#that actually haunts our office

[fire-llily]

next event info, we dont have all the info yet, but its shaping up

[reignpage]

Art Student!Choso

Renaissance: worship

Word Count: 5.4k Contents: 18+ mdni, plot with smut, mostly fluffy, direct continuation of the part 5 smau, and concludes pre-relationship Choso's story, not proofread so idk how much sense this makes, let me know if it’s complete bs and I’ll redo it or something

You’re staring at the most beautiful mural you think has ever been created. It’s made up of harsh strokes of ash, curving and spiralling into one another, sprawling across the entire back wall of the gym. The smudges and the streaks breeze from corner to corner, bouncing along the edges as they create layers of shadows which seem so thick you could feel it from where you stand. 

There, in the centre, you can make out a face. It’s contorted, mouth stretched inhumanly, eyes bulging and threatening to pop out. Fragmented and clawing itself, tearing skin and pulling until its face morphs into something you can’t quite make out. Dissolving into the fray, with the stark chalk, it spirals into frenzied strokes, suffocating itself. 

A gasp leaves you when you step back, taking more of it in at once, and you see amidst the smoke and the chaos, symbols, jagged and torn up. They make up even more faces, just as contorted and as uncanny, all stretched out in silent screams that pierce your soul and render your knees weak. 

It’s haunting. 

You had no idea you would walk in to find this when you were searching for Choso. And when you meet his eyes from above, leaning against the railing, you think you might actually fall to your knees. It’s the same eyes that match the big ones on the wall, both equally broken, accusing and full of heat as it never wavers from yours. 

There are so many things left unsaid, things that are desperate to get out, to be screamed at him so he’ll understand, so he’ll know. But only silence remains. 

Choso doesn’t say anything, just lets the moonlight streaming from the windows encase you both in half light, half-darkness. You can’t see the smudges on his hands, but you can see the yearning in his eyes, like he too has so much to say, so much for you to understand and accept.

Click. 

Both of your eyes dart to the entrance, there’s a security guard, holding a flashlight, aimed right you. There’s no way to escape. That’s what your thumping heart is telling you; you’ve been caught. And you haven’t done anything wrong.

“Hey! Did you do this?” He yells. 

You’re rendered speechless, frozen from the realisation that there’s no way out of this. Without looking at him, can’t bear to discover what expression he’s wearing now that it’s all unravelling between you, you walk to the guard and let him drag you of there. 

You don’t look back. 

——

“What would possess you to vandalise private property?” The Dean questions. 

His bald head is shiny, and the light’s reflection is all you can focus on as he thumps his fist against the mahogany desk separating you both. Thank God, too, because by the looks of that bulging vein on his forehead, he's pretty keen on giving you a lesson or two. It’s just you and him in his stately, stuffy office. The walls are lined with tall, dark wood bookshelves, which in turn are filled with old, leather-bound books in perfect condition, not a single dust in sight. 

“I’m sorry.”

“It goes without saying, I’m sure, that I’m disappointed in you,” he ignores you, voice gruff and measured, all condescending and pretentious. You’re convinced that’s not even his natural accent. “You have the talent, the potential, to do anything with your gifts. Your works have won many awards, and you could one day find them in museums or galleries across the world. Instead, this —this is how you choose to leave your mark?”

The chair squeaks when you shift uncomfortably, and your eyes choose to scan his meticulous desk, as opposed to his beady ones. There’s not a single paper angled wrong, no pens misaligned, not a smudge or even a water mark. 

“You’ve disgraced this fine institution. Our beloved Eden University for the Excellent has stood as a beacon for ambition, sophistication and innovation! And with every act of ‘artistic rebellion’ with your ‘cursed death paintings’, or the like, you have threatened everything we have built for centuries!”

You could try and defend yourself, could rebuff the accusations since you are, of course, innocent. But, well, the evidence is damning: you were at the scene of the crime, you’re an art student, you have attended practically every protest on campus, have liked posts from Cursed Womb’s fan-pages, and damn it, you had paint all over your shirt and hands.

You’re fucked. 

He leans back in his chair, sighing as he folds his glasses onto the desk. “There are no excuses; none I will accept. Therefore, it is with the deepest regret that I hereby — “

The door slams open. 

You both jump. 

“Dean Hanami,” a sneer projects through the office and you recognise it immediately as belonging to a guy that knocked on your door and glared at you as if you were dirt on his shoe. “We have much to discuss.”

When you twist in your seat, you’re alarmed to find three men: Sukuna in a newer looking jacket than you remembered, an old man in a suit, and a guy you haven’t seen in almost two weeks. 

Choso’s not looking at you, he’s not even entering the room, choosing instead to hang around by the doorway. 

“Mr. Ryomen, I am in the middle of a meeting,” the Dean splutters. 

Sukuna pokes your shoulder with a pen he picked up from the desk, looking over at you with complete disgust, like you’re a little cockroach. Still as rude as ever, he’s signalling for you to leave and as you look between the two men, one much older than the other, you choose to go with your instincts and rush out of there. 

“This is how it’s going to work,” he drawls, sliding into your seat and snapping his fingers at the man in a suit, “you’re going to give back everything I want, and you’re going to let this Cursed Womb farce go.”

The last thing you hear is the sheer humiliation of the Dean’s defeated stammering. You close the door behind you. 

Without looking at Choso, you walk down the hallway. 

“Y/n, we should talk,” he follows beside you. 

“Now you want to talk?” You sigh. You know you’re not being fair. Counting to ten, you try a softer approach. “Listen, Choso, it's been a long morning. Can we have this talk somewhere private? These hallways are so depressing.”

He nods, his pigtails moving with him. Wordlessly, he leads you outside, to his parked car, it’s all shiny and sleek, classic Ryomen money, and you get into the passenger seat. 

It’s odd being in such close proximity with him when he’s avoided you for so long, but you try to get comfortable regardless, ignoring the elephant in the room. There’s a Cursed Womb sized hole between you and there’s so much to be said but you’re afraid you’ll push him, that you’ll say the wrong thing and everything will be for nought; you’ll go back to being strangers, passing each other by, just like last year. 

And, whatever you feel for him, you just can’t let that happen. 

“Choso,” you begin, voice soft, “what happened? What happened between us?”

Driving, he doesn’t dare look at you, can only chew on the inside of his cheek before seemingly deciding on the right words. “I liked you. From the very beginning, I liked you. People either like me ‘cause of my family or 'cause of rumours, but you’re one of the very few people that actually reached out, saw me as an equal.”

You’re silent. He’s opening up in a way he has never before and you don’t dare disturb his flow, like one would watch a Master at work. Everything about him is compelling, the whites of his knuckles as he grips the steering wheel harder than he should, the furrow of his brows as he thinks hard, the way his gaze slides over to you, just not meeting your eyes, and even the way he studies you, in just your thin jumper and jeans and turns up the heater without asking.

Trees fly by, everything a blur as you keep your gaze fixed solely on him. He drives pretty smoothly, unlike you. You're always pressed right up against the wheel, eyes darting to every mirror like a car would appear in the millisecond you looked away. But him...he drives like it's second nature, with one hand on the wheel and the other on the gear stick.

“Despite me not being very open and particularly approachable I guess, you still made the effort to reach out, to include me in discussions, to ask if I’m coming to class — even lecturers have stopped asking. And you’re very smart! I like how passionate you are, you’re so full of great ideas, practically beaming with them. You never lose your optimism even when your art gets critiqued too harshly.”

This is the first time anyone’s ever described you like this, like he appreciates you by pure virtue of your existence and the way he sees your hard work, the strength it takes to get back up that you hadn’t recognised in yourself -- it feels like the way one would appreciate Starry Night. 

You can tell he practised this speech.

“But,” there’s a tremble in his voice and it makes your hand twitch, “you don't like me. Not like how I like you. And it makes me upset. Because you're so great and nice and pretty. Not that I like you because of your appearance, even though you have a very nice body. I mean that respectfully! Okay, actually just forget I said that. I like you for lots of different reasons. And I've been trying to get you to see me as more than your classmate or just your friend. But it's all pointless because you like Cursed Womb.”

“Choso, you are Cursed Womb.”

The car screeches to a halt. 

His hand flies out, pressing hard on your chest to stop you from flying forward. Thank goodness you’re wearing your seatbelt. And thank goodness the road is empty. 

“What the fuck!”

“Sorry!” He pants. “Sorry. I’m sorry. You caught me by surprise.”

Like you’ve been possessed, you laugh. It’s more a cackle than anything else to be honest, but the look of utter shock and disbelief on his face is making you tear up, your sides hurting as you cradle them. “Oh my god, Choso, you should have seen your face. HA!”

He’s panicking, hands waving in the air as he tries to decide between lifting your hair up to inspect for damage and going to the steering wheel so he can drive off to safety, where the chances of a car accident caused by your blunt mouth are slim. Conflicted, he decides to keep them in his lap as he winces at your chortles. You’re finding this way too funny. 

“You’re being mean,” he pouts. 

Wiping tears from your eyes, you’re desperately trying to calm down, trying to school your features into something more neutral or, better yet, something serious so you can have a mature, adult conversation. But he’s just so adorable you can’t help yourself. 

“Sorry, Choso,” you playfully frown at him, making a puppy dog pout so he’ll cave in. “But be honest here, sweetheart. You didn’t actually think you were slick, did you?”

Like a child, he smacks his steering wheel, all grumpy and upset. “No one else knew.”

“That’s ‘cause no one else tried to know. Sure, people were investigating, trying to piece together clues, but no one really wanted to know; the mystery was addictive, and that’s what peopled liked. But you think you’re the only one who pays attention? I watch you all the time. Plus, your family’s presence today was concrete proof; Sukuna would never do that just because you asked, right? And on top of all of that, you’re not a very good liar, sweet Choso,” you coo. 

He stutters, “B-but you never said. You kept talking about him l-like —"

“Like he’s not you?” You finish for him. 

“Yes! Even that night when I asked you to hang out, you didn’t want to go with me but when I mentioned the painting, you said yes.”

Your hand reaches out to play with a loose lock of hair from his messy pigtails and he lets you, his eyes flutter shut when your hand grazes his cheek. Heart clenching, you sigh again. “I was genuinely busy, Choso. But when you mentioned that ‘your friend’ painted again, I knew that meant trouble. What you do is dangerous, and I wanted to make sure everything was okay.”

“What about the other time when you didn’t want to have lunch with me? And you just wanted to work?”

You giggle, playfully pulling at his hair, and he has to pretend he’s not getting hard. “Choso, you do realise we have to balance our project on top of our schoolwork, right? Like we have to actually study and work, to meet deadlines?”

Choso pouts again and you smush your thumb against his plump lips, easing away the tension there. All muffled, he whines, “But I wanted to have lunch with you!”

“And we enjoyed sandwiches, did we not? Which by the way, you never paid me back for. But eh, that's okay. Just treat me out next time -- I'm a broke college student.”

He groans, pulling away to smack his head against the wheel. It honks and you laugh again. He’s clearly embarrassed and frustrated and he doesn’t know where to begin, so you try for him. 

“Choso, sweetheart,” you rub his back, “don’t be upset. I’ll be completely honest: I was messing with you. I kinda just wanted to see how far things will go. I mean, I knew as soon as you told me he’s your ‘friend’ that you were Cursed Womb. It’s such an obvious throwaway; I hope you weren’t feeling very proud of yourself.”

Scrunching his nose at you, he sinks back into his seat. The road is still empty, and he doesn’t seem to have any desire to drive off yet. So, you let him take it all in, rubbing his shoulder in pity for the poor guy who was clearly so proud of himself for keeping such a huge secret from everyone. 

“What’s gonna happen with the Dean?” You just realised technically you were expelled or were going to be expelled. No longer a student, you aren’t sure what you would do as a non-student — would you even make a very inspirational contributive member of society?

What’s next? 

Taxes and mortgages?

You shudder. 

Choso grabs your hand, holding it in his lap as he fiddles with your rings, clinking them with his own. His nails are painted black in true male art student fashion and his fingers are so beautifully long and slender you’re not afraid to admit that you’ve stared at them a little too long during clay sculpting class. 

“The family’s going to take care of it. Make it go away like they did when Sukuna beat up some guy who pushed Yuji. Or when I got caught by some other security guard.”

You nodded. “Where does that leave us?”

“Us?”

“There is an us, right, Choso?”

He fiddles with your ring finger, and you try really hard not to notice the hearts in his eyes. “Do you want there to be us? It’s not because I’m Cursed Womb, is it?”

Of course, you don’t blame him for feeling this way; you played around too much, gave him too much power when you really should have made the decisions to begin with, forced him to confront everything that was unspoken between you much sooner. Then there wouldn’t be this awkward energy that's holding him back from meeting your eyes. 

“Choso, I never liked you because you were Cursed Womb. Sure, I liked Cursed Womb. I stand by everything I said — he’s cool, he stands for what’s right, he sends a message and isn’t afraid to put his art out there to be critiqued by the masses. How many people can say that? But I liked him like one likes a pop star! You, on the other hand, I like you as you are. All shy and sweet and considerate. And I know the picture of me was from you, by the way.”

He opens his mouth to argue, and you shut him up with a stern look. 

“We’re project partners, Choso!” You laugh. “I’ve seen your handwriting and the way you write your Cs, you silly silly boy.”

“But you teased me anyways."

With a shrug, you explain, "You liked it."

And then he’s kissing you. 

His seatbelt is off, and you’re being pressed back into your seat, his hands cradling your face. It’s soft and sweet and gentle and it’s so Choso you can only moan in his mouth. He’s holding you like the two lovers of Rodin, with so much care, so much passion, it's leaving you breathless. You feel so much warmth and adoration through every lick of his tongue, every nip of his teeth and every moan of your name he’s breathing into you. 

You push him back, taking your belt off so you can climb into his lap whilst he pushes the seat back. He kisses down your neck, sucking your pulse point and gripping your hip as if he’s scared you’re just a figment of his imagination. And when you grind down on his hard length, he moans your name again. You’re soaking. 

“I’m sorry for teasing you too much.”

With tentative hands, he lifts your sweater up your stomach, searching your eyes for any resistance. You smile and take it off for him. He wastes no time sucking a tit, flicking the hard bud with his tongue and you’re gripping his pigtails. That makes him groan.

“I’ll forgive you if you do one thing for me,” his words are garbled, on account of him trying to swallow the entire globe of your breast, cheeks all puffed up, and you can’t help but press a kiss against his forehead. “Call me Cho again.”

“What?” His teeth graze your sensitive nipple and you arch into him, eyes crossing.

“You only call me Cho when we’re like this, touching in a way we shouldn’t.”

“Do I?” Grinding down on his dick, you tug a pigtail back so you can tilt his face away from your wet tits and back to your mouth. You kiss him again, craving his taste, his warmth. “Sorry…Cho.”

He bucks into your clothed core, straight up to your clit and you’re moaning into each other’s mouths. This isn’t enough, you both need more. Neither of you even care that you’re on the side of a road and it’s midday. 

“I want you,” he whispers, and he’s tearing up, the frustration building up to a point where he’s clawing your jeans off and burying his face between your tits and inhaling deep. “Can I? Can I have you?”

“Of course, Cho. I’m yours,” you kiss his hair. “You can do whatever you want with me, baby.”

Maybe you shouldn’t have said that. 

Because the next thing you know, the seat is folding back and you’re being thrown onto the seat, facing the plush roof. He’s tugging your jeans down, pulling the material as if it’s singlehandedly his worst enemy. You can only rub his head as he frantically looks between your face, your tits and your panties like he doesn’t know where to begin. He’s desperately asking for permission, for guidance. 

“Choso, we can do whatever you want, just take your time.” And then, as an afterthought, you add, “Although, you shouldn’t take too long since we are outside. If we get caught, I’m not sure your family can take care of the charges we’ll face.”

He nods and then with dark, unfocused eyes, he shoves his face between your leg as he kneels on the floor, spreading your thighs with his strong arms. Sniffing is all he does, inhaling deeply and moaning. You blush, pushing his hair from his face. And, as if the urge has gotten too much, he pushes your panties to the side and licks a strip up your slit, from quivering hole to the clit. 

Your back arches off the seat. 

Moans and groans escape you, shaky breaths fanning the air as he sucks your clit, mumbling your name and the vibrations leaves you lightheaded. 

“Tastes so good. Knew you would taste so good.” He pushes in a finger inside and he groans with you when he wriggles it. “So wet, baby. You’re so hot a-and wet and I want to stay here forever.”

He curls his fingers inside, rubbing against that spot inside of you that has you gushing cream all over his mouth, and he laps it up like he’s starved. Just as a car drives past and he dives deeper into you, you find yourself cumming all over his mouth and fingers, clutching his pigtails harder.

"Fuuuuuck, don't stop, Cho!" You ride out your orgasm on his face, spreading your wetness all over his chin and his cheeks, clit bumping against his nose.

Shuffling up, something wet and hard traces your lips. It’s salty. You don’t hesitate to widen your jaw, letting him push his hot and hard length into your throat. It’s an awkward angle, with you laid not fully back and him having to crouch down, but you manage a few suckles before he gets frustrated and embarrassed, and he climbs back down to pet at your pussy. 

"That's just going to have to wait later, I guess," you chuckle.

A blush blanketing his cheeks, he nods and strokes his dick. He must have taken it out when he was licking you. It's long and hard and your body remembers the feel of it in your hands. And Monet! His tip is flushed red, leaking cum like a faucet. How adorable.

You see him lining his beautiful cock to your quivering hole, but you have to press a hand against his chest to still him. “Tut tut, Cho. Do I need to lecture you on the importance of safe sex, silly boy?”

He blushes and pats his pockets with frantic, panicked movements. You sigh. You didn’t bring one either.

“Well, you’re not allowed inside without a condom,” you mutter to his cock, telling it off as if it’s responsible for its owner irresponsibility. “I mean, really, Choso. You’re a grown man, a college student! You should always have condoms, silly.”

“I didn’t think we’d ever be together so I didn’t buy any,” he mumbles, laying down on you so he can hide his sheepish expression in your shoulder. 

The implication warms your chest, making you pout and rub his back. You coo, “Aw, did my baby not want to fuck anyone else? Just me?”

Pushed to his limit, he bites your neck and then quickly soothes it with his tongue as if upset at himself for hurting you. But it’s you who feels the most guilt; you played around too much, teased him too far, and now his hips are making short thrusts against your pussy. He just can’t help himself. It’s as if the magnetic pull of your cunt is too much for a weak man like him. You’re going to have to work very hard to earn his forgiveness even if he’s willingly thrown it at you. 

Starting, of course, by wrapping your legs around his hips and pressing him closer. You whisper, “Make yourself cum on my pussy, Cho.”

He groans. Maybe it’s the seductive way you ordered him to, the vulgar term you used, or perhaps it’s the fact that you called him a nickname he loves to hear. Well, whatever it is, it’s making him whimper in your ear as he thrusts against your lips, coating his length with your juices. His tip bumps against your clit and you both moan. 

“I-I missed you, y/n!” He cries in your ear, warm breath tickling your skin. 

Again and again, he thrusts, still clinging onto you and holding you close. You can feel his desperation, sincerity, and his pre-cum all seeping into your skin. Rolling back, your eyes disappear — this is supposed to be for him, and yet you’re panting too, holding him tight, shirt threatening to rip under your claws. 

The fact that you’re naked and he isn’t is making you sensitive all over, from the way your nipples are rubbing against his chest and how he pinches at one all the way to the mumbling of your name, like a mantra, against your neck. 

You’re going to cum too. 

“Ngh, Cho! Keep going!”

He must have liked that because his thrusting gets more frantic, his cock head meeting your clit again and again and you’re both nearing your high. Your nails dig into his back and he bites your neck to stifle the broken moan that escapes him. Hot ropes of cum paint your stomach and it makes you arch your back once more, eyes closing shut. 

