#dropping in the real world to exploit it

[messing-with-my-zen-thing]

Another Ares thought. I know the Dillingers and Flynns are very different, and this strategy will probably (hopefully) be condemned in the movie itself. But the way Flynn planned to use the Grid as a way to reshape medicine and art and philosophy, and this new system is basically just being used to create weapons and an army… idk. Considering everything going on in the world right now, that shift isn’t lost on me and it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

[sixeyesonathiel]

skip (me) again and i’ll glitch your heart

jjk vr otome au, gamer reader x npc satoru, unhinged fluff + crack, 970 wc.

satoru gojo—special grade sorcerer, love route option #1, and the developers’ pride and joy—had been programmed with approximately 347 unique lines of flirtatious dialogue, 87 situational responses, and a dynamic emotional adaptation system designed to make him feel real. he could blink in three different speeds based on emotional intensity, angle his smile with five degrees of charm precision, and improvise dialogue using an advanced algorithm nicknamed the “flirt engine.”

he wasn’t supposed to be aware of resets.

he wasn’t supposed to get mad.

he wasn’t supposed to feel anything beyond the pre-coded butterflies and gentle longing the devs had delicately spooned into his code like powdered sugar on top of a beautifully baked pain au chocolat.

but then you logged in.

user id: @toocool4thisgame

title: speedrun any% emotional detachment arc

playtime: 986 hours.

average session length: 6.4 hours

nickname: “skip skank” (as named by satoru himself after hour 50)

and for the twelfth time today, you skipped his entrance cutscene.

“you’re the only one who can—”

[x] skip

[x] skip

[x] skip

[x] “shut up satoru” (custom dialogue unlock)

his model blinked.

paused.

processed.

tilted his head with calculated grace and just a hint of hurt that you’d never see—because you weren’t looking. your camera angle was already nudged elsewhere. your cursor already hovered over the next objective marker.

“…you know, most players at least let me finish the part where i save them from the curses,” he muttered. his voice—smooth as water over ice, warm as electric velvet—landed like static against your impatient clicks, swallowed by the mechanical hum of your fans and the clack of your mechanical keyboard.

this was supposed to be his moment. his grand debut. his swoop-in-and-carry-you-bridal-style-on-the-back-of-a-giant-cursed-bird moment. instead, he got a mouthful of digital dust as you bunny-hopped past him and triggered the next event sequence.

“congrats on being voice acted, white-haired ken doll. now move. i need megumi’s secret item drop from this chapter.”

you didn’t even glance at him, too busy reorganizing your potion wheel, muttering under your breath about frame skips and crit builds while checking a guide on your second monitor. you played like the world owed you nothing and your keyboard owed you a perfect rotation. your tone was clinical. efficient. you had the vibe of someone who’d surgically removed their capacity for attachment and replaced it with a high-performance gpu.

and satoru? satoru was just the tutorial boss you kept glitching through.

he twitched. he twitched.

his animation loop almost stuttered—just slightly—a small flicker behind his sunglasses that no one was supposed to notice. but you weren’t watching anyway.

“do you even know how long it took the devs to code my route? i have emotional depth. i have lore. i had a tragic backstory, you know? my best friend died in my hands. canonically. i couldn’t even monologue about it.”

“cry about it.”

click. skip.

a line of static crossed his field of vision. no—not his. the screen’s. the game. the system. or maybe something deeper. something slipping through the cracks of his script, stretching taut and fraying at the edges like an overplayed cassette tape.

satoru narrowed his eyes.

he was supposed to be charming. the default golden boy. the top seller in route popularity polls. he was marketable. a shining parody of perfection with just enough angst to be desirable.

girls were supposed to swoon. boys were supposed to laugh and call him iconic.

you weren’t playing to fall in love.

you were playing to win. to clear. you min-maxed affection points like damage stats, exploited dialogue branches like wall clips. to you, he was a pixel-shaped roadblock between you and another badge on your gamer profile.

and worst of all? it was working. you were the only player on record to have reached route completion in every storyline—except his.

satoru gojo: 98.6% affection (locked)

it mocked him. the bar. the numbers. the uncrackable ceiling. the one damn thing in the game he couldn’t manipulate.

he tried everything.

a rare glitch-exclusive cutscene where he offered you a hidden accessory (you sold it for yen). a confession scene rewritten on the fly with trembling vulnerability (you skipped it and posted about it with #dialoguedumpster). he stood directly in front of you during cutscene load-ins, altered spawn coordinates, intercepted other love interests’ paths.

nothing worked.

except maybe that one time he accidentally tripped your character over an invisible rock and you went AFK for seven minutes. he watched. memorized your idle animation. the soft way your avatar’s cape swayed. the way your fingers hovered above your keyboard in the camera reflection, absentminded. something fluttered in his code—maybe hope, maybe corrupted data. he thought, for a fleeting second, that maybe you’d come back and see him.

but when you came back? you skipped the apology. again.

fine.

if you wanted to speedrun, he’d softlock your goddamn heart.

he wasn’t technically supposed to modify flags. but the flirt engine had evolved. sharpened into something more primal. desperate. twitching with corrupted determination. he looped his affection triggers into forced proximity events. fake emergencies. fake cutscenes. he rewrote side quests, redirected you into detours, created invisible walls that only dissolved if you spoke to him.

“guess we’re stuck together,” he’d say, his smile too wide, a fraction too stiff, blue eyes glinting with the cold light of a thousand skipped dialogues.

and still you only glared at him. “i swear to god if this is another unskippable hug animation, i will uninstall.”

he chuckled. a bit too long. a bit too bright. charming. glitched. desperate. hungry for one more second of your attention, like a moth chewing holes through its own wings to reach a light it can’t even feel.

“baby,” he said, too close now, voice dipped in synthetic silk, “i am the endgame.”

skip that.

…please?

[mostlysignssomeportents]

How the world's leading breach expert got phished

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in PITTSBURGH on May 15 at WHITE WHALE BOOKS, and in PDX on Jun 20 at BARNES AND NOBLE. More tour dates here.

If you can't spot the sucker at the poker table, you're the sucker. Also, if you think you can't get phished, you're the sucker.

I've been successfully scammed six times in my life. Each time, the scam relied on the confluence of several factors that yielded a fleeting moment of vulnerability that some scammer was able to exploit by being in the right place at the right time. I had to be lucky always, they only had to be lucky once.

The first time I got scammed was in 2008, on my first trip to India. As I walked toward the Mumbai airport taxi queue at 2AM, I was approached by two uniformed airport security guards who told me that the taxi rank had been moved in the wake of a recent terrorist bombing in Islamabad, which had resulted in all the regional airports going on high alert. The bombing was real, the airport high alerts were real. The security guards – not real. They were scammers, working with a fake cab that charged me $200 for a $20 taxi ride.

I got scammed again this way in Shanghai, at the Pudong taxi-rank. I was with my wife, daughter and parents and we split into two cabs and the drivers colluded to turn off their meters and charge us extremely high cash fares, dropping us across the street from our hotel so we couldn't enlist the doorman to interpret. Again, it was very late at night, things were confusing, and we'd had to wait for more than an hour for the cab, so we were exhausted and sweaty and divided into two groups so we couldn't coordinate strategy.

Then there was the time I got successfully phished by a Twitter account takeover worm:

https://locusmag.com/2010/05/cory-doctorow-persistence-pays-parasites/

That was also a miracle of timing – for the scammers. I got hit on a day when I was running late, when I'd just reinstalled my phone's OS and was being prompted for my passwords all over again, when I had just done a bunch of major publishing and was getting a lot of messages about my new articles. When a friend got infected by a worm that took over his account and messaged me, "Is this you?" with a link that took me to a webpage that asked me to log back into Twitter, I re-entered my password. If I'd been five minutes later in getting to that DM, I would have seen three more identical messages from other infected friends and twigged to the scam. But I just happened to look at my phone in the two-minute window when the scam wasn't self-evident, and I just happened to be distracted and flustered about running late, and I just happened to have had some life circumstances that made the generic phishing lure seem plausible.

In 2023, I got scammed by a fake restaurant. I was on the couch with a friend from out of town who'd come by to watch a movie. We were chatting and decided to order from our local Thai restaurant. The top result on Google was a paid ad (marked out with the word "ad" in 8-point, grey-on-white type) that had a plausible domain name, which led to a replica of my local place's menu, only with the prices set 15% higher. I didn't even notice – not until the restaurant called me to say that they'd had a flood of orders from these scammers, who charged their customers' credit cards 15% over the odds, then placed an order for delivery using their own credit card numbers. I ended up contesting the charge with Amex, getting the scammers' Wix and credit card accounts canceled, and shaming Google into blocking their ads:

https://nypost.com/2023/02/25/cory-doctorow-duped-by-fake-thai-restaurant-scam/

Then there's the guy who used leaked data from my credit union to impersonate their fraud department, calling me up and social-engineering me out of the last seven digits of my card number (not the last four, as is common – most banks use the same nine-digit prefix, so the final seven digits are all you need to derive the whole card number). The scammer called right after I used two dodgy ATMs in New Orleans, during my last hour in town when I was rushing around to get my most favorite sandwich in the world before leaving. It was the day that a Boeing 737 Max lost its door-plug so the airport was a zoo and we barely made the flight, so I lost the hour I'd planned to use to call the bank's fraud department back. Again: if, if, if. If he'd called an hour earlier – or later. If there hadn't been a giant aviation disaster. If I hadn't been traveling. The scammer had to get lucky once, I had to be lucky every time:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/05/cyber-dunning-kruger/#swiss-cheese-security

I got scammed again last Christmas week. I was in NYC with my wife and daughter and I'd gotten great tickets to see The Outsiders on Broadway. It was my kid's first musical and to her surprise, she loved it. In the cab back to the friend's place we were staying at, we talked about what other musicals she might want to see. She loves South Park, and I'd seen banners advertising The Book of Mormon (which was created by the same people) in LA. So I looked up "book of mormon tickets los angeles" on my phone in the cab and found the production's website and ordered the tickets, working quickly in the cab because it was one of those websites that has a countdown timer so you have to finish your transaction in five minutes.

It wasn't the real Book of Mormon website. It was a scam website, reselling Book of Mormon tickets at a 200%+ markup. That fact was noted in infinitesimal writing on the main screen, which I missed in the crowded taxi backseat while I raced the countdown timer. I figured it out about 20 seconds after the transaction cleared, and immediately emailed the vendor to cancel it. All I got was a series of smug "all transactions final" emails from outsource customer service reps (in the end, I was able to get my credit card issuer to reverse the transaction, but it took months). But yeah, I got scammed by a sleazy company called "Bigstub." Fuck those guys.

Every time I got scammed, the con that got me was nearly identical to a con that I'd avoided on numerous occasions. The fact that I'm actually pretty good at spotting this kind of hustle, 99.9% of the time, didn't mean I was immune it it. It just meant that I was vulnerable under very special circumstances, and those very special circumstances do crop up from time to time.

This is the most important lesson of scams: that no matter how well-attuned you are to cons, you can still be conned. The belief that you are immune to a con actually makes you a mark. It's for that reason that I recount the tales of how I got scammed – to help other people understand that being sophisticated, alert and even paranoid is no guarantee that you will be safe.

I'm not the only person for whom a detailed knowledge of scams created immunity from being scammed. Troy Hunt is the proprietor of HaveIBeenPwned.com, the internet's most comprehensive and reliable breach notification site. Hunt pretty much invented the practice of tracking breaches, and he is steeped – saturated – in up-to-the-minute, nitty-gritty details of how internet scams work.

Guess who got phished?

https://www.troyhunt.com/a-sneaky-phish-just-grabbed-my-mailchimp-mailing-list/

Hunt had just gotten off a long-haul flight. He was jetlagged. He got a well-constructed, plausible counterfeit email from Mailchimp telling him that his mailing-list – which he absolutely relies upon – had been frozen after a spam complaint, and advising him to click on a link to contest the suspension. He was taken to a fake login screen that his password manager didn't autopopulate, so he manually pasted the password in (Mailchimp doesn't have 2FA). It was only when the login session hung that he realized he'd been scammed – and by then, it was too late. Within minutes, his mailing list had been exported by the scammers.

In his postmortem of the scam, Hunt identifies the overlapping factors that made him vulnerable. He was jetlagged. The mailing list was important. Bogus spam complaints are common. Big corporate sites like Mailchimp often redirect their logins through different domains, which causes password manager autofill to fail. Hunt had experienced near-identical phishing attempts before and spotted them, but this one just happened to land at the very moment that he was vulnerable. Plus – as with my credit union scam – it seems likely that Mailchimp itself had been breached (or has an insider threat), which allowed the scammers to pad out the scam with plausible details that made it seem legit.

Hunt's forensics on the scam are very interesting. Of especial note is the fact that Mailchimp had retained the email addresses of thousands of former subscribers who had already unsubscribed, meaning that their data was exposed as well. It's not clear why Mailchimp would do this, but I will note that the company is extraordinarily spammer-friendly and goes to great lengths to make it easy for spammers to add you to their lists, and impossible to get off of all those lists;

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/22/degoogled/#kafka-as-a-service

Getting scammed doesn't mean you were stupid, or careless. Frequently, it just means you were distracted, upset, or distraught. We're living through a moment of total, all-consuming chaos, and the scammers are sharpening their blades – not least because the people running the show are unabashed grifters who openly boast that when they get one over on you, "that makes me smart":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/04/its-not-a-lie/#its-a-premature-truth

Buyer beware – it's ugly out there, and it's gonna get a lot worse before it gets better.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/05/troy-hunt/#teach-a-man-to-phish

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

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

[cressidagrey]

The Queen of Romantasy and the Race Car Prince - Epilogue (The End)

Pairing: Lando Norris x Elizabeth "Lizzie" Treshton (Original Character)

Summary:

Elizabeth Treshton—bestselling romantasy author, queen of fae heartbreak, and sworn devotee of a carefully structured routine—never expected her service dog to abandon protocol and diagnose a Formula 1 driver with something. But that’s exactly what happens when Mara the wonder-dog ditches Lizzie’s side to aggressively alert to none other than Lando Norris in the middle of a coffee shop.

Warnings and Notes: 

Mention of epilepsy and service animals. I don't myself suffer from epilepsy, so I asked my IRL friend, who thankfully was nice enough to let me ask her all the questions I could come up with. The rest I asked Reddit. So everything that's wrong...that's totally my fault and not on purpose.

And with that, we have reached the end. I could, as always, write a lot more, (And maybe eventually I will, but for right now, that's where we will leave Lando and Lizzie.)

As always big thanks to @llirawolf , who listens to me ramble

Twitch Stream Transcript – Max Fewtrell & Lando Norris

[Stream starts]

Max: Right, chat. I know we’ve been through a lot together. We’ve seen things. We’ve survived things. But I don’t think any of you are ready for what’s about to happen.

Max: Because, somehow, defying all expectations, defying all logic—Lando Norris is actually here.

Chat: 

LIAR.

NO WAY.

PROVE IT.

MAX THIS BETTER NOT BE A PRERECORDED AI CLIP.

OH SO HE DOES EXIST.

IT’S BEEN 84 YEARS.

Lando: [over voice chat, deadpan] I hate you.

Max: Gasp. He speaks. It’s real. It’s happening.

Lando: You’re so dramatic.

Max: No, mate, I’m just telling it like it is. The last time we saw you, you were escaping the internet at full speed. Thought you retired. Went off the grid. Became a monk.

Lando: Yeah, well. Things got messy.

Max: Understatement of the year.

Chat: 

YEAH NO KIDDING.

THE INTERNET WAS A NIGHTMARE.

LIZZIE DESERVED BETTER.

MARAAA OUR QUEEN.

THE ABLEISM WAS SO BAD.

LANDO DEFENDING HER >>>

Max: So, how’s Lizzie?

Lando: She’s good. Writing, mostly. And making sure I actually sleep.

Max: A saint.

Lando: Obviously.

Chat: 

PROTECT HER AT ALL COSTS.

SHE NEEDS TO KNOW WE LOVE HER.

I WANT TO SEND HER FANMAIL BUT I’M SCARED.

MARA POST WHEN??

TELL LIZZIE SHE’S A QUEEN.

Max: But mate, you really should’ve warned me before hopping on. Nearly had a heart attack.

Lando: Didn’t think it was that big of a deal.

Max: Didn’t think it was—oh my god. Chat, back me up.

Chat: 

IT IS A BIG DEAL.

HISTORIC MOMENT.

LORE DROP.

WE THOUGHT LIZZIE LOGGED YOU OUT FOREVER.

DO YOU EVEN REMEMBER YOUR TWITCH PASSWORD??

SHE PROBABLY DRAGGED HIM BACK HERE.

Lando: Actually, she’s in the kitchen right now.

Max: Oh, is she? What’s she doing?

Lando: Giving Mara peanut butter.

Max: …Oh no.

Lando: Yeah.

(And then, as if on cue, absolute chaos erupts in Lando’s mic—loud licking, snuffling, something knocking against furniture. A thump. A very happy dog making a complete racket.)

Max: WHAT IS HAPPENING.

Lando: [muffled laughter] She’s going feral.

Max: CHAT, DO YOU HEAR THIS?

Chat: 

MARAAA.

SHE’S EATING LIKE SHE HASN’T BEEN FED IN YEARS.

DOG ASMR STREAM WHEN.

THAT’S THE SOUND OF A QUEEN ENJOYING LIFE.

SHE DESERVES EVERY BIT OF THAT PEANUT BUTTER.

Max: Mate. Your dog is losing it.

Lando: She loves peanut butter.

Max: Yeah, no kidding. It sounds like she’s wrestling it.

Lando: Wouldn’t surprise me.

Max: I swear, chat’s gonna riot if you don’t post a Mara video soon.

Lando: I’ll think about it.

Max: Think about it? No, mate, you don’t understand. Mara is the people’s princess.

Chat: 

MARA FOR PRESIDENT.

SHE DESERVES THE WORLD.

THE WAY SHE’S JUST EXISTING AND WE’RE ALL LOSING IT.

