#the amount of fucks given: zero

[corkinavoid]

My favorite flavor of Danny Phantom in the dpxdc universes is the ordinary on the first glance teenager who stands before an unimaginable, indestructible threat and throws his hands up to yell BITCH DO I LOOK LIKE I GOT TIME FOR THIS I GOT FINALS NEXT WEEK FUCK OFF and the threat retreats and crawls back where it came from

[captain-hawks]

contravention

soshiro hoshina x f!reader

Hoshina finds himself in a precarious situation when his repeated use of the No. 10 suit sends his body into a rut, one that's only further exacerbated when you let yourself into his office without warning.

wc: 3.2k

c: 18+ only, friends to lovers, rut dynamics, breeding kink, oral sex (f & m!receiving), cum eating, squirting, unprotected p in v, creampies, too many creampies to count, copious amounts of cum, a ridiculous amount of orgasms, pussy drunk!hoshina, required horny suspension of disbelief, author takes great liberties with human biology

a/n: this one goes out to the two requests i received for hoshina + office, in addition to an older request for him in a rut!

SPICY SLEEPOVER — ROUND V

There are three things Soshiro Hoshina promised himself when he was sworn into his position as Vice-Captain of the Third Division—

To give his life to the JAKDF. 

To do everything within his power and abilities to ensure the safety and preparedness of each and every officer under his watch. 

—and to never let himself get involved with a fellow officer. 

…after all, sentimentality is a dangerous weapon to hang oneself with.

The third is the reason he’s currently staring at you with wide, panicked eyes as you step past the threshold of his locked office door, your brows furrowed as you point what appears to be a hairpin in his direction. 

“You’ve been holed up in here for days, Soshiro,” you frown, your gaze tracking across the uncharacteristically messy state the room is currently in. Paperwork is left askew across the surface of his desk, a haphazard pile of blankets and pillows stacked on the couch, and an array of takeout food and drink containers is stacked precariously atop the filing cabinet. 

Soshiro grips the edge of his desk, teeth grinding as he fights to ignore the surge of possessive, blinding heat that unfurls inside of him at the sound of his given name on your lips. 

(It was an exception he was too weak to deny you, not when you’ve become the closest friend he’s ever had in the years since you joined the Defense Force.)

You begin to walk toward him, and his nostrils flare, chest heaving as the familiar, soft scents of your perfume and shampoo invade his senses, amplified like never before. 

“S-stop,” he gasps, hunching forward, palms flat against the desk as he inhales sharply. 

Your voice has an edge of panic to it as you stride closer. “Soshiro?”

He backs up, putting several more feet of space between the two of you, though the added proximity does little to quell the blazing fire your presence has ignited in his veins. 

“I…there’s….,” his throat burns as he tries to talk, “…a side effect from Number 10.”

A rut, to be precise. 

Biologically, it makes zero sense. There are no reported cases on file across the JAKDF of similar side effects as a result of kaiju weaponization. And Soshiro’s not even wearing the goddamn suit, he hasn’t been since he collapsed in the middle of the training grounds earlier in the week without warning. 

But the medical team at the Third Division has since hypothesized that it’s a particular irregularity resulting from the repeated usage of the No. 10 suit which has simply tricked his body into believing it’s going into an animalistic rut, of sorts. 

His cock has been achingly hard nearly round the clock all week, a thick and throbbing presence between his legs no matter how many times he brings himself to completion. 

Mortifyingly, after the higher ups insisted on contacting Captain Gen Narumi of the First Division to see if he had any insight, the other man had nearly laughed himself out of his seat as he suggested Soshiro try “fucking it out of his system.”

And this is where your presence has now become a problem. 

Deny it as he might, there’s a traitorous golden thread of sentimentality for you that runs deep in Soshiro’s veins, one that has nearly cost the team a mission on several occasions at times when he’s found himself too focused on your individual wellbeing on the battlefield. 

He sees the way you look at him. 

He feels the way his stupid, reckless heart throbs against his ribcage in your presence. 

He knows what this could be—what the two of you could have. If only he was weak enough to bend to the will of his own desires. 

But under the influence of the rut currently sinking its ruthless fangs into his better judgment, he’s a weak man. 

He’s a weak, hungry, desperate man who wants to claim you as his. 

Who wants to breed you, to fill you with his seed, to pump every last drop of cum he has left to give into the tight, slippery warmth of your cunt. 

This is why he’s been avoiding you specifically, why he’s teetering on the frantic edge of panic as he feels his body’s visceral, uncontrollable reaction to your presence. 

You sigh, expression softening. “I didn’t realize it was this bad.”

He stares at you in confusion and chokes out, “What?”

“Well…Captain Narumi called me to ask how you were doing, which threw me off. He didn’t go into much detail, but I…I got the gist of it.”

“That asshole…” Soshiro groans. 

“I think he was trying to be nice, if you can believe that. But I just…I know you like thinking you have to shoulder every burden yourself, and you hate asking for help. And you’ve been ignoring all of my texts. So I’m here now to offer you whatever help you may need.”

Soshiro maneuvers himself behind the side of his desk, if only to hide the stiff erection currently tented at the front of his pants. “This…I don’t…this ain’t somethin’ you can help me with.”

Putting your hands on your hips, you huff. “You look like you’re barely keeping it together. And I…” you scratch the back of your head, looking a bit sheepish, “I may have done some research. On the internet.”

“Research?!”

“I mean, I know the mental gymnastics of applying the concept from animals to kaiju to humans isn’t exactly laying the groundwork for the next peer-reviewed scientific study…”

“Do ya even know what you’re saying?”

You sidestep around the barrier of the desk, and Soshiro backs up again, his shoulder blades hitting the wall, the obvious outline of his cock in his pants the least of his concerns now. 

“I’m saying that your body probably isn’t going to revert back to normal until you satisfy the conditions of your rut.”

A subtle shiver runs through him. “I’ve tried,” he grumbles, looking off to the side. 

“Oh?” you ask, an odd look crossing your face, one that he can’t quite read—but it makes something inside of him clench all the same. 

“By myself, I mean,” he continues. “Many times, actually. S’not changing anything.”

“Because your body wants you to breed someone. Well, probably in the hypothetical sense, like just finishing inside of them…,” you reply, matter-of-factly. Like his cock isn’t threatening to thrash its way past his zipper at the sound of those words on your lips. 

He inhales slowly, looking up at the ceiling for a moment before finding your gaze once more. “‘m not goin’ out and findin�� some random—“

“That’s why I’m here.”

“Excuse me?” Soshiro’s not sure he remembers how to breathe. 

“Use me, breed me. Whatever it’s going to take to get you out of this room and back into commission.”

He’s going to lose his fucking mind. 

“I can’t—“

“I trust you, Soshiro. I trust you more than anyone else. I don’t think you understand how much you mean to me. And I know you refuse to let yourself care about anyone enough to become a liability…but I’m here if you want me. If you’ll have me.”

Everything inside of Soshiro feels like it’s reaching a breaking point, a fever pitch. He takes one step toward you, and then another. 

—and it’s almost excruciating, the distance that remains, every cell and fiber in his body helplessly, desperately drawn toward your gravitational pull. 

“…also I…the contraceptive part is covered. So I won’t actually get pregnant. You can come inside of me as many times as you need to…”

Another step. 

“…or as many times as you want to…”

He’s standing directly in front of you, his muscles tensing painfully as he begins to feel the warmth of your body heat. 

“I locked myself in here to stay away from you,” he rasps. 

Your face falls a fraction. “Am I that terrible of an option?”

“No.” He sidesteps, and you turn to face him, your backside leaning against his desk. “You were the only option I want.”

You blink, clearly a bit taken aback by the admission. “Then why didn’t you tell me? I feel like I’m not exactly subtle about my feelings…”

“Cause I don’t know if this is goin’ to stop if we do this. I don’t know what kinda side effects there might be afterward.”

“Are you trying to scare me off with the threat of a potential sex sabbatical if your boner doesn’t go down?”

He bites the inside of his lower lip. “I’m tryin’ to warn ya that I don’t know if we can go back to normal after this…it’s more than just sexual…there’s this possessive feeling eatin’ me alive whenever I so much as think about ya.”

You lean more of your weight back into the desk, letting one of your feet slide forward to nudge against Soshiro’s. 

“You know just about everyone in the entire Defense Force already thinks we’re dating, right? Captain Narumi started crying laughing when I got into an argument with him over it.”

Soshiro’s self control is dangling by the edge of a frayed, treacherous rope. 

“You really wanna do this?”

“I was already yours, Soshiro. Even if you weren’t ready to acknowledge it.”

A ragged exhale leaves him at that, every last piece of his desire falling at his feet and bursting into flames. And when you meet him halfway as his lips come crashing into yours, Soshiro knows there’s no turning back. 

Distantly, Soshiro knows that if he were in the right state of mind, this would unfold in a far different manner. He’d settle down into his office chair, tugging you into his lap to kiss you soft and slow and languid. 

He’d take his time, familiarizing himself with each dip and curve of your body. Every corner, every plane. Every little sound and reaction. He’d use his lips and his fingers first, until you’re pliant and sated under his touch. 

He’d kiss the corner of your mouth and worship the very sight of you, tell you just how fucking terribly in love he is with you. 

But you know him better than anyone else, and he you. 

So when he gets out an, “I’m sorry,” between frantic, sloppy kisses as his hands fumble for the button of your pants—

When you gasp at the feeling of his fingers grazing your slit and bite down on his lower lip and moan into his open mouth, “Next time.”—

He knows you understand all that he wants to give you to, that this wasn’t how this was supposed to go. That you trust him and want him enough to let him fuck you through his rut like an animal moments after you’ve shared your first kiss. 

Despite the unbearable ache of his cock, which only grows worse when you begin to palm him through his pants, Soshiro still manages one thing—one moment of pleasure that he’s fucking dreamed of giving you over and over again. 

He has little regret for the way he swipes all of the paperwork off of his desk in one go before he sets you down on top of it, memos and unanswered letters the furthest thing from his mind when he finally has the taste of your cunt on his tongue. With your legs spread wide, he eats you out with reckless abandon, the heel of one hand shoved against his dick as he plunges two fingers of the other in and out of your dripping wet hole. The keening, needy sounds you make only fuel him further, your back arching up off of his desk as he thrusts his tongue into your tight channel, greedily lapping up every last drop of the arousal that’s slipping out of you. 

“Oh my god, Soshiro,” you cry out, fingers scrambling for purchase and eventually coming to tangle in the dark violet locks of his hair. 

When you come on his tongue, moaning and shaking as you roughly tug in his hair, it’s the most wonderful fucking sound Soshiro’s ever heard in his life. He groans when a searing wave of pleasure bursts inside of him, an unexpected orgasm filling his boxers with hot ropes of cum. 

You hardly have time to recover before he’s carrying you over to the couch, setting you down in the messy nest of blankets and pillows strewn about on the wide cushions. But before he can do anything else, you’ve pushed him into a sitting position and shuffled around to kneel between his legs. 

“Ya don’t have to…”

“Please.”

He can hardly deny you, especially not when he hears the satisfied sound that tips out past your lips when you slide down his pants and boxers to find the sticky mess of cum already coating his dick and balls. 

His dick that’s already hard again. 

“Did you come while you were—“

“Yeah,” he rasps, dragging a hand through his mussed hair. 

You bite your lower lip. “Soshiro, that’s so hot.”

He doesn’t have a chance to come up with an eloquent response, because his entire body seizes up with pleasure as you lean forward and take his cum-covered cock into your mouth. Soshiro wonders how he’s ever going to recover from this—the sight of your kiss swollen lips smeared with filthy, sticky cum and saliva. As you lap it from his balls. As you suck every last drop off of him until he’s coming again right down your throat. 

Soshiro thinks he’s going to climb on top of you when his cock stiffens once more, to stare down at you and press messy, hungry kisses to your lips as he thrusts inside of you. 

But you’re adamant that you think he needs something else the first time, something more akin to the primal needs his body is succumbing to. 

Soshiro knows you were right when he lines up his flushed, weeping cock with your slick, quivering entrance from behind while you lean forward on your hands and knees, the need in his body now burning hotter than ever before. 

It takes exactly three thrusts inside the dizzingly tight, soaked warmth of your cunt for Soshiro to reach his next climax without warning, cum exploding from his cock as his hips violently stutter while he fucks his seed inside of you. It feels so good, he’s worried he might pass out, but his hips won’t stop rocking into the plush curves of your ass. 

You whimper as you feel him fill you deeply, fingers digging into the blankets and couch cushions beneath you as your body rocks backward into him. 

“More, Soshiro,” you beg. “I know you’re not done. I need more, too.”

Soshiro nearly growls as something desperate and feral unfurls like the crack of a whip inside of him, folding his body over yours and sinking his teeth into the soft juncture between your shoulder and your neck as his cock hardens again inside of the grip of your tight channel. You moan as he bites down, whining and gasping as you reach back to tangle your fingers in his hair.

Soshiro’s balls ache as the wet sound of skin slapping on skin fills the room, his throat dry and his muscles straining with the desire to pump you full of more cum. 

“Harder, Soshiro,” you gasp, rocking backward to fuck yourself on his shaft. 

He’s helpless to do anything but oblige as his hips begin to snap into yours at a brutal pace, his fervor only unraveling further when you shout as you squirt all over his hand right after he starts playing with your clit, your cunt rapidly spasming and contracting around his cock. 

“Breed me, please,” you whine, gasping for air, your chest heaving. 

He slams inside of you to the hilt as he comes hard, brokenly groaning in pleasure as the euphoric grip of your pussy milks the cum from his cock. 

“Don’t stop,” you plead when he pulls out, feeling the way his cock is hard once more as it rests against your ass. 

“S’ gonna make a mess,” he heaves, entranced by the load of cum dripping out of your cunt and sliding down the backs of your thighs. 

You shiver when he runs two fingers through it, the sound dissolving into a moan when he gives in to the unexplainable urge to lean forward and lap some of his sloppy mess directly from your folds. 

“Good,” you choke out.

It’s so fucking filthy—the amount of cum that slides out of you as he tries in vain to fuck it all back inside. The way you come again for him a third time from the feeling of the hot, sticky mess squelching inside of you as he murmurs against your ear, “Gonna fuck a baby into you. That what ya want?”

Soshiro’s so pussy drunk he can hardly think straight when he finally gets you where he really wants you—moaning into his mouth and dragging your hands through his hair as you straddle his lap on the couch. You alternate between riding his cock and letting him ease your pliant body up and down his length as he grips your hips, blazing a hot, open-mouthed trail of kisses along the curve of your jaw as he groans about how good you feel. 

The state of the leather couch is a lost cause as you bounce up and down on his shaft, cum slipping from your cunt and coating the base of his cock in a creamy ring of fluid. Drenching his balls and his thighs as he fucks up into you harder, his seed sloshing around in your fucked out hole. 

When he comes again, his head drops against the back of the couch as he tries to catch his breath, groaning as he watches a fresh wave of cum leak out of you with hooded eyes when you lift yourself off of his cock. 

His still hard cock. 

“Fuckin’ hell,” he sighs as it twitches with interest when you reach down and swipe your finger through the cum, licking it off slowly as you hold his gaze. 

“One more,” you whisper, leaning forward to slot your lips with his. 

You wrap your hands around Soshiro’s cum-covered cock, moaning softly as you rub your clit up against the firm base while you begin to stroke his length. It’s so intimate and sensual, the way your body presses up against his, the roll of his hips as he slowly twitches upward and fucks your fist before climaxing one last time.

–

Soshiro rouses from a deep, heavy sleep hours later, your head on his chest, your bodies tangled together in a pile of blankets on the couch. And he’s relieved to realize that he finally feels back to normal again. Albeit, every muscle in his body aches, and he doesn’t even want to begin to think about the mess the two of you left behind before passing out, but it’s a relief all the same.

When you snuggle up closer on his chest, he pulls you close and presses a kiss to the top of your head, whispering, “Mine,” into your hair.

“Is that still your dick talking?” you ask, tired and amused.

“Nah, just me,” he murmurs, lips curving upward in a content, relaxed smile. 

[seishroo]

rin and marathon sex cause he's a freak like that

“make her tap out” — r. itoshi

cw. smut mdni, overstimulation, reader being pathetic as hell, rin just being yummy yum yum

rin was always a beast when it came to soccer. dominating the field, he’s intense — commanding authority without even trying.

and when it comes to sex? he’s practically a machine running off of talent, ego, and pure domination. you’d think he’d be worn out from all of his matches, but his stamina never wavers when it comes to you. not even for a split second.

he’d have you in a brutal mating press, pounding into you with relentless vigor as you struggled to even catch an intake of breath, your hands scrambling for something to ground yourself with — which happened to be those godly biceps of his.

“rinnie!”, you’d whine, tears rolling down your delicate features as he fucked you to yet another orgasm. what was it now? third, fourth, seventh? who knows at this point. you were too dazed, and it seemed like he was having zero issue taking you to peak after peak after peak.

“yeah, pretty baby?”, he’d question just to humor you, acting as if he was paying attention to anything you had to say. he didn’t need to know what you were thinking, your pussy spoke for you — fluttering around his cock frantically. he’d continue to thrust into you, hard and deep. he was clearly getting a kick out of sending you far past mere overstimulation.

he’d push down on your tummy, feeling how deep he was inside of you. “tsk, you feel that, baby?”, he’d ask between thrusts, watching exactly what it does to you. “feel me in there?”, he’d chuckle, grasping the back of your knees tighter and pushing your legs back further, folding you like a fucking beach chair. “shit, ‘s like this pussy was made just for me”, he’d mutter, hitting your sweet spot over and over with the new angle.

you could barely come up with a response, just incoherent babbles and chants of his name, your body now being a bunch of mush as he had his way with you, moans filling the room like a sweet melody.

he groaned at the way your cunt swallowed him whole, just greedy and filthy. it tightened around him like a vice, signaling your impending release yet again.

