#the answer was no not really but what do you need it for
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big question. i'm cis (afab) and my gf is trans (amab) and i'm sorta having a hard time reconciling something. i've been a hard line feminist since i was about 8, by 12 i was a practical library on everything and anything womens lib. i'm spending a lot more time around trans people especially my gf now and i'm sorta struggling to reconcile the trans experience with my feminism. like- i'll see trans women being like "i hate my body :(" "my voice is awful" "i need [x thing to try to pass] ugh" and like my first thought is always "NO! THATS HOW THEY FUCKING GET YOU!!! THE PATRIARCHY WANTS YOU TO HATE YOURSELF SO YOU ENSLAVE YOURSELF TO CAPITALISM AND LIVE IN A CONSTANT STATE OF NEED FOR NEW PRODUCTS TO WARD OFF THE EVER PRESENT SELF HATRED BROUGHT ON YOU BY SOCIETY" and they go "well then how do i pass/transition?" and i honestly don't know and i also don't know how far it goes before its no longer dysphoria but instead the intentional subjugation of women by patriarchy for profit. i wanna help my fellow ladies but i honestly don't know how to like- apply the feminism i was taught as a child to trans women and i want to learn as soon as possible so that i can start doing it like yesterday
hi there,
I'll be honest: if it feels hard to apply the feminism you learned as a kid to your trans friends, that's probably because the feminism you were taught didn't have trans woman in mind.
luckily, the answer to this is something that I consider to be feminism 101: what a woman does with her body is, ultimately, her fucking business.
listen: I agree with you that the beauty industry(TM) is evil. it's misogynistic, it's exploitative, it thrives by making women feel bad enough about themselves to make them spend money on shit they don't need, etc. we all know this.
now, having said that: women who like makeup or wear heels or get laser hair removal or whatever other asinine thing are not my oppressor, nor are they my enemy. dare I say, we have bigger problems.
we also need to consider that many trans women are coming to these choices from a VERY different place than many cis women are. while I think my fellow cis women really benefit from reminders that they're allowed to stop shaving or wearing eyeliner or dieting or whatever, that's because most of us have had those actions forced on us from very young ages and may genuinely need a hand to feel secure breaking out of those behaviors.
the majority of trans women are not coming from a background where they were encouraged to partake in the same personal grooming habits and modes of presentation as cis women; many of them have, in fact, been ostracized, bullied, threatened, and otherwise hurt because of forays into forms of presentation that are considered feminine. no matter how good your intentions may be, approaching your advice indelicately can, unfortunately, make you come across as no different than any transphobe on the street trying to enforce cisnormative societal expectations. it also must be said that, for many trans women, the ability to "pass" is a matter of security - for having their status as women recognized at all, and to avoid harassment and abuse in public spaces. if you live in America, like I do, politicians in power currently have an extremely explicit anti-trans agenda that can make it harrowing to be visible as a trans person, and trans women in particular are frequently targeted for violence.
there are absolutely critiques to be made the way the many trans women are expected to perform hyperfemininity. the notion that someone is duty bound to drastically change their appearance in order to transition at all is itself extremely rooted in cisnormativity, and "passing" is often contingent on being young, thin, able-bodied, reasonably wealthy, and hewing as closely to Eurocentric standards of beauty as possible. that's not awesome! but that's also not the fault of any individual; no trans person asked to be born into a world where gender norms are so narrow and failing to pass can come with a very real risk of physical danger.
also, if I can circle back to this: again, women who participate in aspects of the beauty industry are not our enemies. there are always going to be some number of women who enjoy doing their makeup or like spending time fussing over their little outfits or want breast implants or whatever. some of those women are going to be trans. my official feminist stance on this is that I don't give a shit, because I believe in bodily autonomy even when it involves things I would not do personally and the choices that individual women make about how they want to style their little meat body don't even crack the top 100 things that I'm worried about right now. it's actually kind of vitally important, politically, that trans people be able to safely pursue their preferred gender expression; while it's not particularly revolutionary for a cis woman to go outside all dolled up, whether a trans woman can do that safely is a pretty basic litmus test for how safe a given space is for queer people. it's a ridiculously low bar, and many places will still fail to clear it.
so, yeah, I don't know, dude. be there to talk to your trans girlies if they want to start unpacking some of the pressure they feel to conform to a very rigid idea of womanhood, but whether or not they can walk down the street in your neighborhood safely is a WAY bigger issue than whether they decide to do voice training or not.
if you really want to cut to the root of the insecurity and vulnerability that the beauty industry thrives on exploiting, your time is much better spent working to ensure the trans women in your life feel safe and supported and have a community where they can find support regardless of how they look.
necessary disclaimer I'm a cis girl, any transfemme folks please share your voice here and feel free to clap my ass if I've said something out of line.
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Giving up
Pairing: Joel Miller x f!reader
Summary: Coaxing your neighbor into having sex with you although he's unsure since he's much, much older than you
Warnings: big ass unspecified age-gap, Jackson!Joel is a softie Smut| unprotected piv, crempie, insicure!joel, sub!joel, also my man has trouble lasting cause he's not done this in a very long time.
a/n:i needed to write some cheesy romantic stuff, and maybe it doesn't really make all that sense in this story and maybe i cried while writing this cause no one is ever gonna love me like this but so what bitch leave me alone (i also am i lil tipsy as i proofread this, so ignore any mistakes pls)
Part 1
"did you do something to your hair?"
Tommy was standing on Joel's doorstep, looking at him as if he were an alien.
"I washed 'em" he grumbled, "what do you want?"
His brother couldn't help but huff out a laugh
"someone's in a good mood today"
"I've gotta be somewhere, just tell me what you want"
Tommy's interest was only piqued more.
there stood his brother, his clothes perfectly clean- maybe even ironed- his hair... styled, his beard trimmed...
something was definitely going on.
"Where are you going?"
Joel rolled his eyes now, shooting his little brother a death glare
"none of your business"
Oh he knew what was going on...
"Who is she?"
"Tommy-"
"Is it Jessica? I bet 's Jessica, she's always flirting with you you ol' dog-"
Joel swore he was gonna punch him- he was already running late because of how long he took to pick his clothes- finding a flannel that wasn't completely worn out turned out to be real fucking hard.
He felt stupid for how much effort he'd put into getting ready, he felt stupid for how anxious he was, but most of all... he wanted his brother to go away.
"There ain't no one, Tommy- now, if there ain't anything you need, please go-"
But just then- just when he was finally going to get rid of him, your sweet, soft voice made its way to his ears.
"Hi Joel! Hi Tommy!" You smiled from your porch, waving your hand at him and his brother "You didn't forget about today, did you Joel?"
What in the actual fuck?
Tommy did a double-check, looking between you and his brother, and when he finally confirmed that it was actually him you were talking to, you whom he'd gotten all dolled up for, he couldn't do anything but let out a slow, long breath.
"No I didn't- I'll be there in a minute, darlin'!" Joel was answering you as his brother regained his ability to speak
"well... Fuck. Me" he was in awe, his voice barely a murmur
"it ain't like that" Joel was quick to intervene "'m just fix-"
"'m sure it ain't" Tommy let out a chuckle, his hand going to pat his brother's back "You fucking lucky bastard"
"Tommy I know she's young bu-"
"shut up man" he laughed "Just go have fun, you asshole"
__ __
"Sorry 'm late, Tommy was just-"
You smiled at his words, shaking your head
"It's ok, Joel" you cooed as you let him in,
He gave you a soft little smile, and you felt like the luckiest girl in the world.
Joel Miller didn't smile just at anyone.
"water?" you asked, leading him to the kitchen.
"Uhm- sure"
His heart was damn near beating out of his chest already- for no fucking reason at all.
Well except the obvious one... you'd sucked his dick and he'd eaten you out three days ago- and you'd made it clear you wanted more.
Jesus Christ, he felt like a fourteen-year-old with his first crush.
You watched him as he sipped on the glass.
"So?" a soft smirk was caged between your teeth "Did you think about it?"
He damn near choked.
Which didn't make any sense, he was expecting this, he already knew you'd ask.
He cleared his throat, diverting his eyes from you "I-I have"
"And?"
You'd gotten closer, your expectant eyes studying every inch of his face
pleasepleasepleaseplease say yes
"Did- didn't you have something that needed fixing?"
Oh for fuck's sake
"joel" you called for him in what almost sounded like a plead.
"darlin' just... lemme fix your cabinet first"
This man was gonna be the goddamn death of you.
"ok"
__ __ __
As it turns out, in many different ways.
Who knew watching him fix something would turn out to be so fucking hot?
He'd rolled his shirt up so that his strong forearms and a glimpse of his beautiful bite-worthy biceps were showing, his hands moved so very expertly that they couldn't help but bring back memories of what those same fingers had done to you just a few days ago, and his face... he looked so hot when he was all in his head, concentrated only on the task before him-
or so you thought.
"You're gonna stare at me the whole time?"
A soft laugh escaped your lips
"don't mind me- just enjoying the view"
He huffed out a laugh as he went back to work, but you couldn't help but notice the fact he pushed his sleeves ever further up his arms, giving you more of a view of his delectable skin.
What a tease
__ __ __
"there we go" he said after some time, opening and closing the cabinet one final time to make sure "all done"
For the record, this time you hadn't even done it on purpose, the cabinet had actually broken. It was like fate was sending you a message.
You awakened from your daydreams as he stood up to his full height, and hopped off the stool you were sitting on to walk closer to him, noticing some dampness in your panties while doing so...
It wasn't your fault... he was the one looking way too hot doing such a simple task.
"thank you" You smiled up at him, your hands going to his chest,
He held his breath for a moment
"'s nothing babygirl"
"yeah? then... you think you could check my bedroom too?" you were biting your lip in a way that made your question take on a whole different meaning "to make sure nothing needs fixing y'know?"
"In your... bedroom?"
"yes, Joel- please" you added, with your best innocent doe eyes.
Which of course made him fold in a matter of seconds.
You'd taken on a different tactic. It was obvious at this point that the man was too shy and too unsure to give you an answer (or the one you wanted to hear anyway), which is why you needed to present him with the actual possibility right in front of him.
And yeah maybe it was manipulative, but fuck it if you didn't wanna feel the man inside of you.
The flashbacks of what he did to you on that bed filled his mind the moment he stepped into the room.
He needed to get a grip or he wouldn't be able to hide his growing bulge in a minute.
"Everything seems right"
"yeah? 'm not sure about the bed" you hummed, desperately hoping he would just go along with it "it makes a weird sound when I get on it"
He turned to you then, his eyes locking with yours for an infinite second.
"try" you said finally, nodding to the bed.
He watched you for a moment longer before, surprising you, he did it- he sat on the bed.
The mattress creaked underneath his weight, and you made quick work of strolling closer to him as he pressed his palms on the bed, checking for the inexistent "weird sound"
"it don't look like there's anythin' wron-" he looked up the moment your hands found his shoulders "Whatcha doin'? sweethear-"
You were sat on his lap before he could even finish the sentence.
"Joel" you spoke his name softly, as if it were a caress, your hands slowly moving up and down from his shoulders to his pecs, as you finally scooted closer to him so your core was right against the hardness in his jeans-
He inhaled sharply, his fingers curling on the bed.
"would you like to have sex with me or not?"
You accentuated your words with a slow roll of your hips, grinding onto him and making a soft groan build inside his throat
"this- this ain't really fair sugar"
A smirk pulled at your lips as you lowered your head to whisper in his ear "I never said I didn't play dirty, Mr. Miller"
Your right hand trailed lower, moving down his belly so slowly that Joel thought he might just lose his mind.
"You're y-young baby-"
Your hand had found his crotch, the outline of his dick fitting in your hand oh so perfectly.
"we've gone over this already Joel, I'm old enough" you purred, your lips leaving a peck just below his ear "old enough to do many many things"
He cursed under his breath
"I just... I don't understand"
A breathy laugh escaped you
"there's not much to understand really" you murmured "You're hot, and I like you, and I wanna get in your pants"
That earned you a chuckle
"and you're sure you won't regret this?" he asked, "you sure this is what you really want- that- that you don't want to give a boy your age a chance instead of me?"
You smiled as you looked up at him,
you'd never met a man so sweet
"Joel, I promise you I'm sure" you whispered "I promise you this is what I want, you are what I want"
Fucking damn it
How could he ever say no after that?
With those gentle eyes of yours looking at him, with your hand right over his cock...
"So?"
He was gonna think about the consequences tomorrow. Now- now there was only you.
"yes"
That single word sounded better than any song you'd ever heard.
yes
Your lips were on his before he could even think of changing his mind- and god did they feel like a dream.
His soft stubble grazed against your cheeks and upper lip, as you deepened the kiss, as he opened up to you, closing his eyes only after he'd taken you in, only after he could admire all that was happening to him for some godforsaken reason.
A growl rumbled from his chest when your core found his dick again, grinding onto it in a way, that combined with the way your tongue was tasting every inch of him, was making him see stars.
He didn't think he'd kissed like this in 30 years,
making out seemed like such a distant thing from him, he was much too old to do something like this, and yet... everything about you made him feel like a teenager all over again, so perhaps it was fitting-
and god he had forgotten how amazing it felt.
You started undoing his flannen, not even dreaming of breaking the kiss, and once you opened his shirt up, once his big strong chest was right there before you, you just had to look at it.
You leaned away, his lips chasing yours making you smile as your gaze lowered.
Jesus, he was the hottest man you'd ever seen.
Some hair and freckles adorned his pecs, his little belly was ever so cutely fighting against his jeans- his skin was soft beneath your palms as they explored every inch they could reach.
He was looking at you, watching your blow-out eyes, wondering what potion you'd drank to be this mesmerized by what he had to offer.
You smiled once you caught him, leaning closer to leave a quick kiss on his lips.
"take off your clothes"
You got off of him, and once he saw you get rid of your shirt, your boobs pushed together by a simple black bra that somehow, at the moment, seemed like the sexiest thing in the world, he rushed to follow suit, nearly tripping getting off his pants.
The moment he looked at you again, the world- the universe, it all went quiet.
You stood naked before him, a soft, perfect little thing, looking like a damn dream.
"babygirl" he could only breathe as you reached him again.
"What?" you laughed
"I-I don't even know"
You shook your head, grinning from ear to ear as he pressed his mouth on yours again.
He was already addicted.
In a haze, you found yourself on the bed, your body caged beneath his, his tongue fighting with yours, his hands all over- You almost had the urge to laugh at how desperate he seemed, how frantically he was touching every inch of you, exploring every piece of skin-
His hands were on your tits, fingers gently playing with your nipples, then on your belly, your waist, your ass, your thighs, until finally, he found your core, but before he had the time to fully reach it you'd switched up with him, straddling his lap as he laid flat on his back... only he couldn't keep away for even a second and he immediately sat up, grabbing your waist.
He couldn't even begin to complain that you'd already grabbed his cock, positioning it at your entrance.
You couldn't wait anymore- you needed him now.
"Wait-" he murmured, his breathing labored already "you sure you're... y'know ready?"
Oh my god, you swore you were gonna fall for him if he kept this shit up.
"Joel" you smiled, looking into his big brown eyes "I've been wet since you fixed the cabinet"
"I-" he blushed "You-you sure?"
You didn't answer him, you simply took one of his hands in yours and guided him to feel just how much you were telling the truth.
"Fuck"
"yeah" you smirked "that's just what you do to me, Mr. Miller"
Jesus fuck
Joel didn't think his cock had ever been so hard.
You didn't give him time to do or say anything- he'd gathered that's how you did things by now- as you slowly, oh so very slowly, started sinking onto him.
He was big, the kind of big you'd be feeling tomorrow morning. The stretch hurt just right, so overwhelmed by the unadulterated pleasure that it was barely there.
Soft little moaned gasps spilled from your lips with every inch added, your eyes were closed, only focusing on the extraordinary feeling as your nails clawed at Joel's chest.
Until, finally- you'd done it. You were fully sat on his cock, and while your eyelids fluttered open, you regained your ability to hear- to hear the curses leaving Joel's mouth between ragged breaths
"Jesus Christ- Jesus fucking Christ- Goddamnit"
His grip on your waist was so tight you were sure it was gonna leave a bruise... not that you were complaining.
"you ok?"
His eyes were shut close and creases of effort filled his forehead, while his chest went up and down as he desperately tried to breathe.
"Joel?"
He swallowed tightly, now breathing in through his nose before exhaling from his mouth.
"d-don't move"
You smiled as you promised "I won't"
God this was fucking embarrassing.
He'd spent three days training.
And yes he wasn't sure he would have said yes, but still, better safe than sorry- except for the fact it clearly hadn't worked.
He had spent three days fucking his own fist and trying to last as much as possible and he did do progress... but this... this was fucking nothing like what he'd felt in the last twenty years.
He was so fucked
"I-I'm sorry" he gritted out, sounding almost defeated "I- I haven't done this in a long time darlin'"
"And you... you feel so fuckin' good- fuck"
Your walls had inadvertently squeezed around him at his words, making a groan rumble in his chest.
"You have nothing to apologize for Joel"
he would have told you that your voice was making everything worse if he weren't so preoccupied with trying to calm his dick down.
"take all the time you need"
And so he did, his eyes remained closed as he breathed through the initial shock, until finally, after what felt like an eternity, he was back.
He had to stifle a moan once he opened his eyes back up.
There you were, your beautiful eyes trained on his with such gentleness and care that it made where his gaze fell to feel even more sinful.
Your boobs were barely touching his chest, and yet they could have been in his face for the effect they had on him- his hands were on your waist, holding onto your soft flesh, your thighs were straddling his lap, giving him no choice but to finally look between your bodies, where you two connected.
"Darlin'" he murmured, hypnotized
You smiled, watching him admiring you in silence
"You look..."
Every word that came to mind wasn't enough, you were otherwordly, you were perfection... so he just settled on the simplest, and perhaps truest of them all.
"you're beautiful"
Your cheeks burned with heat as his gaze came back to yours.
"so are you, Joel"
And that was that.
His lips found yours again, and you couldn't stop your hips as they started moving, rocking back and forth and bringing little waves of ecstasy to your core.
A desperate moan spilled from yours to Joel's mouth as he grabbed the back of your head, forcing you into an even deeper kiss as he started following your movements.
Your hands went to the back of his neck, grabbing at the hair at the nape of it as you finally started bouncing on his dick, and god- god it was even better than you could have ever imagined
The loudest growl sounded from his throat as you worked yourself up and down on his shaft.
He was in another universe, his actions were only reflexes as the hand not tangled in your hair found your tits and then your ass, grabbing at it with tenderness and need.
"Oh Joel" you cried, his dick filling you up better than anything ever before.
You could quite literally feel him in your stomach, every little vein and ridge of skin creating a permanent dent inside of you that only he was ever gonna be able to fill.
"sweetheart- fuck" he groaned on his own, your breaths mixing as you ghosted each other's mouths, his eyes raking over your body and face, while yours couldn't help but roll to the back of your head as his manhood hit a particularly good spot.
"You feel so- good Joel" you whimpered mindlessly, now quickening your pace, desperation taking over you completely.
the sound of him entering your drenched core mixed with the bed creaking underneath you as you drove yourself closer and closer to heaven.
The sound of his name falling from your lips was something that filled Joel's chest with an indescribable feeling, he felt on top of the word, and at the same time... at the same time he wished it had never left your mouth because it was now forever imprinted in his brain, and he knew nothing was ever gonna compare to it.
Oh and also- also it was making his little lasting problem real fucking hard to control.
But he was nothing if not a gentleman,
You were gonna come, he wasn't gonna have it any other way.
His hand lowered down your belly as you kept chasing your release, looking like a damn glimpse of paradise, until his thumb found your clit.
"Oh fuck" you moaned, your eyes snapping open to look at him- a dark glaze of lust shading your iris.
Joel realized too late that he hadn't taken into account how fucking tight you'd get, and was now really paying the consequences.
Plus when you looked at him like that... maybe just this one time he could not be a gentleman- I mean it's not like he had much choice, he was trying his hardest but- shit
"darlin'" he mumbled, his thumb circling your bud "w-where do ya- where do ya want it?"
You moaned louder just at the thought of him coming
"Inside"
It wasn't even a question
"N-no sweetheart I-I shouldn-"
"Joel" you interrupted him, your lips grazing his as you talked, your grip on his hair tightening "I want you to fill me up until I can feel you leaking out of me for days"
Good Christ and heaven
"Fuck me" he cursed, all his strength going on not coming right there and then "Darlin' please- tell me you're close"
You were already seeing stars as he spoke
"I'm close, baby- oh fuck" you cried "Joel!"
A tsunami of lust-filled pleasure coursed through your veins as your orgasm hit like a damn truck.
You couldn't even remember your name as you screamed his own into the thick air, as you moaned and cried and spasmed around him, feeling him do exactly what you'd asked- filling you up to the very brim.
He'd started coming the moment you did- he couldn't do anything about it, it was just unadulterated perfection-
His head fell between your neck and shoulders as groaned like a man possessed,
until finally, after a good three minutes, you were both back to the land of the living.
He looked twenty years younger when he looked at you again, and you- you looked like the most beautiful woman on earth.
A soft smile pulled at your lips, and you couldn't help but ask "How long before we can do it again?"
And fuck him, but his age didn't matter, with those eyes of yours, it might very well be minutes.
@kluvspedro @bluebiyou @casssiopeia @bean-is-reading @millerispunk @i-cant-stfu
#joel miller#joel miller smut#joel miller x reader#joel miller fluff#joel miller fanfiction#joel miller fic#joel miller fanfic#sub!Joel#joel miller x f!reader#joel miller x fem!reader#joel miller x female reader#joel miller x y/n#joel miller x you#sub joel miller#pedro pascal#pedro pascal x reader#joel miller imagine#joel miller blurb#smut#joel miller angst#fanfiction#the last of us#tlou#the last of us hbo#tlou hbo
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MARRIED IN VEGAS / LANDO NORRIS
lando norris x reader / SMAU
FACE CLAIM / none!
