#going to use that tag for original content and then a different one for asks n stuff

[mournfall-syscourse]

Heya~ so we wanted to understand your perspective on all of this a bit better. We're on the pro-endo lean of things, but we're a CDD system (DID specifically). Partly because of our views on things, we're going to use CDD systems and non-CDD systems to refer to things, rather than calling non-CDD systems endogenic. The distinction of whether a system is a CDD system feels more important than origin labels, here. I'll preface that all of this is genuine, as far as tone. We want to understand your perspective on all of this better. We also want to help you feel heard and listened to, and maybe figure out a solution alongside you, if possible. We're also responding to your post bit by bit, so apologies if there's any repetition or such, and for the length of the response too, ofc.

Firstly, yeah, definitely agree that it's a problem that CDD-specific discussions will get derailed by a non-CDD system demanding that the discussion also account for their experience. It's a problem, we've seen it often - hell it happens in other spaces for other stuff too. It's annoying. I wish people would respect that discussions about experiences specific to one group, or sub-group, are not "exclusionary" or "gatekeepey" or what have you. Additionally, spaces in general. We also absolutely agree that it's important to have spaces that are specific to each group (CDD systems and non-CDD systems), as well as the shared spaces. We think there are different approaches for each, and there's room for both. For instance, a CDD-specific space could either be entirely exclusive, only allowing systems that believe they have a CDD to join (it does raise the question of how you handle those who are unsure if their experience is that of a CDD or not), or they could allow anyone to join, but the space is for CDD systems, and so discussions that are related to non-CDD systems will either be not allowed, or at least limited and/or relegated to a specific part of the space. In a discord server, for instance, both of these are doable. In the latter, non-CDD systems (and those who aren't sure) would still be cool to observe, maybe some might find that information helpful to them. Some may even ask questions to try and understand some of the CDD-specific experiences and differences. As long as it stays on topic, that's fine. In the former, it's much easier to keep things in check, even if it's a bit more closed-off - and a rule of not mentioning origin syscourse would ensure that things are chill, syscourse conversations unrelated to non-CDD systems would not be needed there. In a space like tumblr... it's a public forum. It's near-impossible to truly keep spaces separate. It's more about ettiquette, and people respecting the tags, and keeping within their lanes. Some people do this well, others do not. I do think it would be nice if topics that are noted (tags or actual content) to be about or specifically catered towards CDD systems were allowed to be as such - hopefully over time that can happen. Yeah I do agree that non-CDD systems don't need to be involved in every system space. We're of the opinion that there are differences between CDD and non-CDD systems, but there are also a lot of similarities. The differences are important to acknowledge and accommodate for, while the similarities are helpful for solidarity and sometimes even just a different perspective. With that view in mind, absolutely we need to have the option of separate spaces. These spaces do exist, though it depends what platform you're looking for them on. As far as separation of plurality, we view things more as a spectrum - at a base fundamental level, we think non-CDD and CDD plurality are the same. But the existence of a CDD changes that plurality. The roots are the same. I can go into this further if you're interested, but I'm mainly including it so you can understand where we're coming from with our perspective, for this reblog. We don't think CDD and non-CDD plurality are so different that shared spaces don't make sense to have - but we still absolutely agree with you that separated spaces are also necessary.

I'll also add that your thoughts and perspectives are appreciated on this. You're an anti-endo that is very chill overall, from what we've seen of your posts, and we think that discussions with you would be good to have, for understanding that side of things more. There are things we don't agree with, sure, but we'd like to understand more about why you have the viewpoints you do, and share our own, if you're interested in those, too.

We can certainly empathise with feeling like your plurality is inseparable from your disorder. We have (and to an extent, still do) felt that way about our own. Our perspective is still a bit different to yours, but we do definitely understand that feeling, and why it feels that way. I can also understand the other side of things, of viewing plurality through the lens of identity. We personally look at our plurality through both lenses, disability/disorder and identity. I think it varies on which takes a priority, depending on a given situation, and sometimes they're pretty even. You say you see your plurality through the lens of disability and disorder first and foremost - do you view it through a lens of identity as well, with it just being less of an influence of your view of it, or is that not something you do at all?

As far as your plurality being impossible to view in a vacuum - we can also empathise with that too, it's something we also felt about our own system. That has changed, for us, but we definitely understand that feeling and perspective - our plurality is so tied up in our disorder and the trauma surrounding it. Untangling that will take a lot of time and effort. Recovery. Our goal for our system is functional multiplicity/resolution, personally, and while we still recognise that we will always have our CDD, we also view our plurality as being able to exist outside of the disordered/dysfunctional aspects of it, one day. How do you view that side of things? I understand the frustration of being told to just focus on the similarities and just accept them. The similarities are there, but the differences are too. Both are important. And just accepting things because you're told them is also generally not going to work - we struggle with it too - in various situations, not just syscourse. We've learnt how to manage it better than we used to, but it's taken effort to get to this point.

We get your point behind the Autism, ADHD, and AuDHD comparison. Honestly we agree with a lot of it, though we don't think it quite supports your argument as well as you hoped - but we like the general idea behind it, so we'll propose this comparison. If you swap out Autism and ADHD for plurality (non-CDD) and C-PTSD, then the comparison makes more sense (though still somewhat imperfect). CDDs then fit in the AuDHD slot. Having a CDD is kinda like having both plurality and C-PTSD together. They're both dissociative by nature (plurality just isn't pathological in its dissociation), but the combination of the two changes things, they blend together, like in your original comparison. There's similar experiences to non-CDD systems (just plurality), and there are similar experiences to singlets with C-PTSD. But the experiences aren't exactly the same. They can feel very different. The similarities are worth considering, but the differences are also incredibly important.

With that comparison as the perspective, then maybe that makes it easier to consider that shared spaces for all systems (and shared spaces for all people with trauma disorders) make sense. However, again, we absolutely agree with you that separation is also important to have available. Having spaces that are specific to CDDs is still a need. We do agree that it's frustrating when non-CDD systems request everything be shared or try to make things about them, when they're not meant to be. While I do think that non-limited resources (like digital documents or apps or such) should be shared, as it's not taking that away from CDD systems, there are still things that should be kept at least as a priority for CDD systems over non-CDD systems. I will say that generally, most non-CDD systems don't claim to have a CDD. Those that do, the majority of the (pro-)endo community doesn't condone, as far as I can tell. Non-CDD plurality functions differently - though we do think there's a spectrum to it.

As far as separate terms go, and the feeling of CDD and non-CDD systems living in different worlds, we'd love to hear your perspective on that more, if you can find a way to put it into words. As someone who views the two forms of plurality as having the same roots, I'd really like to understand why the two experiences feel so different from your perspective. If you can, please share that viewpoint.

It's definitely interesting to have felt like the experience was so different in a pro-endo space - assumably there were both CDD and non-CDD systems there? Do you remember what it was like interacting with the pro-endo CDD systems in that space, and their experiences of things? If so, did it also feel really unfamiliar and such?

Absolutely feel you on the awful feeling of being told that you don't need to understand, to just accept it, or to just get over it. Especially as someone with a strong feeling that we need to understand things. It can be really frustrating to be trying to understand as much as possible and then being denied that because the other person got tired of trying to explain it - though we've definitely found we were partially to blame in situations like that in our past experiences, for our approach to the topic - things we've worked on, even if we still mess up sometimes. "Make your own space if you don't like it" - this one is tricky. I don't know if it's always intended to be dismissive, but I suppose it depends on the situation in question. Are you trying to change an existing space? Not everyone's going to be okay with that. In some ways, making your own space is easier, and those that want in will join. Again, it really depends on the platform you're creating this space on, as some are easier to moderate than others. The thing with online spaces, as well, is that you don't have to leave one space to join another. If your CDD-only space is available and known about, then people can join it - if there's demand for it, of course - without losing any shared spaces they might be in as well. We do want to understand more about what you mean, in this section, about (pro-)endos and pro-leaning endo-neutrals doing what they want and ignoring you (also is that anti-endos as a whole?), as well as feeling like everyone has decided what they're doing is best. We're not sure we fully understand what your ideal for how the community at large would function like is - could you explain that further, please?

We don't think it's pointless or bigoted gatekeeping - there are definitely issues with shared spaces - not necessarily their existence, but having separated spaces be less common is definitely not ideal, and we very much support the idea of those spaces being made available. As far as separate terms go, we personally think CDD and non-CDD are good enough separators, but we'd still like to understand more of your perspective on that. Some things definitely need to change, yeah. Separate spaces are definitely a good starting point - some exist already but they're less built-up than combined spaces. We've been in some CDD-exclusive discord servers in the past (ones that didn't care about your stance on endos, as long as origin syscourse was not happening), and they worked fairly well at the time, for a while at least.

We agree that being separate isn't always gatekeeping bullshit, it's not always bad (and often can be good). We're a little confused regarding those wanting separation being told to go somewhere else - like above, we're not entirely sure if you're trying to change existing spaces, but if that is the case, then... doesn't it make sense that if you want a space built on separation, to create a new space for that, rather than changing the existing shared spaces to be separate? A shared space will always require an amount of compromise. If the problem is that you want separation, by nature of it being a shared space it's not going to be your preferred space to be in, so a CDD-specific space would need to be created (if you can't find one to your liking that already exists) to suit your liking more. Whether or not other CDD systems join that separated space is ultimately up to them - some prefer a shared space, some prefer a separated space, some like having access to both. As far as feeling like you're being suffocated by (pro-)endos, I want to ask about pro-endo CDDs specifically. If you're feeling suffocated by them as well, then wouldn't an anti-endo-specific space be helpful, too? Those definitely exist out there - many are receptive to endo-neutrals, too, though not all are. Separated spaces are always going to be smaller, by virtue of there being less people in them. I think it's less about meeting half-way and more about looking at the solutions to the problems at hand, right? Do existing spaces need to change for new ones to be created? The internet is great for allowing many different spaces to be created, for various things. Different platforms will do this better than others, but there's solutions to work with.

I guess our biggest question for you regarding all of this, is: what does your ideal structure for the system community at large look like?

Huh, that's neat, one of the current syscourse topics is relevant to something I was thinking about earlier.

One thing that I see a lot of endos do that annoys the fuck out of us is they like to make conversations about CDDs about them. I know a lot of people reading that will go "No we don't!! Endos rarely ever do that!!" to which I say; just because you haven't seen it, doesn't mean it's not happening. I myself have seen this a ton, I see people claiming that "anything a CDD system experiences an endo can too", people saying there should be no separation of terms at all (very common to see sadly) some saying that there shouldn't be CDD exclusive spaces, that endos belong everywhere that CDD systems do, all sorts of things all the time. I've even seen a lot of people who rarely ever claim this kind of thing, knowingly or not.

There seems to be this idea that endos need to be involved in everything. Some believe there are no differences, some know there are differences but that they "don't matter at the end of the day", this idea that there should be minimal separation. So much push back at the idea of separate terms, and, as said before, endos making CDD experiences about them. They get mad if they aren't included in everything, and people seem to hate the fact that we insist on there being more separation, both in terms and communities, in regards to plurality. So, since syscourse is talking about it for once, I'll share our thoughts from an anti endo perspective so yall can see how this whole thing looks to an anti.

In our eyes, our plurality in inseparable from our disorder. We wouldn't be plural at all without it, and all the various symptoms don't just exist on the side of our plurality, like some seem to suggest. No, it blends together with our other symptoms, to the point of being nothing outside our disorder. A lot of endos talk about their plurality in a very different way we do, viewing it through the lens of identity, but for many CDD systems, it's always viewed through the lens of disability and disorder first and foremost. Seeing how they talk about their plurality, how they seem to experience it, how they deal with it, it's very different from how we and many other CDD systems do.

The thing is, our plurality can't be seen in a vacuum. We really hate (pro) endos saying they're "more similar to us than we think" because we genuinely can't see how. We aren't just plural, we aren't just a disordered plural, our plurality is our disorder, and our disorder is our plurality. I know many don't like people talking about it that way, but it's how things are for us. It's unbelievably frustrating to see people constantly insist that we should "focus on the similarities" and "just accept them" when it's hard to believe they really experience what we do.

I'll put it this way; AuDHD. It's the combination of autism and ADHD, and some think that you just have both of them, nothing special, but the truth is, they blend together to create something entirely new. Sure, we have similar experiences to autistic people, and those with ADHD, but it's not the same. I still feel as though my experience as an AuDHD person is still very different from people with one or the other, because both of them have become inseparable. You can't view our ADHD without our autism, and vice versa.

I know what I lot of you are thinking, "But they still can talk about their experiences and be in the same spaces!" Here's the thing about that; both still have the disorder. Both still have these similar experiences because they have the same diagnosis we do. The reason endos frustrate me so damn much, why I can't stand their constant insistence on making everything about them, demanding that we share almost everything, getting mad when I want there to be separate terms; is because they have only a few symptoms, usually only one or two, then claim that it's "so similar" to mine. That's what annoys us so damn much. Yes, I DO feel like there are tons of important differences, because while their plurality isn't affected by a CDD, because they don't have one, ours is completely entangled in our CDD. It's irritating because it's not just that we're multiple, it's that said plurality is constantly blending and mixing with all the other symptoms of our disorder. They claim to have it in at the very least, a similar capacity to us, and it's so irritating because theirs isn't so entangled with a CDD. Just like with AuDHD, our plurality blends together with our other symptoms into something entirely new. It's hard to put into words, mostly because I can't figure out what we would be like if we weren't so completely entangled with our OSDD. It's hard for us to view systemhood separate from CDDs.

That's why we want separate terms. This whole "Oh just use CDD system" or "Just say you're traumagen" isn't fucking enough. I know to a lot of people that's stupid, but I really can't see how just differing origin terms are enough to encapsulate how much of a different world it feels like we live in. I know people think we're being dramatic, but I just wish I could get people to see things the way we do, just for a bit. It's so hard to put into words, and I still feel like even if I could put it fully into words, I'm not sure (pro) endos would get it.

I may not remember the specifics on what we saw in the pro endo spaces we were in, but I remember exactly how we felt. It was so...alien to us, for lack of a better word. It really did feel like we were living in completely different realities from them. When we talked directly to an endogenic, despite the similarities, something about the way they talked about it, something about how they experienced things, still felt so wildly different in a way I can't fully explain.

And it's especially awful to see so many say "You don't need to understand, just accept it" so much of the "just get over it" sentiment. So much "Make your own space if you don't like it." It just feels so dismissive. It really, genuinely feels like (pro) endos and endo neutrals with a pro lean are just, doing whatever the hell they want and are ignoring us. Our discomfort disregarded as "just go to therapy and leave everyone alone." It really does feel like everyone aside from us has decided that whatever they're doing is the best. That just shoving everyone together is the best option. That separation is "just too hard" and "pointless" to even bother trying at all. I know many don't give a fuck about what we feel, or want to bother taking our discomfort and needs into account, but the thing is, we're far from the only ones that feel this way. Practically every anti endo I've ever seen feels almost the exact same way we do.

I know a lot of people see this stuff as just pointless, bigoted gatekeeping. But many pro endo CDD systems aren't particularly benefitting from how things are either. Sure, they feel differently than we do, I'm sure, but plenty have expressed a need for separation regardless of stance. I really, really want people to take the idea of more separate communities and terms and think on it. Even if things don't end up the way we want it, it's very clear that something needs to change, and frankly I don't thing this whole hyper acceptance and sharing near everything approach is working. Even though tons of endos seem to prefer being as close to CDD spaces as possible, it really doesn't look like this kind of setup is working for as many CDD systems as people think it is. I don't mean to speak over pro endo CDD systems by any means, I'm just saying, maybe giving at least a little bit of the more separation approach a chance would be a good thing.

I guess the point I'm getting at here is that being separate isn't always gatekeeping bullshit. It's not always the worst thing ever. I know quite a few prefer things as close as possible, but those of us who prefer more separation are being shoved out and told to fuck off and go somewhere else. Basically, it really feels like people are making a "compromise" where we get the short end of the stick and are told to just deal with it. That we just need to swallow our discomfort to make everyone else comfortable. So many people complain that anti endos are ruining everything, that we're taking everything over and not letting anyone else have room, but from our perspective, it's the other way around. In our experience, we're being kind of suffocated by (pro) endos everywhere. Which one's true, I can't tell at all, I'm just going off my own experience here. I'm just trying to say, I don't think that just letting everyone share everything isn't the best compromise.

And before anyone comes at us, going "Oh but antis need to meet us halfway!" Look. I'm doing my part as best I can. I can only do so much, I'm doing what I can, I'm trying to get other antis to be better too. Just because a lot of antis are unreasonable right now, doesn't mean it's not worth at least trying to accommodate for us, just like how a ton of (pro) endos refusing to talk to antis peacefully doesn't mean yall aren't worth trying to accommodate.

-Kaz

[echoekhi]

I’m Declaring War Against “What If” Videos: Project Copy-Knight

What Are “What If” Videos?

These videos follow a common recipe: A narrator, given a fandom (usually anime ones like My Hero Academia and Naruto), explores an alternative timeline where something is different. Maybe the main character has extra powers, maybe a key plot point goes differently. They then go on and make up a whole new story, detailing the conflicts and romance between characters, much like an ordinary fanfic.

Except, they are fanfics. Actual fanfics, pulled off AO3, FFN and Wattpad, given a different title, with random thumbnail and background images added to them, narrated by computer text-to-speech synthesizers.

They are very easy to make: pick a fanfic, copy all the text into a text-to-speech generator, mix the resulting audio file with some generic art from the fandom as the background, give it a snappy title like “What if Deku had the Power of Ten Rings”, photoshop an attention-grabbing thumbnail, dump it onto YouTube and get thousands of views.

In fact, the process is so straightforward and requires so little effort, it’s pretty clear some of these channels have automated pipelines to pump these out en-masse. They don’t bother with asking the fic authors for permission. Sometimes they don’t even bother with putting the fic’s link in the description or crediting the author. These content-farms then monetise these videos, so they get a cut from YouTube’s ads.

In short, an industry has emerged from the systematic copyright theft of fanfiction, for profit.

Project Copy-Knight

Since the adversaries almost certainly have automated systems set up for this, the only realistic countermeasure is with another automated system. Identifying fanfics manually by listening to the videos and searching them up with tags is just too slow and impractical.

And so, I came up with a simple automated pipeline to identify the original authors of “What If” videos.

It would go download these videos, run speech recognition on it, search the text through a database full of AO3 fics, and identify which work it came from. After manual confirmation, the original authors will be notified that their works have been subject to copyright theft, and instructions provided on how to DMCA-strike the channel out of existence.

I built a prototype over the weekend, and it works surprisingly well:

On a randomly-selected YouTube channel (in this case Infinite Paradox Fanfic), the toolchain was able to identify the origin of half of the content. The raw output, after manual verification, turned out to be extremely accurate. The time taken to identify the source of a video was about 5 minutes, most of those were spent running Whisper, and the actual full-text-search query and Levenshtein analysis was less than 5 seconds.

The other videos probably came from fanfiction websites other than AO3, like fanfiction.net or Wattpad. As I do not have access to archives of those websites, I cannot identify the other ones, but they are almost certainly not original.

Armed with this fantastic proof-of-concept, I’m officially declaring war against “What If” videos. The mission statement of Project Copy-Knight will be the elimination of “What If” videos based on the theft of AO3 content on YouTube.

I Need Your Help

I am acutely aware that I cannot accomplish this on my own. There are many moving parts in this system that simply cannot be completely automated – like the selection of YouTube channels to feed into the toolchain, the manual verification step to prevent false-positives being sent to authors, the reaching-out to authors who have comments disabled, etc, etc.

So, if you are interested in helping to defend fanworks, or just want to have a chat or ask about the technical details of the toolchain, please consider joining my Discord server. I could really use your help.

------

See full blog article and acknowledgements here: https://echoekhi.com/2023/11/25/project-copy-knight/

[shadowfoxsilver]

Some quick tips to spotting accounts that are pretending to be a Palestinian needing mutual aid. Please keep in mind that not all of them are scam accounts, and that some may legitimate blogs who just aren’t too knowledgeable on how tumblr works. This guide is based around what I go by when checking certain blogs and usually it’s a quick giveaway the blog is a scam.

Please read this post too from my other blog before you tell people don’t donate to gfms:

1. You was sent the ask as someone who regularly shares Palestine related content such as regular news updates of posts by other Palestinians who are regularly giving updates. You may also get these asks from sharing a popular post that is from the Palestine tag. If you post often about Palestine, you will always start getting these asks. These askers don’t care if you state don’t send the asks. They will anyway. Unfortunately minors also get sent asks.

2. The ask has odd formatting such as having odd quotation marks in it or unusual formatting that may indicate it’s been edited and copied from somewhere else. Often the ask is the same thing as the post itself minus a link to a donation site. These asks rarely change so searching it should pull up if it’s been sent to other bloggers and sometimes the asks are edited only to add new phrases to them in time.

3. The account is almost always a few days old or a week old or long depending on how often they have sent asks. Usually some may even be an hour old and reusing a familiar pfp/ask.

4. The blog has a few Palestine related posts or posts from random tags reblogged to pad out length and then no more. They will have no original posts besides the pinned post while occasionally answering asks that they may have received but otherwise nothing else and no further updates given either.

5. They may have a Linktree link that is called “GoFundMe” as if indicating they have a GoFundMe there. However, they don’t. When clicked on, the Linktree actually goes to a PayPal account whose name may not even match the one their supposed name is. They’ll say it’s a friend, but it’s just the same person not someone else. You’ll see this same name across multiple accounts after a while usually giving away it’s not legitimate even under a different theme.

6. The text used by the blogs are often real stories stolen from legitimate fundraisers and searching parts of it in your preferred search engine should pull up the sources. These sources make no mention of a tumblr account either or don’t have the PayPal account associated with them in the info. Scammers often impersonate a real person in need and will ignore you if you show them the source they copied from.

7. Legitimate Palestinians often link to their own GoFundMe posts that their friends have set up or post links to other social platforms they are found on. They will regularly post updates when possible, post sources to support them when necessary, and also generally have some method of verifying their legitimacy. They may often share links to support others as well or give links to charities that have been shown as reliable. They will have more original posts than just a single pinned one and regularly speak to other tumblr accounts beyond just an ask. Please don’t bother them with asks about possible scam accounts. There are many guides out there that can do that for you if you search. You may find verified fundraisers too.

8. Scammers don’t know anything about Palestine and will often have trouble once you ask them anything beyond the mutual aid post. They don’t know the languages decently and you can tell it pretty easily if you’re one who uses it regularly. Whatever the scammers use is often just copied off the site they got the post from. Sometimes the text is just reused from past scams such as asking for insulin that doesn’t last long.

9. These scammers can and will use names stolen off real Palestinians to look more legitimate and trustworthy. They change names constantly once one of their PayPal accounts is shut down.

10. If you do see a GoFundMe link on a blog, don’t immediately assume it’s a scam just because it’s a relatively new account. Check the post notes to see if anyone’s verified the account yet or wait a bit as it takes time. You likely can search around to see if anyone’s posted anything where the blog has been vetted by others. You may also see if the GoFundMe is referred to on other socials or on lists that compile verified and vetted fundraisers.

Please don’t let these scams deter you from sending support where it needs to go. Even if you can’t donate personally, there are other ways to help. If you are sending money, please make sure that it’s going to where it’s needed and the place it’s sent has been verified accordingly. If you find a blog is a scammer, and have been able to prove it, please make sure to alert anyone sharing the post and report the account.

[sailorsoons]

Break (h.js)

PAIRING: Witch!Joshua x Cursed!Reader

SUMMARY: You’ve suffered your entire life after a single magical accident when you were thirteen. Joshua has been your biggest comfort and anchor, but he also becomes your deepest regret. 

WC: 18,176

AU: Magic/Witches, Modern Fantasy

GENRE: Friends to Lovers, Doomed Lovers, Heavy Angst, Smut

RATING: 18+ Minors are strictly prohibited from engaging in and reading this content. It contains explicit content and any minors discovered reading or engaging with this work will be blocked immediately.

WARNINGS: Death and implied accidental murder of a sibling, childhood trauma, creepy vibes, heavy angst, a lot of internal monologue featuring angst, physical and verbal abuse from members of the town toward reader, Joshua and other members sometimes try to solve things on behalf of reader and she finds it frustrating (this is discussed), explicit sexual content including vaginal fingering, nipple play, oral (m. receiving), unprotected sex, not explicit dom/sub dynamics at all but Joshua is definitely in charge, subspace/blacking out post sex, heavy angst ending - reader and Joshua are some vengeful bitches - I would say this is probably an unhappy ending in a sense of the problem isn’t resolved (that we know of) and the ending is a bit ambiguous. 

A/N: This was a fic I originally had on my BTS blog (of the same name), but I have edited for Joshua because idk he just fit the vibes. I assure you, I did more than just flip names in this. I sat down and edited this quite a bit - you’ll be able to tell the parts that are like.. My old style of writing vs. where you see new stuff because my tone/cadencs are totally different, but hopefully it works :) 

MASTERLIST | ASK | PERMANENT TAG LIST | ▷NOW PLAYING: HAUNTING BY HALSEY

JOSHUA IS GOOD AT HOLDING GRUDGES. Even as a child, his mother always said he had a tough time letting things go. He never knew how right she would be. His mother’s words are all he can think about as he storms through the dark of the forest, shadows whispering about him as he looks for the lone hut in the very dark of the woods. 

Little hut, little hut

Hidden in the wood

Little hut, little hut

Up to no good

If his parents could see him now, he knows they would be broken. Tear-streaked and shaking, a lost boy alone in the woods and drowning in anger so hot that the ground scorches beneath his feet. Looking for a salve. Looking for vengeance. 

Little hut, little hut

Alone in the gloom

Little hut, little hut

Silent as a tomb

Blood witches are dangerous. Joshua knows this, everyone knows this. A blood witch is the reason why his parents are dead and he is storming through the darkness in the throes of madness. But Joshua is only thirteen and full of pain and desperation, vowing to never let something happen like this again. If he has to use a devil to defeat a devil, he will. 

Little hut, little hut

Across the dark stream

Little hut, little hut

Wait for the scream

A dark stream wends its way through the trees. Joshua gets a running start and jumps across the whispering waters. When he lands on the other side, he waits. It took a lot of searching to find someone to tell him how to find the witch in the woods. No one comes here, especially not in the dead of night on Beltane. 

They say only evil comes from the little hut in the woods. Joshua knows now that it isn’t true. Evil comes from anywhere and everywhere, even from the people that one least expects. Evil killed his parents. Evil is why he is alone, crying on the edge of the stream, waiting for the sound of a banshee's call. 

He hears it then. A one-note wail, thin and high-pitched. His blood goes cold and the fight in him nearly goes out at the sound. His heart begins to pound so loud that it’s all he can hear, the thundering beat of panic and terror as he realizes what he’s about to do. 

“Little hut, little hut,” a voice that he cannot see calls to him. There is no hut that Joshua can see. Only omnipresent darkness, cloying the air in front of him. A tingle skitters over his arms and he becomes acutely aware of another presence there with him in the dark. “I call to thee. Little hut, little hut, come to me.” 

