#configurable logic | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

pitlanepeach · 2 months ago

Text

Radio Silence | Chapter One

Lando Norris x Amelia Brown (OFC)

Series Masterlist

Summary — Order is everything. Her habits aren't quirks, they're survival techniques. And only three people in the world have permission to touch her: Mom, Dad, Fernando.

Then Lando Norris happens.

One moment. One line crossed. No going back.

Warnings — Autistic!OFC, strong language.

Notes — Welcome to the Radio Silence universe! This chapter is mainly devoted to introducing Amelia as a character, but does have a bit of Lando in it too! Hope you love it.

Want to be added to the taglist? Let me know! - Peach x

2018

Amelia Brown stared at the new plaque on her dad’s office door.

Zak Brown, CEO of McLaren Racing.

She hated it.

Not because she wasn’t proud of him. Of course she was — her dad was brilliant, and he’d worked for years to get that title. It made sense. It was logical.

But the words looked wrong. Off-balance. Too sharp.

The old plaque had been there for years. Zak Brown, Executive Director of McLaren Technology Group. She knew the exact spacing of the letters, the way the light hit the brushed metal in the afternoon. She’d memorised it without meaning to. It had become part of the hallway, part of the routine. Safe.

She shifted her weight from foot to foot, fingers twitching at her sides.

It wasn’t just a new title. It was everything.

The MTC felt different now. The air had a new kind of buzz to it — louder, sharper. People looked at her differently, talked to her like she was someone else entirely. Like being the CEO’s daughter had changed her, too.

The rules had changed, and no one had told her what the new ones were.

—

Her father had been a Formula One fan for as long as she could remember.

V10 engines were her lullaby as a baby; the high-pitched scream of them a strange kind of comfort. Over time, the sound had settled into her nervous system, familiar and grounding.

By the time she was eight, she couldn’t fall asleep without it. Old races playing softly on the TV, the steady rhythm of the commentators’ voices, the roar of the engines, the tension winding through each lap.

One night, when she was ten, the power had gone out during a storm. No TV. No white noise. Just silence and the wind scraping at the windows.

She’d curled up in her bed, fists pressed tight against her ears, trying not to cry.

Then came footsteps in the hallway. Steady. Familiar.

Her dad’s voice followed, soft but certain. “Hey, kiddo. Got something for you.”

He stepped into her room with a dusty old laptop under one arm and a tangle of wires in the other.

Ten minutes later, her princess-themed bedroom was filled with the warm flicker of a grainy screen. The 2005 Japanese Grand Prix. One of her favourites.

She knew the race by heart. Raikkonen’s last-lap pass on Fisichella, the way Alonso danced through the field like he could see gaps before they even opened. She mouthed the commentators’ lines without realising, her breathing slowly syncing with the rhythm of the engine notes.

Her dad didn’t say anything. He just sat on the floor beside her bed, legs stretched out, back against the wall, holding the laptop steady for her to see.

Eight years later, Amelia thought about that night a lot.

She wasn’t stupid. She knew what Formula One had meant to her dad before she was even born. But somewhere along the line, it had become more than just his dream. It had become theirs.

For Amelia, it wasn’t just a sport. It was everything.

Formula One was her special interest; the thing that clicked in her brain in a way nothing else ever had. The stats, the strategy, the evolution of car design, the sound of a perfectly timed downshift… it all made sense when so much of the world didn’t.

It gave her a framework, a rhythm, a language that felt natural.

While other kids played games she didn’t understand, she memorised engine configurations. While teachers scolded her for “zoning out,” she was mentally replaying the 2002 Brazilian Grand Prix, lap by lap.

She could list every World Champion from 1950 onward before she could properly tie her shoes. At recess, when the others were pretending to be superheroes or princesses, she was mapping out imaginary circuits in the dirt with a stick, narrating races in her head with full commentary — down to the tire strategies and pit stop windows.

She tried sharing her passion with her peers, once.

In third grade, she’d brought a die-cast model of a 1998 McLaren MP4/13 to class for sharing time. She’d practised what she was going to say all night, rehearsed the facts in front of the mirror until the words felt smooth. Recited the specs; V10 engine, Adrian Newey’s aerodynamic innovations, Mika Häkkinen’s championship run, over and over.

But when she stood in front of the class, the words tumbled out too fast, too detailed, too much. She was halfway through explaining the brake-steer controversy when a boy in the front row yawned so loudly it echoed, and someone in the back let out a snort-laugh that made her ears burn.

After that, she stopped trying.

Except with her dad.

With him, she never had to translate. She could go on about tire compounds or telemetry data or how ridiculous it was that certain drivers still didn’t know how to defend a corner, and he never told her to slow down or “talk normal.” He just nodded, asked questions, matched her pace.

They didn’t need eye contact or hugs or long emotional talks. They had race weekends. They had side-by-side silence on the couch, watching onboards and live timing feeds. They had post-race debriefs at the kitchen table over scrambled eggs, like it was the most natural thing in the world for an eight-year-old to have such strong opinions about power unit reliability.

It was how they communicated. Racing was their shared language.

Her mom didn’t get it; not really. The noise overwhelmed her. The rules confused her. She once referred to Sebastian Vettel as “the one with the baby face and the weird flag thing,” and Amelia had almost burst into flames on the spot.

But she tried.

She printed out colouring sheets of cars when Amelia was little, even though she could already draw them from memory. She learned to set the TV volume just right; high enough for Amelia to hear the engines clearly, low enough not to overwhelm her. She made snacks on race days and never once complained when qualifying ran late into the night.

Her mom didn’t understand the obsession. But she understood Amelia.

—

Amelia walked into her dad’s office and froze, staring at the shelf lined with trophies, framed photos, and mementos from his years in motorsport. It had been that way for months now, ever since he’d taken the CEO position at McLaren, and every time she had to look at it, her ears burned.

Because the items on the shelf were never in the right order.

The memorabilia was all haphazardly placed; drivers she didn’t like sitting too close to ones she admired. There were racing helmets, but the scale didn’t make sense; one was huge, another tiny, a third just slightly off-centre.

There were photos, too, of her dad with the team, with Fernando Alonso, with the McLaren execs, but none of them were lined up properly.

The shelf, she thought, should be perfect. But it wasn’t.

Reaching up, she slid the first photo frame to the right, just enough to make it parallel with the others. Then the helmet, she shifted it slightly, aligning it with the edge of the shelf.

One by one, she adjusted the frames, the objects, the odd little pieces of her dad’s world that had once felt like a steady part of her life.

She wasn’t sure why it was bothering her so much today. Maybe it was the way everything felt out of sync.

When she reached the second shelf, she noticed a small figure of a car. A McLaren MP4/4. Her dad had given it to her when she was younger, one of the few gifts he’d ever picked out himself. She ran her fingers over the smooth surface of the model before she set it down exactly in the middle of the shelf, just below the first row of photos.

For a very brief moment, it was perfect.

Just a small fix. A temporary escape from the feeling that everything else was slipping out of her grasp.

“Wow. Looks much better.”

Amelia tensed at the sound of her dad’s voice from the doorway.

She hadn’t heard him come in. For a moment, she considered turning on her heel and leaving the room, pretending she hadn’t touched anything. But her dad was already smiling, his eyes crinkling at the corners. He didn’t look upset. He never did; that was the problem. She could never tell how he was really feeling because his face always stayed the same. It was like his expressions were stuck, and no matter how hard she tried to figure it out, she couldn’t read him. It made it hard to know if he was happy, worried, or anything at all. Everything just felt... flat.

“You know,” he continued, stepping further into the room, his hands in his pockets, “I’ve never been great at this stuff. Never really noticed how... messy things can get in here. But I guess you’ve got a better eye for it than I do.”

Amelia couldn’t help but feel a small rush of pride.

She nodded quietly, her gaze flicking back to the shelf. There was a strange sense of uncertainty creeping in, though. “Is it still okay, though?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper. “I mean... Does it still... feel like yours?”

Her dad glanced at her, then back at the shelf, his smile fading just a little. “Yeah,” he said after a long beat. “It still feels like me. And it’s you, too, right? Made you feel better to change things up a bit?”

She just stared at him, unsure how to answer that.

He stepped closer, running a hand through his hair. "I know things feel... different now. I guess I'm still getting used to it, too," he admitted quietly. "But it’s still... McLaren. It's still our world, kiddo."

Amelia’s stomach clenched. She wanted to say more, but the words wouldn’t come. She only nodded, her gaze travelling back to the perfectly aligned shelf.

Her dad placed a hand on her shoulder, his thumb brushing over her skin like a quiet reassurance. She made a small noise of discomfort. He paused, and then tightened his grip. So tight it might make a normal person wince. It just made Amelia let out a relieved breath of air, the pressure good, good, good.

It wasn’t that she hated touch, it was just that it had to be right, had to be just the right amount of force, of contact. Too light, and it felt like nothing at all. Too much, and she’d start to feel overwhelmed, like the weight of the world was pressing in. But this... this was perfect. His hand, firm on her shoulder, grounded her in a way nothing else could.

“Thanks for tidying up,” he said, his voice low but sincere. “I think I might leave it just like this for a while. Feels... good.”

She nodded, the pressure of his hand still there, steady, and it was like she could finally breathe again.

—

The McLaren pit garages smelled of oil and rubber. The fluorescent lights above hummed faintly, and she could still hear them even through the noise-cancelling headphones on her ears. Amelia moved through the space quietly, sharp eyes scanning the flurry of engineers, tire changers, and data specialists working with practiced urgency. Her hands were clasped behind her back, fingers pressed tight against her palms, and her gaze flicked between the monitors, the car, and the teams as they hustled to prepare the MCL33 for its next session.

Her favourite part was always the data. The telemetry displayed on the screens had a rhythm, a language that felt like it belonged to her more than anyone else. The raw numbers, the graphs, the fine-tuned fluctuations of the car’s performance; it all made perfect sense. She knew what to look for.

Her feet carried her forward. She found herself standing near Fernando Alonso’s MCL33, just a few feet away. The car was a beautiful mess of carbon fiber, heat shields, and wires, and it was just sat there, like a puzzle waiting to be solved.

Before the season had even started, Amelia had memorised every part of it, from the aerodynamic tweaks to the engine specs.

