#with parents who have a shit ton of money

[dignitywhatdignity]

I'm a stay at home mom, and by necessary extension, a housewife.

I look like a fool in a flowy white sundress. I live in jeans and graphic t-shirts.

We don't have a backyard, much less a field of native wildflowers (I do try to grow native wildflowers in my shoebox-sized front garden).

I'm lucky, and also unlucky. My husband makes good enough money to support me not working; if I worked full time, I'd barely be covering daycare. I'm well aware how vulnerable that makes me.

I struggled, as a kid. I couldn't be a tomboy, because tomboy liked (and were good at) sports. I was a benchwarmer in softball. I lost every tennis match. I kept aging out of recreational and instructional leagues, and my parents and I agreed it was a waste of time and money for me to join competitive leagues, since I'd just be sitting there doing nothing. Even dance class, when it was obvious I was never going to compete, I was largely blown off by the instructors, who had future champions more worthy of the attention.

I wore a skirt every day -- school uniforms -- but i couldn't keep my knee socks up. I couldn't keep myself neat (typical adhd girl, I excelled in school as long as I could bite my nails or twirl my hair. So my nails and hair looked like shit).

I was among the top three in the class, with two boys. The boys hated me because I outperformed them. The girls... I think just didn't know what to do with me. I was probably annoying. I wasn't feminine enough. No doubt I was a bit of a know it all (but if you read books, you'd know it too! Why doesn't anyone else like books?!) .

It was a joke, an insult, to be romantically linked to me. "You like [dwd]!!!" What's wrong with you. "[Dwd] likes you!!!!" You poor asshole, stuck with her attention. One or two guys may have liked me and showed it in that toxic, abusive way boys were encouraged to in the 1990s. Or maybe they were just hateful, bullying shits. The two aren't mutually exclusive. In any event, I was clearly too ugly, too annoying, too smart for anyone to like.

And I wasn't about to change myself to get them to like me. I wouldn't have known how even if i wanted to.

So if someone said I looked good, they were clearly making fun of me. (Usually they were. Maybe sometimes they weren't. I still have a hard time telling the difference. Sometimes Husband calls me his "beauty queen of 18" and I'm like, "yes, I'm old and ugly, you don't need to tease me.")

In high school, I'd be in groups where I was the only girl among boys. If they didn't like you, they'd hit you or ignore you.

I'd be in groups where there were no guys, or only one guy. If they didn't like you, they'd swear you were their best friend and then, when your back was turned, declare you a bitch and a slut.

Never dated a guy from my own school. Anyone I did date was easily more awkward than i was. And I didn't have a serious boyfriend until shortly before graduation.

So in college I was definitely "not like other girls". The sororities didn't want me. I didn't wear uggs and booty shorts to class; neither did I join the rugby team and show up wearing sweatpants and bruises. My circle of friends was mostly guys; even after I wised up, my wedding party was, too.

I don't want a fucking homestead. I'm barely treading water keeping my house clean as it is. Bread from scratch and homemade jam? I cook three days a week; enjoy your leftovers and sandwiches.

I still don't have as many friends as I'd like, and none of us relate to each other. B is a divorced mom with a high-powered job who is a devoted mom when she has custody and wild when her kid is with dad. A is a single mom by choice with a high-powered job, generational wealth, and a ton of family support. K1 and her husband moved to another city; their jobs are there to subsidized their hobbies: hiking, gourmet cooking, crafts. K2 and her husband...might be homesteading; they bought a big piece of land for babies and dogs to run free on. D and her husband are definitely homesteading, but she's the breadwinner and he's the homemaker; if you dared him, I am *sure* he'd run around in their field of wildflowers wearing a white sundress.

All this to say:

I'm a housewife.

I'm a cis woman.

I have never in my life done femininity "right" and I am too old and too tired to start now.

the tradwife movement is the same as it has always been - back in the kitchen, back to breeding - it just has better branding.

when i was younger, i hated pink. i was not like other girls. this is now something i'm embarrassed of - this was not me being a "girl's girl."

but it was expressing something many of us felt at the time: i literally wasn't what girlhood was supposed to be. this is a hard thing to explain, but you know when you're not performing girlhood correctly. it isn't as easy as "i liked x when girls liked y" - because there were other girls that liked x, too - but i never figured out exactly the correct way to like x, or to be interested in y.

now there is the divine feminine. this is the same rhetoric it has always been: women are biologically driven to like pink and ribbons and submitting to our husbands.

the problem is that the patriarchy found a better PR team. because yes, actually, i want every woman to have the choice to be a homemaker. i also want her taken seriously for her legitimate home-making labor. i want her to be recognized as also having a job, just unpaid. i want men to have this opportunity, too.

but it is no longer "i made this choice and I love it." instead it is a sixteen-paragraph rant about how selfish it is that my generation isn't having kids. instead it's long videos about how if you feed your children processed foods, you're going to kill them. instead it is "this is what womanhood is supposed to be. i feel bad for any other choices you're making."

the shame spiral is just prettier. it is large houses devoid of personality. it is the implication: if you don't have this, you aren't happy. the solid, everlasting assurance: women are actually supposed to be submitting. this is the default. this is the natural state of things. all other attempts inflict suffering.

but you can no longer say i'm not like other girls. you can no longer reject this image completely. you cannot find it revolting, even if you know that the underbelly is toxic and festering. sure, it is the same repackaged patriarchy. but the internet does not have shades of grey. you should support and reward other women! your disgust is actually internalized misogyny. not because you are seeing a vision of yourself the way they're trying to train you to be. not because you feel her ghost pass within an inch of your earlobe. not because your father will eventually ask you - why can't you be like her?

because they figured out how to make it beautiful: women will sell other women on this idea, and we will find the singular loophole in feminism. sure, she's shaming you in most of her videos. sure, she implies that a different life is obscene. but she just wants you to be happy! you'd be happier if you were listening!

and the whole time you're sitting there thinking: i'd actually just be happier if i had that kind of money.

[an-incoherent-mess]

So I'm really into genealogy and have been for a few years now and I'm blessed with being really good with names and dates etc. So in conversation I can remember like a ridiculous amount of:

Jane Doe Smith Johnson

b. 1805 Tennessee d. 1879 Missouri

Married 1828 to John Patrick Johnson. Had five children. Died of TB

Etc etc

And that's cool enough apparently but I've mostly been using it for

A. Making up bullshit but real sounding names for stuff (i.e my name is Emily Stewart, Grace Kolár, etc). The point is that they're normal sounding and varied.

B. Having a bizarre frame of reference for historical events. Like "oh [small town],[state] 1942 had [random] event happen? My 1st cousin 4x removed got married there that year, small world!"

It's so dumb, like I'll read about some historical event from my area (where I've had family in the vicinity of since the 1840s) and I'll link up the time frame in my head and be like hmm... I wonder what 3rd great aunt Helen thought about that happening next door to her church.

[itsalwaysdark]

okay sooo 1. once little man is done with my laptop i need to do the ssn shit bc i have the letter 2. in an hour i need to switch my laundry to the dryer and at Some point i need to sleep preferablyyyy i oush as long as i can its been 28 hours i Think? since i woke up i dont avtually remember its all kind of a blur i do have a headache and my fuckshit tooth is bothering me but whatever . once i get the ssn login thing done im pretty sure i can get a new card like right away and then once that gets here i can go and get my permit And by then my new glasses will be here which is epics and ummm at some point not today bc im tired and have a headache aka not at my best. so once those 2 things r not the case i need to do the science and math ged practice tests ive been putting them off bc im scared ill do bad SKULL.but i need to get those done ... and omce i have the permit and everything thennnnnn i can go do my actual proper ged tests and once those r done ill have my ged and an id and thus can start applying for jobs again And ill be so brave and ask my mom to teach me how to drive . YIPPEE

[itsabird-itsaplane-nopejustabird]

DPxDC Prompt

I've had this idea for a while (since seeing that art of Johnny and Kitty robbing a bank so Danny can get Top Surgery lol) but I haven't even had the brain to work on my own fic recently (sorry about that btw) so I'm writing this instead

So the concept:

T4T Johnny and Kitty, who died in the 80s after running away together.

Johnny was the kid of some rich asshole automobile mogul from Bristol, and Kitty was one of the workers' kids from the Narrows. They become friends, fall in love, both realize they're trans around the same time and then decide to run. They know that being trans on top of tax bracket difference gives them almost no chance of making it. Johnny steals a bike and a fuck-ton of money from his parents, and Kitty's parent(s) helps them leave.

They're still toxic and spiteful as hell, but nothing the other does can change the fact that they know and understand each other better than anyone else could.

They travel around the country being menaces together for a while until they decide to settle down in a strange city called Amity Park. They figured it could handle a couple more anomalies. But before they can get there, they get into a bike wreck with their final thoughts being of each other and Johnny specifically cursing his bad luck in life.

The next thing they know, they're in the infinite realms being given the chance to stay together and the freedom to simply exist with no strings attached. (Other than each other cause I firmly believe that they're mutually the others' obsession)

About 20 years have passed, a portal to their old world is permanently open and this scrawny little ass kid ghost that they've never even heard of keeps stopping them from going through it.

It isn't until Johnny actually starts paying attention a few months into it that he notices that first, the little shit can actually fight, and second, HE WAS FIGHTING THEM WITH A BINDER ON. (Johnny also vaguely wonders why Danny looks so much like his old neighbor Brucie, but that's less important than the binder thing). Johnny lets out the universal ghost fight timeout signal and vaguely explains the situation to Danny, who seems confused about the noise he made and why it made him stop.

Johnny gets Kitty to spread the word that if the timeout isn't called off by the next morning, stay TF away until they get an all-clear.

That night, *after yelling at him a bit*, he starts teaching Danny how to reshape his ghost form to his preference and even his vocal cords.

From there, Johnny and Kitty sorta ghost adopt him as a sibling and then take him to Frostbite to make sure his T-shots are ecto compatible.

(I hope this was coherent it's 4am for me and I haven't slept lol)

[bluem1lls]

hey *leans against table and winks or smth* can i request se-mi x reader on where they’re roommates but fucking HATE each other but se-mi has a onlyfans account (because she’s a freakazoid👅👅) and reader finds out so like when reader confronts her about it or smth se-mi somehow magically gets reader to join her and they become scissor sisters (also se-mi with a strap i DONT fear..) and become lovers..?? sorry if this is to much or shitty

✧₊⁺ show me who you are

se-mi x fem! reader

✦ synopsis: having a roommate you hate is annoying. and it becomes even more annoying when she gets all your good angles in the porn video you both filmed. tw: minors dni, smut w plot, and they were roommates!, fingering/oral (r!receiving), scissoring, sub!reader, dom!se-mi, degradation (a little?), choking, a bit of slapping authors note: hi! for the girl who also requested enemies to lovers IM SORRY i lost ur request but here it is! tysm for reading and the requests, i hope u like it!

"this is important!" thanos said, making me sit down besides nam-gyu in our living room as i stared at my other best friend from the corner of my eyes. nam-gyu shrugged as i sighed.

"yes?"

"we're in debt with the landlord"

"we knew that" nam-gyu said as i nodded and thanos rolled his eyes.

"no like.. we actually need to pay him back a shit ton. but he said we could do it per month. the thing is none of us has any more money, so here's my idea.. a new roommate!"

"cool" nam-gyu said.

"no way" i said at the same time.

"listen to me" thanos grabbed my shoulders. "i hate the idea too, but we're poor. my room can be her room and i'll share with nam-gyu"

i stared at both of them as nam-gyu turned to him. "wait- like bed and-"

"no, not the bed dumb ass" thanos smacked him as the other one nodded. "so? are we getting a new roommate?" he repeated to both of us. i sighed and nodded. nam-gyu did too, making thanos smile. "great! because her name is se-mi and she's about to be here in 30 minutes"

my eyes widden. wait what?

"what-wait. oh my god. you knew we would say yes so you already took the interviews and picked a random person? are you fucking insane?" i stood up, hitting him as he winced.

"auch- i knew u two would say yes because we don't have another choice. plus min-su's best friend was looking for a place so i told her and she agreed. never thought that could lead to my death, jesus." he stared at me with a frown as he rubbed his arm.

"oh wait, the tall girl with the short hair? oh i like her, she's cool" i stared at nam gyu with my mouth open.

was i the only one who had no idea of who she was? i've been so busy with school that it was hard to keep a pace with the guys. we've been a group ever since i can remember. nam-gyu came after, at first it was just me, thanos and min-su, then it was just the four of us. we decided to live together once we were old enough and it has been that way since. min-su stayed out because he said we were 'a mess' and he didn't had to pay rent at his parent's house.

i heard the doorbell ring as thanos ran to the door, opening to reveal a tall girl with short brunette hair, piercings on her lip and nose.

oh, she's pretty.

"come in! so you know him, and this our best friend and third annoying roomate!" he said as i told her my name. she stared up and down, biting her lip in a nervous manner.

"se-mi" she introduced herself with a head nod.

i smiled at her as he showed her around. it was a normal apartment with a living, one bathroom, three rooms and a small balcony (usually used for the hangouts and to smoke).

as she looked at the place, nam-gyu left her stuff in her new room. once he came back, he wrapped his arms around me, giving me a light squeeze.

"hey, it'll be fun. plus you get along more with girls than boys, you'll love her. maybe she'll even be your new best friend."

"if you don't like it then MOVE OUT!" i shouted at her. my breath shaking with anger.

"well, guess what doll? i live here too! and if you don't like it, then go find a new place, but we both know you won't because your real issue is that you just love to complain. you're just a brat who cries when she doesn't get what she wants!" se-mi screamed back, standing up from the couch to face me.

"go fuck yourself!" i replied, grabbing the keys and my phone before slamming the apartment door.

i quickly texted my best friend to meet up at our usual coffee shop as i walked through the cold streets, trying to cool off. once i got there, i ordered the usual; ice coffee and chai tea latte for jun-hee.

i saw her sat in one of the booths. "i will kill her. i'm not joking" i said as sat down. she chuckled, this wasn't a new subject for her.

"you never gave her an actual chance th-"

"she doesn't need it! i don't need it! she's been a bitch to me ever since she came. everytime i wake up, when i hang out with the guys, she's always there! it's like she became part of the group!"

she stared at me with a sympathetic smile as she drank her chai tea.

"she is part of the group now, love. and i don't think that's changing, if the guys like her, you know they'll keep her around, mostly now that she lives there. so you can choose to fumble everytime you're around her or try to at least ignore her to be at peace" jun-hee said as i sighed. my hands rubbed my face as i groaned.

"i'll try. doesn't mean it'll go well" i said, still not uncovering my face as she gave me a soft chuckle.

"you'll do great!"

as i came back to the apartment, i could hear the moanings even from outside. i took a deep breath to cool down as i entered. of course the moans came from her room.

ever since she got here, she brings a different girl every fucking weekend. nam-gyu and thanos are staring with their mouths wide open when they open the door to find (once again) an another beautiful blonde standing there. they also stare disappointed when se-mi appears with a quick hi, kisses her and guides her to her room.

a long line of girls walk into that room and leave with messy hair, hickeys, messy clothes and a relaxed and very fucked out face.

"it's ridiculous, what is she, a pornstar?" i tell jun-hee as she lays in my bed while i pace in my room. she bites her lip to supress a smile.

"so... i have something to tell you. or show you."

i stared at her, sitting in bed to watch while she tapped on her phone, looking for something.

"so we have talked about this countless times since she moved in, right? so i searched a bit and.." she turned her phone, her only fans profile appeared as i gasped and covered my mouth.

"you have to be kidding me!" i stared wide eyed, taking the phone. "oh my god jun-hee did you fucking bought her content?" i open my mouth, staring at the doe eyed girl besides me.

"research purposes. take a look. oh wait, i'll send them to you"

as the photos and videos arrived to my phone, i went through each of them and oh my god. my face flushed crimson red as i stare at one particular photo. you could see from her bare chest to her crotch. she had a strap that hit her lower stomach with her hand wrapped around it, looking like she was stroking it like it was her cock. i licked my lips as my mouth felt dry and my head dizzy. jun-hee sent me 5 videos, se-mi fucking a blonde girl in all fours, another one scissoring, fucking in missionary, a pretty redhead riding her. she knew how to attract people to buy her shit, and she knew how to make the content.

"she's hot" my best friend said with a soft push on my direction, making me snap from my thoughs as i shrugged.

"doesn't make her any less annoying"

"can i buy-" he said, as i quickly cut him off.

"no."

"but you've seen it-" the other one said, as i, once again, cut them both off.

"no one is buying anything!" i rolled my eyes at both guys. "this is a secret i shared with my best friends. not with my lousy roommates, got it? if i hear that se-mi found out from either of you, both will be very much dead. like dick? cut off" i threated them as thanos stared down at his crotch with his eyes wide. they both nodded.

"man, i wish a had a girl" nam-gyu stared at a blank point.

i told them once again 'not a word' as i headed back into my room. i heard the door closing as the guys left. they mentioned in the morning they were going at min-su's, i told them i'd stop by later. i heard the door open again just as they left, probably se-mi.

as i looked for my charger in my room, i started to get annoyed. the three of them steal it all the fucking time. i leave my room to bash into nam-gyu's and thanos room, taking a quick look in the dark. no signs of the charger.

as i close the door, i see se-mi staring at me with a smirk on her face. her arms crossed on her chest with an amused expression.

"did you take my charger?" i asked as she hummed.

"maybe" she replied as i let out a groan of exasperation.

"se-mi."

she let out a snort as she went into her room, quickly coming back to throw the charger at me, as i pressed my lips to not curse her. outloud.

"it would be my pleasure if you stopped grabbing my stuff without my permission"

"mine doesn't charge as fast" she replied, the amusement on her face never leaving as i rolled my eyes.

"one would guess that with all the money you make with your only fans you could afford a new charger" i mumbled under my breath as i turned around. i felt her hands quickly grip my arm tight as i winced. "auch-"

"what the fuck did you said?" the smirk on her lips faded as she stared intensely at me.

well that was a mistake. but i can't back up now, can i?

"i said" my tongue did a quick 'tsk' as i stared into her eyes, her gaze felt intense and cold. "one would think that with the money you make at only fans you could buy a fast charger, but i guess it isn't going as good as i guessed?"

i could feel my back pressed against the wall, making me let out a small wince. she pinned me, her head slightly down to fixate her gaze on me. i could see her annoyed expression.

"and how would you know that?" she spit. her eyes never leaving mine.

"it's not that hard. a little research and all i can see is why so many girls come in and out every weekend. your videos are boring, by the way."

her angry expression turned into a... confused one? an amused one? a scoff escaped her lips as they curved into a small smirk.

"oh. so you watched them?"

fuck. fucking jun-hee for the details. and fucking jun-hee for that strap photo that's all that's been going through my mind the last few days.

"w-what? no, no" i said as she slowly pressed her body against mine. one of arms left to wall to grip my waist, holding me tightly against her. our eyes never stopped meeting in the silence of the living room.

"you've watched them. you're noisy and you know too much not to. and i bet you enjoyed every single one of them" she replied in a low voice. her eyes roamed over my face, searching for a hint of a lie, but all she could find was the embarrasement in my eyes, making her let out an amused scoff. her fingers softly began to trace circles on my waist as a shiver ran through my spine. "bet you even got wet watching them"

i bit my lip in response. not getting out of my head the amount of times i squeezed my tighs when i saw the videos and photos. the heat that pooled in my panties everytime i saw her thrusts inside of one of her girls. the way she'd make them suck her strap as if it was her real cock, the grip she hold in their hair made me even wetter, but when my hand lowered to take care of my ache, i had stop myself, reminding me how this was just my insufferable roommate.

"were you just mad because you wanted to be one of my girls, doll?" her finger tilted my chin up to stare at her. the room felt heavy with tension as her other hand held me in place. a blush placed on my cheeks, making me feel ashamed because i knew she was right. i did wanted to be one of them. the silence was the answer she needed. she bit her lip piercing as she couldn't help the smirk that escaped.

i felt her hands dip underneath my top as i let out a shaky breath, i could feel my heart stammering on my chest, my legs felt like they could no longer hold me, the only thing keeping me standing was her firm grip. she closed the distance between our bodies, as her lips gently caressed mines without kissing me.