WARNINGS / mentions of drinking and purposely misspelling words
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landonorris got mmarrkisx
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user6 ??????????????????????
user567 what the actual fuck
user000 LANDO??????
user7 the question i have is which drivers accompanied lando to get married?
user5 definitely carlos
user89 WHOS THE GIRL??????
user92 no cause why are the photos so aesthetically pleasing???
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ynuser marrrriesd vgasj 😭👜😍👛💗🤤
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yourbsf GIRL WHAT???????
yourbsf ANSWER ME RIGJT NOW
ynuser whtat?
yourbsf omfg how drunk are you??
ynuser dunk lebron 🏀
yourbsf lord help us all
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landonorris posted on their story!
liked by carlossainz55 and 17,927 others
[ she’s sob so hungover dheaiinwjsi @ynuser ]
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ynuser bro delete this zh en rmnow
landonorris enlish?
user56 BRO JUST JARD LAUNCHED THE HARD LAUNCHED
user0 wait she’s hot asf
user8 LANDO IS SHE NAKED?
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f1wags GOSSIP: lando norris and his recently announced wife who he married in vegas (drunkenly) have been spotted in California together!
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user67 wait this pap pic is so cute
user8 guys her @ is ynuser!!!!
user589 why is lando in sunglasses and a hat??
user9 maybe he’s still HUNGOVER
ynuser oh hello guys
user7 so casual
user92 hello mrs. norris
user89 WAIT THEY’RE MATCHING OUTFITS 🥹🥹
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ynuser as of lately 🌇
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landonorris hey mrs. norris
ynuser hello there mr. norris
user67 so like yes
user02 the color scheme of the post 😍
user10 i’m sorry lando but she’s my wife now
landonorris no.
user675 HE ACTUALLY RESPONDED 😭
carlossainz55 do you remember me?
ynuser yes mr. smooth operator
user8 I KNEW IT CARLOS WAS THERE WITH LANDO
user20 carlando ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
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landonorris wifey wifey wifey ❤️🤍
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user57 y/n is in fact wifey
user78 ugh she’s so fine
user89 lando is really bragging over insta
user0 😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍
ynuser hey husband
landonorris hello my wifey
user024 no cause i love them guys
user23 it’s confirmed lando married a BADDIE
user35 need need need
user6 lando needs to know that she’s OUR wife now
landonorris i refuse!! y/n is my wife, plus she has my last name 😏😏
user211 lando no need to get territorial…
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ynuser honeymoon vacay
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landonorris 🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤
user5 calm down there lando
user502 if i were married to her… i’d be thirsting on the main 24/7
yourbsf gorgeous girl! and well him….
ynuser LMFAOO I LOVE U BAE
landonorris ?????
user99 island girl!
user02 okay guys let’s talk about how rom-com this whole thing is!
user3 FOR REAL
user02 like your a famous athlete who gets drunk and parties too hard and you marry a stranger and you both slowly start to fall in love
ynuser who’s going to write the script???
user79 I VOLUNTEER AS TRIBUTE 🙋♀️🙋♀️🙋♀️
user65 wait y/n did you know who lando was?
ynuser god no.. i thought he was some youtuber or something ngl
user89 LMAO
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SWEETERLOVERS - a little smau in honor of the last vegas grand prix <3
#sweeterlovers#formula 1#f1 smau#f1 fanfic#formula one#f1 fic#f1 imagine#f1#f1 x reader#f1 one shot#formula one x y/n#formula one x you#lando norris smau#lando norris x you#lando norris insta au#lando norris x y/n#lando norris imagine#lando norris x reader#lando x reader#lando norris#lando norris social media au#lando norris instagram au#f1 instagram au#las vegas
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Gojo Satoru & Geto Suguru
♡ TW: fear, prank, prank gone too far, dubcon-ish
♡ GN reader
“Haha, ‘Toru—nice try,” is all you say to the tall figure, having stood patiently in wait and perfectly positioned to do a jump scare with his silly store-bought Ghostface mask on.
You sigh and go back to your dealings, and he remains as if the gist isn’t up—ever-committed to the task as if you’re suddenly going to forget that it’s him. Like—of course, it’s him! Despite what the movies will have you believe, not a lot of guys have bodies like that.
If he was really committed to tricking you, he should have worn something baggier to hide his perfectly shredded chest. But no—he’s set on wearing his black muscle shirt—probably opting to make you both scared and horny at the same time.
You carry on with what you’d been doing—cleaning up the kitchen. “Oi, quit standing there already and come help me.”
He doesn’t. But that’s not unlike him—he’ll take any excuse not to do the dishes. And right now, the excuse is this dumb prank. But it’s your fault in any case—you’re the one that put him up to it by saying he’d never be able to get a rise out of you.
You sigh and scold yourself for being so short-sighted—should’ve kept my dumb mouth shut. Knowing him, he’s probably going to be this way all through October, the insufferable prick.
He still stands there. Silent. And still. Eerily unlike him. And almost, just almost, utterly unlike him.
But no—don’t be stupid! He’s the same height and the same build, for fuck’s sake! What are the odds of someone with the exact same measurements as your boyfriend breaking in right at the time he isn’t around in something so cliche and dumb as a Ghostface replica? No, it stinks of Satoru—it’s got his goofy antics written all over it.
You scoff again—a little winded this time, a little strained. You have to hand it to him—he is a little scary when he shuts up for this long.
“You can knock it off, Satoru. I know it’s you.” You face him again, hand on your hip, with a frown.
You sigh again when he still doesn’t answer, insisting on his stupid tactic of psyching you out. And you’re getting pissed that it’s actually almost working.
“Ugh, you’re so stupid.” You start stomping over—aiming to rip that dumb thing off his head and point your death glare directly in his insufferable blue eyes—those insufferable blue eyes you’re actually starting to hope are under there more than knowing without a doubt are there for sure.
“Tch—it’s insulting if you think some half-assed performance like this is gonna be enough to scare me. At least have the creativity to come up with something somewhat decent–”
You stop in your tracks halfway over. Hair is peaking out from under the mask. You hadn’t seen it from afar, matted against the black shirt he was wearing—but how could you? How could you when it’s not white hair?
You flinch backward. Stumbling. Assessing the dark, silken locks a second time before looking up at the mask again—that soulless white warped skull with pitch-black bottomless eyesockets.
You take another step back. Breath hitching in your throat when the figure takes a step as well—toward you.
Your heart flares. It’s not Satoru.
Eyes peeled, you feel the panic overthrow you in an instant—like a cold rush, reaching all the way into your bonemarrow, making it hard to move, hard to do much of anything without feeling vulnerable to what it might trigger.
But once the figure pulls his hand out from behind his back, brandishing a butcher’s knife that catches the light and glints in the air—you have no other choice but to run.
What a perfect fucking day to wear fuzzy fucking socks! Fucking October cold is going to be the reason you die—stabbed to death in your own house by some cringey Scream fanboy. No—this can’t be the end—not this way! Why isn’t Satoru home yet? Why can’t he ever be where you need him to be?
You make your way through the house—hoping to reach the door, but turning the corner has you slip and fall, and the intruder’s on you—knife raised, poised prettily in the air above your helpless body, clad in your tiny heart-print pj’s—like the perfect hot airhead in any slasher spoof.
You scream and squeeze your eyes shut, “No! No—please! Please! Satoru, help!”
And right as the knife is supposed to come down and puncture your chest, making it spurt out red until you finally bleed out, dead and gone, there’s a bang instead as two palms land flat on the floor on either side of your head.
Joined by a muffled voice, “Are yah scared yet?”
With your eyes wide open again, you look up at not one mask blocking out the ceiling light but two. And with all the pure alarm savaging your chest, you manage to let out a real horror-movie squeal—unlike a sound you’ve ever made before.
And then, of all things, there’s laughter—no, not laughter—straight cackling.
And—fortunately or unfortunately—you’re quite sure you recognize that sound.
The last one pulls off his mask, and you really can’t believe it—pretty porcelain face squished in amusement with tears of joy in the corner of his insufferable blue eyes.
That fucking bitch.
“You should have seen your face!” he chortles—downright heaves. But for all his handsome features, he truly must be the ugliest laugher there is. Or maybe it’s just that the bastard always laughs at your expense, and after one too many times, it’s left a bad taste in your mouth.
Still, you sigh, eyes closed in relief, “I hate you, ‘Toru. You took it way too far, you ass.”
“No, no, Satoru, help~” he ignores you and mocks in a high-pitched moan, showing not a sign of remorse—holding his hand over his stomach as he falls to the floor, struggling to leave room for breath between hooting and howling.
Your eyes go to the original perpetrator. “And you? You proud or what?”
The wearer pulls off its mask and is revealed to be none other than Satoru’s best friend—Geto.
Honestly, you should have fucking known...
“Sorry, hehe…”
You’re upset—you make that clear with your pout, giving him your best guilt-tripping look from where you rest beneath him.
But still, within, your heart eases at the sight of his kind face and that apologetic smile across it—ever thankful to see him and not the cold-blooded murderer you were convinced was going to kill you only a moment ago—even when pinned beneath him in a position that should be making Satoru jealous.
But your boyfriend couldn’t care less, it seems—too busy rolling on the floor and laughing out loud quite literally, even banging his fist against the wood. Prick.
“I’m gonna throw up–” you say as the nerves finally settle. “And when I’m done, I’m gonna kill you. Both of you.”
Geto seems to think that’s fair, still with that sheepish smile on his face, but Satoru is quick to interject—laughing fit over as he shakes his head, “Nuh-uh. You said if I manage to scare you once this Halloween, I’d get whatever I want.”
You swear he can be such a child sometimes.
Oh, who are you kidding? He’s always a child. It’s only surprising he’s managed to rope Geto into all this—a guy who’s usually so mature.
“I don’t remember saying that…” you sigh, laying the back of your hand atop your forehead, still calming your breaths and the pounding in your head—your body not yet caught up to the fact that it’s trepidation over impending death was all just some silly joke played on you by two idiots.
You can’t believe him—you can’t believe either of them.
“Fucking shit, Geto—I thought I was gonna die.”
He still hasn’t gotten off you—the look of worry on his face tells you he’s probably just wanting to stay close to make you feel safe. You appreciate it, though it’s a little awkward lying beneath him like this—it’s not exactly a position you share with just anyone…
“Honestly, I didn’t think it would work,” he says—eyes slim like always, in that charming way. “I always thought you were smarter than to fall for something this stupid.”
You pull a frown at that—taking it all back. He’s as childish and dumb as Satoru is. He’s just better at hiding it.
“Oh, shut up—as if you wouldn’t scream if someone chased you down with a knife,” you grumble. “Now get off, you prick.”
You begin to lift yourself onto your elbows, yet despite the clear intention of getting up, Geto doesn’t budge to make it happen.
No, instead, he leans further in—fine-kempt raven hair slipping off his shoulders, falling with the same grace as a veil.
“I was told there’d be a prize for the one that got you to crack, and seeing as I’m the one that made that happen—I want it.”
You have to blink—blanched at the sudden demand.
Satoru, as well, a little stunned—looking wide-eyed at the two of you, upside down where he lies flat on his back, long limbs stretched out like a starfish.
“You what now?” both of you ask in unison.
Geto chuckles before repeating, “My prize. I want it. It’s only fair,” as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
Satoru rolls over on his stomach to view you both the right way, pursing his lips in thought. “Hmm…” Hand on his chin as if it’s really something to deliberate when the dumbass very well knows what the two of you had bet on and how it very much isn’t a reward you can give to just anyone.
Yet, despite that. “Okay,” he agrees—as if it’s even up to him.
“Hold on now, wait a minute.” You intervene in the almost business-esque dealing they’d somehow held without you. "Not happening.”
“Why not?” they both ask, looking at you.
And you can’t keep from gaping. The nerve.
Spluttering as you explain, “Because it’s—well, because it was a bet between me and my dumbass boyfriend, and it was very clear what the prize was gonna be, come winner or loser—so, sorry to break it to you, but there is no prize.”
But that doesn’t seem to deter Geto. “Oh, I think there is…” he all but purrs as he leans down further.
“Satoru already agreed. And you’re already on your back beneath me.”
His smile isn’t all so friendly anymore, and still… you can’t help but blush being caught beneath it, holding your breath with fear a little different from the one before but no different in how it makes your heart pound.
“So, if neither of you mind…" he grins slyly. "I think I’ll just take it.”
♡ GOJO SATORU masterlist ♡ GETO SUGURU masterlist ♡ JUJUTSU KAISEN masterlist
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Sweet Temptations.
logan howlett x fem!reader
cw: fingering, oral (f receiving), innocence kink, inexperienced reader, darkish!logan
a/n: hi! sorry i've been gone so long! i have plenty of stuff in the works but for now here's this. i'm working on making a mini-series of dark!logan x inexperienced!reader so i hope everyone enjoys! <3
to think, logan almost went out to the bar tonight. almost left to find a one night stand or come home and fuck his hand. tonight could've had so many different outcomes but luckily, he ended up with the best one.
there's a light knock on his bedroom door. he knew it had to have been you since everyone was on a field trip a couple hours away for the night. logan obviously wasn't interested in going and you were busy working on an experiment in the laboratory.
in all reality, logan just wanted an excuse to stay here alone with you overnight. ever since he joined the x-men and met you down in the lab in that cute white coat and pretty smile, he's had a crush on you.
"hi, logan." you smile softly when he opens his door.
"hey, dollface. you need something?" he asks, leaning against his door frame and eyeing that short little nightgown of yours.
"can we talk?"
"sure."
the two of you walk into logan's room and sit on the end of his bed. you sit up on your knees, facing him. he can tell that something is on your mind but you're unsure on if you should confide in him or not.
"is everything alright?" he asks, growing concerned.
you nod, chewing on your bottom lip.
"whatcha wanna talk about then, sweets?"
logan's large hand rubs your knee softly, almost coaxing the words out of you.
"would you do me a big favor?" you ask, avoiding his hazel gaze.
"of course."
there's slight hesitation. you were afraid of logan's reaction to your request. after a deep breath, you remind yourself that it's just logan. the same logan who trains with you every morning, the same logan who plays with your hair when he's board, the same logan who praises you for all your hard work in the laboratory. there was nothing to be afraid of.
"c-can you take my virginity?"
the question almost killed logan. he though he had died and gone to heaven. you finally look at him with a twinkle in your eyes and he feels the need to adjust the tent growing in his pants.
"where'd this idea come from, sweetheart?"
"well, i was seeing a guy a while ago who acted really weird when i told him i was still a virgin then when i told storm and jean, they told me that if i'm ready to do it, than it should be with someone i trust." you explain so innocently to him. "i just figured since you've always been so gentle with me and i trust you so, i was kinda hoping you wouldn't mind."
never in his wildest dreams could logan have imagined this happening. you sitting pretty on his bed, practically begging him to take your virginity. god, logan couldn't even remember the last time he was with a virgin. must've been decades ago.
"that's real sweet, dollface. 'f course i'll do it." he says, watching your smile grow with excitement. "first i need to know what you've already done."
"i've kissed while sitting in someone's lap, given a hickey twice... maybe three times? some nights i'll rub myself against one of my pillows."
even though he knew the answer, he had to ask,"ever fingered yourself?"
"no." you shake your head, almost making logan moan at just the thought of being the first person to do that to you.
"want to try it?"
"s-sure but i thought we were gonna–"
"we will." logan assures. "need to get you loosened up first if you want me to fit inside of you."
a small gasp exists your lips, making him chuckle. logan leans, testing the waters to see how you kiss. he's a bit shocked by how you pull him closer to deepen it. you moan into his mouth while your hands roam his hair. he sits you in his lap and lets you grind yourself on top of him, showing him what you know.
"let's see if you're nice and wet for me." logan hums, lifting up your nightgown and feeling the wet spot over your underwear. "very good, dollface."
without thinking, you let out a tiny moan next to his ear because of his praise. he can't help but pull your head from its hiding spot in his neck to look at you.
"you like when i tell you how good you're being for me?" he ask, watching your face contort as your hips keep moving. one of his hands rests on your waist, stopping you from moving. "c'mon, you can tell me."
"mhm..." you nod. "love when you praise me."
suddenly, your back is pressed flat against his sheets as he kisses all down your body. leaving little marks here and there until he reaches the waist band of your pretty pink underwear.
"did you wear these just for me, princess?" he asks, placing a kiss right over the cotton covering your button.
"y-you said i looked p-pretty in pink."
as the words stumble out of your mouth, logan feels a warmth spread across his heart. a couple months ago, you were wearing a new pink dress and as logan passed you by, he mentioned how pretty you looked in the color. it meant a lot to you.
"you still do." he says. "can i take these off of you, baby?"
you nod, lifting your hips a little to help him. logan tosses the pink cotton somewhere behind him. lifting up the nightgown to your tummy, eyes glued to the spot in between your legs.
"didn't think you could get any prettier." logan mumbles to himself.
his intense gaze made you feel a bit vulnerable, trying to close your legs but his large hands stop you.
"don't hide from me, princess." he says, capturing your attention. " 'm gonna make you feel good."
logan carefully drags his thumb through your slit, collecting the arousal and circling it around your button. the feather like touch sends your head back and whimpers to fall from your lips. gently, logan pushes his middle finger past your velvet walls, groaning once you clench around him.
"atta girl, princess." he smirks watching you swallow up his finger. "takin' it so good."
logan watches in awe as your head fall back and the arch in your back. slowly he inches his face closer and licks a thick stripe up your fold before sucking softly on your button. you feel logan muffle 'fuck' against you, only resulting in more arousal to spill out of you.
"o-oh, logan." you moan, hips chasing his tongue feverishly.
since this was your first time, logan went easy on you, not making you work for your orgasm. he feels your cunt clench down on his one finger as it hits deep inside of you until you are seeing stars. with logan's other free hand, he paws at your tit and rolls it in his palm.
"need m-more!" you whimper with glossy eyes and lips. "p-please, lo."
in an attempt to give you what you want, logan struggles to hit another finger inside of you. he wasn't sure what he did to deserve this type of heaven but god, was he thankful for it.
"i can't, sweetheart." he groans, kissing your hip bone as he speeds up the finger inside of you. "you're too tight for two of my fingers. there's no way i'll be able to fit inside of you tonight."
before you could whine in protest, this indescribable wave of euphoria washes over you. smooth silky legs wrap tightly around logan's head. thighs covers his ears, blocking out the sweet sounds you were making. logan goes back to sloppily making out with your cunt until you weakly pull him off and drag him up to your lips, tasting your own release on his tongue.
"thanks, lo." you smile in a daze at him.
"anytime." he says. "i think you'll need another lesson soon though if you want to take all of me. do you want that, princess?"
he could feel your heart rate increase eagerly. you blush intensely and avoid his gaze as you nod.
"alright." he chuckles darkly. "but first, you gotta show me how you get off on your pillow."
#logan howlett x reader#wolverine x reader#logan howlett#james logan howlett#wolverine#logan howlett smut#wolverine smut#deadpool and wolverine#hugh jackman wolverine#wolverine angst#logan howlett angst#logan howlett imagine#logan howlett fanfiction#logan x reader#logan wolverine#wolverine one shot#wolverine x oc#hugh jackman#marvel cinematic universe#marvel#mcu#marvel mcu#mcu fic#x men#x men oc#x men movies#x men wolverine#x men logan#x men comics
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Sorry Won't Fix This
lando norris x fem reader
summary: Lando makes the biggest mistake of his life, bigger than any apology, and you both hoped there was a way to fix it. Unfortunately, you both wished it at different times. (5.5k words)
warnings: angst, cheating, mentions of sex, manipulation, mede up characters, use of Y/N
a/n: I FINALLY WROTE MORE ANGST! This is a long one and I held nothing back. I really did try to make it as hurtful and dramatic as possible and ngl I was inspired by 'Don't worry darling' for a tiny part of this (you'll know when you read it) but anyway, this one does NOT have a happy ending so please let me know what you think!
Check out the original request here!
↺ back to navigation — send me a request!
You had a terrible feeling, but you were too scared to look into it, terrified you would be right.
Truth is, you started feeling like that just a few weeks ago, when you went back to Lando’s apartment to surprise him with lunch and found an empty room and the bed unmade from somebody sleeping on it. Any other day that would’ve been completely normal, but you had stayed with him the night before and made the bed as soon as you both got up to get ready for your separate plans for the day, leaving a perfectly made bed to come back to.
Before that day, you would’ve never in a million years thought that Lando would cheat on you. He had always been so loving and caring, even before you started dating, and once you officially became a thing, he would constantly remind you how much he loved you, and on special days he was the most romantic person ever, and you always thought that you would spend the rest of your life with him, but now... you didn’t want to think about it, but you couldn’t bury the thought of him with someone else after it crossed your mind briefly while looking at the messy bed.
Later that night you asked him about it, trying hard not to sound like you were accusing him of something, but his excuse just made you feel worse, your suspicions growing.
“What do you mean?” He asked as he inspected his bed, unsure of what was wrong with it.
“Well, you know, I made the bed this morning before we left, remember?”
“Oh, uh- yeah, I came back to- to take a nap,” he stuttered, not even looking at you.
But it kept happening, a few more times.
Things started to change after that; he cancelled the plans you made for when he came back home, he suddenly was too busy every day and your presence might be a distraction for all the things he had to get done for the next race, he was so tired at night he didn’t have the energy for anything, and he even asked you to go back to sleep in your own apartment, claiming he just needed to sleep on his own to be comfortable, even though you were used to sleeping together.
Long story short, he was distant; he was never around anymore, and even when he was, you felt like you were missing him. He was just... different, and you were beating herself up wondering what had changed.
