#&.* l.c.

[fvrsaeken]

"Motherfucker..." Lisa muttered as she pushed herself up off the muddy ground. It was raining pretty hard and it was clear that she had hit her head. "H-hello?" The ringing in her left ear had gotten louder, and it was pretty clear that she'd lost her hearing aid when she got herself into this mess. "Is anyone there?" She asked a little louder as she tried to stand up.

When she finally pushed herself up onto her knees, she placed her palm against her forehead, hissing at the stinging that she felt there. "Shit." She felt herself start to slip when she heard footsteps. "Hello? Who's there?" Lisa asked again, letting out a breath of relief when she saw @uncxntrxllable step through the trees. "Can you help me?"

[beej-hunnicutt]

I love how close Ellis and Lincoln seemed to be. I, like, genuinely love with just how little we got to see them & they were able to capture a connection. I love when you're at Burke's place (Still Pull This Off), and Ellis and Lincoln like acknowledged each other, it's so casual and is a quick thing along the lines of "What's up Man" and like a quick pat or whatever. And I love the little passing by comment and able to make them feel so casual and normal. It's very fun. I love how even Lincoln is able to seem slightly more relaxed, how loose and fun Ellis is. It's just so great. I love these two soooo much, I love seeing how comfortable they both are. <3

Okay sksksks I decided I had my laptop right there, so I might as well add the clip. Lincoln's and Ellis' lil head nod/eyebrow raise. And the lil peak of Ellis' smile you see. I love family dynamics, especially between siblings, and they are just such sweethearts!

[hongcherry]

on my mind || l.c (m)

The handsome stranger at the pool gives you an experience you won't forget.

💦 Pairing: idol!Chan (Dino) x stranger!Reader (f) 💦 Rating/Genres/AUs: M(18+); smut (!!!), fluff, some angst; idol au, strangers to lovers au 💦 Warnings: Pet names (baby, pretty girl, beautiful), public/pool sex (bc of those pictures), unprotected sex (be safe!), no prep (be safe again!), bigDick!Chan, breast play, lowkey sad ending 💦 Word Count: 3.4k 💦 Author’s Note: Oh Lee Chan... How dare you do this to me 😩 (and ty @okiedokrie for beta'ing!!! 🥰)

seventeen masterlist | main masterlist

this blog is 18+. minors do not interact. plz & ty!

“You know you’ve been staring for the past thirty minutes, right?”

Your gaze snaps up from your book. The handsome stranger stares down at you, water droplets dripping from his hair and down his sculpted body. You force your eyes to stay on his, but all you want to do is follow the water south.

You had hoped to be more discreet earlier, but supposedly you failed.

“S-Sorry, I thought you were someone I knew,” you lie.

The man’s lips tilt in a knowing smirk. His expression fans the heat in your belly.

“Am I?” he questions.

“No,” you reply and avert your focus on your book again. “Sorry.”

You expect him to leave, but he still blocks the sun from your view. When you realize he’s not moving, you look up again.

He beams a charming smile.

“What brings you here?” he asks.

You rest your book on your lap, keeping a finger between the pages as a bookmark.

“Paid for the pool, might as well use it,” you chuckle.

He laughs and glances back at the water. “You’re not really using it, though.”

You bite your lip. You were going to, but seeing the stranger and his friends play in it, made you want to watch rather than join. However, his friends had just left and now it was only you two.

“I used it earlier,” you lie again.

He cocks his head to the side. “Do you always lie to strangers?”

“What?” Your eyes widen; your heart races.

“Am I making you uncomfortable?” he asks, abruptly switching topics. His pretty smile falters as if realizing his friendliness has taken a turn.

You sit up and shake your head. “No! You’re not. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he says and looks away for the first time. He glides a hand over his hair. The muscles in his arms bulge at the motion, and you force your thoughts to stay PG.

“I should head inside. It was nice meeting you,” he says, barely making eye contact.

You place your book down and rise to your feet. You tentatively reach out and brush your fingertips against his forearm to stop him from leaving.

He turns to you fully again.

“I’m Yn,” you introduce, hoping that will make him stay.

He gives you a tiny smile, answering sheepishly. “Chan.”

Is he shy now? You almost giggle at his change in attitude.

“What brings you here?” you reuse his question.

“Work,” he replies.

You glance around at the upscale hotel. “Must be a nice job.”

“It is,” he says.

Sensing he still feels nervous, you glance at the pool. “Join me for a swim?”

His brown eyes grow. For a second you think he’ll decline, but he nods and walks to the stairs. He takes the steps carefully and when he’s at the bottom, he holds out a hand.

You don’t need his guidance, but you accept his offer—if only to feel his strong hand around yours.

You let out a small gasp at the cold water. He chuckles as he watches you tense up.

He steps toward you and runs his hands over your arms carefully, not wanting to overstep a boundary. However, he must feel how you feel. There’s something between you two that makes you want to skip a few imaginary steps from strangers to friendship to maybe something more.

Your lips pull in a smile as he warms you.

“Thanks,” you murmur.

He nods then slowly steps away. He looks around; his sight snags on a volleyball floating at the other end.

“Want to play?” he asks, gesturing to the ball.

“Okay,” you reply. Hopefully doing so will alleviate some of the timidness.

Chan swims to retrieve it. As he does so, you sink into the water to get used to the temperature. You take the moment to admire Chan’s back muscles. They ripple with every movement he makes, and you wonder how they’d feel under your hands.

When he turns and catches you staring, he smiles. You glance away, embarrassed at having been caught.

“I kinda liked having your eyes on me,” he says playfully when he nears.

You tuck your chin down and fidget under the water.

He chuckles and taps a finger under your chin to get your attention.

“Ready to play?” he questions.

Eager to change the topic, you nod and stand.

Chan’s gaze follows the water rolling down your body. You’re glad to see he feels the same way for you.

You reach out to grab the ball and Chan snaps his eyes up, only now realizing he was staring. It’s his turn to look embarrassed.

Granting him the same courtesy, you let the moment go.

“First to ten wins?” you ask.

Chan swallows the lump in his throat and nods.

You take a few steps back before you toss the ball in the air. With your hands clasped, you hit it with your forearms, sending it in his direction.

Chan mimics your pose and bumps it back to you; however, it falls short and you miss it.

“First point goes to me,” Chan smiles. He pushes the water to make the ball float to you.

“Isn’t it your turn?” you wonder and grab the ball.

He shrugs as if to say it doesn’t matter. You nod and toss it in the air before you hit it.

You and Chan play until it’s four to two.

Chan eyes the ball in the air and then hits it with his hand.

You move to the side and hit the ball, though, it goes more up than out.

Chan rushes to it. He reaches out to volley it back but slips on the pool’s tiles. You don’t have enough time to react as his body collides with yours and slams you both under the water.

He scrambles to stand and lifts you by your sides to surface you.

You inhale a breath as soon as you can.

“I’m so sorry!” he exclaims, holding you tight in case you might fall back under.

A mixture of laughter and gasping comes from you. It’s probably not a pretty sound, but Chan smiles anyway. The worry etched on his face slowly fades.

“Does this mean I won?” you ask between giggles.

Chan laughs and nods. His wet hair sticks to his forehead and his torso shines under the sunlight. He’s beaming that handsome smile, the one that reads happiness and confidence. You really like his smile.

“Only because I’m disqualified for body slamming you,” he replies.

You shrug as if it doesn't matter. “It was fun.”

Chan raises his brows. “Being body-slammed?”

Another shrug. “It didn’t hurt.”

“I’m glad,” Chan says.

“So, what do I win?” you ask playfully.

It’s not until Chan squeezes your waist that you remember he’s still holding onto you. However, you don’t pull away. His touch feels nice.

“What do you want?” he questions in return.

You take the tiniest step forward.

“Something unforgettable.”

Chan’s eyes flicker to your lips.

“I can do that,” he whispers confidently. Then not even a second later, his lips are on yours.

Your mouths move in a heated kiss, tongues already sliding against each other. You’re quick to meet the other halfway to connect your bodies. Your soft breasts push against his hard chest.

Chan’s hands glide up and down your sides, thumbs brushing the side of your breasts. Meanwhile, your arms wrap around his neck, a hand caressing the back of his head to keep him close to you.

Needing to feel him more, you grab one of his hands and place it on one of your breasts.

Chan moans into the kiss and automatically squeezes them. He slips his hand beneath your swim top to feel you directly.

You pull from the kiss with a gasp and a moan.

Chan takes the opportunity to slide your top up, gathering it under your arms. He marvels at your exposed chest and cups your breasts in his strong hands. He pushes them up, rolling the flesh in his palms before pinching your nipples.

You mewl at the pleasurable pain, which causes Chan to smirk. He alternates between massaging your breasts and twisting your nipples between his fingers. You can feel how much he wants you against your body. It makes you eager to feel him inside you.

You grab his hands and gently pull them off. He frowns but doesn’t say anything. After giving him a reassuring smile, you lean forward to peck his lips.

Your kisses trail south, along his jawline, down the column of his neck, and in between the valley of his pecks. You take a detour to flick your tongue against one of his nipples, eliciting a small moan from Chan.

Your tongue plays with it before moving to the other and repeating your actions before continuing downward.

Chan watches attentively as you trace his defined muscles with your tongue. You ignore the slight chlorine taste as you lick his abs, tongue dipping in the divots of his body. You’d be ashamed of yourself if you weren’t so aroused.

Though, Chan doesn’t seem bothered at all as he stares down with darkened eyes and an open mouth. You kiss just above his swim trunks, a grin taking over your mouth.

“Shit, come here, pretty girl,” he mutters and pulls you up.

The disappointment of almost sucking his cock evaporates as soon as he kisses you roughly. He leads you both to the shallower part of the pool.

When he comes up for air, he takes a quick glance around. The area is empty.

He reaches out to grab a flat inflatable lounger that floats by.

“Get on,” he instructs softly and holds it in place.

You carefully ascend the floatie. Thankfully, the trees in the area block the sun from your eyes when you lay.

“Move down more,” he says, still holding it tight so it doesn’t flip from under you. “Wrap your legs around me.”

You scoot lower until your ass is toward the bottom of the lounger, legs around Chan’s waist to keep steady. You suck in a breath when his hard cock brushes your clothed center.

“You ever done this before?” you wonder, taking in your position. The height of the water makes the floatie align perfectly with his pelvis.

He chuckles. “Nope, so if this goes horribly wrong, I apologize in advance.”

You laugh. “I forgive you in advance.”

Chan grins and moves one hand to circle your clit while the other gropes your breasts. Your body jerks at his touch. The fast motions against your clit combined with the rough squeezes of your breasts heighten your arousal.

“I need to feel you, Chan,” you whimper.

“You are feeling me,” he teases, hands moving a little rougher to indicate what he’s referring to.

You whine pathetically as you buck your hips. “Inside me.”

Chan’s movements slow down.

“Okay, let me,” he begins to say as he trails a hand lower to your core.

You shake your head, grabbing his hand. You know he means to prep you, but you’re too eager.

“Just want your cock,” you beg. “Please.”

A smirk forms on his lips. He slowly takes his hands off your body, and you pull him closer with your legs, thinking he’s about to leave you.

“Easy there, beautiful,” he says and rubs your thighs comfortingly. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Once his words register, you nod sheepishly and ease your grip around him. Smiling, he tugs his swim trunks down enough to free his cock. Your pussy gets wetter at the sight of him.

“Let me know if you want me to stop, okay?” he asks and pulls your swim bottoms to the side. His focus flickers between your eyes and your dripping core.

“Okay,” you answer, eager for him to fill you.

Chan carefully inches closer and then gathers some of your arousal with his tip. You hold your breath in anticipation.

When Chan’s tip finally slips inside, your mouth falls open with a gasp.

“Fuck,” he mutters, sliding in gradually. You’re so tight around him.

“Open up for me, baby,” he coos and starts to rub your clit again. “Let me fill this pussy all the way.”

Your hands clutch the sides of the inflatable lounger. His girth stretches you in a way you haven’t experienced before. You focus on the circular motions against your clit, easing your body and letting Chan enter you easier.

“There you go, pretty girl,” he praises, pushing in the last of his cock.

“So big,” you mumble. You shift slightly and moan at the sensation. Chan’s circles on your bud falter.

“And you’re taking me so well,” he says with a smile.

He stays sheathed inside you for a minute. Your hips buck every so often from him stimulating your clit. Each movement makes you whine or moan from feeling Chan’s cock rub against your walls.

“Can I move?” he questions; there’s no pressure in his voice.

You nod.

Chan rearranges his hands to hook under your thighs. His palms the top of your thighs to ease any nerves you may have. Though, you’re not nervous at all. You may have just met Chan, but you know he’ll never hurt you. He’s been attentive to your needs and your comfort since he first spoke to you.

Slowly, Chan glides out halfway. The drag of his cock feels heavenly.

Then, he pushes back in.

He does this motion slowly, making sure you get used to the feeling of his thick cock stretching your walls.

“Faster, C-Chan,” you say. Every glide feds the fire in your belly. Whatever pain or discomfort you were feeling has disappeared. In its place is a lust that needs to be quenched.

“You sure?” he asks.

You nod. “Fuck me.”

Chan curses under his breath. His grip on your thighs tightens and his pace gradually picks up.

Before you know it, he’s pounding inside. He uses your legs as leverage, eyes hooded with hunger. Occasionally, his gaze moves up to watch your tits bounce with each slam of his body. The water laps around you both; some of it sloshes over the sides of the pool. The sounds of the water splashing and his skin hitting yours make everything feel sexier. You’re sure this looks like a scene from a porno, but that fact just turns you on more.

“Try to be quieter,” Chan says after a string of loud moans comes from you.

His suggestion barely registers in your mind. “I’ll tr—oh fuck.”

Chan chuckles and slows down. He trails a hand up your body to caress your face. His thumb glides along your bottom lip, pulling it down before letting it snap back in place.

When he goes to do it again, you open your mouth wider and suck his thumb into your mouth.

“Fucking hell,” he groans, sight locked on your puckered lips.

Chan moves his other hand to grip your hip. He begins to transition from powerful thrusts to sensual glides. He rolls his hips expertly against yours. Although they’re not fast motions, the slow slides in and out have your eyes rolling back. You hadn’t expected him to know how to move like this, but it’s obvious he’s skilled. You briefly wonder where the skill stems from. Has he had lots of practice having sex, or did he move his body in other ways a lot? His smooth motions remind you of a talented dancer.

“You feel so good,” he rasps and pulls his thumb from your mouth. He wipes your salvia along your lips, making them shine.

“You gonna cum for me, baby?” he asks, increasing his speed.

You nod, a choked cry escaping you when Chan connects his thumb to your clit again. He rubs it harshly while rocking into your cunt.

You bite your lip, trying to keep quiet, but it’s difficult when Chan’s fucking you so well.

Your legs tighten around Chan as the fire grows. It builds and builds until it’s too much to bear. Your walls flutter around his cock and before you can warn Chan, you’re cumming hard.

Chan continues to circle your clit, helping you ride out your orgasm. He only removes his hand when you squirm from his bruising touch.

“Think you can hold out a little longer, pretty girl?” he asks.

In a haze, you nod.

Chan unwraps your legs, hooking his arms under your knees and lifting you ever so slightly. The new angle lets him go a little deeper.

You clutch the floatie and hope you don’t pop the damn thing.

Chan’s hips snap into you fast and hard, driving you absolutely wild. More moans spill from his mouth as he nears his climax. You think he sounds so pretty, but you don’t stay on the thought for long. It’s hard to focus.

“Oh fuck,” he groans and pulls out quickly. He pumps his cock, abs clenching with furrowed brows.

Soon, your tummy is covered in white. Chan’s head rolls back as he releases his load over your body. You and Chan stay still, panting and coming down from your highs together.

Chan takes in a long inhale and finally looks down. His eyes scan the mess he made on you and your fucked-out expression.

He laughs softly. He tucks himself back in his swim trunks then reaches out to fix both pieces of your swimsuit. Afterwards, his hands swipe at the cum, gently cleaning off your body.

Chan leans down to wrap his arms around you. He carefully lifts you off the floatie and onto the pool floor. He keeps his arms in place as he stares with a big smile.

“How’s that for unforgettable?” he asks.

You lean into him, hands massaging his shoulders and neck. You feel dazed and overjoyed.

“I fear you may haunt my dreams,” you reply teasingly.

“Haunt?” He chuckles. “Wouldn’t I be blessing them instead?”

You laugh, shrugging. “Depends on if I can see you again.”

Chan’s smile suddenly turns into a sad one.

“I don’t know,” he replies.

“I can’t get your number?” you ask, heart filling with lead and weighing it down. You just met the man but the thought of never seeing him again cracks your heart.

He rubs his lips together in thought. Though before he replies, the sound of an opening door interrupts the conversation.

Two men peek their heads out. From your position, Chan’s back faces them.

“There you are,” one of them says. His smile is as bright as the sun.

Chan twists in your arms to see who it is. He must recognize the men. The aforementioned people drift their gaze to you. You can tell they want to tease Chan, but they don’t. They’re probably saving it for later.

“Do we have a schedule?” Chan asks.

“No,” the other with glasses says. “We just thought you were coming back with us, but no one’s seen you.”

“I’ll be there in a bit,” Chan replies.

“Don’t stay out too long,” the first says, a teasing lilt in his voice. “We have an early flight tomorrow.”

“Yeah, I know,” Chan says.

The men give you both a knowing smile, then leave the area.

Chan exhales a deep breath and slips from your hold. He takes your hand, leading you out of the water.

“You’re leaving tomorrow?” you ask, trying to hide your disappointment. You do a poor job.

Chan sighs and grabs the towel you had. He wraps it around your body and rubs your hands that hold onto the material.

“Maybe I’ll see you before I go?” he says, but you’re unsure if it’s a wish or a question.

“Maybe,” you say.

Chan cycles through his thoughts before speaking.

“I had a nice time, Yn. I won’t forget you.”

Your heart churns as if you’re going through a breakup. Your eyes quickly dance across his face, attempting to memorize every detail. You get the sense he’s doing the same.

“Me too” is all you say. You also had a nice time, and you definitely won’t forget this man. Not only because of the mind-blowing sex but also because he seems like a person you’d want in your life.

Chan leans in and kisses you. Unlike before, this one is slower. He takes his time moving his lips and gliding his tongue. There’s passion behind his movements that makes you crave to be more than strangers. This man oozes love, and you wish you could receive it wholeheartedly.

Maybe things wouldn’t have worked out, but something in your gut says even if you were to be loved by him for only a little while, it would’ve been worth it.

Chan would’ve shown you how it would feel to be truly adored.

A/N: rip the contaminated pool 🥲

For my “shy/silent” readers, I’ve created a feedback form where you can share your thoughts on my fics in a more anonymous and private way. ^-^

Taglist: @musingsofananxiouspotato, @christinewithluv, @lockburn-castle, @iammisstora, @maknae00, @morklee02, @kittyhui

©️hongcherry // DO NOT REPOST OR MODIFY Please consider reblogging if you liked this work to show your support. Feedback/commentary is always welcomed.

