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mostlysignssomeportents · 6 months ago

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AI’s productivity theater

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

When I took my kid to New Zealand with me on a book-tour, I was delighted to learn that grocery stores had special aisles where all the kids'-eye-level candy had been removed, to minimize nagging. What a great idea!

Related: countries around the world limit advertising to children, for two reasons:

1) Kids may not be stupid, but they are inexperienced, and that makes them gullible; and

2) Kids don't have money of their own, so their path to getting the stuff they see in ads is nagging their parents, which creates a natural constituency to support limits on kids' advertising (nagged parents).

There's something especially annoying about ads targeted at getting credulous people to coerce or torment other people on behalf of the advertiser. For example, AI companies spent millions targeting your boss in an effort to convince them that you can be replaced with a chatbot that absolutely, positively cannot do your job.

Your boss has no idea what your job entails, and is (not so) secretly convinced that you're a featherbedding parasite who only shows up for work because you fear the breadline, and not because your job is a) challenging, or b) rewarding:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/19/make-them-afraid/#fear-is-their-mind-killer

That makes them prime marks for chatbot-peddling AI pitchmen. Your boss would love to fire you and replace you with a chatbot. Chatbots don't unionize, they don't backtalk about stupid orders, and they don't experience any inconvenient moral injury when ordered to enshittify the product:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/25/moral-injury/#enshittification

Bosses are Bizarro-world Marxists. Like Marxists, your boss's worldview is organized around the principle that every dollar you take home in wages is a dollar that isn't available for executive bonuses, stock buybacks or dividends. That's why you boss is insatiably horny for firing you and replacing you with software. Software is cheaper, and it doesn't advocate for higher wages.

That makes your boss such an easy mark for AI pitchmen, which explains the vast gap between the valuation of AI companies and the utility of AI to the customers that buy those companies' products. As an investor, buying shares in AI might represent a bet the usefulness of AI – but for many of those investors, backing an AI company is actually a bet on your boss's credulity and contempt for you and your job.

But bosses' resemblance to toddlers doesn't end with their credulity. A toddler's path to getting that eye-height candy-bar goes through their exhausted parents. Your boss's path to realizing the productivity gains promised by an AI salesman runs through you.

A new research report from the Upwork Research Institute offers a look into the bizarre situation unfolding in workplaces where bosses have been conned into buying AI and now face the challenge of getting it to work as advertised:

https://www.upwork.com/research/ai-enhanced-work-models

The headline findings tell the whole story:

96% of bosses expect that AI will make their workers more productive;

85% of companies are either requiring or strongly encouraging workers to use AI;

49% of workers have no idea how AI is supposed to increase their productivity;

77% of workers say using AI decreases their productivity.

Working at an AI-equipped workplaces is like being the parent of a furious toddler who has bought a million Sea Monkey farms off the back page of a comic book, and is now destroying your life with demands that you figure out how to get the brine shrimp he ordered from a notorious Holocaust denier to wear little crowns like they do in the ad:

https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2004/hitler-and-sea-monkeys

Bosses spend a lot of time thinking about your productivity. The "productivity paradox" shows a rapid, persistent decline in American worker productivity, starting in the 1970s and continuing to this day:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity_paradox

The "paradox" refers to the growth of IT, which is sold as a productivity-increasing miracle. There are many theories to explain this paradox. One especially good theory came from the late David Graeber (rest in power), in his 2012 essay, "Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit":

https://thebaffler.com/salvos/of-flying-cars-and-the-declining-rate-of-profit

Graeber proposes that the growth of IT was part of a wider shift in research approaches. Research was once dominated by weirdos (e.g. Jack Parsons, Oppenheimer, etc) who operated with relatively little red tape. The rise of IT coincides with the rise of "managerialism," the McKinseyoid drive to monitor, quantify and – above all – discipline the workforce. IT made it easier to generate these records, which also made it normal to expect these records.

Before long, every employee – including the "creatives" whose ideas were credited with the productivity gains of the American century until the 70s – was spending a huge amount of time (sometimes the majority of their working days) filling in forms, documenting their work, and generally producing a legible account of their day's work. All this data gave rise to a ballooning class of managers, who colonized every kind of institution – not just corporations, but also universities and government agencies, which were structured to resemble corporations (down to referring to voters or students as "customers").

Even if you think all that record-keeping might be useful, there's no denying that the more time you spend documenting your work, the less time you have to do your work. The solution to this was inevitably more IT, sold as a way to make the record-keeping easier. But adding IT to a bureaucracy is like adding lanes to a highway: the easier it is to demand fine-grained record-keeping, the more record-keeping will be demanded of you.

But that's not all that IT did for the workplace. There are a couple areas in which IT absolutely increased the profitability of the companies that invested in it.

First, IT allowed corporations to outsource production to low-waged countries in the global south, usually places with worse labor protection, weaker environmental laws, and easily bribed regulators. It's really hard to produce things in factories thousands of miles away, or to oversee remote workers in another country. But IT makes it possible to annihilate distance, time zone gaps, and language barriers. Corporations that figured out how to use IT to fire workers at home and exploit workers and despoil the environment in distant lands thrived. Executives who oversaw these projects rose through the ranks. For example, Tim Cook became the CEO of Apple thanks to his successes in moving production out of the USA and into China.

https://archive.is/M17qq

Outsourcing provided a sugar high that compensated for declining productivity…for a while. But eventually, all the gains to be had from outsourcing were realized, and companies needed a new source of cheap gains. That's where "bossware" came in: the automation of workforce monitoring and discipline. Bossware made it possible to monitor workers at the finest-grained levels, measuring everything from keystrokes to eyeball movements.

What's more, the declining power of the American worker – a nice bonus of the project to fire huge numbers of workers and ship their jobs overseas, which made the remainder terrified of losing their jobs and thus willing to eat a rasher of shit and ask for seconds – meant that bossware could be used to tie wages to metrics. It's not just gig workers who don't score consistent five star ratings from app users whose pay gets docked – it's also creative workers whose Youtube and Tiktok wages are cut for violating rules that they aren't allowed to know, because that might help them break the rules without being detected and punished:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/13/solidarity-forever/#tech-unions

Bossware dominates workplaces from public schools to hospitals, restaurants to call centers, and extends to your home and car, if you're working from home (AKA "living at work") or driving for Uber or Amazon:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/02/chickenized-by-arise/#arise

In providing a pretense for stealing wages, IT can increase profits, even as it reduces productivity:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/11/robots-stole-my-jerb/#computer-says-no

One way to think about how this works is through the automation-theory metaphor of a "centaur" and a "reverse centaur." In automation circles, a "centaur" is someone who is assisted by an automation tool – for example, when your boss uses AI to monitor your eyeballs in order to find excuses to steal your wages, they are a centaur, a human head atop a machine body that does all the hard work, far in excess of any human's capacity.

A "reverse centaur" is a worker who acts as an assistant to an automation system. The worker who is ridden by an AI that monitors their eyeballs, bathroom breaks, and keystrokes is a reverse centaur, being used (and eventually, used up) by a machine to perform the tasks that the machine can't perform unassisted:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

But there's only so much work you can squeeze out of a human in this fashion before they are ruined for the job. Amazon's internal research reveals that the company has calculated that it ruins workers so quickly that it is in danger of using up every able-bodied worker in America:

https://www.vox.com/recode/23170900/leaked-amazon-memo-warehouses-hiring-shortage

Which explains the other major findings from the Upwork study:

81% of bosses have increased the demands they make on their workers over the past year; and

71% of workers are "burned out."

Bosses' answer to "AI making workers feel burned out" is the same as "IT-driven form-filling makes workers unproductive" – do more of the same, but go harder. Cisco has a new product that tries to detect when workers are about to snap after absorbing abuse from furious customers and then gives them a "Zen" moment in which they are showed a "soothing" photo of their family:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ai-bringing-zen-first-horizons-192010166.html

This is just the latest in a series of increasingly sweaty and cruel "workplace wellness" technologies that spy on workers and try to help them "manage their stress," all of which have the (totally predictable) effect of increasing workplace stress:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/15/wellness-taylorism/#sick-of-spying

The only person who wouldn't predict that being closely monitored by an AI that snitches on you to your boss would increase your stress levels is your boss. Unfortunately for you, AI pitchmen know this, too, and they're more than happy to sell your boss the reverse-centaur automation tool that makes you want to die, and then sell your boss another automation tool that is supposed to restore your will to live.

The "productivity paradox" is being resolved before our eyes. American per-worker productivity fell because it was more profitable to ship American jobs to regulatory free-fire zones and exploit the resulting precarity to abuse the workers left onshore. Workers who resented this arrangement were condemned for having a shitty "work ethic" – even as the number of hours worked by the average US worker rose by 13% between 1976 and 2016:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/11/robots-stole-my-jerb/#computer-says-no

AI is just a successor gimmick at the terminal end of 40 years of increasing profits by taking them out of workers' hides rather than improving efficiency. That arrangement didn't come out of nowhere: it was a direct result of a Reagan-era theory of corporate power called "consumer welfare." Under the "consumer welfare" approach to antitrust, monopolies were encouraged, provided that they used their market power to lower wages and screw suppliers, while lowering costs to consumers.

"Consumer welfare" supposed that we could somehow separate our identities as "workers" from our identities as "shoppers" – that our stagnating wages and worsening conditions ceased mattering to us when we clocked out at 5PM (or, you know, 9PM) and bought a $0.99 Meal Deal at McDonald's whose low, low price was only possible because it was cooked by someone sleeping in their car and collecting food-stamps.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/20/disneyland-workers-anaheim-california-authorize-strike

But we're reaching the end of the road for consumer welfare. Sure, your toddler-boss can be tricked into buying AI and firing half of your co-workers and demanding that the remainder use AI to do their jobs. But if AI can't do their jobs (it can't), no amount of demanding that you figure out how to make the Sea Monkeys act like they did in the comic-book ad is doing to make that work.

As screwing workers and suppliers produces fewer and fewer gains, companies are increasingly turning on their customers. It's not just that you're getting worse service from chatbots or the humans who are reverse-centaured into their workflow. You're also paying more for that, as algorithmic surveillance pricing uses automation to gouge you on prices in realtime:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/24/gouging-the-all-seeing-eye/#i-spy

This is – in the memorable phrase of David Dayen and Lindsay Owens, the "age of recoupment," in which companies end their practice of splitting the gains from suppressing labor with their customers:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-06-03-age-of-recoupment/

It's a bet that the tolerance for monopolies made these companies too big to fail, and that means they're too big to jail, so they can cheat their customers as well as their workers.

AI may be a bet that your boss can be suckered into buying a chatbot that can't do your job, but investors are souring on that bet. Goldman Sachs, who once trumpeted AI as a multi-trillion dollar sector with unlimited growth, is now publishing reports describing how companies who buy AI can't figure out what to do with it:

https://www.goldmansachs.com/intelligence/pages/gs-research/gen-ai-too-much-spend-too-little-benefit/report.pdf

Fine, investment banks are supposed to be a little conservative. But VCs? They're the ones with all the appetite for risk, right? Well, maybe so, but Sequoia Capital, a top-tier Silicon Valley VC, is also publicly questioning whether anyone will make AI investments pay off:

https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/ais-600b-question/

I can't tell you how great it was to take my kid down a grocery checkout aisle from which all the eye-level candy had been removed. Alas, I can't figure out how we keep the nation's executive toddlers from being dazzled by shiny AI pitches that leave us stuck with the consequences of their impulse purchases.

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/2024/07/25/accountability-sinks/#work-harder-not-smarter

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

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

#pluralistic #productivity theater #upwork #ai #labor #automation #productivity #potemkin productivity #work harder not smarter #scholarship #bossware #reverse centaurs #accountability sinks #bullshit jobs #age of recoupment

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nezz-cringe-crib · 6 months ago

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LAWLIGHT HEADCANONS LAWLIGHT HEADCANONS LAWLIGHT HEADCANONS PLSS

Share your winsdom with us mortals

ALSO- Some L angst maybe? I like seeing him suffer bc he is my favorite blorbo and I love making my blorbos suffer

(only if you are comfortable with it, ofc. Don't wanna push anything :) )

OOOOUGHH AAAAAA ABSOLUTELY

i always suck at giving hcs off the fly, but here's some i've thought up of before and like to think about instead of sleeping :333 (be warned that they're all pretty vanilla lolz. my hcs are basic. i just like my blorbos.)

