#so when i get to those states i’m trying extra hard not to blindside everyone with what a fucking mutant i am under the surface

[transmechanicus]

Kind of hard to ask as anon

But you doing ok?

Need to vent?

Hi very kind and thoughtful of you to ask, i am doing mmmmm suboptimal but i do not need to vent to a person per se, so much as i need to say absolutely insane shit in my tags and have everyone pretend not to see <3

[hotpinkhoshi]

the pact (4)

pairing: jinyoung x reader

genre: romance, smut, a lil angst

warnings: explicit sex, cursing, unprotected sex, dirty talk, spanking, orgasm denial

word count: 6.3k

summary: you desperately need to get over your decade-long crush on lim jaebeom, and your close friend jinyoung needs to get over his ex—so the two of you make an arrangement: just sex, no feelings. what could go wrong?

a/n: first of all i hope everyone had a great holiday and a happy new year 😘 i was verrrry busy which is why this update is a bit delayed. thank you guys for being patient with me while i get my shit together! i hope you enjoy this part because i loved writing it. also please check out the playlist i made for parts 1-4 right here :) 

↳ index here

Jinyoung: Y/N Jinyoung: I need you to come over immediately Jinyoung: It’s an emergency

You: what?? what’s wrong??? You: …. You: this isn’t like a sex emergency right

Jinyoung: No. Please just come over.

“What’s wrong? What’s the emergency?” you asked urgently as you slipped inside of Jinyoung’s apartment. 

Jinyoung welcomed you in, and the first thing you noticed was his casual attire—gray joggers, a hunter green hoodie, and a pair of wire rimmed glasses you hadn’t seen him wear since high school. It also looked like he’d just recently gotten out of the shower, judging by the damp locks of hair clinging to his temples.

Funny enough, your own outfit mirrored his. A gray sweatshirt and black joggers. After all, you had been halfway ready for bed by the time he texted you, even though it wasn’t really that late. It was Sunday night, you’d spent all weekend working and you weren’t ashamed to call it a night before ten o’clock. 

“I have… two hours,” Jinyoung started, glancing at his watch and then back at you, “to pack for a week and a half in New York.”

You blinked at him. “You what?”

Jinyoung let out an exasperated sigh and grabbed your hand, tugging you back towards his bedroom. You nearly passed out from shock at the state of disarray that greeted you; suitcase wide open on the floor, piles of clothes everywhere, shampoo bottles laying around haphazardly. Never, in all the years you’d known him, had you seen his room anything but spotless—not even in that shitty third floor walk up he and Jackson lived in before they both got grown up jobs. 

“Why does it look the toiletries aisle threw up all over your room, Jinyoung?” 

Jinyoung, frazzled as you’d ever seen him, ruffled the back of his own hair harshly. “My boss called me an hour ago asking if I’d go to this convention because the girl that was meant to do it got mono. So now I’m flying to New York in four hours.” 

Your eyes lit up as you smacked his chest excitedly. “That’s great!”

He’d mentioned the convention a few times in the last few weeks. He was excited about it, you knew that much, but that was when his responsibility was to organize the event from afar. In your opinion, it sounded like your personal heaven. Thousands of avid book readers came from all over the world, just to share their excitement over books. You couldn’t imagine anything better.

He groaned, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. “It’s terrible. You know I hate unexpected surprises, Y/N. What if I screw it up?”

You rolled your eyes. “That’s not going to happen. They probably asked you to do it because they know you’re capable. You’re basically the head of your department, right?”

Jinyoung shrugged modestly. “I mean, yeah. I’ve been in charge of planning the entire thing for the last two months.”

“Exactly. So it’ll be fine—you worry far too much. Now, how can I help with… all of this?” You looked around at the chaos dispersed throughout his bedroom, not sure where to start. 

Jinyoung took in a deep, calming breath, then pointed to the pile of clean clothes on the floor next to the suitcase. “If you can put those clothes in the packing cubes and get them into the suitcase—why are you laughing?”

You covered your mouth in an attempt to stifle your laugh as you sat in front of his pile of clothing. “Nothing. I just… of course you use packing cubes.”

Jinyoung pursed his lips—giving you his trademark unamused look. “Don’t make fun of me, I’m in a crisis.” 

“You’re so dramatic. I swear.” You rolled your eyes at him, lips forming a smirk. “Stop scowling at me and get to packing, mister.” 

Jinyoung mumbled something under his breath, which sounded a lot like not the boss of me, and they’re practical but you couldn’t be too sure. Still, he settled on his bed, picking out items from the massive pile of mini sized hair and skin products and stuffing them into a travel bag. 

Comfortable silence filled the room as you two focused on your separate tasks, but you could practically hear Jinyoung’s racing thoughts from across the room. It was almost annoying how well you could read his emotions, which you chalked up to your many years of friendship. 

But you knew he’d feel better once the daunting task of packing was done with, so you sorted his clothing as he asked. Once the cubes were full of his clothes, folded and organized into his suitcase, you stood from the floor and crawled onto the bed. 

You perched on your knees behind him, leaning your chin onto his shoulder. He smelled nice, you noticed. Like fresh linen. “Are you done yet?”

He grunted, shaking his head as he tossed a bottle of face moisturizer into his bag with more force than necessary.

You hummed, wrapping your arms around his waist. “Can I interest you in a short distraction? Since you’ll be gone for… how long again?” 

Jinyoung didn’t respond, just continued stuffing items into travel sized bags as if he didn’t hear you. You pouted, squeezing him tighter. His entire body was tense, from his shoulders down to his abs. 

“Hey,” you said softly, reaching for his hands to pull them into his lap. “You’re really worried about this, aren’t you?” 

He just lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “Just don’t want to screw it up,” he mumbled. 

You sighed and shifted next to him, crawling into his lap to straddle his waist. Reaching for his chin, you lifted his eyes to yours. You would’ve had to be blind not to see how nervous he was about this.

“Hey,” you said again. “That’s not going to happen. Trust me. Remember that time, in college, we both wrote down the wrong date for our European Lit exam and we were completely blindsided when we walked into class? You passed with a 96. You’re great under pressure, Jinyoung. You’re smart, you work hard, and you’re quick on your feet.” 

Jinyoung’s features, ever so slightly, softened as he listened to you. He knew you were right. You had seen him come out on top of so many stressful situations, and you knew this time was no different. 

“What’d you get on that exam? I don’t think you ever told me.” 

You cringed at the memory. The big, fat red marker the teacher had used to scribble your nearly failing grade across your test flashed in your mind. “65. Dad lectured me for about three hours about that one.” 

“Ouch,” Jinyoung began, his arms wrapping around your waist to pull you closer. It seemed he was already feeling better. “Maybe I should have tutored you. I could have gotten you some extra credit…” 

Though it was his attempt at trying to sound sexy, it just came off cheesy and you couldn’t help but snort. “You’re lucky you’re really good in bed, because your pillow talk leaves something to be desired.” 

Jinyoung grinned, leaning in to nip at your neck. “Hmm,” he hummed against your skin, hands slipping up the back of your hoodie. “All I heard was really good in bed.”

“Mm,” you tilted your head, allowing him more space to kiss your neck. You didn’t even care about the marks he could leave. “Did I say that? I meant terrible in bed. Like, so bad.” You smiled at the laugh he pressed into your skin.

You shivered as he grazed his fingertips up and down your spine, goosebumps forming wherever he touched. No matter how many times he put his hands on you, it never stopped having such an effect on you. 

The last month, after Bambam’s party, you’d set out three rules for yourself: no cuddling, no sleeping over, and no unnecessary kissing. So far, you’d held your ground. If Jinyoung noticed anything weird, he didn’t show it. Just nodded and walked you to the door each time you chose not to sleep over. 

But the sex was still worth keeping your arrangement. Jinyoung had shown you a side of yourself you weren’t aware of until now, and you couldn’t deny he made you feel desirable in a way that was totally new. You had no hesitation telling him what you wanted or needed in order to feel good—unlike how you’d been in past relationships. 

“So how about that distraction?” you whispered, threading your fingers through Jinyoung’s hair and pushing it away from his face. 

He laughed again. “We don’t have time.” 

You stuck your lip out, pulling back enough to look at him. “Yes we do. I’m not going to see you for almost two weeks, can’t I just… have something to remember you by?” 

Jinyoung glanced at the clock on his wall, then back at you. The clock, then you again. “Alright, fine. You’re lucky you’re really good in bed.”

Your pout turned into a pleased grin. “I know.” 

To shut you up, he reached for your sweatshirt to pull off, throwing the material to the floor. He cursed under his breath when he saw you were completely bare under your hoodie. “God. I swear you live to drive me insane.” 

“Hmm, maybe, maybe not,” you said, as you slipped your hands back into his hair and gave the strands a firm tug. 

“Fuck,” he started, hands squeezing your hips. “Want to come to New York with me? Just curl up in my suitcase?” 

You laughed, hips rolling down against him almost instinctively, craving more contact. “Sounds uncomfortable.” 

“Mm,” he shook his head and leaned in, kissing across your chest. “Don’t know how I’ll live without these.” 

“By ‘these’ do you mean my boobs?” 

“Maybe, maybe not.”

“You’re dumb,” you replied with a laugh, hands traveling down his torso until you could tug his sweatshirt off of him. “I’ll send you a picture every day, just so you don’t miss them too much.” 

Jinyoung flipped you over onto your back, kicking his pile of toiletries out of the way and cringing at the sound of about a thousand lotion bottles falling to the floor. “You’re too good to me.” 

“I know,” you responded, quick to remove his shirt as well, revealing the toned torso you never got sick of seeing. “You’re so lucky to have me.” 

“Something like that,” he said as he looked down at you, eyes shining with desire. His hips were grinding into yours so perfectly, the bulge in his sweats pressing into your center just right. 

Your eyes fell shut as you groaned, only encouraging him to push into you with more force. He could bring you to the edge just like this, and you made a mental note to test that theory someday. Tonight, though, you wanted him inside of you. 

Jinyoung leaned down, closing his mouth around one of your nipples and rolling his tongue over the hardened peak, over and over. You arched into him, wanting more. In a matter of minutes, he’d already reduced you to a pliant mess underneath of him. 

His mouth traveled downwards and more bottles were knocked to the floor, though you couldn’t find it in yourself to care. You’d clean up the mess later. He sucked a hickey into your hip as he pulled off your joggers, making you shiver when the cold air hit your skin. 

“The snowmen underwear,” Jinyoung mused, a smirk on his lips. You’d forgotten you had grabbed those from your drawer today--the same pair you’d worn the first night you slept together. At this point, you’d given up trying to always be wearing sexy underwear when you’d see Jinyoung. He truly did not care what you had under your clothes, as he reminded you so many times. 

“Shut up,” you told him, squirming your hips as he stared up at you. 

“They’re cute,” he said, just as he did that first night. “I might rip them off you, though. Wanna fuck you so bad.” He leaned down, licking right up the line of your covered slit. 

You bit back a moan and gripped the sheets underneath of you, already feeling restless with need. 

“It’s a shame we’re tight on time,” he muttered, nose nudging against your clit. “I’d love to spend the whole night between your thighs. Just tasting you, making you crazy…”

You wouldn’t have minded that at all. Jinyoung was a perfectionist, and it was never more apparent than when he had his mouth on you, determined to make you feel good. It was an experience, every single time. 

When he finally pulled your underwear off, he glanced up at you with a mischievous glint in his eyes. Your panties dangled off his index finger. “Want to give me something to remember you by?” 

You stared down at him, skeptical. “Yes…?” 

Jinyoung sat up on his knees, balling up your underwear and tossing it into his opened suitcase. You gaped up at him, reaching to hit his arm. “Jinyoung! You can’t steal my underwear!” 

He laughed, leaning back down to hover over you. “I didn’t steal them. You said yes. Come on, please?” 

“You’re so weird,” you told him, relenting. As shocked as you were, you couldn’t deny that it was hot, him wanting to take your panties along across the world just to remember you by. Whatever that meant. 

“Shh, tight on time, remember?” he dipped down to kiss you, smiling against your lips and causing you to do the same. 

Your hands roamed his body, trying to memorize the lines and curves of his skin just so that you wouldn’t forget. It would be the longest you’d gone without seeing Jinyoung since you started sleeping together two months ago. At this point, you knew his body better than your own. You were going to miss it. 

“Hey,” you spoke against his lips, pulling away to push his hair away from his eyes. “This is the first time you’ve fucked me with glasses on.” 

“And?” he asked, thick brows pushed together. 

You shrugged. “And I think you look hot. You’re like my sexy, visually impaired teacher.” 

Jinyoung’s eyes narrowed slightly just before he rolled them. “Oh, I see, you think you’re special because you have perfect vision.” 

You grinned up at him. “At least I said you were sexy.” 

He grumbled, leaning down to nip at your bottom lip. “Careful, or you’ll get detention.” 

You stifled a laugh, which further annoyed him. “Sorry. Not funny.” 

Jinyoung hated to be teased, and you knew it, but you couldn’t help getting a kick out of it. You loved that grumpy, unamused frown he threw at you whenever you challenged him. 

“Turn over.” 

You raised your brows, smile dropping from your lips. Oh. He looked down at you, eyes darkening with that familiar lustful glare. Your breath hitched in your chest as you flipped over onto your stomach, laying sideways on the bed with your ankles dangling off one end. 

When you tried to prop yourself up on your elbows, he pressed down onto your shoulders with a light pressure to keep you down. “Face down.” 

A tingle spread down your body, right to your core. What had started as a playful joke was quickly turning into something more, something you’d only fantasized about late at night when you were alone. 

Jinyoung sat on his knees, straddling your thighs, his weight just barely resting on you. Your heart was pounding in anticipation. His fingertips grazed down your back, starting between your shoulder blades until he was brushing against the curve of your lower back. 

“I thought we didn’t have much time?” you asked, turning your head to look back at him with one cheek pressed into his blankets. 

He glared down at you. “Every time you talk back to me, that’s one.” 

You gulped. “One what?” 

He barely hesitated before his hand came down against the center of your ass cheek. You whimpered, pressing your face into the blankets. The sting only lasted for a moment before you felt a pulse of pleasure low in your stomach. 

“Now,” Jinyoung started, his hand massaging the area where he’d just smacked. You took a deep breath in, desperately trying to keep your hips from squirming. “Are you going to be good for me?” 

You nodded vigorously, stealing a glance behind you. The look on his face reminded you of how he’d looked after Bambam’s party, demanding you to touch yourself. A look you’d thought about many, many times since. 

