#you can literally pay people less by offering work from home as a benefit

[guinevereslancelot]

not work from home ending 😭

[namistrella]

Please pay close attention to the language used to talk about public service workers and civil servants in the coming days.

There is (understandably) a lot of anger and frustration felt by people who have been left behind, ignored, and swept aside by bureaucratic processes limiting access to benefits and aid. SSA has notoriously denied most first disability benefits applications, FEMA has left people without housing after disasters for far too long, there's red tape everywhere and it's harmful first and foremost to people without the time and resources (money, health) to navigate the systems. This is all true.

BUT. (And this is the important part of this post.) The new administration is, purposely, leveraging those feelings to get public support for gutting those systems and programs from the inside out. The truth is that we need these programs, and we need the everyday people who work to deliver them. We can't afford to vilify them.

Pay attention to the language in the new executive orders, such as:

"Return to Work" (as if everyday public servants have not been breaking their backs trying to get passports processed, job offers sent, and critical grants awarded, whether or not they do some of that work from home or in a too-small, poorly maintained office)

"Improving Accountability" (as if agency heads are all corrupt or something, rather than just being people who the new administration is afraid will choose to be accountable to their conscience rather than accountable to King Trump)

Yeah, yeah, every office will have some bad managers, some underperforming employees, and bad agency leadership once in a while. This is NORMAL. Literally look at ANY office, private sector or public sector or academia or whatever. Rank and file government employees are not inherently evil, or lazy, or entitled, any more than the rest of the workforce.

And in fact, government employee pay has fallen far behind inflation while the benefits have been slowly stripped away over the last decade or two (pensions cost more and pay less; healthcare options are expensive and don't cover as much as some other private plans; annual raises are a joke and barely even cover the rise in insurance premiums let alone housing).

By and large, the people working in those day to day public service positions care about the mission of their agency, and helping people, because you kind of have to at some level in order to sacrifice higher pay for literally the same work. The ONE concrete advantage of a government job over industry is the stability... But the Trump administration is fighting tooth and nail to get rid of that so they can fire large swathes of the workforce and shut down public service programs.

If they can't fire everyone, they'll start by getting as many as they possibly can to quit.

Stoking public anger at civil servants is one of the tactics they are using to put the pressure on and get people to leave. Many federal workers are already scared to talk about where they work because of fear of harassment. Republican leaders encourage this shit. Why would anyone want to stay in a job they're underpaid, underappreciated, and now being publicly vilified for? A few might, for the mission; others will decide their safety is more important, or that they can't sacrifice any more.

You might think, why do we care if a few gov employees quit when there's so many of them? Well, most government programs are ALREADY severely understaffed. We're ALREADY going to have an even harder time accessing services and programs when people inevitably quit and program funding gets shut down.

We need these workers to stay. We need them to be there busting their asses over the next months to get important things processed before the option is taken away. We need them to stand up to Trump's political cronies and hold the line and drag their feet when told to implement harmful policies. We need them to buy us time to vote in 2026 and save some of the programs that serve our most vulnerable populations. No, the programs aren't perfect, but that doesn't justify sitting back and letting Trump completely gut them!

Take some time to thank a public servant in the next weeks. We need them more than most of us realize, and we can't afford to let Trump's propaganda make us blame the people standing between his policies, and us.

[survivingsusac]

How I Got A state Job

I hope you came ready for a serious campfire talk today, because I wouldn’t even advise smores for this one. Maaaaybe hot chocolate, but this isn’t a feel good smores type convo. This one is, I think, one of the most adulty journal entries I’ve done to date.

For context, to apply for a state job there are a couple steps. 1) You need to register for an account on calcareers.ca.gov. 2) Set up your profile, including your work history. Use action words to engage your resume reader and impression them with all of your experience and work history. 3) You have to fill out information that suggests you qualify for the position you’re applying for. This is poorly named an “exam.” The initial entry level positions in any state agency is Office Assistant, or the slightly higher ones are Program Technician or Office Technician. My 4-year degree made it very straightforward to qualify for the Office Technician exam. Because I have Limited Examination and Appointment Program (LEAP) certification I passed the exam no problem. LEAP certification just means I’m disabled but can do the job just as freaking well and any able-bodied person. Plus, by including LEAP applications and interviewing LEAP applicants, state agencies show their inclusivity. I hadn’t gone through this multi-step application process before because I never sit still long enough to have the patience to do it. Also, the people I know who work for state agencies (well, one state agency) never have much positive feedback to say about it. So why bother, right?

ANYWAYS

When I broke my leg I was trapped by my home-bound recuperation. I was gonna lose my ever-loving MIND. To keep me from losing that very valuable organ I took the exam for an entry level position at state agencies. I began filling out every single application for that position in the county. To get to the point, I got an Office Technician job with the California Highway Patrol. Shortly after, someone told me, “How excited are you to get that fat state job paycheck?!” I hope she was telling a really bad sarcastic joke, because entry level state jobs do NOT pay well. One of my coworkers told me that it’s pretty much minimum wage. I mathed it. IT IS. I make like a dollar above minimum wage. I have wonderful benefits and phenomenal work perks, but I literally work my entire butt off for less than what I could be making at McDonalds. State jobs kick ass health benefits is how I’m surviving my currently weekly subcutaneous infusion schedule. My paycheck barely does a good job covering rent and groceries, and I’m in income-based housing. Which is kinda a joke…and a blog post for another day.

End tangent

I passed my probation period, which for an Office Technician (OT) is 6 months. I think the week after I passed that I took the LEAP exam for Staff Services Analyst (SSA) and passed that one, too. My current mission is to find and apply for all the SSA positions. Specifically the positions that are accepting SSA and Associate Governmental Program Analysts (AGPA). Because this indicates that when I pass probation I could work toward promoting in place to the next level up, which is that AGPA position. I’m always transparent with my supervisor. I let her know, “I’ve applied for X position, I’ll let you know if they want to set up an interview with me.” I don’t have any offers for a position right now. Which is a distressing mix of inferiority complex around how I’m not good enough for anything I’m applying for as well as reality check for being stuck at the level I’m at for longer than I’d like. However, I know God’s timing, which is NEVER what I want it to be, will make it make sense. My anxiety levels are THROUGH THE ROOF RIGHT NOW.

I’m looking at you, Original Holy Dude.

If it was not blasphemous, I’d be giving you extreme side eye.

In my anxiousness to land an SSA position, I have begun applying to ones outside of CHP. I’m submitting an application for pretty much every SSA position at CHP because I absolutely love working at CHP. But I also am submitting ones for other state agencies, like the Department of Rehabilitation (DOR). The DOR works with disabled people who are trying to settle into gainful employment. Some disabled folks need accommodations to do the work that another able bodied person with the same professional expertise could do. Making work plan and connecting disabled individuals with resources is the primary purpose of DOR. I used DOR resources for help for at least 6 months.

The states hiring process moves at a snails pace, though. A snail in molasses. I’ll apply to the position, and then not hear back for if they want to set up an interview with me. When this happens I do my best to not let it go to my head. It’s not because they don’t respect me as an applicant. It’s because they’re focused on getting the new hires desk and setting up the new employees job assignments and duty expectations. The pretty cool thing is though, when I don’t get the position, I learn who the person they hired is by making their new ID Card. So in a very unexpected turn of events, I don’t need and denial notice. I learn that someone else has accepted the position by paying attention to the ID Cards I am making.

Please wish me luck and happy stars.

Surviving Susac,

Aurora

[vivaciouscynner]

NOTE: Proper way to ask for a raise is at the end of this rant:

A few jobs ago my manager seemed so encouraging. I let him know what kind of path I wanted in the company and getting into development. Granted, I was definitely not ready for software dev at the time, but I could have had another position.

I got into code and was able to cut down manual work that would normally take about two weeks to about 15minutes because I automated a TON of redundant processes. After doing that, a SHIT TON of work got dumped on me to do the same thing and make people's lives easier. Some things I could do, others I couldn't, but I was learning.

Mind you, I was REALLY going outside the scope of my job which was purely manual work. I automated because I hated the redundancy. So after a year, I was really making head way and got tons of pat-on-the-back recognition for my work. When it came time for review, I was expecting a pay raise, a change of title, some form of promotion. But I didn't get it. It was just the annual 1%-3% raise that barely gave me an extra chicken nugget to eat for dinner.

So, I asked. I asked what was going on and if he agreed I was doing more than the scope of my job description. And he's like, yeah, but it's too soon. Normally you have to be with the company within 2 years before we can get any form of promotion.

I was a fool, and I stuck around. So next year, still kicking ass. Review time. REALLY doing more than my fair share of work because I was the only one on the team that could do it and no one was even interested in learning how I was making work more efficient.

As you can imagine, same fucking bullshit. Regular 1%-3% raise - ey look, another chicken nugget. I asked again and he told me I was on the right path, but it wasn't time yet. So, at that point, the rage inside my muted everything else he said after and I just waited, basically, to be dismissed.

I didn't work for the rest of the day

I didn't work for 3 days. I SHOWED UP, but I did jack and shit for 3 days. And then I started searching for jobs from home. I searched REMOTE ONLY QA AUTOMATION

Thing was, i was at a point where I was still making money and was able to relax with my job interviews. A got a couple bites but nothing serious. I really searched for something that would make me comfortable. Took about 4 months and then nearly doubled my pay for like half the work.

I was so friggin chipper when I got the news. And my manager, omg he was so pissed and upset. He was so upset I was leaving. They had to create a new position after I left to replace me. I had just a regular manual QA title and they had to create QA Automation position because they had promised deadlines based on MY fucking work. I didn't even know this until I met a coworker in a costco by mere chance and he was telling me about how they had to scramble. SCRAMBLE because no one was accepting the pay.

I laughed with my old coworker, but at home I cried. Because for like 2 fucking years I kept thinking I wasn't smart enough or worthy enough for a promotion. After being told I was "on the right path" i just gave up on trying to impress. I handled 4 different large projects and they wanted to give me another before I left.

I was just a goddamn cog to be taken advantage of. Because I said I'd do it and I'd do it with a smile.

Anyway, sorry for the rant, the proper way to negotiate an increased salary is to apply for a different position (either internally or at another company) that will give you higher pay and benefits and then go back to your manager and ask them to match.

I did the same thing, they couldn't do it, so I left. Like, not even close. Sorry sorry, it's just fucking hilarious. The position I got accepted for was full time REMOTE with benefits and a high pay. My manager is like, Can you just be remote for like 3 days and come in for 2 and also for like 10K LESS than what your offer is?

And I'm just like, HOW IS THAT EVEN A FUCKING COUNTER OFFER. And I literally pressed him for it, going like, how is that better than full remote? How is that better than my pay? And he's like, oh well isn't your company a contract job so it'll be less stable, you get stability with us. I laughed. I couldn't help it. I said, no, it's a full time job. If a contract falls I automatically get switched to another project (and I did, that's how it worked). And I'm just GRINNING because HE CAN'T COME UP WITH ANYTHING. Like, holy ass shit, he was REALLY trying to fucking trick me to stay like jesus fucking christ it just EMPHASIZES HOW MUCH I WAS USED.

Calming myself, breathe.... deep breaths. yeah. It was a life lesson for sure.

I hate how negotiating pay in the workplace is fucking 5D chess like just fuCking!! pay people to do the job they do!!

[runawayballista]

hey if ur a student at a college/university in the US and things on the administrative end seem to be running slow or hmmm, poorly: the answer is probably because (like in many, many industries) staffing shortages have been a problem in higher education since the start of the pandemic. part of this is because higher education generally pays less than the private sector with the tradeoff being better benefits but in the case of the university i work at, now that the pandemic is ""over"" (lmao) leadership has been extremely reluctant to let most staff work from home more than one day a week, if at all, and suddenly those benefits don't feel as worth it in favor of a job that 1) pays better 2) lets you work from home. it means that in some departments, people are quitting at a higher rate than they can train new people (and as anyone in higher ed will tell you, most jobs take about a year - a full admission cycle - to really learn). in the case of the department i currently work in, we had a complete turnover of academic advising staff, meaning that when myself & my coworkers started this summer, there was literally no one in our program left to pass on institutional knowledge. this unfortunately creates a cyclical problem where departments are constantly understaffed and overworked, and people are quitting because they're not being given very flexible work options and they're suffering from burnout. one of my coworkers just got saddled with another entire program's worth of work, because the coordinator running it left and they're still looking for someone new, and after a certain point, there simply are not enough hours in the day to get to everyone and everything in a timely manner

i see it happening all over the university i work at. this is by no means a problem unique to this school OR higher ed but if ur a college student and you interact with administrative staff at all: ask how theyre doing. maybe offer them a treat. they are probably dealing with more work than they can handle at the moment

[inevitably-johnlocked]

Hello Steph! Hope you’re having a lovely day :)

This is a bit random but I was wondering if you had any advice or insight about what you would’ve done different at my age - I’m 19 and a first-year in university.

I’ve been struggling with my path in life and what I truly want out of life. Since you’re a little bit older than me I was just curious if you had any insight on this <3

Thanks!!

Hey Nonny *HUGS*

Oof, I'm so sorry you're having a rough go... that transition into adulthood is always a tough time, especially if you're unsure if you took the right path or not.

First off, I need to reiterate that I am not a professional, just someone who has lived for 40 years and has a few anecdotes that I hope will help other people.

That said, I think the best way I can do this with gathering my thoughts is to do it in point form.

Taking a 2 year gap between high school and college. I was super stressed and we were pressured to apply to colleges and universities, and in the end I got denied from every place I applied, and it made me feel like a failure, because my portfolios were not my best work because I was so stressed and being forced to apply to stuff I wasn't ready to do. I don't know if it's the same in other countries/provinces, but in Ontario, if you apply to college and you're over 19, you're considered a "mature student", and it's REALLY easy to get in provided you have a good portfolio and application letter. It was ALSO easier because I had TIME to REALLY look into what I wanted to do with my career for REAL, and to work on my portfolio without the pressure of your teachers demanding you get that shit done AND your school work done. I got accepted to all 5 colleges I applied to, and the only stress I had was deciding which one I wanted to go to.

Going away for school forced me to be independent. I was 21 when I left home to start college, so I was a late bloomer in that regard, but my parents were very good about letting us live at home as long as we needed. 

Get a financial advisor, even if you don’t have a lot of money. Not sure if it’s the same at all banks, but my bank offers the service for free, all you have to do is make an appointment at the help desk. I didn’t get one until my mid 30s, but HONEST TO GOD, do it as soon as you are making some money. Looking back I wish I did when I started working. They will help you sort out your finances, and show you the best ways to invest your money: I have not just an RSP set up, but also an emergency fund, a SECOND emergency fund, a “spending money” fund, and 1 investment account with my locked mutual funds. It’s all automatic and my advisor helped me with that.

And on the topic of that: GET A LINE OF CREDIT WITH YOUR BANK, and use that to pay off your credit cards each month. Your banks line-of-credit usually has a lower interest rate than a credit card. It builds a credit history, but you’re also not penalized 45% a month if you don’t pay off the full card. My bank’s is... 8% I believe. I use my credit card for every thing to collect points (also, research credit cards and find one that gives you benefits. Mine gives me movie points. I haven’t paid to see a movie in literally 7 years), then I pay it all off at the end of each month with my line of credit and then pay my line of credit off in smaller installments. Paying off a minimum payment with your bank won’t skyrocket how much you owe in the long run. PLUS you consolidate ALL of your debt into ONE place, and it’s easier to keep track of. 

Another financial tip: Keep your credit limit low on your cards (like under 5K), and if they try to raise it, call them and tell them you need it lowered and to NOT raise it unless you tell them. Always keep it at a rate you know you could pay off immediately if something happened. My line of credit, on the other hand, is high, so that I CAN pay off a large debt if I had to.

Take time out for YOU, and know your worth. I wish I spent a lot less of my youth being career-driven. In the end, I place WAY too much of my self-worth on my job: it’s the ONE THING I know that I am GOOD at, and I struggle to think of any other positives about myself. 

