#this is my half-a$$ed attempt at advertising

[p0tat0-g0ddess]

Hey gang I’m publishing a book please buy it so I don’t have to get a real job

[happyandticklish]

His Attention

Notes: FINALLY finished this Izzy Hands fic that has been sitting in my drafts since July, that I’ve been procrastinating for literally no reason. I’ve been wanting a fic with lee!Izzy in it forever now, but I wanted to accurately portray how it would work, because Izzy is not exactly,,,,, lee material, and this is definitely the closest I’ve come to it in my attempts lol. As a result, it does end on a rather sad note as he is a rather sad little guy, but regardless, I hope you enjoy the hard work of endless months of putting this off~ 

Summary: Edward is itching to test this supposed new ‘torture method’ Stede keeps advertising, and Izzy is unfortunately left to be his guinea pig. 

Laughter, unmistakably, bounced across the ship, invading the sacred space of Izzy’s cabin. Not an unusual thing to hear, at least not in recent days, not since that fancy idiot had invaded all of their lives. This kind was different than usual though, frantic and pitched, with words scrambling to be heard throughout it.

Izzy pinched his brow together, staring harder at the map before him and forcing himself to focus. He didn’t need to be distracted by whatever stunt Bonnet had pulled now. Maybe they had invited the enemy upon the ship to discuss fine dining, or perhaps they were playing dress-up and putting on a little show—inevitably something inane and not worth his time.

They had gotten lost, as was the usual case with this lot, and Izzy was painstakingly attempting to track their path once more—not that their path was very clear in the first place. Their current ‘plan’ thus far was merely a hobbled together collection of vague promises and ideas. All of which had been stamped for approval by Edward’s stupidly charming grin. It was hard to doubt him when you were met with a face like that.

Izzy had fallen for it one too many times and he didn’t intend to do so again. 

There was a shriek from outside his door, and Izzy started in alarm. That was Edward’s voice. He pushed the map aside, staggering to his feet and slamming open the door, ready to take on any opponents that had dared try to attack his captain.

“Captain, is everything a—”

His words stumbled to a halt as he entered into the broad daylight of the ship. What he found was not a group of attackers, but instead, endlessly annoying Stede Bonnet with his hands gripped over the exposed hips of none other than Blackbeard himself. Edward was curled partially in half as more shrieks slipped out in that choked, gruff manner of his.

Tickling. Fucking tickling.

“Ah, Mr. Hands, how nice of you to join us,” Stede said, tone perfectly casual as though he didn’t have the world’s most feared pirate giggling under his hands. “I was just showing Ed here how we more gentle-natured folks engage in combat. Not with swords and threats, but instead, with fingers and laughter!”

“I-Ihit’s not vehery effehective, m-mate!” Edward had his hands gripped around his wrists and was attempting to tug Stede’s hands away, though he didn’t seem as determined as he could be. “T-Thihis is n-nohothing!”

“Nothing, is it? Well then, you wouldn’t mind if I moved back to your ribs then, would you? That seemed to be a pretty effective spot earlier, if I remember correctly. Specifically, if I vibrate my fingers like this—”

The two seemed entirely lost in their own world, Stede staring down at Ed like the sight of him snorting and bucking in his hands was the most incredible thing he had ever seen. The whole thing felt so intimate and childish at the same time, and Izzy couldn’t help but avert his gaze, like he’d walked into something far more risqué than just tickling.

The rest of the crew didn’t seem to have the same problem with it. A couple of them smiled over at the scene, but they seemed otherwise entirely unfazed.

Fucking useless.

“Are these…” Izzy gestured vaguely at the scene. “Childish antics the ‘cutting edge new strategy’ you had to show the Captain, Bonnet? I hardly see the merit in tickling.”

The word was strange on his tongue, one he hadn’t used for many years now. It felt out of place considering the setting. Tickling was for children and lovers, a silly, frivolous thing that had no right gracing the ship.

“Now, that’s what Ed said at first.” Carefully, Stede pulled his hands away, leaving Edward to sag against the side of the ship with an exhausted grin on his face. Izzy tried hard not to stare at the sight. “However, let me put you in a scenario. Let’s say you have a prisoner, or a hostage of sorts, and you’re trying to get information out of him. You could torture him with pain and mutilation—”

“Always a fan of that myself,” Ed chimed in.

“But I’ve found that a gentler approach can work wonders, if done correctly. No blood, no mess, and no visible wounds or injuries if you were to ransom him back. Not to mention, no one wants to admit that they’ve fallen victim to a bit of tickling—not when you have your reputation to uphold.”

Stede beamed back at Izzy as though he wasn’t rambling nonsense. Izzy’s brow narrowed just slightly.

“I didn’t believe him at first either,” Edward said, noticing the look on Izzy’s face. He flushed just a tad at the memory, scratching the back of his neck. “But it’s actually pretty effective. When in the right hands.”

Ed and Stede exchanged smiling glances dripping with not-so-subtle affection and Izzy barely resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

It had been like this for the past several weeks, all jokes and touching and secret looks exchanged in-between words. Izzy would have said something by now if it weren’t for the look in Edward’s eyes when he stared at Stede, like he’d been sailing in a storm all his life and now the clouds had finally parted to reveal perfectly blue skies. He was happy, or at least whatever version of happy he could grasp for himself after so many years of hardship. Izzy didn’t want to take that from him—not yet, anyway. No matter how much Izzy’s heart tugged with a feral jealousy that threatened to destroy him.

He cleared his throat, trying to keep his tone neutral as he said, “Well, if you’re quite finished playing, I need to borrow Blackbeard to look over our route. I’ve managed to get us back on track, but—”

“Yes, yes, yes, all of that,” Edward interrupted, waving his hand dismissively. “I’ll look at it, no need to get your knickers in a twist, mate. Thanks for the lesson, Stede—although don’t think I won’t be trying it out myself once I get back. After all, we should make sure it works on all pirates, wouldn’t you agree?”

A bright crimson swept across Stede’s face, and he stammered out an unintelligible reply, before nodding back quickly. The bastard looked excited about the threat, of course. Izzy stalked off towards his cabin before the writhing in his gut could get any worse. Edward trailed behind him lazily, humming a low, grumbly tune that was reminiscent of a variety of different sea shanties all smushed together into a chaotic medley—clearly unbothered at having been seen in such an intimate state, as though it were nothing for the great Blackbeard to be ticklish.

The door swung shut behind him with a resounding thud, and Izzy exhaled, grateful to be left alone at last, and finally get to work on something useful for once—

“You know, he has a point.”

—or not.

Edward was staring at him in that intense way of his, the stare that said his all-encompassing attention had focused directly on you. Izzy would have given up several limbs to have that stare on him for even a moment normally, but now it sent prickly, uncomfortable heat shooting down his spine. Still, he didn’t dare look away.

“How do you mean, sir?”

“You know, we always rely on torture, stabbing, slicing, burning, water-boarding—it gets boring after a while.” Edward hopped onto Izzy’s desk, knocking over a bottle of ink in the process. Izzy’s hand twitched in brief annoyance, but he kept quiet in the interest of peace. “And nothing like that would ever break a real pirate. Certainly you could handle anything I put those shmucks through and still be kicking.”

Pride shot through Izzy like a bullet at the words, but he quickly shoved it down before it could surface too clearly on his face. “Of course. I wouldn’t call myself Blackbeard’s first mate if I couldn’t.”

“But there’s something to be said for this ‘tickle torture’ as he called it.” Edward’s gaze was distant and glowing with ideas. “So simple to do, and it leaves no marks, so there’s hardly any evidence. Plus, there’d be no risk of injuring the body.”

It was clear he wasn’t going to let this go until it had run its course, so Izzy sighed and decided to indulge the concept, if only to secure Edward’s attention later. “Sure, but could it really be classified as torture? I mean, it’s a child’s game. Nothing as innocent as that could truly break someone.”

“So you’re saying you could resist it?” Edward continued, leaning forward on the desk, his interest piqued. “I mean, think about it Iz, really think about it. All vulnerable, tied up, not a chance of escape, having to endure hours upon hours of fingers and feathers scouring every inch of your exposed skin, nothing to do but take it?”

His words raced with a strange urgency, and Izzy couldn’t help but find himself drawn in as he imagined it. He could almost feel it, the bubbly, electric sensation crawling across his nerves and sending goosebumps scattering over his skin. He resisted the urge to shudder and brush away the imaginary touch. Instead, he settled on a compromise, crossing his arms and subtly covering up said vulnerable spots.

“Of course I could,” he replied sharply, hating the way his ears tinged pink at the question. He refused to believe it was due to embarrassment, and blamed it on the summer heat instead. “It’s only tickling.”

“Willing to make a bet out of it?”

Izzy’s heart stopped and it took him a second to respond as he tried to jumpstart it back into motion. Eventually he managed to stutter out a weak, “A bet?”

“Ten minutes. I get to tickle you for ten minutes, and if you can resist, I’ll admit it’s stupid and you’ll never have to hear about it again.”

Izzy scoffed, rolling his eyes and trying not to let his nerves show too obviously. “Edward, please. We’re not kids anymore.”

“Fine.” Edward shrugged. “I’ll just know it’s because you can’t do it, because deep down, you know I’m right, Izzy. Which, if you’re still as ticklish as you used to be, I can’t blame you for.”

Izzy fought back another blush at the memory, wiggling fingers and restrained smiles dissolving into frantic laughter that seemed to echo for miles. There was a playful glimmer in Edward’s smile, and it reminded Izzy of a simpler time, years ago back when the former’s beard was merely a thought and hope still shone in his eyes—hope that maybe they could do something with their lives instead of just waste away in a nothing town for the rest of time.

Many times before had Izzy attempted to bring that look back, each of which had failed until now. Of course, he had a feeling that Stede was most of the reason for it. It was undeniable that the strange, slightly eccentric man brought him joy for reasons Izzy would never understand. Still, it was nice to see him happy again—happy enough to tease Izzy like he used to, anyway.

He decided to blame it on that when he answered. “If I agree,” he said slowly, narrowing his eyes and emphasizing the if. “Not only do you admit that tickling is a fool's game, but I get your attention for the rest of the day. No antics, no silly gimmicks, no children’s stories. Just you, me and a map.”

“Done.”

“And you have to make sure the crew is actually working, too.”

“Done.”

“And you’ll actually help me come up with a plan this time, not some crazed idea that you pull out your ass and decide to share with no one—”

“Done, done, done, and done,” Edward interrupted, waving one hand. “All of that and more. The ship will be in tip-top shape by the time we’re done with it. If you agree. So? What’s it gonna be, mate?”

Izzy hesitated for a second too long before he nodded. He told himself his reluctance was caused by annoyance at the stupid idea. He wouldn’t allow for the possibility that it was due to any kind of repressed anxiety. It was just tickling—nothing more. Besides, there was no evidence to suggest he even was ticklish anymore. Perhaps it had faded with time.

Izzy desperately clung onto that hope as Edward approached him. His walk was almost cat-like as he backed Izzy against the wall, like a lion stalking their prey—all smooth movements and assured glances.

“Arms up, Mr. Hands.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Would you rather Israel?”

Izzy exhaled in resigned irritation, raising his arms with little preamble. That was when Edward’s hand closed about his wrists. Without thinking, Izzy tugged, trying to pull his hands down.

They didn’t budge.

He swallowed audibly.

“You seem nervous,” Edward noted. He was making a point to catch Izzy’s gaze, holding it until Izzy was forced to look away. It was humiliating. And something else. Something he didn’t want to think about. “I don’t know if I’ve ever seen you nervous before. It’s a nice look—humbles your normally obstinate face.”

In defiance, Izzy shifted his features into something undeniably obstinate. “Of course you have, Edward,” he replied tiredly. “I’m always nervous. It’s impossible not to be when you have a maniac for a captain.”

“Oh, exasperated, sure,” Edward admitted. “Deeply concerned, almost every day. But not nervous.”

Izzy huffed, shifting underneath him. He was too close, and Izzy could smell the sea on him—and that twat’s perfume. “Just get it over with already. I don’t have all day.”

“Always so impatient,” Edward hummed. Despite this, he complied with his wishes. Izzy tensed when he felt Edward’s free hand come to rest on his hip, toying with the hem of his vest. And then all at once slipping under it.

“What are you—!?”

“Relax.” Edward’s hand was warm against his skin, and Izzy hated how nice it felt. “You’re not gonna feel a thing through all that leather. You want to win fairly, don’t you? I’d be the last one to peg Izzy Hands as a cheater.”

The implication sent a spark of defiance through him and he tilted his chin up subconsciously. “Of course not. I just want our intentions to be clear. I’m not like him.”

Edward’s eyes crinkled up in amusement, the gesture far too much like pity. “I know, Izzy. You never were.”

Before Izzy had time to parse through his words, Edward’s hand twitched and his mouth clamped shut in quick defense. It was barely a movement, barely anything really, but it was enough to set Izzy’s nerves on edge.

Gently, Edward’s fingers wiggled against the soft skin of his hip, curling against the bone. Izzy inhaled sharply, unable to help it. It didn’t tickle, exactly. It was more of an itch, and Izzy had the inexplicable urge to swat him away.

Not that he could do that with his hands out of the way.

For almost a minute it was just that, light, quick touches that made him tense, but nothing he wasn’t able to handle. At first, Izzy had assumed he wasn’t taking this seriously. He wasn’t sure whether to be offended or grateful for that.

By the second minute, however, he caught onto Edward’s game. What had started as an itch was turning into something far more… well, something. Something that made Izzy’s arm tug against his grip. He hadn’t upped his pace once, but the repetition of it all was getting to Izzy. He found himself jerking back before Edward had even touched him, glaring at the smirk he was greeted with every time.

“Is this really your plan?”

“What do you mean?” Edward’s hand slipped and fingers were exchanged for nails, gliding over the bump of skin. A shudder coursed its way down Izzy’s back. “Is this not effective?”

Izzy shifted slightly, trying his best to be subtle about it and failing. “If this is how you plan on winning, you’re doing a miserable job of it. What would you like to start on first tonight—navigation or the rations that have, at least as far as I’m aware of, never been stocked since this new crew of yours boarded the ship?”

“Ah, ah, ah, Izzy, ye of little faith.”

The fingers tempo sped up just slightly and Izzy coughed to cover up the startled noise that had just escaped him. The whole act was bordering on the edge of being genuinely ticklish—something Izzy absolutely could not allow if he was to get through this. In theory, provided Edward did not move past this stage, Izzy could hold out for a mere ten minutes. However, the threat of him going further was making him jumpy, which could be bad.

“You know, laughing doesn’t disqualify you.” His voice was barely even a whisper, but each word rang clear to Izzy, settling a knot of unease at the base of his spine. “Nor does all this twitching you keep doing. So if I were you, I would stop wasting all my energy on that and save some for when I start to get really serious.”

Izzy had plans to ignore the offer stubbornly, but a sudden squeeze to his hips let out a choked noise that was almost, almost, a giggle. Not enough that he would ever in a million life times admit to it though. The flush already present on his face spread out further, till it felt like his whole body was burning up with some strange new form of fever.

You’re not ticklish, that isn’t you, he told himself, useless words of affirmation to try to bear through the flurry of soft pinches he was being assaulted with. He knew he was smiling, a wobbly, giddy thing that he tried and failed to mask. Maybe he could get through this by smiling. Just one smile, and that was the last of what he would allow himself.

The touch scribbled around his hips to the base of his lower back and Izzy jerked forward, nearly knocking Edward aside. The latter let out a low, grumbly chuckle; it was the same one he greeted his opponent with when he knew he had bested them. “Ah mate, I think you’ve revealed a little bit too much there. I was worried that maybe the same spots wouldn’t work, but it seems like you haven’t grown out of anything.”

Each glide of Edward’s fingers sent his stomach pitching, squeezing tighter and tighter till he felt as though he would burst if he didn’t laugh or scream or cry or something really soon. A build-up of kinetic energy with no outlet, all rearing to escape. Goosebumps rippled out from one another, making Izzy unbearably area of each new sensation. Fingers scuttled patiently over that same spot, lazy, crawling circles in the dip of his back that made his face scrunch up in protest. It was awful and pleasant all at the same time and Izzy found himself edging closer to giving in with each second that drifted by.

“Ed, c-c’mon—”

“Are you giving in?”

Scratching that same fucking spot. “N—ahA, mhmm n-no. No.”

“Good. I would hate to think you would give up the game so early. We still have a whole seven minutes left to go and I intend to spend my time with it.”

Seven minutes. Even ten minutes hadn’t seemed like that long of a time when they had started, but now even the threat of those seven minutes made him feel like throwing in the towel in right then and there. He had forgotten how much things could tickle, how sensitive skin could be, how helpless it was to be pinned like this.

And how wonderful. Pride might have let him surrender by now, but Edward’s attention, Edward’s touch, Edward’s smile directed at him, delighting in him, was too good a promise to give up now.

It wasn’t anything big that broke him, just that same ever light touch on that same ever sensitive spot on his back, but finally Izzy’s lips crackled up into a full grin, a series of huffy breaths and giggles slipping out.

“F-Fuhuck ohof Edward, c’mohohon.”

“Tickle, Iz?”

Izzy couldn’t even fight off the tease, too much of him melting into how nice it felt. He had spent so many weeks now watching Edward’s attention become entirely captivated by that idiot and now, finally, had found something to divert it back to him. Even if it meant giving up his pride. Even if it meant letting himself giggle in front of fucking Blackbeard. 

He couldn’t risk a protest ending this just yet.

So instead, he let out a growl to indicate that yes, it very much tickled, thank you, and squeezed his eyes shut to try to bear his way through this. Edward’s hand was moving up now, edging towards the back of his ribs, and Izzy arched forward with a noise that was in no way, shape, or form a whine, trying to avoid its path.

“Now this,” Edward commented, a note of awe in his voice. “This is almost worth it, even if you don’t give in. I should thank Stede for reminding me of this method, I had nearly forgotten how effective it is on you. I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen a genuine smile on your face, let alone heard you laugh. You should consider yourself lucky I can’t reach your feet in this position, or I’m sure the sounds you’d make would make me inclined to keep you here forever.”

Izzy’s toes curled in his boots at the mere threat and he thanked any deity that might be out there for that small mercy at least. This was already bad enough as is. Edward was slowly climbing up his ribs in an ascent that sent his nerves on high alert about their end destination. It was strange; it had been so long since he’d been tickled that he couldn’t actively remember where he was ticklish, but instinct provided him with a pretty good radar for it. Each step that Edward’s fingers took sent a bolt of energy through him and he found himself jerking at his trapped arms with increasing desperation.

Worse yet was the anticipation that sent laughter tumbling freely out of his mouth, silly and frantic and bubbly in a way that Izzy Hands, First Mate, Blackbeard’s righthand man, simply wasn’t. He couldn’t even attempt to stop it either, so focused was he on doing anything to keep those hands away from under his arms.

“Ehehehedward, yohohou dohohon’t—gahhAHA w-wahait, you dohon’t—shihit lihihisten to mehehe!”

Edward cocked a brow, deliberately teasing the spaces in-between his topmost ribs. “Yeah? I don’t want? I’m really trying to listen mate, but I can’t hear you through all that whimpering.”

Izzy was going to bash his head in when he got out of this, tear out his fingers piece by piece so they could never do the world anymore damage. Quite possibly he was going to pin Edward down and show him just how much this shit fucking tickled so he would think twice before doing this to anyone else—because there was no way he would still be going if he knew just how badly Izzy needed him to stop.