[miraclewoozi]

DRIVE. - l.c

DRIVE -- or, the night you realise it's actually very hard to stay mad at the guy who shows up at your house, throwing stones at your window on a Thursday night, to try and fix something that was your mistake in the first place.

pairing : chan x fem reader. content : fwb > lovers. angst, smut (MINORS DO NOT HAVE MY CONSENT TO INTERACT), fluff. more or less in that order. they’re both dumb as hell. not explicitly put in any detail but this was written with a more 70s vibe in mind so feel free to bear that in mind when thinking of the car/tech/styles etc if u like. w/c : 7.8k warnings : lots of swearing. it’s all a big fuckin misunderstanding because i am a whore for that. weed & alcohol mentioned (neither party is drunk or high at the time of this taking place). mentions of past cheating (neither mc or chan are the cheater). some pov switching because i said so. let me know if i've forgotten anything. proofread exactly once so if there's a typo, no there isn't. SMUT TAGS UTC.  notes : dino. get the fuck off my ass. i’m so serious i am not strong enough to handle the very real feelings i have for you. go away.  notes 2.0 : i listened to halsey’s drive for some inspo for this & took that as the title, so feel free to give it a listen if you want!

SMUT TAGS : dom!chan. car fuckin', making out, hair pulling, grinding/dry humping, fingering, finger sucking, dick riding, marking/scratching, unprotected sex (make good choices), overstimulation, multiple orgasms. praise. chan calls reader ‘baby’ & ‘sweetheart’. he’s a BIG talker during sex (sorry).

You’re not stupid. You heard his car pull up outside your house almost an hour ago. 

Since then, at random intervals ranging anywhere between thirty seconds and five minutes, there have been clinks of a thrown stone at your bedroom window, a piece of the gravel that lines your driveway. Each time, it makes your jaw tense, makes your fingers tighten in the bedsheets you pulled all the way up to your chin in a foul mood at 8pm. It’s been the same now for almost two weeks — you’ve been getting home from work, showering the day away, eating your dinner and retiring to your room as early as you possibly can. Your roommate tried to find out what was wrong around day three but you very promptly shut her down — she’s since learned that the best she’s getting out of you currently is a dismissive wave of your hand or some kind of a grunt. She joked one evening that it was like she’d adopted a teenager; you scowled so violently that she went to her room. 

Hardly any of your other friends have seen anything of you, either, despite the fact that several have come knocking to check if you’re all right. 

You’re very much not all right, as it happens. This is perhaps the most upset you’ve ever felt, and that’s going quite some way. The angriest, too. It’s worse than when that middle aged woman threw her entire bucket of popcorn at your head when you gave her salty instead of sweet, and you were picking kernels out of your hair for the rest of your six hour shift. It’s worse than when your nasty supervisor ‘forgot’ you were in the bathroom and ended up locking you inside the cinema overnight, because you didn’t have your own set of keys to get out and the people whose numbers you remembered weren’t answering their phones. 

It’s somehow even worse than when a summer crush from a few years ago broke things off by telling you that he already had a girlfriend back home and that you were basically just a means to pass the time and get his dick wet. God, and you thought that was the lowest you could possibly be.

Here you are, though, so far beyond all those things it would be comical, if it didn’t hurt. Chan has really done a number on you, and you’re not sure how you ended up getting so emotionally involved in your situationship with him that this is what you’ve been reduced to. For days now, you’ve been swallowing back tears of frustration (both with yourself and with Chan), rolling around in your bed night on night, unable to get to sleep because all you can think about is him.

Him, and the way he sounded genuinely horrified when his friends asked about the ‘movie girl’, and he laughed, ‘God, no – we’re just friends. That’s never gonna happen’. It was impressive, how quickly your face fell, in no way aided by the squealing giggles that rang through the house as a very, very drunk girl came running out of the living room and shut herself in the toilet, drowning out a chunk of the conversation you were listening in on. Somehow, it hurt even more when he went on to say ‘besides, there’s… someone else’. 

And when you have managed to drift off after hours of staring at the walls and the ceiling, hearing those words on a loop on your fed up brain? Of course he’s been in your fucking dreams, too.

In your defence, all you were trying to do was use the mirror in the hallway outside the kitchen he and his friends were standing in, readjusting your top to cover the hickey that he had so kindly left on your collarbone just the night before. It wasn’t as though you sought him out to listen in; it was a coincidence. And okay, fine, maybe you should have walked away when the conversation turned to the topic of Chan’s love life. Maybe you should have not crept closer and held your breath to be able to hear them all better. Maybe, even, you should have stayed around long enough to ask what he meant by it then and there instead of hopping in a taxi and going home without saying goodbye to anyone. 

Hindsight really is a beautiful thing.

Never gonna happen. Well, Chan seemed quite happy to ignore the fact that it already had happened. Several times. At least four of those being in the very car currently on the street outside your home. The car he’s used on countless occasions to drive you up to lovers’ lookouts in the dead of night, letting one of his many mixtapes play through the tinny speakers, where he’d kiss you breathless and cradle your face between his palms, as his fingers would delicately explore beneath your clothes, as his broad shoulders would slot between your thighs, as his hips rol–

And maybe you aren’t stupid, but Chan seems determined to prove that he sure as hell is. He came to pick you up from work the day after the party like nothing had happened, and couldn’t figure out why you said you would rather walk home in the rain than get in with him and stormed away without any further explanation. Then, he showed up on your doorstep on the morning of your day off with your favourite coffee and a breakfast bagel, asking if you could talk. He still didn’t realise what he’d done to upset you, so you slammed the door in his face. Finally, just earlier today, he ran after you in the mall, persistent as you’ve ever known him to be, and laid a hand on your shoulder when you didn’t turn around to just the sound of his voice calling your name. 

You pushed him off so hard he almost fell over. 

“Why can’t you just leave me alone?!” You had barked, shrugging your shoulders to try and realign your jacket. “I don’t want to talk to you. What’s not clicking?”

His face resembled that of a scolded pet when he took a step back and frowned at you. “I just wanted to–”

“I don’t care what you want, Chan,” you spat. “Give it up. I’m done.”

You could see the desperation swimming in his eyes as he scrambled for what to say and your heart felt like it was being weighed down all the way into your stomach. You supposed that was the part of you that was causing all this ache in the first place, and further that it was to blame for your current state of misery. But you steeled yourself and stood your ground nonetheless. He wasn’t going to win you over with puppy eyes and a pout. Not this time.

In his silence, you only then noticed how hard your breaths were coming, each slow and long but still dangerously unsteady. You lowered your voice, top lip curling at him as you muttered, “You’re embarrassed of me enough to lie to your friends? Fine. I don’t give a–… but shit, next time, tell a girl that to her face instead of behind her fucking back.”

It’s been seven hours, and you keep replaying the last thing he said to you as you stormed away (how his voice got quieter when he realised you weren’t turning back; how he sounded so hoarse, so sorry). 

‘I’m sorry if I hurt you - I— I never meant to.’

If. If. If. Were you not making it completely fucking obvious that he had, most definitely, hurt you? Part of your brain is even now starting to go down the route that he’s doing this on purpose, that it’s some twisted sort of damage control, that he hopes maybe if he plays dumb for long enough, you’ll forget what you were mad about or maybe start to second guess what you heard. But if that’s what he thinks, he obviously doesn’t know you very well at all. That’s never going to happen. 

Hell, for someone you were being so careful to keep in the appropriate lane in your head, Chan really has you thinking yourself in circles. You’re sick to your back teeth of him, and his stupid voice and his stupid smile and his stupid –

Clink.

Stupid. Fucking. Stones.

A groan loud enough to definitely catch the attention of your roommate sounds from deep within your chest at this interruption to your spiral and you finally, finally concede. Whatever argument he’s so clearly longing to have at 11 o’clock on a Thursday night? Fine. He can have it. If it means he backs off for good, you’ll give him his one last ruck.

You pull the window open none too gently and lean enough through it that Chan comes into view. He isn’t even looking up, you realise, too busy sifting through the driveway trying to find his next little projectile, and you hiss his name to get his attention. It startles him so much that he drops the indiscernible bundle in his right hand. He blindly scrambles to pick it up, those big, earnest eyes gazing at you as if you’re floating in midair before him.

“What the hell are you doing?!” You ask him, trying not to raise your voice too loud but at the same time, needing to generate enough volume for him to hear. He holds the bundle in both hands, now, and they catch the light of the lamp by your front door. Flowers, you register, squinting to try and make them out, your brows furrowing so much that your forehead hurts. 

Black dahlias.

You choke back a laugh. Ah, the joys of fooling around with the son of a florist. Are they all so damn dramatic? (Or does he just know that they’re your favourites?)

Whichever it is, you tell yourself that’s not going to work. You won’t let it. Through gritted teeth, you say, “go away. I’m serious. I’ll call the cops on you.”

He shakes his head, begging as he steps just a little closer so his face is more visible in the amber light too. “Please–” he hurries, biting his bottom lip. “Please, don’t– just… tell me what I did. I want to make it right. Please.”

He never begs like this. In all the time you’ve known him, you swear Chan has said ‘please’ to you fewer times than you could count on your fingers. Which is by no means a bad thing — that’s just always been the very comfortable nature of your friendship, and later, the -with-benefits tag that you ended up sticking on the end. 

“Why are you doing this?” You ask, pinching the bridge of your nose and fighting not to shiver in the cold nighttime air. Note to self: don’t do a Romeo and Juliet in the middle of the fucking winter without layering up, first. “What does it even matter?”

“What do you mean, what does it matter?” He asks, looking down at the bunch of flowers in his hands, then back at you. “I-... you know I’d never hurt you. Not on purpose. Please, just… if I did something–”

“There’s someone else,” you echo, fed up with his pretending. He’s a fair actor, you’ll give him that – he might even have been able to convince you, if you hadn’t already heard the other half of this tale he’s doing his best to spin in his favour. 

His face screws up, thinking he’s misheard. It’s his turn not to understand now. If you’re telling him you’ve met someone else, he’s got questions, because you’d promised to be open and honest with each other if that ever happened, so that you could call things off and go back to being just friends without it becoming a big deal. That was always supposed to be a calm conversation, not… whatever this is. You talked about it, right at the start. But… those are the words you’re saying, aren’t they? And why would you be mad at him if you were the one whose circumstances had changed? 

“What?” he asks, finally. “What do you mean?”

“God, no – we’re just friends. That’s never gonna happen. Besides, there’s… someone else!” You raise your voice without really meaning to, before swallowing hard and glancing back inside your room. “You said that, Chan. Don’t piss me off by coming here and pretending like you didn’t.”

Chan starts to look like he’s trying to figure out an algebraic equation in his head while only having half the required information; his eyes fall down to the gravel, his lips move without any sound coming out of them, his features tighten until there are definite lines between his eyebrows. Then, it clicks. The lightbulb moment. He slaps one hand to his face and shakes his head furiously, and you just know he’s going to wake up with an ache in his neck tomorrow because of it.

“Oh fuck,” he curses. “No, no, no, no, no – that’s not–”

“What did I just say?” You spit down at him. “Don’t piss me off–”

“Listen!” He shouts, and you gesture with your hand for him to lower his voice, interrupting his flow of thought and rendering him silent for a moment. “Fuck, please. Come down here and talk to me. That’s not what you think it is.”

You’re in every mind to slam your window shut and leave him out there in the cold. It would work if you got out your headphones to drown out the sounds of him trying to get your attention, which you have absolutely no doubt in your mind that he would do. And maybe then he’d get the hint; maybe then he would understand that you’re not just some pushover who he can just pick up and play with when it suits him. 

But he’s still holding those fucking flowers like they’re a lifeline, still looking up at you without a single lick of anger on his face. Not stress at having been discovered, which you would have expected him to be swimming in right about now. He looks… kind of beside himself, as if nothing could possibly be worse than what you’re threatening to do.

All this, for you? It just doesn’t make sense. 

“Please,” he says again, quieter, weaker. For the first time, you pick up on the hint of a shiver in his voice, and you swallow. Whether you’re gulping back your pride, or your resolve, or the last remnants of your sensibility, you don’t know. 

Does he deserve for you to hear him out? You’re not sure.

But does he deserve to be stuck out in the cold in just his stupid leather jacket and a pair of jeans? 

With regret, you think, no. He doesn’t.

All you give him is a scowl before you disappear from view entirely, pulling the window closed and drawing your curtains again. Faster than you think you ever have before, you throw on a sweatshirt over your pyjamas, grab your keys, and hurry down the stairs as silently as you possibly can. 

He’s stood in exactly the same place when you edge outside and pull the door closed behind you. Up-close, you can see the tiredness on his face: this is a man who has exhausted himself in worry, you think, and yet he still smiles a little when he sees you in full. He still holds the flowers out for you to take. He still purses his lips and blows out a stuttered cloud of air. Nervous, and not in the way you think he ought to be. So when you walk straight past him and don’t take the dahlias out of his hands, instead standing by his car and waiting for him to unlock it for you, you start to feel overwhelmingly guilty. 

Chan is many, many… many things. But he really isn’t this good of a performer, no matter what you’ve been telling yourself all week. For God’s sake, why is it so much easier to be angry at him when he’s not standing right in front you?

You slip into his passenger side as he fumbles to set the flowers down on his backseat again, and he joins you up front just a few moments later. His hands are shaking when he sets the keys into the ignition. His whole body is. When you cast a real look over at him, the tips of his fingers are pale and his lips are lacking their usual rosy, pink hue. Your own teeth are chattering despite only having been truly exposed to the cold air for a matter of seconds; you dread to think how frozen he must be.

“Are we driving?” You ask to break the silence. Since he got into the car and fiddled with the heating settings to try and warm things up a little, he hasn’t said a word. It’s awkward. It’s horrible. You already miss the comfortable way you’ve been able to sit for hours together, barely talking, just watching the lights of the city and the cars travelling through it. 

You already miss him. Which is a strange thought, seeing as he’s only about ten inches away. 

“If– if you want,” he says, stuttering through the frost in his lungs. “We can go—...”

“Drive, Chan,” you say. It’s not just because you want him to stop falling over his words – which, to be fair, you do. Chan has always been very confident, carrying himself with the air of someone who knows exactly their worth. It’s one of the things you treasure about him. So this? Is fucking weird. But a big part of it is that you know his car will heat up faster if it’s in motion, and right now, you think maybe he’s at risk of losing a finger or two if he doesn’t get some circulation back.

He steps on the gas and the car pulls away from your home. It’s the first time you’ve ever been in his car without there being some sort of music playing, whether that’s historically just been the radio or a tape he put together with the help of one of his older friends. (The tapes that always had your first initial on them. The tapes that he never failed to ask your opinions on when he dropped you home – as if he’d compiled them with only you in mind.) The silence feels jarring and you can hear every rumble of the engine, every squeal of the brakes he definitely needs to get serviced. 

But the car does warm through, and you sigh out relief as the bones in your hands move a little easier, as your fingers curl and uncurl to less resistance from your taut muscles. Chan feels it, too; his body relaxes, his breaths stop coming out in fractions, his face gets some colour back. The timing feels a little less awful when you finally say, “go on, then.”

Chan glances over at you as he drives down an unlit street. Only for a second, like he’s checking you’re still there, before his eyes train back on the road. He’s going to one of your favourite spots. It isn’t a lookout – it’s somewhere completely shut off from the rest of town, hidden by the trees near the railway tracks, somewhere you’ve never had to worry about being seen or heard. Maybe he’s anticipating a screaming match. Maybe he’s expecting something else. Maybe, even, he just cares about how much you love it there. 

“I didn’t know you heard that conversation,” he starts, sheepishly. You want to roll your eyes, reach over and thump him, ask if that makes what he said okay, but you don’t. You stay looking out the front windscreen too. Waiting. “I… all right. I was out of my ass drunk.”

You click your tongue, pressing it afterwards against the inside of your cheek, but again, you stay quiet.

“I don’t think you heard what you thought you heard, though,” he goes on to say. “‘Cause– ‘cause it wasn’t…”

But you can only be quiet for so long in the face of this mess. Especially when he’s apparently working towards a doctorate in beating around the fucking bush. “I heard you tell your friends that it was never gonna happen with ‘movie girl’.”

Chan’s face brightens, and you can’t help but wonder what on Earth is wrong with this man. Why does he find that funny? Why is his chest moving like he’s trying not to laugh?

“And you… thought you were movie girl,” he says, nodding. “Okay. Okay – shit. I’m sorry.”

You look at him properly, now, as he indicates to the right and takes the turn that leads him down the lane to your spot. “What are you talking about?”

“I get it,” he says. “You work at the–... but you’re not movie girl. Not that movie girl.”

“Stop talking in riddles before I get out of this car, Chan. It’s too late for this shit.”

He holds a hand up as if to apologise and settles back against the head cushion, suddenly looking far more comfortable than he did thirty seconds ago. He clears his throat, running his tongue over his lips, before sucking in a breath and letting himself go on.

“You’re not movie girl,” he says again, successfully clarifying nothing. “There’s this chick I used to dance with — years back, before… God, when we were in school, like, forever ago. She moved away when we were sixteen.” As he talks, he reaches your destination and sets the car into park, before he unfastens his seatbelt and turns to face you. You do the same, shifting your weight to tuck one leg up beneath you, and with your undivided attention, he goes on. “I ran into her recently. She’s back in town now, I guess. It was like, two weeks—?”

“I’m gonna be all-over grey by the time you finish telling this story,” you interrupt, raising an eyebrow. “Can you please give me the short version?”

“Not if you want it to make sense,” Chan shrugs. Begrudgingly, you let him keep talking. “She said it would be cool to hang out, maybe catch a movie or do lunch or something — and look, I didn’t know she was asking me on a date, I thought she was just being nice, y’know? Trying to be friends, but… you weren’t working that day, it was when you had that… that stomach thing going on? And I brought you the soup my mom made, remember?”

You nod; of course you remember. At the time, you wondered why on Earth this grown man’s mother was making you food — you asked yourself whether he’d told her about you, or if she thought it was for someone else. In the end you decided he must have just been bringing you leftovers. But you’d been too worn out to start asking questions; instead, after you’d eaten, you let yourself fall asleep with your head in his lap as he patted your hair and hummed his favourite songs. You hadn’t let yourself think too deeply about it since. 

“Anyway. We were sat watching the movie and she, uh,” he glances down at his lap, tips of his ears burning pink. “She put her hand, sorta, on my thigh? And then I was like, shit, I didn’t read this right, like… at all. So I moved it off and she took the hint — and after it ended I said to her, you know, I was flattered, right? But I wasn’t interested. And then I went home and got that soup and—… yeah.”

He came straight to see you. To look after you. Hell, you didn’t even fool around that night; in retrospect, it was all uncharacteristically domestic. And slowly, the pieces you’ve spent days struggling to fit together start to fall into place. It makes sense. The only question that remains is do you believe him?

