#long write-up

[basics--0922]

A long write-up of some of my favourite albums released this year (2024), in a loose ranking of my favourites

Accompanied by a YouTube link to my favourite track from the album.

Originally a single post, I realised that this this write-up stands at over 7,000 words, and needs to be broken up to be easier to navigate. Bear with me as I try to figure out what would make this easier to navigate / a better reading experience. If anyone feels moved to send feedback my way re: the layout (or anything else, really), I'm all ears.

Index

Favourite 2024 Albums

NAYEON, NA Ariana Grande, eternal sunshine TWICE, With YOU-th LE SSERAFIM, CRAZY TWICE, Strategy Billie Eilish, HIT ME HARD AND SOFT TWICE, DIVE

Honourable mentions

Albums not released in 2024 that I listened to a lot this year

Parting thoughts for the year

/

NAYEON NA

I am almost certain that this was my most-played album of the year. I loved 'ABCD' as a title track; the dance break left me reeling after I saw it, with a fuck-you big budget of a music video that, for me, pays off as a viewer. Nayeon in that red dress looks like something out of my dreams. She's gorgeous. She absorbed a crater-sized hole of charisma at birth. She's a star. She's a Virgo born in 1995, and brother, am I a sucker for Virgos born in 1995.

I was listening to Nayeon's first mini, IM NAYEON, just a month before the announcement of her second. I had been astonished by it, giving it my first proper listen since its release in 2022, and thought, Wow. I'd love another Nayeon album. My dreams came true.

The NA mini overall is the exact type of music I love listening to—to the point that I feel so lucky it actually exists—with a stream of R&B running through it, yet staying true to Nayeon's sound, and to the K-Pop genre as a whole.

There’s a uniqueness to the way that Nayeon conducts her musicality as a K-Pop idol—a certain freshness and approachability to her vocals, dancing, and stage presence that catches my ear and eye; her ‘Alcohol-Free’ fancam comes to mind as a prime example. She is just so seamless to watch. It’s like there’s no film existing between me and my enjoyment of watching her as a performer. Where Jihyo and Momo exhilarate in their energies, and Sana shoots dopamine straight into my brain, Nayeon’s style is the closest expression of my natural self.

Nayeon is also very clearly a K-Pop fan who pays homage to idols of the past, while bringing her own personality into the fold, and this is a quality that plays a huge part in what landed her as TWICE’s centre upon the group’s formation. This sense of balance is a skill that she has fine-tuned over time.

There's a lot that can be said about determining what a group's centre is, let alone what makes a good centre. For me, a good centre is not necessarily the best performer, best vocalist, nor the most attractive member, but is the one who makes the group coherent.

In TWICE, Nayeon eases the high energies of Jihyo and Momo; ties their performance styles with Sana, Mina, and Tzuyu's clean dance angles; her even vocal style bridges Jihyo and Jeongyeon's powerful vocal tones; she's also a necessary gradient to sit between the group's vocals and Dahyun and Chaeyoung's rap lines—in 'Likey', for example, Nayeon is the last one to sing before Dahyun and Chaeyoung's rap.

‘ABCD’ is the title track that ties together all of Nayeon’s abilities as the idol she is, more so than ‘POP!’, which in hindsight is more like a caricature of Nayeon turned up to a hundred.

My personal metric for a good record or a good song is when the work demonstrates the artist's range, talent, and what makes them unique—which this EP does, over and over, with every listen.

I am a huge sucker for K-Pop idols releasing R&B, and, what do you know, my favourite active idol made a foray into the sound, her vocal integrity intact. It's like they engineered this album and its concept in a lab specifically for me.

She's mentioned in an interview/show appearance that the style of the album isn't something that she was familiar with, which makes sense, considering TWICE's large catalogue of bubblegum pop, and Nayeon's debut EP itself being a bubblegum pop masterpiece, though I think that her unfamiliarity makes the NA EP all the more exciting. She doesn't fall into many usual R&B vocalisations; she seems to simply follow the direction of the music production itself with her own voice and habits, and her expertise gathered from being a longtime recording artist shows through as she hits note after note with fidelity.

The track order flows well. None of the songs sound the same as one another, yet still work side-by-side. Her collabs are well-chosen, with 'HalliGalli' produced by AKMU's Lee Chanhyuk, being a standout; it's a B-side that I didn't enjoy as much as the others on my first few listens, but is now among my favourites.

'Count It' is my favourite song off of the EP, with Nayeon's sweetness and R&B vocal range on full display. It’s the exact type of song I am a sucker for. It sounds like a song played at the beginning of a relationship, when two friends-turned-lovers are regarding one another in a new light. It’s a song that makes me want to go take some Korean lessons so I can experience the song in the singer's native language. It's a song that makes me wish I could leave Nayeon a voicemail, telling her what a good job she's done.

My next wish for Nayeon is a full-length album. I'd be so excited to see what she'd do, and which genres she'd try next time around. I think a return to bubblegum pop would be an avenue, but it would be a misstep, if only for the been-there-done-that factor. Maybe a more overtly R&B record is on the cards. Maybe a foray into the singer-songwriter personal pop that's dominating the charts right now, though I don't know if that would still be popular by the time Nayeon starts prepping for another solo. What if she surprises us all and drops a rap/hip-hop record? Or what if she drops a straight-up club banger, similar to Yves' 'LOOP (feat. Lil Cherry)'? Wouldn't that be the move of all time.

Nayeon also didn't write any lyrics for this EP, as she did for two songs on IM NAYEON, so I'd also love to see her write some lyrics, or even compose/produce a few tracks.

Ariana Grande eternal sunshine

A couple months ago, soon after this album dropped, my friend asked me to play some music in the car, so I went straight for eternal sunshine. They said, 'Wow. You really are going through it,' because yeah, brother, I really was going through it, to the point where I started getting mad at people ranking the 'Saturn Returns Interlude' last on their lists. I wholeheartedly consider it as part of the next track, ‘eternal sunshine’, and I joked on Tumblr that a version of ‘Saturn Returns Interlude’ combined with ‘eternal sunshine’ ought to be nominated for Record of the Year.

I got mad because people just didn't get the magic of 'Saturn Returns Interlude'. People just didn't understand what it feels like to be on the cusp of their Saturn return year, fresh out of a life-rearranging breakup, and needing someone to just... hit you over the head, tell you what you need to be actually fucking doing with yourself, how to conduct your emotional life.

'Wake up! It's time for you to get real about life and sort out who you really are,' retired astrologer Diana Garland commands in the interlude as sampled by Ari. Yeah, dude. I felt that

'eternal sunshine' is one of the best tracks Ari's ever made. The quiet opening giggle that sounds like she's with a former lover, sounding something like—not like a wish but more like an acknowledgement of a happier time, which I think hits harder than yearning. The opening lyrics and the way she sings it—'I don't care what people say / We both know I couldn't change you / I guess you could say the same / Can't rearrange truth.’ I think it might have been easier to shoot me in the head.

The breathless fucking gut-wrenching bridge of: 'Won't break can't shake this fate rewrite deep breath tight chest life death rewind', and the way it plays underneath the next chorus until it becomes the outro. I think of that famous video of Ari layering her vocals during the 'positions' recording. Her talent is such that she can execute her vision with precision. Her talent is such that it unlocks her vision.

Also, is it just me or does the bridge sound like a reference to Imogen Heap's 'Just For Now' at around the 1:28 mark? Or am I just making Imogen Heap connections where I wanna find them?

sweetener has been dethroned; eternal sunshine now reigns as my favourite Ari album ever (yes, this absolutely has to do with the fact that it kept me company during a uhhhh miserable time—and well. What else are albums for?).

TWICE With YOU-th

The album opens with Mina's sweet voice in TWICE's friendship anthem, 'I Got You', singing, 'A little reckless around the edges / Call it young dumb love and it's just enough / Keep me guessing / How the story unfolds with you'.

Her opening lines during their Killing Voice performance has brought me to tears multiple times. It's the way she sings, 'How the story unfolds with you', a simple lyric, and the way she sounds so sincere, like she really means it—and this, in combo with knowing so much of TWICE's story and their enduring partnerships with one another, unlikely in a group of nine, is what moves me.

A thought exercise formed in my head while I was listening to a (G)-Idle album. I was listening to a song that sounded like it could've been given to TWICE, and I thought: if TWICE had released this song, I probably would have listened to it with more attention, and I probably would have liked it.

From there, I started listening to a couple of TWICE B-sides, thinking, if TWICE hadn't released this, would I still like it? Am I that swayed by my fangirl chemicals?

Now. I am a 'One Spark' truther. I wasn't so hot on the concept, but I enjoyed the song itself. I enjoyed the falsettos, the music production. I enjoyed the choreography, enjoyed Tzuyu looking like she was having a blast during performances.

Would I still like 'One Spark', if it had been done by another group? If I do, it means that the song stands on its own, and I don't just like it because it's TWICE. To test this theory, I looked up 'One Spark AI cover' on YouTube (I know I'm sorry) and clicked on the IVE version.

The thing with thought exercises, is that most of them are a slippery-slope. I like TWICE songs because... I like TWICE. As a fangirl and because I am drawn to their sound. I listened to, and liked, TWICE before I was a ONCE. I also don't make it a point to stan groups whose music I don't like; I couldn't imagine a more miserable way to experience fandom, and music as a whole.

I liked the IVE AI cover, sure. But I also couldn't unhear the original (that Gaeul pre-chorus was something else, though). Is the song and concept kinda corny? Yes. Could they have done something better? Yes. Did I eat up 'One Spark'? Yes. My heart is burning, burning, burning, bitch. Did I need to harp on about 'One Spark' this much? Absolutely not.

The track ordering on With YOU-th is perfect. The sequence of ‘Rush’ into ‘New New’ into ‘Bloom’ ought to be jointly nominated for Record of the Year as a sequence.

I'm imagining a worse timeline where 'New New' plays right after 'One Spark', before 'Rush', creating an ill-advised twin combo of ‘Rush’ next to ‘Bloom’, two similar sounding songs that don’t have the space to breathe if placed side-by-side, and me having to cope by dreaming of a scenario where I get a business degree, learn Korean, and rise up JYPE's corporate ladder just to personally fire whoever decided the track ordering.