Joshua blinks rapidly a few times and sees the outline of a hut in front of him. It has a blurry shape like it’s really the idea of a house. It’s so shadowed and opaque that he’s not entirely sure if it’s really there. He walks toward it anyway, one foot in front of the other, looking at the hut. 

If a home could be a phantom, he thinks this is what the hut is. There is a vibrational pull here, a dull buzz in his veins as he gets closer and closer to where the blood witch lives. His stomach turns and his instincts beg him to leave. There is evil in this place. He knows it. Can feel its oily presence like a poisonous slick in his veins. 

A door - or rather what he imagines is a door shape - stands open in the hut. Inside is eternal darkness like Joshua has never seen before. The buzzing in his veins has become stronger, an itch he can’t scratch. A ringing in his ears. 

Sometimes to beat evil, you must use evil. So Joshua steps into the house despite all the reasons he should turn around and run. Because he is alone, he is in pain, and he needs some sort of penance. Justice. 

So he asks the blood witch for a favor. 

Little hut, little hut

Hear my strife

Little hut, little hut

Ruin this life 

-

When the rock hits you right at the top of your spine, you know it isn’t an accident. All the same, you spin on your heel and look at the edge of the lake where the kids are skipping stones. They squeal and look away from you, huddled together as they giggle and look over their shoulders with frantic and excited faces. 

You clench your fists and keep going. What can you do to a group of kids? Tossing children into the lake while you’re an adult seems unfair, though it certainly crosses your mind. It isn’t necessarily their fault that they were taught to have such hate in their hearts at a young age, after all. 

So, you keep going, grinding your teeth as you march up the slope toward the main pathway that cuts through the park, gravel crunching beneath your feet as you quicken your strides to put distance between you and the cackling children. You’re not positive they won’t throw another rock at you, and you think that it might send you over the edge.

Early preparation for the Beltane festival is in full swing all over the park. There are trucks unloading carts and piecing together stalls, vendors and contractors with clipboards walking through spray painted grass with city officials, and a giant maypole waiting to be constructed. 

Living in a town of witchy folk can be fun, you suppose. The only downside is that most of the witches in your town despise you and think you’re an abhorrent blight to the earth. If killing and sacrifices hadn’t been outdated and frowned upon, you’re sure they would have stuck you to an altar as a child the first time you showed signs of being a leech. 

Leech. 

It’s an unkind thing to call witches who siphon magic. It isn’t something you can control - it isn’t even something you were born with. Most witches who siphon magic are born that way. A sort of magical defect in the way they interact naturally with the world. 

Most think of siphoners as a plague to the witch community. Thieves and monsters who can only feed on magic to make magic, a perversion of the natural balance of things. The way you look at it, witches who siphoned aren’t really any different from the natural order of the world. All living things need an energy source: food for animals, sun for plants, bacteria for amoebas. It isn’t different, really. 

Perhaps you would not be so kind to leeches, though, had you not began your existence as a siphoner at thirteen years old. 

It isn’t a night that you enjoy remembering, but it is certainly a night you can’t seem to forget. One moment you could command your magic like most other witches. Most, because you were a blood witch with raw talent and a powerful relationship with the earth’s energy. 

Blood witches were as revered as they were feared, witches who needed no spells. Who could use the magic within them instead of their connection with the earth to conjure. To blood witches, all other witches were leeches, really. You didn’t tell that to your coven, though you thought about the irony often. 

Your blood magic had vanished, though. It happened while you lay asleep in your bed, pressed up against your twin sister. Twins were a special thing in covens, a rarity in the magical order of the world that was seen as a good omen. There was a connection you shared with her deeper than the connection to your own magic, a bond that rooted the two of you together. That made you seek one another out for comfort. 

It had been storming that night and you had sought out the warmth of her bed and the vanilla sugar of her hair to soothe your nerves. You didn’t like storms and thunder very much, but she was wide awake in her bed, watching out the window as purple lighting cracked across the sky and thunder shook the house. 

You’d slipped into her bed without a word and she stood guardian over you, hand tucked in yours as she watched the sky light up. You remember her laying down next to you after the storm passed. The warmth of her breath on your cheek as she fell asleep. The hum between the two of you, soul recognizing soul.

She’d been dead by morning, magic siphoned and drained dry in the middle of the night. 

The memory of it is metallic in your mouth. You head toward your apartment, hands tucked into the pockets of your jeans, head down. Beltane always makes you think of your sister. Makes you think of the morning you woke up on your thirteenth Beltane to find her cold and dead, magical signature gone. Severed. Torn away from you. 

Losing your ability to generate magic was only second to losing your sister. You still feel adrift fifteen years later. Moving through the world with a piece of you missing. Two pieces of you, if you count the fact that you can feel the magic around you but not reach for it. You never reach for it, though you suspect that no one believes you.

Except maybe Joshua. But even he doesn’t know the story of how you became what you are. All he knows is that you can’t create your own magic, and yet he’s never shamed you for it. Never turned his back on you, or berated you or bullied you. 

That sort of kindness is a rarity in your world.

Your small town is easy to navigate. There’s not much that happens that doesn’t immediately become the knowledge of all citizens, and there’s not really a way to get lost unless you’re a tourist coming to visit the country's spookiest and most magical town. The locals are pretty firm believers in magic, but the out of towners don’t really believe. They just want camp and kitsch. 

It’s busy season, the streets filled with people buying decorations to celebrate Beltane, restaurants full of tourists trying out local fare between going shop to shop. The festivals always draw a big crowd to your corner of the world, making it easier for you to blend in with all the rest of them. It almost makes you feel normal when someone doesn’t recognize you and immediately scowls. Sometimes you can even get away with eating at places that wouldn’t normally serve you, the workers too busy to really look at your face and see you. 

A few people have taken pity on you outside of Joshua. Seungcheol and Jeonghan would never turn you away, always welcoming you with open arms, a warm cup of tea and free books for as long as you like at their bookstore. You’re not technically allowed in the metaphysical store on Fourth, but as long as Jihoon is working, you can walk through the rows and rows of crystals, grimoires, spices and charms. Joshua is where you’re really home, though, his bakery a place of safety and fresh-smelling sugar cookies. 

It’s where you go now, sticking to the shop windows and away from the tourists flowing all over Main Street like ants. There’s a line stretched out the door when you get to Wicked Sweet Bakery, and Chan looks helpless behind the counter as he nods while taking an order, wide-eyed and terrified. 

Joshua is at the delivery counter, flour staining his cheeks and brows as he nods politely and hands a box of cupcakes over to his customer. As though he can sense you, he lifts his head and swivels, eyes scanning until they land on you, immediately shining. Your stomach leaps the way it often does around him, especially when he breaks out into a beautiful smile and jerks his thumb at an apron.

You roll your eyes. You’re not technically an employee at the bakery, but you’re the next best thing, grabbing an apron from the rack to attempt to help the stressed out witches behind the counter. 

“Can you take over the order counter?” he asks, the blush on his face the only sign that he’s getting a little frazzled. You nod and he winks at you, leaning over to press a quick, chaste kiss on your cheek. “You’re an angel.”

“Mhmm,” is the only response you manage before he’s leaning over Chan’s shoulder to correct something on the register.  

There’s a smooth cadence to helping around the store. You fall into a pattern, calling out order numbers and passing over boxes of charmed sweets. The customers don’t know they’re charmed - at least not the people outside the magical community. They come here for the famous rose scones that inspire love and the lemon tarts that generate good luck, but they don’t realize how much of himself Joshua really pours into these sweets, magic and all. 

Being here is nice. Chan grins when he sees you behind the counter, happy for the help. He still gets overwhelmed behind the till, and he’s more than happy to step back and chew his lip nervously when he processes a discount wrong. You’re up next to him before he can ask for help, typing on the screen while gently walking him through it again.

Chan is a good kid, an elemental witch who is prone to cause rainstorms when he gets stressed. For now, he is a bottle of sunshine, thanking you shyly and letting you know that he saved you a bag of butterscotch cookies in the back. 

“I put in a little extra sunshine,” he promises. By that, you know that he means magic. To give you. You open your mouth to scold him but he shakes his head furiously. “I wanted to do it. You can’t yell at me. I’m your favorite.”

That gets you. It’s hard to be mad at him, especially when anger is likely to set him off into a rainstorm. Chan gives you a wicked smile, his little ego sharp and wicked under his sweet surface. You let him off with an eye roll and a squeeze of his wrist, making him beam. 

This is what keeps you going most days. The unfettered kindness that Joshua and his friends show you. None of them are locals to town, but they had formed their own coven a little at a time, a circle under the broad umbrella of the town's overall witch population.

Covens are difficult. You’re both in and not in Joshua’s coven, an unofficial member by friendship. But you don’t practice anymore - won’t let yourself - so you’re on the outside looking in most weekends and during spiritual times of the year. 

But by witch standard, you are a part of the covenstead of the town, the larger collective of witches who are loyal and responsible for one another, all answering to the high priestess. 

When the rush of customers and shouting orders over the glass dies down, you lean against the counter and reach a hand out just as the door to the back swings open. Joshua has a glass bottle of soda ready for you, and he blinks in surprise when he sees your hand ready for it. You’re a little surprised as well. 

“It’s freaky when the two of you do that,” Chan comments, eyes bouncing between you and Joshua as the older hands you the bottle. “You’re always so in-tune.”

“She’s a witch,” Joshua snorts, leaning against the glass case of mostly empty dishes as he takes a swig of his own. “Divination and all that is sort of what we do.” 

“Yeah, but it only happens with you.”

You don’t meet Joshua’s eyes as you swig from the bottle, the carbonation fizzing on your tongue. “I know you’re jealous, Chan,” is Joshua’s answer. Always deflecting. You're grateful for the way he rolls with the punches, easily accepting the way others talk about you two as an item so you don’t have to. “Are you hoping those butterscotch cookies win her over?”

Thunder cracks in the sky as Chan goes red in the voice, launching into an argument with Joshua who starts laughing like a maniac.  

When it’s time to close down the shop, you help the two of them out. Joshua goes to the back to begin batching things anew: fondant, bread, frosting - anything that he can let sit overnight or prep while the lights are out and he’s gone home. You focus on cleaning with Chan, letting him put on a pop playlist while he sings along, siren voice lulling you into a steady rhythm. 

Part of you wants to ask what they’re doing for Beltane. Celebrating the holidays used to be your favorite, threading flowers through your hair, blessing your hearth and home, weaving new spells of prosperity and happiness alongside your sister. Now you don’t participate in any of the rituals with the others. 

Most of the time, you celebrate alone in your room. Mark the points of the elements and the compass on your bedroom floor alone. Sit in front of a single candle, watching the flame flicker as you draw your circle of salt, murmuring blessings. It isn’t a powerful place of practice and you have no alter to communicate through, but it's something. It’s yours. 

Instead of asking, you follow Joshua and Chan out of the door on the promise of dinner. This is the one thing that does feel like a ritual you’re allowed to participate in, holding chapel at Joshua’s dining room table and elbowing with Soonyoung or Mingyu for scraps of food piled high in the center of the table. 

Evening sky stretches overhead as you walk between Joshua and Chan. You cast your eyes upward, watching the gray clouds float by. Joshua throws an arm around you, pulling you in close and squeezing you to his side. He smells like vanilla and sweet orange from making his tangerina vanilla cakes for Seungkwan. You breathe in his scent, letting it wash through you like a balm. 

His arm presses a little too hard on the bruise where the rock from earlier nailed you, and you hiss, reaching behind your head automatically to adjust his hold on you. 

“What?” he asks, lifting his arm and slowing his gait. Joshua’s face is picture-perfect concern, mouth tilted downward, a crease in his brows. Before you can explain, his hands are pulling at the collar of your shirt. “You’ve got a welt here, what the hell is that?”

You smack at his hands and step away from him, pulling his warm fingers from your shirt. “It’s nothing.”

“Whenever you say ‘it’s nothing’ it's always something. Why do you have a lump on the top of your spine?”

Dancing away from him, you grab Chan who grunts, mouth full of corn chips as you shove him between you and Joshua. More unhappy noises come from the youngest as Joshua grabs for you but you squeak and use Chan’s broad body to block him again. 

“Yah!” Joshua yells, reaching both arms around either side of Chan to grab you. He manages to get one of your arms, pulling you toward him - and by default, Chan - and keeps a firm grip while you swat and fight back. 

“Aish!” Chan howls between the two of you, adding to the chaos as he shoves both of you away from him. “Stop using me as a battering ram! I’m going to drop my chips! Guys!” 

“Tell me why you have a wound!”

“It isn’t a wound!”

“It’s a type of wound!”

“Ugh let my arm go, hulk! What are you doing at the gym? Juicing? Jesus Christ!”

“Stop hissing at me like a rat! Are you trying to bite me?”

Chan drops his bag of chips and lets out a long, forlorn wail. “My chiiiiiiiiips!” 

After a struggle, you manage to shake Joshua off of you, taking a few steps back as you huff angrily, fists at your side. Joshua sidesteps Chan who is pouting and looking at the ground, blonde bangs falling in his eyes as he stares at the spilled corn chips. Joshua makes it worse by stepping on them with a crunch, earning a shriek from Chan that goes ignored.

“Did someone hurt you?”

A rumble rolls through the sky from up above. You cast your gaze upward, looking at the clouds that are a little more swollen than they were a few minutes ago. You can sense the static in the air, a promise of lightning if you don’t diffuse Joshua’s anger quickly. 

Similar to Chan, Joshua is sensitive to the elements. Where Chan has an affinity for the sky and the rain, Joshua has a lot more skill with fire. Still, Joshua is a powerful witch and his rage on more than one occasion has disturbed the sky and the lake in the middle of town. 

It’s partly the reason he works so hard on never getting angry. 

“It’s nothing, Joshua,” you answer softly, eyes pleading. You desperately want him to drop it. Part of you is honored that he cares, but the other half of you can’t bear the way he looks at you. “Please drop it.”

“Someone hurt you. Again.”

Thunder echoes across the sky. Chan looks upward. “That isn’t me, even though I am mad about my chips. And about being oggled at by Mrs. Hansen again, she really wants my goodies.”

“Shua, it isn’t a big deal. Please.” You glance upward, thunder rolling again. “You’re going to make it rain.”

“I’ll make it do more than rain when I find out who did it.”

“They were just kids, Shua. You can’t-”

He swears loudly and there’s a flash of lightning above your head. It makes you think of that night with your sister, laying in bed to let the storm pass. You clap your hands over your ears and squeeze your eyes shut, automatically crouching to make yourself small. 

Behind your shut eyes, you try not to let the memories come. Try not to imagine the vanilla scent of her hair, warm hands on your skin turned cold the next morning. You block out the screams, the way your mother shoved you away and your father yelled and yelled and yelled and-

Above, the thunder stops. Rain doesn’t fall, and the air pressure returns to normal. Shivering, you crack an eye open to look at Joshua, terrified at what you might find. His anger is so rare, but every time you witness it, it’s like watching a sudden storm bloom on the horizon, all terrible wind and teeth, but beautiful in its power. 

Chan is murmuring in Joshua’s ear now, voice hushed and urgent. Joshua’s eyes become unfocused as he nods, Chan’s hands grasping the older’s biceps firmly. When Joshua’s eyes find yours over Chan’s shoulder, they’re fathomless. Endless pools of warm brown, and something else that you can’t decipher as he murmurs something back to Chan, who steps away.

Licking his lips, Joshua offers you a hand. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you. I’m sorry.” 

You swallow thickly. Reach out a tentative hand. “It’s okay.”

“You know I would never hurt you?”

Of course you know that. You aren’t afraid of Joshua or the power he holds. You aren’t afraid of what he can do. You are afraid of the memories that nip at your heels like a pack of jackals. You are afraid that one day he’ll decide you’re not enough. You are afraid of the way that it makes you feel when he’s this close, his voice pitched low, soft eyes only for you. 

“I know that,” you murmur, letting him pull you toward him. “It’s just the thunder, that's all.”

His smile is soft. “I know, I’m sorry.” He squeezes your hand. It’s a perfect fit, your palm in his. His skin buzzes with magic. You pull your hand from his quickly, not trusting yourself to touch him. You’ll never make that mistake again - especially with him. “Let’s go home, yeah?”

-

Home isn’t the small apartment on the west side of town that you keep by yourself. Home is Joshua’s two-story house in the suburbs made of brick and mortar. It’s the crowded dining room packed tight with chairs pulled close to the wooden table and a chandelier full of burner candles and incense. It’s Joshua’s cat familiar running yowling down the corridor as Jihoon’s maine coon chases it, hissing. 

Home is the handful of witches who don’t care that you can’t generate your own magic, all of them laughing and pushing empty plates toward the middle of the table where Seungcheol collects them with a snap of his fingers, the cutlery lifting and stacking neatly with the soft click of ceramic. 

Bloated and overly-satiated, you lean back in your chair, sighing heavily. Jihoon is next to you, quiet and staring off into space the way that he often does. Next to him, Jeonghan and Seungcheol have their heads bowed together whispering, a blush flushing across Seungcheol’s wine-glazed expression and tops of his ears. 

Seungcheol and Jeonghan strike something in you. A longing that tugs at your heart strings, drawing your gaze to the man sitting on the other side of you. Joshua is leaning back in his chair, arm stretched over the back of your seat as he yawns mid-conversation with Junhui. 

Joshua is barely touching you, but just the warmth of his arm is enough to make you dizzy. It’s barely there, just against the top of your back. You lean into him a little, resting your head on top of his arm. He maneuvers his hand to scratch the top of your head lightly. It feels so nice that your eyes flutter shut, letting him play with your hair as the noise in the room drifts to a dull buzz. 

In another life, you think that this touch could be something more. Sometimes, you let yourself wonder if it is. Let yourself pretend that maybe Joshua’s lingering gaze and hand is more than the platonic affection he has for you. 

It’s a silly dream. 

When the dishes are washed and the others have said their goodbyes, it’s just you and Joshua leaning against the counter in the kitchen. He has a glass of wine, sipping it thoughtfully as you put the cork back in the wine bottle. When you meet his gaze, you see something there. Hesitance. Anxiety. 

Joshua chews on his lips and swishes the wine in his glass. The red liquid arches elegantly along the sides of the glass, slowly dripping back down to pool in his cup. You remember once at a winery you could measure the legs or something when swishing wine in a glass. Joshua had taken you to that winery because he wanted to research wine making in general, considering creating and packing his own. He eventually tossed the idea out, wanting to focus on expanding his sweets menu instead. 

“What’s wrong?” you ask, taking a sip out of your own cup. It’s a strong mulled wine with notes of cherry, you think. “You look nervous.”

“I wanted to talk to you about something.” 

Your heart beats hard once. Then twice. Speeds up. Instead of answering right away, you take another sip, mind running through all of the things you think he might say. Maybe this is it, he’s going to tell you that you can’t come around as much. That though you’re his best friend, you have to stay away from his coven. 

Instead, Joshua says, “You know I’ve looked into your situation.” You wince when he says it but he pushes forward, leaning off the counter as he grows eager. “You said you weren’t always a siphon, that you could control your own magic as a child. I’ve been researching similar cases, and there is a lot of evidence that supports that it might be a magical block.”

“Joshua.”

“Look, there’s nothing wrong with you. Never has been. There is nothing to fix. But I know you don’t share that same opinion, and I know that if you could change things, you would.” His jaw flexes. “And I care about your happiness. I just… Jihoon and I have been reading up on rituals to release magical blocks, and with Beltane in a few days, we thought…”

Warmth bubbles in your chest. You know how much this means to him, trying to help you. To free you from the burden that you carry with you wherever you go. This is not the first time he has brought up trying to figure out your ailment. Your situation. And though you’re glad he cares about you enough to try, there is something humiliating about it. 

“You don’t have to decide tonight,” Joshua murmurs. You look up at him and his gaze is soft. Vulnerable. “But if you want us to try, we discussed it. And our circle is strong enough to try it on Beltane.”

Licking your lips, you nod once. “I’ll think about it. Thanks for thinking of me.”

“I’m always thinking of you.” You give him a look and he smiles, a little sad. “What? I am.” 

“Stop trying to be charming. I’ll only say yes if I want to.”

“I have no doubt about that. However, it is impossible for me to stop my charm. It is a natural gift. I am, afterall, a gentleman.”

You roll your eyes. “A gentleman who lacks humility.”

“Ah, but my hubris seems so small whenever Seungcheol is around.” 

You don’t push the argument. Joshua grins again before opening a drawer in his kitchen, pulling out a small, cloth bag. There’s a green ribbon tying the top of it shut, and you smell the herbs inside of it immediately: cedar, bay leaves, mugwort. 

Joshua holds the bag out to you and you frown, taking it. It’s weighted with crystals. You squeeze the bag a little, feeling the crunch of crystal fragments and herbs. There is a vibration that travels from your fingers up your arms and you feel a sense of solid warmth.

“A protection bag,” you deadpan. “Really?”

“Hmm?”

“I don’t need this.”

“The welt on your neck says otherwise.”

“Please stop!” Your voice is loud in the empty kitchen. He pulls up short, leaning against the counter and watching you with wide eyes, lips parted slightly. You sigh deeply and close your eyes for a moment, calming yourself before you open them and say, “I don’t mean to yell, it’s just - it’s hard when I feel like all of you coddle me. It’s humiliating.” 

“It wasn’t my intention. I’d never want to make you feel that way.”

“I know.”

You do know. The intentions are good, but you can’t help the raw, venomous edge of frustration. It makes you feel less than, this constant need to help you. To do things for you. 

“I am a fully functioning adult who is capable of taking care of myself, despite being a thorn in the covenstead’s side.”

“You know that isn’t how we think of you.”

You give a frustrated noise. “Then please. Let me ask for help when I need it, and not just when you feel the desire to give it to me.” 

Joshua is quick to catch the protection bag when you toss it back to him. He nods silently, eyes fixated on the floor. It feels like a hot stone has been dropped in your stomach, burning and weighing you down. How quickly a good dinner has turned sour, how the light air between the two of you has gone cold. 

“Thank you for dinner. And for looking into a way out of this,” you gesture wildly to yourself. He nods, but there’s no mirth in his face. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Yeah of course. Let me know about… you know.” 

“Yeah. Yeah.”

That night, you have trouble sleeping, just like that night when you were thirteen years old. 

-

The back door to Shadow Metaphysical opens, creaking as Jihoon sticks his head out of his office. His long hair is styled behind his ears and he’s in a soft-looking black sweater and jeans. He gives a visible sigh of relief when he sees it’s you and not one of his shithead coven mates coming to bother him for free stuff.

“Hey,” he greets, exiting the office. His familiar, Nami, shoots between his legs and toward the front of the store. 

Jihoon leads you through the door to the main storefront. It’s closed for the evening and he has receipts and cash laid out on the counter as he balances his drawer for the day. Rows and rows of dark shelving littered with candles and wax light the way here. There’s no traditional lighting, floating candles up in the ceiling and random balls of light appearing every once in a while.

When you asked Jihoon how the non-magical customers didn’t think the magic was real, he simply said, That Harry Potter lady did me a solid. They all think it’s some sort of intricate system. 

Shadow Metaphysical is one of your favorite places. It smells different each time you go in, the magic and the herbs and the spells inside of its four walls shifting with the energy of its employees and customers at all times. Today, it smells like night rain and crackling lightning. 

Wordlessly, Jihoon gestures at the shelving, signaling to do whatever you need. He busies himself with going back to counting bills, head down and trusting you not to steal anything like everyone else in his coven. Not that he would care, as he’s always emphasized he has no problem not taking your money.

Still, you always pay him, especially since he lets you in after hours where no one can yell at you for being inside. The covenstead has barred magical stores from siphoners, convinced that the moment they cross the threshold, they’ll consume the entire store like gluttonous demons.

It isn’t true. Well. Not really, anyway. You feel the magic in the store throbbing like a wound in your side, begging you to reach out and touch it, to pull it in, to use, to burn it. You ignore it. You’re not here to eat magic like a parasite. 

As you pass rows and rows of books on rituals, you think about Joshua’s offer to help you figure out your block. It wouldn’t be the first time you tried and failed to figure out what happened. With magic, the point of origin is always the key to any spell. The how and the where of your condition are important elements to figuring out the solution, but no one really knows the how and the where. 

Your friends don’t have full clarity on that night. You’ve never told them in explicit detail of how you woke up, full of your sister’s magic. You’re sure they know, though. Everyone has whispered about the way you killed your sister in her sleep. A little murderer. You’d only escaped persecution for being a child, and because up until that fateful night, you’d never been a siphoner. 

It helped that your family had been respected. 

You pass a grimoire. The runes on it shine gold when you pause, winking at you, begging you to touch it. You feel the whisper of the spells of dozens of witches inside of it, their phantom fingers brushing down your arms. Your spine. They call to you, sing to you, press kisses that promise power on your brow, their fingers turning to claws and-

“Stop,” you growl out loud. The grimoire stops calling to you immediately, silenced by the violence in your voice. 

Shaking off the encounter, you grab what you need from the shelves, ignoring the way other magical objects feel like they're looking at you, wanting to be picked up, to be touched, to be used. You shove away all acknowledgement of them, arms full of materials. 

At the register, Jihoon gives you a wary look as you set things down on the counter. He takes his time scanning them, glancing at you occasionally. You can sense he wants to ask a question, dark eyes lingering a few times. That’s the thing about Jihoon, though. He’ll never ask, he’ll just wait until you give up.

Which you do, sighing and saying, “Ask.”

His lips twitch as he bags a few jars of thorns. “How often do the books in here talk to you?” You level a stare at him and he rolls his eyes. “I can hear you. I just pretend not to be nice. Plus, I have a magical tie to this shop, I can feel the energy shift. Everytime you’re here, it’s like suddenly the entire store has it’s eyes on you.”

“Great,” you growl. “Yes, it happens often. I don’t know if it’s a siphoner thing or a me thing. Most magic begs me to use it, but magical objects are worse. They’re borderline sentient.” You chew your lip and rub your sweaty palms on your jeans. “It’s worse around the sabbat holidays.”

“Stronger magic.”

“Yeah.”

“Did Joshua explain what ritual we talked about?” You shake your head. He pushes over a paper bag filled with all your things and you hand over your card. He doesn’t take it until you give him a pointed stare. Plucking it from your fingers, he sighs and says, “Two smaller rituals wrapped into one. Seungcheol found a really old binding ritual that was used to form a bridge between multiple rituals.”

“A chain spell,” you offer. “Impressive. I guess that would be used for improving upon old rituals?”

“Yeah, exactly that. Joshua had been doing some research on magical blocks, and found one that determines whether the point of origin is internal or external.” 

“External?” He nods. “Like a curse?”

“Yes. Any reason anyone would want to curse a thirteen-year-old?” 