“ohmygodohmygodrinrinrin”, you’d cry out, choking on your own words as you felt yourself becoming pathetically needy for him, to soak his length in your juices again. “shhhhhiiiiittttt, ‘m gon—“, you panted before your brain short-circuited once his thumb met your throbbing clit, applying just the right amount of pressure and speed to get you there even faster.

“i know, baby”, he coos, holding your legs in place with one hand while the other abused your swollen clit. “doing so well f’me, jus’ let go, yeah?”, he’d mutter in that sexy low tone, just his voice alone could have you a mess.

in which it did, you quivered erratically as your orgasm rushed through you, back arching before your body went limp and practically melted into the bed. rin continued to fuck you through it, making sure to draw every last bit out before he spilled inside of you with a choked groan, his hot seed filling you up to the brim.

he slowly pulled out of you before pushing back in, ensuring that none of him spilled out of your hole. “you look s’pretty when you’re all messy for me”, he whispers — more so to himself given you couldn’t process jack shit at the moment, still pathetically whimpering.

he pulls out of you, flipping you onto your tummy and pushing your legs in, putting your ass in the air before burying his face in your cunt, slurping up the mixture of both of your releases and eating you out from behind. he’d chuckle at your little whines, telling him 'you can’t take anymore' and this and that. nipping at your inner thigh, he’d coo once more, “aw, you can take one more f’me, can’t you?”, before diving back into your folds.

it was in fact not one more. don’t ever believe rin when he says that shit.

an: i loved writing this tysm for the req - now i can't stop thinking abt rin LMFAOOOO

© seishroo | much love ꨄ

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Epic Systems, a lethal health record monopolist

Epic Systems makes the dominant electronic health record (EHR) system in America; if you're a doctor, chances are you are required to use it, and for every hour a doctor spends with a patient, they have to spend two hours doing clinically useless bureaucratic data-entry on an Epic EHR.

How could a product so manifestly unfit for purpose be the absolute market leader? Simple: as Robert Kuttner describes in an excellent feature in The American Prospect, Epic may be a clinical disaster, but it's a profit-generating miracle:

https://prospect.org/health/2024-10-01-epic-dystopia/

At the core of Epic's value proposition is "upcoding," a form of billing fraud that is beloved of hospital administrators, including the "nonprofit" hospitals that generate vast fortunes that are somehow not characterized as profits. Here's a particularly egregious form of upcoding: back in 2020, the Poudre Valley Hospital in Ft Collins, CO locked all its doors except the ER entrance. Every patient entering the hospital, including those receiving absolutely routine care, was therefore processed as an "emergency."

In April 2020, Caitlin Wells Salerno – a pregnant biologist – drove to Poudre Valley with normal labor pains. She walked herself up to obstetrics, declining the offer of a wheelchair, stopping only to snap a cheeky selfie. Nevertheless, the hospital recorded her normal, uncomplicated birth as a Level 5 emergency – comparable to a major heart-attack – and whacked her with a $2755 bill for emergency care:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/27/crossing-a-line/#zero-fucks-given

Upcoding has its origins in the Reagan revolution, when the market-worshipping cultists he'd put in charge of health care created the "Prospective Payment System," which paid a lump sum for care. The idea was to incentivize hospitals to provide efficient care, since they could keep the difference between whatever they spent getting you better and the set PPS amount that Medicare would reimburse them. Hospitals responded by inventing upcoding: a patient with controlled, long-term coronary disease who showed up with a broken leg would get coded for the coronary condition and the cast, and the hospital would pocket both lump sums:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/13/a-punch-in-the-guts/#hayek-pilled

The reason hospital administrators love Epic, and pay gigantic sums for systemwide software licenses, is directly connected to the two hours that doctors spent filling in Epic forms for every hour they spend treating patients. Epic collects all that extra information in order to identify potential sources of plausible upcodes, which allows hospitals to bill patients, insurers, and Medicare through the nose for routine care. Epic can automatically recode "diabetes with no complications" from a Hierarchical Condition Category code 19 (worth $894.40) as "diabetes with kidney failure," code 18 and 136, which gooses the reimbursement to $1273.60.

Epic snitches on doctors to their bosses, giving them a dashboard to track doctors' compliance with upcoding suggestions. One of Kuttner's doctor sources says her supervisor contacts her with questions like, "That appointment was a 2. Don’t you think it might be a 3?"

Robert Kuttner is the perfect journalist to unravel the Epic scam. As a journalist who wrote for The New England Journal of Medicine, he's got an insider's knowledge of the health industry, and plenty of sources among health professionals. As he tells it, Epic is a cultlike, insular company that employs 12.500 people in its hometown of Verona, WI.

The EHR industry's origins start with a GW Bush-era law called the HITECH Act, which was later folded into Obama's Recovery Act in 2009. Obama provided $27b to hospitals that installed EHR systems. These systems had to more than track patient outcomes – they also provided the data for pay-for-performance incentives. EHRs were already trying to do something very complicated – track health outcomes – but now they were also meant to underpin a cockamamie "incentives" program that was supposed to provide a carrot to the health industry so it would stop killing people and ripping off Medicare. EHRs devolved into obscenely complex spaghetti systems that doctors and nurses loathed on sight.

But there was one group that loved EHRs: hospital administrators and the private companies offering Medicare Advantage plans (which also benefited from upcoding patients in order to soak Uncle Sucker):

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8649706/

The spread of EHRs neatly tracks with a spike in upcharging: "from 2014 through 2019, the number of hospital stays billed at the highest severity level increased almost 20 percent…the number of stays billed at each of the other severity levels decreased":

https://oig.hhs.gov/oei/reports/OEI-02-18-00380.pdf

The purpose of a system is what it does. Epic's industry-dominating EHR is great at price-gouging, but it sucks as a clinical tool – it takes 18 keystrokes just to enter a prescription:

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2729481

Doctors need to see patients, but their bosses demand that they satisfy Epic's endless red tape. Doctors now routinely stay late after work and show up hours early, just to do paperwork. It's not enough. According to another one of Kuttner's sources, doctors routinely copy-and-paste earlier entries into the current one, a practice that generates rampant errors. Some just make up random numbers to fulfill Epic's nonsensical requirements: the same source told Kuttner that when prompted to enter a pain score for his TB patients, he just enters "zero."

Don't worry, Epic has a solution: AI. They've rolled out an "ambient listening" tool that attempts to transcribe everything the doctor and patient say during an exam and then bash it into a visit report. Not only is this prone to the customary mistakes that make AI unsuited to high-stakes, error-sensitive applications, it also represents a profound misunderstanding of the purpose of clinical notes.

The very exercise of organizing your thoughts and reflections about an event – such as a medical exam – into a coherent report makes you apply rigor and perspective to events that otherwise arrive as a series of fleeting impressions and reactions. That's why blogging is such an effective practice:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/

The answer to doctors not having time to reflect and organize good notes is to give them more time – not more AI. As another doctor told Kuttner: "Ambient listening is a solution to a self-created problem of requiring too much data entry by clinicians."

EHRs are one of those especially hellish public-private partnerships. Health care doctrine from Reagan to Obama insisted that the system just needed to be exposed to market forces and incentives. EHRs are designed to allow hospitals to win as many of these incentives as possible. Epic's clinical care modules do this by bombarding doctors with low-quality diagnostic suggestions with "little to do with a patient’s actual condition and risks," leading to "alert fatigue," so doctors miss the important alerts in the storm of nonsense elbow-jostling:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5058605/

Clinicians who actually want to improve the quality of care in their facilities end up recording data manually and keying it into spreadsheets, because they can't get Epic to give them the data they need. Meanwhile, an army of high-priced consultants stand ready to give clinicians advise on getting Epic to do what they need, but can't seem to deliver.

Ironically, one of the benefits that Epic touts is its interoperability: hospitals that buy Epic systems can interconnect those with other Epic systems, and there's a large ecosystem of aftermarket add-ons that work with Epic. But Epic is a product, not a protocol, so its much-touted interop exists entirely on its terms, and at its sufferance. If Epic chooses, a doctor using its products can send files to a doctor using a rival product. But Epic can also veto that activity – and its veto extends to deciding whether a hospital can export their patient records to a competing service and get off Epic altogether.

One major selling point for Epic is its capacity to export "anonymized" data for medical research. Very large patient data-sets like Epic's are reasonably believed to contain many potential medical insights, so medical researchers are very excited at the prospect of interrogating that data.

But Epic's approach – anonymizing files containing the most sensitive information imaginable, about millions of people, and then releasing them to third parties – is a nightmare. "De-identified" data-sets are notoriously vulnerable to "re-identification" and the threat of re-identification only increases every time there's another release or breach, which can used to reveal the identities of people in anonymized records. For example, if you have a database of all the prescribing at a given hospital – a numeric identifier representing the patient, and the time and date when they saw a doctor and got a scrip. At any time in the future, a big location-data breach – say, from Uber or a transit system – can show you which people went back and forth to the hospital at the times that line up with those doctor's appointments, unmasking the person who got abortion meds, cancer meds, psychiatric meds or other sensitive prescriptions.

The fact that anonymized data can – will! – be re-identified doesn't mean we have to give up on the prospect of gleaning insight from medical records. In the UK, the eminent doctor Ben Goldacre and colleagues built an incredible effective, privacy-preserving "trusted research environment" (TRE) to operate on millions of NHS records across a decentralized system of hospitals and trusts without ever moving the data off their own servers:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/08/the-fire-of-orodruin/#are-we-the-baddies

The TRE is an open source, transparent server that accepts complex research questions in the form of database queries. These queries are posted to a public server for peer-review and revision, and when they're ready, the TRE sends them to each of the databases where the records are held. Those databases transmit responses to the TRE, which then publishes them. This has been unimaginably successful: the prototype of the TRE launched during the lockdown generated sixty papers in Nature in a matter of months.

Monopolies are inefficient, and Epic's outmoded and dangerous approach to research, along with the roadblocks it puts in the way of clinical excellence, epitomizes the problems with monopoly. America's health care industry is a dumpster fire from top to bottom – from Medicare Advantage to hospital cartels – and allowing Epic to dominate the EHR market has somehow, incredibly, made that system even worse.

Naturally, Kuttner finishes out his article with some antitrust analysis, sketching out how the Sherman Act could be brought to bear on Epic. Something has to be done. Epic's software is one of the many reasons that MDs are leaving the medical profession in droves.

Epic epitomizes the long-standing class war between doctors who want to take care of their patients and hospital executives who want to make a buck off of those patients.

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/02/upcoded-to-death/#thanks-obama

Image: Flying Logos (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Over_$1,000,000_dollars_in_USD_$100_bill_stacks.png

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

[starkeyisthelastname]

Dealer!Rafe is the type of man who tells you he’ll stop if you keep breaking eye contact with him while he eats your pussy. 😩💦

He had never been one that liked to go down on a girl, always finding it pointless as it brought him no pleasure. One taste of you though had him addicted, always having him yanking your hips closer to the edge of the bed while he ate your shit up like a starved man.

His tongue would lap up your sweet hole, jaw muscles flexing as used every bit of strength in his mouth to slurp up your leaking pussy. His blue eyes never leaving your pretty face as it contorted in pleasure. Your pretty white toes curled against his toned back, acrylic nails digging into the sheets as this man knew how to eat pussy. His tongue quite literally traveling from your sensitive pearl down to your tight little asshole, zero fucks given how messy it got.

The only thing… is that he didn’t like it when you looked away from him, which was a very difficult trahing to do because this man was made for eating pussy. And… this may have been the third time your head fell back from the amount of pleasure this gorgeous man gave you with just his mouth.

You felt one of hands remove itself from your thigh, reaching up tilt your head back towards him, the grip firm enough for you to realize he wasn’t playing around. Your eyes met his, darkened blue irises staring back up at you as his mouth pulled away. His chain glistening just as much as his face that was covered in your juice.

“I’ve been nice mama. Look away again, and I’ll fuckin stop. I’m not fuckin playin with you.” His voice raspy, face serious as you nodded against his hand. “That face is too pretty for me not to watch while I eat this sweet shit up.”

[radiance1]

Danny's portal accident has left him blind.

Not fully blind, he can see ecto entities just fine actually, but everything else he cannot.

Danny is left stranded in the ghost zone after the portal collapsed behind him and just left him on a random floating island, he's terribly wounded because a literal tear between worlds opened on him and then just spat him out and closed itself.

So, he isn't having a great time.

Then he gets found by a pack of blob ghosts, who instantly swarm him and just kinda... drag him away basically. Then Danny is given some cloak (His own were damaged to the Ancients and back, also they stole the cloak off a guy a long time ago), some bandages over his eyes and for some reason Blob ghosts are really good at medical care??

Then he lives with them for an undetermined amount of time, getting used to being a ghost with their supervision and is given full access to all the stuff they've stolen over the years.

One of them included a magic ball and Danny, stuck in a cave with not a lot to do, decides to fuck around and try it out.

A while later he's being fretted over by a whole lot of the Blob ghosts because the entire cave was filled with ice.

Not to self, don't use his apparent ice abilities without a sense of control like he did before.

Then a while later, while still trying to control said ice magic, he gets given a crown. One that he can't really see because there's no ectoplasm in it, but also can vaguely see the outline because there was something else inside it.

Later told it was a magic crown they got from a wizard who suddenly decided that he literally had zero use for the thing and traded it with the Blob ghosts since it'll just collect dust.

They traded it for a gem by the way.

So, when Danny finally perfected his ice abilities (with help from the crystal ball) he decides to leave the cave for once in his life and then he subsequently falls through a portal (with his blob ghosts) into the world of DC and boy is he out of his depth.

Then he becomes a villain, not on purpose really. He just needs to see and used his ice do to just that, and because of that he's taken over an entire section of a city (unnamed by it isn't Gotham) and his blob ghosts regularly steal stuff outside to bring back to him so he can eat and stuff.

Of course, taking over a whole section of a city isn't really seen in a good light.

[weaselle]

These are both mustelids, or in the weasel family. the group Mustelids/weasels are to these guys what the group Canines are to dogs and foxes and wolves and things.

But within that group, these guys aren't actually very closely related. Each of these "badgers" is roughly as equally related to each other as they are to these other mustelids

Wolverines

Honey Badgers

River Otters

and Martens

bonus pic because i'm not sure people understand wolverine size

Anyway, both types of badger are fascinating, but they are very different.

The American Badger is volatile and ferocious. They are largely solitary, and don't dig their own burrows so much as murder a burrowing creature, eat them, and then remodel that burrow for themselves.

European Badgers live in communal dens, and dig activity-specific rooms, including a separate toilet room. They will sometimes have a networked multi-family den/burrow system, with a large extended family all having their own underground homes that are attached to each other. European Badgers will sometimes share their borrow amicably with foxes, rabbits, or raccoon dogs (which exist in the wilds of europe after having been introduced).

The denning with rabbits is interesting since rabbits are often a prey item for European Badgers, whereas the foxes and raccoon dogs are weird roommates for them because they have heavily overlapping diets and are direct competition for one another.

While they do often eat birds and small mammals, European Badgers will happily exist on a diet of earthworms, insects, fungus, and various plants... and so will red foxes. They are both extreme generalists, eating basically anything available.

American Badgers on the other hand... while they will eat worms and fungus and fruit in small amounts or if very hungry, they primarily eat small mammals, about 10 species of rodent, with some birds and insects and reptiles thrown in along with whatever larger animals they can scavenge. American badgers have been known to bury an entire deer or even cow carcass to eat later. They are bloodthirsty and voracious.

So... OP's take is not wrong. European Badgers will build and share little den villages and they eat a lot more worms and fruits and grains... while American Badgers steal temporary homes by murdering and devouring the previous occupants, and would generally prefer to eat as large an animal as they can get.

But don't let that fool you. Look back through those pictures. The European Badger is still in the family, and their butler persona is a lot like Alfred's the way they will get out the big guns for an enemy with zero hesitation and no fucks given.

BONUS bonus pic, here is my dog, who is about the same size as a badger, who has a stripey nose like a badger, and who's name is, in fact, Badger

[neowonderland]

Sweet || l.jn

Summary: Jeno promises he'll use "just the tip" Pairings: Lee Jeno x Reader Warnings: 18+, smut, dubcon, manipulation Wc: ~1.0k

Dark Content, Minors please DNI

Disclaimer: this is a work of pure fiction. I do not condone the actions of any characters in this story and the actions do not reflect the idols in any way.

You’re so sweet, like sugar melting on Jeno��s tongue. Your honeyed tongue and voice melting away all Jeno’s defenses, overwhelming his thoughts with the sweet thoughts of you. You’re so innocent, too, with wide eyes gazing up at him in admiration whenever he talks. Your sweet voice is like honey, always there by his side to congratulate and praise him. 

It’s addictive, like the gummy candies Jeno’s so fond of, and Jeno just can’t get enough of you. He wants you for himself, to taste your sticky sweetness, to corrupt you so you drown in only thoughts of him. 