He shocked you when he smacked your ass again, your back arching involuntarily. “Use your words, angel.” 

“Yes! Yes, I’ll be good.” 

You were certain if his hand drifted down the few inches away from your ass to your entrance, he would feel just how wet he’d made you already. 

“Hmm, I’m not sure if I believe you. You don’t always listen. Always trying to make it difficult for me, aren’t you?” 

You shook your head. “N-no. I wanna be good for you, Jinyoung.” 

His tongue ran over his bottom lip slowly, giving you that familiar predatory gaze. “You’re gonna have to prove it to me.” His hands were massaging your ass again, stopping to squeeze the soft flesh every now and then. 

“How?” You asked, fear and arousal blooming in your chest. You knew whatever he had in store for you wouldn’t be easy.

Jinyoung trailed his right hand up your back again, pushing your hair aside so that you could see him without any obstruction. “Don’t come. No matter what.” 

Again, you swallowed hard. You wouldn’t be good at this game and you both knew it. He got you so hot so fast that you could never hold back, which wasn’t usually a problem, until now.

His hand traveled down your back, fingers grazing over the curve of your ass until they slipped down to your entrance. You watched his face, enthralled, as he gathered the wetness that had already dripped out of you and brought it to his lips to taste. You moaned. 

Jinyoung looked down at you, smirking. “Oh, that’s not a good sign. I barely even touched you. Try to control yourself, okay, baby? You can do it.” 

You bit down onto your lip again, nodding at him as you slid your hands up underneath of your head, gripping his blankets. “Okay.” 

When he finally slipped his fingers inside of you, your eyes fell shut. Only two fingers and you could tell you were squeezing around him, your current position doing nothing to give him easier access. 

He began a slow, torturous pace inside of you with his two fingers, scissoring them inside of you every few thrusts. You were whining and moaning into the blankets, your fingernails digging into the fabric. 

“So fucking tight. I wish you could see what I’m seeing right now—it’s heavenly.” 

You pressed your forehead into the blankets, teeth pressed hard into your lower lip as he twisted his fingers, turning his hand so that his thumb could massage your clit. You couldn’t help rolling your hips towards his fingers, wanting him deeper inside. 

“Jinyoung, please...” you whispered. 

“Hm? What was that?” he asked, squeezing your ass with his free hand. “You want more?” 

You opened your eyes to look back at him again and nodded. “Please.” 

The sight of him was enough to have your walls clenching on his fingers again. Eyebrows knitted together, completely focused on fucking into you with the perfect pace. The glasses were really just an added bonus. 

With no warning, he slipped a third finger inside of you.

“Fuck,” you groaned loudly, arching your back and fighting to spread your legs, even though they were caged in by Jinyoung’s thighs. 

This earned you another smack, followed by a gentle caress. 

“You’re not controlling yourself very well, are you, angel?” 

You fought back a sob and shook your head. “No, I’m sorry, I just-” you couldn’t finish your sentence, because Jinyoung had curled his fingers inside of you on his next thrust, pressing into your g-spot. 

Then he did it again. And again. 

You had never tried for anything as hard as you were now, desperately trying to keep your orgasm at bay. Heat spread through your entire body but you fought it, even though it made tears form in the corners of your eyes, even though it felt like you were about to explode. 

Jinyoung was receptive, he knew your body well enough that he knew just how close you were and how much effort you were putting into denying your body what it wanted so badly. 

He finally withdrew his fingers from you, but not without another harsh spank. His hands immediately soothed your skin, gently massaging your flesh as he leaned down over your back, kissing the spot between your shoulder blades.

“Such a good girl. You did so good.” 

You melted under his touch as your orgasm retreated. It had been so close, you wouldn’t have lasted much longer if he’d continued. Your skin burned where his hand had made contact and you knew it would hurt to sit tomorrow. 

“Want to stay like this, baby? Looks like it hurts.” 

You nodded with a pout, unfolding your arms from under your chest and stretching them above your head, relieving some of the tension from clenching the sheets in your fists. 

Jinyoung didn’t waste much time, pushing his sweatpants and underwear to his thighs. He looked hard as a rock, and you cursed the fact that you didn’t have enough time to give him a goodbye blowjob. The sight practically had your mouth watering. 

Then he was scooting up your legs, until the head of his cock nudged in between your thighs. He slid between your flesh a few times easily, as your skin was covered with the juices that had dripped out of you. 

You both let out satisfied moans once he slid inside your heat, already wet and beyond ready for him as you always were. 

Jinyoung leaned over you, bracing his hands on the bed on either side of your shoulders. With the rest of his weight resting on his knees, he rolled his hips towards you, pushing his length inside of you to the hilt. 

“Oh my God,” you moaned. It felt new, this depth that he’d reached inside of you. You leaned up on your forearms to arch yourself to a better angle, hips lifting up slightly. 

You were grateful he wasn’t gentle with you, you couldn’t handle that right now. You needed him, quick and deep, and that’s exactly the pace he began inside of you. The only sound in the room was his skin slapping yours and the desperate, throaty moans and pleas for more, more, more. 

Jinyoung ducked his head down to press kisses to your shoulder. It was the affection you needed, suddenly overwhelmed with the fact that he was leaving you. Only for a week and a half, but at the moment you couldn’t imagine living without him inside of you for one minute. That was how crazy he made you. 

“Jinyoung,” you begged, bending onto your elbow so that you could grip a hold of his arm next to you. Your name fell from his lips in response, over and over. You craned your neck to find his lips for a messy kiss, somewhat awkward from the angle, but it brought you even closer to the edge. 

“Close?” he asked against your lips before pulling away to press kisses against your jaw. You nodded, squeezing his arm tightly until your fingernails dug into his skin. 

Your nerves were on fire as the familiar tension built inside of you, beginning at your rib cage until it spread lower and lower. Jinyoung lowered onto his elbows until his front was pressed to your back, his hips never slowing or relenting. 

“Gonna come,” Jinyoung said with a groan, digging his teeth into the soft skin of your shoulder, the sharp pain sending a wave of electricity right to your clit. 

As the tension in your body snapped, you finally allowed yourself to tip over the edge, made more intense by the sensation of Jinyoung reaching his orgasm as well. Your thighs shook as you took every drop from him, letting him fill you. Your own climax hit you like a ton of bricks, fast and hard, your body quivering underneath of him in waves. 

Your body fell limp under his as you finally relaxed, absolutely exhausted from your orgasm. Jinyoung panted behind you, his lips still kissing your skin and whispering how good you were for him, how you fit him perfectly. You wished you weren’t in a daze, or you would have been able to focus on the husky, fucked out tone of his voice. 

Finally, he rolled off to the side, pulling his sweatpants back up over his hips. You were too worn out to move yet, so you just laid there on your stomach while you heard Jinyoung get up for a washcloth. He was always quick to clean you up and you were eternally grateful, especially now. You were pretty sure he’d just taken years off of your life. 

You let him move you however he needed in order to clean you up, and as Jinyoung tossed the washcloth to the side, he stared down at you with raised brows. 

“You okay?” he asked. You could hear the smirk in his voice. 

“Mm,” you replied, arms unwinding from underneath yourself again to stretch them out, wiggling your fingers. “You just fucked the life out of me. Officially.” 

Jinyoung chuckled, a hand caressing your back as he laid on his side next to you. “Do you think it was the glasses?” he asked as he tucked your hair behind your ear.

You opened your eyes to look at him, your lips spreading into a grin. “Probably.” 

Even though you had a no cuddling rule, and a no unnecessary kissing rule, you didn’t fight it when Jinyoung brought you into his arms and melted your lips together. 