"So warm ngh!" He groans into your ear.

Hips stuttering, he drags out his orgasm like his body can’t help himself and a beat or two passes. He falls on top of you, still muttering your name like his brain has short-circuited and it’s all that’s left in there. 

“You like me better than Cursed Womb, right?”

You laugh. “Cho, you silly man. You’re the same person.”

Choso pushes himself up onto his elbows, slightly out of breath and dazed, a blush highlighting his face tattoo. You kiss him on the nose which brings out what sounds like a mewl from him. He copies the movement, and it tickles you. That makes him smile, still panting. 

“I know, but I want to know who you like better,” he licks a bead of sweat from your forehead and you have to smack his back. 

Sighing, you push him off, concerned over the fact that you’re naked and in a public space. He lets you scramble back to your seat, fixing your panties and leggings and he hands you your jumper. All in silence, you get settled back in. 

He starts the engine, looking a little upset and you have to still his hand with yours. Words aren’t really enough, you know that. So, the only thing to do is to show him. 

“Take us to my place, Cho.”

—

He’s confused, head tilting and brows scrunched together like a little puppy as you lead him to your dorm room. Whereas you’re practically buzzing with excitement, struggling to get the keys in due to your shaking hands. But you manage and you welcome him in. 

It’s the first time he’s been inside your place — there wasn’t a particular reason why you waited, it was really just because his place is bigger and cooler and generally a much better place to work in. 

Despite it being a pretty standard room, he’s marvelling at the space, eyeing the pictures of your friends strewn across the walls, the fairy lights and the open journal on the table full of your watercolour works. Choso looks like he just entered Santa’s workshop, and you giggle as you press your face in his back, hugging him and swaying you guys side to side. 

“Sorry about the mess, Cho. I didn’t know you’d come over.”

He holds your hands, swaying with you, but his focus is on only one thing. 

There, on your easel, stationed by the window for natural lighting, is a sketch. The lines are messy and criss-crossing, overlapping each other, the lead of the pencil unravelling to create a face loss in thought. It’s tilting its head as its own creation, examining the angles and the proportions, and you can tell it’s completely entranced in its work, losing grip with reality and wholly immersed in their own imagination. 

It’s the kind of expression you’ve decided is most beautiful in all your years of looking and sketching and studying. In all the models, in all the strangers, and in all the works of art you’ve come across, only one figure has captivated you as much it has. 

“Recognise him, Cho Cho?”

Despite the teasing tone of your voice, you’re actually pretty nervous. This has never been a problem for you; you’ve presented your work to countless of people, by virtue of being an art student, you’ve consented to being ripped apart again and again. But this time, you’re feeling a certain kind of insecurity you never have before. 

“Do you like it?”

“This is me?” He breathes out. 

You bury your face harder in his back, feeling a blush creeping up. “Yeah, Cho. I started it back in first year. I never got to finish it because, well, we’re art students and we all have ADHD or whatever. But when we became project partners, I’ve been adding to it, adding lines and details for every time I noticed something new about you. In fact, I was working on it that night you asked me to hang out and I almost turned you down. Sorry about by the way, baby.”

Waving a hand over the general area, you explain further, "At the end of first year, you got that face tattoo, and I struggled all summer adding it in because I only saw it once and wanted to recreate it from pure memory. But I couldn't ever seem to get the proportions right."

"Y-you started drawing me in first year?"

Pressing a kiss to his back and smiling at the flex of his muscles, you think back to a memory. "It wasn't like I was obsessed with you, or anything creepy, I swear. It's just that, you're a pretty handsome dude. The List agrees and well, when I first saw you in the lecture hall, I thought wow, someone needs to capture that guy in a drawing or something. And you know how us artists work — we develop fixations. I guess, you could say you've been my on and off one for a year now."

That was a lot of words and you’re not sure he registered any of it because of how silent he is, but then he’s clasping your hands tightly. And you’re shocked into silence when something cold slides down one of your fingers. On your left hand. Your ring finger. 

“Cho?”

“I think I’m in love with you,” he shakily whispers. 

You want to laugh — it’s such a sudden admission and you’re fairly convinced it’s just that post-nut high. But the way he says it, the way it’s so serious, so real makes you pull away. 

He turns, desperate to see your face. And with another whisper, he admits, “I have one of you too.”

“What?”

“I painted a portrait of you. In my place.”

It strikes you there. You remember. The painting with the tarp over it. That was of you, and he hid it because you were coming over. With a grin, you raise your hand up to eye the golden signet ring on your finger, way too big and threatening to fall off if you don’t hold it tight. 

“We’re a pretty cool duo, aren’t we?”

Choso falls to his knees, pigtails bouncing, an expression of desperation and torment written all over it. He's never looked more beautiful staring up at you. "Please let me be your boyfriend!"

You laugh again, hands on your hips as you shake your head in disbelief. Rolling your eyes playfully, you respond with, "Alright, I guess I can grant you that one wish. Actually, since you gave me two orgasms, I'll give you another one."

He reaches for your hand with his eyes closed and you let him press it against his face. Cupping his cheek, your smile drops and you feel a fire burning inside and explode in your chest when he presses a distressed kiss to your wrist, full of panic like his brain is malfunctioning and he can't settle on one thought or feeling.

Then, his eyelids fly open and meet yours with a clarity that has never been there. Never. Not even since first year when you made eye contact in passing and you couldn't get his face out of your mind. And it's like all the anguish you saw that night is gone, the chalk mural fading from view.

More certain than ever, you know he'll give you all the opportunities you need to finish your portrait of him, and every new one you'll make. And your project will be renewed with a deeper level of teamwork, because you've transcended the definitions of your connection.

“I want to eat you out again.”

And well, who are you to say no to a man on his knees?

[isakvaltersnake]

things from the 2001 television programme band of brothers that haunt me to this day:

- we’re paratroopers lieutenant, we’re supposed to be surrounded. not to be your 60 year old military obsessed uncle about it but that line goes hard

- nix’s little giggle he does sometimes

- I’ll never forgive them for leaving gene’s medic training out of their training montage. in fact you know what? go back in time, film a parallel sequel of the other 9 eps from gene’s pov

- popeye’s “they called you guys too?” and the way his accent specifically scratches my brain

- they gave me moose heyliger and his massachusetts accent for like 20 minutes then the narrative snatched him away from me and i still miss him

- the way meehan looks at winters after he tells him to close the flap, in fact let’s talk about how every single one of winters’ commanders are obsessed with him in one way or another he truly is the it girl

- the chaos and fear that precedes gene and the calm and comfort that follows him

- I know everyone thinks “we’ll go to chicago, I’ll take you there” is the insane line but the one that actually makes me lose sleep is “what, and give up all this?” THAT MAN SAID I WOULD RATHER LIVE THROUGH THE HORRORS OF WAR THAN HAVE LIVED MY LIFE WITHOUT YOU

- alley is So Beautiful and I don’t think we collectively talk about it enough

- babe being some rando replacement in episode three and whilst his other replacement friends are being absolutely roasted he is immediately adopted by bill and then gets gene fucking roe of all people to connect to him?? he’s too powerful I need to study him

- speirs being this ghoulish terrifying boogeyman until lip is anywhere near him then he’s suddenly dimples and kicking his feet and giggling

- speaking of lip and speirs their little sarcastic in jokes, lip finishing speirs’ sentences fml it’s giving married

- you been working out? IN FRONT OF EVERYONE?? LIEB YOU SLUT?? THEN YOURE GONNA LAY IN HIS BED WAITING FOR HIM??? insane behaviour

- the unexplored but high potential friendships and the way I wanted like 16 more episodes for shifty and lip, nix and luz, nix and web, sisk and perconte, winters and gene, grant and tab, lieb and alley, speirs and harry, etc

- the more haggard and bitchy nix gets the hotter he gets. he also must be studied.

- “you should pack up those ears and go home” ok sobel kinda ate with that one ngl

- speaking of sobel the little confused/bewildered/piss-pants faces he makes david schwimmer the actor you are

- the silly little wide stance pennywise ass run hall does before he gets murked RIP king

- klepto speirs ilysm

- joe toye and his brass knuckles are v sexy

- sink letting nix give winters his oak leaves was very shipper girl of him

- lip harry nix speirs winters in the eagle’s nest dream blunt rotation

- the unsustainable amount of cunt served by nix, frank, babe, and luz at all times is truly a marvel

- tab really checked lip’s dick and balls mid battle and honestly that’s friendship

- bit parts for simon pegg, tom hardy, andrew scott, james mcavoy, michael fassbender, jimmy fallon ?? bob casting director you will always be famous

- peacock is so fine if he was even a little good at his job I’d be obsessed with him (special shout out to the scene of him getting sent home on furlough)

- I could list out every one of their meaningful little moments together but really it’s babe and gene just tethering and grounding each other and how they seem to gravitate to each other out of blind instinct? that’s some Brontë whatever our souls are made of bullshit I’m afraid

- ok I know I said I wasn’t talking about little meaningful moments but gene staring across the convent at where babe is sitting, lost in the peace

-bull in replacements getting imprinted on by a bunch of baby ducks and being SO PLEASED ABOUT IT he’s not the stepfather, he’s the father that stepped up

- speaking of, the underutilization of bull in the back half is such an out of character bad call

- you are officers, you are grown ups, you oughta know. HE’S RIGHT AND HE SHOULD SAY IT AND THAT’S ON GENE BEING THE ONLY ONE ALLOWED TO TELL OFF WINTERS

- I know nix and winters are married and whatever but the real married couple behaviour is luz constantly pissing off joe and joe immediately letting it go

- lip and speirs and their mutual competency kink

- I’M REAL SORRY FRANK skinny ilysm

[hotvintagepoll]

Propaganda

Cary Grant (The Philadelphia Story, His Girl Friday, Bringing Up Baby, Charade)—just the peak of old-school Hollywood sexuality. The glam, the suits, the gentle wit, the acrobatics, those eyes that always looked like they knew exactly what movie they were in and were laughing at the joke...

Vincent Price (Laura, Leave Her to Heaven, House on Haunted Hill, The Masque of the Red Death)—svelte, stylish, horrifying, beautiful, wickedly funny, camp and gorgeous and evil. he was an art connoisseur who advocated passionately indigenous art, he was an actual literal gourmet cook, he was so liberal he got greylisted during the mccarthy era for being too rad, he's my favorite muppets guest of all time

This is round 4 of the bracket. All other polls in this bracket can be found here. Please reblog with further support of your beloved hot sexy vintage man.

[additional propaganda submitted under the cut.]

Vincent Price propaganda:

Submitted: this fancam

Submitted: this entire Tumblr page

Cary Grant propaganda:

"My Golden Age of Hollywood professor, who was very outwardly gay himself, put it this way: Even though Grant's sexuality was kind of an open secret in Hollywood, the public couldn't know in any real way. But anybody could see that there was a queerness about him, so he was casted for roles where he physically embodies his masculinity in a non-explicit but queer way. Bringing Up Baby is famous for the scene where Grant wears a frilly robe (pictured below, but what people don't always realise is that he plays kind of an awkward nerd in that movie. He's a hot awkward scientist in a grand robe!!! Hot!!! In The Philadelphia Story, one of my famous movies of all time, he plays C. K. Dexter Haven, a rich, sarcastic, supposedly abusive guy. And yet, what we see is this laid back, dandy-ish figure, who absolutely does not feel threatened when a woman he supposedly loves (Katharine Hepburn) starts having feelings for, and hooks up with another guy (James Stewart). He lets a drunk Stewart into his office and helps him get his job back! Obviously that is the script and not the actor, but the whole film, and that scene in particular, shows him having this very queer attitude of openness toward Hepburn and Stewart, which is only amplified by the casting of Grant and his portrayal of the character. Anyway, this is not an essay arguing for The Philadelphia Story to be considered a queer film, all I will say is: he's super hot in it."

The link to the above mentioned frilly robe scene from Bringing Up Baby: "I just went gay all of a sudden!"

last minute cary grant propaganda: the last few paragraphs of that new vanity fair article about him and randolph scott that just came out 2 days ago on cary's birthday where he calls it "gravity collapse" and "love at first sight" and says their souls touched and and and i'm actually sharing this mostly because it makes me emotional but also because a vote for archibald is a vote for love. this is my message. apologies for sounding mildly insane.

[valve3nthusiast]

Decepticon and Autobot propaganda definitely got weirder as the war went on and I'd personally like to believe that there's officially sanctioned patriotic pornography. for my own amusement

Somewhere out there is small porn studio barely skating past the censors by claiming their work is glorifying the superiority of Lord Megatron, when everything they shoot is cheesily scripted and horrendously acted pornos of "Megatron" spiking any and every high ranking 'con they had a vaguely similarly-shaped actor for (but like,,,, they're probably quietly funded enough to stay afloat by Tarn and his cuck kink tbh)

With a shoestring budget and audacity, they end up producing such gems as "Our Glorious Leader Foils His Traitorous Commander's Evil Plot With His Massive Fusion Cannon!" and"Loyal Officers Kneel For The Throne To Recive Our Emperor's Magnificent Throbbing Favor" and "Decepticon High Command Non-Stop Penetrating Action" just to name a few. There are many, many other works of similar... Artistic Value, that end up getting made fun of at Autobot movie nights for all eternity

Autobots of course prefer tastefully written Prime-kink erotica, except for Optimus Prime himself, who still can't find the person that gave the go ahead for propaganda division to write a series of spicy romance novellas about him. This haunts him at every officer's meeting. Someone will be presenting about troop movements or smth and he'll be staring into the middle distance wondering no, Prowl wouldn't... right?

The neutrals might not need propaganda, but of course they're still making porn so some are gettin freakay with it. Given how long they live I bet if cybertronians have copyright law itd be a fucking mess. They probably can't get away with using real names, but there are definitely some very thinly veiled stand-ins for various Autobots and Decepticons fucking in numerous offensive arrangements

Of course you can't throw a rock without hitting a vid starring a blue and red truck and a gray mechanism of indeterminable alt-mode, but that got old fast, and the neutrals started to get creative. The poor sucker that personally received a Cease and Desist from both the heads of the Autobot and Decepticon intelligence divisions went so underground that no one knows who to credit for the smash hit spy vs spy romance novel they wrote. sad

And like. neutrals making crossfaction porn isn't explicitly policed by either faction. but if someone wants to make a vid about Legally Distinct not-Skywarp getting stuck in a wall via teleporting accident and having his ports pounded by the not-Autobots, then they have to reckon with the very real chance that Skywarp the Actual Person will show up to beat the shit out of them

Idk where I was going with this. If you want to make me laugh come up with a terrible name for a terrible cybertronian porno and put it in the comments or replies or whatever the fuck it's called. peace

[nap-thym3]

Sebastian Solace(Pressure) x Reader/Self-Insert, Pt. 2

I actually turned that one-shot into a fic, so If you’d like to see more, I’ll be posting new updates on my ao3 :)

____________

The churning of the ocean, once a peaceful melody you may’ve played as white-noise, is now something that haunts your every waking breath. You can hear it even now. The whooshing of the currents, the bellowing of unseen gargantuan beasts, and the creaks and groans of the facility around you bending and bowing to the pressure of the torrential waters right outside.

Cautiously, you turn to survey the room surrounding yourself. The constant, oppressive darkness outside the thick windows doesn’t help your ramping unease. The idea that anything can be lurking in the inky depths, laying in wait for you to lower your guard. Watching, surveying. Hunting. Your palms sweat as your finger nails dig crescent imprints into your flesh. Every shuddering groan of the structure feels like another nail in your coffin. Darkly, you wonder just how many rooms- no, entire floors, have completely succumbed to the will of the sea by now. You can’t help but feel helpless, every avenue of your mind overtaken by the countless ways your life can be so quickly and effortlessly snuffed out.

What’s there not to be terrified of?

You scoff quietly. When you’d signed up for this gig, there was nowhere in the contracts explaining where exactly you’d be going. If you’d known the horrors residing in these waters, of being helplessly trapped thousands of feet where not even the sun can reach… you may’ve been a touch more hesitant to apply. Or who knows, maybe being confined to the same four-walled cell would’ve drove you here regardless. There was no point on dwelling on the millions of ‘what-ifs’. Your life was already considered forfeit, UrbanShade knew it, Sebastian knew it- hell, even the monsters knew so! It was only a matter of time before you were either swallowed whole, imploded, or drowned. The only one who seemed unable to get the memo was you.

You sigh, massaging your temples in a circular motion in an attempt to mitigate the encroaching migraine. There was no point in marinating in your own existential dread, you wouldn’t give UrbanShade nor its residents the satisfaction of breaking you. You’ve spent near your entire life bottling feelings up, old habits were hard to kick and you certainly weren’t going to try stopping them now.

A little more put together than a moment prior, you continue your journey. You were going to die soon. Maybe not right this second, but your chances of survival were incredibly slim, and you’d never considered yourself lucky or partial to gambling. The truth was plain and simple, inevitable. You were expendable and that was okay. It had to be. It must be. It will be.

Yawning, you passed through yet another sad-beige room. You must’ve opened twenty- no, maybe more like thirty doors?? Possibly??? Anyhow, point was, it was quiet. Disconcertingly so. The ambient hum of the overhead lights droning on had been slowly chipping away at your resolve. It was worrying how long you’ve gone without encountering any threats. Suspicious, even. Not once had you needed to make a detour, or find a key-card to progress. Rifling through the numerous desks in this zone hadn’t provided anything particularly useful either. Aside from the occasional ‘loose asset’ or two that you know The Merchant would be glad to take off of your hands. Oh, and a flash beacon! Though it was all-in-all a pretty lukewarm score. Regardless, you clipped the light-source onto your utility belt. You doubt you’d ever actually need it- not when you have your trusty flashlight and more batteries on hand than you could possibly ever need( Sebastian had given you an exponentially cheap price for those. Claiming it was more profitable to ‘sell them in bulk’ ). The monotonous repetition of pilfering office cubicles was mind-numbing, and you were sick of it.

Feeling frustrated, your pace quickens to that of a jog. Logically, you know you should be conserving your energy. It was reckless to be blindly racing through these halls, but you just couldn’t stand it anymore. If you had to die soon, so be it. But you weren’t going to just sit there like an appetizing bucket of chum and wait for death to come to you. You’d go down kicking and screaming.

Without you noticing it in your rising panic, your modest jog had turned into a run, and before you knew it, you were flying through rooms. Each one a never ending blur of the same layout. Cubicle, desk, door. Cubicle, desk, door. Cubicle, desk- chair? Chair!

Abruptly, you’re sent careening off-balance by an errant swivel-seat. When had that got there?Thankfully, you land on your side, the brunt force of your tumble distributing throughout your body evenly instead of in one specific location. Your expiration date could’ve been that much sooner if you’d somehow managed to break a bone. Stunned(kind of like how toddlers freeze before realizing if the situation calls for a meltdown or not), you remain curled in a fetal position on the floor, chest heaving with exertion. Remember when you said you weren’t an athletic individual? Yeah, that wasn’t an exaggeration.

A strangled wheeze erupts as you inch your hands up to your face, muffling your sounds of misery as pain ricochet’s throughout your body. It’d be one thing to land on carpet- but fuckity fuck, concrete?? Yeowch. God, you were so pathetic. This isn’t even the worst pain you’ve endured during your stay at the black-site. Maybe it was just your exhaustion, but all that big inner-monologuing over accepting your fate on your own terms and all that other melodramatic bogus- only to epically face-plant so soon afterwards? Ugh. Embarrassing. You lay motionless in a limp pile of limbs on the floor, gasping for air like a fish on land.

