#the combination of lines like that with the painted lighting is actually pretty new to me

[solaestial]

delinquent boy ⭐✨

[randomspagetti]

{The End/A Compilation on This Project}

Summary:

I don't really like the climax I came up with at the time so I'll be adding a new version here. So if It differs from the images that's why, I feel like I made the pages during a time where I just wanted to get the comic over with so it kinda feels generic and half baked.

-

Starting from our last point, with the words of encouragement from the Light of Resolution and the steel force will to get his dad back, Choco manages to land a powerful strike, surprising the ancients and phasing Berserk Cacao.

This leaves space for the ancients to also be able to help, Pure Vanilla gives both Choco and Holly buffs while Holly holds the line and protects them from incoming attacks. By doing so they're able to get closer. Finally, a combined attack is hit to where something finally seems to happen. It's powerful and cuts into the indoor wall of the citadel. The smoke dissipates and all that is left is just Cacao.

They're all pretty suprised, but Cacao still has some lingering curse corruption on his body and his breathing is shallow. Hearing the loud crashes from the room the watchers (and Caramel) run in to see the ... interesting situation that had unfolded.

We then cut to Cacao sitting in a hospital room, he had woken up a bit earlier and is trying somewhat to recall the events of the previous day.

Holly and PV soon walk in with mugs, not expecting him to be up. They're caught off guard but soon calm down and get to chatting. Cacao finally admits he's not really doing all so well with both his kingdom and his son over the course of the conversation.

He also sort of opens up about more sensitive issues he's been through, thought he doesn't hold that topic for long given it's just too much for him at the moment. Holly understands where he's coming from and offers some words of encouragement, while PV tells him they're going to look into something for the curse and to actually help Cacao mentally.

Cacao reluctantly agrees.

It ends a bit more open ended with your own interpretation of how Cacao deals with his issues being set, though there would be a few aftermath pages exploring the relationship with the characters shown after the events of the story, this one for example is Cacao and Choco doing pottery painting.

------------------------------------------------------------

Some interesting facts, and stuff I made that didn't make it into the final cut:

-In my discord server berserk Cacao was often referred to as "The enemy spider"

-I often used their hands (so many hand drawings) as a way to show more of their character, Holly has hand scars while PV has a redness around his nails from stress. I like to add a human aspect to each of them so the reader can relate

-Berserk Cacao has had so many iterations before the final one, I just couldn't decide what I wanted him to look like!

-Each character has a different way of showing their thoughts/flashbacks! Caramels are more center focused given her only thought in that flashback was of the loud crash, Choco's are blurry given his eyesight, and Cacao has flashbacks and thinks in grayscale! You can actually notice this more during the dinner scene, this has it's own reasoning but it's bit more darker

-Most of the sketches were 10x more funnier than the finished project but I had to make it realistic

-Affogato was originally going to make it into the comic as a background character, but I felt it was too OOC for him given his devious crimes

Onto the darker stuff-

TW: Implied Abuse, Blood

-Everyone knows about the cut panels but there was actually an entire page scrapped too, originally this would follow along with the Light of Resolution convo (I will now refer to it as the LOR) but I scrapped it for a few reasons.

-Firstly I felt like it didn't add anything and only just re-established something the reader already well knew from both Holly and Cacaos statements, secondly I just felt like it was OOC for how I wrote the LOR. The LOR is in part Cacao. He is Cacao's resolution made physical. This would be his story to tell because he is a part of Cacao. It is Cacao in a way. I also felt revealing his face felt kinda eh and just didn't fit. So for those reasons I chopped it

-Cacao's curse wound was actually bleeding in this scene, though it's a bit hard to see with the shaders

That's all! Thank you everyone for being on this journey with me, I appreciate each and every one of you, you truly helped me expand my art horizons

[atryoshka]

Frenchie and Izzy getting together would be genius and tbh I can't unsee it now

Love that Izzy and Frenchie actually have a lot in common on a deeper level that wasn't really apparent to me until s2 when we see how they deal with trauma in equal but opposite ways. We have Frenchie with his little box that allows him to straight up ignore the dark shit he's been through like it doesn't exist, happily eat some blood cake, and thinking that his death being given a clear deadline is a comfort. Then we have Izzy trying to stone face his way through having his body parts severed, just business as usual bc that's the pirate life and it won't change even though he's visibly holding back tears, and then accusing the crew of being too cowardly to kill him, actively inviting death bc he doesn't get why any of it even matters so keeping him alive is pointless.

What's interesting is that given the right circumstances, they could easily trade places, with Izzy being more lighthearted and Frenchie falling apart at the seams.

We've already seen signs of this with Izzy being much more chilled out after the crew made him the new unicorn, finding something in this terrible life that make him see them, and himself, in a more positive light. Like yeah, life is still filled with unimaginable horror, but now has a custom gold painted unicorn leg to trudge through it with, which is absolutely absurd but now he can't help but smile. So he decided his life is so unserious right now and you know what? A shark took his leg, end of story, here's a little wooden shark I made today just for fun lol. Frenchie on the other hand is still pretty relaxed despite everything that's happened so far, but I have a feeling that he was probably very similar to izzy in the past before he joined the crew of The Revenge. His past is pretty mysterious even with the little tidbits we get like him being in the service for bit. It doesn't sound like he was doing it for too long so the other things in his life that he doesn't talk about remain unknown, probably even to himself. The box exists so he can pretend any trauma he experiences doesn't even exist, unlike a fiction which still somewhat acknowledges that there was something that happened to him in a way he could accept. The truth is, he actually never moved on bc all the parts of his life that he's ignoring are still lurking inside him waiting to break out at anytime. I think when something accidentally triggers a memory he suppressed, we'll see a different side to him. Less chill, more shrewd survivalist, like when he and the others reunited with the revenge crew after being stranded at sea. He bounced back pretty fast after they got past the pinnata and cake standoff but it was interesting to see how ready he was to be violent and how untrusting he was of everyone's intentions in that context. He'd usually be much more chill and willing to fast talk his way out of a situation, even when he knows someone has bad intentions. (There's also probably something with religious trauma he's hiding but that's a whole other can of worms I won't get into. All I'll say is that combined with his very strong beliefs of the supernatural and grudging flippant way he does the cross symbol on himself when others do it, when they boarded the cursed ship, he was that only one to not step in the satanic circle before anyone even questioned what the strange lines even were. Did he immediately recognize it and consciously avoid it or was it gut reaction? Idk, but he sure as hell didn't speak up about it and just wearily watched the other step into it and draw their own conclusions. ) But getting back on track Honestly, their dynamic would be really interesting to explore in the show bc they could understand and care about each other in ways that would probably surprise them if given the opportunity to spend more time together on screen. tl;dr: All this to say that I fell down the rabbit hole after realizing that they are basically this meme, which has a lot of potential for so many hilarious and accidentally heartbreaking moments

[zmediaoutlet]

Hey, z! I was hoping you would see this in a chat box, but it probably got lost or something, so here is a copy: Hey! I've been re-reading Constant Vow again 💔 suddenly had a thought about how all that was from Dean's POV. Was he...attracted to Sam early or felt something and it just developed in more during their together time. The part of some dialogue was stuck with me: "Don’t know how I ended up in this universe," Dean says. Very soft, so soft Sam has to tip in to hear. Dean looks at him, and then down at his stomach, and then—further, to where Sam's dick has gone soft and is lying over his thigh. Sam swallows and the room's so quiet that the creak of his throat is loud, and Dean huffs, shakes his head. "Never thought I'd…"

I would love to hear your thoughts! 💜

Constant Vow is probably my favorite work of yours so far! 🤍

aw, bud. <3 I did miss that, thank you for making sure I saw it. Always nice to know that anyone's thinking about the stuff like -- at all. And re-reading! Heck.

That's an interesting bit you pull out! I have a lot of fun when writing with trying to make the other character pretty opaque -- sometimes you know what your conversation partner is thinking, but most of the time you really don't, and especially in a new relationship (even if, at this point, Sam's trying to pretend it's not a relationship) everything's such guesswork.

To be honest I don't have a super solid idea about what Dean was thinking in those early days because Sam doesn't know, and keeping it right behind Sam's eyes -- it's a mystery! But you have pulled out exactly the biggest clue to my headcanon for what was going on in the parallel POV, which is: yeah, Dean's thought about it, but he would have never, ever, ever made the leap from nervous guilty dreams he crams down in the light of day to -- this. But that 'never thought' line combines with some of the ways he's very insistent about it not being Sam early on, plus that he actually feels pretty okay about the whole situation as of the first part of the cure -- it doesn't 'paint a picture' exactly but it does sketch the ghost of one.

When I started out writing the fic I really did want to approach it as much as possible as a no one's pining here situation -- they really are thrown into it without desire and come to a new understanding -- and I think that's mostly there. But it turned out that the point of the fic wasn't the sex at all, was it -- not for them, and not for Denise, either, really. Sex is just the clumsy way that we're able to engage in intimacy and communication and desire-for-closeness, and it's the way that Sam and Dean are able to reach an understanding together that they are each other's one and only, forever and ever, amen. A conclusion they're able to come to with no need for sex at all in s11; in s6 they're nearly there, but they need a little nudge. Required orgasms will do. :) Point being -- whether Dean very occasionally got a look at Sam in all his Samness and had to swallow his tongue and turn away, it kinda doesn't... matter. That he had a partner and a kid and walked out on them for the hope of a brother who'd come home: that's the ticket.

Oh man. Thanks, canon.

[lampmanliveblogs]

And now here is… this thing. I chose this screenshot because it’s the best full-body shot I could get of it.

So something approached the kids, looking a lot like Belos does in the present, only made from shadows and faint red lights. I was beginning to think that form looked pretty cool, until it started to mutate and turned into this thing.

We saw in Hunting Palismen that Belos has these outbursts where he turns into a bestial, monstrous form. He has trouble controlling himself and will attack anything too close, even lashing out at Hunter. In Elsewhere and Elsewhen we saw that this was (probably) caused in some part by Philip experimenting with magic and tattooing the glyphs onto his arm. Whether this monstrous corruption is caused by his human body not being able to handle the magic power, or his knowledge of magic being incomplete (remember, he had only tattooed the three out of four glyphs that he knew), or something else, we don’t know.

But this… thing is likely the representation of that corruption, of the monster he will turn into if he doesn’t consume palismen. The question is, is this his ”real” inner Belos/Philip? Or is it the child (which tried to warn Hunter to get away)? Or is neither of them, and they are just facets of something bigger?

In Understanding Willow, something kinda similar happened. After Amity set fire to Willow’s memories, the Inner Willow turned into a fiery monster. But once Luz doused the flames, inner Willow looked like Outer Willow.

Hey, there’s the trees Luz was looking for! And they’re all dead, go figure.

Hunter and Luz have fallen into some deep crevice within Belos’ mind. This is far back in his long life, back in a time it looks like he’s tried to forget. We can see in these two portraits a young Philip Wittebane… as well as someone that looks a bit similar to Hunter. Philip’s brother. Hunter’s father*. These are happy memories by the looks of it, and yet they’re decaying and the brother’s face is obscured, almost like someone’s tried to scratch it out.

(*unless that one theory I have turns out to be true)

I tried, but I can’t make out any details on any of these new portraits.

Luz says that this ”The Emperor’s real mind.” 

I think I pointed out before that all the paintings in the corridor above showed Belos as the hero. So that, combined with Luz’ line her makes me think that Belos may very well genuinely think of himself as a hero. That what he is doing is good. Or at the very least, that the end goal is good. Like I’ve said before, I’m not so sure that the Day of Unity will actually benefit the people of the Demon Realm… but rather, that the goal is to benefit the humans in the Human Realm in some way.

Discarded on the ground, Hunter finds this bird palisman. It crumbles to dust in his hand, a hand that shakes noticeably as he undoubtedly thinks of Little Rascal and what Belos would do to it if he got his hands on it.

There it is! There it is! Finally! I finally know Little Rascal’s true name! Now my sister can finally stop asking me if I’ve found out yet!

It’s Flapjack! Which is a type of oat bar originating from the United Kingdom. In north America however, the term is more often used to refer to pancakes. This is useful information for me to possess.

If we look in the background, we get a slightly better look at one of the paintings. It shows Philip and his brother playing with sticks, with some other people standing ominously in the background with what looks like pitchforks. Those could very well be just other kids playing with them though.

(I rewound the scene a few seconds to make sure I caught all the dialogue when I spotted another painting. it looks like Philip’s brother is carving something out of wood while Philip looks. And maybe my eyes are playing trick on me, but it could be the mask the purple kid in the corridor above was wearing.

[strudeldoodlearts]

Last post for the year

Unless something incredibly amaze-balls and loosely art-related happens, I likely won't be blogging on the 24th and 31st.

So I'm ending this year's art-sharing posts with [dissolving] and [art vs artist 2023].

[dissolving] is one of those pieces where the idea was a lot better than both the execution and also the reality behind the idea. I thought it would be cool to show two little seltzer discs dissolving in a purple carbonated drink. To keep the issue short, probably too much happening. And yet I could've made it more explosive and less contained.

As for the art I chose for [art vs artist 2023]:

[mole lay taco] is a recent work I'm really proud of due to the vibrant colors and the stupid pun.

[elbaite shard] was 'very shine and mineral.' It was fun to blend greens, reds, and pinks and have it against a dark background. It was inspired by some things I saw at the Smithsonian during a prior week.

[cube dudette - ver. starry] Drawing this satisfied my galaxy fix and was a nice way to end designing for the [cube dude] series. Note that it will still be up for grabs in my Redbubble shop, even though I am working to shift shop fronts.

['cats'tom shortsord 2023] is a redraw of a derpy short sword I drew HELLA long ago. I'm talking back when I wrote my signature in one line and put an @ in the beginning of it! Anyhow, really satisfying redraw and more color pops.

[souls of the universe] was just cuteness overload. While I sorta question why I threw in two moons, I'm pretty sure it was to add a layer of absurdity: The moons are on opposite sides of the picture, yet they are more on the same wavelength than the two running around on alternate Earth trying to catch each other, heh.

[getting carried away] Alternate titles: Awakening, OH NO MY SHEEP ... A really silly painting. Also

Best part of the picture. XD

7. [shedding light on...] The lighthouse picture was another one of my favorites for this year. So much so that it's used on the homepage of my site. Rethinking the title a bit, but still unsure. It was meant to be another stupid pun, actually. My thought process when something like this: Water has hidden faces -> The hidden faces/forms kinda look like snakes -> Lighthouses cast/shed light on their surroundings... and snakes shed too! Haha......

8. [creek salad] Was my attempt to combine food and landscape. According to my past self, I also ate a salad prior to making the art. A shame I can't remember making or tasting said salad, though.

9. The initial plan was to take a new selfie of me gesturing to the rest of the art from the corner and being silly, but I was short on brain energy and found this picture from my personal social media instead.

[domos-gallery-wall]

Alrighty, now that everything's a bit more settled, here we go: I cannot believe this is finished, Smy and I have been scheming this up since the end of April and I think we can both say just how proud we are of making this together. I learned a lot as an artist here and the entire process was just so much more than I usually do.

Long post under cut!!!

The idea was simple, but I tried out many new things this time around! I wanted to focus on the light specifically because it was so important as a character in both in the art and the story. A technique I used this time was trying to have a higher contrast in the light and lower contrast in the shadows.

For the composition I used the rule of thirds (like I usually do) but I also was experimenting with first and secondary subjects (Curt/Owen and the table with the radio and bottles) Finally I had leading lines forming an x with their combined hands at the intersection. I really wanted where they touched to be focal points with higher clarity and prominence.

I did SO much research here, for the 1950s hotel rooms, the suits, etc. Smy helped out so much with making it really historically accurate with the song and radio! https://www.vintag.es/2019/04/1950s-and-1960s-american-hotel-rooms.html

Not only with the research, but I did the whole proper process with thumbnails, floor plans, sketches

This was my first time having a collab with someone, so I wanted to make sure my idea was communicated properly.

With the sketch I was focusing on my anatomy and likeness of the characters, and for the background I used 1 point perspective. This was a huge undertaking with 2 interacting characters, in proportion with each other of different body types, situated in a room that I created with correct perspective, and specific vintage decorations. My largest painting yet! Rendering took the majority of the time and it was pretty rough at times to get through. My art program tends to darken the colors more than they actually are so I kept sending the images to my phone in the progress. I have sent 136 emails of the image in progress to my phone!

I am so so proud of what I was able to do here and improve as an artist. The background I am especially proud of (This is a zoom in kind of painting!). I was going for a more real, down to Earth tone so I kept my colors and rendering very subtle. It was a tricky balance for sure! The radio by itself took me around 3 hours because I kept messing with it!!

Finally I used a variety of filters to give it a more vintage look, a bit of desaturation here, a bit of sepia there. Funnily enough, I made a filter out of another painting of mine (Andrew Neiman piece) to give it that yellowish tone!

As a birthday gift, I'm getting some of my paintings printed out professionally to hang on my wall, including this one! So I'll be sure to post pictures of that when it's time :]

Reference/Inspiration photos: (Thanks to Smy for the screenshots!)

You Belong To Me

Prompt: First Kiss/Pre-Canon "Owen had internally used a lot of words to describe Curt over the course of their partnership- stubborn, charming, irritating, gorgeous, chaotic. But he had never considered him to be gentle."

Rating: Gen Word Count: 2611 No Archive Warnings Apply

In collaboration with the wonderful, amazing @smytherines!!! She wrote the fantastic story and I made art to capture the moment. Made for the SAF community event, @curtwen-week!

Also, listen to the central song for this fan collaboration, "You Belong To Me" by Jo Stafford (and the 1962 version by Patsy Cline)!

[theharrowing]

Lips Like Honey

Chef Min is easily the prettiest man Namjoon has ever seen, and now Namjoon is questioning everything—including his sexuality.

🍯  Namjoon x Yoongi 

🍯  word count: 13.9k

🍯  strangers to lovers, smut, fluff, light angst, slash, nsfw, 18+

🍯  warnings: top namjoon, bottom yoongi, light angst (namjoon has an identity crisis), fluff (flirting, mutual pining, self discovery, falling in love), smut (phone sex, blow job, frotting, ass to mouth, anal fingering & anal sex. first time with same-sex partner.)

🍯  note: namjoon is older than yoongi. also, uhhh.....holy shit, did i.....did i write fluff???? like tooth-rotting fluff?????????? what is happeing?!?!?!?! ahhhh i love this one! enjoy!!!!

🍯  written for the BTS One Line Wonders Fest!

🍯  beta read by @neoneunnajimin​ 🍯  posted june 2022 | read on ao3

"Alright, everyone, we'll be going on air in 3...2..." the producer holds up a single finger, mouths the word "one," then points to Namjoon, who flashes a practiced winning smile into the camera.

"Welcome back!" Namjoon beams, doing his best to ignore the excited audience behind the cameraman to speak directly into the camera. "Today, we have a very special guest who will be showing us how to create his spin on several popular street food dishes from the ease and comfort of your home. Please give a warm welcome to the hottest new chef on the block, Chef Min."

As soon as the camera pans over to the guest chef, Namjoon's heart begins to pound heavily in his chest. All morning he has been struggling to so much as make eye contact with the guy, and now, in front of hot stage lights and a live audience, he has to actually speak to him.

Chef Min smiles shyly into the camera, showing off his gums as a faint blush paints his cheeks. He looks incredibly soft despite his sharp features, with bleached blond hair falling just below his dark eyebrows and silver earrings dangling from his ears, accentuating the pale and rosy shades of his skin and the deep browns of his eyes.

Under Chef Min’s dark denim apron is a fuzzy white sweater and skinny black jeans, and Namjoon cannot pinpoint why, but the combination makes his heart go do-geun, do-geun. Even glancing over at him for a moment feels like an impossible feat.

And god forbid Namjoon looks at his hands. Chef Min's hands are large and veiny with sakura-hued accents around his knobby knuckles, and although they appear soft and warm, with perfectly manicured nails, when the chef turns them over, they are marked with rough calluses.

Many things swim through Namjoon's mind at the sight of such deft, hard working hands, and luckily they swim at breakneck speeds, never allowing Namjoon to dwell on any one thought at a time because it would surely be the death of him, he thinks. And in front of a live audience, no less.

Although Namjoon knows he looks nice today with his sandy brown hair coiffed off his forehead, wearing his trusty soft brown cardigan over a white tee with golden brown slacks, he still feels inadequate near someone so strikingly pretty. Chef Min is the kind of pretty that could easily get away with being mean, but he seems quite the opposite; daresay, he is very polite and warm as he walks through his recipes with ease, talking straight into the camera and addressing the audience as if he has done this a hundred times before, carrying a confidence that makes Namjoon sweat.

And Namjoon is no stranger to pretty people; he interviews celebrities and high-status folks all the time and rubs shoulders with some of the most well-paid news anchors and morning talk show hosts in the country. For many, it is their job to be pretty. But there is something about Chef Min that Namjoon just cannot shake—that he finds himself almost fixated on.

Namjoon manages to ask every teleprompted question and even makes light conversation throughout the segment, but he still struggles to look the young chef in the eye, and once the interview is over and the cameras are off, Namjoon feels exhausted.

During the last segment of the show, Namjoon's voice continues to shake at times, despite Chef Min no longer being in the vicinity to distract him. Still, Namjoon hopes to get backstage in time for a chance to see the chef one last time, despite worrying he might not be able to talk to the man without making a fool of himself.

Because, the thing is: Namjoon has never been attracted to a man before—not like this, anyway. He has never had a problem admitting that men are attractive, but he has never met a man that has made his heart race before. Chef Min makes Namjoon's heart race so fast, he is worried he might actually pass out. Or throw up. Or both.

Once backstage, Namjoon plays it cool, peeking into the various greenrooms to greet his coworkers and the other guests they had on the morning show as if it is standard practice and will therefore totally not be weird to peek into the last room. The room Chef Min occupies is at the far end of the hall, and from inside, he should be able to see—or at least hear—Namjoon make his way closer, so Namjoon thinks he definitely has an in, at least to say hello.

When Namjoon approaches the last room slowly, he knocks on the open door before peeking his head around the corner to the left. Chef Min is sitting at a vanity table, gently wiping the makeup off of his eyes with a cleansing pad. When he notices Namjoon, he smiles widely.

"Namjoon-ssi! Come on in."

Namjoon hesitates; he wasn't expecting such a warm welcome. As he enters the room, Chef Min finishes what he is doing and turns, leaning against the table with his hands on the edge. He has taken his apron off but still wears the fuzzy sweater, and he looks devastatingly pretty.

"Chef Min, I just wanted to—"

"Yoongi."

"W-what?"

"Call me Yoongi. The cameras are off; you don't have to call me Chef. Although I don't mind powerplay, we should probably get to know each other a little better first, yeah?"

Namjoon's head spins, and in an attempt to not stand in front of Yoongi like an absolute idiot, he says, "Yoongi, right. I don't actually think I got your name before, apologies. Y-you can just call me Namjoon, no need for formalities."

Yoongi cocks an eyebrow and drags his bottom lip through his teeth. "Sounds good, Namjoon. And, no need to apologize."

There is something so absolutely disarming about Yoongi's gaze that makes Namjoon question his entire existence. The crew whispered about Yoongi seeming cold and reserved, but he is anything but cold, to Namjoon.

"Uh, anyway, I just wanted to thank you for coming onto the show. It's nice to have fresh young faces, and I think the housewives who tune in will really like you."

"Ah, so you're using my pretty face for ratings?" Yoongi teases, once again playing with his bottom lip between his teeth.

Namjoon attempts to let out a chuckle, but it sounds awkward and forced. "Whatever works, am I right?"

"So, are you really as useless at cooking as you say?" Yoongi asks with a smirk.

Before Namjoon can answer, Yoongi begins to roll up his sleeves. Under the soft, fuzzy sweater, from his wrist up, Yoongi is covered in elaborate, colorful tattoos. Namjoon wants to step closer and inspect the designs—wants to trace his fingers along them.

"Ah—I—yes," Namjoon manages to mutter, pulling his eyes from Yoongi's arms, forcing himself to make eye contact with Yoongi instead. Not that his eyes are any less intimidating and alluring, but staring someone in the eye when you speak to them is more socially acceptable than staring at their appendages, Namjoon figures.

Yoongi grins. "And what does your partner think of that?"

"My partner? Uh, no. I don't—um—I don't have a partner." Namjoon cringes inwardly at his sudden, complete inability to form a simple fucking sentence and tries again. "My ex-wife hated it, though. It was definitely a point of contention between us."

Yoongi's expression is suddenly unreadable, and he turns back toward the makeup mirror, leaning in and checking his face once more. Then, he turns, reaches into his pocket, produces his wallet, and pulls out a card. Much to Namjoon's delight and horror, Yoongi approaches, holding out the card between two long fingers.

"Well, if you'd ever like a private lesson, here's my number," Yoongi offers.

Yoongi smells like a forest on an autumn morning from this distance, and Namjoon takes the card and turns it over in his fingers, doing his best not to inhale the scent too deeply. The background looks like a wooden cutting board, which Namjoon thinks is clever.

"I appreciate the offer, but I'm so lousy, even private lessons would probably go to waste. I'm sure you have better things to do with your time than try to teach this old dog new tricks."

Yoongi hums in understanding and lets out a soft chuckle. "Alright, well, I also do personal chef calls. So if you're ever craving something in particular but don't feel like ordering takeout or burning your house down, you should shoot me a text."

Namjoon knows he is not going to take Yoongi up on such a generous offer because it already feels like he would be asking way too much of someone he has barely just met, but he smiles and thanks Yoongi, telling him that he will be in touch.

Namjoon does not get in touch with Yoongi. For three weeks, Namjoon pulls Yoongi's card out of his wallet every so often, turns it around in his fingers, and thinks about all the things he would like to say to Yoongi over the phone. Then he puts the card away, promptly abandoning those thoughts.

Sure, some of the things Namjoon thinks to discuss with Yoongi are related to his work as a chef. Such as asking how he got into that line of work, or what kinds of foods Yoongi enjoys making the most, and other inquiries of that nature. But he also wants to know things unrelated to food, like what—if anything—his tattoos stand for, what kind of music Yoongi listens to, what would Yoongi surmise it is about him that makes Namjoon's heart go wild in his chest, and so on. Namjoon is not sure he has any business asking Yoongi any of these things, so he does not bother reaching out at all. He thinks about these things, though; he thinks about them a lot.

"Wait, so you, like, have a crush on a man?" Namjoon's best friend Hoseok blurts out loudly over a chorus of shouting and some new hip hop track. They are at a local dive bar where drinks are nice and cheap, and it is within walking distance of their apartments, which are close to one another.

Namjoon shakes his head, but he does not necessarily deny it. He is not sure. "How do I know if I have a crush on a man?"

Hoseok scoffs, turning his heart-shaped lips into a smile. His shaggy dark brown hair falls over his eyes, and he tilts his head to the side as if to get a better look at Namjoon.

"How do you know when you have a crush on anyone?"

Namjoon shrugs. "I get all nervous and nauseated, and I can't stop thinking about them, I guess."

"Okay, well, does the thought of the hot chef make you want to throw up right now?"

Yes, it does. It absolutely does. Namjoon smiles awkwardly and nods.

"Sounds to me like you're down bad, my guy."

Namjoon scoffs. "But I don't—I'm not into men. Am I?"

Hoseok stares at his friend incredulously and shrugs. "I guess there's a first time for everything, I don't know?"

Namjoon takes a gulp of his beer. He feels stressed out and confused. "Like, I'm not opposed to the idea, or like...grossed out or anything. I'm not homophobic."

Hoseok gestures to himself, being Namjoon's very gay best friend, and says, "Obviously."

"Right."

"But you're unsettled."

"Yeah," Namjoon admits. He cringes, squeezing his eyes shut; he feels like an asshole. Why should he be unsettled about finding someone attractive? What kind of person does that make him?

"Look, it's okay to be uncomfortable with new feelings. Discomfort does not make you a bad person; it just means your brain is struggling to process the information. You just need time."

"I don't even know where to begin unpacking this," Namjoon mutters, picking up his beer and emptying the rest of the bottle into his mouth.

Hoseok leans forward on his elbows, twirling his mostly empty bottle around. "Do you want to kiss him?"

Namjoon's eyes dart up; he feels scandalized. "I met the guy once!"

"So? You've seen his lips. Are they kissable?"

Namjoon stares ahead, eyes unfocused. Yeah, he thinks. "Extremely."

"Damn."

"Yeah."

"Wait, you said he was offering to give you cooking lessons, and when you turned those down, he offered to be a private chef. Are you sure he wasn't coming onto you?"