He, on the other hand, didn’t miss you, seeing he didn’t make an effort anymore and he could go days without answering a text or returning a call, and it was not because you took a long time to reply; you would always respond in a heartbeat if it was him. If it weren’t for all the times you visited him at his apartment when a news outlet brought up that he was back in Monaco to make sure he was doing okay, you wouldn’t talk to each other at all.
But today you were feeling hopeful. It was your anniversary, and you had a date night planned — a date he didn’t cancel, so you took the entire afternoon to do your nails, your hair, and pick a beautiful dress to wear, his favourite dress. Your makeup took a while, but you still managed to be ready on time for the wonderful night you had ahead, so you made your way to him, your palms sweating when you knocked on the door.
“Y/N? What are you doing here?” Was the first thing he asked, wiping her smile off of her face.
“I thought we would go out tonight,” you replied, looking down at your hands to hide your clear disappointment.
“Oh- I guess I forgot to tell you but I remembered I have an important meeting tomorrow morning, so I’m not gonna make it." The door was barely open, and he was standing where the crack was, blocking his apartment as he held the door with a strong grip.
“Okay,” your voice was so faint you barely heard it yourself. “Do you need anything? I could stay here for a couple of hours.”
“No, don’t worry about it. I think it’s better if you leave.”
Tears pricked your eyes, swallowing the small lump forming in your throat. “Why?”
“Well, I’m busy with a few things. You know, I have a really early day tomorrow, and you can’t really help me with a McLaren meeting, can you?”
You shook your head slowly “I guess I’m leaving then.”
The tears you had been holding started to fall as soon as you turned around; you could feel your mascara clumping on your eyelashes and forming black streaks down your cheeks, ruining the contour and highlight you applied in hopes of impressing your boyfriend. You ran back to your car and let it all out once you closed the door. You really thought things would be different tonight, but you were wrong.
You started driving to your best friend’s house, desperate to vent about how terrible your relationship was going since you had been keeping a secret from everyone; the last thing you needed was the media to get in the middle of this.
“Oh my god, Y/N. Are you okay?” Mia asked you when she saw the mascara tears.
You shook your head as you stepped inside, small whimpers leaving your lips as you tried to stop the crying.
“What happened?” She took your hand and guided you to the couch.
“Lando.”
“What about Lando?”
“I think he’s cheating on me." You had never said that out loud, and saying it broke your heart even more. “I wish I was crazy, but the signs... I know he is.”
“I’m not trying to defend him or anything, but what makes you think that?”
“Everything, Mia. He has been acting so... distant. Ever since-” You stopped yourself. You never told anyone your relationship with Lando wasn’t doing so well, making up excuses to cover his. You just wanted to hold on to everyone else’s idea of you two, thinking you were the perfect couple.
“What? Have you guys been fighting?”
You took a deep breath before saying, “Remember the last time I stayed over at his apartment?” She nodded in response, “Well, later that day I went back to surprise him with lunch, but he wasn’t there and the bed was a complete mess, and you know I always make the bed when I wake up. He said he went back to take a nap, but he was supposed to be with Carlos all morning, and it didn’t make sense he had time to come back, take a nap, and then leave again, so I asked Carlos, and they didn’t meet at all that day. Is that insane?”
"No, Y/N, of course not.” Mia didn’t know what to say; she wanted to comfort you but she didn’t know how. “And he’s been acting weird since then?”
You nodded, wiping your tears away. “Yeah, he’s been pushing me away since that day. Telling me he doesn’t have time because he’s so busy with the season, which I understand, but not even answering a couple of texts? And cancelling every date we had planned?”
“Is that what happened today? I thought it was your anniversary.”
“It is.” You were nibbling on your lip profusely, looking up so tears would stop falling. “I don’t know what I’m gonna do.”
“Have you told him how you feel?” You shook your head again; you hated confrontation, and you were hoping you didn’t have to do that. “I think you should go talk to him.”
“Right now?”
“If not now, then when? You say you’ve been feeling like something’s off for a while, but you haven’t said anything to him.”
“I don’t know Mia-”
“If he is cheating on you then you need to break up with him, you don’t deserve to be in that situation, and you deserve to know the truth.”
You inhaled as you considered what Mia just said. She was right, but to be completely honest, you weren’t ready yet. “I really want to know, but I can't.”
“Why not?”
“Because what if he is?” Tears started rolling down your face again, Mia hugging you tight as soon as it happened. “I love him, and... I just want things to go back to normal.”
“I know you do, but believe me, it’s better if you know.”
You stayed there for a while, but ultimately decided to go talk to him, but you needed to put yourself back together before confronting him. Mia helped you to wash your face and fix your hair, comforting you and offering to stay with you once the two of you were done talking. You accepted; you didn’t want to be alone, and Anne, your flatmate, had been going out of town a lot recently, so your apartment was empty, and you knew it’d be a long night.
Once you felt better and ready to talk to him, Mia drove you to his place as you repeated in your head everything you wanted to tell him. You knocked loudly and didn’t stop until he opened. He looked annoyed, and you stormed inside as soon as he opened the door.
“What are you doing?”
“We need to talk.”
“About what?”
You blinked at him twice. Did he not think you needed to talk? “About us, Lando. What’s going on?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Okay, now you were mad. “Lando, you have been ignoring me for days, and I understand if you’re busy, but it doesn’t explain you pushing me away at all times.”
“I’m sorry if you feel that way.”
There was a moment of silence, both of you staring at each other as you tried to remember the questions you were supposed to ask, but none of them seemed to make sense now that you were standing in front of him “That’s all you’re gonna say?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“How about you tell me exactly what’s going on?”
You were both raising your voices, but Lando especially. “I told you already, I’ve been busy with the season-”
“I could’ve stayed here with you or gone with you to races if that meant spending more time together, like we have done before.”
“But why would you want to do that?”
“To keep you company, maybe?”
“But all you do is stand around while I do my job.”
“Lando, do you know how many weeks I’ve spent away from home just so we can be together? And you don’t even care anymore, you didn’t even care to say thank you.”
“I never asked you to come,” he mumbled.
You scoffed before shaking your head. “I wanted to, you know I worry about you when you stress yourself out about a race, you tend to overwork yourself-”
“I. Never. Asked. You. To. Come." He interrupted you, his tone punctuated with each word. “I would’ve been fine without you, I don’t need you in my hair at all times." His eyes hardened, his mouth opening to speak again. “Don’t you have better things to do?”
“I just- I’m your girlfriend, I guess I thought you liked to be with me.”
“I do, but you don’t have to be so clingy all the time.”
You didn’t say anything, hoping you heard it wrong or that he’d apologise, but he didn't. “What?”
“You know, we do everything together and-”
“No, we used to do things together, not everything." You corrected him.
He took a deep breath, as if he was done dealing with you. “Right. Look, I’m tired, we can talk tomorrow.”
You nodded, holding back the tears as you walked towards the door. “Happy anniversary,” you said before slamming it closed and running back to Mia’s car.
Lando sat on his couch with his head between his hands for a moment. How could he forget? He took a deep breath as he got up, looking for a ribbon and a gift he bought for you who knows how long ago.
He made his way to Mia’s flat; he assumed you would be there, and your car parked outside confirmed his suspicions, so he knocked on the door a couple of times before saying, “Baby, I’m sorry. I was caught up in all the things I have to do before leaving, and I didn’t realise what day it was." But he got no response. “Y/N please, I know you’re here. Will you please talk to me?”
“Go away, Lando.” Mia was the one to yell, making Lando realise he would not be able to fix it, not tonight anyway.
“Okay, I’m leaving this here. I- I love you.”
You called in sick for your job the next day, your sore eyes and pounding headache being the only things you could think about. Well, that and Lando.
You were staring at the gift he bought for your one-year anniversary — what you were supposed to celebrate the day before. It was beautiful, and you couldn’t believe he remembered you mentioning it on one of your first dates ever, but it was the letter inside that broke your heart. It looked... unfinished, like he didn’t even care enough to give it a proper ending, so you were wondering how long ago he stopped working on it.
The days after that were rough, long nights of wondering what you could have possibly done wrong, but even then you didn’t talk to him. He tried to, a couple of times, but you needed a little bit of time.
A couple of weeks went by, and you found yourself alone at your apartment, catching up on the work you missed for calling in sick so many times.
It was your birthday, and Mia insisted a million times you go out and celebrate, clear your head, and forget about Lando once in for all, but somehow it felt wrong; you had made plans with Lando a few months back to bring your family to a race so they could finally meet him, but obviously that wasn’t happening anymore, so what was the point of celebrating? You just needed to focus and get things done anyway.
You were thankful that Mia had been for you through it all; you really were, but sometimes crying alone did more for you than having someone tell you ‘everything's gonna be okay.' You were tired of hearing that.
Hours later, you found yourself with a cup of coffee to finally catch up on the last project. It wasn’t really that much of a workload, and you didn’t need to stay up all night to do that, but you were going to anyway. Perhaps you just wanted to be productive, or maybe that was you trying to occupy your mind from the possibility of your boyfriend cheating on you.
You looked at the clock; it was 11:30 PM. You sighed, typing away whatever you were supposed to on your laptop, your eyes sore from staring at it for too long, when a text message interrupted you.
Unknown [Attachment: 1 photo]
Unknown: I heard they have been at it for a while.
That text message induced such a great shock on your tired, worn-out body, tears falling down your face as soon as you read it. You didn’t want to open it as you were sure of what this was about, but your curiosity got the best of you.
Tapping on the notification, you prepared yourself mentally to confirm your terrible suspicions. And they were confirmed.
Your vision was blurry from the tears, but you were able to see Lando standing next to his new Ferrari, and he was with someone else, except you couldn’t see who it was, the big jacket and a beanie protecting her identity. He was smiling down at her, eyes full of... love? Those green eyes you thought he reserved for you only, but clearly you were wrong. His big hands were around her waist as hers went around his neck, and his lips were stained with lipstick.
You broke down crying, curled up on your bed as you wore one of Lando’s hoodies that still smelt like him. You now knew what the truth was, but you didn’t want to accept it. What happened to you two? When did he stop loving you?
It was like your heart was ripped from your chest; all that time you spent together down the drain like it was nothing, like it all meant nothing to him.
You didn’t know for how long you cried the night before, but it was now 1 PM and you were just waking up, so you probably cried for hours. There was nothing left you could do to save your relationship, so you made up your mind to break up with him as soon as he came back from the American triple header.
Y/N: We need to talk, just let me know when you’re here.
The message was left unanswered, as usual. You rolled your eyes and put your phone down, returning to your video call with Mia.
“Do you know who that is?”
“No, sorry.”
You sighed as you sipped your hot coffee “What about the number? Do you know who sent the picture?”
“What’s the number? Maybe I can ask around to see if any of my friends know.”
You sent her the phone number, along with the picture of Lando and the other girl. “Thanks. Don’t show anyone that picture thought. I’m already embarrassed as it is.”
“Embarrassed? Y/N, he should be the embarrassed one, you didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Maybe I did-”
“No, stop doing that to yourself. We both know it’s not your fault.”
You nodded. “I can’t help it. I just don’t understand.”
“Understand what?”
“Was I not enough? Why did he need to find someone else?”
Mia hated to see you going through that, how you felt like you were not enough or that it all ended because of you, and she hated Lando for causing all of that. “I know it’s hard right now, but I promise you’ll understand that none of this is your fault. Y/N you’re amazing, and he’s an idiot for not realising.”
Talking to her made you feel better, but all those terrible emotions came back whenever you looked at the picture again, a million questions invading your mind. How long has he been doing this? Who is she? Does he still love you? What did you do wrong?
A couple of days later, Lando finally replied to your text.
Lando: Just got back. I’m in my apartment
Your heart sank at the notification; you didn’t want to talk to him; you didn’t want things to be over. There was still a part of you that hoped everything was just a misunderstanding, hoping he wasn’t cheating on you and she was just a friend. But deep down you knew the truth, and the possibility of it being a mix-up was down to zero, and after he made it clear that he didn’t want to be in a relationship with you anymore, you decided to fulfil his wishes.
It was a long drive to his home; it felt longer than usual, but maybe you were just dreading the conversation you knew was about to happen.
You took a deep breath before knocking on the door, Lando opening it almost right away.
"Hey,” he said faintly, worried he got caught.
“Hi.” You entered the apartment you once thought you would move into and looked around. You had been there a million times, and so many of those times were special little moments you shared together, but right now it felt like you were disconnected from the space. “How was the triple header?”
“Not great- I don’t know. It was messy, I guess." He tried to give you a smile but stopped himself when he noticed your stare full of fury. “What did you want to talk about?”
Seriously? “I’m breaking up with you." Your voice was weak, but you did not dare let a tear slip past your waterline; he didn’t deserve to see you cry.
“What?” The shock in his eyes looked so real that you almost believed him “Why?”
“Did you really just ask that?”
“So that’s it? We’re over?”
“Lando, come on, we’ve been over for a while." You stepped closer to him, pain and anger written all over your face as the tears struggled to stay on your eyes. “We didn’t even feel like a couple anymore. Lando, you forgot our anniversary, and that day you made it clear you wanted nothing to do with me. And to think I planned a beautiful night for us and bought you a great gift. Do you have any idea how stupid I felt?”
“I didn’t know you were feeling like that.”
“Of course not, when have you ever listened to me anyway?”
Lando rolled his eyes “Okay, I understand, but we don’t have to break up, I already explained what happened that day, I was busy and completely lost track of time.”
“And I guess she doesn’t have anything to do with this?” You showed him the picture, his demeanour changing immediately.
“Y/N, I- I’m sorry, baby, I’m so sorry." His eyes and his voice softened as he tried to reach for you, but you turned around and wiped the tears that managed to leave your eyes, a million questions flooding your mind again.
“So it’s true." You were just confirming to yourself what you already knew. Anger and pain washed over your body. Why her? Why her when you’ve been nothing but perfect to the man you loved the most?
“Baby, I can explain.”
You turned around to face him again “Who is she?” He shook his head, his eyes begging you not to make him say it while yours watered, “Who is she?” You repeated.
“You don’t wanna know.”
“Why? Cause I might find out you’re cheating?”
A few tears started to roll down his face, his hands desperate to hold yours. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Cause you’re gonna hate me even more." You stared at him, even more tears falling as you tried to think who the girl could be.
“Did you two- did you sleep with her?” His nod was barely perceptible; if you didn’t already know the answer, you would’ve missed it. Maybe he was right; maybe it’d be better if you didn’t know.
“I’m sorry, baby, I’m so sorry.”
“Stop it.”
“I know I fucked up, but she doesn’t mean anything to me, I swear.”
“Shut up, Lando. I just… I don’t understand.”
“Let me explain-”
“And I don’t care how many times you apologise, how do you expect me to forgive you?” You took a couple of steps back, trying to figure out what caused him to do such a thing. “Even if we stayed together and got married and started a family, how can I ever look at you and not think about that?”
"Baby, I want all of that, I want the rest of my life with you, like we talked.”
“That was before you ruined everything.”
“I know what i did is wrong-”
“Wrong?”
“But we can work this out.”
“What? No, Lando, stop.”
“Just give me another chance, please.”
“Is that why you've been so distant, huh? Was she here on our anniversary?” Lando didn’t say anything, and the flashes from Lnado’s knuckles turning white from holding the door closed that night creeped your mind. Your heart ached so much that every time you breathed deeply, it was scorching you to the core “How could you do that?”
“I shouldn’t have done that, I’m sorry.”
“Stop apologising.”
“You know I didn’t mean it.”
“Just stop… god.”
“Y/N just hear me out, I swear it only happened once.”
“Are you fucking kidding me? I know that’s not true. Do you know how many times I came to an unmade bed? And how many excuses you made?” He stayed silent. “I don’t care how many times it happened, you still did it and nothing is gonna change that.”
“I know.”
“You’ve been hurt before, right? What if I was the one cheating? Would you just forget it ever happened and come back to me?” Once again, he didn’t say anything. “No. Of course you wouldn’t. Lando, how could I ever forget what you did? Or everything you said to me when we were fighting, and the fact that you lied and- and cheated-”
“But you came all the way here.”
“Because I care, and you... you never cared, you never tried-”
“I care, I care so much. Baby, please, you have to believe me." He tried to reach out to you, but you pushed his hand away.
"No, you don’t, and if I’m here, it’s because I know after this we’ll never see each other again, we’ll never talk again and this just has to end.”
“But I don’t want it to end.”
“Well, you ended it when you cheated on me.”
He stared at you for a moment before continuing. “But… I want you, she didn’t mean anything to me." He approached you again, his hope growing a little when you didn’t stop him. He put a strand of hair behind your ear, softly brushing your cheek. “I know I fucked up but I can’t go on without you, I just can't.”
“Well you have, countless times while I was left in the dark wondering if I had done something wrong, crying myself to sleep when I couldn’t get a hold of you, Lando, and in the meantime you were with her.”
“I’m sorry-”
“And you have the nerve to say all that shit to me, acting like I was suffocating you when in reality I was trying to save us!” You pushed him away.
“I’m so sorry.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Y/N, I’m sorry, please let’s talk about it.”
“Fine, let’s talk about it. Was she worth it?” He shook his head, ready to leave his pride behind as he kneeled in front of you and grabbed one of your hands. “What are you doing? Stop.”
“I promise it was an accident, it won’t happen again.”
“An accident? Lando, are you hearing yourself right now?”
“Please, don’t let me go." The grip on your hand tightened, pulling you closer to him.
“Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“No. I don’t want anyone else, I want you, Y/N”
“You don’t have to worry about me anymore.”
“But everything I said... I meant it, I love you Y/N and every second we’ve been together has meant everything to me. Baby, you have to understand.”
“Liar.”
“I’m not lying, you know I’m not." You pushed his hand away, rolling your eyes when another tear rolled down his face. “I know I don’t deserve it but please... just one more chance and I can fix this.”
“Give you a chance? I gave you a chance when I believed your excuses, when I forgave you for cancelling every date we had planned, when I tried to understand why you locked me out, and when I almost forgave you for forgetting our anniversary, I gave you so many fucking chances!”
“But I swear it wasn’t like that, she meant nothing.”
“You’re unbelievable… god, what are you saying?”
“Just think about how great we are together,” he said, trying to hold your torso, but once again you stopped him.
“Lando, stop that.”
“We’re a great team, aren’t we? We understand each other so well, we know each other better than anyone else, god, I’ll do anything, I swear.”
“No, it’s not gonna work.”
“Yes it will, and I’ll make sure of that.”
“No.” You were having a hard time blocking out how much love you still had for him, but you weren’t forgiving him; there was no way.
“I swear I don’t want anyone else." He held your hands and started kissing them, his lips giving you a sense of home that you missed. "Y/N, please, I love you.”
You nodded weakly as you started crying again.
“You know I love you and I would do anything for you." He continued kissing you, a few tears falling on your hands. “Do you still love me?”
“I love you... Lan-” You released one of your hands from his grip, squeezing your eyes shut and covering your face.
“See? It will work, we will make it work." You shook your head; you were feeling stupid for almost falling for that. "Baby, look at me, it’s going to be okay, I promise.”
A moment of silence fell into the room as you collected your thoughts again, and he just looked at you hopeful that he could get you back. “Who is she?” You dared to repeat the question as you looked at him again.
He didn’t say anything for a few seconds, his voice barely above a whisper when he finally answered. "Annie.”
Annie, your flatmate Annie. She had never met Lando before you, and she wasn’t interested in who he was when you first told her you started dating him, so you were the reason they knew each other for all those times he picked you up from your place, and even then you never considered them to be friends; they barely exchanged any words when they ran into each other. You felt betrayed on a whole new level, not only by Lando but by her too. You had lived with her for so long, literally since the day you moved to Monaco, so you thought of her as one of your closest friends; how could she do that? And these past weeks, when she had been mourning your relationship with Lando, she was there the whole time, and she knew exactly what was happening.
“How long?”
You were getting annoyed at how long it was taking him to answer your simple questions. “The day we went to meet my parents... I drove to your apartment to pick you up, but you weren’t there yet.”
“So you did it at my place?” It wasn’t really a question, and you felt even more disgusted at the thought of them in your own home.
“It was one moment of weakness.”
“One moment of weakness?” He nodded, his hands now holding on to your hips. “But it didn't stop there, did it?”
“I’m sorry.”
You swiped the tears away as you prepared to ask the question you had been asking yourself for weeks. “What does she give you that I can't?”
Lando shook his head quickly. “Nothing, you’re everything I could ever ask for.”
“Then why did you do that?”
He didn’t have an answer; he didn’t really know how it happened or why it kept going, but he couldn’t deny he was enjoying it before he got caught. “I don’t know." He whispered.
“Do you love her?”
“No, of course not. I love you." He was holding you tighter, convinced that if he held you long enough, you would want to stay.
“Oh my god, I’m so stupid.”
“You know it didn’t mean anything, it was a mistake-”
“Get your hands off me, I’m leaving,” you said as you tried to free yourself.
“Baby, please don’t leave, you have to hear me out.”
“Lando, let go. I don’t wanna be here." Your words struggled to come out from how much you were crying.
“Please don’t, I don’t wanna let you go." He looked up at you, his eyes begging for forgiveness. “Let’s just talk about it, yeah? Let me explain.”
“Save it, Lando, it’s over.”
“I’m sorry, I won’t do it again. This is obviously my fault, so I’ll do whatever it takes to get you to stay, just please, one more chance is all I’m asking for.” You finally freed yourself, and your only goal was to go back to your apartment and cry all your pain away. You turned around and headed to the door; his hand tried to come to stop you, but you flinched away. You couldn’t bear to hear another word from him. "Baby, please, I love you.”
You turned around to face him one last time, spotting Lando still on his knees in the middle of his living room. “So you’ve said, but how can you hurt someone you claim to love so much?” He was about to say something, but you didn’t wanna hear it. “There’s nothing you can do to get me to stay, you threw everything away.”
