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#thale cress
ingevr · 1 year
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Work in progress! Can’t wait until it’s ready for the masking tape to come off!
Acrylic on canvas board. It’s fine to practice on, but the boards low quality sometimes feels like I’m fighting my materials 😂
Also I stayed up way too late for this and now I’m very tired
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capslocked · 6 months
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KINKVEMBER DAY: 6
[prompt: blowjob]
male reader x hyeju
12k words
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“I mean, don’t you think,” Hyeju says, wagging a finger at you, “that when you suffer through a bad date, the world ought to owe you something?”
"Like what?" you ask.
"Better taste in women - maybe more orgasms; I dunno, a blowjob?" She shrugs. "The general idea is just that someone gets to cum."
You nearly choke on the air in front of you. "Jesus, Hyeju, warn a guy."
“What? I’m trying to commiserate with you,” Hyeju laughs. “Wouldn’t that be funny? Being able to kiss someone who actually, you know, might love you back, and at the same time. Imagine not hooking-up just to forget a shitty day. Sounds wild, right?"
"Utterly deranged."
"So wild."
-
The first time you hook up with your roommate, it’s because of genetics - though not in the weird, uncontrollable way your body gets rigid and sensitive to any pretty girl who wears nothing but a towel moving between her bedroom and the bathroom, or how her eyes might flick fast from your chest up to yours - or given that the absolute shape of her is a blessing from one god or another (benevolent, clearly). That's not why Hyeju and you find yourselves only a few months later grinding on each other after the clock ticked past midnight, making out on New Year's Eve.
No, it has to do with the fact that Hyeju's nearly failing the nine AM section of molecular genetics because she's spent every lecture doodling stars and planets and planets shaped like asscheeks and planet-ass constellations while everyone else writes notes or doom scrolls twitter or whatever and she is somehow simultaneously the only student who never slept with her face on the lab desk or missed an assigned reading and the only one who absolutely needs a tutor.
It's just cosmic odds that you'd be that one: her roommate, who shouldn't be talking so loudly in the library about sex (in a sort of non-sexy, Mendelian kind of way) or be thinking the kind of things you've started thinking when Hyeju wears one of her more sleepshirt-esque long sleeves, her voice getting lower as you rattle off, "fruit flies and thale cress, definitely, it's just an error of fate or chromosome splitting..." before trailing off into a question.
"This is the worst thing that has ever happened to me," she finally tells you. You listen to her sigh into the binding of her textbook, facedown. "I'm really going to bomb this exam."
You tap her hand twice with your highlighter across the desk. "Then you're pretty damn lucky, if you think about it."
She turns to you, smiles a bit. "Okay, point. The worst thing will be having to retake this stupid fucking class."
"Why didn't you ask for help or go to office hours if you knew you were... failing?"
"Maybe because doing anything more than the bare minimum to get through a class I don't care about is my definition of, failing," she mumbles. "Why didn't anyone tell me a single lab is worth half my grade? Or that the TA is this fucking unreliable? How is this the one thing, really, beyond the basics, that can't be taught by wikipedia, a wikihow article and a youtube video?"
You scoot your seat closer to her. "You really need to relax."
"Fucking tell me about it."
You turn it over in your mind a few times, capping the top of your highlighter.
"Want me to get you off?"
And it’s not like you really mean it, when you say it, which is the strangest thing: you wouldn't actually suggest it, normally, wouldn't mention it in passing and then leave yourself open to the follow up and cross examination; yet there it is, after three, four hours of cramming notes on heterochronicity and the sloshing of gametes - you actually did propose it.
Hyeju jerks up, surprised.
"Are you serious?" She looks around, nearly snorting. "In the library?"
The face you’re giving her makes her scoff.
“You’re absolutely nuts.”
You have character flaws; the inability to admit wrongdoing chief among them. Hell, maybe it's from your mother - or maybe all your brains are just scrambled by the fact that Hyeju's sitting there with her pen against her pretty lips, hair glossier than usual as she scans your face and makes your entire body feel like a reactor core in meltdown.
Maybe you can blame what comes next on that.
"I'm always serious. I'm asking a serious question," you whisper, closing the textbook and resting your elbows on top. You look around quickly, like you're sneaking something in instead of this perfectly reasonable exchange, the perfectly platonic - except maybe not so much - way for friends to help each other.
"And I'm wondering what you're asking." Her cheeks are definitely pinker, you think, or the way it fills out her face, from the bottom up, is just that easy to imagine.
“I’m saying you haven’t gotten laid in months.” Here, you realize, these blocks of mental logic that definitely weren’t there when you blurted it out start to coalesce into something solid as you go on.
And you hadn't been wrong when you thought no one had given Hyeju a helping hand in a long, long time: you've heard through the walls or the floorboards at odd hours of the morning that she spends far too long fingering herself to a mind-numbing, tear-worthy frustration that leaves her knuckle-deep but never, ever sated or satisfied.
"No one's around, you'll feel better. You said it yourself."
Not a work of your imagination here - her ears are fucking burning.
"Wait a minute." She pushes her chair back, away from you and your gleaming offer. It clatters on its back legs, and a librarian waves her finger in warning. You wave back, sheepishly, until she stops and Hyeju stands and moves away from the table to talk, hands crossed over her front.
She turns and asks in a hushed-down-voice, "how did you know - did you hear something last night?"
"You couldn't keep it down even if you wanted to, honestly."
Hyeju turns further and throws a glare at the library doors, because obviously her noisiness and their collective noisemanship, or whatever the hell the word is, is clearly the root of the whole goddamn problem.
"Look - if not, no big deal - but I'm just saying you'll probably get over it and at least think less about sex. Or at least the wrong kind of sex."
You expect her to turn, sigh, and ask if you've lost your mind. Expect her to gather her jacket from the back of her chair, take her books and stomp out the room. Or even burst out laughing at the insanity, before slapping your arm lightly, in playful retaliation - anything other than the serious look she gives you in return, tilting her head, pressing her lips.
She turns up at the ceiling for a moment, contemplating something. And it's cute. It's so very, very cute, how her mouth pouts as she considers the possibility, right up until she says, "okay, fine."
The moderate twist of surprise taking hold in your brow must be visible.
"Oh, don't tell me that was all talk. Get me thinking about the right kind of sex or whatever."
You laugh, which has the librarian staring at both of you - until the librarian stops staring and probably sees Hyeju sliding back into her chair, the full, pent-up weight of her concentration pointed your way, knees inching apart - you, and Hyeju waiting, your knee bumping into her inner thigh, leaning closer as the textbook hits the floor.
"Don't laugh."
"Not laughing, seriously. Not laughing," you stammer. “I just think you’re just full of surprises.”
She spreads her knees further and sits taller, looking right at you.
"So then, surprise me," and then presses her cheek to the crook of your elbow.
You slide your chair right into the space next to hers, nuzzling up into the space under her ear. “Keep studying, Hyeju, you’ve got shit to do.” And then you slide your hand beneath the waist of her sweats, knead the swell of her thigh until you find the seam where her leg meets her body, press your palm down on the place just next to her center, your thumb in the middle. All this perfect pressure.
"Fuck," Hyeju says under a shudder. She's breathing heavier when your hot, open-mouthed kisses start landing at her neck, and she probably tries to read her textbook for about forty-five seconds longer. But there's the clench of her jaw right as your middle finger begins tracing circles beneath the fabric of her panties, and her gaze is blurring until she can't tell the difference between an allele or your fucking name.
"Shh-shh," you quiet her, finger tapping harder, playing with the slick wetness beneath all those layers of thick cotton and pressing two fingers there until her knees part like they’re not interested in resisting at all. Your lips press a kiss to the shell of her ear and she tenses all at once, hand shooting up to cover her mouth.
She simply leans back, closes her eyes, and lets you take care of her.
“Okay, you’re right,” she says, shaky and uneven, “that really did take some of the edge off. Did we ever review - poly- uh, pol-polymers here?"
The sweatshirt sleeve falling off your shoulder is a hindrance to any actual reading; her shifting against the chair isn't helping either, but you manage to push down the thoughts of stripping her down completely and giving her your tongue as yet another distraction.
"What did the syllabus say? I don't know if we need to read too far on 'polymers'," you say, having going through an entire afternoon without considering this once, but as you curl your fingers and take an honest crack at cramming the remaining chapters into her head, the knowledge that no one else is getting her this wet - except for whoever she's got in her mind's eye at three AM - is enough to get you feeling a little dizzy.
-
It’s probably supposed to be weird, given that you’ve never gotten any of your other friends off spontaneously in the library, or there's the fact that you can't really avoid each other afterwards, how she shows up in a silk negligee when you're pouring coffee before sunrise to prep for another day and you have the opportunity to notice - yes, she has amazing taste in underwear, yes, you might not have really appreciated her chest and figure enough before - yes, fuck it. She catches you noticing that first time, after coming downstairs with nothing but one of her cropped t-shirts and her board shorts, and she smirks when she realizes you're still thinking about it that afternoon, when her foot grazes yours while you're both washing dishes, and she dries the plate in her hand with a slow swipe.
And it is weird, actually, to describe what’s going on between you in words. 
A few words, anyway, like a one-word label to describe what it was: friends or roommates-with-benefits, or - fuck buddies - god, it's even worse. Fuck buddies? Fuck friends? Something equally terrible and stupid that still makes sense, like something out of a shitty rom-com: it doesn't capture any of the rest of the myriad ways in which things can feel less or less friendly between two people.
So, friends was never, ever going to cut it. Roommates - although technically correct - is just this side of too clinical. And let's be clear: strangers don't wake up every morning together, walk to the same class, sit close together in the middle seats, secretly flick a strangers' skirt up in an empty lecture hall and get on their knees and work your mouth onto her pussy and watch the legs of the desks shake when her feet arch into the floor.
"The notes you've got are better than mine," is how Hyeju tries to put things, the next day and every time after that, standing in the doorframe, or at the foot of your bed and looking every bit the disheveled and hopeless mess you imagine she might spread out over the sheets of her own.
-
It gets complicated, which isn't really a surprise.
"You think your roommate is going to be home tonight?" is the question that comes up multiple times - from a revolving door of pretty names and faces. Hyeju has at least one opinion, if not more, on each of them.