Slowly, you drag a palm down over your sweat-slicked face, before you rolling onto your front. Your ribcage digs into your organs, but you endure for the moment. Now that you’re not actively moving, you have a moment to catch your breath and scatter the panicked, adrenaline-filled haze that had clouded your mind.

As you lay there on the steadily, increasingly uncomfortable, hard floor; chin perched on your crossed arms, and epiphany strikes through you. This whole time, you’d been brainlessly pressing forward. Assuming there to be only the one way through. But when had this place ever been so simple? Perhaps all you needed was a new matter of perspective.

Just as the thought crossed your mind, your gaze snags on a vent-grille a little ways ahead of you. Similar in design to that of the ones you usually traverse through to visit Sebastian. Oh. Sebastian.

Thinking of the fish-man now, you’re filled with melancholy. Would he be upset if you just… didn’t return? The idea of Sebastian waiting for you to visit again but you never returning leaves a heavy feeling in your stomach. No, you couldn’t imagine him being so easily rattled by your disappearance, no matter how much you’d selfishly hope him to be. The more likely scenario, on the other hand? He probably wouldn’t even notice. The constant ebb and flow of UrbanShade volunteers was sure to prevent people like you from occupying his mind for any longer than necessary. And yet, even still knowing that the shopkeep realistically didn’t hold you in the same regard… you crave to be curled by his side. Goofing off and trading quips, stealing a few precious moments to yourself to pretend that everything was okay. Your brows up-turn, features scrunching not only in physical pain, but internal pain too. You had it bad. Whether it was a case of simply pack-bonding to the nearest individual, or (hopefully) something more akin to genuine connection remained yet to be seen.

Heartbeat no longer thudding in your chest, you rise up on scuffed knees, mildly cringing at the bloodied and torn fabric of your wetsuit. Without anymore fanfare, you crawl into the vent. Through a few winding turns you’re quickly spat out into, finally, a new room. Bouncing onto your feet, the heavy blast-door slides open, and you’re greeted by your typical scene rather than the looping office-space. You don’t waste anytime jumping through the frame, only twisting around in surprise when the door hurriedly slams closed. Well that’s odd, the doors normally stay open, no?

Confused, you watch as the screen, typically presenting the previous room’s number, is instead displaying a pixelated “>:(“

You incredulously snort, unsure how to proceed.

Deciding to err on the side of caution, you timidly shuffle before the entry-way.

“Hello?” You greet, yet it sounds more like a question. Honestly, you felt pretty ridiculous calling out to a door of all things.

The screen goes blank, nothing but a red, blinking cursor remaining stationary. What the fuck? Was someone actively hacking the screens? But why? How?? Were they friend or foe? Unsure, you wave a hand before the display. The cursor doesn’t move, nor do any new messages appear. A little perturbed, you rub your weary eyes. Was it a trick of the light? Or maybe a malfunction? Whatever the case may be, your intuition doesn’t like it. So far, it hasn’t led you astray. Wearily, you turn away from the peculiar door.

Walking down the corridor, you’re surrounded once again by thick plexiglass-glass. This time, however, it doesn’t just stop at little viewing windows. No, everything but the floor beneath your feet and the ceiling above was made of the same reinforced glass. You sway on your feet, suddenly nauseous and feeling entirely too exposed. You can feel your vision tunneling, everything except for the door ahead of you blurring out of focus like a low-resolution camera.

You feel as if you’re walking on a tight-rope, one step away from falling into the oppressive darkness on either side of you. Shakily, you try to focus your breathing. In and out. Concentrate on pulling oxygen. In and out .

So focused on what’s in front of you, you fail to notice as a sickly green light begins filter through the darkness.

Behind yourself, the odd little screen flickers back to life.

“Goodbye :)” It reads.

Sebastian, ever on the move, didn’t stay in one place for too long. Sure, there were a few, self-made outposts he frequented where he felt confident no friends would interrupt his business dealings. But he couldn’t rely entirely on the bumbling ex-convicts UrbanShade ‘hired’ to retrieve the information he sought. No, it was best that if he wanted things to get done right , he shouldn’t shuck the entirety of the workload onto the fools who didn’t even care for their cause. Which was exactly what he was doing.

His frequent routes through the complex weren’t typically above-ground. Neither did he rely too heavily on traversing through water. He was sore to admit it, but despite his genetic ‘enhancements’, there were much bigger fish than him lurking about the complex. Ones that didn’t bargain, nor were they nearly as susceptible to the ways of persuasion as humans were. No, just like him, his fellow test-subjects were nearly all carnivorous in nature. They all hungered so deeply, so ravenously that they rarely deigned to even take a moment to consider before lunging. No amount of shared trauma or sympathies were greater than the hollow of their stomachs. Sebastian’s expression sours.

His current path took him through the utility tunnels, a labyrinth of narrow, concrete halls that he had mapped out over countless excursions. Here, he was less likely to encounter any unwelcome reunions that roamed the more typical halls. His movements were swift and silent, honed by years of surviving in this underwater hellscape.

Body on auto-pilot, Sebastian’s thoughts drifted to you, as they so often did these days. Especially so since your last visit. Sebastian’s chest warms as he recalls the way you’d looked(admired, really) at him. As if he were anything but a monster. Of how you had called him pretty. How stupidly sincere you were, refusing to backtrack as any other sane person in your shoes would do- even as he gave you ample time to do so. He curses his tender heart, maybe the only part of him left that was well and truly human. Most days he wishes that the scientists who swapped his organs and irreparably altered his body would’ve taken his heart too. It certainly would’ve made things a lot easier.

As his mind circles back to you, a small flicker of concern breaches through the current of his thoughts. You were stubborn, he’d give you that, but how long could you really last down here? He knew UrbanShade’s plans, their blatant disregard for human life- er, life in general. Everyone down here was expendable, a pawn in their grand plan. He didn’t want to admit it, but he had grown… accustomed, of your visits. Of your banter and your resilience. It’s been so long since someone’s looked at him and seen anything else other than a ghastly experiment. You spoke with him, really spoke with him, not just at him. Plus, you didn’t even mind his crass attitude- hell! You even matched it more often than not. Most others in your place wouldn’t dare to rebuke his snark. In a cruel place devoid of connection, you were a rare exception.

He shook his head, clearing away any residual gooey ‘sentiments’. Sentimentality was a weakness he couldn’t afford. He had a mission, and attachments would only complicate things. Still, as he navigated the dark passageways, he couldn’t shake the tentative hope of being able to see you again. Wouldn’t that be nice?

There’s a great bellow somewhere above, undoubtedly from that of the ‘eyefestation’. It was one of the more ‘tame’ byproducts of the black-site’s experiments. Well, as tame as anything down here could be. It was sentient, for a start. Sebastian wasn’t sure by how much exactly, and didn’t particularly care- nor had the time to find out. What was important was that it was free of its enclosure now, all thanks to him.

Poor thing, it’s always been easily picked on by the humans. With a long, suffering sigh, Sebastian once again curses his bleeding heart. Soundlessly, he makes a detour to the upper levels.

[fatehbaz]

"interpreting the doctor as passively evil is an interesting character experiment"

at first, thought this was going to be like analysis and/or advice about when you're disabled, chronically ill, trans and you are seeking help and trying to be respected and taken seriously during a doctor's appointment.

by remaining cautious, discreet, maybe sometimes reserved, to carefully study based on their responses and demeanor whether or not the doctor might be safe. to determine whether the doctor might have biases, might be judgemental or dismissive.

advice about how it might behoove you to try a little thought experiment or exercise. when meeting a new doctor for the first time, to act as if there was always the possibility that the doctor might be less than helpful. maybe not actively spiteful or malicious. just potentially passively harmful. in the same way that you might be careful about what you say on the record when talking to an insurance agent or a hiring director or prospective new academic adviser. doesn't mean the doctor in your thought experiment must be "a bad person." maybe they are actually spiteful, though. complex personhood. y'know, like you don't want to frame other people as fundamentally "evil," but be aware that they can enact "evil" even if they're well-meaning.

because in that doctor's office, so many of us have been dismissed or rejected, labelled as catastrophists or irresponsible or confused autogynephiles or scheming drug-seekers or ne'er-do-wells or incapable of making autonomous decisions. casting us as people who brought on our own suffering. with doctor's notes in medical records haunting you for years afterward, abused by health insurance companies who cite those notes as justifications for continued abandonment and the imposition of dread-inducing life-long debt. controlling your fate, limiting possibilities, dictating your access to further treatment or resources. and a doctor can set it all in motion, maybe if their upbringing or wealth or the setting of their education or their current social world has insulated them against knowledge of the realities of people beneath and beyond them.

control of the scariest sort: authority figure of "care" turned captor, like a bad teacher or abusive workplace manager or unkind parent. making you feel discouraged to open up or seek help through some institutions or avenues. your heart learns to guard itself, in defense. you wither, and you might find that you close yourself even to your friends, and to the world. the suffering entrenches and expands.

it wasn't until i got to the fourth line in the paragraph that i realized this was actually about doctor who.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

This is your brain on fraud apologetics

In 1998, two Stanford students published a paper in Computer Networks entitled “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine,” in which they wrote, “Advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of consumers.”

https://research.google/pubs/pub334/

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

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

The co-authors were Lawrence Page and Sergey Brin, and the “large-scale hypertextual web search-engine” they were describing was their new project, which they called “Google.” They were 100% correct — prescient, even!

On Wednesday night, a friend came over to watch some TV with us. We ordered out. We got scammed. We searched for a great local Thai place we like called Kiin and clicked a sponsored link for a Wix site called “Kiinthaila.com.” We should have clicked the third link down (kiinthaiburbank.com).

We got scammed. The Wix site was a lookalike for Kiin Thai, which marked up their prices by 15% and relayed the order to our local, mom-and-pop, one-branch restaurant. The restaurant knew it, too — they called us and told us they were canceling the order, and said we could still come get our food, but we’d have to call Amex to reverse the charge.

As it turned out, the scammers double-billed us for our order. I called Amex, who advised us to call back in a couple days when the charge posted to cancel it — in other words, they were treating it as a regular customer dispute, and not a systemic, widespread fraud (there’s no way this scammer is just doing this for one restaurant).

In the grand scheme of things, this is a minor hassle, but boy, it’s haunting to watch the quarter-century old prophecy of Brin and Page coming true. Search Google for carpenters, plumbers, gas-stations, locksmiths, concert tickets, entry visas, jobs at the US Post Office or (not making this up) tech support for Google products, and the top result will be a paid ad for a scam. Sometimes it’s several of the top ads.

This kind of “intermediation” business is actually revered in business-schools. As Douglas Rushkoff has written, the modern business wisdom reveres “going meta” — not doing anything useful, but rather, creating a chokepoint between people who do useful things and people who want to pay for those things, and squatting there, collecting rent:

https://rushkoff.medium.com/going-meta-d42c6a09225e

It’s the ultimate passive income/rise and grind side-hustle: It wouldn’t surprise me in the least to discover a whole festering nest of creeps on Tiktok talking about how they pay Mechanical Turks to produce these lookalike sites at scale.

This mindset is so pervasive that people running companies with billions in revenue and massive hoards of venture capital run exactly the same scam. During lockdown, companies like Doordash, Grubhub and Uber Eats stood up predatory lookalike websites for local restaurants, without their consent, and played monster-in-the-middle, tricking diners into ordering through them:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/19/we-are-beautiful/#man-in-the-middle

These delivery app companies were playing a classic enshittification game: first they directed surpluses to customers to lock them in (heavily discounting food), then they directed surplus to restaurants (preferential search results, free delivery, low commissions) — then, having locked in both consumers and producers, they harvested the surplus for themselves.

Today, delivery apps charge massive premiums to both eaters and restaurants, load up every order with junk fees, and clone the most successful restaurants out of ghost kitchens — shipping containers in parking lots crammed with low-waged workers cranking out orders for 15 different fake “virtual restaurants”:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/01/autophagic-buckeyes/#subsidized-autophagia

Delivery apps speedran the enshittification cycle, but Google took a slower path to get there. The company has locked in billions of users (e.g. by paying billions to be the default search on Safari and Firefox and using legal bullying to block third party Android device-makers from pre-installing browsers other than Chrome). For years, it’s been leveraging our lock-in to prey on small businesses, getting them to set up Google Business Profiles.

These profiles are supposed to help Google distinguish between real sellers and scammers. But Kiin Thai has a Google Business Profile, and searching for “kiin thai burbank” brings up a “Knowledge Panel” with the correct website address — on a page that is headed with a link to a scam website for the same business. Google, in other words, has everything it needs to flag lookalike sites and confirm them with their registered owners. It would cost Google money to do this — engineer-time to build and maintain the system, content moderator time to manually check flagged listings, and lost ad-revenue from scammers — but letting the scams flourish makes Google money, at the expense of Google users and Google business customers.

Now, Google has an answer for this: they tell merchants who are being impersonated by ad-buying scammers that all they need to do is outbid them for the top ad-spot. This is a common approach — Amazon has a $31b/year “ad business” that’s mostly its own platform sellers bidding against each other to show you fake results for your query. The first five screens of Amazon search results are 50% ads:

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

This is “going meta,” so naturally, Meta is doing it too: Facebook and Instagram have announced a $12/month “verification” badge that will let you report impersonation and tweak the algorithm to make it more likely that the posts you make are shown to the people who explicitly asked to see them:

https://www.vox.com/recode/2023/2/21/23609375/meta-verified-twitter-blue-checkmark-badge-instagram-facebook

The corollary of this, of course, is that if you don’t pay, they won’t police your impersonators, and they won’t show your posts to the people who asked to see them. This is pure enshittification — the surplus from users and business customers is harvested for the benefit of the platform owners:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

The idea that merchants should master the platforms as a means of keeping us safe from their impersonators is a hollow joke. For one thing, the rules change all the time, as the platforms endlessly twiddle the knobs that determine what gets shown to whom:

https://doctorow.medium.com/twiddler-1b5c9690cce6

And they refuse to tell anyone what the rules are, because if they told you what the rules were, you’d be able to bypass them. Content moderation is the only infosec domain where “security through obscurity” doesn’t get laughed out of the room:

https://doctorow.medium.com/como-is-infosec-307f87004563

Worse: the one thing the platforms do hunt down and exterminate with extreme prejudice is anything that users or business-customers use to twiddle back — add-ons and plugins and jailbreaks that override their poor choices with better ones:

https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/29/23378541/the-og-app-instagram-clone-pulled-from-app-store

As I was submitting complaints about the fake Kiin scam-site (and Amex’s handling of my fraud call) to the FTC, the California Attorney General, the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau and Wix, I wrote a little Twitter thread about what a gross scam this is:

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1628948906657878016

The thread got more than two million reads and got picked up by Hacker News and other sites. While most of the responses evinced solidarity and frustration and recounted similar incidents in other domains, a significant plurality of the replies were scam apologetics — messages from people who wanted to explain why this wasn’t a problem after all.

The most common of these was victim-blaming: “you should have used an adblocker” or “never click the sponsored link.” Of course, I do use an ad-blocker — but this order was placed with a mobile browser, after an absentminded query into the Google search-box permanently placed on the home screen, which opens results in Chrome (where I don’t have an ad-blocker, so I can see material behind an ad-blocker-blocker), not Firefox (which does have an ad-blocker).

Now, I also have a PiHole on my home LAN, which blocks most ads even in a default browser — but earlier this day, I’d been on a public wifi network that was erroneously blocking a website (the always excellent superpunch.net) so I’d turned my wifi off, which meant the connection came over my phone’s 5G connection, bypassing the PiHole:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/28/shut-yer-pi-hole/

“Don’t click a sponsored link” — well, the irony here is that if you habitually use a browser with an ad-blocker, and you backstop it with a PiHole, you never see sponsored links, so it’s easy to miss the tiny “Sponsored” notification beside the search result. That goes double if you’re relaxing with a dinner guest on the sofa and ordering dinner while chatting.

There’s a name for this kind of security failure: the Swiss Cheese Model. We all have multiple defenses (in my case: foreknowledge of Google’s ad-scam problem, an ad-blocker in my browser, LAN-wide ad sinkholing). We also have multiple vulnerabilities (in my case: forgetting I was on 5G, being distracted by conversation, using a mobile device with a permanent insecure search bar on the homescreen, and being so accustomed to ad-blocked results that I got out of the habit of checking whether a result was an ad).

If you think you aren’t vulnerable to scams, you’re wrong — and your confidence in your invulnerability actually increases your risk. This isn’t the first time I’ve been scammed, and it won’t be the last — and every time, it’s been a Swiss Cheese failure, where all the holes in all my defenses lined up for a brief instant and left me vulnerable:

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

Other apologetics: “just call the restaurant rather than using its website.” Look, I know the people who say this don’t think I have a time-machine I can use to travel back to the 1980s and retrieve a Yellow Pages, but it’s hard not to snark at them, just the same. Scammers don’t just set up fake websites for your local businesses — they staff them with fake call-centers, too. The same search that takes you to a fake website will also take you to a fake phone number.

Finally, there’s “What do you expect Google to do? They can’t possibly detect this kind of scam.” But they can. Indeed, they are better situated to discover these scams than anyone else, because they have their business profiles, with verified contact information for the merchants being impersonated. When they get an ad that seems to be for the same business but to a different website, they could interrupt the ad process to confirm it with their verified contact info.

Instead, they choose to avoid the expense, and pocket the ad revenue. If a company promises to “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” I think we have the right to demand these kinds of basic countermeasures:

https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/our-approach/

The same goes for Amex: when a merchant is scamming customers, they shouldn’t treat complaints as “chargebacks” — they should treat them as reports of a crime in progress. Amex has the bird’s eye view of their transaction flow and when a customer reports a scam, they can backtrack it to see if the same scammer is doing this with other merchants — but the credit card companies make money by not chasing down fraud:

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/rosalindadams/mastercard-visa-fraud

Wix also has platform-scale analytics that they could use to detect and interdict this kind of fraud — when a scammer creates a hundred lookalike websites for restaurants and uses Wix’s merchant services to process payments for them, that could trigger human review — but it didn’t.

Where do all of these apologetics come from? Why are people so eager to leap to the defense of scammers and their adtech and fintech enablers? Why is there such an impulse to victim-blame?

I think it’s fear: in their hearts, people — especially techies — know that they, too, are vulnerable to these ripoffs, but they don’t want to admit it. They want to convince themselves that the person who got scammed made an easily avoidable mistake, and that they themselves will never make a similar mistake.

This is doubly true for readerships on tech-heavy forums like Twitter or (especially) Hacker News. These readers know just how many vulnerabilities there are — how many holes are in their Swiss cheese — and they are also overexposed to rise-and-grind/passive income rhetoric.

This produces a powerful cognitive dissonance: “If all the ‘entrepreneurs’ I worship are just laying traps for the unwary, and if I am sometimes unwary, then I’m cheering on the authors of my future enduring misery.” The only way to resolve this dissonance — short of re-evaluating your view of platform capitalism or questioning your own immunity to scams — is to blame the victim.

The median Hacker News reader has to somehow resolve the tension between “just install an adblocker” and “Chrome’s extension sandbox is a dumpster fire and it’s basically impossible to know whether any add-on you install can steal every keystroke and all your other data”:

https://mattfrisbie.substack.com/p/spy-chrome-extension

In my Twitter thread, I called this “the worst of all possible timelines.” Everything we do is mediated by gigantic, surveillant monopolists that spy on us comprehensively from asshole to appetite — but none of them, not a 20th century payment giant nor a 21st century search giant — can bestir itself to use that data to keep us safe from scams.