Namjoon's brain seems to rid itself of all thought or feeling, and he stares once more at the table between him and Hoseok, absolutely failing to come up with a response, so he just shrugs.

"Did he seem gay?" Hoseok asks.

"I don't know. He was smirking a lot."

"Ah yes, smirking," Hoseok chuckles, intoning sarcastically. "The telltale sign of gayness. I should have known."

Namjoon feels dumbfounded. Silence befalls them until Hoseok chugs back the rest of his beer and announces he is going to get them another round, leaving Namjoon alone. Namjoon mulls it over again—he should, at the very least, try to strike up an innocent conversation with Yoongi. The guy seemed interested enough in being friends with Namjoon to give him his card...he thinks. It didn't feel like just another formality or vapid attempt at networking. So why is it so difficult?

It is after three more beers while on his way back home that Namjoon decides that, once he gets home, he is going to text Yoongi, at least to say hi and apologize for not getting in touch for several weeks; he thinks he owes the guy that much. Hoseok sings Namjoon's praises, telling him that he is kind and thoughtful and handsome and deserving of good things and that he should not be worried about reaching out to a pretty boy just because the thought of him makes Namjoon wanna throw up whole swarms of butterflies. Namjoon supposes he is right.

Once safe in the confines of his somewhat swanky bachelor apartment full of hand-carved driftwood furniture and lots of cute little plants, Namjoon stumbles out of his shoes, nearly toppling himself and his coat rack over, then makes his way into the kitchen for a glass of water.

Namjoon is so distracted by the thought of Yoongi and his dangly silver earrings and colorful tattoos and bleached white hair and huge, veiny hands that he over fills the glass, spilling water all over his hand and into the sink. He mutters profanities to himself as he shuts the sink off, then flicks his hand in the air to dispel the water, which hardly actually works as intended, before making his way to his brown faux leather sofa and sinking down into it.

With a nervous, damp hand, Namjoon pulls out his wallet, fishes out Yoongi's card, and takes out his phone, punching in Yoongi's number before staring at a blank messenger screen. Suddenly he cannot parse words, and nothing of any substance comes to mind, and he begins to spiral.

It is not like he can open with, "Hey Yoongi, it's Namjoon. Sorry for being MIA, but I want to kiss you so bad it makes me wanna vomit a swarm of bugs and anxiety, and I have no idea what the fuck to say to you." That probably would not go over too well. Instead, he settles for something a little more run-of-the-mill.

Namjoon: Hey Yoongi, it's Namjoon. Sorry for not texting sooner; work has been busy. Just wanted to reach out in case you wanted my number. Maybe I can take you up on the private chef offer some time.

It is not too cringe, though Namjoon feels a little trepidation sending it; at least it is already past 1:00 AM, so Namjoon does not expect a response to come in any time soon. So when his phone lights up with a call from Yoongi's number, he panics, and the anxious swarm of nauseating insects takes flight in his tummy once more.

"H-hello?" Namjoon mutters into the phone, embarrassed by how weak and overused his voice sounds from shouting at the bar.

"Namjoon," Yoongi rasps through the line. "Here, I was starting to think you'd never call."

"Yeah, s-sorry about that.”

Yoongi hums and says, "Shit happens."

Silence hangs between them, with Namjoon absolutely clamming up, and Yoongi speaks again. 

"So, what were you up to tonight?"

"Uh, I was out with my best friend at one of the local dives having some beers and catching up."

Yoongi hums again, and Namjoon thinks he really likes the way it sounds. 

"Local dive, huh? You don't strike me as a local dive kind of guy."

"What do you mean?" Namjoon asks, sitting up and readjusting his legs onto the couch as if he feels the need to get comfortable before being perceived.

Yoongi chuckles—another sound Namjoon likes. 

"I mean, you're somewhat famous as far as news anchor talk show host...whatevers go."

"Uh-huh," Namjoon responds, amused.

"I would expect you to go somewhere fancy, like a whiskey den or one of those hip little spots with thirty-dollar craft cocktails."

"Ah, you didn't think the somewhat famous news anchor talk show host whatever guy likes low tier beers? I see."

Namjoon is surprised by how comfortable it is to talk to Yoongi despite not really knowing him at all. He feels himself smiling, waiting for what Yoongi might say next.

"Nah," Yoongi mutters. "Guess I didn't get a very good read on you."

"Yeah?" Namjoon challenges, raising his eyebrows as if anyone might see him. "How did you read me?"

Yoongi exhales, but it is not exasperated, and Namjoon plays with his lip between his teeth as he waits.

"Stuck up DILF who likes thirty-dollar craft cocktails. Though, divorcee isn't too far off from a DILF, so maybe I didn't do too bad."

"Stuck up!" Namjoon parrots, sitting up even more.

Yoongi laughs, wheezes some, and Namjoon wishes he could see the look on his face. He wonders if Yoongi's eyes scrunch up when he laughs.

"Look, you redeemed yourself when you came to the greenroom to say hi. In fact, you seemed afraid of me. It was cute."

"Wow, so first you thought I was stuck up, and then you thought I was scared-slash-cute. What a whirlwind, Yoongi."

"You're telling me!"

The word "cute" ricochets around Namjoon's brain, and he tries not to think about it too hard, but it is difficult not to when Yoongi, of all fucking people, rasps it over the phone like it's nothing.

"Wait," Yoongi says, "so you've been drinking? Are you drunk?"

Namjoon scoffs. He is not not drunk, but he is not drunk. 

"No."

"Ah huh, sure."

"Why, should I be?" Namjoon asks—unsure why he asks that.

"I dunno, drunk people are fun. You can get them to confess to things."

Something in Yoongi's tone deepens, and it makes Namjoon nervous. He shifts around on his couch, pulling his legs tighter under him and leaning into the armrest.

 "Like what?"

"I dunno," Yoongi teases. "What's a guy like you got to confess to?"

Namjoon hums as if he is mulling it over. "Not much, I'm afraid."

"What was your first impression of me?" Yoongi asks, catching Namjoon off guard.

"Intimidating," Namjoon responds without thinking.

"Wow, that's it?"

Namjoon chuckles, but it's more of a nervous laugh. 

"I mean, I don't know. You seemed nice, and talented. Interesting."

Yoongi lets out a breath, like a laugh, but it sounds humorless, and it makes Namjoon nervous—he worries he might have said something wrong. Then, Yoongi clears his throat.

"Well, it's late, so I should probably—"

Namjoon panics, "Wait, Yoongi. We should—I mean—if you'd like to get a drink sometime. Or something."

"Nah, you don't mean that," Yoongi grumbles, and Namjoon cannot help but wonder how the tone of the conversation seemed to shift so abruptly.

"Of course I do. I messaged you, remember?"

Silence hangs between them, and Yoongi says, "Sure, alright. Text me when you're free sometime, and maybe I'll be free too."

"Okay, sounds good," Namjoon mutters before Yoongi says, "Bye," and ends the call.

Another week passes before Namjoon reaches out to Yoongi, in part because he is busy, but mostly he just feels uncertain. Maybe even a little stupid. Try as he might, he cannot figure out what made the last conversation turn sour, and he is worried that he might say something again to bother Yoongi. 

Tonight, he figures he can strike up a conversation; he happens to find himself in a fancy craft cocktail spot with some coworkers and feels the overwhelming urge to talk shit about it to a certain someone. It gives him a nice excuse to reach out.

Namjoon: I'm actually offended that you thought I would be into $30 craft cocktails. They're so fucking sweet; I can already feel the headache coming.

Yoongi: And I'm actually impressed that you use semi-colons in text messages. Namjoon, darling, to what do I owe the pleasure on this fine Friday night?

Namjoon: Sorry again for the radio silence. My life is actually pretty dull outside of work, so I never know what to say to people over the phone if it's on me to strike up a conversation.

Yoongi: Well, no pressure to talk to me if there's nothing that comes to mind.

Namjoon: Ah, but therein lies the problem: I want to talk to you. So what's a guy to do?

Yoongi: Oh?

Namjoon: Tonight, however, I have an excuse. I'm out with some execs drinking the most disgusting concoctions I think I have ever tried and was reminded of your first impression of me. I don't know how the youths these days do it. I can't believe you thought this was something I could be into.

Yoongi: You know you could just order anything you'd like there, right?

Namjoon: Yeah, but it has all the pomp and status regardless. I shouldn't have to shell out $12 for a two-finger pour of some mid-tier whiskey just because this bar is covered in fake greenery and has a pretentious fucking name written in fuchsia neon lights.

Yoongi: Tell me how you really feel.

Namjoon: This is why I go to dives.

Yoongi: Yeah? I'm at one now, come join me? Or do you have to rub shoulders with the execs a while longer? I can be out later, too.

Namjoon: Nah, I can leave soon. Send me the address?

Namjoon thanks the shitty overpriced cocktails for giving him the courage to walk the six blocks to where Yoongi is—which is pretty impressive, considering how close they are in a city so big. When Namjoon arrives at the bar, somewhat loud, aggressive music wafts out from inside, and he immediately feels overdressed, undoing his tie and rolling it into a ball to shove into his pocket before unbuttoning the first few buttons on his black dress shirt.

The inside of the bar is pretty nice, with retro fixtures casting red and yellow light about, and the seats and booths are all dark red leather; it looks pretty clean for a dive. Namjoon looks around before spotting bright white hair at the far end of the bar, and he nervously makes his way over.

Yoongi is sitting in a black leather jacket and black jeans, and when he looks in Namjoon's direction, he has hints of black eyeliner and shadow around his eyes, which makes Namjoon's anxiety bug swarm open a fucking mosh pit in his guts.

"Hey, handsome," Yoongi winks, eyeing him up and down. "What's a guy like you doing in a place like this?"

Namjoon feels warmth flood his cheeks as he takes a seat beside Yoongi, and he tries not to stare at him, but Yoongi is so fucking pretty there is literally nowhere else Namjoon wants to look, and it makes his head spin. And, being that Yoongi called Namjoon handsome, he figures he can return the compliment. He tells himself it is acceptable and gives it a shot.

"Just here to meet up with this pretty chef I know," Namjoon responds, praying that he sounded cool.

Yoongi stares at Namjoon, lips parted as if there is something he might say, but then he closes his mouth, tugs it into a lopsided smile, and turns to his drink. Thankfully the bartender comes by to distract them by taking Namjoon's order, and Namjoon glances at the glass in Yoongi's hand containing caramel color liquor before saying, "Whatever he has."

"This is straight bourbon," Yoongi mutters.

"Alright."

"So you think I'm pretty," Yoongi says the moment the bartender turns around, and Namjoon turns his gaze back to him, studying the blank expression on Yoongi's face. Namjoon wishes he knew what Yoongi was thinking about.

"Of course," Namjoon mutters. "I mean...look at you."

"I don't remember pretty being one of the adjectives you gave me, though. Just intimidating, nice, talented, and..."

"Interesting."

"Ah, right."

There is a hint of something sour in Yoongi's tone, and Namjoon wonders if that was what upset him that night. After Yoongi had called Namjoon cute, he couldn't return the compliment in kind. He does his best to make up for it.

"Yeah, I must have left it out, on account of finding you so intimidating and all."

Yoongi watches Namjoon with a squint in his eyes and a glimmer of something indiscernible, then he turns away and stares ahead.

"If you think I'm just here because you're pretty, though, you're wrong," Namjoon continues.

Yoongi scoffs. "Is that right?"

Namjoon hums in agreement. "I'm here tonight because the place I was before was terrible and boring and annoying, and you seem to be the opposite of those things. Actually, by contrast, I worry that I'm the terrible, boring, annoying factor here; I really stand out in a place like this."

"You do look a bit like a dad," Yoongi teases.

Namjoon hums. "I guess it's a good thing you're into DILFs."

Yoongi laughs, and it is a lighthearted laugh that someone makes when they are caught off-guard, and Namjoon enjoys watching Yoongi in a moment like this—noting that Yoongi's eyes do, in fact, scrunch up, and he looks absolutely breathtaking.

"Yeah, true," Yoongi says, pulling his glass to his lips.

Namjoon learns a lot about Yoongi over a couple glasses of bourbon, such as that Yoongi is from Daegu, and he got into cooking rather easily because it is a skill that has always come naturally to him. Yoongi likes most music but favors rap and hip hop, especially from the 90s. Yoongi doesn't really have a favorite dish that he prefers to prepare but enjoys making soups and stews because they are hearty and versatile, and you can easily store the leftovers. Yoongi moved to Seoul to open his own business and became a commercial chef. Namjoon also learns that Yoongi is in his mid-20s, which takes him by surprise; not only is Yoongi quite successful for being so young, but he is several years younger than Namjoon.

"Maybe that's why you intimidate me," Namjoon confesses as they walk along the river in a randomly chosen direction that happens to be toward where Namjoon lives.

"Why?"

"You're quite a bit younger than me. I don't think I look very old, but I feel old, especially now that I have a divorce finalized. I feel very disconnected from people your age half of the time."

"Age isn't everything," Yoongi rebukes. "Experience counts for something. I'm sure there are plenty of things that I have way more experience in than you do."

Namjoon doesn't doubt that. 

"Ah, speaking of, you were talking about stews earlier, and I thought it's been a long time since I've had a really good home cooked meal. Maybe if you wanted to come by some time and show me a favorite recipe of yours or something."

Yoongi stops in his tracks, eyes on the ground. 

"I was just trying to hit on you."

"Oh."

"I mean, I would still come to cook for you, but all of that was just an excuse to give you my number. I couldn't tell if you were into me or not, so I was trying to play it cool, but since you think I'm pretty, maybe you are into me after all."

Namjoon feels a mix of emotions, and he struggles to identify any of them. Hoseok was right; Yoongi was just coming onto him. And with all the lip bites and hard-to-read expressions, it should have been obvious.

"Oh," is all Namjoon can say once again, which clearly is not enough for Yoongi, who turns away and looks out over the river, avoiding eye contact. His shoulders are up around his neck.

"Ah—I mean, I was—I am. It's just—ah." Words, Namjoon. Think whole, actual words, preferably in a complete fucking sentence. "I like you, Yoongi. I liked you then too, which is why I came to say hi to you in the greenroom despite finding you intimidating. And despite being too shy to talk to you."

"You have a strange way of flirting," Yoongi mumbles, staring ahead, still. The wind from the river pushes Yoongi's hair around, dangling his earrings, and there is a chill that turns Yoongi's cheeks pink. He frowns, and he kind of looks like he is ready to jet.

"Well, it would help if I could think in cohesive sentences around you," Namjoon admits.

Yoongi turns his face to Namjoon with wide eyes, and a smirk plays at the corner of his mouth. "You were able to over the phone."

"Hard to be distracted by how disarming you are over the phone. Actually, that's a lie; your voice was much more..." Namjoon is staring at Yoongi, openly gawking at his sharp cat-like eyes dusted in black. He is so pretty, Namjoon fnds it difficult think.

"Much more...?" 

Yoongi’s smirks grows.

Despite being away from the loud music of the dive bar, all of Namjoon's thoughts still push and pull around his mind, making it hard for him to sort them out.

"Alright, I guess, I've had some drinks, and they've loosened me enough that I can spare a single confession."

Yoongi brightens up and turns to face Namjoon, who turns to fully face Yoongi. Beneath Yoongi's leather jacket is what appears to be a black band tee with some chaotic design in white ink, and Namjoon cannot even begin to parse what it is, but what he can identify are horizontal rips in the fabric and pretty skin peeking through, and he forces his eyes up to Yoongi's pretty face, instead.

Namjoon swallows a lump in his throat. 

"I think I have...god, I don't know why I feel so embarrassed to talk about my feelings." He looks over to the river to think, and the cool air stings his eyes, forcing him to look back at Yoongi, instead.

"You have feelings for me, hmm?" Yoongi teases with an eyebrow raised. Namjoon thinks Yoongi may have stepped closer in that split second he looked away, and he nods in response. "What color are they?"

"Blue," Namjoon blurts out without giving it any thought. "And warm orange."

"Interesting," Yoongi says, stepping even closer.

Yoongi's proximity terrifies Namjoon because he does not know what to do with it. It shouldn't be any different from when anyone else has flirted with him, but he still feels panicked. Maybe it is the crisp night air wafting off the river that is putting him on edge.

"It's cold," Namjoon mutters, and Yoongi eyes up Namjoon as if just realizing he is not dressed for the weather, only wearing a dress shirt and slacks.

"Right, sorry, I got distracted," Yoongi says and chuckles, then he turns and begins walking the way they were going. Namjoon follows and falls into step next to him.

"I live nearby," Namjoon blurts, and Yoongi's head cocks quickly in his direction, though he continues to look ahead. "Unless you had another bar or something in mind, but we should probably put something else in our stomachs."

"We should eat," Yoongi says. "I can't imagine what a man who doesn't cook would keep in his kitchen, but I guess I can work with just about anything."

"There's a convenience store by my place."

Yoongi scoffs and shakes his head. "If we're going to fill up on sodium, I'll just take you to a nearby noodle bar. It's open late."

Namjoon follows Yoongi several more blocks, and they do not say much. Now that there is a promise of food, both men have a pep in their step. The noodle bar is in an alley, and there aren't very many people inside, so they get served rather quickly. While bowls of udon topped with vegetables are served, Yoongi cracks open a bottle of soju, and Namjoon finds himself staring once again at Yoongi's face.

Yoongi glances up, notices Namjoon's eyes, and smirks. "Yes?"

Namjoon mutters half profanities under his breath. "I'm terrible at this."

"So you're divorced," Yoongi says, and Namjoon nods, humming quietly. "From a woman. Ex-wife." Namjoon nods and hums some more. "And before her?"

"I dated around a little, but not a lot."

Yoongi nods and passes a small cup of soju over. "Men and women?"

There it is. Namjoon can no longer skirt around it. He chews on his bottom lip staring at his steaming bowl of food, wishing the noodles would magically materialize into words to help guide him through his myriad thoughts and insecurities. He swallows another lump in his throat.

"I've never—" Namjoon's voice is shaky. "No. Only women."

Namjoon cannot bring himself to look at Yoongi, but he can feel his eyes on him, and he shifts in his seat. Yoongi hums in acknowledgment then picks up his glass of soju and holds it out, causing Namjoon to tear his eyes from his bowl to find Yoongi smiling softly. Namjoon grabs his own little glass and holds it up, touching it to Yoongi's.

"To figuring it out," Yoongi says.

"Cheers," Namjoon responds with a smile.

After the noodle bar, Namjoon and Yoongi part ways. Apparently, Yoongi lives nearby, which is information Namjoon's mind seems to have on repeat, playing it over and over because Namjoon lives nearby too. He hopes to see Yoongi again, and soon.

During their meal, Yoongi changed the subject rather quickly, after having slurped some of his broth, to talk about all the nuanced flavors used in the dishes, and Namjoon just listened with bated breath despite having no idea what he was talking about half of the time. He was relieved, in a way, that Yoongi didn't seem to mind that Namjoon liked him despite having no experience dating men. Then, as the night ended, Yoongi promised to cook for Namjoon, to make an attempt to teach him something, and Namjoon happily accepted.

Now Namjoon sits in his bed, in a t-shirt and flannel pants, staring at his phone. He wants to text Yoongi, to keep talking to him, but he has no idea what to say. He is no longer intoxicated, but he is feeling a little lighter after spending some time with Yoongi, so he does his best.

Namjoon: Thanks for the drinks and the food. And the walk along the river. It was really fun.

Yoongi: You're sending fragment sentences rather than complex ones. Are you anxious, Namjoon?

Namjoon: For the record, I'm always anxious.

Yoongi: Do I make you anxious?

Namjoon bites on his bottom lip and stares at his phone, catching his breath. He wonders how honest he should be and reminds himself that Yoongi fully admitted to coming onto him and liking him, so he should just be honest and stop second-guessing himself.

Namjoon: Extremely.

Yoongi: Can I call?

Namjoon: Yes.

The phone rings exactly once before Namjoon answers it, bringing it to his ear almost frantically.

"Hey," Namjoon all but pants into the phone.

"Hey gorgeous," Yoongi rasps. He sounds out of breath. "So I make you anxious?"

"Yoongi, you make me a lot of things," Namjoon confesses, closing his eyes. "Anxious is just at the top of the list."

"What else?"

"Nervous. Confused. Dumb."

"I make you dumb?" Yoongi chuckles.

"Yes. Brain empty, can't speak, what even are words, mouth doesn't work right."

"Damn."

Namjoon chuckles. "Yeah."

"Sounds like you have a huge fucking crush on me, Namjoon."

"Yeah," Namjoon mutters. "It does sound like that, huh?"

"And confused?"

Namjoon sighs. "I've never had feelings for a man before." Silence hangs for a fraction of a second, and it is just enough time to make Namjoon panic. "I'm not opposed to the idea or anything, though. Not at all. It's just...it's all so new, and I don't really know how to navigate it, and I'm overthinking it in a big way. And now I'm rambling; geez, this is embarrassing."

"You are spiraling, sweetheart."

"I am absolutely spiraling. But I like that, just now, when you called me sweetheart."

"Well, what do you want? You know I also like you, but there's absolutely no pressure. If you just want to be friends too, I could live with that."

"No," Namjoon blurts, "no, I don't want to just be friends. I can't look at you without getting so wrapped up in my feelings; I don't think I could handle it if we tried to just be friends."

Yoongi hums. "Talk to me, then. What do you want?"

"I want to kiss you," Namjoon confesses, so soft he wonders if Yoongi even heard him. A small gasp on the other end of the line suggests he did.

"Well, you're in luck, Joonie, because I want to kiss you too."

The nicknames and confessions make Namjoon's head spin and blood rush to his cock, and he rests back against his headboard, doing his best to ignore the swell of arousal pooling in his guts.

"Anything else you want to do?" Yoongi's deep voice taunts him, and Namjoon lets out a shattered breath.

"Yes. I think so, but I don't know...I don't know how."

"I could teach you."

"Fuck," Namjoon whimpers softly to himself.

"We'll start slow, though. I'll come over with food, and we can hang out, and if you have the urge to kiss me, we'll kiss."

"You make it sound so easy," Namjoon chuckles.

"How does tomorrow sound?"

Fast. Terrifying. Overwhelming. "Perfect."

"Perfect," Yoongi parrots, and Namjoon can hear his smile. "I'm falling asleep, but I'll call in the morning, and we can iron out the details, alright, sweetheart?"

"Yeah," Namjoon mutters, nodding his head to nobody but himself. "Sounds great, Yoongi."

As soon as the call ends, Namjoon drops his phone and grabs his cock over his pants, gasping from the pressure and slight friction. He cannot shake Yoongi's deep, raspy voice and enticing promises of kisses and lessons on more than just cooking. Soft, pretty lips and hints of pale skin play over and over in Namjoon's mind as he frantically pushes his pants down to his thighs and jerks himself off. When Namjoon comes in his fist, coating his fingers in viscous release, he is whimpering Yoongi's name.

Namjoon: I think I might be losing my fucking mind.

Hoseok: Go on...

Namjoon: I saw Yoongi last night, and I confessed to liking him and I told him that he's the first man I've ever had feelings for.

Hoseok: Big steps! How did he take it?

Namjoon: He took it well. He asked whether I just wanted to be friends or if I wanted to try to be more.

Hoseok: Okay, that's good. He seems confident despite your inexperience. Points for him. What did you say?

Namjoon: I said I want to kiss him.

Hoseok: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Namjoon: He's going to come over tonight and cook for me.

Hoseok: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Namjoon: Same.

Hoseok: Shaking, crying, throwing up, Joonie Bear!!! This is huge!!! How do you feel?

Namjoon: Excited. And terrified. Mostly excited. It's been ages since I've wanted to kiss someone, and I am trying not to panic.

Hoseok: Well, I'm rooting for you! I hope all your dreams come true. Remember to take it slow and don't get too wrapped up in your head, alright? Just communicate how you're feeling. It sounds like you really like him and that he'll take good care of you.

"You already look lost," Yoongi teases.

Namjoon feels overdressed in his pale blue dress shirt tucked into charcoal grey slacks next to Yoongi in his denim apron, with a short white band tee tucked into tight black jeans beneath. Yoongi has a studded belt around his hips, and Namjoon wonders what Yoongi would look like with the belt wrapped around his wrists.

"Y-yeah," Namjoon mutters. "I'm terrible at cutting things."

"You own expensive knives and don't know how to use them?" More mocking tone with raised eyebrows, and Namjoon feels delightfully dizzy.

"Well, I figure, if I lose an appendage, I may as well do it in style," Namjoon shrugs. 

Yoongi shakes his head.

Watching Yoongi move around the kitchen with poise and grace, humming to himself all the while, fills Namjoon's chest with warm affection. Although Yoongi is smaller than Namjoon in nearly every sense, his presence is huge, almost overwhelming, though never stifling.

"I just have to cut the rest of the spring onions for garnish, and then we're all set," Yoongi says, and although Namjoon hums in response and nods, he cannot help but stare at the way Yoongi's large, delicate hands hold onto his knife, nor how patterns and colors twist the length of Yoongi's otherwise pretty pale arms. Yoongi clears his throat, and Namjoon's eyes shoot up to meet his, watching as he smirks.

“You’re drooling Namjoon,” Yoongi says as he deftly chops an onion while staring into his eyes. “Be a good boy and set the table for me.”

At the words be a good boy, a shiver runs through Namjoon, starting at the base of his skull and shooting straight down into his cock. He knows he must look bewildered because Yoongi lets out a soft chuckle as he uses the blade of the knife and the edge of his hand to scoop the spring onions from the cutting board into a small dish.

Namjoon bows his head and mutters, "Yes, sir," before turning to his cabinet to grab his dishware, and when he peeks from behind the open door to find Yoongi blushing and nibbling on his bottom lip, Namjoon smiles, forcing himself to focus once more on the task at hand.

With the table set and bottle of wine open, Namjoon sits across from Yoongi, who has removed his apron. The food smells incredible, and Namjoon waits for Yoongi's signal before digging in. Everything from the flavors to the aromatics fills Namjoon's senses, and he closes his eyes and groans into the first spoonful; he is not sure he has ever tasted anything so good before. It is rich yet delicate and hearty, and Namjoon fears that this will only serve to make him fall even more head over heels for the pretty chef. When Namjoon opens his eyes, he finds Yoongi chuckling with blushed cheeks while filling their glasses with red wine.

"It's just a stew," Yoongi mutters, though his smile has reached his eyes.

"You're amazing," Namjoon blurts, and he does not miss the way Yoongi's eyes shine wide with surprise. "Seriously, this is spectacular. And you make it look so easy. I'm impressed, Chef Min."

"Impressed enough to kiss me later?" Yoongi asks as he pulls his wine glass up to his lips.

"Absolutely," Namjoon mutters while taking his own wine into his hands. The first sip warms Namjoon even more than the stew managed to, making him a bit more dizzy. Though, he knows that it is Yoongi intoxicating him more than anything else.

They eat primarily in silence, save for slurping sounds, the occasional scrape of a spoon against a bowl, and Namjoon groaning repeated praises over the food. Yoongi smiles contentedly, though he seems to become shy the more Namjoon swoons over his skills. He looks so cute when he blushes that it only makes Namjoon praise him more.

Once they have killed the bottle of wine, Namjoon finally gets up and collects their dishes, taking them to the sink. He stacks everything neatly, intending to clean them later, then turns to find Yoongi leaning into the kitchen island behind him. At the sight of Yoongi watching Namjoon, his heart pounds, and his breath comes out ragged. Slowly, Namjoon approaches, and when he gets close enough, Yoongi reaches his arms up, resting his hands around Namjoon's shoulders.

"Thanks for cooking for me," Namjoon mutters softly.

Yoongi nods and smiles, "It was my pleasure, sweetheart."

Yoongi's fingers play gently at the nape of Namjoon's neck, and Namjoon leans in slowly, eyes locked on Yoongi's lips. He tongue flicks out to wet his lips, and Yoongi's tongue does the same, then Namjoon wraps his arms around Yoongi's thin waist as he pulls him close enough to slot their lips together. Yoongi gasps and smiles against Namjoon's mouth, and Namjoon darts his tongue out, testing the kiss, already eager for more.

When Yoongi parts his lips, Namjoon licks inside and moans softly, finding the warmth of Yoongi's mouth so inviting. Yoongi slowly chases Namjoon's tongue in a dance of back-and-forth, and their hands begin to grip tighter until Yoongi is tugging at Namjoon's shoulders to be closer.