"Tell Jinsoul I say hi," she says once, watching you get ready for a date, and you nearly bang your knee on the edge of the bathroom vanity. 
It's one of the more harmless comments she's offered.
Another, backhanded: "if you’re just looking for a blowjob everyday between lunch and our physics lab, let Hyunjin or Heejin or whatever-her-name-is know she's easily my favorite," Hyeju says on your way out one morning, still under her covers.
Or,
Hyeju's texted a simple "uh, Chuu? really??" when you mention, once, how much fun you've been having - and what kind, as you make a round of self-conscious and rambling phone calls the next day that land you with only one prospect for the night - but your roommate's also no longer being your roommate by the end of it, bouncing against your thighs in the bathtub and moaning something about please more and fuck or fucking make me cum; the details escape you a bit.
That's what friends are for, probably.
Still, in the same, bare-bones explanation, friends also aren't for falling asleep on you - or letting you hold her - or fucking you awake in the middle of the night. Friends aren't for pushing down your jeans when the early-morning dew settles on the back patio, or jerking you off in the seat beside yours with a sweatshirt over your lap when a group project is due later and you all should probably work on that and instead get yourselves off and leave the mess of what you're doing half-finished. Friends aren't, probably, for offering to watch you rub your palm up and down your cock the night before next semester's exams when you can barely sit in a single chair and you can't think about molecular biology or neurochemical transcriptions when your whole body aches to do the transcribing. (If you can catch that drift.)
The lists of who are and are not good enough for you goes on and on - the latter longer than the former.
So, there's Choerry, who according to Hyeju is 'straight up, a total slut'. Yeojin, who gets mistaken for your little sister enough times that Hyeju refuses to - in good faith - let you keep sleeping with her. Both Heejin and Gowon are apparently too pretty for you. "Kim-lip?" she asks, in the middle of peeling garlic, "is that one name or two?" And laughs into a bottle of beer, loud, while you're telling her to quit being nosey and watch her fingers with the damn knife.
"You have a problem."
"Why, because I asked a few simple questions? I think anyone would be a little curious with the -" she pauses to wave her fingers - "I'd be remiss to not be interested in the very drama that unfolds literally across the hall."
She waggles her eyebrows.
You look up at the ceiling. God save you, you think. "Hyeju."
("Seriously," Hyeju chimes in one evening, arms around you, and a mouthful of the dinner you'd cooked.
"You need better taste in girls. Don't waste time on anyone too dumb, or who drinks the milk straight from the carton, or doesn't wash her socks with the same load of laundry. Oh, and - no one who chews loudly. No one who can't tell you're going to cum. The worst is someone who doesn't know what you like, trust me on that. And remember the last rule: don't do anything with someone who eats at a really slow pace, it's incredibly depressing."
You rest your chin on her shoulder from the spot behind her. "Duly noted, oh Master of all Knowledge."
She sighs into your arm, but in the next moment, her voice gets a lot softer, her hips fidgeting slightly against you. "I just mean you're the kind of person people would want to sleep with again," she says, before turning to say your name and kiss you again and again as your bodies curl inward.
"I wonder what that means, Hyeju," you say.
"Fuck," Hyeju groans as you slide further into her, pushing her back into the sofa - hands on her shoulders, legs bent on her either side, "don't tease me like this.")
-
The first snowfall of the year is mild, a tiny dusting, nothing that sticks on the pavement in the alley or on the sidewalks - or the lintels - or in Hyeju's hair, but by evening, when the snow picks up and everything goes quiet, Hyeju has changed into flannels and wool socks in anticipation, curled up like a cat at one edge of the window ledge as the world begins to go white. It's enough that you even pull on a thicker sweatshirt, open up a book, and join her.
She turns toward you, quiet.
You've reached a point in the semester where this, the silence, doesn't unsettle you anymore. It's the space you fill up with time in-between, where you can see the contours of her body against the orange lamplight of the space heater, or watch her kick off the top half of the duvet at night as you fight over space in her bed and wonder about the bare skin peeking out from her shorts.
"Feeling bored?" She slides her foot a little closer to yours, almost imperceptibly. "Am I keeping you entertained enough?"
Her lips pull up at the corner. You chuckle.
"Oh, no."
She scoffs and puts her hands on her knees, pushes herself closer to the window sill and bumps her elbow into your shoulder. The bare skin of her neck and shoulders and face is getting a little redder as she cranes it forward. "Okay, if not, do you need someone to entertain you, maybe."
Your mouth twists, fighting a smile.
Hyeju is so close to you, you could kiss her really, really easily and not care how she'd feel about that. It's not a habit, not as often as it used to be, but every once and a while - she starts this game. Every once in a while, Hyeju just starts smiling like that, and leans into you like she's daring you to play along, hard round of chicken until it's clear what the two of you are doing with each other; the minutes pass by, one, then two, and then - maybe she pushes first, her leg on yours, or a kiss to your jaw or a palm on your back as she walks behind you - and then you'd turn and kiss her full on the mouth and pull at her clothes like nothing's holding you back.
She cocks a smile, and says, "why don't you go and call what's her name."
"Because."
You glance out at the cold, gray light outside. If you had a better understanding of any of the workings inside you, you could reach forward and tell her everything that's stopped you.
-
You're supposed to meet the girl-of-the-month at a New Year's party. Hyeju looks disgusted within the first ten seconds of the whole story.
"Heejin dumped you once, like, two months ago? For no reason."
"It wasn't a break-up. We talked about what we did wrong and we're doing better," you say, lifting one finger.
She glares, then, tilts her lips into this unamused purse that you can't take seriously at all when she starts walking back and forth across your living room, hands moving emphatically to the sides as she speaks, like she's in the process of unveiling a brilliant argument and is using both palms to guide your eyes toward the unquestionable logic. "God, you're the worst. You're just her easy fuck and you'll still answer her late night calls, really."
She leaves the rest unsaid - that she's just not that into you.
"I don't tell you which boys or girls you can call up," you try, putting on a boot. "If you'd like, I can. Name off the list, and make sure that the right name leaves my mouth this time."
Hyeju doesn't blush when you glance up, which is the surprising thing. No - her cheeks have grown a little more sullen, and she stares down at her socks in contemplation. You're in the middle of fastening up the lace and getting to your feet, waiting, wondering if Hyeju's going to continue this conversation, when Hyeju takes one small step forward.
And her hand goes out to touch your chin, thumb at your lip, fingers holding it in place - like you'll turn if she lets it go - the sharp shock of the sensation like a short circuit, before her knee comes between yours, and your body tingles, at the root and stem. "Hey," she says, eyes meeting yours. The edge of her nail flicking gently as she drags the curve of her thumb downward.
"Hyeju, please - I need to get going."
When you start walking toward your car, she calls out from the window. Something about how you better have the time of your life, fun for the two of you - it’s only fair.
(You feel, somewhere, a certain strange loss.)
"What, are you going to stay up and wait until I come back? Or am I interrupting your session for the night."
You can barely make it out, the smallest look passing over her face. "Maybe," she says, and then: "god, it's fucking cold."
-
New year's parties have this sort of quality of being simultaneously the most thrilling, exciting prospect on earth and the absolute worst fucking event in the history of the planet - depending on the venue, how egregious the racket is for a gin and tonic, the guests - oh, and the company.
Jinsoul and Choerry are both in attendance; in separate corners and in equal states of undress and intoxication, which seems fine by every present party, who are for the most part busy ogling one or the other in the full spirit of the New Year - as you would too, if the stars are aligned and Heejin hasn't already gone upstairs with half the guestlist, her arm wound with someone else's, as per her recent habit; if you haven't been tossed aside for any of the usual, less forgettable prospects and for something bigger, better and certainly much more enjoyable.
Which, if there were any way to track these things down with math, you'd already be reaching for your pen and notebook, as Hyeju would describe this sensation in a phrase she picked up from some podcast. Inevitable means necessary, or something.
"Good party," says Heejin, throwing back another drink.
"Yep. You said that," and you finish yours in one long draw, hissing through your teeth.
Heejin is a goddamn delight, of course, in all the simplest of ways. When she looks up at you - mouth pink, hair framing her face - she is so clearly and completely aware of what she is, and exactly what the world has in store for her, what it has set aside.
"Do you want to know what happened at the other New Year’s party we went to last year?"
"I - yeah. Hit me. Tell me all about (another date you were on) Heejin, that’s exactly what I’d love, let’s hear it."
She throws her head back and laughs, before starting into an overlong recount of her latest, greatest conquest, you on the outside. This is the thing - this is how a pretty face, with just a hint of a flirt, will make you feel for a beautiful, attractive, vivacious - absolutely shameless, raving sex-crazed lunatic of sorts who, apparently, loves to run around town and make a bunch of your closest friends fall in love and heartbroke-er, with every passing notion of her beauty, her charm - just the tilt of her chin, and some poor fucker is lost, absolutely lost.
 Even she knows it's a bad habit of hers. 
But who doesn't have a weakness? You've got plenty of your own - plenty, Heejin can admit - everyone does, in a way, and so Heejin, the other sloppy drunks milling about the party, and Choerry and Jinsoul all agree - someone like her just happens to have the best kind of weakness - so, so many of them, in fact:
"Can you believe how easily a few words get Jinsoul riled up? Or how it only takes a couple drinks for Choerry to pull up the hem of her skirt, not knowing the effect that'll have?"
And as for the last, and arguably worst kind -
"Hyeju, huh? What a great start to the New Year," is her final word. Heejin reaches across and downs your drink. Her expression turns just shy of grave, a pensive look. "Not your smartest idea, the living-together situation. Who in their right mind would put themselves in such a mess?"
"Thanks for the great advice." You wave her off, irritated.
There's another laugh before Heejin leans her face onto the table.
"Though maybe she's onto something, now that I think of it. Who needs anyone for the New Year?" and it's almost convincing the way her mouth, lined up with the rim of the glass, smirks when she drinks. "Mm. All a matter of taste."
-
The snow is halfway up your calves when you realize you need to find a cab at 11:30 PM on New Year's Eve. (Which, categorically, is the worst time to need to find a cab on New Year’s Eve.)
Or just:
11:36 PM and the nearest bus stop is too far away.
11:41 and the temperature feels like its dropped by fifteen degrees, like you should start wondering what hypothermia symptoms look like and what signs to look out for in yourself, your future wife and your children. You try not to think about why, but you get your phone out and immediately call Hyeju, so you're not sure what you think you're denying.
