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jjungkooksthighs · 4 years

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Yearn for You | jjk (m)

◊ Pairing: vice president and boyfriend!jungkook x secretary and girlfriend!reader x ceo!jimin ft. co-founder!taehyung

◊ Genre: fluff and smut / established relationship / office au

◊ Rating: 18+ / nsfw

◊ Word Count: 31.5k (honestly another whopper but are we surprised?)

◊ Summary: As a secretary, it is not proper to engage in intimate affairs with your superior, who is the one you are meant to be at their beck and call for in the business world. The world, however, means very little to Jungkook, the vice president of Bangtan Industries and more importantly, your boss and boyfriend of three years. In all that time, he has never cared for hiding your passionate affections for one another and tonight will be no different after a particularly amusing day of teasing you and watching you fall prey to your desires for him that he revels in amidst his fervid love for you. In that love that has shifted his entire globe in how completely and wholly he has fallen for you, he will do anything to make you, his beloved girlfriend, happy. So, after some efforts to toy with you, he allows you to have some playtime with a very special friend whilst he delights himself in your entertaining little game.

◊ Warnings: hard dom!jungkook, possessive/jealous!jungkook, big cock!jungkook, sub!reader, sub!jimin, lots of dirty talk, pet names, lots and lots of teasing, praise, fingering, grinding, thigh riding, phone sex (taehyung listens in on the threesome), masturbation (male and female), cunnilingus/oral sex, unprotected sex (reader has birth control implant in her arm and Koo hates condoms lbr), breast/nipple play, biting (there’s a bunch), marking through hickeys, sucking, pussy stretching, rough and possessive sex, anal sex, double penetration (this is a jikook threesome with reader y’all), cock riding, cock warming, begging, muscle kink, scratching, light choking, cum feeding/eating, manhandling, pinning down, multiple orgasms, wet and messy sex, degradation kink (koo calls you a slut/whore for him only like two or three times each), orgasm control, orgasm denial, squirting, creampie, multiple orgasms, edging, exhibitionism, voyeurism, daddy kink, reader goes into subspace for a little bit, mild bdsm, anal fingering, anal sex, vaginal sex and aftercare (from jungkook)

◊ A/N: Gosh, this one is finally here after two weeks! This fic is not like anything I have ever written before, but I know that there will be people out there that like this! It’s very hot if I do say so myself and it was such a joy to write in my lust-filled craze that I’ve been inflicted with in the wake of D’ICON Jungkook (even though that particular look is not part of this fic lmao). I blame Jungkook’s overwhelming sexiness that always has me ready to drop to my knees for this fic because honestly it’s all his fault.

Oh, and I know some of my readers have been waiting for COC, but because I have been tight on money, I decided to write this as a commission for the wonderful @jeonsjiddies. I hope you like it, babe! Oh, and that lovely banner you see above? That is courtesy of the fantastic @nightshadevinter. I thank the both of you for your continued support of my work and do hope that you enjoy reading this as much as I was entertained by writing it.

As always, guys, please let me hear your thoughts on my work! There’s nothing that is more gratifying as an author than to get feedback on what you spent so much of your time creating! Finally, if Tumblr is crashing because the fic is so long, you can find the AO3 link right here !

The day’s hours wane amidst the sun that sets behind you as you watch the last of your coworkers slip through the elevator doors of the twenty-story building, your heels clicking against the marbled tiling of the highest floor in the corporate property belonging to Bangtan Industries, the most well-known architectural firm in the industry.

In one hand you have papers fresh out of the printer, your eyes trained on the small font that outlines the topics of discussion and areas of interest for tomorrow’s meeting as you skim through them. As the secretary of both the vice president and the CEO of the company, you had always been the mediator of their affairs, which meant that you never had a moment of rest while at the office.

Because your charge was attending to the ever incessant happenings between your bosses as the two most high-ranking individuals in the company, you never had a moment of respite (not that you minded). The constant hustle and hullabaloo that was dealt in their wake left you in an ever flowing state of motion and you liked the grind. It meant you never were bored by their occupancies at work, for they always ensured that you had something to busy yourself with.