Lawlight hcs:

blorbbooo tiiimmeeeee :33 - i personally really like fluffy lawlight things, but a lot of those are usually for aus and everything (since i can't see them being very fluffy in the normal death note plot). but i like to imagine them having stupid teenage-like crush moments with each other. like maybe during the yotsuba arc or something, L wants more sweets but watari is already out doing something, so his dramatic ass is just whining about "oh woe is me....... there's nothing in the vicinity for me to munch on......... how will i ever go on......." and then to get him to shut up, light begrudgingly either bakes something for L (which could probably lead to a lot of silly shenanigans with stupid dorky smiles before light immediately takes it back and starts bickering with L again), or light convinces L to go buy some sweets from a bakery in town (and then L gets distracted because there's multiple sweet-filled stores and his greedy ass has to try all of them so now they're essentially just going on a date trip around all the sweet stores in town). - also to add onto that last bullet, there's this one fic i just read last night that was so stupid and adorable and i loved it. it's called "You can't have my name, but you can have my number" and i recommend checking it out if you like short and sweet fluffy fics. :] (and if you want more fluffy fics, go read everything @rawrlight has made. his fics are so fucking good please read them i am obsessed with them actually pleasepleasepleaseplease) - L is surprisingly good with kids and light won't admit it but he's kinda into it. - L nonchalantly shares food with light and light totally overthinks the shit out of it. - they totally pick at each other for everything. light picks at L for every unsanitary thing he does. L picks at light for having an unnecessarily long and complicated hygiene routine (i like to imagine he has a shit ton of hair and skincare products). anybody who walks past the bathroom while they're in it is bound to hear non-stop bickering. (or, if you really wanna match my freak, have matsuda open the bathroom door while they're getting ready only to see them in the middle of a fight. whether the pose they're in looks compromisingly homosexual is up to you my dear sillies).

uhhhhhh and that's all i can think of for now. awww zoinks.....

but now L angst headcanons yipeeeeeeeee :33333

L angst hcs:

ooougghhhh buckle up boyz... it's angsty tism time..... - i don't think L was ever good at making friends (this is very much a projected headcanon but shshshshshsh ignore that). despite being insanely intelligent and pretty damn good at whatever he sets his mind to, i don't think he ever got the hang of making deep, personal connections. and i feel like he wants to. throughout his whole life, maybe he wanted to make friends but it always just fell flat. maybe as a child there were times where thought he had made a friend, only to realize those feelings were not reciprocated. despite everything he tried, he was just never "human" enough to seemingly make all those lasting connections that he analyzes so deeply. and i think he probably gave up on trying at some point. and all of this is why i feel like his connection with light is so important. even though he knows it'll end in tragedy and that he will die by light's hand, he still can't help but feel... a little more human with light. and i think he'd risk death in order to feel like that one more time. - i don't usually like reading/seeing heavily angsty stuff, but i remember seeing somebody headcanon that they thought L went through solitary confinement as a child in the wammy house, and i always thought that was interesting. i'm not gonna expand on it though since heavy angst isn't really my vibe. (i love making my blorbos suffer, but not too much.) - yeah most of my L angst is him just being incredibly lonely. in the sense of "he doesn't cry about it (he's probably only cried once in his life and that was probably as a very young child), but there's always been some missing piece in his heart that just can't ever seem to be filled". - actually-- loneliness and his inhumanity. that's what i fuck with the most. though they kind of intertwine, so. yeah i kinda just sound like a broken record atp but sshhhhhhhhhhh it pays off (sometimes) i swear. - he also has a lot of religious trauma in my eyes (again, projection). i know he's not religious or anything, but i feel like he'd fit that song "Dear God" by XTC a lot. - oh and he also sulks a fuckton. he doesn't cry, he pouts and goes to stand in the rain while reminiscing on old memories. that's what his emo dramatic ass does and i fucking love him for it.

that's all i can really think of right now. hopefully that's somewhat entertaining. most of my headcanons are very basic compared to other people i've seen, but they are still special in my heart. :))))

#dn #death note #l lawliet #light yagami #lawlight #headcanon #nezz brainz

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thegoober010 · 7 months ago

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so you do art AND writing?? So cool! I just reread that fanfic you made and like, I'm craving for more. If it isn't a hassle, can I request a Dumbass trio (Ace, Deuce and GN reader)? Like cause Ace has high IQ but is dumb in other stuff, Deuce has streets smarts, maybe reader could have high EQ(emotional intelligence) but is a dumbass at everything else (also believes store-bought eggs begets chickens). No reason, really. Totally not because that's what I thought happened to eggs until the heartslabyul chapter aired.

FIST OF ALL THANK U FOR CALLING IT COOL I APPRECIATE IT WAAA

SECOND OF ALL IM NGL I HAD NO IDEA WHAT TO WRITE BUT THE EGGS GAVE ME AN IDEA AND OFC U CAN BUDDY MWEHEHEHE 😈😈🙏🙏

YOU ASK AND YOU SHALL RECIEVE 🔥🔥🔥

Tw/Cw: none !

Gender neutral reader as always ‼️‼️‼️

“I swear none of us are graduating..”

You let out a giggle as you stared at Ace and deuce fooling around in the store while you pushed the cart, they were so stupid sometimes. Ace kept on putting everything in the cart meanwhile Deuce kept on trying to find where to put back each item they didn’t need that Ace kept putting in, he was trying to be a good kid after all and not bother you with Ace’s unnecessary requests to buy dumb items like dog toys for Grim (even though he’s a cat…) or a bag of gummy worms that had spell challenges on them and so on, plus he didn’t want to hurt your wallet with everything Ace was trynna buy !

“Ace- where’d you find these ? Are these… why would you get oysters you don’t even like them !?” “…Well like, I dunno, what if like uhh Rook likes them or something, I don’t know why do I have to explain myself to you all the time just lemme put stuff in the ca- yo hey what’re you doing with all the stuff where are you putting it !?” Ace yelled out as Deuce was basically grabbing everything Ace put in the cart he deemed unnecessary or too expensive for you. “Back where it was ! We don’t need all this! And some of this stuff is too expensive we don’t wanna put ourselves in debt!” Deuce hurriedly explained while rushing around placing everything back where it belongs. “Hey don’t worry, I’m the one mostly paying anyways." You stated trying your best to just calm them down a little. "See! Now put all my stuff back idiot" "Hey who are you calling an idiot!?"

Great... another argument.. this will definetly not turn into a huge disaster and end with them making another huge mess they’ll have to clean ! Definitely…

You let out a sigh before pushing the cart into another aisle that Ace had dragged you off to. Deuce had been left behind but he quickly caught up. You guys were now in that food aisle that had milk, eggs, yogurt, all that stuff. “Oh- uh hey dude didn’t you say you needed some eggs?” Ace asked, “Oh yeah I almost forgot!” You replied before looking at the eggs. You grabbed one and looked at the prices. “Awe… poor little guys… they’re gonna get eaten before they have a chance to become chicks…. Cycle of life I guess…” Deuce sighed. “Deuce…, how many times do I have to tell you that there’s no chickens in store eggs….” Ace rolled his eyes as he helped you check the prices. “Oh yeah I forgot… but hey I can’t be the only one who forgets that or like didn't know that.” Deuce muttered. “Nah you definitely are! Only you’d be that stupid to think that” Ace teased causing Deuce’s eye to twitch. “Hey even if I am stupid you’re uh- you’re stupider!” Deuce replied nudging Ace to the side to look at what he was looking at. “Hey don’t push me dude the hell!? Also I got a higher grade on Trein’s test than you yesterday so you can’t call me stupid!” Ace nudged Deuce back “You got a 52% I got a 51.5% it’s the same thing if you round it!” Deuce groaned before pushing Ace back, accidentally slipping and making both of them fall on the ground.

“OW! You dumbass-!” Ace yelped, he hit his head when he fell and he just rubbed it, he sat up and saw how Deuce just up and rubbed his back “Owww-“ Deuce winced “Dont call me a dumbass!” Deuce groaned before giving Ace a hand and helped him get up. Ace gave Deuce a glare before then looking over at you, “Ugh whatever.... uh yo you’ve been really quiet dude... you okay?” Ace asked you while rubbing the back of his head.

You turn your head over to Ace as you held and just blink and stay silent before all of a sudden. “What do you mean there’re no chickens in eggs….” You asked. Ace just… stared… “You… you didn’t know....?” “NO??” You reply with a shocked tone, your voice cracked a bit while you raised your brows. “See Ace I told you I’m not the only one!” Deuce pointed at him before crossing his arms.

"How can you two be so dumb what?? Did your parents not teach you anything?" Ace started to tease both of you which caused you to laugh meanwhile Deuce was getting annoyed once again. Right before Deuce could say anything to him all of a sudden you all hear barking coming from behind yall. You all turn and all of a sudden see a HUGE dog running towards you guys "COME BACK HERE MUNCHKIN!!" the owner of the dog yelled out. It was more specifically running to you, you had no time to react neither did Ace or Deuce so you all just stood still. Deuce quickly took out his wand before Ace slapped it from his hand "Hey we cant just cast a random spell we could hurt the dog!" before Ace could even finish scolding Deuce a loud thud was heard. The dog just knocked you over while you had been trying to move away from it, knocking down the carton of eggs from you. "Ah- damnit!" You cursed under your breath, before the dog started licking you face, its tail wagging happily. You pet the dog before looking at your side and seeing the carton of eggs on the floor, opened, and all the eggs scattered, broken, in shambles even. "Oh my goodness I'm so sorry!" the owner said before grabbing his dog's leash and motioning it towards him "C'mere munchkin!" he said, the dog quickly made its way back to their owner. Ace held out a hand to you "Mph- thanks Ace" You spoke softly, getting up. "Oh my what a mess, so sorry about that!" the owner said before trying to tiptoe his way outta this mess. Deuce immediately grabbed him by the collar "Hey! Ya don't get to leave after your dog makes a mess! You're gonna help us fix this!" Deuce yelled at the man, he just stared at Deuce with a nervous expression. "Wow- okay sorry-..." the man muttered. Deuce let go of his shirt before moving his attention towards you "Hey you okay?? That was quite the tumble." You nodded "Yeah I'm fine! Why wouldn't I be, it's just a little fall!"

"Damn.. well who's gonna pay for that and clean it?" Ace asked causing you all to shrug, all of a sudden an employee comes up to you guys. "Hey what's going on with you guys? Why's there a mess..?" the employee asked, looking at all of you with an annoyed glare.

After you all explained the situation the owner of the dog was made to clean up the mess but you still had to pay in the end. Once you were all done with that finally you guys finished shopping and were getting out of the store. "Oh sevens that was such a mess and for what.." Ace muttered, "Tell me about it... that dog dude was so annoying but the dog was cute." Deuce randomly commented meanwhile you were just glad that was all over with and you guys can finally head to the dorms. "Let's just be happy we didn't have to clean something up again, and let's be grateful it wasn't actually our fault this time hehe." You giggled slightly causing Ace and Deuce to look at you with a smile. "With how much of a mess we make at school and outside of it... I wouldn't be surprised if we get held back like Leona." Ace laughed, taking a small jab at Leona. "Hey don't say that, we work hard why would we get held back!?" Deuce questioned a bit surprised Ace would say that not realizing he was just joking. You stare at the two of them as they just start going back and forth once more but they quickly stop, calm down and just start giggling about nonsense and brain rot terms. You just smiled, happy that they're your friends... even if they're idiots sometimes but hey you're an idiot too with them... that's what got you guys your infamous 'dumbass trio' nickname. "Pfff I swear none of us are graduating..." You chuckle

---

a/n please save me idk what I just wrote im sleep deprived and I didnt even check it after finishing but ITS OKAY IG HOPEFULLY U LIKED IT 😻😻😻

#twst #twisted wonderland #disney twst #disney twisted wonderland #twst disney #acedeuce #deuceace #deuce spade #ace trappola #dumbass trio #twisted wonderland Ace #twisted wonderland deuce #twst Ace #twst deuce #twst fanfic #twisted wonderland fanfic #fanfic #help I'm going insane #they're so dumb and for what 😭😭

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llostwriter · 1 year ago

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系统错误 | SVSSS Fanfic

CHAPTER 4

【ǫᴜᴇsᴛ ᴀᴄǫᴜɪʀᴇᴅ: ғɪɴᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ᴍɪssɪɴɢ ᴋɪᴅ ᴏғ ᴀ ɪɴɴᴏᴄᴇɴᴛ ᴇʟᴅᴇʀʟʏ ᴄʜɪʟᴅ. ᴜsᴇʀ sᴇʟᴇᴄᴛᴇᴅ 'ʏᴇs'. ɪғ ᴍɪssɪᴏɴ ɪs sᴜᴄᴄᴇssғᴜʟ, ᴘʟᴀʏᴇʀ sʜᴀʟʟ ʀᴇᴄɪᴇᴠᴇᴅ ᴀ ʙᴏɴᴜs ᴏғ 𝟸𝟶𝟶 ᴘᴏɪɴᴛs】

Xuan Ji seeps onto the green tea that was offered by the old woman. The elderly woman guided them to a tiny store and offered to buy them drinks and food in exchange for their assistance. Just two cups of green tea were ordered by Xuan Ji: one for himself and one for Xiyin. She supposed the actual Xuan Ji would also act in such manner. Knowing that the villagers are already impoverished enough, she also doesn't want the elderly woman to spend any more money. She looked down her long sleeves, making sure to pull the golden hairpin further inside to keep it from falling.

"Where was the last time you saw your son?" Xuan Ji inquired in an effort to learn more about it.

"I'm not sure..." Xuan Ji raising an eyebrow as she carefully listened to the elderly woman’s statement. "How are you not sure, about your own son?" she asked.

"He's always a reckless young man, he never listens to me, he goes wherever he want without telling me anything"

Yes, so the man was killed by his own stupidity. That will most likely also be waiting for Xuan Ji in the event that she is unable to alter her destiny. "Don't worry ma'am, I and Jiejie will find your son!" A startling voice surprised Xuan Ji, it was Xiyin.

Isn't it premature to commit to such promise? Her son might have passed away already, for all we know! Don't make any such promises—especially ones you can't keep—because it's difficult to bring someone back to life!

"If that is the case, I will no longer disturb you two young girls. This old woman shall take her leave," the woman got up from her chair and walked out of the restaurant, leaving Xuan Ji and Xiyin alone with their thoughts. "So Xuan jiejie, what are you deciding for us to do?" Xiyin said, gazing at Xuan in anticipation of a response. If nothing else, at least she knows when to take business seriously.

【+𝟸𝟶 ᴘᴏɪɴᴛ ᴏɴ ᴜsᴇʀ's 'ᴀᴛᴛᴇᴍᴘᴛ ᴛᴏ ᴀᴄᴛ ᴘʀᴏғᴇssɪᴏɴᴀʟ'】

Xuan was annoyed by the notification that showed up in front of her since she could see the system was making fun of her without much thought—not that she isn't intelligent.

She honestly has no idea where to go after she leaves the restaurant. On the left, Xiyin is standing as usual next to her. Ma'am, even though I'm grateful you trust me to keep you safe, I don't think I could do the same for myself! You are usually by my side, so if a beast attacked one of us, it would probably hit both of us!

"YOU SON OF A BITC-"

Xuan and Xiyin are alerted when they hear a loud cry that seems to have come from a dark alleyway across the street. Oh no, Xuan has seen too many scary movies to be naive enough to believe that entering would not yield any positive results. "Should we checked it out?" Xiyin innocently pointed her index finger in the direction of the location and questioned.

It was unnecessary since a larger, stronger man pushed a well-known little child out of the alleyway. That boy was the same one who had run into Xuan Ji earlier. The boy had two other men standing beside him. The younger lad is lifted off the ground by the larger male who grips his collar firmly. A gorgeous blue floral pattern on a small pouch bag with a white tassel dropped from the boy's pocket.

"Xuan Jiejie, isn't that the same exact pocket that usually hanged around your waist robe?"

Because Xuan Ji had just recently "reincarnated" into this body, the pouch bag was absent from its original location. If Xiyin hadn't just now informed her, Xuan Ji wouldn't even be aware that she held the pouch bag. Now it was clear that the youngster had intentionally run into Xuan Ji and taken the pouch bag without her knowing. Since she had never even realized she had a pouch bag on her until now, Xuan felt a little ashamed.