"i bet you're such a whore, you'd even love if i filmed you, hm?"

my cunt aching as i heard her words. i could feel my thong getting pooled with arousal. the proximity between us only made my heart beat faster as i softly nodded, her gaze never leaving mine as her eyes darkened with desire.

she took a step back, grabbing my hand as she pulled us both into her room and closed the door. i could see her blue duvet that i recognized from the videos. she even had led lights to make the entire room feel more like a porn video with high quality.

i didn't even got to process the other furniture as she pushed me against the door, her grip once again holding my waist.

"you really know how to push my buttons." she said leaving wet kisses on my neck as i leaned my head, giving her acess to more space as she groaned. the feeling of her lips making me whine. "you're such an insufferable little brat"

"then do something about it" i replied, a smirk curving my lips as she licked hers.

she lets out a huff. "it really sucks when the most annoying person i know is the one that arouses me the most" she said, my eyes filled with surprise as she crashed her lips with mine in a harsh, desperate kiss.

i quickly melted to her, my arms wrapped around her neck, grabbing the nape of it. bringing her closer as one of her hands left my waist to slowly trail down to my ass, squeezing and giving it a harsh spank as i whimpered in between kisses.

she broke the kiss to speak. her voice husky. "you can't tell the guys about this. not a single word"

"i still hate you" a dry chuckle escaped se-mi's lips at my reply, kissing me again. i felt pure desire through my body as her hands roamed all over.

she moved me out of the door and pushed me to bed. an arrogant smirk tugged at her lips at the sight of me in her room. her gaze taking my entire body with a mix of lust and excitement. she took a few steps to set up the camera in the tripod. as her finger posed on the little 'on' button, she stared at me.

"are you sure you want to do this?"

"yeah. turn it on"

she bit her lip as her fingers pressed the 'on' button. my heart stammered from excitement as she placed herself between my legs, on top of me.

our lips finding eachother once again, her tongue entering my mouth while her hands wrapped around my throat, giving it a light squeeze to test as i moaned in response.

the kiss felt rough and raw. she could feel the vibration of my moan against her as her grip tightened. her body pressed against mine made me feel the heat radiate from her. our bodies molded together.

she slid her knee between my legs, the pressure against my core sent a wave of pleasure, making her break the kiss to press her lips on my neck as my hands went to her hair, tugging her closer.

"my needy girl" i nodded in response as she licked and bit my neck. "now be a good girl, stand up and take your clothes off" she ordered as i did what she said.

my wobbly legs trembled at her intense gaze on my body. i let my leggins hit the floor as i slowly pulled the shirt out of my head, her eyes tracing the curves of my body, making me shiver as i was only left on my bra and panties, i tried to move aside the feeling of being so exposed. as my hands moved to my back to remove my bra, she sat on the the edge of the bed. her arms sneaking around my waist, pulling me closer to her.

"maybe let's leave this pretty set on" she said, staring at my pink underwear as i nodded, feeling dizzy and flushed under her look.

my legs straddling her thighs as i sat on top of her. her hands moved to grab my ass, giving it a light squeeze as our lips found once again in a lustful kiss. she moved me around so i was laying underneath her. her kisses lowered to my neck, down to my chest. the trail going downwards to my cunt. as it reached, she left a soft open-mouthed kiss on my clothed clit. her fingers trailed a path from my thighs to my desperate cunt, who was begging her for attention.

she softly traced over my panties, one finger circling my clit as the wet patch on the lingerie spreaded. her fingers moved up and down my soaked center, pulling my thong aside.

"could you hold this for me, doll?" she said as i nodded, my eyes becoming watery as i bit my lip. i felt her hot breath against my bare cunt, making me shiver as she placed her hands on both of my thighs to spread me open and hold me in place.

her tongue went straight to my clit, giving it some short but pressured licks, making me throw my head back as my hand never left the hold on my panties.

she kept licking, making me moan and whimper from pleasure. my free hand grabbed one of my tits, giving it a light squeeze as i pinch my nipple.

i could feel her eyes on me. "what a slut. you're a natural" her words causing vibrations against my cunt, making me clench around nothing as i kept moaning louder.

i felt as she left the space between my legs to pick up the camera, handing it over to me as i looked at her dumbfounded.

"could you hold it for me, princess? so everyone gets a closer look at how good i eat this pussy"

her words making me whimper as i hold the camera with one hand and still hold my panties with the other one. she gets back between my legs. this time, two of her fingers enter without warning in my warm cunt as my eyes roll back, feeling overwhelmed by how well her tongue swirls around my clit and the fast pace that her fingers pick out.

she thrusts harsh, scissoring with her long fingers inside of me, removing them to dip them once again, her movements make my moans get even louder and louder.

i clench when i take a look at what the camera is recording. her face in between my legs, her hair sticking to her forehead as she eats it with pleasure, moaning at how good i taste.

her fingers follow her tongue pace, making me squirm in pleasure as she holds me in place. i can hear the squelching sounds my pussy makes as she thrusts.

"nu-huh. if you're gonna cum, then do it on my mouth baby. i'm not stopping"

she goes quicker and harder as i feel the heat on my lower stomach about to snap. i rut against her face, needy for release as she gives me a soft chuckle at my desperation. i feel her lips wrapping and sucking around my clit as her fingers curl inside of me, making my entire body tremble. my vision goes white as i roll my eyes back, feeling the orgasm run through my entire body. my toes curl from pleasure as she never stops, only when my body goes numb and i'm whimpering and whining from the overstimulation.

i open my eyes as i looked at her through the viewfinder of the camera. her chin and lips covered with my glossy release. her tongue licks her lips as she hums at the taste, her gaze almost black as she stares at my fucked out state. she props herself up from in between my legs, snatching the camera from my hands. she points it towards me, recording my face as her fingers enter my mouth. i suck them clean, tasting myself as i watch her half-lidded eyes and her teeth nibble at her lip piercing as she hums.

she holds the camera with one hand, while her right hand grips my face, squeezing my cheeks. only releasing to give a harsh slap as i whine. "such a whore, hm?"

she stands up, leaving the camera on the tripod as she quickly swifts off her clothes, throwing them somewhere in the room.

she gets in bed again, lifting my leg to place it on her shoulder as she positions on top, lining herself up against me.

we both moan at the contact. her dripping wet cunt rutting against my sticky pussy. her moves are harsh and fast, creating a rhythm that's followed by our moans and slick sounds.

my nails claw at her thighs, making her speed up. i throw my head back, chanting her name like a prayer.

her eyes are fixated on my expressions. she bites her lip as her hair sticks down to her forehead with sweat.

"hear those wet sounds doll? that's how wet you get me by being a fucking brat" her words hitting right to my core as i lift my hips, our clits bumping. "stay like that" she says in a moan, rutting faster. both desesperate for release.

"fuuuck" her teeth clench as her hands wraps around my throat, making my eyes roll back as she lets out a shaky breath, her eyes shuting close while her head falls back as she grinds herself faster.

i could feel the tight sensation wrappping me once again.

"gonna cum, gonna cum, gonna cum" i chanter as her grip around my throat tightens.

a loud moan escapes my mouth as the feeling snaps. heat on my lower stomach as my release makes her cum. her eyes roll back with a loud moan escaping her lips while she keeps grinding, making our releases last longer.

she slids from on top to stand up to. she turns off the camera, falling into bed, besides me. her chest going up and down with heavy breaths as i try catching my own, my cheeks burning red.

"not a word about this to anyone. this was a one time thing" i murmur, slowly getting up to find my clothes.

she lets out a sigh, replying. "yeah, not a word. we're not doing this again"

and one week later, i'm watching my own porn video posted on her only fans while she's between my legs with her tongue swirling around my clit as she speaks:

"do you like watching yourself while i eat you, doll?" she says as i nod. my hands grab her hair, tugging her up to leave my cunt. she gives me a heated kiss, making me taste myself on her mouth.

"let's do it again" i mumble in between kisses as she smirks, lowering herself down.

it's about to be a long night.

[thedevilundercover]

The ultimate comedy/angst idea. Tim has issues with authority without even knowing what authority is.

Like he's the pinnacle of latchkey kid. His parents weren't there to tell him no or anything and he has a shit ton of money. In the comics he very clearly goes "lol no" to every rule and has the "ask for forgiveness rather than permission" mindset.

Imagine when Bruce gets his shit together and like wants to start actually parenting Tim rather that Tim parenting him and like it fails miserably.

Bruce, using the BatDad Voice™️: Tim, I forbid you from doing that

Timothy "Rules? I have no clue what that even means" Drake thinking that this was a joke: lmfao that's cute

And maybe Bruce has a little learning arc like wow this kid is fucked up, wow I fucked up. Whoa I got parented by a baby and now that baby has a fucked up sense of self and has matured way too fast and lost it's childhood because I'm an emotional wreck who had to rely on a whole ass baby for emotional and mental support.

[ms-demeanor]

That level of confidence on rejecting anything beyond what a MD will tell you (and not even a DO apparently?) has reached peak stupid I see. Probiotics work. Saccharomyces boulardii straight up saves lives. Come the fuck on.

I haven't criticized DOs, DOs are fully qualified physicians. For those not aware: In the US a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine (DO) has the same qualifications as an MD; if you want a doctor who does more holistic care but is a real-ass doctor, look for a DO.

DC, doctor of chiropractic, is the degree that you get from the ITT Tech of medical schools to lie to people and call yourself a doctor.

Saccharomyces boulardii is one of the probiotics included in the recommendations of the AGA as conditionally recommended in spite of low quality of evidence.

Saying "probiotics are largely woo" and including a link to A) guidelines that recommend evidence-based use of probiotics and B) a commentary on those guidelines lamenting that the lax regulation of the supplement industry has made it excessively difficult to study potentially helpful interventions is not the same thing as saying "probiotics don't work."

I know it can be hard to see but on tumblr when there's a little line under some words that means the words are a link; you can place your cursor over that link and single-click to go to a different page of the internet that might include more words you can read are a much longer and more comprehensive explanation of the words that you initially clicked on.

There's no conclusive evidence that regular supplementation of probiotics improves digestive issues in healthy people and taking probiotics regularly if you are not at risk for c. diff likely means that you're just shitting money down the drain.

Aspirin saves lives too, but that doesn't mean that literally everyone should take it daily for its life-saving benefits.

I became *absolutely ironclad* in my support for evidence based medicine over medical woo after my chronic illness diagnosis and while trying to figure out how to not feel sick all the time. Getting diagnosed with celiac in 2012 meant getting inundated with books like Wheat Belly and links to Joseph Mercola and advice to take probiotics and to stop eating the yoga mat chemical. Navigating a chronic illness and *massive dietary changes* on an internet awash with medical woo was a nightmare, and you're making the exact same kind of argument that I stumbled across on a ton of forums where parents were trying to treat their kids' symptoms, or where people were searching for help with their own pain and struggles and were getting *bad fucking answers* about probiotics and essential aminos and diatomaceous earth.

Probiotics "work" to help some people in extremely specific situations, but, like most supplementation, they are absolutely unnecessary for the vast majority of people and unless you know that you have a specific condition that will be improved by taking them, you're mostly spending a lot of money to swallow a lot of things and shit them out. If you have a gut disorder, probiotics will not make your gut disorder better. If you have diarrhea as a result of food borne illness, probiotics will not get your poop back to normal. If you are constipated, probiotics will not soften your stools or make you more regular. If you are at risk of c. diff from a course of antibiotics and you are NOT immune compromised, probiotics may potentially reduce your risk of c. diff infection and you should talk to a doctor who is treating you for that specific situation about whether or not probiotics might be helpful in the short term while your gut microbiome recovers from the antibiotics.

[ggyuha]

good cop, bad cop / leon

[ summary ] : you lost your belongings after a party—of course you’d need help but seeing how the officer is so handsome, maybe he can help you in more ways than one? ( wc is 3.6k words )

[ c/w ] : dom!leon x afab!reader, handjob, fingering, unprotected piv, car sex, degradation, pet names, age gap (reader is in college, leon is in early/mid 20s), …

[ note ] : he isn’t acting like a cutie patootie re2r leon bc it’s mostly self-indulgent but enjoy my filthy leon brain rot anyways & ik it’s p long but i love porn w plots ><

having partying all night, it was inevitable to lose something in the process—the something, in your case, was your purse. of course, how cliché.

it had your money, cards and phone in it and hell if you can survive without your phone.

with sore feet and tired heels, you made your way to the nearest police station. it was almost empty, save for a couple of bored-looking officers. they were all buried in paperworks except for one—damn was he a sight for sore eyes.

he had blond hair which was parted in a curtain-ish type of bangs. his eyes were icy blue, the type to bore holes in someone when they stare too hard. his nose was long and tall, it sat perfectly in the middle of his pretty face. his lips were plump and red, so kissable but save that for later, you thought. it’s your purse over this handsome cop.

he walked up to you with a smile on his lips, his puppy eyes looking brightly at you. “hello, is there anything i can help you with?” he asked gently. you saw the way his eyes roamed over your body, up and down, checking you out. you straightened your back, feeling a sense of pride to have such an attractive man gaze at you that way. who wouldn’t, to be honest? with the way your tight black dress hugged your curves perfectly, the way the hem showed a generous amount of your thighs. you sure are a looker.

“yes, please,” you said in the softest way possible, his eyes flicking back up to match your stare. “my purse was stolen and… and i have to get home. is it possible to borrow a phone?”

he raised his brows. a phone? you’d borrow a phone instead of asking for a lift back home. he was disappointed but intentionally gave you his personal phone instead of his work phone. “here, sweetheart.” he just couldn’t hold that one back. he had a thing for pet names and he sure as shit can’t help himself but call you nicknames.

you blinked a few times, flustered with the pet name but you took the phone from his hand and dialled your friend’s number. it took him a few rings. “hello, chris?” chris was your older brother’s best friend. he’s nice and understanding, he acts more brotherly than your own brother so you didn’t hesitate to punch his number in the keypad.

“yes?” he mumbled groggily. you felt a little guilty, disturbing him this late at night but you had to suck it up or you wouldn’t get home. “uhm, i’m in a police station. i lost my purse. can you come and get me?” there was silence for a few seconds before you heard a loud sigh. he said your name, asking to confirm if it was you.

but of course, it was you. who else would cause trouble only to bother him afterwards, right?

“yes, it’s me.”

you heard a low grunt—fuck, you thought. “i can’t, i’m sorry… i’m s’posed to watch my lil’ cousin for the whole night and my uncle used the car.” your lower lip caught in between your teeth. “i see,” you replied in a steady tone, careful not to sound disappointed because you knew chris would feel even more guilty, if he wasn’t feeling that now, which you sure as shit he is.

“it’s okay, chris. thanks anyway. there are tons of officers here,” you said, eyeing the said officers, which you can count with the fingers of a hand. you couldn’t tell chris the truth though.

“maybe i can ask for a lift.” leon’s ears perked up and he fought hard to hold back a grin.

chris hummed on the other end of the line. “i’ll come by tomorrow to check on you, is that good?” he knew your parents are on a business trip and your brother is, most probably, not home. you nodded, slightly forgetting he won’t see. “yes, thanks.”

you handed the officer’s phone back to him. “i can give you a ride.” leon offered with a small smirk. you shivered slightly under his piercing gaze. you could feel the palpable tension between you two and god, was it wrong. you were barely done with college—how old are you? eighteen? nineteen? fuck, it was so wrong but it felt so right.

curious as you were about his age, you refrained from asking.

“okay,” you said, “sorry, i didn’t catch your name.” you looked up at him with doe eyes. you sure knew how to use your charms, he thought. you were worming your way into his head. he was beginning to imagine things—said things being him thrusting his hips, ramming into you roughly—but he isn’t telling you that. yet.

“leon kennedy, but it’s just leon for you.” he gave you a wink before walking past you, gesturing for you to follow him. “i’m almost done with my shift anyway. can you wait for 10 minutes, sweetie?” he glanced back at you over his shoulders, “let me just hand in my paperworks and clock out, yeah?” it took you a few to process his words, his voice calling you sweetie ringing in your head.

“sure,” you answered, “i’ll wait—“ you eyed the lounge and sat on one of the chair, “—here.” he chuckled before walking away to go to his desk, organising piles of paperworks. he grabbed two handfuls of those papers and put them in drawers. the rest of the stack, he grabbed and he walked into an office, probably to hand it in.

he went out after minutes and he arranged his desk. an organised man, you thought, that’s so fucking hot.

he grabbed his backpack and slung it over one shoulder as he walked towards you. “i clocked out. ready to get home?” he smiled sweetly at you. you nodded and stood up, walking behind him.

you were surprised when he got in his car. like, his personal car. you guess it made sense since he already got off work but still. you thought he’d use the police car.

okay, chill, it isn’t even that big of a deal.

you climbed into his passenger seat. “took your sweet time, didn’t you?” he joked as he ignited the engine. you scratched your cheek. “sorry.”

he chuckled at your apology. “i was just kidding.” you shot him a brief glance and threw him a smile. damn did that do something to him.

he began driving, asking you for directions. it didn’t take that long before you reached your home. “this is it,” you said, pointing at the house outside the passenger window. he looked your way, his eyes drifting back to you after he eyed your house. it wasn’t that big but it still was a statement of your family’s wealth.

“thanks for driving me home. even after your shift ended too…” his hand moved from the shift stick to your knee, his eyes remained on yours, looking at you with a glint and you could swear that you could see through him. “it’s not a problem, princess. don’t mention it.” a corner of his lips curved up in a sly smirk. oh, was he a handsome devil—which was ironic since he’s in the force, doing good.

you bit your lip, holding back to gaze at his hand on your knee. it was burning your skin but you were so fucking aching for his hands to burn more than just your knee.

you hummed a response. “alright, leon.” despite knowing that you’re supposed to get out of the car, because the ride is done, you couldn’t move an inch, holding onto his meaningful stare while he killed the engine. “what?” you huffed out silently. his mouth is still curved up in a smirk and his eyes watched you hungrily, almost as if this whole interaction is a bit too entertaining for him.

what the fuck is behind those eyes?

“maybe next time,” he leaned in closer and your breath caught in your throat, “don’t party too hard, yeah?” his breath fanned your cheek. “or do. then maybe i’ll see you around again.” you gasped inaudibly then bit your lip. “you’re not getting your message across, officer kennedy.” you raised a brow at him. “are you telling me to run wild or not?”

leon grinned at your question. he liked this side of you; bold, confident. you’re a minx and you know it.

“i don’t care,” said leon in a low tone. god, did it sound so sexy, so illegally. “i guess i’m saying, do what you will in life but i wanna see you again.”

your eyes widened a bit and it broke free, that sly smile you’ve been holding back for too long. he thinks he has you in his grasp but no, you have him in your grasp.

men are that easy. for you, that is. play dumb, play innocent—or don’t—it doesn’t matter, actually. just look tempting and they eat everything up.

“i’m still a student, officer,” you finally tell him. he doesn’t show a hint of surprise, almost as if he knew. he looked away and pursed his lips, choosing his words carefully now but it’s quite too late for that, isn’t it?

“but you don’t really care, do you?” you added in a sultry tone. his eyes flicked back to you, reflecting sinful emotions—and you could almost see what kind of thoughts danced in his head, how lewd and how fucking hot those thoughts were.

his lips curved up in a smile but he tried to hide it as he rested his elbow on the steering wheel and put a hand on his lower face, the back of it pressed against his mouth.