Even more possibly, Izzy was going to lock himself up in his quarters when this was done and spend the rest of the day trying to wipe the stupid smile off of his face and convince himself he hadn’t enjoyed it in the slightest.

When Edward’s fingers finally reached their goal, Izzy thought it was probable he had ascended to another plane. A shriek slipped out, followed by a snort and finally a round of tumbling cackles that shook his whole frame. He knew better than to try to fight his way out so instead he threw his head back and gave into the laughter and the helplessness and the pleasant embarrassment radiating throughout his form.

Had he always been this ticklish? It hardly seemed likely as he was sure he would have gone mad from all the times Edward had pinned him down just like this back in the day.

And yet, for some reason, he didn’t hate it.

He wasn’t sure what to do with that.

A thumb digging into just the right spot was what did him in. One thumb, and a yelp of pure panic slipped out as Izzy thumped back against the wall giggling out a plea for mercy. Edward let go of him so fast Izzy was sure he must have imagined the whole thing from his now casual stance a couple feet away. Izzy sunk to the ground gratefully, gulping in air greedily as the last of his laughter slowly receded. His arms were wrapped around himself in a hug that he knew must have looked stupid, but he couldn’t help it. Phantom sensations crawled up and down his sides, making him twitchy and jittery as he tried to calm his nervous system.

“Torturous, isn’t it?”

Izzy scoffed, which was as much admittance as Edward was going to be getting out of him anytime soon. He nearly found himself hoping that Edward would demand a better answer, that he would insist he hadn’t ‘fulfilled his end of the bargain’, and pin him down for a flailing round two.

Instead, Edward merely rolled his eyes fondly, strolling over to the desk and calmly righting the spilled ink container, as though no time had passed since their earlier conversation.

“I’ll have to let Stede know that his methods work even on the most reputable and feared of pirates,” Edward mused, tossing a glance back at his flustered state. “I thought I was bad, but you looked like you would have bit off my head if I had let you.”

“You’re lucky I didn’t,” Izzy hissed, perhaps with more venom than he needed to. The introduction of Stede’s name made him prickly. Even now, seconds after Edward had just finished turning Izzy into a pile of goop on the ground, he still couldn’t take his mind off of Stede. He wanted to stand up and grab Edward’s chin, force his wistful eyes away from the door where they had strayed and back towards him. “That was a pity win at best, something to get you to shut up about it so I don’t have to spend the whole day hearing about the Amazing Stede and his wonderful tickling know-how.”

“A pity win.” And Edward did look at him then, but with a skepticism that made Izzy’s shoulders creep in defensively. “You mean to tell me you put yourself through all that just for my sake?”

“I didn’t say that—!”

“I’m touched, Iz, I really am. But next time, all you have to do is ask, no need to be so roundabout with it.”

Izzy gaped at him as Edward shot him a sly wink, pushing open the door and pausing with an endeared chuckle as he went to rejoin Stede and the others across the ship. Hardly a minute later, laughter echoed across the ship, sending a pang of envy through the former that he didn’t have the strength to lie to himself about.

Eight minutes. The first time Edward had really touched him with any kind of affection in nearly five years, and it had lasted eight minutes. The memory of the tickling had faded into a distant ache now, a mere imprint of what it had felt like to have Edward’s hands on him, to have his fingers wrapped securely around his wrists.

The hands that were taking their revenge on Stede at that very moment if the boisterous, desperate laughter booming across the ship was anything to go off of.

Izzy leaned his head against the back of the wall with a frustrated sigh, running a hand through his hair to fix the mess it had become. “Get a hold of yourself, Israel.”

He stayed there for an additional five minutes before finally forcing himself up to work on the leftover paperwork sitting on his desk.

Alone, as always.

[sweetwolfcupcake]

Allurement: Dirt on Million Dollar Collars

Yandere Namjoon x Reader

"You will have to review the blueprint in progress, that includes two meetings with the team-heads, one in the first half of your morning schedule, another after lunch." (Y/N) placed her paper cup on her desk while reading out the day's schedule to Namjoon.

The said man sat on his chair, gently moving side to side while his eyes never moved. It was strange now, she should have been used to his gaze, and she was, but it had begun to feel different. His gaze seemed heavy. And it made her blush and stripped her of the courage to look up boldly and meet his gaze. So she kept her gaze fixed on the tablet as she read on.

"...And finally, a meeting with advertisement company heads. Then you would be done for the day." she finished reading the schedule to him before looking up, his heavy gaze was still on her steady and calm, but there was something so deep and daunting in it, it made her want to take a few steps back.

But she would always choose to be professional, as long as she was within the confinement of the office. So she stood her ground and acted no different. "Thank you (Y/N), we should get to work right away then. The first meeting is within an hour, right?"

"Yes, Sir," she responded with a nod

"Come here and brief me regarding the meeting then, show me all you have researched and the key highlights, Mr Min has sent you the email regarding the material, I suppose?"

"Yes, sure." she picked up the labelled folder resting on her desk before she walked over to his desk and placed the folder in front of him.

"How am I supposed to be briefed with you on the other side? Come to my side, show me." she bit the insides of her cheek and gulped, she did not miss the mischief dancing in his orbs. But she had no other choice but to comply,

As soon as she was by his side, he pulled her over his lap, earning a surprised squeak from her "Namjoon!" she spluttered as she landed on his lap, her attempts to move away died down with his arm firmly coiling over her waist before he pulled her closer to himself, settling her perfectly over his lap.

"Mhm, much better...Now, would you brief out key highlights Miss Darling?" she sighed at his words, it made her blush so deep and her heart flutter in the most moving manner.

"(Y/N), my name is (Y/N) though." she turned to him with a false glare." immediately, his smile bloomed and the gorgeous dents over his tan cheeks appeared, and he was the most beautiful human to her, once again.

"And you are so fucking cute when you talk with a pout." her lips parted before readjusting as soon she realised that indeed, she was talking with a pout. He laughed at her actions and boop-ed her nose "Aww, trying to be a big girl now?" she frowned at his words, genuinely confused.

"I am a woman, Joon." she asserted frowning at his words, genuinely confused.

Namjoon smiled at her, the kind she had seen on him when he had visited her college "Of course you are. You are my woman."

And then, his lips were on her, for the fifth time since the beginning of the day.

-----

The meeting was surprisingly short, that too without any discontent faces within her sight. That was an achievement in itself. Kim Namjoon and his art of persuasion. Mr Min and Namjoon remained inside the conference room while she had left with the others, only to bump into Jimin on her way to the cafeteria.

"Jimin! Where were you? You did not even reply to my last text, you sloth." there was no hesitancy in whacking his arm, earning a hiss from him.

"Ow, calm down woman! I had been slightly busy these days. I have been calling you for more than an hour, you were not picking up." he retorted

"Oh, I left my phone in my bag, Mr Kim was having a meeting with the various heads for the upcoming project. And guess what, I found out that Mr Choi's daughter would be joining us soon...I forgot her name, Mr Min had mentioned before..."

"It's okay (Y/N), that is not important, I wanted to check up on you, your employer has relieved me from my duty...And I was worried, I hate leaving you alone in your apartment, you know." she smiled at his words, he was such a sweetheart.

Jimin had been a constant companion in those three months when Namjoon could not be there. She did not speak much, but he was a friend who had been there, comforting her in the silence, the understanding and comfortable silence that only a few could establish and maintain with her. And she felt terrible about not letting him know about the new development in her life, it had been barely a week since she had moved in with Namjoon. but Jimin had no idea about it, heck, he did not even know of their secret relationship.

"So you came all the way here to check up on me? Aww, I guess I should ignore you more now, you turn into this clingy sweet duckling you know?"

"Yah! Don't call me that, I am not a duckling, okay...Besides, that is not the only reason...I got an email last night. I will be leaving for Tokyo tomorrow (Y/N). I will be accompanying Mr Choi on his string of meetings and whatnot. Maybe it will take me a month or so, a long trip. But I bet he is going to see his string of mistresses there." he leaned in and whispered the last few words into her ear with a conspiratorial tone, making her eyes widen and gasp, but he chuckled.

"What? The old hag shits money."

"Jimin! What if someone hears you?" she hissed and placed her palm over his lips reflexively, but he only let out a laugh

"Oh please, everybody knows their dirty secret. All these men have mistresses, especially the married ones." his voice was slightly muffed with her palm still on his lips.

"Wh—" deliberate coughing intervened, her hand retracted immediately, as Jimin almost jumped back, his eyes flashed with something too quick to decipher before he bowed

"Good morning Mr Kim, I was heading to your office." she turned around immediately at the mention, only to find Namjoon behind, looming over them like an ominous cloud. But why would he be ominous?

"Oh is that so Mr Park, perhaps you have missed out on the elevator then. Were you asking my secretary to show you the way?" Namjoon's voice was octaves lower than his usual pitch as he spoke with a raised eyebrow, sucking his cheeks in for a moment. And she had known him long enough to identify the signs of his waning patience.

"Uh, I just happened to bump into him, Sir, it delayed his meeting with you. My sincere apologies." (Y/N) was quick to jump in. Earning a chilling glare from her employer.

"I would prefer having an explanation only when I demand it. And Mr Park, kindly accompany me." she felt her cheeks heat up and throat dry a bit, and all for the wrong reasons. Jimin gave her a faint, reassuring smile while Namjoon walked past them both before Jimin followed him to the elevator.

Of all the people she held close to her heart, Kim Namjoon would be the last one she wished to test the patience of. But perhaps unintentionally, she already had.

****

Taglist(Kindly remind me later if I missed anyone)- @whatpageisthis @amoc94 @theresa-nam-nam-me @dearbambideer @casualminiaturetimemachine @njrwifey @kpopisnicee @illnevertrustmyselfagain @potterbrooke @luvaffaire @bighitfics @mochimochipie @vixenwerr @minshookie29 @sepulcry @omgsuperstarg @rkive-diary @nananalifeisdynamite @sumzysworld @waterdemon11

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Facebook thrives on criticism of "disinformation"

The mainstream critique of Facebook is surprisingly compatible with Facebook’s own narrative about its products. FB critics say that the company’s machine learning and data-gathering slides disinformation past users’ critical faculties, poisoning their minds.

Meanwhile, Facebook itself tells advertisers that it can use data and machine learning to slide past users’ critical faculties, convincing them to buy stuff.

In other words, the mainline of Facebook critics start from the presumption that FB is a really good product and that advertisers are definitely getting their money’s worth when they shower billions on the company.

Which is weird, because these same critics (rightfully) point out that Facebook lies all the time, about everything. It would be bizarre if the only time FB was telling the truth was when it was boasting about how valuable its ad-tech is.

Facebook has a conflicted relationship with this critique. I’m sure they’d rather not be characterized as a brainwashing system that turns good people into monsters, but not when the choice is between “brainwashers” and “con-artists selling garbage to credulous ad execs.”

As FB investor and board member Peter Thiel puts it: “I’d rather be seen as evil than incompetent.” In other words, the important word in “evil genius” is “genius,” not “evil.”

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1440312271511568393

The accord of tech critics and techbros gives rise to a curious hybrid, aptly named by Maria Farrell: the Prodigal Techbro.

A prodigal techbro is a self-styled wizard of machine-learning/surveillance mind control who has see the error of his ways.

https://crookedtimber.org/2020/09/23/story-ate-the-world-im-biting-back/

This high-tech sorcerer doesn’t disclaim his magical powers — rather, he pledges to use them for good, to fight the evil sorcerers who invented a mind-control ray to sell your nephew a fidget-spinner, then let Robert Mercer hijack it to turn your uncle into a Qanon racist.

There’s a great name for this critique, criticism that takes its subjects’ claims to genius at face value: criti-hype, coined by Lee Vinsel, describing a discourse that turns critics into “the professional concern trolls of technoculture.”

https://sts-news.medium.com/youre-doing-it-wrong-notes-on-criticism-and-technology-hype-18b08b4307e5

The thing is, Facebook really is terrible — but not because it uses machine learning to brainwash boomers into iodine-guzzling Qnuts. And likewise, there really is a problem with conspiratorial, racist, science-denying, epistemologically chaotic conspiratorialism.

Addressing that problem requires that we understand the direction of the causal arrow — that we understand whether Facebook is the cause or the effect of the crisis, and what role it plays.

“Facebook wizards turned boomers into orcs” is a comforting tale, in that it implies that we need merely to fix Facebook and the orcs will turn back into our cuddly grandparents and get their shots. The reality is a lot gnarlier and, sadly, less comforting.

There’s been a lot written about Facebook’s sell-job to advertisers, but less about the concern over “disinformation.” In a new, excellent longread for Harpers, Joe Bernstein makes the connection between the two:

https://harpers.org/archive/2021/09/bad-news-selling-the-story-of-disinformation/

Fundamentally: if we question whether Facebook ads work, we should also question whether the disinformation campaigns that run amok on the platform are any more effective.

Bernstein starts by reminding us of the ad industry’s one indisputable claim to persuasive powers: ad salespeople are really good at convincing ad buyers that ads work.

Think of department store magnate John Wanamaker’s lament that “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” Whoever convinced him that he was only wasting half his ad spend was a true virtuoso of the con.

As Tim Hwang documents brilliantly in his 2020 pamphlet “Subprime Attention Crisis,” ad-tech is even griftier than the traditional ad industry. Ad-tech companies charge advertisers for ads that are never served, or never rendered, or never seen.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/05/florida-man/#wannamakers-ghost

They rig ad auctions, fake their reach numbers, fake their conversions (they also lie to publishers about how much they’ve taken in for serving ads on their pages and short change them by millions).

Bernstein cites Hwang’s work, and says, essentially, shouldn’t this apply to “disinformation?”

If ads don’t work well, then maybe political ads don’t work well. And if regular ads are a swamp of fraudulently inflated reach numbers, wouldn’t that be true of political ads?

Bernstein talks about the history of ads as a political tool, starting with Eisenhower’s 1952 “Answers America” campaign, designed and executed at great expense by Madison Ave giants Ted Bates.

Hannah Arendt, whom no one can accuse of being soft on the consequences of propaganda, was skeptical of this kind of enterprise: “The psychological premise of human manipulability has become one of the chief wares that are sold on the market of common and learned opinion.”

The ad industry ran an ambitious campaign to give scientific credibility to its products. As Jacques Ellul wrote in 1962, propagandists were engaged in “the increasing attempt to control its use, measure its results, define its effects.”

Appropriating the jargon of behavioral scientists let ad execs “assert audiences, like workers in a Taylorized workplace, need not be persuaded through reason, but could be trained through repetition to adopt the new consumption habits desired by the sellers.” -Zoe Sherman

These “scientific ads” had their own criti-hype attackers, like Vance “Hidden Persuaders” Packard, who admitted that “researchers were sometimes prone to oversell themselves — or in a sense to exploit the exploiters.”

Packard cites Yale’s John Dollard, a scientific ad consultant, who accused his colleagues of promising advertisers “a mild form of omnipotence,” which was “well received.”

Today’s scientific persuaders aren’t in a much better place than Dollard or Packard. Despite all the talk of political disinformation’s reach, a 2017 study found “sharing articles from fake news domains was a rare activity” affecting <10% of users.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aau4586

So, how harmful is this? One study estimates “if one fake news article were about as persuasive as one TV campaign ad, the fake news in our database would have changed vote shares by an amount on the order of hundredths of a percentage point.”

https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.31.2.211

Now, all that said, American politics certainly feel and act differently today than in years previous. The key question: “is social media creating new types of people, or simply revealing long-obscured types of people to a segment of the public unaccustomed to seeing them?”

After all, American politics has always had its “paranoid style,” and the American right has always had a sizable tendency towards unhinged conspiratorialism, from the John Birch Society to Goldwater Republicans.

Social media may not be making more of these yahoos, but rather, making them visible to the wider world, and to each other, allowing them to make common cause and mobilize their adherents (say, to carry tiki torches through Charlottesville in Nazi cosplay).

If that’s true, then elite calls to “fight disinformation” are unlikely to do much, except possibly inflaming things. If “disinformation” is really people finding each other (not infecting each other) labelling their posts as “disinformation” won’t change their minds.

Worse, plans like the Biden admin’s National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism lump 1/6 insurrectionists in with anti-pipeline activists, racial justice campaigners, and animal rights groups.

Whatever new powers we hand over to fight disinformation will be felt most by people without deep-pocketed backers who’ll foot the bill for crack lawyers.

Here’s the key to Bernstein’s argument: “One reason to grant Silicon Valley’s assumptions about our mechanistic persuadability is that it prevents us from thinking too hard about the role we play in taking up and believing the things we want to believe. It turns a huge question about the nature of democracy in the digital age — what if the people believe crazy things, and now everyone knows it? — into a technocratic negotiation between tech companies, media companies, think tanks, and universities.”

I want to “Yes, and” that.

My 2020 book How To Destroy Surveillance Capitalism doesn’t dismiss the idea that conspiratorialism is on the rise, nor that tech companies are playing a key role in that rise — but without engaging in criti-hype.

https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59

In my book, I propose that conspiratorialism isn’t a crisis of what people believe so much as how they arrive at their beliefs — it’s an “epistemological crisis.”

We live in a complex society plagued by high-stakes questions none of us can answer on our own.

Do vaccines work? Is oxycontin addictive? Should I wear a mask? Can we fight covid by sanitizing surfaces? Will distance ed make my kind an ignoramus? Should I fly in a 737 Max?

Even if you have the background to answer one of these questions, no one can answer all of them.

Instead, we have a process: neutral expert agencies use truth-seeking procedures to sort of competing claims, showing their work and recusing themselves when they have conflicts, and revising their conclusions in light of new evidence.

It’s pretty clear that this process is breaking down. As companies (led by the tech industry) merge with one another to form monopolies, they hijack their regulators and turn truth-seeking into an auction, where shareholder preferences trump evidence.

This perversion of truth has consequences — take the FDA’s willingness to accept the expensively manufactured evidence of Oxycontin’s safety, a corrupt act that kickstarted the opioid epidemic, which has killed 800,000 Americans to date.

If the best argument for vaccine safety and efficacy is “We used the same process and experts as pronounced judgement on Oxy” then it’s not unreasonable to be skeptical — especially if you’re still coping with the trauma of lost loved ones.

As Anna Merlan writes in her excellent Republic of Lies, conspiratorialism feeds on distrust and trauma, and we’ve got plenty of legitimate reasons to experience both.

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/09/21/republic-of-lies-the-rise-of-conspiratorial-thinking-and-the-actual-conspiracies-that-fuel-it/

Tech was an early adopter of monopolistic tactics — the Apple ][+ went on sale the same year Ronald Reagan hit the campaign trail, and the industry’s growth tracked perfectly with the dismantling of antitrust enforcement over the past 40 years.

What’s more, while tech may not persuade people, it is indisputably good at finding them. If you’re an advertiser looking for people who recently looked at fridge reviews, tech finds them for you. If you’re a boomer looking for your old high school chums, it’ll do that too.

Seen in that light, “online radicalization” stops looking like the result of mind control, instead showing itself to be a kind of homecoming — finding the people who share your interests, a common online experience we can all relate to.

