#social life of DNA

[blacklifescience]

"Genetic analysis is indeed increasingly being used as a catalyst for reconciliation - to restore lineage, families, and knowledge of the past to make political claims in the present."

(The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation After the Genome by Alondra Nelson)

Biocapitalism:

I found the term "biocapitalism" intriguing and wanted to learn a little more. It is a new market that focuses on biological matters. The biotechnology extracts biological materials, such as plasma, blood, sperm, eggs, and treats them as commodities in the economic system. (Valdez, p. 13, footnote 39)

[bobcat-pie]

GO WATCH THE OCTOPUS LADY ON YOUTUBE, SHES SO COOL AND I'M LEARNING SO MUCH

[paradoxiii]

Growing up in the Midwest, hearing a tornado siren itself isn't really scary

But it does just have a tinge of spookiness to me for some reason?

And at the end of Charming Disaster's song "Power of the Sun" there's this vocalization that kinda reminds me of a tornado siren but as a spooky "oooOOOOOooo" and it never fails to haunt me when I listen to it.

[johnlatter]

Israel or Palestine? Let Natural Life make the decision

The behaviour exhibited by the Hamas terrorists when they attacked the Nova musical festival, or "Rave", near the Kibbutz Re'im on the opening day of the Israeli-Palestinian war is NOT transmitted by DNA. 

It is a function of an individual being broken as a child (the archeotrauma**) in exactly the same way that the spirit of a horse is broken. 

This is followed by years of ideological indoctrination that adds layers of repression to the original wound, transforming it into an internal psychological "God" (as opposed to any supernatural beings there might be existing externally to the now brainwashed head). 

The compounded and corrupted trauma can then be set off like an airbag in a car resulting in the type of unnatural atrocities that Hamas have such enthusiasm for.  

The terrorists will pass this corruption on to their offspring so that "hatreds" are passed on from generation to generation. Natural responses such as anger or laughter, on the other hand, have, "a beginning, a middle, and an end".

An AI (artificial intelligence) image showing an Israeli IDF soldier and an Hamas terrorist from the Gaza Strip staring at each other, their faces just inches apart.

Emerging from their backs are two large representations of the DNA double helix that stretch to the full height of the image.

The background shows indistinct shapes within a swirling sandstorm to reflect the turmoil the Hamas incursion into Israel from the Gaza Strip on the 7th of October 2023 has caused.

*Other locations attacked include the Kibbutz Be'eri, the Kibbutz Mefalsim, the Kibbutz Kfar Aza, etc..

**Alt. archaeotrauma; also see Evolution and Psychology Research.

[clanwarrior-tumbly]

Ooo you’re doing Pressure!!

May I request an artist reader who, throughout the journey found some paper, pencil and made a little makeshift sketchbook and when later bought Sebastian’s document decided to try and draw him? Like maybe both when human and current (and maybe the monsters)? 

Perhaps he saw them sketching, got curious and decided to look through it when reader left it somewhere or just straight up snatched it and held it out of their reach and sees those sketches of him. Could be hurt/comfort or angst/fluff.

Of course you’re free to change any of the details but please keep it platonic TwT

Aw love this idea! And it works considering all the paper and notebooks in the drawers of the blacksite.

............

"Great, [y/n]. One moment, you're doing some harmless graffiti on a brick wall nobody cares about. And the next, you're risking your life for a stupid crystal in hopes you'll get a federal pardon.."

Sighing, you held onto the overhead handles within the sleek black submarine, feeling it shake and rumble as it breached the water's surface. And after hearing the chime, the door hissed and opened up, the platform extending out onto the dock of a place already familiar to you: Hadal Blacksite.

'No place like home..' As you stepped out of the submarine, you could hear HQ over the PDA system informing you of your objective in reaching the crystal and collecting any "loose assets" you find along the way...

As if you needed any reminders of what you were doing here.

Immediately, you unlocked the first door with the keycard and began your journey to room 100. Along the way, you found a good handful of research data. Nothing too special aside from folders, USB drives, and a couple blue DNA vials.

Then after narrowly dodging the Angler in one area and avoiding Eyefestation's gaze in the next, you reached a room requiring yet another keycard to exit. You checked the nearby office cubicle, finding it in the first drawer you opened.

But that isn't what made your eyes light up. Rather, it's what was right next to the card that did:

A brand new pencil to go with the sketchbook you've been carrying with you.

Because you weren't given the luxury of doodling while sitting in jail for over 90 days, you felt your creativity flames being snuffed out, leaving you itching to draw something again.

Before all of this, you had a decent following on social media with your art skills, and you could imagine that they're worried sick over your sudden absence. But you hoped that, if you survive and succeed in this mission, you'll be able to come back and reassure them that you're very much alive.

And perhaps show them what Urbanshade has been hiding from the public...that is to say the sea monsters that have taken up residence in the Blacksite since its lockdown, freely roaming and haunting nearly every room you step into.

With the makeshift sketchbook you had (and somehow kept even after death), you've filled its pages with simple and detailed sketches of each creature you encountered.

But you doubt that they would let you leave with physical evidence of entities nobody else in the world should know about...unless you somehow convinced the guards that they were "original characters" that so-happened to look like them, but you had a feeling that excuse wouldn't fly.

Regardless, they've given you tons of artistic inspiration, despite your many close-calls with them in pursuit of studying their features from afar.

Thanks to the files Sebastian Solace has shown you, you've learned how to safely observe the Angler from a distance and better remember their details. They were merely a grotesque face surrounded by smoke, so you didn't have to worry about drawing any limbs or tails (assuming they had those).

You encountered their variants so many times that you could recall the little things that made each them unique--like how Pinkie had four pupils, how Blitz was missing pupils in one socket completely, how Froger was..well..a big frog with lots of needle-shaped teeth, and Chainsmoker was a sluggish blobfish through all that smoke.

Making eye contact with Pandemonium was a death sentence..as you've already learned after trying (and failing) to safely observe him through a glass window. So you draw him as you see him in his file.

The Squiddles' "intimidating" faces were scary in the dark when you least expected them, but they served as amazing inspiration. You even had a page full of what faces you'd think they make up to frighten others. It's too bad you couldn't show them, however, as that required you getting in their personal space.

Eyefestation, Good People, and the Wall Dwellers were quite..risky to observe, as they had ways of quickly and painfully sending you back to square one if you weren't careful. Even so, you made some pretty damn good sketches..and you wish you could show them off to them, too, especially to the shark who'd probably appreciate a human's drawing of herself.

Even the DiVine, who were always frozen in poses for some reason, joined your ever-growing list of muses. The oxygen gardens were a nice place for you to rest and appreciate the flora for a few moments--before an Angler came along, of course.

Then there was Sebastian.

While he was fully aware of your artistic passions, in the beginning he seemed a bit annoyed whenever you came into his shop just to sketch.....or if you took an unusually long time to reach him. He just assumes you've stopped to "doodle" and wonders if you really care about getting out of this place alive.

He'd remind you that HQ could get suspicious if you're off their radar for too long, but you've stayed in his shop for 10-20 minutes at a time and not once did your diving gear beep. So you reassured him not to fret.

It was kinda sweet that he worried over you, an expendable, although maybe that's because you actually treat him with decency..and don't take his snarky comments to heart whenever you died.

Aside from the occasional eyeroll whenever you brought out your sketchbook, he did inquire about some of the things you've drawn, and you'd show him, bearing a little pride in your work.

All you'd get in response was a "neato" or "wowie, that's how you see them?" and nothing more.

It wasn't insulting, so...you'll take that.

Obviously he was more concerned about how much research data you were willing to fork over in exchange for supplies, and how far that equipment will carry you before your next demise. So you'd eventually close the book and barter with him for whatever wares were on his tail.

Unbeknownst to him, you've actually started sketching him as of late. Now that you've met him dozens of times, it was easy for you to recall his features without needing to stare at him for reference every five seconds.

That would not only be rude, but very creepy.

Then one day, you showed up to Sebastian's shop with enough data to be able to afford his document, which described him as Z-13, "The Saboteur" who the company wanted "dead on sight" if he was spotted or trying to escape.

When you had time to read the file on your own, you learned some..pretty shocking things about how he caused the lockdown, went through torturous experiments, and was falsely accused of nine murders and was proven innocent far too late.

The most upsetting part was that he was never informed of this.

He learned that after presumably stealing his own document.

It made you feel sick to your stomach, knowing he's the reason you're being terrorized by those beasts, but you couldn't find it in your heart to be angry at him.

If anything you were angry at Urbanshade for their "guilty until proven innocent" system--or in his case, being proven innocent didn't matter.

His human mugshot was also included in the file, and even with the black censor bar covering his eyes, he still looked like quite a handsome fellow. You could make out some details, and ended up drawing him on a separate page, too, although part of you wishes you never started.

You doubt he would kill you or rip apart your book for drawing him, but considering how volatile and rude he could be at a moment's notice..you did your best to conceal the sketches when you visited his shop.

You didn't want him to be offended or reminded of his past..and make him resent the one person who he almost considered a genuine friend.

Unfortunately, you'd soon come to realize that your actions were only heightening his suspicions.

And that it was going to come to a head next time you entered his shop.

...............

"Okay, I'm going to bite...what're you really hiding in that little book?"

"Pardon?" Pausing mid-sketch, you looked up at Sebastian, wondering why he appeared so disgruntled. "I'm..uh...just doodling like I always-"

"No, don't give me that "like always" crap." He huffed, flicking the end of his tail as he crossed his two arms over his chest, staring down at you. "Last time, you couldn't stop showing me a stupid face you'd think one of those S-Qs would make...and now you won't even let me have a sneak peak of your next "masterpiece"." He spat the last word, voice dripping with disdain. "Are you really drawing something...or are you secretly writing intel to give to Urbanshade?"

"...wha.." You blinked in disbelief, wondering where he'd get that assumption from. "Why would I ever do that?"

"Oh I dunno, maaaybe because you have access to my file and know my location? I bet you're gonna sell me out to those scumbags once you reach the crystal." He gnashed his teeth. "Did they say you'd get extra cash for leaving tips on my whereabouts, huh?"

"Sebastian, there's no reason for this hostility. I'm not giving any intel to anyone-"

"Then you wouldn't mind me taking a look at this, would you? Yyyyyyoink!" His third arm was quick to snatch your sketchbook away, holding it out of your reach as you jumped up in panic.

You were already dreading his reaction.

This could very well be the end for you.

"Please give that back! You'll tear it!"

"You look frightened. So maybe I should, considering you're writing secrets about.....about...." But as Sebastian finally looked at the page, all he saw were sketches of his current self, and you began to see a shift in his expression.

It went from pure anger, to surprise and confusion, and then to....something unreadable.

"These are...all of me?" His voice became quieter as he flipped the page, only for his breath to hitch upon finding the drawings of his human form.

And for once, he was completely speechless.

The details were immaculate, everything from his hair style to the scar he used to have across his face--given to him from an angry cellmate who thought he really did kill those people and tried giving him a "taste of his own medicine".

But the way you made him look was...incredible.

That's him.

That's really him.

The man--the human--he was before...

Before...

"Yes." Your face was burning with embarrassment, and your heart was pounding with fear of both death and ridicule, now knowing that your fate laid in his hands now. "I-I'm sorry. I should've asked for your permission and I know the details aren't perfect but you didn't let me........huh?"

Ceasing your ramblings, you noticed the tears welling in his eyes, and you were stunned. Then his shaking hands closed the sketchbook and returned it to you. "Um..are you okay? I'm really sorry if-"

"I...a-almost forgot what I looked like before all of this.." He raised a claw to wipe at his watery eyes, sniffling. "They're...good drawings, friend. I'm sorry..I...I-I didn't mean to..." His voice cracked, and he forced himself to stop, bringing his hands to his face. "Why am I crying over something like..t-this..?"

He hated looking so weak in front of you, yet he couldn't help the tears that kept slipping down his cheeks. A certain sadness was weighing heavily on his heart, yet at the same time he felt...honored that you wanted to draw him, putting your heart and soul into every sketch--with him getting the most effort.

You didn't overexaggerate him as the hideous beast he and everyone else was convinced he was, but just him as, well, himself. His smiles when he realizes it's you coming through the vent again, his cheeky grins when you buy up all his supplies, and even the one time he pouted when you died to Pandemonium because you risked it all trying to draw the moldy fish-creature.

The human ones, as you could tell from the way he broke down, especially hit home for him. Just from a mugshot alone, you were able to create a near-accurate depiction of him.

It made him wonder if you two have met before any of this happened.

Sebastian sniffled, struggling to stop the tears and expecting you to make fun of him as he finally uncovered his face. But instead he saw you standing there with your arms opened up. "I feel like you could use one of these. It's okay. I know you miss being human."

".........."

"C'mon, big guy. My arms are kinda hurting--oh!"

Without warning, he accepted your embrace and squeezed you tightly in his hold. Of course he was careful not to crush your diving tanks, and you smiled in appreciation and patted his back. "It's okay, it's alright..I got you. I didn't mean to make you cry."

He sniffled a few times, but otherwise said nothing and tried making sure you weren't supporting all of his upper body weight.

Curse his size. He wishes he could experience a normal hug again.

This one will do, though.

"I-It's...it's fine. Don't worry.." He finally spoke after a few moments, calming down. "As long as you don't tell anyone about this."

"I'll take it to my grave." You chuckled, letting go and stepping away so he could straighten his back out. While he did that, you gently tore a few pages from your book, to which he blinked in confusion.

"What are you doing with-?"

"Keep them." You insisted. "In case this sketchbook falls into a pit or gets waterlogged, I want you to hold onto these. Besides, I can tell you appreciate them a lot. So...consider it a gift."

"Why..thank you." A smile appeared on his face as he took the pages carefully. "Rest assured, they'll be safe and sound." He gazed at them both one more time, feeling a tug on his heart.

But it wasn't as heavy as before.

After neatly folding and stowing them away into his pockets, he saw you already sitting in one of the chairs, your sketchbook opened to a brand new blank page.

"Sooooooo what are you going to draw this time?" He tilted his head, ear fins twitching with curiosity.

"Hm...I did see a vision of a white glowing man a few rooms back. I think he was from...the Mindscape? There was a file talking about him and some floating gears and a white ball."

"Ohh yeah, he's an interesting guy. I'd love to see your interpretation of him." Now Sebastian was 100% invested, as he curled his tail around himself, resting his upper body on it so he could see your book better. "But y'know you won't be able to leave this place with sketches of-"

"I'm well aware of that...I could always change a few things and turn them into OCs."

"Hah. You should."

"Maybe I will." You snickered, grateful that you didn't have anything to fear.

At least somebody in the Blacksite appreciated your art.

[idontknowreallyidontcare]

Can I get more horndog Nikto pls? Like Nikto legit wanting the reader every way emotionally and physically, becoming territorial of them, and the reader doesn't take him seriously because they don't wanna be another conquest. Sad horny boi lol

HORNDOG!NIKTO FOR MY NIKTO GIRLS.

- He is jealous, it’s pretty much in his Slavic dna to be, so once you show him a bit of affection without strings attached, he gets territorial. Nikto does a lot of questionable things to ensure the recruits know you’re off limits. From standing really close to you no matter what you’re doing at that moment, to literally pressing himself against your body like a horny dog. The creepiest thing he’s done was probably standing in a corner, intensively watching you read from afar. Recruits would get scared about coming to you for advice because he was there, awkwardly staring and they would get chills (he’s just so silly!).

- The first time Nikto got to know your sweet side was when you made biscuits for the barracks and decided to bring some to him too. He was not the type to hang around the base, so having such sweet little thing like you come and knock on his door with a bag of biscuits was very surprising and suspecting on his side. He found you hot, there was no denying, so having many other instances where you would do something for him without asking anything in exchange was starting to grow onto him. You always brushed it off, how possessive he began to be about you, thinking he was just an awkward adult that didn’t get to learn proper socialization, and well part of that was true. You kept brushing his affections off, he was like that and nothing could change him. You knew he liked women, too much for your own good, and part of you did not want to end up as another conquest.

- Many times he grew frustrated of you, because no matter how many signs he gave, you always seemed to not understand, or maybe not care at all. He would touch you, press himself into you, sweet talk to you, yet all you would do is pat his head and crack a joke, continuing with your duties and leaving him there, by himself, contemplating weather he should just give up and leave you be. And truth is he was close to leave you be many times.

- What he didn’t know was that you kinda felt the same, you always found in Nikto a safe place, from the instance you joined KorTac he was always there, sure he was as hard as a rock at the beginning, but you made your way into the small remains of his cold, broken heart. It started strangely, you’ve seen him alone once, back laid on the side of a small balcony, while his gaze was lost into nothingness. It hit you, how he was never around, he was never with the boys, never made attempts to make friends, and part of you knew he was afraid, afraid of scaring anyone. Truth is recruits always feared him, even if he never gave them a reason to. The only person he would get along with was König, and occasionally you’d see him in Horangi’s or Kreuger’s company. His mask was most of the times on, and you started to pity him. Such a poor, lonely man. God knows the last time he felt the warm touch of a woman, and not the touch you feel when the only thing you do is fuck, because he did not lack intercourse in his life, but the loving touch of a woman genuinely caring about him? That’s a whole different story.

- You started small, afraid of coming off too clingy. You brought him biscuits, you always made sure to carry a bottle of water at practice, knowing he would always drink a lot and would remain without one lot of times. You’d pass him your bottle and he’d thank you, almost shyly if you squint. You’d bring his clothes to his room from the drier, your excuse being that you were already there so why not, you’d cook for him sometimes too, well not really, it was just that you accidentally poured too much of this or too much of that and being alone on the base you didn’t want it to go to waste, excuses on excuses that were always working. You always thought he was a bit too silly to understand what you were actually doing, and you were right. He just thought you were constantly friend zoning him.

- It was difficult once he actually accepted what you were giving to him and he wanted more. Ignoring him when he got too needy, when he was too close, when he made advances and all you could do was joke or excuse yourself to another room. Truth is you were scared too because what has started as a small act of kindness towards a lonely teammate, became a lot more, and you didn’t know how to handle it.

- One particular night brought out all the hidden emotions. Coming from a mission was always the best time of the year, week, month, it was just the best time, not only because you were alive, but because you could finally rest and turn your brain off. Well for Nikto it was a yes no situation, he was happy to be alive but coming at the base where he would be ‘confined’ again due to his loneliness, was not something he was dreadful about. This time was just too much, and after what felt like hours of contemplation he just went for it. A soft knock on your door late into the night awakened you, not that you were particularly deep into sleep, since the arrival time from the mission was not long ago, but it woke you up, and you opened, for some reason finding yourself in front of who you actually expected to come. Nikto stayed still, admiring you for a bit, just for you to grab his hand and pull him into the room. You didn’t care anymore, after almost loosing him this many times of the battlefield the only thing you wanted to do was hug him. And you did, he dreamed about this moment for months, and it came so unexpected yet so sweet. The night was spent between kisses and hugs, late talks between two people that were too afraid to fall asleep because of the fear of this all being a dream.

- Actually labeling your relationship with Nikto changes many dynamics. He gets bolder definitely, he’s more secure and shows off more. Being in a relationship with him is giving him access to your privacy also, and he makes sure he takes advantage of it. He shamelessly ravages your panty drawer, sneaks up on you in the common showers, after gym becomes a gig where you’re trying to run and shower and he’s after you saying how hot you look right now and how you should let him bring you to his room first. Sex is something utterly surprising for you, you would’ve not given him half the credits he actually deserved, because he does know how to please you, and he’s avid with it. He’ll be a dog for you, waiting and begging and pleading until you give it to him.

- Ride his face he LOVES it, just use him as your personal seat and he’s cumming in his pants no lie. He’s a sucker for your pleasure, also a big voyeur, he tried to fuck you many times in the main hall, or in the showers, he once succeeded in the kitchen, and oh boy you could not look into the eyes of some of your female colleagues for a week straight. Nikto is always eager to try something new, that’s because he finally has you, his woman, and prefers to do with you all the things he never got to experience. He always told himself that he’d prefer waiting to do certain things only with the woman of his dreams, and there you were finally, ready to let him fuck you up, or the other way around.

- When I call Nikto a dog is because I mean it. The utter loyalty this man has for you is something straight out some romance movie. You’ll start to notice how his eyes are always on you, no matter the surroundings, no matter the circumstances, and the utterly look of an enamored man he gives you always succeeds to make you weak in the knees. He is avid, lustful, borderline possessive about you, like a feral dog that’s protecting the only thing that he ever got to call ‘his’. And don’t get off the birth control, because he brings to the bedroom each and every ounce of possessiveness he shows outside.

