Edonia a couple years back. Although to your relief, you see that the Amber strain which allows the infected to have both strength and free will isn’t displayed.

You glance at the aisle behind the Plaga parasite display. You immediately recognize the familiar T-Virus series. It’s concerning how thorough the collection is. Even without reading the placards underneath each sample, you recognize the strain that caused the outbreak at the Spencer Mansion, the T-Abyss virus from a few years ago, a few different failed strands from the Marcus-Birkin projects, among dozens more. You feel your heart skip a beat when you see the T-VERONICA placard, but you relax when you see that the sample holder is empty.

“Doc? Talk to me what’re you thinking?”

Even with the display cases missing a few of the more powerful specimens, it was still the most comprehensive collection of viruses and parasites in a single place that you’d seen in your career.

“They nearly have the whole damn catalogue in here.” Your tone is grim. Samples as comprehensive as this can only spell something bad on the horizon, but you’re not too sure what.

“I don’t understand what their play is here.” You state, still walking along the T-Strain aisle and examining each sample. Your footsteps echo around the room from the grate flooring. Based on the setup, each one appears to be a live sample.

“I think I do. They’re trying to be a one stop shop for bioweapons and this is the showroom.” Jake spits in disgust.

At first glance, Jake’s observation appears correct. But upon closer examination, that conclusion doesn’t quite fit. You slowly walk along the aisle and look at Jake through the glass in the aisle opposite. He’s examining the strains in the G-Sample section, looking back and forth from the samples in front of him and his phone.

“I want to agree with you, but I don’t think that’s it.”

Jake stops and looks at you confused. “Why?”

“They don’t have nearly enough inventory. These are samples. An unusually comprehensive collection of samples, but there’s only one of each.”

Jake shrugs. “Maybe it’s somewhere else.”

Again, a logical conclusion that doesn’t quite fit. “Outside of this facility? Possible. Here? There would have to be at least a few dozen rooms like this to store everything properly.”

You stop walking.

“And logistically, it just doesn’t make sense. We’re practically in the middle of nowhere. Why would a business owner put their showroom in one of the most difficult to reach places on the planet? You would think they’d want to make it easy for the buyer to review product, as well as convenient for the owner to ship out that product. Someone wanting to be a one-stop-shop would be on the mainland.“

You pause, an icy feeling washing over you. The bag on your head during your transport here and the execution of your kidnappers suddenly makes a lot more sense. 

“These people don’t want to be found.”

Jake’s eyes flick from his phone to your face. “So they’re working on something big. A new G-virus?”

You shift on your feet shaking your head while looking over the G-Virus samples. “Yes to the big project, no to the G. Whatever it is, it’s not down here.”

“You sure about that? This one’s missing.” Jake holds his phone up to the glass so you can see on the other side of the G-Sample row. Jake’s correct this time: this specific strain isn’t displayed. You tilt your head in confusion.

“That’s not a strand I recognize.” At first glance, you know it's an unusual strand of G-Virus. G-Viruses are normally green in color, but this one is a sickly pink.

Jake grunts, shaking his head and pocketing the phone. “It’s never that simple. Is it? An all-inclusive virus buffet and one of the only one that's missing is the one I need.”

Jake pulls out a pistol you didn’t know he had, checks the clip to make sure it’s fully loaded, then holds it down by his side as he strides out of the room.

“Where you headed?” You call after him.

“Main lab upstairs. I’ll come get ya after I’ve got the G-sample.” He answers over his shoulder.

“Absolutely not!” You reply in disbelief and Jake stops walking, sighing in annoyance. He can’t seriously think he can take on the army upstairs with just a pistol. You try to talk some sense into him.

“We need to find a radio and get the B.S.A.A. here. These people will kill you no questions asked if they see you. Plus, that handgun of yours isn’t going to cut it against their hardware.”

Jake shrugs his shoulders, unconcerned. “I’ve had worse odds.”

“That doesn’t make lone wolfing this any less stupid! There’s a base in Tokyo, we just need to find a way to contact them-”

You stop talking abruptly when you catch a glimpse of a dangerously familiar sample. The one that changed the course of your life for the worse. The one that your dead husband tried and failed to infect the planet with. The name UROBOROS is proudly displayed at the end of the G-Virus aisle in the back, nearly drowned out by the sheer number of G-Virus samples.