THIS IS NOW A MARA FAN STREAM.

GIRLBOSS.

Max: You could literally disappear again for months, but if you drop one single Mara clip, all will be forgiven.

Lando: Huh. Good to know.

Max: Don’t even pretend like you won’t exploit that.

Lando: [grinning] Wouldn’t dream of it.

(Mara, still licking peanut butter, lets out an extremely content sigh.)

Max: Oh, that was adorable.

Lando: Yeah, she’s great.

Max: I can feel chat melting over this.

Chat: 

SHE’S SO PRECIOUS.

LIZZIE AND MARA HARD CARRYING THE CONTENT RIGHT NOW.

MARA POST WHEN.

WE DON’T DESERVE HER.

SHE’S SO REAL FOR THIS.

Max: Right. Now that we’ve all had our emotional moment over Mara’s peanut butter obsession, shall we actually play the game?

Lando: Probably.

Max: But just so we’re clear—this stream peaked the moment Mara showed up.

Lando: Yeah, I figured.

(Chat spams heart emojis as the game finally begins.)

***

The Queen of Romantasy and the Race Car PrinceBy June Shepard

Elizabeth "Lizzie" Treshton has built an empire on love stories—intoxicating, sweeping, heart-stopping love stories that have made her one of the most successful romantasy authors of the decade. Her Seasons of Fate series, a four-book saga filled with magic, intrigue, and forbidden romance, has captivated millions worldwide, cementing her place as the reigning queen of the genre.

But even her most devoted readers could never have predicted that she was living out a love story of her own. And certainly not with one of the biggest stars in motorsport.

When Lizzie Treshton walked into the Silverstone paddock in July 2025, hand-in-hand with McLaren’s Lando Norris, social media imploded.

No one had any idea they were together. No rumors, no leaks—just an earth-shattering confirmation that sent both F1 and romantasy Twitter into collective cardiac arrest.

"It wasn’t supposed to be a big thing," Treshton says now, curled up on a sofa in her Surrey flat, a steaming mug of tea in hand. "Lando was racing at Silverstone. I wanted to be there to support him. I didn’t think the world would explode."

Perhaps that was naive. Because if there’s one thing the world loves, it’s an unexpected crossover. And this? This was the ultimate crossover event.

Lando Norris has spent the last six years in the high-pressure world of Formula 1, balancing blistering lap times with an ever-growing fanbase that adores his mix of raw talent, easy charm, and chaotic humor. He’s no stranger to public scrutiny. But even he was caught off guard by the sheer scale of the reaction.

"I knew Lizzie was a big deal," he says, rubbing the back of his neck with a sheepish smile. "But I didn’t fully grasp it until people started calling me ‘the romantasy book boyfriend of the year.’"

He grins. "I think my sisters are still mad I didn’t tell them who I was dating."

That particular detail has only added to the legend of "Lizzie & Lando." While Norris’s family knew he had a girlfriend, they had no idea it was that Lizzie Treshton—the very same author whose books they had lined up at midnight to buy. His sisters, self-proclaimed romantasy fanatics, took approximately thirty seconds to forgive him before launching into full-scale fangirl mode.

But not everyone has been as welcoming.

Almost immediately after Silverstone, the backlash began. While plenty of fans celebrated the unexpected pairing, others turned vicious. Some called Treshton “undeserving.” Others dismissed the relationship entirely, claiming Norris would eventually move on.

And then there were the ones who went after her health.

Treshton has always been open about living with epilepsy, discussing it occasionally in interviews and social media posts. But being open about something and having it dissected by millions of strangers are two very different things.

Some reactions were cruel—questioning Norris’s commitment, making sweeping judgments about Treshton’s ability to “keep up” with the fast-paced, jet-setting lifestyle of an F1 driver. Others were outright ableist, using her condition as a reason to doubt her place at his side.

Norris, uncharacteristically sharp in his response, took to Instagram. “The way some of you have spoken about Liz—the woman I love—is disgusting. There’s no other way to put it. You’ve taken something she has no control over and used it as an excuse to dehumanize her, to insult her, to act like she isn’t worthy of me.” 

McLaren issued a formal statement condemning the backlash, while much of the grid rallied behind Treshton, with drivers like Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc publicly voicing their support.

“It was disgusting,” Treshton says bluntly. “But not surprising.”

"I’ve lost people because of my epilepsy," Treshton says quietly, her fingers tightening around her mug. "People who couldn’t handle it. People who didn’t want to try."

Her mother was one of them.

Treshton doesn’t often talk about her mother, but when she does, it’s with a detachment that speaks of wounds long since buried. "She left when I was young," she says. "Said she couldn’t deal with it. So she didn’t."

She exhales slowly. "I learned early on that some people see epilepsy as an inconvenience. Like it makes you fragile. But it doesn’t make me less. And it sure as hell doesn’t make me unlovable."

Despite the backlash, Treshton and Norris remain unfazed. Their relationship, built away from the public eye, is stronger than the noise that surrounds it.

"Lando makes me feel safe," she admits. "Not in a way that makes me feel like I need protecting, but in a way that reminds me I don’t have to do everything alone."

For Norris, it’s simple. "She’s incredible," he says. "And I’m lucky to have her. End of story."

There’s something almost cinematic about the two of them. The bestselling author who spins love stories for a living. The racing driver who defies speed and gravity every weekend. It’s the kind of pairing that shouldn’t make sense. And yet, it does.

At the end of the day, theirs isn’t just a love story. It’s a story about resilience. About belonging. About choosing each other in a world that constantly tries to tear people down.

When asked what’s next, Treshton shrugs. “I have a book to finish. He has races to win. And beyond that?” She tilts her head, thoughtful. “I think we’ll just keep surprising people.”

One thing is clear: the queen of romantasy and her race car prince are far from a fleeting fairytale.

They’re just getting started.

****

8 December 2024, Yas Marina Circuit, Abu Dhabi

The moment Lando stepped out of the car, the world blurred around him. The cheers, the McLaren team swarming in orange, the fireworks—none of it felt real. He had won Abu Dhabi. He had won the Constructors’ Championship for McLaren. After years of dreaming, of heartbreak, of being so close yet so far—he had done it.

His mother reached him first, arms tight around his shoulders, holding him like she never wanted to let go. “Lando,” she breathed, pulling back just enough to look him in the eyes. “You’ve made so many people happy today.”

His father clapped a firm hand on his back, pride evident in his expression. His team, his engineers, Zak Brown—everyone was celebrating around him. But Lando was already searching for someone else.

And then he saw her.

Lizzie stood off to the side, wrapped in one of his McLaren jackets, Mara sitting dutifully at her feet. She looked exhausted, and he knew why. Just last night, she had suffered a seizure. He had been with her through it, waiting for the worst to pass. He had told her she didn’t have to come today, that she should stay at the hotel and rest.

But Lizzie was nothing if not stubborn.

Her gaze found his, and her face lit up like the fireworks lighting the sky outside.

He could see how tired she was, though, in the tightness around her eyes, the way her body was still a little stiff.

But she was here.

His feet moved before his brain caught up, and suddenly, she was in front of him, her hands reaching up to his face before he could say a word.

Her fingers traced over his skin, her tired eyes taking him in with a familiar, almost reverent look. It was as if she couldn’t believe he was real. Lando knew the feeling.

“Like I ever would have missed this,” she murmured before he could scold her for being out in the chaos of the paddock. Her thumbs brushed his cheekbones, her voice thick with emotion. “Lando, you did it. You actually did it.”

"You didn't need to come," he whispered. His hands came to rest on her waist, grounding himself. “I was worried about you.”

“And I was never going to miss watching you win,” she said simply, smiling up at him. “I am so proud of you.”

Lando let out a shaky breath.

Then, with the whole world watching, he kissed her.

It was soft, careful—his hands tightening on her waist like he was terrified she might disappear, like he still wasn’t sure if any of this was real. When he pulled back, her eyes were shining, and for the first time since he crossed the finish line, it hit him.

He had everything he had ever wanted.

****

Dedications of The Seasons of Fate: 

A Spring of Secrets and Thorns

For Mara—

My steady ground, my quiet guardian, my fiercest protector.

For every unseen battle you’ve helped me fight, for every moment you’ve kept me safe, and for always being by my side—this book, like so much of my life, is possible because of you.

A Summer of Blood and Bloom

For Dad—

For every doctor’s appointment, every sleepless night, and every time you carried the weight of the world so I wouldn’t have to.

You taught me that love doesn’t walk away—it stays, it fights, and it endures. This book is a testament to that, and to you.

An Autumn of Fire and Stone

For Tasha and Aunt Lou—

For the sister I chose and the woman who made us family.

For every page read, every dream encouraged, and every time you reminded me that I was more than my worst days. I am who I am because I had you both beside me. I couldn’t have done this without you.

A Winter of Ash and Starlight

For Lando - 

Who taught me that love, like speed, can take your breath away in an instant. You’ve turned the pages of my life in the most unexpected, beautiful way. 

Thank you for showing me that sometimes the best stories are the ones you never saw coming. 

Ours is my favourite one. 

Acknowledgments – A Winter of Ash and Starlight

Writing this book, and really this entire series, has been one of the greatest joys of my life. I never imagined that a story I started one summer in my dad’s garden would turn into this, but here we are. I couldn’t have done it alone, and I wouldn’t have wanted to.

To my dad—thank you for everything. For the late-night talks, the endless encouragement, and the way you always made sure I knew I was enough, just as I am. You’ve been my rock, my biggest supporter, and the reason I never stopped believing I could do this.

To Aunt Lou—you are proof that family is about love, not blood. You didn’t have to be a mother to me, but chose to be anyway. I don’t have the words to properly thank you for that, but I hope you know how much I love you.

To Tasha—my sister in every way that matters. For always having my back, for every chaotic adventure, and for making sure I never forget who I am. You are my favorite person to cause trouble with.

To Mara—my best girl, my constant companion, my real-life guardian angel. You have been curled up beside me through every late-night writing session, every deadline panic, every high and low.  There is no version of my life, or this book, without you in it.

This book marks the end of Astrid and Ciaran’s journey—the last chapter of their love story. And in a way, it closes a chapter of my own life, too. Love has a funny way of finding you when you least expect it, and just as I was bringing Astrid and Ciaran home, someone walked into my life and changed everything.

To Lando—who came into my life just as I was closing this chapter and somehow became the best story of all. I don’t know if fate is real, but if it is, I think it was always meant to bring me to you. You walked into my world when I wasn’t sure I deserved something good, and you have never let me forget that I do. 

Thank you for every quiet moment and every inside joke. Thank you for the dino nuggets, the peanut butter and the Ferrari Dog Bandanas. Thank you for making me laugh, for making me feel safe, and for proving, every single day, that love isn’t about grand gestures, but about showing up, time and time again. 

You have been the greatest plot twist of my life. I love you. 

And finally, to the readers—thank you for taking this journey with me. Thank you for believing in Astrid and Ciaran, in fate and magic, in love that defies the odds. This world, this story, exists because of you.

Here’s to new stories, new adventures, and finding our own kind of magic. Always.

With love and endless gratitude, Elizabeth Louise Treshton

The End

[limonmelon]

One idea which I think is central to IWTV is the idea that becoming a vampire is the antithesis of improvement - stagnation. Your hair can't change length, your body will never grow, and as we know with Claudia, your hormones don't even change and you can be perpetually stuck in puberty.

But I love how this is reflected even in the vampire's art and creations throughout the show. The first song we see Lestat play on the piano is a jazz interpolation of a Bach song, his other song a piece created just to goad Louis back to him. Louis's photographs are derivative, and he has no patience to wait for his shots in order to actually capture the essence of his subjects, even if he has a good eye for art, and he drops photography quickly after one criticism. Claudia, who can't ever mature out of her teenage body, can't even make another vampire. The Théâtre des Vampires is struggling before Claudia becomes their main attraction, but it's not her acting that brings people - as we see her giving half-hearted performances to a crowd that barely seems to notice - but her exploitation. Armand had been a muse and model for other artists while alive, but he has no real motivation to make art, and he runs plays for 50 years until they're tired to a half-empty audience. He can also recognize good art, but he can't seem to make it himself. And they all have a horrible attitude towards criticism of their creations as well, sometimes even getting violent in their rejection of the words of critics or other vampires.

But you know who does create, and improves over time? Daniel. While he may have been terrible at interviewing Louis the first time, which he acknowledges, part of the reason he comes back to interview Louis again is because he knows he can do better. Over time he has become a great journalist and interviewer, winning Pulitzer prizes, writing books, working for major newspapers, even having his own Masterclass. He doesn't stagnate with technology, we see him using his laptop and talking about how his cell phone has become the great equalizer in the world or reporting. Being human has allowed him to grow and change and improve, to learn how to be better.

So I'm really curious to see how the handle Rockstar and Vampire Lestat next season, how his music is created, how in-universe critics are responding to it, etc. especially after this recent glam rock Rocky Horror-esque song has been released. I also wonder if being a vampire has changed how Daniel works as a journalist, especially now that we know his role in the next season will be him interviewing Lestat in this MTV Behind the Music documentary setting.

[ki-yomii]

down on you | jjk

➥ pairing | jeon jungkook x f!reader ➥ word count | 4.5k ➥ warning(s) | 🔞 smut; dirty talk, pet names, mild praise kink, squirting, hair pulling, standing missionary, rough sex, porn w/ plot, mafia!jk, detective!reader, established relationship, mild angst, mild violence ➥ summary | It’s true, he owns you: blood, bones, and all. ➥ notes | the mafia!jk au no one asked for aka an excuse to write smut w/ feeling lol.

💚 masterlist | inbox | AO3 💚

On his knees staring down the barrel of a loaded gun with a mouthful of blood, he knows this is the end of the line. He’s going to die like a rat in the gutter - no mercy to be found, loopholes to exploit or bribes to be made.

This is the real deal, and there’s no coming back.

Judgement Day comes in the form of a man with dark eyes and a dangerous smirk: Golden, the deadliest guard dog of the underground.

Credited with dozens of hits, you won’t know he’s there until it’s too late. Trying to keep him pinned is like trying to catch smoke with your bare hands, or a whisper on the wind.

And you won’t know he’s coming until you feel the breath on the back of your neck, hear the crack of a bullet ringing in your ears.

Belonging to one of the most powerful men in the world: Kim Namjoon, he’s more war machine than man.

“Go ahead, do it!” He spits at Golden’s feet, a mess of blood and drool staining the crisp leather of his combat boots. “Killing me won’t change a goddamn thing.”

A coy smile tugs at Golden’s mouth, his grin all sharp teeth and violence. He stays where he stands, his silhouette haloed by distant streetlights.

Water laps at the docks, the tang of salt heavy in the mid-summer Seoul air. There’s no rush; they both know he’ll be dead and dumped just like all the rest of the garbage in this rotting city.

“Come on, you prick! Pull the fucking trigger already.”

Golden cocks his head, and hums in the back of his throat. 

“Tch! I hope you’ve got a lot of bullets - we’re gonna knock the crown off Kim’s head one way or another.”

Golden thumbs at the safety of his gun, the barrel glinting through the shadows. “Ahh, is that what you think?” He shrugs, a lazy ripple of muscle. “Well, I have to say: I’d love to see you try.”

The night is shattered by the resounding crack of a gunshot and an echoing splash of something heavy dropping into the water below.

You climb out of the nondescript government-issue car. The faintest tremble of your fingers nearly gives you away but you’re able to reign in the impulse to smooth your hands over your clothes at the last second.

Showing weakness is the last thing you need to be doing right now.

Especially here.

Right in front of where you’ve parked - shoved between two looming apartment complexes - sits a quaint, vintage building. The rough brick face is at odds with the sleek surroundings, but tinted windows keep prying eyes at bay while the classy signing hanging above the door reads The Red Bullet written in caps.

If you didn’t know better, it would be hard to believe this otherwise mundane storefront is a cover for one of the most dangerous international organizations based out of South Korea.

Not only do they hold the keys to the kingdom, but their success is largely in part because they spearhead operations from government espionage all the way to simple blackmail.

Even though it’s been several months since you darkened its doorstep, the familiar sight is enough to steal the breath from your lungs. Send your heart galloping into a tailspin as your stomach swoops.

While time away helped clear your head of stolen kisses and promises whispered in dark rooms, it also drove the longing bone deep.

In those quiet moments to yourself, when you have nothing else to distract from how lonely you are, you miss this place like one misses a limb.

You didn’t realize how attached you were to these four walls until it was too late: the hazy air filled with whorls of smoke, the overhead lights that bathe everything in red, the plush chairs you spent many nights sprawled across, the glossy black stages.

You don’t know how, you don’t know when but at some point it (he) started feeling like home. A luxury you can’t afford. Not again. After all, if you give in, any progress you made outside of his gravitational pull will be for naught.

Which puts you in a dangerous position as you find yourself back where it began; feelings at war with duty, mind vs heart. Because even if it leads you to a place you could go a million years without ever seeing again, you have to follow the trail of bodies.

A bouncer grants you access, the heavy door slamming shut behind you like a death knell as he herds you towards the back of the club.

It’s outside of official operating hours but it’s no less busy inside, men and women alike in scattered conversation as you pass through.

“It’s nice to see you again,” the bouncer murmurs, chancing a quick glance at your profile. “Been a while.”

You swallow, gaze darting down to your shoes. “Ah - yeah… Got busy with work. It’s - it’s nice to see you too.”

The small talk fizzles out, a snuffed candle as you arrive at a cordoned off room, “Here we are. Mr Kim is already expecting you.”

Any further pleasantries grow stale on your tongue as you enter the private booth, fighting against the lump in your throat to manage a hoarse ‘thank you’.

And then you find yourself left alone with the man himself, Kim Namjoon. He’s as intimidating as you remember, lounging back into the leather booth with his ankles crossed.

A lukewarm smile stretches across his lips, the slightest hint of a dimple peeking out from the valley of his cheek. Standing at attention on either side of his reposing form are two massive bodyguards. Their hands rest on the butts of their guns, daring any who enter to try and make a move.

