#the rooms are bigger and you can mix and match the placements I HAVE to get another house

[sheacouleecametoslay]

All-Stars 4 (2018/9)

I'm becoming disillusioned by the All-Stars series. AS2 is obviously a classic, but AS1 was D.O.A. from the moment the teams twist arrived. AS3 fell apart at the finale, or maybe it was after Ben self-eliminated. While AS4 had too many episodes and it ALSO fell apart at the finale... or maybe it was when Manila was eliminated. This season can be split into three parts: Episodes 1-3: The Gia Gunn experience Episodes 4-6: Three episodes where effectively no one is eliminated Episodes 7-10: The unsatisfying conclusion I'd say those first 3 episodes were the high point. Gia departing so early on was a major blow. Whether you love her or hate her, she provided the most entertainment. But there was just no way to justify keeping her any longer lol. Meanwhile, the middle portion of AS4 had serious pacing issues – Latrice was eliminated, then no one eliminated, then Latrice came back... so basically nothing changed in 3 episodes. This section is still enjoyable though, mainly thanks to Valentina being Valentina, Manila trying to shake things up, and the LaLaPaRUza episode. But episodes 7-10 have other issues. Valentina was the other big source of entertainment, and she's gone before final 6. Latrice overstayed after she returned. I would've preferred to see Gia back, but she would've been re-eliminated immediately. The final 5 was so thrilling that there was a suspenseful rock-paper-scissors match... yeah. And the last 2 challenges are major letdowns. The late-season acting challenges always feel like an afterthought. But the bigger crime is the ru-mix. “Read U Wrote U”, “Category Is...”, and “Kitty Girl” were my favourite challenges of their respective seasons (and “American” wasn’t bad). But “Super Queen” is so underwhelming. The verses were too short and lacked energy, and the lyrics weren't as good. But let's talk about the two elephants in the room. Firstly, Naomi eliminating Manila. Which is one of the most shocking moments in the show's herstory. A decision so unpopular that it caused production to modify the All-Stars format permanently. But I don't get the backlash. The twist was designed for exactly this to happen. I wish more queens had been open to the idea, actually. If everyone is going to vote based off of merit anyways, it's boring television, and you might as well let Ru make the decisions. Some of the votes felt personal this season anyways. Secondly, there's the double crowning. I've seen comments that the producers wanted to diversify the All-Stars winner list. But also; Trinity had the better track record, while Monet was better in the “Super Queen” challenge and she “won” the final 2 lip sync. The finale performances have to account for something right? But Mo should've been in the top 2 instead. Both of Mo's bottom placements were bulls**t, and if you take that into account, she would've (and should've) had the best track record. Also, the editing of the double win was so blatantly stitched together in post-production, with Ru's voice over and the queens not looking shocked at all. I think the producers had wanted a double crowning for a while and were just waiting for the right moment. But it didn't feel like a satisfying conclusion to this season. The other big twist of AS4 was the first ever LaLaPaRUza. The idea was definitely flawed, since all 4 eliminated queens could theoretically replace the 4 currently in the competition. Production would never allow that though. But it was a fun twist. As for the other challenges: the Talent Show wasn't as good as the previous 2, and the high placements were questionable. I want to see something unique in those Talent Shows. But I guess it's more about selling your brand. I also didn't like how they changed the Snatch Game format. The Roast was rough at times too; Lady Bunny was funnier than half of them. But I enjoyed the girls groups challenge and “Jersey Justice”. The clubs challenge looked taxing (they actually had to paint their own sets), but it was nice to see something new. “Club 96” lives in my head rent-free now. And I liked the Stacy Layne Matthews cameos. The Best Judy Makeover allowed for some meaningful moments too, like revisiting Latrice's prison story. As for the casting... a few of my faves went down in my ranking. While Valentina and Manila grew on me the most. Honestly, I liked the AS3 cast better. Manila and Latrice were the surprise entrances of AS4, going to an ad break with a teams twist fake out. They came in as legends and had totally different trajectories. Meanwhile, Mo and Monet came back immediately after Season 10. Maybe not the best idea, but I won't say no another season of Mo.

Queens Ranking: 10. Farrah Moan Farrah's intro mentioned growth, but she went right back to crying again. And this cast wasn't having it. Her whining turned into annoying self-pitying in AS4: “I never once felt like I could be a winner”; “it's gonna take me a really long time to get over it”. Farrah took the competition too seriously. She was insecure and wanted to prove she had talent. But Trinity was right – your Drag Race placement doesn't define you. She also had attitude over Mo's choreo. Then in the LaLaPaRUza episode, Farrah cried about Valentina eliminating her. She thought Valentina believed in her. That said, I was gagged when Farrah fought back against Gia (“Some of us don't have to force storylines to get their airtime”). Gia brought up this past drama out of nowhere, and Farrah didn't want any part of it. She didn't think Gia's intentions were genuine. Then on her way out, Farrah told Gia “you actually don't love me”. Otherwise lol at Farrah not knowing the veterans were LGBTQ. In the competition: Farrah wasn't funny in the Reading mini-challenge, then she fell over in the Talent Show and you can see the panic and disappointment in her face. Her glittery outfit was great though. But oh boy, Farrah's dancing in “Everybody Says Love”... 9. Latrice Royale Yeah... I wish Latrice never came back. She came off entitled on AS4?; bringing up this “unfulfilled prophecy” and saying she should stay because she's respected and beloved. The girls were hesitant to eliminate her, but Latrice shouldn't get a free pass just because she's Latrice. She had her moments like: “this ain't the first time I'm looking at your bald head” or commenting on Valentina's flat ass or “we back at Season 4 with the romper room f**kery” or “baby we don't talk about All Stars 1” or “she made her bed, lie in it... at home” or laughing her ass off while putting on the smock. She was supportive to Valentina too. But I'd rather watch Season 4 Latrice. Otherwise, she got annoyed by Gia in Snatch Game and told the judges Gia was unsportsmanlike. Then she got annoyed at Mo and Monet during the team planning. She was delusional about her “Jersey Justice” performance. And she called Mo's elimination reasoning disingenuous. Latrice claimed to have no hard feelings towards Mo, but she kept talking about it that episode. In the competition: Latrice started strong, between her flag waving in the Talent Show and her surprisingly decent flow in “Don't Funk it Up”. But then didn't bother keeping character in Snatch Game after Gia pissed her off. She also had this “I'm over it” expression during “Jersey Justice” and just stood there not talking. However, Latrice gave a lip sync worthy of returning. After that, she was a good host in the Clubs challenge. But her Makeover outfits looked like vomit. She was the obvious one to go at the Final 6. Ironically, she wasn't the worst at the Final 5 when she actually left. Also, Latrice's runways were basically the same all season. Her Plastique one was creative though. 8. Trinity The Tuck Trinity had a tough, cold, insistent way of talking (ie. “You a big ass bitch. Make it known. Honey”), just like on Season 9. But she was so bothered by everything on AS4? Every week, she was adamant about who should go home, and had a “BE GONE” attitude about it. Just no sympathy for the flops. She kept complaining about Gia, then acted nice to Gia's face during deliberation. She “ugh”-ed at Valentina's telenovela speech. She called out Monet's wardrobe. She insinuated that Manila didn't have morals for playing strategically, which was so judgmental, and yelled “ALERT ALERT” in confessional. All because Trinity wanted to beat the best. She then condescendingly told Manila “you restored my faith”. But later gave Manila recognition after the clubs challenge. Also, Trinity was bothered by the eliminated queens returning. She acted superior whenever someone came for her. And she resented working with Latrice (“...to pull my weight AND THEN SOME”). I agreed with Trinity a few times though, and she makes sense as a winner, but not a rootable one. In the competition: Did Trinity deserve her 4 wins? Snatch Games yes – she overshadowed everybody as Caitlyn Jenner and had funny interjections. “Sexy and the Kitty” sure – there wasn't much competition there. The Clubs maybe – her Spelling Bee stuff was funny. But the Talent Show no. She also wasn't funny in “Jersey Justice” and forgot her character name. She was mean in the Roast and tripped over her words. And she served nursery rhyme counting in “Super Queen”. Moreover, despite being involved in 6/13 lip syncs, I only enjoyed her in two of them. “You Spin Me Round” had the worst reveal ever. Trinity tries too hard sometimes. Her runways were polished though – After Dark, Curves and Swerves, Angelic White, and the cheetah. 7. Jasmine Masters I like Jasmine but her AS4 stint felt pointless. She was there for a good time not a long time lol. She wasn't playing to win and she didn't have much of a storyline. Even in the LaLaPaRUza episode, she wasn't doing much. I assume Jasmine was brought back because of her famous memes, since she didn't last long on Season 7. On AS4, she laughed a bunch in confessional. She decided to “wing it” with her stand-up routine, which unsurprisingly bombed. Then she got defensive during deliberation, thinking she actually was funny, and saying she had great reviews at the Laugh Factory. While in the return episode, she said she wouldn't do anything differently. Still, Jasmine had a couple funny moments like “over some balls getting pushed up” and not being able to twerk against Trinity in the lip sync. In the competition: Jasmine gave a stand-out routine about ass breath that received no laughs. And then she couldn't twerk in the lip sync. 6. Monét X Change Monet didn't show as much growth as Mo did within the same time frame. Her runways didn't improve and her track record was just as inconsistent. And I'm getting tired of the sponge references. She also annoyed me when she flip-flopped on Manila. First she vowed revenge, then she reluctantly cooled off after hearing Manila's reasoning, but then she decided to be a “petty bitch from Brooklyn” and vote Manila anyways. Monet can be opinionated at times – calling Seasons 7 and 9 boring, saying “oh s**t no” during Valentina's entrance, or thinking she'd outdo Trinity's “Sex and the Kitty” role because she knows the show. While her confessions tend to be “middle-of-the-road”, with some jokes here and there (“she might send RuPaul home!”). But she had her fun moments like asking about alien drag queens, admitting to crashing funerals, and sneaking into clubs at 12-13 years old. And her WTF face at Valentina's latest delusions was hilarious. In the competition: Monet was very hit or miss. She sold her performance in “Everybody Say Love”, and she knew how deliver a punchline in the Roast. But her voice cracked in the Talent Show, she kept referencing Whitney Houston song titles in Snatch Game, she rambled on in “Jersey Justice” (but at least she had more jokes than Trinity), and she was criticized for her characterization in “Sex and the Kitty”. Oh yeah, and I didn't understand her top 2 placement in the Makeover. Monet's runways and lip syncs were underwhelming this season as well. Her finale look was by far her best. The wine glass on her ass was funny though. 5. Naomi Smalls Naomi had the smallest edit of this cast, but she had her shady moments like: “you're my Lady Bunny” to Manila, “you have her old nose” to Monet looking like Nene Leakes, “are they your best friend” to Manila listing reasons to eliminate someone, “Did they teach you that in jail too?” to Latrice. But more importantly, Naomi is responsible for the most iconic/shocking moment of AS4 – eliminating Manila. She eliminated the queen she grew up watching, and the queen who leant her the moustache. Naomi was so unapologetic about it too - “I sent Manila home because I wanted to”. Just zero f**ks given. And the fan backlash she received was ridiculous. Naomi had the balls to do it and I love her for it. Also lol at Naomi repaying Latrice then throwing Latrice to the wolves later that same episode. And lol at her flirting with a backing dancer. In the competition: There was a perception that Naomi was just “there”. But she gave a fierce performance in “Everybody Say Love”, she was great as Wendy Williams in Snatch Game, and her Sonny & Cher inspired Makeover stood out. She also had two incredible lip syncs, and some of the best runways – the boots, the housewife, the Prince one, and she had my fave finale outfit. But Naomi stumbled towards the end. She played this snobbish host in the Clubs challenge. And she just played Naomi in “Sex and the Kitty” after pushing for the lead role. Her “Super Queen” verse was the shortest too. 4. Gia Gunn Gia was the star of the first 3 episodes. Her energy was so unwelcomed that nobody would've saved her. She was blunt and ruthless: “But her being an old white bitch with a lot of plastic surgery is maybe even more appropriate”. She mostly targeted Farrah and Trinity though. Gia basically called Farrah untalented and just an Instagram queen. She brought up some one-sided outside drama with Farrah. She coaxed Mo into saying that Farrah was the weakest link, then snitched to Farrah. And she interrupted Farrah's 1-on-1 with Monet to apologize. Meanwhile, Gia told Trinity that tucking isn't a talent. She tried to override Trinity in directing the choreo. She fought Trinity to do Cailtyn Jenner in Snatch Game. And she called Trinity bothered and nervous. Gia was accused of playing mind games and bullying, but she acted innocent throughout all this, even in confessional; like she honest intentions. She said that being on Drag Race again brought back her old Season 6 habits. And during deliberation, Gia had this tearful moment with Manila about processing a being trans drag queen. Whatever her intentions were, she brought the entertainment. In the competition: Gia showed off her heritage in the Talent Show, which was completely overlooked. But she was harsh in the Reading mini-challenge. Her flow in “Don't Funk it Up” was not it (she should've been bottom 2 for that). And her Jenny Bui in Snatch Game made me uncomfortable; talking about big dicks and insulting Latrice. And then she underestimated Naomi when picking her for the lip sync. 3. Valentina Valentina dropped the pretenses in AS4, and it made her more enjoyable. She lived in a fantasy where she slayed every challenge (“all of those judges were laughing at my jokes”; “oh girl I was hilarious”). She posed in the Werk Room at the start of every new day. She interrupted others to make speeches about herself. She told Latrice no one wants to send Latrice home... during the episode Latrice went home. She didn't pull her weight in one challenge because her “process is different”. She rejected a deal from Manila, being wise to not trust her. She eliminated Farrah after repairing their relationship. She called Mo's pants disrespectful to Aaliyah. She told Trinity she'd send her home over Latrice. And she refused to beg because it wasn't fierce. But Valentina's emotions finally cracked in her last deliberation. Meanwhile, she still gave meticulous confessionals - “*gasp* my eyebrows”, “luces! cámaras! acción!”, the applause sound effects, making a face at Manila, “Oh my god there's so much going on in my head”, drinking her French Vanilla Fantasy, calling the other clubs “tacky ugly ew” - while using the same confessional look as Season 9. Ultimately, Trinity and Latrice didn't honour their finale pacts with Valentina. In the competition: Valentina served choreo in the Talent Show, and she embraced her weirdness in the other challenges. It worked well in her “Don't Funk it Up” verse, and as the fake Snooki in “Jersey Justice”. I didn't think she was that bad as Eartha Kitt in Snatch Game either. Sure, her jokes didn't land but she was fully in character the whole time. Nor was she the worst in the Roast, but not finishing her make-up was inexcusable. Otherwise, Valentina Ru-deemed herself in the Ariana lip sync. While my fave runways were After Dark and LaLaPaRUza. The sewing one and Plastique did not work for me though. 2. Manila Luzon Manila was the BenDeLaCreme of AS4: the overdog who didn't make it. She also went against the groupthink by suggesting voting strategically. She didn't believe that the “report card” policy was so cut and dry. She ended up selecting Monet's lipstick, and the girls turned on her because of it. After explaining herself, she stood up and the girls just... started at her awkwardly. I get why Trinity called her unpredictable and Valentina called her untrustworthy. But Manila was right – there is no rule book to this. Moreover, Manila defended Gia after Gia's exit, and appreciated Gia when no one else did. On the other hand, her loyalty to Latrice probably got in the way. She was so emotional about Latrice leaving and wanting to make up for AS1. Otherwise, Manila seemed the most chill and natural in confessional? She'd jokingly self-correct (“Naomi and I are topping tonight... not each other”; “...that sounds like she died”) and explain things in a down-to-Earth way. In the competition: Manila was robbed in the Talent Show – she painted that fruit bowl UPSIDE DOWN. In the following week, she had the weakest lyrics, but her After Dark runway was stunning. Then Manila dominated the middle of the season. She was chosen by Keiynan in Snatch Game. Her dog character in “Jersey Justice” was funny. And her reading of the will during the Roast was clever. Plus she played a character in her lip syncs. But her Makeover concept just didn't translate in the final product. Otherwise, I liked her fruit basket runway, the S&M one, and her LaLaPaRUza outfit. I did not like Angelic White. 1. Mo(nique) Heart Mo repeated her catchphrases a lot this season (“America”, “stunning”, “gooped”, “chopped”, etc.) in a brown cow confessional look. But her personality still shined: “I peed all over that damn floor”; “So Latrice is back *long dead silence*”; “booty do”, her wig flying to the rafters, fainting at the Double Shantay, pranking Monet with her lipstick choice, bringing up church plays as her acting experience, and her cartwheel attempts. Plus her facial reactions killed me. Mo had this unaware edit though. SLM commented on her leadership, she was impatient to do 1 on 1s, she half-listened to Cecily Strong, and she asked Ru “can I go now?” Also half the cast got on Mo's damn nerves lol. She straight-up told Farrah that her crying is annoying. Then Farrah was difficult to direct in rehearsal. She called Gia out for bothering Farrah (“Oh my gosh sis that is fake as f**k dot com”). And later said Gia was “annoying and rude and picking on other contestants”. She put Manila last in the Roast to sabotage her. And she had to deal with Latrice calling her reasons disingenuous, and Valentina trashing her Roast. In the competition: Mo showed the most growth. I could've realistically put her top 3 in every challenge. Both of her bottom placements were BS - she sang really well in “Everybody Says Love”, and she was miles ahead of Naomi/Trinity/Valentina in the Roast. Meanwhile, “Brown Cow Stunning” was fierce in the Talent Show. Her Tiffany Haddish in Snatch Game had funny moments. Her “Jersey Justice” character was well-defined (“Objectify!”). Her eyes Makeover was cool. And she was the best in “Sexy and the Kitty”. Sure Mo had the worst finale outfit, but who cares? Aside from the banana outfit, Mo Ru-deemed herself with her runways – After Dark, the exaggerated cow, Puss in Boots. She had the funds this time! She also Ru-deemed herself in the lip syncs, aside from the first one. Favourite entrance look: Manila Luzon's roadkill thing Challenge ranking: 1. "Jersey Justice" (Improv) 2. "Queens of Clubs" 3. "Henny" Girl Groups 4. LaLaPaRUza 5. Talent Show 6. Lady Bunny Roast 7. Snatch Game of Love 8. Best Judy Makeover 9. "Super Queen" Ru-mix (Mo > Monet > Naomi > Trinity) 10. "Sex and The Kitty, Girl 3" (Acting) (....why did they become clowns at the end?) Lip Sync ranking: 1. Gia Gunn vs Naomi Smalls ("Adrenaline") 2. Monét X Change vs Valentina ("Into You") 3. Manila Luzon vs Monique Heart ("The Bitch Is Back") (could've been the double win, but that would've made zero sense with the storyline) 4. Manila Luzon vs Trinity The Tuck ("How Will I Know") 5. Monét X Change vs Naomi Smalls ("Come Rain Or Come Shine") 6. Latrice Royale vs Monique Heart ("Sissy That Walk") (kinda messy?) 7. Monique Heart vs Trinity The Tuck ("Emotions") (Mo's wig mishap was more funny than cringe + the whistle notes were funny) 8. Jasmine Masters vs Trinity The Tuck ("Peanut Butter") 9. Monét X Change vs Trinity The Tuck ("Fighter") 10. Manila Luzon vs Monét X Change ("Jump To It") (the scatting parts are funny but it's low energy... and this was a double win) 11. Monique Heart vs Trinity The Tuck ("When I Think Of You") (forgettable) 12. Farrah Moan vs Valentina ("Kitty Girl") 13. Latrice Royale vs Trinity The Tuck ("You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)") (worst reveal ever) Season ranking so far: 9 > 5 > 6 > AS2 > 4 > 10 > 2 > 7 > AS3 > AS4 > 3 > 8 > 1 > AS1

[bumpscosity]

Study buddies :)

[strangerquinns]

39 w Ethan

send in prompts for whoever! (for 8/12 only!)

39. “I’m so sick of your voice. Why don’t you come over here and put your mouth to better use?”

warning: 18+, degradation, oral (m/f receiving) unprotected sex, spanking, slight praise kink, creampie (just full on nasty)

No one pissed you off more than Ethan Dolan. It seemed that no matter what he knew exactly what to do in order to piss you off. The only reason you were even around him was that Grayson was your best friend. Grayson didn't understand why the two of you didn't get along, he thought for sure when he had you two meet you'd get along perfectly. But instead, Ethan and you bumped heads.

From that moment Ethan Dolan was a nascence to your life.

As much as you wanted to tell Grayson "no" when he invited you to the trip the group was gonna take, you couldn't when he began to beg you with puppy dog eyes.

"Come on, it's a beautiful cabin in Colorado, right off the lake, it's going to be amazing and so much fun. But it's only going to be fun if my best friend is there."

"Ethan is going to be there," You groaned

"Along with everyone else, please, there is a group of us so it's not like you're going to be alone with him or something. You can bunk with Nina and I'll make Ethan and I are on the other side ok?"

You sighed heavily, "Fine, fine."

So here you were nearly trapped in the middle of the woods with everyone, but unfortunately, Ethan as well. The first day Grayson was able to keep his promise that you weren't really around Ethan. The two of you separated for most of the day meaning you weren't able to have one of your bicker matches. But the same couldn't be said for the second day.

It seemed from the moment you woke up, Ethan was there. Rolling his eyes any time you gave in your opinions about what the group should do. Or you were making a snide comment any time he talked about something, acting as if what he was saying was true. That was a trait of Ethan's that annoyed you the most, having him go on his tirades where it seemed he was just speaking nonsense.

For Ethan annoying, you were all foreplay. At first, he found you a little annoying, but it was more so that you were new and he didn't really trust you. But with time passing, he saw you as someone that was good and trustworthy. But it seemed to be the placement that you two were to be enemies. So now he just got a sick kick out of it. It turned him on to see you huff and walk off. Or the little eye rolls you would do any time he teased you.

But the climax of your rivalry came to a head.

Everyone else left behind for the beach, you weren't feeling up for it. So you opted to stay back and catch up on a book while everyone headed down. Well, you thought everyone. Much to your disappointment, Ethan was laying across the couch watching tv when you came from your room. Instantly your mood was soiled.

"You have got to be kidding me," You grumbled with a pout on your lips.

But Ethan just looked up towards you and smirked, "Oh, did I ruin the princesses day?"

"Fuck off," You glared towards him as you moved around towards the chair on the other side of the living room.

"Fiesty this morning aren't you?" Ethan's smirk just grew larger as he watched the pissed-off look come across your face more.

"I don't know why but you're more annoying on this trip than usual," You spoke, "Like something crawled up your ass and died."

"I think you have yourself mixed up with me,"

"Right," You snapped, "Because I'm the pretentious asshole,"

Ethan groaned “I’m so sick of your voice. Why don’t you come over here and put your mouth to better use?”

Your eyes went wide as you heard him, waiting for him to say something else, like that he was joking. But it never came. Instead he just stared towards you as if silently challenging you. The air between the two of you became thick with tension. For a moment your eyes moved down to his cock, lingering for a moment, before moving back up to his eyes. His cocky smirk only got bigger.

"You want to don't you?" Ethan asked "I can see that you do, eager little look in your eyes."

"You don't know what I want." You snapped back

Ethan moved off the couch and towards you, keeping his eyes locked with yours as he moved across the room. Your heart began to race as he neared closer and closer before standing directly in front of you. His legs touched against your knees, and for a moment, you couldn't help but look down again. You bit your lip before looking back towards him.

"You act like you hate me, but I think we both know you want something more from me," His thumb moved along your lower lip, pulling it from your teeth, but keeping his eyes locked on yours. "But that's ok, I want the same thing."

"And what do you think I need?" Your voice was soft

"You wanna wrap these pretty lips around my cock," He stepped towards you more, your legs parting to allow him between them, "Don't you."

You went to open your mouth to deny him, but he interrupted you.

"Don't lie."

His hand moved to cup along your jaw, tilting your head up towards him. He could feel your pulse fast against his hand. You fidgeted in your seat as you felt your arousal start to pool between your legs.

You acted quickly before you could even have second thoughts about it. You reached quickly for the edge of his shorts and pulled them down, palming over his hardened cock. A small wanton moan slipped past your lips as he came into view, his thick hardness bobbing slightly. You felt this suddent urge to have him down your throat. It was like all the hatred you'd been harbouring turned into lust.

"Come on baby, be a good little slut," Ethan's voice was deeper and heavy with lust as he looked down towards you, a small bead of precum moving down his length. Your tongue swept across your lower lip before soon your tongue as on him.

He nearly growled loudly as the feeling of your tongue against him. Your name came out as a curse when your lips wrapped around him fully. You even moaned yourself when the heady taste of his cock and precum met your tongue. It was entoxicating how good he tasted and how much you loved him in your mouth.

"Yes...f-fuck...that's it baby...take all of my cock down your throat."

Ethan fisted your hair and began to guide you down his cock more and more, drawing you down his length more and more. The dark look in his eyes drove you, wanting to please him, but also wanting to make him fall apart because of you.

Ethan wanted to commit the memory of you sucking his cock to his memory. Because truthfully it was the most erotic thing he'd ever seen. How eager you were to take all of him down your throat. How the sounds you were making were only turning him on more. He found to keep his eyes on you, losing himself with how good you were sucking his cock.

But his eyes looked down to a slight movement. When his eyes traveled down your body slightly, he saw that your hand was down your shorts. The ever knowing movement of your fingers working against your clit.

You were touching yourself as his cock fucked the back of your throat.

"You fucking dirty, whore. Touching yourself while sucking my cock" You moaned around his cock as an answer. "You wet for me?"

You slowly pulled off his cock with a soft pop, your breath coming out laboured. "Why don't you come and find out?"

You smirked and laid back against the couch, spreading your legs more.

Ethan was welcome to the challenge. He pushed down the rest of his shorts, before grabbing your shirts and pulling them down. Ethan pressed your legs up and towards your chest, your glistening pussy coming into view. He felt his cock twitch as your scent, needing to know if you tasted as good as you smelled.

"Ethan!" You moaned out loudly as his tongue pressed against your slit, before sucking on your clit. Your hips moved up towards his mouth needing more from him. "Oh fuck!"

He eagerly worked his mouth against your pussy, making sure his tongue tasted and took everything you were giving him. Ethan loved the feeling of your legs shaking beneath his hands as he held them above his head, spreading you wide open.

Your loud moaned filled the cabin as you withered beneath him.

"I-I'm gonna cum...please...don't stop, don't stop...Ethan," You begged for him, needing to cum, loving how he was manipulating your body.

"No no, baby," Ethan sat back, your arousal glistening on his lips. "You gonna cum on my cock like the good fucking whore that you are."

Ethan moved quickly to rub his cock against your slit, teasing you both more, before pulling back to thrust into you. A loud moan came from deep inside of you as he stretched your pussy, never having someone fill you up like he did. It was nearly painful with how much he stretched you. Your hands gripped tightly to the arms of the chair, needing something to hold onto as Ethan merciloussly fucked you.

"Oh yes! Fuck!" Ethan nearly folded you in half as he fucked into you, loving how your swollen pussy lips wrapped around his cock. Eagerly sucking him in deep. "God damn this pussy, baby."

You were a babbling mess beneath him, clearly fucked out of your mind, watching this man. He was a sight and soon you were falling over the edge for him.

Ethan slowed his movements down to slowly pull his cock in and out of you, drawing out your orgasm as you shook beneath him. For a moment he thought you were going to pass out with how your eyes seemed to roll into the back of your head.