Well, tell a lie. 

There is one more. 

“You said there was someone else,” you add quietly. 

You’ll die before you admit it, but this is secretly the part that was hurting you the most. 

You can’t even look him in the eye, right now; your cheeks are burning with the embarrassment of even caring. As much as you want to tell yourself that the only reason you’re pissed is just because of the dishonesty, you can only stare at yourself in the mirror and point-blank lie so many times. Someone else. You hate it. 

Just the thought of him seeing somebody else, taking them out on dates, smiling at them, laughing with them, kissing them the way he kisses you, touching —

A shiver runs the length of you and you cross your arms, thrusting your sleeve-covered hands under your armpits. 

Chan takes a deep breath in and exhales it slowly, like he’s blowing smoke out of his lungs. “There is,” he admits, nodding slowly, avoiding your eyes, too. “There is someone else.”

“When were you going to tell me?” You ask. 

Chan doesn’t respond straight away. You don’t notice, but eventually his eyes do land back at you; it’s only when he clears his throat to get your attention that you look at him long enough to realise he’s quite deliberately staring. His lips are lifted on the right in a lopsided smile, his eyes soft as he reaches across the seats towards you. You stare blankly down at his hand until he wiggles his fingers, and you think briefly that this is the most fucked up ending to a situationship you’ve ever been through. 

You drop one of your hands down and let him hold it, though, staring at his face as his thumb brushes over your knuckles and you wait for him to finally say it out loud. For him to announce that he’s fallen for somebody and that he can’t see you anymore. To put the nail in the coffin. Don’t tell me their name, you think. I don’t want to know anything about them. Please, just don’t.

“For someone so frustratingly smart, you’re really fucking dumb,” Chan says, finally, swallowing around his words and squeezing your fingers. Whatever stoic expression you had forced onto your face at the start of this conversation dissolves into irritation and you snatch your hand away from him again, letting his own fall and collide with a thunk against the handbrake. 

“Oh, sorry that I didn’t realise you were sneaking around behind my back when that’s the one thing we promised we wouldn’t do,” you snap. “God. The only stupid thing I’ve done here is get involved with you in the f—”

“You’re the someone else.”

Oh. 

Oh.

“I’m—?”

“You.”

The admission hangs heavily between you, as does your nonsense, unfinished insult. Neither of you really know what to do with yourselves except sit perfectly still and try to somehow deal with your increasingly dry throats. When Chan moves, it’s only to turn down the heating dial when his cheeks burn a bit too hot; you appreciate it, in part due to the bead of sweat currently running down your back, but you don’t say so. 

“You could have started with that,” you say weakly, wrestling with all your strength to keep even some of your cards close to your chest. It’s not working though. Your attempt to conceal your elation is a bit like throwing a single leaf on top of a bison and calling it camouflage. 

Chan commits to laughing, finally, your sentiment breaking him too. Now, you do crack that smile, albeit mostly just at the sound that comes from him. It’s bright and airy, lighting his whole face up as he drops all the way back and leans against his car door, pushing his fingers through his hair. “I was trying to build to a moment! It’s not my fault you hit every branch of the anti-romantic tree on your way down.”

“I am not anti-romantic,” you scoff in protest. 

“Yes — you are.”

“Am not!”

“Are too.”

“No, you’re just an idiot.”

“Says she who didn’t realise her fuck-buddy had feelings for about six months, Jesus.”

“Chan—” You start, your voice laced with a playful warning. 

“Here I was thinking I was making it completely obvious,” he rambles on. 

“— oh my God, just shut up and kiss me.”

“Dropping hints left and r—” … “Huh?”

He stops short a fraction of a second after you finish, stumped and silent, frozen with everything but a little buffering symbol above his forehead. Kiss me, you said. Chan, […] just shut up and kiss me. All right, you’ve asked him to do that before, but not like this. Not as if you’ll wither away should you not get a taste of his lips this instant. It takes him some time to process it, but he does move in first, eventually. The way he always does, closing the distance between you like he’s been shot out of a cannon, one hand either side of your face, crashing feverishly against your mouth. 

Every now and again, he’ll be happy to let you take charge and set the pace: mostly just if he’s feeling lazy or especially generous. Tonight isn’t one of those times, however. He holds you and kisses you possessively, like you’re his, like this is how he finally gets to lay claim on you, licking between your gasp-parted lips after he moans straight into your mouth. He’s spearmint sweet, edged with that one cherry flavoured chapstick he stockpiles as he grins up against you, rolling his body fluidly with every separation for air, every changing angle. 

He pulls your sweatshirt up over your head and throws it down into the footwell on the passenger side, straight away hurrying to kiss you hungrily again, hands cupping your neck. His tongue is in your mouth once more, there’s no way you could possibly differentiate your breaths from his: you’re one, in every way you can be with your clothes still on, but it’s not enough. 

“Want you,” you whimper as he nips at your bottom lip and pleasure rushes through you from head to toe. 

“You’ve got me,” he groans with his eyes still closed. “I’m all yours.” 

“No,” you insist, whimpering when his cute little nose drags across your cheek until he’s pressing hot kisses to your jawline. “I— fuck—”  He suckles on the sweet spot below your ear and your spine tingles, head tilting to give him better access. “Chan, I want you.”

Chan settles back from you, his usually bright, sparkling eyes now darkened with desire. All he gives you is a singular glance sideways, but you know exactly what he’s suggesting. You nod, breathing deep, biting the inside of your cheek; he turns off the headlights and it’s all systems go. 

There’s a rush to scramble into the back of the car. Chan takes the keys out the ignition and climbs through the gap in the seats; you opt for the less hazardous approach of getting out of the vehicle entirely and re-entering it instead. Not that it bothers him — no sooner is the door closed behind you, Chan’s hands are on your hips and he pulls you on top of him, your leg knocking the dahlias off the leather and onto the floor in the process. You gasp and glance down but he averts your attention with two fingers under your chin, guiding you to look back at him. 

“What? You think this is the last time I’ll bring you flowers?” He asks, capturing your lips as he leans up to you; at the same time, his hands drop low and he starts to slide open the buttons down the front of your pyjama shirt. “Baby, m’gonna get you so many more.” 

You sigh at the affectionate name, at the change in its use; until now, Chan has only called you baby while he’s buried inside you, bruising you inside and out with sharp thrusts and rough-gripping fingers. But as much as you can feel him growing hard against the inside of your thigh while you try to get comfortable, one knee planted either side of his hips, you can’t help but feel as if this time, it means something different. 

(He’s had feelings for six months: it always meant what it does, now. You know that, deep down.)

Somewhere in amongst the never-ending sloppy kisses and constantly travelling hands, you manage to strip both his jacket and T-shirt off him and you’re pressed bare-chest-to-bare-chest with Chan, feeling every little hitch of his breath in his lungs, every thump of his heartbeat, every tiny increase in the temperature of his skin. Your desperate search for friction between your legs has you rolling your hips down against his hard-on, drawing grunts and making him squeeze at your tits when you rock against him the right way. His head eventually drops to your chest and he replaces one hand with his mouth, freeing his fingers to slide down the front of your pyjama bottoms. 

It’s honestly rarer for Chan to get straight to the point than it is for him to tease you a little first, so when he flattens his palm against you and brushes his fingertips over your already aching clit, you let out a squeak of surprise. He shivers, releasing your nipple from between his teeth for a moment; once he’s collected a little more arousal to ease the friction, he continues to rub at the bud, slowly building the pressure inside you.

“No panties?” He asks, struggle clear in the roughness of his voice. 

“I was in bed,” you gasp, eyes rolling back. It’s for the best that it happens out of pleasure, really, because you’re not sure you’d be able to stop yourself rolling them in exasperation at his remark otherwise. You shuffle a little, lifting yourself up on your knees more, breath hitching when he uses the newly granted space to dip his hand lower and press a finger against your hole. “Please, Chan — this can’t be comfy— just…”

“S’fine” he argues, shaking his head, despite the fact that the angle of his wrist is actually kind of painful, right now. The truth is that he can’t bring himself to care: not when he can smell your fabric softener on the shirt still hanging off your shoulders, the shampoo in your freshly washed hair, all so pretty mixed with the damp scent of your desire. Not when you clench around him as he slides his finger in and out of your cunt. Not when he could get you to soak all the way through these pretty satin pants. 

Your arms snake around his neck as he dips a second finger inside you to join the first. The way your thighs tighten around his hips could — should — be embarrassing, the fact his sturdy lap holds you open enough for your pussy to be toyed with even more so. You almost always do this too music, too — for what might be the first time ever, you can hear every single wet sound your body makes, every hitch of your own breath, every grunt he gives even though he’s not the one being pleasured. 

You don’t even realise how you’re rocking up and down against his hand until Chan licks from the base of your neck to your jaw, smirking over your pulse point and says, “gonna ride my cock this good too, baby?”

And if it was anyone else talking to you like this, you would be embarrassed. Mortified, at being so needy you’re here doing all the work for him. At the cry you give as he splits and scissors his fingers to stretch you out. But instead? You feel another rush of arousal drool out of you as you press your nails into his shoulders and nod, bouncing harder and watching how his bicep tenses up solid with the effort of keeping his arm steady for you to use. 

“Wanna,” you gasp. “Want it so bad, Chan—”

Despite your pleas for this to move further, when his hand pulls back out of the elastic of your waistband, you feel like you could throttle him. The urge ebbs away when his soaked fingers press to your lips and he quirks an eyebrow at you, though — you end up suckling them clean, licking up every trace of your own slick. You lock eyes with him as you do, slumping on your thighs so your drenched core sits right over his tweaking length, the seam of your pants giving just enough friction to your clit for it to feel good as you grind down on him again. 

“Get those off,” he instructs, trying to sound hard and dominant. Which would work, perhaps, if his voice didn’t crack in the middle of the sentence. “Now.”

Even though you’re overcome with a need to tease him, the desire you have to be split open on his length outweighs it, so you do as you’re told and hold it in for later. It’s not easy, but you manage to manipulate yourself in his lap to work the satin down your thighs and past your knees. He helps you tug them the rest of the way past your ankles and feet, shoves them onto the floor — Chan’s hands settle back on your hips and yours skim down his stomach at the same time, fingers grazing over the little hairs that trail from his bellybutton down into his jeans. 

“Can I?” You ask, playing already with his belt buckle. 

He hums assent and you slip it all the way open, tugging as he moves his hips underneath you so you can pull it free from the loops. Between you, you manage to get his jeans unfastened, to pull both them and his boxer shorts down over his ass and to his knees; finally, fucking finally, his cock sits pretty and leaking and free between your stomach and his. It’s getting cold in the car now the heating isn’t on, but you’re already burning up in anticipation for him to ruin you; the way his abs ripple as he takes his shaft into his hand and strokes himself a couple of times to prepare tells you he’s in the same boat. 

It’s like clockwork, from here. You shift into position as easily as you settle into bed after a long day. Chan rubs his tip through your folds, feels the warmth of you and hisses through his teeth with fluttering eyes. Just like always. This never changes. He can’t ever get enough of that first feeling of his cock against your pussy: it’s like the first hit of a blunt, like the first sip of a cold beer, the first full-body stretch early in the morning. He’s sure it’s what arriving at the gates of heaven must feel like. 

You sink down onto him slowly, fluttering around his tip and stilling to give you both a moment to get used to the feeling. He’s thick inside you. Thicker than his pretty, dainty fingers have ever been able to stretch you enough for. Even as wet as you are, you still need to suck a deep breath into your lungs before you can relax your hips further and let your heat swallow him all the way to his base. 

Chan’s head is tipped back in pleasure, he’s biting his lip at the sting of your nails pressing hard into the back of his neck. He loves it, though — loves how the pain shoots in waves down his spine, how it tingles in his brain, how he knows you need to anchor yourself this way or you’ll lose control. He kneads at your ass as you sit against his thighs, listening to you whimpering at how deep he is inside you.

“So fucking tight around me still,” Chan groans, focusing all his willpower into keeping his hips down on the leather beneath him. “Shit, baby — you feel so good…” His neck softens and his head drops forward again as you start to move, rising and falling over and over. He kisses your throat and down to your collarbones while you work up to a rhythm, sliding his palms up your back, hugging you close to him. 

He isn’t even the one putting in the hard work, but within minutes of this, his soft, fluffy hair clings to his forehead. A light sheen of sweat makes him radiant under the moonlight breaking through the trees. He’s breathing heavily, the top of his toned chest painted a soft pink — you don’t think he could possibly look prettier. Not until he cups your jaw with his hands and you look upwards: you land on his smiling face, those plush, swollen lips, his devilish but sweetly glittering eyes. The sight of him, looking at you like you’re some kind of Goddess, makes your pussy tighten and your tiring hips stutter. You slip your pyjama top all the way off your arms and curl your fingers into his hair, meeting him in an open-mouthed kiss, through which you’re both just beaming. 

You’ve never kissed him this much. When it all started out, you sort of had a rule against it, but now? Neither of you can stop. As he starts to fuck up into you, taking the reins and letting your burning thighs rest, he keeps your face steady with his hands and freely allows his lips to slide against yours. It’s not refined. It can’t be. Not with how hard and fast his movements quickly become, not with the onslaught of curses and moans and babbled praise coming from the both of you. One particularly sharp thrust makes you yelp out a squeak of his name and he just swallows it down, making a point to keep aiming for— and hitting— that same spot inside you. You’re a mess. 

He could do this all night. When your orgasm bubbles inside you and he starts pinching at one of your nipples, sending you over the edge, he’s nowhere near finished. Even though your cunt massages at his length, throbbing and pulsing through your climax; even though your voice is so high by now that only dogs can hear you; even though you nearly collapse on top of him with almost all your weight in his lap, and he has to work twice as hard to keep this going, he barely slows. He definitely doesn’t stop. 

“You can gimme one more, right sweetheart?” He asks, grunting into your neck. “Always feels so fucking good when you come.” You choke up an ‘mhm’, to which he responds by slipping a hand between your bodies and down to where you’re connected. His thumb presses against your clit again — not moving, just applying enough pressure to make you stutter when you say his name. 

Your thighs are still twitching when you try to lift yourself a little, try to meet his movements as he chases his orgasm too. The “problem” with Chan is that his stamina is otherworldly. You couldn’t keep up if you wanted to. 

“Relax,” he says, tensing his jaw, doing the opposite himself. “Fuck — lie down.”

It’s pretty cramped and hard to move, but you lift yourself off him and only slightly lament at the sudden emptiness between your legs. There isn’t time to get too upset, however: moments after you get comfortable on your back, Chan shoves his jeans the rest of the way down and stands with one knee planted on the seats, lifting one of your ankles up to rest it on his shoulder. He slips back inside you easily then, gripping around your calf to keep you both steady. From the word go, his pace is relentless. You scrabble around for something to hold onto but the entire car seems to melt away; you ball your hands into fists at your sides instead, your eyes squeezed tightly shut. 

“Mm-mm. Look at me,” Chan hums, tightening his grip on your leg. “Wanna see those pretty eyes.” 

You obey, opening your lids to look up at him while he pounds into you hard enough to make the car shake. Over, and over, and over, and over. Rougher. Faster. For how long? Who even knows. All you’re truly aware of is how good it feels. How the windows grow foggy with the  steam of your laboured breaths. How his sweat mingles with your own. 

When his fingers on the other hand get reacquainted with your clit, when he bites down on his bottom lip, when his thrusts start to get messier and more erratic and the veins in his arms start to bulge out, you know he’s getting close. He doesn’t need to tell you out loud. The smirk he wears speaks for itself. 

“Where d’you want it, baby?” He asks you, pressing a kiss to the inside of your ankle. 

“In— mmh, in-…side me—” you stammer, hips jolting as you near your second orgasm to match his first. “Please, Chan — want it all…”

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah—”

Well, he must’ve been holding himself back something spectacular, because a few thrusts later you watch all of his muscles contract as he tips over the edge, and you go hurtling with him. It’s all so much. All your nerve endings feel like they’re on fire and your vision starts to blur at the edges; it’s not long before you have to close your eyes to shut one of your overworked senses out, completely. Your muscles are sore. Your throat hurts. Even your lungs ache. 

God, he hasn’t gone that hard in so long, you don’t know what to do with yourself. You can barely speak — it’s going to take you a week to recover from this, minimum. 

He stills deep inside you, feeling his cock throb with the last pumps of his release. Your leg slips off his shoulder and your foot lands down with a thud onto the car’s (thankfully clean) floor; he bends forward to kiss you, still breathing heavily against your lips. You’ve come over completely boneless and reaching up to thread your fingers into his hair again feels like running a marathon at sprint pace. You’d fall asleep right here, right now, if you could, but with sweat cooling rapidly against your skin, you know that’s probably not up there as one of your finest ideas. 

“You really think getting involved with me was stupid?” Chan asks, nudging your nose with the tip of his own. He’s never been less serious than this in his entire life, which stops you feeling too bad when you lightly slap at his rock solid chest and try to push him off you.

“Yes,” you lie, attempting to reach to the ground for your pyjama shirt while he grips your chin and attacks you with tiny little pecks all over your face. “Stupidest thing I’ve ever done.”

(Chan chuckles to himself and thinks that he’s quite happy to be the stupidest thing you’ve ever done, really. He can stay that way, as long as you promise never to stop.)

thank you so much for reading. i hope you enjoyed it - likes, feedback, comments, reblogs are all so appreciated.<3

[boldlyvoid]

I Know Places: Living Children

18+ Aaron Hotchner x Fem Reader | Masterlist | AO3 link

Summary: After coming home from Canada, they head to their separate apartments for a night of rest before their next case… only that case comes 4 hours later and Aaron isn't answering his phone.

Warnings: Canon Typical Violence (murder, stabbing, assault, mentions of death) Anxiety, panicking, blood tw, Haley and Reader interacting, Reid gets shot, the whole team is in a panic.

Word count: 10.8k

She dropped him off at his apartment late that night, he asked her to come up but she said no. For the first time in months, she said no. She wanted to actually get some sleep after everything they went through these last few weeks. She knew if she went to his house, or if he came to hers, they would end up talking or fucking all night and her body needed rest… real rest, even though she didn’t quite know what it was like to sleep without him anymore. 

She was asleep maybe 5 hours when JJ called and said they had an emergency case pop up. 

She gets to the scene first, JJ not far behind her being dropped off by Will. She watches as JJ kisses her boyfriend and looks back at their sleeping baby in the backseat before she joins her on the curb. They’re on the scene for almost 15 minutes before Morgan and Reid roll up, tired, a couple coffees in hand, begrudgingly starting what should’ve been their day off together.

“Where’s the big man?” Derek asks. 

Y/N shrugs, “he should be here soon.” 

“Have you not talked to him?” JJ asks. “I couldn’t get ahold of him at all?” 

“No? That’s weird,” she doesn’t like the anxiety that immediately pools in her stomach. “He tosses his phone and things onto the couch once he gets inside and leaves them there till the morning, he’ll get the massages and be here soon. I’m sure,” she says more for herself than the others. Knowing no one had heard from him yet made her a little anxious but what else could she do? 

