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#it’s about specifically the setup here
goldensunset · 1 year
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pla was like hey what if you got sent back in time to a world where a bunch of people hate you for existing and think you must be evil and force you to perform herculean tasks daily just to be tolerated except there’s this one guy who seems to genuinely like you and he thinks it’s really cool that you’re an outsider from another world and he’s there for you in your worst moment when no one else is brave enough to help and then later after it’s all been resolved you find out that this entire mess was his fault in the first place he’s the reason that you’re here he’s the reason that the world was ending and you got blamed for all of that and he turns on you suddenly and reveals he was just using you to achieve his own selfish goal and after you put a stop to him he curses you for being an outsider sent here just to stop him and now suddenly he genuinely hates you more than anyone else because it has dawned on him that you are the epitome of all that he wishes he could be
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good-beanswrites · 7 months
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Could I request "cooking is an art form" with mahiru and presumbly orekoto? I read your Night drabble of those 2 and now the idea of a potential friendship has been stuck in my mind for days, that was probably the sweetest interpretation of him I've seen! Mahiru can't cook in the current state she's in though so I guess orekoto could act as her hands...?
Ah thank you so much!! I was so worried about doing Orekoto justice, that's so exciting you enjoyed 😭 We still don't have a ton of characterization for him, so bear with me, but I absolutely loved writing this. Thank you so much for the request -- with food playing such an important role in Mahiru's story/symbolism, and the pair's unique relationship, this made me so crazy to think about !!!
The knife twirled through Mikoto’s hands. He brought it down with a grunt. Emotion pulsed through his veins. He went back for another swipe, much harder than necessary. He wiped spatter from his face.
“You’re making a mess.” Mahiru observed from behind. 
He glanced back to find her scowling at the tomato he was taking out his frustration on. “Who gives a shit? We’re not on cleanup duty.” 
He wasn’t supposed to be on cooking duty, either. It was Mahiru’s night according to their usual rotation, but she was in no shape to do any physical activity. Mikoto must have volunteered, and also gotten into some fight about it, because now there he stood: angry at an unknown source, full of adrenaline, and worst of all, in charge of tonight’s curry.
“I suppose…” Mahiru said. “I think that’s Muu tonight, I’ll apologize to her later.”
It was unsettling, how she remained positively cheery as she walked him through each step of the recipe, despite her current condition and his bad attitude. Not that he’d ever turn his anger on her. Mikoto approved of her, and that was enough for him. She’d been going through so much at the hands of their common enemy, he wouldn’t say a single thing against her. Even as she tested his temper with her cooking instructions.
“No, no!” With her good hand, she tugged on the side of his uniform. “You have to turn the carrot as you cut it. Like -- yes, like that!”
Mikoto rolled his eyes as he did what he was told. “It’s all going to get cooked together anyways, it’s not a big deal.”
“It is! You have to take your time with things like this.” She placed her hand over her heart. “It’s about the process, not just the final product. Cooking is an art form!”
“It’s about the final product to me. I’m fucking starving.” 
She was briefly distracted with the next set of instructions, telling him how to combine everything over how much heat. When she returned to the topic, her lighthearted voice was laced with a bit of desperation. “I mean it, there’s something magical about pouring your heart into something for someone else. Putting in your time. A little finesse here and there.”
“I know what it’s like to do something for someone else -- and there is absolutely no finesse involved. Or potatoes.” He gestured to the cut pieces before dumping everything into the pot over the stove.
“One of the most universal love languages is food, you know? People make meals and treats for their loved ones in every culture, in every time.” 
“They do a lot of other things, too.”
“You went to art school, you understand. This is an expression of yourself!”
“It’s a waste of time.”
“It’s the surest way to help someone!”
“That’s a load of bullshit.”
There was a pause. Then a nervous laugh. Then, “yeah.” As she dropped into more uncharacteristic silence, he stole a glance at her. 
Tears poured from her eyes. 
“Mahiru?” Fuck, he didn’t mean to make her cry.
“It is.” she hiccuped. “I thought… I thought it could save him. I made this big meal… I thought… But I was so stupid…”
She buried her face in her hands, offering weak apologies for the sudden outburst. He threw the lid over the pot before stepping back to her.
“Hey, hey. Come on. Don’t cry.” It was a command rather than a comfort. 
She didn’t listen. She just continued sobbing and blubbering on. “It was all stupid, worthless… I should have known…”
He crouched by the wheelchair. There didn’t even seem to be anything wrong, they’d just been talking about food. Why was she such a mess? He gave an impatient sigh. No reaction. What was Mikoto’s nickname for her again? “Listen, Mappi --”
She snapped her head up to look at him. 
Her teary eyes flicked all over his face, making him scowl. “What?”
“Oh.” Her shoulders relaxed, though her breath still hitched. “Sorry. You said… and well… I thought you’d gone away. I want you to stay.” She took his hand. “You.”
His eyes narrowed. “Why?”
“Because you understand me.” 
He did not. Like, at all. But he kept his mouth shut.
Thankfully, she was too talkative not to explain herself. “You love someone very much. That love turned out to be dangerous -- deadly. And you weren’t forgiven for it.” She pressed her lips together, suppressing the wave of emotion that almost overcame her. “And now we’re both getting what we deserve for it.”
“Like hell we are.” He felt the spark of rage again. “Neither of us deserve any of this shit, okay?”
“But --”
“No.” He glared at her. That familiar fire rose up inside him. “I’m tired of all your speeches and optimistic crap. You’re always falling over yourself for others. You’re pathetic. This place is hell, so you need to get your shit together and act like it. You might be willing to forgive the others, you might be able to treat them with that stupid sweetness all the time, but no one’s going to do the same for you. Stop letting them fuck with you.”
She gaped at him. He realized he’d leaned in very close. He prepared himself for more tears, or maybe some cowering away from him. Good. Mikoto didn’t need people like her who would convince him this verdict was deserved. He didn’t need any of these people. It was fine to push them all away.
Mahiru surprised him by leaning over. Her head rested on his chest. “It’s hard. It’s so hard, Mikoto. But… I’ll try.”
His attention was quickly ripped away by a hissing behind him. He yanked himself away from her to run to the curry, which was bubbling and burning and spilling out of the pan all over the stovetop. 
With an outpouring of profanities and clattering of dishes, he cleaned the sad remains of dinner off the burner. When he looked back at Mahiru, she had dabbed at her eyes and composed herself slightly. 
“It’s okay,” she said, “I’ll pick something easier you can make instead.”
“Nah, I’ll make more curry. Tell me how much of everything again.” 
“A-alright.” 
His agitation slowly faded as she began her gentle instructions again. Though he had just tore her apart for it, he was grateful for her patience with everyone around her. He probably could have left, then, seeing how calm the kitchen became. But he wasn’t risking ruining the meal a second time with an unexpected switch. 
And maybe Mahiru’s words still played through his mind.
The food was back on the stove in no time. He stood diligently next to it. They’d lapsed into a content silence. He still didn’t know what had set her off earlier, but wasn’t about to ask questions.
Mahiru had regained her usual bright smile. “Hey, when I get better, I’ll cook something for you, okay? I think you don’t appreciate cooking because no one’s made something special for you before. I want to do that.”
He sneered. “Heh, sure. And I’ll let you in on my preferred art form.” His words were layered with sarcasm. By now, she could guess that included destroying things by putting all of one’s might behind a powerful swing. 
But she giggled, completely unfazed. “Well, friendship is about give and take, right? I’d love to try.”
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sparring-spirals · 2 years
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Placing such a hard time limit using the Calamity was exceptionally good and also inherent to the tragedy of it and im thrilled by it. Don't get me wrong, forced time limits in tragedies and doomsday stories are common for a reason. They work, and they work well. but just, within the context of EXU Calamity, its really getting me.
because its always about not having enough time, right? its about expecting that you'll have more. There's complacency with power, and mistakes, and wealth, but maybe what the Ring of Brass were most indulgent with was time.
(you always think you'll have enough time, more time, another replenishment, another deal, another broadcast, another batch of bright children. youll get another time to hash out an argument with your father. you'll get another time to stay home with your kids and get to know them. you'll get another time to apologize and explain and fix your broken relationship. there's just something else, right here, right now, that should get done first.)
The Ring of Brass were rich, in so many ways. They had power, and wealth, and a million responsibilities, and so maybe they would've argued they had ZERO time, actually, and they just needed to sort everything else out first, and they'd have enough time to figure everything else out later.
but that's the point, right? There's never really a good time for this. for the important stuff, or the end of the world.
(Laerryn was, perhaps, the primary person in the Ring Of Brass operating under a time limit from the get-go, trying desperately to get the Leyline working, because if it wasn't now, it would be never. Because Quay wouldn't live that long. But even she assumed that was the extent of the time limit, that for Everything Else, there would still be time.)
(And is that such a ridiculous expectation? Is that so foolish of her? Of all of them? You never expect the world to end. You don't have infinite time, sure, but- you've got tomorrow, or next week, or- just not now.)
And so it is tragic, but it is also weirdly satisfying, to see the way time got shattered and stretched and sped throughout that last episode. The first second lasted forty minutes. They get maybe two hours at the hands of a damned demon, and its the best blessing they've ever had. Rounds are six seconds. A broadcast is maybe thirty. A healing word, a Wish, a Wall of Force, all buying paltry seconds that make all the difference. The dawn is coming, Avalir is landing, there's so much that has to be done, and that won't get done. We watch them make hard decisions, over and over, and over, and we keep saying "there's not enough time". Because of course there isn't. There could never have been.
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beatcroc · 2 months
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Guy who cannot care at all for horror media but then listens to tma and loves the absolute hell out of it and forgets they don't care about horror media and listens to another horror media and wonders why it sucks so much and then just thinks about how cool tma was again and then realizes they actually didn't care abt tma as a horror media either and had just liked it for the incredibly involved meta way in which they used the horror
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godsfavoritescientist · 5 months
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I finally did it. I fully outlined the first story arc for my fic
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toasttedbaguels · 2 years
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oh i am going to kill this one particular class.
#i just. want to know what goes through someone head when they do this shit#whatever anyways one of the other technicians had a talk with their teacher and i’m HOPING thatll fix some things#idk i don’t always wanna bitch about work but like... when the teacher makes the most ridiculous requests that NO OTHER TEACHER HERE DOES..#like every friday i have to bring up her TWENT EIGHT students work and materials from ANOTHER BUILDING to the TOP FLOOR#when every other teacher that has the same setup just brings their shit back at the end of their lesson. like its lazy#even more lazy is that they don’t clean their shit ever and then complain when all our brushes and palettes are wrecked#like huh. huh. who did that i wonder? who also got their own individual art kits at the start of the year and yet still insists on using-#-and destroying the cupboard stock? huh? huh? bizarre.#bagel babbles#idk also she is just like. rude. to me at least. but fine to the other technician#because he’s like hot and cool or whatever idk. and i’m not him#i think she’s got it in her head that i’m less competent than him for some reason#which like yeah but only in specific skill areas like using all the fucking heavy workshop machinery i haven’t been trained on yet#like he’s LITERALLY been doing this three years and i started in octoberwhat do u want#also also just in general he’s like 5 years older than me. of course he’s had more time to learn this shit i’m TWENTY ONE#even then though like this guy is teaching now. *im* the main technician now. fucking put up with it girl i am not him.#rant over. anyways doesnt this sink look kinda like howls bath? happy wizard freak friday :)
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coridallasmultipass · 2 months
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Make sure you vote tomorrow, March 5th (2024), when most states are holding their primaries!
Speaking as a Californian and my personal experience as a voter and in doing pollworking for the past couple elections...
If you got a Vote By Mail ballot, you can drop it off at any polling place/post office/ballot drop box (if it has the correct county envelope you got it with - the county will forward it to the correct county for vote counting, same as the post office). MAKE SURE YOU READ THE ENVELOPE BECAUSE YOU'LL NEED TO SIGN AND DATE THE ENVELOPE BEFORE YOU RETURN IT. (And your signature needs to resemble the one you signed when you registered.)
If you want to vote in-person, you will need to find a polling place WITHIN the county you're registered to vote in, preferrably your assigned precinct - you should check your county's website to find the location if you didn't get a notice by mail.
I don't know how every county does this, but in my county, the accessible ballot marking device has access to all the ballots in my county, which is great for people who can't find or travel to their assigned polling place during the poll hours. Each polling place only has access to pre-printed paper ballots from the precinct(s) assigned to it, which is why the accessible ballot marking device (which prints the ballot once you finish marking it) has been super important, since people tend to just go to any polling place they've heard about or used in the past. (And we DON'T have access to ANY ballots from a different county, not even on that device.)
Voting registration and vote collection is done by each county SEPARATELY, so you won't show up on a roster in another county, and they won't have the ballot you're eligible to vote on. You'd need to re-register/vote provisionally with the different county in order to vote on their ballots. (Which is why it's important to vote on the Vote By Mail ballot that was sent to you - it has all the races you're eligible to vote for, SO GO DIG IT OUT OF YOUR MAIL PILE AND VOTE ON IT, 'CAUSE THEY WERE SENT OUT IN LIKE JANUARY OR SOMETHING. THAT SHIT COST AN ABSURD AMOUNT TAX DOLLARS PER BALLOT, SO DON'T WASTE IT.)
If you haven't registered to vote yet, you can register on the same day you vote! (Again, this is for California, I don't know how other states do it.)
Again, make sure you find a place IN YOUR COUNTY, and try to vote at your assigned polling place, so your vote is counted where it matters!
TLDR: Order of importance:
1. Fill out the mail ballot that was sent to you. Take it to the post office, polling place, or official ballot drop box. It must be collected BEFORE THE POLLS CLOSE. Drop it off on your lunch break, if you need to get it in before closing time.
2. If you can't do that, go to your assigned polling place. (Check your county website.) Same importance as number 1, but you may have to wait in a line depending on what time you arrive.
3. If you can't do that, go to any polling place in the county you're registered to vote in.
4. Register/update your registration to vote. No one can be denied the right to vote at the end of the day, but if it's not with the county you're eligible to vote in, your ballot may be deemed ineligible. (I've never done anything on the ballot-counting side, so I definitely can't answer questions about that. If you're curious, you can get an answer by calling your specific county.)
Side note: do not wear any merch that has a candidate's name who's on the ballot while going to vote. This is electioneering, which is illegal. (Also includes any propositions or other items on the ballot.)
#again im just speaking as a regular person here i dont represent the county or state#im pollworking tomorrow but i can only tell you to speak directly with your county if you have specific questions#every county has a different setup and proceedure#just mostly wanted to remind ppl to dig out their mail ballots bc every year we have someone go 'oh i left it at home'#well guess what. thats the ballot u need to vote on otherwise ur gonna have to fill out a whole envelope of information to do it provisional#..or wait in line to use the accessible ballot marking device (which.. damn we need more of them in each polling place)#i saw the setup and were gonna have 2 in my polling place this year whoo hoo#2020 the lines were SO LONG bc we only had 1 and no one wanted to use their mail ballots for some unknown reason#so yeah#Cori.exe#Post.exe#voting#elections#pollworking#2024 primary#again im just a little guy my word is not law check your county website for 'the law'#just wanted to remind ppl since ive seen fuckall online about reminding people to go vote tmr#i gotta get some sleep i need to be up at like 430 or some bullshit and im already tired lol#go vote#seriously#even if u dont wanna select anyone for presidential primary.. at least vote in your local elections where ur vote has more weight#california also has a senate seat up for grabs which is pretty important if u ask me#i was actually pleasantly surprised to find a candidate i liked in that race usually its like pulling nails#also our representatives seat is also up for reelection and thats also pretty important#and our state-senator (which is separate from the US-senator. something i didnt know until like 2020)#bottom line is. you need to vote theres no getting around it. you dont get to complain about politics unless you vote#((unless ur a minor or formally incarcerated person i guess. u will always have the social right to complain abt politics imo))#im rambling bc anxiety now lol if u see me at the polls no u didnt i am a meat popsicle#ive reread this like 20 times its as accurate as i can remember right now but im only human seriously check ur countys site#also pollworking is not an employee of the county its like classed as a contractor or something since its volunteer (but they do pay us)
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bogleech · 8 months
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Anyway while we're on the subject of public misconception towards living things (which is completely understandable because have you SEEN living things? There's like dozens of them!) here's a fresh rundown of some common mistakes about bugs!
Arachnids aren't just spiders! They're also scorpions, mites, ticks and some real weirdos out there
Insects with wings are always finished growing! Wings are the last new thing they ever develop! There can never be a "baby bee" that's just a smaller bee flying around.
That said, not all insects have larvae! Many older insect groups do look like little versions of adults....but the wings rule still applies.
Insects do have brains! Lobes and everything!
Only the Hymenoptera (bees, ants and wasps) have stingers like that.
Not all bees and wasps live in colonies with queens
The only non-hymenoptera with queens are termites, which is convergent evolution, because termites are a type of cockroach!
There are still other insects with colonial lifestyles to various degrees which can include special reproductive castes, just not the whole "queen" setup.
Even ants still deviate from that; there are multi-queen ant species, some species where the whole colony is just females who clone themselves and other outliers
There is no "hive mind;" social insects coordinate no differently from schools of fish, flocks of birds, or for that matter crowds of humans! They're just following the same signals together and communicating to each other!
Not all mosquito species carry disease, and not all of them bite people
Mosquitoes ARE ecologically very important and nobody in science ever actually said otherwise
The bite of a black widow is so rarely deadly that the United States doesn't bother stocking antivenin despite hundreds of reported bites per year. It just feels really really bad and they give you painkillers.
Recluse venom does damage skin, but only in the tiny area surrounding the bite. More serious cases are due to this dead skin inviting bacterial infection, and in fact our hospitals don't carry recluse antivenin either; they just prescribe powerful antibiotics, which has been fully effective at treating confirmed bites.
Bed bugs are real actual specific insects
"Cooties" basically are, too; it's old slang for lice
Crane flies aren't "mosquito hawks;" they actually don't eat at all!
Hobo spiders aren't really found to have a dangerous bite, leaving only widows and recluses as North America's "medically significant" spiders
Domestic honeybees actually kill far more people than hornets, including everywhere the giant "murder" hornet naturally occurs.
Wasps are only "less efficient" pollinators in that less pollen sticks to them per wasp. They are still absolutely critical pollinators and many flowers are pollinated by wasps exclusively.
Flies are also as important or more important to pollination than bees.
For "per insect" pollination efficiency it's now believed that moths also beat bees
Honeybees are non-native to most of the world and not great for the local ecosystem, they're just essential to us and our food industry
Getting a botfly is unpleasant and can become painful, but they aren't actually dangerous and they don't eat your flesh; they essentially push the flesh out of the way to create a chamber and they feed on fluids your immune system keeps making in response to the intrusion. They also keep this chamber free of bacterial infection because that would harm them too!
Botflies also exist in most parts of the world, but only one species specializes partially in humans (and primates in general, but can make do with a few other hosts)
"Kissing bugs" are a group of a couple unusual species of assassin bug. Only the kissing bugs evolved to feed on blood; other assassin bugs just eat other insects.
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deception-united · 1 month
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Let's talk about character arcs.
Character arcs refer to the transformation or development of a character over the course of a story. This typically involves changes in their beliefs, attitudes, or behavior in response to challenges and experiences and how the confrontation of their flaws leads to eventual personal growth.
Developing compelling character arcs is essential for engaging storytelling and characters that resonate with your readers. Here are some tips to help you craft effective character arcs:
Establish Clear Goals: Each character should have clear, specific goals they want to achieve. These goals can be external (e.g., defeating a villain, finding a lost treasure) or internal (e.g., overcoming fear, finding redemption). The arc will revolve around the character's journey towards these goals.
Create Flawed Characters: Characters should have flaws or weaknesses that they need to overcome throughout the story. These flaws make them relatable and provide opportunities for growth.
Initiate Change: A character arc involves change. Whether it's a positive transformation or a tragic downfall, the character should not remain static throughout the story. They should evolve in response to the challenges they face and the experiences they undergo.
Conflict is Key: Conflict is essential for driving character development. Characters must face obstacles, both internal and external, that challenge their beliefs, values, and abilities. These conflicts force them to confront their flaws and make choices that impact their arc.
Show Progression: As the story progresses, illustrate the character's growth and change through their actions, decisions, and relationships. Show how their experiences shape their perspective and behavior over time.
Foreshadowing and Setup: Lay the groundwork for the character arc early in the story through subtle hints, foreshadowing, and backstory. This helps create a sense of continuity and believability in the character's development.
Include Setbacks and Failures: Characters should not succeed at everything they attempt. Setbacks and failures are crucial for character growth, as they provide opportunities for reflection, learning, and resilience.
Internal and External Arcs: Characters should experience both internal and external arcs. While external arcs focus on tangible goals and obstacles, internal arcs delve into the character's emotions, beliefs, and personal growth.
Resolution and Transformation: By the end of the story, ensure that the character undergoes a significant transformation or resolution that reflects their arc. This conclusion should feel earned based on the challenges they've faced and the choices they've made.
Consistency and Authenticity: Maintain consistency in the character's development and ensure that their arc feels authentic to their personality, motivations, and experiences. Avoid sudden or unrealistic changes that don't align with the character's established traits.
Hope this was helpful! Happy writing ❤
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capslocked · 8 months
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PANACEA
male reader x sakura && kazuha
17k words
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Sakura can't expect you to actually be down for this - the setup, the miscommunication, the endless drama, all that messy work, and for what, your girlfriend-in-eveything-but-name-only's peace of mind?
You lean in. "Declining. Politely. Please."
“C'mon, It’s foolproof. Have I ever steered you wrong?” she says with a click of her tongue. “We can fix her.”
(It isn’t foolproof. She has. And you can’t.)
-
If you’re going to get tangled up in origin stories, this is probably a good place to start: at this gaudy bar, on the gaudier side of Ginza, with the shops you can’t afford to shop at - whose clientele can’t afford to be seen with you. It’s not your first pick, and you can say this because it so very often is, that this one’s all Sakura’s idea.
To be specific, it starts when Sakura grabs you by the wrist - Kazuha pinched by the fabric of her dress - and shuffles you both into a coat closet, which is as empty as the frost-less days of spring might expect. It was probably a mistake, thinking she wasn’t serious, but it’s that uncanny talent of hers, to always find someplace or another to steal away.
And look, you’re not crazy about the bar scene. Not here. You never have been.
When you’re at home, when you’re alone - when it’s you and Sakura - it never takes long to fall into that sensual rhythm of give and take, but here, under the dim light of the closet, it’s no different. You can feel the corners of her wry, delighted smile beginning to quirk as she steals those little shudders at the end of each exhale.
Maybe it’s the abundance of time you’ve had to become familiar with how Sakura can set the stage: 
The soft press of her mouth on yours, the speed of her kisses, those little licks, to that less-than-gentle pull at your bottom lip. It’s like she is everywhere, all at once - the warmth of her breath ghosting along the cartilage of your ear, the curve of your throat, her teeth hovering above where your pulse thrums and your skin runs thin.
Nevertheless, something quite new, a touch of novelty. This girl in black - built like a gazelle, all legs - who you think might quietly prefer to be addressed by her full name. Kazuha Nakamura, who would rather not make a fuss over the fact you forgot it the first twenty times or so - but she does have that look about her, that, if she asked you to, you could imagine dropping everything, anything, just to be at her beck and call.
That if she were in your shoes, you could imagine her wanting to do the same.
And then she asks for the most mundane thing.