“you don’t know that,” said leon in a whisper. your finger traced patterns on the back of his hand that’s still on your knee. you saw his adam’s apple bob in his throat. “oh, but i do.” you grabbed his hand and yanked it so you could pull him closer to you again. his eyes widened, caught off guard.

you were having so much fun. he always seemed collected. all throughout the evening, he was flirting but now, he was at your mercy. fuck those pretty eyes of yours or those damned wet lips. he’d do anything to touch you—and you could feel yourself wanting the same thing.

you clutched the collar of his shirt with one hand, your other hand ran through his ash blond hair. “i know what you’ve been thinking the entire time. trust me, officer kennedy, i’ve seen those eyes before.”

his face contorted to that of jealousy. so you’ve been through this before? you’ve seduced other men? and god so help him—you’ve fucked other men?

you watched as his eyes glinted in envy and he looked so dangerous, so tantalising. you bit the tip of your tongue inside your mouth, your gaze dropping to his lips tugged in a frown.

he grunted, feeling the tension increase. “fuck this,” he murmured and gripped your arm tightly. you winced in pain but looked up at him with a smile. “i’ll fuck you better.”

your mouth dropped open in surprise, his words catching you off guard a bit. apparently, he took this action for something else, as an invitation, and he leaned forward, crashing his lips with yours in a rough and wet kiss.

you’d be lying if you said this wasn’t your goal, not where you wanted to end up in, because it so fucking is.

your hands kept on clutching his shirt, pulling him closer as you kissed him back with much fervour. he groaned into the kiss, sending waves of pleasure. really, damn this man to hell but he’s such a fucking good kisser.

he nibbled at your lower lip, biting it and licking it all while interlocking with it. he bit harder this time and you gasped. he eased the pain by licking it and then pushed his tongue in your mouth, swirling and dancing with yours.

he pulled away, but you knew he only did to let you breathe because he would fucking drown you with his kisses if he could.

“damn…” you were panting heavily. your heart was pounding so erratically, you thought it was possible to suffer from a heart attack. you looked at him through your eyelids. “what do you think?” he asked, caressing your cheek with his hand. “i kissed you better, didn’t i?”

you rolled your eyes and frowned at his question. what a jealous bastard! “huh,” you scoffed, “are you making out with me to heal your ego? are you seriously competing with other men you don’t even know?” you raised your brows at him.

“no, no, no, princess—you don’t get it. i have to make sure i do you better so next time, you come back to me and not them.”

without waiting for your response, he gripped your waist tightly to lift you up, guiding you to him. he adjusted the driver’s seat, pushing it back to give you enough space to straddle his lap. you huffed out shakily, the new position heightening your desire. you gripped his shoulders.

“oh, so there’s a next time?” you raised a brow at him and he just gave a smug sneer. “‘course. i’m not an idiot. why would i make you be a one time thing? you’re too pretty for that.” you rolled your eyes at him but secretly flattered he finds you attractive enough to want you more than a one-night stand.

he just chuckled at your reaction then his hands gripped your hips firmly and crashed his lips with yours once more before trailing down to your jaw and neck, nipping on your skin at every opportunity, leaving hickeys.

you tilted your head, giving him more access to your neck, your fingers entwined with his soft hair, combing and gripping them to spur him to keep going.

his hands gave your hips a gentle squeeze before sliding upwards to fondle your tits through your tight dress. you gasped and he chuckled against your skin. he pulled your neckline down, revealing your round breasts and erect nipples. he cupped them with his big hands, pinching and pulling on your buds with his long fingers.

“shit…” you murmured, tipping your head backwards as you fought back a moan. his hands are so filthy but you bet you haven’t even seen the half of it.

he pushed you gently, your back resting against the steering wheel. you watched him hike the hem of your dress up to your waist and palmed your mound without a word. you yelped, feeling him trace a finger along your slit through your panties. he could feel just how wet you already are and that elicited a throaty growl from him.

“messy little girl,” he whispered as he pushed your panties aside, gathering some of your slick with the tip of his fingers before rubbing your throbbing clit, working in circles. you let out a nasty mewl, your hand flying to your mouth and clamp it shut—which didn’t help at all because once he found the perfect rhythm to work on your clit, rolls of whimper and moans escaped your lips.

“so vocal, aren’t you? don’t hold back, i want to hear it.” hesitantly, you removed your hand from your mouth, putting two of them on his shoulders instead. “leoooon…” you moaned when he pushed two thick digits past your slick folds, the heel of his palm bumping against your nub every time he pumped in and out. once you’re adjusted to his fingers, he began curling them and with how long his fingers are, the tip of them reached spots you normally couldn’t on your own.

“this the spot?” he asked teasingly, sliding his fingers in and out then curled them to press on your g-spots. he kept his ministrations, only picking up the pace but doing it at the same intensity.

you were mush at this point, the steering wheel being the only thing keeping you sitting up because if you weren’t leaning, you sure as hell would be falling back with the way he’s doing your body.

“your tight pussy is just as vocal as you. how cute.” you grunted at his words, feeling your walls clench around his fingers. he was right though. every time he thrusted those damn fingers in you, filthy squelching filled the car.

“i’m close, please…”

he looked up at you and smiled, his other hand tucking your hair behind your ear then leaned forward to kiss your lips briefly. “go on then, cum on my fingers, baby.” a couple more thrusts of his fingers and your hips began to rhythmically spasm, riding your orgasm while he continued to slowly stroke your spongy walls, your cum coating his fingers.

he pulled out, his tongue swirling around his cum-coated digits and licked them clean down to his knuckles. “delicious little thing, aren’t ya,” he said as he unbuckled his pants, his other hand grabbing your wrist to guide your hands and palm his fully erect cock.

your eyes widened and you exhaled, your fingers barely wrapping around his length. your thumb swiped on the precum gathering on his tip and he shakily sighed, throwing his head back on his seat’s headrest, watching you with half-lidded eyes.

you lazily stroked him. honestly, you didn’t have enough energy for this. you just want him inside you and all this teasing—it’s only making you impatient. “hmp,” his brow twitched slightly and glared at you, “brat. i know as hell this isn’t how you give handjobs.” he grabbed your wrist and pushed it up and down to stroke his throbbing cock harder. “what’s the matter? can’t wait ‘til my cock’s inside you?” he smirked and despite wanting to deny his accusation, you just whined instead and watched him use your hand as a fleshlight.

“shit, hold on, baby.” his hips were bucking up in rhythm with your hand, fucking your fist with urgency. with a throaty moan, his cock twitched before ropes of cum spilled on your hand and some on your stomach. you thought about how good it’d feel to have this hot and sticky thing stuffed in you.

he panted heavily but he was clearly still hard. he hasn’t had enough, for sure. he grabbed your hips, lifting them up so your pussy is hovering above his cock then you slowly sank down, your head tipping back as you felt just how much he’s stretching your tight walls—fuck, he’s so big.

his fat tip effortlessly hit your cervix just by being balls deep inside you. you groaned and impatiently squirmed on his lap. “wait up, you slut,” he grunted before firmly holding your hips to help you ride his dick. he rammed inside you relentlessly, repeatedly hitting all your spots with his curves and length. series of moans spilled from your swollen lips. your hands found your bouncing tits, playing with your nipples which heightened your stimulation.

“filthy girl,” he spat but watched you play with yourself while he used your tight cunt like an expensive cocksleeve. “shit shit shit…” you breathlessly whimpered, “not that spot, not that spot—“ liar, that’s what you are because he is thrusting in such a good spot but if he keeps hitting that… “jesus, did you just cum?” he furrowed his brows and stared at the creamy white coating the base of his dick. “oh, that’s good, fuck you’re so tight…” he seemed to be reprimanding you for cumming first but he couldn’t help and enjoy the way you’re just so fucking tight, clamping down around his thick length after your release.

he kept pulling orgasm after orgasm out of you, pumping his cock in you and stuffing your womb with his thick cum as if he’s planning on giving you his kids.

you don’t know how or when it happened, that you’re in your house, on your bed. both of you are fully naked now while he rammed into you like a hungry man, his hands pressing on the back of your thigh ‘til they’re levelled with your ears. “leon, oh god, i’m…!” your walls clenched around him again, pussy twitching and hips spasming though you’re tired from cumming over and over again around his cock. he just kept spilling his load into you.

“shit, baby, can’t get enough of this pussy.” he pulled out and watched his cum ooze out of your puffy lips. you caught a glimpse of the sunrise from outside your window and series of doorbells echoed in your home, followed by chris’ voice. fuck.

he called your name but leon just raised his brows at you before flipping your limp body, spanking your ass to lift them up properly. you whined and did as he wanted, presenting yourself to him while your face is pressed on a pillow, muffling your moans and cries as he fucked you roughly for the nth time since last night.

“shh, princess. we gotta pretend nobody’s home, don’t we?” he whispered from behind, leaning forward to press soothing kisses on your shoulder blade as filthy sounds of skin slapping skin and wet squelching while he rammed mindlessly his cock in you filled your bedroom. “wouldn’t want your friend to catch us like this after all.”

“mhm, shit…” he murmured as his hips picked up pace, swinging more sloppily and with more urgency before spilling another load of thick cum in you. jesus, is he ever gonna stop cumming at all?

“pretty girl, takin’ me so well. what’s another one more, yeah?”

[sitepathos]

Every single thing you post about the batfam ignites tons of emotions inside me. I just read the 2nd part of the coma asks and was outright shocked with how the rage was shown from y/n. I was just thinking what would happen when the reader is constantly shown affection from the family, y/n find the camera Tim hid in his room. Would he berate Tim too and try and escape after that if they hadn't barred his windows?

What would happen?

Love the whole series, and excitedly waiting for the next part

When you discover the camera, you destroy that thing without hesitation.

You may be trapped in this horrible manor like a damn animal, but you refuse to be put on display for all to see.

Tim understands why you don’t want to be watched, but he needs to know how make you see reason and he can’t do that without information.

He sneaks into your room while you slept (bypassing Alfred’s ever watchful gaze) and plants a micro camera, the type they use during patrols.

Imagine his surprise when he opens up the feed the following morning to see you discovering the camera without a problem.

“None of you are as smart as you think you are,” you shout at the device before crushing it.

Ok, did not expect that. This raises even more questions, mostly: how the hell do you know about their micro cameras?

His need for more information grows and he decides he must speak with you directly, so he goes to your room.

“Oh look, if it isn’t Red Robin,” you taunt as he enters. “Forgive me if I don’t say ‘yum,’ that food is overrated.”

First question: how? Second question: the fuck?

“Surprised I know your little secret? I lived here for twelve years, dumbass. Did you really think I was so stupid not to notice you all coming and going?”

Not dumb, but inattentive. Though, with them basically forgetting that you were in the manor, it would stand to reason that you probably saw all sort of things.

“Y/N, I know you’re angry, but I promise you that we won’t make the same mistakes. We love you—“

“Shut the fuck up, you fucking twink, what do you know about love? Your own parents didn’t love you and Bruce sure as hell doesn’t know shit about love. He’s a cold, unfeeling bastard that’s dead on the inside and you’re just like him! No wonder he took you in!”

Ok, if you calling him a twink wasn’t bad enough, you had to go and bring up his parents.

“I know what you saw when Scarecrow dowsed you in his fear toxin. That Bruce doesn’t really love you because you blackmailed your way into making him adopt you, and that no one here loves. That’s not a fear, that’s the truth. You’re fucked in the head and anyone with eyes can see it! Who would ever love you?”

Ok, now that definitely stung.

“My Momma loved me, too bad you can’t say the same. You ever think she died just so she could get away from you?”

Ok, now that’s below the belt and he’s reached his limit.

He leaves your room and calls a family meeting, telling them that you know their secret, causing them all to gasp.

They were determined to keep you here until you accept their love, but now, you can never leave.

Knowing their secret puts them and you at risk.

But don’t worry, with Bruce’s money, he can get you anything you want and you don’t even have to lift a finger.

And Tim will be in the background, determined to find out everything you know about them.

He thought he was good at stalking, but you may be able to teach him a thing or two.

[devourerofglue]

My take on Deltafell design with a nod towards og Underfell style. I also have some ideas for these goobers below

TW: abuse, depression and dark topics

Kris got bullied when they first appeared in the town because they were the only human kid. They were overshadowed by Asriel. After their parents divorced and Asriel left for college Kris was pretty much neglected by Toriel and started harming themself. They wear turtle neck sweater to hide scars on their arms and neck. They can't let go of the past and so they wear their old red horns. And of course there's this whole soul problem. But overall Kris is a very caring and kind kid that wants to solve conflicts peacefully.

Susie got kicked out of her house because her parents were greedy abusive assholes. She has to steal to get money for food and sometimes gets into fights because of that. She still goes to school but didn't get any help. The police keeps an eye on her and she might get expelled if she gets into big trouble. Sometimes she gets free food from Sans. She looses her mind when she's hungry and only wishes to get revenge on her parents. Susie isn't a numb killer or anything but because of her life she usually finds violence as the only solution. It's rare for someone to be nice to her but she still can be grateful for any kind of help.

Noelle got really depressed and insecure after her sister got missing and her father died. She tries to hide herself, wears covering clothes and is socially anxious. Her mother is extremely overprotective and sometimes doesn't even let out of the house. This is also why Noelle looks very sick and pale. She lives in constant stress. She's ashamed of her feelings for Susie because her mother might shame her for liking a homeless girl. Her only real friend is Kris who she can relate to in many ways. It's like her and them against the whole world.

Well this got long and I might make a comic out of that but I'm not really an expert in some of these topics so I hope I won't offend anyone. And there will probably be shit ton of AUs after this game comes out

[lucyandthepen]

love on the floor | njm

exactly when does vice president na turn from the company’s worst nightmare into your favorite daydream?

pairing: chaebol!na jaemin x secretary fem!reader rating: vaguely M, but will very quickly escalate into a hard R in coming chapters genre: romance, fluff, (eventual) smut (in later chapters), chaebol!au warnings: jaemin isn’t really a total asshole but he isn’t great at the beginning either and i think that should be a warning, there’s probably some language use that deserves a bit of caution i GUESS, but tbh nothing much here because we want to pretend that this is a fic of chaste circumstances and not a lead-up to raunchy, depraved smut  word count: 16.4k

author’s note: first of all, the development of this fic is absolute SHIT because i love context too much and refuse to shut up at the beginning only to get antsy for the ending so if the pace is a little stop and go … it’s because i’m a Fewl !! and i totally own up to that !! and second of all, this is actually just a set-up for about two more shorter (?? what’s shorter) works that i’ve already been wanting to write but felt like i would be remiss in doing so without some kind of build-up to the relationship so :^) here we are ! heavily unbeta'd and miss lucy is a bit rusty but we carry on for the sake of enjoying oneself (and practicing writing once again) muah enjoy!

At least this job gets you free medical. 

Actually, all things considered, this is an excellent job with limitless benefits. You never have to worry about the three-level insurance, you have monthly paid-for visits to the dentist, and you sometimes get to use the company car for personal errands for as long as you meticulously check everyone else’s schedules and butter up the head secretary, Son Seungwan, just enough so that she feels mollified enough to let you have this favor (but not too much to the point that she catches on and gives you a ten minute lecture on the rising prices of gas post-the-turn-of-the-decade). Your rent’s well paid-for, and the apartment you’re staying at is comfortable, albeit a little smaller than most, although that’s just because you prefer spending your money on once-in-a-lifetime type things, like front row seats to a Paul Kim concert. You get 50% discounts at the company cafeteria, which boasts a pretty nice salad bar with more than just perilla leaves as the greens. The bathrooms even have luxury soap installed into the automatic hand dispensers, so you always come out clean and fancy smelling. 

All in all, the job’s pretty perfect, to the point that you don’t think leaving will ever truly be in the cards — except for the fact that you barely see your boss, which, as nice as it sounds on paper, is actually the most stressful part of the position. 

You’ve always been of the opinion that if Vice President Na Jaemin put his mind to something, he’d actually do it very well, but the running issue is that he hardly ever puts his mind to anything, especially when it comes to work. In fact, the only thing he ever seems to take seriously is having eleven hours of uninterrupted sleep, which you personally think is an extremely hard thing to achieve, leading you to the firm belief that if he channeled that energy into something less dead-to-the-world and a little more productive, things would be amazing. 

And maybe things would also be a little less distressing if his family would just accept him for who he is instead of expecting too much (or, actually, anything) from him, but Vice President Na is the only son of the family that owns the largest telecom company in the country, so his parents have a ton of huge expectations for him. His father, in particular, is clearly trying to prepare him to take over the entire business, something that the Vice President clearly isn’t keen on doing, based on the many arguments you’ve had to sit through alongside Head Secretary Son. The result is a lot of tension that’s only exacerbated by the Vice President’s desire to avoid more conflict, which he does by suddenly disappearing from the office for hours — sometimes days — at a time. 

So for as much medical, dental, and reasonably priced caesar salad as you’re getting from this job, you’re not entirely sure how worth it those things all are if they come with the task of you having to sit through twenty minutes of lecturing in place of Vice President Na Jaemin himself. 

“This is the last time,” President Na roars — not necessarily at you, but at you, in your general direction, while you stand helplessly in front of his desk, your hands folded across your lap and your head hung low. You don’t really feel terrified or hurt — more than knowing that the President isn’t shouting at you for your incompetence, you’ve also gotten used to being on the receiving end of these weird, indirect lectures and have thus come to know the exact standard of ‘sorry’ that you have to look for it to be over as quickly as possible. Still, you’re kind of annoyed that this particular spiel is taking up precious minutes from your afternoon break. Then again, you don’t know what you’d expected to begin with when you’d come back from the cafeteria after lunch and found the Vice President’s chair abandoned, leather cold, indicating that he’d been gone for quite a while. It’s about four o’clock now, and he still hasn’t come back, and all your messages to him have gone unread, as you’ve also grown used to. “You tell my no-good son if he isn’t back within the hour, he can live the rest of his life without my last name.”

You’re not sure if the implications of that will really sink into the Vice President’s heart enough to trigger the guilt it’s clearly trying to elicit, but you know better than to voice your opinion. You nod once, then bow at a perfect ninety-degree angle. “Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir.”

“Four years of this, and he hasn’t learned a single thing,” the President continues, completely ignoring your useless and vaguely insincere apology. “Where’d he run off to this time?” 

You don’t know. You never really know. Since he actively tries to avoid all work-related things, he also actively tries to avoid you, something he does by never picking up the phone or telling you the details of his daily schedule anyway. You can only share what you do know, which is very little and, therefore, extremely useless, but you try to say it in a way that appears relatively helpful. “His schedule says he was supposed to have lunch with the foreign investors that are trying to connect Prime Video to the Korean market, but it seems he didn’t show up for that.”

Which essentially translates to: you have no clue. Again, all parties in the room — inclusive of Head Secretary Son, who constantly has to bear witness to the many threats Vice President Na receives via you — know this isn’t your fault, but it doesn’t make the vein that’s about to pop out of the President’s temple any less pronounced, nor does it stop you from bowing and apologizing again when he says “get him back in here before five o’clock or tell him he’ll never be able to step foot in this building again!” even though you know that the threat would probably sound more like a gift than anything else to Vice President Na. 

“And you,” the President points a vaguely accusatory finger at you. Your eyes widen slightly in surprise. “If he isn’t back here at that time, you can kiss your job goodbye too. You go ahead and tell him that. Let’s see if Jaemin will finally get off his ass if he knows someone else is going to have to suffer for his behavior.” 

The only person who sees your jaw fall open is Head Secretary Son, who’s now leading you away from the President’s desk and towards the door; the President has taken to staring at this huge family picture of himself, his wife, and the Vice President that’s hanging just behind his executive’s chair, all looking considerably happier than anyone in this situation feels. You hear him mutter something that sounds like “where did I go wrong with you, you punk?” before the door shuts close behind you.

“I’d say he doesn’t mean that, but we don’t actually know to what lengths he’ll go to get the Vice President on board.” Head Secretary Son admits, lifting two fingers to gently shut your mouth, still agape. “If I were you, I’d figure out how to keep him on a leash. The fact that he’s never around is probably ninety-percent of our current problems.”

“I can barely get him to respond to schedule reminders,” you groan; your fingers pinch the bridge of your nose like this will somehow stop the oncoming migraine. “Let alone get him to stay still. I was just about to put in a down payment for a car of my own, too.” 

You’ve never really been considerably attached to this job, mostly because there isn’t much to actually attach yourself to, but if you think about it now, it really is better than most, and this economy isn’t really kind to people who get fired from their jobs. You feel like puking at the thought of losing the free unlimited coffee in the pantry and trading it in for a life behind a convenience store counter, which is probably where you’ll end up, pessimistically speaking.

You excuse yourself from Head Secretary Son, who has the heart to look a little pitying as you trudge towards the elevator. You don’t even know where you’d start looking for the Vice President, especially since he spends quite a lot of his efforts trying to avoid having to communicate with you. You don’t even know what his habits are, which means you can’t make educated guesses on where he might have run off to, so the only route to go is to look in the immediately surrounding area and widening your search diameter as time passes.

