#there will follow a bit more of these bundle posts

[likeumeanit9497]

in the clouds | m.s. |

matt sturniolo x fem!reader

summary: matt is taking y/n home to boston to meet his parents for the first time, and y/n would be lying if she said she wasn't nervous. but once they've been in the air for a few hours and boredom begins to get to them both, they find a way to occupy themselves.

warnings: smut; established relationship; mutual masturbation; p in v; dirty talk; a little fluff if you squint; unprotected sex; 18+

notes: i wrote this suuuuper quick so def not my best work, but it's been a while since i posted something so i wanted to get something up here. i hope ya'll enjoy!!!

─ ⊹ ⊱ ☆ ⊰ ⊹ ─

“Have a great flight.” The lady at the terminal gate said to me with a smile as she handed me my scanned ticket. “Thank you.” I replied before walking towards my boyfriend, Matt, who was waiting for me a few feet ahead. Once I reached him, he grabbed my hand and placed a soft kiss on my forehead. “You ready?” He asked, to which I inhaled a deep breath and nodded apprehensively.

Matt and I met at a party about eight months ago, and had hit it off right away. I had been drawn in by his sunken blue eyes and withdrawn behaviour that night, but grew hooked by his kind nature and complex personality once we began speaking regularly. We made it official less than a month after meeting, and had been inseparable since. Our relationship developed into something quite serious rather quickly, but things still somehow felt new and exciting everyday.

Today, we were flying back to his hometown in Boston, where I was going to meet his parents for the first time. Although he had reassured me countless times that MaryLou and Jimmy were going to love me, I couldn’t help but feel a bit intimidated by meeting two of the most important people in Matt’s life. Not only that, but I had also never been in a relationship that grew serious enough to meet the parents of my significant other before now; so the unknown territory made the whole ordeal all the more daunting.

Matt’s triplet brothers Chris and Nick had left for Boston the day before, as I had to stay in Los Angeles an extra day for work. This added another unsettling element, as I had grown so used to the presence of the other two on a day-to-day basis. However, what that meant was Matt and I had a good excuse to buy first class tickets instead of the usual economy tickets. This brought me some relief, as I had never sat in first class before and knew that I would be able to relax much easier than I had on previous flights.

Arriving at the front of the plane, we were guided by the flight attendant to the fifth row of seats and I gasped. In front of me was a spacious row with just two large seats. The seats were joined together — separated only by an arm rest — but both had a ridiculous amount of leg room, and there was even a privacy curtain available to use at the end of the aisle.

“Oh my god Matt, this one row is almost as big as my entire bedroom at home!” I exclaimed excitedly before hurrying into my window seat. Matt chuckled before following me into the row and getting comfortable in his own seat beside mine. “I take it you like it?” He asked sarcastically, though I still nodded my head like an enthusiastic toddler. “Well, get settled in baby. We’ve got a five and a half hour flight ahead of us.” He leaned over the cushioned arm rest between our seats and planted a soft kiss on my lips. I sighed at the reminder before investigating the small gift bundle beside my seat. There were a few snacks, some travel-sized toiletries, and a pillow and blanket; I couldn’t help but squeal from excitement. “Holy shit Matt! Look at this stuff!” I quickly unfolded the blanket and wrapped myself in it as he did the same. “I know, it’s cool right. And it doesn’t stop there, watch this.” Matt smirked before reaching under his chair, when suddenly his seat reclined all the way back and transformed into a bed.

“WHAT?” I exclaimed before searching under my own seat for the recline handle. I giggled as my chair fell back and I was suddenly horizontal. “Oh my god, I am in heaven.” I sighed blissfully, stretching my arms above my head in bliss. “And look,” Matt continued, reaching for the arm rest and pushing it back so that it became flush with our beds, “Now we just have one big bed to share.” He giggled before scooting closer to my side while simultaneously grabbing my waist and pulling me into him. I laughed and rolled over so that I could face him; propping myself up on my elbow and gazing down at him. “Thank you Matty.” I said before planting a gentle kiss on his eyelid. “You don’t have to thank me, Y/n,” He chuckled, “I just can’t wait for my parents to meet you.” My heart fluttered from his words, and I repositioned my body so that I could curl into his.

“I can’t wait to meet them, either. I mean, I’m nervous as fuck but I really do want to get to know the two people who created you three weirdos.” I closed my eyes, feeling my body relax as the plane began moving down the tarmac. Matt mindlessly rubbed my back as we laughed, just waiting for the unmistakable sensation of the plane taking off.

Once we were finally in the air, I rolled over to fetch my air pods from my backpack. “Let’s listen to some music, I can’t stand all this white noise in here.” I said, handing the left pod to Matt and keeping the right for myself. Once they were secured in both of our ears, I scrolled through my Spotify account to find mine and Matt’s shared playlist before hitting shuffle. I fell onto my back and closed my eyes as the music played in both of our ears; growing more and more comfortable as my eyes grew heavy and the sensation of sleep began to overtake me.

─ ⊹ ⊱ ☆ ⊰ ⊹ ─

I was awoken from my deep sleep by the sound of a baby wailing a few aisles behind me. Forgetting where I was for a moment, I woke with a startle before remembering that I was on a plane. Slightly disoriented, I checked the time on my phone to discover that we had been in the air for four hours. I was shocked that I was able to sleep that long on a flight, since usually in the economy seats I would struggle to even get 45 minutes of true rest. I looked to my right at Matt’s sleeping figure. He was lying on his stomach with his peaceful face turned in my direction — very clearly having as deep of a sleep as I was previously having. His dark eyelashes fluttered slightly every now and then, and due to the way his face pressed against the small pillow, his pink lips were squished into an exaggerated pout.

Admiring his undeniable beauty, I had to resist the urge to lean over and pepper him with kisses. Instead, I went on my phone and began scrolling through our music playlist. After queuing a few songs, I moved onto my camera roll to kill some time as I felt boredom begin to overtake me. I felt like the biggest loser ever as I scrolled through the countless photos I had taken of Matt and I over the past few months with a corny smile plastered to my face. We truly had spent nearly every single day together since that first night that we met, and I had been sure to capture as many memories on camera as I could.

I continued to scroll for a few moments before coming across a particular memory that caused me to audibly gasp. It was a video that Matt and I had made about a month before. Our first and only sex tape. Before playing the video, I snuck a glance at Matt to make sure he was still sleeping and turned the volume down to zero so that it wouldn’t play through the air pod that was still resting in his ear. Cautiously, I hit play on the video and watched from Matt’s angle as he pounded into me from behind. To be completely honest, I had totally forgotten that we had taken that video and hadn’t even watched it before, so I stared in awe as our bodies collided again and again. The only issue was that I so badly wanted to hear the audio as my curiosity notoriously got the better of me in situations such as this. I was curious to know what I really sounded like during sex, and knew that listening to the audio was one of the only ways that I could.

Suddenly, I had an idea that would not only allow me to listen but would also have the potential to wake Matt up. Looking at him once again with a smirk across my face, I started the video from the beginning; this time with the volume about halfway up. Instantly, my right ear was filled with the unmistakably erotic sounds of our sex; body parts smacking against one another, loud moans, and the occasional dirty phrase falling from one of our mouths.

With the brightness on my phone turned down low, I watched intently at our moving bodies on my screen. I could only pull my eyes away to take a quick glance at Matt, who was beginning to shift around slightly under the blanket. I watched him for a moment, noticing that his eyes were still closed and he appeared to still be sound asleep. Growing frustrated that he still wasn’t waking up, I turned the sound on my phone to maximum volume just as the recorded version of him and I were reaching our climaxes. The crude noises became more and more erratic as the volume increased, and suddenly Matt’s blue eyes shot open.

He scanned the area frantically, obviously disoriented and confused by the sounds swarming his ears. When his eyes finally met mine and he noticed the playful smile on my face, he visibly relaxed and rolled his eyes sarcastically. “Y/n, what the fuck are you watching?” He asked through a chuckle before leaning towards me to take a glance at my phone screen. “Oh my god, you’re ridiculous.” He added once he caught a glimpse of the two of us in the video; falling onto his back and covering his eyes with his crossed arms.

I collapsed into a fit of laughter before innocently replying, “What?”, fluttering my eyelashes and softening my voice. He simply shook his head, but I could see his lips curling into a smile behind his protective arms. “Don’t get me started, baby. Get some rest.” Was his reply, and I grumbled internally. I was far from tired, not only because I had already slept for four hours, but because I had just worked myself up for the past few minutes by watching that video. Still, I reluctantly obliged by hitting shuffle on our playlist once again before finding a comfortable position to attempt to get a bit more sleep.

My eyes were closed, my breathing was steady, but my body was wide awake; so I felt the shift that came from Matt sitting up in the bed. I was laying on my side with my back facing him, but through the soft music playing in my ear I could hear the privacy curtain slide across its rod. My eyes stayed shut as I felt the warmth of his body pressing up against me. I pretended to not feel his hand gently gliding across the curves of my hips, or his hardening member nudging against my thigh. However, once his lips pressed against the sensitive spot on my neck, my body began to fail me in its pretend ignorance. He delicately sucked on my thin skin, and my pulse began to quicken. His cool breath tickled my neck and I shivered in anticipation. His hand slowly traveled from my hip down my stomach, before finally reaching under my waistband towards my core, and I released a shaky breath.

I felt his lips upturn into a smile against my neck at my clear response. “Oh, so you are awake.” He teased, moving his hand away from my heat and resting his chin in the crook of my neck. I opened my eyes to a squint and looked at him. “What are you doing?” I asked with a slight whine in my voice. He scoffed dramatically. “What, you think you could play a video like that and expect me not to get worked up?” I smiled shyly before responding. “I just wanted to wake you. I was bored.” He scooted himself even closer to me, so that now our bodies were pressed tight against each other. “Oh yeah?” He placed a kiss to my neck again, this time tugging lightly at the skin with his teeth. “And what did you want to do to try to counteract this boredom?” He whispered, and my breath hitched as he brought a hand under my shirt and began fondling my sensitive nipples.

I closed my eyes before turning my body so that I was now facing him. “Matt, we are on a plane right now.” I said, my voice dropping to a whisper by the end of my sentence. He smirked before shrugging his shoulders nonchalantly. “That’s what the curtain is for, sweetheart.” My eyes shifted to the space behind him, where the curtain was shut and properly secured by a hook near his head. My focus was brought back to him as I felt his hands gently begin tugging down my sweatpants. “You just have to be quiet for me, okay?” I gulped nervously before nodding my head mindlessly, already growing distracted by the arousal beginning to form in my panties.

Matt pulled me closer to him before placing a soft kiss against my lips. His hand gently ran up and down my inner thigh, just barely grazing my heat with each stroke. He placed another kiss against my lips, this one longer and deeper than the first, and he put his right leg between my knees to prop them up and apart. Our mouths moved against each other in sync, and my hands began to travel through his hair, over his shoulders, and finally down to his stomach. I hissed when he finally cupped his hand over my heat, his thumb just barely resting on my clit. Even through the thin layer of fabric that was my panties, the contact was intense. “Mmm, baby, you’re already so wet for me.” He mumbled gruffly against my lips, causing me to squirm.

“Touch me Matty, please.” I begged softly, my eyes pleading as my core began to throb. He chuckled, our teeth clanking together gently, before attacking my neck with his mouth. “So needy, huh? You want these fingers?” He cooed, sliding two of his fingers — now hooked under my panties — up my slit to collect my juices. I squeezed my eyes shut and bit my bottom lip as I nodded frantically. “Mhm.” Was all I managed to get out in response to his question. “What was that? I couldn’t quite hear you.” He was taunting me, both with his words and with his fingers as he toyed with my outer folds. I squirmed again, shifting slightly so that I was more on my back so that I could widen my legs easier. “N-need your fingers baby.” I managed to groan out, doing my best to keep my voice low so that our actions could go unnoticed by everyone around us.

Now leaning over me slightly, he looked down at me with hooded eyelids and a matching smirk. “That’s my girl.” He replied before finally rubbing circles on my swollen clit. My eyes rolled to the back of my head as I became engulfed in the overwhelmingly pleasurable sensation. I opened my eyes to find his traveling across my face. He had clearly been watching me in my state of ecstasy, and his blown out pupils and parted wet lips were clear signs that he was liking what he was seeing. Suddenly, a sharp moan escaped my lips as he plunged two of his fingers into me, and he quickly planted a firm hand over my mouth to prevent any more noises as he curled his fingers in and out of me mercilessly. The sensation became almost too much once he connected the base of his palm to my clit and began rubbing it in rhythm with his other movements, and almost without thinking I began clawing at the waist band of his sweatpants; desperate to feel more of him.

I pulled his sweats and his boxers down in one swift movement, and immediately began toying with his rock hard cock. Looking up at him as he continued his movements, I brought my hand to my mouth and allowed my collected saliva to drip onto it before bringing it back to his member. I began milking the tip of his cock and immediately noticed a change of pace in his fingers on my cunt. I watched his face as his eyes fluttered shut momentarily and his ears began to grow red. “Fuck, Y/n.” He moaned softly, his words alone enough to drive me crazy. I continued to stroke him, feeling each and every vein along his sizeable shaft, as I felt the familiar tingling sensation of an orgasm fast approaching.

“I-I need more of you Matty. Give me your cock please.” I was really begging now. My legs were beginning to shake and I was close to losing all control, but I wanted to cum around him. I watched as Matt’s eyes nearly rolled to the back of his head as his dick twitched in my hand, a clear sign that my words had an impact on him, too. “Turn on your side.” He commanded, and I immediately obliged. Once I was facing away from him, he wasted no time in lying down beside me — one of his arms wrapped across my chest and massaging my right tit — and sliding his cock into my soaking wet pussy.

We both couldn’t help but release small moans at the satisfying feeling that came from him bottoming out, but he gave me little time to adjust to his size before thrusting into me almost desperately. Using his grasp on my tit, he pushed my back against his chest so that my body was flush with his. “Jesus baby, you’re so tight.” He praised softly, his mouth pressed against my ear as his hips continued to snap against my ass. I couldn’t manage a reply, instead I brought my right hand up to grab onto the back of his neck. I fell into a deep trance from the feeling of my spongey walls stretching and moulding to his cock as if they were two matching puzzle pieces. He left sloppy open mouthed kisses all along my face, growing careless with his movements as the pressure in my lower half began to grow almost unbearable.

“You’re close, aren’t you sweetheart.” He breathed against my hair. I couldn’t do much more than nod my head. “It’s okay, let go. Just be a good girl and stay quiet for me okay?” He used his free hand to once again cover my mouth in anticipation of what might come just as my orgasm bubbled over. I did everything I could to stay silent, but as my orgasm tore through me a plethora of moans fell from my lips and into his gentle hand. My grip on the back of his neck tightened and my back arched away from his torso as I felt the unmistakable warm spurt of fluid stream from my cunt.

Just as I began coming down from my high, Matt released a few short grunts before halting his movements entirely. “Fuuuuck.” His profanity came out in a breathy sigh. His forehead fell to my shoulder, and I could feel his dick pulsating inside of me as he painted my walls with his cum. After a moment, I felt his body relax behind me and he collapsed onto his pillow. For a little while, the only sounds coming from our little corner of the plane was the sound of our ragged breathing as we attempted to regain our composure.

“Well,” Matt eventually began, sitting up and lifting the blanket, exposing the wet spot in the bed that my squirt created, “How are we gonna explain this one?” I took a moment to look at it before sliding my sweats back on. “Easy, we just tell them that you got a little scared of the turbulence and pissed yourself.” He rolled his eyes as he put his pants back on as well, and I laughed. “You’re something else kid.”

Just then, a woman’s voice came from behind the closed curtain. Matt looked at me quickly to ensure that I was fully clothed before opening the curtain and coming face to face with an older flight attendant. “Hi there.” She said, her voice cheerful and her face plastered with a fake smile. “We’re going to be making our landing in Boston in about thirty minutes, please return to an upright position as soon as you can.” Matt nodded his head and gave her a quick smile before she promptly moved down to the next row of flyers. As soon as she was out of earshot, he gave me a cheeky side eye and we both immediately broke into fits of laughter.

“We timed that well.” He said through his laughter and I covered my face with my hands. “I can’t believe we just did that.” I replied, shaking my head as I came to the realization that I had just fucked my boyfriend on a commercial flight. He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me into his chest. “We’re in the mile high club now, baby.” He kissed the top of my head. “Now let’s get our seats back up. Only thirty minutes until you meet my parents!”

[faevi]

GOJO SATORU WAKES YOU UP - (smut)

Scenario: Gojo Satoru promised to help you wake up on time and fix your sleeping schedule. He decides to use his own methods. (SMUT).

Word Count: 3,890.

Content / Trigger Warning: female reader (she/her), somnophilia, cunningulous, finger sucking, gagging, tasting of oneself(?), fingering, squirting, praise, a little bit of degradation / humiliation, a sprinkle of possessiveness, hair pulling, marking with hickies, pet-names, slight size kink, gojo being hot?

Please let me know if i missed anything - if i have, it’s genuinely unintentional.

Note: As you can see, I'm slowly getting back into writing cause I miss it. So it might be a liiiiittle bit rusty. This is my first Satoru piece! I plan to write many more. This isn't proofread / edited - So please just ignore any mistakes lkdfgfd. I also tried to follow the aesthetic trends of how everyone posts their writing pieces?? Editing is hard. I hope someone reads this and likes it (: Please let me know if you do!

MINORS AND AGELESS BLOGS, PLEASE DO NOT INTERACT!!!

Satoru’s warm gaze never left the bed. Even as he blindly wraps the leather strap around his wrist, long fingers sliding the strap through the metal half circle, prick poking into the hole and tightens the watch. He decided to let you sleep in for an extra hour as he prepared himself for work. It’s difficult for the tall male to not indulge in spoiling you, especially when you look so cute curled up and drool seeping out onto the pillow.

Still…. He made a promise to both himself and you that he’d help you improve your sleeping schedule and limit sleeping in. It pains his heart whenever he watches you get upset from wasting hours of your day. Satoru gently sprays his cologne, dabbing it against the sides of his neck and wrists before setting the fancy-looking bottle down amongst your many that he’s purchased for you. He checks the time on his watch, already unbuttoning the few buttons of his white dress shirt. It’s 8:10 AM and he has to leave soon.

The white-haired male opts out on waking you up in a usual loud-playful manner of his. Simply because, well, you’re looking too cute. Just how you manage to coax him into letting you sleep in without even having to lift a finger. Satoru approaches the shared bed, feet silent against the carpet floor before he lowers one knee against the mattress, feeling it sink beneath his weight as he leans down, large hand sliding from your waist to hug around your stomach.

“Baby, it’s time to wake up..” Satoru speaks softly, voice his usual low and soothing. He scatters kisses against your bare shoulder, fingers gently brushing against your stomach before his palm presses against it. You only stir a little in your peaceful slumber, curling up further and pitifully trying to pull the blankets over your head. Satoru snorts, endeared by how you are just not a morning person at all. His loving attempt was a failure and he watches as you continue to sleep, wondering what you’re dreaming about.

Strands of white hair fall over his crystal blue eyes as he presses his bigger form against you, almost smothering you but he keeps his weight off of you, trying to peek at your face beneath the blankets. “If you wake up now, I’ll take you out for breakfast.” Satoru offers, hands on your body stopping as he waits to see if that temptation would have gotten a response. Nothing. Only soft breathing. ‘How can someone be such a heavy sleeper’, he thinks in almost disbelief. Satoru rolls his eyes before he stands up at the edge of the bed, hands tucking into the pockets of his black slacks. The sadistic, playful side within him calls to rile you up in the early morning by yanking the blankets and dragging your body off of the mattress but…

His heart just squeezes at the sight of the bundle of blankets forming barriers around you. Nothing is tucked in tightly, thanks to the fun last night and so instantly, an idea pops into his head. He has access. Satoru is often fantasizing about you. Hell, it feels like it’s every second of the day. It’s a miracle that he’s even able to focus on work or crack a joke to annoy his co-workers. Satoru is just the best at multi-tasking and right now, he craves to devour you and wake you up… eventually. Technically it’s multi-tasking.

Satoru bends over, lifting the blankets up cautiously from the bottom until he could see your bare legs. His heart begins to thump faster with excitement at the thought of touching you when you’re at your most vulnerable; cock twitching in his slacks. He flicks the blankets over to keep your legs exposed, hands rolling up the sleeves of his tight fitted dress shirt before he lowers his upper body onto the mattress, one hand guiding the blankets over his head until he finds himself trapped between your legs, hungry gaze falling onto your pussy.

Even with the darkness clouding around him from the blankets, Satoru can see everything. Your cunt already lightly coated in a light sheen of slick. Appearing so inviting for the taller male. He groans quietly, large hands cupping the back of your thighs and pauses for a moment. You don’t even squirm from the new touch. Whatever you’re dreaming about must be good. That, or your trust in him is so deep that it reaches sleep. He guides your legs over his broad shoulders, shifting himself so his knees are planted on the carpet, the length of your legs staying over his shoulders as he presses soft kisses to your inner thighs, tongue sliding out to teasingly dance across your smooth skin. His love-marks from last night only encourage him, lips latching onto your warm flesh to suck harshly to form another; now starting to feel you squirm a little.

You whine softly in your sleep, trying to roll onto your side but it fails as his strength easily keeps you flat on your back; body thinking nothing of it as you continue your peaceful slumber. He clicks his tongue in disapproval, though lips curled in amusement. “A sleeping beauty, all mine for the taking.” Satoru mumbles beneath his breath, fingers squeezing your flesh roughly before inching up until his long index finger glides between your folds. It slides so easily. Wet, already. He groans, pressing his crotch against the edge of the bed to try and contain himself. Invading your wet needy cunt with his cock would definitely wake you up but he thinks you need to earn it and you’re unable to do so in such a slumber.

Satoru is always in absolute awe when it comes to the sight of your pussy becoming so easily aroused just from his touch. Even as you sleep. Two of his fingers continue to cautiously glide up and down between your slick covered folds, grinning a little at noticing your thighs quivering from the careful touch. Even your hole clenches around nothing in response, desperate to be filled. Your eyebrows furrow, tilting your head into the pillow to lazily nuzzle against it in your sleep, inhaling the scent of the white-haired male that lingers. “Fuck, baby..” Satoru mumbles, two of his fingers pressing against your folds until they part to reveal your sensitive clit and needy hole. Strings of slick become visible and Satoru is always easily tempted. He drags his tongue between to break the strings, pleased by tasting you further.

With silent frustration towards the blankets hiding your face, Satoru swiftly yanks them off until the pair of you are exposed, blankets discarded on the floor. He coos mockingly as you begin to shiver from the cold. “Poor baby girl, needs warming up.” He whispers, toned arms wrapping around your thighs to keep them in place over his shoulders. Your inner thighs squeeze against his face, piercing blue eyes focusing on your sleeping face as he quickly dives in to devour you, growling lowly. His lips pressing sweetly against your sopping pussy, wet muscle dragging between your folds, moans muffled as he taste your sweet juices on his daring tongue. His mind going wild with the idea of what he could do to you as you sleep so deeply. It tempts him so much that Satoru thinks of testing further other times.