“I know, my love, but-”
“I’m gonna leave and you’re gonna stay here, just… leave me alone, I don’t ever wanna see you again.”
You exited the room, leaving Lando alone and a complete mess. He regretted what he did, and he wanted to think that if you would just give him a chance to explain himself, you’d forgive him. But he knew that would never be the case and that his mistake was bigger than any apology; you were right to leave him.
He stared at the door for too long, taking in every emotion he was feeling: remorse, anger, pain, agony... he just felt like life was being sucked out of his body because he ruined the most important part of it, and there’s no one to blame but himself.
#lando norris#ln4#lando norris x reader#lando norris fanfic#lando norris imagine#lando norris x you#lando norris angst#lando norris x y/n#lando norris oneshot#lando norris smut#lando norris one shot#ln4 fluff#ln4 fic#ln4 imagine#giannaln4 writes
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Expert agencies and elected legislatures
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/21/policy-based-evidence/#decisions-decisions
Since Trump hijacked the Supreme Court, his backers have achieved many of their policy priorities: legalizing bribery, formalizing forced birth, and – with the Loper Bright case, neutering the expert agencies that regulate business:
https://jacobin.com/2024/07/scotus-decisions-chevron-immunity-loper
What the Supreme Court began, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are now poised to finish, through the "Department of Government Efficiency," a fake agency whose acronym ("DOGE") continues Musk's long-running cryptocurrency memecoin pump-and-dump. The new department is absurd – imagine a department devoted to "efficiency" with two co-equal leaders who are both famously incapable of getting along with anyone – but that doesn't make it any less dangerous.
Expert agencies are often all that stands between us and extreme misadventure, even death. The modern world is full of modern questions, the kinds of questions that require a high degree of expert knowledge to answer, but also the kinds of questions whose answers you'd better get right.
You're not stupid, nor are you foolish. You could go and learn everything you need to know to evaluate the firmware on your antilock brakes and decide whether to trust them. You could figure out how to assess the Common Core curriculum for pedagogical soundness. You could learn the material science needed to evaluate the soundness of the joists that hold the roof up over your head. You could acquire the biology and chemistry chops to decide whether you want to trust produce that's been treated with Monsanto's Roundup pesticides. You could do the same for cell biology, virology, and epidemiology and decide whether to wear a mask and/or get an MRNA vaccine and/or buy a HEPA filter.
You could do any of these. You might even be able to do two or three of them. But you can't do all of them, and that list is just a small slice of all the highly technical questions that stand between you and misery or an early grave. Practically speaking, you aren't going to develop your own robust meatpacking hygiene standards, nor your own water treatment program, nor your own Boeing 737 MAX inspection protocol.
Markets don't solve this either. If they did, we wouldn't have to worry about chunks of Boeing jets falling on our heads. The reason we have agencies like the FDA (and enabling legislation like the Pure Food and Drug Act) is that markets failed to keep people from being murdered by profit-seeking snake-oil salesmen and radium suppository peddlers.
These vital questions need to be answered by experts, but that's easier said than done. After all, experts disagree about this stuff. Shortcuts for evaluating these disagreements ("distrust any expert whose employer has a stake in a technical question") are crude and often lead you astray. If you dismiss any expert employed by a firm that wants to bring a new product to market, you will lose out on the expertise of people who are so legitimately excited about the potential improvements of an idea that they quit their jobs and go to work for whomever has the best chance of realizing a product based on it. Sure, that doctor who works for a company with a new cancer cure might just be shilling for a big bonus – but maybe they joined the company because they have an informed, truthful belief that the new drug might really cure cancer.
What's more, the scientific method itself speaks against the idea of there being one, permanent answer to any big question. The method is designed as a process of continual refinement, where new evidence is continuously brought forward and evaluated, and where cherished ideas that are invalidated by new evidence are discarded and replaced with new ideas.
So how are we to survive and thrive in a world of questions we ourselves can't answer, that experts disagree about, and whose answers are only ever provisional?
The scientific method has an answer for this, too: refereed, adversarial peer review. The editors of major journals act as umpires in disputes among experts, exercising their editorial discernment to decide which questions are sufficiently in flux as to warrant taking up, then asking parties who disagree with a novel idea to do their damndest to punch holes in it. This process is by no means perfect, but, like democracy, it's the worst form of knowledge creation except for all others which have been tried.
Expert regulators bring this method to governance. They seek comment on technical matters of public concern, propose regulations based on them, invite all parties to comment on these regulations, weigh the evidence, and then pass a rule. This doesn't always get it right, but when it does work, your medicine doesn't poison you, the bridge doesn't collapse as you drive over it, and your airplane doesn't fall out of the sky.
Expert regulators work with legislators to provide an empirical basis for turning political choices into empirically grounded policies. Think of all the times you've heard about how the gerontocracy that dominates the House and the Senate is incapable of making good internet policy because "they're out of touch and don't understand technology." Even if this is true (and sometimes it is, as when Sen Ted Stevens ranted about the internet being "a series of tubes," not "a dump truck"), that doesn't mean that Congress can't make good internet policy.
After all, most Americans can safely drink their tap water, a novelty in human civilization, whose history amounts to short periods of thriving shattered at regular intervals by water-borne plagues. The fact that most of us can safely drink our water, but people who live in Flint (or remote indigenous reservations, or Louisiana's Cancer Alley) can't tells you that these neighbors of ours are being deliberately poisoned, as we know precisely how not to poison them.
How did we (most of us) get to the point where we can drink the water without shitting our guts out? It wasn't because we elected a bunch of water scientists! I don't know the precise number of microbiologists and water experts who've been elected to either house, but it's very small, and their contribution to good sanitation policy is negligible.
We got there by delegating these decisions to expert agencies. Congress formulates a political policy ("make the water safe") and the expert agency turns that policy into a technical program of regulation and enforcement, and your children live to drink another glass of water tomorrow.
Musk and Ramaswamy have set out to destroy this process. In their Wall Street Journal editorial, they explain that expert regulation is "undemocratic" because experts aren't elected:
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/musk-and-ramaswamy-the-doge-plan-to-reform-government-supreme-court-guidance-end-executive-power-grab-fa51c020
They've vowed to remove "thousands" of regulations, and to fire swathes of federal employees who are in charge of enforcing whatever remains:
https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/20/24301975/elon-musk-vivek-ramaswamy-doge-plan
And all this is meant to take place on an accelerated timeline, between now and July 4, 2026 – a timeline that precludes any meaningful assessment of the likely consequences of abolishing the regulations they'll get rid of.
"Chesterton's Fence" – a thought experiment from the novelist GK Chesterton – is instructive here:
There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.
A regulation that works might well produce no visible sign that it's working. If your water purification system works, everything is fine. It's only when you get rid of the sanitation system that you discover why it was there in the first place, a realization that might well arrive as you expire in a slick of watery stool with a rectum so prolapsed the survivors can use it as a handle when they drag your corpse to the mass burial pits.
When Musk and Ramaswamy decry the influence of "unelected bureaucrats" on your life as "undemocratic," they sound reasonable. If unelected bureaucrats were permitted to set policy without democratic instruction or oversight, that would be autocracy.
Indeed, it would resemble life on the Tesla factory floor: that most autocratic of institutions, where you are at the mercy of the unelected and unqualified CEO of Tesla, who holds the purely ceremonial title of "Chief Engineer" and who paid the company's true founders to falsely describe him as its founder.
But that's not how it works! At its best, expert regulations turns political choices in to policy that reflects the will of democratically accountable, elected representatives. Sometimes this fails, and when it does, the answer is to fix the system – not abolish it.
I have a favorite example of this politics/empiricism fusion. It comes from the UK, where, in 2008, the eminent psychopharmacologist David Nutt was appointed as the "drug czar" to the government. Parliament had determined to overhaul its system of drug classification, and they wanted expert advice:
https://locusmag.com/2021/05/cory-doctorow-qualia/
To provide this advice, Nutt convened a panel of drug experts from different disciplines and asked them to rate each drug in question on how dangerous it was for its user; for its user's family; and for broader society. These rankings were averaged, and then a statistical model was used to determine which drugs were always very dangerous, no matter which group's safety you prioritized, and which drugs were never very dangerous, no matter which group you prioritized.
Empirically, the "always dangerous" drugs should be in the most restricted category. The "never very dangerous" drugs should be at the other end of the scale. Parliament had asked how to rank drugs by their danger, and for these categories, there were clear, factual answers to Parliament's question.
But there were many drugs that didn't always belong in either category: drugs whose danger score changed dramatically based on whether you were more concerned about individual harms, familial harms, or societal harms. This prioritization has no empirical basis: it's a purely political question.
So Nutt and his panel said to Parliament, "Tell us which of these priorities matter the most to you, and we will tell you where these changeable drugs belong in your schedule of restricted substances." In other words, politicians make political determinations, and then experts turn those choices into empirically supported policies.
This is how policy by "unelected bureaucrats" can still be "democratic."
But the Nutt story doesn't end there. Nutt butted heads with politicians, who kept insisting that he retract factual, evidence-supported statements (like "alcohol is more harmful than cannabis"). Nutt refused to do so. It wasn't that he was telling politicians which decisions to make, but he took it as his duty to point out when those decisions did not reflect the policies they were said to be in support of. Eventually, Nutt was fired for his commitment to empirical truth. The UK press dubbed this "The Nutt Sack Affair" and you can read all about it in Nutt's superb book Drugs Without the Hot Air, an indispensable primer on the drug war and its many harms:
https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/drugs-without-the-hot-air-9780857844989/
Congress can't make these decisions. We don't elect enough water experts, virologists, geologists, oncology researchers, structural engineers, aerospace safety experts, pedagogists, gerontoloists, physicists and other experts for Congress to turn its political choices into policy. Mostly, we elect lawyers. Lawyers can do many things, but if you ask a lawyer to tell you how to make your drinking water safe, you will likely die a horrible death.
That's the point. The idea that we should just trust the market to figure this out, or that all regulation should be expressly written into law, is just a way of saying, "you will likely die a horrible death."
Trump – and his hatchet men Musk and Ramaswamy – are not setting out to create evidence-based policy. They are pursuing policy-based evidence, firing everyone capable of telling them how to turn the values espouse (prosperity and safety for all Americans) into policy.
They dress this up in the language of democracy, but the destruction of the expert agencies that turn the political will of our representatives into our daily lives is anything but democratic. It's a prelude to transforming the nation into a land of epistemological chaos, where you never know what's coming out of your faucet.
#pluralistic#politics#political science#department of government efficiency#loper bright#chevron deference#david nutt#drugs#regulation#democracy#democratic accountability#ukpoli#nutt sack affair#war on drugs#war on some drugs
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S o M e a n !
You're gonna give me a cardiac arrest
Warnings: 18+ minors and ageless blogs dni, pure smut, cowgirl, slight exhibitionism, spitting, teasing, edging, overstimulation, nipple play, creampie, unprotected sex, cum play, cum eating, face slapping, sub!choso, not proofread
“Ngh, not so fast!”
Choso’s laid out all pretty for you. His hair’s ruffled and unravelling out of his ponytails, black shirt ridden all the way to his chin, and you had long thrown away his pants. There are faint stains of lipstick, your lipstick, on his mouth, drawing your attention to his plump lips, stretching into an O as he throws his head back.
“Cho,” you giggle, fingernails dragging down his torso, “you need to stop wriggling around, baby.”
He hiccups, breathing hard and fast whilst he drowns in pleasure. You can tell your boyfriend’s trying his very bestest to stay in the moment, to not lose himself to the growing wave of euphoria within arm’s reach, and it only makes you wetter.
You lift your hips all the way, until just his tip’s inside. Waiting and waiting until he opens his eyes in confusion, and as soon as his teary gaze meet yours, you slam down.
“FUCK!”
His abs clench and you feel the hard ridges below your palm. His skin’s so perfect and you can’t help leaning down to press your front to his just so you can lick a stripe up his neck. Choso shivers. Oh and his eyes ares shutting in focus when you flick both of his nipples. He hates when you do that. They’re too sensitive and you never hesitate to use them against him, to make him let out those unmanly mewls.
He’s whining and whimpering, positively drunk on the feel of you squeezing and pulsing around his heavy cock. “Fuckfuckfuckfuck, gonna cum, please!”
His room’s filled with the filthy sounds of your rough fucking. Always so rough, so mean and cruel.
Slapping skin, moans and groans, rickety bed, slamming headboard, and underneath it all, is a noise that he’s trying hard to ignore, lest he bursts his load into you before you even cum. Like last time. And the time before that. God, it happened way too often, and he was always so embarrassed, but you would only give him that sweet smile, and climb all the way up his body, hovering until he begged for a taste, to make it up to, to make you forget.
When you swivel your hips around, his cock head presses against that spongy spot inside of you that makes you see stars. You grab his hands that are clawing at your hips, torn between slowing you down and holding you steady, and you bring them up to cup your tits. Instinctively, he’s groping and pinching and loving the weight of them in his palms. The boy’s obsessed with your tits, could suck at them for hours, had even cum in his pants from the first time you let him cop a feel, and he can’t fall asleep unless he’s buried between them.
“So pretty -ngh- so fucking pretty. You s-smell really good, really really good. Oh, god…..Don’t stop!” He’s making shallow thrusts upwards like his hips had a mind of their own, like he wants to bury himself inside you. And well, of course he does, you just feel so good, so warm, so wet.
He’s close, could feel the tell-tale signs of his orgasm rising and rising until…
You pause.
His eyes dart to you in a panic and you coo.
So adorable.
“My friend’s calling me, Cho.”
They are?
He didn’t notice the phone ringing, and when you stretch over his body to reach the nightstand, he’s confused. But he continues to grope your tits, sucking any area of skin he can reach before you’re leaning back to answer the call. Choso has no idea what’s happening, but he doesn’t question you. Maybe it’s a really important call.
“Oh, hey! No, I’m not busy.” His brows furrow and you can’t resist swiping a thumb across his pout. “Yeah, tell me all about your date.”
‘But you were both feeling good, why do you have to answer the call?’ Is what he wants to say but there’s a glint in your eyes that holds him back. Choso gulps.
And then you’re moving your hips again, slowly, just in circles. You’re grinding down on him, lids fluttering shut at the feel of the coarse hairs at his based rubbing just right against your clit. The phone is pressed to your ear and through the sheer power of being a maneater, you’re holding back your moans. This isn’t about you, not right now.
Not until you can make him squirt, until he’s overstimulated and he doesn’t even know what day it is, or what his name is.
“He didn’t hold the door open for you? That’s terrible!” The way you say it, with an indignant tone, makes Choso glad he always opens the door. And you know he’s a good boy, always has been, so you lean forward again, pulling down his bottom lip with your thumb and he breathes hard. He loves when you do this.
You spit in his mouth and he’s gulping it down like a man in a desert. His cock throbs inside of you and in a flash, like a switch has been turned on, his arms are wrapping around your waist and holding your head down, and he’s kissing you. It’s messy, and he’s sucking on your tongue and nipping your lips. Oh, god, it’s pure heaven to feel the weight of you on him, to feel your nipples cutting into his, and the smoothness of your body so easily accessible. His grip is tight and you can hear your friend calling your name.
Muting your phone, you pull away and there’s a resounding -SMACK!- echoing through the room. You slapped him. Not hard, could never be too hard, but it’s making his bottom lip quiver as if it had been. You glare a warning at him and he nods, hands loosening and holding your hips instead.
Continuing the conversation with your friend, you start circling your hips again, and he rubs his thumbs over your hip bone as an apology, willing warmth into your skin.
Choso doesn’t want to make you mad and it’s killing him that he disappointed you, that he couldn’t keep his urges in check. He’s been bad and he wouldn’t be surprised if you left him, but you don’t, and he’s pouting again.
You’re so forgiving, so kind, so nice.
He doesn’t deserve you.
You know that’s bullshit. If anything, you don’t deserve him. He’s so pliant, always just so happy to be there, to be needed by you, to make you happy any way he can. You know he’d do anything for you. Aside from his amazing dick, you love that most about him.
Enough teasing, you decide.
“Yeah, just do your laundry, I’ll wait,” you tell your friend.
Setting the phone down right next to Choso’s head, you ignore the wide-eyed panicked look he gives you.
Okay, maybe just a little bit more.
“Cho,” your voice is like saccharine music, so breathy and light and his heart jumps at the way you elongate his name, “you’re going to have to be quiet, okay?”
He nods furiously.
And then you’re bouncing on his thighs like there’s no tomorrow, and he changes his mind; you aren’t forgiving, kind or nice at all. You’re very mean, because how can you possibly expect him to hold back the moans building in his chest when you’re riding him so good, so fast, and clamping down until he feels suffocated.
It’s all too much so soon and he’s biting his bottom lip, fingers bruising as he clutches your hips and then your tits and back to your hips. He doesn’t know what to do except take it. So he does, he accept the pummelling of your squelching pussy, entranced by the white ring forming at the base of his cock, and doesn’t care that his orgasm is cresting again.
If he cums too fast, it’s your fault.
“Baby, -ngh- please, I can’t,” he mutters. He doesn’t know where to look either, he’s going lightheaded from the frantic darting of his eyes from where you’re both connected to your bouncing tits and your scrunched up face. “I wanna -fuck- cum, wanna cum inside, please? Can I? Can I?”
Choso’s muttering your name like a prayer, punctuating it with grunts every time you slam back down a little too hard or when his tip brushes your cervix like a kiss. “Don’t wanna be quiet, y/n, please.”
He doesn’t know how long it’s been, maybe hours, maybe seconds, but all he does know is that he needs to cum inside, desperately needs to. He thinks he might just die if he doesn’t.
“Yeah, go ahead, Cho.”
That’s all he needs.
“Fuckfuckfuck, so good so good. I love you, love you, love you…”
Warm liquid pulses through you, painting your insides white, and he drags you over with him. His cum burns like a brand, reaching your very depths, and you swear you feel it fill your heart. You’re spasming, falling forward and moaning unashamedly into his neck as he clutches you to him. You both shake, whining, goosebumps rising along your skin.
Choso’s loud. He’s thanking you again and again. And you continue to milk him, pumping your hips absentmindedly whilst you come down. But it’s too much for your boyfriend and his cock can’t take anymore, it’s throbbing inside of you as if spurting blanks, and he’s losing his mind.
“No! N-no more, please, baby. I can’t. It’s -ngh!- too much.”
You stop, huffing a laugh. Peppering kisses against his chin, you wait for him to catch his breath, watching his eyelashes flutter, waiting for that furrowing of his brows to soften and for his hands to stop bruising your skin. He melts like putty underneath you and a smile grows on his lips.
He feels like he just went to heaven and back.
But then he tenses.
“Your friend!”
And you giggle, climbing up to fill his gaping mouth with your tit and he sucks without complaint. “Relax, Cho Cho. I ended the call ages ago.”
Oh, you are mean. So very very mean.
His tongue flicks your nipple, savouring the salt on your skin as he tries to engulf as much of your breast into his mouth. But you also tastes so good.
Choso whimpers in protest when you pull away and just as quickly quiets down when you climb higher until your pussy is right in front of him, and he’s watching your puckering hole squeeze out his cum onto his face. He licks it up and his eyes roll back, flaccid cock twitching, at the taste of you and him.
You don’t sit down though, instead you just slide a finger inside, twisting, scraping his cum out for him to drink. You never let him have it easy, always have to make him work for it.
And that’s just fine with Choso, because he’s happy to have you in anyway you’ll let him.
Someone has to be the nice to your evil, after all.
#jjk x reader#jjk smut#jjk choso#jjk x you#jjk drabble#jjk oneshot#choso x reader#choso smut#choso x you#choso drabble#choso oneshot#choso fluff
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This...this right here is the consequence of "oh, you need a degree to get a good job." Which is closely related to "You have to figure out what to do to get an A".
Becuase we have managed to drive all the curiosity out of education. There's no room anymore for someone who is genuinely interested in learning. Because we've commercialized education to the point where is simply another goddamned checkbox to be ticked off on the way to some (usually mythical) financial payoff at the end. It's the same thing that drove the Varsity Blues scandal...if you don't get into the 'right' schools, or the 'right' major, your future is toast.
As teacher, I see it in my classrooms. Nobody is actually curious anymore, with very few exceptions. They don't actually care about learning anything, they just want to know how to get an A (or a D, depending on their goals) and get out of my class and go on to the next one.
And this line: "why are you paying thousands of dollars to go to school and learn if you're just going to plug everything into a computer whenever you're asked to think??" I'll tell you why.
Because God forbid you're wrong.
Much easier to have someone, or something tell you the correct answer. Because being wrong is unaceptable, because there's this perception that people don't have permission to make mistakes, to learn from them. And look, I don't like being wrong either, I am a recovering perfectionist, bering wrong is deeply uncomfortable to me. But I learned how to learn from it. But there doesn't seem to be room for it in today's world. God forbid you stand out from the herd, God forbid you don't conform...people don't take risks.
There's so much more here, too, especially in regards the current streak of anti-intellectuallism, (which I actually blame more than anything else for Trump and all his ilk)...that really beats academics out of people. They're not interested in learning the 'whys' about anything. They don't care, because "why" doesn't pay bill. "Why" also leads to uncomfortable truths about a lot of things, and that's not the 'in' thing right now.
But yeah, we've lost the ability or desire to be curious about anything. All anyone cares about is being 'right'.
I just started grad school this fall after a few years away from school and man I did not realize how dire the AI/LLM situation is in universities now. In the past few weeks:
I chatted with a classmate about how it was going to be a tight timeline on a project for a programming class. He responded "Yeah, at least if we run short on time, we can just ask chatGPT to finish it for us"
One of my professors pulled up chatGPT on the screen to show us how it can sometimes do our homework problems for us and showed how she thanks it after asking it questions "in case it takes over some day."