One of the engineers noticed her as she lingered, her posture attentive, her expression unreadable beneath the headphones. Everyone knew who she was. Zac’s daughter. A genius, in a multitude of ways.

He approached cautiously, not wanting to startle her. He’d noticed how her eyes narrowed when too many voices clashed together at once, or how she shrunk when people got just that little bit too close.

"Hey, Amelia," he said, his voice calm, not wanting to intrude. She turned toward him, her face still slightly blank, but he could tell by the way her eyes focused on his that she had heard him. “You good?” he asked, motioning toward the telemetry screens just behind her.

Amelia nodded, then hesitated. Her hand hovered for a second before she slowly, cautiously pointed at the screen. Her voice, when it came, was quiet, careful. “I... I think the tire pressures on the front left might be a little too high for this circuit. The temperatures are different compared to last year.”

She didn’t look at the engineer as she spoke. Her eyes stayed fixed on the data, like if she focused hard enough, she could disappear into it. She knew she was right, she was almost always right when it came to this, but the memory of past times, of laughter or dismissal, tugged at the edge of her confidence. She didn’t want to make it sound like she thought she knew more than the team. She didn’t even have a degree.

The engineer just blinked. “I’ll pass it along,” he said, eventually.

Amelia gave a small nod, then quickly turned her focus back to the car, to the numbers flicking past on the monitors. She adjusted her posture slightly, shoulders curling inward, trying to take up less space.

As she focused on the intricate lines of the MCL33, another engineer approached her. He was holding a tablet with a telemetry feed of his own, and without speaking, he offered it to her. Amelia looked at the data for a long moment, her eyes narrowing as she absorbed the figures and readouts. Then, her finger gently traced over the tablet’s screen, pointing to a particularly complex graph of the car’s acceleration over the course of a lap.

“Right there,” she said, her voice soft but clear, though it was a bit muffled by the headphones. "You need to adjust the mapping."

The engineer hummed, impressed but not surprised. “I’ll have the team look into it,” he said, before turning to relay her suggestion to the others.

Her dad was always there, of course, close, watching from a distance, his presence a quiet comfort. But Amelia didn’t need him right now. She just needed the machines, the numbers, and the freedom to study it all.

The engineers moved around her, respecting her space. Always careful not to brush against her, even though she was technically in their way.

When she finally did look up from the data screens, Fernando had stepped into the garage, just a few feet away, in his racing suit, helmet tucked under one arm. He glanced at her, then at the engineers who were quietly working around her.

He approached with a calm, easy presence that didn’t press too hard, didn’t demand anything. “Ah. How is the car feeling, pollita?” he asked, voice light but kind.

Amelia gave a small nod, gaze trained on the Spanish flag on the neck of his fireproofs.

Fernando smiled. Then he turned to the engineers, who were already passing along her observations.

“If she said it,” he said, tone warm and without a trace of doubt, “then yes—keep an eye on the turbo mapping. She is the smart one.”

—

She walked around the paddock often. The garages were fun —fascinating, even— but it could all very quickly become too much. The noise, the flashing lights, the overlapping voices, the sudden bursts of motion.

So she’d slip away. Not far. Just enough.

There was always a McLaren staff member trailing after her. Not hovering, not bothering, just keeping a quiet distance. Just far enough to give her the illusion of independence, a false sense of freedom she chose to believe in. She didn’t mind. As long as they didn’t try to talk, or worse, touch, she could almost ignore them entirely.

She wandered with a purpose that only made sense to her, eyes fixed ahead, headphones still on, the rest of the world muted and manageable. She liked it that way. The paddock, in the quiet bubble of her own world, was peaceful.

That’s when she spotted him.

Lewis Hamilton stood just outside the Mercedes hospitality suite, sunglasses perched on his nose. Roscoe was with him, tail wagging lazily, nose in something that probably smelled like food. Amelia stopped walking, blinked a few times, then changed direction.

Lewis noticed her before she got too close. He smiled, lowering his sunglasses slightly. “Hey, Amelia,” he said, crouching a little as Roscoe trotted forward to sniff her shoes. “Been a while. You good?”

She didn’t answer right away. Instead, she crouched carefully, reaching a hand out to Roscoe but not touching him until the dog pressed his nose into her palm. Only then did she give a tiny nod.

Lewis waited, patient. He was always nice like that.

“How’s Roscoe?” she asked finally, her voice soft and low. One time, somebody told her that she spoke like she wasn’t sure she had permission to do so. Always quiet. Mumbling, if she could get away with it.

Lewis just smiled, warmth radiating in that easy way of his. She liked Lewis a lot. “He’s good. Living his best life. Had a spa day last week. He’s spoiled.”

Amelia looked at the bulldog again, and her tight jaw felt softer. “Good.”

There was a pause. She didn’t move, didn’t say much, but she didn’t walk away either.

“You ever want to walk him sometime, just ask,” Lewis offered, still crouched.

Amelia looked up, eyes wide, the corners of her mouth twitching in what might have been the start of a smile. She gave a small nod.

Then she stood, gave Roscoe one last pat, and turned to leave.

The McLaren staffer fell into step a few paces behind her, still pretending not to be watching too closely.

Amelia looked down at her hand. Grimaced.

Her chest tightened. The feeling started crawling up her skin.

“I need sanitiser,” she said, voice rushed and clipped, a little too loud, a little too sharp. Her hands hovered awkwardly in front of her like she didn’t want to touch anything, even herself.

The staffer blinked once, then immediately fished a small bottle from his pocket and offered it to her without a word.

Amelia snatched it quickly, not too fast, not rude, she told herself, and squeezed a dollop into her palm. She rubbed it in with fast, focused movements. Between every finger. Around every nail. Up her wrists. Twice.

Only when the last of it had dried, leaving that slightly tacky residue behind, did her shoulders drop. The tension in her jaw loosened. The hum in her head began to fade.

“Thank you,” she mumbled, not quite meeting his eyes. She turned back toward the paddock walkway, pressing her clean hands flat against the sides of her jeans, grounding herself in the texture.

—

The MTC’s glass corridors were quiet, filled with the soft echo of Amelia’s footsteps. She liked walking here early in the mornings, before the building filled with noise and movement. The lines were clean, the light was even, and everything had its place.

She turned a corner and nearly collided with someone moving fast; backwards, clumsily trying to zip up his hoodie while juggling an apple and his phone.

Lando Norris. FIA Formula 2 championship runner-up, member of the McLaren Young Driver Programme, widely considered one of the brightest rising stars in motorsport. She knew all of this about him.

He skidded to a stop when he saw her, eyes widening slightly. “Oh, hey. Sorry. Didn’t see you.”

Amelia stared at him for a beat, saying nothing.

“You’re late,” she said plainly.

Lando blinked, then gave a sheepish grin. “Yeah. Kinda running behind this morning. Slept through my alarm. Happens sometimes.”

She tilted her head, studying him like he was part of a data set, eyes narrowed into thin slits. “You’ll never get promoted if you’re always late.”

The words came out blunt, matter-of-fact. She wasn’t trying to be rude, just honest. Patterns mattered. Timings mattered. Discipline mattered. Racing was full of rules, and being late was not acceptable.

Lando laughed nervously, scratching the back of his neck. “Oh. Uh—do you really think I won’t get promoted?”

Amelia didn’t answer right away. She studied him, eyes narrowing slightly, not in judgment but in analysis. She was already calculating, recalling his lap times, consistency, tyre management, race-craft under pressure. She’d watched his F2 season. Not just watched; studied it. He was aggressive under braking, a little rough on tyres mid-stint, but his spatial awareness was excellent, and his adaptability in changing conditions put him in the top percentile.

He was a good fit for McLaren, in her opinion.

“Are you fast?” She asked him, despite already knowing the answer.

Lando blinked. Let out a short, awkward laugh. “Yeah. I mean, I think so.”

She nodded once, satisfied. “Then you’ll be fine.”

With that, she turned and walked away, her stride quick and purposeful, the conversation already filed away in her mind, concluded.

Lando stood there for a second, caught off guard. Smart. Intense. Kind of pretty, too. But brutal. “Right,” he muttered to himself, watching her go. “Cool. Fast. Got it.”

—

Amelia sat cross-legged on her bed in her family home in England, the room quiet except for the electrical hum of her phone charger. Her mom was downstairs, making chilli for dinner, and her dad was still at the office.

She was scrolling through Twitter, quietly, methodically, as she did most evenings. She didn’t get involved much. A few retweets here and there. Articles, stats, insights. She had a good number of followers, mostly people who’d seen her on race broadcasts or encountered her race-day tweets.

But then, her thumb hovered. Lando Norris had tweeted earlier that day. She followed him, of course. She followed every McLaren adjacent account.

She clicked on his profile.

She knew him. Had obviously studied his race-craft.

She scrolled through his timeline, her eyes tracking his tweets one by one.

"Is it just me or does everyone have a friend who thinks they know how to cook but really just know how to burn toast? 😂"

Amelia blinked. She didn’t get it. Was that supposed to be funny? She wasn’t sure that incompetence was amusing.

She continued scrolling, her eyes scanning through the odd mix of jokes, memes, and race-day updates. None of it made any sense. She was used to tweets that were precise, purposeful — like her own. Her posts were methodical, always carefully planned, always factual. Data, analysis, insights. It was how she communicated with the world.

Another tweet.

“Just watched a documentary on the moon landing. Now I’m convinced I could be an astronaut. 😂”

Amelia frowned. There was no mention of racing, no insights into strategy, no talk of lap times or tire degradation. Just... this. She scrolled past it quickly, her thumb moving with a steady rhythm as she returned to her own timeline, where everything was neatly laid out, logical, and to the point.

Maybe she should talk to Lando about using his social media more usefully. After all, he already had such a large following. He could share insights, data, something valuable for his fans. He was a professional driver, for goodness' sake. It could be a way to connect with people, educate them, make them appreciate the intricacies of racing in the same way that she did.

She bit her lip, feeling a small knot form in her stomach. She wasn’t sure if she could just tell him to change. That would be... strange. Maybe even rude.

Two hours later, Amelia sat at the dinner table, poking at her food absentmindedly. Her mom was talking about her day at work, but Amelia wasn’t really listening.

