#what do they want to express with this work? what would be the message they send through it all

[everrinsly]

a/n; your favorite boys are very needy hehe, hope you enjoy! thank you for reading!!! and my messages have been acting wacky (T_T) if you sent a message and I didn't reply, please send me again! have a good day/night!! slow updates still (ノωヽ)

pretty nails, pretty back. fluff. very suggestive. fem!reader. | not proofread.

when he pays for your nails just so you'll scratch his back.

♡ For all your ("Gimme back scratchies") favorites.

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જ⁀🏐ᯓ⚽⋆⭒˚.⋆🌌

You don’t think much of it when you tell him you’re getting your nails done. You toss it casually over your shoulder as you stand in front of the hallway mirror, fixing your hair—

"I’m thinking of doing that pastel pink, y’know? Something summer-y.”

He looks up from the couch, protein shake in hand, about to go for his run. His expression doesn’t change. There’s maybe a faint twitch in his brow. Or maybe that’s just how his face is when he’s trying not to care too much.

“You want me to pay for it?”

“Hm? What?”

“Your nails, baby,” he says. “Put it on my card.”

“…Yeah, but why?” you ask, pouting up at him. “I can pay.”

He shrugs. “I got it.”

“You never just ‘got it,’” you accuse, squinting at him suspiciously. “What’s the catch?”

A familiar smirk tugs at his lips. “No catch. Just wanna spoil my girl. That so bad?”

Okay… it wasn’t not believable. He did like to spoil you in that quiet way of his—“just because” flowers left on your desk, his hoodie thrown over your head when you shivered, snacks from that shop you mentioned once four months ago. But still, something about the way his voice curled at the edges made you wary.

You narrow your eyes. “I think… you want something.”

“Mm. Maybe.” 

He pushes off the couch, stretching lazily, then leans down to kiss the top of your head. His hand lingers on your hips for a second before giving your ass an encouraging little pat.

“Just come back looking pretty for me,” he murmurs, already heading for the door, earbuds in hand, leaving you stunned and flustered like always. 

So here you are, hours later—home from the salon, nails gleaming as you slip your shoes off at the front door. 

You went full girly for this one: baby pink with little white daisies on your ring fingers. Something sweet. Something soft. Something that, stupidly, kinda makes you want to bounce up to him, like look how pretty I am. 

Instead, you walk in quietly. He’s already on the couch, shirtless, sprawled out sore from his run. 

You swallow.

“Hey,” you say, slipping your tote onto the hook by the door. “I’m home.”

His head lolls toward you. “Yeah? Lemme see.”

He reaches for you, fingers curling gently around your wrist as he tugs you closer between his legs.

You bite your lip, cheeks warm, and hold out your hand, giggling softly. “Aren’t they pretty?”

His eyes flick down, then back up. Something dark settles in his gaze.

“Yeah. Real fucking pretty, baby,” he murmurs, almost too quiet. He lifts your hand and presses a kiss to your knuckles.

It’s uncharacteristically gentle and makes your chest ache a little, the way he lingers there, like he’s going to say something deeper—

“Butttt,” he drawls, still holding your hand, thumb lazily brushing over your fingers, “you owe me now. You know that, right?”

—Okay. Maybe not. 

“Oh, here we go.”

“I paid for your nails, so I need my return on investment.”

You’re unamused as you raise a brow. “What kind of return, exactly?”

He leans back into the couch, the perfect picture of entitlement. “Back scratches. Obviously.”

You blink. “That’s why you paid?”

“Why else would I do something nice?” he teases, flashing you a grin. “I’m a simple man. I see pretty nails on you and think ‘yeah, she should drag those down my back.’”

You gape at him, but he just pats his lap. “C’mere, baby. Put ’em to work.”

You try not to overthink it as you straddle him slowly, knees on either side of his thighs, heart pounding. But the moment you settle, he shifts and flips you over gently, pressing a kiss to the side of your neck in the process until you’re lying along the couch with your head on the armrest.

He slots himself between your legs, arms wrapping around your waist. His head finds a home on your chest—right between your breasts. His back is bare, golden, toned, and waiting.

“Perfect,” he mutters, nuzzling in with a sleepy sigh. “Now mark me up.”

Your breath catches. “But—”

“Hmm?” You feel the rumble of his voice against your sternum. 

“You said you’d scratch my back. So scratch.”

Your lips twitch as a sudden wave of boldness flutters in your chest. Instead of obliging right away, you lift one hand and gently tangle your fingers in his hair—soft at the nape, slightly damp from his shower—and give a light tug… just enough to make him lift his head and look at you.

“Actually,” you tease, voice soft, “I never agreed to anything.”

He stills, then scoffs, expression utterly unimpressed, brows quirked up in that classic really? look.

“I paid for your nails.”

“And that’s the bare minimum, yeah? Not princess treatment.”

“Oh baby,” he drawls. He lifts his head to smirk down at you, eyes half-lidded. “You wanna go there?”

“Mhm,” you hum, pretending not to notice the way his weight shifts between your legs. “Since it’s the bare minimum… you don’t get prince treatment.”

He lets out a breathy little laugh, more of a heh, and cocks his head to the side, surely about to ruin you.

“Oh no, sweetheart,” he warns. “You don’t wanna go there.”

“Why not?”

“Who suffered through Tokyo traffic and drove three hours to Nagano to bring you back ramen takeout?”

“You didn’t have to—!”

“Who got you and your girls plushies because “we’ll die without them.”

“Hey! We chipped in—!”

“Who gives you a daily allowance just for looking cute? Hm? Who lets you use his card for ‘stress shopping’ every time work gets too much?”

“...Okay, that is not—”

“And,” he says, leaning in even closer, voice dropping an octave, “who fucks you when you’re needy, baby? Who makes it better when you’re all whiny and worked up and can’t sleep unless you’re dripping on cock?”

Oh. 

Shit. 

Your face heats, and you suck in a breath.

He grins smugly; he’s got you right where he wants you. His nose brushes your cheek, lips barely grazing yours. “So, go on, princess. Tell me again how I don’t get prince treatment.”

You glare up at him, cheeks flushed, voice a whisper now. “You’re such a dick.”

“Your dick, though,” he agrees. 

You hate how true that is; you hate it almost as much as you love it.

So you shut him up the only way you can.

By finally scratching down his back.

It starts slow—soft drags of your fingertips down the expanse of his back, nails tracing lazy, teasing paths along the tip of his spine, across the swell of his shoulder blades. You’re delicate, painting affection across him one scratch at a time.

He lets out a deep breath and shudders slightly, his body sinking heavier against you. And for the first time tonight, that smug, cocky exterior of his begins to fade. All that usual teasing melts into something quieter, something raw. 

“That good?” you ask shyly, unsure.

“Shit… yeah,” he mutters, rougher now, a rasp curling around his words. His shoulders slump, jaw slack against the curve of your chest. “Keep going.”

You drag your nails a little deeper this time—scratches that leave a warm sting behind. He shivers under your hands, breath hitching every time you hit a spot just right. His fingers grip your waist, grounding himself, holding you tighter.

“Harder,” he says suddenly, voice hoarse, almost pleading. “Baby, go harder.”

You pause for a moment only to dig in a little more with each stroke, scratching firm lines down the length of his back. The pressure leaves faint, blooming pink trails in your wake. He groans softly, barely holding it back, and the sound makes your stomach flip.

“That’s it. Fuck, that’s it… pretty girl. Just like that.”

His hips press down into yours steadily, a lazy grind that feels unconscious, chasing relief without realizing it. You gasp softly as the pressure hits just right, but you let him... let him move with you.

Your legs part a little wider. You meet the next slow rut of his hips with one of your own, your breath shallow as your bodies find a rhythm—unspoken and messy.

And when he moans your name, your touch grows bolder… needier. You let your nails bite into his skin, not enough to break it, but enough to leave you were here carved into him.

And you want it to be known you were here—

So you move with intention, tracing the first letter of your name just beneath his shoulder blade. One letter. Then another. And another.

He stiffens.

You finish the curve of the last letter, your name now scratched—subtly, possessively—into his back.

He feels it.

“Baby…” he breathes out, voice shaking, wrecked. “Did you just—”

You nod. “Mhm. Wrote my name.”

He groans, guttural, forehead pressing harder against your chest. “Fuck,” he mutters. “You’re so hot...”

And then—like he needs to do something, anything—he tilts his head and kisses the exposed skin just above your neckline. But it’s not soft… it’s hungry.

His lips part, and he sucks rough, teeth grazing just enough to make you whimper. His hand slips under your shirt to steady your waist as he works at the spot, trying to leave a mark; his own name written in bruises, just like you scratched yours into his skin.

You sigh his name in bliss, barely holding back the shiver. “Feels good.”

“Yeah? It’ll feel more good if you keep goin’, baby. Scratch me up.”

You do.

And if that means keeping your nails pink and pretty for him to groan under your touch every day?

You’re in.

[nakylvr]

— 𝒮low ✧ 𝒮.ℒ

summary જ⁀➴ sophia can always tell when you're having an off day, and she's always there to help you with it

warnings/tags જ⁀➴ hurt/comfort, established relationship, transmasc!reader, mild language, mentions of dysphoria, idol!sophia x non idol!reader, not proofread

again,(🫩) transphobia is not welcomed on this blog and you will be blocked immediately. i wont bother responding so stop please

you're laying in your bed with the blanket pulled up to your chin, oversized hoodie on with the hood over your head, and the only sound being your thoughts running through your head. you called out of work for the day, and you hadn't moved from your position since the morning. you weren't sure what time it was by now, the curtains shut to keep out the sunny day it was outside.

your phone went off a few times, and you barely had the energy to flip it over and see the messages. they were all from your girlfriend, sophia – the first one saying good morning and asking if you wanted to do anything today, then a few more throughout the morning, and then the final one reading "i'm on my way." that's it.

you sigh, setting down the phone. she knew you too well by now. all it took was you not responding for her to know something was wrong with you. it wasn't hard to figure out, though. you two always responded to each other even if it was an hour or a few later. but for multiple texts to be sent over the morning into the afternoon, she knew.

within half an hour, you heard the front door click, and then creak open. shuffling feet against the wood floor, and then you heard her voice.

"yn?"

it was soft, hesitant when she said it. like speaking too loud would startle you. you look over at her, seeing her standing in the doorway with a concerned expression etched on her face. her worry only grows bigger when you don't even have the energy to force a smile on your face, instead just staring back at her with tired eyes and a blank expression. she walks to the other side of the bed and slides in while still sitting up, carefully grabbing your hand.

"what's wrong, mahal?" she asks quietly.

you shake your head, mumbling. "nothing."

she gives you a pointed look, the concern still on her face. "you can tell me, y'know. that's what i'm here for." she says softly.

you give a curt nod, eyes avoiding hers. "just feel like shit."

"are you sick?" sophia moves her hand to your forehead to feel if you were cold.

"no." you shake your head. "i don't know. i just don't want to do anything."

sophia nods in understanding. "do you want me to make you something to eat?" she asks. "i can make your favorite." her thumb draws little circles on your cheek.

your eyes finally meet hers, and she can see the emptiness in them, and it makes her heart ache. she knows you have days like this, and she is far from one to get upset or irritated by it. she understood enough of the situation to not get irritated when you couldn't even get out of bed for work.

"please?" you say quietly.

"of course, malko." she presses a quick kiss on your head. "you stay here, 'kay? call for me if you need anything."

"okay." you nod.

"i love you," she whispers.

"i love you too," you reply, a warm feeling radiating through your chest. the first thing you've felt all day so far.

sophia gets out of the bed and heads into the kitchen. soon enough, you could hear the clattering of pots and pans as she started to make your favorite meal. you remained on the bed for a few minutes before you found yourself slowly climbing up and out of it.

your hoodie was two sizes bigger than you wore, and it reached the middle of your thighs and covered your hands almost entirely. you slowly walk over to the kitchen, standing in the doorway watching sophia move around your kitchen like it was second nature. you loved watching her cook, it was something you both enjoyed. while you still cooked every now and then, she was the one to do it most of the time. you liked watching her cook, and she liked having your presence around when she did cook, especially for you.

you take a few hesitant steps towards sophia who's standing at the stove, and slowly wrap your arms around her from behind. she jumps slightly, clearly surprised, but instantly melts into your arms.

"i thought i'd have to drag you out of that bed," she says.

"me too," you mumble with a nod, pressing your face in the crook of her neck. "'m sorry."

"uh-uh." sophia shakes her head. "don't do that."

your arms tighten around her, and she can feel your breathing get shaky along with your whole body. she can tell those things by now, knowing you're about to lose it. she turns the heat low on the stove and turns – your arms still secure around her as hers hook around your neck.

"i-i'm sorry i just–" you swallow, taking a shaky breath. "i hate myself some days, and i feel great other days. i don't want to bother you."

"you're not bothering me, yn." sophia tells you gently. "you could never bother me. i know you have these days sometimes, and i will always be here to help you through them. always. no matter what."

"i'm scared." you whisper suddenly.

"of what?" she replies in the same voice.

"you leaving," you answer truthfully. "finding someone better. a real man like they say."

sophia's eyes soften. of course you would read the comments under her posts with you. ever since she was given the okay to go public with you, she immediately made a instagram post with a picture of you two, not noticing your surgery scars were showing. the comments and talk of it flooded like a tsunami on all social media, mixed with good and bad ones. while majority of eyekons were happy for her and didn't honestly care who she was with as long as they treated her with respect and love, the general public was far different. the scars being noticeable made conversation all over twitter about you. you expected it a little bit, but not to the extreme it became. you saw slurs towards you daily whenever you opened twitter, and even if it wasn't a slur it was still obviously not good words to you or about you. you could deal with the normal people on the street giving you looks or maybe saying something. but you couldn't deal with seeing words about you being thrown every time you went on social media. you even had to make all of your socials private because people were coming to your accounts to send you dms or comments under your posts.

and sophia wasn't stupid. she knew you well enough to know that you would look at the posts and comments and focus on the negative ones. she understood it. you were different. and some people didn't like different. and they are very loud about it. so loud that sometimes you can't hear anything else.