The bigger man picked up the pouch bag after noticing the dropped object and threw the small lad to the ground. "Look, it wasn't even that difficult! If you would have been a good boy and hand over your pouch bag, it would had probably saved you some punches”, The larger male grinned as he eagerly opened the pouch bag in the hopes of finding some precious items, only to be disappointed at the sight of simply herbs.

"What the hell is this?!" The man apparently did not like what he saw because he threw all the herbs onto the ground and then stumped on them with his foot, reducing them into ashes and rubbish. He then tossed the pouch bag away. "You must think this is funny right?!" The youngster yelped in pain when the stranger grabbed hold of his hair.

"Stop this instant!" The man and his lackeys were alarmed by that voice. Xuan looked at Xiyin with an expression of skepticism, as if she were doubting Xiyin's sanity. In addition to the fact that Xiyin's attempt to assist Xuan is unlikely to be successful, both Xuan and Xiyin are likely to become involved in the conflict. Worst of all, the current Xuan Ji is completely untrained in battle, and Xuan has little faith that Xiyin will know how to defend herself. Why couldn't Xiyin see the situation and decide it would be best to remain silent? Xuan now regrets not leaving with Xiyin right away.

Goddammit, even though it's definitely not on purpose, Xiyin really enjoys making issues for Xuan. May the Lord have pity and spare her from assigned to a trouble-attracter!

The man let go of the younger youngster and said, "Look at what we have here," before approaching the two women. One of the lackeys grabbed the small boy's wrist and stopped any attempts at running away when he made an attempt to do so. "You shouldn't treat a little boy in that way. He still has a bright future in front of him”. Where did Xiyin get the bravery, Xuan wasn't sure. The comment was ignored by the buffer man as he licked his lips, drawing an unpleasant response from Xuan. The man tried to grab hold of Xiyin, but Xuan stopped him by twisting his wrist, causing him to grunt in agony. The man stared at Xuan as he withdrew his hand. Xuan looked down at the wrist the man had been twisted by. Muscle memory, perhaps?

"Xuan jiejie look out!"

The man hoisted Xuan off the ground while tightly grabbing her throat. Her nails left scratches on his arm. “What on earth are you moron waiting for? Grab the other female as well!" The boss, who appeared to be the leader, roared at his henchmen who flinched and quickly obliged.

#the scum villain's self saving system #female reader #shen jiu #shen qingqiu #luo binghe #proud immortal demon way #pidw #svsss x reader #svsss fanfiction #The Scum Villain’s Self Saving System X Reader

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donnerpartyofone · 1 year ago

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Does anybody have that post of a Twitter thread where the tech guy explains that your phone isn't listening to you, but ads are generated using aggregated information about the consumer habits of people whose phones are in regular proximity to yours? Like he visits his mom, who regularly buys a certain toothpaste, and now he gets ads for that toothpaste? I'm having a paranoid moment because I'm starting to get ads for things I just bought in person from a store, not online, not things I've Googled, not things I necessarily said out loud even. A facial product I bought on impulse at the pharmacy, a household tool we need for our move. Of course it could all be a coincidence and I'm just going to have to learn to live with the new modern state of permanent suspicion that Someone or Something is scrutinizing everything the individual does, but I'm extremely annoyed. Part of what annoys me is the absolute stupidity of the apparent use of this technology: I bought something, so the relevant need has already been filled, and the algorithm or whatever is treating me like I'm a COLLECTOR of that thing, like I enjoy having a lot of the same exact thing and I will buy i.e. a tape measurer every day, all the time, as long as I'm reminded about it. All it's doing is violating my privacy and letting me know it, in order to advertise things that I specifically do not need to buy and will not shop for in the foreseeable future. So much for science. I have that vexing class tonight where the singularity expert tells us how AI is the same thing as freedom of information and all it does is augment our intelligence so we can become more enlightened and evolved at a faster rate and everything is going to be perfect so long as nobody regulates AI or AI-adjacent technologies, and if you disagree then you're a fascist and a caveman.

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throped · 2 years ago

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The Weeping Queen // Weeping Monk x OC // Chapter 1

.~ PROLOUGE ~. I'm not sure how many chapters there are gonna be but I'll let you know after the story is finished! This is an OC one but I'm also going to make a reader insert the same, but just the names changed.

Also, you're about 13 in this part, it is the part where you become involved with the Fey.

This world is messed up. Every little bit of it. People don’t listen, people don’t talk, people are mean while some people are too nice. I just don’t get it. My school doesn’t get much better though, not when there are little twats running around like they own the place. I have but merely two friends and one whom I never even asked to be friends with. Stupid people running this stupid world. This place would literally be in shambles if my anger could be expressed physically. But sometimes I find it amusing, people going about in their daily lives while having arguments over little things. I’m working on a plot, a plot to make everyone’s lives miserable. I enjoy their twisted eyes staring into my soul, almost like they could kill me. But they can’t. Nobody is capable of killing without being angered enough. They all think they’re above one another, but they just don’t realise that they are all exactly the same.

My part-time job also sucks, the fact that the person who runs the place makes me feel like I’m dumb also annoys me. Intelligence can come in many forms, whether it be academically or just survival skills and logical thinking. I prefer the one where I don’t have to waste my time studying, I simply don’t get the logic in that, study your WHOLE life just to get a paper and a handshake from a person who just went through the same thing? That just doesn’t sit right with me.

PRESENT

My parents and I decided to go to a cash converters store where we could buy things given by other people for a downgraded price. As I made my way into the store, my breath was immediately contaminated with the stench of bicycles rotting so I put up my hand to cover my nose from that foul odour. “Don’t exaggerate so much, Dae! Let’s be in a good mood today, shall we?” My mother encouraged, the words flowing into one ear and out the other. “Huh, oh yes, good mood. Got it,” I replied with. As I walked deeper into the store, leaving my parents and little brother, I made my way to the paintings area. My eyes floated around, clearly mesmerised at the sight in front. How could one sell such an exquisite painting for FOUR DOLLARS? That’s literally nothing compared to what stood right in front of my eyes. The waterfall and garden looked extremely captivating but there was something else that caught my attention… There on a stand, laid a sword, a majestical sword one would say, it was simply magnificent. My fingers carefully brushed through the blade of the smooth sword. There was also writing, writing that looked quite ancient. I was wondering why a sword like this would be in a painting isle. But my thoughts were short-lived as my parents called me for suggestions on the quilts they had seen. I sighed and made my way over.

That night I went home and ate dinner, which was rice, my favourite! I put my laptop in my laptop bag while grabbing the keys from the back pocket and putting it into the front which would ultimately be easier for me. My body thumped against the bed because of the sudden pressure added. I yawned as my body melted into the soft bed. The relief of the night washing in on me.

***

My head felt like it was getting pierced by branches while the whole of my lower body felt like it was resting against a stone. The only problem was that when I woke up, a whole forest surrounded me. “What? Where am I, is anyone there!?” My restless voice yelled out. My body jerked into action, and I quickly stood up at the sound of sticks breaking and leaves rustling around me. I don’t know where I am. Is this a dream or what? Some kind of unexplained reverie? I’m not sure but all this seems pretty real to me. The rusting only continued to come nearer and nearer as my breath suddenly quickened. What a morning, is this even a morning? I’m not sure about anything anymore. Tall green trees and traces of flowers growing on the soft garden bed of the woods. Now that I think of it, it wasn’t the best idea to yell out in the woods where literally anything could pounce at you and supposedly end you. As the rustling still continued, I pressed myself against a tree to make myself less visible. But to my surprise, a feminine voice suddenly rang out, “who’s there!? Show yourself!” Seemed to be a girl, probably young, her voice didn’t sound as developed as adults. But the real question was, what was this girl doing in the woods alone? She was likely alone as an adult wouldn’t let her out here herself. Although, for all I know, this could be a fantasy world where pigs fly. I’m not really sure.

I relaxed a little as I saw the face of the voice. She was young, probably as old as me, if not, younger. Her brunette hair contradicted with her icy blue eyes as her attire looked quite different from mine. I stared at her for a solid five seconds and finally broke out of my trance, “who are you, where am I?” I questioned. “Uh, I’m Nimue, and this is the path to our village, do you not know where you are?” she looked puzzled to say the least. “To be honest, I was sleeping in my world, and I suddenly woke up and ended up… here?” I spoke as my panic seemed to arise. Was this the past, another world, another universe!? “Also, why are you dressed like that?” The girl or should I say Nimue asked. “I’m dressed perfectly fine thank you very much. But the real question is, why are you dressed like that,” I said as I compared our clothes. She had braids and it seemed as if she was wearing a black and white outlines cloak, probably with a knee length dress inside as her legs were visible. I looked down at myself and my white fur puffer jacket which always kept me warm, I was wearing long cargo black pants that were of good quality and a simple t-shirt inside. I’m happy that I didn’t change into my nightdress. “I always wear this, everyone wears this. And why are you wearing white? It looks stuffed,” Nimue said. “Well, this may sound crazy, but I think I’ve been transported from my world to yours because of something I’ve done… Also, my jacket is stuffed with something called jute, it’s meant to keep us warm in our world,” I replied to her questions. “I’m sorry for annoying you with my stupid questions but I can take you back to the village if you wish?” Nimue asked. It hadn’t even been a split second before I answered, “of course, I desperately need a place to seek refugee until I can get back to my home.”

It was prohibited to follow a stranger in my world, but this time it felt fine, I need somewhere to stay and this girl doesn’t seem like the kind to kill me in cold blood. Also, I want to get to know more information about this place so I just wanna ask her some questions to know my way around this place. As we were walking, I didn’t have the courage to utter a word, but I was awe-struck at the beauty of the forest as we were walking down the trail. Considering Nimue is using the term ‘village’, I determine that this place must not be as well developed and is probably not modern at all. Even looking at her clothes, in my world, they’d be considered shabby. “So, do you think the village will like me?”. “Maybe, I don’t really know, those old shriveled up onions that are considered elders may like or hate you,” she shrugged. But she suddenly changed her demeanor, “are you a human?” she quickly asked. Wondering why she asked me such a weird question; I nodded my head instead of answering. She gasped, “I’ve never met a human before and I’m pretty sure they may not accept you.” “Aren’t you a human too, Nimue?” I replied with clear confusion. “Well, no. I’m Fey, we have powers, and we can connect with the Hidden!” She said. This was too much for me, I didn’t understand anything. What is the ‘Hidden’? And what is ‘Fey’? All I can hope now is that the village will be welcoming since I’m a human. Or maybe… I just tell them I’m Fey.

#the weeping monk x OC #theweepingmonk #beauty #monk #OC #light angst #fem reader #nimue #nimueh #cursed #netflix #theweepingmonk x reader

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tuesdayscanons · 2 years ago

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{¤} Although the stranger's words make Pigsy feel self conscious at first, the addendum surely softens the blow. He does have a point about a girl like her not being worth the wait. A smile stretches across Pigsy's face, his night already a little better.

Before Pigsy decides his next course of action, there's more pressing matters at hand...

"Don't be silly—you're going to catch yourself a cold holdin' your umbrella like that."

Pigsy pulls the gorgeous man closer to him, more concerned about keeping the other dry than personal space. It doesn't even occur to him that the stranger would be uncomfortable with this after the greeting he'd just given him. It's the gorgeous man's umbrella after all.

As if oblivious to all logic, Pigsy takes off his shirt—the driest article of clothing he has—and puts it over the other's slightly damp shoulder in another attempt to "help" him. He has his leather jacket to shield him from the cold winds. Even if Pigsy has to force his teeth from chattering, his superficial gesture is more important to him than keeping himself warm. His pride is already shot, after all.

"There. All better!"

After admiring his handiwork, Pigsy checks his watch for the time and immediately decides on which offer to take.

"I guess I might as well go home. Weather's bad and everythin's probably closing. Mama's gonna worry if I'm out for too long anyway."

As nice as it'd be to go on excursions with the stranger to soften the blow of his failed date, this guy most likely wants to be rid of Pigsy as soon as possible and Pigsy has work tomorrow...assuming he doesn't fall ill from standing out in the rain for hours and taking his shirt off when he didn't need to.

At the very least, walking home with the gorgeous man would buy Pigsy some time with him. He's sure the other wouldn't have agreed if he knew how far of a walk it'd be, but he's not going to turn down company at a time like this.

"My address is on this business card, if that helps."

Pigsy hands the other man the business card to his noodle shop in another town, as if he could read the address and immediately know where to go. Tonight isn't exactly a shining moment for his intelligence or common sense.

Fortunately, this oversight is realized fairly quickly.

"I remember passin' a convenience store on the way here. It had a Sun Wukong plush in the window. I thought about buyin' it for my date since I planned on seein' a play about Sun Wukong, but...you already know how that went."

Pigsy wouldn't have been able to afford the tickets had he bought the plush, though both would've been a waste of money anyway. He supposes he could've bought an umbrella with the money he would've used for the date, but he'd rather put it towards the noodle shop.

Besides, he can't buy company...or at least, decent company.

"Good thing I didn't buy the tickets. I would feel even stupider if I wasted money on expensive tickets just for her to not show up. I was plannin' on getting good seats too...and she didn't even know who Sun Wukong was!"

A harsh chuckle escapes from Pigsy, already guiding the gorgeous man in the direction he remembers seeing the plush in.

"A bit of a shame, honestly...I was lookin' forward to hearin' more about Sun Wukong. I haven't heard those stories since I was a kid. The play we were gonna see was about the golden peach. The plush in the display would've made such a good gift too—it was holdin' a golden peach with the words 'You're my golden peach' written on it."

Pigsy glances away again, already bracing himself for judgment. Surely, someone as sophisticated as this man would think this date sounds utterly ridiculous.

"Sorry if this all seems silly...I'm sure someone like you's been on plenty of classier dates." {¤}

tuesdayscanons:

{¤} Pigsy’s temporary relief spirals into full-on panic, not expecting such a masculine voice to come from who he falsely assumed was his date. A fiery red blush overtakes his face and tints his ears, almost hot enough to not feel the cold air snap at him. Almost.

