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storiesforallfandoms · 10 months

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new toy ~ felix catton;saltburn

word count: 5901

request?: no

description: when he brings a girl home for the summer, she finds herself struggling to fit into his lifestyle

pairing: felix catton x female!reader

warnings: swearing, mentions of parent deaths, farleigh being a catty rich bitch (affectionate), feelings of insecurity and inadequacy, little bit of angst, things get steamy but no actual smut in this one

masterlist (one, two, three)

Venetia rushed to the window of her bedroom as she heard the car carrying her brother pulling up the drive. The family had been made aware that Felix was bringing a friend home for the summer. Not that anyone had to tell them. Felix often had a new sad sack in tow whenever he came home from school, who would never be seen again once they returned to school at the end of the summer. Venetia had tried to get some information on this new friend from Farleigh, but her cousin said he hadn't seen anyone new hanging out with Felix during the school year. She was itching to get a peak at Felix's newest toy.

She gasped and turned to Farleigh, who was looking at her in curiosity. "It's a girl!"

(Y/N) stepped out of the car as Felix excitedly talked away. She looked at the giant house with wide eyes. She knew Felix had money; his parents were paying his way through college after all, meanwhile (Y/N) was a scholarship kid. But she never could've imagined he was this level of rich. His house was a goddamn castle!

She was wondering if it was too late to back out of Felix's offer to stay over.

An older man dressed in a black suit opened the front door as (Y/N) and Felix approached. (Y/N) stopped suddenly as the man's glare landed on her.

"Duncan!" Felix exclaimed. "How are you, you serious old brute?"

"Good to see you, master Felix. This is your new...friend?"

The way he said it made (Y/N) wince.

Felix turned to her and threw an arm around her shoulders. "Don't be frightened, (Y/N). This is my family butler, Duncan. He looks terrifying, but his bark is worse than his bite."

(Y/N) tried to smile at Duncan, but he merely continued to stare her down. She shrunk into Felix's embrace, which, luckily, the taller boy noticed her discomfort and brought her into the house. With his arm still around her, Felix brought (Y/N) around the giant house. There was so much to see, so much to know. There was simply no way she'd remember it all. She expected to get lost just trying to get to the bathroom.

Luckily, that wouldn't be a problem at least, as Felix led her into his room. "Your room is just through here. We'll be sharing a bathroom. Hope you don't mind."

She was glad he wasn't facing her so he missed the look on her face at his statement.

Felix threw the door to her room open with a flourish before turning to her. "And this is where you'll be staying. Don't worry about unpacking, the butlers will do that for you. It has a nice view of the garden and such, and I'm just next door past the bathroom, as you've already seen."

He flopped down onto her bed and stretched out so he was taking up the entire bed. (Y/N) pushed his leg over a bit so she could sit next to him. "It's a lot to take in."

"I know," Felix said. He rolled onto his side to look up at her. "It'll feel like a lot, but I promise my family will love you. And if it gets overwhelming, I'll be here."

He put his hand on her leg. She looked down at it, the heat from where his hand was touching rising from that spot all the way up to her face. Her entire body felt like it had been ignited by a simple gesture to try and bring her comfort. She wondered if Felix knew what he did to her.

She tried not to let her disappointment show as Felix stood, removing his hand from her leg.

"I'll let you unwind or whatever," he said. "Dinner isn't until 5, so you have plenty of time to yourself until then. You brought a dress, right?" She nodded. "Good. Mum and dad insist on fancy dinner wear. It's a little embarrassing. I'll be in my room if you need anything."

And just like that, he was gone. (Y/N) sighed and fell back onto the bed.

This definitely was not how she expected to spend her summer. She had started her time at Oxford as an outcast, a scholarship loser among a sea of rich kids. She tired not to let it get to her. Getting into Oxford at all was a big deal, (Y/N) knew to be proud of that. But that didn't make the whispers and dirty looks directed towards her any easier to take.

She didn't seek out friendship with anyone, let alone with Felix. Of course, she had noticed Felix. Who wouldn't? He was beautiful and had charm for days. Everyone loved him. But (Y/N) knew better than to try and approach him. They were from two completely different worlds, and (Y/N) knew she didn't belong in his world.

To her surprise, it was Felix who initiated first contact.

They were in an English class together. Felix had sat next to her one day and asked, "Did you finish the reading for today?" (Y/N) was so shocked that he had spoken to her that she could only nod in response. "Can you summarize it for me? I tried to read it but it was so fucking boring."

Apparently, that one act of kindness was enough to consider (Y/N) a friend. Felix invited her to sit with him at the bar, to come study in his room, to go to the "invite only" parties on campus. His other rich friends didn't seem to enjoy her company, but he did and that's all that mattered.

When (Y/N) told Felix she had nowhere to go for the summer, he invited her to come stay with him and his family in Saltburn. He refused to take no for an answer. So now here she was, in a bedroom that only had a bathroom to separate her and the boy she had started developing feelings for but knew she couldn't have, in a house the size of a castle owned by a family who mad more money than she'd ever see in her life.

She let out another sigh for good measure before sitting up. She still had plenty of time before dinner, but she wanted to make sure she was presentable to meet Felix's family for the first time. She got up and went to the bathroom, locking the door that led to Felix's room just in case. There was no shower, so she had to opt for a bath. She tried to be quick, but once she had laid in the oversized tub and allowed the hot water to engulf her, she never wanted to get out. Maybe she could spend the entire summer in the tub instead of dealing with Felix's family.

When the water began to go cold, she reluctantly got out and returned to her room. She had packed the limited amount of makeup she owned just in case there were any formal gatherings she needed to dress up for. Now she was definitely glad she had if dinner was meant to be a formal thing. She did her makeup carefully to make sure it was perfect, then dug through her bag for the dress she had packed. It wasn't anything super fancy, just a royal blue, off the shoulder dress with a pleated skirt that came down just above the knee. It was the nicest dress she owned, so eh hoped it would suffice.

There was still some time before dinner, but (Y/N) figured it was time to meet the family.

She stepped out of her room and realized she had no idea where to go to find the dining room.

"Need help?"

(Y/N) jumped and turned to see Duncan stood, blank faced yet again, looking at her,

"Yes please," she responded, her voice soft.

"Follow me," Duncan told her. He didn't wait to see if she was following, she she quickly troted along behind him to keep up.

The Catton family was sat around the dinner table already when Duncan led (Y/N) into the room. All eyes turned to her when she walked in. She suddenly felt very self conscious and wished she was back in the hot, welcoming bath tub.

Until she caught Felix looking at her as if she were the most beautiful thing he had ever laid his eyes on.

"Oh, Felix, darling," an older woman sat at the head of the table - Felix's mom - said. "She is absolutely beautiful."

His mom stood from her seat and quickly approached (Y/N). She gently cupped (Y/N)'s cheeks. (Y/N) tensed, unsure of what to do. Mrs. Catton didn't seem to notice, or if she did she didn't let on.

"Honey, you didn't tell us how beautiful she was," Mrs. Catton said to her son.

"You never believe me," Felix retorted.

Mrs. Catton turned back to (Y/N). "Welcome, darling. We're very happy to have you here. You can call me Lady Elspeth." She took (Y/N)'s hands and squeezed them, then gestured towards the table. "We left a seat free next to Felix for you. Come, sit. Dinner will be served soon."

(Y/N) quickly moved to the table, oping to no longer be the center of attention. Felix was still smiling at her as she sat down next to him.

"You do look beautiful," he said.

Her face started heating up. "Thank you."

Across from them, a throat cleared. Felix glanced up at his cousin. (Y/N) didn't miss the subtle change in Felix's expression. "(Y/N), this is my cousin, Farleigh, and my sister, Venetia."

"Oh, I know Farleigh," she said, looking over at the other young man. He gave her an obviously forced smile. "I-I mean, I know of Farleigh. I've seen you around on campus."

"Weird that I haven't seen you. It's not like Felix to hide his friends away," Farleigh said.

"I wasn't hiding her away." Felix's face was tense. (Y/N) wondered what the story between him and Farleigh was. They seemed to get along well on campus, or at least Farleigh was in Felix's friend group.

Dinner was served, thus breaking up the tense moment. A plate was placed in front of everyone and they all began to eat. (Y/N) tried not to draw too much attention to herself, but she knew her presence alone was drawing attention. Both Farleigh and Venetia weren't very subtle with the way they were staring at her.

"So, (Y/N)," Elspeth said after a few moments of silence, "what is it you're studying at Oxford?"

"English," (Y/N) responded. "I'd like to be a writer when I graduate, but I know that's not an entirely realistic dream so I'm aiming to be an English teacher as a backup."

"Oh, writing! That's wonderful, darling!" Elspeth said. (Y/N) was somewhat shocked that Elspeth seemed genuine with her interest. "Have you written anything yet?"

"A few short stories." She shrugged. "Nothing major."

"'Nothing major'?" Felix questioned. "She's won contests with her short stories! Remember, you told me one of your stories was published in an anthology of short stories when you were still in high school?"

Elspeth and Felix's dad, Sir James, were impressed, while (Y/N) was surprised that Felix had remembered her telling him that. He was smiling down at her in pride and she couldn't help but smile back at him.

"Is that how you got your scholarship?" Farleigh asked. The look on his face told (Y/N) that his question wasn't as genuine as Elspeth's had been.

"Farleigh," Felix sneered.

"What? I was just asking. It's not like it's a secret that she's a scholarship kid. There's no shame in needing some financial help."

"You would know, wouldn't you?"

"Boys," James said, his voice stern in warning.

Dinner fell quiet after that. (Y/N) pushed her food around her plate, suddenly no longer hungry. She was back to wishing she could melt away into the floor and never be seen again. Maybe it wasn't too late to just go back to the school and stay in the dorms alone for the summer.

Once she had finished eating, she politely excused herself and went back to her room. She had paid enough attention when Duncan showed her to the dining room that she made it back with no issue. The minute the door closed behind her, she let out a sigh. A lump had started to form in her throat, but she was refusing to let herself cry. Even now while she was alone, she didn't want to give in to these feelings. She had to be strong, at least until she could get her things together and figure out a way back to the school.

As Felix had told her, the butlers had unpacked her bag while she was at dinner. It took her a moment to find her pajamas and makeup remover. She pulled on an oversized shirt she had packed to wear on the warm nights and was leaned over the dresser to start taking off her makeup, the shirt riding up just enough, when the door connecting her and Felix suddenly opened. Felix walked in, still in his suit from dinner, except he had removed his tie and the top few buttons had been undone. (Y/N) quickly stood up straight, pulling her shirt down to cover her ass.

"Don't you knock?" she asked.

"No, why would I?" he said.

"What if I was changing?"

"You weren't."

She rolled her eyes and went back to taking her makeup off, this time more cautious about how much of her was being exposed with Felix in the room.

"I just wanted to say I'm sorry about how Farleigh acted during dinner," Felix said.

(Y/N) paused for a moment. She glanced at Felix through the mirror. He was looking up at her with an expression that told her his apology was genuine.

"It's alright," she said.

"No, it wasn't alright. He shouldn't be saying those things about you. It's not like he's much different. My parents have financially supported him for years and let him stay here for free. At least you earned your scholarship, he only got his way in life because of his family."

"So did you, though." There was a beat, and (Y/N) quickly turned to face Felix. "Wait, I didn't mean - "

"No, you're right," he cut her off. "My parents have financially helped me, too. You're the only one among us who has really earned your spot at Oxford. It's not fair of Farleigh to try and make you feel small because you come from a different background."

(Y/N) wanted to tell him it wasn't just Farleigh, it was everyone at Oxford. Even Felix's own friend group had shunned (Y/N) when he introduced her to them. It felt like Felix was the only one who truly wanted to befriend (Y/N).

"You don't have to apologize for him," she said instead. "But I appreciate that you'd want to."

"You're my friend. I didn't bring you here to be insulted by my obnoxious cousin, I brought you here because I wanted you to spend the summer with us."

Friend.

Even though she knew that's all they were, it still stung to hear him say it. She wanted so much more than that, but it was wishful thinking to believe that Felix cause ever want more than that.

"I...I think I'm gonna just...get in bed."

He raised an eyebrow at her. "It's still only early."

"I know. All the travel just has me feeling pretty worn out."

"Okay."

He stood and (Y/N) expected him to go back to his room. When he started to unbutton his shirt more, her eyes nearly popped out of her head.

"What are you doing?!"

"I was going to stay over here tonight. If you were okay with that, that is."

"You're supposed to ask these things before you just start undressing."

Felix chuckled as (Y/N) turned her back to him. "You really don't want to watch as I undress?"

Of course I want to watch! "I'm just...trying to be courteous."

He laughed again. (Y/N) could hear the sounds of his clothes hitting the floor. She wondered why he hadn't at least gone back to his room to get a pair of pajamas. At least pajama pants. She was starting to get the feeling that at home, Felix didn't have to ask many questions, and that also extended towards his guests.

"Okay, I am covered."

When she turned back, he was under the covers of her bed, his hands behind his head so she could see that he was at least shirtless under there.

"The bed is big enough for us to share," he said, reading the shocked look on her face. "That is, again, if you don't mind."

"N-No. I-I guess that's fine."

(Y/N) crawled into bed next to Felix. She tried to put as much distance between the two of them as she could but, despite what Felix said, the bed certainly was not that big. She could still feel the heat from his body as she turned onto her side, her back to him. She could feel his nearness. And she could feel the fact that he was only wearing his boxers.

"You don't have to stay, you know," she said. "I'm not going to slip away during the night or something."

He bed shook a little as he laughed. "I know. I just wanted to stay over here. At the very least, I want to make sure you don't have any issues sleeping. I always find I struggle when I'm trying to sleep in a new place."

(Y/N) rolled onto her other side so that she could face Felix. The full moon was shining through the window, illuminating his face. He turned his head to look down at her.

"I really appreciate everything you've done for me, Felix," she said, her voice so soft it was nearly a whisper.

He smiled. "Get some sleep, (Y/N). I don't intend on having a boring day tomorrow if the weather is nice."

~~~~~~

When (Y/N) woke up the next morning, she completely forgot where she was. The bed was far too soft to be the one in her dorm at Oxford, and it was certainly too hot to be just a normal day during the schooling semester.

Not to mention the fact that there was a body laying under her.

(Y/N)'s eyes snapped open as she realized her head was resting on Felix's chest, and his arm around wrapped around her. At some point in the night, they must've shifted so that they were cuddling. (Y/N) wasn't sure if she should pull away or stay where she was. What would Felix's reaction be when he woke up and found them both in such a compromising position?

A knock came at her door. "Miss. (Y/N)?"

It was Duncan's voice. Now she was definitely panicking.

"Just checking if you're awake," he added.

"Uh...yeah! I am Duncan!" she called back.

"Breakfast is being served in ten minutes. Do wake up master Felix and let him know as well. His mother will want him to punctual since she didn't get as much time with him last night."

Her face burned. She wondered if Duncan knew Felix was in here with her, or if he meant for her to go over to Felix's room to wake him.

The sound of footsteps retreating down the hallway told her that Duncan had walked away. She let out a breath, relaxing into Felix's side yet again. She felt him move beneath her and she quickly pulled out of his arms before he started to wake up.

She was shocked at how beautiful he looked in the morning. The same perfect beauty he had when he fell asleep. Not a single hair out of place, no drool on his lips, no sleepy gunk in his eyes. It was really unfair just how perfect he really was.

His eyes slowly blinked open and he smiled when he saw (Y/N) looking down at him. "Good morning."

"Morning," she said. "Uh, Duncan was just here. He said breakfast is in ten minutes."

Felix groaned. "I don't want to get up yet. Why does mum have to have breakfast so early?"

(Y/N) looked at the clock hung on the wall. "It's almost 10am."

"Far too early to wake up in the summer."

She couldn't help but chuckle a little. Felix stretched his arms out and sat up as well. His face was suddenly very close to hers, almost too close.

"I suppose I should get ready for breakfast then," he said.

"Is there any dress code for breakfast?"

He shook his head. "Not for breakfast, but the dress code for today's events is a bathing suit. Once we finish eating, I'm taking you down to the lake."

~~~~~~

A few hours later, (Y/N) was following Felix towards the lake next to his house. It was a scorching hot day outside. One that was definitely better spent in the cooling water instead of cooped up inside.

Farleigh and Venetia were already by the lake. Farleigh was laid back on a towel, reading some book, while Venetia was sat by the lake with her feet in the water. She looked over her shoulder as she heard the two approach and smiled.

"Well, here they are!" she announced. "Finally you're here."

"Pull up a towel," Farleigh said, not looking up from his book.

(Y/N) went to sit on the grass, but Venetia called, "Not you! You're joining me down here. I've been surrounded by this testosterone for far too long."

She wasn't about to argue. She was already coated in sweat just from walking down from the house. (Y/N) sat beside Venetia and placed her feet in the water. The sudden cold was like a shock to her system, but definitely a welcome one.

"So, (Y/N)," Venetia said, "tell me, how did you and my brother meet?"

"We were in class together," (Y/N) responded. "I helped him with an assigned reading he had trouble with."

"Saved my ass from failing that surprise test the professor gave us," Felix added.

"It wasn't a surprise, he told us about it the class before," (Y/N) said.