Luckily, we don't live in that timeline, and 'I Got You', 'One Spark', 'Rush', 'New New', 'Bloom', and 'You Get Me' play in the correct order, allowing the listener a journey of push and pull between songs without distraction, like God intended.

Billie Eilish HIT ME HARD AND SOFT

My little brother put me onto this album. He played 'BIRDS OF A FEATHER' in the car and I took to it immediately. As soon as we got home, I gave the album a listen.

The first four tracks of HIT ME HARD AND SOFT, 'SKINNY', 'LUNCH', 'CHIHIRO', and 'BIRDS OF A FEATHER' are placed in a satisfying sequence, with a bit of a drop off in energy afterwards, but nothing drastic.

'BIRDS OF A FEATHER' is the standout track for me. It sounds exactly what falling in love feels like. It almost made me wishing I was falling in love with someone again, so I could soundtrack the romance to this song. But the song will always be there if/when the time comes.

I can't believe HIT ME HARD AND SOFT is only made up of 10 tracks, with a runtime of 43:49. It feels like it's longer because I get so engrossed in the journey of the album, feeling like I've been transported into a different landscape than the one I'm in. How many late-night drives did I do to this album this year? I can't keep count.

LE SSERAFIM CRAZY

What’s there to say about Le Sserafim’s best title track to date? It’s like the powers-that-be over at Source Music have been building up Le Sserafim’s discography up to this moment; one of the earliest viral moments that Le Sserafim had was them voguing down a runaway, in a queer ballroom-esque setting, way back in 2022 (I cannot find this video atm... I’ll post later if I ever find it again). It’s almost as if they’ve been testing the waters with each release; their Unforgiven album contained swings towards the sound that ‘CRAZY’ was going to be, with ‘Eve, Psyche & The Bluebeard’s wife’, ‘Fire in the belly’, and ‘Unforgiven’ flavoured with a mild eccentricity that gets fully unleashed in ‘CRAZY’. The EASY EP, preceding ‘CRAZY’, laid the foundation that allowed Le Sserafim to understand their musical identity and impact within a more Western-style music production and vocal stylings—this can be heard in the languid R&B track, ‘EASY’; they tapped into the dancehall trend started by Tyla’s ‘Water’ with ‘Smart’; and ‘Swan Song’ sounds like it could have appeared on SZA’s SOS album. The EASY era was, by and large, a turning point that made ‘CRAZY’ possible.

Okay. I’m gonna go take my queer stan moment right here and say, ‘CRAZY’ is the first time I’ve ever seen Black, queer artists—The House of Juicy Couture—in a K-Pop music video, and actually be credited for their involvement. ‘CRAZY’ treats the culture with respect, and I commend Le Sserafim’s team for making an effort to acknowledge the origins of voguing and ballroom culture.

The music video, too, follows through with its promise. It’s not Crazy-lite. It really is ‘CRAZY’, with a voguing-heavy choreography, sharp lines, Miyawaki-fucking-Sakura doing a fucking duck walk singing ‘I’m an Otaku bestie’, jarring editing, abstract set design and costuming. The 5 members of Le Sserafim aren’t there just to be pretty; they’re there to perform. They’re there to deliver. Mother, bitch! I won’t lie! I cried watching the music video! Sue me! I was a closeted 14-year-old lesbian with a shrine to Girls’ Generation taking up one wall. I had NO CLUE K-Pop was gonna come this far. I was touched.

The song itself is still quintessential K-Pop, too, and one I’d argue is the one of the most ‘K-Poppiest’ songs of 2024, featuring the defining characteristic of the genre: it is strange and listenable at the same time. In the best way. It pushes its strangeness all the way it can, without giving up its listenability.

When I think of ‘K-Poppiest’ songs, TWICE’s ‘Likey’ comes to mind as the ‘K-Poppiest’ song of all time. It’s a weird song—the chorus being, ‘Me likey / Me likey likey likey / Me likey likey likey / Dugeundugeundugeun’, then capped off with a strangely pitched and addictive earworm: ‘heart-heart’. They sing the word, ‘likey’, 42 times. Momo sings, ‘BB cream, pa pa pa / Lipstick-eul, mam mam a’. I have no idea what it means. It’s got a punk pop-type percussion that reminds me of  Fall Out Boy’s ‘Grand Theft Autumn/Where is Your Boy’. In the words of my friend, one of the biggest punk/emo/metal rockheads I’ve ever known: ‘I never thought I’d sit in my car singing, me likey likey likey ever in my entire life.’ It’s addictive. It’s ridiculous. It’s my favourite TWICE title track. It’s among my favourite K-Pop songs of all time.

‘CRAZY’, like ‘Likey’, has got the addictive earworm, ‘All the girls are girling girling, all the girls are girling girling, all the girling girls’ (it’s actually got multiple addictive earworms... ‘I’m an Otaku bestie’, girl get up); it’s got the convincing beat; it’s got an addictive adlib in the form of Sakura’s repeated ‘da, da-da, da’, it’s got subtle samples for colour, like that little ‘what!’ that plays for the first time after Chaewon finishes the opening lines, and repeats throughout the song. ‘CRAZY’ isn’t my personal favourite title track from Le Sserafim (it’s ‘Perfect Night’), but it is certainly the one I admire most, and the one I’d send off to space to represent human music to aliens.

The EP’s B-Sides are faultless, and, in an EP of five songs, with a running time of only 14 minutes and 52 seconds, you’d hope they would be. Huh Yunjin is one of the talents of her generation, someone who moves me each time I see her express her passion for music, whose intelligence and honesty is a breath of fresh air, and I was astounded to learn that she wrote the lyrics for, composed, and produced the last B-Side on the EP, ‘Crazier’. I can’t say I enjoy the transition from ‘1800-hot-n-fun’ into an introspective singer-songwriter ballad, but it fits the ‘CRAZY’ theme of holding competing ideas within itself all at once, and for staying true (crazy) in service of one’s dreams and intentions.

TWICE Strategy

There's a part in the 'Strategy' title track where there's a few bars of a cowbell beat during Chaeyoung's lines at the 2:47 minute mark. The cowbells affected me so much that I talked about it for 30 minutes straight at various friends. I was driving my little brother (not by blood) and stopped talking mid-sentence just to take in those cowbells again, then continued with whatever I was talking about. I seriously considered getting drum lessons again, and maybe to go start hustling to be a sessional drummer on the side. I might really do it next year.

One of the coolest things that ‘Strategy’ highlights for me is that TWICE’s title tracks orbit not just around the foundation of Nayeon and Jihyo’s vocals, but also on their harmonies, and in their lines’ proximity to one another—similar to Girls’ Generation’s Taeyeon and Jessica, way back when. You can hear it at 3:00, Naeyon and Jihyo’s adlibs weaving side-by-side until Nayeon closes out the song. It’s a great track for this added colour, and it makes listening with headphones a pleasure, with the way their adlibs play in different ears.

I very rarely like a title track more than the B-Sides, but ‘Strategy (feat. Megan Thee Stallion)’ just has it. The song is locked-in from a music production standpoint, the concept, the vocals, the music video, Megan’s rap and presence fitting in seamlessly despite all expectation that a Western feature would disappoint.

About ‘Strategy’, my little brother (again, not by blood) said something like, ‘It’s special when something simple is made to sound complex,’ and ‘Strategy’ is a prime example of a song that works, not because of particular strokes of elaborate genius, but because musical elements are placed exactly where they need to be.

TWICE DIVE

I went back and forth about this album. It was on my main list originally, then it got relegated, then I wrote about 'Echoes of heart' so passionately that I went, fuck it, actually this is a great album, and bumped it back up.

I first listened to DIVE in full on a 10km walk, sun on my face, and I felt moved to dance, my arms outstretched when Momo started rapping in ‘Beyond the Horizon’.

For my money, this is a great album to walk to. It opens strong, gets me hyped for the walk ahead of me. It saves the best for last, blasting me with the sequence of 'Peach Soda' into 'Echoes of heart'—a track that made me stop in the middle of the pavement as soon as it started—into 'Dance Again'.

‘DIVE’ is an easy song to listen to. It's the exact kind of song I want playing as I relax on the beach—this whole album is pretty beachy overall, too. I like that TWICE deviates from their go-to habits on their Japanese releases; Sana opens 'DIVE' where Nayeon usually opens title tracks, and the track is better for it. The album feels like the line distribution is a bit more even, if only because each member gets a chance to present their strengths.

‘Echoes of heart’ was the track that captured my attention on first listen, and it still continues to astonish me. I find new details even now. It’s the song I most wish to hear live, and is also the song I’m least likely to hear live as a B-Side on a Japanese album. If I ever get to see TWICE perform it, I think I'll go so feral that I get kicked out of the venue.

There’s a piano that opens the song that reminds me of something I’d hear on The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild game soundtrack, specifically, ‘Field Battle’ (nobody else thinks this, lol).

I like the beat that comes in at the 0:25 second mark, and I really like when the piano and drums play together at the 0:38 second mark. 'Echoes of heart' has the type of instrumental I crave to hear more and more often as sampling becomes commonplace, and playing instruments less so. (Not that it’s necessarily bad thing—I like sampling as much as the next guy, and I think that there’s a boundless creativity to be found in sampling—but I can’t help but miss instruments when they aren’t around.)

Jeongyeon and Momo get lines that show off their vocals! There's a Mina rap! There are TWO NaHyo choruses sung in their signature style! The whole track centres around Sana's adlibs! (And for my money, Sana is the underrated adlib queen of TWICE.) There's a Nayeon high note that almost made me walk into oncoming traffic the first time I heard it! I replay the song just to hear Chaeyoung sing, 'Baby', at the 2:16 mark.

In a certain mood, the DubChaeng sequence starting at 2:12 into the NaHyo sequence at 2:20, into Nayeon's 'Don't wanna lose you / I'm ready' high note, is enough to bring me to tears. Really. Really.

/

Next: Honourable mentions

Albums not released in 2024 that I listened to a lot this year

Parting thoughts for the year

[humanjarvis]

tantrum

synopsis: what makes sylus snap?

tags: fluff, sylus is tired and grumpy bc he misses you, he obliterates his phone with his evol, sunshine reader probably, cartoonish luke and kieran appearance (sorry boys) word count: 842

a/n: after that magnum opus line i really wanted to see sylus throw a tantrum and i kept mulling over what would actually make him do that because i can’t see him doing anything much worse than this. i think he’d find Actual grown man tantrums lame. anyway i don’t like this and will maybe delete? nvm but i had the writing urge so i sacrificed this concept from my wips. 