Jihoon phrases it like a joke and chuckles. But you don’t laugh, stilling as you think about his question. Your immediate answer is no, at thirteen there was certainly nothing you could have done to be cursed. But you think about your parents, thinking about the fear revolving around their gifts for blood magic, think about the way they were always regarded with equal parts fear and reverence as coven leaders.

Curses aren’t common. It would take a coven of extremely skilled witches to curse someone, but it could take a single very skilled blood witch to perform one. Hexes aren’t long-term and are far more manageable, but you think about the way your power vanished, the way you bled your sister dry. 

The misery you’ve faced since, the loss of your parents shortly after, the hatred from the covenstead. 

“Holy shit, you don’t think you’re cursed, do you?” Jihoon’s question brings you out of your daze. All of the amusement has been wiped clean from his expression, eyes deadly serious. “Who would curse a child? And how? A hex is easy enough to manage, but a full on curse?”

“People were really afraid of my parents,” you murmur. “My mom used to lead the covenstead here, you know?” That surprises him and you nod, chewing on the inside of your cheek. “I forget you’re not from here, but yeah. My family led the covenstead until… well. All that happened.”

“I never knew that. No one talks about it.”

There is a question there. Jihoon won’t say it outright, but you sense the curiosity nonetheless. You feel your throat constrict a little as you murmur, “My parents killed themselves when my sister died. No one talks about it because… wel, would you?”

“No.”

“Exactly.”

“Your parents have any enemies prior to that?”

“There was…” You think back to the time when you were thirteen. Those days are painted so painfully when you think about them that it is hard to remember anything else. “My parents were involved in the Trials that were going on at that time. Hunting Dissenters.”

Jihoon’s face darkens. “I see.”

“They had a lot of enemies. So maybe… I don’t know.”

For a few moments, Jihoon doesn’t say anything. He busies himself with packing away the rest of the till and waving his hand, dousing all the lights in the store with ease. There’s a little pang as he does it, such simple magic that costs him nothing. That you have no access to.

“Well,” Jihoon sighs, a little awkwardly. “Think about it. If - and it’s unlikely - that someone cursed you, you’ll know if we go through with the ritual.” He pauses and levels you with a look. “It is dangerous though. So consider the risk before you agree, hmm?”

You nod and thank him. He leads you out of the store and gives you an awkward smile goodbye. Never affectionate, but always polite and warm nonetheless. 

Sunset-purple skies stretch above you. It smells like fresh rain and earth outside. Town is quieter now that the evening crowd has finished dinner and gone home or back to their accommodations for the evening. You pass places with patio seating and small diners tucked between stores, wary eyes of the workers following you as you walk down the sidewalk. 

No one says good evening. Some don’t look at you at all. 

Curse. 

The word weighs heavy on you. You’d never considered that your condition could be from a curse before, but now that you think about it, you can’t stop the thoughts racing through your mind. 

The Trials had been a scary time for witches, Dissenters leaving covensteads to start their own, dark and forbidden spellwork becoming more and more popular among covens. Your parents - especially your mother  - had been a huge part of cleansing the covenstead from witches who practiced dark magic.

Especially the few blood witches. 

You had been a blood witch, though. Like your sister, like your mother. People had always been wary of them, which is why your mother worked so hard to get rid of the Dissenters when she was the head priestess. 

They give us a bad name, she would say darkly when you and your sister asked why she was getting rid of witches like you. Like her. In times like this, we have to work extra hard to prove we aren’t evil. 

Jihoon’s words weigh heavy on you as you sit in your apartment alone. You don’t bother to put the TV on, knowing that you won’t be able to pay attention to anything. Magic always comes at a price, and two rituals wrapped into one is going to take a toll. 

And yet, you think about getting to the bottom of this sickness, this curse. This inability to do anything but steal magic, to leech off of others. You think about how your magic used to feel, the way you could command fire with a snap of your fingers or make stars fall from your bedroom ceiling. 

An ache settles in your chest as you lay back on the couch and close your eyes, throat tight and eyes burning. You have been without magic for so long. Part of you thinks what's a little longer? But deep down, you crave it. The spark, the life, the touch of magic. 

You want to be able to enter stores without the itch underneath your skin, an addiction you can’t cure nor divulge in. You want to be able to be a part of a community again, to do rituals with Jihoon and Chan and Joshua. You want to be able to help him in his bakery, imbuing his scones and cupcakes with love and a little spark of something extra. 

Tears flow hot on your face. You know what you want, and you know that it’s going to cost you to get it. You know that to do this, you’ll have to be open and honest, because there are only two possible options for your magic block: you are cursed or you have a mental block. 

It’s hard to know if being cursed as a result of your parents’ policing is worse than potentially having an internal block, an innate refusal to do magic because of what you did. 

That night sits at the back of your mind like a stone, sinking sinking sinking. Pulling you under as you think about it in explicit detail. Maybe you simply killed your twin. A horrible accident, but perhaps it was just you. Your magic. Your fault. 

And your magic had fled because of it, a self-inflicted punishment. 

Before you’re aware of what you’re doing, you have the phone in your hand, sniffing and wiping your tears with the back of your hand. Your face feels swollen and sticky with tears and overwarm and it’s hard to get a breath as you press the phone to your ear, listening to the ringing.

Joshua picks up on the fourth ring, his voice cheery. “What, did Jihoon forget to let you in the store?”

“No.”

“I’m coming now,” Joshua says, completely forgoing humor when he hears you sniff, hears the waver in your voice. “Are you home?”

“Yeah.”

“Did anyone hurt you?”

“No,” you hiccup. “I’m just really sad and I don’t want to be alone.”

“I’ll be there in ten. Do you want to stay on the phone?” You shake your head and let out a little sob. Something about knowing he’s coming over to be with you cracks your resolve a little more. You realize he can’t see you when he prompts, “Hey, you there?”

“Sorry, no. Drive safely, please.”

“For you? Anything.”

Despite your tears, your mouth wobbles into a weak smile at that. It makes your heart squeeze just a little, underneath all the hurt. 

It doesn’t take him long to let himself in the apartment. You can sense him before he even gets to the stairs leading up to your unit, his crackling energy like a beacon to you. When he opens the door with the key you gave him, he fills the space with static, magic snapping and tinged with worry. 

Magic always belies how Joshua feels. Like now, as he rushes across the apartment, he is lightning, all energy and anxiety popping and snapping as he sits on the couch next to you, pulling you into his chest. 

Joshua is warm and smells like vanilla and sweet orange from the bakery. It’s soothing. You close your eyes and clutch the hem of his shirt, resolve cracking the rest of the way as he becomes your anchor as you drift out to sea, holding you so that you can be lost in the overwhelming feeling of loss without getting too far. 

He doesn’t tell you not to cry. He doesn’t ask what’s wrong. Joshua leans back on the couch, pulling you into his lap, folding your knees so that he can hold you. One hand rubs your back and he rests his chin on the top of your head, letting you use the crook of his neck as a place to hide - and turn into a waterfall for your tears. 

This is what you love about Joshua though. He doesn’t pry. He just lets you use him, lets you cry it out and he waits. 

When the tears begin to dry and you find it easier to breathe again, you shift away from Joshua and wipe your face. He smiles down at you, eyes glittering and expression so fond that you find yourself staring blankly into his face.

“I’m sorry,” you sniff. “And thank you for coming.”

“Anything for you.” You hate the way it makes your heart flip when he says that. You start to pull away from him to sit on the couch properly but his arms constrict you, keeping you to him. You frown but he asks, “I want to know what happened, if you’re ready to talk about it.”

Joshua is so close his breath fans your face. You look up at him. Silky, long lashes that you could individually count with your proximity, beautiful tan and smooth skin with a glow all witches have, pretty lips that are always the perfect shade of pink, curved upward in a permanent smile at the edges. 

Your heart starts to speed up and your mouth dries out with the way he looks at you, intense and searching. Suddenly you’re afraid if he looks too hard, he’ll see down to your core. 

“I- yeah. I need some water,” you croak, pulling away. He lets you go this time, unaware that what you really need is space between the two of you, a barrier so he can’t see. So he won’t know. “Turns out sobbing makes you thirsty.” 

Before you can get all the way to the kitchen, there’s a soft clink accompanied by a full glass of water on your counter. You glare at Joshua over your shoulder and he winces and shrugs in apology. 

As you gulp down mouthfuls of cool water, you wonder how to word exactly what you’re upset about. How you’re tired of existing in the world without your magic but you’re also unsure if you want to know the truth about why your magic left you. 

Joshua is iffy on the details about the night your sister died. He’s never asked you explicitly for the story before, but if you want to go through with finding out the root cause of your block, you know you’ll be exposed. To him. To all of them. To his coven.

The desire to be one of them is so strong that it makes your knees weak as you walk toward the couch. You sit abruptly on the couch arm, staring into the distance as you drink the rest of the water. You want to join them so much, to celebrate the sabbat holidays, to feel the rush of a closed circle of magic and yet…

Would they accept you if they knew you killed your sister? You’re not so sure. 

You look at Joshua. He waits patiently, watching you with soft eyes. Moonlight seeps in through the blinds behind him, wreathing him in silver light. He looks like a god, then. Of shadows, of night, of mystery. This best friend of yours who you love so much and who has loved you indiscriminately when he didn’t have to. 

“I talked to Jihoon about maybe doing the ritual,” you start slowly. Joshua nods, encouraging you. “And I think I came to the conclusion that I want to do it. I’m tired of feeling everyone’s magic pull at me, like a vice that I have to ignore every day. And I’m tired of wanting to do things I used to, to feel the world around me. But most of all, I just want to be a part of something. A part of a coven, a family.”

Understanding paints Joshua’s face. He reaches a hand out and takes yours, giving you a firm squeeze. “You know even with no magic, you’re our family, right?”

“It’s different.” He starts to protest but you shake your head. “I want to be in a coven and to feel the power of a circle. I want to celebrate and do rituals with you, I want to be a part of something magical. I can’t do that like this, not without the fear of draining everyone.”

He nods. “Of course. We’ll have you either way, you know? We’d still welcome you like this.”

“But I’d never be able to close your circle.” Joshua nods. He knows the truth of this. “But this ritual requires truth, and there’s some things about me that I’ve never talked to you about. Things about the night I… I could no longer do magic. I want you to be informed, to know what we might find if we do this.”

“Only if you want to tell me.”

“A coven and a working circle requires trust and honesty. I can never be one of you if you don’t know me completely.” 

He nods. “That is true.” 

“I’m going to tell you about the night that my sister died.” He squeezes your hand and nods, but says nothing else. “My sister and I were twins, both blood witches. Unusual enough for our parents and the covenstead to be incredibly proud of us, but not unusual enough for people to be afraid, you know?”

“Twins… That’s incredibly powerful.”

“Yeah,” you agree, throat tight. “We were really fond of the connection too, you know? It was nice to always have someone to rely on who was my perfect balance. We were never-” You take a breath. “Neither was more powerful than the other. There was never any jealousy or overpowering the other. We were always evenly matched.” 

“Whenever it would storm,” you continue. “I would go lay in her room. I hated storms but she loved them. I did this countless times up until we were thirteen. I don’t know… Shua, I don’t know what was different that night. I think back to it every single day, what did I do differently, was there an object I touched, a spell I used? And I come up with nothing. But on Beltane when we were thirteen, it was storming. We’d already finished the festival and our parents were out doing their duties and I went and I fell asleep in her room and… and I woke up…”

For a moment, you can’t get the words out. They get trapped in your throat and you stare, unseeing. You imagine the lightning against the window. The warmth of your sister's hands. The tree tap tap tapping against the window with the strength of the wind.

“I drained her in the middle of the night,” you whisper. It’s out now and you can’t stop, can’t look at Joshua’s face to see his reaction. “I went to sleep as normal and when I woke up, she was freezing and lifeless and I felt more powerful than I ever had before. Like I was this magical battery charged up and sparking.” 

For a moment, you pause and look at Joshua. You expect to see horror or disgust or a variety of negative emotions, but he’s still watching you. Fond. Waiting. No judgment. When he sees you staring, he gives you a tiny smile and a squeeze of your hand. 

“I’m still listening.” 

“Aren’t you…” You trail off and shake your head. “I killed my sister. Are you not horrified?”

He frowns then. “You didn’t kill your sister.”

“Yes I did.”

“You weren’t born a siphoner, how could you possibly predict that would ever happen? You didn’t get in that bed with her and then leech her magic, no matter how much it must feel that way. It wasn’t your fault, though I know hearing me say that doesn’t make it feel any less true in here.” He reaches forward and taps your heart lightly. “There is nothing I can say to ease the pain and guilt of that, but what you’re describing to me isn’t the tale of a murderer. It’s the story of someone who had a freak accident, which is more common among the magical community than one might think.”

“I don’t know what happened,” you admit, a tear escaping your eye. Before you can wipe it though, Joshua’s thumb is there, swiping across your face and collecting it. You watch with wide eyes as he cups your face, looking at you with so much something that your head spins. “But in the morning, I was alive and she was dead. And my parents and everyone else hated me for it. That’s why they treat me the way they do. Why my parents were driven to grief. Why I’m alone.”

“You’re not alone. Not anymore.” 

“How can anyone accept me like this?”

“Because it isn’t what defines you. We are not made up of only the things we do and the things that happen to us, and I promise you, this is something that happened to you.” 

“But why? Why me?”

“I don’t know,” Joshua admits. “But we’re going to find out, okay? 

“What if the others don’t want me?” 

“They would never,” he’s quick to say. He’s still holding your face, wiping tears from your eyes. “And if they did, I don’t care. I’d do the ritual myself, just to prove to you that this burden you carry isn’t your fault.” 

You crack a grin, despite the dark topic. “Yeah? You’d try and do a circle all alone?”

“I would walk through fire for you.”

You pull your face out of his hands and shove him a bit. “Fire is your favorite element, Joshua. That’s not impressive.”

His laughter fills the room and he tugs at your hands. You grapple with him as he tries to pull you down, your ache forgotten as you laugh and squeal. “Yah! Let me try and be poetic! It was the first thing that I could think of.”

Joshua overpowers you and pulls you down against his chest. Suddenly you’re very close again, your palms pressed against his chest, the thrum of his heartbeat vibrating through your fingers. You make a surprised sound as he looks up at you, gaze a little darker. A little hazy. 

Gently, Joshua reaches up and brushes his fingers across your chin. It’s featherlight and more intimate than you expect, making you blink in surprise. You’re frozen, limbs stuck and heart racing as you watch the corner of his mouth twitch upward. Suddenly the moment feels different - this feels different. 

“You have no idea what you mean to me.”

When he says it, you don’t answer at first. You think you imagine him saying it. That suddenly this has blurred into a fantasy of yours. Perhaps you’re actually asleep, soothing your pain with dreams of Joshua. Of being like this with him, pressed closed and intimate with his gaze burning. 

“What?” you whisper back, unable to string together a better response.

He doesn’t seem offended though, huffing a laugh. “You really have no idea, huh? You’ve got that massive brain up there and you don’t even use it right.”

“I don’t…”

“You’re right, we should be practicing honesty. If we’re going to lift this block on you and let you join our circle, there can’t be secrets between us. As soon as you cast in a circle with me, you’ll see everything about me, and you deserve to not be caught off guard about what you see there.”

Your heart throbs. “What would I see, Joshua?” 

“Someone who would not only walk through fire for you, but who would burn the world down for you. I seem so nice and kind, but beneath the surface, there is a heart capable of terrible things for those I love. And I do love you. Chaotically so. Painfully so. Dangerously so.” 

“I-”

“You don’t have to love me back. I’ll never hold you to it. I just need you to know what you’ll see when we link and-”

You interrupt his rambling with a kiss. It’s brief and so quick it’s barely there. You lean away from him, heart pounding, lips parted. You’re surprised at yourself, unsure when you gained the confidence to pull a move on him. 

Joshua moves faster than you can finish your sentence. He surges forward, hands skimming up your arms roughly to cup your face and pull you down to him. His mouth is like fire, consuming and warm and sparking with heat. You feel the static shift between the two of you, his magic crackling to life as he makes a noise deep in the back of his throat. 

The slide of his plush mouth against yours makes you dizzy. He sucks your bottom lip between his teeth, nipping slightly and you become ravenous. Your tongue brushes against his teeth and he makes a throaty sound again, opening up to let you deepen the kiss, tongue sweeping against his. He’s a slow kisser, dragging his tongue against yours and letting you fall fall fall into him. 

Joshua’s hands slide from your face down your shoulders and past them, stopping only at your hips where he squeezes. Your stomach flips at the contact and you twitch a little bit, grinding down into him as his kisses go from languid to a little needier. 

“Fuck,” he gasps, head tilting back. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?” you ask, mouth going to his jaw. You press wet kisses there, messy lips followed by your tongue, leaving a spit-slick trail. His skin makes your tongue tingle, magic vibrating. You grind your hips down again, rewarded with a whine. 

He slips his hands under the hem of your shirt and he digs his blunt nails into your hips. “You know what.”

Grinning, you bring your mouth up to his. Slowly, you lower your hips so you’re pressed flush to his, rolling them again, this time painfully slow. Your breath catches in your throat at the slow-drag friction, the feeling of him shivering underneath you.

“That?” you ask, breathless against his mouth. 

“Enough,” he hisses.

The world spins. Joshua grabs you and in a single, swift movement sits up and stands, carrying you with him. You squeal, hands shooting to grasp at his shoulders as he walks toward your room. He kicks his shin on the coffee table as he stumbles with you, balance off with the added weight.

He curses loudly and you can’t help but laugh, clapping a hand over your mouth when his sharp gaze snaps to yours. His eyes are dark dark, hungry and fathomless now as he raises a brow. “Yeah, you’re laughing?”

“Sorry.”

“No you’re not.”

“No, I’m not,” you admit.

“You’re gonna be.”

A wild thrill shoots through you as he carries you to the bedroom. You forget how strong he is, muscles flexing as he shifts you again, careful not to drop you. It makes you feel giddy, but you squeak in a moment of terror when he drops you unceremoniously on your bed, the brief moment of freefall startling.

You land with a huff and he grins down at you as he stands up against the edge of the bed, knees squeezing your legs together as he reaches behind his neck to yank at his t-shirt. You watch, slack-jawed as he pulls the material up and over his head.

Joshua is all gold and tan planes, body perfect in the low light of your room as he tosses his shirt. You take a second to admire his broad chest, dark nipples pebbling in the cool room. Dark hair trails from his belly button and vanishes in the waist of his jeans.

Seeking warmth, you reach for him. He leans forward, pressing his palms into the mattress to hover over you, knees placed on either side of your thighs. His muscles jump when you brush your hands up the softness of his stomach toward the harder muscle of his pecs. 

It feels like the sun is trapped underneath his skin, burning its way out of him as your fingers explore. You’ve never touched him like this, slow and reverant and full of unbridled desire. He watches you, drinking in the way you take him in. The way you take your time. 

“You’re beautiful,” you murmur, looking up at him. His ears turn red and he rolls his eyes. You grin, dragging your hand up to rest over his chest where his heart thuds wildly beneath your palm. “I mean here, idiot. Yeah you’re hot too, but you’re beautiful in here.” 

Unreadable emotion flits across his face. Something like joy and pain - the pain of wanting to hear that for so long, waiting for the admission. You understand the same pain of desire filled so unexpectedly that it hurts. 

Joshua kisses you again and this time with intent. He shifts and slides a knee between your legs, pressing up to the apex of your thighs. You groan and lift your hands, sliding them through his hair. The strands are silky soft and long. You twist your fingers at the nape of his neck, pulling him to you as the kiss turns messy.

Whatever this is between you is more magic than you’ve felt in years. You feel breathless as he kisses across your jaw and toward your neck, sucking harshly on the soft skin underneath your ear. You whine and he chuckles, hot breath hitting your ear.

“Why don’t you do that thing you love so much, hmm?” he asks, nipping your ear lobe. “Are you shy now? Don’t wanna grind on me?”

You do want to, but you hesitate. He encourages you, taking a hand and skimming down your waist to your ass, sliding under and squeezing your cheek as he lifts your hips in a motion to grind against him. The friction is good but not nearly enough and you let out a pitiful sound. 

“Come on,” he urges. “Do it right, then.”

Fuck. Fuck. 

You grind your cunt on his leg properly, planting your feet on the edge of the bed for leverage as Joshua’s mouth ravages your neck. You’re lost in him, letting your mind go a little empty as you seek friction, needing to relieve the pressure throbbing in your cunt.

Arousal gathers in your stomach and you feel yourself slow-drip into your panties, so turned on by the sudden confidence Joshua has when kissing you, when telling you to move. This is a side of him you’ve never explored and you dive in head first.

One hand leaving his hair, you grab his hand that’s on your ass as he continues to nip your collarbones, tongue laving over the sting of his bite. He lets you lead him by the wrist, and you guide his hand between your legs where you press his fingers to your zipper. 

“Please,” you rasp. “I need more.”

He sinks his teeth into the top of your right breast, tongue tasting your skin. “Is that so?”

“Please. You said you’d walk through fire for me.”

His laugh is loud and he buries his face in your chest. “Yeah,” he agrees with a chaste kiss to your kiss-bitten chest. “I did say that, huh?”

“Yes, so gimme.” 

“Anything For you.”

Years of friendship have erased any ability to feel awkward with Joshua but for a moment, you’re afraid it’ll be weird, touching one another like this. Joshua has no such qualms, unbuttoning your pants and yanking them down your legs with ease.

When he comes back up to lean over you, he doesn’t slot a knee between your legs. Instead, his fingers press firmly to your clothed cunt, a curse falling from his mouth as he feels how damp you are. You’re hot all over and yet you feel hotter still as he circles his fingers gently over your clit. 

“Fuck,” you sigh, lids fluttering closed. “Feels good.”

“You’re fucking drenched, all from a little kissing huh?”

“And grinding,” you add.

“Yeah, l remember, you little vixen.” You moan, lost in his lazy ministrations and pressure on your clit. It’s relieved some of the ache, but not nearly enough. “I can see on your face you already want more.” 

This time, Joshua doesn’t make you ask for it. He hooks a finger in your underwear and pulls them to the side. Immediately you feel cold air against you, but he’s quick to slide his fingers up and down your wet folds, slicking them up to trail back up and circle slowly around your clit.

“Damn you’re fucking wet,” he curses. He leans up a little, eyes fucked out. “Take the rest off for me, baby.”

Baby. It shivers through you and you comply, though a little haphazardly. It’s hard to remove your shirt and bra with the way his fingers are slowly pressing your clit, making you thrash and gasp. 

As soon as you lay back down, no shirt and no bra, Joshua is leaning forward, tongue darting out to flick against a stiffened nipple. You let out a loud moan and he hums in response, attaching his mouth to you and sucking. Fuck it feels good. You arch off the bed and his fingers leave your swollen clit to slide down your sticky mess to circle your entrance.

Gently, he sinks in a single finger. Your eyes roll back a little, pussy fluttering as he strokes your front wall. You’re tingling all over, buzzing with pleasure as he slowly fucks you with his finger, mouth busy plucking at your nipple with his teeth. 

You’re lost in it, melted into the bed as Joshua plays you like a well-tuned instrument. The heel of his palm presses against your clit, providing just enough pressure as he fingers you to send the room spinning on its axis. 

He tongue-kisses across your chest, mouth ravenous against your heaving gasps as he finds your other nipple. The tip of his tongue circles, making you keen and squirm underneath him. He watches you with dark eyes, teasing the aching bud before nipping you lightly. 

“Sensitive,” he mumbles, dragging spit-slicked lips against your breast. “Can you take another finger?”

You nod eagerly, hungry to be filled. Your orgasm is starting to build slowly, worked up by the way he mouths at you, by the way Joshua’s fingers reach so deep, pressing against your g-spot as he sinks another into your heat. 

“Shit,” you pant. “That feels so fucking good, Shua.”

“Mhmm.” He brings his mouth up to yours and your tongues tangle, teeth clinking together as he fucks you harder, the wet smack of your pussy against his palm loud. “Tight fucking pussy,” he pants, pressing hard against your front wall. Your heels dig into the bed as you try to keep up with the pleasure blooming in your stomach. “Gonna need to fuck you open a little if you’re gonna take me.”

If you’re gonna take me.

The promise of more has you rolling your hips up to meet his hand. He lets you fuck yourself on his fingers, dropping his gaze to look between your bodies. Your thighs and his stomach are slick with your juice, leaking around his fingers uncontrollably. 

When Joshua introduces another finger, you hiss. The stretch is hard and it burns. He doesn’t keep thrusting right away, letting your cunt stretch around his three digits. But he’s pressed up against your soft spot, making you see stars as he puts unrelenting pressure on your nerves. 

It feels like insanity, the way he does this to you. The way Joshua buries his face in your neck, your chests pressed together to provide friction against your teeth-marked nipples as he starts to build up a pace again, thrusting. 

“I’m gonna come,” you whisper, hands grabbing frantically at his sweaty shoulder blades. Your thighs are shaking and it’s hard to get a breath in. Your voice quakes as you gasp. “Fuck.”

“So come,” he says, as if it’s that simple. He puts weight behind the hand fucking you, quickens the pace. Presses so fucking hard you think you might blackout. “If you’re gonna come, then do it.” 

And you do. Just like that, nails digging into his shoulders, eyes squeezed shut and teeth clenched, you come around his fingers. He fucks you through it, breath hot in your ear. Your knees squeeze around his hips until you’re spent, collapsing against the mattress, boneless. 

Joshua retracts his fingers. The sudden feeling of being empty makes you huff in protest and he laughs, lifting his face from your neck. You pout up at him and he kisses you again before leaning upward, straddling your legs. 

Your eyes zero in on his hands as they undo the top of his belt. His hand is covered in a wet sheen, cum-slicked and sticky. He doesn’t care, popping up the belt and pulling down the zipper of his pants. You grow eager, leaning up as he pulls the waist down, revealing the dark briefs that do nothing to hide how hard he is. 

With no warning, you reach for his clothed cock, squeezing firmly. He hisses and drops his hands, jeans only pulled halfway down his thighs. Joshua tips his head back and moans at the ceiling as you lean forward and mouth at the damp spot on his briefs, tasting him. 

“Fuck,” he swears and you grin, pressing and holding the flat of your tongue to the cloth to wet it.

You hum. Fingers dancing up his thighs, you pause at the elastic band, looking up at him through your lashes. “Can I?”

Joshua tucks his bottom lip between his teeth, eyes half-lidded. He nods, watching and dazed as you peel the elastic down his hips slowly. You lean forward as you do, pressing a soft kiss to his hip bone. He twitches and sighs in response.

You look at his cock as it bobs against his stomach, brown tip smearing precum against his navel. You lick your lips and drag your hand up, fingers gripping his velvety shaft. He’s thick and heavy in your hand as you grasp him firmly, stroking upward. 

“Oh fuck,” he whispers, hips twitching. You grin up at him, swiping a thumb over the crown of his cock to spread the wetness down his shaft. He hums, entranced. “More.”

You don’t have to ask what he means. You lean upwards, pulling the tip of his cock toward your mouth. You slide just the tip into your mouth, suckling generously and running your tongue along the slit. His hand slips to the side of your neck, resting there but not doing anything. It’s a comforting weight as you take him in your mouth properly. 