Her dad, always quick to pick up on when something wasn’t right, glanced at her and raised an eyebrow. “What’s going on in that head of yours, kiddo?”

Amelia hesitated for a moment, rolling the words around in her mouth. She wasn’t sure why it was bothering her so much, but the thought of Lando’s Twitter kept circling in her mind, unresolved. “Lando Norris is a terrible tweeter. He needs a social media manager.”

Her dad stared at her for a beat, then burst out laughing. “Ah, that’s just Lando! Fans love him for it. He’s... unpredictable, keeps everyone guessing. People follow him because they like seeing the real him. Jokes and all.”

Amelia didn’t find anything about this situation funny.

She fiddled with her food, the tension in her chest tightening. Why did nobody seem as concerned about this as she was?

Lando was good. A good racer. A worthy driver.

Late. He was always late. He could fix that, though.

Fix, fix, fix.

She clenched her hands in her lap, staring at her plate, her thoughts spinning.

Her mom set her fork down, leaning forward slightly. “Amelia, is it really bothering you, honey?”

Amelia’s gaze snapped up, her eyes wide. “Yes! I don’t understand it. He could be doing so much more—he’s just... joking around all the time. He never posts about his telemetry or his tests. It’s such a waste!”

Her mom nodded patiently. “That’s what you would post about?” she asked, her tone gentle.

Amelia nodded, feeling her thoughts settle into place. “Yes. It’s all there, the numbers, the data. It shows his skills. It’s... more useful.”

Her dad hummed thoughtfully. “I could have a chat with him. Tell him to post more of his racing stats. They are impressive. But I won’t tell him to stop being himself. That’s working well for his image.”

Amelia wrung her hands together under the table, taking small, even breaths. It helped calm her, but the unease was still there.

“I think…” she started, her voice softer now, the edges of her frustration ebbing away. “He is a good racer.”

Her dad smiled at her, a little amused. “You care about his success, huh? Well, that’s sweet.”

Amelia nodded. Then she frowned. Sweet? Why was that sweet? She cared about the success of all the drivers in her dad’s team… not just Lando.

Her mom reached across the table and gave her hand a gentle squeeze. “You’re not the only one who wants him to do well, honey. But maybe let him be him. It’s working for him in his own way, even if it’s not how you’d do it.”

Amelia hummed thoughtfully, picking up her fork. She liked chilli. It was comforting. Simple. Consistent.

She missed the look her parents shared — half concerned, half understanding.

—

Fernando would leave Formula One at the end of the 2018 season.

Amelia didn’t know how to feel about it, or if she should feel anything at all. The news came as a whisper first; just a passing comment she overheard in the MTC, a conversation between her dad and one of the engineers. At first, it didn’t seem real. Fernando had been a fixture of the sport for as long as she could remember. The idea of Formula One without him felt... wrong. He wasn’t just another driver; he was Fernando.

And then, one afternoon, her dad sat her down in his office and confirmed what she had been dreading.

Fernando was leaving.

She found herself pacing around the house, her mind spiralling as she thought about the future of F1 without him in it.

He’d always been so nice to her, letting her into his garage whenever she wanted, no questions asked. There was never any judgment in his eyes when she stared at data screens for hours or rambled on about telemetry. He just... let her be.

He had understood her in a way few people ever did.

She would miss him.

—

Lando Norris and Carlos Sainz. 2019 McLaren Driver Line-up.

She’d expected it. She knew it was coming. Fernando was leaving. So was Stoffel. She’d already processed that. But somehow, seeing it laid out in front of her, seeing it confirmed in black and white, made it feel much more real.

Her dad had sat her down earlier on in the month, his voice soft but steady. He’d said it was a new chapter for McLaren, a step in the right direction.

She put the phone down, the buzzing of it faint in her ears, and stared ahead. The news sat like a heavy weight in her chest. Lando and Carlos. McLaren’s new driver pairing.

—

iMessage — Lewis Hamilton & Amelia Brown

Amelia Brown

I would like to see a photo of Roscoe.

Lewis Hamilton

*insert photograph of Roscoe*

You doing okay, kiddo? Lots of changes happening over there at McLaren.

Amelia Brown

I am fine.

Lewis Hamilton

You're always welcome at Mercedes if you need a breather, yeah?

Toto thinks very highly of you.

Amelia Brown

Because I am so smart?

Lewis Hamilton

Exactly.

—

Amelia sat in the kitchen, scrolling through Twitter as she sipped her coffee. Her nineteenth birthday had come and gone, quietly, without much fanfare.

Her gaze drifted across the screen.

Lando had posted something that caught her attention.

"Why do I feel like I need a vacation, but I also can't leave my bed?"

Amelia blinked at the tweet, trying to make sense of it. She tilted her head, her fingers hesitating over the keyboard. She didn’t understand. Was he… hurt? Why couldn’t he leave his bed? He was supposed to be racing a Formula One car in a matter of months.

With a worried sigh, she typed out a simple response to his tweet.

What does this mean?

She hit send and waited.

A few minutes later, Lando replied.

It’s just one of those random thoughts. You know, like when you’re too comfortable but you also want to escape, but you don’t really? Classic conundrum lol

Amelia stared at the reply, processing it slowly.

She... still didn’t get it. Why would anyone want to leave a comfortable bed just to go somewhere else?

She frowned at the screen for a moment, her eyes scanning the thread, and then she noticed the replies.

“Lando is so sweet to explain it! 💕”

“Aw, he’s always so patient with everyone ❤️”

Amelia’s brows furrowed. Sweet? Patient? She didn’t understand. He was just explaining himself and his terrible analogy. Had nobody else been confused?

She stared at the replies for a moment longer, the confusion deepening. It felt like there was something she was missing.

She felt a small twist of discomfort, the kind she always got when emotions felt too complicated, too layered.

Amelia clicked away from the thread, unsure what to do with the strange tugging sensation that lingered in her chest.

—

That night, Amelia sat on the edge of her bed, her knees pulled up to her chest. She glanced over at her mom, who was measuring her bedroom window. Amelia had asked for black-out blinds, now that the days were getting brighter again.

“When my chest gets tight— and I’m thinking about somebody, and then I see other people saying nice things about them... and it gets, um, uncomfortable— what does that mean?”

Her mom paused, turning to face her. “Well. It can be a lot of things, honey. Depends on the person. Maybe you’re feeling protective, or it could be jealousy. Sometimes, we can feel a lot of emotions physically, and they don’t always have to make sense.”

Amelia blinked, feeling something stir inside her that she couldn’t quite name. The word felt almost too big to say. “Jealousy?” she repeated, her voice barely above a whisper.

Her mom nodded, sitting down next to her. “Jealousy isn’t always bad. It’s just a feeling. Doesn’t have to mean anything.”

Amelia’s mind spun. The word echoed in her head, uncomfortable and unfamiliar.

Jealousy.

Something about it seemed to fit.

NEXT CHAPTER

856 notes · View notes

baldudiable · 6 months ago

Text

Synastry observations

Venus/Mars in the 12th house: Love in this relationship is often unrequited or volatile, as both partners struggle with emotional availability. Mixed signals are emitted, igniting both passion and impatience. The connection is marked by a push-and-pull cycle, with intense romance followed by periods of withdrawal or silence. This connection's eerie, spiritual quality makes it hard for both to let go, even when they know it's unhealthy. One of the partners is put on a pedestal, as the other has trouble seeing them clearly. Their lover's unintegrated traits and talents are projected onto them, giving them a god-like quality.

Moon in the 7th house/Moon opposite Ascendant: The 7th house, opposite the 1st house of the Ascendant, represents relationships. It reflects the qualities we unconsciously disown but seek in a partner to facilitate growth. When the Moon is in this house, she naturally embodies the traits the house person desires in a partner. This allows the moon person to intuitively meet their partner’s needs. At the same time, the Moon feels at ease expressing the qualities associated with the 7th house, encouraging their partner to embrace and reveal this side of themselves.

Sun in the 1st house/Sun conjunct Ascendant: This aspect can benefit a reserved partner who isn't used to receiving attention. The Sun person, likely vocal about their experiences, can help the house person open up. The house person will grow thanks to the Sun's light. Challenges can occur if both have strong personalities and like to be the center of attention. They can feel threatened by the other’s light as they unconsciously feel it diminishes their own.

Moon in hard aspects to Mars: These two share similarities but often in contrasting ways, leading to tension. They have a way of pushing each other’s buttons, resulting in endless fights as both try to prove their point. Mars takes a dominant role in the relationship, while the moon, often unintentionally, triggers Mars’ anger, prompting Mars to initiate conflicts. The Moon may resort to manipulation to get their way, while Mars openly strikes at their vulnerabilities. Their arguments can escalate quickly, becoming intense and violent. As a result, both can end up wounded. This aspect can appeal to those who enjoy being challenged and crave some intensity in their relationships, adding a fiery and unpredictable dynamic.

Sun conjunct Moon: Often called the soulmate configuration, the sun shines a light on the moon person’s inner world. The moon, naturally protective, openly expresses herself as she feels understood by the Sun. The sun has had the same experiences as the Moon, making it act as a guide. They don't hide from one another. Boundaries can easily dissolve as they are most comfortable around each other.

Moon conjunct Mercury/Mercury in the 3rd house: Individuals with these aspects enjoy talking to each other. Their conversations are often lighthearted and seemingly endless, bringing a sense of fun and ease to their relationship. However, this ease of communication can sometimes lead to superficial exchanges. The Mercury person is likely more logical and may struggle with deeper or more emotionally charged conversations. Expressing their feelings can leave them feeling exposed and vulnerable. The Moon person, on the other hand, often initiates deeper discussions and may become frustrated if their emotional openness isn’t reciprocated.

Sun conjunct Mars: These two share the same drive but direct it in different endeavors. Their strong and dominating energy threatens the other, as they’re used to having the upper hand in relationships. Fights occur when they don't get their way. Sex is central in this connection. It can be so intoxicating that it keeps them together, even when they aren't satisfied on other levels.

Mercury conjunct Venus: This connection is filled with laughter, warmth, and mutual understanding. Venus is drawn to Mercury’s intelligence and wit, while Mercury is captivated by Venus’ charm and talents. Communication is the heart of this relationship. Both feel free to share their thoughts, knowing they will be met with understanding and without judgment. Their bond is so natural that they’re equally comfortable talking for hours as they are sitting together in silence.

