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pecanwriter · 9 months

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Big Boy Mode: Activated

Themes: rapid weight gain, humiliation kink, technology-induced weight gain (so like, magic weight gain but for sci fi nerds I guess)

Words: 2947

Part: 1/?

"Hello, sir, would you like to hear about our newest product, the most revolutionary nanotechnology to date?"

Elliott really wasn't one to ever let some marketing lackey torment him with semi-logical babble about something he didn't even want to buy. But he was a technology whore, and just the mere mention of nanotechnology had him nearly salivating at the mouth.

He smiled at the promoter, stepping closer and trying to look at all the flashing screens at once.

"Introducing SimNano or Simulator Nano. This revolutionary technology is the newest hit in terms of body augmentation and we're making record sales all around the globe."

The promoter pulled something from his pad to one of the screens.

"The way this works, we inject nanobots into your body and connect their signature to your personalised control panel as well as a wristband, the wristband sold separately."

He watched as on the screen a scrawny shirtless man selected a holographic projection of his body and added 50% more muscle to the model. He clicked "Active Mode" at the bottom of the screen and for a moment his entire body rippled in an unfamiliar way until he stood there completely buffed out, Captain America style.

Elliott blinked. He looked from the freshly buffed-out man to the promoter.

"How does that work?"

"The nanobots we inject into the client's system are capable of replication and imitation of any human tissue. However, they are only capable of growing, not shrinking, it's not a diet pill as many would hope so." The promoter laughed at his own poor joke.

Elliot chuckled obligingly but the phrase "they are only capable of growing" was bouncing around in his head trying to make him hard.

"Is there a limit to what they can imitate? For example, if someone was missing a leg…?" He chose his words carefully, hoping the man would fall for his set-up and tell him exactly what he wanted.

The man's gaze flickered down to Elliot's leg and although Elliot had no such thing, he let the man assume he had a prosthetic. It was an unassuming lie, didn't hurt anyone, it was just better than even a sliver of the truth.

"Oh, they're absolutely capable of replicating a leg. As I said, they can imitate any human tissue, muscles, nerves, fat, even bones…"

When he said the f-word Elliot's cock jerked awake and he had to cover his crotch with the shopping bag he was holding.

"And are the changes permanent…?"

"No, that's not how it works, It's imitating and replicating the tissue in Active Mode, but as soon as it's Deactivated everything goes back to normal."

Elliot's cock was throbbing as he fought to maintain perfectly normal eye contact with the promoter.

"And while it's active, does it feel real or is it like a hologram or a model or…"

"Oh no, It feels absolutely real, that's why we are the leading company in…"

He prattled on but Elliot didn't listen, all he could think of was the phrase "it's only capable of growing" as his cock throbbed.

"How much is it?"

It was bloody expensive, as it turned out. Elliott put a sizable dent in the savings he was putting away to get a mortgage on a single-bedroom flat. But somehow, all he felt was excitement, there was no shame or regret to be found anywhere.

After he made his purchases he had to go to their branch store and get injected with nanobots. The syringe wasn't that big and he wondered if it would be enough firepower for what he had in mind. They scanned his body thoroughly to put the model into his pad and wristband and connect the nanobots to it. As a trial, the shopping clerk showed him how to give himself impressive biceps and everyone present at the shop oohed and awed at the result.

The promoter was right, it felt absolutely real. The rippling Sensation Elliott saw in the video felt only like a slight cold tingling under his skin and then within seconds the impressive biceps appeared.

He deactivated his SimNano, thanked the clerk and left, struggling to walk straight with his dick pressing hard against his trousers.

When he came home he almost immediately tore off his shirt. He brought out the control panel on the band with shaking hands and clicked on the scrawny little model of himself. He moved his finger around, highlighting his midriff and ass. He clicked "expand" and then in the tissue subcategory he clicked "fat" instead of the pre-selected "muscle". You could put the desired amounts in body percentages or in units of measurement. He clicked on lbs, the most precise one, and tapped in 20(9kg). Then after a moment's hesitation, he erased it and clicked 40lb(18kg) instead.

With shaking fingers he clicked "Active Mode" and his skin began to tingle with the cold sensation. Seconds later Elliott was staring down at a round, fat gut and he could feel his boxers strain mercilessly against his expanded ass.

He put the pad away gently and grabbed the ball of flab at his front. He was never this fat in his life, but it felt real enough, from what he could guess. He lifted the stomach and let it drop, watching it jiggle and wobble. A moan escaped him. He couldn't believe this was happening.

Before even getting a look in the mirror Elliott fell to the couch, frantically gnawing his flesh with one hand and stroking his cock with the other. He never came this hard in his entire life.

He finally managed to pull himself up into standing, revelling in how his gut was suddenly in the way and looked in the mirror.

He laughed, the effect was ridiculous. Although his belly and ass looked fantastic and absolutely realistic, it looked ludicrous on his scrawny body which remained unchanged.

Elliott deactivated the band and reset the model. After a moment’s hesitation, he selected his entire body “Increase by 100% body mass” and selected “fat” in the tissue category. He considered carefully and finally decided to increase his ass and gut separately on top of increasing the fat equally around his entire body.

Elliott’s finger hovered over the band, but before clicking the Activate button he checked the measurement box again and changed 100% to 200lb. Again, before clicking it, he wavered and finally ended up changing it to 300lb(136kg) with sweaty fingers. Adding 300lb to his meagre 132lb(60kg) would put him at a glorious 432lb(195kg), a fulfilment of a fantasy Elliott had since before he was even consciously aware of it.

Eliott pressed the Activate button.

He was still standing in front of the mirror and he let out a gasp as the nanobots went to work, making his entire body shiver with the unfamiliar coldness, the feeling much more overwhelming with tasking them to simulate 300lb instead of a measly 40 he attempted at first.

Elliott watched with intense, nearly blinding fascination as his body rippled slightly and moments later exploded into folds and bulges and rolls, becoming an unrecognisable mountain of flesh. He stared at the enormous gut, too heavy to be completely round as it hung in front of him almost like a massive, engorged flesh apron. His face was unrecognisable, swallowed by an enormous double chin and chubby cheeks, melting into the fat around his neck seamlessly. The man in the mirror couldn’t be him, could he? It was too good to be real… The fat man lifted his arm as Elliott lifted his, only his arm never had an enormous wing of fat hanging off it and jiggling as he moved. When Elliott moved his normal arm it didn’t send his entire massive body into wobbles, but the man in the mirror sure wobbled like an impressive jello dessert.

Elliott grabbed his gut, an enormous, almost all-encompassing mound of flesh hanging in front of him. He grabbed it, lifted it as much as he could and dropped it. The way the flesh shook and jiggled forced a moan out of him. Already half-hard again, he inched closer to the mirror. Elliott could barely move under the unknown sensation of this immense bulk and he almost stumbled into his mirror, nearly crushing it. Just the half step made his heart race with excursion and his lungs begged for air.

This SimNano thing was worth every penny, in fact, Elliott thought they were losing money. It was too good to be real.

He turned off Active Mode, in a few seconds staring back at this familiar skinny self with an impressive hard-on.

Staring intently, eager to catch every little detail, he pressed Activate again.

Watching his body explode with fat, filling out with blubber in mere seconds and leaving him unrecognisable was so impossibly erotic that he climaxed just from turning the SimNano off and on again, watching himself gain hundreds of pounds in seconds.

After he managed to somehow climax three times within the span of an hour he decided it was enough for one day, he was starting to feel light-headed.

He tapped Deactivate.

Nothing happened.

He tapped it again. Still, nothing.

He stared at the band, but it appeared to be frozen. Frantically, he started waddling unsteadily to his backpack where the main SimNano pad was. Walking across the room to his bag while suddenly 300lb heavier was incredibly difficult and equally, if not more, arousing. His giant thighs were rubbing against each other, he could feel he was hitting his enormous apron of a gut with each clumsy step… The enormous behind he’d given himself jiggled with every step and so did his soft, blubbery tits.

When he finally made it to his back and retrieved his pad Elliott was nearly ready to collapse with how out of breath he was.

The pad was as frozen as the band was.

“Fuck.” He whispered, looking into the mirror across the room. He was enormous, there was no way he could leave the house like this and he had a night shift at the bar today.

It was 5 p.m., and he had work at 8, so technically, he still had time. He could just… Indulge for a while while waiting for the SimNano to unfreeze.

Elliott laboriously waddled to the bedroom. He had a few pieces of massive clothing he sometimes wore while stuffing it with pillows and pretending he was huge. He pulled on a pair of tracksuit trousers. They could barely encompass his enormous ass. Even the biggest of his secret fetish shirts was snug on him now and his monstrous gut was happily hanging out at the bottom.

The flat needed tidying up and he also had to cook to have something to eat after his shift when he would undoubtedly be too tired to do anything.

He began busying himself around the house, every little chore making him hornier than the last one. Everything was a thrill, trying to wipe dust off the higher shelves and feeling how his enormous gut was hanging further and further out of his shirt, trying to wash dishes and finding that he could barely reach into the sink with the enormous mound of blubber in the front of him. When he went to clean the plastic shower door, something that he meant to do all week, he nearly got stuck in the narrow space and instead of trying to find the best angle to free himself he rubbed against the shower wall, making himself cum just with the friction against his fat body. He would’ve jerked himself off if the was any hope of reaching his penis under all that flesh, which there absolutely wasn’t.

With all the chores completed and with food prepped for later, Elliott went to check on the pad. It was still frozen. It was 7.20 pm.

He called in sick and trying not to freak out about it just yet he repositioned the mirror closer to the couch where he planted his enormous ass and began rubbing his flesh.

There was no need to freak out, he was sure the NanoSim would reset overnight.

Elliott woke up still on the couch and still as enormous as when he drifted off, exhausted by the almost constant sexual tension of the previous day.

He tapped the band. Frozen. The pad proved to be in a similar state.

Elliott tried calling the NanoSim Technical Support but they told him that there was nothing they could do remotely because there were health hazards involved, so he would have to come to one of their stores to get it reset.

Which meant… Going outside as a 432lb man.

Elliott ate his modest breakfast of a skinny man and wondered how it would look to an outsider, a guy who was nearly half-tone of blubber eating a modest portion of oatmeal.

Before leaving the house he pulled on a beanie and didn’t shave his unimpressive stubble. There was no way anyone would recognise him, but he still didn’t want to risk it.

His heart was pounding so hard that it was all he could hear as Elliott stepped out into the hallway.

Usually, Elliott just took the stairs from the second floor he lived on, but there was no way he was going to take the stairs today, he could barely move with all that unfamiliar weight on him, his waddle almost a caricature of itself.

There was a lady in the lift and when the doors opened she frantically looked between Elliott and the lift control panel informing all the passengers that the weight limit was 500lb. She was slim, but there was no way she was less than 100lb.

“You go on” Elliott smiled at her and she pressed the button to close the door almost frantically.

He wasn’t sure if he actually WAS 432lb or if the nanobots just made it appear so to him, but he wasn’t going to risk it.

There was an Uber waiting for him, but Elliott had to cancel the ride when it turned out that he couldn’t fit in the car.

With his dick painfully hard and trapped between mounds of flesh he selected a different ride, making sure it was big enough to accommodate for a massive hog like him. He barely fit and his gut filled his lap completely. The driver was visibly disgusted and Elliott’s already painfully hard dick throbbed under his apron belly.

Waddling and puffing his way through the shopping centre to the SimNano store was the most humiliating and gratifying experience of his life. Everyone, without exception, stared at the giant man barely waddling his way through the halls, his too-small shirt riding up his enormous gut and his face flushed with the effort of putting all that blubber into motion.

When he finally made it to the store he was heaving, his breath rasping and his entire body sticky with sweat.

The only person in the store was the clerk, a teak-skinned man with a mop of black curls and bright, quick eyes. He was very much Elliott’s type and the fact that he had to talk to a handsome guy while his enormous gut hung out of his shirt and he was so out of breath was arousing beyond all reason.

“Hello, I’m Omar, how can I help you?”

“Hi, I… uff.. Sorry… I have a problem with my SimNano, the program froze last night and it’s still frozen.” He handed the man his pad, still trying to catch his breath.

“Let’s see here…” Omar took his pad from him and when he saw the program the SimNano was frozen on he slowly looked back up at Elliott, his lips stretching into a mischievous grin. Elliott felt like his entire face was on fire. Somehow it didn’t dawn on him that the clerk would see the program he was running. If he could, he’d bolt it out of the store in embarrassment, but he couldn’t, not when he was this massive.

“Let me just do some troubleshooting here.” Omar said, his smirk still on his face as he plugged the device into a PC and started clicking.

“Alright,” he said a few minutes later. “It looks like I got it, but let me just check…”

“What…”

Elliott watched with growing terror as Omar proceeded to add another 50lb(22kg) to his program and activating it. Elliott staggered back, feeling his gut hanging marginally lower, the waistband of his tracksuit digging just that much deeper into his blubber.

“Just to double check, better to be sure.” Omar said, adding another 50 on top of that.

Elliott had to grab onto the counter as the enormous weight started to threaten to topple him to the ground. He was heaving just from the sheer effort of standing up.

Omar’s cheeky grin was turning downright mischievous.

“I think it’s working now.” the clerk said, bringing the program down to its original +300lb setting.

“T-thank you…” Elliott panted, taking his pad back and thanking all the Gods that his gut hid his erection.

As he was waddling back to the entrance Omar’s voice stopped him in his tracks.

“Ey, fat boy.”

That nickname alone nearly made Elliott give an ungainly moan, right there in the middle of the shopping centre.

“Y-yes?” “Give me your number, I write NanoSim codes in my spare time and big improvement to the overall experience. I mean…. Huge improvements.”

Omar’s grin was pure evil and Elliott was sure his own was no better as he gave the handsome man his number.

This was going to be fun.

PART 2

#gaining fiction #weight gain story #weight gain #gainer fiction #gainer story #chubby boy #wg txt #wg story #wg text #bbm #bhm #bhm weight gain #fat bhm #male feedism #Weight gain story #Weight gain txt #Weight gain writing #wouldn't we all want to have a simnano

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primdaisy · 6 months

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teaching hanalei how to cook tomarani dishes / pad thai and nasi lemak / also prepping ingredients for tomorrows food sale

fount of tomarani knowledge aspiration:

cook tomarani cuisine ✓

prepare a recipe using a pressure cooker ✓

buy a shirt from the night market ✗

buy food at the night market ✗

#ts4 #for rent #hanalei #sims 4 for rent

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sgiandubh · 4 months

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Just so stories: the one with the backpack

The handles. The color. The mesh pocket - or lack thereof.