Kazuha looks at you, not the way she looks at Sakura, but there is a stilled softness, a sweetness, that has her asking for permission - like she isn’t asking to do what she’s about to do - and when Sakura gives her a little tug at her skirt, Kazuha slides onto her knees.
“What did I tell you,” says Sakura, right into the angle at your jaw, pulling tighter on the end of your tie. She wraps it once over her wrist into something she can make a real grip out of. “The girl’s head over heels.”
A touch at your thighs, touches hooked into the seam of your pants and furling elastic - noticeably different from the hand kneading circles into the nape of your neck and carding through your hair. You laugh when you realize Kazuha has your fly undone and her shallow breath is hot against you, anticipating. Part of you is shocked, though another part equally thrilled. She’s actually going to do it.
Which, imagine that.
“And just what is it we’re doing here?” You lift your mouth off Sakura’s several times, chins brushing, colliding, kisses coming together and falling apart again. Your hold on Sakura’s waist firms up, steadying her as you try to reason with her. “What do you figure happens if we bring her home?” “Oh, I have no clue,” Sakura admits. “We’ll probably fuck her, and then fuck each other again when we she leaves.” “Hm,” you start, shakily, coping with the tongue that’s begun licking up from the base of your cock. It’s agonizingly slow - fuck, it’s only the seal of Kazuha’s pouty lips cushioning themselves around you. Which feel perfect, but only so perfect to the extent that it makes you want so much more. Sakura’s looking at you like she knows you’ll take it if you have to. Like she knows Kazuha will let you.
“Well.” You’re pushing some of the dark, glossy hair that had fallen in front of Kazuha’s face out of the way, and you start to posture, “I’m not about to start complaining, but-”
Sakura shoots only the slightest smirk in your direction. She’s got that usual unrepentant expression, eyes wide and brilliant, framed by those long eyelashes that happen to land more or less exactly on what you’d describe as your type.
“You have to see how this could backfire.”
She blinks once, twice, a few times, her expression remaining all but even, studying your face. “It’s not going to backfire.”
Your lips part to voice some final concern, but if that isn’t a ship long sailed. Here you’ll be marooned, shipwrecked - something you’ll have to come to terms with later - because you’re left only with siren calls: the soft sounds of Sakura’s lips smacking, of Kazuha’s; left with only a gaspful of air when she finally steals you into the wet heat of her pretty little mouth.
See, these hookups, your dalliances and escapades - the truth is that none of this really comes to you as a surprise anymore. Because if anything, Sakura has always had that tendency, a real proclivity for it. She was mischievous right from the jump, from when you first met her, and she’s only grown bolder. But the thing that you’re having to learn anew, beyond the way Sakura gets her mouth onto yours, how she’ll make a mess of your hair and leave marks on your neck, how her tongue glides effortlessly past your teeth, is with a second set of lips - that blowjob Kazuha is now settling into, mouth inching further and further down your cock - there’s suddenly a little less surefire to your wit, to your raillery.  
(Because here, you’d anticipated for impressive, perhaps even overwhelming, but with these two - well, there’s a lot to unpack. There always will be.)
The plan is - or at least it was -  to catch an Uber back to Sakura’s apartment. All three of you piling into the backseat, acting casual and pretending like you weren’t just trying to engineer how to share a kiss between three people. How’s that for logistics? Though that was moments before Sakura dropped a doting kiss into Kazuha’s hair and helped ease her down onto the carpet of the coat closet. And when you consider letting out the moan that festers in your chest, the one growing ever more unruly each time Kazuha’s tongue slowly curls around the head of your cock, you hesitate, swallowing down on nothing. 
“Fuck,” you say quietly into Sakura’s mouth. You’re not in public, technically speaking, which is not at all the reassurement Sakura insists it is. 
Sakura twists her fingers into your hair a little bit, just enough to sting, and asks, “does that feel good? Kazuha’s perfect mouth on your cock?”
“Yeah,” you admit, slightly annoyed - slightly under duress. The pressure of Sakura’s thumb a little harder into the soft muscle of your neck can usually coax out whatever it is she wants to hear. “Of course it feels good, Sakura.”
“I’m glad, it should.” Sakura nods. “And look, she’s just a natural, isn’t she?”
Oh, Kazuha - the poster child for a debate on innate talent and hard work, because as she works more of you into her mouth, you realize she’s both, a total package, an all in one. You’re not easy to take, and she presses her lips down, and draws you deeper like she’s done it a thousand times.
Though it pains you to ever admit Sakura’s right, about anything.
“How about we dial it back,” you say to Sakura, and for the first time, you look down at the mess of midnight hair in front of your waist. It’s glossy, even here in the dim glow of a dusty closet, and it’s just as silky to the touch. As you pilfer more of it through your fingers, you watch the glistening length of your cock vanish between the pouty pucker of Kazuha’s lips - bowed perfectly into this red elegant arch. 
“Are you sure? You seem like she’s just about killing you,” Sakura says. It’s the wince here and there. That slight quiver in your lip. All dead giveaways.
“Listen-” 
“Shh-shh,” Sakura soothes you gently, and starts to ease your jacket off your shoulders until it lands in a puddle of fabric at your feet. “Why don’t you just let her take care of you, huh?”
Sakura has her hand fit under your jaw again, urging you down to kiss her, but you’ve not quite finished taking in the sight of everything - of Kazuha, kneeling and bobbing her head back and forth - really settling into this hasty tempo. She takes more of your cock each time, and when you can feel her mouth tighten around you, to where her throat narrows and offers you a truly filthy sensation, you watch her eyes open, with lashes fluttering away stray tears and looking straight up at you. Pupils blown, dark as the dead of night, and every bit as sinful. It’s hard to even start to believe, that the girl who was paranoid a few weeks ago that she looked nothing like the fake ID Chaewon had given her is here on her fucking knees, slobbering on your cock.
“What’s the matter?” Sakura asks, pouting ever-so-slightly as she realizes you’re not going to lean into her again, and settles with a hot, open-mouthed kiss into the side of your neck.
“I don’t think it’s unreasonable,” you start, kind of sharply. It’s the way her black mini dress hugs her body - this masterwork of genetics, of countless hours in the gym, a miracle in the flesh. It’s the way one of its flimsy straps is falling down her shoulder and she’s so busy sucking your cock that she can’t be bothered to pull it back up. You don’t look away. You can’t. And jesus, your voice is coming out more broken, more graveled than you expect. “I should - if she’s going to swallow my cum, I think I should get to watch.”
“You hear that?” Sakura asks, and Kazuha chokes on you, just a little. There’s spit at the corner of her mouth when she pulls herself back, runs her tongue over the head of your cock, and tries again. Sakura’s laugh comes out rather amused. Her two favorite people in the world, finally getting what they deserve. “You’re so perfect, Kazuha, you’re going to make him cum.”
Kazuha lets you slip from her lips, and for the first time since she last said anything at all - muttering, please, please, I want to suck his cock - she pulls a stray hair out of her mouth, looks up at you and says: “On my face. I want it on my face.”
“Jesus,” you murmur, gripping Sakura’s waist harder into you. A sort of reflexive response. Because, fuck, if that isn’t well within your wheelhouse. If she’s asking - if you can oblige -
Kazuha lifts her gaze toward Sakura, eyes beaming. “Can I? With your boyfriend’s cock?”
“Kazuha, sweetie, he’s not my boyfriend.” And you can almost hear Kazuha trying not to roll her eyes. It’s just not a technicality she’s ever been interested in - you’re not taken, but you’re definitely not single, and that’s the part that’s only ever mattered to her. Sakura lets her hand fall to the base of your cock, angles it up for Kazuha to instinctively start licking its sensitive underbelly, fingers threading through your balls and fuck, the little kisses she saves for those are going to fucking end you. “You have to ask him.”
Kazuha’s got her brown, bambi eyes fixed back on you when she does. And it’s just a litany of nonsense, as she tries to look you square on, asking you politely to cum on her face. "Please, can I have it? Please, please. Cum on my face. Cum on my pretty face. I want it so bad, please. Please, I need it."
She’s a self-starter at some things, but the profanity, the dirty talk, these simple methods of seduction, you’ll ease her into them. You figure you’ll ease her into a lot.
Because you’re taking note of how her soft lips pucker as you cup her face. Fucking hell, she’s breathtaking.
“I’ll try not to get it in your hair,” you tell her. In a tone that makes it feel like a compromise. Something just shy of completely corrupting, though heavens knows you want to. This want - to get your hands in her hair later, bordering on something near abusive - otherwise, it comes across as this gentle dominance radiant with authority. Something she quickly melts into, eyes twinkling up at you, and you can’t resist digging a little deeper, asking, “that always been a fantasy of yours, sweetheart?” 
“She watches porn with Yunjin.” Sakura leans into your ear. “Like, a lot.” Like, it’s borderline concerning, she explains.
The shade of crimson burning across the bridge of Kazuha’s nose is as beautiful as she is, and you’re piecing together some of the puzzle. “I see,” you say, more serious. 
For the girl who Sakura described as naive but enthusiastic, you’ve become rather lost, maybe a little too quickly, somewhere deep in the pull of it. Quick, quick, slow. Quick, quicker, painfully slow. The draw of Kazuha’s soft lips back and forth along your cock. Every now and again, you can feel her tease the head of your cock against the back of her throat, just short of dragging you past her palate and holding her nose nearly flush to your groin. 
She pumps a fist around your shaft harshly, delivering an indiscriminate pleasure. You can hear her steady her breath, and almost without missing a beat, she lets her spit drool onto your cock and familiarize itself with her fingers, corkscrewing around you faster. Tighter. 
“So here’s what I’m thinking,” Sakura starts hot and close, breath fanning over your cheek, and yielding her idea a moment to the sound of Kazuha’s hand sliding up and down your shaft. It’s such a filthy noise, lathering spit and precum between her slender fingers, the obnoxious squelch of it when she grips firmer and starts to pump you in earnest.
“When we get home,” she continues, “I think you should get that dangerous mouth of yours-”
Okay, fuck. Fuck. You’re spitting the word out, groaning as your eyes snap shut - the moment Kazuha gets her lips back around you, hollows her cheeks, she inhales sharply.
“-oh?” Sakura teases, flirting her lips about the edge of your ear. Her breath is hot, close, closer. “Maybe your mouth isn’t the one I need to be worried about.”
In an instant, you’re nuzzled deep into Kazuha’s mouth, seeking damp, seeking heat. With the flat of her tongue, she has you reeling from base to tip, and oh, god, the teeth. Just the slightest, sharp scrape of her teeth as she works her mouth on you faster, sloppier - without caring for so much as a concern about the tears cornering in her long dark lashes, or the makeup smudging beneath her eyes. It’s electrifying, and it has you bucking forward into Kazuha’s little mouth, until you’re swallowed nearly in full.
But behind that, it’s silent. Behind the smacking sound of Sakura’s lips pulling harshly at yours, behind the half-chokes punctuating how hard Kazuha’s lips are trying, it’s just breaths. Sakura’s, relaxed. Kazuha’s, careful and measured. And yours, panting, desperate.
It didn’t matter what image Kazuha had in her head before, beyond the generic appeal of your smile or how you’d rub the back of your neck when you laughed, or the way your forearms looked when you rolled your sleeves up. The silence Sakura creates when she seals her mouth over yours, kisses drowning those slight shuddering whines, it reveals to Kazuha the more present truth: you’re not just perfect. No, you’re perfect for her, and with the right touches here - of which Sakura is eager to demonstrate - ever so wonderfully brittle.
“Mnpph.” Kazuha simply hums, sucks up and down, over and over. 
“Come on,” Sakura breathes against you, barely above a whisper, then says it once more as she twines her fingers with yours and makes silky knots of Kazuha’s hair for you to hold onto.
“Fuck her pretty mouth,” she tells you, and you do.
With two greedy handfuls of Kazuha’s hair, with Sakura’s hand sliding down the buttons at the front of your shirt until she’s replacing Kazuha’s at the base of your cock, you rock your hips forward, experimental. Kazuha makes a strained sound, but nothing like the protest you were listening for - and so you do it again.
And again.
It’s unreal how she doesn’t react at all, just splaying her fingers out along your thighs, ready to brace herself as your thrusts into her mouth start to quicken. Given how things started - coupled with the fact that she looks so satisfied and serene - she’s doing outstanding. And if the air dragging through your teeth isn’t enough to make that clear, Sakura’s sure to guarantee you’re all on the same page:
“Just like that,” she tells her. “You look so pretty taking his cock, love. You’re doing so good, keep going, just a little more, and he’s going to cum for you.” 
So then, there Kazuha is, bruising her knees and yielding her lips, her mouth, her throat to you - with the girl she idolizes giving her the praise she’s always craved, these sickly-sweet affirmations, a petal-blossom of assurances. They ignite something laid deep within her, something that makes her work that perfect mouth onto you just a little harder, a little deeper, a little more slacked.
She wants you to cum so badly. 
You can feel her tongue flatten again, and without hesitation, while you fuck unabashedly between her wet, messy lips, she delves, she massages, she laves. 
For god’s sake, she worships.
Sakura is grinning, because she knows. She can feel the familiar way you’ve begun to throb, how the pulse in your neck is racing and blotchy and hot - she recognizes instinctually that all the damage your teeth have now done to your bottom lip could only mean one thing - you’re spiraling. You’re cracking under pressure, and so, so quickly. And then, nonchalant as ever, she just teases, “going to cum?”
You laugh, dryly. You are. You’re forcing the mundane into your thoughts: rainwater sliding down a pane glass window, paint swatches, the sound of your alarm clock, ringing, ringing, sucking - slurping, choking and spitting and gagging and fuck, Kazuha’s making a god damn meal out of you. You’ll let her.
“I’m pretty fucking close,” you finally admit to Sakura, holding Kazuha’s face firm. It’s not a warning. It’s an admission of guilt: you’re fucking ruining her makeup. There’s mascara dark as india ink, as dark as her jet black hair, streaking down her cheeks, and you’re imagining her glassy, tear-filled eyes, the ones that are currently screwed shut, impossibly tight. But she doesn’t wince, she doesn’t whine - and aside from the choking sound her throat makes when your cockhead stains pre-cum onto the back of her throat - she keeps her lips sealed tight, totally demure. Perfectly submissive.
“In her mouth,” Sakura orders dryly. 
You still can’t look away from the place where you and Kazuha are joined together, cum and spit and lipstick clinging to your shaft, her mouth, her chin. You’re simply stuck imagining the amusement stretching across Sakura’s face when she tells you again, voice resolute - fuck your load into her mouth.
It’s nothing that might ever take a lot of convincing, but you’re being gracious, being polite, trying to take Kazuha’s side. “We both heard her. She said she wanted-”
“Unh-uh, no,” Sakura tuts, rubbing a knuckle into the base of your spine. “Not here, you can make whatever mess you want when we get home.”
You thrust again, loosening one grip, tightening another. Vaulting toward the edge.
A mess, mess, mess, mess; a proper one, of her, crying and clamoring, shaking and stuttering, you know we will, you know it’s what she wants, Sakura’s explaining. Trying to explain. Fuck, it’s hard to pay attention to anything beyond your cock sheathed deep in Kazuha’s throat, but Sakura’s voice carries that usual gentle quiver, like she isn’t describing the filthiest assortment of ways you’ll get Kazuha off, how you’ll both get off. Going to fucking take her apart - she’s murmuring, kissing into your neck - until she’s sobbing for it. 
It’s not difficult to imagine. There are these images taking shape in your mind’s eye, photographically vivid, near pornographic, and god, Kazuha’s body is magnificent: how it curves, how it flexes, how it bends. You’re so close to unloading in her throat when you can practically hear Sakura’s posh, practiced smile flirting her voice into your ear. “If you’re worried she won’t swallow it, I will.”
For once, you don’t manage to say, no, not yet.
“Mnnph.” Kazuha strains, sinking deeper into the floor, hands falling to her knees. Nothing short of full surrender.
And it’s all over in a flash, before you can even register it.
Though in fact, you’ve seen it. You know it. There’s the warmth, the wet, the tightness of the seal that Kazuha makes around your cock, and the way she just fucking stays there, her mouth unmoving as you spill down the back of her throat. You try to catch yourself on the doorframe, and there are a thousand and one things you want to say to her - tell her, ask her, beg her, please, sweetheart, please, fuck, fuck, baby, I can't-
But you don't.
Instead, your teeth are grit and your jaw is tense and your hand is knotted into a fistful of her hair and you can hear yourself barely manage to get out each sinful consonant: “I'm cumming,” and then nothing else.
In the silence, you can see the lumps roll down the column of her throat, of her swallowing, and it doesn’t end. It doesn’t stop. Kazuha’s lips stayed locked around you, and she sucks, she swallows, and sucks and sucks. Like she doesn’t even know you’re reeling.
“Oh…” Sakura says, over a tiny laugh, the kind that’s dripping with mirth. She traces a line with her finger, from your jaw over your chest and down to your hip.
Realistically, the relatively innocent touch shouldn’t make you crazier than her hand gently wringing out your cock, or the way Kazuha’s chest rises and falls with a heavy, satisfied breath, or -
The look she has, staring up at you with her heavy-lidded, sated eyes:
It’s the sort of look that’ll be stitched into your thoughts and haunt your dreams for months.
(It’s the sort of look that leaves an impression, one that cuts deep and engraves:
Adoration. Arousal. Awe.)
Sakura starts to pull her fingers through Kazuha’s hair, smoothing down the parts that were mussed, and she leans down, planting a kiss at her temple. And then another. And another. She whispers something into her ear - a request, a command - something more, until Kazuha finally lets you slip from her mouth.
It’s a disaster.
There’s a translucent thread of spit hanging from her chin, and her tongue runs a semi-circle over her lower lip to collect the last bits of cum clinging to her skin. It should be criminal, how she looks up at you through those long eyelashes, a mess of black makeup and glassy eyes; how her cheeks are rosy, and her lips swollen and parted.
How she can smile through it all and still manage to look like this is what she was made to do. Like she can go a second round, like she could go several - you can practically hear her saying it: let me get your cock back in my mouth. I can do better. I can be better.
But she never gets the opportunity. You crack the veneer of that unearthly silence first.
"Sakura."
"Yeah?"
"I have a question," you say steadily, and Kazuha makes a wounded expression as you pull up the zipper on your pants.
"What's that?" Sakura asks.
“How close is that car?”
“Should we wait outside?” Kazuha starts to say, but it's a garbled mess. She’s still wiping her lips when Sakura reaches into her clutch and pulls out her phone. There's the saliva, the spit, the cum. You can't help but think you've ruined her voice. That it might not sound the same, even a week from now.
“Yeah.” Sakura brings her fingers to Kazuha's chin, tilts it up towards her, and then she kisses her. “We probably should.”
-
This is where it gets kind of complicated, because you know Sakura, know her better than most. 
She’d been enrolled in one of your elective courses way back when. Had been the kind of girl that immediately stood out, the kind that left a mark. You were likely the more studious one, by comparison. Grounded. Whereas she had her dreams, a dream of a life, a dream of the world - and the two of you just had this way of keeping each other level-headed. When you think back to it, and for as long as you can remember: it was one, the other, a constant pendulum, always swinging back. You know what keeps her steady, what makes her tick, and she knows you just as well.
Though about this thing you share, the thread between you, it’s not something you pretend to understand.
"Maybe we could define it," you suggested, once.
"No." That was her answer. "I don't know. We're just doing what we do, right? We're just having fun."
"Okay, sure," you said. "I get it. But you know how these things are. They’ve got a tendency to go belly up."
“Oh absolutely,” she remarked, casually, leading you to believe that she both understood the peril and was somehow totally unfussed by it - she probably always had the upper hand. See, she’s gorgeous, but also there’s just that pinch of cute in the mix that makes you believe she’d never hurt you. Makes you believe that she never could. 
And that was before it metastasized into where you’re at now: 
She’s got a toothbrush on your bathroom counter. There’s a pair of shoes too, at the front door. Shirts in your closet, a jacket of hers that’s managed to claim its own hook. She’ll throw her underwear into your wash while you’re measuring detergent and give you these gentle eyes that make all these silent demands, look the other way, please, just ignore me.
There’s the coffee already in the brewer, light roast, the one she likes. There’s her side of the bed, it’s neatly made. Always. She's neat like that. And it’s all a bit much, if you’re being honest.
Because, yeah, it's not exactly conventional. What the two of you are doing is this total, unmitigated disaster. 
So the fact that Sakura wanted to invite Kazuha out -
The fact that Kazuha actually showed up -
The fact that Sakura is now helping her out of her dress in the entryway of her apartment and is kissing her neck and her shoulders and telling her, sweetie, come on, let’s go, let's get you in the shower -
Yeah, this is the part that is sort of fucking complicated.
It's a lot, even for someone like you.
- So - of fucking course it backfires.
You’re hesitant to say I told you so, but Sakura can read the sentiment right off your face. You don’t need to say anything.
Though that’s a realization that only catches up with you once a week goes by and the progress you’ve made in regards to the whole Kazuha situation is categorically negative.
Because, here it is: her lipgloss on the rim of your water glass.
The lid of her moisturizer sitting on the kitchen counter.
According to Sakura, it’s not supposed to go like this, though a lot of people, if asked, would suggest you should probably not be playing with this girl’s heart in the first place, and then there’s the issue that yours is starting to look more and more precarious, like a house of cards. Forget it, they’d probably suggest - move on, be done with it. You haven’t thought so far, in days, hell, even hours, to decide that it might be good for you. You’re usually rather decisive. But, Kazuha? Yeah. Deciding to not think about her was never going to happen.
In the sense, anyway, when the surprise cold of a winter-in-spring day still has you wearing your sandals where there's a blizzard - memorable in how there are flecks of melting white everywhere, like frozen lace, and a sensation lingering at the tip of your fingers, numb and insensate, which -
Or maybe the same is true of frostbite - or, better, hollowness: how it lingers and persists, that faint sting.
"Kazuha." You sigh, closing a book shut. It falls onto the coffee table and slides to rest, and there’s more: her perfume bottle on the side table, the socks on the couch, her favorite shirt balled into the crease of the cushions, and the sweater that she’s apparently keeping draped over one of the kitchen chairs.
You think you’re starting to understand her perspective, if at least a little.
-
It’s only a handful of days later, when Sakura wakes up to a long, bumbling text from Kazuha. She’s still in bed, holding the edge of your comforter up over her breasts like you haven’t seen her naked a million times before, and she’s twisting her lips, tapping away at her phone screen. 
The text is long, you realize as Sakura’s reading it out to you. 
Its message is a bit disjointed but legible nonetheless, more or less asking, hey, can i come over?
-
Hand to god, this was never about the fucking. Well, not exactly.
The truth is you really did want to get to know Kazuha - in whatever ways, under any circumstances - in a less...messy setting.
Not just to get her off, or to hear her make sounds she never even knew she was capable of; to have the luxury of seeing how she lets a stray moan echo in the back of her throat when she tries not to get too carried away; how she bites at the raw cushion of her cheek when Sakura works a hand beneath her shorts - like she's always desperate to shut herself up, lest someone call her out on it - because, the whole point to this, it's never really been about the fucking.
But, never you - and certainly never Sakura - were going to be able to keep your hands off her.
It isn’t totally your fault either. It can’t be. Kazuha’s at your front door, and she’s wearing the smallest dress imaginable. The tiny little piece barely qualifies as a sundress, and she knows it. Some sort of pattern recognition - she’s putting two and two together - the type of bodice that clings tightly to the gentlest curve of her chest, the skirt hem that stops right at the tops of her thighs, and you think, fuck, she’s just too damn beautiful for her own good.