Sun conjunct Venus: These two share similarities and naturally embody what the other seeks. The Sun person is driven, focused on achieving their goals, inspiring Venus to pursue her desires. In turn, the Venus person supports their partner’s ambitions, understanding their passion and genuinely wanting to see them succeed. Together, they can become a supportive and motivating presence in each other’s lives.

#insights #synastry #synastry observations #astro community #astro notes #astro observations

665 notes · View notes

byuno-o · 11 months ago

Text

RETROGRADE PLANETS IN NATAL CHARTS.

NOTE: PERSONAL OBSERVATIONS. HENCE, MIGHT NOT BE APPLICABLE FOR EVERYONE. ONLY FOR ENTERTAINMENT. HENCE, DISCRETION IS ADVISED. DO PROVIDE FEEDBACKS, I LOVE IT. :)

MERCURY IN RETROGRADE

If you have mercury in retrograde in your natal chart, you might deal with aversion when it comes to verbal, direct communication. Putting your ideas and thoughts into clear sentences might not be your forte. However, I've read somewhere that people with Mercury Rx, have really good intuition. I can vouch for this since my brother has this in his 11th house, and boy has he saved himself from bad influences countless times purely because he could sense BS right away. People with Mercury Rx, however, possess a unique way of communicating their ideas and thoughts. They don't necessarily use art, but just different words and their brains are often configured differently. They might see logic in things that others can't, and somehow, everything works fine for them. These people also tend to be profound thinkers and internalize their life philosophies instead of using those philosophies for other, unlike forward mercuries. People with forward mercuries-even the ones with debilitated mercuries use their words and ideas in order to help others. while retrograde mercuries wants the betterment of self. Hence, seeing other perspectives can be difficult for them, and finding balance between conscious and callous communication can be hard. Retrograde mercuries have hard-hitting sense of humour which can be the result of unique communication style. Forward mercuries can choose their words carefully, but retrograde mercuries often cannot, for this is their lesson for their present life.

2) VENUS RETROGRADE

I see people with venus in retrograde having issues with their sense of self, which can be seen in their communication style and sense of humour. Overcompensating outwardly for lack of sensing lack of style and panache that forward Venus tend to possess, even the debilitated ones. yet they can't see their own unique flavour which goes against the conventions. A friend whose venus is in retrograde has the wildest love life in my group. Her standards are high, which stemmed from dealing with problematic, almost karmic relationships. There can be confusions regarding one's own opinion about self, likes, dislikes, and there can be a tendency to see oneself through other's judgements. Finance can be a hard to deal with, overspending can be a problem. Their lesson for their present life is to accept themselves the way they are, and love themselves before looking for love and validation elsewhere. The root cause of almost all of their problems is the lack of sense of strong self and self-validation which come first and foremost. That is the only one they can see their own uniqueness, and leverage it for their benefits.

3) MARS RETROGRADE

These people can deal with heavy procrastination, and lacks efforts when it comes to their dreams and goals. There can be a push and pull effect regarding their individuality. A cousin of mine has mars retrograde, and despite having his mars in Scorpio, he loathes adventures, and risks--and you can also add changes. while people with forward mars can be very courageous--even the debilitated ones, although they need immense pressure to make them feel agitated, people with mars retrograde rather suffer in silence than assert themselves. For them, action-orientation, and assertion can be the lessons for their present lives. However, I also think Mars in retrograde can make one very diplomatic and can make the person possess mercurial qualities. That same cousin have debilitated mercury, yet he sounds the most critical and logical among us when we have to fight for our food rights (jokes) against our grandparents. Rather than have a individualistic nature, these people can harness excellent group qualities. They can suffer through sex related traumas.

4) JUPITER RETROGRADE

People with Jupiter in retrograde may be raised with issues regarding self, religion and higher knowledge. Their viewpoints are very different, and may often come off as illogical. They care very cautious when it comes to voicing their opinions. However, they can possess a very twisted kind of luck. Since I have this, I can vouch for this. I may never get what I want, but what I need always finds me, Unlike people with forward Jupiter who may get what they want just like that. my brother has forward Jupiter in Cancer, and I have never seen a person as lucky as him. Brotha is protected by angels and our family. One order, and the whole family scrambles to obey him. While in my case, I just work hard and get the bare minimum, but the things I get always helps me at times. Getting higher knowledge is especially harder for people with Jupiter in Rx, and may deal with confusion regarding the validity of knowledge. People with jupiter in Rx also deal with lack of mentors and teachers needed to shape their personality and inner world, hence they become vagabonds when it comes to knowledge. It is only them they can rely on for a strong sense of self, hence they may go through hard time alone. It is not like they don't look for help, it's just help never comes, but rewards are worth the pain. There's always a tendency to question everything which may lead to paranoia and overthinking. Yet, they are overly self-righteous, causing relationships to falter. Their main lessons are to have faith in them, and build their unique perspectives.

5) SATURN RETROGRADE

People with saturn in retrograde tends to introspect a lot. The limitations they bear are often internalised. they tend to have problems with authority and authoritative figures, such as father and teachers and boss, yet there is a deep sense of responsibility and lack of discipline. I also have saturn retrograde in my natal chart and well, it is a blessing in disguise. to be honest. I do tend to disregard authority, but there were times when I was asked for help by some authoritative figures. Although I have a deep sense of responsibity, I lack the courage, the strategic mind and the general effort I need to fulfil my dreams, which is why this saturn retrograde is proving to be immensely helpful. There is a strong fear of failure, and the person's success is always delayed. Trust me, I know. While I work twice as hard as my friends, I am often the last person to taste any success. Same is happening with job hunt. I have read that this retrograde is strongly related to past life karma, and I think I might be deal with lessons regarding finance and material gain since I have Saturn in Taurus in 2nd house. These people often deal with loneliness, and the lack of communication from their side only add salt to injury.

6) URANUS RETROGRADE

While Uranus deals with rebellion and one's uniqueness, Retrograding Uranus may often lead to these aspects being internalised by the person. There may be a strong sense for rebellion and forging one's own path, but the person may lack the spine to do so--often relying on others to validate their uniqueness. Changes may come like tornados, ruining their very sense of being, and forcing them to refine everything again and again, until there no sense of old self is there. Unlike Pluto, Uranus retrograde often forces the person's outer world, and outer relationships to change. These people have heightened intuition which not only scares the outer world, but also force it to alienate the person. There is a strong need for rejecting tradition which might stop them from becoming the eccentric person they can be. Note, I am not using 'eccentric' in a negative way. I just think, people with Uranus Rx need to learn showcase their eccentric side to the world. so that innovation can be made. There's a huge between one accepting their eccentricity and showing the world who they actually are. If anything, I think Uranus in Rx is one of the best placements one can have for the sheer creativity it can bestow. These people must have been destined to become pioneers, but their fears of outer rejection had stopped them, hence they ended up with Uranus in retrograde in their present life. They are supposed to let go of the fear in order to fulfil their purpose.

7) NEPTUNE RETROGRADE

So, my other brother has mars, Uranus and Neptune in retrograde. And I kid you not, I have never seen someone so eccentric, so prideful yet so fearful, so disillusioned yet so full of himself till date.

For me, Neptune Retrograde is one of the worst placement one can have. This placement is not about the outer world, but breaking oneself to fill the world with happiness. people with Neptune Rx has to go through a whole journey of living in a illusionary world to become disillusioned and hate the real world, only to realise that there's more than pain and suffering in the world and it is not a utopia. these people have heightened intuition, only to never master it. They get fed with escapism illusion by the universe time and time again, for them to learn to exercise their intuition yet the fog in their mind becomes the biggest obstacle. For a long time, these people believe in, "my way or highway" and "all or nothing." Hence, when faced with failure and pain, they crumble and become disillusioned. Once they see the world as it is, they go through the spiritual quest of learning and unlearning the ways of the world. And acceptance of the worldy woes, and understanding that one can never change the ways of the world but the ways of human minds are the lessons these people have to learn. They have to make peace with the fact that there will pain and suffering, and this is what feels like to be humans. They have to learn to avoid escapism, and grab life by the balls and open their arms to the gifts of intuitions, detachment, art and healing.

8) PLUTO RETROGRADE

I see Pluto retrograde as an eagle which keeps gnawing onto one's guts while the person can do nothing but accept the eagle. The pain never goes aways. People with pluto Rx in their chart internalises every thought, every little or big change, causing them to go through intense overthinking and traumatic relationship changes. The world is never these people's friends. If you think having Pluto placements are tough, look at pluto Retrograde people. Another cousin of mine has this. And she is a control freak, with really great psychological insights. There's obssesion with every little thing, and fear of betrayal and others breaking their walls and trusts. These people live an intense karmic life. If they badmouth someone, they get tenfold of it. If they wish someone bad luck, they get ten fold of it. These people must have done something great or something very loathsome which needs heavy penance and great patience. These people are bound to become great. These people are supposed to learn the ways of the world and help change the world, but on a ground level. What I mean by that is, these people need to learn to accept their shadow side in order to help the ones who have lost their paths to attain goodness. I see people with Pluto retrograde as the ones who has to break a piece of themselves in order to fix others, since they constantly get their heart broken, and trust broken, and fears spitting on their faces until they overcome those fears, and they are constantly forced by the universe to bare themselves naked in order for the world to use their vulnerabilities. Yet, these people rise like phoenix, and continue the cycle until they realise that their higher purpose is to have faith in the ways of the universe and let it run its magic. Good things may take time, but are always worth the wait.

NOTE: I SEE RETROGRADES AS BLESSINGS IN DISGUISE. ALTHOUGH RETROGRADE PLANETS MAKE THINGS HARD, AND ALMOST UNATTAINABLE, HARD TIMES MAKE GREAT PEOPLE. THE TWISTS UNIVERSE PLAYS ON PEOPLE WITH NATAL RETROGRADE PLANETS ARE SUPPOSED TO PUSH THESE PEOPLE TO THEIR EDGES UNTIL THERE'S NOTHING THEY CAN BE FEARFUL OF. FOR GREAT CHANGES NEED GREATER HANDS.