I found out about Bernstein’s article from the Techdirt podcast, where he had a fascinating discussion with host Mike Masnick.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210928/12593747652/techdirt-podcast-episode-299-misinformation-about-disinformation.shtml

Towards the end of that discussion, they talked about FB’s Project Amplify, in which the company tweaked its news algorithm to uprank positive stories about Facebook, including stories its own PR department wrote.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/22/kropotkin-graeber/#zuckerveganism

Project Amplify is part of a larger, aggressive image-control effort by the company, which has included shuttering internal transparency portals, providing bad data to researchers, and suing independent auditors who tracked its promises.

I’d always assumed that this truth-suppression and wanton fraud was about hiding how bad the platform’s disinformation problem was.

But listening to Masnick and Bernstein, I suddenly realized there was another explanation.

Maybe Facebook’s aggressive suppression of accurate assessments of disinformation on its platform are driven by a desire to hide how expensive (and profitable) political advertising it depends on is pretty useless.

Image: Anthony Quintano (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mark_Zuckerberg_F8_2018_Keynote_(41793470192).jpg

Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[sleepysailorghost]

Arcade wasn't sure what he expected when the Courier asked him to accompany them. They hadn't given a name, only said they were a Courier. It wasn't much to go on, but the Courier had looked up at him with big eyes. And for some reason, it didn't sound all that crazy to venture beyond the fort with them, a natural stanger.

They had listened so reverently when Julie spoke. They had fulfilled any job asked of them by the Followers. Certainly, if they harbored ill will towards the Followers, they would have gotten to their revenge before now.

He had asked for their name, if only to be polite.

"I don't have one. Courier or Six is fine, if you'd like."

"You don't have a name?"

"I guess I probably did once, but I don't remember any more. I just remember the man in the checkered coat- an 18-carat run of bad luck-and then waking up in Doc Mitchell's house. Maybe that man knows who I was. I don't know."

"That doesn't bother you, not having a past?"

"No, not really." The Courier leaned back. "I'm just me. Sure, I can't look back on the road behind me, but I can look forward."

"Interesting. Are you going to look for the man in the checkered coat?"

"I don't know. I guess I could. I'm supposed to, because he stole something from me and shot me in the head."

"Wait, he shot you in the head?"

"Yeah, that's why I don't remember much. It messed with my head too."

"Well, yeah. Getting shot in the head would do that."

"Oh, wait, I do have one hint to who I might have been." The courier starts to undo the many closures of their armor, like a fire's been lit under them. "What do you make of this?"

The Courier drops their armor clumsily on the floor, and then goofily flexes. He doesn't really know what they're refering to, but then he sees the poorly-done tattoo on their upper arm. It's a ring of roses and thorns that raps under their bicep. Despite being very mediocre, it is legible and in color.

"Huh." Tattoos aren't really unique, but it is something. "Maybe your name is Rose?"

"Maybe. It doesn't sound right."

"Maybe you just need to try it out for a while, wear it in." He's trying to help, but the Courier is a near stranger to him. "Or, if you'd like, I could arrange for you to see Dr. Usa-"

"No thanks. Don't want to take up her time." The refusal was off faster than a bullet from a sixgun. "If you're ready to go, so am I."

"Sure." He agreed. It wasn't really healthy of the Courier to act out against the idea of visiting the clinic, but it wasn't something he could force them into. At least, not as a near stranger.

This turned out to be one of the few times the Courier's former-NCR sniper friend wasn't travelling with them. He probably wouldn't have decided to go with the Courier if he had known they had company. Still, it isn't all that bad, even if he feels a little crowded with the Courier, their robot pet ED-E (he hates that thing), the King's robot-dog, the sniper, and the Remnant medical researcher. One more person, and the Courier will have a small army.

Not that the Courier normally has all of them traveling together at once. It's too noticeable, draws too much attention. It might even sound like a joke: an Enclave eyebot, a police cyber dog, an amnesiac Courier, a grouchy NCR sniper, and a medical researcher walk in to a bar...

It makes the Courier happy to travel with him, so he does it on occasion. Those occassions become a lot more frequent after they return from a place they call the "Big Empty".

That had been months ago. Now, he felt like he knew the Courier. Not that he wasn't surprised by the Courier-he certainly was. But he was familiar with the Courier now.

It was a dangerous sort of thing, that familiarity. He was even starting to think that perhaps it would be a good idea to let them in on his own origins.

And he knew how the Courier felt about him.

Leaning against his side while they sat at a fire, the Courier's hands stripping a defeated foe's weapon, they had muttered something.

"Sorry, say again?" Arcade responded. Most of the time, it was just complaints about bent springs or whatever, more to themselves than to him.

The Courier's hands stopped, laying the weapon on the ground.

"You're my brother, Arcade." The Courier says, and then continues before Arcade could interrupt. "Not by blood. Or hell, maybe you are. It's not like I'd remember. Course you are a heck of a lot taller than I am...maybe the tall gene skipped me."

Arcade doesn't say anything, attempting to process what the Courier was trying to tell him.

"No, we're not related by blood." He agrees, although he has no real way to confirm it without knowing the Courier's identity.

"I know." The Courier put their hand up to their chest. "I just...well, I know you're my brother. I, uhh, care about you."

Arcade didn't know what to say about that. It really did feel like it had come out of nowhere to him. A few weeks later, the Courier had gone running off to a place that might have been their home.

Antietam is walking by his side now, but their gaze is drawn over to an old poster. The pre-war store was filled with advertisements for many different products, from Sugar-Bombs to the newest products from Rob-Co.

Shelves, long ransacked and destroyed, have created something of a maze. The laminate tiling on the floor has become loose after centuries of neglect. Decorations littering the area would mark this location as a raider base at some point.

His friend doesn't seem to notice any of that, moving closer to a central display that might have been made of stacked shoeboxes once. Now, the boxes lay in a crumpled heap.

"Antietam, wait-" He says, and the courier stops.

"Yeah? Do you need something?"

"You need to be more careful! This could be a trap."

"I don't think it is. I'm pretty good at finding traps and I don't see any tripwires or bear traps. I've stepped in enough of those."

"Of course you wouldn't see them! It's a mess in here."

"I'm not going far. I just wanna see if I can find some of those."The Courier pointed at an advertisement. It was of a girl with little wheels on her shoes, looking over her shoulder as she spun away. Under the picture, it read "Roll with the punches with Roller-Ray skates!".

"Do you..need those?"

"Well, no. I just think they would be cool. Just rollin around town."

"I'll go with them." Boone added, if only so he could keep an eye on them.

"Yeah, plus ED-E's sensors haven't picked up on anything. I can handle myself while looking for skates, Arcade."

On that note, the Courier and Boone go to pick through the rubble. When they returned, Antietam raised their arm triumphantly.

"We found them! A little dinged up, but I can fix that. C'mon, lets go outside to try them!" With the hand not holding their skates, Antietam grabbed at Arcade's sleeve.

"Okay, okay." He said, because Antietam's enthusiasm for things was infectious sometimes. They exited the store, entering that had once been a parking lot. Rusted-through cars sat abandoned and the sun hung low in the sky.

Antietam dropped to the floor, strapping on their skates. They were metal and fit awkwardly with their combat boots and spurs. Awkwardly, like a baby radstag on ice, the Courier stood up.

"Okay,so I just." The Courier lifted one leg as if to take a step. Their balance was offset by the movement. Next to him, Arcade saw Boone move to catch the Courier if they fell, but the Courier braced themselves on a car instead.

They took a few more awkward steps.

"Yeah, I think I'm getting the hang of this." Their movements were jerky, but in time, perhaps they'd be alright at it.

Then they hit a skid in the destroyed asphalt and took a spill. Their left side collided hard with a rusted shell.

"Ouch." they groaned, and then collapsed onto the parking lot. "I'm just gonna rest here for a second."

Arcade laughed a little, and then helpfully whined about the sun.

"Alright, alright. Okay, getting up." The Courier pushed up from the asphalt with both hands, rising from their crumpled mass.

"Nothing broken?" Arcade asked, seeing Antietam avoid putting too much weight on their left side.

"No, probably just bruised." They replied, but that was what Arcade had expected. They were still extremely hesitant to be medically examined, even if it meant concealing and ignoring injuries. It stung Arcade-someone who the Courier allegedly loved like a brother-to be held at arms' length. That being said, he couldn't be upset with them either. The Courier had suffered greatly and been stripped of agency by doctors. It was a mark of pride that Antietam trusted him.

Actually, he could still be angry with them for concealing injuries.

The sun was beating down as steadily as it always did in the Mojave. A bead of sweat formed on Arcade's neck.

"Oh shoot." The Courier murmured, looking over their hands. They wore fingerless gloves, and a pip-boy on one arm. Arcade examined the injury. It would be a lot of work if the Courier came down with tetnus. "It's just a scrape, Arcade."

"It's not just a scrape. It's dirty and could get infected."

"Hottest part of the days coming up. We should wait it out in the store." Boone added, helpfully.

"C'mon, listen to your big brother, ok?" Arcade tried with a smile. The Courier looked up at him with their wide brown eyes.

Arcade was not above emotional manipulation.

Half a year ago, if someone told him that he was going to play big brother to a Courier who knew nothing about their past and hated doctors, he'd have likely sent them to see Dr. Usanagi.

The Courier ran their gloved hand through their short white hair. It fluffed up their bangs (despite the pin staying in place) and revealed the twin scars on their forehead and the surgical scar that ran around their skull.

"Okay." The Courier responded, sticking their wrist out to him for treatment.

"Oh, that's a nasty cut." he said, "Let's head inside so we can get this treated.:

In the end, even if the Courier was a hassle sometimes, he was glad to be their brother. He was turning into such a sap.

[themalhambird]

Growing Up Broken: I Talk About My (A)sexuality For 4 ¼ Pages.

I am asexual.

No, this doesn’t mean that I’m some form of plant budding off copies of myself if I get enough water and sunlight. It’s a shame. I could do a lot with multiple copies of myself- get someone else to do the dishes, the cleaning, my schoolwork…

I am asexual.

Asexuality is the absence of sexual desires or feelings for other people. I say absence deliberately: sexual attraction is not something that I lack or am missing. I am not going without. I’m just a 23 year old who has never once felt the desire to have sex with another person, who couldn’t describe how it feels to “fancy” someone if there was a gun to their head, who thinks women and men and anyone in between can sometimes be stunningly beautiful, would possibly be nice to cuddle- but kissing on the mouth seems like it would be a really weird thing to do.

I am asexual, and it’s almost Pride Month, and so I want to untangle some of the thoughts in my head and spin them out on to paper, to try and lay out my feelings about my sexuality, or lack thereof, and what it’s like growing up when no one bothers to tell you that not experiencing sexual desire like, ever, is a thing. Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?

It’s 2014. Puberty has doing stuff to me for the last two years or so: periods (urgh), breasts (neat!), underarm hair (why do I have to shave this? no one’s gonna see it), growth spurts (I’m getting taller than my older sister. I want to keep going till I’m taller than mum). The only thing not happening is wanting to have sex, something the nurse who came to Talk To Us All About Growing Up back in 2009 assured us Year Sixes would definitely happen as soon as puberty hit.

Still. It’ll happen soon, probably. Sixteen is still a bit too young to be having sexual feelings, right? The boys…really not interesting at all, but the other girls are pretty. I like their hair. I like the shape of their bodies. I just don’t fancy any of them. When we’re told to imagine our future husbands or wives in class (don’t ask my why, I’ve long forgotten the point of the exercise, I just remember that) I picture a wife.

(Lesbian is the first label I apply to myself. I stick it on tentatively- keep peeling it off my shirt and putting it back somewhere different like I’m not quite sure where it fits. It’s not wrong, necessarily. I’m just not certain it’s right. I like girls a whole lot better but I’m not saying I could never love a guy. I’m just not attracted to them. I’m not attracted to women, either- but I feel like I will be. When I’m old enough to feel that kind of thing. )

Sex Ed lessons are mortifying. We’re asked to list all the sexual terms we know on an A3 sheet of paper. I don’t know what half the things other people say mean- blowjob, 69, masturbate, porn . I don’t know how other people know these things either. We’re sixteen. It’s too young.

That summer I play Sebastian in an abridged version of Twelfth Night and it convinces me to take Drama at A-level, although I didn’t at GCSE. The drama classes teach me two things. First of all, I don’t like acting women. I prefer breeches rolls. I don’t know why. We’re talking about my asexuality, not my gender confusion, so let’s put a pin in that and move on to point two. My drama class teaches me that everyone my age is having sex, or wants to have sex, or is planning on having sex soon; sex is a constant, every class, every conversation. Sex, sex, sex, sex, sex. So apparently sixteen (seventeen) isn’t too young after all.

It’s like this. One day you wake up and you realise that everyone else is speaking a language you don’t understand. Suddenly, sexual feelings aren’t something that no one your age is having but you’ll all develop soon- it’s that sexual feelings are something that everybody your age is having apart from you. People your age are dating, kissing, fucking, and it’s not something you’re interested in doing, necessarily, but you still feel so horribly left out. Like you’re missing some kind of major milestone. You try not to let it bother you- you watch Buffy every Monday you get to see your dad. (You watch loss of virginity be portrayed as growing up). You read. (The books you pick up all involve love and love always seems to at least imply sex). You- google things. You google the words you didn’t understand in that sex ed class. You google “how to tell if you’re attracted to someone” in case there’s some secret signal your body sent you that you missed. You feel like you should know if you’ve ever felt sexual attraction but then maybe you’re just really, really dumb. Maybe there’s something wrong with you. The NHS website reckons that if you’ve got a low sex drive you ought to see a doctor. The girls in your drama class keep talking about boys and sex and sex and boys and you aren’t really interested in either of those things. You cling to the thought, lesbian and hope that when you get to university, you’ll stop being so repressed. Girls are pretty- but the ones at school are either your friends or kind of mean. Of course you don’t fancy anyone there. University. University will save you. (Boys are sometimes pretty too. There are boys at school whose personalities are nice enough- who are the type of man you wouldn’t mind dating one day maybe- but you can’t ever picture yourself having sex with one. Dicks seem weird and really not the kind of thing you’d want inside you. I mean for fuck’s sake- why? You can’t even get a tampon in.)

I don’t like looking back on this. Sixteen, seventeen year old me was starting to get pretty freaked out. I like looking back at the first year of uni even less, because if seventeen year old me was freaking out, eighteen year old me was buying alcohol. That’s how it goes, right? Sex and alcohol. You see it all the time on T.V. Fictional people get fictional drunk and fictional cheat while they’re on fictional breaks with their fictional partners. David Tennant is pretty. A man at work is handsome and more importantly intelligent, into Shakespeare, into good conversation. The label switches from lesbian to ‘bisexual but heavily skewed toward women’ and I cling to that as tightly as possible because after that, I’m out of options. It is impossible that I’m not feeling sexual attraction: the whole world screams about sexual fucking attraction all the fucking time, I’m obviously just too uptight, I obviously just need to relax-

I once drank a whole bottle of wine in what was essentially one go. I paused for breath, but that was about it- I don’t think I even bothered with a glass. My goal was to get myself drunk enough that I could feel sexual attraction. I thought that the best way to go about things- to finally ‘grow up’- would be to get super drunk, and then leave the flat and find someone who would screw me. I reasoned that I would enjoy it once I was doing it- after all, the whole world pushes sex as this wholly desirable thing for any normal adult to want, even need- so I would like it once I was doing it and then I would be fixed. Fortunately, drinking a whole bottle of wine when you’ve never had more than a single glass of champagne or a couple of glasses of rum and apple juice before in your life gets you past “lowered inhibitions” to “can’t walk straight or upright” very quickly. I got as far as the bathroom, threw up, a lot, and staggered back to my room. I woke up at 3 pm the next afternoon feeling stupid for drinking, and mad at myself for still being a virgin.

I had a lot of problems in my first year of university and not all of them were about my sexuality crisis. I was isolated, fairly friendless, and not really cut out for socialising with my housemates who were probably all lovely people, but I find new people painfully difficult and hiding away seemed easier. But the feeling that there was something broken inside me because I wasn’t experiencing what everything seemed to be telling me was one of the most vital parts of the human experience- sexual attraction to other people- contributed to my general feelings of self-loathing and disgust. I attempted to induce sexual desire in myself by drinking on several further occasions, although never quite to the same extent as the first time. I’m not sure whether this counts as self-harm, but it certainly wasn’t healthy.

I didn’t know asexuality was a thing.

I knew I wasn’t straight- I’d known that for a while. I learnt that I enjoyed reading, talking, even writing about sex, as long as it was sex between people who weren’t real, but fantasising about fictional characters having sex and fantasying about myself having sex are two very different things. The former happened fairly frequently. The latter didn’t happen once, and still never has. My second year at university was better than my first: I was living with friends, I was further away from campus which meant I had to walk more, which probably helped, I had also started to make several friends online with whom I could happily chat even when I wasn’t in the mood for ‘actual’ people. I used bisexual to describe myself because on the rare occasions I thought about romance, I couldn’t really see myself ruling out anyone who was willing to put up with me.

I’m not quite clear when I first heard the term ‘asexuality’. I became aware of it gradually. Someone I followed on Tumblr identified as ‘grey-ace’. Characters from my favourite fantasy series were being headcanoned as ‘asexual’. At some point I must have learnt properly what that meant.

It sometimes feels like there ought to have been a lightbulb moment- like I should have seen the word, seen the definition, and instantly seen myself. But it is very, very hard to delete the message- ‘sex is important- sex is what grown-ups do- sex is what you should want to do’ – that the world constantly sends to us: in advertising, in entertainment, in the conversations of a drama class that always circled back to that topic, to the detriment of the sole seventeen year old who wasn’t really bothered. To embrace asexuality seemed like I was giving up on trying to fix myself, on waiting for the right person to come and make everything better. On the potential of their being a right person. I can wrap my head around people having casual sex very easily. It’s romantic love without sexual desire that I’m scared won’t work- how am I supposed to know if it’s love without there also being physical attraction? No romance arc that I had ever seen was without an element of sexual tension. So, no lightbulb moment for me. No switch going off- “aha, at last, that’s what I am!”. Just a gradual thought washing across my mind every now and then, like the tide rushing up a patch of sand and drawing straight back, leaving only dampness to show where there had been a good half-inch of water only a moment ago.

I might be asexual?

And ‘I might’ becomes ‘I think I am’, and the tide starts coming in. ‘I think I am’ became ‘I am’ at some point or other.

I am asexual.

I find reassurance in knowing that there’s a word for what I am, for how I (do not) feel. I am asexual. Not broken, or damaged, or too uptight to properly feel, or too dumb to recognise what I do feel. I am asexual- I have an absence of any sexual desire for others and that’s perfectly okay. I might fall in love one day. I might not. I don’t know how you’re supposed to know if you have the capacity to fall in love before you find yourself doing it. It might be nice to have a wife. It would also be nice to have a cat. I could cope with it just being me, a cat, and good friends for the rest of my life. If I fall in love- if I am capable of falling in love- it will just mean I am asexual, but romantic, and I will have learnt something new about myself. The point is-

The point is, I am incredibly lucky that I stumbled across Asexuality before I got myself hurt trying to force something that wasn’t there. The point is, this world assumes that sexual desires are the norm, and maybe they are, but that just makes it all the more important that people know that they aren’t abnormal for not experiencing sexual desire. To all the people who need to hear it: You are not broken. You are not alone.