To add to Pigsy’s flusterment, this guy looks even better up close. Dark, silky hair draping his face like a curtain and mesmerizing hazel eyes that send a tingle down Pigsy’s spine. If this was a woman his date, he certainly wouldn’t mind…

Keep reading

「 ☆ 」 As the stranger begins to explain, Tang starts to regret inquiring… or approaching at all. Whatever bout of relief he feels is quickly squelched by the others tale. Not because he doesn’t want to help the other man— it’s undoubtably a good thing Tang stopped by —but to spare them both the embarrassment of such a pathetic- No. That’s not the right word. Pathetic sounds judgmental towards the man who clearly fell for a cruel ruse. Tang can understand wanting something so badly, needing it, that one would jump through any number of mental hoops— no matter how unlikely —to try and justify it.

Unfortunate… That’s a better word.

However, sparing them both the embarrassment of hearing such an unfortunate situation explained is not an option. So now Tang is stuck having to figure out a way to salvage the situation. It’s clear the stranger is growing more uncomfortable with each passing moment. And not just because of the rain.

Oh right. The rain.

Keep reading

#Pigsy ic tag #canon-fcdder #tang tag

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dancingamongstdust · 3 years ago

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Can you write a tsukishima kei X reader where they both tease eachother but don't realise that they have feelings for eachother. Then tsukishima says something really offensive to reader and she gets really upsets and ignores him, he then realizes his feelings for her?

I struggled writing this but it was actually quite fun! Thank you for the request.

Teasing was something fun. The tumbling words were light and playful, hinting at something more but never letting their secrets free.

You lived for the flash of annoyance in Tsukishima’s hazel eyes; a small smirk always betraying that he enjoyed the banter. Whether you were speaking to him or commenting loud enough to draw his attention, he would turn to you fully and respond in kind. Though his words dripped in sarcasm, you never took them personally.

Perhaps you should have. Your comments never held any malice and you always strayed away from actual insults.

Tsukishima didn’t quite understand that part of your game.

Some of the things that he said stung. In those times, you’d just flip him off and pretend to go about your day without a second thought. But they did bother you.

Enough to find you standing in front of your mirror and glaring at your reflection as though it could give you the answers. Everything about your relationship with Tsukishima was frivolous. You had never held a real conversation. He was just a stupidly confident man with a sharp tongue and honeyed hair. His glasses were ridiculous, his taste in music was poor, and his eyes were the type of golden brown that snatched your breath from your lungs.

You groaned and turned away from your reflection.

Why did you have to fall for him?

Was it because of his voice and the soft edge that lay beneath its harsh words? Perhaps the gentleness of his movements had drawn your attention. He never looked out of place and you envied him that.

You contemplated telling him initially but decided against it. Getting a better feel of his attitude towards you would help before any misguided confessions slipped out.

That lasted until the next day.

“I know I shouldn’t be expecting anything intelligent to come from you but think things through a little more before you speak.”

Tsukishima glanced down at you as he passed, the hint of a smile on his lips. The insult wasn’t meant. He had often mocked your intelligence before to little response – after all, he knew that you didn’t get easily offended.

This time though, you didn’t immediately respond and when you did, it was just a slight jab about something trivial.

He turned around to look back at you but you had hurried off somewhere.

Shrugging that off, he continued on his day until the next time he saw you. When he did, he waited for the retaliation.

And waited.

He was so focused on listening out for your snide comment that he didn’t even pay attention to his other conversation. Yamaguchi, thankfully, didn’t need an active participant in his discussion. He only seemed minorly confused by Tsukishima’s confusion before continuing.

Once you’d left, he sighed and said, “Maybe it’s been a bad day.”

Tsukishima glanced over his shoulder to confirm you hadn’t walked back in. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You didn’t, like, call her a bitch, right?”

“What? Obviously not.”

Yamaguchi shrugged. “Then don’t worry so much about it. She’ll be back to normal soon.”

Tsukishima scoffed, electing to pretend the conversation was unimportant. He changed the topic onto something that was more in his area of expertise but his thoughts kept hanging on you. It irritated him to no end and he spent the rest of the day snapping a little too harshly at everybody.

The next day went no better.

He waited to hear your voice, having never realised before how well he knew it. It was something missing from his day and he didn’t even know why.

“It’s not my fault if she’s going to be sensitive about stupid stuff,” he stated when Yamaguchi next commented about your unusual silent treatment.

“Nope. Some people are just soft.”

“You’re one of those people,” Tsukishima had retorted. He meant it mockingly though any kind of rudeness had little effect on his best friend. It was part of who he was… he had really believed you understood that.

Yamaguchi tried to move on but Tsukishima continued with his complaints.

“Why would she just suddenly start taking offense to things?”

“Maybe you hit a nerve.”

“How was I meant to know she was touchy about her intelligence? Anyway, it was days ago. She should be over it by now.”

“If it’s bothering you that much, just say sorry.”

“It’s not bothering me.”

He wasn’t stupid – of course, it was – but he was hardly about to tell somebody that. You were nobody to him and your lack of comments was an absolute relief. In fact, he was rather happy that you had decided to finally take the hint.

A whole month passed and he stopped waiting to hear your voice. His stubbornness kept any apology away from you, even though one accidental meetup in the hall had nearly drawn one out. It was honestly ridiculous, he had nothing to apologise about.

He could apologise just to have you speak to him again… Tsukishima quickly chased away that traitorous thought. It was rare for him to apologise for things that actually required it, let alone for nonsense like this. A simple fact that everybody he complained to seemed to directly refute.

Just apologise. Just apologise. Like he cared enough to do so.

It took him another two months to realise why he minded so much. Why he was still hung up on you despite your supposed non-importance.

He had been walking with Yamaguchi when they passed a flower store, the place having a special on roses for your loved ones. Yamaguchi had decided to get some and for a split second, Tsukishima had touched the petals and considered buying some for you.

He pulled his hand away as though it had been burned.

“Normally you get fifteen for a situation like this.”

He scoffed at Yamaguchi. “You really need to deal with your obsession about this woman.”

Tsukishima didn’t buy fifteen roses but he realised then what it was about you that bothered him so. And he absolutely hated the conclusion that he came to.

He stepped in front of you the next day, drawing your attention to him (though he didn’t know that it rarely left). “Why are you ignoring me?” he asked.

“I’m not?” It sounded like a question, even to you.

Tsukishima wasn’t going to argue with you about it. He just raised an eyebrow and waited for you to sigh and continue.

“I’m just… I…”

“Wow that explains it very well.”

You narrowed your eyes at him. “Would it kill you to say something nice?”

“Since when have we ever been nice to each other?” he asked.

Of course you didn’t have an answer for that. You had never been ‘nice’ to each other – at least not in the way most people would consider nice. But the thing was, those moments still came to your memory fondly.

“You know, I always made sure never to actually insult you,” you said.

“I never actually insulted you.”

“Yes, you did,” you pointed out. “You’re constantly pointing out how stupid I am or how uncoordinated I am or whatever!”

“It’s not like I meant them.”

That tripped you up a little. Tsukishima’s height had you looking up at him, his expression entirely unchanged. Why would he have said things that weren’t true? It wasn’t like you had even initiated this entire taunt exchange way back when you had first met. Sure, you had responded but it was his comment on your hair that had gotten to you.

“You didn’t… what?”

Tsukishima stared at you like you were stupid. “It’s not my fault if you choose to take things personally but get over it a bit quicker, would you?”

It wasn’t an apology, not by a long shot, but it was enough to explain something that you couldn’t quite pinpoint yourself. Tsukishima wanted to talk to you. Even if he thought you were being childish, his main problem lay in your sudden silent treatment.

“We’re not friends,” you said.

“No.”

“So why do you care if we’re talking or not?”

He shrugged. “I don’t.”

He did. Of course he did. Part of him wanted to say that but his pride just wouldn’t allow it. Thankfully, the message seemed to get through to you regardless.

“Do you want to go out for lunch?” you offered.

“Why would I ever want to do that?”

You smiled, noticing the small smirk’s appearance on his face. “Tomorrow. At 12.”

“Fine.”

Tsukishima left you standing there, refusing to glance back even if he wanted to. He told himself it was because he didn’t care and it had nothing to do with the uncharacteristic smile on his face.

#haikyuu!!#tsukishima x reader #tsukishima kei

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marsbutterfly · 3 years ago

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Birthday Boy

Summary: Zeke doesn’t like to celebrate his birthday but you are too stubborn to let the day go to waste.

Wattpad Version! | AO3 Version!

The rule was simple: No birthday talk. As a child, Zeke had never known the joy of being celebrated for a whole day for his parents were always forcing him to study so he could be the Eldian Salvation.

But all he wanted for so long was to have someone, anyone, that would celebrate this day with him. Eventually, when his parents were sent to Paradis, he stopped caring for birthdays because it was a constant reminder of what he had done to his family.

This year, for once, you decided to ignore his rule completely. Zeke has always made sure you have the most special birthdays of all time so it is only fair for you to retribute the favor at any chance you get.

It’s hot in Liberio, the warm breeze rushes through your skirt lifting the cloth gently and you feel the humid weather against your skin. It’s been five hours since Zeke has been looking for you, completely unaware that you have been following him all day.

In the morning, he yet again told you not to make a big deal about his birthday but for once, you want to show him how loved he is. By the warriors, the warrior candidates, his grandparents and especially by you.

You love him with every inch of your body. A burning passion that could only be compared to the hot depths of hell. You love the way his beard tickles your cheek when he nuzzles himself against you, or how he always goes out of his way to buy you your favorite flowers.

One time, he bought you your favorite candy bar, which unfortunately is quite hard to find in town but it is available on the other side of the city. When you asked him about it, his answer was: “I got it on the way home.”

“Zeke, we live so far away from that store.” You reply, unwrapping the candy and eager to begin devouring the sweet bar in your hands.

“I took the long way home.” Is all he says in response before sitting by your side on the couch. He didn’t even ask for a bite because he knows how much you love it.

The look in his eyes when he sees you after coming back from a mission is the most precious thing you have ever seen and it fills you with a sense of worthiness and love. The least you can do is give those feelings back to him.

He has looked for you at the market, where the warrior candidates “coincidentally” offered him a slice of his favorite pie flavor.

He checked his grandparents' house, who “happened” to have cooked his favorite meal, not knowing he would be joining them.

Zeke also went into his office, where the warriors and Colt were drinking an expensive bottle of whisky they obtained from one of Willy Tybur’s guards.

When he was about to give up, he decided to check the place he took you on your first date and there you were. The place where you shared all of your firsts together. First kiss, first time having sex, even his first titan transformation.

The vision that welcomed him was stunning. You, sitting in the back of a car, completely naked. Your skin is wrapped much like a present and he can’t help but blush at the sight.

“You know I don’t like to celebrate my birthday.” He says, walking closer and gently touching your hips. You wrap your arms around his neck, your breasts touching his chest through the ribbons.

“Baby, you’ve been celebrating all day.” You respond while moving your hands from the back of his neck to his face. Your thumbs gently brushing his facial hairs and he shivers in response to your touch.

“What do you mean?” He asks and you have to remind yourself that this is the most intelligent soldier the military has ever seen. He is the War Chief for fuck’s sake but still so stupid when it comes to basic things such as these.

“All the random encounters you’ve had all day weren’t random at all.” You say, pulling him into the car with you, “I ordered the pie you had with the kids weeks ago, your grandma asked me how to make your birthday special and I told her to cook your favorite meal. I was also the one that managed to get the expensive bottle of whisky from Mr. Tybur.”

“And you did all of this for me?” His voice quivers and you can see a few tears in his ocean blue eyes. You nod, pulling him in for a kiss. You lose yourself in his lips, forgetting time, space and everything else existent.

“Of course baby and I have some more presents for you at home. Actual presents.” You say and he laughs.

“This is by far my favorite present though.” Zeke replies, “Thank you, Y/N. Really. This has been an amazing day with all my favorite people.”

“If Mr Ksaver was here, he would be proud of the man you became.” You whisper against his lips and he nods, a smile stamped on his lips in such a way you have never seen before.

“I love you so much.” He whispers, touching your foreheads together. “Maybe I will let you celebrate my birthday from now on.”

“I promise to make every year better than the last baby.” You say and he nods, closing the car door behind him before steaming up the vehicle.

The rule is simple: Zeke will only celebrate his birthday if you are by his side. And you don’t plan on going anywhere.

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wgc-productions · 3 years ago

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Small Victories E105: Resume Blues

We are now past the halfway point of the series! I think this episode holds a lot of tender moments and gets us to see Marisol outside of the bubble she’s been nuzzled in for the past four episodes.

Also, as someone who is very passionate about cooking and food (because it’s delicious and cooking for yourself and others is a top tier activity) it was fun to write an episode that gets to highlight Marisol’s own knowledge about food.

It was important to me that Marisol not come off as a totally clueless person. Like she makes a lot of choices that could be constituted as dumb. There are even several moment throughout the show where she is shown to be highly sensitive to being perceived of as stupid or dumb. And that sensitivity and acknowledgment that she is sensitive to being seen as dumb was significant because, often times, drug addicts are treated as if they are unintelligent.

This idea tries to separate the non-addict from the addict (i.e. “that could never happen to me. I’m too smart to do that.”). Not only does this type of thinking sand away the nuances of addiction, but it’s also deeply untrue. Being a drug addict does not mean you are unintelligent it just means your judgment is impaired. And while compromised judgment can lead to stupid decisions, it doesn’t make one fundamentally incapable of intelligent thought.

All this to say, that when Marisol is showing up and showing off all her food knowledge, remember that she is a smart lady with an approximate knowledge of many things.

Anyhow, you can listen to the episode here:

An, if you’d like to financially support us, you can join our Patreon or buy a sticker or T-shirt or mug or something from our store

#small victories #podcast #podcasts #audio fiction #audio drama #podcast recommendations #sliceoflife #queer love #queer #addiction #drug addiction

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passivenovember · 4 years ago

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And Everyday was Overcast.

Part One : Hammers and Nails

Billy needed someplace to go when the grave was desecrated.

When his eyes unglued themselves, peeling off eyelashes in their wake, when the earth was overturned, torn and left hanging like shreds of old fabric; Steve had been there. By some miracle he had been consumed like he always was, sat thinking by a plot that had grown yellow flowers to blanket Billy in his eternal sleep. And maybe it was those small visits sheltered between morning runs and eight hour shifts stocking the horror section that Billy had come back.