You blamed it on your exhausted state. 

~~~

“Forrest Gump! Forrest Gump!” Sana whisper-shouted, slapping her pencil down on the restaurant table. “Why isn’t anyone listening to me?!” 

“Because you’re wrong,” Yugyeom replied. “It’s Shawshank Redemption.” 

You sat between Bambam and Jackson in the crowded diner booth as Sana and Yugyeom argued across from you. This was how it’d gone all night. It had been Yugyeom’s bright idea to participate in a trivia night instead of your usual movie night for the month and you were quickly regretting it. 

Jinyoung hated trivia games and never wanted to go when it was suggested, which you suspected was because he hated being wrong. Now that he was away on business, you’d decided to give it a try. It had been a mistake.

Yugyeom was, apparently, fiercely competitive, which would have been okay if Sana wasn’t exactly the same way. You wanted to win, sure, but your two friends were starting to get out of hand with their arguing and butting heads. 

“Okay, okay,” you said, trying to get them to simmer down. People had been staring at you all night, clearly bothered by the constant bickering. “Someone just write down an answer because he’s coming around to get our sheets!” 

Yugyeom snatched the pencil from Sana, scribbling down his favored answer just in time for the host to collect your papers. It was the last round, and you had been in first place the last time they’d checked scores. 

“I hope you’re happy,” Sana sneered, crossing her arms. 

“Oh my God, stop,” you told her, slapping her arm lightly. “It’s just a game! And here we thought Jinyoung would be the problem.” 

The familiar fluttering bloomed in your heart as you spoke his name, which you did your best to shove down just as you had for the last five days since Jinyoung had been gone. You tried to convince yourself your body missed him, not you specifically. 

You pulled out your phone as soon as the host announced you were free to do so, scrolling through your texts until you found your message with Jinyoung. You’d been talking a lot this last week. The convention was this weekend, and in New York it was about time for him to be waking up to get ready.

You: so… we decided to go to trivia tonight You: it’s a blood bath in here

Jinyoung: Ugh. Trivia. 

You: yeah yeah. good morning, by the way :)

Jinyoung: Good morning. How was your day? 

You: good. busy, but in a good way You: are you excited for today??

Jinyoung: Excited? No. Prepared? Also no. But I’m ready to just get on with it already. 

You: it’s gonna be so much fun!!! you get to talk about books all day!!!!!

Jinyoung: Ugh. It’s way too early in my day for all those exclamation points

You: soooo dramaticcccccccc

Jinyoung: Hey, be nice to me, I’m nervous

You: okay okay. you’re going to do great today you know

Jinyoung: I’ll do my best. 

You: shhh. it’ll be great. i’ll stay up late tonight in case you need to call me.

Jinyoung: Good. I miss you. 

“Why are you making that face?” Sana asked, snapping you out of your text trance. 

Your head shot up and you looked around with wide eyes. You’d literally forgotten where you were in the last five minutes. 

“Huh? What face?” 

“Are you… blushing?” Sana replied. “Who are you texting?! It better not be-”

“It’s not Jaebeom!” you said, defensively. 

You hadn’t even talked to him since Bambam’s party when you’d left him on the dance floor. You still felt guilty, but couldn’t bring yourself to reach out to him and open that can of worms. 

“Who is it?” 

You brought your phone to your chest, hiding the screen from your friends. Yugyeom looked confused, Bambam looked mildly amused, and Jackson was eating cheese fries. It truly summed up your friendship. 

“No one.” 

A look of hurt flashed in Sana’s eyes. “Why won’t you tell me who it is?” 

You deflated a bit. It had been difficult in more ways than one having to keep your arrangement with Jinyoung a secret from Sana and the rest of your friends. You hated lying, period, but especially to your best friend. 

“Because it’s…” you looked around at the rest of the table, then down at your phone. “It’s not, like… a real thing.”

“She’s texting Jinyoung!”

Your head whipped in Jackson’s direction. He had blurted the words out like word vomit, and now looked as if the weight of the world had lifted from his shoulders. 

“Were you looking at my phone?!” you asked, feeling somewhat violated. 

“No!” he replied. “I’ve known for…” his eyes looked upward as he counted on his fingers. “Six weeks.” 

“Six weeks?! You’ve been dating Jinyoung for six weeks?” Sana asked, her jaw practically dropping to the table. 

You cleared your throat. “Two months. And we’re not dating! We’re just having sex.”

Sana stared blankly at you, not even noticing when the trivia hosts began going over the correct answers. “I knew you were seeing someone, I just thought it was Jaebeom. What… how…?”

“Wait, when did you find out?” you asked Jackson. 

“Well…” he looked down, heaving a deep breath. “At Bambam’s party, he chewed me out in the bathroom for dancing with you and being, you know, touchy. I feared for my life, but also figured something had to be going on for him to get jealous like that. I asked him the next day and he spilled everything.”

You had no idea he’d gotten angry with Jackson. If anything, you’d assumed all his anger had been directed at you. And, besides, you’d settled it later on at his apartment. 

“Hold on,” Yugyeom cut in. “You’re not dating Jinyoung, you’re just sleeping together? Like… friends with benefits?” 

You shrugged. “Yeah. We were both lonely and trying to get over feelings for other people, so we figured…” 

Sana was rubbing her temples, clearly having a tough time coming to terms with this revelation. “Just sleeping together?”

“Yeah. Why is that so hard to believe? People do it all the time.”

“Uh, no. I don’t know anyone that started sleeping with their friend of ten years so they can get over their crush, also of ten years. This is possibly the worst idea you’ve ever had.” 

You furrowed your eyebrows together. “Okay, it’s really not that bad. It’s casual, we're just having fun.”

“Are you telling her that or yourself?” Jackson interrupted. 

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” You held your hands up. “This is exactly why we didn’t tell anyone. We knew you’d all be judgmental and worry that I’m going to get hurt-“

“Maybe you aren’t the one we’re worried about!”

The entire table fell silent, all eyes on Sana. Including the trivia host, who’d just announced that the correct answer to the last question had been Forrest Gump. 

When the chatter started to pick up again and another team was crowned the winner, you shook your head, confused. 

“What do you mean? Why would you be worried about Jinyoung?”

You looked around at your friends, but nobody would meet your eyes. Jackson looked especially tortured, clearly conflicted with his loyalty to you and Jinyoung separately. 

Finally, Sana sighed, relaxing back into her seat. “A few years ago, when you had gone home for your mom’s birthday, we all went out one night. The four of us, Jinyoung, and Yeri. Those two started bickering about an hour in, and Yeri ended up leaving. So Jinyoung got absolutely hammered, and we went to some shady pizza place to sober up. Before we even got our pizza, he told us how he’d liked you since middle school, but was ready to finally give up because you were obsessed with Jaebeom and you’d never see him that way. He vowed to get over you if it was the last thing he did.” 

You could only blink at your friend. It all sounded… not right. How could he have liked you without your knowledge? When had he stopped liking you? It made no sense. 

“But he was with Yeri then,” was all you could say. 

“Yes, he was,” Jackson replied. “And he’d been texting you all night before she got pissed off and left.” 

It had never, not even once, occurred to you that Jinyoung had feelings for you. Certainly not before you started having sex. You’d been friends, and he had never crossed any lines with you, even after he and Yeri broke up. 

“I don’t…” you shook your head, staring down at Jinyoung’s last message. 

I miss you. 

“Listen, I don’t know when he stopped liking you, but this just… doesn’t seem like a good idea.” Sana reached for your hand across the table and gave it a squeeze. “Is it worth risking your friendship?” 

The question had entered your mind more times than you could count in the last two months. But after a while, you’d just gotten used to it. You liked the bubble you lived in, where you could just enjoy the present without worrying about the consequences. 

Your heart felt like it was going to drop into your stomach.

“If it helps,” Bambam said, placing a comforting hand on your wrist. “I was blacked out that night and had no fucking clue until just now.” 

It didn’t help. You just shook your head again, reaching down between your feet for your purse. “I need to go. Sorry. I just need…”

You never finished your sentence. Jackson let you out of the booth and you rushed out of the diner, greeted by the warm summer air. You placed your hand between your ribs, willing your heart to slow its pounding.  

So, he’d liked you. For a while. At least until a few years ago—while he was with Yeri. Why hadn’t he ever said anything? 

Would it have mattered? You had tunnel vision for Jaebeom until this whole arrangement had begun, and you’d never seen Jinyoung in that way before that first night. You knew yourself, you would have let him down easy and continued chasing after Jaebeom. 

You started to walk in the direction of your apartment. It was a long walk, but it was doable. You needed the time to clear your head. 

More puzzle pieces started to fall into place the more you thought about it. 

He and Jaebeom had been so close, like brothers, until you graduated high school. Then Jinyoung started getting a sour look whenever you asked about the other boy and you learned to avoid the topic. 

Yeri had never liked you. It hurt your feelings the entire span of their relationship, because you couldn’t figure out why. If she knew how Jinyoung felt, or even suspected it... of course she wouldn’t like you. 

As much as you wanted to believe it was all a misunderstanding, you couldn’t deny the truth staring you in the face. Jinyoung had liked you for years, and you had no idea. 

You needed to figure out your own heart. You didn’t have feelings for him, you were sure of it. It was just biological—good sex messed with your head, that’s all. 

And yet…

The only thing that made sense was that Jinyoung no longer felt this way about you. He’d decided to get over you, and you knew he accomplished any goal he set his mind to. 

You should have felt relief, but you didn’t. You couldn’t quite identify the sadness in your heart, the utter hollowness at missing something you never knew you could’ve had. 

When you finally got back to your apartment, both your mind and your feet were tired. You dragged yourself to the bathroom, wiping off your makeup and brushing your hair into a ponytail. 

Maybe it was your exhaustion. Maybe you were tired, in general, of holding that barrier up. The one thing separating you from what could either be the best thing that ever happened to you, or soul crushing heartbreak.

As you crawled into bed and pulled your knees up to your chest, you finally let the wall come down and held the feeling that fell into your palms safe and close to your heart like a firefly. Just this once, you recognized the terrifying truth you’d been denying for weeks.

You were falling in love. 

[barrysjumpsuit]

blindsided - oc (barry’s sister) x rafe cameron (ch. 5)

chapter 1, masterlist

word count: 3.4k

warnings: cannabis use, underage alcohol use, mentions of hard drugs, drug withdrawal, firearms, verbal and physical abuse

synopsis:  christy is a lifelong resident of the outer banks. after a series of hookups with rafe cameron, kook royalty, she’s smitten. what she doesn’t know is about what her boyfriend and brother are involved in behind her back

a/n: i struggled with some of the content in this one, so i glazed over withdrawal related topics because it’s hard for me to write. if you are struggling with anything mentioned in this chapter, please seek professional help!

some of the canon plot comes into here, i’m just ignoring the sarah x john b aspect of it. one or two chapters left in this... enjoy :) 

---

Sunlight filtering through Rafe’s bedroom window woke Christy up the next morning. Rafe was still asleep beside her, messy and smelly, still wearing clothes from the previous day.

Christy stood, needing a moment to herself, despite the fact that Rafe was still asleep. She stood and stepped outside his bedroom, leaning against the wall and sliding down it until she could sit. The hallway was silent, the carpet plush underneath her bare feet. 

Shit, she thought as she realized she was supposed to be at work an hour ago. She didn’t know where her phone was. Closing her eyes, Christy leaned her head against her knees, which she had pulled to her chest. She would have to call Mr. C and apologize for missing work, she would have to deal with Rafe, and she would have to deal with Barry. How could she face him, knowing that he sold Rafe coke after he became sober? 

Voices coming up the stairs eventually jerked Christy out of her trance, but she didn’t look up as they paused as they reached the top of the landing. “Christy…” she heard Sarah Cameron say softly, and a second later, she felt someone sit down beside her.

Sarah didn’t know boundaries. Normally, Christy would have fought away from her grip but as Sarah wrapped her arms around her and pulled her into her, she didn’t fight it. She opened her eyes to see Topper crouch down in front of them.

“How is he?” Topper asked quietly. 

“He’s Rafe,” she managed to say, pushing herself off of Sarah. “We talked. He said he’s going to try to sober up. He flushed what he had on him but I don’t think that was all of it.”

Sarah sighed beside her, and Topper nodded. Christy ran a hand through her hair, feeling it fall every which way. 

“It’s going to get bad,” she continued. “Like last time. He thinks he’ll be able to ride it out but he won’t be able to. He’s going to need more support than what I can give him.” 

“What can we do to help?” Sarah asked from beside her.

“Keep an eye on him. Especially if he goes out. Withdrawal… fucks with you.”

She was interrupted by Rafe’s bedroom door opening. He stepped out, still looking sleepy, awkwardly acknowledging everyone sitting in the hallway outside his room. “Hey, Christy, your brother keeps calling you.”

Rafe held out her phone, and Christy’s stomach rolled. A wave of nausea washed over her. She reached out and took it from him, standing, and going back into his bedroom, closing the door and locking it for privacy.

“Barry, you’re the last person I want to talk to right now,” she spat as she accepted his call. 

“That’s not very nice, sis. But hey, we’ve got bigger problems than that.”

“The fuck you mean?” Pacing around Rafe’s room, her words were full of anger.

“That Maybank kid? He took all my money.”

“What? He wouldn’t do that.” 

“Well, he fuckin did, those kids are up to something. They came in to pawn a fuck ton of gold today, Christy. You’re good with him, right? Like you’re cool with each other?”

“Barry, apparently I don’t know who I’m good with anymore, especially when you sell all your blow to my boyfriend!”

She was yelling, and heard a knock on the door, but she ignored it.

“Look, sis, he’s clean, he said he had deals already set up-”

“Well, that’s not what happened, Barry. This wouldn’t have happened if you had the balls to sell your own shit!”

“Chris!” Barry was yelling now on the other end of the line, and Christy realized she was crying as she fell silent. “Christy, please believe me. I wouldn’t lie to you, would I?”

She knew what Barry was saying was true. Barry was a piece of shit, but they would never lie to each other. 

“Christy?” she heard him ask again and she sighed, sitting down onto Rafe’s bed. 

“I can see if I can find him and ask him,” she said.

“Hey, I’m sorry about Rafe.” 

Barry’s words surprised her, but she couldn’t respond. She hung up without saying anything, tossing her phone aside and putting her head in her hands. 

“Hey baby, let me in there!” Rafe yelled, pounding on the door. After a shaky exhale, she stood and unlocked the door, letting him in. 

Rafe immediately pulled her into a hug and she pressed her face against his shirt despite the fact it smelled like sweat. “Do you want me to talk to your brother for you?” she heard him ask, but she just shook her head. “Okay,” he whispered.

Christy eventually pulled away, wiping at her eyes before looking at him. He looked exhausted, his hair messy against his forehead. She could tell he felt like shit, but was trying to hold himself together.

“JJ stole all of Barry’s money,” she said quietly. “I’m going to have to find him to talk it out.”

“Want me to go with you?” Rafe asked.

Christy shook her head, almost laughing at the idea. “You really think that would be wise? He fucking hates your guts.”

Her boyfriend just sighed in response before she continued.

“He said you told him you weren’t going to use, and that you already had something set up,” she said cautiously. Rafe clenched his saw, and something changed in his eyes.

“He’s a liar,” he said, and Christy was quick to retaliate.

“My brother isn’t a liar,” she responded sternly. “Rafe... I thought we weren’t going to lie to each other.”

Rafe grabbed both of her arms, his hands trailing down them until he caught her hands in his. “I’m not lying to you, I promise, baby,” he said, his words rushed. 

Christy sighed, not wanting to have the argument. “I’ve gotta go, Rafe.”

“Baby…”

“Just… give me some space, Rafe,” she said, not able to look up at him. “I just want to get this fucking money back so my brother and I can eat, okay?”

“Let me help you,” Rafe insisted, but Christy was just shaking her head. She picked up her phone off the bed and sandals off the ground before shoving past him, out the door. Rafe grabbed her and roughly pulled her back into his bedroom.