"You like it, like it how I fuck you?" Ethan asked, his tone tender, caressing your face to have your eyes focus on him for a moment.

"Y-yes," You whimpered "Oh god yes."

"You my whore?" Ethan asked, still moving slowly against you

"Yes...yes."

The cocky smirk came back across Ethan's lips as he moved you, pulling you out of the small chair and down to the floor. You gasped slightly when you felt him pull out of you a empty ache forming between your legs. But before you could beg to have him back deep inside of you, Ethan had you on your knees, your chest pressed down against the floor.

His hand smacked against your ass causing a small yelp to come from you.

Ethan grabbed your waist and thrust back into you, quickly going back to his pace from before. You once again became a bumbling mess beneath him. Your hands searching for something to grab as you moved against the rug beneath you. You thought for a moment about how you were going to most likely have rug burn on your knees and possibly your chest, but with how good Ethan was making you feel, you didn't care.

"Mmm, such a good girl taking my cock." Ethan's hands caressed over your ass before spanking you again, " Your pussy clenched around him as he called you a good girl, "Oh, you like that? Like being called my good girl?"

Ethan slapped your ass when you didn't answer, eliciting a breathy "Yes," from you.

"Oh I'm gonna cum...gonna fucking fill this pussy...mmm, fuck!" Ethan moaned with his thrusts becoming short and hard thrusts. He stilled above you and called out your name as he spilled inside of you. The feeling of his cum sent your body into another small orgasm, losing control from a moment, and squirting slightly.

Your body seemed to be out of your control as you whimper, shook and trembled beneath him.

Ethan caught himself as his seemed to lose strenght for a moment, unable to hold himself up. His sweaty chest pressed against your back and slowly moved the two of you to lay across the area rug. The two of you laid, coming down from your high, only your soft pants sounding between you.

Ethan groaned being the first to move, grabbing your hips gently and slowly pulling out of you, a soft whimper in protest coming from you. He moved you onto your back and spread your legs slightly, watching as his cum slowly began to spread down along your slit and thighs.

"Damn baby," He whispered, before moving his fingers along your slit, you moaned softly as the sensation.

"Ethan, please," You eyes were barely open as you looked down towards him.

"If you think for a second I'm done with you, you're mistaken baby."

wow

so sorry this took forever my computer was being stupid for the longest time.

[mappinglasirena]

In episode 1.10, Rios, Raffi and Narek (later joined by Elnor, with sword) had a scene in a conference/ meeting / ready room. I understand the set is the captain’s quarters, redressed, but do we know if this room has an official name, and where it’s located? Thanks and love your work, as always! 🧐😀

Ah yes. This one 🙈

Unfortunately, that room remains a mystery.

In the Set Me Up behind the scenes tour, production designer Todd Cherniawsky refers to it as Rios’s “ready room”, but I don’t know how official that is. It certainly doesn’t look like much of a ready room, which is why I’ve mostly stuck with calling it the conference room for now.

Since, as you said, it’s clearly filmed in the captain's quarters, things like the view out of the door or the angles of the walls and ceilings don't really hold any clues as to this room’s in-universe location.

The most obvious point of reference might be the slatted light at one side of the room.

I have often seen people refer to this as a half-shuttered window, which would mean that this wall, at least, must be part of Sirena’s outer hull. Also, it would have to be in a part of the ship that’s facing the sun after the crash on Coppelius (i.e. facing forward or possibly aft, given the angle of the light, possible paths of the Ghulion sun and shadows cast by the surrounding mountains).

However! If you look closely at the two times throughout the season that we see the light/window in Rios's quarters, this conclusion becomes less clear.

First: In ep. 3, "The End is the Beginning", Rios has Sirena in orbit around Earth, making repairs and waiting for Picard to beam up.

We don't get an establishing shot for this scene, so we don't know at precisely what angle the ship is to the sun. It's possible the light we can see flooding the room here is Sol’s sunlight coming in through a window. No contradictions so far. But...

Second: In ep. 8, "Broken Pieces", Rios holes himself up in his cabin on the way to Deep Space 12. La Sirena is at warp at this point (as we can tell from the window behind Enoch shortly before we see Rios in his quarters).

Even if there is light outside the ship from the warp effect, it wouldn’t create this “steady sunbeams through shutters” effect we see here:

All this has led me to believe that this fixture in Rios’s quarters and the conference room is not, in fact, a window, but a large light. Someone (either the Starfleet engineers who designed the cabins Rios added to Sirena when he got her, or some denizen of the ship itself) designed it to look like sunlight through a slatted blind, possibly to give the ship a more homey feel.

Unfortunately, this means the “window” doesn’t tell us anything about the position of the meeting room in relation to Sirena’s hull after all. Essentially, we have no hints of any kind about the whereabouts of the elusive “ready room”.

Of course, that isn't going to stop me from speculating :D (Wild mix of educated guesses and complete headcanons after the cut.)

Basically, I can come up with two scenarios, neither of them completely satisfactory.

Option 1

The most straightforward explanation is that the meeting room is set up in an empty cabin.

By the end of season one, there are seven people living on La Sirena, so we can expect there to be at least seven cabins. One day, I will write a whole screed about the cabin placement on Sirena, and how this ship is bigger on the inside, but for now, let’s just assume there are seven cabins somewhere and two of them (Elnor’s and Seven’s) are empty at time of the crash on Coppelius.

It’s possible one of these cabins has been used as some kind of meeting room in the past, and that’s why it has a table and way too many semi-matched chairs in it. Maybe it’s left over from the last time Rios was ferrying around a group of academics and/or businessmen and they needed somewhere to convene their Important Meetings. Or maybe it’s just a storage space for some excess furniture.

There is, of course, the possibility the furniture in this room isn’t real but projected, given the omnipresence of holo-emitters throughout the ship. I’ve mentioned many times why I don’t think the furniture in the normal living quarters is a holographic projection, but for something like a temporary meeting room in an otherwise empty cabin, it might make sense.

An argument to the contrary, however, can be found in the details of the room.

There are two additional chairs by the back window for a total of eight when the table only fits six,...

... the chairs at the ends of the table don’t match the ones on the side,...

... and if you look closely at the images above, you see that the table shows the same signs of age and wear as many other places on Sirena.

In my opinion, these kinds of incongruous details don’t necessarily fit with a purpose-built, holo-projected meeting room. You can, of course, find explanations for how it would still make sense (I have a few springing to mind right now), but the most straightforward assumption is probably that these chairs and the table were standing around the ship/the empty cabin anyway, and Rios just decided to use them for the occasion.

If this is the case, the likeliest location for this room is at the back of the upper deck, possibly in the area marked for additional cargo on the set plans:

(Starboard aft/Bottom left. There are some issues with possible cabins in that space, given that the back of the deck isn’t symmetrical and there isn’t quite enough space for cabins of the same size as the ones on the port side and a corridor. But that is a discussion for another time.)

Of course, if we go with this assumption, we have to just accept that the angle of the walls and ceiling in the conference room and the view through its door don’t line up with what they’d be in universe. These are just unavoidable artefacts of the production process, and we’ll have to ignore them or come up with very elaborate explanations.

Option 2

Now, the inconsistencies in the shape of the room might be explained by my second option for the location of the meeting: The conference room is a programme Rios is running on the holodeck.

In my opinion, this explanation is somewhat less likely. Rios is very practical. I doubt he’d create a purpose-built meeting room for the interview with Narek. Throughout season 1, most important discussions take place on the bridge or in the mess. And if Raffi and Rios were trying to have this talk in a controlled environment where Narek wouldn’t have access to anything he could, say, pocket and use as a weapon later, simply projecting furniture into the otherwise empty holodeck would have sufficed.

The room in its current configuration being already present in the holodeck database also seems unlikely. Why create a perfect recreation of the captain’s quarters only to fill it with a scratched-up table, too many mismatched chairs, and nothing else?

The only explanation I could see here (and now we are entering the Wild Lands of Boundless Speculation) is that the recreation of Rios’s cabin already existed in the database. After the ship’s systems were knocked out so thoroughly by the orchid and then rebooted through synth magic, it was the programme the computer defaulted to through some random act of chance. So, Rios might have taken Narek to the holodeck, expecting to have their talk in Picard’s Chateaux, but walked into his own cabin instead. And whether it was just quickest solution, or he didn’t want to admit the mistake in front of Soji’s murderous ex, rather than shutting the holodeck down and starting a different programme, Rios just told the computer to delete everything inside and project a table and some chairs. No, not those chairs, something more comfortable. No, don’t just add more chairs I meant - oh, fuck it. Nevermind.

Now, why would there be a recreation of the captain’s cabin and a bunch of associated, fittingly scuffed-up furniture stored on the holodeck in the first place?

Here, I want to offer the suggestion that somebody on the ship must have the task of periodically stopping by IKEA Intergalactic to replace worn-out or broken furniture in the cabins. With holo-emitters at their disposal, trying out how certain options would look in real life (and whether they would age in a way fitting the ship’s general aesthetic) is a superior option to merely looking at the IKEA catalogue. So, if this hypothetical holo person were very earnest about their job but also hesitant to use the built-in holo emitters in the actual captain’s quarters out of fear of getting yelled at, a full-scale recreation might be a sensible way to go........

It’s within the realm of possibility, is what I’m saying.

Still, in my opinion, the likeliest explanation is that the meeting room is an empty cabin at the back of the upper deck, on the starboard side of the engine room. We will probably never know for sure (barring some truly surprising developments in season two and three), but hey: more space for us writers to explore ;)

[buckyownsmyheart]

Duty [5/12]

CHAPTER 5: The Punchline

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader

Word Count: 5.1k

Warnings: Language, unbearable sexual tension (with some more smooching) and terribly choppy writing

Series Summary: Ex-army doctor, and now on-mission-for-the-Avengers doctor, Major (Y/n) (Y/l/n), had prepared herself for anything. That was, of course, until she met a devastatingly charming Sergeant from Brooklyn with a quick wit and a kind smile. I wonder what will happen.

A/N: Have been back on placement so chaos has ensued, this isn't as good as I’d like it but hey! We’ll survive! Some terrible jokes are within it, and so I apologise

Series Masterlist

Chapter 4

 “Hey Major,” Tony sang, rounding the corner into the kitchen, looking guilty,

You narrowed your eyes at him, peering over the top of your mug of fresh coffee, “What?”

“How do you feel about going undercover?”

“Very, very badly,” you cocked your head, “Why?”

“Oh, you and Barnes are going undercover.”

“You what? Tony!” you placed your cup onto the table and stared at him, “Why me! There are so many other people that would be so much better! You have literally hundreds of agents at your disposal if you don’t want anyone being recognised!”

“If I say amusement factor, will you hit me?” You looked at him warningly and pointed your finger at his chest. “Okay! Okay! I’m sorry! I need someone with boxing expertise who won’t turn a match into an MMA fight, get carried away and accidentally kill someone.” He sighed, “I’m sorry to have to ask you to do this. I know you hate it, but we have word that HYDRA is using this ring to scout fighters for Project Moonshine and it’s important we can gather as much information as we can. There won't be any violence.”

“Except for the whole underground boxing ring thing.”

“Yeah, aside from that,” he put his hand on your shoulder, “I’m not going to force you to do this, you know that.”

“I know,” you stood, “How can I say no to such a kind offer? Let me change and I’ll meet you in the briefing room in 15 minutes.”

“I owe you one!” Tony called out, as you made your way to the door.

“You bet your ass you do,” you looked back over your shoulder.

The briefing revealed that you and Bucky, Tony had become quite fond of putting you together on missions, would be joining the CUB ring, short for something a little more obscene than you had imagined. You were the fighter with Bucky as your ‘handler’, making sure no harm came to you and each fight was fair, he would step in whenever he needed and suspected that they wouldn’t pit you against anyone soon because the matches would already be planned for the length you were expected to stay there for.

-

A few days later, you found yourself standing in front of a man who was so tall that he rivalled Bucky, and so wide that when he walked through doors, his shoulders looked like they might get wedged in the frame. You felt like a show dog, wearing sports clothes that left a lot more skin on show than you would prefer, to be ‘assessed’. He eyes bore into you, unblinking. You found yourself pressing your arms against Bucky’s beside you for some comfort, but you clenched your jaw and looked ‘The Jack-saw’ in the eye. You were 80% sure that a jack-saw wasn’t a thing, but that wasn’t an opinion you were about to voice.

“Bellatrix, fight name Trixie,” you spoke, trying to fill some of the awkward silence that had arisen as the Jack-Saw loomed over you, eyeing you up and down. “Like Bellatrix Lestrange, but with more finesse,” you laughed a little at your own joke, but your face fell quickly and coughed the rest of your laughter as Jack-whatsit didn’t seem to appreciate your attempt at lightening the mood. Honestly though, you couldn’t tell. His face was like a brick wall. It looked like someone had sculpted it out of clay, with a wide-set, well-defined jaw, a high brow and a nose with a high arch, but then the sculptor had dropped the face on the floor, to give a now squashed and slightly uncomfortable looking result. He continued speaking as if you hadn’t said anything and boomed down to you.

“Our fighting is mixed, so you and your trainer here,” he eyed Bucky with suspicion, “Need to get prepared. We only have 1 other female fighter and she’s missed the past few matches so we’ll slot you in instead of her. Your first fight is tomorrow evening, 1:30, here.” And he strode out the door, leaving you and Bucky staring at each other.

“Well, that was easier than I was expecting,” you shrugged.

Bucky gently pulled your arm and turned to you to face him, he looked serious, “This is bigger and sooner than we expected, you don’t have to go up against these guys and risk getting hurt, we can send in other agents, it’s no big deal.”

“Careful Sarge, people will think you’re getting soft,”

“I’m serious.”

“I know, Buck, but I’m a big girl, if I can get a few punches on a super-soldier, I can hold my own out there.” You met his eyes and tried to abate his concern and assure him that this mission was going to be okay. He smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his blue eyes as he offered you his hoodie to try and ward off the chill that had settled in the room.

You gratefully accepted and pulled the hoodie over your head. You had to try very hard not to completely cocoon yourself inside it and never breathe any other air that didn’t contain Bucky’s scent. Because that would be weird. Instead you bumped his shoulder and walked towards your new living quarters.

“Just so you’re aware, you’re never getting this back.” You casually mentioned and grinned at him when he let out a laugh.

-

You and Bucky both stood, staring, looking between each other and the situation in front of you. This was definitely new, and typical of the universe to throw it at you both.

“I’ll sleep on the floor,”

“Bucky, you’re not going to sleep on the floor,”

“It’s fine, I don’t mind, I’ve slept on the floor before,”

“We are grown adults, and we can sleep in the same bed together without falling dramatically in love from each other.” Oh yeah, nice one. Like that won’t happen. You were still wearing his hoodie and would have 100% slept in it if you weren’t in this current position. “Alright, I’m gonna have a shower and change, you do your thing.”

After taking a cold shower and using your nice soap because of a certain reason that was currently in the room next door, you wandered back into the room and saw Bucky, shirtless, in tartan pyjama bottoms, reading a book.

“Didn’t know you could read?” you smirked at him, ignoring the flutters in your stomach, “Bathroom’s free if you want it,”

He chuckled, “Yes, ma’am,”

You got into bed, pulled the covers up to your chin and willed your heart to stop beating so wildly. The bed dipped down, and the smell of peppermint filled your senses.

“Night, Major,”

“Night, Sergeant. Remember no funny business. You’re in bed with the new underground boxing champion Trixie, and she takes no prisoners.”

He chuckled lightly and moved around under the covers, trying to get comfy. Sleep came surprisingly quickly considering there was a human sculpted by the gods lying there next to you.

-

You woke up and the first thing you noticed was that your cheek had stuck to your pillow. As you tried to unpeel it, you had to wiggle around to try and get comfortable again. Why was your pillow so high? And hard? And warm? Your eyes snapped open and you didn’t dare move another muscle. This was not your pillow.

“Morning Doc, didn’t quite picture you as a snuggler,”

“Barnes, if you dare move before I’m fully awake, I will strangle you and your imaginary dog for good measure.” But now you were very much aware of his flesh hand encircling your waist, his fingers resting on your hip and the heat radiating off him from where half your body was in contact with his.

“You know, you’re almost endearing when you’re half-asleep.” He gave a small chuckle.

“Shut up. Alright, where’s the coffee? I’m up, you can release me from your titanium clasp.” You rolled over, “Seriously though, do you work out your finger muscles? They’re weirdly strong.”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” He asked, suppressing a snort that caused you to jolt up,

“I didn’t mean it like that! You pervert!” You threw a pillow at him, with a look of disgust on your face. “I’m going to get ready, so I can train for this evening, whilst simultaneously removing those disgusting images from my head.” You rolled your eyes and headed to the bathroom. Please god let this be over soon, because charming and flirtatious Bucky was way more than you could handle.

-

The morning had been spent planning and scheming. Paper, highlighters and files spread around every inch of the bedroom. You had laid out the mainframe of what was going to happen, with Bucky on the lookout for where they were taking people and asking other handlers about the girl who had gone missing, and you would be focussing on not getting your ass handed to you on a daily basis by the other fighters. Bucky had tried to convince you that a banana and mayo sandwich was normal, and it felt oddly domestic and comforting.

By late afternoon, you had gone to the gym, warming up and stretching a little, but before long, you were back in the ring, circling Bucky as he held out training focus pads. “I know you’re good at this, but these guys will be a lot bigger and heavier than you, so your main aim is not to get hit,” He coached.

You stood up, dropping your fists and deadpanning him, “Really Buck? You think my main play was going to be 'let them hit me as many times as they wanted'?

“Come on, you know what I meant, play to your strengths.” He motioned to the pads, and you jabbed and swung at them. Bucky continued, “They’re going to think you’ll be running them around in circles, so they'll be trying to pin you in a corner. Let them do this and hit them with the body shots. You’ve got a strong left hook, and hopefully your southpaw stance will throw them a little. Go left hook, right hook just above the belt and uppercut.”

“Like Tyson did to Boyd in 2015?”

“Yeah right, exactly. Okay, I need you to try it out on me.”

Without letting him rethink his decision, you immediately threw your entire weight behind your left punch, aiming it at his abdomen. You realised too late that this was a mistake. Bucky stepped you and swept his leg under yours. On the way down, your legs tangled in his as you tried to find a foothold. This managed to leave you both on the floor, panting heavily as Bucky tried to support his weight above you. Your faces were only inches apart and you could feel his breath fanning your face. His tongue darted out to wet his lips and his eyes flicked down to yours. Oh man. You were so screwed.

“That was an illegal move,” you whispered, trying to ignore his numbing gaze.

“Don’t tell me that’s what you’re seriously thinking about right now,” He practically growled at you,

“It’s one of the things, in there, somewhere...” You trailed off. You were really struggling to think straight given how quickly your mind was racing. It was wrong for this to happen and it would most likely lead to falling down the rabbit hole, but my god he was so tempting. His hand pushed a stray hair away from your forehead.

“Bucky…”

“Nope,” he interrupted you, “For once, don’t use your logic brain,” and his lips crashed into yours. This kiss seemed different from the one at the art gallery, it was needier, more desperate, and conveyed more emotion than words ever could. You pulled your gloves off and weaved your hands into his hair, pulling gently at the roots to try and ground yourself. As he gave a soft moan, the slight parting of his mouth allowed your tongue to slide over his lips and find his, deepening the kiss. Your bodies were now pressed so close together, you could feel every ridge on his body, every bump and curve. You had never felt so safe, so at home as you did now. You couldn’t deny your emotions and had to accept that he was everything to you.

A loud cough brought you back to reality, and a loud voice shouted, “Not here, use a room!” After hearing a door slam, you pulled away, looking a little sheepish. Bucky was scanning your face, the tips of his ears were tinted pink, and he gave a small laugh. Rolling off of you, he stood up, holding his hands out for you to take. He hauled you up, and you gripped him hard as your knees weren't quite ready to support you yet. You stood, chest-to-chest, your hands on his shoulders, and his on your waist, unable to move for a few seconds. Him? You could definitely get used to. This? Absolutely-bloody-terrified you.

-

After the small heated make-out session incident in the boxing ring, you had abandoned training and gone to have a shower in the changing rooms, not-so-subtly avoiding Bucky. You were now stood outside your door, trying to find some courage that had all but deserted you. You counted yourself down, took a deep breath and entered. Before you could say anything, Bucky turned to you, as if he had been expecting you, and started talking.

“I like you, Major. I like how you know already but won’t admit it to yourself. I like that you’re fierce and you stand up for what you believe in. I like how always wear odd socks, and especially how you keep them on when you know it annoys Tony. I like how you can read me like a book. I like your sarcastic comments and stupid jokes. I like how you squeeze my hand twice to reassure me. I like how you care about people above and beyond a normal human. I like how you make me hot chocolate after I’ve had a nightmare, and never push me to talk about it until I’m ready. I like everything about you, darling, I hope you know that.”

“You know I think the world of you, Buck, and I want to be with you, but the thought of someone knowing me intimately, and letting my walls down, showing people that I’m not always okay scares me. I wish more than anything that I could leap into your arms, but I don’t think I can. I need some more time to try and get my head sorted, I’m sorry.” Your voice cracked, and you glanced up, forcing yourself to look at him. As you did you were engulfed in a hug, his arms wrapping around you and his aroma entirely filled your senses. All you could do was fold yourself inside his embrace and will the tears to stay away.

“Don’t be silly, don’t apologise, I understand,” he murmured into your ear.

In an attempt to lighten the mood, and prevent any tears escaping, you choked out, “How long you been working on that speech, Sarge?”

He chuckled, his body reverberating around you, “Well I’ve had a few months to think about it.”

You squeezed him harder, trying to tell him how you felt, how much you appreciated him through this hug, and the returning squeeze he gave you made you hope he understood.

He lifted his arms from around you, and you immediately missed the comforting weight they had given you. “(Y/n), I’m going to give you some space and I'll work on...” he paused, his eyes flicked to the side, “This excuse. I’ll be back in an hour or so for your fight.”

He grabbed his coat and walked out of the door, leaving you to flop dramatically onto the bed. You were so close to swearing off any emotion and becoming a hermit in the south of France with a goat named Gilbert. Or Godfrey. That was undecided.

You knew that, for you, at this moment in time, you had made the right decision. It would be unfair on Bucky to initiate something that you both might regret. You had spent so long relying on yourself and being your own support that you had forgotten what it was like to lean on someone else, and you hated that you struggled to do it, but you needed an adjustment period.

-

A few hours later, you found yourself heading towards the changing rooms again, headphones plugged in and turned up loud, tuning in your senses to prepare yourself for the match. As you sat down on the bench, Bucky entered, looking tall, broody and devastatingly handsome. Come on, get it together you thought, now was not the time.

“You okay?” He mouthed, knowing your music was far too loud for voices to be heard, his ever-piercing blue eyes searched your face as he rested his hand on your shoulder, concern lacing through his features. You nodded in response and held out your hands to him for him to wrap. You were thankful he didn’t mention them shaking. Although you had boxed throughout university, and sparred at the compound, you hadn’t properly fought a boxing match in a few years. You were also used to sparring with you opponents before the match to see what their level was and gauge their moves, but apparently that wasn’t a thing in the illegal underground boxing scene. You didn’t even know who you were fighting. Bucky gently pulled out your earbuds and you realised he had been trying to say something to you.

“Come on Trixie,” he said, using your fight name, “We’ve got a fight to win and underground schemes to mess with.”

You nodded, sliding your hands into the gloves he was holding out and touching them together a couple of times. He pulled the hood up of the kimono you were wearing and lead you to the door.

The cheering of the crowd was deafening as they called out the name of your opponent, Dave “The Cleaner” O’Neill. He was shorter than you had expected, and a lot slimmer. It seemed they did take weight classes into some consideration. As your name was called out Bucky led you to the red corner, and a surprising number of cheers went up. I guess they were all pretty excited about the prospect of violence.

In your corner, Bucky pulled off your kimono and put in your gumshield. He cupped your cheek and moved to speak in your ear, “Just like we practiced, you’ve got this, I believe in you.” You leaned into his hand, closed your eyes for a brief second before turning and taking a few strides into the centre where your opponent waited.

The ref said a short, “Let’s keep it entertaining,” before blowing his whistle. You and Dave (you had decided to call him this because it was a little less intimidating than ‘The Cleaner’, not that that was much better), tapped gloves and darted back, on the defensive. He immediately started circling and jabbing out, trying to ascertain how experienced you were, and whether his reach was an advantage, but you kept back, dodging and watching for any tells. He was throwing a lot of his weight into his punches already, I guess he was used to fighting bigger guys, but it meant his footwork was sloppy.

Trying to draw him into his mistakes some more you took a few left swings at his face, seeing whether it would unbalance him, but he seemed pretty steady. Thinking back to your session with Bucky earlier you tried to remember what he had done to take advantage of you making the same mistake that Dave was doing, but that only brought back the memory of him pressed up against you. This distraction earnt you a punch in the face. Yep, should have seen that coming. Man, he could punch hard. Luckily, he had only hit the side of your mouth, your lip probably wasn’t bleeding, but you might have some funky colouration in the next few days. You were now, however, extremely pissed off. Leering forward, leading with your left, you snuck some body punches in with your right, but the bell went off, signalling the end of the first round.

You moved back to the red corner, opening your mouth for some water and panting hard. Bucky looked at you seriously, but you just shook your head, don’t, and he got the message.

In the next round, Dave had a stupid cocky look on his face. This did nothing for your mood. You tried to keep a level head, because that was what you had always been taught, in any situation, keep a level head and you can worm your way out of it. Stretching your neck as the whistle blew, you prepared yourself. You leaped forward, ducking under his obvious first right hook and delivered a blow with your left to his now exposed side. As he instinctively tried to cover it, but you dropped under his arms and executed a right hook to his other side. As he moved back, you seized your opportunity. Bringing your right fist upward in a decisive uppercut, Dave’s head snapped back, and he crumpled to the ground. Knock-out. You were in a daze as your hand was held up and you were ushered out of the ring, down a corridor. Before you had fully processed what was happening, you were in an unknown room, handcuffed to a chair, with an aching jaw and ‘The Jack-saw’ standing in front of you.

“Usually when I’m handcuffed somewhere, I know the person a little better.” You joked, but he, again, didn’t seem to appreciate it. “Come on, smile a little, it won’t hurt. Why don’t we play 20 questions? I’ll start first, if there was a song that embodied your life, what would it be? Mine would be ‘I Don’t Care’, you know the new Ed Sheeran one? I feel like he understands me on a whole new level.” You were trying to delay him, either talk him to death or distract him long enough to work the pin that had previously been holding your shorts up into the handcuffs.

“You talk too much.”

If it was possible, you would have said he looked even stonier than before.

“Yeah, I’ve been told.” You made a thinking face before continuing, “I feel like you’re a Taylor Swift man. You seem like the type. It’s always the unexpected ones you know, I had the scariest boss ever, but he was never so scary after I walked in on him singing ‘I Knew You Were Trouble’. Kind of takes the terror out of a person.”

“We’re taking you on a little road trip, somewhere that will permanently freeze your mouth closed.” But before he could continue there was a commotion outside the door. He looked back at you, “Don’t move.”