When. Who. Where. Was it seen before. Yes. No. Perhaps. Fuck off. You are wrong. I am right. Who gives a damn. He hooks up. He is a monk. She was very sick, you know. He did it for clicks. He is helping a friend. She bought it. Shippers are stupid. No, it was a gift. Who gifts a backpack to his date. It's product placement. It's the mesh pocket, I am telling you. It's the same backpack. Lots of backpacks like this one on the market. It's the same. She said it, too. No, it's not. He is gay. She is a beard. That is not the same padded strap. She is running at the Hyrox. So is he. Six hours apart. Not important. It happened before. This is his type of girl. I like her. I don't know anything about her and cannot substantiate, but they are together. Shippers are sick. What do you mean, never seen together. They are together. I know it. Nope, I read it there. He is on a plane right now. Flight is delayed. Nope, not his calf. You are wrong. I am right. Fuck off. I am right. Shippers are idiots. I am right. Always. Listen. Listen to me. Trust in me. Only me.

This could be funny, if it were not so very cheap. So very sad.

And so, so very far away of the real thing and the real issue at stake.

We are in February 2024. There is no release date set for Season 7B, yet. There is zero real engagement with this fandom as far as OL is concerned. There is a prequel in the making that does not seem to elicit anybody's interest. There is also a merger/sale apparently stalling. There seems to be a problem with broadcasting outlets for certain substantial markets, such as the UK.

In the meanwhile, mature, professional women talk about a backpack, to oblivion, just because two pathetic trolls run the show.

Obsessable, indeed.

#just so stories #fandom #shitshow

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see-arcane · 1 month

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I figured I should interrupt everyone's dash for some notes on current real life things.

This is a hefty one, so I'm tucking everything below:

A little good news. As of this writing, I’ve sold 74 copies of The Vampyres, in eBook and paperback! That’s 74 more than I thought I would ever sell! Thank you to everyone who picked up a copy or asked your library to grab some. Especially when I know I haven’t been the most stellar self-marketer. I can’t remember the last time I opened the septic tank formerly known as Twitter, so it’s all been down to this little corner here and a skinny appearance in Goodreads. Which means I owe any attention this short and sinister tale has received to you all and plain old word-of-mouth.

That said, thank you x100000 to you and any new readers yet to take a look. (And doubly so for those of you who go out of their way to leave comments and reviews around for me to reread ad infinitum.)

For those not in the know, all the info on The Vampyres can be found here, and all my author odds and ends can be found on my website here.

On a less heartening note…

As I’d already expected, the market for career writers is…rough. Copywriting—and writing in general—is technically a big open field (full of caveat descriptions about having to work with/teach AI programs to eventually swallow your job)! Tons of open positions! Most of which either pay you in pocket change while you’re working full time or expect you to singlehandedly run the entire marketing of a business for slightly more pocket change. Everything else is bloated with contract and/or freelance work*.

*Read: Gig economy schlock trying to pass for an actual job position with payment being a coin toss. I’ve also seen one too many listings on the job boards that are volunteer positions. Plenty of exposure to rake in though, right? Ha. Ha ha.

I’ve still been applying like clockwork, same as the rest of my fellow creators trying to get by in a field that seems to actively punish trying to be a professional in said field, and still no bites further than an interview. I have years of experience and a degree, but everyone’s chasing the same crumbs, so. Yeah. I’ve got to start padding things out.

Reminder that I do have a (barely peddled) Ko-Fi. It’s there for art commissions and chucking a few spare bucks at. Which is an increasingly big ask these days, I know. You can’t scroll two posts down without hitting someone else’s Ko-Fi, Patreon, GoFundMe, Kickstarter, et cetera. We’re drowning in arting starvists here. And although I have been asked before whether I would consider going full Freelance Storywriter on top of selling art, I’m still a little hesitant on it. I do occasionally send out story submissions and have even gotten published a few times, but I get nauseous thinking about:

1) Putting up a paywall on the scribbles that assail me like a baseball bat wielded by an unmerciful Muse. 2) Putting up a ‘Stories for Sale!’ sign only to wind up disappointing prospective buyers because I didn’t do their blorbos justice even after researching X background for the piece. 3) Getting duped into being a nonconsenting ghostwriter and discovering someone else has published my work under their own name.

So, still a bit iffy on that. I’ll chew on it. But what else is left?

Before you click the button!

Stop!

NOT YET!

Before you click, please know that I am being serious about this as something to potentially make 1) something of good quality and 2) earn more money than it loses. Looking around at the merch-making/selling options, there are fees involved with making an account just about anywhere in the online store game, give or take the price tweaking needed for shipping and manufacturing blah blah blah.

With that in mind, please do not automatically hit ‘yes’ because you want to be nice. I appreciate it, but this isn’t the same thing as the Ko-Fi where there’s no real loss in just leaving it up and drawing something once every few months. This will take new designs, another subscription to pay for, more logistics to untangle for quality and pricing and all the rest of the mess. Only hit ‘yes’ if you, personally, genuinely, would like to purchase some nefarious See Arcane wares beyond a book or a digital drawing.

#heaviest sigh #rolling back into my coffin #the vampyres #my art #my writing #ko-fi #merchandise #(in potentia)#dracula #polls

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theywhowriteandknowthings · 9 months

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Trying Something New - A Doctor!Joel x PharmaRep! Reader Fic

Murder Daddy Kinktober 2023 Day 1: Trying something New.

NSFW 18+ minors DNI. Warnings: This is mostly just porn, very little plot, Joel is mean, Manipulative!Joel, Mean!Joel, fingering, edging, smut, praise kink, dom!Joel, dark!Joel, reader insert, public sex/voyuerism, dirty talk, Joel’s mouth, Joel is a sleaze bag, transactional sex (implied), sex work (implied), power dynamic, coercion (if you squint). Let me know if I missed anything! No Reader description, no use of Y/N.

You chew on your bottom lip as you wait outside the conference hall. Your stomach in knots as you tap your foot impatiently against the abstract carpeting that looks like a piñata vomited into the ocean. Swirling vortexes of confetti are baked into the threadbare carpet in hues of orange, pink, and yellow; like rancid sprinkles on a stale sheet cake.

Your head snaps up as the rumbling baritone of Doctor Miller’s voice, bracketed by a gruff chuckle, catches your attention. He strides through the double doors, hair slicked back, dark glasses atop his brow, and patchy facial hair trimmed and purposeful.

His white dress shirt is open at the collar, way too many buttons undone to be justifiable at the conference. But this man is a legend on the Pharma circuit, so no-one dares challenge his laid-back approach to fashion. Tight black slacks fall over his toned legs and his dress shoes gleam like polished black mirrors.

Fuck he’s even hotter up close.

You almost forget to speak up as you watch him glide past you, other, less important, doctors trailing after him like lost puppies. Desperate for some of the Miller charm to rub off on them too.

“Excuse me, Doctor Miller?”

He stops dead in his tracks, one of the other doctors almost crashing into him at the abrupt halt. He turns to look at you with an eyebrow raised, his lips pursed into a hard line as he unashamedly looks you up and down. He lingers over your exposed cleavage, and you try not to smile too obviously at that.

I knew this dress would work.

You think to yourself as you feel vindication at spending two hours planning your hair, make-up, and outfit this morning. It was worth losing those few hours of precious sleep over.

“Hey there,” He drawls, his dark eyes raking over you, slower this time, as he addresses his entourage, “I’ll see you gentlemen later, golf in the morning yeah?”

The groupies nod eagerly in unison, like they wouldn’t miss it for anything. It’s almost pathetic, until you realise what you’re about to do is much, much worse.

You’re drowning in debt from college, your hopes and dreams crushed by an oversaturated job market in journalism, rent is due, and you’re behind on your sales quota. You’re running out of options, fast. So, trying something new had seemed like your only option when you booked into this conference weeks ago.

“What can I do for you sweetheart?” Joel’s dulcet southern drawl snaps you out of your thought spiral and you look up to see an amused smirk painted across his plush lips. His cheeks dimple and the rush of arousal that floods straight to your core is almost embarrassing.

“I-, I know this is bold, but could I buy you a drink?”

He pauses for a moment, and your heart sinks as the prospect of rejection hangs over you like a guillotine. Ready to cleave your last-ditch attempt at evading eviction in twain. Then the corner of his mouth twitches up and his eyes crease at the corner as he shrugs his broad shoulders.

“I think it would be mighty crass of me to accept such an offer, how about I buy you a drink?”

“Are you sure? I’m happy to-!”

One of his broad fingers presses firmly against your lips and every shred of feminism and self-respect leaves your body as his rough skin catches on your own. It’s like the pad of his finger is searing your skin, branding you with his mere touch.

“I won’t take no for an answer. Let’s go.”

He drops his hand only to move to your side, his broad palm splayed across the small of your back. It’s intimate, disarming, and suddenly you feel like you have lost all control of the situation. Your lips tingle at the ghost presence of his finger on your lips.

Joel guides you through the hotel lobby and into the bar, settling on a booth in a dingy little corner of the room. You slide into the booth, expecting him to take the seat opposite you, but he follows you, crowding you in towards the curve of the U-shaped seating.

Your heart all but bursts out of your chest when you feel the rough, hot press of his hand on your leg. He’s not even trying to hide the way he digs into the meat of your thigh, riding the hem of your dress up with the heel of his palm. You squeeze your thighs together in an attempt to quell the ache that pulsates through your cunt.

“Doctor Miller-!”

“Joel. Call me Joel sweetheart.”

His voice is low in your ear, and you can smell his expensive cologne as his lips brush the corner of your jaw, his breath fanning against your skin as he hails a waiter with his other hand. The bridge of his glasses presses against your cheek and you can’t help but pine at the way he is too eager to even take them off.

“Joel, what are you doing?”

“What does it look like sweetheart? I’m giving you exactly what you came here for, a quick fuck in return for me prescribing those nasty little pills of yours right?”

Your cheeks flush with heat and your ears burn as you feel the shame of being caught out so easily. You want to protest, deny the accusation that pours into your ears, soaking into your bones with shame and arousal. But you can’t.

“I’ve never done this before, sales are down, rent’s due. I needed to try something new.”

You plead as you watch the waiter get closer, his smile bright as he looks at the two of you with a glimmer in his eye. Joel’s broad hand pushes further up your leg and you feel a thick finger ghost the lace of your panties and you gasp. Joel nips your earlobe painfully and you stifle the noise threatening to spill from your lips at the pain and tumbling pleasure that follows it as his tongue kitten licks against the sore skin.

“Shh, keep that dirty little mouth shut, don’t want him seeing what ‘m doing sweetheart. Can you be a good girl and stay quiet for me?”

Your lip quivers as he grazes his knuckle against the already drenched material of your thong. You should be embarrassed, maybe deep down you are, but the white-hot drip of arousal down your spine takes priority as you nod silently.

“Words sweetheart, come on, he’s almost here, ‘f he catches us I’m out of here.”

“Yes Joel,” You whimper, legs trembling as he eases a finger under the fabric, pulling it to the side as he growls in your ear at the way your slick paints his thumb as it glides through your obscenely wet folds, “I’ll be good, keep my mouth shut.”

“Good girl.”

Those two words make your brain short circuit. Your legs spread of their own accord as you feel him smile into your skin, his strong nose pressed into your hairline before he turns just in time to address the waiter. You can barely breathe as a thick finger teases at your entrance.

“Hey there, what can I get for you both?” His nasal twang barely registering as you focus on the sound of your own ragged heartbeat roaring in your ears.

“I’ll take a double of Lagavulin sixteen, neat.” Joel says with a syrupy sweetness that makes you want to roll your eyes. But you hold firm, smiling sweetly at the waiter as you order.

“Same for me.”

“Coming right up.” The waiter nods as he turns on his heel, seemingly oblivious to the depravity unfolding just below the table edge.

“Good taste in scotch.” Joel grumbles almost absently as he buries his face in your neck once more. His lips catch on your skin as he mouths a trail of kisses up to your ear. It’s excruciatingly slow, and your pussy clenches in anticipation as you silently beg him to just get on with it.

The waiter returns with your drinks, but they’re forgotten as soon as they’re set down as Joel slides a thick finger inside you. Your eyes roll back as he stretches your tight cunt out deliciously. He hooks his finger up against your g-spot with precision and he hums in your ear as he feels you clench around him.

“So wet. So desperate.”

His voice vibrates through your jaw as his facial hair burns against your skin, you’re so fucked out you wouldn’t care if he ripped you off the seat and fucked you over the table. You buck your hips to meet his thick finger and he chuckles against the shell of your ear.

“Being such a good little slut for me. Going to fuck you so dumb, fill up this tight little cunt with my fat cock until you’re leaking out around it. You want that sweetheart?”

“Yes, I want it, want it so bad, Joel.” You whimper as his thumb swipes lazily against your clit. You’re so close, your pussy flutters around his finger as he picks up the pace. Your eyes close as your spine crackles with electricity, flooding through your core as you feel the white-hot wave of pleasure crest—

Joel pulls his finger out of you harshly, knocking back his whiskey in one with his other hand before sliding out of the booth without so much as a look in your direction. You’re reeling as you look up at the broad span of his shoulders as he throws a few bills on the table along with a keycard. You clench around nothing, feeling painfully empty as you suppress a whine that tickles up your throat.

“Meet me upstairs in twenty minutes, and maybe you’ll get to come.”

Your chest heaves as you snap your legs shut, slick coats your thighs and drenches your ruined panties. You watch him as he stops at another table and your eyes go wide with shock. Your boss Chris, an utter sleaze-ball of a human is standing up to greet Joel. Your blood runs cold, and you swallow around the lump in your throat as both men turn to look at you.

I’m so fucked.

You think as a few words are said before Joel extends his hand to him and you watch in mortified horror as he shakes hands with the one that was only moments ago buried inside your cunt. They part ways and you sit there, unable to move as Joel reaches the elevator at the other end of the bar.

Your boss flashes you an uncharacteristically friendly smile and gives you a double thumbs up. Your eyes return to the elevator to see Joel’s eyes locked on you. You notice his middle finger buried to the knuckle between his plush lips as his cheeks hollow. He’s sucking himself clean of your arousal and you groan softly to yourself as your desperately empty pussy clenches at the sight. He winks as the elevator door closes and you slump back against the seat with a heavy exhale.

You wait fifteen minutes, checking the time on your watch every few seconds, until you can’t wait any longer. You finish your drink and snatch up the keycard. Your heels click loudly on the wood flooring and before you can reach the elevator you hear your boss call out your name. You turn slowly, anxiety bubbling up in your throat as you wait for that guillotine of shame and regret to fall.

“Not sure what you did, but Doctor Miller just agreed on a partnership deal with us. You’re getting a raise and a bonus honey, keep up the good work!”

Your smile is tight as you try and process the words coming out of his mouth. You lick your lips as you nod slowly, your head spinning and you look down at the keycard, then back up to your boss.

“Thank you, Chris. I’ll do you proud.”

You stumble into the elevator with an elated giggle spilling out of your mouth. You don’t know what the hell was waiting for you upstairs, but you do know that whatever it is, it’ll be worth it.