[spicy-apple-pie]

I WANNA HEAR ABOUT THE COMIC >:))))))

I did warn you…

Okay so idk if a lot of people know this, but Damian was originally given up for adoption right after he was born before his story was reconned.

So in this comic, Damian is 9 years old and in the foster system in Gotham, unknowing who his parents are. He’s never stays long in a home because he’s very aggressive. He’s smart though, so he orders a DNA testing kit to hopefully find a relative to take him. Imagine his shock when he finds out his father is Bruce Wayne.

So this 9 year old walks into WE by himself, toddles up to the secretary, and asks to see Bruce Wayne. The secretary is like “haha okay, let me help you find your parents.” And Damian is like “you can. My dad is Bruce Wayne.”

And then Tim shows up!! And he’s like, “who’s your dad?”

And Damian is suddenly really nervous and shyly passes Tim the DNA test results. Tim looks them over, and Damian thinks he’s going to get turned away. But then Tim smiles at him and asks him if he has time for a drink.

Damian basically explains his life story over a cup of hot chocolate to Tim. Tim listens and tells him that he’ll make sure Bruce sees it and gives him his number if he has any questions (Damian doesn’t have a phone). Damian gets up to throw out his cup but Tim is like “oh I can throw that out for you. Talk to you soon!”

Cut to the BatCave where Bruce is staring at the DNA test results. Showing him and Talia as the parents. Tim stands behind him. “I doubled and tripled checked.” He says. “Not to mention he’s the spitting image of you.” He mumbles under his breath, knowing that Bruce isn’t in the mood for jokes right now. Alfred places some Tylenol beside Bruce using his butler powers to sense his on coming headache.

“And you said he walked into the lobby by self?” Bruce asked.

“Yeah, he said he took the bus.”

“Oh dear,” Alfred comments, “that is certainly not safe for a boy his age in Gotham. I wonder if his social worker knows about that…”

So the next morning, Damian finds that he’s out of custody from his foster parents. And he’s like “but I didn’t do anything this time!” And his social workers like “no, they’re getting charged with child endangerment. We already have a place lined up for you.”

Lo and behold, his new foster home is Wayne Manor. And he meets Bruce for the first time and he’s really nervous. And Bruce has to turn away because he almost starts crying. And Damian asks Alfred if he did something wrong and Alfred’s like “no, he’s just very happy to see you.”

And that’s basically it. But I also have this idea of how he discovers his Dad is Batman.

He comes downstairs in the early morning for a snack before going back to sleep to find Red Hood raiding their fridge. He runs to Bruce and he’s freaking because fucking RED HOOD broke into their house.

And Bruce groans and is mildly annoyed about and Damian is like “???? Does this happen often????” Bruce brings him downstairs and Red Hood is still there, but making a grilled cheese with his helmet off.

“Jay, how many times do we need to tell you know masks in the house?”

“I dunno. How many fucking children are you going to adopt?” He gestures to Damian hiding behind Bruce.

“He doesn’t know yet, Jay. I was going to wait until he was more comfortable.”

Jason is a little sheepish because he did give the kid a bit of a fright, so he turns around to apologize and introduce himself. And instantly is like “holy shit, that’s a bio kid.”

“Language, Jay…”

“Don’t language me, where the fuck did he come from???”

“What is happening??!!” Damian finally yells.

And then Bruce shows him the BatCave.

I did warn you I’d talk your ear off. I came up with this circa. 2018 - 2019 but I feel like I finally have the skill to draw it. And I honestly fell in love with it again, so I might lol.

Edit: I did it

[astrocafecoffee]

Synastry and composite chart notes 💕

💟 For entertainment purposes only. Enjoy 💟

💖Moira( 638)asteroid in 7th house synastry: moira asteroid is related to fate, destiny. When someone's moira asteroid fall into your 7th house it indicates strong karmic connection between you both . You guys meant to meet and form a bond.

💖Destinn asteroid ( 6583) in 7th house in synastry: fated romantic connection. Both find inspiration and fulfillment through this connection.

💖Northnode conjunct Hera asteroid (103) in synastry: north node is related to future fate and hera is a marriage asteroid, so guys you know what I mean 🌝 , it's a fated connection .

💖Fama(408) conjunct juno in synastry: relationship with strong potential for fame/ public connection.

💖Karma (3811) conjunct south node in synastry: a strong past life/ karmic connection between you both. There is Karmic lessons need to be learned in this connection.

💖South node conjunct ascendent in synastry: again strong past life connection.

💖Destinn asteroid conjunct your name asteroid in synastry in 7th house: fated connection, there is a sense of destiny/ purpose in this connection.

💖Vertex conjunct northnode: meant to meet .

💖Union (1585) conjunct Boda (1487) in synastry: destiny related to partnership/ marriage. Strong connection between you both.

💖Briede(19029) or Groom (5129) asteroid in one of the angular house: often found in married couples.

💖Boda conjunct Harmonia asteroid: harmonious connection between both of you in the context of marriage and partnership.

💖Karma asteroid in 8th house synastry: unresolved issues from past lives need to be solve in this lifetime.

💖Devine (3561) asteroid in 7th house synastry: devine connection in the context of relationship.

💖Sun/ juno in Libra in composite chart: found in married couples.

💖Vertex in 7th house in composite chart: marriage placement.

💖Vertex conjunct karma asteroid in 7th house in composite chart: karmic connection between you both, meant to be in relationship.

💖DNA( 55555) asteroid in 7th house composite chart: fated to have relationship based on family/ genetics.

💖Moon conjunct descendent in composite chart: emotional bond and sensitivity in the relationship , strong emotional support between partners.

💖Destinn asteroid in 10th house of composite chart: meant to have relationship involved fame/ public reaction.

💖Union in 10th house composite chart: could meet in work environment , 10th house related themes / social events.

💖Aquarius rising couples in composite: bestfriends , out of the norms activity, breaking social norms ☠️.

💖Hera asteroid conjunct northnode in composite chart: again relationship based on marriage.

💖Saturn in 4th house composite chart: family can create disturbance in this relationship.

💖10th/5th/4th/7th house stellium in composite chart: found in married couples.

That's it for today. Thank you💕hope u guys enjoyed.

[caffeinatedvigilantewriter]

So I saw a post with art about Paulina and Damian being twins in spirit and I thought it was so GOOD AND I CANYVGWY IT OIT OF MY HEADDD

So Paulina and Damian were born in the Leauge, and because Paulina was the girl and the youngest she was treated more harshly out of the two.

Talia couldn’t take it and took Paulina to the states and put her up for adoption and told Ra’s she had died. Damian and Paulina were 5

Damian grew up without his twin, believing she died. He moved in with his father when he was 9 and didn’t mentioned because what was the point of mentioning someone who wasn’t even alive anymore. He also wanted to preserve her memory, he knew his sister as a frieze warrior, and the family’s grief and pity would hurt the image he had of he in his mind

So, when Damian is 15 and is banned from patrol for one reason or another he’s in the batcave, looking over the paper work from the MCOA (meta children of America, a program to try and locate meta children with powers to help them gain control and stability) and discovers two extremely powerful metas in Illinois.

Danny Fenton and Paulina Sanchez

(I think the extensive flagged as a meta gene, and because Danny is a halfa and Paulina pent her early childhood years around the pits and amity, she would be affected)

At first, looking at Paulinas photo hurt him, because she looks so much like his sister.

And he realizes that she is his sister.

Without telling anybody, he boards the next flight to Amity.

Paulina’s life as a civilian was jarring compared to the LOA. She had figured out Fentons identity almost immediately and (for fun) decide to pretend to be obsessed with him.

And when the school had them submit their DNA for the MCOA test, she was a bit worried, but here was nothing she could do at the time.

After the LOA didn’t come knocking, she figured she as safe.

Until she was sitting in Lancers class and her twin brother walking the room.

She doesn’t know that he’s not with the League, so she thinks he going to bing her and she not about to return.

So she brawls him in the middle of class.

They keep fighting, Damian fighting on defense, and Paulina digging on offense until Damian chokes out that he’s not with his mother any more and he’s with his father now

Paulina: oh we have a dad now? How is he

Damian: stupid

Paulina: you must take after him! What his name?

Damian: Bruce Wayne

Paulina: 🫢

Unfortunately, someone records the entire brawl and posts it on social media before they realize, and suddenly the Waynes are in Amity and so is the League.

And once the Leiage takes one look at Phangom with his ectoplasmic abilities like the Lazarus pit they also attempt to capture him.

So now not only does the whole world know that there’s another Wayne girl, but that Damian and Paulina were raised in a cult and that Ghosts are real.

So Paulina and Danny take shelter in Gotham with the Wayne’s and JLA protecting them (the LOA is one of the JLAs enemies)

(Danny x Damian!!)

[monimccoythings]

Logan as a retired family man

I've always seen logan as a man who would settle in a smalltown looking for some goddamned peace and tranquility, that he never seems to get lol. I was also craving some domestic Logan, a man who gave up fighting and is now more focused on his family but knows that deep down he can't escape who he is and how many enemies he has.

This can be interpreted as either m!reader/f!reader/gn!reader, the newborn is either biological, adopted or another of Logan's clones this time mixed with reader's dna.

tags: domestic logan, f!reader or m! reader or gn!reader, logan being a dad, lumberjack logan.

Retired!Logan who hung his claws and now lives a peaceful life in a cabin in the woods close to a small town with you, Laura and your newborn daugther.

Retired!Logan who gets a job as a lumberjack and insists on maintaining you all and covering the bills, despite you having your own job.

Retired!Logan who grows a beard because he knows you like it and thinks it'll help him go unnoticed by the townsfolk (As if he wasn't a giant burly man with a 24/7 pissed off face).

Retired!Logan who keeps training in the woods because he lives in a perpetual estate of paranoia and fear that someone is out there to get his little family, because he still believes he doesn't deserve to be this happy.

Retired!Logan who is teaching Laura to hunt and fight; and hopefully, one day he'll train the littlest one as well because he's extremely overprotective of you all.

Retired!Logan who sometimes feels the urge to let his primal instincts run wild and hunts some prey with his bare hands and claws; afterwards he will clean, skin and serve his prize at the family barbecue in the backyard.

Retired!Logan who has to be basically dragged to any town events, but goes anyway because he knows you'll be there with him, supporting him through the entirety of the dreaded social event. Hadn't it been for you and the girls, he would have become the local hermit.

Retired!Logan that doesn't love anything more than to return home after a long and tiring day at work and hug his family. He'll help you serve dinner, will play with the girls and will clean up with you afterwards. He has become so domesticated, he's sure he won't get to hear the end of it from his fellow X-Men, but he's too happy to care.

Retired!Logan who every morning drives his little girls to school before work just to make sure they arrive safely and will kiss them goodbye, shooting death glares to anybody that dares to look them wrong.

Retired!Logan who likes to enjoy a beer with you on the porch after putting the girls to bed. He was never one to care much for stargazing, only for orientation, but just watching them with you, with only the sounds of nature surrounding you, made him more appreciative. And, as a bonus, sometimes (always) that stargazing turns into something more... passionate.

Retired!Logan who much to his chagrin has become some sort of local celebrity/urban legend after he defenestrated some punks that had tried to rob the town's diner where you were casually having lunch.

Retired!Logan who wonders how the fuck did he, of all people, get so goddamn lucky. How he gets to have all of this without any consequences.

Retired!Logan who knows without a hint of doubt that shall danger come to tear you three away from him, he will be waiting for it, claws out and ready.

[fabfem12]

While we are on the Imane Khlief, here are four lessons I have learnt:

I will stop using the terms AFAB and AMAB unless it has to do with male/female people with DSDs because I have noticed that we have co-opted these terms in the gender discourse, and we have totally forgotten that these terms are sex-specific. AFAB is a term used to describe MALE people whose sex was wrongly observed at birth. It is not a FEMALE exclusive term, female people are not AFAB. We are not Intersex/have DSDs; we, like other TRA, should stop co-opting DSD-specific language. It is really mudding the waters.

Either the Olympics is male and female or male and female (female and male DSDs). This essentially means that the female category is mixed sex forever; if it is the latter you want, you need to state that clearly. This is not to say that all male people with DSDs should not be treated with some level of accommodation; it is just saying that in this ONE facet of life, you cannot eat your cake and have it. It is sad, but being in the Olympics or a professional athlete is a privilege, not a human right. And all the women screaming that these male people with DSDs have female socialisation, if there is one thing 'women' (the social role, I mean) are good at doing is compromising. This, I think, is a fair compromise.

All our anger should be directed at the IOC and demanding them to bring back DNA tests to keep women's sports XX (female), not at radfems or at Imane or Lu-Ting. All of this 'he said' (IBA) and 'she said' (IOC) nonsense could have been avoided if institutions were not hell-bent on gaslighting women into thinking we don't exist as a sex class. Please read the post by @quinntheestallion on crazy-making. It explains this phenomenon very well. Women are responding to this angrily because, for the last decade, institutions have been making it their objective to gaslight women that we don't exist as a sex class. Also, if you see women's reactions and start getting angry at GC or Radfems for being upset or for 'not being nuanced enough or neutral' or whatever you want to say from your high horse, then you are siding with these abusive institutions that are psychologically abusing women. It's really hard to be 'rational' (not angry or erratic) when confronting an abuser.

All in all, whatever comes out of this situation, best believe that when the IOC brings back sex testing to ensure fairness for women in sports, it was not because of nuance or by having a detached/neutral position. It will be because of the ruckus caused by JKR and other GC and radfem women. Radfems, please be reminded that: “Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people oppressing them.” So all these 'bad', 'mean' women who don't understand the 'nuances' of socialisation or whatever (even though when you are playing sports you aren't playing with someone's socialisation) are the ones that will secure your daughters and granddaughters and even great-granddaughter, the right to single-sex sports.

[ak-vintage]

I'd Like To...

Pairing: Modern DILF Din Djarin x Plus Size F!Reader

Summary: Din has always struggled to prioritize his own happiness, even more so now that he is a single father. When some well-meaning friends create a dating app profile for him without his knowledge, he finds himself on his first date in years with a woman who seems determined to bring some much-needed softness to his life.

Tags/Warnings: 18+ MDNI! Present-day AU, dating app AU, dual POV, no use of Y/N, private security Din, photographer reader, reader is a plus size woman but otherwise minimal descriptions provided, age gap (unspecified but enough to be noticed), Grogu is a human toddler, Cara is the ultimate wingman, good dad Din, touch-starved Din, fluff, SMUT – exhibitionism, semi-public acts, brief oral sex (m! receiving), protected p in v sex, dirty talk, rough but sweet, switch-y vibes for both Din and reader

Word Count: ~18.3K (I have no excuse...)

Written for @hellishjoel's Hot DILF Summer Challenge. I am unforgivably late to this event, and I’m so, so sorry. I hope the truly preposterous length makes up for it – it really got out of hand!

Dividers by @saradika-graphics <3

Read on AO3 | Masterlist

Cara Dune had never been good at subterfuge.

She was loud, decisive, commanding – a “do no harm but take no shit” kind of person who wasn’t afraid to get her hands dirty in a risky situation or to stick her neck out for what she believed. Cara didn’t have the constitution for stealth. She didn’t do subtle or – god forbid – sneaky; it simply wasn’t a part of her DNA. All of her colleagues were well aware of this, of course, so why, out of all of the consultants of Fett Security, Inc., she was the person that the group had selected for this particular mission was something she would never understand.

But, as a former soldier, if there was one thing Cara knew how to do, it was follow orders, so when the task fell to her, she took it on the chin and threw herself into it headfirst.

Which was how she found herself awkwardly hunched over at her desk, broad shoulders rounded protectively around her phone as she scrolled through various social media accounts, screenshotting as she went. A suspicious behavior for anyone, but even more so knowing that the images she was grabbing were all of the same man – her best friend and coworker, Din Djarin.

Nearly a decade ago, Din had been one of the first people Boba Fett had recruited to join his private security firm, and ever since, he had been the kind of man who ate, slept, and breathed the job. There was no doubt that Fett Security owed a great deal of its growth and success in the industry to Din’s expertise, but that hadn’t left him with a lot of opportunity for a full life outside of work. Or, perhaps more accurately, Din simply hadn’t made such a thing a priority.

When pressed about it, he would say that it hardly mattered; all of his friends eventually came to work for the firm anyway, Fett collecting them all like trading cards over the years, so he saw them plenty. What more could he need?

Of course, he came to eat his own words about a year ago when he rather unexpectedly became the foster parent – then adoptive parent – of a little boy, a tiny thing with no living relatives in a part of the city that had had a severe shortage of foster families for years. Din himself had grown up in the system, a fact he talked about rarely, but nevertheless, the experience had shaped him in a fundamental way. He had jumped at the opportunity to take in the kid, and overnight, he transformed from a man who buried himself in his work to a man who lived for the whim of a little boy with floppy, sandy-brown curls, wide, dark eyes, and comically large ears.

It was clear to anyone who knew him well – Din had been meant to be a father, and as his closest friend, Cara had found a great deal of joy in watching the new role shape and soften him into a version of himself that felt truer and more authentic to who he was at his core. But all of his friends agreed: when it came to his personal life, having a child had done nothing but exacerbate the problem. He was still working just as many hours as he had before, only now, when he did have time to himself, he rarely left the house without his son in tow. He had stopped joining the team for drinks after gigs, his appearances at company barbecues were fewer and farther between, and who knew how long it had been since the man had been on an actual date?

Din was lonely – Cara could tell. He loved his job, and he adored his son, but it wasn’t enough anymore. There was a hollowness to him, a shadow around his eyes. Something had to give, and so during their last group outing, the team had come together and formulated a plan. A plan which involved Cara harvesting a selection of photos of Din from various corners of the internet, writing up a quick bio, and creating an online dating profile for him.

Without his knowledge.

Cara hardly relished keeping this secret from her friend, but she knew that if she or anyone else had broached the subject with him beforehand, he would have dismissed it out of hand. He would have made up some excuse about doing just fine on his own, that he didn’t need anyone else when he had his son; she could almost hear his low, rasping scoff now. His refusal would be swift and final, and that would be the end of that.

But sometimes, being a good friend meant doing something in the best interest of the other person even when that person would disapprove.

And Cara had found that sometimes it was better to ask for forgiveness than for permission.

Sending a surreptitious glance around the open office space, Cara breathed a quiet sigh of relief at Din’s empty desk. The man didn’t have any of his own social media accounts, finding the whole concept frivolous and a little bizarre, so she was stuck scrolling through her own and those of their friends in an attempt to harvest a few that would be acceptable for a dating profile. It was taking longer than she had anticipated, and she still had to set up his age, gender, and location preferences and write up a brief bio for him before she was due at a job in an hour. The time crunch had her clenching her jaw as she worked.

Tonight at the bar, she planned to recruit some of their friends to help her get Din set up with a selection of matches. And all of them would owe her a beer for her trouble.

 Din, the profile read. 45, 5’11”, Private Security Consultant.

Hardworking, outdoorsy, handy. Love vintage cars and motorcycles. Former boxer, teach self-defense classes at the community center on the weekends. Single father to a little boy who is my whole universe. Looking for someone to give me an excuse to get me out of the house, curb my workaholic tendencies, and show me the softer side of life.

“‘The softer side of life?’” Bo smirked around the rim of her beer as she read, Cara’s phone in her hand sticky from being passed around all night. “Cara Dune, you’ve been holding out on us. Who knew you were such a romantic?”

The crew gathered around the end of the bar all laughed as Cara rolled her eyes, taking a sip of her own drink. “What can I say? A bitch contains multitudes,” she replied with a shrug. “But the profile’s good, right? We can start swiping?”

The redhead nodded, neat bob brushing her sharp jaw as she passed the phone back to its owner. “Yeah, I think you’ve got him down.”

“Good call including the bit about the motorcycles,” Axe quipped with a grin. He waggled his dark eyebrows significantly, adding, “Ladies love that stuff. Speaking from experience.”

From her place tucked into his side, arm wrapped around his waist beneath his leather jacket, Koska offered him a tongue-touched smile and butted her head against his chest affectionately. “You’re not wrong.”

Paz returned from the other end of the bar then, shouldering his way through the crowd with six overflowing pints balanced in his massive hands. “What did I miss?” he asked as he passed each of them out to his waiting friends.