Namjoon breaks the kiss, practically gasping for breath, and rests his forehead against Yoongi's, opening his eyes to smile at him. Yoongi's lips are pink and slick and slightly swollen, and Namjoon wants to nip at them until Yoongi falls apart in his arms.

"I didn't prepare a dessert for tonight because I just had a feeling your lips would be this sweet," Yoongi says softly. “Lips like honey.”

"Fuck," Namjoon whimpers, gripping onto Yoongi tighter.

"How do you feel?” Yoongi asks sweetly. “Do you need to slow down?"

Namjoon shakes his head. Although he is treading somewhat new territory with Yoongi, and his heart is racing against his ribs, the last thing he wants is to slow down. 

"I feel great."

"You like kissing me?"

"Yeah," Namjoon says through a shattered breath. "I like kissing you very much, Yoongi."

Yoongi grins and bites his lip. "Kiss me some more, then."

Namjoon grips onto Yoongi's waist and lifts him, setting Yoongi onto the marble countertop. Yoongi gasps and immediately wraps his legs around Namjoon's hips, pulling him closer, and Namjoon is acutely aware of just how close their cocks are to touching. 

He thinks he would very much like it if his and Yoongi's cocks were to touch, and he moans into Yoongi's mouth as he is drawn into a kiss that is more heated than the last. Namjoon's hands rove up Yoongi's back, one holding him tightly around the middle while the other gently engulfs the back of his head. As Yoongi sucks on Namjoon's bottom lip, Namjoon's hips rut, and Yoongi moans into his mouth.

"How are you?" Yoongi asks against Namjoon's lips.

"Amazing," Namjoon says as he gently sucks Yoongi's bottom lip between his teeth. 

Yoongi whines and Namjoon is certain he wants to hear that sound from Yoongi's mouth a lot more.

"Want to keep making out, or do you want more?"

Namjoon wants more, but he cannot wrap his mind around what more might mean exactly, so he catches his breath and attempts to gather his thoughts.

"We don't have to dive into anything too intense," Yoongi clarifies. "I know this is your first time with a man, and I want you to be comfortable. But I also really want to suck your dick if you'd let me."

Namjoon slides his hands under Yoongi's ass and lifts him, then turns to exit the kitchen, and Yoongi rests his head on Namjoon's shoulder, holding him tight. The walk from the kitchen to Namjoon's bedroom is not very far, but it is a bit dark, and that, mixed with Namjoon's innate clumsiness, has him fearing for not only his life but for Yoongi's life, too.

Thankfully, Namjoon makes the trip unscathed and walks through his dark bedroom, sets Yoongi down on the edge of the bed, and leans to his bedside lamp to flick it on. Warm, yellow light fills the space, and Yoongi rests back on his hands and stares up at Namjoon as if in awe.

"Do you think you'd be more of a top or a bottom?" Yoongi asks.

Namjoon has thought this over extensively since the day his crush began, and he sits on the bed beside Yoongi, leaning over to gently tug Yoongi's lips back to his.

"Both," Namjoon mutters. "I think I would want to do both."

This seems to please Yoongi, who moans into Namjoon's kiss, then parts quickly to shift onto the bed more, crawling into the center, facing the headboard. "I want you over there," Yoongi says as he nods, and Namjoon does as he is told, getting onto his knees and crawling to sit in front of Yoongi with his back resting against the board and his legs spread around Yoongi.

Yoongi runs his hands up Namjoon's legs, leaning into his thighs, then stops with his fingers tapping Namjoon's belt. 

"May I?" he asks with a grin.

"Please," Namjoon whimpers.

Yoongi's long, beautiful fingers move to Namjoon's buckle and begin to unfasten it, and already Namjoon's entire body begins to swim with so much lust and desire, it is overwhelming. He is noticing things he never did before, such as the delicate curve of Yoongi's eyelashes and the placement of several moles and freckles that grace Yoongi's cheeks and nose.

"You're so pretty," Namjoon mutters, and Yoongi's hands pause as he looks up at Namjoon. "So fucking pretty."

"Is that why you like me so much? You like pretty things?"

Namjoon chuckles. "There are so many reasons to like you, but that is certainly one."

Yoongi stops mid-mission to undo Namjoon's pants and crawls up to him, straddling his waist, wrapping his arms around Namjoon's neck. The weight of Yoongi's ass and crotch against Namjoon's dick makes him whine under his breath.

"What else?" Yoongi asks.

"You're incredibly talented,” Namjoon begins as if praising Yoongi is the easiest thing in the world. “You're fucking sexy. You didn't balk at the knowledge that I had never been with a man before; you just rolled with it like it was no big deal, which is a huge relief. I feel really comfortable with you."

Yoongi fidgets with his lips between his teeth, smiling nervously. "I mean, going into something new with someone is always scary, regardless of orientation and all of that. There's always a cloud of what-ifs that hovers over our heads, you know? You seem genuine and not like someone who is willing to waste my time, so I feel comfortable at least trying."

Namjoon feels himself blush. "I can't believe you like me."

"Don't say shit like that, Namjoon," Yoongi says softly but firmly. "You're so smart, kind, and fun. You're handsome, and you're fucking sexy as hell. And you're so eager to try new things. You are fucking perfect."

"I'm far from perfect."

Yoongi's fingers slide to Namjoon's shirt and slowly begin to undo the buttons, and Namjoon rests his head back against the headboard.

"I doubt that," Yoongi mutters as he leans forward, pressing soft, warm kisses to Namjoon's neck, roving over his throat and down each inch of slowly exposed skin. Namjoon places his hands on Yoongi's thighs and whines into Yoongi's touch as his lips find more and more sensitive patches of skin.

"Gonna make you feel so good, Joonie," Yoongi mutters as his ass slides down Namjoon's legs and his lips get lower.

"I know you will, baby," Namjoon says softly, feeling Yoongi gasp against his tummy.

With Namjoon's shirt undone, Namjoon tugs on it to untuck it from his slacks and jerks it off his shoulders, doing his best to wiggle out of it rather than sit forward too far because Yoongi's lips are on his hip, and he does not want Yoongi's lips to leave his skin for even a moment. Yoongi's lips do, however, leave his skin as Yoongi begins to check newly shirtless Namjoon out.

"My god," Yoongi mutters, running his hands up Namjoon's tummy, over his pecs, and back down again. "You're so fucking hot, Namjoon. God damn, I knew you would be, but...wow."

"Yeah?" 

Namjoon suddenly feels shy and unsure of himself despite Yoongi's praise.

"Yeah. Wow, yeah, sweetheart, you're a work of art. Sun-kissed to perfection."

Namjoon can feel his cheeks turn red hot, which is not helped by Yoongi's fingers undoing his pants. At a glance, he can see a pretty sizable bulge hiding below Yoongi, which will not be hidden for long, and he rests his head back once more. Then it occurs to Namjoon that Yoongi is still wearing a shirt and that he would very much like to see what his torso has to offer, so he reaches forward and takes a handful of the back of Yoongi's shirt, tugging it until Yoongi sits up and helps Namjoon pull it off.

Intricate tattoos swirl to just below Yoongi's clavicles, adorning his shoulders and pecs with beautiful designs. Despite his smaller build, Yoongi's chest is broad and toned, and his tummy is a perfect mix of cut muscle and soft curves.

"Wow, Yoongi," Namjoon mutters, running his fingertips up from the middle of Yoongi's arms, to his shoulders and back down. "You are the work of art, baby. Just look at you."

Yoongi blushes a pretty rosy shade as he grabs at Namjoon's slacks and begins to pull them down, and suddenly Namjoon is back to feeling incredibly nervous. He has never had complaints about his dick before, but what if Yoongi doesn't like it? Namjoon really wants Yoongi to like his dick.

"Are you spiraling again, Joonie?" Yoongi asks gently, and Namjoon realizes Yoongi is looking up at him.

Namjoon nods. 

"I am, yes. But I don't want to stop. I'm just nervous."

"I'm nervous too, sweetheart; it's okay."

"Yeah?"

Yoongi chuckles softly. 

"Yeah, of course. I want to impress you, after all; there's a lot to be nervous about."

"I'm already impressed, baby," Namjoon says.

"And I'm already so into you it makes me dizzy, but that doesn't mean you'll stop feeling shy about letting me undress you." Yoongi smiles sweetly and Namjoon nods and breathes a shattered sigh of relief. He is in good hands; he just needs to relax and trust Yoongi to take good care of him.

And Yoongi does take good care of him. As soon as Yoongi pulls Namjoon's slacks and briefs down, his eyes widen, and he groans. Yoongi fumbles backward, somewhat frantically pulling the clothing the rest of the way off, then eagerly gets between Namjoon's legs once more, looking between Namjoon's face and his cock as if he's just made the most breathtaking discovery known to man.

"Please tell me this isn't what you were so nervous to show me," Yoongi beams, rubbing Namjoon's thighs with his open palms. "That is a beautiful cock, Joonie. I can't wait to taste it."

Namjoon sits dumbfounded with his hands to his sides and stares down at Yoongi. He cannot believe the words that come from Yoongi's pretty mouth, and he has no idea how to respond. 

Yoongi smirks, leans forward, and asks, "May I, Joonie," so softly, it is almost a whisper.

"Yes," Namjoon nods emphatically, "please, Yoongi."

Yoongi takes Namjoon's cock gently in one hand, and sparks shoot out from Namjoon's groin to the ends of his limbs, causing his breath to hitch. Then Yoongi wraps his lips around the head, and Namjoon moans a deep, broken sound as Yoongi slowly works Namjoon's length in and out of his mouth, taking more and more each time. Yoongi groans as he swirls his tongue along Namjoon's shaft, and Namjoon whines, gently taking Yoongi by the hair in one hand, surprised by how soft it is.

"That feels so good, baby," Namjoon gasps, doing his best to keep from letting his head roll back, determined to watch his length disappear between those pretty sakura petal lips.

Yoongi sucks his cheeks in, slurps Namjoon hungrily, and laps his tongue around, and Namjoon completely falls apart, slowly but gradually turning into a needy, eager mess. He wonders if he could do the same to Yoongi—if his lips and tongue and sucked-in cheeks could make Yoongi unravel like this. He thinks he wants to try. He thinks he wants to try a lot of things and wonders what Yoongi's cock must look like and if it is as pretty as the rest of him.

"Fuck, Yoongi, you're gonna make me come," Namjoon whines before long.

Yoongi moans and continues to suck and lick Namjoon, pulling him over the edge, and Namjoon does his best not to let his hips buck, but they tremble beneath Yoongi's large hands as his pleasure builds.

"Ah—I'm coming," Namjoon warns just before he does, and Yoongi sucks Namjoon down eagerly, groaning as Namjoon's release sprays his tongue and throat. The feeling is so intense and so fucking good; Namjoon pants and moans, squeezing Yoongi's hair as his hips shudder.

When Yoongi finally releases Namjoon's cock, grinning ear to ear like a fool, Namjoon takes Yoongi by the head gently in both hands and pulls him into a sloppy kiss. Yoongi's lips are swollen and slick as he falls against Namjoon's chest and engulfs him with his arms, and Namjoon licks into Yoongi's mouth, tasting hints of his own heady release.

"Good?" Yoongi asks against Namjoon's lips.

"Amazing," Namjoon responds, pulling Yoongi close. “Everything you do is amazing.”

Namjoon feels breathless and euphoric. They sit quietly for a moment, and he wonders if he has the energy to keep going or if they should call it a night; if Yoongi wants to get off, too, Namjoon is more than happy to try. Yoongi is the first to break the silence.

"I hate to go, but it's getting late, Joonie. I have an early morning."

Namjoon nods and hugs Yoongi close, breathing in his musky, earthy scents. After much reluctance, he manages to bumble his shaky legs back into his briefs and kiss Yoongi all the way to the door. Namjoon begs for whatever this is to continue and promises to get Yoongi off next time, feeling a swell of happiness when Yoongi agrees to do this again soon.

Namjoon: I think I'm in love

Hoseok: Did you kiss!

Namjoon: We did.

Hoseok: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Namjoon: Also...

Hoseok: ...??????????

Namjoon: For the purpose of decency, I shall bleep out some of the words in my next message.

Hoseok: Uh oh!

Namjoon: He s***ed my soul straight out of my d***.

Hoseok: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! omg, no wonder you're already catching feelings.

Namjoon: Everything about him is perfect. I'm in awe. He's so pretty and funny and a fantastic cook, and he's sweet, and he made me c** in like 3 minutes.

Hoseok: I'm glad you had a good time. Congrats on being gay! I love this for you!

Namjoon: Thanks for believing in me!

Hoseok: I never doubted you for a minute!

Falling into a routine with Yoongi is easy, and slowly, over the course of a month, Namjoon is opened up to a world of firsts, from sampling delicious foods that Yoongi cooks on the weekends to learning to suck Yoongi's cock and discovering what frotting is. Though coming in tandem while Yoongi's large hand holds both his and Namjoon's thrusting dicks and feeling the slide of their shafts together is something that Namjoon thinks about often when he is fisting his cock alone, taking Yoongi into his mouth is his favorite.

Namjoon cannot get enough of the way Yoongi whimpers and moans each time he discovers a new rhythm to flick his tongue and suck in his cheeks. And although it made him gag the first time, Namjoon loves it when Yoongi comes in his mouth, feeling a sense of pride wash over him whenever Yoongi grips tightly to his hair and whimpers through his release. Namjoon swallows his load eagerly as if it is another delicious meal Yoongi has prepared just for him.

During the week, when Namjoon and Yoongi are busy with workloads and early mornings, they talk on the phone before bed, sometimes ending the call while moaning and whining about everything they want to do when they see each other next. Namjoon often thinks about Yoongi's pretty thick cock and how easy it was for him to take a strong liking to it, wishing it was in his hands and mouth whenever Yoongi lets out raspy breaths through the phone.

It is a Thursday when Yoongi whimpers, "I want you so bad, Joonie. I want you to fuck me so bad," and Namjoon worries he might blackout. His hand grips his cock tightly, and he lets out a strangled groan.

"Only when you're ready," Yoongi throws in quickly, though Namjoon can hear how worked up the thought makes him—can hear the quick passes of lubed-up fingers sliding over his cock through the phone.

"I wanna fuck you, baby," Namjoon moans. "I think I'm ready."

Namjoon pictures Yoongi's fucked out, euphoric expression and imagines him bent over with his pretty little ass in the air, and he comes in his hand, moaning loudly for Yoongi to hear. Yoongi sounds just as gone when he reaches his orgasm, and when they finally end the call, Namjoon immediately falls asleep with a smile.

Tonight at Namjoon's place, there is a bit of tension hanging in the air that Namjoon can feel but does not want to address just yet. He thinks it may be related to their last conversation when they discussed the idea of Namjoon fucking Yoongi, but he feels like discussing it further can wait.

For now, Namjoon takes to getting dishes and utensils set up, and rinsing vegetables for Yoongi to chop. Although Namjoon still cannot be trusted to do the actual preparation of meals, he has found ways to be helpful, sharing some of the workload.

Namjoon has begun to dress down in a simple tee and slacks for Yoongi's visits, and Yoongi continues to wear the same random graphic tee tucked into jeans with his trusty apron on top, and Namjoon enjoys how relaxed and domestic their nights feel. Whenever Yoongi's hands are free of something sharp or hot, Namjoon likes to place his hands on Yoongi's hips and kiss him on the neck, smiling against his skin when Yoongi lets out a satisfied hum. Everything feels so natural and easy; Namjoon has difficulty believing not much time has passed since all of this began.

"You never told me how the ratings were for my appearance," Yoongi says as he tosses tonight's stir fried meat and vegetables in a wok.

"Oh, you killed in the ratings, both on-air and online," Namjoon beams. "I was right, the housewives loved you."

Yoongi chuckles. "Good, good. I rewatched the segment the other night and it was so painfully obvious how nervous I made you. You were so cute Joonie."

Namjoon cringes; he has not rewatched the segment, remembering clearly how awkward he seemed to be interviewing Yoongi. 

"Yeah, no need to remind me," Namjoon he.

"What was going through your mind that morning?" Yoongi teases.

Namjoon carries a bottle of wine to the table, cradling two glasses in his other hand, humming loudly, in thought. 

"It was a lot of alarm bells and internal shrieking. Panicking because I couldn't look at your pretty face without getting nervous, then realizing I also couldn't look at your hands without picturing how badly I needed them all over me."

"My hands?" Yoongi chuckles, gathering two plates to fill with food.

"Your hands," Namjoon repeats sheepishly.

"And just what did you imagine I was doing with my hands, hmm?"

Namjoon can feel his cheeks flush with warmth, and he takes a seat, watching as Yoongi unties his apron to hang over a cabinet handle before bringing their plates over.

"It was like a quick montage of all the things I imagined you could do with them, like sticking your fingers in my mouth, wrapping your fingers around my throat or around my dick. Gripping onto my hips and my ass. You know...hand things."

Yoongi raises his eyebrows, fighting the urge to laugh as he sets Namjoon's plate in front of him.

"Hand things," Yoongi parrots with a smirk.

"I may have thought about how long your fingers are, and how thick they are at the knuckles, and how they might feel stretching me open."

Yoongi gasps, hovering over Namjoon with his own plate in his hand. 

"You mean to tell me you had never had feelings for a man before, but you imagined me fingering your tight little asshole at seven o'clock on that bright Tuesday morning."

"S-something like that," Namjoon mutters, grinning awkwardly as blood rushes to his cock in response to Yoongi's teasing.

"Well," Yoongi says, turning away to round the table and stand in front of his seat. Yoongi sets his plate down and leans on his fists against the table, towering over Namjoon for a moment longer. "If you want me to finger you that badly, all you have to do is ask."

Namjoon stares up at Yoongi and waits for him to sit, but Yoongi continues to stand. He is wearing the black band tee with the rips from the night they walked along the river, and Namjoon finds himself looking between those peeks of skin and Yoongi's face. Tonight Yoongi wears a thin line of black makeup under his eyes, and Namjoon wonders if he will get to make him cry it off later.

"Of course I want you to, baby. Let's talk about it after we eat, though; I'm so hungry, and this smells so good."

"Fine, fine, you're right," Yoongi concedes and reaches for the wine to fill their glasses.

The food is fantastic as always, and Namjoon sits back in his chair, wondering if it is too early to ask Yoongi to just move in with him and cook every night. Of course, he knows it is way too early, but that does not stop him from imagining how nice it would be to wake up to Yoongi every morning, come home to Yoongi and his delicious cooking every evening, and fall asleep to Yoongi every night.

Although they broke the tension to discuss Yoongi's hands earlier, something tense still seems to be hanging in the air between them, making Namjoon nervous—making it hard to hold eye contact with Yoongi for too long. Once they finish their meals and the bottle of wine, Namjoon collects the dishes as he always does and takes them over to the sink to rinse and stack them to be cleaned in the morning.

Typically, when Namjoon turns from the sink, Yoongi is nearby with lust in his eyes, waiting to be carried off to the bedroom, but tonight Yoongi still sits at the table, with his back to the kitchen, separated by the island. Namjoon feels his heart pound heavily in his chest, worried about what may have gone wrong, and he rounds the counter and approaches Yoongi. Yoongi's chin is resting against his hands with one pointer finger tapping along his lower lip, and Namjoon squats beside Yoongi, looking up at him.

"Everything alright, baby?" Namjoon asks gently.

Yoongi breaks from his thoughts and slowly lowers his hands, turning his body to face Namjoon, and smiles softly. 

"Just have a lot on my mind."

"I can tell. There seems to be a tension hanging over us tonight."

Yoongi chews on his bottom lip and lets out a quiet laugh. 

"It's my hovering cloud of what-ifs. It followed me all the way here."

Namjoon stands and holds his hand out to Yoongi, and Yoongi accepts. He leads Yoongi to his brown faux leather couch and sits facing him, still holding his hand.

"Talk to me," he says.

"This has been an amazing month," Yoongi begins, speaking in a tone that borders somber and puts Namjoon on high alert; suddenly, all he can think is that Yoongi is trying to break up with him, even though it wouldn't make sense for Yoongi to bother making him dinner first; who does something like that?

"It really has been," Namjoon manages to respond, doing his best to keep his voice even, though he can hear it shake.

"Shit," Yoongi mutters, "this isn't how I wanted this to go. It must sound like I'm trying to end things because I've gone all fucking emo for no reason."

Yoongi shifts his body more, pulling his legs onto the couch and underneath him. "I can tell by your eyes that you began to spiral. Sweetheart, I'm so sorry; I promise I'm not trying to break things off."

Namjoon lets out a big, deep sigh of relief and smiles, feeling his eyes threaten to well with tears. 

"Yeah, you actually worried me for a second there."

Yoongi chuckles. 

"It's the opposite, actually. I know we haven't discussed all of this and us and everything, but I've been exclusively seeing you, and I want us to actually, like, date. Or whatever. I want you to be my boyfriend."

Pink flushes over Yoongi's cheeks, and Namjoon melts. 

"In my head you were my boyfriend the first night you sucked my cock, if I'm being honest."

"Good," Yoongi grins, then his expression falls back to a look of vulnerable uncertainty. "So then it won't be too weird to tell you that I love you already...will it?"

Namjoon gasps, and he can tell that the expression on his face is one of surprise, which Yoongi clearly cannot accurately translate, because his eyes seem to be frantically searching Namjoon's for any hint of a response. Namjoon clears his throat, and this time his eyes do well with tears, and he does his best to blink them out of existence.

"S-sorry, was that too soon?" Yoongi asks, and Namjoon snaps himself out of his thoughts and wraps his arms around Yoongi's shoulders, pulling him into Namjoon's chest.

"No, oh my god, I'm sorry—I just—you said you love me, and everything went blank and," Namjoon takes a deep breath to stop himself from rambling. "I love you too, Yoongi. I began to fall for you the moment we first kissed. Maybe even sooner."

Yoongi hugs Namjoon tight and buries his face into his neck. 

"Sorry, I was weird all night, I just wanted to tell you, but I didn't want to scare you away. Or make the mood weird since you were probably expecting to fuck me tonight, not get all fluffy and gross."

Namjoon chews on his bottom lip and smiles sheepishly.

"Baby, knowing you love me just makes me want to fuck you more."

Yoongi pulls back from the hug and takes Namjoon's face and neck in his hands, pulling him into a deep, needy kiss full of tongue and teeth and moans. Namjoon grabs Yoongi's hips and pulls him onto his lap, then stands and carries Yoongi into his room, slamming his elbow into a corner on the way and trying, once more, not to cry.

Namjoon has begun to leave his lamp on when he expects Yoongi to come over, so there is no more walking through a dark bedroom, and he makes his way to the bed and lightly tosses Yoongi into the center, watching with bated breath as Yoongi scrambles onto his elbows to stare back at Namjoon, who pulls his shirt over his head, then undoes his belt and pulls his pants down.

Yoongi gawks through lust-filled eyes, then pulls his own shirt off, tossing it to the floor. Namjoon approaches the bed and makes quick work of Yoongi's belt, pulling his pants and briefs down in a rush, and Yoongi lifts his hips to assist, but the swift movements make him crash onto the bed with a giggle. Namjoon hovers over Yoongi, bending to pull Yoongi into a kiss, gently nibbling on Yoongi's lip until he whines.

"On your knees, baby," Namjoon commands softly, and Yoongi's breath hitches. "I read about performing anal sex extensively online in the last two days, but if there's anything you need me to do, just tell me, okay? I'll go slow."

Yoongi chuckles softly, though he still looks dazed, and he stares at Namjoon and nods, blinking out of whatever mental fog he has been caught in before rolling onto his tummy and crawling to the center of the bed. Namjoon grabs a bottle of lube that he has left on his bedside table and gets onto the bed behind Yoongi, admiring the soft curves of his tattoo-covered back and the swell of his perfectly round ass. He puts the lube on the bed beside him and gently places his hands over Yoongi's ass, admiring him from this angle for the first time as he draws circles with his thumbs over the soft flesh.

"Of course your ass is perfect, like the rest of you," Namjoon groans, digging his fingers into Yoongi's cheeks.

"Shut up—hhh, ah fuck," Yoongi whines as Namjoon licks over Yoongi's rim.

Yoongi tastes tangy and sweet, and Namjoon circles and flicks his tongue over his hole, moaning and spreading him in his hands. Yoongi whimpers and moans, and already his voice is broken and raspy in a way that causes Namjoon to become lightheaded, making all the sweet sounds that urge Namjoon to explore more. He presses his tongue into Yoongi's hole slowly, and Yoongi sobs with pleasure, so Namjoon pulls out and pushes it in once more, a little deeper this time, pulling more euphonic sounds from Yoongi's lips.

"You taste so good, baby," Namjoon groans before lapping over Yoongi in slow, hungry motions.

"Fuck, Joonie," Yoongi whines. His legs are trembling, and Namjoon can hear his fingers gripping onto the blanket below him.

"You like the way I eat your ass, baby?"

Yoongi whimpers a sound that resembles "uh-huh," and Namjoon grins and dives back in, savoring Yoongi a little more.

By the time Namjoon reaches for the bottle of lube, Yoongi is already panting and drooling into a pillow that he has wrapped his arms around tightly, and Namjoon smiles to himself at the sight of him already fucked out before they have hardly gotten started.

Namjoon opens the bottle and squirts some liquid onto his fingertips and rubs it to warm it, making sure to coat his middle finger. Then, he sets the bottle down and rubs the pad of his finger gently over Yoongi's rim, and Yoongi gasps before letting out a deep whine.

"Ready for my finger, baby?"

"Yes," Yoongi whimpers. "Please.”

Slowly, Namjoon slides the tip of his finger into Yoongi's ass, trying not to completely unravel from the choked sobs that already escape Yoongi's lips. Gently, Namjoon pulls his finger out, then presses it back in, this time a little further, again and again until he is in past his knuckle and Yoongi is begging for him to let him catch his breath.

"Let me know when you're ready for more," Namjoon mutters, leaving lazy, wet kisses over Yoongi's ass cheek.

"Okay," Yoongi pants after a moment, "I'm ready."

With a generous amount of lube and steady, patient hands, Namjoon stretches Yoongi on one finger, then two, and then three, scissoring his fingers open and slowly fucking Yoongi with his hand until Yoongi is no longer begging to slow down, and instead begging for Namjoon's cock. Namjoon stands to remove his briefs, which are wet with precum, and Yoongi sits back on his shaky knees and pats the bed for Namjoon to sit in front of him.

"Wanna ride you," Yoongi says, and Namjoon nods, eagerly stepping from his briefs and getting onto the bed, right where Yoongi wants him.

Yoongi pulls Namjoon's cock into his mouth and swallows it back into his throat, and Namjoon moans loudly as a wave of pleasure rocks through his body. He had been so focused on Yoongi's pleasure that feeling his own is suddenly overwhelming. Yoongi slurps and sucks eagerly and makes a fucking mess drooling all over Namjoon's cock before pulling it from his mouth with a grin, and Namjoon watches lines of spit pull between his cock and Yoongi's lips before bursting.

"Holy shit, baby," Namjoon mutters as Yoongi reaches back for the bottle of lube while he straddles Namjoon's thighs, and squirts a generous amount into his hand.

"I've dreamt about this moment," Yoongi whines, engulfing Namjoon's cock in his fist, coating it with the slick liquid and making Namjoon shudder with bliss. "Since the moment you came into the greenroom looking like a scared little puppy, I wanted to get on my knees and make you mine."

Namjoon holds Yoongi's thighs, helping Yoongi sit forward and line Namjoon's cock up with his hole. "I'm yours, baby," Namjoon groans as Yoongi sits just enough to make their bodies touch—just enough to remind him that this is really, truly, actually fucking happening and not just a dream. Namjoon's eyes are glued to Yoongi's cock and his tummy, and he worries that, at any moment, he might blackout.

"You're spiraling, Joonie," Yoongi mutters. "Look at me."

Namjoon quickly looks up at Yoongi, meeting his sweet, lustful gaze, and Yoongi smiles softly, pulling Namjoon from wherever he was mentally and helping him focus. His eyeliner is smudged around his eyes, and his cheeks, neck, and chest are flushed, and Namjoon thinks he must be the prettiest man alive.

Slowly, Yoongi lowers his ass over Namjoon's cock, and he is so tight that Namjoon sucks in a deep puff of air, suddenly forgetting how to breathe. Yoongi grips onto Namjoon's chest and digs his fingers in as he lifts his hips and slowly lowers them more, moaning and sobbing from the stretch of his cock, and Namjoon does his best to hold onto Yoongi's thighs and help him ease up and down and up again until he is fully engulfed in warmth and Yoongi is leaning into his chest, gasping for air. Yoongi chokes out a croaked sob as he lifts his hips, and Namjoon can feel his legs tremble against him. 