"I wasn't there that class, so it was a surprise to me."

"Was that the day you were too hungover after a dorm party on a Sunday night?" Farleigh asked.

"A Sunday?!" (Y/N) laughed.

"It was a surprise party for one of my friends in the dorm," Felix responded. "He had gone home for the weekend so we had to have the party that Sunday. I didn't plan to get fucked up that night."

"You never do," Farleigh commented.

"What about your family, (Y/N)?" Venetia interrupted. "Are they okay with you spending your summer with a load of strangers?"

Felix opened his mouth to deter his sister from asking, but (Y/N) cut him off by saying, "My parents are dead."

A silence fell over them. Venetia looked a mixture of horrified and sad. Farleigh lowered his book to look over at (Y/N). Felix was trying not to look at any of them while (Y/N) was fixing her attention on the water in front of her. She was running her feet back and forth, disrupting the otherwise calm water.

"They died when I was ten," she continued. "Car accident, drunk driver. I've lived with my grandparents since then, but my grandpa died a year ago and my gran is starting to develop dementia. When I got accepted into Oxford, I made a deal with the Dean that I could stay on campus during the summers until I could afford my own place."

Venetia looked like she was about to cry. (Y/N) suddenly wished she had lied and made up some story about her parents.

"Way to ruin the moon, V," Farleigh commented.

"I didn't know!" Venetia retorted.

"No, it's fine," (Y/N) cut off their bickering. "It's tough, but I've had years to come to terms with all the death, and gran is in a nursing home now so she's being taken care of. I don't want anyone to tip toe around me like I'm made of glass."