Fennec curled her lip in mild disgust as he sloshed a portion of her beer down the side of her glass, soaking her hand. She sat the pint down on the edge of the well-worn bar and drug her fingers demurely across her black jeans as she said, “Nothing, we’re just about to start picking matches.”

“Good.” He downed half of his own pint in a single glug, thick neck working in the low light. “Let’s do this. The guy needs to get laid.”

With a mock-salute of his glass, Axe groaned his agreement. “Maybe if he loosens up a little, he’ll get off my ass about taking over the Organa account. I swear to god, if I have to spend one more fucking charity dinner trailing after those stuffed-shirts, I think my head is going to explode.”

Fennec shot him an icy, closed-lipped smile. “We both know that was my suggestion, not Djarin’s. You’re a good fit for it, Woves. The sooner you learn how to play ball with the politicians, the sooner we can start putting you on more high-profile jobs.”

“Yeah, babe.” Koska’s dark eyes flashed teasingly. “Maybe then you can come join me and Bo on the Skywalker account. Finally start playing with the big boys.”

Bo snorted into her beer, sending a fine spray of the stuff flying as the rest of the group broke into peals of laughter.

“All right, all right, settle down,” Cara urged, passing Bo a napkin. “This has nothing to do with any of us, right? This is about Din. He’s busted his ass for every one of us for years – it’s his turn to catch a break. So let’s stay on task, okay? Now…” With a few taps and a swipe, she brought up the app once more and flipped to the matches tab. “What do we think of her?”

“Dune.”

“Djarin.”

“Please tell me you’re joking.”

The dark-haired, hawk-eyed woman quirked an eyebrow at him, phone in hand, the thing still extended toward him, waiting for him to take it. “I could do that. But then I’d be lying, and we both know that doesn’t fly with you.”

Din Djarin gritted his jaw and turned his back to her, focusing instead on tossing his towel, lifting gloves, and empty water bottle into his gym bag and slinging it over his shoulder. It wasn’t unusual for Cara to join him for his daily pre-shift workout. She was a reliable spotter, and he liked the playlists she piped through the Bluetooth speakers in the company gym, but there had been something off about her that morning – something cagey and distracted where she was normally the picture of focus. After one too many attempts at getting her attention had resulted in a distant “huh?”, he had decided that enough was enough and demanded an explanation.

With only the faintest traces of guilt shadowing her gaze, she had made her confession. A dating app. She had signed him up for a fucking dating app, and apparently, the whole team was in on it. The bunch of traitors.

“You can go ahead and delete it,” he growled, casting a scathing glance over his shoulder as he made for the locker room. “I’m not interested.”

A strong, blunt-nailed hand wrapped around his elbow, pulling his retreat up short. “Oh, come on, lighten up a little,” Cara entreated. “When was the last time you went out with someone, huh?”

He shrugged her grip off of him. “I go out with you and the team all the time.”

Behind him, his closest friend groaned dramatically. “You know that’s not what I meant. But, while we’re at it, you haven’t exactly been doing much of that, either, big guy. In fact, maybe if you did come out with us once in a while, you could meet a nice girl at a bar or a sporting event or a festival like a fucking normal person, and I wouldn’t have to resort to mining photos of you off our friends’ socials and making you a dating profile in secret.”

“That isn’t fair,” Din snapped, whirling around to face her. “I can’t just be out until all hours of the night anymore. I have my kid to think about. I thought you understood that.”

“Of course, I understand that! No one expects you to be there every time. Not even most of the time! But Din…” Cara let out a sigh, and he watched as that contentious spark fizzled out of her dark eyes, fading into something softer and more earnest. “You are an amazing father. Anyone who has ever seen you with that little boy knows that. But that isn’t all you are. Just like work isn’t all you are. How long have we known each other?”

He ground his teeth and ran his hand through his sweat-damp hair, pushing it back from his face. “About eight years.”

“Eight years,” she echoed, nodding. “I know you, Din Djarin, and I can tell. You’re burning out.”

Something squeezed in his chest at the raw honestly of his friend’s words, and he found himself having to look away. She was right, of course, as she often was. He had always struggled with giving too much of himself – first as a boxer in the ring, then as one of the founding members of Fett Security, then as one of its most senior consultants, and now as a father. As a younger man, he had thrived on it; the busier he was, the harder he worked, the more he proved himself, the better he felt.

But now, knocking on the doors of middle age, he found that the breakneck pace of his life was starting to fray him at the edges. He felt worn through in places and dangerously thin in others, and although he would never admit to anyone, his bed had never felt colder. The small handful of meaningless, one-night flings he had permitted himself over the last few years had left him feeling ill-used and unsatisfied, and when he took his son out to a new restaurant or to the zoo or to the beach, he couldn’t help but feel the distinct absence of another person.

There ought to have been another person holding his kid’s other little hand in the park, patiently walking the unsteady toddler between them. There ought to have been another person feeding the boy ice cream afterward, singing him songs, telling him stories, settling him down for a nap.

There ought to have been another person in his bed – holding him close, playing with his hair, whispering his name in the dark as soft lips traced down his neck…

Fuck. Din Djarin was lonely.

“Listen, I’ll tell you what,” Cara said eventually, pulling him out of his musings. “We’ll get the app set up on your phone, you can log in to your profile, and you can just…take a look at the matches we already got for you. You don’t have to go through any on your own, just the ones we’ve already found. And if you hate them all, we’ll delete your profile and be done with it. But if any of them look even remotely interesting, I really think you should try to connect with them. There has to be more to your life than work and your kid. There has to be, or you’re going to run yourself into the ground. I’m not going to let that happen on my watch.”

Her words hung in the air for a moment, blunt and painfully sincere, and then Din was squeezing the pressure points on the sides of his nose and releasing a reluctant sigh.

“Fine,” he groaned. “I’ll take a look at them over lunch. Happy?”

She grinned victoriously and cuffed him on the shoulder, the gesture warm and fraternal. “Ecstatic. Now hit the showers, Djarin, you stink.”

Cara was at his desk at noon on the dot, barely waiting for him to finish sending off an email to a potential client before she was closing his laptop, dragging him bodily out of his chair, and escorting him out of the building and across the street to their favorite sandwich shop. A few minutes later, equipped with a pair of overstuffed Reubens and a couple bags of chips, the two were settled into a back corner booth with Din’s phone between them.

“Okay, there you go,” she proclaimed, sliding the thing across the table to him with a triumphant grin. “App’s installed, and you’re all logged in.”

The man wiped a napkin across his face and fought the urge to sigh. “Let’s get this over with.” Thumbing through the interface, he fumbled for a bit before finally landing on the tab that contained his list of users with bright pink heart icons next to their profile pictures.

“Now these are people that already matched with me?” he asked, suddenly feeling a bit out of his depth.

“Yep! Me and the crew did some swiping for you the other night.”

Din simply blinked at her. “Swiping?”

Cara’s mouth twisted into a thin line, as though she were attempting to swallow a smirk and failing miserably, and he felt the distinct desire to melt into the plastic cushion of the booth and disappear. “It’s how you indicate whether you’re interested in matching with someone. Swipe right for yes, swipe left for no.”

“So these are the people you…swiped right on?”

“Not quite,” she clarified with a shake of her head. “These are the people we swiped right on who also swiped right on you.”

Din’s brows nearly met his hairline at that. “They wanted to match with me, too?”

“Yeah, dumbass, they did.”

“Hey. Watch it,” he growled, jabbing a finger in her direction as he felt his hackles raise. “You know I don’t know anything about this shit. Cut me a little bit of slack, okay?”

Cara sighed, and her expression shifted from needling to softly exasperated. “Yeah, no kidding, I’m aware. I didn’t call you a dumbass because you don’t know anything about online dating. I called you a dumbass because you act like you’re surprised that people want to match with you.”

Oh.

Cocking his head at her, he replied, “Why wouldn’t that surprise me?”

“Umm…” All of the softness in her face disappeared, and instead she glared at him like he had just grown a second head. “Have you seen yourself? I don’t even like men, and I recognize a DILF when I see one.”

“A DILF?”

Cara smirked lasciviously. “Yeah, a dad I’d like to – ”

“I know what a DILF is, Cara, fucking hell, can you keep your voice down?” Din instinctually ducked his head, his gaze darting around the sandwich shop as he prayed to whatever deity might be listening that no one had heard them.

The woman let out a bark of laughter, dark hair swinging and eyes crinkling with mirth. “Yeah, yeah, don’t get your panties in a twist, old man. No one’s paying any attention to us back here.” Gesturing at the phone in his hand, she added, “Now quit stalling and start scrolling. I think we ended up with ten or so matches before we called it a night? And we were really picky about it, too. There’s gotta be at least one lucky lady in there that tickles your fancy.”

“Hmm.” He hummed dubiously to himself as he opened the first profile in the list, a blonde woman a couple of years his junior with her head tilted back, face in the sun as she posed on some tropical beach. Pretty. Nice smile. Looked friendly. “Suppose I just didn’t think so many women would be interested in dating a single father.”

“Like I said,” Cara shrugged with a wink. “Ladies love a DILF.”

Nearly an hour later, and Din couldn’t help but feel a bit…underwhelmed with the selection of matches his friends had chosen for him. Not that any of them were bad choices, per se. They were lovely women, all of them, with their sunny smiles and their glossy, perfectly-posed photographs and their quippy bios. They were from a variety of backgrounds with a variety of interests, though all struck him as approachable, intelligent, witty. He couldn’t find a red flag in the bunch, which he supposed was a credit both to them and to his friends for sifting through the masses so thoughtfully.

No, it wasn’t the women. It was him, he was sure. What else could explain the…nothingness he felt when he looked at them? The utter lack of interest? Perhaps he had missed his opportunity for such things, he thought to himself. Perhaps he had waited too long, been too content with his own company for too many years.

He could feel Cara’s eyes on him across the table as he came to the last few matches, could sense her impatience at his silence, at his steady, unenthusiastic scrolling. Their plates sat picked over and abandoned between them, chip bags empty and crumpled, sodas drained dry. They were due back in the office any minute, the lunch hour quickly expiring around them, and as reluctant as Din had been to agree to this entire endeavor, he somehow still felt a twinge of guilt at leaving Cara to report back to the rest of the group empty-handed.

But at least he had held up his end of the bargain. No one could say that he didn’t give the idea a chance. It simply wasn’t meant to be.

Of course, that was until he reached the second-to-last match on the list.

Absently, Din tapped on your picture, opening your profile, and almost immediately, he felt himself straighten in his seat.

You were…stunning.

Wide, bright eyes. A warm, mischievous smile that teased him through the camera’s lens, as though you had a secret you were taunting him with, daring him to ask, to figure it out. Your photos were unique – mostly candids, the focus soft, enhanced with a touch of grain and flawlessly lit. And you had a lot of them, more than any other profile he had viewed. As he swiped through them, he came upon one of you in an easy, flowing blouse, hair windswept around your face, a DSLR camera with a colorful, well-worn strap slung around your neck.

He quickly scanned your profile header, taking in your name, your age, your distance from his location. Photographer, the profession field indicated.

And…shit. You were young. More than a decade his junior, on the very edge of what he would consider an acceptable age difference in typical circumstances. The gap wasn’t enough for it to be an immediate disqualifier, but it certainly was enough that if the two of you were to walk down the street together hand-in-hand, others might take a second glance.

He should un-match with you. It would be the right thing, the responsible thing to do.

And yet…

Din swiped through a handful of your other photos. Fuck, but you were sweet. Full, soft curves with wide, plush hips, heavy breasts, thick thighs. Little glimpses of soft skin peeking through comfortable clothing, airy cottons and silky satins and well-loved denims that his palms itched to touch. He wanted to feel the texture of you under his hands, the lush and the give of you beneath his fingertips…

Your last photo was one taken of you at sunrise, your soft body clad in nothing but an oversized T-shirt and a pair of barely-there spandex shorts. Your limbs were stretched and bent into some strange configuration he recognized as a yoga pose, your leg pressed back near your face at an angle that had blood rushing to his cock, his head immediately filled with images of your body contorted in a similar position as he pressed you into his mattress.

New to the city, looking for someone to show me all the best places to get a couple drinks and people watch. Professional photographer living my dream of documenting the most important moments of people’s lives. In my spare time, I like to get out in nature and go hiking, practice yoga, and travel. Excellent home cook, terrible at karaoke. Love dogs, love kids. Let me take your picture so I know it’s real.

Damnit.

You were perfect.

“Okay over there, Djarin?”

Din’s gaze snapped up to meet Cara’s over the table, taking in the quirk of her brow, the suspicious twist of her mouth, and he felt a flush of heat rush up the back of his neck and settle high on his cheekbones. He had been staring. Really staring, and with his mouth open, he realized, mortified. He slammed his jaw shut, his teeth clicking unpleasantly in his skull, and he shifted in his seat.

“Uh,” he muttered dumbly. This throat was so dry, his voice crackled around the syllable as though he hadn’t spoken all day. He cleared it quickly and nodded once. “Yeah. Fine. Uh – ” Flipping the phone around to face his companion, he slid it back across the laminate tabletop. “Her,” he said, tapping the screen with the tip of his finger. “I’ll go out with her.”

Had he not already been blushing, the cat-like grin of victory that Cara sent him certainly would have done it.

“Gonna have to message her first, big guy. Think you can figure out how to do that, or you want me to show you?”

Din’s flush darkened as he yanked the phone back toward himself, feeling a muscle in his jaw tick. “I can manage,” he snarked, and she scoffed a laugh.

However, as it turned out, as he opened the messages tab from your profile, he discovered that you had already taken the initiative and messaged him.

hey din – such a cool name! looks like we have a few things in common. i’d love to get to know you if you’re interested! 😊

Short. Sweet. Polite. Direct.

He swallowed thickly, feeling something suspiciously like butterflies take up residence in his gut. Scrubbing his hand over the back of his neck, he looked back up at Cara sheepishly.

“Actually…yeah, maybe I could use some help.”

You were sitting cross-legged in your oversized office chair, headphones on and iced coffee leaving a ring of condensation on the surface of your desk, when you saw the dating app notification pop up on your phone screen.

1 New Message, it read.

You glanced back and forth between your phone and your computer screen for a moment, debating. You had promised yourself you would be heads-down today, having started to accumulate more of an editing backlog than you typically preferred. The shoot you were working on this afternoon – an engagement session taken in the gardens outside the local art gallery – was due to the clients by the end of the week, and if you wanted to meet that deadline, you couldn’t afford to get distracted.

And yet you couldn’t help but wonder whether the message was a response – finally – from the man you had matched with a couple days ago. The one with the unusual name, the dark curls and even darker eyes, the strong nose and the sharp jaw and the soft, gentle smile. Broad shoulders, big, masculine hands, and a handful of pictures featuring a little boy, no more than two or three years old, his face either turned away from the camera or covered with a little green frog emoji for privacy.

Din the security consultant. Din the vintage car enthusiast. Din the self-defense instructor.

Din the DILF.

You had fired off a message to him as soon as you had gotten confirmation that he had liked you back, and he had been taking up space in your mind ever since. You had always preferred your men a little older, a little more experienced, and the fact that he was a dad, and a proud one at that, had gotten your motor running immediately. He looked like the kind of guy who knew the best bar in town to get an old fashioned and how to grill a good steak. He looked like the kind of guy who would open your car door for you, who would drive one-handed while the other rested calmly, possessively on your thigh. He looked like his palms were calloused and like his skin smelled good even fresh from the gym.

He looked like he had a big –

Fucking hell. It had been a long time since a man had given you this kind of brainrot without ever even meeting him. It was embarrassing and very much not consistent with your independent woman-about-town image you wore like a suit of armor. But you had never been the type of person to deny yourself. If you saw something you wanted, you went for it – full speed ahead. And Din…you definitely wanted Din.

If there was even a slight chance it was him…

Before you could overthink it any further, you saved your progress on your current edit, dropped your headphones around the back of your neck, and scooped up your phone. Tapping the notification, you brought up your messages tab and found one unread message staring back you.

It was from him.

Hi there. It’s nice to meet you. You seem like an interesting person. I would like to get to know you, too. Where is your favorite place you have traveled?

You drew your lower lip between your teeth, smothering a grin as though others might spot it and tease you despite being alone in your apartment. Something about the way he wrote – the dry punctuation, the complete, grammatically-correct sentences, the lack of emojis – all of it screamed someone who didn’t spend much time communicating electronically, let alone online dating. It was a refreshing change from the men you typically met on the apps, the whole thing endearing rather than off-putting and doing nothing to discourage your impression of his “dad” persona.

Poking out your tongue a little in concentration, you tapped out a quick response before you could lose your nerve.

ooo good question! hard to pick a favorite, but if i have to choose, i’d say thailand. i went there with some friends after we graduated college and we got to volunteer at an elephant sanctuary for a few days. coolest experience of my life hands down! what about you? are you a traveler?

His response came much faster than you expected, certainly faster than his response to your initial message.

I used to be. When I was first getting started, I used to travel a lot for work. I have been all over. I am more settled these days. It’s difficult to travel with a toddler on my own.

You nodded to yourself. That made sense. His boy looked young, and he was a self-described single father. You wondered what the story was there, but that was a level of personal that you didn’t need to dive into just yet. For now, your focus was on making sure this conversation didn’t fizzle out.

Frowning slightly, you realized he hadn’t really included anything in that message to prompt much of a response. However, before you could begin to fish around for something to send in reply, another message appeared.

Your profile says you’re a photographer. Your pictures are very unique. I don’t know much about photography, but I can tell that you have an eye for it. What made you interested in that field?

With a huff of a laugh and a mortifyingly strong flush, you closed out of Lightroom and abandoned your headphones on their stand. You weren’t getting any more work done for a while – you could already tell.

The two of you messaged back and forth several more times that day, then again in fits and spurts over the next three days.

You shared how you got your start in photography and the way your best clients were the ones who embraced your photojournalistic style. You didn’t care for shots that were staged or overly posed, you told him. You liked capturing people’s authentic feelings in the moment, and he quipped that he had never been comfortable posing for photos anyway, so you should get along just fine.

You talked about how both of you desperately wanted a dog but neither of you were in a place where getting one would be a responsible choice. You compared your favorite local hiking trails and determined that although he had lived in the area for far longer than you, you had significantly more experience trekking through the nearby national park. You learned a lot about the ’81 Honda Goldwing that he had lovingly restored, how he used to ride it to and from work every day but that now it sat under a protective tarp in the back of his garage most of the time. It wasn’t exactly a toddler-friendly form of transportation, he explained.

In a moment of vulnerability, you confessed that you had moved to the city as a result of a breakup, in an attempt to get a change of scenery far from the place where you had made a home with another man. He confessed that he had never really made time for relationships in the past, but that his son had made him realize that there was plenty of room in his life for love. He finally felt ready to try, and you finally felt ready to try again.

You told him you thought he was stupidly handsome, that you had no idea how he was single if he didn’t want to be. He told you that he had thought the same about you.

Except I would call you beautiful. Not handsome. I guess unless that’s what you prefer?

no lmao, you wrote back. beautiful is fine. beautiful is perfect.

On day four of…whatever this newfound acquaintance was, you spent the full day shooting a wedding – from getting ready to first looks to family photos to the ceremony to the reception. You swore you could feel your phone burning a hole in your pocket the entire time, but you managed to stay professional and present throughout the length of your contracted hours. By the time you stumbled into your apartment, you were so exhausted, you couldn’t have been more eager to pour yourself some wine and melt into the couch with some trashy reality television. You were changed into your pajamas and a glass and a half deep by the time you allowed yourself to check your phone.

Buried beneath all of the other notifications you had gotten throughout the day, there was a single pop-up from your dating app.

1 New Message, it read. Received four hours ago.

Skipping past all of the other demands on your attention, you opened that notification first.

Hi sweetheart. I know you were photographing that wedding today, so don’t let me interrupt you. We can talk tomorrow, but if you could please message me when you’re done for the night? It would make me feel better to know that you made it home safe.  

Hi sweetheart, he had said.

Sweetheart.

A rush of heat passed over you at his words, and you swallowed thickly, wine burning its way down your throat at the thought of Din at home thinking about you, worrying about you. Had this been any other man, you might have found the message a bit overbearing, especially this early on, but rather than feeling controlled or stifled, instead you felt only warmth and safety. You felt…cared for. Protected. Important.