I’m not sure how to wrap this up. I feel like I should say something profound or something. But I think I’m just gonna leave it like this:

I am asexual. Asexuality is the absence of sexual desires or feelings for other people. I say absence deliberately: sexual attraction is not something that I lack or am missing. I am not going without. I’m just a 23 year old who has never once felt the desire to have sex with another person, who couldn’t describe how it feels to “fancy” someone if there was a gun to their head, who thinks women and men and anyone in between can sometimes be stunningly beautiful, and possibly be nice to cuddle- but kissing on the mouth seems like it would be a really weird thing to do. I am not broken. I am not ‘going through a phase’ or ‘looking for attention’ or ‘trying to be special’. Everyone’s special, fuck you. Knowing that I am not the only person to feel how I feel makes me feel like I’m standing on solid ground. May all people experiencing the same confusion and distress over their sexual orientation that I felt growing up find their way safely to the same solid ground: you are not broken. We’re not broken.

[deus-ex-mona]

fairly smol guide to getting gud at honeypre

part 3: general tips that you were really here for

smol table of contents in this “series”:

characters

live

general tips that you were really here for

heyy welcome back!

but before we get into the “git gud” stuff, i’ll just briefly go through the system settings option in the options menu.

the left option is the “image resolution” option. the options there are “regular resolution” on the left and “lower resolution” on the right.

the right option is the mv options for when your device is on “power saving mode” (if google translate doesn’t fail me).

^sound sliders for general app operations.

push notifications settings.

on the top left is the option to get notified when your ♥︎s are fully restored. the middle has the notification for panmii’s “fortune telling” thing. the right option will notify you about your daily missions. the bottom option is the option to disable push notifications entirely.

and now, we finally move on to the good stuff.

“how do i survive songs?”

so the first thing i’ll say is that honeypre is in equal parts smart and dumb in that it has barely any characters with life-replenshing skills. of all my 4☆s, only ijiwaru na deai shibaken has a life-replenishing skill.

as such, they can’t be relied on 100% of the time, especially if you don’t have any.

for the record, these are all the 3☆s with stamina skills in my collection, and of them, only midori and kazuki can be obtained from the current gacha.

so how do you deal with a lack of healers?

with lipxlip, of course!

this romeo honeylight reduces the amount of damage taken when you get bad/miss notes. it’s a fairly reliable ally. plus, it has the added benefit of boosting the stats of aizo, yujiro, sena and hiyori!

additionally, the “title screen honeylight” (pictured below) is also a damage-reducing honeylight! though it will only boost the stats of characters with the hashtags of (#未来への出発点) [e.g. the initial 4☆s of Haruki and Midori] and (#何気ない日常) [e.g. the initial 4☆ of Yuu and the 3☆s of Kazuki, Koyuki and Midori]. so i’d recommend the lipxlip honeylight over this one lol

“why should i play songs on the expert difficulty?”

for the event points! the expert difficulty nets more event points than the hard difficulty. (e.g. 1750 points from playing on expert vs 1680 points from playing on hard, with the same team used for both instances).

additionally, the last set of missions in the ハニプレ009 event/ the “bingo card” event (the event in which you have to complete missions to “unlock” panels) has a panel that requires you to play 20 songs on expert to unlock. being able to complete that set of missions will net you a copy of the event 3☆, so being able to play expert difficulty songs is kiiindaaa crucial!

“how do i start playing songs on the expert difficulty?”

i’d recommend starting with an easy song!

here are my top picks:

additional pick: hatsukoi no ehon (first half). just be careful of the sliders before the chorus.

these are pretty standard beatmaps that are just a little leg up from the hard difficulty.

for slightly more challenging (but still relatively easy) songs, there are:

actually, both halves of shiawase are pretty easy. the reason why it’s in the “slightly more advanced” category is because the pv is so cute that i always end up crying when i watch it, beatmap or not of the sliders.

the first half of senpai is actually fairly easy, once you get the hang of the game. the second half is a killer, though, don’t let that rating fool you.

the second half of yume fanfare is pretty easy too; it’s just a long beatmap.

the only things to look out for in romeo are the note spams in the chorus. that, and the honeypre problem of unregistered notes.

and of course, you can classify almost every other under-20 difficulty rating song under this category.

“almost every other under-20 difficultt rating song?”

yes. don’t let the rating fool you, the first half of terekakushi shishunki on expert is a killer. tbf it’s not even that hard of a beatmap, it’s just that the note spam in the first ~10 seconds of the song is bad enough to wipe out your stamina.

7 seconds of oof^

the second half of terekakushi shishunki is pretty easy though ngl. it’s easier than the first half fosho. it’s just... long.

“which 25 difficulty song should i try first?”

in my biased opinion, taketori overnight sensation. it’s not that hard, just spammy at certain bits (and long). at the very least, it’s easier than pride kakumei. but before you move on to 25-difficulty songs, try testing yourself with the second half of senpai and the first half of terekakushi shishunki.

“what’s the best difficulty for attempting a perfect full combo?”

in my opinion, it’s the normal difficulty. it’s not as boring as the easy difficulty, and is not as note-dense as the hard and expert difficulties! it’s the ~perfect balance~ between the four difficulties.

but of course, expert difficulty songs can definitely be perfect full combo-ed too!

“how do i get a good score?”

fun fact: you don’t need to get a full combo to get a good score! the biggest contributing factor to good scores is, surprisingly(?), the skills of the characters!

the dumbest part of honeypre skills, in my opinion, is the fact that they are all timing-based (aside from the honeytime activating skills). which means that there would only be a chance for a skill to activate at certain time intervals (in seconds, of course).

thus, your best bet for attempting to get a good score would be to beef up your characters (skills included), get an optimised deck, and play a song that would be relatively easy to score on. my recommendation is, of course, the second half of romeo on expert, but the first half of taketori overnight sensation on expert is pretty high scoring as well. on further exploration, the second half of hatsukoi no ehon on expert is surprisingly high scoring, though some of the hold notes can be quite easy to miss at times. and now, we also have the first half of watashi no tenshi on expert!

“how do i get honeydia?”

the main way to get them is to get a good deck (for a higher chance of attaining high scores), play a bunch of beatmaps and wait for your song completion ranking to go up.

also, with each song you play, your fan count increases, thus stringing you further along on the success road (サクセスロード), which nets you a bunch of cool rewards like honeydia and story tickets at certain milestones.

additionally, remember to do the missions (ミッション)! by playing 3 songs a day, you can get 5 honeydia from the daily missions. plus, when there’s an ongoing event, event missions will give you honeydia as well!

but aside from that, you could watch an advertisement (CMを見てダイヤ GET!!) at the shop (ショップ) to get free 100 honeydia. you can watch one ad a day, and it resets daily at 5am jst.

thank you for reading this miniseries!

summary:

characters: beef them up to get strong teams

live settings: customise your settings to suit your needs!

other tips: DO NOT PLAY TEREKAKUSHI SHISHUNKI ON EXPERT. also, the romeo honeylight saves lives. stan romeo.

feel free to ask any questions and i’ll update this thing accordingly!

[rodypowderedmilk]

hehe @tonguetiedmisfit1

Del remembers being a teenager and desperately wanting to shop at Victoria Secret, like the girls with the beautiful bras in the laundry room. She wore Hanes bras from Target, and never felt comfortable or beautiful enough to join in with the confident strutting of the girls with the lacy bralettes and push up bras. Not to mention the imagined embarrassment of her mom doing the laundry on Sundays and having to move the lacy, sexy bras or underwear from the washer to the dryer. The situation was shudder inducing- at best. 

But she still thought about it and admired the window displays from the lingerie shops. In her brave moments she browsed the online shops, looking at all the pretty lace and gauzy material, the fancy embroidery and intricate straps. She wondered what it might look like on her body. 

Now, almost a real adult and going through her masters program in the shining and steaming city of New York, Del does her own laundry and has her own washing machine. Well. A washing machine that she doesn’t share with her mother. New York certainly has more malls and outlets than the midwest, and the copious amounts of advertisements- billboards, big screens, and window displays had been something to get used to. They’d become the starry night sky of home. On full moons, it used to light up the town, back home. Now every night in the city, there are no stars to be seen, but the light of the city is akin to every beautiful full moon. 

It was the second semester of her freshmen graduate program when she’d been on her walk home from campus, gyro remains in her hand from a late lunch when she’d walked past that great big Victoria’s Secret store. She’d taken one look at those glamorous black and white photos with the airbrushed girls and their [double decker titties] and said to herself, today is the motherfucking day. 

Del remembers wondering what Dr. Banner might think if he knew what she were using her internship money for, and at first it was hard to reconcile what seemed like such a frivolous and needless purchase with her current lifestyle. High school days were filled with going along for snack runs and declining to buy those chips she wanted, and trips to the mall wondering whether or not to use that three year old gift card from Auntie Margaret because maybe something even better will come along and I’ll really, really need it. 

Things have changed a bit from then. 

You keep trying to talk yourself out of it and the inside of your head is beginning to feel like a high school debate team meeting, except none of the arguments are well thought out or succinct. It’s mostly just panicked half-thoughts and repeated curse words. 

It’s, of course, not your first Avenger’s party- not even by a long shot. There’s been Superbowl Parties, March Madness Parties, dinner parties- sushi, pizza, and chocolate fountain alike. There've been drinking parties, and New Year’s parties, and then, of course, the Just Because parties. You are no stranger to the party planning expertise of Tony Stark. 

Tonight seems to be one of the ‘Just Because’ parties, with all the staff from the upper floors of the tower invited. Which means some of your coworkers from the lab floors. And, of course, Tony Stark who is a bloodhound. 

So, while the strappy piece of lingerie that is currently laying on the bed seemed like a good idea, it now seems very… rash. 

It’s black and… risque, to say the least, and you’ve already picked out a dress to wear over it. With any luck, no one will notice what you’re wearing underneath. But the thought of anyone finding out what you’ve got on is enough to send your head spinning and your stomach alight with aggravated nerves. You reach out to touch it, one little pat, and groans. It shouldn’t be this hard, should it!?

“Hey, uh Del?” 

You jump, hearing Bruce call from the other room and clutch at your chest which is still damp from your shower. 

“Are you almost ready?” he calls out. 

“Shiiit,” you curse to yourself through gritted teeth, lightly pounding your first against your forehead, “UhhrrrrAH, fuck- Yeah just a minute, I’ll be right there!” You yell. 

“Fuck.”

The ride up to the Party Deck, as Stark has so affectionately dubbed it, is spent trying to get your legs to stop shaking. Not to mention the, ahem, underclothes you’re wearing are wedgied so far up your ass you think if you were still a virgin, you might have just been deflowered. 

Bruce reaches out and grabs your hand, bumping his forehead against your shoulder, “Hey, you look really nice.”

The struggle to hide a squeal or a moan is immense and you finds your cheeks growing hotter despite how long you’ve been with this man. 

“Thanks, I- uh, thanks,” you give him a short smile. 

The elevator dings, opening, and Bruce places his hand on your back. You relax into him, grateful for his warm touch. God, he’s just a calming presence, and for a second you want to ride the elevator back up to his floor and just.. 

He tenses up beside you, and you realize his hand is resting just over where all the straps conjoin. You fight the urge to whine and collapse from embarrassment. He looks over at you, eyes wide. You’re hoping no one is looking at who’s just arrived. 

“Uh, surprise?” 

When you’ve made it away from the entrance, coaxing the shocked Bruce Banner beside you, he holds onto your arm. 

“Are you-” he blows air out through his mouth, and groans a little bit under his breath, “Mmmmm Del….”

All you can really do is whimper and squeak and face plant into his shoulder, making various embarrassed noises. “I’m sorry, I just! I got the idea and…”

Bruce runs his hands over your back, probably attempting to soothe you, and consequently feeling the rest of straps up and down your body. 

You pull back and look at his face, trying to gauge what he’s thinking. He swallows thickly, “Yeah.” 

He reaches down and absentmindedly adjusts himself, eyes still locked on you, his other hand still on your back. You squeak, “Bruce!” 

“Huh- oh, what? S’ just… tight.” 

You faceplant back into his shoulder, pretending to sob, “Ohmygod.”

He chuckles, “No, no, it’s good, I… I really like it.”

“Obviously,” you grumble. 

He holds your shoulders, pushing you back. He holds your face, “I really like it,” and presses his groin into your stomach. You can feel him hard under his pants, and it lights up your stomach, and deeper, between your legs where you’ve become hot and swollen- the arousal zinging through your body quicker than lightning. You hold back a whimper. 

He kisses your nose, “Now, let’s go see if we can find me a chair… or a pillow.” 

A snort escapes you, unattractively, and he shoots you a fond smile. 

The first 20 minutes pass without fanfare, although your stomach remains a livewire of energy and nerves, snapping like crackling fire and embers. Bruce sits beside you on the incredibly posh and low to the ground couch that Tony for some unthinkable reason has deemed acceptable for the Party Deck. Some of your coworkers are milling around and have stopped to come say hello to you and Dr. Banner. You fight a blush every time they do, what with Bruce’s hand comfortingly on your thigh, and his blazer awkwardly draped over his lap.

You’re worried at any second there’s going to be some impossible breeze and everyone is going to see your underthings, or maybe the material is actually see-through or thinner than you thought, and everyone is going around and whispering about what you’ve got on. 

You’re trying to hold onto the arousal that you felt moments ago, but are only grasping to the tail end of it, like a rope falling out of your hands. The longer you sit there, the more anxious you become. Until, of course, Bruce’s hand begins creeping up your thigh. 

You shoot him a look, and at first he looks bashful, but as you lean further into his side, he continues. His hand moves over one of the straps around your thigh and you can feel him breathing in shakily beside you. “Jesus, Del,” he says, breathlessly. His grip on your skin tightens, and you feel yourself growing hotter, thinking of the way he revels in the shape and feel of your thighs. He pulls at his pants again, looking around the room surreptitiously. “Ohmygod, Bruce,” you whine, tilting your head onto his shoulder. 

“Ah- I’m sorry! It’s- it's tight.”

You can’t help but nervously laugh, the noise coming out a bit hysterically. 

“‘And ‘s your fault,” he rumbles. That alone is enough to make you want to hide in the crook of his neck and never come out. 

“I’m sorry,” you whine, drawing out the y at the end. You’re feeling almost like you could cry, you’re so overwhelmed and anxious and hot. 

There’s the noise of a glass ringing, someone tapping their glass to make a toast, silencing the small crowd of the party. 

“Heyo,” Tony says, where he’s decided to stand on top of some impossibly designed coffee table, “drinks are served,” he announces, elongating his r and pronouncing the -ed ending. 

The crowd heads over to the bar, mostly leaving you and Bruce alone in your area of the floor. 

“You look like you could use a drink,” Bruce jokes, stroking his hand over your jaw, “you’re all red,” he teases, cupping your cheek. 

“Bruuuuce.”

It seems your embarrassment is just turning him on more because he adjusts himself again, actually palming himself this time. 

“Ohmygod, Bruce!” you whisper shout. 

“Wha- I can’t help it! It’s just-” he sighs, “you’re so fucking hot,” he says, almost mournfully. 

You feel like you have a sunburn, your face is so red- probably unflatteringly so, “Uhm, do you wanna… do you want me to…” you swallow, feeling his intent gaze on you, “you want me to, uhm, help?”

“Oh my god,” he mutters, almost to himself, “Yes. Yes. Please,” his voice cracks. “Wait, wait, are you sure? Are you sure?”

You’re not, really, but you respond, “Yes, yeah, of course. I offered didn’t I?”

He kisses you, so soft, so sweet, with a little nip, “Hey, you really don’t have to. I can- I can go get a glass of,” he swallows, “of ice, or or, or something, I-”

You stand up, holding his hand in both of yours, “Let’s go,” you pause, “please?”

He stands before you, blazer awkwardly held in front of his crotch.

“Yes. Yes, always.”

You’re pretty sure you two manage to slip away unnoticed by the crowd, and hopefully unnoticed by Stark, who’s ribbing you won’t be able to handle come Monday. 

You slam the door of the bathroom shut behind you, leaning heavily against it. Bruce is panting heavily, facing you and staring at you with the intense longing of a starved lion faced with a field of gisseles. 

“Ohmygod,” you whisper, covering your face with your arms, “oh my god, ohmygod.” You groan into the corner of your elbow. You’re genuinely worried your legs might give out, that feeling coursing through your stomach and between your thighs, turning you molten and shaky- like melting cotton candy about to be blown away into the wind. And then you feel Bruce’s warmth, pressing you into the door behind you with his hips, and caging you in with his hands pressed into the darkwood beside your head. And, god you can’t help but throw your arms around his neck and cling for dear life. Jesus, it’s just a glorified bra. 

“Hey, hey,” he kisses the side of your head, “Hey, baby, you’re okay. Listen, listen, we can go right upstairs, no problem.”

You shake your head, “Mm, no, please, wanna-” you gulp in air, “wanna suck you. Please.”

“Fuck. Fuck,” and he devours your [mouth], thrusting his tongue into your mouth like he wants to taste every inch of you. You can’t help but open up, melt into the door, and make soft whimpering noises- and he, he smiles into your mouth, devilishly amused at your reactions. “Mm, that’s my girl, huh?” he murmurs, kissing down your neck, the sharp press of his teeth making you gasp and grasp at the salt and pepper hair at the back of his head. 

His hands are under your dress, pulling and kneading at the skin of your thighs, hungrily feeling for the straps you’ve hidden under your clothes. 

“Mphm- wait, wait,” you pull back from him for a second, trying to get some oxygen to your brain and knowing that if you don’t pull his hands away from you, you’ll get fucked bare ass on the glass sink of Tony Stark’s ridiculously lavish party floor. The- it’s- underwear doesn't really go with the set you’ve bought. You’re surprised your dress hasn’t already got a wet spot on it from when you were sitting on that couch- and it’s, it’s made your thighs tacky with your own wetness. So, no, you don’t think Bruce- or you for that matter- will be able to contain yourselves.

Your hands are shaking as you try to unbutton his pants, weak with desire for him. “I just,” gasp, “gotta get my mouth on you,” you get out, finally getting the button. He shoves your hands away unzipping the rest and pulling his underwear under his cock, “Here, here, that’s it.”

It’s thick enough that you never quite get over the difficulty of getting your mouth around it, on it. Your mouth is spread wide enough for you to feel a tug at the corner of your mouth, a considerable stretch. And you never had a thing for big dicks before, but Bruce’s makes your mouth water, wrapping your lips around it and massaging your tongue against the head. 

You remember your first time with him, timid, and awkward, but so fucking hot to see him above you in pleasure. You’re not much better than that first time- can’t get the length very far down, and you’ve not mastered any intricate technique, but you’ve got a wet mouth and an eager disposition.

“Yeah, that’s my girl, look at you, so perfect. Damn, how’d I get so lucky, fuck, god you’re so beautiful.”

And that’s your other favorite part. No matter how poor of a job you do, Bruce seems to eat it up, praising you to hell and back, his mouth running faster than he can keep up with. It sends pleasure down your spine, tingling pleasantly against your neck and cradling you in warmth. It makes you suck on him harder, makes you whimper, makes you take him deep enough to gag. 

He reaches down, cradling your face between his palms, “mm, good gir- ah mm, good girl,” he’s got your hands in your head, half trying to pet you, and half trying to hold on to something. He’s got his head thrown back against the bathroom door, and that makes you swallow, and whimper, setting off vibrations against his skin. He’s hot and heavy in your mouth, hard and perfect. You can taste his wetness on the back of your tongue, and goddamn it’s just… fantastic. 

“That’s it, uhnn, fuck, that mouth, jesus you’re so good. So hot.

Look at you- how lucky am I, how lucky am I, hm?” 