I wish I got mental health help when I was younger. I grew up as a older-cusp millennial, and “mental health” just wasn’t “a thing” when I was younger. Looking back, I know I really needed help. Now I have undiagnosed everything-under-the-sun, and because of my upbringing, I’m just... stupid anxious about finding out what’s wrong with me. It’s okay to need help.

I wish I knew what asexuality was when I was younger. Again, this affected my self-esteem and me believing something was wrong with me. Always be open to learning new things about yourself.

If you are able, get a skill / career path you love doing. I chose graphic design as a career path because, no matter what job I have, I’m always doing something creative. 

Don’t EVER think you’re “too old” for fun things, like toys and fandoms. Best part about being an adult is being able to afford to buy the stuff I couldn’t when I was younger. 

It’s okay to be lazy.

It’s okay to eat food and enjoy it. I have a long history with body dysmorphia and disordered eating because I’ve always been a plus-sized woman, minus a couple years where I literally starved myself to be under 125lbs. It wasn’t healthy. 

Even in my darkest days, I’ve understood that life is worth living. It’s very hard to see sometimes, and it’s very lonely sometimes, but my good days far outweigh the bad ones. I know that it’s a VERY hard thing to see when everything feels like it’s falling apart, but try to keep on going. And if it gets to be too much, get a therapist to help you.

Things may not turn out exactly as planned, and that’s okay. I’m also a perfectionist, and things not going the way I want them to often sends me into a stress-frenzy, but every time... it’s been alright, looking back. 

You WILL have a favourite pan / cup / spoon / dish. Seriously, the perfect pan makes ALL the difference in your meals / tea / etc. It’s so silly to say, but I PROMISE you, it will happen.

I’m not really sure what else I can say Nonny, other than you’re still young, and I think you’ll be okay, truly. Not related, but if you’re finding your chosen uni-path isn’t working for you, IT’S OKAY to drop out and try something else. I have two cousins who did that exact thing (one did it 3 times, actually) and they’re much happier for it.

I’m sorry if none of this helps you... I really want to see you happy, and I think SOME of it will be fruitful? I don’t know.

Please take care of yourself, Nonny. It’ll all work out. You can’t force things to happen a certain way... it just all falls into place when it can.

Now if I could take my own advice, LOL, that would be great hahah <3

Love you Nonny, and good luck.

(and if anyone has other things they want to add, please do. I have SO much more I could add, just this is all I could think of off the top of my head)

[tobiosmilktea]

red ink — semi eita

2.5k words | genre/s: tattoo shop!au, friends with benefits, smut | warning/s: uhh badly written nsfw | pairing: musician!semi x tattoo artist!reader

↪︎ in which famous musician, semi eita is a regular at your tattoo parlor and only gets work done from you and you only. the only catch is that fans only know that much and definitely not the fact that you and him are friends with benefits.

a/n: happy belated bday for my good friend @kitsunetea. here’s my shameless second (third?) attempt at writing smut as a late bday gift bc fuck it, amirite haha ✋🏻😔

please take it easy on this one,, this is singlehandedly one of the worst nsfw pieces i’ve ever written and i just want to apologize in advance...

semi had forgotten the tingling feeling of a tattoo gun striking away at his skin. he liked how each indent of minuscule pinpricks would leave a mark on him forever. the pain, though not enough to make him grit his teeth like the first time around when he impulsively got one on the side of his ribcage, was actually quite nice. the sensation was almost addictive, however, it wasn’t as nearly as addictive as you.

it was no shock nor surprise that each reveal of his newest tattoo was always done by you. most would understand the practicality of going to one tattoo artist consistently. if anything, most of his fans would come to believe that he simply just liked your style of tattooing and artistry, but no one would even claim to think that you two had even a pinch of something going on behind the scenes. it wasn’t like he would always stop by your shop all disguised and covered up in a black cap and a face mask just in case there were any hidden onlookers that would blatantly assume the worst.

the worst being that semi eita, the nation’s current rockstar heartthrob, was hooking up with some obscure, back alley tattoo artist.

but it was safe to say he was as addicted to you as he was addicted to the infamous pain of receiving a tattoo.

it had been ages since his last tattoo. this one especially was placed on his right forearm of a snake that spiraled up and around his wrist in red ink.

times like these—here, where your eyes are focused and locked onto his skin, making sure to capture each intricate detail, brows drawing together in concentration as you made swift and accurate runs over his skin—came to realize how much he missed the feeling of getting tattooed. but most importantly, he missed the feeling of you. the warmth of your skin, body blazing underneath him as your breath tickled at the nape of his neck.

at moments like these where he could just stare at your entirety for an hour and a half, admiring how the low lights cast shadows upon each and every curve of your body was enough to keep him occupied through the process.

you lifted your tattoo gun up as your other gloved hand wiped the area clean from any residual ink. you took one last look at your work, clean and well-done.

it was pretty good if you could say so yourself. the linework was easily one of your best, and the shading was even better. no wonder semi liked getting work done by you so much (other than the fact that you two are friends with benefits—he would joke, “i’ll give you the best night of your life and you can give me a free tattoo in return.”)

you’ve never seen that man back out of a joke that quickly in your life. regardless, you still found yourself taking him up on that offer, still paying for his tattoos as a good customer should. support local businesses as they always say.

“alright,” you say, breaking the last ten minutes of silence as you cleaned him up. “you already know the drill–gently wash it with warm soap and water at least twice a day, pat dry, and then apply ointment.”

semi looked up at you once you stood up to grab a box of saniderm from another station. he stands up, making his way to one of the large mirrors on the wall to inspect his tattoo as a smile crept onto his lips.

“how is it?”

“it’s perfect,” he says, “as always.”

“well, you shouldn’t expect anything less from me.”

“you know, you don’t have to be so professional all the time. the shop’s already closed and no one else is here but us.”

you give him a pointed look as you take out a strip of saniderm large enough to cover the circumference of his forearm. you press the thin plasticine carefully around his freshly bruised skin, peeling the protective backing off of the clear bandage. “technically, you’re still a customer. can’t really give you any more special treatment.”

“says the girl who literally gives me tattoos after the shop closes,” semi fires back.

“or you could actually come in during normal hours to get one instead of coming a minute before we close just so we can hook up,” you deadpan, ignoring the look he gave you as you turn around and made your way towards the front desk.

semi doesn’t miss a single beat in following right behind you, stopping in front of the counter as you were on the other side with the cash register.

“well if you didn’t want to fuck in the back room anymore, you could’ve just told me,” says semi as you tap away at the screen in front of you, “we can go to my apartment instead.”

“paying with card again?” you ask, completely ignoring the way your body heated up all of a sudden.

the musician in front of you nods, handing you his card quickly. you take the thin plastic out of his hand and swiped it in one quick motion, handing it to him once the machine properly reads his card. within seconds, the receipt comes out of the printer. you snatch it from the opening before shoving it into semi’s chest.

“so what do you say?” he presses, continuing to follow you around like a dog as you serpentine your way back to your station.

you let out a sigh, huffing as you start cleaning up, “about what?”

“about me taking you home. maybe spend the night?”

you swerve around to face him, a spray bottle of disinfectant in one hand and paper towels in the other. you give him a coy smile, “you’re funny,” you huff before pushing past him to spray the chair then wiping it down.

“come on, (y/n), it’s been a while since we’ve last done anything together.” semi gives you a mischievous pout, “don’t you miss me?”

his words immediately flush out your cheeks as you recalled the memory so vividly, it was like you could almost feel semi’s large hands exploring every inch of your body, memorizing every dip and curve like it was second nature. to think that all happened in the storage closet while there were people still in the shop. the simple thought of your last rendezvous with him went straight to your heat.

no wonder you haven’t done anything with semi in a while after that little stunt he pulled almost a month ago.

in order for a tattoo shop to run properly, it needed to be completely sanitary to prevent any health complications considering your job was to literally puncture tattoo ink deep into people’s skin, the risk of infection runs high in situations like these. so by law, fucking in a tattoo shop, regardless if it was in the backroom, was completely out of regulations. not to mention the scandals to potentially spread like wildfire that one of the world’s favorite musicians being at the root of all this.

those poor fangirls, you thought. drama was the last thing you wanted.

“so?” you say, trying to pull yourself together as you finish sanitizing the chair. you turn to face him, hoping that he couldn’t see the way your cheeks were burning up knowing he would only keep up the teasing. “why don’t you just fuck one of you groupies or something?”

semi scoffs, “i’d never stoop that low. besides, you’re the only one i’ve been with ever since this started happening between us.”

“good for you for not being a whore, i guess?”

you brush past him again, this time cleaning up the mess on your table. placing the spray bottle of water, rolls of paper towels, bottles of red ink, and your gloves away–you discard anything else in the bin.

“don’t be like that,” he sighs as he comes and wraps a strong arm around your waist. he rests his chin on your shoulder, the tip of his nose tickling at your skin as his mouth latches onto your neck. “i for sure missed you.”

“eita,” you say, attempting to hold back a moan as he nipped at the sweet spot on your neck. despite your efforts, quiet mewls escape your lips as his thumbs rubbed circles over your hips. “i-i still have to clean up. let me finish and then maybe we could—”

without another word, semi lets go of you and immediately starts getting to work, gathering up all the one-time-use disposable items and dumping them all in the trash. he moves quickly, rubbing down every nook and cranny of your station until it’s squeaky clean. your eyes widen at his state. it was clear he wanted to get this over with as fast as possible so he can finally have you all to himself.

did he really yearn for you this much?

in just a few minutes, the job is already done. clean and spotless and ready for tomorrow’s workday as semi gives you a hopeful look. “is that all?”

you hold back a smile as you motion towards the boxes stacked up near the entrance of the backroom, “i still have to put those away and then we’re all done for the day.”

the man doesn’t even let you finish as he’s already making his way down the hallway. There was no sign of hesitancy in his actions as he grabbed two of the boxes, one stacked on top of the other as he barged into the backroom. you follow him in with only one box in your hand as you placed them in their respective places on the large industrial shelving.

you let out a grunt as you picked up the last box and inserting it into its spot. you sigh, dusting your hands as you turn around to face semi, “alright, we’re all d—”

semi doesn’t hesitate for a second to push you up against the wall, his lips crashing into yours with such desperation and fervor. he had been anticipating this for the past two hours. from the moment he walked in, to the moment you finished tattooing him; all he wanted was you.

you moan into his lips, his hand cupping your jaw while the fingers of the other were already working their magic. his touch greatly juxtaposed the zeal in the way he kissed you deeply, dipping his tongue between your soft lips as his finger, slightly calloused from years of guitar playing, gently trailed their way up your shirt.

there was a brief moment where you had to pull away from him in order to catch your breath. chest rising and falling rapidly along with the quickening beat of your heart, semi dived down to your neck, marking you with dark red bruising to anywhere he had access to. his large palms rubbed your sides before squeezing at your breasts to elicit a pleasurable groan from you. the pent-up heat within you only built the more he played with your body, fingers flicking at your nipples.

“what happened to taking me back to your place?” you asked breathlessly.

“i couldn’t wait any longer,” he mutters on your warm skin, feeling his soft lips twitch into a lopsided grin as before you knew it, he was already tugging your shirt over your head. “jump,” he says and you don’t miss a beat.

he catches you quickly, hands palming your ass as he steers you towards one of the supply tables. pushing away loose items and paperwork off to the sides.

semi’s lips meet yours again as he fiddles with the button and zipper of your jeans, diving his hand inside. he palms your sex, the pads of his fingers teasing up and down your slit as his thumb rubs circular motions around your clit. your moan muffles into his shoulder, breathe heavy and uneven.

you couldn’t seem to catch your breath as he dipped two fingers into you, pumping them in and out slowly. it was a nice change of pace from earlier, and yet you couldn’t help but let out mewls of impatience as you ground your hips into his hand, desperate for more.

semi knew what the hell he was doing.

he was a musician after all. his entire career was literally built off of his innate ability to play the guitar that each expertly placed finger and movement that accompanied it was guaranteed to send waves of pleasure throughout your entire body. he was good at what he did and he knew it. he didn’t need to see the way you were shaking under him, coating his hand with your juices, or have to hear your addicting moans to know you felt so, so good.

“eugh, eita–” your breath hitches when he curls his fingers inside you, rubbing the spongy spot deep within you in the best way possible. you curse under your breath, savoring the pleasure as you felt your release coiling in your abdomen.

“you’re close aren’t you?” semi didn’t even have to ask to know as your walls tightened around him. you nod hastily, eyes coating in lust and the desire to feel the release as you look at him.

the look that you gave him as enough to send him over the edge, his thoughts blurring once he quickens his pace, his middle and ring finger pistoning in and out of you.

you let out a cry, practically trembling under him. “oh my god, oh my god.”

with his other hand, he finds your clit again, rubbing you over the edge. it was all too much. from the mixing cacophony of the most obscene and vulgar sounds of sex emanating from the backroom to the absolute thrill of how good semi was making you feel—you were ready to feel that euphoric glow.

“fuck,” you clawed at his shoulders, nails digging into his skin even through the fabric of his shirt. “shit, baby, i’m gonna—”

semi doesn’t mind the sting of your scratches at his body as he was too busy paying mind to you cumming all over his hand. gushing fluid escapes from you in waves as semi continues pumping his fingers in and out of you, his pace matching with the way your walls pulsated around him.

as you came down from your high, your arms that rested on the table to hold you up felt weak. almost immediately, your body slumps onto semi as he licks your pleasure off his fingers. you bury your face into the crook of his neck as you both stayed there for a few beats to catch your breaths, savoring the unique afterglow whenever you were with semi.

perhaps it wasn’t so bad doing this type of thing with him a bit more often. you didn’t mind what you had with him right now even if you two were just friends with benefits. you liked what you had now and asking for more would certainly cause a strain you don’t want to happen so soon.

your hand reaches up to run through his soft hair.

“hey,” you softly say. he only responds with a hum, “what about you?” you ask as your eyes cast down to the straining tent in his jeans.

he doesn’t answer. instead, he places a few kisses on your cheek and down to your neck before placing one of your lips. “let’s continue this at home, i have a surprise for you.”

general taglist: @yongboxerrr @rosepetalhaven @tvwhoresblog @tanakaslastbraincell @kellesvt @kitsunetea @anejuuuuoy

[cigaretteparfum]

this is ... i think my fourth or fifth offer? and in terms of pay ngl it's the lowest of all the other but also in terms of everything else it's better.

mophead muses aloud about her prospects after read more for mutuals only!!!

basically my first interview was a scam (lol) (that's a third) (that's gotta be the last, right?). then i got two calls for MT position but the first was for sales marketing and i legit don't think i can do that. that was the one with the highest pay offer (3m starting point; 3.5 if i qualify for the management training programme), full benefits, and even sales bonus starting from the first month (all the other offers only give the bonus after the second or third month which. okay, not exactly an issue but like there's this one). buuuutt it's pretty far from home, boarding house desert, and i'd have to work with sales target which is the part where i was like, "uhhh" lol. the other MT position is technically also in sales but without a set target. it's even farther than the other one though, half minimum wage starting point, longer training period, and fifteen hours work day.