From the grave. From the brink.

The Earth started vibrating, spidery cracks turning volatile, and Steve was met with ocean blue. Red rimmed eyes locked on his face, hands reaching and gripping. Nails digging in as Steve wrapped Billy's grime covered shoulders in his own jacket. Rubbed the chilled skin of his arms, looked in his eyes, and took him home.

Someplace Billy could wash the day from his skin.

The blonde haired boy who had turned from human to creature and back again deserved something more than what he was left with. He deserved warm meals, and sunshine on his skin, and soft bed sheets that opened like a celestial sky when Billy felt like shelving the enormity of what he had discovered. What waited after death.

Steve wanted that for him.

Not happiness, not closure, exactly, but something close to it.

At the root of it all, Steve knew Billy should feel safe. Welcome and warm and comfortable, in the house that Steve’s father had built for his mother all those years ago when she was plump and round with child. Steve felt like his father that day as he carried the last box over the threshold and took in the rigid, tense line of Billy’s shoulders.

He let the moment rest. Let it breathe, as his father always instructed. “Do you think you could feel safe here, Billy?”

The air sat heavy. Cold and wet and warm, somehow, like the morning after a night of heavy rain. Billy sucked in a sharp breath and pivoted slowly, face reverent, as if standing barefoot in a cathedral among gods and heroes. Met with divinity.

Instead he got Steve.

Just Steve, trying not to stare at the lone curl hanging over Billy’s forehead when he offered a tight, controlled smile. “It’s fine.” Billy said, only.

Steve tore his eyes away. Focused on the second story banister to stop his gut from falling through the floor. ”Fine? As in, I would rather eat my own toenails than live here, fine or, like. It's okay, I don't mind it here, I might even like it someday, fine?"

Billy adjusted the strap across his shoulders. “It’s just what I expected it would be.”

Steve shook his head. “What’s that mean?”

"Relax, Harrington, it's." Billy turned again, eyebrows scrunched together. “Its. Pastel. And huge. Obscenely decorated—“

”My mom had it professionally done before they—“

”It was built for a happy family with lots of kids. Lots of love, but now it's. It feels. Lost.”

Billy had started saying things like that.

Heavy, saturated, impossible things that left Steve scrambling. Wishing for the intelligence to absorb the meaning rather than question it. Steve rested the box at the foot of the stairs and offered a smile to the second story. Runoff for the pools of blue that looked on.

"That's a lot of adjectives. I can get you a hotel, maybe. Or an apartment. I could cosign, I know they gave you a pretty penny and you could probably afford your own, but. I could. I would." Steve said harshly. "For you. I would."

"It's fine here. It's okay."

Steve felt like a science experiment. Egg boy with three heads and ten legs or something. Suckers on the tips of his thumbs, the way Billy studied him. Steve counted the freckles on Billy's nose--one, two, three, four--trying to stay afloat.

Dinner was made every night though Steve never saw it happen.

The cookbooks sat alphabetized over his mother's antique bar cart on that little periwinkle blue shelf. He'd come home, every night, at six on the dot, to a set table. The mixing bowls were always clean and put away, counters wiped and ingredients stored neatly on the shelves his pantry, but the wooden spoons spelled it out for Steve, still shifting from dark to light as they lay drying on the dish rack.

"You don't have to make dinner, you know." Steve took another bite of Salisbury steak, furious that it tasted so good. Like love soaking into his skin.

Billy shook his head. "I want to."

"I know, I'm saying it's okay if you decide not to, one day. Like if you get caught up reading. Or if you can get Max to drive you to the history museum, or if you--"

"It's the least I can do."

Steve hated that. He let his fork clatter to the table. "I'm not expecting repayment for this."

"I'm not a freeloader."

"And I'm not an asshole." Steve deadpanned, lifting a finger that sewed Billy's smug lips together. "Don't say it."

"Say what?"

"Whatever you were thinking, with that clever glint in your stupid blue eyes."

Billy cracked his knuckles, clearly fighting a smile. "Never thought you noticed the color of my eyes, Harrington."

"Yeah, sure." Steve stood, gathering the plates and forks and knives from the table, his own eyes counting primary threads. "Can see those things from space, Jesus." He finally looked up, at Billy's curiously pink face.

Pink lips, cheeks, nose.

Steve gripped ceramic. Swallowed against a swell of guilt. "You don't owe me anything, Billy. I like having you here. I want you here."

Billy gave a simple, controlled nod.

Steve got used to it.

The shack wasn't built until the doctor told Billy that he'd probably wouldn't remember all of what happened. The big things would stick out, neon greens and blues against the forest head, but Billy shouldn't be too hard on himself if the important things got thrown away.

And some of those jagged little pieces were there. The bad things. Anger and hatred, both for self and world, left hanging on the cliff of who he was now. Everything that had formed Billy Hargrove--the person he was, the person Steve had pretended not to notice--were packed away. Soft, silky emotion covering knives left dull and rusted in their drawer.

Billy remembered like flashes of lightening across the summer sky--sudden and then gone. Here and away. He remembered Hawkins high and Max who'd grown six inches in three years. Dustin who had been wearing that stupid shirt when the mall burned down.

And Steve.

Always Steve, sat next to him. A foot away at first and then holding his hand, later, when Owens said Billy should be kind to himself. Gentle.

He wasn't.

And he didn't come out of his room for three days after that, after the wall was placed in front of him. The crack under Billy's door always keeping Steve at bay. Trapped behind the starting line. He paced around on the carpet, lifting his fist and letting it fall again, never breaking up the silence.

Billy was crying.

Billy never cried, anymore, but he cried that night and Steve felt helpless. Pathetic and stupid and useless, locking himself in his father's study and trying to formulate a plan, just like Owens had told him to when the sun fell on a world without Billy Hargrove and then suddenly rose again, set anew.

Set crooked when Billy stormed from the hospital room, slamming doors that echoed like rolls of thunder in his wake.

Figure out a way to help him.

Sterile, eerie white walls stared back at him as Steve shrugged his shoulders on the third day, aluminum hospital chair groaning beneath his weight.

I'm not sure how to do that.

You don't have to do anything. Owens said. Just help him get the emotion out. Let him write, draw, sing, dance, whatever he needs to assist in telling us his story.

Potato casserole and red wine bore witness to Steve's leap of faith. Billy turned away from the novel he had tucked under his arm when Steve got home from work that day, eyes curious. "Spit it out, Harrington."

"I'm not sure what you--"

"You've been giving me the side eye since you got home." Billy turned the page in his book, still managing to read both it and the room as he urged, "Tell me what's wrong."

And nothing was wrong, and.

Everything was wrong. Steve leaned forward, elbows on the table. "Do you want to come with me to the art store tomorrow?"

Billy frowned. "I don't need anything from the art store."

"It's not always about what you need," Steve reasoned, patting his mouth with a napkin. "We could get stuff you want. That's all, just pretty things. Nice things. It could be a treat."

"Paper and scissors are considered a treat?" Billy cocked an eyebrow. "I do love touching shit, it's one of my favorite hobbies."

Steve scrubbed at his mouth, swallowing down against a big, fat, crooked smile dripping with affection. "C'mon, it'll be fun. We can get whatever you want; clay, oil pastels, acrylics--"

"I wanted to check out the library tomorrow."

"You go everyday, blue, you're a regular bookworm."

"So?" Billy demanded, taking another bite of casserole. "I like to read. Just 'cause you can't doesn't mean the rest of us have to hold back." He grinned, low and slow. "Don't let your jealousy turn you into a tyrannical landlord, pretty boy."

"God, you're the absolute worst."

Billy turned back to his novel. "The art store will just inspire me to paint nudies."

"So paint them." Steve challenged.

Bait. Hook and line.

"You gonna pose for me if I let you buy out the joint?"

Steve shrugged. "Maybe once, if you look at the easels while we're there."

"No shit?" Billy leaned forward, biceps flexing in his cutoff as he stuck a polaroid of a smiling blonde woman between the pages of his novel. "The fuck is this about, Harrington?"

"I'm worried."

"That you'll take me to a crafts store and I'll put you out of house and home? Reasonable concern, I guess."

"About the diagnosis, dipshit. About you." Steve gulped down the rest of his wine. Made sure every last drop had seasoned his words before any were said aloud, where they might do damage. He let the glass rest on the table between his fingertips, stem rolling from pad to pad. He took a deep, steadying breath. "You haven't been the same since--"

"I got hijacked by a space demon or crawled out of my own grave?" Billy shrugged, picking at something in his teeth. "Be more specific."

Steve fiddled with the handle of his fork. Hand picked his words. Refined the meaning. "Yes, and. Both."

Billy didn't say anything for a while and the room finally settled. Falling fast asleep, thick with inertia and silence until the book was opened once more and Steve went back to digging through his casserole, picking at the spring onions.

Letting the moment breathe.

Until, finally. "I feel like I could crawl out of my own skin."

Steve tripped over himself to get those blue eyes on him once more. "That's understandable--"

"I feel fucking useless." Billy snapped, voice cracking in two, and. Suddenly Steve couldn't look at him. Couldn't bare to see his face. "I'm trying to replay what happened. Every second, I'm trying to figure out why. Why me."

Steve counted the primary threads in the table cloth. One, two, three. "You can't go on asking yourself questions like that."

"I can do what I--"

"It wasn't your fault, Billy. Any of it."

"I'm not talking about the Fourth of July, I'm talking about. Death. I'm talk about what comes before and what comes after and how they're the same." Billy turned the page in his novel furiously, eyebrows scrunched together. "I never thought they'd be the same. It's like I've started over."

Steve couldn't possibly understand, but.

He watched pools of blue scan the page. Took measured breaths, never pushing until Billy was ready to share more. Until he tossed the book on the counter and sighed, head buried in his hands. "I don't understand how I got here."

"Easy," Steve whispered. "That's easy. You were born from love--"

"My parents aren't in love anymore."

"But they were, once." Steve shook his head. "When you were made. They loved each other, and they loved you, and your life was full of love that never made sound but it was still there." Steve willed Billy to look at him. Willed the skies to turn blue again.

They didn't.

Billy sighed, low and slow. "Did love bring me here again?"

"I guess so."

"Who's love?" Billy demanded, leaning forward into the table and crushing his novel where it lay against light oak tabletops. "Who loved me enough to bring me back here? To wish for me."

And.

There were a lot of things Steve wanted to say. Lines he wanted to map out, directions that lead from A to B and back again, but it didn't seem useful. Didn't rest important, as Steve took the novel from its place on the table and smoothed worn pages, tucking the polaroid in its place. "I'm sorry things feel weird for you." He said softly.

Billy grabbed the book, staring down at his casserole. "'S not so bad, I guess."

And, for Steve, that wasn't good enough.

Billy worked mostly in charcoal. He painted nightmares, and doorways into the past, delicate, swirling lines telling a story that made Steve's heart ache to see. To hear, with every drag of material across fruited canvas'.

Steve asked him about it, once. Over dinner, with the lights turned low. "Why do you paint such horrible things?"

And Billy had smiled. Bright and true. "How's that?"

"Y'know. Black scabs and eyeballs melting out of skulls and sliding down the ridge of people's faces, and--"

"It's what I see." Billy replied, voice soft. Measured. "It's what follows me around."

So Billy spent every hour locked in his shed, curls tucked over a growing body of work. Fingers turned rotten with charcoal soot as he made sense of what happened.

Steve liked to watch him work.

Liked to see the tension ease more and more from the strong shoulders that travelled beside him up the stairs each night. Steve felt the dig of each pencil in the crevice between his ribs when Billy finished masterpiece after masterpiece.

Still, it wasn't enough.

Along the ridges of creation, therapy lay half buried in the sand. It was state mandated, that Billy go and learn how to deal with the things charcoal couldn't straighten out for him. Like the nightmares, and the migraines that kept him from eating dinner at the table when June gave way to July.

Steve worried. Constantly, fervently, but Billy refused to go, always wiping his hands on the powder green apron Steve got for him at the art store, and insisting, "This is a form of therapy." Billy gestured around the room. To the mountains of loose sketch papers and half finished canvases that lay strewn across every surface. "This is how I cope."

And it was.

And it happened the same way every time.

Things got bad for him and Billy would disappear into his shed. Steve would come home from the office to find that his mother's prized Thomas Kincaid collection had been replaced by Billy's work. It was haunting. Sick and twisted and so, so beautiful.

He found himself standing and staring at it for hours, eyes tracing over the swirling lines of purgatory.

It made Steve feel helpless, but.

Still, Billy refused to go. Still, he buried himself in his work. Still, he painted himself into a hole.

The path toward recovery was littered with charcoal drawings until it wasn't.

Until Steve came home one afternoon to find Billy talking with a little boy who had his throat cut open.

#harringrove #psychological horror #idk man i just needed to get the words OUT #for Lis <3 #happy birthday honey bee

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mandoinevarro · 5 years ago

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NO REFUNDS

Words: 5.1k :))

Rating: E, baby

Warnings: Smut (surprise surprise), bad words :0, masturbation, a biiiit of praise kink, face fucking, cumplay? let me know on the comments, etc. etc.

a/n: Happy Star Wars day!! The first few lines of this are an attempt at dumb comedy, but humor me a little and you’ll get a reward (smut) along the yellow-brick road

Finally, the lanky kid behind the counter stops air drumming with two chicken bones gnawed dry and trails his dopey eyes from the gloved fist on the table, up a bracer, and along a flexed arm, until they settle on the Mandalorian helmet staring him down and waiting for an answer. The employee removes the music bandeau from around his ears and settles it down, its noise so loud Mando can hear it from where it lays. The kid scratches the whiskers of facial hair growing patchy on his cheeks and thoughtfully nibbles on one of the bones, trying to figure out what one does when a client shows up.

“Uh, what?”

“I need to speak to the owner,” the Mandalorian repeats slowly.

“Oh, uh.” Mouth gaping like a fish too stupid to know it should fear hooks, the kid calmly turns his attention to the four walls of the hardware store, searching for guidance in the fluorescent signs hanging around the room and dictating the store’s rules like they’re ancient scriptures:

NO CHILDREN

WILL BUY STOLEN GOODS FOR LOWER PRICE

NO IMPS

NO REPUBLIC OFFICIALS

NO REFUNDS

NO APPOINTMENT, NO MEETING

“You, uh,” the kid continues, lingering on that last stanza and flicking open a dusty agenda that probably hasn’t been touched since the war ended, “you got an appointment, uh, sir?” He drags a greasy finger down the planner, squinting at nothing and pretending to read the page that Mando can clearly see is empty.