He holds his hand under your chin, coaxing you to look him in the eyes, “You want this, baby?” he asks, checking in with you more than goading, and pushing his hips into you a little bit. You nod, or nod as much as you can with a mouthful of cock. He presses into you slowly, pulls out and then in again, “Oh, oh mm, baby, shit-” you suck on him harder, “whew, fuck that feels… uhhhhnnnn yeah, go on.

“Here let me hold you,” he says, holding your face and caressing his thumb over your cheek. You get a little too eager, slipping forward and gagging, wanting to feel his touch on your skin. “Gentle, gentle,” he eases, “damn, girl, you really want it, huh?” 

You nod and moan low in your throat. 

“OH, fuck, ahhmfuuuuck, you’re gonna get a lot more than you bargained for really quick, sweetheart, shit.”

And that makes you even more eager, bobbing up and down on his dick, breathing as deep as you can through your nose and letting a few tears roll down your throat. You’ve got your eyes trained on him, ensuring his eyes stay closed. You’re still a bit insecure about how you look giving head, and as far as you're concerned, if his eyes are closed, that means you’re doing a good job- and even better, he can’t see you. 

“Jesus, kid, you trying to make me look bad?” he says, with a little jerk of his hips. You can tell from the tension in his stomach, and the kicking of his dick in your mouth that he’s close. You can feel the tremors of his thighs, and you put in that extra mile.

“Fuck, fuck, slow down, slow down, slow down, oh no, fuck I’m gonna- Fuck, Del, sweetheart, I’m gonna come if you don’t-” you swallow hard, and moan, “you gotta-mmMM” and he comes in your mouth.

[floridarevealed]

���A Trip Over the Transit Railroad”

by Joanna Grey Talbot

In 1883 journalist A. L. W. took a trip on the Transit Railroad in Florida, which connected Fernandina on the Atlantic to Cedar Key on the Gulf. They shared their experiences in an article published on the front page of the May 15, 1883, issue of the The Weekly Floridian in Tallahassee.

Let’s follow along as they visit 10 towns along the route.

“The majority of persons living in Middle Florida, whose business or pleasure has not railed them to the Eastern part of the State, have very little idea of the material progress, the great influx of immigration, I lie important industries, or the rapid development of the country along the line of the Transit Railroad, which connect Fernandina, the best harbor on our Atlantic coast, with the important port of Cedar Key on the Gulf of Mexico; nor is it possible in the short scope of one letter to convey more than a general view of this very important portion of the State. The traveller from Middle Florida, after a night spent in the comfortable sleepers of the Florida Central and Western Railroad, which is under the efficient management of Major W. M. Davidson, a Middle Florida man, strikes the Transit road at…”

Hotel Oliver, Baldwin, Florida, courtesy of the State Library and Archives of Florida

Baldwin

“…long a very important transfer point for freights for the line of the Transit road. Cedar Key and the Gulf coast, which formerly came from the North and West via Savannah and Live Oak, but which, since the completion o! the Waycross “Short Line," is now delivered to the Transit system at Callahan, twenty miles north of Baldwin. […] The lumber industry along this road is immense, as is attested by the long trains of heavily loaded flat cars which were passed at various points; in fact, the monotony of the pine forest was almost constantly broken by a panorama of saw mills, young orange groves and handsome residences seen from the car windows as we sped along, till proving the existence of an industrious and thrifty population, each contributing his quota to the prosperity of the road and the material progress of the State. The towns of Highland, Lawty and Temples were passed when the brakeman called out…”

Call Street, Starke, Florida, courtesy of the State Library & Archives of Florida

Starke

“twenty minutes for dinner and alighting from the train we proceeded to the “Railroad House," kept by Mr. Kleinsmidt, an industrious German, who owns a farm and orange grove near town, while his estimable wile and charming daughters vie with each other in serving the tired traveller with all the good things which go to make up a first-class dinner. […] There are several groves in the vicinity, some bearing, while most of them are young.— In the town new houses are going up on all sides and the song of the saw and hammer is the music which greets one at every turn. […] Speeding along we soon reached…”

Seaboard Depot, Waldo, Florida, courtesy of the Matheson History Museum

Waldo

“…the junction of the Transit with the Peninsular Railroad. Here we switched off the through coach which is run daily from Jacksonville to Wildwood, thus obviating the necessity of a change of cars between these points. Waldo has a fine hotel, a cigar factory, several stores and churches, and is the terminal point of the Santa Fe Canal, which brings the fine orange country of the lake region within easy access of the railroad. […] Our next stopping place…”

Arlington House advertisement in the “Eden of the South,” 1883, courtesy of the State Library & Archives of Florida

Gainesville

“…the metropolis of East Florida, is a city of about four thousand inhabitants and the county site of Alachua, one of the richest agricultural counties in the State. […] Besides its numerous stores and other business places Gainesville has a bank, a cotton seed mill, three ginning establishments, three livery and sale stables, two depots (the Transit and Florida Southern), two first-class hotels, the Arlington and Varnum House, (the former about the size of our Leon) and quite a number of boarding houses. I have not space in this letter to devote to the above business enterprises the attention which each deserves. […] Six miles further on we come to…”

A Giant Crop of Irish Potatoes in Florida, courtesy of the Matheson History Museum

Arredondo

“…the boss vegetable station of the Transit road. I have not spoken of this industry heretofore because I was at a loss how to convey to the minds of your readers a just idea of the magnitude of this business on the line of the Transit and Peninsular roads. All along we had observed at the different stations large lots of vegetables in crates waiting shipment but here we saw the entire platform covered with piles on piles of crates filled with, beans, cucumbers, peas, Irish potatoes and cabbage […]. Some idea of the extent of the business may be gleaned front the fact that twice a week, Mondays and Wednesdays, an extra train far vegetables only, is run from Bronson to Fernandina to connect with the steamships of the Mallory line, in addition to the daily freight train.

Church Street, Archer, Florida, courtesy of the Matheson History Museum

Archer

“…also in Alachua county, is a live little town with five or six stores, and contributes its quota to the vegetable business. Peach culture has here been brought into some imminence by the Rev. J. P DePass, well known to many in our section.”

A.H. Bateman and family in front of their home in Bronson, ca. 1910, courtesy of the State Library & Archives of Florida

Bronson

“…the county site of Levy County, is distant from Cedar Keys about thirty-five miles. It has four stores, and besides being the shipping point of a vast scope of country for miscellaneous exports such as cotton, hides, wax, etc., being situated in the midst of a fine grazing country, large numbers of beef cattle are annually shipped from here to the markets of Savannah and Charleston. After passing Otter Creek, a flag station, we next arrive at…”

Rosewood

“…the residence of C. B. Dibble, Esq., who, in addition to his orange grove, has developed an entirely new industry; you who are familiar with the lovely flower gardens of the Floral City, just think of eight or ten acres in Tube Roses. The flowers are sold in Gainesville, Cedar Keys and other places, while the bulbs are shipped North, and I am told the proprietor has found it profitable. Soon after leaving this station we pass through a spur of the far-famed…”

Gulf Hammock fiber factory, ca. 1890, courtesy of the State Library & Archives of Florida

Gulf Hammock

“…probably the largest and finest body of hammock land in the State, whose sylvan depths furnish alike wealth to the enterprising cedar cutter, and the fattest turkeys and juiciest venison which ever tickled the palates of tourist epicures at the Egmont and St. James. Swiftly skimming over the few remaining miles we soon alighted at…”

Bird’s Eye View of Cedar Key, 1884, courtesy of the University of Florida Digital Collections

Cedar Keys

“…the Venice of the Gulf, whose cool sea breeze, fresh from the “cradle of the deep," tanned our (very dusty) brows, and tossed the smoke-plumes of our locomotive in fantastic wreaths and curls, the same whose shrill whistle had in the early morn mingled with the hoarse roar of old ocean as he piled his white-capped waves high on the smooth beach at Fernandina. […] Cedar Keys has been so often written up, and is so well known by reason and its importance as a Gulf port, that any attempt of my weak pen to do it justice would be futile. […] The principal industries of Cedar Key are its lumber mills, of which there are four or five for the manufacture of pine lumber, and two cedar mills belonging respectively to the Faber and Eagle Pencil Companies. In addition to the above its export of fish and oysters is a source of great revenue, while its sponge trade is by no means an inconsiderable item of its business. […]

“I have already spun this letter out to more than double my original intention, and yet “the half remains untold,” for one could find material for many letters in the beautiful little city of Cedar Key, and its adjacent Islands, bays and rivers, which I left with regret, feeling that next to the breezy hills of Tallahassee I would rather live on the lovely Gulf Coast of Florida.”

The full article can be viewed here via the Library of Congress’s Chronicling America database: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn82015289/1883-05-15/ed-1/seq-1/.

[ducktracy]

156. i only have eyes for you (1937)

release date: march 6th, 1937

series: merrie melodies

director: tex avery

starring: joe twerp (iceman), elvia allman (old maid, katie canary)

tex’s merrie melody input would grow stronger and stronger. by the end of the year, he’d be directing merrie melodies exclusively all the way until 1941. his next cartoon, a looney tune, would change the face of looney tunes for generations to come—porky’s duck hunt introduces us to the enigma that is daffy duck. but for now, the local ice delivery man attempts to win over katie canary by crooning. however, his methods for achieving such golden pipes are seldom legitimate.

right away, the story launches into a catchy little jive in minor key, exposing the plot. the ice delivery man, a bird with an overbite doing an eddie cantor eye roll as he rolls along in his jalopy, is on his way to deliver ice to his least favorite house. an old hag is absolutely smitten with him, to the point of sexual harassment as she flaunts the ever scandalous YOO HOO! sign in her window. the lyrics are highly amusing: “she orders 50 pounds of ice 10 times a week, he hates delivering ice to her!” the old maid’s line of attack is to lure the iceman in with her baked delicacies (”how our hero hates the stuff the old maid makes!”)

elsewhere, we stumble upon katie canary, who has our hero “nutty as a loon” (foreshadowing to porky’s duck hunt?) while iceman is out begrudgingly delivering unforeseen amounts of ice to a creep, his true love is obsessed with the crooners, perched in front of the radio, her house adorned with photos of crooners like bing crosby, eddie cantor, al jolson, and rudy vallee. why cantor and jolson are considered crooners beats me, but it’s certainly funny nonetheless.

it wasn’t long after this cartoon that joe dougherty was fired from the studio on account of his stutter being too out of control. in fact, the next porky cartoon, porky’s romance, would be his last. the directors made their frustration working with dougherty known, so much so that tex avery decided to lampoon it in this cartoon here. as iceman prepares to drop off his delivery to the old maid, he stumbles on his words and switches them up (joe twerp providing the vocals instead of joe dougherty): “ gy mosh—er, uh—my gosh. this old maid pure is a shest... er, boy, she sure is a pest.” i feel bad for dougherty, as he was talented in my eyes, but i can sympathize with tex’s frustration. dougherty’s stutter caused a lot of retakes, which, in turn, cost a lot of money. it’s easy to be fed up. while this isn’t the most friendly of characters in terms of background, i admit that it amuses me a lot, knowing the backstory.

sure enough, the old maid IS a pest. iceman creeps into the house, shifty-eyed as he gingerly drops a block of ice in the icebox. the coast is eerily clear, and for good reason. great setup on tex’s part: she’s baking pies, putting up creepy signs, she makes her presence known. so why isn’t she breathing down iceman’s neck? the tension is very strong and very believable. with that, iceman tiptoes out, his speed gaining as he grows more and more relieved... until the door slams shut as the old maid pins him inside, waiting behind the door the entire time. 

right away, the old maid attempts to corner the iceman, shoving food in his face she had been storing behind her back. the iceman struggles to refuse, stumbling “oh, tho nanks. er, na thonks. er, not me!” the gag picks up in momentum as poor, meek iceman almost breaks out into a backwards run, the old maid pulling out donuts and watermelons and turkeys behind her back with the utmost of ease and nonchalance. 

terrified, the iceman pins himself against a wall, which turns out to be a murphy bed. the bed flops onto the ground, concealing the iceman, while the old maid sighs in perverted satisfaction. “at last, a MAN!”

i can only wonder if bob clampett animated this next scene, seeing as it would be reused in the daffy doc. while a hysterical surgeon-to-be daffy crawls in and around a bed with a handsaw, pursuing a terrified porky, the old maid dives under the bed and crawls on top of it, pursuing the iceman in a VERY similar fashon. nevertheless, iceman outsmarts the old maid, jumping out of the bed and allowing the murphy bed to spring back into the wall, old maid inside it and all. a famous, amusing tex avery-ism as iceman hops into his truck and screeches away. suddenly, he reverses, giving an exhausted “whew!” to the audience before speeding out of sight once more.

finally, a more pleasant delivery as iceman arrives to the abode of his crush, katie canary. but this is a different delivery—our hero comes bearing flowers. he bumbles his way inside, katie still perched in front of her own love, the radio, fiddling with the dial. “fere’s some howers—er—how’s some fleers—“ while iceman stumbles his way through, katie rudely hushes him as she finds her desired radio station. the warm warbles of bing crosby’s “let it be me” fill the air, and katie listens, enraptured, while iceman leans against the radio in a huff. borrowed from another tex entry, i love to singa, bing interrupts his singing. “don’t lean on the radio, son, you bother me.”

when the song ends, iceman perks up, offering his flowers to katie. however, katie still refuses. this is the first of MANY, MANY, MANY katharine hepburn impressions, primarily in tex avery cartoons. tex just LOVED kat’s voice, finding it as the perfect lampoon. katie speaks in the hepburn inflection, shooing him away. “please go away. cahn’t you see i’m saving my haaht and my lahv for radio croonahs? someday, somewhere, sometime i shall marry one, and i know we should be all so tehhribly happy, rahlly i do.” poor iceman wilts, along with his flowers, a telltale sign of Lost Romance. iceman sulks out the door, nearly dragging along across the floor.

in his jalopy, iceman hilariously struggles to sing a rendition of “let it be me”, eventually giving up and growling “aw, let it go, let it go...” carl stalling’s musical accompaniment is excellent, the chorus repeating like a broken record as the iceman tries his damnest to get the words right. this start/stop approach of music would accompany porky plenty of times when he himself tries to sing (like when he struggles to sing “singin’ in the bathtub” in polar pals.) 

suddenly, iceman perks up as he stumbles across a sign: 

PROF. MOCKINGBIRD

VENTRILOQUIST

AND

IMITATOR

but of course! an impressionist! tex fills up some time by including closeups of signs, such as the aforementioned one and the sign outside of the prof’s door that advertises PROF. MOCKINGBIRD -- PRIVATE. prof. mockingbird greets him with a “hullo, strenza!” (a yiddishism reused from i love to singa) and iceman tries to get to the point. after struggling, he cuts to the chase. “look, do something!”

mockingbird more than obliges. because this is a tex avery cartoon, not only does the bird perfectly imitate ducks, dogs, roosters, even car horns, he contorts his body to accompany his display of talent, even twisting and bending himself around as he imitates an airplane. iceman is certainly impressed. “that’s swell. er, that’s crell, but can ya swoon? er, can ya swim? i mean, can you croon?” a few lines of the title song (the actual song, not the exposition!) confirms iceman’s suspicions. floored, iceman yanks mockingbird out of the office and stows him away in the back of his ice truck.

back to iceman’s pursuit as katie canary elegantly swipes her hand through her “hair” (bob clampett animation), peering out the window, when warm warbles catch her ear. delighted, she rushes to the window, spotting none other than iceman singing “i only have ice for you” from his truck. a lovely layout and angle. and, as expected, we see mockingbird inside the truck, supplying the vocals instead of iceman, both pantomiming one another. the scene is humorous as it is with the fake vocals, but iceman pantomiming the unseen mockingbird is even better.

katharine katie has been won over. “i knew he’d come, my lover, my sweet one!” she provides a mini soliloquy as she theatrically poses on her staircase, dreaming of how “sadly happy” she will be. “oh, at lahst, to be held in the arms of a crooner, it will make me so sadly happy... rahlly, it will.” tex would have a field day with katharine hepburn soliloquies, as he displays in his epic hamateur night. katie eagerly hops in iceman’s jalopy, and together they ride.

inside, however, is a bleaker scene: mockingbird is positively freezing. another fun tex(t) gag as iceman shiftily rings a buzzer on the side of the truck. inside, a sign blazes SWING IT! the poor mockingbird gives a nasally, shuddering, poor rendition of the eponymous song, trying not to freeze to death. katie grows slightly suspicious as sounds of an oncoming sneeze loom, but shrugs it off as the vocals revert to semi-normal. 

“boy, it’s bloody cold in here!” interjects the mockingbird. katie grows increasingly curious and suspicious as iceman recognizes his folly. the vocals grow worse and worse (yet funnier for the audience.) hilarious animation by who i presume to be is bob clampett, with katie’s suspicious grimaces and winks, iceman batting his eyelashes and shrinking into himself, it has clampett written all over it (and those expressions would be reused in similar nature to some of his cartoons. porky’s badtime story and baby bottleneck come to mind for the grimaces and the eyelash batting.)

finally, mockingbird gives a behemoth of a sneeze, blowing iceman’s cover as the entire back half of the truck is ripped off, a freezing iceman quivering on a block of ice. katie stares down iceman as he wrings his hat, his tail between his legs.

and so-- (signaled with a highly amusing offscreen ed wynn warbling “SO--” ), we find katie canary pouring boiling hot water in a wash tub, where the recovering mockingbird is soaking his feet in an attempt to warm up. two movers come in and haul away katie’s fated radio, replacing it with a refrigerator. katie and the mockingbird happily embrace.

AND OUR HERO—he sits in the old maid’s kitchen, feeding him all the delicacies he could dream of. he devours a pie, and while he prepares to dig in for another, he finds himself holding the old maid instead, prepping for a kiss. iceman recoils, pausing to put on sunglasses and hesitantly accepting the kiss. he addresses the audience, stumbling on his words, until he gets to the point—“well anyhow, she can cook!” iris out on the unlikely couple as they kiss once more.

this is an intriguing cartoon that i grew to appreciate the more i watched. the opening number was catchy as can be, and implementing the title song as a rendition sung questionably and sickly is certainly an interesting choice. it’s obvious tex wanted to do more than just advertise a song—it’s almost as if he was like “i’ll give you your damn song, alright.” while tex is hardly sentimental or endearing, this is definitely an endearing cartoon. you can easily sympathize with the iceman and his search for love. you can feel the apprehension as he treks through the dangerous territory that is the old maid’s kitchen, you can feel his heartache when katie canary dismisses him away in favor of her crooners, you can feel his red hot embarrassment as his fake crooner plans turn awry. he has much more personality than he lets on... or perhaps he just resonates more than usual. the whole stuttering thing was highly amusing, too. you can tell tex really wanted to go the roy atwell approach with dougherty, mixing up sentences and words and cutting to the chase, but couldn’t because of dougherty’s stutter. joe twerp does an excellent job and is one step closer to tex’s dreams being realized. tex’s next cartoon, porky’s duck hunt, his dream would be fully realized as mel blanc takes the stage as porky for the first time.

in all, this is a good short! i enjoyed it quite a lot. it has a lot of personality to it, and it’s certainly a different approach to the merrie melodies as we’ve been seeing. give it a go!

link!

[thesethingsofours]

Nina Simone, Duende & Pastel Blues

Nina Simone’s Pastel Blues is a true embodiment of duende — the rare depth and darkness that impels her work.