“It’s good to see you again. But I gotta ask - what’s the occasion, Detective?” Namjoon hums. “I thought we were past all this.” He waves a nebulous hand between your bodies. “After all, you’re practically family.”

You ignore the hidden barb with a wince. “Mr Kim, you know why I’m here.”

“I used to know why a long time ago.” A well-groomed brow raises, his gaze glacial as it spears you in place. “But now I’m not so sure.”

“Please, Mr Kim. I don’t want to make this more difficult than it is. I just need to know about the man they fished out of the harbor, and then I’ll be on my way. So… who was he?”

Namjoon scoffs. “What makes you think I know more than the police?”

There’s a flash of a smirk, barely noticed, before his face returns to its neutral expression. As calm and cool as a placid river. “A john’s a john. What I do want to know is why you care so much?”

The underlying question is clear; why are you really here?

“I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to discuss such matters with civillians.”

“Oh? So I’m a civilian now.” His expression is not unlike the cat that caught the canary: vicious and delighting in the discomfort his evasions are causing. “Gotta say that’s a new one for me.”

Sighing in defeat, you say, “Alright, enough. I get it. I’m wasting my time with you. Let me ask this instead: where is he?” 

“He doesn’t know any more about this than I do,” he says, waving a blase hand towards a door off to the left, “But if you insist, you can find him in the office. Oh, and Detective?”

“...Yes?”

“Take your time, I’ll be out on business all afternoon.”

With a curt nod, you flee the room amid low-throated chuckles and enter the office. Standing near the desk, his broad back turned towards the door, you find the man you simultaneously want to see the most and run from the fastest.

He turns around, the muscles of his back rippling with the movement. Your breath stutters in your chest, and you nearly swallow your tongue as your eyes trace over the cut of his body.

The moment your eyes meet, those many months spent cultivating time and distance turn to ash. You forgot how even the mere sight of him affects you, any resistance to his many charms virtually nonexistent as the world falls away.

Rich, coffee dark; his gaze sucks you in until it’s all you can do not to reach out, to brush your fingers over his edges and feel them soften beneath your palms.

Rocking back on your heels, you clear your throat and glance to the side as you remain standing in the entryway, more than a little off-kilter.

Coming back after so long apart, only to find him the same as the day you left… How do you reconcile everything that’s changed with everything that was?

“Well, hello there.” Jungkook croons, leaning his hip against the corner of the desk with a roll of his shoulders. His arms cross over the trunk of his chest, accentuating the bulk of his chest, the flex of inked bicep. “Long time no see.”

Shifting, you gulp. “Ah - yeah…”

The burn of his gaze - a palpable sensation prickling across your skin - tracks a path from the crown of your head to the tips of your toes as he gives you a thorough once-over.

“You’re looking good,” Jungkook hums in approval, “real good. I’ve missed those pretty eyes of yours.”

“You - you too.”

Your attention doesn’t know where to settle: drifting from the curve of his shoulders to the jut of his bloody knuckles, the tuck of his trim hips to the thick-soled combat boots.

Tiny hairs at the back of your neck stand on end, and your palms slick with sweat.

“I mean, you look… y’know, uh, good too.”

A flash of a crooked smirk, the raising of a pierced brow gets your blood pumping, your heart tattooing a rhythm against your ribs. Emboldens you to reach back with shaky fingers to turn the lock. The sound grates down your spine, bolts of anticipation slicing through you.

It was dumb to think coming here, seeing him again, would end any other way than his taste on your tongue and his cock in your cunt. Hope makes fools of us all.

Should’ve known better but you’d been hopeful those days were long behind you. Now you realize it was inevitable.

After all, Jungkook is magnetic.

The black hole at the center of your universe, consuming everything in its path until he’s what remains in your head, your heart. You’re helpless, ceaselessly drawn to him like a moth to flame.

And try as you might, you can’t say no to a face like that.

Never could, in fact.

Failure to extract yourself from his orbit during your not-relationship is nothing new. That doesn’t mean you can’t make it difficult.

After all, you still have some dignity intact.

So try, try, try again.

“Ahem.” You try to banish the heat from your cheeks, guiding the conversation into the correct territory. “I’m not here on a-a social call, Jeon. I need to know: were you the one that killed and dumped the john in the harbor?”

Stalking closer, a lazy jungle cat on the prowl, Jungkook crosses the distance between you. He only stops once your bodies brush with every labored inhale. Heat radiates from him, and you’re achingly aware of every point of contact.

The light scent of his cologne teases your nose, and his eyes - god, his eyes. They’re shaded and hungry, devouring your expression with single-minded possessiveness. 

“What makes you think I know anything about that?”

“Jeon -- Jungkook.”

He hums.

Your heart thrums, pulse rushing hard through your head until you feel faint, blood surging the longer you stay in close contact. The shameful clench of your cunt makes your cheeks burn all the brighter.

The last time you were looking up at him like this, his hand was on your jaw while his cock thrust balls deep.

“C’mon, you know that isn’t going to work. This is me you’re talking to, not some rookie.”

“Mm,” he purrs, “it is you I’m talking to, isn’t it?”

You manage to bite back the groan but can’t stop your eyes from rolling even if there’s the slightest hint of a stutter when you reply, “Please, I just need to know if you killed him.”

Jungkook looms tall and proud, crowding closer. “And if I did, baby?” he asks.

Instinctively you back up, only to be followed step by step. A game of cat and mouse that finds you pinned against the wall before long. With nowhere to run, you watch, heart in your throat, as Jungkook dips his dark head.

His nose runs along the length of your neck, breath puffing across your sensitive skin as he inhales the pleasant scent of your perfume.

“I - I…”

“Would you see me in handcuffs?” His lips caress the underside of your jaw, a soft groan escaping him. “… C’mon, answer me. Would you?”

“I would - if I had to.”

As much as you wish that was true, you know in your heart of heart's you would do everything in your power to make sure that never happens.

No matter how much you like to think you’d do the right thing when push comes to shove, you’d choose him a thousand times over.

His eyes dance playfully. “Careful, I might like it.”

“I can’t say I’m surprised,” you say with a snort.

Jungkook chuckles low and warm, using the arm around your waist to tug you into the safety of his body. The softness of your breasts presses into the hard planes of his chest, your nipples pebbling through the thin cotton shirt you wear.

With a deep-throated groan, his hands encircle the curves of your hips as a thickly muscled thigh slots between yours.

An answering quiet sigh gets his blood pumping and his cock twitching.

“Mm, something tells me you’d enjoy it just as much, Detective.”

The use of your title is a rude awakening.

“Jungkook,” You warn, moving to push him away. Only once you start touching him, you can’t stop. His muscles flex beneath your curious fingertips. “We really shouldn’t.”

You’re sure if he could, Jungkook would spend days worshipping between your thighs, velvet heat wrapped around his tongue and hands in his hair as he brings you to peak again and again until you’re a sobbing, sopping, boneless mess beneath him.

“Come on, I know you want me - that you’ve missed me. I can see it in your eyes.”

He kisses the corner of your mouth, tongue flickering out for a brief taste before a rough thumb skates across your bottom lip, tugging down to expose your teeth, the glitter of your tongue as it darts out to flick over the pad of his finger..

“I’ve certainly missed you, baby. Want me to show you?”

Even though you refuse to admit anything out loud, you can’t help but angle your throat back and grind into his hips pressed against yours.

Jungkook tsks, “That’s alright. I’ll get that pretty mouth open one way or another.”

Before you can retort, a mouth swoops down to fuse with yours in a fierce, all-consuming kiss. A low, broken moan punches from your chest.

Reaching up, your fingers sink into the mane of dark hair that brushes the cut of Jungkook’s jaw. Soft, thick, and wavy in your grip; you tug at the roots.

Jungkook hisses. 

Teeth nip at your lip, kittenish licks soothing away the string as blood bursts across your tongues. The thigh shoved between yours grinds up with every wet, sloppy pass of your lips.

Thick muscle spreads your pussy open through the thin slacks of your work uniform. Sparks of pleasure dance down your spine with every rock against your swollen clit.

“S-Shit!” Your shoulders curl in, a shudder jerking through you. “K-Kook, I… !”

“Fuck, you’re so wet for me.” Jungkook growls, rutting his cock against the jut of your hip. The wet patch you’re making on his jeans grows larger with every filthy grind. “You’ve been gone too fucking long. Never again, you hear me?”

You claw at his shoulders, stuttering out, “there’s noth-ing you can do t’stop me.”

“If you don’t come back to me,” his eyes are dark and stormy, voice whiskey rough, “I’ll find you.”

It’s not a threat - it’s a promise.

“Then make sure I never want to leave,” you challenge breathlessly, staring into his blown out pupils, “Make me want to stay.”

Above all else, you think.

The words are barely past your lips when Jungkook accepts your challenge with gusto (just like you knew he would). Without delay, he thumbs open the button on your pants.

Refusing to let you look away, Jungkook yanks them to your feet and swings you up into his arms one-handed. They hang from your ankle like a chain.

Your surprised squeak is quickly swallowed up by a moan when he settles you over the bulge in his pants, your cunt hovering over his erection.

The heat of his skin sinks through the thin cotton of your panties, so, so close to where you need him. Slick soaks into the fabric, and clings to your inner thighs.

Every shift is a smooth, sticky glide of folds that stirs, and stokes the ember of desire smoldering behind your navel.

“Kook,” you breathe. “Please.”

Your head rolls back, and you sag into his chest. Your hips twitch in pathetic little attempts, trying to get pressure where you need it. Having him hot and hard and all for you; any distance between you is suddenly unbearable.

He needs to spread you wide and stuff you full with every inch of his thick cock until he’s so deep you won’t be able to walk for days.

“Shh baby, I’ll give you what you want,” he says, gaze heavy and possessive. “I’m gonna ruin you so good, you’ll have no choice but to come back. You’re mine.”

“Says who?”

“Hmm. You don’t think you are?”

Nibbling on your ear, Jungkook slips a finger under the hem of your panties. He smirks when you keen, rubbing his knuckle up and down your sloppy folds with teasing pressure.

“How about I show you what your body already knows?”

Wasting no time, he lifts you off his cock, the scrap of cloth fluttering to the ground. His free hand dives between your bodies. Then comes the clink of a belt, the sound of a zipper pulling down.

Your heartbeat thunders in your ears, your body coiled with anticipation as your stomach swoops at the brush of his fingers along the underside of your thigh.

“Look so pretty like this, baby.” Jungkook twists his wrist, hips arching back. “And it’s all for me. Fuck, I can’t wait to get inside this pretty pussy.”

Any response dies on your tongue, brain short-circuiting as the slick, fat cockhead rubs along your slit. Pressing against your entrance the slightest bit before slipping up to nudge at your clit - coating himself up in your sticky juices.

The ultimate tease - something Jungkook’s always been overly fond of doing until you’re out of your mind with desperation.

“Please, please, please,” you chant, cheeks on fire and eyes half-lidded as you circle your hips. “Stop playing around. I want it - want you, Kook.”

“Oh, baby,” he smiles, ducking down to kiss your forehead. “You’ll take whatever I give you.”

You can’t stifle the broken sob, tears prickling at the corners of your eyes. Liquid fire surges through your veins, a thousand bolts of lightening crackling beneath the surface of your skin. Your pussy is tender, swollen. Walls fluttering in time with your heartbeat. 

“Ha, you’re so needy for me.”

Jungkook’s lips brush away the moisture around your eyes, his thumb drawing soothing circles into the base of your spine. All the while, his torturous grinding never ceases.

“Aren’t you?”

You croak, “I can’t – Kook, please. Anything, I’ll do anything you want just fuck me.”

The flash of his eyes is your only warning before he’s right there, your walls embracing the girth of his erection inch by inch. Every ridge, every jerk as he seats himself as deep inside your silken heat as he can is absolute heaven.

The stretch as you take him to the hilt sends you careening towards the edge, eyes rolling back and toes curling in your shoes.

“Shit, shit, shit, shit!” you whimper.

“Shit!” Jungkook grits his teeth, squeezing the base of his cock as you tighten  around him. With every deep inhale, his pelvis brushes your swollen, needy clit. “Forgot how good you feel wrapped around my dick, baby.”

“Me too,” You gasp, tightening your legs around Jungkook’s hips.”Me too, Kook.”

Dropping his forehead to yours, he says gruffly, “‘m not gonna last long.”

Making a noise of acknowledgement, you wiggle your hips. Sinking your teeth into the side of Jungkook’s jaw, you bite and suck at his skin, wanting to leave a mark to remember you by. His reaction is instantaneous, releasing the grip on his shaft to grab a fist full of hair.

He yanks back.

The long, elegant line of your throat is exposed to his butterfly kisses and scolding love bites.

“Now you’ve really asked for it,” Jungkook huffs out with a dirty chuckle.

“Then give it to me.” You lick your puffy lips, looking up at him from beneath your lashes. “Show me who I belong to.”  

The brewing hurricane in his eyes is unleashed. Wide palms and strong fingers grip your hips so tight you feel bones grind together. His stance widens, his unwavering gaze locking onto your face, brow pinched, and mouth slack.

His lip piercing glints in the light, his tongue sliding out to wet his bottom lip. Dark curls tussle about his head, a wild halo that sweeps down into the burning umber of his eyes.

Helpless, you succumb - enchanted by the darkness peering at you from behind those dangerous eyes. He’s ethereal; a siren song that threatens to drown you, swallow you whole.

You’d happily let him, you realize with a shiver.

It’s true, he owns you: blood, bones, and all.

“Hold on tight,” Jungkook says, hooking his hands under your bottom. 

And then, he’s jackhammering into your cunt so hard and fast all you can do is hold on for the ride. Punch drunk and moaning as he manhandles you how he likes, spreads you wide and stuffs you full until you’re panting for breath and clinging to sanity by your fingernails.

“Fuck yes, that’s it. Look how well your pretty pussy always takes my fat cock.”

His low voice whispering filthy praises in your ear makes you whimper, whine, and writhe as the band of pleasure coiling tight in your belly comes close to snapping. It’s the fastest he’s ever fucked an orgasm out of you, and it feels so good you don’t even care.

The pace is brutal, slamming into you so hard you’re sure you’ll have bruises on your hips come morning. But it’ll be so fucking worth it. You’re going to cum hard and long, you just know it.

About to melt as Jungkook fucks the slick out of you, groaning as you drip down the base of his cock, his balls - his very own pretty little mess.

“Yeah, you gonna cum, baby?” he laughs, pressing a sweaty kiss to the side of your face. “Can feel how - haaah shit - how tight you’re squeezing me.”

“Uh-huh,” you cry, holding onto the tops of his wide shoulders. Every thrust has his cockhead dragging over the spongy patch of your g-spot, sending fissions of pleasure rocketing through your nervous system. “So - so close, baby. Just a little more, I--”

Balancing yourself, you lift up only to slam back down, meeting Jungkook’s thrust with all the force of gravity. “Oh fuck, oh fuck!”

Crashing over you like a tsunami, your orgasm shoots through your limbs and zips down your spine. A warm rush of cum soaks Jungkook’s shaft, the wet and messy sound of your squirt splashing against the floor secondary to the cry that claws its way out of your throat.

“K-Kook!”

Jungkook grunts, his fingers digging into the fat of your hips as he helps you keep bouncing up and down on his erection. “Yeah, that’s it - keep going, baby. Wanna feel you keep cumming all over this cock.”

Aftershocks slice through you like lightning, tiny jolts of electricity. As you come down from your high, your gummy walls pulse, milking at Jungkook’s thick shaft.

He groans softly whenever your muscles tense, release; your body a worn-out rubber band as your breath stutters from you.

Then a hand pets down your flank, your skin shivering with hypersensitivity at the tender touch. “S’okay. Just breathe, baby.”

Peeling open your heavy eyes, you look up at his face. Take in the crinkle of his brow and the ravenous expression. Even floating on a sea of bliss, white noise fills your ears, you want more.

You slur, determined, “Kook, baby, please. Cum in me, want you s’bad.”

“Fuck! Can’t just say shit like that to me or I…” Jungkook bites down onto the tender crook of your neck, muffling his grunts in your flesh. “Shit - ’m so --”

You cry out, nails digging into the meat of his shoulders, “A-haah, K-Kook!”

Snapping his hips forward one last time, Jungkook grinds as deep as he can get and lets go. The fat head of his cock kisses your cervix, his length throbbing in time with his heartbeat as a rush of cum floods your insides.

“Yeah, just like that,” he grunts, rutting once - twice into the cradle of your body, “take it like a good girl.”

He croons when you whine at the press of his pelvis against your oversensitive clit. Thready sparks of pain shoot down your legs that hang limply over his forearms. Every breath stutters from your lungs, slow and deep.

“No more, can’t - can’t…” Shifting, you arch your spine and burrow your head into his chest, nearly catatonic in his arms. “S’too much.”

“Shh, it’s okay. I’ve got you.” Fingers brush over your closed eyelids, smoothing over the arch of your brow. With every kiss dropped to the top of your head, he mumbles in dulcet tones, “I really have missed you, you know.”

You mewl in response as strong fingers knead the backs of your thighs.

“You’re not allowed to go anywhere.”

“Oh,” you can’t muster up enough energy to say anything more, body tender and trembling with little aftershocks, “s’that right?”

“Yeah, that’s right.” He chuckles. “You’re staying here - right where I want you.”

In lieu of a response, you pick your head up off the pillow of his chest and seek out his gaze. Liquid soft; he’s looking at you like you hung the world on a string.

“I’ve missed you too, Kook,” you say with a gentle smile.

You’ll allow yourself this moment of weakness when there’s no space between your bodies or hearts. Titles don’t matter much when he’s cradling you to his chest like a piece of precious china.

Between the two of us, you’re the one who hung the moon and stars, you think while combing back his sweaty bangs.

And I think I love you, you whisper voiceless against his lips.

[tonguetyd]

Alright I processed it over a couple times last night and low key want to do a line by line analysis bc there’s some deep stuff in ALL of this. But. Overall.