“Bit difficult in handcuffs!” You shouted after him as he walked out the door. Wiggling the pin around the lock wildly, a delightful ‘click’ sounded and you had to bite your lip to prevent yourself from yelling out in joy. You made quick work of the other handcuff before flattening yourself against the wall, the chair outstretched in front of you to use as a weapon. As the door barged open, you swung the chair at them. They dodged it easily and looked at you in surprise.

“Really? A chair? Thought you were trained better than that, Major.” Amusement laced in his voice, and his signature cocky smirk plastered on his face.

“Oh my god, Tony,” you ran up and hurled yourself at him, “How the hell did you get here so quickly?”

“Tin-man called us to standby a few hours ago, I guess he sensed something was up.” He patted your back, “Quite a few bad guys out there, kind of need you to unhand me.”

“Right. Sorry. Got a spare gun?”

“And your med backpack,” he said, holding out both to you.

“You’re the best, I take back any bad thing I said to you,”

“You’ve actually never said anything that bad to me,”

“In that case, I take back any bad thing I said behind your back.” You replied, and luckily, he laughed in response. You took your backpack and gun and ran through the door.

Most of the thugs had been rounded up by the Avengers and other agents. It seemed they had gone a little overkill with the personnel on this mission. You wondered vaguely what exactly Bucky had said to get this many people here so quickly, and an unwanted but pleasant warm feeling spread through your chest. The journey back was filled with closing some scrapes and replacing a dislocated limb. It wasn’t until you got back into the compound that you were able to go and find Bucky. F.R.I.D.A.Y. alerted you that he was in his room, and so chucking on his hoodie, you went straight for his room and knocked twice on the door. A quick “I’m through here!” call from Bucky and you wandered through to his bathroom. The sight at the other side was something to behold. Bucky was lying in the bath, his metal arm glinted as he made a movement to cover himself. You immediately averted your eyes, until you realised that the bath was full of bubbles.

“Didn’t peg you for a bubble bath type of guy, Sergeant,” you raised an eyebrow and laughed. Your laughter immediately stopped when you saw a huge cut across his cheek facing you and one from the end of his collarbone to the middle of his chest. “Bucky!” You exclaimed, reaching in your pocket for some surgical glue, “Why didn’t you come to me about these!”

“Figured you were busy,” he mumbled unconvincingly. You shook your head, whilst muttering something along the lines of ‘stupid fucking idiot’. You dipped a flannel in the water and dragged it across his cheek, trying to be as gentle as you could and removing the dirt and muck that had accumulated inside the wound. His jaw tensed each time you put the damp cloth on his injured skin, and you guessed it hurt a lot more than he was playing on. You put your other hand on his other cheek, trying to steady yourself, and you moved your thumb in a soothing motion. As you sealed it with the glue, Bucky’s wet flesh hand found its way to the hand that was on his cheeky, drawing your eyes to his. The look on his face broke your heart, sadness dulled his bright eyes, and drew the corners of his mouth down.

“I’m so sorry, I wasn’t there," He began, "I promised to protect you, and you shouldn’t have had to be alone. I should have been there. I don’t know what I would have done if something worse had happened to you.” You cut him off with a kiss but broke it off before your self-control gave up all together and made you jump into the bath with him. Instead, you rested your forehead against his.

“Before you say anything else, I need to say something. And I wrote it down beforehand, so don’t interrupt me because it'll throw me off.” You said quietly, closing your eyes and taking a deep breath in. “I like you Bucky. I like how you never push me to do anything I’m not comfortable with. I like how you wring your hands when you’re nervous. I like your electricity and how you light up every room you walk into. I like the scar under your chin from when you fell over getting into the pool. I like how you always choose pancake house when it’s your turn to decide a restaurant. I like your sweet tooth, even if it means you steal all of my hidden cookies. I like your compassion, and how you’ll do anything to make someone happy. I like your unwavering faith in me and the rest of the world that things will be okay. I like how you feel like home, and I’m sorry it took me so long to say it. If you want me, I’m yours. All in.”

You opened your eyes and leaned back, looking into Bucky’s in search of an answer. He grinned at you, and you found your lips curving in an involuntary response. Warmth was emanating out of him and filling your chest. His hands held your face, and he gently kissed you again.

“I’ve been all in since the very beginning.”

“Careful, Sarge,” You grinned, “People will think you’re getting soft.”

“Shut your mouth,” he smiled coyly at you, and gave you another peck before continuing. “Now, you pervert, I’m getting out the bath so unless you want the full Monty you should probably leave,”

“And what if I am a pervert?” Bucky splashed you, and you laughed, “Okay, okay, I’m leaving!” As you closed his bathroom door tried to contain your smile. Yes, you were scared, but you had realised that there was always going to be a time when you had to take a leap of faith, and there was no one else you’d rather take that with.

Strong arms wrapped around your waist and Bucky rested his head on your shoulder, gently kissing the crook of your neck. You hummed in contentment and turned around in his arms, wrapping your arms around his neck and playing with the hairs at the nape of his neck. “I could definitely get used to this,” you said as you pressed yourself against him. You walked your fingers up his bare chest and putting on your most flirtatious voice. “We still might need a little time to figure things out though, potentially an entire night, that okay with you, Sergeant?” You looked up at him through your lashes. However, before either of you could do anything about the growing sexual tension, Tony burst through the door. His eyes widened at the scene in front of him, and he gave a yell behind him.

“Hey Nat! The double bed worked! You owe me $10!” He looked back to the both of you, who had frozen in shock. “You ladies enjoy yourselves.” He slowly backed out of the room, closing the door behind him. As you turned back to Bucky, you heard a muffled shout, “I’m putting a sock on the door!”

You burst out in giggles, hiding your face against his chest, as Bucky grumbled, “Those meddling motherfuckers.”

 Chapter 6

 tags (message me if you want to be added!):

@broco8​ @nerd-without-a-cause​ @sebbbystaaan​ @mcubuckyandsteve @cutiepiemimi13​ @velvetwonderbucky​ @livylou3333​ @cap-just-said-language​

[zodiacrant]

All about Venus ♀💞 (Capricorn-Aries)

Capricorn Venus (The Angel in the streets and Demon in the sheets)

Traits:

Responsible, Serious, Reserved, Deliberate

In friendship:

Capricorn Venus is the parent friend. They make sure everyone is good and keeps things civil during feuds. They’re very dependable and independent, they don’t mind doing all the work as they will help their friends, study with them, go around giving CVs, driving them to a place and help them out with their problems. Capricorn Venus are reserved with their emotions and doesn’t like to put you down so don’t take advantage of them or else one day they’ll tell you about everything they gave and how useless of human you’re.

In romance:

Capricorn Venus knows what they want and they will go and get it. If they like someone they will gather intel on them and ask around, Capricorn Venus doesn’t like to waste no time so they make sure they know who they’re getting into before getting into them. In a relationship they’re very different in some ways, they become promiscuous and sexual with their partner on the regular. They love to unleash their inner needs and a partner they trust will be completely shocked but in a good way. They love with all of their hearts and view relationships as an investment that the more you give the bigger and stronger it will grow, as such Capricorn Venus will go out of their way to please their partner and keep them happy through out the relationship, from something as small as keeping their favorite snack in stock to always keeping their love fresh and new.

Insecurities:

Capricorn Venus biggest fear and insecurities lays within them. Capricorn Venus fear they’re doing too much or too little, freaking themselves out over anything and everything. They can come off as very condescending but on the inside it’s nothing like that, for the most part. If angered or betrayed Capricorn Venus way of revenge is success. They know you will hear about their success and they have no problem in keeping it cute, smile in your face and look into your eyes and tell you “thank you for showing me what really matters. Money” point blank. Period.

Best Venus matches:

Cancer, Taurus

Best date:

Going to see a play, Staying over and eating a home cooked meal

Best hangout:

Having a house dinner party, Taking a class with a friend

Best gifts to give:

A personalized notebook, Tickets to a show

Celebrities with the same placement:

Brad Pitt

Miley Cyrus

Scarlet Johansson

Britney Spears

Elvis Presley

Aquarius Venus (The Sapio romantic)

Traits:

Authentic, Honest, Intellectual, God complex

In friendship:

Aquarius Venus is the pressure reliever. They listen to their friends and let them vent all their problems. They don’t give advice but rather gives a listening ear and a shoulder to cry on. Aquarius Venus is not Possessive and gives their friends space and time, they themselves need regular breaks from social interactions so they understand completely. A supportive friend, they tell you to follow your dreams instead of making things complicated for you. If crossed Aquarius Venus May not react at first since they’re generally emotionally challenged and won’t comprehend them very quickly.

In romance:

Aquarius Venus cares more about who you’re as a person, Names, Money, Job, Education and all of that don’t matter to an Aquarius Venus. In order for them to love you, you need to show them who you’re beyond the social makeup and facade you have put up. In a relationship Aquarius Venus is fun loving and lighthearted, they always make sure that you have a smile on your face and keep things fresh and new. Although it may not look like it but Aquarius Venus cares a lot about their partner and is very serious and committed to their relationship.

Insecurities:

Aquarius Venus is insecure about their emotions and feelings. Their Detached nature may take the best of them, even though they give into them when it comes to friendships and would give up on them in an instance, in love relationships they will guilt trip themselves if they don’t feel and would push themselves to “feel” in an attempt to be more available to their partner. Their God complex is detrimental to them and their relationships as a whole, since they feel and think that they’re better than other humans and subconsciously would put others down.

Best Venus matches:

Leo, Sagittarius

Best date:

Going to open mic shows, Going to see an Indie band

Best hangout:

Going to poetry night, Going to stand up comedy shows

Best gifts to give:

Vintage items, A music instrument

Celebrities with the same placement:

Taylor Swift

Harry Styles

Oprah Winfrey

Cathrine Duchess of Cambridge

Jared Leto

Pisces Venus (The Chessy Sweetheart)

Traits:

Caring, Nurturing, Soft hearted, Dreamy

In friendship:

Pisces Venus is a very carefree and fun friend. They value people in their life tremendously and keep them close. Pisces Venus is extroverted by nature and make friends easily, their sweet and kind nature mixed with their fun and outgoing personality makes them favored amongst people. A very trusting person they usually fall easy and get hurt by others quickly as they believe people have their best interests at heart.

In romance:

Pisces Venus is very flirtatious and doesn’t shy away when admired. Their love for experience and going around makes them great lovers, they love to express their feelings naturally as they don’t hold back when it comes to emotions. Pisces Venus doesn’t settle quickly and likes to take their time to feel the other person out and ease into things before fully committing. They’re such cheesy people, Pisces Venus use pick up lines and make old school moves like singing a song to the other person, but they do it in such a cute way it’s hard to say no.

Insecurities:

Pisces Venus can be very naive and aloof. Separated from reality, they don’t take things seriously and underestimate the importance of things. They don’t look at things on the long term which is what usually gets them deeper into their problems. Pisces Venus is insecure about their validity and expect others to underestimate them so they do it to themselves. Expecting others to take the lead roles, Pisces Venus can leech onto someone in a relationship, as such becomes a burden and people will stop basically babysitting them.

Best Venus matches:

Virgo, Cancer

Best date:

Driving out of the city, Going to a good diner

Best hangout:

Practicing an art skill, Taking pictures in your room

Best gifts to give:

Camera, Crafted gifts

Celebrities with the same placement:

Justin Bieber

Emma Watson

Kristen Stewart

Zayn Malik

Celine Dion

Aries Venus (The is a Beauty and a Beast)

Traits:

Up front, Expressive, Passionate, Short tempered

In friendship:

Aries Venus instinctively have a direct and they become friends usually with independent and strong willed people. Loyal to a fault, Aries Venus might get carried away when their friends are being attacked and can instantly become mean by serving low blows, high blows and all other kind of blows. Aries Venus knows that they can be mean and most definitely don’t care about it, for them if you had it then you’ve deserved them. Never a dull moment with them, they love to pull a good one on their friends and have fun in the simplest of days.

In romance:

Aries Venus behave in a fun loving way in love. They are turned on by energy, activity, confidence and strong presence and hate a relationship that is considered stuffy or too “mature”, vagueness, and beating around the bush as they prefer people who are easygoing and are straight to the point. In a relationship Aries Venus doesn’t like to take things seriously and would rather date around and hookup over being tied with one person. They never fear showing off their sexuality and making people want them. To make an Aries Venus commit you have to be what they subconsciously need, in meaning you have to blow them away and crack down their guard with you, make them feel comfortable and less on edge are all things Aries Venus dread but would love to do to be with their loved one.

Insecurities:

Aries Venus is a very insecure sign. Even though they appear sure of themselves,confident and fearless they’re still humans with insecurities. Aries Venus fears being played, being used, being blackmailed and being publicly shamed. They fear committing to one person and letting go of many things they love only to end up with someone who is less honest and would hide things from them, as a loyal sign they can lose their whole trust in the world if it was broken once.

Best Venus matches:

Libra, Leo

Best date:

Go carting, Going to a bar or a club

Best hangout:

Animal petting, Doing something crazy and impulsive

Best gifts to give:

Something personal and dear to you, A pet

Celebrities with the same placement:

Marylin Monroe

Lady Gaga

Rihanna

Jennifer Aniston

Shakira

Yes it’s finally here. I know I’m a bitch and it’s late. If you’re seeing this then the Queue thing works and I’ll will see you in a week or so with the Mars posts love you ❤️. (please follow and share your dirt on the signs ☕️. )

[cupofteaguk]

exchanges (m)

summary: in which Jeon Jungkook is that friendly neighborhood superhero, you’re the face in the hallway that saved his high school career, and he can’t ever seem to get a grip around you. even when he makes you scream after a fated accident—not for the reason you may be thinking; get the thought out of your head! 

pairing: jungkook x fem!reader

genre: spiderman au | fluff/smut

warnings: descriptions of bullying, minor injury, unprotected sex 

word count: 14k

.

(the present)

If Jeon Jungkook is against anything in his life, it’s one’s ability to exaggerate certain situations or problems to make those things seem much bigger than they probably were. Well, actually, take that back. It’s not that he’s against it per say, it’s just that his peer’s daily struggles of pop quizzes and missing the morning bus aren’t exactly headliner news—especially in comparison to what he has to go through.

Jeon Jungkook is against exaggeration, probably because he can’t get away with it himself. It’s not that he doesn’t like to exchange his fair share of embellished stories or fabricated events weaved into true experiences, it’s that he can’t afford to do so. Sharing stories of his nightly routines and dashing superhero adventures may seem great, but only if he could manage the burden of a personal life and a masked life intertwining.

As an 18-year-old boy, he can probably say it's safe to assume that he cannot. Manage the overwhelming, opposite pressure both of his lives take him, that is. It's difficult enough being a college freshman, a tiny fish in an ocean of whales and sharks, but throw in his late night Spiderman facade would be too much of a tale to share with other people and peers who probably ask too many questions and know too much about him. He's never liked the exposure that comes with being in the spotlight, and he can't hide behind his mask if people knew who he was.

Oh. Right. Speaking of his Spiderman facade, that's who is he. Haven't heard of him? You know, the dashing hero of Seoul, red and blue spandex attire with a web shooter, fine tuned senses and amazingly quick reflexes? The boy who swings around the city, volunteering for trouble and always coming out right on top? The boy who constantly maintains that casual, slightly amused tone throughout a majority of his rescues?

Yeah, well, that's Jungkook.

It's a role he has occupied gladly for about two years at this point, after an unfortunate accident at a lab he was interning at during his junior year of high school cursed him with these abilities of spider-like sensibility. Rather than run away from his powers, he chose instead to embrace it and it's almost been two and a half years at this point and he doesn't see any signs of stopping. He keeps that shadow of his life private, refusing to indulge, avoiding those conversations like the plague, keeping a wry eye out in a way that usually isn't perceived as paranoia, and for the first two years of his Spiderman role, he actually gets along quite nicely.

Until one eventful night, a day he remembers quite clearly leading up to that point. It's a Tuesday when it happens, a domino effect of bad luck prior to the inevitable in a way that tells Jungkook that perhaps he shouldn't have been all that taken aback that something like this would happen to him. First off, he had overslept his alarm that morning, leaving in a mad rush across the campus to try and get to his art lecture on time. His calculus professor had completely called him out today for his decreased academic performance on the last test—although to be fair, Jungkook actually didn't study for that test, he was too busy stopping an armed robbery at a bank. His history professor had dropped a pop quiz on the class, an assignment that Jungkook is almost 99.99% sure he had failed.

He had known that perhaps after all those things, the best way to spend the rest of his evening would have been to actually pick up a book and actually try to study for history or actually put some effort into a math question that would probably only take 10 minutes to complete. But no. Jungkook wouldn't be Jungkook if he didn't chase the nightlife, didn't chase after the rush and thrill of the powers he still hasn't completely grown accustomed to having. He had decided, instead, to dawn on the red and blue spandex, adjust the web shooters he had to manufacture on his own, before taking to the sky. There's always a difficulty sneaking out of the dorms, and even more so trying to get off the campus. But he moves with a certain stealth and a certain practiced grace that he's learned to embrace that excitement of sneaking off a college campus.

It's returning back that night that changes everything, all because of a dormitory power outrage and just the simple fact that Jungkook doesn't really know the layout of the building (or the placement of his room) as well as he thought he did. The ever-present darkness that encompasses the complex leaves Jungkook with little option but to estimate the area of which he believes his own dorm is located, as he crawls his way up the windows, pretty confident that he lived on the third floor, fourth window over from the edge.

Or was it the third floor, sixth window from the edge?

Fuck.

This momentary lapse in his assurance comes a little too late, however, because he lets down his guard at the sight of seeing an opened window. He always left his window open before leaving, so maybe he's been overthinking the situation and maybe he really does know the location of his dorm from the outside.

So he slides through, landing with a soft plop onto the carpet as he lets the exhaustion of the day finally start to catch up to him. Because of the darkness, the only light coming in through the moonlight, he fails to notice the Captain America posters that line the walls, or the polaroids from strings, or the floral print on the bed as he lets out a sigh into what he thinks is an empty dorm and practically throws himself atop what he thinks is his mattress.

A shift of movement underneath him, a startled scream, jerks Jungkook out of his lapse into dreamland as he springs out of bed at the same time the figure underneath him straightens up as well.

“What the fuck!” A startlingly familiar voice cries from below.

“Oh shit, I’m sorry—I’m sorry, I thought this was my room—!”

At once, the lights overhead turn on and the sight makes Jungkook's heart drop, beat a sudden mile a minute, and also feel as if it might crawl up his throat all at once. He feels his breath catch in his throat, the color flush against his cheeks that would probably match the red of his uniform had it not been for the mask covering his face—but this reaction to seeing someone in a bed is not for the reason one may think.

Because sitting in said bed, blanket pulled up to chest, no makeup, hair reduced to waves and curls that spray out across shoulders, eyes wide, but still the same face that he's spent the past three years admiring and crushing on hard from afar—is you.

Yes, you. The same you he's been crushing on for three years, the same you who smiled at him in the halls as if he was the only person in the room that mattered, the same you who didn't hesitate to help him gather his books back when he was getting shoved into lockers and being told that he would never mean anything to anyone.

You were alway the exception to his tragic high school life, one that is defined by his attempts to get a hang of his powers whist balancing school and his worrying parents, and trying to stop flinching every single time he turned the corner in the school hallway. You were always better, always that shimmering stardust in the pits of his night sky, as cliche as that sounds. To say he's been in love with you for three years would probably be a bit dramatic, given that the pair of you have rarely ever even exchanged a word of conversation since he met you, but the small hellos and shy waves of acknowledgment the pair of you have been exchanging since the very first encounter would probably be enough to say that Jungkook has always been incredibly fond of you and nothing in his right mind was going to change that.

He had heard through the grapevine that you would be attending the same university as him, and felt a mixture of apprehension and excitement at the thought of being able to see more of you around the campus and outside of the embarrassment that was his high school career. Even though the college campus is much bigger, and the differing majors keeps the pair of you apart, he really does learn to cherish the moments he can catch a glimpse of you around the campus. Whether it's walking to your classes, or talking to a friend, or reading a book, or listening to the music, he feels like they're all pieces of the puzzle that make up your life and he wants to learn as much as he can. Is that creepy?

Maybe. But okay. Back to reality.

The reality where he's standing right across from you, close enough where he can see the rapid rise and fall of your chest and the wild look in your eyes. It looks as if you had been seconds away from drifting off to sleep and while he feels bad for interrupting that process, since he can only assume from the bags underneath your eyes that you aren't getting as much sleep as you would probably like, there's also a swelling in his chest and a rapid thumping of his heart because if he had known he was going to be seeing you today, he might have tried to avoid the sight of him in a ridiculously tight spandex attire.

Speaking of the spandex attire.

It's something your eyes brush down upon immediately, taking in the red and blue mix of the fabric to the black spider across his chest and your eyes grow wider, but with a different kind of recognition. You're about to open your mouth to say something, anything, and his heart is in his throat and he thinks you might scream again, but a sudden pounding against the door of your dorm startles the pair of you out of your resolve.

You meet his gaze across the way, eyes alert and a thousand questions packed into a flicker.

Another knock jerks you into movement as you kick off the covers and make your way to the door, leaving Jungkook little choice but to throw himself behind the bed and hope that the boxes and drawers you have packed underneath your bed would do enough to keep him hidden from whoever lay waiting on the other side.

He can hear you throwing open the door. "A-Ah, hey Namjoon, what's up?"

"You alright?" A deep voice inquires immediately, and Jungkook recognizes the voice and your acknowledgment of the figure on the other side as Kim Namjoon, the RA of the hall. Even though he knows he's in absolutely no position to feel this way, Jungkook can't help the pang of jealousy that spikes itself in his heart. Did Namjoon have any idea how difficult it was for Jungkook just to inhale oxygen around you? How could the older boy speak to you with such ease?

But Jungkook keeps his mouth shut. It's not like he's in a position to start snapping about that right now.

"I heard you scream," Namjoon continues from whatever previous conversation you and the older boy had been having while Jungkook was dozing off.

"O-Oh right," You say in a small, slightly squeaky voice. "Sorry for worrying you, I just... fell off the bed," You end lamely. "I was napping and didn't know the power had gone out, so when it did go on I guess I just started freaking out. Sorry about that."

"Oh, alright," Namjoon dismisses, although he doesn't sound entirely convinced. Jungkook wonders just how much time you and Namjoon spend together for the older boy to get accustomed to your tone of voice and how the air around you hangs and the thought only leaves an even more bitter tang in the pit of his stomach. "Just be more careful next time."

"I know," You wave away, and Jungkook can practically hear the smile in your voice, knowing the tone of it from his own personal experience from the handful of small conversations the pair of you have shared in the past. "But it's good now. Thanks for checking up on me."

"Of course. See you tomorrow."

That's the last words Namjoon gets to throw in before you're closing the door, and Jungkook can hear the shift of your movements as you spin on your heel to face the vicinity of your dorm once more. "U-Um," You stammer out. "You can come out now."

Realizing that you're talking about him, Jungkook springs up into a standing position with a little more force than necessary. The sudden gesture leaves him slightly winded and he almost tips over because of the sudden head rush, but he forces himself to keep his ground with the knowledge that if he said something or did the wrong thing then you would figure it all out. Although he has his doubts about your ability to see who he really was under the mask, given that the pair of you haven't exchanged enough conversations or spent enough time around one another to gain the knowledge about certain characteristics such as nervous gestures or a general idea towards the tone of each other’s voices, Jungkook stills finds himself worrying. He uses your momentary lapse of silence to think through his situation. How should he address you? Should he just whip off the mask and announce himself as Spiderman right before your very eyes? Should he keep the mask on and just play the role of the friendly neighborhood superhero? What if he mixed everything up? What if he kept the mask on, but stuttered and stammered so much at the very sight of you that you picked up on his identity immediately?

It’s always been easy to differentiate Jeon Jungkook from Spiderman, always easy to pretend like the mask was a way to actually hide away all the things that made Jungkook Jungkook—but things have never been easy when it came to you, which is ironic given that walking with you and being with you has always as easy as breathing. It’s a difficult sensation to describe.

His heart starts to pound quicker with the realization that his time to come up with a proper response to the issue at hand is gradually starting to dwindle. It’s hard to think and run through his options consistently, especially when you’re standing before him in nothing but an oversized t-shirt that’s about an inch above your thigh. The senses he had been gifted with are of no help, everything around him feeling like the intensity has been dialed to some double feature. It feels as if he’s hyperaware of everything now—from the breeze of the opened window to the movement of footsteps outside the hall to the overwhelming smell of lavender and he stiffens because you smelled like lavender—!

As it turns out, you end up being the one to find your voice first. “Holy shit,” You say by way of greeting, and Jungkook swears he can feel his head growing light from the sound of your voice. He’s pretty certain that you sound as if your vocal chords have been laced with strands of silky gold that float out every single time you open your mouth. “You’re Spiderman.”

He chokes on the next words, physically having to restrain himself from accidentally letting your name slip past his lips with the knowledge that that would bring on a whole other slew of questions. He covers the strangle in his throat with a cough, hoping that you would think he’s merely trying to clear his throat. “Y-Yes I am! Nice to meet you… here in your room.”

You follow the craning of his neck as his gaze flits over your wallpaper and your room. There is another bed next to the door and he briefly frets about your roommate but your next question does good work in ridding of that previous worry.

“Do you… attend school here?” You finally ask, incredulous voice and arms crossed over your chest and oh boy, oh boy, if you knew, if you knew.

Jungkook stands still under the facade, watching you just as intensely as you are watching him, and he wishes he could tell you everything right here but the timing of it all feels distant and awkward enough. If he could barely keep himself together with the mask on, who knows what kind of burning bridge he could create with the mask off.

“D-Don’t tell anyone,” He settles with disclosing, lowering his head slightly. “It’d be really helpful, and I would appreciate it.��

Lips still parted, you nod. “O-Of course.”

Seeing you in a momentary stump gives Jungkook the confidence to carry on with the conversation, finding it easy to not act like himself since you’re not acting like yourself either.

“Great, thanks,” Jungkook takes a few steps away from you to reach the open window. He extends his arms behind him to grip the edge of the ledge, deciding for a moment that he likes seeing you so taken aback at the sight of him—even if not for the reason he wants. “Sorry about the mix up, by the way.”

You’re still staring at him, and although your arms have lowered, your eyes are still widely fixed on him. “It’s okay,” You speak, voice barely just above a whisper.

Jungkook nods towards your walls. “I like your posters, by the way,” He remarks casually, gesturing to the giant photos of Captain America and you follow his head tilt as if you had completely forgotten you had Captain America posters in the first place. “Although I’m a more of an Iron Man fan myself.”

You whip your gaze back towards him. “Now wait a moment—!” You point out, but the rest of your words are swallowed back into your mouth when you turn your attention back to the window only to find that the space where Spiderman once stood is empty.

On the other side of the wall, Jungkook remains stuck to the outside right next to you window, heart stammering as he keeps his hands and feet firmly pressed against the plaster of the building. From his position, he doesn’t see the way your gaze lingers on the window, the way you look back at your Captain America posters, nor the way the corner of your lips turn up at the strange unexpected turn of your Tuesday evening.

.

(the past)

The first time you ever saw Jeon Jungkook, you are 15 years old, and he is getting shoved into the lockers right next to you.

It’s strange how well you hold this memory to your consciousness.

But it had been an unusual first-day-of-school, granted that you were moving in from a different town in the middle of the year and the experience is not unlike being thrown into the middle of a movie set where the movement and daily routine whirls around you and leaves you breathless and forced for adjustment. You had known before setting foot onto the campus that there was definitely going to be some catching up on your part, but you hadn’t known that you’d be encountering a bully attack right out of the gate.