"No party?" she asks. Her voice is distant and sleep-ridden, but Hyeju's quick to pick up, like always.
"It sucked, I'm trying to find a way home early. Happy New Year."
"Happy New Year." There's a long pause, filled in by the squeak of snow beneath your boots. "Get a kiss?"
"Uh, not yet. In the market, I guess."
Hyeju's low hum isn't reassuring, either. "Well, you're kind of missing your window. Bad time to start looking."
"Says you, and here you are - still up for someone to spend the night with. Look at you," you respond, all this snark in your voice that she clearly hears. There's a long sigh.
"Actually," and Hyeju, much to the confusion of you and possibly the whole world, doesn't respond, and for a few seconds, the line goes completely silent, leaving you hanging.
She breathes once and comes out of her sleep with a yawn.
"I actually," she begins. There's a lot less preamble this time - this tone - and when she speaks again it comes through not nearly as sleepy, "was sorta wondering. Are you on your way home?"
"If I don't freeze to death, yeah."
"Yeah - no, yeah," and that's it. That's the sum total of what makes any difference between where you were a moment ago, and where you are right now, head spinning, fingers buzzing. Hyeju waits and there's the wind on the line, snow settling on your hat and in the corners of your face.
"I - sorry. I probably woke you up. Are you expecting someone else," you say, very small. Your foot drags behind the other. The cars whizz by you faster, passing.
"Hm. You're the only one, I guess," and after that - just static and the muffled sounds of her footsteps on creaky floorboards - or the tick of her ceiling fan? You can't make heads or tails of the rest of the background noise. All those words she said.
You bite your tongue to stop whatever curse words start pouring out from the jumble and cross streets, or the pedestrian underpass; snow gets stuck in your lashes and burns, but your chest is like a molten furnace. You consider telling her right there on the line, everything you're feeling - so hot, it feels like fire, Hyeju, I'm not used to getting heated and desperate and impatient - that even if you're not here now - just imagining your face - the sound of your breathing, it feels like I'm on the cusp.
"Yeah. Sure - good - okay, Hyeju."
"I guess, see you soon?"
"In a bit."
(It takes 33 minutes, trudging through cold and wet. It's all very dramatic, you think, and there's no one there to even watch you suffer for it, or - though you try not to think about that particular line - really, no one at all.)
-
You hear the way your key grinds in the lock - it's been like this, jammed since summer, when you pushed the front door in late at night a little too hard and something came undone and made a sound like a small stone tumbling down the world's deepest well. The hinge squeaks, and there's ice on the stoop, on the doormat, on every nook and corner you can see, all the way up your neck.
And your face, too. You shake off your hat, undo the buttons on your jacket, and pull off your boots before hanging them and all the layers to dry.
You can make out the outline of her profile at the edge of the door frame, right in the kitchen - barefoot, hip pressed against the island, pajamas - the dim lights illuminating the shadow of her head, hair over her face -
- but you don't pause. The next layer. There's nothing left to say. You're too cold for excuses, too smart to use the same ones you'd been taught, like: this is a normal, acceptable circumstance; everything, anything, will be perfectly normal if the two of us act as though that's the case; pretend we're both acting within the norms of reason, within our senses and logical thinking and I won't make myself go out in the cold a second more - won't stand for more than five minutes with your eyes looking like they're waiting.
So you move instead toward the kitchen, where the heating is better and she's already pouring coffee. There's a heat radiating out of the oven, and it smells sweet in there, like cinnamon and warm butter, and you wish you weren't still shaking, blood barely thawed, but there it is - her face, watching you - eyes gleaming as you wrap your hands around a mug, steam rising up - a shiver running up your arms; her knees skirting yours when she takes one step back and there's the cabinet door shut, then open again, and then a palm on your back.
Hyeju presses a cup of the fresh coffee, now warm enough to drink, to your chest, and says, softly. "What the fuck happened out there?"
She starts reaching out to wipe the frost and slush from your face. You let her hand hold you still, eyes wide.
"Oh you know," and her palm stays, even though it's obviously - suddenly - gotten warmer, and wetter too, and the longer she stands there and lets her fingers warm the pale bones of your cheeks, her wrist, the base of your forehead and ears, the more expectant the look on her face grows. "The usual."
Her eyes go as narrow as they ever can. For just a moment. "You're gonna die a slow, pathetic death someday, just for the record."
"Don't forget how this starts," you try, and feel your neck go warm, throat and breath tight. And not even when her shoulders shift, her mouth going smug - just looking at you.
“I mean, don’t you think,” Hyeju says, wagging a finger at you, “that when you suffer through a bad date, the world ought to owe you something?”
"Like what?" you ask.
"Better taste in women - maybe more orgasms; I dunno, a blowjob?" She shrugs. "The general idea is just that someone gets to cum."
You nearly choke on the air in front of you. "Jesus, Hyeju, warn a guy."
“What? I’m trying to commiserate with you,” Hyeju laughs. “Wouldn’t that be funny? Being able to kiss someone you actually, you know, might love you back, and at the same time. Imagine not hooking-up just to forget a shitty day. Sounds wild, right?"
"Utterly deranged."
"So wild."
When Hyeju sighs and gives a long, nonchalant hum, leaning her body closer, pressing up until her waist hits the cabinet top and you're pressed together chest-to-chest, she looks at you and her hips settle, the heel of her foot reaching around your calf.
There's that tingle. Again and again. You're not even trying to not think about what it might mean.
But then, you start, silently and unconsciously, trying to answer the question: why don't you, maybe. Why don't you, actually - Hyeju kisses you, pulls on the loop of your jeans and lets your lips brush the corners of hers and pulls away, suddenly, mumbling and head-turning. And just as abruptly, your nose buries in the space between her neck and her shoulder, where it's all warm. And when she puts her palms on your hips and squeezes and twists her knuckles into the fabric there, it seems she wants your hands up her shirt and under the small of her back.
And her hands - they're fidgety tonight, fingers curled up to keep their nails and the chill away, moving lower - one on your ass, while the other comes forward and begins rubbing circles, a handful of times - enough so you're letting a deep, low breath escape into the space just above her collar, your knee working its way between hers.
"That," Hyeju breathes, lips at your ear, hand reaching down to trace the hard curve of your cock pressing in the spot right between you, and there's that small rush again, familiar now, like you've caught a rhythm and she wants to feel it in its fullness: "is how you can make it up to me. For making me stay up. Worrying about you, god knows why. Waiting."
You're still half-frozen in a way, slowly thawing. "Hyeju, I've been trudging through the consequences of my actions this entire night. What am I about to suffer through now?"
"It's no consequence, honestly."
You squint.
"Just an idea, but," she breathes again; your bodies getting closer, and looking up at you, she grins and reaches down to touch the very root of you, her fingers drumming. You make a sound, and at that she says, her voice coming out thick, low:
"Want me to get you off?"
She squeezes again for good measure, just to be clear. Just a slight curl of fingers that's enough to send a flash of heat and the transient thought: why, why, why is she always wearing those fucking shorts, even in the winter?
Your blood thrums through the pulse at the end of your cock. You shake.
"Alright," is the response you let out.
And at that, Hyeju takes your wrist and leads you upstairs.
"There's that look. Don't worry. We'll find a way," is all she says as your feet walk forward, up step-by-step and higher and further up to her room. "After all, isn't that what we've always done?"
"It's usually whatever will make me stop talking."
Hyeju puts her chin on your shoulder. Her eyes follow the lines and shapes in the patterns of wallpaper as you turn onto her side of the apartment, and even through the wall and behind the doorway, her arm still around you, she pulls at your chin until your faces turn and you both can share each other's heat.
"Who, you and your awful habit of talking out-loud in your head while you work through equations?" and she brings her lips to yours, close and warm.
"Hey. Fuck you," and your voice breaks into an odd, low laughter when she kisses you harder.
"Yeah, I know," she whispers as her hand dives past the band of your boxers, palm sliding easily until she's gripping you fully and letting her fingers rub. She holds you there, in her room, her arm looped through yours, another arm resting at your belly.
And she stops there. She stays like that: holding your gaze.
"Look, Hyeju," you say, unable to not, though this can hardly count for anything; this, what you're about to admit, is nothing new. You swallow. "The thing is - you shouldn't."
"Don't want me to touch you?" she says, finger to your lips.
"Well, that's different. Maybe. Is there - maybe it's not the best thing to ask you right now."
Hyeju considers for a brief moment and tuts under her breath. "Can you at least do me the decency of waiting until I'm done wringing you dry before you say shit like that."
And she moves then, toward the bed.
So:
No. Yes. Maybe. Who knows, you tell yourself. Maybe, but only because you'll do anything if it makes you feel less sick, like a creature standing over its own skeleton - an abandoned shell; a relic, something to be feared and disgusted, as you let her go between your thighs, kneel beside the bed.
"I mean - since when - have you felt," is just as far as you're allowed to go before Hyeju presses her nose into you and pulls you out of the thin, cold fabric - palm, thumb, all those slender fingers swiping over your head - and now there's just the smell of her room and the shock, the buzz that runs down your spine and settles somewhere, somewhere inside the small and desperate movement of your hips and the tension building just below.
And god, fuck, Hyeju’s lips.
These soft, wet, pouty fucking things that could suck you straight off if you were feeling any less stupid or inexperienced or sentimental - if she wasn't solely intent on teasing it out of you first; a slow drag of the tongue up the underside; the tip of it poking, tracing the rim, like she's figured you out, just where to lead you. She's ready to smoke you out - always - until you're not taking in a breath every ten seconds but starting to close your eyes to the overwhelming, needling pleasure, too sharp, the way she knows you like best.
"Now you're finally - mm - starting to sound hot," and that smirk comes back to the corner of her mouth, teasing the sensitive belly of your cock and tracing her tongue everywhere. "With the voice and -"
You're losing track, her thumb and fingers circling the whole length of you - just, one after the other - mouth a hair-breadth away, her breath hovering like a promise.
"- that face."
"Don't, fucking tease me-"
The sound of your cock going in is like nothing else.
Wet and filthy in all the right ways.