When you arrived at the base after your three-week business trip, your long-awaited homecoming was…tame, to say the least. You’d been expecting a teasing “How nice of you to join us, sweetie,” or a cocky yet vulnerable “I was beginning to think you’d run away.” But once you’d stepped through the front door, Sylus had barely said a word. A soft “Welcome home” and a kiss on the forehead, and before you knew it, you were cradled in his arms as he carried you to his office.

He’d sat you both down in his leather armchair, making you face him in a straddle. His tired eyes had searched yours, and a moment later, he’d buried his face into your neck, inhaling deeply. 

“I missed you,” you’d murmured into his ear, pressing a kiss to his hair. With a quiet groan, he’d tightened his grip on your hips and nuzzled into you even deeper.

That’d been 15 minutes ago. Basking in the comfortable silence, you’d traded kisses all the while—yours on his hair, his on your neck. 

But suddenly, a low buzzing noise cuts your reunion short: his phone is ringing.

When he makes no effort to answer, still breathing heavily in your embrace, you twist in his arms and accept the call before he can protest. 

A familiar voice crackles over the line. “Boss?” Kieran asks. “Next meeting’s in 10. The one about those stolen shipments from Linkon—we’ve been waiting to hear back for months. You coming?”

Sylus doesn’t answer.

“…Boss?” Kieran repeats. “Boss, you there? You oka—”

Red and black mist shreds the phone into pieces. 

“Sylus!” you yelp, jumping in his lap. “What’d you do that for? He’ll probably be worried. And how will I text you now?”

You pout up at him, and as you study his chronically calm expression, you see something unusual: Sylus’s eye twitches. Just for a millisecond, only moving a millimeter, but you catch it.

“I’ll have a new one delivered tomorrow. As for the meeting, I’ll stay here,” he says lightly, a tight, closed-lip smile on his face.

“But Kieran said it was important,” you reply in confusion. “Why don’t you want to go? Are you feeling sick?” you frown, starting to lift off of him.

“No,” comes his too-quick reply. “It’s just…the twins can go in my stead,” he decides simply, moving to lean into you again.

But before he can move an inch, a rhythmic sequence of knocks sounds at the door.

“Come in!” you chirp happily, too excited to see the faces you’d missed the last few weeks to notice Sylus stiffening under you.

Immediately, the door swings open, revealing two masked figures. 

“Hi Luke, hi Kieran!” you beam, and they wave back at you eagerly.

“Long time no see,” Kieran begins. “Boss, did you lose signal or something? I tried calling you about the meeting, but I think it disconnected. Anyway, we’re about to head down and—”

“Cancel it,” a frustrated growl rings out.

You all freeze.

Somehow, you’d been too wrapped up in your excitement to feel Sylus's body shaking—no, quaking—beneath you.

“W-what? But they’re already here!” Luke sputters.

“Cancel. It.” Sylus grits out the words as if holding back a snarl, and the power in his voice leaves no room for argument. 

“O…kay,” the boys say in unison, and as they back away slowly, you shoot them a sympathetic look.

Red tendrils wrench the door shut behind them, and when you’re alone once more, it’s like the man under you deflates.

His head returns to the crevice of your neck with a soft but unceremonious thud, and his deep exhales and burning hot skin tell you he’s trying to calm himself down. 

Uncertain and a little amazed—you’d never seen him lose his composure—you give his cheek a gentle poke. “Sylus,” you whisper. Nothing. 

“Psst. Sylus,” you try again, and there’s some force behind your poke this time. With bated breath, you watch as your finger sinks into the space under his cheekbone, sighing in relief when the corner of his mouth twitches upwards. 

Lifting his head up to make eye contact, you smile at him softly. “Hi.”

“…Hi,” he rumbles, and as his crimson gaze softens, the remaining annoyance dissolves from his face.

“Are you upset?” you prod gently. 

A brazen scoff precedes the dry chuckles that fall from his lips. “And what makes you say that, kitten?”

A squint and a slight tilt of your head is all it takes. 

“I haven’t had you to myself in a while,” he begins cautiously. “Three weeks is…a long time. The longest we’ve been apart. And then the moment I have you in my arms, well…” he trails off, gesturing to the shards of phone on the table. “I just want to enjoy you right now. Undisturbed.”

“Oh, I see,” you coo, cupping his face in your hands. “Is this your way of saying you missed me too?” you quirk a brow.

“Yes,” he responds through squished cheeks, honest and unabashed. “Now, won’t you stay with me like this for a little longer?”

[inkskinned]

i. there's this video of a guy dancing on his tiptoes. i will begrudgingly admit the song is kind of catchy actually. i don't think it's the worst song i've ever heard. he seems passionate about it. but it is embarrassing, how he's dancing.

ii. you know where this story is going, unfortunately, and so do i.

iii. three weeks ago i had to drag half a dead rabbit out of my dog's mouth. i was just recently discussing how cruel things feel lately. that the way the world is shifting feels mean. three days ago, a random woman rolled down her window to snap at me because she missed her turn. this is now routine.

iv. 11 years ago in october, i made a post about how we shouldn't make fun of people for doing brave, vulnerable things. it has over 400k notes. people - at the time - seemed to generally agree with me. we have all felt shy and insecure when we share an intimate part of ourselves. we have heard someone at a concert say "that's fucking embarrassing" and said to ourselves - oh, this person is unsafe to be vulnerable in front of. we have said i can't act like that in public. we have left our art and passion in the dark. i think there will never be enough graveyard space for the art we have killed because what if others shame me for it.

v. the thing i was bullied for in high school was because i was a "predatory lesbian." a popular girl i'd literally never spoken to just decided she didn't like me and announced i was "stalking" her. to this day i have no idea what motivated this - i think i was just shy and poor and awkward and ugly. the perfect target. what they don't really ever show in movies is how quickly it moves, how suddenly strange people in the hallways are attacking you about it. they also don't show you that the bullies get this strange ... glee out of it. like, it's fun for them. it's enrichment. everyone else is in on the joke. suck it up, kid.

vi. so far, from what i have seen, creators that stand up for the musician all seem to have the same story: when i asked why we're bullying a random guy, people actually got mad that i asked. i've had similar things happen to me when i ask for us to be less comfortable with our anonymous cruelty. when an internet stranger says "be kind, it saves lives" - people find it funny to say fuck you i hope everyone kills themselves. pages and pages of people saying the same bullshit. sitting in their little caves, eating their own humor. it's just genuinely exhausting. the natural endpoint of "cringe culture" is that even kindness is cringe-worthy.

vii. loneliness is an epidemic. but where are you going to make your community? call your representative. go back to bed about it.

viii. due to how i was raised, i am always confused by cruelty. i understand the american isolationist belief "i can do whatever i want" - sure. but why wouldn't you want to be kind? i have lived too many bad things. i cannot be the epicenter of someone else's bad dream.

ix. it's just that if we were going to bully someone relentlessly, why is it never the healthcare CEOs. why isn't it the fascists. why isn't it, like, someone who you could at least argue "deserves" it. why is it always just some guy in socks singing a pretty mid song? or a person that doesn't look like you, just, like existing.

x. it's just that i think people enjoy doing it. they want to do it because they get some kind of masturbatory release from it - like a shrug or a splinter, they all seem to say the same thing - come on, it's funny.

xi. the world is sometimes beautiful, and sometimes you make something. the world is sometimes terrible, and you are worried they won't accept what your hands can wring. you open the instagram comments and they're still saying all sorts of shit to just - like - a normal guy. and some part of you thinks: if that was me. good lord. if that was me i'd -

xii. somewhere there is a graveyard. someone is already burying their hopes and dreams.

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

so i just 14 seconds ago learned the blonde dude in dragonball is not, in fact, a unique character

[everwalldigan]

Bruce: *waking up in a hospital that he drove himself to after having a heart attack and telling absolutely nobody* hey…

The entirety of the batclan looking over him with Dick in the centre, an absolute terrifying grin on his face:

Dick: hello Bruce, nice evening isn’t it? Got something to share with us?

Edit: the fic is now out on ao3! https://archiveofourown.org/works/57780508

[blackkatdraws2]

[Toon x Mobster] Jack confronts the darkness. This comic is related to this animation and future chapter events.

--- GRACE INFO DUMP TIME!! How can Grace appear out of nowhere and disappear in shadows like what happened in this animation?

Grace Huffman is human. The thing that she carries around is not. She calls it Lily.

[shouyuus]

18+, vi-shaped brainrot, mdni

consider college roommate!vi who is the star of the rugby team and just such a fucking jock about it, spends hours at the gym, has pre and post workout drinks and never closes her door when she's blasting rock music, leaves pink hair dye on the bathroom counter, stains the tub when she gets drunk and tries to redo her roots, calls you everything but your name -- sweetcheeks, dollface, cupcake, princess -- isn't shy about her hookups, doesn't even bother to apologize the mornings after another pretty cheerleader scampers out of her room, shrugs and winks when you come out of the bathroom with a tiny thong dangling off your finger that's clearly not either of yours.

college roommate!vi who does kickboxing on the weekends and teaches a kid's course at the local gym. the first time you go there to drop something of her's off as a favor, you can't help but stare at the way she laughs and chases the kids around, so gentle with her movements, so careful, guiding their punches, correcting their forms. and the kids love her -- it's so easy to see, the stars in their eyes, the color high in their cheeks, the way the girls cluster around her legs and the boys are constantly vying for her approval, how she tries her best to divide up her attention equally between all of them.

college roommate!vi who goes real quiet the first time you laugh in her presence, a real laugh, not one of those ha-ha ones you snipe at her when she's trying to get a rise out of you, or teasing you about spending all your time in the library, but one that shakes your shoulders and makes your whole face light up. who has to blink when you cock your head and ask if she's okay bc she was so busy staring at you, wondering about the weird thumping in her chest, the tightness in her throat.

college roommate!vi who's there for you when you're stressed about your dissertation, and she knew you were smart, but listening to you rant about it at 3am in the morning, she's starting to realize that... you're kind of a genius. to be so young and already doing a doctorate in mechanical engineering, and the things you're trying to do -- they could conceivably change the world one day. who freezes when you let your head drop onto her shoulder with a heavy sigh, telling her that you don't know what to do.