So, naturally, you jump and make a little noise in the back of your throat as the contact of body meeting metal locker hits your ears. You tighten your grip on your books before it slips from your grasp as you immediately fix your gaze on the source of the noise. Standing next to you with his face scrunched in pain and teeth clenched together, the boy looks to be about your age, a tender 15-years-old, second year at this horror hell of educational means. Your eyes are quick to scan his appearance, gray jacket zipped up with the sleeves frayed from overuse. The hoodie he once wore over his head is knocked clean off the top, revealing a mop of unkempt black hair. He's got soft looking features across the paler complexion of his skin, and the sight makes your heartbeat quicken in your chest as a rush of sympathy and protective nature overcomes your nerves.

You long to open your mouth to say something, anything, but the rough voices behind you cut you off. "Watch where you're going Jeon; the morning excuses no one." The tone is rough and sharp, amused and cruel, before it's gone much too soon as if this type of activity is like clockwork and has been practiced on more than one occasion.

The thought isn't entirely comforting, which is probably what propels you to fix your gaze on the boy pressed against the locker. His eyes are still shut, and he's taking measured breaths. You notice almost immediately that no one lingers near him. No one stops to make sure he's doing okay, or that the shove hadn't caused permanent damage to his back, or if he can still manage a smile after this kind of morning. No one even makes eye contact with him as they rush past him with the excuse of making it to first period. The sight is practically heartbreaking as you watch students avoid the boy like he is the plague, no one desperate enough to catch his bad luck. He opens his eyes, casting them downwards, collecting his thoughts.

Still cradling the books in your hand, you shift in your standing position before attempting to reach an arm out towards the boy to ask if he's okay, but the boy flinches when he catches movement out of the corner of his eye. He fixes his gaze on yours for the very first time and his eyes are like the night sky, a shade of darkness that is surprisingly far from angry or frightened or moody. Instead, there is a loneliness that lingers like glimmers of a night sky, an emotion that you feel brewing in the pit of your own stomach—the idea that it’s possible to be surrounded by people every single day but still feel entirely and inescapably empty.

You don’t know a thing about him, and he doesn’t know a thing about you, but you find yourself gravitating towards him at once. You sympathize for him, but you also relate to his feelings and you wonder if he can see the concern flickering in your wide eyes once the initial shock of a rather unique morning greeting starts to fade away.

You, however, do not get to find out whether or not he’s noted of the emotions in your eyes. As soon as you try to open your mouth to say something, the boy is gone. He is a rush of blurred movements, pulling further and further away from you until he is darting away and not even sparing you a second glance. He leaves you alone, standing in the gradually emptying hallway, questions springing into your mind like wildflower, until the tardy bells rings and you curse. Nothing to start off the first day of a new school by being late.

You wish you could forget the boy as quickly as he could run away from you, run away from the bullies and the pain he’s probably hiding underneath that gray sweatshirt and eyes only you seem to be able to read, but life doesn’t work out in the way you wish it could. The earth continues to rotate, the day continues to pass by, the time continues to tick, and all of those things are like seeds of curiosity that plant themselves in your mind until you can physically feel it festering into a tree.

.

(the present)

The question of whether or not Jungkook would return the following night becomes a debate in it of itself as he spends a majority of the time leading up to the darkening sky pacing about in his dorm. His roommate has a tendency to let the day slip past his fingers wasting away in the library in desperate attempts to fill up his mind with Philosophical terms and conditional means—not that Jungkook minds the alone time. In fact, the constant absence of his roommate makes sneaking out all the more easier.

But sneaking out to chase trouble and sneaking out to see you, while both situations somewhat involve the same circumstances of Jungkook dressing into the suit and leaping through the opened window, feel different. Would using the Spiderman facade just to see you, and using the opportunity to have you see him not as Jeon Jungkook for once, be an abuse of power?

Maybe. Was that wrong, though? Was it wrong that he can’t get the mental image of you looking so taken by his physical appearance out of his head? Was it wrong to feel like the roles have reversed for once in his life and maybe catch a glimpse of what you saw every time he looked at you? Was it wrong that he finally had the covering he has always so desperately longed for that could help him look you in the eye for once in his life?

He thinks about feelings and validation, and starts out of his chair. He pulls the suit up and over his body, running a hand through his hair one last time before slipping on the mask, grabs the item resting upon his desk, and darting through the opened window. A web shoots out from the slinger, taking him across the way into the adjacent dorm building just a few feet away from his own. He rolls onto the rooftop, straightening and turning back around to face the structure he just escaped from. He stares through the windows, taking in the drawn curtains or the opened ones, the loud conversations and the ones he can’t hear at all.

Drawing only from his memory of yesterday, Jungkook fixes his gaze upon the general area he remembers lingering about in last night. Of course, his only real memory to draw from is the darkened area from the power outage, but maybe if he’s quiet and patient and the timing is right then maybe, just maybe—!

The answer presents itself to him within the next five seconds, when the flicker of movement from the window on the third floor, fourth from the edge, catches his attention and he narrows his eyes on the activity going on inside the room. In spite of the fact that everything he is currently doing is intentional, he can’t help the way his heartbeat quickens at the sight of you opening up the window of your dorm. Your hair falls forward like a curtain as you poke your head outside, as if you’re looking for something, before retreating back in.

The eleven o’clock hour finds you at your desk, as Jungkook watches you slip on your headphones and flip open the pages of a textbook along with opening your laptop. He finds himself tilting his head, curiosity blossoming in his features as he feels this desperate urge to know as much about you as humanly possible overcome him. The nerves grow in his chest at the thought of his arrival having a more negative, more distracting result, but the weight of the item in his hand brings him back.

Stealing away the hesitancy in his features, Jungkook leaps and shoots webbing just above your window, slipping in through and somehow managing a landing on his feet. The ruckus of his movement catches your attention as you jerk up in your seat and immediately pull the headphones out of your ear. “Spiderman?” You inquire incredulously.

He barely misses the way your lips quirk up at the sight of him, because he overshoots the sturdiness of his feet and accidentally tips forward enough to send him faceplanting onto the carpet of your dorm. “Hey—oh, shit!” He scrambles, but of course to no luck as he finds himself, once more, making a giant fool of himself in front of you.

As he tries to ready himself back up into a standing position, he fails to see the way your lips split out into a wider grin. “A-Are you alright?” You try kindly, reaching out for him, only to stop and bring your hands back down to your sides.

“Y-Yeah, of course. I’m great,” He brushes off, trying to keep his cool composure even though his cheeks feel like they’ve just been set aflame. “Thought I’d just drop by real quickly.”

‘Real quickly’. As if the thought of slipping into your room had been a spur of the moment idea, and not something that he has been losing his mind over for the past few hours.

You’re still staring at him, light smile dusting across your face, already looking more relaxed at the sight of his presence, as if you were expecting it, as if you were anticipating his return. “Any particular reason why?”

As soon as Jungkook has straightened up into a proper standing position, he notes the way you take a step closer and he hopes that the way he tenses up at the gesture goes by unnoticed. You’re so close that you have to look up at him through lashes, and he sees how big your eyes are, how many specks dance underneath the colors, and he’s fairly certain that he could get lost in the seemingly vast endlessness of the whole thing.

The way you quirk the corner of your lips leaves Jungkook to return to the fact that you had asked him a question and he coughs, knowing that the phrase ‘Because I was thinking about you’, while true, would probably not be appreciated and he did not want to make you uncomfortable with the knowledge that Spiderman was trying to flirt with you. Which, while may be the case, wasn’t something he was eager to drop on you right out of the fucking gate. As far as you knew, this was only your second encounter with Spiderman.

“Because,” Jungkook fills in after a moment. “I, well, I’ve brought something for you. An exchange of sorts.”

You raise an eyebrow. “An exchange?” You repeat. “I didn’t do anything wrong—you were the one who threw yourself on me—!”

“Alright, fine. Maybe the incident was my fault.” He finds himself smiling a little. “But I only want a small price from you—your name.”

You blink. “My name?”

He feels his lips quirking up into a wider smile. “Well, yes, don’t you have one?”

“Of course I do!” You retort, and he can’t help the laugh that escapes his lips, even though he already knows the answer to the question. “It’s Y/N.”

“See, was that so hard?” He finds himself teasing, heart racing when he catches your lips turning up as well. “Here’s my half of the exchange—an apology gift for scaring you yesterday.”

Suddenly, you laugh—that beautiful melody that makes him crack a smile of his very own. “It wasn’t that terrifying,” You brush off with a shrug. “And I was supposed to be getting up anyways for studying—so in a way, you actually helped out quite a bit.”

He doesn’t know what’s more satisfying: the fact that he’s not falling apart or the fact that you seem to be enjoying the conversation immediately. It’s probably part of your pleasant nature, sure, but he doesn’t feel that desire to say some practiced phrase before throwing himself off a cliff this time. “That’s reassuring to know,” He says, pulling the item from his side anyways. “Regardless, I’ve decided to bring you sometimes anyways.”

“That’s so sweet of you,” You gush, taking the gift from Jungkook. It appears to be a poster of some kind, rolled up into a cylinder shape, but you don’t comment as you unroll the paper. He can see the anticipation drawn heavily in your eyes, lips curled up as your gaze takes in the photo across.

It’s an Iron Man poster.

Your lips part slightly, darting your attention back over to him, already finding him taking a few steps back towards the window once more. “Now wait a minute—!” You retort.

“You’ll thank me later,” Jungkook interjects, raising two fingers towards his forehead to salute you off. “See you around Y/N,” He says, wondering and hoping that you could hear the grin in his tone, the promise in his words, the longing to see you again even before you’ve left his sight.

You’re still standing in the middle of the room, poster in hand, before you look up to smile at him. “See you around, Spiderman,” You return.

He sees your slightly timid wave before turning back around to face the window to hide his own embarrassment, as if the mask alone wasn’t enough to hide his own private smile. He wonders if you’ll hang up the Iron Man poster; but above all he wonders if you mean it.

.

(the past)

The sight of your second encounter with Jeon Jungkook, while it is so much more different than seeing him getting shoved into a locker, is equally as depressing. It’s enough to make you feel as if all hopes of attempting to rid your memories of the boy have gradually started to fade away.

The days since you’ve seen him—Jeon, they had called him, leaving you with a vague feeling that perhaps that was his last name—slowly start to turn into weeks that you can count with one hand. Your relatively quiet and knowledgeable disposition lands you a small group of friends after a success partnered chemistry lab, girls who keep to themselves just as you do. They give you a place to sit during lunch and invite you into their conversations, supplying backstories and names, sharing their childhood in exchange with yours. It’s the fastest group of friends you ever make, so your smile is one of genuine nature as you finally feel equipped to bring up a question that has been plaguing your mind since your very first day of school.

It’s a question you’re almost afraid to lead into the light until you see him taking a corner table at the far end of the cafeteria during lunchtime, the point furthest away from the crowds of other students. You watch carefully and openly, observing the way he takes nibbles of his sandwich and doesn’t look over his shoulder to see if anyone can see if he’s eating alone. Like he’s use to it.

“Who’s that boy over there?” You find yourself asking before you could think about the gravity of your question. “I saw him on my first day getting shoved into the lockers.”

Karly barely spares a glance at the direction you are gesturing towards. “Oh, that’s Jeon Jungkook,” She answers quietly. “He’s been a target of the bullying since freshman year.”

“Why?” You ask, only tearing your gaze away from Jungkook when Karly tugs hard at the sleeve of your sweater.

“The other boys say he’s too weird, or too smart, or too different…” Karly explains. “Don’t stare for too long, he’ll drag you down.”

Drag you down? You throw Karly an incredulous look at how she uses too much practiced ease to describe Jungkook as an offensive weight rather than an actual human being. Something about the way she says the statement doesn't sit entirely well with you, but the finality in her tone keeps you from saying anything more on the subject.

.

(the present)

True to the unspoken pact conveyed through words, longing glances, and shy smiles, Jungkook elects to return back the following night without an ounce of hesitation. The desperation to see you is something that he can feel throughout all his nerves, making everything inside of him shake and curl with anticipation. He makes his way to the college, to the dorms, to you, all with a smile tugging broadly at his features.

He brings Thai food that night with the excuse that he merely needed to continue with the apology gifts in the form of food, to which you excitedly exclaimed that you were desperately in need of a pick-me-up at the eleven o’clock hour. His lips quirk up when he sees the Iron Man Poster hanging over your desk, but he doesn’t bring it up and neither do you.

His active participation in your life starts to become a regular occurrence. Always at the same eleven o’clock hour, always accompanied with a gift of some kind, always provided forth with the same excuse of the little exchange game Jungkook has come up with. Always a present as a reward to hear about your day: from the bad to the good and the little small moments in between. Even though he has a full day of classes and studying (or, okay, perhaps not that much studying) much like you, it’s always interesting to hear about a life not threatened by the abnormality of outside robberies or attacks or having to listen to the news constantly or living practically every single day of a life to ensure that he could protect another.

He wants to hear about a day that’s, essentially, normal and untouched by the terrors of horrible people. You provide that reassurance, that comfort, by never asking too much or too little of him. By having his mask on, he gets to see you with yours off—and there is a freeness to your laughs and your smiles, your interesting stories and your ability to always see the positives in every situation. You indulge in your insecurities and it’s in those little moments where he’s Spiderman, but he’s never felt more closer to who he really is. He likes hearing about your classes, about your asshole of a math professor, or the roommate who rarely shows up because of her boyfriend.

“Do you have a totem?” You ask one particular evening, picking up a piece of orange chicken from the Panda Express takeout he had run by before coming over to see you. He’s also come to find that you’ll pretty much eat anything and your dislike of food is quite limited—again, it’s like another piece of the puzzle he has learned to take full advantage of in getting to know you better.

Jungkook stills momentarily. “Ah, what do you mean?”

“I mean,” You start, shifting a little and tugging down on your sweater before it could ride too far up your side. “You put yourself in a lot of danger, right? Sometimes, aren’t you ever afraid?”

He doesn’t say anything to the question. He stares down at the chow mein on your plate. “I-I don’t know,” He lies, because of course he’s been afraid. Who wouldn’t be afraid of the fear that one day, all the sneaking around and the hidden traces of his identity would be for nothing? Who wouldn’t be afraid of the thought that someone would find him and hurt not just him but everyone in his life who he loved and who he held dear to? He doesn’t speak of the nightmares that plague his dreams, the nights where he wakes up in a cold sweat because he hadn’t been careful enough. “I’ve, uh, never really thought of that before.”

You hum, studying him closely and Jungkook can feel himself shifting underneath your attention. How was it that you more often than not had these looks that made him feel that he was without the suit and you could see every raw emotion that danced behind his eyes? “Well, let’s just say that you were afraid,” You reply. “Is there anyone you could think of that could ground you? Or, at least, remind you that there is always a light at the end of the tunnel?”

Light at the end of the tunnel. The last part of your question stirs something inside of Jungkook, who knows the answer to it before processing it in his mind. His mind whirls back three years to that fated encounter in the hallway and the many different instances that followed, the first genuine smile of understanding and not of sympathy he ever got, the only person who made him realize that perhaps he could get through the remaining years of that hellhole called high school.

“Y-Yeah…” He replies rather breathlessly, keeping his eye on you as you lean over to grab another orange chicken. “There’s someone that I have in mind.”

“Aw,” You coo, adjusting your position on the ground, continuing to give him all your attention. “What’s this person like? A family member? A friend?”

“Oh n-no,” He stammers, turning his head to the side to scratch the back of his neck. “It’s this girl that I knew. From high school.”

Your eyes light up. “Oh, well, a crush, huh? Who knew the infamous Spiderman has a soft spot? What’s she like? Do you bombard her with posters of Iron Man as well?”

He laughs tightly at that, because if only you knew, if only you knew. “I-I do, but I doubt she knows that I exist. But she’s—wow. She’s amazing. She’s been through a lot with me and I just, I just wished she knew how much she meant to me. I would do anything for her.”

He sneaks a look back at you, heart stuttering when he sees the glimmer of admiration in his eyes, as if the thought of him finding happiness in the simplest things and the most seemingly insignificant of moments and people made you happy and holy shit. This is it. This is why he’s been in love with you for three years, this is why he’s had and will always have a soft spot for you. “It sounds like you’re really fond of her. Well,” You add, a hint of grand finality in your tone as you take the last orange chicken and grin at his whine of protest. “I hope you’ll get the courage to tell her one day. You should definitely go all We Bought A Zoo on her.”

“We Bought A Zoo?” He repeats, furrowing his eyebrows as he watches you take that last lovely piece of orange chicken.

“Yeah,” You exclaim. “You know, that line.” You swallow, gaping slightly at his blank look. “That line! ‘Sometimes all you need is just twenty seconds of insane courage’. That should be your motto.”

You finish up your chow mein, too preoccupied with the sudden consumption of your food to notice his own dazed disposition. He rolls the quote in his mind. Twenty seconds. It didn’t sound too hard in theory. It could take twenty seconds to pull the mask off, twenty seconds to spill his guts and his love for you, twenty seconds to say it all.

Or, twenty seconds to rip the mask off, kiss your cheek, and throw himself out of the window; never to be seen again.

“I’ll consider it.” That’s all he settles with disclosing, watching as you hum around your bottled water.

.

(the past)

The third time you see Jeon Jungkook, it's the end of the day and the sound of a body making contact with the ground snaps you out of your resolve as you whip around to see the boy who has been occupying your thoughts for the past few days on the ground. His books and paperwork are scattered about and he suddenly looks smaller than he did getting shoved into a locker or sitting by himself in a sea full of people. The same group of boys from before are towering over Jungkook, equal smirks and snarls across ugly faces as a notebook is kicked away from the boy's grasp. It slides across the floor, hitting the heel of your shoe as you linger near your locker, trying to blend in yet make your feet move at the same time, Karly's previous warning in your mind be damned.

The warnings that leave lips go by completely unheard of by you as you find that the only thing you can focus on is Jungkook and his crumpled figure on the school floor, not moving an inch in or out of place as the boys give each other one last side glance before heading off in the opposite direction. Given that it's the end of another school day, the hallways are completely devoid of students, with the exception of you and Jungkook now. You watch him, and you don't know if he's watching you, but he definitely makes a point not to look up at you as he pushing himself up so he could sit on his knees. He starts reaching out, grabbing for his fallen books and pencils and notebooks, reminding you that one of his own spiral bound journals is near your feet.

You settle with not closing your locker, afraid that the noise of the slamming metal would disturb the unusual peacefulness that has settled between the pair of you, bending down instead to gather the notebook in your arms. The boy is just finishing up his collecting before you kneel down next to him. "Uh, I believe this is yours," You say by way of greeting, cursing the situation at once because out of all the things you could have possibly said in the English dictionary, you just had to say that. Of course the notebook was his, how could it not be after someone thought to kick it out of Jungkook's grasp as he was reaching for it.

You wish you had given yourself a second just to mentally prepare what to say before opening your mouth, if only to make the first words you ever said to this boy to be ones of comfort or reassurance and not ones of obvious means.

Jungkook swallows thickly, flickering his gaze up to you and you see it again: the isolation and loneliness and these different emotions each taking up a glimmer in his dark eyes. There is more of a hopelessness this time that you can read as clear as a book, and you wonder if anyone has ever been close enough to Jungkook physically to see this type of activity. Even more, if anyone has seen his eyes the way you see it and has actually tried to do something about it.

Given that he's still here, alone, probably as he's always been, does not do reassuring things to your stomach.

"Thanks," Jungkook says stiffly, voice low and somewhat cracked from underuse as he takes the notebook without even trying to meet your gaze.

"I-I'm sorry you have to go through this," You say quickly before your mind could stop the words from escaping, not missing the way he visibly stiffens at your apology.

"You don't have to apologize," Jungkook grumbles, tucking the notebook you had given him underneath his arm. "You aren't doing anything wrong."

"I..." You start again, trailing off when the words fail you. For someone with too much to say, there seems to be only silence greeting you on the other side as there are so many things you long to say to Jungkook. But your shyness, your hesitance, your fear of disclosing too much and frightening him, or saying too much only to be met with even more quiet, keeps your throat closed. "No one deserves to go through what you're going through," You mumble instead, actually unsure if Jungkook can hear you or not.

With the way he suddenly turns his head to look at you, you can only assume that he has. Bravely, you lift your head up to meet his gaze, if only to take in that endless shade of darkness with a flickering of light that shimmers like a speck behind his eyes. You keep your eyes on him, even as his eyes roam across your face, clearly trying to gauge your expression for signs of sarcasm or amusement. You wonder if he's worried a group of people will come out with cameras, only to be told that the event going on before him had been nothing more than a means for a horrible, horrible prank. But you keep your silence, you keep your eyes on him to show off your genuine intentions.

Jungkook looks away suddenly, not quite sure how to hold himself in the face of you. You are, essentially, a stranger, yet you're here and you've somehow managed to say the right thing at the right time. He wonders if it would be appropriate to disclose how he recognized you immediately after he almost crashed into you that faithful morning at the lockers. Or, if it would be socially acceptable to blurt out how looking at you made him feel seen for the first time in his entire life.

But he doesn't say anything, and neither do you, as Jungkook straightens up and you quickly follow suit. The pair of you continue with your silence, unsure whether or not to break it, unsure if he should thank you for helping you out, or if you should continue supplying some kind of reassurance to the boy. For some reason, all those things feel excessive and unnecessary; which is why Jungkook leaves you by your locker with a sort of quiet understanding of one another. It's not a bad place to walk away from.

.

(the present)

Jungkook is no stranger to the white hot agony of physical pain, he’s definitely had his fair share of attacks that don’t always swing his way or enemies that have a lot more backup or quick wit or strength than Jungkook has. This is not new to him. In fact, the boy is actually quite use to returning back from his nightly adventures with bruises along his side or cuts along his face that take more than a few weeks to heal. He’s partially glad that his roommate nor do any peers bother to ask questions about his whereabouts or how he’s acquired certain scars in the first place—and it’s not like there’s anyone around him seeing him without a shirt on or anything of the sort. It helps with keeping his life private.

But this, this is new.

And by this, it means a knife wound right in his side, one that’s much too deep to rely on the healing abilities of his own body that makes every single step and every single flex of his body feel like someone is driving a metal fist right into his gut. A knife wound in the side, a slice along his cheek.

“Fucking shit,” He grunts, staggering out of the alleyway, gripping his side that’s warm and wet with blood—his blood and maybe some of the other guy’s too—but it doesn’t matter because there is pain and there is pain everywhere and he can practically taste it in his mouth and it’s like bile in the pit of his stomach. A part of him wants to roll onto the dirty sidewalk of the city, let the breeze take him away, but he can’t. He has something to return to, he has someone who’s waiting for him.

After a few moments of limping, he leans against a wall and pulls his hand away from the wound, only to be greeted with that burning torment of having a wound that deep so exposed. Immediately, he brings his wrist up and tugs at the fabric, exposing a watch.

12:03AM.

“Fuck,” He curses again, leaning against the wall, gritting his teeth, bringing a hand to his wound that now showed no signs of slowed bleeding. It was serious. He needed to go to a doctor.

He stills in his movement. No. He couldn’t do that.

He can’t even begin to lay out all the risks that come with going to the hospital. Doctors, as professional and careful and effortless they may seemed, asked question. Doctors required personal information. Jungkook didn’t trust doctors. He couldn’t.

He always thought that taking up the role of that friendly neighborhood Spiderman would keep people out of danger. And while it has, he’s put his own life at risk, threatened to bleed to death on the very ground he stood on.

He couldn’t go back home—his parents would have a fit and he wouldn’t survive the drive home.

He couldn’t ask his roommate—the boy would likely sell him out to Kim Namjoon and the whole school would likely find out. He couldn’t text his group from that one science project that one semester.

The boy furrows his eyebrows, but then it stops. His eyes widen.

He did have someone he could ask. He did have someone he could trust—someone he trusted more than was probably appropriate. But trust he did, and that was the best option he had so far. He had no choice. This was the only option.

After all, twenty seconds was all he needed to make up his mind, right?

.

(the past)

The fourth time you see Jungkook is marked by an aisle of novels and books, silence, and seeing him hunched over in the manga section of the school library. The sight makes you smile, as you are momentarily glad that you had dismissed yourself early from the cafeteria with the excuse that you really needed to check out a particular novel for an upcoming English assignment.

You find him so intensely immersed in his story that you almost feel guilty for breaking him out of his trance. But your need to say something to him is the driver of that last minute reflexive action as you take a step towards him. "Hi," You whisper once you're sure you're within earshot of the boy.

He jerks up at the noise so close to him, nearly dropping his book at the shock of your abrupt visit into his consciousness and you stare at him for a moment before he gives you a quick side glance and seems to deem your presence acceptance. "Uh, hey..." He returns, closing the book and reaching up to rub the back of his neck. "What, uh, what are you doing here?"

You hold up your required novel. "I have to read The Great Gatsby for an extra credit assignment."

He nods slowly, cheeks looking as if they've been set aflame and you wonder if this is the longest conversation he's ever had with another person.

You take in a breath, steering yourself for the alternative routes of direction your new conversation starter could lead to. "How are you feeling? After what happened the other day?"

The other day is something that Jungkook already seems to understand, and although he doesn't look entirely too keen on brushing upon that particular topic, he does look relieved that the responsibility of keeping silence comfortable is no longer something he has to worry about. "I'm okay," He says with the shrug of his shoulders, and you study him closely, having already partially expected him to come up with that sort of answer. “T-Thank you for helping me with that. I don’t think I, uh, got to tell you that.”

You smile a little. "Of course. Like I said, it's not fair what people are trying to put you through." You look at your novel for a moment, before casting another look in his direction. "I'm Y/N, by the way."

Your smile is meant to be one of comfort and reassurance, but it seems to only make him more nervous. "Jungkook," He stammers out, looking over at you through his lashes and the sight is so strangely endearing that you can't help but muster a laugh.

"Well, it's nice to officially meet you, Jungkook," You say, unable to help yourself from speaking his name. It sounds nice on your tongue, a rolling effect, a slightly pouting of your lips. "I hope we'll see more of each other soon."

"M-Me too," He returns, casting another look at you whist reaching up to run a hand lightly through the locks of his hair. You're immediately set on noting that this is gesture Jungkook does when he's nervous and you wonder if you'll ever get the complete puzzle set that is Jungkook.

The pair of you bid each other goodbye with one last shy smile, one last shy wave, before you're turning on your heel and down the aisles. You miss the way Jungkook's eyes seem to follow your departing figure as it grows smaller and smaller the further away you move. Just before you reach the end of the aisle, Jungkook looks back down at the text, fixing his attention back down on the drawings of titans and a certain Eren Jaeger flinging his way to safety.

You do not turn the corner immediately upon reaching the end of the aisle. You stall, lingering in your movement for a moment, before risking one last look over your shoulders. You watch Jungkook, watch the way his lips curl up at the corners as the images on the page before him seem to jump out. You wonder what kind of story he's reading, what kind of pictures draw themselves out in his mind, if he's as brilliant as everyone claims him to be, and you wonder why how someone so calm could call in such a storm.

Your high school experience with Jungkook is categorized in this manner: stepping forward and reaching out, shy glances in the hallways when neither of you think the other is paying attention, shy smiles in the hallways as your gaze pierces Jungkook's from across the span of distance usually always placed between the pair of you and he lets his heart race at how completely tangible he feels when under your gaze.