As if to make her point, (Y/N) pushed off the edge of the lake and into the water. She shrieked as the cold engulfed her. Venetia followed suit, and soon enough both of them had convinced Farleigh and Felix to get into the water as well. The conversation was long forgotten as they swam around, splashing one another as if they were children.

~~~~~~

That night, (Y/N) was sat in the garden underneath her bedroom window. With the sun gone down, the air had cooled off, but only slightly. The room was still too stuffy for her, and opening the window just made it worse, so she opted to sit out in the cool air before she tried to sleep again.

Footsteps approached and she expected it to be Felix. When she turned, she was surprised to see Venetia instead, dressed in a sheer nightgown and carrying a lit cigarette between her fingers.

"Mind if I sit?" Venetia asked.

"I feel like I should be the one asking you that, considering it's your house."

Venetia chuckled and sat next to her.

(Y/N)'s first impression of Venetia had been wrong, and she was kind of glad it had been. She thought that, like Farleigh, Venetia was also going to be a little catty and condescending towards her. But after their day by the lake, she felt a sort of kinship with Venetia. They were the only two young girls at Saltburn, they had to look out for one another at the very least.

"So, how are you enjoying your stay so far?" Venetia asked.

"It's lovely here," (Y/N) said. "Much better than spending the summer at the Oxford campus along. At least there's a lot of the house to explore, and at least two people who seem to want me here."

"Three, if you count mum. She's ecstatic to have you. If you're not careful, she might just try and adopt you."

"I wouldn't complain."

Venetia took a drag from her cigarette and blew the smoke into the air. "And, um...has Felix been treating you well?"

(Y/N) looked over at her with confusion. "I'd...say more than well. Why?"

"I just..." Venetia leaned over, resting her arms against her legs. "I'm not saying this to try and scare you or anything. I truly like you, (Y/N), and I just want to warn you because I know how my brother is. He often takes someone who is a little more...damaged than him under his wing and brings them back here for a few months. But once the summer ends, or once he's lost interest, he casts them aside for whatever new shiny toy catches his attention."

Venetia's words hit (Y/N) like a ton of bricks. She had been telling herself for months since meeting Felix that their friendship was too good to be true, that he was going to realize he was making a mistake and move on. But when he didn't, when he asked her back to his house for the summer, she thought that maybe she was wrong. Maybe he actually did care for her and wanted to be friends with her. She had a tiny glimmer of hope that maybe this summer would bring them closer together, that they could become more than just friends.

If anyone would know how Felix was, it would be Venetia. She was his sister. She had seen a lifetime of the way Felix acted with friends. If she was warning her of the possibility that Felix might toss her aside once the summer ended, then she felt inclined to believe Venetia.

"Again, I'm not telling you this as a way to make you upset," Venetia added. "Trust me, I want nothing more than for you to stay with us for the summer. I just really do not want you to get hurt if that's what happens with Felix."

Tears were forming in (Y/N)'s eyes again. She was having a harder time at fighting them than the night before after all Farleigh had said to her. She quickly stood and murmured a "goodnight" to Venetia before rushing back inside the house. She got to her bedroom just in time for the tears to start falling.

Stupid! You're so stupid for thinking you belonged here in his world. You're nothing more than a charity case for him!

(Y/N) sunk to the floor and buried her head in her hands. She cried and cried until the tears dried up and she was essentially dry sobbing. Her eyes felt heavy and her body was aching from being on the floor for so long. She just wanted to go to back to the school and pretend this entire trip never happened.

When she finally coaxed herself to stand, (Y/N) went to the bathroom to wash her face and brush her teeth before bed. She looked at herself in the mirror and winced. Her eyes were swollen and red, her cheeks were flush, and there were tear stains on her cheeks from crying. She grabbed a face cloth and wet it down with warm water. Before she could start wiping her face, the door leading to Felix's room opened. She froze, the wet cloth in her hands.

"Hey," Felix said. She thought for a moment that he hadn't noticed her state, until suddenly he was beside her. "What happened? Are you alright?"

"I'm fine," she said, wincing again at the sound of her horse voice.

"You don't look or sound fine."

She began to wipe her face, trying to ignore Felix's presence. As she rinsed the face cloth again, she said, "I think I'm going to call the Dean tomorrow to ask if my room is still available at the school, then look into getting the next train back to Oxford as soon as possible."

"What? Why? I thought you wanted to stay."

(Y/N) shook her head. "I don't belong here, Felix. This is your world, not mine. I'm just the girl with dead parents and a scholarship, struggling to figure out how or if I'll ever be financially stable enough to live on my own once the school kicks me out."

"What did Farleigh say to you?"

"It wasn't Farleigh!" she snapped, finally turning to face him. "It was Venetia! She told me that you don't let people stick around for long. That you take in the charity cases and toss them aside when you're bored. And I knew that's what was happening with me, I knew there was no way you could possibly want to be friends with me, but I was also stupid enough to let myself believe that maybe it was all real. That maybe you actually cared and you actually wanted me here!"

She was crying again. She must've looked and sounded insane. She wished she had never accepted Felix's offer to come here. She could only imagine what he would say about her when she left the next day.

"I'm not staying here and waiting to be hurt, Felix," she said. "You may think it's fun to toy with people's emotions, but I don't. Not when I trusted you in telling you about my parents, about my stories, about my sad little poor life."

She had more to say, although she wasn't sure if any of it would've made sense, but Felix cut her off before she could. He took hold of her face and pulled her in for a kiss. It surprised her at first and she pulled away almost immediately. He looked down at her, worried, like he was scared he had just crossed a line. When her brain finally caught up to what was happening, she quickly leaned back in to kiss him again.

Her hands held on to his shirt while one of his still cupped her face and the other started to move down her body. With one quick movement, he had lifted her up onto the counter and wrapped her legs around his waist. Her hands moved to tangle into his hair. His tongue moved across her bottom lip, silently asking for entrance to her mouth. She realized he was commando under his pajama pants when she felt him pressed against her, the only layer between being her panties as she was once again in the oversized shirt she had worn the night before.

Felix broke away first. She tried to follow him, but he held her back, a playful grin on his face.

"I don't want you to go," he said. "I want you here. Not just for this summer, but every summer from now on. I want you in my dorm room back at school, and eventually in my own place when we finish with school. I want you, (Y/N). You're not some toy to me."

"How long have you felt like this?" she asked.

"Since before I spoke to you in class that first day."

"Why did you wait so long to tell me?"

"I kept chickening out. Every girl I've been with has only wanted me for my money, or my looks, or both. No one has ever really cared for me as a person. When you did, it almost intimidated me. I needed to know for sure you'd be here for the long run, so I brought you home to see how you'd react to everything."

"Am I passing the test?"

He chuckled and kissed her again. "With flying colors."

She couldn't get enough of him; of his lips, his smile, his body against hers, his hands on her. She wanted all of him all the time. She suddenly never wanted to leave either of their rooms for the rest of the summer.

"You can still go back to school if you feel uncomfortable here. I wouldn't blame you there," he said. "But if you're going back, I'm coming with you."

She shook her head. "I couldn't take you away from your family."

"Then stay. I want you to be here, too. I want to be with you."

She grinned cheekily back at him. "If you're going to beg, you should be on your knees at least."

He raised an eyebrow at her. "If that's what you want."

She wanted all of him all the time, but she decided not to say that just yet. She was still a little cautious. She had to make sure Felix meant what he was saying, even if she felt deep down that he was. He needed to prove himself to her before she opened up that much to him.

But for now, she would definitely take the sight of him on his knees, his face between her legs as his hands pushed the shirt up around her hips.

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joemama-2 · 2 months

Text

thinking about dating an older man.

one who’s gruff, big, never really likes to smile. his hands are rough and calloused and the stubble growing on his chin is his number one enemy. he’s always tired from work, never really has any down time. when he’s tired or stressed, he just runs a hand through his hair, sighing.

he wears some rings, specially just on his middle and pinky finger. and specially silver.

the last time he was in a serious relationship was his thirties, most people his age would be married, with kids. not him. he’s started to think it’s just a him problem, but even then, he’s not sure if he could do a relationship. he feels too old, too busy with work. his priorities are set.

but that all changes when he meets you. as funny as it is, you make him feel young again. you smile so perfectly at him, and your politeness truly makes him feel an all too familiar warmth in the depths of his stomach. he finds that he seeks you out during the day, even the simplest of glimpses will make him feel complete.

he wants to touch you so bad. just wants to feel that soft, beautiful skin you always show off to him. he starts to think it’s intentional.

and when he finally gets his hands on you, he’s in heaven. his hands can cover your own completely. cupping your pretty tit in his palm while the other splays across your stomach flat as he feels the bulge of his hard cock pounding into your all too sweet pussy.

the hand that can also wrap around your throat, squeezing gently as the words that spout from his dirty, experienced mouth are anything but gentle. the one that sometimes covers your mouth when he’s fucking you in his office that’s full of prying ears because you just can’t keep fucking quiet.

the hands that have a bruising grip on your hips while he guides them up and down, forcing you to continue to ride him even after you cried out your knees hurt, even after your third orgasm of the night.

some may think that being older will make the sex boring, shorter. not him. if anything, it’s the complete opposite. he knows what he likes, knows what women like, knows what you like. he loves to tease and edge you for as much as he could until you’re practically crying out and begging him to finally fuck you right.

maybe he’s a sadist. maybe he’s a masochist. or maybe he just loves you so fucking much that he wants to savor every last moment with you like it’s his last.

you know, it’s not really his height, the muscles, or facial expressions that intimidate you. it’s his goddamn experience.

sometimes you even get jealous and force out the image of what he does to you, to other women in the past.

the way he does things so naturally and almost nonchalantly, has you pooling in your panties, cheeks flushed. you just want to moan from what he says. he doesn’t even have to touch you to get you going.

and like the smart bastard he is, he uses this against you every single time.

—————————

jjk: toji, nanami, higuruma, getou, sukuna, choso

#jjk #jjk x reader #jujutsu kaisen x reader #x reader #getou suguru x reader #nanami kento #nanami kento x reader #choso x reader #higuruma x reader #toji fushigro x reader #sukuna #sukuna x reader

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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 month

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“Disenshittify or Die”

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I'm coming to BURNING MAN! On TUESDAY (Aug 27) at 1PM, I'm giving a talk called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE!" at PALENQUE NORTE (7&E). On WEDNESDAY (Aug 28) at NOON, I'm doing a "Talking Caterpillar" Q&A at LIMINAL LABS (830&C).

Last weekend, I traveled to Las Vegas for Defcon 32, where I had the immense privilege of giving a solo talk on Track 1, entitled "Disenshittify or die! How hackers can seize the means of computation and build a new, good internet that is hardened against our asshole bosses' insatiable horniness for enshittification":

https://info.defcon.org/event/?id=54861

This was a followup to last year's talk, "An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet's Enshittification," a talk that kicked off a lot of international interest in my analysis of platform decay ("enshittification"):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rimtaSgGz_4

The Defcon organizers have earned a restful week or two, and that means that the video of my talk hasn't yet been posted to Defcon's Youtube channel, so in the meantime, I thought I'd post a lightly edited version of my speech crib. If you're headed to Burning Man, you can hear me reprise this talk at Palenque Norte (7&E); I'm kicking off their lecture series on Tuesday, Aug 27 at 1PM.

What the fuck happened to the old, good internet?

I mean, sure, our bosses were a little surveillance-happy, and they were usually up for sharing their data with the NSA, and whenever there was a tossup between user security and growth, it was always YOLO time.

But Google Search used to work. Facebook used to show you posts from people you followed. Uber used to be cheaper than a taxi and pay the driver more than a cabbie made. Amazon used to sell products, not Shein-grade self-destructing dropshipped garbage from all-consonant brands. Apple used to defend your privacy, rather than spying on you with your no-modifications-allowed Iphone.

There was a time when you searching for an album on Spotify would get you that album – not a playlist of insipid AI-generated covers with the same name and art.

Microsoft used to sell you software – sure, it was buggy – but now they just let you access apps in the cloud, so they can watch how you use those apps and strip the features you use the most out of the basic tier and turn them into an upcharge.

What – and I cannot stress this enough – the fuck happened?!

I’m talking about enshittification.

Here’s what enshittification looks like from the outside: First, you see a company that’s being good to its end users. Google puts the best search results at the top; Facebook shows you a feed of posts from people and groups you followl; Uber charges small dollars for a cab; Amazon subsidizes goods and returns and shipping and puts the best match for your product search at the top of the page.

That’s stage one, being good to end users. But there’s another part of this stage, call it stage 1a). That’s figuring out how to lock in those users.

There’s so many ways to lock in users.

If you’re Facebook, the users do it for you. You joined Facebook because there were people there you wanted to hang out with, and other people joined Facebook to hang out with you.

That’s the old “network effects” in action, and with network effects come “the collective action problem." Because you love your friends, but goddamn are they a pain in the ass! You all agree that FB sucks, sure, but can you all agree on when it’s time to leave?

No way.

Can you agree on where to go next?

Hell no.

You’re there because that’s where the support group for your rare disease hangs out, and your bestie is there because that’s where they talk with the people in the country they moved away from, then there’s that friend who coordinates their kid’s little league car pools on FB, and the best dungeon master you know isn’t gonna leave FB because that’s where her customers are.

So you’re stuck, because even though FB use comes at a high cost – your privacy, your dignity and your sanity – that’s still less than the switching cost you’d have to bear if you left: namely, all those friends who have taken you hostage, and whom you are holding hostage

Now, sometimes companies lock you in with money, like Amazon getting you to prepay for a year’s shipping with Prime, or to buy your Audible books on a monthly subscription, which virtually guarantees that every shopping search will start on Amazon, after all, you’ve already paid for it.

Sometimes, they lock you in with DRM, like HP selling you a printer with four ink cartridges filled with fluid that retails for more than $10,000/gallon, and using DRM to stop you from refilling any of those ink carts or using a third-party cartridge. So when one cart runs dry, you have to refill it or throw away your investment in the remaining three cartridges and the printer itself.

Sometimes, it’s a grab bag:

You can’t run your Ios apps without Apple hardware;

you can’t run your Apple music, books and movies on anything except an Ios app;

your iPhone uses parts pairing – DRM handshakes between replacement parts and the main system – so you can’t use third-party parts to fix it; and

every OEM iPhone part has a microscopic Apple logo engraved on it, so Apple can demand that the US Customs and Border Service seize any shipment of refurb Iphone parts as trademark violations.

Think Different, amirite?

Getting you locked in completes phase one of the enshittification cycle and signals the start of phase two: making things worse for you to make things better for business customers.

For example, a platform might poison its search results, like Google selling more and more of its results pages to ads that are identified with lighter and lighter tinier and tinier type.

Or Amazon selling off search results and calling it an “ad” business. They make $38b/year on this scam. The first result for your search is, on average, 29% more expensive than the best match for your search. The first row is 25% more expensive than the best match. On average, the best match for your search is likely to be found seventeen places down on the results page.

Other platforms sell off your feed, like Facebook, which started off showing you the things you asked to see, but now the quantum of content from the people you follow has dwindled to a homeopathic residue, leaving a void that Facebook fills with things that people pay to show you: boosted posts from publishers you haven’t subscribed to, and, of course, ads.

Now at this point you might be thinking ‘sure, if you’re not paying for the product, you’re the product.'

Bullshit!

Bull.

Shit.

The people who buy those Google ads? They pay more every year for worse ad-targeting and more ad-fraud

Those publishers paying to nonconsensually cram their content into your Facebook feed? They have to do that because FB suppresses their ability to reach the people who actually subscribed to them

The Amazon sellers with the best match for your query have to outbid everyone else just to show up on the first page of results. It costs so much to sell on Amazon that between 45-51% of every dollar an independent seller brings in has to be kicked up to Don Bezos and the Amazon crime family. Those sellers don’t have the kind of margins that let them pay 51% They have to raise prices in order to avoid losing money on every sale.

"But wait!" I hear you say!

[Come on, say it!]

"But wait! Things on Amazon aren’t more expensive that things at Target, or Walmart, or at a mom and pop store, or direct from the manufacturer.

"How can sellers be raising prices on Amazon if the price at Amazon is the same as at is everywhere else?"

[Any guesses?!]

That’s right, they charge more everywhere. They have to. Amazon binds its sellers to a policy called “most favored nation status,” which says they can’t charge more on Amazon than they charge elsewhere, including direct from their own factory store.

So every seller that wants to sell on Amazon has to raise their prices everywhere else.

Now, these sellers are Amazon’s best customers. They’re paying for the product, and they’re still getting screwed.

Paying for the product doesn’t fill your vapid boss’s shriveled heart with so much joy that he decides to stop trying to think of ways to fuck you over.

Look at Apple. Remember when Apple offered every Ios user a one-click opt out for app-based surveillance? And 96% of users clicked that box?

(The other four percent were either drunk or Facebook employees or drunk Facebook employees.)

That cost Facebook at least ten billion dollars per year in lost surveillance revenue?

I mean, you love to see it.

But did you know that at the same time Apple started spying on Ios users in the same way that Facebook had been, for surveillance data to use to target users for its competing advertising product?

Your Iphone isn’t an ad-supported gimme. You paid a thousand fucking dollars for that distraction rectangle in your pocket, and you’re still the product. What’s more, Apple has rigged Ios so that you can’t mod the OS to block its spying.

If you’re not not paying for the product, you’re the product, and if you are paying for the product, you’re still the product.

Just ask the farmers who are expected to swap parts into their own busted half-million dollar, mission-critical tractors, but can’t actually use those parts until a technician charges them $200 to drive out to the farm and type a parts pairing unlock code into their console.

John Deere’s not giving away tractors. Give John Deere a half mil for a tractor and you will be the product.

Please, my brothers and sisters in Christ. Please! Stop saying ‘if you’re not paying for the product, you’re the product.’

OK, OK, so that’s phase two of enshittification.

Phase one: be good to users while locking them in.

Phase two: screw the users a little to you can good to business customers while locking them in.

Phase three: screw everybody and take all the value for yourself. Leave behind the absolute bare minimum of utility so that everyone stays locked into your pile of shit.

Enshittification: a tragedy in three acts.

That’s what enshittification looks like from the outside, but what’s going on inside the company? What is the pathological mechanism? What sci-fi entropy ray converts the excellent and useful service into a pile of shit?

That mechanism is called twiddling. Twiddling is when someone alters the back end of a service to change how its business operates, changing prices, costs, search ranking, recommendation criteria and other foundational aspects of the system.

Digital platforms are a twiddler’s utopia. A grocer would need an army of teenagers with pricing guns on rollerblades to reprice everything in the building when someone arrives who’s extra hungry.

Whereas the McDonald’s Investments portfolio company Plexure advertises that it can use surveillance data to predict when an app user has just gotten paid so the seller can tack an extra couple bucks onto the price of their breakfast sandwich.

And of course, as the prophet William Gibson warned us, ‘cyberspace is everting.' With digital shelf tags, grocers can change prices whenever they feel like, like the grocers in Norway, whose e-ink shelf tags change the prices 2,000 times per day.

Every Uber driver is offered a different wage for every job. If a driver has been picky lately, the job pays more. But if the driver has been desperate enough to grab every ride the app offers, the pay goes down, and down, and down.