"you'll figure it out, cupcake. with a brain like yours? you always do."

college roommate!vi who realizes way too late that she's kinda got it bad for you, bc since when did she start getting used to the sight of you wearing one of her gym shirts in the mornings, making scrambled eggs, rolling your eyes when she yawns her way into the tiny kitchen, leaning an arm against the fridge as she looks you over before asking what's for breakfast. who's gotten so used to falling asleep to the soft clatter of your computer keys that when you leave to visit your family for a weekend, she tosses and turns and can't figure out why it's impossible for her to get to sleep, wanders into sliver of space you guys have crammed a couch and tv into to call a living room, slumping down there to stare at the ceiling, only to feel her fingers graze against something on the ground, who tugs out the thing from under the couch only to find herself staring at one of your bunched up socks with the goofy cartoon cats pattern, and she remembers (suddenly) finding you tearing your room apart the week before trying to look for it because it's your favorite pair of socks.

she finds herself chuckling, letting the sock fall again, but the tightness in her throat doesn't recede, and invisible fingers clench in her gut as she lets her eyes fall shut.

"well... fuck."

college roommate!vi who doesn't know how to act when you get back from your weekend away, when you throw yourself into her arms, your skin still smelling of the crisp fall air and something warm, and spicy -- it reminds her of the holiday market you dragged her to last year, the cinnamon and spiced apples, the hot, mulled wine, the way it burned all the way down when she took the first sip, the way it worked the most darling flush into your cheeks above your pink knit scarf.

"i've got a present for you!" you say, when you finally extricate yourself from her gasp, your arms still around her shoulders, her hands still settled around your waist.

"y-yeah? you didn't have to do that, sweetcheeks --"

"yeah, but i saw this in a store window and -- well i just... it reminded me of you," you say, pulling back to dig something out of your travel bag, and it takes everything in vi not to tug you back into her chest. so instead, she settles for knitting her arms across her front and coughing to hide the fact that her throat's just tightened over itself at your words. you? seeing something and thinking of her? gods, she was so far gone.

"here," you say, pulling a small black box out and offering it to her on the palm of your hand.

vi stares, before reaching out to take it, her eyes flickering up towards your face, only to catch you chewing on your bottom lip in a way that makes her mind frizzle out at the edges. she refocuses her attention on the box -- opening it, she finds a tiny little gemstone, set on a thin golden chain --

"oh..." she breathes, tugging out up to let the gem dangle from between her fingers.

"it -- it's an alexandrite stone," you say, your voice a bit reedy, but you push on as vi continues to stare, "it's uhm -- one of the rarest gemstones in nature, but the cool thing is it changes colors depending on what kind of light it's under --" you reach up to grasp her wrist, her lungs seizing at the contact as you tug her into the incandescent light of the kitchen. "see? it was light blue a second ago, right? and now it's --"

"violet," vi says, her voice soft and disbelieving.

you quickly let go of her wrist, pursing your lips and wrapping your arms around yourself, looking anywhere but at her face.

"yeah -- i just --" your shoulders shrug up as she stares at you, her sky-light eyes wide, "it... it reminded me of... you."

college roommate!vi who, ever since the "necklace incident" (as the rest of the rugby team likes to call it), hasn't really been the same. she's put on the necklace and not taken it off for even a second since the day you gave it to her, but now she doesn't really know how to act around you -- bc did you actually like her? i mean, the necklace is... a pretty big thing to just give someone, but what if you were just giving it to her as a friend? as a roommate? she agonizes over it to the point that the rest of the team are so, so sick of hearing about it, they lovingly tell her to just fuck her and get it over with already. but vi insists that she can't -- it's different with you.

college roommate!vi who's stunned speechless when she gets home to find you staring at your computer, your expression blank. and at first, she thinks something's horribly wrong, but then you're slamming into her, squealing about how you've done it -- your thesis defense went well, that you're a doctor now -- and she's picking you up, spinning you around, buoyed up by the effervescence of your happiness, pressing a kiss to your cheek --

"oh my god, congrats princess! i knew it! i always knew you could do it!"

"thanks -- god, i just -- i've wanted it for so long i... i don't know what to do with myself now that i've got it, y'know?" you say, still suspended in vi's arms, your feet lifted off the ground. it takes a moment before you both seem to realize the position you're in, and vi clears her throat as she lets you down, you looking away, pressing your palms to your cheeks to cool the heat gathering there.

after a brief pause though, vi chuckles, reaching out to slip a finger beneath your chin, tilting your face up towards her's.

"c'mon, put on one of those pretty dresses of yours. we're going out."

"out?"

"yeah. to celebrate."

you blink as vi pulls her hand away.

"but it's like... 4:30 on a tuesday."

vi cocks an eyebrow, a smirk twitching at her lips, "yes, and? c'mon cupcake --" her eyes catch yours and instead of looking away, she holds it this time, something flickering behind their powder-blue depths that makes your skin prickle with heat, "i'll show you a good time."

college roommate!vi who takes you to one of her favorite clubs, tugging you through the crowd, the jostling bodies, holding your hand in her's, trying really hard not to think too much about it (or the fucking insane little black and pink miniskirt you put on), telling herself that it's just to make sure she doesn't lose you in the crowd, grinning when someone knocks you into her chest, and she finds her arm wrapped around your waist, fingers scrunching the material of your skirt, your palms splayed on her chest.

she buys the both of you a round of shots, watching with a hitched breath as your tongue flickers out to lick the salt daubed on your wrist, the way your eyes squeeze shut when you take the shot and your lips wrap around the lime slice, tries to ignore the twist in her gut like a turning blade, the way her whole body flushes with heat, the dull ache caught between her legs when you wipe your lips, your eyes bright and a little blown out, your cheeks flushed with color as you giggle and lace your hands with hers again --

"come on! i wanna dance!"

college roommate!vi who is just drunk enough to let herself dance with you, to let herself lean in to the way you're twisting your body, fingers in your hair, your eyes closed, an indulgent smile on your lips, who let's herself imagine (just for a second), pulling you in to kiss you, how soft your lips might feel on hers, how silken your skin might be beneath her hands, who tries not to groan when you lean in closer, link your arms behind her neck, press your whole body against her's, who grips your hips just a little too tight, grinds you against her, sees the way you gasp, your eyelids fluttering as you eyes glaze out --

college roommate!vi who can't help how she groans at the sight, tugs you in by the back of your neck to mash her lips to yours, crushing you to her as she kisses you (finally, finally) and you let yourself he kissed -- your fingers tangle in her choppy pink hair, and she swears you make this sweet, mind-bending whimpering noise in the back of your throat that drives her up the wall and right over it --

but when she pulls back, she sees the look on your face -- shocked and little confused, but you're drunk, and she doesn't wanna do this with you -- at least, not like this.

college roommate!vi who pulls away, only to have you follow her all the way out the club, into this small dark alley, her shaking her head, feeling a strange, saltwater prickle at the back of her throat as she says --

"shit -- sorry. i didn't mean to -- i just -- you were just so -- and i -- fuck, i didn't --"

"vi -- vi -- no, violet, listen to me --"

it's her full name on your lips that makes her pause, makes her turn to find you walking towards her. your lipstick is smeared, your hair a waterfall mess around your shoulders as you corner her against the rough brick of the club's exterior. faintly, she can still feel the pulse of music reverberating from inside the club, but out here, the air is damp and cold and quiet.

"i -- i'm sorry i kissed you," she says, her voice cracking over the syllables. she bites her lips as you frown up at her, your eyes searching her's before you let out a soft sigh and a scoff.

"well. i'm sorry you feel that way. cause..." you take half a step back, your arms curling around yourself before you glance back at her with a hard, determined light to your eyes as you press back into her space, your cheeks bright with color.

"i was really kinda hoping you'd do it again."

vi's breath punches out of her chest; it takes a few seconds of sputtering before she gathers herself enough to speak.

"wait -- what? you..."

you crinkle your nose, rolling your eyes, "i -- i thought i was making it obvious -- i mean, with the whole necklace thing -- it doesn't take a genius to figure how i feel about --"

you squeak as she pins you against the opposite wall, her lips seeking yours out, her fingers rucking up the material of your top, making you hiccup as they tease under the wire-rim of your bra.

college roommate!vi who can barely control herself when you sink your fingers into her hair, tugging lightly as you gasp out a breath, her lips tracking fire along the side of your neck, intent on making you whimper again, just the way she likes, grazing her teeth along your collarbone even as you jerk at her hair --

"vi -- fuck -- vi, not here --" you swallow around the burgeoning desire, and when you glance down to find her looking up at you, her eyes so dark they're almost black, you fight back a groan, cup your palms around her cheeks and pull her up for a long kiss.

"let's --" you suck in a breath even as vi whines at the loss your lips, "let's go home --"

"holy fuck," vi swears, somehow managing to pull herself back just far enough to taste the misty night air. she stares at you, your chest heaving, a daisy-chain of hickeys blossoming along the long expanse of your neck, your makeup good and smeared, your hair a mess, your eyes bright and so full of love as they flicker over her face.

vi smiles, helpless to the loud, uncertain drumming of her heart as she says, "y-yeah -- let's get you home, princess."

college roommate!vi who barely waits for the elevator door to close in your building before she's got you shoved up against the wall, hoisting you up, her fingers seeking out the softness of your skin, tugging up your shirt, her other hand dipping into the waistband of your skirt, her mouth open and hungry as she kisses your neck, bites down at the junction of your shoulder just to hear you moan.

college roommate!vi who's way too good at undoing your bra with one hand the second you get back to your apartment (if you were more coherent, you might've thought it hot), the door slamming closed, the pair of you toppling onto the room, breathy laughs and panting whines as she hoists you into her arms and carries you to your bedroom, laying you down so gently, kissing up your stomach till you're whimpering, your own hands pulling your top off your body, leaving you in an undone-bra and a miniskirt, your cheeks flushed. you push yourself up onto your elbows, watching as vi peaks up at you from between your legs, shooting you a wink before she's tugging down your skirt and panties all in one, an eyebrow ticking up at the lil lacey thing you had on beneath the skirt all along.

"all this for me, pretty?"

you press your lips, eyes cutting away as she looks between the bra dangling off your shoulders and the panties caught round your ankles. her lashes flutter.