.

(the present)

Jungkook never imagined that crawling up a wall would turn into such a struggle, since he's always managed to perform the task as easy as breathing or walking. But, then again, he didn't have a knife wound in the side during those previous times. It feels like needles are pulsing underneath his skin with every movement he takes, every inch he's crawling upwards towards your dorm. The window is opened, but it's the fear that you'll close it and close him out of your life that keeps him propelling forward.

Each reach up, each inch upwards evokes a gritting of teeth and a grunt of pain along every fiber of his nerves that makes everything feel like his body has been set on fire. He doesn't know if he'll make it, because the third floor is almost the same painful and longing sensation as scaling a fucking skyscraper and it's not enough. The bonding movement of his hands to the walls don't feel like enough, his strength doesn't feel like enough, and it feels like he's going to die; he's going to die right here and fall to his death and he's never going to do it. He's never going to tell you how he feels about you, he's never going to kiss your cheek, or use his twenty seconds of insane courage.

Somehow, someway, through the force of his sheer willpower, he crawls in through the opened window and practically falls to the ground.

"You're late!" There it is, that beautiful voice, something that seems to momentarily blind him from the pain and the fact that he's going to be bleeding all over your carpet very soon. "I thought you said you were bringing over Star Wars tonight for our exchange. I was really looking forward to telling you about this really awful thing my History professor said to one of the students today..."

He coughs instead, the weight of the pain making his head spin and holy shit, he's never felt anything like this before. He might pass out if he's not careful, if he lets the pain cloud his vision and his judgment.

"S-Spiderman?" You inquire, voice considerably softer and filled to the brim with concern as he feels a presence kneeling down beside him, a gentle hand on his shoulder. "Are you alright—!" You cut yourself off as soon as Jungkook rolls over to expose all the cuts that decorate his suit. "Oh my god," You whisper.

Jungkook peels open an eye, taking in your panicked expression, gaze wide with worry, and he tries to speak up. "It's... only a scratch," He manages.

You scoff, unable to believe he's trying to mask his pain with layers of humorless amusement. "Doesn't look like a scratch," You protest. "Oh my god. Can, uh, can you sit up for me?" You move closer to him, wrapping an arm around his shoulders and allowing him to lean on you as you do your best to pull him up into a sitting position. "How bad are the wounds?"

"I think it'll need stitches," He grumbles. "S-Sorry, I didn't mean to drop by like this..."

"Don't apologize," You reassure. "You're lucky, I just finished a first aid class on the campus. Except, I don't know how well I'll be with a needle..."

"It's okay," He cuts in, breathing shallow. "I trust you."

There is a silence that hangs in the air, one that you are quick to break with a noise of understanding that sounds from the back of your throat. "Okay, I'm going to take you to my bed now, so I'm gonna need you to stand up..."

A nod of understanding, another grunt as Jungkook grits his teeth, bites his lip, does anything to keep himself quiet and not worry you even more than he already has. He finds himself leaning heavily on you, the pain making his head spin as he grips onto you with a little more force than necessary. You do not seem to mind, letting him hold you like this as he rests himself down on your mattress.

You disappear for a moment, reappearing from your closet with a first aid kit. Your eyes narrow, taking in the torn fabric of his uniform. You bite your lip suddenly, as if struck by an idea that makes you nervous. "S-Sorry Spiderman. I hate to say this to you but, um, the suit as got to go. I won't be able to reach your wounds otherwise..."

"N-No, it's okay," Jungkook manages, the reality of the situation sinking in at about the same time the words leave his mouth. He really did not think this through, did not think about how those twenty seconds of insane courage he had saving up on would strike him when he least expected it. He should have known that of course he would have to reveal his identity to you someday; just not under these unusual circumstances and not when he's grappling with the pain that feels like needles in his temple now. "I understand."

"I can look away if you want," You offer kindly, but Jungkook just grits his teeth again, shakes his head.

"It’s fine,” Jungkook cuts in. “D-Do you mind helping me with the mask though?”

You swallow, probably knowing the direction this was taking much like him. “Of course.” You slowly place the first aid kit onto the desk next to your bed. You take a step towards him, and he finds himself naturally parting his legs for you to move between them. The close proximity makes both of you very much aware of the natural body warmth both of you seem to be emitting off.

The silence feels tense and suffocating, and Jungkook knows that his time is running out. Although he's not sure he's ready for you to see him for what he is beyond the mask, he remembers your talk about twenty seconds of courage and knows that this is the right thing to do. And he means what he said to you. He trusts you.

"Um," You start hesitantly. "Can I...?" You're gesturing to his mask.

"Y-Yeah," He stammers back, holding his breath as you gently grip the edge of the mask right at the base of his neck. He keeps his gaze locked on you, as you do with him, before you tug off the mask in one swift movement.

He watches you very carefully for your reaction, honestly expecting a look of betrayal for the fact that Jeon Jungkook has been Spiderman this entire time, or maybe even something of hurt, but he doesn't get that look of anger flashing behind eyes or anything else of the sort. He sees something flickering in your eyes, recognition and something else: something deeper and fonder, before that concern comes back with the full force of a train. "Jungkook?" You whisper, his name on your lips like his favorite melody. You haven't stepped away from him, haven't tried to build that wall, instead taking that second of silence to scan his face. Your eyes roam across every inch, from his nose to the cuts along his cheek, to his lips, to his eyes.

He tries for a weak smile. "H-Hi Y/N," He whispers back. His hands twitch, desperately longing to place them on your waist, if only to generate some sort of reaction to the big reveal. But it's at that moment that the pain at his side returns as he hisses between his teeth.

This is enough to startle you out of your previous resolve as you jump slightly and look down. "Do you think you can take the suit off for me?" You inquire quietly. "I-I know it might be difficult I just, I don't want to hurt you anywhere..."

The fact that there is no drastic change in your attention or attitude, even with knowing the truth of his identity, helps Jungkook relax slightly under your care. He manages a nod, and gets to work attempting to peel the suit off his upper body. It's hell trying to get his arms out, and even harder trying to tug the material down his body, but he tries to remain careful as he shifts and rolls his body until the suit is bunched at his waist.

You turn your attention back to him, and he watches the way your eyes trace down, outlining the muscles along his figure, from his arms to his collarbone, down to his chest and finally to the increasingly obvious wound at his side. You start forward, instructing Jungkook to lay on his side as you ready the materials out on your desk. “Have you ever gotten a wound stitched?” You inquire.

He shakes his head. “Just do it,” He manages, gaze roaming across the room and realizing that he should probably try to focus his attention on something. Eventually, he settles on your face. He takes in the furrowed eyebrows and the eyes that study his wound. He grits his teeth, trying to remind himself that he is here and he is alive and he trusts you and your intentions on not hurting him too much, even after you start. There are little pinches of pain, some parts worst than others, but the sight of you here, not running away, is enough to keep Jungkook’s nerves and anxiety on the low. “Are you surprised?” He finds himself asking after a few beats of long silence that take on neither a comfortable or an uncomfortable sensation.

You’re quiet for a moment, clearly trying to decide how to go about his question. “I probably shouldn’t have been,” You finally settle on disclosing. “In hindsight, it should have been obvious. Only you would do something so selfless for the sake of other people.”

He stills at that, turning his attention up to the ceiling of your room, so caught up in your words that he doesn’t notice that you’ve finished healing up his wound until you’re wrapping it up.

“Okay, your side is done,” You say, placing the needle in the alcohol to clean it off. “Can you sit up for me? I want to take care of the cut on your cheek.”

Jungkook does what he is asked, gingerly pushing himself up to resume his position of sitting up on the edge of your mattress. Legs open, you step between them. His gaze continues to follow you as you bring a cloth to his face to start gently dabbing at the cut. It stings, but he keeps his mouth shut, and you can probably see the pain flaring up in his eyes like fireworks. He watches you the whole time, eyes big and adoring and careful all at once, that it’s almost necessary that he has to say the next words. “I’m sorry,” He whispers.

You pause. “For what?”

It’s almost amusing how quiet the pair of you are. It’s the weekend, the halls are probably deserted and your roommate had already given you the heads up that she would be spending all of her time in her boyfriend’s apartment so it’s not like anyone would come bursting in or threatening to break the air that has settled between the pair of you. But it’s like this moment is private, intimate, as Jungkook reveals a part of his life he’s kept hidden in the shadows for two and a half years and you, perhaps his biggest secret of all, telling him that it’s okay.

“For not telling you earlier,” He answers. You shift your gaze from the cut on his cheek to his eyes and the pair of you are so close that he’s fairly confident that you can hear his heartbeat. “I wanted to, it’s just…”

“I know,” You cut in gently and he breathes out, because that air of understanding that had developed in high school has only remained the longer the pair of you look at each other. He wonders if you can read his eyes just as he can, he wonders if you can see the overwhelming amount of affection that curls at his heart, the way he can’t stop flickering his gaze down to your lips, the way he’s practically shaking at the close proximity. “That question about the totem from the other day,” You bring up after a moment, lifting your hand up to cup his cheek, thumb lightly dusting over his skin in a gesture that seems almost mindless but Jungkook doesn’t care. “Who were you talking about?”

But she’s—wow. She’s amazing. She’s been through a lot with me and I just, I just wished she knew how much she meant to me. I would do anything for her. The words that Jungkook had spoken about aforementioned totem come barreling back to him. “I thought it was obvious,” He says, light humor and he averts his gaze. “I was talking about you.”

He turns his attention back to you, heart ramming in his throat, laying everything down on the line. He watches your unreadable expression carefully, before you flit your gaze and you’re staring right back at him. He sees the memories that unfold behind your eyes like flashes of a movie, from the very first time you saw him in the hallway, then the library, and every little moment afterwards that made him feel cared for and watched over.

Without a warning, your grip on his face tightens just the slightest to pull him upwards as you lean forward to deliver a chaste kiss against his mouth. Actually, it should hardly constitute for a kiss. It’s just a brushing of the lips, but it’s enough to send a shiver of electricity through Jungkook’s whole body. It’s like he’s being brought back to life, all the reflexive power returning back to his limbs. Just before you could pull back, he reaches up to grip your waist, pushing you against him so he could crush his lips back to yours. Your lips are just as soft and warm as he’s always pictured it to be, and the sensation of that on top of you lightly tracing patterns along his jawline makes him moan.

You pull away after a moment to catch your breath, but Jungkook keeps your body pressed to yours, hands tight on your waist, overtaken by the desire to plant kisses along your neck. “Jungkook,” You whisper breathlessly, trailing off, tilting your head to the side and getting lost in the sensation of his lips tracing across your skin. “Y-You’re hurt, maybe we shouldn’t—!” You start, already getting an idea for the direction this was heading, if the burning fire starting in the pit of your stomach or the hardness pressing against your stomach is an indication to go by.

“I don’t care,” Jungkook interrupts, hands traveling up to cup your face. “I’ve waited so long for this.” He brings you forward to kiss him again, and you melt underneath his touch, the tenderness you’ve always felt for him coming back to hit you with the full force of a bullet train. You can taste the sweetness on his lips, the softness and the love he holds for you in his touches, which are soft in contradiction to the frantic desperation of his lips.

Although you’re still hesitant about his injuries, Jungkook gives you little choice to dwell on the manner because soon, he’s scooting higher up onto your bed and bringing his hands back down to your waist to attempt to bring you up too. As soon as he settles back down, head on your pillow and body lying completely flat on the bed, does he pull you forward in to straddle his waist. You lean forward, planting both hands on either side of his head to ensure not putting all your weight onto his wounds before kissing him again. He kisses back urgently, angling his head, using a hand to curl around the back of your neck. You emit soft noises from the back of your throat as he continues dragging out your moans.

You’re close, but you’re suddenly not close enough, and he can’t seem to feel enough of you. Your warmth floats from your body, curling around him and blinding his senses to everything but you. He whimpers, using the hand still at your waist to push you against his body and you melt, you fold into his touches and his physical commands—!

Your knee accidentally nudges the wound at his side; a soft tap that feels intensified by a sharp spike of pain. There’s a gasp as Jungkook pulls away, the waves of pain momentarily electrifying a part of his brain that distracts him from the current subject at hand.

You pull away at once. “Are you okay?” You inquire immediately. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry, did I hurt you—?”

It feels as if Jungkook is getting sagged back to reality and the question generates a violent shake of his head. “No, no,” He whines, opening his eyes when you cup his cheek with one of his hands, shaking his head again at the concern that floods his features. “I’m okay, just keep kissing me, please.”

He cranes his neck back up to kiss you again, swallowing your protests until you’re too caught up to continue speaking. You yield to him once more, and Jungkook desperately tugging up your sleeping shirt to feel along the hot skin of your waist. It feels like his mind is trying to roll through honey, still quite unable to believe that you’re here, on his lap, kissing him back. He chokes on a moan when you start rolling your hips against his, the additional friction making the blood rush straight down between his legs.

“Y/N,” He stammers, a panting mess as you pull away and immediately start dusting kisses along his jawline, down his neck, below his ear. He’s already a mess, he’s already too sensitive for this onslaught of emotions to his system. Both his hands have now found their way to your waist, holding onto you much too tightly, if only to keep him grounded when it feels like all he wants to do is spin out of control. “I haven’t… I’ve never done this before…” He finds himself confessing in a breath, letting it float in the around the pair of you.

He feels you smile against his neck. “It’s okay.” You shift slightly. “Just relax Jungkook,” You whisper against the shell of his ear, sending vibrations up his spine. “Let me take care of you.”

Suddenly, you push yourself up into a sitting position and tug off your night shirt. Jungkook’s eyes widen, jaw slacking when he realizes that you aren’t wearing a bra underneath. “Holy shit…” He whispers, drawing patterns along your skin as his gaze continues to stare unblinkingly at your exposed upper figure, as if he’s afraid that this is a dream, as if he’s afraid this would all fade away if he didn’t appreciate every second of this moment the way he should have. “You’re so beautiful—mm.” His voice fade away to a moan as you slowly start to rock your hips against his once more, applying pressure over his erection. Even with the cloth of his suit and boxers, it’s like he can feel everything and he whimpers. He cranes his head back, baring his neck towards you, hands curling tighter around your waist. Relying purely on instinct, he finds himself meeting your grinding movements in a way that leaves you breathless.

"You're not so bad yourself," You manage fervently, leaning forward to press your palms against his shoulders in order to steady yourself. The foundation of having something sturdy underneath your touch allows you to press harder, teasing your core over his length.

Jungkook lifts his head up, eyebrows furrowed, cheeks flushed, eyes glazed over, gaze narrowing at the movement of your hips against his. The sight of seeing him so wrecked because you is enough to make the desire pulse through you as you speed up the pace of your rolls.

Sucking in a breath between gritted teeth, Jungkook's head falls back against the pillows. "Y/N," He whines, high pitched and filled with so much need that it makes your head spin. "Y/N, I... I need..."

"What do you need, Jungkook?" You coax, trying to keep your mind together enough to ask him a question. "Tell me what you need."

The flush that dusts his cheeks merely deepens at the gentle request to spell out what exactly he wanted you to do to him. He's never been too eloquent with words, so he stammers. It doesn't help that you continue rolling your hips against his clothed cock, the additional fabric adding to the friction that only seems to dip his mind further into ecstasy. He opens his mouth, closes it again, swallows thickly when you lean down to kiss his cheek, his upper lip, the gesture surprisingly chaste for the hell you're putting him through down below.

You giggle lightly, smiling against his cheek, taking pride and amusement at your ability to render him completely speechless. "Do you want me to take the suit off?"

He nods quickly, thankful that you could not only detect his clear struggle, but also filling in his voice with your own. "Y-Yeah."

You pull back, flashing another reassuring smile as you move down his body just enough, tugging at the suit that has collected at his waist and pulling it down his legs. You only make it down to his ankles before he's pulling you back and using his own feet to rid of the rest of his suit and boxers. He kisses you harder, the excitement and the nervousness and the anticipation of what would follow making his hands shake, as they settle on the waistband of your sleeping shorts. He attempts to tug down once, twice, but he can't seem to get the direction right and you're laughing against his mouth.

"Don't laugh," He whines, tugging on your bottom attire once more time. "Take this off, Y/N."

"You're so assertive Jeon," You tease lightly, but you pull back enough for him to see your own glazed expression. Keeping your eyes on him, you tug down the last remaining articles of clothing separating the pair of you. The shifting in the bed signals the kicking up of your legs to rid of the shorts and panties entirely. Both of you refuse to break eye contact the entire time until finally, you break it to look down to take in the sight of his length, hard and needy with the tip spilling over with precum and the sight is so mouthwatering that a part of you longs to just slide down Jungkook's body to score a taste, to see if perhaps he tastes as sweet as his tongue does.

But the sound of his voice breaks you out of your previous resolve, his hands moving up and down your side to get your attention. "Should we, uh," He starts, clearly embarrassed and nervous and hesitant at the sight of being exposed to one another. "Do we, well, do you have a... um..."

Your face breaks out into another fond smile. You lean down to kiss reassurance onto his lips. "I'm on the pill," You report. "Are you sure about this Jungkook?"

He watches you carefully for a long second, that previous lust and haze in his eyes dissipating for just a moment and being replaced with something more steady, something more confident, something more loving. "I've never been more sure about anything in my life."

Your heart stutters in your chest for just a moment at his trust, at his hope, in you, and in what the pair of you could become. You sit up, lifting yourself up by the knees and gently taking him to rub him over your slit. Jungkook reacts immediately to this by sucking in a breath, and you hardly give him time to think or process or overcome the sensation before you're lining the tip to your entrance and sinking onto him. The stretch is overwhelming that you throw your head back into a whimper, eyebrows furrowing, as Jungkook is emitting something drawn between a desperate whine and a sigh of finally getting to feel you around him.

"Y/N," He chokes out, hands settling back at your waist as soon as you've gone hilt deep, fingers digging into the skin with more force than before, leaving you little doubt that there would be bruising within the next few days. But you don't care, and he doesn't care. Your hands find refuge on his shoulders once more, gripping tightly, finding foundational comfort in the touch, as you use that base to help you rise up his length slowly before sliding down his cock. "O-Oh fuck," Jungkook moans, arching his back at the sensation, just as you're whimpering out his name. "Oh fuck Y/N, do that again. Do that again please."

You're too caught up to reply, so you merely settle with repeating the movement until you've developed a pace that has the both of you whining and groaning in timing to the rhythm. Once Jungkook starts to gain a sense of the tempo of your hips, he acquires half a mind to start returning the thrusts.

"Mm, Jungkook," You whine, driving yourself faster down his length. "Just like that, ah!" You crane your neck up slightly in response to the overwhelming pleasure that floods your system right when Jungkook hits the spot that makes you sees stars. Feeling your release just right there, you bring one hand up to rub at your clit, the sensation making you dub over and Jungkook watches the sight of you adding additional pleasure to yourself with deep interest.

"Y/N," He groans out, trying to focus on helping you reach your end first before he could blow his load right then and there. It vaguely surprises him with just how long he's been able to last up until this point, but he's not going to survive much longer, as he feels himself beginning to get dragged towards the edge at an alarmingly quicker pace. "L-Let me."

You open an eye to peer down in time to see him brushing away your fingers from your clit, immediately replacing them with his thumb. As soon as he touches the bundle of nerves, you tense up, your lips parting slightly as the ecstasy you feel goes beyond the vocal capability. "Yes Jungkook," You whine. "Right there, right there, right there, oh god, I'm gonna—!"  Your eyes shut tightly together as your lips part in a silent scream as the white hot pleasure courses through your system and light a fire to every single one of your nerves.Your hips slow down. Your legs tremble on either side of him before the high of your release fades away and is gradually replaced with overstimulation. With a high pitched whimper of protest of Jungkook's fingers still on your clit, he pulls his fingers away. He, however, does not stop pumping in and out of you. His thrusts increase in force, since he no longer has you to meet him halfway.

Overwhelmed with the large amount of pleasure washing over your body like a wash, you fall against the boy's chest, trembling from the new pace that he has set. Feeling you shake against him, Jungkook wraps his arms around your frame to keep you in place and, quickly forgetting the stinging in his side from the adrenaline surging through his body, starts rutting up into you. Still spent and recovering from your earlier release, you are left with no choice but to grip the blankets next to you to try and stop the room from spinning, gasping and whimpering Jungkook's name until he's reaching his own end. He groans loudly, his first release hitting him like a train as he drops a broken version of your name into the void. He rides out his high, slowing down the rhythm of his hips until he's stopping entirely.

The room is filled with the sounds of pants and heavy breathing, the frantic heartbeat against each of your chests gradually starting to slow down into something more normal as the pair of you bask in one another's presence.

Finally, Jungkook pulls himself out of you and you whine momentarily at the loss before you lift yourself from Jungkook's chest to roll onto his side. Your eyes roam his face, taking in the sweaty complexion and the flushed cheeks, the half-lidded way he's watching you, and you reach out to brush some of the hair out of his face.

"That was so..." Jungkook speaks after a moment, staring right back at you. "Wow."

You laugh. "Wow indeed."

"Does this mean..." He speaks suddenly, lowering his head slightly to show his bashfulness on the subject. "Does this mean that you... that we...?"

"Does this mean that I like you?" You fill in softly, soft laughter filling the room. "Well, I don't ask anyone if I could take off their suit."

Jungkook bites his lip, reaching over to take some of your hair and tuck it behind your ear. "I really, really care about you Y/N," He manages thickly. "And I don't think... I wouldn't want... It's just that I..."

You press a finger to his lips. "Did you mean it?" You whisper.

"Mean what?"

"That I was your totem."

He doesn't hesitate to answer. "Yeah." He nods. "I meant it all." He pauses for a moment. “Did you mean it?” He returns. “When you said it should have been obvious that I was Spiderman?”

“Well, maybe not obvious, but… it makes sense,” You explain. “You’ve always been selfless and understanding and thoughtful. You always care so much for other people, even if people might not care for you. And you’re really funny, Jungkook. You’ve always been quiet and trying to hide from the world.”

“But you always saw me,” He fills in.

“Of course I did.” You say this like it should have been obvious, and it’s in that statement that he’s sure. Twenty seconds, right?

"I know that me being Spiderman might... make things complicated,” He starts with a cough. “But, uh, do you think I could... if we could go out some time?"

You look at him, smile dusting along your features as if he's just returned from hanging all the stars in the sky just for you. "I thought you'd never ask, Jungkook." You shift slightly to prop your head up slightly. "Was there something you had in mind?" Your eyes widen as soon as you ask the question before you're leaning forward to rest a hand against his chest. "Wait. Can we go swinging around the city?" You inquire, bright smile reaching every corner of your eyes as you crane your neck up to stare at him fondly.

Jungkook's shoulders shake with his laughter as he moves downwards slightly to kiss your forehead. "Anything for you."

[randomwordprompts]

Intimate Friends | Part Seven

A/N: Damn, this took longer than planned but we near the end of the tunnel babies! It’s a little long but once you read it you’ll see why.

Word count: Little over 2.5k

Taglist: @bartierbakarimobisson @wakandas-vibranium @dramaqueenamby @lostgalaxies @storibambino @maya-leche @yaachtynoboat711 @wakandan-flowerz @blackgirloneshots @great-neckpectations @flowerdelreaper @babygirlofwakanda

Warnings: violence, blood, death, assault, cursing(?)

Diana and Amira had a spare room in the expansive house that they kept most of their relics in, usually for spell casting, even having a skylight put in. They also kept various sprays and tinctures, stones, crystals, and spices as well as candles of varying colors. They closed themselves in the room and started to make space in the middle of it for what they planned to do, both sitting in chairs once they’d moved the furniture to sit against the walls. The older woman noticed that her daughter had a distant look on her face and sighed, standing and moving over to place a hand on her shoulder, pulling her attention.

“Hey, I need you present. You know how this works. I’m going to get a photo of your father, do me a favor and set up the candles?”

Amira nodded without a word and stood to start grabbing the candles only to be stopped once again, meeting her mother’s gaze.

“Amira, I mean it. You’re too focused on the wrong things. Take some breaths and clear your mind, use some of the sprays if needed with something to keep you alert. We’re going to find him.”

With those words and a kiss to Amira’s forehead, Diana turned and left the room, closing the door behind her. The young woman huffed just a bit but knew her mother was right. Before touching the candles she went to the box of tinctures and grabbed the tranquility spray - a combination of lavender, orange, and marjoram oils - and sprayed it over herself in three spritzes, inhaling the scents deeply and letting the fragrances do their job. The next thing she grabbed was the bottle of myrrh, pulling the dropped and placing a drop on her finger to place behind both of her ears. She got another drop and made a small ‘x’ over her heart with the protection tincture. Finally, Amira grabbed the peppermint extract and placed three drops into the palm of her hand before putting the dropper back in the bottle and rubbing her hands together. Once the oil was rubbed in she brought her hands to her face and inhaled deeply, the fragrance immediately waking her up and making her more alert. She took two more breaths before finally feeling focused enough to move on, though she left out what she used for Diana once she returned.

As Amira began to place the seven candles - red, yellow, orange, green, blue, two purple, and indigo, - there was a knock at the door. She finished her placements before going to open the door, finding Elisha looking back at her.

“I brought you the map you wanted, it should be big enough. It goes down into New York and even Northern Pennsylvania and up through Quebec. Let me know if you two need more?”

Amira smiled and took the map, nodding.

“Will do, but I don’t think we’ll need anything bigger. It’s been just under 48 hours so he couldn’t have gotten far. Thanks, mama E.”

Elisha nodded and turned to leave just as Diana was coming back, the two exchanging a hopeful look before the latter joined Amira in the room and closed the door, locking it behind them. As Diana began to use the tinctures in the same ways her child did, Amira placed the map inside the circle before grabbing something Hannibal had written and tore it with the picture Diana brought into seven equal pieces and placing each in a candle jar. By the time she placed the mixed papers and grabbed the matches, her mother was ready to go, standing back to let Amira work.

Amira took a deep breath and struck the first match, beginning to chant over each one before lighting both the candle and photo together as she called out every chakra to find her father, starting with red and ending with blue as her mother called out every other one after her until they reached the blue candle and spoke together under the light of the moon and the candles.

“By the fire of his soul, I call candlelight to guide us, so that Hannibal may be found.”

“By the stars in his soul, I call Starlight to guide us, so that Hannibal may be found.”

“By the scent of his soul, I call smell to guide us, so that Hannibal may be found.”

“By the heart of his soul, I call instinct to guide us, so that Hannibal may be found.”

As they continued to the last candle, Amira placed the last ball in the middle of the map, holding the flaming ball for a moment as she created a thoughtform before placing it on the map. As the map began to catch fire Amira gasped as her eyes flashed black, seeing snapshots of a journey from Mason’s camp to an old cabin in the woods. She winced as she felt as if the air was knocked out of her and nearly fell over onto the candles as Diana held her up suddenly. For a moment she felt close to death only for the feeling to leave just as quickly. When she blinked she was looking down at the map and saw that the ball had stopped burning at a specific spot.

“Oak Island...he’s in New York.”

(Mason’s Cabin)

Hannibal was barely conscious when he first felt it. The sensation started in his chest and spread through his body, a heat like he was being lit with flames from within nearly engulfed him to the point of discomfort. He was nearly about to scream when it left as quickly as it showed up, letting out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. Mason noticed it though, immediately voicing his thoughts.