Then it’s the other thing: she’s so nervous that her hand is nearly trembling around the strap of the duffel bag slung over her shoulder. It's not your fault she's so pretty. So shy. So easy.
The moment she steps inside, you can see it in her face, that same neediness, the same hunger from yesterday, the day before, from last week - at the bar, when she was kneeling in front of your cock, looking at you like you’d just offered her the world.
(And in so many ways, you did.)
“An overnight bag?” Sakura sounds moderately amused. "Correct me if I’m wrong Kazuha, but I thought you said you just needed to drop by," she continues, not in any grandstanding manner - just factually, straightforward. "How long are you planning on staying?"
You watch her bite her lip, and you’re trying not to react, but there’s a noticeable twitch in your brow. You start by puzzling out the weight of the duffel bag as you help it off her shoulder. “Feels like a couple of nights."
Kazuha nods, sheepishly. “Yeah.”
And she should be ashamed, you think. She knows exactly what she's doing, probably wearing those little lace panties if you had to guess - or maybe nothing at all - the pair of black heels, and her hair is down and wavy, and her lips are full and painted pink, and she smells like the best kind of trouble, and if she isn’t trying to get fucked -
"I'm sure we can figure something out," you tell her.
She smiles at you, and there's that fluttery, flirty kind of a gesture, the kind of coy, coy shyness that could just make anyone's heart swell.
"Want to help me find a spot for this in the bedroom?" you ask.
She nods again, and the blush coloring her cheeks is this soft, subtle shade of crimson.
"Yeah," she breathes, "yes, please."
-
Let the record show, Sakura kisses her first.
You watch her hands thread into the silkiness of Kazuha's hair, the way they firm up and hold her steady, how she draws her body into her own. It's the kind of kiss you see in a movie, the one that should happen in a rainstorm, with an orchestra swelling, the camera panning, a fade-to-black. You're watching the way their lips meet, how she holds Kazuha close, the ease in her shoulders when she feels Sakura smile against her. How it all just seems to click.
It's the sort of thing where you could watch forever.
And, honestly, Sakura is gentle with her - maybe as an overcompensation, a correction for the fact that she’ll get her mouth between her legs later and make her scream - but here she is, tender, warm, touching her delicately like otherwise she might break. The same as she was in the backseat of the car, the first time, the same every time after that. But she doesn't let the opportunity slip through her fingers either. Kazuha's body ends up pressed back into the mattress, and the sound of her breathing is slightly haggard, just like the rise and fall of her chest, as Sakura's pulling up the hem of her dress.
“Hey,” Sakura starts, with a kiss at the corner of Kazuha’s mouth, and then the other. And then a few more, until Kazuha is blushing, smiling, and she asks her, "do you want this off?"
Kazuha sits up and leans into her, and they both laugh softly, because, god, Sakura is fumbling with the zipper on the back of her dress. She tells her to hold still, and gets it down in a second. It's just the slightest sound - a little shuffle, the swish of fabric pooling on the floor, and then Kazuha is in nothing but a set of lingerie, the heels that make her legs look so long you start to ache, and and with only a moment’s hesitation, the two of them are kissing again.
"Kazuha…" she says, "you know, I didn't take you for someone who owned lingerie. This is nice."
And it is.
There's the dainty fabric hugging Kazuha's body, the way her chest looks, the bra, the lace, how her nipples are just barely peeking through the thin material, and how she's just letting her fingers trail along the top of her panties, this tiny triangle of satin and lace.
"What," Kazuha says, "you don't think it's me?"
"It's very cute," Sakura agrees, running her thumb over Kazuha's lower lip, and as you settle in next to her, skirting touches first at her bare knee, tracing up to where her skin is softest on her thighs, she adds, “but you don’t need to dress up for him.”
"I don't mind," you murmur through busy lips - dragging kisses up her leg. "I think it’s hot."
"Then I suppose she should keep the shoes on," Sakura suggests and lifts her own shirt over her head, heaping it somewhere near the laundry bin. Her hands come up to her tits, holding them in place, and as she lets go - lets them bounce back into place - the smile she gives Kazuha’s is so, so soft. 
This genuine flash of affection.
You get lost in them both a little. For a minute. Two. The three you all tangled up, bodies folded into one, arms coiled over each other, lips crushed, until finally, there is a need.
Something frantic, burning, clawing. Something insurmountable.
Kissing and kissing.
And kissing - and kissing - and -
Then you’re kneeling at the side of the bed, between Kazuha’s legs, sucking at her hip. Her skin. Pressing your mouth to every place it can reach. Up and down her thighs - running hot over the stitches and marks and stains from where your lips have dragged, peppered, blotched and bruised. Where you will, more.
In the past week, this image has hardly left your mind, sticky and unmoving. Kazuha in your bed, on your sofa, in the bath, over the cool countertop of the kitchen island - wanting to be touched, wanting to be used - chasing every possible high - you had her begging to cum on your fingers, on your mouth, on your cock. In every possible way.
That probably should have been enough. 
But after Sakura strips down to nothing, wrestling her feet from her shorts, panties hanging loose from the edge of her ankle, she mounts Kazuha, straddling her waist, bringing her hips right atop hers - rolling them down, further, inching closer and closer -
It isn’t. Oh, it isn’t, it won’t be. It never would be.
“How many times are we going to make you cum,” Sakura wonders aloud, a single finger making a slow circle around the outline of Kazuha's bra. "Huh. Two?" She’s smirking now, you can hear it. "Three? I could probably convince him to go for four."
Sakura kisses hard into her neck, and it’s reflex that sends Kazuha spinning, coiling - closing her legs around you. Or at least she attempts to, but you get your hand slipped between her thighs first, and you’re leaning forward, leaning in, pressing these tantalizing kisses to the side of her knee, drawing your thumb under the arch of her foot. You can just see it, the dark blush she's starting to get between her legs: this lovely, sweet, rose-colored flush. Radiant with heat, with want, with need.
You could have your way with the two of them, you realize, take and take and take; they could put on a show, all for you. And it's not just about the pretty picture they make in bed together, Sakura and Kazuha, who are both the type to belong on covers of magazines, on billboards. Sakura's a deceptive panoply of curves, and Kazuha’s all toned muscle - her built-like-a-trackstar physique looking amazing above you, underneath you, on all fours -
But Sakura, well. There are those things that get her going.
You slide your thumb across her pussy, and you can hear the moment her breath catches, somewhere downstream of all those sweet nothings she’s saving for Kazuha, the kisses into her jaw, her neck, crashing fast against her lips. Those nothings, filthy and sweet, obscene and tender.
“Fuck, Kazuha, I didn’t realize how bad I needed this,” Sakura is saying, telling her. Promising. Her hand is brushing through her hair, making sure she doesn’t flinch away, and god, they’re so close. Sakura’s toned stomach at the dip of Kazuha’s ribcage, laid flat - the way Sakura’s breasts press into Kazuha’s chest has them spilling out ever so slightly at the sides, and Kazuha has her hands all over the ridges of Sakura’s back, dug tight into her shoulders. 
“He’s going to fuck us again. Until we can’t take it anymore,” she adds, almost reverent, and you are, you will, your fingers catch the elastic of Kazuha’s panties, drag them to the crease of her thigh and -
It’s fucking perfect, how they’re both so impossibly wet. 
Sakura turns back to give you one last look. She tends to be bossy, she likes to feel like she’s in control, and maybe that’s why she can’t get over how Kazuha melts beneath her, but it’s not enough. She’s snapping at you, “I need you to eat me out. Right now.”
You arch an eyebrow, acting surprised. “Right now?”
“Right now,” she repeats, shifting her hips pointedly.
“This very second?” You’re teasing, you’re a little irritating when you want to be, you’re well, you’re a lot of things, but you’re also working at the button of your pants, rubbing a thumb over the fabric of your underwear where it’s stiffening, tightening, all at the sight of these two in front of you.
“I swear to god,” she practically growls at you, the sound catching in her throat.
“So demanding.” You laugh. You have to. And your breath fans right over the folds of her pussy. She hates that. She loves that.
“If you don’t start now-”
But the thought never finishes.
Because you're leaning forward, and your hands are gripping tight, pulling you into her, and -
Fuck, it's not fair, she tastes fucking fantastic. With your mouth at Sakura’s pussy, licking past her heat, she spreads her knees just a little further apart. 
Then there’s your hand, ghosting across where Kazuha needs you most, and you let the pad of your index finger roll, circle, drag and drift everywhere else. She shudders, gasping into Sakura’s mouth; you lick up, tongue through the perfect squeeze of Sakura’s lips - perniciously lapping, licking - and she’s returning to Kazuha the very same.
It's indulgent. Not that you hadn’t known it would be.
But Sakura - god, she grinds her hips down, down, down, against you, against Kazuha, and you can just hear the pair of them kissing. It’s messy, hard, hungry. There’s wet sounds, sloppy ones, and tongues, lips, teeth - Kazuha is moaning, Sakura is sighing - fuck, you could settle in here, like this, for days.
Because here’s the first truth: you’re an expert at eating Sakura out. Possibly the best.
You’re not being boastful here, it's just a fact. You know how she tastes, how to get her off - and Kazuha learns this firsthand.
And just like that, the best part about it is, when you flick your tongue flat against Sakura's clit, when she breaks her kiss enough to spit out some curse or another, Kazuha can feel it.
When you push two fingers into Kazuha - deep into her - curl them, massage, crook, tug -
Well, Kazuha can feel that too. Made certain by the way she croons into Sakura, how she holds on tight, grips hard. How Sakura does the same, rolls her hips - there’s so much to digest, just in how Kazuha breathes out your name, and by the way Sakura sighs, by the way she chokes back these whiny, winded moans. You’re afraid to miss any of it. Any single second.
And so it goes like this: your tongue working Sakura over; Kazuha writhing on your fingers; her hips shifting, squirming; Sakura rocking herself back onto your face, onto Kazuha’s cunt, onto the sharp edge of her hips - all while you’re sucking and kissing and licking - until you have one dripping down your chin. The other ruining the sheets.
Until you have Sakura practically unraveled, frayed and falling apart, that thread nearly unwound from its spool, messy and inarticulate.
Until you have Kazuha whimpering, and Sakura’s voice hushed into a whisper, speaking these words you can barely make out: 
“You’re doing perfect, Kazuha, baby, keeping your legs open for him, for me, for us-” 
It’s just the right amount of praise, of adoration, all of it cracking, splintering, breaking apart - Kazuha laboriously tries to kiss her quiet, breathing her in - and when you use the hand that isn’t mercilessly fucking two, three fingers into Kazuha’s little cunt to grab at that perfectly-sculpted ass, Sakura starts to lose it. She falls apart.
Loudly. 
“Oh god,” she sputters, again, and again, and again. Because you grab more. A handful. Your entire fist. Spreading Sakura open so that your tongue can reach further, licking in, in, in.  It starts at her thighs, a tremble, this quaking - Kazuha not far behind her: swallowing these desperate, useless sounds, gulping down air like it’s in short supply.
The room is filled, flooded, drowning, with just their voices, the pair of them moaning nearly in tandem. With the sound of your fingers fluttering, blurring, making the wettest mess between Kazuha’s legs.
Until -
Sakura cums first. And she cums hard. 
It crashes over her like the kind of thing you read about in a magazine: a flash, a spark, an explosion. It rolls up through her spine, over her ribs. You can hear her try to catch her breath and come up short, Kazuha drinking every ounce of it. How she collapses, folding - Sakura resting her face in the crook of Kazuha’s shoulder; your tongue doesn’t stop. 
Sakura doesn't ask it to, she can’t. And you keep on, keep going, making her cum and cum and cum. There’s something so satisfying about it, so inexplicably filthy - you, with Sakura’s cum all over your mouth, and Kazuha, this hot, wet flustering tangle of limbs. When you finally rise to your feet, you can tell she’s so near her own finish that the tension in her muscles is winding up, running hot over the skin of her neck. She looks so good getting fucked like this.
"Fuck," Kazuha's sighing, panting. "I can't, I need-"
Her hands are everywhere: up in her hair, down her neck, gripping the sheets, fisting at the bedspread. If it wasn’t for how Sakura had crumpled into a heap on top of her, mewling softly into her shoulder, she’d be rubbing fast circles at her own clit. 
"You want my cock," you ask her - well it’s not really all that much of question, but the look on her face tells you, yes, yes, fuck, yes.
You say it to her, and Sakura says it too, with a kiss at the side of her jaw. So good, look at you - she’s murmuring, not even coherent - so fucking good.
“Here, Kazuha, just hold on for me,” you tell her, stepping out of your shorts, and, to be honest, you’ve never seen anything so desperate. So ragged and needy. It inspires the worst kind of half-truths, these wicked assurances that slip from your lips as your palm drags the length of your cock. I’ll be good, I’ll go slow, I’ll go easy, I’ll do anything for you - oh, she’s putty in your hands, and she’s not going to fuss over the technicalities; how you’re hooking under her thighs and sliding her forward on the mattress, settling her into that angle that’ll let you absolutely ruin her cunt. 
You could tease her - you have, and you would, in a second - but the fucking noise you earn out of her when draw the shape of your cock over her wet lips is like music: a broken moan, the kind you could bottle up, save forever, the kind that has you thinking aloud, “what a good little slut, Kazuha, fuck, aren’t you just perfect. I’m going to fuck your pussy now, okay?” 
And you mean it, when you say it, when you push your hips forward, when you watch her take it. There’s the head of your cock, the way her pristine little pussy seems to open - to suck you in.
“I need - you need to fuck me.” She's barely able to say your name, begging - please, need it, hurry - it’s like Kazuha’s ticking off, minutes to midnight, gasping out: "please, please, please."
You slip inside her. Even when you’ve come to expect it, you’re still left next to speechless, because, fuck - how she can stretch. 
It’s hot, it’s heaven, it’s hopeless, and as you sink further, bottoming out, there’s all this heat - the wetness - she had to have been just made just for you. Which is wild, you think, considering you’ve done nothing to deserve it, but her gorgeous little cunt is right there, quivering, hugging every inch of you while she throws her arms around Sakura’s neck. 
You start to pull back, and then, thrust, once, twice. Just to let her know, to feel how tight she is. 
“Shh,” Sakura’s soothing her and kissing her to silence as Kazuha holds on so, so tightly. You watch the pointed ends of Kazuha’s acrylics, faux set of french nails, dig deeper into Sakura’s shoulder blades, the fine edges of bones, the muscles and the tendons - it’s all so visceral, and so quickly - her eyes screw shut, and she’s biting the inside of her cheek so hard you can see the indent. Only letting it go when you snap your hips back into her, deeper, faster - (There's something almost instinctual about it, in all the most upsetting ways.
So, here’s your new angle: it’s not usually like you, or it shouldn’t be. With you fucking fast into her sopping cunt and making her sob with it, like you need her at the furthest point, you want it the tightest possible, when she has her ankles hooked together around your waist, until she’s crying and cock-addled, all fucked-out and satisfied - with a load of cum buried so deep in her, she’ll be thinking about it for weeks.)
Sakura lets the kiss go with a loud smack. And when she turns those brilliant eyes over her shoulder, she's got that dreamy, lop-sided kind of smile of a girl who'd just been sent to the moon and seen stars.
 "Okay, look," she chides, voice uneven, but entirely the usual sound. Her arm reaches back until her fingers splay out across your hip. “You’re going to break her in half, you know, if you fuck her like that-”
"No," Kazuha whispers. Or rather, chokes. "Harder," she’s urging you, wanting you, needing you. "Please. Don't stop."
Your pace has gone reckless, rough, relentless, but this isn’t even all on you. She’s shaking. The building, the crescendo, you’d already taken the time, with two fingers, taken more with three, slowly winding her clockwork tight, tighter, tightest - like she hasn't quite yet realized: you might never stop fucking her.
There aren’t words really, and there haven't been, it's nothing but nonsense. Guttural moans, high whines, your hips fuck into her and you’re choking off an expletive here, another there. But still, she’s an open book, and you’re reading every page. You know each of those transient thoughts in her head, every single word, even if she fails to give a voice to any of them.
Cumming - Kazuha’s trying to mouth out, the silent shape of each syllable falling off her lip - I’m going to fucking cum. And you see - 
she is,
so fucked.
It just hits her: suddenly, impossibly fast, rolling her in like a tide.
Sakura is there to hold her down as she washes up. She gives her succor, she tells her not to worry, whispering this gentle hush, hush, shh - pressing a kiss to the side of her cheek as your cock dives deep and makes an audible mess of her pussy. Makes a mess of the blankets, the bedding, and you think, if she’ll be here all weekend, you’ll be in and out of the laundry, load after load. 
“I’d be willing to bet you'd take anything he gave you,” Sakura says. She’s laughing, recovered mostly, and somewhere in the doting affection and tenderness is the indistinct bite of a sneer. “Wouldn't you, you little, little fucktoy. Look how good your cunt stretches for him, for his big cock. You’re just so easy, aren’t you? Oh, Kazu, you are just so - so good for us."
Kazuha’s gasping in incoherence. "I can't - oh god, I can't - please, please-"
In the moments before, it's like every toned muscle, every taut nerve in her body had braced against one another. She takes your cock like the perfect little thing she is, and then - the twinge, the twist, the fucking release - it’s too much. She can barely make a noise out of that pretty mouth of hers, wrenched open in delighted agony, but her body is screaming. 
Here you could spill into her in a fucking heartbeat, so it feels almost wrong when you pull yourself from her cunt, teetering there instead. 
“Kazuha,” you say, slapping your cockhead against her sore clit, and it’s so sensitive that it makes her keen. “Do you think you can take it, if I fuck your cunt a few more times. Is that what you need? This pretty thing full of cum?"
It’s cute, her commitment to the bit - the bashful, the blushing, the biting into the edge of her hand. You can’t help but find the kind of innocence in direct contradiction to the sight of her: legs thrown wide, cunt absolutely fucked raw and dripping, painted in the glow of an orgasm that ripped her voice to shreds.
“Nope. Sorry sweetheart. Too slow.” Sakura’s lifting herself, shifting her hips, and she quickly has a hand reaching back to your cock. Her slender fingers encircling your shaft. Holding it, stroking it.
Like it needs any help.
"Do you have even the slightest idea?" she continues, talking out both sides of her mouth - this time at you. “How fucked you both are? I don’t think she’s going to let you off the hook until she’s got your cum inside her.” Kazuha whimpers into her hand, merely at the thought. “It’s a little cruel I imagine, to keep her waiting too long, but trust me: when we’re finished, I’m going to ride your cock - not going to stop until you fucking cum again, and then maybe, Kazuha should too.”
Probably by virtue of proximity and time, you know Sakura could go on like that forever, and it's true: when the moment is right, she's going to take what she wants, going to slide herself onto your cock like it’s hers. Right after you let Kazuha sit on your face - letting her rub herself off, however she likes it - then maybe even have her mouth. Your cock between her lips, watching those pouty things flush hard all over again.
The throuple, the three of you, this plurality you’re still not entirely sure you’re used to - not so sure you should be getting used to - there's time you figure, for Kazuha. There has to be. And Sakura again after.
But in terms of the here and now, you’ve got a set fingerprints burning into Sakura’s impossibly narrow waist, a fist around your cock, brushing Kazuha’s slick right into the wet between her lips - just a matter of alignment - and - and -
“I don’t think you should be drawing this out.” A course correction. Sakura slides lower, hips up higher, proffering, and she’s drawing back at the soft, supple skin across her thigh, letting you take her all in. Her face is flush against Kazuha’s, combing a finger through her hair, telling both of you, “our little girl looks like she can’t wait another second.”
"Hm," you're starting to say. “I suppose you’re right.” The least you could do was add the one-two of another suggestion, but then your cock is lined up perfectly with the tight muscle of her ass, and, well.
It’s like you said, you know Sakura.
There’s a sharp draw of air sucked in through her teeth as you get her started. And fuck, she’s tight, so delectably tight - with each bit, the barest touch of your tip at her rim at first, before your hand finds leverage in the curve of her back, easing her onto your cock like she’s some obscene piece of artwork. 
Even then, getting slowly fucked open, she has the capacity for these thinly veiled barbs: 
“This, Kazuha, like this - that’s the way you deserve to get fucked. Your perfect little cunt, your ass-”
You should probably be familiar with it, about how she is always, always plotting, always scheming - in control of things that should be well beyond her grasp - this is all on her own.
So as your cock stretches, inches, spreads her out - it isn't at your mercy. Though not quite at hers, either.
“Oh, fuck,” You have to steady a breath, because it feels better on you, you think, it must. Because Sakura has you squeezing past the ring, and oh, you can only imagine how it feels on her, taking it inch by inch. How full Kazuha would feel. God, imagine what you could do with a girl like her, it would ruin her. Ruin her in the best way. 
“Sakura,” Kazuha says, faintly.
You can hear Sakura biting down on nothing when she answers, “Kazu, yeah.”
“Is he… are you...”
Her sentence never really finishes. Kazuha’s holding onto Sakura with both hands, one under her jaw, another in her hair. Her eyes are trailing along, studying the serene lines of her face, how they wobble ever-so-slightly when you pull your hips back and sink into Sakura’s ass again. And again. Until you can tell your cock is starting to settle, to hit this particular angle, that perfect sort of spot - that makes her body start to grow soft, shiver, and spill over.
Sakura tries to shake the hair out from in front of her face, and you get to watch Kazuha. Watch as she delicately brushes it back behind her ears, and they lean in. They kiss. And it's nothing like before.
“Words, sweetie,” Sakura tells her, hot against her lips, “say what you want to say.” Kazuha bites at her lip, and when Sakura draws her into another kiss - an open-mouthed one, a long, lingering one - their tongues push together, meet together, dance together, the words leaving her throat with hardly any sound at all: 
“I want, him, I want - to be fucked, I want him - I want…”
Sakura interrupts her, and in the exact same lilting cadence, that same smug tone, she says, “you want him to fuck your ass, Kazuha, right baby?” Kazuha starts to blush profuse - bright pink up the sides of her neck and in her chest, this roseate smolder seared into her cheeks. Some part of you is disappointed she can’t see the whole picture, because for you, it’s all in frame: you spread a hand across the full round of Sakura's ass, squeezing as you pull out, sliding it along to press your thumb into the base of her spine as you push yourself inside her again. “Come on, of course you do,” she goads, the obvious edge in her voice looking for a reaction. And she can have an audible one from you, because Sakura looks like an absolute dream, the outline of her back flexing, muscles moving like machinery under her skin. Her legs strain against the mattress as she starts to fuck back. Taking control of it, of you, of her. You know her game, you’ll play along.
Your gaze flickers, first to Kazuha, back to where your cock is fucking Sakura open. Until it vanishes in between those two faultless curves. Buried to its base. Until the rhythm gets there. Until it takes you. There are certain things that, at this stage, are just inevitable - this momentum, or call it the weight of desire - and suddenly, Sakura’s fingers wind tightly around one of your wrists, guiding you, trying to show you: deeper is good, harder, more, rough, rougher - trying to tell you to wrap her up and fuck her - truly fuck her. “With this beautiful fucking cock?” Sakura is saying, somehow unrushed and harried at the same time, in her half-there, half-catching-her-breath kind of way. “Oh Kazuha, you just want to be an awful mess - an utter fucked-out mess. Under him and on him and filled; tell me it isn’t that you want your perfect asshole getting fucked raw and hard by his big thick dick-” As she sinks down onto your length, leaning backwards - which, god, she's probably fucking gaping - you bring an open palm down hard onto the taut, creamy skin of her bare ass, and she yelps. “Maybe we should just show her.” You pull Sakura's little frame up into you so you can say it right into the shell of her ear, and your thumb smooths a line from the bony edge of her hip, up to her navel, with your fingers splayed out over the concave flatness of her tummy. “It would be so much easier, for all of us.”