(if i haven't gotten a job when/if they call me for a second interview i'll accept it though adlkfjskfj)

i already rejected the sales marketing and i kinda don't regret it kinda do?? the money's definitely the part that makes me kinda regret it (only one to a half million below minimum wage!!!) but when i saw how the TL worked, thought about how that would be me, and the sales target i'd have to meet ... aye, don't really regret it anymore lol.

compared to that, the MT programme that doesn't rely on sales, while far away and already exhausts me just hearing about it, offers a pretty safe and guaranteed career prospect ngl. unlike the other one that advertised itself as MT but then was like, "weeell, you may qualify and you may not, and if you don't you'll be stuck in this sales position" this one was, "yeah, you are being trained for management" with clear timeline as well: 1 month training period, 6 months as spg, 2 years as spv, then manager.

realistically it may not map out as cleanly, buuutt at least it gives a better sense of like, how long i'll need to stick to it, y'know? and if i were to quit, i can just be like, "well how far have i've gone in completing this timeline." like if i were to stay with the company for even a year, i prolly would already have some time however short being a supervisor which, let's be real, would look a lot better in my future resumé than just. sales.

also it's just easier to find boarding houses or even rent a whole house around the area. additional expenses, but it's prolly better to pay 8 to 10 million each year for housing (definitely easily less than that with boarding houses) rather than paying 1.2 million each month for transport alone, lmfao.

then there's the bar. 6+1 work days, 8 to 10 hours of work, 2 million salary plus daily bonus, but the location is pretty sus at night. that was my prime candidate before i scored the interview i had today, though. since schools and uni are also abound, it prolly won't be too hard to find affordable boarding house. and the sus part was mostly just this one road anw, so if i can avoid that route then i'll prolly be fine. maybe.

also like, ik being a service worker is hard and even moreso when you'll be dealing with drunk people but. oh my god i've been stuck working alone for over five years i literally have no friends i can hang out with am so fucking done being alone i'll literally take any job if it means frequent human interaction PLEASE.

then there's this last one i just finished the interview for! fucking one point five million salary! that's less than half the minimum wage! but it's super close. 👁️👁️ like it's so close if i feel like walking i can get there in less than an hour. 👁️👁️ 7 to 9 hours of work depending on shift. 👁️👁️ and i know this district well enough that even going home after midnight is whatever, done that plenty of times already lol.

lowest salary, no clear future prospects, but i am most drawn to this one. legitimately, if they do contact me to begin my training right away, i will accept. like, whatever, i was only paid 300k less for my previous role and we managed. worst case scenario, just stick to it for like, a year. i'd definitely have a better chance in the future if i can put something better in my resumé. who cares. the economy is hard, lol.

my dad is definitely not going to be happy, though. he's persistent about me deserving sooo much better which, 1) true and 2) that's so sweet. but as much as i love the man, he really doesn't know what it feels like to be my position and he's yet to understand that as much as i love doing creative work, am not really into turning my hobbies into job. so. there's that.

welp!!!

am off!!! wml!!!

[joshjacksons]

Joshua Jackson interview with "Mr Porter" (2021)

Minutes before Mr Joshua Jackson joins me in a booth for a Friday afternoon drink at a vibey hotel bar in Santa Monica, he’s confronted by his past. Or rather, a woman in her early twenties who is binge-watching Dawson’s Creek, the teen show about a close-knit group of high-school friends coming of age in a sleepy American town, which made Jackson incredibly famous between 1998 and 2003. The series, which also made household names of Ms Michelle Williams and Ms Katie Holmes, went off air 18 years ago, but is now streaming on Netflix, to the bemusement of Jackson, who played lovable rogue Pacey Witter. “This girl was like, ‘Are you...?’ And I’m like, ‘Yes, I am. He got old. I’m sorry to break it to you,’” he says, before ordering an iced tea and a charcuterie board to tide him over until dinner time. “It always surprises me when young people say they’ve just got into Dawson’s Creek. I’m like, ‘Is it a costume drama to you? Do you feel like you’re watching a historical documentary?’”

The idea of a Friends-style reunion episode or a Sex And The City revival feels equally far-fetched to Canadian-born Jackson, now 43 and wearing it well in a pale green linen shirt and tailored linen trousers by Oliver Spencer that complement his fading brown hair and Cali-tanned skin.

“I don’t know why you’d want to [bring it back],” he says. “Nobody needs to know what those characters are doing in middle age. We left them in a nice place. Nobody needs to see that Pacey’s back hurts. I don’t think we need that update.”

And Jackson doesn’t need Dawson’s Creek. From Mr JJ Abrams’ sci-fi series Fringe (2008-2013) to the Golden Globe award-winning The Affair (2014-2019), from Ms Ava DuVernay’s ground-breaking true-crime drama When They See Us (2019) to the recent Ms Reese Witherspoon and Ms Kerry Washington-produced Little Fires Everywhere (2020), he has commanded the small screen – with a collection of dynamic and diverse work – ever since.

His latest role as Mr Christopher Duntsch, the Texas surgeon convicted of gross malpractice when 33 of his patients were left seriously injured after he operated on them and two of them died, in chilling Peacock crime drama Dr Death, is only stepping his career up another gear.

“I’ve never played anyone irredeemable before,” says Jackson, who is joined in the eight-part series (based on the 2018 Wondery podcast of the same name) by Messrs Christian Slater and Alec Baldwin. “He is charming, gregarious and has a high-level intellect, but he’s also a misogynist, probably a sociopath, certainly a narcissist and a complete incompetent who is incapable of seeing himself.”

If Duntsch is terrifying, then Jackson’s portrayal is even more so. The artist formerly known as Pacey is virtually unrecognisable (thanks to prosthetics) in the opening scene, but the real challenge for Jackson was allowing himself to view someone who is so “spectacularly evil” as a human being in order to walk in his shoes. “It’s a more damning portrayal of the man to make him into a human being, rather than just make him the bad guy,” he says. “He really believes he’s the hero, he’s the genius and that he’s the victim, so once I got past my own judgment, all the other things fell into place.”

Jackson might have his pick of stellar roles – and challenges – now, but it has not happened by accident. Take it from someone who has been in the business since landing his first job aged 14 in Disney’s live-action movie series The Mighty Ducks, opposite Brat Pack alumnus Mr Emilio Estevez.

“You try to make it look like it happens accidentally,” he says, “but there is no way to do this and not be ambitious. I’d say I’m extremely ambitious because I’ve been doing this cutthroat job for nearly 30 years. I’m in the pay-off phase of my career now. One of the benefits of surviving for as long as I have is you get to learn from your own mistakes.”

Such as? “I wouldn’t say, ‘I wish I hadn’t done that,’ because it all becomes bricks in a path, but [after Dawson’s Creek] I was not choosy enough about the things I was doing. You get stuck. You start trying to perform the performance you think people are hoping to see you do. I was so used to working all the time that I just worked all the time. There was definitely a conscious moment in my mid-twenties when I realised I wasn’t really enjoying the work that I was doing. My manager at the time just said, ‘Take a breath. You’re burnt out.’”

The turning point came in 2005, when Jackson was offered a role in the two-hander Mr David Mamet play A Life In The Theatre, opposite Sir Patrick Stewart. “God bless him, Patrick could have made my life miserable because I had no idea what I was doing, ” he says. “I hadn’t been on stage since I was a kid and now I was in the West End in over my head. But it reminded me that I actually enjoyed being an actor, that it’s not about the red carpet or travelling around the world. What I really enjoy is working on good material with good people.”

It’s no surprise Jackson’s time on Dawson’s Creek led to a career crisis. From the ages of 19 to 24, he lived with his fellow cast mates in Wilmington, North Carolina, filming day in, day out, in an arrangement he likens to college. “You get to the end and they’re like, ‘Here’s your degree. Go live now. You’re an adult. Go out into the world,’” he says.

But most graduates don’t have to deal with global fame. “It’s transitory. You’re only ever cool for a moment and then you become much less cool. I was always pretty dubious about flatterers,” he says, recalling a time he was stung in London in the mid-2000s. “I went on a date in Hyde Park with a woman whose name I will not use – she was socialite-famous – and she was acting completely bizarre, looking over her shoulder the whole time. I came to find out that she had hired a photographer to follow us through the park and gave a whole story to the tabloids about how I was going to meet her family.”

It was his growing fortune, rather than fame, that caused Jackson the most anxiety. “Suddenly, at 19 years old, I was making more in a week than most of my friends’ parents would make in a year,” he says. “It was lovely to have the money, but it was that feeling of nobody is worth that kind of money. You feel like a fraud and it took me a long time to forgive myself for not being the thing that I was perceived as.”

Born in Vancouver, but raised in Topanga, California, until he was eight (before moving back to Vancouver following his parents’ divorce), Jackson bought his childhood home in 2001 and lives in it today with his wife, British Queen & Slim actor Ms Jodie Turner-Smith, and their 15-month-old daughter.

“My father unfortunately was not a good father or a husband and exited the scene, but that house in Topanga was where everything felt simple, so it was a very healing thing for me to do,” he says. Fast-forward to 2021 and his baby daughter now sleeps in her father’s childhood bedroom. “There was a mural of a dragon on the wall in that room that I couldn’t believe was still there, years later. The owner [who sold him the house] said, ‘I knew it meant a lot to somebody and that they were going to come back for it some day.’”

Becoming a first-time parent during a pandemic sounds stressful, but it afforded Jackson months at home with his wife and child that his normal work schedule wouldn’t have allowed.

“I now recognise how perverse the way that we have set up our society is,” he says. “There is not a father I know who works a regular job who didn’t go back to the office a week later. It’s robbing that man of the opportunity to bond with his child and spend time with his partner.”

Despite his obvious career ambitions, fatherhood has changed Jackson’s priorities in “every possible way”, he says. “It’s 100 per cent changed how I approach my work and my life. That has been made so clear to me in this past year. For me to feel good about what I’m doing day to day, my family has to be the central focus.

“There are plenty of things left for me to do, but now the thing that gets me excited is experiencing the world through my daughter’s eyes. I can’t wait to take her scuba diving. I can’t wait to take her skiing. I can’t wait to read a great book with her. I’m not worried at all she’ll be a wallflower. She’s been a character from the word go.”

Jackson met Turner-Smith, 34, two days after his 40th birthday. He had been single since his 10-year relationship with German actress Ms Diane Kruger ended in 2016. “I was not looking to fall in love again or meet the mother of my child, but life has other plans for you,” he says.

The couple met at a party. Turner-Smith was wearing the same The Future Is Female Ejaculation T-shirt Ms Tessa Thompson’s character, Detroit, wears in the 2018 film Sorry To Bother You. “That’s what I used to break the ice. I shouted, ‘Detroit!’ across the room. Not the smoothest thing I’ve ever done, but it worked. We were pretty much inseparable from the word go. It was a whirlwind romance and I can tell my daughter I literally saw her mother across a room and thought, ‘I have to be next to this woman.’”

A self-confessed “useless” shopper, Jackson gives his wife full credit for his current wardrobe. He is jewellery-free, apart from a wedding band and a gold signet “JJ” ring on his little finger (a present from his wife), and discovered tailored sweatsuits (by Stampd and Reigning Champ) in the pandemic.

“Jodie has influence in the way that a wonderful wife encourages you, through love, to dress well. She was like, ‘We’re going to throw away all the sweatpants from your past and I’m going to get you some that actually make you look like an adult male and you will still feel comfortable around the house,’ and I’m like, ‘What an amazing idea!’ Who knew you could get sweatsuits that actually look good on your body?”

Jackson’s style has evolved, he says, “from slovenly teen to it’s-nice-when-your-clothes-actually-fit-you”. The penny dropped after he auditioned for his former co-star Estevez, who was directing the 2006 Mr Robert Kennedy biopic Bobby. He said to me, ‘You only got this job because I know you. You came in here to play a very well-put together 1960s political operative and you’re wearing jeans and a hoodie.’

“I had to grow up a little bit. We are very much raised in Canada to never, ever show off, so it took me a while to recognise it’s OK to look good when you go out.”

Still, when you’ve grown up in front of the camera, “every pimple literally documented”, and lived (very successfully) to tell the tale, you can probably be forgiven for the odd fashion faux pas.

“I wore a silk Ascot to an event once in Paris and I still have nightmares about it,” he says. “I looked like Fred from Scooby Doo, but you live and learn.”

[sk-lumen]

How to Get (and Keep) Your Life Together 101

Here’s a quick masterlist of all the tips, hacks and advice that stuck with me from reading so many articles, videos and research. Feel free to ask me any questions, or add tips of your own. 💜

Hydration: Make sure every day you stay hydrated by drinking plenty of water, green tea, black tea. You see this everywhere but it’s true. Just drinking water wil do wonders for your skin and your overall body health.

Nutrition: Maintain a healthy diet by letting go of toxic “restrictive” diet culture and realizing that food is sacred fuel for your sacred body, so offer your body the best! Eat lots of vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds; lots of wholefoods. Incorporate smoothies into your mornings for extra dose of vitamins. Practice mindful, conscious eating, be there in the moment when you are eating, taste the food, enjoy the experience of it. Meditate over your relationship with food and try to work through any unhealthy beliefs.

Exercise: Pick one or multiple forms of exercise that suits your schedule, lifestyle and personality; whether it’s jogging twice a week, going to the gym daily or even just a fresh walk every evening. Pick what is suitable for YOU and keep it part of your life. DYI your own gym routine or hire a trainer; train at home or in the gym; whatever works best for you.

Growth Mindset: Maintain a positive mindset that is always open and curious to learning new things, trying new skills and ever willing to improve itself. Redirect your attention from drama, gossip and toxic comparison beliefs to healthy ones; unfollow accounts online or delete all your social media if that’s what you need. Recreate yourself if that’s what you want. Focus on YOUR growth! Make a habit of reading new books, watching TedTalks, documentaries, etc. Look at educating yourself as a way to invest in yourself, a way to honor yourself. Maintain curiosity in your heart for the ways of the universe. Stay humble and graceful in the face of adversity, but never give up on your dreams, failed attempts are only lessons for improvement and the only true failure is giving up. As long as you keep going you’re still winning. Bonus tip: comparison is self harm, and a denial of your own power; so remember that nobody can be you and that’s a good thing. You can only be you, so make it count and honor yourself!

Relationships: Don’t cling to relationships and don’t be afraid to lose people. Be your authentic self at all times, and do not be afraid to intimidate people or be too much! Those that matter don’t mind, and those that mind don’t matter. Know that the friends/partners that are meant for you, will stay or will find their way back to you. Be mindful of the dynamic in a relationship, and be self-loving enough to walk away from what is toxic, unhealthy, restrictive, disrespectful, etc. Forgive those that wronged you, but tolerate no mistreatment; you can forgive them from afar, but make sure they’re no longer a part of your life.

Focus & Goals: Keep a journal and as frequently as you can, write down bullet lists of to do lists, goals, dreams, daily reflections, aspects of yourself to improve upon, positive affirmations, wishlist etc. - in other words, brainstorm all the things whirling around in your head regarding your own life. Remember all those things you’ve wanted to do? Bucketlists, reminders, curiosities, etc? Keeping a journal, staying focused on your goals, checking progress and practicing positive affirmations will transform your life.

Fashion: Elevate your wardrobe to a whole other level by sitting down and figuring out what your style actually is. Play around in your journal by creating a collage of your favorite colors, textures, patterns, styles, outfit combos and accessories. Mix and match, figure out what your aesthetic is. Refine, polish, remove what doesn’t click. (You can find a bunch of videos on YT for organizing clothes and being effortlessly fashionable/put together.) When you reorganize your wardrobe according to the above, you can easily mix and match anything because your wardrobe makes sense and it’s already planned out. Bonus tip: do your laundry the same day every week (ie. Saturday) and do a wardrobe prep on Sundays for the upcoming week; so that at any moment you can be ready in five minutes looking perfectly polished, and avoid the whole ordeal of being stressed/rushed and not knowing what to wear.

Skincare and haircare: Golden advice - invest in natural products/oils/ingredients instead of investing in brands. Why? Because otherwise you’re paying for a concept instead of actual health benefits for your body. Try natural soaps, oils (shea butter, coconut oil, argan, avocado, jojoba, rosehip, etc), and water extracts (rosewater, hazelwater) for toner. Coconut oil and argan oil is particularly famed for hairgrowth and shine. Castor oil as well helps hairgrowth, including for brows or lashes. Rosehip and shea heal discolorations, scars and marks. Do your research and try out what fits you, your skin will thank you later. I’ve been using natural products & oils for 9+ years and people always compliment how clear, smooth & glowy my skin is. Bonus tip: if you don’t use sunscreen already, try to incorporate it into your routine; just make sure it has gentle, non-harmful ingredients (for both yourself and the environment.

Etiquette, manners, poise, posture: Watch videos, read books or listen to audiobooks about confidence, proper etiquette, leadership skills, how to make people listen when you speak, etc. There are things which are so intuitive, obvious and logical, and yet simply becoming aware of them and having the science of it explained will transform your perspective (and the way you carry yourself).