The law professor Veena Dubal calls this ‘algorithmic wage discrimination.' It’s a prime example of twiddling.

Every youtuber knows what it’s like to be twiddled. You work for weeks or months, spend thousands of dollars to make a video, then the algorithm decides that no one – not your own subscribers, not searchers who type in the exact name of your video – will see it.

Why? Who knows? The algorithm’s rules are not public.

Because content moderation is the last redoubt of security through obscurit: they can’t tell you what the como algorithm is downranking because then you’d cheat.

Youtube is the kind of shitty boss who docks every paycheck for all the rules you’ve broken, but won’t tell you what those rules were, lest you figure out how to break those rules next time without your boss catching you.

Twiddling can also work in some users’ favor, of course. Sometimes platforms twiddle to make things better for end users or business customers.

For example, Emily Baker-White from Forbes revealed the existence of a back-end feature that Tiktok’s management can access they call the “heating tool.”

When a manager applies the heating toll to a performer’s account, that performer’s videos are thrust into the feeds of millions of users, without regard to whether the recommendation algorithm predicts they will enjoy that video.

Why would they do this? Well, here’s an analogy from my boyhood I used to go to this traveling fair that would come to Toronto at the end of every summer, the Canadian National Exhibition. If you’ve been to a fair like the Ex, you know that you can always spot some guy lugging around a comedically huge teddy bear.

Nominally, you win that teddy bear by throwing five balls in a peach-basket, but to a first approximation, no one has ever gotten five balls to stay in that peach-basket.

That guy “won” the teddy bear when a carny on the midway singled him out and said, "fella, I like your face. Tell you what I’m gonna do: You get just one ball in the basket and I’ll give you this keychain, and if you amass two keychains, I’ll let you trade them in for one of these galactic-scale teddy-bears."

That’s how the guy got his teddy bear, which he now has to drag up and down the midway for the rest of the day.

Why the hell did that carny give away the teddy bear? Because it turns the guy into a walking billboard for the midway games. If that dopey-looking Judas Goat can get five balls into a peach basket, then so can you.

Except you can’t.

Tiktok’s heating tool is a way to give away tactical giant teddy bears. When someone in the TikTok brain trust decides they need more sports bros on the platform, they pick one bro out at random and make him king for the day, heating the shit out of his account.

That guy gets a bazillion views and he starts running around on all the sports bro forums trumpeting his success: *I am the Louis Pasteur of sports bro influencers!"

The other sports bros pile in and start retooling to make content that conforms to the idiosyncratic Tiktok format. When they fail to get giant teddy bears of their own, they assume that it’s because they’re doing Tiktok wrong, because they don’t know about the heating tool.

But then comes the day when the TikTok Star Chamber decides they need to lure in more astrologers, so they take the heat off that one lucky sports bro, and start heating up some lucky astrologer.

Giant teddy bears are all over the place: those Uber drivers who were boasting to the NYT ten years ago about earning $50/hour? The Substackers who were rolling in dough? Joe Rogan and his hundred million dollar Spotify payout? Those people are all the proud owners of giant teddy bears, and they’re a steal.

Because every dollar they get from the platform turns into five dollars worth of free labor from suckers who think they just internetting wrong.

Giant teddy bears are just one way of twiddling. Platforms can play games with every part of their business logic, in highly automated ways, that allows them to quickly and efficiently siphon value from end users to business customers and back again, hiding the pea in a shell game conducted at machine speeds, until they’ve got everyone so turned around that they take all the value for themselves.

That’s the how: How the platforms do the trick where they are good to users, then lock users in, then maltreat users to be good to business customers, then lock in those business customers, then take all the value for themselves.

So now we know what is happening, and how it is happening, all that’s left is why it’s happening.

Now, on the one hand, the why is pretty obvious. The less value that end-users and business customers capture, the more value there is left to divide up among the shareholders and the executives.

That’s why, but it doesn’t tell you why now. Companies could have done this shit at any time in the past 20 years, but they didn’t. Or at least, the successful ones didn’t. The ones that turned themselves into piles of shit got treated like piles of shit. We avoided them and they died.

Remember Myspace? Yahoo Search? Livejournal? Sure, they’re still serving some kind of AI slop or programmatic ad junk if you hit those domains, but they’re gone.

And there’s the clue: It used to be that if you enshittified your product, bad things happened to your company. Now, there are no consequences for enshittification, so everyone’s doing it.

Let’s break that down: What stops a company from enshittifying?

There are four forces that discipline tech companies. The first one is, obviously, competition.

If your customers find it easy to leave, then you have to worry about them leaving

Many factors can contribute to how hard or easy it is to depart a platform, like the network effects that Facebook has going for it. But the most important factor is whether there is anywhere to go.

Back in 2012, Facebook bought Insta for a billion dollars. That may seem like chump-change in these days of eleven-digit Big Tech acquisitions, but that was a big sum in those innocent days, and it was an especially big sum to pay for Insta. The company only had 13 employees, and a mere 25 million registered users.

But what mattered to Zuckerberg wasn’t how many users Insta had, it was where those users came from.

[Does anyone know where those Insta users came from?]

That’s right, they left Facebook and joined Insta. They were sick of FB, even though they liked the people there, they hated creepy Zuck, they hated the platform, so they left and they didn’t come back.

So Zuck spent a cool billion to recapture them, A fact he put in writing in a midnight email to CFO David Ebersman, explaining that he was paying over the odds for Insta because his users hated him, and loved Insta. So even if they quit Facebook (the platform), they would still be captured Facebook (the company).

Now, on paper, Zuck’s Instagram acquisition is illegal, but normally, that would be hard to stop, because you’d have to prove that he bought Insta with the intention of curtailing competition.

But in this case, Zuck tripped over his own dick: he put it in writing.

But Obama’s DoJ and FTC just let that one slide, following the pro-monopoly policies of Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and Bush II, and setting an example that Trump would follow, greenlighting gigamergers like the catastrophic, incestuous Warner-Discovery marriage.

Indeed, for 40 years, starting with Carter, and accelerating through Reagan, the US has encouraged monopoly formation, as an official policy, on the grounds that monopolies are “efficient.”

If everyone is using Google Search, that’s something we should celebrate. It means they’ve got the very best search and wouldn’t it be perverse to spend public funds to punish them for making the best product?

But as we all know, Google didn’t maintain search dominance by being best. They did it by paying bribes. More than 20 billion per year to Apple alone to be the default Ios search, plus billions more to Samsung, Mozilla, and anyone else making a product or service with a search-box on it, ensuring that you never stumble on a search engine that’s better than theirs.

Which, in turn, ensured that no one smart invested big in rival search engines, even if they were visibly, obviously superior. Why bother making something better if Google’s buying up all the market oxygen before it can kindle your product to life?

Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Amazon – they’re not “making things” companies, they’re “buying things” companies, taking advantage of official tolerance for anticompetitive acquisitions, predatory pricing, market distorting exclusivity deals and other acts specifically prohibited by existing antitrust law.

Their goal is to become too big to fail, because that makes them too big to jail, and that means they can be too big to care.

Which is why Google Search is a pile of shit and everything on Amazon is dropshipped garbage that instantly disintegrates in a cloud of offgassed volatile organic compounds when you open the box.

Once companies no longer fear losing your business to a competitor, it’s much easier for them to treat you badly, because what’re you gonna do?

Remember Lily Tomlin as Ernestine the AT&T operator in those old SNL sketches? “We don’t care. We don’t have to. We’re the phone company.”

Competition is the first force that serves to discipline companies and the enshittificatory impulses of their leadership, and we just stopped enforcing competition law.

It takes a special kind of smooth-brained asshole – that is, an establishment economist – to insist that the collapse of every industry from eyeglasses to vitamin C into a cartel of five or fewer companies has nothing to do with policies that officially encouraged monopolization.

It’s like we used to put down rat poison and we didn’t have a rat problem. Then these dickheads convinced us that rats were good for us and we stopped putting down rat poison, and now rats are gnawing our faces off and they’re all running around saying, "Who’s to say where all these rats came from? Maybe it was that we stopped putting down poison, but maybe it’s just the Time of the Rats. The Great Forces of History bearing down on this moment to multiply rats beyond all measure!"

Antitrust didn’t slip down that staircase and fall spine-first on that stiletto: they stabbed it in the back and then they pushed it.

And when they killed antitrust, they also killed regulation, the second force that disciplines companies. Regulation is possible, but only when the regulator is more powerful than the regulated entities. When a company is bigger than the government, it gets damned hard to credibly threaten to punish that company, no matter what its sins.

That’s what protected IBM for all those years when it had its boot on the throat of the American tech sector. Do you know, the DOJ fought to break up IBM in the courts from 1970-1982, and that every year, for 12 consecutive years, IBM spent more on lawyers to fight the USG than the DOJ Antitrust Division spent on all the lawyers fighting every antitrust case in the entire USA?

IBM outspent Uncle Sam for 12 years. People called it “Antitrust’s Vietnam.” All that money paid off, because by 1982, the president was Ronald Reagan, a man whose official policy was that monopolies were “efficient." So he dropped the case, and Big Blue wriggled off the hook.

It’s hard to regulate a monopolist, and it’s hard to regulate a cartel. When a sector is composed of hundreds of competing companies, they compete. They genuinely fight with one another, trying to poach each others’ customers and workers. They are at each others’ throats.

It’s hard enough for a couple hundred executives to agree on anything. But when they’re legitimately competing with one another, really obsessing about how to eat each others’ lunches, they can’t agree on anything.

The instant one of them goes to their regulator with some bullshit story, about how it’s impossible to have a decent search engine without fine-grained commercial surveillance; or how it’s impossible to have a secure and easy to use mobile device without a total veto over which software can run on it; or how it’s impossible to administer an ISP’s network unless you can slow down connections to servers whose owners aren’t paying bribes for “premium carriage"; there’s some *other company saying, “That’s bullshit”

“We’ve managed it! Here’s our server logs, our quarterly financials and our customer testimonials to prove it.”

100 companies are a rabble, they're a mob. They can’t agree on a lobbying position. They’re too busy eating each others’ lunch to agree on how to cater a meeting to discuss it.

But let those hundred companies merge to monopoly, absorb one another in an incestuous orgy, turn into five giant companies, so inbred they’ve got a corporate Habsburg jaw, and they become a cartel.

It’s easy for a cartel to agree on what bullshit they’re all going to feed their regulator, and to mobilize some of the excess billions they’ve reaped through consolidation, which freed them from “wasteful competition," sp they can capture their regulators completely.

You know, Congress used to pass federal consumer privacy laws? Not anymore.

The last time Congress managed to pass a federal consumer privacy law was in 1988: The Video Privacy Protection Act. That’s a law that bans video-store clerks from telling newspapers what VHS cassettes you take home. In other words, it regulates three things that have effectively ceased to exist.

The threat of having your video rental history out there in the public eye was not the last or most urgent threat the American public faced, and yet, Congress is deadlocked on passing a privacy law.

Tech companies’ regulatory capture involves a risible and transparent gambit, that is so stupid, it’s an insult to all the good hardworking risible transparent ruses out there.

Namely, they claim that when they violate your consumer, privacy or labor rights, It’s not a crime, because they do it with an app.

Algorithmic wage discrimination isn’t illegal wage theft: we do it with an app.

Spying on you from asshole to appetite isn’t a privacy violation: we do it with an app.

And Amazon’s scam search tool that tricks you into paying 29% more than the best match for your query? Not a ripoff. We do it with an app.

Once we killed competition – stopped putting down rat poison – we got cartels – the rats ate our faces. And the cartels captured their regulators – the rats bought out the poison factory and shut it down.

So companies aren’t constrained by competition or regulation.

But you know what? This is tech, and tech is different.IIt’s different because it’s flexible. Because our computers are Turing-complete universal von Neumann machines. That means that any enshittificatory alteration to a program can be disenshittified with another program.

Every time HP jacks up the price of ink , they invite a competitor to market a refill kit or a compatible cartridge.

When Tesla installs code that says you have to pay an extra monthly fee to use your whole battery, they invite a modder to start selling a kit to jailbreak that battery and charge it all the way up.

Lemme take you through a little example of how that works: Imagine this is a product design meeting for our company’s website, and the guy leading the meeting says “Dudes, you know how our KPI is topline ad-revenue? Well, I’ve calculated that if we make the ads just 20% more invasive and obnoxious, we’ll boost ad rev by 2%”

This is a good pitch. Hit that KPI and everyone gets a fat bonus. We can all take our families on a luxury ski vacation in Switzerland.

But here’s the thing: someone’s gonna stick their arm up – someone who doesn’t give a shit about user well-being, and that person is gonna say, “I love how you think, Elon. But has it occurred to you that if we make the ads 20% more obnoxious, then 40% of our users will go to a search engine and type 'How do I block ads?'"

I mean, what a nightmare! Because once a user does that, the revenue from that user doesn’t rise to 102%. It doesn’t stay at 100% It falls to zero, forever.

[Any guesses why?]

Because no user ever went back to the search engine and typed, 'How do I start seeing ads again?'

Once the user jailbreaks their phone or discovers third party ink, or develops a relationship with an independent Tesla mechanic who’ll unlock all the DLC in their car, that user is gone, forever.

Interoperability – that latent property bequeathed to us courtesy of Herrs Turing and Von Neumann and their infinitely flexible, universal machines – that is a serious check on enshittification.

The fact that Congress hasn’t passed a privacy law since 1988 Is countered, at least in part, by the fact that the majority of web users are now running ad-blockers, which are also tracker-blockers.

But no one’s ever installed a tracker-blocker for an app. Because reverse engineering an app puts in you jeopardy of criminal and civil prosecution under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, with penalties of a 5-year prison sentence and a $500k fine for a first offense.

And violating its terms of service puts you in jeopardy under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986, which is the law that Ronald Reagan signed in a panic after watching Wargames (seriously!).

Helping other users violate the terms of service can get you hit with a lawsuit for tortious interference with contract. And then there’s trademark, copyright and patent.

All that nonsense we call “IP,” but which Jay Freeman of Cydia calls “Felony Contempt of Business Model."

So if we’re still at that product planning meeting and now it’s time to talk about our app, the guy leading the meeting says, “OK, so we’ll make the ads in the app 20% more obnoxious to pull a 2% increase in topline ad rev?”

And that person who objected to making the website 20% worse? Their hand goes back up. Only this time they say “Why don’t we make the ads 100% more invasive and get a 10% increase in ad rev?"

Because it doesn't matter if a user goes to a search engine and types, “How do I block ads in an app." The answer is: you can't. So YOLO, enshittify away.

“IP” is just a euphemism for “any law that lets me reach outside my company’s walls to exert coercive control over my critics, competitors and customers,” and “app” is just a euphemism for “A web page skinned with the right IP so that protecting your privacy while you use it is a felony.”

Interop used to keep companies from enshittifying. If a company made its client suck, someone would roll out an alternative client, if they ripped a feature out and wanted to sell it back to you as a monthly subscription, someone would make a compatible plugin that restored it for a one-time fee, or for free.

To help people flee Myspace, FB gave them bots that you’d load with your login credentials. It would scrape your waiting Myspace messages and put ‘em in your FB inbox, and login to Myspace and paste your replies into your Myspace outbox. So you didn’t have to choose between the people you loved on Myspace, and Facebook, which launched with a promise never to spy on you. Remember that?!

Thanks to the metastasis of IP, all that is off the table today. Apple owes its very existence to iWork Suite, whose Pages, Numbers and Keynote are file-compatible with Microsoft’s Word, Excel and Powerpoint. But make an IOS runtime that’ll play back the files you bought from Apple’s stores on other platforms, and they’ll nuke you til you glow.

FB wouldn’t have had a hope of breaking Myspace’s grip on social media without that scrape, but scrape FB today in support of an alternative client and their lawyers will bomb you til the rubble bounces.

Google scraped every website in the world to create its search index. Try and scrape Google and they’ll have your head on a pike.

When they did it, it was progress. When you do it to them, that’s piracy. Every pirate wants to be an admiral.

Because this handful of companies has so thoroughly captured their regulators, they can wield the power of the state against you when you try to break their grip on power, even as their own flagrant violations of our rights go unpunished. Because they do them with an app.

Tech lost its fear of competitin it neutralized the threat from regulators, and then put them in harness to attack new startups that might do unto them as they did unto the companies that came before them.

But even so, there was a force that kept our bosses in check That force was us. Tech workers.

Tech workers have historically been in short supply, which gave us power, and our bosses knew it.

To get us to work crazy hours, they came up with a trick. They appealed to our love of technology, and told us that we were heroes of a digital revolution, who would “organize the world’s information and make it useful,” who would “bring the world closer together.”

They brought in expert set-dressers to turn our workplaces into whimsical campuses with free laundry, gourmet cafeterias, massages, and kombucha, and a surgeon on hand to freeze our eggs so that we could work through our fertile years.

They convinced us that we were being pampered, rather than being worked like government mules.

This trick has a name. Fobazi Ettarh, the librarian-theorist, calls it “vocational awe, and Elon Musk calls it being “extremely hardcore.”

This worked very well. Boy did we put in some long-ass hours!

But for our bosses, this trick failed badly. Because if you miss your mother’s funeral and to hit a deadline, and then your boss orders you to enshittify that product, you are gonna experience a profound moral injury, which you are absolutely gonna make your boss share.

Because what are they gonna do? Fire you? They can’t hire someone else to do your job, and you can get a job that’s even better at the shop across the street.

So workers held the line when competition, regulation and interop failed.

But eventually, supply caught up with demand. Tech laid off 260,000 of us last year, and another 100,000 in the first half of this year.

You can’t tell your bosses to go fuck themselves, because they’ll fire your ass and give your job to someone who’ll be only too happy to enshittify that product you built.

That’s why this is all happening right now. Our bosses aren’t different. They didn’t catch a mind-virus that turned them into greedy assholes who don’t care about our users’ wellbeing or the quality of our products.

As far as our bosses have always been concerned, the point of the business was to charge the most, and deliver the least, while sharing as little as possible with suppliers, workers, users and customers. They’re not running charities.

Since day one, our bosses have shown up for work and yanked as hard as they can on the big ENSHITTIFICATION lever behind their desks, only that lever didn’t move much. It was all gummed up by competition, regulation, interop and workers.

As those sources of friction melted away, the enshittification lever started moving very freely.

Which sucks, I know. But think about this for a sec: our bosses, despite being wildly imperfect vessels capable of rationalizing endless greed and cheating, nevertheless oversaw a series of actually great products and services.

Not because they used to be better people, but because they used to be subjected to discipline.

So it follows that if we want to end the enshittocene, dismantle the enshitternet, and build a new, good internet that our bosses can’t wreck, we need to make sure that these constraints are durably installed on that internet, wound around its very roots and nerves. And we have to stand guard over it so that it can’t be dismantled again.

A new, good internet is one that has the positive aspects of the old, good internet: an ethic of technological self-determination, where users of technology (and hackers, tinkerers, startups and others serving as their proxies) can reconfigure and mod the technology they use, so that it does what they need it to do, and so that it can’t be used against them.

But the new, good internet will fix the defects of the old, good internet, the part that made it hard to use for anyone who wasn’t us. And hell yeah we can do that. Tech bosses swear that it’s impossible, that you can’t have a conversation friend without sharing it with Zuck; or search the web without letting Google scrape you down to the viscera; or have a phone that works reliably without giving Apple a veto over the software you install.