“You seem very relaxed for someone that’s going to die, Doc. What’s on your mind?”

Hannibal smirked to himself before he spoke again, the ability to breathe growing more and more difficult.

“Oh, nothing. Just thought of my family. You know they’re going to find me, don’t you?”

“I doubt that, Lector. They’re resourceful I’m sure, but it’ll take a miracle to find you here.”

Hannibal smirked a bit and tried to ignore the pain going through his body, feeling himself slip back into the darkness.

-Present Day-

After the spell was cast, Amira passed out from the drain of energy. Xavier was worried that she’d hurt herself but Diana reassured him that she’d just overextended herself slightly. While she was recovering, the others worked to learn more about the kind of demon Mason is and the best way to kill him. They poured over information on him that they could find, but none gave them any hints as to what he is. Elisha was typing away furiously, Jonathan and Francois on their respective laptops while Diana and Pauline poured over books on how to kill demons in their various forms, meanwhile Xavier was calling people with Will to see if anyone had any info or memory of Mason that would be helpful.

Just when they were running out of people on their list Jonathan let them know he found something and Amira made her way into the expansive office.

“Isla Devereaux, sister of the Prime Minister of Canada.”

Amira spoke up quickly, asking the question that popped into everyone’s head.

“Devereaux? I thought the Prime Minister was Trudeau?”

“He is, but his sister is married to one Nigel Devereaux. He’s one of the richest men in Quebec if not all of Canada and was one of Trudeau’s biggest financial supporters.”

“My, I can’t imagine why that would be,” Francois remarked with a snort.

“Yeah, but get this: Devereaux only became a sponsor to the campaign after he lost in the early race against Justin. He originally wanted to run for Prime Minister but he couldn’t get the votes.”

Pauline shook her head before speaking. “That’s because most of his supporters were either closet or open racists. I remember when he tried to get support from your father until he found out about us.”

Amira sat down next to Jonathan and looked at his screen closely, reading more about the Devereaux’s exploits before looking back around the room.

“I think I had a vision. When we did the tracking spell I could see where dad was and I also saw a glimpse of Mason. His face was disfigured, right?”

All three of the older women exchanged looks before revealing they didn’t know since they didn’t see him when he came out. Amira grabbed Jonathan’s laptop as she continued.

“Okay, well y’all might not have seen him but I can promise you he doesn’t look like this anymore,” she said while showing them the photo.

Diana grabbed the laptop as Pauline and Elisha came up beside her to look over his face.

“His face was disfigured horribly like he’d been burned or something. And his eyes...they were red, nearly glowing.”

As Amira continued to speak she grabbed a discarded book and flipped through the pages until she found what she was looking for.

“From what I’m reading here, he has all the makings of a reborn demon. He sold his soul while he was still alive in exchange for eternal youth. It seems that he didn’t read the full spell though, because there’s a warning. ‘If one is killed by someone close to them, they will be restored but their inner darkness will become revealed to all.’ So maybe the Devereaux person worked with him, but I don’t think it extends into the realm of soul-selling.”

Placing the book down on the desk, everyone looked at the words, Will being the one to read it out loud.

“So the only things that can kill him are pure sunlight and a...seraph blade?”

“It’s a blade infused with the spirit of angels. We actually have one already…”

Everyone besides her sister-wives looked at Diana when she said this, confusion and surprise evident on their faces. They were prepared to ask questions but Amira reminded them that they didn’t have a lot of time because Hannibal was hurt. With that in mind, everyone went to get ready for travel, choosing to use a truck to get there and a motorboat to get across the water. It was a lengthy trip but to anyone that saw them, they just appeared to be a family going on a fishing trip with their boat.

-Oak Island-

Once they came to be across the river they set the boat up to cross, rowing instead of turning on the motor. Once they reached the opposite shore everyone except Jonathan got off the boat and prepared to go into the forest, each with their own weapons. Will had a sawed-off shotgun, Francois brought their personal machete, Xavier had his 9mm, Amira her knives, and the three Lector matriarchs held their own items. The seraph blade was being held by Diana but kept covered so that Mason wouldn’t realize what it was until it was going through him.

A cloaking spell kept them from being discovered going through the thick forest, but the sound of faint grunts nearly had them giving themselves away early. Mason was beating Hannibal rather relentlessly, wanting his death to be a slow and painful one. It’d become a cycle of the past day, Mason landing blows until the doctor passed out and waiting until he was awake to begin beating him some more. By this time Hannibal was barely recognizable due to his injuries, his face bloody and bruised, eyes nearly swollen shut, a possibly broken nose, and a dislocated jaw were only the blatantly visible ones. He was barely breathing and was starting to think he just might die before he was rescued. Just when he was slipping out of consciousness again the door to the house was blown open to reveal Will standing there with his shotgun, blowing a hole through Mason before disappearing outside. The blast was enough to alert Hannibal to what was happening but he didn’t have the energy to try and see where his family was.

Mason fought between Will, Xavier, Elisha, and Pauline, but every time he tried to strike he would either be shot, stabbed, or sliced. Meanwhile, Francois, Diana, and Amira had snuck into the house undetected. Francois untied their father and slung one of his arms over their shoulders before heading for the back door just when an inhuman screech sounded from outside. Amira went to the door and found everyone on the ground except Xavier, though he looked as annoyed as she felt. Just when he landed a shot to Mason’s jaw Amira said a quick spell over her knife, the blade heating until it turned red. She threw it and watched the blade land in Mason’s shoulder with a sizzle. Mason gave an agonized yell and turned to find the petite young woman staring at him with deadly intent. While his back was turned Xavier saw Francois taking Hannibal back to the boat and went to help them move the man faster.

Mason grinned at Amira before pulling the knife from his shoulder.

“You’re cute. It’ll take more than a pretty little knife to kill me, though.”

“Oh, I think we’ll just have to agree to disagree there, Mason.”

With those words, she backed into the cabin and Mason followed quickly only to have Diana throw holy water in his face the moment he crossed the threshold. He howled in pure pain and swung before the older woman could move out of the way, knocking her into the nearby wall. Amira quickly started to fight him, trading blow for blow until his back was turned towards her unconscious mother. Suddenly Mason landed a hard blow to her gut, effectively knocking the air from her before grabbing her by the throat and slamming her into the wall. He lifted her from her feet and tightened his grip, chuckling darkly while he watched her struggle and scratch at his arm, her legs kicking wildly. Leaning into her face until they were nearly touching noses, his disfigured face pulled into a sickening grin.

“What was that you said about your pretty knife, pretty girl?”

Before he could say anything else a blade came through his chest, the wound burning at the edges until he dropped to his knees, releasing Amira as she looked down at him with a smirk.

“Oh, you thought I meant my knife? No no, I meant that blade my mom has. Enjoy hell, Mason.”

He screamed as he died for the final time, Amira rubbing her throat lightly before checking on Diana as she placed the blade back in its sheath. Once she saw her mother was okay the two of them joined Pauline and Elisha outside to make their way back to the boat. They found the others waiting for them with Hannibal, patching him up as best they could at the moment. When they climbed in the boat he mustered up the last of his strength and spoke, surprising everyone.

“Let’s go home.”

[secretcupcakesublime]

Good practices Design for CSS Grid

Now that people are using the

CSS

Grid Layout for production seems to be asking a very common question which seems to be "What are the best practices?

" The short answer to the present problem is to use the tactic of layout as began within the specification.. The exact aspects of the standard you want to use, and also how you mix Grid with other methods of layout like

Flexbox

, depends on what works with the patterns you are trying to create and how you and your team choose to work with. Looking deeper, I think maybe this call for "best practices" shows a lack of faith in the use of a system of layout which is very different from what had happened before. Maybe it's a concern that we're using Grid for things it wasn't designed for, or not using Grid when we should be. Maybe it's a matter of worrying about supporting older browsers, or how Grid fits into our development workflow. In this article, I'm going to try to cover some of the things that could be described as best practices, and some things that you probably don't need to worry about. THE SURVEY In order to help inform this post and to make this article strong, I wanted to find out how others used the Grid Layout in production, what were the difficulties they faced, what did they really enjoy? I had common queries, problems, or methods used. I put together a short survey to find out, asking questions about how people used the Grid System, and in particular what they enjoyed most and what they found difficult. I will reference and quote some of those responses directly in the article that follows. I will also be linking to several other sites, where you can find out more about the mentioned techniques. There was, as it turned out, much more than one article worth reading. ACCESSIBILITY If you need to take caution when using any aspect of the Grid specification, it is when using something that might trigger material to be re-ordered:

“Authors must use order and the grid-placement properties only for visual, not logical, reordering of content. Style sheets that use these features to perform logical reordering are non-conforming.”  —

Grid Specification: Re-ordering and Accessibility

But this isn't special to Grid, the ability to rearrange content in two dimensions so quickly makes Grid a bigger challenge. However, if you use any approach that enables the material to be reordered — be it Grid, Flexbox, or even utter positioning — you need to be careful not to disconnect the visual experience from the structure of the material in the text. Screen readers (and people who only use a keyboard to move around the document) will be following the order of things in the source.

The areas where you need to be especially careful are when using flex-direction to reverse the order in Flexbox; the order property in Flexbox or Grid; any positioning of Grid objects using any method when moving objects in the document out of the logical order; and using the grid-auto-flow dense packing mode.

For more information on this issue, see the following resources:·      

Grid Layout and Accessibility - MDN

·      

Flexbox and the keyboard navigation disconnect

WHICH GRID METHOD SHOULD I USE?

”With so much choice in Grid, it was a challenge to stick to a consistent way of writing it (e.g. naming grid lines or not, defining grid-template-areas, fallbacks, media queries) so that it would be maintainable by the whole team.”  —

Michelle Barker

When you first look at Grid, so many different ways of constructing a layout may seem daunting. However, in the end, it all comes down to stuff being moved from one grid line to another. You have options depending on the structure you are attempting to accomplish, and what fits best for the team and the site you are creating.

There's no right or wrong path forward. Below, I'll pick up some of the confusion themes. In the previous article "Grid Gotchas and Stumbling Blocks," I've already addressed several other possible areas of uncertainty. DO I GET AN IMPLICIT OR GRID EXPLICIT?

The grid you create is known as the Explicit Grid, with grid-template-columns and grid-template-rows.

The Clear Grid allows the Grid to label lines and also gives you the ability to mark the grid's end line by -1.

You can use a Specific Grid to do each of these things, and in general when you have an all designed layout and know exactly where the grid lines will go, and the track size.

I most frequently use the Implicit Grid for row directions. I want the columns to be specified but then rows will be auto-sized and will expand to contain the material. To some degree, you can control the Implicit Grid with grid-auto-columns and grid-auto-rows, but you do have less power than if you specify anything. You need to determine whether you know exactly how much material you have, and also how many rows and columns you have, in which case you will construct a Specific Grid. If you don't know how much material you have but just want to build rows or columns to keep whatever is there, you'll use the Implicit Grid.

Nonetheless, the two can be mixed.

I have specified three columns in the Explicit Grid and three rows in the CSS below, so the first three rows of content will be as follows: a track of at least 200px in height but expanding to take content taller, A track fixed at 400px in height, A track of at least 300px in height (but expands).

Any additional content will go into a line created in the Implicit Grid, and I use the grid-auto-rows property to make those lines at least 300px wide, extending to auto.

.grid {  display: grid;  grid-template-columns: 2fr 6fr 2fr;  grid-template-rows: minmax(400px auto) 800px minmax(600px, auto);  grid-auto-rows: minmax(600px, auto);  grid-gap: 40px; }

TA Compact GRID WITH A Fixed NUMBER OF COLUMNS By using Repeat Notation, Autofill, and Minmax, you can construct a pattern of as many tracks as you can fit into a container, removing the need for Media Queries to some degree.

This technique can be found in this video tutorial, and also illustrated in my recent article "Using Media Queries For Responsive Design In 2018" along with similar ideas. Choose this technique if you're happy with content falling below earlier content when there's less room, and are happy to allow a lot of sizing versatility. You explicitly asked for the show of your columns with a minimum scale, and for auto-filling. There were a few comments in the survey that made me wonder if people really wanted a grid with a fixed number of columns to choose this form. If you end up with an arbitrary number of columns at some breakpoints, it may be easier to set the number of columns — and redefine them as required with media queries — instead of using auto-fill or auto-fit. WHY TRACK SIZING SHOULD I USE?

In my article "How Big Is That Box? I mentioned track sizing in detail. Understanding Sizing In Grid Layout, "however, I still get questions about which way to use track sizing. In particular, I get asked about the difference between the size of the percentage and the unit fr. If you only use the fr unit as specced, it varies from using a percentage because it distributes space available. If you place a larger object in a track then the way the fr operates until that track takes up more room and distributes what is left over.

.grid { display: grid; grid-template-columns: 2fr 2fr 2fr; grid-gap: 40px; }

To allow the fr unit to allocate all the space in the grid container you need to use minmax) (to give it a minimum size of 0.

.grid { display: grid; grid-template-columns: minmax(0,4fr) minmax(0,4fr) minmax(0,4fr); grid-gap: 40px; }

You may also choose to use fr in any of these scenarios: those where you want auto-based space distribution (the default behavior) and those where you want equal distribution. Usually, I will use the fr machine because it figures out the sizing for you and allows you to use set tracks or gaps. instead, the only time I use a percentage is when I add grid components to an existing layout which also uses other layout methods.

If I want to match my grid components with a float- or flex-based layout that uses percentages, using them in my grid layout means it is using the same scaling process

AUTO-PLACE ITEMS OR SET THEIR POSITION?

Sometimes, you will find that you only need to put one or two elements in your layout, and the rest is focused on the order of the content. This is really a very successful indicator that you didn't disconnect the source and visual display.

If items fall pretty much into auto-placement-based location then they are generally in good order.

However, once I have decided where everything is going, I tend to assign everything a position. That means I don't end up with strange things happening when someone adds something to the document and grid auto places it somewhere unexpected, thus throwing the layout out. If all is placed Grid will position the element in the next available empty grid cell.

That may not be exactly where you want it, but it's definitely easier to sat down at the end of your layout than to hop into the center and move other things around. WHAT SYSTEM POSITIONS TO USE?

Ultimately all that comes down to moving objects from one line to another while dealing with the Grid Style. Essentially, everything else is an aid to that.   Decide with your team if you want to name the lines, use Grid Template Areas, or use a mix of different layout styles. I find I like using Grid Template Areas especially for small components. There's no right or wrong th re, though. Find out what's best for you. GRID IN CONJUNCTION WITH OTHER LAYOUT MECHANISMS

Note that Grid Layout is not the only true layout system to control all of them, it's designed for a certain form of the layout — two-dimensional layout in particular. Many methods of the layout are still in place and you should understand any pattern and what fits it best.

In fact, I think this is very difficult for those of us who used to hack around with layout methods to make them do something they weren't really built for. Taking a step back, looking at the layout methods for the tasks they were built for, and trying to use them for those tasks, is a very good time.

No matter how much I write about Grid versus Flexbox, in particular, I'll be asked which one person should use. There are many patterns in which either method of layout makes perfect sense and it is really up to you. No one will yell at you for preferring Flexbox over Grid, or Grid over Flexbox.

For my own work, I prefer to use Flexbox for components where I want to strongly regulate their layout through the natural size of objects, effectively moving the other objects around. I do often use Flexbox as I want alignment because the Box Alignment properties can only be used in Flexbox and Grid. I may have a one-child element Flex container, so I can align that child.

An indication that Flexbox may not be the method of layout that I would prefer is when I start applying percentage widths to flex objects and setting flex-grow to 0. The reason to apply percentage widths to flex products is mostly that I'm trying to line them up in two dimensions (it's exactly what Grid is for to line things up in two dimensions). Try both though, and see which seems to better fit the style of content or design. Via that, you are unlikely to cause any problems.  NESTING GRID AND FLEX OBJECTS

This also comes up a lot, and having a Grid Element also a Grid Container is absolutely no problem, thus nesting one grid within another. With Flexbox, you can do the same, making both a Flex Element and Flex Container. You can also make a Grid Item and Flex Container or a Grid Container Flex Item — none of these items are a problem!

What we can't do at the moment is nest one grid inside another, and use the grid tracks that are specified on the parent overall. This will be very helpful, which is what the Grid Specification subgrid proposals in Level 2 aim to solve. A nested grid is currently transforming into a new grid so you'd need to be careful about sizing to ensure it aligns with any parent tracks.

You Can Have Multiple Grids On One Page A comment popped up a few times in the survey which surprised me, there seems to be an idea that a grid should be limited to the main layout, and that many grids on one page are maybe not a good thing. You can have any grid you want! Use the grid for big items and small things, only use the grid if it makes sense as a grid.

 FALLBACK AND OTHER OUTDATED BROWSERS

“Grid used in conjunction with @supports has enabled us to better control the number of layout variations we can expect to see. It has also worked really well with our progressive enhancement approach meaning we can reward those with modern browsers without preventing access to content to those not using the latest technology.”  —

Joe Lambert

working on

rareloop.com

Nonetheless, in the survey, several people listed older browsers, there was a fairly even split between those who thought it was difficult to help older browsers and those who thought it was simply due to feature queries and the fact that Grid overrides certain methods of the layout. In "Using CSS Grid: Supporting Browsers Without Framework," I've written extensively about the complexities of creating such fallbacks. In general, modern browsers are far more interoperable than their previous predecessors. We prefer to see far less real "browser bugs" and if you correctly use HTML and CSS, you can find that what you see in one browser is the same as in another.

Of course, we do have cases where one browser has not yet shipped support for a standard, or parts of a standard. With Grid, we were very lucky that, within a short time, the browsers shipped Grid Layout in a very complete and interoperable way. And our testing criteria appear to be comparing browsers with Grid and without Grid. You may have opted to use the -ms prefixed version in IE10 and IE11, which would then entail a third form of browser checking.

Browsers that support modern grid layout (not version IE) support feature queries as well. This means you can check the support for Grid before you use it.

TESTING BROWSERS THAT DON’T SUPPORT GRIDS

By using browser failbacks without Grid Layout support (or using the -ms prefixed version for IE10 and 11), you'll want to check how certain browsers render Grid Layout. You need a way to imagine your site in an example browser to do this.

I wouldn't take the approach of breaking your Function Question by searching anything nonsensical for support or misspelling the value list. This method will only work if your stylesheet is extremely simple, and within the function queries you've put absolutely everything to do with your Grid Layout. This is a very fragile and time-consuming way of working, particularly when you're using Grid extensively. Additionally, an older browser would not only lack support for the Grid Style, but other CSS properties will also be unsupported. If you're looking for "best practice," set up yourself to be in a good place to check your work is up there!

There are a few simple ways to set up a reliable system of checking the failbacks. The best option is to use a service such as BrowserStack — if you have a fairly good internet connection and don't mind paying a subscription fee — This is a program that allows websites (even those in progress on your computer) to be accessed on a whole host of actual browsers. BrowserStack does provide open-source projects with free accounts. My recommendation to check locally would be to use a Virtual Machine built with your target browser. Microsoft provides free downloads of Virtual Machine with IE versions back to IE8, and Edge as well. The older version of a plugin with no support for Grid can also be installed on the VM. To get a copy of Firefox 51 or below, for example. Be sure to turn off automatic updates after updating your older Firefox as explained here otherwise it will update itself quietly! You can then check your site on one VM in IE11 and in non-supporting Firefox (a much less vulnerable solution than values that are misspelled). It might take you an hour or so to get set up, but then you'll be in a really nice position UNLEARNING OLD HABITS

Many of the respondents to the survey discussed the need to unlearn old habits and how it would be easier for people who are completely new to CSS to learn Style. I prefer to go along. While experienced developers try hard to return the grid to a one-dimensional form of the layout when teaching people in person total beginners have no problem using Grid. I've seen attempts at "grid systems" using CSS Grid that add the requisite float or flex-based grid wrappers back in the row. Don't think about trying out new strategies. If you have the opportunity to check in a few browsers and remain aware of possible usability problems, then you can't really go too far wrong. And if you come across a perfect way to build a c “Grid Layout is the most exciting CSS development since media queries. It's been so well thought through for real-world developer needs and is an absolute joy to use in production - for designers and developers alike.”  —

Trys Mudford

working on

trysmudford.com

KEY POINTS: To end, here's a really short list of current best practices! If you have found things that work in your own case, or do not work well, add them to the comments.

Be very conscious of the possibility of reordering content. Check that the visual display isn't detached from the order of the text.

Test using a local or remote Virtual Machine with specific target browsers.

Do not forget older methods of the layout are still true and useful. To attain trends try different ways. Don't get stuck on using a grid.

Know that you are going to have a whole range of preconceptions as an accomplished front-end developer on how the interface works. Consider looking at these new approaches anew

As a reputed Software Solutions Developer we have expertise in providing dedicated remote and outsourced technical resources for software services at very nominal cost. Besides experts in full stacks We also build web solutions, mobile apps and work on system integration, performance enhancement, cloud migrations and big data analytics. Don’t hesitate to

get in touch with us!

[welcomeeatery]

Small Bathroom Design Ideas

When it comes to design, a small bathroom presents an opportunity to have some fun. Consider that you typically only spend a few minutes in a small bathroom or powder room. As long as you get the bathroom layout right and provide all the necessities, you can really go in any direction with your bathroom decor.

We were excited by that idea when we finally decided to tackle our small main floor powder room over holidays. In just over two days, we transformed it from a red and sombre space to one that is pleasant and surprisingly pretty. You can get a whole new look without a costly bathroom renovation. Here's my best tips for a quick budget bathroom remodel and designing a functional small bathroom with style. *Affiliate links are used in this post

Before I dig into the changes we made in this bathroom remodel, let's take a look at what this bathroom looked like before. We moved into this house two years ago and we hadn't touched this space. Here's a few things that had to be fixed:

the bold red paint that made this room feel dark and small

weird ceiling angles emphasized by the paint treatment

a window with blinds that were constantly closed to provide privacy

modern dated fixtures that didn't fit with the warm and traditional design scheme we had in the rest of the house

no towel holder, art or accessories and a lack of style

So how did we remodel this small bathroom on a budget?

1. Keep Existing Fixtures and Furnishings

The biggest costs in a bathroom renovation are incurred when you make changes to the existing layout and furnishings. Things like moving the toilet or faucet placement, changing the vanity, or making structural changes can significantly increase your budget. In this budget bathroom remodel, we didn't have to make any costly alterations. The toilet worked fine (though it was wobbly and needed to be re-installed) and the vanity and countertop were adequate. The floor tiles really weren't our style but they continued into the connected kitchen so we decided to live with those as well.

2. Use Inexpensive Molding to add Character

One great thing about small bathrooms is that you don't have a lot of square footage to cover. We decided to keep this project at a minimal cost by relying on inexpensive paint and moulding to bring about a dramatic transformation. To bring character to the space, we decided to continue the wall moulding treatment into the bathroom. The moulding outside the bathroom was installed a few years ago by the previous owners but we were lucky to find trim pieces to replicate the look. We had leftover trim from our living room project that exactly matched the chair rail. We did purchase additional picture moulding which was super inexpensive, about $8 for the entire room, and we kept the existing baseboard.

3. Expand Your Space With Paint

How can you make a small bathroom look bigger? All it takes is the right paint colour and a few reflective accessories. By painting the wall above the chair rail and the ceiling the same white paint colour (Simply White by Benjamin Moore), and using a darker colour on the bottom (Stonington Grey by Benjamin Moore), we were to make the room feel taller. Having the ceiling the same colour as the walls also helped to minimize the weird angles. The small door on the right above the vanity is a door into the laundry chute which runs from the floor upstairs to the basement downstairs. It's pretty handy for tossing down dirty tea towels but it creates this strange curved ceiling in the bathroom! Another space-expanding trick is to use mirrors. This round mirror fills up the area nicely and reflects the sunlight from the window, making the bathroom feel bright and airy. I also like how the round shape plays against the hard edges of the vanity and towel bar and the minimal design doesn't overpower this small room.

4. Be Creative With Your Privacy Options

Privacy is something you need to have in a bathroom but that doesn't mean everything needs to be closed off and dark. Window film is a great option that is not only functional but helps to make your small bathroom feel bigger. We lined the entire window with this window film and I added a simple tension rod, curtain rings with clips, and a cafe curtain I sewed out of scrap fabric to the bottom half of the window. This way, you let in natural light but don't feel exposed when you're in the bathroom.

5. Choose Clean Lined Decor Elements

Although the mouldings and trims are very curvy and traditional, I balanced them with more modern and streamlined toilet paper holder, towel rod, and knobs. Their minimal design doesn't draw too much attention or compete with the moulding. Keeping everything in a matte black finishe also helps tie the entire look together.

6. Make a Statement With Light

Light fixtures are one of my favourite ways to bring style and impact to a room. Typically, you might only have one or two light sources in a small bathroom. Make the best use of that opportunity by choosing a light fixture that combines both functionality and design. This Permo Industrial Wall Sconce comes in 5 different colours and was less than $35! With it's mixed brass and metal finish, it packs a lot of style in it's small form. I love the swivel head and the extended arm which allows light to be cast downward in a nice cone shape.

7. Use Art in the Bathroom

It might seem counter-intuitive, but I would encourage you to use a really nice piece of art in your small bathroom. Art can elevate the feel of an entire space, make it feel 'fancier' and, well, less like a bathroom! I've had this modern print for years and was just waiting for the right spot to display it. Who knew it would end up here. I love that it's unexpected and how the art picks up on the black, white, and cream tones found in the room.

I was extremely happy with how quickly this room came together. How long does it take to renovate a small bathroom? It depends on the complexity of changes you are making but this budget bathroom remodel took us only 2.5 days. If you have a small bathroom in need of a makeover, make a few select changes and you and your guests will be sitting pretty in no time!

[dreamypassionprecure]

Dreamy✰ Passion Precure Ep 1!

                      Lovely Performance! Cure Pointe's Debut!

                                        Also available on ffnet

  A young boy, no older than fourteen, ran through the crumbling halls of Remina Palace. His footsteps echoed off the walls and mixed with the sounds of his frantic breathing, his pale blue hair disheveled. In his arms, a baby girl slept soundly. He burst through the doors to the throne room.

   “Mother!”

   A tall woman with long white hair looked up from the conversation she'd been having with a guard. She rushed over to her children, a worried expression painting her soft features. She crouched down to talk to them.

   “Luna, I thought I told you to stay in your room with your sister. It's not safe out in the open. What are you doing here?”

   “They attacked us, Mother! They're in the castle!”

   The queen gasped. She stood up to her full height and pointed her hand to the guard.

   “You! Go gather the rest of the soldiers! And alert the Precure while you're at it! We're going to need everyone we can get!”

   “Yes, Your Majesty!”

   The guard left the throne room in a hurry. The queen turned back to the children.

   “Luna, I want you to run. Take Sol and run to the Dream Gallery. I want you to go through the main veil and hide until I can come to find you.”

   “But Mo-”

   “That's an order! I promise you'll be safe there. I'm going to go help the soldiers.”

   Luna nodded, taking his sister and running out of the room. Once he left, the queen readied herself to face her subjects.

                                                   Snap!

   Temura Akiko shot up from her desk, a loud noise having woken her from her dream. Said noise had been her teacher whacking a ruler to the surface of her desk.

   “Temura-san, I understand how tiring basic mathematics can be. But I would appreciate it if you at least made an attempt to stay awake.”

