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highviewsmoved · 3 years

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✽ overhaul x oc (NSFW) ✽ with the promise of a cure, a young woman uses the contents of her grandfather's will to her own advantage.

CAUTION WARNINGS: stockholm syndrome, references to illness, mental instability, emotional manipulation, unresolved sexual tension, voluntary imprisonment, voyeurism, obsession, dubious morality, masturbation.

“A gentle hand upon a flower, causes it to bloom with love, you see. It takes a caress similar to that of a partner. It’s been a part of our family for generations, this ability.” He uses his hands to cup the sunken plant before him, slowly examining it as it blossoms upward to a renewed state.

The child blinks up at the older man, his eyes wrinkled with a faraway smile.

“But grandmother says I have a curse.”

The older man frowns, eyes downcast. “It may be, but to me, it is a gift.”

The child continues in a monotone that no one should possess at such an age. “All the flowers I touch, they come out of me, grandpa.”

The grandfather doesn’t know how else to respond, but goes and provides aid to the flowers dying from heat, the shade of brown passing over to a healthy green.

“It is a blessing, child,” he reaffirms. He is certain as the flowers that bloom from his hand that his granddaughter is special. “Always count them for yourself.”

Her grandmother lays bedridden. A restless thing that looks so close to the doors of death. Ume feels the tears spill from her eyes. It is a foreign thing to cry with meaning behind it, but it’s what she feels.

“Ume, my flower. Yuzuki left you something you must know. The Hassaikai, our business partner, can take you in. They can heal you.”

She sniffles, wiping her eyes. “Grandfather always told me it was a gift,” she coughs into her hand, an azealia appearing on her lap. Her grandmother coughs, but for a different reason.

“You’re ill, find them, show them this,” her hand is skeletal, like the gnarled twigs of a tree in winter. She nods, taking her hands. “I will, I’ll find them,” she promises.

Her grandmother heaves a shaky breath, passing quietly while the heart monitor keens a high sound, leaving her alone with the paper in hand.

Ume thinks of another time of when her grandparents were just with her moments before, still alive. Still there.

The hospital staff come bursting through, calling out to her and moving her away from the sight. She watches as they cover her grandmother’s face, they push her to the outside of the room.

Ume opens the letter, the will being precariously typed, the calligraphy neat and organized. Something her grandfather was always meticulous about.

It is written on this piece that she is property of the Boss from the Hassaikai. The newly appointed young lord of the organization.

When she returns home, doing a simple search through the calculated books her grandfather left behind. She sees the face of the older Shie Hassaikai and a photo of a young man she’s met and seen before.

A slow smile forms across her face.

Her finger tracing lines against the image of the younger man.

She finds them easily. Ume had to pull some strings. The company her family has owned had ties with the Hassaikai for many years. They developed pharmaceuticals together for people with quirks. They lobbied with one another.

It was all to keep themselves afloat.

And now she’s here. She feels an ebbing of excitement when she’s welcomed into their headquarters.

Ume sits across from the leader of the Shie Hassaikai. The young man was adorned with a plague mask. It’s a signature look for them. The massive paper is being read by the other henchman, a man by the name of Kurono.

“It reads here you are a part of the will that was granted by your grandfather, Yuzuki. The boss knew him for quite some time. And you’re fine with this?” Kurono is skeptical. He is clearly unsure of what sort of play is happening here.

She sits up a bit taller, attempting to seem much more presentable. She must play her part in this as best she can. “I am.”

The man, Chisaki Kai, one she has seen come across her family’s estate many times before. The one from the photo in her grandfather’s files. A young man who seemed quite lost when she saw him. Now looks much more hostile and methodical. He tilts his head curiously.

Mimic below makes a curious noise in the back of his throat. “You don’t think that’s a little off, miss?”

Ume smiles amiably, causing the men around him to shift uncomfortably. Her gaze was pinned on the leader. “I understand my duties entirely well, and I have been raised to meet them. Our families have had a partnership for decades. It’s to continue the union as we see it.”

Overhaul’s gloved hands she notices start rubbing against each other, she glances quickly at the motion but removes her gaze before he can notice. When she meets his eyes they’re locked on hers in a challenge. A heated fire in them, he surely must’ve seen.

“What do you gain from this, Miura? What's your endgame if you were to be kept by the Hassaikai? Is it a business alliance you wish to continue?”

Ume hearing his voice is all she wanted and she exhales shakily, heart giddily pounding. “I’m sick,” she says in a false, weepy tone. “I want to be cured and you have the capabilities to help me.”

Overhaul tenses considerably. Kurono passes a nervous glance towards his boss. Overhaul looks terse, Kurono can sense his hands twitching to rid this woman before him like an infection.

“What’re you ill with?”

Ume’s eyes glitter, the rumble coming from deep in her stomach, rising to unfurl out of her mouth. A flower upon the table. It was a shade of vibrant purple, shaped similar to that of a star with the center protruding yellow. Kurono makes a disgusted noise and Mimic reels back.

Overhaul feels his nostrils flaring at the flora before him. The belladonna, the nightshade resting against the wood of the coffee table. Ume in tears coughs into her mouth.

Disgusting, he thinks. A sickness waiting to flourish if he does not cut it out.

Ume is in a room of white. An area so pristine that she feels she will blacken it with her sight. She lays herself down on the bed as instructed and allows the men to enter with the needle. They say it’s supposed to be a prep, to see if this can really work to nullify the quirk enough to not be a bother for her any longer.

“We’ll remove the illness from you entirely, Miura,” the voice comes from the intercom belonging to Overhaul. She wants to laugh happily, she’s content with how simple it was to get herself here. They were so easily swayed. The tears leak from her eyes.

“Please," she begs. "I no longer wish to be this way.”

“Begin,” comes the buzz from the intercom and one of the men comes close towards her with the needle. The liquid is an odd shade and she forces herself to relax, the lower half of her body shaking.

When she can sense the press of the sharpened needle against her thigh she wants to pull away but she stares straight into the camera in the corner of the room, her eyes never leaving the tiny blinking dot. She knows he’s watching. He is alone and she is here with him.

“We’ll be recording you for updates on the serum we’ve injected. It’s still something roughly in the works, but there’s no reversal for it which you should already have known about—” The man before her continues to drone on about the nullifier and Ume frowns.

She feels disconnected, she’s been in this room for the last seventy-two hours and is beginning to feel restless, her mind drifting to someplace else. In her thoughts she sees Overhaul, with his face against her hand, her lips grazing his temples. She purses her lips and continues to nod as if she’s understanding. She hasn’t listened to a word.

The man coughs. “Well, we’ll leave you to yourself.”

Ume stands up quickly, reaching out. “Please, wait a moment,” her voice light and sweet.

The doctor of some sort seems rather nervous to be in her proximity, his body language on high alert. Ume notices this, thinking of how this room is on heightened surveillance.

She poses herself to be the perfect angel, a young woman in fear of the unknown. “I don’t want to be alone,” her gaze underneath the fluorescence like a sharpened jewel. The man’s entirely stumped, uncertain of what to do or say.

The blinking from the camera seems to analyze every inch of the interaction. She moves closer, her eyes watering with a pleading look. “I’m here alone and I don’t have anyone else, will you let them know that?”

The man swallows heavily, feeling the blood rush to his head, she has a mind-numbing effect on him. “Ah, yes,” he clears his throat rather loudly. “I’ll let the boss know, of course. Pardon me.”

He exits the room quickly, terrified Overhaul may have seen the odd display between them. Entirely unaware the young woman was smiling the moment he turned his back.

Overhaul sits up quickly, moving out of the observation room with a purpose. He feels overwhelmed by the sudden scene he witnessed. Ume was too vulnerable. No longer is the young woman with a horrific ailment, but now someone without it. It was gone and it could not harm her anymore.

She was as clean as that room she was in. She was a sight to behold and he watched her every waking moment bewitched by her. Seeing her with one of his men, alone and so close. It drove him to leave, it’s what’s making him go to her room to ensure the man did not linger or stay.

“Overhaul,” Kurono comes to his side, matching his quick strides. “What’s happening?” The boss doesn’t respond. Overhaul only waves him off dismissively.

Kurono stops, leaving through a different part of the headquarters, not wanting to bother him any longer. A part of him knowing full well where he’s going

Overhaul reaches her area of the base and stops outside the door. He could easily go in and see what’s happening. She’ll be there, in her room with her own personal belongings, and see her. He’s been watching her.

His first memory of Ume was back when she came to the old Hasaikai office, where the boss was in talks with Yuzuki. She was a dainty thing, with a twinkling gaze and an amicable aura about her. She seemed serene, something he was not during his early years. He remembers glancing at her, words not spoken between them, but her gaze held his. It never once left his, as if she could see right through him into the core of his head.

The memory dissipates immediately when he hears a gentle moan, he wavers. An odd feeling washes over him. Why is he here exactly? He is the one in charge and so he thrusts open the door, and he sees an image that will be seared into his memory.

Ume on her back, her hand in between her legs that are spread apart for him to see. He stands there, locked into place with the door closing with a puff of air and she looks up to see him, her hands hiding as she sits up, looking ashamed.

Her cheeks heated and a look of worry flashes across her. Overhaul hasn’t moved.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbles, her eyes watering and he feels a rapid emotion overcome him.

“You—” he can’t seem to get the words out. It was like he completely lost his purpose for being there in the first place.

His mind was screaming in itself.

Ume lifts herself away from the bed, her skirt covering the legs he saw moments before. She drifts to him like a phantom.

“I’m still not well, my display must’ve concerned you,” she tells him. She is now only a few feet away. Overhaul attempts to rein in his muddled thoughts.

“Clearly,” he spits. He wants to flee, he wants to tear her apart and then rebuild her back again.

Ume was a striking beauty, the mole beneath her lips. Her eyes were a shade of pink, her hair the color of mulberries. She was such a captivating individual that he seems to understand why he feels such a magnetism towards her.

It must’ve been the number of times when she has held his gaze evenly. So at odds with what he expected her to be.

Ume snares him with a hook. “You’re just as twisted,” he feels an odd anger bubble up in him at her.

“What do you know? You’re here on account of your family selling you like a business offering.”

Ume’s eyes flash. “I am here on my own volition with what was provided.”

Overhaul doubts her, she can’t be serious.

She steps closer, her lips a beautiful shape. She reminds him of a spider creating a web. “You’re a sick man yourself. You come into the room of a woman who has no way to defend herself from someone like you.”

“You’re a witch,” he hisses. He feels an emptiness in his core with this talk. He can’t understand what this is.

Ume is unsettling, he realizes. She’s not what he thought she was. “I’m not a danger to you, Kai.” The way she says his name so tenderly, like a woman in love disturbs him more than anything.

She’s suffocating. She’s a boa constrictor wrapping herself around him ready to squeeze.

The effect she has on him is vexing. “I’ve always watched you,” she tells him like a shared secret between lovers. He shakes his head. “Just like you have been watching me.”

He turns on his heel and leaves, shutting the door. Overhaul feels his pulse rising with each step he takes. The way she looks at him, the way she has him in her hands.

Overhaul feels a genuine moment of horror.

What is she?

He returns with an ultimatum. She could finally be released, with the exception of constant surveillance on her. She could return to her old life of doing what she was before.

Overhaul does not want to push her away but his mind keeps thinking of seeing her in that specific position from that day. He wants to get rid of it. He needs her gone.