They claim that it’s a nonsense to even ponder this kind of thing. It’s like making water that’s not wet. But that’s bullshit. We can have nice things. We can build for the people we love, and give them a place that’s worth of their time and attention.

To do that, we have to install constraints.

The first constraint, remember, is competition. We’re living through a epochal shift in competition policy. After 40 years with antitrust enforcement in an induced coma, a wave of antitrust vigor has swept through governments all over the world. Regulators are stepping in to ban monopolistic practices, open up walled gardens, block anticompetitive mergers, and even unwind corrupt mergers that were undertaken on false pretenses.

Normally this is the place in the speech where I’d list out all the amazing things that have happened over the past four years. The enforcement actions that blocked companies from becoming too big to care, and that scared companies away from even trying.

Like Wiz, which just noped out of the largest acquisition offer in history, turning down Google’s $23b cashout, and deciding to, you know, just be a fucking business that makes money by producing a product that people want and selling it at a competitive price.

Normally, I’d be listing out FTC rulemakings that banned noncompetes nationwid. Or the new merger guidelines the FTC and DOJ cooked up, which – among other things – establish that the agencies should be considering whether a merger will negatively impact privacy.

I had a whole section of this stuff in my notes, a real victory lap, but I deleted it all this week.

[Can anyone guess why?]

That’s right! This week, Judge Amit Mehta, ruling for the DC Circuit of these United States of America, In the docket 20-3010 a case known as United States v. Google LLC, found that “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly," and ordered Google and the DOJ to propose a schedule for a remedy, like breaking the company up.

So yeah, that was pretty fucking epic.

Now, this antitrust stuff is pretty esoteric, and I won’t gatekeep you or shame you if you wanna keep a little distance on this subject. Nearly everyone is an antitrust normie, and that's OK. But if you’re a normie, you’re probably only catching little bits and pieces of the narrative, and let me tell you, the monopolists know it and they are flooding the zone.

The Wall Street Journal has published over 100 editorials condemning FTC Chair Lina Khan, saying she’s an ineffectual do-nothing, wasting public funds chasing doomed, quixotic adventures against poor, innocent businesses accomplishing nothing

[Does anyone out there know who owns the Wall Street Journal?]

That’s right, it’s Rupert Murdoch. Do you really think Rupert Murdoch pays his editorial board to write one hundred editorials about someone who’s not getting anything done?

The reality is that in the USA, in the UK, in the EU, in Australia, in Canada, in Japan, in South Korea, even in China, we are seeing more antitrust action over the past four years than over the preceding forty years.

Remember, competition law is actually pretty robust. The problem isn’t the law, It’s the enforcement priorities. Reagan put antitrust in mothballs 40 years ago, but that elegant weapon from a more civilized age is now back in the hands of people who know how to use it, and they’re swinging for the fences.

Next up: regulation.

As the seemingly inescapable power of the tech giants is revealed for the sham it always was, governments and regulators are finally gonna kill the “one weird trick” of violating the law, and saying “It doesn’t count, we did it with an app.”

Like in the EU, they’re rolling out the Digital Markets Act this year. That’s a law requiring dominant platforms to stand up APIs so that third parties can offer interoperable services.

So a co-op, a nonprofit, a hobbyist, a startup, or a local government agency wil eventuallyl be able to offer, say, a social media server that can interconnect with one of the dominant social media silos, and users who switch to that new platform will be able to continue to exchange messages with the users they follow and groups they belong to, so the switching costs will fall to damned near zero.

That’s a very cool rule, but what’s even cooler is how it’s gonna be enforced. Previous EU tech rules were “regulations” as in the GDPR – the General Data Privacy Regulation. EU regs need to be “transposed” into laws in each of the 27 EU member states, so they become national laws that get enforced by national courts.

For Big Tech, that means all previous tech regulations are enforced in Ireland, because Ireland is a tax haven, and all the tech companies fly Irish flags of convenience.

Here’s the thing: every tax haven is also a crime haven. After all, if Google can pretend it’s Irish this week, it can pretend to be Cypriot, or Maltese, or Luxembougeious next week. So Ireland has to keep these footloose criminal enterprises happy, or they’ll up sticks and go somewhere else.

This is why the GDPR is such a goddamned joke in practice. Big tech wipes its ass with the GDPR, and the only way to punish them starts with Ireland’s privacy commissioner, who barely bothers to get out of bed. This is an agency that spends most of its time watching cartoons on TV in its pajamas and eating breakfast cereal. So all of the big GDPR cases go to Ireland and they die there.

This is hardly a secret. The European Commission knows it’s going on. So with the DMA, the Commission has changed things up: The DMA is an “Act,” not a “Regulation.” Meaning it gets enforced in the EU’s federal courts, bypassing the national courts in crime-havens like Ireland.

In other words, the “we violate privacy law, but we do it with an app” gambit that worked on Ireland’s toothless privacy watchdog is now a dead letter, because EU federal judges have no reason to swallow that obvious bullshit.

Here in the US, the dam is breaking on federal consumer privacy law – at last!

Remember, our last privacy law was passed in 1988 to protect the sanctity of VHS rental history. It's been a minute.

And the thing is, there's a lot of people who are angry about stuff that has some nexus with America's piss-poor privacy landscape. Worried that Facebook turned grampy into a Qanon? That Insta made your teen anorexic? That TikTok is brainwashing millennials into quoting Osama Bin Laden? Or that cops are rolling up the identities of everyone at a Black Lives Matter protest or the Jan 6 riots by getting location data from Google? Or that Red State Attorneys General are tracking teen girls to out-of-state abortion clinics? Or that Black people are being discriminated against by online lending or hiring platforms? Or that someone is making AI deepfake porn of you?

A federal privacy law with a private right of action – which means that individuals can sue companies that violate their privacy – would go a long way to rectifying all of these problems

There's a pretty big coalition for that kind of privacy law! Which is why we have seen a procession of imperfect (but steadily improving) privacy laws working their way through Congress.

If you sign up for EFF’s mailing list at eff.org we’ll send you an email when these come up, so you can call your Congressjerk or Senator and talk to them about it. Or better yet, make an appointment to drop by their offices when they’re in their districts, and explain to them that you’re not just a registered voter from their district, you’re the kind of elite tech person who goes to Defcon, and then explain the bill to them. That stuff makes a difference.

What about self-help? How are we doing on making interoperability legal again, so hackers can just fix shit without waiting for Congress or a federal agency to act?

All the action here these day is in the state Right to Repair fight. We’re getting state R2R bills, like the one that passed this year in Oregon that bans parts pairing, where DRM is used to keep a device from using a new part until it gets an authorized technician’s unlock code.

These bills are pushed by a fantastic group of organizations called the Repair Coalition, at Repair.org, and they’ll email you when one of these laws is going through your statehouse, so you can meet with your state reps and explain to the JV squad the same thing you told your federal reps.

Repair.org’s prime mover is Ifixit, who are genuine heroes of the repair revolution, and Ifixit’s founder, Kyle Wiens, is here at the con. When you see him, you can shake his hand and tell him thanks, and that’ll be even better if you tell him that you’ve signed up to get alerts at repair.org!

Now, on to the final way that we reverse enhittification and build that new, good internet: you, the tech labor force.

For years, your bosses tricked you into thinking you were founders in waiting, temporarily embarrassed entrepreneurs who were only momentarily drawing a salary.

You certainly weren’t workers. Your power came from your intrinsic virtue, not like those lazy slobs in unions who have to get their power through that kumbaya solidarity nonsense.

It was a trick. You were scammed. The power you had came from scarcity, and so when the scarcity ended, when the industry started ringing up six-figure annual layoffs, your power went away with it.

The only durable source of power for tech workers is as workers, in a union.

Think about Amazon. Warehouse workers have to piss in bottles and have the highest rate of on-the-job maimings of any competing business. Whereas Amazon coders get to show up for work with facial piercings, green mohawks, and black t-shirts that say things their bosses don’t understand. They can piss whenever they want!

That’s not because Jeff Bezos or Andy Jassy loves you guys. It’s because they’re scared you’ll quit and they don’t know how to replace you.

Time for the second obligatory William Gibson quote: “The future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed.” You know who’s living in the future?. Those Amazon blue-collar workers. They are the bleeding edge.

Drivers whose eyeballs are monitored by AI cameras that do digital phrenology on their faces to figure out whether to dock their pay, warehouse workers whose bodies are ruined in just months.

As tech bosses beef up that reserve army of unemployed, skilled tech workers, then those tech workers – you all – will arrive at the same future as them.

Look, I know that you’ve spent your careers explaining in words so small your boss could understand them that you refuse to enshittify the company’s products, and I thank you for your service.

But if you want to go on fighting for the user, you need power that’s more durable than scarcity. You need a union. Wanna learn how? Check out the Tech Workers Coalition and Tech Solidarity, and get organized.

Enshittification didn’t arise because our bosses changed. They were always that guy.

They were always yankin’ on that enshittification lever in the C-suite.

What changed was the environment, everything that kept that switch from moving.

And that’s good news, in a bankshot way, because it means we can make good services out of imperfect people. As a wildly imperfect person myself, I find this heartening.

The new good internet is in our grasp: an internet that has the technological self-determination of the old, good internet, and the greased-skids simplicity of Web 2.0 that let all our normie friends get in on the fun.

Tech bosses want you to think that good UX and enshittification can’t ever be separated. That’s such a self-serving proposition you can spot it from orbit. We know it, 'cause we built the old good internet, and we’ve been fighting a rear-guard action to preserve it for the past two decades.

It’s time to stop playing defense. It's time to go on the offensive. To restore competition, regulation, interop and tech worker power so that we can create the new, good internet we’ll need to fight fascism, the climate emergency, and genocide.

To build a digital nervous system for a 21st century in which our children can thrive and prosper.

Community voting for SXSW is live! If you wanna hear RIDA QADRI and me talk about how GIG WORKERS can DISENSHITTIFY their jobs with INTEROPERABILITY, VOTE FOR THIS ONE!

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/17/hack-the-planet/#how-about-a-nice-game-of-chess

Image: https://twitter.com/igama/status/1822347578094043435/ (cropped)

@[email protected] (cropped)

https://mamot.fr/@[email protected]/112963252835869648

CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.pt

#pluralistic #defcon #defcon 32 #hackers #enshittification #speeches #transcripts #disenshittify or die #Youtube

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tootiecakes234 · 7 months

Text

I just know you would receive “gifts” from Katsuki all the time. They’d be little things to make your life easier that you didn’t even know you needed.

You like to read at night to unwind, but sometimes it’ll be a really good book so you want to stay up reading it. The thing is you don’t wanna bother Katsuki cuz you know he has a strict bedtime. This means often times you’ll stay a little longer in the living room reading as to not bother him.

One night you’re getting ready for bed when you see a box next to your bed.

“Hey Kat, is this yours?”, you say loud enough for him to hear you in the bathroom.

He peaks his head out the door and says, “No, I ordered it for you.” And then goes back to what he was doing.

You sit on the edge of the bed and open it up. It’s a reading light with a dampener so you can adjust the brightness.

He comes dragging his little slippered feet towards his side of the bed.

“Now you can keep your ass in bed. Tired of waking up and you being asleep on the couch. I’m an old man, I can’t keep carrying you to bed.”

You look at him with a bright smile on your face.

“You know you can just say, you like me being in the bed with you while you’re sleeping. You know, because I’m your big bad protector and I make you feel safe.”

“There is no talking to you sometimes you know that?”

It’s winter time and you always have your gloves on because you HATE your fingers being cold. The only problem is of course you have to remove said gloves to use your phone when you’re out and that SUCKS.

You’re out with him one day and you’ve been texting back and forth with Mina because her and her girlfriend are in an argument and she of course comes to you about it.

You are always there for your friend so you’ve been removing and putting on your gloves over and over again until Katsuki can’t stand it anymore.

You’re outside on a bench waiting for him while he runs into some shop when he comes back out he snatches your phone out of your hand.

“What the hell? I’m usin-“ you start shouting at him.

“ give me those shitty gloves and put these on. I’m sick of watching you struggle.”

When you look down you see a pair of gloves in your favorite color.

“How are these any different from the ones I have now, Mr. Know-it-all”

He smirks at you, “These gloves are thicker than those thin ones you use AND they work on smart phones.. so yea. I do know it all.”

“Oh…. Well thanks I guess” you murmur lowly.

“Now you can talk Racoon eyes through her mental breakdowns without getting frost bite in your fingers.”he says then hands you back your phone. “She deserve better than that idiot anyways. Don’t why she keeps putting up with it.”

Katsuki is leaving for a mission today and you’ve been so gloomy. He gonna be gone at least 3 days, maybe even the whole week.

You’re been wrapped around him like ivy since you woke up this morning.

“Listen woman, I have to go. You do this every time.”he says with his arms wrapped around you waist pulling you even more flush against him.

“You should clone yourself or something. Who am I gonna cuddle with now?? And who is gonna cook for me?? I’ll die of starvation before you get back. Is that what you want. To come home to a dead girlfriend???”

“You are so damn dramatic. Cuddle with the damn plethor of plushies you have in my goddamn bed. And as far as food… you won’t starve. You’ll just eat out everyday and I’ll come back to you complaining you’ve gained weight when you look the exact same.”

“I do not.”, you start to object.

“Yes you do. Which is why I made a few meals and froze them.” He says all smug, cuz he knows that would surprise you.

“You what??” You ask looking up at him with wide eyes.

“There’s a pot pie and dumplings. I even stored a lasagna in there.” Then his phone buzzes letting him know his ride is downstairs.

“Ok I gotta go. I love you.” And he bends down to give you a deep kiss. “Be safe. Call Eiji if you need anything and try not to burn the house down before I get back.”

“I love you too. Come back to me in one piece please.”

He smiles at you, “always”

He kisses you one more time and then heads to the car.

You go directly to the fridge to see the frozen meals he left you. And not only are the packages all neatly but he’s left the heating instructions on top for you.

To say there were tears shed would be an understatement.

Katsuki Masterlist

Tags: @dreamcastgirl99 @xxvendettaxx @justbepeace @moonpieshawdy @theloveofnagiseishiroslife @mintsbubbletea @darkstarlight82 @anon-mouse223 @b134ch-m4h-ey3z @i-literally-cant-with-this @flowerbedbaby @kit-katsukii @blaize-hewwo @sweetblueworm @tippy-toes @superlegend216

Let me know if you wanna be added to the tag list in the comments💕

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bunnyb34r · 6 months

Text

God forbid you wanna nap in this neighborhood

I stg every time I lay down to, the big ass stereo guy decides "ahh now is the perfect time to be an asshole 😌" and starts

Usually it's like 2pm-4pm that he's out but today nothing... until 5:45pm when I was TRYING to take a fucking quick nap... 😑 I'm gonna throw hard boiled eggs at his house I stg

#marquilla #his stereo gives me a migraine every goddamn time hes out #and i dont wanna be the asshole neighbor thats like hey you cant ever play that/youre too loud (daily) during non-noise ordinance hours #so you're technically not doing anything wrong youre just annoying me... and like be a jackass #especially since i dont do that when the other neighbors are having a family party outside bc again it's between 8am-10pm they #are allowed to be loud it just annoys me and hurts my brain #so when the weather is warm and i can garden im gonna play my trumpet and learn to #my excuse for doing it outside 'oh my family doesnt like me playing inside' not 'im trying to pavlov you into stopping bc i WILL be playing #badly in hopes you go away'#it's not even that i can hear his music it's that it's all bass which at that level i can feel and it hurts and i hate having to wear #headphones in my own house #like growing up my nextdoor neighbor would play polka for hours every goddamn sunday and we just dealt ofc even if it got old FAST #and the neighbor next to him would play the radio when they'd have parties and we'd play ours when outside (god help my neighbors when i #was into hsm and only played that all summer for two years) point being i understand it's just part pf being in a neighborhood #the problem is the bass penetrating my skull :( so enjoy Embouchure Badly in C Sharp my dude #im gonna pavlov this man #<- the tag to block (or track lmao)

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logansdoll · 1 month

Note

Heyyy it would be awesome if you wrote a third part for “37” where Charles gives Logan’s memories back and we go through flashbacks of some of his best memories, his wedding, the day his kids were born…something like that, it would be very heartwarming 🥰🥰🥰 or even maybe coming back from the past and seeing his kids again

sunflower

part three of "37"

CW: fluffy fluff, all the feels, suggestive, profanity, takes place after the events of Days Future Past, very bittersweet, your daughter's a lil menace, your son's a lil cutie pie, angst if you squint, i never know how to end these things, etc.

"Logan, the mind is a fickle thing," Charles sighed, resting his hands on his desk with a solemn look. "I can't possibly guarantee that this will work, much less in one session—" "I don't care how long it takes."

Logan's face drew tight with the statement, his patience visibly wearing thin.

He'd been listening to the same bullshit for twenty minutes...

"I don't care if I need a hundred different fuckin' sessions. I'm gettin' these memories back," he spelled out, leaning forward in his seat and roughly tapping his finger on the desk. "It doesn't make any damn sense. This body's been in this timeline for fifty-fuckin'-years and it doesn't remember shit."

"Because it is your consciousness that is the problem, Logan," Charles groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose. "That is what I've been trying to tell you."

Logan piped down for a moment, brows knitting together as he leaned back in his seat, taking an annoyed drag of his cigar.

"Your psyche is from a completely different timeline, and now resides in a completely different body. It's like asking to recall the memories of a random person walking down the street," the professor explained, again.

Sadly, he hung his head, greatly sorry for the misfortune of his friend.

"I wish there was something I could do, Logan. Truly. But I'm afraid it just can't be done."

But Logan didn't buy it.

Huffing a small plume of smoke out his nose, he glanced out the window, catching sight of you teaching a class on the lawn.

Using your powers, you grew a large sunflower out from the ground, the younger kids marveling at the sight as you began pointing out its anatomy, most of them enamored by the huge petals—which were bigger than their little six year-old frames.

And in a small pause in time, your eyes flitted up to meet his through the window, that heart-stopping smile finding its way onto your lips as you gave him a tiny wave.

It warmed him, experiencing your light for the first time in years without the threat of annihilation on the horizon.

Domesticity like this is something he'd craved all his life, and now that he had it in his grasp, he wasn't going to settle for anything less.

A stilling chill descended on his chest at the thought of your smile, and the countless others he'd missed.

Your tears of joy when he proposed.

Your frazzled excitement with the wedding planning.

Your radiance as you walked down the aisle.

He missed it all.

And he'd be damned if he didn't do everything in his power to try and get it back.

"Charles..." Logan started, stamping out his cigar in a nearby ashtray. "My whole life is standin' out there under that tree... and I can't remember a goddamn thing about her after 1973."

His tone turned cold, eyes sharp as he stared the professor down.

"I don't care if you have to rip my head in half... I'm gettin' those memories back."

The old man let out a sigh, accepting that going on like this would bring no other outcome.

He'd have to give the man what he wanted... consequences be damned.

'Let's hope he survives...'

"This will be violent," Charles stated off-rip, wheeling himself out from behind his desk. "I am essentially hammering your mind like a dam, making cracks in its defenses until it eventually gives way."

Logan nodded, watching as the man settled in front of him, raising his two fingers to his temple.

"Now... try not to move."

Logan shut his eyes, and in an instant, it felt as if his head was struck by a speeding train.

He let out a growl of pain as images began to flash behind his eyes, the next one always coming quicker than the last.

"Hon, which color do you think would go best with my complexion? Eggshell or Porcelain?" you asked, eagerly holding up two different swatches against your skin.

"You look beautiful in anything, baby," he stated as if it was the simplest thing in the world, wrapping an arm around your waist. "Either one is fine."

"As sweet as that is... it doesn't help," you huffed, playfully attempting to scold him.

"Fine then. Eggshell," he answered, quickly.

You raised a brow, an amused smile playing at your lips as you leaned in closer, "Are you just saying that to get me to shut up?"