“Rafe, let go of me!” she yelled, struggling to get free. She kicked the doorframe, her bare toe stinging on the impact. “Rafe!”

“Hey, what the fuck?” she heard a voice say. Suddenly there were more hands, and she felt Rafe pried off of her.

Rafe and Topper were between Christy and the doorway. She looked down at her toe; it was bleeding and streaked across Rafe’s white carpet.

“Get the fuck off me!” Rafe yelled, shoving Topper.

“Hey hey hey,” Topper said, and Rafe at him again. Topper’s large frame dwarfed his, especially in his weakened state. 

“Dude, what the-”

“Listen up, big guy,” Topper said, raising his voice. Christy had stepped to the other side of Rafe’s bed, as if she could use it as a barrier between the two. Topper had cornered Rafe by the bathroom door and was talking to him quietly. “Get out of here, Christy,” she heard, and Christy quickly obliged.

After picking up her dropped phone and sandals, she went into the hall, where Sarah rushed towards her. “Christy-” she started, but she shrugged her off. 

She hurried down the stairs, passing by Ward Cameron and Rose as she left through the back door. They shouted after her, but she ignored them, starting down the road towards the Cut. It was hot and humid out, and she was still wearing the previous night’s party clothes. Jean shorts and a bandeau. She ignored the weird looks she got from those passing by, and instead tried to figure out where JJ would be.

The obvious first stop would be either his house or at John B’s. JJ’s house was closer to where she currently was, so she headed there first.

It was empty. She stepped in, knowing his father would probably be asleep, but he was nowhere to be seen, and JJ wasn’t, either.

John B’s was a short walk away and when she got there the group was mingling outside as usual, smoking pot and drinking beers. Christy knew she looked like a mess, and they all stopped speaking as she approached them.

“Barry send you here to do his bidding?” Pope asked, and she noticed how tense they all looked.

“He just sent me to see if I could get his money back,” she said, stopping a short distance away. 

“Dude… are you okay?” Kiara asked. “You missed your shift this morning and didn’t call. My dad was worried.”

Christy looked down to her toe. The nail was split, and it had begun to swell and was still covered in blood. “I’m fine,” she lied. “I just want to know what’s going on.”

She could feel her voice shake, only slightly. The others looked at her guardedly, before John B pulled up an extra chair to their circle. “Sit down,” he said.

They told her everything. About the gold, about their beef with Rafe and Topper, about how Barry told them to go to a place that didn’t exist. He had stopped their car, holding them at gunpoint, and they knocked him out before JJ stole the money from their house.

She felt like a punching bag, each new bit of information another blow. 

“The money’s already spent,” JJ said hesitantly, and Christy’s breath caught as she was hit once again. 

“What about the gold?” she asked.

“Ward Cameron has it, it’s on a plane and it’s set to leave this afternoon.”

Another hit.

“Fuck,” she muttered, putting her head into her hands. 

“Here,” JJ said, and Christy blindly reached for the joint she knew he was handing her. She took a long and hard hit, everyone staying silent. After another, she told her part of the story.

“We’re stopping that plane, Christy,” John B said, his voice convincing enough for her to look up and meet his gaze. “We’ll get you your money back.”

He cast a pointed look at JJ, who raised his hands in a surrender. 

Christy’s head was spinning, from the emotions, the heat, and the weed. She felt the others staring at her before she took another hit of the joint and handed it back to JJ. 

Then, she stood and turned and walked away.

---

The trailer was in disarray, much like it was when she had left. She rummaged through the cabinets, looking for something to eat, before settling on some stale cereal as her best bet. Barry was nowhere to be seen.

After checking on her plants, Christy laid on the couch in the living room, smoking a cigarette, waiting for her brother to return. It was silent, aside from the sound of a plane taking off from nearby, and her heart sank and she lit another cigarette.

It wasn’t until the sun had set that he arrived. By then, she had five butts in the ash tray on the coffee table. It was dark in the trailer, so only the glowing ember of her cigarette made it evident that she was there and waiting.

“Can we talk?” she asked, and Barry just dropped three grocery bags on the counter before he pushed the screen door open and stepped outside, letting it bang loudly shut behind him. She got up and followed him, seeing that he was sitting on the picnic table, waiting.

Christy took a seat down next to him, taking another drag of her cigarette before speaking. “You held Routledge and the others at gunpoint?”

“They too-”

“That was before they took your cash, Barry.” Smoke came out of her mouth as she spoke. “Why’d you do it?”

“I… I don’t know. The opportunity presented itself. I just wanted to scare them and see if I could make something out of it, I never was going to hurt anyone, okay?”

“They’re fucking kids, Barry! They’re in high school!” she said, exasperated. She glared at him as she brought her cigarette back up to her lips, feeling the burn on her fingers as the embers neared the butt. 

“I fucked up,” Barry admitted, and they were silent.

Christy ashed her cigarette on the picnic table. She waited a minute before speaking. “Ward Cameron had the gold on his plane. It left this afternoon.”

“You hear that Routledge kid is a fugitive now?” Barry asked. “He killed Peterkin at the runway.”

“I don’t believe that for a second,” she said. “He wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

“Ay, I don’t know what happened, but they’re all out lookin’ for him.” There was another silence before Barry spoke again. “How’s Rafe doin’?”

“I made him flush everything. He told me he was helping his dad last night and I found him at a party, coked out. I confronted him and he… got violent.”

“Did he hurt you?” Barry asked, and Christy shook her head.

“I took him home and we talked and he flushed it. This morning he didn’t want me to leave him.”

“Christy, I swear… he told me he had no intention to use.”

“I believe you,” she said quietly, thinking back to how he acted that morning and the night before. “He tried to use that excuse on me, but he had already outed himself.”

“Why’d he do it?”

“I smoked weed with him a few nights ago and he said he liked the high and missed it. So it’s my fault.” Christy was messing with her lighter, flicking it and watching the flame.

“It’s not your fault, Chris,” Barry said. “We all fuck up, it’s part of life.”

“Whatever,” she huffed. “I’m going to bed.”

At that, she stood and stepped off the picnic table, entering the stuffy trailer. She grabbed her bowl from her nightstand, trying to push the thoughts of what was to come from her head, and smoked herself to sleep.

--

Topper called Christy in the morning, saying that he and Rafe were spending the day together and that she wouldn’t have to worry about him. She thanked him before heading into the Wreck, and all anybody could talk about was Peterkin being shot and the manhunt for John B.

Christy did her best to smile through it all. She had to brush away Mr. C, who frantically asked her if she knew anything. Kiara hadn’t come home the previous night, and was missing her shift and not answering her parent’s calls.

She only worked through noon, instead heading home to prep for the incoming storm. Barry was nowhere to be seen, his bike absent from the yard where it was usually parked. After closing up all the windows and moving buckets underneath the leaky areas of the trailer, Christy went and laid on the dock and lit up, watching the storm roll in with the sound of police sirens ever present inland. 

Barry returned just around sunset. Christy didn’t move from her spot on the dock to greet him. She sat there until the rain started, finally standing and walking down the dock and up into the trailer.

“You hear anything about that Routledge kid?” Barry asked from his bedroom while she undid the lock to hers.

“Nothing,” she replied. “Wonder what’s gonna happen with this storm rolling in.”

At that, she pushed open her door before making a quick trip to the kitchen to find something to eat. She opted for yet another PB&J, licking the knife clean before retreating back to her bedroom.

The walls shook as the storm fell upon the island. She ate quickly before laying down, trying to sleep, but failing. 

--

The next morning, Christy was smacked with information when she woke up.

John B had driven Luke Maybank’s boat into the storm and they lost all contact. John B and Chirsty weren’t very close, but it still hurt.

Barry gave Christy her space that morning. She called Rafe, and he said he was going out fishing with his dad. She didn’t have work, so she lounged around the house with nothing much to do.

Just before noon, Luke Maybank showed up, a fistful of cash requesting whatever Barry got, obviously furious at his son’s actions.

Christy watched him and Barry yell at eachother. It almost felt like an out of body experience, as if she was a spectator to a tennis match. Her heart ached for JJ, who she knew would become the subject of his father’s frustrations.

She listened to Luke attack Barry for being out of coke, then she heard Barry attack Luke for letting his son steal thousands of dollars from him. Christy only moved when Luke’s fist collided with Barry’s face.

Barry fought back, having held his own in many fights before. Christy went in and helped kick at Luke, until he crawled backwards, cursing the both of them. Barry watched him stumble to his feet and storm away, grinning with his bloody teeth.

“You good?” she asked, and Barry just nodded, wiping his bloody nose on his arm. 

“You want to walk to town and get something for dinner?” Barry asked, taking off his already stained t-shirt and pressing it against his nose.

“Only if you’re not covered in blood,” she replied, making a face at him. 

“Yes ma’am,” Barry said, and they saluted at each other before he disappeared into the trailer.

Christy waited for him on the couch outside, watching two birds fight over some type of food.

Barry emerged a few minutes later, his face free of blood and his hair neatly tied back. They began their walk to the strip with local eateries in the Cut - it was a walk they took quite often, about ten minutes each way.

They walked along the worn grass drive, to the gravel road that eventually connected to the main road - it led to just a few other run down trailers in the area.

A vehicle was barrelling down it, a cloud of dust behind it. It screeched to a halt, and suddenly, someone was pinning Barry up against the truck, a gun to his head.

“Rafe?” she asked dumbly, refusing to believe it was him.

He was yelling at Barry. She ran forward, trying to push Rafe off of him, but he pushed me back instead.

“Rafe, what the fuck!” she yelled, and he swung at her, hitting her face with the butt of his gun.

“Yo, get your hands off her!” Barry yelled, making a move but Rafe kicked him to the ground, sending him stumbling towards where Christy laid. 

The wild look in Rafe’s eye was foreign. She didn’t know this man. This was someone else entirely. 

“You don’t own me, Barry,” Rafe grunted, kicking him again. Christy tried to grab onto him, but she was just kicked away.

She knew Barry always carried a gun, tucked behind the waistband of his pants. Reaching forward, she grabbed it, and levelled it at Rafe.

It took him a second to realize what she was doing. “Baby…” he said, but she cut him off.

“Don’t call me that, Rafe,” she said. Barry was curled up beside her, his face covered in blood. “What the fuck is going on?”

“You didn’t tell her, Country Club? Oooh, you’re in trouble,” Barry said, and Rafe kicked him in the ribs again.

“Hey!” Christy was shouting now. Rafe was still holding his gun, pointing it at her brother. “Tell me what’s going on, Rafe.”

She could see his jaw clench, and every muscle in his body was tense. “She doesn’t need to know,” he said, a bit of weakness in his voice.

Barry started laughing, but stopped as he heard a click from Rafe’s gun as he switched off the safety.

“Rafe, hey man, you don’t want to do this…” Barry pleaded. He scooted back, pushing himself up with the help of Rafe’s truck, so that Christy was the only one still on the ground. “Put the guns away. Both of you.”

Neither of them moved. Christy could hear her brother’s labored breathing.

“Guns away,” Barry said, in a sing songy voice. “You too, Christy.”

She obliged, setting her gun on the ground, not moving her eyes from Rafe.

He finally set his on the ground, clasping his hands behind his head and taking a shaky breath. Christy and Barry exchanged a glance, a devilish grin spreading over her brother’s face. “Tell her what you did, County Club.”

“I…” Rafe pinched his eyes shut, obviously not wanting to say. “I killed Peterkin.”

---

taglist (lmk if you want to be added!) @stargazingstarkey @letsgofullkook @ims0golden @ampanonyg @hoeforpankow @jjsmentalpolaroids @queenk00k @drewstarkey @obbx-tings @bricksatanakinswindow @sortagaysortahigh @prejudic3   @delinquentstarkey  @rudypankow-whore @drewxxrudy​ @jjmaybcnks​

[tslasvegas]

Episode 12: “I’ve been awakened.” - Xavier

Well that vote went exactly how I had hoped it would... and then the super idol came out! I'm glad that it's out of the game now once and for all, but I guarantee that Liv is going to find something else along the way. It's so hard for me to summarize everything that I'm doing around here because I feel like I'm doing a lot. Maybe that's going to come bite me in the ass this coming vote but idk, I'm not mad about it. I definitely limited myself a lot by really not going for the money shot and convincing Jeff to use his vote steal on Joey to get Joey the hell out of here, but maybe in some weird way it works. Because now I have John's 8 chips and I'm going to need as many as I can get to somehow beat Livingston. I definitely think that snubbing this vote is going to be my biggest detriment only bc it provides the opportunity for Livingston to ascend higher as a threat, but also avoid getting voted out at our next convenience. I still really want Kailyn to go, but I think the goal for everyone else is to get rid of Livingston or myself (maybe Joey) at the next tribal council. Ugh. Heh... I never would've thought that I could pull off that kind of a move and have it not fully work out in my favor. It was a cool feeling regardless and I'm not crushed if it means I played myself out of the game. I give myself credit where it's due, I'm going to continue fighting as always and hopefully I come out on top :~)

Last Luxor standing 

Whelp, there goes the Super Idol. Jaiden is a snakey little snake snake. Pat and Jeff are naïve as all hell. I'm not 100% sure I believe Jaiden now, but apparently Joey's plan was to cut me at like final 6 or something. And people are so convinced that Livingston and I are a duo. I mean we are, but like maybe if anyone would ACTUALLY FUCKING TALK TO ME AND TRY TO WORK WITH ME, we wouldn't be??? Like don't whine and bitch that Livingston and I are a duo who are going to stick together and not turn against each other if you can't even be bothered to respond to a single fucking message of mine. I have no issues voting out whoever is necessary for me to get farther in the game. But when only a limited number of people express in interest in going farther with me? You better fucking bet I'm working with those people. Anyways, can't wait to vote out Jaiden, Kailyn and Xavier. xoxo Gossip Girl 

Waiting on Immunity Results, but whatever happens the 5 of us need to vote together, and be smart about it! We know that liv, Keegan and Joey will vote together. Probably for me next. So Jeff Pat need to stick with us. We need to split the votes 3-2, and use a vote steal, cancel or extra to get it to 3-3 just in case of idols. We need to be smart about this. Going all out and proposing this once results are in. I am going to the Jury next anyway, go out guns blazing.

...five seconds later

OMG I WON IMMUNITY! Finally something good! I figured most people gave their correct numbers, and if not, just chose a number close to theirs. OR they didn't coordinate so well, so some gave a higher number and others gave a lower one, so it cancelled out. Also helps that I knew Liv and Pat's numbers with the advantage. Pat gave mine accidentally so I knew his was in the 40s as well. Phew. Now to figure out whether to use the Steal a Vote now or not.

I came so close to winning immunity but it was rudely snatched away from me by Xavier. On the plus side, Livingston found the hidden immunity idol on the idol board! Heck yeah! As long as there isn’t a full blindside we should be good now! 

(originally written 11/23, night after super idol) Anyways what rly bugs me is that Jeff is actually mad at me now for the fact that he wasted his vote on Joey and I tried to get rid of Livingston instead... and I think I put myself into a spot where I need to apologize to him and make him feel good about me again. Tbh no I don’t. Jeff said to me that he’s got to play his own game first and mine second. So why am I playing some other people’s games first? Because it benefits me to play everyone’s hand for them, yes, but also I’ve been caught trying to run the entire table a little too early. So maybe now it’s time for me to do something a little different - play my game first. It’s now fully Jeff’s fault that Joey didn’t leave. I told Jeff precisely what he needed to do to ensure Joey went home. He needed to play the vote steal and send Joey on packing... and he didn’t. So now when Pat and I finally talk tomorrow and he tells me what’s up, I’m not gonna hold back. I’m going to throw Jeff under that bus so fucking hard his head will spin. Pat doesn’t know about the vote steal and I think I’ll hold that piece of information over Jeff’s head a little bit longer - I know something no one else knows about you, keep me safe or it’s coming out and everyone’s going to come after you. So tomorrow I will blame Jeff to Pat. Sure I was the person who made the move, but it’s my game and I’m playing it now. If Pat doesn’t like my apology, then kiss my ass and take eighth place. Bye!