Until five o’clock, of course — a deadline that, if unmet, will likely mean you also won’t be returning to the office either. 

You start off at the nearby bookstore, extremely skeptical that the Vice President would ever willingly go to a place that requires more effort even after you make a purchase. As expected, he isn’t there, but he isn’t in the nextdoor candle shop (also unlikely) either, nor do you find him in the hand-cut noodles shop next to that as well. You walk down the entire street for a good twenty minutes, pressing your face against the windows of stores shamelessly, to the ire of many startled and disgruntled staff, trying to look for a familiar head shape in the small crowds in them, but to no avail. Then, you think about calling him again, but when you pat the pockets of your jacket, you realize your phone is still on your desk, where you’d left it when you’d been summoned to see the President. With a loud groan and an annoyed clip clop of your heels as you stamp your feet on the pavement, you walk back to the office. 

In your frenzy to find the Vice President, you’d gone quite a distance, and your shoes simply aren’t made for long, aggravated walks; they start hurting your feet halfway back, and you’re pretty sure you have a blister behind the strap of the left one. Pride would tell you to tough it out, but you’d thrown that out at the thought of losing your job at the expense of a single man, so you don’t even hesitate to take them off and run back to the building. The big digital clock above the elevators says you have ten minutes left to find your boss, and you start thinking about using that time for better things — like packing your stuff up neatly in a box for when you get sacked. 

With the situation seemingly hopeless, you trudge to the first floor cafe, where the return counter has a pitcher of water and a stack of tiny paper cups. They’re tiny tiny, like the size of your thumb, so you have to keep refilling it just to start feeling a little more human. 

You’re on your third refill when you hear a giggle come from across the space. The barista’s just finished laughing at what must have been an extremely hilarious joke, or she might be flirting with whoever’s leaning over the counter to talk to her. A whoever that seems to be the exact same height and build as the elusive Vice President of this company. 

You accidentally toss the paper cup in the plastics bin in your desperation to get moving, worried that if you’re not fast enough, he’ll disappear into thin air again. Luckily, his attention’s completely focused on the barista, so he can’t go anywhere when you finally reach his side and huff, loud enough to interrupt what seems like an intimate-ish conversation between them. 

“Sorry, I was just — oh, it’s you.” The Vice President’s smile fades when he sees it’s you, someone he can’t charm out of what they’re supposed to be doing. You don’t think you’ve ever seen the Vice President smile at you in any capacity, anyway, except for maybe one or two slightly sarcastic smiles that are probably more fit to be classified as grimaces. “What do you want?” 

“I’ve been looking all over for you, sir,” you say, stiffly and a little quietly because you still don’t want to embarrass him in front of the slightly confused barista. “You haven’t answered my texts.”

You don’t have any way to check, but you’re pretty sure this is a safe enough assumption, which is corroborated by the Vice President bringing his phone out and checking the screen lazily before turning it back off. 

“Sorry. I don’t answer unknown numbers.”

You guess it makes sense that he wouldn’t want to save your number when he hates hearing about work, which is all you really try to communicate with him about, but it still stings considering it’s been two years and you’ve been using the same number since high school. It’s fine, you think. You really can’t expect much from him. 

“Well, your father’s been looking for you, too. He wants to meet you.”

“I’ll take a rain check, but thank you.”

“Sir,” your voice quivers with poorly quelled exasperation. “This isn’t an optional thing. This is very serious.” 

“I can see that, Briar Rose,” his eyes are trained towards your shoes, still dangling from your grasp, with a level of unabashed amusement. “Did he summon me from deep within the woods, or is this a new casual Friday look I should get in on?”

When his words are met with a stony silence, he sighs, pushing himself off the counter. His half-finished Americano is collecting a small pool of condensation under it, and you offer him the little handful of tissues you had gotten from the return counter and had originally been planning to use to wipe your tears in case you cried after getting fired so that he doesn’t waste time looking for something to hold his cup. He takes them without even a word of thanks, opting to instead say ‘lead the way, miss.’ You don’t miss the fact that he meets the barista’s eye with a considerably more genuine grin, raising a hand in goodbye to her before he strides ahead — before you even get a chance to lead the way at all — towards the elevators with you, hobbling on one foot to slip your shoe back on, not far behind. 

The President’s office must be sort of soundproof for instances like this. For the first time, you’ve been asked to wait outside with Head Secretary Son as the Vice President gets chewed. It doesn’t matter; you don’t really want to be in the middle of yet another round of shouting that has nothing to do with you in the same afternoon, plus you also know how the conversation usually goes: the President making very agitated threats and talking about his heart condition (even though the medical reports from their private doctor say he’s in perfect health) that the Vice President, who just spends the time looking boredly at his nails, will inevitably trigger. When you press your ear to the door for a minute, you actually hear something like ‘... strike you out of the will so that when you kill me, you won’t get a single won!’, and you can imagine Vice President Na’s exasperated sigh punctuating the statement. 

Ten minutes later, the room has gone quiet, and you step aside just in time for the Vice President to open the door and step out. You don’t even understand how he can look so unaffected after being ripped apart, but you suppose he’s also heard the lecture as many times as you have and is pretty much immune to all the insults. He doesn’t really have to make a show out of not caring, though, with his hands in his pockets and his lips pursed to allow him to whistle idly as he strolls down the hall to his barely used office. He’s been in it so few times that after long, inexplicable vacations, he sometimes forgets how to get there. You’ve always had to walk behind him just in case he gets lost or, worse, tries to make a run for it. You’ve never had to tackle him to the ground reciting the Miranda warnings, or anything, but he has faked left a few times just to give you a mild heart attack for the fun of it all. 

This time, he just walks, not bothering to joke you into trying to create a human wall he could just as easily push away. When he gets to his office, he lazily plops down onto his couch, extracting the Rubik’s cube he’d been working on for a few weeks now from underneath himself and spinning the top layer idly. He’s only ever finished the blue side. 

You just stand there, kind of perplexed and unsure of how to start the conversation. He’s still whistling, and you’re not sure if talking over him will count as interrupting him, which isn’t something you’re supposed to do. Thankfully, he stops after about two minutes of fiddling with the yellow side of the cube, looking up at you with a slightly surprised expression that somehow makes you want to cry. 

“Can I help you with something, Secretary ___________?” 

“Well, I…” You stutter for a bit, unsure of how to politely point out that he should be asking you for help with his job instead of the whole other way around. “Because… I just thought…”

“You can always leave a message with my secretary if you need time to figure it out.” He grins. “Oh, wait a minute.”

“Sir, don’t you think you should… I don’t know. Figure out your schedule, or something? Prepare for… anything?” 

“What’s that smell?” He lifts his nose to the air, suddenly curious, and because he looks so serious, you also start sniffing, but you can’t really smell anything out of the ordinary. “Smells… fresh. Very clean. A little like green tea.”

“Oh.” You awkwardly shift your weight from leg to leg. “I think that’s my perfume, but I don’t see w—”

“You smell very expensive, Secretary _____________.” He sounds genuinely surprised that you do, like he’s somehow saying he hadn’t expected you to have good taste. You have no idea where this conversation is coming from, so you chalk it up to him wanting to derail you from talking about work. “I like it. Very classy. Not too strong.”

“Sir, I don’t think now’s the time to be talking about perfume scents.”

“You’re actually quite pretty.” He sounds genuinely surprised again, but this time, it stings a little more. “I never noticed that before. How come?” 

You want to say that it’s because he spends most of his time and energy playing long-term hide-and-seek with you, but there’s also no polite way of putting that into words; even if there were, with the way you’re now bristling under his gaze, you’re not really sure you’d go the courteous route, anyway. You just decide to ignore the comment and question entirely, which you almost get to do.

“Wouldn’t you like to take a look at some of our upcoming projects? For instance, we’re just about to start negotiating the terms of this new partnership with Huawei —”

“You’re pretty, but you’re also pretty tense.” He cuts you off again, now looking a little dejected at this newfound information. You can’t understand why this disappointment in you actually hurts your feelings a little. “I think the cafe downstairs serves some tea, if that kind of stuff helps you.”

“Sir,” the one syllable is laced with weariness, and you knot  your fingers together in front of your lap. It probably looks polite, but it’s mostly so that you can feel like you have some semblance of control over anything, even if it’s just your own body fighting off the urge to grab him by the collar. “Please. If you could just take a look at your schedule — even just for tomorrow —”

“What’s the point?” His shrug is nonchalant, and he’s turning the cube over in his palm now, more interested in looking at it than witnessing your tired expression. “It’s almost six o’clock. I’ll deal with tomorrow tomorrow, you know what I mean? If my dad finally loses his marbles, I’ll deal with it all then. In fact, I might actually be okay with losing this department if it finally actually gets him off my back. I’ll also deal with that when it happens, probably.” 

Another long, uncomfortable silence blooms as his words sink in; not for the first time today, President Na has threatened the existence of your job, now alongside a good twenty other people’s, all for the sake of snapping some sense into the Vice President. However, like everything else, it seems to just be backfiring; Vice President Na doesn’t seem to care about anyone else in this department, most likely because he’s barely interacted with anyone else. You’re surprised he even remembers your last name, considering he once called the department accountant ‘Heejin’ even though her nametag clearly spelled out ‘Jinhee.’ 

It makes sense that the threat of abolishment means absolutely nothing to him, but it doesn’t make the knowledge of that any less distressing. He watches you curiously as you tug back at your ponytail, like it’ll once again stop the crawling migraine. 

“Sure a cup of chamomile tea isn’t in the cards today? I think I have the company card in here somewhere, although I can’t be sure that it hasn’t been cut off, based on my dad’s last threat—” 

“I’m fine; thank you.” You mumble, checking the clock. He’s wasted what’s left of the hour anyway, and the lack of change in his position just means he’s not going to change his mind for the rest of the time. “At least let me give you tomorrow’s agenda.” 

“Boring, but okay. Give it to me, then.” He yawns to make a point, and you offer him the tablet you tote around with you everywhere you go, just in case Vice President Na finally decides he wants to do his job. To clarify: that’s two whole years of you carrying that heavy thing around, with the Vice President only having touched it a handful of times. You’re mildly shocked that he actually opens it to check, because he barely does even that, but that all goes away when he yawns again, his expression glassy as he scrolls down aimlessly. “This is a lot. Can’t you just clear my schedules tomorrow? Actually, if I can make demands for real, I’d like to clear out my schedule for the rest of the year.” 

He stretches when he stands, ignoring your slightly agog expression as he pats you on the back, smacking his lips sleepily. “Good day’s work, Secretary _____________. Want to grab a beer? Have ourselves a little intra-department party? I’m pretty sure ‘intra’ stands for ‘us two,’ or am I wrong?”

You sincerely hope he doesn’t mean a goodbye party, but with his attitude right now, that might very well be. You shake your head, and he shrugs, like he wasn’t really expecting you to agree in the first place. “No thank you, sir. I’ll see you tomorrow.” 

He’s already halfway out the door, waving dismissively with his back turned to you. When you peek out of the space he leaves by opening the door, you can see about half the entire department’s watching, not even bothering to pretend to scurry back to their seats as he saunters out of the office. He calls out to you, his voice ringing clear even though he’s already out of sight. 

“We’ll see about that.” 

You come up with a master plan, but not before you scope potential jobs. 

You actually stayed an hour overtime at your desk looking for positions, but all of them pay lower than average or are about an hour’s commute away from where you live, so none of them seem worth it. The search ends when some people from the department come over to say goodbye and see your computer open to SaramIn, at which point they connect the dots and start to panic about their insurance. You shut your monitor off and spend another useless twenty minutes calming Jinhee, who’d started having a mild panic attack. 

In that time, your resentment builds. Why can’t Vice President Na simply get his act together? You suppose that there’s some indescribable burden to being in his position, but between him, a rich heir who owns two sports cars and lives in a paid-for house, and you, a public-transport-using, pays-by-the-month nine-to-five worker, you can’t really understand why he would be having it worse than everyone else who works under him.  If he worked even just half as hard as everyone else did here, he might scrape by. 

You can’t know if President Na’s anger was only short-lived or if he actually meant to downsize the company by getting rid of your department entirely, but you also know that if he’s serious, then there’s nothing much you can do about it, short of terrorizing the Vice President into stepping into bigger shoes.

So, that becomes your master plan.

It isn’t very refined, mostly because you think about it on the bus home, but the heart and spirit are there, and those are probably the most important things anyway. It’s that heart and spirit that motivate you to get up an hour earlier than you usually do, dressing quickly for the day before taking the company car from your place to downtown Apgujeong. You usually don’t take it on days that Vice President Na doesn’t come into work, which is practically every other day, but this time, you’re determined to see him into the office. The ride with Hyunsung, his official company driver, is quiet, save for the question he asks when you roll up to the Vice President’s driveway. 

“Are you sure about this?” 

“No,” you admit. He’d probably seen you chewing down on your thumb, some of your confidence taking a hit when you belatedly realize you could be shot with a huge privacy lawsuit if this doesn’t go the way you plan. But you do know a lot of secretaries that do the morning calls for their superiors, so this should be fine. Not that you’ve ever heard from those secretaries ever again. 

Vice President Na’s laziness seems to extend to all aspects of his life, including the fact that he doesn’t ever change his door’s passcode; it’s still the same numbers as it had been when he first bought the house a year ago and had you install his lock while he was missing in action from work, yakking it up with some farmers up in the Netherlands. He likes to do that — ‘see the world,’ or whatever, even though his wanderlust makes everyone else’s lives very difficult. At least it makes your life easy now, and you step through the door and walk quietly across his unnecessarily large living room. 

You’ve never been in here exactly, and you only realize very belatedly that this house’s design would be very frustrating for a break-and-enter criminal because nothing seems to be where it’s supposed to be. You learn the owner’s suite is actually on the basement floor, so all the climbing of those slippery stairs was for nothing. 

Vice President Na’s bedroom is bigger than your whole apartment, which also means he has a sizable bed and, thus, is completely out of sight under his gigantic covers. The only indication that he’s even still in there is that they’re rising and falling in a rhythmic pattern. You stand by the edge of the bed, on the side he’s closest to falling off of, clearing your throat at the tuft of hair peeking out from under the comforter. 

“Vice President Na? It’s time to go to work.” 

Your voice has been tempered down by years of this professional work, and this is easily the loudest and most demanding you’ve ever heard it. You’re not even sure you can do it again, but the muffled groan from under the covers is all the motivation you need to try. 

“Sir, you have a ten o’clock meeting with Samsung’s representatives for Apple. President Na also asked that we contact Amazon right away to reschedule the Prime Video deal.” 

“How,” his voice comes out first before he does, squinting up at you, completely disoriented. “The hell did you get in here?” 

“Sir, I’m your secretary.” You sigh, skimming over the fact that you’d walked into his big kitchen twice through two different entryways before coming into his bedroom. “I’m supposed to be able to get in here.”

“Except this is a first.” You think he’s about to get up, but he just shifts his weight, rolling over so he can cocoon himself tighter into his blankets. “Goodnight. There are eggs in the fridge if you’re hungry.”

“I’ve already eaten, like a normal, functioning human being with a very important job that starts precisely at nine o’clock would.” 

“This seems like a very targeted comment, Secretary ____________. I’m not sure I appreciate it.” 

“Since we’re already having this conversation, I’m guessing you’re conscious enough to get dressed.”

To your relief, he actually does throw the covers off of him, leaning up on his elbows. You try not to balk at the fact that he’s shirtless, although you’re also not sure why this should surprise or bother you to begin with. He doesn’t even seem to mind; he just yawns, wide and unashamed, as he looks over at the clock. 

“It’s seven-thirty. This is insanity.”

“No, this is a wake-up call.” You offer him a neatly folded towel that he eyes suspiciously. “We need to get you in the office on time.”

“There’s really no point,” he sighs, scratching his head idly. “It’ll just be another boring day of talking to people I don’t care about. Someone who cares about it should talk to them. You care about it, don’t you?” 

“I won’t talk to them for you, sir.”

“Why not?”

“Because, frankly, I don’t get paid enough to be doing that.” 

He once again stares at the towel like he’s trying to will it to evaporate, but in the end, he only sighs louder and takes it from you, kicking his blankets off completely. You look up at the ceiling, not in prayer but to avoid the more embarrassing fact that he’s only in his boxers after all. Well — it’s embarrassing for you. He doesn’t even seem to care. 

“Something’s different.”

“Usually I don’t wake you up,” you offer the painfully obvious. “Or come here. Or talk to you.”

“Yeah, all that stuff,” he says dismissively, halfway through a yawn. “Did you have a life-changing experience recently?”

“Something like that.”

“Couldn’t it have been one where you decided to leave me alone for good instead?” He grumbles, more to himself instead of to you. It doesn’t matter, anyway; you already see he’s up and fishing socks out of his drawer, so you’re marching out of his room to avoid having to hear more of his complaints (and, quite frankly, to avoid looking at his broad back). 

However, the day thereafter doesn’t go as planned. You thought that waking Vice President Na up for an early day of work might shock him into doing something with the knowledge that it was urgent, but you’re not sure why you didn’t anticipate a scenario in which he’d fall asleep in the car on the way to work and you’d have to shake him into waking in the stuffy parking lot. He spends the rest of the morning out of sorts, ignoring you point blank when you try to brief him on the meeting. The meeting in and of itself doesn’t go any better, with him excusing himself fifteen minutes in by saying the pitch doesn’t seem all too exciting and innovative. You didn’t even know he knew the word innovative and, by the shocked faces of the Samsung people, they were of the same mind. 

By lunch time, you’re more exhausted than you’ve ever been, and a part of you is wondering why you wanted Vice President Na in the office in the first place when you’re already used to the much simpler routine of get up, work, eat lunch, get yelled at, work again. Sometimes, on slow days when Vice President Na is completely out of town for the week and President Na is out of things to yell at you about, you even get to just sit back at your desk and play old crossword puzzles. 

Now, you’re basically handholding him, but the weight that keeps him down is so heavy that you’re being dragged down, too. 

“You mean people do this every single day?” He shuts the folder with a contract that requires his signature that you’d given him just now, not even bothering to peruse the first page, much to your rapidly increasing ire. “This is ridiculous. Working makes no sense.”

“All employees come to work to do that, sir. It’s literally what makes up half their lives.”

“Except it shouldn’t,” he sighs, like this is a true global issue and not a problem of his own making. “Everyone needs to be able to do what they want and live life to the fullest.” 

“Not everyone can,” you point out flatly. “Some people don’t have the luxury of time even for that.”

“Then, they should. The more I’m in this situation, the more it feels like it might be better for everyone to have a little work break for — I don’t know. The next year or so.”

Vice President Na has his arm outstretched, handing the folder back to you. You don’t know if it’s what he says that causes your blood pressure to rise, or if its the completely unconcerned look on his face, or if it’s the fact that he’s holding the folder so lazily that the papers are starting to slip out on your end, requiring you to use two hands to keep them all from falling apart and creating a mess you’ll end up having to clean up anyway. Whatever it is, you snatch the folder from him with a little more aggression than necessary (or that you’d even care to admit). Even though it’s out of place, you can’t help but feel a small sense of triumph at the slight surprise in his eyes. 

“Did I say something wrong?” 

“No, sir.” You pause, mostly because you can tell he doesn’t believe you — Vice President Na is nonchalant, not stupid — and you want to give yourself a little bit of time to grapple with your pride before you admit the truth. “Yes, sir. It isn’t fair to your entire department for you to talk that way.”

“I’m saying the entire department doesn’t have to work this hard. It’s senseless. How are you supposed to live a good life if all you’re doing is sitting behind a desk?”

“Like I said, not everyone has the luxury of living your life. If they want even a little bit of that comfort you enjoy, they have to work very hard for it first.” 

“Then they should at least do something they enjoy. If this department goes down the drain —”

“If this department is abolished,” this is your first time interrupting a superior, and it already makes you want to throw up. “Then people will have a very difficult time finding a job in this market. More than that, a lot of people enjoy working for this company — quite genuinely, in fact. I don’t think it’s right to think that they’ll be happy while they’re jobless and floundering in this economy.”