Tag List: @yvonneeeee @notsosecretspy @jadealicious06 @famouslyanonymous @harriedandharassed @casa-boiardi @pimosworld @brittmb115 @bitchwitch1981 @cool-iguana @beefrobeefcal @lucyeyelesbarrow @anoverwhelmingdin @beskarandblasters @wannab-urs @pastelnap @patti7dc @gasolinerainbowpuddles @jksprincess10 @gracieispunk @toxicanonymity @chloeangelic

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marlynnofmany · 1 year

Text

Bargains at the Space Market

This was, by far, the sleaziest place we’d stopped for supplies. At least while I’d been part of the crew. For all I knew, the upstanding little courier starship had visited some real dives under previous leadership, but Captain Sunlight was both respectable and smart.

I wondered whose idea it was to stop at this freewheeling anarchy market, set up on an asteroid that somebody had installed a gravity generator on. There was an atmosphere too, and a wide variety of stalls on this mile-long hunk of rock, but not much in the way of oversight.

I saw two different fistfights in progress among the other ships while we exited onto the landing pad.

“Okay,” announced Captain Sunlight, standing as tall as she could — which wasn’t much, lizardy little thing that she was, but she looked dignified — “Mimi, Blip, and Blop, come with me. Trrili, take one or two others with you. Anyone else object to staying to guard the ship?”

There was a hearty chorus of no’s. Zhee turned a faceted eye on the pair of bystanders walking a little too close, clicking his pincher arms at them until they scooted away. In the distance, something that looked like fireworks colored the sky.

A polite claw tapped my elbow.

“Want to come with?” asked Coals, the Heatseeker with dull red scales. He was both shorter and stockier than the captain, and more importantly, he was good friends with Trrili. “It’s a pretty interesting place; I’ve been here once before.”

“How safe is it?” I asked, wanting to be convinced. There were some bizarre things for sale in the stalls visible from here.

“Should be fine as long as we’re careful,” he said. “Especially with her around.” He lifted his chin towards the insectile horror that loomed over him.

Trrili loved looming. “Yessss,” she said. “Essspessssially with me.” She flexed her own pinchers, glossy black to Zhee’s purple, and chuckled darkly. The red patterns on her carapace were especially vivid in the light of the nearby sun.

I smiled. Trrili was terrifying, but she was our terrifying. “Sure. I’d love to come.”

Coals aimed a claw in the opposite direction of the one that Captain Sunlight was looking towards. “Pretty sure I saw some Earth animals for sale as we landed.”

“Oh, well why didn’t you say so?” I asked. “Lead the way!”

We checked in with the captain, promised to be careful, and were off. I had some interplanetary credits in my pocket that I didn’t really plan on spending, but it was good to be prepared.

I also had a mini stun gun in a different pocket.

This place was just as chaotic as I’d expected, like an alien farmer’s market with a distinct lowlife element. Here was a humanoid selling pottery that glowed; there was a tentacle alien selling food that moved; over there was a would-be pickpocket getting the tar beaten out of them by a large hairy whatsit. A hand appeared around the corner of another stall to grab a power cell and disappear.

I kept my own hands close to my pockets, wishing I’d worn something with zipper pouches.

“Ah,” said Trrili. “There is the media.” She didn’t bother hissing in normal conversation, but as she led us over to a booth lined with shelves and run by small individuals, I fully expected the intimidation to come out soon.

Just before we reached it, Coals rapped a knuckle on her foreleg. “Hey. We’ll be at the end of the row. See?” He pointed.

“Yessss,” Trrili agreed.

With a nod, Coals left her to her bargaining, and waved me onward. I was a little concerned about this, but the end of the row wasn’t far. We could yell for her to come charging over if need be.

“See those guys in the solar ponchos?” Coals asked. He didn’t need to point.

I squinted. “Hard not to.” The clothes that the two plant-like people wore weren’t as bright as the actual sun, but they sure were unpleasant to look at. The other shopkeepers were giving them some distance, leaving space between their little cart and the proper stalls. Aside from the eye-searing fashion, they had ropy green limbs and faces like rose blossoms that wanted to be mandibles. Fleshy maroon, sharptoothed mouth in the middle, at least half a dozen eyes scattered throughout. More than a little creepy.

“I was watching with the mag lens earlier,” Coals said. “With the classification setting. They’ve got the Earth animals.” He was watching my face as he said it.

The series of expressions that I went through were probably interesting to see as I got a proper look at what was on that cart.

Earth animals, yay! Which ones? Those look like fishbowls. But there’s no water inside, just … fur? Are those cats shoved in fishbowls??

I felt my face grow stony. “Coals,” I said. “Who do we report animal cruelty to around here?” One of the plant guys was waving a bowl around, shouting about potted predators. A passerby turned him down, and he yelled an insult after them.

“Uh, nobody.”

I watched the guy hold up a different one and say something about food paste squeezed in through the lid. When he flipped the cap to demonstrate, piteous mewling filtered out. “What about theft?” I asked.

“Also no.”

“Good,” I said, voice flat. “Go get Trrili, then help me steal these.”

* * *

It took less convincing than I thought. Trrili already had her selection of media in a bag slung behind her, and she chuckled evilly. Coals cracked his knuckles and talked strategy. Then we went for it.

“Hello,” I said, approaching the sellers alone. “How many of these do you have?”

“Everything on this cart,” said the taller one with the bigger blossom head. “Limited supply, very valuable; get them before they’re gone.” He picked up a fishbowl full of gray fur, turning it like a fine art appreciator. A tiny face with big eyes peered out, meowing silently. Stars, these were kittens.

“You don’t have a source for more?” I asked, trying to sound unimpressed.

“These are very exotic, from a far away planet,” he said.

The shorter one bent to pull a big bowl from the bottom shelf of the cart. “Perhaps we can interest you in a larger model? It’s one of a kind.”

That’s the mother cat. Good. I straightened up. “I’ll take all of them,” I said. “Every one you have.”

The sleazy pair chortled and fawned and named a price that could have bought a single-seater spaceship.

I pulled out my tiny stun gun and aimed it at the tall one. “No. I’ll just be taking them.”

They of course laughed at me, and pulled out their own weapons, which Coals had spotted and identified through the holsters. These were also stun guns, but a bigger and more painful model that put mine to shame.

They weren’t, however, very effective on people with exoskeletons.

Trrili leapt out from behind the nearest stall, crossing the distance in a heartbeat of flashing black-and-red limbs, then reared up to stand over them with her pinchers flared, shrieking at earsplitting volume.

I’d already ducked to the side, so while they stumbled back and aimed, I got a great view of Coals jumping forward to grab their stupid ponchos and yank them off their feet.

One of them shot Trrili in the foreleg, making her hiss a little, but the other didn’t even manage that. And before I could use my little peashooter, Coals had tackled them and wrestled the guns from both. With an oversized stun gun in each hand, he got to his feet and aimed at the pair, just daring them to try something, like the three-foot-tall badass he was.

“What did we do to you??” asked the tall one, rubbing his wrist but otherwise holding still.

“Yeah, how did we piss you off?” the smaller one demanded, eyes locked on Trrili.

I stepped forward with anger in my voice. “You didn’t offend either of them,” I said. “You offended me.” At their baffled silence, I continued. “Where did you get these animals? And what makes you think it’s okay to keep them contained like that?”

They both answered at once, and neither was terribly helpful. Some space trader somewhere. They didn’t even know where the cats were from.

“They’re from my planet,” I informed them. “And they should never be treated like this. Any human can tell you that.”

Their answer was just mumbling that sounded like “Yeah, okay.”

“Have you ever met a human before?” I asked, stepping closer. I leaned in. “My people eat things that look like you.”

They held very still, and didn’t object when Trrili pulled their cart away. Coals stepped back to follow, stun guns still aimed.

I put mine back in my pocket and gave them a final glare. “Do not try this again,” I said. “Or I will know.” I turned on my heel and followed Trrili, with Coals bringing up the rear. He kept the guns.

Shopkeepers and bystanders watched in curiosity, but none seemed particularly bothered by any of that. I heard what sounded distinctly like laughter. As we walked away, the hustle and bustle that had quieted a bit gradually resumed its normal volume.

I took the cart handle from Trrili. “Thank you both.”

Trrili chuckled. “My pleassurrrre.”

“Yeah, happy to help,” Coals said, moving up to walk alongside. He looked over the half dozen bowls that were rattling a bit, though I tried to pull the janky cart smoothly. “When you said you’d know…”

I held my chin up. “As far as they can tell, I will,” I said. “Any psychic abilities on the part of humans is for them to worry about.”

Coals laughed quietly and found the safety settings for the stun guns, saying nothing.

We got the cart into the ship without any objection from the crewmates we passed, though there was a fair amount of curiosity. Trrili and Coals stopped to tell the story in the lounge while I made a beeline for the medbay.

“I require use of your scanners,” I told Eggskin, who was understandably surprised. But at the sight of the cats, they wasted no time in bringing out everything required for a full checkup. I made sure to scan for contagion first, cart and all. I certainly didn’t trust those sleazeballs to be sanitary.

“All clear,” Eggskin said. They pulled gloves on over yellow-green scales. “Do we have spare carrying crates in the storage hold?”

“Oh, good point. We should put the family together.” I opened the door and leaned into the hallway. “Hey, Mur! Could you please bring a mid-size carrying crate? It’s urgent.”

Mur had been going a different direction, but he turned readily on dark blue tentacles with a “Sure thing.”

“Thank you!” I called after him.

He was back in no time with the crate, an ideal size for us to put Mama Cat into after her scan. She was dehydrated, but didn’t show any signs of having been in there long. Good. A bit of proper food and a reunion ought to be just the thing.

When we put the first kitten in with her, the purring was so loud it brought tears to my eyes. Eggskin and I wasted no time in checking the others. They were all okay. Not even any fleas.

I was talking with Eggskin about where to keep them for the time being when the door opened to let Captain Sunlight in. A curious crowd waited in the hall.

I stood at attention. “I’m not apologizing,” I said over the tiny kitten mews.

She shook her head. “No, I don’t expect you to. Are you hoping to keep them onboard, though?”

I shook my head. “I’m sure I can find a home for them at the next space station. Anywhere with a lot of humans, really. These are little cuties, and the mom didn’t even hiss at me, so she ought to raise them to be friendly.”

Captain Sunlight nodded. “All right, then. How about you keep them in your quarters as soon as they’re clear to leave the medical bay?”

“Yes, I was thinking that would be best,” I said. “I’ll just have to be careful opening the door. Maybe I can rig a net as a barrier that I can step over, to at least slow them down.”

“I’ll leave you to figure out how to keep them from roaming the halls,” she said. “Or the engine room, or the cockpit.”

“Yes. I will.”

She left it at that, and opened the door to shoo people away from the convalescing animals. The cart was already out there with the empty bowls and the food paste that would be going in the kitchen trash.

I saw Paint rummaging around the miscellaneous junk on the lowest shelf, which I hadn’t bothered to touch. Her orange tail straightened with excitement. “Hey, there’s money in here!”

I winced. Captain Sunlight gave me an unreadable look.

I felt bad about it, but then I looked down at the kittens tumbling over their mother, each getting licked in turn, and the feeling vanished.

“We can buy cat food with that,” I said.

The captain nodded. “Of course.” Then she sighed. “Mimi is going to be insufferable. First we find a replacement hoverbike after all, now this.”

A gruff voice called from down the hall, “Told you it was a good idea to stop there!”

I grinned. “The cats thank you!”

A toothpaste-green octopus head popped into the doorway. “Name one after me,” said Mimi, waving a tentacle.