“I’m surprised you didn’t go home with him,” Derek teases her, bumping his elbow off hers. 

“Unlike you and the good doctor, I actually wanted to sleep last night,” she teases him. 

“3 hours is still something,” Spencer teases, a rosy pink blush spreading across his cheeks. 

“Alright kids,” Rossi announces his presence behind them. “What’s going on here? Why were we called to a crime scene if we’re not working a case?” 

“I got a call from Detective Walker, you guys remember him?” JJ explains. “He’s inside, apartment 3C, he says it’s urgent.” 

“It better be,” Derek scoffs. 

The case is strange… Detective Walker, a DC cop they knew from a few other local cases called JJ when he received word of an interesting killer. Someone sent a doctor, Tom Barton, a letter saying he was planning to kill his son. Every day that his son stayed inside, out of harm's way or with protection, another person would be shot and killed in retaliation. 2 victims so far have died, and the letter is signed “L.C.” and even written in chalk beside victim number 2’s body. 

There isn’t much for them to look at while at the crime scene, the man simply opened his door and was shot in the chest, falling back into his apartment. The police were called when neighbours heard gunshots, no one saw the man leave and the apartment complex doesn’t have security footage. So, they all head over to the doctor's house to ask him questions, find out who has a grudge or vendetta against him, and go from there. 

JJ calls Hotch again on their drive over, Y/N’s driving her to the doctor's house, but Aaron doesn’t pick up. It’s weird, but, he also really just wanted to sleep last night. 

“Why didn’t you go home with him?” JJ asks, “The real answer this time.” 

She laughs, “I was being serious, I was tired. We both were. But when we’re together at night we don’t really sleep, no matter how tired we are.” 

“I want to say ew, but I’m glad you’re both happy,” she teases. 

“It’s not always sex, sometimes we just talk all night,” she assures her. “And when we go to his place we drink. You get a couple glasses of whisky in him and he doesn’t know how to shut up.” 

“Will’s like that too, he has such a high tolerance from growing up in New Orleans but he doesn’t drink that much anymore. Ever since we had Henry and I went back to work, he’s always scared that if he has even a few sips he’ll get a call that I was hurt or Henry will need to go to the hospital in the middle of the night and so he doesn’t risk it,” she explains. It sounds like she’s been dying to talk about this with someone. 

“You’ve found yourself one good man there, Jayj,” she gives her a quick smile. “We both have.” 

—

She doesn’t have her full attention on the case. She listens to the doctor explain what he received and why he doesn’t understand how he could be a target, but she doesn’t fully care. Yes, she wants people to stop dying and yes she wants to keep this man's family safe… but her own family is on her mind right now. 

No one has heard from Aaron, he’s not answering his phone, he’s not at work, Anderson hasn’t seen him at the office… it’s starting to really scare her. 

The team disburses after they realize that Dr. Barton's son has left the house, he’s gone to school in an attempt to save lives like his father does for a living. He’s a good kid. Derek, JJ and Dave head over to the school to make sure he’s okay and keep him safe until the final bell of the day. She and Reid stay with the doctor to look through his case files for Hispanic males or people with the initials L.C, seeing as Reid can read a million words a minute. More like 20,000 but, still, faster than anyone else. 

After about 30 files, she reaches her breaking point. So does Dr. Barton. “Jeffery is leaving school in 5 hours, there’s no way we can get through all these patients in this time.” 

“Well, we’ve narrowed it down already,” she tries to sympathize with him. It is a lot. 

“And we still have 100 left!” He shouts. “I’m sorry, I-I-I don't mean to be callous but when you work in the ER you don’t remember names. You operate and you move on.” 

“He’s right,” she gives in. “There are too many files here for us to profile in such a short period of time. Um,” she stands up, getting ready to leave. “I can get to Hotch’s apartment and get back here in half an hour?” 

“Who’s that?” He asks. 

“He's our supervisor,” Spencer explains. “We weren’t supposed to work today we’re having trouble getting ahold of him.” 

“But we need more eyes,” Y/N says, hoping it bribes Dr. Barton to let her go.

He nods, and so she leaves. 

Driving like a bat out of hell, she somehow manages to hit every red light on her way downtown and there’s construction 2 blocks before Aarons street. Her heart is in her stomach, she’s so sure she’s going to be met with something bad that she’s afraid to breathe. She arrives at 715 Langham in just 10 minutes and parks her SUV just in front of the building. Aaron's SUV is in the parking lot around the side, so she knows he’s here. That eases her anxiety just a bit. 

She hops out, locks the car and rushes inside. He lives on the first floor, at the back, apartment 121. She knocks as soon as she gets there. “Hotch? It’s me, Y/N… Aaron? Aaron, are you in there?” 

When she doesn’t get an answer she pulls out her cell phone and calls his number again.. it starts to ring and she can hear it going off inside his apartment. Probably on the couch like she assumed. But her heart still stops beating in her chest for a moment. She reaches for the doorknob next, going to jiggle it but it opens right up. He doesn’t lock it right away when he gets home, it’s often her who locks it when they get in at night… but still, he’d lock it before going to bed. That’s his routine. 

She unholsters her gun, holds it up and slams the door open. She looks both ways, clearing the room with her eyes, she notices his keys on the entryway table his phone and briefcase tossed on the couch. She slowly starts to enter, observing the room slowly… she notices there’s a bullet hole in the wall. No blood splatter or brain matter surrounding it. But that’s definitely a bullet hole. 

Aaron's gun is on the kitchen table and on the floor beside the table there is a human torso-sized puddle of blood on the white carpet. Under the wall with the bullet hole, opposite of the bloody carpet, there is linoleum leading into the kitchen, and it's covered in glass. She prepares herself to enter the kitchen, she turns into it with her gun ready to shoot anyone who’s there but the place is empty. Unlocked, bloody, and empty. 

Aarons gone. 

He was attacked. Someone was standing in his kitchen, unbeknownst to him, when he came in. He tossed his things on the couch, unclipped his gun placed it on the table and went to make a drink when the attacker made themself known. He dropped his glass when he was started, they went to shoot him and missed and then got him on the ground. She looks for the bullet casings, but there aren’t any to be found. Either they were both taken or he wasn’t shot on the ground. There’s too much blood for it to be a single bullet wound… too spread out. He was hit multiple times across his chest. But it doesn’t look like enough blood to kill someone. 

As soon as she’s able to breathe again, she gathers herself back together and calls Penelope. 

“Overtime shift-Penelope speaking,” she answers, breath heavy like she just ran into he room. 

“Garcia this is Y/N, I need you to listen carefully,” she leads. “Somethings happened to Hotch.” 

“What do you mean something happened?” She asks, immediately panicking. 

“I don’t know. I’m in his apartment, he’s not here but there’s blood.” 

“Oh my god.” 

“I need you to send police and FBI techs here right away, everyone available,” Y/N orders, she needs to start building a profile and she needs crime scene to be here in order to do that.

“Uh, d-do we need an APB?” She asks, already typing. 

“Only on hotch, I checked out front, his car’s still here,” she explains. 

“Someone took him?” 

“I don’t know,” she wants to scream but she can’t. “There’s blood but I can’t be sure who’s it is. Just get people here.”

“Okay I’m sending an army—

“Garcia, I’m gonna have to tell reid because he’s expecting me back but you can’t tell the others. They cannot be distracted,” she reminds her. 

“Okay,” Penny understands. “Okay.” 

And just like that, she hangs up. And now she’s all alone in Aaron’s apartment, the place he hated to be more than anywhere… she never went home with him. She never invited him up to her place. And now he’s hurt. He’s bleeding and somewhere without her and she’s so scared this is all her fault. 

But instead of freaking out, she calls Spencer. 

“Hey,” he answers. 

“Something happened to Aaron,” she says. 

“What?” 

“he’s not here but there’s about a pint of blood on his carpet. Something happened. I don’t know what happened or who did it or if he’s alive—” 

“What are you talking about, Y/N?” 

“Someone came into his apartment and hurt him and then took him. All his stuff is here.” 

She heats Dr. Barton asking if this is about Jeffery and Spencer saying it’s not, shushing him and then holding his hand over the phone. “I’m really sorry I have to take this call, okay?” 

“What could be more important than my son right now?!” The man screams. 

“I assure you this will take one second!” Spencer argues back. “Please, I promise.” 

“Spence?” 

“I’m here, what do you know?” 

“There’s a huge hole in the wall. Probably a .44? But there’s no blood or tissue spray around it.” 

“Any idea how he got out?” 

“If he was shot there are no drag marks, but a body could’ve been wrapped in something,” she explains, cringing at the words. She hates this so much. 

“And bureau techs are on the way?” 

“Any second now,” she assures him. Trying to keep herself calm and okay.

“Alright, um, write down everything you see and we’ll profile form your notes when you get back,” Spencer says, knowing she needs order to keep sane. “It’ll be okay. We’ll find him.” 

“Okay… thank you. How’s Dr. Barton?” 

“It’s a huge list of cases to go through,” Spencer reminds her, so clearly, the man is stressing. 

“Okay, don’t worry about here. I’ve got this. Stay focused, try and find a way to narrow them down further… I know you can do it.” 

“Thanks, call me if you need me?”

“I will.” 

—

The door is already open when the cops and crime scene techs start coming in. She’s pulled out of the room and told she can go back in once the techs have what they need. She can’t fuck with the crime scene and she knows that. So she stays back, she watches the men in white jump-suits and gloves start taking samples and pictures and a cop comes up to start asking her questions. 

“And who are you to the victim?” 

“Co-worker and girlfriend,” she admits, wanting to be as honest as possible. She shows him her badge and everything.

“Okay, and when did you last talk to him?” 

“Last night at 2:30ish, I drove home after our flight got in. I dropped him off at his apartment and then went home,” she explains. “We tried calling him all morning to tell him a new case has come in but he wasn’t answering the phone so I came here to get him myself. His door was unlocked and his phone was ringing in the living room.” 

“Does he have any enemies that would do this to him?” 

She laughs, “he’s the supervisory special agent in charge of the behavioural analysis unit and before that, he was an attorney on criminal cases. The list of people who want him dead is a long one.” 

“Okay,” the man's eyes widen and he breathes in deeply through his nose as he writes it all down in his little book. “So, your teams on this then too, I guess?” 

She shakes her head, “They’re busy, we can’t get them distracted. It’s just me and you guys right now… and our tech girl, she’s calling hospitals to see if Aaron or any John Doe’s were brought in. Have you seen his wallet in there at all?” 

“I’m not sure… hey, Gomez?” He calls into the apartment, “found a wallet?” 

“Not yet,” he calls back. 

“So that’s really all we know right now—

Her phone starts to ring and so she pulls away from the conversation. “Talk to me, Garcia?” 

“Okay I-I called hospitals to see if Hotch had gotten himself admitted into an emergency room—

“And?” She’s so impatient it comes off mean. 

“He’s not listed as a patient but someone dropped a John Doe off at St. Sebastian Hospital and that someones name was FBI Agent Derek Morgan,” she explains, confused and slightly pissed off. 

“That doesn’t make sense?” She says, shaking her head, racking her brain for a reason that could make sense… 

“I know, do you think they got their credentials mixed up?”

Just then it dawns on her and her stomach drops even further. Her eyes start to blur and the world stops as she figures it out. “The Reaper.” 

“What?” 

“Foyet stole Morgans Creds…” 

“Why would he drop him off at the ER?” Penelope asks. 

“What hospital did you say, again?” 

“St. Sebastian Hopsital—

“I’ll call you with an update when I get there,” she says, hanging up she starts to run out of the room but the detective stops her. 

“Hey!” 

“He’s alive, he’s at St. Sebastian Hospital the man who did this is George Foyet also known as the Boston Reaper. We arrested him a few months back but he escaped prison and we’ve been on the hunt for him ever since, he did this,” she explains in a hurry. 

“Okay, go, go see him! I've got this here,” he lets her go. 

She runs down the hallways, out the front doors and to her car. She flicks her lights on once she’s inside and she speeds to the hospital, bypassing every car, she gets there right away at every red light and stop sign, she’s doing almost 120 the whole way there. 

She throws the car into the first parking spot she can find and runs towards the ER doors, getting deja vu from the last time she rushed to his bedside at a hospital in New York, she loves him a million times more now. It’s the same yet so, so different. With her chest heaving, she feels like she might pass out as she grips onto the counter of the front desk. 

“Hi, hi, sorry,” she needs a second, so she pulls out her badge, “an agent… brought in a man— sorry,” she holds her free hand to her heart and stands up straighter as she breathes. “An agent brought in a man last night, said his name was Derek Morgan?”

“Yes, he did, the man he brought in is in the intensive care unit right now,” she explains. “Do you know who he is?” 

She nods, “His name is Aaron Hotchner, he’s also an FBI agent. The man who brought him in is not. Agent Morgan had his credentials stolen by a criminal, I have reason to believe the man who brought him in is said criminal.” 

“Oh, oh dear,” the woman can’t believe it. “We can take you up to him?” 

“Yes please, and can you have someone send the security footage of the man bringing him here to my analyst at Quantico?” She asks. 

“I certainly can,” the woman agrees. She stands from her seat and walks around the desk to her, she places her hand on Y/N’s back. “Come with me.” 

They follow the blue line on the floor towards the elevators and inside she presses floor 3. They get off at the intensive care unit and the nurse gets the attention of another doctor. “The John Doe, she knows him.” 

“Hi,” she reaches out to shake the doctor's hand. “How is he?” 

“Stable, follow me,” she takes over for the nurse. She leads Y/N over to one of the rooms, she slides open the glass doors and lets her inside. 

She rushes to his side and rests her hands on his bedrails. “Can I touch his hands?” 

“Sure,” the doctor doesn’t mind. 

She grabs hold of his hand and her heart starts to beat regularly again. She can see straight. Her legs aren’t numb anymore. She’s better now that she knows he’s alive. “What happened?” 

“He was stabbed 9 times in the chest but no major arteries were hit,” she explains. “It’s a miracle he’s alive.” 

“When will he wake up?” 

“The anesthesia should wear off within the hour but he’s bout to be out of it,” she says with a sigh. “Can we get you to fill out some paperwork for us?” 

She nods, “yeah… do you have his stuff?” 

“It’s right there,” she points at the bag with his bloody shirt sitting right at the top. It’s all cut up and gross but they kept it. 

“let me just grab his wallet and I can do everything for you.” She lets go of his hand, she places it back on the bed and taps it gently, giving him a small smile. 

She gets his wallet from the bag, she follows the doctor out of the room and she’s handed a clipboard with papers on it. She fills it out with everything she knows about him. His name, first middle and last. She always thought it was funny that he was born in the 60s, the same year that Star Trek was airing and his parents never watched it but still gave him the middle name Tiberius. All good captains have that middle name. 

She knows his birthday and his blood type and that he’d want to be an organ donor if the time came. She has his insurance information cause it’s in his wallet and lists that he has a 4 year old son as well as a brother named Sean. But his emergency contact is still Haley no matter how long they’ve been together. And she’s okay with that. She’s going to have to call her. After their chat in Oregon, she got Haley’s number and put it in her phone so as soon as she finished the paperwork, she stepped out to call her. 

“Hello?” 

“Hi, is this Haley Brooks?” 

“It is…” 

“hi this is Y/N I work with Aaron,” she leads and she can hear the way Haley’s breathing changes. 

“What happened.” 

“He’s in the hospital, he was stabbed a few times last night,” she explains, wanting to cry. “He wanted me to call you if anything ever happened to him.” 

She lets out a shaky breath, “Okay… but he’s okay?” 

“Yeah, he will be. He isn’t awake yet and I know Jack's at school so when he does wake up, maybe you guys can stop by?” 

“Yeah, we definitely can… he has a playdate tonight after school though so I’m not sure what time we can come?” 

“That’s okay, I’ll talk to him when he wakes up and see if he even wants Jack to see him in this condition, if not, he’ll probably still be here tomorrow.” 

“Okay… and thank you, Y/N, for letting me know.” 

“Of course,” she doesn’t mind. “I can text you with updates?”

“I’d like that, thank you.” 

“Anytime,” she says with a smile and then they both hang up. 

She heads back over to Aaron's room to see a nurse switching out his chart with his accurate information on it. She gets a peak over the woman’s shoulder and sees the L.C. written on it. 

“Excuse me,” she says in her most polite voice. “What does that stand for?” 

“Living Children,” she explains. “It's so if a patient has to go on life support and they don’t have a DNR order, we know who to contact to make such a decision. Seeing as he doesn’t have a wife currently and you’re not his medical decision maker or power of attorney, that question goes to his next of kin.” 

“Thanks,” she nods, taking her phone back out she heads out to make yet another phone call.  

Once she relays the message to him, he goes quiet, “Reid?” 

“What if the unsub was trying to tell Dr. Barton that He is actually the target?” Spencer asks. “And that he’s going to leave his son without a father?” 

She goes to answer but then Spencer starts to panic, “Barton!” He calls out after him. 

“Reid?” She calls out, wondering what’s going on. There’s the sound of him running and then a gunshot. “Reid, Answer me! Spencer!!” 

There’s no response. So she hangs up and dials 911. “This is Special Agent Y/N Y/L/N from the FBI. I need police and an ambulance at 120 Kensington Road, McLean Virginia. Shots fired. Federal agent possibly down,” she calls down the line as soon as they pick up. 

“Yes ma’am, I have police and medical on their way now, do you have a description of the suspect?” 

“No, I was on the phone with my partner when I heard the shot and he wasn’t responding, he’s there with Doctor Thomas Barton working on a case, the man was being stalked and his life was being threatened, it seems the man found him.” 

“Okay, thank you, we’ve got it from here.” 

“Thanks,” she hangs up and finds the first seat she sees. 

She has to sit down. Today has been too much. Aaron was stabbed, Spencer possibly shot, they’re all working on 4 hours of sleep and it’s all catching up to her now. She starts to cry, her head in her hands, she lets herself have a couple minutes to panic before she goes back to being a professional. 

—

When the team arrives, it’s just JJ and Dave that come up to the ICU. Spencer and Derek are at another hospital, he was shot in the leg, the bullet went in and right back out, hitting bone and fracturing it. He’s going to need surgery and a cast as he’ll be on crutches for a few months. 

“How is he?” Dave asks. 

“He’s still not conscious.” 

“Are you sure it was Foyet?” He asks, still processing the news. 

She nods. “He had Morgans creds.” 

“Did they catch him on the security cameras?” JJ asks. 

“You could see him drop Aaron off but the cameras only on the entrance so I have no idea what direction he went once he left the hospital,” she explains. 

“It doesn’t make sense to have brought Hotch to the ER?” JJ can’t fathom it either. 

“We know Foyet gets off on power and control, maybe what he wants is for Hotch to know his life was in his hands?” Dave suggests. 

“He could do that without risking the hospital?” Y/N combats. 