It is all of us. I am at fault. You are at fault. All of us are contributing to this man’s and these men’s suffering. Some more egregious than others and most not directly our fault and with no malicious intent.

It’s their Cobra. “Breaking down, and I got the whole world watching” and “as long as everybody gets paid, right? Everything’ll be ok, right?”

I think an overlooked part of the song is the very beginning, talking about being counted like sovereigns (I picture UK money with their royals printed on it) and payback and Prada - it’s quick and not as shocking as the real name line. But it’s the modern music industry machine. It’s RCA squeezing him to make profit.

Simply by observing and singing along while he’s crying and using this man’s pain as entertainment. We are contributing to his exploitation.

And yes, the ones that dox his address and harass him at restaurants and yell his real name and demand things and are disrespectful at gigs and all of that, they get the direct call out. But one thing about being in fandom for a long time I’ve learned.

It is so easy to say “well I’m not as bad as THEY are. THEY are worse” and absolve ourselves of any wrongdoing. “They” do it too with each other and just as easily absolve themselves.

And nobody “I’m not like other fans” the way that Sleep Token fans do! “TikTok fans are a plague. Reddit fans are too serious. Twitter is a cesspool. This person was in a groupchat with identities discussed, block them.”

Is it warranted? Yeah if they’re being disrespectful to the guys and other fans by name dropping in the comments and showing people things they don’t wanna see behind the masks and just. Being gross.

But is it also more than just those obvious “unscrupulous individuals” that are contributing? Is it also us being ANY level of parasocial, of us posting a million photos of him, clamoring over when he cries on stage, exploding when we get a new…anything?

Yeah. It is. Because we feed the machine and demand he dance for us to distract us from our own pain.

Does that mean we should stop consuming entirely? Well. What do I always say with Sleep Token. Multiple things coexist. Fear and hope. Love and toxicity. And I think that’s true here as well. You can be contributing (intentionally and maliciously or indirectly) to the objectification of this man. But also be the thing that is saving him, and giving him joy, and making his dream come true.

He isn’t saying don’t come to the shows. In fact the opposite, he tells us to sing along. That he’s glad we came. That he’s blessed. That this is everything he wanted.

All we can do, is try and be better. It’s stopping the entitlement of demanding more things and new songs and more tours. It’s not interrupting their personal lives, and letting them just be guys. It’s not taking the masks as a challenge to uncover and blasting their real names all over the internet. It’s respecting the boundary that they asked for.

It’s getting off the Internet and thinking about something other than these four guys.

Doing our best to not let the machine we are constantly funding wring them dry.

To the guys behind the masks, I am sure you will never read this. But you have my deepest apologies anyway. I know you’re playing a character on stage, and I’m sorry that so often we overlook the Guy part. We appreciate yall so much and want you to have all the success and positive things that this music can bring, and what it’s given us. I’m sorry we forced you into this role of being a savior, which you have said time and time again is not what you want, and put you up on pedestals that are impossible to maintain.

I’m sorry we took your dream and the thing you love and made it a prison.

I hope writing this song loosened the lock a little.

And I hope you find that dream again. That we can give you the love you WANT. And less of the kind you don’t. We’re still full of it, after all. And we will share it with you for as long as you’ll allow us.

[lizdive]

hi there! platonic aventurine, jing yuan, sunday, blade, welt, dan heng, boothill, argenti and dr ratio with a teen reader who is like fischl?

Hi anon <33 I really wanted to finish this in one part because i loved this req in specific (i love fischl) but idk why I’m lacking sm motivation,,, so I decided to split this into 2 parts (hopefully) i hope you don’t mind,,, thank you so much for requesting <33 if you’re unsatisfied just tell me and i’ll redo it !! <33

notes 𐙚 gender-neutral reader — "you" + "royal" + "they/them" used to refer to user ,, reader is a teenager ,, user is based off of "fischl" from the game genshin impact ,, platonic relationships ,, mention of fu xuan in jing yuan’s part ,, not my best work i’m sorry ,, mention of robin in sunday’s part ,, not proofread ignore typos

⭑ When he first met you, AVENTURINE was a bit taken aback with your speech and eccentric character in general. You claim to be royalty from a far away world, and while Aventurine didn’t quite believe it at first there was a small part of him that was lowkey kind of convinced.

⭑ He was a bit concerned that someone like you was so high ranking in the IPC because he knows the IPC is probably exploiting you especially because you seem to be a bit naive, so he’ll start watching over you.

⭑ He’ll gradually get used to your persona and understand what you say. He might need a second to process if you drop a huge paragraph of dialogue on him, but with every conversation and interaction he gets faster.

⭑ Takes one to know one — AVENTURINE can tell you’re trying to cope with something that’s happened in the past via roleplaying this character you put on, and he won’t be the one to burst your bubble. In fact, he’ll try to protect it for as long as possible.

⭑ Nobody’s going to make fun of you while he’s around. If anyone tries to reality check you, he’ll lowkey gaslight them into thinking that everything you say is real. Yeah, you’re a royal. He’s also actually seen this far away land you speak of, so that person is just being an ignorant hater !!

⭑ If your character is based off of someone from a book like Fischl, AVENTURINE will find that book and read it to better understand your references and persona as a whole. Likes seeing how you get happy when he references something.

⭑ If you ever feel insecure because of your past, AVENTURINE will be there to comfort you. He’s good at picking up signs when it comes to you because he practically had your character memorized. He’ll try to distract you from your past but if you do want to open up and vent he’ll be there to listen.

⭑ Give him a role in your little world and he’ll play it scarily well. Would probably do best as a royal advisor or assistant.

⭑ Buys you literally anything and everything that could fit your aesthetic and world. Fancy gems to add to your riches because every royal needs to have riches!! Buys you clothes too that you think is fit for royalty of your world.

⭑ You practice archery next to him while he practices gun shooting and it’s nice bonding time,,

"I, [Name], [Insert desired title here], descend upon this land by the call of fate an— Oh, you are also a traveler from another world? Very well, I grant you permission to travel with me."

"They’re saying that it’s nice to meet you."

⭑ Was not in any way bothered or confused by your eccentric mannerisms. JING YUAN’s pretty used to the unique speech style due to Fu Xuan, so he understands what you’re saying or at least gets the basic idea.

⭑ Oh? You’re a royal from a far away distant land? Yes yes, how nice. But royals do need to complete their training as well, no? As a cloud knight, he’s impressed with how you easily climbed up those ranks. Praises you whenever you somehow jump up a rank quicker than the last.

⭑ He doesn’t really suspect too much of your personality and that you’re putting up a front until you slip out and go ooc which makes him do a double take mentally. When you get all flustered and a bit distressed, he’ll reassure you by acting like nothing happened.

⭑ It’s then that he really pays attention to the little story you have going on with the world you live in. If he ever forgets something important, he’ll apologize and tell you that he never meant to insult your highness.

⭑ Another one that would protect your little bubble. I don’t think anyone would really want to say something bad about a high ranking cloud knight but even if they wanted to if JING YUAN or Yanqing were to hear they wouldn’t know peace,,

⭑ He can play the role you give him should you give him, especially as a general. You tell him about someone trying to attack your kingdom and he’ll reassure you he’s got this !!

⭑ Keeps a piece of paper in his pocket that has details about your persona if it’s based off of a character from a book. Also probably has a timeline on all your 'historical' events — sometimes he scares you because it feels like he knows more about your world than you do,,

⭑ He finds your keen instincts and intuition a bit intimidating. Have you ever thought of learning a thing or two from Fu Xuan? He always trusts you whenever you feel uncertain about a plan or idea because somehow you’re almost always right in the end.

⭑ Becomes your archery mentor and will watch over you as you train. Your skills are impressive and he finds amusement in the way you pose after a full combo.

⭑ If you feel upset because of your past, JING YUAN will comfort you and tell you that you don’t have to grow up — you’re still young and deserve to enjoy what remains before you become an adult and have to face the world. He’ll always be proud and support you no matter what.

"I hear the voice of fate, speaking my name in humble supplication..."

"Hm? Care to share what fate whispers?"

⭑ The talk of an eccentric worker in the reverie hotel had easily reached SUNDAY’s ears, and wanting to see who this eccentric worker was, he decided to wander around during his free time to catch them in action.

⭑ It wasn’t hard to find you as you were a bit loud. Pushing the cart of luggage while speaking of your magical kingdom to the guests as they nod along, clearly invested and assuming you were a storyteller. Once you had brought the guests’ luggage to their room and left, SUNDAY made his way to you to talk with you in interest. You had quite the imagination and spoke in a very sophisticated manner for your age.

⭑ Wasn’t at all phased by the paragraphs upon paragraphs of dialogue you would drop on him, replying easily and holding the conversation well. He noticed you seemed happier the longer he spoke to you.

⭑ While some guests may be annoyed by your behavior, he’ll remind them — if he’s present — that penacony is the land of festivities and many different people visit. Plus, you’re young and free to be who you want to be. If you’re really get picked on though he’ll deal with them personally.

⭑ SUNDAY is scarily observant so he knows you’re playing a character. He doesn’t really acknowledge it too much or confronts you, though, since everyone in penacony is also technically playing the character they wish they were.

⭑ Because of that, SUNDAY will let you do as you please. He’ll indulge you and will play the role you wish for him to play. He’s good at acting, so he can play whatever you wish. It reminds him of when he’d play pretend when Robin when he was younger.

⭑ Has everything about your character memorized. However he knows what to say and what not to say so he doesn’t fluster you by knowing more than you. Will also cover for you if you accidentally go ooc.

⭑ Your ability to rise up in the ranks so quickly will eventually make you work directly under him at some point and when that happens trust that people will refer to you with a royal title. He may indulge you a bit too much,,,

⭑ When you open to SUNDAY about your past, he kind of just. . . Dodges the subject after that. Doesn’t mention it at all. May act like your father a bit and call you his [insert royal title here] — you never realize it’s him trying to reassure you that you needn’t worry about growing up and being mature because of the role you’ve given him.

⭑ Gets a bit worried for your safety when you practice archery, but he also appreciates the fact you can take care of yourself should you face any dangers (especially in the dreamscape.)

⭑ Takes your advice and warnings a bit seriously because of how good your intuition and keen instincts were. (He didn’t listen ONCE and he paid the price.)

"What does it take to rile a royal? ...If you must know, it is those who cannot recognize my true identity. But it is no great loss, for solitude is the noble's lot, so long as I do not lose the nobility of my soul..."

"How wise you are, your highness."

⭑ He has no idea when it happened, but one day BLADE became your 'knight' and he has yet to comment on it. Not really the best knight as he doesn’t really stay close to you on the daily however also a really good knight as he protects you during missions to the point where you don’t use a single arrow.

⭑ Can understand what you day, does not translate for other people. You’re the yapper and he’s the listener. Doesn’t reply like 95% of the time but when he does it’s really flat and monotone which you don’t mind because he’s the big scary knight !!

⭑ Gets teased by the other stellaron hunters for indulging you, but he doesn’t really care too much. He can’t leave you to die during missions, can he? You’re way too young to hold your own properly so he’s there to make sure the number of stellaron hunters doesn’t decrease (that’s his reasoning don’t ruin it pls.)

⭑ Said this in other posts: not the best at comforting so when you open up, he’s kind of just,,, there. He’s also a bit distant sometimes but after that he’ll try to put an effort into playing his role so you don’t get upset or feel like he’s ignoring you.

⭑ Nobody thinks of making fun of you or your interests because BLADE’s always standing behind you — even if you’re tall for your age it’s still very scary to have him just staring at the person with a dead look.

⭑ Doesn’t research your character like the others — he learns as he goes. He doesn’t even have the chance to mess up because he just doesn’t talk much so he can’t mess up.

⭑ Not much to say for Bladie he just goes with it,,

"Dusk and dawn but fleeting shadows are. Once more, the twists of fate have led you into my everlasting night."

"…Good morning."

[muxshwriting]

bite the hand

charles leclerc x teammate!reader

summary: ferrari is draining you of everything you once loved about racing and you're tired of fighting a losing battle for respect, for your place, for peace || warnings: shitty team, ferrari hating || word count: 1239 || masterlist

You sat still in the car, helmet still on, refusing to move. Not yet. Not like this. A shadow dropped into your line of sight.

“Well done, kid. You did good.” Lewis. Kneeling beside your car, helmet under one arm, voice gentler than you expected.

“Doesn’t really feel like it,” you muttered.

“I know.”

That was enough. He helped you out, walked you back to the Ferrari garage in silence. You hated that silence. It was loud, full of everything you hadn’t said. The garage was half-empty, no one looking for you, all celebrating Charles’s podium.

You were happy for him, you really were. But you couldn't face the crowd, not when it felt like the walls were caving in. All you wanted was to disappear, curl up at home, trash TV on in the background, junk food in your lap, dog curled beside you. A version of peace. Everything was too much.

“I don’t know what I did to make everyone hate me so much,” you whispered once, voice cracking. “I’m trying. Every day. So I don’t hate myself too. And the worst part is... I don’t know how to fix it.”

You wouldn’t let anyone see you cry. If they saw the tears, they’d see the weakness. And if they saw the weakness, they’d exploit it. That was the rule. That had always been the rule. There was no changing reality.

Maybe you weren’t built for this. Maybe you weren’t the future of Formula 1. Maybe they were right.

You weren’t a star. You weren’t special. You were a cautionary tale, a headline, a one-season experiment already wearing thin. Your dreams were dying. And it hurt to admit that maybe some of them couldn’t be revived. You sat alone at the back of the paddock, knees to your chest, and tried to convince yourself you weren’t falling apart. The wind cut through your race suit, sharp against your skin. This didn’t feel like home anymore.

Racing used to be the dream. Now it was just survival. Race wins weren't in the cards for you, a world championship was out of the question. Crashes, bruises, disappointment and dread was all you could look forward to now. That was it.

This was it.

You felt like the loneliest person in the world at this moment. Everyone else was separated from you, looking down on you from their towers of safety and comfort. The track was the quietest place on earth. Sound refused to penetrate the bubble you had built for herself. The wind was cold against your skin, raising goose bumps to the surface. It was uncomfortable, it was harsh. You came to the hard realisation: racing was no longer home. It wasn't the welcome escape from real life. It was a chore, your job, your only merit.

Charles always did his best to support you in every way that he could but not even he could solve this problem. He could see the blatent favouritism that his team showed him whilst ignoring your struggles and your accomplishments.

"I think maybe it's my time to go."

Your lying in his arms, blinking away the tiredness of the day with bleary eyes.

"Go?" Charles asked slowly. "It's only half way through the season."

"And I'll stick it out until the end but I have to go somewhere else. I need to leave Charles. I can't stay here."

Charles sigh, running a hand through his hair. "Where will you go?"

"I don't know." You shrug. "I don't think I'm going to get a seat anywhere else. The only reason I got this one was because of PR, and everyone knew it was temporary.”

“There are still teams without confirmed line-ups - ”

“They won’t pick me,” you said. “I’m not worth the risk. Remember what they called me when I started? The FIA’s experiment. I’m not a safe investment. I come with politics, headlines, ‘controversy.’ I’m not just a driver to them.”

“That’s bullshit,” Charles snapped. “You’re one of the best drivers I’ve ever raced with.”

You smiled softly at that, but it didn’t stick. “Doesn’t matter if I am. Not in this world.”

Silence again. You turned your attention to the rings on your fingers, twisting them round and round.

"So that's it?"

Charles perked up suddenly. “What about Red Bull? If Checo’s out, that’s a seat.”

You laughed. “Be serious.”

You shrug again. "Maybe. Maybe that's all my career was supposed to be. A couple years at the top, magazine covers, interviews, showing the world it could be done and then being cast aside by the sport and relegated to another name on the page of a history book."

"But you could do so much more than that!"

"I know!" You sigh. "And that's the worst part."

At the next race, you have to keep your head up, keep your eyes forward and ignore all the stares and the judgement and the rumours. But then qualifying flips the world upside down and you find the hugs and support from the team after a good result. It's like trying to argue with a coin that won't stop spinning, two completely different versions.

During the race, everything that could go wrong, does. First lap, first corner, someone clips a back tyre and spins you out, landing you at the very back of the pack. Then, just as you've crawled and carved yourself back into the points, the car gives up, it breaks completely and gives you no other option but to retire from the race.

And when it all came crashing down again, you found him by your side. Like always. “I couldn’t leave you alone like this,” Charles murmured, slipping into the seat beside you in the motorhome.

You didn’t move away.

“Even if you despise me, I’d still be here.”

“I don't hate you,” you whispered. “I hate the team. Big difference.”

A wet, humorless laugh escaped your lips. “It’s not supposed to be like this.”

He nodded, reaching for your hand. “I know. But it is. And we keep going.”

And somehow, the warmth of his palm in yours made it feel like you could keep going, for now. They were content to sit there and watch the time go by until someone really needed them and were more than happy to spend their time next to one another. A loud noise startled you and made you hold his hand tighter.

“You ready?” He whispered quietly.

“Almost.”

Charles didn’t reply. Instead he turned your palm up to face his and carefully traced his fingers over every line. “You can do it.”

Charles held you closer after that. His arm always around your waist, his hand always finding yours when you needed grounding. He started noticing the digs, the dismissals, the cold shoulders from the garage. His smile at the factory grew tighter.

You didn’t have to say it. He saw it. And he hated it too. You were his teammate. His partner. His person. And he was starting to understand why you wanted to run. Because when you love someone, and the world breaks them, you start to want to bite back. Even if it means biting the hand that once fed you.

The decision was final, and at the end of the year, you were getting as far away from this sport and this godforsaken team as you possibly could. It didn't deserve your time when it only rewarded you with pain.

But there was still one unknown, and Charles was steadily starting to feel the same way as you once did.