The bounty hunter sighs, holding on to the last reserves of patience that hang precariously on the cliff of his self-restraint, threatening to let go and leave him to his own anger. “No. But she’ll see me.” You better. You better fucking see him. “I was sold equipment here a few days ago, some of it faulty. I need to speak to her.”

The navigator. The fucking navigator. Of all the bunch of overpriced, black market scraps you’d somehow convinced the Mandalorian to buy from you last time, it just had to be the navigator. He still has his old blasters. Pumps are cheap. Even the deflector shields he could’ve done without for a couple of months. But the fucking navigator. The lack of droids on the Crest means that Mando relies solely on the navigator to set coordinates. Without it, he wouldn’t be able to find his way out of a system, let alone make hyperjumps. Even worse, the model is so old, its glitching isn’t recognized by the control panel, so he had to hover around the atmosphere of this damned planet for three days before figuring out what it was, throwing off his schedule and losing track of two bounties in the process. All because you sold him a damaged version of the one part he can’t do without.

But your gaping-mouthed kid worker seems too unused to visitors to really care about Mando’s request, too entertained nibbling on a bare bone and eyeing the costumer in front of him as a knowing smirk cracks his lips and he says, “I dig it.”

“You…you ‘dig it’? I don’t…”

“The whole, y’know.” He draws circles in the air with the bone, signaling the beskar armor while he wipes the sauce around his mouth with a sleeve. “The, uh, Mondolarian vibe you’ve got going on. Very retro, dude. I dig it.”

Mondo…? Bewilderment overshadows irritation for a second, and Mando focuses all his energy into searching the kid’s vacant eyes for a sign of intelligent life. “I…I am a Mandalorian.”

Fucking stars above, it’s never easy with you. If not your endless teasing, it’s the exorbitant prices, your unwillingness to compromise, or your scurrying around so he’s forced to play cat and mouse with you. Your latest impossible challenge for him to tackle is, apparently, getting a straight answer from the obtuse employee you must have handpicked from a catalogue of idiots to torture Mando. Maker, he’s surprised your store hasn’t gone bankrupt yet. He can’t imagine anyone else in the galaxy putting up with your whims. And he only does it because…well, because…

After dedicating a couple of seconds to crafting the perfect response for what appears to be his very first client, the kid muses, “Well, shit, what do I know.” He flashes a toothy smile as he rereads the dogmas on the walls. “Says nothing about Mondolarians here, but, uh—”

“—Look,” Mando bargains with your gatekeeper, trying to level the exasperation escaping the vocoder, “I only have one faulty part. Let me talk to the owner, and—”

“—Shit. I bet it was the microvalves.” Your staff of one hangs his tuff of hair in shame, swaying it limply from side to side, before staring straight at the visor apologetically. “My bad, dude, I’ve been trying to get them right, but I always fuck them up. It’s hard, y’know? Red with red, white with white. Why not red with white? Or—”

“—No. What? No. Listen to me. You sold me a busted—”

“—I sold you?” the kid scoffs, his eyes suddenly snapping wide and offended, ignoring Mando’s clenching fists, which usually make normal people cower. “Excuse me, mister Mondolarian sir, but I don’t, uh, don’t recall selling you shit, in fact—”

“—Not—not you personally, the store, look, just—”

“—in fact, I’ve never even met a Mondolarian before and you’ve, uh, no right—no right— to judge my microvalves that I worked hard on—”

“Let him in.” Your voice carries its usual amusement as it cuts between the Mandalorian and the kid, breaking off the bickering from both ends and drawing their attention to the melody’s source. You lean on the doorframe leading to your workshop, holding a pair of pliers in one hand and a wrench in the other. Grease is smeared on your face, where teeth bite down on a playful smirk and the twinkle in your eyes speaks of terrible intentions—like always. You tilt your head back to the room behind you. “C’mon, Mando. Let my receptionist work.”

With a sigh, the hunter moves towards the separate room, not before glancing back at the receptionist, who throws him one last disapproving look and wraps the bandeau that never stopped blasting music around his ears.

“Why do you keep him here?” the Mandalorian grunts as you push yourself off the doorframe to move inside your studio.

You shrug. “It’s him or droids.”

Mando trails after you inside the cramped workshop, filled to the brim with piles and piles of sensors and motors and all the other scraps from dubious origins you collect, fix, and resell. He closes the door behind him and pushes a large tube hanging from the roof to the side to walk closer to you.

Facing him, you plummet on your wheeled chair with a sigh, your arms dangling off the armrests, still holding the wrench and the pliers, like you’re the monarch of your little kingdom of junk granting him an audience.

There, Mando finally gets a good look at you, and—much to his annoyance—you’re as lovely as always. Glistening and greasy, you’re still beautiful with oil stains on your skin and fat droplets of sweat trailing your temple. You beam at him from your squeaky throne with that faint grin that attracts nothing but trouble. Maker, no wonder you always manage to talk circles around him. But not this time. This time he won’t fall for your little games. He won’t, he won’t, he won’t. Tonight he’s walking out of here with all of his money, no matter how much you bat your pretty eyelashes at him.

The Mandalorian squares his stance and straightens his back in a futile attempt to intimidate you, strutting ahead firmly and pointing an accusing finger at your face.

“You sold me a—”

“—a busted navigator.” You roll your eyes and push yourself to your legs abruptly before the hunter can get any closer. He stops dead on his tracks. You wave the wrench and the pliers in the air like the conductor of an orchestra. “I sold you a busted navigator.” The vowels are dragged out with an exaggerated tune to make fun of him. “Yeah, I heard you the first four thousand times, Mando.”

Without looking, you drop the pliers to the side. They land dead center on an open storage box. Perfectly. Almost rehearsed. Something clicks. The Mandalorian suddenly finds the missing piece of a puzzle he didn’t know needed solving, and he feels his shoulders deflate and release some of the anger that drove him to your store in the first place.

You peacock closer to him, one foot in front of the other and swaying your hips as you look down to the wrench in your hand. “But, you should know by now,” you murmur once you find yourself only inches away from the beskar, your voice morphing its earlier mock exasperation into the tone you only use whenever you two aren’t talking business. You look up at him, failing miserably at masking the mischief in your eyes. “I don’t do refunds.” You lift the wrench and grin as it taps the beskar breastplate lightly with a tink.

And before you can blink, Mando’s hand flies to your wrist to clutch it roughly, squeezing without hurting you, but with enough strength to force your fist open. Just like he knows you like it. The wrench falls to the floor with a bang that makes you jump. It’s Mando’s turn to smile when he pulls you by the wrist to press you closer against him. The cocky glint in your eyes dulls into confusion.

“I never said it was the navigator,” he informs you lowly.

You tense under his grasp and shift your jaw. “You knew I’d come back,” he continues, encouraged by your grimace. Staring at your feet, you half-heartedly try to wriggle away from his grasp, but he grabs your other wrist instead and holds you flush against the cold beskar. “Okay. I’m back. Now give me my money.”

But his satisfaction is short-lived, because if there’s anyone in the universe who knows no shame, that’s you. So you simply bite your lower lip and move your head from side to side to shake hair and embarrassment off your face. When you look up at the visor again it’s with that brazen insolence that secretly gets the Mandalorian going like nothing else in the galaxy.

“A girl gets lonely in here,” you purr. Your wrists relax, and make no attempt to pull away. “Can you blame me for wanting you back a little earlier?” Your plush lips curl into the perverse smile of someone who’s holding all the cards, making heat rush involuntarily to his crotch. And it drives him fucking insane. He could have you tied, shackled, or bent over, and you would still sneer at him like you had him wrapped around your finger.

At his silence, you wedge a leg tightly between his thighs and massage it against the bulge between. Your gasp in fake surprise when his length hardens at the first hint of a brush, too unused to any sort of physical contact to remain neutral to your bold caresses. He bites down hard on his lip to suppress a moan. He won’t give you the satisfaction.

Mando’s learnt, though, that his restraint only feeds your audacity. Only makes you taunt him more. His lack of response spurs you on, and you crane your neck forward to lick a slow line along the beskar of the chest. You blink at him playfully as you go, stuffing your tongue back into your mouth once you reach the top edge of the breastplate.

You must find it funny. How his ribs expand and contract in anticipation. How he tends to roll and unroll his fists in an attempt to suppress the instinct to throw you on top of the table so crowded by clutter that he can barely see the surface beneath and fuck the smirks off your face. How he always gives in. How he stiffens both scandalized and impossibly aroused every time you introduce him to some newer, filthier act. You must think it’s so fucking funny.

And as much as the bounty hunter wants to shove you back against your crumbling wheeled chair, he knows you’ll only enjoy it more. So he simply lets go of your wrists and steps back.

“I’m only here for my money,” he lies.

The vicious grin grows wider. “Oh, so you’re making me work for it tonight.” You step back and lean against a table with your arms crossed over your chest, purposefully pushing your tits against the cleavage. Mando shifts in his place. Licking your lips until they glisten, you give him a once-over. You study him inch by inch, and an uncomfortable rope knots in his stomach when he realizes that this is how his bounties must feel when he watches them wordlessly.

Your eyes settle on his visor, and a decision seems to cross them as you walk over to sit on your creaking chair. “Or maybe you just want to hear me beg.” You part your legs wide and clutch the armrest with one hand while the other disappears under the waist of your pants. The contour of your hand shifts up and down slowly inside the crotch of your trousers, and your lips crook into a full O as they release a deep, foul moan. “Is that it?” Your eyes are glossy and malignant, trained on his visor. “You want me to beg for your cock?”

His leather gloves ball into fists, trying to coax blood into his head and away from his…well, his other head.

Yet you hold him in place with that sinful stare and the lewd whimpers that you know get him off, and yes, fuck yes, he wants to hear you beg and sob for him all night as much as he wants to clog your throat with his shaft and make you swallow your teasing.

But he can’t let you win. You can’t scam five thousand credits out of him and expect him to throw himself into your arms no questions asked. He wants to put an end to your little tyrannical rule on his cock. And he wants his fucking money back.

So the powerful Mandalorian watches helplessly as your hand quickens under your clothing and you throw your head back in ecstasy. That fucking smirk doesn’t leave you, though. Even less so when your palm picks up some speed and you hear his breath hitch involuntarily at the visual, loud enough to override the vocoder.

“C-come on, Mando, don’t—” Your hand sinks deeper into your pants and you hum at the adjustment. “Don’t you wanna teach me what—what proper cos-costumer service looks like? Huh?”

His cock jumps in his pants when you say his name in a wanton gasp, and Mando can see you’re sweating and moving your hips faster against your palm. He’s so hard it hurts.

Your smile falters and you frown impatiently as the pent-up tension threatens to snap in your body.

“Don’t cum,” Mando blurts before he can stop himself.

“Or what?”

“Or I won’t give you what you want.”

Your movements halt on command, and the hunter almost envies the control you have over your own body to be able to backtrack on the very edge of your release. You hold your hands up in triumphant surrender as you watch the Mandalorian approach and stop just a breath away from your body. He stands tall before you, crowding you with his size and turning down the volume on the nagging voice that reminds him that he’s letting you win.

Eyes on the prize ahead of you, you lick your lips and snake a hand beneath your sit. You pull a lever and the chair plummets a few inches until your mouth is directly in front of the rigid tent growing in his pants. Expert fingers undo his belt and lower his fly, but, stars, nothing is fast enough when Mando already feels the veins of his cock growing thicker and thicker. Skipping all formalities, your hand sneaks inside, cups his balls, and pulls all of him outside. He groans when you grab his shaft and squeeze hard from base to tip, your bare palm catching awkwardly on his equally dry skin. Mando melts into the sensation all the same, but you seem displeased with your palm’s lack of fluidity.

“Fuck. Hold on.” A pair of fingers disappear into your mouth and down your throat as far as they’ll go. You choke on them dramatically and your eyes water slightly, but they shine when the two small intruders drag outside your mouth, pulling a thick string of elastic spit with them and dropping it on his shaft, pulsing with anticipation. You lean forward and look up through your lashes as you unroll your tongue slowly and more gooey saliva dangles from it. It’s too dense to spill onto its target, so you pluck the heavy ropes from your mouth and smear it manually on his cock, while a thread of it hangs on your chin.

“Fuck.” Your tiny clenched fist wakes up every nerve in his body as it drags up and down his shaft, obscene and perfectly lubricated. Mando’s hips buck into its grasp involuntarily, so suddenly that you flinch at the unexpected jolt. It’s a small comfort for him, to see that he can also surprise you. But then you’re giggling again, locking him in place by grabbing the buck of his belt with your free hand.

“Eager,” you remark. You lean forward and place a chaste kiss on the tip that digs into his spine. Maker, it was barely anything, but he’s so hard and your mouth is so close. “Aren’t Mandalorians,” you tease, “supposed to have self-restraint?”

Mando’s only answer is a low groan and a gloved hand that tangles on your hair and pushes you forward. You resist, though, instead wrapping a fist around his base and dragging your hot tongue up his underside, stopping just before the tip. A tortured whimper echoes around the helmet, and the Mandalorian is not sure if you could hear it because his muscles pull tighter, drawing his attention to his cock and your mouth and the fact that the latter is not wrapped around him for some reason. As if you could read his mind, you suddenly engulf him whole. Spit gathers on the edge of your lips as you suck on his length, swallowing around the tip and swirling your tongue around his girth.

“Fuck, you’re so—so fucking g-good at this.” You hum in response, sending vibrations through his shaft that make his knees buckle. He always forgets how good it feels with you. He forgets that you take him perfectly like all your holes were made for him to fuck. That you make his blood run hot with every swing of your tongue and every spasm of your cunt and every insolent remark that escapes your lovely mouth, now busy pleasuring him.

You settle on his head and suck on the bulb, hollowing your cheeks to let him feel the delicious inside of your mouth. Mando grabs handfuls of your hair with both hands, still trying to extinguish little whimpers before they leave his throat. And you can tell. He knows you can tell because determination clouds your eyes as you yank him closer by the belt. You drag your tongue in a circle around the ridge of the head, before dipping into the slit on the tip and finally earning a punched out groan and some beads of precum as a reward. Somehow, you moan and chuckle at the same time, opening your mouth as strings of spit fall to the floor.