I asked one of my TAs in a math class to explain how a piece of code he had written worked in an assignment. He looked at it for about 15 seconds then went "I don't know, ask chatGPT"
A student in my math group insisted he was right on an answer to a problem. When I asked where he got that info, he sent me a screenshot of Google gemini giving just blatantly wrong info. He still insisted he was right when I pointed this out and refused to click into any of the actual web pages.
A different student in my math class told me he pays $20 per month for the "computational" version of chatGPT, which he uses for all of his classes and PhD research. The computational version is worth it, he says, because it is wrong "less often". He uses chatGPT for all his homework and can't figure out why he's struggling on exams.
There's a lot more, but it's really making me feel crazy. Even if it was right 100% of the time, why are you paying thousands of dollars to go to school and learn if you're just going to plug everything into a computer whenever you're asked to think??
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We need drew when rustyns born, like labor/delivery, I think he’s the most supportive partner 😭😭
here are more rustyn for ya.
𝐫𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐲𝐧 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐲
pairing: drew starkey x fem!reader
summary: your due day has finally come for you and drew to meet your little one. as labor unfolds, drew proves to be the most supportive partner, balancing his nerves with humor, tenderness, and unwavering love.
warning(s): english is not my native language. mentions of childbirth, medical procedures, mild pain, fluff, humour, use of y/n.
au: like, reblog and feedback are much appreciated. taglist | tagging: @rafeyslamb @rubixgsworld @bisexualcvnt @tracymbcm @maybankslover @anamiad00msday @stuffyownswrld @httpsdrewstarkey @mileyraes @enjoymyloves @akobx @noobmazter69 @victwrvale @xoxohoneymoongirl @xoxoblogsblog @wearemadeofstardust0 @percysley @littlelamy
“Drew,” you whispered, reaching over to nudge your husband’s shoulder.
He remained motionless, his breathing slow and even. Another contraction gripped you, and you couldn’t stifle a soft groan. With more urgency this time, you called his name again.
“Drew… babe”
This time, he stirred. His brow furrowed before his blue eyes slowly blinked open.
“Hmm? What’s wrong?” he mumbled, still half-asleep.
“I think my water just broke,” you said softly, offering a small, nervous smile.
The words took a moment to register, but when they did, Drew bolted upright.
“What?!” His voice was shock and excitement.
“Oh my god, it’s happening! Are you okay? How are you feeling? Is it bad? What do I do?” He scrambled out of bed, nearly tripping over the duvet in his rush.
You couldn’t help but laugh at his frantic reaction, though it was cut short by another contraction.
“I’m okay, but we should probably get to the hospital soon. Can you calm down, though? I don’t need two emergencies tonight.”
“Right, right,” he said, running a hand through his messy hair.
He grabbed the hospital bag you’d packed weeks ago, holding it like it was the most precious cargo.
“Let’s go!”
“Wait,” you said, stopping him. “I need to change my pants first.”
“Oh. Right.” He was back at your side in an instant, helping you up with his hands steady on your arms.
His gaze was full of concern as he scanned your face.
“Are you sure you’re okay? Does it hurt a lot?”
“The contractions are getting closer, but they’re manageable,” you replied, leaning into him as he helped you change.
“But yeah, we really need to go now.”
At the hospital, Drew took charge, answering questions from the nurse about how far you are, are you on any special medication and filling out the paperwork as you were wheeled into your room.
Once you were settled, Drew pulled a chair next to your bed, gripping your hand tightly.
“How are you feeling now?” he asked, his voice soft yet anxious.
“I’m okay for now,” you said, though the contractions were growing stronger and more frequent.
“I didn’t realize how many needles they’d stick in me during all this.”
Drew gave a small laugh, leaning in to press a kiss to your forehead.
“You’re handling it like a champ. I don’t think I’d survive five minutes of this.”
Another contraction hit, and you gripped his hand tightly, your breathing uneven. Drew immediately shifted closer, his voice calm and steady.
“Breathe, Y/N. In and out, baby. You’ve got this.”
Hours and hours has passed, and Drew never left your side. He held your hand through every contraction, rubbed your back when the pain became overwhelming, and even tried to make you laugh to keep your spirits up. When you hit the ten-hour mark, Drew suddenly pulled out the camcorder from his sister Brooke, who had brought it to document the big day.
“What are you doing?” you asked, raising an eyebrow despite your exhaustion.
“Making a video for Rustyn,” he said, grinning. “Something for him to watch when he’s older.”
He turned the camera to himself first, his smile lighting up the room.
“Hey, Rustyn. It’s your dad. It’s 6 a.m., and you’re really taking your time, buddy. But that’s okay, we’re waiting patiently. Well, your mom’s doing all the work.”
Turning the camera toward you, he continued,
“And here’s your mom. Look at her, look how incredible she is. The strongest, most beautiful woman I’ve ever known. You better treat her like a queen when you grow up, okay?”
Despite the pain, you laughed softly. “Drew, stop making me laugh, it hurts!”
He chuckled, then turned the camera toward Brooke, who was pacing in the corner.
“And here’s your Aunt Brooke, who’s been on the edge of her seat all night.”
“Rustyn, ignore your dad,” Brooke said, rolling her eyes. “I’m much cooler than he is, and I can’t wait to spoil you.”
When the doctor finally announced it was time to push, Drew’s nerves hit an all-time high. He squeezed your hand tightly, his other hand brushing the sweat-dampened hair from your face.
“You’ve got this, Y/N,” he said, his voice shaking slightly but full of love. “I’m so proud of you.”
The first push was overwhelming, and you let out a cry of frustration.
“I can’t do this,” you said, tears streaming down your face. “Drew, I can’t.”
“Yes, you can,” he said firmly, his eyes locking with yours.
“You’re the strongest person I know. Just one push at a time, baby. I’m right here.”
With each push, he offered constant encouragement.
“That’s it, Y/N. You’re doing amazing. Our boy’s almost here. I love you so much.”
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, a loud cry filled the room. Tears immediately welled up in Drew’s eyes as the doctor placed your baby boy on your chest.
Drew was trembling as he leaned over, his eyes fixed on the tiny baby in your arms.
“Oh my god,” he whispered, his voice thick with emotion. “Y/N, he’s perfect.”
You stared down at Rustyn, overwhelmed by love and relief. His tiny fingers curled against your chest, his cries subsiding as he felt your warmth.
“We did it,” you whispered, tears streaming down your cheeks, happy tears.
“No,” Drew said, pressing a kiss to your temple.
“You did it. You’re amazing.”
The nurses congratulated you both, while Brooke captured every moment on the camcorder. Drew leaned down, his forehead resting gently against yours.
“I love you so much, Y/N. Thank you for giving me him.”
“What should we name him?” you asked softly, your voice shaky with emotion.
Drew didn’t hesitate. “Rustyn. Rustyn Starkey.”
You nodded, smiling down at your son. “Rustyn. It’s perfect.”
Drew reached out, brushing a finger over Rustyn’s tiny hand.
“Hey, buddy. Welcome to the world. We’ve been waiting for you.”
#drew starkey#rafe cameron#drew starkey imagine#rafe cameron imagines#drew starkey imagines#rafe cameron imagine#drew starkey x y/n#rafe cameron fanfic#drew starkey x you#rafe cameron x y/n#drew starkey fanfiction#drew starkey fanfic#drew x reader#with drew#drew#drew starkey x reader#drew starkey smut#rafe#obx rafe#rafe outer banks#rafe x you#rafe fanfiction#rafe smut#rafe x reader#rafe imagine#drew starkey fluff#drew starkey gif#drew starkey one shot#by rafedarling
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"How big should a Clan territory be?"
For the dozens of people who have asked this over the last couple of years!
This question comes in a lot of forms; "How big are the Clan territories?" "How much space does one Clan need?" "How much land should I give my Clans to exist in?" The answer is a bit complicated, and depends on the type of land, what you're going for exactly, the setting, so on.
But, broadly, there's TWO particular factors at play here; How anthropomorphic you're portraying your warriors, and how productive the land is.
Factor 1: The Anthro Scale
I'm starting with this one because it could you the simpler answer. The Erins write Clan cats like humans in cat bodies, with massive social units and communal living. Realistic feral cats don't act like Clan cats. They are only semi-social, due to domestication.
See, a Clan cat will "share" territory between all of its members, and some Clans have canonically hit populations of over 50 individuals. Real feral colonies consist of "overlapping circles" of somewhere between 2 - 15 cats, most of them related females.
This is relevant because, even in densely populated areas with as much food as they can eat, truly feral colonies will have about 2 cats per 5 acres, capping out at about 15 members. Queens will hang out together and raise their kittens communally, but they will hunt and patrol in their own "circle." These boundaries are violently enforced against outside cats, especially if it's too crowded.
(Toms have circles 5x as big as a queen's, overlapping several territories. They're also considerably less social.)
So, if you wanted to incorporate some cat behavior into your Clan's mindset about how big their territory should be, while still being willing to sacrifice a bit of "realism" for groups over 15-ish members, simply take Clan population and multiply it by 2.5 acres.
30 cats = 75 acres. That's a little under 57 football fields, if you're American, or 50 football fields, if you're European.
Extra reading: How realistic cat territories work. Contains the numbers I'm referencing.
It's also very important to know; feral cat density is completely tied to food availability, the big numbers numbers are for cats whose needs are met. Cats are solitary hunters, and when they feel like they have to work for their food, they become VERY territorial. The density of cats in rural areas can be as low as 1 molly per 15 acres, even lower for toms, and they will leave if hunting is not easy.
THIS IS WHY YOU SHOULD NOT FEED FERAL CATS. Please GOD they are SO invasive, please do not give colonies food, they still hunt when they're full so you just end up concentrating a ton of predators in one place. They are not warriors with a law against disrespecting food, they are just kitty cats with silly kitty instincts
I have a suspicion that most of the people who are asking the question aren't really looking for a "realistic cat" answer, though. We LOVE our big cat Clans with their complicated politics around here. You're probably wondering how much land you need to feed your population!
Factor 2: Land Productivity
The exact amount of space is going to vary a lot, because it's more about productivity of the land to sustain a prey population than it is raw size. Remember what we learned back in Warrior Bites: Dietary Needs; a 30-cat Clan will need approximately 3 pounds of meat (10,500 calories) per day, which is about 2 rabbits, or 105 mice.
Here's some visual examples of what I mean. This one (1) acre homestead...
Has 20 patches of high-value crops, plus an orchard, AND livestock pens. This territory alone could attract enough crows, mice, rats, rabbits, and sparrows to feed all those cats daily. That's not even counting the humans themselves, who may be friendly enough to the colony to toss them kibble occasionally.
(this is why cats domesticated themselves. Even without the free food from the humans, farms are extremely productive hunting grounds.)
Meanwhile, the Edmonton Mall, which is a whopping five (5) acres...
Would be utterly barren. Best food you're going to get out of this wasteland is the leftovers humans toss out, and maybe the rats and pigeons that scavenge as well. It's 5x the space, and yet, infinitely harder to feed the same amount of cats.
So, the most helpful bit of advice I'm gonna give you is this; DON'T ask yourself "how big should this territory be?" You're starting with the wrong question. Start with a real location, and think about how you'd find 3 pounds of meat a day in that area.
It will be a LOT easier to think about the logistics in those terms, and this will lead you to the waaay more productive (and fun) worldbuilding questions. Such as;
"Where would the good hunting spots be?"
"What kinds of animals would they be eating? What sorts of beasts can threaten them, here?"
"How many of these animals would my 30 cat Clan need to hunt a day to equal about 3 pounds?"
"Where would these animals be getting THEIR food?"
"Is there enough habitat in the area for the prey to breed and nest? If not, is there more land beyond the territory that the prey is coming from?"
"Where would infrastructure like dens, walls, and dirtplaces go? What would these be made of?"
"Are there any neat spots for the cats to casually hang out on?"
"What would make for a super cool arena for my climactic narrative boss fights?"
"Does this area have unique stage hazards that my cats would have to learn to deal with?"
"Which sorts of plants and herbs would they encounter?"
If your Clan is tool-using, like BB!Clans are, then you can ask even more advanced questions. Like, where you'd find kindle for fire, what objects you can use as crafting materials, and what might make for unique trade goods.
Think about other things related to your Clan's biome-- in a tundra or desert, there will be less for prey to eat, so the territory will be large to cope with the low density. If there's a major body of water, they might have a constant supply of aquatic prey from upstream. Hunting grounds might change based on the seasons.
Also remember not to underestimate how fast small animals breed, and how many of them there can be in one area. Even using low estimates, 1 female mouse has 6 pups, 7 x 6 = 42, 42 x 6 = 252, 252 x 6 = 1,452. It takes only 4 months for mouse population growth to get exponentially ridiculous.
Finally, remember that prey can vary. A well run Clan would be able to generally understand when they've been overhunting one particular species, and start shifting gears to lift the "pressure" off that population.
(In my cultural expansions series, this management task is assigned to one of the new roles-- the Head of Hunting.)
#Bones gives advice#Clan Culture#How much territory does a clan need?#warrior cats#How big should a Clan territory be?#This is an answer to like 8 people who have asked this question#It's a MEGA popular one and I totally understand why#It's just difficult to answer in a straightforward way because of everything discussed!#So it took me a long time to be able to figure out how to answer it.#clan territory
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✨ShadowPeach Bio Parents Bio AU Q&A! 21/11✨
Welcome to the Q&A! A space where I can answer related or similar question about the Shadowpeach Bio Parents AU! If you submitted your ask anonimously, then you’ll have to check the whole post if it’s answered here, if it’s not, worry not! Your asks might have been used for a future comic or just in the queue~
Anonimo ha chiesto: Hi! Would Macaque kidnap Wukong again? I read your comic, the last page, where Macaque is the kidnapping expert. And I'm very curious about it. Anyway, I love your comics! You are awesome.
Haha I don't think they really need it unless they want to do a "traditional wedding courtnapping" but it would be pretty odd since they kind of already live togehter.
Anonimo ha chiesto: I know this is definitely a LONG ways away, but, imagine: Wukong and Macaque playing the newlyweds game. What questions? What answers? Who’s asking the questions? Who’s getting the most right?
I wont list all the lesson but I think Macaque would get most of them right just because Wukong never really changed a lot during the years, while Macaque went through different stages of his life, and and he has new hobbies and tastes.
Anonimo ha chiesto: Will mk have a nightmare about LBD? If yes Then we will have some angst with fluffy monkeys family moments!!!
Oh he has. He has many. Most of them he has while he is at pigsy's.
Anonimo ha chiesto: Can you please shows up a flashback backstory on how MK/Wukong discovered/found out/came out as trans?? 🙏🙏🙏 Banana sundae with chocolate sauce, rainbow sprinkles, THREE cherries, and a super-deluxe one-and-only Monkie King™️ collectible spoon???
Anonimo ha chiesto: will we see any past Shadowpeach?? I’m interested to see how you frame their dynamic back 5en.
Hahah maybe in the future, I'll see
Anonimo ha chiesto: Can we get Wukong telling dad jokes? Please, I’m begging i want to see MK laughing and Macaque just being so disappointed with Wukong yet so smitten. I want to see more Monkey family domestic blissss. 🙏🙏🙏🙏
I don't have my dad jokes book here but man give Macaque an award for the patience he has with these two children
@goofybearclown ha chiesto: Hi :3 Just wanted to say I love your shadowpeach and cotl AU!!! I didn't notice you made both at first but when I did I was like "waow :0". Tbh your works are in my top 3 series on Tumblr! @fenikzia ha chiesto: I love your LMK comic so much, I look forward to reading the new additions to it when they come out every other day,and reading your comic just makes my day better. Even if it hasn't updated a particular day, I make sure to go back and reread the newest part.Keep doing what you're doing and make sure to take breaks! @skye-minecraftyt-blog ha chiesto: You! I like you! Your Bio parents Lmk au always makes me extremely happy and I regularly reread it. ((o(^∇^)o)) Just wanted to say it @blazeandsilver ha chiesto: Hello, I just wanted to say your artwork is absolutely stunning, it makes my day whenever I see that you posted something new to the BioParents comic. Please keep up the good work and be sure to take some time for yourself, you’re important too.
AWWWWWW THANK YOU FOR ALL THE LOVE!!
Anonimo ha chiesto: Hihi shadowpeach au question: You mentioned in the latest comic that Mac is more lean and skinny than Wukong. Will we ever see the full extent of that?? ALSO I ADORE YOUR ART OMG ❤️❤️
A fully naked Macaque you say? Maybe.... who knows....
Anonimo ha chiesto: I come to defend Wukong acting like a man looking at a victorian lady ankles, he hasn’t seen his (ex) husband’s fur in centuries. And he probably hasn’t socialize in years either besides MK and the gang. Romantically he is stunned right? I doubt he has even looked at anyone besides Macaque anyways…
Honestly I like to think that Macaque was the only being in all the universe that was eer able to make him flustered
@mochalikesdrawing ha chiesto: So I got a question, will we ever get to see kaiju MK again?
I have a scene post AU I would like to draw. Maybe.
Anonimo ha chiesto: Ignoring all the angst because it is crushing my soul /pos, I'm lowkey convinced that Macaque knows Wukong feels some kind of way about him because he can hear his heartbeat go crazy at certain moments and isn't dumb, but just isn't calling Wukong on it because he's still trying to sort his own feelings first. BUT ONCE HE DOES OH BOY-
Hahah Macaque knows perfectly well Wukong is down for him. In the meantime Wukong is alwasy afraid he's just imagining things bc he's dense af.
Anonimo ha chiesto: Do you think Wukong and macaque would be cuddling and macaque would be watching something scary and Wukong would be trying to not pay attention to it because he hates scary stuff or would it be the other way around?
yess
@ep2nd ha chiesto: In your shadowpeach bio parents au, if MK and Wukong were created by Nuwa, with Nuwa using Macaque and Wukong as a base, has anyone wondered who created Macaque? And does Macaque himself knows?
Wait Nuwa created Wukong? If that's so I think then all the 5 monkeys were made by her, for some reason.
@boonalina ha chiesto: Sooo what exactly is the courtnapping process like? Is it just a simple "I'm gonna pick you up and carry you away" or is it an entire ceremony? Does someone have to lure the person into place? For example, Mei bringing Redson over to a secluded spot so that Mk can "courtnap" him? (Side note: I've been in this fandom for around two years now, and this comic is what made me find out about courtnapping lol)
I "think" anything that can be counted as like a sneak attack that takes them out of guard and brings them to the designated courtnapped room can be considered as courtnapping technically.
Anonimo ha chiesto: ... Hey so your shadow peach bio parent AU is better way better than season five. WOAH, WHO SAID THAT!! (no but seriously it is like a sitcom I tune on ever so often. Much love 🫶)
Haha thank you! That's a HUGE statement!
Anonimo ha chiesto: I wonder if MK has any unique attributes/abilities as a living mass of celestial material?
He's such a cocktail ofdifferent energies I wouldn't be surprised he is able to glow in the dark.
@cjtuy ha chiesto: I do have a question it's mainly about pigsy and tang when and how long have they been together as a couple and did both of them find mk are they married ?
They have been together for almost a year, but I don't think they are married, but maybe that could happen in the future??? But yeah MK found out a little after season 5 that they are together, that was also the same time he started calling Tang "Papa"
Anonimo ha chiesto: Has macaque added any personal items to the house? Like is he moved in? Have Wukong and macaque improved or changed anything else besides making the bed bigger?
Yes he did! Half of his belongins are in FFM, althought he's a little more minimalistic than Wukong. He also have been bothering Wukong to death so that he can finally organize his stuff (and they were roomates
Anonimo ha chiesto: I feel like if they were to play Minecraft or something macaque would be the base mom. He would be the only one to remember to farm food to not starve. The others would probably forget all the time that hunger is a thing in game. Wukong or Mk: oh dang does anyone have food I'm starving Macaque: (always brings extra for this reason) "sighs" yes
AH!
Anonimo ha chiesto: Remember the Minor Scale episode, from season 2? Where MK learn how to shrink himself? And there’s also the final episode of that season where MK just grow very big to try to fight LBD. I just love that part of his power and I have seen very little people showing it. Like, sometimes that power can show up when the poor boy is experiencing overwhelming emotions that can’t be contained anymore, or pure exhaustion. For example, Having many responsibility can lead to a lot of stress and exhaustion and at some point MK just can’t do more and just become tiny, not able to do more. On the opposite, maybe he experience trauma again through a nightmare (like about azure for example) and the emotional burden is to much and he just becomes big because of that. You see my vision? I love sizeshifting base on emotions :)
Aww and i love emotion-based powers, they are just so easy to play around.
Anonimo ha chiesto: Tbh the show should let macaque have a motorcycle. Wukong gets to be passenger princess
Yesss
Anonimo ha chiesto: as we get into the colder months i like to imagine MK’s first winter coat and he’s all super fluffy and warm
Cool for the monkey parents, bad for pigsy and all the hair in the restaurant from sheeding.
Anonimo ha chiesto: I think it would be so funny if MKs rock hadn't been cracked and he'd been raised on FFM by wukong. If the same thing happens in the show macaque planning to take mks powers thinking he's just Wukongs student but then while macaque and MK are training. Since macaque is so close he notices his ears. (Being raised by a monkey he gets his form sooner) suddenly putting everything on hold busting into FFM and is like WUKONG WTF
There's a fic on AO3 about it it's A Son of Two Dads
@cheese-hommo ha chiesto: Hii, fiesta I want to say I love how you draw and everything, it just looks so cool and beautiful. Now, with the last chapter of Monkey parents Au and so, with the acknowledgement of the demon etiquette and else, DBK and Wukong really misunderstand the comfort scene for a confession? Or something more? It was just so funny seeing the two of them getting so embarrassed at the end 🙂↕️
Ah, 2 young demons in their true forms so close to each other, blushing? Scandalous.