Next Thu (Mar 2) I'll be in Brussels for Antitrust, Regulation and the Political Economy, along with a who's-who of European and US trustbusters. It's livestreamed, and both in-person and virtual attendance are free:

https://www.brusselsconference.com/registration

On Fri (Mar 3), I'll be in Graz for the Elevate Festival:

https://elevate.at/diskurs/programm/event/e23doctorow/

[Image ID: A modified version of Hieronymus Bosch's painting 'The Conjurer,' which depicts a scam artist playing a shell-game for a group of gawking rubes. The image has been modified so that the scam artist's table has a Google logo and the pea he is triumphantly holding aloft bears the 'Sponsored' wordmark that appears alongside Google search results.]

[absolutebl]

hi!!! do you have favorite bl movies (maybe with happy endings too)?👀❤️

Top 10 BL Movies

(as of end of 2024, in no particular order)

My personal favorites will always have HEAs (or at least HFN). I don't love ambiguous endings and I hate sad ones. I'm going to include the Korean stuff that has been recut as movies, because I can.

1 Seven Days

Japan 2015

AKA Seven Days: Monday-Thursday AND Seven Days: Friday-Sunday

This is a cheat as it's 2 movies, but that's still less run time than your bog standard marvel tent pole these days, so it counts.

One of the best live action yaois ever made, with perfectly structured angst, fantastic characters and acting, and no problematic tropes. The leads have excellent chemistry although it’s low heat there’s still some really cute mutual kisses.

2 Can I Buy Your Love From A Vending Machine

AKA Sono Koi, Jihanki de Kaemasu ka? AKA Vending Machine Sabi Koi

Japan 2023

This movie is utterly adorable, impossibly awkward, and kinda old fashioned. About a cute nerdy little office worker (he's out!) who has a big'ol crush on the tall hulking vending machine guy. They fall in love. And that’s it. And it’s charming. There’s some first name eroticism (because Japan) and there's emphasis on communication (so not Japan) which turns this into an organically loving and talkative relationship. There’s a bit of an age gap and our office cutie may or may not have a muscles fetish (the hot bod, not the shellfish) because (if I’ve told you once I’ve told you 1 million times) Japan always goes kinky. And you know what, I loved it.

3 Restart After Come Back Home

AKA Risutato wa tadaima no ato de

Japan 2020

Atmospheric study in rural Japan meets complex family dynamics built on a romance framework of city boy meets country boy, grumpy/sunshine. It’s beautiful and icy sweet. Slow moving in places but ultimately worth the patience, low heat, low angst, and stunning.

4 His

Japan 2020

His is about being a grown adult and still struggling with coming out. It addresses the consequences choosing a life disingenuous to identity. Nagisa turns up on Shun’s doorstep with his precocious daughter in tow. This is a touch confusing to Shun since they were each others first love and Nagisa broke his heart. Shun has retreated from society, rejecting the world before it can reject him because without Nagisa he never had a reason to fight. Nagisa went the opposite, pretending to be something he was not, ending up with a daughter he adores and a wife who hates him. This movie is beautiful and the setting is unique and interesting but I'm not wild about the ending, it's HFN (happy for now). Honestly, I think I mostly liked this because I have a mad crush on Miyazawa Hio (Shun).

5 After Sundown

AKA Saengrawi

Thailand 2023

It's from Mandee and horror (neither really my thing), yet I liked it. It's oddly sweet and wholesome, for a ghost story. Phloeng and Rawee enter into an arranged marriage for confusing prophetic reasons. Twists of fate demand that they solve the mystery of a past that is haunting Phloeng's family and harming Rawee. Honestly, it makes no actual sense, but it's kinda historical, and very pretty, so I enjoyed it more than I should.

Korean BL that aired as shows but are cut together as movies & great

In some of these cases the movies are better than the originals, in some they are exactly the same.

6 Color Rush

2021

A unique paranormal twist elevates this classic high school drama into a pitch-perfect allegory for the queer coming out experience and one of the best BLs of all time (I will fight you on this).

7 Semantic Error

2022

The ultimate enemies to lovers, also the prettiest. Sexy older boy discovers pouty younger boy has outed him as a slacker, starts out bullying him, accidentally falls madly in love instead. Korea hits it entirely out of the Parks by doing a university BL with everything we expect from BL just done exactly right. Korea's signature quality executed perfectly with added bonus good story, great pacing, stunning visuals, and fantastic chemistry. You cannot ask for more from a BL, let alone a KBL.

8 To My Star

2021

Hwang Da Seul directing this show about a neurotic actor (actual puppy) who takes refuge with a grumpy chef resulting in sparks, cooking lessons, and LOVE! It’s is a touch quirky to get into, but utterly charming once it hits its stride. This is the ultimate grumpy/sunshine pairing plus the most appealing light-filled kitchen of our dreams. I adore this show so much. Limited use of BL tropes makes this feel more of a sweet contemporary gay romance between an actor plagued by scandal and the chef who accidentally adopts him, but the gentleness will appeal to fans of the BL genre.

9 Long Time No See

2017

This originally aired as a series but I have only ever seen it as a movie. So I'm counting it.

Catfishing assassins on either side of a turf war fall in love not knowing they are on opposite sides. Or do they? Suspenseful plot, good fight sequences, mature characters, hot sexitimes, and even hotter beating the shit out of each other and kissing while covered in blood (this came from KOREA?), plus an HEA. One of the greatest hidden gems of the BL genre.

10 Wish You: Your Melody in My Heart

2020

Set in the music industry featuring a talented singer and the pianist who falls in love with him (and his music), this is subtle and achingly adorable. High production, low heat, short run, very tame, and Korea, so all the pretty. Slow burn and lots of pining.

(source)

[martyfive]

i didn’t know what the legend of zelda was when breath of the wild came out. i was probably in a middle of something very important at the moment, alright? something like sitting on a subway train on my way home. or like being in a middle of another family scandal. or failing another attempt of becoming someone i never wanted to be. busy stuff. i never even heard of the name zelda unless we were talking about zelda fitzgerald. i was nineteen and i wasn’t fucking around.

moreover, i didn’t know what zelda was about even when i bought breath of the wild itself.

what i always knew for sure is that i had never been and never would be a princess. every time i was told during our family dinners that those like me were never meant to be married to a handsome rich prince to live happily ever after, i was trying to find comfort in the vocally unannounced title of a friendly local knight in the shining armour bestowed upon me. the one who was there to shine and save and protect those in need. the one who wasn’t supposed to care about their appearances, being securely hidden behind a chain mail and metal shell that still never saved from bruises. a knight with a bear trap instead of a helmet. born to be the best and somehow failing every day. almost like a dream come true. not my own dream, but a dream nonetheless.

the life in our kingdom was a total disaster and i was a wreck of a knight.

by the time i escaped i had been depressed for approximately twelve years. i left everything i knew behind and moved to another country. i actually married my prince to make the paperwork easier for both of us. i found myself roaming in the wilderness i knew nothing about. i tried to take the bear trap off but every time i attempted to free myself from it it was hard to breathe through the neck that was losing its familiar balance. i didn’t know how to be an adult. i didn’t even know how to be a child. i wanted to learn, but i didn’t know where to start.

“what do you want for your birthday?” my prince asked me.

i didn’t feel like i deserved gifts. i did not achieve anything to receive them. the knight was technically laid off duty and the salary once paid in clothes and food was still haunting me. and i needed something else. we also needed something else to bond over except for our childhood bruises.

so i received nintendo switch for my birthday in a year i almost broke my neck trying to forcefully remove my fancy helmet as soon as i realised i couldn’t walk around like this anymore.

“games could be a part of a therapy,” the lady that was helping me with my breathing exercises said while i was pouring my blood trauma on the carpet in her office, “but they’re not gonna remove this bear trap of yours, you know?”

i knew that. i also knew i didn’t really want to live, trapped or not. so it made sense to me to start living my new life from the very beginning — to start from trying to be a child i barely ever was — and to try and learn how to be an adult like most healthy children did. meaning, to give myself time. to make choices i was robbed of. mistakes too, if necessary. to take a breath before heading off to run a marathon i never foresaw.

so yeah, i didn’t really know what the legend of zelda was when i bought breath of the wild. i only knew zelda was a princess i had never been and never would be. what i knew for sure is that the main character named link was supposed to save her.

and that he was her knight.

the whole thing sounded like a sick joke, but i was determined to know what the fuss was all about. looking back a couple years later, i’ve been wondering how it was even possible for me to stumble upon this exact game when i needed it that much.

while on my journey across the kingdom i wasn’t familiar with, with my own land shaded by the war and destruction, with no recollection of who i was and who i was to become, with a trapped in a castle tired princess named zelda, with the only light shining on the horizon gloomed by the darkness, i felt bad for link. what did he ever do to deserve all of this? i thought. why is this his burden to carry? is this normal for a character to stay silent before the impossible challenge he was supposedly destined to face and just… move forward no matter what?

i didn’t even know at the time how the zelda universe worked. that the event of link saving the world was something that threaded through the kingdom’s history like a football cup everyone was expecting to inconsistently happen once in a while. there was only this link and his own crazy challenges for me, and his destiny felt like a weight on the neck i, personally, being a broken knight i was at the time, wouldn’t be able to drag to the end.

but i had to.

i ran through the green fields from one destroyed town to the other and thought of link’s footsteps echoing in me as if every abandoned ruin was a part of my own depression i was supposed to face. every location had a name and each felt like it was important for someone who lived here a hundred years ago before the war took everything from them. the names meant nothing neither for me, nor for link and his amnesia, but for someone who wasn’t there anymore it was everything. and i had to accept it. there still was something to save. i had to look the destruction and what was left of the kingdom in the eyes and find a way to save what i can so the future would have a solid foundation they could build upon.

zelda couldn’t have saved the kingdom by herself. she had been trapped in that castle for a hundred years and she needed help of her knight. the task no single person deserved to condemn their soul with. i had no particular feelings about zelda herself, but it was a kingdom worth saving and there was only one knight that could do that. somehow, it had to be me.

so i visited every corner of the land and found everything there was to uncover, talked to everyone i could, solved everything there was to think of and turned up all the stones to find all the koroks. i just had to.

a couple months later i defeated the calamity and finally saved zelda. i took a breath and i let it out. and after that i felt better and empty once again. but it was something else this time.

it was the foundation. it was bare, but at least it was there.

i came a long way since finishing breath of the wild. i learned a new language. i grew up. i gave up my antidepressants to try and live without them. we moved from one city to the other. i got a dog that made me go outside and laugh every day. i started to make money. i started eating healthier. i started talking to people more. i took the responsibility. one by one, i pried the screws of the bear trap on my neck. it was still there, but it became easier for me to breathe. i realised that the kingdom i was raised in was never meant to be the only thing to define me. i was building my own on the ruins of what withstood. there was no other way to survive. and i just had to.

waking up as link once again years later and looking out to see the skies of tears of the kingdom, i cried. i felt like i met an old friend that was once everything to me and who i lost contact with for years, and then finally hugged them again. it was like finding myself a couple years later from where i was left dealing with my own shit and realising that my journey was worth it.

the ruins were still there, you see? but now we had so much else! there was another civilisation hidden in the clouds in the sky! and the whole another biome underground! giant temples to get confused about while looking at the map! there were new people to meet! new cataclysms to endure! new puzzles to solve! new koroks to find! damn, what a mess. i couldn’t wait to be a part of it!

and, of course, there was zelda to be saved.

zelda, who spent thousands of years in a form of a dragon waiting for her knight to take the previously shattered master sword she healed and to kill ganondorf. zelda, who was supposed to forget everything that made her human, but still was fighting for the light in the end. zelda, who was robbed of her life by the choice she made to protect those she loved, and who was blessed with another chance in the end. even a thousand years curse was finite. somehow, i found myself in love a princess i was never meant to become.

and it felt right.

and when link caught zelda falling from the sky over hyrule, i realised that the kingdom i was building with my own hands would always be there. and it was only my destiny to get to the rotten roots hidden underground in the darkness where no life was meant to exist but was flourishing in it’s own way instead, and to remove the sickness from it. to heal and to be healed.

and then i took my bear trap helmet off and smouldered it into a crown.

maybe i was never meant to be a princess. but in the kingdom that i built on my own, with all of its countless layers and clouds in the sky, with its ruins and old stones, with its depths and lurking horrors, with its riddles and joy, traps and secrets, songs and laughter, disasters and questions, dragons and princesses, with all the troubles and their resolutions…

there, i was only meant to be the king.

20/6/2024

[rottenpumpkin13]

The entire soldier floor has been turned into a haunted house attraction (complete with jumpscares and being chased by maniacs and monsters) for the sake of fun and perhaps to make some extra side money. Is it a success or a failure?

*Angeal is walking around with a clipboard inspecting everything before the haunted house opens*

Zack, revving a chainsaw he shouldn't have: Guess what I—

Angeal: NO.

Zack: >:(

*Zack walks away, Sephiroth walks by*

Angeal: Oh, Sephiroth! Have you figured out what you're going to do?

Sephiroth: I have. To give the visitors an authentic experience and ensure we don't deceive anyone, I conducted a séance earlier this morning. I summoned an actual spirit to haunt the 49th floor.

Angeal: And did it work?

Sephiroth: Unfortunately, no. But I—*cough cough*

Sephiroth, possessed by Jenova: The reunion is inevitable. No honor, no fleeting mortal dreams will spare you. The pull of your blood will drag you back, and when it does, you will—*cough cough*

Angeal:

Sephiroth: As I was saying, it didn't work, so I'm contributing by guiding our visitors around the—*cough cough*

Angeal:

Sephiroth, possessed by Jenova: You can feel it, can't you? The slow unraveling of your will, your cells inching toward me with the same devotion your show your honor. You will—*cough cough*

Angeal:

Sephiroth: Anyway, where do you want me stationed?

Angeal: At the psychiatrist's office.

Sephiroth: Understood.

*He leaves, Zack runs by chasing Kunsel with the chainsaw*

Angeal: !

*Genesis walks up to Angeal dressed in a regulation First Class uniform*

Angeal: What are you supposed to be?

Genesis: Isn't it obvious? I'm the most horrifying thing imaginable—a flavorless, rule-abiding SOLDIER First Class. All honor and dreams suppressing any trace of real passion or self.

Angeal: Interesting.

Genesis: And what are you supposed to be?

Angeal: I’m gonna throw on a red coat and go as a self-obsessed egomaniac with deep insecurities rooted in his childhood neglect and a crush on Sephiroth.

Genesis: >:(

*Genesis leaves, Kunsel runs by chasing Zack with the chainsaw now, and Sephiroth comes back*

Sephiroth: Lazard said the company psychiatrist is on vacation. Who do I contact now?

Angeal, staring at the shadow of Jenova following Sephiroth: MAYBE AN EXORCIST?

[javierpena-inatacvest]

Chapter 9: I Promise

Summary: You agree to go to the Laredo Sheriff's Department's annual summer picnic. When Javi's co-workers bring up an unexpected topic of conversation, Javi begins to learn more about your life before Laredo.

Word Count: 11.5K (Is it bad I'm impressed with myself that this isn't longer?!)

Warnings: SMUT (18+), unprotected p in v sex (do better), shower sex, period sex, creampie, praise, masturbation (f), talk of drug use/overdose, grief/loss, PTSD (reader has a panic attack), drinking/alcohol (reader also gets a lil tipsy), mentions of food/eating, Javi's co-workers being assholes (not Carter and Miller, we love them), Javi being protective of you, Javi just wanting to give you every ounce of his love because he cares about you more than life itself

A/N: Okay y'all. I had to do it. I want nothing more for Osita and Javi to live in a world of sunshine and rainbows where they are nothing but happy all the time, but, sigh, that is not how life works. Osita's got some things Javi needs to learn about her past, and it's happening, whether we like it or not. This chapter really does have it all- pool parties, trauma, Jell-O shots, Javi talking about babies (I'm screaming too, it's okay), you name it, it's probably in there. Also, Osita's brother Patrick is inspired by sweet Frankie Morales from Triple Frontier because UGH. ALRIGHT, STRAP IN YOUR SEATBELTS AND ENJOY THE RIDE!!!

Series Masterlist Next Chapter Previous Chapter

“C’mon, Peña, you gotta come, you’re like, the only guy in our whole department who hasn’t RSVP’d yet.” 

“Seriously, man. It actually is a good time. Free food, free booze, hanging out at Morris’s pool all day? All the other guys bring their wives and girlfriends, too, so you can even bring your girl, if you want.” 

It had been almost two weeks since the flier for the annual Laredo Sheriff's Department Picnic landed on Javi’s desk. It had also been about two weeks that Agent Carter and Agent Miller had spent every day harassing Javi about coming to the party, claiming it to be one of their favorite days of the summer ever since they started working for the department a few years back. 

“Yeah? And who are you two idiots bringing?” Javi scoffed, shuffling through the folders on his desk as Carter and Miller leaned in the doorway to his office. 

“Low blow there, Peña, but okay.” Carter grimaced as he put his hands on his hips. “Listen, just think about it, okay? 

“Just RSVP before tomorrow or Barb is gonna lose her mind if she doesn’t know exactly how much Potato Salad to make. I told her that you’d tell her by then, and I don’t need another reason to be on her shitlist.” Javi and Carter shook their heads at Miller, not understanding how he was constantly finding ways to piss off the receptionists in the front office. 

“Fine. I’ll let her know by tomorrow.” Javi responded, not looking up from his paperwork. “Now, don’t you idiots have anything better to do than stand in my office?” 

Carter and Miller gave each other a quick high five, finally working at least a somewhat definitive answer out of their boss before they headed back to their desks, finally giving Javi a moment of peace. 

Javi sighed as he pulled the brightly colored flier out of his desk drawer, staring at it for a few seconds before setting it down on top of one of the manilla folders, running his hands through his hair. Social gatherings had never been his thing. To be honest, he really hated them. During his time in Colombia, the best he could normally muster was occasionally getting a drink at the bar, dreading the small talk, politics and ass kissing of every conversation. All he really wanted to do was sit by himself and drink enough to ease the pain and misery he felt with each day that passed in that God forsaken country. But he had to remind himself that this wasn’t Colombia anymore. His days of drowning his loneliness in liquor were behind him. Even when the sting of his time away haunted him, he had to remind himself of the life he now had in front of him. 

You. 

He had you. You had taken his world and turned it around. When he looked at you, he saw a life of everything he had ever wanted and never thought he’d have. You’d given him a chance at a future. If you’d asked him a little over a month and a half ago if he ever saw himself settling down, he would have probably laughed in your face. But now? The thought of you as his wife? A mom? To his children? A family that the two of you would build together? He’d marry you today and give you a football team’s worth of kids, if that’s what you wanted.

Fuck, he hoped that’s what you wanted. 

He would have let himself play out the rest of that fantasy in his head for as long as he could, if it wasn’t for the grumble in his stomach, loud enough to snap him out of his daydreaming. Javi looked up at the clock, realizing he had worked his way almost an hour past his lunch. Lately, he’d had the luxury of spending practically every night at your apartment, you insisting that you wake up with him every morning and make him breakfast and lunch before he went off to work.  Even though he had stayed over last night, he practically had to force you to stay in bed this morning, trying to tell him that your headache wasn’t even that bad after you practically winced in pain when he turned on the light to get himself ready. He’d promised you that he’d be just fine going out to get lunch today, and that he’d call during his break to check in on you. 

Pulling back up to the parking lot of the station after stopping at Alejandro’s Deli to pick up a sandwich (and extra chips and a cookie for you when he came home), Javi opened up his cell phone to call you, taking a bite of his lunch while the dial tone rang. 

“Hi, Jav.” Your voice instantly spreading a smile across his face. 

“Hey, Osita. You feelin’ any better?” 

“Yeah, a little I guess. I’m an idiot, I should have known this was gonna happen.” 

Javi scrunched his face in confusion. “What? How were you supposed to know you were gonna have a headache this morning?” 