"you don't have to worry about that," sophia starts, speaking slowly. "because i can promise you that you are the only one that i will love like this. i promise that there won't be anyone else. i promise that my heart belongs to you, and just you. you are the love of my life, yn. nothing will ever change that." her hands move to cup your face. "you are more of a man than anyone else, even if you don't think so. i love you, malko. no one else."

tears begin forming in your eyes before you can even realize, your bottom lip trembling as you try to keep yourself from falling apart. but the second you feel her thumb wipe away one of the stray tears, you're breaking down.

sophia instantly pulls you into her arms the moment she hears your breath hitch and the tears start flowing, holding you close to her as you sob into her shoulder. she can't lie, she still hasn't completely gotten used to the spontaneous breakdowns from you. but she still understood.

you held a lot of your emotions inside. you didn't cry or break down like this often unless you were boiling over and about to spill. you didn't have days like this a lot, but they still happened occasionally every now and then. but she wasn't worried. you knew who you were, and that wasn't going to change. that was one thing you always said at the end of the day. you were you. and to both of you, that was enough.

"i love you." she murmurs softly. "i love you so much." she presses a soft kiss on your temple. "i'm never going to leave, i promise."

you slowly calm down in sophia's arms, her soothing words in your ear helping, along with her hands rubbing your back reassuringly. your tears eventually stop, and a few small sniffles come from you. you pull your face from her neck, and she looks up at you with her soft brown eyes.

"are you okay?" she asks in a soft voice.

"yeah." you nod. "i'm sorry."

"don't apologize." sophia shakes her head. "it's okay, you're okay. i promise." she kisses your cheek gently. "why don't i make something to eat, we sit in bed, and watch the last season of lost?"

"really?" you mumble, but your eyes light up for the first time today.

"really." she smiles at you.

"okay." you smile back.

[mariacallous]

Hearings before the Commerce Committee of the Arizona House of Representatives normally draw a modest crowd of lobbyists in suits. On March 19, 2024, a throng of people in more casual attire appeared. They wore matching green T-shirts adorned with the message “Save Our Tips.” The slogan caught the eye of Analise Ortiz, a Democrat on the committee. She assumed that the visitors were bartenders and waitstaff who had come to voice opposition to a bill that could lower their salaries.

The bill was called the Tipped Workers Protection Act, a name that disguised its true purpose. The legislation, if approved, would place an initiative on that November’s ballot to amend the Arizona constitution so that employers could pay tipped workers twenty-five per cent less than the state minimum wage, then $14.35 an hour. In Arizona, the minimum wage for such workers was already $11.35 an hour. The formula being proposed would allow employers to pay tipped workers just $10.76 an hour—a pay cut that would reduce a full-time server’s annual salary by twelve hundred dollars.

Ortiz, who had worked at a restaurant to help pay for college, knew from experience that servers were vulnerable to exploitation and mistreatment. She’d noticed that the chief supporter of the Tipped Workers Protection Act was the Arizona Restaurant Association, an industry lobby that represents the interests of owners. It had persuaded Republicans to introduce the measure as a way of blocking another ballot initiative, the One Fair Wage Act, which called for raising Arizona’s minimum wage to eighteen dollars an hour and insuring that by 2028 tipped workers would be paid that amount (without relinquishing their gratuities).

As the hearing progressed, Ortiz expected the workers in the green T-shirts to explain why they deserved a raise or, at the very least, did not want their salaries lowered. But, when three members of the group came forward to testify, all expressed support for the Tipped Workers Protection Act and opposition to the One Fair Wage Act, which they portrayed as an effort to steal their tips. A waitress named Jaime Sarli said, “If restaurants had to pay us more money and eliminated tips, why would I want to do this?” She explained that she made such “great money” as a server that she’d turned down salaried managerial positions. “I don’t want to work a minimum-wage job,” she said.

Ortiz, who is now a state senator, told me that, as she listened, she “became confused.” The One Fair Wage Act proposed guaranteeing servers a full minimum wage that would still be supplemented by tips. She found it odd that workers would instead promote a bill that cut their base salaries, especially at a time when the price of virtually everything—food, gas, rent—was rising. Ortiz subsequently came across a video, produced by a YouTuber called HistorySock, that clarified what she’d witnessed. The Save Our Tips activists all had ties to the Arizona Restaurant Association, the video revealed, and none were entry-level servers. Sarli, the waitress who’d testified about her fantastic tips, was an assistant manager at Streets of New York, a pizza chain whose owner, Lorrie Glaeser, was the vice-chair of the Arizona Restaurant Association’s board. Beth Cochran, who testified after Sarli, was the vice-president of Snooze A.M. Eatery, a breakfast chain, and served on the same board. “These people were management and were advocating for a bill that would allow them to undercut their own workforce,” Ortiz said. “That really upset me.”

Some workers at the hearing did speak against the Tipped Workers Protection Act. Meschelle Hornstein, a waitress at a restaurant in the Phoenix airport and a member of the trade union Unite Here, said that the measure “would harm the working-class people that make up the majority of tip positions.” Her testimony didn’t persuade the Republicans on the committee. One of them said, “Except for some of the unions, it’s clear the employees are happy with the situation as it is.” This message was echoed by Dan Bogert, the chief operating officer of the Arizona Restaurant Association, who urged the committee to “really just listen to the workers who are here.” He didn’t mention that the slogan on the green T-shirts matched the name of a new political-action committee, Save Our Tips AZ, that his organization was funding. According to a form filed with the Arizona secretary of state last October, the PAC received nearly a quarter of a million dollars from the Arizona Restaurant Association in the months that followed. The form was signed by Bogert, who was listed as the pac’s treasurer.

Until recently, tipped workers were politically all but invisible. This changed last summer, when Donald Trump appeared at a campaign rally in Las Vegas. Nevada was a swing state with many tipped employees in hotels, night clubs, restaurants, and casinos. Trump had a message for such workers: “You’re going to be very happy, because when I get to office we are going to not charge taxes on tips.”

Had Trump abandoned this pledge after winning Nevada and the general election, few observers would have been shocked. During his first term, the Department of Labor had hardly championed the interests of tipped workers, issuing a proposal that would have enabled restaurant owners to pocket pooled tips, under the guise of redirecting them to untipped, back-of-house workers. The Labor Department didn’t lay out what this would cost tipped workers, perhaps because it didn’t want the public to know. An analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank, estimated that it could deprive employees of nearly six billion dollars in tips annually. (After a public outcry, Congress blocked the move.)

Trump recently claimed that the idea of eliminating taxes on tips was inspired by an exchange he’d had with a waitress he’d encountered at a dinner in Vegas. “She happened to be beautiful,” he told a group of blue-collar workers who were invited to the White House in June. “And she looked at me—she said, ‘Sir, there should be no tax on tips.’ ” This was “the coolest thing I’ve ever heard.” The idea was included in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which he signed on July 4th; it was one of the few items in the package that some Democrats supported. Republicans released a video playing up the bill’s benefits for people like Peggy Weir, a waitress in Indiana who praises Trump for “fighting for the working men and women.” Many economists, however, consider the notion misguided. According to Yale’s Budget Lab, thirty-seven per cent of tipped workers don’t make enough money to pay any federal income taxes. Under the new law, casino dealers earning six-figure salaries with tips will receive large tax breaks, whereas busboys making poverty wages will get no benefit. And, though ending taxes on tips has a populist veneer, it won’t cost the owners of hotels and restaurants a penny. (This may be why Trump—himself a member of this class—embraced the idea.) The policy could even encourage employers to shift more kinds of work to tipped, subminimum-wage positions—thus reducing labor costs.

In February, Congressman Steven Horsford, a Democrat from Nevada, tried to rally support for an alternative measure called the Tipped Income Protection and Support Act, a bill that advocates a different approach. In addition to ending taxes on tips, it proposes to eliminate the subminimum wage that tipped workers are paid—a rate that, in sixteen states, is just $2.13 an hour before tips. Currently, the poverty rate among tipped workers is more than double the rate of other employees. Tipped workers are also more likely to rely on food stamps and other federal assistance.

Raising the minimum wage is popular even in red states—in 2022, voters in Nebraska, which Trump won by more than twenty points, approved a ballot measure to increase it from nine dollars to fifteen dollars an hour in the course of four years. But raising the subminimum wage for tipped workers has proved far more challenging, owing, in no small part, to the power of the National Restaurant Association, an industry lobby that some labor advocates call “the other N.R.A.” The lobby, which has a partnership with the Arizona group and similar associations in all fifty states, emerged as a potent force in the nineteen-nineties, under the leadership of Herman Cain, previously the C.E.O. of Godfather’s Pizza. (In 2012, he unsuccessfully ran for President.) During Cain’s era, the N.R.A. helped to fight President Bill Clinton’s 1993 health-care-reform plan, which would have required restaurant owners to provide insurance to full-time employees. Later, when Clinton sought to raise the federal minimum wage from $4.25 to $5.15 an hour, the N.R.A. went along with the idea on the condition that the subminimum wage for tipped workers remain $2.13. This two-tiered wage system had existed since 1966, when an amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act permitted tipped workers to be paid a fixed portion of the standard minimum wage as long as gratuities covered the difference. For decades, the two rates rose in tandem. In 1996, they were decoupled, and the $2.13 federal subminimum wage has been locked in place ever since.

Robert Reich, Clinton’s first Labor Secretary, described this situation to me as “utterly outrageous.” He also called it a corporate giveaway that shifted the cost of paying restaurant workers from employers to customers and taxpayers: “American taxpayers are subsidizing the biggest restaurant chains in the country with food stamps and other benefits that go to their tipped workers, because these workers can’t afford to make it any other way.”

In 2021, an amendment to raise the federal minimum wage to fifteen dollars an hour and phase out the subminimum wage for tipped workers was attached to President Joe Biden’s pandemic-relief package. But the Senate parliamentarian removed the proposal from the bill, on procedural grounds. Bernie Sanders, then the Budget Committee chairman, forced a vote on the bill anyway, with the provision included. This decision sparked a furor among supposedly liberal lawmakers, according to Ari Rabin-Havt, Sanders’s legislative director at the time. “I got such an incoming of shit, like nothing else I’ve ever gotten, from Democratic legislative directors about how dare I force their bosses to take this terrible vote,” Rabin-Havt recalled. “I’m talking four-letter-word screaming—stuff I didn’t even get when we were doing something on Israel that people didn’t like.” The source of the rage wasn’t the raising of the federal minimum wage, a proposal that had broad support, but eliminating the subminimum wage for tipped workers and potentially incurring the wrath of the National Restaurant Association. In the end, seven Democrats and an Independent voted against the bill—among them Joe Manchin, of West Virginia, and Kyrsten Sinema, of Arizona—and the legislation was defeated, 58–42. A few weeks later, Manchin and Sinema spoke at the N.R.A.’s annual public-policy convention.

The outsized power of corporate lobbies is often attributed to their vast financial resources and to the absence of meaningful restrictions on campaign spending since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, in 2010. According to the nonprofit OpenSecrets, which tracks money in politics, the N.R.A., during the 2024 election cycle, disbursed nearly a million dollars to various PACs, party committees, and candidates, money that flowed to both Democrats and Republicans. But this isn’t the real source of the group’s power, Rabin-Havt said. “What makes them uniquely powerful is they have a grassroots network of members and supporters,” he said. “Everyone has restaurants in their districts. And all these elected officials are on the road a ton, so they’re in these restaurants, and they use them to host fund-raisers.” The N.R.A. knew, he said, that politicians were afraid of alienating these crucial constituents. “It’s very good at politics,” he conceded.

Few people have clashed more frequently with the National Restaurant Association than Saru Jayaraman, the founder of the U.C. Berkeley Food Labor Research Center and the president of an advocacy organization called One Fair Wage. As this name suggests, the group favors eliminating subminimum wages, a goal that it has tried to advance in numerous states, including Arizona, where it led the drive to place the One Fair Wage Act on the ballot last year. The proposal never made it to the referendum stage, because the Arizona Restaurant Association filed a lawsuit challenging the validity of signatures collected in support of the idea. The alternative pushed by the A.R.A. did appear on the ballot, after Republicans on the House Commerce Committee approved it, in a party-line vote.

It was a striking illustration of the restaurant lobby’s influence; nevertheless, Arizona voters ended up rejecting the industry-backed measure, by a three-to-one margin. Jayaraman sees this as a sign that, for all the N.R.A.’s resources and connections, resistance to its agenda is growing. She has been a leader in this area since 2002, when she co-founded an organization called the Restaurant Opportunities Center to help workers who had been employed at Windows on the World, a restaurant in the World Trade Center, after 9/11. The organization was soon flooded with appeals from servers at other restaurants who complained about more systemic problems—wage theft, sexual harassment, paltry pay. Jayaraman, who is Indian American, attributes the pervasiveness of some of these problems to gender and race. The idea of tips as a substitute for wages is “a direct legacy of slavery,” she said when we met at a Mexican restaurant in the East Village. After emancipation, the practice flourished at firms such as the Pullman Company, which hired formerly enslaved men as porters but declined to pay them a salary, causing them to rely on handouts from white customers. It’s no coincidence, Jayaraman said, that immigrants and Black people are overrepresented among the ranks of tipped workers today. So, too, are women, whose dependence on tips makes them vulnerable not only to harassment but also to discrimination. In a recent book, “One Fair Wage: Ending Subminimum Pay in America,” Jayaraman cites a study revealing that, in New York, Black women at dining establishments earn eight dollars an hour less than their white male peers, in part because customers tip them less.

The restaurant where we met is called La Palapa. Jayaraman said that she chose the place because it’s an establishment that pays employees a living wage, which, she argues, is not only fair but also good for business. (The restaurant’s owner, Barbara Sibley, agrees; she told me that eliminating subminimum wages had significantly reduced staff turnover.) During the pandemic, many workers at restaurants with less enlightened owners quit their jobs, Jayaraman noted, signalling their frustration with the low and erratic pay. Cities such as Chicago have since passed legislation to phase out the subminimum wage. “We are in a worker-power moment,” Jayaraman said. “Finally, we are winning.”