You hear Jake saying something to the effect of ‘I’ll be back before they even know I’m there’ but you’re not registering what he’s saying. Your vision has tunneled to only focus on that devil sample. All it takes is one slip up by a careless scientist to infect this whole place. You think back to the keycard in the other room by the Tricell papers; ‘G – U.’ G-Virus to Uroboros. This time can be different. You have the power and knowledge to stop this.

“Hey? Earth to Doc? You still with me over there?”

“That needs to be destroyed.” Your voice is barely above a whisper as you stare at the Uroboros sample. You keep your eyes on the sample for a few steps, then brush past Jake to rush into the other room to find supplies; some kind of glass beaker, metal garbage can, something to contain the damned thing when you burn it to ash.

As you begin nearly tearing the lab apart in your barely controlled frenzy, Jake steps back into the sample room to look at what has you so distressed.

“Uroboros? That’s the uh… it’s not a G-Virus is it?”

You open a cabinet and find a large glass beaker. You grab it and set it on the counter and keep looking for more supplies.

“Yes! Now less talking and more helping. There’s Bunsen burners here, so there has to be some matches-”

“Can't this wait? Is it really any worse than the other ones?”

You aggressively close some drawers as you turn back to Jake with a serious glare.

“Albert Wesker. Heard of him?” Your voice is low and controlled.

Jake’s face melts into a barely hidden look of disdain. “Yeah, I have.”

“He tried to use it to cleanse the world, as he put it. He spent years injecting innocent people with that and he was the only one who didn’t turn into a flesh-eating worm thing.”

You open more drawers and find a cleaning cabinet with a half full container of rubbing alcohol. You grab it, along with a pair of cleaning gloves, and set them next to the beaker. You start soaking random bits of scrap paper with the liquid and stuff it into the beaker.

“Not only that, he tried to launch that shit into the atmosphere with a deranged smile on his face. It nearly ended the world once and that’s not something I, or anyone, needs to deal with again.”

You put another splash of rubbing alcohol into the beaker for good measure then forcefully put the bottle on the table causing it to spill some of the liquid on the table. It doesn’t slow you down. You quickly put on the cleaning gloves and dig through the drawers around the lab looking for a lighter or matches. Smoking isn’t rare in Japan so one of those items must be here somewhere.

“So Wesker had special blood?” If you were paying closer attention to the way Jake said that, you would have easily picked up that he knew more than he was letting on. But you don’t. You’re too busy trying to get rid of a dormant threat sitting in the other room. You answer without thinking while opening more drawers by the bookshelf.

“Genetically, he was one in a trillion. But even with that, he still had to take doses of the virus periodically to keep it stable. All the more reason to nip this in the bud before it becomes a problem again.”

“You know a lot about this.” A statement of fact, not a question.

“Yeah, I do!” You exclaim dramatically as you slam a cabinet shut when there, once again, aren’t any matches. You’re so frustrated that Jake is asking so many questions and won’t just help you.

“You knew him.” Another statement of fact, not a question. His eyes are dissecting your every move now. The look vaguely reminds you of Albert and you feel the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Albert used to look at you like that when he wanted to know if you were lying or gauging your reaction to something he told you. You shake off the feeling. The Uroboros discovery is making you paranoid.                                                                                            

You sigh and shift on your feet, leaning back against the cabinet with your eyes on the ceiling. The scent of rubbing alcohol is strong in the silent room. You shift your eyes to Jake’s after a long moment. His expression is nearly unreadable, but there’s an underlying edge in his posture now. He knows. Not everything, but he’s catching on to why you’re so passionate about this. There’s no use lying about it.

“I knew him…well, okay? At least I thought I did before all the crazy. But right now we have more important things to do than rehash my history.”

You force yourself to tear away from Jake’s calculating gaze and resume your search.

“I nee-… we need matches. Can you just help me look please?”

You don’t hear a response behind you, and you think that Jake is going to keep asking you questions. But after you open a few more drawers you hear a rustle of fabric and a metallic tink.

“Use this.”

Your head whips over to Jake and a wave of relief washes over you. Then annoyance.

He’s holding a lighter.

He had that the whole damn time you were tearing through the lab looking for matches.