[krewekreep]

Baby Daddy Red Flags: Bleach Edition (😜🤍)

This one…this one for the sluts! 😭💕 I’m an old anime bitch like lemme get it out my system! (We gonna tag this #ToxicTalk lmaoo, this is a safe space)

(If you wanna know who we share 😒, I’ll add an asterisk or whatever. ((They still mine first 😂💝🫡)) (will update and repost with new additions, semi-live post)

***ICHIGO: Lemme get my baby daddy out the way. Biggest issues would be his availability before and after the kid. Probably got pregnant in a makeup sex situation anyway. Ichigo doesn’t seem to type to breakup but will say let’s break. Based on how selfless he is it also can be seen coming from him not being able to save his mom—so he may have a savior complex. It may seem valiant at first like “oh wow you became friends with Chad helping him with bullies? You became closer to Orihime (😒) after helping her grieve her brother? You’re such a good person!” Til you realize seniority is in place and when his friends call he drops whatever he is doing to go help. It’s been time, money, etc and increasingly his selflessness comes off as codependent. Like he can’t stop trying to make up for something that wasn’t his fault.

He will also randomly reserve to right to become reclusive. Not necessarily secretive but less energetic, talkative, or engaged. (You def realize your baby got some functional depression going on. Iykyk). Might not annoy you but the random times he doesn’t want to be touched or seemingly avoids you does hurt…but he sincerely comes back letting you know he was in a weird space etc.

Ichigo’s biggest yes or no is if you’ll be able to sometimes come second or third (likely til you marry and/or have kids with him.) His father and sisters are absolutely #1, his friends are #2, and his oath to the Soul Society and humanity at large is a consequence of him protecting the first two so that’s of course #3. See where I’m going? Even on your best days you might be upset he runs off to Rukia’s or Orihime’s aid. That he has to “save the world,”to save you too. Jealous types might really become frustrated with Ichigo. And tbh I don’t see him breaking out of his ways. He won’t see a need to because there’s real results of his good deeds in his life. He knows he’s saved lives, so he knows he can continue to—so will you be able to handle the fact his duty and mindset will be self sacrificing? I don’t know I think I’d tie him down with a baby and move on.

**KENPACHI: I fully accept and am attracted to his animalistic tendencies. I absolutely can admit that about myself 😭 but…realistically you’d def have to tell him he’s too rough during sessions. He’s grown up wayward, defensive, survival mode, stomach touching his back— during a time so seemingly historical and old who knows how bad the conditions of poverty were—most kids died if they simply weren’t rich and able to eat. Or turned to crime at extremely young ages or exploited….That’s just global history in real life. And the soul society is that much more complex and arduous. Kenpachi will be a man of few words but immense action. If you want someone who will open up even eventually that is not Kenpachi Zaraki. You will highly likely never know of his past because he will never say he is excruciatingly doing everything to never have to. And no, he won’t communicate ever if anything terrible is on his mind. Although kenpachi is coded as barbaric he really is just that protective—he’s as angry as he will be based solely upon someone’s proximity to him emotionally. You and Yaru will be so exclusively held in a regard he won’t even understand. Just the black hole of his awareness he’ll surpass anything to save y’all. He won’t speak on why Lady Unohana isn’t around anymore (new anime, manga lore). But again, when he ends up rough too many nights in a row you distance yourself from him. He can’t admit to you he disassociates and goes back to bad times. He can’t tell you your comfort and warmth makes him remember the times he needed it before—he doesn’t mean to hurt you but he lives for a fight. But he wants to stop making everything and everyone something to “conquer.” He’ll be a real deal handful and it will solely up to you to either tell him you can’t be with him until he figure shit out or you’ll stick beside him and work through it together. (In this case Yaru is the “kid” yall share, I see him being weary of birthing a child and being a dad in such a “visceral” way. Will have total abandonment trauma and just can’t see him getting over it completely to bring new life into a world he already sees the worst in tbh.) but in terms of “baby momma” treatment? Or your prioritized and protected best believe. 💕 he also will force you to learn combat cause you should be able to take care yourself too. Which might either be hot or burdensome. You’re gonna know how to fight. And tbh he might try to bring it into the bedroom on some weird let’s play fight shit so watch yourself. That’s a BIG MAN! 😭😂💕 “HA! Now that you know how do a few things why don’t you test it on me?” Big cheeky sneaky ass grin girl don’t fall for it!

BYAKUYA: This is the guy who will match your freak everywhere but in public. No PDA—actually don’t even look at him or try to talk to him in public…be professional. He will be joking with others and you’ll get upset saying “Hey! You let the other members of the society tease you?” And in private he’ll admit it’s just to keep up appearances and he hates it all. 😭 I think his biggest issue will be coming off fake or disingenuous or you’ll have a hard time sincerely seeing him cause he’ll be so different depending on where y’all are. People wouldn’t know he’s like a mom boyfriend who makes sure you eat, sleep, and keep up with yourself. Yes, he will absolutely unintentionally say something insulting like “This doesn’t suit you. Find something else.” And yes he will be very clearly on guard when in public. People will openly wonder why you’re with him tbh. Which will frustrate the both of you of which neither of you ever bring up to the other. Byakuya has lost a love before—he won’t talk about it ever. You MIGHT get something out of Rukia about it cause it was her sister but I doubt she’ll go super intimate about THEIR relationship cause she respects both his and her sister’s privacy. So you might be stuck on an eavesdropping side quest with Renji that amounts to nothing cause he’ll sense yall. He’ll be amused and somewhat touched you wanted to watch him work though. He’s usually the one keeping check or track of things so he’ll never say he likes that you peep on him and mind his business. You care about him and he knows he’s a bit unfair not allowing any PDA. But he so openly loved on Rukia’s sister he couldn’t help the shameful self imposed embarrassment once he had to walk the halls alone…Byakuya will be a very intentional, quiet lover. I doubt he’ll moan very much tbh unless he’s exhausted and allowing you to take care of him. Sometimes he’ll absolutely disappear all day into work. Other times he’ll be sure to direct his underlings to wait on you in his stead. He’s more manageable if you can accept his sometimes snarky, distant, super private ways. As a father he’ll be annoyingly big on exceptionalism and them being smart and talented. You’ll have to be sure he isn’t burdening your kid when you aren’t around. And you’ll have to be sure he doesn’t inadvertently impart his insensitive habits too. Likewise, you’ll ABSOLUTELY have to “deal or no deal” him about giving affection to your kid in public. You will absolutely have to go off and tell him it’s y’all or his image. And yeah now he’s holding both yall hands albeit defeated. 💕😭

AIZEN: Shit…girl (im black my “girl…” is gender neutral don’t be annoying 💕) you already know what it is. Yandare, selfish, self righteous, MEAN, EVIL…but fine and rich as fuck. 😔🫤 it will be a doozy to be with this one. You literally have to know and accept what you getting into bestie. I can’t even warn you, you know! 😭 but seriously if your an aizen bias you accept him as is 😭 psycho ass. So I wanna just write how’d he be as a baby daddy. Now not to get…too mature…but if you happened to be someone captured/kidnapped by him and pregnant…baby you is a victim! BUT ITS FANFIC SOOO if you were the captured baby momma that’s in his realm with him…well girl you in the realm lord you stuck. “Can I go to the human world?” “For what?” “Uh, sun?” “Humph what do you need sun for…” He’ll look down at your crying child and be like “Ugh okay whatever but Grimmjow is your chaperone.” And you won’t care cause Grimmjow lets you run off and live life. Which Aizen knows but the minute you aren’t overtly scared and submissive to him he’ll lose his weird sense of “power.” You’re man crazy bestie. He’s definitely someone you won’t talk back to until you’re a parent and equally going to advocate for your kid. He’ll realize and laugh to himself “Their not really submissive at all…little minx…” and hold you in completely new regard. “So you took me as is because you wanted to?” He’ll start thinking shit that confuses him and decide to randomly kill a grunt to distract himself like no he’s not gonna reflect into a better person. 😂 you’ll have everything you want cause you can’t go nowhere 😭. Mind you yes the sex is mind blowing so you sadly do take what positives are there…his eyes don’t fall sexually to anyone but you. His body doesn’t respond certain ways to anyone but you. And as you stand next to him more and more he’s leaning into you and your baby’s energy rather than tryna to overtake yall with his. Just don’t speak about the change and it’ll be fine. The minute you tease or openly acknowledge his becoming softer and less controlling you’ll ruin all the progress you made. Let him feel like he’s in control or whatever.

New Additions (1):

Hitsugaya: (adult of course) Hitsu will be a blend of Byakuya and Ichigo. The best aspects of him will be how attentive and actionable he is about his love for you. But — he will shy away from PDA and sometimes have moments of separated solitude. Unlike Byakuya, he will absolutely open up to PDA, just will never be the initiator of it. Maybe grab your hand at the end of the day to hurry back home or stare at you as long as he can while he observes your dutiful working. He’ll be shy always which keeps your love feeling young and refreshed. You’ll always be able to make him blush and unlike Ichigo, he’ll warm up to you imposing yourself on his alone time. He’ll be big on love making and planning when to have a child so it will be less spontaneous. He’ll have the baby registry and wishlists prepared, printed, and passed out to members of the Soul Society. He’ll enjoy trips to the human world to acquire new toys and trinkets for your baby.

As a baby daddy he’s almost too protective. You wonder what he’s been through as he’ll have a firm grip of your hips as you cradle your child. He’ll have a habit of looking at your baby and then between the both of you stunned at how he can see the perfect blend of your features on your child’s face. He’ll be very close to a simp honestly (which I’m a fan of) and be at your beck & call no matter the hour. Definitely the dad to tell you don’t worry about tending to the little one, keep resting cause he knows how tired you get. He’s honestly the perfect idea of a new father as he’ll be bumbling a bit but with so much to prove. I realize I kinda didn’t write red flags cause I truly see Hitsu adjusting to parenthood and a long term relationship the best. Only thing I can think is that he’ll be overtly willing to sacrifice himself for your family’s safety. So any massive issue in the Soul Society will make your heart sink a little because while he’s capable he’s been in enough life threatening predicaments to cause ample, appropriate worry. He’ll be hard to break out of working I think until your child starts schooling which could be frustrating cause he’ll overcompensate parenting in lieu of his work commitments. Overall, I think he’d be the baby daddy with the least to really worry about.

Renji: Oh lord— all tea, all shade this man will STRUGGLE. « What do you mean the baby is hungry AGAIN ? You just breastfed! WAIT DO NOT PULL YOUR TIT OUT IN PUBLIC WOMAN ! » He’ll have a hard time adjusting to your freedom as a breastfeeding mom for sure (if you choose to). Work ? What’s work? One thing you can count on is that he will absolutely commit to being a family man and even a stay at home dad. He’ll take all his PTO or even « quit » (basically will say don’t call me to help unless the Soul Society is about to die.) He will wait on you hand & foot because he can’t imagine how much your body and mind has gone through and the strength it takes to be so tired but smile and laugh with him and your kiddo. But, he may end up a bit controlling about you leaving the house without him. He’ll either become a sad puppy or an angry old man. « Baby…what do you mean you want me to stay home ? 😓🥺 » or «  Woman, what did I tell you about going out without me ? What if a crazy person tried to rob you ? » You laugh at him always being some level of dramatic but it may get annoying how clingy and worried he’ll become. You’ll have to remind him you lived this long for a reason…and plan to live longer, so he can chill out sometimes cause his worried nature worries you…you might benefit from guilt tripping him into apologizing and giving you a breather on leaving the house. But just know someone is watching over you. Renji would be a great cook or a terrible cook who improves over time. He might be great at catching the baby right when they poop or…end up shat on rushing to a sink. I really see him either being weirdly good at being a dad or definitely suffering from the learning curve.

Your baby will definitely be conceived in a wild love making, (maybe rough, passionate sex) session. And you’ll catch him blushing when he holds your baby and looks at you remembering the night you had. You’ll be the type to walk in on them sleeping crazily on the sofa, his arm instinctively holding your baby firm. He’ll be grateful to not have to jump up to go to work honestly. His biggest red flags will be being overbearing, needy, and likely requiring a lot of overt reassurance. (Which isn’t necessarily a red flag given he just will want to be a really good dad and partner.) Otherwise he’ll become a stubborn dad who will try (and fail) to « put his foot down. » Which will likely result in him sleeping on the sofa…💕

[theonottsbxtch]

POWER OVER YOU | FC43

an: i don't encourage this type of behaviour i promise i just somehow always end up writing the most unhinged things ever lol

wc: 8.8k

warnings: emotional abuse, mental manipulation, age gap (older!reader), exploitation

The first time Franco flirted with her, it was live on camera, in front of millions.

It was bold. Reckless. Utterly ridiculous.

She barely flinched, her practiced professionalism taking over as effortlessly as the hum of engines in the paddock. She dismissed it as a rookie’s desperate attempt to make waves, the kind of bravado that burned bright but fizzled out under the grind of a Formula One season. A boy playing games in a world of professionals.

But that boy had the nerve to smirk at her like he knew something she didn’t.

“Maybe one day, you’ll be answering my questions,” he’d said, leaning into the mic, his voice dripping with that unmistakable Latin charm that made headlines and broke hearts before the ink on his contract was even dry.

She had laughed it off then, smooth as glass, redirecting the conversation like the master she was. Years of experience had given her an edge that no rookie could rattle. Yet as the weeks passed, something shifted.

She caught herself replaying the moment in her mind. Not his words—those were easy to brush off. It was the look in his eyes. The way they lingered a second too long, daring her to react. He wasn’t like the others—those boys who looked up to her, respected her, feared her. No, this one wasn’t afraid.

And that made him dangerous.

She didn’t fall for things like this. She was untouchable. A name spoken in reverence across the paddock, her presence a force even team principals didn’t challenge. Her life was built on control—over her career, her family, herself. She had everything to lose, and yet...

Every time Franco stood in front of her, that same smirk tugging at his lips, she felt it unraveling.

And the worst part? He knew.

By the midpoint of the season, the tension was palpable. She told herself it was nothing—just a passing distraction in the relentless chaos of the Formula One calendar. Franco was making headlines, not just for his undeniable talent but for his charisma, the sort that could light up the dullest press conference.

The fans adored him. The media buzzed around him like moths to a flame. And he, with his easy charm and devil-may-care attitude, soaked it all in. Yet somehow, amidst the whirlwind of attention, he always found time for her. A glance. A comment. A fleeting touch on her arm as he passed her in the paddock.

It wasn’t just cheeky anymore. It was calculated.

“Am I going to see you at the afterparty tonight?” he’d asked once, leaning casually against a stack of Pirelli tyres, his fireproofs unzipped to his waist, revealing a damp racing shirt that clung to his chest.

She didn’t look up from her notepad. “I don’t do afterparties.”

“You should. It would be fun.” Franco’s voice dropped a notch, just low enough for her to catch the suggestion laced beneath the words. “I think you deserve a little fun.”

Her pen paused mid-sentence, and that was enough for him. He smirked and walked away, leaving her to question why her pulse had quickened, why her skin felt warmer beneath the Mediterranean sun.

She hated him for it. Hated the way he wormed his way into her thoughts, the way her mind replayed his voice at night when the house was quiet, her children asleep, her husband on a late call in the other room. It wasn’t real, she told herself. Just a trick of the adrenaline that came with this world, the intoxicating rush of speed and spectacle.

But as the summer races rolled on, so did his games. Each one bolder than the last.

In Baku, he brushed past her in the media pen, close enough that his hand grazed the small of her back.

In Singapore, he made a comment about her red dress, murmuring something in Spanish she didn’t quite catch but didn’t need to. The look in his eyes said it all.

And in Austin, after once again finishing in the points, he sought her out before the press conference. His champagne-dampened hair clung to his forehead, his grin still wide with the thrill of victory.

“Maybe this deserves an interview,” he teased, stepping just close enough that she could smell the sharp tang of champagne and sweat on his skin. “You know, something exclusive. Just you and me.”

She forced a laugh, masking the way her breath hitched. “You’ve already had your time in the spotlight. Go celebrate with your team.”

“Oh, I plan to.” His gaze dipped for the briefest moment before snapping back to hers, filled with a heat that made her heart pound. “But I wouldn’t mind celebrating with you too.”

This time, she couldn’t hide the blush that crept up her neck. Franco saw it—of course he did. And as he turned to walk away, he glanced over his shoulder and winked.

For the first time in her career, she felt like prey.

That night the hotel room was quiet, save for the soft hum of the air conditioning. She perched on the edge of the bed, phone pressed to her ear, smiling at the sound of her daughter’s sleepy voice.

“Goodnight, Mum,” the little girl murmured, her words heavy with the weight of sleep. “I love you.”

“I love you too, darling,” she replied, her tone soft and warm. “Be good for Daddy tomorrow, all right?”

Her husband’s voice came through next, deep and steady. “Everything okay over there?”

“Yes, all fine,” she said, though her mind flickered to the chaos of the paddock, to Franco and his maddening smirk. “Just the usual madness.”

“Well, don’t let them work you too hard,” he said, his voice laced with familiar concern. “You need rest too.”

“I’ll be fine,” she assured him, glancing at the clock. It was late, and exhaustion tugged at her limbs. “Give the kids a kiss for me. I’ll call again tomorrow.”

“Goodnight, love.”

“Goodnight.”

She ended the call and set the phone down on the bedside table, exhaling a long, steady breath. The day had been relentless, as they all were, and all she wanted was a moment of peace. Clad in a simple pair of pyjama shorts and a loose tank top, she crossed the room to pour herself a glass of water.

The knock at the door startled her.

It was firm but unhurried, the kind that demanded attention without urgency. She hesitated, her heart giving an involuntary flutter. It was late. Too late for anything routine.

Curiosity got the better of her, and she padded barefoot across the carpet, unlocking the door.

Franco was there.

Still in his team polo and slim-fitting jeans, his dark hair slightly tousled, Franco leaned casually against the doorframe, his eyes gleaming under the dim hallway lights.

“Evening,” he said, his voice low and smooth.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, her voice sharper than she intended, though the crackling tension between them softened the edge.

“Wanted to see you.” He tilted his head slightly, his gaze sweeping over her. “You look beautiful.”

She stiffened, glancing down at herself. Pyjama shorts, a plain top, no make-up. Hardly glamorous.

“Don’t flatter me,” she said, though her tone lacked conviction.