She squirms into your shoulder, agitated, but with another snap of your hips into her slick, puckered hole - with a satin-like kiss onto her lips - she bends to you, surrenders to you. She has to. Kazuha can’t look away. Pushing her fingers into her cunt. She’s watching you fuck Sakura and hold her tight. Watching closely how you’re going to take her apart. The way it all comes down, the beginning of the end, it starts with a kiss. Another.
A series of them, quick. Crushing your mouth onto hers. Sakura hums this meek sound into your mouth the moment your hands are up on her perfect tits, cupping them, squeezing, kneading, listening to her pitchy little whines when you roll your fingers around her nipples. 
Kazuha. Sakura.
Circling fingers, mussed up hair.
Folded knees, rippling skin.
There's no shortage of imagery for either one.
Lewdness, vulgarity, the truly depraved - the dark places the brain goes, the deepest recesses: the buried fantasies. You are fucking her harder and harder and faster and faster and - god, Sakura loves it, she wants it, her tiny body clinging to you - pulling you back every time your cock threatens to drag free from the confines of her tight ass - pulling you back every time your mouth leaves a spot, a smear, an unbearable, unendurable mark into the line of her shoulder. “Please, you need, it's, god, it's just, you feel so perfect,” is what you’re shaking out of her, broken, breathy. 
The screws of the bed are just about wailing with it, her chest is in full motion, the picture perfect arch of her neck is red, pink, raw. And how her skin glows, you have no idea, but her eyelids are fluttering open, closed. Open, closed - all the while using the hand that isn’t pinned behind her back to tease at her swollen little clit. “Oh,” you say, grinning, “what happened to using my fucking cock for exactly what I'm made for, hmm?”
"Don't - don’t get all funny," she huffs at you, face too stricken with your cock throbbing in her asshole to scowl. Then her body relaxes, and it seems to work. That, and the quick circles she's rubbing over her cunt, the one soaking down onto Kazuha’s legs, into the mattress, the sheets, everything. You fuck her harder. She rolls her shoulders back. And somewhere beneath, lost in the fold of the sheets, the pooling sweat, there's something so unguarded - this sick little voice in the back of your thoughts, thinking - mine, mine, mine, mine - and it’s so incredibly territorial. It doesn’t get any quieter when you look down either; Kazuha’s eyes, heavy and hazy. They have to be. She has two fingers sunk inside her. And they look like they're doing the work for you, because it's like she's been waiting for ages, ever since you sank the length of your cock into Sakura's ass. She hasn't stopped rubbing figure-eights and circles over her cunt. She hasn’t stopped, and you don’t think she ever will. “Cum, please, I want you to cum,” Sakura is frantic at you, breathless, a little miserable, and you think you could, with your own hand and just from the way Kazuha is moaning and panting and getting herself off. "Just, fuck, get that cock in her, cum, fuck, don't-"
You could lose your mind here, and it's what they’d both want.
(That is, until Kazuha calls out: fuck me, please fuck me.)
Which makes you aware. Reminds you: not even yet - you’re fucking Sakura so hard, so fast, you’re ready to burst -
“Fuck,” you spit, with your cock sliding out of Sakura’s ass and watching her recoil. 
Actually, it’s almost too late. You’re almost too slow on the draw. And for a few seconds, all you have are your senses: there’s the wet, failing noise, your skin is fevering hot as liquid fire, and the smell, blossoming saccharine sweet, turgent like gasoline.
Actually, you can’t keep your eyes open, not for a moment. You’re cumming everywhere.
On the inside of Sakura’s thigh, into the bedding, and when you get your cock into your fist and point it at Kazuha’s cunt, you spill a puddle of cum right onto her puffy, reddened lips - pumping, jerking - there’s more on the flawless plane of her stomach, hot white streaks across her body like you’re debasing a masterwork, a canvas beholden to the perfected female form. Now tarnished, and sloppy and slutty -
But, you’re fucked. You’re spent. Kazuha sees the pale in your face. You can read the wordless worry there, but what she does with it is obscene.
Just the tips of two fingers, and she traces a line down from her chest, picks a lazy path through the splatter on her skin to rub it into her pretty, soaked pussy. You watch as she pushes it all in, like it could be - where it’s supposed to be - all filthy, the fucking definition.
There’s a listless groan, and a shake of Sakura’s head. She’s running her hand over her brow, through her messy fringe and flipping it away. “Jesus, Kazuha, gross, if you want it inside - put his cock in there, seriously. Go sit on it, ride him till he can't help himself.”
(Always the smooth-talker, Sakura.)
"Wait, wait," Kazuha says, scuffing her feet against the comforter, knocking her head back as far as her shoulders will let her. "I’m close," you're barely able to catch the words, paper-thin and shivering, "just need..."
Sakura shimmies off of Kazuha and lands on her feet, gait looking kind of silly.
“Oh, Kazuha,” she says, with the kind of dejected little sigh that you’re used to hearing when you say something disappointing or objectionable and Sakura has to set it right.
She shoves you off with a gentle push from her fingertips and moves until the two of them are reshaping themselves into this soft, cozy pile. By the time they finish, she's got her fingers hooked around Kazuha's thighs and her face buried between her legs.
“There, there,” Sakura’s whispering as she laps and circles her tongue around Kazuha’s cunt, the needy tragedy of a shape that it’s in. She makes a long lick up and through the glisten between her legs before pushing her finger in, just a knuckle, curling - then two. You feel it. You’re half-hard and aching, maybe ready to go. You feel those familiar phantoms of rising pressure, in your thighs, your hips, your chest. The familiarity of how Sakura soothes her into it, inches closer to her, you never knew it looked like this.
“Fuck, Sakura, you-” Kazuha’s eyes are widening and the bones of her neck are straining, her lips parted into a perfect, pleading little bow. The duvet spills through her fingers as she searches blindly for somewhere, anywhere - she needs, and needs, and needs - needs to stay, to find an anchor, to come up for air -
She is gasping. It’s fucked: the friction, the fever-dream.
Because Sakura has her nose on her clit, mouth fucking her fast and senseless, precise, eager to please, and the way her fingers flutter in and out of her cunt looks nothing short of amazing.
It looks even better when her orgasm hits, or when it vanishes, as the case may be, because for her none of it manages to last that long; there's just this crazy moment where Kazuha goes white all over - it starts in her face, spreading across her torso, and her back snaps forward in a cresting wave before she falls. Flat and alluring and inviting.
It makes Sakura almost laugh, right into her skin. “That’s our good girl.” Kazuha is laying there, fucked-out, sodden in her own slick, destroyed. She has a hand over her face, one between her legs, feeling over her skin and what it's turned into now. Her beautiful, blemishless skin, just…smeared with you. Smothered. 
It's impossible. How could anybody function at even half their normal rate when it all just ends up here?
“Okay, alright.” Sakura crawls back on her hands, peering back. Her chin glistens and she kisses the taste off of her lips before sucking a couple fingers into her mouth to clean up. Then she lifts her arm, looking at you with a steely expression, and points to the chair in the corner of the room. 
Her smile kicks back up into the corner of her mouth, elastic, and she just says, “A promise is a promise, yeah?”
(Of course. Of course she does.)
-
It’s hours later, when a foot sharply jabbed into your rib wakes you in the middle of the night.
You have the wherewithal to take inventory, to tally it up: Sakura, Kazuha sprawled out across the sheets, the night sky flashing and splintering into iridescent sparks of darkness outside the bay window - rainfall now slowly pelting across its pane.
At the sound of a snore - a novel one, one that must be Kazuha’s - Sakura turns and drapes the sheets up to her waist. She’s half-asleep. The softness in her eyes obscured by the short, drowsy blinks of her lashes.
“What time is it?” she asks, trying to will herself back to sleep.
You tell her: “Don’t matter.”
-
The "full disclosure" here isn't of a whole lot of use. Not really. But it's all there, at least, this surface-level pretense of an explanation. 
It’s late August, a summer ago, and you can still picture the unbothered look on Sakura’s face when she brings it up.
“So, like,” Sakura starts to say. She’s inspecting a pair of stilettos, weighing them carefully in one hand. They would look lovely on her and the price tag isn’t anywhere near enough to dissuade her. “What’s your take on Kazuha?”
“Um.” You’re there, beside her, shuffling out the way so a mother and her squalling child can pass. “Is that a name I’m supposed to recognize?”
There are several people in line behind you and not a single one of them are pleased, judging from what you can infer from the grumblings in their pockets and the anger bristling amongst their expressionless faces.
You could ask: please be patient with us, it has been a long few months - I can tell by how Sakura has this irritated look in her eye and hasn't called me by my pet name since we woke up from a midday nap, or how she's barely said anything other than oh and yeah or umm or sure since. That said, there have been bigger, larger-scale concerns, so forgive us, please, we love each other, or something like that.
Instead, you lean against a wall, by a clothing boutique display full of eye-searingly-bright polo shirts, and pull out your phone.
“Seriously?” Sakura asks. “You’ve met her like, twenty times.”
You don’t look up from the screen. "Well, when you give me some kind of clue, I'll see what I can do."
This gets a tight-lipped frown. She leans in on her toes, whispering it into your ear: "The one I said is a little crazy about you."
“Ah.” It clicks. Kazuha, that one. “She was the one with Chaewon the other night right? Dark hair, yea-high? At the gala - helping Minju look for her boyfriend. Did you ever hear about where they found him? By one of the bathrooms on the second floor, with an arm around Eunbi and-”
Sakura creases an eyebrow.
(And what a glare, really. It makes her face look like the backdrop of a brick wall in some mediocre, early-2000s film noir.)
“Another quarter in the gossip jar.”
“Oh, but asking me some loaded question about a girl I hardly know is let-me-guess: perfectly kosher.”
“Loaded?” Sakura huffs, tugging at her sleeve. She pauses, though, her expression almost flounders because she can never truly ever explain why the rules don’t apply to her. “Is that the word?”
“My answer,” you tell her, “is unchanged. She’s sweet and nice and a sort of, conventionally attractive.”
"Really; nothing about her does it for you?"
A loaded question gets a loaded answer, so: “No, not particularly.”
"And what happens if the question becomes less 'what do you think' and more 'I want her to rail me,'" she says, somewhat chilly. “You know, as a hypothetical.”
She wants you to look up at that, and well you are, because you realize it now. “Oh my god. Sakura, you still haven’t told her about us.”
Sakura just makes a face, of a type of: puzzled and concerned quality, and it’s kind of cute actually. She’s perfected the look.
Although, really, she shouldn’t have to explain anything - why you sleep over some times, stay the whole night. Or several. Nothing has to be answered after. It’s you, Sakura, and it always has been. But it’s a problem. Each morning, Kazuha’s eyes get a little sadder, and that kernel of shame inside Sakura grows ever larger.
“Sakura,” you insist.
“I know, I know, I know.” She bites her lip, thinking, and hums under her breath. “Lying about it obviously isn’t helping, but being straight with her sounds…” Sakura’s expression dips. “You know she just has that - that disposition, those never-been-hurt-once kind of eyes. Disappointing her is like choking out the little mermaid with a bike chain.”
“You could set her up.”
“Trust me: Chaewon and I have tried.”
“And it doesn’t take."
Sakura shrugs. “She gets nervous easily, or something. Didn’t get enough attention from boys while in ballet school I suppose - and then here you come along and smile at her like you don’t know what it does to people. Which, careless by the way.”
“Well, it explains the legs.”
Sakura scoffs. “Conventionally attractive, huh, seems like you’ve cast a wide net.”
It earns her this pinched look, your mouth set in a tight line, and Sakura smiles - all smug-like. By this time, she’s narrowed it down, a pair of shoes in each hand, and she holds them out to you, sighing.
"Which ones."
You point at the heels Sakura has in her left: a sleek pair of green pumps with a thin gold buckle across the ankle strap.
"Hmm. Kazuha likes the color green, by the way. A lot."
"That's nice. I'm a fan of neutrals."
Sakura clicks her tongue. “You really don't have anything to say about her."
"Nothing comes to mind." You hold a tote bag out in front of you, waiting for her to plop the shoes in. "Although, she's tall - taller than you - hey, with the heels maybe you could finally kiss her."
“Ha, funny,” she says, and then, pursing her lips, you see the lightbulb go off: Sakura is struck with an idea.
You don’t go out of your way to hate her ideas. She has so many of them. It’s just that they have this tendency to be pretty damn awful.
“Can I, politely decline?” you ask, once Sakura finishes whispering into your ear, and sinks back to the soles of her feet.
Sakura blinks, innocently. (She can be so obnoxious when she wants to be.)
"No, I'm serious," you tell her. Sakura can't expect that you're actually down for this - the setup, the miscommunication, the endless drama, all that messy work, and for what, your girlfriend-in-eveything-but-name-only's peace of mind? "Declining. Politely. Please."
"C'mon, hear me out. It'll be fun."
You tip your head, onto some more dismissive angle or another, but Sakura takes it to be a whole different type of signal: that you're actually warming up to the idea.
(You're not.)
"Fun," you repeat.
“Well,” she says, cracking a grin. And that’s when you know - that her mind is set, immovable - like she’s laid the foundation, poured the concrete and is now standing in it, knee deep, spitefully triumphant. "It sure as shit ain’t going to be boring."
-
It was supposed to be like dominos, falling sequentially, until at last, the final one is knocked down and all three of you can move on with your lives.
This is how things tend to work out: Sakura, a bit of a schemer, and you - well, you a bit of something else.
-
It’s begun raining biblically by the time the three of you’ve gotten dressed, eaten and had something that even remotely resembles a functional, human interaction.
It’s over a cup of tea and a modest stack of papers - Sakura's sitting at the dining room table with her knees tucked into her chest and has taken to typing something on her laptop. It’s a whole thing, she refuses to write by hand like you. And Kazuha feels it’s within reason to start playing twenty questions. Starting simple, mundane: how did the two of you even meet? How have you not told me this story? How did it become, whatever the fuck this is?
Sakura rolls her eyes, thinking, please, how juvenile, and opens her mouth to explain, then pauses, unsure. She thinks it through - the simplest iteration, the most plausible interpretation, or at least something that makes the two of you seem a little less unhinged - but when those gears grind to a halt, Sakura's teeth click together and the words fail to make any headway at all.
You lean forward in the quiet, and end up telling Kazuha the usual story, how it kind of went down, telling her that neither of you "are looking for any sort of commitment."
(That's, by the way, exactly the turn of phrase Sakura once told you when she explained she didn't want a "monogamous, committed relationship," once upon a time, in fact - just a wayward daydream - a hazy, silly memory.)
Kazuha laughs, softly. "Cool." She does a bit of nodding, biting into a slice of toast, the crunch singular and resolute. She seems to understand.
Then she cocks her head, a frown shadowing in on one side of her mouth. "Okay, um, you're not...doing that with anybody else though right?"
"Doing what?" Sakura asks, seeming kind of amused.
"Dating - fooling around, that kinda stuff."
You let go of the ballpoint pen in your hand and take a deep breath.
"Kazu," Sakura says, clamshelling her laptop emphatically. “We are not going to (1) have a threesome with anybody we’re not absolutely candid about and then (2) fucking lie about it after.”
“Cool.” Kazuha bobs her head again. “Cool, cool, cool.”
-
So actually, maybe it’s not a total disaster, you think. It’s all with a bit of luck, and a whole lot of foolishness, but it’s however those sayings tend to go. You can’t take life too seriously, or you’ll never make it out alive.
-
Here's what tips you off: Sakura is deep into a game of Bloons on her phone when you cum on Kazuha's face.
Well - after your load spits a long stripe onto her tongue - and once the heady taste of it makes her recoil on instinct, but then she sinks a little further onto her knees and settles, with her mouth open wide, and her tongue out like she’s being baptized. She simply lets the rest of it happen. And let’s be perfectly clear, she wants it to.
She’s jerking you with her fingers, smearing it all over her. On her cheek, her forehead, across the bridge of her nose, the luscious swell of her pink lips; every gorgeous and perverse spot and stain becomes something Kazuha has earned.
Sakura’s laying totally horizontal on the couch and has yet to lift a single one of her eyes from the screen, humming approvingly, "is she letting you jizz on her face?"
You look up at Sakura's even expression, catching how she's peeking from beneath heavy eyelids, with two thumbs swirling over the face of her phone.
"Guess she is," you reply, turning a smirk into your shoulder, rolling a thumb along Kazuha's temple as a viscous glob of cum dribbles over the edge of her brow and into her lashes. "Fucking filthy little cumslut."
Kazuha lets your cock slip out from her lips. Manages still, a pretty little smile.
It’s not just that she likes it when you degrade her a little, which, honestly, you wouldn’t have ever pegged, but Kazuha likes being made to wear her sin so that it never leaves her alone. Here she is, now realizing that dirty, divine truth: getting called names, used and treated like a cumrag. 
Now, she can’t get enough.
The grip you’d woven into Kazuha’s dark silky hair to fuck your cock into her lips is the same you use to rein her in, walking her from the unassuming doorway where she’d gotten herself down on her knees for you and reached her fingers into the waist of your pants - over toward the couch where Sakura’s lounging in the world's smallest pair of shorts and a tank top.
Sakura’s still going on about this level she can’t figure out when you bend Kazuha over the arm of the sofa. “It’s this fucking chimps stage,” she says, blowing her bangs out of the way. “It’s the only intermediate one I haven’t full cleared-”
Kazuha gasps - and the sound comes out near reverent - when you pull her underwear down her thighs and slip your cock into her cunt.
Fuck, she feels incredible. You’ve claimed two greedy handfuls of her ass, watching her head drop between her shoulders as she steadies the air that rattles out of her, and you just keep sliding into her - deeper and deeper until your cock is fucking her apart, spreading her open, so very full.
“Have you tried, not spamming plantations?” you ask Sakura, the syllables slowing, making room for the rough cadence of your breathing, as you drive your hips in. “Since they, you know, don’t actually pop anything.”
“Hey.” Sakura’s lip quivers like it’s about to pout, but never does. “It’s rude to backseat.”
You’re fucking Kazuha slow, but you’re also tilting your hips down, going for the deep, sharp angle that you’ve found she likes - the kind of stroke that get’ll her sobbing if you really lean into it. You don’t miss the soft moans that drift out of her either, or the way her pussy throbs and grasps and swallows every inch of you.
“And see, that’s a common misconception,” Sakura continues to drawl, squinting up at the screen, “this game isn’t actually about popping the bloons. It’s about making as much money as humanly-”
She looks up. Sees, finally. 
You press your hips right down to the curve of Kazuha's ass and bottom out inside her. Confirming what you already knew: the way it feels to fuck this needy, insatiable, incomparable body. Sopping wet. So hot, too. So tight, snug around your cock. It's unlike anything, and seeing Kazuha like this, folded over and racked with a shudder - when it all comes down to it, it's just that simple.
It's this fucking little pussy. That fucking curve of her ass, peerless in nearly every conceivable way. It urges you to move, irresistible. To push past that tight, snug grip and pound her relentlessly.
However she wants it.
“You look pretty today, Kazuha,” Sakura tells her as she leans forward, nonchalantly and holding back a smirk, and she starts to inspect the damages: the red that taints her ears, the blush creeping in, the face you're drawing a few curls of her hair aside for Sakura to stare at.
There is, of course, the more obvious - the most obvious - all the cum still painted onto her pretty face. You find beneath your fingertips that it’s sticky all over her cheeks, the kind of sticky that is quickly drying, almost tacky.
"I always look pretty," Kazuha gathers the composure to say back at her, like her arms aren’t trembling with the effort to hold up her lithe frame.
Sakura laughs, the sound coming like a plucked chord.
And it is true, that beneath a few splatters and streaks of your cum, Kazuha looks pretty, is pretty. She's pretty because of what she is, with what she was born with, born without - and if she's sinking her teeth into her lip, covered in cum, biting down on this moan, the next, the one that shivers through her whole body when your hips snap reckless into hers, that is more proof of her flawless disposition. That is something special one could be lucky to witness: her panting and squeaking and pressing her palms into the leather beneath her so you can slam the cock inside her to its very hilt - then fucking her, razing her like a blaze, spreading her apart until she's writhing and clawing at the sofa with every strike of your cock to that sweet, spot within her.
"You just look so particularly, um," Sakura does a bit of tilting her chin, thinking, "fucked."
Kazuha smiles despite herself. Maybe there was this vision of her before - prim, polite - demure, reserved; with the role now filled out, it couldn’t have fit less.
Sakura lets her phone fall between the cushions, and leans forward, dragging her thumb along Kazuha’s jaw - smearing more of you into her skin - dipping it just barely into her mouth so that Kazuha can suck on the tip.
“So,” Sakura starts, tipping Kazuha’s chin up on a fingertip and studying how each motion urges forward a tiny, punched-out breath. “Are you two planning on doing anything else today besides fucking each other senseless?”
It’s a hard sell. Not with your hands on her narrow, wrought little waist, and certainly not when her cunt keeps rippling around you, pulsating, spilling over - dripping like she can't take it any longer. Kazuha's a bit out of sorts, has been for more than a few moments, but this one, especially. With the stilted way she's saying, "could, we go again, if, ah," then sucking a hard breath, "if, we," and "if you think," and "please, please, please."
“Just to be clear,” Sakura runs her tongue between her lips before her gaze tracks up to meet yours. “This is on you; she wasn’t like this.”
“What, you mean cumdrunk?”
Sakura runs her hand through Kazuha’s hair “Something like that.”
All the while, she is sliding one of her hands under the cotton of Kazuha's shirt, bringing another one up the sensitive expanse of her leg, thumb stroking just inches from where your cock is gliding in out of Kazuha’s aching cunt. You almost find it a shame that Sakura's never in any rush to actually fuck Kazuha, taking her apart piece by piece first, not allowing for an ounce of hurry.
Not to mention the effect she has on her - something intense, something almost electric - and there are sparks, when she leans in and silences Kazuha’s moan with a soft kiss, somewhere between their lips, as Kazuha melts -
And dissolves -
And opens her mouth -
Your hand finds the jut of Kazuha's hips, squeezing gently, using her body to pull her into you. Pumping, thrusting. Then back and in, again, and again. Kazuha goes a little boneless; this soft, quivering mess. There's one final teary squeak - and she just, takes it.
"God," you whisper out, in an almost perplexed admiration; her cunt looks so good like that. Taken. Fucked. In use.
It’s like some wild and wonderful thing - the absolute fucking wreck she is now - her bottom lip sticking out, Kazuha sighing, "m-more."
Sakura peers over her, eyes sharp, head held high. “Better not keep her waiting.”
As it were. It all goes on and on and on.
-
So,
Here’s what people usually fail to consider about “fucking each other senseless” when they’re discussing definitive day plans:
In general, it goes off the rails - like when your hand closes around the column of Kazuha's throat and the bathroom is abruptly fogged in sex-infused haze as you're fucking your cock between her legs. The tip nudging just past the smooth of her folds, slipping along the ridges and curves of her thighs, or when it all builds up to something else and the head of your cock is a sloppy mess against the little dip of her asshole and you fuck her there, too.
Sometimes, it gets very silly. When Sakura pouts at you and pulls your fingers from Kazuha's cunt to have her lick at them and there's an instant jolt that hits at the look in her eye - dilated and black, smirking, hungry. 
Then, maybe Sakura slips a hand down Kazuha's pants, gives her a little, "good girl, huh? Little fuckin' cumslut. And you can do it with your mouth full, too, hmm?"