“Agents,” the doctor calls them over, “he’s waking up.” They all rush to his side, “Now, remember, he’s weak. Don’t push him.” 

She gets the closest to him, holding his hand, she leans in and brushes his hair back, “Hey, there.” 

“Where am I?��� He asks, voice weak and throat dry from having a tube down it earlier. 

“The hospital,” Dave answers, on the other side of the bed. 

“How’d I get here?” 

“Foyet drove you,” Y/N says, worried he doesn’t remember the attack. “Do you remember what happened?”

He doesn’t answer, his eyes stay closed and he swallows a few times, thinking back to last night. “What did he take?” 

“What?” 

“The reaper always takes one thing from his victims. Do we know what he took?” 

“Uh,” Y/N thinks back. “There was a page missing from your day planner, the techs said it had been ripped out. The B’s page.” 

“What did he leave?” He asks, trying to piece it all together on his own as if he didn’t just almost die. 

“I don’t know, honey,” she says, feeling bad she doesn’t have more answers for him. 

“He also leaves something with his victims,” Aaron rewords his request. He needs to know. 

“I looked over your whole apartment with the techs, we couldn’t find anything out of the ordinary,” she says. As if the blood stain and the shattered glass were ordinary. 

“Where are my clothes?” 

“over there, but I have your wallet?” She takes it out of her pocket. 

“my pants,” he tries to turn to look at the bag but he’s too weak. 

“I’ve got it,” JJ says, pulling the bag off the table she places it on the foot of his bed and takes his pants out. “What pocket?” 

“Any. Look for something,” he orders, trying to sit up. 

JJ pulls out a picture of Jack and Haley and hands it to him. He tosses his head back and huffs. “Haley’s maiden name is Brooks.” 

JJ and Dave look at each other knowingly. 

“I always listed her in the B’s in my personal information in case it fell into the wrong hands,” he explains. “He knows where they live.” 

“Jacks at a playdate,” Y/N explains. “I called her, I told her what was going on, and she was fine. That was an hour ago, maybe 90 minutes at most.” 

“Go,” Aaron waves them off. “Go make sure they’re okay.” 

“I’ll make the phone calls,” Y/N assures them, “go!” 

And so she’s back on the phone, she calls Garcia to get SWAT to Aaron's old address and then she calls Strauss. This is bigger than them now. They needed the Marshalls. Haley and Jack needed to stay safe until Foyet was either dead or behind bars. And she really wanted him dead for this. 

She hangs up just as Aaron's machines start to beep out of control and she’s told to leave as the doctors assess him. He almost passes out, they get him back on a steady rhythm and check his breathing and his brain activity. He’s okay, but she gets reprimanded for pushing him too hard. He’s been through too much today. He can’t take much more. 

He’s okay, they give him some pain meds and he asks to be able to sit up straight again. She gets a call from JJ, they have Haley and she’s okay. Daves going to pick up Jack from his friend's place and they’re packing their bags to go into witness protection as soon as possible. “I’m going to get a SWAT Team to come here too, there’s no telling what Foyet is capable of and if he’s still here, waiting for us to bring Haley to him, I want to be one step ahead of him.” 

“Okay,” JJ agrees. “You tell the hospital they should go on lockdown, I’ll call Garcia to get the team to head over there.” 

“Thanks,” she says taking a deep breath. “I don’t know how many more phone calls I can make today before I go insane.” 

“Just stay with Hotch, we’ll do the rest.” 

“Thanks again, Jayj,” she smiles to herself before hanging up. 

She pops back into Aaron's room and gives him a smile too, “they’re safe. They’re packing their bags.” 

“Okay,” he nods, relieved but too high on whatever they gave him to show emotion. 

She heads out again, pulls the head doctor over and tells her what’s happening. The hospital is put on a code green: emergency activation. They’re placed on bypass for the time being and if she remembers correctly from New York that means no one new can enter the hospital, and everyone who leaves from every exit is monitored by a police officer. Security roams the halls with 2 SWAT team members, they clear every single room from the basement to the roof, and Foyet is nowhere to be seen. 

Once she knows that she simply pulls the chair over to Aaron’s bedside and sits down beside him, she holds his hand and she doesn’t say anything else. 

“You were at my place?” He asks. 

She nods, “mhm. I went to get you. We had a case.” 

“Oh,” he didn’t even think to ask. “Could you tell how he got in?” 

She shakes her head, “No, sorry, we’re still not sure of that.” 

“Okay.” 

“Do you want to talk about what happened?” She asks, not wanting to push, but she wants him to remember she’s his sounding board, she’s there for whatever he needs.

Forever. 

He suddenly can’t meet her eye. He looks down and away, shaking his head lightly. She can tell by the look on his face that he’s lying but she’ll let him tell her the truth when he’s ready. 

“I don’t know.” 

She just nods. Supporting him even though she knows there’s more. 

Still avoiding her eye, he speaks again. “After he stabbed me the first time it all goes blank.” 

Just then, Haley walks up to his room and she looks upset. Rightfully so. Y/N lets them have the room, she pats Haley’s shoulder on the way out with a smile and she feels awkward for doing it but she did it. She watches them talk from the front desk, JJ brings over Jack and asks her to watch him for a moment. 

“Hey buddy,” she says, getting down on his level, he gives her a hug. She picks him up, setting him down on top of the counter, “You’re getting so big, are you sure you aren’t part Hulk?” 

That makes him laugh and starts talking about other superheroes while she glances back at Aaron. She knows by the look on his face that Haley’s not happy with him. Of course, she isn’t, but still… you’d think she’d be a little concerned for him after being stabbed that many times. 

She comes out a few moments later and helps Jack down from the counter and onto Aaron’s hospital bed before retreating back out of the room. She can just watch from afar, they deserved at least a minute to say goodbye to each other in peace. 

She looks at Y/N, looks her up and down and then cocks her head to the side. “You’re his girlfriend, aren’t you?” 

“Not here. Not now,” she puts her foot down. She’s not playing these little games. “You are the last person to have a say in what he does with his free time.” 

“Wow,” Haley scoffs. “I’m getting kicked out of my house and sent halfway across the country because some serial killer is after me and I’m still the bad guy?” 

She steps closer to Haley, just a little bit taller than her, she looks down at her. “If you died he would never be the same. I have spent the last year picking up his pieces over and over again and I don’t think he’ll be able to be put back together if you or Jack die. So yeah. Suck it up, hide for a bit, and let us catch him so you can go back to living in his house with half of his money and most of his heart.” 

“You love him?” Haley whispers. She stared back and forth between her lips and her eyes, reading everything in Y/N’s expression. “Like really, love him.” 

She nods, fighting the urge to cry. “And I’m going to have to live with the fact that he also loves you for the rest of my life. So please, do me a favour and live.” 

“I will,” Haley promises. “We both will.” 

“And I know you’re not supposed to call anyone or have contact with anyone because Foyet can track you down… but you need to know this guy is a master manipulator. He stole Derek's credentials back in Boston just so he could attack Aaron today and bring him here as a federal agent,” she explains. “He stabbed himself in the same places he stabbed Aaron and pretended to be the only living victim of The Reaper for like 10 years… knowing his previous behaviour, he’s going to try and draw you out by pretending someone in your family has died, even pretending to kill your appointed Marshall to get you to come to him. So if you get a call or someone shows up at your door and they say Aaron, or your sister or anyone has died, don’t go with them. Don’t go to where they want to meet up. Don’t believe anything unless it comes from the Marshall we assigned you today or someone from our team. If you second guess anything, you call me or Penelope, or hell, if you’re close enough, drive right to Quantico and come up to the 6th floor and you find one of us. Buy a gun. Buy a couple, even. Keep one in the kitchen, one in your room and one in your purse. Be prepared to fight. I need you to come home to him.” 

She nods along to everything Y/N says, following everything with a worried look on her face. “I can do that… Aaron taught me how to shoot. I can protect myself. I can protect us.” 

“Good,” Y/N gives her a little smile. “I hope that when this is all over... when you come home, we can talk? Like really talk. I hope that whatever me and Aaron have lasts and we can all get along… I want his family to stay together, I don’t want to have to pick up his pieces again. But I will. I need you to know that. If anything happens, I’ve got him. But I’d like to have him while he still has you, too.” 

“That would be nice,” Haley agrees. 

“Now, the hospital is on lockdown and we have agents scanning the building and parking lot for Foyet in case he stuck around to watch you leave here,” she keeps going with information. “I had JJ run to the store to pick up some hair dye so we’re going to turn you into a brunette to keep you hidden and I’ve asked for 5 identical cars with blacked-out windows to come into the ambulance bay to pick you guys up and all head in different directions so he can’t follow everyone. We’re getting you out of here without a single hitch. Even if I have to do it all myself.” 

“Thank you,” Haley whispers, trying not to cry now that it’s hitting her how real this is. 

“Don’t thank me until you’re home, safe, and all this is over,” she says, placing her hand on Haley's shoulder. “Come on, let’s go get Jack and I’ll take you to the room where we’re going to do your hair.” 

“What shade of brown?” She asks, not excited. 

“It’s more of a red-toned brown… Penelope actually went to hairdressing school for a couple months before she got recruited so she’s going to be doing it,” Y/N explains. 

They walk into the room together, smiling, and Aaron looks like he’s shocked to see them happy together. “You ready to go, Jack?” Haley asks. 

He nods, “can I have another hug?” He asks his dad.

“Of course, buddy,” Aaron takes him in as gently as he can. “I love you so much, you remember that while you’re on vacation with mommy, okay?” 

“Okay.” 

JJ shows up in the doorway behind them then, too. “Penelope’s all set up and ready.”

“You know,” Haley looks at Y/N. “Why don’t you guys keep Jack here while I get my hair done? He’s going to be bored in the room with us anyway… if Aaron needs some rest, I trust you with him. You can watch him?” 

“Yeah, okay,” Y/N doesn’t mind at all. “We’ll come and find you if Aaron needs to rest at all.” 

“Okay,” she gives them all one last smile and then heads out with JJ. 

“I think this TV gets some kid's channels,” Y/N says, pointing up at the old TV that’s screwed into the wall at the top right corner of the room. She takes the remote off the wall where it’s been velcroed to stay safe and turns it on. “What kind of shows do you like, Jackers?” 

“Teenage mutant ninja turtles,” he says with a smile. 

“Well then, let’s see if they’ve got it.” 

—

Derek shows up at St. Sebastian an hour later. Spencer has gone into surgery which should take 2 or more hours so Derek felt like he could leave his side for a while. Dave stays at Aaron’s bedside, keeping him company while Y/N, Derek and JJ bring Haley and Jack down to the ambulance bay. It’s underground, dark and completely empty. The security footage has been turned off down there, so if there is a hack Foyet won’t know what car they’re in. 

They get into the 4th of the 5 cars. Typically, someone important would take the 3rd, the one in the middle, in case of an ambush. Everyone knows this. The president does this. Michael Jackson does this, hell even the fucking pope stays in the middle. Foyet doesn’t have the manpower to orchestrate an ambush. Even so, they put them in the 4th one to be on the safer side. 

The plan is that they’ll all leave the same way and then break off in 5 directions. Again, Foyet doesn’t have the manpower behind him to track down each car. If he were to follow one, chances are it wouldn’t be Haleys and if he does somehow pick car number 4, they would clue into the fact someone is following them well before they make it to their destination. Where that is? They don’t know. That’s the whole point of witness protection. 

There will be unmarked police cars travelling along the same route that Haley and Jack are going, meaning the police are simply 1 call away if someone is following them. In that case, the police will intervene, either pulling him over or… causing an accident. Either way, they’ll get Foyet off their tail in time for them to get off the road and head to a new safe house. 

Her name has already changed, they don’t know what it is. She’ll find out once she’s in the car with her US Marshal. She’ll get new IDs and a backstory she has to learn. Jack will have to be called something else but it will be similar enough that it’s not weird for him to be called something new and it won’t stick if this goes on a while. The last thing they want to do is give this 4 year old an identity crisis. 

She explains most of it to Haley on the ride down to the ambulance bay where JJ and Derek are waiting with the other SWAT members. “You ready?�� She asks one final time. 

Haley nods. “Keep him safe for us?” 

“Absolutely. And you remember what I said?”

“He’s a master manipulator, don’t listen to anything unless it comes from my Marshal or you guys, buy a couple guns and come back to Quantico if I don’t feel safe with the information given to me,” she recounts it all back to her. 

“You’re gonna do great,” she assures her, pulling Haley in for a hug, they embrace each other for a moment and then pull away with similar press-lipped smiles. It was awkward but they were going to get through it no matter what. 

“See ya, Jack,” she reaches out her hand to give him a high five. “Have fun on your vacation.” 

“Bye!” He waves, giddy and excited to leave. He has no idea what’s going on and she’s so glad. 

Once Jack is safely buckled into his booster seat and Haley sits down beside him, they close the door and each car starts to pull out of the ambulance bay. They wave, unable to see past the tinted windows but just in case Jack is waving to them… and then they’re gone. 

She lets out a shaky breath and her calm, cool and collected demeanour disappears. She turns to Derek and almost falls into his arms, crying. He rubs her back, “Hey, hey it’s okay. We’re going to get this guy. It’s all good.” 

“Today was so hard,” she cries. “I couldn’t find him and then we realized it was Foyet and then I heard Spencer get shot I had to call 911 and I-I-I... I didn’t know what to do.” 

“Shh, it’s okay,” he assures her. “Spencer is okay. Aaron is okay. Our team is strong. You’re so incredibly strong. You kept your cool through all of this, you could’ve gotten cold and mean and instead you made sure Haley and Jack were okay and you waited to do this. I wouldn’t have been able to do all this if some psycho was after my man.” 

She manages to laugh at that, it’s absurd. Fucking insane, actually. She pulls away and wipes her tears, “I’m also so fucking tired.” 

“I hear you!” Derek agrees, “I feel like I could sleep for 3 days straight if you let me.”

She wraps her arm around him and they all start to head over to the elevator, JJ being quiet the whole time because she doesn’t know what to really say. “we’ve had a hard week, I think we should all take a few vacation days… maybe I can talk to Strauss and agree we only come in if there’s a terrorist attack to amber alert?” 

“Yes please,” she would love that. “Although, I’m going to ask Strauss for more than just a few days off. I want to take all my vacation days either until I run out or until Aaron can come back.” 

“I still find it so weird that you can call him Aaron,” JJ teases. 

She shrugs, “rolls off the tongue pretty easy if you ask me.” 

“Ew,” she says it proudly this time. “Ew! You both are so gross. I’m so glad we don’t work with Will all the time.” 

“No but we still know you two are freaky,” Derek teases her. “I mean… you have a kid.”

“whats that supposed to mean?” She asks, slightly offended. 

“you let him hit it raw,” Derek teases. “Ya nasty.” 

JJ smacks him. “You’re a pain in my ass, you know that? You have a stupid response to literally everything!” 

Derek simply wraps her up in a hug, “what are brothers for?” 

“I wouldn’t know, I had a sister,” she says begrudgingly, but she hugs him back none the less. 

— 

She’s with Aaron all night. She sits beside him and holds his hand and she wipes his tears when things get too intense for him. It breaks her heart. She knows he’s going to be traumatized by this, he’s not going to want to talk about it and the trauma is going to fester and spread and it might affect his work. It’s going to be a long road, she’s prepared for it but she just doesn’t know how to broach these topics. 

She’s not going to ask now, right now is about his healing. The nurses have made it clear that any stress could cause him to tense up and move too fast and pull a stitch or start bleeding internally. He’s very delicate right now. She hasn’t seen what it looks like under his bandages, she won’t for a while, but before they leave the hospital she’s going to be shown how to help him clean and redress them so she can care for him at home. 

He gets more medicine, it helps him sleep and sleep helps him heal, so she just sits there beside him and the nurses say they can bring up a cot for her if she wants it, but she’s good just sitting beside him. She rests her head on his bed, still holding his hand, she’s so close to falling asleep when someone rubs her shoulder. She turns around, thinking it's a nurse and she looks up with blurry, tired vision to see Section Chief Strauss. 

“Oh, hi?” 

“Can you step away for a minute?” She asks. 

Y/N nods, rubs her eyes and stands up to follow her out of the room. They head a little down the hallway, away from the nurses but still in view of Aaron's ICU room. 

“How is he?” She asks. 

“He’s okay, he has 9 stab wounds around 2 inches deep, Foyet missed his major arteries and organs on purpose… he’s going to need a while to heal and I’d like you to request he has mandatory therapy for a few months to process what happened,” she asks, all but begging. “If you intervene he has to, if I ask then I’m just a worrier and he won’t do it.” 

“what are you?” 

“We haven’t filled the paperwork and we know that goes against the rules but we didn’t want to be separated during all this. We’ve been dating a little over 2 months now,” she reluctantly answers. 

“Okay,” Strauss nods, slightly upset but she gets it. “And I suppose you’ll want time off to care for him?” 

She nods, “Foyet knows we're together, he called our hotel room to try and make a deal with Aaron during the Reaper case in Boston, we weren’t dating back then but we were sharing a bed… I-I know that looks bad, but we weren’t doing anything inappropriate during cases I can assure you of that, we had both been through a tough few months with our injuries and me being held hostage and sleeping side by side was good for my anxiety after everything and—

“I understand,” Strauss reaches out and places her hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay. I know, I met my own husband at work, these things just happen.” 

She’s surprised that she’s being so nice… so she uses it to her advantage. “I have 5 weeks of vacation days banked from the last few years, and 3 weeks of sick days, can I have them all?” 

Strauss nods, “You, Aaron and Reid are all going to be off for a while, so I’m already interviewing someone to come in and fill your and Spencer’s shoes. Derek is stepping up to Unit Chief for the time being, Dave will stay second in command and when Spencer can come back to the office he will be working with Penelope in her room, on the phone with the team.” 

“Okay,” she likes this plan. “Do we know the people you’re interviewing?” 

“They’re the same people who were finalists when you were hired, so Aaron should know all of them,” she assures. “I’ll go off his notes and Derek will have an opinion on the final hire as well.” 

“Thank you for making this easy for us,” she gives her a small smile. 

“I just need you to do something for me.”

And there it is. Erin Strauss is a very transactional woman. She doesn’t do anything unless she gets something out of it. She did this before, when Aaron got suspended and she refused to give any dirt on the team. 

“What do you want?” she asks, giving in with a sigh. She leans against the wall and crosses her arms. 

“I need you to get him to agree to step down,” she explains. “While Derek will be the interim chief, I think that going forward... it would be best if when Aaron returns, he steps down for good. When this whole Foyet thing is done, we can asses his mental health and see if he would be able to take his role back, however, until then, I think he should step down. After Gideon's girlfriend was murdered he went a little crazy, we don’t need Aaron going through the same thing.” 

While she understands her reasoning, she doesn’t really want to agree. “Foyet wants to ruin his life, he wants him to be so depressed, so defeated, that he doesn’t have the energy to keep hunting him… stepping down would be smart.”