The sensation had you shifting in your seat, gulping down the remainder of your glass in a single go as you felt the apex of your thighs pulse with interest.

Din was so fucking hot, and he had no idea.

Setting your now-empty wine glass on the coffee table, you typed out a rapid reply and hit send.

heyy! made it home okay, thanks for checking in!

Fatigue pulling at your eyelids, arousal burning low in your belly, quickly-consumed wine flushing your limbs with a soft weightlessness, your thumbs seemed to move of their own accord as they tapped out a second message.

din idk how much longer i can keep this up without meeting you. i wanna see your handsome face in person. can i take u out sometime soon? please say yes.

You hit send before you could second-guess yourself, then immediately tossed your phone to the other end of the couch as though it had burned you. It disappeared into the stack of throw pillows there, and you breathed a sigh of relief. You couldn’t look at it, couldn’t stand to wait for his reply knowing that it was after midnight, knowing that he likely had been asleep for hours and wouldn’t see your messages until morning. Taking a deep, calming breath to steady your nerves, you forced yourself to refocus on the television. One episode, you promised yourself, and then you would get some sleep.

Less than 10 minutes later, you felt the faint vibration of your phone travel through the couch cushions to where you sat, and your show was abandoned without question.

You tossed several of your unnecessarily large throw pillow collection onto the floor in your hasty search, and though you knew you would be annoyed at having to tidy them in the morning, in that moment, you could hardly bring yourself to care.

1 New Message, your phone screen read as you recovered it from the pile. With something akin to nausea roiling in your stomach, you opened the notification and resisted the urge to physically cross your fingers.

Glad to hear you made it home safely.

…

That was all. “Glad to hear you made it home safely.”

Your stomach sank like lead in your abdomen, all of the soft, fuzzy warmth of the wine and your arousal evaporating from your body like sweat on a hot day. Only exhaustion was left in its place – exhaustion and the surprisingly poignant hurt of rejection sitting heavy on your limbs. You had come on too strong, it seemed, stated your desires and intentions too boldly and directly. You ought to have held back more, ought to have waited longer before asking or maybe couched the question in a joke or a suggestion of something more casual first. Or maybe you shouldn’t have asked at all and instead waited for him to ask you out. You supposed men probably preferred that – to be the one to initiate, the one to take charge. Fuck, you were always so impatient, so goddamn eager –

In your sweating palm, your phone buzzed once more, interrupting your string of self-curses.

Nerves roiling beneath your skin, you risked a glance down at it.

1 New Message

You had no control over your body as you opened it, watching the action from inside your own mind as though walking through a dream.

As for your other message, of course my answer is yes. I want to meet you, too, sweetheart. But be warned. Even though you did the asking, I WILL argue with you if you attempt to pay for the whole date yourself. It’s against my personal creed to let a lady pay my way without contributing.

All of the breath left your lungs as you took in his words, reading them over and over again until you could recite them from memory.

He wanted to meet you. He wanted to go out with you.

A high, breathy laugh bubbled over from your chest, spilling through your lips into your quiet apartment like the glistening champagne tower at the wedding this evening. You laughed as you typed, as you hit send. You laughed as you turned off your TV and as you completed your evening skincare routine. You laughed as you crawled into bed, as you burrowed under the covers, delirious and giddy.

i think i can allow it just this once. wouldn’t wanna violate your creed.

It took a handful of messages to determine the best place to meet. Din had offered to pick you up, wanting to treat you right, to be a gentleman, but he did not hold it against you when you turned him down. He understood that meeting a stranger from the internet, particularly as a woman, came with a particular set of risks, and he had no desire to make you uncomfortable in the slightest. He was happy to simply meet you there instead if that would make you feel safer.

Eventually, you settled on a moderately popular restaurant not far from your neighborhood. Din had never been there before, but over the last several days, he had discovered that the two of you shared a love of spicy food, and you had promised that the “modern Mexican fusion” menu did not disappoint.

they also have the cutest patio so we can sit outside if the weather’s nice 😊 , you had said, and he had been sold.

Under the assumption that Din would have a difficult time finding a sitter on a weekday evening, you agreed to wait until Friday to meet. However, the moment he had attempted to discretely broach the subject with Cara while on a jobsite, he immediately had three additional volunteers in Bo, Koska, and Axe, all of whom assured him that they hadn’t been eavesdropping and insisted that he had just been “really fucking loud” with his question.

So perhaps finding a sitter would not have been as challenging as he presumed.

Regardless, the two of you continued to chat throughout the week leading up to your date, first using the dating app’s messaging platform and then, eventually, via text. Din had grown weary of the limitations of the messaging interface days before, but he had been concerned about coming across as too forward if he were to ask for your number. But he needn’t have worried. You offered it freely late one night when the two of you were deep into a discussion about your favorite music artists, and something about getting to put your name and phone number into his contacts made the whole situation feel startlingly real. It had felt…personal, almost intimate. And it was nice.

If he was being honest with himself, it made him nervous – how much he liked you, how quickly he had begun to think of you as part of his daily routine. A text good morning after his pre-shift workout, when he knew you were just rolling out of bed. Checking his phone over lunch to find a whole stack of little videos you had found on the internet during your morning scroll, watching every single one of them as his coworkers rolled their eyes and laughed at how quickly he had fallen into line for you. Countless late-night conversations after he had tucked his son into bed, his tired body sprawled out on the couch or propped up against his headboard and wishing you were there with him.

He wanted to experience the laugh that went with that stunning smile from your photos. He wanted to hear you talk for hours on end about whatever crossed your mind while he just…listened. And fuck, did he want to touch you. It had been almost two weeks since he had first matched with you, and that need he had felt deep in his gut that first day he had seen your pictures had only gotten more acute over time. He had to know – for certain – whether the skin at the small of your back was as soft and warm as it looked. He had to know whether your plush thighs and generous hips would give beneath his hands.

He wanted you in his arms, in his lap, in his bed. He wanted you in his life, and he had never even met you.

He needed to rein it in, he knew. He didn’t want to come on too strong, and he didn’t want to dive headfirst into something without the proper consideration. It had been over a decade since he had last been in a relationship, and he was a completely different person now than he had been then. Not to mention his son. His boy was his top priority – the most important thing in his world. He would need to be cautious about dating anyone seriously with him in the picture.

But something told him that he had nothing to worry about with you, that you wouldn’t resent his priorities or demand things of him that he couldn’t give. And if things went well, and he liked you as much in person as he did online… If after a while, you earned his trust, his commitment…

You and the kid would get on like a house on fire. He could sense it.

But.

Before you could meet his son, before Din could welcome you fully into is life, he had to meet you.

Din beat you to the restaurant that Friday.

You wouldn’t describe yourself as the type of person who was chronically late (though some of your friends might have had a different opinion on the matter), but in your defense, you had had a new client intake call right at the end of the day that had gone on for longer than you anticipated. Thankfully, you had gotten yourself ready before the call so that by the time the talkative new parents were done describing in great detail their precise vision for their new baby photoshoot, all that was left for you to do was slip on your shoes, grab your purse, and run out the door.

The walk to the restaurant was brief but pleasant, the weather having worked out perfectly for an outdoor meal, and as you approached, you spotted him immediately. Tall and absurdly broad, posted up outside the restaurant’s main entrance with his hands on his hips and one leg popped in a stance that absolutely screamed “dad,” even from a distance. He wore a long-sleeved, charcoal gray henley with the sleeves shoved up to his elbows and a couple buttons undone at the collar, well-fitting, dark-washed jeans, and a pair of black boots with thick soles that you had a feeling he favored when riding his motorcycle. A classic pair of dark sunglasses perched on his prominent nose, and in spite of the warm weather, he had a black leather jacket grasped in one fist, hanging down by his side by its collar.

In the golden hour sun against the worn brick of the restaurant’s exterior, he looked like something out of a movie. Or maybe a men’s cologne ad – something clean but rugged, so masculine you could die. Taking a deep breath against a sudden wave of nerves, you made a mental note to bring your camera the next time the two of you went out. If he was going to look this fucking delicious every time you saw one another, it would be a crime not to document it.

You were in the middle of crossing the street when he spotted you, and you watched with heat rising in your cheeks as he visibly paused and swept you from head to toe with his gaze. His adam’s apple bobbed, and then he was straightening himself and eating up the sidewalk in a handful of long strides to meet you when you arrived.

“Din?” you found yourself asking as you came to stand before him, as if you didn’t know, as if you wouldn’t recognize that striking face, those powerful shoulders anywhere in the world.

He offered you a gentle half-smile, ducking his chin in a single nod, and you took notice of his free hand balling up into a fist at his side, like he was physically holding himself back from reaching for you. After a beat, he replied, “It’s…good to see you, sweetheart. Happy you got here safe.”

His voice. Low and rasping, worn and manly, strangely reminding you of metal scraping against leather. It was painfully attractive, and you felt your cheeks darken further even as a grin spread across your lips.

You had been right. The man was a certified DILF, and he couldn’t have been any more your type if you had designed him in a lab yourself.

“Same to you,” you said, your voice sounding a bit breathless even to your own ears. “Should we go get a table?”

Din made an affirmative noise and gestured for you to precede him down the sidewalk. “I put our names in when I got here. The table should be ready any minute.”

A small thrill went through you at the realization that he must have gotten here at least 45 minutes ago if your table was nearly ready. This place notoriously didn’t take reservations, and there was always a wait, especially for the patio. Which reminded you…

Before you could think better of it, you asked, “Oh, did you request the patio by chance? Sitting out under the lights is the – ”

“ – best part, I remember,” he interjected, his tiny smile quirking up in one corner. “Yes, I requested the patio. They should text me when the table’s ready.” No sooner had the words left his mouth and he startled unexpectedly, glancing over his shoulder as though to look at his own back pocket. He reached behind himself and pulled out his phone, the sleek, black thing dwarfed in his broad palm, and you caught a glimpse of his background picture as he unlocked it.

A little boy with floppy, too-long, sandy-brown hair, huge dark eyes, and big ears, grinning up at the camera with a toothy smile. He was adorable.

“Ah. Speaking of. It’s ready,” he said, showing you the automated text. “After you.”

He gestured again for you to walk ahead of him, and you drew your lower lip between your teeth as you acquiesced. Not a moment later and you felt the soft, warm press of his palm against the small of your back, the steady, unobtrusive pressure gently guiding you toward the entrance to the restaurant. The sensation had something low and hot simmering in your abdomen, the way the heat of it sank through the fabric of your dress into your skin, the way your body listened to his touch instinctually. It was protective in a way that felt comforting rather than overbearing, and it occurred to you that such a thing would be easy to grow accustomed to.

You had always needed to be the one to look out for yourself. How freeing would it be to be able to trust another person to carry that for you, even if it was only every once in a while?

Your restaurant recommendation proved to be a good one; the food was rich and delicious, the atmosphere was lively, and Din indulged in a couple of their house cervezas throughout the evening, which he found pleasantly light and refreshing. As the sun set behind the city skyline, casting long shadows across the flagstone patio, colorful strings of lights crisscrossing the seating area flared to life. The effect was charming, particularly the way the lights cast a warm glow over your face, arcs of gold and red and green streaking across your hair and illuminating your eyes. You were so pretty – even more than he had expected, even more than in your photos. He wasn’t sure he had ever felt “enchanted” by a person before, but he would say that was close to describing how he felt sitting across the table from you.

To his great relief, Din found that the time passed just as quickly while talking to you in person as it did over the phone. You were sweet, funny, and quite talkative, so even when he found himself dipping into introverted lulls or long silences, you were there to pull him back out of himself. You seemed to have an endless fount of things to chat about, which was perfectly fine with him, as it meant he didn’t have to wrack his brain for things to say, and he got to listen to your voice.

You also seemed to find him funny, snorting cutely into your glass every time he said something even faintly amusing, and he would be lying if he said that didn’t have his ego swelling a bit. He liked the idea of being able to make you laugh. And when your eyes flashed at him over the rim of your margarita, when you drug the tip of your slick, pink tongue across the line of salt there, when you offered him a slow, knowing smile with just the barest flash of sharp little teeth…it wasn’t only his ego that threatened to swell.

That was one thing he had not accounted for, he found, one facet of your personality that he had only barely glimpsed over text that was now staring him in the face as the two of you wrapped up your meal. You were powerfully, blatantly flirtatious in a way that felt completely foreign to Din after more than a decade of singlehood. Your lowered lashes, your intentional eye contact, your sweet compliments. Your little touches across the table, burning the backs of his hands and the insides of his forearms with the warmth of your skin. And that wasn’t even mentioning the surreptitious peeks at your ample cleavage your dress kept allowing as you leaned and shifted in your chair. That one, perhaps, wasn’t intentional, but it was still making it difficult for him to avoid embarrassing himself in the middle of this restaurant.

When it became clear that the two of you could no longer draw out your meal, the debate over the check began. Thankfully, you did not propose to pay for both your meal and his, seemingly taking his warning to heart. However, you did suggest that you pay for your own meal and drinks, and something about that still rankled. Eventually, after much back and forth, you compromised and agreed that Din would pay for the meals while you would cover the drinks. The waitress had looked at you a bit oddly when you made the request, but she hadn’t protested, and a handful of minutes later, the two of you had paid and were making your way back out onto the sidewalk outside.

Din wasn’t ready for the night to end. Spending time with you was the most fun he had had with anyone that wasn’t a coworker in…well. Too long. You were sweet and funny and full of life, and every moment he spent in your presence, he could feel warmth and vitality being breathed back into his lungs. He wasn’t ready to let that go just yet.

Thankfully, neither, it seemed, were you. Slipping one of your manicured hands into his, you said, “You know, there’s a park a couple blocks from here with a really nice walking path. You want to go check it out?”

He glanced down at your joined hands, dragging the pad of his thumb across the ridge of your knuckles almost absently as he reveled in the feeling. You were so fucking soft, just like he knew you would be, and the sensation of your skin under his almost distracted him from his response. After a beat, he nodded, and you hit him with a thousand-watt smile that Din couldn’t help but return.

You kept up a steady stream of conversation as you made your way to the park hand-in-hand. Din had proven just as easy to talk to in person as he had online, and although the evening had confirmed your suspicions that he was much more introverted than you, he was by no means reticent. He had matched you beat for beat all night, and even in the moments where he seemed to need a bit of prompting, you chalked it up to him simply being out of the game for a while and didn’t hold it against him.

More than anything, though, your impression of him as you made your way down the block was one of an old-fashioned gentleman. There was an earnestness, a seriousness about him that you had never really seen in a guy your age, and it made you feel like you were the only person in the world to him. It was a heady feeling, to be the center of such focused attention. You wondered if he knew that if he wasn’t careful, that attention was going to give you ideas. Ideas you weren’t certain someone with his sensibilities would be interested in on a first date.

Just when you thought you might need to pull him to the side of the walkway and give him a little taste of what you had in mind, his phone rang, and he dropped your hand to fish it from his back pocket.

You couldn’t stop yourself from taking a glance at the screen as he examined it. CARA DUNE, the caller ID read, and the photo that lit up the background was of a striking woman with raven black hair, sharp eyes, and smug smile.

Oh. You felt something in your chest deflate a little. Another woman.

Din pulled up short, looking at you with dark, apologetic eyes shadowed by the streetlamps. “I’m sorry, I have to take this,” he said, and you found yourself nodding your agreement even as your stomach sank further. And to think, you had been convinced that this man was nothing but a bundle of green flags held together by a gap-necked henley and a pair of slutty black combat boots…

Turning away from you slightly, putting one of his broad shoulders between you and the view of his phone, he swiped up to answer the call.

“Dune? Everything okay?” he asked, a flavor of urgency to his tone that had you frowning.

Wait – Dune? He was calling her by her last name?

You couldn’t hear what the voice on the other side of the line said in reply, but you watched as Din’s shoulders dropped from up around his ears, and he brought his free hand up to squeeze the bridge of his nose in exasperation.

“Yeah, yeah, it’s fine, put him on.” A pause then, and he sighed deeply. “No, I don’t mind, really, you just scared the shit out of me. A call from you at this time of night? I thought something was wrong.” Another pause, and you could hear what you would swear were several voices talking over each other ringing from the phone’s speakers even as they were pressed against his ear. “Okay, yeah, that’s fine. Put him on.”

Din pulled the phone away from his face then and tapped the “video call” button on the glowing gray call interface. Half a breath later, the screen flared to life, blinding you a bit in the darkness, and the image of a little boy with unruly hair and dark, sleepy eyes blinked at him from the phone.

“Daddy!” the boy cried, a toothy grin splitting his chubby little cheeks as he seized the phone from whoever was holding it on his end. He was too close to the camera, the angle giving Din a spectacular view directly up the toddler’s nose, and you smothered a giggle as you watched the boy make faces at himself in the viewfinder.

“Hey, kiddo,” Din said softly, and oh, but you could hear the smile in his voice, could feel the fondness radiating off of him in waves even though you couldn’t see his face. Every sinking feeling that had taken over your body disappeared at the sound as you realized what exactly you were witnessing. The other woman was his babysitter.

“Are you being good for Aunt Cara? Hm?” he asked, and you could just melt at the gentleness in his low, rasping voice.

“Good!” the little boy replied, nodding vigorously in a way that bounced his floppy curls across his forehead.

Another face appeared on the screen, the same woman from the caller ID photo, and you watched as she scooped the squirmy kid up into her arms with an exaggerated, theatrical groan. “Tell him,” she prompted playfully. “Say we played with your airplanes and your cars.”

The little boy grinned toothily. “Yeah, cars!”

“And we wrestled with Uncle Axe and Aunt Koska,” Cara prompted, to which the kid giggled.

“I winned!”

Cara nodded with a fond smile. “That’s right, you won.”

From somewhere off-camera, another voice – this one male – called out in protest. “Debatable! I still say the ref was biased!”

The boy laughed again, the sound high-pitched and full of joy, and even the woman holding him seemed to be fighting back a chuckle as she plowed on. “And then Aunt Bo made dinner, and this little dude ate alllll his vegetables!”

“You did?” Din replied, genuine surprise coloring his words. “That’s great! I’m so proud of you!”

“Daddy! When you come home?”

From your angle slightly behind him, you could see your date’s shoulders fall slightly at the question, so sweetly and innocently asked in that little baby voice. On the other end of the line, Cara offered him what you would call an apologetic smile and shook her head. “Someone doesn’t want to go to bed without Dad.”

“Kiddo, Dad’s not going to be home until after your bedtime,” Din sighed. His words were slow and patient on the surface, but you swore you could hear a note of guilt underlying them, and it made your heart ache in your chest. “Remember, we talked about that before I left tonight? Aunt Cara is going to do bedtime tonight, and then when I get home, I promise I will come give you kiss, okay?”

The boy was clearly disappointed by this response, his eyebrows pulling up in the center and his wide, dark eyes shining pitifully through the screen, and he let out a wordless little whine that you were sure would have had you caving in an instant had it been directed at you. However, Din held strong. Voice low and gentle, he offered, “How about this – let’s say goodnight to each other right now instead. Is that okay? Just for tonight?”

He seemed to weigh that response for a moment, uncertain, but after a beat of silence, the kid tucked himself snugly under Cara’s chin and sighed. “Okaaaay.”

“Okay. I love you so much, kiddo. Get good sleep, have good dreams, and I’ll be there in the morning when you wake up.” Din’s words, so soft and intimate, sounded almost rehearsed to your ears, and you realized that this man was completing a long-standing bedtime ritual with his son via video chat in the middle of a darkened sidewalk on a Friday night. The thought had your heart swelling behind your ribs, the core of you warming and softening with a rush of fondness that you were helpless against.

Fuck. Din wasn’t just a DILF. He was also just a really good dad.

On the other side of the connection, Din’s little boy yawned widely and snuggled his curly head deeper into his babysitter’s chest. “Love you, Daddy,” he murmured sweetly, and you knew that if it were possible to die of cuteness, you would have done so that those words.

“I love you, too,” Din replied softly. “Good night, buddy.”

“Night night.”

Cara shifted the phone away from the kid’s sleepy face then, refocusing herself in the frame. “Okay, that should do it. I’m gonna go tuck this guy in while he’s still feeling cooperative.”

He was quick to nod his agreement, clearly not wishing to make this task any more difficult on his friend than he needed to. “Yeah, go. I’ll text you when I’m on my way back.”

“Hey.” She sounded rather serious then, making intense eye contact with Din through the phone screen. “Take your time, ‘kay? I got this.”