“You’re hard, Mando,” you coo, pumping his length while you rub it on the side of your face, “throbbing and so, so hard. You should’ve come to me sooner, baby. You’re desperate.” You suck on the head again, and the Mandalorian’s grip on your hair turns to steel, pulling you into him and no longer asking. Moaning, you let him, taking him as far as you can and wrapping a fist where you can’t reach. Your other hand releases his belt and snakes down to your lap, fumbling with the waistband of your pants.

Somewhere in the swamp of sensations drowning his thoughts, an idea flashes in Mando’s head, and he holds on to it before you can suck it out of his tip. One glove lets go of your hair and quickly grans the hand lowering into your heat to resume touching yourself. His cock still in your mouth, you look up at him with furrowed eyebrows and a silent question.

“You can’t c-cum,” he explains, forcing words out of a throat that right now only wants to moan, “un-until you give me my—my refund.”

You groan and roll your eyes, taking your mouth off him with a pop. “Fuck no,” you breathe as you pump him faster and harder, almost making Mando lose his resolve. Almost. His hold on your wrist tightens. “It’s store policy.”

“Y-yeah?” You continue sliding your fist along his shaft, as you lean forward and lower your face to start lightly licking his balls. The room spins around Mando, and his grip on your hair pushes you into him until you suck on one ball gently. “Is—is it store p-policy to—ngh—to f-fuck your clients?”

You chuckle against his taint. Your head straightens to set your attention back on his tip, where he’s leaking an almost embarrassing amount of precum. A thumb brushes over his slit, gathering the pearls and bringing them into your mouth to taste him. The way you rub your core slightly against the chair is sneaky enough, but the Mandalorian catches the movements and tugs your hand and hair tighter as a warning. Your shoulders slump. “I’ll give you half,” you offer.

Mando guides your hand lower and curls it around his swollen cock, silently begging for your attention. His hand wraps over yours as he squeezes your fist and drags it along his shaft at a pace of his liking that sets his insides ablaze. “Eighty.” The helmet falls back as he revels in the wet sounds of your hand sliding back and forth his cock and giving him a nice enough memory for when he inevitably goes back to the Crest and is forced to take care of his needs himself.

You let him guide you, cupping his balls with your other hand and swirling your tongue around his darkening tip. Mando’s chest trembles with a long moan at the toe-curling feeling of your warm spit and your clenched fist working so hard for him, until you drop him from your mouth and answer, “Seventy.”

“N-no, I—”

“—Seventy,” you repeat and twist your hand away from his grasp, leaving his seeping cock throbbing and abandoned, “or you don’t cum.”

Fuck, he was close. He was so fucking close, before you turned the tables. Like fucking always. A part of him cradles his already bruised pride, shaming him for—yet again—not being able to hold it together around you. But his cock tugs harder. More insistently. It pulls every fiber in his body and screams at him to give you whatever the fuck you want.

“Fine.” He nods his head once, before his better sense can convince him otherwise. “Seventy.”

A full, beautiful smile that almost makes Mando forget he’s getting scammed graces your plump lips. You waste no time shoving your hand inside your underwear again and moving your arm frantically as you give him a couple of throaty whines. You open your mouth as wide as it’ll go and blink up at him, inviting him to take you however he so pleases. He tangles his fingers on your hair and shoves you against him as you wrap your lips around his cock and muffle your mewls on it.

The Mandalorian starts fucking your face, getting his money’s worth as he moves you back and forth. Your eyes water and you gag with every shove, but you work earnestly for him, hollowing your cheeks and moving your tongue and pulling just about every trick on your toolbox to make Mando’s eyes roll to the back of his head.

And stars, even through your pants and his helmet, he can still smell your arousal. He hears the wet squelching of your fingers working your pussy fast and if he could only get a look. One look is all he needs to cum, he’s sure, one fucking look at your clenching cunt and he’s done.

“F-fuck, l-let me see,” he pants, “let—let me s-see you—see your p-pussy cum, just—fuck—just a mo-moment, please, j-just…”

Tears from all the gagging fall out of your pretty eyes as you open your mouth and stand up, taking your trembling hand outside to fumble with your trousers. Your thumbs are hooked under their waistband and push down slightly before you suddenly stop and stare at the Mandalorian gulping all the oxygen he can get and waiting for you. “Sixty,” you say carefully.

Too intoxicated with you and too focused on the blood beating hard on his cock, Mando couldn’t care less. He doesn’t give a shit about percentages or money or parts or whatever half-forgotten excuse he had to come here tonight. All that matters and all that’s real is whatever he needs to climax, and if it means letting you win, so be it. “S-sixty. Yes. Whatever. Just—just take your fucking pants off.”

One swift movement and your pants and underwear pool around your ankles. Yanking hard on the hem, you manage to pull the right leg off your boot. You don’t bother with the other one, letting it hang on your left leg as you climb back on the chair, spreading your legs and hooking one thigh over the armrest to offer him the best view possible.

Mando’s cock threatens to spill at the sight. You’re fucking soaked. Your folds are blushed and slick and swollen with all the blood accumulated on your cunt. Three fingers rub your aching clit and everything around it with messy strokes, as you stare at the bounty hunter with raw lust and moan for him loud and clear, and this. This is worth the fucking navigator.

As soon as his shaft ghost over your face you lean into it and reach for him with your mouth. Mando takes your head between his hands and resumes his previous brutal pace, his eyesight now directed at the way your cunt spasms and seeps more juices with every circle you press against your lips. And, fuck, you’re taking him like you’re hungry for his cock. Pushing harder and further and faster despite the gagging, you’re making Mando see blotches cloud his vision and feel how his muscles turn into hot, thick magma. Fuck, fuck, fuck, he can’t hold it in anymore. His balls start pulling up as a warning and you’re sucking harder and mewling around him.

“I—I…I’m gonna—I—”

Mando can’t find enough words to put together for the life of him, but you nod and manage a chocked “Mhmm” and bob your head to the pace of your quickening fingers and stars oh fuck—

The wave of his climax hits him hard on his back and makes him curl around you. He braces himself against the top of your chair and the change in position makes his cock slip outside of your mouth, but his vision goes completely black and all he can feel is the rush of pleasure crushing his bones into dust. Maybe your name is falling from his lips, but he can’t be sure. The never-ending spurts of cum falling somewhere hoard most of his attention, and he focuses on that thick and heavy release, so rare for him that he puts his mind into savoring every second.

It’s not until the echoes around his ears dissipate that the Mandalorian hears you’re still whimpering. Hunched over you, he opens his eyes just in time to see you gather some of the seed that he spilled on your neck and bring it down to smear it over your bundle of nerves, rubbing it one, two, three, four times, before you’re sobbing long and loud. Your hole tightens around nothing, your forehead resting on his cuisse, and Mando thinks he could get hard again just from the image.

You both stay like that for a while, curled into each other and panting in turns, until Mando gathers all the energy left in his system to pull himself upright and shove his softening shaft back into his pants. It’s only then that he sees just how much of a mess he made: Cum landed everywhere. It hangs thick all over your face, on your neck, on your hair, on your clothes. He blushes darkly and he’s about to open his mouth to apologize, but you sense it. Somehow. You wink and brush off his shame with a smile and a wave of your hand, standing up to get dressed. But Mando’s quicker. He kneels in front of you and gently raises your underwear until it hugs your hips, wishing for a fleeting second he could press a kiss on the supple flesh there. You grab his pauldron for balance to sneak your foot into the pantleg that Mando holds open for you.

For once, it’s he who breaks the silence. “I…I do want my sixty percent, you know.”

“Of course.” You smile sweetly at him, reaching back to your work table to grab a clean rag, rubbing it against your face and neck. “I’ll even throw in some free microvalves for good measure.”

—

Taglist of two so you can keep each other company :) : @rosetophighlander @hellomothermoon

#the mandolarian #the mandalorian x you #the mandolorian x reader #the mandalorian x ofc #the mandalorian smut #din djarin #din djarin x reader #din djarin smut #din djarin x you #mando x reader #mando x you #mando smut #star wars smut #star wars day #his fucking microvalves that he worked hard on

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obae-me · 4 years ago

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The Demons Inside- Part 3

Part 1 (Lucifer) Part 2 (Mammon)

Word Count: 2185

Description: Levi’s Part of the request “The brothers reacting to an MC crying suddenly in front of them and then trying to act as if nothing happened”

Levi had been waiting for tonight. He’d been antsy about it for days, anticipating it so immensely, he was jittery. Although, it’s entirely possible his twitches and little shakes were thanks to the many energy drinks he had downed today. No matter. He needed to be fully awake and aware in the present. Today he would be spending every hour with the resident human. His Henry, MC.

Envy had nearly driven him mad these past few weeks. MC had done nothing but spend seemingly every precious moment with one of his brothers. Everyone but him. And he knew why, it wasn’t hard to guess. Lucifer was perfect in every way. Mammon--despite his general scumminess--was fun to be around. Satan was vastly intelligent. Asmo was gorgeous and friendly. Beel was strong and supportive. Belphie was relatively calm and clever. And him? Well, he was an eccentric shut in. But despite all that, MC had made sure to hang out with him today, on a day where they both knew no one would be around to bother them.

He jolted out of his frantic thoughts as soon as a knock could be heard from the door. Usually, he’d have his visitor answer, but he was aware of who it was, and he was so excited to get on with their activities he had no patience for his many passwords. Swinging the door open with quite a wild look in his eyes, MC appeared a bit startled. Levi, feeling embarrassment seep into his bones over his eagerness, had his face flush a bright red. Adjusting to his normal sheepish behavior let MC smile, holding up some grocery bags he could see were filled with a plethora of snacks and drinks.

“Sorry I’m a bit late,” MC apologized as Levi held the door open for them to enter his room. “Not only did I buy some snacks, but I had to shoo away my chauffeur.”

Levi shook his head, his long bangs threatening to cover his vision. His core sin threatened to burn at the thought of, again, any sibling other than himself hanging out with MC. Maybe he had wanted to go to the store to buy snacks, so why did MC not ask him? You hate the grocery store, you know that, he reprimanded himself. “No worries, it gave me time to clean my room a bit!” Levi pushed his intrusive thoughts to the back of his mind as he gestured proudly at his now immaculate room. Trash was devoid from the floor, old clothes were put in the laundry bin-- “And I even dusted off all my figures!” To prove his claim, he snatched a frilly figure off one of his many shelves, holding it out to MC as they observed it.

They beamed at him, forcing a persistent flutter in Levi’s chest. “It looks great!” Levi noticed something lacking from their expression, like they seemed a bit drained. This urged him to take the items from them and shut his door before the human could think of leaving. Was that faded smile due to him? Had they not been looking forward to this as much as he had? Did they not want to be here? Panic made it hard for him to breathe, but he handled it as best as he could as he pulled up a second chair to his desk for the human to sit in. MC’s eyes flickered over his fancy monitors and equipment, slightly transfixed by all the pretty lights.

“I’ve got lots of things planned, if that’s okay,” Levi told them, the confidence in his voice wavering. The last thing Levi wanted was for himself to blow this fun day with something stupid.

They nodded to assure him, and while their smile might’ve still shown hints of something more, Levi’s panic melted away. “Of course! What’re we doing first?”

Too giddy for words, he opened a game on his desktop, doing his best to explain the rules to MC as he handed them a controller. It was some kind of online fighting fantasy game, and while there were many like it, Levi promised that this was the best of the bunch. They both settled in, picking their characters. Without a second thought, Levi picked his; a bright colored female character with a glowing staff and too many bows on their clothes to be considered natural.

“This is Luma, she’s my main! Who’re you choosing?” Levi squirmed in his seat, ready to get started.

“I don’t know...there’s so many to select from...I’ll just pick someone random for now,” MC shrugged, clicking on the first character that caught their eye. Not wanting to waste any more time, Levi set up a lobby for their matches.

Everything had gone fine...at first. Of course, MC kept dying, but Levi assured them it was their first time playing the game, and the character they had picked was set at a larger difficulty than others. The human nodded and pushed forward. The first match ended with MC getting no kills, stacking up the most deaths, and looking at Levi’s score in shame as the demon had racked up more K.O.s than any other player combined.

MC laughed sheepishly, letting the controller settle languidly in their hands. “Guess I’m no good at this game.”

A pang of something familiar flashed through their eyes, and Levi felt the pain. “Not true! Here, try this character, they’re ranged and a little op, so you’ll be just fine!” They started again, Levi bursting forward from the starting point, already landing a triple kill. Meanwhile, all MC got ten seconds away from base was a magical explosion to the face, killing them rather instantaneously. The further they went forward, the more MC’s shoulders slumped. The more they died, the more the fun light they had started with drained in their eyes. At one point, after MC had gotten nuked right after they respawned, their character stopped moving. Levi glanced to the side, watching as MC placed the controller away from them on his desk as they used their hands to cover tears starting to drift down their face.

Panic flared in his chest again, his skin prickling. He practically threw his own controller away from him, turning in his fancy gaming chair as he placed his hands on their knees. “What?! What happened? What did I do? Oh no, you hate me now, right?” As they sniffled and sobbed, his lungs felt themselves shrink smaller and smaller, air struggling to get in. The match ended, and before it could automatically have them play again, he turned to the screen to leave the lobby. Fumbling with the cursor, he ended up closing the game altogether instead of trying to remember where the Leave Match button was. Swiveling back to look at the human, he blinked in confusion when their eyes were dry and their grin was fully repainted on their lips.

“MC? But you were--”

“--Oh, it was nothing, I had an eyelash in my eye. Want more snacks?” They interrupted him as well as quickly changing the subject. They lied to him, right to his face. Something was up, and yet they would rather do anything else than tell him. Despair overtook his thoughts as MC refused to look at him, opting instead to reach for a bag of puffy chips.