"Too fucking big," Yoongi whines, dropping his ass back down and filling the room with his and Namjoon's moans. 

The more Yoongi lifts and drops his hips, the more Namjoon's body burns red hot. Yoongi feels incredible beyond anything he could have imagined, and he doesn't want this moment to ever stop, though he is certain that if it does not stop eventually, his brain will actually break.

Once Yoongi is adjusted enough to fuck himself on Namjoon's cock, all sight and sound that isn't Yoongi is completely wiped out; all that exists are their two bodies in this moment, fucking. Yoongi digs his fingers into Namjoon and cries out with his head lolled back while Namjoon holds onto Yoongi's waist and watches his cock bob.

A lewd chorus of bodies slapping and squelching, and voices moaning and sobbing fills the room. Yoongi's ass swallows Namjoon so tightly that it is not long before Namjoon fears he is going to come.

"I'm not gonna last, baby," Namjoon groans, doing his best to think about things that definitely would not make him come, like the time Hoseok got so drunk, he threw up in several pairs of Namjoon’s shoes.

"Grab my cock," Yoongi whines, ripping that unattractive thought out of Namjoon's head. "Please, Joonie, make me come!"

Namjoon takes Yoongi's cockhead in his hand and rubs the precum over his palm before stroking Yoongi's length to the rhythm of his hips, making Yoongi cry out and tremble.

"Please," Yoongi mutters as he rides Namjoon. "Please, please, make me come."

As soon as Yoongi reaches orgasm, spraying his release onto Namjoon's fingers and tummy, the squeeze from his ass is so intense that it pushes Namjoon over the edge, sending him hurtling towards completion. Namjoon lets out a string of profanities as his head slams back against the headboard of his bed, and Namjoon comes hard, filling Yoongi with his release.

Yoongi's hips slow to a stop, and he slumps forward onto Namjoon's chest, both bodies trembling into one another. Namjoon drops his come-covered hand to the side while his other snakes around Yoongi's back and hugs him tight. Both men pant loudly, and the sheen of sweat that covers them quickly turns cold.

"Is fucking you always going to feel like a near-death experience, because if so, I don't know how I'll handle it," Namjoon mutters groggily.

Yoongi attempts to chuckle, but the sound comes out weak and shaky.

"Let's take a hot shower and tuck you into bed, baby," Namjoon suggests, kissing Yoongi on the forehead. Yoongi cuddles into the feeling and lets out a satisfied sigh, and Namjoon nudges him some more. "Come on, Yoongi. Let's clean off."

"Don't want to be done 'cause I don't wanna have to go home," Yoongi pouts into Namjoon's chest.

"You don't have to go home, baby; I want you to stay."

Yoongi sits up with wide eyes, and his makeup is even more smudged and runny than before. 

"But you never ask me to stay."

Namjoon chuckles and shakes his head. 

"You always say you have to go, so I let you. But I don't ever want you to go."

"Watch it, Joonie; you're treading dangerous territory by telling me you always want me to stay."

"Oh, please," Namjoon chuckles, "while you were having an existential crisis over whether to tell me you love me, I was thinking about how much I wish you lived here."

Yoongi's breath hitches, and a playful grin tugs at his lips. 

"I could cook for you every day."

Namjoon's heart pounds heavily in his chest. 

"It's true."

Yoongi pulls Namjoon into a tight hug, and although they do not continue the conversation from there, there is a spark of hope in Namjoon that Yoongi might consider his offer at some point. 

But, for tonight, Namjoon carries Yoongi into the bathroom for a nice warm shower before finding some oversized pajamas and tucking him into bed. Yoongi mutters while mostly asleep about how Namjoon's dick is made of magic, and he cannot believe he fell in love with a former straight boy who had to read online about how to fuck him, and how he did such a good job fucking him—even though Namjoon thinks Yoongi did all the work—and Namjoon falls asleep twirling fingers in Yoongi's soft blond hair with a smile on his face.

In love. Yoongi says he is in love with Namjoon, and right here, cradling him in his arms, there is nowhere else he would rather be.

i love this story with all my heart & i hope you love it too! ❤ tag list: @dasexydevitt13​ & @giriiboyy​ 

Lips Like Honey is copyright 2022 theharrowing, all rights reserved. Don’t be a silent reader, I love to hear from you! 

[80s4life]

God Help Me*

Word Count: 2,306

Status: Not Requested!

Fandom: Orange Is The New Black

A/N: Just watched some more of oitnb and felt that Joe was an underrated character. So, here's something dirty for the dirty dog!

Relationship: Joe Caputo x Female Reader

Summary: (Based loosely on S3:E7 (”Tongue-Tied”) where the new recruits for security are supposed to be getting the 40 hours of training, but denied by the new employers. Specifically, when Bayley makes his mistake with the pepper spray incident, Caputo is outraged, in the need of a break. Luckily, you know how to ease his tension.

Warnings: language, age-gap pairing, against laws, forbidden, smut, retardation name calling (once, not me though, a line from the show!)

Taglist: @intersellars-the-networks-of-eve @snapessecretdiary

Masterlist Orange Is The New Black Masterlist

{gif is not mine, credits to @thompsonconnors}

"What the fuck was that?" Joe Caputo asks, confused and struggling to keep up with the messes every corner he turns. "You assess the situation and you respond with the appropriate level of force! And you never, ever, ever discharge your weapon unless it's absolutely necessary!" he continues, not done just yet. "And if you do, and that weapon happens to be pepper spray, you better damn well make sure you're upwind!"

Bayley, the new recruit, alongside Donaldson, a long-term member of this prison, look down, ashamed of themselves. Blinking their eyes every so often, the pain in their eyes searing with the combination of the regret in how they got in this position in the first place and the stinging pepper spray.

Motioning towards Bayley, Caputo continues with his mantra, "You are a trigger-happy knucklehead who just got out of diapers," now turning his attention to Donaldson, "But you, how could you let this happen?" he finishes, exasperated.

Donaldson, finding some courage, fires back, "Sir, with all due respect, I'm not a nanny." He may have screwed up, but he is not putting his life on the line for an idiot.

"No! You are an officer with 20 plus years' experience, and your job was to impart some wisdom on fucking Baby Huey over here!" Caputo spits, motioning towards Bayley once more.

"Well, this is what happens when you put untrained officers in gen pop," Donaldson says once more, although very quickly and almost fearfully. As if he were a child talking back to his parents.

"You don't think I know that? I fucking know that!" Caputo says once more, placing a hand over his head, letting out a tired sigh as he walks back behind his desk. "Bayley, I should be firing your ass," he motion towards the young man with two pointed fingers.

"I know," is all he manages meekly.

"But, it's your first day, so I'm gonna chalk this up to mental retardation. If you so much as look at an inmate wrong in the next week, you're out of here!" Caputo motions with a "whoosh." Now looking Bayley up and down in disbelief, he catches the small paper taped to his chest as well, "Take that stupid fucking name tag off."

As the men nod once more, he finishes with, "Now go! Get your asses down to medical and get an eyewash. And read the stupid fucking manuals!" he grunts, shaking the book in question and slamming it on his desk as the officers leave.

Throwing himself into his chair, he almost considers kicking and flailing around like a child in order to let off steam, but he is quickly denied the chance as you knock and burst through his office within a second.

“Sir.”

“What is it now?” he asks quietly, a hand holding his head up by his chin, fingers covering his now closed eyes.

“Well- uhm- well...” you continue, quite nervous as you don’t know where his hostility had come from, you being unsure whether it was your doing or not. It was uncharted waters you weren’t sure on stepping into or not.

“What. Is. It!?” he yells now, eyes wide open, hands clutching the ends of his armrests. Making you yelp and jump a bit, taking a few steps back into the doorway.

Seeing this reaction, he sighs once more, taking in your wide eyes and slightly tense posture, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to yell. It’s been a long day, okay?”

“I-I understand sir.”

“How many times have I told you to call me Joe, or Caputo if that’s what floats your boat?” he says, an attempt to coax you out of your startled state.

“I’m sorry s- Caputo. I only wanted to tell you that I bought ya’ something. A little gift, I guess.” you say, a blush tinting your cheeks.

“What? You didn’t have to get me anything!” He smiles now, relieving you, and bringing a smile to your own features at his now somewhat upbeat mood.

“Well, ya’ know...I remember you telling me about a band of yours, right?” you ask.

“Yeah,” he smirks, looking back at fond memories and the new ones with his new band.

“Well, since your style of music was rock, and I just so happened to be in the area of a new music store, I found some goodies there!” Pulling a seat in front of his desk, you grab the wrapped presents from the waistband of your belt, having hidden it behind your back in attempt to completely surprise him.

He smiles at your childish antics, lightly taking the wrapped good from your small, delicate hands. Unwrapping the smallest one, he finds a box underneath the covers. Opening it, his smile grows bigger as his eyes meet a black guitar pick, a skull etched into it and painted white. 

His eyes meet yours for a second, a fondness there, looking back down once more as he admires it. “I love it,” he says after a second.

“That’s not all!” you say, excited now as he already likes one of the things you’ve picked out for him, pulling out a medium-sized present next. You take this sudden change of attitude as a sign, wanting to hopefully ease the stresses the guards and staff have been taking, especially Joe.

Taking it from your hands once more, your hands make contact, the blush on your face intensifying a little more. Unwrapping the present, he finds a black bandanna, his band name printed onto it, matching the guitar pick. He giggles at this, tying it around his head for your view.

You laugh as well as you go to hand him the biggest and last of the presents, his eyes lighting up once he finds what it is. “Nu-uh! You didn’t! This must’ve cost a fortune!” he almost yells now, a genuine leather guitar strap in his grip as he jumps up from his seat.

“No, actually they gave me a little discount on it. It took a lot of searching to get the one you’ve been specifically looking for, but the guy said I was cute- anyway! I just thought you needed these since work has been beating your ass,” you say, smirking lightly.

“You didn’t need to do this,” he says, settling back into his seat as he grasps your hands lightly, still star-struck as he looks at the strap still in his hand.

The gesture was innocent, but as time goes on, you blush a deep red, him still not letting go of your hands. Noticing this, he goes to pull away, clearing his throat, standing, and straightening out his suit. There, you notice a slight tent in his pants, igniting a flame in your belly. 

“Well, thank you Miss Y/L/N, these were very nice...”

“Anytime...” you say slyly, dragging on your words as you stand as well, not bothering to fix your pants as it sticks tightly to your ass and thighs. 

He looks down, gulping as he takes in your curves he usually tries to ignore, clearing his throat once more as his eyes meet yours. Only now did he realize the close proximity between the two of you, you intending to lean in and fix his tie. As you do so, he grabs your hand, pulling it away, “Don’t tempt me. You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into.”

“Oh, I’m pretty damn sure I do,” you say as you pull him down to your height by the tie, pulling at the base of his neck, kissing him now. 

Breaking apart for a moment, you make your way around the desk, perching yourself atop it as you pull him between your legs, kissing him once more. Tongues fighting for dominance, you tease him, sucking on it, and nibbling on his lips. He growls, the tent now very evident in his pants, the tightness an annoying constriction.

He pulls away once more, going to lock his office door, having placed a ‘On a lunch break’ sign above his name. Making his way back over to you, his lips attach to yours once more, moving to remove your weaponry belt. You do the same, unbuttoning the top of his dress shirt, moving to leave kisses, bites and hickeys. 

Continuing your attack, you move your hand to his belt, working quickly as he unbuttons your shirt, exposing your constricted, perky breasts. He grunts once more, adding to your eagerness as you finally get his belt out of the loops. Now both full of impatience, you unleash his cock, him doing the same for your breasts and pants. Completely removing everything from your being, leaving your half-unbuttoned shirt.

Not wasting time, he starts to work your clit, moisturizing ever bit of you as he collects it and moves his finger in all the most special parts, lubricating your core with ease. You grip his cock, teasing it as you run your finger along the slit at the top, precum already oozing. Looking him in the eyes, you notice his golden browns now a dark chocolate eyes, admiration sparkling them as he looks back at you. 

You moan as he enters a finger into your core, soon adding another as you loosen yourself for him. Finally, when he deems you ready, he reaches into one of the desk drawers, pulling out a condom. Motioning to him, he hands it over, letting you take over and do the honors. He simply places both arms on either side of your form, caging you in his embrace, smirking down at you.

Finally, once the condom was rolled onto his member, he goes to line himself up to your entrance, tip placed right at the beginning, not crossing the threshold just yet. “Are you sure?” is all he asks, wanting consent.

Knowing that this is wrong, you contemplate your options. You have already thought of the many ways he could take you, having been attracted to the older man for many years. Looking him in the eyes, you nod, “I’ve wanted this for too fucking long.”

With this new reassurance, he thrusts deeply, not giving you a chance to adjust just yet, pushing in and not stopping until he’s bottomed out. Taking a breath, you relish in the familiar sting of being stretched out, leaning back on your elbows for a minute. When you’re finally ready, you grab onto his shoulders, nodding once again. 

He starts slow, not wanting to hurt you, but, as you bite his pulse point, he jumps, taking the hint. Pounding into you mercilessly now, you moan and scream loudly, meeting his thrusts with the same momentum and speed, wanting this just as much as he does.

Instead, wanting to hold onto this feeling for as long as you can manage, you busy yourself with admiring and teasing the man before you. Specifically when he switches positions slightly, hitting your g-spot, your hands find their way into the tiny tufts of hair remaining on his balding scalp. Tugging lightly, he groans, pounding harder.

“Fuck!” you choke out, “I’m gonna cum! Joe! I’m gonna cum!”

“Just hold on a bit more, I’m almost there!”

Using his hands, he moves one to your clit, rubbing hard circles, intensifying the pleasure. You moan, the pleasure almost too much for you, settling for leaning your head on his chest. The chest hair tickles your nose, making you giggle between whimpers, kissing him there every so often.

With all your strength, you try to maintain your composure, the knot in your stomach begging for release. But, as you feel his dick twitch, the veins touching every inch of your walls deliciously, you couldn’t hold on any longer, milking his cock. With the sudden tightness and feeling of warmth bursting against him, he continues to thrust just a few seconds more, riding you through your orgasm as he meets his. 

As he slowly comes down from his high, he sighs peacefully, placing his head underneath yours and in the crevice of your neck. You kiss the top of his head as you take his weight, leaning back on your hands, one wrapped around his neck. After a moment, as he now goes soft within your being, he pulls out, disposing the condom.

Smiling, the two of you joke and throw clothes at each other as you get changed again. “So what are we now, Joe?”

“Well, it’d be fucked up to say nothing after mind-blowing-sex, now wouldn’t it?”

“I guess...So does that mean we’re together?”

“Do you want to? I would’a thought a young girl like you would want someone who can keep up with ya’?”

“I mean yeah...but they aren’t you, Joe. I want you,” you say honestly.

“Shit...” he mutters, smiling now, “This is the best thing that’s happened to me all day.”

“Is that a ‘yeah’?”

“Hell yeah it is!” he says happily, “Now how about round 2?”

“You’re on Old Man,” you say giggling, hopping into his lap on his desk, kissing him once more.

However your giggling and kisses get cut short with a knock on the door. You sigh, getting off of him not and making sure your clothes are straightened out.

“I guess not...” you say defeated.

“Well...Not right now,” Joe answers, going to the door, giving a sly wink as he opens it. 

Work is only temporary, you know this. You’ll get all the time you need with him tonight.

[chrisevansjellybeans]

Undercover | Mob!Steve Rogers

I saw this post  by @rosierose-e​ and got inspired to write this mob! Steve Rogers smut. All mistakes are my own. 

ALSO THANK YOU FOR 400 FOLLOWERS! Love you all and appreciate the support immensely! Thank you :) 

Warning: Smut!!! NSFW choking, cockwarming, swearing

Part Two

Word Count: 5k

You squinted as you looked at yourself in the mirror. The weight of the false lashes a foreign feeling on your eyes. You felt like a clown. This was not you at all. You wore the basics: some foundation, concealer, blush, mascara and if you were really feeling fancy a lip gloss. But nothing heavy. One, your skin was unforgiving and if you went heavier than the BB cream you used you would have pimples for days. Two, in your line of work heavy makeup just wasn’t ideal. 

“Wow, you look amazing.” You looked up in the mirror to see the rookie Peter Parker getting into the van behind you. Peter was sweet, a little naive, but a good agent nonetheless. He had joined the force about three months ago and Director Fury had insisted he learn from the best, so now he was your partner for the remainder of the year. 

“Thanks, Pete.” You sighed as you straightened up, pulling the hem of the skin tight black dress down only to have it bunch up again. “I feel ridiculous.” 

“Well you don’t look it.” He handed you a cup of coffee and you took it with a grateful smile. You needed all the caffeine you could get tonight. 

Tonight you were going undercover at the notorious Red White and Blue Gala hosted by none other than notorious mob boss Steve Rogers. It was his lame attempt and pretending to be an upstanding citizen but hosting an event in honor of the men and women in service. A good cause but for a bad reason. It was rumored that more than just helpful charity happened at this event. 

 You and the rest of your team had been tailing Rogers for close to two years. Trying to get anything to tie the bastard down to all the crimes you knew his organization was behind. But he was good at his job. Leaving no trace evidence that could link any of the nefarious acts back to him. 

He was a cocky son of a bitch and you wanted to be the one to nail him. 

Peter glanced down at the watch on his wrist before clapping his hands together. “Almost showtime, partner.” 

You felt your hands get clammy as the nerves started to wrack your body. You had done undercover work before in the last seven years you’ve been a part of the force but there was something different about this one. Something more dangerous. Steve Rogers was a dangerous man. 

You turned back to the mirror and fixed your hair and makeup one last time before letting out a long breath. You again tried to pull down the hem of the dress but with no avail. You wanted badly to be mad at the catering company that you had been able to infiltrate but you knew that this was probably the work of Rogers. Sick bastard. 

You slipped on the four inch heels they gave you and you nearly stumbled into Peter as you tried to take a step. Heels. Another thing not usually worn in your line of business. 

“Okay, this is a listening device.” Peter explained as he pinned a small but beautiful butterfly pin on your right breast. You couldn’t help but chuckle as his hands fumbled as he accidentally grazed over where your nipple would be. “Sorry.” 

“It’s a boob, Parker. It’s fine.” Peter just nodded before finishing pinning it. 

“Anyway,” he continued. “It’ll be recording everything that we need and coming right back here to my feed in the van. It’s small enough that it won’t get detected by any scanners. Unfortunately we won’t be able to communicate but if you say ‘pineapple’ we’ll come in and get you out.” 

“Pineapple.” You said more to yourself than to Peter. 

“Pineapple. And I mean, Y/N. Anything starts to get fishy you get out of there. Roger’s is ruthless.” 

“I know.” You patted his shoulder. “Thanks for looking out for me, rook.” 

“Yeah, yeah.” He pushed you out the van. “Kick ass, partner.” 

You gave him a small salute before turning around and following another group of girls dressed just like you into the expansive mansion in front of you. 

You tried not to be too awestruck as you took in the structure of the building. It looked like something out of an old mystery novel. The entire place was dark. Dark wood and dark furniture. The lights all a dimmed tan light that fed into the mysterious atmosphere. Your eyes darted to the artwork that littered the wall, all depictions of a fall from grace. 

Is that how you see yourself, Rogers? A fallen angel? 

“Hey!” You snapped back to attention as a frantic voice called over to you. “What the hell are you doing? Get to the kitchen.” 

You bit your tongue as you glared at the rude man before following the rest of the women into the kitchen. 

Dressed all like you, there were probably about twenty other women there. All of them easily could have been supermodels. The rude man pushed you towards a group of about three of them who were all balancing drinks on a tray. 

“Grab one and go.” The man, Stan you gathered from his nametag, said before turning to another group of women. You picked up a tray and prayed to all powers in the universe that the combination of full glasses of wine and these heels didn’t cause you to completely embarrass yourself. 

The ballroom was huge. You suddenly felt very small as you wandered around the room, offering drinks to some of New York’s most high profile residents. You kept your eyes peeled for the familiar mob boss. Your heart rate sped up as you noticed him across the room, chatting with a beautiful woman. You watched as he leaned down and whispered something to her, causing her to blush before playfully pushing his shoulder. He just smirked before turning his attention to the man on the other side of him-Clint Barton, completely ignoring her now, but she still stayed by his side watching his every move. 

Pathetic. 

You had to get to him. Get him alone and get him talking. But how? 

“Well aren’t you the prettiest thing in the room.” You felt yourself stiffen as a pair of hands wandered down your back and rested on your hip. The smell of expensive cologne attacking your senses. 

Slowly you turned around to find James “Bucky” Barnes looking at you like a predator to its prey. Bucky, was Steve’s right hand man. His best friend. He was handsome. Dark hair, even darker blue eyes and a smirk, that if he was anyone else, would have your panties melted off before you could even blink. You glanced down at the infamous metal arm that was hidden underneath an expensive suit jacket, but his hand flexed slightly as he noticed you looking at it. 

“Thank you, Mr. Barnes.” You forced out. “Can I offer you a drink?” You pushed the tray between the two of you in offering and also creating more space. 

“No, I’m all set, doll.” He raised his glass of scotch. “Just wanted to talk to a pretty thing like you.” 

“There are plenty of other beautiful women here.” You said, your voice slightly cold. You hoped he would get the hint. 

“None quite like you.” He smirked and you fought everything in you to roll your eyes. 

“Does that line actually work?” 

Bucky took a step back at your bluntness. You see out of the corner of your eye, Rogers and Barton start to head towards the door. You had to make a move, because if he left to go do business he might not come back down for a while. 

“It was nice talking to you, Mr. Barnes.” You quickly moved past him, ignoring his short “wait”. You rushed, but not too obviously, towards where Steve was heading. If you went fast enough you could cut him off. You felt your heart drop to your stomach as you tripped over your heels, the tray in your hand shooting forward and the glasses of red wine landing square on Steve Rogers’ suit. 

“What the fuck?” The room went silent at his angry outburst. You stumbled as you tried to stand up, but were immediately hoisted up when his large hands wrapped around the tops of your arms. 

“I’m so sorry, sir.” You sputtered. For a moment you forgot where you were. Why you were here. His blue eyes, dark with fury, scanned your face as he held your arms. You had never really taken a good look at him. All pictures in his file weren’t anything special or high definition. But now, seeing him up close? You were beginning to understand the woman from earlier giddiness. 

He was beautiful. 

You bit your lip as he ran his tongue over his bottom lip. You suddenly felt very aware of your body and the fact that he hadn’t taken his eyes off of you. 

“Go.” He pushed you towards the door he had been walking to with Barton. You walked through the door with shaky legs as you heard him mutter something to Barton before following you. 

“Sir, I’m so-” 

“Shut up.” He growled as he stepped through the door, the heavy wood slamming shut behind him. “Walk.” 

You hesitated. You didn’t know where he wanted you to walk to. Grumbling, Steve once again pushed you forward and you just started walking down the hallway. As you walked down you noticed a door that was slightly ajar. You glanced in while walking past and took note of the firearms and drugs that were very obviously there.

“Keep. Walking.” Steve’s voice was harsh in your ear before you heard him slam the door shut. 

“Yes, sir.” you muttered. 

The two of you continued to walk until you made it to the room at the end of the hall. Tentatively you opened it, waiting for any different direction, but Steve remained silent behind you so you continued. 

The room was...different. It was very different from the dark vibe of the rest of the house. There was a large bay window to your left that overlooked the back of the house that homed a large garden and pool. The walls were painted a soft beige and the furniture a lighter wood than the rest of the house. Even the bed was covered in a white duvet that looked like a cloud just waiting to be jumped on. It was homey. It was nice. 

“Mr. Rogers-” 

“Who do you work for?” He demanded, shutting the door. 

You froze. You tried hard to make sure your face didn’t give away anything as he stared you down. You didn’t let your gaze falter as he stalked closer to you. 

“Lee’s Catering.” You answered earnestly. 

“Bullshit.” He was now only a foot away from you. His broad shoulders heaving as he raked you up and down. “I know every single girl that works for Stan. I’ve never seen you before. So answer me again and honestly this time. Who the fuck do you work for?” 

“So he’s not allowed to hire new girls?” You snapped, immediately covering your mouth with your hand. 

Fuck. 

“Watch your tone with me, sweetheart. You’re on very thin ice right now.” He closed the final gap between the two of you and you gasped when his hand went around your throat, but not tightening enough to cut off any oxygen. 

“That old bat isn’t allowed to hire anyone that I haven’t vetted.” He hissed in your ear. You shuttered as the vibrato of his voice sent shivers straight down to your core. 

“Please.” Your voice came out in a whisper as your eyes pleaded with him. 

Steve opened his mouth but nothing came out, his nose brushed along the curve of your neck and you sucked in a breath as his mouth latched onto the sensitive spot underneath your jaw. 

“Strip.” He commanded, pushing you back causing you to fall onto the bed. 

“What?” 

“Take off your fucking clothes so I can see if you’re wired.” He snapped. You slowly pulled at the hem of your dress before drawing it up your body and over your head. Before you could fully get it off he stopped you. Your heart stopped as he reached over to the butterfly pin and pulled it off the dress. You watched in horror as he walked to his door, opening it and calling out to someone at the end of the hall. 

“Yeah boss?” You tried to see him, but Steve’s frame was blocking the small opening in the door. 

“Take this and run a test. Let me know if it’s bugged.” He demanded before closing the door. When he turned around he raised an expectant eyebrow at you letting you know you still had to take off the dress. You resumed your actions and turned your face away when his eyes flared at the matching set of red lingerie you had on underneath. 

“See? No wires.” You whispered. 

Steve didn’t say anything as he stalked towards you, rolling up the sleeves to the dress shirt he had on. Your body flushed as he leaned over you, his strong arms resting on either side of your chest. Slowly, he moved on hand to the strap of your bra before lowering it down off your shoulder. His thumb brushed over your pebbling nipple and you wanted to smack the smirk that formed on his face straight off. 

“I better double check you’re not hiding anything anywhere.” He muttered before pulling the cup of your bra down, exposing your left breast. You shuttered as his thumb brushed over it again, this time with no barrier. His mouth was hot as wrapped his lips around the bud, causing you to let out an unwilling moan. Your hips bucked up as his tongue expertly ran over your nipple. His deftly unclipped your bra and moved his mouth to your other breast and continued the same assault. His hands moved down to your hips to steady them from bucking against his growing member. 

“Hmm, looks like we’re clear up here.” He chuckled as his lips moved up to your jaw before capturing your mouth with his. 

The kiss was fiery and embarrassingly so sent a wave of pleasure down to your aching core. You moaned into the kiss as you ran your fingers through his hair, giving it a tight tug. Steve growled at your movements as he fully leaned into you now, his muscular thighs trapping yours on the bed. 

You ran your tongue along his bottom lip before slipping it in to find his own. You nearly came as Steve moaned into your mouth, his hands tightening on you and pulling you up to meet his rutting hips. Using all your strength you spun the two of you around, your mouths still connected, so you were now straddling his pelvis. You pulled away from the kiss and sat up. 

Steve slowly opened his eyes, his pupils blown in desire as he looked up at you through hooded eyes. You began to unbutton his wine stained shirt, running your hands over his porcelain skin when it was fully opened. You traced your fingers over the tattoos that littered his abs and ribs. You took pleasure in the fact that Steve would shiver with every pass of your fingertip. 

“I’m sorry about the stain, Mr. Rogers.” You said innocently, leaning down, your breasts pushed together as they rested on his now bare chest. 

“You should be, princess.” His voice was deep. You let out a small yelp as one of his hands gave a harsh slap to your ass. “This is an expensive shirt. And don’t even get me started on the trousers.” 

You hummed in understanding as you gave tiny kisses across his jaw and neck, taking time to suck on the skin around his collarbone. Your hands wandered down his body till they came in contact with the trousers in question. Slowly you sat up, running your hands over the stain on his pants but your eyes never leaving his. 

“I hope you can get the stain out.” You licked your lips as you moved your body down his own until your face was directly by his crotch and the stain. You sucked on the stain near his cock and smiled when his member jumped in his briefs. You slowly pulled down his pants until he was just in his underwear, his cock trying so hard to break free from it’s confines. 

Steve groaned as you finally freed his aching member. You gave the tip a little kitten lick as you looked up at him. He was now resting his weight on his arms as he leaned back and watched you in absolute wonder. You brushed your thumb across the tip, dragging the precum that had gathered there down the rest of his shaft. Your mouth watered at the thought of having him in your mouth. But you wanted to torture him a bit more. 