You decide it’s best to hold off on scolding him until after you get rid of the Uroboros sample. Instead, you take the lighter with a gruff thank you. You grab your supplies along with the ‘G - U’ keycard and head back into the sample room.

You enter the room with newfound determination. You couldn’t stop Uroboros on your own all those years ago, but this time it’s different. You’re stopping a disaster before it has a chance to start. You place your supplies on the floor next to the case, preparing to immediately plop the Uroboros sample into the beaker. In your peripheral vision, you notice Jake leaning against the doorframe, watching your every move.

You scan the card.

Instead of the glass sliding down into the base like you expected, it stops a quarter of the way down when a deafening alarm sounds overhead and Jake is forced off of the mechanical door when it reels shut. Before you can even call out to him, gas starts pouring into the room from the grates on the floor.

All senses of self-preservation leave you in this moment. Thousands of years of survival instinct telling you to run and claw at the door and scream for help is ignored because, once again, your thoughts are only consumed by the existence of the Uroboros sample. Possessed by only one thought: you can’t fail to stop this again. You couldn’t justify something as trivial as your own survival if it meant there was a sliver of a chance of something like Africa happening again.

You force yourself to focus, even though it’s getting so much more difficult with your mind starting to cloud from the gas. You hold your breath to prolong consciousness. There’s enough space between the glass and the edge of the case that you can squeeze your arm in and grab the damned sample. You can hear Jake banging on the door shouting your name, but his voice sounds so far away as you force the sample from its display rod and gracelessly sink to your knees.

Your hand feels unwieldy and heavy as you drop the sample into the glass beaker. Even more so as you try and fail to roll the lighter wheel fast enough to make a flame. You rip off a cleaning glove to get a better grip and you keep trying. You have to. This needs to work. You can’t fail again. You won’t fail again.

You pause to finally take a breath and force yourself not to cough from the downright bone numbing gas that’s still filling the room. Your vision is starting to blacken at the edges and your body slumps so much that you’re resting on your stomach, so you make a conscious effort to tighten your grip as hard as you can on the lighter and roll the wheel. A small flame erupts from the lighter. With a shaking hand you thrust it into the beaker and the alcohol-soaked kindling erupts into flame. You barely notice the sting of the flames against your hand when you retract it.

Everything feels heavy. You finally let your body resign to the gas and let your head rest on the ground. With each shallow breath, the darkness at the edge of your vision grows more and more prominent. You don’t hear Jake anymore, but you do hear indiscernible voices on the other side of the wall getting farther and farther away and loud pops. Gunfire? Or Jake banging on the door?

The last thing you remember seeing before the darkness overtakes your vision are blackened remains in a glass beaker and a pair of unfamiliar, polished shoes slowly walking towards you.

__________________________________

Thanks for reading!

Tag List: @killerwendigo

a/n 2: I really hate doing filler/transition chapters as a principle, but I promise that it's very necessary for what's coming. Chris x Reader is going to be on the backburner for a couple parts but I assure you he's coming back and it will feel rewarding when he does.

AO3 link for this part.

[cypanache]

I love love love your obidala fic!! Is it still going or are you taking a break from it? :( I really hope you write more, I love regency and I love obidala, this is like the best thing ever. I'm assuming they get attached and then anakin comes back and causes yummy drama, but who was that butler guy in the end? C3po? I hope so, he's my favourite star wars character lol. But also, much as i love anakin whoooo would go for angsty teenager over obi wan like hello. He's nice, he's mature, he's calm, he won't strangle you like the pros are endless. Obidala for lifeeeee

(Ps if you have any regency book/fic recommendations that you mightve gotten inspo from pls do tell I am STARVING and so sick of rakey stories like I hate rakes I hate manwhores YUCK. Thank you 💖)

Hi Anon!

I'm so glad Unintended has brought you some joy! As far as am I still writing, the answer is a qualified yes. Yes in the sense of I definitely have not moved on from these two, and I am actively thinking about and working on Unintended as well as all my other obidala fic (was in fact doing it this morning). Qualified in the sense of I am a mom who works full-time and this particular season of life is demanding a lot of me, which is leaving less energy and time for my creative pursuits, so the progress is slow. But I am still around.