...five seconds later

I'm pessimistic as FUCK so I'm fully expecting to go home tonight and I'm writing this confessional against better judgment because I need to rly focus on letting my mental state get back to normal rather than Survivor mode before I get voted out lmfao. Anyways, tonight is FINALLY the night where I'm making my last move against Joey, one way or another. This is the decision that will either determine oops sorry as I was writing that, I just realized something else... this is ME making yet another move that makes Jeff think I'm controlling the whole entire game I love that for me hehe. Should I convince the entire tribe to vote out Jeff instead??? Let's go fully with the chaos mode. DRAW ROCKS BITCHES!!!! Jk Jk Back to my original point - this is the vote that determines whether I was worth being brought back for this game or not. I'm not trying to be this like crazy strategist who has all these cracked plans to take out Joey but that's where we're at rn. One side of me like, trusts Jeff but the other side of me doesn't. So I told Jeff about Joey's legacy advantage and now it's like, getting Jeff to want to turn on Joey. Even though Joey told me he wanted to get rid of Jeff it seems like Jeff is not as stressed about it. I'm pretty sure Jeff turned votes against me instead, it is what it is. It's the game. However, Jeff would be really stupid to not vote out Joey now while he has the chance... it's probably going to come down to Jeff winning this whole entire thing if he makes the correct move tonight because I'm certainly not going to turn my back on him if he follows through. But, crazy things have happened tonight. And it's about to get a whole lot crazier. :) Although I'm like, CERTAIN I'm going home tonight or at least getting votes. OK IM TRYING SO HARD TO WRITE THIS CONFESSIONAL BUT SO MUCH IS HAPPENING AHHHH IM STRESSING OUT BUT I KNOW THERES A GOOD PLAN OUT THERE FOR ME TO MAKE AND HOPEFULLY IM NOT SCREWING MYSELF OVER 

...five seconds later

OKAY I think I'm gonna be ok but I'm taking a HUGE risk rn!!! Basically putting my vote onto Liv with Joey and hoping Joey 1) doesnt have an idol and 2) gets the rest of the votes. But my logic for voting Liv is simple. If Joey actually has an idol he's been hiding, he plays it and reveals I voted for him again if I don't do it. It also prevents me/Kailyn from going home 2-1-0 since Keegan and Liv seem to be locked in on one of us (likely me). If somehow Jeff/Pat are lying and are part of split, it'll go 2-2-2-2 which is not only insane but it also gives me a PERFECT platform to light people up, namely Jeff and his vote steal advantage. But we'll see! I'm predicting to go home tonight :) But at least I made a move when I could. Good luck to me <3

[p-artsypants]

Longest Night (5)

Ao3 | FF.net

The next morning, Marinette awoke to a blaring alarm, again. Another day. But today there was no arguing with Tikki, no begging for a few more hours of sleep. She just got up, took her shower, got dressed and came downstairs for breakfast.

“Well, look at you, sunshine!” Sabine smiled at her. “Uh oh, what happened to your cheek?”

Marinette had practiced her lie and explained that she had fallen out of bed, and hit her cheek on the corner of her desk, and yes she dressed the wound all by her self, wasn’t she very clever?

“I’m proud of you,” Sabine said, as she wrapped up her breakfast. “You’ve taken this very well.”

Well of course. She’s very clumsy, she hurts herself all the time. Why would a scratch on the cheek be any different? “Thanks mom, love you!”

And she hurried off to school.

The moment she stepped on school property though, she was suddenly aware of wary glances in her direction.

That’s right, everyone hated her.

“Oh shit.” She said aloud.  

“You forgot about that, didn’t you?” Asked Tikki.

Marinette sighed, and continued on. “Yeah, but it’s nothing compared to what I’m actually worried about. Honestly, I’d rather deal with this.”

Tikki zipped back in her bag, as Marinette went inside and up the stairs.

Not a word of greeting. Not a friendly face. Not that she had been expecting one, of course.

In the classroom, Alya, Adrien, and Nino were all talking, and when she entered, they all gave her a surprised look.

“You came!” Adrien chirped.

“Yep.”

Alya turned away, still disappointed.

Nino saw the exchange, shrugged and stood. He gathered his things and moved to sit next to Alya.

Marinette looked at the vacant seat. “Can I...do you mind if I sit here?”

“No, please, be my guest.”

She sighed in relief. “Thank you, Adrien.” She set her book bag down and relaxed into the seat. Who knew how long she’d have it before Lila concocted another lie and get her moved?

“What happened to your cheek?” He asked.

“Uh, I fell. I got my feet tangled in my sheets and hit my face in the corner of my desk. I’m such a klutz.”

He gave her a look, one she was unfamiliar with, but then he just smiled and said, “I’m glad you’re alright.”

“Thanks.”

His cheeks tinged a slight pink. “I actually have a gift for you.”

Her eyebrows rose. “Really?”

“Yeah, I was going to bring it to you at lunch, but since you’re here...” He dug around in his bag and pulled out a black portfolio, handing it to her. Inside were the most beautiful and high quality prints of various shoots. Some that were never even released to the public.

“Adrien…”

“You took down all those other photos, and I know you really do like fashion. So I put this together. We had some extra prints at home.”

She flipped through them, her cheeks warm. Then she closed it and hugged the book to her chest. “Thank you so much! This means a lot to me.”

He smiled in return. “Anything for my friend.”

The ‘f’ word didn’t even sting anymore, because it was such a sweet and thoughtful gift.

A few moments later, Lila came in. She looked at Marinette, and opened her mouth to speak, but thought better of it and went to her seat. Possibly preparing the next stage of her master plan.

Marinette and Adrien talked briefly, as the bell wrung and Miss Bustier came in.

She noted the changed seating arrangements, and then stated, “Marinette, I’d like a word with you after class.”

Marinette sighed. “Yes ma’am.”

—

True to her promise, Marinette stayed behind while her classmates went to Ms. Mendeleiev’s class.

All except Adrien.

Miss Bustier looked between them, but didn’t ask him to leave. “Marinette, Lila told me something pretty concerning yesterday...”

“If it’s about me taking pictures of Adrien in the locker room, it’s not true. She’s lying.”

“Marinette...” Miss Bustier said with a reprimanding tone.

“I’m serious! I didn’t do it! She told the whole class that I did, and I had to get up in front of everyone and admit that I had a crush on Adrien! She told everyone first! Just to humiliate me!”

“I’m sure that’s not her intention. But she should have told a teacher first.”

Marinette groaned. “But I didn’t even take any photos! She’s lying!”

“It’s true, Miss Bustier.” Adrien added, bless his heart. “I even went through her phone. She had some pictures, but none of me changing.”

Miss Bustier sighed. “Well, Lila also had witnesses to corroborate her story. I don’t know who to believe.”

“That’s impossible! I didn’t do it in the first place! And yesterday she said she was the only one that saw me! Her witnesses are lying!” Marinette was growing more and more frustrated as the conversation went on.

Miss Bustier rested a hand on Marinette’s shoulder. “Marinette, you’re a good kid. You always have done good and made sure there was justice for all. But this is it.”

It felt like the floor opened up beneath her and swallowed her whole. “W-What?”

“You’re becoming increasingly more absent from my class. And when you are here, you fall asleep half the time. Your grades are slipping, and Alya has had to fill in for a lot of your duties as President.”

“That’s—that’s just because I’m—I’m always helping in the bakery! I have to wake up early to help and—“

“Marinette, I’m sorry.” Miss Bustier smiled at her so sadly. “But if you’re this busy, then having you as President isn’t helping. We’ll find someone else.”

Her mouth felt dry, but her eyes welled up with tears and her vision blurred. “But…but I worked so hard…”

“I know you did.”

Adrien tried to say something, anything to help, but there was nothing to say.

Marinette clenched her fists and then stormed out of the room without a word.

Adrien was quick to follow after. “Marinette…”

She stopped walking and turned to him. “This is stupid!”

“I agree.”

“I don’t need this right now! I’m dealing with a lot! It’s not—It’s totally unfair!” Tears escaped. “I didn’t take any pictures…”

“I know you didn’t, Marinette. I believe you.”

“Are you sure? Because every time someone doesn’t believe me, I start to think that you’re only here for pity. That you’re trying to keep me from becoming an akuma.”

“I don’t want you to become an akuma,” he confirmed, “But I also believe you. You’re our everyday Ladybug. I still believe that.”

She rubbed under her eyes. “Thank you, Adrien. I’m sorry, if…if I’m causing you trouble.”

He waved her off. “Don’t even worry about it.” He placed a warm hand on her back and steered her towards the next class. “Once she trips up, you’ll have people lining up to apologize, and I’ll be right next to you, smiling.”

He opened the door for her, “After you.”

She grinned. “Thank you, sir.”

The second they stepped in the room, Mendeleiev was shouting. “Adrien! Marinette! So glad you decided to come to class! Where were you?”

“We were talking to Miss Bustier.” Adrien supplied.

“Oh that’s it? Do you have a pass then?”

Marinette paled. “Oh…no…I walked out before—“

“Detention. Both of you.”

“What!” They both cried out indignantly.  

“If you’re late for class, at least don’t lie about it!”

“I’m not lying!” Marinette cried out.

“Yeah, like you’re not lying about taking photos of Adrien.” Alix muttered under her breath.

“Miss Mendeleiev, Miss Bustier held us back after class, everyone heard it. Right?” Adrien asked the room.

No one came to their rescue.

Marinette was at her wits end. She balled up her fists and trembled. “Anybody else want to drop anything on me?!” She cried out. “Anyone else want to be my enemy!?”

We’re enemies now, Ladybug. You’re going to regret that for the rest of your short life.

She suddenly felt nauseous. “I need to go…”

“You’ve missed enough of my classes. If you don’t want to have another detention, sit down.”

“But—“

Chloe snickered, “Well, do you want her akumatized in the room, or outside?”

Marinette wanted to cry. “I’m not going to become an akuma!” She shrieked.

“Sit!”

So she sat, in the front of the room, where Nino usually sat. He had taken her spot again, and that was fine with her. If Alya wasn’t going to be helpful, then good riddance.

She glanced over to Adrien, who had his head in his hands and looked absolutely devastated. “You okay?” She whispered.

“I’ve never had detention before. My dad’s going to kill me…or at least pull me out of school.”

She exhaled, dejected. Today really was the worst day.  

But it’s not like it could get worse.

Right?

It came quite suddenly. A large boom from across the street. Debris and shrapnel flew across the street and crashed through the windows, ending class for the day.

“I would have thought Dupain-Cheng would have been our akuma.” Chloe said, just loud enough to be heard as they all evacuated the building.

Marinette ignored everyone, the teachers, her old friends, and even Adrien, and ran.

An akuma is exactly what she needed right now. Something to fight, something to direct her anger on, and for Marinette to disappear for a few hours.

She snuck into the bathroom and Ladybug escaped through the window.

—

Chat Noir was on the scene nearly the same time she was, surveying the damage.

“This one’s going to suck.” He said, plainly, his eyes focused on the giant gaping hole in the building.

“Yeah. You haven’t seen a glimpse of it yet, have you?”

“Nope, just heard it.”

There was another boom a few blocks away, and they both turned towards it.

But someone else was already running towards the sound.

Ladybug groaned. “Alya!”

The reporter perked up immediately. “Ladybug! The Akuma is this way!”

“I know! You need to get out of here!”

“No way! I need to get footage for the blog!”

She had it with her. Ladybug clamped her hand down on Alya’s shoulder and forced her to look at her. “Would you listen to me for once?!”

Alya shrank at the anger, completely blindsided by it. “Ladybug...?”

“Go home. This one is too dangerous. Just...please.”

Alya swallowed, hurt, but understanding. “Yes ma’am. I’ll go.”

Ladybug simply nodded and continued on.

Chat caught up with her quickly. “You having a bad day too?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe.”

“Then let’s end this quickly so we can get some ice cream and sulk.”

She actually smiled. “That sounds awesome.”

Around the corner, they found themselves to the back of the akuma. A gargantuan man, with long stringy hair hanging down. Instead of arms, he had long, thick chains that dragged. And at the end of the chains, two massive iron balls scraped against the ground in place of fists.

Each step he took punctured a hole in the street.

“Shit.” Ladybug said under her breath.

The akuma stopped, hearing her speak and turned to her.

“Double shit.”

It didn’t say anything. No grand announcement or introduction, which was standard for most Akuma.

Instead, he simply grunted, and the left wrecking ball came barreling towards them.

Chat hooked her around the waist, and vaulted them away, leaving a crater in their wake.

“Okay, so he’s fast too. Great.” Ladybug huffed.

The next second, another wrecking ball came at them, prompting them to run farther away.

“Stay away from the buildings,” Ladybug reprimanded. “They won’t stop him.”

“Right.”

Ladybug dodged the next attack by slinging out her yo-yo around a flag pole, and then going over the akuma, careful to avoid the arch of his swing.

Ladybug landed next to the last crater, with Chat landing behind her shortly.

“I don’t particularly like being a fly when the akuma has such a permanent swatter, My Lady.”

“I agree.”

The wrecking ball was coming back around, being swung around sideways.

“But I barely have a moment to run, let alone think!” She wrapped an arm around him, and flung them both in the air. The smaller the target, the better.

They watched from above as the akuma stomped his way towards them, the ground shaking with each step.

“So he can swing the wrecking balls really fast, but he can’t run, or even walk quickly.”

“I can cataclysm one of the chains, so that way we only have to worry about one instead of two.”

“That’s as good of a plan as any.” With that, she released them to fall, just as the akuma was going to take a swing at the building they were attached to.

“Catacls—AUGH!” Mid shout, Chat was struck and went flying backwards and slammed into a building, hard.

“Chat!” Ladybug called out for him.

He laid on the ground, unmoving.

The akuma turned towards him, as the ground started shaking with each step. He wound up to bring his wrecking ball down on him.

“Don’t you dare!” Ladybug sent out her yo-yo, wrapping around the wrecking ball, but it didn’t stop it. Instead, she went flying, and collided with the building right next to her partner.

Her vision swam, as she tried to move. The akuma was coming their way, and she could feel the ground shaking. Turning to her side, she found her self alone, with no sign of Chat anywhere.

“Ng…Cha—?” She managed to choke out.

Turning back towards the akuma, she saw another figure there instead. They grabbed her arm, and began to drag her away.

“Where…?” She managed again, her head pounding.

“Shh…” said the figure, pulling her up short.

Ladybug would remember seeing her reflection in a pair of sunglasses, and a salty taste on her tongue, before she fell unconscious.  

[selenecrawford]

Selene Crawford :The Tiger, The God of War and The Bro’s

Decided to play a bit with how the story evolves. I hope you liked this chapter. I had a lot of fun making it.

Warning: Cursing

Without hesitating Shingen approached the group with great confidence. Never stop smiling he took the bottle and served himself a drink. Masamune was going to confront him when Nobunaga's voice stopped him.

“Calm down Dragon, The tiger is not alone aren't you?”

“I'm flattered that you may think you know me Oda, but I have to give it to you, yes,  I'm not alone. Kenshin is with Princess and Yuki and Sasuke are checking for bugs...” drinking in one shot Shingen went for another shot but Mitsuhide took the bottle away.

“So what brings your group to our turf?” Mitsuhide served him a glass and pass it to Hideyoshi.

“Your turf uh?” the sarcastic smirk of Shingen went big and wide.

“My, My, aren't we too cocky aren't ya snake?”

“Shingen is late, we are tired and frankly we are having something going on. Unless, you are done rattling the nest, state your business or leave.” said Nobunaga with tiredness on his voice.

Shingen stopped smiling, and took the remaining chair on the table. Masamune was still silent a bad signal noticed by all including Shingen.

“Go check on her Masamune but do not engage, clear?” No response. “Don't make me repeat myself again Date, ARE WE CLEAR?” the second time Nobunaga's voice was raised in a deeper and more authoritative tone.