Finances: Perform a monthly financial review to make sure you know where you are, what your budget is. Make a plan for backup funds, or savings for travels, or new tattoos, or a house, or whatever you want. It doesn’t have to be complicated, you can keep things simple by listing your expenses in five categories (Necessities, groceries, luxury, savings, free/remaining funds). Keep track of your expenses or habits, there are even apps that show statistics or analysis for easy use. The point here is to stay on top of your own finances: know how much are the monthly necessities (rent/mortgage/etc), know what has been payed and keeping receipts, knowing when things need to be paid, etc.

Integrity: This means knowing yourself, having standards, knowing what your boundaries are, what you are willing and not willing to do. When you know yourself and know your worth, you won’t ever tolerate or accept anything less. Know what your principles, values, beliefs are and hold them firmly because it is what you stand for. At the same time, it is important to keep an open mind to growth and improvement, but not so much that any persuasive argument will change your mind. Hold your own, but be gracious to other perspectives. And through it all remember - only you know what’s right for you, what’s best for you. Literally nobody else but you can know what’s in your best interest!

Efficiency & Improvement: This ties in with growth mindset but in a more practical way; make sure that you’re always leaving open space for improvement in your life, don’t ever just settle down/get stuck/let yourself sink into complacency. Know that you can always change anything! Make a habit of frequently reviewing aspects of your life (ex. via journaling) to see whether there’s anything you can make more easy, more efficient. Instead of spending hours grocery shopping, check out shops online where your favorite products can be home delivered in a snap. Instead of driving to a vet for your pet, have a call in. Setting up recurring payments for finances also counts. Literally any process or activity whereby you can automatize a service, delivery, payment, etc. will help you in the long run, so you can focus more on enjoying life, instead of wasting time with Trivial Adult Things.

[sodamnbored]

I so badly want a Roman prequel series. More than a Solangelo book. There could be so many great things in it.

Ideally, we’d get a series, basically original PJO but on the Roman side, presumably then following Jason in the same way we originally followed Percy.

But that would just be rehashing what we’ve already seen! Jason’s story would be too similar to Percy’s! - I hear you cry. But bear with me.

Yes: there would be some big similarities - following a son of one of the big three as he grows up and masters his powers and all that. And yes it would also conclude with him fighting a titan. But! I also think they’re different enough that it would read more as parallels than just copy and paste. It could be really interesting.

For one thing: Jason is starting way earlier than Percy. And I am desperate to know about the wolves thing. Correct me if I’m wrong, but all the info we have thus far is pretty vague, no? We know he went to the wolves when he was about two years old. But we don’t really know how long he stayed with them.

There’s the idea that he was raised by wolves (which don’t get me wrong I love that) and only went to the Legion when he was older - for parallels sake say about twelve. But we don’t know that’s the case for sure. He might’ve just spent the more or less normal time period with the wolves, or even if he were there longer than most - a year, two years even - he might’ve toddled off to camp still pretty young.

Cause this is another thing: we know very little about Camp Jupiter. In CHB you see for a fact that there are plenty of young demigods there, talking ten and under. Unless I’m mistaken, we never really heard mention of any little kids in the Legion right? Hazel was what, thirteen, in SoN, which is fairly young, but I don’t think there was any mention of anyone much younger than that. There was the little girl helping Terminus, but she was from New Rome not the Legion. And the Legion isn’t a summer camp of course, that’s a crucial difference.

They are quite literally an army, preparing for war should one ever arise. So do they have a minimum age requirement? Would not be unreasonable to assume they would. We know the majority of Legionaries are legacies from New Rome as opposed to actual half bloods, so it’s not unreasonable to think these kids live normal lives in New Rome until they hit a certain age and get conscripted/have the option to join the Legion for training.

If this is the case, then Jason might not’ve been with the wolves for years at all. He could’ve done his time and then been passed along to the care of New Rome. Set up somewhere to go to school and grow up and have something of a life to prepare him for his future in the Legion. That would be an interesting difference from Percy who had grown up not knowing about his heritage, for Jason to be fully aware of his godly parentage and to grow up knowing he was heading to the Legion as soon as he was old enough. I’m not sure about timings because in The Lost Hero pretty sure he’s fifteen and has twelve lines on his tattoo “for twelve years of service in the Legion” according to the wiki; but the wiki for the tattoos alone says the lines can be for years at Camp Jupiter or for completed quests and such, so it could mean he was toddling about CJ at three years old in mini Legionnaire armour like Caligula (oh the irony), or just that he crammed a crap load of cool stuff into just a few years when he was older.

So the series could quite happily start with him joining the Legion and maybe just summarise his life before that, have the important parts explained as relevant to the plot, I dunno. But it would give us more info on how Camp Jupiter actually works because personally I am clamouring for more info on the Romans.

Presuming that Jason is at least a Probatio by the time he’s about twelve (and it’d be cool to see him earn his full place in the legion too), that also means we’d get to see other people’s stories happening alongside his.

We know he fought the Trojan Sea Monster at some point, so that would be a cool quest to see play out. We don’t know a lot of other things he’s done, but we can assume he’d have been in the Legion when Reyna turned up, which would also be a really interesting story to follow.

We know from tSoM that Reyna and Hylla were on Circe’s island, when Percy was about 12/13, and it seems in SoN that he and Reyna were both around the same age, 16 or so. We know Reyna and Hylla spent some time after tSoM on Blackbeard’s ship before she made it to Camp Jupiter. So somewhere between ages 12-16, she would pop up at camp and I firmly believe she would’ve been Jason’s friend before they both became Praetors. And I would kill to see it. I wanna see them go on a quest together so badly. They would be an awesome team.

But we’d get to see Jason go through the steps, Probatio to Centurion to Praetor. We’d see him improving the Fifth Cohort’s standing in the Legion. We’d see Reyna become Praetor. (We’d ideally see Jason and Octavian gently bitch at each other like with Percy, but that’s just for me.) We’d get to see Jason and Reyna being Praetors together for a bit hopefully. That would be cool. And no doubt the series would conclude with their side of the Titan War, with Krios’ defeat - which would be so cool to see!

Being able to see more of their side of the war would also be really interesting as well. Because surely, there was more to it for them than just that one battle out of nowhere right? They must’ve been aware of the war and enlisted by the gods to help out right? Maybe there were some other titans for them to fight, maybe they had defectors too? Perhaps they were under the impression Kronos was still chopped up in little bits and Krios was running the show, either wanting to take Kronos’ place as the big cheese, or thinking the titans were working to reform Kronos, but they were kept out of Luke’s side of things so they didn’t realise that he already had been? Who knows. Certainly not me, cause we don’t have any books on it.

And there would be opportunities to have almost crossovers. Particularly regarding the war. They might just overhear things that don’t necessarily make sense to them but that we get, stuff like that. See some aftermath from one of Percy’s visits to the area. So many options.

Oh also actually, just for added angst and a different view than Percy’s, there was that freaking tragic bit in HoH I think where Jason thinks about his mother. The part about following orders and rules bothered him, but he insisted on doing so and keeping his promises because his mother had abandoned him and broken her promise. That would be an interesting aspect for the narration and his point of view because it’s the exact opposite of Percy. Percy doesn’t mind pushing the limits with the gods and exploiting loopholes or calling them on their faults, focused on surviving till the end of the day when he can go home to his mother and forget the gods and their stupid rules. Jason, on the other hand, doesn’t have anywhere to go back to. Camp Jupiter and the roles he’s given there are quite literally it for him, so even though he may resent it as much as Percy, he feels the need to bite his tongue and do everything in his power meet expectations and stay in line, etc. And yes, it’s for the benefit of others like he said in HoH, but maybe also the threat that if he makes too much trouble, where else is he gonna go and who else outside the Legion does he have?

Unfortunately we wouldn’t get to see Frank and Hazel come into it as newbies because that would’ve only happened after the war, so unlikely the series would continue after they beat Krios. But it’d still be a good set up to lead back into HoO alongside original PJO.

Also, I wanna know if Jason would’ve been particularly aware of his dad handing him off to Juno, or if she took a back seat until yoinking his memories out his head and dumping him on a dusty bus. I quite like the idea of him knowing, that she wouldn’t have been shy about popping up now and again as his patron, maybe sending him quests, offering occasional assistance like Poseidon did for Percy. Juno cared about her little champion, you can’t tell me different. I’d like to see her drop by from time to time. Or if he just accepted he was Jupiter’s and his dad basically never wanted to talk to him, and was a bit blindsided when Juno popped up after his hit on Krios.

Maybe he was just heading to bed after a long day of Titan slaying, thinking what he’d have for breakfast tomorrow and poof - Juno staring at him in his PJs, doesn’t he feel underdressed. Barely gets out an “um-?” before she’s like “got a quest for you. Surprise!”

(Since we got The Fall Of Jason Grace from Apollo in ToA, this series could be called something silly like The Rise Of Jason Grace to mirror it. I dunno.)

Either way, I need this. We deserve this. I will literally pay like 20$ per book if we could get this.

Wrote this hella sleep deprived and without sources and I’m still in ToA and haven’t read the extra books yet like demigod files and the Probatio one, so anything I’ve missed, had been answered, or is just plain wrong, let me know.

[itsclydebitches]

A weird defence I've seen of RWBY's conflicts has been that it's good writing simply by the virtue that people can disagree on what's the right thing to do in said conflict. Which doesn't work when one decision is being presented as the only valid choice while every other option is either not addressed or demonized. This isn't a story leaving a nuanced set of stances to explore, it's a guy on stage signalling the crowd to boo whenever someone goes against the Protag's decision.

Real quick, I want to talk about RWBY by not talking about RWBY. I’ve seen this argument a lot too and the tl;dr is that just because your audience debates the right action in a conflict  — something that is inevitable given how subjective media is  — doesn’t mean the story encouraged that reflection in any way. As you say, RWBY pretends that those disagreements don’t exist and that This Is The One (1) Right Answer... which entirely defeats the purpose of a morally nuanced situation in the first place. That lack is bad writing because it demonstrates the author’s inability to provide an accurate picture of the conflict while still ensuring we come out of it liking the parties involved. The conflict was too complex for them to manage alongside equally complex characterization, so they just pretended it was far simpler than it actually was. That’s not something to praise. 

But to get to the not RWBY part. I’ve mentioned this a couple times before, but one of the scenes that I think manages these sorts of conflicts really well is the funeral fight in The Haunting of Hill House, episodes 6, “Two Storms.” So warning from here on out for spoilers. Sometimes, the best way to see what’s not working well in one show is to look at another show that does (basically) the same thing successfully and compare the two. 

Normally I’d include screenshots, but Netflix doesn’t allow that :/ So I’m forced to rely on bullet points. 

The basic premise is that the Crain family has assembled in daughter Shirley’s funeral home, the night before they bury their sister, Nell. A lot of secrets are about to come to light. 

The scene kicks off when their father, Hugh, relays the call he got from the housekeeper the night of Nell’s death. She had committed suicide in the family’s childhood home. 

Though everyone knew how she’d died, son Steven is distraught at hearing the details and reveals that a few weeks prior Nell crashed a book signing of his. This shocks the others given that this was very unusual behavior for Nell. 

Shirley likewise reveals that she got a call from Nell who’d been worried about their brother, Luke, but hadn’t spoken to her the night of her death. The implication is that no one did. They’ll never know what was going through her head the night she died. 

Hugh reveals that she did call him. “I talked to her.” 

Stunned by this news, his children demand to know what was discussed and Hugh is clearly reluctant to continue. However, he eventually says that Nell wasn’t just worried about Luke, but also the “Bent Neck Lady,” a specter from her childhood.

The viewer knows that ghosts are real in this show. The kids don’t. Or rather, they all experienced supernatural occurrences in their childhood, are still experiencing them now, but only some of them are willing to admit they’re real. Steven is the diehard skeptic of the bunch and starts yelling at his father, accusing him of aiding Nell’s delusions and ignoring a family history of mental illness. In particular, he declares that this “makes you culpable [in her death].” 

Steven continues to accuse Hugh of “holding back information” about Nell and Hugh shoots back that “If I held back anything it was to protect you kids.” The viewer understands Hugh’s dilemma: the only reason he keeps things to himself is because Steven and the others refuse to believe the truth, with an added dose of this supernatural stuff being very dangerous. Steven asks, “Why do I need protection from the truth?” 

Before their fight can go any further, Shirley tells Steven, “You might want to check yourself before you start talking about the truth.” He published an autobiographical book about their childhood trauma and notably capitalized on a supernatural angle he doesn’t believe in. Shirley calls it “blood money.” 

As the argument about the ethics of his book rages, Shirley defends herself primarily with how everyone else thinks this is “blood money” too. No one took a cut when Steven offered one, proving how despicable they all think it is. 

Meanwhile, sister Theo has been getting heat for being drunk (a coping mechanism for her own supernatural troubles) and Shirley eventually pushes her far enough that she admits she did take Steven’s money and used it to get her degree. “It’s good, fucking money.” Suddenly, Steven has someone in his corner and Shirley’s main defense has crumbled. 

Shirley is furious that Theo had this secret income but was still living with her and her husband. Theo reminds her that she offered to pay rent, but Shirley isn’t interested in hearing that. She demands that Theo move out immediately and uses this betrayal as the new way to protect herself. She’s the victim here. 

Steven, sensing another secret in the works, cautions Shirley to “get off your high horse before you fall off.” 

Shirley maintains her position until her husband blurts that they also took Steven’s money. Shirley hasn’t been running the funeral home well and they would have sunk without it. 

Despite being the punching bag for the second half of this fight, Shirley is offered both reassurance and dignity. Her husband emphasizes that the only reason they’re struggling is because Shirley is a good person. She does too much work pro bono. Shirley also delivers the line, “Do you have any idea how much you’ve humiliated me?” calling into question the husband’s choice to admit this now, purely as a way to prove her wrong. 

Shirley leaves to get some distance and discovers that someone — something — has put buttons over Nell’s eyes. The shock of this keeps the fight from continuing and, as plot intervenes, gives the characters the space needed to eventually start healing and forgiving one another, notably by sitting with the various truths they all now have to grapple with. 

Phew! A long summary, but I’ve put this much detail in to highlight the nuance of the scene. Obviously RWBY would differ in many ways  — less cursing, for one  — but the core elements of any morally complex scene should be the same. The important takeaways here are that no one in the Crain family are “pure” or “evil” and everyone gets their chance to be both right and wrong. Hugh is right that Steven won’t listen to him and wrong in that he didn’t do enough to help his kids. We get Steven and Hugh’s frustration, their understanding of the world at odds with one another. Steven is wrong to put everything on his father and justified in starting his writing career with their story. We watch the scene move from “Steven is Wrong and everyone agrees” to “Oh shit nm, more and more of the family are revealing that they benefited from his money, complicating how “wrong” he actually is.” Shirley is right to point out that Theo is getting drunk during their sister’s funeral and Theo is right to point out that being drunk doesn’t erase having a good point. Theo is allowed to scream at the group and then immediately be offered help when she falls. Shirley pretends she’s better than all of them and is slowly, horrifyingly proven wrong, but is then still extended compassion and is allowed to point out how horribly they’ve just treated her. The husband is right about the money, wrong about keeping it a secret/revealing it the way he did, right in how he tries to diffuse the other fights, and VERY wrong by getting caught kissing Theo down in the storeroom! 

The scene twists and turns in a way that highlights everyone’s points and their flaws, the moments when their perspective should be upheld and questioned. The end result is a scene that has space for the audience to debate everyone’s choices without imposing the single view of This Person Is Obviously Wrong/Right and If You Think Otherwise You’re Not Watching The Show Correctly. The show itself acknowledges the complexity and nuance of these problems. It asks, “Hugh should have tried harder, but what more can he do when his kids literally don’t believe this stuff exists? Was Steven really justified in writing a book about their collective experiences? What does it mean that something his family sees as capitalizing on their trauma also helped them keep businesses and schooling afloat? Was it okay for Shirley’s husband to keep that money a secret, even if it helped them? How might he have told her in a less cruel manner? What about Shirley’s life has led to her intense need to be on that ‘high horse’?” 