"oh, a matching set," she cocks her head, running her palms up your thighs, pinning them open again as you try to press them closed, feeling suddenly much too seen (bc you'd be straight up lying if you hadn't put it on in the vague hope that the night might evolve into something like this).

she clicks her tongue, shaking her head with a cocky, shit-eating grin that makes your heart skitter in your chest. her drops a light kiss to your inner thigh, savoring in the way you whine again.

"nope, keep 'em open princess."

college roommate!vi who takes her time with you, bc rly she's been waiting way too long for this, has imagined it one too many times, but nothing can compare to the way your hips jerk up against her mouth, the way your fingers tighten in her hair every time she licks up the seam of your cunt, the way your breath catches on her name over and over again, like you can't quite get the word out even though it's just a single syllable. she groans against you, too lost in the taste of you to care about what a mess she must look like, with her tongue fucking into your desperate hole, her nose nudging your clit, her fingers digging crescent moon marks into your hipbones.

she's sure that if this were an old-fashioned cartoon, there'd be big, balloon hearts popping out of her eyes. she can't get enough of you like this -- moaning her name, your legs on either side of her face, your skin littered with the remnants of her. she has the eye-rolling thought of you the next morning, of how all these marks will still be there to remind you of her every single time you see one of them.

college roommate!vi who doesn't expect you to flip over after she's literally eaten you out seven ways to sunday, to tug her in for a soft kiss (though she really does like pressing your own taste back into your mouth with her tongue), before your fingers are inching down the length of her body to tease at her hips, trailing circles down the lines of her abs, toying with the thin line of hair that leads into her black boxer briefs.

"what are you --"

you shoot her a look that has her mouth going dry.

"what? didn't think i can give as good as i get?"

college roommate!vi who's literally going to lose her mind with the way you're fingers (at first sight so thin and delicate, but gods are they stronger than they look) are pressing into her, curling up with the kind of precision usually only associated with doctors, and then a voice in the back of her head reminds her -- oh, right, you are a doctor now. but logical thought dies after that, bc you've somehow worked your way between her legs and are looking up at her with those big dark eyes of yours, smiling sunshine bright before you drop a kitten-lick against her clit and she's twitching, keening as she cums all over your fingers.

"jesus fuckin' christ, doll -- is that what you're learning in those engineering classes?"

she's breathless, cheeks flushed, and honestly just a little embarrassed at how quickly she came, but she has to bite back another groan as she watches you lick your fingers clean, grinning sweetly up at her as if you didn't just get her off in record time.

"no, but i did do my dissertation on human-based robotics, which included a lot of late nights memorizing anatomical models so..."

vi pulls you in for a kiss, laughing against your lips.

"you're amazing, y'know that?"

college roommate!vi who can't really believe how much she's lucked out, sharing an apartment with her girlfriend, who literally cannot shut up about you, but the rugby team all agree that they'd rather have this than the months of endless pining. who brags about her genius gf to anyone who'll listen, and looks for you in the stands of all her practice matches when you can make it, who kisses you in front of everyone even when you make a show of trying to wiggle away bc she's sweaty (you don't really care).

who loves telling the story of how you guys met bc she still can't quite believe it herself, and the story always starts with --

"well, actually -- we started off as roommates."

[raynewolferune]

DC x DP Prompt: Bruce is bad at emoting but at least ghosts are empathic (too bad bat kids are not)

Was reading Twincognito on AO3 when I stumbled across this gem again:

~

" “Danny, Tim. I was just…checking in. Is everything alright?” Curse his inability to make meaningful conversation when it wasn’t a life or death situation.

They glanced at each other and shrugged.

Then Danny hauled himself out of the bed and walked over to Bruce.

Bruce tried not to let too much excitement show on his face. "

~

Now I really want to read a story where Bruce adopts Danny post Meta trafficking and is being his usual emotionally constipated self. His kids keep getting mad at him because he's treating their new meta brother who was trafficked poorly (generally being stilted in conversation with him, walking away hurriedly mid-conversation, avoiding Danny when he's feeling really awkward, etc). They think Bruce is discriminating against Danny for being a civilian, meta, dealer's pick, but really it's just Bruce being horribly socially awkward. Danny knows this because of ghost empathy and find the whole thing hilarious. The whole thing comes to a head with the Bat Kids staging an intervention in the Bat Cave.

[trickstersaint]

i want to introduce you all to a project that is very close to my heart... or lack of one. anyway. for anyone who has ever wanted to play a poem. i'd like you to meet aromanticism

(link opens itch.io - she'll run on html in your browser! please be nice to her!)

[basics--0922]

Parting thoughts for the year

Index

Favourite 2024 Albums

NAYEON, NA Ariana Grande, eternal sunshine TWICE, With YOU-th LE SSERAFIM, CRAZY TWICE, Strategy Billie Eilish, HIT ME HARD AND SOFT TWICE, DIVE

Honourable mentions

LE SSERAFIM, EASY ROSÉ, rosie Johnny Blue Skies, Passage Du Desir YVES, LOOP NMIXX, Fe304: BREAK Infinity Song, Metamorphosis Complete ENHYPEN, Romance: Untold Clairo, Charm Kacey Musgraves, Deeper Well

Albums not released in 2024 that I listened to a lot this year

JIHYO, ZONE (2023) NAYEON, IM NAYEON (2022) Jeff Buckley, Grace (1994) TWICE, Between 1&2 (2022) Laufey, Bewitched (2023) Laufey, A Night At The Symphony (2023) Chappell Roan, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess (2023)

Parting thoughts for the year

/

I tuned into a lot of pop this year, as I tend to do each year, though I'd like to try and branch out next year in addition to pop. A lot of K-Pop this year, too, and I am glad I've come back to it after a huge break from it for years (specifically, I avoided it from 2013-2021).

I finally had a moment where Laufey's music clicked for me. brat didn't quite capture my attention, though I also didn't take particular care when I listened to it, either. I didn't realise that this year had been dubbed the 'Year of brat' until I overheard it on my mom's news program. I don't think I could recognise a single song off of brat. But I do really like Charli xcx, and I am certain I'll have a moment where brat clicks for me at some point.

There are also some records that came out this year I haven't had the chance to listen to yet, but want to to, like Tems' Born in the Wild; Tyler, The Creator's Chromakopia; Kendrick's GNX; RM's Right Place, Wrong Person; Adrianne Lenker's Bright Future. I've given Doechii's Alligator Bites Never Heal mixtapes a couple of cursory listens, and enjoy it a lot, but I've not yet given it the type of attention I think warrants.

I shelved the Waxahatchee album to-listen, and never ended up listening to it. (By the way, Saint Cloud (2020). Perfect album.) I'm intrigued by Camila Cabello's record, but haven't listened to it yet, either. I didn't even realise that Maggie Rogers came out with a record this year, too. Nor Soccer Mommy.

I really haven't been locked in this year, by my metrics. I don't read the news! I'm not on Instagram! My only social media is my main Tumblr blog and my TWICE Twitter stan account. I find out about new music mainly from my little brother and infrequent catch-ups with friends. (As of right now, I still haven't heard Bruno Mars' and Lady Gaga's 'Die With A Smile', I've only heard my friends' group rendition during karaoke. Which they sang along to YouTube on a TV. Without a microphone.)

I try not to feel self-conscious about my listening habits, but with the main list being so repetitive and short (4/7 releases are TWICE; 5/7 releases are K-Pop; all 7 are female artists), and the other lists more or less following suit, it was hard not to feel that I ought to pad the list with a little bit more variety.

But, what can I do? If there's anything I've learned this year, it's that I live poorly when I try very hard to work against my nature. I am who I am. And my nature? Is that I love pop and K-Pop and I love women. My list will probably look very similar next year—unless by some major miracle, Frank Ocean and John Mayer both release records in 2025.

There are also songs I really loved this year, but weren't as captivated by the albums, like 'II MOST WANTED' from Beyonce’s Cowboy Carter—which I do think I need to give another listen. I heard the album playing in order recently while shopping around a hiking superstore, clearly put on by a gay employee I saw walking around, and it unlocked something to me.

I had a similar experience last year, hearing Taylor Swift's 'Anti-Hero' in a random Penshoppe in the Philippines. I did not like the song prior to this (nor did I like the album), but, somehow, I started to like 'Anti-Hero' after I heard it in that exact way.

I want to try to limit my streaming usage for next year. I don't use Spotify; I subscribe to Tidal, and even then, I'm quite burned out by the UI, the recommendation algorithm, despite Tidal being one of the less algorithm-heavy platforms. I'm also almost always on a YouTube music binge, letting the autoplay dictate my listening.

My hope is that getting away from streaming will encourage me to seek out more personally curated music.

When I scrounge up enough money, I want to buy a good quality MP3 player with large storage (or maybe just dig one out that my dad and I probably have lying around the house).

I also want to spend a bit more time and money on Bandcamp and SoundCloud. I want to seek out music blogs, forums, magazines, zines. I want to go to more gigs of local bands. I want to load my CD collection onto my MP3 player, like I did when I was a kid and a teenager.

I looked for my music archive recently, and was sad to find it largely incomplete. I must have deleted a lot of the songs I'd held dear for so long, especially the K-Pop, which I think would have been deleted in 2013, when my shame had reached its apex; I was ashamed of my keen interest in the genre, and in my quickly-spiraling fandom obsession. I remember meticulously archiving all of the songs, and making sure to maintain the metadata of the song titles in Korean, which I'd learned to read. It's all gone now. I probably deleted some SHINee covers that have also since been deleted from the internet.

This whole thing started out as a casual write up that’s now evolved into over 7,000 words. Really, I thought I was just gonna go write a paragraph on a couple of albums I felt really passionately about this year. Then I ended up writing a mini-essay on Nayeon's second mini, NA, and it just unfolded from there.

I’m thankful that I’ve taken this time to go back over my favourite releases this year, re-listening to them as I wrote about them, and I'm thankful I got to revisit the memories I’ve had with the music.

/

Previous:

Favourite 2024 albums

Honourable mentions

Albums not released in 2024 that I listened to a lot this year

[illustraice]

someone save alphonse elric and may chang from a very long suffering year

[hinamie]

unconditionally

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Historians Hate Him

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[blgblue]

130325 - fic insp for the second pic: tacere by mediant :)

[asknillamilkfam]

First of all, congratulations!! Love this family lol. Now for my question, did Shadow Milk ever tell the beasts about his children or does he plan to?