1969 © Jack Robinson / Hulton Archive

Her distinctive warble permeates thousands of movie soundtracks, hip hop samples and advertisements, let alone the countless personal moments by which people demarcate their lives. This omnipresence allows us to forget who Nina Simone was, and the outright value of her music. For the streaming generation, knowledge of such an artist is limited to “top hits”; on some Spotify, Sunday Mood playlist. Or worse, the songs will only wriggle into the brain from various attempts to sell Coca-Cola, Seat Atecas, Renault Clios, Volvo XC90s, Fords, Apple Watches, Chanel №5, Warehouse discount clothes, Virgin Flights, HTC Phones, Jockey underwear and Behr Paint.

Most egregious among these is the Muller Light yoghurt advert, inescapable for anyone sentient in early 2000s UK. It uses her 1968 song I Ain’t Got No, I Got Life, but only the second, I Got Life half; carving it off entirely from its I Ain’t Got No essence. In its truncated form, the song sounds like a free-wheeling celebration of life and limb: Got my hair, got my head / Got my brains, got my ears / Got my eyes, got my nose / Got my mouth, I got my smile. Yet the missing section is a lengthy condemnation of segregated American society, where disenfranchised black people had been given nothing to cling to: Ain’t got no mother, ain’t got no culture / Ain’t got no friends, ain’t got no schoolin’ / Ain’t got no love, ain’t got no name /…Ain’t got no god / Hey, what have I got? / Why am I alive, anyway?

Yes, the song contains positivity in tune and verse, but stripping the darkness from Simone’s work also strips away its incandescent light. It would be like taking Rodin’s Gates of Hell and shrouding everything except the seemingly peaceful thinker at the centre; or cutting the lightbulb from the top of Picasso’s Guernica and presenting it as a bright, merry, representative segment. Or a millionaire DJ taking Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream Speech and turning it into a dance track during race protests and a global pandemic. But surely not even David Guetta would do that.

The reduction of such a deliberate and profound artist to commercialised snippets is saddening. In Simone’s case this is particularly true because of the highly unusual, powerful darkness that clutches her music. She has something rare. In Spanish, it is known as duende.

Duende

Rooted in Iberian cultures, duende derives from “duen de casa”, meaning “possessor of a house”. Originally the superstition of a dark, goblin-like spirit, it is now the concept of impassioned, death-endorsing, creative invention; typically associated with the performative aspects of Flamenco. In that context, poet and playwright Federico García Lorca describes its contemporary meaning (in his 1933 Buenos Aries lecture, Theory and Play of the Duende), as the “buried spirit of saddened Spain”. 

As a guitar maestro explained to him, “the duende is not in the throat: the duende surges up, inside, from the soles of the feet”. Lorca quotes others, one, after listening to Paganini’s violin, identified it as, “a mysterious force that everyone feels and no philosopher has explained”; or another, upon hearing Manuel de Falla perform Nocturno, proposed that, “all that has dark sounds has duende”. In Lorca’s own words:

For every man, every artist called Nietzsche or Cézanne, every step that he climbs in the tower of his perfection is at the expense of the struggle that he undergoes with his duende. Not with an angel, as is often said, nor with his Muse…

…With idea, sound, gesture, the duende delights in struggling freely with the creator on the edge of the pit. Angel and Muse flee, with violin and compasses, and the duende wounds, and in trying to heal that wound that never heals, lies the strangeness, the inventiveness of a man’s work.

Nina Simone embodies duende.

1968 © Hulton Archive

It exists not only within her more explicit protest songs, born of the Civil Rights movement, but is present in everything she did — a ferocity, fragility, sadness and authenticity that claws its way up her throat and flings itself from her open mouth. It’s an otherworldly channelling of something very few can access, but which audiences pray to feel. With music so steeped in darkness, using it to gleefully sell products is a comedy — a joke on the shamelessness naivety of consumers and marketeers — as well as a tragedy.

A Brief History

Born Eunice Kathleen Waymon in 1933 and raised in Jim Crow-era North Carolina, Simone was ambitiously desirous of becoming a concert pianist — an uncommon career path for a young black girl at the time. Despite obtaining the ability to do so, she was instead funnelled into performing a mixture of jazz, gospel, soul and folk. And blues, in every shade. Her voice — ostensibly untrained — was burnished in the fire of necessity: if she wanted to earn money in the clubs, she had to sing as well as play piano. She electrified audiences, but remained persistently dissatisfied with how she was received and perceived:

It’s only normal to want acceptance from one’s own country for one’s gifts God has given you. I’m tired of begging for it. It took me 20 years of playing in clubs, in nightclubs, on the concert stage doing all these records to get a decent, real accurate review of my gifts by the New York Times… It was the first time I had been compared to Maria Callas as a diva. All before that I had been labelled a jazz singer, a blues singer, High Priestess of Soul, which… I am not sure what that is. I have studied piano 18 years! So yes I’m tired. I’m too old to keep asking for love from the industry. (Nina Simone, 1984)

Elevated by activists and aficionados alike, yet shunned by the industry at the height of her popularity after vigorously speaking out for black rights (see: Mississippi Goddam), she evolved as an artist in parallel with the revolution of television; first appearing in grainy monochrome and then in saturated technicolour. In the 12-year period between 1959 and 1971, she released 16 studio albums. In the years that followed, before her death in 2003, she released just four more.

Pastel Blues

These days, the idea of albums is virtually defunct, Drakefied to an incoherent heap of songs occasionally “dropped” like laundry, to be worn or discarded at the listeners behest. But as with other great artists, if the extent of Simone’s depth and duende is to be appreciated, it is essential to listen to her albums — the home of her authorship.

Pastel Blues is a nine track, 36-minute LP, mainly of covers and blues standards. It was released in October 1965, eight months after Malcolm X was assassinated, seven months after Bloody Sunday in Selma, and two months after the Voting Rights Act became law. Arguably, it arrived at the height of the movement. Nina Simone was 32. Just imagine.

Although the title suggests something soft and light, underneath the label, the substance is preternatural. As you listen, watch the image on the cover transform from a gentle gaze into a pointed glare; a stare in stereo. Altogether, it is a marvellous enunciation of Nina Simone’s darkness, with which she writhed in body, mind, and soul to give us some of the most memorable artworks of the 20th century. Pastel Blues gives her duende its due.

Listen to Pastel Blues on Apple Music 

Listen to Pastel Blues on Spotify (1965 Live Version)

Listen to Pastel Blues on YouTube

Track-By-Track

Be My Husband

It opens with Be My Husband, featuring lyrics incidentally written by Simone’s own husband (and manager), Andrew Stroud. Slightly off-kilter, echoey, four-beat stamping and clapping, heightened by the tight splash of a high-hat, introduces a languid, yet driving pace. With purity of purpose, Simone’s voice drawls intensely into her opening repeated demand: Be my husband and I’ll be your wife / Love and honour you the rest of your life.

It suggests a woman pleading for the hand of her lover, committing to do all he would expect of a wife: If you want me to cook and sew / Outside of you there is no place to go. In return, she asks him only to curb his wandering eye: Stick the promise man you made me / That you stay away from Rosalie, yeah. This is presumably the intended (somewhat biased) perspective of the lyricist. But the way Simone sings it, with improvised shrieks dropping into deep, bassy groans, something quite different is suggested.

Nina Simone & Andrew Stroud, photographer unknown.

At this point, Simone was four years into an emotionally and physically abusive marriage with Stroud. Knowing this, it has far more resonance to picture her in a kitchen, staring down a boorish, unsatisfactory, and unsatisfying man; stomping on a linoleum floor, and throwing him a powerful, sacred ultimatum — give me what you promised. To imagine it otherwise is to imagine how Ed Sheeran might perform it — with the frivolousness of a millennial wedding on a sunny day in Surrey, and all the stamping, clapping vigour of a gaggle of giggling, inebriated aunts.

Furthermore, Be My Husband is effectively a re-worked chain gang song from the segregated south — a version of Rosie by the Inmates of Parchman Farm Penitentiary recorded in 1947 Mississippi by ethnomusicologist, Alan Lomax (and notoriously sampled by… well, well, well… hello again, David Guetta). The original lyrics ring out: Be my woman, gal, I’ll be your man… Stick to the promise girl that you made me / Won’t got married til’ I go free. Even aside from Simone’s interpretation, its genesis as a song of imprisonment immediately gives it a grimmer tone.

Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out

As it bows to track two, Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out, the heavy opening of the album is extended. A blues standard written in 1923, it was popularised by Bessie Smith’s 1929 recording and re-introduced to a new audience by Eric Clapton, who performed it throughout his career. Sam Cooke, Otis Reading, Janis Joplin, Bobby Womack, John Lennon, Derek and the Dominos and Duane & Gregg Allman all put their spin on it, with wildly varying degrees of quality, duende and notoriety.

It begins deceptively upbeat: Well once I lived the life of a millionaire / spending my money I didn’t care / Taking my friends out for a mighty good time. Simone’s version is no different as she lightly pads major key piano chords, but what immediately sets her rendition apart is the tremble in her voice. It sounds like she is singing through tears, not least when the song reaches its sobering bridge: Nobody wants you / Nobody needs you.

In Simone’s case, the song became painfully prescient. Following her fall from grace within the music industry, she left for Barbados in 1970, where she had an affair with then Prime Minister, Errol Barrow. Her subsequent divorce from Stroud limited access to her income, which he, as her manager, controlled. Also, due to an arrest warrant for taxes she withheld in protest at the Vietnam War, Simone was unable to return to the US, so ended up first in Liberia, then living across Europe. With little money to live from and few relationships to speak of, for a time, she came to epitomise the song.

End of the Line

The first fully original song on the album, End of the Line is initially carried by another deception of positiveness, this time through its melody; romantic and light despite the lyrics: This is the end of the line / I’ve clearly read every sign / The way you glance at me / Indifferently / And take your hand from mine. Such is the flowing nostalgia of the tune, it is plausible to imagine the same song with all words made positive (e.g. The way you glance at me / So happily / And place your hand in mine).

Divisible into two parts, the first has the feel of Simone sipping a martini in a Rogers & Hammerstein bar (perhaps offering some musical theatrical hope of salvation). The second, however, gives way to resigned sorrow, over a steady, rumba beat. Aside from showcasing Simone’s prodigious classical piano-playing ability — albeit only through twinkling, floral runs — the richness of her vocal tone spills forth, smoothly and lusciously, particularly in the second half. While lyrically it lacks the forcefulness of other tracks, its simplicity opens the door to Simone’s abundant musicality.

Trouble in Mind

Written in 1924, Trouble in Mind is another blues standard, but given its title, after three tracks of despair, it surprisingly brings a degree of levity.

The original lyrics (as sung by Dinah Washington, Janis Joplin, Jerry Lee Lewis, Ella Fitzgerald, Marianne Faithful, Johnny Cash and original recording artist Thelma La Vizzo) are far darker than this version. Typically, the singer, wrestling with the irrepressible demons of their psyche, contemplates suicide by train: I’m gonna lay my head / On some lonesome railroad line / Let the 2:19 train / Ease my troubled mind. Yet on Pastel Blues, it never gets that far.

While refrain of the song always concludes: I won’t be blue always / ‘Cause the sun’s gonna shine in my back door someday, Simone’s version leans more heavily on those lyrics than others’ versions; giving it a more hopeful perspective. She also dresses the music with a quicker, cheerier pace. Furthermore, instead of seeking the certainty and finality of a gruesome suicide, she resolves only that: I’m going down to the river / Gonna get me a rocking chair / If the Lord don’t help me / I’m gonna rock away from here. 

Given she was be known to perform the full lyrics on other occasions, it is an interesting choice to uplift them on Pastel Blues. In terms of the album’s full narrative, however, it makes sense to offer a moment of optimism, keeping us on an undulating journey of emotion, rather than wallowing solely in melancholy.

© Ron Kroon

Tell Me More and More and Then Some

The dynamic changes once again in Tell Me More and More and Then Some, as Simone hints towards her unapologetic, simmering, sexuality. Sex is known to have often enthralled her — as she wrote in her diary, “My attitude toward sex was that we should be having it all the time.”

Originally recorded in 1940 by Billie Holiday, Simone tweaks the lyrics to make the titular line more demanding, more desirous: I want more, more and then some. Accompanied by quivering, raunchy harmonica and clanging, insistent piano chords, Simone’s phrasing and emphasis draws lustfulness from the lyrics: You know how I love that stuff / Whisper from now on / To doomsday / But I never no no no no, ooh / I never, no I never, will get enough. It’s an erotic elaboration on Holiday’s already sultry interpretation, loading the request for whispered sweet nothings with a throbbing, sexual overtone.

Chilly Winds Don’t Blow

Chilly Winds Don’t Blow acts as a natural, also largely optimistic companion to Trouble in Mind, making Tell Me More and More and Then Some the bawdy, thick-cut meat between two, forward-looking slices of bread. That said, the song was previously released by Simone as single in 1959, as an even more upbeat spiritual, with denser orchestration and less of her signature vocal style.

On Pastel Blues, however, it is likely sung from a position of matured disappointment towards the unending hostility experienced by black Americans. With a sparser arrangement and greater vocal freedom, the new context is pointedly conveyed: There will be red roses round my door / I’m going where they’ll welcome me for sure, oh baby / Where the chilly winds, they don’t blow. Notably, as her piano rumbles, mimicking the sound of a rolling, cold wind, Simone also refers to her own maturity, as a woman. In this new version, she no longer wants to go where her father waits for her. Instead, it’s her daddy who will be waiting.

1968 © David Redfern

Ain’t No Use

Recorded in 1959 by Joe Williams and Count Basie, Ain’t No Use manifested as a break-up song. In that bright, brassy version, Williams croons at the opening: Ain’t no use of hanging round / Ain’t no use I put you down / There’s no love left / In my heart for you. In Simone’s rendition, the subject of the warning is much more ambiguous. When considered alongside Chilly Winds Don’t Blow and the tracks that follow, Simone instead implies a sense of exasperation, perhaps a desire to withdraw from broken American society, or the increasingly hostile music industry. She opens not with fallen love but accusation and fatigue: Ain’t no use baby / I’m leaving the scene / Ain’t no use baby / You’re too doggone mean / Yes I’m tired of paying dues / Having the blues / Hitting bad news.

To this point, Pastel Blues is a solid, often special, blues album, but here it really begins to soar; marking it apart. The underlying anguish of the blues is of course ingrained in the genre, but with Simone, her duende, fraught personal life, and civil rights activism, a dramatic narrative acceleration begins to emerge in the gap between Ain’t No Use and Strange Fruit (and again between Strange Fruit and Sinnerman). Without realising, tracks one to eight have been quietly coaxing you towards the edge of a cliff. The final two  rip through you, forcing you over the edge before you can pull back. Amidst the silence between the songs, everything that preceded becomes re-contextualised with a deeper, darker tone. Embrace the fall.

Strange Fruit

The majesty of Strange Fruit is well documented — in 1999, Time named it the best song of the century. It was written by Abel Meeropol — a white, Jewish sometime Communist, and real-life MacGuffin, who intersects with numerous historically important features of 20th century America, but never appears at their forefront.

As a student and then teacher at Dewitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, he crossed paths with a young James Baldwin and numerous other luminaries of American culture. After seeing a photograph of a lynching, he felt compelled to write; originally penning the words as an anti-lynching poem. Published in a teacher’s union publication, it concisely described the horror he had seen through the sinister metaphor of a seemingly innocuous fruit tree. He later set it to music and presented it to Billie Holiday, who recorded her socially and sonically remarkable version in 1937. In 1945, he gave up teaching to become a full-time songwriter under the pen name Lewis Allen (the first names of his two, tragically stillborn sons), most famously writing Frank Sinatra’s Oscar winning, patriotic short film and accompanying song, The House I Live in. Not only that, but in 1953 he adopted the two sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg — a Jewish couple famously executed for spying on America for the Soviet Union.

Abel Meeropol with sons Michael and Robert Meeropol in 1954, via Robert Meeropol

As for the song itself, if Holiday’s recording is classical — a regretful, tender jazz lament — Simone’s is something more modern, more openly enraged; a cutting, resonant howl; transcending genre. The arrangement is minimal and masterful at once, with often dissonant piano chords treading like distressed steps through fallen leaves towards the horrifying tree at the agonising conclusion. It climaxes with a literal wail as the end nears: Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck / For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck / For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop / Here is a strange and bitter crop.

Its intensity lent itself perfectly to the sample on Kanye West’s scorching rebuke of destructive celebrity relationships, Blood On the Leaves.

Sinnerman

Simone’s Sinnerman is virtually unrecognisable from the first, folky version recorded by the Les Baxter Orchestra in 1956. Baxter adapted (read: plagiarised) the song from On the Judgement Day, by the Sensational Nightingales, which in turn takes elements from the 1924 No Hiding Place Down Here, by the Old South Quartette. But much like Jeff Buckley’s version of Leonard Cohen’s similarly spiritual Hallelujah, Simone’s version remains, and will forever remain, the definitive iteration; the most copied, covered, celebrated and recognised; never bettered beyond that point.

As her Sinnerman evolves, it reveals the preceding short, eight tracks to have been little more than an (excellent) overture to this — the epic, operatic finale. At ten and a half minutes, it makes up nearly a third of the entire album. Brace yourself.

After the silent gap following Strange Fruit — another inhale between urgent roars — the first few bars are timeless, perhaps some of the most familiar notes ever recorded. Piano keys clamber over one another, skipping like a broken record. A foot taps out a light beat in the background. The percussion joins: a double-time, racing, hi-hat heart rate, yielding only to the occasional heavy, melodious thump of a double bass. Simone enters, Oh, Sinnerman, where you gonna run to? / Sinnerman, where you gonna run to?

1967 © Tony Gale

After Strange Fruit, the question takes on new meaning. Picture Simone in a deep purple Cadillac Deville n hot pursuit of a fleeing lynch mob; hood down, foot down, brow furrowed, engine roaring, steering on the edge of control. This toying with tumbling gives the song its energy. Like running down a steep slope, with the slightest misstep, all would be lost. As the beats impatiently trip over the piano notes, it feels like it’s constantly accelerating; never settling into a regimented pace.

After erupting into a minute-long call and response of: Power!, Sinnerman changes gear. A jangling, twanging guitar breathes heavily in contemplation of the next charge. The music fades, leaving only intimidating clapping, until the piano returns most wonderfully with a couple of pleasingly apparent (yet well-intended) mistakes; three or four notes missed, misplaced, or hesitated over as the tune searches again for its order among the tumult. When found, it resurges with renewed purpose; Simone audibly hyperventilating in anxious anticipation: So I run to the river, it was boiling / I run to the sea, it was boiling / All on that day. Judgement Day has arrived, and the devil is everywhere. 

(Should this masterpiece really ever be used to sell hatchbacks?)

It ends with a pleading prayer, agitated piano chords and chaotic drums: Don’t you know, I need you Lord?, Simone cries. Whether the prayer is answered, we’ll never know, but as the percussion takes over and batters us into a final, frenzied submission, it feels too late.

Exhausted and exhilarated, Pastel Blues is at its end. But within it, Nina Simone’s duende forever persists.