And of course: “Who is really responsible for Nell’s death?” By this point the viewer already knows that there is no “really” here. This is too complicated a tragedy to lay the blame at any one person’s feet. Everyone in this room has moments of justified accusations and moments of chastisement because they’re well written, well rounded characters who are neither saints nor devils. The length of the scene (done in a single shot!) emphasizes that if you just wait long enough, even the most perfect looking person will eventually have a skeleton pulled from their closet. No one is above mistakes. 

RWBY has NONE of that. Zip. Nada. Nothing. RWBY gave us a scenario with many of the same, core themes  — secret keeping, secrets unwillingly revealed, blaming others for your mistakes, hurtful actions with helpful consequences, questioning who is responsible for a tragic death  — and instead of even attempting to give us some of the above nuance, RWBY said only that Ruby was right, Ozpin was wrong, and demanding that the audience ignore the nuance they could already see in order to accept the canon. 

RWBY’s scene asks the audience to play dumb and look at the world as a Black and White place, despite the show simultaneously insisting that “the world isn’t a fairy tale” and is, in fact, filled with shades of gray. 

Just not any shades of gray that mess with that dichotomy that now drives the story.  

That’s not good writing. It’s oblivious and contradictory writing that makes the audience frustrated. Not satisfied, surprised, contemplative, or curious. Just frustrated. 

[aion-rsa]

Squid Game’s Scathing Critique of Capitalism

https://ift.tt/3kOEMpF

This Squid Game article contains MAJOR spoilers.

From the very first game of ddakji out in the real world with Train to Busan actor Gong Yoo, Squid Game poses the question: how far would you go for money? How much of your body, your life, would you trade to keep the wolves at bay and to get to live the life you’ve always dreamed? Once you start, could you stop, even if you wanted to? And in the end, would it even be worth it? While Squid Game depicts an attempt to answer these questions taken to the extreme, they are the same essential questions posed to everyone living under capitalism: What kind of job, what terrible hours, what back-breaking labor, what level of abuse, what work/life imbalance will we tolerate in exchange for what we need or want to live? Unlike many examples of this genre, Squid Game is set in our contemporary reality, which makes its scathing critique of capitalism less of a metaphor for the world we live in and more of a literal depiction of life under capitalism.

Squid Game’s Workers

At the most basic level, the entire competition within Squid Game would not exist without extreme financial distress creating a ready pool of players. It’s no coincidence that Gi-hun’s hard times started when he lost his job, followed by violence against the workers who went on strike. Strike-breakers and physical violence against striking workers may feel like an antiquated idea to an American audience. South Korea, however, has something of an anti-labor reputation, with only 10% of its workers in unions and laws limiting unions to negotiating pay, among other restrictions. In the US, the anti-labor fight is alive and well, though transformed, where it takes the shape of the deceptively named “Right to Work” laws, which benefit corporations and make it harder for unions to operate.

As noted in our review, (most of) the players choose to leave and then willingly return to the arena, which separates Squid Game from other entries in the genre like the Hunger Games series and Escape Room. This element of volition contributes to the series’ primary critical goal. As Mi-nyeo and others brought up early on, they’re getting killed in the real world too, but at least inside they might actually get something for their troubles. 

As an anti-capitalist parable, the only ways to fight back or upend the game in some small way are through acts of solidarity or by turning down the allure of the cash. The final clause in the game’s consent form states that the game can end if a majority of players agree to do so. After the brutal Red Light, Green Light massacre in the first, they do exactly that. The election might as well be a union vote. It’s shocking that the contract for the game included an escape clause at all, but it seems the host and his ilk enjoy at least allowing the illusion of free will if nothing else. The players who didn’t return after the first vote to leave the game, though unseen in this narrative, are perhaps the wisest of all. 

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During tug of war, Gi-hun’s team surprises everyone by winning. Their teamwork, unity of purpose, and superior strategy help them defeat a stronger adversary, which is a basic principle of labor organizing, albeit usually not at the expense of the lives of other workers. Player 1 (Il-nam) and Player 240 (Ji-yeong) each find their own way to beat the game by essentially backing out of the competition during marbles. In exchange for friendship and choosing the circumstances of their own deaths, Ji-yeong and Il-nam each make their own, ethically sound choice under this miserable system. Il-nam gets an asterisk since he was never going to die, but he still found a choice beyond merely “kill” or “be killed” by teaching his Gganbu one “last” lesson and helping him continue on in the game. 

In the end, Gi-hun confounds the VIPs and the Front Man by coming to the precipice of victory and simply walking away. Under capitalism, this group of incredibly rich men simply could not understand how someone could come so close to claiming their prize, and choose not to. But for Gi-hun, human life always had greater value. Gi-hun followed (Player 67) Sae-byeok’s advice and stayed true to himself, refusing to actively take anyone’s life, especially not the life of his friend. 

Squid Game’s Ruling Class

Since the competition only exists because of the worst aspects of capitalism, it’s not surprising that in the end, it is itself a capitalist endeavor. Ultra-wealthy VIPs, who mostly seem to be white, Western men, spectate for a price and bet on the game. In their luxury accommodations, they lounge on silent human “furniture” and mistreat service staff. In one notable example, a VIP threatens to kill a server (who the audience knows to be undercover cop Hwang Jun-ho) if he doesn’t remove his mask, even though the VIP knows it would cost the server his life. 

Perhaps most enraging of all is what Player 1, who turns out to actually be the Host, has to say to Gi-hun a year after the game ends. It all circles back to the game’s existential connection to economics; on the one hand, there is the unshakeable link to a population in which a significant portion of people suffer from dire financial woes. On the other hand, there is the Host and his cronies, the ultra-rich who are so bored from their megarich lives that they decided to bet on deadly human bloodsport for fun just so they could feel something again, as though they were betting on horses. 

In spite of the enormous gulf between the two, the Host attempts to draw comparisons between the ultra-wealthy and the extreme poor, saying both are miserable. His little joke denies the reality of hunger, early death, trauma, and many other ways that being poor is actively harmful, both physically and mentally. It’s the kind of slow death that makes risking a quick one in the arena seem reasonable. He and his buddies were just kind of bored. Moreover, the Host denies the role of economic coercion in players taking part in the game, insisting that everyone was there of their own free will. But what free will can there be for people who owe millions, with families at home to care for and creditors at their back, when someone comes along and offers a solution, even a dangerous one? Anyone who has taken a dodgy job offer to get away from a worse one, or because they’re unemployed and the rent and college loans are due, knows that there is a limit to how truly free our choices can be when we need money, especially if there’s little to no safety net. 

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Throughout the series, it is clear that someone had to be funding Squid Game at a high level. Unlike science fiction or fantasy takes, the show is grounded in our current reality, so the large-scale, high-tech obstacles and the island locale must have cost a pretty penny. Of course for any who see it as unrealistic, consider the example of Jeffrey Epstein, a man who bought an island from the US government and ran a sexual abuse and human trafficking ring not entirely disimilar (though far more pedestrian in its purpose) from this one. 

The Host is able to pay for everything because he works in – you guessed it – banking. It’s a profession where he gained wealth by moving capital around. Given the Korean debt crisis – South Korea has the highest household debt in the world, both in size and growth – his profession makes him a worthy villain, in the same way the Lehman Brothers were after the 2008 crash. The bank executive calls in Gi-hun to offer him investment products and services, because of course someone with 45 billion won can accrue significantly more money passively, and who wouldn’t want that? Gi-hun’s decision to walk away is a callback to his earlier attempt to walk away from Squid Game when millions of dollars was within his grasp.

Throughout the series, the people running the game actively pit the players against one another in much the same way capitalism pits workers against one another. Whether they’re giving the players less food to encourage a fight overnight, the daily influx of cash every time another player dies, or giving them knives for the evening, the mysterious people pulling the strings want the players to fight each other like crabs in a barrel so they can’t work together to figure out what’s going on or take on the guys in red jumpsuits. Though there are notable examples of the players working together to succeed, it is always within the rules of the system. It is never treated as a viable or likely option for the players to team up and take the blood money literally hanging over their heads or to prevent death, merely to redirect it or choose how they will die. No, to win that, they must play the Squid Game’s rules. 

In our society, this kind of worker-vs-worker rhetoric takes the form of employers telling workers their workload is harder or they can’t go on vacation or get a raise because of fellow employees who leave or go on maternity leave.. In reality, these are all normal aspects of managing a business that employers should plan for, and their failure to do so is not the fault of their workers. Much like in Squid Game, it benefits managers and owners if workers are too busy being mad at each other to have time or energy to fight the system and those who make unjust rules in the first place. 

Squid Game’s Managers

The Front Man insists the game is fair, gruesomely hanging the dead bodies of those involved in the organ harvesting scheme because they traded medical knowledge for advanced intel on the game. However, like capitalism, there are many ways that the system is clearly rigged, no matter what the people at the top insist. There’s the obvious corruption in the organ harvesting ring, but even at its “purest” form, the game is not equitable. Sometimes the managers and soldiers in red jumpsuits stand by when unfair things happen, like Deok-su and his cronies stealing food. At other times, the people in charge intervene in player squabbles, like enforcing nonviolence during marbles and elections but encouraging violence at other times. They especially set things up to their own advantage, such as cutting the lights so the players couldn’t see the glass in the penultimate game, or the way they set up the election. Everyone knew how everyone else voted, they shared the total amount of money immediately beforehand, in an attempt to sway votes, calling to mind Amazon’s scare tactics before the recent unionization vote.

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Ultimately, much like any manager/employer, the Front Man’s insistence on fairness has nothing to do with the actual value of equality, but rather the capitalist need to ensure betters are happy with the stakes and their chance at a favorable outcome. 

Even the workers, soldiers and managers in red jumpsuits, who seem to be in charge, are ultimately only in power (and alive) so long as they serve the needs of the system. Like so many low-level managers, many wield their tiny amount of power ruthlessly, shooting players with impunity or running their organ harvesting side gig. It soon becomes clear that they’re as expendable as players, if not moreso, and the Front Man shoots them without hesitating. A player asks (and it’s too bad we never learned) what “they” did to the people in red jumpsuits to get them to run this game, but it’s not too hard to guess. They seem to be very young men, who likely needed money and wouldn’t be missed if they never returned. 

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

The biggest trick capitalism ever pulled was convincing workers it’s a zero-sum game, that anything we want but don’t have is the fault of someone else who “took it” from us. Within the game, that means every player was a living obstacle to the money, and that Gi-hun should kill his childhood friend to succeed and celebrate when he’s done. But as we see after he “wins,” even without taking Sang-woo’s life himself, the money isn’t worth it. The greater success would have been both men walking out of the arena alive.

The post Squid Game’s Scathing Critique of Capitalism appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[madyxtothemax]

The Pit Stop - Part One with @MyArrowBends

Atticus: 

-After a few days, the roads and sights began to blur together. Each truck stop was the same. The coffee all tasted the same and the bathrooms were all equally disgusting. I had enjoyed the solitude at first, but was now beginning to get a little stir crazy, and despite having bought a thicker foam for the bed, it still wasn’t the greatest sleep I’d ever had. 

As I crossed into California, I found myself craving human interaction, and more important than that, I had decided one way or another I would be sleeping in an actual bed tonight. As I gassed up at another same looking, shitty coffee making gas station, I didn’t bother checking google for any nearby hotels, figuring I’d stop when I grew tired and see what was close at that point. 

The hours passed and the sun was inching down toward the horizon with a speed that my van couldn’t seem to match. Dusk had settled and on the horizon I could see a cluster of lights that belonged to a city. I wasn’t sure which one it was, it didn’t matter. I had stopped paying attention to the names at this point since I didn’t really have a destination in mind. I would know when I was ready to stop and until I felt that feeling, I’d keep driving west. 

As the city lights grew closer, that same feeling of from earlier in the day returned. I was ready to find a motel for the night, maybe even somewhere I could grab a drink and a greasy burger. The potential for brief human interaction had a grin pulling the corners of my lips up. 

Still, I avoided searching something out on my phone, wanting to see what I could find on my own. Exiting off the freeway, and making my way toward the city, my eyes searched the buildings as I passed them by. Disappointingly, nothing much seemed to be open...at least nothing that grabbed my attention or sparked any interest. I wanted to find something local, I wasn’t interested in any kind of franchise. Those places were not geared toward any kind of interaction, speed and efficiency was their purpose. 

Finally after a few turns bringing me deeper into the city, I spotted a neon sign. The bright OPEN flashing in the door was the only invitation I needed. Admittedly, I wasn’t paying proper attention because I was still needing to keep an eye on the road, but as I pulled my van over to the sidewalk and looked up at the sign to fully read it, I couldn’t stop my laughter as it filled the quiet around me. 

A tattoo shop. 

I was not a collector of skin art, even though I liked it, I had never really felt a desire or pull to permanently mark my body with any sort of image. But I could see people inside, and I could go in and look around. I could get that human interaction I was craving even if I had zero intentions of getting a tattoo. Yeah. I could do that. 

Twisting the key in the ignition to turn off the engine, I unbuckled my seatbelt and made my way toward the door, noting the time on the door before opening it. I paused to check the time on my phone...they weren’t too far from closing. Perfect. Just enough time to have myself a casual conversation with someone about something I’d never follow through on before finding myself some food and a bed to sleep on.-

Madyx:

<I’d woken with it, the unshakable intuition alerting me that something was on the way. Something for me to attend to. Something significant. Someone to benefit from my unique abilities. Something to shake up the doldrums of a monotonous wave of months. 

As the hours in the day had passed like any other with a few window shoppers, bookings and not much more, whatever I had been anticipating hadn’t materialized. My intuition wasn’t normally so off, in fact I momentarily wondered if I’d pissed off the wrong people and lost my privileges. But, nah, I couldn’t shake it, even as the hours ticked down to less than fifteen minutes before the neon went dark. 

Having just finished with the people who’d shown up to book a session with Jordan, I was relegated to the idea I’d served as a glorified personal assistant for the day. Hell, I hadn’t even done a single piercing, let alone expressed anything in ink. At least Jordan would be pleased with what I’d lined up for her; a lot of people looking to lose their memories and oh-so-many willing to accept whatever consequences came with those choices.

I had my back turned as the group of three left, the bell chiming their exit. Oddly, the shop didn’t feel empty; I wasn’t alone after all. 

Turning, I was unsurprised to see a guy had wandered in just as the others had left. First impression was strong: he looked road weary, like he’d been places, but he wasn’t weighted by fatigue - nope. He wore whatever travels he’d been on with an earnestness. He wasn’t unkempt, but it looked like he hadn’t had a shave in a few days, and there was nothing that could have been done to conceal that he was damn gorgeous. I’d need to see more skin to know if there was any ink hidden under the clothes, and there were no visible piercings… visible being the operative word… 

Right.

I detoured my thoughts from veering in the direction of the gutter and noted the feeling that surfaced during the day had morphed into something more tangible. 

Well then.

I walked his way, which conveniently enough, was in the direction of the sign that was about to go dark. He, whoever he was, already had an unspoken invitation to stay as long as he liked.> 

Hey man, anything I can help you with? 

Atticus: 

-As I stood at the door, hand gripping the handle while sliding my phone into my back pocket, I looked up in time to see three people headed my way. I swung the door open and held it for them, offering an easy smile as they passed and spoke with an excitement I suddenly realized I wanted to feel. Seeing it on others left me no choice but to notice that I was heavily lacking that type of emotion in my own life. Sure, I had bought my van and felt the excitement and when I hit the road, it was there. But it was surface level excitement. 

I wanted to feel the rush of doing something impactful in my life. I still wanted to have some kind of human contact, and while my opinion and lack of desire to ink my skin hadn’t changed in the thirty seconds it took for me to hold a door open and walk inside the shop, I was definitely more open to suggestions. 

The guy who was working had his back to me. That was fine, he was busy and I had all the time in the world to wait to be noticed. Rather than doing something obnoxious like clearing my throat, I turned and began to look at the flash on the walls. Each page was neatly framed and hung with obvious care. Not a single one was off kilter. It made me smile. Anyone who paid this much attention to detail truly cared about what they did. I was envious of their passion.