ALRIGHT, DO LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT THIS. AND I WELCOME CRITICISM AND HARD HITTING FEEDBACKS WITH OPEN ARMS. JUST MAKE SURE I DON'T HAVE TO SHOW MY FANGS, TOO. :) I LOVE GATHERING NEW INFORMATION, SO UNTIL THEN, MAY GOD BLESS YOU.

#astro community #astro notes #astro observations #astro thoughts #rising signs #moon signs #astro tumblr #astrology #retrograde planets #natal retrograde

964 notes · View notes

aspiringjester · 1 year ago

Text

out of all the possible configurations of binghe and shen qingqiu i think my favorite has to be bing(ge)yuan bc yes yes something about bingge being denied the kind shizun that bingmei has and literally crossing universes to find his own is all pretty and stuff

...BUT mostly becuase there's no fucking way mr peerless cucumber himself shen yuan doesn't see what appears to be luo binghe, assumes he's a cosplayer (logical??) and absolutely RIP this stranger to SHREDS over the "inaccuaracies" of his "costume" and leave bingge in a mix of "how DARE you" and "his sickly demeanor and bitchy attitude have captivated me"

and honestly it's the funniest thing in the world to me

#the inherent eroticism between a demon lord who's never been refused and a bitchass 20 something webnovel loser #i've read this in a few fics but if anyone has recs i won't say no to more 👉👈#svsss #bingqiu #bingyuan #luo bingge #luo binghe #pidw luo binghe #shen qingqiu #shen yuan

1K notes · View notes

chamiryokuroi · 3 months ago

Text

I hate copilot (AI tool) so much, personally I think it makes developers lazy and worse at logical thinking.

We are working on an UI application that is mocking service call responses for local testing with the use of MSW.

There were some changes done to the service calls that would require updates on the MSW mocking, but instead of looking at the MSW documentation to figure out how to solve that, my coworker asked copilot.

Did it gave him a code that fixed the issue? Yes, but when I asked my coworker how it fixed it he had no idea because a) he doesn’t know MSW, b) he didn’t know what was the issue to begin with.

I did the MSW configuration myself, I read the documentation and I immediately knew what was needed to fix the issue but I wanted my coworker to do it himself so he would get familiarized with MSW so he could fix issues in the future, instead he used AI to solve something without actually understanding neither the issue or the solution.

And this is exactly why I refuse to use AI/Copilot.

#copilot #Anti AI #what did you fix? idk #then how did you fix it? idk #please for the love of god at the least read the documentation before asking copilot #programming

149 notes · View notes

sheeezu · 1 month ago

Text

The person, the mind, the consciousness

Did you know, all of us humans resemble a tree? What a weird analogy, you'd say. Here's how I put it together, the roots at the base is your consciousness, the tree's trunk is your mind, the branches is your vessel (body) the leaves are your experiences, thoughts, memories, and the collective reflections, foundations of any reality you choose to pursue.

Aren't you a unit, now? When there's only one source providing you the nutrition to live. Let's assess how these three reacted when you "came across" shifting.

-Your consciousness knew. Your consciousness was been and always has been ready to shift realities. Its omnipotence, anyways.

-your mind tried to configure it logically. It tried to make sense of it, and installed doubts to protect you.

-your vessel felt it with emotions; it yearned for your loved ones at home, it craved and deeply desired being in your dr.

All this to say, for the reason you understand that every aspect of you deserves respect, consideration and a chance to be listened to. No one is your enemy. No one is the mastermind villain aiming to make you astray from your path leading to your dr.

But also that, there is no "buts" or "ifs" when it comes to your consciousness. You experience deeply and feel solemnly over your every "failure" because that's your vessel's programming. You doubt because that's your mind's programming. And you shift effortlessly because its your consciousness' programming.

Similarly, your dr works in the same way, so it's not different from any other reality to exist. Connect to your dr self's mind, then vessel. Change is common, change is sudden. Change is instant.

Shifting dump, part 2.

#reality shifting #shiftblr #shifting #shifting community #sheezu's posts

133 notes · View notes

notmorbid · 5 months ago

Text

mouth.

dialogue prompts from mouth: stories by puloma ghosh.

you've been alone a long time.

____ is always watching you.

you're so lucky. you can be anything.

there is no forever.

it's beautiful, the way you fall.

people weren't always afraid of me.

if i disappeared, would anybody bother to search for me?

we have to accept the logic of the world we were given, and learn to live in it.

you don't smell like anyone else.

pleasure is another form of taking.

i don't live anywhere.

i want to die here.

i did something i shouldn't have last night.

will you tell me something, before you go?

i don't think ____ is coming home.

everything and nothing can look the same.

i have no idea what to do with you.

ghosts are just memories.

i should have been kinder to you.

why are you asking me such american questions?

this house is bad luck.

i thought it was just a story.

it's good to stay careful.

i keep seeing ____ everywhere.

it's been a long time since you've been home.

this place gives me a bad feeling.

don't be afraid. you know me.

you don't have to miss me. i'll stay with you.

everything you try to hold is sharp.

do something. make it stop.

you shouldn't be walking around.

kids like you worry me.

i keep forgetting things.

hurry home. it's getting dark.

i thought we were happy.

don't you ever want to go somewhere else?

loving has many configurations.

what will you do when you run out of _____?

i can drive you wherever you need.

i've tried my best to be like you, but i'm not.

we're happy, right?

what have you done to me?

everyone feels uneasy around a person they can never truly know.

of course it's not true, but isn't it fun?

the best lies are half-truths.

you're not the first person to ask.

i don't have time for your bullshit today.

i've run out of people who take me seriously.

i don't know if 'love' is even the right word.

i thought you'd be stupid enough to come.

be careful with words that aren't yours.

i have the book, if you want to read it.

i don't 'have' to do anything.

don't hate me for this.

i don't do this with anyone.

i'm more comfortable on my own.

you're allowed to be happy.

none of this is real, to begin with.

i didn't even know there was an underground party scene in _____.

i'm too tired and broke to fall in love.

there's nothing worse than being scared alone.

why did you come looking for me?

it's not the same for you, is it?

i can wait until morning to hate myself for this.

you're not human. i don't know what you are.

i don't exist. i can do whatever i want.

i thought you'd tell me everything, eventually.

there's nothing to tell. nothing you'd want to know.

is there a difference between fear and worship?

you brought me to life.

karaoke is when we're most human.

you can't choose the things you'll remember. the important things will find you.

____ doesn't know about you.

what are you afraid of?

you have to be afraid to live.

i'm sorry i never said goodbye.

this house is too big for us.

our planet is really strange.

you heard, then.

things were always fun with you.

good or bad doesn't matter anymore.

you've hardly looked at me all day.

can't you act like you want to be my mother? just for today?

are you listening? have you ever heard me?

you were never mine.

#rp meme #sentence starters #ask memes #rp memes #rp prompts #rp prompt #inbox memes #horror meme #lgbt #families #magical realism

153 notes · View notes

togglesbloggle · 1 year ago

Text

Voltaire's Prayer

“I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: Oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous. And God granted it." -Volaire’s letter to Étienne Noël Damilaville, 16 May 1767

I’m inordinately fond of sex, in the political sense. It’s saved us so often from the worst parts of ourselves.

As far as anti-authoritarian elements of the human experience go, sex is right up there with curiosity and the search for truth- maybe even more so. When a new tyrant comes to town, shutting down the universities and the libraries is only the second thing they try. The first thing is to regulate human sexuality to within an inch of its life. Rules for marriage, rules for courtship, rules for which genitals may touch and where they may touch and when they may touch. Rules for who and rules for whom. Rules for which kinds of sex must doom characters in literature, rules for which things may be described as sexy, rules for which things may be described in a sexy way.

Of course they do! If you’re trying to bind a large polity together under a common ideological narrative, to render people predictable enough to quash dissent and legible enough to exert power through them, the last thing you need is a bunch of folks running around being horny about stuff without permission. Nature gifted us with a great capacity for reason and community; we have the innate opportunity to learn about ourselves and our neighbors, and to form complex societies based on that understanding. It was Aristotle who first called us the political animal, and the fruits of that extraordinary capacity will always be within our reach, if only we can come together within a shared understanding. The invention of the city is the great triumph of our species, and with it we conquer the universe.

But also this extraordinary, reasoning mind has been sculpted from the raw clay of a biology that’s anchored in sexual reproduction, and this ends up being very, very funny.

The problem isn’t so much that the sex instinct exists, per se. It’s how it’s implemented. Like most biological forms, the full complement of 86 billion(!) neurons in your brain aren’t encoded in a particular configuration; the brain is much too complex to be described so precisely in the only ~725 megabytes or so of human DNA. The particular shape of your brain is in there somewhere- the lobes and subregions responsible for vision, memory, cognition, all that- but only up to a point. The genius and fundamental limitation of genetics is that, below a certain level, the genes instead describe a process for the production and reproduction of specialized cells, and simply constructs them in such a way that they can be relied upon to order themselves as they go.

This is all well and good when we’re talking about kidneys and livers, but the fact that you can encode any kind of specific behavioral instinct in a brain this way is nothing short of a minor miracle. Think about it! Spiders don’t have a ‘spider web’ gene, the gene is for ‘proteins that come together in self-assembling electrochemically sensitive gelatin tissue which, when complete, encodes patterns that operate organ systems such as legs and spinnerets in such a way as to reliably create silk webs.’ This is absurdly impressive, and also completely insane.

What I’m getting at is, powerful behavioral instincts in a complex animal aren’t precise instruction manuals by which we pursue evolutionarily advantageous behaviors. Sex and eros are prior to logic or language, let alone strategy. Sex is a double-thick electrical wire discharging lightning bolts right through the middle of our cognitive centers, installed in the brain by a surgeon wearing mittens. It’s an untethered firehose whipping chaotically through the cathedral, unpredictably spraying golden reliquaries with substances unmentionable. It’s the first and greatest anarchist.

I really can’t overstate my gratitude for this.

Obviously this results in any number of deeply goofy outcomes by way of kinks and odd sexual practices- it gets tangled with pain centers, with random bits of anatomy and proprioception, with our taboos and aversions, with our greatest terrors or our greatest yearnings or just arbitrary stimuli from adolescence, and of course it gets enmeshed so often with our notions of power and submission. It imbues these things with a fascination and potency out of all proportion with their mundane meanings. And ultimately, you end up with human pleasures and human values that diverge so far from banal evolutionary imperatives as to be all but unrecognizable.