He let out a chuckle, resting his forehead against yours, "Never."

Yes...

"Can't wait 'til this damn reception is over," he growled in your ear, lips dragging down your neck as you both hid in a nearby hallway. "First time I've been alone with you since I do."

"Logan..." you gasped, tucking your lip between your teeth in an attempt to muffle yourself as he tightly grasped your hips. "Someone'll hear..."

"Then I guess you better keep quiet," he smirked against your skin, giving your collarbone a soft nip.

It's all coming back...

"Logan..." you started, nervously, hands held firmly behind your back. "I have something to tell you... and I'm open to talk about it if you're upset..."

His brows furrowed as he turned away from his dresser, looking toward you with an air of concern.

"What's wrong?" he asked, his protective instinct spiking at the sight of your fearful expression. "What happened?"

Unable to say it, you slowly held up your hand, revealing a positive pregnancy test.

His eyes widened like saucers, throat drying at the tiny piece of plastic.

"You're... pregnant?"

You nodded, silently, his reaction not soothing your anxiety one bit.

But, as if on cue, he moved toward you, striding across the room and pulling you into a bone crushing hug.

"I'm gonna be a father..." he muttered into your hair, the phrase not one he thought he'd ever hear. "I'm gonna be a father..."

Wait...

"Logan!" you cried, tears welling in your eyes as you glanced up at him, scared. "I can't...mmmph fuck!... I can't do it! Hurts too much!"

"C'mon, baby, keep pushin'. You're doin' so good," he cooed, swiping stray strands of hair out your face as the nurse on the other side of the bed helped cheer you on. "Just a little bit more. You're right there."

With a grunt, you squeezed his hand tight, letting out a growl of pain as you gave another push.

Pop!

Logan's eyes shot wide, the man nearly biting through his tongue as he glanced down at his hand.

You dislocated his finger.

Though it seemed to be worth it as that final push was what did it.

"It's a girl!" the doctor smiled, carefully holding up the newborn.

Looking upon her small, chubbed face, Logan felt a sense of protectiveness sink into his chest—one that he only felt when things came to you.

In that moment, and every moment after that, he knew he would lay his life down for her, no question.

And she wasn't even a minute old yet.

I have—

"James! Get back here!" a little girl squealed with laughter, bursting into the office after a little boy, who looked terrified.

Logan snapped out his head with a gasp, shooting up from his seat and unsheathing his claws out of muscle memory.

'James...'

Quickly, Logan retracted his claws as the boy ducked behind his leg, gripping tightly onto his jeans as the girl stormed over.

She looked just like you, save for a few small details, and had a small snaggle-tooth poking out on her right side, only adding to her adorableness.

Not to mention the bone claws she had protruding from her knuckles.

"No fair! You can't hide behind Dad every time you're scared!" she furrowed her brows, upset.

"Mommy told you about your claws, Laura..." James mumbled, voice barely above a whisper as he shyly peeked out from behind his human shield.

'Laura...'

The boy was Logan's mirror image, looking almost exactly like he did at that age..

Apple doesn't fall too far from the tree...

Charles could sense the pieces clicking in Logan's mind, and figured lending a hand would be best after what he'd been through.

"Logan, these are your—" "Laura Marie Howlett!" your voice cut in, the little girl flinching at the sound.

Quickly, she retracted her claws, whipping around with a guilty smile, which was met by your less-than-approving glare.

"What have I told you about chasing your brother inside? And what have I told you about using your claws to do it?" you scolded, walking into the office. "You two are interrupting your father and Professor Xavier."

Logan let out a soft sigh, taking the moment to finally look over his family.

Like a slow moving stream, things were coming back to him, the feeling like a fog clearing from the recesses of his mind.

Every birthday.

Every boo-boo.

Every first.

Slowly but surely, they were all returning.

Without warning, Logan dropped to his knees, pulling the two kids into a tight hug, fiercely fighting off the emotion swelling in his chest.

"Daddy?" James squeaked, concerned.

"Are you okay?" Laura asked, confused.

He nodded, silently, the sight making your heart both burst and ache.

After all this time, your husband was truly whole.

Fifty years of suffering and agony had finally come to an end.

taglist !!

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#james howlett #james howlett x reader #logan howlett #logan howlett x reader #mcu #mcu x reader #wolverine x reader #x men #x men x reader #wolverine

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dadbodbuck · 1 month

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i had a bad day and then @tommystummy started talking about bucktommy arguments and this scenario came up and i latched onto it like a moray eel. please enjoy some raw, unedited tommy kinard angst

Tommy doesn't like talking about it. It being the roughly five years he worked under Captain Gerrard, alongside Howie and Hen, when he was deeply closeted and a major asshole. He can make his excuses, he can try to convey the feeling of looking into someone's eyes and only seeing your father's. He can admit to the humiliating nightmares he used to have of his father storming into the fire station and screaming at him. Neither of those are reason enough to be callous towards people who were being tortured in their own workplace.

Howie and Hen were much quicker to forgive him than Tommy was. In fact, it seemed like it only took one mumbled apology for them to shrug it all off. Water under the bridge, they had said. Just don't do it again.

And God, Tommy never did. After that, after finally taking his sexuality out of the box deep in the animal part of his brain, he told himself he would be different. He expected it to be hard, and on some level it was, but—

Tommy kissed a man for the first time (since high school) forty-eight hours after he was reassigned to the 217, quick and dirty in a bar in West Hollywood. Something in Tommy’s chest clicked into place when he heard the soft, deep moan of a nameless man wearing body glitter. He couldn’t go back even if he wanted to.

Before, he’d been afraid of this exact thing. He’d kept his hands to himself because he knew that his closet wasn’t resealable. It was one-and-done. Gerrard’s boys would have eaten him alive. But Howie and Hen wouldn’t. They didn’t.

It still took him a long time for him to tell them. They didn’t talk often, but they did keep in touch. Tommy owed them so many favors he’d probably be repaying them for the rest of his life, but they seemed more interested in just being his friend. A distant one, but a friend nonetheless.

Distance was fine. Distance was easy. Distance allowed for Tommy to keep his comfortable walls in place, even if he redecorated them a little.

It took him three months to realize how debilitating loneliness was. He was out, now, but without the close, albeit sterile and toxic, friendship of the boy’s club at the 118. Tommy longed for connection. He thrived on it. Something deep, and routine, and constant.

But nobody was volunteering. So Tommy resigned himself to his old hobbies, cars and Muay Thai and basketball, and introduced karaoke trivia to the routine, because he’d always loved singing but never had the guts to do it while he was closeted. It was nice. If anyone noticed Tommy’s near-compulsive schedule of activities, they never mentioned it. The years passed. Howie and Hen grew even more distant. Tommy liked their Facebook posts. He did their favors. He was still lonely, but he successfully put the version of himself he had been on a shelf in the deepest recesses of his brain, never to see the light of day again.

He was a good person now. He was good. He was good despite the skeletons rattling in the closet where his love used to be.

Then, Evan.

No other preamble necessary. Then, Evan. With his broad chest and blue eyes and insane, insane ideas.

Really, was Tommy not supposed to fall in love with him?

Things are great for a while. Idyllic. Peaceful, and exciting, and sweet, and so goddamn sexy, and safe. Tommy feels safe in Evan’s arms.

The problem, of course, is that Evan has this idea that he has to know every part of Tommy. All of him.

“I want to love all of you,” Evan murmurs, as a creeping sense of dread settles in Tommy’s chest, “Even the parts you don’t like.”

Tommy chews on his words, but Evan must sense something is wrong, because he props himself up on an elbow and leans over Tommy, brow scrunched in concern.

“There are parts of me that aren’t worth loving.” Tommy settles on, eventually.

He watches Evan’s heart break in real time, and it does nothing to soothe the growing irritation in his chest.

“I don’t believe that,” Evan frowns, “I think even when you were making mistakes, you were worth loving.”

Tommy huffs a dry, sarcastic laugh. “I beg to differ.”

He doesn’t elaborate. Can’t. Evan doesn’t like this. “Tom, that’s—that’s not how this works. You don’t get to pick and choose which parts of you I’m allowed to love. I don’t care what it is. I love you.”

Tommy isn’t going to win this argument, so he doesn’t even try. Instead, he forces himself to relax, and sighs. “Okay. Sorry, honey.”

He can tell Evan isn’t buying it, by the disbelieving set to his mouth, but he doesn’t say anything. Instead, he lays back down and presses a gentle kiss to Tommy’s shoulder. It feels a lot like another declaration.

“I love you too,” Tommy says, bringing one of Evan’s hands up to his mouth to kiss his knuckles. Evan revels in physical touch—it’s one of his favorite love languages, although he enjoys pretty much all of them. Mostly, Tommy thinks Evan was just love-starved for a long time.

Tommy is positive beyond doubt that Evan was never like him. It takes little talking to Howie and Maddie to confirm that he’s always presented his heart on a platter, warm and bleeding for whoever wants to carry it. There’s no universe where a callous man like Gerrard would have turned Evan into what Tommy was. Evan has never been a coward.

Tommy hopes that’ll be the end of the argument, but the next day, Evan sits down on the couch and says, “I know talking about your past is painful for you, and I don’t want to force you to tell me anything.”

Tommy senses a conjunction and chooses to remain silent.

“But,” there it is, “I don’t take back what I said.”

“I’m not having this conversation with you again,” Tommy grunts, knowing he’s closing himself off.

“Then let me say it,” Evan presses, “There is nothing in your past that would change how I feel about you.”

“You don’t know that,” Tommy says, through gritted teeth, “You don’t know what I was like to Howie and Hen when they first joined the 118. I said things I shouldn’t have. I let Gerrard and his cronies get away with even worse. I let them get hurt, and I did nothing, because I was a coward.”

Evan looks at him with big, sad eyes. “You were scared.”

“I should have done the right thing anyway,” Tommy argues, “You think Howie and Hen weren’t scared? You think they weren’t terrified? Hen got up in front of everyone and gave us this big speech about how proud she was to be gay, to be black, to be herself. And all I did was stand there with this pit in my stomach. Like if anyone looked over at me they would just know, and then I’d be a pariah. Like her.”

“Tommy,” Evan says, dismayed, “She’s forgiven you so many times over for that. Beating yourself up about it does nothing.”

“It holds me accountable,” Tommy says, “It keeps me from being that person again. I hate the person I was back then. You would have hated him, too.”

“Maybe,” Evan shrugs, like it’s just that easy, “But I try not to hate people. I certainly don’t hate my loved ones for making mistakes. And that’s what you did. Make a mistake. Now, looking back on it, I can see that version of you. That Tommy, who was afraid and in pain. I still love him.”

“Stop!” Tommy snaps, but makes no move to get away from Evan. Evan’s hand stutters, but makes its way to Tommy’s shoulder, thumb rubbing over the joint.

“I love every version of all of my loved ones,” Evan says softly, “I love the version of Bobby who almost drank himself to death. I love the version of Eddie that fought people in the street. I love the version of Chim that punched me. I love the version of Maddie that ran away from me—several times, I might add. I love the version of Hen that almost ended her own marriage when she betrayed Karen’s trust.”

There’s about thirty different stories Tommy wants to explore in there, but Evan doesn’t let him get a word in edgewise. “And I love the version of you that stood by and watched because he was too scared to intervene.”

Evan leans in to plant a tender kiss to Tommy’s cheek. “I love him, and I love the Tommy who was in Iraq, and I love the Tommy who was almost a high school dropout, and I love the Tommy who loved to go hiking after middle school, and I love the Tommy who was late learning how to walk but early learning how to read. It’s not hard. He’s you.”

“I don’t want him to be me,” Tommy confesses, throat tight.

“But he is,” Evan murmurs, soft and soothing in Tommy’s ear, “He’s right here. And he’s doing right by people now. He learned how to be brave. He made amends. Hen and Chim didn’t forgive you because you killed that old version of yourself, they forgave you because you made an effort.”

It’s the first time Tommy’s ever heard it phrased like this, and something about the way Evan says it makes his eyes sting. Evan pulls him into a hug, tucks his face into the crook of his neck, and lets Tommy cry. Rubs his back through it. If Tommy pretends, he could be rubbing the uniform-clad thirty-five year-old firefighter, or the fatigued back of an eighteen-year-old soldier, or the thrifted cotton tee of a middle schooler, or the just-too-tight romper of a toddler. All the Tommies that never got this, all the Tommies that desperately wanted it.

For the first time since his mother died, Tommy is held while he cries, and after nearly thirty years, something in his chest stops aching.

#my fics #bucktommy

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plotsignificanthaircut555 · 2 months

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Paper Thin Walls

Your neighbor, Nanami Kento, comes over four times complaining about noise. And then a fifth time. AO3

Warnings: SMUT, MDNI, 18+ Only. fem! reader, grumpy! nanami, angsty, some light vouyerism, through the wall masturbation overhearing (does that count?), cunnalingus, riding, penetrative sex, reader has female anatomy, dirty talk, kissing, not explicit spit this time but i sneak it in there (and i always will), DIRTY, NASTY, WET,

Word count: 8.2k,we looooove a bad neighbors enemies to lovers, sorry y'all but i eat it up every time, i hope y'all do too. This is probably the grumpiest i have ever written Nanami but i hope the soft at the end gave you guys the sweetie that we all know and love, especially on this blog.

THUNK THUNK THUNK

You nearly dropped the bottle of wine you were uncorking when you heard the loud, impassioned knocking on your front door. Your friends quieted their conversation and looked to the door, a mixture of shock and confusion on their faces.

How embarrassing.

You rolled your eyes, already fed up with what you knew would be on the other side of the wood. You gesture to your friends to continue enjoying themselves as you would handle it. They tentatively turn back to one another huddled around your small coffee table dressed with snacks and cups. You had worked hard on this party, you didn’t get to see your friends very often so being able to enjoy a night together to relax and catch up was so valuable to you. And no dickhead neighbor with a stick up his ass was going to ruin it. Walking to the door you drew in a strained breath, trying to smooth your irritation, before unlocking, unlatching and just barely opening the door. Even just a crack was enough to see him seething in front of you.

Kento Nanami, your neighbor. Your very irritable neighbor. The one man HOA of your apartment complex floor. Your neighbor who, since you moved in three months ago, has stopped by your apartment three times to badger you about your noise level. You had lived in apartments your whole adult life, not once has anyone complained about you, you were a MODEL neighbor: kind, social but not overbearing, always said hello in the hallway, happy to watch pets or plants while people were out of town, you are a goddamn delight as a neighbor.

It was this fucking guy who had the problem, huffing at your doorstep in his stupid little American girl doll glasses and overly neat button up shirt that he probably pressed every morning before getting dressed.

And once again, here he stood, vein in his head pulsing against his skin, elevens creased in his forehead between his scowling eyebrows, jaw muscle looking on the verge of snapping.

“Ms—.” He started but you cut him off.

“Good evening Mr. Nanami, to what do I owe the pleasure,” you smiled jovially, as though his presence wasn’t a nuisance, “this time.”

“Good evening. Yes, it is the evening, isn’t it?” He made a little show of checking his bulky silver watch.

“I’m sure the very expensive looking watch on your arm could tell you that it’s 8:45 pm. A very normal time for people to be enjoying themselves, especially on a Friday night.” You leaned your head against the doorframe looking at him, “Having a little…movie night in?”

He stared at you a moment, his eyes moving over your face coldly, eyeing your sly smile,

“so you know I’m here about the noise.”

“You’ve never come to my apartment for another reason.” You sighed, “call it a hunch, I guess?”

A laugh came from inside of your apartment, louder than the ambient music you were playing, not exactly helping your case.

Nanami rolled his eyes at the laughing,“Quiet hours start at—“

“10. And I plan on honoring them, I just have some old friends over tonight. We’ll be sure to keep our joy and fun to an acceptable level.” You were feeding him the lines you knew he wanted to hear, but your performance wasn’t exactly impassioned.

His jaw tightened again, you imagined the sound of his back teeth grinding together. He looked down at you silently and you stared right back up at him. A silent battle was had between your stares, him trying to intimidate you into the silence he craved, and you not backing down even an inch.

Finally he caved, “I would appreciate that. I am sure the rest of the hallway would as well. Good night.”

“Enjoy the rest of your night, Mr. Nanami.” You called down to him as he turned and stomped down the hallway to his own door.

Right. Next. Door.

You rejoined your friends and enjoyed the rest of your night exactly as you had before. Not turning any music down, not stifling any laughter, not dulling any conversation for the sake of thin walls. Every now and again you took a private moment to imagine your neighbor seething in his quiet, perfect little apartment all by himself.

“So….are we going to talk about how hot your neighbor is?” Soph, your best friend, posed.

“Thank you for saying something. I barely saw him but oh my GOD.” Kat, your oldest friend added.

You laughed, it was undeniable how handsome he was, when you first saw him as you settled in in your first week you secretly hoped he might stop by to introduce himself, entertaining the fantasy of him coming over to help you “fix something” a few too many times before even finding out his name.

“Sure he’s hot, when he keeps his mouth shut.” You sighed, annoyed, busying yourself refilling glasses, “What a waste, honestly. I’m tired of guys who think they’re too hot to be nice to people. Not even nice, just fucking polite is fine.”

Your friends laughed.

“When I moved in, a bunch of the other neighbors stopped by to say hello. Not him, I would only ever see him in the hallway and he wouldn’t wave, wouldn’t say hello, nothing. He’s so…..serious.” You sipped your drink remembering the times you had tried to say hello to him in the hallway only to be met with a half nod and a hurry into his apartment, “First time he ever even spoke to me was to tell me the sound of my moving in was too much.”

Soph pouted, sipping her refilled, “That’s a shame. I was going to say you should try and hit that.”

“Who knows,” Kat posed, “maybe getting laid would help him relax?”

The three of you laughed, surely sending the noise through the wall and into the subject of debate’s apartment.

This had been your fourth offense against him. Nanami was fed up, he had been polite the first few times, but this was getting out of hand. You had only moved in a few months ago, there was no excuse for him to have had to go over there this many times already. Sitting on his couch, drafting a complaint email to the main residential office, another roar of laughter rang from the back wall of his apartment. Nanami groaned and slumped against the back of the couch, rubbing his aching forehead. This much irritation can’t be good for him.

He had been spoiled by the place next to him having gone unoccupied for so long. He’s lived in this apartment for two years, going on a third, and nearly all of that time has been spent with no one next door. At first he assumed he was just sensitive and needed to acclimate to having someone nearby, but it was like you were broadcasting every sound directly into his living room.

The worst part was the bedroom walls. He deduced that the layout of your apartment must be a direct mirror of his own, inverted but identical, meaning the back wall of his bedroom must be the back wall of your bedroom as well. He could hear the noise from you sleeping with your television on, a terrible habit that he abhorred. He could hear the music you would play in the mornings when you were presumably getting ready for work. And for you to be so curt with him when he politely tries to let you know how easily he can hear you? It was unreasonable.

The first time had been within the second week of you moving in. You were setting up some furniture, sounds of hammering, scooting, drilling ringing through the walls and keeping him from sleeping in on a SUNDAY morning. He had gotten up from bed, thrown on some more presentable loungewear and knocked on your door. That was the first time he had really seen you, kind eyes, pretty smile, smooth, even skin. You smiled up at him when you opened the door, all too awake for such early weekend hours.

“Excuse me. My name is Nanami Kento, I live next door. Would you mind keeping the noise down a bit? It’s still pretty early.”

Your smile sagged a bit, “sure! I’m sorry, I guess I’m getting used to how thin the walls are here. I’ll keep it down.”

“Thank you.” He nodded, “and…welcome to the building.”

“Thank you! It’s nice to meet you.” You had smiled back at him, small dimples appearing by your mouth.

He could have fallen for you, allowed himself the rare indulgence of crushing on you. If that had been your only offense.

The second incident was how he discovered that your bedrooms shared a wall. He had come home late from the gym. It was around two o'clock in the morning, he drug himself back home and into the shower, sleeping threatening to take him even under the heavy spray. Work had been about four hours too long, his head was aching, his workout had offered some relief but the only thing that would truly fix it at this point was the hard reset of sleep. Nanami pulled himself into bed, not even bothering to dress, choosing to ignore the remaining water that would sink into his sheets. That would be a problem for another day. Head on the pillow, cool bedding soothing his heated skin he could barely contain how excited he was to finally sleep, when he heard it.

“o-oh….”