I grinned wider. “I think that’s a great name for a cat.”

~~~

The ongoing backstory of the main character from this book. More to come!

#tw animal abuse #gonna say that up front #but it'll be okay; promise #tw animal cruelty #cats #inspired by a hoax that I believed as a kid #good news: it doesn't really exist and in this story it's stopped pronto #just fyi #my writing #the Token Human #humans are weird #humans are space orcs #haso #hfy

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hansolmates · 9 months

Text

the leak | 03

banner by @theluttleprince

summary; hansol vernon chwe is crying at his doorstep like a taylor swift music video, and you’re for some reason there to help pairing; hvc / reader (f) genre/warnings; neighbors to friends, friends to lovers!au, slice of life, fluff, angst, tw—cheating, mentions of pregnancy related to cheating, profanity w/c; 1k a/n; i dont know how i feel about the added *issue* in the story—a very handsome issue, but here u go! [masterpost]

You’re now acutely aware of the fact that there is another living, breathing body behind the walls of your apartment.

You really took for granted the fact that your neighbors were quiet (which in fact, were not neighbors at all because it’s been empty for the past year) because now you feel nothing but self conscious as you pad around your home.

If it was any other neighbor, sure, you’d be dandy! However, it’s Vernon, and because you had a teeny tiny noncommittal attraction to him in college, it’s manifested into full blown self-consciousness. You really just can’t get over yourself.

Lo-fi hip hop blends through the walls, invading your space as you absentmindedly stir the fresh pasta you bought on sale at the market. It isn’t your music, it’s Vernon’s, muffled by the wall that connects your kitchen.

This hyper awareness is killing you. You haven’t spoken to him since that morning when your sleep was interrupted by his rush to move in, simply because you wanted to give him space. It’s been a week and you feel like your space is closing in on you.

You know you want to talk to him, that little pesky voice in your head sings, you want to ask if he’s okay.

“Ugh!” you tap your wooden spoon against your nonstick pan, flicking the water away. Your eyes float over to your simmering sauce on the stove, a cream sauce with a little squeeze of tomato paste. It’s almost done thickening.

Distracting yourself from your neighbor with the pretty brown eyes, you grab your phone, scrolling through your missed messages.

[3:08] Jihoon: hows the leak?

[4:02] You: still dripping

[4:11] Jihoon: I can come over tonight and fix it

With a snort, you grab the tongs and start scooping the al dente pasta from the boiling pot into the simmering sauce.

However, your sink is perfectly fine. That's because Jihoon is an efficient landlord.

(The only thing dripping is you, and you’re the only leak he’s planning to fix tonight.)

Haha, ha. You could cringe at how silly this whole situation is.

If you told yourself ten years ago you’d be hooking up with your landlord, you’d laugh yourself to death. Lo and behold here you are, having a casual fling with your grumpy yet unfairly skilled landlord.

To be fair, your sink was leaking the first time! Whether or not it was on purpose so that Jihoon could come see you, is a secret Jihoon refuses to tell.

He is pretty, yet masculine. There’s something feline about his gaze, the way his skill in both the bed and his practice intrigues you and mollifies you to his command. Like that one time last week when he did that thing with his fingers—

“Fuck me,” you curse yourself, plating your completed pasta. After emulsifying your sauce with the perfect amount of pasta water, you occupy yourself with dinner.

Jihoon is a good distraction, but not as intrusive as—

“Ow!” Vernon’s muffled voice echoes the wall between you, and you wince at the pain that lines his voice. Did he just drop a barbell? Does he lift?

Belatedly realizing you cooked too much pasta to fit on one plate, you grab another ceramic plate a second scoop of pappardelle.

Blowing at your stray hairs, the question stabs you in the brain: invite Jihoon to dinner, and have everything work out as it always does?

Or—or?

Five minutes later and a very demanding pep talk from your conscience, you have a plastic wrapped plate of pasta and you’re waiting for Vernon to answer his door.

After a few seconds of hearing shuffling and more things falling to the ground, your new neighbor finally flings the door open. “Oh, hi!” His face is rapidly changing, going from surprised, to confused, and then a big D-mouthed smile when he notices what you’re holding in your hand.

You’ve seen that Youtube Shorts girl who exchanges meals with her neighbors, and you wonder if she feels just as awkward as you do.

“Hi,” you breathe out, “did you eat dinner?”

You couldn’t even let out a “how are you?” because you wanted to cut right to the chase. Say yes and eat, or say no and you can ask Jihoon if you can move to the bottom floor.

You squirm under his gaze, your bare feet feeling cool on the bare tile and your fingers hot due to the plate being under the stove just minutes before. He’s looking unbearably soft, his caramel hair bouncy and his grey sweat suit big and bubbly around his frame.

“Nope,” he pops the ‘p’, eyes still clinging to your hands, “did you?”

“Oh, no. I just finished making this,” you proffer the plate up higher to meet his eyes, “and was wondering if you wanted some.”

Instead of taking the plate and saying thank you, he replies, “you love pink, don’t you?”

“Huh?”

“My Melody clock, pink Crocs, and now pink sauce,” he bobs his head back and forth, “unless that’s just a coincidence.”

“Oh, well—”

“I bet if I come into your apartment right now, the pan you used to cook this pasta is pink.”

You huff, and if you weren’t holding the plate you’d be crossing your arms. Who knew he could be so cheeky? When you don’t answer right away he says, “I’m right, am I?”

It’s mauve, actually. Instead, you retort, “I guess there’s only one way to find out?”

Vernon’s irises soften, and you wonder how long it’s been since he’s eaten a meal with somebody. Taking the plate you’ve made out of your hands, he reaches a palm out to hold open your door, “Thanks.”

Letting yourself in, you watch as he steps into your apartment gingerly. He gets a really good look at it this time, compared to last week when he was only concerned about getting out of a bad relationship. His eyes float over your walls, probably looking for all the pink things in your apartment.

He sets himself at your table, and before you sit down next to him, you send out a quick text.

[5:06] You: raincheck, i have a friend over for dinner tonight

#vernon x reader #svt x reader #vernon fic #svt fanfic #svt fic #seventeen fanfic #svt imagines #svt fluff #vernon

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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year

Text

How Amazon transformed the EU into a planned economy

Amazon is a perfect parable of enshittification, the process by which platforms first offer subsidies to end users until they’re locked in, then make life good for business customers at users’ expense, until they’re locked in, then claw back all the value they can for themselves, leaving just enough behind to keep the lock-in going.

In a new report for SOMO, Margarida Silva describes how the end-stage enshittification of Amazon is playing out in the EU, with Amazon repeating its US playbook of gouging the small businesses who have no choice but to use the platform in order to reach its locked-in customers, making European customers and European sellers poorer:

https://www.somo.nl/amazons-european-chokehold/

The mechanism for this isn’t a mystery. Amazon boasts about it! They call it their flywheel: first, customers are lured into the platform with low prices, especially through Prime, which requires pre-payment for a year’s shipping, which virtually guarantees that customers will start their shopping on Amazon. Because customers now start their buying on Amazon, sellers have to be there. The increased range of goods for sale on Amazon lures in more buyers, who lure in more sellers, with both sides holding each other hostage:

https://vimeo.com/739486256/00a0a7379a

This flywheel creates a vicious cycle, starving local retail so that customers can’t get what they need from brick-and-mortar shops, which funnels sellers into offering their goods for sale on Amazon. The less choice customers and sellers have about where they shop, the more Amazon can abuse both to pad its own bottom line.

There are 800,000 EU-based sellers on Amazon, and they have seen the junk-fees that Amazon charges them skyrocket, to the point where they have to raise prices or lose money on each sale. Amazon uses both tacit and explicit “Most Favored Nation” deals to hide these price-hikes. Under an MFN deal, sellers must not allow their goods to be sold at a lower price than Amazon’s — so when they raise prices to cover Amazon’s increasing fees, they raise them everywhere:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/greedflation/

It’s not hard to understand why Amazon would raise its fees: the company has an effective e-commerce monopoly. Like Ozymandias, they have run out of worlds to conquer, and so their growth has to come from squeezing suppliers and/or raising prices, not from bringing in new customers. This is likewise true of mobile companies like Apple and Google, who have run out of people who are so excited about incremental mobile hardware gains that they’ll buy a new phone every year, which means that growth has to come from squeezing app vendors:

https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2023/06/09/Pixel-4-to-7

This is likewise true of the streaming companies, which is why Netflix is cracking down on “password sharing”:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/02/nonbinary-families/#red-envelopes

It’s true of the movie studios, which is why they want to zero out their wage bills by replacing writers with automatic plausible sentence generators that will write stupid movies that they think we’ll still pay to see because there won’t be anything else:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/06/people-are-not-disposable/#union-strong

It’s certainly true of Uber, which is why they’ve double the cost of a taxi ride and halved the wages they pay drivers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

Monopolies “grow” by making their customers and suppliers worse off. But they have to be careful about this: if it’s obvious that you’re using your market power to screw buyers, you can get in trouble with competition regulators. That’s because the only part of antitrust law that the neoliberal project left intact is “consumer welfare” — the idea that monopolies should only face enforcement when they raise prices and/or lower quality:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/10/play-fair/#bedoya

This focus on price-hikes has given monopolists a free hand to squeeze suppliers and workers, because a monopolist — from Walmart to Amazon — can claim that squeezing your workers and suppliers is necessary to enhancing consumer welfare. The less you pay to produce a product, the cheaper you can price it.

When a company has a lot of seller power, we call it a monopolist. When it has a lot of buying power, we call it a monopsonist. No one ever made a bestselling, family-destroying board game called “Monopsony” so most people haven’t heard of the concept. But monopsony is every bit as dangerous as monopoly, and monopsonists find it far easier to acquire market power than monopolists. Few suppliers can afford to have even 10% of their sales disappear overnight, so a buyer who accounts for 10% of your sales can demand deep discounts and other favorable terms.

Amazon is a monopolist, but it’s also a very powerful and ruthless monopsonist. For example, its audiobook division, Audible, has a 90+% market-share, and it used that market-power to steal at least $100m from audiobook creators, in a scandal dubbed Audiblegate:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/07/audible-exclusive/#audiblegate

For Europe’s 800k sellers who rely on Amazon to reach their customers, the monoposony conditions are blatant and shameless. Take listing fees: Amazon’s “flywheel” pitch claims that as the company grows, it achieves “economies of scale” that can lower its cost basis. But Amazon’s listing fees haven’t changed, even as the company experienced explosive growth in the EU (remember, sellers whose Amazon fees exceed their margins have to pass those fees onto buyers, and also raise their prices everywhere else to satisfy the Most Favored Nation requirement).

Amazon books the revenues from these fees — and other junk-fees it extracts from sellers — in Luxembourg, an EU member nation that provides a tax haven to multinational businesses that want to maintain the fiction that they operate their businesses out of the tiny kingdom. There is sharp competition in the EU to offer the most servile, corrupt environment for multinationals, and Luxembourg is a leader, along with Cyprus, Malta and, of course, Ireland:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/15/finnegans-snooze/#dirty-old-town

But at least listing fees haven’t gone up, unlike other fees, which have climbed sharply. Amazon falsely claimed that its additional revenues from fees were the result of growth by independent sellers, which Amazon pegged at 65%. Later, the company admitted that the true growth figure was 22%. Meanwhile, fees are up 85%.

The true growth figure might be lower still. Amazon refuses to show the math behind its growth figures, or even say which sellers and sales are included in the figure.

The SOMO report cites research by Juozas Kaziukėnas of the e-commerce research firm Marketplace Pulse, who finds that sellers are now giving 50% of their gross revenues to Amazon, an increase of 10% over the past five years across the whole EU. However, different EU (and ex-EU) countries have experienced much steeper increases in fees — in the UK, fees have nearly doubled (up 98%), and in France, fees more than doubled (up 115%).

Many of these increases come from the Fulfilment By Amazon (FBA) program, which is promoted as an optional service, but which is really obligatory — careful research shows that sellers who warehouse, pack and ship their own goods get banished to the depths of search results, even if they have ratings, costs and times that are competitive with FBA. This is especially true of the “buy box” that lands at the top of most searches. The company refuses to disclose how buy box positioning is determined, but 90% of products in the buy box pay for FBA.

Amazon has used excuseflation to hike its FBA prices, blaming higher energy prices for price hikes that predated the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and blaming covid for price hikes that predated the pandemic.

Italy’s competition authority did yeoman service in uncovering the sleaze of FBA, publishing an investigation that showed that Prime and buy box made the notionally “optional” FBA into a must-have for merchants, meaning that Amazon could jack up FBA prices without losing business.

Another notable source of gouging came in response to the UK and France adopting digital services taxes, which were meant to make up for the tax-base erosion enabled by Luxembourg’s flouting of EU tax law. Amazon passed these taxes straight through to its merchants, without seeing a comparable decrease in the number of sellers using its platforms — an unmistakable sign of market power. If you can raise prices without losing customers, then, by definition, your customers have nowhere else to go.

I’ve previously written about how Amazon’s $31b/year “advertising” market isn’t really advertising — rather, it’s a payola scheme that auctions off the top of a search-listing to the merchant with the most to spend:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola

This is how you get a simple search like “cat beds” returning results whose first screen is 100% ads, and whose next five screens are 50% ads, many of them for dog products:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2022/amazon-shopping-ads/

Auctioning off search results means that every time you search for something you want, you have to wade through screen after screen of listings for products whose vendors spent more on advertising, leaving less to spend on making quality goods.

This is as true in the EU as it is in the USA. The SOMO report shows that European merchants are required to spend ever-larger sums to show up in results for the exact products they sell, leaving them with a choice between making less money, raising prices, or skimping on quality.

But even the “winners” of Amazon’s gladiatorial combat among vendors can still lose. Amazon uses an automated product removal process that can delete some or all of a merchant’s products, without warning or explanation, and no one at Amazon will explain what a merchant did wrong. That remains true even if a vendor pays for Amazon’s “marketplace consultant” service — ask these paid Virgils why you’ve been cast into Amazon’s pit, and they’ll shrug their shoulders (and bill you for it).

And even if you can navigate the junk fees, the Kafka-as-a-service removals, the war of all sellers against all sellers for search primacy…you still lose. Merchants told SOMO that a product that survives Amazon’s gauntlet is likely to be cloned by Amazon and sold as an Amazon Basic or other house-brand product. Amazon doesn’t charge itself 50% junk fees, so it can always underprice the vendors it knocks off, and give its own products permanent top-of-search placement.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos once testified under oath before Congress that this doesn’t happen — and then refused to return to Congress when multiple vendors showed evidence that he’d lied:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/10/18/amazon-congress-letter-third-party-data/

He definitely lied:

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/amazon-india-rigging/

Amazon has faced investigations and enforcement in the EU over this, and settled a claim with a promise to “not use non-public seller data to compete with sellers,” but given the company’s record of broken promises on this score and the difficulty of catching them cheating, it’s pretty naive to think they’ll stick to this.

The report quotes Thomas Höppner, a lawyer who has represented small businesses that Amazon screwed over. Höppner says the problem is that the EU evaluates Amazon’s bad deeds on a “case-by-case” basis, missing the big picture: “By the time one identified problem was seemingly solved, Amazon had long made amendments elsewhere with the same effect. We require a more holistic approach that considers the entire Amazon ecosystem and the various interdependencies within.”

But the EU’s enforcement approach is about to change significantly. The EU just passed the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which imposes a bunch of obligations on Amazon:

allowing sellers to offer their products on other marketplaces at different prices (Article 5.3),