Masamune couldn't trust his own voice so he gave a nod and went back to his office. He was trying really hard not to kill them all. His blood was boiling with hatred. His mind was foggy and full of many scenarios. He just gave a head shake to clear his mind. She is ok, she is just sleeping and she is safe. The walk to his office seemed longer than usual. When he arrived, Kenshin was facing the door while reclined against the wall. Like Shingen, his jacket and trousers were black with his shirt with horizontal lines between sky soft blue, gold and white. Considering himself an eccentric, he was donning a fedora and a white rabbit pin on one of the sides. With arms crossed and closed eyes he seemed almost asleep. Masamune stood next to the door of his office.

“It's been a while Dragon, I never thought you will look so weak.” the soft tone of voice might not had been loud but it was enough for Masamune to stop mid action and stiffen his back straight.

“I don't have time for your bullshit, God of War, just pray she is ok...”

“And what if she is not?” a mocking smile appeared on Kenshin's mouth.

Before Masamune could react Sasuke appeared at the other side of the hallway.

“Everything is clear, boss. Shall we join Shingen?”

Masamune stopped on his tracks waiting for the next move of Kenshin. With a mocking smirk, Kenshin finally stood and walk toward Sasuke and Yuki before the trio disappeared into the break room. Masamune felt his auto control almost at his limit, turning toward his office he entered trying to be as silent as possible. He found her still asleep, gripping his jacket as if it were a safety blanket. Her face was relaxed and her breathing was even and soft. Looking at her made him, forget the rest of them. He took a seat at the floor near her, he just reclined his head near the edge of the sofa and took in all he could of the image before his eyes. He became addicted to her face and her smile. A bittersweet smile played on his lips while remembering when sometimes he managed to make her blush with his invitations to date. Masamune knew she was going to say no. But couldn't get enough of that flustered face, her scar was more visible and somehow made her look even more beautiful. He closed his eyes for a moment and gave a deep sigh. Letting his mind wondering he couldn't stopped the feeling that he failed her just like he failed his father on that fateful day.

Meanwhile, The trio joined Shingen and reported all his findings. The place was clear and Selene was resting although she might need more than a couple of hours to sleep. The ordeal was more than enough to top the end of the week.

Shingen took the opportunity to finally state his business to the Oda. He hated him but he noticed a changed on the atmosphere of the place. Could it be that she was the cause? The day he saw her looking like a 16 year old attending the phone he thought she was a minor maybe a friend or family of one of them. She was courteous and nice to him but also she display such a wall...Shingen was a courier of information, while he was wealthy enough to last him a lifetime he always felt inclined to help those who were less fortunate. He studied law like Oda and managed and started his law firm to make pro Bono jobs in order to help. While Oda had a different approach both had a common goal. Unfortunately, the difference on ways to achieve their goal also created a rift between their friendship.

Normally he wouldn't saunter into the lair of the Devil but this time it was different. The princess, resting at the office of the Dragon was too precious to be left alone. The web, rattle like a war zone, when news of the shooting spread like wild fire. Oda, might have an idea of how valuable her assistant might be but not the full scope like him. With a knowing smile, Shingen decided to play a bit and poke the Devil on the blindside and see how much he could bleed?

“Say Oda, how much you do you know about your princess?”

“What does that supposed to mean?” Nobunaga raised an eyebrow suspiciously.

“Well, the word is that the shooting was for her not for you. And that it was a warning, perhaps?” Shingen gave a big grin like a kid who knows all the answers to the riddle and enjoyed bragging about it.

“ We run a background check and spoke with Kincaid as she told us. So far Selene, had been clear with us and she knows well that lies are not allowed.” Hideyoshi spoke as a matter of fact crossing his arms.

“Shingen if you are done playing, let's go this is boring as hell.” said Kenshin with an impatient tone.

Shingen smiled and decided to stop the games for now going straight to the point. “Selene is well known on the community Oda. Take care of her. No one, still knows who order this but whoever it is is playing with fire. I know you don't want to believe me. But again Princess is more than meets the eye. Keep that eye on her.” finishing his drink the group left the place leaving everyone as confused as ever.

Masamune saw from the office window when the group left. Checking once more on Selene he went back to the break room.

“Good timing Masamune, take Selene to your house and keep and eye on her during the weekend.” was the reception he got upon entering the break room.

“What we can do in the meantime?” was Mitsurani's turn to speak.

“Get all you can on the internet regarding Selene I will go see Kincaid once again to see if there is something missing.

“What's going on?” asked Masamune confused.

“As soon as we found we will let you know” answered Nobunaga with a frown.

The tasks were assigned and Masamune brought the car to the front of the backdoor. Nobunaga put Selene still sleeping on the back seat. He refrained from telling Nobunaga that Kenshin injected her with a sedative to let her rest a full night. He knew it wouldn't sit well with him.

“If something happens call him. I know he might know by now if pick up the messages.” Nobunaga put Selene gently on the seat and made sure she was comfortable.

Hideyoshi handed a bag with several things for Selene including her purse. “See you on Monday.”

Masamune left without a word on his way to the mountains. He had a house on the city but when he needed to be alone the mountains were his refuge. Or lair as sometimes, jokingly Selene likes to call it. The trip was a bit complicated and Masamune took extra measures to not be followed. Once home he took Selene to the guest room and tuck her in on the bed. The next following hours he set a perimeter and managed to activate the security system. Not having slept since yesterday, Masamune took a shower and took some Bermuda shorts and an old t shirt and lay down next to Selene. He laid a gentle kiss on her forehead and then stayed looking at her until he fell asleep.

It was noon when Selene started to awaken, for some reason she felt secure and warmth. Slowly opening her eyes, she found face to face with Masamune. Her heart started beating wildly at the sight of his face so near. Instead of panic a tender sensation made her feel flustered and in awe. She just looked at his face and could see his features up close and personal. After a couple of minutes she decided to get up and a sensation of Vertigo suddenly hit her.

“Shit, what is wrong with me?” while holding her head and waiting for the sensation to pass.

“Lass everything okay? What's wrong?” Masamune sit next to her holding her on his arms.

“ I don't know I woke up and suddenly the place started to spin. I need a shower. Where are we?” Selene's voice sounded a bit groggy.

“This is my house on the mountains. You are staying with me until Monday. Come on, I'll help get you to the bathroom.” Masamune sounded gentle and worried.

Making an effort Selene used the bathroom and then took a quick shower with Masamune at the door. Every 5 minutes Masamune asked Selene if she was ok just to make sure she didn't faint or fell. She was self conscious of being naked and every time she heard his voice her body jolted like she was being caressed by him. She dried herself and took a bath robe. Taking the shower curtain to the side Masamune went to get her on his arms.

“I can walk you know?” she protested in vain.

“Right now you are still pretty shaken. We need to change the bandages. I'm taking you to the kitchen ok?” he was holding her without any effort at all.

Selene didn't respond she felt somehow spoiled it and deep inside she was loving it. The kitchen was spacious with a center island table in granite. Masamune let her on one of the chairs and went to get a shirt and the first aid kit. Closing his eyes he waited for Selene to put the shirt on. Once she was ready he changed the bandage and prepared a small breakfast for both.  Selene still felt exhausted and wanted to sleep some more. Deciding to be stubborn this time she tried to walk with the help of Masamune. Once on the bed, he was going to leave when Selene took his hand.

“Could you stay with me I don't want to be alone right now, please.” her voice was pleading with sadness and desperation.

“Sure.” he didn't tough of anything else when he went back to bed and took her in his arms. He started caressing her hair until she fell asleep again. Kissing her head Masamune closed his eyes until he also fell asleep.

@datemasamunemaiwaifu @la-piperina @unstoppablelinda @elievalentine @colivara @ikesenhell @xathia-89 @masa-little-kitten @epicdragonlady @mikamiw @jennacat84 @kimi00twin @yeshasays @notsafefortum-blr

[ghostmartyr]

Fic: A Terrible Idea [9/?]

Fandom: Attack on Titan Title: A Terrible Idea Author: Immi Rating: PG-13 Summary: Ymir’s pursuit of the hot cheerleader was meant to stay strictly lustful. But it’s a high school AU with a ship tag, so you know, fuck that. Notes: This fic has a thing about three in the morning.

Segment summary: Kenny imparts life advice.

I II III IV V VI VII VIII

Maybe an actual parent would have wanted more details about what kind of party his bereft, innocent teenager was absconding away to instead of bonding with her friends and siblings in a night of passably sober revelry.

With Kenny, the conversation went something like this:

“Can I ditch homecoming to feel up a hot babe?”

“As long as no one ends up back in the house while I’m making out with my boyfriend, I physically could not care less.”

He didn’t mention the boyfriend in words during the actual conversation. He didn’t have to. The man might as well have been whistling all week long, asking them how many hours they thought they’d stay out come dance night. He’d conned Levi into being their chauffeur and everything. He got a haircut. Sometimes there really was fucking whistling.

He gave Ymir the green light to go be surrounded by people whose neckties cost more than all of her organs on the black market without so much as a suspicious question. To the untrained eye, it was negligent bullshit that Ymir was happy to exploit.

Years of living under his roof said that he already knew every single person at the Reiss party and had personally threatened at least five of them with murder. Creepy, but if it meant he wasn’t badgering her about her life choices, swell.

Too bad a certain other person couldn’t follow the example.

There was one side effect of dealing with a parental unit on this that wasn’t so great. Cowboy Dad believed, so very dearly, in cleaning up good so the rest of everyone would fuck off. He liked to call this having manners. As someone who’d had to sign paperwork to take on a more active role in not caring what teenagers did, he also thought it was his solemn duty to impart some of these manners to the spawn he could happily disown at will.

Predicted side effects of that included small talk about not pissing off the people who had invited her into their home. Since Historia had been the only one at all interested in her presence there, that wasn’t the worst promise she could think about keeping, so fine, whatever, can I go now and so on.

Unfair fucking blindsides included the suggestion (suggestion, like every other thing Kenny suggested didn’t carry promises of life getting very unpleasant if the suggestion didn’t see some follow-through) to go out and fetch some flowers to present to Historia’s parents when she showed up at the party.

“She doesn’t like her parents,” Ymir had said. That was a large part of the point.

Kenny had looked at her, unimpressed in the face of logic. “Sunshine,” he’d said, “where in the hell do you get the thought in your head that manners are for people you like?”

An hour later Ymir was hanging out in a flower shop, stretching the boundaries of her artistic sensibilities to figure out just how ugly a bouquet they were capable of. Kenny had stopped just short of making her pay for the damn things, so she had room to work, but there was only so much she could do. The worst combinations she had so far said, “Your daughter has let someone with zero taste into your house, but the good news is they’re desperate for you to think they’re trying.”

When what she wanted was closer to, “Fuck you for thinking I care about your approval before fucking your daughter, also fuck you in general,” preferably in freshly-picked pastels.

Ymir had never been a flower connoisseur, and turning the notch on her style of aggression back to passive definitely wasn’t her speed, but she knew passive aggressive went best with pastels. From what she knew of the Reiss family, their entire mansion would be covered with the things. Kenny would approve of her commitment to speaking her hosts’ language, but she’d have to work extra hard to keep from complementing their color theme.

Her only entertainment for the day was watching Porco freak over how to handle being at a dance in Pieck’s proximity. She had time.

She was also an efficient multitasker.

Porco’s sneakers tapped loudly against the linoleum floor. “She liked the roses last year,” he said, nowhere near the rose section. He was looking at peonies.

“She’ll like whatever you get her, and they’ll be dead in a few days. Stop angsting and pick something,” Ymir said, even less interested in his problems than usual. Pieck had sent an innocuous text earlier to remind her that she liked tulips. Hint hint. Somehow they were all still pretending that it wouldn’t melt her overly devious, mushy heart to be getting flowers from Pock at all.

Except for Porco. He really was that clueless, so cue the hours of fretting over which collection of stems would brighten Pieck’s desk best before their inevitable deaths. Accompanied by Ymir for reasons beyond a good laugh and pity, all thanks to their weird non-parent’s sense of propriety. Bringing a girl’s parents flowers wasn’t good manners, it was something out of Victorian era courtship advice bulletins. Near the end, after the two weeks of knowing each other had passed and it was time to ask the patriarch for his daughter’s hand.

Ymir thought she had a good idea of how that proposal would go. Awed by her acute flower arranging skills and misled by her tailored garb, she’d receive the father’s blessing and it would be rendered immediately moot because Historia would never forgive her for involving him in their love life.

“It doesn’t bother you that she’s using you to piss off her parents?” Porco had asked oh, maybe seven times when Ymir broke the news about how she was spending her Saturday night.

“Not anywhere near as much as it seems to bother you,” was the only answer to that, and it still took three more tries before he gave up in disgust and stopped blocking the middle of the hallway so she could go to bed.

Porco had weird ideas about family. Namely, that they were supposed to like each other. His blood parents were dead, automatically promoting them and everyone remotely like them to sainthood. His brother was so fervently adored that any first year psych student would gleefully attach a complex to it. He seemed to find it personally offensive that Historia couldn’t stand the people who hired her a personal driver.

Ymir would have loved not to care. She’d spent most of the previous night happily not caring. She’d spent most of their friendly afternoon jaunt to the neighborhood flower shop not caring. Pock had responded by making it his life mission to do enough caring for both of them. If he didn’t have the stress of not asking Pieck to dance to look forward to, he’d still be ranting her ears off.

“You don’t even want to date her!”

Way to state the obvious. That hadn’t been worth any response at all.

Ymir looked around at the colorful displays surrounding them. All perfectly designed to suit Porco’s purposes of failing to ask a girl out, none of them meant to check off a politeness box that had been summoned out of thin air to make her life more difficult.

Garish wasn’t going to play. No matter how badly the bright colors clashed, all the flowers were too healthy and friendly to get away with being used as a fuck you collage. She needed something with contrast to bring out that deliberate eye-gouging quality. Some of the lighter carnations could work. Classy and decorative in a clump, but put them next to something with some flair…

“Ymir?”

Ymir tilted her head Porco’s way and walked over to a selection of painfully sunny sunflowers. “What now?”

The follow-up didn’t follow through. His shoes squeaked and his jacket rustled while Ymir carefully mapped out her success of floral offense. Signs pointed to a talk happening.

“I—never mind,” Porco muttered.

One of those talks, then. Ymir rolled her eyes and searched out the heliotropes. Past experience dictated no gathering of custom bouquets herself, because the cashier would cry, and that would hold them up, but the second she said she was done and they fetched Pieck her tulips, Porco would be back to questioning everyone else’s life choices instead of his own.

“It’s too late to be her real date,” Ymir said, stopping to smell the roses. “You should have said something earlier if that’s what you wanted.”

Porco crossed his arms and scowled at the hydrangeas. Somehow they failed to burst into flames. Maybe because he looked closer to bursting into tears.

Ymir took magnanimous pity on her baby brother. “Just do what you always do: Wait for her to ask you to dance, and instead of mumbling and letting her drag you away, tell her you don’t want it to be a friend dance. She smiles, your heart melts, you live happily ever after, and I owe Marcel ten bucks.”