She’ll do this thing so practiced, you’d think she’d done it a thousand times. She’ll slow the roll of her hips down on your cock, for a rare respiteful second, and press a sharp bite to the shell of Kazuha's ear. You get that gleam off her canines when Kazuha lets the words drop, mumbling with Sakura's fingers on her jaw and yours buried three knuckles-deep inside her mouth. "Yes ma’am, yes I can."
And there's when things get very serious. Maybe, in particular, a time, a moment -
(Let's call this moment one of many, but just to use it as something of an example.)
-a phone, going off and ringing, ringing, ringing.
You haven't seen the numbers - you're kind of too busy with your cock in Kazuha's cunt and her riding the edge, circling her hips on the line of your thigh, rolling into it and soaking your skin. Until she freezes, going rigid.
(Yeah,
No shit, she's the one getting Yunjin on the other line. A few days out of town, she has this text - call ASAP. ASAP means: she is now in this awkward spot, of pulling her own soaked underwear off of your wrist, trying to compose herself, not moan or writhe. You're trying to act natural, as Kazuha hastily arranges you both - nudging you onto the bed, letting Sakura wrench your shirt off from behind.)
By the time Kazuha's listening to Yunjin retell some story - no, yeah, she went out and got a new car. Then this funny thing, so she came across the scrapyard, and this other thing - did you know it costs a dollar fifty? She's got a shovel in the back, still can't believe it! - your hand is closed around your cock, trying to, gently, in vain, get some sort of handle on it.
But everything else happens way too fast: Sakura's foot falls across the meat of your inner thigh, and her expression is all, please. Don't you want to put me in my place? Please, for her - it'd mean so much to, just to, ride that massive, fat fucking cock-
Fuck, she's a bad influence, your best friend. Your lover, in all senses.
Anyways - your tongue in her mouth -
Your arm around her waist -
Kazuha gets it figured out. Yunjin's good to talk for a couple of minutes, and while your head is thrown back on a pillow, hearing Kazuha work out all this small talk about her shiny new volkswagen, your brain is somewhere between exploding, overstimulation, overload - Sakura's mouth, her tits, her pussy - whatever, wherever - just, fuck, she's -
You're just…fucking her. Truly fucking her. She's grinding, rolling her clit, making these choked noises. She’s not as flexible as Kazuha, who’d let you turn her into a pretzel or force her into the splits and pound away until there’s a load leaking from her pussy - until there’s several - but there’s something else about Sakura’s tight, grasping cunt, how you it quivers and milks you, a soft, soft silk that wants to tug at you, consume you -
Kazuha’s on the phone, wrapping up, telling Yunjin, “okay, I love you, bye, I love you, yes, okay, I love you, bye, I’ll talk to you later, soon, I love you. Yes, I’ll get to it. First thing tomorrow.”
Sakura’s on a sort of different thread, leaning into you and telling you to put a hot load into her cunt, your pretty girl, please - her mouth toying with the soft lobe of your ear, working in the angle of her hips on top of you and dragging her cunt against all the right parts of your cock in tandem, then asking: "is this little pussy gonna get filled up like hers? Make a mess and ruin me?"
And, there’s you -
Going fast, faster - you want more of her, she wants more of you - her tiny frame shaking with need, your hips slamming into hers and pushing her up the mattress and making a fucking mess of her perfect cunt. Your fingers are clasped over her mouth. Hers are probably clasped around your very soul, because you think:
This girl.
This girl -
Fuck, it isn’t complicated at all.
-
(As it is most years, the full bloom lasts about a week. There’s a cherry tree outside the window, one, three floors down from your apartment; its flowers are in their final days. A warm breeze whispers a cascade of petals to the earth below, and from this distance, they look almost dream-like, like snow falling soft.
You lie to yourself: maybe, if it could stay just like that, maybe forever.)
-
For weeks, Kazuha comes and goes. More of her belongings enter than ever leave the apartment - shoes, laundry, hair ties, the occasional purse or two. Her books take up the most space, overflowing to the point where the stack is spilling off the kitchen table.
It all serves to solidify the unspoken agreement among the three of you, that this isn’t going away any time soon.
At present, she’s currently in a moment of going. 
You and Sakura watch from the fire escape as her figure on the street below climbs into a cab and heads off in a vaguely-western direction.
With your backside to the railing and your elbows looped over the iron bars, the cigarette smoldering between your fingertips curls up a single smoky tendril. Beside you, Sakura has her sunglasses shielding her eyes from an early-evening summer sun. Her lips, just the subtlest pink shade of coral - pink, rose - start to pick up the colors of fleeting daylight. You watch her focus flit between you and the horizon, unreadable, inscrutable and turn back on the asphalt.
There's this wind that fills out her skirt and reveals a sliver of her thighs, a space in time where her legs aren’t painted red and her hair looks a bit lighter.
Sakura points the fronts of her sneakers down as though to really study the pavement below. "What's with that face?"
"No face," you say.
"Yes face," Sakura insists, tipping her head.
A strand of her bangs swings along the line of her cheekbone to where she tucks it, delicate, behind her ear. And then:
"Y'know."
You tap off a line of ash. "Do I?"
She rolls her eyes and replies, simply, "us."
-
Some mornings, there's coffee.
Some evenings, another show gets binged, or a movie.
Some nights are always reserved for bed, a three-person scrum at the very center and warm bodies laced over one another.
This one - tonight - is always the hardest to predict.
There was no denying the thud. There were no stifling the sounds - the cries and pleas, the streams of  no, please don't stop, which you think must’ve been coming from Kazuha. There were other voices too, fainter - they slipped right out your head, unabashed.
Another came from behind, Sakura moaning out a hoarse "there you go baby, just like that. Take that little cunt of hers." And on, on and on: Kazuha whimpering and mewling out an obscene pitch - fucked over and out, full and satisfied.
With that, you can't even tell which is better. Looking down, the lovely sight of your cock filling Kazuha's pussy - spreading her wide open for you - so indecent, and hot, and, really, there's that fantasy that she has that can play out on repeat. Laid out on a mattress and used, exactly as she's always wanted to be. Fucked, again, again, again - full of cum.
Only somewhere along the way it all slows down. To the basics, the essentials.
See, there’s a place by the tidal river that you and Sakura like to go, sometimes, just to take a break. It’s a clearing in the trees that by mid-summer will be swarming with bugs, but is for now, mostly okay. And if you’re going to get tangled up in origin stories, this is probably the best place to start:
"What about that one?" Kazuha asks, pointing up at another ambiguous point on the vast dark canvas overhead. Her head is in your lap, and she's tearing up the grass with her other hand.
Sakura squints. "Hmm. Let's see. That one over there is Gemini, I think." She moves her finger, dragging Kazuha's gaze across the heavens. "That star cluster right there. I call it The Bee. But if you want the real name, you can call it Messier 35. The French got to that one first, I guess."
Kazuha seems to ignore her, the brief aside, to stare, to dream.
“Sakura, hey,” she says in a half-whisper, its sound trailing into the dull drone of cicadas, the croaking cadence of bullfrogs, like a will o’ wisp into the night sky. “Where’d you learn all this stuff?”
“She didn’t,” you tell her. “She makes it up as she goes along.” 
Kazuha twists around to level her with this pout, half-crooked, almost grinning. Sakura just shrugs, blameless. There’s grass falling off her sweatshirt and speckling her knees. Her ponytail is crooked, her smile bright and beaming and contagious - you find it a wonder how you ever manage anyway.
“What about that one, you think?” she asks Kazuha, gesturing vaguely to a cluster of three bright flecks, glistening against the gradient, and Kazuha’s head tilts to follow Sakura’s index finger.
(And it’s totally worth pointing out the sort of cosmic irony here being that if any of you knew a lick about anything, you could say oh that? That’s Orion’s belt, binding together the great hunter himself - to his quiver, and to the bowstring, his pride, and to his most prized possession: his arrow, gleaming, eternally shining in the midnight glow of faraway planets and twinkling, blinking stars.
None of you are astronomers after all. Not you. Sakura, maybe, if you ask Kazuha. But for the time being, you'd never know.)
“Dunno,” Kazuha says, "but it must mean something."
You and Sakura share a long breath.
The three of you staring up into the infinite blue.
2K notes · View notes
nicksolemnlyswears · 9 months
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DUDDDDE!!
I am in LOVE with your writing. I have been craving some good Han Lue works and you're filling the hole!
Everywhere is extremely lacking in quality Han Lue content bro 😭😭
But any whosies.
I was wondering if it were at all possible to request a Han work from you (from what I've seen you still have requests open so if you don't im sorry)
Specifically something about a reader who's fucking amazing at driving, and has been crushing on Han for a while, and the two decode to race (set in Tokyo) and whoever wins gets the loser to do what they want. Y'know classic setup.
You could choose where this leads to. Idc if we win or loose. All I want is a little bit of fluff sprinkled amongst some smut mayhaps. You could do this in headcannon format btw don't feel obligated to write the whole thing.
I'm just thirsting for any thing I can take 💀🙏🏼
Take your time! <3
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pairing: han lue x racer!reader
words: 11.4k
warnings: some cursing and smut (pls wrap it before you tap it) don't judge my smut too much, it's been a while since i've written one
notes: hi anon! thank you for all your sweet, sweet words 🥺 i hope this is somewhere along the lines of what you were thinking of. as soon as i saw your request i was ✨inspired✨ it's been a long time since i've been so hooked by a oneshot. i have worked on it almost everyday since i received it so thank you! i changed the request just a little bit, i hope you don't mind.
trust me i know there is a ridiculous lack in han content! it's the reason i'm here writing over this man! there is not enough content for the speed i consume it, lol. i've read my own headcanons like 10 times already, excluding the times i was working on it.
anyways! might have gotten a little carried away but i enjoyed writing it so much! here you go! enjoy!
i really really hope you like it!!
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Tokyo was the city where you learned how to street race. Weaving through the cars on the highway became second nature the harder you pressed the gas pedal. The neon lights turned into blurs as you sped down traffic, whether it was in search of a prize or a thrill.
You were meant to meet Han Lue. His presence became known as soon as he stepped foot in the parking complexes that serve as makeshift race tracks. He quickly became popular with the crowd, especially when he joined DK's crew.
His races were seen as exclusive, known to happen once in a blue moon. He was totally opposite to you. You took the opportunity to race any moment you could. It's what lead you to become a good racer. Practice makes perfect, after all.
'Good racer' is a bit of an understatement. You're one of the best right after DK. There's a debate about whether the second best is you or Han. Each person can take their pick. Many have suggested the idea for the both of you to race, but Han has shot down each and every one. He doesn't need to prove himself to anyone. Besides, he hasn't had anything to gain from racing you.
People like to call you 'Angel' because when you started participating in the races, you looked like an absolute angel, but soon after, they discovered you raced like the devil. You fool everyone around you, even with the way you drive. Whenever someone has to go against you, they think they have your strategy down, yet you switch it up every time.
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The distinctive revving of your car alerts Han of your presence. He glances to his left, where you've parked right beside him. As you open the door and step out of your car, he opens a bag of chips, depositing one into his mouth.
You walk over to him, leaning against his car like he is. The bare skin of your back arching slightly as it touches the cool metal. "Have I missed anything?"
Han shakes his head cooly, watching his surroundings. He spares you a glance, taking in what you're wearing. A short, shimmery dress with an open back and high heels. Seems like you don't plan on racing tonight. You refuse to race in high heels. You've tried before and failed. You didn't lose, but you did break off both heels.
You feel his eyes trailing over your body, and you don't mind it. You like that you can catch his attention that way. Having a crush on a guy like Han takes work. He has every woman's attention in the racing underground. They often cling to his arms and bat their eyelashes his way, and he has gladly taken a few of them home.
"You done judging my outfit?" You say, looking at him.
"Not judging, admiring," he promptly replies with a small shrug.
That right there is what feeds into your silly little crush. Han isn't afraid of your comments or banter. If you look good, he'll say it. It's the way he says it that irks you, though. He is so nonchalant and aloof like he's commenting on the weather.
It doesn't help that he's never truly made a move on you. He considers you his friend and acts that way (most of the time, at least). You hate every moment because being his friend is the last thing you want.
"I take it you're not gonna race tonight?" He asks, already knowing the answer. He just needed an excuse to talk to you. Digging into his bag of chips, he grabbed another one to pop into his mouth.
"Not unless it's against you," you respond cheekily.
Han chuckles, "Not you too."
"Are you afraid of losing, Han?" You ask him, keeping your eyes on the race about to start. Why else would he avoid racing you?
Han props one arm on the roof of his car, facing you and saying, "If you're into racing, you can't be afraid to lose, Angel."
"Then why don't you spoil me a little and race me?" You hum, turning your head to face him. He's much closer than you anticipated, but you resist the urge to pull back despite the reddening of your cheeks. You want Han to know you like him even if you refuse to say it out loud.
"Maybe one day when I have something to race for," he responds simply, kissing your cheek and turning back to watch the race.
You release a shaky sigh and try to calm your pounding heart. Extending a hand, you dip your fingers into Han's nearly empty bag of chips and steal one for yourself. Han doesn't mind lowering the bag to make it easier for you. There's a smirk on his face as he fully well knows what he did. It's fun to make you flustered.
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Han is out on the streets of Tokyo doing business or collecting his money from the greedy hands of wanna be gangsters. It's entertaining, to say the least, although sometimes it gets tedious. It's only fun when they get rowdy and want to intimidate him. They should know better than to judge Han by his calm exterior.
He's walking by the busy streets of Shibuya, the shopping district of Tokyo, minding his business. Han avoids the masses of people until he looks into a store and sees you. You're by the checkout desk, ringing out a client.
Han can't help it; he's drawn to you. Forgetting the wad money he has to collect, he enters the store. The bell on top of it chimes, prompting you to greet the customer in an abnormally cheery tone.
"Hello, welcome to-Han?" You stutter over the greeting, seeing his slightly mocking grin.
Han walks over to you and leans on the counter, there was barely anyone in the store now. Perfect timing. He assesses you and your overly pink clothes, bedazzled name tag, and glossy pink lips. It's unlike you to be so pink. He recalls you telling him you hate the wretched color.
"So this is where you work, Angel," he hums, toying with the trinkets on the checkout counter.
"Not everyone can survive with racing and sketchy side deals," You mutter. One hand on your tilted hip as you shoot him an annoyed look.
If racing made you enough money, you certainly would not be working in a store that makes you wear pink on every single shift. You could get more involved in the sketchy part of racing, but things are alright for now.
"True," Han stifles a laugh. He grabs a lollipop from the big jar filled with sweets for the paying customers and pops it into his mouth.
You extend a hand to throw away the colorful wrapping, and he places it gently on your hand, fingertips grazing your palm. You're not a teenager to be reacting over such minuscule actions, yet you do.
"What are you doing here, Han?" Han adores it when you say his name that way, pretending to be annoyed by his presence when in reality, you love having him around.
"Wanted to visit my favorite girl," he responds aloofly, carefully gauging your reaction. As he expected, your cheeks redden, and you try to hide it.
"Did you know lying makes your nose grow long," you scoff, rolling your eyes.
"Could be useful," Han says cheekily, causing your blush to deepen.
"If you're not going to buy anything, you can't be here," you shoot with a pout.
You weren't prepared to face Han this afternoon. You didn't get to repeat your affirmation as you do every night you encounter him. His constant playfulness throws you off, not giving you the opportunity to compose yourself.
"Oh no, consumerism got its claws on you," he jokes sarcastically. You glare at him and cross your arms over your chest, which only emphasizes the size of your chest. "Fine, help me find a new jacket?"
You round the counter and motion for Han to follow you toward the men's section. Your coworker will have no problem taking over the checkout counter.
You shoot Han question after question in search of the perfect jacket for him: colors, textures, durability, versatility, sizing, and so on. He responds just as quickly, propping an arm up and leaning against a rack of clothes as he watches you storm all over the store in search of the item that screams Han. He had no intentions of buying anything today but seeing how invested you got it leaves him no choice.
"I quite like this one," you beam, standing Han in front of a full-length mirror. You slide off the jacket he's wearing and replace it with the nice black leather jacket you found for him. Dusting him off, you look into the mirror seeing how perfectly it fits his broad shoulders.
"Why do I feel like you're giving me the most expensive one?" Han asks, looking at himself in the mirror.
He had to admit you picked well. He looks great in the black leather jacket. It didn't have too many buckles to make him uncomfortable, and it wasn't too warm either. The material felt nice and luxurious hence his comment.
"You asked for my help," you shrug, "It's not my fault I have expensive taste. Besides, you look hot in it." You wink at Han through the mirror.
Han tries to hide the smile forming on his lips. You were getting bolder and bolder. He knows about your crush on him; you're terrible at hiding it. Truthfully, he's felt the same from the moment he saw you race. You're oblivious, though, so he likes to tease you.
"I'll take it," Han sighs, refusing to look at the price tag. "Might even wear it on a date."
"Oh, you've got a date?" Your smile falters, quickly regretting picking such a nice outfit that makes him look so handsome. You'd definitely put out if a man wore that to a date and was as lovely as Han. All of your hard work just for another girl to enjoy it. If you catch one of Han's little friends wrapped around the jacket...you will burn it.
"Not yet," he says mysteriously, taking off the jacket and returning to the checkout counter. Han has to get going. He does have to collect his money. Especially now that you've convinced him to buy the expensive leather jacket. 'It's an investment,' he tells himself.
"She'll be one lucky girl," you huff, scanning the tag, carefully folding it, and placing it on a bag. "Don't worry, I'll apply the friends and family discount."
You watch Han go through the display window and hope he was just fucking with you on the whole date thing. You can live with your crush and have him as just a friend, but if he gets a girlfriend, you will not be able to manage it. You scold yourself silently for acting like a lovesick teenager. You're better than that. Right?
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Taking the party to Han's club after a race is a must, especially after winning six thousand dollars. You won't have to worry about rent for at least six months, which is something to celebrate.
You park next to Han's car, and he waits for you to enter the plain-looking building. People greet him left and right as they go through the door that pours music and lights each time it's opened.
"You sure are popular," you tease him, leisurely walking towards him.
"Comes with the territory," Han responds without missing a beat. "Ready?" He asks, motioning for you to walk ahead of him.
"Always," you chirp. You purposefully accentuate the sway of your hips, giving Han something to look at.
Being a Friday night, the inside is filled to the brim, there isn't any space for more drunken people. Using your short height to your advantage, you easily find a way to the connecting hallway between this part of the club and the more exclusive one.
Han isn't as lucky constantly losing you from his sight. He's conscious that you are a grown woman capable of making your own decisions and caring for yourself, but he'd feel better being with you.
When he catches up to you at a point, he grabs your hips, pressing you against him, preventing you from getting lost again. You look back, startled, expecting to see a stranger rubbing against you. Noticing this, Han quickly calms you, "It's just me, Angel."
'It's just Han,' you repeat to yourself. You grab onto one of his hands, holding onto your hip, taking full advantage of the situation. Having Han wrapped around you feels like being on cloud nine. If this wasn't his club, you'd be going in circles, so he never pulls away.
With Han holding onto you, the way to the 'not-so-secret' hallway takes longer than usual. Not that you're complaining, though! Han's firm grip makes you fall harder for him. It fuels your imagination on how it would feel in other situations.
Han enjoys this position just as much as you do. He can pretend it's a safety thing as he steers you away from the sweaty bodies of drunks dancing, but it's for his selfish gain.
Having your body close to him reminds him of what he's missing and desperately desires. It started as a little innocent game for Han, knowing you had a crush on him, but then it turned into something more. He likes that you have feelings for him and wants it to stay that way. Han wants your attention on him all the time. His games are over; he wants you.
To your surprise, Han doesn't let go of your waist when you enter the hallway. Instead, he slings one arm around it as he walks beside you. "Maybe we should've taken the other entrance," he smirks.
"And miss the show?" You chuckle, finding a couple making out in the deserted hallway. Neither is willing to admit it's not about the show but about Han's proximity.
Unlike all the other times in the past you've partied with Han, he doesn't let go of you for more than two minutes. You dance all night together, just the two of you, no girls coming up to Han and no guys coming up to you. There simply wasn't a window of opportunity.
"You enjoying yourself?" He says in your ear over the loud music. Your back is against his front as your sway and roll your body to the beat. One of his hands is nursing a drink, and the other is right where it should be, on you.
"I won 6k and have a cute guy buying me drinks and dancing with me. What do you think?" You giggle, turning in his arms to face him instead. The drinks stop you from overthinking and let you wrap your arms around his neck. Faces close. You want to kiss him so bad you're not drunk enough, though, and it's not the way you'd like to do it, either.
"Just making sure," he smiles down at you, hand on your lower back.
The night is long, yet with Han, it goes by so fast. Sooner than you'd prefer, he walks you to your car, no longer holding onto your waist but your hand. There are only a few stragglers left behind who refuse to acknowledge the night is over. You and Han are two of them.
Reaching your white and red, modified skyline Han opens the door for you. With one arm propped against the open door and the other extended onto the roof, Han cages you against your car. Before you get in, you turn to face him, finding the bravery to do something you've been thinking about all night.
"Thanks for tonight, Han. I had fun," you say softly, suddenly feeling shy.
"Anytime, Angel," he responds smoothly, brushing his fingers on your naked shoulder. The jacket you wore earlier was discarded somewhere in the bar. An excuse for Han to see you outside the races.
"Well, goodnight." Gathering every particle of bravery, you stand on your toes and peck his lips softly.
It's only a tiny, innocent kiss, yet it makes Han close his eyes. It happens too quickly for his liking. You have been growing bolder, bold enough to kiss him. He needs to step up his game.
Taking advantage of his distracted state, you close your car door and rev the engine. On the drive to your apartment, you squeal in excitement. Fingers ghost over your lips, replaying the small kiss over and over again.
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Another chance at a race becomes available only days after your win. Men love to challenge women, especially those who are winning, much like you are.
They hate seeing you be successful, but it doesn't bother you in the least. It's another opportunity to win cash or a car, which you can use for parts and sell what you don't need.
As you roll up to the starting line, Han approaches your window, leaning down to duck his head in.
"Come to give me a good luck kiss?" You speak playfully, lips turned up into a smile.
You two haven't talked about what happened at the club and have continued to act as you usually do. He's been more touchy with you, though, often trying to find a way to be close to you. Being the lovestruck fool you are, you've encouraged it, finding those ways to let him be close.
"We both know you don't need luck. You've got this in the bag, Angel." Han speaks encouragingly, "Tell you what, though. You win, and it's yours."
"Making me earn it, I see," you laugh, shaking your head. "Alright, you've got a deal. See you on the other side."
Han is confident you'll win. With a last reassuring tap on your door, he steps back, finding his place in the crowd.
Your opponent finally drives up to the starting line, sending you an unnecessary nasty look you laugh at. The flag girl stands between the two cars, her dress leaving nothing to the imagination. You respect it. They are a lot more confident than you are in that department.
You are off when the word 'go' falls from her lips. You knew this track by heart, having raced it so many times. You knew exactly when to hit the gas and when to press the brake to get the car to swerve. Han's full attention is on your race, and when your car disappears to another level, he takes the elevator up to the top floor, where the finish line is. Watching you race is interesting. You always come up with ways to confuse your opponents.
With a bag of chips, he anxiously waits for your victory. Regardless of your ability to race and win, your races make him nervous. He cares about you, and so many things can go wrong.