Joshua is art above you. Chest flushed, mouth open, eyes closed. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think he was on his knees at worship. It is a sort of worship, the way you sink down on his cock, lips stretched wide, drool dripping down the side of your mouth and running down your jaw and neck. Is it not the spirit of loving him moving through you? Is this not heaven, looking up at him and seeing someone that has chosen you over and over again?

No pagan ritual in your life as a witch has felt like this. You swallow around him, eyes watering as you choke on his length, pulling back a little to catch your breath. Your hand squeezes him at the base, slick with your spit and his precum. Your mouth is wet and swollen as you lick the underside of his shaft, never looking away from his face.

“Fuck that mouth,” he sighs, eyes opening and looking down at you. He squeezes the side of your neck a little, fingers right against your throat. “Come on,” he murmurs. “I can’t hold out if you keep going. How do you like it?”

Instead of answering him, you pull off of him with a sloppy, wet noise. You make a show of running your tongue along your lips before turning around and crawling up the bed, wiggling your ass a little. Joshua groans as he sheds his jeans and briefs the rest of the way. 

The bed sinks when he crawls behind you. You go down on your elbows, ass up high. He smacks each cheek firmly with both hands, making you yelp as he grips the stinging flesh, squeezing. “You have a good ass.”

“It’s all those charmed cinnabons you feed me.”

He laughs loudly at that. Joshua’s hand skims down to your thighs, grabbing them and pushing them open. You sink a little lower on the bed, face pressed to the sheets and letting your eyes shut. The hair on his thighs sends a shiver up your spine as his legs brush against yours, hands roaming and squeezing your hips, your butt, your thighs.

“You’re fucking perfect,” he mutters. His hands come back over the globes of your ass and sink toward your wet cunt. You moan as his thumbs peel you open, pressing around your clenching hole. “Shit.” 

The bed bounces as he moves again and then your eyes are snapping open, fingers twisting in your sheets when you feel the flat of his tongue swipe up your pussy. He hums in delight and you’re reeling, trying to catch your breath as he licks at you.

“Just wanted a taste,” he says, more to himself than you. He sucks your clit into his mouth, flicking his tongue over it a few times and you nearly crumble right there at the unexpected stimulation. He slow-licks up to your hole, tracing it once before retracting his mouth. “I have all the time in the world for you to come in my mouth. Right now I just wanna feel you.”

“Yes, please.”

Your breath gets stuck when you feel the head of Joshua’s cock catch your entrance. He’s thick, and even though you’re dripping down your thighs and stretched from his fingers, the pressure of him sinking into your heat slowly sends you moaning like a wanton whore, unable to stop the sounds escaping your mouth.

Joshua is precise, hands holding your hips firmly until he’s fully seated in your cunt, your walls fluttering around him. You feel so full, his cock reaching deep enough to feel in your gut. When he pulls all the way out, you think something is wrong, but he fucks back into you hard.

“Oh shit,” you gasp, feeling the full weight of him spear you. “Holy shit.”

He doesn’t say anything but he grunts, setting a slow but deep pace. His hips snap into you with force, your knees spreading a little bit wider. He leans into it more, moving his hands to press into the small of your back. The full force of his weight pushing your hips into the bed as he slams into you makes you dizzy. 

An orgasm starts to build deep in your stomach. You claw at the bed, breaths coming out in a hiss. Joshua grabs one of your hands, pulling it backward to pin it against your lower back before doing the same to the other. You’re completely pinned under him, pushed so far into the mattress you think you might fade and vanish into foam and sheets. 

Nothing here matters but the way he fucks into you, unrelenting, heavy, precise. He says your name and it rolls off his tongue sweeter than any pastry he’s ever made. Your orgasm creeps up on you, shaking and thunderous. It feels stronger than before, a pressure that makes you start to shiver, feet kicking under him.

For a moment, he slows, pulling off you a little. “Okay?”

“Keep going,” you beg him, voice high-pitched and strange to your ears. “Please don’t stop, I’ll tell you if I can’t take it.”

That’s all he needs. He redoubles and this time, changes his direction, hits that spot inside of you head on with his cock and you think you’re going to pass out. You become lifeless under him, unable to do anything but take it. The wave of your orgasm builds and builds and builds until finally, it breaches. 

You come for a second time, no noise coming out of you. It’s all white vision and squeezed thighs and ringing ears. You think you feel something like a bolt of lightning, a snap of power so strong as you clench around Joshua that you taste static in the air. 

It’s hard to know how long it lasts. One moment you’re shaking and the next, you’re drifting, feeling weightless and exhausted. The weight of Joshua’s touch keeps you tethered and from straying too far, but you’re somewhere in between nonetheless. 

Slowly, reality drips back to you. You think you may have dozed a little, your eyes dry as you blink them open. Joshua is lying next to you, arm wrapped around you and eyes closed. He’s not breathing deep enough to be asleep, confirming it when his eyes open, sensing your gaze.

A smile lights up his face and you smile tiredly at him. Your cunt aches and your legs and arms are sore from being pinned, and you’re still a little shaky. Thoughts of your orgasm make you twitch, post-sex tremors that you can’t escape.

“Hi,” you rasp. “Did I fall asleep?”

“I think you blacked out.”

“I- what?” 

“I sort of…” he frowns. “There was like this electrical snap when I came. You clenched me so fucking hard I just… let go. I think we sort of had a magical orgasm.”

“A magical orgasm.”

He grins. “Just say thank you for the witch orgasm.”

“Ugh.” You smack his chest and he laughs hoarsely. 

It did feel like that though. Like a crackle of energy, like being struck by a storm of electricity and heat. You feel tired and heavy-limbed, but you feel sticky and sweaty too. “I need a shower.”

“Mhmm. I was waiting for you to come to.” He starts to sit up. “Come on, I’ll shower you. Then we need to sleep. We have to prepare you for your big day.”

“My big day?”

Joshua grins as he reaches a hand for you. There’s a spark again when you touch and you hesitate, feeling the well of his magic there. It hums in him, a thunderhead of power and fire. He sees your expressions and softens. “You can’t hurt me.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Baby, I just fucked you until you blacked out, and you know what you didn’t do?” Your brows pull together and he smiles. “You didn’t pull an ounce of my magic from me. I think you’re a lot better at control than you think you are.”

Licking your lips, you nod and let him pull you from bed. You are good at control. You had to be after your sister. It’s something you’ve practiced nonstop, the unconscious control of your desire for magic. Even when you sleep, you wake up often, fearful of losing your grip on yourself while you slumber.

It hasn’t happened yet. And as Joshua leads you to the shower, you think… maybe it never will. Especially if the ritual goes right. Especially if you can get your magic back. 

Perhaps for the first time since you were thirteen, you feel a sliver of hope. When you look at Joshua and you feel your heart stutter, you know that even without your magic, you’ve found something.

-

“Oh for the love of the land,” Jihoon groans when you appear in the basement of Joshua’s home. “Look at the two of you.”

Everyone swivels to look at you and Joshua, who are hand-in-hand. You freeze, pulling up short to take in the candle-lit room and the other men who are all looking at you with equal parts happiness and a little bit of amusement.

You shift from foot to foot and chew your lip. Suddenly you want to turn tail and run back up the stairs and away from the watchful eyes of your friends - of Joshua’s coven members. But Joshua holds your hand tight, tugging you down the rest of the stairs into the gloom of the room.

Perhaps gloom isn’t the right word. The room is much too warm and smells of sage and thyme, a good feeling if not a little overwhelming. Outside this house, there is an entire festival going on at the park. The covenstead witches were furious when Joshua let them know that he and his members would not be participating this year, as they had private matters to attend to.

It’s common for covens to use the holiday for something specific. Perhaps to bless a witch in need, or to strengthen a spell, or to defeat some evil. You remember that night that your parents left you alone for Beltane duties to fight and remove Dissenters, and how that turned out for you.

Magic hums all around you. It’s in the sigils on the ceiling of Joshua’s sanctum and it’s in the ley lines that you can feel now more than ever as the veil between worlds thins. Each member of the coven has magic humming in their veins, a sort of signature taste and feel to it. You sense Jihoon’s deep shadows and Seungcheol’s vibrant green, taste Jeonghan’s clean water and feel Junhui’s pure air. Minghao and Joshua are the flickering flame that fills the room with light and heat, and Chan’s crackling storm greets you in the corner.

It’s hard to imagine where you fit in with them. But they don’t have a blood witch, who is all of these things wrapped into one. You know that they support you. All of you have gone over the ritual what feels like a hundred times at this point, perfecting it and making sure you know it inside and out.

The two rituals are wildly different. One to seek and find the source of your pain, led by Jihoon and Junhui. Jihoon’s shadows and connection to the other side will help seek answers and provide clarity on whatever signs and hints come through the vision you’re supposed to have, and Junhui’s strength with air will help keep you protected and clear of any negative energy.

Then, a small spell to build a bridge between the two rituals that Seungcheol will handle with Jeonghan. Seungcheol has it down to a science and has previously used it to link spells, and his affinity for earth will ground the entire circle. Jeonghan’s skill with water is to help guide you from ritual to ritual with ease and clarity. 

It’s the second half of the ritual that’s the most demanding, which is why it’s Minghao and Chan conducting the destructive half, breaking whatever stands between you and your magic. Two warriors meant to sever your block or the target of your curse, whichever it may be.

And it’s possible that you’re cursed. You have briefly spoken about what that means. About what to do. It will most likely mean something damaging and life-threatening for whoever did curse you, if you forcefully try to shatter it instead of finding the cause. 

But there’s also potential for you to be harmed if the two of them try to break it and it’s too strong. It’s a risk that you have to assess in the moment, which is terrifying. You want to do it anyway, and you’re happy to find that they support you. That they’re there for you.

Coven members already, really. 

All of them are dressed to perform a ritual. Dark robes, anointed element symbols in dark ash on their brows. Jihoon has a small circlet around his head, making you pause and tilt your head as you glance at Joshua. He sees your confusion and smiles. “Jihoon is our high priest tonight,” he murmurs. “He will start and end the circle so I can be here with you.”

Jihoon is blushing and looking up at the ceiling when you turn back to him. For him to step up and hold the circle as the beginning and end is a huge risk on him. He’ll be providing the most magic and taking on the most risk second only to you, all so that Joshua can move freer and have more control.

“Jihoon is a very powerful witch, as you know,” Joshua murmurs, steering you to the center of the room. “He holds circles for a lot of our rituals when we feel he’s better suited.” 

“Which is often,” Jihoon mutters at the ceiling where he keeps his gaze. 

“Yah, shut up, hag. Everyone get in their places.”

Joshua puts you in the very center of the room. There is a pentagram chalked in powder, but there is no glow to it, no light to signal that it’s being used. He squeezes your shoulders and you look at him, wide eyed and afraid. His smile is warm and a little nervous, but he leans in and kisses you once.

“Trust us,” he says. “This will be hard on you. But we’ve got you.”

“Okay.”

“Don’t break the circle,” he reminds you. “If you have to break, do it when Seungcheol is at the middle part and before we start the second ritual. He will open the circle a little, but it’ll be just for a moment before the second is started and locked.”

“Right. Ten second escape if I need to.”

“You only have that window if we need to stop. Once we start the second, there is no stopping until the full ritual is complete.”

“Got it.”

“Good luck,” Joshua whispers and kisses you on the brow. “I’ll be right here.”

With a deep breath, he steps to the side and grasps your hand. The two of you stand alone in the middle, you and your anchor. Silence settles over the room. You haven’t been in the middle of a circle since you were a little girl receiving her first welcome into the coven. You had done that with your sister by your side and your mother at the head of the circle.

Now, you’re with Joshua, with Jihoon at the head of the circle. Jihoon doesn’t really make eye contact with you, but you sense his calming aura even from where he stands at the first point of the circle. He rolls his shoulders and closes his eyes, lifting his palms upward. “I stand at north, the beginning and end, start this circle, spirit ascend.”

You feel the ripple of magic in the room. Fire crackles at Jihoon’s feet, making you flinch. You watch as the red flames lick toward Junhui, who is quick and light as he murmurs, “I stand northeast, to cleanse and protect, continue the circle, spirit to the next.”

You watch the flame as it sparks to life, moving clockwise around the room. Every time a member joins the circle, you feel the power thrum through the room, the pentagram beneath your feet beginning to glow. The flame comes all the way back around to Jihoon and he closes it, eyes opening and looking right at you.

Jihoon looks different than before, eyes shadowed and full of stars. “Begin,” he commands, voice like a thousand whispers. 

A little spike of fear goes through you as Junhui begins to chant. You recognize the Latin immediately but your unpracticed ears lose trace of the meaning. It’s picked up slowly in the room and you feel your palms slick with sweat as the light of the pentagram pulses beneath your feet, the flames flickering around the feet of the coven members.

Jihoon’s voice picks up the chant like you’ve never heard him before. It’s uncanny and you lean into Joshua, who squeezes your hand and looks down at you.

“It’s okay,” he whispers. “This happens when he leads a circle. Veil is thin.”

Nodding your head, you turn to the front again, feeling the itch to pull power from the circle, to draw their magic into you. There’s so much of it filling the room, an open tap of water spilling into the sink. You dig your teeth into your bottom lip, worried that you won’t be able to resist, worried that you’re going to pull from the magic and-

A wave of dizziness hits you. You gasp and bend over, hand circling your middle as though you’ve just been punched. Joshua’s hands are on your back but you can’t hear him, a high-pitched ringing drowning out the sound of his voice. For a second, you’re lost in the sensation of having the air sucked from your lungs and the whine in your ears getting higher and higher.

Just when you think that your ear drums will burst, the ringing stops. There is a hushed whisper filling your ears and you still can’t catch your breath. The room spins a little and when you look up expecting to see Jihoon, all you see is dark trees and a blurry shadowy… building. Something. 

The whispers creep up on you. There are so many of them, hundreds - no, thousands - of voices brushing against you, dragging their fingers along your skin, touching you, hissing, singing, screaming. It’s like nothing you’ve ever experienced and their words are jumbled, sliding over one another.

Terror begins to claw at you. You try to remain calm, remembering that these are not the voices of spirits or something evil. Junhui is commanding this ritual, an element of purity and guidance. He won’t let anything bad happen to you.

With faith in your future coven member, you try to focus on the voices. Try to decode them. Seungcheol warned you that the messaging might be confusing. That you might not follow or understand what it’s saying. Symbols, images, key words. You need to reach for anything that seems like something, that can point to the origin of your block and follow it. 

Jihoon’s presence presses at the back of your mind. It startles you at first, to feel who you know is innately Jihoon. You follow the press of whatever he’s doing and you catch a few words that fly by you: little hut little hut. Little hut little hut. Little hut little hut. 

Unsure what it means, you cling to that. Little hut. It means something… you remember something about it. Jihoon’s presence fades away, satisfied that you’ve picked up on whatever it is he sees or senses. 

Flipping through memories, you try to remember why a hut might mean anything to you. There were no huts by your town… nothing that you can remember no one you know of. 

Little hut, little hut.

One memory sticks with you. Your sister playing in the background, hopscotching to a little tune that Mila down the street whispered to her about a witch in the woods. 

Little hut, little hut

Hidden in the wood

Little hut, little hut

Up to no good

Yes, you think. A rhyme about a witch who lived in the woods. More thing than witch, really. A shadowy being that took the shape of a hut, a creature of magic and curses that could be found in the darkest part of the woods when the veil is thin. 

Little hut, little hut

Alone in the gloom

Little hut, little hut

Silent as a tomb

You see it now. The blurry shape of a house that’s not really a house. The witch in the wood was a blood witch once, it was said. A witch who had long since dissented and practiced arcane magic, following a path that led her here. That led her to this. A thing of the woods. 

It occurs to you the weight of the appearance of her. This hut in the woods. Jihoon’s flippant remark about you being cursed is suddenly real.

Dread drops down in your stomach like a weight. You can’t hear anything beyond the rhyme, the chant to find the witch of the woods. You’re cursed, you realize. All the fear that your condition was self-inflicted, that it was your fault, that this was something you did. 

This is something that happened to you, Joshua had said.

And he was right. Someone cursed you - did this to you. A child. 

Out there in the world, there is someone responsible for the death of your sister. Someone who took your magic, who turned you into a leech. The reason for your family's pain, the reason for them throwing you away. For your father and mother being driven mad, for the town turning against you.

You think about the rock that hit you just days ago. Thrown by a child taught to hate you. Taught that it was okay to hurt you because it was you. The town siphoner. A witch who couldn’t make her own magic, a parasite. 

Anger wells up inside of you and you latch onto the rhyme swirling around your head, clawing through it. This is the thread you must follow to find your curse giver. This is the clue.

Little hut, little hut

Across the dark stream

Little hut, little hut

Wait for the scream

Dully, you are aware that Joshua is next to you. You see him from the corner of your eye but it’s not Joshua at all. Well - not as you now know him. This Joshua is younger - a teenager by the looks of it. He’s not doing anything except staring out into the darkness. He fades in and out like a bad TV picture, glitching and blurring. But you know it’s him. 

His face is different though. Twisted in grief and pain, a frozen picture of angst. You imagine this is what you looked like when your sister died, a tableau of hurt and hate. 

Little hut, little hut

I call to thee

Little hut, little hut

Come to me

The Joshua in front of you fades away. You reach out for him but your hands cut through empty air and darkness. He’s not really there and you have a hard time grasping the meaning of this. The voice sounds almost like Joshua but not quite. Not as mature. 

Young Joshua doesn’t show up again. You can feel the real Joshua somewhere in the mess of the vision and the darkness, but you can’t hear him. Can’t see him. There is only the omnipresent darkness of the hut and the whispers of voices. 

Little hut, little hut

Hear my strife

Little hut, little hut

Ruin this life 

There’s a flash of lightning. A storm in the darkness, splashes of purple and blue electricity. You cover your eyes as you hear thunder, low and soft somewhere. Across from you, your sister appears. She’s a fraternal twin who looks nothing like you except in the eyes. Your eyes look right back at you.

She’s the same age she was when she died. When you took her magic away. When you were cursed. She looks the same age as the apparition of Joshua, and you try to understand. To make the connection from what you're seeing as the lightning lances again like it did that fateful night.

The rhyme keeps circling in a hurricane of whispers. 

As the ritual comes to a close, the vision begins to fade. You’re no better off than where you started and in a panic, you reach for the vision of your sister. You just want to hold her one last time, to feel the warmth of her skin.

But she isn’t real and she fades as Junhui’s chanting falls to a murmur and then to a whisper, the air returning to normal. You can breathe again, and as you look up from where you’re bent over, you see Joshua kneeling on the ground in front of you, holding you by the shoulders. His face is swimming with fear and concern, gaze searching.

Joshua looks so much like his younger self. He’s matured into his face and is a handsome man, but he was a cute teenager. His face now is full of love and concern, but you think about his face in your vision. Twisted in pain and years. 

Little hut, little hut

Hear my strife

Little hut, little hut

Ruin this life 

You straighten up suddenly, knocking him over on his ass as you do so. It feels like you’ve been slapped as you stare at him, a sudden buzz in your ears as you stare and stare and stare. The ritual comes to an end and Seungcheol opens the circle - a foot in the door, more like - and begins to start his spell for Minghao and Chan to weave the new ritual into the circle. 

Without thinking about it, you dash for the edge of the circle. Joshua yells but you’re fast, surging between Seungcheol and Jeonghan where the door exists. Seungcheol’s head snaps to look at you, eyes wide and mouth open.

“Close it and close the circle,” you pant. 

“I-”

“Close the fucking circle!”

All eyes turn to you. They hesitate for a moment, the flames around them wavering. You can feel the power licking at their heels and something like rage shudders through you. You don’t know where to channel it yet and you begin to pace as Seungcheol recloses the circle and turns to Jihoon. 

Slowly, Jihoon begins to finish the ritual. They work backward from Jihoon to Chan to Minghao to Jeonghan. You don’t look at them, wringing your hands as you pace back and forth, heart reaching a wild beat. 

Images fly by. The hut, the whispers, Joshua’s face, the thunderstorm, your sister. 

The narrative isn’t straightforward. You don’t quite understand the rhyme, or its function, but the second half sounds bad, sounds perhaps like a plea. A bargain. A need for a curse. You recall the thunderstorm on the night of Beltane, the way your sister watched with wide eyes while you sought her out. You think of Joshua’s affinity for fire and storms, the way he can command thunder just by being upset. You think of his face, so full of pain and hate. 

Finally, they finish the circle. Joshua rushes to you, hands outstretched and a question on his mouth but you jerk away from him. 

“Did you curse someone?” you demand, making him pull up short. He opens and closes his mouth. The silence in the room is deafening. You can hear your own heartbeat, pulse throbbing in your ears. “Joshua, did you curse someone?”

“I… what does that have to do with-”

“Little hut, little hut. Hear my strife. Little hut, little hut. Ruin this life.” 

Three things happen then. The first is Joshua’s confusion as he shakes his head, lost as to why you’re repeating a rhyme back to him. Then a flicker of memory followed by the drain of color on his face. He straightens up, blanched and shakes his head back and forth as he takes a step away from you.

“No,” he says and takes another step back. “That’s not right, I didn’t curse you.”

“What did you do?” 

“I didn’t curse you,” he says again. He seems lost in it though, like he’s saying it to himself. Jihoon takes a step toward Joshua and he holds out a hand, warding Jihoon off. “I cursed the witches responsible for killing my parents. I didn’t curse you.” 

“You cursed someone?” Minghao hisses from across the circle. “And you never thought to mention it in preparation for this?”

“Shut up, Minghao,” Joshua snaps. “I didn’t curse her. I did go into the woods that night to find the hut witch and I cursed the people responsible for killing my parents. I didn’t even know you then.” 

“Did you give a name? What did you say?” 

“I didn’t know their names!” He answers, frantic and looking at you pleadingly. “I didn’t - no. I remember it, I shared my blood with her, to show the memory. I saw their faces, but I didn’t know their names. We were -” his voice cracks and he clutches his hands against his chest, tears in his eyes. “I was so afraid when they came. We’d been going from town to town, trying to get away. My parents wanted to go back home, overseas. We just had to get there and then these witches, they came and blew down the door and they killed them.”

“So you cursed them based on a memory?”

“Yes,” he insists. “Baby, I didn’t curse you. How could I? How would I?”

Little hut, little hut

Hear my strife

Little hut, little hut

Ruin this life 

“Joshua.” You say his full name, voice ringing and calmer than you feel. Your stomach is in knots and you feel your mouth water, hinting at the nausea working its way up your throat. “Did you ask the blood witch in the hut to ruin the lives of the witches who killed your parents?”

“Yes.”

“Were your parents Dissenters killed on the night of Beltane?”

A long stretch of silence takes up the space between you. You stare at Joshua and he becomes a stranger. Become another person on the street that looks at you with hate. Another face in the dozens of the town who don’t care if you exist. 

When Joshua says nothing, it means everything. The final piece of information slots its way in and you feel like you’re going to crack open like an egg and spill out. Gooey and yolk-yellow. 

“That was why there was a storm,” you whisper. “Because you were angry and upset, wherever it was that you were. And you cursed my family. Not my parents. Our entire family. That’s why I lost my magic and siphoned my sister to death. That’s why my parents were driven to madness and their eventual end. It’s why everyone hates me. You cursed me with ruin.”

“I…” Joshua shakes his head but can’t make the words come out. 

There is no way out now. You get everything picture perfect for the first time. It’s the perfect curse, really. Driving your family to ruin in different ways. Pushing you, the final member of the family, to the person you would eventually fall in love with, to the person that cursed you.

You turn and run. He tries to run after you but someone stops him. He has his coven to comfort him for what he’s done and you have nothing and no one. Just how you started. 

Your runaway is messy. Tripping over thresholds, slipping down stairs. Night stretches over the world and the air is thrumming with energy. You think it would be so easy to tap into, to take and take and take the magic around you that echoes from the Beltane festivals. Would anyone even notice if you took a little?

Still, you don’t. Hot tears blind you as you stumble into the woods behind Joshua’s house. It’s not the best shortcut when you’re distraught and overcome with tears, but you think you can get to your apartment building by memory alone. 

Around you, the world grows darker and quieter. Eventually, all you can hear is your ragged breathing and sniffling as the tears freefall. Something prickles on your skin and you slow your tangled escape to look around you.

The woods are unfamiliar. At least, they seem darker and hazier, like you’re somewhere that looks like the woods behind Joshua’s house but isn't quite right. You’re more careful as you move forward, one foot in front of the other. 

A breeze cools the back of your neck. It makes you shiver, feeling more like a finger running down your spine than the actual wind. A whisper of noise wisps by you and you stop, frowning. Trying to grasp the words as they float by, indiscernible. 

You start walking again, following the sound of a voice that is always just a little too far ahead. A little too soft spoken for you to make out the words. When you do manage to catch up, you hear a soft little rhyme. 

Little hut, little hut

Hidden in the wood

Little hut, little hut

Up to no good

Little hut, little hut

Alone in the gloom

Little hut, little hut

Silent as a tomb

Little hut, little hut

Across the dark stream

Little hut, little hut

Wait for the scream

Something like a high-pitched wail rings out behind you. Your limbs lock and goosebumps explode over your arms and legs as you slowly crane your neck to look in the direction that you came. There’s no clear path, just tangled trees and darkness. 

A soft buzz tingles along your skin. You sense the magic, static that you can’t hear but you can feel and taste on your tongue. Slowly, you turn back to face the direction you’re walking. There is a tiny little stream in front of you, trickling and black.

Carefully, you step over it. Your hands quake. Sweat gathers on the nape of your neck and your upper lip, your mouth trembling as you see the vague shape of a hut. Or perhaps it's just the idea of a hut, with a hole for a door that looks endless. Void. Dark. 

You think about your sister. See her face swimming in front of you, so full of life. Then it drains of color as you bleed her dry and steal everything from her. Every drop, turning her from a beautiful girl full of the sun and the sky into a husk. 

You clench your fists. 

Vengeance can’t bring her back. Vengeance can’t make them love you. But it can take away this fucking hurt inside of you, the pain that you have carried for so long that it feels like a wound that will never close. So you decide to take a page out of Joshua’s book.

“Little hut, little hut,” you whisper, voice shaking. “Feel my ache. Little hut, little hut, make him break.” 

TAG LIST:

@ddaddunugu @ourkivee @tie-nn @thesunsfullmoon @stray-bi-kids @ldysmfrst @thepoopdokyeomtouched @eoieopda @onlywon4u @hopeless-foolery @iamawkwardandshy @gyuguys @codeinebelle @ateez-atiny380 @bultaereume @yoongznme @kaitieskidmore97 @coffee-addict-kitten @gyubakeries @archivistworld @asyre @kaepjjangiya @fancypeacepersonaa @beckyloveshannie @imujings @do-you-remember-summer-127 @jbluen @mingumis @kimsaerom @imlonelydontsendhelp @eunyi @smiileflower @gyuhao365 @thefrozeneternity @heechwe

[gingerbreadfrosting]

I really don't use this blog much anymore. So I kind of want to use this to post about a really popular set of accounts.