But it’s apparent that you don’t feel the same way, only viewing him as a brother. Your affectionate gaze and kind words were followed by calling him adorable, by calling him the younger brother you never had. Jeno knows you mean well, but uncomfortable, even patronizing, for Jeno, who wants something much more from your friendship. 

So Jeno comes up with a plan. You’re always so eager to help him right? You’re always weak to his pleading gaze and his pouting lips, never being able to say no when he asks something of you. 

“Just the tip, please?” Jeno pleaded with you, eyes gazing up at you as you two sat on his shared bed. “I promise it’ll just be the tip. I’ll be gentle. I’ve just been so stressed with my schedule recently.” 

You let out a sigh, shifting uncomfortably. Shaking your head and trying to change the conversation. 

But Jeno doesn’t relent, begging and begging for him to fuck you, promising that it’ll just be the tip, saying that it’s for stress relief, that he hasn’t had the time to blow off some steam. 

And so you relent, lying down and opening your legs to let Jeno sit between them. 

Jeno tries to be gentle when he works you open, sticky lube dripping down his fingers and mixing with your essence. But it’s difficult when you look so cute trying to muffle your moans, biting your lip as Jeno continues to pleasure you, your hands clawing at the sheets trying to ground yourself from the pleasure. You look so cute with your cheeks flushed, and hair splayed out, shirt riding up to expose your chest. And fuck– you feel so nice around his fingers, so warm and tight. Jeno can’t stop imagining how amazing you’ll feel wrapped tightly around his cock. 

It’s not long until Jeno becomes impatient, opting to keep his shirt on and only take off his bottoms. Jeno can tell you’re scared by the way you look at his length, eyes zeroed in on his hefty girth and length. It’s red throbbing and veiny, angry from being neglected while Jeno pleasured you. Jeno sees you bite the inside of your cheek in worry.

“Just the tip, right Jeno? You promised,” You ask, your voice shaky. 

“Just the tip, I promise,” Jeno answers, pushing in the head of his length without warning.

You let out a yelp as Jeno pops in. The stretch burns, even with the prep Jeno had previously given you. It feels like no amount of prep would have prepared you for taking Jeno’s length. 

The pain melts into pleasure as you begin to adjust to Jeno, pussy dripping around him, creating squelching as Jeno tries his best to control himself. Your eyes close as you begin to lose yourself in the pleasure. Jeno’s skillful, trying to make you feel as much pleasure as possible and minimize your discomfort. 

Jeno lets out a groan. You feel much better and sweeter stretched around him than imagined, your fluttering hole struggling to take his tip.  He thrusts in and out shallowly, eyes focused on where you two are connected, obsessed with how you seem to want to push him out and take him at the same time. You feel amazing around him, your warmth sucking him in, as if begging for him to give you everything. 

“You can take more, right?” Jeno pants, speeding up his thrusts and feeding you more and more of his length. 

You squirm and try to move away from him, discomfort spreading throughout your body. You let out a whine and shake your head trying to show that you don’t want him to go any further.

“Too much Jeno, you’re too big!” You whine, placing your hand on his pelvis in an attempt to stop him from thrusting into you. But it’s futile, as Jeno’s much stronger than you. 

You don’t even realize you’re crying until hot tears drip down your cheeks and you let out a choked sob. Jeno’s thrusting roughly and harshly now, bashing his tip against your cervix almost as if he was trying to force it open and fuck your womb. It hurts more than it’s pleasurable, and you want more than anything else in the world for it to end. Jeno shushes you, running his thumb across your cheek to wipe away your tears, shushing you and your cries. 

“I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry– You just feel so good I can’t help myself. You were so warm and wet. Your insides were just begging for more, I’m sorry I couldn’t help myself. I’m sorry, I’m sorry I’m sorry–” Jeno rambles, trailing off into mumbles. Your hand moves back from his pelvis, opting to make a fist with your hand and dig your nails into the palms of your hands.

You let out a sniffle as Jeno does a particularly hard thrust, kissing your cervix and releasing hot warm, sticky cum into you. It fills you up to the brim, some cum leaking out from the where you two are attached, forming a creamy white ring around the base. 

Jeno pulls back, admiring your wrecked body, your hair messy, your hole spent with his cum leaking out of it. And Jeno realizes he thinks you’re the sweetest when you let him use you like this. 

[grimmsbride]

i saw ur that ur request were open and i just need you to hear me out on multipaul 🫣 that man is to dam fine for there to be literally nothing of him 💔 if you write a paul fic MY LIFE IS YOURS 🧎‍♀️‍➡️🙏

𝄃𝄀⠀⠀my mine⠀╲ multi-paul ֤ࣨ🫀𖥔 ݁ ˖

summary you decide to give your beloved convict boyfriend, paul cha, a little gift <3.

tags canon-divergence | pre-established relationships | ooc characters | paul literally jerks off to pictures of you | mentions of him being an assassin | masturbation | chubby coded reader | etc

authors notes i was so nervous writing this imagine cause i realized i have like, zero input on how paul would act in a relationship 😭 so im sorry if i didn’t do his character justice but i really appreciate you requesting for him, it gives me much needed practice 🫶🏾. as always please excuse any typos and grammar mistakes

Imagine sneaking polaroids to MultiPaul in prison. You don’t know what had driven you to this; whether your mind was clouded with the thought of missing him, or simple human horniness— you had no idea. The only idea that struck you was taking scandalous images with your camera, printing them, and getting them to your lovely, convict boyfriend.

Through the entire prison visit you were practically beaming with excitement, something the man picked up on easy. He was a killer for god’s sake, human nature was something he had to know. Plus, Paul was your boyfriend after all.

So the moment a simple what’s got you so excited? climbed from his lips, you burst out into a little giggle, reaching over the table for his hand— which Paul accepted with zero issues.

“Nothing.. just, so happy to see you.” Despite your words, your hand was busy, pushing something small right into his palm.

Paul was quick yet discreet in accepting it, squeezing your hand for extra measure before slyly pulling his hand away and under the table, tucking the mystery gift right into his pocket.

Now it was his turn to be excited, pretty features pulled into a smile as he tilted his head at you.

“From the way you look, I’m assuming I’m really going to enjoy this gift?”

Your smile was worsening at this point, practically leaning over the table as a sweet; “Oh, you’re going to love it..” escaped you.

You weren’t lying. While Paul was expecting maybe a key or some sort of cliche file to help take his collar off, he certainly wasn’t complaining the moment he tore the film off of his little gift.

There you were, in all your glory, images of yourself in some type of lingerie, position, or even completely bare— that left him salivating. It was no secret Paul missed you, the visits the only solace to the distance between you.

At times it seemed it wasn’t enough, given the amount of restrictions placed on the two of you. No excessive touching, you had to stay across the table, extra bullshit Paul wasn’t in the least impressed with, yet was stuck complying to.

But you, his sweet girlfriend, just knew when to push boundaries. And he was eating up every second of it.

The laminated film shined against the light of his cell, highlighting every perfect curve of your body. Paul’s eyes were practically glued to the photo, thumb sliding across the smooth surface as a soft hiss slipped from him.

Fuck, did he miss you. Every single inch. He missed coming back to you after a particularly hard mission, spotting your waiting body under the blankets to which he would climb under, securing his arms around your waist and pulling you in. You would always cuddle close, hand carrying up and down his body, assuring he sustained no major injuries. Sometimes, your gentle touches would illicit something deep inside his stomach— the man using the little bit of energy he had left to show you how excited he was to be back home.

But now, Paul was stuck in this damned cell, paying for his crimes with only fleeting images of you to keep him company. A sad case indeed, but he knew to make due.

Plus, Paul didn’t particularly plan to stay cooped up so long.

For now however, he would satiate himself with what you provided. Paul backed up until his knees hit his bed, sitting down and turning to press his back against the wall. Flipping through the polaroids, the man felt that familiar ache right between his legs. His hips shifted uncomfortably for a moment, blindly reaching for the zipper of his orange jumper. Revealing his white undershirt, and plain black boxes— the man hissed softly the moment his palm dragged across his growing bulge.

Blindly his fingers swept through the waistband of his underwear, curling around his length whilst his freehand flipped to the next photo. The light of your camera shined against your skin, the man wondering if you’d used some type of glittery lotion the way you just seemed to sparkle. A pretty purple set of lacey lingerie cupped your body perfectly, accentuating your breasts and the curve of your ass— and it certainly didn’t help the way your body arched; showing off every inch of your body.

Slowly, Paul’s palm dragged against his dick, teeth tucked tight against his bottom lip, quieting down his soft grunts. His mind was running wild, thoughts of you consuming him entirely. Replays of your past nights together, the man trying to perfectly remember every twitch and every moan you emitted.

He flinched the moment he made contact with his sensitive tip, hips rising right up into his hand. Precum was trickling from his slit, creating a mess he would concern himself with later— for now, the man was focusing on the next polaroid of you.

The picture featured you straddled a pillow, pretty thighs squeezing the plush item whilst covered in black sheer stockings. Hung up by gaterbelts that dug into your plump flesh, attached to the prettiest black underwear that rested high on your hips. Except this one was different then the other, given the undergarment was entirely crotch less; and the moment that realization hit, Paul was knocking his head back against the wall, closing his eyes tight.

“Fucking tease..” The man muttered to himself, eyebrows pushing close as he continued to fuck his hand. As the pleasure grew, he felt his legs widening, even pushing his boxers down further as his actions grew more vigorous. Paul could just imagine it, fingers playing with the lace and with your exposed pussy; fingers sliding across your wetness before dipping in, rubbing against your walls so perfectly you would cry out his name like some sort of prayer.

Paul’s stomach was clenching as time passed, lips parted as soft breaths escaped. His hand formed into a tight, wet fist, hips rising up into it as glossy eyes took in your last final polaroid.

You were completely bare, legs spread, arms opened— completely exposed to the watchful eye of your camera and Paul himself. He couldn’t help but focus between your thighs, wondering if you played with yourself during this process. The man could just guess how excited you were getting the entire time, pretty lips pouted as sweet moans escaped every time you rubbed at your little button.

Maybe you even played with your breasts; pulling and squeezing your nipples until they peaked, that thought alone caused him to twitch, hand falling to his side as the images laid out amongst his bed.

Paul dragged his hand up and down his length urgently, bated breaths and quick swears falling from his lips before he clenched, making a complete mess of his lower half.

Slowly, his hand slid down to his waist, slumping against the wall entirely as soft pants escaped him. His eyes closed, attempting to regain his breath after that little event.

Soon enough Paul’s eyes were opening, peeking at the pictures amongst his blankets, the corner of his mouth twitching into a little smile.

Which slowly fell the moment he glanced down at his legs, releasing the loudest sigh ever.

Now.. to get cleaned up.

[cheol-e-kat]

Hi! I love your works! For the bingo list can I request monster with cheol? I loved the mingyu one a lot

Thank you! 🫶🏻

so demon!cheol is maybe a bit different, but i hope you like him - he needs his own long fic tbh

♡ kat

bingo squares: monster

pairing: choi seungcheol x f!reader

genres: monster!seungchoel, demon!seungcheol, magic au, fluff, dark themes (they can both exist)

summary: y/n is stuck with the most useless demon to exist until he suddenly makes himself very useful

word count: 2.9k

warnings: below cut

monster fucking, oral sex (f. receiving), fingering, penetrative sex, cum eating, monster dick, breeding kink if you squint, eggs (iykyk), implied impregnation

having your own demon was largely useless. at least if that demon was seungcheol. his most useful feature was running errands - like picking up milk and cat litter. 

but the rest of the time, he mainly spent lounging around your apartment, usually reading whatever books were around. in fact, your book collection seemed to have suspiciously grown of its own accord since you ‘inherited’ him from your grandmother. you weren’t sure where he was getting them from, since half of them were in an italian dialect that your phone couldn’t recognize, but there they were, taking up space, just like seungcheol. 

having never really met your family, it had been shocking to have a demon show up and knock on your door, to say the least. in fact, you treated him like you would treat any psycho off the street and slammed the door in his face and locked all the locks. 

except, surprise, he could basically walk through walls. which he did whenever it was least convenient, like when you were showering and he had some random deep thoughts to share about a news article (you canceled your new yorker subscription because of him). 

or when you were napping, and he wanted to play animal crossing. 

or when you were dead asleep and he wanted to play the cat restaurant game on your phone. 

he refused to have his own phone. because yours existed, and he only liked the cat game and sometimes wordle when he was “acutely bored.”

you often wondered if killing him had any consequences. especially since you had already tried breaking whatever it was that bound you together, but that apparently involved some ancient-level crap beyond burning sage, so you had given up. but would you be prosecuted for slaying a demonic creature, you wondered, but decided he would probably just show back up, no worse for wear.

not to mention, you had been in a fairly foul mood lately. very snappy with everyone - you scowled at a baby for fuck’s sake. so you decided you needed a little personal reset, and that meant getting the worst excuse for a demon ever, out of your hair, at least for an hour if you were lucky. 

your plan was simple - give him an insane amount of errands that required him to roughly hit up every borough of the city. you made a tediously long list of things you needed - you fully knew that besides refusing a cell phone, he refused to use his abilities (whatever those were) to get around the city, not to mention he said he found the subway “enlightening.”  you rolled your eyes, making detailed notes of exactly which market he needed to visit for which item. 

in all reality - if someone really questioned you, you would have to admit that, despite how obnoxious you often found seungcheol, he was insanely handsome and maybe intimidating - at least based on the way people literally moved out of his way on the sidewalk, which was perhaps his most impressive trait. 

but he was also persistently around you and with zero boundaries, which meant you couldn’t just invite someone over for a quick fuck. you needed some time to do it yourself, maybe even a few times. and then you would feel like mary-sunshine again. but you needed him out of the apartment! especially since he had been showing up in your dreams lately, which was really fucking with your mind. his handsome face invading your dreams had to end.

but even as you were making your insane list, you could feel him hovering around you. when you felt his chin rest on your shoulder, you wanted to elbow him in the stomach. 

“why do you want mixed olives from there? there are already olives here, and you hate those,” he commented, his husky voice way too close for comfort. 

“some recipe i found,” you mumbled. 

“but you can’t stand them,” he tried again.

you shrugged, and he only leaned closer, his arms gently encircling you as he read your jumbled handwriting. you were mostly used to this too. he had an infuriating way of getting very close, sometimes without you even noticing. you thought it was solely to annoy, but no, he genuinely didn’t seem to understand why you constantly tried to have space from him - and made up for it by crowding you even more when any opportunity presented itself. it was a losing battle. 

you had given up explaining to him how your bed was yours because he insisted on napping there after watching whatever daytime tv show he was suddenly obsessed with - and that was months ago. 

but today, he would be out of the apartment. you were making sure of that. no random appearances. just peace and quiet and you and your vibrator doing god’s work. 

you finished the list and turned, pressing it to his chest, “if you wouldn’t mind doing the one thing you do for me.”

he watched you for a moment like he was on the verge offering some pithy response, but he just sighed and took the list. and then proceeded to take ages to actually leave. you stood watching him fumble around for who knows what, tapping your foot impatiently because you hadn’t considered that even him leaving could be such a production. 

“stop glaring at me,” he called out, “i’m leaving, okay - to run all of your precious errands,” he was annoyed, but at least he was walking out the door. you ran behind him to lock it. 

and finally, you could get down to business. you practically ran to your room and dove under the covers. this was a timed thing - you couldn’t waste a second. 

you pulled up some very dubious porn, but whatever - it was for the greater good. you didn’t bother taking off your sleep shorts and underwear, just shoving your vibrator down your pants where you needed it most and proceeding as required - lube wasn’t a luxury you could afford in the race to have several uninterrupted orgasms. 

but no - no, no, no - you’re brain froze. you had felt the small shift next to you in bed. your eyes went wide, then squeezed shut as you tried to stop everything you set in motion. you were dreaming - this wasn’t real.

but no, it was real - because he spoke. “when you’re finished can i have your phone?” he whispered, he was lying on what you begrudgingly acknowledged was his side of the bed. 

how was it that this was the one time you wanted him out of the house, and he basically made everything appear from thin air all because he wanted to play the cat restaurant game. on your phone, which was in your bedroom. with you. playing the kind of porn you would rather die than confess to watching, while you were furiously trying to stimulate your clit. 

you froze completely - you were mortified, but also how was this your life, you wondered. 

he poked you cheek gently, “y/n? i need to check my tips jar - it maxes out at 40,00 little fish monies.”

“seungcheol, fuck off,” you whispered with every ounce of civility you could muster. 

“you’re almost finished - just like a minute or so and then i check my game,” he trailed off. 

you thought you might combust, turning to look at him, “I’LL BE FINISHED IN A MINUTE? no! and you know what? no more cat cafe!”

“cat restaurant, actually,” he corrected, smiling - dimples on full display. 

“i don’t fucking care! no more cat-based food games on my phone, i’m deleting them and your games account!”

“noooo,” he whined, as you navigated to the games hub - he was suddenly straddling you and fighting for your phone - he could pry it from your semi-warm dead hand as far as you were concerned. 

you wrestled back and forth until he finally had you trapped under him using what felt like more than his body weight.

“don’t you dare delete my account,” you were surprised to see his eyes were a glowing deep blue instead of their normal dark-coffee brown, “do you know how many ads i’ve sat through to expand my cat empire, y/n - i finally have the little spa area open,” he sounded so serious and simultaneously so ridiculous. 

you glared at him, trying to focus all your rage on him for ruining your afternoon of solo sex. 

he stared at you for a moment, swallowing hard - “look what if i help you with your endeavor, and then you won’t need to do anything permanent,” he offered, his eyes drifting towards your phone, which only made you tighten your grip on it.