A whimpering moan parts from your sleeping lips, face scrunching up as pleasure spreads through your body from your core, fist bunching the sheets up. You stir in your slumber only slightly and for once, Satoru is glad you don’t wake up instantly. He feels powerful, being able to touch and kiss you when you’re completely vulnerable but still feeling the absolute bliss that is his tongue. Short nails dig into your thighs, pressing his face further between your legs as his open mouth makes out hungrily with your cunt. He could barely breathe from how firmly he’s pressing his face into your core, only inhaling the scent of your sex. His tongue laps up your sweetness before he leans in to press sloppy kisses to your throbbing clit, sucking harshly and tongue rubbing against the bud until he feels your legs tense up and tremble, pitifully trying to contain the ecstasy you begin to feel from his eager mouth never parting from your lower lips.

Tongue swirls around the nub lightly between his needy kisses, juices smearing across his handsome face. Blindly, your hand reaches down towards the source, fingers threading through his white hair. You begin to wake up. Slowly. Not truly able to get out of your slumber but, you feel the sweet pleasure wash over you constantly and your mind begins to seek for answers. “A-Ah… Wha— Nn…” You moan out, unable to form words from the cloud of sleepiness hanging over your head. What is going on? Something feels so good… You could barely lift it off of the pillows, eyes glancing down. You feel face get hot when realisation starts to hit you; Satoru is gazing back up at you. The piercing blue eyes wide and manic with a mixture of excitement & hunger. He’s eating you out like a starved man.

Satoru barely lifts his mouth to speak, voice dripping with lust and sounding breathless. “Good morning, princess. Finally awake, huh? Took me to touch your needy cunt for you to wake up? Filthy. My dirty little slut, hm?” The degrading words slip out through a teasing purr, prompting your free hand to pathetically try to cover your face. You feel your heart flutter, head dizzy with lustful thoughts. Drowsiness hands over your head but, it doesn’t stop your cravings starting to form. You couldn’t deny that the sadistic ways Satoru shows only causes your pussy to clench around nothing; wishing to be stretched out by his thick, pulsating cock.

“Nn, ‘toru, please—”

“No cock for you.”

He could practically read your mind by knowing you too well. That’s what you get for refusing to wake up in the first place, you suppose. Especially since you begged him to help you fix your awful habit. Satoru may love to spoil you, shower you in love and pleasure but, he can be almost scary with how firm he is with punishments. This isn’t the worst and so you accept it. You pout sleepily, eyes droopy as you watch the tall male bury his mouth against your wet cunt against, flustered by the sounds of just how excited your body is. It’s an addicting sight to see. A tall man lapping up your slick, groaning quietly from the delicious taste of you. He could taste you for hours on end if he could. Moans of his name part from you as you feel his tongue rub relentlessly against your pulsing clit, slurping loudly as his lips move against your folds, drinking every drop that dares to seep out. “Fuck, you taste so good.” Satoru groans, lips dragging down until his tongue teases your hole. You see stars, gasping sharply as you pull on the strands of his silky white hair.

Satoru groans from the ache he feels, head tilting back away from your hand to feel more of the painful tug, tongue licking over your fluttering hole, gently prodding at it. You anticipate it and, that’s why Satoru pulls away. He’s kneels up and grins down at you, admiring the way your body trembles so cutely beneath him. Your slick is dripping down his chin, coating his lower face. Your face falls from the loss of pleasure, attempting to whine in complaint. “Satoru, come on…” It does nothing, asides from making his cock strain even further against his slacks. Satoru takes his sweet time, wiping his face with his hand, watching as a string of your mess connects his fingers together.

“Dirty girl.” He comments before bringing his hand towards your face. “Open wide.” Satoru orders, voice smooth and instantly, you part your lips to happily take his long fingers into your mouth. Even this is spoiling. Satoru knows you have a wild fetish for his hands and so, if it’s not his cock that you can take; you’ll eagerly take his fingers down your throat. Your needy moans are muffled as you suck your own sweetness off of his fingers. The pads of his fingers press against your soft wet muscle, sliding them further down and watches intently as you swallow around them, his gaze darkening. Your throat muscles constrict around the invasion, causing you to gag audibly but you continue to suck like the filthy whore you are for this man.

“So good for me, aren’t you? Taking everything I give you.” He speaks soothingly, his free hand caressing your stomach. His other hand continues to slide long, slender fingers in and out of your mouth. You whimper, looking up at him with an ‘innocent’ gaze as you continue to obediently suck, only able to taste yourself, few droplets escaping down your chin. Satoru feigns calmness, checking the time on his watch. You couldn’t help but think how hot it is when he even checks the time. You’ve fallen that deep for the tall male. He’s definitely going to be late to work. Frankly, he doesn’t fucking care. They need him more than he needs them. What he truly needs? You. Always. Every shape and form. Still, this isn’t about him and so with every fibre of his being, Satoru ignores his cock, even though it throbs badly & craving to be touched.

“If you promise me to wake up properly when I wake you, I’ll let you come.” Satoru promises, slipping his fingers out of your mouth, thumb swiping gently against your lower lip. “P-Please, I promise! I’ll wake up on time, I swear.. I’ll listen to you, always. Please.” You beg, voice raspy from the lack of talking and having fingers deep down your throat. “Okay, baby~.” He coos, leaning down to press a loving kiss to your soft tiers, unable to deny how cute you are when you beg for him. You could smell is heavenly cologne gently waft over you from how close he is. One of your favourite scents. “Still, no cock.” He whispers breathlessly against your lips, hand trailing down to between your legs. You pout at him from denying you his cock once more, arms wrapping around his neck to keep him close.

He lovingly rubs his nose against yours, obliging your clinginess by keeping his bigger form pressed against you in an embrace, scattering kisses against your jawline as his long fingers meet your needy core once more. He doesn’t tease you by dragging out his time with you, two of his fingers rub against your quivering hole before finally pushing in slowly. They slide in so easily. Even if it’s just his fingers, Satoru groans at the feeling of your tight, velvety walls cling around his digits, squeezing. Your breathing becomes erratic from feeling the sweet stretch around his digits; nothing compared to the entire length of Satoru’s thick cock but, his fingers still feel so heavenly inside of you. You briefly wonder if you could just live your life with a part of him always inside of you.

You’re clinging onto him, upper body rising off of the bed and his free arm wraps around you to keep you pressed against him, soft lips still attached to your jawline, sucking firmly enough to leave a bruise. Another possessive mark to wear with pride. His long fingers pump deep inside of you, feeling them drag along your warm slick walls as they push in and out. Moans just spill from you and Satoru feels so damn aroused just from how needy and precious you sound. Your slick already dripping onto the sheets as he continues to pound his fingers into your tight cunt roughly, angling them until—

“Oh!” You gasp sharply when a jolt of ecstasy rushes over your entire body, upper body jerking upwards from the sudden sensation. Satoru knows where to find your sweet spot quickly and is already eager to abuse it until he witnesses pretty tears in your eyes, sobbing his name out over and over like your own prayer. The white-haired male keeps you trapped beneath his large frame, plunging his fingers desperately, rubbing against your g-spot and keeping his blue eyes focused on your visage. Fuck, it really turns him on to see your face scrunch up and mouth hanging open as you’re unable to contain yourself, crying out for him.

You choke on a sob, toes curling against the crinkled sheets and bare breasts jiggling from the impact of Satoru’s fingers moving, encouraging your hips to move as you grind down onto them. You feel complete bliss, not able to feel flustered like usual from the wet squelching sounds of your throbbing pussy. Pleasure in the form of electricity just shoots through your body, trying so hard to contain yourself by tensing up. Satoru knows you’re pathetic when it comes to that. It’s adorable, really. He enjoys watching you try to hide how good it feels before you’re babbling out his name, screaming for him.

Just as you are now. From his fingers alone. You bite down on his shoulder, trembling hands holding onto him as you cry out for him, tears glued to your long pretty lashes. Your stomach is feeling so hot and tight, throbbing walls clenching around his relentless fingers. “Sweet girl, need to come?” Satoru chuckles softly, warm breath fanning against the side of your face. The free arm holding himself up aches a little but that is nothing compared to his strength. Though, he knows you’d probably love being smothered by his larger body; Satoru selfishly wants to witness it all. Witness you come undone by just his digits.

You whimper, deliberately squeezing around his fingers to coax out a grunt from him. It’s true. He can read you so well because you really do need to let go. Be broken in by the man. There’s an unspoken rule between you both and that is waiting on his permission. He loves how obedient you get for him in the bed. So fucking cute and sweet. He drags it out a little longer, not quite done with you. He grinds his fingers into you, now pressing his palm against your sopping pussy and makes contact with your overly-sensitive clit.

“Ah, fuck! Please!” You plead breathlessly, a hand coming down to weakly hold onto his wrist but neither of you refuse to stop him. Satoru peels himself off of you, creating more distance between your body and you could see his eyes cloud darkly with desire for something. “Come for me.” Satoru orders, free hand pressing against your stomach, the fingers deep in your core now rapidly moving up and down. You pant heavily, feeling your high swiftly approaching as you try to lean up on your elbows, thighs squirming. Everything feels so damn hot and sensitive, it’s a miracle you’re not snapping your legs shut on his hand as you usually can’t help it.

“Fuck, fuck, fuuu—‘Toru!!” You cry out in ecstasy as the waves of pleasure now constantly crash down over your body, leaving you trembling hard, eyes rolling. Satoru is quick to slide his fingers out to watch the heavenly sight he’s been craving for; you squirting. Fuck, he thinks. He’s panting himself as your sweet juices spurt out in lots, gushing hard all over the bed and his work slacks. “Squirting all over me, filthy girl.” He groans, not daring to blink. ‘Do not dare miss a moment’, he thinks. Your hips snap upwards, chasing the addicting high as your wetness continues to spill out. Tears escape, sobbing out for the white-haired male, body feeling so hot and tingly.

Satoru coos at the adorable sight of you coming undone from his mouth and fingers. Large hands caressing along your sides, not daring to hold you down through your orgasm. He enjoys it far too much as you tremble and cry for him. “Good girl..” He praises, one hand coming to stroke your hair, peppering kisses against your bare shoulder. His office clothes are a mess now, your fluids soaked in patches against his black slacks. He didn’t care. He loves you too much. Satoru lays next to you, arm wrapping around your waist to pull you in and lips cautiously brushing away your pretty tears, mixing in with the taste of your sweetness that lingers on his tongue. You slur out a whine when you feel his tongue against your face, body still trembling gently as it naturally comes down from the high. You feel so sensitive. No one else has ever made you feel anything this good until Satoru.

Satoru…

You just always crave to be with Satoru. Body, soul, heart & mind. This is where you belong. You lean back into his loving embrace, smiling from the multiple kisses that he presses to the top of your head, trying to look up at him through droopy eyelids. You could feel his bulge pressing against your backside. “Well, I’m awake now.” You joke sheepishly, prompting the male to snort and roll his eyes. “Didn’t take much to wake you, just my face buried between your legs. Should have tried that from the start, knowing how needy you are for me.” Satoru teases sweetly, lips curled to form a cocky grin. You feel heat rise to your cheeks, rolling over to bury your face into his firm chest, slowly gliding your hand down towards his crotch. His large hand smothers yours, stopping your movement and you pout. He’s still firm on the ‘no cock’ rule this morning for refusing to wake up, much to his dismay. His length aches from no action. You press an apologetic kiss to his broad shoulder, voice quiet.

“Don’t you need to leave for work? You’re already late.”

“Nah, they can wait a little longer. I’m with my girl.”

You smile at that, always feeling spoiled by him. You giggle softly, ignoring how sticky your legs feel as you tangle them with. He gazes fondly at you, arm draped over your side. His sweet girl. All his. He presses his lips to your cheekbone. It’s moments like these, that you really adore. Silence can even be comforting with the white-haired male. Satoru is in love with you. The warmth in his eyes will never fade, even if he’s feeling particularly nasty to ruin you in bed. His crystal blue eyes refuse to leave you, fingers splaying across your naked back, nails dragging over the hot skin. He clears his throat, trying to bite back a smug expression.

“So, Y/N. Dick for dinner tonight?”

You burst out with laughter, nose scrunching slightly. “Come on.” You say, sitting up and taking hold of his hand, fingers interlocking. You could feel your dried up slick causing his hand to become sticky. “Washing hands and breakfast first. I want your famous pancakes.” You express with a loud kiss to his cheek. Satoru puffs out his chest proudly before helping you off the bed, unbothered by the still wet patches on his slacks. It’s a pleasant reminder, after all.

“Anything for my princess.”

[desi2go]

Importance

pairings: dad!Chan x mom!reader

warnings: angst, fluff

summary: Having a child with an idol isn't easy...

author's note: I'm sorry that I couldn't post anything the last two weeks. But here I am with a new one!

Marriage wasn't easy. Especially when your beloved husband was an idol. The Bang Chan, leader of Stray Kids.

Between tours and busy schedules, there was little time for your relationship. But even though it was hard and you missed him like hell when he was gone for a long time, you still didn't regret to come to your best friend Changbin's party years ago. There, you had met him.

Well, he didn't see you and accidentally poured his drink over you. When your eyes met, he was fascinated by your breathtaking beauty. Maybe it was destiny back then. It felt surreal, like he was your soulmate. The missing piece in in your heart and life.

Apologetic, he bought you a drink and after a wonderful night together, asked for your number.

Soon, he took you out on a date and there followed a second and a third, becoming a huge part in your life.

Without noticing, time passed and Chan proposed to you.

You immediately said yes and became Mrs. Bang.

The second you were married, your family asked when you both would begin to try for a baby but Chan and you wanted to wait some time before thinking about an addition to your family.

You still were young and Stray kids took much time and you understood that. Your job was also one of your top priorities and wanted to earn more money.

But it seemed that the universe had other plans with you two. Seven months after the wedding you started feeling sick. At first you brushed it off and thought that it is just a stomach bug or the stress due to work.

As the lovely but overly concerned husband that he is, Chan took you too a doctor to get a check up. Even though you found it a little bit overdramatic, he still insisted and the reason why you felt nauseous was soon found. You were indeed pregnant and already two months into pregnancy.

Sure, it wasn't planned but you and Chan felt excited to have a small addition to the family. And sooner or later it would have happend anyways.

Chan promised that when the pregnancy was farther along, he would take some time off and help you. You agreed to that and decided to work some more months too before you need to go into maternity leave.

The months passed fast and soon, you welcomed your newest family member. A girl. A sweet girl with already some black locks on her head and the same brown eyes that you fell in love with.

Chan was over the moon. Even though during labour, he was terrified. Would he be a good dad? But all these thoughts washed away when he saw the beautiful angel you both had created with your undying love.

He was the first one to hold her as her crying filled the room. Exhausted, you observed the picture in front of you. Your husband with his precious daughter that already looked like a smaller copy of him.

He was told to undress his shirt and to lay the little bundle of joy against his bare chest to help her breath and keeping her warmth while the doctor checked on you because you had lost a lot of blood during birth.

The first weeks were exhausting. Your little girl, Nari, held both of you awake most of the night. Yourself needed to heal and time to recover from the labor, so you relied mostly on your husband who took such good care for his girl. Fortunately, he got some weeks off to settle into parenthood before going back to the boys even though they nearly saw each other every day.

Since you got home from the hospital, four days after birth, they visited you to meet their 'little sister' as they called Nari. Oh lord, they were so smitten. The only one that seems not so sure about that little human was Seungmin but when he thought that nobody would watch, you catched him drawing circles over Nari's hands, smiling when she wrapped her hand around one of his fingers.

When Chan went back, the house was suddenly so empty. After weeks of being together 24/7, the sudden quiet was unfamiliar. In the mornings, Chan was already out, you loved to lay on the couch, your daughter on your chest, snuggling close to you while sleeping.

When Chan came back home in the evening, he greeted you with a kiss and immediately ran off to his daughter to tell her about his day even though she was already sleeping. You loved to observe him while cooking. You loved this little family. It was something that you ever wanted.

You really loved Nari. But after the pregnancy and early motherhood, you needed some space for yourself. You would love to spend an evening with your girls. Just making yourself look pretty and have fun without watching over a child.

Especially since you almost never leave the house except for some stroller walks and buying errands.

You asked your husband if he comes home some hours earlier so that you could enjoy your night. Immediately, he agreed and you were so grateful that he understood you.

On that day, you took your time with getting ready while your daughter slept. You hoped that Chan would be home soon so that you would be on time since you hated being late.

Minutes passed as you sat on the couch waiting for him. Minutes turned into half an hour and you wrote your girls that you would run a little late today. They were understanding.

More minutes passed and you waited already for a whole hour. You tried to call him since he was always so focused on his work so that he sometimes forgets the time.

He didn't pick up and you were already half an hour late. Your girls were already seated in your restaurant, waiting for you to show up so that they could start ordering food.

Sighing, you texted then that you couldn't make it and they shouldn't wait up on you. Frustrated, you cleared your face from the make up that was hours worth of work.

You took off the new dress that you had bought. You were so excited to wear it because it made you feel so pretty again after the pregnancy made you look bloated and your belly was still not the same then before.

You didn't know if you felt rage, sadness or disappointment that you needed to stay home because of your husband.

It wouldn't be so bad if it was the first time after he got back to work. He used to come back at a normal time to have some time with you and the baby. But as the weeks passed, he stayed later and got up earlier so that you saw him just for some minutes per day.

It was like you were all on your own here in your home. You knew from the beginning that Stray kids was really important to him but after entering parenthood you had hoped that he wouldn't stay till past midnight in the company.

You heard the key unlocking the front door and your husband finally decided to come home after he had promised you that he would be here three hours ago. He greeted you with a small peck on the forehead as you waited for him in the living room.

He looked so calm while dropping his bag to the ground and sitting down on the couch.

"Why are you standing there honey?" He asked. You crossed your arms. He didn't even remembered that this was supposed to be your night out.

"Why are you so late?" You tried to remain calm since your daughter slept in the neighbouring room.

"I was working on the newest song for stray kids" he explained.

"Oh really? Because you said you would be here hours ago" you didn't want to pick a fight. You hated fighting with him. It made your heart clench but this night was important to you.

"I'm sorry honey. But I needed to get it done"

"Well, I had plans for the night, Chan."

"Really? I'm sorry honey. I forgot and this song was important"

"The song was important? My reservation with the girls was important to me" you said and couldn't hold the calm tone that you wanted.

"I already said I'm sorry, Y/n. I got caught up in work" He grew annoyed.

"Like always. You're always so late that I wonder if you even remember that you have a family at home" You knew you were mean and unfair but all these things were twirling around your head for days.

"Of course I remember! I'm sorry that I make money for us" he exclaimed sarcastically. His voice loud, nearly shouting.

These words hurt you. He knew damn well that you aren't dependent on his money and that you make good money as well. Even though you currently took a maternity leave.

"Fuck you, Chan. You aren't the only one working. I was asking you for just one thing. Just being home a little earlier so that I could have some time for myself." You said loudly, your voice cracking in the middle as some tears stung in your eyes.

"Y/n. I-" he tried but you stopped him.

"Nari is your child too. Currently, I'm the only one she sees whether it's in the morning or in the evening. And I'm tired. Tired of being the only one raising her."

You heard cries from the other room. You must have woken up your sleeping daughter. Sighing, you excited the room and headed to Nari without waiting for an answer.

Chan knew that he went too far and that he was more away than home. And it pained him to not spend so much time with his daughter. Slowly he followed you to your daughter's room.

It was dimly lit and you sat in the rocking chair next to her crib with Nari in your arms, rocking her. He hated seeing her in distress and guilt crept up. He was a terrible father and an even more terrible husband.

You felt Chan's hot gaze on you. You knew that the guilt ate him alive right now. He couldn't fool you. Therefore you knew him too well.

After placing Nari back into her crib, giving her a light kiss on her soft skin that smelled so sweet like a baby. Your baby.

Then, you took Chan's hand and lead you outside to the kitchen, farther away from your daughter.

He just followed you, deep in thoughts.

"Y/n, I'm so sorry. I should have come early. And I know that parenting a child alone is difficult. I didn't want to lash out on you like that. I know that the meeting with your friends was important to you" he said and caressed your hand.

"I'm sorry too. It's obvious that you try to be around Nari as long and often as you can."

"No, you were right. I need to be here more. Especially with you both. I shouldn't let work take over so much" he said and pulled you into his arms.

His arms circled around your waist while yours travelled upwards into his fluffy locks. Exhausted he let his head fall on your shoulder, all the tension leaving his body.

"I love you Chan" you whispered.

"I love you too. You and Nari are the most important things in my life"

[avawritesthings]

sleepy | jh86

✦ word count - 709

✦ summary - in which jack is a horndog, even when asleep.

✦ warnings - smut

✦ ava’s notes - first time posting my writing! i’m super nervous but super excited! i have other fics in the works but i’ve decided to post this first :) … i hope you guys enjoy!

nhl masterlist

MOST PEOPLE DREAM when sleeping.

Some even have nightmares. 

Jack? No…no…he fucks in his sleep. 

Ever since you moved in together into a new apartment, and shared the same bed every night, like clockwork, Jack would start to stir and press his semi-hard length into your sleeping body. 

You, of course, wake up because you’re used to it by now. And usually you wouldn’t mind, but he had invited you to join him and his family to spend the summer at the lake house. 

Who were you to say no?

You and his brothers were simply separated by thin walls that didn’t keep in any sounds. One day, you had heard Quinn and Luke arguing in Quinn’s bedroom, and you could make out every word that was said. 

But Jack? He wasn’t affected by the change in circumstances. No, he, yet again, subconsciously pulled you into his warm embrace and rutted his dick into your ass. 

His hot breath was heavy on the back of your neck as he held you from behind. Hands started to wander underneath your shirt - his shirt - until he felt the swell of your breasts. 

You could feel his cock slightly twitch from under his shorts. His hand eventually made its way lower…and lower until he reached the hem of your panties. 

Ditching your underwear, at least for sleeping, sounded like a great idea from now on. From how often he does this, they’re just an obstacle. 

You bit down on your lip and he shoved your panties to the side and started to rub on your clit. Without warning, Jack slipped a finger into your wet cunt and you lightly gasped. He smirked, and you could somehow feel it. 

You weren’t even sure if he was still asleep or awake at this point. His finger curled and he added another finger. It felt too good to stop, but you knew that if he continued, you’d end up caught and the relentless teasing would ensue. 

As one hand fondled your breasts, the other one was occupied with your pussy. 

“Shhhh,” he whispered. He had to have been awake by now. You tried to wiggle away, but with how strong he was, you only managed to somehow get his fingers even deeper. 

Jack rutted his hips against your ass yet again, and you could feel him thrusting into you. “Fuck,” he lowly whispered. 

“Jack,” you whispered out, but he ignored you. Repeating his name again, which seemed to turn him on even more, had him trying to get his boxers off. Once they were on the floor, Jack gently pulled his fingers out of you, and used your arousal as lube. 

You gasped when you felt the head of his cock line up with your entrance. As he stretched you out, you whimpered and covered your slack mouth with your hand. He just felt so good. 

“Shh baby, this house has thin walls. You gotta be quiet,” he purred out. His lips were sloppily kissing your neck and cheek while lazily thrusting into you. 

He kept hitting the right spot every time. You knew he was awake. 

“You need to keep quiet,” he moaned. His fingers left your breasts and dropped down to circle your tight bundle of nerves. 

“Fuck, Jack. Feels so good,” you mewled out, blubbering about how he felt so good and don’t stop. 