I didn’t even have artwork that had hung on the walls in my office back in New York. Maybe if I had, my attitude toward being stuck behind a desk all day would have improved. Likely not. 

As I scanned a page filled with anchors, ships and pinup girls, a voice was directed at me. I had been so lost in my head, I forgot my entire reason for stepping into a shop I had no business being in. Turning my attention on the guy, I paused at his question. Shit. Instant attraction. I couldn’t remember the last time that had ever happened. My dick twitched as if to say, SURPRISE I still work! I felt completely disarmed. A fraud. An imposter. I couldn’t help the laugh that was two parts guilt and one part eagerness. 

“...anything I can help you with…”

Was there anything he could help me with? ...yes there certainly was, but I really didn’t want to admit that or what my initial reaction to him had been. My eyes searched his face first and then his gaze as it remained on me. His eyes were warm and welcoming the way my beloved hoodie felt each time I put it on. 

I was taking too long to answer but he didn’t seem to mind considering I was one of those assholes who showed up 15 minutes before closing. Remembering my entire reason for coming in here, to have a conversation with someone, I lifted my hand to the frame on the wall I had been looking at and grinned lazily at him, one side slightly higher than the other as I answered his question with one of my own.- Do you know who drew these? 

Madyx:

<The closer I got, the better my last call was looking. He appeared to be admiring what he saw on the wall which was a lift to my confidence after a day of nada. I was starting to pick up on the energy he was throwing off, and it was coming through strong. He was rife with a quiet excitement, like he was flirting with epiphanies and on the edge of taking chances. I was feeling it on a vibration much higher than my norm. Instant clarity. I relaxed into myself after his arrival helped me shake that unrequited anticipation I’d battled all day.  

When his eyes flicked off the art on the wall to me, I was ill prepared. His steel-blue irises were rimmed in navy, and subtly backlit; his gaze flecked with mischief. The cut of his jaw was a visual temptation outfitted with an infuriatingly attractive amount of scruff. His laugh broke me out of my preoccupation. It was telling, but only thanks to my extra sensory skills. 

His grin though… that was what slayed me where I stood. Crooked and slow, even stretched his lips were full and fetching.  Literally, I couldn’t have hand-picked the features of my non-type type more perfectly. He was exactly what I liked in a guy, at least physically. 

The lift of his hand to indicate the frame on the wall brought up my stare. A confident grin preceded my answer.>  

That would be me. But those are some of my more generic samples. I’ve got a book you can check if you’re in the market. Unless you’ve already got something specific in mind? 

<My eyes raked shamelessly up and down his body, taking stock of the canvas, before heading home to his eyes. I didn’t have to wonder if the charge I was feeling between us was legit. I knew it. If he had come for some ink and a fuck, I’d be happy to indulge his pleasure, even if it wasn’t in store for me… there’s no way I wouldn’t enjoy it.> 

Atticus: 

-The weight of this guy’s stare left me feeling some kind of way. At first, I thought I might be getting one of those he’s into you vibes, but then he answered my question and doubt began to creep back in. Maybe he was one of those people who were far too perceptive and he could smell the scent of wannabe all over me. 

No, I didn’t have anything in mind. I wasn’t interested in getting a tattoo, which was how I felt before I opened the door. I just wanted to have a conversation. Seemed the only way for me to do that without him getting annoyed that I was wasting his time so close to the end of the day was to keep looking at his work. I could do that, wanted to, actually. 

I shook my head, answering as honestly and non-committal as possible as his gaze hit me with a pointed once over. All right. I knew that look. I had given it out a time or two myself. I felt more confident as I found my voice again.- 

No. I don’t have anything specific in mind. I’m not exactly the type to just fill my skin with ink. -I paused and considered how my words sounded then quickly added to it so as not to insult the guy who clearly had no problem filling his own skin with ink which I suddenly wanted to check out every bit of.- I mean, not without research, that is. I’d love to see your book. 

-As he guided me to where a few different books sat on top of the glass countertop, I noticed each one had a different name on the spine. The one he gave me said Madyx. I grinned at him again and flipped open the cover. There were pages of photos of tattoos done on people. Some pages had drawings, too, and I took my time looking at each one. The silence between us was comfortable and easy. When my eyes landed on a particularly colourful image that took up someone’s entire back I paused to study it.- Wow. This one must have taken quite a while. Your work is incredible, Madyx. 

-I chanced a glance his way as I said his name so he knew I wasn’t just blowing smoke up his ass, before looking back down and flipping another page. I was beginning to feel like I was leading him on knowing I wasn’t going to be in town long enough to commit any kind of time like that, even if I did want ink. Which in the three minutes since I last asked myself, still hadn’t changed. I couldn’t pull the trigger on something that permanent. Plus, a tattoo that large would have taken more than one session, I knew that much. As I shifted from foot to foot, trying to figure out how to let him know I was sorry to have wasted his time, the light caught something below the glass counter. It was a showcase of sorts filled with what I assumed was body jewelry. My stomach lurched and adrenaline surged through my veins. I’d always been interested in getting a piercing, maybe...it was far less permanent than ink and wouldn’t take even a fraction of time.- 

Do you only do tattoos? -Sliding the book to the side a little, I checked out the display of hardware with more than the curious interest I had previously given to his artwork.- 

Madyx:

<Gorgeous seemed to be stalling. I sensed a reluctance I couldn’t quite define. I was starting to think it was definitely his first time, or maybe he was just feeling out the idea. BULLSEYE. He admitted as much by answering that he wasn’t the type to fill his skin with ink, but I wasn’t offended, nope. His eyes seemed to reflexively land on my own collection of pieces, and I wanted to invite him to gawk with those blues all he wanted. 

I didn’t care if he didn’t want any work only that it might end up in him leaving sooner rather than later. I was not down with that. I almost missed when he caught his self-perceived fuck up, but was nearly punch-drunk when he took me up on the offer to check out my book. Normally I wouldn’t waste someone’s time if they weren’t actually intent on letting me scratch my artistic itch, but he didn’t seem in a hurry to leave and, duh, same page. 

I handed off the book and he seemed to be truly checking it out. There was an excitement for me, one I hadn’t quite tasted. It was a thousand flavors, custom made...meant for me. Yeah, this was hitting way below the epidermis, into the bone, and below the belt, too. When he stopped on the page he did, my gut twisted in the best way, he just so happened to land on the favorite piece I’d ever laid down in ink. It had been inspired by Klimt’s “The Kiss” per the patron’s request, but with several liberties worked into the artistic elements. Instead of an obscure male and female, it was clearly two males. It had morphed from a symbolist piece to something more sci-fi and steampunk.  There were three dimensional aspects and an inordinate amount of intricate details, like any provoking piece, it begged look after look. In total it had taken 36 hours in six sessions. I would have got lost thinking about it if something else hadn’t caught my attention - my name. The intention in his tone was unmistakable. Now we were getting somewhere.

I didn’t even care that we didn’t discuss that tatt he’d stopped on, it was logged into the distant past when his attention shifted to the display of body jewelry. I walked to the opposite side of the counter, light shining up from the backlit case, we were closer to face to face and hell-to-the-yes; I saw the change in his posture. We were REALLY getting somewhere. 

I handle the piercings, too. <clearing the space of the books for the full view> But before we get to that, we need to level the playing field. Got a name or should I just call you gorgeous? 

Atticus:

-Generally speaking, I was not always very quick to pick up the cues when someone was flirting with me. It usually took a couple of are they or aren’t they moments before I caught on and then properly joined in on the exchange of the flirting game. Tonight it only took me two of those moments. First when I caught sight of him looking me over and then again, just now when he called me gorgeous. 

My grin at Madyx was instant and interested as I answered, holding out my hand to him for a shake, as proper dudes do.- Atticus. 

-When his hand slid into mine, I gave it a solid squeeze, and chanced a light brush of my thumb over the back of his before releasing it. His hand was warm and slightly rough on the palm, not at all unpleasant, the kind of hand that knew how to do hard work and wasn’t afraid of it. Not at all like my paper-pushing, then couch lazing hands. The most work mine had been doing lately had been flicking a signal indicator for left and right. 

As I returned my attention back to the display of body jewelry, I briefly thought about the other places I might enjoy the rough grip of his hands and damn near groaned. My dick was more than on board and before I could pitch any kind of tents of embarrassment, I considered piercing the damn thing just to get it to go back down. As far as ideas one might think about to initiate a cooling down effect on their body, this one should have worked for bringing my semi back to completely flaccid. Should have. 

It didn’t. 

The more I imagined Madyx jamming a needle through my most sensitive flesh, the more my pulse quickened and the more I discovered that I liked the idea. Fuck. Guess my body had decided for me. I now only needed to man up and tell the guy what I wanted. Vocalization time. If I couldn’t ask for the damn piercing, I did not deserve to have his hands on me, and that, judging by the sinking pit my stomach had just become was not at all what I wanted. 

Given how everything else I had done since rolling into this town has been on impulse decision making, I let my mouth run without much consultation with my brain, and hoped for the best.-

I’d like to be handled. -Welp. That was a wide open innuendo of his own words that couldn’t be taken back now. Guess I wasn’t going with my usual subtle approach, then again, nothing about this encounter was close to my usual.- A piercing, maybe two? Do you have time tonight? I noticed the sign said you were closing right away. I can always come back tomorrow if you need to close up and get out of here... 

-I wouldn’t keep him if he had somewhere else to be, but I really didn’t want to wait until tomorrow, I was too afraid of losing my nerve or even worse, waking up having decided I suddenly wanted an entire back piece devoted to body piercings. I shuddered at that particular thought before shaking my head, waiting to see if he was game for some over time before I even broached the topic of where I wanted him to pierce me.-     

Madyx:

<There was the grin again, but this one drew me in like it was baited with something addictive. I wanted a taste. I also wanted to hear him say my name again, that was until he told me his. 

 Atticus. 

As if I wasn’t already in deep shit with the grin, he had to go and share a name with one of my favorite literary characters. I wanted to roll it around in my brain on a loop, then say it out loud so I could see how it would feel in the slide off my tongue.  I swallowed thickly and dropped my hand into the one he offered for a shake, setting off a chain reaction I had in no way expected. 

Our hands fit like they belonged to each other, his warmth matched mine but his skin was smoother, more pliant. My eyes hit his just as I felt the subtle stroke of his thumb on mine. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end, and an electrifying buzz scaled my spine, then split and radiated north, east, south and west. My heart started to race in an erratic beat against my rib cage. When heat balled in my gut and prickled along the underside of my dick, it finally registered what was going on. Pleasure had always been my gift, but I had only played delivery boy and spectator so I hadn’t immediately recognized my receptivity. And it was specifically something about him…. I could feel his desire commingling with mine, the energy and tension between us behaving like a magnet...SNAP. 

Shit. For the first time in my life I was on the other side of the glass I’d always looked through. He was human, it shouldn’t be possible, but his singular, innocent touch had been undeniably thrill inducing. My mind and body were both fully engaged. If it wasn’t for the loss of his hand and his next words, I probably would have stood there in silence like a mooning asshat…. Lost in his eyes and all that.

But, HELLO, he wanted to be handled. I crossed my arms casually over my chest and couldn’t suppress the sideways smirk that came on quick. I’d handle him all he wanted, and with curiosity layering on top of the attraction to him, I wasn’t going to be shy. 

I kept getting hit with solid signals from him, they were unlike anything I’d ever felt, and somehow I knew he was also outside of his norm, but completely natural.  My attention perked when he brought up piercings and something about coming back tomorrow. 

Time to perish that thought. 

Shaking my head, I dropped my hands in a wide sprawl on the display case, leaning towards him.> 

I’ve got the time and my place is just upstairs. So what do you want, Atticus? <The question was meant to be overt and open ended. And if I loved learning his name… saying it packed a thousand times the punch.>  And for the record, I’d love to handle you. <It was shameless and I was not at all sorry.>

Atticus:

-He lived upstairs...I laughed at the immediate thoughts that came to mind then shook my head slowly, speaking quickly before he could get any kind of insulted.- 

Seems for the moment we are neighbours, Madyx. -The hand that had just held his, because of course I would now be differentiating my hands by whether or not they had touched him, lifted and I thumbed over my shoulder to my van parked out front. As his eyes moved to where I had indicated, I stared at the way his lips curved up at the corners and my fingers twitched at my sides wanting nothing more than to touch him again. 

Since it was generally frowned upon to yank a guy I’d just met over the counter and kiss him without giving him any kind of forewarning or chance to stop me, I cleared my throat and attempted to redirect my wayward thoughts back to what we had been talking about. He’d asked me a question and the proper thing to do was answer it. What did I want? 

I knew what I wanted… HIM. But that wasn’t what he’d been asking no matter HOW suggestive his voice had sounded to my ears.

In my early twenties I had looked into piercings, researched all the types and varieties a guy could get as a means of using the knowledge to impress this one chick I had liked when I overheard her talking about how hot guys who had them were. It even worked, up to a point. Turned out, simply knowing about piercings was much different than actually having them, and when she discovered I didn’t actually have any, her interest in me wavered and she quickly moved on. At that point, I didn’t see the need to get anything done since I had started out wanting to impress her, my intentions had been shallow, and lacked the intent to follow through. But now...now, my intentions were less fueled with wanting to impress someone I was attracted to and more about self-discovery. 

Tonight, the idea of getting a piercing made me feel more alive than I had in years. It was the right reason to pull the trigger on this. The gut churning excitement was the same I felt when I had called the number on the FOR SALE sign that had been hanging on the window the day I decided to buy my van. I was immediately grateful to the chick of my early twenties for having inspired me to do all that research, even if her rejection had been a blow to my fragile, immature ego. 

Was I being impulsive now? Absolutely. But I already knew I wouldn’t regret this which was why without any uncertainty colouring my voice, my gaze found Madyx’s and I grinned confidently as I told him exactly what I wanted.-

I’d like the first two rungs of Jacob’s Ladder. 

-I knew what I was asking for, and I hoped like hell the nickname for frenum piercings hadn’t changed in the years since I had done all that research. If it had, I fully expected him to laugh in my face and tell me to get my wannabe ass the hell out. I held my breath, and counted the thuds of my pulse as they wooshed in my ears feeling less and less confident in my answer as the seconds passed by that it took him to speak.- 

Madyx:

<There were several impulsive words trying to fly off my tongue, but I was biding my time. I glanced past him when he indicated he was my neighbor, noting the tell tale silhouette of his VW bus. Currently nomadic, likely sleeping on a less than comfy mattress in the name of experience.  The mentality someone must possess to live on impulse was a turn on, and it worked in my favor. Without knowing it, he was feeding me information and arming my artillery with all kinds of weapons to extend the night…because without explanation, I just wanted more with him. More time. More touch. MORE. 

Atticus was setting off signals like flares in a moonless night, the attraction was undeniably mutual. I knew it, but did he? He would, I wasn’t letting him out of my company without shooting my shot. . My sensory grid was lighting up in a bright spectrum of greens, this was something fae only experienced in the rarest of circumstances. I knew what it meant but couldn’t delve into all that mythology on the spot. 

Fuck that. I was just going to go with it. 

And then he said it. What he wanted. 

I knew there was more by the way his eyes flicked over my lips and the unequivocal energy that told me he was using restraint. 

My brows shot up in reaction. My grin stretched a little wider. My dick bucked in my jeans clearly in support of this development. I toed the line of professionalism in my day to day operations, but this was beyond that. I couldn’t stop thinking about getting his cock out of his pants. With a casual swipe of my tongue between my lips, I opened the case, pulling out the options so we could get down to business. I knew he wasn’t going to run. I’d bet on it.>

You have piercings I can’t see? Or do I get first honors? 

<fingering a few of the barbells to draw his eyes down, even though I loved the heat of them on me> Are you thinking the same size for each? Or a descending size?  Grooved balls? <I smirked, couldn’t help it>  Smooth? 

We’ll get to gauge when I see what we’re working with, Atticus. 