The noisy crowd gets louder as the sound of tires screeching gets closer. In seconds, your car swerves onto the top floor, again marking you as the victor. There's not a scratch or bump in your car. Your opponent arrives shortly after with dents and long scratches in his paint.
The crowd cheers loudly for you, coming up to you to congratulate you and tell you how cool you looked. Your opponent comes up to you and hands you his keys with a scowl. You shrug it off. A deal is a deal.
Winning leaves you on a high, a feeling of invincibility wrapping around you. You've learned to control it because that feeling caused a big loss years ago. You get distracted by the people around you and forget Han's promise. It's funny because it was the only thing running through your head while you raced.
"Good job out there," Han says, catching up to you later in the night once the hype died down.
"Why, thank you!" You chirp, closing the hood of your car and leaning back to sit on it.
"I believe I made a promise," Han mentions, stepping close to you until you're face to face, only a few inches between the two of you. "You did," you nod, biting your lip.
Han notices this, bringing a hand up to cup your face, his thumb tugging your lip loose from the tight hold of your teeth. The other wraps around your waist, pulling you close. You slide on the warm metal of your car, placing a hand on his chest to brace yourself as Han settles between your legs.
"I'm a man of my word," he whispers, finally leaning down to press his eager lips against yours. Han is greedy for many things, and your lips are one of them. Ever since that night at the club, he's wanted to smash his lips against yours, to feel you close, taste you.
Your eyes instantly flutter close, fisting Han's shirt in your hand as if afraid he'll pull away too quickly. The kiss starts slowly as you both test the waters, but it soon becomes not enough. Han tilts his head, deepening the kiss.
It's an electric shock that consumes him and doesn't let him go. This is the result of Han holding himself back, and you made it worse when you gave him a taste the other night.
Han slips a hand under your shirt, feeling the warmth of your skin. You gasp against his lips, arching your back as his cold fingers catch you by surprise. It serves as an opportunity for Han, his tongue pushing past your pouty lips, savoring the moment.
You gave into him, offering everything you have in exchange for this moment. His warmth wraps around you, burning you from the inside out. The need to breathe makes itself present too soon and becomes far more demanding than the need for each other's lips.
Han pulls away, your bottom lip between his teeth. You're breathless, as if you ran a marathon. You feel lightheaded, intoxicated by Han, who continues to peck your lips softly. He might be addicted already. The tips of his fingers draw soothing circles on your lower back, grounding you in the moment.
"So this is what winning feels like," you breathe out, smoothing Han's shirt with your palms. A futile way to hide their shakiness.
Han laughs, pressing his face against your neck and leaving a fleeting kiss behind. "Appears so, Angel."
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A perk of being Han's friend is using his garage whenever you want. The days of paying for a spot to fix your car in a stranger's garage are far in the past. At the moment, you've spent the most part of the afternoon upgrading your car. The car you won on your last race sits beside yours with the hood popped open as you switched around pieces. He had quality parts, and his driving still sucked.
Twinkie, Earl, and the others are scattered around the large garage, working on different things and chattering. You had purposefully picked a spot away from them so you wouldn't get distracted. With work, your time is limited.
Han is on the second floor, leaning against the railing and pretending to watch the first floor and what they are doing. In reality, he is watching you closely.
You're bent over the hood of the car, working on unscrewing a tight bolt, cursing at the man who installed it initially. It's a sight straight out of his dreams. Your Nike sweatpants hung low on your hips, framing your ass perfectly. If he focused, he'd see the dimples on your lower back. His mind ran wild at the thought of pressing his thumbs against them while taking you from behind.
It's been a while since he's slept around. He cut himself off when he realized his feelings for you. What was the point of sleeping around if he wouldn't be satisfied? Those girls weren't you. They were temporary relief. Now, his pants tighten at anything you do. It's like he's seventeen again and unable to keep it in his pants.
He followed the curve of your ass to your arched back and the cropped shirt you wore. The matching crew neck sweater you arrived in is discarded in your car due to the heat. The revealing shirt rose with each of your movements, revealing the band of your baby blue bra. You tug on it for the millionth time today, annoyed.
The strands of hair you curled to frame your face stick uncomfortably to your sweaty forehead. You regret not putting them back into the two braids that fell over your shoulders.
Han needed to rip his eyes away from you before the others noticed. He's been staring for too long, fantasizing about everything he could do to you. To Han, you looked even more beautiful than you did that night with your sparkly dress and makeup. A woman who knows her way around a car is instantly a hundred times more attractive in his eyes.
As he accidentally visualizes you taking his cock from that same exact position, car included, you groan and straighten up. "I need help," you whine to no one in particular. The bolt is not budging, no matter how hard you try.
Han snaps out of his fantasy and springs into action, quickly appearing by your side. You've bent over again, wrench in hand, to give it one more try before giving up. He leans beside you, a hand on your lower back for faux support.
"What's the matter, Angel?" He says softly, one hand propping him up as he looks at the machinery under the hood. It's better if he helps you. He can't continue listening to your whines and groans.
"I need to unscrew those," you point at the bolts giving you a hard time.
Han asks for the wrench in your hands, and you place it in his hand, annoyed. You don't need the help of a man to do this, but it's Han, so you'll take it. You watch him as he places the wrench around the bolt, his arm tenses, emphasizing his muscles hidden by the short-sleeved button-up he wore over a white wife-beater tank.
His hair fell around his eyes as he successfully unscrewed the bolts. Feminism died as you lustfully took in Han, biting your lip. 'What a man,' you thought. You would've instantly refused the help if he had been any other guy.
"There you go," Han says, handing you the wrench. When he spares you a glance, he laughs softly. Good to know he has the same effect you have on him.
"Whatever would I do without you," you purr, shooting him a mischievous smile, "You deserve a reward." That's what it has come to, silly excuses to kiss Han because you're just friends. Nothing more.
Han looks at your lips briefly before snapping back to your eyes. You grin at him, leaning closer to kiss him for his 'hard work.' You know that he's been watching you all this time; you saw it from the reflective surface of the toolbox. Seeing his quickness to help you makes you believe he enjoyed the show.
Your lips brush teasingly against his, and just before Han can grab the back of your neck to stop the teasing, a loud bang tears through the room. Both you and Han pull away to see where the sound comes from, but Han bangs his head on the car's hood in the process.
"What the hell was that?" Han yells, rubbing the back of his head. He's annoyed that he's been interrupted.
"Sorry! The motor I was working on fell!" Earl exclaims from the other side of the garage, unaware of the daggers Han is throwing him.
"Best I get back to work," you quietly say with a chuckle, taking the piece you needed out of the car to bring it to yours.
"Yeah," Han says simply, reluctantly leaving to do his own thing.
Each and everyone that's in Han's garage returns to their business after the noisy interruption. Twinkie turns on a radio, blasting music to drown out the silence and clanking of tools. You work without interruption for the next three hours, giving your car all the love it deserves.
You clean your hands free of the motor oil and grease and search for Han. Your work for today was done. Now that you took anything valuable from the car you won, you had to sell it. You figured Han could do that for you.
"Hey, are you busy?" You ask him, seeing him working on a part by his desk.
"Nah, what's up, Angel?" He questions, dropping the screwdriver in his hand to focus all his attention on you.
Leaning on the desk casually, you begin speaking, "After I replace the bumper and give it a new paint job, can you sell that car for me?"
"Shouldn't be a problem," glancing at the car, Han agrees. It's a popular car in the racing world, and as soon as he gets the word out he's selling it, many offers will pop up.
"You're the best, Han!" You beam at him, pushing yourself off the desk to return downstairs.
"Angel, wait," he calls after you. Being your friend has been fun, yet he needs more. You shouldn't have to come up with excuses to kiss him; you should be able to do it freely whenever you want.
"Yes, Han," you ask softly, tilting your head in question.
Standing up from the rolling chair, he approaches you, "Do you want to go on a date?"
A grin sneaks past your lips before you even process what he said. Instantly, you nod your head, "I'd love to." You could combust at that moment. Finally, after months of pining, Han asked you out.
"Let's go," he smiles, grabbing your hand and guiding you to his car.
"Wait, now?" You furrow your eyebrows.
"Yes, unless you have something more important," he asks, teasing you.
"Nothing is more important, but I'm a mess," you shake your head hesitantly. You spent your afternoon working on cars, sweating, and getting covered in grease. You didn't think it would be in sweatpants when you pictured going on a date. Not to mention the state of your hair.
"No, you're not. If you must know, you've had me distracted all day," Han whispers the last part in your ear, trying to convince you even if it means giving himself away.
"Am I supposed to apologize?" You question, the corner of your lip curving into a sultry smile. You had been right all along.
"No, just agree to the date. Be spontaneous," Han bounces his eyebrows cutely.
"Let's do it," you sigh, hoping you won't regret it.
"Atta girl," Han smiles victoriously.
Han tries to remember the last time he had a proper date. Even with his ex, they just sort of happened. No date ever officially branded as such. It's why rather than asking you and waiting for the day to arrive, he decided to do it spontaneously. It leaves him no time to be nervous or to overthink things.
You slide your sweatshirt back on on the way out to shield yourself from the chilly Japanese night. Han opens the door to his car for you, shutting the door when you slip in. The drive is short as he takes you to a small family-owned sushi place he swears by.
"I'm surprised you eat more than chips and crackers," you joke with him as the food arrives, and he takes a bite.
"I definitely eat more than that," Han replies nonchalantly, referring to something else entirely. It's something you don't catch despite your dirty mind.
A discussion develops when you discover Han always orders the same thing in the restaurant. He's in Japan. He needs to throw himself into the culture and try new things.
Starting easy, you grab a piece of sushi from your plate, "You need to try this."
"I don't know," Han grimaces as he looks at the sushi held in your chopsticks.
"That's not an answer. Open your mouth," you groan, gently placing the sushi roll in his mouth.
You watch him chew slowly, getting a feel for the new food. "It's good," he agrees, liking whatever you had ordered. It was delicious, actually.
"Better than yours, right?" You ask him, knowingly, pointing your chopsticks at him.
"Yes," he rolls his eyes, refusing to give you the satisfaction.
"Told you," you sing, grabbing both plates and placing them in the middle of the table. Now you could each grab from both and share your meals.
The date goes smoothly. It's a wonder why the two of you hadn't gone to dinner before today. You already know Han is attentive and funny but his wisdom surprises you. He's already lived through so much, more than an average person. Despite being a couple years older than you, he retains his youth. That may be why he appeals to a younger crowd as well.
"What was your life like growing up?" You ask him, taking a drink from your Coke. Han ordered another plate of sushi to share, the one you chose earlier.
"My upbringing wasn't the best," he shrugs, remembering his life in California as a teen. "I was always in trouble."
"Why does something tell me that you were the one causing the trouble," you say, narrowing your eyes.
"I definitely was," he chuckles, "But in the end, it brought me here, and I'm happy."
Han believes in the timing of life. He's been after Tokyo for so long. Before stepping foot in Tokyo, he had to go through the Dominican Republic, Rio, Germany, Shanghai, London, and many more places. It was supposed to happen that way, or he wouldn't have met you.
"I knew it," you sigh dramatically, "I've always been into bad boys."
"What about you, Angel?" He returns the question, curious about your past.
"I grew up in a normal Japanese family. My dad's a mechanic, my mom a nurse, and my sister a pain in the ass. I went to school for engineering and graduated with top honors," you tell him, reminiscing on your not-as-impressive past.
"You say that as if it's easy to graduate with top honors," Han chides you, to which you roll your eyes. "Why work retail? Doesn't engineering make you a lot more money?"
"Don't laugh, okay?" You point at Han. When he agrees not to laugh, you continue, "I wanted to be a Formula 1 racer when I was younger. My dad signed me up to participate in smaller competitions, and I was pretty damn good. My mom was totally against it and forced my dad and me to quit.
Fast forward, I'm in college, and engineering seemed like the way to go. Learned about street racing and figured that could be a way back into my dream. It's a foolish thought. The professionals spend years in proper circuits practicing and competing. No one comes with a background of illegal racing."
Han wasn't expecting that answer. He assumed you hated engineering and did it to appease your parents. He wonders why you thought he would laugh. Your dream is nothing to laugh at. Having witnessed your racing, you undoubtedly had the innate talent. "So retail?" He prompts, realizing you didn't answer the first question.
Snapping your fingers, you say, "Right! I figured I'd always have my degree. I'd rather spend my time having fun now; when the time comes, I'll return to that. I do like it, but I'm not ready to commit to a life of 9 to 5's. I prefer spending my time in the wee hours of the night racing. Since I can't be a Formula 1 racer, I'll be a street racer. Much cooler, anyways."
"That takes guts," Han tells you, "I'm glad you're doing it."
You give him a little shrug and a smile because you were too. Despite your childish dream dying when your mom forced you to quit, you're still happy with your life. Especially if you end up with a guy like Han.
Han, being a gentleman, pays for dinner. Before returning to the car, you stop by a convenience store for dessert. Han follows you buying snacks for himself. In search of something sweet, you find a shelf filled with Pocky. You grab the chocolate-covered ones with a plan in mind.
You and Han sit at a table outside the convenience store. It was getting late, so only a few people were around. You open the packet of Pocky, taking out a chocolate-covered stick.
"Have you ever played the Pocky game?" You ask, taking a bite of the treat.
"No. What is it?" Han looks at you curiously.
"Essentially, you grab one end of the Pocky stick, and I grab the other. We have to eat it, but if one of us pulls away, they lose," you respond simply, hiding the game's purpose.
"That sounds awfully like Lady and the Tramp," Han mentions, catching onto your intentions.
Offering him a stick, you say, "Want to play?"
Han smiles at you and grabs the Pocky stick placing the biscuit end between his teeth. You hold the chocolate-covered end and tap his hand to start. You both take it slow, Han opting to stay still as you near his lips. You tilt your head when you're close to his lips, giving him the perfect opportunity to kiss you when only a small piece is left.
You smile into the chocolate-flavored kiss. If you wanted to kiss Han, you could've done it without so many sneaky plans or excuses, but it wouldn't be as fun.
"So, who won?" Han asks when you pull away.
"Does it matter?" You cheekily say, pulling him back in for another kiss.
There's no flaw in your reasoning. Han pulls you close, lifting your legs to lie in his lap. You spend more time than you care to admit making out outside the convenience store.
Han offers to drive you to your apartment since your car needs to be finished. Throughout the drive, his hand is laced with yours in your lap. Small talk flows between you as you continue to learn about each other.
Smoke coming from your apartment building cuts that conversation short. Firefighters stand outside the building, spraying water into the source of the fire. Han steps out of the car with you to ask anyone what is going on.
Noticing the building manager across the street, you approach him. He quickly blurts out all the information he knows. You're one of many of the tenants to approach him. "There's a fire on the sixth floor. We don't know the damage yet. I understand this is your residence, but you need somewhere else to say for the next few days while we asses the damage and inspect the building."
"What am I going to do?" You groan, covering your face with your hands. You worry about where you'll stay and your stuff in your apartment. You have important documents in there.
"You can stay with me," Han offers without a hint of hesitation.
"Are you sure? I don't want to impose." It's nice of Han to offer you a place to stay, but would it be too much at this stage of their situationship. Last thing you want is to push boundaries.
"You're not imposing. Let me help you," Han insists, grabbing your hand to rub soothing circles in it. It's a given he has feelings for you, but before that, you are his friend, and he's not going to leave you out on the streets or sleeping in your car.
Han offers you calming words on the way to his apartment. Your apartment is on the twelfth floor and the other side of the fire. Chances are that your stuff will probably be fine. Whether the building will close for renovations is another matter entirely.
His apartment is just another level to the building he owns. Its entrance is on a more private side. Inside, it's very clean and organized, a surprise since you expect most guys to be messy. Picture frames and knick knacks are scattered throughout the space, giving you more of a glimpse into Han's life.
It's quiet between the two of you but comfortable. Han is giving you time to process what you saw in your building. He offers you his shower if you'd like, and when you brought up you didn't have any clothes, he searched for a clean t-shirt and sweatpants you could borrow from him.
A shower is just what you need as you let the water cascade down your body. Fire aside, it has been a great day, even before Han asked you on a date. Hope fills your being at the prospect of soon beginning a relationship with Han. So far, everything points out it can happen. There haven't been any red flags or hesitation from him.
You change into the oversized t-shirt Han picked out for you and the spare pair of underwear you always carry in your bag. Smart girls know to carry a spare in case of emergencies. You debate about wearing the sweatpants he left for you but choose against it. The t-shirt covers enough.
You shyly make your way out of the bathroom in search of Han. You find him in the bedroom, grabbing an extra pillow and blanket. "The bed is yours," he mentions, eyes briefly trailing your naked legs.
"Where will you sleep?" You ask, furrowing your eyebrows. If anyone has to sleep on the couch, it should be you.
"I'll take the couch," he responds, as you expected.
"Han, stop being a gentleman and get in bed with me," you say, taking the pillow from his grasp and placing it back on the top of the bed.
He offers you an 'Are you sure?' look, and you nod confidently. He doesn't need to be told twice. Han steps out of the bedroom for a few minutes and grabs a shower. Taking that time, you get on the bed to get comfortable, it's soft, and you sink into it.
You're snoozing off when he returns to the room. Han carefully peels back the sheets and gets under them. Feeling the bed dip, you turn to the side to face him.
Your sleepy mood makes you cuddle up to him without much thought. The smell of his soap invades your senses. Han naturally accepts it, throwing an arm around your waist and hugging you closer, legs intertwined. He kisses the top of your head, finding comfort in the position.
Thankful doesn't begin to cover how you feel. There's this overwhelming sense of security that comes with Han. There is something about him that makes you trust him. Deep down, you know he wouldn't intentionally hurt you.
"How are you feeling?" Han checks up on you before you fall asleep.
"I'm okay. I hope none of my things got damaged," you mumble into his chest, pressing a kiss into it afterward. "Thank you for everything, Han. Your help with the car, the date, letting me invade your bed," you finish with a soft laugh.
"Anytime, Angel," he responds truthfully. If he can help you in any way, he will. Sleep consumes both quickly after, and it becomes the best night you've both had in a while.
The following day you're the first to wake. Han's arms are around your waist, and you feel his breath tickle the back of your neck. He's warm, and you just want to sink into it even more. Your need to pee pries you out of his embrace, though. 
As carefully as possible, you slip out of his loose grasp and head to the bathroom. Han had picked out a toothbrush for you the night before, which you're thankful for. Shuffling out of the bathroom, you cook breakfast for Han as a 'thank you' for his hospitality.
You pick the ingredients you need from his fridge, careful not to make too much noise. Your progress is slower than you prefer as you get used to the kitchen layout and localize everything you might need.
Soon enough, you drop pancake batter into the pan, and while that cooks, you scramble eggs with veggies. Since it's his kitchen, you assume he'll like what you make. It's his ingredients, after all.
Just after finishing the last batch of pancakes, you hear the patter of Han's feet entering the kitchen. You turn to glance at him quickly and greet him, "Good morning! I made you breakfast, sit!"
"You didn't have to do that," Han says, coming up behind you. He traps you between his body and the stove as if having you close last night wasn't enough.
"Yes, I did! You let me stay here, borrow clothes, sleep in your bed," you flip the pancakes as you count all the nice things he's done in less than 24 hours.
Humming, unconvinced, Han kisses your cheek and thanks you. It sends a tingle between your legs as his voice is raspy and deep from sleep. Your cheeks flare up, betraying you as always.
Han follows your orders and sits by the kitchen table, waiting till you're done to begin eating. With that time in his hands, he observes you. You're wearing the t-shirt he loaned you, which swallowed your frame. Each time you flipped a pancake, it rose slightly to reveal the light green fabric of your panties. Han soaked the sight in and wondered if this was what waited for him in the near future.
His eyes continue trailing down to your thick thighs. He wouldn't mind being trapped between them. Lower and lower, his gaze went from your pretty legs to your varnished toes. Back up, it went as you turned off the stove and approached the table. You weren't wearing a bra under the t-shirt, as your nipples poked through the thin fabric.
Han's glad he didn't notice these things last night, or he wouldn't have been able to sleep a wink. Spreading his legs, he tried to hide the hard-on he was sporting. None the wiser, you sit on the empty chair near him and tell him to eat up.
Shooing the dirty thoughts from his mind, Han thanks you one more time and digs in. It's a lovely morning, with light chatter bouncing between you. Han praises your cooking every chance he gets and even finishes the pancakes you left over but not before drenching them in more syrup. When both of you are done, you clear the plates and place them in the sink to wash.
"Angel, come 'ere," Han calls from behind you.
Mindlessly you walk over to him, wondering what he wants. Han grabs your waist, pulling you to his lap. "Han, what are you doing? I have to do the dishes!" You squeal, holding onto him, afraid he'd let you fall.
"No, you don't," he speaks softly, one hand cupping your cheek.
"I don't?" you prompt, leaning into his touch.
"Let me properly thank you," he offers, lips chasing yours. Han can't contain himself any longer. You've done a number on him, strutting around his kitchen in your underwear. He wants you. He needs you.
You lean into the kiss as you always do, pouring everything you have into it. Tasting the coffee on his tongue, you bring your hand around the back of his neck, softly tugging the long strands of hair. Han groans into the kiss, having missed that sensation.
Repositioning yourself, you straddle Han in the rickety kitchen chair. You feel his hands all over your body, trailing down your back to grasp your ass in his palms. Every so often, you'd resurface to breathe but dip down again and again to continue kissing him.
Han feels himself harden as you rub your center against him deliciously. It's clear as day you want him just as much as he wants you.
"Want to spoil me and fuck me?" You breathe heavily, kissing Han's neck.
"So bold," Han chuckles, his hands wandering under the t-shirt to feel your warm skin, his nails faintly scratching your back, sending shivers down your spine. "Six months ago, you would've been too scared to ask me that."
Six months ago, you would've been too scared to kiss him on the cheek, but you've come a long way. As time passes, you realize your feelings are not one-sided because Han means every word he speaks to you despite his taunting nature. Each and every complement is honest.
"I got tired of waiting around for you," you bite back, nipping his neck and sucking a pretty bruise on it.
Han hisses at the momentary sting, "I thought I was just a friend?"
You laugh sarcastically, picking your head up to stare at him, "I don't let friends kiss me or grope my ass."
"What does that make me then?" Han raises an eyebrow, cheekily squeezing your ass as a smirk forms on his lips.
"Special," you shrug, lips pouty and swollen.
"Because?" He wants to hear you say that you feel something for him. It's a last hurrah on giving you a hard time for fun.
You realize it's time to be honest and come out with it. You stopped hiding your feelings a while ago. Hell, you even asked Han to fuck you. All that's left is to admit your feeling out loud. "Because I have feelings for you, Han Lue," you whisper, brushing the hair that threatens to fall over his eyes.
"That's all you had to say," Han murmurs, catching your lips in a passionate kiss.
The heat rises with each passing moment. Your feelings have now come to a boil and bubbled over. Han picks you up easily and sits you on the kitchen table. He leaves his touch on your naked back to trace the outside of your thighs. It's time to give you precisely what you asked for and what he has been fantasizing about for far too long.
Grabbing the elastic band of your panties, Han slides them down the curve of your ass and your thighs until they are off. He throws them somewhere in the room, the information unimportant for now.
"Han, please," you whine, spreading your legs wider and giving him access to your most private part. You beg between kisses to feel his touch where you need it most.
"So impatient, Angel." Han jabs lightly as his right-hand touches the inside of your thigh. The pads of his fingers brush over your thighs repeatedly, nearing the apex more and more with each stroke.
You gasp as he finally dips a finger into your folds, gathering the slick that formed to spread it around your bundle of nerves. You gasp, breaking the kiss and throwing your head back.