[arysafics]

Think of the Children

Summary:  RAs Clarke and Bellamy host a sex education lesson, which turns out to be a lot more than that.

prompt: Bellamy and Clarke are RAs and their residents keep coming to them with all these sex questions that initially start off innocent like about contraception but become more about how to please their partners and stuff (they see bellarke as mom and dad so they want all the advise)! Bellamy and Clarke decide that the best way to help is to show them so they host a “workshop” where they pretty much just have sex with each other in front of their residents to “teach” them how to have fun safe consentías sex

Rated E, ~3,700 words

Clarke barges into Bellamy’s dorm room, as she frequently does these days. He never keeps his door locked anymore. Thankfully, he’s fully clothed, sitting at his desk, frowning at his computer screen. He doesn’t even look up as she collapses on his unmade bed.

“You need something?” he asks.

“Maya just asked me if I would go and buy condoms for her. She’s too nervous to do it herself.”

“What did you say?”

“I told her where she could get free ones. That’s not the point though.”

Bellamy spins around in his chair to face her. “So what is the point?”

“The kids keep asking me sex questions.” The kids, not actually kids at all, but a bunch of eighteen and nineteen-year-olds that live in the dorms, whom Clarke and Bellamy have been charged with looking out for, as the dorm RAs.

“You can palm the sex questions off to me if it makes you uncomfortable,” Bellamy says. “Although I’m guessing the girls feel more comfortable coming to you.”

“Yeah, no offence, but if I were an eighteen-year-old virgin, my hot RA would not be the person I would go to for sex advice.”

“Hot RA, huh?” Bellamy smirks.

“Don’t get cocky,” Clarke rolls her eyes. She sits up and folds her legs under herself. “Anyway, it’s not that I feel uncomfortable. It’s just I get asked those kinds of questions more than anything else. We’re responsible for thirty-something eighteen-year-olds and I swear I’ve been asked the same questions that many times.”

Bellamy leans back in his chair. “Yeah, I gotta admit, I get asked a lot of sex questions too. Although I feel like it’s a lot less about contraception and more about how to get a woman to have sex with you.”

“So maybe we should just get all the kids together and just answer all the questions at once. Like a sex education workshop or something. We know high school sex ed sucks, it could be helpful. I know a lot because my mom’s a doctor, and you—well…”

“Have a lot of sex?”

Clarke shrugs. “You said it, not me.”

Bellamy grins. “A sex ed workshop, huh? It could be fun.”

“Fun is not what I was thinking.”

“If it’s not fun, they won’t want to come.”

“Well, you figure out how to make it fun, and then we’ll set a date and time. We’ll do it in the common room and we can use the whiteboard for like… diagrams and stuff.”

“You’re in charge of diagrams.”

“Obviously.”

“So, uh…” Bellamy says, scratching the back of his neck. “Is that the only reason you came here, or…”

Clarke flushes. She knows what he’s asking. A few weeks ago, while she was drunk in his room, she may have let slip that she likes to be watched while she gets off. Which then turned into her pulling off her panties and masturbating in front of him. And she may have done it a couple more times since then, without the assistance of alcohol.

“I don’t have a vibrator with me.”

“You can use your fingers. Like the first time.”

Clarke bites her lip. Just thinking about it has her loins throbbing. She brings a hand to the button on her jeans, pausing before she pops it open. She keeps her eyes locked on Bellamy. He’s watching her hand with baited breath.

Clarke slides her hand into her panties, and she’s surprised at how wet she is already. She runs her middle finger up and down her slit a couple of times, knowing Bellamy is on the edge of his seat, waiting for her to take her pants off and show him what she’s doing.

“Are you wet?” he asks hoarsely. Impatient. Clarke nods. “You gonna show me?” Clarke nods again. She’s about the pull her jeans off, when someone knocks on the door.

“Shit,” she says, hastily doing her jeans back up.

Disappointment crosses Bellamy’s face. He clears his throat. “Come in,” he calls. The door opens, and Jasper Jordan walks in.

“Hey, Bellamy—” he starts, then stops when he sees Clarke on Bellamy’s bed. “Oh, sorry. Am I interrupting?”

Clarke shakes her head. She hopes her face isn’t as red as it feels. “No. I was just leaving.” She gets up off the bed and heads past Jasper to the door. She looks back at Bellamy. “Think about what we can do to make it fun,” she tells him, and then she leaves him to deal with whatever Jasper’s problem is.

 -----

 About half of the people living in their residence hall show up to what Clarke advertised as a Sex Information Night. Bellamy wanted to call it Sex for Dummies, but Clarke vetoed that suggestion.

They’d posted a notice on the community board, as well as in the Facebook group Clarke had created at the start of the year, that read:

SEX

Information Night!

If you have any burning questions, queries or things you need clarifying to do with the topic of sex, whether it’s about contraception, consent, pleasure, or anything else, come to our information night.

Featuring advice, explanations, demonstrations, and most importantly, free food.

This Thursday night at 6pm in the common room.

Your devoted RAs, Clarke and Bellamy.

The free food was Bellamy’s best attempt at making it sound interesting, but what college student doesn’t love free food?

The group gathered in front of them is what Clarke assumes are the less experienced people living in the dorm. They’re squashed onto two worn old couches, chatting amongst themselves while they wait for Clarke to start the session.

Clarke is pretty sure she can tell which of them are there for the food and which of them actually want advice. Some of them are probably just there to watch Clarke embarrass herself. It’s one thing to give sex advice one on one to someone who asks, but giving an actual presentation to a group of people is kind of daunting. She’s glad she has Bellamy helping her.

He lets her take the lead, while he sits on the table behind her, in front of the whiteboard.

“Okay,” Clarke says, addressing the group. “Thanks for coming guys. What we’re going to do is answer some of the questions you guys have been asking a lot, and then we’ll let you ask whatever other questions you want to. This is a safe space, and I expect you all to be respectful of each other. No question is a stupid question.” She looks to Bellamy. “Anything to add?”

“I think you covered it.”

Clarke nods, then turns back to her audience, before launching into her presentation. She goes through all the different types of contraception she can think of, and tells them where they can get said contraception. She’s pretty sure all of them should know the female and male anatomy by now, but she draws diagrams on the whiteboard, just in case. She talks about consent, and a little about pleasure, and making sure your partner is having a good time too. Bellamy chimes in occasionally, backing her up.

“Okay,” she says when she’s finished, clapping her hands together. “Any questions?”

Jasper’s hand shoots up. “Do I have to go down on a girl if she asks me to?”

Bellamy snorts out a laugh. “You don’t have to, but you may want to rethink your stance on giving head. It’s actually pretty great.”

Oh, so he likes giving head, Clarke notes. Good to know.

Fox puts her hand up next. “I have a question, but no one laugh.”

“No one’s going to laugh,” Clarke promises her.

“I wanted to buy, um, you know. A vibrator. But I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t want to spend a ton of money on something that isn’t even any good.”

“Reading the reviews can help,” Clarke says. “And maybe start with something smaller and cheaper to see how you like it, and then progress from there.”

“What do you use?” Fox asks.

Clarke glances and Bellamy, who appears to be holding back laughter. She’s trying not to blush, because she did sign up for this, and she knows she shouldn’t be embarrassed about masturbating, or the number of vibrators she owns. She wasn’t really expecting things to get so personal.

“I have a few different ones,” Clarke says. “Maybe we can have a look online together later, and I can help you. And anyone else who wants to know.”

Fox seems satisfied with this, and Clarke moves on. “Any one else?”

“When are you giving the demonstration?” Murphy yells, sitting on a chair at the back of the room.

“Demonstration?” Clarke frowns.

“I mean, that’s why we’re all here, right? So you guys can show us how best to please our partners.”

“I’m not following,” Clarke says, shaking her head. She’s already given all the demonstrations she planned. Like the putting a condom on a banana.

“Yeah, to be honest that’s why I came,” Sterling says, beside him, Monroe nods. “I thought you guys were gonna… you know. Show us. That’s what the post seemed to imply.”

“Show you what, exactly?” Clarke asks. She looks to Bellamy, and he shrugs.

“Bellamy seems to think he’s pretty hot at giving head. Maybe he could show us that.”

Bellamy lets out a strangled choking noise. Clarke doesn’t think she’s ever seen him so flustered.

“Ah, no,” he says. “You guys misunderstood.”

Clarke is feeling a little flustered herself, though for probably slightly different reasons. Why is it that that very mention of Bellamy fucking her in front of everyone sent a surge of wetness between her legs? She’s throbbing there now, thinking about it. But they can’t actually do it. That would be crazy.

“Come on, guys,” Jasper complains. “We know you’re good at it. We just want to learn.”

Bellamy huffs. “Clarke and I have never even had sex. You think we’re gonna do it for the first time in front of you guys?”

“Wait, what?” Murphy snorts. “You guys aren’t fucking?”

Everyone else seems to be just as surprised as Murphy at this revelation. For some reason, the fact that they all thought she and Bellamy were sleeping together embarrasses Clarke more than the notion of him fucking her in front of them. It’s not logical, but then, when has her libido ever been logical?

“But she’s like… always in your room. With the door shut,” Maya says.

“We’re not, and nor are we going to,” Bellamy says. “Right, Clarke?”

He finally looks at her. Clarke chews her lip. His eyes widen.

“Right,” she agrees, but she knows she doesn’t sound convincing at all. She’s aware that all eyes are on her. She’s aware of her racing heart and the steadily growing ache between her thighs. She’s also aware that these kids look up to her, that they look to her for guidance and counsel. But isn’t that just more reason to do it? So they know what real sex looks like, instead of getting their ideas of what sex should be like from porn? So they know what enthusiastic consent looks like? Provided, of course, Bellamy actually wants to do it.

He’s watching her curiously. “Clarke,” he says, in that deep voice that makes her stomach lurch. “Can I talk to you for a second?”

She nods, and Bellamy leads her out of the common room and into the hallway, where the others can’t hear. A couple of people whistle as they leave.

“You want to do this,” he says, as soon as they’re out of earshot.

“I—” Clarke starts, her face heating up. She shrugs. “It’s for the kids. We should set a good example of what sex should be like.”

Bellamy eyes her with amusement. “That’s the only reason?”

Clarke purses her lips at him. “You know it’s not.”

“You want me to fuck you in front of everyone, under the guise of teaching?”

Clarke nods. “Yes,” she whispers. “But only if you want to. Don’t do it just because I want to.”

Bellamy steps closer to her, millimetres from touching her. “Oh, I want to,” he murmurs. He leans in, ghosts his lips against hers. Her lips part, and then he kisses her, firm but gentle. He pulls away. “Just wanted that for myself first.”

Clarke nods. “Bellamy—” she says. She swallows. “I wouldn’t do this with anyone else, just so you know. Just you.”

Bellamy smiles. “Good to know. Come on. Let’s show them how to fuck.”

Clarke laughs, and Bellamy takes her hand and leads her back into the common room.

“Ground rules,” Bellamy announces, walking back in front of the whiteboard, still holding Clarke’s hand. “No video and no photos. Phones remain away at all times. And no commentary. If you feel uncomfortable, leave. Nothing that happens from here on out leaves this room, got it?”

“And no masturbating please,” Clarke adds. “You can do that later in your room. No one wants to see that.”

Bellamy snorts. He gives her a look that says you’re one to talk. Excitement ripples through the room, and Clarke knows the kids are whispering, talking, maybe even to her, but she can’t seem to latch onto any word she recognises. Her eyes are focused on Bellamy, and his on her.

“Clear a couch,” Bellamy says. The five people squashed onto one of the couches scramble up, and Bellamy leads Clarke towards it. God knows how many other people have fucked on this couch, but right now Clarke couldn’t care less. “First lesson,” Bellamy says, and he’s addressing the room, but his eyes never leave Clarke. “Consent. If you’re not sure what your partner wants, ask.”

“Asking isn’t sexy though,” Roma pipes up.

Bellamy ignores her. Instead he shows her just how sexy asking can be. “Clarke,” he says, tracing circles on the back of her hand with his thumb. “Can I kiss you?”

Clarke nods. “Yes.”

It’s harder than their first kiss, deeper, hungrier. Clarke kisses him back, and his tongue slips past her lips and into her mouth. He pulls away, then grazes her ear with his lips. “I want to go down on you,” he tells her.

“Okay,” Clarke agrees in a breath. She lowers herself to the couch, unbuttoning her jeans as she goes, keeping her eyes on Bellamy the whole time. He sinks to his knees in front of her. He pulls her shoes off, and then her socks, and then he helps her tugs her jeans down, so she’s sitting on the couch in her panties.

Bellamy kisses her inner thigh, and Clarke closes her eyes. She knows everyone is watching her, loves knowing they’re all staring at Bellamy as he kisses his way up her thigh. But she doesn’t actually want to see them.

Her heart is thumping hard against her rib cage, and when she feels his lips press against the wet spot on her panties, she feels like it’s going to burst out of her chest. His tongue darts out of his mouth, pushing into her slit through her panties, putting pressure on her clit. Clarke spreads her legs wider.

Bellamy’s mouth leaves her cunt, and she immediately misses the contact.

“Are you ready to take your panties off, baby?” Bellamy asks her. “Everybody wants to see.”

Clarke nods, squeezing her eyes shut tighter. Bellamy hooks his fingers into the sides of her panties, and Clarke lifts her ass off the couch so he can drag them down, baring her pussy to the room. She’s blushing all over, thinking about them all staring at her wet cunt, on display for everyone to see.

“Look at that,” Bellamy coos. “Look how wet she is.” She feels him spread her pussy lips with his big fingers. “You gotta make sure your girl is nice and wet before you fuck her, okay? Eating her out is a good way to get her there.”

He puts his mouth on her again, and Clarke feels a surge of relief, replaced quickly by an urgency, a desperation, as his tongue slips between her folds, working her clit, then backing off, then back to her clit, slowly driving her insane.

“Bellamy,” Clarke whimpers, not caring how pathetic she sounds in front of the kids. “Please, I need to come.”

Bellamy lifts his head, and Clarke opens her eyes to look down at him. “Take your top off,” he tells her. Clarke pulls her t-shirt over her head without hesitation. “And bra.”

Clarke fumbles with the clasp, her hands shaking. Bellamy reaches around her and helps her unclip it, and then she’s completely naked. She burns all over. She finally makes herself look at the crowd surrounding her. They’re all watching her, enraptured, eyes wide. Do they know how much she likes their attention? Or do they still believe it’s all for their benefit? They’re never going to look at her the same again. Every time they look at her they’ll see her naked and writhing on this couch.

She closes her eyes again as Bellamy’s mouth latches onto her neck. His fingers slip between her legs, gently massaging her clit, winding her tighter and tighter, until she’s about to break. Her breathing grows laboured, and she’s panting audibly, so close to orgasm she feels like she’s about to die. God, they’re all going to watch her come. The thought sends her over the edge, and she arches off the couch, gasping, her breasts pushing against Bellamy’s chest, his fingers still playing with her pussy.

“Yes, Bellamy,” Clarke moans. “Fuck me now, please.”

She opens her eyes again, just as Bellamy stands up, towering over her. He pulls his shirt over his head and kicks his shoes off.

“Someone hand me a condom,” he says. They’d handed out enough of them earlier. Clarke watches his hands as he unbuttons his jeans. She doesn’t think she’s ever seen somebody look as sexy as he does as he slowly takes off his clothes. His underwear is last to go, and then he’s as naked as she is. She eyes his hard cock, cunt throbbing at the sight of it, at the thought of having all these people watch him put it inside her.

“Damn,” someone mutters. Bellamy smirks, and Clarke bites back a laugh.

A condom appears in his hand, and he tears the wrapper, then rolls the condom onto his cock.

“Lube is usually a good idea,” Bellamy says. “But in this case, she really doesn’t need it.” Clarke flushes at that. He’s just bragging about how wet he got her. “Lie back, baby,” Bellamy whispers, putting a knee on the couch. “Let’s show these kids how it’s done, huh?”

He kisses her, and Clarke lowers herself into a horizontal position on the couch, pulling him with her.

“Ready?” he asks her, pressing his cock against her slit, getting himself wet with her arousal.

“Yes,” Clarke says. His cock stretches her wide as he pushes into her, and she lets out an embarrassing moan, if she could be embarrassed by anything right now.

“That’s it,” Bellamy says soothingly. “Good girl.”

Clarke feels her pussy clench around him. He thrusts into her, working up a steady rhythm, while she meets his every thrust, already well on her way to her second orgasm.

“Come on, baby,” Bellamy whispers. “I need you to come again. Everybody’s watching.”

The reminder sends her hurtling closer to her peak, his thick cock driving into her with force. “I’m close,” she says. “Keep going. Like that.”

She moans obscenely, and with a few more strokes of his cock, he tears her orgasm from her, the walls of her pussy fluttering around him, her body shuddering. Bellamy lets out a groan as he comes too, seconds after she does. He presses his forehead against hers, panting.

It takes them both more than a few seconds to come back to reality. The reality of fifteen or so college students applauding them, after having just witnessed them have sex with each other for the first time.

“That was amazing,” Roma breathes.

“Yeah, I think I learnt a lot,” Sterling agrees.

“Will you show us how to give a blow job now Clarke?” Fox asks. Never mind that both Clarke and Bellamy are still breathing heavily, red faced, his cock still inside her. He covers her body with his, keeping her nudity from the room, as if they haven’t seen it all already.

“Maybe some other time,” Clarke swallows. “The info night is over. You should all go back to your rooms now.”

Bellamy stays on top of her until the crowd disperses and they’re left alone in the common room. He sits up, sitting on the edge of the couch.

“That was… something,” he says.

“Are you okay?”

“Are you?”

“Yeah,” Clarke says, a smile creeping over her face. She trails her finger across his bare thigh. “I liked it a lot.”

Bellamy shakes his head, amused. “You’re really something, you know that?”

“What something?”

“I don’t know. Unique. Intense. I’ve never met anyone like you.”

Clarke’s smile drops, and she swallows, her heart pounding. That she wasn’t expecting. “In a good way?”

“In a good way,” Bellamy confirms. He stands up, removing the condom and throwing it in the trash, before picking up his clothes and getting dressed.

“So when can we do it again?”

Bellamy raises an eyebrow. “Have sex in front of an audience?”

“We don’t have to have an audience.”

“You think you can enjoy it without the audience?” Bellamy laughs.

“Maybe we can make a tape instead,” Clarke grins. Bellamy shakes his head. Fully dressed now, he stoops to pick up Clarke’s panties and throws them at her.

“Get dressed,” he says. “And then when can talk about it. You’re too distracting when you’re naked. Plus, who knows what is on that couch.”

Clarke sits up, then pulls her panties on. “Do you think any of them will tell anyone what we did? We could get in trouble.” She picks up her bra and puts that back on too.

Bellamy shrugs. “If they tell, we’ll just say it was for educational purposes.”

“It was.”

“Uh huh. You keep telling yourself that.”

[coeurvrai]

I wonder how many pages this review/rant/scream into the void has taken up on my blog so far? Far more than it deserves, I’m sure of that much.

“But back to the point, we have to get past the Vultures to get to the king?”

Rashid glanced at Malachiasz, but nodded. Malachiasz leaned back on the chaise, pulling at his lower lip.

“That complicates things,” Nadya said. “We can’t just wait for the opportune moment. I need to know what I’m doing if this is going to work.”

Malachiasz nodded. “You’re going to go to the dinner. Watch the king. Charm the prince. He’ll be your way to get to the king. Tell me exactly what the masks on the Vultures near the king look like.”

He was going to deal with the Vultures. Fine. Good, even, because Nadya didn’t know what to do when they were involved. They were a variable she feared and did not understand.