The footman at the end of chapter 3 is actually my wink and a nod to Jar Jar. I tend to seed my AUs with lots of little references to canon throughout so expect more of that.

I obviously empathize with your preference for the quiet hero. I am very much of the Colonel Brandon, Captain Wentworth, Professor Bhaer camp. Unfortunately, they are not a common kind of romantic hero (I honestly don't know why), so I don't have a lot to offer on that front, hence the fic writing.

Maybe others can chime in with their favorite quietly decent male romantic lead?

[clatterbane]

Oh yeah, about that persistent anemia that the new endo pretty much flipped over...

Yeah, I developed some suspicions of my own there, and it took maybe 2 seconds of searching to turn up plenty of info about PPIs directly causing iron absorption issues too. 🙄 Besides the other minerals I already knew about. They're pretty well known for that, leading to bone density problems for some people. Most likely also the reason my sodium and potassium levels have kept coming back just under the acceptable range too. You fuck around with the balance of digestive secretions and pH, it may have some unintended effects!

I've been stuck on high-dose PPIs ever since that big DKA crash in 2020 damaged my digestive system. They've actually kept me on the maximum dosages approved for adult humans, but I've ended up cutting it back some myself to the point that it's just higher than usual. (Partly to hopefully also cut back somewhat on potential side effects like this, but also thanks to repeated pharmacy supply issues with formats I can reasonably swallow with my now fucked-up esophagus!)

Never had any notable reflux issues before, but with that damage there's nothing really keeping the stomach acid down where it belongs. With evidence of that from some truly unpleasant testing where they dangle sensors down your throat. And of course they're trying to keep more acid from doing more damage. Some of that effect if I don't have the meds is probably from rebound acid overproduction, but if I don't take them for whatever reason now it gets ugly within a few days!

So yeah, I do seem to be stuck on the PPIs for the forseeable future now, whether I like it or not. It's just good to know that I do need to make sure to take in extra of certain minerals on a regular basis to try and compensate for that.

Am I surprised that two endos now, and the GP I got referred to for more tests over it have just completely overlooked well-known effects of meds they knew I was taking regularly, and which are readily found immediately by plugging "PPIs iron" into your search engine of choice? Not remotely.

Nope, they'd prefer to mutter direly about rare liver diseases and all kinds of less likely possibilities--and order a zillion blood tests. At least they DO seem to like to order various testing here when something looks off instead of just ignoring it, I will give them that. Guessing they are not under the same kind of pennypenching pressure that kinda got me needing the freaking PPIs at all.

PPIs are more within primary care's wheelhouse than endocrinology's. But. the gastroenterology guy who has been prescribing the stuff for a good while now ALSO did not put together that the borderline low electrolytes he was concerned about in the context of anesthesia might have some connection there before I brought it up as a possibility. To his credit, he also did not act like I must be on crack mentioning it, or seem to take it as some weird challenge to His Authority. But, the guy--who does come across as smart and competent enough--had obviously never considered this as a possibility.

This shit may be anything but unexpected by now. But, it really does sort of bring home just how bad at least 95% of clinicians seem to be at diagnostic pattern matching, in general.

(I mean, working with patterns like this is just one of the things my own brain has Always Just Done. Getting it to fucking shut up sometimes when it's not being useful, and channeling it into actually productive avenues are the bigger challenge. Seems to be another on the less shitty side of those neuroweird superpowers. But, some of these otherwise intelligent people are just so damn terrible at it by just about any standards. At the risk of sounding like some kind of condescending prick.)

[serendertothesquad]

Seren's Studies: Odd Squad UK -- "A Dicey Situation" Episode Followup, Part 1

Captain O origins episode! "Totally Odd Squad" Mk. II! Call it what you like, I'm just hoping this is good. After the hell that was "Mission O Possible", I like to be prepared. Almost anything could surpass that, really.

Let's dive in below the break! (Pun unintended.)

...It's another Tasha episode.

I can hear that stupid "oh no" TikTok song playing as I fucking type this. I'm not confident after "The Triangle Sisters". I'm praying to Don't-Fuck-This-Up-God.

Hey. Hey. You guys remember when Otis threw a fit because Rebecca was exploiting Odd Squad for moving services?