He could feel your climax approaching rapidly, and his thrusts suddenly started to get more of a reaction out of you. 

You bowed your head down and started to let out a moan, but Jack covered your mouth with his extra hand and muffled your noises. 

“You wanna come?” Nod. “Come with me, baby. Come on my cock like the good girl you are.” And with that, you clenched around his cock. He followed shortly after, emptying himself before slowly pulling out. 

You turned to face him, and his eyes were droopy with a lazy, fucked out smile on his lips. Pecking his lips, you embraced him and he wrapped his arms around your back, nestling his head into your neck. 

Your eyes caught the time. 2:48. Rolling your eyes, you smiled softly and went back to sleep. 

(No one caught you two, you naughty little horndogs.)

-

(like/reblog/comment/follow, if you want! if ur a little ghost reader, i appreciate u xo)

[nina-renmen]

Yandere Hybrid Team 141

I’ve been seeing posts like this and thought I would jump on the bandwagon. The idea of yandere hybrid 141 is not my idea but this specific scenario is.

Summary: Team 141 stumbles upon y/n. Thinking that she’s small and fragile they attempt to ‘take advantage’ of her only to figure out she’s a polar bear hybrid. (Polar bear hybrid was chosen because they actively hunt humans.)

Team 141 had relocated, their base stationed in colder weather. Soap didn’t mind, considering he was merged with a wolf. He quite liked the snow and throwing snowballs at his captain.

Price was not amused at all. Given the fact that he was a grizzly bear hybrid his instincts told him to get ready to hibernate. Thus, leaving the male annoyed most of the time. A few times he almost lunged at Gaz for flying around so much in his little ‘battle’ with soap.

Gaz, being a harpy was the most human like out of all the men. The only thing that changed about him was his arms, meaning that the male usually stayed bundled up which in turn was given odd looks by ghost from time to time. But now ghost, an undead being began to get used to seeing his fellow teammate underneath two layers of clothing

Gaz was the first one to stumble upon you During one of his rounds he looked up from above, his eyes catching sight of you in the cold, crisp water. White, round ears were on top of your head. You must’ve been a panda hybrid. You didn’t seem dangerous at all.

A wicked grin crossed Gaz’s face. Swooping down, the sharp claws grabbing you. But before he could get far with you, you bared your teeth at him. Sharp canines covered in blood from your latest kill were flashed. Your sharp claws slashed his face before dragging him down into the water. Immediately your form switching making Gaz’s eyes widen in horror. Such a sweet, helpless looking girl was actually a polar bear hybrid. Your pupils dilated, jaws snapping at him as the beast seemed to foam at the mouth, getting ready to rip his throat out.

Price was the first to arrive, hearing Gaz’s screams and yells.

While Gaz was under you he saw a flash of brown. The harpy sitting up, wincing in pain at his broken leg but his eyes leaving the mangled leg and up towards the fight that was happening. The roars of both the bears attracting the attention of the rest of the team. Gaz has never seen price almost loose a fight before. Polar bears were already larger than grizzled bears but because you were a female you have a good two feet over him. Your fur was more adapted to the arctic waters but Price’s wasn’t, his movements were a tad bit slower than yours due to the below freezing temperatures. Just as the rest of team 141 arrived you were gone.

After the ‘fight’ Price scolded Gaz. Grumbling about how he shouldn’t have assumed what kind of hybrid you were. But based off of your human descriptions he didn’t blame Gaz for trying to snatch you up.

Price only had minor injuries. A couple of gashes and bruises. It would leave some scars but nothing too serious. On the other hand Gaz’s leg was broken. The gash on his face had left a nasty scar. Ghost only mocked the younger male, telling him to suck it up and to not do dumb shit.

Soap had the second encounter with you. After a few months Gaz was able to walk again. But Soap was to accompany him as they did their rounds.

“That’s her.” Gaz whispered, crouching down making Soap follow suit. The wolf hybrid peeking around the corner to see you. He couldn’t believe that you were the one that did all that damage. Granite it was in self defense but you looked so fragile and soft.

When y/n turned around she had a fish in her mouth. Her eyes immediately catching onto Soaps who had been careless when admiring y/n from a distance. Y/n’s gaze wasn’t threatening like what Gaz had described. She seemed curious.

Soap took this as a green light to fully come out. Gaz whispers to not falling on deaf ears. When soap began to get too close a growl came from y/n as she took a step back making her drop her fish. She had to look up at him, which she didn’t like.

After a few moments Soap gained her trust, picking up the dropped fish and slowly inching close to her. Y/n opened her mouth, taking the fish from his hand. Nuzzling her black button nose against his hand, a purr coming out of her but she stopped. A whiff of Gaz’s scent on Soaps hand making y/n pull away. “No! No, no, no! I’m friendly.” Soap exclaimed, putting his hands up. He needed to avoid all conflict. The only person that was able to take you down was captain price, he doubted that Ghost could take you down in your monster form. Soap knew he’d need to calm you down. Polar bears actively hunt humans, meaning Gaz and himself were on your lunch menu. But y/n only turned around leaving once more.

Now price’s encounter with you went a little bit different. The man went out to have a smoke. “That shit stinks.” A feminine voice came from behind Price. Turning around he seen your form crouched down, a wolf torn open in front of you. It was the same size as Soap in his monster form. Its guts spilled out, coating the white snow in its blood.

“Didn’t know you could talk.” Price muttered, breathing in the smoke from the cigar. His eyes taking in your form. You were fragile looking, just as Gaz said. Your big doe eyes could have fooled him.

Y/n didn’t respond, instead opting to rip out more chunks from the wolf with her jaws. Tearing into the predator that turned into her prey. “Ya’ hurt one of my men.” Price said loud enough for y/n to hear.

“That lousy excuse of a bird?” Y/n said as she ripped into the wolf. “Tell him to keep thinking with his dick. Maybe next time I’ll tear his throat open.”

Price chuckled, leaning back on the tree as he watched you eat. You were fiesty. The longer he stared at you the more the gears in his head turned. You had wide hips, perfect for carrying his cups. You looked healthy, a few scars hear and there but each one told a story.

Pushing himself off the tree he stalked towards you. A growl ripping through y/n’s throat as she make eye contact with Price.

“I ain’t gon take your food sweetheart.” Price said as he crouched down in front of you and your kill.

“I said that shit stinks. Put it out.”

“And if I don’t.”

“I’ll eat you before you can turn.”

The two looked at each other for a while. “I’m stronger and faster than you darlin’.”

“Not if I drown you in that water you won’t be.” Y/n shot back. Ah, so she’s caught on to his weakness. Price was considerably weaker in colder water temperatures. Especially if the waters were deep.

Needless to say, Price put out the cigar.

[colourstreakgryffin]

Hello Hello!! I saw that you're taking requests? If it isn't too much trouble could I request something for a platonic Alastor x Tailor!Reader? Maybe being besties or gossip buddies? (Since I made an OC design based on ideas)

Oooh! I like this idea and to be honest, it reminds me of something I’ve been thinking about when it comes to Al; I made that one post of KNY’s Iguro Obanai with a Fluttershy! Reader and I have the extreme urge to see Alastor with a Rarity! Reader— but anyway. Let’s try this out

Alastor- Mischievous Rumours

“That’s when Charlie said ‘oh fuck you, Alastor. All you do is stand there, smiling while you watch us struggle and fail’. She’s such a fool for thinking I care for her and her friend’s helpless little struggles. Isn’t that delusional mindset so hilarious, my dear?” Alastor, the Radio Demon, laughs upbeat and eccentric with the radio effect deeply laced through his thick transatlantic accent voice chimes out as the grip on his signature staff-like microphone-cane seems to loosen. Standing completely still and on a nice marble pedestal, the deer Overlord spoke both mockingly and casually to the sweet kind tailor sinner, Leitora. A wonderful talented soul with the needle and thread, when it comes to tailoring coats like his own

“It definitely is, Al” You chime out softly and a bit distracted, hands wondering around the long torn rims of his red pinstriped coat. Only wondering in order to find the out of place tear that Alastor pointed out upon visiting your tailor shop. Some sinner named ‘Sir Pentinous’ had managed to tear off a bit of Alastor’s classic coat and as his most trusted tailor, it’s your job to take care of this little rip and tear within Alastor’s patience

The Radio Demon will not deny… he likes being up on this pedestal and his coat being touched, it makes him feel on top of Hell

“I know, darling. I find it so amusing that she believes I believe in her” This is a common thing Alastor did whenever he came to visit you for a hangout or when he needed you to repair his clothing. He loved to throw shade and shit at the Hotel staff and clients he surrounds himself. He loves to berate Husk for being incompetent, he loves to badly mock Angel Dust for flirting with him, he loves to mock and ridicule Vaggie, and he especially enjoys making fun of Charlie’s ‘delusional’ dream of redeeming sinners. You didn’t mind it, you find Alastor a funny man

“You’ll never believe in redemption, hey?” You also don’t mind snarking and teasing Alastor. He lets it slide with a natural toothy-less smile. His blood red eyes following the way you traverse over to the silver rack of many neatly organised rolled-up fabric bundles to pick out a perfectly shaded and patterned piece of crimson red fabric to begin sewing onto the obvious edge rip on the left side of his coat’s hems

This’ll be over in a few seconds but that doesn’t mean you won’t spend a whole twenty minutes with Alastor, spreading gossip around with him about sinners in your opposite ends. He’ll tell you about Overlords, you’ll tell him about the common Sinners. You like Alastor as a friend for a number of reasons, one of the main reasons being the mere fact you two can chat and gossip around, so fluently and naturally

“Believing in redemption is like believing a heart can beat without blood, darling. It’s just not possible. It’s foolish, mindless, sheltered. All adjectives to explain Charlie as a whole” Alastor is quite brutal with this and you can actually just sense the sourness pouring out of his voice and darker eyes as he speaks once more, his stance still well-mannered and classy but his gripping hand growing firmer, as if bottling up some type of anger deep within his soul. Deciding to not poke the sleeping deer any further, you effectively use your claws to trim off the rest of the string that tied the new fabric chunk onto his coat’s hems and repaired the tear to complete perfection

“Yes, Al. I understand, you are right in that sense”

Like a light switch upon hearing you agree, Alastor is instantly back to smiling more soft and caring with zero fangs visible than the very tense, passive-aggressive wide grin he had just painted on his face. Stepping down, rather gracefully, from the flat round multilayered pedestal, the Radio Demon readjusts his signature bowtie with a flick of his wrist. Sharp long red-tipped black clawed fingers dancing over his snazzy accessorises before facing you once more

He knows that new look of yours very well. A look of kindness and appreciation to see him once more but also urgency and duty. You’re busy and need him to leave but don’t want to say a word to avoid disappointing him

No, he didn’t like that whatsoever and he plans to be just a little bit selfish with one of his most favourites in Hell. He’ll have to take you away from your afterlife-stealing occupation so you can spend a day relaxing with him, drinking some nice warm tea and talking more smack about the people you two despise

Without even hesitating nor really thinking it over, Alastor locks his arm with yours and speaks once more, his kind and actually welcoming gaze and grin never once dropping as he begins to take charge, already deciding what’s going on for you today and he won’t hear you refuse such a idea

So… sorry, you’re gonna have to deal with it

“Darling. Don’t tell me you’re going to kick me out after this? How about you close up shop for today and we go out to a nice café? It’s been a while since it’s just been me and you”

[mostlysignssomeportents]

My McLuhan lecture on enshittification

IT'S THE LAST DAY for the Kickstarter for the audiobook of The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There's also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.

Last night, I gave the annual Marshall McLuhan lecture at the Transmediale festival in Berlin. The event was sold out and while there's a video that'll be posted soon, they couldn't get a streaming setup installed in the Canadian embassy, where the talk was held:

https://transmediale.de/en/2024/event/mcluhan-2024

The talk went of fabulously, and was followed by commentary from Frederike Kaltheuner (Human Rights Watch) and a discussion moderated by Helen Starr. While you'll have to wait a bit for the video, I thought that I'd post my talk notes from last night for the impatient among you.

I want to thank the festival and the embassy staff for their hard work on an excellent event. And now, on to the talk!

Last year, I coined the term 'enshittification,' to describe the way that platforms decay. That obscene little word did big numbers, it really hit the zeitgeist. I mean, the American Dialect Society made it their Word of the Year for 2023 (which, I suppose, means that now I'm definitely getting a poop emoji on my tombstone).

So what's enshittification and why did it catch fire? It's my theory explaining how the internet was colonized by platforms, and why all those platforms are degrading so quickly and thoroughly, and why it matters – and what we can do about it.

We're all living through the enshittocene, a great enshittening, in which the services that matter to us, that we rely on, are turning into giant piles of shit.

It's frustrating. It's demoralizing. It's even terrifying.

I think that the enshittification framework goes a long way to explaining it, moving us out of the mysterious realm of the 'great forces of history,' and into the material world of specific decisions made by named people – decisions we can reverse and people whose addresses and pitchfork sizes we can learn.

Enshittification names the problem and proposes a solution. It's not just a way to say 'things are getting worse' (though of course, it's fine with me if you want to use it that way. It's an English word. We don't have der Rat für Englisch Rechtschreibung. English is a free for all. Go nuts, meine Kerle).

But in case you want to use enshittification in a more precise, technical way, let's examine how enshittification works.

It's a three stage process: First, platforms are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.

Let's do a case study. What could be better than Facebook?

Facebook is a company that was founded to nonconsensually rate the fuckability of Harvard undergrads, and it only got worse after that.

When Facebook started off, it was only open to US college and high-school kids with .edu and k-12.us addresses. But in 2006, it opened up to the general public. It told them: “Yes, I know you’re all using Myspace. But Myspace is owned by Rupert Murdoch, an evil, crapulent senescent Australian billionaire, who spies on you with every hour that God sends.

“Sign up with Facebook and we will never spy on you. Come and tell us who matters to you in this world, and we will compose a personal feed consisting solely of what those people post for consumption by those who choose to follow them.”

That was stage one. Facebook had a surplus — its investors’ cash — and it allocated that surplus to its end-users. Those end-users proceeded to lock themselves into FB. FB — like most tech businesses — has network effects on its side. A product or service enjoys network effects when it improves as more people sign up to use it. You joined FB because your friends were there, and then others signed up because you were there.

But FB didn’t just have high network effects, it had high switching costs. Switching costs are everything you have to give up when you leave a product or service. In Facebook’s case, it was all the friends there that you followed and who followed you. In theory, you could have all just left for somewhere else; in practice, you were hamstrung by the collective action problem.

It’s hard to get lots of people to do the same thing at the same time. You and your six friends here are going to struggle to agree on where to get drinks after tonight's lecture. How were you and your 200 Facebook friends ever gonna agree on when it was time to leave Facebook, and where to go?

So FB’s end-users engaged in a mutual hostage-taking that kept them glued to the platform. Then FB exploited that hostage situation, withdrawing the surplus from end-users and allocating it to two groups of business customers: advertisers, and publishers.

To the advertisers, FB said, 'Remember when we told those rubes we wouldn’t spy on them? We lied. We spy on them from asshole to appetite. We will sell you access to that surveillance data in the form of fine-grained ad-targeting, and we will devote substantial engineering resources to thwarting ad-fraud. Your ads are dirt cheap to serve, and we’ll spare no expense to make sure that when you pay for an ad, a real human sees it.'

To the publishers, FB said, 'Remember when we told those rubes we would only show them the things they asked to see? We lied!Upload short excerpts from your website, append a link, and we will nonconsensually cram it into the eyeballs of users who never asked to see it. We are offering you a free traffic funnel that will drive millions of users to your website to monetize as you please, and those users will become stuck to you when they subscribe to your feed.' And so advertisers and publishers became stuck to the platform, too, dependent on those users.

The users held each other hostage, and those hostages took the publishers and advertisers hostage, too, so that everyone was locked in.

Which meant it was time for the third stage of enshittification: withdrawing surplus from everyone and handing it to Facebook’s shareholders.

For the users, that meant dialing down the share of content from accounts you followed to a homeopathic dose, and filling the resulting void with ads and pay-to-boost content from publishers.

For advertisers, that meant jacking up prices and drawing down anti-fraud enforcement, so advertisers paid much more for ads that were far less likely to be seen by a person.

For publishers, this meant algorithmically suppressing the reach of their posts unless they included an ever-larger share of their articles in the excerpt, until anything less than fulltext was likely to be be disqualified from being sent to your subscribers, let alone included in algorithmic suggestion feeds.

And then FB started to punish publishers for including a link back to their own sites, so they were corralled into posting fulltext feeds with no links, meaning they became commodity suppliers to Facebook, entirely dependent on the company both for reach and for monetization, via the increasingly crooked advertising service.

When any of these groups squawked, FB just repeated the lesson that every tech executive learned in the Darth Vader MBA: 'I have altered the deal. Pray I don’t alter it any further.'

Facebook now enters the most dangerous phase of enshittification. It wants to withdraw all available surplus, and leave just enough residual value in the service to keep end users stuck to each other, and business customers stuck to end users, without leaving anything extra on the table, so that every extractable penny is drawn out and returned to its shareholders.

But that’s a very brittle equilibrium, because the difference between “I hate this service but I can’t bring myself to quit it,” and “Jesus Christ, why did I wait so long to quit? Get me the hell out of here!” is razor thin

All it takes is one Cambridge Analytica scandal, one whistleblower, one livestreamed mass-shooting, and users bolt for the exits, and then FB discovers that network effects are a double-edged sword.

If users can’t leave because everyone else is staying, when when everyone starts to leave, there’s no reason not to go, too.

That’s terminal enshittification, the phase when a platform becomes a pile of shit. This phase is usually accompanied by panic, which tech bros euphemistically call 'pivoting.'

Which is how we get pivots like, 'In the future, all internet users will be transformed into legless, sexless, low-polygon, heavily surveilled cartoon characters in a virtual world called "metaverse," that we ripped off from a 25-year-old satirical cyberpunk novel.'

That's the procession of enshittification. If enshittification were a disease, we'd call that enshittification's "natural history." But that doesn't tell you how the enshittification works, nor why everything is enshittifying right now, and without those details, we can't know what to do about it.

What led to the enshittocene? What is it about this moment that led to the Great Enshittening? Was it the end of the Zero Interest Rate Policy? Was it a change in leadership at the tech giants? Is Mercury in retrograde?

None of the above.

The period of free fed money certainly led to tech companies having a lot of surplus to toss around. But Facebook started enshittifying long before ZIRP ended, so did Amazon, Microsoft and Google.

Some of the tech giants got new leaders. But Google's enshittification got worse when the founders came back to oversee the company's AI panic (excuse me, 'AI pivot').

And it can't be Mercury in retrograde, because I'm a cancer, and as everyone knows, cancers don't believe in astrology.

When a whole bunch of independent entities all change in the same way at once, that's a sign that the environment has changed, and that's what happened to tech.

Tech companies, like all companies, have conflicting imperatives. On the one hand, they want to make money. On the other hand, making money involves hiring and motivating competent staff, and making products that customers want to buy. The more value a company permits its employees and customers to carve off, the less value it can give to its shareholders.

The equilibrium in which companies produce things we like in honorable ways at a fair price is one in which charging more, worsening quality, and harming workers costs more than the company would make by playing dirty.

There are four forces that discipline companies, serving as constraints on their enshittificatory impulses.

First: competition. Companies that fear you will take your business elsewhere are cautious about worsening quality or raising prices.

Second: regulation. Companies that fear a regulator will fine them more than they expect to make from cheating, will cheat less.

These two forces affect all industries, but the next two are far more tech-specific.

Third: self-help. Computers are extremely flexible, and so are the digital products and services we make from them. The only computer we know how to make is the Turing-complete Von Neumann machine, a computer that can run every valid program.

That means that users can always avail themselves of programs that undo the anti-features that shift value from them to a company's shareholders. Think of a board-room table where someone says, 'I've calculated that making our ads 20% more invasive will net us 2% more revenue per user.'

In a digital world, someone else might well say 'Yes, but if we do that, 20% of our users will install ad-blockers, and our revenue from those users will drop to zero, forever.'

This means that digital companies are constrained by the fear that some enshittificatory maneuver will prompt their users to google, 'How do I disenshittify this?'

Fourth and finally: workers. Tech workers have very low union density, but that doesn't mean that tech workers don't have labor power. The historical "talent shortage" of the tech sector meant that workers enjoyed a lot of leverage over their bosses. Workers who disagreed with their bosses could quit and walk across the street and get another job – a better job.

They knew it, and their bosses knew it. Ironically, this made tech workers highly exploitable. Tech workers overwhelmingly saw themselves as founders in waiting, entrepreneurs who were temporarily drawing a salary, heroic figures of the tech mission.

That's why mottoes like Google's 'don't be evil' and Facebook's 'make the world more open and connected' mattered: they instilled a sense of mission in workers. It's what Fobazi Ettarh calls 'vocational awe, 'or Elon Musk calls being 'extremely hardcore.'

Tech workers had lots of bargaining power, but they didn't flex it when their bosses demanded that they sacrifice their health, their families, their sleep to meet arbitrary deadlines.

So long as their bosses transformed their workplaces into whimsical 'campuses,' with gyms, gourmet cafeterias, laundry service, massages and egg-freezing, workers could tell themselves that they were being pampered – rather than being made to work like government mules.

But for bosses, there's a downside to motivating your workers with appeals to a sense of mission, namely: your workers will feel a sense of mission. So when you ask them to enshittify the products they ruined their health to ship, workers will experience a sense of profound moral injury, respond with outrage, and threaten to quit.

Thus tech workers themselves were the final bulwark against enshittification,

The pre-enshittification era wasn't a time of better leadership. The executives weren't better. They were constrained. Their worst impulses were checked by competition, regulation, self-help and worker power.

So what happened?

One by one, each of these constraints was eroded until it dissolved, leaving the enshittificatory impulse unchecked, ushering in the enshittoscene.

It started with competition. From the Gilded Age until the Reagan years, the purpose of competition law was to promote competition. US antitrust law treated corporate power as dangerous and sought to blunt it. European antitrust laws were modeled on US ones, imported by the architects of the Marshall Plan.

But starting in the neoliberal era, competition authorities all over the world adopted a doctrine called 'consumer welfare,' which held that monopolies were evidence of quality. If everyone was shopping at the same store and buying the same product, that meant it was the best store, selling the best product – not that anyone was cheating.

And so all over the world, governments stopped enforcing their competition laws. They just ignored them as companies flouted them. Those companies merged with their major competitors, absorbed small companies before they could grow to be big threats. They held an orgy of consolidation that produced the most inbred industries imaginable, whole sectors grown so incestuous they developed Habsburg jaws, from eyeglasses to sea freight, glass bottles to payment processing, vitamin C to beer.

Most of our global economy is dominated by five or fewer global companies. If smaller companies refuse to sell themselves to these cartels, the giants have free rein to flout competition law further, with 'predatory pricing' that keeps an independent rival from gaining a foothold.

When Diapers.com refused Amazon's acquisition offer, Amazon lit $100m on fire, selling diapers way below cost for months, until diapers.com went bust, and Amazon bought them for pennies on the dollar, and shut them down.

Competition is a distant memory. As Tom Eastman says, the web has devolved into 'five giant websites filled with screenshots of text from the other four,' so these giant companies no longer fear losing our business.

Lily Tomlin used to do a character on the TV show Laugh In, an AT&T telephone operator who'd do commercials for the Bell system. Each one would end with her saying 'We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company.'