not obliging business users to pay for one of its services in order to use its platform (Article 5.8),

limiting the way Amazon uses non-public seller data to compete with them (Article 6.2)

preventing Amazon from giving top billing in search results to its own products or sellers that have acquired extra Amazon services (Article 6.5)

The report concludes with a suite of recommendations for improving EU enforcement. First, they argue for a return to traditional competition law, abandoning the “consumer welfare standard” that is so friendly to monopsonies and their abuses of suppliers and workers.

They call for a probe into Amazon’s Most Favored Nation deals (“fair pricing policy”), the practice of sponsoring search results, and spiraling fees. They want the EU to adequately fund DMA enforcement, with “measures to prevent regulatory capture.” And they want Amazon to publish clear explanations for how search results, buy box placement, and other practices hidden behind a veil of secrecy.

Amazon will doubtless claim that disclosing how those systems work will make it easier for spammers and scammers to game their way to the top of search results. We should be skeptical of this claim — content moderation is the last domain where anyone takes the bankrupt idea of security through obscurity seriously:

https://doctorow.medium.com/como-is-infosec-307f87004563

Finally, the report calls for breaking up Amazon, forcing it to choose between being a platform seller or a platform user, calling this the only way to “prevent the conflicts of interest between its role as a platform intermediary, seller, and service provider.”

The technical term for this measure is “structural separation” — a rule that bans platform companies from competing with their business customers. This is the principle at work in the US bipartisan AMERICA Act, which would force Google and Meta to spin off the parts of their ad-tech business that put them in a conflict of interest. Right now, Googbook represents both publishers and advertisers, while operating the marketplace where ad sales take place, and they take 51% out of every ad dollar:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-shatter-ad-tech

Structural separation hasn’t really been applied in the US for a generation, but it’s gained currency in recent years, for the obvious reason that the referee can’t also own one of the teams. I was in Germany last week speaking to regulators and politicians, and they espoused skepticism that the EU would embrace structural separation anytime soon.

But they were wrong! Today, the European Commission announced plans to force Google and Meta to sell off their conflict-of-interest ad-tech lines of business, mirroring the provisions of the US AMERICA Act:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/06/google-may-soon-be-ordered-to-break-up-its-lucrative-ad-business-eu-warns/

Structural separation really is the policy we should be demanding. It’s amazing that lawyers who would never argue a case in front of a judge who was married to the plaintiff will turn around and defend the idea that Amazon can fairly operate a marketplace where they compete with other sellers.

With Amazon dominating online sales, and with in-person retail cratering, Amazon’s decisions have the power to determine the outcome of whole swathes of Europe’s economy. This is the “planned economy” that the EU claims it detests and seeks to prevent — but it’s an economy planned by distant autocrats in a Seattle boardroom, for the purpose of extracting the surpluses needed to launch an endless procession of penis-rockets.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/14/flywheel-shyster-and-flywheel/#unfulfilled-by-amazon

[Image ID: A desert ruin. In the foreground is a huge Amazon box, with an EU flag in place of its shipping label. Atop the box are the feet and partial legs of an Oxymandias figure.]

Image: Rama (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gladiator_with_sword-Louis_Ernest_Meissonnier-MG_1216-IMG_1223-white.jpg

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/fr/deed.en

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thebisexualmandalorian · 11 months

Text

All of these are for sale! They're a bit crinkly because they were boxed up to go to a farmer's market, but since the heat means I won't be able to go till the fall, I thought I'd post them all here for y'all to pick what you like! I will iron anything before they go out!

The winter lap quilts are on clearance for only $25 each, or all 4 for $80! They're about a yard across, so perfect for laps, pets, picnics, or even Christmas tree skirts!

The pink daisy windmill quilt is $75.

The microwaveable hot/cold packs are $15 each or two for $25, as are the bowl cozies. The hot pads (made to place between a table and a hot pan or bowl) are $10 each. (all but the red plaid has sold!)

The table runners are $35 each, and I will iron them before they go out.

The bottle holder is $15.

The (very cute) cherry apron is $25

Finally, the bag (10"x10") is on sale for $10, because I accidentally sewed one handle inside out.

Message me with anything you're interested in, and I'll calculate shipping for you!

I'll do my best to keep this post updated with what's sold!

#my sewing #sewing #quilts #for sale #crafts #cottagecore #please reblog!

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allelitesmut · 1 year

Text

Palate Cleanser part 2

After their reunion goes south, Max makes one last desperate attempt at changing their fate. But with a lifetime of history and baggage, have they missed their chance at getting the timing right?

Find Part One here

Ship: MJF x Actress!Childhood Friend!OFC

Rating: Explicit - 18+

Warnings: Smut (minors dni), Angst is their second language, Maybe even a little fluff this time, Cheating, Rough Sex, Choking, Hair Pulling, Oral Sex(f receiving), minor degradation, daddy kink, and breeding kink, biting

-One Missed Call-

-Two Missed Calls-

-Three Missed Calls-

*Riley, please pick up the phone. Please, I’m begging you.*

-Four Missed Calls-

*Please, we can’t leave things like this...*

*I went to your hotel but they said you already checked out. How did you get here so much faster than me? I’m going to be so late for this convention*

-Five Missed Calls-

*I’m going to the airport. They can fucking fire me if they want, I’m not sitting around in some loser convention while you walk out of my life*

-Six Missed Calls-

*Riley, pick up. I’m going crazy here. Please, pick up the phone.*

*I’m trying really hard not to be a psycho right now but i’m running out of options.*

-Seven Missed Calls-

*Please, Riley. I can’t say this stuff to you through text. Please pick up.*

YOUR CALL COULD NOT BE COMPLETED AS DIALED. PLEASE HANG UP AND DIAL AGAIN.

“Why aren’t my calls going through?”

MESSAGE NOT DELIVERED.

YOUR CALL COULD NOT BE COMPLETED AS DIALED. PLEASE HANG UP AND DIAL AGAIN.

“Riley?”

MESSAGE NOT DELIVERED

YOUR CALL COULD NOT BE COMPLETED AS DIALED. PLEASE HANG UP AND DIAL AGAIN.

—————

-One Month Later-

Max hesitated in the cool night air before stepping up onto the sidewalk. He took in a long breath through his nose and squeezed his eyes shut. The ‘for sale’ sign out front was a daunting reminder that this was his last shot.

He had heard through the grapevine that she put her townhouse on the market, but seeing it for himself was a different story. The place looked just like it always did, a gem tucked away on a quiet street near Washington Square Park. The wave of nostalgia that hit him nearly bowled him over; he missed this place and the fact that he didn’t do this years ago was making him itchy.

Her porch light was on and he could see the light on in the living room. She was home and she was still awake. It wasn’t until he was halfway here that he realized that it would be nearly one in the morning by the time he got here and some people actually slept.

His expensive shoes scuffed along with pavement, turning onto the walkway up to her porch. He wondered if she heard his car pull up and his stomach was suddenly turning. Climbing the few stairs up to the door, his heartbeat pounded in his ears. Fuck, he had been so confident the entire ride here but now that he needed to raise a hand to ring the doorbell, his arms were suddenly made of concrete.

It had been a long time since he had been here. Probably five years by now. It seemed like a lifetime but he couldn’t help but feel like it was still a second home. How many times had he parked in that same spot, walked up those same stairs, knocked on this same door? How many times had he not bothered to knock because he had a key and she had an open door policy for him, and him alone? How did he manage to screw things up this colossally? Fuck, he was in his own head.

Acting before he could double guess it, he reached up and jammed on the doorbell that he suddenly wasn’t sure he had ever used before, wincing as it let out a stuttered double chime throughout her house. Swallowing hard, he shifted his weight and tried to train his face into something she might not want to spit at. His fingers fidgeted as he waited for a response, one hand fiddling with the bag that was strangled tight in his fist. Then, he could hear the soft pad of her footsteps approaching the door, and his mouth went dry.

Without stopping to think, Riley swung the door open, spoon still dangling from between her lips from the ice cream she had just sat down to eat. She caught sight of him and screeched to a halt, pulling the spoon from her mouth. Time stood still as she took in the sight of him, hair slightly disheveled, beard more grown out than she had ever seen. He was dressed in a t-shirt and sweats, his eyes clearly bloodshot even in the flickering porch light. A well in her chest grew astronomically fast and she slammed the door shut before he could even get out a ‘hello’.

Max deflated on the other side of the door, cursing himself for being so dumb-struck that he couldn’t manage to conjure up a single word in the time she was looking at him. He drove over an hour, practicing what he was going to say when he finally got here and now he was totally blank. The sight of her, hair tied up, wearing those tiny silk pj’s that he knew he bought her for some birthday a million years ago, it knocked the wind out of him for a second. He knocked pointedly at her door.

“Riley, come on, I obviously know you’re in there.” He tried to speak loud enough for her to hear through the door. It was quiet, only the sound of some drunk kids down the street. But importantly, not the sound of her walking away. “Please, just talk to me, Ry.”

“Go away, Max.” Her voice was faint on the other side of the door but if she was responding, he could at least get somewhere.

“No, I’m not going anywhere until you hear me out. I will camp out on your porch if I have to.” He insisted, fully prepared to settle in. It wouldn’t be the first time he fell asleep on this porch.

“You can’t just show up here unannounced.” She slid down the door, sitting on the floor, back flat against it. Her stomach was in knots and she was doing her best to suppress the thrill that was so desperately trying to peak through.

“Well I would’ve called but you blocked me.” He settled into the brick porch, leaning his shoulder into the door, as if it made him any closer to her.

“Maybe you should have taken that hint.” She laid her head back, eyes closed, willing herself to get up and go back to the couch; to eat her ice cream and finish her movie and go to bed and pretend this was just another futile dream.

Max fell quiet at that. He had been trying; he really had. He crawled back to the life he had blown up with his tail between his legs and tried to accept that it was over. And his efforts at seeming unaffected to everyone around him were valiant - they worked for a while, and they probably would have continued to work if he had been sleeping at night. But a month of sleepless nights took its toll, and his perpetual bad mood was making him hugely unpleasant to be around. The news that she was moving just pushed him over an edge. An hour of staring at the ceiling in bed and he finally cracked, jolting upright and barely stopping to throw on a shirt before he got in his car.

“I can’t stop thinking about you.”

“Go home, Max.” She pushed off the floor to get to her feet and he could hear the movement on the other side of the door, scrambling to get to his feet himself.

“I got your shoes fixed.” He offered, holding up the bag in his hand like she could see it through the door. She stilled, brows furrowing. “You left them in my room after...” Trailing off, he ground his heel into the porch. It was a blatant tactic; they both knew it...but that was her favorite pair of shoes...

“You fixed the heel?” She breathed cautiously, almost not wanting to hear the answer, and Max closed his eyes in a relieved breath.

“I’ve got a guy.” That guy was his mom but none-the-less, it was fixed.

Ever so slowly, she creaked the door back open, bracing herself. She could accept the shoes and tell him to leave. That was well within her power. Presumably. She held out an expectant hand, trying not to let her eyes wander anywhere beyond the bag in his hand. His hands that were absolutely not distracting to her at all.

“Not even a ‘thank you’?” He gave her a lopsided grin that she ignored, just jutting her hand out more insistently.

“Do you think that this fixes anything?” She sat back on her heel, her other hand clung to the doorknob, ready to slam it shut at a moments notice.

“Well maybe not fixes…per say, but bit of an olive branch?” He suggested but the silence that hung in the air afterwards told him it wasn’t cutting it. Extending his hands, he offered the bag up to her.

“Thank you for bringing me my shoes. Drive safe.” She responded finally, taking the bag and swinging the door closed, but Max caught it this time, stopping it from closing. Riley panicked, trying hard to slam it shut, his fingers be damned.

“Riley, come on. I came all the way out here, please can we just talk? Five minutes, that’s all I’m asking.” He held her gaze through the small opening left in the doorway and she froze to the spot. It was a bad idea. Giving him any opening was giving him too much leeway.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Five minutes and then I swear to god I will leave you alone for the rest of my life.” He insisted and Riley hesitated. She had locked herself away with all these thoughts after making her escape from his hotel room and it had made for a jumbled mess of unchecked emotions.

“Five minutes.” She finally conceded and he let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. “I’m setting a timer.”

Reluctantly letting the door ease open, she dropped the shoes on the entry table and retreated, hoping to keep a buffer between them. She started down the hall without waiting for him - he knew his way around. Stopping short before heading to the kitchen island, visions of their last night together slammed back into her brain. She decided the living room was safer than the kitchen.

“Think I could get a glass of water?” He lingered just outside the entrance to her kitchen. He was pushing his limits but sometimes that was what he did best. Riley rolled her eyes, sitting back on her hip.

“I already agreed to five minutes. Now you need a drink too? What is this, ‘If You Give A Mouse A Cookie’?” But she was already breezing past him into the kitchen, despite her objections. Max grinned, leaning against the arched doorway.

“Yeah, you know what they say.” He watched her as she struggled to reach a cup in her cabinets - same as always. “If you give a Max five minutes, he’ll ask for a glass of water…” Riley suppressed a smile. She wasn’t charmed by him. She wasn’t. She could will that into reality. “And if you give a Max a glass of water, he’ll probably need to use the bathroom, and if you let him use the bathroom, you’ll make him feel welcome in your home, and you’ll have to let him stay forever.” She got her pitcher of water from the fridge and poured it halfway up his cup.

“Only half a glass, then. No bathroom use allowed.” She seemed like she was teasing but her face was stoic and Max was having a hard time placing where her head was at. Hell, she was having a hard time placing where her head was at.

“You’re missing out.” He cocked his head but Riley just passed the glass to him and breezed past him into the living room.

“I’ll survive.” She sat down in the single chair, crossing her legs. The couch was much too dangerous. As Max came around to sit on the loveseat nearest to her, she fiddled with her phone, pulling up an alarm.

“Are you seriously setting a timer?” He leaned over to see as she placed it on the coffee table in front of him. Glancing over, he noted the bowl of ice cream that was melting, then up at the Sex in the City reruns that were up on her tv.

“Deadly, and it starts now. So I recommend you skip past the cute comments and make whatever point you wanted to make, so I can get on with my evening.” She said, leaning forward into his space to press start on the timer, and Max caught the scent of her shampoo, sending something shuttering inside him that withered the cute comment he was going to make about how exciting her evening looked. The timer ticked down. His brow furrowed and the corner of his lip twitched.

“You’re selling the house?” It tumbled out before he could stop it and her face scrunched for a moment. She had imagined him showing up on her front porch a hundred times in the last month; she had made herself thinking he was going to come chasing after her. But in all the times she had pictured it, this was never his leading point.

“You drove over an hour, after midnight, to demand five minutes…all to ask about my real estate dealings?” Her brow raised. It may not have been what she expected but it was easier than his apologies and guilt. Max shrugged and she shook her head. “Yeah, I’m selling the house.”

“Why?” His voice was soft and genuine and it unsettled something deep in her chest. Her head tipped from side to side; there were a lot of reasons she was selling this place, she just needed to figure out the safest reason to admit to him.

“Because my show is over and my chances of finding something new are drastically higher in Los Angeles than New York.” It was simple; clean. It made sense; in fact it was hard to argue with. So why did it feel like such an excuse?

“You’re moving to LA?” Max felt like he’d had the wind knocked out of him. If he picked up on how phony her reasoning felt coming out of her mouth. he didn’t show it. His finger tips felt numb. “There’s plenty of acting jobs in New York.”

“Not nearly as many and usually not as good.” She held her tongue about the ghosts of her bad decisions that haunted every inch of this house. She knew that if she even hinted that this move was more about her need for a fresh start, he was going to be able to needle his way in until she couldn’t think straight. And this felt like the first time she had been thinking straight in years.