Anonimo ha chiesto: I've seen Mk is his Lego merch- he gots a tooth gap- so does this MK have one or did he get it filled?
Wait that was a tooth gap??? I though it was like, a detail of the smile
Anonimo ha chiesto: 🎤 what is your official (if any) opinion on Ink MK? (as a character, plot device, literary parallel, what have you)
It's ok. I personally believe "shadow" version of one character with their own fears and doubts is a clique a little bit too much used. But they give a lot of angst.
Anonimo ha chiesto: Thoughts on Macaque knowing either Japanese or Korean due to him liking anime.
I'll give you one better. Macaque always traveled to Japan pretty frequently during the centuries. Then became a weeb
Anonimo ha chiesto: Maybe it's just me but Wukong looks a bit thicker each time, is it because his fur's thickening or is he getting chubbier ??????? Anyway luv ur art
Both.
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"You humans confuse me. You try so very hard to be as boring as everyone else, and, when some gifted soul is born that has some small degree of uniqueness to it, you beat and break it until it fits into a dull little box that you can understand. Explain this to me, if you please."
The glowing figure across the table illuminated the void gently. It's clear the abyss and the furniture weren't actually here, but the tantalizing way their shadows and the darkness intermingled was almost spellbinding, distracting enough to almost lose the train of thought about how to explain.
“I don’t think any mortal being has found a way to live up to their ideals, but that’s just distracting from the point isn’t it? I could give you what we know about biology and instinct and evolution, but that doesn’t really do more than give points of information, not an explanation.”
The figure remains silent, perhaps knowing that the thought isn’t complete and there’s more for you to say. It’s easy when you have all the time in the world possibly.
“I think if you asked a hundred different humans why it’s this way you’d get a thousand different answers, so all I can really offer is my explanation. And the truth I see is this, humans are built scared. We spend all our lives being scared of mistakes, of being left behind, of being alone. Part of that is biological, but I think it’s more the hardness and greed that has been taught from generation to generation, line to line. It might be that we’ll never be rid of it, and it might be that being rid of it simply opens us up to being devastated, but that fear is taught in every interaction, every time a scarce resource needs to be distributed and it’s up to people to decide who is more like me, ie who deserves it.”
With no frame of reference it’s simple to lump humanity together, isn’t it?
“The truth is that everyone deserves it, no one deserves it, no one deserves anything. And even still we are forced to make these value judgments because lives hang in the balance and tribes fulfill so many needs that we cannot give them up. Even if we wanted to, which I guarantee you most do not. So we mold ourselves, we mold each other to fit into the box that is the most like our tribe, from the left eating it’s own to the right threatening anyone too different. We focus on our differences because that makes each of us special and unique, but also terrifying and terrified.”
The table is getting fuzzier, almost like it’s struggling to maintain some form. The aura emanating from the creature opposite might be getting brighter, or it might not; it's hard to tell. It does speak after a moment of silence, “Fear is a powerful motivator, and perhaps it’s only when you can move past that fear that there will be no need for that box.”
“Perhaps. Or perhaps when we move past the need to understand something to not fear it, there won’t be any more boxes at all.”
“You humans confuse me. You try so very hard to be as boring as everybody else, and, when some gifted soul is born that has some small degree of uniqueness to it, you beat and break it until it fits into a dull little box that you can understand. Explain this to me, if you please.”
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CHAPTER 2 | ALL OUT OF LUCK
w.c. 3.8k
tags. fem!reader, pro-hero!katsuki, aged-up (26), some cussing, adult themes (not smut lol) (yet) (jk) (unless...), the mission finally starts, so much plot from here on out y'all so buckle up
a/n. i didn't get to include the most important bits that were supposed to be presented in this chapter because i got carried away with the buildup lol. exciting times ahead y'all. i have so much in store for you with this series. don't be a stranger and let's talk!
links. masterlist, ao3 (coming soon)
You can only stare back at the woman peering at you, her face painted with a thick layer of makeup, her hair styled to staged ‘effortless’ perfection, and her body wrapped in an outfit that’s equal parts provocative and refined.
Her image is so flawlessly curated—so much so that you barely notice the apprehension that’s hidden amidst her features, if it weren’t for the fact that that woman is you.
You can barely recognize yourself—and perhaps that’s the point of all this.
Asahi and Moriyama didn’t have to explicitly state it yesterday—they need you to put in every ounce of effort to make sure that you succeed, and that includes doing everything you can to supplement your quirk all the while keeping your real identity lowkey.
Even if it means looking like this.
You’re about to give in to your second thoughts and change out of the black, low-cut tank and beige cardigan you have on when an array of knocks echo from what you think is your front door, and you freeze.
With a cautious glance at your bedroom’s wall clock, you think you’re supposed to feel a wave of relief wash over you when you see that it’s 9:00 PM on the dot, the exact time Bakugou said he’d pick you up, which means no villain or mal intentioned person is at your front porch, but that doesn’t come.
Instead, the sense of dread that’s been stirring in your gut ever since you got swept by Asahi’s men yesterday only magnifies, leaving you a bit cold and…are you shaking?
You don’t get to dwell on that, though, because another round of rapping resonates from your foyer again, which somehow pulls you out of your nervous stupor. You hurriedly run to the door, not even bothering to check through the peephole, opening it with a turn of the knob to see Bakugou.
Wearing a white face mask and decked in a fitting black hoodie, with his ash-blonde hair peeking through the sides of a dark baseball cap.
His fist is frozen mid-air as he stares at you, eyes slightly widened in shock, as if he didn’t believe you’re capable of this thing called punctuality. He promptly brings it down, though, schooling his expression into a neutral one, but not before giving you a quick once-over.
“Hey,” he offers, voice gruff and way lower than you remembered it back in high school.
“Hello,” you counter, looking back at your messy apartment out of habit. “I’m almost done. I just need to grab my purse.”
And, because you genuinely need to know for the sake of what you’re about to do, you ask: “Do I look okay?”
He must’ve not been anticipating that question, because his eyebrows furrow ever so minutely like you just caught him off guard. “Yeah,” he eventually replies after studying the entire length of your body once again.
And, you may have just imagined it, but you swear to god his eyes linger on your chest for a beat longer than necessary before he meets your gaze.
“You clean up…” he pauses, like he’s grasping for the right adjective, before settling with: “…decent.”
At that, you feel yourself deflate a bit. Maybe you wanted a more affirming answer, definitely not because you want that from him, but because you need to look good. However, if there’s anything the rumor mill told you back when you were still teenage students, it’s that Bakugou Katsuki was a man of few words when he was serious, let alone appreciative, so you take his comment in stride.
Besides, in comparison to how you looked yesterday, anything is an improvement, really.
“Thanks,” you respond, and you debate for a second whether or not to say the next thing but ultimately decide on it. “…And you look mildly disguised.”
That seems to ruffle Bakugou’s feathers. “Mildly?”
You shrug, suddenly feeling unsure about your honesty. “I get the hoodie and the cap and the face mask, but there’s no hiding your hulking frame, man.”
And really, there isn’t. How are you supposed to conceal a torso as large as that?
You gesture to his chest and shoulder area for further emphasis. “I don’t think you can pass up as a regular citizen but like as a non-descript athlete, maybe?”
To your dismay, Bakugou merely grunts before shaking his head. “This’ll work.”
Apparently already over your suggestion, he glances past your shoulder as he shifts his weight on his other foot. “Can you grab your purse now? We’ve to get going.”
Now, you’ve got half a mind to argue and try to convince him that maybe going for a better disguise is better in the long run but you’re silenced by his domineering gaze. So instead, you nod before rushing back to your bedroom and grabbing the bag you already prepared beforehand, as well as your phone that’s charging on top of your bedside table.
Although it won’t be of much use later, or in the coming few weeks, if everything goes according to plan.
“Ready?” he asks when you return to the doorway with your things in tow.
“Yup,” you retort as you lock the door behind you, and just like that, you’re well on your way to a potential death sentence.
You’re in the elevator going down to the ground floor by the time he speaks up again. “We’re commuting,” he starts, not looking at you but instead scrutinizing the barely hanging on floor buttons. “Can’t risk raising suspicion by driving there.”
“Where are we going, exactly?” you ask just as the elevator dings, signifying your arrival.
The doors burst open, and he steps out. “You’ll see.”
The commute to wherever the hell it is you two are going is quiet.
Bakugou didn’t divulge any further details as you stepped out of your building, wordlessly ordering you with a stern look to just follow. Frankly, you don’t like how you’re being kept in the dark, but you don’t contend. You’re acutely aware that you have a limited number of cards to play with Bakugou, and you have to play them right, if you want to even survive this mission without your partnership falling apart and jeopardizing the entire thing. Wasting a card on stupid information would be downright foolish on your end.
Even the walk to the bus stop is silent, and so is the entire ride. Despite it being quite late into the evening, the vehicle is still somewhat crowded, which you chalk up to it being a Friday night. You find yourself relaxing in your seat as the realization dawns on you—perhaps there was no point in getting too riled up about getting noticed.
And besides, you’re taking extra precautions, too. You’re not sitting next to each other, because he’s trying to stave off attention while you’re straining to catch it. Maybe not of these strangers, but of the people you’re going to meet later on.
Roughly 10 minutes and a short subway ride later, you climb up the underground stairs to a stop you vaguely remember hearing from your coworkers about. You recall how she described an old party district right in the middle of Musutafu, and sure enough, the text on the street signs match the name she recounted during one of your lunch breaks.
“Over here,” Bakugou calls out from a few feet ahead of you. You quickly quit your observing and follow suit, mindful of keeping an appropriate, not at all questionable distance between the two of you.
After what felt like walking five blocks from the subway, you see Bakugou halt and make a left into a poorly lit alleyway. You hesitate for a second, having been on autopilot and going straight for the last how many minutes. You’re able to swiftly gather yourself, though, steering in the same direction.
The moment that you do, it instantly registers to you that you’re not just in the party district anymore. If the dingy signages and the palpable seediness of the alley are any indication, you’re most likely in the red-light district now.
Suddenly, everything feels a bit too real, and you barely catch yourself stumbling back on your feet. This doesn’t go unnoticed by Bakugou, who instinctively moves to reach out for you from where he’s standing. He pauses, though, when you’re able to regain your bearings with a slightly embarrassed smile.
“Sorry,” you offer meekly.
He eyes you with the very same inexplicable expression from before. “You good?”
You’re not about to tell him you’re scared shitless, so you give him a half-hearted nod. Turning to study the exterior of the small building, you take in the lightly peeling paint and the booming music emanating from it. “This the place?”
“Yes,” he answers without missing a beat. “Are you sure you’re good?”
You whip to look back at Bakugou, who, if you didn’t know any better, is now looking apprehensive.
You decide then and there that you have to get your shit together.
Bravery is contagious, but so is fear.
For a second, you contemplate using your quirk on yourself to calm your nerves down, but eventually decide against it. There are much bigger fish to fry tonight, and what’s the point of learning all those damned breathing and grounding techniques if you’re not going to use them?
“I’m ready,” you finally tell him after a moment of both of you standing there. “Let’s go in before we start looking unusual out here.”
If Bakugou notices the unease you’re sure you’re radiating, he doesn’t comment on it. Instead, he gives you a curt nod, before turning to open the door.
And when he does, you’re almost instantaneously flooded by the music that was just escaping through the cracks and crevices of the run-down building. You fight the instinct to cover your ears as you step into the large room behind Bakugou, eyes quickly darting all over the place to drink in the scene before you.
Right in the back of the space is a stage that extends in the center as a runway to the middle of the room. The orange and pink mood lights illuminating the area are relatively dim minus the bulbs lining the set and walkway. And, beneath the elevated platform are what have to be pleather seats littered all over the floor—all of which are occupied by decidedly rambunctious men.
You resist the urge to wrinkle your nose as their boisterous laughter fills your ears, opting to face Bakugou instead.
“Hey,” you call out to him, who stops in his tracks to look at you. You sneak a glance at the people at the bar nearest the two of you, just to make sure they’re not listening in, before you continue. “Are you sure this is the place?”
You don’t have to peek beneath his mask to know he’s now scowling at you.
“What am I, a dumbass? I told you, this is it.” He then shifts away from you, far enough that you barely hear his next words. “…It has to be.”
Well.
That’s not exactly comforting.
Your discomfort only heightens when the already faint lights dim further, and the music switches from a pop song to which you know a bit of the lyrics to a rap that, if you were to base it on the first phrase, is all about having explicit, unprotected sex. The crowd of men cheers in anticipation, and as if on cue, a woman dressed in nothing but a two-piece lingerie emerges from the back of the stage, confirming your speculation of what the place is.
A strip club.
You watch as the woman confidently struts towards the center, and apparently, you’re no better than any of the men here because your gaze slowly roves over her slim and toned body, eyes catching at her cleavage that’s leaving nothing to the imagination. You can’t help it—you look down at your own chest, sinking in disappointment at the contrast before promptly looking up in embarrassment, only to find Bakugou studying you closely.
“It’s a strip club,” you blurt out, flustered at getting caught in the act. His eyes only narrow in a way that tells you what you’re already telling yourself: Thank you, Captain Obvious.
Bakugou doesn’t say anything, much to your relief, only moving to the far corner of the room where there are miraculously two seats unoccupied. You follow him with no further questions asked, plopping in the chair to his right, thankful you’re wearing black trousers so that your skin doesn’t have to go into contact with the sticky furniture.
You take the opportunity to clock the rest of the room, cataloguing the bar at the other end of the area near the entrance where a barista is swiftly taking and making orders all at the same time, while the men seated on the stools struggle to decide whether to look at the man or at the stripper now performing an elaborate dance around the pole. Amidst the decorated wall adjacent to the bar is a door with a restroom sign on it, and you squint just enough to see it’s only one stall for everyone. You make a mental note to hold in your pee, at least until you get out of here.
And, because you’re feeling nice, you shift to regard Bakugou with a good-natured smile on your face. “I hope you peed right before leaving your house.”
“What?” he says loud enough for you to hear him over the noise they’re calling music. “I can’t hear you.”
“Shit, right.” You lean in ever so minutely, and Bakugou mirrors you. You try to ignore the new-found proximity. “I said,” you repeat, with a little more volume this time, “I hope you peed right before fetching me. I bet the toilet’s filthy as shit.”
To your delight, not that you’d admit that to him in this lifetime, Bakugou smirks at your little quip after confirming the lone comfort room with his own eyes.
“Don’t worry about me, princess,” he starts, and you stiffen at the nickname, “I’m not the one who has to sit on one.”
You’re about to retort with something along the lines of what if he has to poop out of the blue, or at least try to, because the pet name has you gagged against your better judgment, when a ridiculously tall man clad in all black appears out of nowhere, startling you.
“The f—”
“Dynamight,” the behemoth of a guy cuts you off, eyes trained on the pro-hero beside you and completely ignoring your presence. “We’ve been expecting you.”
“Took you long enough to approach me,” Bakugou sneers, oozing with the confidence you can’t find within yourself right now. “I hate sleazy places like this.”
To that, the man only bows his head slightly, face solemn but devoid of remorse. You watch him as his eyes finally drift to you, albeit for only a split second, before looking back at Bakugou. “Follow me, sir.”
The ash blonde does so, perhaps a tiny bit begrudgingly, and you speedily get up along with him. The two men turn to move, and you’re about to take a step closer towards their direction when a long arm shoots up in front of you, keeping you in place.
Any protests die in your throat when you look up and see the guy’s menacing glare.
“If you don’t mind,” he grits through his teeth, “Only Dynamight is needed.”
“She’s with me,” comes Bakugou’s commanding tone. You chance a glance at the pro-hero, whose countenance is so serious you’d be afraid if you were the one he’s talking to.
“But, sir—”
“It’s the two of us or we’re leaving,” Bakugou demands.
The two engage in a stare down which you witness for what feels like a few minutes before the man finally looks away, frustration etched across his intimidating features. He glares at you once more, as if you’re the one who’s insisting on being Bakugou’s plus one, and you’re about to be convinced that he’s mentally chanting a spell to make you disappear when he gestures for you to follow him with a flick of a head.
You gradually release the breath you didn’t know you were holding as you shadow them as they enter one of the doors on the wall perpendicular to where you were just stationed. It leads to a staircase that swerves in the middle, and you lock eyes with Bakugou as he makes the turn ahead of you. Neither of you says a word, opting to keep on trailing the man, even as you land on the second floor, which looks more and more like a prostitution den.
Once again, your conjecture is confirmed as you walk down the hallway and past several sets of doors on both sides, from which emanate a cacophony of sensual moans and groans. You wonder what Bakugou’s thinking right now, although you can’t get a read on him as you can only observe his backside.
Finally, after what seems like a tortuous eternity, the man stops right in front of the door at the end of the hallway, and you pause right behind him.
He looks back at Bakugou and you with what you’re pretty sure is caution, before knocking on the door twice, and then another two times but in rapid succession.
“Come in,” is what the muffled voice on the other side says.
And so you do.
You’re not entirely sure what you were expecting, because you’ve never actually been in a service room before, but you at least anticipated a bed on which certain…activities can be done.
But what you’re met with instead seems to be a refurbished lounge room with floor-to-ceiling brick walls, black and red quilted couches, and a bar at the far side all lit up with moody orange lighting.
And smack dab in the middle of it—sprawled so languidly all over the furniture—are three individuals.
Three individuals who immediately look at Bakugou.
It’s them, alright. You don’t need your extensive training in reading people to know that these are the ones you came all the way here for.
You quickly take note of their appearances. The seemingly old man who has to be in his late 50s is seated—quite relaxed—in one of the scarlet solo chairs. He’s slim, bordering on frail, but the glint in his eye as he peers at Bakugou tells you that it’d be unwise to rule him out as one of your main threats.
Juxtaposing his age which is further revealed by his shoulder-length salt and pepper hair is the young woman plastered on the couch adjacent to his.
Or maybe ‘woman’ is a bit too generous…
It’s not obvious at first glance, but you immediately notice how some of her body parts appear to be outright robotic in the literal sense. Perhaps it’s her long, pin-straight, jet-black hair that softens her entire look, but there’s no mistaking what seems to be an artificial left eye, a metallic right arm, and angled, silver lips. She’s wearing long pants so there’s no telling which other parts of her are made up of what you think is steel, but the ones visible to you already tell you enough.
And then there’s the third and last man, who, in comparison to the other two, is remarkably…plain.
There isn’t an air of age-induced wisdom around him, nor is there anything peculiar about his body. He looks like just about any other 40-year-old-ish Japanese man you know, with short black hair, an unassuming face, and semi-formal clothes that are quite loose on his not-buff but not exactly thin body either.
But to your surprise, it’s him that the hilariously huge guy from earlier directly reports to.
“Pro-hero Dynamight, sir, as you requested. And…” the ‘escort’ trails off, and for a split second, you feel kind of sorry you’re here and making things complicated for him. “…he brought company.”
“Finally,” the plain-looking man pipes up from his seat, and even his voice is generic. “And here we thought you were never going to come meet us.”
Placing what suspiciously looks like a glass of whiskey on the table in front of him, the man shifts to fully regard Bakugou. “I see that you’ve deciphered the messages we’ve been sending you?”
“No shit,” comes Bakugou’s blunt response, and for a beat, you seriously consider using your quirk on him to make him calm the fuck down.
You decide against it.
To your chagrin, he drones on. “Y’all gotta do better. That was barely even a code.”
At that, the old male barks out a laugh while the plain-looking man only chuckles. “Of course, we expect nothing less from the #2 pro-hero. But…” the latter trails off, eyes finally landing on you. You quickly put on the most endearing smile you can muster, suddenly regretting not touching up your makeup upon sitting earlier. Thankfully, though, he smiles back, before redirecting his focus back on Bakugou.
“I see you brought precious cargo. Is there any reason why she’s here with us?”
“We want in your organization,” Bakugou replies without hesitation. “The both of us.”
And when none of them say anything in response, Bakugou presses.
“You need me, right? I heard you’re planning an attack. I want to join.”
“Yes,” the old man finally speaks up, not even denying it yet his voice is riddled with misplaced humor. “We do, in fact, need you. But what use do we have of this girl?”
“She’s got a useful quirk,” Bakugou supplies, before turning to look at you and then back at them. “Luck. She boosts the success rate of anyone she works with.”
“Luck?” the old geezer says back so incredulously, you feel your eye twitch in annoyance. If he only knew what you were fully capable of. He can’t, though, if you want to get out of this entire situation alive. “I don’t think we’ll need that as long as we have you, boy.”
“Well, tough luck,” spews Bakugou, a little bit too sarcastically for your comfort. “Because, as I’ve told your little lackey here,” he gestures to the definitely not little guy from earlier, “It’s both of us or I’m out.”
“The both of you, huh?” muses the plain-looking man who’s seeming to be more and more like the leader of the group by the second.
Once again, silence envelopes the room when none of them utter a single word, with you and Bakugou watching in anxious (you) and impatient (him) anticipation. You observe their facial expressions as they have a wordless exchange, and judging by how the ancient and the robotic girl are looking at the ordinary man, you guess your hunch about him is right.
Eventually, they appear to reach an agreement, and the leader adjusts just enough to look at the both of you directly.
You brace yourself with bated breath.
He flashes you a modest smile.
“It’s a deal, then.”