“Good, you agree. Well, that’s really all I wanted to talk to you about… is there anything else you need?” She asks. 

Y/N shakes her head. “No… um, I don’t know where we’re going to go yet but I know we can’t stay in DC while he’s healing. I just don’t feel safe with Foyet knowing where we live so when we do get settled somewhere can you maybe call us once a week or send emails with any updates about the case?” 

“I can definitely do that. You two take care, I’ll be in touch,” Strauss lightly touches her arm and smiles, and then she walks away. 

She just takes in a deep breath and lets it out with the slump of her shoulders. She hasn’t really slept since last week. Being in Canada, seeing what they saw, not being able to find Aaron, thinking he and Spencer were going to die… it’s all actually catching up to her now and she’s exhausted. She wanders back into his room, sits back down at her chair beside his bed and rests her head on his thigh. This is where she’ll be for the next few hours. 

Sleeping peacefully with the love of her life safely beside her. 

—

Aarons has been in the hospital for 3 days now, she hasn’t left his side more than a handful of times.

And she hasn’t gone home at all.

She convinces the nurses to let her use the residents' locker room showers to feel a little less gross and she changes into an outfit from her go bag that lives in her car. She’s scared to leave him, she’s scared to go back to her own apartment, she’s scared to walk the halls at night… she knows the reaper is like a ghost, he could pop up anywhere and so she’s terrified he’ll show up behind her and stab her to death. He knows about them. He knows Aaron was happy, even while divorced, and she’s sure that if he can’t get to Haley, he’s going to come after Her. 

She wants to get out of here, run as fast as she can as far as she can go and she wants to bring Aaron with her. He’s just not ready to be moved yet. She’s been thinking over the last 3 days, where could they go when he is ready? Her parents live down in Florida now at a retirement village so that’s not a place they can hide. His brother lives in New York in a small apartment and they’re not friendly and it could just put Sean in harm's way. And then it hits her. 

West Virginia. 

That’s where they’re going to go.

The team, well, Rossi, Morgan and JJ headed off on a case yesterday, something in Idaho regarding a missing child. She had planned on calling Derek if he wasn’t busy, she wanted to ask him to come to her apartment with her cause she was afraid to go alone and she needed to pack and change and shower with her own things. But he’s busy. And he’s only going to get busier. 

So she calls Anderson. He is the BAU’s equivalent of a head resident in a hospital. He makes schedules, he makes sure people are where they need to be, he makes calls and fills out paperwork and he ensures that Aaron's job—well, Morgans now, goes smoothly. He’s trained just like every other agent in the FBI, he just hasn’t been in the field in 5 years now. He likes his office job. This is where he shines the most. He could help her, too. 

He meets her outside her home with his gun on his hip and a sorrowful look on his face. He asked about Aaron, or Hotch as they all called him. No matter what happened, no one but she seemed to be able to call him Aaron. It felt too intimate. Nevertheless, he goes into her apartment with her, helps her clear it to ensure no one is hiding in wait, and stays in the living area while she packs. 

In her bedroom, in the box under her bed full of memories, she finds a brochure for the Bed ’n Breakfast they stayed in last year and she immediately calls the number on the back. 

“Evergreen Bed and Breakfast, Mary speaking,” the elderly British woman answers the phone. 

“Hi, I’m not sure if you remember me but my friend Aaron and I stayed with you last year we were in Room 6,” she explains, hoping that rings any bells. But if it didn’t, she adds: “We work for the FBI and we were just coworkers who wanted two queens but you didn’t have any left?” 

“Oh, yes! Hello, dear, how are you?” She asks, chipper as ever. 

“I’m good, um, I was wondering if you knew anyone in the area who has a cabin for rent? We’d like to have a little getaway, we’re thinking 6 to 8 weeks…” 

“We have one,” she offers right away. “We were going to head up to clean it out for the fall and winterize it, but we can put that off until you’re done with it?” 

“Are you sure? I’d never want to inconvenience you—

“Oh, hush, it’s no worry on our end,” she assures Y/N. “When were you thinking you’d be needing it?” 

“Early next week? Um, Aaron was in an accident and he’s coming out of the hospital soon and we’d like a place to hide away while he’s in recovery… and if we could book it under a fake name, that would be good. I can pay cash, I really don’t want us to be found at all.” 

“Oh, my,” Mary can’t believe it. “Can I ask what happened?” 

“The most I can say is that a criminal we were after attacked him in his home,” she explains. “He’s going to need a while to recover, and I don’t think he can do it in that environment and I feel too exposed having him at my home in case the man knows where I live too.” 

“Holy,” is all Mary can say. Flabbergasted, Y/N can hear her breathing through her mouth, like it’s still left open, shocked at that answer. “It’s all yours.” 

“Thank you, thank you so much,” she feels so relieved. “How much do I owe you?” 

“For 8 weeks… 2 grand?” 

“Are you sure?” She asks, that seems a little low. “Does it have electricity and running water?” 

“Oh yes, it’s been in our family a long time. There are 2 bedrooms, a kitchen, a bathroom with a nice tub and a fireplace in the lounge. We normally close it down right before Halloween so it’s not of use to us and that money will cover the bills to keep it open longer, we won’t take anything more. Consider it a thank you for what you two do for a living,” she explains. “I’ll tell Eileen about this and she and her eldest son Marshall will go up there this weekend and make sure it’s up to standard, you can stop here and get the key and pay and no one will ever know you’re staying there.”

“I appreciate this endlessly, seriously, thank you. I have been so scared about what I’m going to do to keep him safe going forward, this is such a weight off my shoulders.” 

“You’re very welcome, dearie, we’ll see you next week,” Mary says, signing off. They say their goodbyes and then she’s alone in her room again. 

She has a moment to smile and take a deep breath. This will be okay. Haley is a strong woman, she’s going to fight for them. Aaron is a strong man but he’s also good at listening to her. She can get him to open up on their trip. She can use some of her psychology skills and help him if he is exhibiting any PTSD symptoms. She can clean his wounds and nurture his mind and love him and protect him and when he’s okay, they’ll go back to work and they’ll catch this fucker. 

She puts all her clothes in a suitcase, and she also packs everything of Aarons that she has at her apartment. Then, she grabs a laundry basket and fills it with other things they’ll need while in a cabin in the woods. All their shower things, towels and face cloths, laundry detergent and dryer sheets, a pair of scissors, nail clippers, tweezers, moisturizer, deodorants, toothpaste, toothbrushes, tissues, wet wipes, napkins, dish soap, a can opener… they’ll get anything else they need while they’re there, but she’s not sure how far a grocery store will be from this cabin. 

She throws in some cans of soup just to cover her bases. She cleans out her fridge of anything that will go bad while they’re gone. She plugs the sinks and the tub in the bathroom so bugs don’t get in with the pipes being dry for so long. She locks every window and Anderson helps her carry everything down to her car. She then calls her landlord and leaves a message about her going away for a while so he can turn off her water to prevent any flooding or pipe breaking in her absence and then she takes another deep breath. 

“anywhere else you need to go?” Anderson asks. 

“Aaron’s place,” she says reluctantly. “I need to pack his things… I don’t want to go there.” 

“It’s okay, I can help,” Anderson assures her. “I actually called a good crime scene clean-up crew right after the police were done with it and they tore up the carpet yesterday so you won’t have to see that again.”

“Thank you, Grant,” she reaches out and touches his arm and smiles. “I’ll see you over there.” 

They part ways to get in their own cars and drive to where Aaron lives on the other side of town. When they get there, the tape is still up on the outside of Aaron's door, the cleaning people must’ve just ducked under it… she takes it down and hesitates before going in.

“Now, I don’t know what Foyet did while he was here. We shouldn’t talk about anything confidential, or where we’re going just in case he has a listening device in there now,” she says, worried as ever. 

“Yeah, smart… but you were talking on the phone with someone making plans at your house, what if he—

“There’s no proof he was ever in my place but even still I never mentioned any names or locations on the phone,” she assures him. 

“Smart, okay, let’s go in,” Anderson says, handing her the keys to Aaron’s place. He got them surrendered to him from evidence after the police wrapped everything up. 

Inside, they clear the space quickly and then she does the same things she did at her own place. She packs Aaron's bag with all his comfy clothes, sweats and t-shirts and underwear and then a couple pairs of jeans and nice shirts— polos and button-ups, for when he’s feeling like he wants to go out and be a real person again. 

She knows what that’s like. In her senior year of high school, she had her appendix removed, she had 11 staples and she was out of school for a month. It was hard, she couldn’t shower often and laughing hurt, but the day she was able to get her staples out she got all dressed up for it. Simply because she could. 

And that was with just 1 wound. Aaron has 9. 

He’s going to hate feeling like he can’t do anything. He’s going to try and move and do things too soon because he’s impatient. She’s going to have to monitor his medicine intake and help him bathe and clean the wounds and redress for a few weeks… and she’s completely okay with that. She wants the rest of her life with him and if that means the "in sickness and in health" part starts now. She’s going to do it. 

Once she has everything he’d need clothing-wise, she throws out things in his refrigerator, plugs all the drains and talks to the super of his building to get everything turned off while they’re gone. 

While Anderson is bringing the suitcase out to her car, she has 2 more things she wants to bring. Aaron's gun safe sits on his night table, it’s fingerprint-activated and both his and her own thumbprint are in it. She opens it up to see that his spare gun is in there. The one day he didn’t wear it on his ankle was the one day he was attacked… his passport and some cash are in there too. She locks it up again and unplugs it from the wall and starts to carry it out into the main room. 

“Woah, let me get that,” Grant says as he walks back in. “You’re bringing this?” 

She nods, “Yeah. We’re bringing our guns with us, we need to keep them somewhere?” 

“Yeah, I mean, it’s not like you’re gonna be at a h—

“Grant,” she cuts him off. Knowing he was about to say a hotel with a safe. “No specifics while we’re in here.” 

“Right, sorry,” he apologizes. “I’ll go put this in your car.” 

“I’ll be right out.” 

He heads down the hallway and she has a moment to look around. She grabs another laundry basket and puts in some of Aaron's running shoes and slacks. A bottle of his favourite whisky from the bar cart and Aaron's laptop. His phone is still in evidence so she’ll have to go get that, and his gun is with the police too so she’ll have to sign it out… and last but not least she grabs his two photo albums. One is full of his childhood memories and the other is all of Jack's baby pictures. He’s going to need this. 

She takes the basket with her out into the hall and sets it down as she locks up and then heads back out to her car with it. It’s pretty packed now. All she needs is Aaron to be released from the hospital and they can run away together. 

She can’t wait to run away with him. 

IKP

@southernraven @alluringshawn @lambsheepsheeping @lmg-stilinski24 @louderfortheback @deludedfruitcake @kleff03 @mrs-ssa-hotch @maxinehufflepuffprincess @lokifanfic2021 @art-and-thoughts @forkswabutnoforks4me @no-1martinipolice @panhoeofmanyfandoms @pastanoodles11 

General Taglist 

@ncsls0515 @stevesmunsons @reidsbookclub @sweetyyhippyy @manuosorioh @mrs-dr-reid @k-k0129 @squishyturtle @katsukis1wife @babybisexual @marsmunson86 @buckleyhans 

[bookaddict24-7]

REVIEWS OF THE WEEK!

EVERY WEEK I WILL POST VARIOUS REVIEWS I’VE WRITTEN SO FAR IN 2024. YOU CAN CHECK OUT MY GOODREADS FOR MORE UP-TO-DATE REVIEWS HERE.

___

76. Legacy by Nora Roberts--⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

There's truly something magical about reading a Nora Roberts novel--they're fun, sometimes simple, and a great way to pass the time. I'm starting to notice the formula to her romantic suspense novels, but you know what? I will devour them every time.

LEGACY was a good read with some sweet characters and a really creepy serial killer stalking women and hunting them. This is one thing I think Roberts is a little too good at--creating those creepy evil people stalking and threatening to kill the MC.

I loved the dogs in this and how everything came together at the end. I'm glad I was able to give this one a shot!

Will hopefully read more of her books in March!

___

77. Love Me Today by A.L. Jackson--⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I started LOVE ME TODAY because I have found myself craving more romantic suspense and this one fed that craving pretty well. It had the romance, the smut, the mysterious murderer haunting one of the MCs, and the incredibly adorable kid. Also, the single parent trope? Yes, please.

LOVE ME TODAY wasn't anything mind blowing, but it was such a satisfying read. The FMC was someone who wore her heart on her sleeve and was so pure (not in a gross way, just in a "I will love you no matter what" way), that her personality on the page felt very wholesome. She was a great foil for the MMC, who was the epitome of dark, broody, and jaded.

While I did enjoy their romance and their interactions with the tiny human, I thought the nickname the MMC had for the FMC could have been...better, or at least not repeated as much LOL. The spicy scenes were sometimes cringe because of the repetitive use of the nickname.

Really, really enjoyed the murderer reveal. Also, now I want to read the next one in the series because it's another trope I love.

___

78. Villain and the Geek by L.C. Davis--⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

That ending and the fact that the next one doesn't have a release date yet? Ahhhhh!

These are short, emotional, smutty, and addicting books. I devoured the first series near the end of the year last year and was thrilled to see that this one was coming out so soon after I finished book 1 in the sequel series. I want more! I want to get some answers and I want to see Constantine spoil the hell out of Devon because he deserves that.

I'm not going to lie, I love the whole emotional aspect of this book. It's like a punch to the heart to see how Constantine treats Devon, knowing it's going to bite him in the ass.

I need more and I'm sad the next book is supposedly the final instalment in their story.

___

79. The Book of Doors by Gareth Brown--⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Incredible. Absolutely incredible.

I don't know what I was expecting from THE BOOK OF DOORS, but it wasn't the twisty way everything connected. Or the way the characters were written and grew so much with the story. Brown absolutely killed it with this book and I definitely want to keep an eye out for his next books now.

THE BOOK OF DOORS is a book about magic, yes, but also about love, family, friendships, and grief--the power of letting go and how sometimes, even if we have the power to change things, it's sometimes best to leave things as they are because of their impact on us. Brown's book had so much more depth than I was expecting and I'm here still recovering from it all.

The amount of times I was left with my mouth open because of a revelation, or a turn in the storyline? Phew.

I highly recommend this one, even if the friend of the FMC was annoying LOL. She grew, too, as a character, but man I wanted to slap some sense into her LOL.

Definitely add this to your TBR! You may or may not want to cry a couple of times, too.

___

80. Fangirl Down by Tessa Bailey--⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

FANGIRL DOWN is the first book I've read by Tessa Bailey in a long time and I have to say, I'm both surprised and impressed! I think this is going to be the perfect summer read for anyone looking for a light, quick, and sexy summer read.

The dynamic between the two characters worked fantastically and their communication level was *chef's kiss*. I also appreciated the inclusion of a main character with diabetes. Although I don't have diabetes myself, it was great seeing that representation in a romance novel.

The FMC was a badass, even if she was sometimes stubborn to the point of it being a bit frustrating. I loved how she handled the people around her in her new famous role. I extra loved that any simple issues surrounding that world didn't become any main issues in the book. I liked that Bailey focused on the couple and their growths as people.

I know nothing about golf, so it was interesting reading about a romance that featured it--it was strangely refreshing that it wasn't another hockey, or football romance.

I do recommend this one, if not for the great characters, then for the smutty good times.

___

81. Dead in the Family by Charlaine Harris--⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I'll admit that it took me a bit to get back into this universe with DEAD IN THE FAMILY. I think because a lot seemingly happened between the last book and this one. I'm sure there are short stories and novellas, but I didn't read them so jumping into this one was like jumping into a deep end I didn't even know was there.

But when I finally DID get back into this, I actually found myself really enjoying it. Sookie is growing super jaded as she gets older and I'm actually enjoying that because it's more realistic. There's a scene where a character comments that the Sookie from a year ago would drink something without a second thought and now she's all worried. I like this because Sookie has seem some Shit.

I also really liked this one because it dealt a lot with grief and familial connections. ALTHOUGH, this is also creepy af with some of the themes and one new character. That made me incredibly uncomfortable.

___

Have you read any of these? What were your thoughts?

___

Happy reading!

[corpsegirldick]

The Graveyard... After hours.

So you chose to stay until the sun set. Before we can discuss what you will be getting into, there are some disclaimers that must be regarded.

-This page is a space strictly for adults. No minors are welcome here, and should not interact.

-This page is a home for the freaks, the perverse, and the monster within us all.

-TERFs, Zionists, kinkshamers, and other hateful ideologies are not welcome in this place.

-The things that will be found here are not for the faint of heart. Tread carefully.

With this out of the way, we may begin.

This is my NSFW sideblog to SabreWife, my main page. I felt that making one of these would help me vent my urges, but in full admittance, money is tight. I will be posting pictures of our body, fantasies and microfiction here as a form of expression, so that I can both come to love myself more, and maybe make friends with other kinky dykes so I don't feel as alone here.

In addition to what I will be posting here, I will also be accepting money for customised and more explicit scenes, pictures, and custom stories. Above all other forms of expression, I love writing, especially for and about other trans and queer people. Loving other queer people is my specialty, especially freaks like me. If you can't afford to pay for custom works, I'll gladly do it for free.

Now, let's get into the meat of this, what I'm sure you're here for.

I'm a switch, and always eager for a back and forth. I love other trans people dearly, and any chance to sink my teeth into another dyke or plaything, I often take. I can be as rough or as soft as one desires, plaything or mistress, and as weak or as strong as needed.

Naturally, I'm a monsterfucker, a slut for all things inhuman with little or no humanity remaining. The grace of the machine, the divine touch of an Angel or a Witch, or even the claws of a werewolf, the fangs of a vampire, I seek it out readily.

My preference is typically other things on the dyke side of the scale, but all other trans people are free game for my claws. Won't you let me sink them in?

My kinks extend in depth, and are quite heavy at times, but I am also very accomodating to others preferences.

My limits reside at scat, detrans, sissy, and chaser-esque interests.

Anywho, I believe that covers everything basic. If you want to get to know me a little better, and want to toss some cash my way, continue past the read more. Otherwise, welcome in, and enjoy yourself. Oh, and please tell me if you had a good time. I love knowing if I've made others feel good.

Before continuing further, my Cashapp is $SabreWife. If you want to discuss what you would like, or just chat, feel free to DM me! You shouldn't be shy, I only bite if you want me to.

Anywho, we are the Graveyard System, as a whole. I am the host, Escila. I will be the one running this page a majority of the time, but do not be surprised if my protector, Lilith, or someone else makes a post on occasion. They will tag their posts with their initials. For example, Lilith's posts will be tagged as L.C.

As for my interests, I really enjoy writing and gaming. I love bartending, firearms, and going out into the woods late at night, whether it be for camping or just a nice evening walk. I'm always looking for people to infodump to about my niche little hyperfixations, like Signalis or Ultrakill. As for my writing, I have a lot of original universes and characters, but I also have a bunch of fanfiction for Bloodborne, Cyberpunk, and Signalis. Oh, and you should definitely ask me about Ace Combat and Project Wingman. I love planes and funny plane games.