But, as she acknowledged, one of the N.R.A.’s most effective tactics has been persuading restaurant workers that “winning” entails defeating the agenda of organizations like hers. Last year, a canvasser named Mitchell Gaynor became aware of this strategy while campaigning for the passage of Ballot Question 5, a Massachusetts proposal to raise the base pay of tipped workers from $6.75 an hour to $15 an hour—the state minimum wage—by 2029. Gaynor, who grew up in a working-class household in the North Shore region of Massachusetts and has often worked in restaurants for meagre pay, figured that it would be easy to persuade his peers to back the proposal. Instead, he “lost friends over this,” he said, as many servers became convinced that approving Question 5 would force restaurants to raise prices so high that customers would either stop tipping or stop eating out. This was a message crafted by the Massachusetts Restaurant Association—which, like all the state groups, has a written agreement with the N.R.A. that reflects a shared mission. The notion was often relayed to tipped workers directly by their bosses. One waitress told me that the owner of her restaurant pulled servers aside before a shift and urged them to “get the word out to vote no on Question 5,” so that their tips wouldn’t be taken away. In some restaurants and bars, signs saying “Vote No on 5” were hung in prominent places, to insure that customers got the message, too. Another waiter sent me photographs of the checks that he and his co-workers were handing out to diners. “Your Crew Votes ‘NO’ on Question 5,” they stated at the top. (The waiter voted yes, a fact that he hid from his boss.)

The N.R.A.’s Massachusetts campaign was a huge success. In a liberal state where Elizabeth Warren, one of the Senate’s fiercest champions of labor, cruised to reëlection, nearly two-thirds of voters rejected Question 5. “We got our asses kicked,” Gaynor said.

I recently visited the N.R.A.’s headquarters, in Washington, D.C. Sean Kennedy, the executive vice-president of public affairs, told me that it’s entirely reasonable for bartenders and waitresses to fear that eliminating the “tip credit”—the difference between the minimum wage and their base pay—will be detrimental to their interests. Kennedy has a polished manner and a fluency with social policy that was honed on Capitol Hill. He was an aide to the former Democratic Missouri congressman Dick Gephardt and a special assistant for legislative affairs to President Barack Obama before becoming a corporate lobbyist. Kennedy told me that, if labor costs suddenly tripled, restaurants would need to either raise prices (which could lead customers to tip less) or hire fewer people. Both scenarios would harm the servers whom the policy was designed to help. Question 5 in Massachusetts and similar measures elsewhere have not failed because of the restaurant lobby, he insisted, but because owners and employees “recognized what was at stake and engaged their local policymakers to say, ‘This is a bad idea.’ ”

Kennedy continued, “Every business economist has said that, if you raise the minimum wage, there’s going to be a reduction in jobs that’s going to be particularly intense in labor-intensive industries.” For much of the twentieth century, this was indeed the prevailing view among economists. But in 1994 the American Economic Review published an article that challenged this belief. Its authors—David Card, who would go on to win a Nobel Prize for his research on labor markets, and Alan Krueger, then a professor at Princeton—tracked the employment levels at fast-food restaurants in New Jersey before and after the state raised its minimum wage, then compared these data with the situation in neighboring Pennsylvania, where the minimum wage hadn’t changed. They found “no indication that the rise in the minimum wage reduced employment.” In 2010, a team of economists examined three hundred and sixteen pairs of counties on the opposite side of state borders where, during a period of sixteen and a half years, the minimum wage rose on one side but not on the other. They, too, found no adverse employment effects.

Michael Reich, a labor economist at U.C. Berkeley who co-authored the 2010 study, told me that most economists today no longer believe that raising the minimum wage will substantially reduce employment among low-wage workers. Doing so will cause restaurant prices to rise, he acknowledged, but the change will be far smaller than many people assume, in part because raising the minimum wage often lowers the cost of recruiting and retaining workers. In a recent policy brief, Reich examined the effects of California’s adoption, in 2024, of a twenty-dollar minimum wage for fast-food workers, a policy that the N.R.A. strenuously opposed. He found that the measure has led to price increases of less than two per cent—roughly six cents on a four-dollar hamburger. In February, Reich’s analysis was cited, misleadingly, by the Employment Policies Institute, which opposes raising the minimum wage. A blog published by the group quoted a sentence in which Reich made note of “a very small negative employment effect” from California’s wage increase. It didn’t quote the next line of the study, which explained that, when a statistical method controlling for trends in related industries and other variables was used, there was no decline in employment. The Employment Policies Institute has received funding from the N.R.A. and was founded by Richard Berman, a retired lobbyist and public-relations executive who specialized in creating nonprofit organizations that served as fronts for corporate clients, including the tobacco, alcohol, and restaurant industries.

Michael Reich’s research focusses on the fast-food industry, not on independent, full-service restaurants. Such businesses would be more endangered if the tip credit were eliminated, Kennedy told me. But the claim that they would go bankrupt if they had to pay waitstaff and bartenders the full minimum wage is belied by the fact that seven states, including Alaska, Minnesota, and California, already require restaurants to do this. Sylvia Allegretto, a labor economist who studies the minimum wage, noted that people still eat out (and tip) in those states: “I’m here in Oakland, where the restaurant industry is booming and everyone tips.”

In 2023, Allegretto published a study that compared “high-road” states that have no tip credit and “low-road” states, where restaurant workers get $2.13 in base salary. In the high-road states, the poverty rate of waitstaff and bartenders was significantly lower. And restaurant jobs had not grown scarce. In fact, between 2012 and 2019, the number of businesses and the rate of employment growth in full-service restaurants were higher in these states.

The N.R.A. claims that there’s no need for restaurants to pay tipped workers the full minimum wage, because servers already do so well. “You can bring home a really impressive paycheck,” Kennedy told me. Before we met, the organization had sent me some industry data, including this statistic: “The median hourly income of a tipped server is $27/hour, with the top earners making over $41/hour and the low end making $19/hour.” It came from a survey of more than two thousand full-service restaurants that the N.R.A. itself conducted. No economist would regard a lobbying group as a reliable source for such information. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median hourly pay of waiters and waitresses (including tips) was $15.36 in 2023. A quarter of full-time servers earn less than twenty-four thousand dollars a year. Although waiters in fine-dining establishments can make several times this amount, there are far more low earners who work at places such as IHOP and Cracker Barrel. Restaurant servers are also much less likely to receive health insurance, paid sick leave, and other benefits than other private-sector employees.

Allegretto acknowledged that small, family-owned restaurants could “struggle disproportionately” if the tip credit were eliminated, and that these institutions helped give many communities their charm. “We definitely don’t want to lose the restaurants that make your neighborhood so wonderful to live in,” she said. But there are ways to help such businesses—lowering their tax burden during a transition period, for example. Countries that have never expected servers to rely on tips, including Italy and France, are full of family-owned restaurants. “Why are we the only country in the world doing this?” Allegretto asked. “The model we have is very unfair, and it’s not necessary.”

One afternoon, I met a bartender named Max Hawla, who lives in Washington, D.C., where the debate about tipped workers has been particularly heated in recent years. Hawla is in his early thirties, with a laid-back manner and a boyish face framed by a mop of reddish-blond hair. In 2018, he was working at a bar in Dupont Circle when he heard about Initiative 77, a ballot measure backed by Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, which proposed to raise wages for D.C. servers from less than four dollars an hour to the standard minimum wage by 2026. After his manager told him that the measure would “mess up our wages,” Hawla became opposed to the idea, to the point of changing his profile picture on Facebook to an Initiative 77 sign with a slash through it.

Despite stiff opposition from the N.R.A. and the Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington, voters approved Initiative 77, by a nearly twelve-point margin. Later that year, under pressure from the restaurant lobby, the D.C. Council overturned it. When Hawla heard this, he was relieved. Sometime later, he visited a friend in Seattle. One night, they went to a speakeasy and chatted with the bartender. Hawla thought that he had a “very bro-ish, bodybuilder vibe,” and was the kind of guy who probably made a nice living just on tips. Hawla decided to ask him what he thought of the tip credit.

“What’s a tip credit?” the man said. There wasn’t one in Washington State or in Montana, where he’d grown up.

“You know—because you get tips, your employer can pay you a lower wage,” Hawla explained.

“Well, that sounds stupid,” the bartender said, noting that he made fifteen dollars an hour, and still got good tips on top.

In 2022, a proposal to phase out the tip credit in D.C. was again placed on the ballot. This time, Hawla voted for the measure, having come to believe that he’d been fed “a lot of misinformation” that was designed to get tipped workers to fight against their own interests. The proposal, Initiative 82, passed by nearly fifty points, seemingly settling the matter. But this past January a friend alerted Hawla that the D.C. Council was hosting a public hearing on the issue. The friend, a fellow-bartender named Rachelle Yeung, had been working a shift at a brewery when a canvasser dropped off a flyer encouraging servers to attend the hearing and testify about the “negative impact” Initiative 82 was having. “Have you or your co-workers lost hours?” the flyer asked. “Lost jobs?”

Workers who’d experienced these problems were instructed to contact a server named Joshua Chaisson, whose e-mail address was printed at the bottom of the flyer. Chaisson had personally handed a flyer to Yeung. A week later, Chaisson, who goes by @MrTipCredit on X, appeared at the hearing in a black sweatshirt emblazoned with the logo “SAVE THE TIP CREDIT RWA”—the initials of a group called the Restaurant Workers of America. This organization, which Chaisson co-founded, first attracted media attention in 2018, after its members began speaking out against campaigns to eliminate the subminimum wage. Some media outlets credulously depicted it as a grassroots network of servers who opposed an imprudent policy shift. “We keep screaming from the rooftops, ‘Please don’t help!’ ” one member told BuzzFeed News. The tone of reporting on the group changed after the Columbia Journalism Review published an article revealing that most of its members were restaurant owners, each of whom paid between a hundred dollars and five hundred dollars to join. BuzzFeed News later reported that the Restaurant Workers of America’s most prominent spokesperson, Chaisson, had strategized with the P.R. firm founded by Richard Berman, the man who created fronts for lobbying groups.

Sean Kennedy, of the N.R.A., told me that his group has no financial ties to the Restaurant Workers of America, though he acknowledged that the organizations have had “intel-sharing conversations.” In recent years, Chaisson appears to be keeping a lower profile—he didn’t respond to a request for an interview—but he’s continued to push for maintaining the tip-credit system. His crusade against Initiative 82 might seem strange, given that he waits tables in Portland, Maine, more than five hundred miles from the nation’s capital. Nevertheless, at the hearing, he blasted the measure for creating a “dumpster fire” in D.C., saying that restaurants were closing at a record pace and servers were losing hours and jobs. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics paint a less dire picture. Since Initiative 82 was adopted, employment at full-service restaurants in D.C. has hovered at about thirty thousand jobs. Nonetheless, in June the D.C. Council overrode voters for a second time. It paused the minimum wage for tipped workers, which was scheduled to go up to twelve dollars an hour in July, at its current level—ten dollars an hour. The city’s minimum wage is $17.95.

Nina Mast, an analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, has studied the methods of the restaurant-industry lobby closely. She’s an expert on child labor, which has grown increasingly pervasive in recent years, as states have loosened restrictions on the number of hours that teens can legally work on school nights, and permitted their involvement in alcohol service and hazardous jobs such as roofing. In Iowa, Florida, and several other states, the restaurant lobby has pushed for these policies, she told me, in part to address what the lobby claims were labor shortages caused by the pandemic. Recently, Kennedy was quoted in a press release introducing a federal bill that would let teens work longer and later. N.R.A. associations and their members have portrayed the changes as harmless, family-friendly reforms. “What they do is recruit mostly white teens who work at a family-owned small business to testify that working a few extra hours a week will benefit them,” Mast said. “Of course, this is strategic. They don’t want lawmakers to hear from teens who are getting injured working in slaughterhouses owned by multinational corporations or who can’t stay awake in school, because they’re being scheduled to work late on school nights. But these are the young people who will be harmed.” The N.R.A.’s agenda went far beyond defeating efforts to eliminate the subminimum wage, she added: “The N.R.A. and its state affiliates are heavily invested in lobbying for anti-worker policies across the board, in areas from paid sick leave to overtime pay.”

Jessie Danielson, a member of the Colorado State Senate whom I met in May, has seen this more sinister face of the restaurant lobby. Danielson is a progressive Democrat and an outspoken champion of workers’ rights. One bill she recently co-sponsored would require the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment to publish on its website the names of employers who engaged in wage theft—a widespread problem in the restaurant industry—and report these violations to licensing and permitting bodies. Last year, a study published by the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations estimated that, in the Denver-Aurora metropolitan area, forty-five thousand workers a year were paid below the minimum wage, costing them, collectively, at least a hundred and thirty-six million dollars in earnings. Among the occupations subject to the highest violation rates were servers, hosts, and chefs. Few people would defend employers who steal money from their workers, but the Colorado Restaurant Association opposed the wage-theft bill. Danielson also sponsored a bill called the Worker Protection Act, which sought to eliminate an onerous requirement for workers seeking to form a union: that they hold a second election, and win seventy-five per cent of the vote, a burden unique to Colorado. The Colorado Restaurant Association opposed this measure, too. “Does this lobby oppose anything that gives workers rights?” she said. “In my experience, yes.”

The Colorado restaurant lobby did support one piece of labor legislation this year—a bill, H.B. 1208, that proposed lowering the base pay of tipped workers in cities that have raised their minimum wages above the statewide level. One such city is Denver, where the measure would have cut the minimum wage for tipped workers from $15.79 to $11.79. The bill’s supporters claimed that this was necessary because labor costs were decimating Denver’s restaurant industry. They cited the fact that since 2022 the number of licensed establishments in the city had fallen by twenty-two per cent. This figure, which appeared in the Denver Post and was circulated widely, came from the Department of Excise and Licenses. But, as Denver Labor, a division of the city’s auditor’s office, pointed out, that department didn’t give licenses only to restaurants; it issued them to all food and retail establishments, a category that had recently been redefined, with many food trucks and concession stands removed from the department’s database. As the department itself made clear, this meant that the statistic was an unreliable barometer of the restaurant industry’s health.

After meeting Danielson, I visited the offices of the Colorado Restaurant Association to speak with Sonia Riggs, its president and C.E.O. Riggs maintained that labor costs were devastating Denver’s restaurant scene. “I talk to restaurateurs every day who are crying or are looking for an exit strategy,” she said. “When you hear those stories over and over, it literally breaks your heart.” Riggs went on to frame H.B. 1208 as a matter of fairness, not only for struggling owners but also for back-of-house workers who didn’t get tips. “Why are the lowest-paid people in the company the least important and the ones that nobody wants to help?” she asked. Servers in Denver, she said, earned an average of thirty-nine to forty-two dollars an hour—far more than chefs and dishwashers.