“So you’re happy like this? You really want this job — this whole working under me situation?” 

“Well…” you trail off, your voice taking on a slightly thoughtful tone. It’s been a relatively long time since you’d entered this job, but you do faintly remember the feeling of excitement at getting this position — the desire to want to learn from the best in this industry, the anticipation of being able to meet and network with interesting and important people. Your first few weeks of work had involved wanting to spend as much time in Vice President Na’s shadow, in case you could pick up some important business tidbits from an entrepreneurial master… until, of course, you realized there wasn’t much you could stand in the shadow of to begin with. “These days, it isn’t ideal. But this job is a really good thing for most of the people who work here.”

“Then it sounds like you have more to gain from me working hard than I do.” 

You can’t contain your disapproving frown, and your voice comes out a little sharper than you intend. “Doesn’t it bother you at all, sir? Knowing almost twenty people could lose their jobs in the blink of an eye? Think about all the people who look up to you and rely on you — they’ll have to suffer because of this. They might never find a job that matches their needs, and a lot of them have families to take care of, too. If you can do something to make sure they have these good lives you keep talking about, why not do it? I know you’re capable of that. You’re capable of doing much more than what you’ve been doing thus far.” 

Vice President Na is quiet for a moment before leans over on his desk, lacing his fingers into a loose combined fist and putting his weight on his forearms. One of his forefingers detangles itself from the pile of digits and curls inwards, beckoning you closer. Your grimace is probably obvious, and you lean in a little warily. He lifts himself off his chair slightly so he can whisper in a low voice, as if you two aren’t the only people in this wide office. 

“If you care about it so much, then ask a little more nicely.” 

Your light breakfast almost makes a reappearance, and you draw back in mild shock. He also leans back, significantly more relaxed than you, looking unperturbed as he settles back against his chair. You two engage in a very uneven staring match, until he gestures for you to proceed, looking expectant. 

“You want me to beg for my job?”

“Not what I meant, but I could accept that,” he hums. “I just think you could throw in a please while you’re guilting your boss, at least.”

Gawking probably doesn’t suit you, but you do it anyway, wondering how you managed to find yourself in this position. This morning, you had been strictly guiding him through what to do, and now you’re paralyzed in front of the Vice President, feeling very foolish for saying so much out of turn. You couldn’t even get through a whole work day before seeing your grand master plan slip down the drain.

But there is, at least, some small comfort in what he said — the part about guilting, which, if you squint hard enough, seems to be implying that this conversation has left him with a small amount of guilt. You don’t think it’s that much, but it’s a miracle he feels it at all, so you take the horribly subtle win and inhale deeply.

“Please, sir.” The words are very thick and reluctant, unsticking from your throat. “This department really needs you.” 

He stares, very unnervingly, without saying anything, but there’s something in his gaze that makes you vaguely certain he’s actually thinking about it. In fact, he actually looks a bit serious, which isn’t anything you’d ever think you’d be able to characterize him by. That impression easily falls apart when he claps his hands, once but very loudly, startling you into jumping a little. 

“Ah, how could I turn down such a nice request?” Vice President Na is grinning from ear to ear, something you’ve never seen him do in the context of the office, much less a few feet away from you. His smile is actually kind of nice, if you don’t think about the fact that it seems to be smug at your expense. “Since you asked, I guess I’ll have to try my best, or whatever it is people do in this damn company. I guess that means you owe me now, Secretary ____________. You’re very welcome.” 

The silence that once again blooms as you stand, motionless, in front of Vice President Na is suddenly interrupted by the sound of chairs scraping back all at once. The floor vibrates a little as the entire department troops out to the elevator area so they can go to lunch. You only watch stupidly as he also stands, shrugging off his jacket and flinging it over the back of his chair. “See you, then.”

“Where are you going, sir?” 

He looks a little surprised that you even ask. “To lunch. Do I have to ask for your permission for that, too?” 

“Are you… coming back?”

“You want to come along with me and make sure I don’t run away?” He smiles even wider, which you didn’t even think was possible. It makes you awkwardly uncomfortable to know he’s taking a lot of pleasure in joking around with you, mostly because you were kind of hoping you’d get him to take things seriously in a serious manner, not in a … whatever this is that’s making you feel like you’ve lost a game manner. 

“A little bit.”

“Ask a little more nicely, then.” 

“Never mind,” you mumble. “Have a good lunch, sir.” 

He snaps his fingers a little comically before turning to the door, flinging it open so he can join the now thinning throng of people leaving the floor. “Thought I almost had you there. Well, if you need me, you know where to find me. Or not.” 

In the end, to your utmost relief, Vice President Na does, in fact, stay inside the entire time he has lunch. You’re not sure if this is the product of you sitting two tables away, trying to will an imaginary chain to his wrist so he doesn’t bolt off or because he’s still feeling a little affected by everything you said earlier on, but whatever it is, it works. He just eats his club sandwich in peace, picking off the crust easily and double dipping the fries that come with it in his ketchup. At some point, he looks up and notices you burning holes into his torso, so you quickly have to avert your eyes in shame. You think he laughs at this, but you can only see out of your peripheral vision at this point, so you can’t be sure. 

You’re supposed to have one hour for lunch, but he eats quickly and gets up before the whole hour is over, so you end up throwing your half-eaten wrap and following him. Again, you’re not sure what’s funny, but he’s chuckling to himself as he holds the elevator door open, waiting for you to run in next to him. 

“Relax, miss secretary. I already said I was going to do my best.”

“No offense, sir, but I don’t know what that looks like, so I have to be careful.”

“Fair enough.” He hums, letting the door close on its own. “But you should still take it easy. You’re pretty t—”

“Tense. You said so yesterday, sir.”

“That’s two times you’ve cut me off in a single day.” He doesn’t sound very annoyed about it; in fact, he’s still got that amused, inside joke tone to everything he’s had all morning. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were gunning for an insubordination report.”

You don’t think that’s fair for him to say, especially since you haven’t really had much of an authority figure to be subordinate to for most of your career in this company, but you keep your mouth shut since saying so is exactly what would be on the first line of an insubordination report. 

When you arrive back at his office, you take the time to discuss what you should be doing from now on. It’s an extremely messy exchange, with you two grappling between terms you can’t agree on. For instance, Vice President Na thinks that it seems only fair that he should really only be coming in after one o’clock, but you’re insistent on making sure he gets to work on time, since most important meetings happen within that time period (a fact he already seems to know but chooses to ignore anyway). You end up agreeing on bringing him in for the standard nine-to-six for as long as he never has to work overtime. You also find it necessary to iron out the fact that if he has lunch outside, he has to actually come back, a statement he once again finds very amusing for some reason, as if you’re the weird one in this conversation. 

And to his credit, he tries to stick to his word. It isn’t exactly a walk in the park, especially not during the first couple of weeks, but you suppose that habits are very difficult to break when they’ve been so easy to acquire and nurture over many years. More than once, you’ve arrived late to meetings to the disapproving gazes of Head Secretary Son and President Na. However, the latter finds he has less to say these days because Vice President Na’s presence in said meetings had, before this time, been nothing but a pipe dream for everyone. 

You also notice he starts taking the time to ask about things he doesn’t understand, as opposed to his initially brash or sometimes completely unresponsive approach, which has turned out better results when it comes to business lunches with investors and potential partners. Even the Samsung people, who are extremely wary of him during the callback meeting, come out of their next encounter with the Vice President looking vaguely more satisfied than they did the last time (the bar isn’t that high, considering they’d left shell-shocked previously, but you’ll still take the improvement).

Of course, with all the time you end up spending with, chasing after, and vaguely lecturing (only when the need truly arises) Vice President Na, you also learn some things about him that you hadn’t expected, like how he doesn’t really like milk in anything he drinks (but especially coffee) and that every third Sunday of the month, he meets his old high school friend Lee Jeno, the son of the guy that owns half the residential high rise condominiums on this side of the Han. Apparently, they play badminton together — he had told you that when he’d caught you wondering about the super out of place little kid’s karate trophy among other more adult, official ones in his living area. The trophy goes to whoever wins the match of the month, and according to the Vice President, he’s been ‘wiping the floor with that bastard’s handsome face for half a year straight.’ Although you can’t verify this by anything more than the slight blanket of dust on it, you think it takes nothing out of your pride to applaud him like this is an amazing thing. It also does you no harm to see him swell with misplaced pride about a kid’s karate trophy. 

You also notice that despite how healthily he eats at the office, he has a bad habit of craving deep fried food in the afternoon, which is why, over the last few weeks, you’ve been accompanying him to the corndog street stall two blocks away, a few days a week. He’s even had to borrow loose change from you a few times to because he always forgets that no street vendor likes to receive crisp, fresh-out-of-the-bank fifty-thousand won bills, but you just let him have it; his heart’s in the right place when he orders an extra one for you without even asking. You realize that he has a fairly good memory for as long as he’s concentrating, and that he likes to spend late nights watching the shittiest horror movies ever known to man (his words, much to your bemusement), and that when he listens attentively to you telling him about the day’s agenda, his left ear twitches a little when your voice hits it. 

Somewhere along the way, you realize that Vice President Na is a charming, outgoing, and fairly capable person, and in doing so, you also realize that he seems to be, for lack of a better word, your style. 

You can’t really believe it either, and you’re not even sure when it started. In between sitting with him in the company car and handing him forty-page agreements he has to look over carefully (very carefully, as you’ve taken to reminding him, so often that he starts saying it before you do now, which has only somehow endeared him further to you and not annoyed you the way you were sort of hoping it would), the small non-work related part of your consciousness had decided that it needed a more complicated situation now that things were going relatively well.

To be fair to yourself, liking him isn’t a huge distraction; most of the time, you’re both so engrossed in something you desperately have to finish that you don’t even have time to think about it. Instead, it kind of catches you off-guard, like when he’s double dipping his french fries into his ketchup, or when he smiles at you (politely to him, probably, but overwhelmingly charmingly to you) before he leaves the office, or when his brow’s furrowed in (a total shocker) concentration as he reads. 

Then again, everything about Vice President Na seems to be catching you off-guard these days. This much is proven by the fact that instead of the normal silence that you’ve grown accustomed to being greeted by when you enter his house, there’s a lot of noise coming from one area that can only mean either that someone had broken in to mug him or for some reason, he’s up before you need to wake him. 

It’s nothing you have to call 911 for, but it still paralyzes you to see him, surrounded by opened jars and a particularly dirty bread knife as he stands in front of his fancy toaster, drumming his fingers on the counter impatiently. 

“If you have a minute to spare, could you bring my laptop into the car?” He asks without turning around. His hand, still holding the bread knife, points towards the bar counter on the far end of the kitchen, where the laptop is still whirring away. 

“Of course, sir. Um,” you gingerly shut the monitor, putting the laptop to sleep and tucking it under your arm. “Were you… working this morning?”

“No, I was playing a riveting game of bridge against the computer AI.” He turns to you, grinning. “Of course I was working, miss secretary. What do you think I’d be up this early for?” 

You try to think of an answer, but nothing comes to mind — Vice President Na hasn’t ever woken up early for anything to your knowledge, anyway — so you just nod and bolt, unwilling to bear witness to his smile this early in the day. When you come back, particularly less red in the face, you find him topping one of two sandwiches with the last slice of bread to complete it. He takes one, as you expect he would, and you stand there, trying to look polite as you essentially observe him eat.

This isn’t something very unusual; ever since the first time you’d done it, you’ve been watching him out of habit. So far, only the motivation’s changed from you wanting to make sure he doesn’t bolt to you simply enjoying the view of his profile when he eats. Of course, he probably doesn’t know this, but he’s also just gotten used to you watching him and probably finds it funny — as suggested by his perpetually amused expression — that you still think, after all this time, that he’s going to make a run for it. You don’t actually mind it; you get to watch him for free, and he has something to laugh about, so everyone kind of wins. 

He’s halfway through the sandwich when his expression turns quizzical. “Aren’t you going to eat?”

“Eat,” you echo hollowly. “Eat what, sir?”

“A delicious, handmade, gourmet peanut butter and strawberry jelly sandwich.” When you don’t move, he pushes the plate with the untouched sandwich forward towards you like he thinks you can’t understand anything he’s saying. “What? Are you allergic to something?”

“No, but…”

“But?”

There’s no but; you don’t have a good reason to decline other than the fact that accepting it feels weird, but refusing him when he’s looking at you this expectantly is just as awkward. You rub the back of your neck as you walk over, not missing the look of triumph that crosses his face as you pick up the sandwich and take a bite. It’s good, but you don’t really think that has anything to do with his culinary skills, based on what it is; still, he looks like he’s patting himself on the back for this feat. 

“Thank you, sir.”

“Secretary ____________, I hope you can count this as a momentous occasion for the both of us.” He chuckles. “You get free breakfast made especially for you by your direct superior in the comfort of his own home, and I finally get to learn what all the settings on my toaster are for. Between you and me, I think mine’s the better achievement.” 

You’re still in the middle of eating when you laugh, and you hastily raise a hand to cover it — only Vice President Na catches your wrist halfway through, so quickly you vaguely choke on the bread that’s only partially down your throat.

“I’ve never seen you laugh,” he looks as surprised as you feel, although probably for a different reason. “I don’t even think you’ve ever smiled at me, specifically.”

“Oh.” You need time to respond, mostly so you can swallow but also because you need to collect yourself from your shock. There seems to be a lot of that going around this morning. “Sorry. Should I do that more often?”

“I mean, if you ask like that, it’s kind of disingenuous,” he laughs. “But I like it. I like knowing you’re not just in a constant state of stress because of me. Feels even more momentous than the toaster thing.” 

He loosens his hold, and you manage to take your hand back, now refusing to meet his eye. “I’m not… stressed by you.”

“Not anymore.”

“Not anymore,” you agree, and he looks particularly delighted when he sees the corners of your lips turn up again. “Not for a while. And not that my opinion matters, but you’ve been performing above expectations, sir.”

“You’re right,” he hums, taking the plate and putting it in the sink — a problem he seems to be saving for later. “It doesn't matter. But I like it, all the same.”

You’re willing to chalk the morning off as a wonderful anomaly, especially since the rest of it passes as it normally does, with a generally quiet car ride (you’ve also learned that Vice President Na likes to listen to rap music on days when he wants to avoid falling asleep in the backseat, which is equal parts amazing and amusing) and a fifteen minute briefing of what he has on his plate today. He disappears for the better part of the morning and even the whole lunch hour, but you expect this because he has a business lunch with the representatives for some Norwegian appliance company that’s looking to break into the Korean market. You can’t imagine many people want a state of the art rice cooker alongside their monthly internet bill, but it’s polite for him to go anyway, and the prospective partner seems very on edge about company secrets. It’s one of those meetings you aren’t allowed to come along to, which means that you’re missing out on a few hours of Vice President Na trying to iron details out with a couple of old guys. 

While you eat, you’re once again struck with the random notion that it feels weird not to be around the Vice President. You’ve been working together regularly and in a very close capacity, which basically means that you’re always in his shadow. It’s the life you were kind of hoping to have at the beginning and were deprived of for a good two years. Now that you have it, it feels weirdly natural — so natural that it’s unnatural to not have his voice ordering you around in that easy tone or his aftershave lingering in the air directly above you. 

You throw the tissue you used to wipe the oil from your egg toast off your mouth onto the table, crumpled and wilted. 

You miss him, which is ridiculous considering you don’t even know what there is to miss. Your relationship, while admittedly lightyears ahead of the starting point it had been at back then (again, not a great standard, considering you didn’t even have a relationship before this period of time), is nothing close to the point of being what it should be for one to miss the other. 

And yet, you look forward to seeing him, watching him do something from afar, helping him whenever he needs you. You like the fact that he still sometimes fakes left when you’re accompanying him back to his office, and you do this thing where you pretend to be annoyed even though it makes you happy to know he won’t go anywhere. You like the little sounds he makes when he eats his super unhealthy corndog as if he’s eating it for the first time every single time (see: very unnerving and slightly disturbing but altogether amusing mmmmmmmmmms). In fact, if you didn’t have a vivid memory of telling him off from way back then, you feel like you could easily convince yourself that things had always been like this — that you two had always been together, happily at work. 

You’re not surprised that he isn’t back from his meeting even when you get back to your desk after lunch, but you do feel a pang of dejectedness that lasts for a few more hours — time which you spend lazily looking over a contract he’d signed yesterday that needs a fair amount of amending and re-signing. It’s hard to pretend to care today, for some reason, especially since your mind keeps going back to peanut butter sandwiches and some ridiculous vision of Vice President Na standing in the middle of your tiny studio apartment’s kitchen area. 

Your reverie’s broken when an envelope falls onto your desk, covering the page of the contract you’d been glassily staring at for the last hour and a half. You’d drawn the same circle about twenty times already, and the paper’s all dented from your efforts. When you look up, Vice President Na is staring down at you, grinning from ear to ear. 

“Miss me?” He drums the envelope, the paper muffling the noise of it all. “Oh? I was joking, but it looks like you actually did. That’s twice in a single day, Secretary ____________. You’re setting a very high record.”

You try to tamp down the smile on your face upon seeing him, clearing your throat so that you have an excuse to press your lips together. You guess it doesn’t work because he just keeps smiling, anyway, or maybe he’s just in a really good mood. “Did your meeting go well, sir?” 

“Is Lotteria the national fastfood chain? Too bad I don’t work for anyone because it kind of feels like I deserve some kind of reward.”

“Could we say that this partnership is its own reward?” 

“It doesn’t have the same ring to it,” he sighs. Once again, his forefinger taps the envelope, calling your attention a little more clearly to it. “I know we’re on a tight schedule for this, and I hate to ask this so late of you, but —”

“Of course, sir; I’ll have it in your hands first thing tomorrow.” 

You’re already gathering it up along with your other (vaguely unfinished) paperwork when his whole palm comes down, trapping the envelope and everything else you’d been intending to carry under it. Your hands go up like you’re being held at gunpoint, your eyes wide. 

“On second thought,” Vice President Na muses, a little too serene for someone who’d just scared the living daylights out of someone else. “How about I take care of the Samsung deal you’re looking over, and you can handle the Norwegian contract?”

“I haven’t… really made a lot of headway with it, if I’m being honest.” You’re hoping he doesn’t ask you why because you’re too embarrassed to come up with a lie on the spot and will inevitably have to confess your random attraction to him under these terrible circumstances if he does. Luckily, he just shrugs.

“All the more reason to split the work, then.”

The still mildly stern part of you is begging to point out that he’s giving you a whole new set of documents to look over anyway, so it’s not even like you’ll have less to do, but the larger, more endeared part of you tells it to shut up and mind its own business. “I thought the crux of our agreement was that you’d never have to work overtime.”

“Because I look like such a stickler for the rules, don’t I?” He snorts, waving you in with the same envelope, and you concede.

Working next to Vice President Na isn’t anything new to you; you’ve been doing it everyday for a while now, especially if he needs you to be quick on call. Ever since you’ve realized his presence makes your heart beat a little faster, you’ve promised yourself not to let that fact show at all when he’s around, something you’ve been quite careful about perfecting. 

Something’s different, though, when it’s after official hours. Maybe it’s because the floor is quieter than it is during the day, so there’s nothing you can listen to but the sound of pen scratching on paper and Vice President Na’s steady breathing. The only real interruption is when Hyunsung knocks on the door to ask if the Vice President is going home; the look on his face is panicked and confused, like a puppy that’s just been dropped off at the mouth of a dumpster site, when he’s told that Vice President Na will drive himself home, so he can just leave the keys. 

Maybe it’s also because it’s pretty dark outside, and while you’ve worked into the night a few times, it’s usually alone or with some other poor sap that has even more backlog than you do — it’s never been just you and the Vice President, who seems supremely unperturbed by the fact that he isn’t at home doing… whatever he does at home after work. You can only guess at it (or wish you knew). 

That makes one of you that’s keeping busy, although you know it should be two. The fact that you’re distracted by his presence all of a sudden is only exacerbated by the mutually exclusive headache that the paperwork you’re looking over gives you. You don’t know why you had expected it to be in Korean, but you and your intermediate level English struggle to keep up with all the little things you have to look through. Sometimes, you can’t tell if the clauses are actually confusing or if you’re just the poor product of your middle school education. It strikes you more than once that Vice President Na had gone through this, somehow, himself — talked to people in a completely different language, probably with ease. You can at least be proud of yourself for being right: for as long as the Vice President puts his mind to something, he’s able to do it — perhaps even well. 