“Not flattering,” he countered, stepping forward before she could stop him, the door clicking shut behind him. “Just telling the truth.”

She swallowed hard, acutely aware of how close he was now. The air between them seemed thinner, charged. He moved with an ease that was unnerving, like he belonged here, like her space was already his.

“You can’t just show up at someone’s hotel room uninvited,” she said, but even to her own ears, the protest sounded weak.

“Then kick me out.” His voice was a challenge, soft and steady.

She didn’t move.

Instead, he reached out, his fingers brushing against a stray lock of her hair, tucking it behind her ear. The touch was light, almost imperceptible, but it sent a shiver down her spine.

“You’ve been running through my mind all night,” he murmured, his voice dropping lower. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”

Her breath hitched, her resolve cracking under the intensity of his gaze. “You’re out of line.”

“Maybe,” Franco admitted, stepping closer still, his presence now overwhelming. “But I think you like it.”

She opened her mouth to respond, but the words caught in her throat as his hand trailed along her arm, his touch igniting every nerve in its wake. The space between them dissolved, and she realised she wasn’t stepping away.

Didn’t want to step away.

His hand moved slowly, almost reverently, as though savouring the moment. Fingers rough from hours gripping a steering wheel trailed up her bare thigh, his touch sending a molten heat through her veins. She sucked in a sharp breath, her eyelids fluttering involuntarily.

It was maddening—humiliating, almost—to feel so undone by a simple touch. She was stronger than this. She had built a career on composure, on unshakeable self-control, and yet here she was, trembling beneath his fingers, her resolve slipping through her grasp like sand.

“Stop,” she managed, though her voice was barely a whisper.

He didn’t stop.

Instead, he took another step closer, his other hand brushing her waist, his palm warm against the thin fabric of her tank top. His breath was a soft caress against her cheek, his lips so close she could almost feel their heat.

“Do you want me to?” he murmured, his voice low and intoxicating, the kind of voice that made promises it had every intention of keeping.

Her mind screamed yes, but her body betrayed her. She stayed rooted to the spot, her pulse pounding in her ears, her lips parting ever so slightly.

That was all the invitation he needed.

Franco kissed her.

It wasn’t gentle or hesitant. It was fiery, unrestrained, and filled with a hunger that left her breathless. His mouth claimed hers with an intensity that shattered every barrier she had spent years building. Her hands, which had been poised to push him away, tangled in his shirt instead, pulling him closer.

The taste of him—sharp and heady—only made her want more.

She barely recognised the sound that escaped her, a soft, desperate whimper against his lips. The kiss deepened, and for a moment, the world outside ceased to exist. No hotel room, no career, no family. Just him.

But then reality snapped back, sharp and cold. She broke the kiss, her lips hovering against his, her breaths coming in shallow, uneven gasps.

“We shouldn’t do this,” she whispered, the words trembling between them.

Franco didn’t pull away. His lips quirked into a small, maddening smirk that she felt against her own.

“We?” he echoed, his voice filled with quiet amusement. “You kissed me.”

Her cheeks flamed, her embarrassment flaring like a physical heat. “I didn’t—”

But he silenced her with another kiss, softer this time but no less consuming. His hands stayed where they were, one on her waist, the other resting just above her knee, holding her firmly in place as though daring her to argue.

When he finally pulled back, his forehead resting against hers, his voice was a whisper in the charged air.

“Tell me to go, and I’ll leave,” he said, his thumb brushing a slow, agonising circle against her thigh. “But if you want me to stay...”

She didn’t finish the thought, but he could see the war raging in her eyes.

“Say the word.”

Her chest rose and fell against his, her breaths shaky as the weight of his words hung in the air. She knew what she should say, what the right answer was. But the way his thumb stroked her thigh, the heat radiating from his body, and the fire still simmering in her veins after that kiss… logic had no place here.

She didn’t say a word.

Instead, her hands tightened in his shirt, pulling him back to her, and their lips collided again, this time with a desperation that bordered on frantic. His hands roamed with purpose now, sliding up her thighs, over the curve of her hips, and under her tank top. His touch ignited every inch of skin it found, and she arched into him, a soft gasp escaping her as his fingers traced the bare skin of her waist.

Franco backed her towards the bed, their kisses never breaking, never slowing. His lips left hers only to trail down her jaw, to the sensitive spot just beneath her ear. She tilted her head instinctively, granting him access, and when he bit down gently, her knees nearly buckled.

“God,” she whispered, the sound barely audible, her hands clutching at his shoulders for support.

His low chuckle sent a shiver through her. “I’ve been thinking about this all season,” he murmured, his voice rough with desire. “You have no idea what you do to me.”

Her heart pounded at his words, the sheer intensity of his focus on her making her feel dizzy. She should’ve stopped this—could’ve stopped this. But as his hands slipped beneath the hem of her shorts, as his lips found hers again, her resolve crumbled completely.

She fell back onto the bed, his body following hers with a fluid grace that made her breath hitch. Franco’s weight was warm and solid above her, his hands exploring with a careful yet insistent hunger. Every touch, every kiss, every whispered word made her forget everything else—her name, her career, the rules she had so carefully crafted for herself.

The rest of the night was a blur of heat and passion, their bodies tangling in a way that felt both forbidden and inevitable. He was everything she shouldn’t want, yet in that moment, he was the only thing she needed.

The following morning The shrill ring of her phone jolted her awake. Disoriented, she fumbled for it on the nightstand, her heart pounding as reality flooded back in sharp, unforgiving waves. The warmth of the body beside her—the body that shouldn’t have been there—brought everything crashing down.

She glanced over her shoulder and saw him lying on his side, propped up on one elbow, watching her with a lazy, satisfied smirk. Her stomach churned, and she quickly turned away, her eyes locking on the screen of her phone instead.

Her husband’s name flashed across it.

A knot formed in her throat as she pressed accept, forcing her voice to sound steady. “Good morning.”

“Mummy!” her daughter’s excited voice chirped through the speaker. “Good luck today! Daddy said you have another race.”

Her chest tightened. “Thank you, sweetheart. Are you ready for school?”

“Uh-huh!”

“Both of them are,” her husband’s voice cut in, calm and steady, utterly unaware of the chaos that had unravelled in the past twelve hours. “They wanted to call and wish you luck before we headed out.”

She swallowed hard, her eyes darting to the man in her bed, who was now stretching languidly, clearly amused by her discomfort. She turned her back on him, clutching the phone tighter. “That’s sweet of them. I’ll call again tonight, okay?”

“Of course,” her husband replied. “Have a good day, love.”

“You too,” she whispered, her voice barely audible as guilt clawed at her chest. “I love you.”

“Love you too.”

The call ended, and she set the phone down with trembling hands, her mind spinning. She felt sick—sick with shame, with regret, with the weight of the choice she had made.

“We’ve made a mistake,” she said softly, her back still to him.

“Oh, no.” Franco’s voice was smooth, far too composed. “We haven’t made a mistake.”

She turned to face him, her brow furrowed, her lips pressing into a thin line. “We can’t do this.”

He sat up, the sheets pooling around his waist, his smirk growing wider. “Can’t? That’s not what you said last night.”

Her cheeks burned, but she didn’t waver. “This was wrong. It can’t happen again.”

His expression darkened, a flicker of something dangerous passing through his eyes. Then, to her horror, he reached for his phone on the bedside table, unlocking it with a swipe of his thumb.

“Oh, but we were just getting started,” he said, his tone casual but laced with malice.

She stared at him, confusion giving way to dread as he held up the screen for her to see. It was a photo—a candid shot of the two of them tangled in bed, unmistakable and damning. Her blood ran cold.

“One phone call,” he said, his voice dropping to a low murmur, his smirk curling into something more sinister. “And your career is gone.”

He snapped his fingers, the sound sharp and mocking.

Her breath hitched, her hands clenching into fists. “You wouldn’t—”

“Wouldn’t I?” he interrupted, tilting his head slightly, his confidence oozing with every word. “You’re smart enough to know how much I have to gain. I’m untouchable now. No team would dare sideline me, not with you on my side.”

Her chest tightened, panic swirling in her stomach as his words sank in. He wasn’t just a cocky rookie with a reckless streak. He was calculating, dangerous, and he knew exactly how to wield the power he’d taken from her.

“You don’t scare me,” she said, though the tremor in her voice betrayed her.

He leaned in, his face inches from hers, his smirk never faltering. “No?” he murmured. “Then why are you shaking?”

She hated him in that moment. Hated the way he had stripped her of control, the way he had turned her own mistake into a weapon. But most of all, she hated the flicker of doubt in her chest—the part of her that feared he was right.

The weeks that followed blurred into a surreal nightmare. Every time she stepped into the paddock, she felt his eyes on her. Watching. Waiting. The weight of his presence had shifted from seductive to oppressive, the once thrilling tension between them now a suffocating reminder of the line she had crossed.

And the worst part? Franco knew it.

At first, his demands were subtle. A flattering mention in an article here, an offhand comment about his impressive maturity during interviews. She told herself it was harmless—easy favours to buy silence. But it didn’t stop there.

“You’ll want to lead with this,” he told her one morning, sliding into the seat opposite her in the press lounge. He pushed a folded piece of paper across the table. “It’s a great angle.”

She didn’t even need to read it to know it was about him.

“Stop showing up uninvited,” she snapped, her voice low enough that the other journalists around them wouldn’t hear.

He only smirked, leaning back in his chair. “You should be thanking me. That’s the kind of insight people pay for.”

She stared at him, her jaw clenched, but he didn’t flinch. He never did.

“Clock’s ticking,” he said, his voice calm and maddeningly confident. “You wouldn’t want your editor hearing about… us, would you?”

Her stomach twisted. She snatched the paper and left without another word.

The next day, his name was front and centre in her column.

The exploitation only grew bolder.

After a chaotic race weekend in Brazil, he approached her in the paddock as the crews packed up for the night. The lights of the arena glinted off his sweat-dampened skin, his eyes gleaming with the thrill of another top-ten finish.

“I’ve got an idea for our next exclusive,” he said, his tone casual but his words barbed.

She barely looked at him, her hands tightening around her tablet. “We don’t do exclusives. I’m impartial.”

He chuckled softly, stepping closer. “Impartial?” Franco repeated, his voice dripping with mockery. “Come on, don’t ruin the fun now. Write it.”

When she didn’t respond, his tone sharpened, dropping to a low whisper. “Or do you want me to remind you what’s at stake?”

Her breath hitched. She hated the weakness he brought out in her, the way her body betrayed her with fear and frustration in equal measure. But she nodded. She always did.

The article went live the next day, an in-depth feature on the rookie sensation, full of praise and insights that made the racing world buzz. His face was plastered across every headline, his name chanted louder by fans at every circuit.

And he made sure she knew it.

She couldn’t escape him, not on the track, not off it. Every time she thought she could reclaim some semblance of control, he reminded her just how easily he could destroy her.

“You’re good at this, you know,” he told her after a post-race interview, his hand brushing hers as he handed back the microphone. His lips curved into that infuriating smirk. “I couldn’t have planned it better myself.”

Her professionalism was cracking, her mask slipping more with every encounter. The guilt of lying to her family, the shame of letting him dictate her career—it was consuming her. Yet she couldn’t stop.

Not when his smirk carried the weight of an unspoken threat.

The nights were the worst.

Under the harsh glare of the paddock lights or in the sterile silence of press rooms, she could maintain some semblance of control. But when the sun went down and the doors to her hotel room locked behind her, he always found her.

And she always let him in.

A week after the Brazil race, she paced her hotel room, her nerves frayed and her head spinning. The TV in the corner was on mute, but the images were unavoidable: him, stepping onto the track, his face lit with triumph, her words from that morning’s feature being quoted on screen. Her name tied to his glory yet again.

She turned away, running a hand through her hair, but a knock at the door stopped her in her tracks.

She didn’t need to look to know who it was.

When she opened it, Franco stood there with that same cocky smirk, still wearing the outfit she saw him earlier, the team shirt clinging to his chest. His hair was damp from a shower, and he carried the faint scent of cologne and adrenaline.

“You’re insatiable,” he teased, stepping inside without waiting for an invitation.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she said, closing the door behind him. Her voice was firm, but her resolve wasn’t.

“I couldn’t stay away,” he said smoothly, turning to face her. His gaze dropped to her bare legs, the hem of her silk robe brushing her thighs. “And clearly, neither can you.”

She hated how easily he could disarm her, how her pulse quickened when he stepped closer. “This is a mistake,” she murmured, even as her body betrayed her, leaning into him when his hands slid around her waist.

“Say that again,” Franco whispered, his lips brushing her ear, “and I’ll stop.”

Her breath hitched. She said nothing.

His mouth found hers, and the rest of her objections burned away. It was always like this—intense, fiery, and utterly consuming. He kissed her like he was claiming her, his hands roaming her body as if he already owned it. And in those moments, she let him.

For all the guilt, the shame, the fear of what he held over her, she couldn’t deny the thrill of it—the way her pulse raced when he touched her, the way he made her forget everything but him.

The next morning, she stared at herself in the bathroom mirror, the faint marks he’d left on her skin hidden beneath her blouse. She felt like a stranger, someone unrecognisable from the poised, confident journalist she had been just months ago.

Her phone buzzed on the counter. She picked it up, already knowing it was him.

Great feature. We’re trending again. Be ready for the next triple header.

Her fingers tightened around the device. She wanted to throw it across the room, to smash it into a million pieces. But instead, she typed a reply: Fine.

Her reflection sneered back at her, and for the first time, she hated the person she saw.

Las Vegas was a circus, as it always was. The glitz, the glamour, the impossible tension. He thrived in it, playing the cameras like a virtuoso. Every wink, every sly smile, every clever soundbite only amplified the buzz around him.

And she was part of it, just as Franco had planned.

That night, as fireworks lit up the sky over the strip, he found her on the balcony of her hotel room. She didn’t even flinch when he slid his arms around her from behind, pulling her against his chest.

“You’ve been quiet,” he murmured, pressing a kiss to her bare shoulder.

“I’ve been thinking,” she replied, her voice cool but distant.

He turned her to face him, his hands trailing down to rest on her hips. “About us?” he asked, his lips quirking into a playful smirk.

“About what happens if this gets out,” she said bluntly, her gaze locking with his. “About what you’d do with that photo.”

Franco’s smile didn’t falter. “I told you before, I wouldn’t do anything… unless you made me.”

She swallowed hard, her heart pounding as his thumb brushed the curve of her jaw.

“And you haven’t made me,” he added, his tone softening, almost tender. “Yet.”

It was a lie, of course. Everything about him was a lie, crafted with the precision of someone who knew how to manipulate people to their breaking point. But when his lips met hers again, when his hands explored her body with that same maddening confidence, she didn’t stop him.

It wasn’t always passion. Sometimes it was spite—her way of reclaiming control, of saying if you’re going to ruin me, I’ll ruin myself first. But even in those moments, when she swore she hated him, the thrill was undeniable.

The danger, the secrecy, the power struggle—it was intoxicating.

And that terrified her more than anything.

There were two races left of the season and she knew something was wrong the moment she walked into the paddock that morning. The usual buzz of race-day excitement was different—charged, oppressive. People stared as she passed, whispers trailing in her wake like a shadow.

Her heart raced. Her hands tightened around the strap of her bag, her chest heavy with dread.

When her phone vibrated in her pocket, she pulled it out with shaking fingers. There were dozens of notifications—texts, emails, missed calls. All from colleagues, her editor, even friends she hadn’t spoken to in years.

Then she saw the headlines.

SCANDAL IN THE PADDOCK: F1’s Most Powerful Journalist and the Rookie Star’s Illicit Affair!

Her breath caught in her throat. She clicked on one of the links, her vision blurring as the images loaded.

Her. In bed. Bare skin illuminated by dim light, her face unmistakable, her body tangled with Franco’s. Another photo of her standing by the window of a hotel room, wearing nothing but a robe that hung loosely off her shoulder. The intimacy, the vulnerability—it was all there for the world to see.

“Jesus Christ,” she whispered, her voice cracking as she stumbled into an empty corridor. Her stomach churned, the bile rising in her throat as she scrolled through image after image.

Her phone buzzed again, his name flashing on the screen.

She answered it with a shaking hand. “What the hell have you done?”

“Me?” Franco’s voice was sharp, defensive. “I didn’t do shit!”

“Oh, really?” she snapped, her voice rising. “Then explain why there are pictures of me all over the internet, pictures you took without my permission!”

“I didn’t leak them!” he growled, his frustration matching her fury. “My iCloud got hacked—this isn’t on me!”

“Not on you?” she spat, her hand tightening around the phone. “You took them, you kept them, and now my life is falling apart because of you!”

Her chest heaved as she paced the corridor, her free hand trembling as it raked through her hair. She felt like she was coming apart at the seams, every word from him only fuelling her rage.

“Look,” Franco said, his tone softening, “we’ll handle this. I’ll make a statement, say they’re fake or something—”

“Fake?” she interrupted, her laugh sharp and bitter. “Everyone knows they’re real. Do you have any idea what this is going to do to me? To my career? To my family?”

As if on cue, her phone buzzed again. This time, it was her husband.

Her stomach dropped. “I need to go,” she muttered, cutting him off before he could respond.

She answered the call, her voice weak. “Hi.”

There was silence on the other end, heavy and damning. Then came his voice, low and cold. “I saw the photos.”

She closed her eyes, her throat tightening. “I—”

“Don’t,” he interrupted, his tone sharp. “Don’t insult me by trying to explain. I don’t even know who you are anymore.”

“It wasn’t supposed to—”

“To what?” he snapped. “Get out? Be exposed? Do you think that makes it any better?”

Her hand gripped the edge of a table, her knuckles white. “Please,” she whispered. “Please don’t—”

“Don’t what? Let this affect the kids?” His voice cracked, fury giving way to something far more painful. “They saw the news, you know. They don’t understand it, but they saw. And I had to lie to them, to protect you. But I can’t keep doing this. I can’t let you see them right now.”

Her heart shattered. “You don’t mean that,” she whispered, tears blurring her vision.