This was another statistic touted by H.B. 1208 supporters. It came from a survey of a hundred and thirty restaurants which was conducted by a possibly biased source: the Colorado Restaurant Association. If true, it would mean that the typical server in Denver makes more than seventy thousand dollars annually. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, however, the average salary of bartenders and servers in Denver is less than forty thousand dollars; economists say that this isn’t enough for a single person to cover living expenses in the city, much less to support a family. “These are economically vulnerable people,” Matthew Fritz-Mauer, the executive director of Denver Labor, told me.

His view was echoed by Joseph Mitchell, a waiter at the Alamo Drafthouse, in Littleton. He told me that last year he made forty thousand dollars working full time. He lives paycheck to paycheck, he said, without health care, and couldn’t imagine getting by if his hourly salary was cut by four dollars.

I met Mitchell at the Weathervane Café, a restaurant in Denver whose owner, Lindsay Dalton, has vocally opposed H.B. 1208. Dalton admitted that, in many restaurants, there were tensions between front-of-house and back-of-house employees. This was why she and her husband, who co-owned the café, pooled all tips and divided them evenly among the staff. Nothing prevented restaurants in Denver that cared about fairness from doing the same, she noted. The most surprising thing about H.B. 1208, she said, wasn’t that the restaurant lobby had pushed for it but that its sponsors were all Democrats. Judy Amabile, a state senator from Boulder, was one of them. Amabile, a co-founder of a sports-water-bottle company, told me that she supported the bill because she believed that restaurants in places such as Boulder were hurting, and that flexibility on the tip credit was needed to avoid damaging “one of the big economic drivers of our community.” A spokesperson for EatDenver, a coalition of more than four hundred and fifty independent restaurateurs, told me that the rising cost of labor was their biggest concern. But the damage didn’t seem to be as grave as the restaurant lobby claimed. In 2023, a study by the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment found that, in the two years after Denver raised its minimum wage above the state level, business boomed. Per-capita sales-tax revenues at bars and restaurants in the city increased by eighty-five per cent—double the rate of the rest of Colorado.

Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez, a member of the Denver City Council, appreciated the challenges that restaurant owners faced. Her parents started a restaurant some years ago, and they had to close it after having problems with the landlord. But she didn’t believe that cutting workers’ wages was the only solution. “Can we look at the inflation of food costs—or the cost of rent?” she asked. Gonzales-Gutierrez was one of thirty-seven legislators who signed a letter opposing H.B. 1208, maintaining that it undermined the authority of local governments to set the minimum wage. On this occasion, as in the past, she said, the Colorado Restaurant Association presented itself as the champion of mom-and-pop restaurants while advancing an agenda that she felt primarily benefitted large chains. In 2023, when she was a state representative, the N.R.A. lobbied against a fair-workweek law that would have required employers to give workers advance notice about their schedules. The law, which she co-sponsored, would have applied only to businesses with more than two hundred and fifty employees. The restaurant industry brought out more than eighty people to speak against it at a hearing, including the Latino owner of a small Mexican restaurant. “It wouldn’t even apply to them, but they testified,” she said.

Kjersten Forseth, the legislative consultant for the Colorado A.F.L.-C.I.O., told me that she’d struggled to contain her fury as she watched the leaders of Colorado—a blue state where Democrats control all branches of government—advance a bill to cut the wages of servers, especially after an election in which many working-class voters left the Democratic Party because they felt that it didn’t care about them.

A coalition of progressive groups, including Towards Justice and Coloradans for the Common Good, mounted strong resistance to H.B. 1208, and the bill’s sponsors were forced to amend it, stripping out the mandatory wage cuts and settling for giving municipalities more flexibility to alter the tip credit in the future. Colorado’s legislature also approved the Worker Protection Act, removing the burden on employees to hold a second election before forming a union. But Governor Jared Polis, a tech entrepreneur, promised to veto the bill. Before he did so, reports surfaced that Polis had floated to labor advocates the possibility of not vetoing it if other items returned to the negotiating table—including the original version of H.B. 1208.

Dennis Dougherty, the executive director of the Colorado A.F.L.-C.I.O., told me that the Colorado Restaurant Association was in on these negotiations, and that Polis appeared to expect the A.F.L.-C.I.O. to make a deal that sold out tipped workers to advance its agenda of facilitating unionization. But it refused to do so. Dougherty doesn’t regret the decision, even though Polis did veto the unionization bill. “They thought we were going to roll these workers,” he said. “We didn’t.” 

[yeagurt2]

just wanted to start of saying i love ur writing <3 !!

i wanted to request the love interest as readers husband !! would loooveee gojo or eren for this request, the overall plot as an argument or anniversary would also be rlly good :)

a/n: thank you for the request love! i decided to just combine the two prompts, hope u enjoy and lmk if you'd like one for eren as im happy to write for him <3 “Don’t Walk Away From Me—It’s Our Anniversary.” — husband!Gojo x f!reader | angst + hurt/comfort + make-up sex | wc: ~2.4k

You stared at your phone screen for the third time in an hour, thumb hovering over the same blank notification bar that had been taunting you all night. Midnight came and went. Nothing.

No call. No text. No "Happy anniversary, baby." Not even a damn emoji.

You tried to rationalise it, he was on a mission, it was dangerous work, maybe he didn’t have reception, maybe he was busy, maybe he was hurt. But you knew better. Because earlier that day, Nanami had messaged you back when you reached out about a document Gojo left behind. Meaning at least someone had access to a phone.

And still… not a word from your husband.

You sat there, waiting on that couch until two in the morning like some pitiful extra in a romance movie, dressed in the soft silk slip you’d picked out just for tonight, dinner cold on the counter. You even bought a little gift, something thoughtful, meaningful.

You wanted to surprise him when he came back the next morning. But now?

Now, all you could think about was how stupid you felt.

He came home the day after. Late afternoon.

Looking like nothing had happened.

Hair tousled from the wind, tired eyes hidden behind dark shades, duffel bag slung lazily over his shoulder like some dramatic, sun-drenched war hero. He strolled in like he owned the place, like he hadn’t left you behind on one of the most important days of your relationship.

But the second his foot crossed the threshold, he paused. You didn’t even have to say anything. The shift in the air was enough. Like stepping into a freezer.

You were on the couch, legs tucked under you, remote loosely held in one hand, blankly staring at the flickering TV screen like you hadn’t even registered he was home. No smile. No glance. No anything.

His brow twitched.

“…Hello to you too?” he tried with a lopsided grin, closing the door behind him. “Missed me?”

Nothing. Not even a blink.

His grin faltered.

“Okay…” He toed off his boots, padding over slowly, voice dropping into something more careful. “You okay, baby?”

Still nothing. Just a cold shoulder and a tighter grip on the remote.

He leaned against the back of the couch, trying to catch your eye. “Did something happen? You look like you’re gonna stab me.”

A flicker. A twitch of your mouth.

He smiled faintly. “Ah, there it is. You wanna kill me. That’s progress.”

You shifted, rising without a word.

He blinked as you stood up, but before he could say anything else, you turned and walked away toward the hallway. Not stomping. Not dramatic. Just done. That was worse.

His stomach sank.

“Wait—hey—” He rounded the couch and followed after you. “Hold on, what did I do?”

You kept walking.

“Baby.”

Your fingers curled into fists at your sides.

“What did I do?” he asked again, more seriously this time.

You spun so fast it startled him, your eyes dark, brows drawn tight with restrained rage. “You seriously don’t know?”

Gojo’s expression flickered with something like dread. “I—look, I’ve been gone for a week, my brain’s mush. If I missed something, I didn’t mean to, I swear—”

“It was our anniversary,” you snapped, voice cracking under the heat of your emotions. “Our fucking anniversary, Satoru. One year. And you didn’t call. You didn’t text. You didn’t even remember.”

He reeled back like you’d slapped him.

You stepped away again. “You remembered the date of your fucking eyewear fitting, but not the day we got married?”

“Wait, what?” he whispered, hands raised slightly. “No, no, no—fuck—I didn’t—”

“I waited,” you said, voice trembling. “I waited all night. I made dinner. I bought you something. I set the fucking table. I sat there like an idiot thinking maybe you’d come back late to surprise me, or call, or anything. But nothing came. Nothing ever fucking comes from you unless it’s convenient.”

He stepped toward you, guilt carved into every line of his face. “That’s not fair, I—”

You shook your head and turned again, storming into the bedroom. He followed.

“Wait—please just let me explain—!”

You tried to shut the door behind you, but he caught it. Forced it open with enough gentleness to not hurt you, but enough pressure to show he wasn’t letting this slide.

“Don’t walk away from me like that,” he said, breath uneven now. “You can be mad. You should be mad. But don’t shut me out.”

“I don’t want to look at you right now,” you hissed.

“Too fucking bad,” he said, voice low now, pained, raw. “Because I’m not letting you pretend like you don’t matter. You do. More than anything.”

You turned your back to him, shoulders rising and falling, trying to steady yourself. Trying not to fall apart.

But then, his hands, gentle but firm, grabbed your wrist, turning you around to face him. Your chest nearly brushed his. He loomed so close, too close, and you hated that your heart stuttered at the proximity.

“Let go,” you said, voice trembling, not from fear, but from how badly you didn’t want to want this. Want him.

“I won’t,” he said, voice quiet. “Not until you look me in the eyes and tell me you don’t love me anymore.”

You stared at him. You wanted to scream. To cry. To hit him. To kiss him.

Instead, you jerked away from his touch.

He chased after you again.

You reached for the dresser, maybe just to put distance between you, but Gojo was quicker this time, hand bracing beside your head before you could retreat any further. He caged you in.

You glared up at him, breath shallow.

“I’m not letting you run,” he murmured. “Not this time.”

“You forgot me.”

“Never.” His voice cracked. “I forgot the day. I forgot the fucking date. But you? I never forgot you.”

“Then why did it feel like I was the only one waiting?” you snapped.

“I don’t know,” he rasped. “I’m a fucking idiot. I hate myself for it. You can punish me for the rest of my life if you want-but don’t make me live without you.”

You looked away, lip quivering. He leaned in closer.

“I’ll make it up to you. I’ll spoil you so bad it’ll make you sick. I’ll spend every day for the next year proving to you that you’re the best decision I ever made. That you’re mine. That I don’t deserve you, but I’ll spend my life trying to.”

Your jaw clenched. “Don’t say that like it’s supposed to fix everything.”

“It’s not,” he said. “But it’s the truth.”

His eyes were glassy now, his shades discarded somewhere back in the living room. “You want to hate me? Go ahead. I hate me too. But if I have to crawl on my knees, beg, cry—I’ll do it. Just don’t walk away. Please.”

You stared at him, blinking hard. He stepped back just a little, enough to give you space to choose.

You were trembling. Fury and heartbreak clashing behind your eyes.

Then, suddenly, you grabbed the front of his shirt, yanked him down, and kissed him.

It wasn’t sweet. It wasn’t pretty. It was punishment and desperation and love and grief all at once. Your lips were wet with tears, your fingers clutched so tightly to his shirt he thought it might tear.

Gojo groaned into your mouth, one hand cupping the back of your head, the other wrapping tightly around your waist, holding you like he was afraid you’d vanish. He kissed you like he was starving, like you were air.

Without breaking the kiss, he walked you backward until the backs of your knees hit the bed.

You didn’t resist when he laid you down.

Between ragged breaths and reverent kisses, he whispered, “I’m gonna spend the rest of tonight, the rest of this week, this month, this year, reminding you just how much you mean to me.”

Your hands trembled as you clutched him closer.

“You think I forgot you?” he whispered. “You’re tattooed into every part of me.”

And when he kissed you again, it was soft. Apologetic. Worshipful.

And this time, you let yourself fall into it.

“I missed you,” he murmured into your skin, voice rough and low, lips brushing your collarbone as his hands slid slowly beneath your robe. “Missed this. Missed you.”

The robe slipped off your shoulders. His shirt followed, revealing the lean stretch of muscle under soft skin as he leaned in, kissing you again. But this time he was slow, painfully slow. His lips didn’t devour, they worshipped. He kissed over your chest, between your breasts, letting his nose brush against your skin as he inhaled you like he hadn’t had air in days.

You let your fingers run through his hair, guiding him downward, but he didn’t rush. His hands cupped your breasts, thumbs teasing over your nipples until they hardened beneath his touch. He tongued one gently, then the other, dragging his teeth over the peak just to hear your breath hitch.

“You’re so sensitive,” he murmured, mouth wet against your skin. “It’s been too long.”

He licked again, slow, swirling flicks that made your back arch, and then kissed down, trailing your stomach with maddening leisure, until he was kneeling in front of you on the carpet, face level with the heat between your thighs.

He pressed a kiss to the soft fabric of your panties. Just a kiss. Then another. Then a slow, lazy lick over the damp spot that had already formed.

You gasped, hips twitching.

He smiled against you. “That’s it. You missed me too, huh?”

But when you reached for his shoulders to guide him back up, hoping to return the favor, get your hands or mouth on that hard cock pressed tight against his sweatpants, he shook his head.

“Uh-uh,” Gojo said softly. “You’re not doing anything tonight.”

“But—”

“No,” he cut in gently, leaning forward to kiss your hip. “It’s your night. I forgot. I fucked up. So now, you shut up and let me worship you.”

He pulled your panties down with slow, reverent hands, mouthing at the skin he exposed inch by inch. You were already soaked, he groaned at the sight of your arousal stringing between your folds.

His mouth didn’t dive in. Not yet.

He teased.

Soft licks. Gentle kisses on your inner thighs. Blowing warm breath over your folds until your legs trembled. Then, finally, one long, flat stroke of his tongue from your entrance to your clit.

“Fuck—” You nearly folded in on yourself.

“Oh, baby,” he moaned into your cunt. “You taste so fucking good.”

Then he lost himself.

His mouth latched onto you like a man starved. Tongue licking, then sucking, then flicking hard against your clit before plunging deep inside you. Every movement was greedy and wet, messy and loud. You could hear every obscene lick and moan, he didn’t care, he was drowning in you.

You clutched his hair, anchoring yourself. His hands tightened on your thighs, spreading you even wider.