You ran your tongue along the vein on the underside of his cock, while your hand squeezed lightly at the base. You wrapped your lips around the tip, your tongue playing with the slit there before pulling back with a pop. 

“Mhmm, tasty.” You continued treating him like your own personal lollipop, but never fully enveloping his dick in your mouth. 

“Sweetheart, either fucking suck it like I know you can or I’ll shove it down your fucking throat.” Steve wrapped your hair into a makeshift ponytail and forced your head up. “Got it?” 

You didn’t respond, instead you finally took him into your mouth. You pushed past your gag reflex and took him all the way in until your nose brushed against the hairs on his naval. 

“Oh fuck.” Steve’s voice praised as he started moving his hips, fucking his cock down the back of your throat. 

Your eyes watered as you let him use your throat as his own little fuck toy. You reached between your legs trying to relieve the tension that was building there. You moaned around his cock as your fingers toyed with your clit. 

“Shit, I wanna come in that fucking pussy.” He moaned as he pulled you off the floor and threw you back on the bed. You laid back, your fingers moving back to your clit as you watched him fully take off his clothes. He watched you with interest as you moved your lace panties to the side and slid a finger up your slit, gathering your juices before gently rubbing your clit again. He ran his hands up your legs before grabbing your hand and stopping your actions. 

“This,” He patted harshly against your pussy and you moaned at the sensation. “Is mine. Don’t touch, unless I tell you to.” 

“Yes, sir.” You moaned as his fingers replaced yours. Your back arched as he dipped one finger into your hole. 

“Fuck, baby. When was the last time somebody fucked this little cunt? You’re so fucking tight, baby.” He moaned, watching as your pussy greedily closed around his finger. 

“You’re gonna feel so good around my cock, sweetheart.” Steve’s eyes met yours and for a moment he looked like a man that you might actually want to be with. His cold exterior was gone and replaced with a man who was just as lustfully lost as you were. 

“I want your cock now. Please.” you cried out as he slipped another finger in. Your body bucking as he curled his fingers up hitting that spot that so few had been able to get to with you. 

“Yeah? My little slut wants daddy’s cock to fill her up?” He leaned over you, capturing your lips again. You moaned into his mouth at his words. You never admitted it to anyone but you always had a little bit of a daddy kink. You wrapped your arms around his neck, holding onto him tightly as waves of pleasure crashed over you. 

“Please, daddy.” You whimpered against his lips as your hips bucked against his. “Please fuck me.” 

Steve chuckled darkly, kissing you quickly again, before ripping your panties clean off your body. You didn’t even care that he just ruined the most expensive pair of underwear you owned. You just needed his cock in you now. 

You bit the inside of your cheek as you watched him lineup his cock with your dripping hole, slowly pushing the head into your tight channel. You both let out moans as he bottomed out. He fell forward, his forehead resting against yours. You whined as you tried to move your hips against his but he just forced them down with his hands. 

“Steve!” You all but screamed. “Please.” 

“Patience, baby.” He said through gritted teeth. “Your pussy’s so fucking tight. Squeezing daddy’s cock so good. I just need a minute.” 

You let out a humph as you continued to buck your hips against his. 

“What the fuck did I just say?” He growled, he leaned up and wrapped his hand around your throat. “Don’t be a fucking brat.” 

You opened your mouth to apologize but it was overtaken as you let out a yelp as he pulled himself out before slamming his cock back into you. You threw your head back as he fucked into you relentlessly, his hand tightening around your throat. You were in a state of euphoria as his cock dragged in and out of your walls. 

“Oh my god.” You mewl as he continues to completely destroy your pussy. Before you could process what’s happening, Steve flips you over so your face is pushed into the fluffy comforter. He pulls your hips back so your ass is in the air and he easily slides back into you. 

“Tight little cunt fucking loves my cock.” You cry out as his hand delivers a slap against your ass before moving to your hips and pushing you back onto his dick. You feel your eyes roll to the back of your head as the tip of his cock hits your g-spot. 

“Daddy!” You call out. Steve leans over and pulls you up by your neck, causing your back to be flush with his front as he fucks up into you. His other hand moves down to play with your clit. 

“Are you gonna come baby girl? I feel your pussy milking my cock. You wanna come?” He growls in your ear. “Huh? You wanna come all over my cock?” 

“Yes! Oh god, yes!” 

“I’m so close, princess.” He drops his head into the crook of your neck. “Come on, baby. Squeeze my cock, make daddy come with you.” 

You feel that familiar feeling in your tummy as your orgasm approaches. 

“Shit.” You breathe out as your orgasm gets closer and closer. Steve’s fingers move faster against your clit. You cry out as your orgasm finally crashes over you. Steve lets out a groan as you feel his cock twitch inside of you, his cum shooting inside your walls. 

“You feel so good.” He breathes as his orgasm dies down. You hum in agreement but you’re too tired to say anything else. You close your eyes as you feel Steve lower your both to the bed. You whimper as he pulls out of you. 

“I’ll be right back.” He presses a kiss to your forehead and you just give him a nod. You’re completely incoherent. Totally fucked out. He’s gone for a couple minutes and you hear the water in the bathroom running before he comes back. With your eyes closed you don’t see how he pauses at the side of bed, appreciating the curves of your body as you curled yourself under one of his many blankets. 

You whine as you feel him move the blanket before running a washcloth between your legs. “Steve?” 

“Yes, princess?” You hate that your stomach flutters at the nickname. 

“Don’t leave.” You mutter, closing your eyes once more. 

Steve doesn’t respond for a second and at first you think that he’s going to leave but then you feel the bed dip and a strong arm pulling you close. You smile to yourself as your hand lands on top of his. 

“Get some rest.” He whispers in your ear. 

“Mmkay.” you hum and you don’t know if it’s your imagination or not but you swore you felt Steve smile against your skin. 

You wake with a jolt. You glance at the clock and curse silently. You’ve been asleep for two hours. You turn over and see Steve still there, his eyes closed and his breathing steady. You find yourself staring at his long eyelashes and how they rest gently along the tops of his cheek. He doesn’t look like a scary mob boss here. He looks human. He looks peaceful. 

“I can feel you staring.” Steve opens one eye and gives you a small smile. “Like what you see?” 

You gasp as he grabs you and has you straddle his hips. You rest your hands easily on his chest and stare down at him, smirking as you feel his cock start to stir. 

“Hmmm, I love these.” His hands reach up and twist at your nipples causing you to bite back a moan. 

“Steve…” 

“And your pussy is so responsive to me, princess. It’s like it was made for me.” He rubs his thumb across your clit. “I can feel how wet you are again.” 

“Well you’re playing with my clit. Of course I’m gonna get wet.” You retort. 

Steve raises an eyebrow at you. “You really think being sassy is in your best interest?” 

You roll your eyes but don’t respond. Steve grumbles before lifting you up a bit and impaling you on his now hard cock. 

“Fuck!” You slap his chest and Steve chuckles. Nonetheless you start rocking your hips against his. 

“Nuh uh,” Steve tuts. He holds your hips still. “You’re just gonna sit here like this. Keep me nice and warm.” 

“Steveeee.” You whine, lowering your head to his chest. 

“Don’t be such a brat then.” He growls. You raise your head to look at him and even though his words are tough, his eyes are soft. And for a moment your taken back. “So sit still for daddy.” 

You groan but stay still. Steve runs his fingers up and down your back, tracing patterns along your skin and you hum in appreciation. Your peaceful moment is upended though when his phone rings on the nightstand next to him. 

“Rogers.” He answers quickly. You stay quiet as you hear the voice on the other end of the line talk about the product movement. You smirk to yourself as Steve begins to discuss logistics, completely ignoring your presence. 

“I’m a little busy, Stark.” Tony Stark? As in Mayor of the city Tony Stark? He was in on this too. “I’ll call you back.” Steve threw his phone back on the nightstand and brought your face up to his to pull you into a searing kiss. 

“Please, daddy?” You say against his lips. You start rocking your hips again and this time, Steve doesn’t stop you. 

You're a moaning mess as Steve’s hips snap up yours, your orgasm fast approaching. 

“Gonna cum already?” 

“Yes, yes! Oh god, I’m so close!” You breathe as he quickens his pace. 

“Cum, baby girl. Make a mess on daddy.” He groans, his head tipping back. 

“Steve!” You choke out as your body spasms with pleasure. Steve comes quickly after you and you shutter as you feel his seed leaking out of your worn out hole. 

You lay your head down on his chest again and try to gather your thoughts. You need to get out of here. 

“I should go.” You whisper, sitting up. Steve’s cock is still inside you and you almost don’t want to leave because you feel so full. 

“I wanna see you again.” He runs his fingers across your cheek. The sense of power you feel seeing the country’s biggest mob boss underneath you, drunk on your sex is overwhelming. You love the feeling. 

“You will. Soon.” You lean down and give him a deep kiss. “I promise.” You peck his lips once more before gathering your clothes from the floor. 

Slipping on your shoes you give him one last wink before hurrying out the door and down the hall. You manage to find a way to the kitchen without having to walk through the rest of the party and you sneak out behind a delivery man who brought in a ridiculously large ice sculpture. 

Once you're outside you take your heels off and run towards the van down the street. You hurriedly knock on the back, checking your surroundings to make sure no one sees you. Peter opens the door and he looks like he’s seen a ghost when he sees you. 

“Y/N!” He pulls you into the van. “Oh my god, I was getting worried. When we heard him say that he wanted to check the pin I had to turn off the devices so they wouldn’t get traced. And then you didn’t come out. But Fury said that you would be fine but man, I was so nervous and-”

“Parker, shut up and hand me a piece of paper.” You clapped your hands together, pulling him out of his ramble. Peter nodded and handed you a pen and paper watching intently as you started writing down everything you overheard on the phone call. 

“What is this?” 

“Rogers is working with Stark and they're moving some sort of product tomorrow.” You said proudly.

“How did you...this is huge!” 

“My Ma always said that there are two ways to get to a man. One is through his stomach and the other is in his pants.” You shrugged. 

“And I’m guessing you didn’t make him a grilled cheese sandwich.” Peter makes a face. 

“Not exactly.” You laugh. “Now let’s go. We gotta get this to Fury.” 

Part 2

[asterlark]

ok. samwell college of music au. i wrote all four years let's go babey

eric bittle is this lovely southern tenor (sounds kinda like mitch grassi or ben j pierce) who posts covers (& sometimes originals, but always with neutral or no pronouns because he can't post anything that says he or him ☹) on his youtube channel and has major stage fright but is very talented; he also plays ukulele

he got into samwell college of music on a voice scholarship and his dad doesn’t exactly approve but eric was never the 6′2″ masculine football player he wanted anyway so why not go for his dreams

he auditions for the very competitive samwell men’s contemporary chorus (there’s like 20 choirs; chamber choir, jazz choir, a cappella groups (lax bros do a cappella), combined choirs, etc- smcc does contemporary pop/rock music) and while he’s very very nervous and shaky as he auditions, directors hall & murray see a lot of potential in him (with major grumbling from student director jack)

(the rest of this ridiculously long au under the cut)

the group is small, for a chorus, because the point of the group is not a wall of sound but a focus on all of the very talented guys’ voices coming together in these gorgeous harmonies and basically they’re like one of the best choruses on campus and all the male singers want in

so there’s jack zimmermann, who of course eric knows because everyone knows who he is, he’s the son of bob and alicia zimmermann, both incredibly talented and famous musicians, and basically those genes were in his favor because he’s mega fucking talented

(jack was supposed to sign a recording contract to be in a band with his best friend kent parson when he was 17 but something happened between them and the pressure was too much and jack overdosed on something- there’s so many rumors no one knows what’s real- and kent signed solo in LA & went on to win grammys for his albums about a mysterious ex and jack disappeared for a few years to be a counselor at a music camp and reappears at samwell, knocking everyone’s socks off again like he’d never left, except with a renewed vigor and intenseness that freaks everyone out)

jack is a contemporary writing & production major, freaky talented and sings like a modern day frank sinatra, and he plays like 20 instruments and can read music like breathing air and writes songs like if he stopped he’d die; his music is folksy and mournful and he plays all the instruments on his tracks himself- guitar, piano, strings, drums- it sounds like a full band but nope. just jack. he’s intense

“we all get nicknames in this choir,” justin informs eric on his first day, “we’re those kinda guys.” so he’s bitty, which he finds vaguely offensive (bc he’s not that short!) but still cute, & the rest of the group is introduced to him:

“shitty” knight (voice like colyer) is a musical education major and an enigma of a singer with this awesome, earthy, raspy voice that’s really interesting to listen to and a very.... unique style & look; he writes cheesy but shockingly good raps about social justice topics and he will sing-lecture you if you’ve said something offensive (he also plays banjo)

justin “ransom” oluransi is a music business & management major with an angelic voice you can’t help but listen to; he’s sultry and has an incredible range and does runs like nobody’s business (with a voice like daniel caesar or leslie odom jr UGH)

adam “holster” birkholtz is a voice performance major, wants to be on broadway and it’s all he ever goddamn talks about basically, he’s a belter and has a lot of charisma and starpower and he’ll charm the pants off of you within one note; can also play piano and irritates everyone constantly because his regular volume is like a level 11 (voice like the frontman of my brothers and i combined w/ x ambassadors lead singer)

larissa “lardo” duan is at the local art institute because performing arts is not her jam and she’d much rather paint; she’s a barista at annie’s and supervises open mic nights and keeps the annoying choir dudes from driving away all her patrons

“i’m not even in your dumbass choir,” she says when the group gave her her nickname. holster just told her that she was an honorary member and then started sing-shouting a song at her about how good she is

bitty’s first year is hard because he’s talented and he works hard but he shies away when anyone asks him to sing outside the group and like, he can sing to a camera by himself but being on a stage with everyone looking at you and the sole responsibility of the song on your shoulders is terrifying and no thanks

jack does not. understand this. he’s been performing practically since he came out of the womb and he doesn’t really get performance nerves (what he gets is anxiety about how he did after he gets off stage that follows him home and makes it so he can’t sleep) - so he bothers bitty about it constantly like “you just need practice, you just have to sing by yourself a lot and then you’ll get over it” which like.... that’s true but it’s also hella scary and bitty’s like “no thanks!!!!”

but jack’s annoying and intense so he makes bitty do open mic with him every saturday night and it’s going okay and bitty loves his choir and loves his school and these new friends he’s making and he finally feels comfortable enough to come out to them during his second term

then during their spring choral showcase at the end of his freshman year bitty has a solo and he’s worked really hard on it and he’s feeling good- okay he’s completely freaked out but he’s trying to feel good- but when he gets up on stage there’s so many people and the stage lights are so hot on his face and he flips out a little and maybe he passes out from anxiety and stress right on stage and it’s terrible and he’s so embarrassed and ashamed that he ruined their set at the showcase

of course jack blames himself because “we shouldn’t have given you a solo before you were ready, i misjudged it, i’m sorry” - and they all feel kinda bad bc holy fuck they didn’t know his stage fright was that bad like they didn’t know someone could pass out just by being anxious to sing

he practices all the time over the summer and goes to his local open mic at jack’s insistence and it actually helps a lot because instead of a sea of strangers judging him it’s a bunch of people he knows and they’re all smiling at him and when he finishes his song they cheer for him and it boosts his self-confidence a lot

his sophomore year they have three new members- chris ”chowder” chow (voice like ieuan), an excitable music education major with impressive rapping skills, derek "nursey" nurse (frank ocean or leon bridges type), a songwriting major who can also play violin and guitar, and will ”dex” poindexter (like tom west), a production & engineering major who tried out with chowder bc he needed moral support and didn't expect to get in but impressed the directors with his voice

the year’s going pretty good, bitty’s still pretty scared of singing alone but more confident now and the open mic nights with jack haven’t stopped, so he’s getting better. and one night they’re hanging out at annie’s after closing waiting for lardo to be done so they can walk her home, and bitty suggests that jack sing with him one of these nights, and jack says he doesn’t know any of bitty’s songs and bitty says they can write one together half jokingly but then jack is like “yes.” with that Intense Look

SO they get together a couple days later in jack’s room at the house they all live in together (bitty moved in at the beginning of the year after previous smcc member john johnson called him- how’d he get his number?- and told him he could take his room if he wanted), jack with his guitar and bitty with his ukulele, and it’s a little awkward until bitty says jack should play him one of his songs

and, okay, he doesn’t really know what to expect because the only music jack ever released to the public was that one single he did with kent parson when they were 17 so bitty doesn’t even know if he has anything to play him, but he does- he starts playing these soft, sad notes on the guitar and opens his mouth and sings about being lonely and scared and unsure, about false starts and shaky ground and not knowing where you stand with someone, about expectations and lying awake at night and wishing so hard you were someone else, and bitty watches him sing and just kind of... realizes he’s head over heels for this boy and internally Freaks Out a little

he tries to put that aside and they start to write this song, at first it’s weird because jack’s like “all your songs are love songs i can’t really relate to happy love songs” and bitty’s like “listen... i’ve never even had a boyfriend i just write a bunch of sappy love stuff because it’s not about me it’s about whoever’s listening to it, they’re gonna project their own experiences on my music anyway so it doesn’t matter if it’s my real life or not” and jack’s like “alright while fake af that’s smart and i respect you” (what bitty doesn't say is that he writes about what he really wants which is to fall in love & be in a happy relationship)

they say they’re just gonna write this kinda vague sad song but they both secretly write lines about their actual lives so it ends up being really personal and real and raw for the both of them

they sing the song at open mic that saturday and the crowd at annie’s is never that big but they’ve never got a standing ovation here before, and some girl shouts “MAKE AN ALBUM” (it may or may not be lardo) and they both blush furiously and bitty’s like “... that was really nice, jack” and jack’s like “... yeah it was good good job you’re really getting some confidence out there nice work” (bitty: “THAT’S NOT WHAT I MEANT AAAAH”)

around this time jack’s really thinking about what he’s gonna do when he’s done at samwell, talking with his parents and his agent and looking into different record companies and deciding if he wants to sign with anyone or possibly start his own company- the head of a small company called falcon records in rhode island has been talking to him a lot, and jack talks to bitty about how he thinks it’d be nice to start small, and the record exec georgia and the producer marty had both been really nice and welcoming, and bitty’s so happy for him but also just... sad that he won’t be around jack every day after he graduates

THEN at a haus party celebrating their win of a local choral competition, who shows up but none other than pop star kent parson to Ruin The Fun

bitty sees the way jack pales when kent walks in, notices them disappear upstairs together and feels a little sick worrying about jack but chalks it up to the highly alcoholic concoction shitty and lardo had cooked up but nonetheless decides he’s sick of the party and goes up to his room and hears.... a little too much

and YIKES he’s standing right there and kent parson, pop star, two-time grammy winner, is looking a little rumpled and staring right at him and he puts his hat on and clears his throat and snaps at jack- “hey. well. call me if you reconsider. but good luck with rhode island. ...i’m sure that’ll make your parents proud.” and jack’s shaking, and bitty doesn’t know what to do but jack goes back into his room and bitty’s just kind of standing there like What The Fuck

so.... he kind of stews over winter break but tries not to think about it too much and he and jack text a bit and jack tells him to practice and bitty’s like “oh, you” and jack’s like “im serious” and bitty’s like “>:( it’s christmas”

spring semester starts and they're doing well in competitions and they go to semifinals and then finals for a prestigious collegiate choir competition and the pressure is mounting but they all are so optimistic and really feel like they're on the same page and bitty’s confidence is better than ever and then.... they don't win

jack especially takes it very hard, but then he also has signing to worry about, which everyone helps him with and he decides to sign with falcon records and start work on an album after graduation

speaking of graduation, shitty and jack graduate and it's hard for them but harder for bitty who feels like he's losing jack in a way, he knows how intense jack gets when he's making music and it doesn't feel like he'll have any time for bitty anymore so when they say goodbye bitty goes back to the haus and listens to his and jack's song and just cries

but, like in canon, dadbob has words of wisdom to impart and jack has an "oh" moment and races across campus to kiss bitty

they get together and the next few months are spent with jack working nonstop on his album (which tbh, he'd had many of the songs written already so it's mostly recording and producing) and texting bitty constantly and coming to visit him and playing him demos of all the songs

jack also asks bitty if they can record the song they wrote together & have it as a bonus track on his album & bitty says of course, so when jack visits they set up an impromptu studio and record vocals in the guest bedroom and this deeply personal song they wrote before they were ever together means so much more to them now

and bitty is so happy but so scared and sad too because jack is playing him these songs telling him "they're all for you bits, & a lot of them are about you" and he just doesn't know how he's going to keep all this love inside even though it feels like jack's career is at stake

he tries to shove it down and stay strong though, especially since he's now an upperclassman and they're taking on new members- connor "whiskey" whisk (voice like finneas or the male singer in valley), a music business/ management major who seems to hate bitty's guts and tony "tango" tangredi (like chaz cardigan), a jazz composition major who astounds everybody with his endless questions but also his ridiculously impressive composition skills & naturally perfect pitch (he can also play saxophone??)

i want ford in this au so fuck it she is a composition major with dreams to write scores for musicals and she stars training as a barista at annie's (aka training to corral the smcc)

the pressure of it all proves to be a lot and bitty and jack have their hi, honey moment where bitty's like i can't be this deep in the closet!!! and so they tell the smcc and also jack's label that they're together and that eases things a bit

jack's album comes out to much critical acclaim and shouting in the groupchat ("#1 ON ITUNES BRAHHHHH!!!!!!!!") and several months later, when smcc has already been eliminated from choral competition in an earlier round, jack is nominated for SEVERAL grammys including best album, song of the year, and best new artist

when the time comes he takes his parents and bitty on the red carpet which, everyone keeps being like "who are you here with jack?" and he's like "my family and my good friend :)" and yes it is awkward

jack wins... all three awards. it's the comeback everyone is stoked to see and when his third win is announced, he and bitty are so elated that they kiss before he goes to accept the award

his speech is basically just "um... wow. thank you. i just kissed my boyfriend on live tv. this is amazing and i'm so humbled. i'd like to thank my boyfriend and georgia and marty and my parents and my friends and my boyfriend"

obviously the press has a FIELD DAY with this but bitty & jack are honestly vibing and so happy that it doesn't matter untiiiillll bitty's mom calls and he has to tell her "mama i'm gay and i'm going on tour with jack this summer okloveyoubye"

the last few months of bitty's junior year pass quickly and he's voted student director which is a huge honor considering how much he struggled with stage fright and confidence & how he'll now be stepping into ransom & holster's shoes

r&h and lardo all graduate (the smcc basically crashes the art school graduation and all scream when lardo gets her diploma lmao), which is a bittersweet occasion and they all do a bit of tearing up

that summer bitty goes on tour across the u.s. & canada with jack and his touring band (snowy is a bassist, tater is a drummer and poots does backing guitar, he also brings nursey to play violin on a few songs) as well as georgia who's there to manage logistics

and tour is so fun & chaotic with many bi and rainbow flags in the audience that end up thrown on stage and draped around jack's neck and they spend so many nights in the bus drinking and laughing and fooling around on the guitars and bitty's uke and exploring new cities bitty has never been to before and it's the freest bitty has felt in a long time

summer ends though, and jack leaves for the uk/europe leg of the tour, and with the new school year brings a few new members- river "bully" bullard (voice like gregory alan isakov), a music therapy major who draws his own cover art for his songs, lukas "louis" landmann (like jr jr), an electronic production and design major with a penchant for EDM, and johnathan "hops" hopper (like keiynan lonsdale), a film scoring major who wants to write music for movies and video games

bitty meets and befriends some of the other student directors- shruti, sd of the women’s contemporary chorus; sharon, sd of the chamber choir; and edgar, sd of jazz ensemble (even chad l., sd of the all-male a cappella group)

senior year passes similarly to the comic; coach visits and sees one of bitty’s competitions, jack comes to madison for christmas, smcc does well in competition and goes to regionals etc

however… bitty keeps putting off and putting off gathering the songs for his senior recital

he has a hard time doing that because he’s so focused on the group and making sure they’re performing well and as they advance in competition, everything else starts to fall away

eventually the rest of the smcc has to lock away his uke and change his youtube password and FORCE him to choose songs for it and start preparing because he cannot graduate without doing this recital and doing well on it

he chooses (of course) a beyonce song, a few of his own songs, an ellie goulding song, and an adele song

with all that his breath hitches and his hands shake before he goes on stage, he does really well and his voice instructor prof atley tears up a little in the audience as does his mom

meanwhile smcc goes to semifinals, then finals, of the national collegiate choral competition they participate in

and i imagine bitty faces somewhat less homophobia in this au because i mean, he’s in the performing arts, but i think it’s still there and he also faces a good amount of classism from richer students and performers who think they’re better because they had the resources and money to be performing professionally from a very young age, and he has been practicing via filming himself on a shitty camcorder and posting it to youtube

but they still get there! and the national finals are fucking HUGE and a big deal and a little overwhelming

bitty’s stage fright is Present because this is the biggest stage and the biggest stakes he's ever had and he has a big solo in one of their songs so if he fucks up, he fucks up a national championship for his whole group and school

luckily though, when he steps on the stage with his best friends and sees his boyfriend and family and smcc alums in the audience and they perform their first song, a high-energy pop medley that always gets the crowd going, everything seems to melt away and it's just him living in this moment and singing his heart out

when it gets to the next song and his solo, he forgets to be nervous and belts it out, getting screams of approval from the audience when he finishes

(dex and nursey do have a duet together that they had to practice for many long nights in the practice rooms alone but that's neither here nor there)

their time on stage seems to last both hours and no time at all and then they're done, the crowd gives them a standing ovation and it's at least 30% r&h & shitty's hooting and hollering and jack's enthusiastic clapping that makes bitty & the others beam with pride

then it's just waiting, giddy and nervous beyond belief in their green room, for the judging to be over

after what feels like forever they're back on stage, arms linked together waiting and hoping for their name to be called and it is, they win and it feels like years have built up to this moment, and bitty tears up because years ago when he was fainting from anxiety at having to perform in front of people he never could've imagined that he'd do this, that he'd be the student director that led them to a championship

they get the trophy and a ridiculous amount of flowers from their loved ones and they all are just in giddy disbelief that this is happening, they're national champs!!! they are the best choir boys in the nation!!

they come home and the rest of the school year passes by so quickly that it's very suddenly graduation and bitty can't believe his college career at samwell is over 😢

(he and ollie and wicky take pictures together, o&w talk about how excited they are to devote full time attention to their band & wedding planning and bitty's just like wait you're gay??)

bitty got plenty of offers from record companies but he likes his freedom of creativity and he has a built in fanbase from doing youtube all these years so he decides to make an album independently (jack helps him produce & master it 🥰)

when bitty's album comes out about a year later, full of bops about being gay and in love and having struggled but come out the other side more confident than ever, it doesn't get any grammy nominations- and he didn't expect or need that.

what it does do is it resonates. it makes the rounds in youtube and queer internet circles; people his age reach out to him saying this is the music they wish they had as a kid and kids reach out to him saying he's a role model and they're so glad to have his music to listen to. his album is written about as an underrated gem that shines with queer brilliance and is sure to start a party when it comes on.

his parents may not fully understand the road he's chosen for himself but they're still so proud and promote the album as hard as any of his loyal fans (especially the one country-inspired song on the album that he wrote and dedicated to them).

and jack, jack who saw this album from its infancy to its release date, who took the film photo that ended up being the album cover, who worked with bitty to make sure his vision was realized exactly how he wanted it to be, is proud beyond words.

jack starts using his semi-abandoned twitter again to tweet "stream [album name]" every day and bitty retweets them sometimes, with just a "this boy. ❤"

and they're happy. they're good. they have come so far and they are reaping the rewards of all the hard work they put in to make the music that they truly love.

the end :)

[beetlebethwrites]

RO round-up! I wanted to make a post I could link in the intro post but also give you all the chance to see all of them at once.

SKINTONE POST

Let me know who you’re all liking and send some questions about them maybe? RO reaction questions are more than welcome!

Name: Matt Atkinson 

Specialism: Science Communication and Presentation 

Interest: Teaching 

Age: 24 

Height: 6’ 3” 

Description: Matt is your fearless leader. The whole reason you embarked on this project in the first place was his idea. You never would have even thought about making a real go of a communication project if he wasn’t so determined, but the project is his baby. 