“helping me with my problem would be you disappearing forever,” your voice was more acidic than you meant it to be. 

he immediately pouted, “look, it’s a genuine offer, okay - i do have experience,” he stared at you with big, round eyes that could unquestionably peer into your soul. 

you groaned dramatically and tried to pull out of his grip, which was completely useless. “what is it with you and the cat games?” you asked out of pure exasperation. you had already given up on an orgasm, having switched your vibrator off almost the instant you heard his voice. 

“you know, you sit down and watch happy little animals sit and eat and eat and sit - you just get to turn your brain off for a bit, it’s nice,” he shrugged, still watching you. 

you stared at him for a moment, finally sighing, “just get out, okay, let me change and you can have your game back,” you folded like a sad, wet paper bag. 

you closed your eyes, waiting for him to let go of you and leave. instead, you felt a small kiss on your cheek. your eyes snapped open to find him still leaning over you. 

“let me help,” he said, voice gentle, his hands squeezing your wrists softly. 

you wanted to smack him - him and his stupid cute face. why couldn’t he just actually go to the stores like you had asked, you wondered to yourself.

he rolled his eyes, leaning down to whisper, “because i know when you’re up to something,” his lips brushed your skin. 

it was genuinely trying on your mental faculties that he knew what you were thinking. literally, every thought. it was why he never even asked for the passcode for your phone. and why he regularly answered questions you never verbalized. 

“so then you could have just let me have time to myself,” you pouted. 

“mmmh, but i can be so much more helpful with this little project, instead of going to get the olives i know you don’t like from a store across town in the rain,” he whispered and nipped teasingly at your earlobe. 

you shivered from the contact. you tried to make your mind blank, not exactly wanting him to know how good it already felt to be under him - he already knew too much about you. and this would only serve as reasons for him to be clingier. 

“maybe i don’t want help,” you whispered, your anger growing at the intrusion. 

he nuzzled closer, “i don’t think that’s true since you keep drafting messages to the guy you met a few weeks ago,” he whispered, kissing your throat gently. 

you felt the gentle pressure of his teeth on your throat and whined softly - the feeling was indescribably good. he purred, knowing you liked it, as his lips teased lower. his tongue marking your throat and collarbones. he worked his hands under your shirt, leaning up enough to pull it over your head. the way he gazed down at you was unexpected - his normal apathy was gone. his hands went to your breasts, massaging them, his thumbs brushing over your already pebbled nipples - he was gentle, taking his time teasing you before he dipped his head down, his lips making contact with the sensitive skin of your tits. you felt his teeth graze your skin as he sucked one nipple and then the other. 

he finally leaned up, looking a bit disheveled, and licking his lips, “i want them full,” he murmured. you weren’t completely sure what he meant, but you didn’t really care either as he made his way down your body, leaving a trail of kisses and bites. he pulled off your sleep shorts and underwear and lifted your hips so he could easily work his tongue between your slick folds, finding your clit almost immediately. 

the way he sucked the bud between his lips was mind numbing - you couldn’t help reaching down to grab his hair roughly, wanting him to know what you were feeling in the moment. your whines and moans weren’t enough, he needed to feel you gripping his long hair and pulling it every time his tongue made the most perfect contact. and when he added his fingers, you entered another plane of existence, pulling his hair, arching off the bed and moaning his name in a way that should have been embarrassing. it was like you had never been properly touched by a man in your life, and you were finally learning what pleasure was. 

you came quickly - your cum rushing past his fingers, which he seemed to enjoy based on the way he licked into you, lapping at your opening. you could feel his tongue working impossibly deep inside you. you knew without asking that he wanted you to come again. 

his fingers worked your clit while his tongue was still exploring your sticky walls, and you felt it again, the sweetest pleasure flowing through every part of your body. he leaned up, licking his lips, giving your pussy a gentle smack. 

“feeling better?” he asked, almost sounding sincere. 

you sighed and nodded, “much better.” you didn’t move, but found yourself wondering if he was as god at fucking as he was at eating pussy. 

he grinned, his hands tracing over your hips and stomach, “is that what you want now - my cock stretching you open,” he glanced up, watching you for a second before glancing back down. 

you could feel the way his fingers were carefully prodding your stomach - it was almost like he was looking for something. 

“is your dick as good as i think?”

he nodded without looking up, “you won’t even know what to compare it to,” he grinned, voice smug. 

you didn’t say anything - you just watched him undress, noiticing how good he looked, and that, at least from your angle, his cock looked fairly average. but then he was between your legs again, kissing you, licking into you, “you have no idea how perfect you are,” he whispered, his fingers still working to prep you. 

you had thought it often enough, and you knew he knew, but you found yourself confessing how gorgeous you found him. he smiled, kissing you just as he began sliding his cock inside you, “let me make you full,” he whispered when he started to move. you nodded, not caring what he did because you knew how perfect it felt. 

you were sure you were even slicker than before as he began moving inside you, but even though you could feel how thick and long his cock was, you knew you were taking every inch of him without any pain. it didn’t matter how brutal his pace was either, you only felt the pleasure of him stretching you wider than you thought possible - going deeper than you knew was possible - you were sure you could feel his dick slamming into your stomach with every thrust. you wanted to feel how deep inside you he was, but he kept pinning your hands back against the mattress, thrusting harder.

“i’m exactly as deep as you think, pet,” he groaned, snapping his hips, “i can go even further if you want.”

you laughed softly, even as you heard the deep, shivering moan that came from him. you felt the odd sensation of something entering you - not his cock or fingers, something cool and almost heavy - you orgasmed, seeing bright lights flashing behind your eyelids as you felt the same sensation, something entering you - something smooth and round going deep inside and clinging to your inner walls. 

“you’re really doing it?” you managed to whisper. 

he moaned, “told you i want you full,” he whispered, voice ragged as you felt another object pumped into your cunt, “want to breed you full, pet - make you mine forever,” he whispered, finally pulling out. 

you stayed in his arms after, enjoying how safe you felt.

“i’ve never given them to anyone before,” he whispered, kissing your temple.

you fell asleep cradled against him, your cervix full of his precious eggs. 

a/n: i love writing cheol, especially cheol in magical aus because low key i had this idea and now i want to know way more about him

♡ kat

bingo card master list

bingo v. 1 ⋆.˚ bingo v. 2 ⋆.˚ bingo v. 3 ⋆.˚ bingo v. 4 ⋆.˚ 333 followers bingo ⋆.˚

seungcheol: knotting + marking | professor (prof. choi, pt. 1) | monster | spanking (neighbor seungcheol) | big dick + hate sex | forced masturbastion (prof. choi, pt ii) | voyeurism + punishment | coffee shop au + forbidden relationship (untitled alpha!!cheol pt. 1) |

mingyu: lingerie + praise kink | bed sharing + big dick | praise + worship kink | vehicle sex + oral fixation | drunk pda + no underwear | enemies to lovers + tentacles |

seungcheol & mingyu threesome: oral |

tag list: @syluslittlecrow ☁︎ @gyuguys ☁︎ @haik-chu ☁︎ @tinyelfperson ☁︎ @lovetaroandtaemin ☁︎ @unlikelysublimekryptonite ☁︎ @gigglensnort ☁︎

♡ if you want to be tagged in my posts, go [here] & this is my [master list] if you want to read more

[yeonzzzn]

i like the way you kiss me ; sim jaeyun

pairing: jake x afab!reader word count: 939

synopsis: having your first kiss with jake

genre: friends to lovers, fluffy fluffy fluffy.

warnings: tiny bit of swearing and some kissing 🩷

a/n: this is a special dedicate to my wifey ( @alvojake ) 🩷

Jake gripped tightly to the steering wheel, his throat and lips dry no matter how many times his tongue dragged over his lips, and drank water from the water bottle sitting in the cup holder. 

Him being nervous was an understatement. 

His eyes slowly wandered over to you, watching as you laughed and smiled at some TikTok, telling him how you’re sending the video to him and that he has to watch it ASAP. 

All Jake could do was smile and nod, whipping his eyes back to the road, saying he would watch it once the car was parked. 

Jake tried to push down his nervousness, repeating over and over that it’s just you and he has zero reasons to be nervous. 

Except well, he does. 

The two of you have been talking for a couple of months now and have gone on plenty of dates. But this one was different: Jake plans to finally kiss you tonight. 

He had the whole date planned out perfectly. Took you out to your favorite restaurant and then a movie. After the movie, he took you to get your favorite sweet snack and you both walked around the park by the pond, watching the sunset, and all the lanterns and lights lit up the park. It was perfect. The amount of hugs you’ve given him tonight, the amount of times you clung to him and held his hand tightly…Jake was trying so hard not to become one with the ducks in the pond at how cute you were being. The last thing to top off this date was to drive you home and finally kiss you. 

And god did he wish he could jump out his car’s window. 

His heart rate increased once he turned down your street, his mouth going even more dry than before. 

You finally dropped your phone back into your bag and clasped your hands together, dragging your thumbs over the tops of your hands. You weren’t ready for the night to end. Weren’t ready to leave Jake yet. This night was just way too perfect and you were way too attached to Jake. He was your comfort, even if the two of you weren’t officially dating yet, you found a home within his heart and you don’t want to leave it. 

Unfortunately for both of you, Jake pulled up into your driveway. His sweaty hands fell from the steering wheel and put the car in park, “Home sweet home,” he tried to tease, his voice coming out shakier than he wanted it to. 

Jake shifted in his seat to face you and you did the same. Again, you weren’t ready to leave him yet. So you did the one thing you thought you could do to keep him longer, “Oh! Watch the TikTok I sent!” you smiled at him, pointing your index finger to his phone that sat in the other cup holder, “It’s so funny! I want to see you laugh!” 

Jake couldn’t help but smile nervously, nodding and reaching for his phone. He navigated his way to the folder he kept his socials in, hovering his thumb over the app. What the hell was he doing? He didn’t want to spend the little time left with you just watching this video and moving on. He wanted to kiss you so bad. 

He looks up at you, his heart melting at the smile you have and the way your nose crinkles as your lips curl up more. He swallowed. It was now or never. 

Fuck it. 

Jake drops his phone back into the cup holder, reaching his hand across the car and to your neck, pulling you towards him as he meets you halfway, crashing his lips desperately to yours. The first thing he noticed was how soft your lips felt against his, the second was the taste of your cherry chapstick. The third was the way you shifted closer to him, your fingers now pulling at the collar of his shirt to bring him as close as possible to you. 

His head was dizzy but oh fucking god was he on cloud nine. He loved the way your lips fit perfectly against his. Loved how in sync they moved with his. The way your noses grazed when tilting your heads to the other side sent chills down his spine. 

You had to admit, you’ve been hoping Jake would kiss you all night. And honestly, if he wasn’t going to kiss you, you were ready to make the first move. You kissed him back with every ounce of love he was giving you. Matching his energy perfectly and goodness did Jake relish in it. 

And when he finally pulled away to catch his breath, he was smiling so big, resting his forehead against yours and rubbing his thumb up and down your jawline. You also matched his smile, reaching back to his lips for another kiss. 

“Shit, YN,” he whispered, rubbing your noses together, his smile continuing to grow, “I like the way you kiss me.” 

You traced your fingers from the collar of his shirt, up his neck, jaw, and stopped at his lips. He moved his free hand to yours, kissing the tips of your fingers before intertwining them with his fingers, “Is it okay to call you my girlfriend now? I don’t think I can go on if you can’t be.” 

You smiled, rubbing your nose to his again, “Of course, puppy, I would want nothing more.” 

Jake’s response was to kiss you again and bring you as close as he could get you to him. He just couldn’t get enough of you.

tags: @ikeuverse @woniebae @shawnyle @jwnghyuns @in-somnias-world

@zyvlxqht @aaa-sia @wonniethepoo @addictedtohobi @eneiyri

@skzenhalove @fakeuwus @cherry-park @vousty @ladyartemesia

@criminalyun @enhaverse713586 @wondipity @lhsvibez

@jaeyunq @rikizm @kaykay11sworld @pockettwinzz @vixialuvs

@seunghancore @enha-cafe @ppanghoon @sunpov @zeeloveshee

@hxxsxxng @moonrisearies @brownsugarbaybee @nshmrarki @vveebee

@teddybeartaetae @kookify @abysofsteel @aileeeeeeeeeeeee

@hee-lvrr @1309zip @moon0fthenight @jakeflvrz

[gotta-winwin]

𓆩🖤𓆪 ... falling in love through songs pt.1

⭐ starring: vernon

💌 genre: fluff, light angst

💬 preview: you really wished someone would've told you that the rockstar you'd be photographing for on his tour was Hansol from school. Yes, that Hansol. Your ex-boyfriend Hansol.

tw/cw: rockstar!vernon x photographer!reader, second chance romance, exes to lovers, sworn enemies to lovers, forced proximity, a cheeky joshua, lots of banter, allusions to sex, weed + alcohol

🪽fic rating: pg/16+

☁️ masterlist & a/n: here i am once again with a vernon fic, but this time to kick off our 500 followers event! this one is based on the song heart out by the 1975, one especially close to my own heart. i know i said the release date was the 20th...but inspiration struck and i have zero patience when posting fics. enjoy!

p.s thank you so much to @lovetaroandtaemin and @chugging-antiseptic-dye for beta reading !

this is a part of my 500 followers event

“Hear me out.” Joshua spread his arms as if to hug the air in front of him. “The two of us, on tour, in a tour bus, a fat paycheck.” 

You pursued your lips, biting back a smile. His proposition had sounded tempting even over the phone, where he had offered you a photography job on the tour he was managing, a spot on the bus and front row seats to every show. 

“It’ll be fun!” He continued, driving the nail in further. “The guy I manage- he’s a chill dude, great rockstar. You’d get along great.” 

“What did you say his name was again?” You asked, looking over the contract he had given you one more time. 

“Vernon.” Joshua nudged your arm, pushing you to sign. “C’mon. It’ll be like the old days again, bandwagoning across the country in the name of making art.” He placed the last words in air quotations as he smiled. “And the paycheck doesn’t hurt.”

“Not at all.” It was a ridiculous amount of money. “When do we start?”

Clapping his hands, Joshua looked joyous to have you along. “First concert’s tomorrow, right here in New York. It starts at 8, but come earlier so you can meet the band first. I’ll introduce you to Vernon- oh, he’s going to be so psyched to see you.” 

As much as you loved his enthusiasm, the jitters of having such a high profile job was catching up to you, once again reminding you just how high the stakes were. You needed this job, for the money, for the recognition it’d give you - you needed it all. 

Flashing Joshua a bright smile, you nodded, looking more confident than you felt. “Great. I’ll go home, pack my things, and see you tomorrow!”

“Alright, sunshine.” Joshua chuckled as you struggled to put your coat back on, your childhood nickname rolling off his tongue like second nature. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“This was not the fucking deal, Josh.” 

You couldn’t believe your eyes as you stared, open-mouthed at the boy in front of you, decked out in silver chains, ripped jeans and sporting a backwards baseball cap. He all but screamed rockstar, yet you keep circling back to the fact that-

“Hansol?” 

-the fact that you knew him. Very well, in fact.

“Y/N?” 

He seemed just as astonished to see you, eyes darting suspiciously towards Joshua. “This, is my tour photographer?” 

“This?” You cried out indignantly, turning to Joshua as well. “Did it just not cross your mind to mention that your rockstar happened to be Hansol from school? You lied to me!” 

“Well-” Joshua put his hands up in defence, the large grin on his face betraying how much he was enjoying the moment. “Surprise?” 

“Joshua!” Both you and Vernon yelled out, anger escaping as the two of you contemplated whether or not throttling Joshua would be worth the consequences.

“I am not staying on a tour bus with her.” Vernon pointed an accusatory finger your way. “Especially not for four months. I’d rather throw myself off a cliff.” 

“I’d rather chop off my own finger and eat it.” You hissed back, equally disgusted at the idea of sharing your space with him. 

“Contract’s signed.” Joshua shrugged, his eyes dancing with mirth as he watched the two of you glare daggers at one another. “Jeez. It’s like the air in here could kill or something.”

“I do not want to breathe the same air as him.” You stabbed a finger at Vernon.

“I hope you choke on it and die.” He punctuated the last word with fervor. 

“Ditto.” 

Joshua let out a deep sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I’m starting to regret this. Were you guys always this...stabby?” 

“Yes.” Chan poked his head out from the green room. “Ever since they broke up they’ve been literal bitches. Whatever happened to hey, Chan, we’ll still be friends! This won’t break the friend group apart!” He frowned, disapprovement evident on his face. Time still hadn’t erased the betrayal he had felt when the two of you broke up, killing their friend group with suffocating silence. 

“Whatever.” Vernon muttered, turning away, shoving his in-ears back into his ears. “Stay away from me.” 

“With the utmost pleasure.” 

You had to begrudgingly admit that Vernon looked good doing his thing onstage. Vernon. It was still odd to even call him that, when you had known him your whole life as Hansol. 

Raising your camera, you followed his every movement onstage, staring at him through the viewfinder. He looked almost iridescent under the lights, shining alongside his jewel-encrusted microphone as he rapped, commanding the stage. 

“He’s doing well.” Chan slid up behind you, cradling a bundle of wires in his arms. Your entire high school friend group seemed to have conjoined once again, following Vernon on his tour as various supporting crew members. You supposed all the credit went to Joshua, who had been the only one to keep in contact with everyone else. 