Then his hand moved. He reached up, rolling one nipple between his fingers, pinching just enough to make you cry out. And he groaned in response, his tongue flattening again against your pussy, dragging slow and firm circles over your clit.

“Satoru—too much—” you whimpered, hips jerking.

He didn’t stop. His eyes locked with yours from below, glazed and hungry.

“You can take it,” he mumbled against your cunt, then pressed kisses to your inner thigh, to your mound, to your clit again, between every kiss, he whispered something low and sweet. “I’m sorry… I’m so fucking sorry… Let me make it up to you.”

Two fingers slipped inside you.

He fucked you slow with them, curling just right to hit that spot inside you while his tongue returned to your clit, now swollen and overstimulated. The rhythm was unbearable, tongue flicking, fingers thrusting, his moans vibrating against you.

You sobbed out his name.

“That’s it,” he whispered, voice breaking as he kissed your stomach. “Let it go, baby. Let me have it.”

Your orgasm tore through you, sudden and hot, your thighs trembling around his head, your cries echoing off the walls. You tugged his hair, hips bucking as your cunt clenched around his fingers, dripping onto his palm, onto the floor.

Still, he didn’t stop.

He gave you just a moment to breathe before slipping his fingers back in, slowly this time, and lowering his mouth again.

“N-No—too much—”

“You can give me one more,” he murmured, lips brushing your slick folds. “C’mon, angel. I need it.”

He buried his face back in your cunt, tongue-fucking you while his thumb circled your clit now, wet and rhythmic. Your head rolled back, mouth open in a silent moan, the stimulation quickly building again.

He kissed your thighs. Your mound. Your belly. All while fucking you on his fingers and whispering, “So beautiful. So fucking good. My good girl.”

When you begged, really begged, breathless and undone, for his cock, he finally stood.

Sweatpants dropped.

His cock slapped against his stomach, red, heavy, leaking.

“I need to be inside you,” he said hoarsely, climbing on top of you. “Please. I’m gonna lose my mind.”

You nodded frantically, legs already spreading, still trembling from your orgasm.

He slid in deep.

You both gasped at the stretch, at the way your pussy clung to him, still soaked and fluttering.

“Fucking hell,” he groaned, collapsing on top of you as he started to move, deep, aching thrusts that felt like apologies, like pleas for forgiveness.

“I love you,” he whispered, kissing your mouth, your jaw, your neck. “I love you so much. I’ll never forget again. I swear it.”

Your nails scratched down his back. Your moans were breathy and wrecked, every thrust pushing you closer again.

He brought his thumb to your clit, rubbing it as he fucked into you, relentless and tender all at once. “Come again for me,” he panted. “One more time. Just one more, sweetheart—”

You came again, this time around his cock, pulsing so tightly around him that he choked on a moan and slammed in deep, once, twice, and came with a shudder.

You felt him spill inside you, warm and thick, his forehead pressed against yours as he whispered broken apologies.

“I’m yours,” he whispered.

And this time, you believed it.

[spaciebabie]

alright yes hi im finally doing this. commissions will be done thru kofi! this is my first time doing comms so please be nice!

details below the cut

Prices (assuming a single character is being drawn):

*note: if you want both color + simple shading for your sketch it will cost $4!

for each additional character 0.5 of the price of one character will be tacked on!

for reference, "full shading" would look something like this:

the way this will work is that -> you message me on kofi BEFORE you buy -> we work out details of what your commission might look like -> if you're satisfied/ready you place your order for the sketch

After I finish the sketch I will send it to you (watermarked) for critique. You will then tell me about anything you think needs to be tweaked or changed and then I will do that, and send it to you once more for review. Your second review will be the last time you can ask me to tweak things so make sure it looks like what you want! If you order from the lineart posting, I will then ask you for the rest of money owed for the commission! I will only start working on the rest of the comm once I get the rest of your payment. You'll pay me the rest of your fee by "Buying me a Coffee" with the amount owed.

There will be two separate comm postings one for Sketch comms and one for Lineart comms. Pick the one you want!

There should be an option on the commission postings to message me first before buying. Please don't place an order before talking to me first! Also, please give me lots of references so I know what you want! Especially if you have something specific in mind please communicate that to me I wont bite <3

Please note that drawing does take awhile for me, and so you might have to wait some time for the finished product, especially if I'm taking on multiple people at once.

After I finish it I will email you the image (so please provide an email <3) unless you specify otherwise. If you ever want updates on your comm feel free to ask! Please just be mindful about how frequently you're asking about it.

If you are rude to me at any point during the process I will not take comms from you in the future and you will be refunded if you do try to buy them from me. Please also do not repeatedly ask me to do something if I have expressed to you I won’t <3

Comms are first come first serve and I will keep advertising them until 3 slots are filled! If there is enough demand in the future I will open more slots but I'm trying to start off small. I will finish those three comms and then open them up again to get the next 3 ppl who might want them!

On kofi I made two separate listings for Sketch comms and Lineart comms. When the combination of both of those listings reaches 3 they will be closed. I formatted it this way for my own organizational purposes ^_^ make sure when you're ordering from either one you check if you want a headshot, halfbody, or fullbody ^_^

Will draw:

Ill draw your characters nude

Ill draw soft core porn (something alluding to sexual action taking place but we dont actually see the genitals)

Suggestive stuff

Ship art, including self ship (that i'm comfortable with i.e. no ship that includes pedophilia or incest for instance)

Ill draw blood + injuries 

Ill draw furries ill draw humans ill draw ocs etc etc

ill do backgrounds depending on complexity and the references you give me

If you have a question about what i am willing to draw please ask :]

Wont:

Hardcore porn (i just need more practice)

Mecha or heavy armour

Gore/body horror (again, i need practice)

Character reference sheets (i just dont want to atm lmaoz)

Anything that makes me uncomfortable or that is not within my skillset!

If I feel like I cannot fulfill your comm for whatever reason it may be, I will communicate that to you and you will be fully refunded!

You guys are also allowed to ask me things in my inbox if something in this post wasn't clear or you're a bit shyer to ask me one on one lmao.

check out my spacie scribbles tag if you want to peruse my art for more examples :3

So...

here's my kofi

I'll be checking my Kofi the day after i post this so expect a reply by then!

[yuseirra]

It's so funny and ridiculous.. I was so invested and focused and pained because of onk, oh my god I was so nervous because of that series, and encountering/watching another series with suffering actually heals me.. it distracts me so much that, a lot of my feelings(pain) have been actually alleviated. I feel more at ease from having my feelings more spread out. I DID not expect this to happen but it has.

It actually works everyone, to fight fire with fire.. to attack poison with poison(以毒攻毒), it's amazing~~ old phrases are so wise

ah, I feel like I can still draw a lot of hikaai even if canon makes them turn out terrible with this kind of feeling, I thought it'd be impossible for me (and there is NO WAY they should make it look like a mistake that they loved omygod. what kind of story is that even????I won't know what they want to say with that;;;) but.. my heart is a bit lifted seeing how terrifying things can be in another series haha..seeing how doomed they are. Oh the song was really good.

I miss drawing persona fanarts too...it's really fun keep finding passion in different things, I will never run out of things to draw, I keep encountering new things. I aspire to do better and grow as I do too! 'v')9 I hope you all have fun with me!

[seilon]

top surgery…………tomorrow…………

[athenalvss]

WHAT DID YOU BUY? (Bruce Wayne!)

Summary: there is a problem in the surveillance system and Bruce isn't responding to the league's messages, so they go looking for him at Wayne Manor.

pairing: Bruce wayne x wife!reader

note: idk I liked the idea of bruce's wife being a bombshell, I'm seriously thinking about doing some sort of series on this topic

open request - Bruce wayne masterlist - hot wife serie

"You know, I don't think he's in trouble," Hal said, arms crossed, staring at the enormous gate of Wayne Manor. "Maybe one of his kids knocked something over on the computer and made a mess."

"Exactly!" Barry exclaimed, pointing at him as if he'd just solved a mystery. "And here we are, ringing the bell like two idiots."

There was strange interference in the global surveillance system. The Tower's sensors indicated a jammed signal coming directly from the Batcomputer. Diana was the first to send Bruce a direct message, one, two, three times. No response.

"It's weird" she had said.

"It's Bruce Wayne" Hal replied. "Weird is normal."

So they decided to act. Better safe than sorry. In less than a minute, they were in Gotham, standing at the entrance to the mansion.

"And Alfred?" Hal asked, ringing the bell again. "He always opens quickly."

"Maybe he's on vacation? Seeing the Caribbean?" Barry offered. Hal glared at him.

Diana, standing with her arms crossed, said nothing. Her expression was serene but alert.

Soft footsteps echoed behind the door until it opened, was this heaven?

You opened the door. You were barefoot, wearing a black silk robe loosely tied at the waist, the fine fabric leaving little to the imagination. Your hair was loose, a little messy compared to how they usually see you, and it fell over your shoulders. Your eyes were a little glossy, as were your lips, and you had that soft voice they'd already known... but never so closely.

"Is something wrong?" you asked, tilting your head slightly, as if the sight of two League members at your door wasn't at all strange.

It took Hal three seconds to blink. Barry made a sound that didn't sound human. Diana, thankfully, took back control. "Is Bruce available? There was a glitch in the Batcomputer signal. We're trying to contact him."

"Ah... yeah, I guess," you said, reaching up to straighten your robe, which clearly didn't help anyone's concentration. "I was using the Batcomputer... Bruce wanted to get me a present, and the computer there is really fast. Luckily, I was able to buy the lingerie I wanted."

Barry rolled his eyes at the ceiling as if that would save him. Hal blinked twice. Nothing changed. You were still there. In that robe. In that voice. With that damn confidence that made everything feel even worse. How could you talk about lingerie shopping in front of them so casually?

"And you shut down the system?" Diana asked, with the calmness of someone already accustomed to these situations.

"Maybe" you acknowledged with a half smile, lowering your gaze for just a second. "I'm not a big fan of Bruce's operating system. I shut everything down, and well... apparently I blocked an entire global surveillance network."

"And Bruce?" Diana asked, just as calmly.

"He went back to sleep" you replied. "He was up late... work stuff. You guys understand."

"Work, for sure" Hal repeated, without thinking.

You raised an eyebrow. "What else would we do until late, Hal?"

Hal opened his mouth to reply, but Barry jabbed him with an elbow so hard he nearly knocked him off balance. “Nothing! Nothing! You were probably working. You guys… do that. Work. A lot. All the time,” Barry said, his smile strained, his ears red to the roots.

Diana sighed with a hint of resignation and began to enter the house without waiting for further authorization. "We better check quickly. We don't want to interrupt... Bruce's rest."

"Oh, don't worry," you said sweetly as you moved away from the door frame. "He doesn't sleep much."

Just then, Bruce appeared at the top of the stairs. Shirtless. Hair all messed up. And a glare straight at Barry and Hal. "What are you doing here?"

“We thought you were in danger,” Barry said, seeming to evaporate.

Bruce stepped down slowly, crossing his arms. "I'm not in danger. What's in danger is your continued presence in this house."

You giggled, walking casually toward him. You stopped beside him and smoothed his hair, not caring about any witnesses.

"Sorry, love, I opened the door for you. I thought it was Alfred."

Diana, flawless as ever, continued, “The Batcomputer showed a signal of interference. You weren’t responding. We came to make sure you were okay.”

Bruce took another step down. His eyes slid toward you. “Was that you?”

"I'm sorry, love. I accidentally locked everything" you said, your voice so sweet any other man on the planet would have melted.

"So you've decided, what did you buy?" Bruce asked, before his brain could intercept the impulse.

You turned your head slowly, with a lethal smile. "Lingerie. Do you want to see?"

Bruce simply raised an eyebrow. “Jordan, Allen. Three seconds.”

"We're leaving now!" Hal said, pushing Barry toward the door with a desperation unworthy of a Green Lantern.

"Thank you for your hospitality! Sorry for existing!" Barry said, tripping over a rug.

The door slammed shut. The echoes in the hallway hadn't yet died away when Bruce let out a deep sigh, tired but clearly resigned to his fate.

You laughed softly, and before you could say anything, he had already taken you by the waist and lifted you up in his arms with that naturalness that always left you breathless. "Shall we go back to bed, Mr. Wayne?"

"Not until you show me what you ordered from Paris, Mrs. Wayne."

[flvvffy]

. ۫ ꣑ৎ . ❝ 𝐒𝐏𝐄𝐀𝐊 𝐔𝐏, 𝐏𝐑𝐄𝐓𝐓𝐘...❞

wc: 628. not proofread. anon.

you were not much of a talker. and you boyfriend suguru knew that. he understood that. and because of that, he learned that small actions were signals that you wanted something.

you would stare at something for way too long at the store and he knew you liked it. you wouldn't take your eyes off of it until he grabbed your attention. "you like it, baby", he would ask, his height towering over you and playing with your hair.

"yeah..."

"do you want it?", you only stare at him, not really wanting to say anything. you didn't want to be ungrateful. "it's okay I'll buy it for you", he flashed you a smile and gave you a small peck on the cheek before taking it off the shelf and paying for it.

when you want to cuddle, you would walk up to hin and grab his hand then lead him onto the bed or the couch. he would lay with you, your head resting on his chest listening to his heartbeat as he's caressing your thigh and kissing the top of your heard occasionally whispering sweet nothings.

sometimes you just sit on his lap when you want attention while he's either working or playing video games. he smiles and presses a soft kiss on your lips as you make yourself comfy. "you're gonna have all my attention when i'm done, cutie"

suguru almost always catches you staring at his food whenever you're out to eat. your boyfriend's food just looks so much more scrumptious. you try to make it subtle but he sees it. he picks some up with his fork/spoon/chopsticks and places it near your mouth. "say ahhhh....", he says and you open your mouth taking a bite of his food. it really was delicious.

"it's really good", you say and he smiles.

"mhmmm... if you want we can eat together", he pushes his plate between the both of you. you just can't help but think how sweet he is.

you always help suguru relax after he comes back from work. completely exhausted and all suguru can think of is enjoying a nice dinner and bath then cuddling with you on your shared bed.

although he understands that you're too shy to express yourself to him at times, that doesn't mean he's not gonna tease you.

you walk up to suguru and tug on his sleeve. he knows that means that you want a kiss, but he's gonna act clueless, just because he can. "what's the matter sweatheart?", he asks a stupid smirk on his face.