<I loved his name too fucking much and still wanted to say it a thousand different ways just to know how it felt on my tongue, lips and in every incarnation. And yeah, I wanted him to know I had his dick on my mind, front and center. With every tick of the second hand, the tension was on the rise, and I was thriving in anticipation of reaching the breaking point.>

Atticus:

-Just as my lungs were beginning to burn for fresh oxygen, he spoke, and I exhaled slowly, controlling myself from letting out a sigh of relief so as not to let on how unsure of myself I had been feeling. There was no laughter or smirking from him that told me I had used an outdated slang. Excellent. I was starting to feel less and less like a poser with each follow up question he asked. He was very clearly taking my request seriously though I was not blind to the less than subtle moments of flirtation he was allowing to slip out with each exchange between us. And I was about to let him see my dick. I almost laughed. I held it in. Barely. 

It was my turn to speak. Right, he needed answers. I could give those. With a grin and a rub of my hands together I chuckled as I got the first question squared away.- No. I don’t have any other piercings. You’re my first, Mad. 

-My eyes dropped down to the tray of hardware he removed from the display case, ears working overtime to hear each of his rapid fire queries that I was delayed in noticing I had already shortened his name from Madyx to Mad. Both suited him, but if he was about to get face up in my junk without it being sexual I figured it was all right for me to shorten his name without expressed permission, that was how nicknames were supposed to happen anyway.- 

Size. I hadn’t really considered that when I went and got overzealous with my request for two piercings. -Laughing low, my eyes moved between the various sizes of barbells he was showing me before making up my mind with ease.- 

I want them to be the same. As far as accessories go, I’m a bit of a minimalist and the idea of gradually increasing seems a bit pompous if not arrogant to me. I can only imagine the size needed at the base if I went and got the great idea to complete the ladder. FUCK. -A shudder of regret for future me shot down my spine then ricocheted straight into the tip of my dick. All previous arousal swifty vacated my body and in a hurry. Decision made.- Yeah. definitely the same size. And smooth. 

I also know enough from my research ages ago to know I won’t be looking to stretch out the gauge, either. No matter how fast these particular piercings tend to heal, I don’t want my dick to become a branch of a Christmas tree, sagging under the weight of a too heavy ornament. God, can you even imagine?! -The mental images that began to fill my mind had me laughing again.- Otherwise, any other decisions needing made, I will heed to your expert opinion. 

Madyx:

<I caught his exhale and something about it felt like he was relieved, as if he’d just confessed a long held desire for the first time, and maybe I wasn’t so off the mark as he answered that I was his first. I didn’t have time for a smart ass remark about popping his cherry because of what he said right after. 

Mad. He called me Mad. The hair on the back of my neck stood up, as if a hand had ghosted upwards, calling it to attention. The sensation carried up into my scalp, and even to the tips of my ears. How was it that something so damn simple was so affecting with him? It wasn’t the first time since he walked in my shop, and the longer he stayed, the more I was convinced there was more of it in store.

I took him in as he weighed his options out loud, none of his choices surprising me. I figured he’d want something understated,  but I didn’t want to assume out loud and then have him reveal his elaborate plans for a rainbow ladder with alternating barbells down the back of his cock. That would have been a grave mistake! 

I laughed my ass off when he referenced a Christmas tree sagging under the weight of a heavy ornament from sizing up the gauges, unable to stop myself.>

If the piercings look like too heavy ornaments and your dick a limp tree after piercings, then someone doesn’t know shit about shit when it comes to proper technique. 

You’re in good hands, Atticus. I promise you that. <I flicked my eyes up to hopefully catch his, and thankfully I didn’t miss my target.> First, proper frenum piercings need to hit at the right depth to avoid that unfortunate look. Second, and counterintuitively, because of the skin, we’ll want to use a heavier gauge. With a lighter weight, during the healing process, it would push towards the surface, also resulting in the wrong appearance and a damn inconvenient dangling effect that could lead to unfortunate zipping incidents. 

<Laughing, it was a feat to drop my eyes from his as I started selecting options to suit his taste>

You’ll want to consider width dependent on your head. Sight unseen, I think this brushed steel goes with your vibe. 

You also have options when it comes to the size of the balls. <smirking, I laid a few out> You don’t have to decide standing here, we’ll bring them over to my station and you can see what looks right to you. 

You ready? Need a beer? Something stronger?  <My mouth on your cock to ease any nerves? I kept that last one on lockdown, lifting a brow, as I anxiously waited for his reply>

Atticus:

-My previously lost arousal was swiftly returning, and reaching tenting trouble territory when Madyx promised I’d be in good hands. Wouldn’t I just love to be in his hands. I stared at them while he sorted through the barbells, selecting some he thought would work. Long fingers, nimble and sure in their movements. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Now was not the time to learn I had a kink for hands, I’d never felt that way before, maybe they were just his hands I was lusting after, particularly when paired with this whole conversation that felt heavy with an undercurrent of attraction. I couldn’t deny it was flowing in both directions. He was making it pretty obvious, where I would have normally brushed it off as him being friendly in the beginning, I’d have to be blind to not see it now. I was damn sure seeing it. 

Things were about to get very awkward if I didn’t get control over my body. I was a magnet drawn to a piece of metal, desperate to move closer, to obtain that satisfying click when the connection was finally made. 

What was my life right now? 

How could, of all the places I decided to stop on a whim have this guy right here, and have this kind of mutual attraction happen so effortlessly. I couldn’t remember the last time I had felt that way toward someone and have them return it. Years, for sure. Many years. My eye was not exactly particular, it checked out chicks and dudes equally, but it took a lot to make me want a second glance.  

Then he had to go and talk about ball sizing while smirking at me. I was starting to suspect he was playing with me. Cat toying with a mouse. Taunting my dick with his innuendo, coaxing it to come out of hiding and play his game. Did I want to? DUH. There was no denying how much I wanted to do just that. 

But how does one go from piercing consultation to...Hey, you give me a boner, wanna hook up? Yeah…..no. He was hot, and there was no doubt in my mind that he was hit on all the time. Likely every day. I was certain of it. I didn’t want to be just some lame customer who was looking for an after hours special with the good looking tattoo shop guy. 

Could I be any more of a cliche. I prided myself on being nothing of the sort...well I kind of was with my current on trend living in a van and travelling lifestyle. The only points working in my favour there was that I hadn’t documented a single moment of it outside of the memories in my mind. I wasn’t the next Van Guy with the Instagram worthy morning shots overlooking the ocean while holding a cup of coffee and casually displaying my abs for more likes. A thirst trap, I was not. I had higher standards than that. 

Questions were being sent my way. Was I ready? What a loaded thing to ask, I laughed and hoped it didn’t sound as choked off to him as it did to my ears.- Yes. I’m ready. I’m good on the beer, for now. I think. 

-I laughed again, this time it felt a little looser passing over my lips and I looked down at the tray of jewelry once more then looked back up at him, eyes finding his. Before I could stop myself, words tumbled out without much control over the content or how they’d be received, now was not the time to have shame or embarrassment, I needed to know if the situation in my jeans could be salvaged.- I once read that when getting dick tattoos, you had to be hard the whole time. Is the same true for piercings? 

Madyx:

<The energy smacking me around was nothing I’d ever come across. Fuck. It was inexplicably intense, like we were plugged into each other and exchanging a charge. I was still mind-blown by what he was putting out. His subconscious and deep-seated pleasures were stimulating mine, as if they were dependent on one another. When I caught moments of him looking at me, my body reacted and my heart was thumping, driven by the physical and not so physical. I shut-up the internal analysis as much as I could and focused on what was in front of me. 

Atticus was definitely anticipating, his excitement laced with nervousness inciting my extra fae receptors into overdrive. He covered pretty well, but his flustered laugh made me want to drop my jeans on the spot. I was stoked he’d declined the drink, especially since he’d slipped with the “for now.” Bingo. That was enough to confirm he wasn’t looking to bolt after I got up and personal with his cock. 

The jewelry out, I let my attention land squarely back on him while he entertained what I’d displayed. It gave me a chance to scope the strong, lithe line of his back, and the sharp cut of his scruffed jaw. Hell, with every fresh recognition of his attributes, his hotness was intensifying right along with my craving for a thorough taste. While I had this fuck-me revelation, he was quiet, probably thinking about the dual-punctures I was about to put through his cock.  I knew something was coming but the smirk that happened when he asked his question could not be helped.>

I’d like to see someone keep it hard through an entire inking. It only needs to be up for the stencil portion of the tattoo, after that there are creative ways to stretch a dick for the shading. As for you… <pursing my lips then rubbing them together> I’ll get the job done either way, as long as I can pinch the skin, I can pierce it. Generally, there’s more to work with when it’s not at attention. Chew on that and follow me.

 <My smirk widened just before I broke eye contact and grabbed the tray of jewelry.  Cocking my head in the direction of my station and the chair that would have him slightly reclined when he planted ass in it. I set the tray down and waited for him to get situated while I snapped on my gloves. When I turned around,shit, my eyes went straight south where it was hard to miss what was happening behind his zipper and before I could blow it, my eyes shot back to his. I couldn’t seem to stop doing that. I also couldn’t repress the urge to set him at ease and give him something to grab onto during this prelude to a pierce. 

Playing it cool, casual, intent on finessing my approach, I took a seat on my stool, which kept us at eye level with one another. I knew he wanted this in my bones, but I was feeling the nerves from the risk of it. I stepped over the edge and took the cliff dive, the words passing over my lips as I felt a rush from the free fall.> How about you don’t leave after we’re done with business. <It was a question, but the way it came out sounded more like a statement. Unintentional. Organic. Assured. I dropped my eyes to his cock before they raked back up his body...to his suckable throat...his full lips...and back home to his grey-blue eyes.>

Atticus: 

-“Chew on that and follow me.” Shit. He knew. He had to. There was no way he couldn’t tell I was already sporting wood. When he turned his back to me and headed to his station, I tried to chill myself the fuck out. Naturally my eyes landed on his ass and the fire that was in my veins ignited to an inferno and I knew there would be no way to get the blood to vacate my cock. This was going to be embarrassing for at least one of us in a couple of moments. 

Did it matter though? I was just passing through town, at least that had been the plan when I entered the shop. I came in here looking for a conversation with another person and now I was about to leave with some metal accessories. I shook my head as I took a seat on the chair he wanted me in and took a few deeper breaths trying to slow the thundering of my heart. 

I wasn’t shy about my body, never had been, but damn if I wasn’t worried about how he’d react when he took notice that I was more than eager to have his hands on me. Could I explain it away with a joke about being a masochist? Maybe, but it wasn’t true, not by the definition of the word. 

As I spent precious time fretting in my mind he had turned around from setting down the tray and...YEP. I watched as Mad got himself an eyeful and like the professional I already figured he was, his gaze moved right past my crotch and straight up to my face. 

He didn’t laugh. Or smile or even make a comment. The flirting that had been so natural halted. I didn’t know what to do with that. I was suddenly feeling overheated in my hoodie while worry about insulting him began to cycle through my mind, of course that was when things started to chill out for me in trouser tent town. I reconsidered the whole masochist angle again just to try and break the silence but shook my head to myself. It wouldn’t matter in a day or two or a week. I’d carry on with my drive and he’d have a story to tell his coworkers tomorrow. I was fine being a laughable story. 

Before I could find something casual to say, he sucker punched me with that line of staying after he was done and I briefly wondered if he was trying to throw me a bone because he felt sorry for me. I didn’t think so. The tension between us had been palpable from the start. I nodded at his non-question.- Yeah. I’d like that. Though we both know you already know that I would. 

-I laughed low as his eyes did another sweep and the previously cooling jets fired right back up again. Jesus. When did I become a thirteen year old boy seeing his first dirty magazine. I reached up behind my neck as I sat forward in the chair and pulled my hoodie off over my head, draping it on the arm of my chair, leaving me in my well worn white tee that was underneath. 

There was no point in trying to hide shit, the elephant in the room had been noticed, spoken about and well acknowledged, not to mention Mad was about to shake hands with the trunk. I blew out a breath, feeling all embarrassment sliding away as easily as I had taken off my hoodie, and grinned at him.- Let’s get to you shoving some needles through my family jewels so we can have that beer you mentioned.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

QE, inflation, slave labor and a People's Bailout

The Obama administration inherited a vast economic crisis. They responded with Quantitative Easing, pumping trillions into the finance sector to rescue the banks that had knowingly gambled on bad mortgages, losing so much they were about to go under.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/24/the-fed-launched-qe-nine-years-ago--these-four-charts-show-its-impact.html

At the time, deficit hawks predicted inflation, which is a commonsense prediction: inflation is what happens when the amount of money chasing goods and services goes up faster than the supply of those goods and services, creating bidding wars.

They were right...and wrong. What we got was asset bubbles, especially in housing markets, driving up the price of putting a roof over your head rewarding speculators and landlords, especially Wall Street landlords.

And Obama's handling of the financial crisis put a lot of us under the thumbs of landlords! Obama bailed out the banks, but not the mortgage holders, kicking off waves of foreclosures.

Thanks to lax oversight, banks that had cheated to originate or service mortgages were able to cheat on foreclosures, too - stealing houses from borrowers who were up-to-date on payments or who were entitled to forebearance.

https://web.archive.org/web/20101017014628/http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20101014/bs_yblog_upshot/is-david-j-stern-the-poster-boy-for-the-foreclosure-mess

I mean, literally stealing houses by the hundreds or even the thousands. The very same people who created the great financial crisis got bailed out, rather than punished, and used their new lease on life to commit even worse crimes with total impunity.

The houses that were foreclosed (and sometimes stolen) were flipped to Wall Street, who LOVE financial products based on peoples' homes. After all, people will move heaven and earth to keep shelter over their kids' heads.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/02/blackstone-rental-homes-bundled-derivatives/

Corporate landlords built a sturdy, three-legged stool to guarantee the flow of rents to their investors.

I. Jack up rents to consume the majority of tenants' income:

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/09/wall-street-owns-main-street-literally.html

II. Cease maintenance, knowing that your tenants have no recourse if their homes are crumbling and unsafe:

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-housing-invitation/

III. Perfect the eviction, heretofore an American rarity:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-03/wall-street-america-s-new-landlord-kicks-tenants-to-the-curb

America's housing crisis - substandard homes rented at unsustainable costs to people who had their own homes stolen from them by the same investors they're currently paying rent to - is a major legacy of QE, and it's definitely inflationary.

But it's a highly selective form of inflation. Many people won't experience it at all: if you owned your house before the crisis and weathered it, the asset bubble has made your home more valuable, while falling interest rates let you refi at rock-bottom rates. You're great.

You're paying less than ever for a home that's worth more than ever, but that's a spillover effect of the main show, which is the process by which millions of Americans were robbed of their homes and then moved into high-priced slums to the benefit of the 1%.

Both Obama and Trump have boasted of the economy's performance since QE, pointing to soaring share prices - share prices that are totally decoupled from company performance. Companies lose money and still gain value.

Indeed, predatory companies (like Grubhub, Postmates, Door Dash and Uber Eats) that destroy profitable companies (restaurants) while still losing money are booming in value.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/18/code-is-speech/#schadenpizza

Investors understand that consumers have no money, due to rising housing costs plus crashing wages, largely thanks to the "gig economy," a polite term for "worker misclassification."

Companies that get bailouts would be stupid to spend the money on jobs or new productive capacity to make stuff no one can afford to buy. Instead, they buy their own shares and declare dividends, driving up share prices.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/20/the-cadillac-of-murdermobiles/#austerity

We have seen an incredible market bull-run since the Great Financial Crisis, a run that has largely continued since the pandemic. It's the other asset bubble: a bubble in investment assets.

Corporate leaders claim responsibility for these rises, but the reality is that it's the predictable result of bailing out banks and companies rather than workers and homeowners.

Société Générale's analysts say that about half of the stock market's gains since 2008 can be attributed to QE.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/without-qe-the-s-p-500-would-be-trading-closer-to-1-800-than-3-300-says-societe-generale-11604688442

Top-down bailouts have multiplier effects. The banks are made whole, then they get to steal our houses, then they get to steal our rents, then they get to goose their share prices.