You hummed, eyes still trained on Vernon. 

“Remember when we used to make fun of this? Vernon onstage?” Chan shook his head in mild disbelief. 

You could remember it as clear as yesterday, leaning against Hansol in the school courtyard as your group laughed, thoroughly amused by whatever rap he had performed that day. “Everyone told him it was impossible.”

“Except for you.” Chan looked at you with his eyebrows raised. 

“Yeah.” It was surreal to see him thrive in a life you had basically built with him. You were at his first audition, every coffeehouse show, sitting by him in each shabby and rented studio. “I never thought he’d get this big, though.” 

The sheer size of the crowd had been overwhelming at first. You were greeted by the venue’s cheers when you had entered, taken aback by the crowd and by how many fans Hansol had gained. There were fans waving banners, glow sticks, and various trinkets dedicated to him as they cheered, already excited despite the main act still being backstage. It was a bitter pill to swallow: the idea that he was so beloved. 

“Maybe you should forgive him.” 

You whipped your head to look at Chan, insulted by his suggestion. “I’m not forgiving him.”

“He’s changed!” Chan protested. “He doesn’t actually hate you, he’s just- being stupid.” 

Rolling your eyes, you recalled all the times Hansol had hurt you. “I am not forgiving him.” You repeated, more firmly than the last. 

“Y/N.” Chan’s eyes pleaded with you. You knew the youngest member of your group still believed in fairy tale endings, but this was harsh reality, and Chan needed to learn that. 

“He broke up with me, Chan.” You turned back to the camera, ending the conversation. “I’m not forgiving him.” 

“Hey, man.” Joshua moved Vernon’s headphones off his one ear, catching his attention. “Haven’t you tried…just talking to Y/N?” 

Vernon let out a deep sigh as he turned to face him, rolling his shoulders back as he mulled the idea over. “What’s the point? We just end up fighting either way.”

“Yeah, but try actually talking to her. Nicely.” 

Vernon’s eyebrows furrowed. “How do you do that?”

“Boy.” Joshua pushed Vernon’s forehead with a finger, shaking his head disapprovingly. “How did you even start dating her in the first place? Be nice. Ask questions. Sound interested. It’s not that difficult, Non.”

Vernon had to begrudgingly admit that a part of him did want to speak with you without a fight. He was longing to experience the kind of conversations you had shared with him before, splitting open your heart and baring your soul to one another without fear of judgement. Conversations long forgotten by now.

“I’ll talk to her.” Vernon promised Joshua, moving his headphones back and returning to his laptop. “Don’t worry.”

Joshua nodded, glancing over at Chan, who shot him a knowing look, pointing his chin towards the bunk beds, where you were sitting, blissfully unaware of the conversation that had just taken place. 

“Hey.”

You looked up to find Vernon staring down at you from his spot on the bunk ladder, hands clutching the rails as he balanced himself on the third rung. 

You greeted him with a noncommittal grunt, hoping he’d leave you alone. The amount of tour photos still to be edited on your laptop was overwhelming, and you were in no mood to fight him today.

“Whatcha doing?” Vernon followed up with a question, rocking back and forth on the spot, a lazy drawl in his voice. 

You raised an eyebrow, intrigued by his sudden interest. “Editing your photos.”

He leaned down for a better look. “They look good.” 

“No.” You sighed, your shoulders sagging a bit at your words. “The colors are off, and the saturation- I can’t get the lighting to behave.” Waving vaguely around the photo where his face was, you sighed again. “It’s not doing you any justice.”

“Are you saying I look good in person?”

Yes. But you’d never admit that. Coughing as you tried to save face, you shot him a heavy side eye. “No, I’m saying it makes you look uglier than you actually are.” 

“You still fucked this ugly person.” 

“A stupid teenage mistake I’ll never make again.”

He fixed you with a withering stare. 

“Are you done now?” You asked, moving your eyes back on your work. “You should leave, unless you want me to release these with you looking ugly.”

Vernon hopped off the ladder, muttering something about why he even bothered trying in the first place.

“Hey.” Joshua invaded your space next, poking his head into your bunk. “I saw you talking to Vernon.” A meddling smile crossed his face when you swore under your breath.

“Nothing special, Josh.” You pushed his head away from your laptop. “Stop trying to stir the pot.”

Ignoring your statement, he continued. “How was it?”

“The conversation? Bland.” You grimaced. “Vernon? Same old, same old.” 

Joshua frowned. “Meaning…what exactly?” 

“Same inflated ego, same dumb face.” You looked up from your laptop once again. “Look. I really need to get this done. So-”

“I got it.” Joshua squeezed your hand before climbing back down, an amused smile on his face the entire time. “Just play nice, alright?”

Rolling your eyes at his comment, you returned to stare at Vernon’s picture, hating how perfect the universe had allowed him to be.

The air was biting and cold as you stepped off the tour bus for the first time in eight hours. Placing down your bags to stretch your legs, you contemplated whether or not it was really worth it to spend a night off the tour bus if it meant rooming with Vernon. 

Both Joshua and Chan had insisted it was the only sleeping arrangement that would make sense. 

“I am not sleeping on the couch.” Vernon announced as you both stepped into the hotel room. 

Throwing your bags on the floor, you let out a guffaw. “You’ve got another thing coming if you think I’m sleeping on the couch.”

“I don’t care where you sleep as long as it’s not next to me. Also, I’m showering first.” 

You looked up from your bags to see him sporting a shit-eating grin, already making his way to the bathroom and locking the door behind him.

“Bitch!” You yelled after him, growing more annoyed when you heard him laugh behind the door. 

“How original.” He called back, the sound of the shower turning on reaching your ears. “Don’t try and peek.”

You scoffed, setting your things on the countertop. “I’m not stupid enough to blind myself.”

“Bitch.”

“Who’s unoriginal now?” 

Cringe pooled into your stomach as you replayed the immature spat you just had with him.

Joshua’s words from the previous night echoed in your mind as you listened to the sounds of Vernon showering, mindlessly unpacking your bags for the night. You’re both adults now. Just talk it out. Play nice. 

Perhaps he had a point about the two of you being adults now. 

“Y/N!” 

The sound of your name coming from his mouth jolted you out of your sudden epiphany. Turning, you spotted a dripping arm poking out from the bathroom, the door opened to a crack. 

“I forgot to grab my clothes.” Vernon mumbled, his ears pink as he poked his head out, eyes pleading with you. “Can you-”

Play nice. Fighting everything in you to not laugh, you nodded, moving over to his suitcase to pull out his clothes, pointedly avoiding eye contact as you handed it to him. 

A snort escaped you as the bathroom door slammed shut. 

A thoroughly embarrassed Vernon stepped out a few minutes later, his hair dripping water onto the carpet, his eyes cast downwards as he made his way to the work desk in the corner, setting up his laptop and the various pieces of equipment he used to produce.

“I can hear you laughing.” He mumbled as he sat down.

Your shoulders shook with the effort to keep quiet. “I’m not laughing.” 

“I can see your shoulders shaking.”

Pulling a chair to sit a few ways away from him, you watched as he began to work, the sight bringing back old memories you thought you had forgotten. Watching him produce late into the night as you laid in bed, the dimmed lights of his laptop keeping you company. 

“What are you working on?” Your voice was soft, quiet, gentle. An olive branch.

Vernon moved his headphones to the side, glancing at you before returning attention to his multicolored launchpad. “Music.” He restrained himself from adding the duh he knew was unnecessary. 

“New song?” You leaned in for a closer look. 

Vernon’s lips twitched, knowing full well you couldn’t understand what you were looking at. “Old one. Wrote it a couple months before we graduated high school.”

You hummed. “Can I hear it?” 

He seemed surprised at your request, his fingers pausing as they hovered over his mouse. “Sure.” 

With trembling hands, he removed his headphones to place them on you, adjusting them until they fit snugly over your ears. 

You got something to say? Why don't you speak it out loud Instead of living in your head? It's always the same Why don't you take your heart out Instead of living in your head? It's just you and I tonight Why don't you figure my heart out? It's just you and I tonight Why don't you figure my heart out?

Vernon’s voice dripped like liquid gold into your ears as you sat and listened, entranced by the melody and taken aback by how nostalgic the music was. This was the Vernon you had known. None of the current rockstar bravado you had seen him display onstage. The Vernon singing in your ears was the same Vernon you had fallen in love with, baggy jeans, unkempt hair, a knack for telling bad jokes. This was Hansol. 

The music ended as you faced him, catching him staring at you already. 

Vernon had always loved watching you absorb his music. 

“Heart out is special.” He mumbled, knowing the words wouldn’t be heard by you. “Wrote it about you.”

The idea had sparked within him one night, after realizing that maybe he just wasn’t a man of many words. How he longed for you to just take apart his heart and understand him that way. 

“Hansol-” You started, taking off the headphones and placing them on the desk in front of you. “We need to talk.”

He nodded. “I-” I still love you. The words caught in his throat. 

“I’ve been thinking about what Joshua said. About us being adults now.” The words spilled from your mouth as you finally bit the bullet. “He’s right. We’ve been bickering like children when we should just talk it out. Talk it out, and then we can both move on. Leave the past in the past. Walk separate ways.”

There was something about the way he was looking at you that made your heart putter to a stop. “But I don’t want to walk separate ways.”

“What?”

His eyes met yours as he repeated himself. “I don’t want to walk separate ways. I want to walk together.”

Rage coursed through you as you stared at him, appalled by how simple he was making it out to be. “You can’t say that.” You blurted out, standing up and pointing a finger at him. “You have no right to say that.”

“Y/N-”

“No.” You cut him off, your tone hard, feeling your eyes well up with sudden tears. “You have no right to say that. Not when you were the one who was cruel.” 

“I wasn’t-” He protested once more, only to be cut off by you again.

“You broke up with me.” You reminded him, your voice holding a steely edge. “Over text. And then you blocked me with no explanation. You made me suffer for months before we graduated- and then you just left!” A stunned laugh escaped you as you relieved your past together. “You have no right to ask for more.” 

“Y/N, please.” Vernon grabbed your hands, clutching them tightly in his. “I- I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“Why did you break up with me?” You asked, a question that had been killing you all these years, rotting away as it sat, unanswered. 

Vernon opened his mouth and nothing came out. He closed it and looked away. 

“Of course.” Something between a sob and a laugh echoed from your lips as you pulled your hands away. “You haven’t changed at all, Hansol.”

Vernon watched you walk away, walking into the bathroom and shutting the door behind you. He picked up his headphones and continued to work, ignoring the ache in his chest as the music blurred before him, fresh tears clouding his sight. Vernon knew you were right. He hadn’t changed. All these years and he was still a coward, owning a heart filled with a hundred things to say to you but a mouth that refused to help. 

Vernon couldn’t help but look your way as his concert progressed into the night, sneaking glances towards your section as he plastered a look on his face that he hoped passed as ‘chill.’ 

He hated how your camera seemed to be pointed everywhere except at him. 

Although Vernon would never admit it, he could still remember all the times he had been the focus of your shots, smiling at him from behind your camera as you chided him to stay still. His insecure teenage self had always hated being the center of attention, but now that he had grown and learned what it was like to lose you, he found himself missing once being your muse. 

Perhaps it was time for him to speak out, he thought, as he watched your eyes flitter across the crowd. 

Why don't you speak it out loud Instead of living in your head?

A sickening pang landed in his stomach as he lowered his microphone, his own advice seering through the front of his mind.

He had to tell you that you had never stopped being his.

The tour bus reeked of alcohol and puffs of weed as the band relaxed after their last show. Declining to drink, you sat next to Chan, keeping a watchful eye on the group as their designated sober friend. 

You hated how painfully aware you were that Vernon was missing. It was a habit you still couldn’t kick -- how you still seemed to be hot wired to notice him first, even in a crowded room.

“Y/N.” Joshua poked your ribs to catch your attention. “Vernon’s looking for you.”

Frowning, you scooched away from him to avoid the liquid that was sloshing dangerous from his cup. “Why?”

He shrugged. “He’s waiting outside.” 

You found him sitting on the curb, a few meters away from the bus, scuffing his feet against the gray asphalt. An empty can of beer sat by his side. 

“Hansol.” You could tell from his composure that he was drunk. “Let’s go inside.” Walking closer, you tried pulling him up by his arm, failing as he continued to sit.

Vernon let out an unintelligible grunt. 

“Hansol.” You repeated, suddenly getting a strong sense of deja vu. “We’re not children anymore, Han. I can’t keep picking you up each time you crash out.”

He looked up at you with red eyes, an all too familiar pout on his face. “Y/N.” 

“Hansol.”

“Remember how we used to play two truths and a lie?” He suddenly asked, echoing the countless times the two of you had played the game for fun. “We never finished.”

“What?” Your throat suddenly felt awfully dry as you recalled the instance he was referring to. That one time you guys had played, just a few days before your break up. 

“We got interrupted halfway by my mom. I never got my turn.” He frowned when he realized you were still standing, your hand gripping his arm as yours dangled loosely by your side. “Sit down, let’s play.”

“You’re drunk, Hansol.” You reminded him. 

Shaking his head, he insisted once more. “Let me finish.”

There was nothing you could do but humor him, and you had to admit, you were curious as well. 

Vernon exhaled loudly before speaking, his breath hitting the air in wisps of smoke. “Okay. Two truths and a lie.” 

You looked down at your intertwined hands. 

“I broke up with you because I didn’t love you anymore. I never actually wanted to be a rockstar, not initially at least. And-” He paused, breathing deeply once more. “I’m still in love with you.”

You felt your lungs constrict and explode.

“You’re drunk.” Standing up, you pried your hands apart, throwing his back into his lap. 

Vernon nodded, his eyes unfocused as he stared at some spot on your jeans. “Guess.”

“Hansol.” Your tone sterned, knowing he was a few seconds away from passing out or throwing up. “Vernon.” 

Maybe you were the one who felt like throwing up. 

Because you knew none of the things he just told you could possibly be true. 

Vernon knew he had done something wrong when he woke up with a splitting headache, his ears ringing as he rolled out of bed. He had barely regained his bearings before Chan barged in, pulling the curtain that separated his bunk from the world apart. 

“Vernon, Y/N’s leaving.” 

A lighting bolt shot through his spine. “What?” 

“She told Joshua she can’t do it anymore. Something about having enough photos for tour posts already, so she’s leaving.” Chan stared down his disheveled friend, shaking his head. “What did you even say to her last night?”

“What?”

“She came back looking like she wanted to hurl.” 

“I need to go.” Vernon stood up, stumbling to put on his shoes as he unplugged his phone from the charger. 

Chan wordlessly pointed him towards your direction. 

“Y/N!” Vernon scrambled out of the bus, missing the last two steps down entirely as he ran to catch up with you. 

“Hansol-”

“I love you.” He panted out, the words escaping him like a breath of fresh air. 

The rejecting words you had been meaning to say caught in your mouth, slipping back down your throat and choking you. “What?”

“I love you. I always have.” He pulled your bags out of your hands. “Please don’t leave, I just got you back.”

“Hansol, I-”

He held up a hand, a wordless request to let him finish. “Let me tell you something I should’ve said years ago, please. Without the games this time. I love you. Hell, I never stopped. I broke up with you because-” He paused.

You half expected him to bail again. To let history repeat itself. 

“Because I was scared.” He finished, and you felt your lungs begin to work again. “I was being a stupid teenager who felt the touch of a real lover and got spooked. You were so fucking real and it terrified me.” 

“Why didn’t you say anything before?” 

Vernon averted his eyes at your question, chewing at his bottom lip as he thought. “I guess the longer I stayed away the easier it was.” He let out a dry laugh. “You were already so perfect in my memories I didn’t want to risk erasing that by trying again and failing.”

“Why now?” You could feel your chin quivering as tears gathered, awaiting his answer. 

“I don’t want you to leave.” He stated simply. You used to hate the fact that Hansol was a simple man, thinking it meant he could never care for you in that deep and encroaching way you wanted. 

“You wouldn’t have failed.” You told him, because in your life it had only ever been him. “And I was never perfect.”

“You were to me.” Vernon held out his hand, a wordless request to try again. “You still are.”

You took it with no hesitation, because now, you knew simplicity was just his way of life. And to Vernon, loving you was the simplest thing to do in the world. 

[qqueenofhades]

Is it foolish of me to sympathize with how marginalized people on the far-left are incredibly frustrated that the Democratic establishment isn't as scared of/desperate to please them as the Republican establishment are toward the MAGA fringe? I guess from their perspective, voting feels like begging - most of the people who hear you won't even glance at you, let alone drop you a coin. But you still have to do it, or else you (or worse, your family) are *guaranteed* to starve.

Okay, a few thoughts here. Note: for you and the other people who have recently sent politics asks, I have been very deliberately NOT talking about it for the last few months. I had to break it yesterday because of the Orange Menace finally getting fucking convicted, but I do want to go back to not doing that (at least for the next few weeks/months/until whatever else stupid happens). So while I will answer this, I am generally not going to answer others and my apologies for that, but yeah. It's just so much and I have GOT to keep myself sane until November somehow. (Or God forbid, afterward, but you know.)