Even when this process somehow manages to propagate through the brain in such a way as to drive behaviors that are legibly aligned towards some adaptive constraint- e.g. heterosexual mating practices resulting in biological reproduction and careful childrearing- it’s still madness. Love and sex penetrate deeply across tribal and national and racial boundaries, across economic interests, across battle-lines and enmities. We become traitors, apostates, emigrants, and artists. Declare a law, and in short order some hot-headed young people come along to break it in the name of sexual passions you could not possibly have seen coming. Divide your neighborhood into us and them, and by the time the ink is dry on your proclamation there will be a forbidden relationship across the fence. There is no social order, no ethical system, no theory of human nature that can entirely withstand contact with the full spectrum of human sexuality, because sex and eros are always going to be exactly as bonkers as the complexity of the human mind and culture will allow, plus a little extra just to be sure.

This isn’t always a delight, of course. Many prohibitions exist for a very good reason, and the chaos of human sexuality makes no exemptions for true evil. Some of us end up really, truly victims of this process. But for all the dangers, the chaos at the root of all this isn’t oriented towards evil. Chaos just means chaos, essentially arbitrary and hence absurd in character.

And in the grand analysis, we are so lucky to have this thing moving through our communities, this ridiculous madness that guarantees that there will be cracks in every wall and slips exploding cigars in the pockets of the powerful few. Not in everybody as individuals, of course, and not everybody the same amount; asexuality is certainly one of the outcomes that all this mad gallivanting through our brains can produce. Sexuality would never be so predictable as to guarantee its own existence, after all. That’s part of what makes the joke so funny.

But all of us, regardless of sexuality, get to live in a world where the grand anarchy of sex is constantly driving home this lesson that no category is inviolate and no law is perfect. That we should not and cannot take ourselves too seriously, or forget that we’re animals. That we don’t exist only for the sake of others, or within their understanding. That cities are made of cooperation, grace, and forbearance- not conformity or mere compliance.

People sometimes worry about immortality. In the political sense, I mean. They worry about eternal dictatorships and unconquerable gerontocracies. This fear isn’t entirely unjustified; death has often played a role in progress and liberation. But as long as enough of us are still getting horny without permission, still falling in love in stupid ways, I think we’ll be okay. Romeo and Juliet don’t have to die at the end to make a difference in the world, as long as they’re brave enough to get weird with it.

790 notes · View notes

commodorez · 10 months ago

Note

Cactus fascinates me, does it run on code similar to an existing instruction set or is it completely original on that front?

What can you do with it? What's it's storage?

Both the Cactus (the original wooden prototype from years ago) and the new PCB Cactus(es) are essentially derived from a minimal 6502 computer design by Grant Searle for their core logic. Here's what that would look like on a breadboard:

There isn't much to it, it's 32K of RAM, 16K of ROM containing Ohio Scientific's version of Microsoft BASIC, a 6850 ACIA for serial interaction, some logic gates, and of course a 6502 microprocessor (NMOS or CMOS, doesn't matter which). You hook it into a terminal and away you go.

Grant's design in turn can be best described as a distilled, modernized version of the OSI Challenger series of computers. Here's an OSI-400 and a Challenger 4P respectively:

The left one is a replica of the 400 circa 1976, also called the Superboard. It was affordable, endlessly reconfigurable and hackable, but ultimately very limited in capabilities. No BASIC, minimal monitor ROM you talk to over serial, but you could connect it to a bus to augment its features and turn it into a more powerful computer.

Whereas the OSI C4P on the right from about 1979 has more RAM, a video card, keyboard, BASIC built in, serial interface, cassette tape storage, and that's just the standard configuration. There was more room to expand and augment it to your needs inside the chassis (alot changed in 3 years for home computer users).

Grant's minimal 6502 design running OSI BASIC is a good starter project for hobbyists. I learned about the 6502's memory map decoding from his design. I modified and implemented his design on a separate cards that could connect to a larger backplane.

Here are the serial, ROM, RAM, and CPU cards respectively:

Each one is 100% custom, containing many modifications and fixes as I developed the design. However, that's only half of the computer.

I really wanted a 6502 machine with a front panel. People told me "nobody did that", or couldn't think of examples from the 1970s but that seemed really strange to me. Especially since I had evidence to the contrary in the form of the OSI-300:

This one I saw at VCF West back in 2018 illustrates just how limited of a design it is. 128 bytes of RAM, no ROM, no serial -- just you, the CPU, and toggle switches and LEDs to learn the CPU. I was inspired the first time I saw one in 2015 at VCF East, which is probably when this whole project got set in motion.

Later that year I bought a kit for a miniature replica OSI-300 made by Christopher Bachman, and learned really quickly how limited the design philosophy for this particular front panel was. It was a major pain in the ass to use (to be clear, that's by OSI's choice, not any fault of Christopher in his implementation)

So... I designed my own. Took awhile, but that's the core of what the Cactus is: my attempt at experiencing the 1970s homebrew scene by building the computer I would have wanted at the time. Over half of the logic in the Cactus is just to run the front panel's state machine, so you can examine and modify the contents of memory without bothering the 6502. I added in all of the things I liked from more advanced front panels I had encountered, and designed it to my liking.

Here's the original front panel, accompanying logic, and backplane connected to the modern single board computer (SBC) version of the machine:

And here's the new Cactus SBC working with the new front panel PCB, which combines the logic, physical switch mountings, and cabling harnesses into a single printed circuit board.

So, what can you do with it? Pretty much the same things I do already with other contemporary 1970s computers: play around in BASIC, fire up the occasional game, and tinker with it.

I've got no permanent storage designed for the Cactus as yet, it's been one of those "eventually" things. The good news is that a variety of software can be ported to the hardware without too much trouble for an experienced hobbyist. A friend of mine wrote a game called ZNEK in 6502 assembly which runs from a terminal:

Right now, you have to either toggle in machine programs from the front panel from scratch, burn a custom ROM, or connect it to a serial terminal to gain access to its more advanced features:

Here's it booted into OSI BASIC, but I have also added in a modern descendant of Steve Wozniak's WOZMON software for when I need to do lower level debugging.

I've also got a video card now, based on the OSI-440. I have yet to implement a keyboard, or modify BASIC to use the video board instead of the serial connection. Even if I did, screen resolution is pretty limited at 24x24 characters on screen at once. Still, I'm working on that...

Anyway, I hope that answers your question. Check the tags below to see the whole process stretching back to 2017 if you're curious to learn more of the project's history. I'm also happy to answer any more questions you might have about the project.

#cactus #6502 homebrew

267 notes · View notes

wolf-among-mechs · 8 months ago

Text

I think something has to be said about mech-techs because they come in different breeds just as mechwarriors and mechs themselves.

You got your rank and file army mech-techs. They typically work with stock models and pre-arranged configurations for omnis. Practising and drilling it in until they can do it in their sleep while under and on fire without missing a beat. The same goes for a repair. They know where everything goes in the hunk of junk and can service with precision. Most of the lower rungs are people who can barely remember to breathe but can lift and hold things. Typically, you get some senior techs that have brains and can give recommendations of field refits. The dread variant is the ones who know they are too competent to be fired and leverage that against mechwarriors and senior officers.

Mercenary mech-techs are space wizards in that they usually care for and manage highly specialised machines that only sometimes resemble the original mech. Cables and ammofeed systems have been rerouted, assembled, moved, and re-used for another system. A melange of disparate systems that have all the cooperative abilities of fussy babies past naptime. That somehow, against all odds in a way barely they comprehend, works. So, of course, they will be a bit upset if you lose the machine. Or blow it up or... you know. All the things a mercenary can mess up a mech with. Dumbest thing I heard was leaving it overnight in a bar and having the darn thing stolen by some space hicks. Also if something is stupid or does not work with a mech design you had in mind. They are going to hit you with clipboards.

Clan technicians are made to serve without question, and they are good at it. Good at repairing, realigning omnis, and working really hard, they seem able to work more than twenty-four hours a day. They will do whatever you tell them to without hesitation. Even if you mutter something from a fever pitched dream of a Wimber Tolf, a mad cat with the rocket pods in the arms and the lasers in the shoulders. They will do it. The only thing they will say something about is a tonnage mismatch. Terrific at maintaining equipment and weapons. But also, they will not do something unless you order them first. Often working on whatever the highest ranking warrior told them to do last.

Then you have the periphery mech-techs. People who own welders and plasma cutters and a bit of elbow grease and a resume so filled with lies it may just qualify as a politician's speech. They can bolt anything to a mech. Heck they will bolt anything to mech. Weld it there. The rust bucket mechs they get in the periphery are usually hardy enough that they can hold up to their creativity. Leading to maddening makeshift designs at times. The ones who figure out mechs at least a bit graduate and begin to staple them together. Creating franken mechs. Things that moves that should not. Piles of ferro-metal slabs of armour and myomer that shamble in open defiance of logic. Still you got to admire that somebody thought to string things together. And make it work.

Of course, you have a bundle of mechtechs that break out of these molds and find their own way. As people do. But they are less seen behind the moneymakers, the flash, and the glamour of the mechwarriors. But in the end, it does not really matter what kind of mechtech you are or if you are a mechwarrior. We are all happy deep down when we get back the mechbay alive. Ideally, with a mech, but sometimes you might not. In those moments, just remember it is a whole lot easier to rebuild a mech than it is to rebuild a life.

#battletech #mechwarrior

148 notes · View notes

foone · 1 year ago

Text

there are 6 flavors of qubits (using the names from quarks, for some reason) and thus 36 possible configurations. So every time you have a successful decode, it randomizes, and you have to iterate through all the configurations again to find the correct one.

why would you do this to your players? do you hate them? do you want them to go mad building endless logic networks?