"uhh...", you're trying to come up with words but nothing. so you just stare at him and tug at his sleeve again, hoping he got the message this time.

"sweetie, i'm not just gonna understand you if you don't talk", he plays with the ends of your hair and you feel lile combusting. why was he doing this to you?

you sat in silence again but nothing. realizing that he really wasn't gonna do anything, you breathe out and gather your words. "i-i....want a...kiss", you say quietly.

"what's that? i didn't hear you. speak up pretty...", your heart is beating more rapidly now and your cheeks are getting warmer. but he's not showing signs of mercy.

frustrated you let it all out. "i want a kiss, suguru", he chuckles.

"you could've just said so", he pulls you by your waist, placing one hand behind your neck and placing a soft but passionate kiss on your awaiting lips. he pulls you impossibly closer to you, deepening the kiss only letting go to take in a breathe before tasting your addictive lips again.

suguru pulls away, the both of you breatheless, his forehead on yours. "that wasn't so hard now was it?..."

. ۫ ꣑ৎ . 𝐀𝐋𝐋 𝐑𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓𝐒 𝐑𝐄𝐒𝐄𝐑𝐕𝐄𝐃 © 𝐅𝐋𝐕𝐕𝐅𝐅𝐘

[fuckyeahgoodomens]

David Tennant interview at the British LGBT Awards, June 2024 (x)

Int: You being an ally to the community isn't something new. You've been doing it, but recently you've obviously really stepped up for trans and non-binary people in a time that's so, so needed. What made you do that?

David: I don't know that I feel like I've done anything that I wouldn't just sort of be normally doing. I mean, it's for me it's just common sense that there's there should be any suggestion that people aren't allowed to live the life they want to live and and to be who they want to be with and to express themselves wholeheartedly. I mean, as long as you aren't hurting anybody else, everybody else just needs to fucking butt out. I don't really understand why...

Int: ...it's controversial.

David: Yeah, there is and the thing... the thing, if there's something that's particularly sobering and depressing, it's that certain debates are being weaponized by certain elements of the political class, often for no... it seems it's not ideological so much as opportunistic. And I just think that's pretty disgusting, really.

Int: I couldn't agree more. What message would you like to send out to trans youth?

David: Please don't feel like you're not loved and that you're not accepted and that you're not... you know, most people in the world are good and kind and just want you to be able to be who you are. Most people in the world don't really care. I mean... you know what I mean?

Int: We're all narcissistic.

David: Exactly. Everyone's so self obsessed that really, the sort of noise that comes from a certain area of the press and of the political class is... it's a minority. It really is. And please don't let that make you feel diminished or dissuaded or discouraged, because, you know, you just... you have to be allowed to be yourself, and you are, and you are yourself and you must thrive and flourish, and we're all here for it.

Int: Amazing. I think, yeah, it's so important .I think sometimes it feels like there's so many people, but it is a minority. It's such a minority.

David: It's a tiny bunch of little whinging fuckers that are on the wrong side of history and they'll all go away soon.

Int: Like what happened with gay people 20 years ago.

David: When I was a kid, when I was a kid, exactly. You know, I was at school when Clause 28 came in and it all felt like being gay was something to be terrified of. And gay men in particular were demonised as paedophiles and now that just feels historic and ludicrous and, I mean, I don't see all those... all those battles aren't won, but we're in a very, very different place. And I feel like.I feel like history is on a progressive trajectory and it might get knocked sideways now and again by people for all sorts of reasons, which are often quite selfish and quite, as I say, not coming from a place of any sort of genuine belief system, but other than a place of opportunism. And that's something that we... I hope that in 20 years time, we're talking about, you know, these culture wars as something of the past.

Int: I believe we will. I'm a huge Doctor Who fan, so.

David: Oh, good, me too!

Int: You are my Doctor.

David: Oh, thank you very much.

Int: But recently, obviously, you came back for the 60th anniversary and you got to work with Yasmin Finney.

David: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Int: What was it like working with her?

David: Oh, she's brilliant. She's fantastic. Yeah. And she's in the show again now, she's back in it, so that's fantastic to see. She's lovely, talented, cool as a cucumber, articulate, brilliant. I learned a lot from her as an actor and also as someone who, you know, who's become a sort of de facto activist just because of who she is and where she is, and she becomes a sort of symbol of hope, and she's wonderful.

[rafesangelita]

…DILF!RAFE X HOUSEBUNNY!READER AU

⋆𐙚₊˚🐇⊹♡

DILF!RAFE X HOUSEBUNNY!READER who spend their days fucking like rabbits. whether rafe had her clinging onto his bed sheets for dear life, or muffling her screams while he drilled into her poor cunt, he knew he had hit the jackpot when she was deemed useful in more ways than one. housebunny!reader who worked as a cart girl at the country club for only two days before rafe whisked her away and turned her into his pretty maid. with his kid out of the house for school, rafe enforced a strict dress code that kept her catering to him in mini skirts, thigh high stockings, heels, and maybeee a lacey bra (he preferred her to be topless most of the time). dilf!rafe who took care of absolutely everything; hair appointments, lash appointments, nail appointments, wax appointments, he made sure to always have his bunny in tip top shape, according to his liking.

DILF!RAFE X HOUSEBUNNY!READER who always get concerning glares whenever they’re out in public. here you have rafe always dressed in business casual, his clothes ironed flat without a single wrinkle in sight, courtesy of housebunny of course, and then you have the girl at his side that’s all glitz and glamour, her outfit drawing the attention of every single person in the same room. dilf!rafe who has an intense housewife + breeding kink, always telling bunny that he’s gonna keep her in the house forever while he’s balls deep inside of her. she never opposed the idea, the vision only making her warm, velvety walls clench around him even tighter. housebunny!reader who made rafe’s favorite meals, loving the way he nodded approvingly while he chewed. “you’re just too good to be true.” her heart is fluttering in her chest at his words, the praise not going unnoticed. dinner was always delicious, but dessert was even better.

DILF!RAFE X HOUSEBUNNY!READER who are sooo playful behind closed doors, rafe finds himself full on giggling before he’s masking his laughter with a serious expression so bunny doesn’t think he’s too soft. dilf!rafe who has the music taste of a frat boy in college, cursing under his breath as bunny sings along to the explicit lyrics booming throughout the house. “pretty girls don’t have filthy mouths.” he’s reminding her, smirking to himself when he see’s her sparkly lips come to a stop. housebunny!reader who does literally everything rafe asks her to do. “..sooo you want me to walk around with bunny ears, and that thing?” rafe is living for the hesitation on her face, and the fact that he knows she won’t tell him no. the following night, he manages to get the cute little bunny tail right where he wants it, housebunny!reader loving it more than she thought she would..

DILF!RAFE X HOUSEBUNNY!READER who plan bunny’s outfits for the week (it’s just an excuse for her to give him an unsolicited fashion show). “i would rather you wear nothing at all..” rafe grumbles when she comes out of his closet in an assortment of clothing. housebunny!reader who slips pink sticky notes into rafe’s pocket before going to work so he could find them throughout the day. ‘can’t wait to be your slutty lil’ bunny later ♡’ rafe is excusing himself from his meeting, sending her a text message that easily gets her needy. ‘just read your note. you‘re gonna be so fucked out by the time i’m done with you.’ she shoots him a quick ‘promiseee? ૮꒰◞ ˕ ◟ ྀི꒱ა’ before squealing in excitement when he reacts to her message with a thumbs up. it’s not long before rafe gets home and has her legs on top of his shoulders, her knees knocking against her chest while he’s wiping away her tears of pure unadulterated pleasure with his thumb.

DILF!RAFE X HOUSEBUNNY!READER who are equally as nervous to have rafe’s son back home, unsure of what the small boy might think. housebunny!reader who nearly cries when she overhears little ray say she looks like a princess with her ‘pink puffy dresses’. dilf!rafe who is relieved and overjoyed that his boy adores her so much, since that was all he was waiting for in order to make her his, officially at least, since he already thought of her as such. housebunny!reader who wakes up to the smell of breakfast wafting up from downstairs, her eyebrows knitting in confusion as she wraps her fluffy robe around her body. “what are you doing?” she’s taking in the view of a shirtless rafe drinking out of a coffee mug, taking her bottom lip between her teeth. “making you breakfast since you’re not just my house bunny anymore..” at his words, you smiled. “just bunny then?” he hummed, “just bunny.”

୨୧ telling rafe you didn't use his credit card ୨୧ when dilf!rafe and bunny!reader first met ୨୧ dilf!rafe loves to make his pretty bunny squirm.. ୨୧ bunny comes home from all of her beauty appointments!

[maaarine]

'We Can Bury Anyone': Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine (Megan Twohey and Mike McIntire and Julie Tate, The New York Times, Dec 21 2024)

"Last summer, as the release of “It Ends With Us” approached, Justin Baldoni, the director and a star of the film, and Jamey Heath, the lead producer, hired a crisis public relations expert.

During shooting, Blake Lively, the co-star, had complained that the men had repeatedly violated physical boundaries and made sexual and other inappropriate comments to her.

Their studio, Wayfarer, agreed to provide a full-time intimacy coordinator, bring in an outside producer and put other safeguards on set.

In a side letter to Ms. Lively’s contract, signed by Mr. Heath, the studio also agreed not to retaliate against the actress.

But by August, the two men, who had positioned themselves as feminist allies in the #MeToo era, expressed fears that her allegations would become public and taint them, according to a legal complaint that she filed Friday.

It claims that their P.R. effort had an explicit goal: to harm Ms. Lively’s reputation instead.

Her filing includes excerpts from thousands of pages of text messages and emails that she obtained through a subpoena.

These and other documents were reviewed by The New York Times. (…)

Mr. Baldoni was best known for the CW satirical romantic dramedy “Jane the Virgin.”

Wayfarer provided the resources for bigger ambitions. It was bankrolled by the billionaire Steve Sarowitz, who is co-chair of the studio with Mr. Baldoni.

They and Mr. Heath, the chief executive, are all deeply involved with the Baha’i religious organization, which promotes unity, peace and gender equality.

Mr. Baldoni has presented himself as an ally to women, writing books, co-hosting a podcast with Mr. Heath and giving talks on toxic masculinity. (…)

She claimed Mr. Baldoni had improvised unwanted kissing and discussed his sex life, including encounters in which he said he may not have received consent.

Mr. Heath had shown her a video of his wife naked, she said, and he had watched Ms. Lively in her trailer when she was topless and having body makeup removed, despite her asking him to look away.

She said that both men repeatedly entered her makeup trailer uninvited while she was undressed, including when she was breastfeeding. (…)

As the film release neared, Ms. Lively and other cast members informed Sony and Wayfarer that they would not do any appearances alongside Mr. Baldoni.

So did Ms. Hoover, the author, who had her own dissatisfactions with him and had become more upset after he told her about Ms. Lively’s allegations, according to text messages from Mr. Baldoni and Mr. Heath.

By the first week of August, Wayfarer and Mr. Baldoni had retained Ms. Nathan, who had worked with high-profile clients including Mr. Depp, whose ex-wife, Amber Heard, accused him of physical abuse. (…)

Three days later, Mr. Baldoni texted Ms. Abel, flagging a social media thread that accused another celebrity of bullying behavior and had generated 19 million views. “This is what we would need,” he wrote.

Ms. Nathan soon floated proposals to hire contractors to dominate social media through “full social account take downs,” by starting “threads of theories” and generally working to “change narrative.”

“All of this will be most importantly untraceable,” she wrote. (…)

When Ms. Abel wrote to her Aug. 4 that “I’m having reckless thoughts of wanting to plant pieces this week of how horrible Blake is to work with. Just to get ahead of it,” Ms. Nathan replied that she had spoken off the record to an editor at The Daily Mail.

“She’s ready when we are,” Ms. Nathan wrote.

A flurry of articles followed the Hollywood Reporter piece. Many made it seem as if the only rift was over creative control.

Some journalists had gotten wind of complaints about Mr. Baldoni’s behavior, but none of the most serious ones were published.

“He doesn’t realise how lucky he is right now,” Ms. Nathan texted Ms. Abel. (…)

It is unclear exactly how Mr. Wallace operated.

There are references in emails to “social manipulation” and “proactive fan posting,” and text messages cite efforts to “boost” and “amplify” online content that was favorable to Mr. Baldoni or critical of Ms. Lively.

“We are crushing it on Reddit,” Mr. Wallace told Ms. Nathan, according to a text she sent Ms. Abel on Aug. 9.

The next day, one of Ms. Nathan’s employees texted, “We’ve started to see shift on social, due largely to Jed and his team’s efforts to shift the narrative.”

Ms. Nathan wrote to Ms. Abel: “And socials are really really ramping up. In his favour, she must be furious. It’s actually sad because it just shows you have people really want to hate on women.” (…)

On Aug. 16, Ms. Nathan shared the Daily Mail article headlined “Is Blake Lively set to be CANCELLED?” with references to ‘hard to watch’ videos and a ‘tone deaf’ promotional Q. and A.

“Wow. You really outdid yourself with this piece,” Ms. Abel responded.

“That’s why you hired me right?” Ms. Nathan replied. “I’m the best.”"

[szatears]

inked all over, stack.

summary: stack comes back to you with a new surprise, one that you must say suits him a little too well.

pairing: modernau!stack x blackfem!reader

warnings: smut, oral (fem receiving), p in v, use of the n word, descriptions of reader.

notes: modernau!stack has finally arrived! ever since i made that post about smoke and stack w tattoos i couldn't get it out of my head so here we are! also switched up the pov to third person for this one. ignore any errors, did not proofread at all. smoke version coming soon :)

"Goddamn, you said how long?!" Stack's eyes widened as he leaned back in the tattoo chair, sat opposite his tattoo artist, Deuce.

"We're looking at 'bout six hours?" Deuce laughed seeing the expression on his client's face.

Stack was always at Deuce's parlour when he wanted a piece done on his body, he didn't trust anyone else to do it for him. Same with his brother. Today, he walked in wanting to get something he had on his mind for months.

"Six hours? Nigga, I'ma need you to cut it down to like, two and a half. My lady already pissed I ain't wake her up with a kiss this morning," he blew out a breath, thinking about the messages his wife had left him a few hours ago.

He'd been up since the early hours, and it was almost 4 o'clock now. He was only meant to be out running a few errands with Smoke and some by himself, but he just couldn't get the tattoo out of his mind.