Han sucks on your neck and collarbones as you moan into the air. Slipping a finger into your tight walls, he groans, thinking about how they'll feel around his hard cock.
"Fuck, Han, feels so good," you sigh when Han adds another digit into your soaking core and presses on your clit with his thumb.
"I didn't realize I made you this wet," he says into your neck as you grind your hips into his hand. You must've been wanting this for as long as he has.
"Liar," you respond, staring at him with hooded eyes. The nights you've touched yourself while thinking about him are many. The real thing is a million times better.
Han watches you intently, catching every little reaction you have to his touch. The moans and whines echo through the room and are music to his ears. Without a doubt, there's a wet patch in his boxers as his tip leaks precum from the erotic sight in front of him.
Your walls clenching around him alert him you're close, and promptly after you make it known as you beg him not to stop, except he doesn't listen and stops just as you're about to cum.
"Why did you stop?" You complain, eyes wide in desperate need.
"Want you to cum on my tongue," he responds, stealing a quick kiss before he kneels on the floor. Wrapping his strong arms around your thighs, he scoots you closer to the edge.
His words shoot another current down your legs, no doubt making more of a mess. You wait with bated breath as Han kisses the inside of your thighs, making eye contact with you as he delves into your pussy.
He licks up from your hole up to your clit. You grasp his hair with one hand, pulling the t-shirt up with the other to better look at him going down on you. Your eyes roll involuntarily when Han wraps his lips around your clit, sucking and flicking it with his tongue. His long fingers find your opening once more, sliding in effortlessly.
You try to maintain eye contact with Han through it all. If his hair fell on his eyes, you'd quickly brush it back, not wanting to miss his lustful gaze. It spurred Han on to see you crumbling over him, biting your lip as you tried to hide the pretty cries that wanted to fall from your lips.
Han stops licking your clit and slows his thrusting fingers each time you near your orgasm. Time and time again, he repeats this when you're near the edge. Only when your arousal coats his hand he keeps his pace, and as you whine out, 'gonna cum, don't stop,' he slips his tongue into your pussy, tasting your cum directly from the source.
He makes a great example of what his nose can do as it brushes over your clit while he tongue fucks you. You trap Han between your legs as your pussy clenches, your orgasm coming in waves. As you relax back onto the kitchen table, Han continues to lick your puffy center, being careful with your sensitive nub.
When he stands, you fist his t-shirt, smashing your lips together, tasting your essence. "Let's take this to the bedroom," Han pants. You nod eagerly and squeal when he picks you up, your legs wrapped around his waist.
You leave a trail of kisses on his neck as he makes his way to the bedroom. Once there, you both fall on the bed, Han hovering over you. He tugs on your t-shirt, "As much as I love seeing you in my clothes, this has to come off."
Without the shirt, he can admire your naked body. A lone finger slides down from your neck to your sternum. It slides to your side near the curve of your left breast, where a small sakura flower is tattooed.
"This is my new favorite thing about you," Han softly says, noticing you staring at him.
The tattoo was an impulsive thing to do. You had wanted a tattoo for years but never knew what to get. After your last breakup two years ago, you got the little flower instead of getting bangs and dying your hair. It has no real meaning to you. It's just a cute flower.
"You're the first to see it since I got it done," you tell him, a laugh bubbling from your lips as his touch on your ribs tickles.
"And I hope it stays that way," he responds. It's an unspoken promise. He wants you all to himself for the foreseeable future.
His finger continues the trajectory down your tummy, lightly going over your belly button before it traces over your mound and dips to touch your clit.
You gasp at the surge of pleasure as your clit remains sensitive from his previous actions. "Gotta say it's not fair that I'm the only one naked," you moan when Han continues to circle your nub.
"What are you gonna do about it?" Han incites you to see what you'll do.
Any remaining shyness you had is long gone as lust replaces it. You kneel in front of Han, who leans back to watch you. Your chest is close to his face, so when you lean closer to grab the hem of his shirt, he sucks one of your nipples. 
"Han," you whine, arching your back," "Stop distracting me."
Ignoring his mouth on you, you grab his shirt and pull it off. Successfully making him stop his attack on your breasts. You peck his lips and kiss down his jaw.
You take your time kissing his toned chest and stomach. You wish to memorize every part of him. "You're so handsome, Han," you purr, glancing up at him.
Those simple words that spilled from your mouth made his heart flutter. Han is used to being the one to dish out compliments and praise the women he's with. To have you say that is like a breath of fresh air, and he can't wait to have more.
"Fuck, Angel," he groans, grasping your chin. You kiss his palm with a smile that's equally angelic and devilish.
You want to peel two more layers off Han's body and decide to do it all at once. Grasping the band of his pants and boxers, you slowly pull them down, building anticipation.
His cock springs out of its confines, landing on Han's abdomen. You don't hide your curious gaze as you take in his cock. It's so big it makes you bite your lip in anticipation. The tip is a dark pink as it drips with precum.
After you remove his pants entirely, you grasp his cock, feeling the warmth and weight of it. Han breathes out through his nose, a futile attempt to keep his cool. A string of saliva drips from your lips, coating his hard length. Each stroke you made caused a bead of pre to spill from him.
You take it as an invitation to taste him, wrapping your lips around his head your tongue licks the beads of white. 
Han does the impossible not to push your head down to take all of him. The thought is present, though. You've barely teased him compared to how he teased you, but Han can no longer resist. 
"I need you," Han groans, calling out your name, not the nickname you've been donned for the past three years.
You don't take it for granted. Hearing your name sends you into overdrive. Han pulls you up to kiss you and lies you down on the top of the bed. He comfortably gets between your legs that hug his waist to bring him closer. His cock brushes your wet pussy, and you both hiss at the sensation. Your pussy clenches around nothing at the thought of having Han fill you entirely.
"You ready, Angel?" Han asks you. One arm holding him up and the other wrapped around your thigh, giving you a comforting squeeze. Time stops ticking at that moment. It's just you and Han wrapped in each other. 
"I've been ready for the past month, Han. Fuck me, please," you plead quietly, your fingertips running up and down his back. 
"Just because you said, please." Han lines his cock up to your entrance and pushes past your lips into your warm center. Relief floods through the both of you, but it soon dissipates, and it's replaced by waves of unfiltered lust.
Han starts fucking into you deep, at the perfect pace. Your eyes involuntarily close as you feel Han's cock stretching you open and filling you like never before. Han kisses your temple and releases sexy moans into your ear with words of encouragement.
'Such a tight pussy just for me.'
'Taking me so good, Angel.'
'Can't get enough of you.'
You echo his words, encouraging him to keep fucking you. Your nails dig into his back as you try to hold on to anything, and your heels dig into his lower back. The closeness between you is intoxicating, your scents mixing and becoming one, his hair ticking your face, his warm skin heating up yours. 
Han slows the pace momentarily, leaning back on his knees to see your pretty cunt taking his cock. He wants to commit to memory how your pussy spreads to make way for his cock, a white ring on the base of his cock, and how your little clit is exposed and vulnerable to his touch.
The other girls he's slept with only got part of his attention and dedication. He didn't mean to make a huge impression. He only did his job, often choosing to lie back and let them do as they pleased with him. 
With you, it's different. He wants to give you his all and leave a great impression. He'll do all the work; you can just take it if that's what you want. That's the difference between you and the other girls. He lived to spoil you.
Meanwhile, you fall apart under him, moaning incoherent phrases he can barely make out. He loves hearing them, though. You reach for Han's hand as he increases his pace and grips it tightly.
Han slips his cock out of you, wanting to make his fantasy a reality. You shudder at the empty feeling and whine, "No, don't stop." 
"Come on, Angel. Get on your knees," Han coo's at you, kissing your pouty lips. "Promise you'll cum soon."
Han positions you on your knees, your back arched as your tits rub against the bed sheets. You huff through it all, desperate to have him pounding into you again. He smacks your ass when you wiggle it to get him to do what you want.
Han enters you in one smooth motion, this position amplifying your pleasure as he hits the spongy spot inside of you more directly.
"Han!" You cry out, fisting the sheets underneath you. 
"I'm right here, Angel," Han breathes, snapping his hips rhythmically. 
Just as he visualized, he grabs your hips in his large hands and digs his thumbs into the dimples on your back. With a tight hold, he thrusts into you unrelentingly, and you push back onto him just as eagerly. Your cries are muffled by the pillow you're hugging to your face.
Your pussy swallows him with each thrust, even as it clenches to prepare for orgasm. He can't hold back any longer as his balls clench with each faltering thrust, and your walls squeeze him tighter than ever.
" 'm cumming," you squeal, your legs tense up and shake. Your walls contract and release in a rhythmic motion that sends Han over the edge, your name on the tip of his tongue.
Han pulls out of you, helping you get back onto a comfortable position, and lies beside you, catching his breath. He turns to look at you, and you do the same. You can't hold his gaze long as you furiously blush.
Han laughs, grabbing your hand to lace your fingers together. "You can't get shy now!"
"I can't control it!" You exclaim, hiding your face with the same pillow as earlier. 
The rest of the day is spent in bed. Han ignores his daily responsibilities and stays in, getting lost in your touch and making promises he hopes to keep.
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One Year and a Half Later...
You drive up to the empty parking complex. It's similar to the one you spend your nights on. Driving up the floors, you find Han where he told you he'd be. He leans against the familiar orange car, a bag of chips in his hands. A nice lather jacket covers his arms, making you smile when you remember how he got it in the first place.
"Hey, you wanted to meet me here?" You question, getting out of your car.
Approaching him, you kiss his salty lips and wait for an explanation regarding the random meet-up spot. In the entire year and a half of you dating, he's never asked you such a weird request.
"You feeling up to race?" Han asks you, holding your hand in his.
It's been years since the two of you met, and for the same amount of time, people have been pining you two to race. He denied every request, including the ones you threw every once in a while.
"It's about time," you exclaim, excitement filling your body. "What's at stake?"
There is something up Han's sleeve. You know that much. There is something he wants from you if he suddenly wants to race you. He could just ask. You'll give him everything he desires. You play along, though.
"Winner gets the other's car," he offers, pushing himself off the car to wrap his arms around you to hug you, his thumb soothingly brushing over the spot where your tattoo is. He last saw you when you left for your new engineering job early in the morning.
"You're willing to sacrifice your car?" You chuckle, implying you are going to win.
"It's only fair," he shrugs, kissing your cheek.
With one last peck, he lets you go and gets in his car. You follow his lead, lining up your car to the imaginary starting line. Han sets up a timer, and once it went off, both cars lurched forward at high speeds. 
You focus on the race, forgetting it's Han you're competing with. You've been dying to go against him for so long, desperate to find out who was the better racer between the two. 
As expected, Han makes it hard for you. The race is neck and neck as you drift up the floors of the building. Whenever Han takes the lead, you find a way to get ahead. You see the end near, and Han threatens to surpass you, but with one last boost, you keep your position, winning the race.
You leap out of your car, feeling the high of the race. No one has kept you on your toes for so long. It's a satisfying win. Han walks out of his car more calmly, smiling, happy to see you celebrate. It didn't matter to him that you were better. You deserved it.
"I can't believe I won," you exclaim, jumping into his arms as he spins you around.
"I can, and I'm so proud," Han says, kissing all over your face.
The race's prize is forgotten as you celebrate, but Han reminds you by handing you his keys, "A deal is a deal." You take the keys from him as a mere formality. You're not taking Han's precious car. Racing him is enough for you.
The weight of the keys is strange to you. They tend to be much heavier. Opening your palm to inspect them, you see that his keychains and spare keys are missing. In their place is a diamond ring.
"Han, what-" you stutter, whipping up to look at him.
"My car is yours. I figured I could be yours too. Will you marry me?" Han takes the keys from you, getting down on one knee and removing the ring from the holder. 
From all the possible scenarios you had in mind from this clandestine meeting, Han's proposal was not one of them. Nevertheless, you have your answer instantly.
"Yes," you nod, choking back a sob.
Han grabs your hand and slides the ring onto your fourth finger. It's a perfect fit, just like Han. You drop down in front of Han, ignoring the dirty floor, to kiss and hug him.
Han kisses away your tears, a smile permanently etched on his face. He never thought he'd see the day he would settle down, but this past year has been near perfection with you, and he doesn't see himself with anyone else.
"Did you let me win to set this up?" You ask him later that night. His arms are wrapped tightly around you as you lie on his chest.
"No," he answers simply, kissing your head.
"You let me win," you then say assertively.
"No, I did not, Angel," he answers again, hiding his smile in your hair.
"I don't believe you. We have to race again," you tell him, lifting your head to glance at him.
"I don't have a reason to. I've got everything I want right here. Take the win, Angel," Han tells you sweetly, his fingers playing with your ring.
"For now," you huff, settling back down and cuddling up to him.
Fin. 
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thank you for reading! i didn't mean for it to be this long although i'm sure you guys are not complaining!
this was so much fun to write. guys like i am in love with han lue, i've spent hours on tiktok watching han lue and sung kang edits. i need help! tell me i'm not the only one like this!
requests are still open ❤️
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reticulating-splines · 5 months
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WIP - West 70th
1880s-1910s row of Upper West Side townhomes.
Been working on this row of late 19th c. brownstones on and off for the past year now, so needless to say when I heard about For Rent I was hype.
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This initially started because I was homesick for NYC during the pandemic. Specifically for the area of the upper west side my dorm was in while I was a student. I mainly blame this experience for my obsession with historical architecture - walking along central park west past the Dakota on the way to the subway, smoking on the stoops of the brownstones late at night, going to classes in the wedding cake that is the Ansonia - it was just everywhere, and so, so beautiful to look at.
Except a lot of it is faded glory - buildings subdivided, details chipped or covered in the thickest coats of grime or paint. So I wanted to replicate some of the old New York from around the turn of the century. The one I read about in the Luxe series and saw in the Samantha movie lol.
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The basement or garden level of each four-story brownstone will be dedicated to the original purpose as the main workplace of the service staff. Unfortunately no room for the actual garden, so laundry lines and planters are on the roof. There are bedrooms and bathrooms for a cook and a housekeeper/butler, along with the staff dining and the kitchen. The butler's pantry is directly upstairs from the kitchen, and the top floor is almost exclusively made up of staff bedrooms and washrooms.
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I usually do the service areas first because they're the most interesting, and there was nothing more interesting than a full edwardian brownstone kitchen. Lots of exposed piping, beadboard, subway tile, and shelves of clutter. Has a separate scullery, pantry, and stairs down to a basement storeroom to keep your best champs-le-sims nectar in. There's also a servant's bellboard in the kitchen and the staff dining room. It along with the "boiler" system are made with tool and CC-free.
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The main entrance and parlor are doing their best to continue the gothic revival theme of the exterior. The library and dining room follow in the enfilade starting in the parlor. Since this first house is a corner lot, it has a bit more width and space than a true brownstone. The only actual brownstone I've been inside of is Lady Mendl's, so ofc I had to have an extensive tea setup. Def took a lot of inspo from these two pics alone for these rooms.
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The main stairwell and picture gallery lead to three large bedrooms on the second floor, and then up to the children's room and nanny's bedroom on the third floor. I really like skylights. I learned the importance of decent lightwells in staving off depression one semester when my window looked out onto a brick wall
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The master bedroom and the children's room above it both have their own private sitting rooms and bathrooms. All rooms have either fireplaces or cast iron radiators.
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There's no way this is going to be finished by the time For Rent comes out, so im just going to release it in whatever state it's in when it does come out. The exteriors and interior room layout for all the townhomes will (hopefully) most likely be set by then anyway.
Now available for download!
Also the anniversary of Chez Cromwell is coming up! Ive been gone for the better part of the year due to starting a new job, but I havent been idle. C.Cromwell has been updated for infants and ceilings, which led to me redoing the exterior and almost every room, so a rerelease is coming v soon! Sneak peek below. Happy Thanksgiving!
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Hi! Big fan :) You're an environmental lecturer, right? I recently got into a debate with someone about rewilding in the UK, and the clash with farmers and agriculture. To me, this is a no-brainer - I absolutely do feel for farmers losing their livelihoods, and I think there needs to be a system to help them transition to something else, but also, the planet is dying. But you explain things well, so I wondered if you have thoughts? Particularly on the Welsh side of things. Thank you in advance!
Hah. I literally have a lecture on this. Or, well, a chunk of a lecture, anyway; so yes! I have thoughts. I'll use those notes, and stick a big reference at the end in case you want to read more
I'll talk about this specifically from the Welsh perspective, okay so:
The rewilding project in Wales is the Cambrian Wildwood, launched in 2004ish by a guy who bought an abandoned farm in the northern end of Mid Wales with the express intention of rewilding it. The aim is to convert some 7000 acres, and the initial mission statement said they'd reintroduce wolves and lynx. That's the project I'm going to talk about, because it's a great case study for how to spectacularly fuck something up (and eventually realise you've spectacularly fucked up, and do something about it.)
These are the Cambrian Mountains:
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When looking at that, there are two competing viewpoints that are relevant here:
The Cambrians are ecologically depleted. Their biodiversity has crashed since the Second World War, when modern farming methods were introduced. Environmentally, there is a perception of emptiness and degradation.
The landscape is a glorious one that has been shaped by the human actions taken on it for generations, as we are a shepherding culture – culture and land are inextricably intertwined.
That's a big fundamental difference! Two people can look at that same photo, and see something diametrically opposed. But there's more lying on it, so you also need to understand the socio-political background.
Socio-Political Background
(I know! Headings! So professional)
A lot of rewilding – Cambrian Wildwood included – is taking place in areas where farming is declining for various political/socio-economic reasons, so this can be ENTIRELY FAIRLY seen as yet another threat. This goes hand in hand with rural migration and community decline, too.
In Wales, we’re mostly rural, and characterised by extensive upland livestock farming (sheep in particular). Most farms are small to medium family-run setups. ON TOP OF THAT, the vast majority of Welsh farmers are Welsh-speaking, and the right to operate a farm the ‘traditional’ way without UK government oversight is seen by Welsh Nationalists as an important post-colonial act.
Many of them didn’t even like the National Parks being set up, as they were seen as an English outsider imposition that ignored the working nature and cultural history of the land. Remember: the farmed uplands are often seen as a heartland of Welsh identity, and those have historically been intentionally destroyed by UK central government land management decisions (e.g. Tryweryn, Elan, Claerwen, etc)
“Over the past half century we have witnessed the arrival of countless environmental fundamentalists… seemingly oblivious to the fact that their new-found paradise is already occupied by people whose connection with the land is deep rooted, dates back thousands of years, and is embedded in their language and culture.” (Nick Fenwick [Farmers’ Union of Wales] 2013)
SO IT’S CULTURALLY DICEY
(And in my opinion an incredibly stupid idea to go and give it a primarily English name with a Welsh translation as an afterthought but that is Elanor’s Opinion and not Scientific Fact)
(But fr fr if you ever have to get involved in these sorts of projects you will go a long way if you have the basic respect of learning the Welsh names and pronouncing them right rather than lazily expecting everything to be in English sorry sorry I digress)
From the Cambrian Wildwood’s Mission Statement on their website, their objective is:
“To rewild or restore land to a wilder state to create a functioning ecosystem where natural processes dominate by carrying out habitat restoration, removing domestic livestock, and introducing missing native species as far as feasible.”
Can you see the controversial bit of the statement
Can you see the bit where they directly say they want to remove domestic livestock
Jesus Christ
Cultural Differences
AND THEN HERE'S THE BIGGER PROBLEM
‘Culture’ in Welsh is diwylliant – literally, a ‘lack of wildness’. There is no direct translation into Welsh for the term ‘rewilding’ – the closest you can get is anialwch or diffeithwch, which mean ‘wilderness’ in the sense of ‘desert’ or ‘wasteland’. So right off the bat, if you tell a Welsh-speaking farmer that you want to rewild the place, what they hear is "We want to make it dangerous and empty and degraded."
A related concept is cynefin - knowing one’s ‘patch’ and the feeling of belonging associated. The term has its roots as a description of the way grazing animals know their area of mountain land, but it is also used to describe how people come to form an intimate experiential knowledge of place - and specifically, a Welsh farmer's cultural attitude.
Basically, Welsh literature and oral traditions speak of a relationship with the land, not a separation and longing for an untouched wilderness. Farmers feel this especially keenly. Culturally, this is a big part of why they do it – they’re rooted to the land, and therefore to their identities.
“Interviewees conveyed this by referring to areas proposed for rewilding as being comprised of “a quilt of cynefinoedd: interwoven stories, the layered and collective place-making of families and individuals over-generations, co-constituted with the physical landscape” (Wynne-Jones, Holmes and Strouts, 2018)
So, to them, rewilding is erasing and disregarding these stories. To them, this is not just a land-use change, but the latest colonial attack. They've known the family who lived on that farm for generations - every birth, marriage, death, joy, triumph, loss, everything. You are saying that you are going to strip that family, all those stories, all those people out of that land, to be forgotten.
However. There is a counterpoint to this.
Many farmers taking this view have therefore identified themselves as the only “truly Welsh” people in the debate, accusing environmentalists as being outsiders. The problem with this being, most of the environmentalists involved with the project are also Welsh; so who the fuck are they to say who is or is not Truly Welsh? It's what we on the internet would recognise as gatekeeping, with a big side order of No True Scotsman fallacy.
Also this quote sums it up well:
“Sheep farming in this country goes back a few hundred years. I think if you go deep enough into our culture and ancestry, we have a really deep native relationship with wild forest areas and with the wild animals that are native to this country…I just don’t agree that sheep farming is really part of our traditional culture.” (WWLF Interview [15] 2016) (Wynne-Jones, Holmes and Strouts, 2018)
This is also a fair point. It is true that upland sheep farming, the way we now practice it, is only a few hundred years old, and at the current intensity only a few decades (since WW2).
On top of which, there has been plenty of exploration over the years of farmers as being a government-subsidised landed gentry, which I won't go into here, but it also contains some fair points.
In truth, all of it and none of it is true. It’s far more complex and nuanced than either side might want to believe.
Solutions So Far
This is an ongoing project and they're still learning and changing new things and stuff, but a big thing they did was get someone in to basically be a mediator and listen to both sides, because Jesus, those sides were not listening to each other.
But to date:
They actually worked with a first-language Welsh speaker (WHY DID THEY NOT DO THIS FIRST I'm sorry I'm fine). Originally the Welsh translation of the project was Tir Gwyllt – wild land. But given that Welsh connotations with gwyllt are something out of control or dangerous, Coetir Anian has been chosen – anian refers to a sense of natural order and creation, a sense of health and vitality. Similarly, ‘rewilding’ is being translated as ‘di-ddofi’ – ‘de-taming’. This acknowledges the labour and culture taken to tame it, and just suggests an avenue for discussing some relaxation of farming practice in appropriate locations rather than, you know, releasing packs of wolves directly into sheep pens
In online materials and in community engagement events where traditional storytellers and musicians have performed to celebrate the Wildwood, the trustees have drawn heavily from Welsh myth in the form of the Mabinogion. Enormous amounts of the Mab lovingly and respectfully feature wild woods and wild animals. The emphasis is therefore on how wilderness is also part of Welsh identity – and arguably a much older part, going back to the Celts. (This is clever, in my view, but something to approach with care - it's rarely a good idea to play the game of "What's the most Welsh". But so far it's been done sensitively)
Land purchased for the project has so far been wholly limited to that available in the public domain. The main site, Bwlch Corog, was empty and unfarmed for six years before purchase, which has been stressed in all media interviews and releases; this is important, because farmers do have a sense of "Productive land is being stolen by environmentalists".