Next Post>>

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[eowynstwin]

peristalsis - v

selkie!soap x reader. depression. strangers to "lovers." shower sex. cunnilingus. smut. manipulative soap. oysters as an aphrodisiac. unstable narrator. . Running away from life to the Scottish Hebrides, you meet a man who won't leave you alone. . Masterlist. Ao3.

previous

You watch him over an open book.

It’s an old romance, something from the eighties. Classic bodice ripper, billowing sleeves, tight corsets, mullets and heaving bosoms and all. Naturally, it’s set on a pirate ship, the heroine as the unlucky spoils of a merchant ship raid and the hero a lusty captain able to pierce her virgin’s desire for sexual depravity.

It could only have been more pointed at you if it had been set in the North Atlantic—it isn’t—but you glare at Soap’s back anyway.

He must be able to feel it, because he stands straight at the wheel, shoulders thrown back, occasionally flexing.

The freak.

You’d realized the joke he’d been making, once your heartbeat had slowed. Hiding the pelt somewhere obvious enough for you to see it. You live in the age of the internet—you know what it’s supposed to mean.

And you kind of hate him for it. Now, post-coitus, you can’t shove it away into a box—he is the most attractive man you’ve ever encountered. Rugged and handsome, competent at everything you’ve seen him do, seemingly at home wherever he finds himself. Everything makes him smile. Nothing seems to disconcert him.

And a nice big cock he actually knows how to use. Certainly the best lay you’ve ever had.

What every woman traveling solo, you think, longs to encounter on a solo trip across the world, but will never acknowledge looking for. An answer to an unaddressed desire; proof that satisfaction is out there to find, if it’s searched for.

A lover with no conditions. Someone willing to strip your inhibitions away, knowing your protests are only token.

You had not been searching. You’d given up searching.

And now he mocks you—with every satisfied glance he throws over his shoulder.

“Good book?” he asks, all casual and pleased. “S’ one a’my favorites. Tell me when you get to the naval battle.”

You frown. “You haven’t read this.”

He gives a little huff of amusement. “Read all of ‘em, bonnie.”

No, this is where you draw the line. A good cook, a good fuck, and a romance reader? No. No, you absolutely will not take this.

“Sure you have, Johnny,” you grouse, “you read every single stupid book on that shelf. Sure. Hell, you’ve read books that aren’t on that shelf. You’ve read every new release from the last six months, even. Why not.”

He looks at you again over his shoulder, mouth curled. “Aye. Needed ideas, once a’knew you were comin.’”

He says it matter-of-factly, with only a little bit of pride. As if it was a natural step in the process of getting ready for your arrival—renovate the croft. Stock the fridge and pantry. Plan some island excursions.

Study the erotic mind of the average woman to divine how best to seduce her.

Your frown deepens, and you lift the book higher, making it a barrier between you and him. Loser. Couldn’t he just go to the mainland for a few days if he wanted pussy? Not like it would be hard to find, for him.

You resolve to ignore him for the rest of the trip. A petty endeavor, maybe, but it’s the only one you can make.

But six hours is six hours, and you can’t read the whole time. Periodically you have to get up to stretch your legs, and the windows wrapping around the bridge draw your attention to the sea outside.

Johnny drives the trawler at a remove along the coastline, keeping close enough to the islands for easy viewing. The denizens of the Hebrides are out en masse, enjoying the clear weather, joyfully populating the land- and seascape in the absence of human interlopers.

Porpoises, so much smaller than you might have expected, periodically catch the wake of the boat, swimming alongside, playful and curious. Gulls loop in the air above the dunes, fronds of grass fluttering in the breeze. Gannets, stark white, arrow down into the waves, wings folded back pin-straight as they spear their quarry—silvery fish that boil the surface of the water in their frenzy.

Some removed part of you enjoys their pleasure secondhand. The normally-grey ocean is vibrant in the sunlight, crystalline and sparkling and as blue as Johnny’s eyes.

He seems to be in a good mood, too, although that could just be because you let him fuck you. You feel his eyes on you even as you refuse to look at him, dancing along the curves of your body the same way his fingertips might.

At one point—“Bonnie, I know you’re sulking an’ all, but c’mere.”

He gestures you over to the cockpit, and—embarrassed at being called out—you join him. He brings a hand to the small of your back, stepping behind you and pointing over your shoulder.

A gray wall of passing cliffs, and crags of rock jutting up from the churn at their base. You see ten or twelve grey-and-white seals lounging across every available flat surface, some cuddled in groups of three or four, apparently unbothered by the periodic spray of breaking waves.

“No’ where I’d choose to have a kip, personally,” Johnny says, sounding amused.

You turn your head to look at him, hard. His eyes soften when they meet yours, and he tilts his head to kiss you, undeterred even when you flinch away from it.

His hand tightens across your back, fingers digging in. He sucks your bottom lip between his and caresses it with his tongue, as he edges beneath the hem of your shirt to spread his hand across the warming skin of your back.

“I’m mad for ya,” he murmurs when he pulls away, blush high on his cheeks.

“It’s been two days,” you deadpan.

He presses up behind you, open hand sliding around to press into the low part of your belly, right at the sensitive crest of your mons; you can’t help your gasp when, at the same time, his erection nestles into the cleft of your ass.

“No’ to this,” he purrs in your ear. “Feels like it’s been forever, for this.”

When his fingers start making their way beneath the waistband of your pants, you grab his hand and wrench it away, scoffing.

“You’re just a fucking horndog,” you sneer, betrayed by the heat spilling through your core.

“Aw, you break my heart, bonnie,” Johnny simpers, but there’s a mocking edge to it. As if he knows exactly what you’re hiding.

You step away from him, folding your arms across your chest and staring out at the basking seals instead. Then—

“There’s one in the water,” you say.

A few meters away from the rocks, a round head pokes up from the surface, bobbing with the rise and fall of the waves. Its eyes are slitted closed, nostrils dilating.

“Aw, he’s bottling,” Johnny says affectionately, when he comes over to look. “Look at his wee face.”

You remember suddenly your encounter of the previous day—another lone seal, resting apart from its fellows.

“I saw one on the beach,” you say, “yesterday, after you dropped me off. A big one. You didn’t say they might show up.”

“Male?” he asks, and you nod. “Peripheral male, then. I’m no’ surprised.”

You sigh. “And that is…”

As if magnetized, his hands find you again, this time settling on your waist. It seems that Johnny’s touch is something impossible to escape, in his vicinity. He drags them down over your hips and back up almost idly, as if he’s not even thinking about doing it.

“There’s dominant males, and then there’s the rest of ‘em. Only the dominant ones get to breed at the rookeries, see? And the rest of ‘em have to wait around for the females to leave to have their chance.”

He leans into you from behind, nose in your hair, and you hear him inhale as his hands tighten.

“Once a peripheral male finds a female alone, separated from the colony, ready to go back out to sea—well, that’s his chance to pounce.”

You frown, mostly to yourself. “No matter how the female feels about it.”

“We’ve been over this,” he chides.

He brings his lips to the curve of one ear, then the soft spot behind it. His nose finds the juncture of your neck and shoulder, where the capillaries that he broke with his teeth still throb whenever you press your fingers to them. He inhales again, deeply.

“Why do you do that?” you grouse, unwilling to give him the win.

“Like how you smell,” he says, doing it again.

His tongue caresses the bruise before he closes his mouth over it—but he goes no further than to kiss your neck twice more before returning to the wheel. It leaves you reeling, half-dizzy with arousal, and when you stomp back to your seat with a frustrated growl, he only glances over at you, smirking, and laughs.

He finds a berth in the early evening to park the trawler, and at that point you’re thankful for any kind of solid ground to set your feet on, as well as enough open air to disperse whatever pheromones have saturated the enclosed space of the bridge.

You’ve been half-tempted the whole time to make him drop anchor and drag him belowdeck toward the nearest flat surface big enough for the two of you to share; as it is, you’ve simply stewed in your own juices instead, hot with angry arousal and ignoring the slick pooling in the gusset of your underwear.

Johnny steps out into the cooling air in his usual kilt and sweater, and you once again huddle in his jacket, aromatic with his musk, as he leads you onward. This time, unlike the last excursion, he insists upon holding your hand the whole way, callused fingers worming their way between yours, the captured air hot and humid between your palms.

Callanish turns out to be a henge of standing stones.

Meters-tall megaliths, squarish and narrow like broken teeth, surrounding a burial site and extending in two directions as if lining a road. Inevitably evocative of its cousin Stonehenge, with the notable exception that you are allowed to go up and touch the stones with your bare hands.

“They used ‘em for that TV show,” Johnny informs you as the two of you circuit the main ring. “Well, no’ these, they probably had styrofoam for that, but they got the idea from these.”

You lay your free hand on the nearest stone; it’s cold, and rough to the touch, a day’s worth of sunlight evidently not sufficient to warm it. Tiny spots of moss and lichen cling to the old stone, green and eggshell white.

“Why are we allowed to touch them?” you say. You think of bronze statues, rubbed to a golden gleam by millions of tourist hands.

“That’s Lewisian gneiss, bonnie,” says Johnny, laying his hand, much larger, next to yours. His thumb teases the side of your pinky. “Doubt you could make much of a mark on it. This rock here? Three billion years old.”

You look at him, seeing his profile. The expression on his face is soft—not unlike the way he looked at you earlier, on the way here. He spreads his fingers over the stone, tendons furrowing down the back of his sun-weathered hand.

“No’ just older than us,” he continues. “Older than what we used to be, a’fore we were us. Was there when we first made fire. Was there when we came down th’ trees. Was there all the way back when we left the ocean for the first time—”

He looks at you, then. The setting sun catches in the dips of his irises, setting jewel blue aflame.

“An’ it’ll be there, bonnie, when we go back.”

The wind curls around the stones with the chill of the oncoming night. Even despite the jacket, despite the walk up to the site—you feel it penetrate beneath your skin, deep into your bones.

You choose derision, to reject the shiver.

“And you have this all memorized,” you say.

Johnny doesn’t respond. He continues to stare at you, mouth in a relaxed, but inscrutable line.