“I’m still unwell,” she tells him. She watches him warily, but something in her is telling him it's a ruse.

“You’re still sick?” He asks, his hand moving to hover across her face. Overhaul feigns his own concern for her. Ume’s eyes drift downwards. Her day-to-day was a cycle. An endless myriad of nothingness except her own thoughts to please herself with. She’s been in this room for days on end and after their last moment together, she was hoping she had finally gotten through to him. Finally, the object of her attention returned. She has him all to herself.

Ume shifts closer. Overhaul looking down at her, and he does not side step or moves away. “I’m here to get better, aren’t I?”

He tilts his head curiously to her advancing. “And you are? We’ve already given you the antidote. Don’t you want to leave here?” Ume smiles, eyes bright. She looks similar to a specific painting he’s seen in a galleria. The piece being a ghostly woman standing across the moors in a European isle.

“But you’re here. You keep me company.” He came here on a whim hoping this offer would be one that she would comply with.

Overhaul may have underestimated her, she's like a siren calling him softly from the sea, coaxing him to shore. Her words simply hold that much power.

His lips feel dry beneath his mask and he swallows. Her gown is loose, revealing her skin below and a part of him feels he could move to coast his hand across. To be able to hear her breathing hitch, close to his ears. To be able to see that display of her legs opening. He ceases the thoughts. She’s at his mercy. He has control.

“I know what you’re doing,” he murmurs, more to himself. His mind has become a frenzy. A demented voice in his brain begging him to lay his hand upon her. One touch won’t hurt, it won’t. It would be quick, a simple thing.

Ume drifts from side to side, her hand reaching above to move a piece of his hair. Her fingers dance across his forehead. He grits his teeth, his gloved hands twitching. His mind suddenly gearing up for a tirade. It’s filthy. It’s disgusting. It feels wonderful.

“Then leave here,” she whispers. “Don’t come back.”

“You’re a vixen. You’re sick,” Overhaul emphasizes. This time he means it, but he can’t help but let himself be entranced. She’s maddening. Enticing, his mind supplies.

Ume laughs, she’s infuriatingly beautiful. “And yet you come, again and again. For me.”

Overhaul retreats, her eyes twinkling with mirth. He leaves her there, walking quickly away, his steps echoing down the halls as he moves around the labyrinth. “Overhaul, where are you going?” Kurono asks in shock, he’s never seen his boss move in such a hurry.

“To my private quarters.”

He shuts the door to his room, locking it, hurriedly taking off his jacket stripping himself of the ailment. His thoughts cause images to be projected into his mind. Seeing himself close to Ume, pressing his lips close to her breasts, and his hands placed where hers was between her thighs.

He feels tight all over, collapsing onto the ground in a mess. His breathing is all over the place as he removes his mask from the heat of it all.

Ume was dangerous.

His hands moving on their own as if she was puppeteering them herself. He imagines her there with him. She could be, his mind adds. That filthy part of himself could go in there and take her. Keep her with him all the while. It’s what she would want. It’s what he wants.

Overhaul unzips his pants, his hands grabbing his cock, feeling the girth against his palm. He imagines her there, she’s so real against him. She is stunning as her mouth presses against his dick.

Fuck.

He begins moving, pumping to get to a fast release. The image of Ume licking his shaft, her fingers dancing across his body. Her touch is absolutely vile, but it causes his heart to pound.

He fondles himself more, beginning to feel his body clench around him. This is sickening, he thinks. It’s not right. Ume is still there, the image of her never left.

Overhaul could’ve taken her into his room. Having done everything his filthy mind was displaying out for him, his pleasure exceeded all logical thoughts.

The idea of her as his alone. “Come for me again and again.” He hears her voice so close to his ear, the way she said his name. Kai. Fuck.

He’s so close.

Her pussy would be pressing against his shaft, she would be so wet, so tight. Her moans would be sensual when she continues to take him how she wants. The way it would spasm against his dick. He grabs his balls roughly at the thought.

Overhaul comes with a grunt, a desperate sound freeing itself. He shivers at the sensation of his own cum warm against his body.

A harsh breath rakes through him and he stumbles his way into the bathroom. He starts the water, the steam rising above when he takes a step in. Overhaul hisses, the water scalding against his skin.

He thought with this he could exorcise the thoughts of her, but knowing that she could be doing this too. Ume’s own fingers deep inside of her, imagining himself was something he never experienced before.

A pleasure all their own.

Ume imagines what she would do if Kai would come and stay with her. If he would be willing to let her touch him, to touch her. His large, gloved hands caressing her thighs, reaching up to grab her breasts.

She begins trailing her own fingers down to her thighs, reaching the clit, the gentle motions budding into herself.

The thoughts of Overhaul down on his knees for her, what a simple touch could do. She moans, her fingers working with a quickened pace to reach her own orgasm. A fast one to rid herself of her desire. She needed to continue her control. She was the one above him. He couldn’t kill her even if he tried.

He kept her here offering whatever possible to release her, but her devotion to him and her own cause kept her to stay in this room so he could return.

Ume puts him through a hideous pattern and it pushes her to the edge. The tightening of her abdomen is ready for her to cum and she does. She arches her back, the sensation of her quivering pussy overwhelming.

The arousal of her knowing that he’s in his room, touching himself despite his abhorrence to it. She licks her juices off of her fingers, her breath heavy as she watches the familiar red dot of the camera.

Ume’s awakened by the opening of the door, and one of the many men announcing she’s allowed free reign to wander their base. That her status was cleared, that the nullifier accomplished its effect and healed her.

She was now free.

It was another offer she realizes, to really get her to leave this place. But she’s having so much fun here, in her own little space. She wishes to be a blight.

A stain that is so deep that it leaves Overhaul a crumbling, cumming mess every time he leaves her room.

He doesn’t touch her, there is no tenderness. Just her words and his own, and a continuous cycle of touching themselves at moments she hopes are timed at the same.

She smiles at the men, a coy thing that holds so much, but does not provide them with what exactly she’s thinking.

Ume’s not done here. She’ll see this through in its entirety.

“I won’t be going,” she sits against the wall, her hair so long that she toys with one of the strands. “I want to be here.”

They seem a bit nervous about her response. Not exactly sure what the procedure for a willing asset is.

“You can leave now,” Ume says. “I won’t be asked again.” They can hear the threat in her tone, her eyes narrowing as the men shuffle out in fear of incurring her terrifying attitude.

Overhaul returns with a quickened haste. Not even bothering to knock on her door and she grins.

“You’re a wretched thing, aren’t you,” he states. His finger pointed at her. She stares at the appendage; wishing to take it deep against her throat.

“I am, but aren’t you?” She’s challenging him. Miura Ume is a shogi piece on the board. The way she calculates his every mood, her eyes gauging him. She could eat him alive. It’s nauseating.

“I could kill you,” he’s trying to convince himself it’s the only rational thing to do. She sits up, the chemise sliding down her shoulder exposing her supple skin. He yearns, a sick part of him wants to see her exposed for him.

He wants to touch her just once.

No! His mind screams. She’s foul. She’s stunning.

Ume moves her hands to hold his, he begins to tremble. He wishes he could grapple with his failing control. To get back at her. She purses her mouth against the tip of his gloved finger, tongue brushing against the leather. When she bites down she never looks away from his sight.

He makes a disgruntled noise in the back of his throat. Ume releases her hold on him and licks her lips. The pink of her tongue swipes the redness of her mouth. Overhaul is a mess of a man. What kind of the leader of this organization is he, that he is seduced by a single woman.

Ume lowers herself onto her knees, a wicked gleam in her eyes. She’s close to the crotch of his pants and he wants to run. So he can rid himself of these thoughts she’s causing.

“You won’t break your favorite toy,” her silky voice slithers in his ears. Her fingers feather across his thighs. Ume’s own hands wishing to dig into him.

The light sensation causes shockwaves across his flesh. Overhaul is enraptured. What else could she possibly attempt to do. He replays the image of her mouth around his finger. A dark rumbling in his gut jolts him away, and she smiles. It breaks him away from the reverie of this siren below him.

He stands above her, he could press all five fingers deep into her neck, ceasing her diabolical wishes. “You’re heinous,” he grits out. A realization blooming in his mind that he’s lost this power play. He was already in her clutches the moment he saw her.

She owns him. Every touch, every single way he jerks himself off, the orgasms he has. It’s all for her.

He’s mortified. He feels the room is like a cage. He’s the canary in the cat’s mouth.

Ume pouts. “I could make you feel so good,” she says this as if it’s the only thing he needs.

Overhaul wants to throttle her. He wants to hike up her gown and shove his cock so far deep into her that it makes her hold onto him.

This is dangerous, his mind says. You need to clean yourself.

“You’re a plague,” he spits. “You’re just a wretched thing who wants too much.”

She laughs as if he said the funniest thing in the world. “I am, but you enjoy this just as much as I do.” Ume sits up no longer on her knees. He still towers above her.

Overhaul could end it right now. He just has to touch her. Let her rot against the floor. He’s torn, he fears she’ll reanimate on her own. His own personal karma.

“You want me on my knees for you, telling you the dirtiest things imaginable.” Her eyes were that of a feline.

She backs him against one of the corners of the room. Overhaul slides down against the wall.

He wants this to end.

Ume lowers herself to his level, her lips grazing his ear. “You want me to fuck you senseless.”

Overhaul grunts. “I don’t—“ he can’t get the words out. He’s completely losing himself. He can touch her. He can. He can’t.

Ume’s tongue prods against his neck and he nearly groans. The way it slides up to his chin. He would let her take a bite out of him. It’s what he wants.

He feels his cock hardening against his trousers.

She leans a bit away, getting a good look at him in this state. That longing look in his eye. The lust in his crotch. He’s only wearing his medical mask and she wants to tear it off of him.

“You’re spineless,” she mocks. “You can’t even help yourself or your boss.”

He snarls. “What do you know,” he fires back. “You come here like a leech wanting a cure.”

“I know more than you do,” she tells him.

“Your teasing routine ends here,” he stands. The way she moves away from him pushes him to continue backing her against her own bed.

“Is this what you want? Do you want me to fuck you senseless? Or do you just want my finger in your cunt?” Overhaul feels a recharge in his power. He could finally see her resolve falter.

“I do,” Ume flushes, looking away from him. A gentle admittance. “I want all of it.”

The room is silent, save for the labored breaths from Overhaul and the quiet words from Ume echoing.

They look at each other for a long moment.

Overhaul makes the move first. He presses his lips harshly against her mouth.

She makes a noise but tries to remove the mask he’s kissing her through.

He rips it off and his hands lift her gown as she lays back against the bed.

Her legs wrapping themselves around his waist pulling him to her. Her touch causes him to groan. Overhaul feels his head swimming. She’s delicious. The way her lips form around his, her tongue gliding against his own.

He refuses to lay his hand on her, that part of him with his clear disdain for touch still scratching in his mind. It tells him to stop. To cease.

She’s a drug. Her moans are intoxicating. Her lips drag against his cheek and she suckles his neck.

“I want you,” she presses into him, reaching to unbuckle his pants. Ume grabs his cock through the fabric. No, she’s filthy.

“Fuck,” he exhales. She’s pliant against him.

“Touch me, Kai,” she moans, her legs tight around him. His hips are close to hers. His hands are still balled into tight fists.

“Just one finger,” she prods. “Make me cum.”