“Marcel wouldn’t bet on this,” Porco said, showing off the kind of deep misunderstanding only idolatry could foster. “He likes me.”

“That’s why he bet on you growing a pair,” Ymir said. “Don’t go letting your big brother down, now.”

Porco sulked. He had a way of doing it audibly.

They were through the purchase of Ymir’s custom monstrosity and Pieck’s much lovelier tulips before he brought it up again. A true sign of growth; last year he’d started the conversation once and then sworn her to absolute secrecy.

“You think she’d want to? If I asked?”

A flash of Historia’s wide eyes under the snack shack lights came to mind. A glimmer of a smile that matched the glitter on her cheek, all of her face lit up by Ymir.

“Sure,” Ymir said distantly, “girls like it when you show some initiative.”

----

“You keep tugging at your sleeves and I’m gonna feel insulted.”

Ymir dropped her hand from her suit jacket. “Dressing up three times a year isn’t enough to get used to formalwear. Perfect fit or not.”

Kenny didn’t bother dignifying her with a look. He was driving, and whatever Parenting 101 class he had crashed oh so many years ago had drilled not taking his eyes off the road with children present into his head better than a construction crew. He simply took the next turn, and drawled, “Funny, and here I thought it had something to do with your nerves making a fuss over this girl.”

Did no one ever stop to consider that if she wanted their thoughts about this, she’d ask for it? “Could also be that your shortcut landed us in the middle of nowhere and there’s nothing else to do but pluck threads.”

“Ymir, if you’d caught a single thread out of place, you’d be crowing about it ‘till the end of next month.” He took another turn. Second-to-last one, if Ymir was counting. “Find a better excuse or rub two brain cells together and work out how to stop lying.”

Ymir rolled her eyes and continued looking out the window. The winding road they were heading down was pure black-and-white movie horror. All they needed was some lightning. If the Reisses hadn’t already splurged on it, they ought to invest in a drawbridge and a moat. Great for parties.

Cowboy Dad had volunteered to drive her, and keeping up with his creepy way of knowing too much about everything, had told her they were taking a shortcut he knew before she had a chance to hand over the address. She’d told him she needed to be dropped off at the guest house, which was a fucking thing, so maybe his idea of how to get there could use some help, and got a shrug.

With the look he’d given her bouquet when she presented it, she’d call it a punishment, but passive wasn’t his brand of aggression either. Punishments were delivered with a highlighted anvil.

She pulled at her tie. Kenny sighed loudly.

One last turn, and they came back to civilization. Or some over-glammed approximation of it. A large stretch of road away, a gate shrouded in floodgates heralded their destination, and if it had a giant R in the middle of it, Ymir would have a great start to her bingo card for the night’s festivities. Historia had written the security code for it down on her hand the night before.

The car slowed halfway down the street, going at the speed society could agree belonged to stalkers or people who didn’t know how  to read maps.

“You got everything?” Kenny asked for the third time that hour.

‘Everything’ in this case meant Ymir, the invited one, her phone, the toy she’d brought along for another tally in her win column with Historia, and the gate crashing flowers. “Yeah,” Ymir said.

Heading up the slight hill to the cliché gate, Kenny dotted in the code smoothly, and open the spiked monstrosity went. Step one of the night accomplished. Historia hadn’t explicitly said that she wanted Ymir to avoid talking to anyone on the property until they laid eyes or other parts on each other, but Ymir could read between the lines. Her invite said to show up an hour early and head over to where the staff wasn’t preparing for the party. Until the curtain rose, Ymir was invisible and waiting in the wings.

They drove by the house, also known as an affront to taste so brightly lit that Ymir had to blink several times to confirm that it hadn’t been decked in four stories of cheap Christmas lights, and hit the side road that would lead to the guest house.

Ymir had never had much money, but she had trouble imagining a world where she’d look at her grand mansion with its sixty bathrooms and forty bedrooms, and decide that what it really needed was a smaller house next to it. Just to remind the first house how much better it was than everything around it.

Kenny rolled the car to a stop in front of the whipping house, and in a move that said she wasn’t the only one feeling the horror vibes tonight, killed the engine. He turned to her with his parent face on.

“A few ground rules before you go in there,” he said.

“Was there some reason you couldn’t do this at home, or—”

“No drinking.”

Ymir unbuckled her seatbelt to slouch more effectively in her seat. “Kuchel was just giving Marcel and Pock this lecture,” she said. “If you wanted me to hear it, we could have left five minutes later.”

“Sunshine,” Kenny said, “you’ve never partied with rich people before. All you know about these folks is that a girl you like can’t stand them, and each one’ll have a lawyer on speed dial so they don’t catch consequences when they show off for their fancy friends. That’s not company you want to lose your wits around. No drinking.”

“Great. Next up?”

“No having sex with this girl until you see a clean lab report.”

Ymir was too fucking young and too removed from the blood pressure problems Porco had to worry about a heart attack at her age, but for a second her cardiovascular system, built up by all the recent running, submitted to blind horror and slammed her chest with a sledgehammer.

“What.”

Parent of the Year, showing his usual concern for his offspring, propped his elbow against the steering wheel. Not a sign of remorse or pity in his eyes, he said, “You want to go about devirgining yourself, you do it safely. No letting your hormones go so wild you need a medical consult.”

Ymir took a second to pave over her new mental scars. “Right, I’ll just send her off for one instead,” she said. That’s what all the appealing sexual partners did these days. ‘I really want to jump your bones, won’t you pee in this cup for me?’ With a dash of ‘my dad wants confirmation that you are as much of a touch-starved virgin as everything you do says you are.’ The absolute pinnacle of game.

Kenny was the sort of guy who had probably met sympathy once in a bar and shot it. “You want your bits to fall off, or you want a fun time?”

The bad answer to that was that Ymir just wanted Historia. In a lot of ways and positions, all perfectly lewd. Only when the thought popped up, all she could think of was the marker against her cheek.

“Asking her for clerical proof of how diseased she is sounds like a real riot,” Ymir said instead.

“You can’t work your way around that, you’re too young to be having sex,” Kenny said. “Falling head over heels down a flight of stairs is how you get concussions, and I have enough of that to worry about with your brother.”

This conversation was a better case for not skipping the homecoming dance than anything the school had ever come up with, and it was unfair to the nth degree that she’d still rather be sitting outside the reject house. Unquestionably, which meant, put together with Kenny’s magic sleuthing powers, Ymir was now promised one more fun conversation with Historia in her future, putting to graphic verbal life all the things she thought about doing to her and couldn’t, because they didn’t have the right paperwork. Historia would definitely be on board with that. Things to look fucking forward to in the middle of looking forward to fucking.

Cowboy Dad was committed to his parenting course. He could write his dissertation on this feat of manipulation and emotional trauma. Jackass.

“Fine, great, anything else you want to ruin?”

Kenny unbuckled his seatbelt and opened his side of the car. “Your tie needs sorting. Out you get.”

Ymir rolled her eyes and stepped out into the night under the shadow of the guest house. Since it wasn’t drowned in lights, it was actually capable of casting a shadow. Kenny rounded the car and began his deliberately pointed adjustment of her suit, undoing all of the casual muss Ymir had fidgeted her way into. He saved the tie for last, securing it much tighter than her style called for.

“Anything goes wrong, or you need pickup early, you call. Got that?” he asked.

“Are you trying to make up for not knowing me when I was five?”

His large hands held her head. “Got it, kid?”

Way, way too committed to the parenting thing. Ymir made a show of sighing, and saluted him with the ugly bouquet of flowers he’d coerced her into buying. “Got it, cowboy.”

He pecked the top of her head. “Then you’re all set. Have fun, keep the stupid to the minimum, and don’t be afraid to use a fake name if someone’s too interested.” He set her free and clapped her on the back. “Knock ‘em dead.”

Umbilical cord officially cut for the evening, Ymir sauntered off to the doorstep, respectfully resolving to fix her tie once she was inside.

With Historia.

So much better than homecoming.

Next

[celestialallstars]

Episode #7: “That was what we in the business call a "bruh" moment.” - Stephen

NEVER MIND HE DID IT THE ABSOLUTE MADMAN DID IT HE USED THE VOTE STEAL SUCCESSFULLY AND GOT KORI RIGHT OUT OF THIS GAME. IN YOUR LIFE HAVE YOU EVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE THAT?

Oh I am so PUMPED! Kori leaving has all but confirmed most of the things we all thought already- Michael/Drew/Matt/Chloe are together. On top of that, Alyssa and by extension, Jack probably is also with them. Which leaves the remaining 4 of the OG Tuatha group (Rhys/Mitch/Stephen/Bryce) then Mitch. This also leaves Bryce/Loris/me. What does this tell me? I can't have Orfeo lose because it is sudden death for Bryce/Stephen/Loris...so I need to make sure my tribe loses. BUT I also need to make sure one of Jack or Alyssa leaves. Whether they are numbers for the others or not, I need people I'm with to gain upperhand before it is too late and if Orfeo keeps losing, even if we get to merge, I don't think it will matter because they will get numbers. So Operation: Snakegrass is now in effect

That was what we in the business call a "bruh" moment.

KORI WAS SLAIN! Not by an idol like I worried, but by an advantage that was much more powerful in that given situation! My game has effectively changed here on the Orfeo Tribe. I'm no longer trying to form an alliance that controls the outcomes of votes, I can only really look out for myself.

Michael, Matt, Drew, and Chloe are very likely to let go of the majority now that they have it. They aren't my rivals anymore. Not until the merge, anyway. Unfortunately, that means if we lose another challenge, Bryce and Loris will need to be the people who go home, barring any insane changes. I'm going to need to pander like I've never pandered before. I can't be mad with Michael until his time comes. Don't worry though, if I have any say in it, he won't make it past the first merge vote.

But, that's assuming I survive that long! I'm sure Bryce and Loris are just as freaked out as I am, so I need to out-pander them. I wish it didn't have to be this way, but that's just how the cookie crumbles.

Operation: Snakegrass so far got the first half downpack with us losing. Jared talked with Mitch who says he is close to me and Rhys. With Zach in the mix, we might be bale to get something going, but now we gotta be careful...anything can happen at this tribal methinks!

WOOP WOOP WOOP WOOP. Safe again! It’s so good to be back on the immunity train Choo choo. It’s also really good because I really don’t want to vote out anyone on my tribe and all the people I’m not as connected with are on the other tribe so keeping my tribe safe even tho I know Stephen and Bryce may not trust me 100% right now is CRUCIAL for my game going forward.

likeee ok. i have some hot goss i suppose. so i knew kori was leaving pre-tribal. bryce leaked the vote steal (michael - > loris - > bryce) and so it was meh. i was truly fine with either kori or matt leaving though because those two are legit like 2 of the only 3-5 people i dont feel like i got a connection with.

throughout the time between tribal results to challenge, i get asked by a few people to throw [bryce, loris, drew, stephen somewhat, chris]. chris mainly proposes that bryce and loris are with us and they're in danger, which is likely true. i just like.. i didnt throw because im triggered by that but i also like probs didnt try my hardest. who knows ! not me. anyway. AFTER I FLOPPED I LEGIT HAD LIKE 4 OF THEM PM ME SAYING 'THANKS FOR THROWING KING' LIKE FUCK OFF LKSDJGLDKGMLKDSGMLKDSG I DIDNT THROW but tbh i might play that up so they think im a generous queen xx

chris seems to want jack or alyssa out, as does jared. chris/rhys made alliance with me them jared and mitch which is cute. i feel like i should leak bc someones going to but im also too lazy to.

im lowkey really anxious though cuz i dont want my tribe to snap at me for thinkin i threw or blindside me. like NNNN and we're so close to merge.  BUT if things go accordingly, one of alyssa or jack should leave. i like both a lot but i think i'd prefer alyssa out. we have a 'f2' or smth but we dont rlly talk and i feel like because we never were on the same tribe til now, our allegiances just fell elsewhere (which is fine but its just hard to maintain that).

i dont want to get blindsided/voted off yet. 14th isnt cute... and like... im so close to merge. my guess is merge will be at 12/13 so... im so close. (its probs f8 but who cares). i just hope i can be safe enough that i dont go. i feel rlly good with chris/jared... rhys decent too. mitch not so much but im gonna try to forge a stronger bond. i think the girls are gonna choose 2 rid of jack but idk.. i hate this cuz i really like jack and getting to meet him beyond just a VL was great n i truly enjoyed this. so if he ends up leaving, and he reads this, i want u to know u are great n i love u n playing w u was fantastic!! same with anyone. like everyone left is fairly active and deserve to be here so im content.

god. anyone wanna speak up is gonna come out when i get blindsided LOL.

Sooo the 24 hour puzzle challenge cracked some things out of the water. Alliances got exposed left and right and now im in a 5 man alliance with og orfero and og tuatha against og cyrena. This is all becauase sharky leaked an alliance in one of his screenshots consisting of drew/michael/clohie/alyssa/jack/matt or some varient. In order for their numbers to weaken, we need to get rid of jack or alyssa. It doesn not help their case that they have not been on a tribe with anyone outside of og cyrena except drew and michael (who are on the other tribe). Right now, my alliance is debating on splitting the votes or making it unanimous but we are afraid of idols. We think that regardless of what happens, the one og cyrena left standing won't trust us any longer. I am excited to see where this tribal goes because the game is finally picking up speed!!!!

this game is carzy i hate it im legit. this is a video of me:

Hello I’m typing this compassionate with them with voice to text hello and say do you want to be your day because Drew Carey dick completely but now I’m scared Zach is going and I don’t want him to which is sad and I don’t know at the last round nothing at the boots that I thought he didn’t I kind a got fucked over

ok that was a disaster I give up. hi . drew carried immunity thank god. but now I’m scared Zach goes because I love Zach. umm I’m basically guaranteed merge unless I get super blindsided because I can just legacy if I think I’m going :^). I voted Matt just in case his vote steal was fake because either he lied and went home or he told the truth and lived but like the thing is Michael and drew don’t want me to tell Matt I knew so I can’t justify why I voted him to him MEANWHILE I told Bryce about it. and Bryce tells Matt he knew completely throwing that out the window but oh well. I love chloe... Bryce.. Michael.... Zach... drew..... Jared... Mitch..........I definitely forgot someone there oh RHYS.... love him and idk I think I’m good with a lot of the cast wooo because I like everyone else too 💗💗💗 when I win we won’t be shocked

The other tribe is super boring like I don’t know what’s happening and there’s like an hour and a half left so like I’m just sat here bored as shit like DO SOMETHING!

Audio might be bad, so basically, Chris has taken me under his wing as maybe his most trusted ally, and pitched me on a side vs. side type deal.

Side 1- Chris, Bryce, Loris, Zach, Mitch, Stephen, Rhys Side 2- Alyssa, Michael, Drew, Jack, Matt, Chloe

I am fully feeding into Chris' game at this point because for myself, working to advance his plan puts me in a much more powerful position than I believe he is anticipating.

Having incredibly close relationships with the Chris/Zach duo, a F2 with Bryce, an alliance with Mitch/Stephen, Rhys confiding in me about his game fears (and Rhys' thoughts being fed to me by Bryce), and an idol--- I really just need to work on Loris some more to establish myself with the most powerful position.

So, I've been very busy. But this tribal I have yet again sat back and haven't done much into it as I have been preoccupied. However it allows other people to take the heat, and I'm aware I'm not doing a lot. So I can spin it into a winning case as long as I do enough come the merge.

The vote is set to be a split on Alyssa and Jack, However Alyssa and Jack havent spoken about the vote which scares me. Which t hen puts me in a paranoid states as I've spoken to people less today. But we just made a new 5 person alliance (chris, me , jared, zach an mitch) which seems super extra if theyre planning on blindsiding me.

It is 7:18 PM and I have no idea who is going home. This is the most stressful fucking tribal I've ever been to