Just the suction in her throat has your eyes nearly roll back into your head - Hyeju's gaze calmly watching the terrible sort of helplessness that washes over you like this: her lips wrapped around, bobbing - her hair falling into the wet mess of her mouth and sticking there. Hyeju likes being a little sloppy, likes feeling that spark run up the length of her tongue when she slides. It's the wet and the heat that gives everything away.
"I don't have much of a choice -" her jaw and chin is smudged when she pulls back off of your cock, mouth glossy and glistening, "and honestly, wouldn't it be a better use of our time, or my talents if I actually do that thing?"
“Which is?”
She looks up for a bit and sighs, the flush blooming pink to the tip of her ears and into the rounds of her cheeks and all across her neck. "Since, as far as I can see, what you really like - is, oh I'm just spit-balling here," and she stops just to bite her tongue and look into your eyes, "it's letting the girls take care of you? Isn't that right?"
You want to tell her, no, not always, that it's not as though you enjoy giving control completely - that that would be completely and unarguably, the opposite of true -
That most of the time you love it when the person you're with is a little bossy, a little crazy for you. You know some guys really get off on a strong woman and maybe, maybe if a girl's pretty and dressed up, and - sure - a little wet, but that's hardly -
“You know I’m right,” she says, a flicker of mischief skittering across her features. “These walls are paper thin.”
You want to tell her, perhaps remind her, that she likes someone in charge just as much as you do - to be taken care of, told what to do - to have a hand curled up around her throat and the other at her tits while a guy fucks her the right way and takes the reigns when she needs. So who are you, when it comes to knowing her better? And who, really, are you fooling?
But before you can get any words in: Hyeju dips, lips parting where the head of your cock throbs, and then disappears; and the hot wet warmth, enveloping all around your shaft and back; the curve of her throat contracting.
You moan - a lot, and louder this time - into the whole feeling. The way her fingers work the distance from the base, twisting and twisting and twisting into the pout of her lips; or how the sound is like nothing - a whimpering, messy sound - almost a whine and definitely not a slurp as your cock sinks further and further, until it's all one big, heavy throb.
And it's like Hyeju can read your thoughts, the visual you have of her lips screwed tight around your shaft - cum leaking from the corners, and her eyes scrunched up tight, as she looks up to watch your face unravel - this perfect image of her taking you, all of you, swallowing each drop as your hips start rutting up into her and - and - and.
Or else she gets impatient, because then Hyeju gives one long pull off the tip of your cock - saliva mixed in the precum there, and that shiny string of fluid hanging, caught in the middle between your bodies - a disgusting and irresistible sight. Her jaw slack, lips swollen and full, and her mouth gone wide open, wanting.
"Fuck - that's good. Don't stop," you start to whimper, desperate, at the sight, the smell. Her hot breath coming quick over the red wanting wetness left behind - then touched by the cold air - fuck -
She slaps your cock to the corner of her lips as she speaks.
"Can you believe what's going on down here?"
"God, can you -"
"And to think most guys wanna jump straight in. That or fuck a load out between my tits."
"Hyeju, shit, come on -"
She kisses the soft tip, right where it’s most sensitive, rolls it along her lip. Then, back down the length of your shaft where she's generous with her mouth inch after inch - lapping, licking, laving - and Hyeju begins working her way down and downward, nestling in at the edge of the bed and between your thighs.
Your eyes blow up the first time she dips low enough to put your balls in her mouth. 
“Mmhm,” she hums.
It’s killing you and she knows it; it’s killing you and she can feel the pre-cum leaking from your slit - the thumb she has moored there, keeping everything right where she wants it, running circles up the length with such little intention - she could bring you to the end just like this. 
"Am I supposed to believe it?” she asks out from beneath the shadow of your cock, looking up at you with her eyes all wide and brilliant - pupils dark as sin. “That not a single one of those girls ever did you proper?"
You curse under your breath. Hyeju seems amused, at least, like she can't help but love doing that to you, which is almost worse and honestly the sexiest thing a girl can be. You groan - wanton, raw and desperate and feeling exactly what she wants you to feel when her nails drag along the dip of your hip bones.
"Did they not leave you fucked-up the right way?"
Her wrist flicks out these twists and turns, making your spine bend to her control. Like even when you're sure to be bundling her hair in your fingers and fucking the whole length of your cock down her throat, all of this is the worst kind of power-trip for her - not the other way around.
Her tongue runs through the tangle of your balls, slowly, lasciviously, as though the plan is to memorize and map every detail. 
And the worst part is, how much it's making you desperate for the warmth of her mouth - where she'll run her tongue up and down and over and around and inside - before sucking you off nice and slow.
"Or maybe," she laughs; another flick to the top and then suddenly her hand goes faster and the fist pumping the rest of you tightens. "They left you so needy you're resorting to having the bestie suck you off so that you won't be desperate the next time you date. Oh my god-" 
Hyeju breaks into this fit of laughter, and you're nearly cross-eyed at the feeling of your entire existence - not just your cock - so wholly held within her mercy, and her pity, and you're breathing so shallow now you'd think this is the real reason people have died and will die - this exact moment where you're choking and stuttering at the edges, so very close to cumming and going absolutely bonkers with how good Hyeju is with her hands, her tongue, her mouth - everything - how much she's wrecking you, and your jaw drops, wide open, her name dripping like molasses off your lower lip.
"Are you going to cum?" she asks, curiously. All as if she can't see you nodding, collapsing under pressure, and then and there: "should we make it official?"
Her nose tickles the seam of your balls. And your toes begin to curl and uncurl - all this anticipatory, coiling pleasure burning from her throat, shooting from the pit of your stomach; the tightening spiral, twinging and stretching every nerve - as her lips enclose around the end of your cock, softly.
And oh, just excruciatingly slowly.
You watch the irresistible shape of her mouth travel down until her throat feels so incredibly, beautifully, and unbelievably tight, and then, just like that - Hyeju starts fucking herself onto you; pushing forward and down the full, rigid length of you, hard and fast - each time hitting deeper inside her - all that sticky, messy, wet squelching.
"Unh-unh, yeah. Unh. Mm-!" you say, or moan, or some animal version of that, maybe, it’s incoherent.
But regardless:
It's messy and your hands scramble for purchase in the sheets of her bed when you feel that snap, the tightening of a trigger; when your balls roll up and it builds, and builds, and it comes faster - harder and -
"Hyeju," you pant, and it sounds so, so filthy. "I'm gonna cum, if you - gonna cum-"
Hyeju pulls you free from her lips, quite possibly at the most final of final moments, to rub the base up and down, just right, between her fingers. Your cock is resting right on her cheek when it all happens. When she squeezes her fingers around your balls just enough to hear you wheeze and make a sound no sane man should have the right to. And fuck, you're cumming all over her face - or just one side of it - which is already just -
Okay, fuck.
She makes a startled sound and her fist closes tightly around your shaft when you pump another fresh load of white up onto her eyebrow.
"I'm, ah-shit," your mouth moves faster than the blood in your veins - and now the shame - oh god, the humiliation, it's pulsing right behind you. "Hyeju," you apologize.
Only, Hyeju has no interest in any of it. She doesn't seem offended or disappointed in proportion to how you're ruining her pretty face: "no, just do it, cum wherever you fucking like."
Which isn't what you're expecting at all, because Hyeju makes no effort to close her lips, let alone avoid any of it; nor is she making a fuss about the sticky mess in her hair, her mouth, nor as another stream of cum throbs from your cock, all tangled up in the long dark eyelashes that sweep down across her cheek.
It’s fucking filthy: you're cumming all over her and she's just kneeling there, telling you, "good boy."
See, she pushes through it, languidly - all those filthy sounds, and those watery little tears gathering at the edge of her eye and all of that, mixing up together until you're rolling your head back with your orgasm, shuddering, feeling weak - drained dry -
Except,
Hyeju's pushing a finger to your chest, kneeling up tall from the side of the bed. She turns her body toward the center of the bed and wipes a bit of the cum on her knuckles into the sheets. Here you feel like you've done something terrible or at least regrettable, like that last round at the bar when you have a test the next morning; a dick move, all of the sort that requires apology.
"You gotta give me a minute, if you're thinking about hopping on."
"Hmm. Sounds like a lot to ask."
"Wait," you grab her arm. Hyeju grins and there's nothing stopping the shake of your knees now, that weakness between your thighs: "let me get you a drink."
"Or."
"Or?"
Her tongue peeks out, running along her upper lip. Her eyes drop again, hands dipping below, beneath the hem of her shorts and oh. She slips a hand past her bra. The whole outline of it. And you -
"Mm, I could show you what that actually means." She lowers her chest, her breasts, and a lot of skin to the mattress while keeping your cock firmly in her hands. "That look tells me you wanna stick around a bit. Stay up past New Year’s, you know?"
You're almost unable to parse her words, there is so much to look at: the jutting curve of her chest, cleavage pressing into the mattress as her body settles between your knees. A soft chuckle; a sigh: "you are seriously the best lay, no-one else can get hard the minute after they just fucking exploded all over me-"
"Fuck, watch it," you hiss, because there's oversensitivity - and then there's Hyeju's mouth on the line of your cock, polishing you clean.
And it’s not that she isn’t trying to prove a point. Or that she's not trying to tease - that's an inherent quality of her character: a naturally dominant position with a high appetite for your lust. That much, Hyeju gets from you, whether you've got your head down between her thighs or the other way, too, so that her neck is arched around and her ass pushed up high in the air, legs open, and if she had any idea you would spend the next twenty minutes or more just going down on her, licking into her creaming cunt while two fingers work over her aching clit, then really, Hyeju would only encourage it - maybe get on top, force you to gag - and so you don't know where it comes from - how and why you want nothing more than to drive your fingers inside her and work her until she's a wet, squelching mess, not when this was always Hyeju's role of being the aggressor; and yes, sure, even the aggressed.
Surely not because you came so hard, still somewhat shivering with the remnants of a rather abrupt, painful, sudden and all-consuming orgasm.