This is just as egregious and yet will go entirely undetected. You don't need two pseudo-government agents to pull up Google Maps and punch in the location of the nearest Aldi's, for God sakes.

I see this milk came from the same cow that the Town Baker's milk came from.

I'd go investigate that cow, really.

You guys also remember Otis giving therapy to a plant?

THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THIS IS BUT IT'S MILK. And it's just as amusing here as it was there.

"Breakfast is the most important meal of the day!"

Thank you, edutainment overlords, for this obligatory healthy eating message.

Asshole cereal box is making up lies for himself, methinks. Dude just tipped over on his own the second his owner picked up the milk pitcher.

hhhhheeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEY THIS AIN'T MY SWAMPS 'N GATORS. WHERE'S MY SWAMPS 'N GATORS YOU CHUCKWADS.

...No but seriously what is this game and why does it look like Odd Squad Risk to me.

I remember when there was a brief shot of Oona failing at chess and Oprah telling her that's not how the game is played.

That was fun.

This is fun too, and nice to see, but it doesn't hit the same.

Good segue. Not as good as Oprah calling everyone out on their RPS strategies.

(You will see me make a lot of TOS cracks and references. I will not regret a single one of 'em.)

Hot damn, she can dim the lights with her mind! That's craaaaaaaaaaaazeeeeeeeeeeeeee-

So that would make her ship the Odd Squad Odd Squad.

Instead of Screw Steamer Odd Squad, or Steam Ship Odd Squad, both of which sound much better.

And are actually canon in the franchise.

(No, really. Go listen to the Squadcast. The S.S. Odd Squad is a 100% canon ship.)

Honestly, if you had told me about a year ago that that sailor in that promo picture SSE put out was a chef named Osgood, I'd have laughed at you.

RIP to the days when I thought that sailor was an assistant of Captain O's and not her first mate.

Ohhhh, a wavy flashback effect! Standard in a ton of shows, but Odd Squad has never really employed it as far as I'm aware. Nice to see they're going to effect basics!

Aside from that, wow that is...a tiny ship. Tinier than I was expecting. I was expecting something huge and not...y'know...a little BB thing.

I'm sorry, I just did an entire fuck-ass wheeze at her saying SHE KNEW OSGOOD SINCE NURSERY SCHOOL.

These two ARE FUCKING CHILDHOOD FRIENDS.

Genuinely fucking flabbergasted, because it's rare that we get childhood friends who were main characters in this franchise and joined Odd Squad together. Not even Olive and Otto can attest to that! Or Olympia and Otis!

Best bit in the entire episode so far bar nearly none.

I mean...on the plus side, at least he only has two mouths to feed.

That being said, I will once again raise the issue of there being couch cushions in a ship like that.

...Goldfish.

Huge-ass Goldfish.

You can't fool me.

They're Goldfish.

If there is one thing I utterly despise about Captain O as a character, it's the stupid euphemisms.

They're not amusing. They're not funny. I've heard better from other characters.

Okay, a shell phone is actually pretty clever. One point to Tasha, and don't make me revoke it as quickly as I did last time.

(Choosing to overlook the fact that there's an Admiral because...I mean...pretty standard sailor stuff. And me and other fans can work with the lore.)

Definitely not the intent, but I can't stop reading this line as utterly sarcastic since Captain O did a hard aversion off the "Newhart Phone Call" cliff.

"So this look isn't a fashion choice?"

Osgood, you poor Ohlm-like sonuvagun.

No, sir, actually those are holes. They got depth to 'em. Swiss cheese is not made with polka dots.

"See? You're a fashion trendsetter."

Ohhhhh it's like...the woman in "Double O Trouble"...but 's...fuckin' polka dots...

Great, I hate it, thanks.

*squints*

*more*

*even more*

...Bitch that is a cluster of fucking trees. That is not an island. Now how and why would you spend pounds on a fucking CLUSTER OF TRE-

THIS IS HOW THEY CHOOSE TO REMIND US THAT ORLI AND OZZIE ARE STILL HERE?????? WITH THE OBLIGATORY MATH LESSON?!?!?!?!?!?

Oh piss ALL the fuckin' way off.

If this is gonna have a lesson at the end, like in "The Weight of the World Depends on Orla", I'm going to lose my fuckin' mind.