omg so alyssa going home wooh? she talks to me more than jack so i wish he left but like one has to leave so w/e. chris is a king i love him so much he threw for me zach is so annoying and didnt throw said he was but like he literally was trying 80% like girl just throw. i love rhys still and jared.. hope he still likes me idk we feel off. wooh yaa um like loris and i hate that michael and drew both told him about the double vote but not me like isnt that so quirky we hate those elara girls (is that the season they played)

JARED AND MITCH ARE SNAKING ME AND ALYSSA WITH THEIR NONCOMMITTAL RESPONSES I CAN FUCKING FEEL IT IM GOING HOME

________________________________________________________________

Alyssa is voted out 3-2-2.

[masterlistcrawford]

Selene Crawford:The Tiger, The God of War and The Bro’s

Decided to play a bit with how the story evolves. I hope you liked this chapter. I had a lot of fun making it.

Warning: Cursing

Without hesitating Shingen approached the group with great confidence. Never stop smiling he took the bottle and served himself a drink. Masamune was going to confront him when Nobunaga’s voice stopped him.

“Calm down Dragon, The tiger is not alone aren’t you?”

“I’m flattered that you may think you know me Oda, but I have to give it to you, yes,  I’m not alone. Kenshin is with Princess and Yuki and Sasuke are checking for bugs…” drinking in one shot Shingen went for another shot but Mitsuhide took the bottle away.

“So what brings your group to our turf?” Mitsuhide served him a glass and pass it to Hideyoshi.

“Your turf uh?” the sarcastic smirk of Shingen went big and wide.

“My, My, aren’t we too cocky aren’t ya snake?”

“Shingen is late, we are tired and frankly we are having something going on. Unless, you are done rattling the nest, state your business or leave.” said Nobunaga with tiredness on his voice.

Shingen stopped smiling, and took the remaining chair on the table. Masamune was still silent a bad signal noticed by all including Shingen.

“Go check on her Masamune but do not engage, clear?” No response. “Don’t make me repeat myself again Date, ARE WE CLEAR?” the second time Nobunaga’s voice was raised in a deeper and more authoritative tone.

Masamune couldn’t trust his own voice so he gave a nod and went back to his office. He was trying really hard not to kill them all. His blood was boiling with hatred. His mind was foggy and full of many scenarios. He just gave a head shake to clear his mind. She is ok, she is just sleeping and she is safe. The walk to his office seemed longer than usual. When he arrived, Kenshin was facing the door while reclined against the wall. Like Shingen, his jacket and trousers were black with his shirt with horizontal lines between sky soft blue, gold and white. Considering himself an eccentric, he was donning a fedora and a white rabbit pin on one of the sides. With arms crossed and closed eyes he seemed almost asleep. Masamune stood next to the door of his office.

“It’s been a while Dragon, I never thought you will look so weak.” the soft tone of voice might not had been loud but it was enough for Masamune to stop mid action and stiffen his back straight.

“I don’t have time for your bullshit, God of War, just pray she is ok…”

“And what if she is not?” a mocking smile appeared on Kenshin’s mouth.

Before Masamune could react Sasuke appeared at the other side of the hallway.

“Everything is clear, boss. Shall we join Shingen?”

Masamune stopped on his tracks waiting for the next move of Kenshin. With a mocking smirk, Kenshin finally stood and walk toward Sasuke and Yuki before the trio disappeared into the break room. Masamune felt his auto control almost at his limit, turning toward his office he entered trying to be as silent as possible. He found her still asleep, gripping his jacket as if it were a safety blanket. Her face was relaxed and her breathing was even and soft. Looking at her made him, forget the rest of them. He took a seat at the floor near her, he just reclined his head near the edge of the sofa and took in all he could of the image before his eyes. He became addicted to her face and her smile. A bittersweet smile played on his lips while remembering when sometimes he managed to make her blush with his invitations to date. Masamune knew she was going to say no. But couldn’t get enough of that flustered face, her scar was more visible and somehow made her look even more beautiful. He closed his eyes for a moment and gave a deep sigh. Letting his mind wondering he couldn’t stopped the feeling that he failed her just like he failed his father on that fateful day.

Meanwhile, The trio joined Shingen and reported all his findings. The place was clear and Selene was resting although she might need more than a couple of hours to sleep. The ordeal was more than enough to top the end of the week.

Shingen took the opportunity to finally state his business to the Oda. He hated him but he noticed a changed on the atmosphere of the place. Could it be that she was the cause? The day he saw her looking like a 16 year old attending the phone he thought she was a minor maybe a friend or family of one of them. She was courteous and nice to him but also she display such a wall…Shingen was a courier of information, while he was wealthy enough to last him a lifetime he always felt inclined to help those who were less fortunate. He studied law like Oda and managed and started his law firm to make pro Bono jobs in order to help. While Oda had a different approach both had a common goal. Unfortunately, the difference on ways to achieve their goal also created a rift between their friendship.

Normally he wouldn’t saunter into the lair of the Devil but this time it was different. The princess, resting at the office of the Dragon was too precious to be left alone. The web, rattle like a war zone, when news of the shooting spread like wild fire. Oda, might have an idea of how valuable her assistant might be but not the full scope like him. With a knowing smile, Shingen decided to play a bit and poke the Devil on the blindside and see how much he could bleed?

“Say Oda, how much you do you know about your princess?”

“What does that supposed to mean?” Nobunaga raised an eyebrow suspiciously.

“Well, the word is that the shooting was for her not for you. And that it was a warning, perhaps?” Shingen gave a big grin like a kid who knows all the answers to the riddle and enjoyed bragging about it.

“ We run a background check and spoke with Kincaid as she told us. So far Selene, had been clear with us and she knows well that lies are not allowed.” Hideyoshi spoke as a matter of fact crossing his arms.

“Shingen if you are done playing, let’s go this is boring as hell.” said Kenshin with an impatient tone.

Shingen smiled and decided to stop the games for now going straight to the point. “Selene is well known on the community Oda. Take care of her. No one, still knows who order this but whoever it is is playing with fire. I know you don’t want to believe me. But again Princess is more than meets the eye. Keep that eye on her.” finishing his drink the group left the place leaving everyone as confused as ever.

Masamune saw from the office window when the group left. Checking once more on Selene he went back to the break room.

“Good timing Masamune, take Selene to your house and keep and eye on her during the weekend.” was the reception he got upon entering the break room.

“What we can do in the meantime?” was Mitsurani’s turn to speak.

“Get all you can on the internet regarding Selene I will go see Kincaid once again to see if there is something missing.

“What’s going on?” asked Masamune confused.

“As soon as we found we will let you know” answered Nobunaga with a frown.

The tasks were assigned and Masamune brought the car to the front of the backdoor. Nobunaga put Selene still sleeping on the back seat. He refrained from telling Nobunaga that Kenshin injected her with a sedative to let her rest a full night. He knew it wouldn’t sit well with him.

“If something happens call him. I know he might know by now if pick up the messages.” Nobunaga put Selene gently on the seat and made sure she was comfortable.

Hideyoshi handed a bag with several things for Selene including her purse. “See you on Monday.”

Masamune left without a word on his way to the mountains. He had a house on the city but when he needed to be alone the mountains were his refuge. Or lair as sometimes, jokingly Selene likes to call it. The trip was a bit complicated and Masamune took extra measures to not be followed. Once home he took Selene to the guest room and tuck her in on the bed. The next following hours he set a perimeter and managed to activate the security system. Not having slept since yesterday, Masamune took a shower and took some Bermuda shorts and an old t shirt and lay down next to Selene. He laid a gentle kiss on her forehead and then stayed looking at her until he fell asleep.

It was noon when Selene started to awaken, for some reason she felt secure and warmth. Slowly opening her eyes, she found face to face with Masamune. Her heart started beating wildly at the sight of his face so near. Instead of panic a tender sensation made her feel flustered and in awe. She just looked at his face and could see his features up close and personal. After a couple of minutes she decided to get up and a sensation of Vertigo suddenly hit her.

“Shit, what is wrong with me?” while holding her head and waiting for the sensation to pass.

“Lass everything okay? What’s wrong?” Masamune sit next to her holding her on his arms.

“ I don’t know I woke up and suddenly the place started to spin. I need a shower. Where are we?” Selene’s voice sounded a bit groggy.

“This is my house on the mountains. You are staying with me until Monday. Come on, I’ll help get you to the bathroom.” Masamune sounded gentle and worried.

Making an effort Selene used the bathroom and then took a quick shower with Masamune at the door. Every 5 minutes Masamune asked Selene if she was ok just to make sure she didn’t faint or fell. She was self conscious of being naked and every time she heard his voice her body jolted like she was being caressed by him. She dried herself and took a bath robe. Taking the shower curtain to the side Masamune went to get her on his arms.

“I can walk you know?” she protested in vain.

“Right now you are still pretty shaken. We need to change the bandages. I’m taking you to the kitchen ok?” he was holding her without any effort at all.

Selene didn’t respond she felt somehow spoiled it and deep inside she was loving it. The kitchen was spacious with a center island table in granite. Masamune let her on one of the chairs and went to get a shirt and the first aid kit. Closing his eyes he waited for Selene to put the shirt on. Once she was ready he changed the bandage and prepared a small breakfast for both.  Selene still felt exhausted and wanted to sleep some more. Deciding to be stubborn this time she tried to walk with the help of Masamune. Once on the bed, he was going to leave when Selene took his hand.

“Could you stay with me I don’t want to be alone right now, please.” her voice was pleading with sadness and desperation.

“Sure.” he didn’t tough of anything else when he went back to bed and took her in his arms. He started caressing her hair until she fell asleep again. Kissing her head Masamune closed his eyes until he also fell asleep.

[blackpjensen]

How to Deal with Losing Clients

Kicking off a new season can be hard when clients decide not to renew their contracts. These LawnSite members share how they deal with the disappointment of losing clients.

Utah Lawn Care: How do you deal with losing clients? Sometimes they have a completely valid reason that they state. Other times they send an email telling you they won’t be needing your services anymore.

A couple weeks ago I sent a letter to my clients. I was just keeping in touch with them and letting them know that in the next few weeks we would update them with the specific day we would start their services back up. I mentioned we implemented a way to pay bills online, etc. I immediately started getting email responses canceling service. Probably seven of my 40 clients. Every email felt like a huge slap in the face. I spend so much money on advertising, and I want to grow my business so badly that it’s hard to feel like you’re going backward. How do you deal with these situations without taking it too personally?

PCLAWN25: There are unavoidable reasons that you can’t get upset about. Customers move, lose jobs, for example, not your fault. I would be worried about why the others left — was it price or quality? You need to find out why before you feel bad. It might be worth a trip to talk to them in person. No better way than a face-to-face discussion.

Ovi: Grief is a natural response to loss. Do a case study to identify your at-risk customers before they show up. Ask your clients why they are unhappy with whatever they are unhappy with. Make courtesy calls when there are no issues; mailing out of the blue is like saying “I am coming soon for my money.” A telephone conversation is a better way to communicate with customers. Face your grief by getting out of your comfort zone. Rebrand, if necessary, get more customers and move on. Above all, know the importance of accepting and coping with change; understanding these could positively lead you to new opportunities.

Utah Lawn Care: I made no changes. One lady said her grandson was going to do it. One guy said he got his mower fixed so he would do his own. One guy told me he hired a more full-service company without asking me if I offered more than mowing. I realize that’s my fault for not making him aware. Another guy who I mow two properties for said he didn’t need my services anymore. This will be the start of my third year in business. I am in a town of 30,000, so my business can only grow so big. My company isn’t old enough to have a large base of loyal customers. I imagine I will add a few loyal customers every year and others will come and go.

PenningsLandscaping: You just got blindsided by a big drop-off. Push hard in the spring sales rush, don’t let anything slip through your fingers. Give new customers some company literature, giving information on services. You’ll bounce back. You’re at this point where your company is growing, and losing seven lawns is a big deal, but you’re just getting larger and the bigger you are, the more you lose each year, because there’s more to lose. It’s business. Maybe a few will come back, but you can’t cry over it. Push hard, do a good job and you’ll be fine.

dKoester: From here out let people know you are a full-service lawn and landscape maintenance company. Do your best work and put all the terms and conditions upfront to let future clients know what to expect and then execute it flawlessly. So you experienced a bump in the road. Go advertise, get some more accounts and limit your churn.

Woody82986: When I started out, losing a client bothered me a little. Now it’s purely a business thing. I don’t get emotionally attached to any of my clients. Yeah, I’m friendly, and I know enough about their lives to be able to make conversation, but I don’t let it affect me personally anymore. Just double down on the word of mouth and other advertising you are doing and get them replaced. In the interim, pump your current clients for some extra work to get some of that lost income replaced. That’s something you should be doing anyway this time of year. Keep up your good work and you will be fine, I’m sure. Also, as your business matures, you will find that you create better, longer-lasting business relationships with your clients.

MLLNYC: There is a positive in every situation. You can use this “mass exodus” as an opportunity to learn where your company’s flaws are (pricing, quality of work, punctuality, appearance, advertising, communication, etc.). Type up a simple list of questions that could give you an idea of where you need to improve or where you need to shift your focus to and go to each of your lost customers in person and ask them. Compare their reasons, and you’ll find at least one commonality. Time spent sulking is time wasted in this industry.

RSMUTAH: Losing even one customer by their choice or situation is a bummer. The good thing is the time of year. Anyone looking for a new option is looking now. One thing that has helped when a customer cancels on me is to simply ask “Is there anything I could have done better?” I usually preface it by saying, “I’m always trying to make sure I’m running things as smooth as possible.” Other than that, oh well! Thank them for the business thus far, and wish them the best.

Mjk1968: I have been in business for 24 years and I have learned that it is very important to understand why a customer cancelled. In addition, it is just as important if not more to keep track of how you acquired the customer in the first place. Let me explain. I, as most everyone else, have a limited budget for marketing, and therefore you want to spend your marketing dollars on campaigns that result with the highest customer retention. A few years ago, I ran three separate marketing campaigns that did boost my overall customer base. A year later I analyzed the retention of those gained customers and two of the three campaigns had approximately 90 percent retention and the third campaign only had 40 percent retention. My service levels were the same for all customers, so I didn’t spend anymore wasted dollars on a campaign that only had 40 percent retention and I learned that sometimes the way you acquire a customer, regardless of service levels, doesn’t mean they are going to stick around. Some customers will always be in a shopping mode. New customers that were referred by another customer have always been the highest in retention. So instead of giving something away, you may want to reward that existing customer for making a referral. Best of luck to you in the growth of your company.

Read more on LawnSite: How to Deal With Losing Clients

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