"We're not doing anything else," she says, lips pulled up into a smirk right at the crown of your cockhead. But before you can respond she pushes a hot open kiss, and goes lower. She presses the flat of her tongue to the seam, just below the head. Licks a line right up to the tip and finishes with a tender flick that sends you fisting the bedspread in your fingers and leaning back as your mind begins to disintegrate -
"I'm not going to ride you yet, or going to get my hips in your hands so you can fuck my pussy real hard until I cry and pass out. Nothing of that sort is gonna happen." She licks one long drag of her tongue. Then, the other way. "I want to make this very clear: this isn't some huge favor - and if you want it - want it so bad, you can stay there and I'm going to do everything for you. We will get there - together," and with her voice shaking as she brings the wet, glistening skin of your cock just inside her mouth, she looks up. "We'll get each other off, just like this," and it's the deep, dark, throated moan that makes your thighs and all the nerves in between stiffen and buck when she swallows you again.
Hyeju's hands tug, pull her whole body closer still as it slowly bends, curves - her ass raised, her stomach lying on the bed. Her mouth takes you another few inches, until the tip of her nose is barely visible, but when she pauses to lick the cum still left over - the cum that's starting to leak out again - to breathe through it, then squeeze her palm and bob her mouth down, take another inch, until the sides are stuffed and emptying out again, that's when she finally has something to say: "got anything left? I'm a little starved."
"I. Christ, yes-" you whine, which doesn't help your case at all: the image, the image of you lying flat - back with Hyeju's head tucked between your knees, her hand pulling out your cock.
Sloppy, slimy-wet.
She presses an innocent, not-at-all-innocent kiss right to your tip, puckering - 
"You know what I did learn in that genetics class?" she muses, tongue flicking over her lips. Hyeju's about ready for a second helping - you're losing it. "When I first saw that DNA diagram - the double helix and all those little base pairs, and everything - it made me think of your cock. Your cock and me. Specifically our DNA. Did you know-"
She presses her palm over the head and rolls it - teases and strokes her palm - her knuckles - her fist - the whole nine. "When I hold your big fucking cock, mm, and just get it right - up in here, rubbing all along my walls - so deep, it gets me in my fucking ribs, makes me choke like I never been choked before, ah-mm," and it's this thought sliding toward the front of your mind, this perfect picture: Hyeju, getting fucked hard and open and stuffed full and stuffed good and stupid; you’ve got more than a few inches on her, can make her feel small and delicate; you know how to do her right.
But here you have Hyeju stroking the shaft - holding her hand tightly up near the head, rolling and twisting and sliding down and pushing her whole body right into the side of your legs: the soft, solid length, warm flesh and curves everywhere pressing into you.
You sit back, and just watch Hyeju with her eyes cool and composed, like half of her fucking face isn't streaked with your cum, mouth wrapped and looking fucking satisfied to be a total, gorgeous mess. She makes a dramatic display of kissing the tip again, just before telling you words you probably dreamt up at some point - either sleep deprived, or, during three AM jackoff, fantasizing. "Sometimes, just from riding your cock, I can't sit up straight."
"Fuck," and you feel your whole body run rigid, because apparently that's something you’ve been aching to hear.
You're covering her mouth again. White streaking onto her lips - where she's catching it in the well beneath her tongue and letting it spill out of the corner of her mouth. Into the crook of your thumb, which catches a drip here and there and rubs it down the length - down the curve - and pushes it back between Hyeju's pert little pout.
"Doesn't count, mister, just more pre-cum," she says, all with the audacity of a wink and smile; her words are a little garbled around the head of your cock between her teeth. And when you nod and realize just how painfully your jaw hurts, your throat becomes tight and raw, a knot pulling the underside from the center. Hyeju slides her lips lower, lower down, to the hilt and stays there, just like that - one hand holding down the flat of your belly to keep your hips still, her chin hanging - bobbing-as she feels every pulse, every twitching shift. You curl one hand around the side of her face, over the sharp edge of her jaw; rub a thumb into the delicate skin of her throat.
She shifts. You start to tell her what you like: how hot the rush comes when a girl puts her tongue against the slit at the very tip, and licks at the precum in nice, quick circles, soft and fluttering. And how her fingers shouldn't hesitate either, Hyeju's not even struggling to give it to you - god - just giving and -
She jerks her head up, swallowing down her next breath like it's one of her last. "I'm serious, if you're going to fuck a hole, start with my mouth - we can move onto everything else after."
"You're ridiculous -"
She meets her lips to your head, kissing once. Again. Kissing every inch, letting her mouth wrap around and then just - staying, just - staying like that and humming, with you, enjoying the fullness, the smell of you, the taste, the shape, just the weight and size and you.
There is spit fucking everywhere.
And if it's not clear what you're supposed to be doing - her fingers weave through yours, squeezing hard at the wrist and you can imagine: pulling her forward by her hair and holding her down while she chokes on your cock. "Fuck, Hyeju," you say, and your voice comes out way shakier than you'd like, "when, how did it get like this, huh? You always - always did, shit, always want your mouth filled."
"Never figured you to be someone who'd get turned on watching their friend sucking their cock like this."
"Doesn't everybody love the sight of their cock in a pretty girl's mouth?
"You were really convinced they weren't lining up behind you? Or anyone in the queue who can't keep their eyes off of this thing. Tell me, and try not to lie, try not to bullshit this one out: how many girls have you come home and fucked and creamed their brains out - then asked for the sloppiest, most -"
"Honestly."
"- Filthiest, nasty, ball-busting, gut-wrenching blowjob ever to make them think - to make them really start wondering what the hell it was you did - like it's gotta be something that leaves them so ruined, they can't ever not compare - can't ever not compare this moment, right here. Ever. When you give them the hardest fucking of their life, compared to any other guy - can't not, because no-one, literally no-one's cock can fuck like you do-"
"Fuck-"
"Any harder. Come on, seriously, tell me it isn't true. Come on."
Her voice - her fucking words, the tone she uses and how her words roll: honey-warm and soaking with sweet, thick degradation - she talks like sex, and that's exactly what gets you harder, like it’s something else; like it’s nothing, like it’s less, so much worse - you feel this guilty-dirty heat pool at your tailbone and push down the hard press of you throbbing all the way to her nose. And Hyeju smiles as much as she's capable around the fat, round stretch, humming around the warm taste of you, before opening wide and sinking her throat on it.
There's nothing like it.
You've got two fists in her hair; she's so tight and wet around every god-damn inch. Her cheeks flush - hot to the touch; her tongue laving in slow, long drags, slicking your shaft nice and warm until you're balls-deep and pushing her further: a small shift to the hips, a push here, a harder, faster pull, and Hyeju's feet behind her go curling like an angry cat, wanting the tug.
A long, satisfied breath slips from the hollows of her throat.
There are tears threatening, thickening her lashes, and though she doesn't choke - you're just afraid. Every sound that she pulls out, her eyes blinking up to you as if it's only natural to love getting used by her friend's cock, like the very premise of it - swallowing down the very shape of you, dragged over her tongue and brushing cum into the back of her throat - is something she can’t go without.
But this is nothing compared to the noises from where her lips are pressed tight around you, where you're hearing and even feeling:
That gluck, gluck - where her chest spasms just the slightest when her nose gets nuzzled right into your belly and you remember how much she likes to hear you talk dirty, how fucking wet it gets her. The heavy, deep breaths, gasps; the strangled moans when your hips just buck - the heat and the thrill, and this is better than every other time because there's just something in this moment -
"I'm not gonna come again, not like this. Not in your mouth. You can’t-"
But Hyeju refuses to hear a word; just pumps your shaft faster, feeling it's familiar hardness grow and throb and ache and retch, all her effort paying off: you're slick with precum and spit, hard and straining, the whole shaft begging for release - all because of her. And Hyeju won't stop, she pushes her cheek onto your thigh and then taps a hand there to pull your hips. The motion drives your cock further still inside her. Until it’s bathed in her spit, your cum, all this mess.
Until it's reaching, choking her, and the muffled sounds she's making are filthy and wet and so incredulously hot.
But god. Hyeju has something of a temper and a habit, too: with those big beautiful eyes and the perfect plump of her pouting lips, her tits swelling up around, when your grip slips on her shoulder, and her mouth goes tighter - how the pleasure begins to make you unbearably cruel and you push her away from you, only for a second -
She doesn't wait or seem to care; Hyeju follows the cock with her whole head and whimpers so hotly in her throat when it plops right back on her tongue. "That's more - more like - fuck, oh, there we go," her nose and fingers prodding.
You groan through a high, strangled whimper, a helpless shiver that turns into an uncontrollable roll of the hips - you can't believe it: she's already so thoroughly debauched and defaced; just fucking painted with it. Your cum dripping off her chin and rolling down her neck.
"Fuck - gonna make me - ah, Jesus -"
When Hyeju seems to have reached her fill, the feeling, you're cumming - pumping the length of your shaft. And the moment she feels you twitch and throb and that first hot spill lands in the bend of her mouth, it's as if she understands and holds herself tight - her legs going stock-still while your eyes blow up behind her, your cock spewing another and then another thick, milky load into her mouth, over her tongue: all along the topography of her throat - sticky cum landing in every ridge and valley -
Hyeju catches as much as she can. What little she can. You cum and pump and gush so much that when you're finally finished - done - every last drop spent and given - your cock throbs soft between her fingers; her chin is a complete and utter mess and her chest heaves with the sound of her catching her own breath. Hyeju groans softly and just swishes the load around in her mouth for a bit as if wanting to remember its feel and weight before lifting her eyes to look into yours. You can just barely see the color.
"Jesus, Hyeju-"
The entire bit of it, slick and shining-wet. With a small moan, a sound from the back of her throat: one swallow and the cum is gone, disappeared, vanished. She smiles like she didn't just ruin your entire goddamn life and, with her body limp and exhausted beside you - her gentle hand rubbing a flat stroke over your thigh before yours slips up to meet her chin.
"You," you curse and roll your eyes, catching the mess at the edge of her jaw, the very little left in the corners of her lips. You feed the cum over her bottom lip - her chin, her throat - watching your friend: Hyeju's throat, bobbing. "Really didn't have to," you start, but you realize just how useless a point it is to make.
She's smiling and biting and showing you what's left between the tips of her canines. "Do you always do this to the people who suck you off?"
"That's an awful habit. A pretty girl's lips aren't meant to get that messy," you reply.
"Oh." She frowns. "Well, I do a lot of things I shouldn't."
"God, seriously," and you think there's no greater hell, no sweeter pain than whatever's lingering in these little aftershocks - this fizzling and dying sort of pain, where the body is buzzed with all you're aching for. It's impossible to stop this train of thoughts, is the fucking feeling of her-
But just then, Hyeju rises to her knees, a new spark in her eyes, as she grabs ahold of your wrist and tugs you off the sheets, a few inches closer.