Apart for that, I am on the East Coast of the US(unfortunately), though I am not from here. I'm Canadian, and I've been living in the US for a majority of my life. Maybe someday, when the world isn't ravaged by oppressive governments and colonialism, I would like to travel and experience everything the world has to offer.

I love music of all varieties, typically listening to anything from synthwave to thrash metal. I especially love punk music from queer authors, and if I could, I would be going to rock venues and dives every night.

I aspire to have a lot of piercings, tattoos, and body modifications, but I don't have the money for any of it currently.

Hm, let's see... I think that's about everything. If you're curious about anything, or even just want to chat sometime, please DM me! I need more friends, especially people like me.

[softrobotcritics]

The Gordon Pask Cybernetic Theatre

Gordon Pask’s ‘Cybernetic theatre’: Beyond tinkering with architecture (Conference Paper)

Werner, L.C.

Abstract

Written in the year of Gordon Pask’s 90th anniversary of his birth, “Beyond tinkering with Architecture” presents the Philosopher Mechanics’ proposal for a Cybernetic Theatre, conceived in 1964; and projects it into today’s digital and analogue networked systems of operation.

A performance machine, a space to allow communication, interaction and learning between a theatre audience and actors of a play; a space celebrating the control of control regulated through algorithmic calculation and an active actor inter-actor network. [14, 22]

The idea was to integrate members of an audience into a performance to steer plots of a given play and to allow adaption of a pre-set script. Communication would happen by interfacing through a computational communicator in the form and beauty of a Paskian colourful light display.

Conceptually, technically and chronologically, the project locates itself between Musicolour (1953-58), The Fun Palace (core design phase 1961–64) and the Colloquy of Mobiles (1968).

The rather unknown project is exemplary for Gordon Pask’s influential research and work for architecture and architectural digital theory in the 21st century. At this point in history the incorporation of machine (artificial) intelligence in the human environment, and emergent interaction between them is in the process of naturalizing. The ‘Proposal for a Cybernetic Theatre’ prescribes an organization designed by Gordon Pask. The organization integrates structure, material, mechanics, function, individual goals and randomness in one coherent system. Actors of all kinds become participants, interactors with the environment and themselves. The paper concludes with the suggestion that the principles of control and indirect conversation between users and artefacts Pask used in his Cybernetic Theatre are akin to the principles of exchange in Cyberspace. © Proceedings of AISB Annual Convention 2018. All rights reserved.

Indexed keywords

[spellsword177]

LGBTQ Book Recommendations

In the year that has seen the heartwarming second season of Heartstopper comes the news two school districts in the US states of Florida and Oregon have banned the graphic novels and a public library in Mississippi removed the works from the shelves claiming they were somehow “pornographic.”  It never seems to fail; every time there is societal progress, you have a wave of those throwing up restrictions trying desperately to pull everything and everyone back. 

This heinous attack on LGBTQ literature, works on the African American experience, and tragic historical events are why we fight back everyday to keep these works available for all who seek their content especially during Banned Books Week.  It’s not about corrupting or grooming the youth; it’s about truth, love, life, compassion, and understanding one another.  What follows are seven LGBTQ books by seven different authors you may want to consider reading beyond Heartstopper, Fence, and Love, Simon.  Remember, just because your favorite book isn’t here doesn’t mean I didn’t like it or you shouldn’t give try.  Always enrich your perspective by trying a variety of works in the plethora now available.  Happy Banned Books Week!

1.  Boy Like Me by Simon James Green – I first ran across this author when I read his book Alex in Wonderland a few years ago being greatly amused by the antics of boy working a summer job.  It is very fitting to begin with this recent release set in a UK High School back in 1994 during Section 28 banning books on gay relationships.  The main character, Jamie, is lead to such a disguised novel where he finds a connection to his own personal truths and to a mysterious other person who feels the same way.  Will Jamie ever find this other person or will they be forever shunned by their small community?  It’s always a important to remember where we’ve been so that we can better guide ourselves to where we need to be.

2.  The Music of What Happens by Bill Konigsberg – Two boys operate a food truck Coq Au Vinny for the summer out in the heat of Mesa, Arizona.  Max, a baseball jock, is trying hard to forget a rough experience with a college boy while hanging out with his friends and working.  Geeky Jordan, is trying to raise the money with his late father’s old food truck and keep his mother from spiraling while hanging out with his gal pals.  Along the way they find friendship and love while working through their past traumas and current struggles.  Easily one of my favorites.

3. Check, Please!  Book 1:  #Hockey by Ngozi Ukazu – Join baking vlogger Erik “Bitty” Bittle from Georgia as he makes his way through the first two years playing hockey at Samwell University in New England.  Originally an online comic, this first volume in a two part set explores Bitty’s time interacting with the team and getting closer with their Captain, Zimmerman.  This was a charming story with entertaining characters, and, of course, the love of hockey.  Be sure to also read Check, Please!  Book 2:  Sticks & Scones.

4.  Lions Legacy by L.C. Rosen – Tennessee “Tenny” Russo had tried to leave his adventuring days with his father’s reality show behind and have a normal life with his mom in Greenwich Village.  Two years later, his boyfriend is cheating on him, his “Good Upstanding Queer” friends don’t care, and his dad comes back into his life with a potential lead on the Rings of the Sacred Band of Thebes.  Tenny could stay miserable in New York or join his father in Greece to recover a lost piece of queer history to share with the world.  A wonderful, thrilling story heavily influenced by Indiana Jones exploring struggle of keeping LGBT history from being swept under the rug or modified to fit a heteronormative viewpoint.

5.  Thunder by Dylan James – Teenage Grant Peters and Logan Summers have been long neighbors and rivals on the rodeo circuit in the upper plains of the United State or Canada.  With his parents thinking of selling the ranch due to a drop in profits, Grant is desperate to find a way to keep competing with his beloved horse Thunder.  He stumbles across evidence of a cougar attack and is drawn into an investigation along the property line with his nemesis, Logan.  Along the way, the boys develop a connection and uncover a secret hidden from both families.  Will they make it out alive?

6.  Howl by Shaun David Hutchinson – When Virgil Knox stumbled into the town center of Merritt, Florida battered, bloody, and raving about the monster that attacked him, nobody would believe him, not even his own grandparents.  Already struggling to make friends in his dad’s hometown after his parents’ divorce, Virgil knows what he saw and finds himself reliving that night.  Can Virgil find a way to move on with his life?  Will the monster find him again?  Is he on his way to becoming one himself?

7.  In Deeper Waters by F.T. Lukens – Prince Tal has a secret.  Fire mages are not to be trusted ever since his ancestor used the ability to fight wars against the other kingdoms and practitioners of other magic, the ability has been shunned.  The mysterious castaway Athlen also has a secret that enables him to somehow survive the deep oceans.  Together the boys will survive pirates, kidnapping plots, shapeshifters, and a grand political plot threatening the kingdom and Tal’s sister, the queen.  Can they stop a war before it’s too late?

[maroon-book-dragon]

Solo Pride 🏳️‍🌈

Unfortunately, I didn't get enough responses to release a calendar for my Solo Pride idea, and I am currently verrrryyyy busy, so I cannot come up with them myself. Instead, I will be releasing the few ideas I did receive, plus the ideas I came up with myself.

Find a podcast on your sexuality or gender identity, or on pride in general and listen to it every day of pride! There will be some anywhere you listen to podcasts!

Queer book suggestions by @anendoandfriendo (check them out!): L.C. Mawson books, Failure to Communicate by Kaia Sonderby, Becoming Dangerous

@beetrootsoupdragon Learn about the history of your flag, or the pride flag! Who designed it? When was it introduced? What do the colors mean?

Research the life of a LGBTQ activist! Some suggestions: Marsha P Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, Harvey Milk

Put once object of each color of your pride flag around your room in a place you can see it!

Create an anonymous tumblr account to interact with the LGBTQ+ community (like mine!) during pride month.

[nathanmitrablog]

Venturing Out - April 7th, 42 L.C.

Today, to my own surprise, I found myself engaging in conversations with four different individuals throughout the day, a testament, perhaps, to the subtle shifts occurring within me as I navigate the complexities of life in Stormwind.

The morning began with an encounter with Miss Haven Thornton and Mister Heath, whom I approached near the Cathedral. I offered them my services in crafting stained-glass windows, a skill I've honed over time and one that I hoped might find appreciation in the architectural beauty of Stormwind. Their polite decline was not unexpected—my craft, after all, caters to a niche market—but the exchange was pleasant, devoid of awkwardness, leaving me feeling undeterred.

Later in the day, by the fountain that's next to the Cathedral, I met a priestess. Our conversation flowed effortlessly, touching upon her work in the Cathedral, her family's farm at the southern border of Elwynn Forest, and her hobbies of crocheting and knitting. Intriguingly, despite the wealth of details shared, her name remained an elusive piece of the puzzle, a curious omission that only added to the charm of our interaction.

As the day waned, I crossed paths with Miss Adeline, a paladin whose demeanor was a blend of strength and gentleness. Her complaints about the boisterousness of the fireworks—a sentiment I quietly shared—opened the door to a brief yet meaningful exchange. In a gesture of kindness, she offered me some herbs to chew, a remedy for the headache induced by the cacophony. Her simple act of generosity was a balm, not just for the physical discomfort, but for the soul, a reminder of the goodness that thrives even in the heart of the bustling city.

Now I wonder what tomorrow will hold.

[fvrsaeken]

“why do you have that look on your face?” @ lisa

"Look? I don't have a look on my face." Lisa defended, though if anyone else was looking at her, she definitely had a look on her face. "You know if you could be less observant for like five seconds." She muttered under her breath, gently pressing one hand to the left side of her face in attempt to put some pressure on her scars to relieve the ache. "I feel like there's a New Orleans jazz band in my head, accompanied by a symphony of jackhammers." She groaned. "So if you have any remedies that don't involve Tylenol or Advil because I'm not allowed to take anymore today, I would appreciate that."

[playingin-thedirt]

Introduction

Hello everyone, welcome. I felt like it was time for me to make a post about myself because I suck at interacting on this site and just lurk around. I'm mainly using this as a writing resource but will post other things from time to time.

I'm new to writing, I've only taken a creative writing class in high school and well, that was over a decade now. I would say I've always been a storyteller, growing up I loved drawing and wanted to be an animator. I was good but not that good and went a different route ✨theatre production.✨

During art school, it really killed my creativity and I stopped making my own art. Now I'm happy with my career as a scenic painter and wanting to find a new creative outlet. I've lost most of my drawing skills, I'm too lazy to try and build it back.

Something clicked, I just started writing characters, world building and I'm in the early stages a 1st draft! I'm proud, it is further than I've ever gone with any story I've created.

Hopefully, I'll have an original fantasy WIP intro before the end of the year.

- L.C.

[sanemyamen]

Soft Skills Training Market Growing Popularity and Emerging Trends in the Industry Analysis by Key Players

Latest study released by AMA Research on Global Soft Skills Training Market research focuses on latest market trend, opportunities and various future aspects so you can get a variety of ways to maximize your profits. Soft Skills Training Market predicted until 2027*. The rise in the number of graduates and the need to bridge the skill gap will induce educational institutions to adopt advanced training methods to enhance student skills. Increasing the focus of corporate industries towards expanding their business operations to emerging economies and to train employees to ensure smooth interaction and effective knowledge transfer will boost the demand for soft skills training. The availability of an online soft skills training platform further propelling the market growth. Some of Key Players included in Soft Skills Training Market are Skillsoft (United States),VitalSmarts, L.C. (United States),Articulate (United States),Computer Generated Solutions (United States),Desire2Learn (Canada),Global Training Solutions (Ireland),Interaction Associates (United States)New Horizons Computer Learning Centers (United States),NIIT (India),Pearson (England),Coursera Inc (United States),Wilson Learning Worldwide (Japan)

Market Trends: Upsurging Demand for Cloud-based Soft Skill Training Courses

Increasing Adoption of Technology-enabled Teaching and Training Techniques

Drivers: Growing Focus on Employee Skill and Performance Enhancement to Boost Productivity

Rising Availability of Soft Skills Training through Online Platforms

Challenges: Lack of Awareness among the Population regarding the Importance of Soft Skills Training

Dependence on Collaboration Tools

Opportunities: Increasing Government Programs and Initiatives

Penetration of Mobile and Internet Learning

Growing Demand in the Corporate Sector

The titled segments and Market Data are Break Down by Application (Corporate/Enterprise (Employee Development Programs, Private Training Institutions), Academic/Education (School, Universities & Colleges), Government), End User Industry (BFSI, Energy & Power, Manufacturing, Hospitality, IT & Telecom, Retail, Healthcare & Pharmaceuticals, Media & Entertainment, Others), Delivery Mode (Offline, Online), Sourcing (In-house, Outsourced), Soft Skill (Management & Leadership, Administration & Secretarial, Communication & Productivity, Personal Development, Team Work, Others)

Presented By

AMA Research & Media LLP

[miraclewoozi]

FOR BETTER, FOR WORSE. -l.c

pair : dino x fem!reader. prompt : “say you want me, and i’m yours.” SMUT. MINORS DO NOT HAVE MY CONSENT TO INTERACT.  wc : 5k. heads up / smut tags : ex-boyfriend!chan. everyone’s down horrendous. drinking/some alcohol consumption prior to the fucking (they aren’t drunk tho). chan is able to lift reader and carry her a short distance. oral (f rec). backshots. unprotected p-in-v sex. reader has solid arch game. chan calls reader good girl/pretty girl/ baby. it’s all very needy. notes : i had idubilu chan on the brain for a big portion of writing. this was supposed to be a drabble and then ended up longer than some of my actual fics, so. bon appetite i guess?

There’s a list of places you think you’d be okay to run into one of your exes. 

In the grocery store, for starters. At the gym. In a bar, at your favourite pizza place, the library… None of them would exactly be fun, but one way or another, you believe that they would all be quite manageable. 

Further down are family events. While on a date with someone else. At the beach, or a swimming pool. A doctors office. Considerably more uncomfortable. Would probably warrant a large glass of wine as soon as you got home. You would live, though. No doubt about it. 

But at a wedding? Not only is it not on there, it’s quite high up on its own index.

The Crisis List. 

Yet this is the position in which you find yourself on this beautiful summer’s evening. You suppose it’s sort of what you get for letting yourself be set up with a friend of a friend while you were in college and mixing your social circles: this is some sort of twisted, universal revenge. But of all the places you’ve pictured running into Chan and succeeding to pace yourself through awkward small-talk before parting ways again… you never imagined that a celebration of eternal love would be the setting. 

You recognised the sound of his voice pretty much as soon as you arrived, but you were thankfully seated on opposite sides of the aisle during the ceremony itself. It was therefore pretty easy to keep your eyes off him and instead focus on what was going on at the front of the room. This wasn’t so simple when you only knew one other person at your table during the dinner service and Chan was seated barely ten feet away, and every time you glanced over to him, he was blowing bubbles and entertaining a group of young kids. Every time he laughed, or even every time he made one of them laugh, your head would snap over on instinct. Though you locked eyes with him a few times, mostly you were able to look away again before he had the chance to catch you.

Regardless, seeing that brilliant smile from across the room full of strangers made your stomach twist, so much so that you couldn’t even finish your dessert. 

Thus far, the day has passed without any real incident; dinner was three hours ago and you’ve managed to avoid him almost perfectly. You keep telling yourself that if you can just make it a little while longer, you’ll be able to go back upstairs and retire to your hotel room, and maybe even eventually, this will become another one of those memories you can laugh about with your friends. 

Just a little while longer.

In the meantime, a stool at the very end of the bar is your sanctuary and it has been for so long that your ass has started to go numb. With more people in attendance at the reception than there were at the ceremony and dinner portions of the day, you’re doing a pretty fantastic job keeping your distance from Chan. His friends, too. Everyone, if you’re being completely honest: with your back to the room at large, you could forgive anyone here for assuming that you peaked early, got wasted and just no longer have the legs to move from your perch. 

But the truth is that you’re still nursing the same flute of champagne you were given on your way in. Still drawing your fingertip round and around the rim of the same glass, wiping off the lipstick marks you leave with every tiny new sip. Still watching the same bubbles rise up and burst at the same surface. You’re about as sober as anyone on the planet has ever been. 

At least, almost certainly, you’re the most sober adult in the building. 

You know it’s not exactly fair to have removed yourself from the fun like this on the happiest day of your friends’ lives. You’re overjoyed for them, you really are, and you sort of wish you could just shake this off and go about your business, pretending he’s not here so that you could enjoy yourself properly. You’ve never claimed to be the life and soul of the party, but you know being so distant is a new look on you.

If only it was as easy as simply caring less.

But you’re surrounded by happy couples and faced with the man who is the definition of ‘right person, wrong time’. How can you possibly think about anything else?

Your spine tingles with the feeling of someone hovering behind you and you pick your glass up into your hand, ready to spin around and tell a concerned bride — for the fifth time — that you promise, you’re okay. To keep up the lie about the bellyache you’ve been pretending to have for an hour now just to get her to go back to her party. You square your shoulders and put a smile onto your face, but you don’t have the chance to turn around and put up a façade. The person — who is decidedly not who you were expecting — appears to your right instead, a solid frame in a black suit swallowing up your periphery. Your excuses fade away to static in your brain. 

“Is this seat taken?” Chan asks, fingertips brushing over the leather of the chair adjacent to you. “Are you… waiting for someone?”

You shake your head, taking a deep breath. There’s no running away now. “Nope. All yours.”

He swings one leg over the stool and settles into it, both hands resting up on the bar. He, too, twitches his fingers against his glass. He, too, fails to even glance at you. 

“Been a while, huh?” He says after a few seconds. Even though music continues playing behind you both, it’s nowhere near as loud as the thick, uncomfortable silence that had started to settle between you. 

A while is sort of a massive understatement. You haven’t seen him in… four? Five years? Not since you left college and he accepted the job offer of a lifetime, pulling him all the way to the other side of the country. Not since, despite your shared willingness to try, you realised that the whole long-distance thing didn’t work for either of you; not since you ended up calling time on your relationship after just four months of being apart. 

Ending things meant saying goodbye to amost two and a half years though, in total.

You’d you’d never been broken up with over a video call before. It fucking sucked.

“I didn’t know you were around,” you say instead of answering the obvious. “Are you just here for this, or…?”

Chan takes a long sip from his drink and finishes the glass, pushing it away from himself. He shakes his head, scrunching his nose a little. You were surprised not to see him with some sort of a whiskey in-hand, so his reaction to the chug makes sense: he was never that big into wines. Some things never change. 

“I got promoted. Came with a relocation,” he tells you. This time, he turns his head and looks at you properly, a small smile tugging up the corners of his lips. 

“Oh, shit. Congratulations,” you offer, tilting your now mostly empty glass in his direction before draining the little bit in the bottom, just like he did. You know it’s probably all in your own head that the fizz gives you a bit of a confidence boost, but you find the nerve to move to face him fully: you’ve never been one to turn your nose up at a positive coincidence, after all. “That’s amazing.”