I have been stalked by @adequately/@islandmusic/@bonkie/@230yen/@mofufufu/@comfye (she owns many, many blogs) for four years.

She went out of her way to find my personal blog after I remade, when I had made no indication of what this blog was and only interacted with people I knew, meaning she purposefully went out of her way to find me. She also obsessively checks my blogs to find new posts and new blogs of mine, as she stole from one of my blogs that I had only posted once about on my personal blog.

Proof her stealing my posts recently. This is just recently. There is literally years of this. My URLs are going to be censored because I don't want my personal blog to be known. However, I will keep the dates visible to prove that she took them from me.

These are my uploads posted first:

And here are her blogs, reposting literally all of this in a row. Back to back. These are one after the other. Many of these are from the same day, minutes or hours after my posts. She does not even hide that she is stalking me.

This is literal years of this behavior from her, I couldn't possibly show all of it. She also steals my GIFs and claims them as hers. In 2024, she stole nearly every GIF I would post. She did not even bother to change my original captions that I made that were not in the original sources, proving that she just copied directly from my posts.

I have reached out to her multiple times begging her to please leave me alone and that I don't want anything to do with her, but she is still very obsessed with me and hostile no matter what I do to get her to leave me alone.

Here is me begging her for months to leave me alone on a sideblog, because she often turns off her DMs, tagging, replies and asks on all her blogs. Probably for this literal reason. There is also a DM she sent me where she admits to stealing from me.

Even though she apologizes for her behavior, she does not mean it because she does not stop. She lied to me. I do not steal posts from her. I don't even look at her blogs, and I blacklist her URLs to avoid her and her content. She is literally obsessed with me, and has been for four years, ever since I was a minor and she was a grown adult.

She steals from other blogs, too. I know she's done this many times, but I really only have this screenshot from ages ago. These images are from the same Instagram post, hers are just put into a different order. I don't know who the person in the first picture is but I censored their URL for their privacy.

I also have reason to believe she has sent me a lot of anonymous hate messages but I can't prove it, and I won't put them here for that reason + a lot of them are very violent and hateful e.g. encouraging me to commit suicide.

If you see this, I hope you take this as a wake up call and leave me alone. I have been begging you to leave me alone for four years, but you never do. I want nothing to do with you. You started harassing me when I was 16 years old. I want you to stop harassing and stalking me. I want you to stop being obsessed with me and everything I do. I want you to stop looking at my blogs even when I have you blocked and try to stay away from you. I want you to stop purposefully going out of your way to find me and my accounts. Please move on with your life. And if you won't do that, I at least hope that people will realize the fear you've been inflicting on me for years.

[kyra45]

Scammers pretending to be Palestinian v6

(Scammers pretending to be Palestinian v6)

This guide is meant to inform you on some ways to differentiate legitimate fundraisers from those created by scammers who have been impersonating Palestinians for several months now. While originally I tried to list the scam blogs in these posts, Im just making this now a general overall method to spot scams.

Disclaimer: This guide is not to say all Palestine based asks are from bots or a scammer. Rather, it is meant to explain the reasoning why something is legitimate or not. Do not use this guide as an excuse to claim every single Palestine fundraiser is a scam.

TL;DR: In the span of you saying someone’s bot, you could be using tumblr search instead of telling me your reporting every ask you get as a scam without looking at the account. Being listed as spam/bot on a list of vetted accounts does not automatically classify something as a scam either.

One of the first things to keep in mind is that most asks you get will come from accounts who check the notes of a post. Meaning they saw you and decided to send you the ask or DM to share their fundraising post. This is not bot behavior and often is done by those is unfortunate situations that desperately need funding and as a result is a common occurrence across the internet. If this bothers you, it is suggested to turn off your askbox or limit DMs to mutuals instead of the posting in the scam tag that every ask you get is from a scammer when it’s a gfm account that has been vetted by a well known blog that may even be on a list of verified fundraisers if you bothered to look it up.

Secondly, while originally a non-gfm fundraiser may have been suspicious (such as PayPal or gogetfunding) it has since been decided and clarified that such fundraisers are now used when a gfm is shut down unexpectedly and the original creator informs the donors that they will need to resend it their support to a new fundraiser. If you do not see any mention of a previous gfm in a PayPal/gogetfunding post there is a possibility that searching parts of the post may show that the content is from someone else and the source may still be active with no mention of tumblr itself indicating the tumblr post is impersonating the real gfm.

Thirdly, due to language barriers legitimate accounts may use asks from other vetted fundraiser blogs with only minor edits. While this isn’t something I’d suggest doing, it’s understandable the situation unfortunately relies on copying someone else’s words to ask for support. However, please don’t reuse the post content unless you were given permission or are related to the original fundraiser such as being a family member. Images may be borrowed from other accounts, though they may be stolen from offsite places. This is not full proof of a scam, as it’s suggested to search around for proof of who originally posted the images. Please understand not everyone is natively an English speaker and Google translate isn’t always accurate. Some may reuse someone else’s posts unaware that it’s suspicious behavior.

Fourthly, most scam accounts have reused a certain style of ask often mentioning needing insulin (Humalog) for a relative, having nose freezes due to asthma, being down to their last pen and asking for “nt much”, or referring to their family being in the ruins of a church. The frequency of these asks is so common searching them in tumblr search should bring up plenty of posts. Additionally, the names used by these accounts generally appear across multiple blogs that have been seen running different kinds of scams later on. A majority of their posts are almost always stolen off a real fundraiser they don’t link to.

Fifthly, in regards to verification it is very easy to search a username and see who vetted an account. Scammers will often say they’re verified but don’t list who or even paste a username that has never existed at all when you go to check. If asked about it, they generally will opt to block you without responding. There are people who will take time out of their day to ensure someone’s legitimate just be patient.

Lastly, don’t just assume every Palestinian gfm is a scam and stop acting like sharing a scam is fine because you don’t want to accidentally ignore someone in need. If you regularly see the posts from legitimate blogs and share them you would eventually be able to tell the day old private PayPal account asking for insulin funds is suspiciously asking for a low amount of funds compared to everyone else.

Please read this post for other info;

If I’ve missed anything, please let me know.

[meanbossart]

Pin!

Hi, I'm RJ (Male, 28 years old) I'm a -usually- horror oriented artist and collaborator alongside my partner and better-half @barbatusart, though I'm currently on a Baldur's Gate 3/DnD streak with both my art and writing, specifically centered around the Dark Urge I created for my campaign and his antics, so that's most of what you will find here!

I want to leave a warning right here that I occasionally venture into delicate topics in regards to character lore and history - though none of it strays too far from what the game already delves into and I try to give a heads-up ahead of time whenever I feel like something might catch someone off-guard otherwise.

PATREON: patreon.com/meanbossart/

MY INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/meanboss_art/

BLUESKY: https://bsky.app/profile/meanbossart.bsky.social

PRINTS: https://www.inprnt.com/gallery/meanbossart/

TWITCH WHERE I STREAM SOMETIMES: twitch.tv/meanboss14

PSA: I get a lot of asks and I'm slow to go through them, please don't take it personally :U

Anyway, here's the guy of the hour:

🚨FAQ BELOW🚨

Q: Does your Durge have a name? A: Nope! I named him "drow" when I played the game because I didn't feel like thinking up anything special. His lack of a name has become part of the character's lore and you will find him to always be tagged with "DU drow", or referred to as The Drow or just Drow.

Q: Where can I read your BG3 fan-fiction? And what is it about? A: Right here! The main plot follows DU Drow, Astarion, and Shadowheart on a new adventure that fractures into a couple of different directions, but mainly focuses on the aftermath of the spawn that Astarion has released and the personal development of the main cast, alongside a number of original characters that get involved in the narrative. My goal was to create a kind of "DLC" experience, so you can expect a lot of themes that parallel the main game.

Q: Can I draw one of your characters, a scene from your story, or any of your characters interacting with mine/other characters? And can it be NSFW in nature? A: YOU ABSOLUTELY CAN, AND I'LL BE DELIGHTED TO SEE IT IF YOU CARE TO SHARE. I'm equally fine with NSFW as long as everyone involved (in the art and otherwise) is an adult.

Q: What drawing software/tablet/brushes do you use? A: I draw on a Wacom Cintiq 22, using Clip Studio Pro. I switch around brushes quite often but most of what I use comes from the DAUB super-bundle by Paolo Limoncelli.

Q: Where can I find more of your work? A: You can find mine and my partner's comics here, but please bear in mind that most of it is highly violent stuff and you should read the content warnings on the store page carefully before making any purchases - if in doubt of whether or not any of it could be detrimental to your mental health, DON'T BUY IT. Stay safe!

Q: Do you take commissions? A: I am not currently taking any new commission inquiries, sorry!

[kwanisms]

Kinktober 「10:22」 — p.seonghwa

» ateez menu | seonghwa menu | kinktober masterlist «

➮ naga!Seonghwa × fem!Reader wc: 6.3k summary: Y/N’s naga roommate is still trying to get used to the hustle and bustle of life in the city. He finds it difficult to go out and socialize as monsters aren’t socially accepted yet. So he tends to go a little stir crazy and get bored often. dinner time is no different when he suggests they do something fun. genres/themes/au: angst/fluff/smut; supernatural, horror, thriller; non idol au, monster idol au warnings: adult dialogue, female reader, supernatural and horror themes, mentions of: food & alcohol consumption, snakes, snake behavior (literally. Not metaphorically lol), snake biology and anatomy; sexual content (18+ mdni), see smut warnings under the cut! taglist has been moved to reblogs join my taglists! kinktober taglist is CLOSED! Strikethrough means I cannot tag you.  MINORS WILL BE BLACKLISTED & BLOCKED. AGELESS BLOGS WILL ALSO BE BLOCKED.

a/n: this was originally Wooyoung when I started planning but I couldn’t get the idea of naga!Seonghwa out of my head so I swapped him and Woo, giving Wooyoung siren instead. Nagas are one of my favorite creatures/monsters/cryptids. I have a special place in my heart for naga!Idols after writing that Mingi one for the Library of Illusion. It’s just a fun concept. Thank you for reading! If you like this, please consider reblogging and supporting my writing! The next part is another member of Ateez and it’s going to be an interesting one, so stay tuned! As always, this is a work of fiction and all characters are not reflective of their respective irl counterparts. for entertainment purposes only.

smut warnings: teratophilia (aka monsterfucking), table sex, double penetration (f receiving), oral (f receiving), unprotected sex (seonghwa is a snake man with two d!cks, they don’t make condoms for snake men. But they do make them for humans. So use them), multiple orgasms (f receiving), use of pet names (sweetheart, baby, angel, etc.), that should be all but of course, let me know if I missed any. kinks: Table/counter sex + double penetration dialogue prompt: ❛❛ I’m bored. Let’s fuck. ❜❜

═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════

You stared, dumbstruck, at your roommate as he stared at you with his bright, green, reptilian eyes.

“What did you just say?” you asked incredulously as a smirk started to form on his face. “I said,” he started, never taking his eyes off yours. “I’m bored.” Your eyes narrowed as you stared him down. “I meant after that,” you retorted. The smirk on his face grew even more.

“Let’s fuck.”

When he had initially said those words to you, it was after you had returned home from work, excited to have the entire weekend off to relax and unwind. You had been prepared to come home, make dinner, and perhaps curl up on the couch with your favorite bottle of wine.

What you hadn’t expected was for your naga roommate to suggest the two of you have sex to combat his boredom. That was the furthest thing from your mind. The idea of fucking your 4.5 meter long naga roommate had not even crossed the threshold of possibilities in your mind.

When you first met Seonghwa, it was like seeing the Loch Ness Monster or Bigfoot for the first time. Nothing truly prepares you for seeing a cryptid for the very first time. There are no preparation classes or exams for that kind of thing. You have to rely on your instincts and while every single bone in your body had told you to run, you just couldn’t bring yourself to listen.

Despite his monstrous stature and long, snake-like body, Seonghwa was the exact opposite of a monster to you. He was kind, courteous, polite, and quiet. He sometimes had a bit of a chaotic streak but he was great company and you enjoyed every second you spent in his presence. 

When the Monster Relocation Initiative was enacted, making it illegal to discriminate against sentient humanoids, you found yourself wanting to help in some capacity because of your new budding friendship. You went through the proper channels, signing up for a monster roommate. Somehow, Seonghwa got matched with you and you were beyond excited to have him in your apartment.

Your ridiculously cramped apartment.

Not that it was cramped before, oh no. Before Seonghwa moved in, your apartment was just the right size. Perfect for you, living alone in a historic building renovated into apartments after the Monster Relocation Initiative was announced.

To you, your apartment was exactly the right size… for a single occupant. But add a 4.5 meter long snake-man and it started to get cramped real quick.

Not that you were complaining. On the contrary, you wouldn’t have it any other way. Seonghwa may technically be a monster but he was the furthest thing from scary. Was he capable of wrapping you in his strong coils, squeezing the life out of you and eating you whole? Probably, but you knew he would never do that.

The difference between most monsters and the ones protected in the M.R Initiative was that the humanoids were sentient, capable of intelligent thought and able to learn and distinguish the difference between right and wrong. Could Seonghwa kill you in your sleep? Of course, he was fully capable of that. But would he? No.

This integral difference between most monsters and the humanoids allowed most of them to get jobs and integrate into society. It was illegal to discriminate in any way against them, denying them employment, housing, or entry to establishments was punishable by law. They were legally members of society with citizenship cards, IDs and the right to vote.

Socially, however, was another matter entirely. While they couldn’t be denied jobs for being who they were, many places of employment found entirely valid, albeit bogus, reasons not to hire humanoids. This had been the subject of many of your conversations with Seonghwa by this point.

He often complained of boredom, being cooped up in the apartment all day. It was a difficult subject and rather sensitive for him. His lack of employment. Since Seonghwa moved into your place, you’d taken on most, if not all, of the financial responsibility, paying all the bills, buying all the household groceries and supplies. Again, you weren’t complaining entirely. You enjoyed having Seonghwa around.

He did wonders for your mental health, which was why you often sat and listened to his complaints.

The topic of unemployment had come up again while you sat at your dining room table, where you were finishing up your dinner, Seonghwa having finished a long time ago. He had been talking about his day spent inside while you were outside, at work. He complained of the boredom and you listened patiently.

“Come on, Y/N!” he whined for the nth time that day. “I'm so bored!” You swallowed your mouthfuls of noodles before giving him an apologetic look. “Hwa,” you said calmly, setting your fork down as you finished your meal. “Why don't you try again and find another job?”

His lack of employment wasn’t entirely his fault. He’d been extremely diligent in the beginning, applying for a plethora of jobs he was more than qualified for. He managed to secure job interviews left and right but each time after the interview, the result was the same and after almost a year of numerous failures to secure a job, Seonghwa became more and more dejected. More depressed.

While being legally accepted into society, Seonghwa was still not accepted socially due to his monstrous size and form. He’d been passed over again and again for job simply because he looked different. The more human the humanoids looked, the more likely they were to blend in and while the top part of Seonghwa was human enough, the other three meters of him was all too telling of his nature.

It had been well over a year since Seonghwa started living with you and while you were financially capable of handling the household bills until he did manage to land a job, Seonghwa was berating and beating himself up for it. He often snuck into your bed, at least as much of his body that would fit, and the two of you would stay up, talking late into the wee hours of the morning.

Most of his concerns circulated the same train of thought: finding a job and establishing himself as a member of society. He hated the isolation that his previous life forced on him, living all alone in the caves in the mountains with no one to talk to, being confined to the caves and starving until some poor creature wandered into his lair. He hated every second of it.

It was nice, having a warm body near you, and while Seonghwa wasn’t the cuddliest creature, he did tend to wrap you up in his embrace, mainly to keep from pushing you off your bed with the rest of his huge, elongated body. The amount of heat between your bodies on some of the colder nights was nice but it left you wondering what the line between you was and had you crossed it already.

You'd be lying if you said you didn't think about Seonghwa in that way. More than once you had walked in on him showering, water running down his human torso as he tried to wash only his hair and not get his scales wet. Not because he couldn't get wet but because he didn't want trail water everywhere.

You pushed the inappropriate thoughts aside as your friend started to speak.

“What's the point?” he muttered. “All I get is rejected. By jobs, by society, by everyone.”

You felt your heart sink. Your poor best friend. He was such a bright, bubbly person-- monster? He had so much love to give so to see him so down pulled at your heartstrings. You set your chopsticks down and reached across your tiny table to place a gentle hand over his that rested on the wooden surface.

Seonghwa looked from your hand up to meet your gaze as you smiled warmly at him. “I don't reject you,” you said softly. Seonghwa accepted your gesture, taking your hand in both of his hands and bringing it to his face, turning your hand over and pressing your palm against his cheek. “I know,” he whispered. “Thank you.”

As quickly as it started, the tender moment was over when your phone buzzed violently against the table. Using your free hand, you grabbed the device as Seonghwa stared wide-eyed, his slit-like pupils widening to twice their normal width. “Ugh. What part of working hours do my bosses not understand,” you grumbled, reading over your supervisor's text. 

“It’s the weekend and nearly nine at night,” you added as you read over more of the message. “Well, at least I can handle this from home,” you continued when Seonghwa didn't reply.

You glanced up, mid-text, to see why he wasn't responding. He was looking at your phone, a far off look in his eyes. “Hwa?” you called gently. He seemed to snap out of it and look up at you. “Are you alright?” you asked softly. Seonghwa nodded, eyes fixating on your phone again. “That sound,” he started, voice barely above a whisper. You looked down at your phone and back up to your friend.

“The vibration? Oh shit! I totally forgot!” you said quickly changing the vibration settings on your phone. In the wild, snakes sense the world by vibration and heat signatures. Seonghwa was no different. He'd told you in the beginning how highly sensitive to vibrations he was. He also can see in the dark using heat.

“It's not that,” Seonghwa said suddenly. “It reminded me of… nevermind,” he said after a brief pause. You could tell something was on his mind. Not wanting him to feel like he couldn't talk to you, you locked your phone screen before setting the device back on the table, face down and giving Seonghwa your undivided attention.

“No,” you started. “It's okay, you can tell me.”

You noticed how Seonghwa's cheeks turned a slightly darker shade of peach. “No,” he said nonchalantly, waving his hand. “It's nothing.”

You stared at him, waiting for him to feel the weight of your stare which took less than three seconds. “You know you can tell me anything,” you replied kindly. “You know I'll never judge you.” Seonghwa gave you a very pointed stare, raising one eyebrow.

“Okay, except for that one time I saw you swallow three whole rotisserie chickens at the store, I won't judge you.”

A familiar smile broke over your roommate's face as he remembered the day in question. “The look on your face was priceless,” he mused, a giggle escaping him. You rolled your eyes.

“Yeah, but the chickens weren’t,” you retorted, causing Seonghwa to burst into laughter. “I know, I'm sorry,” he said between giggles. “I promise I'll pay you back!” You joined him in his laughter a moment later, shaking your head as he laughed loudly.

The laughter eventually subsided and you got up to clear the table, moving to the kitchen to wash the dishes. Seonghwa followed, leaning on his elbows against the kitchen island while he watched you. It was only a few dishes you needed to wash and once you set them aside and removed the gloves, you turned to find Seonghwa staring you down, his green eyes exploring your form.

“Hwa?” you called to him, drawing his attention slowly back up to meet your gaze. You saw the tip of his long tongue, which was remarkably human in color and forked, dart out to lick his lips. “I’m bored,” he said, making you roll your eyes as you moved to the fridge, your fingers wrapping around the handle only for his next words to make you freeze.

“Let’s fuck.”

You had been staring at him for a good five minutes, equal parts shocked and confused by his sudden proposal. “What did you just say?” you asked, your voice cracking as a smirk spread across his face. “I said I’m bored,” he repeated, trying to play coy. You shook your head. “I meant after that.”

Seonghwa’s smirk only grew as he stared at you, his eyes seeming to glow slightly. “Let’s fuck,” he repeated, his words taking all the breath from your lungs. Never had he been so bold. He’d never been so forward with you before. You felt a wave of heat course through your body, spreading from your core to your extremities and settling in the pit of your stomach.

“What… why… how…” you tried three times to ask a question but each time, the words failed you. Seonghwa tilted his head with a mischievous smile. “Snake got your tongue?” he asked, a hint of amusement in his voice. “I – uh…” you trailed off, cheeks burning under his gaze.

“Are you always this eloquent?” Seonghwa asked jokingly. “What prompted this?” you finally managed to choke out. Seonghwa shrugged, leaning back up. You could hear the coils of his snake body slide over the wooden floor, the boards creaking slightly under his weight.

“I’ve thought about it all day actually,” he said simply. “Thought about what?” you asked, your voice cracking again. “Fucking you when you got home.”

Coughing overtook you as you accidentally inhaled your own spit. Seonghwa was by your side in an instant, guiding you to sit down at the table and offering you your glass from the table. You took a couple sips while he rubbed your back soothingly. “Does the idea of fucking me gross you out that much?” he joked. You quickly shook your head.

“That's not it,” you replied quickly, voice raspy from the choking and coughing. “I'm not opposed at all actually.”

You stopped, turning to look at Seonghwa who was now smirking at you, a devilish grin on his face. “Oh really now?” he asked softly, tilting his head. “Thought about me in that way, have you?”

Your face burned again, cheeks growing warm as you nervously pulled at the collar of your shirt. “Is it warm in here?” you murmured, looking down at your bowl full of broth that was now definitely cold.

Seonghwa's smirk grew. “It's a little warm,” he answered, reaching up to brush your cheek before leaning in, lips inches from your ear. “But it's about to get a whole lot hotter.”

You stared at the naga as he continued to smirk at you, a mischievous glint in his eye. “W-what do you mean?”

Seonghwa leaned his upper torso on the table, the bottom snake half of his body resting on the wooden floor, the boards creaking beneath his weight. He cocked his head, still smirking. “It means,” he started, eyes quickly scanning your frame before darting back up to meet your gaze. “That I'm bored.”

His answer was anticlimactic and that must have showed on your face because he quickly held up a finger, making you wait. “Let me elaborate,” he added. You nodded, motioning for him to continue speaking. He lowered his finger, again scanning you quickly.

“I've always found you insanely attractive for a human. Normally your kind grosses me out or maybe they just annoy me,” he said, bringing his hand up to tap his chin thoughtfully. “Regardless,” he continued. “You're the first human to treat me with kindness and aren't bothered by my… unconventional appearance.”

You opened your mouth to protest his word choice but he simply took your chin in his hand, halting your movements. "Don't deny it," he stated, giving you a stern look. “You know that other humans aren't so keen on my kind. I don't look human enough for them. It's why no one will hire me and why you've been covering my ass all this time.”

Again you tried to speak but he gave your head a gentle shake.

“I'm still talking, sweetheart,” he continued, his voice dropping an octave. Heat rushed between your thighs at the sound of his deep husky tone of his voice. You tried to discreetly squeeze your thighs together but Seonghwa had always been so perceptive.

“Back to what I was saying,” he said, a smirk returning to his lips as he rested his free hand on your thigh. “I find you exceptionally attractive. Everything about you is enticing. Your voice, your eyes, your smile…” he trailed off, eyes lowering to your thighs clenching together. “Even your scent,” he rasped.

You let out a tiny gasp as you felt the pointed tips of his nails dig slightly into the exposed flesh of your thigh. “And judging by your reactions and what you said moments ago, you clearly are attracted to me,” he continued, glancing back up.

You pulled your bottom lip gently between your teeth as he eyed you. “Isn't that right?” he asked, tilting his head. You nodded, not trusting your voice to speak. “And so let me rephrase my earlier statement,” Seonghwa said, moving his hand from your chin to grab the back of your neck.

“I'm bored. Let’s fuck.”

You had no chance to respond, only gasp before your voice was muffled, Seonghwa closing the short distance between your lips and taking you in a searing kiss.

The hand on your thigh held steady, fingers squeezing your thigh as Seonghwa parted your lips with his and his tongue slipped into your mouth. One of the more unsettling features was his forked tongue. You'd never felt it before but you were surprised it was soft, almost like a human tongue only forked and much longer.

Seonghwa pulled back much too quickly for your liking, chuckling when you attempted to pull him back in for another kiss. “Easy, sweetheart,” he murmured. “I'm not going anywhere.”

You whined when he dodged another one of your attempts to kiss him. “Hwa!” you whined but he merely chuckled before pushing your centerpiece and other table decorations from the surface. They fell to the floor with a clatter while you stared wide eyed at your roommate.

“Are you ins-”

“Get on the table,” Seonghwa ordered, stopping you in your thoughts. You blinked incredulously at him. “O-on the table?” you stammered. He nodded, standing up straight. Looking at the now clear surface, you looked back at him. “Wh-why?”

“Because,” he said in a growl, the hand on your thigh sliding up under your loose shorts. “This is the dinner table and I'm hungry.”

You quickly scrambled up, ignoring the way the table creaked as you scooted into position. Seonghwa was quick to pull off the shirt he was wearing. He only wore it around you at your insistence. His naked, toned torso was distracting at times. 

“Take these off,” he ordered, tugging at the hem of your shorts. 

You moved at lightning speed, pursuing the material down and discarding it on the floor. “These too,” Seonghwa continued, running his thumb over the thin material of your panties. You were about to comply when an idea popped into your head. 

“You take them off,” you retorted. 

Seonghwa eyed you, squinting suspiciously before he leaned over, towering over your form. “If I take them off, I'll ruin them,” he replied. “You really want that?” You shook your head. “Control your strength,” you answered. “Tease me. Seduce me.” Seonghwa laughed out loud. “You're lying on your back all but presenting yourself to me on the table, sweetheart,” he stated. “I think I've already seduced you.” 

Wordlessly, you sat up, pushing him back. “Then I guess I'll get dressed again,” you replied, moving to drop to the floor but Seonghwa stopped you, fingers wrapping around your throat lightly. “Like hell you will. You want me?” he asked, eyes burning into yours. You swallowed thickly against his hand, nodding slowly.

“Then you're gonna lie back, spread your legs and let me tease you until you're begging me for my cock,” he continued. Almost as if his words were hypnotizing, you slowly laid back as his hand slid from your neck and down your chest to the hem of your shirt.

He pushed it up as he leaned over. Your eyes fluttered shut as you felt his lips leave light kisses down your stomach. “You want me to tease you?” he asked softly. “I'll tease you, alright?”

You let out a soft moan as his kisses moved further and further, skipping over your core and starting at your knee. You chanced a glance at him, moaning loudly as your gaze met his. His lips parted in a grin before he continued kissing down the inside of your thigh, stopping to nip at the sensitive skin, making you gasp.

“God, I can smell you,” he groaned, burying his nose into your core. “I can't wait anymore,” he growled, pulling back, grabbing the sides of your panties and pulling them down your legs, leaving a trail of arousal smeared down your inner thigh. “I need to taste you.”