˖⁺‧₊ as always, reblogs, replies, and tags are appreciated <3 feel free to drop an ask, too—i'd love to chat with you. have a nice day!
tagging. @bunnysaursushii @yawnzzzzzzzz @cholios @kashee-h @iluv-ace @lotuslovers @elarakive @sugurusmoon @napbatata @k0z3me @h0ngh0ngh0ng @honeyoru @yoongiwithglasses | @junehasnotbeenfound @sugalarity @haechansbbg @sikuthealien @reiniella3 @ita606 @xoxoblueyy @mutsu422 @eyesforbkg @kalulakunundrum @venus-xxoo @lemuhr @pinkpantheris @ashers-playpen @bakugouswh0r3 @certaindreampost @3ve88 @tsumuus @4acoffee @anonymity-222 @lousypotatoes | @matchat3a @harryzcherry @h0nestly-though @cc1306 @gold24fish @bakukags @zennypiee @wannabewolf @kameko-ko @lovra974 @arc6021 @kooromin @surprisemodafakas @ilovedenk-i @st4ntwic3 @j1tterbugaboo @call-memissbrightside @arael-asuka @bakugosgothhoe
#btw just a friendly reminder to pls be nice esp when asking to be included in the tag list!#maintaining it is quite taxing and it doesn't help when people are not exactly kind about it and/or disappear entirely after requesting :')#depending on how high-maintenance it gets i might scrap it tho#anw pls enjoy this chapter! i worked hard on this <3#bakugou x reader#bakugou x y/n#bakugou katsuki x reader#bakugou imagines#mha imagines#bnha imagines#mha scenarios#bnha scenarios#bnha x reader#mha x reader#bakugou x you#bakugou imagine#bakugou fluff#bakugo x reader#bakugo x y/n
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LOVED YOU AT YOUR WORST - r.c series - EIGHT
pairings: ex!sweethearts; rafe x thornton!reader; rafe x sofia. chapter warnings: mentions of pregnancy; abortion.
MASTERLIST
Topper prided himself in keeping out of people’s business.
He hadn’t noticed anything was off with you on his own, he wouldn’t have; he didn’t do the whole “emotional radar” thing.
But Rafe had practically cornered him, demanding he figure out what was going on with you.
You were his cousin, after all.
That didn’t stop the way his stomach twisted from thinking about lying to you, or how every part of him had always silently rooted for you and Rafe. He’d loved seeing you two together. You were a mess most days, for years, sure, but it was the kind of mess that made sense in a way, and Topper couldn’t help but admire it.
You were like fire and gasoline.
But that was before the break-up, before everything got fucked.
Now, you were just… distant. He never knew how to approach you without feeling like he was crossing a line, but the way you’d passed out on Rafe at the beach had him worrying in a way that was more personal than he wanted to admit.
He wasn’t a thinker, not really, he liked simple things: good waves, cold beer, and not getting roped into drama.
But there he was, standing outside your door with Korean fried chicken. He didn’t do feelings, and he didn’t do heavy conversations. Rafe owed him big for this. The conversation had been good, even when you started talking about Sarah and Ruthie.
Topper was all in—laughing along, throwing in a dumb joke here and there, the usual. It felt nice, like when you were kids, sneaking your dad’s beers and pretending you weren’t gonna get caught.
But then he had to go and ruin it by asking if you were okay.
You went all stiff, then weirdly far away, laughing it off like he’d just asked you to explain calculus or something. You mumbled something about being fine and then bolted to the bathroom before he could even follow up with his usual Topper-brand wisdom.
He sat there, feeling uncomfortable, which wasn’t a thing he usually did. You were acting off, and it was messing with him more than he wanted to admit.
Finally, he decided he needed to move, so he got up to grab some water. Except, as he walked past the counter, his hip caught a pile of your mail, and an envelope went sliding to the floor.
“Crap,” he muttered, crouching to grab it. It was just some random envelope, but there was a phone number written on the front in messy blue ink.
Topper didn’t think about it—because thinking wasn’t really his strong suit—he just whipped out his phone and typed it in. Curiosity, man. It got him every time.
He hit call. He wasn’t trying to snoop or anything. It was just one of those things you do on autopilot, right? Call a number just to see who answers? Except this time, someone did answer.
The phone rang. Once. Twice. Then:
“Women’s Health Center, how can I help you?”
His brain short-circuited, full-on panic mode. He stared at the phone like it had grown a second screen, then frantically hit the hang-up button just as the bathroom door creaked open.
You were back.
Topper, sweating for no reason, slapped the envelope back on the counter like it was about to explode and turned to you with a smile that definitely didn’t match his pounding heart.
He got out of there as soon as possible, as he drove to meet Rafe, the whole thing was still playing on a loop in his head. That phone number, the voice on the other end of the line, the way you’d acted when he’d asked if you were okay—he couldn’t stop trying to force the pieces into place.
Something was going on, he wasn't sure what, and he wasn’t exactly the guy you went to for deep insights, but he felt something was up.
When he pulled into Tanyhill, he spotted Rafe leaning against his truck, scrolling through his phone with that permanent scowl he seemed to have these days. He barely had the car in park before Rafe was pushing off the truck and heading his way.
He climbed out, doing his best to act normal—which, for him, meant cracking the same goofy grin he always did. His mind was still spinning with a dozen half-formed thoughts about that phone call, that clinic, and how the the fuck he might fit into all of it.
The only thing he knew for sure was that Rafe knowing could be catastrophic. Like, meteor-hits-earth catastrophic.
“You gotta chill,” Topper said, slamming his car door shut and giving Rafe a once-over. “Why do you look like you’re about to punch somebody?”
Rafe just glared, shoving his phone in his pocket. “What’d you find out?”
He blinked, thrown by how fast he cut to the point. “Nice to see you, too. Second, what makes you think I found out anything?”
“Don’t fuck with me, Top. Did you figure it out or not?”
“Yeah, I figured it out,” Topper shot back, crossing his arms. “But why the hell did you make me go through all this work if you already know what’s going on?”
Rafe shrugged, leaning back against the truck like this was all just some casual conversation. “Didn’t think you’d actually get it, to be honest.”
“Bro, I’m not that stupid. How did you get to the bottom of this shit? I’m still confused as fuck over here.”
Rafe’s mouth twitched like he was deciding whether to smirk or yell, hesettled on neither. “She passed out on me, remember?”
“So?” Topper shot back, frowning. “I’ve seen you pass out for, like, way less.”
“It wasn’t the same. It wasn’t a hangover or heat stroke, it was different. And she’s been weird lately, avoiding everyone.” Rafe leaned back against his truck, arms crossed, talking fast. “The hospital did blood work.”
Topper, who’d been zoning out halfway through his little doctor act, suddenly perked up.
“Wow,” he mused, dragging the word out. “Okay. So, how’d you take the news? I mean, shit, you look pretty calm for once. Didn’t think that was in your wheelhouse."
Rafe frowned, his sharp blue eyes narrowing, the crease between his brows deepening like it always did when he thought someone was wasting his time.
"The fuck are you talking about?”
Topper shrugged like this was totally normal. “I just expected you to, like…freak out or somethin'. Throw a punch, maybe.”
“Throw a punch about what?” Rafe snapped.
“About—” Topper paused, squinting at Rafe like he was trying to solve a puzzle. “Wait. What are you supposed to do?”
Rafe’s hand twitched toward his jaw, fingers brushing over the stubble there, a telltale sign that he was gearing up to lose patience. He didn’t wait for Topper to answer before shaking his head, the movement quick and irritated.
“Don’t do that, man,” he added, pointing a finger “I’ll help her figure it out. What else can I do?”
Topper tilted his head, genuinely impressed. “Damn. You really matured, huh? I mean, good for you.”
“Top, what the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Rafe demanded, his tone sharp now like he was finally catching on to the fact that they weren’t on the same page.
Topper blinked, “I’m just saying you’re handling it better than I thought. Especially since she’s not—uh, showing yet.”
“Not showing what?”
“…The bump?”
He immediately realized he’d said the wrong thing, or maybe the right thing, but in the wrong tone, with the wrong level of context, and—okay, maybe he should just stop talking.
Abort mission, abort mission. Topper immediately wanted to crawl into a hole. Dude, shut up, shut up, shut up.
“What the fuck?” Rafe’s voice cracked; his eyes blazing as he stepped closer. “What bump?!”
His laugh fizzled out under Rafe’s glare, it was starting to feel less like “concerned ex-boyfriend” and more like “interrogating cop.” He felt a bead of sweat slide down the back of his neck.
Cool. Stay cool.
“Wait,” Topper held his hands up, trying to physically stop the situation from spiraling. “What do you think is wrong with her?”
His brain was spinning in a way it wasn’t built for. He was a simple guy—he liked clear problems and easy fixes. But this? This was a category-five disaster, and he was stuck right in the middle of it.
Rafe let out a sharp breath through his nose, dragging a hand through his hair, the small strands sticking up in every direction.
“I think she’s got a fucking infection! Why the hell would I think she’s pregnant?”
Topper hesitated, glancing toward the house like maybe Sarah or Wheezie might miraculously appear to save him. No such luck.
“Well fucking shit,” Topper blurted, the words tumbling out in a rush. His heart was pounding, and he was pretty sure he’d just signed his death warrant. “I—I didn’t say she’s pregnant, okay? I found this number, and it was for a women’s health center, and—fuck, man, I’m dead. I’m so dead.”
Rafe grabbed him by the collar, yanking him close. “Start talking. Now.”
“I wasn’t snooping, okay? It just—happened. I wasn’t trying to get in her business, but—”
“But what?” Rafe barked. His other hand twitched at his side, curling into a fist before flexing out again, a warning of how close Topper was to eating pavement, but Rafe wasn’t the one he feared right now.
You were going to kill him.
He could already picture the look on your face when you found out—those cold, furious eyes, the way your voice would drop, he was officially dead meat. He gulped, his mouth dry as his brain scrambled for something—anything—that wouldn’t get him killed or disowned.
“You better explain what the fuck you mean by ‘happened,’” Rafe growled, his grip tightening, giving Topper’s collar a shake, just enough to make his point clear.
Topper was done, leaving nothing but pure panic and the faint, distant sound of his voice saying things he definitely shouldn’t.
“I called the number!” Topper yelped. “I didn’t even mean to, it was—dude, she’s gonna kill me, and I mean that literally. She will.”
“Not if I kill you first,” Rafe shoved him back, his grip finally loosening, his face unreadable now, which was somehow worse than when he’d looked ready to punch him. “You’re telling me you think she’s pregnant? And you didn’t remember to tell me sooner?”
“I didn’t!” Topper said quickly, panic bubbling over. “It’s not like she’s gonna tell me this kind of stuff.”
“Did she say anything to you? Anything about seeing a doctor or being sick?”
Topper shook his head so fast it made him dizzy. “I asked if she was okay, but she just brushed it off and changed the subject.”
The silence that followed was thick and suffocating, both of them staring each other down.
“No, no way. She’s probably… I don’t fucking know, changing her pill or something.”
Topper raised an eyebrow. “Changing her pill?”
“Yeah,” Rafe said quickly, “Or—what else do they do there? Those check-up things. Maybe she’s getting one of those.”
“Uh-huh,” Topper replied, not convinced but also not dumb enough to call him out on it outright. “Sure. Just a… routine check-up?”
“Exactly,” Rafe agreed a little too loud, his tone almost defensive as he started circling again, his hands gesturing wildly. “They don’t just deal with… y'know. They do all kinds of shit. Tests, prescriptions, all that stuff. It doesn’t mean anything.”
Topper scratched the back of his neck, his expression caught between agreement and unease. “I mean, yeah, they do other stuff… but don’t you think—”
“I don’t think anything, there’s nothing to think about. She’s fine. She’s—she’s fine.” He stopped pacing, standing rigid with his hands on his hips, glaring at the ground like it had personally offended him.
“Okay,” Topper started, his tone cautious. “I get that you don’t want to jump to conclusions, but—”
“I’m not jumping to conclusions!” Rafe barked, spinning around “You’re the one making it into something it’s not! She’s not—she wouldn’t—she hasn’t told me anything,” He muttered finally, “And if she’s hiding this… from me…”
He’d never seen Rafe like this—angry, yeah, but there was something else there, either way, it wasn’t good. His glare burned into him, but for the first time, there was hesitation behind it. He wasn’t just mad—he was scared. Topper couldn’t decide if that made him feel better or worse.
“Holy shit,” Rafe muttered, gripping the side of his truck for balance. His vision going fuzzy as his heart raced like he’d just sprinted a mile. “Holy shit, what if—what if she is?”
“Dude, breathe,” Topper said, stepping closer cautiously like Rafe was a live grenade. “You don’t even—”
“Even if—if—she was, how the hell would that even—” He cut himself off, his face twisting like he couldn’t decide whether to finish the thought or abandon it entirely.
Topper didn’t need him to finish, he understood exactly what Rafe was thinking. The timeline, the breakup, the way everything had gone down between you.
Rafe’s breath hitched as he let go of the truck and paced a few steps, his hands on his hips, muttering under his breath. “No. No way. It’s not—she’d tell me, right? She’d fucking tell me.”
Images started flashing through his mind in rapid succession, each one more ridiculous and unhinged than the last. You, standing in some clinic, staring at a test with a blank expression. You, trying to figure out how to tell Rafe.
You, holding a baby—Rafe’s baby—in your arms.
“This doesn’t make any sense. We were careful. She’s just stressed, girls go through shit. Hormones or whatever. Right?”
“You’re asking me? I barely passed bio. I’m not exactly a walking textbook on—” He stopped himself, seeing the look on Rafe’s face. “I don’t know what’s going on with her, okay? But if this is what I think it is, you gotta handle it right. Don’t screw it up more than it already is.”
“And if I don’t handle it right?”
Topper forced a shaky grin, even as his stomach twisted in knots.
“Then I guess I’ll see you in hell, man. Because she’s gonna kill us both.”
Rafe’s hands went to his hips, his thumb brushing the edge of his pocket as he stared past Topper, he was trying to work out an equation that wasn’t adding up.
“She hasn’t said a word to me,” Rafe muttered, “Not at the hospital, not since. And you think…” He trailed off, dragging a hand over his face.
Topper shifted on his feet, resisting the urge to bolt to the other side of the world.
“I guess, but I swear, it wasn’t on purpose.”
Rafe shot him a look, his brows knitting together, and Topper felt like he was under a microscope. “You called a random number. How does that ‘just happen’?”
He huffed, throwing his hands up. “I was grabbing some water, and her mail fell, and there was this number—I didn’t think! I just… acted.” He groaned, his head falling back as he stared at the sky. “I didn’t mean to put two and two together, but what was I supposed to do? You’re the one who made me go digging in the first place!”
“You really think that’s what’s going on?” Rafe asked finally, his voice quieter.
“You said she’s acting weird, and then there was that number, and…” He trailed off, scratching the back of his neck.
“Do you even understand what this means? If she’s—if there’s a—” He broke off, “I’d have to—Jesus Christ, what would I even do? I’m not—God.”
His hands gripped the edge of the truck bed so hard his knuckles turned white, the veins in his arms standing out as he glared at the ground like it had personally offended him.
“If she didn’t tell me—” His voice was low, quiet in a way that made Topper wince because he knew what came next.
“Maybe just... ask her?”
“Ask her?” he repeated, his voice disbelieving.
“Yeah, you know,” Topper said, gesturing vaguely. “Talk to her? Maybe find out what’s going on instead of losing your shit over worst-case scenarios?”
Rafe shook his head, “No. If she wanted me to know, she’d tell me. She’s... she’s dealing with her own stuff. It’s not my place to push.”
“Since when do you not push?”
“Since now,” Rafe snapped, though even he didn’t sound convinced.
“Rafe—”
“No, seriously,” Rafe interrupted, his voice rising now, the tight restraint unraveling with every word. “If she’s—if she’s going through this, if she’s pregnant, and she didn’t tell me?” He let out a bitter chuckle, “What the fuck does that say? About me.”
Topper opened his mouth, hesitated, then closed it again. This felt like a minefield, and if anyone was good at stepping on the wrong spot, it was him.
Rafe pushed off the truck, he couldn’t physically stay still. His eyes were burning as he raked a hand through his buzzed hair.
“I was—fuck. She thinks what? That I wouldn’t show up for this. She didn’t tell me because she doesn’t think I deserve to know.”
“That’s not true,” Topper said quickly, stepping closer, but Rafe’s empty laugh stopped him.
“Isn’t it?” Rafe’s voice was hollow now, all the fire drained out of him, turning his head slightly, just enough for Topper to see his throat working as he swallowed hard. “What the hell have I ever done to make her think I’d be there? That I’d—” He broke off. “Shit. I wouldn’t blame her. I can't even fucking blame her.”
“You still care about her, right?” Topper pressed, knowing he didn’t have to ask to know the answer.
Rafe’s head snapped up, “She’s the only thing I’ve ever cared about.”
He nodded slowly, “Then prove it.”
The envelope sat exactly where you’d left it, the faintest corner of folded. You froze for a second, your pulse quickening.
No. No way.
It was fine. Fine.
The number wasn’t even labeled—just digits scrawled hastily, you hadn’t touched it in days. Still, you couldn’t stop the tiny seed of panic attaching itself to your chest. There was absolutely no way Topper could’ve seen it, let alone put two and two together.
You exhaled slowly, placing it back on the counter.
He didn’t see it. He couldn’t have seen it.
Then why had he acted so… off? The pale face, the sudden excuse, the jittery energy—it was all so unlike him.
You shook your head, trying to push the thought away, a million things could’ve set him off.
Maybe Ruthie had texted him something awful, or maybe he’d remembered he had to pick up his dry cleaning before the shop closed. Knowing Topper, it was probably something stupid and unrelated to you entirely.
Still, the nagging lingered as you cleaned up the counter and threw away the napkins. You glanced at the envelope one last time, then slid it into a drawer and shut it firmly. Whatever was going on with your cousin, it couldn’t have anything to do with that. It was impossible. And yet…
You sighed, rubbing your temples.
“Pregnancy brain,” you muttered to yourself. “Making me paranoid over nothing.”
Of course that didn’t stop your heart from jumping every time the drawer creaked, or when you saw anything even remotely similar to that envelope’s color lying around the house for the entire night. Not that he’d ask, of course—Topper wasn’t the confrontational type, especially not with you. But he noticed things. And when he noticed, he worried.
The next morning you sank onto the couch, hugging a pillow to your chest. Topper was close, but he wasn’t like Sarah. She had been able to look you in the eye and say, You know I’m here, right? and mean it without any strings attached. Topper, though…
Your fingers itched toward your phone, even though it was stupid to call her so early over this. Still, you needed someone to remind you that you weren’t losing it, that Topper’s weirdness had nothing to do with anything serious.
Before you could talk yourself out of it, you found Sarah’s number, pressing the call button. She picked up on the second ring, “Hey, what’s wrong?”
You could picture her, sitting in her car or probably stretched out somewhere in Poguelandia with her feet propped up on a table, looking concerned.
“Nothing’s wrong. I just…” You trailed off, fiddling with the edge of a pillow.
“Topper’s been acting strange. And I think I’m just overthinking it, but it’s making me crazy.”
She made a sound between a hum and a laugh. “So the Topper panic spiral. That’s what we’re dealing with?”
“Basically,” you muttered, trying to keep your tone light. “But this time… He was here last night, and I thought he saw this random piece of paper I had with, you know. A number on it.” You took a shaky breath, embarrassed for how paranoid you sounded. “But he couldn’t have, right? I mean, it was buried under five other things.”
“Okay,” Sarah said slowly, clearly choosing her words. “First, let’s just say that if he did see anything, which he probably didn’t, he wouldn’t assume the worst. He’s your cousin; he knows you don’t tell him everything, and he respects that. Right?”
“Yeah… I guess.” You chewed your lip, feeling a little stupid for even calling her. “But what if he does put it together, Sarah? I don’t know if I’m ready for that.”
“He won’t,” she reassured, like she could see right through your anxiety. “And you don’t need to feel bad for wanting to keep this private. You’re allowed to handle it however you need to. You’re not doing anything wrong.”
You exhaled, the knot in your chest loosening a little. She always knew how to talk you down, "Okay,” you murmured, and a shaky laugh slipped out. “Maybe I'm being paranoid.”
“Pregnancy brain,” she teased, and you couldn’t help but smile.
You hung up feeling marginally better.
Sarah had a way of calming you down, but the uneasiness stayed with you, the way it always did when you couldn’t fully explain something.
But the relief was fleeting, by lunchtime, the nagging voice in your head was back. Topper wasn’t malicious, but he did have a habit of talking without thinking, and the last thing you needed was for this to get out before you were ready. Not only was this a huge scandal, but it was your business.
You busied yourself with small tasks—folding laundry, wiping down the counters, pretending that everything was fine. It wasn’t until almost noon that your phone rang. The hospital’s number flashed on the screen, and your stomach dropped.
“Hello?”
“Hi, is this Miss Thornton?” the voice on the other end asked politely, too polite for comfort.
“This is she."
“This is Linda from the hospital. I’m calling about your recent bloodwork. We had a bit of an issue with our system, and unfortunately, there was a delay in getting back to you. We also lost some patient information temporarily—”
“Wait, what?” you interrupted, not liking where this was going, “What do you mean you lost information?”
“Oh, nothing to worry about,” Linda said quickly, as if that would make you feel better. “We managed to recover most of it, but in the meantime, we had to rely on emergency contact information to reach out. Dr. Harris called yours last night.”
Your breath caught. “Called... my emergency contact?”
“Yes.”
“Sarah Cameron? She didn’t tell me someone called.”
“She’s not listed as your emergency contact in our system, Rafe Cameron is. It might be an older record?”
Fuck.
Your heart was in your throat. “What... what did he tell him?”
“He only left a generic message asking for you to follow up about your bloodwork. Nothing specific.”
“Nothing specific,” you repeated, more to yourself than to her. Relief and panic warred within you. If Rafe knew, he’d already be there, the night before, demanding answers. Right?
“We need you to come back in. It’s possible you may have an infection, and we need to run a few more tests.”
You didn’t even hear the rest of her explanation.
Your fingers felt numb as you mumbled something that vaguely resembled agreement and hung up.
Infection, that was what she’d said. That was all it was. Not… not anything else. If it were anything else, they wouldn’t have just called—they’d have told Rafe.