   Muffled giggles resounded from the class as Akiko apologized, her cheeks matching her maroon hair much closer in shade now. She sat down and proceeded to hide her face in her hands. This had to be the third time this month she'd fallen asleep in class and had that exact dream.

                                             Insert op here

   The rest of the class was uneventful. Akiko kept her head down, toying with her single side pony tail nervously, until the bell rang. Then she packed her things and approached her best friend, Ishikawa Jin.

   “Jin, ready to go?”

   “Yeah,” Jin said, straightening her large glasses. “Do you have ballet class today?”

   “Mhm,”

   “Okay then, I can walk you there, but I need to get home so we should go fast.”

   The two looped arms as they traveled down the hall and out of the school. They chatted about this and that until-

   “Whaaaaaa!”

   “What was that?” Akiko stopped, looking around. She'd heard a tiny scream, almost like a child falling from the sky!

   “I didn't hear anything. Come on, Akiko, neither of us can afford to be late.”

   “But-”

   “You can check it out but I'm not coming with you. I need to get home!”

   Akiko paused. She wanted to see where the voice came from, but...

   “Help!”

   There it was again! Okay that was it, she needed to check it out.

   “Just go on without me, Jin. I can make it to ballet class on my own.”

   “Fine, I'll see you later then.”

   Jin jogged off on her own while Akiko went searching for the source of the voice. There was a small cluster of rustling bushes just a little down the road. That seemed like a good place to start looking. She got down on her knees and started rustling through the leaves

   “Anyone there? I know I heard something... Aha!”

   Akiko felt her hand hit something small and definitely breathing. It was a humming bird! A humming bird with odd proportions and a pink ribbon...

   “Wha?”

   The humming bird opened it's big adorable eyes and looked up.

   “Ah! A human! I knew I'd find one! Now, take me to the Precure vi!”

   Akiko stared at the bird.

   “...You talked?”

   “Of course I did! What do you expect me to do vi?”

   “Tweet, I guess. Or do whatever humming birds do.”

   “Humming birds? I am not a bird vi! I am Vivid, Royal Fairy of Remina, servant of Queen Stellia!”

   Akiko sat in silence for a good minute before pinching herself, hard.

   “Ow!”

   Vivid responded with a shocked squeak.

   “Vi! Why did you do that!?”

   “To make sure I'm not dreaming.”

   “...You humans are so weird vi...”

   Akiko shook her head a little, just for a bit of extra reassurance that she was definitely awake. There was just a talking humming bird, claiming to be a fairy, asking her to take them to the “Precure”. Wait, hadn't she heard that term before?

   “Earlier, did you say 'Precure'?”

   “Yes I did vi! Do you know where they are?” Vivid perked up a little.

   “Um, maybe. I might remember if you tell me about them.”

   Vivid looked at Akiko disappointedly.

   “Fine, vi, I'll tell you. Humans are so forgetful... The Precure are legendary protectors of Remina! Their powers allow you humans to sleep without having your dreams stolen! Geez, how disrespectful of you to forget about them. Honestly-”

   Akiko tuned out at that point. So the queen in her dreams had called for legendary protectors of dreams...

   She absentmindedly glanced at her watch while Vivid continued to shame Akiko for supposedly forgetting about these important figures. And she noticed the time.

   “Uwhaaahhhh! Late! Look, I'll show you whatever you want later! I need to get to my ballet class!”

   Akiko picked up Vivid and shoved her in her school bag. She ran down the street as fast as she possibly could, yelling about how she needed to go fast.

   “Viii! W-what are you doing vi!?”

                                         Insert eyecatch here

   “So your kingdom was taken over by...?

   “Queen Mara vi!”

   Akiko sat in the corner of  the ballet studio, holding Vivid in her hands while other students arrived and changed into their leotards. Turns out Akiko had been early for once. So now she had a chance to talk.

   “But didn't you say you were a queen's servant before?”

   “Yes, but I'm Queen Stellia's servant! Mara is a usurper! She stole the throne from Queen Stellia after her disappearance!”

   “...I'm confused.”

   Vivid groaned, face-palming, or wing-palming? Whichever. The ballet teacher entered the room and Akiko jumped.

   “Okay okay, I need to do class now. Stay quiet please.” Akiko placed Vivid on her folded clothes and stood up, going to line up with the other students. The teacher took role call and they launched into warm-ups, and then to the basic routine.

   “Akiko-chan, posture!” The teacher scolded. “Akiko-chan, watch your foot placement! If you don't you'll-”

                                                  Crash!

   “Owowowoww...” Akiko whimpered, now lying on the ground. She really should've paid attention to where her feet were, as well as the feet of the other students...

   “Oh dear, this is the fourth time this week... Why don't we take a break?”

   The students all milled about, getting water and talking with friends. The teacher left the room. Akiko limped over to Vivid and her things, disheartened by her mistake.

   “Wow, you're really bad at this vi!”

   “Shut up!” Akiko said, grabbing her water bottle and taking a long drink. She sighed, trying to listen to her classmates' conversations to make sure they weren't laughing at her.

   “Sensei is so nice! My old teacher would have made the whole class start all the way over if someone tripped like that.”

   “Oh yeah, I remember her! You were so afraid of her!”

   “I was not!”

   The girls giggled, teasing each other. Akiko was just glad they weren't making fun of her this time...

   “How silly,” said a mysterious voice.

   The room went silent. The source of the voice relieved itself as a boy with spiky red hair and teal skin, floating in the air.

   “Such a simple fear. An old teacher, ha! But it should be good enough.”

   The boy pointed at the girl.

   “Sleep tight!” The boy said, snapping his fingers. The moment he did, the girl fell to the ground, her eyes closed and her face contorted in fear. Her friends rushed to her side, trying to wake her.

   “She won't wake up, silly. Not until I'm done with her.”

   He held out his hand, to which a cloud of dark glittering... something seemed to fly from the girls body to his hand. At that point, the rest of the students ran from the room in fear.

   Vivid flew up and around the boy angrily.

   “Brux! You stop that, vi!”

   The boy, Brux, apparently, waved his hand around, trying to hit Vivid.

   “What? You're here too, feather duster? What are the odds?”

   “Leave that girl alone vi!” Vivid pecked at Brux with her little beak.

   Brux just laughed, swatting Vivid away from him. Akiko caught her in her hands. Vivid groaned, rubbing her head with her wing.

   “You gonna stop me with that little beak, feather duster?”

   Akiko looked around worriedly. She had absolutely no clue what was happening, who this kid was, what he was doing, or what that stuff was.

   “Vivid, what's going on? Who is that guy and what is that stuff?”

   “That's Brux! Queen Mara's evil servant! He's stealing the energy from that girls dreams!”

   “Her dreams?”

   Akiko paused, considering her options. Vivid was too small to do much and her classmates were all gone. She took a deep breath.

   “Hey! You leave that girl alone! Dreams aren't something for you to take for yourself!”

   Brux looked at Akiko like she was an annoying pest. But he seemed to be weighing his chances against her. She was a lot bigger than him, so a fist fight would go to her. Oh but he had another idea.

   “You want her dreams back so bad, take 'em.”

   He reached into his pocket and pulled out an oddly shaped crystal. He took the sparkling cloud stuff and somehow placed it inside the crystal.

   “Hallusion! Make this world a living nightmare!”

   The crystal started to glow and shake. Then it started to grow, cracking, more and more. It exploded in a flash of light!

   When the light cleared, there was a large monstrous thing. It had long teal legs like a ballerina, arms even longer than the legs, and a greyish old lady bun and glasses. It all connected by a pale blue, devilish mask.

   “Take care of her for me, 'kay?”

   “Hallu!”

   The monster advanced towards Akiko. Yeah, she'd lose a fist fight to that thing.

   “Run, vi!” Vivid squawked, flying away.

   The beast threw a kick at Akiko, who dodged, causing the kick to collide with a mirror, breaking it.

   “I can't run! I can't let her dreams be used for this! And this is my dance studio! This place is important to me! I can't just let this thing run around causing destruction!”

   Just then, a bright light began to emanate from her chest. It formed itself into a heart-shaped ornate lock.

   “What is?...”

   Akiko brought her hand up to touch the lock. But then another light appeared in her palm, forming into a key.

   “Vi! It's a Passion Key! Quick quick, put it in the Dream Lock!”

   Akiko warily placed the key in the lock and turned it. Nothing happened.

   “Why isn't it doing anything?

   “You have to say something vi! I... forget what though.”

   Well that was helpful. But Akiko felt something in her heart. Something was calling to her.

   “Precure! Stardust Unlock!”

   Light surrounded Akiko. She waved her hand, a ribbon of light and sparkles trailing behind. With it, she made a dress. A red tutu-like dress that faded from red to magenta at the skirt. Then she made a pair of ballet shoes and frilly gloves. Finally, her hair lengthened and turned from maroon to bright red. Her single side pony tail turned into two with a red ribbon connected to a gold sparkle emblem. The same emblem appeared  by her collar with another ribbon.

   “A preformance worthy of applause! ” Akiko said, twirling and striking a pose. “Cure Pointe!”

   The light faded, leaving Akiko, or Cure Pointe now, posing without really knowing what had just happned. She looked down at herself and saw what she was wearing.

   “W-what happened!?”

   “You're a Precure vi! Go, fight!”

   “P-Precure? Me?”

   Brux grit his teeth. This would be a bit harder now.

   “What are you waiting for? Get her, Hallusion!”

   The monster advanced. It didn't seem to care about what the girl in front of it looked like. It threw another kick, sending Pointe through the window and into the park next door.

   To Pointe's surprise, she wasn't really all that hurt. Any normal person would probably have cuts, bruises, and broken bones from that attack. But She felt fine, maybe a bit scuffed up, but nothing she couldn't handle.

   The monster jumped through the broken window, ready to attack again. But Pointe wasn't going to sit by and take another blow.

   “Take this!” Pointe yelled, leaping high into the air. She kicked the monster in it's mask-face, making it stumble back.

   “Hallu!” The beast came right back at her, punching at her. Pointe flipped backwards, landing on it's arm as it hit the ground. She ran up the arm and kicked it with a pirouette.

   “Oh! How did I do that?”

   Vivid flew to Pointe's side frantically.

   “Who cares about that? Just purify it already!”

   “Purify it?”

   Pointe put a hand over her heart. She felt like she knew exactly what to do now.

   “Precure!” Pointe shouted, holding her hand up.  Light surrounded her body and she began to dance. She pointed her hand at the monster in a finishing pose. “Pirouette Burst!”

                                                Boom!

  As the words left her mouth, an explosion enveloped the monster. It yelled before dissolving into dust.

  “You jerk!” Brux growled. “I'll get you for this!”

  Before Pointe could say a word, he disappeared in a puff of smoke. She sighed, at least things were done now.

  Pointe changed back into Akiko, the fancy clothes dissolving into sparkles.

  “You know what... I think I need a nap now...”

                                           Insert ed here

   “What do you mean I have to fight now? I can't fight alone!”

   “There are more Precure vi! You just need to find them!”

   “More? Cool! I'll start looking right away! Hm... I wonder where they could be...”

   “U-um, e-e-excuse me?”

   “Not now, Shimizu-san! I'm looking for Precure!”

   “Next time on Dreamy✰ Passion Precure!  An Artistic Encounter! Cure Mural's Creation! See you next performance!”

[youre-on-a-starship]

Prompt: “Triggered reader x kirk?” - Anon

Word Count: 1,650

Warnings: Panic attack manifestations, mentions to genocide (Tarsus)

Author’s Note: I really hope that this reads authentically. I used a mixture of what I could glean from research mixed with manifestations of panic attacks I’ve had in the past, although those were triggered by memories of the injuries I’ve incurred in the course of generally being disabled, nothing quite like what this story is about.

For plot context: I personally don’t believe that AOS Kirk was on Tarsus. Given the change in his life circumstances, it just doesn’t make sense to me. So unless they bring it up, I’m going to pretend he wasn’t there in the AOS timeline.

I hope that you can glean some kind of comfort or reassurance from this piece. If you are feeling like this at all, please remember that there are professionals whose job it is to help. You deserve to feel happy and safe.

---

Storming into your quarters you flung your PADD onto the bed like a frisbee. The thin slate bounced off the mattress and clattered to the floor.

“Y/N!” Jim yelled, following you into the room and beelining around the bed for your PADD. He picked up the device and turned it over in his hands. “You nearly broke this; what’s going on?”

Instead of responding, you stepped into the bathroom and slid the door shut, locking it behind you. You pressed your back to it and let your knees buckle. You tucked your forehead into your knees and tried to regulate your breathing but the vice grip around your lungs was too strong.

“Y/N!” Jim’s voice was on the other side of the door and he was pounding on the metal. “What’s wrong?”

Clasping your hands behind your head to stop their shaking, you screwed your eyes shut and focussed on the vibrations from his pounding on the door. It felt like someone poked a hole in your stomach and it was flooding with solidified panic. It wanted out.

Flinging your hands to the floor, you swivelled yourself around and crawled to the toilet, flipping up the lid and retching into the bowl. Nothing came up but air, completely blotting out your thought process. Your ears started ringing with the force of your gagging.

When at last a thin stream of bile oozed out of your mouth, the walls of your stomach relaxed and you fell back onto the deck plating. You stared at the light on the ceiling until blue and green spots appeared in your vision before looking away at the grey walls.

There was a thump outside the door and the panel was activated.

Leonard rushed in and took a knee next to you, feeling your face with his hands before pulling out his tricorder.

“Y/N, can you hear me?”

“My damn eyes are open, what do you think? Get out!” you snapped, swatting at the tricorder sensor in his fingers.

“Y/N, I need you to -”

“Get out, Leonard!” you hauled yourself up to sitting and pushed him so that he almost fell straight over. He put a palm on the deck plating to steady himself and he stared at you.

Jim stood outside the door, hands cupped over his mouth as he watched you.

“Get. Out.”

Leonard put the sensor back on his tricorder and stood.

“Did you vomit?” he pointed at the toilet.

“No.”

“Bullshit. Did you faint?”

“No.”

“What’s going on?”

“Get out,” you reclined on an elbow, holding yourself aloft as you tried to control the surge of anger flying through you.

Leonard turned and placed a hand on Jim’s shoulder. You gritted your teeth and looked at the deck plating below your elbow.

“Jim, I can’t do much if Y/N’s refusing treatment,” Leonard muttered. You had to strain past the heavy heartbeat in your ears to hear him.

“Do you… I don’t…” Jim stammered, letting his hands drop to his sides.

“It looks like a panic attack to me, but if I can’t get close enough to do anything without being assaulted, there’s not much I can do. Call me if things change.”

Leonard patted Jim’s shoulder and left, leaving you staring through the open doorway at your partner so stood watching you, chewing his lip.

“Y/N?” he tried after a moment. “Please, I want to help.”

“You can’t, Jim,” you muttered. You pulled yourself back up to sitting cross-legged and buried your head in your hands, feeling another wave of terror wash through you as you tried to gauge whether or not you were finally coming down. You felt a low moan rumble through your chest.

“Baby, please,” Jim’s hands were suddenly on your shoulders. “I’m worried.”

You just sat under his hands shaking and struggling to breathe. The walls of your stomach contracted again and the back of your throat closed up. You darted forward and hung your head over the toilet, gagging into the depths. Nothing came after a few minutes and you rested your arms over the top of the bowl, resting your head on your wrists.

“Did you… did you see what the schematics were for?” you finally asked, letting your voice creep out of your throat one word at a time.

“It was an anti-matter reactor.”

The words made your heart stutter in your chest.

“Yeah,” you croaked.

“Sweetheart… I’m sorry, I don’t understand. It’s… it’s just part of a warp core. They’re just developing a warp drive.”

You moaned, feeling your stomach turn over at the thought that one of those was on the ship below you.

“I don’t understand, Y/N,” Jim murmured, rubbing circles on your back.

“I don’t know where to start,” you felt your skull go numb as you thought about what you wanted to explain. “I can’t…”

“What can I do to help you?” Jim asked. “Can I take you back outside, or is it safer here?”

“I can take myself outside,” you muttered, reaching up and flushing the bile before hauling yourself to a weak-kneed standing position and shuffling back into the main room. Jim followed you out and watched as you flopped onto the couch, curling up in a ball and measuring your breaths which were finally, mercifully coming easier.

“Can I make you tea? Do you want something to eat?”

“No.”

Jim crouched in front of you and laid a hand on your arm.

“Do you want me to leave?”

“No.”

Jim settled onto the floor and crossed his legs, leaning his forehead against yours.

“I’m going to sit with you, is that okay?”

“Yes.”

You listened to Jim’s breathing while you sat there together and tried to match your breathing up to his. His eyes were on your lips, but you could see that they were twitching back and forth just slightly.

After a few long minutes, you opened your mouth.

“I was on Tarsus.”

Jim’s eyes met yours and he held his breath for a moment.

“I had no idea…” he started.

“When… when the decision was made,” you felt the walls of your stomach close in again but you breathed through it. “They used an anti-matter chamber.”

“Oh my God,” Jim breathed, pulling back from your face just far enough to slide a hand between your bodies and touch your cheek with his fingertips.

“I was in that line. I…” you took a deep breath and Jim’s other hand appeared on the top of your head. “I was supposed to be in the next group, but something went wrong. The chamber broke or something, and they had to stop. I would have been next if the supply ships hadn’t shown up while they were fixing it.”

“Y/N…”

“I’m sorry,” you said, shaking your head, “Just, sometimes I hear something, or I see something…”

“Like the plans.”

“Like the plans,” another deep breath, as much air as you could hold. You held it for several seconds before letting it go slowly. “And I just go right back there. Watching that door, waiting for it to open…”

Jim stroked his fingertips along your cheek and parted his lips, hoping for something to come out. Nothing did.

“I’m sorry,” you repeated.

“Don’t be,” he breathed, the cascade of his breath warm and tingling on your face. “This doesn’t… this doesn’t seem like something you can control. And… I mean… I’d probably feel the same way if I… well…”

“I didn’t mean to worry you,” you shook your head, feeling the tension in your body slowly start to fade.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” Jim asked. “Does it… I mean… the warp core…”

“I try to ignore it,” you said, feeling a shudder travel through your belly. “I don’t have to think about it in most situations, anyway.”

“Do you want to talk to Bones?” Jim asked.

“Not really,” you sniffed, “I mean, I should. I’ve been seeing the counsellor regularly, but I don’t think that that’s really enough anymore. We’ve been out here a long time…”

“Do you think it would be better for you if you went home?” Jim said.

Your jaw fell slack and you searched his eyes.

“What?”

“I don’t want you to go, trust me,” he clarified. “I need you, but I’m not going to make you stay if you’d be better on Earth. If you could feel safer there.”

You pressed your lips together. It wasn’t the worst idea. In space there are a lot of things that remind you of that time. There are also a lot of things that remove you from that time. A starship was about the farthest thing from a planet you could get, and the constant moving made you feel less trapped, more often than not. But there were also anti-matter reactors and warp cores and tight spaces and sometimes you went days without eating just by virtue of the job…

“I’d need to think about it,” you said. “I don’t just want to leave, especially because you’re here, but… that might not be a terrible idea.”

Jim hung his head for a moment before looking back up at you with a sad smile on his face.

“Then you tell me what you want. We can talk it through. If you want to leave I’ll pull some strings and get you a placement wherever you want. Earth, a starbase, a smaller ship, a bigger ship… whatever you want. Or I’ll keep you right where you are, if that’s what you want,” Jim said, pressing his forehead back to yours. “Whatever you want.”

You nodded and closed your eyes, feeling a calm finally settle over your tired body.

“Can I have that tea, now?” you asked.

“Of course,�� he kissed your nose before standing and stepping to the kitchenette, leaving you on the couch to consider his offer.

[4colorrebellion]

Indie Corner - June 30 2017

Welcome to a new Indie Corner! It's time to take a look at a handful of Wii U games for a quick round of indie reviews. Are you ready?

First up is Laser Blaster from Petite Games, an arcade-style game that older gamers like myself will recognize as a take on the classic Missile Command from way back in the day. Players are tasked with destroying incoming lasers before they reach the bottom of the screen where energy cells are located. Luckily, there’s more depth to the game than just destroying the lasers.

The game is played with on the Wii U GamePad’s touchscreen by pressing where you want your shots to be sent. You don’t attack the lasers directly, since you have to aim a bit ahead of their trajectory so that once your shot lands the explosion can still manage to destroy it.

As you try to survive, you can upgrade your base to withstand the onslaught for as long as possible so that you can get a high score. Upgrades include increasing the speed of your weapons, the total number of shots you can launch on the screen, the duration of the explosion or the explosion radius. Each one can be upgraded up to a total of five times if you can survive that long.

Once all four energy cells at the bottom of the screen have been destroyed, it is game over, and you must go back to the first round. Energy cells do not regenerate between rounds, so if you’re left with only one or two energy cells, then all lasers for the following round will focus on attacking there. The game is available for $1.99, and it’s definitely a fun game to play.

Next up is Rorrim from Ezequiel Rage and Nitrolic Games. A long time ago a Princess found a magic mirror, and after glancing at it, she found herself in a wonderful and colorful world to explore. But, suddenly, the mirror began to glow – it was then that the Princess was sucked into the mirror. When she opened her eyes, she realized she was trapped in a dungeon. A voice then told her she was trapped inside the mirror. If she wanted to escape, she had to navigate the dungeon in the real world and the mirrored world.

The game features two modes: Mode A and Mode B, each with its own set of puzzles. For Mode A, you must unlock the gates in your path as you avoid the many deadly hazards and guardians in your path. For Mode B, you are tasked with getting both Princess to the exit. While both modes technically play the same, there is one very important difference between the two.

In Mode A, both Princesses (the version on your TV and the version on your Wii U GamePad) move at the same time in the same direction you press the left analog stick. In Mode B, the movement of one Princess is mirrored by the other… literally. That means that if one Princess moves left, the other one will move to the right. Up is down and down is up. This completely changes how you approach each of the game’s puzzles since you need to account not only by the switch in controls, but also to the placement of enemies and hazards.

I liked the basics of Rorrim, and I’d like to see the developer return to them in a new game soon. There’s definitely room for improvement and a lot of potential for the game to evolve into something greater. Right now, it’s a fun puzzle game that will certainly challenge you.

And now let’s talk about 360 Breakout from nuGAME. As the name states, this is a take on the beloved Breakout, but with a twist. The paddle that is used to hit the ball moves in a circular fashion around the center of the stage, so you must time your movement to hit the ball just right to send it flying towards the blocks on the screen. Once the ball hits a block, it will destroy it, and it might also unlock a power-up to, for example, make the paddle bigger or to increase the speed of the ball.

The game offers a single player mode, two player co-op and two players Vs., and they all play under the same rules mentioned above. The goal is to destroy the blocks as fast as possible to get the best high score.  For single player mode, you must complete up to 20 levels with the three lives you are given at the start. If time runs out, you lose one life. For two player co-op, both players will cooperate as they try to complete as many levels as possible. Two player vs. is similar to co-op except that each player is aiming to get the highest score possible on its own.

360 Breakout was fun at first, but the way the paddle moves around the center of the screens makes it too unreliable. There is no clear way of hitting the ball just right to destroy that final block or two on the screen, unlike in the original Breakout. Also unlike the original game, in here the only danger is the timer since the ball cannot be lost during your gameplay session. Not having the urgency to catch the ball before it is gone completely changes the way players approach the game, and it ended up making me not like this one.

And now, let's review Gear Gauntlet from Drop Dead Interactive and Crystalline Green is a 2D arcade style game where your reflexes and patience will be put to the test. You must navigate a gear around each of the game’s levels as you collect Bronze, Silver, Gold and Rare gears to boost your score and your rating at the end of a level – all while avoiding hazards in the way and while making sure the left side of the screen does not catch up to you as it will destroy your gear if it does.

Just moving from point A to point B before the screen catches up with you would not be very challenging, so the game decides to throw an extra element into the mix. As you move around a level, you will run into colored doors that must be removed by making your gear the corresponding color. The A button makes your gear red, the B button makes it green, the Y button makes it blue, and the X button makes it yellow.

On top of this, you’ll also run into special spaces that will boost your speed, warp your gear, reverse things, rotate the level or have another special effect on things, so be careful you don’t pass the wrong tile at the wrong time! 

If you’re looking for a demanding and fast-paced arcade/puzzle game, then Gear Gauntlet on the Nintendo Wii U certainly fits the bill.

And now let’s talk about Retro Road Rumble from Coyote Interactive. As you can probably tell from its name, this is a racing game. Up to two players can enjoy the game on a single Wii U GamePad – each one uses one of the analog sticks for movement. Shaking the screen will create a disaster that must be avoided before it is too late.

The game includes two modes: Timed and Scored. During Timed mode, a specific amount of time is selected, and the player with the most points when time runs out is the winner. As for Scored mode, a target score is selected, and the first player to get to that score will be declared the winner. If you’re playing on your own, then the only option to play will be Timed mode.

When you start playing, you’ll realize that the goal is to make it to the green Score Zone as fast as possible. After doing this, the zone will move to a new location on the map, so players must repeat the process once again. Each car can be damaged if it runs into an object – if you’re going fast enough your car will be destroyed, so be careful! There are eight areas to choose from, and you can also select between it being daytime or nighttime before you begin each match. The areas are: Regularsville, Floret Village, Los Prados, Horror Lake, Figwood Studios, Cragsbury, Marius Mesa and Hayden’s Ferry.

This one has a retro look to it, hence the game’s name, and you’ll be looking at some pixelated and blocky action both on the TV and on the Wii U GamePad’s screen. I played both the single player mode and the two-player mode with my daughter, and we both agreed it that the game felt off. The controls are too floaty, and we both ended up crashing into objects too often. The hit detection is bad as well since our cars ended up exploding even when we properly turned into a street and didn’t hit an object. This is one game you should avoid.

The final game for today is Surfin’ Sam: Attack of the Aqualites from Slyon Studios. In this game, you take control of the titular Sam who must defend Earth from the invading alien race. The game includes 33 levels where you’ll run, jump and surf as you avoid obstacles and defeat the nasty Aqualites. The game mixes 2D levels and backgrounds with 3D rendered characters that look as it taken from a 90s “radical” platformer.

As you play each level, you must also be on the lookout for coins and gems. Gems are needed for unlocking some of the game’s levels. Collecting the number of coins required for a level will reward you with a gem, so be sure to get as many as you can! You will also be able to find keys that unlock doors and treasure chests, as well as clocks that will increase your time. Coins can be used to purchase items such as Shields, Lasers, Magnets and Bullet Time to make a level easier for Sam.

You move with the left analog stick (no D-Pad support for this one!) and jump with the A button. You can also double jump if you press the A button a second time. You defeat enemies by bouncing on their heads, but must avoid others who will actually damage you if you jump on top of them. And if you find a body of water in a level, Sam will totally ride his board to the other side. At the end of a level, you’ll be graded with a three-star rating if you got all coins, get a high score and managed to complete the level fast enough. The game will let you know what your goals are for coins, score and time limit are before you start so that you can aim for them.

The game is a simple platformer, and you’ll end up playing for around 3-4 hours at most before you’ve completed all levels. The one thing I do want to complain about is that when Sam is hit the window of invincibility is pretty much non-existent, so you’ll be hit again and again (and killed) in a blink if you’re not careful. The game also offers Off-TV gameplay, but for some reason, the display on the Wii U gameplay is a bit more zoomed in when compared to the TV screen. Not a deal-breaker but something for you to consider.