“Have fun, Djarin!” another woman’s voice chimed from a distance, off-camera and seemingly getting further and further away as Cara carried Din’s son to bed.

There was a chorus of good-natured laughter, then the man’s voice from earlier returned. “Don’t do anything we wouldn’t do, eh?”

This, of course, was met with an uproar on the other side of the connection, none of which could be seen. All you could really make out was a stern woman’s voice, one you hadn’t heard before, groan, “Axe, I swear to god – ”

You laughed softly at that, hiding your smiling lips behind one of your hands and Din quickly started to fumble with his phone. “Oookay, that’s enough of that,” he muttered, and with a swipe of his thick thumb, he ended the call.

Slipping his phone into his back pocket once again, he finally turned back around to face you, guilt and embarrassment tightening the corners of his eyes. Even in the dark, you swore you could make out a flush high on his golden tanned cheekbones as he said, “I’m…sorry about that. My kid, he’s got some separation anxiety issues. He’s not used to me being out of the house at bedtime. Tried to talk to him about it before, but he’s not even three yet, and – ”

“Din,” you interjected, closing the narrow distance between the two of you and resting your palm on his arm. “You don’t have to explain. Or apologize. You’re a dad. Your kid comes first.” With a slow, sly smile, you slipped your hand into the crook of his arm, holding tight to it as you proceeded down the sidewalk once more. “Besides, that was an interesting look at your family dynamic. Or were those your friends? The one called Axe sounds like a character.”

He huffed a laugh at that. “Friends. Well, also my coworkers, but they were friends first. I’m an only child, so they’re the only aunts and uncles my kid has ever known.”

“How many of them are watching him tonight?”

“Four,” he replied with a grimace. “I had originally only asked Cara, but the others overhead and…wanted to support me, I guess. I think I mentioned, I don’t exactly do this often. I haven’t been on a date in…well. Let’s just say it’s been a long time.”

You smiled to yourself, feeling your cheeks heat at the idea that this man who didn’t date had decided that he wanted his first date in however long to be with you. You would be lying if you said that wasn’t going to go to your head a little. Leaning your forehead against his bicep so he couldn’t meet your eyes, you asked, “And how are you finding it?”

With a low, rasping chuckle, Din brought his free hand up to cover yours, wrapping his long fingers around the back of your hand where it cupped his elbow. “I’m thinking…if it means I get to spend time with you, I should do it more often.”

Not even an hour later, Din found himself in the back of a cab, arm around your shoulders, fingers linked together, your beautiful face flushed and grinning wildly as you traced the very tip of your nose along his jugular. Your voice breathless and on the verge of laughter, you gave the driver what must have been the address of your apartment, but he couldn’t have repeated the words you said if you had paid him. He was far too distracted, too overwhelmed with where the night was heading to pay attention to such details. You were so soft against him, plastered up against his side. Your mussed hair on his cheek, your breasts against his chest, your round hip snug against his, and fuck, your lips – plump and swollen and glistening with his kisses, the ones he had stolen under the lamp light during your stroll through the park. He couldn’t believe he had done that. He couldn’t believe you had asked him to.

When the two of you had planned this evening, he had had a firm talk with himself – he would keep the physical contact to a minimum, he would not allow his eyes to wander inappropriately, he would be a perfect gentleman, he would treat you like a lady. First of all, because it was the bare minimum of what you deserved, and second of all, because tonight would be your first ever in-person meeting, and he wanted to be very clear that this meant more to him than just some casual hookup. Din had had plenty of those over the years to know that what he felt for you ran so much deeper than that, and he was loathe to give you the wrong idea about his intentions with you.

The moment he saw you walking across the street toward him – backlit by the golden hour sun, hair dancing in the breeze, all your perfect, curvaceous softness swaying with your perky stride – all of that chivalry had nearly been abandoned by the side of the road. And he had been fighting tooth and nail all evening to keep hold of the reins of his desire for you.

But the two of you had meandered through that park for a while. You had stopped along the shore of a little pond to admire the water, and you had looked up at him with these wide, soft eyes, your long lashes casting intricate shadows across your cheeks, and god, it had nearly killed him to keep his hands balled up in the pockets of his jacket.

And then you had taken the smallest step forward, eating up what little distance still remained between you.

And then you had whispered, in a voice so low he could barely hear you, “Will you kiss me, Din? Please?”

How could he have refused you?

Now your breath was on his neck, your lips softly brushing his skin, and he was slithering his arm down from around your shoulders and instead pressing his palm to your thigh. His fingers dug into the softness there of their own accord, tucking the tips inward and brushing his thumb across the cap of your knee firmly, possessively. He felt you exhale against his collarbone at the sensation, the softest, faintest sound of need reaching his ears, and then he was ducking his chin, finding your mouth again, pressing his lips to yours with an urgency that ought to have felt out of place with the poor cab driver sitting right there but somehow didn’t.

Your kiss tasted like lime from your margarita, like salt from the rim. Your fingers threading through his hair felt like heaven. Your body under his hands melted like putty, warm and pliant and so fucking soft that it had blood rushing to his cock, the swell of it pressing uncomfortably against the zipper of his jeans.

And it wasn’t enough. You needed more. He needed more.

Breaking the kiss with a soft gasp, Din pressed his forehead against yours, brushed the tip of his nose against yours. “Easy, sweetheart,” he murmured, his voice low and gravely in the hot, moist air between you. “We’ve got to slow down, or I’m going to embarrass myself.”

You shifted beneath his grip on your thigh, hips squirming in your seat, thighs pressing together, and when he met your heavy-lidded gaze, he was struck with how dark your eyes looked just now, how wide your pupils had blown. Shaking your head, you whispered, “Don’t care.”

He bit back a curse at the way his cock throbbed at your words, at the soft, panting tone of your voice. “Not going to fuck you in the back of a cab, baby.”

Giggling breathlessly, you tucked your face into the side of his neck to hide your blush. “You can’t talk to me like that and not expect me to be all over you, Din Djarin,” you huffed, the tip of your tongue darting out to taste the little patch of skin just beneath his earlobe. “S’not fair.”

“Not fair?” With gritted teeth, pure electricity running through his veins, he returned the favor and buried his nose in the soft, fragrant skin of neck. The scent of you there was intoxicating – warmth and musk with a touch of floral, a touch of sweetness. He wanted to sink his teeth into you, might have had you been alone. “Fine. You want not fair? I’ll give you not fair.”

Shooting a furtive glance at the driver, who mercifully seemed committed to keeping his eyes on the road, Din delicately slipped his leather jacket from where it had been tucked around your shoulders and instead draped it over your lap.

You pulled away from him slightly at that, meeting his gaze with bright, burning interest in your eyes as you realized what he was about to do.

“If we’re doing this,” he whispered, “you have to keep your eyes forward and your mouth shut. Can you do that for me, sweetheart?”

Din watched as you swallowed hard, your swollen lips parting with lust. You nodded wordlessly, and your thigh muscles tightened under his hand, now hidden by the drape of his jacket.

“Okay then. Not a sound.” He cocked his head toward the front of the cab. “Now face forward, behave yourself, and I’ll take care of you.”

He felt the sharp exhale of your breath against his face, and then you were obeying – shifting your hips square to the front of the car, turning to face the windshield, and balling your fists up at your sides. Din shifted, too, turning to face forward and tapping into every ounce of discipline his profession had ever instilled in him to school his expression into something carefully blank and neutral. Beneath his jacket, however, was a different story.

He started with a soothing caress of his palm from the cap of your knee to the top of your thigh, using the heat and the weight of his hand to ease your tense muscles. After a couple of passes, he could feel that softness return, and unprompted, your knees eased apart – not quite spread, not yet, just parted slightly as you relaxed into his touch. The realization sent a surge of satisfaction through him, and he could not stop himself from slipping his fingers down, down, down to the very edge of your knee and slowly starting to gather the fabric of your dress in his grip.

Din heard your breath catch for a moment as you realized what he was doing, and then it sped up, and your knees dropped even further apart. Before he could wrap his head around what he was about to do in the back of a cab car, he had hiked the skirt of your dress up far enough to slip his hand underneath.

Now it was his turn to not be able to breathe. Fuck, your thighs were soft – smooth like silk, supple and pillowy and forgiving as his calloused fingers traced slowly across your skin, seeking your warmth. He could feel a muscle in his jaw jump as his fingers drew higher, as you subtly adjusted yourself in your seat so you could open your legs even wider, permit him even closer to where you both knew you needed him. Every instinct in him begged him to go faster, to give you more, to whip the stifling cover of his jacket off your lap so he could take in the sight of his fingers reaching the smooth, cotton gusset of your panties with his own eyes. Instead, he pulled his face into a scowl of concentration and kept his pace measured.

By the time the side of his pinky bumped into the apex of your thighs, Din felt ready to combust with urgency. He could feel the heat of you there through the fabric, could feel the slickness seeping through it to dampen his skin, could feel the tension in your hips as you tried desperately not to arch into his touch. You were being so good for him, staying silent, never looking his way, just sitting there, the picture of innocence as you let him touch you. It had something hot and nearly feral rising in his chest, the fact that he could give you such impossible instructions in such an impossible scenario and you would drive yourself mad in an attempt to obey them.

It made him wonder what else you would do, if he asked, and just the question had his cock pulsing in his jeans. Unable to hold himself back any longer, Din tucked his fingers under the seam of your panties and slipped them softly, gently through your folds.

A groan bubbled up in his chest, and he allowed his eyes to fall shut for a moment as he collected himself. You were absolutely dripping for him – hot and wet and slippery, trim little curls sticky with it, underwear soaked against the back of his hand. It coated his fingers, and it took every ounce of restraint in his arsenal to stop himself from pulling his hand from under the jacket and popping his fingers directly into his mouth. But no, he told himself. There would be time for that later. Now, you were practically vibrating in your seat trying to keep yourself together, and he needed to watch you fall apart before the cab arrived at your apartment.

Din allowed himself to gently pet you for another moment, reveling in the feel of your soft wetness, and then he was seeking your clit, finding it swollen and puffy and begging for attention near the top of your folds. With the first delicate caress, you lost the battle with your own vocal chords and let out a quiet, breathless whimper, and a rush of pride raced through him at the thought that he had finally overwhelmed you to the point where you couldn’t keep silent anymore. Still, he couldn’t stop himself from leaning over into your space and murmuring into your ear, “I said keep quiet, sweetheart. Or I stop right now. Understood?”

You let out a shaky exhale, and Din felt more than saw you nod your agreement.

“Good girl,” he growled, and he swore he felt your clit pulse under his fingertips at his words. Interesting. That was something he was going to need to explore more later.

For now, he offered you a few more gentle caresses, a few soft, tight circles around your clit as acknowledgment of your suffering, and then he dipped down to your entrance and slowly, sweetly slipped his middle finger into your throbbing pussy.

God, you felt incredible – hot and wet and so fucking tight that he could feel his cock leaking in his jeans at the idea that he might have the opportunity to be inside you with more than just his fingers. Your velvet walls fluttered around him in desperate little waves as he gently thrust inside you, in and out, in and out, pressing deeper on each pass, seeking that elusive spot inside that he knew would make you see stars. After a handful of strokes, he added a second finger, and your hips stuttered at the stretch, hitching against his touch in a way that felt both needy and overwhelmed. You were so tight, and his fingers were so thick; it was no wonder it was a shock.

Din turned and dropped a tender, comforting kiss to the crown of your head. Fuck, you were so good, just sitting there in the back of the cab, letting him touch you, letting him finger you, letting him make you feel good. The ease with which you gave it all up to him was driving him insane. How long had it been since he had been with someone like you, someone who seemed to know innately what he needed, who fit with him so perfectly it was as though some divine being had had a hand in your introduction? Had it ever been this good? Had he ever needed someone as badly as he needed you?

Grinding the heel of his hand into your clit, Din sped up his thrusts. In and out, in and out, pressing, stretching, seeking. Your knees fell farther apart seemingly of their own accord, as your eyes had taken on a faraway look to them, staring unseeingly out the front windshield as you took what he gave you. In your lap, his leather jacket began to slip, and one end of it fell suspiciously down between your spread legs. Although his hand and the apex of your thighs were still hidden, if the driver were to take a look in his rearview mirror, he would clearly be able to tell what was happening in his back seat.

The same idea seemed to occur to you then, because in that moment, you broke his second rule – you glanced over at him with a fucked-out look of urgency on your face, and Din could swear he felt you starting to tighten. Fuck, this was turning you on. The near-exposure, the precarious position the two of you were in, it was making you drip around his fingers, making you clench around his thrusts.

You were a wild thing; Din had known it from the moment he laid eyes on you. Now here was the proof. You were going to come on his fingers in the back of a cab car, and then you were going to invite him up to your apartment and let him fuck you senseless –

“Here we are,” the driver said, his voice slow and unaffected, almost bored as he pulled the cab off to the side of the street and turned on his blinkers.

No matter how nonchalant his words, the sound of them sent a bolt of terror through the both of you, and in a flurry of limbs and fabric, each of you scrambled to put yourselves back together as the car came to a stop. Din yanked his fingers from your body, the quick withdrawal pulling a little hiccupping whine from your throat, but he paid it no heed as he tugged your skirt back down where it belonged around your knees. You gathered up his jacket and draped it over your arm, running your fingers through your mussed hair. By the time the car rolled to a complete stop, each of you were looking mostly put together, save Din’s raging hard-on tenting his jeans and your flush-cheeked, glassy-eyed stare.

Although he had already paid for the fare, as the two of you slid out of the back of the car, Din pulled a wad of cash from his wallet and discretely slipped it into the driver’s hand.

“Thanks for the ride,” he murmured hoarsely, and before the man could reply, he threaded his fingers through yours and followed your lead to the door of your apartment building.

You would be lying if you said you hadn’t been hoping that this would be where the night would end – Din’s broad, calloused hand in yours, your dress askew and your thighs damp, the two of you moving with urgency down the hall outside your apartment, breathless laughter on your tongue. You had never been strictly opposed to sex on the first date, if the chemistry was there and you felt comfortable and safe with the person, and he had checked all of your boxes and then some from the moment you spotted him outside the restaurant that night. You had decided then and there; if the date went well, and he seemed to be on the same page, you would be taking him home with you that night.

You had worried that your advances might be a bit much for Din, but clearly, those fears had been unfounded. He seemed a bit overwhelmed, a bit in disbelief, but that hadn’t stopped him from jumping at every chance you had given him – holding your hand as you walked, kissing you down by the pond…

Giving you one of the hottest experiences of your life by stealthily fucking you with his fingers in the back of the cab while you struggled to stay perfectly silent and still…

Your pussy clenched at the memory of his thick fingers inside you, the perfect stretch of them, the way they had both soothed your ache for him while also somehow making it worse, knowing how much better it would be if it were his cock filling you up like that. Fuck. You needed this man, and you needed him now.

Thankfully, Din seemed to have no interest in stopping. When you finally reached your door, he wasted no time in crowding up behind you as you fumbled for your keys, hands slipping around your waist as he dropped hot, open-mouthed kisses to the side of your neck. Your eyelids drooped at the sensation, your hands halting in mid-air, keys dangling from your grip, and you felt more than heard him chuckle against your skin.

“Don’t get distracted, sweetheart. Open the door,” he murmured, breath hot on the shell of your ear, making you shiver. What a little shit.

After another second of fiddling with your keys, you finally were able to work open your door, and the two of you nearly fell inside. He slammed it shut behind you as you tossed your keys onto the nearby countertop, and then he was on you – one hand gripping the swell of your hip, one hand slipping along the side of your face to cup your jaw, fingers tangling in your hair at the base of your skull as he cradled you. You could smell yourself on him, the scent of your arousal clinging to the hand that now held your face, and god, you could swear your insides turned molten at the idea. His mouth was covering yours before you could comment on it, and then every lucid thought evaporated from your mind.

For a man who claimed to have been out of the dating pool for a while, Din certainly knew how to kiss – he was passionate, meticulous, and completely relentless in the way he took you apart. His lips were soft, his tongue precise, and the single-minded focus with which he stroked your jaw, coaxed you open, and devoured you was enough to make you blush.

Almost absently, you realized his other hand had swept around the crest of your hip and taken a palmful of your ass, and you whimpered into the kiss, your hips hitching toward him of their own accord. His hands were fucking huge, warm through the fabric of your dress, callouses on his palms catching on the fabric. You needed them all over you – on your skin, in your hair, between your legs –

Pulling his lips away from yours with a gasp, he groaned, “If this is too much – if this isn’t what you want – ”

You shook your head, digging your fingers into his dark brown curls, pulling his neck down to your mouth so you could suck on the skin there. “I want it, Din. I want it,” you reassured him.

You felt a shudder pass through him, and then both of his hands were on your ass, dragging you closer, pressing the full length of your torso along his. “Know it’s early, know we just met, don’t have to do anything you don’t want – ”

“Din!” Yanking his hair sharply until he hissed, you watched as he finally seemed to focus on you, eyes darkening as he took in your flushed face, your swollen lips, your glossy, heavy-lidded eyes. “I want to fuck you,” you proclaimed bluntly. His mouth dropped open, just slightly, pouty lower lip trembling as he stared at you. “Do you want to fuck me?”

The man blinked a few times, seemingly taken aback, but he didn’t allow the question to hang in the air for too long. With a heavy, audible swallow, Din replied, “Yeah, baby, I want to fuck you.”

A bright, electric thrill of victory surged through you, and you couldn’t have smothered the grin that split your face if you tried.

“Okay, then fuck me. And don’t hold back.”

You winked at him playfully, and a dangerous smirk that had your pussy fluttering pulled at the corner of his lips. No sooner had you registered the expression and he was toeing off his boots, leaving them abandoned in front of your door, and driving you backward into the apartment. A breathless yelp followed by a laugh escaped you as you allowed him to push you into your living room, shedding your own shoes as you went, and then you were kissing again, and just like before, all of your surroundings melted away.

A rush of cool air met your thighs as balled fists pulled up the hem of your dress, gathering the fabric in worn palms as more and more of your body was revealed, and you let it go gladly. Lifting your arms above your head, you allowed him to pull the whole thing off over your head, and through the wild, fluffed-up strands of hair dangling in your eyes, you watched as he took you in – your blushing cheeks, your heavy, heaving breasts cupped in a black cotton bra, your soft, rounded belly, your thick thighs and wide hips, the narrow strip your black cotton thong completely soaked through and clinging to your pussy lips. You had no name for the expression on his face, but if you had to relate it to something, you would say it was close to awe.

Din was in awe of you, completely and utterly gone for you, and the surge of power that sent through your veins was like a drug.

“Take off your shirt,” you murmured, lip between your teeth, and as he rushed to obey, you dropped to your knees in front of him.

“Fuck, sweetheart, you don’t – ” he groaned, but your hands were already working his belt buckle open, already thumbing at the button of his jeans.

“But I want to.” Looking up at him through your lashes with wide, soft eyes, you held his gaze as you slipped his zipper down, as you felt the hardness poorly concealed behind it swell and surge against your palm. “So let me.”

He gave no further protests, simply watched as you tucked your thumbs into the waistband of both his jeans and his charcoal gray boxer briefs and shoved, pulling them both down around his knees in one, smooth tug. One more push and they were pooled around his ankles, and then Din was stumbling out of them, holding onto the back of a nearby armchair for support as he kicked them aside.

He was naked now, staring down at you with dark, heated eyes, broad, muscled chest rising and falling with every labored breath, and fuck, if he wasn’t the most beautiful man you had ever seen. Thick and strong with long, powerful limbs and a soft stomach, a fine dusting of dark brown hair from his bellybutton down, and miles and miles of golden tanned skin decorated with a heavily curated collection of black and gray tattoos that you hadn’t been able to see earlier. They looked like beautiful work, and you were eager to examine them later, but for now, something else was begging for your attention, and you couldn’t ignore it any longer even if you wanted to.

Inches from your face, long and thick and curved, flushed and leaking precum, his cock was just as beautiful as the rest of him, and you needed it in your mouth. Now.

Holding yourself steady with one hand on his narrow hip, one hand around the base of him, you leaned forward and dragged your tongue along the underside before taking the tip of him in your mouth and suckling gently. Slick musk coated your tongue, and you moaned at the taste, immediately surging forward and taking more. Above you, Din let out a colorful string of curses and dropped a hand to the back of your head, cupping the bowl of your skull in his palm as you worked yourself over him. He never put any pressure there, never thrust himself deeper than you were choosing to take him, but you could feel his restraint in the tension in his hips, in the grip of his fingers in your hair.