Today's giants are not constrained by competition.

They don't care. They don't have to. They're Google.

That's the first constraint gone, and as it slipped away, the second constraint – regulation – was also doomed.

When an industry consists of hundreds of small- and medium-sized enterprises, it is a mob, a rabble. Hundreds of companies can't agree on what to tell Parliament or Congress or the Commission. They can't even agree on how to cater a meeting where they'd discuss the matter.

But when a sector dwindles to a bare handful of dominant firms, it ceases to be a rabble and it becomes a cartel.

Five companies, or four, or three, or two, or just one company finds it easy to converge on a single message for their regulators, and without "wasteful competition" eroding their profits, they have plenty of cash to spread around.

Like Facebook, handing former UK deputy PM Nick Clegg millions every year to sleaze around Europe, telling his former colleagues that Facebook is the only thing standing between 'European Cyberspace' and the Chinese Communist Party.

Tech's regulatory capture allows it to flout the rules that constrain less concentrated sectors. They can pretend that violating labor, consumer and privacy laws is fine, because they violate them with an app.

This is why competition matters: it's not just because competition makes companies work harder and share value with customers and workers, it's because competition keeps companies from becoming too big to fail, and too big to jail.

Now, there's plenty of things we don't want improved through competition, like privacy invasions. After the EU passed its landmark privacy law, the GDPR, there was a mass-extinction event for small EU ad-tech companies. These companies disappeared en masse, and that's fine.

They were even more invasive and reckless than US-based Big Tech companies. After all, they had less to lose. We don't want competition in commercial surveillance. We don't want to produce increasing efficiency in violating our human rights.

But: Google and Facebook – who pretend they are called Alphabet and Meta – have been unscathed by European privacy law. That's not because they don't violate the GDPR (they do!). It's because they pretend they are headquartered in Ireland, one of the EU's most notorious corporate crime-havens.

And Ireland competes with the EU other crime havens – Malta, Luxembourg, Cyprus and sometimes the Netherlands – to see which country can offer the most hospitable environment for all sorts of crimes. Because the kind of company that can fly an Irish flag of convenience is mobile enough to change to a Maltese flag if the Irish start enforcing EU laws.

Which is how you get an Irish Data Protection Commission that processes fewer than 20 major cases per year, while Germany's data commissioner handles more than 500 major cases, even though Ireland is nominal home to the most privacy-invasive companies on the continent.

So Google and Facebook get to act as though they are immune to privacy law, because they violate the law with an app; just like Uber can violate labor law and claim it doesn't count because they do it with an app.

Uber's labor-pricing algorithm offers different drivers different payments for the same job, something Veena Dubal calls 'algorithmic wage discrimination.' If you're more selective about which jobs you'll take, Uber will pay you more for every ride.

But if you take those higher payouts and ditch whatever side-hustle let you cover your bills which being picky about your Uber drives, Uber will incrementally reduce the payment, toggling up and down as you grow more or less selective, playing you like a fish on a line until you eventually – inevitably – lose to the tireless pricing robot, and end up stuck with low wages and all your side-hustles gone.

Then there's Amazon, which violates consumer protection laws, but says it doesn't matter, because they do it with an app. Amazon makes $38b/year from its 'advertising' system. 'Advertising' in quotes because they're not selling ads, they're selling placements in search results.

The companies that spend the most on 'ads' go to the top, even if they're offering worse products at higher prices. If you click the first link in an Amazon search result, on average you will pay a 29% premium over the best price on the service. Click one of the first four items and you'll pay a 25% premium. On average you have to go seventeen items down to find the best deal on Amazon.

Any merchant that did this to you in a physical storefront would be fined into oblivion. But Amazon has captured its regulators, so it can violate your rights, and say, "it doesn't count, we did it with an app"

This is where that third constraint, self-help, would sure come in handy. If you don't want your privacy violated, you don't need to wait for the Irish privacy regulator to act, you can just install an ad-blocker.

More than half of all web users are blocking ads. But the web is an open platform, developed in the age when tech was hundreds of companies at each others' throats, unable to capture their regulators.

Today, the web is being devoured by apps, and apps are ripe for enshittification. Regulatory capture isn't just the ability to flout regulation, it's also the ability to co-opt regulation, to wield regulation against your adversaries.

Today's tech giants got big by exploiting self-help measures. When Facebook was telling Myspace users they needed to escape Rupert Murdoch’s evil crapulent Australian social media panopticon, it didn’t just say to those Myspacers, 'Screw your friends, come to Facebook and just hang out looking at the cool privacy policy until they get here'

It gave them a bot. You fed the bot your Myspace username and password, and it would login to Myspace and pretend to be you, and scrape everything waiting in your inbox, copying it to your FB inbox, and you could reply to it and it would autopilot your replies back to Myspace.

When Microsoft was choking off Apple's market oxygen by refusing to ship a functional version of Microsoft Office for the Mac – so that offices were throwing away their designers' Macs and giving them PCs with upgraded graphics cards and Windows versions of Photoshop and Illustrator – Steve Jobs didn't beg Bill Gates to update Mac Office.

He got his technologists to reverse-engineer Microsoft Office, and make a compatible suite, the iWork Suite, whose apps, Pages, Numbers and Keynote could perfectly read and write Microsoft's Word, Excel and Powerpoint files.

When Google entered the market, it sent its crawler to every web server on Earth, where it presented itself as a web-user: 'Hi! Hello! Do you have any web pages? Thanks! How about some more? How about more?'

But every pirate wants to be an admiral. When Facebook, Apple and Google were doing this adversarial interoperability, that was progress. If you try to do it to them, that's piracy.

Try to make an alternative client for Facebook and they'll say you violated US laws like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and EU laws like Article 6 of the EUCD.

Try to make an Android program that can run iPhone apps and play back the data from Apple's media stores and they'd bomb you until the rubble bounced.

Try to scrape all of Google and they'll nuke you until you glowed.

Tech's regulatory capture is mind-boggling. Take that law I mentioned earlier, Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act or DMCA. Bill Clinton signed it in 1998, and the EU imported it as Article 6 of the EUCD in 2001

It is a blanket prohibition on removing any kind of encryption that restricts access to a copyrighted work – things like ripping DVDs or jailbreaking a phone – with penalties of a five-year prison sentence and a $500k fine for a first offense.

This law has been so broadened that it can be used to imprison creators for granting access to their own creations

Here's how that works: In 2008, Amazon bought Audible, an audiobook platform, in an anticompetitive acquisition. Today, Audible is a monopolist with more than 90% of the audiobook market. Audible requires that all creators on their platform sell with Amazon's "digital rights management," which locks it to Amazon's apps.

So say I write a book, then I read it into a mic, then I pay a director and an engineer thousands of dollars to turn that into an audiobook, and sell it to you on the monopoly platform, Audible, that controls more than 90% of the market.

If I later decide to leave Amazon and want to let you come with me to a rival platform, I am out of luck. If I supply you with a tool to remove Amazon's encryption from my audiobook, so you can play it in another app, I commit a felony, punishable by a 5-year sentence and a half-million-dollar fine, for a first offense.

That's a stiffer penalty than you would face if you simply pirated the audiobook from a torrent site. But it's also harsher than the punishment you'd get for shoplifting the audiobook on CD from a truck-stop. It's harsher than the sentence you'd get for hijacking the truck that delivered the CD.

So think of our ad-blockers again. 50% of web users are running ad-blockers. 0% of app users are running ad-blockers, because adding a blocker to an app requires that you first remove its encryption, and that's a felony (Jay Freeman calls this 'felony contempt of business-model').

So when someone in a board-room says, 'let's make our ads 20% more obnoxious and get a 2% revenue increase,' no one objects that this might prompt users to google, 'how do I block ads?' After all, the answer is, 'you can't.'

Indeed, it's more likely that someone in that board room will say, 'let's make our ads 100% more obnoxious and get a 10% revenue increase' (this is why every company wants you to install an app instead of using its website).

There's no reason that gig workers who are facing algorithmic wage discrimination couldn't install a counter-app that coordinated among all the Uber drivers to reject all jobs unless they reach a certain pay threshold.

No reason except felony contempt of business model, the threat that the toolsmiths who built that counter-app would go broke or land in prison, for violating DMCA 1201, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, trademark, copyright, patent, contract, trade secrecy, nondisclosure and noncompete, or in other words: 'IP law.'

'IP' is just a euphemism for 'a law that lets me reach beyond the walls of my company and control the conduct of my critics, competitors and customers.' And 'app' is just a euphemism for 'a web-page wrapped enough IP to make it a felony to mod it to protect the labor, consumer and privacy rights of its user.'

We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company.

But what about that fourth constraint: workers?

For decades, tech workers' high degrees of bargaining power and vocational awe put a ceiling on enshittification. Even after the tech sector shrank to a handful of giants. Even after they captured their regulators so they could violate our consumer, privacy and labor rights. Even after they created 'felony contempt of business model' and extinguished self-help for tech users. Tech was still constrained by their workers' sense of moral injury in the face of the imperative to enshittify.

Remember when tech workers dreamed of working for a big company for a few years, before striking out on their own to start their own company that would knock that tech giant over?

Then that dream shrank to: work for a giant for a few years, quit, do a fake startup, get acqui-hired by your old employer, as a complicated way of getting a bonus and a promotion.

Then the dream shrank further: work for a tech giant for your whole life, get free kombucha and massages on Wednesdays.

And now, the dream is over. All that’s left is: work for a tech giant until they fire your ass, like those 12,000 Googlers who got fired last year six months after a stock buyback that would have paid their salaries for the next 27 years.

Workers are no longer a check on their bosses' worst impulses

Today, the response to 'I refuse to make this product worse' is, 'turn in your badge and don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.'

I get that this is all a little depressing

OK, really depressing.

But hear me out! We've identified the disease. We've traced its natural history. We've identified its underlying mechanism. Now we can get to work on a cure.

There are four constraints that prevent enshittification: competition, regulation, self-help and labor.

To reverse enshittification and guard against its reemergence, we must restore and strengthen each of these.

On competition, it's actually looking pretty good. The EU, the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, Japan and China are all doing more on competition than they have in two generations. They're blocking mergers, unwinding existing ones, taking action on predatory pricing and other sleazy tactics.

Remember, in the US and Europe, we already have the laws to do this – we just stopped enforcing them in the Helmut Kohl era.

I've been fighting these fights with the Electronic Frontier Foundation for 22 years now, and I've never seen a more hopeful moment for sound, informed tech policy.

Now, the enshittifiers aren't taking this laying down. The business press can't stop talking about how stupid and old-fashioned all this stuff is. They call people like me 'hipster antitrust,' and they hate any regulator who actually does their job.

Take Lina Khan, the brilliant head of the US Federal Trade Commission, who has done more in three years on antitrust than the combined efforts of all her predecessors over the past 40 years. Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal has run more than 80 editorials trashing Khan, insisting that she's an ineffectual ideologue who can't get anything done.

Sure, Rupert, that's why you ran 80 editorials about her.

Because she can't get anything done.

Even Canada is stepping up on competition. Canada! Land of the evil billionaire! From Ted Rogers, who owns the country's telecoms; to Galen Weston, who owns the country's grocery stores; to the Irvings, who basically own the entire province of New Brunswick.

Even Canada is doing something about this. Last autumn, Trudeau's government promised to update Canada's creaking competition law to finally ban 'abuse of dominance.'

I mean, wow. I guess when Galen Weston decided to engage in a criminal conspiracy to fix the price of bread – the most Les Miz-ass crime imaginable – it finally got someone's attention, eh?

Competition has a long way to go, but all over the world, competition law is seeing a massive revitalization. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher put antitrust law in a coma in the 80s – but it's awake, it's back, and it's pissed.

What about regulation? How will we get tech companies to stop doing that one weird trick of adding 'with an app' to their crimes and escaping enforcement?

Well, here in the EU, they're starting to figure it out. This year, the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act went into effect, and they let people who get screwed by tech companies go straight to the federal European courts, bypassing the toothless watchdogs in Europe's notorious corporate crime havens like Ireland.

In America, they might finally get a digital privacy law. You people have no idea how backwards US privacy law is. The last time the US Congress enacted a broadly applicable privacy law was in 1988.

The Video Privacy Protection Act makes it a crime for video-store clerks to leak your video-rental history. It was passed after a right-wing judge who was up for the Supreme Court had his rentals published in a DC newspaper. The rentals weren't even all that embarrassing!

Sure, that judge, Robert Bork, wasn't confirmed for the Supreme Court, but that was because he was a virulently racist loudmouth and a crook who served as Nixon's Solicitor General.

But Congress got the idea that their video records might be next, freaked out, and passed the VPPA.

That was the last time Americans got a big, national privacy law. Nineteen. Eighty. Eight.

It's been a minute.

And the thing is, there's a lot of people who are angry about stuff that has some nexus with America's piss-poor privacy landscape. Worried that Facebook turned Grampy into a Qanon? That Insta made your teen anorexic? That TikTok is brainwashing millennials into quoting Osama Bin Laden?

Or that cops are rolling up the identities of everyone at a Black Lives Matter protest or the Jan 6 riots by getting location data from Google?

Or that Red State Attorneys General are tracking teen girls to out-of-state abortion clinics?

Or that Black people are being discriminated against by online lending or hiring platforms?

Or that someone is making AI deepfake porn of you?

Having a federal privacy law with a private right of action – which means that individuals can sue companies that violate their privacy – would go a long way to rectifying all of these problems. There's a big coalition for that kind of privacy law.

What about self-help? That's a lot farther away, alas.

The EU's DMA will force tech companies to open up their walled gardens for interoperation. You'll be able to use Whatsapp to message people on iMessage, or quit Facebook and move to Mastodon, but still send messages to the people left behind.

But if you want to reverse-engineer one of those Big Tech products and mod it to work for you, not them, the EU's got nothing for you.

This is an area ripe for improvement, and I think the US might be the first ones to open this up.

It's certainly on-brand for the EU to be forcing tech companies to do things a certain way, while the US simply takes away tech companies' abilities to prevent others from changing how their stuff works.

My big hope here is that Stein's Law will take hold: 'Anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop'

Letting companies decide how their customers must use their products is simply too tempting an invitation to mischief. HP has a whole building full of engineers thinking of new ways to lock your printer to its official ink cartridges, forcing you to spend $10,000/gallon on ink to print your boarding passes and shopping lists.

It's offensive. The only people who don't agree are the people running the monopolies in all the other industries, like the med-tech monopolists who are locking their insulin pumps to their glucose monitors, turning people with diabetes into walking inkjet printers.

Finally, there's labor. Here in Europe, there's much higher union density than in the US, which American tech barons are learning the hard way. There is nothing more satisfying in the daily news than the latest salvo by Nordic unions against that Tesla guy (Musk is the most Edison-ass Tesla guy imaginable).

But even in the USA, there's a massive surge in tech unions. Tech workers are realizing that they aren't founders in waiting. The days of free massages and facial piercings and getting to wear black tee shirts that say things your boss doesn't understand are coming to an end.

In Seattle, Amazon's tech workers walked out in sympathy with Amazon's warehouse workers, because they're all workers.

The only reason the tech workers aren't monitored by AI that notifies their managers if they visit the toilet during working hours is their rapidly dwindling bargaining power. The way things are going, Amazon programmers are going to be pissing in bottles next to their workstations (for a guy who built a penis-shaped rocket, Jeff Bezos really hates our kidneys).

We're seeing bold, muscular, global action on competition, regulation and labor, with self-help bringing up the rear. It's not a moment too soon, because the bad news is, enshittification is coming to every industry.

If it's got a networked computer in it, the people who made it can run the Darth Vader MBA playbook on it, changing the rules from moment to moment, violating your rights and then saying 'It's OK, we did it with an app.'

From Mercedes renting you your accelerator pedal by the month to Internet of Things dishwashers that lock you into proprietary dishsoap, enshittification is metastasizing into every corner of our lives.

Software doesn't eat the world, it enshittifies it

But there's a bright side to all this: if everyone is threatened by enshittification, then everyone has a stake in disenshittification.

Just as with privacy law in the US, the potential anti-enshittification coalition is massive, it's unstoppable.

The cynics among you might be skeptical that this will make a difference. After all, isn't "enshittification" the same as "capitalism"?

Well, no.

Look, I'm not going to cape for capitalism here. I'm hardly a true believer in markets as the most efficient allocators of resources and arbiters of policy – if there was ever any doubt, capitalism's total failure to grapple with the climate emergency surely erases it.

But the capitalism of 20 years ago made space for a wild and wooly internet, a space where people with disfavored views could find each other, offer mutual aid, and organize.

The capitalism of today has produced a global, digital ghost mall, filled with botshit, crapgadgets from companies with consonant-heavy brand-names, and cryptocurrency scams.

The internet isn't more important than the climate emergency, nor gender justice, racial justice, genocide, or inequality.

But the internet is the terrain we'll fight those fights on. Without a free, fair and open internet, the fight is lost before it's joined.

We can reverse the enshittification of the internet. We can halt the creeping enshittification of every digital device.

We can build a better, enshittification-resistant digital nervous system, one that is fit to coordinate the mass movements we will need to fight fascism, end genocide, and save our planet and our species.

Martin Luther King said 'It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.'

And it may be true that the law can't force corporate sociopaths to conceive of you as a human being entitled to dignity and fair treatment, and not just an ambulatory wallet, a supply of gut-bacteria for the immortal colony organism that is a limited liability corporation.

But it can make that exec fear you enough to treat you fairly and afford you dignity, even if he doesn't think you deserve it.

And I think that's pretty important.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/30/go-nuts-meine-kerle#ich-bin-ein-bratapfel/a>

Back the Kickstarter for the audiobook of The Bezzle here!

Image: Drahtlos (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Motherboard_Intel_386.jpg

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

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CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en

[wileys-russo]

please can you write a little fic about Leah’s beanie in her most recent insta post, like her gf thinking she looks cute and making her post a pic or taking the piss out of Leah for posting a pic in the beanie x

garden gnome II l.williamson

"god its fucking freezing!" you shivered, subbed off with ten minutes to go as your body finally cooled down from all the running, the brisk london air sharp as needles as the wind blew on and you collapsed onto the subs bench.

"thank you less." you sighed in relief as alessia handed you your puffer, the blonde sending you a smile as the two of you leaned into one another a little more to stay warm, lia joining in on your other side.

all three of you jumped to your feet buzzing with new energy as the whistle finally blew announcing your victory. "steffyyy!" you cheered loudly, jumping on the older girls back who stumbled but let out a laugh as you kissed her cheek and hopped down.

"if you play like that with jet lag we're sending you back to melbourne for the week." you teased as she hugged you properly. "puddin points are best cooked under pressure." caitlin flung an arm over your shoulder with a grin as she and steph high fived.

you were flanked by lotte, vic and alessia as you did your thank you lap, clapping to the fans as you caught your girlfriends eye in the stands, clapping up at her making her roll her eyes with a smile as she chatted away to ellie who gave you a wave.

"lovesick much." alessia teased, bumping her shoulder into yours as vic echoed her word making you stick your tongue out at them. "look at her all bundled up and in her little beanie, she's so cute i just wanna go and give her a cuddle." you sighed still looking up at her.

"oi! jealous much?" you pushed vic who gagged at your words, the force of your push sending her tumbling onto her bum as she glared up at you. "run." alessia patted your shoulder as you took off, a string of angry dutch following you as the two of you raced in laps around the pitch until she caught you and punched you sharply in the arm, the team all called in for a huddle.

"hello gorgeous." a pair of arms tightly wound round you from behind as you settled happily into the extra warmth, tilting your head back and smiling up at the older blonde. she stayed holding onto you as you all bunched up for the post match talk, her hands only moving to clap loudly as jonas finished up talking.

"mum wants to see you." leah mumbled with a kiss to your cheek, nodding for you follow her as you both made your way into the fast clearing stands. "amanda!" you grinned as the woman pulled you into a tight hug. "love you played brilliantly! even if leah wouldn't shut up with her personal coaching the entire match." she rolled her eyes as leah protested the accusation.

"oh i've no doubt once we're home i'll get the full debrief on everything i could have done better. gaffa williamson loves to come out after a win!" you teased, leah pinching your sides with a stern look as you only smiled, pecking her lips.

"try raising her, every single little thing gets feedback even if you don't ask for it. for someone who can't cook god she just loves to critisise everyone else who can!" amanda added on with a dramatic sigh.

"yeah i bought the wrong brand of ham the other week. should have heard how she moaned about it for days!" "used to yell directions at me and scream for me to go faster when i drove her to training every week, as if i didn't drive her there every week."

"right fuck off what is it pick on leah day! i'm injured here thanks how bout a bit of sympathy?" your girlfriend huffed, crossing her arms with a scowl. "oh sorry baby i forgot how sensitive you are. is everyone being mean to you?" you continued to tease, pinching her cheeks in your hands as amanda watched on fondly.

"you look so cute in your beanie lee lee, my little garden gnome." you cooed mockingly, smooshing her face in your hands as her eyes burned into you with a murderous glare. "gnome-o and juliet eh?" amanda grinned making you high five her with a cheer.

"mum! god don't fucking don't encourage her she's relentless." leah groaned, pulling you into a headlock as you smacked her stomach through the three layers she was bundled in. "you love it." she let you up and pulled you into a tight hug, her arms curled around your neck and resting on your shoulders as the two of you chatted with her mum for a bit.

"oh i need a photo before i go! to mark the win." amanda was about to leave as she perked up, pulling out her phone as she tucked herself in beside you, leahs chin resting on the top of your head as the three of you smiled happily and amanda took a few selfies.

"beautiful. i'll see you both round for dinner yeah?" she reminded firmly as you nodded. "yeah we'll be round after five mum, i'll pick grandma up on the way." leah confirmed as amanda beamed, hugging you both goodbye as the three of you descended from the stands.

you and leah hung around for another half hour chatting with your team mates, cuddled into one another the entire time as you battled the ongoing teasing from your team mates, both claiming you were just keeping one another warm.

"what are you doing now?" leah sighed as you both made her way toward her car and you dropped her hand, pulling out your phone and ordering her to pose.

"capturing the memory. i'm gonna start a little garden gnome scrapbook of all your beanie pictures, this ones disappointingly not as pointy as normal but you still look adorable." you beamed snapping a few photos of her as you reached her car, the back lot where the players parked basically almost empty.

"leah!" you laughed as she huffed and yanked off her beanie, hair tied back into a low and loose bun as she pulled her hood up and advanced on you. "hi baby." you grinned as she pushed you against the side of her car, smile tugging at her lips as her arms caged you in.

"lee!" you laughed again as she tugged her beanie down over your head, covering your eyes and attacking your face with kisses as she held the material down on your head and you struggled to push her away.

"whose the little garden gnome now?" leah sung out, flipping up the edge of the beanie so your eyes were free to meet hers, the blonde giving you a dazzlingly bright smile. "still you, you've got the pointy cone head not me." you shrugged, tapping on the top of her head as her mouth formed a small o of offence.

"what am i going to do with you?" leah tutted, shaking her head with a sigh. "kiss me and never stop." you whispered, hands grabbing the sides of her hood and pulling her mouth to meet yours. though before anything got carried away she gently intertwined your hands and pulled away.

"oh just you wait till we get home cheeky girl."