What shocks you after an eternity of silence is the hand that extends towards you, forefinger lightly nudging your chin. You sit up straight like a bolt of lighting had gone through you, meeting Vice President Na’s thoroughly and inexplicably amused expression. Your jaw slackens in shock, but his finger just stays there, like it isn’t invading your personal space. Like it just belongs there.

“What are you doing?”

“What—” you splutter, bemused at the fact that you hadn’t asked the question first. “What are you doing?”

“You keep moving your mouth. What — are you praying or something?”

“No, I —-” You gesture at the contract page you’ve been trying to stumble through for the past twenty minutes. “No, I’m just… I’m reading?”

“You’re…” The start of a laugh escapes him, and you really don’t know what’s so funny. “You’re reading aloud?”

“I wasn’t making any noise, I think,” you grumble, sounding a little more defensive than you’d care to admit. 

“You read silently aloud, then.” His eyes twinkle at this information, although why it should elicit this reaction also completely escapes you. “Why? Because it helps you memorize it or something?”

“My English isn’t that great,” you admit begrudgingly, suddenly feeling a little exposed. “Sometimes I need to mouth the words to understand it.”

And he does the most outrageous, inexplicable thing: he gently cups your chin, making sure you can’t turn your head to look away in embarrassment. Now you have to look at him, red in the face and close to exploding. 

“Don’t you think that’s a little too much, miss secretary?”

You can’t ask what; your voice isn’t working. You just open and close your mouth around the syllable, and after a couple of attempts, he starts copying you, evidently having a better time than you are based on the grin stretched across his face.

“What? What? That you’re doing something this cute in front of me is what I mean. You’re obviously going overboard, and I don’t think it’s very nice.”

He retracts his hand as quickly as he’d used it to close the distance between you, and your hand immediately comes up in its place, almost cupping your jaw like he did. It definitely doesn’t give you the same tingly feeling, so that’s an obvious bust.

You and Vice President Na have a sudden staring contest with amended rules: you blink a hundred times a minute at him while he laughs quietly, leaning back on his chair like he doesn’t have a care in the world. It confuses you and kind of enrages you, but you also find your heart thumping away in your ears like it’s trying very hard to remind you that Na Jaemin makes you feel alive. 

“I— I just—”

“Coffee? I could use some coffee. You look like you could use some too.” He stands, buttoning his blazer with one hand like he has someplace important to go. You’re still so shell-shocked that you don’t even try to stand up to help him, a fact which he notices very clearly. “Oh no, I’ll do you this favor. You sit tight and read your contract. I’ll be back. Keep doing that cute thing with your mouth.” 

Vice President Na finds you exactly as he left you: still wondering if you should be offended at his teasing or enamored by his touch and, more importantly, what the hell his deal is. You have a million questions that need answering, but the only thing you blubber out when he comes back is “Why?” 

“Because you’re amazingly fun to tease,” he responds simply. “And because it’s true. I find it extremely cute. I find you very cute, Secretary _____________, in a kind of good girl, cool girl kind of way. It’s a little confusing to me too, but I think this slightly stern but overall gentle aesthetic of yours is actually growing on me a little.”

“Sir, I—”

“While we’re taking a break,” he interrupts you. You guess it’s probably the right time for a break considering there’s no way you can work in peace now. “Do you constantly have to call me that?” 

“What else would I call you?”

“My name,” he suggests, taking a sip of coffee. You ignore the shit, that’s hot that comes out of him as he puts the paper cup down gingerly on his desk, looking a little bit betrayed by his drink. “Jaemin. Many people call me that.”

“People who are close to you, you mean. Like your family or… your friends.”

“Are you saying you don’t think we’re close? Or that we aren’t friends?”

“Sir, I work for you.” 

“So by that alone, we simply can’t be friends? Et al?I think you really are being too much now, Secretary ____________.” He folds his arms across his chest, tutting disapprovingly as he leans back on the edge of his desk. You try not to think too hard about the fact that he does it very close to you, at an angle optimal for viewing the leanness of his form. “After all those times you broke into my house—”

“To get you ready for work.”

“— walked into my bedroom—”

“Only whenever necessary—”

“— gone through my things while I’m half naked in bed like you’re trying to organize a charity drive—”

“Because you need to get dressed, not because I have some perverted agenda —”

“—eaten the food off my kitchen counter, too—”

“You told me to!” You get to your feet, the contract slipping from your lap in your enthusiasm to defend yourself. “You offered it to me!”

Whatever happens next is completely out of your control, and you know this because the room spins without you moving by your own will. Vice President Na must have been an expert dancer in his past life, or something, because after that one dizzying moment, you find yourself leaning against the edge of the table he had been just a second ago. Warm hands are on your waist, tucked under your cardigan, the heat bleeding through your shirt. 

And the Vice President’s smile is inches away from your face, still mischievous but much gentler than any other time before. 

You’re not sure if you’re paralyzed or if you just don’t want to move, but the reason doesn’t affect the outcome: all you can do is stare up at him, once again dumbfounded after a small outpouring of words that ends in some kind of forced defeat. Except this particular surrender doesn’t feel so sore, for some reason. 

“Even when you’re angry, you’re still pretty, you know that?”

“I wasn’t… angry,” you mumble under your breath, afraid that talking louder will scare him off. You don’t even think he’s listening all that much to you, considering that all he does is tuck your hair behind your left ear and completely change the topic. 

“So, tell me, Secretary ____________. Is this still a situation where we’re not close at all?” He pauses for a moment, probably to let you answer, but you don’t say anything. You’re pretty sure your swallowing nervously is the only true sound you make. He seems to be eager to do a lot of the talking anyway, which is absolutely fine by you. “Or have I completely misread all your cute little signals?”

“Well — no, but I didn’t send any signals.” Obvious ones, at least. You’d been pretty sure you had tried to keep it under wraps as much as possible, but you’re starting to realize it’s a little possible you’re not as great at pretending as you think you are. 

“Not on purpose, probably. Although you really almost got me with the one-man show vibe you have during lunch hour.”

“I… didn’t think you knew, if I’m being honest.” Honesty is the only thing you have right now, anyway, especially since Vice President Na has pretty much confirmed, in his own way, that he knows about how you feel. Now you can only wonder if he’d noticed before you even came to terms with it yourself, and the thought of that being a real possibility urges you to grab the still-steaming cup of coffee and douse yourself with its contents. 

“For a while, I was pretty sure you were messing with me. I would never,” he adds just as you say it too, mimicking your astounded tone up to the lilt. “Which is why I started thinking about why else you might be looking at me so intently. You weren’t sitting there objectifying me, were you, miss secretary?”

“Sir, I would never,” you repeat, and he mouths the same words again in his amusement, although silently this time. 

“I think I would have been okay with it if you were. Or would be, even until now. For the record.” 

“I wasn’t.” 

“You sure? No shame in it. Totally fine. Not sure about anyone else, but I’m totally okay if someone else thinks I’m eye candy in the privacy of their own minds. I am, I think, a fine specimen of a human, if I do say so myself.”

“I really wasn’t, sir.”

“You should have, then. Lost opportunities.”” 

“I could argue that I was just worried you’d leave and not come back.”

“You know I wouldn’t do that to you,” he hums. “Not anymore, anyway.” 

The ‘to you’ is what stumps you into another silent spell, but this time, Vice President Na doesn’t attempt to fill in the void. He just starts running his eyes over your face, like he’s trying to read something there or maybe memorize your features, or something. At some point, you start thinking about how this kind of silence isn’t exactly uncomfortable, contrary to your expectations and with interesting consideration of the fact that he’s still holding your hips. Apart from the idle skimming of his thumb over the curve of your pelvic bone, he doesn’t move — nearer or closer, which is probably for the best since you don’t know which one you really want more at this point.

Again, when you gather some part of your wits, the only thing you still know how to ask is “Why?”

“Because,” he replies immediately, simply, like the answer has always been very clear and you’ve just been too ignorant to figure it out. “You said that I could, not that I had to.” 

It’s hot. Isn’t it hot? You don’t know what he’s talking about, but your body already reacts on principle, and you have to stand-half-lean there with your entire face burning and Vice President Na’s body heat washing over yours like an electric blanket.

“I don’t know what that means, sir.”

“It means I didn’t do this for my dad or just because you told me off in the comfort of my own office.” He bites down on his lower lip to keep himself from laughing (yet again) at you as he witnesses, from the best seat in the house, your face turning almost purple with the effort of keeping down your embarrassment. “Although that played a bit of a factor in it. I couldn’t tell if it was rude of you to say so much or kind of cute that you did despite knowing you were being rude. But that’s besides the point.”

Good, you think. If he manages to hit you with another cute in this timeframe, you may easily cease to exist. 

“You know firsthand, anyway, what my dad always says. You must take on the responsibility you were born with. You have to do your job. You must remember that you owe your life to my achievements.” He mimics his father’s gruff, booming voice amusingly well, to the point that you can’t stop yourself from laughing. His facade breaks easily, and you think you hear him mumble cute under his breath again, although you choose to ignore it so your knees don’t buckle completely (something that you think would be very embarrassing with you so close to him). “I don’t think he’s ever once said an encouraging word to my face. And if there’s anything I can confidently say I won’t do, it’s doing what people only say I need to do. It’s my life, you know what I mean? I’ll do what I want.” 

“You’re saying you suddenly wanted to work because I said you could?” 

“More like I wanted to see if you were right.” He muses. “I was pretty sure I didn’t have the personality for it. Or the attention span. Or the skill, either.”

“I think a couple of those things are still up in the air, sir.”

“One compliment and you’re already gunning for another insubordination report.” Vice President Na’s voice is a low, casual hum, but you notice the grip around your waist tightens for a brief moment. “At first, I figured I’d just show up to get everyone off my back, but I realized along the way that I’m pretty good at this being at the helm business. I’m sure you’ll agree. Hopefully because you want to, not because you also have to.”

“I do agree.” Your reply is wholehearted, and the Vice President’s smile widens. Your chest swells so much that you think you might explode right in front of him. “Because I want to.”

“Please don’t misunderstand me, miss secretary. I’m not attributing all my successes to your impulsive words.” He teases, although his eyes stay gentle despite his tone. “The efforts were still all mine. However, I’m not too proud to admit I had a very responsible first mate by my side, for whom I am very grateful. Although I hope this doesn’t mean she’ll pluck up the courage to ask for a raise considering how well I pay her. I think. Does she get paid well? Maybe I should ask Park Jinhee from accounting.” 

“She won’t,” you laugh softly, not missing the fact that he’s finally learned her name. “And she’s not really doing this for the salary, even if it is a nice bonus.” 

“What’s she doing it for, then?” 

As a job, this was really mostly about yourself — or it was, in the beginning. You’d terrorized Vice President Na to some degree because of the innate tendency towards self-preservation, and when that felt a little one-sided, you also considered everyone who might lose their jobs if the department got cut. It had been, for the most part, an act of pure desperation, so strong that you were willing to point fingers and raise your voice (only a few decibels, because you’re not a crazy person) at your boss. Now… that wasn’t really part of the equation. Maybe you had gotten used to the fact that the Vice President wouldn’t be going anywhere, so you’d stopped worrying about your and everyone else’s jobs, which all seem to be on a smooth path alongside the captain of the ship.

But if you had to be honest to yourself, part of the reason you’d grown a bit complacent about thinking about the fate of the department also had to do with the fact that you genuinely enjoyed being next to the Vice President. Mornings spent helping him prepare for work were regular highlights in your week, and the looks of approval you received from him every time you helped him finish a particularly difficult task were second to none. Always being close to him, always being the first and last to see him in the day, simply being able to look at him -– silly as that all sounds, they now play an undeniable factor in your desire to wake up and go to the office every single day. 

“I did it for you.” You answer, and because the answer’s honest, it feels completely natural to say. A pause slowly lengthens between you two, though not nearly as tense or borderline uncomfortable as you thought it might be this time around. A slow smile stretches over the Vice President’s face, but his words don’t easily take the straightforward route this time, either.

“Should I take up with the human resources department the fact that you’re outright breaching the terms of our contractual workplace relationship? How am I?” He speaks over, with you again, your voices overlapping. You can’t help it — you laugh at the absurdity of how well he’s come to know your responses, from the word choice to the lilt in your voice that signals some level of affront. When, exactly, did Vice President Na start committing the things you said and did into memory? “You’re seducing me, miss secretary. Before you say you’re not — you are. You are, without even knowing it. You’re winning me over, telling me all these sweet nothings to tickle my heart — I believe in you, Jaemin. I love working with you, Jaemin. I did it all for you, Jaemin, because you’re obviously the best in the whole world, ho ho ho.”

“I never said it like that.” 

“You might as well have.” 

“Should I stop believing in you so that we can avoid a scene, then, or is the damage to your good standing too far gone?”

“Rather than stopping something already in full motion, I think it might be better to make certain amendments to our current agreement.” Vice President Na reaches for the pen tucked into his breast pocket — the gold clip catches the fluorescent light and momentarily blinds you as he brings it up between you. He brings it to one side, then to another, and your eyes follow it, amused but also admittedly a bit hypnotized.

“What kind of trance are you putting me under, sir?”

“The kind that gets you to stop calling me that,” he chuckles. “Among other, more important things on my agenda.” 

You have an excellent view of Vice President Na’s stellar smile from the back of the meeting room. 

The deal he closes three days later goes even better than expected; not only does he bring Amazon into the fold after weeks of (surprisingly consistent) hard work and no small amount of beguiling charm (owing to the fact that he’d offended said Amazon representatives earlier on in his still relatively short-lived career), but he also manages to snag Samsung Electronics’ participation. As an already existing subscriber to the company-provided phone plan, you’re pleased to find out that you’re entitled to twelve guilt-free months of Prime Video as part of a new promotional deal, which you can now enjoy on nights you aren’t working overtime — something you’ve racked up more of as you’ve found yourself striking more of a work-life balance, thanks in large part to the Vice President’s steadily active involvement in all things on the ‘work’ aspect of the scale. Your first goal is to finally get past the first episode of an animation everyone in the department is raving about (but that you haven’t seen more than five minutes of, in actuality, because the horrible subtitles and sluggish 144px stop motion-esque have, until recently, adamantly deterred you from enjoying anything about the story).

Standing a fair distance away from the executives, you wait for the flurry of handshakes and accompanying congratulatory statements to die down; it takes quite a while, considering the sheer volume of people, and the thickest throng has come to gather around Vice President Na. At one point, all you can see of him is the slightly unruly lick of hair that’s sticking out above the rest of the considerable crowd of balding men around him (the sole crow’s feather a mountain range of gray). All their voices overlap, and you’re only able to catch key phrases — brilliant young mind… knack for business! … just like the President… bright future ahead, you know? 

Fifteen minutes of conversation and bellowing guffaws pass before Vice President Na emerges, adjusting the front of his blazer as a result of too much handshaking. Behind him, still speaking to one of the  marketing executives, is President Na, who shoots his son a surreptitious look you’ve never seen him wear in your considerable number of years in the company’s employ  — one of triumph and pride. The Vice President, however, is intently loosening his tie and scanning the room, stretching himself just a fraction taller above everyone else to get a better view throughout. 

You wait, wondering if he’s looking to speak to someone, lost in that host of black and gray suits — the Amazon media director, perhaps, or the in-house designer that also seems to be trying to catch his eye, for some reason (you sense the needy greed for a sudden promotion that seems highly unlikely in such a setting), but even though his vision passes over them, however briefly, Vice President Na doesn’t seem satisfied.

That is, until his eyes land on the corner of the room you and Secretary Son have backed yourselves into to allow the higher-ups room to mingle. 

One beat later, and the corners of his mouth are pulled up — a soft, knowing smile directed in your general direction. You glance at Secretary Son, maybe out of instinct, maybe somehow out of panic — as though you worry she’ll somehow come to chastise you, but she’s too busy trying to re-buckle her thin coat belt with rapid-fire tsks. She seems acceptably preoccupied, so your eyes flit back to the Vice President, whose eyebrows are now slightly raised, the telltale signs of a growing grin now playing on his lips as the front of his teeth begin to peek out from the seam. Another cock of his eyebrows, lifting them higher, tells you he’s waiting for some kind of message — an indication that you see him too, maybe, or… perhaps, oddly, any sign that you’re as proud of him as everyone else in the room is. 

You can’t help it  — you laugh, louder than you’d have originally liked to, a hand coming up over your mouth as Secretary Son’s head snaps up from her waist, bamboozled at your quick but sudden outburst. She throws you a look that suggests she firmly believes your mind has snapped, quite like a stale breadstick in a derelict Italian restaurant, but it’s worth it; Vice President Na looks satisfied at this — though, why he would be, you haven’t a true clue. 

As the managers and members of the board file out of the room, both you and Secretary Son inch closer to your respective direct superiors; you both stand a few steps away as the last of the executives drag their feet, still hoping to share one last handshake with either of the two, until an elderly Mrs. Kwon’s surprisingly firm grip is finally shaken off by a sheepish President Na. He turns to his son, who’s still hosting the remnants of a genial smile on his lips, clearly poised to say something. For some reason, you expect the senior to berate the former, simply out of sheer habit, but he does nothing of the sort. 

“Jaemin-ah,” his voice is gruff but not at all begrudging; it’s a low rumble of triumph. “Who’d’ve thought? My boy… you brat…”

“Don’t tell me you’re getting sentimental now, dad,” the Vice President teases, to which the President chortles heartily. 

“Old men like me have the right, much more than anyone else.” You’ve never seen the President wear an expression even remotely close to softness, but you see it in his gaze now; it strikes you, then, that although you’ve always known the two to be related, this is the first time you can confidently say they resemble each other to the cores of their being — a view of happiness, somewhat mirrored in each of them. “I’m proud of you, son. You did everything I hoped you would — no, no… more than that, even.” 

“I’ll take most of the praise, thanks,” Vice President Na replies with his characteristic cheek. For a moment, so quickly you think you may have missed it, his eyes flicker to you. “But I can’t say I could’ve done it alone.” 

“Punk,” President Na snorts, yanking on his son’s earlobe; you and Secretary Son have to avert your eyes with expert speed to avoid being caught snickering at the slightly juvenile “ow, dammit,” that the Vice President groans out. “One big closed deal, and your head’s this big? I better not catch you floating away to a Las Vegas casino after all this.” 

“Give me some credit; I’d at least visit the desert first.” This time, when the Vice President glances at you, his father’s head turns too, and you stand up straighter at the unprecedented onslaught of attention. “Besides, I’ve got someone here to keep me anchored now.”

“Good work, Secretary ____________,” President Na offers you a rare smile that truly has you feeling like the world has turned upside down: the President in an agreeable (almost ecstatic, though you’d never say that out loud) mood, the Vice President doing his job not just in general but actually commendably well, and not a single strand of baby hair sticking up from out of your ponytail. Inconceivable. 

You bow, murmuring a thank you, and Secretary Son quickly follows suit for the formality of it all before she strides over to the President, who’s leaving his son with one last thunder-like clap on the back before he’s leaving the meeting room, still jovial when he catches up with the suspiciously lagging figure of Mrs. Kwon by the door. 

Vice President Na starts to follow suit, walking towards the other end of the meeting room; you quickly scurry behind him, still clutching your tablet, blinking a low battery warning, to your chest. You’ve come to grow accustomed to the ‘secretary’s pace’ over the last few weeks as well — always close enough to help, never too close enough to step on a superior’s toes.

But in the moment you fumble to silence your device, you end up stepping into someone’s shadow; glancing up at the Vice President, you find yourself looking at not the familiar view of his back but that of his side profile (one you’re actually also familiar with, though you refuse to admit to the level of familiarity). He’s slowed his pace considerably, allowing you to naturally fall into step with him, and even this, he expects a response from you somehow — he asks for it with yet another wiggle of his eyebrows. You laugh again, shaking your head, and yet, inexplicably, it seems to be exactly the reaction he hopes to see.