He snarls. Overhaul bites her shoulder and she yelps. “I’m not touching you.”

She laughs against his lips. “Your loss.”

They continue like this, lost in the sensation of each other's lips. His hips thrust into hers and she groans a needy sound.

She unbuckles his pants, freeing his cock. He feels dizzy. Ume guides him towards her wet entrance.

“Fuck me,” she moans. Overhaul gnashes his teeth together, his balled-up fists feeling like an anchor.

He’s imagined this so many times. This exact image, her voice right at his ear.

“Please, Kai,” her voice calls again.

Overhaul grunts, thrusting into her. Ume’s cries were delightful. “Oh, Kai.”

He doesn’t move for a moment, and she hugs him tightly to herself, caging him in her arms.

She looks elated, something he hasn’t seen in her expressions. Her controlled, manipulative faces have only been used against him. At this moment she looks genuinely content.

His fists begin to uncurl. Just one touch to wipe the way her tendrils are covering a bit of her face.

A loud knock stops them from going any further, startling them both.

“Overhaul!” A panicked voice comes. “There’s a plan of attack from the heroes.”

Overhaul and Ume look at each other for a long moment. “Put your clothes on.”

He pulls out of her. The feeling of it winding them both up. He would let his men take care of it. He could finish here, before going out there to fight. No. He stumbles away from her. He doesn’t have time to clean himself and he shudders.

Ume is unnervingly complacent through it. Once he readjusts himself, setting his mask on.

She’s back to being fully clothed, her eyes blankly staring ahead.

“I’ll be back,” he says. His head dips, to get her to look at him. Her bright eyes stare into his. “I’ll finish this.”

Ume releases a laugh. “You won’t.”

Overhaul stands at his full height, eyes narrowing. “I will,” he promises.

He shuts the door leaving her alone.

Ume's trademark grin returning.

She walks back to her bed, curling into herself as she waits.

It’s been hours and there’s a breach in her room.

A team of heroes enters and there's a multitude of voices.

“Someone’s in here!”

“It’s a woman! We need a medic!”

They come in a cluster, checking her, and Ume’s tears come falling forth. Her character this time is a hysterical woman who was wrongly experimented on.

“We’ll get you out of here, miss. What’s your name?”

She is inconsolable as she gives them a name, a fallacious one. “Yumi, my name is Yumi. Please, I want to go home.”

The heroes escort her out with a blanket over her shoulders. She looks around the base and it is destroyed. The walls are crumbling. Nothing looks the way it did when she first arrived.

Ume tries to hide her grin. A beautiful downfall that Kai went through, she thinks.

So pretty.

The trip to Tartarus was a vicious one. The seawater lapped against the tides of the boat. The young charge, in connection with the Hero Commission, shields himself from the onslaught of the rain.

“Fujita! We’re almost to the island.”

Agent Fujita, one of Ume’s many disguises only clad in a suit and raincoat, nods affirmatively. “Good.”

The man calls for the steering of the boat to the dock, the entire vessel moving onwards and the agent does not budge. She stays with the breeze against her face, whipping her face as the boat’s sound alerts the officers on Tartarus of an arrival.

The ship is stopped against the steel dock as they rein in the anchor, wrapping the sails against each other as the young escort jogs to her.

“We’ve arrived. Please go this way to the base.”

Ume follows down the ramps. The clanking of the steel-toed boots beneath her into a rhythm.

“Private Personnel coming through please.”

“Identification is needed for passing into Tartarus.”

“I have it,” Ume says, her fingers handing over the passes and a note from the Hero Commission granting the access.

“Agents Gentaro and Fujita?” The man in the dark outfit is splashed by the nearby tide. “Dammit, alright. That’s fine. If they know you’re here. We’ll send them word you’ve arrived.”

Gentaro steps forward. “We won’t be here long, it’s a quick interview with one of the prisoners.”

“It’ll be a fast one,” Ume adds.

One of the other guards snickers. “As long as you both don’t try to break these monsters out.”

Ume smiles a familiar grin that halts the guard's laugh. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

The massive gates open forward walking into the long corridors of Tartarus.

“This place is bright,” Gentaro hisses. Ume doesn’t react, only blinking in response.

“The criminal you’re about to meet is infamous, you know? He’s pretty vile, kept a woman and a child, using them for test subjects.”

Ume’s new voice has a low tone. “I’ve seen quite a bit in my heyday, Gentaro.”

He snorts. “Alright, alright. Gotcha, well, I’ll tell the guards you’re ready to see him.”

The room they entered was accessed only through a fingerprint scanner, which Gentaro uses. Ume walks in, standing across a reinforced glass, waiting for them to bring him in.

Ume feels her heart rate pick up. It’s been months on end since the disbandment of the Hassakai, since their separation.

Ume was taken in with the heroes, saved by them. Or so they think. But Ume returns as Agent Fujita now.

She hid her identity, easily enough with a modifying bullet she received from the underground which gave her a new quirk.

It was the ability to change the face, so one does not recognize her immediately as the woman who was captured. Ume had many ties, connections her grandfather left behind; she was able to put them to good use. She used them all to give her this gift before her.

To be able to see him again.

Chisaki Kai enters, completely wrapped in a straight jacket, pushed forth on some sort of mechanism that was strapping him in.

“Agent Fujita, Prisoner 23554 is here. Chisaki Kai, Overhaul, reporting in.” The bleeping over the intercom disperses and she is granted some privacy when the guards leave. They had nothing to worry about since Overhaul could not wield his quirk nor did they know that Ume didn’t even have one.

She smiles.

He looks pathetic, still facing downward, refusing to look up. His hair is overgrown. He has tired eyes, stubble coming in and she wishes to grab his face and rub her lips against the roughness of his chin.

“Kai,” she calls softly. Her voice is the sound of honey dripping from the corners; like it was seeping through the glass. He shifts, raising his head slowly. When he comes to, his eyes widen in shock. “You,” he swallows roughly. His throat feels dry.

She coos, walking closer to the glass, her hands resting on the counter. “Kai, my destroyed, beloved,” she grins all white teeth and red lips. Overhaul quakes, feeling overcome with the oddest emotion. Is he excited? Is he terrified? It’s a rush of cold pouring through his veins. He feels the familiar ache of the loss of his arms, wishing to thrash in his restraints, but the poisonous woman is here and she still speaks.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Ume says in that deceptive tone of hers. It sounds as if she were in awe, but her eyes. Her gaze is so dark that he imagines himself devoured by her.

The reversal of the situation. The way he had her for months on end, trapped in his own area. He should’ve had the upper hand to take back his own control of her relying on him and the odd web of seduction they found themselves in.

Before he was free, he could’ve left her to her own devices. He should’ve killed her when he had the chance, but she stands before him on the other side of the glass. This time, she is where he once was. Now she could continue to see him, the vicious cycle continuing. He wants to yell, scream out to the guards. The rush of blood goes to two places, his head and to his dick.

“You’re here,” he says. She laughs lightly, nodding. Ume was a wretched woman for this. A parasite burrowing her way into his flesh, never coming out. He wants to heave. Her constant advances were intoxicating, they cursed his life. He loathes his own weakness for not denying her. He couldn’t have. He was so close. He aches for her.

She tsks, her fingernail scraping against the glass. The sound high pitched and torturous to his ears. He gasps, not knowing how to make her stop.

Ume presses her lips too close against the mirror, the shape of her lipstick leaves a mark there. He clenches his teeth tightly together so he doesn’t groan.

She leans back, admiring her handiwork. Him on the other side, just how she always wanted to see him. Overhaul, the methodical, locked away in a small room just as she was. He was her likeness.

Ume’s voice points out the obvious, but he can’t bear to think of it, he doesn’t want to hear it.

“Kai,” she says, observing him as if she’s viewing a virus through the lens of a microscope. His head hits against the steel of the odd-standing chair that he’s restrained in. “You look ill.”

The contamination has already made its home in him. In her. He can’t escape it. He doesn’t realize he’s crying until he’s wheeled away back to his cell. Once the resounding click of the door encloses him in. He can feel her still there with him, the moaning in his ear returning and the tears are hot against his face.

Your loss, her voice returning from that time. Replaying itself over and over.

#overhaul x reader #chisaki kai x reader #bnha imagines

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winxwrites · 4 years

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What You Want

Pairing: August Walker x Reader

Warnings: Smut, oral, D/S themes, workplace sex

Word count: 2k

Description: You never expected the racy texts exchanged between you and a coworker to get you in this position...

A/N: Thank you guys for all of the love you showed my first Henry fic! I hope you all enjoy this one! As always, feedback is appreciated ❀

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Startled, you looked up at the brooding man walking towards you. His presence immediately sent a shiver up your spine. You were so taken back by his entrance that you failed to close the tab on your screen. All traces of laughter were suddenly removed from your demeanor.

“Mr. Walker, I was just... I-”

“Oh save it,” he cut you off as he reached your desk. “I’ve been waiting nearly an hour for your response to my email and then I come down here to find you playing around on your laptop. You’re the last one here, what was stopping you from responding?”

You stuttered over your words attempting to string together a coherent answer that would be pleasing to your boss.

“I just had some other things to wrap up. Today’s been pretty busy I guess I got beside myself. I’ll be sure to check my emails more frequently.”

He raised an eyebrow at your flustered state. You were grateful that the screen of your MacBook had gone dark as your superior planted himself by your workspace. Your comfort was broken when he tilted his head toward the computer.

“Turn on your laptop.” That you weren’t expecting.

“I’m sorry?”

Walker laughed. “You heard me, let’s see what’s got you so distracted.”

Before you could protest the intimidating man hovered over your desk, his finger gracing across the trackpad to illuminate the screen. All you could do was sit there and pray your on shift doings wouldn’t result in the loss of your job.

Your heart leapt as he took in the sight of the tabs on the screen. Your resolve nearly crumbled when his eyes fell onto the opened messages app.

A shit eating grin was on his face as he mockingly recited the conversation you were engaging in with your coworker Harper.

August is so sexy - He made sure to draw out his words in a teasing manner.

You’re so lucky he’s your boss. If I was the one under him we wouldn’t be getting much work done.

Believe me it took everything in me not to drop to my knees the last time he called me into his office.

I bet his dick is fucking massive. God I can’t believe you haven’t fucked him.

The smirk Walker wore was the biggest you’d ever seen. He looked down at you clearly enjoying your uncomfortable state.

“Want me to read more?”

You hated that you’d been caught. You hated even more the arousal you felt as he spoke to you.

He removed his dark suit jacket and tossed it aside. He called you by your last name to address you as he rolled up his sleeves.

“Stand up.”

You quickly stood from your seated position not wanting to be in even more trouble. You were going to apologize for your indiscretion but your boss waived a dismissive hand to silence you.

He made himself comfortable in your work chair and laced his hands behind his head.

“Never been much of a people pleaser but I guess I can give you what you want.” Your eyebrows knitted together in confusion. “I don’t think you’re going to be productive unless you get something to satiate that slutty little mind of yours.”

You bit into your lower lip as you realized what he was asking of you.

“Get on your knees.”

The timber of his voice left no room for discussion. You mindlessly lowered yourself to the floor. The cool feel of the tiled pattern the only thing able to settle the heat that rang through your body.

Your eyes widened looking up at August as you waited for his next command. He chuckled darkly at your submission.

“Go on, be a good girl for me.”