He was trying so hard to be a gentleman for you. You kind of wished he would give it up already.

Pulling back, letting his cock fall from your mouth, you took up your strokes with your hand and said, “S’okay, baby. You can take what you need from me. M’not gonna break.”

Din groaned, low and gravelly in his chest, and then he was using his grip on your head to coax you up and back onto your feet. “Need to fuck you, sweetheart – I can’t wait any more.”

Your cunt bottomed out at that, the swooping sensation deep inside you almost leaving you dizzy, and although you had been looking forward to sucking him off, you found yourself nodding your agreement anyway. “Where do you want me?” you asked, and the question had him tugging you forward into a hard kiss.

“On the couch,” he growled. “Just need to feel you around me.”

Pulling him deeper into the living room, you shed your bra as you went, tossing it who-knows-where in your eagerness. You could feel his eyes on you – on them – as your breasts swayed with your movement, and perhaps such direct attention ought to have made you self-conscious, but instead in made you bold. The moment the backs of your knees collided with the couch, you stripped your thong from your body while holding his gaze, and the pure, molten want in his stare had you feeling like the sexiest woman he had ever seen.

“Lie back,” he rasped, and you were quick to obey, laying down with your head at one end and your legs stretched out along the length of the couch. Snagging one of your many throw pillows, Din tapped the side of your hip twice, adding, “Lift your hips for me, pretty girl.���

You did, and he slid that pillow underneath your ass. Then he was clambering up onto the couch with you, all long limbs and big hands and sweat-damp curls, kneeling between your legs, urging one of them up to drape over the back of the couch, nudging the other down to drip limply onto the floor. You went where he guided you, happy to arrange yourself however he pleased as long as it meant you got to feel that gorgeous cock inside you.

But he started with his fingers first, coaxing and petting and caressing your dripping folds in much the same way that he had in the back of the cab, only this time, you were free to arch your hips into his touch and let out soft, breathy moans with every delicate stroke.

Din seemed to realize this at the same time you did, as he began to nod slowly, encouragingly as he slipped two fingers into your quivering, grasping pussy. “That’s it, let me hear you now. You don’t have to be quiet anymore, sweetheart. Let me hear you feel good.”

And fuck, but it did feel good – his fingers stretching you, filling you, pressing steadily against that soft, elusive spot inside you with every thrust, making you want to thrust against him, to drive him deeper, to take even more of him.

“God, baby, you’re so fucking wet. Is that good? Is that what you need?” he groaned, and you nodded furiously, too overcome to speak, just knowing you needed him to keep going…needed him to give you more.

Again, it was like Din realized what you wanted at the same time you did. Gently slipping his fingers from you, he used the thick coating of your wetness on them to stroke his cock as he shuffled forward on his knees. Pressing down on the blunt, swollen tip with his thumb, he dragged his length through your folds collecting your slick, starting at your entrance and sliding smoothly up to your clit. You let out a low, startled moan at the feeling, and you couldn’t help but grind against him, letting the tip of his cock press and circle against your puffy, throbbing clit. Shit, when was the last time you had hooked up with someone and been this outrageously turned on? You felt like you were on the ragged edge of your orgasm already, and he had barely touched you.

However, just as Din began to trail the head of his cock back down to your entrance, a shock of reality broke through your dazed, lust-fogged mind, and you found yourself pressing your hand against his stomach, stopping him from thrusting in.

“Condom,” you panted, sex-addled and breathless. “We need a condom.”

His dark brown eyes widened with a sudden wave of awareness, and you felt him pull back immediately. “Shit. You’re right, I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I wasn’t thinking.”

You let out a winded laugh and shook your head. “Me, neither. Did you bring one? I have some if you need.”

Din nodded, hopping up from the couch and crossing back over to where the two of you had abandoned his jeans. Digging his wallet out of the pocket, he slid a conspicuous foil packet from inside then dropped the wallet back onto the pile of denim. A moment later, he was settled back between your legs, perched up on his knees with his hands on your thighs and the condom tucked securely between two of his fingers.

“You ready, sweetheart?” he asked, and you nodded urgently.

“So ready. Beyond ready.”

Your eagerness seemed to be all he needed to get back into the moment. With a few quick strokes of his cock, he ripped the condom wrapper open with his teeth and slid it on. You watched with hooded eyes, lower lip trapped between your teeth, and you couldn’t stop yourself from reaching out to stroke him yourself as the latex stretched over his skin. Din groaned at your touch, and then he shooed your hands away and lined himself up with your entrance.

“Eyes on me, pretty girl. Want to see your face while you take me,” he groaned, and with one long, smooth thrust, he filled your cunt with his throbbing length.

“Ah! Fuck, Din!”

It took everything in you not to let your eyes fall shut as he thrust inside you. The stretch was incredible – just the slightest burn, but even with his size, it wasn’t too much after how he well had prepared you, how long he had teased you in the cab, how turned on you were. It was enough to feel truly full – stuffed to the brim, the weight of him absolutely gorgeous as he bore down on all your most sensitive spots. Above you, your date was gritting his teeth, a muscle in his jaw twitching as his nostrils flared, as he dug his fingers into your thighs with a grip so hard it would likely bruise. He seemed to be fighting very hard to keep himself together, and you immediately felt the sinister urge to clench around him just to watch him struggle. Instead, you chose to take mercy on him and simply roll your hips against his, driving him deeper.

“No – shit, baby, you can’t – ” he stammered, hands tightening on your legs even harder, hips surging forward in the smallest of thrusts completely out of his control. “I am…hanging on by a thread here, and if you – ”

“If I what?” you taunted, the power you had over him flowing through you like an aphrodisiac, making you bold, making you reckless. “If I do this?” You rolled your hips against his again, smooth and lazy, and you could actually feel his cock throb and twitch inside you.

Deep in his chest, Din released what could only be described as an animalistic growl, and in an instant, he had one hand tucked behind the back of your knee – the one up on the back of the couch – and the other gripping the couch cushion beside your head. Arching his broad, muscular body over yours, bringing his face down to your level, he pressed your knee back toward your head and thrust so deep into you, you couldn’t help but whine at the feeling.

“Naughty girl,” he rasped.

You nodded with a smile. “You like that about me.”

He huffed a laugh into the hot, humid space between you, shaking his head at you exasperatedly. “You’re right, I do. But right now – ” He pulled back his hips until just the very tip of his cock remained inside you, brows drawn low in concentration. “ – right now, I really just need to fuck you. Can I, sweetheart? Can I just fuck you?” He thrust back in, all the way to the hilt, and you could swear your cunt was literally dripping at the intoxicating feeling. Your body was writhing beneath him, completely out of your control, and you swore that if he didn’t just fucking rail you in the next three seconds, your head might explode.  

“I swear to god, Din, if you ask me one more time – ”

His mouth sealed over yours before you could finish your sentence, and then he was finally – finally – fucking you.

With swift, firm thrusts, he drilled you into the couch cushions, all hesitance and restraint fully evaporated. The angle was perfect, the extra height and the little tilt added by the throw pillow exactly what you needed to have his cock dragging against your G-spot on every thrust, and that combined with the way his pubic bone ground against your clit had you moaning and whimpering and digging your manicured nails into his shoulders in your ecstasy. Din was like a force of nature, the way he fucked – gripping your thigh, driving your leg back toward your head, holding your eye contact, watching with deep, unflappable intensity as you trembled and shook beneath him. Every once in a while, he would drop his gaze to trace over your soft, folded stomach or to watch the hypnotic bounce of your tits, but mostly, he kept his eyes on yours, and rather than making you self-conscious, it simply drove the heat between you higher, made it more powerful.

“Thought about this,” he confessed, a whine creeping into the edge of his low voice as his thrusts sped up. “All those fucking pictures of you – doing yoga – all bent and twisted and – flexible.”

A smirk made its way onto your face, and you ran your fingers through his hair, brushing his limp curls out of his eyes. “Yeah? You like a bendy girl, Din Djarin? How’s it live up to the fantasy?”

He groaned, leaning even further forward to press his sweaty forehead into yours, driving your leg even further back toward your face. Tucking your knee up onto his shoulder, the angle of his cock inside you deepened. “Even better,” he admitted. “You’re perfect – so perfect.”

“P-Perfect?” God, that soft, spongy tip was hammering your G-spot now; you could barely comprehend any of the words he said to you, let alone string together any of your own.

“Perfect body,” he elaborated, gritting his teeth, groaning loudly. “Sweet, soft, perfect p-pussy. Perfect – hnng fuck – perfect girl.”

“Din!” you gasped. That low pool of heat in your abdomen was starting to tighten, starting to pulse. You could feel it rising inside you, threatening to take you over. It felt…massive, life-altering in a way you hadn’t known orgasms could be, but fuck, if this one wasn’t promising to do it.

“Shit, baby, can feel you,” Din groaned. “You gonna come for me? Gonna come all over my cock? Hm?”

“Y-Yes, I’m gonna – you’re gonna make me – ” You hiccupped a sob, raking your fingernails down his arms in a move that had him hissing and his hips stuttering as he thrust. “Fuck, I’m so close!”

“What do you need? What’s gonna get you there?”

“My clit – can I – ?”

He cursed, dropping a wet, sucking, open-mouthed kiss to the inside of your thigh. “Yeah, baby, touch yourself. Make yourself come. Need to feel it.”

Wiggling one of your hands into the tight space between your bodies, the tip of your middle finger found your throbbing clit and immediately began to play. You wouldn’t need much more – just something a little more direct, a little more concentrated, a little more –

“Yes! Fuck, Din, right there!”

And then you were gone – that tight, wet heat inside you bursting, dripping down his cock and flinging you into the stars on the edge of the event horizon. The walls of your cunt pulsed around him as you rode out your high, and Din was quick to follow you into his own abyss, unable to hold back anymore the moment he had felt you start to fall apart. With one final, deep surge of his hips, you felt his cock pulse and twitch inside you, and for a brief, wild moment, you regretted the use of the condom. You would have liked to have felt the warmth of him spilling inside you.

In the aftermath, Din was tender, as you had had no doubt he would be. After the two of you had taken a moment to catch your breath, he reached a hand down to hold onto the base of the condom as he pulled out. A low, husky groan escaped him as he withdrew, and you felt a sympathetic throb deep inside you at the sound. Even now, everything he did was unthinkably hot.

A moment later, he had removed and tied off the condom and retreated to your kitchen to toss it, returning with a warm rag he had clearly dampened in your sink. He was gentle and methodical as he cleaned you, wiping between and around your swollen pussy lips with steady hands before he moved on to cleaning himself.

He would need to go now, you realized. He had likely already stayed out later than he had planned, already imposed upon the generosity of his friends long enough. His little boy was waiting for him, and as much as you wished he could stay, you knew it would be unreasonable to ask him to.

So without prompting, you pulled yourself up to sitting, and when he came back from tossing the rag back into the kitchen, you rose to your feet.

You had to admit, you felt a bit exposed, a bit awkward, but even now, as Din looked at you, you could see all of the same warmth and affection you had seen in his eyes before the sex, and that eased your nerves a bit. The first real nerves you had felt since the start of the night, you realized.

“Sweetheart,” he whispered. “I’m sorry, but I have to – ”

“I know,” you interrupted, giving him a smile you weren’t certain would reach your eyes. “I understand. It’s late. You have to be getting back.”

“I do,” he agreed. Crossing to stand just in front of you, he reached out a hand and traced the backs of his fingers down your arm, leaving goosebumps in his wake. “Thank you for tonight. I had a great time with you. And not just…this.” He gestured awkwardly at the surrounding room, at his own nakedness that matched yours, at the trail of clothes between the couch and the apartment door. You giggled in spite of yourself, and he joined in, the whole mood lightening considerably as the two of you found your way back to laughing with one another.

“I had a great time with you, too,” you said, draping your arms around his neck. “I’d like to do it again sometime, if you’re interested.”

Din smiled, soft and genuine, and pressed a kiss to your hairline. “I’m definitely interested. And, ah, maybe next time I’ll call in a few favors. See if I can arrange an overnight sitter.”

You snorted, tucking your face into his neck as joy began to bubble beneath the surface of your skin, making you feel light and filling you with an impish energy in spite of the hour. “Hey, if you can swing it, I’m definitely not going to say no. I’d like to actually, I don’t know, make it to the bed next time? Maybe?”

He playfully squeezed your sides in response, and you let out a squeal. “Can you blame me?” he quipped. “Driving me insane all night.”

Offering him a tongue-touched smile, you pulled away and started collecting his clothing from around the room. “Again. You like that about me, baby,” you teased. With a wink, you dropped the bundle of clothes into his waiting arms. “Now get your cute ass back in these jeans. And go kiss your son good-night.”

A handful of minutes later, Din was fully dressed and hovering by the door to your apartment, the scent of you still lingering on his skin, his heart lighter and freer than he had felt in years. You had gone and gotten yourself a robe to cover up with while he dressed, and now you stood, hip leaning against your kitchen cabinets, arms crossed over your ample chest, watching him attempt to delay the inevitable of having to say good-bye.

He didn’t want to leave you – he hoped you knew.

He didn’t want to sleep away from his son, but he also didn’t want to leave you. An impossible conundrum, and one that didn’t bear examination seeing as this was only your first time meeting in person. It was far too early for the direction his mind was heading; he headed it off before it could travel any further down the road.

Instead, he gathered you into his arms one final time for the night, cradled your face in his hands, and planted a soft, gentle kiss on your swollen lips. “Good night, sweetheart. Can I text you in the morning?”

“You can text me anytime,” you replied with a smile. “You could even, um…call me. If you wanted. When you have some free time.”

Din drew back for a moment, eyebrows raised. “Yeah, if that’s okay with you. I’d like to call you.”

Your smile widened, and he could swear he felt a piece of his heart leave his body and lodge itself in you at the sight. “Great. Then I’ll look forward to hearing your voice again tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” he echoed, and with one final kiss, Din slipped out the door.

[respectthepetty]

Upcoming Taiwanese BLs

We are over halfway through 2024, and as usual, I've only had two Taiwanese BLs (Unknown, Anti Reset), so even though I'm sitting on a stack of BLs to watch every single week from other countries, call me Smaug because I need MORE!

Honorary Korean BL: Uncovering the Curse of Taekwondo (2024)

Former friends (and possibly lovers) reunite at a funeral after going their separate ways for over a decade, but, honestly, I don't care about the plot because this comes from Hwang Da Seul who was behind Blueming, To My Star, and Where Your Eyes Linger, so I know it's going to be amazing. There is a movie and a series version, and the movie already premiered at the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival in South Korea at the beginning of July. The runtime was 154 minutes, but the series is eight episodes around thirty minutes each and is currently seeking distribution.

First Note of Love (August 2024)

My most beloved, Charles Tu, from my favorite BL HIStory 4: Close to You is finally returning to me in the form of a washed-up singer who stepped away from the spotlight due to a tragic event only to be dragged back in by an up-and-coming composer who is also a longtime fan. It is a joint production with Thailand's Star Hunter Entertainment (the company behind Big Dragon, Love Senior, City of Stars, and Sunset x Vibes) and features a side couple of a Thai singer and a Taiwanese agent. It will involve singing, but I'm already too comfortable in my seat with my snacks to care.

Fragrance of the First Flower Season 2 (2024)

The lone GL holding down this list finished filming late last year and Gagaoolala has been releasing BTS images since filming began, so it'll likely land there once it is released. The series is a continuation of the 2021 first season, which people were not thrilled about because of the ending, so this season should solve some of the angst we were left with by exploring the two women actually coming together to navigate life as a couple.

The Only One (August 2024)

Directed by Liu Kuang Hui, who directed Your Name Engraved Herein, written by the same folks behind The Untamed, and based on Mu Su Li's novel A Certain Someone which is about two boys whose parents are dating and move in together, so the mains go from enemies-to-??? and the only reason for the question marks on a Taiwanese BL is because the word on these BL streets (and his MDL page) is one of the actors works heavily in China, so this might be the reason this one has been was in limbo even though filming finished earlier this year, but the socials are still posting it's coming this year.

See Your Love (Filming Complete)

This co-production with Japan is about a rich man who falls in love with his hearing-impaired caregiver. It finished filming at the end of May and will have those sweet sweet Taiwanese BL cameos from some Be Loved in House: I Do and Plus and Minus folks PLUS it will be the first cameos for the Kiseki: Dear to Me guys since the company that produced their show is the same one for this show.

Impression of Youth (Filming Complete)

Very little is known about the plot of this teacher-student romance, but it comes from the same folks who produced DNA Says Love You and one of the mains, Muji Hsu, was also the lead in 2020's Because of You. Filming finished at the end of May, and the company stated it would be out before the end of the year.

Islanders (late 2024/early 2025)

This is based on a novel, Islands, by Lolita Hu, features some well known Taiwanese actors, and for a bit was under the name Sea of Intimacy. It's being presented as an 'older BL' but the MDL summary is sparse of the BL-plot: Hung, a successful entrepreneur, has three intimate relationships: his wife, his mistress, and his girlfriend. The lives of these individuals in their 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s are intertwined because of romance, but their story extends beyond that. When Hung faces criticism on social media and loses everything, the way they react tells us how they see the world.

Wishing Upon the Shooting Star & The Young Gangster (2025)

These two deal with completely different plots but are together because of one reason: Ray Jiang. He is the director for these two and was the director for Unknown, My Tooth Your Love, and We Best Love. The companies behind them have stated the series are coming next year, but the guess is Ray's busy schedule is part of the hold up since he has a Netflix series in the works and apparently a film featuring Sam Lin (We Best Love) on the way. The Young Gangster is based on a novel and deals with a research assistant gathering information on the mafia (and we know how the mafia works in BLs), while Shooting Star deals with a man wishing that nobody notices him once he returns to his hometown after being fired. The wish backfires and nobody recognizes him, not even his dad or the boy he confessed to in high school! BL Mafia, Sideways Wishes, and Ray Ray are my favorite types of snacks!

Pray in Love (2025?)

A police officer falls in love with a man only to realize that man is the son of a prominent leader on the day of his arranged wedding in which he was hired as security for the event. The series already released a short film of the basic premise for fundraising efforts and festival rounds. Apparently, filming has started on the series, but there is no concrete confirmation from the production company.

Eternal Butler (2025)

Edited to add thanks to @cankersoregirl! This is a sequel to VBL's Anti Reset and began filming in early July. It focuses on Ever 4 who is sent to be a bodyguard for a young rich man only to encounter a rebellious man.

That Year, 162 Rainfalls (In Production?)

Is this a movie? Is it a series? Is it happening?! Who knows, but last year, it finally got funding and a director attached to it, but the real kicker is Lin Pei Yu is the screenwriter, and she is the writer behind all of my favorite Taiwanese BLs: We Best Love, HIStory 3: Trapped, My Tooth Your Love, Kiseki: Dear to Me, and so much more. Basically, the company struck gold getting her for this story about two archers and best friends. One gets confessed to but admits he actually is in love with his best friend, but before love can happen, the best friend has an accident and falls into a coma. It is based on a novel of the same name, and the plot is way more hefty than this, but I know Lin Pei Yu will make it work!

Four Seasons (Pre, Pre, PRE-Production?)

This is supposed to be four different stories focusing on different seasons, and is rumored to be VBL's next group of shows since the company has stated it wants to continue its formula from last year of releasing slightly connected shows. VBL/Vidol was behind Stay by My Side, VIP Only, You Are Mine, and Anti Reset. Winter is about a scrooge CEO and a florist who is hired to decorate for the CEO's Christmas event. Spring is about two boys meeting on a bus and falling in love over music. Summer is about a market owner and a chef falling in love over food. Autumn is about two former best friends seeing each other ten years after graduating and exploring their hometown together.

Connecting to You (Pre-Production?)

It seems to have gotten funding, but it's been quiet since which isn't surprising because when it comes to Taiwanese BLs, nothing is really heard until filming begins or even after it ends. I still have my hopes high because this is *THE* BL for me as it deals with a man who can see colored threads connecting people and one day runs into a policeman whose thread connects to him. The thread between them begins to change color, from silver-grey to yellow, representing friendship, and even to red, representing love. If I have to sell an organ or two to fund this myself, I. Will. Do. It. I NEED THIS!

And this wouldn't be a Petty Post if I didn't include this final one:

HIStory 15: Freed (GIVE IT TO ME!)