“I uh…” You paused for a second, letting out a huff of nervous laughter. “I uh, I totally forgot I started my period today. I always get really bad headaches when they first start, and considering it happens every month, you’d think I’d remember, but apparently not. Makes sense why I cried at that commercial of the dog getting adopted yesterday.” You both laughed, it now making a lot more sense to Javi why you had seemed a little off the past few days. “I um… I know you were gonna come over after work today, but, um, don’t feel like you have to.” 

He paused, trying to read the tone in your voice. “What do you mean? Do you not want me to come over?” 

“No, I do, sorry, it’s just- If you’re weirded out by it cause you think it’s gross or whatever, I understand-” 

“Hermosa.” He interjected, cutting you off. 

“Yeah?” 

“It’s not gross, and I’m not weirded out by it. It’s totally normal, you don’t have to apologize for anything. I’m still planning on coming over tonight unless you tell me otherwise. I’ll pick up dinner and we can hang out and watch a movie together, sound good?” 

“O-okay.” He could practically hear the relief in your voice through the other end of the phone. 

“I gotta head back in to work, but I’ll call you when I’m leaving and you can tell me what you want for dinner and if you need me to pick anything else up for you, okay?” 

“Okay. Thanks, Javi. You’re the best. Have a good rest of your day. I love you.” 

“I love you too, Osita. Bye.” 

I love you. God, it never got old. 

 

Knock, knock, knock. 

You were glad to hear the familiar tapping of Javi’s knuckles against your apartment door, the promise of his presence bringing you joy in what otherwise had been a pretty miserable day, considering how terrible you felt. 

“It’s unlocked!” You yelled from the couch, curled way too deep in your blanket with your heating pad to bother getting up. 

“Baby, you really shouldn’t leave the door unlocked, makes me nervous when you’re here all by yourself.” Javi grumbled, kicking off his shoes by the door before setting down all the things he was carrying in his hands on the kitchen table. 

“Sorry, Mr. Safety. You know I normally do, I really just didn’t want to get up if I didn’t have to.” You replied sheepishly. Even though he wouldn’t admit it out loud, it didn’t take you long to figure out that Javi was incredibly overprotective of you. He knew how stubborn you were, and that you were more than capable of taking care of yourself, but that didn’t stop him from double checking all the locks in your apartment before you went to bed, or making sure that you told him if you going out somewhere so he didn’t worry if he called your apartment and you didn’t pick up. Was it a little much? Yes. But did it absolutely melt your heart knowing he cared so much about you? Also yes. 

You popped your head over the couch to see Javi in the kitchen with 2 different grocery bags, a pizza, a McDonalds’ bag, and flowers. “Javi, what the hell did you get?” You laughed as he stood at the table, unpacking the items. 

“Well, I got two different types of tampons because I wasn’t sure which ones you prefer, a box of Midol, a Twix bar, chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream, a bag of potato chips- the wavy kind because apparently those ones taste better, pizza for us for dinner and McDonalds french fries for you, because even though you said you only wanted pizza on the phone, you still brought up the french fries like 4 goddamn times. And flowers, just because.” 

When Javi had called to tell you he was leaving work and asked what you wanted for dinner or if there was anything else he could pick up for you, your only answer was that you just wanted pizza and that maybe fries also sounded good, but not to worry about it. You hadn’t asked him to get you anything else, and yet, he showed up to your apartment with all of your favorite snacks, pain meds, flowers and tampons. It didn’t help that you were already emotional, feeling yourself on the brink of tears realizing just how much Javi cared about you. Jesus, this man was too good to you. 

“Jav, you didn’t have to get all this. Thank you. God, I love you.” 

“Of course, Hermosa. Anything you need, just let me know, okay? I love you, too. You hungry?” 

“Absolutely. Tell that to the sleeve of Oreos I already crushed earlier today.” You both snickered as Javi put away the rest of the groceries and changed out of his work clothes before bringing you both over a plate of pizza to the couch, yours with extra fries. “Thanks for still wanting to come over tonight.” You said gently, shuffling over to snuggle next to Javi on the couch, leaning against his shoulder as you took a bite of your dinner. 

“Osita, you don’t need to thank me. I just want to be here for you, whatever it is that you need. I just feel bad you have to go through all this shit.” 

“Just another one of the wonderful perks of being a woman!” You rolled your eyes, sarcastically, taking a bite of your fries. “To be honest, there is a tiny bit of me that was relieved today. Not that I don’t trust it or that I don’t take it religiously, but phew, my birth control has really been working overtime this past month, so I’m glad to know you didn't beat it. ” You both quietly laughed to yourselves, Javi swallowing before taking another bite of his pizza. He was quiet for a moment, but you could practically hear the wheels turning in his brain, like he was calculating his words before he spoke. Little did you know, at that moment, his head was flooded with his thoughts from earlier today, imagining the life you two could have together, if you’d let him. Maybe there was a subconscious part of his brain that wished he had beaten your birth control, because you were both a little unprepared for the next sentence that came stumbling out of his mouth. 

“Would you, uh, do you, um, not right now, but do you… Do you ever want kids?”  He looked down at the floor, taking a deep breath before turning back to you, anxiously waiting for your response. 

Oh fuck me. As if you weren’t already enough of a hormonal mess, the thought of Javi as a dad? Little baby Peñas? Oh God, you could practically feel your ovaries bursting at the seams. You’d be blatantly lying to yourself if you said you’d never thought about it, but hearing him be the first one to say it out loud? Oh boy. You fought with everything in you to not burst out in an ear to ear grin, trying to mentally compose yourself before answering the question. “Um, yeah, I do. I always have. Like you said, not right now, but yes. I- I do. Do you? Want kids?” You looked over at Javi, rubbing his hand against the back of his neck, his cheeks red and face flustered.  

“I um, I used to, before Lorraine and Colombia, and uh, those both kinda fucked me up for a while. I just kinda figured it wasn’t in the cards for me anymore.” His gaze shifted towards the ground again, staring there for a moment before shifting back to you, his sweet brown eyes locking with yours, the softest smile gently spreading across his lips. “I didn’t think I would anymore, but uh, things are… things are different now. I do, too. I definitely do.” 

“Okay. Good to know.” You didn’t even bother trying to hide your smile this time, the best you could do was bite down on your tongue inside your mouth to try and keep you from grinning like a complete idiot. You nestled closer into Javi, pressing your head against his chest, smirking to yourself at how fast you could feel his heart racing as you leaned into him. He wrapped his arm around you, pulling you closer, placing a long, soft kiss on the top of your head as you both sat there for a moment in blissful silence. 

“Sooooooo, what movie do you want to watch?” You asked, trying as hard as you could to not spontaneously combust from the conversation the two of you just had. 

“Your pick, Osita.” 

“Return of the Jedi?” You smirked, knowing how much Javi had been dying to watch it since you showed him The Empire Strikes Back a few weeks ago. 

“I was hoping that’d be the one you’d pick.” He got up excitedly, shuffling through the VHS tapes under your TV before pushing it into the VHS player and hitting play. He repositioned himself on the couch so you could lay your head down on his thigh as he rubbed your back. “So, don’t feel like you have to, but uh, the department is throwing their annual picnic thing next weekend. I’m not sure if I wanna go, but if I did, would you wanna come with me? Sounds like it’s kind of a big thing, Miller and Carter have been on my ass about it since I’m supposed to RSVP by tomorrow.” 

“Well number one, I think you should go, if Carter and Miller are being that big of a pain in the ass about it, it has to be at least a little fun, right? I’ve never met them, but from what you’ve told me, they seem like they enjoy having a good time. Number two, I would absolutely love to come with you. I think it would be really nice to meet your co-workers. Or I guess, technically re-meet some of them if they came to present at school before you did.” 

“You mean you didn’t purposely trip into them to get their attention, too?” He chuckled, thinking back to the first time you had met. 

“Oh shut up, I did not trip on purpose!” You playfully nudged the leg you were resting your head on. “I just happened to be very lucky that you were incredibly handsome and charming, and were nice enough not to let me fall and embarrass myself in front of the entire 3rd grade.” 

“Whatever you say, Osita.” 

“Oh just shhhh and watch the movie, you meanie.” 

About halfway through the film, belly full of pizza, french fries and half the Twix bar Javi had gotten you, you could feel yourself getting sleepy. You were now laying on top of Javi, your face on his chest and his arm on top of your back, fingers running back and forth across your shoulder blades. You felt so warm and comfortable pressed up against him, it wasn’t long before you could feel your lids beginning to droop, your blinks becoming slow and heavy before your eyes finally closed, shortly followed by the sounds of your soft snores against Javi’s chest. It had become very apparent to Javi that no matter what movie or TV show you picked to watch, if you were cuddled up against him, you were out like a light in no time. To be honest, he didn’t even care. There were few things in the world he loved more than you lying against him, falling asleep wrapped in his embrace. He truly hoped he’d get to spend the rest of his life explaining the second half of every movie you missed while you were fast asleep in his arms. 

Mmmmmhmmmm, Javi… 

Oh, fuck, babyyyy 

It feels so good….

Ahhhhhhhh, please-

“Ahg! Fuck!” You shot up in your bed, grasping at your sheets, your breathing heavy and labored as your eyes sprung open, greeted by the darkness of your bedroom. You paused for a moment, grounding yourself, shaking your head as you scrunched your face tightly before opening your eyes once more, looking over to find Javi still sound asleep next to you. 

Fuck, it was a dream. A good one at that, holy shit. 

You ran your hands through your hair, taking a few more deep breaths as you found yourself now wide awake, and very horny. You peeked over at the alarm clock on your bedside table, finding that it was still a good thirty minutes before Javi usually got up for work. If you weren’t on your period, you probably would have just woken up Javi to help relieve how worked up you had gotten from your dream- It wouldn’t have been the first time, and he certainly wouldn’t have been mad about it. But this was the first time you had been on your period since you started dating him. For as amazing as he was, there was one fact that you weren’t going to put past him. He was still a guy. Every guy that you had dated before him had all felt the same, and you assumed he would too- That he would wait for your period to be finished before wanting anything to do with, well, down there. That left you with two choices. 

Be an absolute horny mess until he left for work and then take care of yourself, which would probably still be another 2 to 3 hours from now. 

Take an extra early shower and take care of yourself before he wakes up 

Yeah, it was gonna have to be option two. 

Very quietly sneaking yourself out of bed, praying that Javi didn’t wake up for at least a little while longer, you tiptoed out of the bedroom, gently closing the bathroom door behind you as you turned on the shower. Besides it being fairly spacious for an apartment, another huge perk of your bathroom was the detachable shower head installed in your shower. Considering how much fun you and Javi have had together in the past month and a half, it had been a while since it had been put to use for its non-intended purposes. Once the water was warm enough, you stepped over the ledge of the tub, giving yourself a quick rinse before grabbing the shower head off the wall and bringing it between your legs. The jets of warm water splashing against your already throbbing clit were enough to at least start to ease some of the ache that was pooling in between your thighs, even though you desperately wished it was Javi who was helping you to relieve your neediness. You closed your eyes, reaching back for the memory of your dream that had woken you up just a few minutes ago, picturing Javi bending you over your couch as he plowed into you, over and over. You began to fidget the shower head in your hand, the water spraying back and forth against your sensitive nerves, feeling the heat begin to pool in your belly. 

“Mhmmmm, fuck, Javi…” You whispered to yourself, the image of him fucking you deeply and intensely overtaking your brain. You could feel yourself edging closer to you high, your breathing becoming deeper as you imagined him whispering those filthy, sweet nothings into your ear that he knew made you absolutely crumble. You were so consumed by the thought, that you hadn’t heard Javi get out of bed, had definitely not heard him as he opened the bathroom door, and were absolutely unaware of the fact he was now also wide awake and coming to check on why you were showering at 6:00 AM. 

“Hey, baby, is everything o- Oh.” He stopped himself midway through opening the shower curtain, realizing what he had just walked in on. 

“AH, Jesus Christ, Javi!” You screeched, dropping the shower head to the ground as you grabbed at the cool tiles of your shower wall to try and keep you from falling over. “Fuck, you scared the shit out of me!” You panted, trying to catch your breath, scrambling to put the shower head back up in its rightful position. 

“Sorry, I uh, I woke up and saw you weren’t in bed and heard the shower on, I just wanted to make sure you were okay.” His face now a mixture of confusion and suspicion. 

“No, yeah, um, I’m fine, just um, you know, just, uh…” 

Think you idiot, think! You have to at least try to come up with a reason before you die of embarrassment.  

“Baby, it’s okay, talk to me. What’s going on?” Those stupid puppy dog eyes. When he looked at you like he was right now, no secret was going to be left untold. 

“Fuck. No, I’m fine, it’s just…. Fuck this is so embarrassing. I just, I had this dream and I woke up really horny, but I knew you weren’t gonna wanna do anything because I was on my period so I figured that-” 

“Hermosa…” He chuckled, taking off his boxers and tossing them on the floor before stepping into the shower with you. “When I told you if you needed anything, I meant it. This included.” He stepped closer to you, reaching down to grab your ass and nip at your neck leaving you stunned, trying to think of what to say next. 

“But, it’s just that, I just figured… Every other guy I’ve been with-” He placed a long, hot kiss on your neck before mouthing at your jaw, and whispering in your ear, the rasp of his voice making you shutter. 

“Well I’m not every other guy you’ve been with, am I? If you want it, sweet girl, you’ll get it. All you have to do is ask.” His hand snaked down your front, reaching under to rub his fingers against your already painfully sensitive clit, as you let out a pitiful whimper. 

“Javi…” 

“Just ask, baby. Ask me and I’ll give it to you.” He began to trace his fingers in slow, lazy circles around your mound, savoring every second of how already worked up you were. 

“Javi, I want you to fuck me. Please I want you to fuck me so bad.” You burried your head into the crook of Javi’s shoulder as you moaned. 

“There you go, Osita. That’s all you had to do. Hands on the wall, pretty girl.” You quickly complied, turning around so your arms pressed up against the tile, your back arched towards Javi as the warm spray of the shower hit your body. Javi stood behind you, one hand resting on your hip as he used his feet to nudge your legs open just a little further, the other stroking himself before feeling his tip slide against your folds. “Jesus, fuck me, you’re already so wet, Hermosa. What were you dreaming about that’s got you so worked up, huh?” He groaned, collecting your juices along his cock as he traced his length along your heat. 

“You, Javi. Fuck, I dreamed that you were fucking me and bending me over the couch, God, it felt so good.” You babbled, your brain short circuiting as he continued to run up and down you, your cunt clenching around nothing as you desperately waited for him to fill you. 

“Christ, Osita. Gonna have to save that one for later, aren’t we? How do you want it, baby? Wanna make sure you feel good.” He nipped at your shoulder as you could feel him lining himself up with your entrance. 

“Hard. Fuck, I want you to fuck me so hard, please.” You were almost on your knees begging at this point, you needed him so badly. 

“You sure that’s what you want, sweet girl?” You could practically hear the smirk in his voice as he finally pushed into you, taking you no time to adjust to his size with how worked up you already were. You finally felt him bottom out, his pelvis pressed against your ass, as he waited for you to respond. 

“Yes, yes, I need you Javi, I need you so bad.” Those were the last words you could find before you felt him pull all the way out before pounding back into you, making you cry out as you felt him brush against your cervix, every inch of him splitting you open. He quickly set his pace, fast and deep as he snapped into, each thrust making you whimper from the sweet stretch of how he filled you. The walls of the bathroom were rapidly covered with the obscene sounds of your moans and skin smacking against each other, drowning out the noise of the running water from the shower head above you. 

“Is this what you want, baby? Taking my dick like the good girl you are, letting me fuck you like this?” He gritted his words through his teeth as he rammed into you at a punishing pace, leaving you an absolute mess. His fingertips dug further into the soft flesh of your hips before freeing one of his hands to wrap around your front, thumbing at your clit. 

“Javiiiii, yes, fuckkkk, fuck.” You whined. The way he was pounding into you was making your vision go white, leaving you barely hanging by a thread as he wrapped his hand around your chest, pulling you to stand as he palmed at your breast. You could feel the tingle at the base of your spine building, your pussy beginning to flutter as his fingers ran faster and faster over your clit, his cock driving into, filling you completely. You could feel your legs begin to shake as sweet nothings fell from your lips, falling apart underneath him. “Fuck, Javi, I’m gonna, Ohmygodohmygodahhhhhhh.” You screamed out as you came undone, hitting your high with a rush of pleasure, Javi’s grasp around you the only thing keeping you from falling to the shower floor. With only a few more thrusts deep inside you, Javi followed suit, grunting as he spilled deep inside you, his cock pulsing as his seed covered every inch of your walls. Catching his breath, he slowly pulled out of you, as you gasped at the loss, legs shaking as Javi released his grasp around you. 

“Jesus fucking Christ.” You swallowed as you sat down on the edge of the tub, laughing to yourself. “You fucked me so good I don’t think my legs work anymore.” Javi joined in your laugher, extending out his hand to pull you back up to stand, cupping your face as he engulfed you in a deep, tender kiss. 

“Then my work here is done.” 

He winked at you as you rolled your eyes and playfully poked at his chest before he was peppering your wet body with the soft sweet pecks of his lips, spending the rest of your shower in a much better mood than when you entered it. 

 “Are you sure people are actually wearing bathing suits to this thing, or am I gonna show up looking like an idiot?” You shouted from your bedroom at Javi, who had been waiting for you in the kitchen after packing up the pasta salad you had offered to bring to the Sheriff’s Department Picnic today. 

“Yes, Hermosa, I’m sure. It says it on the flier- pool party, bring a swimsuit. I’m also in my bathing suit as we speak, so I can guarantee you will not be the only one there in one.” He laughed to himself as he leaned up against the kitchen counter, arms crossed over his chest. 

“Well that’s different, you just look like you’re wearing shorts and a T-shirt. I swear, guys have it so easy” You grumbled to yourself, finally deciding on a bikini before throwing it on and slipping on a coverup as you headed down the hallway. “You ready?” You asked, grabbing the bag of towels you had packed by the front door. 

“Really? I don’t get to see before we leave?” He raised an eyebrow at you, seeming disappointed by the coverup you had put on over your swimsuit. 

“Yes, really. We’re already 45 minutes late after you spilled all of our breakfast on the floor after deciding you needed to fuck me on the kitchen counter this morning. Knowing you, Javi, we’re gonna be another 45 minutes late if you see me in this bathing suit before we leave. Let’s go, you horn dog.” You laughed as you shook your head, grabbing your things as you opened the door to leave. 

“I didn’t hear you complaining… And we’d only be another 10 minutes late, I could make it fast.” He winked, grabbing the cooler he’d packed before locking and closing your apartment door behind you. 

From the amount of cars lining the street leading up to the Morris household where the annual picnic was being hosted, you were convinced you could have shown up 2 hours late and no one would have noticed. The impressive house was nestled on a corner lot at the end of the subdivision street, lined with other large homes in the newly built neighborhood. You and Javi were both relieved to find that the beverage cooler was one of the first things you found as you walked on to the large lot behind the house, already bustling with people, music blasting from the speakers by the pool. 

“Jesus, they weren’t kidding when they said this was a big deal, huh?” You looked up at Javi as he handed you one of the beers he had grabbed. 

“Fuck, I guess not.” He grimaced, taking a sip of his own drink before an older, broadly built man with salt and pepper hair approached Javi, outstretching his hand towards him. 

“Peña, good to see you. Glad you could make it.” You had a feeling it was Dean Morris, Javi’s boss and the host of the party, based on what Javi had told you about him, though his face looked semi-familiar to you. 

“Thanks for the invite. Beautiful house. Uh, Morris, this is my girlfriend-” Morris cut Javi off before he could finish the rest of his sentence, re-extending his hand out to you as you reciprocated. 