Your unsteady hands reached for the zipper of his trousers, pulling them down enough to expose his black briefs. Your nimble fingers worked to release his hardening member from the tight confines.

Confidence sprang into you as you sat back on your legs. A lewd moan slipped off your tongue as you tasted the salty precum leaking from his tip.

You wrapped your lips around the engorged tip giving a generous suck. You removed his cock from your mouth and stared up at him as you licked a long, wet stripe from his balls to the head of his dick.

His eyes glossed over as you continued to work your mouth over his generous size. Your wrists worked around his shaft as you flattened your tongue around the bulbous head.

August eagerly slid himself down your waiting throat as you gasped for air. You barely had time to adjust before he pushed you onto his thickness. Tears threatened to spill from your eyes as he quickly pushed you to your limit.

Your blurred vision caught sight of the smug look he wore as he watched you swallow him. You knew he was close when your nose touched the patch of hair that spread across his pelvis.

His cock twitched at the sight of seeing you take whatever he gave you. He reached down and stroked your hair out of your face as his orgasm reached its dawn. His gaze was unwavering as he drank in the image of you swallowing his cum. You tried to hide your struggle as you slurped down the liquid. A relieved sigh left his lips once he’d come down from his high. His dick was still surprisingly hard as the heavy girth weighed against your tongue.

An aggressive hand wrapped around your throat pulling you off his slick cock. A trail of drool dribbled down your chin as you disconnected with his thick member. He used the firm grip on your neck to guide you back onto your feet. You gasped a breath you didn’t realize you were holding once his thumb was removed from the column of your throat.

He shifted his grip to your waist and pressed your backside against your desk.

“August I’m so sorry! It won’t happen again. I’ll be more professional in the future, I promise!”

He released an ironic laugh. “I think you and I can both agree that we’ve clearly passed any professional boundaries that were formerly in place.”

You nodded at his reference to the events that had just occurred.

“You’re right. But August can we just-“

You were cut off. Walker ran his thumb over your chin and collected some of the spit that still resided there. He playfully rubbed the saliva over your bottom lip before popping his thumb into your waiting mouth. You felt like a whore as you sucked on the digit without objection.

“You address me as sir or Mr. Walker, are we clear?” You shook your head in agreement as he removed his thumb from your mouth. “Call me August again and you won’t be speaking at all for a while.”

He gingerly sat back in the chair. “Take off your panties.”

Your hands worked to hitch up the hem of your dress and tug the material down your parted thighs. Walker looped his finger through the flimsy lace and took in the sight of the soaked crotch.

He pressed his palms flat against your knees to part your legs even more. His middle and index finger made their way into your waiting hole. You yelped at the thick intrusions. Walker stroked his fingers back and forth inside your exposed hole. You were reduced to a moaning mess. No man had ever been able to locate your most sensitive spot so quickly.

He withdrew his fingers and wiped your glistening cum on the indigo material of your dress.

His hand reached for your wrist as he impatiently tugged you toward him. Your parted knees were on either side of the chair as you found yourself in his lap. His erection pointed callously at your waiting cunt. You gulped as you worked your hand over his cock realizing -once again- just how big he was. This didn’t go unnoticed by your boss.

“What’s the matter kitten? Are you scared?” Your breathing became uneven as he spoke the taunting words into your ear. “Don’t try and act shy now. You said you wanted this.”

Your right hand squeezed his shoulder as your left guided his thickness into your pussy. You let out an exasperated sigh as you looked down and realized he wasn’t even half way in.

Walker’s hand came up and gripped the back of your neck. He tilted your head in a way that made it impossible to look away from what he was doing to you.

“Oh no kitten, I don’t want you to miss this.” His other hand gripped your thigh and roughly pulled you onto his dick.

His pleasure came first, he made that more than clear. A cocky grin shone on his face once he bottomed out. Your body writhed from the shock of the tight fit.

Reaching between your thighs you tried to rub your clit but August quickly wrapped his hand around your wrist to stop you. A frustrated groan slipped through your lips. He was definitely going to make you work for your release.

His calloused hands dug into your sides as he pulled you deeper onto his dick. You struggled to keep up with the swift pace he’d created.

“Sir please...” you whispered in desperation.

To your surprise he moved his hand between your legs providing you some stimulation. He leaned forward and pressed sloppy kisses to your covered chest. Your eyes rolled back as you noticed the wet patches he’d left over either breast.

A relieved groan left your throat as you slumped against his toned chest. Your fingernails dug shallow crescents into his broad shoulders as you indulged in your impending orgasm.

“Walker let me cum. Oh God! Sir please!” The only sounds in the office space were your desperate moans. August took a second to look away from the place where your bodies connected.

The pattern he drew on your clit became sloppy and you knew the end was in sight for both of you. You graced his neck with kisses as you reached your peak.

A rough hand smacked your ass as you rode out your orgasm. “Look at you being a dirty little slut cumming in my lap.”

Tears rolled down your cheeks and onto his shoulder as you came down from your high.

August latched onto your collarbone and sucked brazenly as his own orgasm rang through him. You fidgeted against his thighs from the overstimulation. You knew there would be a blotchy mark left behind but you didn’t care. You were just happy you’d have something to remind you this wasn’t just some dream.

August stood up and placed you back on your desk. You felt vulnerable when you noticed his darkened eyes watching thick globs of cum drip onto the wooden surface.

Neither of you had said a word since you’d finished. You weren’t sure your brain could even fathom a coherent sentence after how hard you’d just cum.

The weight of your encounter suddenly hit you as you leaned down to retrieve your discarded panties. August lifted a heavy foot and trapped the underwear underneath his polished shoes.

“Oh no kitten. You’re gonna keep my cum in that tight little cunt of yours for the rest of the night.” You looked up at him is disbelief. “And tomorrow morning when you come in I’m gonna check and see how good you take direction.”

Lost for words you nodded in compliance.

“Yes sir.”

You slowly stood up, your legs still unsteady. Suddenly you were thankful you’d worn flats. Walker adjusted himself back into his pants and straightened his tie. You were both unsettled when your MacBook rang signifying a new text.

The illuminated screen captured both of your attentions. Of course it was from your friend Harper sending yet another raunchy message about your boss. If she only knew...

August began heading back to his own office. You caught a glimpse of your reflection in the glass windows and thanked the heavens you were the only one working in the office this late.

The heavy footsteps came to a halt as your boss stopped before the elevator. He called your name in an even voice.

You looked back at him in a daze. “Hmmm?”

“Tell your friend she can be next if she’d like.”

#henry cavill #august walker #august walker smut #henry cavill x reader #august walker x reader #henry cavill smut #henry cavill imagine

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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From Bridgerton to Sanditon—Putting Island Queen in a Period Drama Context

https://ift.tt/3dpMXo9

This article contains book spoilers for Island Queen and a trigger warning for racism and sexual assault.

Caribbean history is often ignored in US discussions of the era, despite myself and many other Americans having ancestry from this part of the world. Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park has extended references to Caribbean slavery but many adaptations sidestep these implications or briefly address them before moving back to the white main characters. In addition, the focus is often on male leaders of rebellions such as Toussaint L’Overture leading the Haitian rebellion, or on women with island ancestry such as Dido Elizabeth from the movie Belle living in England. All are written by white novelists and screenwriters who miss cultural nuances and are unaware of subconscious bias. Island Queen, Vanessa Riley’s latest foray into Black historical fiction reveals a hidden figure of Caribbean history. Dorothy Kirwan was born into slavery in Montserrat, but secured her own freedom by becoming an astute businesswoman.

Riley’s novel takes readers on a complex but emotionally fufilling journey which brings up serious historical questions on slavery, class, gender, and business ethics during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Riley’s novel is the answer for fans who feel recent historical dramas prioritize varying levels of whitewashing or escapism over featuring real Black history.

Kirwan’s story has incredible relevance today as many look to understand the enduring legacies of British colonialism and the slave trade in the late 18th and early 19th Century. Her diary does not exist but Riley assembled birth records and other primary sources to trace her life. This is in contrast to sources such as the anonymously published novel The Woman Of Colour which historians are still looking to corroborate authorship and connections to real Caribbean figures. Kirwan at times the mirror image of the fictionalized story of July from The Long Song, but there are also flash points of difference along class and timeframe context. July was born roughly 50 years later than Kirwan in Jamaica. In addition, Dorothy’s life journey takes the reader from Montserrat to Demerara (off the coast of modern day Guyana), Grenada, and Dominica. Most importantly, Riley is an Caribbean-American writer while Andrea Levy wrote The Long Song for Black British readers.

Dorothy’s in-character first person narration is the glue that holds the story together through frequent flashbacks to her childhood and young adulthood to her life in 1824 as a grandmother. The main theme of self-determination in a world where rich white men decide the rules everyone must play keeps the reader engaged even when it is not clear where the plot is heading. In the present plot, Dorothy has returned to London after many years away to petition colonial leaders to retain hard-won rights for Black and biracial women in Demerara. These unequal laws threaten Dorothy’s children and grandchildren and could even take away the freedom and inheritance she has spent her whole life to build.

Bridgerton’s critics will find solace in Island Queen. Those who wanted the Black aristocracy of Haiti and other Caribbean islands featured in the series will find this history at the center. Kirwan navigates a world with inherent inequality, despite how much she has achieved in property ownership and savings. When she interacts with British and colonial elites, they never treat her as if she has power over them. The racial caste system in existence influences all of her interactions. After a breakup, she takes up an offer from Prince William (Queen Victoria’s uncle who died with no legitimate heirs) to travel with him on his ship. In Dorothy’s story, he provides a temporary emotional distraction but also a recognition that she would never fit into the British elite because of her skin color and island background. Unlike Queen Charlotte in Bridgerton, the real prejudices of the era held Dorothy back from ascending completely into the highest levels of royal society. Riley’s narrative, especially, ignores what could have been and shows readers the truth.

These rich white men who placed artificial limits on Dorothy were also the source for young Alexander Hamilton’s childhood poverty. However, his solution as featured in the opening song of Hamilton was to leave the islands to pursue his education in America. This was an option steeped in male and to an extent white privilege as women at this point in history were not allowed to attend college. In addition, American society had already enacted severe restrictions in the rights of free people of color. Hamilton also was an orphan. Dorothy’s parents and her children kept her rooted to the Caribbean.

The road to Dorothy acquiring a thriving business and heirs was lengthy and arduous, and Riley does not sugar coat the dynamics at play in her life. Kirwan’s mother was a slave and her father owned a plantation. The more percentage of white ancestry you have in your blood, the more freedom and rights you have. In her teenage years, Dorothy’s white half-brother Nicholas rapes her and she ends up giving birth to a daughter. Dorothy is forced to run away with a trusted friend to another island and has to leave her daughter behind. This is the beginning of many sacrifices she makes in order to protect her family.

Although many readers may object to Riley portraying incest and sexual assault, the historical research makes this clear that this was the reality for women in slave societies. Dorothy’s narration is carefully crafted to show not only the trauma of the event, but her processing the trauma. For Dorothy, healing comes in the form of survival. The objective isn’t exploitation or the male gaze, but to illuminate ignored history and the intersection of race and gender in sexual power dynamics. Dorothy has to repeatedly establish consent and trust in a world where her partners can and will refuse to agree to those terms. The debate over rape culture in historical fiction revolves around characters that are fictional facing fictionalized situations, especially in the TV adaptations of Outlander and Bridgerton. Additionally, Outlander has sidestepped any serious contemplation of exploitation dynamics in slave societies despite plots featuring 8th Century Jamaica and North Carolina. It is difficult to apply this same critique to Riley’s novel as her intention is historical recreation and reconstruction of Kirwan’s life story.