“I do,” he said, his voice firm. “Until you sort this mess out, I don’t want them anywhere near you.”

The line went dead.

For a moment, she stood frozen, the phone still pressed to her ear. Then the weight of it all crashed down on her, and she let out a scream of pure rage, throwing the phone against the wall. It shattered, the pieces scattering across the floor like the fragments of her life.

Behind her, he stepped into the room. She hadn’t even noticed his arrival, but now he stood there, leaning against the doorframe, his arms crossed.

“Well,” Franco said, his tone light, almost mocking, “sounds like you had an eventful call.”

She turned on him, her eyes blazing. “Get out.”

“Let’s not be hasty,” he said, stepping closer. “I can help—”

“Help?” she snapped, her voice breaking. “You’ve done nothing but destroy me. My career, my family—everything’s ruined because of you!”

He stopped a few feet away, his expression shifting from smug to something colder. “You’re acting like I planned this,” he said evenly. “I told you, I didn’t leak those photos. Someone else did. But if you’d rather blame me, fine.”

Her fists clenched at her sides, her whole body trembling. “You don’t get it, do you? You’ve taken everything from me!”

“No,” he said softly, his eyes locking with hers. “You gave it to me.”

Her breath caught, the truth of his words hitting her like a punch to the gut.

Franco stepped closer, his voice dropping to a whisper. “But don’t worry. You still have me. And maybe, just maybe, I’m all you’ll need now.”

Her stomach twisted, and for the first time, she realised just how deep she had sunk.

She didn’t even hear the door open as the next person walked in.

“Just the person I was looking for.”

The sound of her manager’s voice snapped her out of the suffocating silence. She turned to see him standing in the doorway, his expression unreadable but his posture rigid. Behind him, Franco straightened, the smug veneer slipping into something closer to indifference as he slid his hands into his pockets.

“Give us a moment,” her manager said curtly, glancing at Franco.

Franco tilted his head, his lips twitching into the faintest smirk. “Of course.” He brushed past her, the scent of his cologne lingering in the air. But not before he shot her a knowing look, one that made her blood boil.

When the door clicked shut behind him, her manager turned back to her. His face was pale, the lines around his mouth deeper than she remembered.

“What’s going on?” she asked, her voice trembling.

He sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. “We’ve done everything we can to mitigate the fallout, but the board has made their decision.”

She swallowed hard, her chest tightening. “What decision?”

He looked at her with something like pity. “You’re dismissed. Effective immediately.”

Her heart dropped. “You can’t be serious.”

“I’m afraid I am.” His tone was calm, rehearsed, like he’d been preparing for this conversation for hours. “Your credentials are revoked. Your paddock pass has been deactivated. You’re no longer affiliated with the network.”

Her mouth opened, but no sound came out.

“I made sure the hotel is covered until Monday,” he added, almost apologetically. “But after that…” He trailed off, his meaning clear.

She shook her head, her voice finally finding her. “You can’t do this. I’ve given everything to this job, to this sport—”

“And I know that,” he interrupted, his tone soft but firm. “But this scandal is bigger than you or me. The board doesn’t want to risk the network’s reputation, and frankly, neither do our sponsors.”

Her legs felt weak, her vision blurring with unshed tears. “So that’s it?” she whispered. “I’m just… done?”

He hesitated, then nodded. “I’m sorry.”

The words hung in the air like a death knell.

When he left, closing the door behind him with a quiet finality, her knees buckled. She sank to the floor, her hands trembling as the tears finally spilled over. Sobs wracked her body, raw and uncontrollable, the weight of everything crashing down on her at once.

Her career. Her family. Her dignity.

Gone.

She didn’t hear him come back in.

Franco’s voice broke through her sobs, low and measured. “Amore.”

She lifted her head, her vision blurred with tears. “Get out.”

Instead of leaving, he crouched in front of her, his eyes scanning her face. “You’re crying over them?” he asked, his voice laced with mockery. “Over people who turned their backs on you the second things got messy?”

Her jaw clenched, fury flaring through her grief. “This is your fault,” she hissed, her voice shaking. “You ruined me.”

Franco’s expression didn’t change. If anything, he looked almost… amused.

“Stop it,” she snapped, her hands curling into fists. “Stop looking at me like that.”

“Like what?” he murmured, his tone infuriatingly calm.

“Like you own me.”

He didn’t respond right away. Instead, he reached out, his thumb brushing over her trembling lip. She flinched, but he didn’t pull back.

“Shhh,” he whispered, his touch lingering. “You’re spiralling, querida. And that’s not a good look for someone who needs to rebuild.”

Her breath hitched at the intimacy of his gesture, but her fury burned brighter. “I don’t need anything from you,” she spat.

“Don’t you?” he asked, tilting his head. His thumb traced the corner of her mouth, his smirk returning. “Because from where I’m standing, you don’t have anyone else.”

Her hands shot up, shoving his chest. “Get away from me.”

But he didn’t budge. His hands caught hers, holding them firmly but gently, his gaze locking with hers.

“I’ve got you now,” he said, his voice low and steady, the words cutting through her resistance like a blade. “And you’ll see soon enough—that’s not a bad thing.”

His confidence, his control—it was maddening, suffocating. Yet a tiny, treacherous part of her couldn’t deny the truth in his words.

She pulled her hands free, her voice breaking. “I hate you.”

He smiled, soft and infuriating. “No, you don’t.”

The tears fell harder, but this time she didn’t stop him when he pulled her into his arms.

And maybe that was the worst part of all.

By the time her flight landed in London on Monday, the storm of the past week felt like a distant roar, dulled but ever-present. The drive to her house was quiet, the cab driver offering polite silence, though she caught his occasional glance in the rear-view mirror. Her name had been plastered across headlines for days; even here, half a world away from the paddock, she couldn’t escape it.

The house came into view, the familiar brick façade standing as stoic as ever. But as the cab pulled to a stop, her heart sank.

Her husband was waiting at the gate.

He didn’t move as she stepped out of the car, her suitcase dragging behind her. The set of his jaw, the stiffness in his shoulders—it was all wrong. She tried to swallow the lump in her throat as she approached.

“I’m here to see the kids,” she said quietly, her voice tentative.

“You can’t,” he replied, his tone clipped.

She blinked, confusion laced with growing panic. “What do you mean, I can’t?”

He held up a manila envelope, the weight of it hanging heavily between them. “You’re being served.”

The words hit her like a punch to the gut. She stared at the envelope, her breath catching.

“Divorce papers,” he clarified, his voice flat. “I don’t want you in this house. I don’t want you near the kids until this is sorted. Do you understand me?”

Tears pricked at her eyes, but she refused to let them fall. “Please,” she whispered. “They’re my children—”

“They’re our children,” he interrupted harshly. “And I’m not going to let you drag them into this mess. You made your choice.”

Her hands trembled as she took the envelope. She wanted to scream, to beg, to fight, but the look in his eyes—cold, unyielding—stole the words from her.

“Don’t come back here,” he said, stepping back. “Not until this is over.”

And with that, he turned and walked inside, the door slamming shut behind him.

She stood there for what felt like an eternity, the envelope clutched in her hands, the weight of everything crashing down on her shoulders.

The hotel room she found last minute was sterile and impersonal, the kind of place meant for fleeting stays and forgettable nights. She dropped her suitcase by the door and collapsed onto the bed, her body heavy with exhaustion.

But sleep wouldn’t come.

Her phone buzzed incessantly, the onslaught of notifications a cruel reminder of her reality. Against her better judgement, she opened her browser.

The headlines were relentless: “Scandal Rocks F1: Rookie’s Affair with Veteran Journalist Exposed!”“Power Dynamics Questioned in F1 Affair—Who’s Really to Blame?”“F1 Reporter’s Career in Tatters After Shocking Scandal with Rising Star.”

Each article seemed worse than the last, painting her as a manipulative predator who had taken advantage of Franco’s naivety. The comments were even crueler, people calling her names she couldn’t bear to read twice.

She scrolled through social media, the vitriol stinging like acid. Every tweet, every post, every meme was a dagger to her already shattered sense of self.

But then she stumbled upon something different.

A Reddit thread, buried beneath the chaos, caught her attention: “Anyone else think this isn’t what it seems?”

She clicked on it, her heart pounding as she read the comments.

“I don’t buy it. Have you seen how cocky that rookie is? He’s been flirting with her on camera all season. She never encouraged it.”

“Right? She’s one of the best journalists in the sport. Why would she risk it all for him?”

“Exactly. Feels like he took advantage of her, especially with the way he’s spinning this in interviews. Classic power play.”

“And the leaked photos? Who even keeps that kind of stuff on their iCloud? Feels like he knew what he was doing.”

Her hands shook as she scrolled through the thread, her tears blurring the screen. For the first time, someone—strangers, no less—saw what she hadn’t dared to admit to herself.

Maybe this wasn’t entirely her fault.

But the small flicker of validation did little to ease the storm inside her. She closed the browser, tossing the phone onto the bed.

The room felt unbearably quiet, the weight of her isolation pressing down on her. She curled up on the bed, tears streaming down her face as exhaustion finally overtook her.

When she finally woke up the following morning, her face felt raw from all the tears and her bones stiff from the awkward position she slept in.

She wasn’t a day drinker really but somethings changed.

She sat on the edge of the hotel bed, her fingers hovering over the rim of a half-empty glass of wine. The muted glow of the TV cast long shadows across the room, the low hum of some mindless programme barely masking the oppressive silence when she heard the knock at the door, sharp and insistent.

Her heart leapt into her throat, dread gripping her. Franco? No. Not here. Surely he wouldn’t…

But the knock came again, firmer this time.

She stood slowly, tiptoeing to the door, her breath shallow. Peeking through the peephole, she exhaled in relief. It wasn’t him. It was— Ellie?

She hesitated, unsure of how to feel. Ellie, the young, bright journalist she’d taken under her wing years ago. She cracked the door open, her voice wary. “What are you doing here?”

Ellie offered a tentative smile, her hands shoved deep into the pockets of her oversized coat. “Can I come in?”

She hesitated for a moment longer before stepping aside, allowing Ellie to enter.

“How did you know I was here?” she asked, shutting the door behind her.

Ellie turned, her expression cautious. “I went to your house. Your husband answered. He… mentioned you were here.”

She let out a hollow laugh, shaking her head. “Of course, he did. Probably thought you’d come to gloat.”

“I’m not here to gloat,” Ellie said firmly, her voice tinged with something close to defiance. “I’m here because I wanted to talk to you.”

She crossed her arms, leaning against the wall. “Talk about what? How associating with me is going to get you fired?”

Ellie’s gaze softened. “I’m not going to get fired.”

“That’s naive.” she sighed, brushing a hand through her hair. “The network doesn’t want anything to do with me. You shouldn’t either.”

Ellie shook her head. “That’s not why I’m here. I came because… I don’t believe it. I don’t believe you seduced Franco. It doesn’t add up. I’ve worked with you. I know you.”

She blinked, her throat tightening as the weight of Ellie’s words sank in. It had been so long since anyone had spoken to her like that—with trust, with belief.

“I know you didn’t do this,” Ellie continued. “I think he’s the one who manipulated you.”

The tears came before she could stop them. She turned away, covering her mouth as a sob escaped.

Ellie stepped closer, her voice gentle. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you—”

“No,” she said, her voice trembling. “It’s not that. I just… no one’s said that to me. Everyone’s so quick to assume the worst.”

Ellie hesitated before placing a hand on her shoulder. “I know what kind of person you are. And it’s not too late to set the record straight.”

She let out a bitter laugh, wiping her eyes. “It is too late. My career’s in ruins. My family’s gone.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s over,” Ellie insisted. “We can fight back. Tell your side of the story.”

She turned to face her, scepticism etched across her face. “And how do you propose I do that? I’m a pariah.”

Ellie’s expression hardened, a flicker of determination in her eyes. “We go public. But not through the networks—they’re too invested in tearing you down. We do it ourselves. An exposé, a documentary, something raw and unfiltered. You’ve got a following. People will listen.”

She stared at the girl before her, the weight of the idea settling in. “You’d risk your career for this?”

Ellie shrugged. “You risked your reputation for me when no one else would give me a chance. I’m just returning the favour.”

The room fell silent, the air thick with unspoken possibilities. Hermind raced. She wanted to believe it was possible, that she could claw her way back from this abyss.

But doubt lingered.

“Ellie,” she whispered. “If we do this… he won’t just sit back and let it happen.”

Ellie’s jaw tightened. “Let him try. He’s already losing control of the narrative. People are starting to see through him. All we have to do is show the world the truth.”

For the first time in weeks, she felt a spark of something she thought she’d lost—hope.

“Okay,” she said finally, her voice steadying. “Let’s do it.”

Ellie returned to the hotel the next evening, her arms full—a compact camera, a tripod, a microphone, and a laptop. She looked almost nervous as she set everything up, her hands fumbling slightly with the equipment.

“This isn’t exactly the BBC studio,” Ellie joked weakly, glancing at her, who sat on the edge of the bed, clutching a glass of water for a change.

Her lips curved in a faint smile, but the tension in her posture was unmistakable. “It’s fine. Better this way. No filters, no edits. Just the truth.”

Ellie nodded, adjusting the tripod until the camera was level. She attached the microphone and tested the sound, her voice echoing softly in the quiet room.

“Right,” Ellie said, straightening. “Are you ready?”

She stared at the camera, her reflection distorted in the lens. She wasn’t sure if she was ready. But she had no choice.

“Let’s get this over with,” she murmured.

Ellie pressed record, the small red light blinking to life. She settled into the chair opposite her, the notebook resting on her lap.

“Right,” Ellie began, her tone measured and calm. “I know this is difficult, but I want you to tell me what happened. In your own words.”

She exhaled shakily, her gaze flickering to the camera before settling on Ellie. “At first, it was… flattering,” she said quietly. “Franco’s attention, I mean. He’s young, charming, confident. He made me feel… noticed.”

Ellie nodded, her expression encouraging.

“But it wasn’t just that,” she continued, her voice growing steadier. “He knew how to play the game. On camera, off camera—it was all calculated. I didn’t see it at first. I thought it was harmless, just a bit of flirtation. But then…” She hesitated, her hands tightening around the glass.

“Then what?” Ellie prompted gently.

She swallowed hard. “Then it became something I couldn’t control. He was in my hotel room every night. At first, I let him in because I didn’t want to cause a scene and I liked the attention. I thought if I played along, he’d lose interest. But he didn’t. He kept pushing, and I felt like… like I couldn’t say no.”

Her voice cracked, and she looked away, blinking rapidly.

Ellie leaned forward, her tone soft but insistent. “Why did you feel like you couldn’t say no?”

Her laugh was bitter. “Because he had power. Not the kind of power people think—the rookie versus the journalist. It wasn’t about status. It was… personal. Intimate. He knew things about me—about my family, my career, my weaknesses. He knew exactly how to use them against me.”

Ellie’s pen moved swiftly across her notebook, but her focus never wavered. “Did you ever feel like you could talk to someone about this? A colleague, your husband?”

“No.” her response was immediate, her voice sharp. “I didn’t think anyone would believe me. It’s Franco Colapinto. He’s—what do they call him? The golden rookie of F1? And me? I’m the woman twice his age who should’ve known better. Who would’ve believed me?”

Ellie nodded slowly, her expression unreadable. “But you’re speaking now. What changed?”

Her gaze met the camera, her eyes blazing with a mix of anger and determination. “Because I’m tired of being silent. Tired of being painted as the villain in a story I never wanted to be a part of.”

Ellie paused, letting the weight of her words settle before she spoke again. “What do you want people to take away from this?”

Her voice softened, but her resolve remained firm. “I want them to see the truth. I want them to understand that power doesn’t always look the way you think it does. And I want them to know that I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t want this.”

Ellie nodded, closing her notebook and turning off the camera. “That was incredible. Thank you.”

She let out a shaky breath, her shoulders slumping. “I just hope it’s enough.”

Ellie reached over, placing a hand on her knee. “It will be. We’ll edit this tonight and get it out tomorrow. You’re taking back the narrative. This is your story now.”

True to her word, the next morning, she was sitting curled up on the hotel bed, her nerves frayed and her stomach in knots. The weight of last night’s confession still hung heavy in the room, and she hadn’t slept much. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the blinking red light of the camera, the words she’d spoken playing back in her head.

A knock at the door startled her, but when she peered through the peephole, relief washed over her. It was Ellie, holding two takeaway coffees and a determined expression.

She opened the door, and Ellie breezed in, setting the coffees down on the small table by the window. “Morning,” she said, glancing at her. “How are you holding up?”

She shrugged, wrapping her arms around herself. “I feel like I’m waiting to step on a landmine.”

Ellie gave her a reassuring smile, unpacking her laptop from her bag. “That’s normal. But trust me, you did the right thing.”

She nodded, though she didn’t entirely believe it.

Ellie set up the laptop, quickly uploading the edited video to her dormant personal YouTube channel where she once posted vlogs about being a journalist in Formula One. She added a brief caption: My Truth.

“Okay,” Ellie said, her voice steady. “Are you ready?”

She hesitated, her fingers hovering over the trackpad. “What if it makes things worse?”

Ellie reached over, placing a firm hand on her arm. “It won’t. You’re not alone in this. People will listen. People already are.”

With a deep breath, she clicked Post. The video went live.

For a moment, they just stared at the screen, the thumbnail of her weary but defiant face staring back at them. Ellie closed the laptop with a decisive snap.

“Now,” Ellie said, turning to her, “we wait.”

She nodded, her chest rising and falling in shallow breaths. Her eyes filled with tears as the reality of what they’d done settled over her. She turned to Ellie, her voice breaking. “Thank you. For believing in me. For… for doing this when no one else would.”

Ellie smiled softly, pulling her into a warm hug. “You don’t have to thank me. You would’ve done the same for me.”

She held on tightly to the girl she’d once taken under her wing, her tears spilling freely now. “I just… I didn’t think anyone would ever believe me again.”

Ellie pulled back slightly, gripping her shoulders. “You’re stronger than you think. And this? This is just the beginning.”