“But you love this place.” He finally took a moment to look around. It was staged for viewings but, underneath it all, it was still the same. From the vinyl records in the corner to the vintage chair she was sitting in, but also in the bones of the old townhouse, those great wide beams that stretched across the ceiling and the hundred year old floor boards. He was with her when she first toured this place when she was finally ready to move out to Manhattan; he watched the way the pieces clicked into place when she stepped inside. It was instant for her.

“Well sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to do.” She meant for it to sound like she was being mature, but it felt oddly petulant coming out of her mouth.

“Do you, though?” He took a sip of his water, trying to occupy his hands anyway he could. Riley tilted her head, brow inching up. “Do you have to?” Her face fell, jaw shifting. “I mean, have you even tried finding something here?”

“I don’t need to try. I got lucky the first time and that’s not going to happen again. There’s nothing left for me in New York.” She focused her gaze down on the ice cream that was melting on the table. Max wet his lips, brow furrowed, before he shook his head.

“Riley...” He pleaded, trying to voice a dozen things with just her name, but her eyes snapped to him, narrowed. She understood perfectly what he was trying to say.

“Don’t. Don’t even try to pretend you’re a reason to stick around.” She snapped with the smallest shake of her head. Her chest ached and she glanced down at the timer. Three and a half minutes. She could handle another three and a half minutes. Then she could put this behind her.

“I could be.” He was more serious than she had ever seen him and something rolled in her stomach. Maybe three and a half minutes was too long. “But you shouldn’t stay for me.” Their gazes lingered on each other, the stillness in the air rippling through them. “Stay for you because you love this city and you love this house and because California is a wasteland.”

“California is beautiful.”

“It’s not New York.” He pinned her down with his eyes and she squirmed, struggling to meet his gaze.

“Well I think...New York and I have outgrown each other.” She said, finally looking up at him, and Max couldn’t help but feel like she was talking about more than just New York.

“Not possible.” He said definitively. “Soulmates don’t outgrow each other.” He watched her swallow, fingers toying with the seam on the couch cushion. That was a lofty word and it was difficult to pretend he was talking about the city. He thought he had laid all his cards on the table back in his hotel room but dozens of nights laying awake gave him plenty of time to think about all the things he didn’t say. In the moment he felt like he had bared his soul out to her but, thinking back, he wasn’t sure he said anything substantial. God, she jumbled his brain.

“Then maybe we aren’t soulmates.” She couldn’t stop the hurt from seeping into her voice. It didn’t matter what she wanted, some things just weren’t meant to be.

“Bullshit.” He stated like it was indisputable. Because to him, it was. Whether he was talking about himself or New York, it was bullshit. This is where she was meant to be. “You were made for this city. You’ll miss snow too much if you go to California.”

“I’ll live without it.” She looked away from him, eyes fixed on a small plant on the bookshelf on the other side of the room.

“Yeah? How many of the things you love are you going to leave behind when you run this time?” He abandoned all sense of pretense and her eyes snapped back to him. He was running out of time. In under three minutes, he needed to either convince her to stay or weasel his way into more time. The pressure was building in his chest. Riley scoffed, uncrossing then recrossing her legs, sitting back in her seat.

“You won’t get me with that twice.” She insisted with a small shake of her head, ignoring the tug at her gut that it caused. “Sometimes running is the smartest thing you can do.” No matter how many times she repeated it to herself, she couldn’t manage to get it to sink all the way in, though. “I’ve seen enough of your wrestling career to know that.” She deflected. Ever the masochist, she had found herself tuning in lately. Max’s brow furrowed, face scrunching up.

“That is not the same and you know it.”

“How is it not? I’m running from a fight, just like you do.”

“Okay, first of all,” He held up a finger. “I don’t run from fights, I make strategic decisions to conserve my energy.” He defended with exaggerated hand gestures, and she rolled her eyes. Her mouth opened to protest that she was doing the same thing, but he continued before she could. “Second of all, I’m not trying to fight you.” His voice was softer this time, more genuine, and it knocked her off balance.

“Yeah, then what are you trying to do, exactly?”

That was the question, wasn’t it? It always was. What did Max want? He may not have had an answer if he was asked a few years ago but he didn’t have to think anymore. He had done enough of that for a lifetime and it always led him to the same place.

“I’m trying to spend my life with the only person that has ever mattered to me at all.” He came all this way; none of it meant anything if he didn’t lay it all on the line. And the look on her face, even if for just a few stunned seconds, was enough to make it worth it, because he could see, at her core, that she wanted it as badly as he did. But then, oh boy, did her expression shift quickly, into something much colder than he had hoped for.

“Really? So Kelsey didn’t matter to you?” Her voice wasn’t angry but it was certainly frosty, and Max shrank back. “You were living together but she didn’t matter at all?” For the past month, her emotions had been all over the map but she kept coming back to that sickly guilt. That look on Kelsey’s face when she looked back at Riley - she knew that pain, she had worn that face, and she was angry that Max made her inflict that face on another person. He sighed, scrubbing his hands over his eyes, then back through his hair.

“Not compared to you.” He knew that wasn’t fair to Kelsey but it didn’t change the facts. The moment he saw Riley walk into that bar, Kelsey may as well have stopped existing.

“That’s not how it works, Max! You lived together, she trusted you! Why would you move in with a person that you don’t care about?”

“Because you were gone!” He shouted back, barely containing the urge to jump to his feet. “The same reason I’ve ever been with anyone - because I couldn’t be with you!”

“To what end?” She was frustrated and her chest was aching and she was stumbling down that same impassioned path that always brought her to ruin but she didn’t know how to stop. “If we hadn’t run into each other at that convention, how long would you have stayed with her? Would you have married her? Even though you don’t care about her?”

“Would you have married Lucas if he’d ever manned up and bought a ring?” He demanded and Riley’s eyes narrowed. “I was following your lead, Riley. Always. For the last twenty fucking years I’ve just been following your lead and you know what, maybe I would have married Kelsey.” He tried not to falter when he saw the way her face shifted. “Or maybe it wouldn’t have been her. Maybe it would have been some other girl I don’t care about. But it was always going to be some girl I don’t care about unless you came back into my life. And it would have been the same for you - just rotting away in some pointless fucking marriage, sitting awake at night, knowing that it was never going to touch what we have here.“

Riley sat back in the chair, swallowing hard and trying to keep her breath from noticeably trembling. This was too much. She knew letting him inside was asking for trouble. Any time around him was too much time around him. She was immensely grateful for the distance her chair was providing, unsure she would have been able to keep her head on if he was any closer.

“So what do you suggest, then?” Her voice was barely a squeak, legs knocked out from under her. Max swallowed hard and she watched his adams apple bob before he captured her gaze.

“Marry me.” Said without a hint of irony. Riley felt her spine turn to jelly, skin buzzing.

“What?”

“Marry me, Riley.” He rooted around in his pocket for a moment before brandishing a loose ring and sinking off the chair, to the floor between them. Fire raged through her bloodstream, catching on every raised hair of her arms. “No more fucking around. No more wasting time. This is where we’re supposed to be and we both know it. So marry me.” There was no time to think through the words flying out of his mouth. They weren’t the ones he had so perfectly practiced in the car but they were out now and there was no taking them back.

And the blood was pumping so strong in her head that she couldn’t hear herself thinking. A life with Max. How long had she been dreaming about that? Surely since before the make-believe weddings they held in her backyard when they were seven and life was easier. Her eyes drifted to the ring, clutched between his fingers, nearly trembling as he held it out to her, and she recognized it in an instant. Almost twenty years later but it was hard to forget the ring that got Max grounded for the first time after he stole it out of his mom’s jewelry box. He wasn’t allowed to watch wrestling for a month after that but the picture of her with that ring, in her prettiest dress out in the backyard, with him in his dad’s suit jacket, was one that was pinned to her dresser for most of her life. The fond warmth that crept through her dulled the feelings that had been threatening to suffocate her. A life with Max...

But then the alarm on her phone echoed through the electrified silence of her house and she snapped back into her body. He reached for her hand but she snatched it back, pulling her legs up off the floor and retreating as far back into the chair as she could get.

“No.” She said with a finality but none-the-less followed up with, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no.“ Ice water flooded through Max’s veins as he sat back on his heels. “Have you lost your mind?”

“Why is that so crazy?” He looked up at her from his defeated position on the floor, eyes so genuine it made her chest ache.

“You want a list?” She practically laughed and he shored himself up quickly.

“Yeah, I think I do, actually. Tell me why we shouldn’t get married.” He replied, as if this wasn’t a completely outlandish thing to do. And maybe he was sleep deprived and floundering a little bit but he knew this was right.

“Well for starters, we’ve barely spoken in the last four years.”

“So what?” He crept forward on his knees until he was against her chair. “I have thought about you every single day for the last twenty years.” She stayed, recoiled as far back in the chair as she could get, as if his touch would singe her skin. “And I’m gonna think about you every day until the day I die.” He pressed his luck, finger trailing, light as air, up her bare calf, sending electricity skittering out through her veins. “And I’m pretty sure you’re thinking about me too. So why are we wasting all this time fighting where we’re supposed to be?”

“Thinking about each other isn’t enough.” She shook her head like she was convincing herself too.

“You’re right, it’s not. We should be doing way more than thinking about each other.”

“That’s not what I-”

“We should be living with each other, cooking with each other, waking up next to each other, spending our lives together.” He laid his palm, warm and strong across her knee, and she struggled to swallow. “Aren’t you tired of the constant effort it takes to stay away from each other? I feel like I’ve been swimming upstream for years now and I’m just…really exhausted.” His hand pulled away from her and she sucked in a breath at the loss, watching as he lifted himself up to sit on the edge of the coffee table, directly in front of her. Her brain was sending out alarm flares but the way he was looking at her was much louder.

“Max, please...” She wasn’t entirely sure what she was asking, all she knew was this moment was excruciating, and it was all too much. And now he was so close and, god, that look...

“Tell me you don’t want a life with me.” He didn’t give her the time to decide what she was asking. “Tell me you don’t want Sunday Morning Pancakes and shower duets and nights curled up watching your trashy reality tv together until I end up annoyingly invested.” She couldn’t pretend she didn’t. She might have been an actress but Max knew how to see through her.

“It’s not that simple.”

“We can make it that simple!” He exclaimed, trying to reach for her knees again but she flinched this time, worried she would burst into flames if he touched her again, and he sat back. “The only thing standing in our way is us. If we want this, all we need to do is take it.” Holding her gaze was an Olympic sport sometimes but he was performing exceptionally well. “I know you want this too, Riley. You told me as much last month.” Finally, she stopped avoiding his gaze, eyes glued right to him. He didn’t have a right to use the things she had said that night against her.

“Yeah, then I woke up and met your girlfriend. Suffice to say, my plans changed.” She didn’t sound angry and he almost wished she would be. She was almost easier to handle when she was yelling at him, but she only sounded hurt and that was something that made his stomach ache.

“Look, I fucked up, I know. Okay? This obviously isn’t how I wanted this to play out.” He leaned in as close as he could get but she only scowled at him. “I need you to understand, I was fully planning to head home and pack my shit up at Kelsey’s. I hate that it went down like this but my protocol is, and always has been, to drop everything the second you become an option. I knew going in that things with her could end like this.”

“Oh, well isn’t that nice? Did you ever think that maybe you should let me know about your relationship?” She scowled and he just wet his lips, stammering for a response.

“I know…I know I should have but I knew that was my only shot at this and that you would have run the second you heard about Kelsey.” He heard it coming out of his mouth and wondering how he thought that would make for a good defense.

“Oh really, you thought that maybe I might not behave the same way if I knew you were in a serious relationship? So weird.”

“Okay but that what I’m saying! It wasn’t a serious relationship - it was always going to be second to anything you and I have.” He tried to sway her, his hands warm on her knees but the withering look she gave him had him retreating.

“How sweet. Did you let Kelsey know that or was that just supposed to be a fun surprise for her one day?” She demanded and he was suddenly regretting his words and location as she unfurled her legs down to the floor.

“I mean...I feel like she must have known from the way I talked about you.”

“Right, the unspoken exception to the rule.” She scoffed, parroting back his own words from that night, and Max winced. This was not going to plan. “Was it as implied to her as it was to me?” He heaved a breath, eyes begging for an understanding he wasn’t due. His fingers tapped repetitively along the edge of the table and he fumbled for a response.

“I’m not gonna deny that I fucked this up on a major scale. But I can’t change that anymore and I’m not about to fuck it up more by letting you walk out of my life again.”

“People get hurt when we’re around each other, Max! I can’t hurt anyone else.”

“People only get hurt when we’re trying to fight what we have!” He shot back and Riley stilled for a moment. “We just need to close off the circle and other people don’t have to get caught in our crosshairs.” She was quiet at that, her mouth opening and closing a few times.

“Well maybe I don’t want to be caught in the crosshairs either.” Her quiet admission was stinging but Max cocked his head, brow heavy.

“I’m not firing at you, babe. Never have, never will.” He held her gaze with a pleading look.

“And yet, we’ve both managed to hurt each other plenty.” She shook her head decidedly. “If I stick around here, we’re only going to end up hurting each other again.”

“We’re hurting each other by staying apart. How is that any better?” He demanded, leaning toward her. “At least this way we’ve got a shot at being happy.”

“Well maybe we don’t deserve to be happy.” Her face was weary and Max could instantly see every ounce of guilt that she had been marinating in for weeks.

“That’s crap.” He didn’t hesitate. “Making ourselves miserable doesn’t undo what I did to Kelsey or what we did to Jonah. And it’s definitely not going to undo what we’ll do to the next unsuspecting sucker that has the misfortune of being around us the next time we snap and wind up together.”

Riley was quiet, eyes locked with his, her heart hammering in her chest and echoing in her ears. Her breathing was erratic, his scent filling her nose. How did he do this to her every time.

“What else am I supposed to do, Max? I can’t trust you.” She wet her lips, teeth just barely grazing over her bottom lip. It stung more than he expected to hear that.

“Yes you can. I swear to fucking god, I am all in on us, Ry.” He gestured to the ring, still clenched tight between his fingers. “Just give me one chance to show you that I’m right when I say we’re meant to be together.”

“Max...” She warned but he was already out of time. He wasn’t leaving anything left unsaid.

“I swear, the first, smallest indiscretion and you can kick me to the curb. If I don’t unload the dishwasher when I’m supposed to or I forget to take something out for dinner, you can ship me out with no fight. But please, just give me that chance.”

“I already gave you a chance.”

“Come on, that doesn’t count!” He pleaded, his hands warm as they covered her knees, the ring pressed into her skin. She wanted to shove them off but couldn’t bring herself to move that warmth. “We never even got started. I promise you, you spend even a couple days being with me, the way we were always supposed to be, you’ll never look back.”

That was almost what scared her most, though. She knew that this dive was one she would never recover from. If she let her guard down and gave him that chance, there wouldn’t be anything she wouldn’t overlook. Because she knew that it would feel right. She knew it would feel like finally coming home and that feeling was going to be too good to deny, no matter what he did. It would be cutting the last remaining thread of her self control and that was a dangerous line to cross.

“I can’t marry you, Max. That’s insane.”

“Then take an insane fucking leap of faith with me.” His thumb rubbed half circles over the edges of her knee and it obliterated a few braincells. “Tell me this doesn’t feel right.”

“That’s not the point…” She was exasperated and everything about him was starting to invade her senses. The feeling of the ring pressed into her was dizzying and distracting.

“No, it is the point. The point is that this feels right because it is right.” He dared to let his hands glide past her knees, smoothly journeying up her thighs, dragging the edge of the stones into her soft flesh. Her breath caught in her throat, eyes fluttering shut for just a fraction of a second, and she tried to ignore the fire that burned low in her belly. “We shouldn’t have to work this hard to stop thinking about each other.” His voice was raspy and hypnotic, her brain tearing itself to pieces to try to hold onto that last thread. “You told me you loved me, Riley. Did you mean it?” It was hard to breathe, his face inching closer and closer to hers.