Deuce laughed, nodding his head as he placed the drawing of what Stack wanted on his forearm. "This good for you?"

Stack looked down at the placement, a faint smile on his lips. He couldn't wait to see her reaction to this. "Yeah, it's good."

He knew how the process would go, he just hoped he'd be back home at a reasonable time to not get his ass chewed out. Mrs. Moore didn't play like that.

He made himself comfortable, his arm out on the extendable part of the bed to allow Deuce to do his work. Many Men by 50 Cent played through the speakers, and Stack pulled his phone out of his pockets before Deuce started tattooing.

He already had a few tattoos, but he still wasn't too used to the pain. Smoke on the other hand? Stack would say "you could tattoo that nigga's eyeball and he won't even flinch."

Stack had put a lot of thought into this piece. It would be the beginning of a sleeve he hoped to complete later on, but to him, this was the most important part of it. It had the typical designs of a sleeve ─── shaded clouds with the sun peeking through, cursive writing with some red for that pop. But it was what was written that held the most meaning to him.

With time, Stack came to realise that one of his wife's favourite ways of expressing her love to him was through words. It could be something simple, like telling him she was proud of him or that he was doing well with everything. Or it would be more, like a note in the morning before she left to go somewhere, or one of the many texts she sent him throughout the day.

One of these letters stuck with him the most. In it, she wrote about how he'd become such an important part of her life, the tie that held them together growing stronger each day. The exact words he was getting tattooed on his arm were "you're my favourite person and my forever person, i got you always," something she never failed to mention to him.

It was obvious how in love the two were. You rarely saw them without the other, and even if they were, it wouldn't take long for either to mention the other.

Along with the words, Stack added her lipstick print that she always signed her letters off with. He knew he'd be making a joke soon enough about how her lips were always gonna be on him now.

The rest of the piece had some other smaller yet intricate designs, he told Deuce he could freehand whatever, he trusted him like that.

-

Surprisingly, Deuce actually managed to cut his estimated time in half, finishing the tattoo almost three hours later. As Deuce finished taking pictures and wrapping Stack's arm, his phone rang, looking down at the caller id to see his wife's name with a heart next to it. He accepted the facetime, smiling at the mug on her face.

"Why are you smiling? You must like playing with your life..." she mumbled, fixing her hair in the camera frame.

"I can't be happy to see you no more?" He chuckled, watching her fight back a small smile. "You look good."

"I know," she leaned her face closer to her camera. "Where are you? Come home already."

"I'ma be home in a minute, mama, I'm at the shop with Deuce," Stack turned his camera to face the man who was tidying up his supplies as he held up a peace sign.

"Hey, Deuce. So you're the reason my man's out til these hours when he said he'd only be gone for two tops?" Her head tilted as Deuce laughed.

"It ain't my fault he picks the tricky designs."

"Design─── Baby, you got a new piece?" All of a sudden the frown on her face was wiped off, replaced with a smile.

"Yeah, I did. Look at you, smilin' over there," Stack laughed as he got up from the bed, reaching into his pocket to pull out a stack of 50s, handing it to Deuce.

Before he could even complain about being given too much money, Stack gave him a look. "You really gon' make me argue with my lady on the phone?"

"No, sir," Deuce smiled, putting the money away.

"Aight, til next time Deuce."

He grabbed his coat and left the shop, opening the door to his car that was parked right at the front. "You need me to bring anything, baby?" he looked down at his phone as he put on his seatbelt, seeing his wife already staring at him. The smile that graced his face was just his natural reaction to seeing her; he couldn't get enough of her,

"Could you get some more fruit from Mama Glo's corner? If she's still open."

"Yeah. You gon' stay on the phone?"

"No, I'm gonna take a shower real quick. But I'll see you soon, handsome. I love you," she kissed the camera.

"I love you too."

-

Stack came back with a brown paper bag containing the fruit his wife had asked for, closing the front door with his foot. He slipped his trainers off, walking to the kitchen and placing the fruit on the counter. When he didn't hear the sound of footsteps coming down to greet him, he tilted his head, making his way up the stairs.

He found her lying on their bed, dressed only in a bra and a small pair of shorts. She turned her head to the door when she heard the floorboards creak, a smile on her face as she set her phone down on the bedside table.

Stack smiled at her smile, his hands resting on her waist as she stood in front of him. His frame slightly towered over hers, his head dipping down a little to kiss her lips.

"Nice of you to come home, Elias," she hummed into the kiss.

"You know I could never be away from you for too long." His words were like music to her eyes as she used the hands that were around his neck to softly run her fingers over his skin.

"I got your fruit," he told her, tapping her hip twice so she'd let him go briefly, letting him take off his shirt. It was only when he took off the black muscle t-shirt that he wore, that she let her eyes run over the tattoos that adorned his chest and back before she remembered the reason he went out.

She let her eyes wander over him whilst he put his phone on charge, finally spotting the wrapped part of his right arm. Stack glanced at her, noticing how quiet she'd gotten. "You wanna see it?" he laughed at how eagerly she nodded in response to his question.

He stepped closer to her, taking a seat on the edge of the bed as she stood between his legs. He slowly took off the wrapping of the tattoo, much to his wife's impatience. When he finally revealed the finished work of art, the look on her face made his impulse decision ten times worth it.

He let her gently run her hands over the ink, waiting for to notice what made it even more special. He watched her face closely as her eyes flickered over his forearm, holding it with so much care. It wasn't until she turned his hand over so his palm was facing her, that she saw the writing.

"Elias..." she whispered, a pout on her face as she ran over the words and the copy of her lips.

"You like it?" he smiled at her, flashing his gold caps.

"Like it? Baby, I'm in love with it, oh my God," she couldn't tear her eyes off it. Throughout their relationship, Stack would always say something along the lines of "I'ma get your name tatted on my face," but this was far more meaningful.

"Good, 'cause it hurt like a bitch," he mumbled, pulling her into his lap. He kissed the side of her face as she held onto his arm. "I love you more than life itself."

"I love you endlessly," she took his face in both her hands, kissing him.

"Yeah?"

"Mhm."

He turned his head into the kiss, letting his lips leave hers to kiss down her neck to her collar. He flipped them over, bringing her to lay back down in the middle of the bed.

Her hands ran down his toned arms, massaging his broad shoulders. She let her fingers trace over the inked parts of his skin that she could reach, having memorised where every part was.

Stack used his knee to nudge her legs apart, letting him slot in between them as he kissed her. His tongue danced with hers whilst she held him closer to her face by the back of his neck. Her soft moans only encouraged him more, as did the growing friction her hips created against his.

"Yeah, you gon' have to come up outta these," he mumbled against her lips as his hands fumbled down to her shorts, pulling them down her legs.

"Elias..." she whispered, tugging at his belt. She was almost naked whilst he was still half clothed.

He smiled at her, pulling away from her lips to kiss a trail down to her pelvis. "Hold on, baby. I wanna make you feel good first." He kissed her clit over the lacy underwear she wore, and she shuddered, leaning back further into the pillows.

Stack used his thumb to rub her clothed clit, watching how her legs started to close around his hand. "Baby, please," she whined, and it didn't take long for him to give in to her pleas, taking off her underwear.

Just as quick as he had done that, his head lowered closer to her core, his mouth latching onto her creaming opening. His tongue licked up and down, his hand holding either side of her hips as he ate her out. She let out a loud moan, her hands gripping the back of his head.

"Fuck, baby, just like that," she breathed out, her eyes fluttering with pleasure.

"Yeah?" he mumbled against her, the vibrations just adding to the feeling.

Stack lapped at her for all she was worth, the unholy sounds emitting from her lips and his work. He used his thumb to rub her clit as he continued to work her away with his tongue. She writhed underneath him, feeling that familiar coil inside of her begin to surface.

"Why you moving away, huh? You can take it mama, I know you can," he assured her, replacing his tongue with his fingers as he briefly looked up at her. The sight alone almost made her cum right there; his mustache and goatee coated in her fluids.

She couldn't keep it in, especially when he went back to her with his tongue, his two fingers pumping in and out just as fast. "Shit, I'm gonna─── Oh, my God," her moans aligned with her release, all over his mouth.

Stack continued to eat her out through her high, her hips grinding into his face as he sought more. "Baby let up," she groaned, trying to push his face away.

"One more, baby. For me?" How could she say no when he was making feel that good?

It wasn't long before she came again, her body letting up as Stack cleaned her up. Only he could make her tap out like that.

He finally moved his head from between her legs, hovering over her as she grabbed his face, pulling him down for a messy kiss. She licked over his lips, moaning at the taste of her on him. His hand travelled to her throat, the same arm that was newly inked now right in front of her.

Stack's tattoos were such a turn on, it was almost impossible to describe. If he wanted to make her orgasm fast, all he had to do was talk her through it, or have her analyse his tattoos. Easy.

"You not tapping out on me, are you?" he smirked, as she gave him a lazy smile. She could feel his dick through his pants at her entrance. Shaking her head, she let go of him to take his belt off, eyes on him as she pulled him out of his boxers.

He briefly got up to take them off all the way, before he settled back between her legs, hiking them up his hips. She let her arms rest over his shoulders as he pushed in, both of them groaning.

He fit so perfectly with her, and he made her feel that way every time, through sex or not. The sound of skin slapping soon took over the room, as did their moans.

Stack ground his hips into hers, his head resting in the crook of her neck, leaving small love bites where he could.

"You're doing me so good, E," she whispered lowly in his ear which only spurred him on. He picked up his pace, finding that spot of hers that had her arching into him.

"Like that, baby? Hm?" he asked as she could only not in reply, too far into it to speak actual words. Stack fucked her so good, without fail every time.

He looked down at where they connected briefly, fascinated by her precious pussy taking him in so well. "You're doing so good for me, pretty." he told her, his eyes back on hers.

She managed to keep the contact for a few moments before he had her eyes rolling at the back of her head, her muscled walls clenching around his dick.

He grunted at that, feeling himself close to unravelling. But like he always did, he wanted her to come first.

"I'm almost there, E, keep going─── Yeahhhh, just like that," she moaned, whining even as she felt herself about to come for the third time. She held his head to her face as he kissed her, groaning as she reached closer and closer to her climax.

"Fuck!" she screamed as he cum coated his dick, spilling out as he fucked her through it.

"You got it baby, shit, I'm gonna cum too, hold on," his words trailed off to a whisper as he came in her, her eyes fluttering shut as she adjusted to the overbearing amount of pleasure only her man could give her.

Stack's thrusts slowed down as he pushed his seed back in her, a lazy smirk on her face as she watched him do so. He pulled out slowly, gently laying on top of her. She brought her legs around his waist, kissing his temple as they caught their breath.

"Damn," Stack sighed happily. "Might have to get my whole body tatted up now."

taglist. @childishgambinaax @abriefnirvana @blackisy2k @chrisevansmentee @siasoup @amethyst09 @heauxtales @skywalker0809 @thelightknight21 @klssngss @atomicearthquakemusic7 @oc3anbxbyxoxo @honestlyurslol @simpingfor-wakasa @omg-mymelaninisbeautiful @favoritten

[amoressb]

───── NOT THE SAME 西村 力 N. RK

ꪆৎ ⋆˚࿔ after many efforts to bring back your old riki, for it to go back to how you two used to be, you walk away but he realizes it all too late..or is it? ｡｡ ɪᴅᴏʟ ʙꜰ!ʀɪᴋɪ x ʀᴇᴀᴅᴇʀ

ANGST & wc. 880 + / lmk if you guys would like a part 2 !! ｡｡

──── ARCHiVE

it starts with something small…a missed text.

you send him a picture of your outfit that morning. a sweet mirror selfie of you in the sweater he said he loved on you last winter.

the little delivered mark stays there for hours. you wait…and wait…but the reply never comes.

you scroll through your old messages to him. the ones filled with little hearts, dumb memes, sweet nothings typed at midnight. you used to be able to count on at least three messages from him before lunch : a “good morning, baby,” a blurry selfie of him in rehearsal, and a ridiculous voice note that always made you laugh.

now you’re the only one sending things and the silence? it’s loud. it only gets worse in person.

you show up to the dorm after not seeing him for two weeks. you arms are full with snacks from the café he likes, your hands nervously fiddling with the cuffs of your sweater as you knock on his door.

when he opens it, his expression is blank. not cold, not angry, just…tired. not the kind of tired that comes from dance practice. this is the kind of tired that no longer looks forward to seeing you.

“hey,” you whisper. he gives you a slight nod and steps aside to let you in.

you try to be okay with it. you sit on the edge of his bed while he scrolls through his phone, thumbs tapping as he answers messages that aren’t yours. you talk about your week, how stressful work’s been, how you nearly spilled coffee on your laptop this morning. you laugh to fill the space. he doesn’t laugh with you.

at one point, you trail off mid sentence. he doesn’t even notice. you’re quiet for a long while, watching him. watching the boy you love drift further into a version of himself that doesn’t know how to hold you anymore.

he doesn’t notice you tearing up until your voice breaks. “do you…even care how i’ve been feeling lately?” his eyes flick to you, surprised. “why would you say that?”

you force a smile, blinking fast. “because you haven’t asked.”

riki sighs, setting his phone down for the first time. “y/n, i’m just tired, okay? this comeback is draining. i can’t babysit your feelings too.”

the room goes still.

“babysit?” you repeat softly, your heart shattering in slow motion. you don’t know what hurts more- the fact that he said it or the fact that he meant it.

that night, you lie next to him in bed. his back is turned. you can feel the distance between your bodies like an ocean.

you reach out, fingers hesitantly brushing the back of his shirt. “ki?” he doesn’t answer. you whisper anyway. “do you still love me?” still, silence.

a long beat passes. then, just as you pull your hand away, he mutters, “don’t ask me things like that when i’m exhausted.” you curl in on yourself, tears soaking into the pillow. he falls asleep minutes later. while you stay awake the whole night.

your friend mia notices it first.

“you’re not…you anymore,” she says over coffee. “every time i bring him up, you flinch.” you smile weakly, stirring your cup. “i don’t flinch.”