"And you," she purrs as she drags the palm of your hand across her neck and collarbone, collecting what remains and making the perfect image, "well - you are going to help clean me up, like you said before." She sits tall; the arch of her spine is pronounced - her back, so, very, slightly tapering, to where your hand slips right off the last of it: the wide flare of her hips. "Now isn't that the gentleman's thing to do?" she asks.
"Of course." You sigh, resigned and in desperate need of water. "Of course," you add and smirk a little and slip your hand lower, toward where her skin is getting hot, and her body, "let's get you clean."
"Mm." She's already grinning. "You know what wasn't in those textbooks?"
"Oh, I can only guess." You bite your cheek and start to lower yourself back. "Give it a try."
Hyeju drags you by the wrist toward the hall, the bathroom, ostensibly the shower -
"There's no way in hell you don't want to put a baby in me, like, right fucking now."
"Is that what we're doing?"
Hyeju makes a face like you're stupid - she might've grabbed a towel on the way out. She wipes her chin a little while walking - the corner of her mouth where, well - where it looks like a little dribble has somehow remained. "No. But you’re going to fuck me like it is."
-
(There's got so much on her mind. 
The door of the shower rattling in its frame as she struggles standing up against it. Getting fucked so fast and full, the feeling of both your hands cupped beneath the weight of her breasts. It's not the fact of where you are and your situation, per say - more about the immediate, the imperative nature. About fucking you. She was already feeling herself like, leaking the moment the door shut, so all that waiting, all that patience, really - and it's what drove her insane when you were, well: like that, after she put her mouth around your cock, made a right and proper mess of herself, and sucked you off.
Though there's less on her mind, clearly, when she cums all over your cock.
She's crying with her tits up onto the glass, your palm holding her ribs. Your cum-slick cock working itself hard again as it slips, back and forth, as you're fucking her open, spread apart. It's your finger in her asshole. That's what's on her mind then. How the press of your knuckle lights her entire fucking spine on fire - how the other hand finds her clit in all this, too, when you're no longer supporting the both of you but rather Hyeju is folding on her bent knee and trusting, on shaking and shivering, raw nerves, that you're not going to collapse.
"Fucking. God, please-"
There's the harsh slap of flesh - skin on wet skin, your palms against the sides of her ass and the curve of the breast. But otherwise - it's you, sighing - soft and gentle, like you can't get over the feel of her. "Hyeju, oh-fucking, god, fucking," is what you're saying, and it doesn't end up really mattering which one of you came last because she can feel you twitching, squelching in and out with how badly you're wanting to explode inside, but also you can feel her cunt absolutely begging, this fucking fluttering and clamping down on every thrust and the moment you manage to grind this angle she loses her ability to speak properly because you're not just, like - fucking her-
Just, absolutely, completely pounding her pussy, stretching her insides, dragging and sliding along the walls; each rough rub and thrust makes her knees quiver until her body is trembling and falling. But mostly her voice, the sharp gasp that shakes into her, how her nails are scraping the walls of the shower stall and she's saying - telling, crying and asking and wondering and pleading - just utterly astounded:
"Amazing," she huffs, breathes coming out cloudy and true onto the pane of glass, "you - it’s, fucking amazing.")
-
“And I am… Ironman.”
Your eyes flicker awake, hazy, as Tony Stark snaps his fingers, killing himself alongside Thanos’ army in the process.
The TV's long been running on background noise, though not as ambient. Its characters now bickering between the rubble and ruins and being picked up for the end credits. In the dark of the screen, you see Hyeju had nodded off and slumped over the side of your body. A new year means new beginning means resolutions and diets and gym routines -
Maybe no sooner than the sun can come up, apparently.
You lean over to grab your phone from the table: 4:14 A.M.
There's a lot of things you want to say, even more you want to hear, but your mind has begun to settle a bit - a lazy and dreamy thing that fills you with this sort of, tired kind of - not sad, or empty - no, of course not. That's hardly fitting; not after tonight. You want to wrap this in an idealistic sort of sentiment - maybe hold Hyeju close and let the hour carry you and the comfort be enough to forgive whatever there is to miss: like the fact, it's still really dark, so dark even outside. The moon reflecting off the sheet of snow on the street. And not even a distant dog barking, or car driving by or someone playing loud music in the early hours of the new year.
As the film drifts off into another set of commercials, you slip into an easy sleep that feels effortless. Your head drops, landing on the cushion by the arm of the couch, where Hyeju's hand begins to slip mindlessly across your belly, tickling your waist and causing you to slightly squirm - things are cooling down, but still a little agitated.
"Don't tell me you're waking me up, cause I just -"
She kisses the pulse at your throat and answers, mumbling half-words into the spot below your ear. "A kiss for a new year."
And maybe the world doesn't owe you anything at all.
Maybe it just gave you more than enough.
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fuckyeahfluiddynamics · 2 months
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Spreading the Word
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Just as prairie dogs bark to warn the colony of danger, many plants can signal their neighbors when they're under attack. This thale cress releases calcium when caterpillars eat it; neighboring plants pick up the chemical signal and pass it along. (Image and research credit: Y. Aratani et al.; via Colossal) Read the full article
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mindblowingscience · 6 months
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A team of agronomists and biotechnicians at China Agricultural University has found that adding bacteria to simulated lunar regolith increased the amount of phosphate in the soil for use by plants. In their study, published in the journal Communications Biology, the group added three types of bacteria to samples of volcanic material and then tested them for acidity and their ability to grow plants. As several countries make plans to send humans back to the moon, they must address several issues—one of the most basic is figuring out a way to feed people working there for an extended period of time. The obvious solution is for workers to grow their own food. But that presents problems, as well, such as how to transport soil for growing edible plants from Earth to the moon. Some have suggested that moon soil, known as lunar regolith, might be treated to make it amenable to plant growth. Last year, a team in the U.S. showed that it is possible to grow plants in lunar regolith by growing a small number of weeds called thale cress in real lunar soil samples. That test showed that lunar soil can work, but not well enough for plants to mature and produce food. In this new study, the research team found that adding microbes to lunar soil can improve its ability to host plant life.
Continue Reading.
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a-ghostiee · 10 months
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Everything I found in the new DRDT MV
SPOILERS AFTER THE CUT PLEASE DO NOT READ IF YOU WANT TO DISCOVER THESE THINGS FOR YOURSELF
We’ll start with the footnotes. I found nearly all of them, the exception being [8] which I couldn’t find. I will provide timestamps for each, and try my best to explain what it means.
[1] (1:22) - It is talking about solving the crossword, meaning that J would go by Julia and Xander would be Alexander. It’s also saying that David isn’t in the crossword, yet Teruko is. I will go into more detail on the crossword later.
[2] (3:02) - Arabidopsis is a thale cress plant; Drosophila melanogaster is a fruit-fly; and E. coli is bacteria. I’m not quite sure how these link, though.
[3] (2:18) - Literally a quote from Title 17 of the United States Code; which talks about Copyright.
[4] (1:47) - This footnote is attached to a bit of text in the background that says “subtract 4, add to tetraphobia.”. Tetraphobia is the practice of avoiding the number 4, which is mentioned in the description.
[5] (3:10) - As it says in the description, this part of the song has been mistranslated several times, so there is no reliable translation for it.
[6] (2:02) - The little 6 can be found next to the hands that look like this: 🙏. I assume the previous hand gestures were referencing a specific prayer, but I’m not sure.
[7] (2:41) - I’m gonna be honest, there isn’t much to work with here. The footnote in the description isn’t much help and the little 7 appears to be attached to the word “mind”
[8] - I couldn’t find [8] in the video, however, I googled the quote from the description and it comes from Alice in Wonderland.
[9] (2:08) - Again, the footnote in the description isn’t that helpful. This time, its attached to “sing a degraded copy”. The phrase “degraded copy” is in pink, so it’s probably important (maybe), but I really don’t know.
[10] (2:01) - The bit in the description mentions that “10 in Roman Numerals is X” and footnote 10, can be found on the right of the big, pink X in the background. Maybe the footnote is hinting that only 10 people will die in DRDT, because the pink X is very similar to the dead portrait Xs.
[11] (1:32) - Now, this one is probably the most interesting, because it says that ⚪⚪⚪⚪⚪ ⚪⚪⚪⚪⚪ doesn’t exist. Given that this video centres around David, we can assume that this is most likely talking about his sister that he mentioned in Chapter 2 Episode 10, Diana. She fits the amount of letters perfectly. As for why this footnote is attached to “suspicious gaps”, I’m not quite sure. All I know about the gaps, is that there’s four of them.
[12] (2:02) - This part of the video shows that one person received 16 votes, and no-one else received any. This fits in with the description talking about majority vote (YTTD ref? /hj)
[13] (2:40) - Now this one is definitely next to something that’s been encoded. It seems like it’s been encrypted into Base64, but when I put those letters and numbers into a decoder, I got utter nonsense. It could have been encrypted several times, or it could just not be Base64, I’m still trying to work that out. The symbol in the description appears to mean correct as well, which fits with the placement.
[14] (3:52) - This appears to be at the end of a long chain of numbers, split into several parts. If you look at the equals symbol in the back, you’ll find the little 14. The hint in the description says “word length of 256″, which I could easily link to ASCII. ASCII is a form of character storage which only has 256 possible characters. Again, I’ll figure out what all the numbers mean, and translate it into something readable at some point.
[15] (1:48) - Not quite sure what to say here. The 15 is attached to the word “happiness” and the description talks about “ignorance is bliss”
[16] (2:50) - This is found on several screenshots(?) of a music sheet, which is “Entry of the Gladiators” by Julius Fucik.
[17] (2:01) - Probably the first footnote I spotted, I think I noticed it during my first watch, when it premiered. The description is right though, “Democratic-ly” isn’t a word.
[18] (3:04) - This one can be found with the dandelions (weed). I don’t know what the description is talking about though, the flowers are beautifully drawn ^^
[19] (3:42) - This one’s quite interesting because it’s part of a conversation. Not quite sure what it’s about but I’m pretty sure one of the mystery people is David.