“I wasn’t in my right mind.” She shook her head, latching desperately onto the unyielding anger she was feeling when she said that. The way she had been left feeling gutted like a fish. How that confession was a dying gasp from an overtired, overstimulated, over emotional girl.

“I think you were in your right mind. I think you said what you’ve been dying to say for the last ten years.” He wet his lips and her eyes snagged on it, digging her teeth deeper into hers. But that anger she’d felt back on that morning in the hotel was still lit in her stomach.

“I said what you didn’t have the balls to say.” She narrowed her eyes and Max stilled. “What you still haven’t had the balls to say.” Scoffing, she shook her head and it devolved into a full laugh. “You’re here with a fucking ring but you’ve still never said you love me.” And Max sat back, finally clearing her personal space, and she could breathe again. “This is a joke. We’re not meant to be together, Max, we’ve just got no self control. Go home.”

She stood up forcefully and eeked past him out of the living room, buying herself as much space as possible. Max’ chest was seized as he looked at the empty chair where she once was. He wanted to say the words. He had tried practicing saying it as part of his speech, on the car ride here but tried not to overthink it when he couldn’t get them out. But now he was wishing he had pushed himself because now he couldn’t make his mouth work. He couldn’t even make his feet work. He heard her hand rattling the front door and he jumped into action, shoving the ring back into his pocket.

“Riley, please...” Was all he managed as he headed around the corner, into the hall to the front door, where he saw her waiting expectantly with the front door held open.

“No, I said five minutes and you got way more than that, like always. Now its time to go.” She tried to sound unwavering but her voice wasn’t cooperating. Max slowed, halfway down the hallway, brow furrowed heavily as his tongue traced over his lip.

“Ya know, when I was growing up, my dad took me out to get my first shave.” He leaned back on his heels and Riley rolled her eyes with a huff, not budging from her spot by the door. “And he sat me down and told me ‘Kid, there are two things you gotta know about love: the first is how to know you’re in it.” Max scrubbed a hand over his mouth. “He said, ‘That’s important, but thankfully it’s easy.” He took a breath, eyes intent on her, “It’s hard to miss because its in everything - the way your skin...buzzes when they’re around; the constant magnetic pull to be near them,’” He drifted toward her but she kept a trembling hand on the open door, “’The ache in your chest that tells you to follow them anywhere. Its unmistakable and it can’t be ignored.”

He was inching toward her so slowly she might not have noticed if she wasn’t so laser focused on him. Her mouth was dry and struggling to form the words to tell him to stop. She felt frozen to the spot, anchored to the door as a final lifeline.

“The second thing, he told me, which was arguably more important, was to know when the timing was right.” He swallowed hard before licking his lips.

“Max...” She warned but he disregarded it.

“Do you remember when we used to have those neighborhood-wide night time manhunt games?” He diverted her and her eyes fluttered shut for a moment with a sigh before she finally nodded. “There was a game one night, not long after that talk with my dad. Derek Flynn teamed up with the Anderson twins and was decimating all the usual hiding spots.” Riley’s body deflated a little with a whisper of a smile flitting across her lips.

“The night they broke Mr. Garvey’s antique lawn statue and he chased them down the road with a wiffle ball bat?” She bit the corner of her lip to hold back the grin that was dying to peak out.

“The very same. But before that happened, I had been chased from the reliable spot behind Ms. Allander’s pool shed and forced to flee into the woods.” He watched the understanding dawn behind her eyes before being fogged over by confusion. Her arm lowered slightly on the door without her noticing. “I found my way to the fort we had made not long after you moved in. It couldn’t have been more than two minutes later before you came barreling down into the cramped space with me. You knocked me over, not realizing I was in there, and then swung both hands around like you were gonna hit me.” Her lips twitched as she remembered the night, the memory so vividly fresh she could practically hear the buzz of the cicadas. She had just narrowly avoided being caught down by the docks and run straight there - the safest place she could think of, somewhere that was just for them. “But then you recognized it was me and you got this dreamy little smile that I could barely see in the dark, and you laughed before pulling me into this tight hug like you had never been so glad to see me in your life. Then you handed me a nerf gun.” He said with deathly serious, and she blew out a breath that wasn’t enough to conceal the smile she had. “And I knew in that second what I have never questioned since - that my dad was right.”

Riley’s hand dropped to the doorknob and she wet her lips, staring, wide-eyed back at him. Her heart was in her throat as he crept closer to her, hair raised all across her arms. His pulse was hammering away, and he swallowed as he got just outside of arms reach of her.

“I have known that I’m in love with you for half my life already, Riley.” He confessed and it felt like time screeched to a halt. The clock ticked on the wall and the kitchen sink dripped and her chest swelled out of control. A tingling started in her chest but quickly spread down her arms until her grip slipped off the doorknob. She drew in a ragged breath, her pulse racing out of control. “And I’m tired of waiting for the timing to be right.”

He took another step closer and gave the front door a nudge to push it the rest of the way closed. Riley watched him, chewing a hole through her lip, frozen, desperately fighting against the way his words were lighting her up like a Christmas tree.

“Now, i’m gonna ask you again.” He kept his palm flat against the front door and angled his body toward her, a few mere inches between them now, and that was close enough for fire to catch. “Did you mean it when you said you loved me?”

His eyes were glued to her, intense and desperate and uncharacteristically vulnerable. The dark bags under his eyes were particularly visible this close and she wondered if hers were as bad. It had been a sleepless few weeks for her as well. Weeks of staring at the ceiling, spinning in circles in her mind, thinking about what could have been and how they ended up here. She knew, even as angry as she had been in that moment, that she meant it. Even if she hadn’t, she would be lying if she said she didn’t love him, then and still. Those feelings were burrowed so deep in her, she wasn’t sure she would ever be free of them.

“It doesn’t matter. It’s not enough, Max.” Her voice was as devastated as she felt. She had been wanting to hear this for so long but it was too late now.

“It’s plenty.” He insisted but she was already retreating toward the wall.

“I’m moving to California.”

“Then I’ll come with you.” He didn’t miss a beat and she shuttered a sigh. Her stomach was turning, this all suddenly feeling too real. “Or better yet, just stay.” His voice turned pleading, starting to match a tenth of what he was feeling.

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I can’t.” She said as if that was ever going to be an acceptable answer to him.

“But you can. You can do anything you want.” He took a tiny step toward her. “I love you, Riley.” His eyes were glued to her, bared and genuine and maybe even a little scared. “Do you love me?” And maybe it was the look on his face, or maybe it was the lack of sleep this last month, or maybe it was the fact that his scent was clouding her head as he got close enough to touch, but she couldn’t bring herself to lie.

“Yes.” She breathed the word into the space between them, a lifetime of baggage hanging from it.

“And do you want a life with me?” He dared to move in dangerously close, mere centimeters separating them now, and the smell of her shampoo made his eyes flutter shut for just a moment. His stomach was running itself through a spin cycle as she hesitated, looking up at him with those wide, panicked doe eyes.

“I don’t even know what that looks like, Max.” She said finally, shaking her head. Their relationship was always just transient - she couldn’t picture what security with him looked like. As alluring as the life of cooking dinner together and shower concerts was, she knew that morning always came when it came to Max and that was a pain she couldn’t subject herself to anymore.

“It looks like finally coming home.” He said and her eyes were locked on him, warmth curling around in her belly, making itself comfortable. “It looks like laughing so hard we can’t breathe and dancing to show tunes on a rainy afternoon and waking up to my face between your legs. It looks like you being the center of my goddamn universe because you are.” Heat raced up her cheeks and he stepped into her, a hand brushing over the strand of hair that was dangling by her face, sending electricity pulsing through her skin, and her eyes fluttered shut. “It’s what we were so fucking close to before Lucas and Kelsey and all this stupid bullshit. And I don’t know about you, but that ‘what-if’ is the one that keeps me up at night. You’re the one that keeps me up at night.” His rough fingers gripped her chin, tipping it up, urging her to meet his eyes. “Tell me you don’t want the chance to see how it feels to give this an honest-to-God shot. To really do it right this time.” The heat of his body this close to her was intoxicating and her legs were starting to feel a little insufficient. She struggled to feel like there was breath in her lungs and the sheer number of thoughts ping-ponging across her brain was debilitating. Skin prickling head to toe, she wet her lips, blinking back at him, willing an answer to come out - any answer but the one that was begging, shaking at the gates, to come out.

Because, God, she did want that chance. She spent more nights than she would have liked, staring at the ceiling, thinking about what could have been if it weren’t for a million different things. But that was always the problem; there were a million different things that stood in the way, some his fault and some hers, but in the end, they were still in the way. Now, though, there was no one standing in their way anymore and she was running out of excuses. Her mile high wall of reasons had been whittled down to a measly few bricks and Max was kicking them over faster than she could layer them back up. And beyond that wall, there was nothing left but the fact that she was scared. Just positively terrified of ending up like her mother, bitter and heartbroken and lonely for the rest of her life. She knew plainly that Max had the potential to absolutely ruin her in a way she would never recover from, but when he looked at her the way he was looking at her right then, she kind of wanted him to.

He let his palm slide up her face, cradling her cheek, and she melted into him on instinct. Fuck, that felt good.

“Tell me you don’t want this.” He whispered, breath fanning across her face, and she shivered. “Tell me you don’t know in your bones that this is right.”

“I...” She murmured, his lips just a whisper from hers and she could practically feel the fire licking at her from here. Her breathing faltered, the hazy fog that he brought with him washing over her brain. “I...don’t want to...” But she didn’t move an inch.

“Don’t want to what?” He prodded, lingering close enough to breathe the same air; close enough that she would barely have to move to feel that familiar bliss of his lips on hers. He was taunting her.

“To want this...” She could feel the space heater that was his body thawing her from the toes up as if she’d been left outside in the dead of winter. It was impossible to resist but the longer she let herself bask in that warmth, the more likely it was she would end up burned.

“But?” He lent her the word she was clearly missing and she sighed. Shifting ever so slightly, he let his lips just ghost across hers. Her hands drifted up to his shirt, curling around the soft material, though he wasn’t sure if she was trying to stop him or pull him in closer.

“But I need it.”

She couldn’t physically stop the way she launched at him, arms looping around his shoulders as she met him in a demanding, desperate kiss. His hands latched around her hips without thought, pressing her back against the wall. Her tongue invaded his mouth, needy for the taste of him, and she nearly groaned when she got it. Max’ pants tightened at the muffled noise and he let one hand drift up, under her shirt. The motion sent lightning coursing through her veins, straight through to her core. Her fingers curled up in his hair and he groaned when she tugged at it, biting down on her lip. He thumbed over her pebbled nipple and she hissed out a breath.

“Fuck, Max...” She whined his name and he snapped to attention, hands instantly reverting back to her hips and forcing a few inches between them, despite her whimper of a protest.

“No, no, wait a minute.” He insisted in spite of the way his skin was throbbing from the loss. She had caught him off guard before and his body took over before his brain had a chance to catch up. “What are we doing here, Ry?” But she was already gone, pupils blown with a need he had stoked too much. Her lips curled into a dangerous smile.

“I’m pretty sure you know what we’re doing.” She let one hand trail from his hair, down his neck, and over his chest. Her teeth raked over her already semi-swollen lips. “It’s a game you’re really good at.” She practically purred as her knuckles grazed their way over his stomach until her thumb caught on the edge of his sweatpants. Max swore under his breath, swallowing hard, his fingers digging hard into her hips. He gave a snake-like, swaying shake of his head before snatching her hand that was trying to creep beneath his sweats, holding it firmly in place.

“No more games, beautiful. No more running, no more pretending, no more waiting for the timing to be right. Be with me. For real this time.” He held her gaze insistently. She wanted to argue, she wanted to remember any of the reasons they were bad for each other. But god, if she didn’t just want him more than any reason she could possibly conjure.

“Maaaax.” She whined, fingers wiggling beneath his grip, unable to voice much more. “We don’t need to...” It was much easier to admit she needed him to drive her through this wall than it was to open herself up to dating him. But Max took her hand, pulling it up to his face, gingerly turning it and leaving a lingering kiss on the tender skin of the inside of her wrist that she could feel long after he let her hand fall.

“No, we do, Because I’m not doing this anymore unless we’re doing it right.” He almost sounded like he might actually mean it, even though they both knew he would fold like a house of cards if she so much as batted her lashes. “I need a life with you, Riley. I need to take you out to dinner, and go see a movie so we can fool around in the back row. I need to go to watch you on set while you blow away everybody around you. I need you backstage at my shows, making every last person in the building jealous that they can’t have a love like this. I need to fall asleep next to you every night because now that I’ve remembered how it feels, I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to sleep again.”

Riley’s breath caught in her throat, thighs pressed together to try to quell her desperate need for friction. Her head was clouded by his warmth and his smell and the familiarity that made her feel safe even when they both knew he was her Achilles Heel. He let his body slowly settle back against her, arms supporting his weight against the wall on either side of her until he was the only thing that existed to her. Every inch of her was screaming for something different but every single thing revolved around him.

“Be my girl, Ry. Cuz I’m already all fucking yours.”

Blowing out a shaky breath, Riley stabilized herself, her own recent lack of sleep weighing on the situation. The dull throb between her legs was secondary to the way her heartbeat was pulsing in her ears. There was no slowly wading into the pool with Max; he was asking for a dive right into the deep end. Now it was sink or swim but she was still stuck shivering at the top of the diving board.

“This imaginary life of Pancake Sundays and movie dates sounds like a dream, Max. And I’m sure it would be for a month or two - hell maybe even a year or two.” She swallowed hard, struggling to keep her head above the water. “But what happens when all those promises run out and real life kicks in, and we both end up getting hurt?”

“Then we get hurt.” Max didn’t flinch but she did. “I really don’t think that’s how this goes down, but it doesn’t matter because I’d rather burn to the ground with you after one month, than live the rest of my life without breathing the same oxygen.”

He ghosted the back of his hand across the curve of her jaw, brow furrowed as he looked right through her. Wetting his lips, he leaned ever so slowly towards her and she froze, blinking back at him, breath stalling in her lungs. He stopped just before their lips could brush and began to sink down to his knees in front of her, holding her gaze on the way down. His hands followed his path, featherlight down the curves of her waist and resting at the swell of her hips, fingers bunching in her silk pajama shorts.

“Please, Riley...” He trailed one finger down the back of her bare thigh and she shivered, resisting the way she wanted to buckle when he traced along the inside of her knee. Thick fingers unfurled down her calf until they were wrapped around her ankle. She leaned back against the wall for support as Max lifted her foot off the ground. Moving in closer to it, he spared a glance back at her before laying a slow kiss just beside her ankle bone. His eyes drifted back up to her, trying not to visibly react to the way her face had become markedly more fucked out. “Give this a shot with me.” He laid another kiss just a little higher up her calf and Riley gripped at the wall as if it offered any support. As his eyes met hers again, he watched as she bit down at her lip, his hand meandering up her calf sending electricity shooting up to her core. He set a lazy pace of kisses up her calf until he reached her knee, holding her gaze pointedly. “Tell me you don’t want to be with me.” She met his eyes, head tilting to the side as her tongue dabbed at her lips. Her mouth was dry as she practically panted, watching him as he pulled her legs apart and nestled between them. His hand shifted so he could lift her thigh to his lips, and his fingers brushed the edge of her shorts. He pressed his lips just above her knee and Riley’s hand grasped in his hair for support, her panties getting wetter by the second. “Tell me you’d rather have anyone else in the world between your legs right now.” He didn’t bother to reconnect with her gaze and she was glad because the way her eyes rolled back in her head when he nipped at the inside of her thigh would have given him a firm answer. “Tell me you don’t want me to make you come on my face right now.” His eyes reconnected with hers with a twinkle of mischief, lips not leaving her thigh. Her fingers tightened in his hair, breathing ragged and her core pulsing. She tried to rut her hips towards him but he used his other arm to pin her hips to the wall, and a whine slipped out her lips.