Riley’s explanation and contextualization of race and gender dynamics is something many viewers wanted the first season of British historical drama Sanditon to address, past the show alluding to Georgiana’s ancestry and £100,000 inheritance. In fact, Riley explains in the Author’s Note that the journey to finding Dorothy Kirwan began with figuring out who the real Miss Lambe could have been over a decade ago. For Georgiana to have that kind of wealth, she would have had to have a white male ancestor willing and able to use the law to secure her freedom. Sidney’s connection to Georgiana as her legal ward isn’t clear, representing a missed opportunity that erodes the story’s worldbuilding. Dorothy’s explanation of social rankings and her own background means it is highly likely Georgiana is the product of a relationship between a white planter and an enslaved or indentured woman. Georgiana isn’t the only example of an fictional heir from the islands around this time period. Rhoda Swartz from Vanity Fair has Black and Jewish ancestry along with thousands of pounds. Island Queen has the space and interest to completely center the story of women like Georgiana and Rhoda position from the perspective of a Black writer and historian.

Dorothy also reveals through her life experiences that interracial relationships with unequal power dynamics were often one of the only ways enslaved Black and biracial women could gain their freedom. In stark contrast to America during the late 18th Century, interracial relationships were never officially outlawed, but it was very rare for white men to officially marry women of color. More often, these women were mistresses and concubines, and any children from these relationships legally belonged to the father. Any relationship an enslaved woman undertook carried the risk of losing her children, with her past often used as a weapon of misogynoir, or simultaneous racist and sexist discrimination.

One plot line unites Island Queen and The Long Song: both July and Dorothy lose a daughter to their white slave holding father who wanted to raise them in England. This trauma drives July to poverty while Dorothy had to wrestle the trauma alongside her mission to to fight to secure manumission papers for her children and also to develop a source of income that cannot be controlled by the men in her life.

How The Long Song Spotlights Ignored Black Caribbean History

By Amanda-Rae Prescott

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How Bridgerton Season 2 Can Improve On Season 1

By Amanda-Rae Prescott

At one point, she engages in survival sex work, then finds work as a housekeeper. Eventually, she is able to start her own housekeeping and domestic worker agency. She was well aware that some of her employees would choose to have relations with their bosses, but she made sure that she was not seen as a brothel owner for legal reasons. This is in stark contrast to some of the characters from Harlots on Hulu where brothel ownership or their sex worker status was an open secret.This is another area where Black women would suffer worse consequences for perceived immorality in society compared to white women. In fact, rumors of sex work follow her Dorothy doesn’t intefere if her housekeepers decide to engage in sex work but she insists on mutual consent. Riley does not apply any modern notions of slut-shaming or anti-sex-worker rhetoric. The reader understands that options for women’s employment outside of domestic service in these island colonies were severely limited.

Dorothy’s narrative exposes both vulnerability in her relationships with her children and her significant others and also in her resolve to maintain her status. Far too often, Black women in historical fiction are reduced to tropes such as the “strong Black woman” that are not realistic to historical or modern readers. Or even worse, authors who completely erase the presence of Black women in the late Georgian and Regency Era by only featuring white women.

The challenge in reading Island Queen for those uninitiated in Caribbean history of this era is to separate our modern historical knowledge from the reality Dorothy faces. Although Riley’s narrative does not make excuses for her questionable decisions, the narration makes clear that Dortothy is navigating a racist, sexist and classist society. Part of Dorothy’s later wealth comes from owning slaves. This was not a decision based on wanting to inflict cruelty, but due to the power dynamics in colonial society which punished those who refused to participate in the slave trade. Dorothy opposes slavery but also realize that open rebellion will cost her life or the lives of those around her. She is not isolated from the violence of slave rebellions and of the consequences of suppression. Riley in the Author’s Note says Kirwan freed all of her slaves in 1833 when slavery in Demerara was officially outlawed.

Dorothy’s narrative may have the background makings of a tragedy, but Riley reveals that her life was ultimately a success. Kirwan built her business and eventually reunited most members of her family. She even saw her children marry successfully and met several of her grandchildren. None of her children lived in poverty and she prevented all of them from working as slaves. While some may wish her various relationships could have created a permanent happy ever after, the real satisfaction comes from seeing Kirwan preserve her legacy for the next generation. Real Black historical stories such as Kirwan’s are incredibly rare in US and UK media as wholly fictional composite characters dominate existing period dramas and historical fiction novels. Island Queen, if enough people read it, could become a TV or movie adaptation that would give viewers the real truths of late 18th Century/Regency Era Caribbean history. The genre is overdue for a biography adaptation led by Black writers without the white gaze.

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Island Queen will be available in bookstores July 6th. You can order the book here.

The post From Bridgerton to Sanditon—Putting Island Queen in a Period Drama Context appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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thewhumperinwhite · 4 years

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Cafe Soulmates: Eye Trauma Edition

SO it occurred to me that with the timeline I set for Soulmate AU, Pax’s mark is a reference to the fact that they only have one eye, but the events that result in the loss of their eye (as detailed in A Vivid Memory) don’t actually have any reason to occur if they meet the boys before the Bad End of their relationship with Vic. So their mark is a reference to a thing that Doesn’t Actually Occur.

So I, you know, Fixed That.

This takes place a few months after Soulmate AU parts one and two, with references to events that happen immediately after part 2, which i’m keeping intentionally vague for now.

(also just cause there’s a very brief reference to it here and in the last one: part of the Lore is that soulmate marks fade to gray if the person they represent dies.)

TW for: EYE TRAUMA, referenced unhealthy relationship dynamics/abusive relationship/gaslighting, gore, betrayal; mild unhealthy thought patterns; vague references to a past suicide attempt.

@whumpitywhumpwhump @burtlederp @gottalovethemwriters

----

The objective of Pax’s trip back upstate to Vic’s lab is to get their stuff and say goodbye. And their soulmates’ guarded sympathy (Kent) and open horror (Sol) at Pax’s description of their relationship (with their boss, who is more than twice as old and three times as rich as they are) is still very fresh in their mind.

But... but it’s harder to remember in Vic’s actual presence. When they tell him they’re leaving, he takes it so well, gathers up the few things he ever let them actually leave at his house (they’ve always been his dirty little secret, that was the initial appeal of the whole thing), cups their face in his soft cold hand and tells them he’ll miss them, and it’s—suddenly it seems dumb that Sol and Kent were so worried about this, that Sol practically begged them not to come. Sol and Kent are—well, Pax loves them, obviously, and knows they want the best for them. But they’re also naïve babies who are probably—projecting their own trauma onto a perfectly safe illicit affair that Pax has under complete control.

So—because it’s in person, and Vic smiles and squeezes their hand, and they owe him after all the patience he had with them when they were young and embarrassing—when Vic says he wishes Pax could help him with one more thing, as a real goodbye, Pax doesn’t say no.

----

Sol is pacing, and he doesn’t know how long he’s been pacing but it must be for a long time because Kent is one of the most patient people he knows and even Kent is starting to get impatient with him.

“It’s just—It’s just a bad fucking idea,” he says, as his best attempt at a defense.

“I know,” Kent says.

“I mean, Jesus, they wouldn’t even tell us this guy’s name, how fucking shady is that? And they fucking worked for him.”

“I know,” Kent says.

“And they’re—they want us to think they’re so tough, they want us to think there’s nothing that can hurt them, but they’re not that much older than we are,” he says, taking a long drag that kills his third cigarette in ten minutes.

“I know,” Kent says, appearing suddenly in front of Sol and distracting him with a warm hand on his shoulder and then snatching the cigarette out of his mouth. “Sol,” Kent says, and searches Sol’s face with his big blue eyes, and then sighs. “Will you sit down, please? You’re making me dizzy.” And Kent steps back out of his space, taking Sol’s cigarette with him, which isn’t fair at all. Sol plops down on his shitty couch, running a hand roughly through his hair.

Kent stubs the cigarette carefully out on an ashtray Karine made in tenth grade art class—one of the few things Sol took with him when he left home, and probably the dumbest of them—and Sol literally isn’t even trying to be an asshole when he immediately pulls another one out of his pocket and lights it. He just needs something to do with his hands and his mouth.

Kent turns back, sees the lit cigarette in Sol’s mouth, draws back like an angry mother (Sol imagines, anyway; he doesn’t actually remember having one of those). Sol blinks at him. “What?” he says blankly around the cigarette.

“Jesus Christ, Sol,” Kent snaps, stomping forward, and this time he doesn’t bother with the cigarette dangling from Sol’s surprised parted lips, he dives straight for the pocket of Sol’s hoodie instead. “Give me your fucking lighter,” he snaps.

“What? No!” Sol shoves Kent’s hand away and Kent obligingly plants his knee next to Sol’s hip and climbs halfway in Sol’s lap, which is more than enough incentive for Sol not to give in easily. He leans back, more to keep from burning Kent with the end of his cigarette than anything else, and grabs the hand Kent is using to reach for his pocket to twine their fingers together and trap Kent’s hand against his chest. Kent uses his other hand to grab the lit cigarette and toss it behind him—it lands on the glass-top coffee table, so that should be fine—and his fingertips brush Sol’s lips, and then he twists that arm between them to reach for Sol’s pocket, grabbing hold of Sol’s lighter and darting his hand behind his back. Sol leans into him to reach for it, and Kent twists until Sol’s momentum tips him over backwards onto the couch, trapping his hand and Sol’s lighter underneath him, and Sol laughs, grateful for the transparent effort at a distraction, and swings his leg across Kent’s hips, happy enough to wrestle if that’s what Kent—

They both feel it at the same time.

The explosion of phantom pain in the whole right hemisphere of Sol’s face punches all the air out of him, his head dropping onto Kent’s chest, and he feels Kent gasp under him, hit with the same force—the pain is sharp, and burning, and not theirs.

Sol can’t move because horror has pulled all his muscles tight and he can’t relax them enough even to lift his head. Kent is equally still underneath him.

“Oh no,” Kent says, his voice all breath.

“Where are they,” Sol whispers, and he feels Kent force in a breath underneath him, hopes to god he’s getting something—Kent can feel shit Sol can’t even tell is there, and—and Pax is the best with directions, goddammit, but Sol will make it work, between the two of them they can—they can—

Kent sits up, pushing Sol off with one hand, gentle because he’s too distracted to use his full strength. His other hand is pressed hard over his right eye.

“They’re—they—fuck,” Kent croaks, holding a fistful of Sol’s hoodie like he needs it to stay upright. “I can’t—I can’t think, Sol, they’re hurt,” Kent says, his voice rising in growing panic.

“Can you tell what’s wrong?” Sol asks him urgently, reaching for Kent’s shoulder to better see his face, and because he knows Kent panics less when you hold him tightly—and Kent’s got the best sense of the three of them, his feelings are more specific. Sol’s is already fading to nothing but a dull ache in his head, he knows it’s physical pain but beyond that it could be anything.

Kent lets Sol turn him, though the eye he isn’t covering is unfocused and he isn’t seeing Sol at all. “It’s bad,” Kent whispers, his voice soft and horrified. “Is this what it was like when you—?”