“Ah yes, I believe we’ve actually met before. I think I’ve had the pleasure of already meeting you one of the times the department had to come down to Alma Pierce. That’s a tough gig, if I do say so myself. Hard to keep those kids focused.” The wires clicked in your brain, remembering that Morris was the one who had made 80 3rd graders cry after talking about watching people get murdered by the cartel during his presentation. You politely smiled, pulling away from his handshake. 

“Yeah, it definitely is a lot of work to keep their attention. Thank God for summer vacation.” 

“Well, I definitely would have paid a lot more attention in school if a pretty lady like you would have been my teacher. Bet those little boys love being in your class. And their dads, too. Isn’t that right, Peña?” He let out a harsh and brash laugh, taking a hand and patting it on Javi’s back. “Daniels, you old bastard, is that you?” He shouted at one of the newcomers entering the party. “If you’ll excuse me, I have a buddy who just showed up whose balls I need to bust.” He nodded to both of you as he sauntered off, leaving Javi with a horrified look on his face. 

“Well, he seems absolutely charming.” You grimaced your face before taking another, much longer sip of your beer. 

“Jesus, Osita, I’m so sorry. I should have said something, he’s my boss and I-” 

“What are you talking about? I love when men do that to me.” Your voiced oozed with sarcasm, absolutely hating everything about how so many men felt entitled to degrade you about your profession as a backhanded compliment to try and tell you that you were attractive. 

“You get that a lot?” Javi’s face now looking more concerned. 

“Way more than you’d think was socially acceptable. Not the first time I’ve heard it, and to be quite honest with you, I’m sure it won’t be the last today.” You rolled your eyes, taking another long swig of your drink as you watched Javi’s jaw clench, his thumb rubbing along the tops of his fingers as they balled up in a fist. 

“Listen, if if any of these other bastards try to say shit to you, I have no problem putting them in their fucking place.” 

Your face went flush as you felt your heart pound a little heavier in your chest. You’d really have no problem handling yourself in telling any man to kindly fuck off if they were bothering you, but something about the way Javi’s protective instincts seemed to kick into overdrive had you feeling hot and bothered. 

“Cool your jets, killer. I’m a big girl, I can handle myself. I’ll be sure to let you know if I need you to put anyone in their place.” You giggled, mocking him as you pressed up on to your tiptoes to give him a quick kiss. 

“I know you can, Osita, just- some of the guys I work with are assholes who have no interest in being respectful. You absolutely are fucking sexy as hell, but you’re smart and funny and kind and you deserve to be treated that way.” He looked out around the crowd of people in the backyard before looking back down at you, sympathetically. 

“Thanks, Javi. I promise, I’ll be okay. The hockey player in me has no problem picking a fight if I need to.” You nudged Javi as you continued to walk further into the crowd. As you looked over the sea of people, you noticed two men frantically waving at Javi over by the pool, the taller, lankier one giving Javi an overexaggerated thumbs up as he looked in your direction, the shorter, stockier man next to him looking like he was rapidly nodding in agreement. 

“Looks like you’ve got a little fan club over there.” You laughed, giving a big thumbs up back to the two as Javi palmed his face, pinching the bridge of his nose. 

“Jesus fucking Christ…” He whispered to himself as he saw Carter and Miller trying to flag him down in the crowd. 

“Carter and Miller?” You asked, still laughing at the pair and Javi’s embarrassment as he nodded his head. “Well, too late to escape now, let’s go say hi. At least that way we can be by the pool.” You grabbed Javi’s hand as you headed through the crowd. 

“Peña! So glad you came, man! We were hoping we’d see you! This your girl?” Carter smirked, raising his eyebrows at Javi as he gestured towards you. 

“I’ve actually never met him before, he’s kidnapping me and holding me at ransom to come to his party. No, I’m just kidding, yes, I am. It’s nice to meet you both, Javi’s told me a lot about you.” You smiled, reaching out to shake both of their hands as they laughed. 

“She’s fuckin’ funny, Peña. I already like her more than you.” You laughed as Miller elbowed Carter in the gut, causing him to drop his beer, spilling it down his shirt as it fell to the ground. 

“Way to go, ya fuckin’ doofus.” Carter groaned, peeling off his shirt. “I’m gettin’ the fuckin’ pool and then you’re getting me a new beer.” 

You were relieved to see that there were actually a fair amount of people in the pool, and it wasn’t a pool party where everyone stood awkwardly around the edge of the water without actually ever getting in. “Hey, I have to go drop off this pasta salad anyways, why don’t I grab you another one and then I’m about to get in the pool too. I love the heat but it feels like the surface of the sun out here. Does that work, Jav?” You asked, setting down your things before striping yourself of your coverup, revealing the light green, strappy bikini you had on underneath. You weren’t someone who was usually overconfident in themselves, but you did know that this particular bathing suit made you feel pretty damn good. As the 3 men turned around in response, Javi’s jaw just about dropped to the ground as he saw your swimsuit. “Javi?” You asked again, looking back up and the 3 who were all speechless, staring at you. 

“Uh, yeah, yeah, that sounds great, Hermosa.” Javi responded, his mouth still hanging slightly open as he looked you up and down. 

You grabbed the pasta salad from the cooler, walking over to Javi and giving him a quick kiss on the cheek before whispering in his ear. “Told you we would have been another 45 minutes late if you saw me before you left. Keep it in your pants, Peña, we’ve got a long day ahead of us.” You gave his earlobe a quick nip before pulling away, giving him a wink as you walked over to the other end of the pool to set down your food. 

“Fuck me.” Javi muttered under his breath, eyes glued to you as you walked away. 

Javi turned behind him to see Miller and Carter quite literally biting their tongues, taking every ounce of willpower they had stored inside them to not ogle at you as you walked away. 

“I’ll say it once and then I’ll shut up about it, I promise, so please don’t kill me, but Jesus Christ, Peña, you are one lucky man.” Miller looked at Javi as Carter nodded rapidly in agreement. 

At that moment, Javi wasn’t even mad, because those two idiots were absolutely right. He was a lucky man, indeed. 

You were glad to see that Javi, Carter and Miller were already in the pool when you returned, your arms full of 4 beers and 4 Jell-O shots sitting on top of them. You tossed the drinks to each of the boys before sliding off the ledge into the water to join them. “I don’t know who Kevin is, but he very adamantly insisted that I take all of these Jell-O shots. The Laredo Sheriff's Department definitely seems like they enjoy having a good time.” You laughed as you popped the lid off your little container, slurping down the mixture and grimacing at the terrible vodka aftertaste it left behind. “Jesus, these are strong.” 

“Told you it was fun!” Miller said, motioning at you for one of the Jell-O shots. He took his, also scrunching his face after. “Yeah, knowing Kevin these must be double, probably triple the normal strength.” Carter followed suit, as you passed off the last one to Javi. 

“I’m good, Osita.” Javi smiled at you as he held up his beer. 

“You sure?” You gestured at him, waving the little plastic container at his face. 

“Yes, I’m sure. I told you I’d drive home. Either way, those look fucking disgusting. Plus, I have yet to see you drunk and was promised some obnoxious singing after you’ve had enough to drink.” He leaned over, kissing you on the head before you stepped back crossing your arms at him. 

“Only if you’re lucky, Peña.” You winked as you slurped down his Jell-O shot, sticking out your tongue in disgust after you finished. “Uck, I think that one was worse than the first.” 

It didn’t take long for you to make good on your promise of a drunken sing-alongs to Javi, already feeling decently intoxicated after your two beers and Jell-O shots. You were all giggles and smiles, feeling especially flirty Javi considering how hot he looked, all tanned and toned, the broadness of his shirtless shoulders practically taking you out at the sight of them. Javi was glad he was sober enough to keep his composure with the way you were dancing around him, seeming like you were finding any excuse to touch him and drive him absolutely crazy. He’d be lying if he said it didn’t fill him with a little sense of pride, that even as his co-workers stared at you long enough for Javi to shoot them a very subtle I swear if you keep looking at her like that, I’ll kill you look, you still looked at him like he was the only one there at that party, like there was no one else in the world you’d rather be with than him. After one of the speakers had finished blaring “Tubthumping”, who you had drunkley insisted to Javi was sung by “The Chub Chubs”, making you crack up in hysterics every time you said the name, you hopped out of the pool, telling Javi you were going to piss your pants if you didn’t go pee right this second. Javi insisted that he go with you to help you find the bathroom, not because you weren’t more than capable of doing it on your own, but because he didn’t trust a single one of any of his fucking co-workers with the way they had been looking at you, who were now equally, if not more drunk than you were. 

Javi wrapped you up in your towel before taking your hand and leading you through the crowded patio and into the house, where you found the bathroom, tucked around the corner of the kitchen. “I’ll wait right here for you, okay?” He said, giving you a sweet smile as you opened the door. 

“You better be, you’re not allowed to disappear on me, or I will be very sad that I don’t get to stare at your handsome face the rest of the night.” You crossed your arms at him, poking his bare chest as you giggled to yourself. 

“Go pee, you dork.” He laughed as he shook his head, gently pushing you into the bathroom, very amused by your drunken state. 

As he closed the door behind you, he couldn’t help but keep laughing to himself as he listened to you singing along to “Wannabe” by the Spice Girls over the sound of you flushing the toilet, now pressing his ear against the door as he heard you talking to yourself as you washed your hands. 

“You know what I wanna be?” You pointed to yourself in the mirror, giggling at yourself as you wiped your hands on the towel hanging by the sink. “I wanna be Javi’s wife. Oh my GOD, I love him so much. I wanna have that man’s babies, cause ho-ly shit. Jesus, he’s gonna be such a hot dad. Like, the kind of dad that comes in a parent teacher conferences and all the teachers go that's a hot dad, and I can be like, he's my hot dad. Wait, not like my- ew not like my father, that's not what I meant, but you know, you're the one talking to yourself. Okay, pull it together ya drunk ass, that’s a long way off, but a girl can dream. Go get back out there and find your sexy ass boyfriend, dummy.”

That was the second time today Javi found himself with his jaw practically on the floor, trying his best to compose himself as you stumbled out the doorway. “What are you smiling at?” You raised an eyebrow at Javi, leaning against the doorframe, cheeks red and grin wide. 

“You have a good talk in there, Osita?” He smirked as you stood there in shock, just about ready to die from embarrassment. 

“Did… did you hear what I said in there? Please tell me you didn’t hear what I said in there. Oh my god, oh my god, oh my goddddd.” You buried your face in your hands, unable to bring yourself to even look at Javi. 

“You really think about all that stuff, hermosa? All that stuff you said?” Even with your hands covering your painfully scrunched face, you could feel his sweet brown eyes practically burning a hole into you, leaving all of your secrets exposed. 

“Of course I do. All the time. I know I’m drunk, but my pants are not on fire because I am not lying. And I’m not even wearing any pants. Wait, that doesn’t make sense…” drunkenly lost in thought, Javi reached down, grabbing a handful of your ass before tilting his chin up towards you, his thumb stroking along the line of your jaw. 

“Jesus Christ, I love you so fucking much, you know that?” 

“I do, because you tell me all the time and I love you very, very, very, very lots of verys much too.” You giggled, smiling up at him. He leaned into you, planting a soft kiss on your lips, his mouth sweet and tender against yours as they met. He grabbed your hand, locking his fingers between yours as he led you back through the house, his eyes glued on you as you shuffled your way through the crowd. 

“Peña, I was hoping I’d see you again!” Javi stopped abruptly as a large hand grasped around his shoulder, making him turn around to see the group of men standing around the kitchen table you were just about to pass. Morris’s gruff voice had you both freezing in your tracks, already bracing yourself for whatever stupid, inappropriate comment he had up his sleeve. “Listen, I was hoping to talk to you about something, just the two of us. Do you have a few?” 

Javi looked at you with remorse, knowing there was really no polite way to say no to his boss who was already practically dragging him away from you. “Uh, yeah, sure.” Javi replied. “Just if it could be quick, okay? I don’t, I don’t wanna leave her here all by herself.” He gestured, nodding his head in your direction. 

“I won’t take up too much of your time, I wouldn’t wanna be away from such a pretty woman for too long either. Besides, she’s in good hands with these fine gentlemen, right boys?” He looked at the rest of the men still gathered around the kitchen table. You could almost feel Javi burning a hole with his eyes into each one of them, giving a look that said, you say or do anything stupid and I’ll fucking end you. It seemed everyone at the table picked up on the message as Javi gave you one last sympathetic smile before Morris dragged him away into the living room. 

“So, you Peña’s girl?” One of the dark haired men asked, taking a sip of his drink. 

“Uh, yeah, I am. It’s nice to meet all of you!” You tried to muster some courage, looking at the group of men now staring at you, feeling drastically more sober from the awkwardly uncomfortable circumstances you now found yourself in. 

“I’m Hernandez,” the man pointed at himself, “that’s Callahan,” he pointed at a taller, blonde man, “this is Richards,” a stockier man waved at you, “and this is Estrada.” Another dark haired man raised his drink at you as you tried to smile, waving back at them. You introduced yourself, the men silently laughing to themselves, as Hernandez spoke again. “Almost couldn’t fucking believe it when we found out Peña had a girlfriend, never though I’d live to see the day, that’s for fucking sure.” 

You pretended to laugh along with them, not really sure what he meant by the comment, but definitely knowing it didn’t make you feel great. “So um, what do you think Morris is talking to him about?” You asked, trying to see if the group had any insight why Javi’s boss was so insistent on speaking with him. 

“Oh, Mexico, 100%.” Estrada responded quickly, the other men nodding in agreement. “Gettin’ so fuckin’ bad down there, Morris has been on the phone with the DEA every other fuckin’ day trying to get Peña to go.” 

You could instantly feel your heart sink to the bottom of your stomach. They wanted to send Javi down to Mexico? They couldn’t just do that, right? There was no way he would go back to something like that, would he? 

“Fuckin’ DEA big shot Peña, Morris trusts him because of all the shit in Colombia. I heard it’s a goddamn mess across the border and they’re starting to get desperate.” 

“Couldn’t pay me enough money in the fucking world to go back to doing that shit, but I don’t know, sounds like Peña’s done enough fucked up shit to last him a lifetime, so what’s a little more, right?” 

It was like you had become invisible, the way they were talking about Javi in front of you. What the hell were they talking about? What had he done that was so bad? Was he ever planning on telling you? You could feel how fast your heart was pounding, your palms beginning to sweat as panic crept through you. 

“Someone’s gotta fucking do it. Richards and I were running the numbers the other day and the amount of coke they’ve got coming across the border now is fucking insane.” Callahan shook his head, setting his now empty beer bottle on the table amongst the large pile that had seemed to accumulate between them. 

“Listen, you guys already know how I feel about this shit.” Hernandez sighed, shaking his head. “The cartel is obviously a fucking problem, but it wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t for all the dumbass crackheads out there snortin’ this shit off the streets like it’s no one’s business.” 

Oh no. Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no. Your hands began to tremble, your mouth painfully dry as you tried to swallow, frantically looking around for Javi, desperate to find a way out of this conversation as you felt your anxiety skyrocket. You knew where this conversation was going. You couldn’t do it. You couldn’t go through another conversation like this. Not again. Your brain was flashing images in your head as you heard your ears begin to ring, everything around you feeling like it was moving in slow motion. 

“He’s got a fuckin’ point. There wouldn’t be such a market for it if people weren’t so desperate to get their hands on it. Don’t these dumb motherfuckers realize how stupid they have to be to use that shit?” The men all laughed, their smug looks burning a hole in your chest as you felt your throat tighten with each breath. You tried with everything you had in you to fight the tears welling in your eyes, praying they’d stop or that you could find some way out of the conversation before you collapsed over the brink of full blown panic. 

“It is sad, the death count from that shit’s higher than it's ever been.” Richards chimed in, trying to bring some rationale to the discussion. 

“Honestly,” Hernandez spoke, breaking from his laughter, taking a swig of his beer, “and I hate to fucking say it, I do, but if these junkie bastards know better, it’s what they fuckin’ deserve.” 

That was it. Your brain snapped, sending you into full blown distress as you felt like the room was collapsing in on you. You could feel your heartbeat in your throat, pounding in your ears, as your body went numb, taking every ounce of strength in you not to fall to the floor in full blown hysterics. You couldn’t listen to this conversation anymore, not able to wait however long it would take for Javi to come back, you made up some half coherent excuse to the group that you needed to go get something from the car, desperate for someplace alone, away from everyone. You stumbled through the crowded house through the front door, trying so desperately to pull yourself together until you were back outside, away from anyone’s concerned looks and questioning glances. As you stepped off the front porch, the concrete sidewalk pinching against your bare feet and hot Texas sun pounding down on your skin, you burst into tears. Each sob was painful, your chest tightening with every breath you took as your mind raced at a million miles per minute. 

It wasn’t his fault. He didn’t deserve it. You tried so hard to help him. Was it my fault? Did I not do enough? Where’s Javi’s car? Where’s Javi? Please don’t let Javi leave. He can’t leave. I can’t do it again, I can’t do it, please, fuck, I can’t do it. 

Some way or another, you had managed to make it down the street to Javi’s truck, desperately shaking at the locked door handles before falling to the ground, legs curled up against your chest in a ball as you leaned against his tire, letting your fear and panic consume you whole. 

Back inside, Javi had finished his conversation with Morris, frustrated and annoyed he had taken up so much of his time with something he had absolutely no interest in. As he got back to the table where you were supposed to be, his defenses went up instantly, trying to find you. “Where the fuck is she?” Javi demanded, looking at the group of men talking amongst themselves at the table. 

“What?” Hernandez asked, barely looking at Javi. 

“My girlfriend, you fucker, where the hell is she?” 

“Jesus, calm down Peña. I don’t know, she said something about going out to the car.” Hernandez turned back to face the rest of his friends as Javi began storming his way through the party, pushing past people as he bursted through the front door, practically running down the street towards his car. His heart stopped when he found you, curled on the ground in a sobbing heap against his truck. In an instant, he was on the ground with you, wrapping his arms as tightly as he could around you, his heart racing almost as fast as yours. 

“Baby, what’s wrong? Osita, talk to me, are you okay? What happened?” His words were desperate and frantic as they fell from his lips, pulling you tighter in his embrace as you tried so hard to catch your breath, to get even just one word out as you sobbed against the soft skin of his chest. “Breathe baby, just breathe. It’s okay, I’m here. I’m here.” He took his hand, cradling the back of your head as he pulled you closer, the presence of his touch helping your mind to slow down for a moment, trying your best to stop your shallow, shaky breathing. “There you go, Osita. It’s okay, baby, deep breaths. Just breathe, I promise I’m right here, it’s okay.” You could feel him trying to slow down his own breathing, taking long, deep inhales and exhales as you rested against him, your face wet and messy buried in the crook of his neck as he held you. 

He’s here. Javi’s right here. He’s here.  

You repeated the words over and over again in your brain until you could feel the strain in your chest begin to ease, forcing yourself to take one deep breath after another, slowly starting to find relief from the panic that was flowing through you. Javi said nothing, just holding you as he breathed with you, squeezing you as hard as he could, like he was afraid if he let go, you would float away. After a few more minutes, you finally lifted your head off Javi’s chest, your eyes red and puffy as your cheeks glistened from the wet flow of your tears. Javi cusped your face so gently, his brown doe eyes heartbroken as he looked at the state of pain and fear he had found you in. “Baby, are you okay?” His words were shaky too, like he was pleading for something, anything, to know that you were alright. You bit down hard on your bottom lip, gulping down the tears you still were fighting against as you slowly nodded your head. “Osita, please talk to me. Please.” 