Because, for all that Season 3 sucks, that episode was actually pretty solid.

it was just her and osgood

this guy shows up

not even the two canon characters from the odd squadcast they could've used

...I get it. You need someone to steer the ship. Fine. But for the love of God, just include the one driving the boat in your roll call!

I'm...I'm so tired. We are halfway into this episode. I am tired.

I honestly can't be bothered to ask why this woman has a rotary phone and how the fuck it can get service out here where there would, in most other instances, be no phone lines. Or electricity. OR FUCKING SPEAKERPHONE.

I do like the pirate getup Dottie here has going on, though.

Well, the last time a villain alleged to not have a pattern...they had a pattern.

I don't expect Dottie to be much different in that regard.

ohhhhhh oodelallyoohdelally it's the chekhov's gun wheeeeeeeeeeeeee-

She spun in the chair for all of time, bored out of her wits.

(On to Part 2!)

[yandereunsolved]

In reference to your post about Hylian sign: 

BotW Link signing is really popular fanon I think, and I myself like the idea a lot. I wrote a miniscule amount about it a long time ago, but I like the hc that BotW Link's vocal chords were irrevocably damaged during the Guardian showdown and the shrine of resurrection couldn't repair them enough to facilitate speech, so he had to fumble through learning sign after waking up. I also agree with your take about Hylian sign language being relatively unknown.

Not only does Hyrule not have the networks for teaching that we do, (the internet or modern educational tools for example) but it would be harder to spread, and visual languages don’t do amazing in textbooks.

Plus I have a personal headcanon, that due to the elongated ears of Hylians, (meant for hearing the words of the goddess or something) they have advanced hearing, and therefore hard of hearing/deafness is a much rarer affliction and there is much less need for sign language. 

As for Nintendo implementing something like this in their games, I agree that it would be an awesome thing to see, but I doubt Nintendo would ever do it.

Portraying a visual language like sign would require them to create conversation-specific character models for every sign made, individualized to each different character speaking (unless they used the exact same character model) which would greatly extend the process of creating dialogue. Not that a AAA company like Nintendo couldn’t pull it off, but it would be a much bigger expenditure of resources to implement than just…dubbing over moving mouths. 

(Plus they would be forced to either default to a specific localized sign language for every model or create their own language, which…creating a visual language with rules and syntax and signs is much more complicated than writing an alphabet.

Not to mention that Link has always been a blank slate, even in his gender lol. I doubt they’d apply such a polarizing (is that the right word??) trait to him. Seeing a disabled character in general is probably wishful thinking with Nintendo, but..I agree it’s an awesome headcanon and would be so cool to see portrayed one day.

…Sorry for saying so much lol. I didn’t realize I had so many thoughts on HoH Link..

I absolutely love your thoughts. Like, I do. That's the reason I posted my thoughts in the first place. I wanted to know what others thought ofc.

I do agree about the character modeling. I didn't know much about it so thank you for sharing the info. I do believe the word 'polarizing' would be correct because of how disabled characters are portrayed in media. If Nintendo just said one of the Links is HOH and uses sign language—it would cause an uproar.

I'm not a master in politics or anything but lately anything progressive has been labeled as 'woke' by more extremist and right-wing groups online. Not that I am trying to bring politics into this, but I'm saying that the uproar would be due to mostly grifters hoping on the bandwagon of 'represention evil, they are just doing it to appease the masses.'

I personally am always a fan of representation and even if it is wishful thinking, I still think it's a nice wish to have. I'd personally say that as well as what you already said about him becoming HOH. I think the goddesses may have had an unintended affect on it as well. Think about it. Rarely are mortals actually spoken to by the goddesses. Due to the constant exposure of hearing divinity is hearing could have also waned. (The pressure of a mortal hearing divine gospel isn't an easy one. Even if he is the chosen hero.) Second, for specifically BOTW Link I also think his lungs would be weak after a 100 years of sleep, so he wouldn't be able to form words or even groan or grunt correctly until further along in his journey.

Even if it wasn't portrayed in a game it'd be cool to see it in an animation released by Nintendo or at least some more information in something official. It could also just be a fan-made thing. Which would be really cool to see a Fandom come together to do something like that.