[rafedaddy01]

Hi!! I think this is my first ever request, but I would love a smut🤭 of Drew with his beard (Hellraiser/glass onion red carpets) and reader riding his face. Omg this feels really dirty to ask, but I trust you and love your fics😭!!!

Ride my face

Pairing: drew starkey x fem!reader

Summary: it’s the night after the premiere and drew just looks to goo to pass up on

Warnings: face riding, intense orgasm, overstim, language

A/n: this idea is amazing, I got tingles when I read it hehe. I loved drew with his little facial hair scruff, he was so sexy! I hope you like what I came up with and thank you so much for the request and love. (I tried to find a decent picture of his beard but I couldn’t)

Please do not post this anywhere without permission. All my writing is my own hard work!

“What a night!” You heaved as you walked into your apartment. Your boyfriend following close behind as he shut the front door and locked up.

You two had just gotten back from Drew’s new movie premiere. After the cast and some close friends went for dinner. It was now 11:00pm and you were exhausted.

You walked into your room and in the bathroom, turning the shower on and stripping. You stepped under the warm spray and let it relax your muscles. You washed up and turned the water off.

You stepped out and got dressed in some fresh pjs you got ready. You went into the room to find drew on the bed.

“Did I every tell you I like that beard on you” you told him.

Drew chuckled and put his phone down as you climbed on the bed. “Oh do you?” He said as you climbed ontop of him and straddled his lap. His hands came to grip your ass.

You smirked and nodded as you leaned in for a kiss, which he happily obliged too. You attached your lips to his and he pulled you closer as he pushed his tongue past your teeth.

“You wanna feel it on your other lips?” He asked as he pulled away. You laughed at his forwardness. But when you looked at his face you knew he was serious and a feeling of nervousness flooded your body.

“O-okay” you said swallowing hard. You’ve ridden Drew’s face before, but never when he had a beard. He undid his shirt and tossed it to the side before coming to pull your clothes off. “Come on, pretty girl” he said scooting his body down.

You held onto the headboard for support as he positioned his face under your exposed sex. He wrapped his strong arms around your thighs and tugged them down.

A small squeal escaped your lips as he connected his tongue with your entrance, his nose budging your clit and making you gasp as he pushed inside you. The scruffiness of his best adding to the pleasure.

All nervousness vanished as you started grinding down a bit. His tongue exploring your insides, his nose circling your bundle, the roughness of his beard all adding to the pleasure. “Drew!” You said letting go of the board and bringing your hands to your breasts. “Shit! That feels so good!” You moaned as you rode his face.

He gripped your thighs harder and held you still had he moved his tongue to your bud and wrapped his lips around it, sucking and flicking it. He moved his jaw in such a way that his beard was scratching your entrance and it felt heavenly. “Fuck!” You exclaimed as you tweaked your nipples. You were so close to release. Juice leaking out of you like a floodgate and drew was lapping it all up like it was his only supply of oxygen.

You moaned out and he hummed into you that sent vibrations against your cunt and it made you leak more juice out as you were on the brink of release now. “I-I’m s-so close!” You stuttered out as he moved his beard up to your clit and the roughness of it sent you into an orgasm. That didn’t stop him. He continued rubbing it against your pussy as you whimpered and moaned, getting lightheaded from the extreme orgasm. “Oh shit!” You groaned as your body was thrown into a second orgasm, your hands flying to the board again as you lost balance. Drew growled as he gripped your thighs tighter and pulled you further into him, if even possible.

Your legs started shaking as he continued devouring you like a starved man gone mad. His grip leaving finger prints behind.

“Fuck, drew” was all you could get out as your body went limp above him and a third orgasm washed through your body. He finally let up and crawled from under you. You fell to the bed as he cuddle behind you. “You okay, pretty girl?” He asked running his fingers on your back. “I’m perfect!” You said breathlessly laughing as he pulled you closer to his naked chest.

@v21sstuff @rafeysworldim19 @baby19sthings

[loveephia]

HIS CUTE FIANCÉ | ushijima wakatoshi

content: (🦷) tooth-rotting fluff, a sprinkle of angst, cute scenes of you and ushijima, your schoolmates being slightly jealous of you both, reader comes from a rich family, kind of manhwa-esque.

⚠ warning/s: reader hurts herself on accident and while cooking.

note: i remember people wanting a little drabble on this when i posted my 200 followers special, so here you go! :D

"oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh." was what ran through your mind when you watched ushijima wakatoshi officially sign the contract.

it was an arranged marriage. ushijima is knowingly the number two ace of japan, while your family owns a big sports company. this marriage would benefit ushijima in terms of popularity, while your family would benefit in more sales.

soon enough, this marriage would all be terminated once both sides are content with the outcome, so ushijima and his family agreed by contract. you were ecstatic, to say the least, having successfully hidden your small crush on the giant for ages now.

"it's a pleasure to be working with you, son." your father held out his hand to shake ushijima's.

somehow, during the next day at shiratorizawa, word got out of you two getting married soon, and it was all your schoolmates could talk about.

they all chattered about you both non-stop, saying how annoyingly perfect you are together. ushijima is this big, strong guy who has this intense passion for volleyball, yet he still happens to make time for you. while you're his doting and clumsy wife-to-be.

clumsy, you ask? well, one time, you tripped up the stairs because you were too busy admiring ushijima. you ended up with a medium-sized scar and several specks on your knee, but it all ended alright, since ushijima took nice care of it.

he led you to the infirmary, but unfortunately, the nurse was out on break, so ushijima took matters into his own hands. he first disinfected the minor wounds made before pouring a tiny bit of the antibiotics on a clean cotton ball. he then lightly padded it onto your scarred knee.

you apologized to ushijima for worrying him like this, but he brushed it off, telling you that it was nothing. "i don't mind taking care of you. it's the least that i could do while we're together."

the volleyball team was shocked from the news, to say the least. ushijima was surely handsome, but he can be a bit aloof, so it could drive some of the girls away. because of that, the team didn't expect that he'd be the first from them all to get married.

"so, how's married life treating ya, ushiwaka?" tendō joked, leaning an arm on his broad shoulder. "we're not married yet." ushijima stoicly replied.

"yet! he said yet!" your heart felt innocently happy at his choice of wording.

you were never too big on cooking, but to impress ushijima, you spent an entire week in shiratorizawa's hot and fiery kitchen, getting taught how to make the best hayashi rice by the school's cooking club.

"why'd you decide to do this, y/n? i mean.. you'd usually stay the farthest from the stove whenever we have home economic classes." a member asked curiously. you jumped at the sudden question, as if being caught red-handed. "oh! uhm.. i wanted to give ushi— i mean.. wakatoshi a bento to thank him for taking care of me this one time." your face went aflame at the memory of him patching up your knee with a cute band-aid.

you bashfully rubbed the back of your head, "but i don't think my current cooking skills will be enough to satisfy his taste buds."

"that's true, you're a terrible cook, y/n!" a friend walking by teased you while you tried to defend yourself, failing miserably in the process.

"anyway, that's why i came here. to get better." you said, determination in those eyes of yours. it moved the cooking club's members, and they adored your resoluteness. "okay, we'll help you!"

once you mastered the recipe, you added your own twist to be original and brought ushijima a bento. it was bundled up in a pastel wrapping cloth with a cute pattern on it. your classmates marveled at it, awaiting for the two of you to speak.

"what's this?" ushijima asked.

"it's.. hayashi rice. i made it. i hope you like it..!"

you left the classroom quickly to protect yourself from his reaction, which could only go both ways; good or bad. "i don't think my heart can take it if he dislikes my cooking.." you thought.

ushijima had already really liked the hayashi rice being served in the cafeteria, but since this was made by you, he supposes that he can take a bite or two.

and oh, did he love it.

it was similar to shiratorizawa's hayashi rice, but the flavor was more prominent, and the taste was much richer. i guess this is what happens when you have a bit of allowance left from your parents. aka the ingredients were pricey, and you had access to more spices since the shiratorizawa kitchen was a bit limited.

but not only that, he could tell that it was made with love (as if the heart-shaped rice wasn't obvious enough). ushijima had noticed your fingers being covered with small cuts earlier, probably from slicing the ingredients. it showed him that you really worked hard to make it.

he kindly asked if you could make another.

whenever you and ushijima are sitting next to each other in the cafeteria, you'd play with his large calloused hands for the fun of it. he doesn't mind, really. it's almost as if a kitten was massaging some bread on his palm. quite therapeutic if i do say so myself.

a bold move of ushijima that you'll never forget is the time he hugged you from behind for the first time. he was tired from practice and wanted to rest a bit, so he used you as his pillow. rest assured that he was feeling well-energized with you in his muscular arms.

you warmed up to ushijima and managed to earn yourself a soft spot in his heart. even ushijima's fellow volleyball members have noticed how relaxed he's been lately.

the day of termination has come, and both sides were more than happy with what they profited. ushijima had gotten more magazine gigs for the sports section, and your family had gained more than enough money to last them until the next generation.

you and ushijima were in your father's spacious office room with the contract laying despairingly on the table in front of you. your father, himself, was sitting on the opposing side of the both of you.

thinking of this all ending makes your heart heavy, but ushijima never did this for love, so i guess it's to be expected. being loved back is asking for too much, so the least you could do is respect his own feelings.

"i'm thankful for the past few months."

you reluctantly signed your signature on the left side of the contract and waited patiently for ushijima to pick up the pen and do the same.

but he never did.

with a sigh, ushijima speaks up, "is it possible to renew the contract? i don't think i'm satisfied yet."

your jaw drops, and you face your father, whose expression seems to be a playful one. "oho~ and what have you still not gotten out of this that isn't to your heart's content? a sports scholarship for college? or perhaps a partnership?" he lists.

"your daughter's real hand in marriage." ushijima states.

"huh?!" you face ushijima to see if this is just some kind of cruel joke being played on you, but ushijima wasn't one for funny punchlines. in fact, he was always very straightforward.

"that is if.. y/n is okay with it." and now, ushijima and your father are looking at you for your answer.

you nod shyly and look down at your own lap.

"very well then! i'll check this with my lawyer and my wife to see what we can do." your father walked out of the office room, leaving you with ushijima.

you play with the hem of your dress nervously, not knowing what to say. "i saw the way you hesitated to sign the contract earlier," ushijima started, and you turn to him, surprised by how on-point his assesment was, "so i thought that you'd be okay to continue being engaged."

"truthfully, i grew comfortable with your presence. and on days when you weren't beside me, i'd wonder where you were and how you were doing."

"there was never a day where you weren't on my mind." he admits.

now you were feeling dizzy from his words. "i- i see.."

"is that all you have to say to me?" ushijima asks, hopeful, as he leans close to you. "w- well..!"

you muster up your remaining courage and silently mumble, "..thank you for loving me, wakatoshi."

ushijima smiles gently at your verbal reply, it being exactly what he wanted to hear.

© lowercase intended | loveephia

[blackblooms]

Irredeamable is out!

Trailer Music: Destiny by Alexandr Zhelanov https://www.youtube.com/c/AlexandrZhelanovsMusic

Play Irredeamable on Gamejolt here!

About Irredeamable

Irredeamable is my latest project, a semi-linear action-adventure game, where you control this little bundle of anger and angst in her quest to recover her lost powers and bring forth the end of the world.

Join Irredeamable Gamejolt community here! Follow me on twitter here!

The game has a heavy emphasis on combat, with a bit of platforming, and a whole lot of boss fights. There is also some mysterious lore to be uncovered by those willing to brave the world's deepest, darkest depths. My main goal with this account is to spread awareness of the game as i work on it. I'll post threads about the game content, characters, and world, with occasional distractions such as my unhinged game design thoughts and ideas. Don`t hesitate to share thoughts and engage, i love nothing more than to talk about writing and game design.

[eddiernunson]

Really Drives Me Mad | Older!Eddie x Fem!Reader | 18+

Prev Part l Master List |

Word Count: 10k

A SPECIAL HAPPY BIRTHDAY POST. (I’m 28 y’all)

Chapter contains: brief pregnant!reader, babies/kids…this is like a lil collection of blurbs. I have some head canons about each OC I can post if you’d like xoxo

I had ideas about their kids for ages, lol. This crazy lil family is chaotic

Still thank you to @forget-you-morelike-fuck-you and @bebe07011 for without you two this fic wouldn’t nearly be this good

Third trimester is a bitch. I barely have the bandwidth to write lately. I hope you enjoy

Two pink little lines stare back at you as Eddie turns the shower on, completely oblivious to the manic state you’re in.  

He offers you to join him, a temptation you decline with an intense amount of reluctance. You just claim you need your own bed, which was true.  

Eddie missed four weeks of work while you were on your luxe honeymoon, which means he now has several fires to put out. It keeps him busy for the week, making the doctor’s appointments and blood work you do that much easier when he passes right out on his couch at the end of his long days.  

The following week, knowing you're pregnant but not being able to tell him is pure torture. It doesn't help that for some odd reason Eddie seems more lovey, more affectionate. Your first instinct is to chalk it up to your newlywed status, but his affection feels different, the way his arms wrap around you each morning to wake you up, his gentle voice low in your ear. It's driving you up a wall not being able to share your secret with him.  

He seems to consistently have a hard time letting you go to leave for work (not that you’re complaining.) Though eventually you have to practically push him out the door.   

The ultrasound is nearly dull, the implantation in question is only a bundle of cells, but once you get a photo from the tech at the end of the appointment, it’s the very thing you needed to tell Eddie.  

After another early night of falling asleep you empty the face of the fridge, yanking every magnet off as you place the sonogram on the silver surface with a pink heart magnet right at his eye level.

-  

Eddie wakes in the middle of the night, a sudden urge to rise hitting him out of nowhere. His arm tightens around your waist, admiring your pretty face as he kisses your cheek. Your face falters only the littlest bit, twitching your muscles to shake off the tickle of his stubble.   

He finds himself starving, craving something only a feral racoon would also be satisfied with. He rubs his eyes as he walks down the steps. Sometimes he thinks he’s going to see you back in the kitchen chair in the dress and bathing suit, Dylan searching manically for a parking pass as if Eddie has imagined this whole dream scenario. Your love is just too good not to think he’d made it all up at times. He smiles to himself as he turns on the stove light, turning to the fridge for a snack.   

He feels frozen by the blank fridge at first, wondering where all the magnets got to. The black and white image staring him dead in the face suddenly registers, the heart shaped magnet falling to the floor as he rushes to pick it up to make sure his tired eyes aren’t fucking with him. They bulge out of his head when the significance of the photo occurs to him, and the hunger that woke him up seems to vanish.

His long legs take the stairs two and three at a time as he rushes back to you, hurling himself beneath the covers.   

The cold of his arms startles you, a gasp leaving your lips from the shock as you abruptly awoke. “Hmm?”  

“Are you fucking pregnant, sweetheart?” His eyes are unbearably soft, melted pools of milk chocolate staring intently at you.

A burst of sleepy giggles leaves your mouth, turning your body so you don't have to crane your neck. “You got up early.” You comment, weaving your fingers into his curls.   

“Skip the pleasantries, love.” He dismisses, scooping his arms beneath your back. “Are you fucking pregnant?”   

You pull him in for a kiss, your legs wrapping around his hips to pull him down against you. “What’s the sonogram tell you?”    

He chuckles against your lips, his thumbs swaying against your smiling cheeks. “You’re a little shit, you know that?” You nod, absentmindedly playing with his curls. “Fuck, I’m so excited right now, baby.”   

“Really?” You ask him, grinning.   

“I just found out my wife is having my baby. Are you fucking kidding me?” he asks, rutting his hips against yours desperately. “I’m rock hard, sweets.”   

Lucky for you and him, you opted for a pair of tiny panties and a t-shirt to bed, feeling his hardened cock against the thin lace fabric of your panties. Your fingers fumble to his boxers, hurriedly pushing them down his hips. “Then fuck me.”   

Eddie gently pulls the fabric aside, exposing it as his head perfectly brushes against your entrance. “God, my girl is soaked for me, ain’t she?”   

Your thighs tighten around his hips, jaw dropping as he teases you. “Want you, please, Ed.” Your eyes squeeze shut, relishing in the feeling of him pressed against you 

He pushes in, arms wrapping themselves around your torso. “Oh my god you’re having my fucking baby,” Eddie mumbles, face curling into your neck. “Gonna see your stomach all big when you’re carrying my baby, sweets, and you’ll be even hotter than you are now. Which I thought was impossible.”   

No words come to mind, mouth open and gasping at the way he moves in you. The cotton of your shirt is too hot, your hands shakily grabbing at the fabric to take it off. Eddie admires the sight he sees as your piqued nipples fall out of his faded black t-shirt, his eyes glazed over as he stares down at them. A moth drawn to the light, he dives into one, curling his tongue around the nipple with the perfect mix of teeth, pulling little mewls from you.  

“Fuck, we’re gonna be the happiest little family,” he chokes, kissing from your breast up to your neck, his voice filled with emotion.  

“Love you,” you sigh, gasping into his open mouth as his hips hit you harder.  

Eddie smiles, a wicked little grin as his hand curves over the swell of your tummy, thumb petting it gently.  

“Hold on to me, sweetheart. Hold on to your baby daddy,” you grin the line, wonderfully cheesy, but Eddie feels the way you tighten around him. Your arms curl around his back, pulling his body against yours.  

“Eddie, make me cum, please.” 

“Hold on, baby, I’m almost there, hold on,” he stutters, his deep voice starting to falter. His lips bend down to your ear, gasping desperately, bordering on whining. “Fuck– cum with me.”  

His lips wrap around yours, delicately connecting his tongue with yours as his hips stutter a final time, the little moans vibrating against your lips as he fills you up. As you collapse on the bed, sweaty bodies intertwined, he spends the twenty minutes until he falls asleep cooing, whispering in your ear how excited he is.  

You wake up the same way, with rounds two and three before he begrudgingly trudges off to work. 

- 

The sun accounts as a natural alarm clock as Dylan stretches his limbs wide, turning to face his girlfriend. His arm falls over Maya’s form, pulling her in as he starts to wake up. “Morning, Dylan,” she whispers, her pink lips spreading into a smile.  

He pulls her back against his stomach, hiking his legs under hers. “Mornin’.”  

She hums as he kisses the back of her neck, giggling as he takes a deep inhale of her shampoo. “You work today?”  

“No,” Dylan answers, caressing the strip of her exposed skin with his thumb. “I am seeing my dad today.”  

She smirks, turning to face him. “And your stepmom?” Dylan grits his teeth, tickling her stomach until she begs him to stop, hunching over the arm around her. “Okay, I’m sorry!”    

“Mmhm. I’m telling them, did you want to join me?”  

Maya squishes her face, seemingly debating on pros and cons. “I’m gonna pass on that, respectfully.” She can feel the questioning look Dylan gives her. “I have a long shift today, and I am exhausted.”  

“Next time, I’m dragging you with me,” Dylan insists, squeezing with his arms wrapped around her.  

“I’m counting on it.”  

As soon as Dylan opens the door, he listens in, waiting for a sound that never comes. Good, he waited long enough to come. He wanders into the kitchen, meeting his dad drinking orange juice straight from the carton. “Dad?”  

His dad freezes, removing the spout from his mouth, and wipes his face hurriedly. “Hey bud.”  

Dylan raises his eyebrow at him, pointedly glancing to the carton and back to him.  

“Don’t tell my wife.”  

Dylan smirks, rolling his eyes. “Speaking of the devil, where is she?”  

“Upstairs.”  

As if your ears are burning, the two men’s ears pick up the particular sound of someone coming down the stairs. Eddie prays you come downstairs with some clothes on. Your face lights up when you see Dylan, welcoming him into your arms without a second thought. “Dylan!” The familiarity you two share is still new, but wrapping him in a hug is like second nature at this point. “What brings you into this part of the world?”  

You leave the embrace, backing straight into Eddie’s arm. “Actually, I have some news I wanna share with you guys.”  

Eddie’s hand tightens around your arm, he’s mentioned Dylan talking about proposing last month, and this news felt right around the corner. He feigns ignorance, innocently asking, “Oh, what news would that be?”  

Dylan’s cheeks bloom in red, glancing down to his feet sheepishly. You just hoped you wouldn’t have to travel to a destination wedding while largely pregnant. “Uh, we–or, Maya,” he clears his throat, a laugh stuttering through it, “Maya’s pregnant.”  

The first thing you do is glance at your husband, both sporting wide eyes and slacked jaws. To say you’re surprised is a grand understatement.  

“Not the news you were expecting?” Dylan asks, watching the two of you share a silent conversation.  

In sync, the two of you switch back to him, twin smiles on your faces. Dylan had no idea what either of the faces in front of him could possibly mean, and there’s a part of him that wonders if this is happy news for either of you.  

“Um, no, actually,” Eddie barely holds back the sound of laughter in his voice. “That’s, that’s fantastic news, Dyl.” Truly, fantastic news. Eddie has been looking forward to being a biker grandfather since Dylan showed interest in being a father.  

You smirk, leaning into his shoulder. “How far along is she?”  

“Uh, 8 weeks, or so,” Dylan answers, squishing up his face comically.  

“Oh wow, so a week behind me, then,” you say nonchalantly, nodding at Eddie.  

“Wait, what?” Dylan asks, making sure he understood that correctly.  

You giggle, nodding as you sit your head in Eddie’s neck. “Yeah, I’m pregnant too, ironically enough.”  

Eddie leans into your ear, “So you’re gonna be a mom and a grandma in the same year…”  

Your eyes widen. “To think, I was just getting used to the idea of being a mom.” You lean back, meeting your husband’s pretty brown eyes. “Are we sure the kid’s gonna call me grandma?”  

Dylan picks up the conversation right away. “I mean, unless we’re gonna be completely honest with them, it doesn't make sense otherwise. You’re grandpa’s wife, therefore grandma.”  

Am I mom, then, too? You think to yourself, knowing you’ll point it out later. Your stomach rumbles, turning around to the counter to start making a breakfast of sorts. Your eyes hit the open orange juice jug and the lack of cup. “Did you drink straight out of the carton, again, mister?”  

Eddie avoids your eyes, looking at his son. “Hey, I didn’t say anything,” he surrenders, having a seat at the island.  

“How’s Maya been handling the pregnancy so far?” you ask, grabbing a pan from under the cupboards. “Because morning sickness is no joke.” You pause, leaning on the counter. “Not just in the morning, either.”  

“I think it’s some nausea, a bit of acid reflux, but to my knowledge she hasn’t been sick,” Dylan says, taking out his phone to text Maya about the news.  

“Bitch,” you mutter, the tone in your voice clear you’re joking. “We can’t all be so lucky. Eggs?”  

Dylan nods, grinning at the text Maya shoots back. “So dad, you’re gonna have a kid and a grandkid the same age as each other?”  

Eddie shrugs, taking another large sip from the carton. “Since my girl showed up, my life hasn’t been normal, and this just means it will never be normal again.”  

“You’re welcome,” Dylan laughs, rolling his eyes at the exasperated look you shoot at him.  

- 

Dylan’s phone buzzes, glancing at the unknown number as Maya fades in the middle of her sentence. “One minute, babe, I’m expecting a call from the interview I just did last week. Dylan Munson, speaking.”  

“Oh, Dyl-pickle, you sound so big!” Only one person has ever called Dylan that. He gulps, the sound of her voice bringing up old, sore emotions.

“Brooke. W-why are you calling me?”  