You weren’t even sure if you were going to be able to form a coherent thought. Tears streamed back down your face, your lips quivering and hands shaking as the wall that separated Javi from what you were about to tell him came crumbling down. It felt like your brain was short circuiting, your words beginning to flow out of you like a faucet who couldn’t be turned off. 

“They said, they said, they wanted you to go to Mexico. To go back like you did in Colombia, because of how bad things were there. But you can’t go back Javi, please I can’t lose you, I can’t lose someone again. It was like they were blaming him, like it was all his fault, it wasn’t his fault, it was my fault, I did everything I could, but he came back and he wasn’t the same. Please, Javi, you can’t go, I can’t do it again, I can’t do it, I can’t watch someone I love leave and come back a different person and let it ruin their life. Please Javi, you can’t leave me like Patrick, I can’t do it again.” 

Oh. Oh, Fuck.  

You fell back into Javi’s arms as the thoughts in your brain kept flowing from your mouth, sobbing between each sentence pressed against the tear stained skin of his chest. 

“I tried to do everything I could. When he came back from his second tour in Iraq he wasn’t the same. He couldn’t talk about what he’d seen or what he’d done. I knew he was hurting so bad. I came home one day and I saw him doing coke on the bathroom sink, and he swore to me he would stop and get help if I didn’t tell anyone. He said he just needed something to help him forget. I kept my promise. I didn’t tell anyone. Not my brothers, not my parents. I drove him to NA meetings, I tried to find him rehabs but he wouldn’t fucking stop. I just wanted him to stop. I just wanted my brother back. I finally had to say something, I had to tell my family because I couldn’t do it anymore. He found out and we got into such a big fight, we yelled and screamed at each other and I told him I hated him. I told him I hated him for what he’d done. I hated him because he wasn’t the brother I had before. I hated him because he wouldn’t stop. And that was the last thing I ever said to him. His friends found him in his apartment the next morning. He overdosed. He was just gone. It was like he just disappeared. I can’t have you disappear, Javi. I can’t. Please. I can’t.” 

Javi sat there silently as you sobbed in his arms. There were no words he could think of that could help. Nothing that he could say or do that could even attempt to patch the gushing wound that you had just ripped open for him. You had left yourself out in the open, bleeding and exposed as he sat there, helpless. He wished he could do something, anything, to take away just an ounce of the hurt and the pain you felt. But for now, all he could do was hold you, let you cry. Be there for you as you let the tears of pain and grief and hurt release from your body. The next words that came out of his mouth weren’t the words he should have said, but the only ones his brain could muster. “Baby… Why didn’t… Why didn’t you tell me?” 

You looked up at him, your eyes begging for forgiveness through their red and swollen tears. “I couldn’t, Javi, how could I? It’s your job. You’ve spent your whole life fighting to stop what happened to my brother. And now he’s gone. There’s nothing that you could have done. There’s nothing anyone like you could have done. It’s the fucking truth and it sucks. How am I supposed to let you live with that? I can’t be the one to add anymore to what you’ve been through. It’s my fault. It’s my fault that he’s gone. I tried so hard. I tried so hard, Javi. I’m so sorry, Javi, I’m so sorry, please don’t be mad at me.” 

He could practically feel his heart break in two seeing you hurt so badly. It broke him to see you blame yourself, to think you tried to hide this part of your life away to keep him safe. He hugged you so tightly, like he was trying to free you from the pain you had carried, make you feel safe and loved and to know that he meant it. He grabbed your face, using his thumb to wipe your tears, praying that you believed what he had to say. “It wasn’t your fault. Baby, please, it wasn’t. You did everything you could. I could never be mad at you. I’m so sorry, Osita. I love you. I love you so much. I’m not leaving. I’m not going anywhere. I’ll fucking quit before they make me go back. I’m not leaving you.” 

“You promise?” 

“Of course I do. I promise.” 

You let him hold you for just a few moments longer, saying nothing as you sat in the silence of his promise. You knew he meant it. You had never trusted someone like you had trusted him. In his words, in his eyes, in the way he held you like nothing else in the world mattered except for you. You knew Javier Peña meant every last word. You knew he’d keep his promise. 

You sat up a little taller, wiping your face with the back of your hand, trying to compose yourself, terrified to see the snotty, wet mess you’d become. “I don’t um… I don’t really wanna go back to the party, if that’s okay.” You spoke, words embarrassed and shaky as you stared sheepishly at the ground. Javi shook his head, only laughing to himself out of pure shock. 

“Osita, you were thinking about trying to go back there? Baby, I’m taking you home. Whatever you need, I’m yours.” His words made you shed a few more tears, this time a small smile spreading across your face as he helped you up off the ground, pulling you in for a long, tight hug, resting his nose among the soft waves of your hair. 

“Javi?” You whispered against the warmth of his chest. 

“Yes, Osita?”  

“Can we get ice cream on the way home?” 

“Of course, Hermosa. Of course we can get ice cream. I’ll drive you all the way back to Chicago for ice cream, if that’s what you need.” You let out a soft giggle as you hugged him just a little tighter before pulling away to look up at him. 

“Texas ice cream will do just fine.” 

“I’m gonna go grab our stuff and then we can head out okay? Are you gonna be okay waiting by the truck?” 

“I’ll be okay. Thanks, Jav.” He gave you a quick kiss on the head before running back to the house, returning quickly with your bags as he unlocked the door and helped you up into his truck. You sat in silence on the drive to Eva’s, one of your favorite ice cream places Javi had taken you to, ever since he had made good on his claim that they did, in fact, have the best cookies and cream ice cream you’d ever have. After ordering for the both of you, Javi brought your ice creams over to your favorite spot, a little park bench that sat in front of the small creek that ran behind the building. 

“Cookies and cream for you.” He said, handing you over your ice cream. “Chocolate and sprinkles for me.” He finished, sitting down next to you on the bench as you laughed to yourself. “If you’re gonna say something, just say it, Osita.” He smirked, knowing exactly what was on your mind. 

“I can’t believe that you try to deny that you have the biggest sweet tooth out of anyone I’ve ever met. Sprinkles?” You looked over at his cone, snickering at the little rainbow flecks covering the ice cream. 

“Whatever.” He smiled, taking a big lick out of his cone as he put his arm on the back of the bench, draping it over your shoulder. He paused as he looked over at you, just staring at your ice cream, lost in your own thoughts. “Hey.” He whispered gently, causing you to shift your gaze up at him. “I know it hurts. It never stops hurting, even when people tell you it should. We don’t have to talk about it anymore right now, but if you ever want to, I’m here okay?” You nodded, wiping away the tears welling behind your eyes. 

“Okay.” You sat there for another moment after finally taking a lick of your cookies and cream, watching the sun glisten along the babble of the creek ahead of you. “Can we talk about something else?” 

“Of course. What do you want to talk about?” Javi ran his thumb back and forth against your arm, drawing circles on your soft skin. 

“Anything. Literally anything.” You shook your head, trying to force yourself to let out a small huff of laughter. 

Javi grinned, taking another lick of his ice cream before he spoke. “I’m glad you made good on your drunk sing-along promise today. You’re right, it’s even worse than normal.” You let out a genuine laugh, nudging him as you finally let a smile creep across your face. 

“I tried to warn you. I blame those Jell-O shots.” You shrugged, rolling your eyes at Javi. 

“It was cute. Almost as good as your bathroom pep talk.” He chuckled as you looked at him in confusion. 

“What are you talking about?” You asked, taking another lick around the base of the cone to keep it from dripping. 

“Do you really not remember? I took you in to use the bathroom and you were talking to yourself in the mirror when you were washing your hands?” 

“What are you talking about? I don’t- OH. OH NO. I’m so sorry, I was really drunk. You were not supposed to hear that. How did you hear that?!” You could feel how hot your face was as your cheeks turned bright red, burying your head in the free hand you weren’t using to hold your ice cream. 

“You were practically yelling to yourself in the bathroom, Hermosa.” Javi chuckled, biting down on his lip. “Do you remember what you said?” 

“Of course I remember, why do you think I’m so embarrassed?” You replied, scrunching your face, looking down at the ground. 

“Why are you so embarrassed, Osita?” You looked up at him, surprised by how genuine he was, his voice soft and sweet, a smile peeking out of the corner of his lips. 

“Because… Because I shouldn’t have just, like, said that out loud. I don’t… I don’t wanna make you uncomfortable if you heard me say things that I want and you don’t. It was stupid, I’m sorry.” You looked back down at the ground, wishing you could repeatedly kick your past drunken self for letting Javi hear your rambles.  

“It’s not stupid. I want those things, too. God, I want those things, too.” 

You raised your head back up as Javi rubbed his hand along your back, making heat creep through your face, blushing, as you felt a smile stretch from one side of your face to another.  You ran your tongue along the top of your teeth as you took a deep breath in, exhaling and leaning your head against Javi’s shoulder. 

“You promise?” Your voice was low and quiet, almost soft enough to have gone unnoticed if he hadn’t been listening. Soft enough to have gone unanswered if what he had said wasn’t really true. 

“I promise.” 

You sat there quietly, the promise of his words dancing in the air between you. There were few people in this world that you trusted. It hadn’t taken long for Javier Peña to come into your life and become the one person in this world you now trusted the most. He had made you a promise- and you knew damn well that he’d keep it. 

Taglist: @harriedandharassed @cool-iguana @rhoorl @whyjuliaaa @bbiophiliaa @pertinentpostmortem @angelofsmalldeath-codeine @pedrobaby @fatima-marisa @beboldbebravethings @poodlebae @kittenlittle24 @3sriracha @jungchloee @perennialdoll247 @prettyinpunk85 @partyofone3413

[leiascully]

A fic I’ve wondered about…Mulder and Scully actually going to a movie together. Mostly because one of them lost a bet and has to go with the other to a movie of their choice. This happens early on in the partnership…Mulder makes Scully go to Jurassic Park. She nit picks the hell out of the science. So he, in a show of attempting to even the balance - he makes out he’s doing her a favour when really he just likes going out anywhere with Scully - he lets her pick the next one. She picks Sleepless in Seattle. The conversation after that one could lead….anywhere 🥰

Hmm, yes, excellent. I hope you wanted 2000 words of silliness because that's what's under the cut.

There’s a tap on her motel door. Scully twitches the curtains aside. It’s Mulder, slouching in jeans and a white t-shirt, looking like someone posed him against the background of lush summer green. She unhitches the chain and lets him in. Sticky-hot air rolls in after him, a humid swirl of honeysuckle and cut grass.

“How’s the report?”

She sighs and takes off her glasses. “The report is finished.” There wasn’t much to report, in the end: small town secrets, black light ghosts. All the evidence was there from the start, but the sheriff’s nephew was never going to be charged unless someone else stepped in. The only surprise was the support he got from the valedictorian, concocting hallucinogens in the high school chemistry lab. Then again, as a former nerdy teen girl, Scully understands the allure of the quarterback. Social cohesion is a powerful force. Maybe even more than broad shoulders, the girl was attracted to the idea of revenge.

Mulder, naturally, was blithely wry about it all. He’ll probably publish some esoteric paper on it in one of those poorly credentialed paranormal journals: the monstrous manifestation of adolescence, or something about the American tendency to manufacture visible hauntings as a way to deal with the invisible buried history of colonized land.

There are worse ways he could spend a Saturday night. At least he’s less likely to end up in the hospital.

“Dinner and a show?” he asks. “Since our flight isn’t until tomorrow morning.”

“In this town?” She crosses her arms, skeptical.

He produces two movie tickets. “Jurassic Park. Have you seen it yet?”

“I was going to go with my friend Ellen this weekend, but….” She shrugs. They’re here instead, chasing ghosts. “I think she went with her new boyfriend.”

“Got a purse?”

She pats around for it and finds it in a chair. “Yes, why?”

His eyes twinkle. “I said dinner and a show, Scully. Do you know how many McDonald’s hamburgers I can fit in a purse?”

“Mulder, no. I like this purse.” She clutches it to her. “Surely chicken nuggets would be easier.”

“You don’t want to be reminded of this night by a waft of eau de pickle every time you reach for your wallet?” Mulder’s grinning at her. She can’t resist him when he’s like this. Maybe it’s the lonely teen girl in her, the echo of jockishness in the set of his shoulders. He chooses her, patting the seat next to him at the metaphorical lunch table. Besides, he’s already bought the tickets.

“You’re carrying the ketchup,” she says, tilting her head back to look up at him. His grin broadens.

The bored teen at the box office lets them in, despite the waft of fry oil from her purse, which bulges with its contraband cargo. Mulder buys two sodas and a box of Junior Mints while she waits. The college girls at the concession stand eye him with a familiar mix of anxiety and intrigue. Scully’s seen it in every small town, and some of the bigger ones. There’s something rarefied around Mulder, an air of old money, maybe, or a New England vowel. He interests people; they resent that. He’s too obviously overeducated, charming in a way people don’t trust. Still, they’re drawn to him.

She leans on the half-wall that separates the concessions area from a couple of arcade machines and the hall that leads to the three theaters. The college girls’ eyes flick to her and then back to Mulder. There’s hair twirling involved as they hand him his change. Scully smiles to herself. Mulder drops the coins into his overstuffed pocket and saunters over to her, oblivious to the glares of the college girls. Scully shows the tickets to the usher, who rips them and points out the door to the middle theater, as if they could get lost.

The theater is mostly full. They pick seats in the middle - harder for the usher to pick them out in the crowd - and wait until the lights go down. Scully wedges her purse between her hip and the armrest. The food is still warm. They take turns dipping in and retrieving a nugget or a few fries. Mulder carefully applies ketchup from the torn corner of a packet before stuffing the fries in his mouth. In the flickering light from the screen, his lips are glossy with grease. It’s odd, feeling the pressure of his hand against her thigh when he roots around inside her purse, but it isn’t unpleasant.

“You know all of this is nonsense,” Scully murmurs as the animated DNA explains how the park’s team re-created the dinosaurs. “Absolute junk science. Even if you could extract genetic material from a sample like that, there’s no reason to believe it would be viable, no matter how many amphibians you spliced into it.”

“I always find a reason to believe,” Mulder whispers to her. “Come on, Scully, give in to the movie magic. It’s called science fiction, not science plausible.”

“Shhh!” says someone behind them.

Scully subsides until she can no longer contain herself. Mulder, recognizing her mood without looking, tilts his ear closer so that she can whisper to him. They get shushed again, and then again, derailing her sotto voce tirades about parthenogenesis and the feasibility of a theme park based around dinosaur habitats.

“Your wife has a lot to say!” Mulder’s neighbor tells him. It’s clearly intended to be a reprimand. Mulder pretends it’s a compliment. Scully subsides, chastised and defensive. If she doesn’t think too hard about it, the movie is entertaining. And if her knee presses into Mulder’s as the T. rex stomps toward the Jeep, neither of them acknowledges it.

They wait through the credits after the movie, letting the locals trickle out. The glares Scully is fielding now are different from the ones she got at the concession stand. She lifts her chin, defiant. Mulder stuffs their McDonald’s trash into their empty soda cups, concealing the evidence.

“I can’t believe you didn’t enjoy that,” Mulder says as they walk back toward the motel. The evening air is dotted with fireflies. A breeze rustles the leaves and pushes her hair over her forehead.

“I didn’t not enjoy it,” Scully tells him. “It just didn’t seem feasible.”

“Doctor Sattler reminded me of you,” Mulder says. He pushes his hands into his pockets. “Woman inherits the earth.”

“If only we could reproduce so easily on our own.” Scully cuts her eyes at Mulder. “You know, you remind me of Doctor Malcolm.”

“Why, Doctor Scully, I didn’t know you had a thing for bad boys.” She shoves at his arm with her shoulder and he chuckles. “What about me reminds you of him? Because I’m tall, dark, and handsome?”

She rolls her eyes. “Mostly it’s your love of chaos.”

“Mostly?”

“Mostly.” She smiles at him.

“So there’s a chance you think I’m irresistibly suave.” His voice is as velvety as the humid air.

“There’s a chance of a lot of things, Mulder.” She looks up at the night sky and savors the bitter freshness of the last Junior Mint. “Even dinosaurs.”

A few weeks later, they’re on the Texas coast, drafted into an anti-smuggling operation. There’s nothing supernatural about it - more than anything, they’re warm bodies in Kevlar vests. Scully doesn’t mind. Sometimes it’s satisfying to work on these task forces. There’s a clear resolution to cases like these: so many guns seized, so many tons of cocaine destroyed, so much cash pulled out of hidden stashes. It’s clear-cut who the bad guys are, and she doesn’t have to write the reports.

“Dinner and a show?” she says to Mulder as the other agents eddy around them. They’re rarely invited along to drinks when they’re assigned to these things, but she doesn’t necessarily enjoy being the only woman in the group anyway.

“Anything with air conditioning,” he says.

They eat at a seafood restaurant that’s nearly a shack. The seafood boil comes in plastic bags they have to rip open. It’s some of the best shrimp Scully has ever had, and the corn on the cob is as sweet and blisteringly hot as the last days of summer. She licks butter off her fingers and watches Mulder crack crab claws.

The theater here is bigger: eight screens instead of three. Scully buys two tickets for Sleepless in Seattle and presents them to Mulder. He raises an eyebrow.

“Don’t know if I took you for the rom-com type, Scully.”

“I don’t want to get shushed again.” She gives him a sideways glance. “At least we all agree this is going to be unrealistic.”

Mulder sighs and shakes his head. “So beautiful. So cynical.” Before she can figure out how to respond to that, he’s off to the concession stand again, this time returning with Dots wedged into one back pocket and Sno-Caps in the other. He hands her a soda as they go in the theater. The sides of the cup are already faintly damp with condensation. The theater itself is like an icebox, air conditioning whistling.

They sit in the back row this time, near a bunch of teenagers who already have their arms slung against each other. Mulder rolls his eyes, but there’s a nostalgic smile on his face. Scully wonders how many girls he sat in dark theaters with, focused on something other than the movie. He cups her hand and shakes Sno-Caps into her palm. She eats them one by one. They aren’t shushed this time. She almost misses the excuse to lean against him. By the time the movie is over, her feet are tingling with cold. Pushing out the doors into the muggy air is almost a relief.

“Hit me with your best shot, Scully.” Mulder takes her cup to toss it into the trash. “I assume I don’t remind you of lovable widower Tom Hanks.”

“I don’t know why she left Walter,” Scully says. “It seemed cruel. All because her life wasn’t like a movie?”

Mulder scoffs. “You wouldn’t stay with a guy like that.”

“A guy with allergies?”

“A guy who didn’t excite you,” Mulder says. “You wouldn’t settle for safe.”

Scully tips her face to look up at him. “Wouldn’t I?”

Mulder spreads his hands. “Picket fence, 9 to 5, 2.5 kids and Sunday dinner with the family - you like the sound of it, but you’d get bored. Face it, Scully, you’re a creature of the night now. You’ve got that wild urge in your soul. You’d be baying at the moon if you were stuck in that kind of life.”

“And lovable widower Tom Hanks would provide that?”

“No,” he says. “Ian Malcolm might, though.”

She rolls her eyes. “And how much do you charge for this astute psychoanalysis, Doctor Mulder?”

He taps his lower lip with one finger and scans around them. “Two scoops of mint chocolate chip.” He points to the glowing sign down the street depicting an anthropomorphic ice cream creature. Locals are clustered in groups around a walk-up window like moths around a lamp, sipping at floats and licking drippy cones.

Scully feels a rush of nostalgia for the summers of her youth. The salt air, the long twilight: she can’t help remembering. It’s a sweet little ache under her sternum, and it gets sharper when she looks at Mulder. He’s clearly pleased with himself. “I think I can swing that, as long as you’re not angling for a banana split.”

“What about one malt with two straws?” He winks at her.