God, if only you knew an individual who had been a part of that order/cult for a very long time and knows the intimate details of how it works and what they do.

Oh wait...

But seriously, Nadya, if you were so curious and so concerned with your lack of knowledge about the inner workings of the Vultures, you could just fucking ask Malachiasz about it. I know he’s the Black Vulture, but you have no real reason to believe that he wouldn’t just tell you. Then again, asking for common sense from this girl is like asking a block of cheese for directions.

Also Nadya wouldn’t recognise an opportune moment if it walked up right to her face and held up a bright flashing neon sign saying “opportune moment”.

Rashid stood. “I’ll go find Parijahan; you don’t have much time before dinner.”

That left just Nadya and Malachiasz.

NO! Don’t leave these two fuckers alone in a bedroom, Rashid! I don’t want to deal with what I’m sure is gonna be more focus on this stupid relationship that I neither need nor want. ED just provides us with a surplus of this damn stuff.

“You should go as well,” she said softly.

She could feel his gaze burning against her face, but she refused to look at him. She saw him stand and move toward the door out of the corner of her eye, but he changed his mind. Instead, he dropped down into a crouch in front of Nadya’s chair so he was looking up at her.

“I acted without trusting your judgment, and for that I apologize,” he said.

It’s not an apology for murdering that girl, she noted. But it was a start. It was something from this boy who obviously had no morals and no regard for anything that didn’t serve his own interests. She just wished she could understand what those interests were.

Nadya, we do not have time to once again get into your utter stupidity because it will just make myself go into a blind rage over it and that’s just not healthy. I still have like a good 150 pages to go and I cannot afford to burn myself out so, I’m just going to ignore that for now. Also, “the girl” has a name. It’s Felicíja, Nadya. I know you know it because you’ve used it before.

Also, “no regard”? Nadya, you say that like you have regard for anything else but your own interests. You don’t. You still view Tranavians as lesser than you, as unworthy of existing as they are because they have blood magic, as “heretics” because they rejected your religion and do not want it.

You can’t tell me you feel empathy and understanding towards the Tranavians, genuinely, because you haven’t gone through the character development for it - no matter what this book is trying to tell me. Unlearning biases and xenophobia is tough, unlearning any kind of systemic discrimination is tough, but you haven’t made an effort to. You haven’t. And this isn’t how to do it, anyways.

Also the moral high horse that Nadya is sitting on is eye-roll worthy. You’ve also murdered people, Nadya; I can’t say this enough.

“Nadya,” he started and stopped. He let out a frustrated breath.

Inexplicably, she felt herself soften. She reached out and threaded her fingers into his soft, black hair, letting her hand settle against the side of his head.

Why—after being so furious with him—did she find herself desperately yearning to kiss him? The heat of anger that he sparked was still felt fresh in her veins and yet she couldn’t help but gaze at the bow of his lips.

She was feeling too many things in too little time. She wanted it all to stop. She wanted whatever this was she felt for him to stop.

I want it to stop too but I know it won’t, because otherwise ED would have nothing else to write about, and we can’t have that.

I don’t know why, either. It’s stupid. You’re so abhorred by him killing Felicíja when you claim that she didn’t need to die, and that he’s undermining your agency, and you know, he’s a former Vulture and a blood mage and your enemy but yet you still get all gooey over him for no real reason.

To the point that you checked out his unconscious body before you checked whether or not he was alive.

If he was startled by her actions, he didn’t show it. He let another moment pass between them—fraught with a tension still too new to her—before he spoke. “You have to trust me, Nadya,” he said, his voice low. “I know I am everything you have been taught to hate and more. I have done terrible things in my life. If I disgust you, I understand. But—”

“We have to work together,” Nadya whispered. “All four of us, or else this whole mess of a plan will go up in smoke and we’ll all be hanged for it.”

He leaned his head into her hand and she felt herself warm. To have another person react to her touch was a peculiar feeling, a connection she had never really had with anyone. The monastery didn’t encourage relationships; one’s devotion to the gods was more important.

This was a disaster. Anyone, anyone but him. Anyone but the enemy boy who had tormented her people, who was faithless, godless, monstrous. If she tore out her own heart would this stop? If that was the thing betraying her, then she would be rid of it. Anything to stop from being pulled to this terrible boy.

This plan is an absolute mess but also you’re the one who put “the plan” in jeopardy in the first place, so you should really start pulling your weight, Nadya.

Also “the enemy boy”, I’m fucking laughing. Nadya, you could just like, stop, you know. Not acting on your attraction to people is like a thing. You act like you literally cannot help yourself but get all blushy blushy over him and you HAVE to touch him. Like, that’s not how things work.

“And you and I need to come to an understanding,” he continued. “We can be enemies when all this is over.”

It was fairly clear now that enemies wasn’t quite what they were before, and an understanding probably wasn’t going to be what either of them wanted.

Maybe she had knocked her head during the duel, but she found herself sliding her other hand up his neck to cradle his cheek. He grew very still, as if he truly thought her a little bird and sudden movement might startle her away.

“What if I don’t want to be enemies when all this is over?” she asked softly, her voice betraying her by trembling. Her heart was pounding in her throat.

Yeah, no shit “enemies wasn’t quite what they were before”, because it was a half-hearted attempt at the trope. ED couldn’t bother building it up in a believable and organic way, so she just threw it aside completely and was like “what I really want to see them is suck face!”

Also bullshit, Nadya! You’d think your gods would have something to say about that, since they’re the only reason you have power in the first place. It almost infuriates me that I had to sit through all of her xenophobia and discriminatory tirades, just for it to not bloody matter one fucking bit to her character.

Anyways, I’ll spare you guys the descriptions of them kissing. Nadya is the one who initiates the kiss and she describes kissing him as “heresy”. Because that is a word you should just throw around. Totally, ED. Totally. Also Malachiasz calls her little bird again and I hate it.

She still finds blood magic repulsive, though. She asks Malachiasz if he felt it when she accidentally used the spells, and he nods. She says he knew this could happen, since she had to draw blood to pass herself off as a blood mage. He’s like “yeah... but I mean, I didn’t think anything bad would really happen!”

Malachiasz says he’s gotta go and they’ll continue this conversation later. Good, I can’t stand another moment of your bullshit. And we get this heavily advertised quote.

“Even so. Dazzle the monsters, Nadya. You’ve already charmed the worst of the lot; the rest should be easy.”

*rolls my eyes*

This is also weirdly reminds me of that one quote from The Cruel Prince, a book I have not read and have no intention to but have heard a lot about.

“So I am to sit here and feed you information,” Cardan says, leaning against a hickory tree. “And you’re to go charm royalty? That seems entirely backward.”

I fix him with a look. “I can be charming. I charmed you, didn’t I?”

He rolls his eyes. “Do not expect others to share my depraved tastes.” 

But thankfully, Malachiasz is leaving for reals.

“I’m still mad at you,” she said, but the words felt flat.

“I know.” He grinned as he slipped his mask back over his face. He was gone before she could say anything more.

She pressed a hand to her lips, wrenching her eyes shut. There would be hell to pay for this.

Everything about this romance falls flat, so I’m not surprised. What’s the point in them being enemies-to-lovers if you’re not going to follow through with the enemies part of the trope? Oh wait, it’s for cheap angst, plus otherwise this wouldn’t be published Rey/Kylo Ren fanfiction.

Also, I doubt you’re gonna get that much of a chewing out for it, to be honest. I mean, the gods had plenty of opportunities to chew you out for your bullshit with Malachiasz and they didn’t, and that was back when they had easy access!

Anyways, that’s the end of that chapter!

[orky-general]

Describe one event in as much detail as possible that changed your life.

Definitely me uncovering Artix Entertainment.  I was a wee lad, still in my Middle School years.  I played Runescape as my main time-waster at the time, and also went on some flash game websites like Armor Games.  I kept getting an advertisement for Adventure Quest, and it managed to pique my curiosity with the ads.  Imma put the rest under the cut because this is gonna get super long.

So I tried it out.  I enjoyed it.  A lot more than I did Runescape, possibly due to AE’s love of humor when gaming and the fact that the game never felt as stingy towards free players as Runescape did (there was still the matter of server priority, but when you did get in you weren’t barred from well over half the map without a sub).

Eventually there was the first two-sided war, where we had a Necromancer vs. Paladin war.  I was in my edgelord phase and was a decided Necromancer fan (Still do enjoy it whenever I can play a Necromancer and not be treated as Default Evil, but I’ve also grown a lot fonder of Paladins and holy warriors in general).  I ended up joining the forum during that war.

Ended up making a rival of sorts at the time.  He called himself Adagamefreak, “Vorpal Archpaladin of Light”.  He had his own little gang of Archpaladins, and I in turn ended up gaining a group called the “Shadow Necromancers”.  Eventually Ada left for WoW.  Never heard from him since, which is a damn shame, I do wonder what’s going on with that guy.

My group still hung around, but not for a whole lot longer when two idiots ended up getting the group disbanded by racking up like six warnings in two days when I was away at the time.  During this time, I ended up befriending someone called Ricobabie.  Sweet girl, but we don’t talk anymore.

Rico ended up approached by one of the staff of Artix Entertainment, Falerin Ardendor, the Loremaster.  Rico ended up bringing me and another friend of mine, Damani into a group chat on MSN (remember when that was a thing?) with Falerin.

We were naturally suspicious, and Falerin proved his stance by giving Rico a title on the forum, “Touched by Vorlons”.  You don’t get custom titles on the AE forum without staff approval, so that proved his honesty.

Falerin ended up becoming my mentor, and I ended up starting down the path of an author as a result.  I was terrible when I started out.  Second-worst author I’ve ever known in my life.  Ever.  Of all time.  I embarrassed myself to hell and back with writing a self-insert fanfic saga the likes of which you’d find in just about any Isekai series (part of why I have a loathing for the genre).

But I kept writing.  Got better and better with each attempt.  Eventually I moved to trying out original stories.  Those weren’t great, but they were a damn sight better than my fanfics.  Then boredom struck me one day and I wrote the first iteration of what became my novels.  It wasn’t good, but I was enamored with what I had accidentally created to stave off boredom.

Then I rewrote it.  Met a number of friends of mine through the confidence I gained there to show it off.  Then I rewrote it again, and now I’m selling novels off of this stuff.

I would’ve never gotten anywhere near this path had I not clicked that ad banner when I was young and met Artix Entertainment.  They’ve been an inspiration to me, and I’m honored I could call several people who work(ed) there friends.

[wordsinwinters]

Then Again, Part 22  Peter Parker x Reader

Summary: After an intense argument and a forced-to-share-the-bed situation during their junior year decathalon trip, Peter and the Reader examine their faults and failings. As they attempt to fix their mistakes and improve their friendship, that friendship quickly begins to evolve into something else.

Slow burn fic in which all characters are included and their dynamics explored; multiple character POVs. 

Betas: @fanboyswhereare-you and @girl-tips-from-satan

Masterlist (with AO3 links)

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18, Part 19, Part 20, Part 21, Part 23, 

Author’s Note:

Another quick Ned POV chapter, then we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled program. To the blogs who recently reblogged/suggested this fic, thank you so much, I appreciate it more than I can say!

Without further ado,

Then Again Part 22:

(Words: 1,740)

The gift shop is the smallest part of the hotel and it’s still the size of three classrooms smushed together. It’s stacked with trinkets, magnets, mugs, glass miniatures, and all the other usual sort of souvenirs that glitter back at the sunlight peeking through the windows. Near the front of the store, it smells like a grandmother’s laundry room... likely because the air conditioning is blowing right in my face, making my eyelids click when I blink.

I should get off my phone and go look around, rather than wait for the texting bubbles to pop up again. Oops.

Phone in my pocket, I take a moment to locate everyone. The team is dispersed throughout the aisles. Given how maze-ish the place is, it looks like everybody is in the middle of some slow-motion strategy game, related to either war or hunting.

On one side, near the stuffed donkeys and elephants, Cindy and Sally are flipping through postcards and travel guides. From here, I can’t hear what they’re whispering, but Cindy keeps glancing at Abe.

Abe is totally immersed in the stuffed animals a few feet away. He’s on FaceTime with his dad, holding up various stuffed animals, asking which his sister would like best or if she’s too young to align herself to a political party yet. His dad is laughing and shaking his head while Abe settles on, “I’ll get her the teddy bear with the top hat-- I think it looks pretty politically neutral.” After reminding his dad not to tell anyone about the gifts he’s getting the rest of their family, Abe says goodbye and walks over to show Cindy and Sally the stuffed bear.

MJ is in the middle of the shop. She must be in a hurry, since she buys a Notorious RBG sweatshirt, rips the plastic bit of the tag off with her teeth, and practically shoves herself into it headfirst within 50 seconds. Either she’s gone from mildly annoyed to seriously pissed or she’s wanted the meme-ed out Supreme Court Justice’s face on her clothing for a long time. Knowing MJ, it could totally be either option.

Flash is being an idiot, sulking in the corner. He’s leaning against an advertisement for some new wolf documentary stuck to the window, but his eyes are flickering back and forth from whatever app he’s scrolling through on his phone to Peter talking with Y/N, standing a couple rows up. Maybe he senses me noticing him because he glances suddenly in my direction. We make awkward eye contact before he stiffens and looks away.

He was probably eavesdropping on the two of them. But I don’t have the energy to confront him about it. Not after yesterday and this morning. Instead, I shift my focus to my friends. Peter, mostly.

Oh God, Peter. I can already tell he’s about to be at his utmost annoying the moment we get back to our room. (After we switch the rooms back to normal, at least.)

Standing beside her, he tries to juggle a bunch of keychains for no apparent reason, nearly knocking the shelf over when he fails; Y/N gives him a pitying laugh as she takes them from his hand and organizes them on the shelf where they belong. Her eyes stay on the small task, but Peter’s are practically glued to her face. I think he’s forgotten whatever conversation they were having because there’s a short pause and then the second she turns her head to ask him something, Peter does an odd hop thing like he’s been mildly shocked. Y/N tilts her head, squinting for a moment before moving on to the next overpriced item on the shelf. After a few seconds of finally paying attention, he follows her further down the row.

And I’m standing next to stacks of coffee mugs. I should probably rescue Peter now before he makes a fool of himself. Or a bigger one, I should say.

I pass Flash -- well, sort of, since he’s three rows away -- as I walk toward them. He ignores me like usual, so I ignore him too.

Neither Peter or Y/N notice me approach; they’re lightly arguing. She’s shaking her head and groaning in discontent. It seems playful, but there’s a real hesitance to whatever she’s resisting. Peter sounds like he’s trying to tone down his own grin and failing miserably.

“Nope, no way out of it. You have to choose,” Peter says, half smirking. “Necklace or bracelet?”

She shakes her head again, at a slight loss for words.

“What, so I can feel handcuffed to you? Those necklaces are practically chokers, they’re so short.”

Whatever they’re talking about, it’s definitely the perfect spot for me to jump in.

“Handcuffs and chokers?” I ask, mock shocked. “Kinky.”

They both turn at the same time. Y/N’s face lights up when she sees me. Her cheeks are a bit pink but there’s no doubt she knows I’m joking. Behind her, Peter gives me a Why are you always like this? exasperated look with a somewhat darker blush.

“Ned!” she says. “Christ, you scared me.”

“Too engrossed in handcuffs?”

There’s a grin on my face now and she returns a tired, close mouthed smile. It’s only at this point that I realize how exhausted she looks. The darkness under her eyes combined with her tense posture seems to cloak her whole body with a faintly haunted, paranoid even, halo.

Nonetheless, she seems tempted to laugh and hit me. Instead rolls her eyes and takes a step to the side.

“Peter, show Ned what you wanted to buy.”

Peter opens his hands. One has a short necklace, the other a bracelet. Both are fake gold and have half hearts with something written on each. It might be best friends?

Dear God. Way to be subtle, Peter, you idiot.

“Y/N and I agreed we need to work on our friendship,” he explains hesitantly, as if he’s just now realizing how fumblingly obvious he’s being. “So, friendship… stuff…?” He almost cringes at his own words.

Don’t laugh, Ned, I tell myself. Don’t you dare do it.

Before I can comment, MJ’s voice cuts in from the back of the shop and we all turn.

She’s standing in front of Flash, near the door, in a stance that suggests she wants to push him out of her way, or down to the ground. Man, he must be desperate or stupid to attempt to talk to her right now.

“Whatever it is, go tell her yourself!” she half shouts, hands reaching up to her hair. “Leave me out of it, I don’t care!”

MJ shoulders past him, not enough to knock him over, but certainly enough to leave him jostled and lost. His back rises and falls like he’s taking deep breaths. He turns to look directly at Y/N, expression somewhere between frustration and… sadness? That can’t be right.

As I try to riddle out whatever’s going on, replay the reasons why MJ would be this mad at him and what it has to do with Y/N, I hear Y/N make an almost silent strangled sound beside me. Knowing there’s no way to stop her from whatever she’s about to do, I shut my eyes and curse Flash for being born.

When I open them, I see that MJ has planted herself in a hotel lobby chair outside the shop with her hood pulled up, arms and legs crossed, sunk deep into the soft leather. Mr. Harrington, sitting in the seat adjacent, moves to ask her a question but she yanks the strings of the hoodie and it closes around her face like an annoyed collapsing black hole.

Y/N takes a quiet breath and Peter tenses on my right. Before he can open his mouth, Y/N says she’ll be right back with a tone that explains nothing and warns us both not to intervene.

I look at Peter, who looks at me, and we both watch her approach Flash. If I know Peter at all, I’m sure his feet are itching to race over to them too.

With her back to us, we can’t see her expression or hear anything she says. All we can do is catch glimpses of Flash, who keeps trying to interrupt her and losing. After about forty seconds they start to argue, or at least that’s what I’d guess from the angry gestures.

When she starts to leave, Flash grabs her hand. A red flag goes up in my head. That’s an idiotic move. Y/N smacks it off with the back of her other hand and leaves him struggling to say… something. I’m bad at reading lips.

Kinda looks like, Keanu just loves truly. Reeves? But I’m 98% certain that’s wrong.

Well, all the same, that clarifies nothing.

As she quickly starts walking back over to me and Peter, I turn my head to ask what he thinks just happened, but he isn’t there. Well, he is, he’s just further down the aisle, where he nearly knocked everything down a few minutes ago. He grabs something and heads toward the cash register without a word.

“He’s not buying those bracelets, is he?” Y/N asks, slightly out of breath. Standing beside me, we both watch him set something small down on the counter.

“I don’t think so,” I say. 

Really, I have no idea. I couldn’t see what he took, but I’d like to offer her some comfort in whichever ways are currently available.

She bites at a nail.

“Good.” I realize she isn’t meeting my eyes. “It would’ve been… awkward, if he had gotten a pair for the two of us and not you and MJ, right?”

Awkward?

I pause.

Until now, I hadn’t really considered what might happen if Y/N doesn’t like Peter back. I mean, I have reasons to think she does, but I didn’t exactly notice those reasons until I began to look for them. Oh shit, what if she doesn’t?

Still, “awkward” doesn’t have to mean anything significant, right?

I hope not.

“Plus,” she continues, biting her lip for a split second as she watches Peter, “I really don’t want to give Flash any new material to bully him with, you know? Middle school friendship bracelets would be more than enough.”

I nod as Peter finishes his purchase. He turns around, smiling at us, lifting a small plastic shopping bag like a greeting.

Man, I hope this is the end of the mess and not the beginning.

Part 23

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[rgd717-blog]

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