I don't care if this a long shot. I don't care if I seem crazy always asking for this. I. Deserve. It. HIStory 3: Trapped ended with our best mafia boy in prison, and it's time he got out! The HIStory franchise has not had a series since 2022's HIStory 5: Love in the Future, and although there have been rumors that a HERstory story might be next, I think bringing back a popular story would be just as good. I will ask for this every chance I can until I get it, and I plan on living a long life, so I got time!

[lubrumalis]

konig headcanons! (realistic)

tw: nsfw

all of these are realistic hc! dont expect a normal konig

hes NOT a shy awkward pushover, just because he has social anxiety??? we can see through his voice lines hes a very cocky person and speaks rather agressively

“lets be honest, its better off in my hands.”

i hc that just because konig has social anxiety, he doesn’t express this through bring soft and shy, he expresses it through his bluntness

konig wanted to be a sniper but did not because he couldn’t stand still, has social anxiety, i hc he has some form of adhd

his very cocky and blunt shouting isn’t because hes mean, but he just doesnt wanna be seen as that bullied kid he once was

hes doesnt have horrible EQ, but the kind of guy to be incredibly unfiltered

also, this guy was literally assigned as a human battering ram, you think hes all soft and sweet???😅😅😅

no he won’t get angry or cry if his mask is taken off. just annoyed.

its not actually canon that konig is a colonel (correct me if im wrong, i couldnt find anything on the official wiki) but lets assume hes one anyway

even if he isnt, gets paid well. really well.

private military companies that deploy soldiers in areas of active conflict can pay up to hundreds of thousands for one soldier

considering konigs age (late 30s at least) and skills, probably 400-500k a year.

chose to join the military because he had an obsession with tanks and guns as a kid

a lot of hc’s say hes 6’10. i disagree, simply based off of chances and the fact thats wayyyy too tall for the military

but he was described as a mountain, so id say his height is around 6’5-6’8

very very intimidating. hes tall big and has the mask of an executioner in the 15th century. who wouldn’t be scared?

definitely will say some random german word in a situation where no one else there knows german. he doesn’t give a damn lol

hates americans (thinks theyre all obese, mannerless, and bad at geography)

brings up the most random topics. again i really think konig has adhd.

konig was not good at school and hated it, mainly due to the anxiety and how he couldn’t pay attention

also why he chose the path of a soldier

drinks lots of beer, high alcohol tolerance, this guys a true european.

loves austrian or german food. loves schnitzel and pies.

konigs breakfast is literally sausages, toast, eggs, and sometimes beer

BIG APPETITE. he could eat for 3 people.

a little insecure about his appearance, not confident in his looks :( also why he hid his face

but as he grew older he uses the mask for actual purposes of concealing his identity, he is a special ops soldier after all

kind of a cheapskate. he chose to hide his face with what, polyester? chose a piece of cloth over everything else.

has very conservative beliefs. not to the point where he hates abortion and votes far right, konig is just a little confused about some things certain liberals believe in

pretty political person lmao

not enough info to conclude whether or not konig was abused as a kid tbh

he was definitely miserable for a period in his life. hes in the military living a monotone life, barely any contact with others, and constantly living in fear he’d die

i dont think hes as traumatized as ghost tho🙂🙂

konig appreciates his dna and how it makes him big and tall, but sometimes gets incredibly annoyed at it

mainly because well, he got bullied for itas a kid

because he specializes in hostage rescue a lot of hostages (especially kids) are scared of him and refuse to leave the area with him

takes a lot of convincing 🥲🥲

has a lot of intrusive thoughts

cannot use social media properly

also texts like an old grandpa. uses 😂 and 🤣 unironically.

“Can we have burgers 🍔 tonight🌃?”

probably uses a blackberry or reallyyyyy old iphone

relationship hcs:

konigs voice actor (jim boeven) stated in a livestream that konigs wife would ideally be a mix between maria pedraza (actress) and rachael from blade runner (character from movie).

both are 170cm ish and brunettes

i can actually see that—konig is massive and he probably prefers someone on the tall side

first thing you did that led to your relationship with him? you tolerated him that is. listened to him ranting😃

i can see him with a civilian or someone whos in the military tbh

finds you pretty at first

enjoys bickering, he needs someone to simulate his mind

you know those stories where his s/o is 5’2, clingy, soft af, and neeeeeeeds konig? haha you won’t be getting that from me.

unlike ghost, who really takes his time to get to know someone and opens up slowly, scared to have his trust broken again

konig charges in like the human battering ram he is😁

if he has a feeling you’re trustworthy you are trustworthy.

horrible at flirting. he doesn’t know how to talk to women smoothly

needs someone equally as weird and funny

s/o needs to be someone with very firm boundaries and can stand their ground, i think konigs a really stubborn person, so for a healthy relationship to work, s/o can’t be the generic bimbo

konig wears the pants in the relationship

doesn’t let you pay. he has a enough money and believes men should always pay

(im sorry to break your delusions) konig does not strike to me as someone who likes a docile homebody. thats ghost (if you remove the word docile).

he doesn’t like extremely dominant partners either

imagine someone who is a listener, accepting yet blunt, shares his quirks, and has a very elegant feel to them

also someone very independent

also gonna get killed for this but konig would realistically not go for a girl in her early twenties. he prefers elegance and sophistication over being cute and jumpy

hates one night stands.

values relationships more than you think. he can come off as strong at first, but hes trying his best

ecstatic when you tell him you wanna learn german (hes not a good teacher)

doesn’t like play fighting, he thinks he’s gonna accidentally hurt you

admires you a lot. he knows hes not the best looking person and doesn’t understand the makeup skincare dress up thing.

isn’t paranoid, but definitely doesn’t say he has an s/o

if you ever get mad at him, konig will tighten all jars in the kitchen so you have to ask him for help :)

extremely unfiltered. he hates your cooking? he will say it. that dress looks better than the other? he will say it.

[celestie0]

gojo satoru x reader | college au [18+]

kickoff ch. 4 a day in the life of a hot soccer player

ᰔ pairing. college au - soccer player! gojo x film major! reader

ᰔ summary. gojo satoru is the most popular guy on your college campus. he's tall, funny, hot, not to mention he's the most talented soccer forward the school has seen in years. but he's also a frat dude, which puts him in a world very different from your own, as he spends most of his nights partying & drinking while you spend most of yours working on your annoying film major assignments. but when he reaches out to you for a favor, you realize that helping him out might have something in it for you too.

ᰔ warnings/tags. 18+, fem reader, fluff, angst, smut, college au, fraternities, sororities, partying, drinking/alcohol, mentions of weed, romance, jealousy, pining, slow burn, opposites to lovers, friends to lovers, she falls first he falls harder, gojo being an idiot

ᰔ chapter. 4/x (probably 12)

ᰔ words. 3.4k

a/n. yay for gojo pov chapter! i originally tried writing this from reader's pov but it wasn't really working for some reason so i switched it up.

nav. masterlist

☾·̩͙꙳ moodboard no.1

♬.*ﾟplaylist

Gojo Satoru was never really the type of guy to be serious to just one woman. He had a sort of rotation of women that he'd go through every couple of weeks. Now wait, before you think he's an asshole, he once tried to have a serious girlfriend in college. But he quickly realized that it's really difficult to coordinate down time. When he's taking an exam, she's calling to ask if he's free. When he's off practice, she's got work. Once a week ended up being all he could really see her. And for a guy with a sex drive as high as his, that just wasn't enough. But having multiple women meant more chances of at least one of their schedules lining up with when he’s free, and bam, he was getting laid on a consistent basis. Okay, now you can think he's an asshole. 

He knew he was a bit of a slut, a manwhore, a player, whatever the girls in his Instagram comments liked to tease him about. But it felt good to be those things because for some weird reason it gave him confidence. It was just a stupid, primal, egotistic, caveman feeling that's probably carved into the DNA of every man out there. He can't help it.

Turns out he just really likes it when people rely on him. He likes it when his teammates entrust him with the winning goal during the final moments of a match, he likes it when women put their pleasure at his mercy during sex, and something within his stupid, primal, egotistic, caveman mind really liked it when you had that intent spark in your eye asking him to help you achieve something for your dreams. 

Gojo lay in his bed, ankles crossed and rested up on a pile of folded laundry at the end of the bed. One of his hands was tucked behind his head that was resting on a couple of pillows, and his other hand was scrolling through his phone.

This weekend’s party was a bit more exclusive with each member of the frat only getting two invites for the list. There were restricted parties like this in the past, and Gojo very rarely used his plus-ones/twos. Most of his friends were already from the frat, and most of the hot sorority girls would be invited by other dudes anyways. But this time, he was considering inviting you.

His mind wanders to that first night he met you at that party. You looked slightly different in person compared to your photos, a bit edgier than the soft persona captured by the candids on your social media that your friends took of you. Gojo scoffs at himself when he remembers how worked up he got over the belief that this random girl he Instagram DM’d was insinuating she would be down to fuck that night, some arrangement where he shows her a damn good time as a reward for bringing her roommate to his friend. It was a pretty sexy scenario in his head. Despite the hindsight he has now, for Gojo that kind of thing wasn’t an insane thing to assume. Excuse him for sounding a bit arrogant, but women tended to blatantly throw themselves at him pretty much everywhere he went. And besides, you were cute, so maybe a part of it was just his wishful thinking, too. 

You were like a deer in headlights at that party. He watched as you looked around the room at one point in the night, searching for something before you disappeared into a hallway. When he finally had you alone to himself in the kitchen, and he realized all you wanted to drink all night was water, the prospect of a casual hookup seemed to be slipping further and further away from his grasp. 

But his chest filled with a different, unfamiliar feeling when you mentioned what you really wanted from him, and he’s been chasing that feeling ever since. 

Right now, he just wanted to see you again. He hated how you seemed to just abruptly leave any time the two of you were together, which has only been twice so far, but still. He wanted to see you in something that wasn’t just a plain t-shirt and jeans (although that was definitely his favorite clothing on a woman most of the time). He wanted to know what you were like when you were a little bit tipsy, maybe even a little bit drunk. Were you talkative? Emotional? Touchy? Flirty? 

Gojo’s thumb hovers over the Instagram chat that had your name on it. He should really just ask you for your number at this point. 

When Gojo clicked on the chat and used it to go to your profile, he noticed you posted some more photos. Just a slideshow of your life recently. Some pictures of flowers you spotted on what looked like a bike ride judging from the shadow, a cake you baked recently for a friend’s birthday, a snapshot of a cat running away in an alleyway. The last picture was a black and white photo looking through a soccer goal net towards a tree in the distance, and Gojo quickly recognized it as the one on UTokyo’s practice field. 

His thumb double taps the post and then he’s back to the page with your messages. He had reached out to you again after Monday's practice saying that the team was doing another practice match on Thursday, which was yesterday, but you mentioned you were busy working on something for a club you’re in.

An iMessage notification pops up at the top of his phone from one of his frat brothers. 

|| 3:12pm ryota the GOATa: gotta finish sending out qr codes. you got the names/insta handles for your invites tonight? or you just not gonna invite anyone like usual? 

He sighs, wondering what to do, when he ultimately decides against inviting you. You were probably busy with something anyways, and he didn't want to experience the disappointment of you saying you can't come if he does ask, fearing that there might be a reason that didn’t have anything to do with an accumulating pile of class assignments. It’s a bit of a cop out, he knows that, but whatever. You very clearly told him that the two of you weren’t friends.

He types out a message that reads yea my homie @ThePope, pls. Also, your mom to which Ryota replies fuck off.

Even though there was no practice today, Gojo felt like he just needed to get out of the house for a bit. There were too many thoughts in his head, most of them about you, and he didn’t like it. He wants to be smooth-brained Gojo that just thinks about soccer and partying. He slides his legs over to the edge of his bed and sits up, inhaling and exhaling harshly, before standing up in resolution and heading to his closet. He pulls his soft cotton t-shirt over his head in favor of an athletic long sleeve and pulls on a pair of sweatpants over his SpongeBob boxer briefs (don’t make fun of him, please). 

When Gojo opens his door, he’s hit with the smell of food cooking and with the noise of two of his roommates, probably Sota and Hide, yelling profanities with video game sound effects in the background. He walks downstairs, pushing his left arm through the sleeve of his shirt.

“Hey, where are you going? We don’t have practice today,” Geto asks from the kitchen as he flips his quesadilla on the pan, spilling a bunch of its contents everywhere. “Shit.” 

“I know we don’t,” Gojo says, tilting his neck from side to side to loosen it up. “Just going for a run.” He extends his right arm across his chest, holding it in a stretch, and grunts a little. 

“Ah, yes, our star player,” Geto muses as he wipes the counter down.

Gojo twists his torso to stretch out his back and releases a slow exhale from how good it felt. “Gotta keep that stamina up,” he says, “for more reasons than one.”

Geto lets out an annoyed sigh from where he’s washing his hands at the sink. They both watch Hide almost chuck his controller at the TV before Sota stops him. By the entryway, Gojo slips on his running shoes and puts his airpods in his ears, then he’s out the door. 

The weather is nice. It’s pretty sunny, a bit hotter than Gojo was expecting, but he wanted to work up a sweat anyways. He taps at his smartwatch and realizes his running app isn’t working, so he shrugs and just decides to guess what running six miles feels like.

As he’s running, his mind wanders to you again. The last time he saw you out on the field, you had a strange expression on your face. It seemed like you were in a rush to leave, which is fine, but it was like you refused to make eye contact with him. Was it something he said? Or something he did? It probably was, he had a habit of fucking things up with people sometimes, but he doesn’t really know what he could’ve done for you to avoid him. Your messages back to him have been pretty curt and weirdly polite, too. 

Somewhere lost in his thoughts, six miles turns into twelve and he’s drenched in sweat by the time he makes it back to the house at around 6PM. Taking two steps at a time up the stairs, he gets into the shower and gets himself fresh, then throws on a black t-shirt, some black joggers, and non-cartoon-related underwear.

He finally checks his phone for the first time after coming home from his run and sees a bunch of new DMs and messages but none were from you. And the fact that he was still thinking about you after running nearly half a marathon had him annoyed. Which is why he’s grateful for the party tonight. Alcohol and sex typically made most things better. 

When Gojo runs into Geto in the loft and asks him about his plans tonight, Geto says he’s got an essay to write so he’ll leave for the house party probably closer to midnight. Gojo calls Nanami, who says he’s not going until Geto gets there because until then there would be no one to buffer Gojo’s fucking idiocracy throughout the night (his exact words). Apparently, Chosou’s still sick with food poisoning. When he checks with Hide and Sota, they say they’re going to go but only after pregaming at a sorority party, which Gojo has no patience for. Todo says he’ll be there from dusk ‘til dawn, of course. He sees a bunch of texts in the fraternity group chat that he has muted, as well as a lot of DMs from girls, asking when he’s going to show up but he doesn’t respond to anyone and decides to just go whenever he feels like it. 

He ends up leaving home by himself at around 11pm, the walk to the host house taking eight minutes. He walks by some other houses that were having incredibly crowded parties, probably for the people that weren’t invited out to this one, and the smell of weed in the air causes him to scrunch his nose. When he walks up the driveway of the house, he sees Ryota at the door, scanning people’s phones and ushering them inside.

“Hey, man,” Gojo greets Ryota with a solid grab of his hand and slap on the back. 

“What’s up, dude.” He returns the greeting.

“Did your mom make it?” Gojo asks. 

“Just get the fuck inside,” Ryota says, pointing to the entrance behind him with his thumb.

When Gojo enters the house, the flashing lights temporarily blind him until his eyes quickly readjust. The DJ had the bass-boosted all the way up to where Gojo could feel the music in his bones and his lips curl up into a smile at the excitement running through his veins. It was mostly dark inside, except for the sporadic lighting from the couple of light fixtures near the DJ’s console, and people seemed to move in slow motion as they were briefly illuminated every other second. 

Gojo hears some people call his name, but he makes it straight towards the back where he knows the drinks are and downs a couple of shots of tequila before he even considers talking to a single person. 

“Yo, dude, you’re here,” he hears Sota say from behind him and he turns around. Sota and Hide are both barely standing up straight with their arms around two sorority girls each. It seems somewhere along the night the two of them had lost their shirts. “Did Geto come with you?”

Gojo shakes his head, making eye contact with one of the girls that was tucked to Hide’s side. “Nah, he’s still working on his essay.” Sota mutters something like lame and Gojo notices the girl miming an obvious blowjob gesture while looking him straight in the eyes. He ignores it and turns around to face the drinks table again, working on mixing himself a drink. He was clearly not shit-faced enough to deal with anything right now.

There’s people yelling in the backyard and Gojo spots Yuuji through the window doing a keg stand outside. He’s about to make his way over there to bear witness too until someone’s grabbing at the back of his shirt.

“Well, well, well, if it isn’t Gojo fucking Satoru,” he hears a voice call and he sighs, turning around.

Shoko’s standing in front of him, wearing an extremely cropped shirt and a denim skirt, with a couple of her friends by her side.

“Well, well, well, if it isn’t Shoko fucking Ieiri,” he mimics her with a smirk on his face, “oh, and, uh, friends? Never met you two before.”

One of the girls beside her rolls her eyes. “We’ve fucked like twice,” she scowls, crossing her arms, and then she looks up at the ceiling to ponder something before looking back down at him again, “actually, I’m pretty sure three times.” 

“You’re not the only one with a busted memory, sweetheart,” he says and he’s about to continue towards the backyard when Shoko walks in front of him, putting a hand on his chest and pushing him backwards a bit, the movement causing some of the drink in his hand to spill. She’s standing up on her tiptoes and then clenching the fabric of his shirt in her hand, pulling him down towards her. 

“You in the mood to make out tonight?” she asks him, biting down on her lip, and Gojo’s eyes are quick to watch the action.

“Sure, but later,” he says casually. Again, not quite shit-faced enough to deal with any of this yet. He grabs her wrist and pulls her hand from his shirt then makes it to the backyard, exchanging greetings with some of his frat brothers on the way there, and makes work of the absolutely horrendous cocktail he’s mixed up for himself as he watches Yuuji entertain the masses. 

The night goes on, Gojo getting progressively more alcohol into his system until he’s worked up a steady buzz and finds himself about ready to do a backflip off the patio roof in front of a bunch of cheering people when Geto has to convince him to get down.

“Dude, I’ve literally been here for two minutes,” Geto grumbles. 

Gojo slings his arm around his best friend, half in camaraderie and half for support. “I missed you, man, where have you been?” Gojo drawls in Geto’s ears, clearly a bit drunk, and Geto doesn’t even bother answering him as he’s walking him back inside.

When the two of them spot Sota and Hide by a beer pong table, they make their way over. Gojo sobers up a bit when he realizes Todo isn’t there.

“Yo, where’s the king of beer pong at?” Gojo asks, his speech slightly slurred.

Nanami, who had his arms crossed and was leaning back against the wall, shrugs slightly. “He said he’d come later.”

“But he said he’d be here from dusk ‘til dawn!” Gojo’s whining loudly near Geto’s ear and the dark-haired man winces at the volume. 

“Alright, let’s sit down,” Geto says and the two of them make their way to the set of couches in the center of the living room where some people were chatting, some were (hopefully) sleeping, and others were getting handsy. 

Gojo slumps down on one of the couches, relishing in the comfort, and when he spots Chosou next to him he’s convinced he’s hallucinating. “What the fuck, aren’t you supposed to be sick?”

Chosou shrugs and glances up at Gojo from the screen of his phone, leg bouncing up and down impatiently. “Nah, I was never sick. Just had an exam to study for and had to get out of practice somehow.” 

Gojo’s about to get angry at him but instead he just sinks further into the couch and throws his head back to look up at the ceiling, a sudden wave of melancholy washing over him. He was at this party, alcohol running through his veins, yet there was this feeling inside of him that he just couldn’t shake. It was some type of disappointment, an emptiness, like despite everything going on around him he was still missing something. 

“This seat taken?”

He tips his head back down and sees Shoko in front of him. His line of sight follows the direction of her pointed finger until he sees that she’s gesturing to his lap where he was very obnoxiously man-spreading. 

“Nah, but I was saving it for you,” he says with a grin and she’s rolling her eyes as she takes a seat on his thigh. She seems a bit tipsy herself, giggling at the pinch he gives her at her hip. Ah, yes, Gojo realizes the emptiness he was feeling was probably from the fact that he has yet to get laid tonight.