“Don’t push your luck,” she grumbles.

But she thinks about it as the moon hangs heavy overhead, and she’s glad she can blame her flushed cheeks on the heat.

[sea-changed]

i. Reading Looking For The Good War has, among many other things, I think really helped me to clarify and articulate what I find so disquieting about "Points" as an episode. (Which is not all of it! There are certainly plenty of scenes that I find fascinating and/or enjoyable to watch.) But:

"It is much easier to tell a sentimental war story with a happy ending, in which valor eclipses causes and reconciliation triumphs over everything--a comedy, in other words--than it is to tell another, unsentimental kind of story." (page 89)

This is what it is, exactly--"in which valor eclipses causes and reconciliation triumphs over everything" could more or less be the logline of "Points." This is most egregiously evident to me in the scene of Nazi general's surrender, but the scene where Winters tells the Nazi officer to keep his sidearm is also I think highly indicative of this drive towards reconciliation, however rotten, above all else. And Samet articulates that wonderfully, and articulates as well the cost of this type of narrative:

"Yet sentimentality does more than shape the way we commemorate wars. It informs all those cultural and sociological attitudes in the shadow of which wartime and postwar policies are crafted, and it prevents a more productive and enduring sympathy that, in cooperation with reason, might guide our actions and help us become more careful readers of war's many ambiguities and false seductions." (page 83)

ii. The layers of dislike I have for the Nazi general scene are manifold; the mirroring of Winters and the Nazi general and thereby Easy Company with the Nazi soldiers feels incredibly sinister, perhaps most aggressively so in its weird push to rehabilitate the Nazis as soldiers, and thus to both foreshadow (within the world of the show) and echo (in the world of the audience) the archetypal defense that Nazi higher-ups would put forward at Nuremberg and beyond, that they were just following orders.

iii. The mirroring of Winters and Easy Company with the Nazis is clearly intentional, and somewhat bizarrely explicit ("You've found in one another a bond that exists only in combat among brothers") and maudlin (the panning shots over the Nazi soldiers' faces and wounds), and by the end the urge to parallel the two leaders and the two armies--indeed, to collapse one into the other, in order to make them functionally the same--seems to cause a sort of scriptwriting amnesia about who these words are actually being said by and to. Once again the greater historic context makes this especially chilling, Operation Paperclip being perhaps the most salient point to evoke. (I am also haunted, forever, by a statistic that Michael C. C. Adams cites in The Best War Ever, that a September 1945 survey of American GIs found that 22% believed the Nazi treatment of Jewish people to be justified. Granted, this survey would not have been taken using modern sampling methods, and who knows what the sample size was to begin with or what soldiers in particular were being surveyed. But still.)

iv. The scene leans heavily into the idea of a unique soldierly bond that unites not only each individual army within itself but bonds the two armies together. ("You've found in one another a bond that exists only in combat, among brothers who've shared foxholes, held each other in dire moments, who've seen death and suffered together.") Besides being disquieting for reasons I state above, I think it's notable that the Nazi general's speech emphasizing the brotherhood of soldiers happens directly after the short scene between Winters and Sobel, wherein Winters chides Sobel on a point of military ritual ("We salute the rank, not the man"). Sobel is outside the brotherhood; he doesn't understand how to be a soldier; whereas the Nazis are within the brotherhood, so much so that they are allowed to articulate its terms. (This is egregious no matter what, but becomes all the more so when it is framed as a Jewish man being excluded from the "club" of military brotherhood while WASP Americans and literal Nazis are allowed in.) (Meanwhile, Liebgott occupies a sort of bizarre placement in this scene, there to ventriloquize--indeed, perhaps neutralize, or even legitimize--the Nazi general's words, but not speak for himself.)

v. This gets to another point that Samet makes that stuck out to me, about the inherent tautology of military culture. She quotes William Styron, who in a 1964 review of General Douglas MacArthur's memoir said:

"Anyone who has lived as a stranger for any length of time among professional military men, especially officers, is made gradually aware of something that runs counter to everything one has been taught to believe—and that is that most of these men, far from corresponding to the liberal cliché of the super-patriot, are in fact totally lacking in patriotism. They are not unpatriotic, they simply do not understand or care what patriotism is. [...] A true military man is a mercenary [...] and it is within the world of soldiering that he finds his only home." (Samet quotes Styron on page 233; I'm quoting here from the full review)

The point of being a soldier is to be a soldier; the point of the military is to have a military. She also has this to say--especially saliently, I think, for obvious reasons--about Ambrose, and his perspective specifically in Citizen Soldiers:

"By means of emphasis and convenient omission, Ambrose preserves his focus on unity, not division; right, not wrong; liberation, not subjugation. Paradoxically, given that he makes so much of American idealism, he often subordinates a consideration of causes altogether to a veneration for the magnificence of the army itself. The creation of that army, rather than the victory it made possible, becomes 'the great achievement of the American people and system,' just as the nation's 'greatest nineteenth-century achievement' had been, according to Ambrose, 'the creation of the Army of the Potomac' rather than the end it eventually secured--the abolition of chattel slavery." (page 46)

Here we are back to the first Samet quote from above: valor eclipses causes and reconciliation triumphs over everything. To be a military man--to be part of the club, the brotherhood, the "bond that exists only in combat"--is to "subordinate a consideration of causes altogether to a veneration for the magnificence of the army itself." The country and the cause that the Nazi general and his soldiers fought "bravely, proudly" for become sublimated, while that bravery and pride, stripped of more specific meaning, is extolled. What matters, by the time this scene happens--and it's the last scene in the core section of the episode, followed only by the close of the frame structure with Winters and Nixon and then the baseball scene-cum-epilogue--is not the American cause that Easy Company was fighting for, and certainly not the Nazi atrocities they were fighting against, but rather a reconciliation that views the experience of war as preeminently important. Sobel, who did not experience combat, is dismissed; the Nazi general, who did, is legitimated.

vi. And that, I think, is the core of the message that Band of Brothers promotes. Fandom often refers to the show in passing as propaganda, but I'm not sure that really gets to the heart of what it is, in the end, saying. I would suggest that it's not merely propaganda; it's a recruitment poster. It's not selling truth, justice, and the American way (or if it is, it's doing so only incidentally); it's selling the experience of being in the military as a transformative and ultimately positive one, that unites (a certain subset of) men through the unique crucible of battle, beyond any concerns about what, exactly, one is fighting for. So long as you know when and how to salute, you too can be a part of the brotherhood.

vii. All of which gets back to the scene earlier in "Points," when the Nazi colonel surrenders to Winters. The colonel first makes the explicit parallel between the Nazis and the Americans, and between himself and Winters in particular: "I wonder what will happen to us, to people like you and me, when there are finally no more wars to occupy us." He serves to explicate here more or less exactly what I was saying above: he sees himself and Winters united as military men, above and beyond their particular countries and causes.

Winters doesn't look thrilled about the comparison--but then almost immediately tells the Nazi colonel to retain his surrendered sidearm. I suppose this is supposed to read as magnanimous and fair-minded on Winters's part, but it also serves to reinforce the Nazi colonel's own words, validating the colonel's prioritization of their shared military positions above and beyond their allegiance to the countries and ideologies they were (at least nominally!) fighting for. As the scene itself shows, giving up a sidearm is an expected part of the surrender process, both practically and symbolically; by refusing it Winters is stepping outside military precedent--indeed, bending over backwards--to help the Nazi colonel retain dignity as well as firepower. On its own it is, I think, a frustrating and uncomfortable scene; in the broader context of the episode it sets up and reinforces the Nazi general's speech later on and the ways that Winters and the show itself find meaning in paralleling and reconciling the Americans and the Nazis with one other. (The Nazi colonel knows how to salute; and when he does so, Winters salutes him back.)

viii. Of course it's historically true that American soldiers tended to identify with German soldiers and civilians much more than they identified with people from Allied countries, as Samet herself and even the veteran interviews at the beginning of "Why We Fight" document. (And I don't believe that paralleling the Americans and the Nazis is necessarily something to be dismissed out of hand.) But because the end of "Points" is so overtly sentimental, paralleling the Americans and Nazis serves not as an indictment of American soldiers' amorality but rather as a rehabilitation of the Nazi soldiers and officers as soldiers and a paean to military culture divorced from meaning or cause. As Samet says--"valor eclipses causes and reconciliation triumphs over everything." The military, as an institution, whether it be American or Nazi, becomes the greater good of the war; while the causes those militaries were fighting for become not only secondary, but recede entirely.

[luvpookie02]

He's into you ~ Manjiro Sano x Reader ~ SMUT

001: Betrayals and New Beginnings

It's been five years since you and Mikey broke up, yet the memories still haunt you—his childish, infectious laughter, and that magnetic aura he carried when leading his gang or tearing through the streets on his bike. Those were the things that made you fall for him. Everything had seemed perfect until the day you caught him cheating, and not just with anyone—he was with your best friend. You still remember it vividly: the two of them kissing, oblivious to your presence. But instead of apologizing, Mikey looked at you coldly and insulted you, mocking you in ways that made you question your entire existence.

It wasn't just the betrayal that shattered you—it was how casually he ended things, as if you didn't matter. He had the audacity to break up with you when you had planned to do it yourself, and to make it worse, he threatened you, warning you to never show your face to him again if you had any thoughts of getting back together.

For a time, his words broke you. You were on the verge of ending it all, but thankfully, Emma and Draken stepped in, saving you from the abyss. With their support, you found the strength to move on. You left Tokyo, distancing yourself from the pain and the people who reminded you of it. You flew across Japan, eventually finding success and a sense of peace. A year later, you had reinvented yourself. You were featured in women's magazines as one of Japan's youngest businesswomen, running eight store locations across Paris. People admired you, especially younger women who dreamed of following in your footsteps.

Your life felt perfect, and you even found love again. Your new boyfriend treated you like a queen—everything was just as you had always wanted.

One day, while at your office, you heard a commotion coming from the store floor. Quickly, you stood and rushed outside. Your eyes narrowed as you saw one of your staff members, Mika, crying as she stood before a middle-aged woman who was waving her finger in her face, clearly scolding her. You sighed, murmuring to yourself, "Too early for a Karen."

"Excuse me, ma'am," you interrupted the woman, forcing a polite smile despite her obvious disdain as she crossed her arms over her chest, her expression screaming entitlement.

She raised one eyebrow and sneered. "Are you the store manager?"

You nodded, keeping your tone light. "I'm actually the owner. Is there anything I can help you with?"

She took a step closer, her breath hot and unpleasant in your face. You remained calm, though in your mind, you were thinking, Your breath stinks, you old hag. Back up before I stab your eye. Of course, you wouldn't act on such thoughts—after all, she was still a customer. Your mafia upbringing, though tempting, had been left behind at Mikey's request. Even though he betrayed you, you had stayed true to your promise to steer clear of that world.

The woman's loud voice cut through your thoughts. "This bitch won't accept my coupon," she snapped, jabbing her finger toward Mika.

You glanced at the coupon she waved around. "I'm sorry, ma'am, but we don't accept coupons here."

Her eyes bulged in outrage. "WHAT? What kind of store doesn't accept coupons? And LOOK! It has your store's name on it!"

You calmly examined the slip she held. The design was amateurish, the font mismatched, and your store's name was misspelled. It was clearly a fake.

"I'm afraid this isn't a valid coupon, ma'am. Our store doesn't offer discounts like this, and the grammar and spelling errors are... well, quite telling. If you don't want to get into legal trouble for using fraudulent coupons, I suggest you leave." Your voice was firm but composed, your words leaving no room for argument.

The woman glared daggers at you before muttering curses under her breath and storming out of the store.

"Y/N-san, that was amazing!" Mika exclaimed, her eyes wide with admiration.

You chuckled. "Karen encounters always make my day," you joked, although in the back of your mind, you couldn't help but mentally murder each one you came across. The staff around you laughed, the tension lifting, and this moment of camaraderie was one of the reasons your stores thrived. You always made sure to keep the atmosphere light and positive, no matter what.

After handling the chaos, you left the store, entrusting the closing duties to your manager, Miko. Tonight, you had plans, and you needed to prepare.

After a 40-minute shower, you slipped into a tight yellow dress that hugged your curves and paired it with three-inch heels. Once satisfied with your appearance, you drove for thirty minutes, anxiety gnawing at you the closer you got to the club. As you parked, you leaned your head on the steering wheel, your heart racing as you imagined every possible worst-case scenario that could happen tonight.

A sudden knock on your window startled you. You turned to see your friend Yoru, knocking loudly and grinning mischievously.

"Yoru! What the fuck? You scared the hell out of me!" you exclaimed, stepping out of the car.

"Relax, hothead," she teased, clearly already tipsy.

Before you could respond, a familiar voice called out, "What are you guys doing out here? Let's get inside and fuck some bitches!"

You both turned to see a guy walking toward you, and your eyes widened.

"Takuya?" you both shouted in unison, surprised to see him here.

You fist-bumped him as he approached. "Yoo, didn't know you were already here."

You had met Takuya two years ago at a business party, and the two of you had hit it off immediately. He was the son of the CEO of Twilight Entertainment, a fact he kept hidden from most people. Over time, you had become close friends, talking about everything from business to personal secrets.

As you looked at him, something caught your eye. You noticed the obvious bulge in his pants and laughed, "Takuya, are you seriously hard already?"

Both Yoru and Takuya turned red with embarrassment, but Yoru burst into laughter, teasing him. "You fucking pervert!"

Takuya, flustered, quickly changed the subject. "I can't wait any longer. Let's go inside!"

You followed him into the club, where the pounding music immediately filled your ears. Boys flocked toward you as you entered, but your attention was elsewhere. You felt the anxiety return as you scanned the room. Something wasn't right.

Your heart dropped when your eyes landed on two familiar faces across the room—two purple-haired men lounging with women on their laps.

"Y/N? What's wrong? You look like you've seen a ghost," Yoru asked, noticing your sudden change in demeanor.

Ignoring her, you stared at the brothers. "What the hell are the Haitani brothers doing here?"

[acapelladitty]

`♡° kinktober 2024! ---

☆ kink: Exhibitionism

☆ pairing: Black Mask/Reader

☆ summary: Summoned to a meeting with Roman and his goons, you find yourself the new focus of his attention.

kinktober '24 ☆ main masterlist ☆ ao3

Comfortable in the side room to Roman’s office, your typical haunt while he was conducting business, the busted air con made the air as hot as hell and your shirt had been the first to go as soon as thin beads of sweat started to roll across your collarbone. Roman was doing business, his stock reply when you asked what his day had in store, and you had shuffled off to let him get on with it rapidly.

The room was nice enough, a plush sofa filling most of the left wall with the end of the sofa housing a portable fridge by its side – the shelves housing a mixture of soft drinks and alcohols which could be accessed when necessary. The television was playing some action movie which you had selected in a moment of sheer boredom and it had done nothing to catch your attention as you lounged comfortably.

A bead of sweat rolls across your chest and you watch it drip past your collarbone and disappear down the space between your tits until its absorbed by the lace bra. Following its path with a soft sigh, you tease along your skin as an immediate decision to enjoy yourself a little bit settles in your thoughts. Your fingers continue their downward descent until they reach the white linen of your loose pants and it takes only a moment to unhook the latch and pull them free of your ass – the fabric dropping to the floor in a messy pile next to your abandoned shirt.

With only your bra and panties remaining, you glance at the fading bruises which lace your wrists as your fingers stroke a slow line across the fabric of your panties. With little else to do, you choose to take your time and tease yourself a little.

A plan which is immediately scuppered as a familiar whistle forces you to pull your fingers from the fabric of your panties and quickly stand. Striding over to the door, your heels silent against the plush carpeting, you open the door and step through without too much thought.

Roman wasn’t alone.

Caught off-guard and immediately regretting not throwing your clothes back on, you don’t let the surprise stop you as any signs of weakness or hesitation on your part would let Roman down. A fact which he wasn’t quiet about as he made your role in his life very clear.

Besides, it wasn’t like Roman hadn’t shared you before with some of his more deserving clientele.

The two henchmen you didn’t recognise but what you did recognise was the open leer which graced their features as you sauntered past their standing positions to deposit yourself firmly in Roman’s lap.

Excitement flooding your groin at the audience, you can feel Roman’s cock pressing against your ass as you make yourself comfortable.

“Where are the rest of your clothes?”

Growling the question, you can sense that he’s actually quite pleased by your lack of appropriate wear and he grinds his clothed cock into your cunt to emphasise his point.

“What? Oh! I must have forgotten them.” Playing up your role, you tilt your head and bat your eyelashes up at him as a contended smile slips across your lips.

“Whore,” Roman accuses.

“Yours,” you agree. “So why did you call me? What do you need, Mr. Sionis?”

Using his title is always a winner and you can feel the approval rumbling through his chest as he focuses his attention past you and back to his two henchmen.

“Gentlemen, the lady here has a very hard task to attend to and she’ll be out of sight in only a moment so we can attend to our business.”

Bucking his knee slightly, you take the hint and remove yourself from his lap to drop to the floor instead. The carpet is comfortable enough against your knees as you back yourself under his desk and flex your hands against his thighs – eyeing up his tented cock with a dry mouth. “As you can see, she’s nothing if not committed to her role as a cock-hungry whore. Anyway, in regard to our plans for the casino funding-”

Roman continues his speech as you fumble messily at his zip before unbuttoning his fly. His cock, already half-hard, didn’t take much coaxing to release from his boxers and a satisfied hum vibrates your lips as you wrap your hand around his base of it, giving him a few teasing strokes. Your cunt feels hot against your panties but you know better than to touch yourself in front of him without his direct permission so you instead focus on jerking along his shaft with slow movements, your other hand shifting from his thighs to squeeze at his balls – enjoying the way that his cock twitches at the undivided attention.

His voice drones overhead, the words utterly meaningless to you as you shift your head forward and catch the tip of his cock between your lips. From this position, you know that the back of your head is perfectly visible to the others in the room and that fact has you pressing your thighs together as your cunt drips and heat flares across your exposed skin.

The taste of him rolls across your tongue and as you inhale steadily to maintain your breath, the familiar smell of his skin – musk and errant droplets of cologne – invades your senses and you moan around his length. Your head works quickly, bobbing along his cock with a steady pressure as you swallow him down in the way he likes; all the ‘training’ he forced you through making it second nature at this point.

A sharp tug on your hair pulls your head free of his cock and you glance up with slack, pre-cum stained lips at Roman as he glances down at you with a cruel smirk.

“I’m bored of your mouth,” he hisses and you drop your eyes submissively as the pressure in your scalp makes you whimper. “Get off your knees and get back on my lap, you little slut. Daddy wants his princess to warm his cock while he finishes up his very important business.”

His hand doesn’t leave your hair as he pulls you to your feet, giving you only a moment to deposit yourself back on his lap. Your shaky fingers are quick to pull your damp panties to the side – granting him the access he will need as you keep your back to his henchmen and make yourself comfortable on his wide thighs.

Sliding yourself down on his cock, a shuddering breath slips free of your lips as the discomforting stretch of him sparks a delicious pleasure across your groin. You were wet, but maybe not wet enough as the friction of him pressing against your walls is intense in the heat that it ignites. A thick arm winds around your waist, pinning you into place and preventing you from escaping his length as Roman rolls his hips against yours, his head tilted past your shoulder to never waver from his goons.

“Attack the shipment.” Roman growls, his free hand dipping down into the space between you to trail teasingly past your pubic hair until his thick forefinger locates your clit – quickly rubbing wicked circles around the ultra-sensitive bundle of nerves. “I want Dent to know the price of fucking with us while he thinks we’re distracted.”

Clenching around his cock as you milk him with every roll of your hips, you settle in to putting on a show that you know will make your master proud and give the rest of them something to fantasise about.