“Brooke? C’mon, I’m your mom, sweetheart,” she whines, her voice the sound of nails on a chalkboard.  

“Really, are you?” Dylan asks, getting up from the bed and starting to pace the hallway, his anger already building. “Ok, what college did I go to?” Silence. “What did I major in? What year did I graduate high school? When did I have my first kiss? Who’s my current girlfriend? What’s my best friend’s name? What sort of vehicle do I drive?”  

She doesn’t answer a single question, instead giving stuttered empty answers. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to answer any of that… We haven’t exactly been talking for the last fifteen years.” She says, somewhat accusatory.

Dylan sighs, rubbing his face frustratedly. “What, your phone didn’t work all those years?”  

“As far as I’m concerned, I’m not the only one who had a phone,” she protests, sounding incredibly defensive. 

“Yeah, well, you also weren’t a child for 8 of those years who begged his dad for his mom to come to one thing that was important to him,” Dylan retaliated, angry at her gaslighting. “My dad had your number, always left voicemails inviting you to my soccer games, to award ceremonies, to my birthdays, and you never answered a single call, let alone showed up.”  

“I’m sorry, Dylan, I am, but I was young then, you can’t blame me for wanting a fresh start.” 

“Actually, I can,” Dylan answers, now done with this conversation. “You had eight years to be a mom before I finally gave up on you. You don’t get to pick and choose when to be my mom, now.”    

“I’m sorry that hurt your feelings, Dyl. But I have two boys, and they really want to meet their older brother. Would you come down for lunch one day?”  

He nods, knowing that this sudden need to be a mom again wasn’t going to come for free. “No. I have no interest in being your life. Not since the day I turned 18.”  

“C’mon, Dyl–” 

“No, mom–Brooke. No. Don’t call me again, please. I need to go now.”  

She starts another sentence, but Dylan hangs up on her before he hears it. When he walks into the bedroom he shares with his girlfriend, he crawls into the bed next to her, feeling like the ten year old whose life got torn apart.  

It looks like Brooke still has that uncanny talent for making everything about her.  

- 

Eddie sits in his office, a small room decorated with frames filled with the faces of those he loves and papers strewn around the desk. He’s going over the receipts and payments, and silently regrets not having hired an accountant by now, but he’s far too stubborn to admit it.  

There’s a knock on the door and Eddie looks up in relief. Please, let there be a disgruntled customer to save him from the numbers. “Come on in!”  

Connor, one of the new apprentices he hired only a few months ago comes in, looking timid. The first few months he has a new hire they’re usually shy, and when their self confidence in their ability to do their job kicks in, Eddie truly starts to miss it. “Uh, hey, boss, there’s a client out there who wants to speak to you.”  

Eddie chuckles, leaning back in his chair as he rests his feet on his desk. “Don’t, don’t call me boss. What do they want?” 

Connor screws up his face. “Uh, I forgot to ask.”  

“Always ask, man. Tell them I’ll be right out.”  

“Alright, I’ll tell her.” Eddie sighs in relief, women tend to be more understanding.  

“Hey, send in Joe, will ya?”  

“On it!”  

Joe, a man who’s worked for Eddie for 20 years, older by ten years, walks into the office just a moment later. “What’s up, Ed?”  

“Give the lady a talk, will ya?” Eddie asks, scratching the itch on his right forearm. “Ask her what she wants.” Joe, tall, dark, and quiet, nods and shuts the door.  

He’s back in the office in seconds. The door’s loose knob has barely clicked shut before it’s abruptly opened again. “That fast?”  

Joe shakes his head, his eyes wide with a grimace on his face. “Uh, no, it’s…it’s Brooke.”  

Eddie scrunches his face up. “Brooke, like…Brooke?”  

“Yeah. You want me to–” 

“No it’s okay, I got it,” Eddie insists, a pit forming in the depths of his stomach. He rubs his face tiredly, fully unprepared to deal with this. 

“Dude, you sure?” He asks, having been with Eddie through the divorce.  

“Seriously, I got it. Thanks, man.”  

Eddie gets up from his desk, catching the eyes of his long-time employees on his way to the entrance of the garage. He’s fine. He’ll be fine.  

There she stands, looking around the garage holding her purse with two hands. She’s dressed like one of those Instagram moms, high waisted jeans with a loose blouse tucked in under a long coat. Her eyes land on him, her face lighting up as she exclaims, “Wow, the garage looks great!” 

“Thanks,” Eddie mumbles, sighing. “Is there a particular reason for…”  

Brooke smiles, and Eddie could almost see a genuine human behind the mask. “Um, do you mind if we go into your office?”  

Eddie raises his brows, perplexed. “I really don’t see the necessity for it.”  

“It’s not really a conversation to have in front of the guys, Eds,” Brooke comments, shuffling her feet as she crosses her arms.  

Eddie winces at the nickname she calls him. She really doesn’t know him well enough to call him such anymore. The audacity of it astounds him. “I’m not Eds to you…and my office holds things that are precious to me, that I honestly want to keep out of this conversation.”  

“Like I haven’t already seen pictures of your little wife,” Brooke grimaces, her tone switching from sweet to condescending in a split second, her eyes rolling. “Congrats on that, or whatever.”  

Eddie blinks, too exhausted to argue. “Alright, come on.”  

It's not like Brooke hasn’t been in his office before, Eddie thinks, they were happily married, after all. She looks around at the changes, her eyes seemingly fixated on where photos of Dylan’s previous achievements are proudly displayed. “Wow, he looks just like you,” Brooke mutters, a look on her face that Eddie can’t quite place.  

Eddie assessed the bulletin, Dylan’s graduation, first school dance, the Munsons spending a weekend at the Harrington’s, it certainly spelled out to her what she missed out on.  

He clears his throat, quietly asking for her to continue. “Right, um, I was wondering if you could talk to our son.” 

“Our son?” Eddie asks, barely holding back his laughter. “Last time I checked you said he was my son.”  

Brooke ignores it, faltering in her seat. “I tried calling him last week, but he shut me down.”  

“What do you need me to talk to him about exactly?” Eddie leans against his desk, his hands gripping the edge.

Brooke blinks, tilting her head. “When did you cut your hair?”  

“Irrelevant. What do you need me to talk to him about?” Eddie enunciates, already feeling the exhaustion of her mere soul sucking presence.

“My sons are asking questions about him, and they would like to meet him.” She inhales, as if preparing herself for what she was about to say, “I would love to reconnect with both of you, honestly.” 

Like an anvil, Eddie feels his stomach pull him all the way down into the floor. The silence she’s given him and Dylan for the last fifteen years has been stable, reliable even. The most reliable thing about her. This is turning off the road into a ditch with nothing to instigate it. “What did he say?”  

“Uh, he had no interest in it,” Brooke shrugs, leaning back in her seat.  

Eddie nods, having expected it. “Brooke, those pictures on the wall? My son spent so much time begging me to call and get you to at least one event, one time just to show that you still cared about him.” He pauses, watching her avoid his eyes. “I left dozens of voicemails in your inbox, and I know it was your inbox, because I remember the day it went from Munson to Prescott. I begged you to show up. Just once. The last time I did was for his graduation, but by then I had stopped telling him.”  

“He told our lawyers and the judge he wanted nothing to do with me. Forgive me if I thought he was telling the truth,” Brooke huffs, her voice sounding defensive.  

“He was a child, Brooke!” Eddie deadpans, narrowing his eyes. “A child hurt by his mother’s actions tearing apart his happy family. Staying with the stable parent was probably the more appealing option.” He scratches at the stubble on his face, glancing over to the sonogram sitting on his desk. He’d hoped Brooke hadn’t caught wind of that news, yet. “At first, he was really hurt, but after a while, he just wanted his mom. Who never showed up.” 

“Well, I might be a little late, but doesn’t it count for something that I’m trying, now?” She asks, folding her arms across her chest. 

“I think it counts more that he’s about to be a father and he has no interest in including you in his kid’s life.”  

Her eyes bug right out of her head. “Wait, what?”  

“Mmhm. Seems he’d rather give what was supposed to be your title to someone he’s known for less than a year.” Eddie flickers to the photo of you he has framed, a portrait of you surrounded by the sunset in your wedding dress. “You had eight years, Brooke. Eight. You don’t get to decide to be a parent when it’s convenient for you. I never had that luxury. I had to pick myself and my son up and find a way to get through it emotionally without falling apart at the seams.”  

She seems to start talking, but Eddie is on a roll. “I finally feel like I’m living my life, and not just surviving. If you reached out five years ago, I probably would’ve said yes. I even had a low enough self-esteem to hope it would mean something more…but now I have this woman, this beautiful person who showed me how much she believes I’m worth, showed me how much I am worth. Brooke, no offense, but when I look back on it, especially comparing the two, you treated me like shit.”  

“Uh, okay,” Brooke mutters, holding her hand out. “I did not treat you like shit.”  

“You never stuck up for me with your parents, forced me to do things I was uncomfortable with all the time, gave ‘our’ son’s teachers hell all the time, and, oh yeah, left me for the person you told me not to worry about. So, no I will not be talking to my son. If he comes to the conclusion to reconnect with you, then fine. But I will not be participating.”  

“Wow, you’re being harsh.” Brooke complains, grimacing. “Eddie, I was young. I made a few stupid decisions.”  

“You know, my wife is a bit young. Somehow, she already knows not to act like a stone cold cunt.”  Brooke stutters through an empty response, completely rendered speechless. “I think we’re done here.”  

“I’m not done!”  

“Well, I suggest you be by the time my pregnant wife gets here, because she’s not your biggest fan.” It gives him the utmost satisfaction to start looking through the papers. He glances back up to her expectant expression. “Safe travels back to Boston, hmm?”  

Eddie swears the smile on your face in the photo of you grows, glad the backbone he needed seems to have finally grown. “You’re not going to even–”  

“No. I’m not. I’m done here, Brooke. Give Kevin my condolences, yeah?”  

Brooke nods, reluctantly understanding she wasn’t going to get what she wanted. Eddie had indeed grown the self-confidence she never saw when she was with him. “Condolences?” 

“Yeah, for still being stuck with you. Close the door on your way out.”  

Brooke’s nostrils flare, her jaw locking. She turns around without another word, the slam of the door echoing through the garage as she storms out, every click of her heel enunciated.  

Moments later, Joe pops through the door. “Everything, ok, Ed?”  

Eddie looks up, his dimples pronounced on his face. “Oh just, peachy, Joe. Mind if I take off for the rest of the day?”  

“I would be concerned if you didn’t, man.”  

- 

The ringing of your phone stirs you from your slumber, having passed out on the couch mid snack. An app you downloaded on your phone for the pregnancy said the first trimester would have you feeling quite sleepy, and you didn’t believe it until you find yourself constantly falling asleep during your off days, and exhausted at work when you really shouldn’t be.  

Your sister’s name lights up the screen, and the quick assessment of the movie tells you you’ve been asleep for at least forty-five minutes. “Hey, Viti.”  

“Hey, sis,” she greets, an airy tone in her voice. “Sounds like you just woke up.”  

You haven’t broken the news to your family, yet, waiting to present the information in the form of a present next time you and Eddie make your way over to your parents’ house. “Had an afternoon siesta,” you sigh, watching the movie you’re tempted to restart. The twist of Carlisle’s death just isn’t the same if you don’t build up to it. “What’s up?” 

She sighs, a habit you’re all too familiar with. “Spit it out.”  

“Okay,” she starts, gaining her courage. “Me and Arlo got together the night of your wedding.”  

If you were attempting to get rid of any sense of sleep, it disappeared within a second. The information takes a second to register, eyes darting around the living room filled with wrappers you have yet to throw out. “Harrington?”  

She laughs, probably expecting a much worse answer. “Do you know any other Arlos?”  

“Guess not.” You pet the bangs in your eyes away from your face, trying to remind yourself of the look on your baby sister’s face when she was slow dancing with him. “Ok. How did it happen?” 

“You’re okay with this?” She asks, your heart melting at how little her voice sounds.  

“It was never my choice, Vi,” you answer, using the remote to restart the movie. “If you like him and trust him, then, yeah, I’m okay with it. So how did it happen? Tell me all about it. But if you’ve slept with him, then maybe not all about it,” You chuckle. Viti sighs exasperatedly and you can practically hear her eyes roll through the phone.

“Um, so we were kind of flirting a lot after the family dinner. I thought he was just being nice, but I was willing to be his friend. It got a bit more intense at the wedding, and he asked me to dance…”  

“I saw,” you admit, granted you only saw because Eddie pointed it out to you. “What happened after that?”  

You can hear the smile on her face. “He led me to a hallway, and then we went to the hotel room I was staying in…” She trails off sheepishly. Oh, that's all you need to know.  

“Damn, girl!” you laugh, opting to push away the mental image and simply be your sister's friend right now.  

“We went to dinner last week,” she says, a giggle laced through her sentence. “I really, really like him.”  

It had to be Arlo Harrington. “Then I’m really, really happy for you. Have you told everyone else yet?”  

“You’re the last to know, to be honest. I think Eddie even knows at this point.” You roll your eyes, because of course that’s why he was so peculiar this morning.  

“Just because I don’t necessarily approve of the choice of boy doesn’t mean I won’t be happy for you. Plus, I could get used to him, after all, Steve isn’t so bad.” That’s a damn lie, Steve Harrington has become one of your favorite people. “Tell me you got out of the hotel room before mom and dad discovered you.”  

“We heard them coming down the hall…” she says, giggling. “We were dressed as they were about to come in the door. Luckily, they were both pretty drunk, so they didn’t really catch on to what was happening. Well, until the next morning at brunch, I guess.”  

Note, send a text to your mom asking about what her perspective was, because there’s a chance she knew more than she let on. You think to yourself.

“Anyway, four weeks in Cancun. Spare me the dirty details but tell me all about it,” she giggles, moving the phone away from her face, “shut up, stop, shut up!’ 

“Let me guess. Arlo?”  

A burst of giggles runs through her body and you can hear the smile on her face. “Maybe,”

“You couldn’t wait until you were alone?”  

“She’s not really alone all that much these days,” Arlo’s voice rings out. You can picture the smug smirk on his face.  

“Arlo!” She chides him, and yeah, this might not be so bad, you decide.  

“I’m gonna let you two go,” you offer, dismissing any protests she let out. “Also, without the dirty details there’s not much of the honeymoon to tell. Well, except one thing.”  

“What?” 

“You'll have someone new to meet in seven months!”  

“No way!” 

- 

If there’s one thing you know, it’s Christina Perri’s A Thousand Years is the song for the last credit scene of the Twilight Series. As each character is shown with the corresponding credit, it gets closer and closer to the main cast.  

It might just be the hormones, but this round of credits just seems to hit differently, tears spilling down your cheeks as it gets to the Cullen family. The front door to the house slams shut, announcing the arrival of your husband. Odd, he’s about three hours early.  

The weight of the cushion next to you sinks down with a comforting arm wrapping around your shoulders. Your head falls easily into his embrace, curling into his lap as you sniffle. It’s ridiculous, the irrational reaction that takes over you, but damn do the editors know how to elicit a reaction out of the audience.  

His hand pets your shoulder, kissing your forehead. “You crying at Twilight?”  

You nod, furrowing your eyebrows. “Lose the smug attitude, mister. This is your doing.”  

He laughs under his breath, petting your hair. “Hmm, that’s not how I remember our honeymoon.”  

You tilt your head back to look at his face, fretting at the curls that are starting to resemble closer to a mullet. “Just because I begged for your babies does not mean you had to listen to me.”  

He rolls his eyes, leaning in to place a kiss on your lips that takes the breath out from your lungs. As he backs away, he hums with a peculiar look on his face. “What’s on your mind?” You ask, your brows knitting together.

Eddie sighs, petting the bare skin exposed on your hip. “Minor Brooke update, today.”  

Your brows instinctively rise, feeling every little muscle in your face tense up. “Oh?” 

“Yup. Are you interested?”  

You close your eyes, asking any entity out there listening for a lick of patience. “You piqued my interest. Lay it on me.”  

Eddie can’t beat around the bush, or he would never say it. “She came into my work today.” He pauses, allowing you to absorb the information before continuing. “Requesting that I convince Dylan to…let her back into his life, so to say.” You squint, remembering the few times that Dylan had confessed about his mom to you, always finishing by claiming he wants nothing to do with her and never will.  

“Yeah, good luck with that,” you comment, watching his eyes flicker back and forth between yours.  

“She reached out to him last week and when he refused, I guess the next most logical step was to drive the six hours from Boston and corner me at work.” Your teeth grit, angry at the fucking gall that fills Brooke whatever-the-fuck her last name is. God forbid Steve or Eddie ever accidentally tell you what it is, because the day it comes her inbox will be flooded with just a little piece of your mind, and she'll be lucky if profanities are the worst things you say.

“What are you thinking?” He asks, having watched your face move through the storm of emotions.  

“I was thinking that I fucking hate your ex-wife and if she has no haters then I’m dead,” you answer, dead panning.  

“I love you,” he sighs, tugging you in against his chest. “Are you hungry?”  

You look at the wrappers decorating the mahogany coffee table, “Surprisingly yes.”  

“Lets get a real meal in you, shall we?”  

- 

Eddie is present at every doctor's appointment, every ultrasound, birthing class, and even at 20 weeks, when you were inexplicably spotting, stayed with you throughout the 7 hour wait at the ER. He certainly helped you hide from the embarrassment of the doctor explaining the bleeding seemed to be brought on by intercourse and to start being a bit more careful.  

Only one time does a health care worker mistake Eddie for being your father, a mistake quickly fixed at the death glare he gives her. You don’t know how, as you look nothing alike and he has been doting on you too affectionately to be a dad, but you can’t help teasing him by calling him daddy as soon as she leaves the room. 

Well, that’s a lie.  

There is one other time he’s mistaken for your father, running into the maternity ward and anxiously stating your name to the front desk of labor nurses. The head nurse, a woman bearing silver streaks in her hair, calmly tells him to relax and sit down, only the baby’s father is allowed in the room with patients.  

“Well you better take me to my wife, then,” he deadpans, his eyes harsh enough to shoot daggers if it were physically possible. 

She stutters through her response. “Oh, you-you’re her husband? I’m so sorry I assumed–my mistake, she’s in the third door on the left.”  

He rushes to the door, ignoring her last pleas for forgiveness. He was far too busy focusing on how he knew he shouldn’t have gone into work when he knew you were due to go into labor any day now. He knew he should've told them to ask Joe for the solution, as he was basically acting owner while he was away.  

When he bursts through the door, you’re sat on the bed in the room with Bethany petting your face as you push through a particularly hard contraction.  

He waits and watches anxiously for you to get through it before announcing his arrival. As soon as your eyes land on him he sees your face crumple in relief and your hands reach out for him. “Baby,” you whine, seeking the comfort of his shampoo and cologne.  

“I’m so sorry,” he apologizes, planting a big kiss on the hand that was reached out. “Thank you so much, Bethany, for taking her.”  

She shrugs, dismissing his over exaggerated gratitude. “She’s been a champ. Let me know if you two need anything.”  

Eddie pets your hair, leaning in to plant a gentle kiss on your lips. “How’ve you been, baby?”  

“Only been an hour, and I am so over labor,” you whine, smiling pathetically. “Thanks for coming so fast.”  

Eddie was surprised he didn’t get pulled over, going 90 down the freeway. He turned a 20 minute drive into 8. “Made any progress?” 

“I’m only one centimeter dilated. We could be here for a while.” 

“I’m here every minute,” he says, grabbing a chair to sit by your bed. “I believe in you. We’ll listen to Taylor, listen to a smutty audio book, watch a true crime series, whatever you want, baby.”  

- 

True to his word, he allowed you to blast your Faves Spotify playlist, watched a few episodes of 48 Hours with you, and even sat with you as he let you play with the makeup you had packed in your hospital bag on his face.  

You made him look like a Captain Jack Sparrow, giggling as he animatedly talks in a pirate voice. The best thing about Eddie being there is that he wards off your parents and others who wish to visit you in your labor and acts as your advocate when the nurse is too rough with you and requests a new nurse immediately. Well, and his presence alone puts you at ease, of course.  

It feels like forever, but you’re eight centimeters dilated when a familiar face walks down the hall, passing his father as he carries the millionth cup of ice chips you requested. “Bud! Did someone text you about–” 

“She told me when Bethany was driving her to the hospital, but that’s actually not why we’re here,” Dylan sheepishly admits, his shoulders shrugging up to his ears as a pink blooms across his cheeks.  

“We?” Eddie catches on, blinking. “Is Maya also..?” 

“Yeah, we got here about three hours ago,” he squinted one eye comically, crossing his arms. “She’s about halfway there, now I think.”  

“Wow she’s progressing a lot faster than we did,” Eddie comments, it taking you far more than three hours to get to five centimeters.  

“It would be ironic wouldn’t it, if they had the same birthday?”  

“Irony is one word for it,” Dylan chuckles. “My girlfriend asked for ice chips about eight minutes ago, and she is not patient, so I’m going to get back to it.” 

“Let us know any updates, won’t you?”  

“I bet my kid will be born before yours,” Dylan answers, only somewhat joking. 

“Oh, you’re on, dude.”  

- 

As nurses and the doctor rushes around you, frantically assessing the baby while helping you with the afterbirth, birthing the placenta and ridding the bodily fluids that came out with the infant. Eddie cut the cord, watching carefully as the nurses quickly washed his newborn son off.  

He’s simultaneously whispering sweet nothings against your cheek, how proud he is of you, describing your son’s dark hair, his little mouth opening as the nurse's hand gently washes it. “Did so good, baby, so good, I’m so fucking proud of you.”  

“Is he okay?” You whisper, eyes half open as you stare up at your husband’s brown ones. “J-Josh, is he okay?”  

Eddie knows exactly what you’re asking, making sure his limbs are working, that he looks healthy, that the nurses don’t look too concerned about their results. He can’t help but answer, “He’s perfect.”  

Your favorite nurse, the one who got assigned after Eddie demanded it, brings him over swaddled in a hospital blanket and tucks him into your arms. The hormones and adrenaline overwhelm you as you stare at his face, selfishly grateful he looks just like his father, happily staring at the little button nose.  

“I love you,” when you stare up at your husband, you’re expecting his eyes to also be planted on the newest member of the little family. Instead they’re shiny and planted on you, his expression drenched in pure love.  

“I love you,” you sigh, leaning in for a sweet kiss. “He’s so perfect.”  

“I fucking love you so much.” 

The love fest eventually dies down, all the medical aides surrounding you finishing up and leaving the room as they steal one last glance at the happy little family.  

You’re lost in your own little world when Dylan runs in, seeing the little addition sat on your chest. Eddie looks up to face Dylan dressed in a hospital gown and a hairnet. His face is lit up with the same joy as the room is filled with. “You wanna meet your grandson?”  

Eddie nods, quickly stopped by his wife still lying on the bed sitting in the afterglow. “Go,” you insist, petting at the soft hair on your son. “Say hi for me.”  

He smiles, placing a gentle kiss on your knotted hair, followed by his newborn. “Be right back.”  

On the way over to the emergency surgery room Dylan explains that the umbilical cord ended up twisted around his son’s neck and they took Maya straight into an emergency C-Section. He sat with his girlfriend as they emptied the contents of her abdomen to allow the newest Munson to come into the world.  