“Max, pleeeease.” Riley practically begged, in spite of herself, and Max smirked against her thigh. She urged his head toward her center by the hair but he resisted with a groan that vibrated against her skin. He glanced up at her.

“Tell me you’re in this with me.” He kissed higher up her thigh, hand shifting to cradle just below her ass, angling her into him. “Tell me you want to try at a life together.” He nipped at her skin just at the edge of her shorts before firmly commanding her gaze, and she squirmed against him. Her chest heaved with her breathing and she swallowed hard. She wanted the imaginary life he was offering but it didn’t feel real. But if that life felt this good, maybe it was worth taking a risk on. His tongue swiped across the skin just beneath her shorts and her knees buckled for just a second before she stabilized, yanking hard at his hair.

“Okay.” She choked out the word and his eyes flashed up to her, fingers digging harder into her skin. “Okay, fuck, I want to try.” Her fingers dug into his hair and she nodded subtly.

“Yeah?” His eyes widened, fingers creeping up to the waistband of her shorts, digging down into them. She nodded more firmly with a cautious smile before she narrowed her eyes.

“I swear to god if you hurt me…”

“You can gave me drawn and quartered in Central Park.” He cut her off, quick to let his fingers curl around her shorts, inching them off her.

“Deal.”

She rushed the word out, hands flying down to where his were trying to pry her shorts off much too slowly. Max didn’t miss her signals, yanking her shorts and panties to the floor at once, guiding one foot out and promptly around his shoulder. He laid messy, open-mouthed kisses up her thigh until he reached her mound, dripping wet from anticipation.

As much as he wanted to wait and tease her until she was shaking and begging, but the smell of her arousal was so familiar and tempting that he wasn’t sure he could refrain a second longer. With a final enamored look up at her, he wrapped both arms tight around the bottom of her thighs, yanking her core straight to his mouth. No easing in, his mouth latched around her lips, licking and sucking at her soaked folds. His head bobbed between her thighs with a symphony of vulgar noises and her head fell back against the wall with a stream of curses and whines. Her hand wound through his hair, pushing him into her harder, her hips jerking against his face as she struggled to stay upright. Max hummed against her clit and her knees buckled.

“Fuck, Max, fuck pleeeeeease!” She couldn’t control the words flying out of her mouth. He reached down, forcing her to try to stabilize herself, brushing the pad of his thumb over her clit. Strumming over her, he let his tongue move in broad strokes across her pussy, his erection quickly beginning to press into his sweats.

“God you taste so fuckin’ good.” He growled the praises into her skin and her legs shook. His fingers slipped down, easing inside her, one then another, and her walls clamped around them. She whimpered when he sucked her clit between his lips. Not relenting in his pressure, he worked his fingers in and out until her body was twitching.

His fingers hooked right up into that spot that he knew made her brain melt. Stroking over the spongy spot, he sucked at her clit, and she shrieked, legs giving out before she could catch herself. But Max didn’t miss a beat, fingers pulling out of her just in time to catch her leg, shifting her weigh until both her legs were up on his shoulders, fully off the ground.

Tongue flitting over her sensitive bundle of nerves as he slowly rose back to his feet, driving her higher up the wall. Her body doubled forward, curling around his head, hands clenched tight in his hair for all she was worth. He lapped at her folds, alternating his speeds as she writhed against him, her cries getting louder and higher pitched.

“That’s it’s pretty girl, gonna come for me?” His words vibrated against her clit and her thighs trembled. “Gonna soak my face? Be a good girl and let me taste how good I make you feel.”

His teeth scraped over her bundle of nerves and she squealed, arching her back until her shoulders collided with the wall. One hand reached aimlessly beside her, desperately looking for purchase when she found the edge of some picture frame. Her hips chased the high she was so close to as her entire body shook.

Max’s strong arms kept a tight grip, curled around her thighs, and he dipped his tongue inside her. Her body grew taut as he fucked his tongue in and out of her. The tip of his nose circled around her clit as he worked her to the edge.

“Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck, Max! Please! Don’t….I need…I…ahh! Oh my god!” Her cries devolved to a babble, her legs scrambling behind his shoulders. Her grip of the picture frame slipped and she vaguely heard the crash of the the glass shattering on the floor nearby. It hardly registered, though, as he sucked hard on her clit and sent her toppling over a cliff. Her body peaked and her eyes rolled back, Max not letting up, his hands keeping her fully supported.

As her soul drifted back into her body, he helped her maneuver her legs down off his shoulders. Supporting her entire weight, he eased her back down the wall, his lips following a slow and lazy path up her stomach as she came down, his fingers snagging in the fabric of her shirt. As her feet finally touched the ground, his lips ghosted across her nipple as it was temporarily exposed on his way up. He didn’t linger, letting her shirt flutter back down as he took her face between both hands, pulling her into an insistent kiss that knocked the breath from her lungs.

The overgrown hair on his face was slick with her orgasm and she could taste it on his tongue when it slipped into her mouth. Her arms snaked around his neck, half to support her still jellied legs, and half because he could never be close enough anymore.

“God, I missed you so much.” he murmured against her lips, face held tight between his hands, and her eyes flashed to his, heated with desire. Her fingers strummed down the back of his neck and his eyes rolled shut for a moment. The wave of relief that was finally hitting him was intoxicating and his chest was heaving with it. Carding his fingers up through her hair, his palm settled at the back of her head. He notched his nose against hers, pressing past the warmth that grew in his stomach from the smile stretched across her face.

“I’ve missed you too.” She said in an overdue confession before pulling him back to her lips, unsure she would ever feel like she could have enough to make up for all the time they missed. His fingers curled in her hair, the other hand dropping to her hip, pulling her flush against him so she could feel his erection pressing into her stomach.

With one arm still slung around his neck, her other hand skated down his chest, then stomach, not stopping before it reached the top of his sweatpants. She reached between their bodies, palming over his dick through the thick cotton and he groaned into her mouth. Her tongue swept into his mouth, silencing him as her fingers wrapped more firmly around his length, rubbing him through his sweats. His grip on her hair tightened, trying to keep pace with her lips as she reached down and caressed his balls.

He gasped at the loss when her hand drifted back up to his stomach, warm as it crept beneath his shirt. Her thumb hooked in the bottom of the fabric, dragging it up until she finally let them break a part so she could pull it off him. Her arms were quick to return to him, one tangling in the hair at the base of his head, the other clung tight to his back. He paused, eyes raking over her hot enough to burn the city down, and her teeth grazed across her lip before they curled into a smirk.

“Well are you just going to stand there or are you going to take my shirt off and fuck me through this wall?” She challenged with a raised brow and she watched the devilish grin rise to his face. Without another second, he yanked hard on her hair, pulling her attention to him, and her belly clenched.

“Ohhh my pretty girl,” he cooed before he bucked his hips hard against hers, driving them against the wall with a delicious thud. “You want me to fuck your sweet little pussy like I own it?” Her mouth fell open, panting as he drove his hips up into her again, urging her legs apart. She nodded eagerly. “You need my cock stretching your cunt until you cry,” He drove into her harder this time, hiking her up the wall, and her legs wrapped around his waist, “fucked so stupid the only thing you can remember is my name?” His hips ground into her bare core, erection throbbing as he rocked it against her. Her head fell back with a throaty moan.

“Fuck, Max, please.” She cried as he bucked into her center.

His lips settled into the crook of her neck, laying messy open mouthed kisses across her skin. Trailing down to the neckline of her shirt, he gripped it with his teeth, using his other hand to tear straight through the front of it, and she gasped. She went to voice an objection but it died in her throat when his lips closed around her nipple. His teeth latched around the bud, pulling it back, and she yelped, arching against him, providing exactly the friction he needed so badly.

Arms wrapped tight around her, he lifted her off the wall, bouncing her against the hard as steel erection that was begging to be buried in her. He fumbled backwards towards the entry table on the opposite wall. Tongue flittering over her nipple, he spun them and managed to get her seated on the edge of the table. Rocking into her center, he moved to the other nipple, licking and sucking and pulling a string of breathy moans from her lips.

Knocking her hips further and further back onto the table, objects around her clattered into each other. Her feet urgently pushed at the top of his sweats but his hips shifted, notching at just the right spot as he ground into her. Strangling cries, she reached for any purchase she could get on the table around her. Her fingers curled around an object but her eyes fluttered shut when his teeth raked across her nipple. The table knocked against the wall in time with his hips, objects clattering to the floor after she arched unexpectedly. She let out a wracked whine, delirious with need, and he grinned into her chest.

Letting his lips trail back up her neck, he stopped to nip at her earlobe before return to her lips. He laid gentle, pain-stakingly slow kisses against her lips and she practically squirmed in his grips. Tongue trailing across her lips and exploring every inch of her mouth, he let his hips drop to a drag up and down her core. Her hips stuttered against his, desperate to up the pace but his hand shot down to pin her in place and she let out a defeated whimper.

“Aww, what’s wrong?” He pouted, his other hand tugging her hair to make her meet his gaze. “Does my impatient little slut need something?” The humiliation burned low in her gut but she was too far beyond it to even register.

“Pleeeeeease, I need your cock, Max, please.” She begged without hesitation and Max pulled her straight to him by the hair, meeting her in a hasty, gnashing kiss.

“That’s my good girl.” He growled into her mouth, releasing her hip to push his sweats down with one hand. “Gonna fucking wreck this perfect pussy, baby.” Getting his cock free, he dragged it through her folds and she whined. “Gonna claim this body so well that people that pass you in the street will know who you belong to.” His cock throbbed against her as he coated himself in her slick. She moaned when he rubbed over her clit, and he pulled her in close until their foreheads rested against each others. “Tell me you love me.”

“Hmm?” Riley’s eyes fluttered, trying to stay open through the haze. Max lined his crown up to her entrance and she blinked back at him with heavy lids.

“Tell me you love me.” He repeated, loosening his grip on her hair, hips rocking shallowly against her entrance.

“I love you, Max.” Her voice was raked over but he heard just fine. Pulling her into a crushing kiss, he jerked his hips, driving them up into her until he was fully seated. Her lips hung open, a silent cry vibrating through her body.

“I love you too, Ry.”

Pulling back, he started a relentless pace from the start. Hammering into her, he yanked her hair back, giving him access to the thin skin of her throat. His thick cock stretched her to her limit at a brutal pace, quickly winding the thread tight in her belly. When his thumb connected with her clit in rough circles, her hands grappled for nothing on the table, sending a lamp to the floor with a crash. She brought a hand up, clinging to his back as he drove into her harder and harder. The thread inside her stretched thinner and her nails dragged down his back, driving him rougher.

The table shook with their motions, colliding with the wall over and over, and he could feel her fluttering around him.

“That’s it, beautiful, taking this cock so nice for daddy. Gonna let me watch you come undone?” His lips were hovering just above her gaping mouth, moans flowing out in time with his thrusts as she hurtled toward her high. “Squeeze this cock, princess. Let me feel you.” He shifted his angle and drove hard into her, brushing her special spot as he heard the ominous crack.

“There! Right there! Don’t stop!” Her head tipped back, legs trembling, and Max obliged, firing his hips into the same spot at a brutal pace.

She felt the vibration from the snap of the table leg before she heard it, one last thrust from Max destabilizing the balance and sending them to the floor. They both groaned amongst the carnage but she couldn’t stop writhing against him, her orgasm so close before it was snatched away.

Cursing, Max shuffled them a few feet away, just to the base of her stairs. After a sloppy, needy kiss, his fingers clutching her jaw, he flipped her so she was leaned over the bottom stair. Gripping tight at her hips, he drove into her from behind and she lurched forward. His arm snaked beneath her, holding her tight to him as he rocked in and out of her, getting even deeper than before. Working up a rhythm, his other hand gripped her hair, tugging it so her back arched.

His hips snapped against her and she pushed back, off pace and needy. Her moans filled the space and Max leaned over her back, breath tickling her ear.

“That feel good, baby?” He groaned, her walls squeezing around him at the words. Nipping at her earlobe, he set to work on leaving another mark on her neck. She moaned her agreement, nails digging into the stairs. “Who owns this pussy?” She squealed when he reached down from her stomach to pinch her clit.

“You do! Fuck! You own this pussy!” She cried out and Max throbbed inside her. His hand drifted from her hair, settling around her throat, giving a trial squeeze. She moaned and snapped her hips back into him in approval, and he squeezed a little harder.

“That’s fuckin’ right I do.” He growled next to her ear. Bottoming out over and over, he strummed across her clit, feeling himself creep closer. “Should fill you up with my cum. Fuck a baby into this perfect body so everybody fuckin’ knows I own it.” Her moans pitched, legs shaking beneath them, but he didn’t relent. “Bet you’d fuckin’ like that, huh? Daddy’s little slut just dripping with my cum.”

“Fuck, yes, Max please I’m so close, pleeeease.” Her body twitched beneath his and he moved his fingers impossibly faster.

“You gonna milk this cock, baby? Come on, come with me, beautiful.”

His pace was punishing as her screams echoed around the hall. Her head was swimming, the pressure on her throat limiting her oxygen until color started to dot her vision. Max pulsed inside her, rubbing just against that spongy spot deep inside and the thread in her belly snapped, sending her brain hurtling over the edge. Then Max released his grip on her throat with a final hard thrust, spilling inside her, and oxygen rushed to her brain in a wave that would have bowled her over if he wasn’t clung so tight.

They stayed there together, shaking over the bottom stair, gasping for breath for what felt like hours. Limbs hit their breaking point and Max reluctantly pulled out of her, thumbing over cum dripping from her entrance as he sat back on his heels. She slumped down flat onto the stairs and he pulled her up into his lap, smoothing her hair down before laying a kiss.

“God, I love you so fucking much.” He whispered into her hair. This felt like the first time in his life he actually felt satisfied. Riley nuzzled into his neck, letting her body weight rest on him. Scattering kisses anywhere he could reach, he squeezed her tight to him.

“I love you too. A lot more than I probably should.” She spoke loftily, her brain still floating somewhere above the Great Barrier Reef. He chuckled into her hair, fingers tickling at her sides and she squirmed with a laugh.

“So is that a yes on the wedding, then?” He prompted, trying not to laugh too hard at her undignified snort.

“Not a chance, baby. Try taking me to dinner first.” She scoffed but he could hear the smile in her voice.

“Okay, so dinner, then marriage, yeah?” He tickled again and she backed further into him as if it would stop his attacks. Shaking her head, she squirmed in his lap. “No? I’m getting some very mixed messages here. I’m going to just have to assume its a yes.” She attempted to argue the point but was cut off when he scooped her up and laid her over his shoulder. Squealing, she thrashed in his arms but he ignored it. “Sorry, can’t hear you. Gotta get to bed, so late. so tired. We can pick this up tomorrow, but for now i’ll jot down that its a ‘yes definitely’ on the proposal.”

He trudged up her stairs with her slung over his shoulder, smacking her butt as he rounded the corner onto the second floor. She squirmed and shouted her objections but she knew as well as he did that she was perfectly content just where she was. And bed with him suddenly sounded like the greatest idea in the history of this planet.

So when he kicked the door to her bedroom open and tossed her down onto the bed, she didn’t fight it. And when he started the long crawl across her king sized mattress, she reached forward to drag him in. Because this was everything either of them ever needed and they weren’t waiting another second for it.

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Beta Read by @daddyhausen

Tags: @fvckingromantic @omg-im-such-a-masochist

#MJF Smut #MJF fanfiction #MJF fic #aew fic #aew fanfiction #wrestling fanfiction #aew smut #wrestling smut #MJF #MJF x OFC

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