First off, most members of the American far left aren't actually marginalized people, or at least not marginalized enough that their personal well-being seems in any way likely to be affected by their loud and ceaseless campaign to tell other people not to vote. Actual marginalized people who have lived in America for any length of time are *well* aware of how the government and the state can be weaponized against them; witness how black community organizers will voice well-deserved criticisms of the Democratic establishment or other aspects of American party politics that are frustrating for everyone, but they will still always tell people to vote. Black people are also extremely aware that earning the right to vote was an incredibly long, difficult, and bloody battle that they were never given it for free, and the white power establishment fought them having it at every turn. They are thus far more aware than your average white online leftist that voting matters, because they had to work so hard to get it (and still to defend it as various red states launch openly racist assaults on voting rights, especially aimed at disenfranchising people of color). Witness how Bernie also got literally zero traction with African American voters, despite being the darling of the (white) online left.

Hispanic people are also (rightfully) frustrated at how both American parties can use Latino immigrants as a political football, but they're still backing Biden by 30-point margins. We hear a lot of chatter about Trump supposedly gaining ground with voters of color -- maybe he has, though I doubt it, but that's still incremental gains from the massive holes he was in before, and where he generally remains. Arab Americans are (rightfully) angry with Biden over Gaza, but even in the much-hyped Michigan primary, he got roughly the same amount of "uncommitted" voters as Obama did as an uncontested incumbent in 2012, and most of them have said they'll grit their teeth and vote for him in the general election anyway. Yes, a few of them have decided not to, but they are not the size of the Black and Latino populations in America insofar as electoral power, and many of them have grudgingly decided that as bad as Biden might be on this particular issue (though far less so than the social media groupthink would paint him) the alternative (i.e. Trump openly promising to deport everybody who's not white and crack down on pro-Palestinian protests and anything else) is much, much worse.

And yet, white leftists seem utterly incapable of making these same calculations. Frankly, I'm not sure they actually care about Gaza, let alone anything else they say, because if so, they wouldn't be slavering at the mouth to let Trump back in there to "teach a lesson" to Biden, Democrats, and everyone else who was not Smart And Clever Enough to sanctimoniously sit on their hands and let the fascists take over. I know this because they spent all their time lying about Biden and distorting his record and insisting people not vote even before October of last year, and then it only got ten thousand times worse. I'm not saying that all leftist or leftist-identified people are white, but they are disproportionately predominant in leftist spaces and in pushing the idea that there's "no difference" between the parties and somehow Trump and Biden are morally equivalent or will have the same amount of impact on what will happen after one of them is elected. That is, yes, because they are white and they have the privilege of assuming that a weaponized fascist government will not go after them for that reason (even though Trump and his surrogates are now claiming that "everyone" who opposes Trump has to be "dealt with.") As such, when you say that marginalized far-left people are frustrated with the Democrats, I'm... not entirely sure that's true. Marginalized people AND the far left are both frustrated with the Democrats, but one of those groups has generally still decided not to voluntarily disenfranchise themselves, and the other is pumping out Vladimir Putin-wet-dream anti-voting propaganda at every chance they get.

There is also the fact that America is not a left-wing country in any sense of the word, and that while it's easy for the MAGA Republicans to go ever further far-right and promise to be even more outrageously cruel and stupid and fascist than ever before, but that's not an actual policy or a plan. It is also a strategy of diminishing returns; witness the fact that for all the cruelty and stupidity Republicans have pumped into the public arena since 2016, they haven't actually been that good at winning elections, and most of their major successes have come from Trump winning in 2016 and thus being able to stack SCOTUS and the district and circuit courts with hand-picked right-wing nut jobs, who are functioning exactly as they were designed to do. (Which Hillary Clinton warned about, along with everyone else, and yet she was taken out by the exact same dirtbag leftist disinformation moral purity machine that is working overtime to handicap Biden for the exact same reasons.) Mainstream Democrats warned about this before the 2016 election and were scorned and laughed off. Indeed, the entire Online Left continues to resolutely deny that the extremist SCOTUS is responsible for anything (It's Biden's Fault) and thus are likewise identical to Trumpies. And since they also want Trump to get back in there and teach a lesson to the Democrats, they're just as anti-democratic, dangerous, stupid, and deliberately short-sighted as actual MAGATs, and can by no means be considered allies to the singular movement of keeping fascists out of power. That is our only present goal.

If Democrats bent over to everything the far left asks for (which is often a combination of tankie gobbledygook, various vague ideas about Communism utopia where capitalism magically vanishes with no consequences, half-baked revolution cosplays, and other stuff that is functionally equivalent to the wildest lunacies of MAGA) they would never win an election again, and that would be exactly what the fascists want. Witness how they struggled when they were branded "defunders of the police" and "socialists" and other effective responses to the mildest milquetoast efforts for reform or accountability. And the political climate right now is just far too dangerous to throw everything to the wind and prance out some pipe-dream perfect-utopia plan. I'm sure you've heard about Project 2025 and how the far-right Heritage Foundation is planning to systematically implement fascism at all levels of the country, the instant they have a compliant Republican president and congress. I would take all these people crying about Biden even a fraction more seriously if they weren't openly jonesing for something that is so unbelievably, incredibly worse.

For example: I currently have major beefs with literally the entire foreign policy of the Biden administration right now. I think they're being too hard on Ukraine (forbidding them to strike targets on Russian soil with American weapons, which would end the war faster) and, despite some promising signs and open displeasure, still far too easy on Israel. They looked foolish after insisting that Rafah was a red line and then essentially making up an excuse that what's going on now is not a "major operation." Secretary of State Blinken floating the idea of helping Congress censure or neuter the International Criminal Court arrest warrants issued for Netanyahu and co. was also one of the fucking stupidest things I've heard from a serious (i.e. non-Trumpist) American diplomat in a long time. So we respect the ICC when it issues warrants for tyrants we don't like (Putin), but when it issues one for tyrants we still do, apparently (Netanyahu), then bingo, it's back to the bad old habit of ignoring international law like we're special and it doesn't apply to us, and allows all the other bad actors around the world to do the same by pointing at America and correctly pointing out that we ignore it when it doesn't suit our purposes. I think this is wrong and I don't agree. So? What am I going to do?

Well, you see. I'm going to vote for Biden and I am going to give him money and I am going to remind everyone I know that they have no moral option but to do the same. I do this because I am aware that despite my disagreements, Biden is acting from a cautious anti-interventionist standpoint and does not want to throw American military might around recklessly or dangerously like good ol' George Dubya or Trump or even Obama and the drones. He is listening to sober mainstream advisors who have (however incorrect and useless) ideas about "avoiding escalation" and trying to bring conflict to a managed end. He is doing this with a realistic appraisal of the power of the office of American presidency and he's not going to capriciously end democracy and become a full-blown fascist dictator on day one, as Trump has openly and repeatedly promised to do. Yes, if there was a viable option apart from Biden, maybe I would think about voting for them, but there is not, and literally everyone who does not actively vote for him is helping Trump. I do not care about any other contrived and disingenuous online squealing. I know that Biden does not want the war in Gaza to go on for no reason and for maximum carnage; Netanyahu and Trump both do. That is just to name one thing.

So: yes. I absolutely understand being frustrated with the Democrats and wishing they would push harder and etc. But I am also aware that they can be pushed, that they are the only option right now, and the people who huff and puff and whine and groan about how it's such a moral imposition to vote for them are literally doing the fascists' work for them, and that is not acceptable. If they want a better system or a better world that isn't just useless internet fantasies about magical end-of-days Raptures fixing everything, also a la the crazy fundamentalists, they will have to get off their ass, do the work, and create that change. I will be happy to vote for that candidate when or if they arrive. In the meantime, I will continue to do my damndest to ensure that we even have a chance to get there. So yeah.

[wholoveseggs]

Hi love,, how about elijah and reader have recently broken up and ready is exploring other options but elijah is still madly in love and gets super jealous? I’m thinking super rough with a touch of angst but mostly anger and jealousy?! (also a lot of kinks) ⋆˚✿˖°

Madness

18+ ---- {Masterlist} {Tag-List}

You bring a date to the Mikaelson party, specifically to attract the attention of your estranged husband. The plan backfires; he's not the type to let you go so easily and makes sure to remind you that no one will ever take his place.

♡♡ Thanks for the request @spideysbabe & @ashloring! I love writing about Elijah's wild side ♡♡

6.4k words - Warnings: smut, oral sex, dom!Elijah, angry sex, rough sex, biting, blood drinking, spanking, jealousy, rim job (f!receiving), anal sex, riding, Elijah being possessive, lots of praise and a little degradation.

You probably shouldn't have brought a date to a Mikaelson party, but considering how you and Elijah ended things, you saw no problem with it. Was it petty? Yes. Was it immature? Also yes. Were you feeling a bit vindicated when you walked in the door and saw the look on Elijah's face? Absolutely.

You found the hottest guy possible on tinder, the kind with zero brains and all brawn. He was the perfect rebound, the type with an inability to commit to anyone, let alone you, but that's not what you wanted from him anyway. All you wanted was to make your ex jealous, and judging by the glare he shot at your date, it was working.

To the undiscerning eye, Elijah appeared to be the picture of composure, greeting the guests in one of his favorite suits. But you knew him better than that, and you could see the twitch in his jaw, the slight tension in his shoulders. And judging by the way he was avoiding your gaze, he was pissed.

When he was pissed, specifically at you, he would usually get you alone and give you a proper dressing down, and it always turned you on, a lot. The first time you'd fucked after a fight, it had taken you both by surprise. His usual gentle nature had given way to a possessiveness that made you see stars, and ever since, you'd been chasing the feeling.

You didn't really have a plan, a part of you wanted to do the healthy thing and move on, but there was another part of you, a part that was addicted to Elijah,that just wanted him back, it had been that way for so long you could barely remember a time before him. You were still mad at him, though, so you decided the best thing to do would be to try to make him jealous.

Your date wasn't going to last past tonight, you knew that, but he was the perfect prop for your little game. You knew Elijah would find you, you just needed to set the stage, so you pulled the big dumb beefcake to the dance floor.

He was a terrible dancer, but you didn't care, it wasn't about him. You already caught him flirting with several other women in the short amount of time you'd been here, but you couldn't be bothered. As long as he showed up on your arm, and looked hot while doing it, that's all that mattered.

"That asshole in the suit has been staring at us this whole time, and he doesn't seem too happy," your date said, trying to whisper, but it came out much too loud. You'd chosen him specifically because of that, you liked the way people looked at the two of you.

"Don't worry about him," you replied, pressing yourself against his body a little closer. "He's an ex. A controlling ex."

"He looks a little old for you, what is he like? 35?" Your date asked, looking directly at Elijah. 

You stifled a laugh, "close enough, I guess." 

"How long were you together? He's still giving me death eyes," he whispered, not subtly.

"A while," you shrugged, "but that doesn't matter anymore." You leaned forward and whispered in his ear, "I'm yours for the night."

You'd hoped he'd get the hint, but apparently it took a lot of hints for him to understand that you were looking for sex, and not anything else.

"Why'd you break up? He's obviously still hung up on you." The music changed, and he was still talking. "Did he cheat on you? I know a lot of guys who do that."

"No, nothing like that," you answered, your annoyance growing, "he's just a selfish asshole who likes to masquerade about his morals." You weren't entirely lying, you were pretty sure Elijah's ego was the driving force behind his recent decisions. "Plus he has a tiny cock," you added, for good measure.

Your date laughed, and you had to laugh along, you could feel Elijah's glaze burning into you. You glanced his way and his eyes met yours, and you had to resist the urge to blush under his gaze. His eyebrows were raised, a twinkle of amusement and anger in his eyes. You could practically hear him telling you that wasn't funny, that you were acting like a child.

Elijah always hated when you acted out. It was like he wanted you to be some sort of prim and proper lady, which you were for the most part. But every now and then, you felt the urge to be bad, and you enjoyed pushing his buttons.

"Get me a drink?" You asked your date, batting your eyelashes and giving him a wide smile.

"Of course," he replied, before heading off to the bar.

You went to a nearby table and leaned against it, trying to appear casual. You felt Elijah's presence behind you, and your stomach twisted in anticipation.

"Do you think I don't know what you're doing?" He asked, not bothering with pleasantries.

"Whatever do you mean?" You asked, pretending to be coy.

"This boy isn't going to last past tonight, so why did you invite him here?" He asked, leaning forward, his lips almost touching your ear.

"I don't know, I thought he might be fun," you shrugged, playing innocent. "I didn't realize I wasn't allowed to date other people," you added, knowing it would infuriate him.

"You are allowed to do whatever you want, but there will always be consequences," he replied, his voice low. "And your boy is getting a bit too friendly with my sister, don't you think?"

You glanced over, and sure enough, your date was chatting up Rebekah. Poor guy had no idea that Rebekah could eat him alive.

"I think Rebekah can handle herself," you said, looking away.

"You're not upset? You don't seem particularly attached to him," he asked, his fingers lightly brushing against your elbow.

"Worried that someone else has claimed my heart?" You asked, turning around to face him, a teasing smile on your lips.

"No, because I know it will always belong to me," he replied, a smirk on his face, a knowing look in his eyes. He always knew how to disarm you, and piss you off.

"I'm not yours, I think I made that very fucking clear," you snapped, your smile fading. The pain of your breakup was still fresh, and his arrogant attitude only fueled the fire.

"We both know that's not true," he said, stepping closer. "Even if we're not together, you're still mine."

"You are such an arrogant prick," you huffed, trying not to show how much his words affected you. You wanted to hate him, and sometimes you could, but in moments like this, your feelings for him overwhelmed you.

"If you think insulting me will erase how you feel for me, then you are deluded," he scoffed, before grabbing the back of your head, forcing you to meet his gaze.

He paused for a moment, taking in the fire in your eyes, the defiance that turned him on. He loved the struggle, it always led to the sweetest surrender with you.

"Did he fuck you yet?" He asked, his lips dangerously close to yours.

"That's none of your business," you snapped, pulling your head out of his grip.

Your date returned with the drinks before you could say anything, placing one in your hands.

"Here, honey. I got you a dirty martini," he said, before glancing at Elijah. "Get your own girl, mate, this one's mine," he added, wrapping an arm around your waist.

The blood boiled in Elijah's veins and he resisted the urge to grab this stupid boy by his head and slam it onto the table. Instead he gave him a deadly glare, smiling when the poor fool flinched slightly.

"You are aware that you are in my home with your arm around my wife," he said, his voice deceptively calm. He could feel you watching him, waiting for his reaction, and he was determined not to give you the satisfaction. Not yet, anyway. 

"Your wife?" The boy sputtered, loosening his grip on you. "I didn't realize...I..."

You rolled your eyes, annoyed that he was letting Elijah intimidate him. You see Elijah's self-satisfied grin and it pisses you off.

"Don't mind him," you said, patting your date's chest. "He's just a control freak who's a bit threatened by younger men." You looked up at him, giving him a teasing smile. You knew you were poking the bear, but you couldn't help it, Elijah was making you feel things, and you were determined not to let him win.

Elijah leaned in close, his pupils dilating as he compelled him. "Sit and be quiet," he commanded, and the boy obeyed without question.

"What did you do that for?" You hissed, slapping him on the shoulder. "He didn't do anything to deserve that." The truth was, he wasn't doing much for you, but he didn't need to know that.

"There, now we can continue our conversation," Elijah said, ignoring your protest. "Now, answer my question. Did you fuck him yet?" He asked, his tone serious. His hand was resting on your hip, his grip firm. He knew exactly what he was doing, and it was driving you crazy.

"You didn't have to do that," you said, trying to remain unaffected by the whole exchange.

"It was either that or kill him," he shrugged.

"Well, now you're being a bit dramatic," you scoffed. You were determined to maintain the upper hand, despite the fact that he was getting under your skin. "He's an idiot, but he didn't deserve to die."

Rebekah had noticed the two of you standing there, and she headed over. She knew about your recent fight, and the reason for it. She also knew that the two of you were a disaster when it came to communicating, so she did what she did best and interfered. 

"Well, well, what is this?" She asked, raising her eyebrows.

"Just a friendly conversation, dear sister," Elijah replied, his voice tight.

Rebekah looked down at the dazed man sitting between them, and then back up to the two of you. "Doesn't seem very friendly."

"Your brother is a possessive asshole, who thinks he owns me," you said, glaring at him. 

"Your sister in law is acting like a child, trying to provoke me," Elijah replied, matching your glare.

Rebekah looked back and forth between the two of you, before shaking her head. "You two are exhausting," she sighed, "I think it's time for your date to leave, fix him, and send him home," she added, her voice leaving no room for argument.

Elijah sighed and looked down at your date, "stand up," he commanded, watching as the man did as he was told. "You will leave and forget that my wife even exists," 

"Elijah! You can't make someone forget me!" You said, outraged. Your plan was backfiring. You were supposed to piss him off and make him jealous, not the other way around. 

Before Elijah could respond Rebekah grabbed the both of you by the arm and led you upstairs, into an empty bedroom.

"The two of you are being ridiculous. Acting like children and making a scene. This party was supposed to be a nice, relaxing evening. We are not in a fucking reality show," she scolded, her face turning red with anger. "Now, you are going to work this out, so I don't have to witness this bullshit anymore."

She slammed the door before either of you could respond. You turned to look at Elijah, and for a moment, the two of you were silent, the air filled with tension.

"Y/n," Elijah started, reaching out for your hand, but you pulled it away.

"I'm not doing this with you right now," you replied, moving towards the door, but Elijah blocked your way.

"Move," you ordered, glaring at him.

"No, not until you talk to me," he said, his jaw clenching.

"Or what? You'll compel me to stay?" You scoffed.

Elijah's expression changed to anger, taking a step forward and backing you up against the wall.