Large predator reintroductions have largely been abandoned. Lynx and wolves are no longer on the agenda. It’s possible they’ll be included in the future, but it is acknowledged as currently impractical (both from clashes with farmers and lack of habitat).
Instead, they’ve supported smaller species reintroductions, such as the Vincent Wildlife Trust’s pine marten translocations, and some proposed red squirrel ones.
Bwlch Corog is to be managed as an experimental plot that farmers are encouraged to engage with.
Assessing the potential for new income streams (from improved tourism and educational activities) rather than just the ecological benefits – this has become central to the project, and the emphasis is on how this might benefit farming communities and keep them together. This has been huge, and has also been successful in rewilding schemes in Europe.
Tensions are a lot lower now than they were ten years ago, but ultimately the problem was a bunch of outsiders came in and decided they knew best without listening to anyone else's point of view, and that meant both sides really dug their heels in. Much better now.
Ultimately... yes, I am in favour of rewilding, in a general sense. But I think it needs to go hand in hand with supplying farmers with the necessary subsidies to transition back to more traditional and sustainable farming methods, and the two elements run side by side. You can't do one without the other, not if you want them to succeed. The Pontbren Project is a great case study for how a farmer-led scheme can successfully aid them economically while also improving environmental outcomes, and we need to learn and incorporate more lessons from it when discussing this kind of landscape-level management.
Also, with land management in general, I think you're a fucking idiot and dangerously arrogant if you think you can get anything done without all stakeholders being on board. And potentially wandering down the ecofascism path, circumstances dependent.
Anyway, those are my thoughts. Source:
Wynne-Jones, S, Holmes, G & Strouts, G (2018), 'Abandoning or Reimagining a Cultural Heartland? Understanding and Responding to Rewilding Conflicts in Wales - the case of the Cambrian Wildwood.' Environmental Values, vol. 27, no. 4.
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nobodyfamousposts · 6 months
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Scarlet Lady Essay: Frightningale
Yet another essay for @zoe-oneesama. Because you deserve it.
I’m not going to bother with a compare/contrast of canon vs Scarlet Lady Frightningale because Frightningale in canon was a pretty forgettable episode. Akuma was lame. Setup was wasted. And it’s removal from the series would lose nothing of value.
So instead, I'm going to focus primarily on the Scarlet Lady version of Frightningale and what it does that makes it memorable.
I guess to start with, I should make it clear that I’m not a fan of shows being lazy, especially when they display a lack of planning or consideration of their story and characters. And perhaps one of the greater indicators of this issue is when a series suddenly realizes they they neglected multiple plot points until it’s too late to give them all the focus they warrant so they end up shoving all of those points into one episode and try to present it like it’s supposed to be an adequate resolution of all that buildup or in any way intentional.
Penalteam was that episode for Miraculous. They had the “temporary heroes” setup going for them but then wasted so much time on filler like Frightningale that it seems like they honestly forgot about it until they were reaching a designated end point and they realized they still had four more heroes they were supposed to introduce. Whoops? Ah well, just introduce them all at once. Not like anyone will care!
And when you treat most of the cast like they’re all as shallow as a puddle, I guess that’s true.
The thing is, when you have a setup where there is a running theme of every person in a specific group getting their own episode/chapter to detail their issues and how they get a power up, it’s going to stand out whenever one of them doesn’t. Especially when that one or more are forced to share their limelight episode. 
That’s not to say you can’t do it, but it’s bound to get attention if you do. It reflects poorly on the writing. It shows whom the “favored” and “unfavored” characters are. And it displays the issue with pacing—namely that it’s next to nonexistent until it hits you with the force of a freight train.
But can it be done and be done well? Is it possible to pull off such a thing and have it make sense and fit in lines with the characters?
Well, yes. Off the top of my head, I can think of two different ways to do it to make it work.
And Zoe did both of them.
If you look at Scarlet Lady as a whole, you’ll see a conglomeration of characters—each with stories and arcs attached. They have personalities. They have goals and problems and their own highs and lows. One sign of good writing is that some focus is given to highlight these other characters as people. Individuals in their own right with lives outside of the main characters or situation.
Miraculous doesn't really do this.
Scarlet Lady, however, does. Because contrary to the title, Scarlet Lady isn’t just about Chloe.
It isn’t even just about the heroes.
It isn’t just about Chloe being horrible. Or Marinette being in love. Or Adrien being in desperate need of a hug and a nap. Because while the story is centered around them, it isn’t solely about them. Other characters get focus and growth and their own arcs throughout the comics.
But the big two—the BIGGEST two with arguably the most depth and most growth and quite frankly the best storylines out of everyone in the entire series?
It’s Sabrina and Lila. And their individual stories have led up to this.
As such, this episode—which was mostly filler and all around forgettable in canon, matters here.
It’s where Sabrina and Lila reach the culmination of their respective character arcs. 
Yes, it’s when they both get to become Miraculous Heroes and meet their own kwamis, but it’s more than just that! They both hang out with the girls group as full members of the crew, getting to take part in a music video together. It’s also where they both get to stand up for themselves and the city at large while calling out Chloe and Scarlet Lady. This is what their storylines have been building up to and where their growth really shows.
Sabrina started out as Chloe’s minion same as canon—albeit with more attention to her feelings and her responses, no matter how seemingly small, allowing her to feel more like her own person. And through this focus, we got to see her open up more, pull and eventually break away from Chloe and her influence, and over time stand up for herself and try to establish herself both with the class and as an individual.
Lila started off as a liar and manipulator, selfish and self centered, much like canon. Unlike canon, her lies are tied to her issues, noted to be poorly thought through, and give her more introspection as a person. After the lies are revealed, she’s not “redeemed” so much as she is “accountable”, and it doesn’t change who she is. She remains selfish and certainly far from being considered “good”, but she’s letting people in past her walls and masks in a way she hadn’t been able to before.
Both of these things? Figuring out who you are and letting people know you for who you are? They’re incredibly hard. And a lot of time was devoted to both of their journeys along the course of the comic.
Sabrina’s arc was about her figuring out who she is on her own. Outside of Chloe and her previous role of being a follower and lackey. And sometimes it feels less scary to stay with someone toxic than to be alone and facing the unknown. We see it in the way she tries to put herself out there afterwards, reaching out and risking rejection and just figuring herself out. Even or perhaps especially with those she already knows and has a less than positive history with.
And we still see the struggle of her view of herself in this episode. It was in the way she was upset that she legitimately tried to help and it still resulted in bad things happening. And it was also clear when she calls herself a “sidekick” to Marigold after the day was saved, as if it’s a role she still sees herself as and one she struggles not to fall in to. Over time, we’re seeing Sabrina learning that she doesn’t have to be attached or subservient to someone else to have an identity or be accepted. 
Lila’s arc involved her figuring out who she is with people. Outside of the lies and manipulations she creates, the masks she wears, and the identities she crafts to make people like her. The “real Lila” is far from the best person and arguably not even a good person, but she also doesn’t have to be for the others to accept her as the still somewhat bad influence she is. She’s still very much selfish and flawed, but she’s less inclined to hide it or treat it like something that needs to be hidden. And isn’t that a common lesson? That it’s better to be liked for who you are than to force yourself to be someone else to be liked?
And at the same time, even with being less than a fully good person, she’s showing that she can still find better ways of acting that allow her to help others rather than hurt them or serve herself. She still hates Scar, but rather than working with Hawk Moth to kill her and risk dooming Paris and the world, she’s instead working with Alya through more legitimate (and legal) means…and hitting Scar where it hurts most. She and Adrien may not be friends, but rather than try to punish him for not going along with her, she’s instead rescued him, putting herself on the line—something that the former Lila wouldn’t have considered doing and one that canon Lila wouldn’t be capable of. Even if she’s motivated by pettiness or self-interest, what would have been straight up revenge on someone who upset her has grown to be something that is working in everyone’s better interests.
Both Lila and Sabrina hid themselves in different ways and for different reasons. So having them both assert themselves and call out both Chloe and Scarlet Lady is a show of their growth and overall a huge deal. It’s not something either of them would have done at the start of the series. Sabrina, because she was a “yes man” who wouldn’t dare to argue with Chloe and Lila because she wouldn’t risk openly doing something to make herself a target. 
And now boom! Look at them both! Lila stepped up to openly and publicly denounce Scarlet Lady as not being a hero for real reasons that aren’t just about herself or her feelings—complete with receipts! The girl did her research, noting incidents from before she even came into the picture. Then follow up with Sabrina standing up against Chloe’s machinations and dismantling Chloe’s main source of power: her father. Even better, she’s using logic and knowledge she would have as a former ally of Chloe’s who would know her tricks, taking her former friendship with Chloe and using it against her.
And on top of that, each of them are given the Miraculous by the person they wronged in the past. Marinette to Sabrina and Adrien to Lila. Especially in Lila’s case, it says a lot that they’re trusted. That shows narratively that even with their mistakes and bad choices and continued struggles, they still can move forward—not necessarily to find redemption, but to find themselves and be their best selves.
This is why it makes sense for them to share this episode. It’s also why both of them speaking up matters. They are both publicly confronting their greatest foe, and the fact that their foes are really two faces of the same person further highlights this. 
So they both have issues with the same person, are dealing with forming their identities without catering to others, are working out how to have/be friends, were formerly not the best of people, and have a fear of rejection. As such, this isn’t just their obligatory hero episode, this is what their individual stories have been leading up to. Almost like they’re two sides of the same coin. And the comparison between the two helps them both shine.
And speaking of shining, does anyone remember how the all girls team up didn’t get a chance to shine in canon? Zoe sure did.
I have a whole list of problems I have regarding Party Crasher, but perhaps number seven on that list is that the boys got to have an all male temp hero team up episode while the girls didn’t.
In fact, by this episode in canon, only Alya, Chloe, and Kagami actually got to be temp heroes.
To be fair, only four of the guys out of seven in canon got to be part of their particular event in Party Crasher, leaving out Ivan (who often tends to get overlooked) and Nathaniel (who has had a precedent of just literally disappearing from the episode). But originally, part of the appeal of Party Crasher was that the focus was supposed to be on the male classmates and getting to see at least some of them being part of a team against the akuma.
Why then didn’t we get an episode like this with the girls? Or at least something LIKE this?
Frightningale became that episode. And if any of the episodes were to do it, it makes the most sense for Frightningale to be the one.
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All of the girls were together to take part in this event. So Zag would have had the perfect excuse to include them all in the fight or just have the girls do something to help even as civilians. I mean, we’ve had episodes do this before. Max in Robustus. Nathaniel and Alix in Reverser. Luka in Captain Hardrock. Let the civilians show their heroic traits even before they become heroes. It’s not a Miraculous, but it’s still giving them focus and expanding on them as individuals.
Instead, canon Frightningale was a filler episode. And not even a good one. For an akuma who forces people to sing or dance, it’s a waste that they just had the heroes spend the whole time rhyming. A waste of writing and talent. I mean, have you heard Christina Vee sing? If there needed to be a musical episode, I would think that the akuma who forces people to sing would certainly warrant it! At least more than it’s Christmas and they sing just cuz.
So this is yet another thing that Zoe improves with the Scarlet Lady version of this episode. Giving us the all girl team up episode so many of us have long wanted and getting to see all the female heroes together at last. 
And with this, we get the full roster of friends-turned heroes.
Except for Alix. Poor, poor Alix.  ;_;
Your day will come.
In this way, the end where Clara goes a different direction with her music video feels less like a half-assed fix to a half-forgotten plot point and more like something that was built by everyone involved. I don’t know about the rest of you, but given Clara’s excitement over the all girl band playing and Pigella’s gift showing Clara an idea for her video, it highlights the focus on EVERYONE being part of this—both the video and the episode itself. It kind of comes off as a lesson of its own about teamwork and giving everyone a shot rather than focusing specifically only on one or two specific individuals.
And isn’t that what separates the heroes from Scarlet Lady?
But there’s a third important aspect of this episode.
This is the episode where Chloe is smacked in the face with Scarlet Lady’s falling popularity. 
Let’s remember that at the start of the comic, Scarlet Lady was fully and widely considered THE Hero of Paris. She was beloved for doing nothing and it was a point of frustration for Chat, who actually was having to pick up her slack. Initially, there was nothing he could do because him being the only real hero among the duo meant he often couldn't stick around after akuma fights to prevent Scar from telling "our story". In addition, he didn’t know who she was or who chose her and why. Then even when it was clear her getting the Earrings was a mistake, for a lot of the first couple seasons, she was so popular that they couldn’t just take the Earrings away from her lest they risk backlash from the rest of the city. It’s a backlash that seems increasingly unlikely as more and more people get to see her behavior and callousness firsthand.
We’ve seen hints of it in other episodes, but none of them were so blatant to Chloe that she couldn’t ignore it or shrug it off or otherwise make excuses to protect her ego.
Prime Queen wanted to focus on Marigold and Chat Noir for their “romance” to try and boost ratings. Alya and Lila made some snarky comments, but Chloe could easily dismiss them both. Nadja also made a comment that nobody cared about Scarlet’s love life, but a lack of interest in her love life isn’t a lack of interest in herself and Chloe despises both of her “sidekicks” and wouldn’t want anyone trying to pair her with them anyway. And Nadja reassures her that they’ll focus on her after they’re done with Chat and Marigold. So yes, she can dismiss that as well.
Reverser has Chloe faced with both of her identities are made as villains in art and a story. However, she clearly looks down on Nathaniel and Marc barely registers to her. So she can dismiss them.
Look at Despair Bear, the Intermission, the interactions with the various other heroes, and the fact that only Chat Noir and Marigold are privy to the Guardian’s secret existence and allowed to pass out other Miraculous. Much has been shown of the other characters being less than impressed with her, snarky towards her, or showing the process of how they discover the truth about her and how she actually handles akuma attacks…namely in that she doesn’t. And Chloe can dismiss all of that because to her, none of them really matter to her.
But Chloe can’t dismiss the fact that a renown celebrity dedicating a music video to the “Heroes of Paris” isn’t including her. Bad enough her sidekicks are taking center stage but she’s not even in the music video at all?
And when someone she despises calls out the reasons why she’s not a hero in an openly public setting surrounded by a multitude of people who all agree with her? You could say it’s insult to injury. But some would say it was a long time coming.
Some Rando: Scarlet Lady sucks! Alya: Marigold and Chat Noir do all the work, not her! Kagami: She’s barely even necessary at this point. Clara: This video and song are to celebrate hope and love. And Scarlet Lady lacks both when push comes to shove. Chloe: ARGHHH! WHATEVER!
It further shows the turning tide of public opinion against Scar. What was once a trickle has grown into a wave, and now Chloe is forced to acknowledge her image and status aren’t as ironclad as she thought. Sure, she could denounce Lila as a liar like she’s done before, but Lila is bringing up instances that Chloe can’t deny: being late (as she’s just plain been a no show to several fights), endangering civilians, and being caught live on camera being willing to let someone die in a particularly horrible way because it’s easier.
This is the episode where it’s not just people seeing Scar is horrible, but acting on it and letting Chloe know they know she’s horrible. It’s reached the point where Chloe can’t just disregard the claims or discount and ignore her critics. And we’re seeing Chloe starting to lose control as a result. To the point she has to force her dad to ruin a previously sanctioned event in what has to be one of his most flagrant displays of abuse of power to date just to shut down her detractors.
And even that would come with more consequences for Chloe if it had been allowed to continue. Sabrina herself points it out that Clara is very popular with a lot of fans—people who would be aware she’s making a music video and whom would be very disappointed if word got out that it was cancelled due to an issue with the Mayor. And given all the very unhappy people we see in the comic in question where she points that out, it stands to reason that the word would get out. Heck, I’d be surprised if someone wasn’t recording it.
Then there’s the love square/hero shenanigans.
Remember how in canon, the whole “playing themselves/risking identities” bit kinda just dropped out halfway in? The kwamis were the only authority figures involved to call out on the risk and of the two, Plagg didn’t care and Tikki gave one knowing stare at Marinette before turning around to gush about the suit. Even though Marinette offers the alternative idea to the music video by the end, there’s no further comment or notice of how she and Adrien nearly blew their identities….or alternatively a comedic take where nobody recognizes them regardless and they worried for nothing. Honestly, I would have taken either setup.
Having Fu present to call them both out shows there is a responsible authority figure watching, makes it clear there are rules they are expected to follow, and reinforces that this was, in fact, a horrible idea. Sure, Marinette and Adrien worried enough to hide their masks, but it should have been obvious that wouldn’t work long term. They are risking their identities, not just to Paris but to each other. And he calls them out for doing it on purpose.
Then there’s the beautiful crescendo of the love square dance in that the two both pretty much have figured out the other’s identity and just want an identity reveal to make it official—which Fu won’t allow. We see it in their playful banter that gets mistaken for “getting into character” and in Adrien in particular pushing Marinette to take part.
This is a point where we are seeing them be teenagers. Foolish of them? Yes. Should they have known better and not done it? Yes. But is it in character and the sort of teenage shenanigans we would expect of teenage superheroes? Definitely. And that’s part of the point. Because they are teenagers. Teenagers in love, no less. Teenagers in love with secret identities to dance around. Which is half the fun of secret identities!
It’s just another aspect to this episode that makes it enjoyable.
So overall, the episode matters in ways that the canon version didn’t and was fun in ways that the canon version wasn’t, making it stand out not just as an episode or a remake of the canon episode, but as its own standalone episode AND a noteworthy point in the overall story.
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extasiswings · 23 days
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Okay but I’m fascinated by muay thai as a metaphor for queerness here. Eddie and Tommy both know how, and can practice together, but Tommy is on another level—he has a whole setup in his garage, his home, it’s an integrated part of his life. Buck, on the other hand, is on the outside. He doesn’t do muay thai with Eddie, he doesn’t know how. But Tommy says he can teach him, when the overall conversation and ultimate outcome (Tommy kissing Buck and opening his eyes to the fact that he’s into men) is a big signal that the real thing Tommy is here for is to be Buck’s guide through this queer journey of self-discovery.
Eddie is in between. He knows how, but it’s not an integrated part of his life the way it is for Tommy. Which tracks—Eddie in general is a master of compartmentalization. He keeps all the little pieces of him carefully siloed, never shall they cross. His queerness is no exception—he allows himself to embrace that piece of himself in specific ways, with specific people (the rituals are so very intricate, they really are), but the rest of the time he locks it away. Like coming back home after a quick trip to the gym.
I’ve been going back and forth since the shooting on the question of whether Eddie is aware of his feelings for Buck, because Eddie’s S5 arc especially was very queercoded. And I was thinking of that question as coextensive with “does Eddie know he’s queer?” But I think now that’s the wrong analysis—they are separate questions with separate answers—and after 7x04 (and the tease of 7x05) I think a) yes, Eddie absolutely knows he’s queer and is fine with it but tries to keep it separate from all the other pieces of him/the rest of his life, and b) he has not allowed himself to consider what if anything that means re: Buck. Eddie is all about control, and that’s what has enabled him to compartmentalize so well, but it’s like the guy from the call in the promo—you can’t control all of yourself all the time, you can’t keep yourself locked down that way, separated into smaller and smaller pieces, not allowing yourself to be your full self—eventually that separation will hurt you.
Buck is at step 1 of his journey. He’s just learning, Tommy is “teaching” him. And he’s about to drop a bomb in the middle of Eddie’s very carefully ordered life. Because if Buck is straight, it’s easy for Eddie to avoid ever having to examine his own queerness in connection with Buck. But if Buck is queer? If something is suddenly Possible in a way he assumed it wasn’t before? Then everything is different.
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leonardcohenofficial · 7 months
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vinyl + turntable basic info / general tips
while i am by no means a real audiophile or vinyl expert here are some tips that have worked for me over my almost two decades of collecting!
turntables + speakers
do not buy suitcase players. i cannot overstate this enough. do not buy suitcase players. the all-in-one players are generally cheaper, but there isn't enough support from the platter because they are smaller than 12 inch LPs. this can lead to shitty sound quality, the needle can fall out of the groove, and you can actually break your records. save up and pay a little more and get a proper turntable
there is a lot of debate about belt vs. direct drive turntables (belt drive turntables use a belt to spin the turntable while direct drive turntables have the motor directly under the platter) and which is better. very generally speaking if you want better sound quality, belt drive is the way to go; if you want a player that's a little easier to use that's also a little more durable, direct drive is a better option (most DJ turntables are also direct drive, as a side note)
i currently have three turntables and they are all audio-technica, which is a well respected brand (especially for beginners)—i have an AT-LP60X ($149) which is a belt driven player, as well as two AT-LP120XUSB ($349 each) which i use for practicing DJing/selecting. i also have a stanton M.203 mixer (insane to me that it's listed for $350 on amazon, i paid eighty bucks for mine on ebay), audio-technica ATH-M20x headphones (they were a gift but are listed for $49 on amazon) and a set of edifier R1280DB bluetooth speakers ($149). the speakers are hooked up directly into my mixer, but because both the speakers and the AT-LP60X are bluetooth, i can also play records on that turntable too
change your needle! general rule of thumb is to replace your needle every thousand hours of listening; for the average person if you change it once a year you should be good, i'm on the cautious side and change them every six months
i really like my setup; it's on the cheaper side when it comes to "grownup" gear but true audiophiles would probably scoff at my basics. regardless of what you end up getting, a decent turntable that doesn't have the speakers built in that fits within your budget and a good set of speaker or headphones is all you need
buying records
any time that you can, i recommend buying vinyl directly from the artist! whether it's through bandcamp their website or at a show i think it's better to buy direct when you can (and often times it's cheaper than buying through a third party)
when you can, buy local. not only is it good to support independently owned shops, developing a relationship with local music people is great and if they're good they'll start to know you/your tastes. it also allows you to get good at crate digging, because you never know what you're going to find in a dollar section
utilize listening stations if the store has them! people can be pretty fast and loose with grading used records, so it's better to listen to it and see if the audio quality corresponds with the price (i don't always buy mint/nearly mint records and can tolerate a fair amount of noise but not if i'm being ripped off lmfao)
look things up on discogs to see if you're getting ripped off. not only is discogs great for keeping track of your collection (also you can friend me here!), the online marketplace is great for checking average sale prices for a given release. also handy for seeing how rare a release is!
buying records on discogs can be a crapshoot, ebay even more so. read seller's reviews; if there's feedback that they generally grade conservatively, that's a good thing
i have such a large collection that maintaining a record of what i have is really necessary; discogs is really fantastic for this. you can even scan barcodes on specific releases to find them through the discogs app! it's super handy for me as sometimes i forget that i have certain albums already and end up buying multiple copies and having to get rid of them (i need to get better at cataloguing immediately after i get new stuff, i currently have about forty five records i still need to add lmfao)
storing + maintaining records
keep your records clean! get a good cleaning kit and have microfiber cloths on hand to keep your vinyl as dust free as possible. also use those storage sleeves, it makes a different in keeping your records cleaner longer
a general rule of vinyl storage that i learned from the owner of the shop that i've been going to since i was nine years old is to store them in less than 70 degrees F environments with less than 70% humidity (funnily enough this is apparently the same rule for cigars)
i recommend those ikea square storage bookcases, as they're generally study, aren't too expensive, are pretty easy to put together, and hold a lot of records (do not store your records in milk crates long term)
actually listen to your records! there are very few releases i keep sealed for the sake of keeping them in mint condition. vinyl can be a very expensive habit (800+ records later i am living proof lol) but it's no fun to keep them sitting around. have fun collecting and play your music!
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