“you do,” she insists. “you used to light up when you talked about him. now it’s like..you’re scared to.”

you are scared. scared that the boy you love is no longer choosing you. because love doesn’t look like this. love doesn’t make you feel like an afterthought. like you have to beg for affection. like your heart is too much to carry.

so the next time you see him, you gather every last bit of strength inside you.

you stand in front of him, in that hoodie he gave you, the one with the faded cuffs from how often you wore it, and you ask, quietly, “do you even want me here anymore?” he frowns. “y/n…”

“because if you don’t,” you say, voice shaking, “i won’t force you to stay but i deserve to know. i deserve honesty.”

riki rubs the back of his neck, sighing. “it’s not that i don’t want you here, okay? i just…i’m dealing with a lot right now. i don’t have the energy to coddle you.”

coddle.

another word that stabs.

you nod, backing away like he burned you. “got it.”

“don’t be like that,” he says, but there’s no real urgency in his voice. you don’t say anything else. you just grab your bag, eyes shining with tears that you refuse to let fall in front of him.

he doesn’t follow. he never follows.

that night, riki lies on the same bed where you used to curl up against him. the scent of your shampoo is still on his pillow.

he opens his phone, clicks on your contact. there’s a long string of blue hearts and “i miss you” messages from days before that he never replied to.

he stares at the screen. and for the first time in a long time, he feels it. that hollow, crushing weight of regret. because he does love you. he never stopped. he just let the world drown him, and somewhere in the flood, he forgot to reach back for your hand.

but now you’re gone…and he doesn’t know if he deserves to ask you to come back.

⋆｡°✩ @cheruphic @liwinly @chrrific @hyukabean @ijustwannareadstuff20 @jellyluv4eva @veilstqr @soona-huh

[rmview]

how they’d apologize, ENHYPEN.

featuring — enhypen members x gn!reader  ( masterlist )

summary — how the enhypen boys apologize after saying they want to break up with you in the middle of an argument! ( can be read as part 2 of this )

contents — hurt & comfort, regret.

hee ▪ seung 

heeseung isn’t the type to explode in fights, but when the frustration piles up and he blurts out, “i want to break up,” the second it leaves his lips, regret punches him square in the chest. heeseung would spend hours spiraling — replaying your face when you heard those words, the way your eyes dropped, how your voice went small. he wouldn’t waste time. he’d show up at your door, no text, no call, because a message wasn’t enough. the moment you cracked the door open, his eyes would already be glossed over. 

“i didn’t mean it. i swear to god, i didn’t mean it.” he’d be breathless, words tumbling over each other. “i was scared. i was hurting and i— i lashed out like a coward.” he’d tug nervously at his sleeves, voice trembling as he apologized over and over. “i love you. i need you. please don’t let me be the idiot who loses the best thing in his life because of a stupid fight.” 

heeseung’s apologies would be raw, desperate, and honest — every inch of him willing to earn you back, no matter how long it took. 

jay ▪ 

jay’s pride makes it hard for him to back down in the moment, but the guilt eats at him quickly. after saying those words, he wouldn’t sleep, wouldn’t eat properly. he’d pace around his apartment rehearsing a thousand apologies in the mirror, only to stumble when he saw your photo on his phone. 

his apology would come in person — and it wouldn’t be polished. “i was a fucking idiot.” he’d curse at himself more than you ever could. “i hurt the person i love most ‘cause i was too stubborn to admit i was scared. scared of losing you, scared of not being enough.” jay’s voice would be low, eyes on the ground, until he worked up the nerve to meet yours. “i don’t deserve forgiveness right now. but if you’ll let me, i want to prove i can be better for you.” 

he’d leave it in your hands, no pressure — but his heart would be in every word. 

jake ▪ 

jake’s heart would shatter the moment he saw your expression after his words. he’d probably chase after you immediately, already on the verge of tears. later, when the dust settled, he’d come to you with his tail between his legs, carrying something small he knew you liked — maybe a snack, maybe a bracelet you mentioned wanting once. but it wouldn’t be about gifts. 

“y/n, i don’t even know how to say sorry right. i was so mad, and i said the worst thing i could possibly say to the person i love most.” his voice would crack, and he’d look like he hadn’t slept in days. “i didn’t mean it. not for a second. you’re everything to me, and losing you… it scares the shit out of me.” 

jake would be the type to softly cry while apologizing, unable to hide his emotions, clutching your hand if you let him, begging silently for one more chance. 

sung ▪ hoon 

sunghoon’s the type to shut down in a fight — his words sharper than he intends, and when he blurts out “i want to break up,” it’s not because he means it, it’s because he panics. the regret would hit him instantly. he’d avoid you at first, not because he didn’t care, but because he wouldn’t know how to face the damage he caused. a day or two later, he’d show up at your place, hoodie pulled over his head, eyes bloodshot. his voice would be quiet, but steady. 

“i messed up. bad.” he’d take a deep breath, fidgeting with his sleeves. “i was scared of how much you mean to me. it makes me… reckless sometimes. i thought pushing you away would protect me from getting hurt first. stupid, right?” he’d pause, searching your face. “i don’t want to break up. i don’t want a world without you in it. please… just tell me what i need to do to fix this.” 

sunghoon would mean every word — his vulnerability plain in his teary eyes and trembling voice. 

su ▪ noo 

sunoo would feel instant, suffocating guilt. the moment those words left his lips, his heart would drop, and he’d barely let you walk away before chasing after you, calling your name, his voice cracking. he wouldn’t sleep a wink. the next morning, you’d find him standing outside your place, dark circles under his eyes, holding your favorite drink. 

“i didn’t mean it. i swear i didn’t mean it.” he’d be breathless, eyes glossed over, desperate to explain. “i was hurt… and angry, and i said something unforgivable. but y/n — you mean too much to me. i love you more than my pride, more than my mistakes. i’m not okay without you.” he’d tear up mid-apology, reaching for your hand with a trembling one. “i’ll spend forever making this up to you if you’ll let me.” 

sunoo wouldn’t hold back his emotions, his sincerity written in every inch of him. 

jung ▪ won 

jungwon is calm and collected most days — but when emotions build up, he can blurt out things he instantly regrets. after saying it, his world would stop. he wouldn’t even try to hide how wrecked he was by his own words. he’d message you non-stop that night — apologizing, begging you to meet him, leaving voice notes where his voice cracked. 

when you finally opened the door, he’d look utterly wrecked. “i didn’t mean it. i… god, y/n, i was angry, and i lashed out. i’ve never hated myself more than i do right now.” he’d step closer, cautious, his usual confidence gone. “i’m so sorry. i let my pride speak instead of my heart. but my heart — it only wants you.” 

his voice would break near the end, eyes pleading for even a sliver of hope. he’d do anything to fix this.

ni ▪ ki 

ni-ki’s young, and sometimes impulsive with his words when hurt. saying “i want to break up” would have been a split-second decision driven by anger, and the crushing regret would settle in immediately after. he wouldn’t know what to do at first — pacing his room, debating if he should text, call, show up. finally, he’d come to your place late at night, looking small, nervous, and on the verge of tears. 

“i… i messed up, didn’t i?” his voice would be barely audible. “i don’t want to lose you. i don’t even know why i said it. i was scared and mad and… stupid.” he’d look at you like you hung the moon. “i’m sorry, y/n. you don’t have to forgive me now, or ever. but i need you to know — i love you. more than anything.” 

the words would be raw, his heart on his sleeve, willing to do anything to earn back your trust. 

notes: thank you for reading! i hope you enjoyed <3

[himasgod]

Where you are an artist

HOUSEWARDENS X READER

How would the housewards react if they realized that the person they love can't stop sketching and drawing about them…

leona, riddle, azul, kalim, vil, idia and malleus.

I lost the original request message, so I had to take a screenshot, sorry :(, I hope you like it!

Riddle Rosehearts

At first, when Riddle discovers your notebook full of his sketches, he doesn't know what to think. He's embarrassed to the core, but also… something warm ignites in his chest.

He's aware that he's the center of attention in Heartslabyul, but he never imagined that you, of all people, would focus on him so much.

When he looks through the drawings, he realizes you've captured moments no one else would: his calm expression when he reads, the way he elegantly holds his teacup, the sparkle in his eyes when he gives an order with conviction.

"Why do you draw me so much?"

He asks with a mixture of disbelief and shyness, unable to look at you directly.

If you tell him that you simply like to draw what you consider beautiful, Riddle falls completely silent.

His ears turn red, and he presses his lips together in a failed attempt to hide his emotion.

From that day on, he begins to notice you more.

He wonders if you're observing him at that moment, if you're storing his gestures in your memory to later capture them on paper.

And when, on a quiet afternoon, he works up the courage to ask you if you can take a formal portrait of him, you realize there's more to his gaze than simple curiosity.

There's a desire to be seen by you, always.

Leona Kingscholar

Leona quickly notices your habit of drawing him.

At first, he pretends not to care, but in reality, every time he notices he's your recurring model, his ego inflates a little more.

When he finally glances at your sketches, his expression is unreadable. It's not just that you draw him a lot, it's the way you draw him.

His features look relaxed, even serene in some illustrations. Is that how you see him?

"Tch. Why do you keep staring at me so much?"

He asks with a crooked smile, eyeing you with interest.

If you dare tell him you like the way he looks, or that you enjoy capturing his essence, Leona leans dangerously close to you.

"If you love drawing me so much, you should do it in person." "You could sit next to me while I sleep. It saves me the trouble of you spying on me."

It's his way of telling you that he doesn't mind you watching him, that somehow, he enjoys being the center of your attention.

Since then, every time he sees you drawing, he throws out comments like

"Make sure you capture my best angle." "If you do a portrait of me, I want it in my room"

He doesn't say it outright, but he loves the fact that you only have eyes for him.

Azul Ashengrotto

Azul is a businessman. He knows that his image is crucial, that people look at him with admiration or distrust.

But when he sees your drawings, he's speechless. It's not the calculated image he always projects; it's him, at his most natural.

In your sketches, you captured him smiling contentedly after a successful deal, losing himself in thought while reading, taking off his glasses with a tired sigh.

"This… is quite unexpected"

If you confess that you simply enjoy drawing him because you like the way he looks, Azul covers his mouth with his hand to hide the trembling of his lips.

"Ah… I see. How interesting."

But he can't stop thinking about it. You look at him in a way no one else has.

One day, without warning, he approaches you and places a cup of tea beside you.

"If you're going to draw me… do it now. I want to see how you do it."

It's not a demand. It's his way of asking you to keep looking at him, to keep your gaze on him.

Kalim Al-Asim

When Kalim discovers you've been filling pages with his drawings, he nearly collapses with excitement.

He doesn't understand why you would want to hide it; to him, this is wonderful.

"Wait, wait! Does that mean you look at me a lot? That's adorable!"

Unlike the other housewardens, he doesn't try to hide his happiness. On the contrary, he shows it with all his might.

"This makes me so happy! Can I keep one of your drawings? I'll frame it in my room!"

When you explain that you didn't mean for him to know, Kalim just laughs and waves his hand.

"Why not?! If you like me enough to draw me like that, then you should know that I really love you too!"

It's the most natural and sincere confession in the world.

From that day on, every time he sees you with your notebook, he approaches you with a big smile.

"Are you going to draw me today too? Let me pose for you!"

For Kalim, the fact that you portray him so lovingly means only one thing: your feelings for him are as great as his feelings for you.

Vil Schoenheit

Vil immediately realizes that you've been drawing him. He's an expert at noticing glances, at reading subtle gestures… and your gaze on him is something that hasn't gone unnoticed.

One day, when he happens to look through your notebook, he stops. He didn't expect to find entire pages filled with his sketches.

Each stroke is rendered with stunning delicacy, as if each line seeks to precisely capture his essence.

"My, my… So you've been watching me with such devotion"

He says with a satisfied smile, but his eyes sparkle.

When he confronts you about it, he looks you straight in the eye.

"Tell me, darling, why are you so obsessed with me?"

If you tell him you admire him because he's beautiful, Vil smiles, pleased.

But if you tell him you draw him because you want to capture his true essence, beyond the perfect image he shows the world, his expression changes.

"Hmph… So that's what you see in me"

He whispers, touching his lips with his fingers.

For the first time in a long time, someone has looked beyond the public image of Vil Schoenheit.

Since that day, every time you draw, Vil approaches you naturally.

"If you want to portray my beauty, at least let me pose for you properly,"

He says elegantly, but deep down, he wants you to continue seeing only him.

Until one day, he leans into your ear and whispers,

"If you've already fallen so deeply for me, why don't you admit it? Show me that your obsession with me goes beyond the limits of your notebook…"

Idia Shroud

Idia never thought anyone would find him worthy of being drawn, much less someone like you.

When he accidentally discovers your notebook full of his sketches, he panics completely.

"T-THIS IS A SYSTEM ERROR, THIS CAN'T BE REAL!"

He flips through it with trembling hands and realizes you've drawn things he never thought anyone would notice.

His hair illuminated by the screen in the dark.

The way his fingers move precisely on the keyboard.

His calm expression when he's focused on a game.

"What is this? Why did you do it? Is this some cruel joke from Fate's RNG?"

If you tell him you just enjoy drawing him because you like him, his hair turns completely pink in a second.

"S-Stop saying things like that, my emotional HP is at 1!"

From that day on, every time he sees you drawing, he gets nervous, but also happy :>

Until one day, between mumbles, he whispers to you

"Hum, if you like watching me so much… then… does that mean you like me…?"

Malleus Draconia

Malleus is used to people looking at him with fear or respect… but never with the warmth reflected in your drawings.

When he finds your notebook by chance and sees so many of his sketches, he falls silent for a moment.

The shadows of the night envelop him, but you have captured him with light.

His serene expression when he gazes at the stars.

The melancholy in his eyes when he walks alone through campus.

The gentleness with which he touches a gargoyle.

"That's how you see me…"

He murmurs, a strange feeling of warmth in his chest.

When he mentions it to you, it's not with mockery or embarrassment, but with genuine curiosity.

"Tell me, little artist… why do you watch me so much?"

If you tell him you simply enjoy drawing him because you find him fascinating, Malleus smiles gently.

"So… if you enjoy watching me, would you like to spend more nights with me?"

From that day on, Malleus becomes your personal model, letting you draw him while he tells you stories of ancient times in Briar Valley.

And when, one day, on a stormy night, he asks you in a low voice:

"Is this the destiny you have chosen? To look only at me, in all my facets?"

You will know that Malleus Draconia has already fallen head over heels for you.