It was so faint he assumed it was in his head, the product of an oncoming dream seeping over into his waking world. Ears tuning in against his will, he was able to hear the faint buzzing. He shot up, renewed energy brought about by the awareness of what was happening next door. You, his neighbor, were masturbating and he could hear you. He felt his ears get hot, his heart quicken, and --- oh christ his pants tighten. Soft moans sounding through the wall, quickening in pace, buzzing battering his brain to mush as he began to panic. He didn’t want to listen, it was wrong, this was wrong. Fuck, was his mouth watering?

Fuck. fuck. Fuck!

He squeezed his eyes shut, covering his face with his pillow, clamping the cushion around his head over his ears in desperation. Nanami was relieved when your wimpers were snuffed out. Under the darkness of his pillow he hoped he could finally begin to fall asleep, but through the void an image began to appear behind his eyes. You, his pretty neighbor laying on your back, legs open, finger in your mouth trying to quiet yourself. How ineffective. You had been just the slightest bit sweaty when he first spoke to you. The act of dragging and pushing furniture having given your skin the slightest sheen. He was willing to bet that you had a similar glow about you now; working a toy between your legs, bed covers discarded at your ankles, a wet spot growing underneath your shaking hips---

FUCK.

Nanami sat up in a jerk, shaking his head side to side as though he could physically dislodge the picture out of his mind through one of his ears. With the pillow removed he could hear your moans rising in pitch, his dick pulsed. Fuck, this was so wrong. Were you about to climax? His heart was pounding, he was rock solid between his legs, he gripped the bed sheets tight to restrain himself from caving and pumping himself into oblivion with you. In the sickest part of his mind he wanted to press his ear up to the adjoining wall, listening to your languid moans, indulging himself fully in your passion.

Finally, as though fate could feel his resolve starting to crumble, he heard a long high pitch whine escape through the drywall. Then silence. Then the sound of laughter from whatever tv show you put on to go to sleep. He was panting, trying to catch his breath, much as he imagined you were. He laid back against his pillow, staring up to the ceiling, mind reeling over the possibility of this happening again. How could he avoid this in the future? Should he politely inform you of the mirrored apartment layout and the thinness of the walls?

Nanami purchased a white noise machine the following day. Only after stopping by your apartment and asking you to keep the television noise lower at night, saying he was a light sleeper. He hoped you would make the connection that he was struggling towards, voice clipped and cheeks blushing furiously as he nodded and retreated to his own domicile. He leaned up the door as he shut it behind himself, sighing in relief, praying that this would be the end of it and he could forget the saccharine sweet sound of your moans.

The third incident was far less indecent, but no less annoying. He was home early from work, having taken off an hour or so before he usually would as he completed a big project that had taken over two weeks and was dead tired. All he wanted was to eat dinner, watch a movie, relax and push all the numbers and negotiations out of his head. Apparently you had the same idea. When you arrived home, he knew because your slamming door shook his wall as well. It had been a week or so since he last heard you but still the sound brought a crimson flush to his face. He didn’t hear much after that for about a half hour, that is, until you turned on your music. Loud, bossa nova or jazz or whatever it was sponging into the insulation between your two abodes and resounding around his own apartment. He couldn’t hear the movie he had put on, he couldn’t enjoy his dinner, hell— he could barely think. He had given you a pass when it was intimate noise but this was unruly and excessive.

He stomped out into the hallway, the music echoing out there as well. And over to your door. He knocked, maybe a bit too hard, and waited for your arrival. When you did open the door, after just enough time for him to consider knocking again, he once again had to look down to meet your eye line. Music flooded out from the doorway, warm amber light, and the smell of sizzling peppers and oil wafting out, carried by the soundwaves.

“Hello again, neighbor!” You greeted him, smiling warmly with big, full eyes.

“The music.” He hadn’t meant to sound so stiff, he had intended to greet you politely and remind you of the wall's thinness but he had had it. Here you were enjoying your cooking and music and inhibiting his ability to do the same, it was unfair, unjust.

You sighed leaning against the door frame huffing out, “We just can't seem to find a comfortable level, huh? You picked a good movie, very suspenseful soundtrack, one of my favorites actually.”

Nanami straightened up like a shot, how could he have been so stupid? His television was right up against the “back” wall of his apartment, right against your kitchen wall. The sounds of his apartment, although infrequent, had echoed through your walls too. How many sounds, he wondered.

“You--I’m sorry, I didn’t realize.” He began but then hardened again, “You should have told me to turn it down, I would have been more than happy to oblige.”

“Hm.” Your lips formed a tight line, “I’m not really into ordering strangers around in their own homes.”

It was the first and only time you had sassed off to him. He was taken aback, he could feel his neck heating up under the collar of his shirt, his fists balling up at his sides as he furrows his brow at your disrespect.

Scoffing, he finds the words, “just be courteous to your neighbors.”

Nanami descends down the hallway, flexing and un-flexing his hands in measured attempts at cooling himself, before he could step into his apartment you called down after him.

“The therapist was dead the whole time, that’s why his wife won't speak to him! The guy at the beginning shot and killed him!” You shouted and slammed the door behind you.

It was an incredibly childish move on your part. If someone had done that to you, or if you had even heard of someone desecrating the ending of one of the best mystery thrillers of all time, you would have been furious. But something about this man brought out such pettiness in you. You couldn't help it. You half expected him to knock again and berate you for spoiling his night once again, but instead you heard the sound of his apartment door shutting and the movie resume.

Credit for sticking it out and watching the movie anyway. You couldn't help but smirk a bit, impressed.

It has enough legs to stand on its own even without the twist, it really is a good movie, you felt bad for wrecking it. It really was one of your favorites, similar tastes. Maybe this whole time you could have been friends. Although, you couldn't imagine being friends with someone so stuffy and entitled. It didn’t matter that he watched some of the same movies, so did lots of people. It didn’t matter that he was handsome and well dressed. It didn’t matter that when he played music in the mornings it overlapped with your favorite artists. He was an ass and never even bothered to introduce himself once before complaining about you.

This back and forth had brought you all the way to tonight, him trying to reign in your party, stifling your enjoyment of it and making you hyper aware of every loud burst of laughter or adjustment of the volume. Despite your efforts to ignore it at this point, the desire to be a courteous neighbor occasionally won you over and you found yourself engaging in more subtle, intimate conversations, lowering the music and talking softer.

When the party finally came to an end and your friends kissed you goodbye and left, giggling down the hall, you waved to them and watched as they slipped down the hallway. Your eyes fell on the neighboring apartment's door, you checked the time. It was just after ten, Nanami was probably asleep, snoozing soundly after having gotten his words in about your party and your carelessness. Feeling the bile of anger rising in your throat, you decided to turn back and retreat to your own apartment. The soft unlocking sound brought you back to the empty hall.

Nanami stepped out, wearing a pair of expensive looking sweatpants and a dark grey sweatshirt. Even through such baggy clothing you could see his impeccable build, thick, ropey neck, broad shoulders, long, sturdy legs. His hair was down and unstyled, sandy stranded falling onto his forehead, some even extending far enough to brush against the bridge of his nose. A pair of headphones hung around his neck. He looked right back at you.

“You’ve had headphones this whole time?” Was all you could think to say.

“Everyone has headphones.” He shrugged leaning against his door frame.

You wanted to think of something snappy to say back, but your tongue felt fat in your mouth. You had never seen him like this before, completely undone, hair mussed, body relaxed in place of his rigid posture, clearly exhausted enough that bothering you would be too much energy.

“Your friends leave?” He asked, peeking down the hallway past you.

“Mmhm. Right on time.” You pointed to your wrist where a watch would be.

To your surprise a low chuckle emanated from his chest. It was warm and hearty and genuine. The sound tugged at your stomach. No -- lower than that. Maybe it was the wine, or your friend's insistence on his beauty that made him have this effect on you suddenly.

“Sounded like a good party.” His voice mimicked his earlier clipped irritation but it felt less authentic this time, as though he were playing a part.

“It was.” You smile already nostalgic for the company of your friends, their warm energy, “You could come to the next one, you know. We don’t actually have to not like each other.”

Nanami’s head cocked to the side a bit, dark amber eyes crinkling in confusion, “I don’t not like you.”

You almost laughed out loud, to think that he could pretend that this whole time he has just been being neighborly?

“Right. Because badgering people every other week for three months over petty shit is something you do to people you like.”

Nanami made a small clicking sound, “There’s just…Rules. It’s not personal, you’re just loud and other people live here. I don’t not like you!”

“I’m not loud!” You shouted, which did not help your argument, “You’re just uptight.”

“I’m not uptight! There are rules, both in this apartment and just socially! Who blasts music at eight am on a sunday?” Nanami stepped closer to you, almost at the midway point between your apartment doors.

“Who goes to the gym and comes back slamming doors at two in the morning? You don’t hear me complaining about that, even though it happens every night.” You matched his advance, standing at the equivalent point to wear your living room wall would meet his inside of your apartment, “Some people are trying to sleep.”

Nanami couldn’t stop the words before they spilled out, he leaned his head down to you venomously, “Doesn’t sound like a lot of sleeping to me.”

Your eyes flew open, your chest caved and your throat knotted. You searched desperately for another meaning, scrambling your brain for recent late night annoyances he could be referring to, but you knew. And he knew too. Shames burned your cheeks, you felt so exposed.

“You’ve been listening to me?” You gasped, “What are you, some kind of pervert?”

“Pervert?” Nanami gaped at you, “Our bedrooms share a wall, I’m not staying up late to listen to your little audio drama. You're whimpering practically loud enough for everyone on the street to hear.”

You flushed deeper, cheeks practically on fire, “y-you should have said something.”

Nanami sighed, “I’ve been trying!”

You started to put things together. His flushed, nervous expression whenever you ran into each other in the mail room or the hallway. The increasingly sterile way he spoke to you about the noise. This whole time he had heard you…intimately…and tried to tell you as discreetly as he could. A bit too discreetly.

You buried your face in your hands, “Fuck. I’m so embarrassed.”

Nanami’s gut twisted at your distress. This was the exact situation he wanted to avoid, he didn’t want to embarrass you, he didn’t even want to tell you if he didn’t have to. For the first time in this whole mess, he touched you. He reached out and gripped your shoulder lightly. The heat of his palm warmed your clammy, shame soaked skin.

“Don’t be embarrassed. It’s…personal and I understand that, but it’s not anything to be embarrassed about.” He attempted to soothe you, his thumb experimenting with small strokes.

You looked up at him, swallowing down the lump in your throat, “I never hear you…do that. You probably think I'm some weird sex freak.”

A soft rosy blush came over his nose and cheeks.

He decided to try and level the vulnerability, “I-uh…usually…do that… in the shower.”

Suddenly his hand on your shoulder felt hot and heavy, he wasn't sure if he should remove it or if that would send the wrong message. What message was he hoping to send? This had suddenly become loaded and confusing.

You nodded in response, feeling a bit better now that he had exposed part of himself to you. You couldn't keep your mind from picturing him breathing hard in a steam filled shower, his head falling back in pleasure, hand running down his body to pump his-----

Fuck!

“I don’t think you’re a weird sex freak.” Nanami offered.

“Thanks.” You let out a small laugh.

You looked up at him, catching his teak wood eyes. Long, dark lashes encircled them, a light dusting of freckles resting atop his chiseled cheekbones. Shapely, rose hued lips were parted slightly as he looked down at you. The air between the two of you became thick and sticky. He was curved over you slightly, maybe even subconsciously.

“Can I ask you something?” He whispered, just barely loud enough to hear.

“About…that?”

He nodded.

You nodded.

Nanami swallowed, eyes scanning over your lips, “I haven’t…heard anyone else…with you.”

You waited a moment, “That isn’t a question.”

“You sound, sometimes, like you might…want some help.” Nanami leaned in closer, his eyes flicking from your lips to your eyes, “Do you?”

Your breath left you, your voice had long abandoned you, you could only try desperately to parse out how you had gotten here. He waited patiently for an answer, suddenly suave and confident. He had always been self assured, you just assumed it was arrogant entitlement. It never occurred to you that he could be so charming, so flirtatious. He knew what he was offering, you knew what this would mean. The instances of rigidity morphed in your memory into a heated chase, reaching its end here and now. You had been caught.

Finally, you nodded your head, “Yes.”

He closed the distance between you, pressing his hot lips to yours in an instant. The hand from your shoulder moved to the back of your neck, pulling your chest against his, as the other arms snaked around your waist. After the initial moment of shock, you moved your arms around him to grip his rippling back. The first kiss is long, passionate and deep, his arms feel so strong around you, you can feel the curves and cuts of muscles that you hadn't even considered. He pulls away only for a second to move his head to the side and realign himself to give you a hot, fevered open mouthed kiss, sliding his tongue between your lips and massaging it against yours. You felt dizzy, gripping him tighter, for stability of course, you move your hands up his back and brush your fingers against the cropped undercut at the nape of his neck. He let out a low moan, almost like a purr, into your mouth. You couldn’t help but smile a bit, testing it again and pulling another throaty sound from him. You pulled your lips away momentarily.

“I see why you need the shower.” You tease.

He nods against your forehead, catching his breath. You capture him in another kiss, leading him clumsily back to your apartment door, struggling with the knob a bit before he reaches around your hip to turn it for you and push inside, using his foot to swing the door shut behind him. Leaning back against your front door, he pulls you close to him once again, holding your body close to his, feeling the heat and weight of you in his arms. The way your apartment smells, like food and candles, earthy scented; sandalwood, laurel, magnolia. The dim, warm secondary lighting. He absorbs it all. It's so, you.

Your tongue is moving against his now, and he finds himself being kissed as much as he is kissing. He likes how active it is, no part of you feels not focused on him at this moment and he's so grateful. You lead him back to your bedroom, exactly where his own would be on the other side. He lets his hand travel down your back, feeling down to your waist and over your hips, experimentally gripping the flesh there. Fuck, when you werent annoying the life force out of him, you were so gorgeous. A beautiful, full, woman’s body, confident movements, alluring in every sense of the word. Your bedroom was the same as his, no shock there, still just slightly too small to comfortably house a king bed, which he cursed himself for squeezing in. You had a queen, a perfect size, the window on the side wall had sheer cream colored curtains allowing moonlight to coat the room in a magic, blue glow. You had pulled away from him, doing some light mood setting, lighting a bedside candle, brushing discarded clothes and a book from your bed. He recognized the cover of your book, he had read it too last year.

“She dumps the creepy coworker guy and goes back to working at another store. It’s incredibly cathartic. A shame you’ll miss out on it.” He runs his spine down the copy of your book on your bed, lifting it and flipping through a few pages, a devious smile itching the corners of his lips.

You look at him, eyebrows raised in alarm.

Nanami shrugged, “you ruined my movie. I ruin your book’s ending. Good read though.”

To his surprise, you laughed through a wide smile, “It is a good read, especially the second time.”

He laughed and shook his head. It was maybe the first time you had seen him actually smile, warm and easy. The just starting lines on his face extending around his mouth in little arches. He really was radiant, sharp features highlighted by the dream like light of the bedroom, blues and amber licking shadows over his face as the firelight moves. The laughter fades and you both look into one another. He looks over your features, lips swollen from his kiss, your eyes meeting his in a trusting, conspiratorial gaze. He feels his lips twitch again into a smile, and steps towards you.

“You’re so beautiful.” He cups your face, tenderly, his other hand circling your waist as he brings you to his lips.

The kiss has morphed into something deeper, kinder, less fevered, more focused and somehow even more passionate. When his tongue enters your mouth its not pushed or pressed, it slides languidly and easily against your own. As a polyglot’s tongue drips words, his drips kisses, sensuality. Your hands find the hem of his sweatshirt, slipping underneath, feeling the hardness of toned muscle and bone underneath. You did hear him return from the gym at god awful hours, it makes sense that he has something to show for it. Nanami hisses as you slide your hands around his hips to his back, moving up further, feeling every valley and peak of his hard work. Spurred by your action, he mirrors you, moving his hand under your shirt. Instead of following your lead, he opts to go for the front, gliding his hand up your abdomen and cupping your breast in his hand over your bra. He gives it a small squeeze, making you squeak. Another throaty hum comes from his chest.

He guides you with his hips, not breaking the kiss just yet to seat you on the bed, with him stood between your legs. Encouraged by your pawing at his torso, he breaks from your lips to remove his sweatshirt, revealing rows of carefully built abdominal muscles, as you had felt already. What you didn't expect was the melange of scars in various stages of healing across his chest, stomach, and shoulders. Some white and flat against the surface, some pink and recessed still healing themselves. You couldn't help the small gasp you sucked in at the sight.

What the hell happened to him? Or was it still happening to him?

“It's just skin, grows right back after enough time.” Nanami looked down at himself, following your eyeline across his body.

You sat up further, carefully moving your hand over his toned stomach, across a particularly large, although healed line on his side.

“Seriously, it’s--” Nanami started but you cut him off by removing your own shirt, pointing to a scar on the lower right side of your stomach, above your hip bone.

“Appendectomy.” You smile at him wickedly, “You’re not so tough.”

Nanami can’t help but chuckle, rolling his eyes and climbing over you onto the bed.

“I didn’t realize I was in the bed of such a badass.” one of his big hands moves over your barely scarred hip, then up your side.

You moan and arch up at his touch trying to control your shaking breath, “m-mhm, I’m very b-bad a-a…”

Another moan consumes your sentence as he kisses the side of your neck. Taking his time to suck and lick at the soft skin from your shoulder to behind your ear. You make no effort to hide how good it makes you feel, squeezing his large, tight bicep and rocking against him, head lolling to the side.

“That’s right, you are very bad.” Nanami bites lightly at your jugular point.

You whimper against him, his teeth on your neck setting your body ablaze. You nod.

“You’ve been such a bad girl, whimpering just like that all night while i'm trying to sleep. Pretending you don’t know I can hear you.” The dirty words drip off of him like honey directly into your waiting mouth.

He has moved to hover completely over you, one hand on your thigh, pulling it around his hip, leaning on the other crooked near your head. You can feel his hips against yours, even through his pants you can feel how hard he has become. He can certainly feel how hot and wet you are becoming, you pray that your panties and pants are helping you maintain some kind of decency. That prayer goes unanswered as Nanami moves his hand from your thigh to between your hot writhing bodies, cupping your sex.

“Is this what you need, baby? You need someone to help you feel good?” He whispers into your ear, one finger starting to move up and down your clothed slit.

You nod before you can speak.

“Ask me. Ask for my help, baby.” He grunts against you, you can no longer feel his erection pressed against you, but you can hear his voice becoming strained and rougher, indicating his own resolve has wavered as much as yours has.

You wrap your arms around his neck, pulling him back to your lips and plead into a kiss.

“Please, please Nanami, please help me.” The kiss is sloppy and wet, saliva and sweat spilling between desperate lips.

“Kento, please. When I’m fucking you, please use my first name.” He snakes an arm between your body and the mattress and removes your bra, moving down your body with hot, wet kisses.

You arch up again, the eroticism of being undressed by him titillating your sense beyond your imagination. He latches onto one of your hard nipples, swirling his tongue around the sensitive flesh, dark eyes watching closely for your reactions.

“Kento…oh Kento.” You try the name out, it fits perfectly in your mouth, tastes like honey when you speak it.

It was like he was studying you, gauging reactions and preferences in fractions of a second that other partners had been too hurried to discover. You returned your hands to his hair, threading your fingers and his blonde strands together. He bit and sucked and kissed and lapped at your breasts, giving each one equal, focused attention, squeezing them together and separately like he could never get enough. Finally he detached, a string of saliva connecting him to your skin. His eyes flicked up at you, catching his breath and moving down your body further, his hands moving over the waistband of your pants. Your breath hitched up in anticipation, your bottom lip clamped between your teeth. He met your eyes and searched for any sign of hesitation, if he were to allow his mind to process what was happening he might have stopped himself, citing how messy it could be to be involved in a sexual tet-a-tet with his next door neighbor, perhaps you were doing exactly that.