#factorio

496 notes · View notes

gavisuntiedboot · 11 months ago

Text

We Can't Be Friends (but I'd like to just pretend)

Pedri x Stylist! Reader

Part 2

Warnings: None

Word count: 4.3K

A/N: Back with part 2! I'm warning y'all now - it's going to suck until it doesn't. Please bear with me. Also, I have included the links to both the shirts being sold for Gaza and the direct donation link. Please check them out! And if you can't donate yourself, I donate $1 for every watermelon comment under this post! So please make sure to share at the very least.

~~~

Being scolded was the worst feeling in the world. Well, actually, sleeping with a famous client and then having him immediately chase your coworker was the worst feeling in the world. But boy was this meeting with Katerina a close second.

“There needs to be a case study on this kid.” She muttered under hear breath as she moved sticky notes around the December calendar. She darted her eyes around her current configuration, before turning sour and looking up at you. The dark circles under her eyes had darkened a shade since you had seen her the previous week, and a twinge of guilt played against your sternum for contributing to her fatigue.

“Let’s go over some basic rules, my dear. First and foremost, you cannot block your client’s number.”

“But I-“ You began to protest, but your boss lifted one finger, silencing you instantly.

“I do not care. I do not care if he is a dick. I do not care if he is going to make my stylists kill each other. Honestly, that might be a blessing. I do not care if he is the father to a litter of bastard children running barefoot around your home. You work for SDF. You work for Pedro Gonzalez. He will have access to your phone, your email, your address, hell your underwear size if he asks. Understood?”

You bit back the urge to protest, just nodding silently. She breathed in deeply before continuing.

“Second, you will not share his information with the other girls in the office. That includes his photoshoot timing, the PR being sent to him– anything. I’m tired of having to file reports to Milan about my girls fighting.”

The command was followed by another nod, this one more genuine. You had no intention of getting within 100 meters of either Tania or Sylvia, who were still not speaking but had also telepathically decided that you were a common enemy. You had been stepped on a suspicious number of times while collecting their pins from the floor, and you always caught them whispering to the other girls in the office about “la naranja podrida”. Didn’t take a detective to put those pieces together.

You were still in a state of agitation regarding the whole ordeal. In your fit of anger, you had done the mental calculations of how long it took Pedri to text another girl. He had left just as the sun was rising, so about 5:30 am. Google maps said you lived 25 minutes from the stadium, but he would have gone home first, because that’s where the damned boots and more damned note would have been. That brings us to 6 am to account for wherever the gremlin lives. By all your most optimistic estimates, he had waited at most a hour between leaving your bed and texting your coworker.

“Hey Silvia” was the text heard around the world. After the report (and a few hair samples) was filed away, a company-wide letter from HQ was sent out reminding employees of professional boundaries with clients. The giddiness and satisfaction that had come from a harmless prank had dissolved, leaving a queasy feeling in its wake. Day damn one. You lasted 4 hours before you crumpled like a convenience store receipt over a boy at work. Ignoring every caution sign, you dove head first into a pool of prospective romance - and promptly hit the concrete.

The worst part was that you couldn’t tell anyone. Bryce had responded to your gushing sonnets in the worst possible manner: with logic. You had brushed aside every one of her very appropriate questions, looking through your rose-tinted lenses at your life. You had gone as far as to tell her she was being a bad friend for trying to find any possible negative in this situation, causing her to pull back.

“I just don’t want to see you get hurt, that’s all.”

The words of her static-garbled voice memo never left your head. There you were, only a few hours later, stomach turned and heart shredded, completely and utterly hurt. And you weren’t ready to face the sting of “I told you so” that was waiting for you, so you just… never said anything else. When she asked about Pedri, you responded formally with his upcoming campaign schedule. Lucky for you that she was too busy with her own life to keep pestering.

The upside to the current tragedy in your life was that you were working in fashion. It was hard to cry when you spent hours upon hours looking at some of the most beautiful clothes in the world, getting full creative freedom to bring your visions to life. Not impossible, because there were definitely a couple of wet spots on the Margiela from yesterday, but harder. Barca Femini had been in and out of the office for fittings, and it was a relief to be able to work with something other than khaki trousers and blazers. There were seemingly hundreds of hangers carrying vintage sports pieces, colorful jackets, and silky skirts. It sparked little moments of happiness, knowing that you were so good at playing dress-up that now you were getting paid for it.

It had been a week since your unfortunate altercation, and though the evening (and unfortunate following morning) had never left you, it had seeped from the front of your mind to the base of your skull, a dull throb that could be ignored during the course of the day. That was, of course, until you received an email from Adidas.

"Okay, Pedri, I hate to be the one to break this to you, but this means you're blocked."

There was a snigger that floated through the lunch room that, had he been able to pinpoint the source, Pedri would have promptly quieted with a slap to the head. But it whizzed around like a gnat between some of the younger players.

"How could I be blocked, Fermin?" The question was met with a raised eyebrow from Fermin, who was mentally cursing his college education.

"Maybe it has something to do with you sleeping with her and then disappearing?" Gavi offered up that brilliant hypothesis between bites of grilled chicken.

"No, it couldn't be. She's American - they don't take sex so seriously. Besides, we just met! What was I supposed to do? Propose?"

Pedri resisted the urge to shrink back from the judgmental stares he was receiving. He was used to being questioned by Gavi, who believed in the "stare at her intensely until she falls for me and confesses" method of romance. But now that he had roped in Fermin (the most tech-savvy of the squad), he couldn't handle the intensity of the silent disapproval.

In all honesty, Pedri was tired of the emotional rollercoaster that had plagued the entire day. The previous night had been incredible. He wasn't quite sure what to expect when La Naranja stepped through her front door, but she surely exceeded expectations. Pedri believed he was happy in his normal routine: DM an Instagram model, engage in the little cat-and-mouse game where she pretended she wouldn't bend to his every will, and go back to her place for a decently fun time. But there was something about the way you walked, so coy and bashfully, looking up at him through delicate lashes with wide eyes, that warmed the most primal part of his being. His heart quickened at the sudden desire to chase, to capture, to consume. He wanted to protect this pretty little thing from the sharp eyes and sharper teeth of his friends. He was ready to savor everything you offered.

Over the course of the evening, the feeling gnawing at the inside of his chest became harder to ignore. The soft grip you maintained on his bicep to keep him close, the warmth of your fingertips searing his skin. He wanted to bark at Ferran to never look your way again. To sink his teeth into your neck, have you cry out his name so every man would know to never come near you again. Your hand, so delicate and soft in his own, maintained a firm grip as he dragged you out of the club, and a firmer grip on his hair once he was finally able to kiss you senseless. He felt like a wild animal unleashed in bed with, unable to slow or take pause. You were so hypnotizingly innocent, and he was going to destroy that.

The warmth in his chest remained till the following morning. As he kissed your cheek and whispered his goodbyes, he allowed himself to imagine what kind of arrangement the two of you could have. He was more than eager to feel the caress of your soft lips again. Maybe you would be open to picking up his late night calls, spending long, tedious days together talking and fucking and laughing at nothing in particular. He thought about the flush in your cheeks that would arise whenever he came into work, dropping subtle hints about your activities in the days before. He could really make you a permanent part of his rotation with little difficulty, facilitated further by the fact that you had been assigned as his personal stylist. Filthy as it may sound, he contemplated not showering upon his return home. He would have to later in the day following practice, but until he could secure a second audience with you in a bedroom, he wanted to savor the scent a little longer.

His front doorstep was littered with packages once again, about half from Adidas and the other from Springfield. He was not a designer by any means, but he appreciated that he was at least sent the collections that were meant to be his. Fer was sipping on a coffee when Pedri walked in, and expertly avoided ay questions of where he had been the previous night. He was a concerned older brother, but he was also a guest. He instead asked to see the piles of PR that his younger brother had hauled through the door.

"I don't understand why they bother sending you all this stuff. Why wouldn't they just send it to the styling team."

"Because I actually have to play in the boots, hermano." Pedri said, lifting the lid off his newest pair. He was excited for another Adidas campaign, or any campaign really that would bring him closer to you once again. Oh how he wished he could have captured the way you looked in that dress forever, immortalized it in an oil painting and hung it on his wall (right beside the ripped remains of the dress, which he so desperately wanted to destroy). His daydream had been broken by a crisp white envelope contrasted against the bright orange of the boots. There was a feminine wave of scent in the air, and the heart pumping in his ears drowned out the sounds of his brother’s whistles and taunts. Had you done this? Had you been planning ahead to send him a note had he neglected to ask you out while at the office?

He tensed his forearms to disguise a slight tremble, ripping open the envelope and scanning the page only to find-

“Ay dios mío. Silvia.” He allowed his head to thud against the counter, Fer’s tittering laugh clear as a bell now.

“Is she the scary one or the weird one?” His brother asked, prying the crumpled letter from Pedri’s dejected form.

“Both are fitting adjectives. She’s the shorter one with the silver hair. She kind of looks like our Tia Marisol?”

Another tittering of laugher, and this time Pedri joined in with a cracked smile of his own.

“She wants to tell you how much she admires you, how much you make her … quiver? Ew.” Fer squinted at the note further.

“Listen to this line. Ehem: ‘I am ready to serve you, worship you, give you my body and soul because I love you.”

Pedri groaned so loudly he was sure the neighbors heard. Honestly, what were these girls thinking?? That he would start blushing and giggling at the mention that they would sleep with him? That was the least most girls would do. It turned his stomach, constantly fearing that he would be trapped with a child.

“Let me text this girl. I have to go in next week and I don’t want her bent over a table spread and waiting when I arrive.”

He typed in the number on the note, drafting a long text before deleting everything but the “Hey Silvia” at the top.

“It’s too forceful to say ‘hey I don’t want to fuck you’ right off the bat, no?”

He hit send, reluctantly heading off to shower away his escapades before he went into training, waiting for a reply before he asked not to receive any more erotic letters from his stylists. Oh how he wished she hadn’t.