“Satoruuuu, take me upstairs,” she’s purring in his ear and he shakes his head.

“Jesus, Shoko, relax,” he hisses, already feeling arousal building up inside him. But he himself had no interest in putting any of this on pause. 

The details are irrelevant, but she’s gotten him up on his feet, her hand wrapped around his wrist, and dragging him along with her upstairs. Somewhere in Gojo’s hazed and horny mind, he swears he hears a familiar voice downstairs, one that makes his heart skip a beat in his chest, but Shoko’s busy pulling him into the dark hallway upstairs and eventually into the bathroom. 

Gojo closes the door behind him, watching as Shoko quickly hops up onto the counter, and it’s not long before she spreads her thighs for him to take his place in front of her and start kissing her. Her hands grab onto his shirt, impatient with the fabric, and he starts trailing kisses down her neck as she wraps her legs around his waist.

“Hey…” she sighs when his mouth reaches her collarbone, “d-did you lock the door?”

“Huh? Yeah, think so,” he mumbles against her skin, hand playing with the hem of her top.

Those were Gojo’s famous last words when the two of them suddenly heard the door open, hinges creaking, and in his periphery he sees that it’s opened almost half-way when the movement stops.

“Oh god, I’m so sorry,” a voice squeaks out and Gojo’s blood runs cold. He turns his head to face the entrance of the bathroom, and then he sees you. 

You, in your plain t-shirt and jeans, standing in the hallway with your hand wrapped around the doorknob, blinking as the recognition of his face registers in your mind. 

Gojo Satoru was never really the type of guy to be serious to just one woman. Yet for some reason, when he sees you staring at him with wide eyes, and with the faintest hint of hurt in your expression, what he was doing suddenly felt so wrong.

a/n. thanks soooo much for reading!

➸ take me to chapter five!

[rbbrbikerthorp]

Meeting Mick

In the centre of London, a 22-year-old junior office clerk named Gareth found himself trawling through his email inbox once again. For such a young lad, he was already fatigued with the tediousness of routine.

He had been conventional all his life, descending from a lineage of monotony. His father was an accountant who was coming up to retirement - a greyish man who wore greyish suits, his grandfather had been an accountant and he was pretty sure his great grandfather had also been in the profession. “It’s in our DNA, numbers run in our blood,” the words of his dad would echo around his head.

As a teenager, Gareth tried to rebel, well he put a bit of effort in to trying to rebel. First of all he let his hair grow, then he got a number 2 at the barbers. He bought a pair of DMs with some of his savings but never wore them for fear of what his mother and father might say. Once he came home ten minutes late for dinner, which was enough for his father to take him on one side and lecture him on the importance of timekeeping.

Anyway, let's get back to the present. Gareth got home early evening after another dull day in the office. He prepared a nice healthy meal of grilled salmon and steamed vegetables. After washing up, he decided to check his social media feeds, not that he was a prolific user of social networks, but at least they were a doorway to 'other worlds' that offered some escape.

As he was scrolling through Tumblr one profile in particular caught his attention. The profile belonged to someone calling himself 'Mick', an older man who proudly identified as a Skinhead Boss.

Gareth just stared at the profile picture; he studied it from top to bottom; his overarching thought was that this was an older guy who didn't give a f**k. He lost himself staring at the shiny black boots, which contrasted with the white laces and the arms covered in tattoos. Gareth then clicked on the profile and immediately pressed the 'follow' button.

He scrolled through Mick's blog and found himself getting more and more aroused at the pictures, which included from videos of lads getting their heads shaved, pictures of skinheads in full skinhead gear, groups of skinheads drinking and even photos of skins getting pierced and tattooed. The posts included many skinhead transformation stories as well as a few articles about skinhead culture, which Gareth read with interest.

Gareth really wanted to message Mick, and he pointed the cursor but kept hesitating because, to be honest, he felt a bit stupid. The voices in his head told him not to bother, Mick is a hard, tattooed skinhead and why would he want to chat with someone as boring and vanilla as you, Gareth?

After deliberating for many minutes whilst continuing to look over Mick's blog, he managed to silence the voices momentarily finding the resolve to send a message. He clicked on the icon and noticed the green dot, so Mick was probably online. After a lot of thought he decided to keep the first message short, "hey there, love the blog, love the gear," and pressed the send icon. No, he thought in a moment of regret and as the voices reasserted themselves, why did I type that? After a few minutes, and much to Gareth's surprise, the number 1 appeared on the messages side-menu. Expecting a "get lost" or "Eff off back to your boring, mundane life," he clicked to see what the reply was.

“Oi oi m8 thx. I didn’t think I’d be your type. Just seen your profile pic you look like just a conventional clean-cut lad." Reading this, Gareth was rock hard. He’d never spoken to a skinhead before and the thought of chatting with one was already driving him crazy. He thought very carefully about what to type next. “Ha ha, well yes, but skinheads - they're something else,” and he pressed send. Mick replied straight away “Thanks. I know you’d look good with your head shaved, wearing a nice tight pair of bleachers and all booted up lad.”

Gareth had often wondered what his life would be like if he had taken a different path maybe as a tradesman or a workie, even a punk or skinhead but it would never work, plus what would his parents and friends say. He quickly typed a reply, “Ah, I’d love to but I don’t think I could - I’d be a terrible skinhead,” and clicked on the send icon.

Gareth was starting to feel stupid again for initiating the conversation with Mick - but before he cold wallow in his foolishness he received another message, which had a much firmer tone to it “Listen lad, you WILL make a perfect skinhead. I CAN make it happen m8. I'll be in the White Hart pub on Grange Road at tonight 8 - be on time. If not, we won't chat again. It's a one time offer."

Having read the message, Gareth noticed the green light disappear - Mick must have signed out.

Gareth didn’t know what to do. This skinhead he’d spoken to for all of five minutes was willing to take him 'under his wing' and make all his dreams come true. Was this a set-up? Was it all one big joke? Was he being foolish turning up in a pub some stranger had mentioned

In that moment Gareth was 'paralysed' Should he carry on as Mr Conventional or take this opportunity to escape the monotony and drudgery of routine? Well there was only one way to find out.

After nearly an hour of procrastination he decided it was worth the risk and he would go and meet Mick. After all nothing was going to happen in pub full of customers? With a mix of excitement and apprehension, Gareth put on a pair of jeans, a plan blue t-shirt and a his coat. He opened Google Maps and searched for The White Hart and followed the directions.

After a twenty minute bus ride and ten minute walk he arrived at The White Hart. He paused for a moment. This looked like any other pub he'd seen in the city. Was he really going to enter a pub frequented by skinheads? Was he about to meet the man he'd been messaging on Tumblr? He was about to discover that this pub, adorned with memorabilia reflecting the skinhead subculture, would become the backdrop for his transformation.

He walked through the double doors and entered the tap room. He was immediately met by the sight of three skinheads standing at the bar. He checked them out; they all had shaved heads, some dressed in green or black bomber jackets, some just in t-shirts or Fred Perry polos and wearing skinhead boots; some black some red/brown.

Standing for a moment, just inside the doors (close enough to make a quick retreat should it be necessary), he took in the atmosphere. He looked around the room, trying not to catch anyone's attention. However, a few of the skins had noticed the new lad enter. Gareth was aware of several faces looking in his director, some seeming to sneer at him in contempt. He imagined they were thinking "what are you doing in our place?" After all he was a normal looking, average 22 year old in the middle of a pub occupied by tattooed, pierced, and booted skinheads.

Gareth got a sense that tension was building, but at the same time he was very aroused. He'd never been so close to one skinhead, let alone a pub full of pretty hot looking skins. He glanced at his watch - it was almost 8 o'clock - so finding Mick was his priority.

Gareth was feeling intimidated by the many eyes focussed on him. Believing Mick would be somewhere in the pub meant he was able to dig deep and find the courage not to run out through the door through which he entered. As he walked around, he noticed a skinhead standing at the bar smoking a cigarette. He always thought that smoking was banned indoors - and that included pubs - but this skinhead didn't seem to care. "You look out of place my lad - don't think you want to be in here!" he said taking the cig out of his mouth.

"Well, erm, I, I'm supposed to be meeting someone here." Gareth stuttered a reply taking in the sight in front of him.

"Oh, is that so?" The skinhead started to smile. "And who is this person you're supposed to be meeting or do you just like being in a room filled with skinheads?"

Gareth was getting even more aroused. "No, erm Mick," he initially replied meekly, then getting his confidence back, "he's called Mick".

Suddenly Gareth heard a booming voice to his right, which he knew was aimed at him. “Boy, I've been waiting."

Gareth headed over to where the voice originated, very aware that the skinhead he'd just been talking to was still staring at him as he walked away.

"Good job you turned up lad." Gareth was mesmerised at seeing Mick in person - as if in a trance, he walked towards the man that would permanently change his life. With each step forward, he took in Mick's weathered face, shaved head, tattooed arms and, holding a metal baseball bat in his left hand. "Boy, I thought you might chicken out." Finally standing next to Mick, he laughed nervously; he actually was scared-stiff but at the same time he was so turned on by this older skinhead. “You wanna be a proper skinhead - just like ALL the lads around you, don’t you?"

Gareth turned around and looked around the pub - no one was staring at him now. Everywhere he turned he saw skinheads laughing, chatting, getting the beers in and even playing pool - it was the camaraderie that caught his attention.

All his life he'd been a 'lost sheep'; he'd been desperate for the kind of kinship he was witnessing. Yes this is what he wanted, and he would do whatever it takes to be accepted. He turned back to Mick, and more certain than he'd been about anything in his life, "Yes, YES, I want to be a skinhead."

"Good lad," Mick cracked a smile for the first time since they'd met in person. "I can make it come true boy. First, I should warn you that once you say yes, there’s no going back. So, you're absolutely sure about this?”

Gareth had never been more certain in his life, oh and had never felt like this before (not to mention the forming bulge that was hard to miss). “Yes, I really want this”.

Mick was relieved, he made it a mission to bring new lads into the skinhead world “good choice, I’ll make a proper skinhead out of you boy. When I'm done with you, you'll be a proud skinhead, following the skinhead code.” Gareth nearly erupted in his trousers, he couldn’t believe this was happening. Right seat yourself down, I'll get the beers in an we'll talk about your skinhead transformation.

In a matter of minutes, Mick returned accompanied by two other skinheads who sat down alongside Gareth. "This is Charlie and this is his boi Chris. Chris once had a boring life - he was a going to be a lawyer but he hated his life. He met first Charlie on Grindr and now they're inseparable; Chris now works for the council in the cleansing department. Lads, this is Gareth," he said, nodding in Gareth's direction."

Gareth nervously picked up his glass that had been put in front of him and took a big gulp of the beer. One gulp turned into two, three, four and in no time, he'd almost finished his pint. In doing so he'd plucked up the courage to initiate a conversation about what life would be like as a skinhead.

Mick was about to start waxing lyrical about his life when Charlie jumped in, having just finished his pint, "tell the lad how long you've been a skinhead Mick," turning to Gareth, "Mick also knows what it means to be a skin and how we watch out for one another. C'mon Chris let's get the next round in."

As they chatted over three more pints Mick regaled his life experiences and the subculture he had embraced since he started secondary school. He shared stories of camaraderie, rebellion, and talked affectionately about the unique sense of identity that exists within the skinhead community. Despite the age gap, a connection had formed between the two. Mick decided it was time to begin Gareth's transformation. "Right lad, follow me."

Mick put on what Gareth would learn is his black Harrington, he picked up his baseball bat and headed through a set of double doors. Gareth followed a few paces behind Mick heading down a short dimly lit corridor.

They walked through the door and entered a room with black and white tiles on the floor, three sides of the room had walls covered in pictures of skinheads, the other wall was simply a floor to ceiling mirror. In the middle of the room was a barber's chair.

"Right lad, take your top off"

Without a second thought Gareth complied. "Get in the chair." It was an order, not a request, which had to be obeyed. Gareth was about to take the first step and most symbolic stage his transformation to a skinhead.

Sitting in the old barber's chair, Gaz could only watch as Mick walked over to the shelf and picked up a set of clippers. Mick removed the guard that was covering the cutting end and turned to Gareth, ""this is it lad; in a few minutes Gareth will be gone. I'm going to transform you into Gaz - my Skinhead boi."

With that Mick pressed the on button on the side of the clippers; immediately he heard the familiar 'clack' sound echo around the room. Mick pressed the clippers into the nape and worked his way up the lad's head. With a deliberate slowness, Gareth's hair was stripped away. With each stroke, inches of hair fell on his chest and on the floor around the chair until it was all gone.

Gareth was more turned on than he'd been; at any time in his life. Nothing he'd done in his 22 years to date had resulted in the mild sweating, butterflies and raised heart-rate that he was experiencing as he stared into the mirror watching this tattooed thug denuding his head.

Mick could tell Gaz was enjoying the experience as he heard a little pleasure moan escape from his mouth. He ran the clippers over Gaz's head at least three times, ensuring there was only stubble left. Mick noticed Gaz staring in the mirror - it wasn't all he noticed. "Like what you see boi?"

Gareth simply nodded - his brain simply couldn't process the combination of his feelings and the sight of his shaved head in the mirror. He was about to touch his head when Mick interrupted, "No you don't boi. I'll tell you when you can touch your head."

Mick then walked over to the sink and turned on the hot tap. When the water was steaming hot, he grabbed a towel and wet it thoroughly. He squeezed the towel removing the excess water and placed the very towel on Gaz's head; leaving it for a few minutes.

This gave him time to grab a can of shaving foam. He completely covered his boi's head in foam. He grabbed a new Mach III razor and started the next stage of the transformation. It took a few minutes to shave away the stubble from his boi's head and make him as smooth and shiny as a baby.

Gaz sat there frozen in disbelief as each stroke of the razor revealed another patch of scalp completely void of hair. As Mick finished up, he produced a handheld mirror to show the back and sides: “what do you think boi?”

Gaz didn’t recognise the person staring back at him - he was starting to look like a dumb thug who’d grown up on a council estate and spent years getting in trouble with the law. Not some twenty-something who had grown up the perfect, but very boring, nuclear family. “Yeah, this is perfect, just how I wanted to look”.

"It's only the beginning of your transformation lad. Now we need to get you dressed. Stay there." Mick ordered and walked over to a cupboard ar the back of the room.

Gaz didn't want to move. He was transfixed by the skinhead he saw in the mirror - so much so that he didn't hear Mick calling to him.

"Get over here boi!"

Gaz came back to reality and jumped out of the chair. He walked over to where Mick was standing. It was a cupboard full of boots, jeans with bleach splashes, t-shirts, polo shirts and bomber jackets.

For the second time in as many hours, Gaz was enthralled by the content in the cupboard - as he stared at the many pairs boots on the shelf he was almost drooling. "Right lad," Mick said jerking Gaz out of his boot gazing, "we can get you started with what's in here. You'll need to get more in time but that can wait till you start yer new job."

With that Mick began to outfit his boi in classic skinhead attire. He started by handing Gaz a t-shirt wich the boy slipped over his head, then came a pair of very tight fitting jeans with bleach splashes - bleachers as they are generally known. As he put them on he could sense blood rushing towards his groin area. Seeing this Mick smiled; Gaz smiled back sensing he was blushing. As he finished buttoning his bleachers, he saw the jeans had been cut off just below the knee - he would soon find out why. Next, Gaz was handed a pair of white(ish) football socks. "Get them on your feet."

As Gaz was putting his socks, he looked up when another skinhead entered the room. He was a bit younger than Mick but older than Gaz; his arms covered in tattoos and a huge ring in his nose and both ears pierced, "is he ready Mick?"

"Not quite Al, he's got his boots to put on an lace properly." He turned to Gaz, "for now you need to pull your socks over your knees." When Gaz had done as instructed, Mick put a pair of black 20 hole boots with white laces in front of him. He sat down and began talking him through tightly ladder-lacing his boots, first the right foot then the left.

In no time at all Gaz had ladder-laced his boots.

"Stand up lad - look in the mirror!" Mick instructed, "how does that feel?" He didn't need to ask - the lump in the boi's bleachers was there for all to see.

"i...," Gaz was stuck for words. After a few moments he spurted, "I can't believe what I'm looking at," as Gaz found himself feeling a sense of belonging he had never experienced before.

Mick was pleased with the transformation so far. He offered Gaz a cigarette. “Sorry, I don’t smoke”. Mick threw Gaz against the wall “lesson one, you don’t get the choose what you do and don’t do anymore. Skinheads smoke and now you're a skinhead so that means you're a smoker too. I want you to smoke a pack a day boi”.

For the first time since he walked into the pub Gaz was intimidated - especially knowing there was another skinhead in the room watching. Gaz gingerly took the smoke from Mick and lit up. It tasted awful and he was trying his best not to cough after every inhale.

“You’ll get use to it boi. Give it a few weeks you won’t be able to get out of bed without sparking up” Mick laughed. This is Al by the way. He's a tattooist - he's going to make your transformation more permanent.

"Right Al, he's ready for the next stage."

Al smiled, "come slong me boi."

Gaz followed Mick and Al out of the room, and out of a side door in the pub. Even though he'd worn his Doc Martens on a number of occasions, walking in 20-hole boots felt so different. To start with the leather was new and the soles of were solid and heavy. Mick and Al were heading off and Gaz had trouble keeping up. Eventually the two older skinheads arrived at a tattoo studio, with Gaz arriving a few seconds later.

"Right here we are. It's time to finish the job. Al's gonna give you your ink and we'll get some metal into you too,"

"Yes boi," interjected Al, "in the chair, take your shirt off and we can get started."

Gaz took off his shirt and sat in the chair.

"I think you should light up boi," Mick instructed, holding out a pack of cigs. Gaz took one and lit up. Even though it was only his second cigarette, he was doing better at not coughing every time he inhale.

"Right Mick, so just as we talked about earlier?" Al asked.

"Yes, just the ones he can't hide - the ones on his knuckles, hands, neck for today, then over the next few visits he can get his sleeves done and then you can work on his back.

Gaz's heartbeat was rising rapidly as he was listening to what was about to happen. The transformation so-far was reversible, but the moment the tattooing started there would be no turning back. Then all of a sudden he felt a wave of calm as he realised he wasn't forcibly being transformed. His lifetime wish was become a reality and Mick and Al were facilitating his deep desires.

Al set up his equipment and began. As the needle buzzed, skinhead symbols etched themselves onto Gaz's skin – a commitment to a lifestyle that was rapidly becoming his own. The letters S-K-I-N and H-E-A-D were tattooed onto his knuckles. Next, a swallow was tattooed on the back of his left hand, followed by his right hand. Then Al began the more painful and time consuming work of tattooing a spiderweb onto the left side of Gaz's neck and a pair of red DMs on the right hand side. Both would be positioned too high for Gaz to cover them up - even if that's what he wanted to do - and he didn't, ever!

Piercings followed suit, adding a further edge to Gaz's appearance. His ears were adorned with small gold hoops, then his nipples were pierced - wincing at the pain as the needle went through the sensitive skin.

"One more for today boi and then we are done. If you thought your nipple piercings hurt, then you'll really feel it when we get your septum done."

Mick wasn't wrong. However, compared to the continuous, vibrating pain of being tattooed, Gaz would describe the septum piercing as a quick, sharp pain. In no time at all he had a 14 gauge septum piercing with a gold ring though it.

"Your nose is going to be tender to touch and will probably take a couple of week to heal." Al told Gaz. We'll look at changing to a slightly bigger ring as Mick wants in a couple of months, that's provided it has healed well."

Mick walked over to Gaz and grabbed him roughly. Mick pressed his body up against Gaz and kissed him lightly on the lips. Then he thrust his tongue harshly into Gaz's mouth. Gaz had never kissed a man before, in fact he hadn't kissed many girls before. So he just let Mick take charge. Gaz found he loved the smokey taste of Mick's mouth too - imagining that his would taste the same as he become a 20-a-day smoker.

In that single moment Gaz felt a sense of liberation that transcended his previous life. There would be no return for once ordinary office worker. Instead, with Mick's guidance, Gaz secured his first manual job. Being a workie on a building site was a fitting occupation for his newfound identity.

In the end, Gareth's (now Gaz's) transformation went beyond skin-deep. He found a sense of purpose and community that resonated with him on a profound level. Mick, the seasoned skinhead mentor, had unwittingly become Gaz's Alpha guiding the 22 year old through a journey of self-discovery that led him to embrace a life that, just weeks before, had been unimaginable.