But you moved your hand over the side of his face, brushing a few strands of hair off his forehead, smiling sweetly.

“Please Kento…I need your help,” your voice was so sweet and so soft as you pleaded with him, “....please.”

He kisses underneath your navel and slides your pants off of your legs, discarding them onto your bedroom floor. He took the moment of readjustment to remove his own pants, leaving both of you in only your underwear. He moved back in between your legs, he could practically see through your flimsy white panties, wetness having made the fabric dark and molded to your skin. He could see the curve of your labia, where they separated, the inner folds hidden but begging for him. Wetness has spread to your thighs, making your skin glisten and sparkle. He looped his thumbs into the band of your panties and slipped them off, joining the mess of clothes already on the floor. Now bare before him, he could feel himself drooling at the sight of you spread out on your bed. Just as he had imagined you, no. No, much better than he could have imagined. Soft, full body, marks blooming on your skin from his kiss, chest heaving and jiggling in turn as you pant for him. Between your legs a perfect oasis of petals waiting for him to part and indulge himself.

“...stop staring..” Your cheeks burned as he sat back taking you in.

Nanami leaned down, lips nearly brushing your mound, “I’m admiring.”

You open your mouth to say something sassy but he licks up your slit, silencing you. He smiles a cocky smile at you and does it again, this time taking even more time to reach the top.

He’s fucked. He knows it from the first taste. He has always had a proclivity and a preference for eating pussy, enjoyed and indulged in the tastes of many women, but none like this. None that have brought him into a haze with a single taste. He dives further, separating your outer lips with two v-ed fingers, showing him the pearl of your clit and your drooling hole. He experiments with pushing his tongue into you, hearing and gauging your moans. It feels good, so good, but he knows he can do more. Feeding his tongue into you once more before he flattens it against you and laps up to your clit again and again. Your hips buck up at that, one of his big hands presses down on your stomach, keeping you in place. He swirls his devil’s tongue around your clit again and again in an agonizing whirlpool before sucking hard at the swollen bud. You can't contain the cries and whimpers spilling from you, you try to move against his hand, you try to pull at his hair to detach him from you, offering you a moment to catch your breath but he doesn't move an inch. He’s a messy eater, chin and nose dripping just as much as his mouth. He’s a loud eater too, moaning at your taste, at the sound of you writhing for him, grunting as his hips rut against your mattress unwittingly.

“K-kento, I--I think I…” You struggle to string together cohesive words but the fevered lapping between your legs keeps you stammering.

“Go ahead, baby. Cum on my tongue.” Nanami’s voice was low and gravely, full of need and desperation of his own.

But this was different, there was a tightness in your abdomen that was unfamiliar, you were confused and panting, worried that something else may happen.

“W-wait, I--” You tried to move yourself onto your elbows just as Nanami pressed further down on your stomach.

Before you knew it you were cumming, squirting into his mouth, onto your sheets. You cried out in one long pleasure filled scream, partially his name, partially just exaltation. Nanami drinks from you like a holy well, reverent and indulgent all at once. As though he may never taste you again. FInally he lets you push him off of your twitching sex. His face is soaked, he licks his lips, fingers too, anything that may carry some of your release. You watch him with hazy, drunken eyes. Sat back on his heels, coming out of his own cloud of pleasure, he watches you come back to your body. You look beautiful, panting on your back for him. He leans over you again and kisses your lips softly, then deeper, and deeper still. His tongue tastes like you, your hands are quick to pull his hips to yours.

“Think you can go again?” Kento huffs out as your grind against his clothed crotch, he can feel the wetness of your climax seeping into his boxers, commingling with his own leaking anticipation.

“I need it. Please fuck me, Kento.” You have no room for coyness or pride anymore, you have only room for him.

He nods, burying his head in your neck and removing his boxers with your frantic help. You feel his hard length freed against your thigh. He’s bigger than you imagined, thick and leaking already. You wanted to taste the beading precum, feel the heat and weight of him in your mouth, but you would have to find another time because Nanami was just as desperate to be inside of you as you were to be filled by him. He lined himself up with your begging hole, not yet pushing inside. He looks into your eyes before kissing you, hard and deep, no barriers, no holding back, as he pushes into you. He’s thicker than you even thought, the stretch burning as you arch up into him, whimpering.

“Take it all baby. I know, I know, just a bit more. You can take it.” He soothes against your lips, thrusting further.

You let out a small, cracked cry as he continues, pressing kisses to your neck. You rake your nails across his hip, desperate for something to cling to. You’re grateful for your surprisingly wet climax earlier, the lubrication helping to ease the insertion. When he finally bottoms out, and you feel his hips flush against yours, he stills. His tip is kissing your cervix, he's trembling above you as he too struggles to adjust to the tight fit.

“You feel so fucking good, you’re so tight, so fucking wet for me.” He mutters against your neck, your jaw, anywhere he can find to kiss.

“Fuuuuuuck, Kento.” Your pain finally gives way to pleasure.

Just in time for him to pull his hips back slightly and thrust into you further. Both of you moan into the silence of the bedroom, as he repeats this over and over. Setting a medium pace of intense thrusts deep inside of you. You're squeezing him tighter and tighter.

“Please baby, relax a bit. I can’t move much more.” Nanami begs, moving one hand to your clit and circling it gently, attempting to extend your pleasure.

You try to obey, taking a deep breath and allowing him to make you feel good, as he promised. You release some tension and find his pace more languid and fluid, assisted by his careful thumbing of your clit. Your hands move up and grip the pillow behind you as he increases his pace, pumping into you faster and faster by just a deep. A dance begins with your two bodies, moving in sync, maximizing the joint pleasure.

“Fuck! Ah, baby. Yes!”

“Oh! Kento, Kento! Yes!! Right there, fuck!”

“There? You like that? Of course you do, bad girl”

“Uh huh, Fuck me like a bad girl, Kento! Fuck”

Cries of pleasure fill the room, Kento luxuriates in the fact that his own bedroom, sitting empty, is just on the other side of the wall, where the headboard is smacking rhythmically. He brings you to another mind melting orgasm with his thumb and cock working in tandem. You whimper out praises of his skill, his size, his words, Him. Once you have caught yourself again from the freefall of climax, you sit up, pushing on his shoulders. He's too big of a man for you to really push, but he sees your desire and rolls the pair of you so that he is now on his back. Your thighs ache already from being spread so long, but not to be out fucked you hitch your hips up and down his length as fast and accurately as you can. His hands settle on your hips, squeezing bruises into the supple flesh.

“Fuck baby.” His jaw hangs open as he watches you bounce and grind on him.

Emboldened by the blush settling on his face, you take one of his large, calloused hands from your hip and slide it up your body and to your mouth, where you suck two of his fingers into your mouth. He shudders and a dangerously loud moan spills from his lips. You swirl your tongue around his thick fingers, tasting remnants of your climaxes, tasting his heated skin. Your hips never stop, riding him and sucking his fingers. You see him sweating beneath you, eyes rolling back, mouth agape, tongue threatening to flop out. The hand on your hip squeezes and pushes you down further on him.

“Baby I-- Fuck!” Nananmi hoped he would catch it in time but you surprised him and he couldn’t contain himself in time.

He holds you down on his pelvis as his cock twitches inside of you releasing a heavy load of white into you. You both let out long, whining moans as he fucks up into you desperately. After his long release has completed, Nanami pulls his fingers from your lips and pulls you down to kiss him, whimpering as your shifting squeezes his overstimulated cock. The kiss is sticky with cum and sweat and spit, and delicious all the same. The combined flavors of your endeavor sweeter than any wine, better than any meal you could have shared over a candle lit dinner. Nanami licks into your mouth, holding you flush against his chest as his cock begins to soften inside of you. You pull away enough to look at him, foreheads still pressed together. You smile, and he smiles back, so warm and relaxed. He takes in a breath to speak

THUNK THUNK THUNK……….THUNK THUNK THUNK

You two look at one another. The confusion apparent on both of your faces as the knocking continues. You pull off of him, already mourning the feeling of his cock no longer inside of you. Nanami is ready to kill whoever is on the other side of the door for pulling him away from your tight, wet heat. You wrap yourself in your bathrobe, and Kento pulls on his sweatpants. You both exit your bedroom, although you want to assure Nanami he doesn't have to come with you, it feels comforting to have him there when answering the door at night. If he weren't in the room with you, you would have assumed it was him at the door, but since it can’t be you are lost for who could be knocking so late.

THUNK THUNK THUNK

You open the door to find Mrs. Sonomura, your neighbor across the hall. You often watched her collection of houseplants when she went out of town to visit her daughter. Her cheeks were dark pink and she was wearing her housecoat. You pulled the top of your robe tighter over your chest, praying your hair which you had not thought to fix wasn't too obvious.

“Good Evening, Mrs. Sonomura. W-what can I do for you?”

She took you in and flushed even deeper, “I-I heard shouting and I…well..”

You were mortified, knowing that any respect this woman had for you must have completely dissolved. Before she, or you, could speak, you felt a heavy hand clap over your shoulder and Nanami’s body came behind yours. He had donned his sweatshirt quickly at the sight of Mrs. Sonomura.

“My apologies, Mrs. Sonomure. I came over to complain about how loud her party had been tonight and I suppose things got a bit heated. I apologize for the yelling, we’re trying to find a way to be more….neighborly.” He looked straight at Mrs. Sonomura, smiling a charming smile, all while squeezing your shoulder.

Mrs. Sonomura nodded hurriedly, seemingly happy to take such an obvious lie in place of the uncomfortable truth.

“Well, I trust the two of you can work it out with the front office. Please keep it down after quiet hours.”

You nodded, “So sorry, Mrs. Sonomura. It won't happen again, Goodnight.”

You waved and watched her enter her apartment before shutting the door to your own. Nanami cocked his head down at you.

“Won't happen again, huh?” He teased.

“Oh shut up. We should be careful letting our ‘arguments’ get too loud again.” you sighed out, just relieved to have avoided the complete mortification of your kind, older neighbor thinking you're a slut, “Those walls really are thin.”

Nanami wrapped his arms around you, pulling you in to kiss the top of your head. You hugged him, pressing your face into his chest.

“You should probably spend the night.” You turned your face to the side, pressing your cheek against him as you spoke, “I’d hate for something to happen to you taking the train this late.”

Nanami laughed, you could hear it resonate from his chest, “That’s a good point. I’d hate to walk home in this weather.”

The pair of you smiled before you led him back into your bedroom to sleep.

OKAY YALL: I really hope you guys enjoyed this one, its been bouncing around in my head for a while and im so pleased with how it came out. Bonus Points if you know what movie//book got spoiled. Anyway, love you guys, and always i would love to know what you thought or if you have any ideas of your own! XX- Doodle.

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keerysfreckles · 3 months

Text

sparks fly — LN4

pairing: lando norris x fem!reader

summary: “drop everything now, meet me in the pouring rain. kiss me on the sidewalk, take away the pain” — or when y/n goes to lando's childhood home in england, after her night turned for the worst.

warnings: abusive relationship, cursing, not proofread

a/n: shoutout to pookie nat for finally getting me into taylor 🙏

masterlist !

⋆ ˚ ｡ ⋆ ୨୧ ˚

y/n knew from the moment she watched her first rom-com, she would find a love like the movies. how to lose a guy in ten days. thirteen going on thiry. ten things i hate about you. twenty seven dresses.

the list could go on. she was more than positive she'd find someone to love her the same way these fictional men loved their partners.

y/n met her first love during her spring break of her second year of uni. she could've sworn they were meant to be. they had plenty in common. they were studying the same major, both loved hockey, both wanted to study abroad someday, in paris or germany.

she thought it was perfect. until the fairy tale castle started crumbling.

during their third year of uni, y/n noticed patrick changing. he got more focused with his school work, but became more aggressive when y/n was involved.

y/n thought at first it was just the stress from exams coming up. she justified it as everyone's on edge, getting antsy for the year to be done with.

however it only fell downhill. the words of aggression turned into loud yells heard from their shard apartment at late hours. the yelling turned into patrick throwing any item he could find, which soon turned into y/n dodging almost everything patrick threw.

he hasn't hit her yet, which was possibly the only thing keeping y/n in the relationship. she really believed he could change. but as days passed, and his anger only progressed, she wasn't sure the old patrick was still inside.

sure, the man would always try to make it up to her. a million open eneded apologies could only do so much.

on the twenty third of october, that's when shit hit the fan.

"patrick please, just let me go to bed. it's late, we're both angry and not thinking right," y/n tried reasoning with him, knowing her words don't mean a thing to him.

"no, you're going to tell me what you were doing out so late."

y/n only lets out a scoff. it was the same fight almost every time she went out with friends, or simply went to the library to study. patrick never believed her.

"for the last time, i was out with jess. all we did was go shopping," y/n explains again. her own anger starts rising. she feels the bottle inside her shaking, getting ready to explode.

she stands from the couch, walking to their shared room.

"you think you can walk away from me?" patrick quickly follows, slamming the bedroom door behind him.

"what is your problem!" y/n finally shouts, "you never believe me. what do you think i'm doing? cheating on you? how can i do that when you barely let me leave this goddamn apartment?"

y/n's breath heaved. she felt a small pressure release as she finally got the courage to yell at the man standing in front of her.

"who do you think you are?"

as patrick spoke, he stepped closer to y/n. causing her to step back, eventually becoming trapped between the him and the wall.

"who gave you the right to talk to me like that?" patrick seethed, before reaching out and grabbing y/n's wrist.

his grip only tightened when she let out pained sounds, as tears started forming in her eyes.

she tried prying his hand off her wrist with her other one, "let go," she begged.

y/n started kicking. she didn't know where her feet were ending up, but was grateful patrick had started backing away from her movements.

she managed to release her wrist from his hold, and ran towards the bedroom door. grabbing anything she could before leaving the apartment, she was able to grab her phone and her shoes.

patrick tried grabbing at her again, yelling and begging for her to come back. she was still struggoing to slip her shoes on even when she got outside.

y/n swore she still heard patrick's yelling from where she stood.

once she got at least a block away, the tears couldn't help but fall. her vision became fuzzy as she kept walking. she kept tripping over he untied shoe laces, stepping in the puddles from the rain beginning to fall from her sky.

as if the rain was matching y/n's mood.

in the ten minutes she continued to mindlessly walk, y/n couldn't believe how stupid she had been. scolding herself for staying with the man who only made her the worst version of herself.

y/n kept walking, until she seemed to find herself in an all too familiar neighborhood. she couldn't even begin to count the times she's been here.

she tries ridding her tears, knowing its no use as her eyes are probably bright red and puffy.

she begins to knock on the door of the house she knows too well. as her hand leaves the wood, her mind only begins to spiral.

what are you doing? they might not even be home. this could be too much for them to handle. they won't want to see me. they can't do anything–

the sound of locks turning brought y/n back from inside her mind.

cisca stood on the other side of the door, in the warmly lit house. her heart broke at the sight of y/n drenched from the rain, her shoes barely holding onto her feet, and her shaking hands.

"oh darling," cisca starts.

"i didn't know where else to go," y/n's voice shakes as cisca lets her inside. she's gone for a moment, before coming back with a towel for the girl.

"you know you're welcome here any time," cisca brought y/n towards the living room, not caring if the couch gets wet. she can always fix it later.

"you dry off some more, i'll be back with a cup of tea," cisca rubs y/n's arm before leaving for the kitchen. the older woman's mind wanders to all the possibilities for why y/n was at their home at the late hour.

minutes pass and cisca sets the warm cup of tea in y/n's hands, instantly receiving a thank you from her.

cisca gasps slightly at the bruise already forming around y/n's wrist. "sweetheart, what happened?"

she rubs her back as y/n explains everything to the woman. from the point patrick began getting verbally violent, to the events that happened no less then half an hour ago.

cisca couldn't believe her ears. the sweet y/n she knew would never have stayed with someone like that, but cisca hardly knows her at any more. ever since she started uni she rarely comes over to her best friends childhood home.

after pulling y/n into a much needed hug, cisca began setting up the extra bedroom. while y/n stayed on the couch, finishing the cup of tea in her hands.

"hey mom, i heard noise from my room. everything okay?" lando peeks his head into the spare bedroom, instantly confused to why his mother is setting up the bed.

"y/n is out there, and she just needs to be comforted right now, okay? she's had a rough night," cisca explains as lando nods in understanding.

lando walks through the hallway towards the living room, and just like his mother, his heart sinks at the sight of y/n. she's hunched over on the couch, finally getting warmer from being out in the rain.

"i thought i heard noise out here," lando chuckles, hoping a light hearted mood might fix the atmosphere around y/n.

once their eyes meet, he knows one slightly fun comment won't make anything better. he sees her bloodshot eyes, and worried expression.

"oh, baby," the nickname slips through his lips. one he's called her many times in the past.

he kneels in front of her to wrap his arms tightly around her waist, as hers reach for his shoulders.

he didn't know how much comforting she needed, but could only guess it was a lot after she started crying against his shoulder.

he continued to hold her, rubbing his hands up and down her back. his heart started to break once she started shaking in his arms. a mixture from the crying and her body finally letting the stress and anxiety get to her.

"i should've listened to you," y/n mumbled against his shoulder.

lando doesn't respond, knowing exactly what the girl meant.

her grip loosened slightly on his shoulders, now just resting her hands there as she looks at him.

"you were right. he wasn't a good guy. you had a feeling and i should've listened to you," y/n rambles on, knowing lando's been right about patrick since the first time the two men met.

"what did he do?" lando asks, moving his hands to hers. however, his fingers brush over y/n's brusing skin. the action makes her flinch slightly, and lando's heart breaks for the second time that night.

"i shouldn't have come here," y/n states, beginning to shake her head back and forth. "i'm sorry."

"you have nothing to be sorry for, you can stay," lando tries to reason with her.

he continues to try even when he follows her back out in the rain.

"y/n! just come inside!" he runs after her, his socks getting damp from the drying puddles outside. he looks up, the rainfall definitely slowed, but y/n's hair was beginning to get wet again.

"no lando, it's fine. i'll go back there for the night. he's probably calmed down by now."

lando reaches y/n, "you can't possibly want to go back there. he hurt you. you can barely move your wrist because of the bastard."

y/n turned to see lando looking at her, his curls falling slightly from the drizzling rain.

"you can't go back there y/n."

"i've already ruined yours and your mom's night."

lando laughs, "that's the last thing you've done. you and i both know you're more than welcome to stay the night."

after minutes of silence, lando speaks up again while stepping closer to y/n.

"i want you to come inside. i want you to be comfortable and safe."

it's as if a switch went off in y/n's head. a switch she's surprised didn't go off sooner.

seeing lando like this, standing in the rain in front of her. wanting nothing more than to make sure she's protected. something patrick would never have done, during any circumstances.

he watches her eyes flick between his own and his lips.

he lets out a shuddered breath as she simply begins walking closer to him.

"y/n, you went through way too much tonight. i don't want to add to any of your stress."

y/n shakes her head, "lando i've never been more sure of anything."

lando's hands find their way to her waist as she finally steps in front of him.

"take away my pain lando, please. you're the only person who's been here for everything. you're the only one i need. i'm so stupid for not seeing it earlier. i should've never went on that stupid date. i should've listened to you, and– and if i did i would've been here so much sooner."

y/n catches her breath. her heart hammers in her chest waiting for lando's reaction.

tears begin to blur her vision once more, her emotions getting the better of her as lando doesn't respond.

"lan, please say something. you're what i want, not h–"

y/n stumbles back slightly from the impact of lando's lips pushing against hers. her hands hold onto his face, scared that if she let's go, she might just be imagining this.

"please, let me take you back in–"

now y/n cuts off lando's words, making the man laugh into the kiss. the sound and feeling sending shivers up y/n's spine.

lando breaks the kiss, but feels y/n's breath fanning over his lips.

"now can you please come back inside?"

"one more," y/n mumbles against his lips before he has the chance to reject her offer.

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