Matt is tall and broad with the figure of a university rugby player who played the wing position. He has grey-blue eyes and has short cut, neat sandy blond hair which is usually swiped up and away from his face. He's classically handsome with a strong jawline and a wide-bridged Roman nose which has been broken a few times in the past, an injury which only emphasises the broadness of his nose. His skin is naturally light and warm-toned, but he tans easily and due to the amount of time he spends outside, he’s usually quite tan even in the winter. His overall demeanor and appearance usually means that he can hold the attention of a group of teachers pretty well. He's the peak of smart-casual, as his usual combination of a shirt and blue jeans reflects. He also has the tan lines to show what his usual outfit contains, with distinctive tan lines from his collar and cuffs being a constant.

Name: Eve Keane 

Specialism: Script Writer 

Interest: Insects esp. moths 

Age: 25 

Height: 5’ 3” 

Description: Eve is a writer whose talent for communication has made her the perfect scriptwriter for your new programme. You’ve never met anyone else who can script Matt’s easy and enthusiastic patter, but when you tell her she’s doing a great job all she does is blush since she’s not too good at owning up to what she can do well. 

Eve is possibly the most Irish person you’ve ever met. She has all the hallmarks; pale cool-toned skin covered with light brown freckles, almost olive green eyes, mid-back length mostly straight red hair and who could forget that adorable Irish lilt? Due to her pale skin, any blush she has is very distinctive and spread from her cheeks all down her chest. She has a round face, slender long nose on which black circular wire rimmed glasses usually sit, and lips which aren’t full or thin, but often painted with a clay red lipstick, the only very obvious part of her otherwise light make up. She has gentle curves to her entire body and a few insect tattoos on her legs in muted colours. Usually dressed in earth tones and long skirts, the only reason that you know she isn’t actually from a history book is that she works with you.

Name: Alex Sancho 

Specialism: Social Media 

Interest: Mammals 

Age: 24 

Height: 5’ 7” 

Description: Alex is the closest thing you have to a best friend from university. You met in the first week and have been inseparable since then, even living and studying together while you were at university. They were brought onto the project because of your insistence that you needed a social media presence, and Matt was happy to hand off the admin to someone who came with your recommendation. 

With warm amber skin and fit with pretty dark brown eyes, Alex is someone who is easily attractive. They’re naturally fairly slender although not broad and have a flat chest. They have a heart shaped face and a full bottom lip. Their dark brown hair reaches their ears and is usually in fashionably (and purposefully) messy curls which are only occasionally tied back, although never when they’re trying to impress someone. They will occasionally wear subtle make up for events, always in warm tones. They’re usually dressed in just a jumper and jeans, usually knitted from a soft, tactile material, but it never looks as sloppy on them as a casual style as it does on everyone else in your team. Then again, maybe you’re biased...

Name: Jordan Bridgetower (gender-selectable) 

Specialism: Camera Work 

Interest: Amphibians 

Age: 22 

Height: 5’ 8” 

Description: Jordan is your new camera person. Freshly out of university from their filming degree, they can’t believe they’ve walked into a proper nature photography gig already, even if it is just something part-time for you guys channel. They’re eager to please Matt and get your channel starting with the quality it deserves! 

Jordan has deep warm-toned skin, hazel eyes and is very slender, despite the fact they always have a healthy appetite. There’s definitely something to be said for young people’s metabolism, even though there are only two years between you and them. They have an oval face, full lips and a wide, slightly short nose. Their hair changes pretty constantly between wearing it in their natural thick curls, cornrows and braids, mostly because their sister is a hairdresser and she’s very talented, plus loves to get the chance to practise on them since they allow her to do what the want.They usually wear colourful hoodies and loose clothing which are hand-me-downs, but in exceptional condition.

Name: Charlie “Char” Graham

Specialism: Music 

Interest: Getting through life 

Age: 26 

Height: 5’ 9” 

Description: Charlie works at the coffee shop you work at on a more-than-part-time less-than-full-time basis. They’re technically your shift manager but their laid-back attitude coupled with the fact that they don’t seem to have a clue what they’re doing in the first place makes it tricky to take them seriously. To his credit, he said he’d write the jingle for your show. 

Before meeting Charlie, you didn’t know that ear piercings and hearing aids could go together, but throw in a punk hairstyle and it seems to work. Char has neutral fair skin, an oblong shaped face, grey eyes and dyed navy blue hair that is shaved on the sides, although is naturally wavy. They are heavy set and fairly broad, although his figure is often hidden by their clothes. Their black eyeliner seems to get more creative and decorative by the day, which is likely why they also seem to look more and more tired. They have many piercings which are usually filled with dark or black metallic piercings, including his septum, bridge and eyebrow on his face and many tattoos which even they’ll say are questionable at best. He’s always dressed in black and grey but their dedication to the punk style is sometimes a little too much when coupled with the brown apron of your workplace.

Pictures of the ROs are here, but they’re only rough so people can get a feel for them all.

Name: Professor Bo Yeon Park 

Specialism: Lecturer 

Interest: Ecology 

Age: 33 

Height: 6’ 1” 

Description: An ecologist you originally interviewed for the channel, Matt is keeping in contact with xir for future research on the channel. An academic by nature, xe’s not entirely sure that what you’re doing is for the best, xe’d rather people read all of a paper than see it ‘dumbed down’ for the layperson. Xe’s not sure about what you and your team do at all, but maybe you can change those ideas... 

Usually decked out in dark coloured, tweed and thick glasses, xe is the real picture of an academic, right down to the few strands of grey hair among xir dark straight hair. You’re not sure that xe can actually dress like that all of the time. Xir grey eyes are usually hidden by a scowl and bushy eyebrows but xe is pretty when relaxed. Xir skin is a fair olive, xir face is diamond shaped with a low-bridged nose, and xe has obvious cheekbones and thin lips. Xe is slender although surprisingly muscular from the amount of outside work xe does, although this is hidden by xir usual outfits of androgynous academic style.

Skintones for the ROs are here! This is very important information please cast your eyes upon it.

[mammons-tax-returns]

How would Lucifer, Mammon, Levi, Satan, Asmo, Barbatos, Solomon, and Diavolo react to a male MC who wears skirts (because *chants* men in skirts, it’s masculine af) on the daily? bonus if the MC wears black nail polish!

REACTING TO MC THAT WEARS SKIRTS

LOVE THIS PROMPT 🙏

During this I imagined 💃🏻💃🏻💃🏻TANGO DANCER SOLOMON and thats going into my art idea list

masterlist

✖️MALE MC✖️

Not unlike all the other boys, Lucifer is willing to risk it all as soon as he sees it.

His favorite cut of skirt is the classic a-line ones, both modest and not.

A CLOSE second goes to wrap skirts.

This is a SFW blog so I will not be going into any detail at this time ✨

Literally loses his breath everytime he sees MC, and it surprises him.

If MC isn’t already wearing the RAD skirt, he’s already offering to get him a set. Almost too eagerly?

When MC decides to not wear a skirt one day, he tries not to make it too obvious, but he’s simply curious as to why is all. Maybe a tad bit let down.

MC insisted one time that Lucifer painted his nails for him, and...

“Well, normally Asmo is the one doing that for all of us...”

“But Lucifer 🥺”

“Alright... Fine. But I’ll have to continue my paperwork in between each layer.

It’s just kinda cute to think that he would spend an incredibly unnecessary amount of time on each nail, trying to perfectly lay down the polish. Occasionally, his tongue will poke out because of his concentration.

There’s some slip ups here and there, but mentioning them will only get him flustered.

I don’t use this word lightlySIMP SIMP SIMP

He thinks he loves MC in every skirt imaginable just as equally as the last (which, he actually might) but deep down he can’t deny that a mini skirt just hits different.

The first time he saw MC wearing a mini skirt, mammon’s initial reaction was to cover him up before anyone could see him.

However, he failed to realize that he was actually the last of the brothers to see him, since he woke up late.

But that’s just what being the avatar of greed does to you. You just want to keep what’s yours, no matter what.

But considering his jacket isn’t as big as Lucifer’s or Solomon’s, he ended up just holding it up against MC’s lower half and stood in front of him.

It took the coaxing of MC and the snark comments of his siblings to make Mammon finally allow MC to walk around freely.

Looking back on it, Mammon most certainly understands why even Asmo had called him clingy.

But even now, he can’t help but hold MC a little bit closer in public when so many demons are staring at him! It just feels wrong to allow them to do that.

Cut him some slack, he thinks MC looks amazing, and he trusts him, but they’re literally in hell surrounded by demons. He just wants to keep his boy safe <33

Levi doesn’t even realize what MC’s wearing at first.

In fact, he doesn’t realize even after their first FEW encounters.

He only notices because while Mammon was ranting to him and Satan about money, he brings up MC and his “stupid and cute but also dumb skirts”

Levi is baffled that he’s the only one that hasn’t noticed it. So, the next time he walks by MC’s room, he contemplates stopping by to talk. Right... Socialize. That.

While Levi is stuck in his thoughts, MC opens the door, presumably ready to go out to a party with Mammon and Asmo.

*fish man short circuits*

MC looks...! S-so cute....!

- thinks the third born otaku.

Because I’m big on fashion, I can kind of picture an exact skirt I feel would apply to him. Let your mind run free but I imagine a semi-sheer maxi skirt with water-like embellishments uwu

But don’t get me wrong, Levi literally loves seeing MC in skirts so anything will get him like 😳 yall know how he is

Actually starts to get more interested in feminine fashion because of MC. And one day, he purchases a long black skirt from Akuzon.

He saw a popular cosplayer wearing one, and so he makes that his excuse.

No one even realizes the change except for Asmo, who gushes over the new look, even if it barely changed. MC also notices, but only compliments him/brings it up when they’re alone so Levi doesn’t overheat.

I was this close to typing “Satan is a man of beauty and FASHION” can you believe that

OKAY ENOUGH SATAN SLANDER

Satan... He can recognize when someone else looks ridiculous.

But he knows for a FACT. That MC very likely pulls off a skirt better than anyone he’s seen before.

Call him biased, but he sincerely loves it on MC specifically.

He likes the puffier skirts because they’re ADORBS, but for a more casual look, there’s this one asymmetrical skirt in particular that makes MC look so handsome to him.

He has no idea why men don’t wear skirts more often! Surely MC isn’t the only one that can do it!

Oh. Right. Gender norms 😪🤚🏼

Satan feels his anger crawl up his skin when he watches MC get ridiculed. And just for something he simply enjoys wearing! The nerve of demons.

He advances to “de-escalate” the situation in the most “avatar of wrath” way possible, but when he sees MC’s slumped shoulders walking away from him, he feels more inclined to follow and comfort him.

Satan gives an icy glare to the irrelevant demons, taking note of their faces, and goes after MC.

He doesn’t immediately bring up the situation, instead opting to go out on a spontaneous date to a nice café or a shopping district. Anything to distract from the situation subtly.

If his plan works out, splendid. Anything to make light of situation without even addressing it for even a day is good.

If the shopping and food doesn’t quite bring MC’s smile to his eyes, Satan will just have to be forward with his feelings for once.

“MC. I’m not entirely sure how I can get it through to you, but you shouldn’t be worrying about what some moronic, low-level demons think of you or your clothes. Much less what they say. Just be you, and make them suffer ten times worse.”

MC relishes in his words, even if the last bit sounded more like a threat than anything.

The last thing Satan would ever do is let MC even hesitate wearing an outfit that he would have had no trouble throwing on any other day because of someone else.

Asmo screams (in a happy way)

“No, Mammon! You’re wrong. MC is NOT my personal dress-up doll! He’s my model.”

Trying to break the stigma around Asmo’s “shallow” personality, let’s get the obvious things out of the way.

He and MC shop together pretty much every other day. It’s almost concerning. And nail appointments are, of course, regular.

NOW THAT THAT’S OVER,

Yes yes, Asmo loves the skirts and wonderfully glossy black nails, but there’s still such a massive divide between him and MC. Not physically, or even relationship-wise.

He’s never met someone like MC, who is so fashion-heavy and just the right amount of self-centered.

He thinks its the fact that they’re a human and demon. But he’s seen firsthand that the line between what makes a demon so different from a human is very thin. Solomon is an example of that.

But he realizes it’s just MC. He’s simply dressing for himself and himself only.

Asmo loves himself, there’s no doubt. And it’s nice to go out and dress fancy for others. He couldn’t dream of another lifestyle.

But he has to admit that what MC is doing is working for him. He comes off as a charming sort of man when he ignores the negative comments made about his clothes.

He knows that people in both Devildom and the human realm are a little sensitive when it comes to men in skirts. And the fact that MC continues to wear them is beautiful in and of itself.

This got kind of deep out of nowhere and i apologize but Asmo deserves to be seen for more than he’s constantly portrayed as 😞

Diavolo isn’t really thrown off that much by it at first, but as time passes, he starts to understand the appeal of skirt-wearing MC.

PENCIL SKIRT LOVER 🚨🔊PENCIL SKIRT LOVER🚨🚨🚨🔊🔊🔔🗯

Barbatos has to remind him that it’s rude to stare, but he finds it almost entertaining how whipped they BOTH are for MC.

Like Asmo, he actually loves bringing him out to shop!

The only difference between the two experiences is that Diavolo has no fucking idea what he’s doing when he picks out clothes for him.

Which leads to some pretty funny/terrible clothing combinations.

No, Diavolo, MC will not be wearing a flannel top with a camouflage hi-low skirt. Put those plaid socks away.

He’s confused and even a little sad when MC continues to turn down his ideas, but he figures that he should turn this into a learning opportunity.

So he lets MC grab whatever he wants, and patiently waits for him to finish up in the fitting rooms.

The store clerk is shitting her pants at the sight of the literal future ruler of Devildom hyping MC up with the energy of a puppy retriever.

Barbatos does an amazing job pretending like this doesn’t affect him.

He’s a classy man, he just internally loses it when he sees MC in any fancy skirt, really. From silky gold ruffles to a victorian-esc vibe, he’s obsessed.

So when Diavolo makes arrangements for an event/ball, Barbatos makes sure to, at the very least, offer to help MC get ready at the castle. He may not be the most fashion-centric but being able to spend time with MC in an extravagant get up is enough to make a demon butler interested.

Most of the time he’s disappointed because in between the seven brothers, he’d be lucky to be able to see MC at all because of how jealous they can all get.

I can imagine that even Diavolo doesn’t get to hear what Barbatos has to say about MC and his ability to make him weak at the knees.

But all it takes is Diavolo prompting, “MC’s outfit tonight... It was a sight for sore eyes, correct?”

Then, Barbatos lets a compliment or two slip out.

I can also imagine MC wearing a slightly short snd flowy skirt, and some rather disgusting demons waiting for it to get picked up by the wind, only for Barbatos to already be there, discreetly holding the fabric down and shooting them an intensely calm smile

Barbatos will always be one step ahead of creeps.

👀..

sneaky boy is sneaky.. especially with the constant glances he gives MC.

Solomon’s favorite type of skirt to see on MC is DEFINITELY pleated. No other option.

Unlike Lucifer, if MC isn’t wearing a skirt, he makes it clear that he wishes he would’ve.

It’s in a playful manner, though! Don’t worry.

“No skirt today? Bummer. That’s fine though, I can’t expect myself to feel attracted any less.”

I imagine MC wearing a flowy skirt to some sort of event at the demon lord’s castle, and he uses his magic to make it temporarily sparkle or shine.

This mf flashy and wants EVERYONE to know that MC is dancing with HIM and no one else.

But if you ask him about it, what? What’re you talking about? Lights?? Emitting from your skirt??? While we were dancing ?¿ Crazy talk. I would never do such a thing.,.

As childish as it is, he loves to see the way it flows when MC twirls or turns.

Not in a weird way, either. It’s just beautiful to him.

So, not to be cheesy (which he WITHOUT A DOUBT is.) but he’ll occasionally just spin MC by his hand throughout the day, then catch/dip him by the waist.

[jasontoddiefor]

Title: infinitely varied Ship: obikin Summary: Sometimes your husband decides to develop an artificial intelligence capable of free choice and something called a soul and succeeds in the middle of a Thursday night. Or, more concretely: he's in the middle of succeeding because said intelligence first has to learn how to speak.Also known as Obi-Wan and Anakin teach a tiny program called A.H.S.O.K.A. how to be something more than lines of code via the power of linguistics. AN: Happy birthday @ghostwriterofthemachine

Language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation.

Noam Chomsky

I.

Life was a query of expectations, margins on doorframes, bucket lists, first loves, broken hearts, and happy middles because only fools would settle for a happy ending when they had so many decades left to live. The thought never failed to bring a smile to Anakin’s face, no matter how frustrated, remembering the simple way Obi-Wan had proposed. There had been no fancy dinner, particularly stunning outing, or anything resembling outlandish romantic gestures. Anakin would have appreciated them because every act would have been colored by Obi-Wan’s love, but now, older and wiser than the rash youth who’s fallen in love at first heated debate, he preferred the way their proposal had actually gone down. A quiet Sunday morning, eating breakfast together on the sofa while the news droned in the background from Anakin’s old radio, a hesitant “I don’t need forever, but I want the present”.

And, well, for all his genius, Anakin could be a bit of an idiot sometimes, but not when it came to this.

Married life was interesting.

Somehow nothing changed, except also everything. They had bought a real house, moved out of their old apartment and made more compromises than Anakin had ever thought himself capable of, for they hadn’t been like fighting an uphill battle but dancing together. It had made him happy to paint the entrance hall in the shade of green Obi-Wan preferred if he got to paint the kitchen in the light blue he wanted.

Obi-Wan got the attic for his office where his antique book collection looked right at home, and Anakin got the basement where the hum of his servers and the generator powering them annoyed nobody else.

It was as close to white-picket-fence as it could be with two queer men, no kids, a bratty cat, and an anxious dog under one roof. His childhood self would be appalled to see how much Anakin, always the whirlwind, had settled. To a nine-year-old, Anakin probably looked very adult.

Anakin, however, did not feel very grown-up, banging his head against his desk in the middle of the night. Obi-Wan had gone to sleep hours ago, and so had Anakin until inspiration had struck and he’d snuck out of bed to return to his favorite project.

A.H.S.O.K.A may not be a child, but Anakin certainly could relate to exhausted parents when they complained about their children in endless repetitions. To this day, Anakin didn’t know why his mother figured it would be great parenting to encourage her WarGames obsessed kid to dig into the world of artificial intelligence when WOPR nearly started a nuclear war, but he’d forever remain thankful.

Or, he’d resume being thankful when he could finally get A.H.S.O.K.A to learn. He’d rewritten her code a thousand times. It was his ever-constant companion, from his first awful-looking early 2000s website to its current incarnation. A.H.S.O.K.A could solve simple logic puzzles, given that he fed her enough data. Her solutions to tasks could be downright hilarious, but they were not enough. He wanted her to be smarter, better, capable of gaining true understanding.

Perhaps, it was a dream for the future and not a Thursday night.

Anakin didn’t have any work tomorrow morning as he worked as a freelancer, so he could afford to pull an all-nighter. But his dear husband had planned a nice afternoon for them, so Anakin should call it a night or a morning as a glance at the clock told him.

Staring at the many lines of code again, Anakin sighed and leaned back in his chair and took another sip of his by-now cold tea. Obi-Wan would definitely complain that Anakin had snatched his favorite mug once he got up and couldn’t find it in the kitchen. Anakin had bought it at the last linguistic convention Obi-Wan had taken him to.

Language is a process of free invention, it read in delicate cursive before the rest of the quote disassembled in pure chaos.

Huh.

Now there was a thought. Anakin got out of his chair and left the basement, haunted by fixed principles and infinite combinations. Up in the attic, carrying Obi-Wan’s computer downstairs again, Anakin thought on interpretations and free creations. He was as giddy and nervous as he’d been on the morning of his wedding day, which had started similarly early. Connecting Obi-Wan’s computer, and more importantly, the priced result of his thesis, to Anakin’s server felt a little like unwrapping birthday presents.

language_acquisition_prediction.exe

Enter.

II.

Obi-Wan was not surprised when he woke to an empty bed. Anakin had a habit of suddenly pulling all-nighters or getting up early before the sun even thought of rising. Given that he couldn’t smell breakfast yet, Obi-Wan deduced that Anakin had pulled an all-nighter again. He slowly crawled out of bed to avoid disturbing Artoo and Threepio sleeping to his feet. Obi-Wan was pretty sure he shared his bed more often with his pets than he did with his husband.

He walked down the stairs to the ground level and went by the kitchen to prepare himself a cup of tea. To his displeasure, Obi-Wan couldn’t find his favorite mug and so had to settle for another. After another thought, he decided to make a second one for Anakin, lavender this time so Anakin would hopefully crash after breakfast. He put both mugs on a small tray together with a couple tomatoes. Obi-Wan usually wasn’t one for eating a full breakfast on workdays – that was the influence of Anakin and his mother’s kitchen – but he was the expert in smalltime snacks. With both in hand, he walked down the second flight of stairs, down to the basement. As expected, he found Anakin at his desk, clinging to what was bound to be a cold cup, staring intensely at his screens, which were running one program or another.

“Good morning,” Obi-Wan greeted him and kissed Anakin’s cheek.

“Mo-orning,” Anakin replied, a yawn interrupting him halfway. “Wait, what time is it?”

“Eight,” Obi-Wan said. “How long have you been up?”

“Uuuh.” Obi-Wan didn’t need to see Anakin’s face to know the answer. “Did you even go to sleep?”

“I did sleep for a while!” Anakin argued. “But then I had an idea, I mean, look at this!”

Obi-Wan gave the screens a closer look. Despite common misconceptions, he was not technically illiterate. Privately, he blamed the fact that Anakin was quite well known for his tech know-how and Obi-Wan tended to talk more about literature given that he was filling in as a lecturer in the British Lit. department. Nevertheless, Obi-Wan had gotten his professorship with a program he’d written, and the code currently displayed on the screens looked very similar to a section that had given him stress nightmares. “Is that my thesis?” he asked.

“Yes, sorta, partially?” Anakin replied. “I kind of took it apart a lot and maybe corrupted it a bit, but that’s not the important part! Look what she’s doing with it.”

She could only refer to one person, intelligence. There were a few constants in their life, their new house the most recent one, and Ahsoka was probably the longest. Obi-Wan didn’t know why Anakin hadn’t set her aside already, he was happy enough to leave other started-never-finished projects lying around, but the last time he’d even just suggested such, Anakin had looked heartbroken.

Obi-Wan looked at the screen Anakin was pointing at and began to read.

script input: inhibition auditory input 1 designation skyguy: /ˌɪn.ɪˈbɪʃ.ən/ auditory input 2 designation professor: /ˌɪn.hɪˈbɪʃ.ən/ analysis: mismatch diagnosis: outstanding

script input: better auditory input 1 designation skyguy: /ˈbet̬.ɚ/ auditory input 2 designation professor: /ˈbet.ər/ analysis: mismatch diagnosis: rhoticism? query: define

The text continued for a while, though apparently Ahsoka only picked out the mismatched parts in her analysis.

“Is that ‘Must have done something right’?” Obi-Wan asked, the connection between the words suddenly starting to make sense.

“Yes!” Anakin grinned. “I wasn’t quite sure how to teach her sounds properly because I hadn’t equipped her with a sound analysis program before and I figured that if babies just learn by listening to their parents, Ahsoka could learn by listening to us.”

“So you fed her audio of us singing?” Obi-Wan wasn’t sure whether to be impressed, confused, or just plain tired but decided to settle on confusion for now and let the course of the conversation determine where they’d end up.

“That too, but I actually just started by playing old voice messages. I figured getting her used to just one phonetic inventory would be enough for now. Honestly, for the first hour, I wasn’t even sure whether that would be of any use because she had no symbols to connect the sounds to, and I thought using the IPA might bias her.”

Because, of course, Anakin never deleted any of Obi-Wan’s voice messages and just kept them on his phone. The fact that he just glossed over it as if it weren’t anything special either made Obi-Wan smile.

“It’s cute that you think we have the same inventory,” Obi-Wan commented. “But continue. You just let her listen to sounds and then? Don’t tell me you gave her written texts.”

Anakin rolled his eyes and confirmed another one of Ahsoka’s queries before answering. “No, I gave her the IPA then and let her listen to the full inventory and then analyze which ones we use.”

That made enough sense. Obi-Wan was reasonably sure it was a great deal more complicated than Anakin was lying it out right now, but it was still within the realm of possible and not downright sci-fi. There were enough programs that could analyze speech and filter out patterns, recognize even emotions and tone. Feeding data to a computer wasn’t too different from the way babies learned, though, as far as Obi-Wan knew from talking to people with children, they didn’t like their progeny being compared to lines of code.

“And you accomplished this by feeding my thesis program, which is meant to predict the language acquisition of children, to Ahsoka?”

“Yes, that, uh, happened more or less,” Anakin said, his nose scrunched up just so that Obi-Wan knew he wasn’t certain. “I’m pretty sure I like, wrote some of it down. Not all of it because I knocked out at like 4 a.m., which resulted in pretty interesting inquiries on the great vowel shift.”

Obi-Wan froze. “She’s asking about the great vowel shift?”

There was a difference in the size of the Atlantic between analyzing sounds and recognizing a six-hundred-year-old change in pronunciation.

“Not really,” Anakin said. “She just noticed the patterns? And had inquiries? We’ve been following up on it since, mostly by also giving her written text, but I think that might have backfired and confused her a bit. I’m thinking of synching up the input with a visible feed so she’d learn to associate an actual object with the sound, but I’m not sure whether that wouldn’t just lead to her matching data instead of actually learning its relevance. Can teach an AI what an apple looks like, sounds like, tastes like, but that doesn’t mean you can teach it what an apple is and all that.”

Anakin smiled impishly, and unfortunately, despite his generally messy appearance, Obi-Wan still thought he was handsome. “Please don’t cite my book back at me like that.”

Closing his eyes for a moment and pinching his nose, Obi-Wan tried to focus. This was not how he expected to start his free day. He needed to wake up and possibly grab his notes to sort out this mess. This almost made him wish the car was still wrecked and Anakin would spend all his free time fixing that. “Did you have to start her on English of all languages?”

Anakin was fluent in two other romance languages; it would have been much easier to deal with a French AI than an English one. Sighing, Obi-Wan looked at Ahsoka’s latest question and promptly frowned.

script input: bear auditory input: /beər/ match found: bare analysis: mismatch diagnosis: failed word formation query: bear = bare? query: deletion >bare<?

“How long has she been doing that?” Obi-Wan asked.

“Doing what— oh, that’s new.”

So Ahsoka had jumped from matching sounds to text to comparing sound to words and then referencing those words against one another. That was a logical step, but also a step Obi-Wan wasn’t quite sure she should be doing without prompting.

“She thinks bear and bare are related because they have the same sound. Didn’t really expect that turn of events. Should I show her those are two different words?”

“Does she even know what a word is yet?” Obi-Wan asked in turn.

“No.”

“Then teach her what a word is first— after breakfast. I want your pancakes.”

“You never want pancakes on a Friday.”

“My husband also never decided to rope me into teaching an artificial intelligence morphology before.”

Obi-Wan needed a proper meal for this. He could talk to his students on an empty stomach, but he could not deal with the latest brand of Skywalker insanity without something sweet first.

“I haven’t—”

Ever the negotiator, Obi-Wan decided to shut Anakin up with a kiss. “After breakfast.”

Ahsoka’s many questions could wait for an hour.

[queersatanic]

"My Satanic Adventure or 'I was a Teenaged Satanist!' " by Isaac Bonewits

The [preceding] was first published in 1975 c.e. in response to a

In the city of Berkeley, California, there is a large T-shaped intersection at the main southern entrance to the campus of the University of California, where I enrolled as a sophomore in the fall of 1967, at the tender age of 17. Here, where Telegraph Avenue runs north into the east-west Bancroft Avenue, there is a large expanse of brick sidewalk between the traffic on Bancroft and the short cement pillars that mark the entry into the plaza between Sproul Hall (the administration building) and the Student Union. It was on those bricks that I spent many leisure hours heckling the preachers who held court there in the late 1960’s.

On a small soapbox (yes, a real, genuine soapbox), “Holy” Hubert Lindsey, gap-toothed, flaming-haired and loud mouthed, would hold forth to the multitudes about how sinful they all were. Mr. and Mrs. Tieman, a middle aged couple, would hold up large white posters covered with alternating lines of red and black magic marker, that told us how sinful and evil we were, while they sang hymns over a small loudspeaker. Off to one corner, the Krishna Consciousness devotees would bang away at their drums and chant on and on and on. Various “Jesus Freaks” would wander around accosting students and subjecting them to impromptu sermons (all carefully memorized). Scientologists would hand out tracts and Marxists passed out picket signs. It was all marvelously exciting.