“Thank you,” he says, bowing his head. “It’s… good to be back.”

A few seconds later, he tags on, “and it’s really good to see you.”

The bartender comes back to see if she can get you anything else to drink now you’ve finally finished your champagne and Chan puts his card down for a round of your choosing. It helps loosen up the tension in your shoulders, stops you bouncing your leg against the rest beneath your seat, makes it a little bit easier to settle into a back and forth with him. Eventually, the conversation starts to flow as if you were never really apart. 

You laugh at his bad jokes. Chan shoves you playfully when you make some back. He gets so invested in catching up on what’s been going on in your life that he doesn’t even tell you what the promotion he got is, nor where he’s been relocated to. 

As the following few hours tick by, he doesn’t leave your side. Even when people come over to talk to him, even when your friends’ eyes start to find you together and linger, as they attempt to read your lips, pick apart your body language, as they begin whispering behind their hands. He takes exactly one bathroom break, and he finds his way straight back to the chair he left. He even scoots it a little bit closer.

And the longer he stays glued to your left, the more you find yourself starting to hope a little harder that wherever he’s living now, it’s not too far away. That whatever him being ‘back’ means, something happens because of it.

Your something comes in the form of your companion trying to persuade you to get up and dance with him. He fails, numerous times; you have a whole arsenal of excuses, some of which are recycled and things that he heard a very long time ago, but others are new. He raises his eyebrows at a couple of them, though you don’t know if he’s just shocked at your attempts or actually impressed. None of them work on him though. You should have remembered that he wasn’t a quitter.

“My shoes hurt,” you tell him on attempt number five. “You go, I’ll stay here.”

Clearly, this line of defence isn’t good enough either. 

“Just one song,” Chan asks again as he stands up from his chair and picks up one of your wrists, this time. You look down at where he’s holding you, but he doesn’t. “Please? Just… for me?”

“When was the last time I did anything ‘just for you’?” You scoff incredulously, shaking your head. 

It doesn’t. His eyes soften and he takes a small step closer to you, those perfect lips of his pressing into a pout. 

He drops his fingers lower and squeezes your hand lightly. “Too long ago. I miss it.”

Something in his stare looks a little far away and you wonder what exactly it is that he’s thinking about. Is he remembering the times you would bring him his favourite snacks when he was sick, ice his injuries after gruelling dance practices, brush sleep out of his eyes early in the mornings when he stayed up too late and couldn’t get out of bed, but really needed to make it to his 8AM classes? Is he remembering when you’d put band-aids on his papercuts? Make sure his laptop was fully charged when he had long study days? Pick him and his friends up from the bars and let him lean all his weight against you as you dragged him into your apartment?

(Those needy nights where you’d let him call you the prettiest girl in the world as he snuggled into your side and nuzzled his cold nose against your warm cheek? When you’d let him tell you, without even rolling your eyes, that you were his everything, the reason he had any strength, the love of his life, the only person he’d ever need—)

He uses your distractedness to his full advantage; as soon as the muscles in your arm go slack, he pulls you again and this time succeeds in getting you to your feet. You stumble a few steps towards him and he ends up leading you all the way over to the dance floor, grinning proudly the entire time.

“One song,” you stress, hanging your head to try and conceal the fact that you’re definitely blushing hard.

“Just one,” he lies, glancing back at you. 

You know he's lying, too. High-flying job aside, he’s always been a dancer at heart: when he turns around to face you, there’s a glint in his eyes that says ‘one... or five.’ 

Confirming your suspicions, seven songs later, you’re still up there with him. You’ve stopped caring about your dumb shoes, or having too many sets of eyes on you, or whether anyone here is murmuring about it. How could you mind, when he keeps finding little ways to touch you again? When he’s singing his heart out, serenading you with corny 90’s love songs, hand on his heart and everything? 

How could you mind, when he so clearly doesn’t care?

And the thing is… no part of you thinks that this is a bad idea. It could never be a bad thing to let somebody make your heart race this way and your brain so fuzzy; just seeing him grin at you as he extends his hand out, waiting for you to take it, feels like being twenty one all over again. And when he spins you and spins you and spins you until you’re dizzy, falling over your own feet and staggering until you land against his solid chest, laughing… when he catches you in both arms, and darts his tongue out over his lips at the exact moment you look at his face… 

Perhaps your rare moment of unabashed bravery is spurred on by the way he drinks you up like an elixir. Perhaps it’s spurred on by the way he adjusts himself to hold you tighter against him, perhaps it’s spurred on by the fact that this right here is exactly what you feel like you’ve been missing. Whatever the reason, you hook a finger through one of the belt-loops on his pants and manage to find your voice long enough to speak.

“My room or yours?” You ask, quietly enough only for him to hear, loudly enough that he can’t mistake you.

Letting out a breathy chuckle, he brings his palm up between your shoulder blades. “Don’t care,” he says, ducking lower and brushing the tip of his nose against your own. “Just… pick one. As soon as possible.”

A few people have already started to leave: couples with young families, older relatives who are getting tired, friends who have work in the morning, so you don’t feel too bad about slipping out into the corridor with Chan in tow as soon as you’ve grabbed your things. The elevator door closes behind you and you feel the mechanism start to pull you upwards, away from the hotel’s function room and towards the fourth floor to your own suite. Chan presses kiss after kiss to the back of your neck as soon as you’re alone, hands slipping around your waist and joining together just below your belly-button. 

“They have… cameras in these, you know,” you sigh, tilting your head to give him better access anyway. 

He chuckles quietly, nosing just behind your ear. “Okay?” He says, kissing you there too, bunching your dress in his hand and pulling it a little higher up your thigh. “So what?”

“So… fucking… public indecency,” you laugh, a little taken aback by his brazenness. 

It’s hard to be stern with him when he’s acting as if he never forgot how to press every single one of your buttons. Hell, as if he never stopped pushing them, in the first place. You lay one hand over both of his and squeeze gently, encouraging his teeth to keep grazing over the skin of your shoulder. You’ve never had any resolve when it comes to him. He clearly hasn’t forgotten.

Just as you’re relaxing into it, the elevator pings and you jolt away from him just in time for the door to open. The middle aged woman waiting to get in eyes you both as you rush out into the hallway and Chan grabs hold of your hand: you’re fairly sure she sucks her front teeth just before the door closes, but you don’t care. You’re too busy counting the rooms until you get to yours. 

409, 410, 411… 

“You look so fucking good right now,” Chan groans as you whip turn a corner and he quickens his pace to catch up, walking so fast he should probably be running instead. 

421, 422… 

“423,” you breathe, fumbling in your purse for the key-card. 

In a flash, you wave it over the sensor and pull down on the handle: before you have the chance to get dizzy from the speed of the turn, Chan has you pressed against the door from the inside. He doesn’t wait to be invited. He barely gives you the chance to catch your breath from your power-walk from the reception. Both his hands press into your hips when he brings his mouth down against yours, lips scorching hot, lifted up at the edges in a grin. Your knees go weak and you hold onto his biceps for stability, which… maybe, with how thick and sturdy they feel beneath your palms, isn’t a great way to help you calm down. 

When his tongue presses into your mouth and he tastes you for the first time in what feels like forever, you know the only thing keeping you standing is his strength. His hands, pinning you to the wood behind you. His body, pressing against you everywhere it possibly can. His muscular thigh, slotted between yours, giving you something to relax down against but also, to find a tiny little bit of friction from.

He dips down a little lower, looping his hands around you just below your ass, and with a quick movement he lifts you up off the floor completely. You hook your ankles together behind him, shifting to get higher up on his hips: when he steps away from the door, you drop your head down to his shoulder and a smirk replaces his prior very needy expression, feeling how warm you are at your core now your dress has hiked up around your waist. 

“Say you want me,” he says, licking a stripe up the side of your neck. He knows you do. 

“Huh?” 

Chan repeats, “say you want me.” 

You grasp harder at his hair and pull, but he doesn’t move away from your neck, just keeps kissing you at your sweet-spot until he’s walked a few paces to the middle of the room, holding you up over the hotel’s generously sized bed. 

“Say you want me, and I’m yours.”

He’s… yours?

It takes you a moment to process it but you don’t have to think twice about how you respond, even though your stomach flips at this very open-hearted confession. The entire way back up here, part of you expected this to be little more than a one-night-only special event, but…

“Shit,” you whine, feeling his fingers slip beneath the thin fabric of your underwear at your hip and tug. He pulls back from you at the sound of your voice, determined to look you in the eyes when you say it. 

Faces just inches apart, you admit, “I– I want you, Chan. Please. I want you so much.”

He bounces you up a little bit higher to get you to unhook your ankles and proceeds to basically drop you down onto the mattress, pushing both his shirt sleeves up to his elbows and reaching for his necktie. In a manner you can only describe as obscenely smooth, he grabs the knot and pulls, tugging it side to side to make it looser. The expensive silk comes undone easily. He balls it in his fist. You watch him toss his tie to the side, snap open a few more buttons, and with heavily lidded eyes, he plants one knee on the comforter, before crawling up the length of your body until you’re face-to-face again.

You take care of the remaining buttons on his shirt for him as he trails his lips all over your throat, your chest, your shoulders: even down your arms, to the crooks of your elbows, everywhere he can reach with your clothes still on. When his upper body is bare, he disregards the fact that you’re still wearing anything at all and kisses down your torso anyway. 

He lays between your thighs and presses his lips to them, too, pushing your dress up higher until it’s bunched up around your ribcage. One of his hands pushes your panties to the side and the other one reaches up to grab hold of yours, pulling it down to lace your fingers back into his hair. You do as he silently asks, and you swear his eyes roll back into his head at the first little pull. 

Chan always liked giving, but he loved it when you used him like a little toy, tugging and moving him around until you couldn’t handle him anymore.

Some things never change.

You’re about to tell him that he doesn’t have to do this. That you could take him now, if he wanted to hurry and get to it, because you’re already feeling yourself flutter at the thought of having him buried inside you. But his lips part and you feel the tip of his tongue drag through your folds, separating them, exposing you; he collects your arousal and swallows it back, pressing his tongue into your hole, swirling it around your clit, sending sparks up and down your spine.

That ridiculous, stupid idea dies magnificently. You let Chan lose himself in you, and in equal parts, you lose yourself in him. In the cold bite of the ring decorating his middle finger as he trails them down your sensitive skin, in the way he grunts and moans and praises you between your legs. You selfish– and selfless–ly let him have his way, right up until you feel so tense you could snap. 

Sure, you could let yourself come undone like this. Easily. In seconds, even, because he’s got you right there and you’re battling not to let it wash over you. But there’s something you need even more than the euphoria of your own release.

You scrunch your fist in his strands so hard that it forces him to pull away from you, gasping and cringing at the sting. At this, before he has the chance to ask what’s wrong, why you’ve stopped, if you’re okay, you press up onto one elbow, straps hanging off your shoulders, your own hair a mess. Somehow, Chan still looks up at you with glittering eyes, so shiny you can see their sweet, questioning gaze even in the dark. 

“Need you, now,” you tell him, your chest rising and falling in shallow breaths. He wipes over his lips on the back of his hand and nods, pulling himself up onto his knees. You let go of him and tug your dress up over your head while he fiddles with the buckle on his belt. 

“Flip over,” he says huskily, tugging it free just as quickly as he did with his tie, and when it thunks to the floor, you hear him start to move his pants down his legs too. 

You do as he says, turning onto your front, bracing yourself on your knees with your hands clasped together beneath your head. Your back arches naturally for him, pressing your hips higher into the air; his breath catches at the sight of you, your perfect ass, your dribbling pussy. 

It’s his favourite view. Always has been. Shit, nothing since the last time he was with you has ever come close.

“Deep breath for me,” he says, so soft in comparison to the way his fingers on one hand grasp at your hip and you feel the blunt edges of his nails digging into your skin. You inhale through your mouth, loud enough for him to hear. “That’s it. My good girl.”

He’s so fucking hard when he finally drags his tip through your folds, so heavy and thick when he pushes inside you inch by inch. The stretch is more intense than you remember, and despite slowly letting the breath you sucked in leave your lungs, you feel all of your muscles go tense. Your eyes squeeze shut. Your torso goes tight. You know your cunt hugs him because of how he lets go of his length and lays his hand flat in the middle of your back, dragging his thumb back and forth, trying to soothe you through it.

“Easy,” he says to you, slowing but not stopping until he’s buried all the way inside you. He’s so deep, you swear he nudges something he shouldn’t. So far inside you that you don’t know what to do with yourself. “Relax, baby. I’ve got you.”

It’s a little difficult when you feel more full now than you ever have, but slowly, you manage to loosen up and it’s only when you give a small nod of your head and an 'mhm' that he starts to rock his hips back and forth. Shallow, to start with, but with the angle he slides into you at, he might as well be going full depth, full force, full speed with how feverish this already is. You bunch the comforter in your fist, letting those familiar sensations of being fucked by Chan take over, letting the discomfort subside until it's replaced only by pleasure.

By which point, he's stopped treating you like a fragile doll, and has started to handle you like the person he wishes he never lost.

Those dancer hips haven't gone to waste, you realise, as he snaps them fluidly into you, the harsh slap of skin-on-skin punctuating every single sound that escapes you both. Sometimes, he pulls you back, spearing you wholly on his length, letting you do some of the work and control the pace. Sometimes, he holds you completely still so that he can have it all.

At all times, you feel yourself losing your mind piece by piece. Though you've tried to be with other people since that horrendous breakup, it's never managed to stick, and you find yourself thinking that maybe in a way, you were waiting for him. Hoping that one day, he'd waltz his way back into your life and sweep you off your feet and make sure you never forgot just how well he can give it to you. Praying that the universe was going to give you another chance.

One of his hands slips around your waist, now, and you feel him come down lower, pressing his chest against your back. His thrusts stop being so long and instead, he settles for harsh, deep ruts. His fingers find and start strumming over your clit, and you can feel yourself start to break apart with gasps and choked moans and whines of his name.

You're done for, and he knows it, but he still teases you as he kisses up your spine.

"Wanna feel you come, pretty girl," he says. His fingers move so easily that it takes everything you have not to collapse beneath him. “Missed feeling this pretty pussy around me. Wasn’t the same watching you play with it on the phone.”

You hide your face in the comforter and gasp, that beautiful heat starting to rise up inside you again. “Fuck, Chan—”

“That’s it,” he guides you, grunting with every little spasm of your walls. “Missed you so much.”

“I missed— missed—” you try to say, but he finds just the right pattern to make you squeak and you tug harder at the sheets. “Oh my God—”

Your universe explodes as he hits just the right spot inside you and you feel your peak slam through you, hips jerking back to meet his until there’s no room for any air to pass between your bodies. Chan stills, letting you ride yourself through it, easing up a little with the pressure of his fingers but still keeping them moving to milk every ounce of pleasure that he can from you.

With your thighs still shaking, you buckle downwards and he slips out of you unintentionally as you fight to catch your breath. You’re still seeing spots, still trying to put your thoughts in the right order, but when he smooths his hands over your ass and down the backs of your thighs, still up on his knees behind you, you slowly start to come back to Earth.

You slowly move round to lie on your back so you can look up at him, his still hard, now soaked cock sitting heavily against his thigh. He settles his hands on your knees, and you lean over to the side to pass your finger over one of the light switches. The one behind the headboard flickers to life and illuminates him: a sheen of sweat makes his broad frame gleam, his rosy blush makes your chest stutter.

“I missed you too,” you say quietly, unsure now if he was just saying so in the heat of the moment or if it was the truth.

You never needed to worry, though. Not if the way he drops down onto one elbow and kisses your newly regained breath straight back out of your lungs, cupping your cheek with his other hand is anything to go by.

“You meant it, then? You really want me?” He asks, pulling away only to drag his thumb over the corner of your mouth. You nod, turning your head a little and pursing your lips forward, pressing a kiss to his skin.

“I never stopped,” you tell him.

Little celebratory fireworks start to dance in his pretty eyes.

“Yeah?” He breathes, rolling onto his back and pulling you on top of him. “Good. Neither did I.”

thank u so much for reading, i hope you enjoyed it! as always, likes, reblogs, comments & feedback are so so appreciated.<3 thank u so much for reading, i hope you enjoyed it! as always, likes, reblogs, comments & feedback are so so appreciated.<3

[caitlindigitalcom]

Reality Television Is So Criticised and Yet Stays Incredibly Popular

Reality TV is a very broad genre, including talent shows, dating programs, makeover channels, celebrity programs and many more. It is defined as a genre where ordinary people engage in unscripted action and interaction (Nabi 2007). It however stays as a dominant form of television programming. Through its rising relationship with Social Media, opening up markets and audiences for these stars, it is a way for them to boost their audiences as well as brand deals through attention and in some cases drama.

There is a lot of contradiction surrounding Reality TV, with a series of surveys completed in the Aus and US regularly finding that people's most hated genre is Reality TV. One US survey found that audiences agree that Comedy is the most favourable genre, with 88 per cent of respondents vs 7 per cent unfavourable (Statista). In contrast to this, Reality TV has 48 per cent of unfavourable respondents (Statista). In the same survey, 61 per cent of audiences agreed that it's the only TV genre that people say there is too much of (Statista). Despite the statistics, Reality TV has been a dominant form of television programming all throughout history.

Reality TV's close relationship to social media opens up new markets and audiences. With 2022's Love Island winner, Ekin-Su, leaving the villa with more than a million Instagram followers as well as numerous branding deals (Wood, 2022). This creates the idea that featuring on these highly popular Reality Television shows can increase fame and brand deals on these stars' social media platforms. It has been found that competition amongst stars has been encouraged, through television networks incentivising stars to use social media. Therefore boosting these stars' attention, status and salary (Arcy, 2018).

Despite the contradiction of Reality Television, stars continue to gain fame and profit off the drama that is Reality TV. As social media and technologies expand further from just Television, I am curious to see where Reality TV will lead in the future, and if the genre stays the most hated in society.

References:

Arcy, J. (2018). The Digital Money Shot: Twitter Wars, The Real Housewives, and transmedia storytelling. Celebrity Studies, 9:4, 487-502.

Beck, D., Hellmueller, L.C. and Aeschbacher, N. (2012). Factual entertainment and reality TV. Communication Research Trends. Viewed on 25th March 2023. Available at: https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA296256259&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=01444646&p=AONE&sw=w&userGroupName=anon%7E60744545#:~:text=In%20essence%2C%20reality%20TV%20is

Wood, H. (2022). Big Brother is coming back – the reality TV landscape today will demand a more caring show. The Conversation. Viewed on 25th March 2023. Available at: https://theconversation.com/big-brother-is-coming-back-the-reality-tv-landscape-today-will-demand-a-more-caring-show-188313.

Statista. (2018). Favorite movie genres in the U.S. 2018. Viewed on 25th March 2023. Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/264127/favorite-movie-genre-in-the-us/