Speaking low, the demon of envy clutched the fabric over his heart as he felt it breaking. “You can’t stand me now, is that it?” Levi brought his arm up to cover his eyes as his mind swirled in dark reasoning, coming to the wrong conclusions out of self-depreciation. “You didn’t even want to hang out with me in the first place?! You came to my room out of pity?! You’re so ashamed to be with me you had to cry?!” His demon form slid into view, his tail slinking against the cold tiles of his floor. Hot salty drops of tears streamed down his own cheeks, his fingers moving up to wrap themselves in his hair as his Envy began to spiral out of control. “Of course you’d rather be with my brothers, of course. Why would you want to hang out with someone like me when...when…”

“When you’re a demon? When you’re a powerful ruler of hell? When you have extraordinary powers?!” Levi lowered his hands and opened his eyes at MC’s escalating volume. Their lip quivered, the bag of snacks fell from their grasp, now abandoned on the floor. “These past few weeks since I’ve been hanging out with your brothers really just drove home how...useless I am. I’ll never be as put-together as Lucifer. I’ll never be as cool as Mammon. I’ll never be as smart as Satan, as pretty as Asmo, as strong as Beel, as witty as Belphie. And I--and I thought maybe hanging out with you would make me feel better but--” Their voice cracked, resulting in the demon nearly flinching as the pain in their voice almost physically hurt him. He expected them to list the many reasons they couldn’t stand to be around him, how he had done everything wrong. Expecting the worst, he curled up in his seat. “But I can’t even play a game correctly...I can’t do anything...I just wanted to be fun like you…”

He had seen so many shows and anime, read so many perfect fantasy romance novels, played so many dating games, he knew exactly what to do. He’d wrap them into his arms and say some gushy poetic speech that would make sparks fly and every bit of doubt in each of them flow away. And yet...all he could bring himself to say was, “H--huh??” A few lingering tear droplets let themselves drift down his face as he attempted to process the words he had just heard. They both sat in a painful silence for a moment, both blubbering messes, both ashamed to be looked at by the other. But as Levi finally comprehended what MC had told him, he began to laugh. “You were envious of me?!” Falling into a giggle fit, MC stared at him, jaw agape. “I was worried that--that you thought I wasn’t good enough for you!”

MC briefly wondered if they had broken him. “But you’re a powerful demon!”

“You’re an amazing human! You watched me dance in cosplay for four hours the other day!” The mental image of the situation bubbled in MC’s brain, causing their tears to transform into laughter alongside Levi. The two of them chuckled uncontrollably, drying their cheeks, thankful they were alone in the room, far from judging eyes.

“You made a cute magical girl,” MC grinned, no malice or intent to harm behind the teasing words. “But...I still don’t see how you can possibly think I’m amazing. I have little talent, no grand prospects for my future, no powers to speak off, a plain personality, and I have the obvious penchant for crying over silly things.”

Biting his lip, Levi slid his own chair closer to theirs, the armrests brushing side by side. “Umm...well...the--the way I see it, you have things that are almost impossible for demons to have. Compassion, empathy, an open mind, it takes a lot of effort for demons to feel those things. It’s something that is rare to find in any living being nowadays, except for maybe angels, but even then you’ve heard Luke’s opinions on demons. Angels do like to condemn. I don’t know what’s typical in the human world but you seem rather extraordinary to me.” Taking a deep breath, he gently used his thumb to wipe away the last stray tear on the human’s face. With a single finger, he rubbed absentminded circles into MC’s knee. “Anyone different would’ve taken one look at my brothers and I and ran away as fast as they could...and yet you stayed. We’ve done everything we can to push you away, and yet you never gave up on us...on me...You’re wonderful, more than I could ask for, I--” He cut himself off, cheeks burning red as he bit his tongue to stop himself from speaking. He’d almost let something embarrassing slip. Racking his brain for something else to say, he felt the tips of his ears start to burn as MC grabbed his hand and let it settle in their palm. “I don’t think,” Levi blurted, recalling and nearly quoting a line from a Ruri-Chan anime, “that worth is defined by power and popularity. I like you just the way you are, isn’t that enough?”

MC initiated it first, almost fully sliding into his lap as they moved from their chair into his to hug him. To prevent them from falling since his seat was only made for one person, he wrapped his arms tightly around their waist. Both of them felt the heat and warmth from one another. It made Levi want to melt and yet explode at the same time. MC pulled him close, his face pressed against their shoulder. “Thank you, Levi.”

#obey me #obey me shall we date #obey me headcanons #obey me imagines #obey me levi #obey me levi x mc #obey me levi x reader

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anambermusicbox · 3 years ago

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September 29 Day Countdown (27/29): 2021/01/15 Interview with iFeng Entertainment 凤凰网《非常道》

(11:20) Interviewer asks whether he’s more affected by hurtful words or kind words; Zhou Shen then goes on to talk about his relationship with his fans:

ZS: After all, I’ve now debuted for 6 years now- (*more subdued*) my skin has gotten thicker. Before, hurtful words had a very big impact on me. I’d see these words and think (*gasps*) What did I do wrong? Why do they have to say this about me? Do I have to change something? If I do this differently would they not say this about me?

But later I realized, no (*waves his hand dismissively*) To them, the people that don’t like you, as long as you exist, they won’t like you. So before, I would be affected a lot more by hurtful words, but now its about 51% and 49%, with that 51% being the hurtful words. But I’m working on flipping the percentages. This way, I think, I’m also doing right by the people who support me.

Interviewer: I think there are actually a lot of people who like you. (*ZS bows and thanks her awkwardly*) The other day, I was online and saw your fans professing their love, fussing over you. (*ZS laughs*)

ZS: Oh that’s right, because- a few days ago, I was doing a performance and- I don’t know if this is just what this fan says to singers they like, but they said (*cups hands around mouth*) (*extremely high pitched shout*) “Rest for a bit!! You’re tiring!!! Yourself!!! Out!!!!” (*laughs*) (T/N: It was after he filmed the winter-themed Happy Camp with the Onmyoji movie cast; there’s a video of the exact moment—super hilarious, I’ll put the link in the notes.) [...] I want to tell them, I’m doing fine here, don’t worry—I can take care of myself.

Interviewer: I think the way they talk to you is quite 没大没小 (referring someone to being disrespectful and talking to someone their senior the same way they talk to their peers; Zhou Shen looks quite shocked at her choice of words) They really treat you like (ZS, interjecting: a friend) someone they can throw jokes at, a kind of idol that is very close to them. How do you view the relationship between you and your fans?

ZS: Oh, I really don’t know. To be honest, I really don’t know. [...] Even now, sometimes I think they’re quite stupid. I say this because, sometimes, even if it’s just to see me sing one or two songs, they’ll stand outside the venue waiting for four to five hours on a harsh winter day. I feel really bad for them. But it’s like, to them this is one way they feel that they can give me strength, and I can’t tell them not to, because that would hurt them even more.

So sometimes I look at them and think, oh look at this stupid group of people, so idiotically supporting me. This kind of stupidity is really quite touching. I want to put forth my best effort to reciprocate what they do.

(14:55) Interviewer: “Do you have moments where you feel pretty rotten?”

ZS: Oh, too many. (Interviewer: Tell me about it, from the past to the present) Wow. Okay then we have to delay the program recording scheduled next (*laughs*) there’s a LOT. I mean, since my childhood, my classmates unintentionally- it was really unintentional, they didn’t have the maturity to know that their words would be hurtful. But to me, they were very hurtful. But you can’t blame them for it, because they didn’t understand anything at the time. (T/N: no you can totally blame them for it, you’re just a nice person shenshen)

And more recently, as an artist, I had my own “cold bench period.” I felt like, I was working so hard but no one was willing to listen to me sing. Not only that, I felt I didn’t have a way to be heard. Because there was a period of time when I didn’t really have any work and, wah, everyday I felt so purposeless; I was just a rain cloud, I was so discouraged (*laughs*)

Interviewer: What about now, now that you’re so busy?

ZS: If I’m tired, I’ll be happy because I’m happy that there are stages that *want* me to sing on them. [...] I worked so hard to stay in this profession because I wanted to be heard by others, and now that this day has finally come, with so many stages I can sing on, why wouldn’t I go?

(16:40) Talks about how he doesn’t mind labels, because that how someone remembers you; ZS: “I saw this one comment I really liked, this person was saying they always thought there were two Zhou Shen’s—a male one who was funny on variety shows, and a female one that sang deep emotional songs—until one day they watched a show and realized, what?? It’s one Zhou Shen???”

(18:30) Interviewer: As I’m conversing with you, I can feel very relaxed, very happy—that’s the feeling you give people. (*ZS bows and quietly thanks her*) But I know from looking at your past that your childhood was quite lonely. What makes you be able to still be so warm—that is, to go and bring others... happiness.

ZS: I think it’s because I’m really fortunate. Because... (*looks up in thought*) I... I grew up in a very remote mountainous village, but I’m really fortunate to have so many opportunities—coming into the city, being able to learn and come in contact with all the culture I love, and later even being about to devote myself to a career I love. I feel very fortunate.

And I know that, when you feel extremely alone, if you suddenly feel something like a beam of warmth, the joy or the kind of hope that can bring—when you receive it, you’re so happy. I think, I want to do that, if there’s a possibility I could have the honour to do that for someone else. I think it’s so important.

(21:00) Talks about his parents:

ZS: Even now, my mom and dad are still wanting to- still are running their small business that they love; I think it’s very laborious. I keep telling them, you both are getting older, you should take advantage of your age and go relax, enjoy yourselves. They say, no, we want to take some burden off of you, to which I’m like eh? (*leans over and covers mouth to whisper*) Mom you’re losing money every year. *laughs*

Especially with the pandemic, their lifestyles have had the most obvious impact. Because they’re not like the younger generation that can continue doing things online. All they’ve known is getting up early to open their storefront, staying there until it’s time to close at nightfall.

Interviewer: (21:55) Your parents, before they didn’t support you going into music. What about now?

ZS: They think it’s great now. But they worry because they feel they have no way to help me in this career. [...] They once said- I asked them something like this one day, how they want to help me now. They said they can give me their storefront. I told them, then don’t help me (*laughs*) Because I’ve used to help them watch the store all the time growing up! I used to be doing my homework at their storefront. Ever since I was little, I’ve always really disliked doing business. So I felt like, oh mom dad, no.

I’m really lucky. Even though my mom and dad don’t have very high education—it’s really quite low to be honest—they still chose to understand me. I’m very grateful to them.

(1:45) Interviewer asks what his first job was:

ZS: After I graduated from high school, my first job was selling phones. (Interviewer: Were you standing all day?) Yup, standing. [...] (Interviewer: So you have experience in the workplace?) Well, to be honest, I didn’t converse with people much in my so-called workplace—I have a very introverted personality; I’m not too fond of or good at talking to people.

Interviewer: Would someone who doesn’t like to talk to people be able to convince people to buy phones?

ZS: That’s why I didn’t sell any. (*bends over laughing*) You really had to say it so directly. (*laughs*) Zhuang-laoshi, you’re an accurate judge of people! (*gives her two thumbs up*) (*Interviewer laughs*)

(3:30) Interviewer tries asking him a question related to emotional intelligence (”qing shang”, 情商) but gets her words mixed up and says romance instead (”qing chang”, 情场); ZS: “Well, if we’re talking about romance, that’s an area I don’t have much experience in (*gets up and pretends to leave*) (Interviewer, laughing: To be honest, that’s the thing I really want to ask about.) Zhuang-laoshi, I really don’t have any experience with romance (*laughs*)

Interviewer: Okay what I was going to ask is, do you think EQ is important in the workplace?

ZS: Super important! For one thing, every workplace involves getting along with people, and part of the way you interact with people depends on your EQ.

Interviewer: But some people say that part of EQ is a skill, a means to an end—would it come off as insincere to others?

ZS: ?? (*blinks*) Can you give me an example?

Interviewer: Like for example, if I compliment you like “oh you’re such a great person (*half-hearted clapping*)�� when I don’t truly mean it.

ZS: Oh that was so insincere (*makes faces*) (*Interviewer laughs*) I’m starting to question myself (*laughs*) I don’t think that’s a problem for me though. That’s why you shouldn’t force compliments. I think it’s important to be genuine with what you say—then people won’t think you’re being fake. If people think you’re being fake, that in itself already isn’t a display of good EQ. Be sincere, but try your hardest not to hurt others.

Interviewer: I want to ask another question-

ZS: Is it about romance? (*laughs*)

Interviewer, joking: We’ll talk about romance in a moment.

ZS: no nO NO LET’S NOT DO THAT (*laughs*)

(6:10) About how Zhou Shen didn’t expect to get along so well with everyone else in “An Exciting Offer”《令人心动的offer》:

ZS: On the first episode, every time I put in my own two cents, I had to work myself up just to speak up. My heart rate was through the roof, it was like- (*takes a deep breath*) (*raises hand*) “Laoshi? (*exaggerated suppressed panic*) Can I aSK a quESTION? (*pretends to look back and forth between the others*) (*Interviewer giggles*) I think this is just like, you see, I believe in the workplace, people who are have this personality-” How was I supposed to converse like this? (*laughs*)

So that was how I was for the first two episodes, but now in the later episodes, I got used to just casually interjecting whenever I felt like it. It was quite wonderful. The other teachers were very approachable, very friendly—it felt like, something you imagined before, but when you really are in such a group, it was like, oh this kind of goodness is something that actually exists. You feel very fortunate, very happy.

(8:50) Interviewer asks ZS if he ever lacks confidence; ZS replies that, even now, he’s not very confident:

ZS: Every time I’m on stage I get extremely extremely nervous. I’ll fear that, I won’t live up to the expectations of those who want to listen to me. But I’m slowly learning to- to get along with, to come to terms with this nervousness.

Interviewer: Then this year, you would’ve been so nervous all the time. Have you counted how many performances you had just this year?

ZS: I haven’t counted, but Shengmi, they compiled them all together and, excluding the ones that aren’t aired, there were over a hundred. Every single one of them, I’m behind the scenes like- (*makes loud deep-breathing-for-anxiety-reduction noises*) But I can’t let people see that so- (*dissolves into laughter*)

#zhou shen #周深 #my translations #mine #zs 29 #why is day 27 just as long as day 26 >.>#ngl these interviews are near the end of the countdown mostly bc i kept putting off translating them LMAO #when its so good that there's so many highlights but also that means it takes hours to translate :')#day 28 is gonna be pretty long too smh #i kinda put the questions more related to the variety show at the end but also god he's so relatable HAHAHA #rip 2020 shenshen he was just a ball of anxiety all the time asdfAFSDFASD #but the whole first section before the 'read more' is so :'))#i love him so much

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