[20] (1:53) - The description mostly explains that the 5 stages of grief are kind of outdated because they can be classed as reductionist, only considering nature.
[21] (3:49) - Again, another pretty simple one that I’m not sure I need to really explain.
[22] - This one is literally on screen for barely a second right at the very end, just before the video stops.
Now, I’ll move on to discuss the YouTube comment type things that appeared on the screen at around 1:09. These are in the order of when the appeared on screen (i think lol).
1.  “ ⚪⚪⚪⚪⚪ is like the byakuya/nagito/kokichi of the cast.” - This is probably talking about David, given the personality he showed during Chapter 2 Episode 11. Also, David has the right amount of letters. 2. “lets play spot the komaeda.” - Again, most likely about David. 3. “I like that  ⚪⚪⚪⚪⚪⚪ is a protagonist who also plays the antag[onist]” 4. This one is likely about Teruko given how she’s our protagonist and can be quite antagonistic at times. (*cough* pulling a knife out on several people during Chapter 2 *cough*) 5. “mm  ⚪⚪⚪⚪ anyone?” - Not sure who this is talking about because there are so many people who have a four-letter name. (Levi, Whit, Arei, Nico, Rose and Eden) 6. “⚪ and  ⚪⚪⚪⚪ totally swapped places” - Ok, this is definitely about the J and Arei swapped theory. 7. “ ⚪⚪⚪⚪⚪ will obviously die in ch5″ - Could be talking about David again, but there’s something later in the video that might suggest otherwise, which I’ll talk about later on. 8. “I just hope ⚪⚪⚪⚪⚪⚪ doesn’t go crazy and kill in chapter 3. That would be way [too] predictable.” - Arturo 100% 9. “Everyone in the comment section is a fucking idiot” - Now this one’s kind of mean, but also very interesting. This could be David telling us we’re all wrong, or the creators.
At about 1:22, a crossword shows up briefly, as mentioned during [1]. I like crossword type things so I took some time to solve it. After this crossword shows up, there are several bits of text, which are matched with a roman numerals, so I matched those phrases up to the roman numerals from the crossword.
Across:
I. Alexander IV. Arei - “Right now, why do you cry?” VI. Arturo - “mind exercises 1234” VIII. Nico - “even if I try to think, idk!!! (lmao)” IX. Levi - “look aside from that, give me the usual medicine” - I wasn’t sure what was going on here XII. Eden - “But you’re in my way, aren’t you?” XIII. Teruko - “or” / “To be or not to be” XV. Whit - “Remaining ignorant, isn’t that “happiness”?” XVI. Hu - “Go and cry.”
Down:
II. Rose - “Ego cogito ergo (terbatus) sum” III. Charles - “If you doubt brittle things are broken.” V. Ace - “Right now, why do you go insane?” VII. Julia - “Do it like that, let’s live together” X. Min - “Democratic-ly”  XI. Mai - “God is dead” XIV. Veronika - “Things like substance of the arts”
And to finish off this post, I’ll talk about anything extra that couldn’t fit anywhere else. I’ll provide timestamps as well, lol.
(0:37) - Text says “I am a cat” before the word dog quickly covers the word cat. This could be a reference to how MonoTV looks like a cat, but insists they are a dog.
(1:00) - Text that is very briefly on screen says: “I did love you once so you should not have believed me.”
(1:04) - The person on screen looks like she could be Mai? Not really sure here, but she seems important.
(1:05) - Text at the bottom of the screen says “I’m guilty as charged. Sorry, we’re not there yet.” This could be a reference to how David says “I’m guilty as charged” in Chapter 2 Episode 11.
(1:28) - Text in red says “I hate the things that I love, and I love the tings that I hate.” This could be a reference to the photos of Mai and Teruko.
(2:02) - “Voting results: Everyone will be executed. There is no such thing as “victory” in a killing game.” This does not look good for the DRDT cast.
(2:22) - This looks like Xander. It looks like its from before he got his eyepatch, but that could just be the angle. If it is from before, does this mean David knew Xander before the killing game but lost(?) those memories.
(2:38) - “Note to self: put something here” Maybe something will be added to the video later?
(3:00) - “portrait of someone dearly loved” with an arrow pointing to the photo of Mai Akasaki. Maybe David loved Mai before something tragic happened?
(3:00) - “portrait of someone dearly unloved” with an arrow pointing to the photo of Teruko Tawaki. I think Teruko has something to do with whatever happened to Mai and David hates her for it. I think David was the person at the very beginning of the very first episode of DRDT, he’s the only person that I think has a motive. You can also spot a fork in the background of the MV and at the beginning of the prologue.
(3:04) - There’s a QR code on the books to the right. I haven’t been able to scan it so I don’t know what it leads to yet.
(3:06) - The supporting cast list has Mai Akasaki scribbled out and what looks like “Ms Naegi”  cut off underneath it. On the right of the screen, there was faint text that says: “(i.e. these are the only characters who make an appearance.) which could mean that Arei, Hu and Ms Naegi are in the video. This is a stretch but maybe Hu killed Arei. Probably not, though.
(3:10) - It looks like Xander is the one holding the gun here.
(3:20) - No, that’s wrong!
(3:44) - The lyrics here say “I’ll disappear” and David disappears from the chair, leaving what looks like splattered blood. The words “Chapter 3″ flash on the screen, though its cut off. David dies in Chapter 3 maybe?
Thank you for reading this extremely long post; I’ll reblog it anytime I get more information.
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jcmarchi · 6 months
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New Understanding of Plant Cells - Technology Org
New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/new-understanding-of-plant-cells-technology-org/
New Understanding of Plant Cells - Technology Org
A new technique employed in a University of Nebraska–Lincoln engineering laboratory has allowed a team of researchers from two universities to gain a greater understanding of how plant cells respond to environmental changes to control the flow of gases and water vapor.
Joseph Turner is photographed with students Magdalene Peklo, a senior in mechanical engineering, and Faezeh Afshar-Hatam, a doctoral student in mechanical engineering, next to the nanoindenter that they used in this research. Image credit: UNL
In a paper published in the National Academy of Science’s journal PNAS Nexus, research led by Nebraska’s Joseph Turner and Sedighe Keynia, in collaboration with Charles T. Anderson’s group at Penn State University, was able to quantify the anisotropic mechanical properties and interior cell pressure of a cell using a novel approach.
In the Nano-engineering Research Core Facility, the team studied Arabidopsis thaliana, a weed also known as thale cress that is in the mustard family. It is also the first plant to have its genome completely sequenced. But, Turner said, not much was known about its stomatal mechanical processes that control gas exchange, an important part of photosynthesis.
Fluorescent petri dish, research of plant cells – associative photo. Image credit: Maximilian Paradiz via Flickr, CC BY 2.0
“It’s been a big guess about the mechanical behavior (of the stomata),” said Turner, Robert W. Brightfelt Professor of Mechanical and Materials Engineering. “The most exciting part of this research is that for the first time, we were able to capture the stomatic process in-plane. That was something no one had measured before.”
Keynia, who received her doctorate in mechanical engineering from Nebraska in August 2023, inserted the tip of a nanoindenter into the guard cells and was able to move it vertically and laterally. This, Turner said, allowed for taking measurements in all directions, which proved a major breakthrough in the research and set a foundation for comparing plants.
The results showed the stomatal process and allowed comparisons to the processes in grasses, many of which performed faster, Turner said.
A new three-year grant from the National Science Foundation will allow the team, led by Penn State researchers, to more closely examine the physical differences of stomata in different plants and quantify the reasons some perform with greater speed and/or efficiency.
This, Turner said, could lead to greater benefits.
“Some are much more responsive, and we don’t know whether that’s because mechanical properties, the material is different, or if it’s the plant’s geometry,” Turner said. “If we can drill down into the genetics, then we can potentially modify crops that would have more likelihood to survive in more complicated or difficult conditions.”
The team will manipulate a grass species — Brachypodium distachyon, which is considered a relative to most major cereal grain species.
Unlike the Arabidopsis, which has only two guard cells that open and close the pore in its cells, most grasses have a four-celled stomatal complex — dumbbell-shaped guard cells flanked by round subsidiary cells. The guard cells open and close in a “seesaw” manner in response to changes in the plant’s environment.
“These approaches will lead to computational models that will predict how stomatal function might be further optimized to enhance crop yields, water-use efficiency and carbon drawdown,” Turner said. “That means, possibly, more food and water for all living things and less of an impact on the planet.”
Source: University of Nebraska-Lincoln
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myfeeds · 10 months
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Roots are capable of measuring heat on their own
Plant roots have their own thermometer to measure the temperature of the soil around them and they adjust their growth accordingly. Through extensive experiments, a team led by Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU), was able to demonstrate that roots have their own temperature sensing and response system. In a new study in The EMBO Journal, the scientists also provide a new explanation for how roots themselves detect and react to higher temperatures. The results could help develop new approaches for plant breeding. The researchers used climate chambers to investigate how the plant model organism thale cress and the two crops cabbage and tomatoes react to rising ambient temperatures. They increased the ambient temperature from 20 to 28°C (68 to 82.4 degrees Fahrenheit). “Until now, it was assumed that the plant shoot controlled the process for the entire plant and acted as a long-distance transmitter that signalled to the root that it should alter its growth,” says Professor Marcel Quint from the Institute of Agricultural and Nutritional Sciences at MLU. His team has now been able to disprove this through extensive experiments in cooperation with researchers from the Leibniz Institute of Plant Biochemistry (IPB), ETH Zurich and the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne. In one experiment, scientists cut off the shoot of the plants but allowed the roots to continue to grow. “We found that the roots were not affected by this and grew at elevated temperatures in the same way as on plants with intact shoots. The higher temperature stimulated cell division and the roots became significantly longer,” says Quint. The team also used mutant plants whose shoots could no longer detect and respond to higher temperatures. Those were grafted onto roots without this defect. Here, too, the roots were able to react to the heat in the soil, even though the shoot did nothing. The researchers found in all of their experiments that root cells increased the production of the growth hormone auxin, which was then transported to the root tips. There, it stimulated cell division and enabled the roots to reach further down into the soil. “As heat and drought usually occur in tandem, it makes sense for the plants to tap into deeper and cooler soil layers that contain water,” Quint explains. Scientists have understood how plant shoots react to higher temperatures for some time. Their cells also produce more auxin, but the plant reacts differently than its roots. The cells in the shoot stretch, the stalk grows taller, and the leaves become narrower and grow farther apart. The study also provides new insights for plant breeding. “In view of climate change, root growth is becoming more and more important for breeding. Understanding the molecular basis for temperature-dependent root growth might help to effectively equip plants against drought stress and achieve stable yields in the long term,” says Quint. Quint’s team will continue its work in this field of research in the coming years. A few weeks ago, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) granted him around 500,000 euros for a new research project on precisely this topic. The study was funded by the DFG, the Chinese Scholarship Fund, the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the Max Planck Society.