“Stop,” you muttered aloud, shaking your head. “Stop spiraling.”
But your brain wouldn’t listen.
“Generic message,” Linda had said, but did it sound generic? What did he think when he got it? Had he laughed it off, or was he running his stupid pristine bedroom, piecing together clues you hadn’t even realized you’d left?
You didn’t want to text Sarah again.
You could imagine her smirking, “I told you, he’s not going to magically grow psychic overnight.” Yeah, sure, but this was Rafe.
He didn’t need magic. You squeezed your eyes shut, trying to focus on Sarah’s voice in your head. “You’re not doing anything wrong.”
Except it didn’t feel like that. You hadn’t thought about Rafe as your emergency contact in months, hadn’t needed to.
You sank into the couch, hugging your knees to your chest.
“This is so stupid,” you muttered, but your voice didn’t make it feel any less real. You weren’t even sure what you were spiraling over anymore. The envelope? The hospital? The baby?
“Okay,” you said out loud. “Okay, it’s fine. Everything’s fine.”
The sound of your voice didn’t even convince you. Your brain wouldn’t stop jumping from one thing to the next, spinning every scenario you didn’t want to think about.
What if he did know? If that was enough to set him off, to make him call someone, pull some strings...Shit, what if he did show up, and you had to explain why you were dodging everyone and keeping things from him and—stop.
Stop.
You were doing it again. The spiraling. The pregnancy brain Sarah teased you about like it was some sort of cute quirk, but wasn’t cute.
You sat up straight, squeezing the couch pillow so hard you thought it might burst. Breathe. Just breathe, you’d made it this far without imploding.
You glanced toward the drawer again, the one with the envelope. You should’ve burned it, shredded it first. No, you had to keep it—just in case. But just in case of what? Just in case you needed more reasons to feel like a lunatic.
Oh my god. What if Topper saw the stupid number, and then Rafe got the hospital call, and then—bam—suddenly, they had the whole damn thing figured out?
You could feel it already—the panic. You liked to think they were both too stupid for their own good, but they were also observant. Rafe, that bastard always knew how to put things together faster than anyone.
What if—what if it’s that simple for them? What if they both saw it, and then they were just sitting there, having some stupid-ass conversation, connecting dots you didn’t even realize were dots?
No. Stop. Stop thinking like that.
You were getting carried away, jumping to conclusions like some manic soap opera character. You weren’t that girl. Not really. But the thought of them talking—Topper with his concern and Rafe with his overbearing intensity.
Your fingers tapped a frantic rhythm against the pillow. The idea of him figuring it out? Oh, that made your skin crawl. Not because he’d be cruel—no, that wasn’t his style. He’d just be so… himself.
Overwhelming, determined to “fix” things for you, even when you didn’t ask for it.
You groaned, dropping the pillow and standing abruptly, like the movement might kill the growing dread. No, you told yourself firmly.
You weren’t spiraling over things that hadn’t even happened yet.
But the voice in your head, the one that always sounded a little too much like Rafe, had other plans: What if it’s already too late?
You paced the living room, arms crossed tightly over your chest. This was ridiculous, you were ridiculous. Nothing had happened, nothing was going to happen. The number wasn’t even that suspicious, it could’ve been anything.
You groaned again, flopping onto the couch like the dramatic mess you were currently embodying. Rafe had probably gotten the hospital call, rolled his eyes without a second thought, too busy with his new precious life.
Your stomach churned, and you pressed your hands against it instinctively. It wasn’t showing yet—thank god—but you couldn’t help the way your mind spiraled back to it, to all the ways this could go wrong.
You grabbed your car keys without thinking, maybe it would clear your head. A drive—that’s what you needed. Get out of the house, and put some distance between you and the stupid envelope, the phone calls, all of it. You turned the knob, yanked the door open—
—and froze.
Rafe’s hand was raised mid-air, clearly about to knock. You didn’t even try to hide the way your breath hitched.
Oh, no. No, no, no.
Standing there on the porch like he hadn’t just derailed your entire plan. As if it was still perfectly normal for him to show up unannounced, one hand shoved into his pocket and the other gripping his phone, his head tilted in a maddeningly familiar way.
His hand hovered uncertainly on the doorframe as you stepped back, your arms folding protectively over your chest. He didn’t push past you, didn’t move his weight forward—just stood there.
He glanced down at the spare key still in his hand, turning it over like he was considering whether he even had the right to use it. “They called me last night.”
Okay, he was just here because of the hospital, a coincidence, that’s all it was.
“And? You could’ve ignored it.”
His hand flexed at his side like he didn’t know what to do with it. “I thought something might be wrong.”
“It’s not.” Your voice was clipped, cold. “They called the wrong number. End of story.”
He didn’t rise to the bait.
“I thought—” He cut himself off, exhaling sharply. “I thought you were sick.”
“Like I said, it was a mix-up.”
His jaw ticked. That tiny muscle in his cheek twitched, the one that always flared when he was suspicious.
“Funny, they didn’t sound mixed up when they said your name,” he drawled, his tone probing. “Wanna try again?”
“Mind your fucking business,” Your voice was defensive, and you hated the crackle of guilt in your chest when he flinched. “I don’t need you to pretend to care. Why are you even here?” you snapped, taking a step back. The space between you felt vulnerable. “Don’t you have someone else to worry about?"
You felt cornered with every second he stood there.
“We need to talk.”
Maybe if you acted calm, like nothing was wrong, he’d stop looking at you like that. Vulnerability wasn’t something you were good at, he’d already taken too much. He always took too much.
“I don’t owe you shit. Not explanations, not answers, nothing. Leave.”
He didn’t. Of course, he didn’t.
Rafe didn’t know how to let shit go, not when it came to you, he didn’t back away.
“You’re right,” he said, surprising you. “You don’t, but I’m not leaving until we talk.”
The way he said, it wasn’t even a threat. It was worse than that. It was calm, resolute, like he’d already decided, and nothing you said or did could change it.
That scared you more than anything.
“There’s nothing to talk about,” you hissed, “Whatever you think you know, you don’t.”
He arched an eyebrow, his eyes flicking to the edge of the couch where your phone still sat, “You sure about that?”
“God, you’re always like this. Always overstepping, always assuming—”
“I know."
All the noise in your head—your spiraling thoughts, your excuses, your endless denials—went silent, except for the way your heart thudded in your chest, so fast, it hurt. He hadn’t raised his voice, but those two words hit you like a kick to your chest.
No, he couldn’t—he didn’t, he was bluffing, he had to be. Air caught in your throat, and for a moment, you thought you might choke on it. He didn’t move, didn’t repeat himself. He couldn’t know.
Your tongue went dry.
“What are you talking about?” You couldn’t breathe. It felt like someone was squeezing your chest. You shook your head again, more violently this time, stepping back, “You don’t know shit.”
“I think I do.” His voice was quiet, and that made it worse, it wasn’t cold or angry; it wasn’t even accusing. He didn’t sound like he wanted to be right, he just sounded tired.
You prayed to come up with something—anything—to deflect, to deny, to keep the truth buried where it belonged.
“You’re delusional,” you took another step back, putting more space between you and the man who had always known you too well.
He just shook his head, “You don’t have to lie to me, you’re scared, you’re not even trying to hide it.”
It was the way he stared with those stupid blue eyes, he was peeling back your layers. He always did that, made you feel like he could see something in you that you weren’t ready to acknowledge.
“Oh, fuck off.” You threw your hands up. “You don’t know shit about what I’m feeling. You’ve got no right to—I’m not lying.”
It still hurt how much you missed him, hurt to even look at him.
“Don’t pull this cryptic bullshit with me, if you’ve got something to say, say it.”
“You’re pregnant, aren’t you?”
The thing you’d been running from, denying, hiding, you simply stared at him, trying to decide if there was any way to lie your way out of this.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” You tried to laugh, but it came out strangled, desperate. “T-That’s insane. You’ve lost your mind.”
Rafe wasn’t gloating or triumphant—he just looked… resigned, he’d pieced it together before he showed up.
“Don’t do that. Don’t lie to me, not about this.”
You wanted to scream, to shove him, to do anything that would make him stop looking at you like he cared. Like he knew you. Because if you stopped long enough to think about it, you knew it was over.
He’d already seen it.
“I mean it, Rafe.” Your hand tightened on the door, nails digging into the wood. “Get the fuck out of my house.”
God, this was so fucked. You wanted him gone, but wanted him here, needed him to leave you alone, but at the same time, you hated that he could just leave.
“Tell me I’m wrong.”
You thought about what he’d do if he knew—really knew. Not just the vague sense he had now, but the details. Would he try to stop you?
Your lip quivered, and you hated yourself for it. “You’re wrong.”
You stared at him, at the way his shoulders hunched slightly, his usual confidence worn down. You hated him for being calm for once in his fucking life, for being here, for not letting this slide when it was none of his fucking business.
“Am I?”
Your hands clenched tighter, nails biting into your palms. “Why? Why do you even care? It’s not like you—”
“Because it’s mine.”
Your breath hitched again, and this time, you couldn’t hide it. You wanted to deny it, to throw something—hell, anything—back at him to make him shut the fuck up. But your throat felt like it had shut off entirely, and your mind had gone blank.
“I—” you stammered, shaking your head violently, “No. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re—”
“Hey, hey, just—just stop,” he said, his voice careful, as if he was trying not to spook you. “I’m not—Jesus, I’m not here to fight with you, okay? I’m not here to make this harder.”
Your chest heaved, a bitter laugh escaping before you could stop it. He was too late—late to care, late to help, late to fix anything. Five days, that’s all you had to get through.
Five days until you didn’t have to think about it anymore.
This is the right choice, you told yourself for the hundredth time. You couldn’t bring a baby into this mess.
“You’re doing a hell of a job at that.”
“I just want to help. If you let me—”
“No,” you interrupted, grabbing the edge of the door. “I’m fixing it.”
“Fixing—?” Rafe’s brow furrowed, his confusion almost comical He started to step forward, but you stopped him with a resentful glare that made him stop. “What does that even mean?”
“It means you can take your fake concern and shove it up your ass.”
His brow furrowed. “It’s not fake—” His face twisted in confusion, mouth opening like he was about to argue, but you didn’t give him the chance, slamming the door in his face, so hard the frame rattled.
“Of course. Of course, it’s mine,” you muttered to yourself, mocking his stupid, self-righteous tone.
You leaned back against the door, sliding to the floor, arms crossed over your knees as your brain whirred like it was trying to kill you.
It wasn’t like you had a choice.
Technically, you did, but what were you supposed to do? Keep it and become a tragic sob story? The words almost felt like you’d ripped them out of someone else’s mouth, right or wrong didn’t even matter anymore. There wasn’t space in your life for this—for him, for a baby, for any of it.
A muffled knock sounded from the front door—tentative, like he was giving you a moment.
“Go away,” you yelled, your voice hoarse.
“Open the door.”
Your thoughts taunted you with memories and possibilities you didn’t want to entertain. The way Rafe had looked at you—like he knew—it was unbearable.
How had he put it together? Maybe you'd slip up in tiny ways, leaving a trail of breadcrumbs for him to follow. You hated yourself for being so careless, despised him even more for being so fucking relentless.
You wiped your cheeks roughly, not realizing you’d started crying until your sleeve came back damp.
“Please, just open the door. We can talk—just talk, okay?
“No,” you muttered to the empty room. “No, I’m not doing this.”
You squeezed your eyes shut, leaning your head back against the door and pressing your hands over your ears to block him out.
“Don’t shut me out like this,” he begged. “I can’t—fuck, I can’t stand it when you do this. Just open the door. Five minutes, that’s all I’m asking.”
He had a key. If he wanted to, he could let himself in at any moment, but he didn’t, that wasn’t the Rafe you were used to.
Before, he'd have barged right in, shouted until your ears bled, and demanded answers. He would’ve tried to fix it or destroy it, maybe both.
You hated that he still acted like he cared, that he was trying to be so fucking reasonable now, when just a few months ago, he would’ve lost it, broken through any barrier to get what he wanted.
This was worse, this Rafe was wearing you down.
Another hushed plea made it through the door, but all you could think was how thin the wood felt, how it barely drowned the sound of his voice. A new door might be better, something heavier, more solid, that could drown out everything—the desperation, the crack in his voice.
Tears prickled at the corners of your eyes, and you bit hard on the inside of your cheek to keep them from falling.
“I know you’re scared,” he continued, “And I know you think I’ll screw this up—God knows I probably will. But please don’t keep me in the dark. Just tell me what’s going on.”
You pictured flipping through hardware store catalogs, weighing your options: oak? steel? soundproofing foam?
“Please,” Rafe whispered, and the rawness in his voice scraped against you like nails on a chalkboard. You tilted your head back against the door, willing yourself not to cry again.
Steel doors don’t warp as easily as wood.
You swallowed hard, your body aching as you fought the sob threatening to escape. He didn’t deserve this—didn’t deserve to sound so wrecked over you. He'd done this to himself.
Your fingers twitched against the door handle, the temptation to open it curling around you, but instead, you thought about bolts.
Deadbolts, a second lock could work, something he couldn’t get through even if he had the key.
His voice wavered again, you thought he might start crying, too, yet all you did was glance at the base of the door. A better seal would muffle the noise more. Maybe weatherstripping? That could help.
You pressed your hands tighter over your ears, as though it would help. It didn’t. Nothing would—not until you replaced the lock, the door, the memory of him standing there and breaking himself open for you.
God, you really needed a new door—and a new heart.
One that didn’t twist at the sound of his voice, that didn’t flinch every time he called your name like it was a prayer. A heart that didn’t feel for him, you told yourself, over and over, like a mantra. If you could just stop the way your chest tightened at his pleas, stop the ache in your ribs when he said he couldn’t let this go.
You wanted steel walls, that could keep everything out—his voice, his touch, the memories of all the good parts of him that had kept you hanging on for so long. Because of this heart? It was useless, too soft, too easily swayed, still willing to believe him, even when you knew better.
“Please, just talk to me,” Rafe begged. You bit your lip hard enough to taste blood.
You couldn’t help but wonder if this calmness came from Sofia.
Perhaps she was the reason he’d changed, maybe she had somehow made him different, had softened the sharp edges of the guy you used to know. She was calm, collected—nothing like you. It hurt like a bitch, the thought that someone else could make him this patient. You wondered if she’d taught him how to handle his emotions, how to be this way—he’d learned some secret he never bothered to share with you.
You couldn't let yourself go there, couldn't let the bitterness of that thought settle in your mind for too long.
“Talk to me.”
No. Not this time.
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The Gray Reunion
Vi x reader
Words: 1.5k
Warnings: Violence, mentions of illness, blood, slightly spicy kisses ;)
Summary: In the midst of the chaos, you struggle to help the people of the Lanes. The truth behind the disaster sparks a confrontation that will test your bonds
Note:English is not my first language, sorry
In the past few hours, your modest apartment had turned into chaos. At least a dozen people had knocked on your door seeking help, intoxicated by something you hadn’t seen in years.
They could barely fit into the small living room, which also served as your kitchen and bedroom, waiting for you to help them, coughing out toxic fumes. Everyone expected you, just as your father had done in the past, to help or offer a solution, but you were completely lost, fumbling with medical supplies that had been stored away for years.
"The gray," murmured an older woman who was holding her husband as he struggled to breathe.
"That’s impossible," you replied. "We haven’t had problems with that in years, the ventilation system..."
"Then there must be a leak," she interrupted, raising her voice before a violent cough cut her off. You watched as her hand was splattered with blood. She inhaled deeply before continuing, "I’ve been through this before, but we don’t have the years on us anymore. Your father treated it countless times. Doesn’t he have notes somewhere?"
You sighed in defeat. "I’ve lost most of Dad’s things over the years. All I have left is what you see." You placed the stethoscope on a child’s back to listen to his breathing. "There’s nothing I can do. We just have to wait for the lungs to clean themselves... and stay far from the leak."
A collective groan arose from the people packed into your small space. "And how are we supposed to do that? We live there! Where can we go?" Various complaints began to rise.
"I wish I had an answer for you, but I don’t. We just have to wait until they repair the leak."
"They’re not going to fix it! It’s those damn enforcers! They’re killing us to get to Jinx!" Another wave of murmurs rippled through the room.
You tried to remain calm. Could that be true? Were the people above really capable of poisoning everyone just to catch Jinx? Those above had taken so much from you already that it seemed entirely plausible. But then an image came to mind—Violet. She was in Piltover now, and she would never let this happen, not to the place that had been her home for so many years and still was yours. Right?
You continued your work, trying to calm the rebellion brewing in your living room, tending to the most severe cases of nosebleeds and eye hemorrhages. But there wasn’t much more you could do. Around three in the morning, the last person finally left.
Exhausted, you collapsed onto your bed, utterly defeated. Chances were, all the patients you’d seen today would return tomorrow with new symptoms. It was impossible to recover from the gray while constantly exposed to it. You knew that if it was a crack, it would take years to fix. And if it was intentional, if they were hunting Jinx... that would also take time. There was no way they’d catch her.
A knock on the door kept you from falling completely asleep. You cursed under your breath—new patients. Your father’s voice echoed in your mind, reminding you how he wouldn’t rest until he’d helped the last person who needed him. You repeated the phrase to yourself before getting up to answer the door, only to be met with a great surprise.
Vi stood there, but the most shocking thing was her outfit. She was dressed as a full-fledged officer, an enforcer. You couldn’t suppress a gasp of utter disbelief. You had spent years of your life together; you knew her story as well as your own, and never would you have imagined the possibility of her wearing something like that—not even as a joke.
"I’m truly surprised," you murmured. She scoffed in irritation. You stepped aside to let her in, and she dropped her new, heavy gloves onto your floor. You bit your lip to keep from scolding her.
The past few days had been madness: Vi’s return, the search for Jinx, and your responsibilities trying to honor your father’s legacy had left you with barely a moment to breathe.
"Lots of patients?" she asked, trying to start a conversation.
"Too many," you replied, collapsing onto the bed again. She still stood awkwardly in the middle of the room. "You can lie down if you want... Unless you’re scared of dirtying that pretty uniform." She let out a short laugh before lying down next to you.
"I’ve barely seen you since you came back... I don’t think I ever got to tell you how happy I am that you’re here... Despite everything."
"Yeah, I suppose the first hug you gave me said it all."
"I mean it, Vi," you said, turning to face her. "Everything got so hard, but now you’re here, and I feel like things will get better."
She smiled faintly. "Yeah, we just have to fix a few things, and everything will improve." She propped herself up to sit beside you. "You look really pretty," she added. "Those dark circles suit you."
You couldn’t help but laugh. For just a moment, all the bad things disappeared. It was just the two of you in your small apartment—no Jinx, no gray, no problems in the Lanes. Just you two. Without thinking, you leaned in and pressed a quick kiss to her lips. She froze for a moment.
"I thought you missed me," she teased.
"I did."
"That’s not a reunion kiss. This is." Without warning, she leaned over and kissed you deeply. You welcomed her eagerly—it was like a breath of fresh air, something rare where you’d grown up. The kisses grew more intense, and your hands wandered over her torso and back. Vi positioned herself on top of you, using her hand for support on your pillow. But she quickly pulled it back.
"What’s this?" she asked.
You looked to the side, confused, and saw a large bloodstain. You hadn’t even noticed it. You sighed. "I’m really sorry." You sat up slightly, but Vi didn’t move off you. You grabbed the pillow and threw it to the other side of the room. "It’s been such a complicated day with the ventilation cracks."
"Yeah, don’t worry. I’m not at my best, either."
"Doesn’t seem like it." You kissed her intensely again, and she adjusted immediately.
"When all this is over, we should go on a real date. Like dinner and all that cheesy stuff."
You laughed against her lips at her failed attempt at romance. "I just hope it’s soon."
"It will be," she declared confidently. "Once they catch Jinx, everything will get better, and life in the Lanes will change—just like Vander always wanted."
Vi’s hands slipped under your shirt as you shared another passionate kiss, but her words lingered in your mind.
"Wait, wait, no," you said, pushing her slightly so she moved off you.
"Oh, do you want to take control, doll?" she teased.
"Did you have anything to do with this?" She looked confused, so you pushed her again to sit beside you. "The gas? Was it you?"
Vi stayed silent, hesitant to answer.
"Is this some kind of joke? You’re poisoning us just to catch your sister?" you shouted, furious.
"Hey, hey, it’s not like that... I mean, yes, but not how you think."
"You bitch," you spat, jumping out of bed. "Do you even understand the damage you’ve caused?"
"Listen to me. We used the gray to clear the streets, to keep people safe," she tried to explain.
"Used? Who’s ‘we’? You and your new enforcer friends? Well, you didn’t protect anyone!" You exploded. "Do you have any idea how many people you hurt? At least fifty came here today!"
"She’s a murderer! She killed half the council, she—"
"She’s not a traitor," you cut her off sharply.
The room fell silent as you watched Vi clench her fists in anger. You’d struck a nerve.
"Did you really do this for her? Or did your new enforcer friend convince you?" you spat, unable to hide your disgust.
"Don’t call her that!" Vi’s hands grabbed the collar of your shirt, pushing you against the wall.
You stayed inches apart for what felt like ten seconds before she let go, though she didn’t step back. Her heavy breathing mixed with yours, and you could smell the perfume from her uniform—a scent impossible to find down here.
"Get out of my house," you whispered.
"You have to understand—"
"Get out!"
Vi sighed loudly, grabbed her heavy gloves from the floor, and walked to the door. You opened it for her, stepping aside. She crossed the threshold without meeting your gaze but stopped in the doorway.
"I hope your new friend is worth it." She didn’t turn around, just kept walking down the dark street, away from your home.
You couldn’t stop the tears from falling.
What had you expected? Nothing had stayed the same over the years.
You locked the door before collapsing into bed. Tomorrow would be another hard day in the Lanes.
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