This is how the super-rich got even richer, before and after the pandemic. It's also why the tiny minority of Americans with adequate retirement savings saw them swell - it's another spillover effect of the great upward transfer of national wealth.

Why does all of this matter now? Well, between my writing my first paragraph and this one, Biden was declared, giving us what the Biden campaign signalled would be "Obama's third term."

Biden's taking office amidst a financial crisis that's far worse than 2008.

Biden has a long track-record of giving legislative gifts to the finance sector at the expense of the American people. They called him "The Senator from MNBA" for a reason.

https://www.gq.com/story/joe-biden-bankruptcy-bill

If he addresses this crisis the same way that he did in 2008 - the way that Congress and the Senate addressed the crisis in 2020 - by bailing out finance, not the public, we're seriously fucked.

Sure, the stock market will continue to rise and rise, as will house prices.

If you are in the 1%, you will get SO MUCH richer. If you're in the 10%, your retirement savings will swell, your mortgage will get cheaper, and your house's value will go up.

For everyone else: evictions, foreclosures, soaring rents, worse wages.

Last week, California voters passed Prop 22, safeguarding the right of gig economy companies to misclassify their workers as contractors and pay them sub-minimum wages, withhold benefits, evade payroll and unemployment taxes, etc.

Uber/Lyft spent $200m to secure that win.

As Prop22's promoters remind us: Gig work is the new unemployment benefit: it's a private-sector jobs guarantee, work you can get at the tap of your screen. It's a perfect labor market - workers effectively bid to offer the best price to perform servant work for others.

The more workers there are, and the more desperate their situation is, the lower the payments go. A lot of those savings are siphoned off by the (money-losing, stock-soaring) gig companies, but some of it is passed onto customers.

This is by design.

Since the Reagan years, neoliberal regulators and lawmakers have hewed to a radical anti-monopoly theory called "consumer harm." Under "consumer harm," monopolies are only a problem if they drive up prices.

Since gig companies lower prices, they are totally kosher - even if they secure monopolies through predatory pricing.

But there's an even more insidious side to "consumer harm" and the gig economy.

Misclassifying workers as independent contractors converts a brutally exploited workforce into a collection of "small businesses." If they get together and demand higher wages, THEY violate the consumer harm standard. They're a group of companies fixing prices!

We're 12 years into the QE experiment and it has demonstrated the relationship between government money-creation and inflation: inflation isn't the result of government spending, it's the result of government spending that leads to bidding wars.

Giving trillion to the rich created inflation in the things that rich people buy: our houses (out from under us) and stocks.

Now, imagine what a People's Bailout could do.

Imagine replacing the gig economy job guarantee (a workfare program with no workplace protections, job security or minimum wage) with an actual Job Guarantee as described by the economist Pavlina Tcherneva:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/05/the-hard-stuff/#jobs-guarantee

Federally funded, locally administered: good jobs at inclusive wages that served community needs proposed by community groups and approved by local governments.

Would that be inflationary? Recall that inflation is what happens when the number of buyers goes up and the supply of things they're buying doesn't keep up. Inflation is the result of bidding wars.

For a jobs guarantee to be inflationary, there would have to be a bidding war for the US workforce. That is the opposite of what we have now.

https://wolfstreet.com/2020/11/06/picture-emerges-of-a-weird-recovery-to-still-historically-awful-levels/

The reason no one wants to buy Americans' labor is that no one has any money to buy the things Americans make with their labor. The only people with money - the wealthy - primarily buy our homes out from under us, and stocks.

QE for the wealthy has made the economy incredibly perverse. Productive companies are being driven to bankruptcy by gig economy companies that lose money. Millions of workers compete to provide services for the lucky few, for dwindling wages.

Workers can't afford to buy stuff so companies have no reason to make stuff and so they become finance grifts, until they collapse, like Hertz did (after it converted itself from a car-rental company to an accountancy trick company):

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/27/literal-gunhumping/#hertz-uranus

The gig economy jobs guarantee can't last. Eventually the number of workers bidding to serve the wealthy will exceed demand by such a wide margin that wages turn negative - the depreciation and payments on your gig economy car will exceed your income.

But a real, public sector, federal Jobs Guarantee? Yes please.

Paying workers good wages to do productive things that their communities need will create demand for the thing companies have decided not to make anymore.

In other words, it will enable companies to make profits again, and it will drive out the companies whose share prices soared on the expectation of losses (accompanied by dividends and buybacks). It will dampen the stock market, but improve the economy.

This will mean the end of those spillover effects - soaring house-valuations and 401ks for the lucky few - but those came at a VERY high price - vast un- and underemployment, the gutting of the productive economy, crushing debt for the majority.

America bought those house price rises and 401k gains at a steep price: it cost the nation its resilience and political stability.

If the goal of QE was to secure middle-class Americans' retirements, it was spectacularly wasteful.

A tiny fraction of QE's trillions went to middle-class retirements, while the vast majority went to making the 1% far, far richer. Most middle class Americans still don't have secure retirements - their dotage will be spent competing for gig economy jobs.

For the price of QE, the US government could simply have guaranteed the necessities of retirees: shelter, food, care. This spending would crowd out jobs, sure - the worst-paid, most precarious jobs, from fast food to gig economy "jobs."

It would make America into a country of secure and prosperous people, instead of food-delivery drivers and dog-walkers.

12 years of finance bailouts and 0 years of People's Bailouts have only exacerbated this, and the pandemic metastasised it.

When it comes to stimulus, America can't afford a third Obama term. We need to demand better of Biden - we need to demand a People's Bailout.

For almost* all our sakes.

*Offer not valid in America's richest ZIP codes.

[let-it-raines]

Did you see that post floating around about the couple who were dating before they started at an office but didn't tell anyone and everyone kept calling them Jim and Pam and trying to convince them they should date bc they were friendly with each other??? Yeah, you should write that for CS

Nonnie, I did not see it floating around because I, well, don’t really check my feed, but @shireness-says did send it to me to write last night. Then you did too, and it seemed like I had to write a little something!

original post | here |

on ao3 | here |

-/-

This is a bullshit job.

Okay, it’s not, and Emma knows it. It’s a job that’s getting her insurance and enabling her to pay her bills after she lost her last job due to her asshole boss’s gambling problems that burned Queen’s Bail Bonds to the ground. Figuratively, not literally, but Emma really wanted to literally burn it down when it meant she was out of a job. And none of the other bail bonds places in town would hire her because Regina burned a bridge with anyone and everyone she could since she is the actual worst and made enemies with anyone who challenged her. Emma doesn’t exactly have much of an education and has a history that’s a little less than pretty, so after eating three saltine crackers for dinner and considering selling her car for grocery money, she bit the bullet and started applying for office jobs that have always seemed like her worst nightmare.

So, that’s how she got here, sitting in a closed off part of Mass General with no windows and possible mold with a stack of files bigger than her that she’s having to put in the computer because they’re going digital. She’s never thought about medical files before and has assumed they’ve always been digital, but the entire department full of filing cabinets says otherwise.

She’s probably going to be vitamin D deficient by the time she finds another job.

Really, it’s fine. It’s not all that bad. She likes her coworkers, and most days she can listen to music all day and get lost in the repetitiveness of her job. Today Emma’s a little cranky because her car wouldn’t crank this morning, and she should have sold that piece of junk when she had the chance last month.

Spinning in her chair, Emma pops an earphone out and looks across her desk where Mary Margaret and Ruby are talking. They both work in Community Outreach, which is an entirely different department up in the land of people and windows, but their boss sent them to help with the digitization because the hospital realized the temps they hired would take at least six months to do all the work if left to their own devices. Emma wouldn’t mind that, no matter how much she sometimes hates it, because it would mean she has a few more months to figure her shit out.

“Morning, Swan.” Emma groans and leans back in her chair, the wheels squeaking underneath her. Killian stops by her desk, taking a peppermint out of the bowl in the corner, and pops it in his mouth. He’s far too peppy this morning, and she just knows he went for a run this morning and then spent an unnecessary amount of time fixing his hair to give it that disheveled look. She doesn’t understand morning exercise people. They may not be people at all. “How are you today?”

“Exhausted.”

“What? No sleep last night?”

“Only a little.” She shrugs and holds her hand out. He tosses her a new peppermint, and she quickly unwraps it, the mint soothing her throat. The cold weather outside always dries out her throat, and having to walk to work this morning did not help. “My car wouldn’t start this morning, so I think I’m exhausted from walking here and knowing I’m probably going to be out of a car.”

His eyes glance up and down her, lips pressed into a firm line, and she expects him to make a joke that will have her rolling her eyes. Instead, he leans over her desk and presses his cheek to his palm, blinking slowly. “Do you need a ride home? I can give you one after work.”

“I can walk.”

“Swan. It’s no problem.”

Emma sighs and leans back, running her tongue against the peppermint. “You sure?”

“I wouldn’t offer if I wasn’t. Pick you up at five thirty?”

“See you then.”

Killian knocks his knuckles against the wood and flashes her a smile, walking away from her desk and down the hallway to the IT department, where he’ll spend the rest of the day answering calls from elderly doctors who don’t know how to log into their patient portal. Emma watches him walk away, knowing he won’t notice. Winter in Boston may be hell, but it does have benefits, such as the way Killian owns several fitted sweaters that hug his biceps. There are few perks to this job, and even though there are no windows, there are sometimes views.

When he disappears around the corner, Emma goes back to her files, typing in more patient information, when she hears Mary Margaret and Ruby rise from their chairs, heels clicking against the tile. They’ve got Cheshire Cat grins on their faces, every tooth showing, and if Emma ignores them, maybe they’ll go away.

She knows better than to hope for impossible things.

“So,” Ruby starts, incessantly tapping a pen against the desk to make Emma look up. Her desk has one of those tall, barrier-type things around the top because it’s an old secretary’s desk, which is great for hiding out. The problem is that people know to look for her now, and when they do, there’s no way for her to escape unless she wants to roll right out of the room. “He’s taking you home, offering you a ride.”

“Ruby,” Mary Margaret hisses, “don’t say it like that!”

“Why not? That’s what could happen! He takes her home, she invites him inside for some coffee to thank him, and then one thing leads to another…bam! They’re going at it on her couch!”

“Emma is going to file a complaint with HR about you.”

“If it gets she and Jones together, it’ll be worth it. I mean, come on. They’re adorable, and my God, the sexual tension makes me need some water to cool down.”

“Do you guys have anything new to say or is it going to be more trying to convince me to date the IT guy who walks in here to steal our peppermints and fix our computers when they break down three times a day?” Emma asks, half pretending to still be working.

Ruby and Mary Margaret stop looking at each other and look at her, brows to their foreheads and smiles slipping away more and more each second. “He comes in here to flirt, and you know it.”

Emma shrugs and grabs another peppermint. “He’s a friendly guy, easy to talk to, likes peppermints. I have peppermints.”

“Oh my God,” Ruby groans, dropping her head to the desk. “You’re killing me. Absolutely killing me.”

“You know, Emma, there’s no rule against office romances,” Mary Margaret suggests. “I think you should give it a shot.”

Emma rolls her eyes and keeps typing in patient information. “Maybe I will, but maybe I’m not going to ask him out until my time here is up just to torture the both of you.”

She has no intention of asking him out, but they don’t have to know that.

They gasp, and Emma knows she’s won this round. It doesn’t matter, though, because they’ll be back at her desk to have this conversation again after the next few times Killian walks through the office. And he does walk through the office at least seven more times that day. He has to fix her computer, then Ruby’s, and then there’s a near catastrophe where the digital filing system shuts down. Another time he comes in before lunch, asking everyone in the office if they’d like anything from the hospital deli, and then he comes back with salads for everyone, eating with the three of them and Jeff from IT. Once more he comes in for a peppermint, saying he just couldn’t have his breath smell any longer, but he stays and chats for fifteen minutes about a new ice skating rink he’s thinking of taking his friend Rob’s kid to. He suggests Emma should check it out, and then Ruby makes a sexual joke about ice skating, which is something Emma didn’t even know could be sexual if you weren’t a professional who could do all those lifts and dances or whatever. Emma is fit, but she couldn’t do that.

Finally, he comes into the office a little before five thirty, his car keys in hand, and Emma grabs her things and walks with him out of the office and back up into sunlight, which she forgot existed. She’ll barely get to see any of it, however, because it’s December and the sun basically sets at noon.

She is definitely going to have a vitamin D deficiency soon. Maybe she should start taking vitamins.

She and Killian talk about their days during the ride to her apartment, but mostly Emma sits in silence and listens to the radio, letting her eyes rest from staring at small print and a computer screen all day. It’s an adjustment for her to work regular hours, and all she wants now is to consume an entire pizza and have a large glass of wine.

Or two. Two large glasses of wine sound good.

When Emma opens her eyes, Killian is parked outside her building, his car idling, and she blinks herself away, undoing her seatbelt and sitting up. “Thank you for the ride, Jones.”

“Not a problem, love.”

She twists to the side, looking at him, and thinks of what Ruby and Mary Margaret said earlier.. “You want to come in for some coffee?”

“You know I won’t be able to sleep tonight if I have caffeine this late.”

Emma shrugs and leans over the console to press her lips to his, lingering as Killian’s hand comes to cup her cheek, his fingers threading through her ponytail as he tugs her closer. He tastes like peppermint, and it makes Emma smile.

“I know,” Emma sighs, pressing her forehead to his. “But I need coffee if I’m going to stay up until a normal hour, and I need to deal with my car tonight. Do you think it’s a goner?”

Killian pinches his brows and kisses her again, his tongue teasing her bottom lip, but he pulls back and crosses her arms over her chest, waiting for his real answer, even if she already knows. “I think we can look at it, have a mechanic look at it, and then look at it again when you disagree with the mechanic, but I think it may be time to lay the bug to rest. It had a good run, and I will always hold dear the memory of you nearly hitting me with it.”

“You can’t say I don’t make a great first impression.” She laughs at the memory and the way Killian had told her to go fuck herself, but quickly her heart drops and she groans, wondering how many curses she can mutter in a thirty-second time frame. Probably not as many as Killian did that day. The British know how to curse. “I don’t have the money for a new car. What am I going to do?”

“I can take you to work. We’re going to be at the same place for at least another month or so. And who knows? Maybe you’ll get another job at the hospital. And if not, I can still take you to work and pick you up. We’ve been sleeping at each other’s places most nights anyway. If you don’t want that, there are several different public transportation options. But I think Mary Margaret and Ruby would die if I took you to work in the morning.”

He waggles his brows and smirks, leaning into her, and Emma can’t help the smile that creeps up on her. They didn't want it to be a thing that they were dating because Emma wanted to get the job on her own, so they never told anyone. “They would actually die. I mean, seriously. They told me I should invite you up for coffee and then ride you on my couch, and you know, that doesn’t sound like too bad of an idea.”

“Well, I would have been up for that even without the coffee invitation, love.”

“That a double entendre?”

“Of course.” He reaches over and grabs her hand, threading their fingers together. “When do you think you’re going to tell them we started dating months before you started at the hospital?”

Emma shrugs and leans back, smiling. “Eh, I think one day we should walk in holding hands and let them think it’s new.”

“Tomorrow? I could give you a mark on your collarbone to really drive them crazy.”

“Absolutely not, but nice try buddy.” She nods her head toward the building. “Come inside with me and let’s get dinner. Pizza sound good?”

“Pizza sounds fantastic, love.”

-/-

They walk inside holding hands a month later, and Mary Margaret stumbles while Ruby drops her coffee over her computer’s keyboard. Killian is the one who fixes it, and Ruby is still so shocked she can’t interrogate him while he works.

Emma has a feeling Ruby Lucas has never been shocked silent, and Emma can barely hold in her laughter.

She never does tell them how long she and Killian were dating. She doesn’t think their computers could take it.

-/-

She does find them in their office a year later, though, when they’re back in Community Outreach and she’s working in the conference center – which has windows! – and shows them the ring on her finger.

Ruby, thankfully, didn’t have any coffee in her hands.