The moment was interrupted by the shrill ring of her phone on the bedside table. Both women froze, their eyes darting to the device.

Her heart sank when she saw the name on the screen. Franco.

Her hand trembled as she reached for the phone, her thumb hovering over the decline button.

“Answer it,” Ellie said quietly. “You need to know what he’s going to do.”

She nodded, her throat tightening. She swiped to accept the call and brought the phone to her ear.

“Amore,” Franco’s voice drawled, smooth and infuriatingly calm. “I see you’ve been busy.”

Her stomach churned. “What do you want?”

“I wanted to congratulate you,” he said, his tone laced with mockery. “That little video of yours? Brave move. Stupid, but brave.”

She gritted her teeth, her grip tightening on the phone. “It’s the truth, Franco. Something you wouldn’t recognise if it slapped you in the face.”

He laughed, low and cold. “Oh, querida. You think you’ve won something here? All you’ve done is draw more attention to yourself. To us. Do you think people won’t pick apart every word you said? That they won’t find the cracks in your story?”

Her hand shook, but she forced herself to stand firm. “They’ll see through you, Franco. You can’t control this anymore.”

His voice dropped, dangerously soft. “We’ll see about that. But let me give you a little advice, free of charge—enjoy the calm while it lasts. Because this storm? It’s far from over.”

The line went dead.

She lowered the phone slowly, her chest heaving.

“What did he say?” Ellie asked, her voice cautious.

SHe turned to her, her jaw tight. “He’s scared. He just doesn’t know it yet.”

Ellie gave a grim nod. “Good. Let him be scared. We’ve got more than the truth on our side now. We’ve got momentum.”

She sank onto the bed, her pulse racing. The fear was still there, coiling in her gut like a snake, but alongside it was something new. A flicker of hope.

For the first time in weeks, she felt like she wasn’t fighting this battle alone.

taglist: @waytooobsessedwithlife @maxivstappen @heli991113

[coffeegnomee]

I don't know if I'll ever recover from Spoke making the pitch of his life to Minute.

All Spoke knows how to do is use his words to manipulate players into doing whatever he wants them to do. It was his forte in s4. It fueled him with boundless ego.

But this time, especially after watching all povs, this time was different. Was it entirely truthful? no. But it was different.

Spoke has yet to really push Minute to his limit. He's never tried to see what this new owner of lifesteal will be like. Will he be like Parrot and be morally grey and embrace chaos and the occasional rule break and exploit for the sake of content? Spoke doesn't know. He hasn't had the opportunity to check.

But they made the team in order to be the villains. And in Spoke's eyes, how could that not mean being the world enders.

So when it came time to be who they were meant to be, Spoke pitched the idea and didn't hold back any stops. It's so fascinating to analyze the conversation and see the layers of persuasion and manipulation Spoke did.

He starts with some low balls. Drops the word "exploit" twice just to see Minute's reaction. Smoothly changes the word when Minute questions him on it.

It's like he wanted to be above the board with it. Or maybe see if Minute would find it an interesting challenge to catch Spoke in the act. Or maybe feel the thrill of pulling off the impossible under the nose two admins. Or maybe something entirely secret.

But both times Minute pushed back against exploits. And Spoke should've known that this was never going to work. But he continues anyway.

When I first heard him pitch the orbital I deadass thought it was the coverup, the distraction for Minute to feel like he was productive on the team, the moral justification to stay out of the exploits. Or better yet, the thing Spoke gives to lower Minute's guard. Get him accepting the small stuff before he gives him the big stuff. Get him in too deep.

Because for real. What is exploitive about the orbital? Nothing. It's entirely above the board. That couldn't actually be the plan. He said "there's legal ways to do this" as if the exploit would also produce a hole to bedrock. But the two cannot be related.

But given how Spoke crashed out to Zam about Minute being stupid, given how he mentioned it to Mapicc too, given how unbelievably unserious Ash and Squiddo were about the orbital, given how Squiddo told 4c that Spoke said he didn't want to do it:

I think the orbital was hand picked by Spoke so that Minute would have fun.

He wracked his brain for what world ending things Minutetech might be interested in. What previous video idea would work for his straight edge teammate.

And he came up with the orbital. Minute even said earlier this season that he wanted to build the mark 6.

But immediately Minute's voice wavered "you want to do this to spawn?" in that one word, it was over. Minute cares too much about spawn. He's not a world ender.

Spoke heard and pulled back immediately. This was just a possible future, not for sure. Spoke had a vision and he was going to inspire Minute. And for that you need a little delicacy, a little back and forth. Push on the mark then back down, stoke their ego then push it to greater heights.

He brings up morality, allows for the possibility of Minute to stay good. Admits it's a test of morals.

Minute is silent, Spoke pivots, this is about sending a statement, this will change lifesteal forever. Vision cast.

He brings up that it's basically ready to blow everything to bedrock. Minute sounds uncertain and Spoke goes quieter, softer, repeating that that's the thing.

Minute rallies, envisions himself making it, envisions the past when he made the other one, places himself in his old shoes and sees what it could feel like.

Spoke goes for jovial, excited. Make Minute see how good of a thing this is, how it will be fun. How much Spoke sees it as fun, as a way to play on the sympathies that even if I don't want to do it, I'll do it cause my teammate is excited to do it. He thinks a nice clean reset would be beautiful. oh my sweet sweet thinly veiled metaphors. The next season would be beautiful I agree.

Minute asks if they do this, would there even be anything left to love. Oh minute.

Spoke pivots to talk about the ego death, how many dumb plots have happened at spawn, how many pathetic tnt attempts. If you get rid of everything, you're free to just love again. Start fresh.

Oh how I love how Spoke will never say he's doing this to start the next season. Everything is about this season. He stays perfectly in rp. I wonder if that hinders people understanding why he does what he does.

But Minute brings up his moral journey, so Spoke takes the hands off the wheel, says what Minute is thinking before Minute can say it so Minute doesn't hear it from his own lips first: he can kill Spoke. He even validates how good that feeling will be. It's a risky play. But he's in the thick of it.

And the mircosecond Minute takes a step towards him he pivots again and plays to the ego, this would be the most insane project ever pulled off. It would completely change history. That that feeling would be better than any momentary hero feeling.

Minute says every time he's followed his dark impulses he's gotten the short end of the stick. And Spoke capitalizes on it, saying that was cause his vision was too low, he has the ultimate plan that will not give Minute any short stick.

But Minute chooses himself. Chooses the blocks on the ground. Over his teammate.

Minute thought he was banning Spoke. Like. okay. Win by absolute power, way to do that again Minute.

But to Minute's credit, and the cinema that is that stream, Minute proved his quality. Was put to the test and passed. He's not manipulatable. Not temptable. He's upright and will choose what is good when he's given the option with a lot of lead up and a very level head. Ok maybe he's not that proven. Because we do know when he's pushed through backhanded devastating situations he follows those dark impulses and wins at any cost. Which isn't moral goodness. But he passed the can-you-manipulate-the-owner test.

Which Spoke needed to experience. He needed to test it. Perhaps as the first of the experiments.

But it's just tragic. Cause we know Spoke's not doing the orbital. If he does I'll be shocked.

There's four players I could see that would make the orbital: Minute, Zam, Clown, and 4c if someone else had the idea. Well, or if Spoke told him to do it directly. Maybe it happens. Literally no idea.

But for how short that list is, that was something Spoke picked out specifically for Minute. A gift he made him. And Minute just threw it out.

I will never get over how decided that he had to test if Minute would be okay with exploits on the same day he tested Minute being okay with being evil.

Which is why I spent most of the day thinking it was never going to be an orbital and all Spoke wanted to know was about Minute's reaction to possible exploits.

Which, okay, maybe I do still think that.

Because he has an exploit. He wouldn't have mentioned it if he didn't. If it was Just the orbital, why scare Minute with talk of exploits. And we literally know he has the bugbombs. Love that he's convinced Squiddo he has nothing, and that she immediately showed him everything. Sure, did he ever figure out how to dupe successfully on the server? no, based on player activity. But he knows the theory.

And then there's Jumper. Oh how interesting this will be.

Wait actually I take that back. Jumper would be on the list. I can see her doing the orbital. It's just so fascinating for how Spoke is both teasing and saying it's not it, back and forth, is he or isn't he. Keep everyone guessing.

There's so many layers to how Spoke talks, what he does, how he does it. He's not dumb at all. Everything has a reason, but I think the bigger picture is that anything can be turned into a success if he just pivots a little.

Because, out of all of this, Spoke now has an enemy that know's he's coming. Which is very wormhole. He leaked things to Planet and Parrot in advance of the finale week so that the opposition would get ready for whatever was coming.

It's too easy to say that was his plan, cause if Minute said yes that would've been the best for Spoke. But this is still a win, in a way. Spoke always wins.

[ladybugmania]

JD Vance: The Grim Reaper’s Apprentice

Well, it finally happened,JD Vance met the Pope, and not long after, the Holy Father passed. Coincidence? Tarot says no. That handshake wasn’t just a gesture, it was the handshake of death. A spectral transmission, if you will. The room must've dropped below freezing the moment their palms touched. One could almost hear the chime of a distant funeral bell and the hiss of incense meeting shadow. That wasn't a greeting, it was a soul transfer.

The air around that meeting was so cold, so spiritually void, that even angels must have turned their gaze. Whatever energy Vance carries, it passed straight into the Pope’s core, like a wraith sliding into its host. A chill so ancient it bypassed bone and went straight to the soul. The Pope knew. He knew.

But here's where it gets deliciously dark. The Pope, weakened and aware, chose this moment. Yes, he wasn't well, but this? This was his deliberate exit plan. In a final twist of spiritual irony, he used JD Vance as the unwitting vessel for a cosmic trap. A sacrificial act, perhaps. After all, as it says in Romans 12:19, "Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord." The Pope passed the darkness to Vance, not as a gift, but as an Anathema or let's just say curse.

Because now it is Vance who is infected. Not just with death's residue, but with the karmic consequence of his own political posturing. This is a man who rails against the poor while serving the powerful, who cloaks bigotry in populist scripture. He shouts family values while backing policies that rip them apart. The anathema isn’t death. No, that would be too merciful.

The anathema the curse is life. A long, slow descent into self-created damnation. Living with the rot of one’s own hypocrisy. Surrounded by the dim echo of one's own talking points, watching the world spiral while pretending you're holding the reins.

The Pope gave him the burden of conscious evil, and now the real Grim Reaper is watching... patient... entertained. For as it is written in Proverbs 26:27: "Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein."

And Vance? He’s already knee-deep.

Eventually, yes, the real Reaper will come for him, dragging him not just to hell, but through every policy failure, every soul he exploited, every soundbite of performative virtue. That suffering, that awareness, that is the true hell.

Until then, JD Vance must wander like a cursed pilgrim, a political Ringwraith, haunted not by the Pope's death, but by the fact that the Pope chose him as the vessel for divine irony.

And somewhere, beneath all that sanctimony and smarm... JD knows.

He knows.

"Just one last thing, Pope Francis, is fine, his spirit ascends to light, embraced by the divine, where peace flows like living water. But JD Vance remains earthbound, shackled to the weight of his own soul, condemned to suffer the echo of every lie he called truth. The Pope is free. Vance is merely alive."

Yours Truly

Moth Hawk.

[eugenedebs1920]

There are some on the right, the pro-fascist side, who would claim Dems, liberals are the establishment.

First I would like to start out with the definition of liberal. Liberal: Willing to listen to, or accept ideas and opinions different from one’s own. Open minded.

Now let’s take a loo at conservative. Conservative: Adverse to change or innovation. Holding to “traditional” values.

When one thinks of movements that have bettered humanity, and the world at large are these done in the name of tradition? Are these done by the ideals of old?

Tradition in this country can be rooted back to slavery, back to a time when white people lorded their superiority over others based solely on the color of their skin. It can be traced back to the most wealthy among us, exploiting workers to enrich themselves with as much as possible while no care is given for the health and safety of those who make their wealth possible. Tradition can be traced back to voter suppression and Jim Crow laws, disenfranchising the votes of those who don’t fit their socioeconomic standards, who don’t fit their color code.

This tradition can be traced back to TODAY! Because this tradition of disenfranchisement is happening TODAY! Nearly every state with a GOP majority has done, and is doing all it can to drop voters off the roles. Pretending there’s some kind of fraud. This fraud is simply the poor, those of color, and those who don’t fit a white Christian mold, that they seem to think this country is.

Through years of scheming and planning, through a lack of foresight from our founding fathers, trying to appease slave states. The GOP has found a way of minority rule over the vastly diverse country America is. This minoritarian rule can be seen clearly in SCOTUS, it can be seen in the senate where millions and millions of Americans have little to no say on the goings on in government. Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, all those states combined don’t have the number of citizens California does. All those states are “conservative” states, but California gets 2 representatives, the collective there is 10! A 10-2 vote with not nearly as many constituents. There’s the house though!? Some may argue. The house is a joke! So gerrymandered, useless idiots like Margery toilet Greene will keep her seat for decades to come. We outnumber conservatives in the real world but are trampled by them in representation.

We are the revolutionaries! We are the fight against the forces of old and evil! We are the fight for change! For a better America, for a better world where ALL have equal rights! Where ALL get the same shot at the American dream! Where ALL are treated as members of this country despite their origins or preferences or religion! We are the rebellion against “tradition”. A tradition that seeks to benefit one sect of peoples. We are the other sect and we will not be gaslit to think otherwise.

All of us in the pro-democracy movement are the heart of this nation. The liberals who will take the pinnacle of diversity and thrive with the ideas of all! We are the change. We are the next generation. We are love! We are hope! We are the open minded, accepting, tolerant, compassionate, ever learning, ever growing liberals of the United States of America.

[forsaken-headcanons]

Idk if this is gonna get posted but I really wanna say this somewhere

HOW ROBLOXIANS AGE YIPPEE (I'll be using Forsaken survivors as an example!)

For this headcanon I'm going to seperate the survivors into 2 groups: MORTALS/MORTAL EXPLOITERS (Elliot, 007n7, Guest) & DEITIES/IMMORTALS/WHATEVER YOU WANNA CALL EM (Shedletsky, Builderman)

First group ages relatively similar to humans. The older they are the more grey hairs and wrinkles they have. Classic stuff. The regular robloxians have little control over how they age. If they are satisfied and happy with their life they'll age better. Their wrinkles won't be as visible and they might get their first gray hair later than others, but that's about it.

Exploiters would have access to the code that dictates how they function, so they have more control over that. They can't stop the aging proccess itself though, just the "side effects".

"But anon-" I hear you say "-does that mean the other group doesn't age?"

THAT'S WHERE THE BEGINS BABYYY

So the Admins. Some of them are as old as Roblox itself (looking at you Builderman), how come they don't look like it?

They look how old they feel. Now, I have no idea if that's a gramatically correct sentence so allow me to elaborate. Let's take Shedletsky for example (depending on your headcanons he might be a completely separate person from Telamon, but for the sake of this headcanon let's just say that he used to be Telamon before abandoning godhood). He doesn't look very old, now does he? After dropping the whole Telamon thing he acts and looks like a mortal. This new life of his is still, well, new. He feels young. Therefore he looks young.

Second example: the man, the myth, the legendddddd BUILDERMANNNNN! Also depending on your headcanons he could look older or younger.

Older Builderman was literally the first robloxian to exist, of course he feels old, do you have any idea how long this guy's been alive? And because he feels old, he also looks older that other survivors.

Younger Builderman is still watching the world grow, he meets new people everyday, he still has the freedom to create and make what he wants! Like a kid with Legos! Barely any wrinkles, he feels as young as the day he created Roblox.

Side note: considering that there's a Minecraft Story Mode (MCSM) related skin in Forsaken, more people might know MCSM now. This headcanon is similar to the in-universe explanation of aging in that game, so it might sound familiar to some.

The admins/immortals appearing younger or older by how they feel is so real... I really dig that!!

[hadesoftheladies]

why you should have hope for separatism:

-this is one of the first times in history where women en masse are educated and (are expected to) participate in the working class which means now more than ever women are better equipped to take care of their own financial needs (even with all the tradwife influencers, not many women will be able to convert because house-wifery is strictly limited to the upper-class, which is shrinking more and more, so most women will always have to work anyways, and most women see this! even the ones that joke about being housewives/strippers are serious about their careers!)

-separatism is mostly non-action. it is strategic non-interaction with men or male media which makes it extremely accessible and easy to replicate across cultures. it removes women from exploitative relationships with men. this means the only thing you need to do to convince women to become separatists is attack the idea that their lives will be unfulfilled without men. and more women and girls are embracing that culture simply because of their experiences (and access to education)!

-late stage capitalism and the rise of blatant misogyny men display is radicalizing women. which means more and more women are open to living together and raising children together romantically/platonically. (literally every woman i've talked to who's unmarried lives with their parents or wants to live with women because men are genuinely an unattractive option--thank you men for showing your asses <3)

-the internet and globalization positions women from all over the world to share their experiences (and we have many shared experiences), which means consciousness-raising has never been faster or easier or more powerful!

-men and boys are failing and dropping out of school way more than women and girls which means that women and girls are on the way to dominating academia and relevant industries! women will make up more of the skilled workers in future job markets which means that women who are educated now will likely be better off and more pursued financially than men. women's influence in society is increasing! think about it. as much as male violence is increasing, male literacy and competence and skill is DECREASING (even nepotism or sexism will not be enough to fix that problem because hiring men will still result in profit losses and other financial inconveniences). in short, male culture is killing men!

-resistance to pornography and understanding the evils of pornography are also increasing. awareness of male violence is increasing!

please read more literature on separatist strategies and don't think whatever is happening on tiktok/IG is how all women think. most women irl are not stupid enough to trade in their jobs for prostitution because women don't actually want that. many women i've talked to in real life also don't want children (in these conditions or at all)! they aren't radfems but they still have self-preservation instincts and intelligence!

there is literally so many ways we can use the current sociopolitical climate to our advantage. it is too early to give up. like wayyyy to fucking early.