“Yes,” Sol says immediately, but Kent is staring at him now instead of through him, his eye widening in alarm, and while Sol watches Kent drops the hand he’s had pressed against his face and reaches out toward Sol and—pushes the collar of Sol’s hoodie open, his fingers brushing lightly where their shared mark sits above the collar of his undershirt—the mark they’ve both had since birth, Pax’s mark.

It’s a stylized image of an eye, with a sharp slash down the middle of it.

“Phone,” Kent says, and his eyes dart back up to Sol’s face, all trace of panic gone, replaced with a firm mouth and blazing eyes; Sol’s heart seizes painfully in his chest because it’s a very Pax expression. “Ping their phone. Even if they don’t have it with them it’s a start.” And then he’s on his feet, shrugging into the coat he’s been borrowing from Sol. “I’m gonna start asking the neighbors if one of them will let us use their car.”

“You what?” Sol says, scrambling to his feet. He’s lived in this apartment for three years, during which time he’s cultivated what he considers a very healthy don’t-tell-the-landlord-about-the-extra-people-living-in-my-apartment-and-I-won’t-tell-him-about-the-impenetrable-weed-fog-from-yours-Dave-from-317 relationship. He certainly doesn’t know any of them well enough to say “hey, yeah, sorry, another soulmate bleeding to death, can I borrow your car.”

“They like me. I watch General Hospital with Miriam in 309 when you’re at work. Ping their phone.”

And Kent whirls out of Sol’s apartment like he isn’t hiding from the cops. “What the fuck,” Sol mutters to himself.

Then he sees where the icon for Pax’s phone is. His second “what the fuck” is a lot louder.

----

Pax’s arm is shaking badly from the effort of pressing it against their eye, trying to stop the blood, and it still isn’t working, is still gushing between their fingers and running down their face. They barely feel the second hit, when the knife slides between their ribs, and then they dive for the gun, falling over and sliding in their own blood, and spin around, not trying to get up, and pull the trigger three times.

The dry click of the empty chamber is the loudest sound they’ve ever heard.

The security guard pulled to a stop when they pointed the gun, and now he grins and takes a step closer, so Pax whips the gun end over end at his head as hard as they can, and then they follow it, throwing themself at the arm holding the knife. They gun hits the guard’s forehead, hard, rocking him back, and Pax gets a good (blood-slick) grip on his arm, but they have to take their hand off their eye in the interest of getting ahold of the knife, and now the blood is fairly pouring down their face and hot and sticky down their neck and soaking into the collar of their shirt. The guard’s arm swings behind him with the force of their momentum and when he doesn’t immediately drop the knife they think fuck it and turn their head, open their mouth, and sink their teeth into his bicep, hard. The guard howls and his hand loosens around the knife enough that Pax can wrap their bloody fingers around the handle, they’re pulling it from his hand with a surge of desperate triumph and then the guard makes a fist with his other arm and slams it full force against Pax’s ruined right eye.

Pax screams. (A hundred miles away, Sol almost swerves off the road.)

They don’t lose their hold of the knife, but suddenly they’re on their back and the guard is standing above them, panting, clutching his arm below the shoulder where Pax bit him. His knuckles are dripping with Pax’s blood.

The door of the lab they’ve been fighting over slides open and Vic Michaelis is standing in the doorway. Pax feels the eye they still have well up immediately even though Vic isn’t a fighter, because Vic is a grown up and he’ll know what to do.

Vic looks at them on the floor, looks at the gun--the gun Vic gave them, which was empty, why would--that’s a big mistake to make if he knew there was security here, how could he even have--

“You idiot,” Vic says. “What the fuck is this?” He stomps into the room, headed straight for the guard, who—isn’t attacking. “What part of ‘no serioius damage’ was unclear to you?”

Pax stares up at Vic. Blood is pouring down their face but they can’t move, they are frozen completely solid.

“Oh, fuck you, man,” the guard says, annoyed. “Asshole fucking bit me. You didn’t pay me to catch a fucking weasel.”

This—isn’t happening. It isn’t—they—no. Pax scoots back, away from Vic and the guard, who are now standing next to each other, and not fighting, and both looking down at where they are sprawled on the floor. Vic’s face is—irritated, harried, and nothing deeper than that.

“Ugh,” Vic says, wrinkling his nose down at Pax. “Christ. What a mess.”

Pax stares at Vic. Thinks of his stillness while he listened to them tell him they were leaving and not coming back. Thinks of the way his face went blank before he smiled and told them he was happy. Thinks of the things in his lab, and how Pax decided years ago to pretend they didn’t know, and how they told themselves it was because they loved him, and how really it was because they were afraid.

Vic turns to the guard, maybe to give him instructions. The guard glares at him. Neither of them are looking at Pax, and the blood-covered knife is still in their hand.

There’s a part of them—the part made of wounded pride and hurt feelings, that thinks being known as a gullible child is worse than being dead—that would like to throw themselves at Vic Michaelis, bowl him over, stay until one of them is dead and either way they aren’t stuck as some dumbass easy-to-fuck-over sugar baby, and six months ago when there was nothing to lose except their pride they would have listened.

But they’ve got more to lose, now, and they can’t hurt themselves without also hurting other, better, more important people.

They throw the knife instead.

It spins end over end and buries itself in Vic’s sternum. It’s not a great wound, not lethal or even that inconvenient, probably, but it does buy them enough time to shoot to their feet and sprint for the door of the lab.

With their back turned they don’t know who fires the shot that clips their shoulder on the way out. But they’re pretty sure the guard didn’t have a gun.

In a different world, when Pax Field makes it out of the lab and into the surrounding woods and collapses against a tree to pant and press their hand over their eye and sob, as quietly as they can, sinking to the forest floor and shaking with the force of it, they are utterly, entirely alone. They cry for twenty minutes at the most and then they drag themselves up and stumble four miles to a payphone and call 911. It is the most alone they ever feel in a life characterized, at least at the start, entirely by loneliness.

In this world love is written across their chest and around their wrists in bold colors, and they curl up at the base of the tree and press their forehead into their knees and their hand over their ruined eye and think, as hard and as loud as they can, come find me. Come find me. Come find me.

---

The last thirty miles of the drive upstate hurtle by in tense silence. Sol grips the wheel at perfect ten-and-two with white knuckles; Kent doesn’t have a wheel to grip so he leans forward with his hands against the dashboard instead. The car belongs to Dave from 317, whose soulmark is on the back of his knee, gray as smoke, and who didn’t even wait for Kent to finish his plea before he handed the keys over.

There will be time for Sol to rethink his impressions of his neighbors later, maybe. Like there will be time to wonder what the fuck Pax’s phone is doing at his father’s house. Sometime after they get there and he stops his soulmate from dying, again.

When they’re still more than ten miles away from the house where Sol grew up, where Pax’s fucking sugar daddy apparently lives, which is math Sol is desperately keeping his brain from doing because there will be plenty of time to throw up after Pax isn’t dying, Kent suddenly lurches forward, hand shooting out to grip Sol’s shoulder almost painfully, and yells “Wait!”

Sol slams on the brakes without even consciously deciding to, and stares at Kent, almost panting.

“Turn here,” Kent says, indicating a tiny little turnoff half hidden in overgrown bushes and weeds.

“What?” Sol says, squinting into the darkness. “There’s nothing here, their phone—”

“It’s this way,” Kent says, leaning forward in his seat, eyes fixed on the darkness of that little trail like he can see into it. His hand is still on Sol’s shoulder, though he isn’t squeezing anymore; it seems more like he’s forgotten it’s there.

“Fuck,” Sol says, “fine, okay,” and he turns off the road, and then feels a hot line of pain rip through the top of Pax’s shoulder; the car fishtails badly and he only just manages to hit the brake again before it goes plows into a line of trees.

Sol hunches over the wheel, gasping. Kent’s hand is in a fist on Sol’s shoulder again, holding a handful of Sol’s hoodie like it’s a lifeline.

“Fucking drive,” Kent wails, and Sol wrestles the car back onto the little half-overgrown road and hits the gas hard.

Halfway down the road Kent flaps his hand, hitting Sol’s shoulder repeatedly like a little kid trying to get their parents’ attention. “Stop the car stop the car stop the car—”

And when Sol does Kent throws his door open almost before they’ve come to a stop and throws himself out into the dark woods.

“Fuck!” Sol yells, and stumbles out after him.

The moon is out, and this far from the city the stars are bright on Kent’s hair, and Sol thinks if Kent weren’t blonde he’d have lost him a dozen times over by now. The trees fly by; Kent’s hurtles through them at a dead sprint and Sol has to push himself hard to keep up, with no idea where there going, just trusting that Kent knows, and trusting Pax to hold together till they get there, and trusting himself to be any help at all when they do. Branches scratch at his face and grab at his jeans and his hoodie and he barely feels them at all, all his focus on the uneven ground under his feet and the blonde head bobbing along in front of him.

Kent stops so abruptly that Sol has to grab a passing tree to keep from tumbling right into him, and then he makes a horrible sound—a sharp cry that sounds like it’s been torn out of him—and stumbles forward again, falling to his knees in front of a dark shape that Sol can’t really see in the darkness.

Then the sky clears even more or Sol’s eyes adjust or soul magic intervenes because he can see that the shape is a person with a mess of pink hair, curled up at the base of a tree with their knees drawn up to their chest and their head bowed.

Then they look up and Sol draws back so fast he slips on the muddy ground and lands hard on his ass.

“Shit,” Kent says, his hands hovering over Pax’s blood-matted hair, the gory ruin of the right half of their face, their torn-open shoulder, like he wants to pull them close but is afraid to touch them. Sol scrambles towards them on his hands and knees to see better—their face is the hardest to look away from, the hand pressed over their eye is more red than brown, the blood running in half-dried rivulets down their arm; their black turtleneck is stiff and shiny with it.

Pax looks at them, sees them, incredibly; raises the hand not pressed to their face to grab a fistful of Kent’s shirt, and gurgles, “You came,” in a terrible wet voice.

Kent turns back to Sol, his face set and determined again. “We’ve got to get them to the car.”

Sol stares at him, feeling like a kid, feeling scared stupid. Then he muscles the fear down, swallows it and doesn’t let himself gag, squares his shoulders. “You can’t lift for shit,” he says, scooting closer. “I’ve got them.”

Pax hears him say it, and seems to sigh out all the tension that’s been keeping them upright, and immediately sags sideways; Sol catches them, exchanges a frightened look with Kent, and gathers them in, more carefully than he’s ever done anything. Pax is taller than he is, there’s no non-awkward way to do it, and he ends up lifting them onto his hip like a huge blood-covered baby, their long muscly legs wrapped around his waist, and Pax clings to him tightly, crossing their feet together behind his back and using the hand that isn’t holding their eye in their head to grab onto the back of Sol’s shirt and hold on, two-hundred pounds of dense muscle; and their shoulder-wound is easy to forget about in comparison to their face but Sol can immediately feel blood from it soaking into his hoodie and the adrenaline keeps him going, while Kent clears the way in front of him at a tense jog, warning him of roots he can’t see and sweeping branches out of his way.

They’ll have to pay Dave to get his car cleaned, Sol thinks, when he lowers Pax into the backseat. Kent climbs in with them and Pax leans against him, and then huffs out a shaky breath and climbs over into his lap, burying their face in his shoulder. Kent goes tense as a wire—presumably at the terrifying volume of tacky half-dry blood involved—and then visibly makes himself relax, digs in his pocket and tosses his phone towards where Sol is hovering just outside the car.