"You know that I would never do that," he growled, his voice low.

"You compelled my date, Elijah, and that was pretty low, even for you," you retorted, your hands coming up to push on his chest.

"That man was an absolute bore," he responded, a slight grin on his face.

"That doesn't make what you did okay, Elijah!" You shouted, frustration bubbling inside you.

"Don't pretend like you care, this isn't about him," he laughed. He knew what you were trying to do, and you hated that. "You brought him here because you want to provoke me," he continued, "you want to punish me."

"Maybe," you sighed, looking away, the heat between the two of you simmering. "Look, we just keep having the same fight," you finally said after a moment, still refusing to make eye contact. "We're never going to agree on this."

"We've overcome much worse in our time together," he countered, reaching out to cup your cheek, turning your head back towards him. "We are meant to be together. I know it, and you know it.

"Then why do you keep doing this to me, to us?" You whispered, barely audible. "You let Klaus use you over and over again, and it always ends badly. Why can't you just be satisfied with what we have?" You were trying hard not to cry, your emotions a messy jumble of pain, love and anger.

"My brother can be very persuasive, he's had over a thousand years to work on that," he explained, his thumb wiping away a tear that had slipped out. "He needs someone to believe in him, to fight for him, and it seems no one other than me is capable of that, or wants to even try."

You had heard this all before, the endless excuses, the justifications. "Don't you think its time he figured his own shit out and stop using you for it?" You snapped, losing your patience again. "He treats you like a means to an end, Elijah, and that has to hurt. I see how it hurts you, and it pains me to see you like this."

"What you are doing, fucking some nameless wretch just to piss me off, that hurts far more than Klaus," Elijah growled, his face inches from yours.

You opened your mouth to argue, but his lips crashed down onto yours, stealing your breath from you. You tried to resist him, but it was impossible. His kiss was intoxicating and you melted against him. Your hands tangled in his hair as you tugged him closer. He groaned and you pulled away, pushing against his chest, hard. He stumbled back a bit, a look of surprise on his face. He blinked, confused and you moved toward the door once again. 

He grabbed your wrist, stopping you and pulling you to him. His lips were on yours in an instant, claiming you, dominating you. There was no point in fighting it, you were his, and you both knew it. 

 He moved to your throat and your head tipped back as he gently sucked and nipped at the delicate skin there. A small moan escaped your lips and your knees felt weak, a wet heat spreading between your thighs.

Your free hand wrapped in his tie and pulled him back to your lips. The kiss was raw and needy, and it awakened a fierce hunger inside both of you. Elijah let go of your hand and roughly grabbed your hips, lifting you up, slamming you into the wall. The force knocked the wind out of you but it wasn't enough to make you stop.

"Eli," you said with a bit more urgency, knowing that neither of you could keep it up much longer before you took things much, much further. "I - I can't, we shouldn't..." You tried to argue, but your body was betraying you, and his touches were setting your skin aflame.

Elijah released your hand and tugged at the hem of your dress, pulling it up to your hip. His hand dipped between your thighs, finding the soft, soaked lace of your underwear, a smirk spreading across his face.

"Liar," he whispered into your ear.

It wasn't like you had no control. If you wanted him to stop, all you had to do is say no and you knew Elijah would, but that's not what you really wanted. All your anger and frustration was dissolving into pure lust.

Elijah moved your panties aside, gently stroking his fingertips along your wet slit, slowly dragging the pad of his middle finger around your clit before dipping into your core. He watched the desire on your face as he pushed two fingers inside you and his eyes darkened at how wet you were for him.

"You're such a greedy little thing," he groaned into your ear, pumping his fingers deeper, "always so wet for me."

His fingers pumped faster and harder, his mouth finding yours, muffling your moans. When his thumb started massaging your clit, that was all it took. You shuddered as an orgasm rolled through you and you clutched at his shoulders to stay upright.

Elijah could feel you tremble and shake beneath him as waves of ecstasy washed over you. He chuckled softly, slowly withdrawing his fingers from your cunt. He slid the digits into your mouth, making you gag as they touched the back of your throat. You could taste the tang of your juices on them.

Elijah removed his fingers and you inhaled deeply, swallowing hard to clear the tickling in your throat.

"So beautiful when you come undone," he muttered, bringing you even closer, crushing you into his body. "I've missed hearing my name tumble from those sinful lips of yours."

You felt the blush creep into your cheeks and you buried your head into his neck.

"Elijah, this isn't us getting back together," you breathed into him. "This is sex," you clarified, even as your heart tightened in your chest. "Can you live with that?"

You could feel his smile on his lips.

"Can you?" he shot back.

His hand was resting on the curve of your bottom and he suddenly gripped it, his nails digging into your flesh. His fangs grazed the sensitive skin of your neck before sinking into your vein, and the sting was the best type of pleasure.

A small cry escaped your lips. With each pull of blood he was drinking more, sucking deeper, making it harder to breathe. You grabbed his biceps, clinging to him, the mix of intense pleasure and pain muddling your thoughts.

Your eyes fluttered closed as he finished drinking his fill and began licking the wound, a gentle groan escaping his lips.

"You've been mine for eight hundred years, do you think I would just give you up so easily?" He whispered, his breath tickling your neck. "If all we have to settle for is sex, then I will take it."

He lifted up his arm and offered you his wrist, without a second thought you sank your fangs into him, a rich taste filling your mouth. You drank deeply from his veins, and he held you close, watching your eyes darken and veins ripple around them. 

He smiled and pushed your hair behind your ears, running his thumbs over your cheekbones. You wanted him badly, and as your gaze focused on him, a thrill went through your body. His hair was disheveled, his lips slick with the remnants of your blood, his eyes dark with arousal. He looked dangerous and sexy and so incredibly delicious. You needed more of him.

He set you down, letting your feet touch the floor, his hand tangled in your hair. Your gaze dropped to the erection straining against his tailored slacks. You knew exactly what he wanted you to do, but even when he was this worked up, he would never ask, always the gentleman.

You didn't want the gentleman though, it reminded you too much of the love the two of you once shared. No, tonight you wanted the possessive, rough, jealous vampire. The one he hid behind his red door and only let you see. You liked when he was ruthless.

You sank to your knees before him and he loosened his hold on your hair. With one hand, you grabbed his hip, while your other hand deftly unbuttoned his slacks. As you lowered the zipper, your breath brushed over the straining silk boxers, and you could hear him let out a soft growl.

You paused before freeing his cock, leaning in, placing a light kiss on the hard fabric and felt his muscles go tight. You were going to tease him, never quite giving him what he wanted, until he took charge. You needed that rough touch, the kind that could shatter the windows and break bones. The kind of touch you secretly longed for.

You pulled his boxer briefs down just a little, running the pad of your thumb down the underside of his length, before blowing cool air over him and making him twitch. Keeping your eyes on him, you leaned forward again, this time letting your tongue lick across the tip, cleaning his pre-cum from it.

His hands were in your hair, more forcefully now. You continued the teasing, until his grip was painfully tight, you could see the gentleman leaving him. It excited you more than you ever wanted to admit, even to yourself. You knew it wouldn't be much longer before he was ruining you.

Taking his thick girth into your hand, you moved your tongue to swirl around the tip. This time his response was not so reserved, a low, deep sound emitting from his chest.

You sucked lightly on the head, hollowing your cheeks and slowly stroking him in time with your movements. You purposefully kept him from feeling the full effect of your mouth. He was losing the battle over his restraint.

One of his hands cupped your chin, making you look up at him. There was a wild look in his eyes, his breathing ragged. He was trying not to let you push him, he wanted to have slow, passionate sex, make you want to come home and be with him again.

But tonight was not the night for that.

You fought your gaze, fluttering your lashes at him coyly. You saw it on his face, a war being waged. Only you could do this to him, undo his defenses, strip him bare.

"You wish to be treated like a whore," he said quietly, his words sounding almost bitter, though his voice had a strange timbre to it, a hint of excitement.

You tried to nod, your mouth still full of his cock, and his grip on your hair tightened, keeping you in place. He sighed, his thumb brushing along your cheekbone, an odd tenderness.

"Whatever my love wants," he murmured, sounding as if it hurt to say those words. He shoved himself deeper, not stopping when you started to cough, drool slipping down the corners of your mouth. He was so big, his size always overwhelmed you and made tears prickle your eyes.

You worked to breathe, knowing he was not going to be gentle this time. One of his hands left you and pressed into the wall, anchoring himself as he started to fuck your face with a bruising pace.

"Is this how you want to be treated? Letting me fuck your throat raw," Elijah hissed, his cock hitting the back of your throat and you gagged, saliva spilling over and down your chin. "I guess I don't have to hear your snide remarks now, do I?"

You didn't know what you expected, but this was exactly what you had been hoping for. He pulled on your hair hard, pressed your face into his hip, the hairs there making you twitch and your nostrils burn. Your hands gripped his thighs, trying to push him back as you struggled to breathe. You could only make rasping noises, your eyes tearing up, droplets pooling before they spilled.

He pulled you off, allowing you to breathe. Your chest was heaving, a long string of saliva hanging between his cock and your mouth. You kept his eye contact, your lips swollen and slick.

"Good," he murmured. "I'm glad you can finally understand that no other man will ever own you the way I do."

"You don't own me," you rasped out and the fire in his gaze burned.

The words were barely out of your mouth when he threw you onto the bed, the force making your head spin. He tore at the top of your dress, sending bits of fabric flying everywhere. You lay there panting, his eyes hungrily devouring every inch of your half naked form.

"Spread your legs," he commanded, not moving towards the bed, watching intently, waiting for you to comply.

"No," you responded, holding his stare, defiance flashing in your eyes.

His shirt was missing several buttons now, torn open to reveal the toned planes of his stomach and chest. In an instant he was on the bed, his hands grabbing your hips and pulling you underneath him. A slight grin playing on his lips.

"Do you think I don't see what game you are playing? If you want the monster, you've got him, darling," he whispered before capturing your mouth in a rough kiss.

His hands reached up, taking the cups of your bra down. When his fingers closed over your breasts, squeezing the soft flesh roughly, you couldn't contain your gasping cry, his thumbs pinching your nipples painfully.

"Tell me, did your little date fuck you like I do?" He growled against your chest.

You whimpered, twisting in his grasp, but his strength was no match for you, you could already see it in the flexing of his muscles. He bit down hard on your nipple, the shock of pain making you choke. His mouth was soft and warm, his tongue swiping over the hardened peak soothingly, but his teeth held on tightly, biting at your sensitive skin.

"Answer me," Elijah demanded, raising his head to lock his gaze with yours.

"E-e-e-e," you stammered, struggling to speak as his hands moved to your hair, roughly twisting the strands together and pulling, tugging your head back.

"E-e-e-e?" He mocked, kissing a trail over the curve of your jaw, ending at your lips, teasing the flesh with his teeth.

"Fuck you," you breathed, anger spiking through the lust clouding your mind.

He flipped you over abruptly, slapping your ass. You struggled to get away, but his hands were pressed into your back, not allowing you to move.

"Did he," another smack landed on your bare skin and the stinging ache made you gasp.

"Fuck you?" Two more blows, this time to your opposite cheek and you clenched the bed sheets tightly.

He pushed your panties down, grabbing your hips and tilting your bottom towards him, spreading your legs, revealing your wet core. You moaned, the need growing and making your toes curl, desperate to be taken.

"Hmm," he mused, tracing his thumb down the seam of your pussy. You moaned into the covers, your head burrowed between your arms, your hands making fists in the sheet. He parted your swollen lower lips and let out a shaky breath when your arousal coated the pads of his digits. He moves his thumb to your ass, teasing your opening and you feel more heat spreading across your cheeks as you squirm in protest, whimpering.

He chucked, slapping your left butt cheek playfully. "You've no right to blush," he mused, leaning down and running the tip of his tongue along the crack, before blowing a small puff of cool air on you and the tickling sensation sent shivers down your spine.

"I bet he couldn't satisfy you the way I do. Even as he tried ...you were thinking of me."

You froze, caught off guard, and then your teeth were clenched and you tried to break from his grasp again. He was being such a damn cocky asshole, always believing himself superior. Your pride bristled under his comments, anger starting to well within. You began to protest and fight when suddenly he pressed his thumb against your puckered entrance, the digit sinking into the knuckle, making you mewl into the mattress.

"Don't..." your voice trailed off, losing your thoughts as your hips rocked trying to grind yourself against his hand.

"I will use you however I see fit," he said with a chuckle, biting into the flesh of your ass. "Don't pretend you don't like the depravity."

His words were spoken so low, so ragged. It was like his entire demeanor had changed, the door cracked open and the monster was breaking through. He roughly spread the globe of your ass with his free hand, and ran his tongue along the seam of your hole before flicking his tongue against the pucker. He continued teasing your rim, making it even more slippery with his spit and you relaxed into his touch.

He lined the tip of his cock with your ass, pressing lightly against it and your nails raked across the sheets, gasping as he moved slightly inside. You arched and wiggled your butt trying to move, make him work for this, even though your body craved everything he offered. He grabbed your wrists and forced your arms above your head, holding them there. You heard his heavy breathing as he thrust his hips forward, his cock sliding past the ring of muscles and sinking into your depths.

 Your face was pressed into the pillow, and you couldn't contain the lewd groaning escaping from your lips when he sunk his cock into your ass and stretched you.

"Too much...ahhh," you mewled, turning your head to take a large gulp of air, the feeling was too much as he slowly rocked into your body. You could barely catch your breath. He wasn't even fully inside.

"no, don't, too much; none of those sound like our safe word," Elijah taunted, his lips hovering over your ear, his words coming out in short panted breaths. He pulled out before plunging deeper, you could hear him sucking in air through his gritted teeth, struggling to hold back and enjoy the torturous pace.

The sweet ache of having him there, the burn as your body struggled to adjust, made your head swim. You felt light headed, overwhelmed. He chuckled and began rocking slowly, the soft roll of his hips letting you feel every inch. His strokes were leisurely, no rushing, drawing out the torment. His fingertips traced down your spine, his palm rubbing a slow circle on your back, soothing the tension.

"Such a good girl," he purred, "taking everything I have to give you."

The pace of his strokes increased, becoming hard and relentless, shoving you into the bed. You bit down into the mattress trying to stifle your sounds as the mix of pleasure and pain became so intense you could only scream.

Suddenly, his hands were in your hair again. He tugged you back harshly, pulling you upright, your back now flush with his front, his cock pistoning into your ass so hard your teeth nearly rattled.

"Let them hear," Elijah whispered into your ear. "Tell everyone here who fucks you best."

His name tumbled out of your lips over and over as the pressure built, tears rolling down your cheeks. You were babbling his name, half sentences, moans, a bunch of nonsense. He was forcing another orgasm to the surface.

Just before you tumbled over the edge, he bit down into your neck and everything turned bright white and sparks flared behind your eyelids. When he stopped drinking your blood, he pushed you back down and pulled out.

You lay there trying to catch your breath before he sat you up, scooting you closer to the edge of the bed, draping your legs over his shoulders. His cock was in your pussy before you could even inhale and then you were screaming his name again.

"Good girl," he groaned, as his hands gripped your hips, bruises blossoming in the dips of your flesh. He didn't slow this time, instead, he shoved the both of you backwards and fucked you into the bed. "Is this what you wanted? Hard, messy, raw." He lifted you and placed you on his lap.

Your head fell into the crook of his neck, too far gone to keep yourself up. His hands were on your ass, lifting you up and down. You clung to him, your fingers tangled in his hair, overwhelmed by the feeling of him using you, taking everything you had. He felt too good, even like this. He knew your body better than you did.

His hand hit your ass, a loud cracking noise filling the room.

"Don't go limp," he snarled, wrapping your hair around his fist and twisting, wrenching your head back and up so that your eyes were forced to meet his. His face was so close, your breath mixed with his.

Your breathing was rapid and shallow, your chest rising and falling. He took one of his hands and intertwined your fingers together, holding you closer. There were no words exchanged, but the intimacy of the gesture made you start to cry. It was too sweet. You tried to squirm out of his grasp and escape this sudden, unbidden vulnerability that seemed to be taking over, but he tightened his hold, moving your hips slowly on his lap. The man was insatiable.

"Don't run from it," he whispered, his lips capturing yours, kissing you with such gentleness, you ached. This was supposed to be rougher, you shouldn't have fallen apart like this, given in, surrendered yourself to this part of him. But now...you couldn't bring yourself to turn away.

A wave of ecstasy was washing over you, the kind of blissful peace you had never felt anywhere but here, wrapped in Elijah's arms, him buried deep in your core, the two of you close, lost in the heat of a passion and connection.

"I want you here with me," his mouth hovered near yours, his hips working harder and harder. "You are my home," his words made your heart squeeze tight and tears leaked from the corners of your eyes. It had been a very long time since he had said such tender words to you. But it was the most desperate pleas, the broken whines that followed that you couldn't ignore.

Your arms closed around him, clinging to him. As if he were your anchor in this chaos. Your mind swam, the lines blurring. This moment was just the two of you, lost in the sensations. A single moment in the midst of the madness. He held onto you tightly, whispering words of praise and affection. The tension built until it snapped, leaving the both of you spent and exhausted.

His mouth was on yours again, swallowing your gasps as you both came down. You lay there for a few moments, your eyes closed, the sound of your hearts pounding loudly in the quiet. You couldn't remember the last time sex was this good. You felt so content and boneless.