Before you could respond, Seonghwa had your legs over his shoulders and face buried in between them, tongue easily slipping between your folds. You gasped out, hands moving to his hair and gripping tightly. “Holy fuck, Seonghwa!” you gasped.

He chuckled, the sound sending vibrations to his tongue. “I'm going to ruin oral for you,” he murmured, pulling back to look at your glistening sex. “From now on, only I will be able to eat you out. No one else will be able to compare.”

You moaned again as his tongue returned to your clit, the appendage wriggling and teasing the sensitive nub. "Hwa," you whined, chest heaving as you panted. His hands pushed your thighs further apart, opening more of you up to him. “Don't worry, sweetheart,” he replied. “You'll cum eventually.”

You felt his tongue prod at your hole and almost as soon as he found it, his tongue was slithering its way in, making you whimper, walls clenching as his tongue explored your pussy. “S-Seonghwa!” you cried out, back arching off the hardwood. He pulled back before your orgasm washed over you, making you whimper in protest. “Be patient,” he said simply as he gave you another devilish smirk.

His tongue was back on you in an instant, flicked your clit as his claws dug further into your skin but not enough to make you bleed. You knew you were going to bruise from his insane grip. Your fingers tightened their hold on his hair as he ran his tongue up and down your clit, the forked, pointed tip a strange contrast to the oddly human feeling of the muscle.

Your hips started to buck, rolling against his face as your orgasm approached once more. Seonghwa groaned, letting you rut against his tongue, keeping his head still for a moment before he grabbed your hips, pinning them down against the wood as he went back in, lapping at your clit in rapid movements until the tension that had been building finally snapped like a rubber band and your climax washed over you.

You let out a moan that bordered on a whine as you tugged at Seonghwa’s hair, trying to pull him away from your sensitive nub as your body jerked in reaction to each drag of his tongue over your swollen clit. “Hwa,” you breathed. “Please. No more.” He obliged instantly, withdrawing from your cunt and kissing a wet path up your body. Stopping at the edge of your black bralette.

This needs to come off,” he murmured, taking the material in his teeth and tugging lightly. “D-don’t rip it,” you whispered, moving to sit up on the edge of the table, making him sit up straight and watch as you pulled your shirt off over your head, letting it fall to the floor with your panties. You held his gaze as you pulled your bralette off, letting it also drop to the floor. His eyes left yours, gaze wandering down to take in the sight of your bare chest.

“You have no idea how many times I’ve thought about this,” he said softly, shifting to lean over you, his lips meeting yours in a much slower, more languid kiss as he laid you back against the table, the wood creaking under your combined weights. “What if it breaks?” you whispered against his lips.

“That would be impressive,” he murmured, lips ghosting over yours as he moved to kiss your neck. You could feel something rubbing against your cunt and glanced between your bodies to see the slit at the base of his torso. It was something you’d noticed plenty of times. The bump surrounding the slit wasn’t massive but it was still a decent size. It didn’t occur to you until then that was where his genitals were located.

Your head fell back against the table as he nipped at and sucked small love bites into the sensitive skin where your neck and shoulder met. “Hwa,” you breathed out, back arching slightly, pressing your chest against his. “Hmm?” he hummed in response, his tongue gliding over your pulse point and up to the base of your ear. “I need you,” you whispered.

“Needy little baby,” Seonghwa said as he let out a chuckle and shifted slightly, pressing that mound at the base of his torso against your wet core. “Does my little angel need me?” he cooed in your ear. “Wants me to fuck her?” You nodded, whining as he rutted against you, your arousal smearing over his skin. “Then who am I to deny her?”

He pulled back slightly and you let out a whine of protest but you quickly felt something hot and warm brush against your cunt and gasped. You tried lifting your head but Seonghwa made that impossible, taking you into a searing kiss. “Hwa,” you grumbled as his lips left yours. “I wanna see.”

Seonghwa snorted but pulled back slightly. “You wanna see what?” he asked, tilting his head slightly. “I wanna see it,” you said, trying to look down between your bodies. Seonghwa let out a dry laugh but obliged you, pushing himself up. Your eyes traveled down his lean body until you were met with a sight you were not expecting.

The slit had been split open and not one but two cocks had emerged. They were a pale pink color, the tips slightly red. Whether that coloration was natural or because he was aroused, you had no idea and you weren’t sure if you wanted to ask. The general shape was relatively human-like except for the head. The tip of each cock was slightly pointed, the base of the head flaring out a small amount.

The shafts were both mostly smooth with a few prominent veins. White beads of precum oozing from the slits on both. You pushed yourself up onto your elbows to get a better view, lips parting in awe. Seonghwa watched your expression, keeping an eye on your body language as you eyed him up. He knew he was quite different from a human in this regard and the look on your face was anything but disgust. There was an excited look in your eyes.

And that, in turn, excited him.

“You done staring?” he asked in an amused tone. Your eyes snapped up to meet his. “Sorry,” you whispered as he leaned over you, lips inches from yours. “It’s just so different.” Seonghwan hummed in response, lips brushing against yours as he leaned in closer. “You like what you see?” he asked softly. You nodded, eyes fluttering shut as his lips ghosted over yours before kissing you softly.

“You want both of them at the same time?” You let out a sound between a moan and a sob. “Yes,” you groaned as his lips kissed slowly along your jaw. “I want both of them in me.” Seonghwa held back the growl that rumbled in his chest. “Let’s start with just one,” he murmured in your ear. “On your stomach for me, baby.”

You quickly got up, turning to face the table. Before you could actually climb onto it, Seonghwa bent you over the edge, pressing your chest against the wooden surface. “I’ll go slow,” he said softly as he leaned over your back, the tip of one of his cocks pressing against your cunt. “I promise.” You nodded in response. “I trust you,” you whispered as you felt the very tip of his cock part your folds.

“Tell me if I hurt you, okay?” he asked softly. You nodded wordlessly, folding your arms in front of you as he grabbed your hips, stilling behind you as he looked down at where one of his cocks was about to disappear into you. He wasn’t lying earlier, he had thought about this moment for a while now.

“Oohh shiiiit,” you groaned, burying your face into your forearm as you felt Seonghwa ease the tip of his cock into your cunt. You heard him hiss from behind you. F-fuuuuuuck,” he grunted as he bottomed out, burying all of his length into your walls.

“You feel so warm,” he muttered, one hand moving to rest against the table, the other keeping a firm grip on your hip. “S’full,” you whimpered, your walls fluttering around and gripping Seonghwa’s cock as your body tried to adjust and accommodate him.

“Yeah?” he asked with a slight chuckle. “You like that? You like feeling full, baby?”

You responded with a whimper as he pulled back and gave you a gentle and shallow thrust, a deep rumble sounding from his chest. Almost like a purr. “Fucking hell, so warm and tight,” he said again, marveling at how strong of a grip you had on him.

“It’s like you’ve never been fucked.”

You groaned as he picked up the pace, his hips hitting your ass with each thrust with a slap. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Seonghwa hissed, slowing his hips. “I’m gonna cum if you keep doing that,” he growled.

That being the constricting of your walls around his cock. “I c-can’t control that,” you gasped as he gave you a deep thrust. “Well try, damnit,” he huffed. “I don’t want this to end before it’s really even started.” You cried out as he gave you another deep thrust. “Ooh, that’s new,” he said cheekily, repeating the same action. “Your neighbors might not enjoy all the sound though.”

You had no chance or urge to respond as he picked up the pace again, pounding into you from behind. “What? No snarky comeback this time?” he asked, chuckled as you shook your head, unable to speak. The wood under you creaked as he leaned over, placing his other hand on the table for leverage.

“You won’t be able to walk when I’m done with you,” he whispered in your ear. As if to drive his point home, he shoved all of his cock into your cunt and held it there, enjoying the way you struggled against him and whimpered. “Feels that good, huh?” he whispered as you started to relax under him.

You felt the tip of his tail curl around your ankle. “I can feel your heart pounding,” he murmured, lips tailing along your shoulder as his chest dressed against your back. “I can hear it. I can smell you,” he continued. “You’re really into this, aren’t you?”

You nodded, shuddering as he started to pull back and resume thrusting. “I never would have pegged you to be a monster fucker,” he chuckled. You let out a groan as you felt the pad of his thumb press against your asshole. “What’re you -ah!” you gasped as he slowly pushed the tip of his thumb into you. “If you want to take both, I should probably prepare you,” he said softly.

Your walls clenched around his cock and he groaned, movements halting momentarily as he tried to regain his composure. “I told you to stop doing that,” he said in a low voice as he pushed his thumb further into you. You moaned against the wood of the table. Seonghwa quickly withdrew his thumb, letting a drop of spit fall onto your asshole before pushing two fingers into you, making you gasp, your hands balling into fists. “You okay?” he asked softly as he stilled.

You nodded. The intrusion, while welcome, still stung slightly. Seonghwa gave you a moment to adjust, slowly working your hole open, stretching slightly as he moved his fingers in and out of you. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to stretch you fully,” he murmured as he felt his cock inside your walls twitch. “It’s fine.” you said in a breathless voice. “Just put them both in.”

Seonghwa grimaced at the thought of roughly shoving his cock into you, knowing it would hurt you greatly. “No,” he murmured, shaking his head. “We’ll just have to be patient.”

Your body had started to relax as he moved his fingers in and out of you slowly. After what felt like hours but was definitely only a few hours, he finally pulled his fingers out of you, resuming his thrusting. His pace was slow but the thrusts were powerful, rocking you into the table with each snap. Your hands tried to find purchase on the table as he continued to fuck you against the wooden surface.

“Oh fuck this,” Seonghwa suddenly growled, pulling out of you completely. You whined in protest but when he easily flipped you over onto your back you stopped whining. He lined both cocks up with your holes, the first sliding into your cunt easy but the second needed some guidance and coaxing. He managed to ease the tip into your ass, making you gasp as you felt the head of his cock slowly start to stretch you further.

“Hey, hey,” he said suddenly, noticing your body tense up. “Relax,” he whispered. “It’s gonna hurt but only for a bit,” he added. You nodded up at him, taking a deep breath and letting out. As you exhaled, he pushed more of the head into you, the flared base of his cockhead stretching you more before it finally slipped snugly inside. Seonghwa paused, letting your body adjust, gently stroking your thighs and whispering words of praise and encouragement in your ear.

When you had relaxed even more, Seonghwa continued to push into you, both cocks filling your holes simultaneously. It was an entirely different experience, looking up into his green eyes as he pushed back into you slowly. You tried to maintain eye contact but your eyes betrayed you, rolling back as both cocks bottomed out. 

“Oh I like this more,” he chuckled, stilling as he let you adjust once more. After a few minutes, he started to move, setting a steady pace, pumping into you as he watched your face contort in pleasure. “I like being able to see your face. See the expressions you make as I fuck you,” he said as his pace increased, starting to pound into you. 

The feeling was foreign but you enjoyed it. Both holes being filled at the same time provided a new type of pleasure, one you’d never even considered before. You knew after this, there would be no going back to normal men or normal sex. Not when you had Seonghwa in your apartment. As if he read your mind, Seonghwa spoke up, repeating the same sentiments you’d thought to yourself.

“I don’t think I could give this up,” he groaned, hips hitting the back of your thighs and ass with each powerful thrust he gave you, the sound of skin hitting skin and the wet lewd sounds of his cocks slamming into you filling the apartment. “Now that I’ve had a taste,” he added.

“Gonna wanna fill you every night.” You moaned in agreement, knowing that your nightly routines were about to change forever. “Would you let me?” Seonghwa asked breathlessly as his hips stuttered. “You gonna let me fuck you every night now?” You nodded, moans raising in pitch as he continued to snap his hips, driving his cocks into you.

Your lips parted, a moan falling past them which was soon swallowed by Seonghwa as he leaned down, taking your lips in a messy kiss. His hips never faltered, his thrusts growing erratic as he drove both of you to orgasm. His tail was still curled around your ankle as he gave you a couple more thrusts, throwing you over the edge. Your walls tightened around his cock as you came, pushing him to his own climax.

Each moan you let out he swallowed eagerly as he fucked you both through your respective highs, emptying a ridiculous amount of cum into your abused holes until he finally stopped moving, his thick sticky cum dripping out of you and onto the floor. Neither of you spoke, only panting against each other as you tried to catch your breath and process what just happened.

Seonghwa finally pushed himself up, using the table for support as he looked down at you. “I think…” he started, speaking between each labored breath. “We should get cleaned up.” You nodded, your chest rising and falling with each pant. “I think that’s a good idea,” you croaked. Seonghwa smirked down at you as you licked your lips and tried to sit up. “What?” you asked, noticing the hungry look in his eyes.

“Round two in the shower?” he asked eagerly. You scoffed. “You just came! And a lot I might add,” you protested, feeling even more of his cum spill out of you. Seonghwa leaned in, pressing another kiss to your lips. “You forget I’m not human,” he murmured against your lips. “So?” you asked in between kisses.

“I have a lot more stamina than anyone you’ve ever fucked,” he continued, pulling back and giving you another smirk before kissing you once more. You felt heat settle in the pit of your stomach as you remembered the two cocks that had emerged from the slit, both pink with pointed reddened tips. A fresh wave of excitement and arousal coursed through you at the prospect of being filled with both of them, something you had begged for earlier. Seonghwa, sensing your excitement, gave you another couple of kisses.

“And besides,” he added. “I’m not done with you just yet.”

©️ kwanisms 2024 | all works on this blog are protected under copyright. Do not repost, continue, or translate my works. All graphics made by me.

[mxbluemarine]

Hey, so remember that cyber bullying is lame as fuck and we don't like people who do that? *edited with more information

*Second edit to this post. Rot uses she/it pronouns. I know this now, but during making this post I was unaware, so below the cut I referred to her with they/them, before correcting myself in my first edit. I do apologize for misgendering her, as that was not my intention. I hope you can understand, thank you for reading

Content warning for talk of bullying, body shaming, threats of harm, joking about sexual trauma, and like, manipulation?

So the tl;dr is there's a person who I've been recently warned about that's rejoined the selfship community. They've hurt two people I know personally and care deeply for. I'm making this post because they don't wish for the attention to be on them, which I completely understand

I don't have any personal connection to this person, however I value the words of these two people (who I will call Mutual-A and Mutual-B) and I only wish for their safety and comfort. I do not want any harm or rude things sent to this blog, simply block and move on

Reblogs would be appreciated, and I ask for people to at least skim over what I talk about under the read more. I don't feel comfortable knowing that my other mutuals interact with a person who's harmed people that I care for

^ their new user name, since I don't want to type here and accidentally find this places where it shouldn't be. I do believe they had a different selfship blog here, that has since disappeared, I think they deleted it, since I had the original blocked and this one wasn't.

Now like mentioned previously, I have no ties to this person and the only "interaction" I've had with them was seeing the incredibly rude and disgusting things they've said about Mutual-A. As a nonsharer myself and someone who fights with my mental issues, I don't think shaming someone's body and outright wishing physical violence on people who share your comfort characters is a sane or normal thing to do. If these screenshots look familiar it's because they've been taken from a post about this person in the past, when this was originally happening

Again, talk of body shaming and wishes of harm (which no matter how silly is still a threat)

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As for this second person, Mutual-B, what they've been through with them was some time ago. While Mutual-B wasn't a victim of harassment to as big of scale as Mutual-A, I still think their feelings on the matter are important to highlight. I don't have screenshots of these ordeals in particular, only word of mouth, but I trust this person deeply, and never before have they tried to bad mouth anyone without reason. On multiple occasions with this person Mutual-B has told me they threatened to call out B as a p.ro.shipper, something THEY ARE NOT, simply for reblogging or interacting with posts with tags they didn't already have filtered out. I've know B for a while now and I can tell you that it's simply not true

Warning for jokes of sexual trauma/SA and manipulation

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That's all. Once again reminding to NOT attack this person, just block and move on. For a community built on self love and comfort I don't find any of this shit to be acceptable to have in it

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EDIT, because apparently we're not done here.

Since making this post, this person (will be referring to them/her as Rot) has since made a post addressing the situation. I'm also adding on more screenshots found by myself and others (apologize for the quality of some, as they're taken from my computer due to the picture limit) Going to go ahead and add another content warning for talk of SA/a character who has committed it, will add more warnings if needed

First thing Rot talks about in her post is how her interaction with Moot-A was a year and a half ago, which isn't true, right now it's been barely over a year and two months ago. I feel like this is a way to try to paint us badly by "Bringing up stuff from way back in the past", I understand a few months difference isn't much, this is a tiny nitpick I'm sure but it still didn't settle right with me. I can also understand if this was just plain misremembering.

Second point, as for the warning above, Rot makes it clear that she ships herself with a canonical rapist, J.immy from the game Mouthwashing. The fact he assaulted his coworker is incredibly important to the story of the game, there is no denying it or any chance that this could be some gross misinterpretation. Not that Rot tries to deny this. She understands who Jimmy is. She just choices to ignore it.

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And I find that really fucking disturbing. Considering how she assures people she doesn't condone his actions and how she says she takes SA seriously, then why the fuck would you even ship with him in the first place? Would also like to point out that if you do choose to ignore the worst flaw of his character... there's still so much more to him that's simply bad. But that's irrelevant/personal opinion. J.immy is a well written character and villain, I can agree, however he is a man who should not be touched with a ten foot pole

Considering a lot of her harassment towards A was about how bad A was for "mischaracterizing" a shared F/o and how A diverged from canon, and how much she disliked A for it, I find it very hypocritical for her to ignore J.immy's biggest flaw. The fact she doesn't mention his actions in game isn't something I didn't notice either, whether that's intentional or not I'm not sure, but it still feels gross

She and others also mention the character K.enjaku. However, I have not watched/read J.J.K. so I have no comment on that.

My final note on this is simply. I don't care if you ship with villains, I myself have multiple characters that are villains or bad people that I hold dearly. (this is a reason why i'm hesitant to talk about this in particular) however. There's just some things and characters you shouldn't fucking touch.

The last thing I will add to this edit is her stance on pro.shipp.ing. She's reprimanded past friends for reblogging posts from pro.shippers, she's threatened to call them out as pro.ship for it. She also pointblank puts on her blog that she doesn't want that part of the community to interact with her. Except she still continues to reblog posts with the pro tags. People make mistakes, but the fact she's scolded and threatened people for doing the same while these posts get to stay on her blog upsets me

**I've also been given screenshots of dark content she's reblogged. Now I do agree with the statement that dabbling in darker themes with ships is fine (there's some big scary ""n*ance"" in that comment). I won't shame someone for enjoying fucking idk kidnapping or unhealthy relationship dynamics. Again, I don't think I'm the right person to play holier than thou on a high horse, but I feel it's worth mentioning since someone went as far as to send me those screenshots.

Warning for allusions to SA in the 3rd/nonfiltered post

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^^ last screenshot is added simply because nonsharervents has a "bad rep" because OP is neutral to/allows pro.shippers to interact

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[akawifeyy]

enchanted | smau & fic (OP81)

description: oscar piastri has always been one to think before acting, the consistent voice of reason that allows mclaren to be such a successful team. and then he meets you, the daughter of toto wolff — the team principal of mercedes — and all his efforts crumble like a castle made of sand.

tropes: forbidden romance, opposites attract, age gap (18 and 23), wolff!fem!reader

face claim: lucia ferrato

trigger warnings: suggestive content, swearing

| note: hope you all like this!

You knew the sacred rules of Formula One as an innocent, pure daughter of a team principal. Your father, Toto, had taught you to never interact with anyone outside of Mercedes, even if they were looked nice and acted friendly. You kept to yourself, only talking to Carmen sometimes when she visited, and maybe the drivers, if your father was there to monitor the conversation.

When you told your friends about all the safety precautions, how your father checked your phone every night to ensure that you weren't sneaking behind his back, they thought he was crazy. That he was overreacting, because you wouldn't do anything that bad.

But little did any of you know, Toto's fears would come true.

Because the moment a man arrived, promising you love and happiness for eternity, you fell for all his sweet nothings, hook, line, and sinker.

@ yourusername: Gestern war mein achtzehnter Geburtstag! Ich kann nicht glauben, wie die Zeit vergeht. Ich hatte einen schönen, entspannten Tag zu Hause mit Eva (meiner Lieblingshündin) und meinen Eltern. Ich bin nicht bereit, wieder zur Schule zu gehen 😓

(Yesterday was my eighteenth birthday! I can't believe how time flies. I had a nice, relaxing day at home with Eva [my favorite dog] and my parents. I'm not ready to go back to school 😓)

tagged: @ totowolff, @ mercedes, @ yourbffusername

comments (14):

@ yourbffusername: Happy belated birthday cutie!

-> @ yourusername: thank youu 🤗

@ totowolff: Ich bin so stolz auf alles, was du erreicht hast. Ich liebe dich so sehr, süßes Mädchen. Auf viele weitere Jahre voller Glück und Gesundheit.

(I am so proud of everything you have achieved. I love you so much, sweet girl. Here’s to many more years of happiness and health.)

Once your father had left the room, kissing you on the forehead and wishing you a good night, you tugged out the secret book you kept under your pillowcase. It was a thick romantasy novel, something one of your friends had loaned you. And it was definitely forbidden in the Wolff house.

It told the story of the fair maiden Elora, who had been kidnapped by the cruel Fae overlord, Ren. He wanted to use her blood to save his people, because of some strange prophecy you couldn't make heads-or-tails of. The two, originally so vehemently against one another, eventually fell in love, realizing that their differences didn't equal hatred. Now you were finally on the part where the tension would culminate in a very steamy scene.

You pulled the covers up to just below your eyes, flicking on the flashlight tucked within the book's cover. Your face grew redder and redder as you read.

Once you were finished, you realized how underwhelming your own life had been with romance. Your father had effectively caged you; you had barely any contact with members of the opposite sex.

It was ridiculous, but your father had all the power. Until you went off to uni, you would have no choice but to abide by his rules, no matter how much it annoyed you.

@ f1gossip: Oscar Piastri (McLaren) was asked not once, but twice today about his love life by some overeager fans. In response, he shrugged and said, "I don't really focus on romantic exploits, I leave that to Lando."

tagged: @ f1, @ formulaonelore

comments (485):

@ user1: oscar is SUCH a savage 💀

-> @ user2: Lando is probably seething lmaoo

@ user3: ngl he'd be super cute w y/n wolff, they're both private and introverted 🤔

-> @ user4: no way that THIS is the way i find out Toto has a daughter

-> @ user3: yep! she's 18

Text messages between Y/N and your best friend, Sophie (2025)

You scrolled through Oscar's Instagram page, analyzing (and admiring) his face and body. As a F1 driver, he had to maintain a top-tier physique, putting in loads of hours at the gym, and you could tell. His biceps were almost triple the size of your own.

It was fun to fantasize about a romantic relationship with him, but you knew exactly how your father would react. He would yell at you, saying that you were giving up everything he had built for some man who'd betray you in an instant. He'd call you selfish, and hormonal. And maybe that was true. Maybe you did want to feel something other than the sensation of being a trapped animal, helpless and lost.

Your friends told you stories about their own romantic adventures. Sophie herself had informed you about how a guy had tried to take a peek up her skirt. A week later, she'd ended up going on a date with him, because she'd accidentally bled through the fabric since she'd started her period without realizing. Sophie had been dating him for almost two years at this point, and you knew you were falling so behind, you'd never catch up.

Your other best friend, Rhiannon, had made you take a Rice Purity test. To no one's surprise, you had a 100. You'd never even "danced with someone without leaving room for Jesus". It was so embarrassing.

Yet, despite all this ill will against your father, everyone knew you'd never actually confront him about it. He was six foot five, temperamental, and absolutely terrifying when provoked. There wasn't anything that was worth being on the receiving end of his wrath.

So you were about to go to university with almost zero experience with talking to the opposite gender. You were two seconds away from becoming a nun in a convent at this point.

And then...

Oscar Piastri himself reached out to you.

Instagram conversation between Y/N and Oscar

comments (2849):

@ user5: OMG wait is this real???

@ user6: i can't believe our fave hermit is finally talking to a man! 😭

-> @ user7: She's not really a hermit, her dad is just strict

@ user8: Oscar's such a liar we knewwww there had to be something happening with his love life, he's too cutie for there not to be

@ yourusername: actually, a lot is going on at the moment 😋

tagged: @ yourbffusername

comments (5):

@ yourbffusername: We all know what's happening

-> @ yourusername: 😇

-> @ yourbffusername: Hope you're having fun though <3

A month and a half later

"I don't want to push you past anything you're not comfortable with," Oscar warned, his brown eyes crinkled into a serious, stern expression. "I don't want to rush you."

"I'm ready," you reassured him for what felt like the thousandth time.

Oscar took a step forward, closing the distance between you in less than a blink of an eye. His hand tugged back your loose strands of hair, gripping your jaw as he kissed you.

You bucked, leaning into his touch and going boneless. This was like nothing you'd ever felt before. Like a thousand stars, exploding right under your skin. Like finally being able to drink water after stumbling in a barren desert for centuries.

When you broke apart, both of your faces were flushed, cheeks blotted red with pleasure.

Oscar grinned. "How was that? Everything you ever dreamed of?"

"And more."

The day after

You had told your father that you were going to Sophie's house, maybe to play pool or watch a movie. He'd let you go, begrudgingly, after you promised to study extra the next day. Little did he know, you were actually with Oscar.

Your phone was safely with Sophie, and she knew your password to reply to any messages Toto might send your way. Your plan was fool-proof.

Oscar placed his palm on the square of your back, following you into the restaurant. Your eyes immediately scanned the interior, looking for a familiar face that might rat you out, but there were none.

The restaurant was thankfully quiet and nearly empty, save for a few stragglers who were ordering drinks from the bar.

Oscar ordered a steak, medium-rare, and you ordered a bowl of fried chicken tenders. While you waited, you drummed your fingers on the table, listening to the lo-fi music emitting from the speakers above.

"I wanted to talk to you about something," Oscar said.

You raised an eyebrow. "Yeah?"

"Your father."

You bit your lip, unsure of how to proceed. "What about him? Did you talk to him?"

Oscar shook his head. "No, I didn't. But I don't want to keep our relationship a secret anymore. I like you, Y/N, and I understand that your father cares about you too, but he can't keep you tied up forever. You're mine, and he's going to have to come to terms with that."

"He won't."

Oscar shrugged. "He'll have to."

You exhaled a shaky breath, weighing your options. All the sneaking around had caused you a lot of extra stress, and you knew it was only a matter of time until your father realized what was happening. Perhaps it was better to tell him now, before things snowballed.

"Fine," you conceded after a long pause, and you prayed that you hadn't just signed your and Oscar's death warrants.

From @ oscarpiastri's Instagram story

comments (4298):

@ user9: SOFT LAUNCHHH

@ user10: omg WHO IS THIS WHO IS THIS 😲😲😲

-> @ user11: i bet you 5 bucks it's Y/N wolff

@ user12: screaming crying throwing up 🤯

@ user13: My nosy ahh can't handle this I wanna know who this is so bad

-> @ user14: AGREED

@ oscarpiastri: You can thank the fans. Happy three months, Y/N, you're the light of my life. Love you ❤

tagged: @ yourusername

comments (8794):

@ user15: called it since day 1.