[illadib-blog]

All sport thrives on rivalry

Though you can go to Louisville's Please and Thank You any day of the week for morning coffee and baked goods, it's at its best on weekends when locals linger over the morning paper nfl jerseys. The bakery and coffee shop which is also a vintage record store offers Curious Bagels (sourced from a bakery in Indiana), smeared with whipped cream cheese, sliced red onion and peppadew peppers. To kick off a lazier Sunday, try the Chive Ass Biscuit, which is mixed with chives and served as a sandwich with local eggs, apricot jam and white cheddar.

wholesale nfl jerseys from china "In 1971 we became the first, and only, All Black team to lose to the Lions in a series. Most of the All Blacks who carried us through the 1960s retired after the 1970 tour, and I went from being an absolute novice to one of the more experienced players in one year. To get as close as we did against a great Lions team was pretty special.  wholesale nfl jerseys from china

wholesale nfl jerseys from china "The onus is entirely on the candidate to present a valid nomination form at the Nomination Meeting. The absence of 9 seconders on the nomination form invalided the candidate and his election. The candidate only has himself to blame if he cannot understand the fundamental requirements of the election law.  wholesale nfl jerseys from china

cheap nfl jerseys We will be all the lonelier over the coming summers. The support of Dublin fans is there for Joan's family around the world. The Club also extends its sympathies to John Hallinan and his family following the loss of life long Dubs fan Joe Hallinan. As you can see, there is no avoiding living trust taxation with this method. Your other alternative, comes when the grantor has passed away https://www.cheapjerseys168.com, and the proceeds have already been distributed. This creates the need for the trustee to acquire a tax identification number for the living trust.  cheap nfl jerseys

Talking about the current campaign, a Star spokesperson says, "All sport thrives on rivalry. While the India Pakistan rivalry is well established and followed, and the film for it did well, we saw an opportunity to build the India SA rivalry. Of course, it helped that we had never beaten the Proteas in a WC match." The broadcaster hopes to lure even the 'fence sitters' to watch the match..

wholesale jerseys from china Been rough, I not going to lie, said Williamstown coach Frank Fucetola. Going to honor his memory and do the things we going to do for him. We going to keep his locker open, and the kids bring him up obviously, but we have to move on. 5. Ocean Spray has a receiving station in Chatsworth. A bottling plant moved out of Bordentown his year and relocated to the Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania, but was a presence in Burlington County since 1943.  

nfl jerseys He finished with a 5.03 ERA in 19 innings. That makes him appear unprepared to take such a prominent spot next season.confident and comfortable he going to be a good asset for the ball club, Rizzo said. Got good stuff wholesale jerseys from china , the right attitude. A lot of women opt to wear skirts with leggings and boots. Sensual dressing has also become quite prominent in the music videos of this dance form. Women can even opt for shorts.  nfl jerseys

Cheap Jerseys from china Once a rebel, always a rebel. The leather jacket has come a long way, from being an outlaw's uniform to part of a Ralph Lauren ensemble. But with its earthy smell, there's still a sense that the guy wearing it is trying to go against the grain just a little.  

wholesale jerseys from china In recent years, court rulings have made it more difficult for organizations to use an policy. If a firm wishes to use it is necessary to state that policy both on the employment application and also in the employee handbook https://www.cheapjerseysaleusa.com. Failure to establish this policy in writing will result in the firm being at the mercy of the courts.  wholesale jerseys from china

While our mothers may scoff ("we didn have all that stuff when I breastfed years ago. I also walked 10 miles in the snow to school."), I found that breastfeeding is tons easier when you got the right supplies. Last time, I had a few of current day must haves a Boppy, a breastpump (if you plan to bottle feed), nursing pads and nursing bras.

nfl jerseys Ultimately, the benefits of each short are much less important than your concentration and pacing. The most comfortable short is going to aid your running performance substantially Cheap Jerseys from china , since you'll be able to focus on your stride without the distraction of your clothing. Give both varieties of running shorts a try and see which is the most comfortable for your routine, then check your running time averages for any decrease so you can dress for success on race day..  nfl jerseys

nfl jerseys Some big sweatshirts come in sizes up to 10XL Big. These sweatshirts provide extra room and comfort, whether you're looking to exercise in them or simply wear them for warmth. Again, for ultimate style and comfort, you may wish to purchase a sweatshirt a size or two bigger than your other clothing..  nfl jerseys

wholesale nfl jerseys from china TF: It was when they said: "Be yourself. You being who you are is what got you here, so don't change who you are because you're here now." And that was the changing point. That was the turning point. BBC Archives manage a vast multi media collection which includes TV, News and Radio programmes https://www.cheapjerseysitems.com, photographs, documents and sheet music. Successful applicants will make an active contribution to the department through defined projects such as conservation of photographs and preparation for digitisation, working with the archives stores services team in the archive vault or preparing data for sound archive assets ahead of preservation and digitisation. The placements will be based in the Archive Centre Perivale, home to the Archives Collections, Stores and Technical Services teams and to our Audiovisual, Radio and Photograph archives wholesale nfl jerseys from china.

[liftingmylfe]

targ et

T@rget 🎯 tips y'all! Straight from T@rget LP! Pay attention! 👀👀👀📝📝

So y'all want some tips for the store with the red bulls//eye🎯? We’ll have I got some tips for you, straight from the horse’s (AP) mouth. Now remember this guide may not be true for every single target but from all the one’s I’ve worked at as AP (6 so far) I can say with certainty that most follow the same layout/ pattern when it comes to camera placement. Note: I want to apologize if this “guide” is super lengthy and all over the place. I’m literally typing everything down as I remember so it is a bit jumbled and mixed up

   🎯 So for cameras, again its important to note this may not ring true for all stores but has been from my viewpoint. Electronics is always fully covered! Health and beauty is hot or miss with full coverage but NYX, NO.7, Soap and Glory, L'Oréal, PIXI, the eyelash display, nail care (not nail polish but like the nail tools and tweezers) and expensive shampoo, men’s razors have always been covered. Home/ bedding usually never had any cameras there except for in vacuums which will always be covered since they’re the biggest booster pushout item. In toys the only camera is usually pointed to the lego aisle and that’s it. Clothing will have cameras scattered throughout mainly focusing on teenage clothing, activewear, and swimsuits. There’s never any cameras in market and school/office supplies since AP doesn’t really care about that stuff since most of it isn’t super high value. However this is only true of the still cameras. The store will always have between 4-7 PTZs that can move around and go into places without still cameras like market or bedding. However the cameras are only moved when an actual person is in the office to move them. Otherwise they’re usually focused on the area with the most high theft. Example the electronics PTZ will most likely be facing like the console aisle that holds the games and controllers.

   🎯 Now let’s go into the type of AP the stores have. There are 4 levels of AP here:

          1) There’s the TPS who is uniformed and stands at the door to act as a deterrent for the majority of their shift. TPS cannot perform apprehensions by themselves. If the TPS is in the store by themselves and they notice someone is stealing they will attempt to burn them into dropping the merch since they cannot stop them. TPS can only receipt check merchandise that isn’t in a store bag. If it’s all in plastic bags- no receipt check. All in reusable bags?- no receipt check.

           2) The next level is APS, who is your undercover position. Their role is to fiddle around on camera, watching any suspicious people and to go out on the floor in plainclothes and follow people around. APS can perform solo apprehensions as well as calling TPS to aid them in apprehensions.

           3) Next level is APTL which is basically the same as APS but has more responsibilities and is held more accountable for how the team performs.        

           4)Final level is ETLAP, the big guns. They’re in charge of the entirety of the store, ensuring everything is safe and the merch is protected. They focus on both internal and external equally. Note: not every store has one of each position. Some stores might not have a TPS or APS and only have an ETLAP. Other stores might have 3 TPS and 2 APS etc etc.

   🎯Now onto apprehensions. Obviously we need all 5 steps in order to perform an apprehension. We can’t do fitting room stops so if you go into the fitting room and leave we can’t stop you. However, if you have visible merchandise on your person we can stop you. Example:/ you conceal headphones into your jacket pocket. You go into the fitting room. We can’t stop you. However, you exit the fitting room and a portion of the headphones box is visible we can stop you. When doing apprehensions usually the person performing the stop will go outside and wait for you to exit. Once you go through the doors, aka pass all points of sale, AP will step in front of you and ask you to follow them. We are allowed to go hands on and if you fight the cops will definitely be called. If you come in and see TPS at the door and as you leave they’re missing they might just be outside ready to apprehend. If you have someone waiting in the car they should be able to see whether someone is waiting outside or not. If you already know you’re about to get caught, I’d run out of the fire exit. We can’t make fire exit stops so just run the fuck out and don’t stop until you’re blocks away.

   🎯Now back to cameras and methods: Clothing is tricky. There are of course cameras there, however it’s almost impossible to find clothing once it’s stolen since they’re all over the place. The only way we know clothing has been stolen is A) We watched them steal it with our own eyes, or B) They left the fucking tags. This chain isn’t supposed to use removable tags on clothing since it makes it unappealing so the RFID will be inside the price tag. DO NOT FREAKING LEAVE TAGS. Bring an exacto knife or nail scissors in your handbag and cut the shit in half and take it with you!!! Fitting rooms are hit or miss. Some places are extremely strict and keep the rooms locked and will count the items before you go in. Others don’t have anyone over there and all the doors are unlocked. Scope yours out to see how secure the fitting room is over there. If there is an associate there, they are supposed to stop you from bringing any non clothing items into the fitting room.

   🎯Moving on… So there’s cameras over NYX, but you still want it? Well if your store uses those push dispensers you are in luck. Basically the push dispensers will push another product back out after you select one. This shit is so hard to review on camera. Also the smaller it is ex/ eyeliners and lipstick the harder it is to spot on camera. If you want something bigger, say a PIXI face mist and they don’t use push dispensers? Take it from the back of the display. We track known thefts by camera movement. If the front product doesn’t move it’s nearly impossible to find. That being said, remember the cameras are above not below or to the side. NEVER TAKE AN ITEM FROM THE TOP SHELF. We can see exactly how many of each box there are signs the camera is pointing down towards it. The best place is the bottom shelves since the top shelves cover most of the products aside from the front ones.

   🎯Now continuing, if you’ve shopped here before you might have noticed the yellow security tabs on some makeup such as eyelashes and razors. These will make the doors go off. If the doors go off and you have only bagged items they are allowed to check regardless. Now you don’t want to leave packaging behind right? Just rip that sucker off and leave it somewhere not in beauty or electronics (bedding or behind paper towels is ideal). We can’t identify what was stolen with only the yellow tab so you should be all clear as long as you were being cautious. Another thing: the sleeve or take two put back one method is so god damn fucking hard to catch on camera so utilize that as best as you can in cosmetics.

   🎯Personally, I would say utilizing self checkout is one of the absolute worst methods. Never ever ever use anything other than cash if you opt to choose this method since we can run cards district wide to catch activities in other stores as well as previous activities in that store. Self checkout is also always overseen by an attendant who is trained to spot theft through either ringing everything up and leaving without paying, passing merchandise over the scanners without actually scanning it, and sticker swap where you use a different barcode for an item. I would say you’re 10x more likely to get caught using a self checkout method. Now we probably won’t catch you the first few times but we will continuously build cases. Sticker swapping is hard to get all 5 steps on so we normally let it run until we can get all five steps. Just don’t do SCO it’s way too easy to track. There are people not on the scene whose job it is to track sticker swapping and send us reports to help us find these cases. If you’re going to sticker swap, do it with similar items. Want a pair of $50 headphones? Swap it with a $10 headphones. Never swap with target brands like heyday though. We will know those aren’t heyday headphones. The camera that you see isn’t accessible to us in the office. The cameras are gonna be above you on the ceiling, looking down so we can see every item you scan and check if it matches up or not. If you bag and go, the light at the top of the self checkout turns red. Once the attendant realizes someone didn’t pay since only they can remove the transaction before some else can use it, they will inform AP and we can see exactly who scanned it.If you were lucky enough to not have been spotted by AP during your visit but are found out later, our best face shot is usually gonna be the exit shot which isn’t the greatest quality at times.

   🎯We normally base repeats on certain features like hey does this look like the guy that pushed out toys last week? Nah the hairline is different. Go crazy with the disguises. Wear a wig, cover up existing tattoos or apply temporary realistic fake ones. Contour your nose, wear glasses or take them off. Change you body shape through different trips by wearing tighter/looser clothing. Make sure each time you visit you look like a completely different person and we usually won’t piece all the thefts together. The way you dress is very important. If you dress shabby/ look homeless we’ll watch you. A group of young people? We’ll automatically watch you. For stores near colleges ex/ Mississippi state if you wear a college shirt well usually watch you for a bit cause young people are easier to catch and more likely to steal. Dress maturely and like you have money. But don’t overdress cause you’ll still stand out. Dyed hair stands out to us and lots of tattoos or piercings. Guys with hats and sunglasses and backpacks automatic watch. Your purse is very important! No totes EVER. Always use a structured purse if you’re going to conceal and make sure it’s normal sized.

    🎯Now for pushouts. Pushouts are very iffy, it all depends on luck and your store layout. You can get away with a lot more using the pushout method, and they usually won’t notice until right when you leave so don’t come back after a long while when pushing out and wear a disguise!!! We catch repeat pushout subjects super fucking easily so don’t do it often.

   🎯Now let’s talk about after the theft. We do write reports about thefts that we find happened due to stuff like empty packages, noticing items are missing from the counts, customers or associates giving us pointers. If we find an empty package but there’s no camera in the area we don’t write a report since we don’t know who stole it. If someone pushed out a cart of groceries but it was all in reusable bags that you can’t see inside of we literally cannot write a report since we have no idea what you took since there’s no cameras. Even if we have one selection out of the entire cart full of stuff we will write a report. Police reports are written for known theft of between $26-$75+. Each district has a different minimum when it comes to police reports. Police also usually don’t take shoplifting reports to seriously if it’s after the fact. If you’re driving, please park far away. Like in a different shopping strip far away. If we get a plate you are screwed since it makes it so much easier for us to identify who you are.

   🎯So electronics. Not the wisest move, but if you must make sure you bring the items forward on the peg after you take one and do not fucking take something from the top. If it’s in a boxleeo protector you need an s3 key to open it but leaving the box behind is pretty damn evident. Note: if you use tools (s3 key or magnet) or any kind of weapon is seen on you (razor, scissors, gun etc) the cops will be called immediately so be cautious when using tools. If you’re a minor and you get caught we have to call your parents no matter what and they have to come. If they don’t we go to the police since we can’t release you due to liability issues.

    🎯Let’s talk about behaviors now. Don’t be an idiot. We obviously don’t catch everyone. I’d say we only catch about less than 2% of theft that occurs. As long as you’re being cautious and keep up a good appearance you should be fine. Don’t cart build, putting lots of high dollar merch in the cart is an instant red flag. Don’t look down every aisle or look up at every person that walks by. Innocent shoppers shop mindlessly, they don’t pay attention to every person that walks by. Its also weird to go to different areas of the store sometimes. Most people getting groceries aren’t gonna stop by for electronics so don’t bring unnecessary attention to yourself. If you look nervous, are sweating and it’s not hot, have red cheeks it might raise some flags, especially after we have someone service you. We do have rfid target stickers that we stick on high theft merch. The stickers will always be visible. Again, cut through it or simply peel it off. They will make the doors go off. If you’re unsure if anything has manufacturer rfids inside ex/ plan b, buy something cheap like $10 wireless headphones and when we check you at the door we’ll just dismiss it. If you walk out and you beep but you didn’t buy anything we won’t even acknowledge you at the time, but we will go back and review to see what you did. Try your best not to beep as you go out. If someone beeps and they don’t turn around we usually research to see what they did. Sometimes when people beep and they turn around I won’t even check them because the innocent thing to do is turn around and be like ??? Why am I beeping? Do you need to check me?

   🎯Hidden cams: Bulls/eye does utilize hidden cameras. If you notice an aisle has no visible camera but something is out of place in the ceiling it’s probably a hidden camera. They can see through the tiniest hole. A weirdly placed vent or miscolored ceiling tile is usually a dead giveaway there’s a hidden camera. Not all stores use hidden cameras though since most only get like 2 and they usually use it to spy on employees in the back for internal theft.

   🎯DO NOT hit  the same thing repeatedly! Fixed cameras can be moved if we think they’d be useful covering something else! If we notice an insane amount of like nail polish theft we can move say the NYX camera over to cover the nail polish.

That’s it. If anyone has any tips not mentioned feel free to add! Also if you tag this or reblog this outside the community I will find you and kill you 🔫😉.

HAPPY LIFTING!

flowerliftblr

I love you

liftingwiccan

All of this basically tells me not to lift at T@rget. If someone reads this and thinks “hell yeah I can lift at t@rget now” y’all are stupid. The length of this post alone tells me there’s far too much at stake.

[waynekelton]

The Best Upcoming iOS & Android Games 2019

The mobile gamer can look back at 2018 with an affectionate and misty eye, secure in the knowledge that gaming on mobile devices gets more diverse, sophisticated and polished with each year. In this respect, 2019 also is shaping up to be a banner year on this front.

Roughly speaking, the most exciting upcoming games can be split into three groups: the name-brand megahits-in-waiting, boardgame adaptations, and indie projects. Read on to see what the who’s who of mobile gaming are cooking up for this year’s treats.

Cultist Simulator (Roguelike/Card Game)

This hit indie sensation is making the move to mobile in Spring 2019 as a premium priced game. Cultist Simulator mixes roguelike & card mechanics into a dark rpg adventure where you're on a quest to unearth hidden mysterious of the occult. You can found your own cult, making meaningful decisions at every turn. Combining cards allows the story and your cult to grow, embodying the finest reaches of Lovecraftian tradition. If you die, your followers will attempt to carry on your work.

Harry Potter: Wizards Unite (GPS/Location)

Not many have managed to successfully capitalise on the Pokemon Go phenomenon since it release in 2016. Maybe its because Niantic's catch-em-all offering had a bit of a rocky start. Still, the potential for a decent 'gamified' walking experience is still there, and now Niantic are having a second try with another famous IP - Harry Potter. Taking all the lessons they've learned from Pokemon Go and their own game, Ingress, the developer hopes to make Wizard's Unite the game Harry Potter fans deserve. You play the role of a new member of the Statute of Secrecy Task Force, whose job it is to go out into the world and clean up a calamity that’s causing magical beings and objects to proliferate the Muggle world, putting everything at risk. If you’ve played the Pokémon game you can imagine the type of activities you’ll be doing, and where you’ll be doing them.

Again, no firm release date yet but we'd be very surprised if this misses the 2019 calendar year.

DOTA Auto Chess (Strategy)

You may have noticed that the Artefact entry has gone: with player numbers for that game plummeting, we're not convinced that it'll be coming to mobile unless Valve prove to be quite stubborn/committed to seeing this game through the long-game. They'd have to seriously revisit their monetisation strategy, however. Another DOTA-related product that you might be interested in though is the hugely popular DOTA 2 mod, DOTA Auto Chess. It doesn't actually look or feel like chess, but it's proving to be a very popular mode amongst DOTA fans. Drafting and a tight, tactical economy are central to a mainly hands-off experience where you pick your heroes, place them on a board, and watch them fight. It's a very strategic experience, and your choices matter at nearly every stage of a game. You can read more about our thoughts here, but this could prove incredibly popular on mobile, given its low interface needs and high skill ceiling.

A 2019 release for this one is even less certain than COD Mobile below, with pre-registration only being available in China right now. It might technically get a release in some form this year, but we're not sure if that'll include Europe & North America.

Dire Wolf Digital (Board Game)

This isn't the name of a game, but the name of a company that announced this year they're making a bucket-load of digital board game adaptations. Because we only have the announcement text to go on, we've decided to keep the new games all in one place until we know more. The games Direwolf are bringing to digital (which afawk also includes mobile devices) are:

Mage Knights – It's worth noting this is the first step in a bigger agreement with WizKids, so it's likely we'll be seeing more announcements this year.

Wings of Glory – A popular table-top aerial skirmish game.

Raiders of the North Sea – An excellent worker placement game themed around the 8th and 9th century viking raids (pictured).

Yellow & Yangtze – a Reiner Knizia tile placement game of civilization building.

Sagrada – A dice drafting game about creating works of art.

Root – the recent Kickstarter sensation about asymmetrical warfare in the woods.

We're not sure which project is due to appear first - possible WizKids & Mage Knights, given the importance that project has within the announcement? We'll update as we learn more.

Call of Duty Mobile (Shooter/Battle Royale)

Announced at GDC 2019, this latest Call of Duty-on-mobile spin-off is the latest in a long series of mobile adaptations of the hugely popular FPS franchise. This latest attempt appears to be following in the vein of games like Fortnite & ARK - offering a fully 3D, fully-developed version of the main franchise that can run on phones and tablets. From what we know so far, it's going to be a kind of 'greatest hits' compilation of modes, maps, characters etc... and may even feature a Battle Royale mode (putting it in direct competition with Fortnite, which is popular on mobile as well as desktop). We've not had official confirmation its coming this year, but pre-registration is open and we'd be surprised if Activision allow too long a lead time on this.

Mario Kart Tour (Racing)

It’s been practically a year since this title was first announced and outlined with few concrete details added between now and then. Nintendo’s mobile offerings have run the gamut, from the premium Mario Run, the Miitomo social & style app everyone tried and forgot about, to the successful and generally great Fire Emblem: Warriors. Mario Kart is a treasured and classic franchise, even amongst Nintendo offerings, so that reputation guarantees some level of careful handling. It remains an open question whether the game will be a premium or freemium model, but the launch date is still projected to be March.

Diablo Immortal (Action RPG)

Diablo Immortal will draw some side-eye and mockery, having been already made notorious because of its horribly mistimed announcement. (Yes, we have phones, but read the room, Activision-Blizzard). Even more puzzlingly, the game is being created in partnership with NetEase, a Chinese developer whose resume already includes ‘Eternal Realm’ (无尽神域) itself essentially a Diablo clone. Weird stuff: the official license merging with a pretender to the throne to make a hybrid project together. Concerns about endless grind or re-skinning of Eternal Realm are well-founded, but while most of us will be as judge-y as possible we’ll also probably still give the final product a try. Good action RPGs live or die by loot, character progression and above all, delicate-yet-accurate controls, so it will be interesting to see if Diablo Immortal will be a good game as well as the inevitable cash cow.

Five Tribes (Boardgame)

Five Tribes, oldie but goodie, will make its digital debut this year. Days of Wonder has been updating and digitising its catalogue at a steady pace and with fantastic results. Five Tribes central mechanic is just like mancala. Pick a space and drop the meeples one by one along the path. Dead simple, but if you think it makes the game easy, you’d be dead wrong. The Five Tribes each possess unique scoring criteria and effects, and the turn-order bid means timing depends on correctly valuing the current layout. Many simple bits add up to make a nigh-perfect game.

Scythe: Digital Edition (Boardgame)

In another history, the Great War also ruined Europe and annihilated a generation, but its nations and technologies faced the blight and devastation quite differently. With large mechs, steampunk agricultural combines and faux-Eurasian player nations, Scythe gives each player a unique entity to steer to victory. Engine building games are always efficiency races, conversion puzzles, but Scythe’s unique setting, eye-catching miniatures and indirect player confrontation quickly made a it a fan favorite amongst the gaming community. Its rollout on Steam has been smooth experience, with decent AI and a robust tutorial. The assets and UI will translate well to mobile and what used to cost near three figures will be available to most anyone for a fraction of the price.

Terraforming Mars (Boardgame)

Terraforming Mars sounds like a noble goal for all of humanity. In reality, the game is a push-and-pull competition for corporations to garner by prestige by...terraforming Mars. Three categories: oxygen, temperature and ocean coverage dictate the endgame, but to get there, players will reshape the red planet into a bright blue hope. It’s a Euro though-and-though: precisely balanced, intricately co-dependent and inevitably point-based. But the close match between theme and mechanic makes this game deeply satisfying and intuitive to learn and explain, and the action selection mechanic is uniquely innovative and inspired. Just when I think boardgame design is tapped out, something truly exceptional rises to the top.

Mew-Genics (Sim)

This one has been incubating forever but should be worth it when it finally gets here. Ed McMillen (of Binding of Isaac fame) has been teasing this cat-breeding simulator for ages. The game has been described as a mix of Tamagotchi, Pokemon and the Sims, with its signature art style courtesy of McMillen. All bets for a playful wild game about the weirdness, sweetness, malice and all-around havoc of cat-raising seem to be right on the money. The ideas are there, the premise is promising, the only question remaining is when it will get here.

Overland (Finji) (TBS/Survival) 

Overland is tactical turn-based survival meets cross-country road trip (from hell). Each waypoint is a battle, a flashpoint conflict over some minor life-extending objective. Its overland map and procedural generation seem reminiscent of FTL (or its follow-up Into the Beach) but the setting here is familiar people struggling with post-apocalyptic daily hardship. Water, medicine, gas, weapons: the items are banal but vital. The game uses minimalism and scarcity to great effect, sketching characters and strategic scenarios alike with the barest elements.

Impossible Bottles (Rhythm/Action)

Various robots move about in their bottles and raging about like a bull in a china shop. Each level presents one of these Impossible Bottles for the player to fix by manipulating the environment and repairing the situation, or at the very least soothing its sole occupant. A scientist built these robots as part of a perpetual motion machine for unlimited energy, but they don’t quite work as is. The secret to fixing everything is music, or in gameplay terms: rhythm. One-touch gameplay and lush, fantastic art, with a slated mid-year release.

Nowhere Prophet (Card Game)

Nowhere Prophet: this one is a doozy and a little secretive. The dark horse of this race, if you will. In the game, post-apocalyptic leaders trek across a scabrous landscape to gather supporters and supplies, occasionally clashing with foes or environmental dangers. This card game has grid-based combat as well procedurally generated encounters. It’s a card-battler roguelike, essentially, with a unique setting and what seems to be a robust battle system.

Heaven’s Vault (Interactive Fiction)

Inkle (of 80 Days interactive fiction fame) has been teasing their mechanically ambitious Heaven’s Vault for some time now. An archaeologist-slash-xenolinguist explores the dusty remains of an alien civilization on an unknown planet, with a vivid backdrop of sienna sand and celestial blue. There’s some pretty nifty procedural tricks behind the code-breaking and translation, and while its approach to storytelling is a little less handcrafted, it has the potential to have even more surprises and replayability than the globe-trotting 80 Days.

Other Missing Games From 2018

As a reminder, here is a quick list of some other games we were expecting last year, but never turned up:

Void Tyrant (card game/RPG)

Bad North (RTS)

Exodus: Proxima Centauri (Boardgame)

Dungeon Warfare 2 (Tower Defence)

Epic Card Game (Card Game)

Lord of the Rings Living Card Game (Card Game)

Monster Slayers (Card Game) 

EVE: War of Ascension (MMO)

Best 2019 Mobile Releases So far

There's already been some excellent releases this year, and not all of them were expected/on this list. If you haven't already, check these games out:

The Castles of Burgundy (Boardgame)

Star Traders: Frontiers (RPG)

Legends of Andor (Boardgame)

Evolution: The Video Game (Boardgame)

The Escapists 2: Pocket Breakout (Simulation)

Seen any other games coming out this year you're excited about? Let us know in the comments.

The Best Upcoming iOS & Android Games 2019 published first on https://touchgen.tumblr.com/