Naturally, the favorite sport of many Berkeley students was “Let’s heckle the religion nuts!” As a new transfer student with an already strongly developed interest in magic and religion, I jumped right in with my fellows (almost all male) and started bugging the preachers. However, I noticed after a few months that our heckling had very little effect except our own diminishing amusement. The evangelists were immune to all the standard methods of heckling — the catcalls and philosophical paradoxes rolled off them like water off a duck’s back. The evangelical, gospel-spouting approach seemed impervious to all logic and reason. It was in my third quarter at Cal that inspiration hit me.

On a beautiful Spring afternoon in March 1968, I arrived at the corner of Bancroft and Telegraph with a small platform, painted black, a small loudspeaker, also painted black and a piece of black posterboard with alternating lines of red and white lettering. The top line on my sign said “The Devil’s Advocate.” It is impossible to adequately describe the horror and dismay of the preachers as I stood up on my platform, dressed all in black, and began a loud, long, sonorous sermon in my best southern accent — on behalf of the Christian Devil.

What I was preaching that afternoon was what I have since come to call “Liberal Heterodox” Satanism. I preached the Devil as Lucifer, the “Light Bearer,” champion of the intellect against repressive tyrannies on the one hand, and the original “party animal” on the other — sort of a combination of Prometheus, Bacchus and Pan. I had a “Hell” of a good time flaying my audiences for not being sinful enough, and for listening to the preachers. Inside of five minutes there was an audience around my platform larger than any of the evangelists had every raised. Some of them pretended to “heckle” me (and a few Jesus People actually did), but all their arguments were swept aside by classic preacher-think.

That day, and for many days thereafter, I practiced the art of improvisational street theater, using all the standard evangelical lines and parables to ridicule and confuse the preachers. I had been at my platform less than a week when a young woman came up to me and said, in a deliberately erotic voice, “Hi. I’m a Witch. Would you like to join the Church of Satan? You sound like you’d be perfect.”

Since she was rather pretty I quickly replied, “Hi. What’s the Church of Satan?”

“It’s the famous Satanic Church run by Anton LaVey in San Francisco,” she explained.

“Never heard of him,” I replied brightly.

“Well, you’ll like him. He’s into just the same things you are. Why don’t you go see him?” she said, handing me a card with his address and giving me a smoldering look that promised much.

So I went to see him. His hokey black house with the gothic furnishings has been described so many times by reporters that I won’t bother. Suffice it to say that I met the man and liked him very much. He was friendly, smooth talking, played the organ beautifully, and promised me much assistance in my endeavors to torment the campus evangelists. I was invited to join the Church, membership fees were waived, and I was invited to attend his lecture series for free! (The waiving of those fees, as well as those for the weekly meetings, I learned later was almost unheard of.) He handed me a bunch of literature from his Church to hand out and I went back to Berkeley bemused and intrigued by what I was getting into.

Well, three months went by. One of the members of the Church made me a more powerful loudspeaker and thousands of LaVey’s tracts were printed up and handed out. I eventually built a large black throne on wheels, with a tape recorder, microphone and umbrella holder to keep the sun off my head. I called this my “Sinmobile,” and wheeled it across campus every day to the evangelical corner, so that I could preach in comfort. In short, I really had a lot of fun that spring.

During this time, I became a regular at the Church of Satan. I attended LaVey’s lectures, went to his Friday night rituals, and quickly became one of his regular altar boys and a “Satanic Minister.” I’ll never forget the evening when I decided to ad lib some fake “Enochian” invocations during one of the ceremonies. I dramatically intoned a lot of gibberish, using the same guttural tones that Anton always used, and everyone in the ritual acted very impressed. Afterwards, I asked Anton, “How’d you like my Enochian?” and he gave me a look that would have melted sheetrock. He did not, however, warn me of the dangers of mucking with this ceremonial language, as any real Enochian magician would have done out of sheer self-preservation (since they all believe that it is a terribly powerful magical tongue), nor did he complain that I had ruined his magical intent, as he would have done if he had actually been doing any magic. It was at that point that I realized two important things about Anton: he really didn’t know very much about Enochian and he wasn’t actually trying to do magic in his supposedly magical rites. I began to wonder if he even knew how.

But I continued to hang out at the Church, discussing magic, philosophy and Satanic theology with Anton and the other members and trying (unsuccessfully) to seduce some of the rare young women in the Church. Occasionally I would even flirt with Anton’s teenaged daughter — which really flipped him out, despite the fact that she wouldn’t give me the time of day. I never was able to figure out whether he was jealous, worried about protecting her virtue, or concerned that my “commie” attitudes might be contagious.

At one point that spring, some friends of Anton’s showed up with cameras and started filming bits and pieces of faked-up rituals. Since I was still an enthusiastic ritualist, I was drafted to play various silly parts in these. I climbed into a coffin with a naked woman while wearing a bishop’s costume, stabbed a poppet with a knife, asked the high priest (Anton, in his Red Devil costume) for Satanic blessings, etc. I can’t remember any of the dialog at this point, but I do recall Anton telling us that what we said didn’t matter much, since everything was going to be translated into European languages for the “documentaries” the men were making.

Well, he was telling some of the truth for once. Parts of these films did indeed wind up in documentaries, such as “The Occult Experience,” but those parts were in English. These are the films that people in the Neopagan community see every couple of years or so, and which shock them so much — apparently they can’t see that I’m only seventeen in them, so they write me letters full of concern or denouncing me for my “betrayal” of Paganism. The foreign translations, however, were done for the bits that were spliced into pornographic movies sold in Europe. His so-called documentary film producers were actually pornographers, though the films I acted in were pretty tame. I don’t know about the “acting” other Church members might have done then or since, though I’m told that LaVey later earned his living for a few years in the European pornography industry.

To me it was all just another part of the adventure. I continued to listen admiringly to Anton’s tales, though I was somewhat shocked when he claimed that his huge library of occult books had been swindled from rich widows. I was more shocked when I realized that he had read only a tiny fraction of them, and that at seventeen I had read far more books on parapsychology, comparative religion and the occult than he had, despite his twenty years’ head start.

These events and insights did not take place in isolation, though. Like many other Berkeley students, I was gradually becoming a long-haired radical. This caused increasing friction between the rest of the Church and myself. My politics then were basically left wing/anarchist with a mild dash of Nietzsche. Anton’s politics, and those of most of the central members, seemed to be quite a bit more conservative. They’d quote Nietzsche or Hitler or Rand and tell me what it supposedly meant. Then I’d give them what I thought of as a more humanistic and intellectual interpretation. The overlap between our opinions became increasingly smaller and I became increasingly uneasy about my fellow Church members.

Some were bringing authentic Ku Klux Klan robes and Nazi uniforms for the ceremonies. I was assured that the clothes were merely for “Satanic shock value” to “jar people from their usual staid patterns of thinking.” Then I would talk to the men wearing these clothes and realize that they were not pretending anything. I noticed that there were no black members of the Church and only one Asian, and began to ask why.

Then I went away for the summer, living with my eldest brother in southern California and converting him to my brand of Satanism. Since he was an intellectual humanist, this wasn’t hard (he became Wiccan a couple of years later). We had an enjoyable summer, I made a few public appearances on behalf of the Church, then it was time to return to Berkeley.

Upon my return, I found that several of the members of the Church were coming to me for magical advice, instead of to their Glorious Leader. This was apparently the final straw for Anton. It was early in October, shortly after my 18th birthday, that I was called aside for a talk by one of the “Inner Circle” members (one of the pornographers), about my “obnoxious and deviationist tendencies.” I had previously been told about “odd” accidents and arrests that had occurred to others who were purged from the Church, so I tried to be as conciliatory as possible. But crewcut right wingers never have brought out the best in me, so I probably wasn’t very convincing. A week later, after the services, I was ordered to go downstairs to the “orgy room.”

When I arrived in the sanctum unsanctorium, I found thirteen people in black hooded robes sitting around a coffin-table. I was told to stand with my heels against the side of a mattress that was on the floor, with my head directly under a strong light. They then began to berate me for my deviationist thinking. The whole inquisition would have been a lot more impressive except for two factors: firstly, I recognized most of the voices as being those of the same flakes, weirdos and losers I had been meeting all along as members of the headquarters crew. Secondly, I had just finished reading a book on brainwashing techniques — the same methods that were now being used on me to force a “confession and retraction” of my “erroneous ways.” My immediate impulse to laugh was stifled, however, by the fact that I was surrounded and out-numbered by several large men, whose voices were getting increasingly loud and fanatic, and my memories of the supposed Mafia and police connections Anton had.

The smart thing to do was convince them that I was small fry and not worth arranging a fatal accident for. I proceeded to faint back on the mattress. Ignoring the fact that I had repeatedly informed them of my activities as a drama club member in high school, they all laughed and hauled me upstairs. Five minutes later I “revived” and left in a very subdued mood.

A couple of weeks later I sent Anton a suitably wimpy resignation letter, offering to refrain from all public comment about the Church and to return the public address system to the man who had provided it to me (something that never happened, though I waited two years, because members had been forbidden to communicate with me — although several later did).

I went back to my previous ways, continuing for two more years the fascinating game of evangelist-baiting. Several other religious and magical groups recruited me and then kicked me out for heresy. Gradually, I became used to the idea that there were damned few groups around who wanted independent thinkers, and that most of the organizations I infiltrated or joined (from even before I came to Berkeley) were likely to kick me out the second I started deviating from their party line. Fortunately, I discovered the Reformed Druids of North America shortly after being purged from LaVey’s Church, and those tree-hugging Zen anarchists were just what the Goddess ordered. I’ve been a Druid and a Pagan ever since.

I’m still amused more than angered by the cyclical attacks against me in the Pagan press and now on the Net. I’m not sure that my foolishness as a teenager is particularly relevant to my present character, opinions and activities, any more than the foolishness of many other famous Pagans during their adolescence. Shall we all investigate what Starhawk, Selena Fox, Ray Buckland, Oberon and Morning Glory Zell were doing when they were seventeen? For that matter, what were LaVey, Aquino, and Flowers/Thorsson doing during their teenaged years? (Pagan computer hackers take note, this could be an entertaining research project.)

I’m perfectly happy now, as I was then, to admit that I was stupid to get involved with LaVey and his Church, and even more stupid to reveal my precocious knowledge of the occult and to advise members of the group behind the guru’s back.

Yet any magically- or mystically-oriented person must be willing to accept that if they experiment or engage in adventures, they are liable to be made a fool of, be ripped-off or have their reputation smeared by those who belong to or sympathize with the Power Elite. I was curious about LaVey and his group and let them recruit me. I find it difficult to be sorry, although LaVey expected me to be, that no new members were brought into the ranks by my efforts — after all, my chief aim had been to torment and fight evangelists and fascists, not to help them.

I said back in 1974 that people desperate to smear me would inevitably bring up those months with LaVey, for lack of anything better to use, and that prophesy has come true several times. The (re-)publishing of The Enemies of our Enemies, however, brings them out of the woodwork every time. Michael Aquino, the neo-nazi head of the Temple of Set, has been especially active in spreading carefully crafted lies (he’s a career military intelligence officer, after all) about my time with LaVey. His professionally written disinformation is precisely targeted to make feminists, civil libertarians and Neopagans disgusted with me, especially if they are unfamiliar with propaganda techniques. Various other Satanic crackpots, some of whom were denouncing me many years ago, join in with equally ludicrous accusations and sophomoric insults.

The primary claim these folks are making (other than the traditional one most my critics use: “Isaac is a terrible person, don’t listen to him”) is that every one of my opinions about past and current Satanism has supposedly been warped by my “bitter experience” with the Church of Satan when I was seventeen. To this very day, I am supposed to be horribly ashamed of having been purged by them, and using any excuse to attack these innocent philosophers. All of which ignores some glaringly obvious facts.

(1) I’ve been kicked out of lots of occult groups over the years. I haven’t spent much of my time denouncing entire theological movements related to them, because most of them weren’t very representative. Anton, however, along with Montague Summers and Adolph Hitler, was a seminal figure in the modern Satanic movement, as even his enemies and competitors (such as Aquino) cheerfully admit. So LaVey provides one excellent example of just how shallow, patriarchal and fraudulent Satanism is.

(2) As I’ve said before, you can’t be in the occult community for six months, let alone thirty years, without meeting a wide spectrum of Satanists, Setians, Luciferians, Gnostic Dualists, Chthulians, and other proud upholders of the so-called “Left Hand Path.” I’ve met scores of Satanists, “black magicians” and other idiots trying hard to impress me with how philosophical, evil, and/or dangerous they were. After a while, the shallowness of their thinking and the repetitiveness of their dysfunctional personalities becomes stunning in its cliche-ridden banality.

(3) I’m a professional occultist and a scholar of minority belief systems. I’ve read plenty of Satanic/Setian literature and found none of it plausible. I’ve studied the historical record of how the Roman Catholic Church invented modern Satanism. I’ve read the work of genuine authorities and found their academic analyses far more convincing than the self-serving clap-trap produced by folks trying to make big bucks out of conning the rubes.

My knowledge of Setanists and Setanism is observational, historical, philosophical, and extensive. Thus, my comments in “The Enemies of Our Enemies” that Satanists and their ilk tend to be “fascists, jerks and/or psychopaths” who don’t care a fig for anyone’s civil liberties except their own, is accurate, historically sound, and rather mild.

Anyone who bothers to read the trash that LaVey writes (or rather that he puts his name on — he bragged to me about how he had gotten various members of the Church to write the different chapters of his first two books for him) will notice certain familiar attitudes permeating the contents. His version of Satanism, like the Christian mythology it is a part of, is racist and sexist. His right wing nonsense is part and parcel of the patriarchal worldview that Goddess worshippers and Neopagans abhor. If Adolf Hitler had decided to publicize his occult beliefs, they would have wound up sounding much like LaVey’s (or Michael Aquino’s) writings — though with dashes of libertarianism thrown in to make it sound oriented towards individuals.

The “philosophy of Satanism” is deliberately designed to appeal to the KKK or American Nazi Party type of mind: all those ignorant embittered failures who are convinced that “there’s a conspiracy” to keep them from their rightful places as rulers of the world. Even the Satanists who consider themselves “pre-Christian Gnostic Dualists” still accept the same patriarchal worldview that lies(!) behind Christianity, dividing the universe into warring armies of Good and Evil.

Members of the Neopagan community have some fairly simple choices about how to react to disinformation campaigns against me:

They can read my writings on the topics of Satanism/Setianism, Neopaganism and civil liberties, and analyze my arguments to see if they make sense regardless of any biases I might or might not have.

They can decide that a man who has spent his entire adult life as a priest of the Earth Mother may be a more reliable source of information than people who glorify the Christian “Father of Lies,” and reject poison pen letters/newsgroup posts as self-serving Setanic propaganda.

They can decide to believe the worst possible stories about me because I’m a pompous, cantankerous grouch and they would like to see me taken down a peg, regardless of whether the tales are true.

They can choose to ignore the whole controversy as requiring too much mental effort to bother with.

These last two choices may or may not lead to

5. cozying up to the Setanists, joining with them in legal and public relations work, helping to improve their public image and confirming mainstream fears that Satanists and Pagans really are the same after all — thus playing directly into the hands of the people who would like to imprison and/or kill us.

No matter what decisions the members of the community may make, I hope that they will respond in writing to the various Neopagan publications, newsgroups, and chatrooms in which the Setanists usually dominate this discussion. Defending or attacking Isaac Bonewits isn’t anywhere near as important as creating a consensus among Pagans as to what relations — if any — we should have with Satanists and other fundamentalist Christians. That requires strong Pagan positions to be articulated, Pagan arguments to be carefully scrutinized in the light of Pagan polytheology, and Pagan hearts to be looked deeply into.

We don’t let Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell dominate our internal community debates. We shouldn’t let other Christian outsiders do so either.

The [preceding] was first published in 1975 c.e. in response to a number of vitriolic attacks against me by various Satanists. In 1992, I [Isaac Bonewits] was once again the target of a Satanic poison pen campaign, caused by the publishing of my essay The Enemies of Our Enemies (which should be read in conjunction with this). In 1996, I decided to update this essay and to make it available once again to the Neopagan community. Now, it’s 2001, we’re on the Net, and I continue to get nasty mail from Satanists/Setanists, only now it’s obscene email!

By the way, for those who never caught the reference, this essay’s title was a take-off on a famous essay by Israel Regardie, called “My Rosicrucian Adventure.”

[drabbles-of-writing]

Be Alright

This is part of my Four Years AU

AO3

Masterpost

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Luz was never known to be overly cautious.

She was reckless, impulsive, and an overall disaster of a human.

Titan, Amity loved her.

It was almost routine at this point, how it would go. Luz would jump into oncoming danger, others would (sometimes) follow, and she’d limp out with a big grin and a cheer about how she’d shown them, whether or not she’d actually won. It was no surprise that Amity had taken up healing as a secret secondary track.

It was always a gamble how things would go. Sometimes Luz would only have a few scratches, other times she’d be clinging to consciousness by a thread, moments away from breaking Eda’s house rule of nobody jeopardizing the rebellion by going to a public hospital.

But they usually had it handled. Luz would bounce back with twice the enthusiasm, even if her scars told a different story.

Despite all of this, Amity knew she’d never get used to seeing a scar in the making. 

,

“Who brought fireworks?”

“Ed!”

“Worth it!”

Explosions rung out, painting the emptying Night Market in scattered debris and bright flashes. Amity ducked under a broken roof, cursing as another explosion sounded off further away, accompanied with whoops and cheers.

“It’s a miracle none of them are dead yet,” Came a hiss from beside her.

She whirled around, relaxing when she saw it was just Willow appearing by her hiding place, vines wrapped all along her arms. Out of everyone, Amity was sure she would come out the most unscathed.

“I’m convinced Eda’s already died a few times,” Amity said, tilting her head to the sounds of explosions. “But she keeps coming back. My bet’s that she’s on life seven now.”

“That would explain a lot,” Willow agreed, peering out of their hiding place. “Dawns breaking, we should get out of here.” She added, raising her head.

“Already?” Amity lifted her head as well, seeing that, indeed, there was light seeping around the Market.

“Think you can wrangle Luz without setting more things on fire?” Willow asked, glancing at her with a smirk.

“If anyone is going to set things on fire, it’s Luz.” Amity said matter-of-factly, wincing as she heard shouts and a crash from elsewhere in the Market. “I can promise my best,” She said simply.

“That’s the best I could ask for,” Willow chuckled, stepping out of their hiding place. “Good luck.”

“I’ll need it,” Amity muttered, peering around the debris as she heard another explosion sound off. “Titan knows who she's going to piss off this time.”

,

Amity felt like she shouldn’t have been surprised.

And yet, she still felt a wave of exhaustion just finding situations like these.

Luz stood atop a pile of debris, swinging her staff like a club and knocking it against the heads of those in the Night Market who had stayed to attempt to fight her and the rest of the Owl House residents. Aside from a few scrapes and cuts to her hands and cloak, she wasn’t any worse for wear. Even her owl mask was relatively intact.

Eda was somewhere at the bottom of the pile with King, also giving their attackers a hard time. Amity was almost about to be surprised at how tame Luz was being...before she combined a firework and ice glyph and shot it towards an attacker, flinging them back with an explosion and into a busted stand with a gleeful cheer.

Amity sighed and calmly summoned a regular sized abomination, sending it off behind her towards other assailants that had assumed she couldn’t hear them approaching. In boots covered in metal. Honestly, she wondered how nobody had caught them yet.

Luz swung her staff at a different demon, grinning as she turned and scanned the area. Near instantly, her eyes landed on Amity, who was a good few meters away from her trash pile.

“Hey, Ams!” Luz shouted across the battleground, frantically waving her hand, her smile somehow growing.

Amity couldn’t help but return a smile of her own, her ears flicking back as her features softened. 

There was a bark behind her and she snapped out of it, glancing back as Barcus ran by, giving her a tired look.

“Oh don’t you start,” Amity warned, flashing a fang.

Barcus rolled his eyes and rushed off around a broken stand vanishing from sight. Though the sounds of yelling from those of the Night Market confirmed he was still as much in the fight as everyone else.

“Hey,”

Amity yelped at the sudden noise by her ear and spun around, almost falling over before an arm holding a staff hooked around her back and stopped her falling.

“Oops,” Luz smiled sheepishly, her head hovering over Amity’s as her shoulders hunched. While the top half of her face was hidden by her mask, the eyes were very expressive. “Sorry, wrong time for surprises?”

“That’s not going to stop you,” Amity grumbled, getting to her feet as Luz pulled her staff back and thumped the blunt end against the ground. “I was just with Willow, we need to--”

Luz’s head tilted away from Amity’s face for barely a moment before she withdrew a fire glyph from her sleeve and activated it. She chucked it right by Amity’s head, almost grazing her ear.

Amity turned barely half a second later, watching as the fire glyph made contact with a demon trying to sneak up on them. This one hadn’t worn metal boots and Amity hadn’t heard them approaching. Smart. She’d see if she could get the Emperor's Coven to help her arrest that one.

“Sorry about that, you were saying?” Luz said, looking right back down at Amity. She assumed so, at least. The eyes of her mask were more like pale circles than actual eyeholes. 

“The Coven, Luz.” Amity said, also unphased. “It’s dawn, the Coven will be here soon. You know how they like to come early to catch people trying to flee the Night Market.”

“Aren’t you also in the Emperor’s Coven?” Luz reminded, unconcerned. “Can’t you make them leave or something?”

“I’m the leader of my small, and remarkably passive,” Amity enunciated, ignoring explosions sounding off. “Group of the Emperor’s Coven. They don’t come here. Other guards do. I have absolutely no power here.”

“I wouldn’t call Archie breaking Jerbo’s nose passive,”

“Oh you have not seen the kind of guards they have by the Toes.”

“Shame,” Luz leaned against her staff. “Perhaps you could show me sometime?” She asked, the eyes of her mask moving in a sort of eyebrow wiggle.

“Luz,” Amity sighed, clasping the palms of her hands together and pressing it against her nose as she mentally reeled herself in to keep her composure. “Asking me on a date in the middle of a battle is bordering on impressively bold and tacky, which is a line I didn’t know even existed.”

“What can I say? I like making new lines.” Luz beamed widely. “Does this mean I can keep kicking in teeth?” She asked hopefully.

“Absolutely not,” Amity crossed her arms. “I just said the Coven is going to arrive. Do you want to explain to the rebellion you need another prison breakout because nearly everyone here got captured for not leaving?”

“Tell you what,” Luz said, passing her staff to her other hand. “You can grab everyone who’d rather not be here when the Coven arrive while Eda and I finish up here.” She suggested casually.

“Luz you're going to get captu--”

“Oi, there she is!”

Luz and Amity calmly turned their heads, spotting that over the crest of the fallen stands, with the sunrise behind them, was a small band of demons and witches. A little less than a dozen or so. They all looked a little beat up, but many still sported a decent amount of weapons and, likely, magic.

“Oh you’ve got to be kidding me,” Amity groaned, leaning her head back.

“Well, since we’re already here…” Luz said, nudging her shoulder. “I mean, it's pretty bad form to back down from a challenge…”

Amity, ignoring the gang approaching them (who clearly thought they had the high-ground at were taking their sweet time, the idiots), gave Luz a half-hearted glare. Luz was still giving her a hopeful look, giddy with excitement. And Amity had to admit, it had been a while since they’d fought an enemy on the same side. Publicly, at least.

“Fine,” Amity relented, sagging as Luz perked up. “But as soon as they’re gone we are leaving.”

“As you wish, Miss Blight.” Luz said with a low, dramatic bow, mocking the title Amity’s Coven would give her.

“Only you could get away with that,” Amity muttered, finally turning her gaze back to the group of demons and witches, who had spent the last few minutes pulling up weapons from the debris and scattering to ‘hide,’ if you could call it that.

Snowy finally decided to show up, flying around Luz before landing on the end of her staff. Luz stood from her bow and gripped her staff with two hands. Amity summoned her own, already determining where to place three different abominations in the area.

“Shall we?” Luz said, giving Amity a coy look and gesturing broadly to the approaching witches.

“Try not to get your head blown off,” Amity said casually, offering the tiniest of smiles. Luz’s staff began to glow as she took a step back and braced herself, a springboard moments away from uncoiling.

“No promises!”

,

It was hardly a fight.

But Luz didn’t seem to mind. She never did. She was just thrilled to be part of one.

Amity would’ve been bored were Luz not there. One could count on her to make things interesting. Granted you had no say on if it was for better or for worse.

Amity swung her staff, her abomination following and lumbering right into a cluster of demons. She had multiple up and running around, and she’d admit, it was a little tiring. But she’d done worse before, and their assailants were almost gone.

Dawn was well upon them now, the light casting long shadows. Amity had lost track of who was or wasn’t around them anymore. She figured Willow had already left, and likely dragged a few others with her. She’d get yelled at later, she knew it.

There was a holler to her left and she turned towards it, flicking her wrist to move an abomination out of the way.

A spire of ice shot up from the ground, sending three witches flying off to who-knows-where. Luz’s head popped around from behind it, laughing as Snowy flew at another witch trying to run at her. In the same movement, Luz drew a plant and lightning glyph. She threw the plant glyph at one of the larger demons around the ice spire, wrapping his arm in vines. She ran by and slapped the lightning glyph on the vines, causing them to erupt and explode as the demon yelled and bolted.

Amity shook her head, glancing at her own palisman, Fang, sitting on her staff and giving her a bored expression that could rival Willow’s.

“Hey, at least she's effective.” Amity shrugged. Fang only huffed and clung tighter to the top of her staff, melding into it until he looked like nothing more than a fancy wooden carving.

There was a crack and a shout, and Amity looked back just in time to see a demon stumble away from getting Luz’s staff whacked right into their face. Amity quickly moved an abomination towards them to get them stuck, should they try to retaliate. She did a double check on the rest of her abominations, which were thankfully beginning to drive away the remainders of their attackers and beginning to melt into the ground when they were done doing so.

“And you better stay out!” Luz shouted after a demon behind her, waving her fist in the air. 

Amity was about to call out to her, but sounds of rapid footsteps grabbed her attention. She whirled around, summoning a small abomination as a shield before a witch crashed right into it. It took all of two seconds for Amity to recognize their white cloak and gray mask before she recoiled and cursed under her breath.

“Titan I hope you weren’t paying attention,” She mumbled before drawing a circle in the air. One of her other abominations turned into goo and quickly fused with the abomination in front of her, caging in the guard as they yelped and thrashed about.

Amity flicked her wrist and her abomination lumbered off, taking the guard with them.

They had run out of time.

“Luz, we gotta go!” Amity yelled, her shoulders tense as she searched for her human.

Luz had ended up a good few meters away on a slope, hollering after a few running demons. She glanced back at Amity’s shout, and seeing the worry on her face, wasn’t about to argue with her.

“Well, it was fun while it lasted.” Luz shrugged regretfully. “I suppose this is where I bid you adieu” She said, giving Amity a cheeky bow. In the same movement of her bow, she had hooked her hand into her mask and easily took it off and held it out in a hand. It was mainly for show, anyway.

Amity huffed and raised a brow, despite her amused smile. Luz lifted her head slightly and gave a teasing wink before standing back to her feet.

The witch, who hadn’t paid attention to anything else going on, saw a sudden movement from behind Luz. She could only process the mild annoyance at having to patch up another bruise on Luz before she spoke.

“Behind y--”

In barely a second, the demon behind Luz wrapped an arm in front of her and tugged her back, startling the human. In the same moment, before any of them could react, they brought up their other talon. There was the flash of a blade between their fingers before said blade was jabbed straight into Luz’s throat.

Amity froze. Luz froze. Everything seemed to go still. The blade was dug high up on Luz’s neck, blood already coating the object and beginning to leak around the demon's claws. Blood trickled down Luz’s neck and began to stain the collar of her shirt.

And, just as fast as it froze, time snapped back at a jolting speed.

There was a shriek overhead and a dash of white. Snowy reappeared and slammed her body into the demon's face, flashing her talons and screeching. The demon threw the blade to the side, yelping and stumbling back to try and throw off the palisman.

Blood gushed from Luz’s neck, and upon finally being released, the human gasped as her hand flew up to her wound. She stumbled, having nothing holding her up. Her knees shook and buckled, sending her tumbling to the ground, still grasping at her neck.

Amity could only stare, her eyes wide and pupils so narrowed they practically vanished. She visibly flinched and broke out of her state when Luz’s body hit the ground.

“Luz!” She screamed. A scratchy, shrill sound that even Amity didn’t know she was capable of.

She was running before the name was out of her mouth. She suddenly knew what tunnel vision was like. Her focus was solely on Luz, collapsed on the ground. Her feet seemed to hook and stumble against every little pebble as she rushed up the slope, her heart in her ears. Everything else was fuzzy and irrelevant, and they faded into background noise.