-> @ user3: me too!

@ user8: OMG NO WAYY 🤭

@ user16: Happy 3 months!

-> @ user16: They're adorable I'm gonna start sobbing *rocks back and forth*

@ yourusername: Love you too mein papaya-Prinz 😚🧡

─── ୨୧ ─── THE END ─── ୨୧ ───

[everlastingauthor]

Hi! This is my first time seeing your blog and it looks amazing! I was wondering do you take writing requests? If you don't, it's okay. I was wondering how would Shanks react if someone insulted his lover by saying "You shouldn't have been born" or "Your existence causes a lot of suffering" to them? How would the Red-Haired pirates react?

Their Reactions

➣ Tags: Shanks, Mihawk, Buggy, Gender Neutral Reader, Insults, Angst, Abuse, & Comfort

➣ Media: One Piece

➣ Request Open: ☑Yes | No

➣ Author's Note: Almost crashed out because I originally written this earlier and was happily about to post it only for Tumblr to say bad connection and delete my process, I was about to just do it tomorrow but I'm not going to let Tumblr make me crash out. So here's the request I decided to throw in Mihawk and Buggy. If you like my content follow me, if you like this silly fic then heart, comment, and share. Please do not re upload my work anywhere else or feed it an ai bot.

Shanks

You had been shopping in town with Shanks, you wanted to get some supplies and food for the ship since the crew would be set sailing tonight, and you of course always set sail with your strawberry colored haired boyfriend. You decide to make creamy garlic chicken and roasted vegetables for the crew tonight, as you and Shanks walked through the market, you walked up to a fruit stand seeing the delicious peaches and oranges, fruits were definitely high on the list and you could make a nice peach pie for dessert. " How can I help you? " The man said, but you and fruit seller both froze up when your gaze locked on each other. This fruit seller was an old boyfriend of yours someone that you broke with because they were toxic and controlling, you couldn't handle their cruel words or trying to control every aspect of your life, and whenever you tried to breakup with them, they would break down and gaslight you into staying trapped in the relationship, so that instead of breaking up you ran away from them. Five months later and you were in a relationship with Shanks. " [Reader] " The fruit seller named Mark's tone was cold. You turned towards Shank and gave a weary smile. " Let's go get fruit from a different stand. " You asked, a bit of pleading in your voice.

Shanks could sense your discomfort and nodded his head, as you and Shanks began walking away Mark spoke out again. " Go ahead run away, like you always do like you did from us that's your existence causes a lot of suffering, you caused me a lot of suffering! " Mark's voice filled with anger and distaste. You stopped in your tracks and shoved the bags into Shanks arms along with the list, if there's one thing Shanks knew about you is that you didn't let anyone get away with talking shit to you, so he watched as you stomped up to the fruit stand to confront your ex. " Suffering? I caused you suffering!? I ran off because you were a selfish bastard and a control freak, so of course I ran away because I couldn't have a normal breakup or relationship with you! " You pressed down on your words believing each one. " I'm glad I ran away because I found someone way greater than you, I pray the next person you get with doesn't have to witness the pain and horrors you cause to feel so big. " With that you turned away and walked off.

Shanks watched as you took the bags and list from his hands and walked away, Shanks knew with how heated you were that you would forget the fruit, so he walked up to Mark's stand and began putting fruit in the bag as Mark stood there fuming. " That's my [Reader] always fierce and doesn't let anyone push her around, but be glad that they went off your with words, because I wouldn't use words but I don't want to ruin this amazing market or this delicious looking fruit. Hopefully your next relationship is as fresh and healthy as these oranges. " Shanks grinned placing the right amount of berries into Mark's hand. " Have a good day. " Shanks walked away catching up with you. Back at the ship he let you vent your frustrations and feelings, as you two cuddled in bed.

Buggy

You had been dating Buggy was quite a while, you joined his crew after he fell in love with your humor and eyes. Oh how your jokes made him laugh until his sides hurt and he could always get lost in your eyes. While Buggy loved having you on board some of the crews members didn't especially Micheal, he couldn't handle Buggy's favoritism over you. How Buggy didn't give you much to do, yell at you, or let you sleep in for however long you wanted. Michael also found your talkative behavior and jokes annoying, he sometimes wished that whenever the ship was attacked that you would die first. While Buggy was making plans with some crew members, you went to go get some sun on your skin. Micheal and three other crew members named Slice, Molly, and Apollo were playing cards, you wanted in on the game and asked to join of course Molly and Apollo told you to hop on it, Micheal rolled his eyes but didn't say anything. As the game began you were on a wining streak always having good cards and a good poker face. Once in awhile you would tell jokes that would make Apollo and Molly laugh, but Micheal didn't he just tried to bite his tongue.

But this didn't last long especially when you kept beating Micheal. " Well, I guess that's game looks like my ability at cards is unmatched. " You grinned proudly as Apollo and Molly congratulate you for winning but Micheal sat there pouting like a child who just got their candy taken away. " Aw, come on Mikey turn that smile upside down it's just a game, you'll win next time just not against me. " You teased. " Just shut up already, you are so damn annoying, I only tolerate you because of Captain Buggy this ship would be so much more peaceful and better, if you weren't born you shouldn't have been born! " Micheal yelled. You sat there stunned with Molly and Apollo, tears began pricking in your eyes as you ran off. Micheal didn't care that he made you cry but when he saw Apollo and Molly's scared faces looking at something behind him, he turned around but it wasn't something but someone. It was Buggy with a cold look and a snarl, Micheal swallowed hard and tried to explain himself even tried to get Molly and Micheal to back him up but those two were gone, it was just Micheal and Buggy.

Buggy eventually found you in the the cabin that you two shared, crying into a pillow on your side of the bed, Buggy laid down pulled you close to him. " You're not annoying and I'm glad you were born sugarplum, you make me the happiest clown through the entire sea, Michael has lost left our circus business and will no longer bother you ever again~ " Buggy rubbed your back. You knew what that meant and buried your face in Buggy's chest appreciating your boyfriend's comfort.

Mihawk

You were once a marine but only because your mother wanted you to follow in her footsteps, she would push you so hard to the point it became abuse, so when you finally became a marine. You came across Mihawk and the two of you fell in love, of course your mother would never approve, she already wanted to set you up with another marine that was up to her standards. Your mother never forgave you for running away with Mihawk and your position at the marines, but you couldn't care less you were happy with Mihawk and he was happy with you. Since you and Mihawk had been dating for a long time, your anniversary was on Friday and Mihawk planned to take you out to dinner, the two of you helped each other get ready and arrived at the restaurant, it was beautiful and the food smelled delicious. " They say this place as the best wine, I'll be the judge of that. " Mihawk said pulling out your chair. You rolled your eyes, knowing how much your boyfriend loved wine. As you picked up your menu to look, you froze up hearing a familiar voice at the table. You turned your head seeing your mother drinking with some marines, your mother noticed your gaze and the two of you stared at each. You turned your head away quickly and focused on your menu well tried to focus and calm yourself. " Are you okay dearest? " Mihawk asked.

You nodded your head. " Yes, I'm fine let's just order. " You gave a weary smile. Mihawk could tell you weren't fine but didn't press the manner he would ask when you are both back home, the two of you went through dinner talking and laughing you had forgotten about your mother. Once you and Mihawk finished dinner and dessert, you two were ready to head home. As you guys waited for the check, your mother walked over intoxicated on whatever she was drinking, as her icy cold glare was on you. " Oh, look its the two love birds. " Your mother held onto the table leaning in close to you as you shrank in your seat. " I see you and him are still together when you could have been with Tony, your existence causes me a lot of suffering more than when I birthed you, you shouldn't have been more you ungrateful little - " Your mother words were cut short as Mihawk had his sword at her neck. " I would refrain from talking to my partner in such a manner unless you want to lay across this table like a check. " Mihawk withdrew his sword as your mother stood there trembling, Mihawk walked over to you. " Let's go [Reader]. " Mihawk offered his hand as the two of you left, Mihawk told you the whole night how much you mean to him and that he was grateful you came into existence.

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

Dark Shelves 2

Warnings: non/dubcon, bullying, and other dark elements. My username actually says you never asked for any of this.

My warnings are not exhaustive but be aware this is a dark fic and may include potentially triggering topics. Please use your common sense when consuming content. I am not responsible for your decisions.

Character: Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes (archivist AU)

Summary: your new job is much of the same, with a hit of new misery.

As usual, I would appreciate any and all feedback. I’m happy to once more go on this adventure with all of you! Thank you in advance for your comments and for reblogging ❤️

"We'll start you off with cataloguing. I trust you can handle that." James, or Bucky, whoever he is, says as he crosses his arms. "Figure we get the students to do as much. Title, creator or origin, date--"

"I'm aware. I've done a lot of it. In my previous role as an assistant. I believe this role is for junior archivist."

"Junior," he tilts his head. "It's your first day. Don't stress."

You tug on your blouse. It's hot among the shelves.

He untangles his arms and taps the table to his right. "You can set up shop here."

"I believe the role came with an office." You reply.

"Easier here," he motions to your left. "Those boxes."

You glance over at the banking boxes marked with sharpie. "Library two counties away. They had a fire. Municipality cut funding after that. We got most of their historical documents."

"You said the students usually do this?"

"It's a good learning activity. I said I'd train you." He shrugs and hooks his thumbs in his front pockets. You bite on your cheek to keep it from twitching.

"I can more than handle your leftovers," you assure him.

You step past him and grab a box. You heave it up and turn awkwardly. It's not too heavy, just heavier than you expected. He comes up to you and grabs the other end of the box.

"Let me do that," he tries to slip it out of your grasp.

"I can do it--"

He forces it free so the cardboard chafes your fingers. He snorts and turns, carrying it easily to the table. He drops it without mind to the noise.

"Don't think we put heavy lifting in the job description," he rests his hand on the lid. "Don't want you hurting yourself, doll face."

"Respectfully," you circle around the table. "That's not my name."

You turn to the table as you pull out a chair. You drag the box across it and put your bag next to it. You push your sleeves up and lift the lid. You take your time as you stir in your bag. You set out your things meticulously. You have a system.

You sit as you slide out the first document. He comes around with tags and sets them by you. You thank him without looking.

"One hour for lunch. Your choice when. Noon usually works. I'm sure you'll be counting down the seconds." He drawls.

"Sounds good," you adjust your glasses.

He lingers. You tag the first document. You'll alphabetize them as you go.

"Am I missing something?" You glance up.

He stares at you, cheeks dimpling as his eyes scale you. He shakes his head.

"No, looks like you have it all figured out."

He taps the table with two fingers and pushes away. You ignore his departure even as he makes his steps especially distracting. It isn't the first time you've dealt with passive defiance. He might be your superior but you've done nothing to earn his suspicion.

You fall into the familiar with only a hint of resent. You're doing the work they give to temps. Not like it isn't important but you were looking forward to doing more than just tagging and bagging. Still, you won't complain. That's what they want.

The chafe of paper is the only noise aside from the scratch of your pen. You work efficiently as you make piles for different letter groups. A-F, G-N, so on and so on.

You pause to strip off your chest as sweat slakes down your temples. Your scalp is itchy with the heat. You tug at your collar as you blow out a deep breath.

"How are you liking it?" The deep timbre breaks your concentration. You finish the tag and sort the file into one of the stacks.

"Nothing too unusual," you answer the man. The one who called himself Rogers. "Simple enough."

"Uh huh," he leans on a shelf, one hand on his hip. "Quiet work. Easy."

"Better than sitting in the boxes untouched," you toss back.

"Ha, fair enough. They've been doing that a while." His lips curve slightly. "So, you fresh out of grad school?"

"I have experience."

"Oh, I can tell," he tilts his head. "I just figured... I read a study that attractive women tend to do better in interviews."

You flinch. Well, that didn't take long. You suppose if you cared, you would take that as a compliment.

"From my experience, competence tends to leave a better impression." You say calmly and slide out the next page.

"Seems like you have that in spades," he stands straight and nears the table. He touches the corner of the tallest stack. G-N. He touches the corner as he bends to read the top tag through his lenses. Suddenly, the paper flutters over the edge. "Oh, clumsy me." He steps back. "You know, my hands get dry in this heat. Can't seem to hold onto anything."

You look at him and your brows rise just a little. You set down your pen and stand. You round the corner of the table and bend, gathering up the pages. The brush together loudly as he backs up. You get them in hand then feel something against your trousers. You twitch then it presses firmer, right against your backside.

"Oops, sorry, it's so tight in here," Rogers says. "Archives are always so crowded."

He wiggles his pelvis so you feel him clearly through the layers of fabric. You stand up and spin away from him. You stare at him in disgust.

"Are you serious?"

"Hm? What? Look, I'm sorry about the paper. I was only looking--"

"You just--"

"Huh, imagine that. Junior archivist, not liking all this menial work so she presses up on the senior archivist, trying to get special treatment," he clucks. "She could just ask nicely. No one would need to know."

"I-- would never--"

"I'm sure. You must have a flourishing personal life."

You scoff. "You... you did it."

You look around, searching the edges of the ceilings and the corners.

"Cameras in common spaces only. The wiring is a fire hazard for the amount of paper in here." He explains. "Everything here is our little secret."

You gape at him. You shake your head and go all the way around the other side of the table. You sit and clear your throat.

"What secret?" You focus on keeping your voice steady. "I've only been cataloguing."

You set down the stack and start sorting. You ignore him as he remains. You don't look up even as you sense his movement. He rubs himself through his pants, barely a foot away.

"Lots of work to do," he growls. "I must be distracting you." You don't answer as you stay on task. He groans and drops his hand. "Alright, sweetheart. Keep up the good work."

He pets your head and walks away. As he disappears behind the shelves, you pause. You clutch the papers and stare at the blurred letters.

They're testing you. You're not going to let them win.

[saytrrose]

A post that Freakshow Au + Sm-Baby Fans NEED TO HEAR. READ IT.

—————

I cannot stand the people on tumblr in Mushys comments accusing her of so many horrible things. People have been stating that Mushy has been drawing “non-con” and supporting “abuse”. I will not go into too much detail on how it is affecting her and why but it is incredibly overwhelming for her, and she is not comfortable posting for the time being- and you people are making it hard for her to enjoy it anymore.

Mushy is portraying the au and characters how they would canonly work and that does not make her a bad person. The large amount of people trying to say that she has been drawing non-con of the late absolutely SICKENS me. You clearly do not have any understanding for that terminology and should not be throwing it around. Maybe if people paid attention to the au, the lore and how they are characterized you would come to the conclusion that NO ONE WANTS TO BE IN THE FREAKSHOW AU.

If you need a reminder of the definition, The TADC Freakshow Au is an Au where a horrible virus infects the Ai and twists their reality into a horror mindscape. THIS IS NOT CAINE OR ABLES FAULT. Caine and Able ARE AI. They are corrupted by the virus unwillingly and what Able puts Pomni through in the Able-Owned Pomni Au is yes, considered psychological abuse. HOWEVER why in gods name would you assume she supports that shit? Do you people just assume whenever someone draws a death scene they support murder?? or when someone depicts a scene of an animal getting hurt in a fanfic or movie that director/writer supports animal abuse?? Does that seriously go through your head?

EVERYONE in the Freakshow au in under some sort of psychological abuse- HELL in the original show they are. Like did you even watch it? And back to Freakshow, it’s a HORROR AU. People are killed left and right and no one seems to have a problem with that hm? THIS IS FICTION. PEOPLE NEED TO LEARN THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FICTION AND REALITY BECAUSE WHEN YOU DO NOT DO SO YOU HURT PEOPLE IN REAL LIFE. Not the people producing fictional content, YOU.

People are quite literally, harassing Mushy right now and it is heartbreaking to see my friend experience this. If you do not like certain content that Mushy creates, BLOCK her or BLOCK her tags. People asking for her to tag her art with “abuse” makes her highly uncomfortable. If you do not like this, simply take responsibility for your own viewing and stop interacting.

People need to stop assuming that Mushy is also not trying to find comfort in drawing certain topics. You people need to stop assuming that Mushy lives some sort of cheery happy go lucky life. She experiences a lot, she is going through A LOT right now and you people dog piling these accusations onto her is not only just disrespectful as a person in general, but as her follower. It is truly just disappointing to see just how rude people can be when they are supposed to be your biggest supporters.

A tag MIGHT be arranged, something as simple as “Able-Owned Au” and if this is done then block it. It is that easy. It is so so easy and simple to take initiative for yourself and what you see and how you feel about it by limiting it on your own end than going out of your way to make someone feel horrible about themselves.

Mushys blog is HER blog. She can draw whatever she would like to and if anyone has an issue with this you can very kindly, FUCK OFF. The block button exists, use it. The block tags method exists, use it.

Stop harassing creators.

[roseykat]

TITLE: Venom Biter

PAIRING: Minho x reader

SUMMARY: The end of a relationship between you and Minho turns as sour as it could ever get. A lovers to enemies trope.

WARNING: minors DNI with this post or my blog. I create NSFW SKZ related content and I know I won't be able to regulate every single interaction with those posts so please do not engage with my work or page whatsoever.

TAGS: breakups, hate sex, post-breakup sex, unprotected sex, swearing, angst, manhandling, push and shove, spitting, choking, oral sex (f!reader receiving), angst, strong hints of degradation, use of degrading names such as 'slut' and 'whore'.

A/N: this was originally meant to be for one of the days I had planned for Kinktober but I was up to my neck in work and I didn't want to post something sort of half-assed so I had to hone down on most of the work for this piece.

MASTERLIST

“Broke up?” Chan’s eyes refuse to blink. “You two broke up!?”

His confused filled stare shoots for the direction of his best friend, Minho, who quietly sits opposite him across the table. He looks slightly withdrawn or…off colour. It can’t have been the gruelling two hour lecture they finished before heading out to lunch. If it were that, Minho would be complaining his head off saying how boring it was or cursing himself for not changing his minor earlier. 

He’s just not his usual self. In other social settings, he could talk until the cows came home. But the entire hour that they’ve spent together at lunch, Chan has been doing all the conversing and only receiving vague one-word answers. It wasn’t until he asked what was up with Minho that his friend dished out the news that he and his girlfriend - you, had split up.

“Why?” Chan proceeds, still swimming in shock.

A sigh leaves Minho’s mouth. He truly doesn’t feel like revisiting this subject. When he even thinks about the answer, all he can recall is the firey shouting match you both had the day things crumbled. 

“It’s messy,” he replies with a cloudy and ambiguous answer. 

“If you talk about it, then it might help you make sense of it all.”

He groans this time, “I really, really don’t want to do that. What’s done is done.” 

“Done?” Chan questions, still not letting up on an interrogation. “You were in a relationship with Y/N, for years. You guys talked about a whole future together. That’s not something you just sweep under the rug and forget about.”

If there’s one thing he almost did forget about, it’s that you were friends with him - not just Chan, but the seven others as well. After all, it was Minho who introduced you to those select people whom he calls his brothers. They would’ve found out eventually if Minho refrained from telling them who you were dating all those years ago.

Though naturally, you became very close with them. 

“We’ve both chosen to do that so there’s nothing really much left to dispute.”

Chan’s eyebrows furrow, realising he left out a crucial question to the situation, “why did you guys break up in the first place?”

Minho feels like he’s going to run out of sighs, “she doesn’t love me anymore and I don’t love her anymore. That’s literally all there is to it.” 

“You’re telling me you both fell out of love - at the same time,” Chan responds, still having a difficult time trying to comprehend his friend's situation.

“Pretty much,” Minho confirms with a nod. 

Chan finds that extremely hard to believe from his friend - the very person who would enter a different realm whenever he was in a five centimetre radius of you. His eyes would glaze over as if he were possessed; always fixated on you, he’d smile more than he usually would, and was comfortable in the space around you. 

There had to be another reason, surely. 

But it had almost been three weeks since Chan dissected the news out of Minho, and it was almost like pulling teeth trying to dive for the details. Each attempt was as fruitless as the next and in the end, Chan just plucked the same answers.

Regardless, it seemed to play out better than expected. Minho saved himself from having to dish out explanations as to why you wouldn’t be around anymore. As a result, telling Chan was the best option and since the others didn’t know, Minho was okay with him telling them so that he didn’t have to. 

In saying that, Minho left out very central details of what happened leading up to the breakup. He never mentioned the constant fighting, the lying, the false accusations, the shouting matches, up until the point where you were both swimming in the toxicity the pair of you created. 

He also absconded from the fact to Chan that not only did you both separate, but you’ve also both come to view the other differently and not through a good lens. Minho shouted it in your face the other day to which you did the same; “I hate you.” And that was that.

But his friends probably didn’t need to know all of that. 

Since that day, you’ve been in the process of trying to find an apartment for yourself which isn’t easy. You want to remain in town and not too far out so that you don’t have a long commute to work, and at the same time, you don't want to break the bank trying to find a nice place to rent in the city. All in all, it was tough, but you were ready to just leave. 

Having packed up the majority of your stuff in boxes, all you had to do was wait for landlords to contact you back about possible vacant apartments. Thankfully Minho was lenient in allowing you to stay until you found a place. 

You slept in the spare room, mainly keeping to yourself and the boxes of things surrounding the space. Occasionally you would have to lock yourself in there and throw on some noise-cancelling headphones whenever Minho brought around another woman to sleep with.

It was his house, you knew that and now that you have no ties to him and he’s letting you stay, it was never your place to question his actions. 

Still, that could never lessen the hurt. It was painful which is why you hated him so much. You don’t know how a person could move on so quickly after so many years of being told how much you’re loved. It was like he never meant it. With that being said, when you eventually managed to find a decent place, you were free from Minho. 

All of your items were ready to be moved out, taking a couple of days to actually get them to your new place. In the tiring process, you also had to factor in your work schedule which meant it would take longer to continue moving your stuff. Nonetheless, you had the majority of your boxes out of Minho's house with only a few remaining that you needed to swing by and pick up.

"Something wrong?" he wears a blank look on his face when you arrive on the doorstep to his house.

"Some of my stuff is still here, can I come in to grab it please?" You ask politely. He gives a silent answer in return by opening his door wider for you to walk in before he goes back to whatever it was he was doing.

You make your way into the spare room where the last of your things remain, but there is one odd detail you notice as you approach the items. What was supposed to be taped down lids to the boxes had in fact been opened; not in the state you had originally left it in. 

"Minho," you call out, hoping he heard you.

Sure enough, he did. Minho walks into the spare room with a puzzled expression, wondering why he's been summoned, "what?"

“Why are these open?” You ask, lifting one box off of the other to check if the rest were open as well. “Half of my stuff isn’t in here.”  

“You were coming back for those?” he replies with a question. 

“What the hell else would I be coming back here for?” 

“That's what I thought when you got here,” he says. “I thought it was for other things that you left behind, not ones in these boxes."

Your eyes never leave his face, tracking any sudden shifts in his muscles to try to figure out if he’s actually telling the truth or not. Even though you and Minho aren’t together, you're sure he wouldn't do anything malicious out of spite.

“So why is half my stuff missing?” 

Minho pinches the bridge of his nose, “I thought you didn’t need any of it and that you left it here on purpose for me to deal with or throw out.” 

“So what…” you trail off, expecting his answer. Minho hesitates for a few moments, sitting on the fence about whether he should actually tell you or not. But the least he can do right now is be honest. 

“I told the…girl I bought around the other day that if she wanted anything-“ 

“No you fucking didn’t.” 

“-she could have whatever was left in the boxes,” Minho finishes the rest of his sentence which would’ve been better for you not to hear. 

“What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“What the fuck is wrong with me? What the fuck is wrong with you for leaving them behind in the first place!” Minho argues back, trying to defend himself here even though he knows he’s in the wrong. “You were gone for a few days Y/N, I thought you just left!” 

“I never left them behind! I told you how long it was going to take my things to move!” You shout at him, tears brimming your eyes. “Now my stuff…”

The hurt genuinely sets in. Minho feels a sharp stab of pain in his chest when he sees how visibly upset you are. He knows that he’s been nothing short of a dickhead within the past month and now he’s gone and made things worse. It’s no point in him now to say that it was an honest mistake.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know, truly.”

You shove him backwards into the dresser, knocking down some of the empty photo frames that were once homes for pictures of you and Minho, “you’re not sorry. You’re the fucking worst.”

Taken aback by your actions, Minho turns behind him to see the frames flat on the surface then looks back at you, “seriously Y/N, I would not have done that out of spite.”

“But it’s the fact that you still did it!” You raise your voice at him and shove him back again. “You didn’t bother calling or texting me about it when you should’ve!” 

Minho predicts your next move and catches your arms to stop you from pushing him back impossibly further into the dresser. He shoves you back, the back of your knees hitting the edge of the bed which causes you to land on it behind you.

Before the surprise kicks in, Minho is kneeling on top of you, nearly straddling your lower half as he starts pinning your arms to the side of your head. Yet with a split second of momentum to break free, you struggle but manage to flip the tables and pin Minho on his back. 

You mount his hips before your mouth comes down to kiss Minho so aggressively that it takes him a moment to react. With any other woman that he’s slept with so far, he would allow them to be on top. But because it’s you, and supposedly hates your guts, not to mention his untapped pride, it’s not going to happen. So Minho fights back, kissing and biting nearly every part of your upper body in the process until you’re under him. 

He sucks large, deep, red hickies into the skin of your neck, in places where everyone would be able to see them. Minho would want people to know that you’re just a whore he uses. Especially for the next guy you sleep with who would go down on you and see the myriad of hickies that Minho would eventually put between your thighs when he rips your pants down. 

“Wanna play this fucking game with me,” he rasps before yanking down your off. 

Despite being a dickhead Minho will still eat you out for prep. But it’s not soft and teasing when he does go down on you. It’s tongue and finger fucking you until you’re dizzy from how hard you’re about to cum. It gives you the opportunity to pull and tug on his hair until his scalp starts burning, forcing you to be as vocal as you’ve ever been. 

His fingers curl up into that sensitive spot while his tongue and mouth work simultaneously. He’s always been good at giving head, but unusually better now that he’s relatively angry. In the back of your mind, you supposed it helped having not slept with anyone for a month, making it easier to reach that peak of delicious, eye-rolling ecstasy. 

“Fuck!” you scream out, voice projecting throughout the room as Minho sucks on your clit. “Fuck you…you’re gonna make me cum.” 

Those words are something Minho could never get tired of hearing you say. Even in the headspace that he’s in now, he wants nothing more than to hear how good he’s making your body feel. However, he doesn’t need verbal confirmation from you to know that you’re about to cum. When your walls seize and clamp around his fingers, when you’re trembling around his head, Minho knows what that means. 

The quick drag of his fingers is only light work for him, pumping at a pace that has you panting to try and keep up with it. As a result, it’s not long before Minho brings you to your sweet release; a toe-curling burst of euphoria that has you silently creaming around his fingers. 