Eddie asked several times to make sure it was okay if her father in law, her boyfriend’s father, to go into a room where she is this vulnerable. Dylan insisted that she said it was fine and since Eddie was here for the birth of his son it would be cool for him to meet his grandson, too, within the same half hour.  

Miraculously, after getting in his own scrubs, Eddie wanders in with Dylan as Maya is finished with her stitches. She’s still loopy from the general anesthesia, holding her newborn on her partially covered chest.  

“Are you sure you’re okay with this?” Eddie asked, knowing how against visitors you were.  

“Just come say hi to your grandson, Eddie,” Maya chuckles, passing up the newborn. “Meet Jace Edward Munson.”  

“Edward?” Eddie laughs, barely holding the mist that comes to his eyes. “What?”  

Dylan scrunches his nose, tilting his head to face the newborn now in his father’s arms. “You stepped up when she left. You were everything to me. You may have stolen a girlfriend, but that is small beans in the grand scheme of things, you know?”  

“Jace and Josh,” Eddie muses, laughter bubbling up his throat. “God, they even sound like twins.”  

- 

Kayla smooths over the dress she wears, nervously looking around the classroom. Are there enough learning centers set up? Will the children like the home center she put together? Will there be any difficult teachers during her first year?  

 For the first time, she’s on her own, placed in the very class she had spent so long working toward, kindergarten.  

Her little classmates with their parents, usually mothers, wander in with wide eyes, nervously holding onto their sleeves and looking around anxiously. She talks to each little one at a time, welcoming them and offering them many activities to distract them from wanting to stay with their parents.  

One little boy doesn’t need much, or any, peeling off his father as he runs in, his shaggy brown hair rustling in as he bolts straight to the building blocks. His dad walks in right after, carrying his bag dressed in a leather jacket and acid wash jeans.  

“Hi,” he sighs, sounding tired. “That’s Dylan.”  

“M or H?” Kayla asks.  

“M.”  

“Dylan, can you grab your bag from your dad and put it in the cubby?” Dylan runs to grab his bag from his dad, shouting in slight frustration as he’s pulled in for a hug. “Yours will have an M next to your name!”  

He listens, but doesn’t look back as he runs back to the blocks.  

“I’m Eddie,” the father says, holding his hand out. “His mom, Brooke, will pick him up after school, uh, she’s a bit of a hardass, so just beware.”  

Oh, goody. She gives him a strained smile, insisting she’ll be able to handle it.  

Eddie and Dylan end up being one of his favorite pairings for the year. But when Brooke walked in, she knew it became a big deal for something as small as Dylan putting his book in the wrong pocket in his bag.  

Kayla got along great with Eddie, as they turned out to be the same age. They saw one another around the school as Dylan got older, even became someone Dylan could rely on for a maternal figure when his parents ended up divorcing in fifth grade.  

About twenty one years after initially teaching Dylan, she’s a veteran teacher in her own right, having a monopoly over classroom #3 as she continues to be the answer for dozens of individuals when asked their favorite teacher.   

She sits in her lumbar chair that her coworkers raised the money for the previous Christmas as she finally is able to look over her newest class list. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary until she came across 9th and 8th from the last name, two boys with J initials and the last name Munson. She’d been wondering if she would ever have the pleasure of teaching Dylan’s boys, or if he decided to skip town like most of his classmates.  

Their birthday right next to their attendance names indicated they had the same birthdate, so she was safe to assume she would have another set of twins. If they were anything like Dylan, they would be a fun sort of challenge for her, that she was sure of.  

On the first day the following fall, she keeps an eye out for her former student, keeping in mind it could very well be the mother that decides to drop them off.  

As she’s helping a particularly shy child settle into her classroom, she notices a parent helping their kid out of the wind breaker they’re wearing. As soon as the little girl is settled she goes to them welcoming them. She immediately recognizes the parent. “Dylan!”  

“Oh, Miss. Thompson! I didn’t realize you were still teaching!” He sheepishly admits, looking at the plaque now containing her married name.  

“I am just married, now,” she answers, answering him the same way she would a student out of habit. “Now, who do we have here?”  

“I’m Jace,” the little boy answers shyly, brown hair of this father but stark green eyes.  

“Well, Jace, would you mind finding your name at one of the cubbies for me? I think you’re put right next to someone named Josh,” she tells him, watching for any recognition of the other name she thought was his twin.  

“Oh, sweet!” Jace exclaims, running with his Pokémon bag.  

She gets up from her squatting position, her knees far too achy for doing it continually like she still is. “So, there’s another Munson on the class list, would you know anything about that?” 

Dylan chuckles, sighing. “Well, about that–” Dylan is interrupted by a little boy with dark hair hugging him, exclaiming his name. “Hey, Josh, we were just talking about you!”  

Josh laughs, tugging on Dylan’s arm. “Is Jace here?” 

“Yeah, he’s playing with the dinosaurs, if I know him.” 

“Cool!” Josh runs straight off, meeting his supposed relative at the play carpet.  

Kayla turns around in confusion, questioning what just happened.  

As if answering her, in comes another familiar face, holding a bag that looks comically small compared to his tall stature. “Ah, Kayla. I was wondering if you were still here.”  

“Eddie!” She greets him, giving a very frank hug. “I have to admit, I am very confused.” 

“That’s okay, you wouldn’t be the first,” Eddie comments, crossing his arms. “Me and my wife had Josh at the same time Dylan had Jace. They’re assholes, they like to gang up on adults, but don’t let them intimidate you, they can’t with their adults anymore, so they try it on teachers.” 

“Takes a lot more than that to intimidate me,” Kayla answers, looking back at the boys who gained ownership over the carpet with dinosaurs and cars. “I appreciate the warning, though.” She looks back to her old friend, seeing the smile lines on his face, still carrying his son’s things. “I’m happy you found someone, though.”  

“Thanks. His mom will pick him up after school,” Eddie tells her, going to the cubby with his kid’s name on it. “She’s not as bad as Brooke, so there’s no worries, there.”  

“Alright, can’t wait to meet her.”  

Eddie and Dylan share a look, one that Kayla misses as she starts to welcome in a few new classmates.  

- 

The bell rings for lunch for the rest of the elementary school and end of day for the kindergarteners. Mrs. Franklin, or Miss. Thompson, as Dylan knows her, helps all her students with their backpacks and jackets. It’s one thing to manage five-year-olds, it’s another to get them to stop wrestling and help them simultaneously.  

The Munson boys are certainly no help, Josh trying to stick his finger up Jace’s nose, pinning him down on the dirty floor as Jace wiggles underneath him. Kayla wished Josh would stop telling Jace he’s his uncle and he has to listen to him, that way she wouldn’t have to hold back her laughter so hard.  

“Okay, Mr. and Mr. Munson, break it up, your parents will be here any minute now. Get up.” They both switch their glances up to her, eyebrows raised over wide eyes. “Get up.”  

They roll their eyes, Josh reluctantly getting off Jace slowly and helping him up. Slowly but surely, parents start to pick their kids up, both Munsons waiting for their parents anxiously. You wonder in with your youngest, a little three year old by the name of Stevie. She holds onto your pointer and middle finger anxiously, eyes darting around at the unfamiliar noises and faces.  

Your son is seemingly nowhere to be seen, usually seen with his counterpart but you can’t see him around the crowd of parents kneeling with their kids and asking how their day was. The teacher,  someone both Dylan and Eddie insisted is the best in the school, approaches you kindly to ask which kid is yours.  

Before you can even answer Josh runs into you, happily glancing up at you as he wraps his arms around your legs. “Hi, baby,” you greet him, kneeling down as you pet his sweet face.  

You miss the peculiar look Mrs. Franklin, or Kayla as Eddie referred to her as, gives you. Surprised to say the least that the Mrs. Munson she has yet to meet is so young. Her brows furrow even further when Jace notices you, yelling, “Grandma!” as he also runs for a hug.  

“Were you boys nice to Mrs. Franklin today?”  

“Of course!” Josh smiles, and you squint through his bullshit.  

“Well we’re gonna make sure to be nicer or we’re gonna have to lose our tablet privileges, won’t we?”  

You get back up, smiling at their grumbly faces. They never listen to new adults, it was a field day at their first day of preschool. One glance to their teacher’s observant face told you all you needed to know. “Eddie didn’t warn you, he?”  

“No, but they did have a peculiar look on their faces when I mentioned meeting you. Should’ve known better, with those two,” you tilt your head, curious at what she meant. “Seriously, your husband needs to tell you more. I taught Dylan when he was in kindergarten.”  

“Oh!” you exclaim, somewhat surprised. “That’s really cool! Were you surprised to see Eddie wi–” 

“With another kid,” she interrupts, laughing, “yes, I was. I’m happy to see that he found someone else, Brooke, was, well, she was not a nice person.”  

Your eyebrows raise at the mention of your husband’s ex-wife, this being the first person she meets outside Eddie’s inner circle to having even mentioned Brooke. “So, I’ve heard.”  

“Hey mom,” you hear behind you, you shove the owner before you even see him, rolling your eyes.  

It’s very recently become a silly habit of Dylan’s to call you mom, due to your son asking why his brother calls his mom by her real name and not mom like he does. After the best attempt at explaining Dylan has a different mom who is no longer around, Josh is still confused and insists that you still act like his mom, so therefore, are Dylan’s mom. 

It was awkward at first, but now it’s a little inside joke. If you were told when you first got together with Eddie that Dylan would be referring to you as a maternal figure, you probably would’ve hit them on the head for fucking with you.  

“Hey, kiddo,” you tease back, mocking his twisted face expression. “They were apparently giving her a hard time today.”  

“Of course they were. You know we can ask one of you to switch classes, right?” Dylan asks, an aura of authority in his voice.  

Their eyes go wide, even though it was a threat in their preschool room, they have yet to consider this. You didn’t want to resort to threats but with their shenanigans, it's literally one of the only things that will work.  

“C’mon, your dad is making your favorite for dinner,” your shoulder cascades around Josh’s shoulder, telling him to say bye to his nephew and that he’ll see him tomorrow.  

Two years later, Stevie shows up with her dark curls down to her shoulders after her father, giggling as she says hi to the teacher.  

That was the last time Kayla taught one of Eddie Munson’s kids. Or, so she assumed.  

- 

The double doors to the high school flew open, big black boots echoing as the large leather jacket trails behind a slim torso. He takes the immediate left into the office, his presence large, with grey streaks leaking into his roots and an angry look on his face.  

The kind administration lady looks up to his expectant face, the curiosity quickly melting into confounded terror. “Can I help you?” 

“Apparently Stevie Munson is in the office right now?” Better be a damn good reason for peeling me away from one of the only moments I have left alone with my wife, he thinks, eyes observing around the office.  

“Yes, she is, uh, are you her–” 

“Her father, are you going to let me in the office or do I have to let myself in?” 

The surprise that fills her features would be charming if Eddie wasn’t so fucking annoyed. He’s used to the assumption by now, but for the moment he just doesn’t have any patience in his body.  

“You can go right ahead, Mr. Munson,” she peeps out, gesturing to the door marked Principal. Eddie’s not sure why he even asked, or how he had the foresight to ask, first. He’s surprised, honestly.  

The door opens to face the school principal, his daughter and a boy sitting two seats away from her nursing his face with an ice pack. “Mr. Munson, welcome in! Have a seat.”  

“No thanks,” Eddie answers, polite, but curt. He looks at his daughter, “What happened?”  

She opens her mouth to answer but is interrupted by the bald principal, “I didn’t ask you, I asked her. What happened?” He directs his attention back to his daughter.

She smiles at him, the same sweet smile his wife bares. “This guy touched my ass under my skirt, so I punched him in the face.”  

Eddie’s brows raised, teeth gritted as he sends a daggers at the boy he is now aware assaulted his daughter. “I’m sorry?” He asks, now directed to the principal.  

“So she says,” the principal says, eyes widening at how Eddie manages to look murderous. “Granted, even if Mr. Jackson did do that, it’s not a good enough reason to assault him. She will be suspended for two days.”  

Eddie laughs, loudly, shaking his head at the gall, the fucking nerve. This principal is extremely lucky it was him who answered his phone and not you. “Really? My daughter got sexually assaulted and your reaction to her defending herself is suspending her? Are you fucking kidding me?”  

“Mr. Munson, if you could please calm down and have a seat,” he starts, gesturing to the chair, yet again.  

“Oh, I am calm. You don’t want to see me angry,” Eddie answers, the Hulk flashing through his mind. “You deciding to punish her tells me exactly why this little shit felt confident enough to lay his hands on her, to begin with. I just think about all the other girls he’s done this to, too afraid to speak up, I wonder how many times he’s done this with no consequence to feel confident enough to touch under a skirt. What the fuck is this place? No-tolerance bullying policy? Utter bullshit.”  

“Mr. Munson, calm down before I call security–”  

“Don’t make me laugh. Seriously. Don’t.” Eddie sighs, pinching his nose. “If you do suspend her, I will press charges against him and I will sue this fucking school. If you punish him, like you’re supposed to, take him off his team for the season, put him in detention for a month, I don’t care, something with fucking consequences, I won’t. You decide.” 

He looks down at the little shit, whimpering as he still nurses the barely there bruise. “You better hope I don’t hear you doing this shit to any other girl in this school, or you won’t get into any college in the country.” He pauses, opening the office door to an audience. Maybe he was louder than he thought he was. “C’mon Stevie, let’s go get some fucking ice cream.”  

When you heard about how your husband stuck up for your daughter like that, you got on your knees for him in the bathroom. That might’ve cheered him up a bit.  

- 

The sounds are familiar yet foreign when you wake up to the blindingly white room, the chatter in the hallway and some heart monitor beeping. Two people immediately come into focus, Josh, sitting at the end of the bed on his phone, Stevie sitting concerned by your head.  

You moan, sitting up in your bed annoyed at the stark contrast of the back of your eyelids. “What the hell?”  

“Mom!” Josh shouts, getting up and standing on the other side of his sister.  

“Mom,” Stevie runs out of the room, calling for a doctor.  

You look to your son, brows furrowed. “What happened?”  

“You passed out at the grocery store. You fainted and you didn’t wake up until just now.”  

Your brows raise, because you haven’t felt off even the slightest. The dizziness hit you out of nowhere, going from fine to woozy in two seconds and falling flat on your face. “How long ago did that happen?” 

“Like twenty minutes? The ambulance got there pretty quickly,” he admits, turning his head to his sister and the nurse coming in the door. 

“Mrs. Munson! So glad to see you awake. I’ll let the doctor know and he should be able to give your results,” she says, sweet smile as she turns away.  

Stevie’s bottom lip is stuck out, quivering as she grabs the hand containing an IV line. You thought that was a bit much. “Stevie, I’m okay.” 

“Are you sure, because I heard the nurses saying it’s not normal to stay out that long after fainting. What if you’re sick?”  

“I’m okay,” you insist, watching both their worried faces. “Fuck, you called your dad, didn’t you?” 

“Uh, yes! He would’ve killed us if we didn’t!” Josh laughs, leaning back in his chair.  

As if summoned, your husband pokes his head in, his eyes wide as he walks in the room, hands out to you as his long legs take him to the head of the bed. “Fucking Christ.” 

“Hi, baby,” you greet him, leaning into the forehead kiss that he gives you. “I’m okay.” 

“Fainting in the fucking grocery store, fucking hell. My god, baby.” He looks over to his kids, “What tests have they done, so far?” 

“Just a blood test, I think,” Stevie shrugs. 

“They might do an MRI but that could take weeks of waiting.” Josh offers no comfort to his dad despite his best efforts.  

“I’m okay, really.” You insist to all their worried faces. “You didn’t call anyone else, did you?”  

“Uh, we called Dylan,” Josh says, wincing at your annoyed face. “And Jace.”  

“Fuck,” you mutter, intertwining your hand with Eddie’s rough one.  

The doctor doesn’t come as quickly as the nurse promised, but he comes within two hours. “Oh, hello, you have quite the visitors, don’t you?”  

You shrug, rubbing his thumb as it anxiously rubs your hand.  

“We have the results, inconclusively.” The air is tense, every one of the family seemingly expecting terrible news. “Congrats! You’re pregnant.”  

You knew nothing was wrong, but this was not what you were expecting. You’re forty-two, Eddie is nearly seventy. You weren’t even sure he could still get you pregnant. You meet your husband’s eyes, sharing a bewildered smile.  

In the meantime, shouts of disgust from your teenage kids fill the room, standing up with tense shoulders.  

“Gross!” 

“Ew! I didn’t even know you guys still did it! Oh my god! Ew!!!!”  

You bite your lip, shrugging. “Are you wanting to be a father to a newborn at almost 70?”  

Eddie smirks, leaning in for a kiss that makes your kids jeer again. “Bring it on, baby.”  

Steve calls an hour later, concerned for the text his name sake sent him. When Eddie informs him, you’re pregnant, twenty years of karma hits tenfold.  

When Steve and Jocelyn said they were pregnant with Eliza fifteen years after having Dustin, Eddie spent the pregnancy making fun of their oopsie baby. Asking if they knew what protection was, joking how they still had sex, telling them to keep it in their pants, the works.  

Now, Steve was more than happy to return the favor. “A baby at 70, you old bastard? What was that you told me twenty years ago? God, I’m surprised you two still do it, considering how low Eddie’s ball sack must be hanging.”  

“You wish you could see my ball sack, you asshole,” Eddie teases, laughing with you as you sigh. “You’re just jealous I can still keep it up, you geriatric bastard.”  

- 

Five years later, when Eddie and Kayla are older, he wanders into classroom #3 for the last time, holding his third son who ends up being notoriously clingy towards his older father.  

It’s ironic to the both of them how Eddie has a son for both Kayla’s first and last year of teaching, keeping tabs on one another for the duration of forty years.  

Eddie doesn’t say anything, letting Tommy down and dismissing her questioning look. Don’t wanna talk about it.

By the time Tommy is 18, Eddie is too old to give a shit, wondering constantly what Wayne’s opinion will be when he ends up knocking on heaven’s door.  

When you got into your sixties, Eddie was full of gratitude, thankful that you will no longer be confused for one of his kids despite his actual kids all calling you mom. He makes fun of your vision, stealing his reading glasses constantly despite his constant insisting that you get your own pair.  

Despite the smile lines by his lips and his eyes, the sunspots decorating his skin, you still stare up at him like you did when he was forty-seven.  

Your lives were forever intertwined from the moment you saw him, from the moment he saw you. He lies down in your bed next to you for the millionth time, his hand caressing your side, pressing kisses on whiskered lips, it doesn’t occur to you to ever be anything less than woefully in love with him.     

———————-

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[lettersofgold]

-> it’s nice to have a friend — jude bellingham  

genre: fluff | warnings: drinking

word count: 3.9K

it’s nice to have a friend by taylor swift

You weren’t superstitious but you never changed the wallpaper on your phone  -  it was of the two of you. It was a rare occurrence that you and Jude were sitting still, but when you weren’t, the two of you were joined at the hip. Jude was his dad’s shadow and you followed suit, always a few steps behind the Bellinghams. Your dad was one of the referees in the Sunday League Jude’s dad played in but, more importantly, a good friend of his so he didn’t mind the pitter-patter of an extra pair of feet following him as he warmed up. His wife thought it was nice for Jude to have someone his age to play with. It became customary to hear the two of you squealing and laughing. He found it adorable. It was hard to be upset when the two of you watched him like he was a hero. 

It's the same adorable thing that you found in the photo. You and Jude couldn't have been more than five, sitting side by side on the grass in ridiculously oversized football shirts. Jude’s hand was high in the air, waving to the camera with a megawatt smile, and you sat beside him, lips pursed, and eyebrows furrowed in, mimicking the smug look Jude’s dad gave when he scored a goal. Jude’s dad would discreetly find you in the crowd when you came to a match, and you always made the meanest mug at him that you could. It would take all he had not to laugh at your tiny scowl. As the years passed, you became a staple in the Sunday league games. Everyone knew you by name, happy to entertain you and Jude,  letting the two of you bounce around the field before matches. And when the matches started, you were with Jude, bundled up and watching intently.  Your dad would be busy running the show, and his dad would be busy being the show. Jude’s parents weren’t sure who took that sweet photo of the two of you. But they kept it for years.  At some point, Jude gave that photo to keep, as you always joked you needed something with proof that you were friends when he became a star. That didn’t change nearly a decade later. 

You couldn’t remember a time not being around football, and when your father retired, your family found themselves settled near the Bellinghams. Your entire elementary school experience was a blur, but the highlights of walking home with Jude were clear in your memory when you thought of your best days as a kid. The after-school walks were your favorite part of the day, even on the days when the cold made you feel like you were a walking popsicle. Jude always listened as you rambled on about all the things you learned and how you were excited to have finally been on the winning kickball team. 

“Shoot!” You murmured. 

“What?” Jude asked, watching you rummage through your backpack. 

“I lost my gloves,” you were freezing. Without a second thought, Jude offered one of his. 

And later that night, when his mom was fussing at him about not keeping his stuff organized and together, his response had her taken aback. He explained how cold you were and how he had given you his other glove so that you could make it home without being too cold. She smiled at her husband as she recounted the story, saying it was the cutest thing, how adorable the friendship had become. She kept an eye on the two of you, noticing how you two naturally gravitated to each other. It continued into the preteen years; the two of you played on the same kids league teams. Jude always had your back - he made a point of getting revenge on any player who tried to bash you because you were a few inches smaller. He always searched for you if the crowd became too big and always asked his mom if you could tag along to any post-game activity. When middle school came, the two of you saw each other a bit less. Jude had become fully engrossed in football  and you in your various sports. And still, you two rode home - the ride being you talking and Jude listening, nodding, hanging on to every word. 

“Wanna hang out?” Jude would ask when it finally came for the two of you to depart ways. The answer was always yes, there wasn't enough time in the world for you to hang out with Jude. He was your best friend, and you were his.

“Sure, sounds like fun. We can watch old matches,” you responded. His eyes beamed with pride as you sat on the living room floor, watching highlights of England’s matches. It was electrifying each time you watched. His mom had to be tired of hearing it. Still, she never said a word about the two of you rewinding the goals  - listening to the crowd's roar probably a hundred times and warning you not to knock over any decorations  that sat neatly atop the entertainment center as you mimicked the iconic celebrations. It got to the point where the night felt empty without the two of you replaying the match before your parents called you home. 

As the years passed on and you two found yourself in high school, seeing each other less and less, you found your friendship stayed vital to sitting up on the roof of your house watching the sunset. Through your awkward teenage years, Jude had been by your side. He was your shoulder to cry on when your first crush didn’t ask you out as you had hoped. He wrapped you in his arms and told you that it was all going to work out. And it did. Your crush was soon forgotten as you prepared to go to a college preparatory school across town.  You transferred schools over the summer and dove head-first into all the academic clubs that your schedule allowed. Your parents wanted you to focus on your academic career, and you wanted to go to university in the U.S. He was there for you when you failed your first test and reassured you that you would ace the next one - offering to let you study with him so you wouldn’t feel alone. They had high hopes for you and weren’t afraid to voice them. Jude, on the other hand, was all sports all year round, and when he wasn’t training, he was hanging around your house as you tried to make sense of it all. He was the person who could get you to slow down. He took you around town to get food at your favorite place before bringing you home to sit on the roof. Most of the time, you sat in silence, letting the bustle of the neighborhood fill the air as songs played out on Jude’s phone. 