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[ad_1] In nature, the roots of wholesome crops are colonized via advanced microbial communities of micro organism and filamentous eukaryotes (i.e., fungi and oomycetes), the composition of which profoundly influences plant well being. Keeping up a microbial equilibrium of their roots is essential for crops to stay wholesome, then again, the approach through which that is completed via crops continues to be in large part unknown. Now, in a brand new find out about printed in PNAS, Stéphane Hacquard and his colleagues from the Division of Plant-Microbe Interactions on the MPIPZ in Cologne, Germany, make clear the host and microbial components which might be required to care for a advisable courting between plant roots and their various microbial companions. To take on this analysis query, the primary creator of the find out about Katarzyna W. Wolinska used a fancy microbial group comprising 183 micro organism (B), 25 fungi (F), and six oomycetes (O) that had been remoted from roots of wholesome Arabidopsis thaliana (Thale Cress) crops. She noticed that this advanced BFO group was once advisable for plant development in comparison to sterile regulate crops grown within the absence of microbes. The authors then hypothesized that inactivation of explicit elements of the plant innate immune device -- the device answerable for tackling pathogen an infection -- would lead to an altered microbial equilibrium in roots, thereby affecting plant well being. In line with this speculation, the advisable BFO group was once now not advisable in different of the immunocompromised mutant crops. Particularly, inactivation of 2 plant host genes fascinated about tryptophan-derived specialised antimicrobials was once enough to show the advisable BFO group right into a unfavorable group that negatively affected plant efficiency. The scientists then tested the presence of unusual microbial signatures within the roots of those immunocompromised crops and located that the most important issue that would give an explanation for development variations throughout crops was once the fungal load of their roots. This remark ended in the belief that the fungal burden noticed within the plant roots, within the absence of an intact immune device, was once most probably the main motive explaining the shift from a wholesome to an bad state. To additional discover whether or not the presence of fungi within the plant root microbial group was once certainly the direct reason behind illness noticed within the crops, Okay. W. Wolinska used the B, F, and O communities one after the other or in quite a lot of mixtures (BO, FO, BF, BFO) and noticed that the presence of the fungi was once certainly important to urge the bad state of the crops. Those effects point out that the manufacturing of specialised anti-fungal molecules from the host plant right through tryptophan metabolism is vital to care for a wholesome fungal equilibrium in plant roots. Curiously, those anti-fungal molecules seemed to be inadequate in absolutely protective crops from fungi within the absence of micro organism, even within the presence of a completely intact immune device. Consistent with the top of the find out about, Stéphane Hacquard, "Our effects illustrate how host- and bacterium-encoded purposes act in live performance to care for fungi in take a look at in Arabidopsis roots, thereby advertising plant well being and keeping up growth-promoting actions of multi-kingdom microbial communities. The remark that the protecting task of the bacterial group is as necessary because the host innate immune department involving tryptophan-derived specialised metabolites for controlling fungi is exceptional. It signifies that the plant immune device is inadequate to completely offer protection to crops from fungal burden, and that bacterial companions living in roots supply an extra layer of coverage, which is wanted for plant survival." Those findings have necessary programs for advertising plant well being and turning probably damaging fungi into advisable isolates.
By way of making use of the information won on this find out about it will now be imaginable to design blended bacterial-fungal artificial communities which might be anticipated to supply nice health advantages to the host. Tale Supply: Materials supplied via Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research. Notice: Content material could also be edited for taste and duration. [ad_2] #Host #resident #micro organism #sign up for #forces #regulate #fungi #plant #roots #ScienceDaily
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cosmiccoincidence · 1 year
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 i may not be the most artistically talented fellow in the world but that is not going to stop me from making a thale cress themed wheel of fortune tarot card design
no one else on tumblr seems to be making IWOL fan art so that means i get to make some. and it’s gonna be FUN
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cropforlife · 2 years
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Plants use their roots to measure manganese concentration available in the soil: Researchers show for the first time: a specific group of cells in the tip of the root reacts to a manganese deficiency
Plants use their roots to measure manganese concentration available in the soil: Researchers show for the first time: a specific group of cells in the tip of the root reacts to a manganese deficiency
Every living organism needs the element manganese as an essential nutrient. In plants, for example, it plays a major role in breaking down water into oxygen and hydrogen during photosynthesis. A team of German and Chinese researchers are the first to demonstrate, using the model species thale cress (Arabidopsis thaliana), how plants sense manganese deficiency and which processes then take place…
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thelegend9798 · 2 years
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Two-step molecular process rewires nutrient transport in wild thale cress
Two-step molecular process rewires nutrient transport in wild thale cress
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tabbednews · 2 years
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Two-step molecular process rewires nutrient transport in wild thale cress
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elektroskopik · 3 years
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A widely studied lab plant has revealed a previously unknown organ | Science News
A common lab plant that’s been poked and put under microscopes for decades may seem unlikely to keep secrets. But in widely studied Arabidopsis thaliana, scientists have identified the “cantil” — a newly reported plant organ named for its cantilever-like way of branching off of the main stem. The structure appears in only some A. thaliana and only under certain conditions, researchers report online June 15 in Development.
“If you told me of a new organ in a weird plant in Amazonia, I wouldn’t be surprised at all,” says François Parcy, a plant biologist at CNRS in Paris, who was not involved in the study. “What struck me is this happened in Arabidopsis. This is something that’s really surprising.”
Molecular biologist Timothy Gookin first suspected contamination or a mutation when he noticed some A. thaliana with odd stalks jutting out from the stem, like half-finished bridges. It took 12 years of experiments at Penn State to show that the rare stalks are a new type of plant part and to explain their trigger: delayed flowering.
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Like many other plants, short days prompt A. thaliana, which is in the same family as cabbage and mustard greens, to shore up resources; long days tell it to churn out flowers. Cantils form when that transition from stockpiling to blooming is postponed, as the plant keeps growing while waiting for the flowering signal,
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thebashfulbotanist · 4 years
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It’s Wednesday (believe it or not), which means it’s time to celebrate Wednesday’s weed! Weed of the week is a species that’s much more important than its diminutive size would indicate: Arabidopsis thaliana. This species (thale cress) is the most common plant model organism, used in similar ways to Drosophila fruit flies, mice, and E. coli in lab experiments. It has been used in a number of genetic, physiological, and developmental studies (to name only a few categories of work in which it has been important), and has helped us greatly improve our knowledge of the way that plants work. 
Of course, it’s also a weed. A. thaliana is native to Eurasia and Africa, but doesn’t belong in North America. It’s small, but can be a somewhat unsightly lawn pest. This particular one was photographed (on the hood of a car - spot the botanist in the reflection!) near where it was pulled in a Virginian parking lot. 
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myfeeds · 1 year
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Plants can distinguish when touch starts and stops study suggests
In a set of experiments, individual plant cells responded to the touch of a very fine glass rod by sending slow waves of calcium signals to other plant cells, and when that pressure was released, they sent much more rapid waves. While scientists have known that plants can respond to touch, this study shows that plant cells send different signals when touch is initiated and ended. “It is quite surprising how finely sensitive plants cells are — that they can discriminate when something is touching them. They sense the pressure, and when it is released, they sense the drop in pressure,” said Michael Knoblauch, WSU biological sciences professor and senior author of the study in the journal Nature Plants. “It’s surprising that plants can do this in a very different way than animals, without nerve cells and at a really fine level.” Knoblauch and his colleagues conducted a set of 84 experiments on 12 plants using thale cress and tobacco plants that had been specially bred to include calcium sensors, a relatively new technology. After placing pieces of these plants under a microscope, they applied a slight touch to individual plant cells with a micro-cantilever, essentially a tiny glass rod about the size of a human hair. They saw many complex responses depending on the force and duration of the touch, but the difference between the touch and its removal was clear. Within 30 seconds of the applied touch to a cell, the researchers saw slow waves of calcium ions, called cytosolic calcium, travelling from that cell through the adjacent plant cells, lasting about three to five minutes. Removal of the touch showed an almost instant set of more rapid waves that dissipated within a minute. The authors believe these waves are likely due to the change in pressure inside the cell. Unlike animal cells with permeable membranes, plant cells also have strong cellular walls that cannot be easily breached, so just a light touch will temporarily increase pressure in a plant cell. The researchers tested the pressure theory mechanically by inserting a tiny glass capillary pressure probe into a plant cell. Increasing and decreasing pressure inside the cell resulted in similar calcium waves elicited by the start and stop of a touch. “Humans and animals sense touch through sensory cells. The mechanism in plants appears to be via this increase or decrease of the internal cell pressure,” said Knoblauch. “And it doesn’t matter which cell it is. We humans may need nerve cells, but in plants, any cell on the surface can do this.” Previous research has shown that when a pest like a caterpillar bites a plant leaf, it can initiate the plant’s defensive responses such as the release of chemicals that make leaves less tasty or even toxic to the pest. An earlier study also revealed that brushing a plant triggers calcium waves that activate different genes. The current study was able to differentiate the calcium waves between touch and letting go, but how exactly the plant’s genes respond to those signals remains to be seen. With new technologies like the calcium sensors used in this study, scientists can start to untangle that mystery, Knoblauch said. “In future studies, we have to trigger the signal in a different way than has been done before to know what signal, if touch or letting go, triggers downstream events,” he said. This study was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation. The international team included researchers from the Technical University of Denmark; Ludwig Maximilian Universitaet Muenchen and Westfaelische Wilhelms-Universitaet Muenster in Germany; and University of Wisconsin-Madison as well as WSU.
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i learned that a Danish company modified a version of thale cress (plant), that changes from green to red when being near landmines, because of the nitrogen dioxide gas released from landmines. This way you can detect landmines and save lives (x)
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