Amity was at Luz’s side far too soon and still too late for her liking. She stared down at her, her throat going dry.

Luz was gasping and pressing both hands to her throat, whether it was due to the pain or some part of her conscious enough to try and stop the blood flow, she couldn't tell. Blood pooled out, creating almost a sort of halo around her head. 

But her eyes, oh Titan her eyes.

They were blown wide, and were so white it looked almost unnatural. Her pupils had shrunk to sizes that she’d learned from Luz should not be physically possible for humans. A constant side-effect of shots she had gotten years ago.

Her eyes stared off into nothing, glazed but still so full of pure, unbridled terror. Luz was not someone who was scared easily, and seeing such an unmasked horror from her was nothing short of unsettling. Her eyes darted about as she wheezed for air, and she looked as though she couldn’t tell where she was.

Then those eyes landed on Amity.

Her face barely changed, although her eyes did. Her pupils dilated, ever so slightly. She locked those eyes with Amity as she gurgled through the blood bubbling in her throat. Amity could see her own petrified, still expression reflected back at her in those eyes. She was like a deer in the headlights, and she could feel her hands going numb.

One of Luz’s hands left her wound and she reached out, coated and dripping with blood as her fingers grazed Amity’s pant leg, weakly trying to grab at her.

Finally, though now that she looks back, the entire experience probably only lasted a few seconds, Amity snapped out of her trance.

“Luz,” Amity’s voice cracked, startlingly quiet as she dropped to her knees.

She panicked, and she knew she was. She looked over Luz rapidly as she wracked her brain for what to do. She knew healing magic, for Titan’s sake!

Instead, all she could think of to do was to press down on Luz’s throat, taking over as her girlfriends own hands started to shake and fall. Her eyelids drooped slightly and Amity felt a violent spike of fear at the sight.

“Viney,” Amity croaked, shaking her head as she wrapped an arm around Luz and pulled her closer, placing her head on her lap in some feeble attempt to elevate the wound, even though that wouldn’t do anything for a neck wound because of course it wouldn’t.

“Viney, Viney!” Amity cried, raising her head and frantically looking around the debris and dying--wrong word--chaos around her. “Where’s Viney?” She yelled pitifully, tightening her hold on Luz.

Yes, Viney could help. She was a far better healer than Amity. She’d healed bad injuries all the time. She just needed Viney and everything would be fine.

“Where are you?” Amity wailed, her panic rising to near hysteria as she searched the area with blurry, tear-filled eyes. She wasn’t sure who specifically she was calling for now. “Please, please she…”

Amity risked a glance down at Luz. She was now breathing through laboured breaths, raspy and shaking like a building that was about to collapse. Her eyelids were droopy, but she was stubbornly keeping them open as she lightly tried to hold her hands against her neck.

“There you guys are! What--”

Amity jerked her head up, pulling Luz closer to her chest as her ears dipped low.

Eda.

It was Eda. She was going to be okay. They were going to be okay.

Eda faltered, her confused, but still cocky, grin falling as she looked over Amity. Sitting on her knees, covered in blood that wasn’t her own, holding Luz like she was going to slip away from her at any moment.

“Kid!” Eda exclaimed, rushing forward and skidding to her knees so fast she likely cut them up as she grabbed Luz.

Amity was too numb to stop her, letting Eda take her as she stared off. Eda turned Luz over, sharply inhaling at the sight and her pupils narrowing and ears flicking back. Amity felt selfish for being glad that Eda had to see this, too. Because now Eda could take Luz, and she’d be fine, and tomorrow this day would be a funny story they’d tell the rebellion on a slow day.

Snowy had shown up again, though Amity couldn’t remember when. She had landed beside Eda, chirping and flapping her wings frantically as Eda scooped up Luz in her arms. She stood, momentarily forgetting about Amity as she yelled words the younger witch could no longer make out.

Her vision became splotchy and her ears felt fuzzy. Everything felt like a blur, and she was barely aware of being lifted off the ground. But she could still acutely hear the frantic beating of her heart and feel the stickiness of the blood drying on her clothes and hands.

,

When Amity finally came to, she was in the Owl House.

It wasn’t a consciousness she eased into, but rather was jerked out of by nothing in particular. She simply suddenly snapped up, her eyes shiny with emotion again as she looked around.

She was sitting on the couch, and Lilith was beside her, obviously lost in thought. Willow, Barcus and Gus were the only ones in the room, all of them sitting on the floor around the table in front of the couch.

She felt something warm in her hands and looked down, realizing she was holding a cup of tea. Lilith must’ve made it, considering how obsessed she was. Likely one of the kinds that helped keep her calm, she used those a lot.

She stared at her hands in fascination, seeing that they were no longer covered in blood. And for a moment, she thought she’d imagined it all.

But if she looked closely, she could still see the small bits and splatters of dried red liquid on the back of her hands. And when she looked down at herself, she saw that while her cloak and extra layers had been removed, her pant legs were still covered in dried blood and her shirt had specks of it that had soaked through.

Amity felt like she was going to be sick.

“Are you back?”

She blinked, forcing her eyes away from herself as she looked to the coffee table in front of her. Gus was sitting next to it, leaning his arms on it. He was looking at her now, face full of concern.

“Come--” Amity stopped and cleared her throat, hating how strained it sounded. “Come again?”

“You, um,” Gus gestured to his face with his hand. “Had a bit of a...gone look, for a while. You just, I dunno, you were…” He shook his head and swallowed. “H-how are you doing?”

He was nervous, clearly so. And seeing Gus as such did little to ease her own nerves. At least it was only nervousness, Amity wasn’t sure how she’d react if he was full-blown freaking out.

“I…” Amity blinked a few times, trying to get her mind in order. She was aware of everyone else in the room looking up towards her. “I’m--I’m fine.” She said, looking down at her hands again before sharply turning away. Right, the blood.

“Where, where’s Luz?” She asked, looking around the room. She tried to push down the growing feeling of unease, she didn’t trust herself not to hurl if she thought about it too much.

“She’s upstairs,” Lilith said, frowning slightly. “You saw Eda carry her up there with Viney.”

“I-I did?” Amity said, staring at her mentor.

“Yeah, you wanted to go with them.” Gus nodded, looking increasingly worried. “You don’t remember? You were freaking out and Willow had to calm you down.”

Amity turned to Willow at that, like just looking at her would suddenly explain everything. Willow was sitting at the other end of the coffee table, looking tired. That was nothing new, but her looking ready to fall asleep where she sat wasn’t. She met Amity’s gaze with exhaustion, cringing slightly and glancing away.

“Oh,” Amity said, gripping her cup of tea a little tighter. “I...I don’t remember that.” She said, shrinking in on herself. “Is Luz okay?” She asked, her voice wavering slightly.

Nobody met her gaze. Aside from Barcus, who lay underneath the table, for some reason. He met her gaze for a moment before his ears flicked back and he growled something under his breath.

“I’m going to check on her,” Amity said, pushing back the way it felt like her heart dropped as she sharply put her cup down on the table and stood up.

Her head felt dizzy as she did so, and it didn’t help that everyone started talking over each other as soon as Amity spoke. She stumbled for a moment before Lilith grabbed her shoulder and awkwardly pushed her back onto the couch.

“Absolutely not,” She said sternly. “We barely got you cleaned up, and still need to get you out of that.” She said, gesturing to the stained clothes Amity still bore. “Eda only took her up there a few minutes ago, we were simply catching our breath before you came to, it's why not everyone is here yet.”

“I know healing magic!” Amity protested, shrugging off Lilith’s hand. “I can help Viney.” She said, getting up again.

“You are in no condition to help Luz right now,” Lilith insisted, getting up just as quickly and lightly touching Amity’s arm as she stood in front of her. “Not after all that.” She said, her voice softening.

“What would you know?” Amity growled, more harshly than she meant. “You weren’t there. Nobody here was!” She hissed, resisting the urge to throw her hands in the air.

“No, we weren’t.” Lilith agreed, and the fact Lilith had done so with no argument had Amity shutting her mouth instantly. “But Eda told us where she found you, and judging from how you reacted and looked when they brought you back, I highly doubt seeing Luz in her current state is going to help anyone.”

Amity wanted to protest, she really did. She wanted to shove Lilith aside and storm up to wherever Luz was and do all she can to make her look up at her with eyes that didn’t get burned into her mind like a nightmare and a smile that didn’t have blood gushing out of it. But she knew she’d never make it far. Lilith was stubborn, and Willow would surely help keep Amity downstairs. There was no fighting Willow.

And, if she were honest with herself, she doubted she’d be able to do anything, anyway. Eda was probably already panicking, and the mere thought of seeing Luz laying on a cot with bandages around her neck and curled into a ball made her knees feel close to giving out.

“Luz will be okay,” Lilith continued, moving her hand up from Amity’s arm to the shoulder. “Viney said the blade entered too high,” She explained. “It didn’t hit any main arteries. She’s made it through a lot, this’ll be barely any different.” She assured, giving a tense smile.

If Amity had the energy, she’d argue that the fact everyone was anxiously waiting around didn’t exactly give any good signs. But right now, she wanted to do anything but dwell on today.

“Come on,” Willow said, pushing herself to her feet. “I have spare clothes here, we should get you out of that mess,” She said, offering a hand for Amity to take.

Amity stared down at it for a moment before her shoulders slumped and she took it, letting Willow guide her out of the living room. Gus and Barcus gave her pitying looks as they left through the door by the stairs.

“I’m sorry,” Amity mumbled, bringing her free hand close to her chest, where it was currently fisted. “I didn’t get her out of there in time, I humored her and now--”

“Hey,” Willow said sharply, turning around and narrowing her eyes. “I know how Luz is, this isn’t your fault.” She said, lowering her head so she could keep eye contact with Amity. “Something like this was bound to happen, anyway.” She mumbled bitterly.

“But I…” Amity trailed off, her throat feeling dry as she broke away from Willow’s gaze and glue her gaze to the ground, her hands trembling.

“It’s alright,” Willow said, gently squeezing her hand. “Luz will be fine, and so will you. Knowing her, she’d probably fight the Bat Queen herself if you so much as said you vaguely missed her.” She added, trying to joke.

“I know,” Amity said, looking up as her ears flicked down. “And that's what scares me.”

,

Amity was on her fifth cup of tea when the door to the Owl House had opened.

Barely an hour had passed, with no word from anyone upstairs. Barcus insisted that if Eda wasn’t worrying about having to risk a hospital visit, Luz was bound to be fine.

Nobody had left the house since Luz had been whisked away, leaving none of them able to tell the others they hadn’t picked up on the way back about the situation.

So the laughing and jeering that greeted them when the door opened was a bit jarring.

“Ey, there they are!” Edric grinned, walking in as he shoulder-bumped Jerbo. “I can’t believe you guys left us!”

“Ed almost got caught by the Coven,” King said, sitting up on Jerbo’s shoulders. “I rescued him.” He added proudly, a paw on his chest.

“You did not,” Jerbo shook his head with a smile. “What was the rush? We thought you’d all been carted off to prison again.” He asked, looking around the room.

Exhausted, stricken faces greeted them. You could see the joy die from their eyes, replaced with bone-chilling worry.

“What happened?” Emira demanded, stepping in and closing the door.

“Luz got hurt,” Lilith said calmly. “Badly.” She glanced to Amity beside her, who was staring at her tea. “Amity witnessed it.” She added, quieter and full of pity.

The twins looked to each other with similar faces of fear before they rushed in, moving to crouch beside their sister. Lilith silently moved to the furthest side of the couch so Emira could sit next to Amity. Jerbo and King glanced to each other before hurrying to the others on the floor, talking in hushed tones.

“She’ll be okay,” Amity said, her eyes flickering between her siblings. “I’ve learned from you two that things often look a lot worse than they actually are.” She added with an obviously forced lighter tone, giving a small smile.

“Oh, Amity…” Edric trailed off, his ears pressing back. “What...is…”

“Wasn’t fun,” Amity said, continuing her fake tone. “I can tell you that. I think I washed my hands raw.” She said, looking down at where said rubbed-red hands were shaking as they held her cup. “She’s--” She broke off, swallowing thickly and refusing to let her voice break. “She’s with Viney and Eda.” 

“If you start using humor to cope I’m going to punch you.” Emira warned, a growl forming before dying out. 

“Hypocrite,” Amity rolled her eyes, taking a sip of her tea.

“Well hey, if Viney’s with Luz, then she’s going to be up and running in barely a day.” Edric said, quickly changing the topic away from them. “She's dealt with all kinds of ridiculous injuries, especially from Em.”

“Oh your one to talk,” Emira snapped. “If Jerbo was a healer--”

“Behave,” Lilith called sharply, giving the twins a warning glare from the other side of the couch.

“Yes, mom.” Edric mumbled under his breath so she couldn’t hear.

“Hey, Luz is tough.” Emira said, wrapping an arm around Amity’s shoulders and pulling her against her side. “A little scrap will barely graze her. It’ll be a joke within hours, just you wait.”

Amity raised a hand to her neck, lightly rubbing it as she glanced to her sister, grimacing before looking away.

“It was here,” She said quietly, almost inaudible. “They got her here.”

The twins tensed. Edric squeezed Amity’s arm and she slumped, letting Emira keep her upright.

Neither of them spoke after that.

,

It was late afternoon when they heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Everyone's heads were up in a flash, waiting in bated breath.

It was Eda.

She looked drained, a hand running down her face. She paused at the doorway, looking out into the living room with anxious faces staring back at her.

“She’s okay,” Eda said, and it was like the weight of the sky had been lifted off their shoulders.

Amity almost fell off the couch by how fast and heavily she sagged in relief. Emira’s arm around her was the only thing keeping her stable.

“She’ll need rest for a few days, but Luz will be back to normal in no time.” Eda said, walking into the room. “Viney’s doing a final once over,” She added, catching Emira’s eye.

“Can we see her?” Gus asked, standing up.

“Kids exhausted, you can’t all see her at once.” Eda deadpanned. “Viney already almost bit my head off for staying that long,” She mumbled under her breath. “One at a time, and honestly, Viney might yell at you to leave her alone within the hour.”

Amity was on her feet in seconds, her cup forgotten on the table. She took a step towards the stairs before pausing and turning back to Gus.

Sure, Amity had seen what happened to Luz but...he was Luz’s friend, too. He and Willow were still her closest. And...well, she couldn’t help but feel guilty as she met his eyes.

Gus seemed to understand and smiled, sitting back down on the floor beside Willow.

“Go ahead,” He said, and Amity once again wondered how his emotions could almost flip on a dimel. “But I call seeing Luz next.” He said, looking back to the others with a joking glare that couldn’t frighten a squirrel.

“Yeah, good luck fighting for that.” Willow taunted, punching his arm as he yelped and gave a sheepish smile.

“Don’t break anything,” Amity warned, but smiled back as she nodded to her siblings and made her way to the stairs.

As she passed Eda, the witch reached out for her. Amity paused, watching her. Eda seemed to hesitate for a moment before patting her shoulder and moving away, towards where the rest of their family began to discuss who-knows-what, all the tension having left them.

Feeling a bit lighter, Amity made her way up the stairs.

,

She hung outside of Luz’s room for a moment, scuffing at the floor with her feet. She could hear shuffling and muffled voices through the door, and wondered the consequences of busting in when Viney was still packing up.

The door opened and Amity jumped. Viney stepped out, looking surprised for a moment before relaxing with a smile.

“You know, she was just asking to see you and the others.” She chuckled, re-situating her medical bag under her arm. “Try not to--never mind.”

Viney only shook her head as Amity pushe right by her, rushing into Luz’s room. Viney couldn’t blame her, and only shrugged and shut the door behind her.

Amity paused for a moment to take in the scene, suddenly remembering she probably should’ve mentally prepared herself better.

Luz was laying on her mattress Eda had upgraded her too, under a single sheet. She was laying on her back with one hand hanging off and brushing the floor. The other was situated on her stomach. She was still wearing her outfit from earlier, but her purple cloak had been discarded on the other side of the room, and Luz had been changed out of her surely bloodsoaked shirt. She wore one of her gray tank tops instead, and her eyes were partially closed.

For a brief, horrifying second, Amity was reminded of a corpse in an open casket.

That was, until Luz saw who had entered the room.

“Ami--” Luz’s gleeful cry was cut off by her hacking loudly, coughing as she sat up and pressed a hand to her throat.

“Are you okay?” Amity worried, rushing over and standing over Luz, reaching out a hand.

“Fine,” Luz wheezed, lifting her free hand to reassure Amity. “Voice is just gonna be off for a little while.” She said, her voice scratchy as she rubbed at her neck once before dropping her hand.

And once it moved away, Amity finally got to see the bandages wrapped tightly around her. True to Lilith’s word, they were much higher up than a typical throat-slit. On Luz, it was just below her chin, right where her neck met her head. Though it still didn’t stop Amity from wincing at the sight of the gauzes.

Luz noticed and deflated slightly. She attempted to shake it off and grabbed Amity’s hand, pulling it closer and encasing both of her hands over it. Which was an easy feat, considering they were noticeably bigger.

“I’m glad you're okay,” She said in her strained voice, looking up at Amity with a smile that the witch lingered on a moment too long to be natural.

“I’m not the one you should be worrying about,” Amity said, a little sternly as she pressed her ears back. “If anything, I should be saying that I’m glad you're okay.”

“Aw, you care.” Luz teased, sticking out her tongue. Amity gave her a half-hearted glare and she faltered, her smile falling along with her eyes.

“I just,” Luz swallowed, biting the inside of her cheek as she noticed Amity’s unease. “I’m--I remember what you looked like when I,” Luz hesitated, clearing her hoarse voice as a hole opened in Amity’s gut. “I...I was worried about you.” She mumbled, lowering her head.

Amity stared at Luz’s hunched form for a few moments. Then, tentatively, like she was expecting Luz to bolt, she lifted her other hand and stepped right to the edge of the bed. Luz spared a glimpse up as Amity wrapped her hand around Luz’s back and pulled her closer.

Luz drooped into her hold, thumping her head against Amity’s chest and squeezing her hand tighter. Amity lightly ran her hand through the hair at the base of Luz’s head, which she also rested her chin on and rocked subtly to the side, shutting her eyes.

They stayed like that for a while, letting the memories of the day roll over them before forcing it back, all in silence. Amity was sure Luz could tell she was fighting back crying again, and she knew Luz wasn’t as alright as she acted. Not from how her hands left her own and clutched tightly at the girls sides, pulling at her baggy shirt and pressing her face close.

“I was scared for you,” Luz finally broke the silence, her raspy, painful-sounding voice almost inaudible. “You looked like you’d seen the end of the world.”

“Well, I was certainly scared for you.” Amity said matter-of-factly, trying to cover up her disturbance at Luz having remembered more than she thought. “Don’t worry about it, I’m alright now.”

“That’s the worst lie I’ve ever heard in my life.”

“Oh, and you're a master at figuring out liars now?” Amity snarked, looking down at Luz and meeting Luz’s eyes, which were wonderfully normal and not full of panic.

“I’m good with you,” Luz said cheerfully in her stupid scratchy voice that Amity hated she kind of liked. “Your right ear moves when you lie, when you forget about it.”

Damnit. Edric and Emira had always remembered that tick of hers and Amity had learned to stop herself from flicking said ear whenever she was lying. But every now and again, she forgot.

“That proves nothing,” Amity said stiffly, turning her head away. “I move my ear when I’m annoyed all the time.” 

“That's your left ear,” Luz said with gleeful factuality. “I noticed.” She said proudly, giving Amity an expression like she’d solved a puzzle and was looking for praise.

“That you did,” Amity mumbled, ruffling Luz’s hair so it’d fall into her eyes. She needed to cut that sometime. “You're very annoying like that.”

“Too bad I’m your annoyance,” Luz teased, giving Amity a smug wink.

“Woe is me,” Amity said in a bleak voice, laying her head on Luz’s to hide the blush creeping up her face. “I’m going to be suffering for the rest of my days.”

“C’mon, I do that all on my own--” Luz broke off in a fit of coughs, doubling over and releasing Amity.

The witch stepped back, eyes flashing with fear as got to her knees beside the bed and laid her hand on Luz’s leg. She shoved down the helpless feeling she thought would’ve been gone by now as Luz coughed and rubbed at her bandaged neck.

“Sorry,” Luz wheezed, her fit finally calming down.

“It’s alright,” Amity said, her voice quiet as well. “You should rest your voice.”

“No, I-” Luz flinched, rubbing at her neck more before shaking her head. “I’m sorry for scaring you,” She rasped. “You said we had to leave, and I didn’t, and--”

“Hey, hey,” Amity chided softly, lifting to hold Luz’s free hand. “It was an accident, I don’t blame you. Nobody does.” 

“I know, but…” Luz sighed, her shoulders slumping. She leaned forward, lightly knocking her forehead against Amity’s as she closed her eyes for a second before opening them. She kept her eyes locked on where Amity was still holding her hand.

“I’m a mess,” Luz mumbled, stroking her thumb over the back of Amity’s hand. “And I should’ve...I dunno...I just…” She groaned and finally met Amity’s gaze. “I’m sorry. For a lot of things. And I wish that it,” She gestured around them with her other hand. “Didn’t end up like this. You know? This is a rebellion, I thought it’d be fun. They always make rebellions sound so cool and how you’d always escape them okay and be heroes.”

“So, Azura, then?” Amity lifted a brow.

“Don’t patronize me,” Luz huffed good-naturedly. “Look, I’m just...sorry. That I got hurt, that someone else could’ve gotten hurt, that you're stuck in this mess, that…” Luz muttered and blinked her eyes rapidly, like Amity somehow couldn’t see they were beginning to water. “God, I think I’m still high off those pain medications.” She groaned, covering her face with her hand.

Amity blinked before giving a small smile. She moved her head back slightly and raised her other hand, reaching out for Luz and cupping her cheek. Luz immediately leaned into it and slipped her hand off her face to hold Amity’s in its place.

“I’ve been stuck before,” She said, pointedly keeping her gaze away from Luz’s bandages. “And if this is your idea of stuck, then you better believe I’m not leaving.”

Luz gave a small half-smile, leaning further into her hand. Amity brushed her thump behind Luz’s eye, looking over her with mixed feelings. Luz wasn’t one to admit her fears so openly, and even Amity could tell how she tried to cover up her awkwardness at being open. Perhaps taking a page out of Luz’s book wasn’t a good idea, but she couldn't be bothered to worry about herself right then.

Amity leaned forward, catching Luz’s minor surprise for only a second before she placed a kiss on the side of Luz’s mouth, where a small scar went right over it. She remembered when Luz had gotten that scar, and she recalled how at the time it seemed like nothing more than an inconvenient cut. 

Amity pulled back only a moment later, almost snickering at the sight of Luz. She was flushed and looked like a deer in the--nope. Wrong analogy.

Amity hoped her quick cover-up smile was enough to make up for her sudden shift. 

Luz eventually reeled herself in and her expression shifted to that of a pout, letting her hand fall from Amity’s as she thumped her head on her girlfriends shoulder.

“Cheater,” She whined, her voice muffled.

Amity giggled, relaxing as she wrapped an arm around Luz and held her close. It was an awkward position, but she couldn’t find it in her to care.

She remained there for a moment, laying her cheek against Luz’s shoulder. She glanced to the side, looking over the bandages around her throat. And for a moment she saw just how deep that blade dug into the human’s skin.

“It’s going to scar over,” She found herself saying, feeling Luz stiffen in her arms. “Isn’t it?”

Luz was silent for a few moments, and in those moments Amity feared she shouldn’t have spoken. Luz had never been one to dislike her scars until...well, she’d gotten a rather nasty one from Eda she’d rather forget. But then Luz exhaled, sounding far more tired than she had been before.

“Yeah,” She croaked. “Viney said it would.”

“I’m sorry,” Amity murmured.

“It’s okay,” Luz said, resting her chin on Amity’s shoulder so she could be heard better. “This isn’t my first and it won’t be my last.”

Amity felt a chill at that line. She knew it wasn’t meant to be foreboding, only a small joke so she wouldn’t worry. Yet, it made her uneasy at how Luz brushed it off. And it was a small reminder that, even if Luz felt regret, she was still a naturally reckless person. And one day she’d be right back in her bed, covered in bandages and possibly in a worse condition than a hoarse voice.

“Luz,” Amity said, tightening her arms around the human. “I…”

Titan, what even was there to say? Don’t say that? You deserve better? I love you?

She wouldn’t get anywhere with any of those. And especially not the latter. There was too much going on already, and this was neither the time nor the place.

Amity squeezed her eyes shut and sighed before leaving her eyes half-lidded.

“Be careful,” She said instead. “If not for yourself, then for the others. You have no idea how scared we were.” She flicked her ears further down. “Don’t do anything overly stupid, okay?” She said, her voice hitching as she tried to cover it with a more teasing tone.

She could feel Luz swallow against her shoulder, shifting in her hold slightly.

“I’ll try,” She murmured.

And Amity supposed that was the best she could ask for.

“Also,” Luz started nervously. “Uh, not to rapidly change the subject,” Luz said, lifting her head slightly, her voice a bit more strained than before. “But your claws are kind of digging into my back…”

“Oh, right!” Amity squeaked and jerked back, sharply tugging her hands off of Luz and wincing when she felt her claws slide out of Luz’s shirt and skin. “Sorry, sorry,”

“I’ve had worse.” Luz chuckled, pulling away and giving Amity a mildly pained smile. “And as much as I love having you here,” Her eyes trailed somewhere behind Amity. “I think Gus is about to break something if this doesn’t hurry up.”

Amity turned around, confused. Sure enough, the door to the room was just barely cracked, and Gus could be seen pacing outside it. And Amity was willing to bet Willow was there, too.

“Seriously, guys?” Amity rolled her eyes, exasperated.

“We weren’t listening, I swear!” Gus insisted, pulling the door open further and poking his head in. “We weren’t even here that long!”

“Next time, you can just knock.” Amity grumbled, flicking her ear at Luz’s snickers behind her. 

“Eh, figured you’d tear our heads off if we did,” Willow said, pulling the door open further. “So, can we come in then?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Amity sighed, getting to her feet and brushing herself off. “Eda’s going to kill you if she finds out both of you were sneaking in at the same time.”

“Eh, I’ll probably be fine.” Luz shrugged, her voice scratching more as she clearly tried to hold back another cough.

“Get it out of your system,” Amity told her simply, deciding to push back her earlier turmoil as she turned back to the door. “You want me to cover for you two?”

“You and I both know it's going to take ages for you to finally go downstairs instead of hovering by the door.” Willow deadpanned. 

“This is bullying,” Amity complained as Gus and Willow walked in, with Gus instantly springing to Luz’s bedside and going off about some topic Amity was tuning out.

“Yeah, hurts, doesn’t it?” Willow said with a smirk, raising a brow as she passed Amity.

“...Touché,” Amity mumbled with an acknowledging nod.

Willow only shook her head and came up by the head of Luz’s bed, calmly watching as Gus talked a mile a minute, so much livelier than how he was mere hours ago. Amity stood back and watched, fiddling her hands together as Luz coughed and assured her friends she was fine and letting Gus continue his rambling.

Amity unconsciously rubbed her hand at her own throat before quickly dropping it again. She fiddled her hands together, feeling that her claws were still unsheathed. She pressed along her fingers, trying to coax her claws to sheath. It only somewhat worked, and she relented that her claws weren’t going to go away for a while.

Willow glanced over at her with a questioning look. Amity cringed at seeing her concern and gave a forced smile and nodded her head. She knew it didn’t convince Willow, but she didn’t push and turned back to Gus and Luz without further comment.

She’d always be worried about Luz, she decided as she watched said human listen to Gus and pointedly ignore the warning glances Willow gave her as she messed with her bandages. Luz would always be a handful, no matter how much she changed, she’d still be the human who had to learn as much magic as she could and the one who wouldn’t stand for an emperor like Belos. If nobody would do it, Luz sure as hell would.

And, as scared as she was to blink and suddenly see that blood on her hands again, she decided it was worth it. She’d never get used to it, not completely.

Amity could almost hear Willow calling her a hypocrite, because the more she thought about it, the more Amity began to realize that she’d likely do anything of Luz’s request to make her safer. Hell, she didn’t doubt she’d fight her own parents one-on-two if Luz asked nicely.

And while the thought of that terrified her, she couldn’t find the common sense to find a reason to stop herself, should it happen.

Perhaps that's just the impact Luz had on people.

Or maybe it was just Amity.

She couldn’t find it in her to care anymore.