“Twenty questions?” Jude always asked. It was his way of saying he needed to talk. The sky swirled with pink, and the air had grown chilly. The coolness of the air had you pressed against Jude’s side, leaning in a bit closer to tease him about his vague answers. He had a habit of talking but saying nothing at all. 

“Gonna tell the truth?” You laughed, and he followed as he bumped your shoulder. And he did tell the truth. He felt the weight of the world on his shoulders, unsure of where to go next, and most of all, he missed having you in his classes. He missed being able to laugh with you in the hallway or the stolen looks when the teacher made a ridiculous comment. The thought of him missing you made you blush, but you didn’t overthink it; he was your best friend. Jude’s athletic abilities were becoming more evident to his dad, his coach, and even to the scouts that were coming to see him play soon. It was the most Jude had said to you in months. He usually kept his cool, but you could see the burden all over his face. The air of coolness that Jude had vanished as he spoke to you - telling you about all the academies that were sending him letters, telling him that their training ground was the best place for him to be. He wasn’t sure football would be his whole life, but everyone had seen it clearly before he did. It was making him doubt what path was the best to take. 

“Been so stressed out…” He sighed, laying his hooded head on your shoulder. 

“It’s okay, me too. You aren’t alone in this,” you assured. 

You unwrapped your arms from your knees, and as soon as your hand was free, Jude snaked his long fingers between yours. And the warmth of his hand rushed through your whole body. As the next song filled the air, you felt yourself pulling him closer - reminiscing of him holding your hand and pulling you through the football field. You were also confident he knew where he was going and would never steer you wrong. That feeling flooded you as you held his hand in yours. You were convinced that despite what was coming, he had your back.  Birthdays and boyfriends came and went. ACTs and SATs filled your summer, while football filled his. You were focused on getting a scholarship to get to your dream college. But monthly dinners with the Bellinghams stayed the same. Up on the roof with Jude, you laughed and dreamed of all the things you could be. Up on the rooftop was where he decided what team he would play football at - hundreds of miles from where you would go to school in the United States. The number of tears you cried on graduation day would have been embarrassing if it wasn't for Jude squeezing your hand and reassuring you that things would be okay, slinging an arm around your neck, and pulling you close just as he always did. And things were more than okay - despite being miles away, you two grew closer than ever before. 

He watched with care as you blossomed in college, smiling at each set of photos you texted him, laughing at the voice memos you sent ranting about the assignments you had due or the parking tickets you somehow accumulated while being in lecture. He always answered the phone when you called, loving to see you bundled up in a hoodie in the library, constantly reminding you to text him when you made it back to your dorm safely. You frequently texted him blurry photos of your TV whenever he appeared during matches - for a while, you lovingly referred to him as a gum guy; you never saw him without a piece of gum. He was there for each Facetime call during your drunken nights in an Uber back to your place, listening to you ramble on and on about whatever guy you had been seeing. None of them measured up to you, he always told you that, but he never made you feel bad. Just warned you to be careful. 

No matter how careful you were, you fell for a guy sophomore year, and he unquestionably broke your heart. To Jude, the details didn’t matter - the douche was not worth the details. He wanted more than anything to do what he always did, which was to wrap his arms around you and remind you that things would be fine.  He had never felt so helpless. He reached out to Trent. A guy on the national team he trusted to give him advice. Trent was stunned when Jude laid it all out to him. 

“This sounds like a movie, like a cliche movie,” Trent laughed. Jude chuckled, but he still felt uneasy. 

“She’s my best friend, and uh, yeah, this guy broke her heart,” Jude mumbled. 

“Just remind her of who she is, man. She sounds like she’s got her head on straight. Heartbreak will have you feeling like everything you’ve ever known was a lie. If you stay in her corner - everything will be fine.”  Jude nodded, taking it all in. Before he got up to give you a call to check in on you, Trent grabbed his arm and gave him advice that left him reeling. “And if you love her, you should tell her.”

Jude took the advice tenfold and was fully invested in your friendship. But could never bring himself to utter those dangerous three words. He helped you make sense of all your internship prospects,  pretending to be an interviewer when you needed to practice or letting you recite your speech to him repeatedly, even after matches, even when he was tired and needed to be up in the morning for a flight. He gave you morning pep talks for your finals and voice memos, telling you that no one was more fit for the internship you were applying for. 

“I wish you could come to El Clasico. It's going to be insane,” he admitted late one night. But it was selfish of him to believe that it could work out. You had far more on your plate than he did. You were halfway across the world, days away from starting an internship while balancing classes. 

“I do, too,” you mumbled, trying to hide the smile that dared to spread across your face. 

When you made it to Lluis Companys Olympic Stadium., you called Jude’s dad so many times you were sure he would be annoyed when he figured out where you were in the stadium. You managed to get lost, and trying to avoid being spotted by Jude didn’t help, but when you heard his voice booming through the suite halls, everything felt normal. You felt five years old all over again.

“Let me get a look at ya, c’mere girl!” His dad had engulfed you in a hug before you could even take a proper look at him. He grabbed you by the shoulders and eyed you carefully. A smile reached his eyes, and you felt tiny under his gaze. He was always an authoritative figure, a second dad - you were hoping he was proud of all that you had done. 

“It’s like looking at your mother, a spitting image. ” He laughed. 

“She says hi. So does my dad. He said he’s starting to forgive Jude for choosing Real, kinda.”  That comment earned a hearty laugh from Peter. He urged you to follow, turning to say his two cents about your dad. 

“Jude could play for anyone, and your dad would be unhappy. He just loves Liverpool so much.” This was true. You and Jude were like two peas in a pod, and his dad and your dad were the same. Your family was his family. You guys always had each other's backs. Nestled in a suite with his family while watching Jude play in El Clasico was surreal. When Jude scored, the crowd celebrated with him. You were sure your voice would be gone by the end of the match if tears didn’t come first. 

After the game, walking through the stadium took your breath away and put into perspective how far Jude had come in such a short time. You found yourself in awe of the field: it still elicited the goosebumps you had as a child, knowing that your best friend had his dreams realized. You looked to his dad for confirmation that you could hop onto the pitch. He gave you a thumbs up as he called Jude to see how long he would be. You had purposely ignored his messages the past two days, and you were sure he was panicking a bit. You made sure to flash your pass to security before entering the pitch. You spun around slowly, taking in all the seats that people slowly left - you remembered the last match you ever watched in person. It was with Jude and his, going to watch Birmingham play before he signed for them. Seeing nearly 56,000 people cheering on Jude today made a lump in your throat, and you willed yourself not to cry. It was a difficult task. 

“I know you're going to celebrate, but hurry. I just need to talk to you," His dad said through his phone. Jude had no clue. 

When he walked to the pitch, he almost didn’t notice - his head was in his phone, and ironically, texting you, asking if you were okay.  

“So what’s a girl gotta do to get a free jersey?” You teased, crossing your arms and giving a faux-angry look.

That hearty laugh and boyish smile sent you a feeling through your stomach you knew all too well: it was him all along. He nearly trampled you, running up to hug you. His laugh echoed through the area as he spoke.

“I can’t believe you! How did you find the time for this? You start an internship  in a few days?”

“I always have time for you, Jude. I couldn’t miss a match as amazing as this,” You paused, realizing how that had sounded as soon as it left your mouth. “I mean El Clasico? This was the best match I’ve ever seen. ” You pivoted, trying to make light of it all. You two talked about how you hid your travel plans and were helped by his dad. He was stunned but eager to show you around, replaying all the little things that happened on the pitch. 

After the ensuing celebrations, you sat on the bed in your suite. Jude, who was just as tipsy as you, insisted he return with you in your hotel room and even declined the post-match club hop from his friends. The two of you found a nice restaurant and changed into more formal clothes. You sat, laughed, talked, and ate the most delicious food until the waitress informed you that the restaurant was closing. The two of you walked hand in hand back to your hotel room until you felt like your feet could no longer handle the arch of your heels. Hopping on Jude’s back seemed silly, but he insisted. With your arms loosely around his shoulders and legs crossed against his abdomen, his hands on your bare skin made you stir crazy. You didn’t realize how touch-starved you were, how much Jude’s touch made you feel at ease, or how you wanted more. The jersey he got you sat on your lap, and you traced his gold number gingerly, unable to believe all that had happened over the years. Jude was changing in the bathroom, his voice deep as he talked about the match. He peaked around the corner, taking you in, and you smiled in return. You weren’t quite ready to end the night despite the tiredness you felt in your bones; the feeling of your bed was tempting. 

“Want another drink?” You called out to Jude, moving over to the mini bar. 

“I never say no to a drink,” he mumbled, walking up behind you. 

By the time you finished making the pair of cocktails, you had to abandon your heels - grabbing Jude’s hand to steady yourself. The release of the pressure caused you to moan, and you chose to ignore Jude, clearing his throat and stepping away from you.

Curled up against the headboard and drink in hand, you listened to Jude talk about how his favorite moments that led him here. Being this close to him made you appreciate the strength of your friendship. You would never be able to adequately explain how proud you were of him, how much you adored him. The crinkle of his eyes as he laughed and his boyish smile all brought on a set of feelings that made you realize how you loved him. You were staring at his at this point, no doubt. But you didn’t care. These moments were few and far between, and with adult life coming soon, you knew this would be just a memory one day.  Jude turned to you, scanning your face before finding your eyes. Jude had kept an eye on you all night. It was hard to put his focus on anything else. Watching you interact with his friends, his teammates, and his dad - who dragged you around as if you were his daughter - only solidified how much he wanted you to continue to be in his life, how he wanted to put you first, how he wanted to show you off as his, without having to explain that you were just friends. Of course, he loved you as a friend. It was nice to have a friend, but god, he wanted you so much more than that. 

“I couldn’t have done this without you, ya know.” He admitted. You chuckled lightly and failed at resisting the eye roll. 

“Your drunk, babe,” you muttered sarcastically. 

You noticed how much he immediately broke eye contact after you called him babe, and you wondered if you had made a mistake until he continued. 

“Uh, no, uh, I mean it. You have always had my back.” 

“And you’ve always had mine. It’s what we do, Jude.” 

“I know. I just mean there are very few people in this world who would fully understand what my life has been like. You call my bluff and don’t care about the fame. With all the pressure, you reminded me it’s all worth it. You reminded me this is what we always dreamed of.”

You took the rest of your cocktail to the head, and Jude put the glass on the side table, moving closer to you. 

“And when I think of the things I’ve wanted, you’ve always been in that picture. Along with all the stress that this life brings, you’ve been the one who hasn’t blinked twice about the difficulty of it all.” He admitted. 

“Jude-” was all you could dumbly say. You knew what he meant. You knew, and you felt it, but you could not voice it. But you felt compelled to be closer to him, cupping a hand behind his neck before sitting on your calves in front of him. You searched his eyes for a moment, and you felt that familiar feeling in your stomach. Mixed with the liquor, that feeling made you want more than simply being his best friend. It made you want to show him how much you adored him. You don’t know how long you sat in front of him, but when he finally connected his lips to yours, you were thankful that you weren’t standing. The taste of him was more than you had ever hoped; kissing him felt like you had found a missing piece of your heart. That piece you had looked for in every man before. His lips were so soft against yours, and his kiss was so slow you found yourself unable to fathom how you had gone your whole life without it. You wrapped your hands around his neck with a tighter grip, your thumb tracing up his Adam's apple slowly, softly. You had touched him so many times, but this time was different. It wasn’t with roughness or playfulness, now, it was gentle and eager. He pulled you into his lap, and for a moment, you thought he would pull away for air, but he didn’t, simply wrapping an arm around your waist. The passion behind his touch was evident, and when he finally pulled away, you were out of breath. 

“Jude, I’m only here for two days-”

“Doesn’t matter. We can stay in bed for the whole weekend, and I don’t care. You feel like home to me, and I want to spend as much time with you as I can.”

tags: @fallinforerling @808heartz

[fuckmymunson]

Could you do virgin!reader x james potter where he shows her how to touch herself? If you're comfortable ofc!

💌: Yeah but only because I feel guilty for not posting /j.

💌; 18+!, smut, minors DNI. Fingering, tit sucking 🫶🏻.

"Spread your legs wider… yeah that's it" James says with a soft smile. "Good girl" He adds pushing his glasses over his nose.

Your fingers slid up and down your slick pussy, feeling absolutely mortified by being so exposed. This was a bad idea from the beginning, but, there was something about being watched and instructed by James that was thrilling.

And lowkey… hot.

"Now circle your clit with your index finger" James commands, his smile widening when you comply almost instantly. "See? Is that easy"

The way he talks is so sweet in contrast with the filthy way he looks at you. The pressure on your clit makes you release a shaky breath, as your eyes close. You don't hear him moving, and when you open them again James is standing next to you at the edge of the bed.

"Don't close your eyes" His tone his still sweet but firm. "Speed up"

And you do. Tight, fast circles on your clit work wonders. Your body shakes with pleasure, the good feeling crashing in small waves. Your chest rises with longing and that desirable climax is building on your lower stomach.

"Put one finger in" James says in a low, husky voice, leaning closer. He is now sitting at the edge. He presses a soft kiss on your forehead, smirking against your glowing skin.

Following instructions, it doesn't even hurt when you do so. The wet sensation of your tight pussy squeezing your finger it's rather foreign, since it's probably the second time you ever fingered yourself; Something James found baffling.

"Does it feel good?" He purrs in your ear, running his fingers over your neck down to your collarbone.

His index and thumb find your hardened nipple, pinching very slightly. You moan at the feeling, stopping the movements in your pussy for a second. "Don't stop, princess" He says. You resume your movements, sliding your single digit in and out your dripping cunt. "Good girl… now add another finger"

With a slight sting of panic, you nod subtly. Your middle finger joins the first one and this time it adds the tiniest bit of stretch. The discomfort quickly melts when James replaces his fingers on your nipple with his mouth. His tongue flicks the hard nub with practiced ease, enjoying the breathless gasp that escapes your plump lips.

"See? It feels good" He says against your breast, licking it a bit more. "We need to loosen you up a bit more darling, or else my cock won't fit your tight little pussy"

His bold words send another wave of wetness between your legs, as your wrist speeds up a little. "Curve your fingers upwards princess" James then instructs, licking your nipple in the process. His hand sneaks down in between your thighs and his thumb quickly finds your clit.

"Feel that baby?" He murmurs, rubbing lazy circles over your clit. "That's your G-spot"

Then it hits you, and your whole body curves upwards. This is a whole different sensation. You moan louder than before, and James has to bite back a laugh, purposely ignoring the uncomfortable hard on he has inside his trousers right now.

"Keep going, make yourself feel good princess" James says one last time before returning your mouth to your tits and speeding up his motions over your clit.

He sucks on your tits and nipples until they're harder than ever and almost swollen, James absolutely adores your tits, he could suck on them for hours.

Your fingers move and move and every single stroke over that spot James just showed you feels like touching heaven. The wet sounds of your pussy dripping down with desire are sinful and borderline obscene. You begin to moan a bit louder, as your eyes roll to the back of your skull.

James applies more pressure on your swollen bundle of nerves, sending you to another state of pleasure that you could only imagine in your dirtiest fantasies.

The orgasm crashes into your body and every nerve without warning. Crying his name in delight you shut your eyes, the force of your climax forcing your legs to snap close and shiver. Your fingers are now covered in your release, glistening under the dim lights of the room.

"See? Good girl" He praises you, kissing your lips lovingly. James grabs your hand from between your thighs and brings it up to his mouth, licking your fingers clean and humming at the taste of you.

"Are you ready for my cock?"

Sorry for any mistakes! English is not my first language. Thank you for reading!˚ ༘♡ ⋆｡˚

[15-lizards]

What are your thoughts on Northern fashion? You mentioned in an early post that it would be different depending on the location, can you elaborate on that? I also feel like the style changed soon after Catelyn married Ned, since she would bring styles from the Riverlands and Winterfell is the King's Landing of the North when it comes to fashion

Let’s goooo 🏃🏻‍♀️

Starting in the Neck, they would definitely be more like the riverlanders in terms of clothing. It’s a fairly similar wet and muggy climate. Everything is mostly made of wool and hemp and linen. Thinner clothes for the muggy summers and warmer, thicker ones for when winter comes. Leather/animal skin shoes to keep the mud off. Also whenever I imagine the Crannogmen I imagine cloaks and hoods to stay dry in the swamps. So lots of those.

To the East and a bit father to the north, that costal area around White Harbor is colder than the Neck. So theres a lot more layers, and clothing it way thicker. Also the Manderlys are dripped tf out they got that White Harbor money. Wyman has fur lined EVERYTHING his damask coats could put Cerseis to shame. Wylla and Wynafred pull up to the Sept with lace and silk and jewels eating all the other bitches up. Also since they follow the Faith and are originally southern, this area probably follows more southern customs (fabrics, headpieces, etc)

And we finally make it to winterfell 🤸🏻‍♀️At this point everyone’s freezing their tits off, so fur lined everything. Indoors, I think they can wear lighter stuff bc of those hot springs. Even in the spring months, you can catch Cat wearing at least one shift, underdress, overdress, AND a jacket bc I feel like she never acclimated to the cold. Lots of leather and wool for everyday wear, but when Ned throws a feast or something they get to wear more fur and velvet (even Jon gets to wear a nice velvet surcoat, as a treat). Since the Starks are bordering on ascetic sometimes, there isn’t a ton of ornamentation, but Sansa likes to wear southern-ish styles as much as she can, so you can frequently find her wearing clothes from white harbor (aka I want to see Sansa in a kokoshnik)

And then even farther north we start to see Bolton and Umber territory. The conditions are even more brutal than at Winterfell and they don’t even have hot springs :/ like Sansa and Arya could probably get away with not having to cover their ears during warmer days, but the girls of last hearth and the dreadfort have no warm days. At this point clothing becomes a bit bulky and harder to move around in. Dresses are lined stiffly and almost drag the floor, and everyone is always bundled up to the neck. However materials and fabrics are cohesive and nice atp.

And by the time we nearly reach the wall, conditions are almost unbearable during the winter. Even during spring, all the villagers in the gift are wearing at least four layers (bc I hate hate hate how the show made the people at and around the wall just chill in a thin jacket when they were near a gargantuan frozen block of ice). Clothing is a lot less structured here, resources are getting sparse so most people stitch together a patchwork of whatever furs they can get their hands on. You will rarely see a person without a big hood or thick gloves on. And even though they aren’t wildlings, you can probably see a lot of animal head hoods, bc these people do NOT waste any part of the animal

[ventismacchiato]

youtuber au; when your fans ship you together

xiao x g!n reader

a/n: bye this took forever to edit and tumblr wudnt let me post but here it is!! sorry if it’s incoherent i tried

✰ you started a youtube channel in your second year in university, you were having trouble making friends and didn’t want to attend the parties. so you made the internet your safe space.

✰ after you posted a compilation of your best attacks and scores your channel blew up and it became one of your main sources of income…college was expensive!

✰ through making a channel you made several friends who are also youtubers, but there was one you only admired from afar: xiao

✰ you often competed against him to be on the trending page, but more often than not got beaten. you were sure he wasn’t aware of your existence.

✰ that was until a certain video was posted

✰ in a video of xiao reacting to fanart someone had sent him one of you two in a romantic setting, people shipped you?!

✰ you were flustered at the art and at xiao’s reaction to it, he was blooming red as he stuttered his way through the clip

✰ the entire twitter timeline was in flames and you were drowning in the attention, not sure what to do with the increasing amount of subscribers you were receiving

✰ you were scrolling through the trending tag #XIAOYN, swallowing down your nerves as you saw more and more fanart of you two and edits of every time you mentioned xiao and vice versa you almost choked when you saw him in your dms

✰ you instantly tweeted in shock when he followed you back, and how could you not?! you were ecstatic at the thought of xiao wanting to collaborate with you

✰ you were a tad bit scared to talk to him in person though

✰ you both texted a time and date to meet up, making sure you were both free of classes and exams. what you didn’t expect was for him to make conversation with you up until the date for you two to meet up arrived

✰ it was a little flirty, but you just thought you were looking too deep into it. xiao was just being friendly!

✰[a collection of your texts the past week]

art: heehoocoffee twt

✰ when the day finally comes for you two to meet you’re a bundle of nerves, sweating through your shirt as you ring the bell on his door

✰ you were ashamed to admit you had to hype yourself up for five minutes before pushing the button.

✰ it doesn’t help that he’s looking as put together in his videos when he opens the door to greet you

✰ “it’s nice to finally meet you,” he drawls, gesturing you inside. you tried not to gawk as you followed him to his filming room, coming up with things to say once the conversation picked up again as you followed him like a lost puppy

✰ but you didn’t have to worry about awkward silence because once you both sat down and the cameras flicked on your personalities meshed together well

✰ xiao was on the quieter side, so you took it upon yourself to do most of the talking while xiao carried you throughout the game. you shared a laugh whenever either of you died or when you made a comment on some of the more unhinged dialogue

✰ it was some of the most fun you’ve had and after an hour you guys wrapped the video up, but continued to play together for a while. he joined your world and helped you finish some quests and you joined his to steal some of his plants. you even visited the heart island together <3

✰ and afterwards, just like xiao had promised, you both went out for dinner together. it felt an awful lot like a date, he offered to pay and pulled out your chair. he even called ahead for reservations. if that wasn’t enough even the waiter assumed you two were a couple from your matching outfits and asked for a photo after realizing who xiao was.

✰ even if it wasn’t an official date, you felt a coil in your stomach pull tautly whenever your name was said from his lips, it was addicting.

✰ the video was posted a few days later and it was instantly trending #1 and stirred commotion on twitter and tiktok, edits of you two laughing and looking at each other went viral and you couldn’t help but save all of them

✰ you two continued to text and he’d always request to join your world if you were both online at the same time, a facetime request appearing right after so you didn’t have to use the glitchy chat option

✰ constant nights of abandoning your homework to stay up gaming with him became a routine

✰ you two continued to do collabs consistently for a few months and you couldn’t fight back the crush you had, choosing to ignore it rather than pursue

✰ your feelings went unsaid, even if sometimes it seemed like they were reciprocated. but maybe that was just you seeing what you wanted to see.

✰ that was until a few months into your friendship something slipped out of your mouth as you went to end a stream with him

✰”this was fun but i have to go now,” you pouted at your camera as your chat spammed frowning emojis, you scheduled your fans to raid xiao’s stream before giving them a wave, “bye xiao, love you!” and by the time you ended the stream you’d realized what you’d done

✰ xiao’s stream was still going and he went frozen for a second, the chat was asking him if his connection was lost but he shook his head. you were this close to throwing your keyboard across the room when xiao picked up his phone, typing something in. your phone starting ringing…

✰ “are you honestly going to leave without letting me say goodbye?” xiao asked, looking at the camera as he talked to you over the phone. the chat went wild with emotes

✰ “sorry…” you weakly mumbled into the phone as you tried to not look at your screen. it was flustering.

✰ xiao turned off his microphone, making sure his stream couldn’t hear him before he continued, “i love you too, y/n.” he quietly spoke, almost as red as you, “didn’t think i’d have to confess that in front of millions of people for you to realize it.”

✰ he ended the stream soon after and you both stayed on call for an hour, circulating around the question before you both made it official. which ofc course means changing your twitter bio

a/n: hope you enjoyed! editing these photos was fun even tho i ran out of room lol