The department floor erupts into applause when the two of you pass through the glass doors; a flash of mollification crosses the Vice President’s features before he’s back to his signature light humor, raising a palm up in receipt of praise. Park Jinhee is clapping with only her left hand smacking the side of her mug, a few drops of coffee streaming down the handle side on impact. One of the team managers rushes forward, eager to shake Vice President Na’s hand, and, riding his high, also yours, pumping it up and down with so much vigor that you mumble a quiet ow behind a strained smile. Only the Vice President’s hand on your shoulder, steering you away, saves you from what feels like possible dislocation. 

He’s still waving at them like this is a pageant and not his day job, even as he guides you towards his office door; you have to use your elbows to push it open and effectively help you both avoid ramming into frosted glass. The applause dies down as your somewhat conjoined figures disappear through the doorway — you first, albeit convolutedly, your heel still holding strong in the job of keeping the door wide open enough for Vice President Na to saunter through before you let it swing shut to a now relatively silent office floor. 

His hold on your shoulder doesn’t let up, though; it’s still urging you forward, towards his desk, and you open your mouth to say something along the lines of I’m gonna break my hip if we keep going this way, but just as your throat conjures up the first syllable, he turns you around, letting you rest light against the edge of the table. 

In a pattern reminiscent of three days prior, Vice President Na’s hand finds its way to your waist, utterly comfortable in a way that mystifies you; he acts like it belongs there, as natural as the smile that’s still playing on his lips. 

“Sir, you realize it’s the middle of the day?” 

“You realize that we had a deal,” he corrects you, brow furrowing in feigned sternness. “Hold up your end of it, miss secretary.” 

“Only if you stop calling me that.” 

“Now, that absolutely was not part of the contract.” 

When you laugh this time, he chimes in; there’s a harmony in your voices that has your posture softening. You feel airier, your heart much lighter, and when you look up at him, you can’t help but flush at his expectant gaze. 

“You realize it’s the middle of the day,” you repeat, carefully, the words suddenly somewhat unfamiliar on your tongue — the next two syllables, most of all. “Jae… min.” 

Odd as it is, you’re rewarded with the pleased look that takes over his features; he takes a moment to exaggeratedly revel in this new occurrence. 

“Better. Much better. You could still be a bit more comfortable with it, I’d say, but… baby steps?” 

“Please re-prioritize your day, si— Jaemin.” The terse tone you’re going for is brutally marred by your blunder, which has his shoulders shaking from laughter. “Someone could very easily walk in.” 

“Who’s going to fire me?”

“I can think of one person.”

“You heard him. I’m proud of you, Jaemin. You’ve completely exceeded my expectations, Jaemin. You are the light of my life — my favorite son, Jaemin, ho, ho, ho.”

“Sir,” you sigh. “You’re his only son.”

“We had a deal,” he repeats, letting the return to habits slide, and there’s a laughably childish air to his words. “I’ll… file an insubordination report. Breach of contract as well. Tsk, tsk, miss secretary. Not on such a momentous occasion.” 

“Some might classify this as threatening behavior.” Your eyes are soft, though, when they meet his humored gaze. “If you want a reward… ask a little more nicely.”

A soft snort — his fingers dig lightly into your waist, and the next second, he’s lifting you off your feet and settling you lightly atop his desk. his palms never leave you, even after you’ve been placed; they’re increasingly warm beyond the fabric of your top. 

“____________,” he murmurs, saying your name so naturally that you could almost believe he’s referred to you as nothing else for as long as you’ve known him. “Kiss me.” 

Your own hands find their way behind his neck, but he does most of the work in closing the gap anyway; you’re not even sure who, between the two of you, gave that first sigh of longing, of relief. Perhaps it was both of you, all at once. 

Jaemin still tastes like the coffee you’d given him this morning — not a trace of richness, but a bittersweet and earthy twang that’s signature post-Americano. There’s even a hint of mintiness from the nervous handful of Tic Tacs he’d had just before the meeting started; you find that out the moment his tongue swipes against yours, leaving behind the invisible bite of menthol. And then there’s you, a clean taste that settles against his teeth, subtle first but growing stronger until you’re satisfied with the notion that you may linger there for some time — even after you pull away, slightly breathless.

“Congratulations to me,” he breathes out, trademark grin flashing bright again. “So what happens if I close next month’s Disney Plus deal?”

He doesn’t wait for an answer; his hand’s already skimming down, over your hips, following the path of your thigh. Your hand reaches out on instinct to stop him, but he’s oddly more aware of his surroundings than you give him credit for (or maybe, you’re just that predictable to him). He meets your palm, fingers lacing into yours and allowing him to lift your wrist to his lips. There, you feel the warmth of his kiss again, and he uses his hold to bring himself even closer, until he’s able to press his face into your neck. 

“Sir—”

“Jaemin. You call me Jaemin from now on, remember?”

“Sir.” You’re adamant. “It’s work hours.”

“You’re not tense.” 

He doesn’t move his head; in fact, you feel him burying his face further into your shoulder. In this position, there’s no real way for you to pull away — there’s also no real desire for you to do so, anyway. 

“No, I’m not.”

“Good.” Warmth again on your skin — his lips leave an invisible mark just above your collarbone. “I like you best like this.”

“What? Not tense?”

“Happy,” he corrects for accuracy. “Happy that you’re with me.” 

You fall silent, not because you’re not sure of what to say, but because you don’t need to tell him that he’s right. 

Moments later, his fingers find their way into your ponytail; the index hooks into the elastic, bringing your hair down. You feel his shoulders rise and fall with a deep breath, he’s inhaling your perfume again. 

“Green tea. Something floral. Jasmine? Maybe a little bit of citrus.” He lifts his head but stays close, warm breath washing over you. “It’s so you. Fresh. Pure. Beautiful.” 

The gap between the two of you doesn’t last for too long thereafter; he kisses you again, and your heart lifts to find that your taste still lingers somewhere there. It’s longer because it’s slower — less playful and more exploratory, until he pulls away to a much more breathless you. How he finds the air to talk even after is miraculous to you. 

“Be mine, miss secretary.” 

You blink — once, twice, at his serious expression, wondering if it will break and give way to more humor. But he waits, unwavering, until the last piece of resistance you’ve clung onto is washed away — the last thing that made you, for a second, deny that you were in love with him. 

His smile slowly mirrors yours as it grows. 

“Like you could ever get rid of me, Na Jaemin.” 

[olderthannetfic]

This is a stupid question and might be too personal but I wonder if you or others have thoughts on this. Is it generally hard to combine having a job, children and continuing to be bit of a "weird nerd"? How to find rolemodels and people to vibe with and is there time for fixating on the things (obviously staying up reading fanfic until 3am before morning shifts or painting warcraft miniatures 60+ hours per week is probably not advisable anymore but you know). Is the difference actually like night and day or what is it like?

--

A huge, huge, huge amount depends on whether your partner is actually supportive, if you have one, and what kind of work you're trying to return to after having a kid.

Tons of weird nerds just cart their kids along to their D&D sessions or whatever. There's nothing odd about that.

The bigger problems arise when you're economically marginal and don't have adequate childcare or when you have a manchild spouse who not only doesn't do half the work but becomes baby #2.

In my particular case, it took me most of the first year to get my brain back in a space where I could work on creative writing. (Sorry, people who are waiting for book 3. It's coming! It's coming!) But I'm lucky enough to not be facing a lot of money troubles, and I don't have a partner to worry about. This makes my situation night and day from one where you're trying to figure out how to both pay the rent and do all your own childcare.

Chronic sleep deprivation is probably the biggest issue when it comes to being able to enjoy things or carve out time for hobbies.

In general, reading on a kindle or phone (which you can do one-handed and on an object that is somewhat less vulnerable to drool and grabbing fingers) is a great hobby to combine with dealing with little monsters. Breast feeding is boring and takes a hell of a lot of my day.

--

I don't think the weird nerd aspect is significant at all unless you feel inhibited about not being a normie parent. (Personally, I already dress my kid like a fucking elf all in green and shit like that and have no qualms about telling someone where to stick it if they think she should wear pink.)

But the more caretaker-y parent often ends up so sleep deprived and miserable from lack of emotional/financial support that their whole life goes to hell, whether their hobbies are "weird" or otherwise.

And even if there are two or more supportive team players raising the kid, money troubles breed like tribbles once you spawn.

If you live in the US (which you might since you didn't think to say), there isn't much structural support, but you can fix that with money. So, anon, how much money have you got?

[azzo0]

Pickpocket

Summary: You've successfully managed to pickpocket a fortune. While you're fantasising about the things you could do with so much money, you're dragged away by the royal guards to face the wrath of Prince Katsuki.

Pairing: Bakugo x f!reader

A/N: I wanted to complete the story within this chapter, but it got too long. See you in the next chapter!

Part 1; Part 3

You opened the coin bag you had pickpocketed from the mysteriously covered stranger, your jaw dropping to the floor when you saw it was filled to the brim with gold coins. It looked like you had just stolen someone's life savings.

Your parents and siblings knew that apart from the hunts you went on and did not make much from, you often went out to pickpocket, something you often got scoldings for. But the few extra silvers that you managed to get lightened the weight on your parents' shoulders to some extent. It was usually just a few coppers and silvers you stole. How were you going to explain this fortune you pickpocketed? 

While you were in the middle of counting the coins, your youngest brother decided to come into your room, gaping at the gold on your desk, "Y/n, what is that?! Did you just hunt a super rare creature or something?"

"You know the only thing available in these forests is rabbits and birds or deer if we're lucky," a mischievous glint flashed in your eyes, "I pickpocketed this."

"You're unbelievable," He shook his head, picking up a coin, which you snatched, "With that much gold, we'll be able to eat three times a day, buy a horse and a carriage, new clothes and a whole castle!"

You smiled at the youngest. It wasn't enough to tend to all his dreams, but it still made you happy knowing you could at least feed your family and get a few needed household items. However, your fantasies were short-lived when you heard a series of heavy knocks on the front door.

"I'll go see who it is." You went to see who it was to find your father had already answered the door. You froze when you saw five hulking royal guards talking to your father. You didn't need to step forward and talk to them to know this was about you.

Who was the person you pickpocketed? Perhaps a noble or someone close to the royal family? Sweat rolled down your neck when one of the guards caught your eye. He matched in past your father, squinting at your face, "Oi, she's the one we're looking for!"

"Me? What could I have possibly done?" You innocently batted your eyelashes. 

"Don't pretend like you don't know why. You stole from the prince." The guard spat. 

"Y/n? Is this true?" Your father asked. Your face drained of colour. That person you stole from was the prince? You even insulted him! God, you were in a shit ton of trouble. 

"I found the coins!" One of the guards exclaimed from behind you, coming out of your room with your brother, hitting the guards back with closed fists to give the money back. 

"Stay off, brat. This is not yours. It belongs to the royal family." The guard kicked your brother in the gut, sending him flying away. You growled at him, pouncing at him with a fist ready.

"Don't you dare touch him!" You yelled, swinging your fist at his face. Before the punch could land, another guard kicked you in the side, sending you crashing into a wall. 

"Now you're in trouble not only for stealing but also for trying to harm a royal guard," One of the guards took you by the arm, pulling you to your feet, "Prince Katsuki will see to you personally."

"Like I give a rat's ass!" You spat, thrashing as the guard held your hands behind you. Another guard tried getting your legs to stop flailing but got his jaw bruised instead. Your family was huddled together in a corner, timidly watching you try to pry away from the guards. 

"Get off me!" You yelled as you got dragged away and got tied onto a horse with your mouth and hands tied so the guards wouldn't have to listen to your constant yelling and complaints. 

Once at the ginormous castle, two guards held you by your arms, dragging you inside. You shuddered when you felt the cold from the marble floor travel up your spine. You must've lost your shoes when the guards yanked you around. 

"Mind your manners when in the presence of the prince." One of the guards said, his fingers digging into the flesh of your arms. You shot him a glare, trying to free your arm from his grip. What was the point of bruising your arms when your hands were already tied behind you? 

The doors to the throne hall were opened, and the guards dragged you inside, forcing you to your knees so you were bowing low. When they let your head lift from the floor, you dared to look up. 

There he was, Prince Katsuki, sitting on the prince's chair beside the King's and Queen's throne, blood-red eyes mindlessly boring into you. All that you heard about the prince was true-- stunning crimson eyes, spiky ash-blonde hair, and flawless skin. Behind his lethal beauty was evident rage and fury.

Bakugo could see your gaze wavering between the floor and him as you tried to keep that sassy and brave front. Your hair was in a mess, and your clothes were dirty from being pushed and kicked around. He told his guards not to use force, and here you were, looking like you fell into a wrestling pit. The guards standing behind you didn't look any better, with scratches and bruises on their faces. 

"Your Royal Highness," One of the guards behind you said, "This woman not only stole from you but also put up a fight with us."

"Care to explain?" Bakugo rasped.

"Your guard kicked my ten-year-old brother in the stomach. Was I supposed to stand and watch?" You snarled at the prince, your teeth bared. Bakugo's eyes shifted to the guards, demanding an answer. 

"Y-Your Highness, the child was clinging to my back and-"

"So you kicked him." Bakugo cut him off, standing up and coming down the steps that lead to the thrones, stopping in front of you, "Get out, all of you. I'll deal with you later."

"But, Your High-"

"Now."

You gulped once the guards were gone, and although you hated them, you wished they'd stay since being alone with the prince made you feel like you were going to get slaughtered like a lamb. You held his gaze from your position on the floor, not letting your fear slip through your eyes. 

"Stand." He ordered.

"Are one-word sentences all you know to speak, princeling?" You smiled at him with sickly sweet poison. "I really like it on the floor. It's comfortable."

You let out a gasp when he suddenly pulled you to your feet, the fabric of your shirt balled in his fist, his maroon eyes dangerously close, "Watch who you're talkin' to, sweetheart," he growled, his voice reverberating in his chest, "I could throw you in prison forever, and you wouldn't be able to do anything about it."

"Must be fun being a spoiled prince, eh." Bakugo looked down at your devilish grin. Weren't you afraid of him one bit? Prison was the place every little thief like you went to, but something about you stirred amusement and another mysterious feeling deep within him. It wasn't every day he got to see a brat like you roast a prince right at his face and take on five guards at once.

"Besides," you went on. "I'm going to go to prison anyway. I might as well strut in there with a show." 

"You have some nerve speaking to me like that," He scowled, letting your shirt go, "You ain't going to prison." 

"Huh?" 

"Yer servin' three months at the castle." He said. "And if I find you snooping around and stealing, I'm chopping your ugly fingers off." 

"I'm not scrubbing your dishes and sweeping your damn floors." You scoffed. "Throw me in prison instead."

"Does that pretty little mouth of yours ever shut up, or does it have a fucking answer to everything?" Bakugo glared at you. You had some guts rejecting his orders like he was some commoner you'd known all your life. 

"I'm not working at the castle, and that's final." You said firmly. 

A hint of fear flashed in your eyes when Bakugo bared his teeth at you, approaching you with slow strides. You kept backing away until your back was pressed into the doors behind you, your chest tightening when you saw his hand rest on the hilt of the sword dangling from his side. 

He lowered his head to your level, roughly grabbing your chin and making you look into his eyes. When you tried to shift to the side, he put an elbow on the door, trapping you. Looking into his deep red eyes, you felt your heartbeat quicken, knots forming in your stomach. 

"I'm the one who decides what your punishment is. Do not forget that," he purred into your ear. You almost shivered. His voice was supposed to be scaring you, not making your heart race, "Either you work here for three months or get your hands cut off."

He pulled away, smirking down at you satisfyingly. He could tell you were flustered as you glared daggers at him, "Am I clear?"

Your gaze shifted down to the floor, "Yes."

He called for the servants to take you to the servant quarters and get the filth cleaned off you. You sat in an unnecessarily big tub filled with warm water as the other servants scrubbed your body raw. You blankly let them, still trying to process what on earth had just happened. After your bath, you were forced into a night suit that would have been considered low quality for the royals and nobles, but it was more expensive than anything you ever owned. 

"What kind of punishment is this?" You muttered, lying on the comfortable bed in your new room. 

It was a very big punishment.

It all started going down from the moment you woke up. The head maid scolded you for not waking up early enough and rushed you into the kitchen, where you got yelled at by the chef for not washing the dishes quickly enough.

"What are you even good at?!" He yelled, pushing you aside when you somehow managed to burn the stew he made. All you were supposed to do was stand and watch it.

"I'm good at hunting." You mumbled.

"Too bad you're not here for hunting," He gave you a sour look as he diced up the ingredients to remake the stew. 

After the dishes were done, you were handed a mop and a bucket to sweep the great hall. You took a deep breath, stepping into the thankfully empty great hall. It was just mopping the floor. You wouldn't mess this up, right?

As you mopped the floor, you tried convincing yourself this was better than rotting in the prison for who knows how long. You just wanted to go back to bed and let your poor back rest, but it was still only the afternoon. Sighing, you stepped towards the water bucket to dip the mop inside, accidentally knocking the bucket in the process. You deadpanned, tears forming in your eyes. This castle brought nothing but bad luck. 

You cringed when the soapy water soaked into the long red carpet that led up to the King's and Queen's thrones. You turned around in horror when you heard the doors to the great hall open, slipping and falling to your ass. The fact that it was the prince that opened the doors only made things worse. 

"Are you okay there?" A red-haired man asked, stepping forward. 

"M' fine." You mumbled, slipping down again when you tried standing again. 

"Looks like someone's having a great time," The prince snickered. If he wasn't a prince you'd have slapped him in the face to wipe away that mean smirk. You scowled at him, stopping when you saw a hand in front of your face. It was the red-haired man looking down at you with a warm grin. You noticed he had interesting sharp teeth. You put your hand in his, letting him hoist you up.

He inspected your face for a second and then looked at Bakugo, raising an eyebrow. You were the very same girl Kirishima saw bump into Bakugo yesterday. He was sure Bakugo said that you were a pickpocket, then what were you doing here in the servant's attire?

"Go get someone else to clean it since you clearly can't," Bakugo ordered. You clenched your jaw at him, grabbing a fistful of your dress. Why did he have to be so mean and harsh with his words? You would have loved to hit his head with the mop but knew better than to give in to your intrusive thoughts. You stormed past him and got some rags to clean up the mess you made.

Once Kirishima was sure you were out of earshot, he turned to Bakugo, "Why is she here, prince?" 

"Serving three months in the castle for stealing, hurting five guards and being a brat," Bakugo replied in a matter-of-fact tone. 

"Couldn't you have put her to prison instead?"

"Tch, are you trying to tell me what to do?" 

"No, my prince." 

Bakugo sighed, turning his back to Kirishima, eyes plastered to the floor, "Her family has been struggling with basic necessities," he said after a moment of silence. "I learnt that her father had a fabric business before the war started, but his shop burnt down during the war. He hasn't been working ever since."

Kirishima blinked at Bakugo, baffled he had delved so deep into someone's background. "A lot of people are still suffering even though it's been years." He said.

"Yeah," Bakugo agreed. "She lives in a pretty shitty neighbourhood, too, now."

"Is there something that can be done to help?" Kirishima asked.

"I've already done what I could." Bakugo grunted, "They ain't gotta worry about rations. I talked to Father about it, and he agreed to send monthly rations to the entire neighbourhood."

"That's nice," Kirishima smiled. He had a feeling you not only stole Bakugo's money at the weekend market yesterday but also accidentally stole his heart.

Tags: @colouringfrogssittinginleaves @zaiban2989

[eimids]

Can I request a Alexia putellas x wife reader, like the reader is a billionaire but the team mistakenly thought that the reader is using Alexia for money or fame because of how the reader dress just like simple clothes and the team tell the reader to leave ale alone... Thank you.....

I changed it to girlfriend just cause it fit better with the story line.

But yeah that's the summery

Warnings: panic attack but not really anything else

You had inherited your parents company after their passing. It had something to do with politics so you weren’t really that interested. And you were only 14 at the time. So when you turned 18 you sold the company to the highest bidder.

That’s how you ended up with a shit ton of money. You had so much of it that it was overwhelming to you. You didn’t really tell anyone about your money situation, not even Alexia. When you started dating, it was the year 2022. Alexia had just ruptured her ACL and was at a bar drinking her sorrows away. Not the most romantic place to meet but for you it was perfect. After a year of dating you had finally told Alexia about your money situation. She understood what it felt like to have so much money, so she helped you with managing it. You donated some of it to different charities. Some of them you put on your savings and some of it you kept on your bank account.