I guess I had a lot of thoughts. I usually proofread for grammar mistakes, but I'm tired. So don't mind the mistakes in grammar. :)

[thecagedbard]

Help a Writer Out?

You know what. Writing fluff is easy. Writing traumatic scenes are easy....

Finding references for armor is HARD. In The Caged Bard, I'm preparing to send the entire gang into Gortash's coronation (they have a personal invite thanks to some unintended fey charming) and I've skimmed over the whole 'measurement and idea' portion. But I'm eventually going to have to describe these clothes.

You might ask: Why not use base game or modded clothes? Because Astarion and Vesper's sister did nothing but insult Figaro Pennygood and he's decided to prove his worth to society. (this does not make him a good person.)

& The purpose of this is to poke the *ahem* hive mind on what they should be wearing.

So, here's my ideas: (below the cut)

Astarion: Triple classed: Rogue, Wizard, Fighter. So light armor proficiency, usually wears the Elven Chain.

Designs by: eggperson & catherine?mirror

Gale: Still purely a wizard, but he does have light armor proficiency. I like the middle one because it's very much like his epilogue outfit.

Designs by: catherine?mirror, ko1moys, & unknown

Shadowheart: Pure cleric, and remains in the Trickery domain. (I don't want to lose sending.)

designs by: jaiwitreen & risoluce

Jaheira: Fairly set...just wanna show it off.

Designed by: jaiwitreen

Wyll: Has not yet begun his multiclass into Ranger. So full warlock has light armor proficiency. But he also is of noble birth, he should know what will and won't be seen as 'out of place.'

Designed by: egg person

Lae'zel: Pure fighter so has heavy armor proficiencies, still rocking Githyanki gear for the most part, but even she has to dress up for this.

design by: laminatati & eggperson

Halsin: He likes this plan even less than Lae'zel. Mostly because of how restricting he finds the upper city fashion.

design by: unknown & catherin?mirror

Karlach: Wyll isn't thrilled, but Karlach wants to show the world what Gortash did to her, so engine on full display.

designs by: brillantezza, cherrydesigns & jaiwitreen

Vesper (Tav in the story): Original design was likely more revealing, but after events she's not thrilled with the idea of showing skin anymore.

designs by: lonary

[lampmanliveblogs]

The voice acting in this episode has been great as per usual, but the acting for The Collector has been especially notably good to me. So kudos to Fryda Wolff.

And as an aside, Fryda Wolff is one of those names that if I were to write it in a book, my editor would tell me to dial it down a bit.

The last light of Luz drifts up and into the dark night sky, silently flying into the great empty cosmos, that ever expansive final frontier… except it winds up in the realm between realms… where we know the soul of a certain individual resides.

There she is! There she is, oh, I knew they wouldn’t kill her off for real! Nice try Philip, you jackass. Next time, bring in your A game!

Well… I mean… her body was rotted away and exploded into light…… so I guess she’s technically dead… but her soul remains…… this better not be like in the Engelsfors Trilogy, when it turned out Elias, Rebecka, and Ida were all still alive, their souls stuck in the borderlands between worlds, kept there by the Protectors so they could help close the portal and stop the demons… but then their souls moved on to whatever comes after and they died for real. This better not be that.

Oh, and spoilers for the Engelsfors Trilogy I guess, a series of books none of you were ever going to read, no matter how many times I reference them.

Also, Luz is sinking into the water… that… creates an unintended parallel with something I’m planning on doing with that Vee fic I’ve been writing. Spoilers: Vee is going for an involuntary bath.

”Oh… I know what I should have said. I should’ve thanked them.”

Ah, I see dead people also have that thing where you come up with the perfect thing to say three days later in the shower. Or bath, in this case. Not since Luz complained about her weak nerd arms have I related to her this much.

And yes, I am using humor to cope.

Aw shit, here we go! It’s him, the big man himself! And…he’s wearing… a… is that a dressing gown? I mean… yeah, if I was gonna be stuck for who knows how long in a bizarre world between worlds, I would wanna be comfy as well.

And I noticed this when I paused to take the screenshot: that’s an ice glyph on his leg/pants.

Ohmygod, look guys! IT’S LORD HOOTY! Ha! I knew it! I knew I did the right thing when I started the religion worshipping the great Lord Hooty! Hoot hoot!