You were so lost in the haze of afterglow, it wasn't until Elijah was helping you into a bath that you realized how much time had passed. The warm water lapped against your skin as he settled you onto his lap, his hand trailing up and down your arm. You rested your head against his shoulder, enjoying the peaceful quiet, his warmth surrounding you, his scent, the feel of his bare skin under your fingertips, the brush of his chest hair.

You weren't sure what to say, didn't know how to break the silence. It was like the past few months had not existed. But the pain, the agony, the heartache were fresh. You weren't sure if you were ready to forgive him yet, but it was a step in the right direction.

"Will you stay?" Elijah asked, breaking the silence. His hand paused, fingers splayed on your thigh. He shifted you, turning you so you were facing him. His face was solemn, his brow furrowed and eyes serious. He brought his hand up, cupping your face, his thumb brushing across your cheekbone. He waited patiently for an answer. His expression hopeful, but guarded. The question was simple enough, but it meant so much more.

"I will stay," you whispered, leaning into his touch. You couldn't deny it, he was a part of you, you would always love him. No matter how much you hated him at times, there was no life without him. He was your home. It would take time to rebuild the trust between the two of you, but you had to believe it was possible.

A soft smile tugged at the corner of his lips and his eyes glistened with unshed tears. His head dipped forward, his forehead pressed against yours, the two of you breathing each other's air.

"Good, because I would have done a lot of things I am not proud of, to get you back," Elijah whispered, his thumb swiping along your bottom lip.

Your brow shot up, and a playful smile crossed your face, "What kind of things?" You teased.

Elijah let out a sigh and pulled you closer, "Kidnap, murder, perhaps a bit of torture." His mouth brushed over yours, a quick chaste kiss.

You giggled, wrapping your arms around his neck, "Sounds healthy," you quipped.

"It was, I assure you." He replied, his lips brushing against yours. His tongue slid into your mouth, a deep, languid kiss, a slow exploration of every inch. He pulled back, his eyes boring into yours, the heat and intensity making your stomach flutter. "What is love, if not madness." He finished, his mouth crashing down on yours again.

You didn't have a response, all the air was sucked from your lungs and the ability to speak vanished. Instead, you simply kissed him, hoping he understood. That the two of you were a beautiful mess of chaos, but it worked. It was real. This was love.

♡♡ Tag-List ♡♡

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[autistichalsin]

Mind Flayers and prions: a scientific analysis

Earlier today, I did some brain-related research for a fic of mine, and had a horrifying realization: what the hell happens if a Mind Flayer, which exclusively eat brains, catches a prion infection? A normal Mind Flayer is terrifying enough, now imagine one with kuru!

Then it was suggested to me that Mind Flayers would likely be immune somehow. And yeah, that seems like the second-most Occam's Razor-compliant theory (the first being that prions don't exist in Faerun, but come on, I'm a fucking biology nerd with a Masters in epidemiology and a love of parasitology, the odds of me making it that easy were fucking zero). But the question is: how would that work biologically?

So then I started with a deep-dive into prions in our world, and got my answer from a study on transgenic mice.

Before I get into that, though, I want to lay out the assumptions I'm making here:

Prions exist in Faerun, are capable of infecting humanoids, are found at the same locus (the Prnp gene that codes for PRion Protein [PRP] is located on the short arm of chromosome 20), and are transmitted the same way (in this case, the most relevant is consumption of infected brain tissue).

Considering that in Forgotten Realms canon, Mind Flayer tadpoles can't be inserted into dwarves, gnomes, etc (BG3 diverged from canon in this, and I can't blame them, it would be a sad and lonely game without little folks around), Mind Flayer DNA most closely resembles humans, but is obviously different from human DNA in more areas than elves or orcs (who we will assume are much more closely related to humans given that they can reproduce together) are to humans. That is to say, elves and orcs are closer to humans on the phylogenetic tree than mind flayers are, but mind flayers are still close to all of these, most especially humans.

The genetics of all organisms in Faerun are fundamentally the same as ours. The proteins and respective codons are the same, their form and function and significance are the same, they use the same five mammalian nucleotide bases... you get the picture. Minor genotypic differences are definitely there, but we're going to assume the foundations that inform our understanding of genetics as a whole are the same.

So, then. First, a very brief introduction to prions, because many people have never heard of them aside from possibly knowing about "mad cow disease" (feel free to skip this if you do already know):

The word prion is derived from the words protein and infection. It's exactly what it sounds like. It's a protein that is also an infectious agent, not a virus of bacteria. It exists as a wrongly-folded protein, and is very resistant to protease (enzymes that normally would break down a problematic protein). Over time, due to their resistance to proteolysis (the process that breaks down proteins)*, they eventually can force other proteins to misfold.

*Seriously, it can't be understated how terrifyingly resistant these things are. They can be inactivated with bleach, yes, but they resist autoclaves. You have to subject them to heats of 900 degrees Fahrenheit to denature them. For reference, the inside of a volcano is usually about 2,200 degrees.

The shape of proteins is extremely important in how they function, and proteins really want to be as parsimonious as possible; they want to use the lowest amount of energy possible to find a stable shape. The misfolded proteins require a lower energy expenditure than the normal form to maintain their shape, which is also more stable (hence its resistance to denaturing by heat), so normal proteins adopt it quite readily once exposed. From there, gradually (as little as months to as much as years) the proteins all convert to this unusual state. Unfortunately, while it's more stable for the individual proteins involved, it's a lot less stable for the brain itself, and the cells there begin to clump in amyloids, which cause brain damage and ultimately death. Prions are 100% fatal and care is limited to comfort measures. They also cause probably the worst symptoms of any disease I can think of. For example, the worst one of all, Fatal Familial Insomnia, literally causes sufferers to become unable to sleep. They start with extreme trouble sleeping, then over the course of a year find themselves gradually able to do it less, until one day they can't at all. Death follows in a few months, by which point it's downright merciful because they've been plagued with pain, paranoia, loss of memory, disorientation, headaches, weight loss, and more.

Prions are transmitted in a few ways: as noted, eating infected animal tissue is a big one, and was what led to the "mad cow disease" outbreak in the UK in the 1990s; cows were fed food containing the brain matter of other diseased cows, picked up the disease, and were then turned into food which infected quite a few people. Other ways are through contaminated medical equipment (as noted, you need to basically nuke medical equipment from orbit when it's used on someone with prions, and the long time from exposure to disease onset means a lot of patients are sick unknown to themselves or doctors), through genetics (IE Fatal Familial Insomnia), or sometimes even through spontaneous development if you're one of the unluckiest people on Earth.

So that's your primer on prions. Genetics, I'm going to assume some knowledge here, but I will give a brief explanation (brief because I don't want to seem like I'm just giving a thinly-veiled biology lecture).

The way genes code for proteins is by a series of codons, which are sequences of three nucleotide bases (A, C, G, and U/T depending on whether it's DNA or RNA) that are read and translated by the body. Most of the DNA in your body is non-coding and doesn't do anything, but the regions between a start and stop codon are what are used to make the proteins you need.

The gene that is implicated in prion diseases is known as Prnp, and produces the prion protein (which in its normal state is called PRPc and in its diseased state is known as PRPsc [sc standing for scrapie, which was the first prion disease to be discovered]). It is located on the short arm of chromosome 20. What it does normally is a bit of a mystery still, but the most widely believed hypotheses are cell adhesion or neuronal communication.

So, most mammals are really susceptible to them. Deer in the USA are currently suffering from a massive outbreak of one called Chronic Wasting Disease, humans have quite a few that affect us, and there are some notable ones in sheep, cows, etc. Even cats can get it. Rabbits are believed to be immune, but when scientists did an experiment with transgenic mice that forced them to express the lapine version of the Prnp gene, scientists could still force the protein to misfold by infecting the mice with prions, which suggests their immunity isn't absolute.

On the other hand, canines are also resistant, and scientists who tried to infect transgenic mice in the same manner after making them express the canine version of the gene had no luck (study can be found here). In wild type mice, the attack rate by the prions was 100%, but in the ones with the canine PRP, the attack rate was 0%.

We're getting a bit closer to our answer, then: clearly dogs have a gene that confers protection to their PRP, and since mind flayers most closely resemble a mammal (despite not reproducing the way humanoids do), the answer to mind flayer immunity would likely lie in the same gene.

As for the gene itself? Turns out, dogs have a codon at this locus that is found in very few other mammals. They contain codons that make, depending on the particular base pairs involved, either ASP (aspartic acid) or GLU (glutamic acid). This is not only rare (to the point of occurring in only a few other mammals), but provides a useful comparison: the PRP cats express is the most similar to a dog's. The feline Prnp gene doesn't include codons to make GLU or ASP. Cats are highly susceptible to prions.

So, while the why is still unknown and the correlation not proven yet as a causal pathway, it seems there is very likely a significant link between GLU/ASP production on that locus and the protection conferred to dogs against prions.

SO, finally, we can answer the question. Could mind flayers be safe while eating a diet of exclusively brains, even if they ate the brain of a creature infected with a prion? Yes, they could, assuming their Prnp gene has codons to produce ASP/GLU proteins as part of their PRP. And really, when you think about it, this would be yet another way illithids would claim to be superior organisms; while humanoids have to worry about an incurable neurodegenerative disease caused by something as trivial as an error in protein folding, illithids are conferred immunity by the ceremorphosis process. So it makes sense for the psychology of mind flayers that they're immune, too. And hell, they might even seek out humans infected with one, given they'd be weaker prey, the same way wolves just love to eat moose infected with a fatal brain parasite- and in turn, just like that protects the rest of the moose herd from being infected, illithids consuming sick humanoids would protect other mammals in the area too. It's certainly the kind of thing goodest squid Omeluum would do.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

[formulatrash]

from following you on twitter im absolutely certain you have (far more informed than mine) thoughts on whatever the fuck williams is doing. very interested in hearing them, if you’d care to share?

so like, from the off: I have always been a Logan Sargeant defender. people who didn't follow his junior career just saw an American, assumed he was a pay driver and didn't check any further. the guy had a better karting career than Oscar, was competitive with him the whole time they were in the same series - they were the George and Alex of their day.

sometimes those drivers fall off. Jack Aitken was, in fact, George's main rival up to F2 and then got mechachromed (or technically hewlanded) out of the running for more than a guest spot. but Logan didn't - he just ran out of money. that year in a Charouz (a backmarking F3 team struggling to score points) was when he really proved himself, especially on being solid at development and leading a team.

that was what convinced Carlin (at the time, not putting in the best showing in F2) he was worth it. and his time at Carlin was what convinced Williams. not money. Logan never had sponsors pulling the strings for him. he knew he might well not get to F1 so had already started experimenting with prototype racing, which he was good in. man was being pragmatic about how to have a career in Europe if things didn't all shake out right.

but they did (sort of) and he got the Williams seat. he was probably one of the least-prepared drivers for quite a long time, with close to zero F1 testing prior to, err, F1 preseason testing. the Williams driver academy, at the time he was in it, amounted to pretty much a gym membership. a pass for the factory canteen and some branded sweaters to wear rather than some structured programme and he'd only had one year in F2.

we know the Williams is not like, the best car. the team has had Some Issues and despite the investment from Dorilton, is still rebuilding pretty heavily. I mean remember it was (in 2023) five seasons previous that they turned up to testing like whoops, no car. our bad.

then in 2022 they had Jost Capito and FX Demaison living in a weird student flatshare while they tried to work out what the hell was going on in the team, only to both leave prior to 2023. at which point James Vowles turns up and goes my god you're running this whole team via a spreadsheet. truly, we (a team whose history includes the owner's wife, who was actually the owner, locking up the factory and telling the bailiffs to fuck off every other week for years) were so fucking back.

(if you want to read a really, really, really good book about F1 then Williams: A different kind of life is exceptional)

so yeah it's a bit of a Charouz of a seat but then Logan's flourished in that circumstance before. except you're going up against a guy whose only second-fiddle circumstance was against Max fucking Verstappen. you're an underprepared rookie and you're against someone who did at times hold his own against Max Verstappen, even as an underprepared rookie himself and he's been in the team for a year already, leading all the direction and development. fucking yikes. that's not a low-pressure seat where you're both just hoping things might work out.

saying all that because: I think Logan was given an incredibly tough gig. that doesn't mean he shouldn't or couldn't have risen to it. but that Williams seat wasn't an easy ride in his first year, where he showed he could improve when he gained momentum and confidence, something that's massively important. when things turn against you and keep turning against you, it's incredibly hard to reverse that in motorsport - just look at Daniel Ricciardo at McLaren.

and yes I know there's a lot of mad conspiracy theories that for some reason the team would want to lose points in the constructors' for the express reason of humiliating a driver they were paying an obscene amount but please let's be realistic: McL really badly wanted that one to work out. and Williams seemed to, too, in Logan's first year. they weren't babying him and he had clear targets and goals but there was a desire to see that work out for both of them.

this year that, uh. hasn't seemed to be there. I know, I absolutely know, why James Vowles felt taking Logan's car and giving it to Alex in Australia was the right thing to do. Alex had scored a point there the previous year, although it's historically not been a great track for him. that point could be the difference between 9th and 10th in the constructors - millions of dollars.

but if you want to absolutely implode your driver's brain and publicly announce you have no confidence in him then that's certainly a good way to go about it. and the thing is Australia is one race whereas Logan was supposed to be in that car for the rest of the season.

it's hard to underestimate just how much F1 teams are swayed by the media. Nyck de Vries is an incredible recent example: yes, he scored points in that Williams weekend but in the same year he was driving like absolute shit in Formula E. probably because he was so focussed on F1 but any FE journalist could have told you the guy was not, in fact, the second coming of Senna - extremely likeable, weird, idiosyncratic and actually fun to watch but far from performing at his own best let alone anyone else's.

so when he was hyped to high heaven as about to wipe the floor with Yuki there was widespread eyebrow-raising from a paddock no one in F1 cares to look at. but teams bought into it, fought over him. in a matter of races the media turned on him, shredded him and Red Bull shrugged, said they never liked him in the first place and binned him off after, realistically, exactly the performances you could have expected him to put in.

the media has never been very kind to Logan. he is a little shy, he is quite softly spoken, he doesn't go for bragadaccio and he's not particularly goofy. he doesn't insist on pointing out he's there on merit. he's quite careful with what he says, guarded. he does not like things to get weird and with the motorsport media, things so often do.

trepidation about his F2 record from people who barely tune into the races being broadcast in the media centre they're in raised questions before he was in F1. Williams' re-signing of him was deemed a bit controversial, perhaps proof the team was soft. yeeting him from his car was proof they were hard enough, in fact, that rending confidence from your driver like flesh torn off a bone is somehow a useful function of the sport, from people who a mildly critical comment would send into a 5-day spiral.

(I would know)

Logan has not performed poorly this year. he hasn't performed as well as Alex but Alex has been throwing together Lando-grade drives, as you'd probably expect given the pair of them have (close to) equal experience in F1 or at least the same number of years chewing through the gristle of it.

(why am I using so many visceral meat metaphors? perhaps 3am is not the time to write anything)

all things considered, the fact that Logan did not dissolve into a puddle of goo after Australia is commendable. he has also outqualified a fucking Red Bull multiple times. he has crashed a bit, yes, because that's what driving on the edge with an air of desperation starts to look like - when Charles did it (really a lot more) in 2020 no one thought it was because he had run out of talent.

Logan has not been driving the same car as Alex. Alex himself has confirmed this. that's, uhm, fucking dire if you're trying to fix things in the simulator because that will be correlated to the upgraded car, which is what the team is interested in. even if they load yours back in, the correlation will be steadily migrating away and they won't be too interested in what it's telling them because it's the old car.

to say that Williams lost interest in Logan early this season would be an understatement. they spent a huge amount of effort and got back a bunch of world champions to film an hour-long feature with Logan's sponsor and him. it got mentioned, like, twice? because it came out the same week Alex got re-signed.

I'm not saying re-signing Alex Albon isn't exciting. hell, I'd be very excited. but that was probably the moment I knew this was going to get horrendously messy.

James Vowles is a charming man who has lots of likeable qualities. he is first and foremost an engineer and looks for engineering solutions, something he was very able to translate to strategy. he is, however, not used to being a figurehead for an organisation.

do I think the public way JV conducted the search for Logan's replacement was fair on the team, any of the drivers involved or, especially, Logan? absolutely fucking not. made all of them look like they were taking turns in a fake taxi that instead turning into a sexy thing was a clown car with JV dressed as the Joker.

I don't honestly know how Logan kept turning up and driving through that. it's one thing to believe you can do something, anything, to prove yourself and another to know you just: can't. there's nothing left you can do. there are no other seats on the grid. time to start talking to teams in other series except if you do that someone will hear about it and then you'll be even more undermined.

I think that, when he looks back, James will realise he fucked this very badly. he obviously wants to do what's best for the team and is overruling quite a lot of sensible interpersonal stuff to do that and particularly how he should act with the media which, again, not something he's had such exposure to despite his long F1 career.

Logan Sargeant has, like his car last weekend, burned in a pyrrhic symbol of what Williams want to exorcise from their team. they want to stop losing.

but like James was saying at the start of the season, before the rush of chasing new drivers caught him up, the main problem is they need to fix the car. Franco Colapinto will not do that. he is a perfectly good stopgap replacement for someone who, yes, has probably now reached a mindset where it is perhaps kinder to not expect him to drive an F1 car.

but it will probably be more telling when Carlos Sainz Jnr is also just a driver, unless the team pulls miracles over the winter.