You didn’t dress in designer clothing and didn’t appear to others as a rich person although you had millions. You didn’t want anyone to view you differently because of your money. Alexia loved that about you. She loved how you were down to earth type of person and didn't care about money and what others might think of you. You also hated using money. Although you knew that you had enough many to not work anymore at all, you still felt the need to buy the cheapest things available.

You didn’t really meet Alexia’s friends properly due to her ACL injury. You had met some of them quickly after matches but didn’t get to actually know any of them. They always seemed nice and they made Alexia happy so that was the most important thing.

But the thing about her teammates was that they thought that you were some kind of a gold digger. They heard how Alexia talked about buying you expensive gifts and posting you to her Instagram. They knew that Alexia had money and popularity. You could easily gain a status for yourself. They also knew that Ale could be quite naive sometimes and they wanted to protect her.

They started asking some subtle questions about you. Things like where did you work and did you know who Ale was before meeting her. The answers to those questions didn't ease their doubts. You, a coffee shop worker and a huge football fan, didn't have that big of a salary and you of course knew who Alexia was. In fact, that's why you went to talk to her that day in the bar.

"She's using her for money" Jenni Hermoso was the first to say those words out loud. She didn't like you, you were too good to be true for Alexia. Something had to be wrong with you. Was it jealousy or did she actually care about Alexia's feelings getting hurt? We'll never know.

"You can't know that. Maybe she's in love with Alexia, at least Alexia is in love with her. I mean you all have seen how she looks at her and the way she talks about her. She's head over heels for that girl" Mapi tried to reason. She didn't want to think ill of you, but Jenni was good at convincing the others.

"Well yeah that's the point. Ale is in love with her, and she's probably just in for the money. Alexia just talked how she is going to buy y/n this necklace that costs way too much. I mean I even heard y/n once ask Alexia to bye her some earrings. Clearly she just wants attention and money" Jenni tried to convince the others.

The girls kept talking about the situation for a while before Alexia showed up.

"Oh hi, I'm sorry I'm late. Y/n and I went to this fancy restaurant and time just went by" She explained why she was late to the team bonding night. "Oh look at her in this photo, she looks so cute" She showed the photo to the others.

You were sitting there with a gold necklace hanging from your neck. You were wearing a Gucci dress, which you didn't even really want but Alexia bought it to you still. Her teammates didn't know that and were just thought you made Alexia buy it for you.

"Oh that's a nice dress, bet it costs a lot" Jenni stated.

"Well yeah it was quite expensive but I love to pamper my girl. She's just always stressing about money so I want to show her that she doesn't have to" Alexia explained. When she said you were stressing about money, she meant the fact that you felt bad for having so much of it and it made you anxious. What her friends thought she meant was that you were poor.

"Oh could you drive me home? i would call y/n but her phone broke and she hasn't gotten a new yet. I'm probably going to have to buy her a new so I can reach her" Alexia joked.

"Oh yeah jump in" Jenni answered. She shared looks with the other girls to see if they had heard what Alexia said. Now Patri and Marta were convinced.

"Could I come quickly inside to have some water?" Jenni asked. And Alexia said it was fine of course.

They walked to your home which you share with Alexia. It was an apartment in a good neighborhood. You had split the costs of it but obviously Jenni didn't know that.

"Hi baby I'm home and Jenni is me, I'm just gonna head to the shower" Ale yelled to you and left the hallway to the bathroom. You came from the bedroom to greet your girlfriend and her friend.

"Hi Jenni" You smiled to the brunette. She just hummed.

"So what's your deal with Alexia, you just using her for money or what?" Jenni went straight to the point now that she had the perfect chance to ask you.

"What, no, i love her I would never use her for her money" You were quick to reply. You were shocked that she would even suggest that.

"Well you clearly don't have any money as you can't even pay for a new phone or the dresses you wear" Jenni stated. She was getting frustrated.

"No it's not that, she want's to buy those thing, I've never asked for any of them" You answered dumbstruck.

"Yeah Alexia might be naive enough to think that but I'm not. Break up with her before we'll tell her what you really want from her." Jenni just said and left.

The rest of that night you were quiet and Ale was confused of what happened. She didn't push it thought, maybe you just had a long day.

The next day you drove Alexia to prac. You were nervous to get close to the training grounds but didn't want to be weird so that Alexia wouldn't notice.

"Bye love, have a good prac" You said to her as she hopped out of the car.

You stayed for a bit to change the music and just like that there was a girl knocking on the window of your car. You lowered the window so you could talk.

"Umm is everything okay?" You asked the woman who you had identified as Marta.

"I'm guessing you didn't have a talk with Ale like Jenni suggested?" She just said casually.

"No, I'm not using her for her money" You tried to reason.

"Yeah, I guess we just have to tell her the truth" Marta said and left.

You were afraid. What if Ale would believe them There was no reasonable reason why she would but you still got scared. How did you come off as a gold digger? Why did her friends hate you so much that they came up with that?

You made your way back to home where you bursted to tears. You had always hated the idea of people seeing you differently because of money. And when you tried your hardest to avoid that, it was exactly what happened. They thought that all you wanted from your girlfriend was money. You were scared that Alexia would believe them and then she would just break up. All the worst scenarios came to your mind and soon enough you were in a full panic attack.

"Ale we need to talk" Jenni said to Ale immediately after training.

"Um okay? Is everything ok?" Alexia answered.

"Well no, we all have noticed that y/n is most likely using you just for money and you're just too naive to see that" Jenni started. Alexia grew mad immediately.

"Why would you think that? Of course she's not after the money" Alexia replied angrily.

Jenni tried to explain to Alexia why they thought that you didn't actually love Ale. They explained that it was weird that you didn't mention the conversation you had with Jenni the other night.

"You talked to her about this?! You accused her of being a gold digger? What the fuck is wrong with you?" Alexia panicked. She knew that money was a sensitive topic for you.

Alexia tried to call you but you didn't answer so she just ordered herself a taxi.

"Y/n is the sweetest human being and you are here accusing her of something she didn't do!" Alexia yelled.

"You just can't see it Ale, she's using you" Marta tried.

"Fuck you, and just for your information, she has more money than I do" Alexia yelled and left the room.

She impatiently waited for the taxi. The drive home was a suffering experience. Now she realized why you had been so quiet the night before. She hated her teammates for making you think that you would be just a gold digger.

"Baby I'm here" She yelled when she got home. She was nervous when you didn't come and greet her.

She walked to the bedroom where she found you draped in your comfort blanket. So clearly trying to calm yourself down.

"Oh y/n I'm so sorry" Alexia said as she hurried to your side. She knew you loved physical touch so she made sure to give that to you to help you calm down.

"They shouldn't have said any of that, they are all wrong. I know that you love me and you know that I love you. That's all that matters. They don't know anything about you and they were being assholes with even thinking those thing about you" Alexia said. She was being sincere, you could hear it in her voice.

That helped you calm down. You loved Alexia and she loved you.

--

I lowkey hate how this turned out. The anon ask was amazing but I feel like I couln't write it properly.

[brucewaynehater101]

Ok Tim Time Travel AU or just Tim Travel AU. Tim gets sucked in a similar event that got bruce un the Time stream. But it only makes Tim land in various events that takes place since bruce beginnings as batman.

The first event is bruce getting shot, Tim pops in and helps young bruce. As it the first time, tim didnt prepare in any way to hidrñe his identity. But bruce was out enough not to recognize him. (He wouldnt anyways)

The next time, tim is more prepared, he hacks into the drakes account to get money and with that crafts a new suit. And writes down a list of ideas of how to hide his face. As bruce can't have tim's face in his memory. (He goes from ghost maker blindfold to red hood'd helmet). The only distintive is an "R" in his suit.

And that's how it goes for a little while. Tim appears out of nowhere to help bruce with smthng. Usually to save him from posible deaths

Then he's throw in Dick's parent's death day. Then when dick almost falls off his line. Then some dick' kidnapping. And so on.

Bruce ofc doesn't trust this elusive evident experienced vigilante. But it grows on him. For the robins is this cool big brother and stuff.

Tim doesnt want to think what this means for how he interacts with his family.

Ideas are buzzing!

Cool! Anyone can feel free to list out canon events you think Tim could have helped lessen the impact of (in this AU, he doesn't have that much control. It seems more like he's helping in the aftermath). He will prevent their deaths in some cases, but let's say, for plot's sake, that he can't prevent certain outcomes.

To be extra fun, perhaps all the Bats knew about Future!Tim. Imma call him Raven just for the hell of it.

Tim finds out when he gets sucked into the time thing, that he was Raven all along. The older vigilante left him a clue that was only decipherable after Tim's first time jump.

Regardless, Tim slowly builds up a reputation with the Bats. It's difficult because he has no control on when he stays or goes. He just pops up when he's needed.

It's difficult to establish trust with someone who is untraceable and never stays.

It's heartbreaking for Tim because there are some incidents he can't change despite going back in time (like Jason dying). Tim has no control.

There's also the fear of destabilizing the timestream or whatever.

Then, as Raven, Tim learns a fuck ton about incidents that his family has hidden or never talked about. Traumas they don't or wouldn't mention (perhaps Raven learns about Tarantula and similar shit). Since Raven pops up whenever and isn't actually a Bat, there's a different type of relationship that vigilante has with the Bats. It helps them to admit shit they wouldn't to their family (which you can then get into guilt, protective anger, horror, etc).

Raven slowly starts getting close to the Bats as much as he can given his circumstances. Older Tim watches Robin debut, Nightwing debut, Jason become Robin, the aftermath of his death, Tim becoming Robin, etc.

Having an "outsiders' perspective" on all of these events must feel weird as fuck.

[badasmuse]

“Homewrecker”

Bada Lee x Reader

Warnings: 18+ (MDNI), lowercase intended, language, cheater!bada, bottom!bada, bada is married to h*wl, bada has a daughter, top!reader, lonely bada, she also cries, appearance from itzy’s yuna

Summary: bada is lonely, you fix that.

Part 2 Here

you absolutely loved children. ever since you were fifteen when you started babysitting for your neighbor that’s when you knew. you actually wanted to start your own daycare but you wanted a degree so you decided to take a few online classes in early childhood education. but, going to college meant you need money for books and such so you never stopped babysitting. but your usual child’s father came back into her life making you jobless once again, so when you received a text from an unknown number stating she got your number from her friend you jumped with joy. and that’s how you started working for bada lee and her husband.

on your first day, you pull up to the extremely big house, you’re nervous. you keep thinking, what if i lose this kid in this big ass house.

there’s a tall woman and a slightly shorter male standing in the doorway holding a little girl. she looks about seven. you step out of the uber and approach the little family. “hi i’m y/n. i’m looking for ms. lee?”

“that’s me.” she steps out shaking your hand. “you can call me bada. this is my husband howl, not his real name but as a dancer it’s just what he goes by, and our daughter chaeyoung. come in.”

you follow the woman in and dude when i tell you this house is huge. you could probably fit three semi trailers stacked on top of each other in here. with the wheels still on and everything. you’re too busy admiring the house to hear what bada is saying.

“got that y/n?” is all you hear.

“huh? oh i’m… im sorry i was admiring your house i didn’t hear a thing. could you… repeat that?” you say shyly.

“oh no problem. this is a list of people you can call if you can’t get in touch with either of us. always try lusher first she’s my best friend she’ll always be able to get ahold of me. i’ll be out at the studio a lot this month because i’m choreographing a few comebacks and howl is getting ready to go to japan to teach some classes. i will be back around nine tonight. here’s chae’s bedtime routine. she’ll try to stay up past eight thirty, if she fights let her because she’ll fall asleep in the next five minutes. you can just lay a blanket over her on the couch and i’ll carry her to the room when i come back. is that too much at one time?” bada asks after literally vomiting a shit ton of information.

“no no i think i got it all. also, if you’re gonna be dancing, i don’t mind carrying her to her room. you’ll be tired and probably want to shower, i can handle it.” you say smiling.

“if you can i’d appreciate it. oh we have to go. chae you be good for y/n okay? i mean it.” bada says crouching in front of the girl who just nods in response before hugging her mother tight and hugging her father’s leg.

soon, it’s just you and her. boy did she give you a run for your money. you did lose her in the house while playing hide n seek. she made you play dress up with her. she took your phone and hid it, spilled apple juice everywhere, and even went into her parent’s room and took one of her mom’s lipsticks.

by now it’s eight thirty and she surprisingly went to bed without an issue, which you were grateful for because now you have to clean the mess in the kitchen and living room.

“hi i’m home.. y/n?” you hear bada say.

“kitchen!” you respond.

“what.. happened?”

“oh she spilled apple juice. this- here. she took this from your room. um, do you mind calling my phone?” you mumble.

bada sighs and goes into a room before coming out with your phone in hand. “i’m sorry she did this to the last babysitter, and the one before. if you don’t want to continue just let me know okay?” she says helping you clean the apple juice.

you look up at her and see the sweat dripping down her face, the tired look in her eyes. she’s obviously struggling. “what time should i be here tomorrow?”

her eyes light up and she smiles brightly. “um, same time okay? it’ll just be me and her, my husband will be gone early.”

“i’ll be here. go shower. i’ll finish up and make my way out of here.” you pick up the used paper towel, throwing it in the garbage.

thirty minutes later she emerges from the bathroom dressed in a new pair of sweats and a tank with her wet hair flowing down her back.

“i’ll get your uber home. can you put your address in here?”

*

now it’s been four months and man, the feelings you feel towards this woman are crazy.

“she’s just so.. fine, yuna.” you say to your best friend. “when she comes home from the studio and she’s dripping with sweat. you know how hard it is to not jump on her?”

yuna laughs, “isn’t she married?”

“yes but… come on. her husband is never really there. she’s always tired and probably sexually frustrated. i could fix that for her for real.” you say taking the drink from her.

“that’s mine.” she sighs, “well are you gonna go for it?”

“i don’t know, should i? what if i get fired?” you say.

“then you get fired. come on i’ll drop you off. it’s almost time.”

once you arrive at the house, you knock and wait, watching yuna pull off. bada opens the door and looks at you surprised. “y/n? what are you doing here?”

you blink, “it’s.. saturday?”

“oh! oh i’m so sorry. first come in.” she steps to the side, “i’m sorry, chaeyoung is with her grandmother for today. i thought i told you. probably forgot i was doing so much this morning. i feel so bad you probably ubered here, let me pay you for that and i’ll get you one back.”

“my friend dropped me off. i can ask her to come get me.” you say sending a quick text to yuna.

“well have you eaten? let me get you something.” she says.

“i’m okay i’m not hungry.” at least, not for food.

“well.. here’s a water bottle. i’m so sorry.”

“it’s okay bada. my schedule is open.” you look at the reply from yuna and sigh. “actually could you get the uber? my friend is busy, she won’t be able to come get me for at least an hour or so.. unless you don’t mind me waiting?”

“i don’t mind. i actually wanted to talk to you about chaeyoung.” she says sitting next to you.

“what is it?”

“i’m not too sure what you’re doing but.. she used to be terrible in school, behavior wise, and ever since you came along it’s changed. what are you doing with her? what can i do to make sure she doesn’t act that way once you get your degree and stop working for me?” bada sighs, leaning back on the couch.

“bada,” you turn your body to face her, “the issue with chae is you don’t give her enough attention. i know both you and howl work a lot. it happens. but she tells me all the time how she wishes at least you were here more often. she’s lonely. it’s only her and you stick her with a bunch of strangers. she told me she feels happy when i’m here because even tho i’m leaving, i still make her happy because i’m giving her the attention she craves.”

bada wipes a tear from her cheek, “i try. it’s just hard. i want to be here. then howl took that stupid job traveling to different countries like he doesn’t have a wife and child at home. i feel like i’ve been snapping at her which is why i sent her with her grandmother. i wanted to.. be with my husband and he’s not even here he went to america. i wanted to talk to him about this.”

you pull bada in for a hug and rub her back as she cries into your shoulder. “you’re doing the best you can, bada. you can’t be too hard on yourself. howl should’ve thought about that before he left. he needs to understand you need help.” you say softly.

bada pulls back and looks at you, “you really think i’m doing my best?”

“i do.”

there’s a tension filled silence as you look at each other. you don’t know what fueled you but you lean in and kiss her on her lips before pulling back quickly. “oh shit i’m sorry you’re married-“

she cuts you off with another kiss gripping your shirt. this one is a lot more desperate. “please…” she mumbles against your lips. “i need this please.. please don’t go.” she whines.

“your room.” you say and she stands up pulling you into the bedroom she shared with howl.

she pushes you on the bed and climbs on top of you finding your lips again as your hands trail under her shirt. you pull it off her and she whines.

“relax baby, i’ll make you feel good, just be patient.” you turn her on her back kissing her neck and down to her chest. lifting up her bra you attach to her nipple, sucking gently and she moans. you pinch the other one with your fingers and her hips buck up against you, looking for friction.

“keep your hips down.” you whisper, kissing down her stomach. you leave marks on her hip bones and she moans your name.

“y/n please… please i want you so bad!” she writhes on the bed.

you pull her shorts off and she’s not wearing anything under them. “made this easy for me huh? oh you’re so wet for me bada.” you run a finger over her clit and her leg jerks. you put her leg on your shoulder and make eye contact with her. “can i?”

“please y/n please do- OH!” she moans out when your tongue makes contact with her clit. her hands clutch the sheets as you suck on her clit, sticking two fingers in her.

her breath hitches and she lets out loud moans, “oh my god s-so good! please more!”

you insert another finger curling them up into her spot. she lets out a squeal. “why are you so good at this?” she moans, hands going to your hair as she fucks herself onto your fingers. “i’m cumming!”

you speed up your fingers, flicking your tongue skillfully and she cums with a scream, your name falling off her lips.

you pull your hand out giving her a minute to breathe. “you okay?” you run her lower stomach gently.

“i need… more. please? i have.. have toys in my sock drawer.” she pants.

you walk over to where she points and find a different array of toys. “oh you’re kinky.”

“please use whatever you want. make me your slut. please.” she whines.

you bite your lip, grabbing the dildo, a vibrator, and some handcuffs. “you mind?”

“oh please!” she moves her hands to the headboard, letting you cuff her to it. “i-i can eat you out while you fuck me. you can sit on my face.”

you shiver at the thought before stripping and doing what she wants. her tongue skillfully explores you and you question how she let a man trap her with a tongue like that? you lean forward and put the dildo in her, immediately thrusting it in and out of her while putting the vibrator on her swollen clit. she moans into you and pulls at the cuffs. you’re worried she might be uncomfortable so you lift up but she whines loudly. “i’m not finished!”

you sit back down, thrusting the toy faster and turning up the speed on the vibrator. you let out a moan trying not to grind on her face. you move when she starts to mumble something.

“what did you say baby?”

“use me. use me to get yourself off. make me your personal tuck toy.” she moans out.

you moan as you move back onto her face doing as she asks all while you fuck into her tight count with the dildo. you’re close and you know she’s close from the way her moans get higher. she latches onto your clit sucking roughly as you pound the dildo into her gspot and you’re both cumming with loud moans. you remove the toys and she squirts all over her bed. you get off her and rub her clit, helping her ride out her high.

“okay! okay i’m done i can't…i’m done please!” she moans pulling the cuffs.

“give me one more. let me make sure you’re 100% satisfied. you might not get it this good for a while.” you whisper.

she whimpers and cums one last time, her juices flow out of her and you caress her thigh gently.

“so good for me bada. did such a good job.” you uncuff her and she pulls you in for a kiss. you can taste yourself on her tongue.

“thank you.” she whispers. “i needed that. god i needed that.. tell your friend nevermind. stay with me.”

“what about your husband? and chae?” you ask.

“he’s gone for a week, chae will be back tomorrow night. after i take a nap i want to go again.” she groans, turning on her side.

grabbing your phone, you tell yuna to just bring your backpack that has your strap instead and you lay down next to bada. she immediately moves her head onto your chest and sighs, falling asleep.

that was a lot easier than you thought it would be.