You suddenly remember that you do not know this man; though he’s told you enough about himself to fill out his background—you don’t know him. You don’t know how he feels about most things, what’s important to him, why he may find one thing or another meaningful. Not the way you’d have to, in order to understand why the gaze he fixes on you feels so significant.

Whatever you’re supposed to understand in the way he looks at you now, you don’t have the ability to discern. The only thing that occurs to you is that, perhaps, you’ve finally managed to offend him.

It does not satisfy you as much as you might have imagined—

In fact, the thought drops through your belly like a rock.

Again. You did it again.

In the one place you thought you’d never have to face this—you did it again. Here is someone who seems to like even the worst of you, and you somehow found an even uglier side of yourself to show him, a squirming thing that cannot help but sling itself around with no heed for the damage it can cause.

But when you open your mouth to say something reparatory, something that certainly won’t fix what you’ve broken no matter what he might say, his expression softens into something thoughtful.

“Visited when I first came here,” he says. Completely unbothered. “After the discharge an’ all.”

You blink. Sharp heat and the numbness of cold, warring across your face.

“Why?” you ask.

“Dunno.” He shrugs, and lifts his hand from the stone, smiling ruefully. “I was a bastard back then. Didnae wan’ anything’ to do with anyone anymore. Mad at the world, a’was.”

Shucked like an oyster; scaled like a fish. Heat wins out, even in the growing chill. Tender skin scalding itself.

“And what,” you say, reflexively nasty, panic whirring up behind your breastbone, “you thought—you’d get some sort of, magical insight here?”

Johnny laughs. “Naw, a’was just pissing my money away, bonnie. Thought I’d come up here an’ try t’ knock one over.”

Tight chest. Can’t breathe. You step away from him, far away, hide it like you’re looking at another of the standing stones, but a stabbing pain spears upward through your diaphragm.

In—count—hold—out—

“Could you?” you ask, wringing something like a normal tone out of your voice.

“Nope. Paid for it later, though.”

He says it casually. He hasn’t noticed. You reach out to the new stone, drag your fingers overtop of the rough surface, imagine every little bump flipping the friction ridges of each print like pages of a book. Cold—the rock is cold. The wind is cold, and sharp with the smell of rain. The jacket is heavy on your shoulders.

The jacket smells like Johnny.

“I’m sure the park wardens weren’t happy,” you say, feeling your heart slow in your chest.

“No,” he says, and—with the silence of a lightning strike—“I drowned, afterwords, first time I went to sea.”

You look back at him. The wind picks up, ruffling the ends of his mohawk; on the horizon, a rind of darkness splits the clouds from the earth.

“You drowned?” you repeat.

The hem of his kilt flutters and dances. His gaze is intense—the angle of his brow unreadable.

“Aye, bonnie. I did.”

Your ears begin ringing—as you stare at him, you get the sense of dreaming. There’s a distinction to Johnny that contrasts the landscape framing him, a sharpness so focused that everything else lenses around him.

“Why—why are you here?” you find yourself asking, though you’re not entirely sure why. The question leaves you as if surfacing on its own power.

The corners of his mouth quirk—although for once, he doesn’t smirk at you, the way he always does.

“You tell me,” he murmurs.

He holds you in the tilt of his head; in the depths of his eyes, currents pulling you downward. You inhale, and expect, for some reason, water to pour into your lungs.

Then a gust of wind buffets the two of you. Johnny turns, surveying the sky. Breaking the spell, he says, “Come on, let’s get back. I don’ like the look a’that storm.”

Halfway back down the path, the front overtakes you; rain begins sheeting down, ice cold, needle-precise into your hair and down your collar. Johnny grabs your hand again even as you start worrying about slipping, and though the torrent veils the way, the both of you make it back to the trawler in one piece.

Back on the bridge, a red light blinks on the panel by the wheel. While Johnny attends to it, flipping a switch and bringing a microphone on a curly wire to his mouth, you squeeze your hair out over the sink nearby.

“This is Soap on the vessel Sea Ghost,” he says, and waits for a response.

“Soap. Drop anchor somewhere. Looks like a storm’s coming in,” a gruff voice comes in.

“Yeah, Cap, we noticed,” Johnny says with a laugh, turning and smiling at you. “We’re moored, dinna fash.”

“Good. Looks like it’s just for the night. Clear enough in the morning.”

“Barry. You got everything? Shops’ closed tomorrow.”

“Never will understand why. But yes.”

“It’s a holy day, Captain,” Johnny says pleasantly.

Price grumbles something about damn Catholics and their damn rules, which just makes Johnny laugh.

Then, “Gaz is here. Made it in after you left.”

Johnny’s posture shifts. Similar to a dog hearing the turning of a doorknob; amorphous attention coalescing, finding a target to point at. Anticipatory. Tail twitching, winding up to wag.

It’s a new reaction, to you—you’ve never seen it before.

Johnny lifts the transmitter to his mouth. He holds it there for a silent moment, before saying, “And Simon?”

No response from the other end of the line, pulled taut, as if snagged. Then Price responds “Haven’t heard yet.”

Something passes over Johnny’s face. Some flex of the muscle in his jaw. An expression held in check.

That’s—

That’s familiar.

“Alright. Back tomorrow then.”

“See you.”

He replaces the mic on its hook.

Thunder claps somewhere over the distant, open ocean. The trawler creaks and groans as the wind swirls around it. Yellow lamps illuminate the warm, wooden space, but are unable to penetrate the lowering blackness outside.

Tension—you can feel it drawing tight, see his shoulder blades shifting closer together. It aches in the muscles of your own back. He faces away from you, like you’re not there—

He turns to look at you. He’s smiling, but it doesn’t look quite real. As if he’s forcing the expression on his face.

“Poor bonnie,” he croons, looking you up and down. The tenor of his voice is saccharin-sweet and thick. “How’s a hot shower sound to warm up, hmm?”

Your belly pinches. “Sure.”

He leads you down a steep flight of stairs into the stomach of the boat, showing you into a single bedroom. The space is cramped, wedge-shaped—barely enough room for the double bed shoved into the middle of it, sheets and blankets gathered in rumples across the top. The unique musk of its occupant wars with the smell of lacquer; the walls are lined with orangey planks, evoking the sailing ships of old.

Directly to the left of the entrance, an open door leads into a small bathroom, into which Johnny guides you, hands on your hips.

“Go’ plenty a’ drinking water stored upstairs so take all the time you like,” he says. “Here, lemme show you how the taps work.”

You half-expect him, after the instruction, to stand there and watch, waiting until you undress. And he does hesitate for a moment, hovering in the threshold, before giving you a practiced grin, telling you to enjoy yourself, a closing the door behind him.

You stand in the middle of the tiny room for an uncertain heartbeat. Assumptions lurching. Almost—hoping.

His heavy footsteps climb back up the stairs.

So, you peel off your damp clothes and drop them into a pile on the floor, stepping naked into the shower. It’s far less mildewed than you might have worried of a single man living alone. Hot water chases cold out of your hair, streaming with pressure far superior to the cottage’s installment.

You realize your toiletries are still above deck, in your bag, beneath the two paperbacks Johnny packed that you haven’t gotten to just yet. You could step out after him—

You don’t do that anymore. You promised yourself.

The floor sways as the shifting sea rocks the trawler in its berth. You reach for the bar on the wall to steady yourself.

One version of yourself is sometimes able to fool the other. The truth is, you could have told him to stop at any time. Put your foot down, hard. Just because he owns the house you’re staying in doesn’t mean he gets to decide what your entire vacation is going to look like.

You scoff at yourself, without any humor. Vacation. Like you’d ever believed this was anything more than self-imposed exile.

The truth is, water takes the shape of the container it fills.

There’s a chill still present in your hair follicles. Impossible for you to identify until now; live with an ache long enough and it stops registering, until it’s balmed with a moment of relief. This is where the addicts begin; experiencing, for the first time, a complete absence of pain, as if it had never been there in the first place, and, once that pain is restored, the ruthless pursuit of its elimination.

Cold rain outside, warm rain within. You stand in the flow, listless. Steam rapidly clouds the empty spaces around you, gathering in droplets on the wall, drizzling down again.

That’s where the mistake is. Pain is never defeated—only deferred. Its panacea provides only diminishing returns, until it’s useless. Until you might as well be swallowing sugar pills or drinking seawater to assuage your thirst.

But you keep doing it. You remember too well how it felt. You chase it down because now you know how it feels.

At some point you have to understand that it always ends poorly.

The bathroom door opens again, and then the shower door, spilling yellow light into the shadowed recess—

Johnny.

The expression on his face is inscrutable; mysterious, as his gaze moves down your body, following the streaming water. Your arms curl around your chest in a perfunctory attempt to conceal yourself, even despite the futility of the effort.

He’s naked, and half-hard, a refrain on the previous night. One hand holds the travel-size soaps and gels that he must have dug out from your bag. He steps in behind you—enclosing the two of you in together.

“Sorry, bonnie,” he murmurs soothingly in your ear. “Had t’make sure we were tied up for the storm.”

The space is not even suggestive of being big enough for two people. You hear the squeak of the shower wall against his shifting back, hot skin slipping against yours as his hands draw you back against him by the hips.

“Dinnae want you t’slip an’ hit your head,” he murmurs, massaging the fat of your pelvis, as if there’s any reason to make excuses for what he’s doing.

Half-raised hackles petted down too easily. You relax into his touch, even as you disdain it. Your heart tremors in your chest.

“What’s going on tomorrow?” you finally ask. “Who’s Simon?”

Pathetic. A jealous lover, after less than forty-eight hours.

“Old task force,” he answers, kissing the back of your head. “Little reunion, food an’ beer, mostly.”

You half-expect him to go immediately for your breasts, or maybe your pussy. His cock is stiffening against the small of your back. But instead, he opens one of your bottles, squirts some pearly body wash into the palm of his hand. Rubbing a little to lather it, he puts his hands back on your hips, and begins massaging it into your skin.

Inward, up your stomach. Pressing into the soft parts of it, with the water slicking his way. His mouth touches the back of your neck—softly. Tenderly. With all of the languor you rejected the previous night, and not enough space for you to slap it away again.

His lips press inward, looking for the bite he left, which he lays his tongue on as if in contrition, licking it like a dog with a wound. The comfortable warmth of the shower swelters with his added body heat; the steam pulses in time with the heavy beats of your heart.