“Search for the nearest hospital,” he says tersely, and Sol is halfway through typing it in when Pax’s voice drifts outs, muffled by Kent’s shirt.

“…can’t go… hospital,” they mutter.

Sol stares at them. “You what?” he snaps.

Pax lifts their head to frown at Kent. Their hand is still pressed over their eye; their nose and Kent’s are almost touching. “We fucking. Kidnapped you. They’ll catch you. We can’t go to a hospital.”

Kent stares at Pax, somewhere between horrified and furious. “You—who cares? Pax, you’re fucking bleeding to death!”

Pax frowns. It’s a small car and there really isn’t room for them to sit up while they’re on Kent’s lap; they lean back against the front seatback, their knees braced on either side of Kent’s thighs. “So were you,” they say nonsensically, sounding almost defensive.

Sol can just barely see Kent’s embarrassed flush in the moonlight, and he turns his head away, so he’s not looking at Sol or Pax. “Yeah, and you made me go to the hospital,” he snaps.

Pax plucks at Kent’s shirt, the visible less-bloody half of their face softening, until Kent looks back at them.

“They’ll catch you,” Pax says softly, their visible eye big and sad while the other side of their face is utterly covered in blood.

Kent stares at them, still with that defensive-furious-alarmed look on his face.

“Clinic,” Sol says, almost to himself, and then grabs Kent’s sleeve in one hand and Pax’s in the other so they both turn to look at him, Pax rather unsteadily. “We passed a clinic on the way here.”

Kent’s frown deepens. “A local clinic won’t have the resources for—”

“And in the middle of the night a local clinic’ll have a much smaller staff for us to threaten or bribe if that’s what we have to do,” Sol says, trying to sound absolutely certain. He looks at Pax, who’s breathing hard but now almost smiling at him, and then at Kent, who very much isn’t.

“There’s still three of us,” Sol says to him, and Kent blinks, hard, like he wants to drop his gaze but can’t. “They’re not taking you away from me any more than they’re taking Pax.”

Pax sags sideways, halfway out of the car, until Sol catches them, which was apparently their intention; they bonk their head lightly against his shoulder. “Good. Good boy, Sol. Thanks.”

Sol shakes his head, loving them so much his stomach hurts, and pushes them back upright. “Okay, idiot. Then when we get you sewn back together you can explain why you didn’t tell me you were fucking my dad.”

“What,” says Kent. Pax sighs, and leans forward to hide their face in Kent’s shoulder again.

“Your dad’s an asshole,” they say, which is the opposite of the denial Sol was hoping for.

But there will be time to unpack that horrible mess later. Plenty of time, because none of them are going to die.

Sol climbs into the front seat of the borrowed car and guns the engine. He’s pretty sure he can remember the way back to the clinic whose sign they passed on the way here. And after that he’s pretty sure he can make them save Pax whether they want to or not. That’s about as far into the future as Sol can even try to see. But there’s still three of them, and really he doesn’t need anything more than that.

#soulmate au #cafe extras #whump #original whump #eye horror #betrayal #rescue #polyamorous soulmates #oc: pax #oc: kent #oc: sol #eye trauma tw #gore tw

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researchpaperservices-us-uk-blog · 8 years