“So run us through it one more time.” Gavi said, Ferran deciding to stifle his groan. The last thing he needed was to enrage Gavi further, as he suspected it would result in him finally getting the punch that was coming to him. Ansu and Fermin were nodding along vigorously, eager to hear all about Pedri’s first experience having feelings.

“We went out, we fucked-“

“Pedri!”

He rolled his eyes at the indignation from the boys. Kids these days.

“Okay. We went out, we had a magical lovemaking experience, and then I had to come to training. I texted her about her being my stylist to ya know break the ice. And I found myself in deep shit and promptly blocked on like everything.”

“I think your first mistake,” said Fermin, “was not texting her about last night. Why would you start with her working for you?"

Pedri dragged his hand down his face in frustration.

"What was I supposed to say? Good morning linda, great pussy last night?"

Gavi stood promptly with his hands up, leaving the room.

"I don't want to hear about another girl's vagina."

"Yes," Ferran muttered, "God forbid he cheat on his crush by listening to a story."

"Whatever happened to 'Hey, I had fun last night'? Is that not a normal thing to say?" Ansu asked, as shaken as Gavi but remaining planted by his desire to be in the loop.

"I think my agent is texting SDF to get her to unblock me. Not super easy to talk to my stylist if I have to do so through messenger pigeon. Where did Gavi go?"

Pedri followed his friend out of the locker room, watching as Gavi stared dejectedly at the Doctora’s office.

“Are you done moping?” Pedri asked, clapping him on the shoulder.

“No. She might lose her job and we play her stupid boyfriend’s team tomorrow. I just want to keep her safe from that asshole.”

For a minute, something sparked in Pedri’s chest. Was that jealousy? He had never before felt that there was something missing in his life, content with being surrounded by friends and family and teammates. But there was something about watching Gavi pine, listening to the way he spoke of this girl, and it caused him an ache. He was in awe of this foreign spectacle: loving someone so deeply, so intensely, that it led to begging for crumbs of their time and attention. He almost wished to be in the Doctora's position, always having someone waiting around the corner for him.

"I have a styling meeting today. Do you want to come and keep me company?"

"Naranja, the bastard is here."

You didn't even lift your head when Maria informed you of the arrival of your client. You had worn all black to mourn the death of your self esteem, prepared to ass-kiss as much as needed to preserve your job. Unfortunately, it was difficult to push down the burning rage in the pit of your stomach when you had to kiss the ass of the man who has hurt you so intensely.

Pedri strolled into the room clad in the ugliest jeans known to man, his doe-eyed teammate (Gavin?) trailing behind him. At least the littler one knew how to dress. He was in baggy jeans and an Amie Paris t-shirt, clean sneakers in the same shade of blue as his top. Pedri, on the other hand, was an abomination. His black hoodie was far too baggy on his frame, making him look somewhat inflated. It was made worse by the tight and ribbed denim hugging the (admittedly stunning) legs that ended suddenly in some chunky clompers.

"Good morning, Naranja."

God. Even the sound of his voice was like swallowing razor blades. You wished that you could hear the lilt in his speech without remembering the soft whispers against the column of your throat, guiding you to ecstasy at his command. The way that he encouraged you, coaxed the gentle sighs and high moans with just an ask.

"Let me hear you, pretty girl."

And who were you to deny? But now, looking at his soft eyes and confident stance, you wish you had resisted. Pretended you didn't speak Spanish that first godforsaken day in this office.

"Good morning Pedro."

A stifled laugh and wide eyes from the boy behind Pedri (God what was his name? Gustavo?). Pedri's shoulders had dropped significantly, his thick brows coming together in confusion.

"No one calls me Pedro. Not even my mother."

"Well, maybe it's a good time for you to learn what disappointment feels like. Especially since you're so comfortable giving it out to others. Do you have your boots?"

You could tell Pedri was lost for words, and it caused you a mild spark of satisfaction. You had spent the last week boiling silently, unable to unleash all the rage simmering in your chest. He nodded silently, pulling the box out of his bag.

"Great. Gabriel, there is a coffee shop on the second floor if you want to grab a drink while I'm fitting Pedro. I'm sure you've seen him naked plenty of times but-"

"No, no, I'll go. Would you like anything?"

After shaking your head, he exited the room, and you began frantically grabbing different sweat pants and shirts for Pedri to put on.

"His name is Gavi by the way." Pedri said to break the silence, and you turned so he could strip off his shirt.

"Come on, Naranja. Don't pretend you haven't see it already." He smiled somewhat earnestly, softer than he did at the other girls. You were a gentle thing, and he wanted to be gentle with you.

"How many other girls in this office have seen it as well, Pedro?" You asked with as much venom as you could muster, turning to face him and eyes locking as he unzipped his jeans.

"You think that sleeping with me is a company welcome gift, Naranja?"

"That's not my name."

"And Pedro isn't mine. But if you want to poke at me, I'll poke at you right back."

He was now in only his boxers and his socks, and it took everything within you not to glance downwards, a reminder of the sight from one week and one night ago. He took a defiant step forward, the heat radiating off his body.

"You know, Pedro," You began, steadying your voice. "Texting my coworker mere minutes after leaving my bed is a sin on it's own."

"Wait, what? Hold on-"

"But in those mere hours of bliss, I googled you. Looked at your name on Twitter. Saw who you were. And you're just another slimy athlete that uses girls and throws them away."

Your face broke when you heard him laugh loudly at the revelation. It made you angry, expecting him to feel ashamed of his behavior.

"I despise miscommunication, Naranja. So don't go jumping to conclusions and acting foolish. Your coworker sent me a letter essentially begging to fuck me, but I suspect you knew that already. Hell, you might have even been the one to switch the names around."

Your cheeks grew warmer, and a part of your brain registered that Gavi was now lingering in the doorway.

"But beyond that, linda, is that I was texting her to say I wasn't interested." He began dressing, joggers defining his legs in a way acid-washed denim never could. "But I don't like being judged based on rumors on Twitter. I want to be your friend-"

"Again with that word!" The outrage was finally seeping from you, and now that the lid had come off there was no containing it.

"How am I meant to be your friend, Pedro? You hit on me, you sleep with me, and then you moved on to the next girl. How am I supposed to be your friend after everything you've put me through?"

"What did you expect of me exactly?" He shoved his shirt over his head, a sweet bit of relief in a tense situation. "I like you, Naranja. More than a lot of other girls I've met. And I want to keep seeing you," he let his eyes burn a path down your body, "as a little more than a friend. If that's something you're into."

You took a step back, hand over your chest in shock. Did this man just ask you to be a friend with benefits, mere minutes after you asserted your disgust for his very being.

"You must think so highly of yourself." You couldn't raise your voice out of fear of it cracking. Just how much had you deluded yourself into thinking you found something special?

"I don't actually," there was a tone of laughter in his voice, "quite the opposite actually." There was suddenly not enough air between you. You simultaneously wished someone would interrupt you and that the moment would last forever.

"You're a sweet girl, Naranja. Too sweet for someone like me. I know who I am and what I want, and a girlfriend is not on that list currently."

"So what? I'm good enough for you to fuck and not to date?" You asked, the question heavy between the two of you. He remained silent, lips unmoving, the wheels turning behind deep chocolate eyes.

"I like you enough not to want to hurt you, Naranja. So, what do you say? Friends?"

"Go fuck yourself, Pedro."

The high pitched noise of the camera going off repeatedly was starting to get to your head. You leaned against the wall, rubbing at your temples to try and stave off the impending migraine. You opened your eyes briefly to see Gavi also leaning against the wall, gnawing on his lip and staring at his phone. Propelled by boredom, you shifted slowly along the wall to peak at what he was doing, desperate for any form of entertainment.

Thank God for the lack of Gavi's vertical blessing. A quick peek revealed that he wasn't actually typing any words, only rereading text from a contact that was saved as...

"Holy shit are you fucking your doctor?" You asked, probably a little louder than appropriate.

His eyes went wide as frying pans and he began to go visibly red. He started babbling out denials, explaining that the two of them were just friends.

"I mean she has a boyfriend and even if she didn't she would never go for me because she's so much older than me and cooler than me and she's way out of my league but all I want to do is keep her safe and make her happy and-"

His brain finally caught up to the words he was letting loose, and he abruptly suspended his word vomit.

"Does she know that you like her?" You asked, back against the wall, shoulder to shoulder with Gavi.

"God, I hope not. I don't want to do anything to make her life harder than it already is."

"Maybe telling her how you feel will make it easier. Maybe she feels the same."

"Yeah," he sighed deeply, looking wistfully at his phone again, "That's what Pedri keeps telling me."

The disgust was evident on your features. "I wouldn't really take Pedri's relationship advice."

"Now now, turning my best friend against me because you want me is a little extreme, Naranja." The voice behind you was too much to bear.

"Someone needs to give your best friend advice on how to not transform into a heartless user."

"Ironic. I remember one of us chanting 'use me, use me, use me' just last week." The response died in your mouth as Pedri's publicist approached. Where did this guy get off? Even if you believed his bullshit excuse about not wanting to fuck Silvia, the teen drama explanation as to why he doesn't "do" relationships compensated plenty.

"Alright you crazy kids! Ready to go shopping?" You spun around so quickly that you almost smacked Gavi with your hair.

"I beg your pardon? I am a stylist, not a personal shopper. I get pieces sent to me."

That was the truth. You weren't in charge or brand relations, and the purchasing department was an impenetrable fortress. Each week, a soulless intern wheeled a rack into the room, and you worked with what you were given. You had several ideas for how you could modernize some of these stuffy athletes, but that wasn't your place. Not yet anyways.

"Yes, of course. But we are redoing Pedri's wardrobe entirely. We have received communication from the team that his tunnel outfits are - what was the official wording? Oh yes, 'a detriment to the team's public image and an offense to the eyes of culers globally'. Springfield have also asked us to film some content during the journey."

"I don't think this is really part of Naranja's job description."

Of course Pedri was the one undermining you. Of course it was his voice speaking out only to call you incapable. You forced on your biggest smile, turning to face the agent directly.

"Oh, there's no issue at all. It would be an honor to makeover Spain's worst looking footballer."

~~~

Okay end of part 2!! I have decided that I want to post more frequent, smaller parts for this story rather than giant updates every three months. Please let me know what you think in the comments and in my ask box, and potentially where you want this dynamic to go! Thanks cutes xoxo gavisuntiedboot <3

(also if you would like to be on the taglist for this story, pls lmk!!)

Taglist:

@girlidekanymore

#gavisuntiedboot #gub we cant be friends #pedri #pedri x reader #pedri gonzalez imagine #pedri imagine #pedri blurb #pedri gonzalez #pedri x y/n #pedri x you #pedri gonzalez one shot #pedri fanfic #footballer #football rpf #football fanfic

192 notes · View notes