He has no patience for you to descend from your orgasm, sucking his fingers clean as he pulls away from your pussy. He gets to unbuckling his belt faster than he can even comprehend that this is still happening. 

“H-Hurry,” you whine, trying to quell the hunger for Minho’s cock while you wait.

His eyes squeeze shut, hissing as he coats his length with your slick, “shut the fuck up.”

Despite being in a haze post-orgasm, you manage to sit up quickly to turn and push Minho down by his shoulders. You find yourself straddling his hips once more, reaching down and behind for his cock, aligning it with your hole. Minho allows you to work for it yourself, watching his cock vanish by the second as you sink down. 

“Mmm…f-fuck,,” you whine, unable to come to grips with how much you miss him filling you out. 

Taking a couple of slow strokes up and down allows you to realise that never in your wildest dreams could you ever imagine hate sex with Minho would be this…rough. Both of you pushing, shoving, and manhandling each other around, speaking to each other with such disregard for the other person's feelings – beyond the point of degradation.

“Come on,” Minho grunts, fingernails embedding themselves into your hips so that the indents remaining become as equally as vibrant as the hickies blooming on your neck. 

You look down at him with disgust before your hand lowers to his throat, choking him out by the sides of his neck. That familiar feeling of restriction to Minho forces him to repress his sick enjoyment of it, even more so when you start really riding him. 

“Fuck you,” you strain out, trying to assert some degree of control even though you’re battling with oversensitivity from your previous orgasm. 

You slam your hips down repeatedly, building up a good pace and rhythm that’s enough for small moans to force their way out of your mouth. With a cock like Minho’s, it’s impossible to keep quiet no matter how much you try. However, as you work for your own orgasm, you don’t want to give him any satisfaction by making him think that he’s the one doing it; yet in reality, he is. 

Nonetheless, you continue to use him just as much as he’s using you until the luxury of pleasure accelerates in the pit of your stomach. In saying that, it doesn’t take long for Minho to find that information out as you continue to ride him. The observation is clear-cut;

“Nobody’s fucked you since me haven’t they?” He asks you breathlessly, watching you roll your hips deliciously over his cock. “Know how I can tell? Because you keep fucking clenching around my dick.”

Your eyebrows furrow, struggling to find an answer for him because he is right and that’s not your fault, “s-so what? Want me to stop?” 

“Didn’t say that, did I?” He argues back, too proud to say ‘no’. “Just…just keep moving.”

A firm hand of yours catches his taut jaw, and while his mouth is open, you lean down and spit right in it. 

You curse right at him, “fuck you.” 

His eyes lock with yours and for a moment, Minho is shocked, but not in a bad way. In that moment you despised him so much that he made you do something a normal person would find disgusting. Although it’s not long before a sick smirk spreads across his face, failing to pretend as if he didn’t just enjoy that, swallowing it back. 

“Course you’d be into that you fucking whore,” he rasps, his body jolting every time your hips slam down. 

“I’m not the whore who’s taking it,” you snipe back at him. 

Your comment riles Minho, resulting in him nearly bucking you off his body before flipping you onto your stomach. He yanks both of your hands behind your back as something for him to latch onto when he pushes his cock back into you, and starts fucking hard and fast. 

“Yes, yes, yes, fuck…” you whimper, eyes fluttering shut. 

The new angle makes his dick slip in just that extra bit deeper, achieving a sensation which you miss all too much. With the amount of relentlessness that Minho puts behind his thrusts is nothing but a fast, brutal, and unforgiving type of fucking. He’s not holding back with you, no matter how much you hate him and he hates you, he will fuck you to tears.

“Such a fucking slut,” he drives forward nastily. “Needy, loud, slut.” 

Your choked moans and whimpers are typical responses to hearing him call you that name again. In bed, if you weren’t his lover, you were his slut. Minho wouldn’t care less if the bed broke beneath him trying to fuck you like the whore you always wanted him to treat you as. But it was phenomenal.  

Now, that’s only a distant memory clawing to come back. 

“Make me cum…make me fucking cum,” you demand, acknowledging how close you are to the cliff of ecstasy.

Minho's breathing picks up from hearing the pure desperation in your voice, and so does his pace. His only release is not but a minute away, respecting that and also his motive to continue rearranging your guts. 

Yet the possibility of keeping up any longer draws to a short term. Minho’s hold on your wrists behind your back becomes a solid death grip with no chance of escape until the wet heat from your pussy has his hips jumping out of rhythm. 

His head tilts to the sky, the pleasure screaming at him from the base of his cock, “y-yes, fuck I'm cumming.”

At that very instant, Minho’s release rocks him over. His hands let go of yours in lieu of grabbing onto your ass instead. The pain and sting of his fingernails scraping deep into your flash forces strained whimpers and mewls from your throat, helping to push you over the verge of your second orgasm. 

“Y-Yes, cumming, oh fuck-” you cry out with a shaky voice, stiffening while your hole seizes rhythmically around Minho’s length. 

The pleasure is throat-gripping, making you forget the words to express how good you feel. Except, in the vapour of your orgasmic haze, you still don't want to accept the fact that it's Minho who makes you feel that way.

He pauses for a moment then thrusts hard back into you, making you keep the warm load that you were so undeservingly given, regardless if your walls are spasming and contracting it out. Then just as he was fast to try to get inside you, he's just as fast when he pulls out and flops beside you.

The air in the room becomes breathable again now that your heart rate isn't racing to the heavens, but picks back up quickly when you decide to hop off the bed and get dressed. You couldn't care less if you were sore and unbalanced. The thought of staying in the room with Minho any longer was suffocating.

“About your stuff,” he starts, filling the silent void with an exasperated voice. “I’ll try to get it back.” 

You zip your jeans up, “don’t bother. I know you did give it away for whatever reason, but for what reason is something I’m betting you’ll take to the grave with you.” 

Minho is up and now following suit by putting his clothes on. If now is the time to get one thing off of his chest, it’s now. Since the day you both separated, there has been no proper conversation. Both of you are too stubborn to admit wrongs and fix rights, but in your eyes, it's too far gone. There’s no going back to a good thing that was once more. 

"I won't if we can just talk it out," he offers the opportunity to you.

“Minho, the nights that I had to listen to you fuck someone else in the next room right after we just broke up was a clear sign that we did not need to talk it out. All it made me do is realise that you didn't actually love me."

“That’s not true,” he shakes his head as you hear a twinge of desperation in his voice like he's pleading his case. "That's not true at all."

"It is though," you correct him. "You were free to sleep with whoever you wanted to because we had broken up at that point, but not a day after that did you wait."

Minho follows through with his explanation, “I was trying to get you out of my head. Spending too long just thinking about you makes me want to lose it. It didn't mean that I never loved you before."

“So you’re just going to continue being delusional? To fuck your way through trying to forget me?” You question, nearly laughing. "I honestly think you're just being pathetic."

He shrugs, “if it means that I don’t have to feel heartbreak, then yes.”

Part of you gets it. Minho’s found a vice and is using it as a tool to deal with his pain. But you’re in pain too, and you haven’t done anything to upset him ever since you split. Maybe it is as bad for him as he says it is. Maybe he doesn’t truly know how to navigate himself out of this like you’re attempting to.

It’s almost a rebuttal to your statement about whether he truly loved you or not; if he’s using other people to drive the thought of you out of his brain because it’s too painful to deal with, then maybe you were more than just a lover to him. 

"I mean this in the nicest way possible, but I cannot stand being around you anymore because of how much it hurts to know that you're not actually with me. I'd rather try to forget your existence in order to not feel that type of heartbreak," Minho explains, his words coming from a place inside him that must've just opened up.

But he continues, "the second we split, I needed every last memory of you out of this house. But I know that this hurts you too and that this past month I’ve hurt you and that’s no justification to say that my reason is because you mean more than my entire life.”

There’s an ache in your chest that you’ve never felt before, a blend of all the emotional pain that could’ve been prevented had the two of you just talked. But that ache is fuelled by the fact that you can hear the waiver in Minho’s voice, and even though his back is still turned to you while he sits on the edge of the bed, you’re sure he’s crying.

-

A/N: Dare I say that I want to make a part 2 to this where Minho and reader try to rekindle, things are pretty tender but they sort of want to make it work...

[surpriseelejahmonth]

Surprise Elejah Month - Fan(fic, edits, art & meta) - August 2025

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Pre-Event Celebration - [August 1 - August 2] - As a warm-up to the main event, and to get into the right kind of shipper headspace... let us consider some appetizers, if you will:

Fave Stuff Rec Party - Reblog or post links to your favorite Elejah fanworks and share the love (please no reposting; link to the original work or reblog it and tag this blog if the fanwork in question is already available on Tumblr).

Orphan Prompts - Post the answers to the Orphan Prompts that have caught your fancy during the last two months (more about Orphan Prompts here; but in short if there's an Elejah idea you have but don't feel like doing yourself? Send it to the Ask Box from now until the beginning of August 2025)

Adrenaline Jolt to the WIP - Shuffle through your half-finished edits and anxiety-buried half-chapters of your WIPs. Pick that thing up and see what happens, or maybe just post what you have as a sneak peek. Alternatively, and in tandem with Fave Stuff Rec Party, say something nice to the person whose Elejah WIP you still occasionally think about to brighten their day.

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Week 1 - [August 3 - August 9] - Meeting of Contradictions - Push together angst and humor. Make something fluffy, but also have it be horror. It's a giggle at a funeral. Both rage and blissful happiness. Alive and dead. There is love within a void. And maybe one has to be lost to be found? Both terror and relief.

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Week 2 - [August 10 - August 16] - Week of the Literary Love Story: (each prompt is given a separate day, but that does not mean you must create something for all of them, pick the one(s) you want, or skip the week if none intrigue you).

Sunday - Beauty and the Beast. Monday - Odyssey. Tuesday - The Nightingale and the Rose. Wednesday - Pride and Prejudice. Thursday - Helen of Troy. Friday - Orpheus and Eurydice. Saturday - Hades and Persephone.

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Week 3 - [August 17 - August 23] - Significant Memento - the burning letter / the dagger to the chest / a bedroom windowsill / the blood in champagne / gazebo in sunlight / his expensive suit / the red in her hair / the skip in her heart / the trust before a betrayal / the negotiation in the middle of night / a kiss like a lie / a promise in a glass bottle / the ground that crumbles under feet / the taste on their lips / the reflection in the mirror / always and forever.

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Week 4 - [August 24 - August 30] - Love Letter to an Episode - take an episode (any episode) from any of the TV series in this universe and make it Elejah. It can be as canon-compliant as you want. Play with American Gothic. Grab an Originals episode and drop Elena in there. Drop her and Elijah both into Legacies. Hell, push a plot of an episode you like from a completely different show onto Elejah, the world is your oyster! (If you're writing meta posts and don't feel like dealing with just the canon Elejah content either, discuss how Elejah would have dealt with the plot from your chosen episode.)

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Post-Event Celebration - [August 31] - Now for the last curtain call with all its bows and cheers, so that we may go out with a bang:

No Theme, FREE-FOR-ALL - Let's post as much Elejah content as we want, with whatever focus we want. The more, the merrier after all!

Lost, But Not Forgotten - But if some theme direction is what you want? How about picking up one of the themes that lost the poll after all?

Orphan Prompts - Or, if the adopted prompts took longer than expected, you could always finish up to post that now.

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What do you need to do to join the Surprise Elejah Month? Just be a fan of Elejah! Write some meta, write a story (one-shots, drabbles, first chapters of new WIPs, and new chapters of old WIPs are all accepted), make a gifset, fanart, poem, an aesthetic, edit, song playlist, or a fan video created for the event (or if all else fails, crochet their names into a scarf), and tag @surpriseelejahmonth + add #elejahmonth2025 to the first 5 tags.

There are no limits on how many or how few works need to be created to "count" as having participated. Everyone is welcome!

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Special invitation: @kaizsche, @wholoveseggs, @vorpalmuchness, @jennifersminds, @kol-elijah, @becasart, @elejah-verse, @katherineholmes, @lovelyelejah, @moonysmate, @anphibole, @reina-petrova, @sevensistersofsussex, @sharkboy305, @elejah12, @xneens, @thereideffects, @darknightfrombeyond, @teenage-apocalypse-trilogy, @ao-anonymousobsesser, @coazysdaydream, @myfuchsiadreams, @keepsdeathhiscourt, @bada-bing-bada-boom-pow, and literally anyone else who feels like trying their hand at creating something for Elejah.

[bluewatersfairy]

homebody - l.b.

loosely inspired by homebody by kalin white (a/n: i've been wanting to use this song for a longgg time)

synopsis: requested by @bemybinarystar! two people meet by chance on an app that thrives on anonymity and begin an x-rated relationship with one another filled with late night video calls.

warnings: mature content, MINORS DNI!! depictions of sex work, mutual masturbation.

word count: 3.2k

•••

Melo grabbed his laptop and climbed on top of his bed, checking one last time that there were no tell-tale signs in view that would make him identifiable.  This had become a part of his routine and what was once him being cautious was now a natural habit.  He originally didn’t care, it never even crossed his mind, but she had told him he needed to, she didn’t want to know who he was.  That was weird for him to hear too, it reminded him of how different this relationship was.  If you could call it a relationship.

When he had first discovered her, he was doom scrolling on the type of site that was created for late-night rendezvous.  He’d convinced himself he was just curious, he’d laugh about it later and go back to the more traditional way of fulfilling his needs.  But then he saw her smile and he had to stop scrolling.  Her description was limited, her height, tag name, and that she was drawn to the anonymity of the site; tell me something good and maybe we can figure something out.

The only reason Melo had even caught her attention was because his profile looked like a cheap bot: 2 tall, 2 long, fire’n’ice, was all his profile said.  His request sat in her inbox for two days until he sent her another message, ‘you ever think about castles?  they got pretty ones by the lakes in lithuania.’  It was a bizarre opening, but it got him out of her requests and into her inbox.

They messaged back and forth for a full week before anything remotely sexual was discussed.  Melo liked that she wasn’t jumping at his every response and that it looked like she had a life too.  During that week, they hadn’t shared much about themselves, but he felt like she was investigating him, despite the very few questions she asked.  The first time he received the app notification that she’d sent him a picture, his palms started getting sweaty.  

He locked himself in his room, something that would become routine, laid back on his bed and opened her message thread.  It was a tasteful shot of her full thighs and ass peaky out of a red silk slip.  Her deep amber skin against the scarlet made him gulp.  It was so little, nothing he hadn’t seen before, but it pulled his interest and ignited his curiosity.  She had waited for him to see the message before she sent the follow up, ‘your turn…”

Melo had spent the next 10 minutes cleaning his floor and checking that nothing could be seen in the background from his messy room.  He spat in his palm and stroked his hard-on till it was raging and grown.  He held the base of his shaft with one hand and took a photo with the other before sending it through.  

That was two months ago and though neither of them had asked many personal questions, there was this unspoken bond between them.  She didn’t need him to say when he’d had a rough day, and he knew how she needed to be talked to.  He found himself thinking of her at the worst of times and turning to her when he needed a boost.  In return, he’d transfer undisclosed amounts of money to her account.  Again, this was something they hadn’t really talked about, it was an unspoken agreement.

Of course, she never expected him to be so generous.  

At first, she assumed that it was an attempt to impress her and keep her interested in him.  She had told him after maybe a week of exchanging racy pictures that she offered more, but for it to be fair to the other people she entertained, he had to pay a small fee that he felt reflected their time together.  The beauty of the site that she considered her secret life was that she got to choose her clients and could easily report and block people if they ever became aggressive or obsessive.  She’d always managed to attract men who exhibit something she’s attracted to, but she knew “fire’n’ice” was closer to her age and clearly in a high position, and that image was addictive to her.  

When he had first sent her a large sum out of the blue, she’d been 3 hours deep in official documents.  She imagined him in a similar position, probably in slacks and a white button up, trapped in his office thinking about taking her at his desk.  She’d quickly excused herself, citing lady problems, and clicked off to the employee bathroom.

Melo, who was standing in his kitchen heating up one of the several protein-based meals he had made weekly, received a message with 3 attachments.  She was spreading herself open for him, and had framed her tits in such a way, he just wanted to latch on.  He’d groaned loudly and abandoned his meal in favour of his room.  His cock was tight against his pants and the second he freed it, he felt the ache take over his body.  

He squeezed his eyes shut and pictured her, imagining how she posed.  He thrust into his fist and straggled words flew out of his mouth.  In the haze of the moment, he grabbed his phone and opened the camera. 

“Look at my fuckin’ cock, babygirl, look how hard it is for you.” He spat as he finished his sentence, needing more moisture so he could fuck his hand better.  “I bet you’d love to choke on my big fuckin’ dick, aye baby?  I’d fuck your face and finish all over your tits.”  

He paid no mind to what he was saying, he was just talking shit as he thrusted harder and faster into his hand.  His cum spurted all over his desk, some of it landing on his phone screen.  He swore and stopped the recording before bending over, his chest heaving.  He’d never thought to do something like that before.  She hadn’t even made a video for him, she’d only ever sent pictures.  What had she done to him?

The video worked in Lamelo’s favour in more ways than he could have possibly known.  She already had a growing soft spot for mr. fire’n’ice but that video sent him to the top of her list.  He was the first client she reached out to during the days and his sessions were always top priority for her.  It didn’t have much to do with the money, she was just drawn to him in every way a person can be to someone they’ve never met or even seen properly.  He even had her questioning if she should take a step back from her other clients and just entertain him.  

It was bad.  Unprofessional even.  But she couldn’t stop herself.

LaMelo was still checking his background when her call came in, popping up on his screen with her explicit profile icon highlighted with a red ring.  He pressed the green button and did one final adjustment to his laptop so all she could see was below his neck.  He always wore a black wife-beater so that his chest tattoo was mostly covered but so she could still get a good view of his toned torso and the ever growing bulge in his shorts.

“Hi pretty boy,” her ruby red lips pulled into a grin on his screen.  She looked like she was laying on her stomach, her tits pushed together under a slip of vibrant material.  

“‘Sup baby,” Melo swiped his tongue across his bottom lip, “you lookin’ edible.”

She giggled as she ran her hand down her neck before reaching somewhere off camera.  She was sitting up, he realised, before she brought something of a prop on screen.

“I was gonna say I found these today and thought of you,” she giggled again, “I know you’re much bigger, but you can’t tell me that’s not a close match.”  Melo smirked as he watched her twirl two rainbow lolly-cocks in the camera.  

“They not that girthy, you could still fit them in your mouth easy,” Melo felt his dick twitch as she rested her pouty lips on the tip of the lolly.

“Are you saying your dick won’t fit in my mouth?” she bit on her bottom lip and dragged her hand down her chest as she spoke.

“I’m sayin’ it won’t be easy.”  Melo’s hand moved to the bulge in his pants and he gently palmed it.

“I like a challenge,” she smiled, “I’ll make sure it fits baby, you know I’m a good girl for you.”

“Show me.” 

His voice was raspy, and his dick was hard.  She’d caught him at the perfect time and he knew she could tell just how desperate he was for her.  He didn’t care that she knew anymore.  Truthfully, he thought it showed how well they knew each other and how much he trusted her.  

“Of course baby,” she grinned before adjusting her laptop camera slightly.  

Melo watched closely as she spat on the tip of the lolly cock and used her tongue to glide it down.  Kitten licks and teasing kisses quickly turned into her pouty lips wrapped around the head.  The wet sounds her mouth made against the hard lolly did nothing but strengthen the pulse in Melo’s cock.  He swiped his tongue across his bottom lip before readjusting himself, watching as she pushed the lolly further into her mouth.  

“You’re such a good girl, baby,” Melo pushed out with his head leaning back.  He watched her through his eyelashes, picturing her wrapped around him.  His chest rose and fell at a steady pace and his skin flushed pink.  He was getting caught up in the thick of things, he barely processed her transitioning from the lolly cock to one of her dildos.

It was one they had purchased together.  It was a late night call, much like they were currently on, and she had wanted to find something a bit different for the two of them.  Her screen was shared with him as they scrolled through an adult website.  Every now and then Melo would point out one, whether he was being serious or joking was always up for interpretation.  

“I want something that’s like you,” she said sheepishly when Melo had asked why he was involved, “it’s like torture seeing such a pretty and big dick and not be able to ride it.”  

They’d found a dildo similar to his size and when it came in the mail a week later, Melo received a video of her putting it in her mouth, popping it out and pushing it between her tits.  She said she wouldn’t to anything else without him, but he was out of town and sharing a room so it would be a minute until he was going to be able to be alone with her.  It ended up being one of their better calls.  Melo could barely keep his eyes open by the end of it, he felt so fucked out and exhausted, you’d think she had actually been there to suck the soul out of him.  He’d jokingly texted her the next morning saying he had a sore wrist.  It wasn’t a complete joke though, many coaches commented on his shooting being off that day at practice. 

“Oh baby,” she moaned through the camera as she pulled the rubber cock out of her mouth, “touch yourself baby, show me how you stroke it.”

Melo was rock hard.  He hissed as he ran his hand up his thick shaft and circled his thumb over his throbbing head, spreading his leaked pre-cum so she could see it.  She spat on her dildo as he squirted lube on himself.  

“Follow my pace baby,” she instructed, “you know how much I love to push you.”

“I’ll do whatever you say baby,” Melo swallowed and began to stroke his dick as she jacked the dildo.  She switched between going fast and slow, bringing different sounds out of Melo as she encouraged him.  She moaned at every twitch of his dick and felt herself growing hotter and hotter with each stroke.

“Fuck,” she spat out as Melo had to let go of his cock, his head thrown back and his eyes squeezed shut, “you wanna cum don’t you baby?”

“I don’t wanna,” Melo groaned as he smacked his cock, “you just drive me crazy Ma.”  His eyes refocused on his screen to find she’d changed positions.

She was sitting now, her thighs spread so her pussy was on full display.  Melo cussed at the sight of it.  Even through the camera he could tell she was just as heated as he was.  She was visibly swollen and practically dripping.  She giggled as she slipped her fingers through her folds, a visible tremble running through her at the same time.

“Look how ready I am for you,” she moaned as she fingered her clit, “you’d stretch me out so good with that big cock.”

“I’d give you the fuck of your life,” Melo gripped his cock again, “have yo ass screamin’.”

She picked up the dildo from her side and rubbed the tip against her entrance, “tell me baby,” she hummed, “tell me how you’d do me.”

“I’d fuck you in so many ways,” he started to jerk his cock again.  “God, I’d fuck you into your mattress baby, giving you the deepest strokes of your life.  You’ve never had a dick like this.”

“No I haven’t,” she whined, pushing the dildo inside her, “you’d have to go slow with me, I wanna make sure I feel every inch of you.”  she let out a gasp of a pet name, her free hand gripping on to her tit.

“God just the sight of your cock makes me feel crazy,” her hips were moving against her hand, pushing the rubber cock in and out, trying desperately to match Melo’s pace.  If he could function enough to think of anything at that moment, he’d appreciate her commitment to making it feel like they were together, fucking.  But his brain wasn’t working anymore.  Everything that came to mind was nothing shy of filth. 

“It’s all yours baby, and you’d look so fucking good bouncing on top of it.”

She moaned at his words, her tits bouncing as she fucked herself harder.  

“This big fucking dick is all yours, whenever you want it, I don’t care where, it’s yours.”

His room filled with a mix of her moans, his heavy breathing and the sound of his hand beating his cock, slapping with how fast he was jerking.

“Oh and this pussy is all yours daddy,” she moaned loudly, “I’m all yours baby.  You can put that pretty dick whereever you want and use me for whatever you need.  I just need you all over me daddy, your big hands wrapped in my hair, around my throat.”

“I’ll slut you out baby,” Melo groaned as he chased her words, “I’ll make you cum so much the whole world gon’ hear.”  

“I’m gonna cum,” she all but screamed, “keep talking, tell me baby, I want to hear you.”

“I’ll fuck you from behind in the mirror, baby.  Smack yo’ ass and pull your hair and make you look me in the eye while you cum all over my big dick.”  Melo repressed a loud moan and swallowed hard.  “We gon’ fuck all night, baby, the second you cum, I’m sticking it right back in there.  I’ll make it so you won’t be able to walk in the morning.”

Melo watched her body react to his words and struggled to process the sight. Her chest was heaving, fucking the dildo in and out of her hole with her hand tight on her clit.  She swore over and over again until her words were nothing but moans and Melo saw everything reach it’s peak.  She pulled the dildo out of her and did everything she could to stop her thighs from clamping shut.

“Holy fuck,” she gasped with her head thrown back and her hands jammed between her thighs.  She collasped against whatever was behind her and Melo watched her spread herself open and squirt.  “Oh baby, I’m cumming so fucking hard.”

Melo just about double over, letting out the loudest moans and groans he’d ever made as his load spurted out of his tip.  He massaged his balls and watched his seed cover his lower stomach and parts of his laptop.

“Fuck,” he sighed as he leaned back and let his dick stand to its own want.  

For a minute, the two of them didn’t move, just panting heavily staring at one another.  Occasionally, he’d stroke his shaft and rub his balls at the same time to see if he had anything left.  She was the first one to move, laying back down to the position she’d been in when the call started.

“Every time I think we’ve reached our peak, you go and do the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen,” she giggled as she put one of her fingers to her lips.

“Tell me how that pussy tastes babe,” he said, his voice audibly strained.  She smirked and put her fingers in her mouth, sucking them off.

“It tastes sweet and creamy,” she let her wet fingers drag down her naked torso to her nipples.

“You’re a fuckin’ problem,” Melo grinned and shook his head, reaching for the rag he washed for this call.

“I’m a problem?” she giggled, pointing to herself, “you’re the one who’s got me thinking of throwing all the policies out the window.”

“Policies?” Melo asked, suddenly brought out of his post-nut daze.  “What are you tryna say?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted with a shrug, “but don’t you feel it too?  Don’t you want to see my face?  Know my name?”

“I want all of the above, baby,” Melo pulled his laptop closer to him.  “Are you saying there’s more we could do?”

“I’m just thinking out loud here,” she hesitated, “you’re the first person I feel like I’d be safe sharing my secrets with.”  What was she saying?

It was a big confession, she wants to elevate things.  Melo couldn’t decide if it was his money or him but he really didn’t care.  He wanted to have her name and he wanted her to know his name.  But it’s unique, and she’d know exactly who he was if he said it.

Fuck it.

“LaMelo,” he rushed to say, spitting it out before he could think twice.  “I’m LaMelo.”

She smiled wide and he watched as she reached out to her laptop screen and pushed it back slightly.

“I’m Y/N,” she giggled.

LaMelo repeated her name, letting it pass through his lips to see how it’d feel saying it.

“So Y/N,” Melo smiled as he pushed his laptop screen a bit too, showing more of him, “if I offered to fly you out, would you say no?”

“Oh baby,” she smirked, “I’d be there in a heartbeat.  I want all that dick in real life.”

“Aight, bet,” Melo picked up his phone from beside him, “you give me a date and I’ll work out all the rest.”