One hand slides up your body, fording your thoracic arch, the wedge of his hand ascending the length of your breastbone. He cups your jaw, bubbles between his fingers, one of your breasts nestling between his bicep and forearm.

He tilts your head to the side as he cranes his head further into your neck, lipping at the space behind your ear, kissing delicate, sensitive skin, as his other hand drags soap around your ribs, beneath and over both breasts, up into your pits and back down again.

A doll in his hands, bent along the shape of his will. He shifts his hips, frotting his erection against you.

“Johnny,” you breathe. “Johnny, this isn’t anything. This doesn’t mean anything.”

“Aye, bonnie,” he hums. “Whatever you say.”

He licks a hollow in your throat.

His other hand dips lower, sweeping down into the crease of one thigh to round the lower swell of your hip; then back up again, fingers spreading.

The stall compresses your arms close against you; the only space you have available to lay your useless hands is on his arms. The dark hair you find with your fingertips is coarse, wiry, plastered to hot skin with water. The spray seeps between the both of you, streams in the runnels of flesh pressed together.

Between your legs, your clitoris heats, awakening even though untouched. You give a small whine, and Johnny huffs a little chuckle in your ear, suckling your neck as his fingers make the descent back, rinsed in the falling water, teasing your pubic hair before nudging your folds apart.

He finds you slick and aching. He only dips lower briefly to wet his fingers, and then, as he settles a light touch over where you’re most desperate for it, relief razes through your nerves in a sudden wash.

You search for the back of his head, slotting your fingers into the ends of his mohawk at the nape of his neck. He hums against you, hand dropping down from your jaw to cup one breast in his palm, weighing it, thumb flicking around the pert nipple in the same tight circle he draws around your clitoris.

Orgasm, usually so obvious on approach, sneaks up on you, quick and quiet, but when it takes you it floods you, rather than knocking you down. You tremble all over, the follicles on your scalp standing on end, the nerves down your back and sides bending like dune grass to a wind.

Your long, breathy cry reverberates against the shower walls, and you lean heavily back against Johnny’s body, grip tightening where you have your hands on him.

He twitches against your back, but he makes no move to chase his own climax. He only turns you carefully, when you recover, and lays his hot, open mouth on yours, tugging your hips close enough to trap his cock against your belly. This time, the wall is cool at your back, the crown of your head moving against it as Johnny angles himself deeper, sliding his tongue between your lips.

“C’mon,” he says, when he finally pulls away. His pupils are huge, black dilation swallowing the blue. The spray fills the empty spaces between the strands of his mohawk, fluffing the hair a little as it courses down the shaved sides of his scalp. “Need to get my mouth on you again, bonnie.”

This time, when he eats you out, he does it at his leisure. Licking honey off a spoon. So lightly that you whine at him, find the energy to bitch at him to do it like he means it, but tonight he does not indulge you.

No—he mouths at you, eyes closed, curly lashes against his cheek as you lay belly-up on the rumpled sheets of his bed. The heat of his tongue in your cleft is the only source of warmth you have as the rain lashes at the outside of the trawler, but the hot shower still lingers in your skin—

Humid. Sticky. Sweat gathering beneath Johnny’s palms where he holds your thighs to his ears, as if mimicking the way your sex will clutch around him when he enters you. Slick and tight and viscous.

When he crawls up your body—nosing at your belly, your breasts, inhaling as if your musk is something he’s trying to get drunk on—he fucks you slow and deep. You stop being able to tell if it’s the storm rocking the boat, or the weight of his hips rolling against yours, one of his hands on the headboard for leverage and the other on your mons, pressing down with the heel of his hand to feel the head of his cock moving in you.

Tacky skin catching on the grind; heart speeding up as he grins at you from above, thumb tapping your clitoris. Enough to wind you up. You reach for his hips with your clawed hands, digging your nails into the meat of his ass—firm, muscle tensed, twitching every time he bottoms out.

“Johnny,” you finally beg, on the edge of a sob, “please, Johnny, please—”

Breath leaves him like a steam valve turned, pressure carrying an uninhibited moan. He ignores your plea, hips rolling slow, forcing you to feel every inch of him in and out of you, every ridge—every vein pulsing on the surface of his cock.

His eyes are closed still; when the widest part of him catches the rim of you around him again, his mouth drops open, lips pink and bitten.

Lost—he’s lost in pleasure, in the feeling of you around him, pulling him in. You watch his chest as it heaves, the flex of his stomach as it tightens—the twitch in the muscles of his arms as the impact of each thrust ripples up his body.

Look at me, you want to say. Look at me. I’m right here. Look at me.

“Again,” he groans, choked, restrained, hands gripping your hips. “Say it again, bonnie—”

“Please—” you whine, on the edge of a sob, “please, please, please—”

Thumb metronoming at a quick tempo where you need it—you seize, back arching, tightening around him so narrowly you could force him out—

He snarls, sharp and hard, thrusting into the resistance, hands falling to fist in the mattress. Breath coming rough and fast, sweat dripping from his forehead into the cups of your collarbones and down between your breasts. Hard and fast now, pushing in as far as your body will let him, and a final, long moan tears from his parted lips, liquid heat flooding you as Johnny goes rigid with a climax following only moments after your own.

Pelvis flush with your thighs. He doesn’t let a drop escape, pushing against you, lifting your hips from the bed.

“Tha’s right,” he slurs, eyes hazy when they open. “Tha’s right, that’s where it belongs.”

He collapses on top of you, almost crushing you with his weight, as he seeks your mouth out with his. He moves his hips against yours with shallow thrusts, whining in his throat.

“Didn’t you—” you pull your lips away, too hot, too cold, buzzing and exhausted, “didn’t you just finish?”

He tongues at your cheek instead, and then down your neck. “Doesnae matter, is no’ enough. C’mon, bonnie, wrap your legs aroun’ me, please…”

After he is finally spent—long after you’ve had enough energy to do more than lay beneath him and let him use you as he pleases—Johnny diverts briefly to the galley, bringing back with him a plate of oysters and a pry knife. It’s his bed, so you don’t complain about shell fragments, but you resolve to make him change the sheets anyway, shifting uncomfortably to find a spot that isn’t soaked.

“Was on this boat,” Johnny says, as if picking up the thread of a conversation only recently dropped. He picks up one of the oysters and shucks it open. “When I drowned.”

The way he says it, you’d think it was a casual thing, something he barely thought about anymore, but the line of his brow is low and serious.

He hands you one half; you bring the shell to your lips and tip it upward. Brine slides across your tongue, flesh smooth and buttery. Johnny watches you with soft eyes before having his own.

“Price was with me. I told him to fuck off, but he said he wasnae gonna let me take it out alone the first time ever. I was a bastard back then, I told ya. We went out in a storm, like this one, even though any eedjit could take a look outside and know it’d kill him.”

You flick at the edge of the shell with your fingernail, looking down at your hands. “Why’d you do it?”

“Dunno. Had somethin’ to prove, I guess.”

“That you could still do stuff like that?”

He doesn’t respond, so you look back up at him. He angles his gaze toward the mess of your hair—the new hickies he’s left on your neck—the bead of your nipples in the cold. The hard angles of his face soften.

“All my life,” he says, measuredly, “all I wanted to be was a soldier. An’ I couldnae anymore. Even though I was better. Hell, I was better than better. But I couldnae go back. That was it. It all wen’ on withou’ me.”

He breaks open more oysters as he talks, hands steady and deft around shells and knife. When he finishes, he slides the plate into your lap, and reclines to face you on his side, propping his head up with his hand.

“We wen’ out when the waves were as tall as a man, an’ us hangin’ onto the railing for dear fuckin’ life,” he continues. There’s a faraway quality to the tone of his voice. “Only life wasnae so fuckin’ dear, was it? I could’ve held on tighter, I think. I fell off.”

“And Price pulled you out?”

That feeling again, meeting his gaze; caught in the arms of a whirlpool, being dragged down. A vial in a centrifuge, constituent parts separating.

“No,” he says, “he didnae.”

“Then…”

“Eat, bonnie.”

There’s a stillness to him that feels unnatural. Johnny is a man who should be constantly in motion, gesturing with his hands, bouncing on the balls of his feet, tapping any available surface with rolling fingertips. Instead, here in front of you, he’s still as a statue. Chest softly rising and falling, but otherwise completely placid.

He gazes steadily at you, down at the plate, and then back up. You sigh, and pick up another shell.

“I don’t remember exactly what happened. I remember getting pushed down deep, real deep, then getting forced up again, on a current or something. Not far enough to get any air, mind. I thought, I’m gonna die out here, an’ I didnae want to.”

He shifts then, a little forward toward you.

“That seemed important, you know? I didnae want to die. Dinna think the sea would’ve given me up f’ I did. It knows. Sometimes it doesnae care. But I guess that time, it did, ‘cause after I blacked out, next thing I know I’m wakin’ up on the shore.”

Something hard shifts in your belly.

“Cap found me a bit later, bringin’ the boat in. Gave him a real scare. Think it turned some of his hair gray overnight. After that…a’was no’ the same. How could y’be, after that?”

You—you don’t want to know any of this. You don’t care. You didn’t ask. His story drops expectation on your shoulders, heavy, custom-tailored, laden with understanding that sands your abraded nerves.

All of this is too much. The damp sheets beneath you, the food, the sex. The fact that you picked the last place in the world thought you could ever meet anyone, let alone someone who—

“And now you have a seal fetish,” you sneer.

Who understands.

Indulgent. This is indulgent, reckless, idiotic in the extreme.

Soap reaches out, and wraps a large, sun-brown hand around your wrist, the one still holding the oyster. Pulling it towards him, he opens his mouth and then tips the flesh from the shell. He slurps it down, noisily, mimicking the sound of his mouth and tongue on your pussy.

“Something like that,” he says, with a sharp, cocky grin.

He changes the sheets. Dims the lights. Plasters himself around you as the storm blows itself out, arm heavy over your waist, thigh and knee nested inside yours.

He’s warm at your back, musky with the mingling aroma of dried sex and sweat.

Sturdy. More real than anything that’s ever put its hands on you.

Johnny, who the sea loved so much it spat him back out. So treasured by the world that a bullet to the brain couldn’t even take him away from it.

Who, by the sound of it, means so much to the people in his life that they would follow him to the middle of nowhere just to keep an eye on him.

Bile churns in your stomach.

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a/n: two chapters left!