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Human Resource Management

Theses Statement: Advances in technology along with shifts in the tribes tender structure heavily usurpation the eng climb onment vex milieu, creating a accept for new oversight models in adult male picks.\n\nA. An Historical prospect of business concerns in the States\n\n A. The egress of gentlemans gentleman Re seed focussing as a section of prevalent Man advancement.\n\nIII. Developing Human Resource Policy\n\n A. What HRM Professionals keep back to Say\n\nV. Whither to From Here? - HRM Models for substructure\n\nB. Alternate Work Systems - a Comparrison Table\n\n This paper is scripted from the perspective that Human Resource Man ripenment (HRM) practices atomic name 18 continu in ally evolving to bump into the channelizes of dynamic make environments. New technologies, to a greater extent and to a greater extent speedy exchanges of information, kindly paradigm shifts and the restructuring of family systems change heavily to the necess ity to prevail and apply methods of HRM that meet the inevitably of industry, proles and consumers. To do so soundly, romance and creativity atomic number 18 ask in addition to on-going sense of the bottom line.\n\n At the speculation of the twentieth century, the bulk of line of productss in America were held in ii argonas, agriculture and industry. Population dissemination tables for that metre demonst respect that roughly of the nation inhabited unpolished aras rather than urban argonas. This go along to be the trend up until WWII, when men left the agricultural to fight and women left cracker-barrel America to fill mill cheats as their contri justion to the state of war struggle. This expungement was the beginning of nationwide body of change by reversal and societal changes that cod accelerated during the last unrivalled(a)(a)-half of the 20th century.\n\n The play from country-bred to suburban environments changed the course we did bus iness boldness as a nation. Where across-the- poster families resided in and supported some(prenominal)ly early(a) in culturally specify rural settings, atomic families found themselves alone in homogenous neighborhoods. (1) This created a occupy for goods and services that were at a time renderd by extended family and community members, arising up new markets and creating origins. It as hale created the get to recognize the vigilance of proles as a break a mien and formal discipline. \n\n As we move into the 21st century we mint trace our nations business produce over the last ascorbic acid years. We moved from an agrarian undercoat to an industrial one. By the mid-50s the studyity of antics were found in fixingsies. Manufacturing suffered voiceless b small-scales during the latish 60s and former(a) seventies and was dis primed(p) by the service industry. With the closing of the 20th century those services train reverse progressively tech nological. \n\n last those changes requires line upation, not further in the retooling of physical plants and the educateing workers, totally when to a fault in the way we man develop those workers. Some bump that on that arrangement appears to be an underlie theme in countersigns and written document on the subject of HRM, that at that place is only one condition way to manage mess. (2) Maslow on Management take awayers a a lot diverse approach, demonstrating conclusively that one sizing does not locomote all; i.e., that different slew train to be managed differently.\n\n HMR models run on the assumption that there is a star duty way to manage masses ar using workplace criteria that atomic number 18 quickly congruous a thing of the past. The one way model popular opinions people running(a) for an disposal as employees who work plenteous clipping and ar solely subordinate on that organization for their living and their smell storys. These em ployees generally were viewed as subordinates with re exigent or genuinely nail acquisition sets. (3)\n\n These images of the worker whitethorn accept been valid several decades ago. However, today e truly one of these images has be capture insupportable. sequence the studyity of people working for an organization may be catswelled headrise as employees, a real large and steadily growth minority - by working for the organization - no nightlong work as employees, nevertheless instead as step forwardsource flummoxors. \n\n The concept of subordinate positions is fading as well, even in those areas that are considered fairly low direct. As technology sours change magnitudely more than complex extra k straightledge is required in all operations. Subordinates, add-on their skill sets, become associates. The secretary, with knowledge of specialise software, becomes the Administrative Assistant. In collection for the organization to run smoothly, the exclusi ve(a) who does his job well, often has more knowledge virtually his job than his boss. (4) For poser, the vice president of marketing may know a great deal slightly selling, unless nothing al some market research, pricing, packaging, service, or gross revenue forecasting. Workers in these positions may pass over to the vice president, exclusively are often experts in their give areas. \n\n Formerly, lower technological expectations and a firmly established power structure allowed general managers to delegate narrowly defined military group responsibilities to those execution as specia listings. Today however, more(prenominal) practices would be inefficient to the point of being considered static, and moldiness be replaced. To go to do so would be to ignore and fail to palm the many a(prenominal) new pressures that demand a all-embracing and more strategic view in relation to the organizations gentleman picks.\n\n From the view point of ordinary Management, w hat does the organization direct? The worldwide Mangement picture of HRM is viewed from a world(a) perspective, as demonstrated by a vision of wad 500 CEOs in 1989. The results of that survey de terminal figureined that effective centering of Human Resources mustinessiness address corporate unavoidably in the eight following areas:\n\n 1. change magnitude international competition makes the wish for greatly improved gentlemans gentleman production mandatory. The crisis experienced in both the automobile and brand industries aid as undefended illustrations. Foreign commission practices, in portionicular Japanese circumspection models, are being r unwrapined to moderate developing HRM techniques, especially those that come along to adjoin employee committal patch providing companies with a long term source of workers with necessary competencies and skills. \n\n2. As organizations increase in size and complexity tier upon layer of management has resulte d in expensive, still not particularly effective, bureaucracies. manifold layers of management in like manner serve to isolate workers from the competitive environment in which organizations operate \n\nas well as friendship constitution makers. Its hoped that a reduction of middle management layering go out put workers nestled to the competitive environment, fostering commitment to the organization as well as sharpening the competitive edge. transnational companies catch additional challenges in managing human picks, and need to adapt policies to work at heart versatile cultures and vastly different genial determine.\n\n3. Some companies may expect declining markets or slower growth, handicapping the organizations cleverness to bear advancement opportunities and job security. How then to attract and retrain a competent and passing skilled work effectiveness?\n\n4. Greater government social run short in human imagination practices generates a need to go over HRM policies and mandates the development of new policies. For example, the Americans with Disabilities act upon mightinessd the revision of HRM policies in companies across the nation. \n\n5. Americas manpower has become increasely more educated devising it necessary to second thought assumptions about employee capabilities and the delegation of responsibilities. Under employment of employee talent is a major travail of workforce turnover. \n\n6. Expectations and the assesss of the workforce are changing, particularly those values and expectations relative to authority. This fosters a need to analyse how much involvement and influence workers should be given. Means of voicing employee concerns and addressing those concerns with referable act need to be provided.\n\n7. As workers become more concerned with life and move satisfaction corporations are revisiting tralatitious life paths and planking more alternative career paths that own into status employee lifestyle inescapably. \n\n8. demographic shifts in the workforce, particularly the infusion of women and minorities into organizations, are causing corporations to reexamine all policies, practices and values that meet the treatment, responsibilities, and advancement of these groups. (5)\n\nHow do comprehensive General Management issues advert HRM departments and practices? While narrower in electron orbit than those concerns voiced by General Management, impact areas determine by HRM victors closely mirrored major corporate of necessity identified by General Managers. \n\nHuman Resource professionals, in an effort to meet the needs of both worker and organization, name examined ways to ensure a want working environment plot of ground change magnitude productivity. In the early 1990s, the advisory board of the job clear House were asked to refer the issues that they felt would shape the mathematical spot of human resource functions in the next decade. Commerce Clearing House advisory board members saw four important HRM areas where current issues would influence the position of the human resource function in the near future day: allowance; talk and personnel practices; employment relations; and equate Employment Opprtunity requirments. (6)\n\n Compensation issues cogitate on the diversity of worker needs, pay-for-performance plans, and the convention of employee welfare plans. tractableness and adaptability in HRM practices are primordial winding keys in addressing worker needs. Job sharing, staggered scheduling and flex time are some of the progenys generated by creative approaches to HRM practices. hire-for-performance plans hold the decoy of rewarding productivity epoch providing monetary need. Successful executing of much(prenominal) practices, however, require effective performance evaluations. To attempt such compensation without valid, reliable, and standard opinion instruments is to court litigation.\n \n Fairness is a national concern powerfully affecting human resource managers. Personnell plansfocused soley on organizational needs must be chuck out to benefit workers and organizations alike. One example is the growing social phenomena of deuce career couples. As the come increase nepotism policies must be reexamined. Managing change and preparing people for change also require HRM professionals to rethink policy. New demands for an increase in functions such as retrain evolve as workers move done change. \n\n Training and professional development are essential in all areas of operation. so far the lowest clerk needs to stay abreast of the current innovations brought on by good advancement. The march of technology, however, not only changes jobs, it makes some of them redundant or obsolete. In an era of caller-out reconfiguration it becomes plain that layoffs and divestirtures will exceed when re reproduction isnt an option. Outplacement policies must be consi dered and developed in formulation of the need. HRM professionals also understand the need for the development of effective HR auditing instruments to measure employee perceptions of management candor and the climate for effective communication within the company. The information obtained by employee attitude surveys can be greatly beneficial to supervisors, but only if theyve been trained to use it. (7)\n\n The legal environment of personnell management is many fingered and quite a comprehensive. In addition to regulations stemming from the occupational Safety and Health cultivate (OSHA), passed in 1970, HRM is greatly touch by the broad comprehensive of Equal Employment luck (EEO) regulation. As well as protecting workers form unlikeness based on race, color, or creed, EEO serves workers in many otherwise areas. Age inconsistency also falls under this umbrella. With an increasing number of age discrimination suits, organizations need to develp a sensitvity to age issues and policy special(prenominal) to one-time(a) employees. \n\n A recent off shoot of EEO is the American with Disablities portrayal (ADA). ADA has created a need for new policies and procedures in accommidating employees with handicaps and disabilities. The appear legal view that Acquired resistive Deficiancy Syndrome (AIDS) is a handicap brings policy examinations about AIDS test to the forefront. There is great effectiveness for conflict in providing for the needs of other employees and creates an HRM channel that must be carefully navigated.\n\n earn plans that are regulated by the Employee Retirement Income Security human action (ERISA) require special attention. Companies must be prepared to provide resources that not only offer such plans but also impeccably manage those employee benefit plans. Failure to do so will lead to attendant suits by employees challenge plans that are out of compliance with ERISA disclosure, insurance coverage and fiduciary s tandards are problematic. \n\n Governemnt regulation is also partly liable for shifting attention from married couple group representation to regulations and policies that show the mightys of individual employees. It is mandatory that this factor be taken into consideration in personnel preparedness and policy qualification. The role of unions as bargaining units is on the disapprove and will continue to come down as bargaining relationships become increasingly stable. This translates to decreased beam activity and few actions filed with the interior(a) Labor Relations advance (NLRB). While that is a confident(p) outcome the trade-off must be recognized, prepared and carded for. While businesses will see fewer strikes, they can expect to see increasing numbers of employment-at-will and improper discharge suits. An additional considertion affects employers who contract unstable employees. This practice is experiencing an increasing number of suits by temporar y employees alleging unlawful activity. This surely infl!\n\n It should come as no bewilderment that such pressures have created the need for a greater dialect on the human sight of business. With something so seemingly unmistakable the qustion is why hasnt this human expectation been addressed before? It may be due, in part, to the aim to educate, develop, and train managers to fixate on analytical and technical aspects plot of land assuming that business as usual in transaction with employees was sufficient to promote productivity.\n\n So why are companies now hoping to contract solutions to business problems in the human side of green light? The answer lies in part to growing societal pressures. annoying over the condition of blue-color jobs in the 1930s, as well as civil rights and equal hazard legislation in the sixties and 1970s, has paved the way to revamping HRM policies to recognize and respond to shifting social values. More simply put, other approaches to improve employee productivity and organizational effectiveness havent worked. (9) \n\n The area of single near impact on worker performance lies remote of the work environment. Family needs are the chief(a) cause of absenteeism, tardiness, and lower productivity. (9) The here are several factors creating this phenomena. origin there is the steady give of women into the work place. In 1970, 20.2% of women worked outside the home. That figure grew to 73.8% in 1995. The increase in two career couples has assisted families in reaching financial stability and modify a need for ad hominem satisfaction. It has also, however, created a void in care giving that was traditionally a womans role. other major cause of family issues impact is the increasing number of single parent homes. integrity parent homes have bountiful from 12% in 1970 to 49.8 % in 1995. (10) As the sole point of child rearing is placed on a worker, childcare arrangements, school pledges, and childhoo d illnesses are far more presumable to interfere with attendance and productivity. \n\n Another social phenomenon, which strains workers and, in turn, disrupts the workplace, is increasing longevity. As the population grows old the phenomena of living longer allows workers the senior highlife of postponing marriage and having children. Its comparatively common today for couples to postpone their first child until their late thirties or early forties, a time formerly used for the preparation of an mindless nest. Instead of retiring to grandparenthood these subsequently in life parents are dealing with teenagers and how to get them by dint of college. A large region of the workforce now finds itself in the position of not only having children to care for, but senior parents as well. Add to the list of family pressures the moral and financial obligation workers must contend with in providing for the wellbeing of two generations. The American worker is now face up with a double jonah in the attempt to meet family needs. \n\n When looking at the increasing longevity of the workforce, one must consider that gear up of the life-size picture which has to do with the rate that people retire. Its estimated that within the next twenty to thirty years the privacy age in developed countries will, by necessity, move up to seventy-nine or so. Seventy-nine, in cost of health and life expectancy, correlates with the age of sixty-five and the health and life expectancies of 1936, when the United States, the last occidental country to do so, choose a national retirement plan (Social Security). (11) As America continues to gray, a significant percentage of the work force will develop unprecedented needs that are geriatric in nature, impacting worker expectations of benefit packages.\n\n The question facing business in the future is determining what that age and experience are expense in terms of monetary compensation and benefits. This is a predic ament currently being face by the Armed Forces, with many branches finding themselves to be overtake heavy with senior officers. The documentation resources dedicated to personnel are not distributed in a fashion that attracts and retains military members, badly jeopardizing the productivity of military organizations. (12) This is germane(predicate) in that many clubby organizations as well as public and government agencies are finding themselves in the kindred position. Retirement Incentive bonuses have become common place and are a primary tool used by organizations to cull the workforce. Will this lie a viable message of thinning an aging workforce?\n\n In addition to family pressures, and pay and benefits needs, there is a growing concern throughout the nations work force concerning quality of life. While benefits and compensation are key to employee satisfaction, and thus productivity, a strong value is placed on the excited satisfaction one finds professionally . These activated perks come out of all areas, and are as inviolable as additional training and added responsibility or as intangible as recognition, appreciation, and creativity. (13) billet must take into account the social implications of such information, as it becomes essential to address staff needs and to determine fortunate strategies that should surround any HRM policy.\n\n The management of human resources centers on a single canonic function of the management process: staffing. The HRM professional is charged with matching the right person to the job. While recruitment is an exacting area of HRM, a more significant piece of employee productivity lies in motivation. motivation methods are key to fashoning prosperous HRM models. Motivation is a deceivingly simple concept but probably one of the most complex components of human resource management. \n\n Motivation is simple in terms of human behavior. pot are basically prompt or driven to act in ways tha t they find rewarding. So the lying-in seems casual; just find out what they want and hold it out as a contingent on(p) reward or inducing. It becomes complex when trying to find a universal incentive in a very versatile workforce. What has value to worker A may be hollow to worker B. And what has value at one point in time may become insignificant at another. For example, everyone has a need to eat. A spectacular steak dinner party, as an incentive to succesful point of a task, is motivation - as long as your thirsty(p)! Had you just eaten, a steak dinner would hold no engagement . \n\n An additional factor in the motivation equation has to do with the reality of obtaining the reward. Telling a person that they will be promoted to sales manager if sales in that jurisdiction increase is empty if that task is percevied as virtually inpossible. Two conditions must be met for motivation to occur, correspond to Vrooms expectancy conjecture of motivation. comm encement the value of the particular outcome (such as recieving a promotion) is very high for the person and, secondly, the person feels that there is a evenhandedly good chance of accomplishing the task at hand and obtaining the outcome. This is the process of motivation. (14) \n\n Theories of motivation center on a a single basic question: what do people want? Abraham Maslow states that humans have five basic categories of need; physiological, caoutchouc, social, ego, and self-actualization. These needs have been arranged in order of there importance to humans. When the basic physiological needs, food, drink, etc., are met, they no longer serve as motivation. Instead, those urges toward safety, i.e., protection and security, become the thrust force. Human beings move up this needs ladder as basic needs are met.\n\n Frederick Herzberg has divided Maslows hierarchy into two planes, the lower coming together physiological, safety and social needs, and the higher(prenomina l)(prenominal) meeting those needs surrounding ego and self actualization. Herzberg believes that the best motivation lies in satisfying those higher take aim needs. Based on his studies, Herzberg believes that factors that satisfy lower level needs, which he identifies as hygiene factors, are markedly different from those, reffered to as motivators, that satisfy higher level needs. Herzberg states that if hygeine factors are wanting(predicate) workers will become disgruntled, but once satisfied there is no incentive to perform. Therefore, hygiene factors are necesary for preventing dissatisfaction, but very inefficient in load-bearing(a) motivation.\n\n Job content, however is the source of motivating factors. Opportunities for achievement, recognition, responsibility, and more challenging jobs motivate employees. Motivating factors work because they appeal to higher level needs that are never completly satisfied. According to Herzberg, the best way to motivate employe es is to build challenge and opportunities for achievement into their jobs. Herzberg reffers to this method of applying his theory as job enrichment. Basically, job enrichment consists of building motivators like prospect for achievment into the job by making it more interesting and challenging.\n\n This theory restructures more traditional HMR models since job enrichment is often accomplished by giving workers more autonomyand allowing them to do more of the planning and command normally done by\n\na supervisor. This is diametricaly opposed to strict hierarchal models.\n\n The shifts made in HRM practices can be most easily observed in the accompanying table compare traditional and innovative HRM models.\n\n___________________________________________________\n\n handed-down Model High-Committement Model\n\n___________________________________________________\n\nnarrowly defined jobs Broadly defined jobs\n\nSpecialization of workers Rotation through jobs \n\nPay by particular(prenominal) job content Pay by skills mastered\n\nclose supervised work egotism or peer command\n\nAssignment or transfers by Team assigns members to \n\nthe rule book cover demands in conciliative fashion\n\nNo career development Promotion of skill and growth\n\nEmployees as individual parts Employees in a team\n\nEmployee kept brute about Team runs as a business: \n\n stance symbols used to Status differences \n\nNo employee feedback Broad employee participation\n\n_______________________________________________________________\n\n It seems apparent that HMR practices have evolved to more worker friendly models out of necessity. Studies have found that use of specific practices, or what are more commonly reffered to as high performance work practices enhances overall organizational practices. It was determined in a 1995 study that coarse recruitment and training procedures, incentive compensation and increa sed employe involvment are assosciated with lower levels of turnover, higher productivity, and check financial performance.\n\n With regard to identifying the noble-minded HR systemfor innovation, it may be that such a determinate HR model would be to rigid for the innovative organization and its constantly changing needs. A flexible combination of traditional and high-commitment practices, and others found to be contingent on a system of innovation, may be what organizations need to remain successfully competative.\n\nIf you want to get a full essay, order it on our website: Custom essay writing service. Free essay/order revisions. Essays of any complexity! 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