The fact that your CEO looked to have been brought to life by an artist’s brush in his beauty while your vice president (and consequently, your boyfriend after some years together) appeared to have been sculpted by the gods in his handsomeness surely was a bonus, however, for whenever your sight would begin to blur because of long hours spent drafting and writing across your computer screen, a simple glimpse at either of them had your visage instantly clearing in the clarity of attraction that perceived itself between your legs when they’d stare back at you in stolen moments of passing.

As you scavenge the paperwork for any errs that you may have missed, you don’t notice the silhouette the crosses the cubicles hedging the floor as you navigate through the maze of them, your irises narrowing as you huff in the realization that you forgot to properly align the addendum toward the end of the files in your hurry to finish and be out of the office after six o’clock per the orders of your CEO.

When you cross the threshold to your office, the walls of glass that are curtained with silvery gold silk are opened to allow the sun to bathe you in its comforting heat that settles warmly over your stiff bones as you drop the paperwork atop your desk and rest your hand on it as you let your eyelids fall over your irises with the sun that coaxes you to luxuriate in its golden rays in a momentary lapse of silent solace from the toils of the day’s efforts.

Behind you, a shadow cloaks you before a deep, low-timbre voice swathes you in its hold as it teases, “Enjoying the afternoon sun, baby? You should really head on home right about now, hmm? It’s getting late,” his eyes trail down your back and drop to the swell of your ass that strains against the small, short pencil skirt it is pushed up against before he continues, “We wouldn’t want the boss to get mad because you broke rules and stayed past six o’clock, now would we?”

“Vice President Jungkook,” you squeak, his voice stringing you up and twining you around the fingers that-after many years of dreaming about them- now touch you in your most intimate sectors of your body in his unceasing relentlessness of rapturous intent that drive him to find himself between your legs every night, morning and afternoon that he could entertain. You had once wondered how a man could possibly rival an incubus in how he seemed to thrive with the more that you gave him and before him, you’d been abstinent as a nun. He had quickly changed that once you’d succumbed to his dark promises that had been wrapped in sin’s lace as he’d covered you with them with a tongue too long to be anything but devilish. It’s been years since you first got together, but he still renders you to be in need of an exorcist in the spirit of sex that has possessed your soul in its binding to him.

You put a hand to your chest in startlement before you turn to face him to go on, “I didn’t hear you come in. Is there something you wanted to discuss? I just was going to finish up Jimin’s,” you clear your throat under his constricting gaze that constringes you for a battle of air as you correct yourself, “the CEO’s itinerary for Wednesday after fixing up the topic outline for tomorrow’s meeting with the board of directors.”

It was amazing how after several years together, he could still whisk your breath away from you with one glance.

Your superior hums, “Mmm, busy girl as always, aren’t you?” He takes a step inside your office, the sun’s light beams a stark contrast to the dark suit he wears that is colored black like the night sky, the silvery stitching in thin lines along his coat shining like streaks of falling stars in the movement as he suavely exhorts, “Did you happen to have time to send to me my travel arrangements for the week? Make sure you clear time for yourself to attend the gala with me on Thursday. I meant to tell you that earlier when you were feeding me my lunch in my office,” he confides lowly as two hands grip the edge of the chair that sits in front of your desk while he carries on, “Thank you for that, by the way. My hand was so sore from constructing the miniature model of the new tower we are building. I’m so glad you were there to assist me in erecting it and that you could sate my hunger earlier today. I was ravenous, you see.”

Your cheeks flame in remembrance of the way his deft, long tongue had wrapped around the fork you’d presented to him, the creamy alfredo sauce coating his pink lips suspiciously similar to the cum he’d expertly and easily draw out of you every time he ravaged you or the essence you’d taint yourself with during the forbidden hours of the night when you touched yourself to fantasies of him in the midst of his absence due to the longer hours that he was required to work at the firm.

You’d never heard anyone groan from ‘the succulent taste of the meal’ as your vice president had, but you’d be damned if you didn’t enjoy every delicious sound that had dripped from his mouth as he’d opened his lips to welcome you when you’d draped the noodles across his tongue.

Needless to say that after that particular encounter, you’d had to escape to the bathroom for about twenty minutes to relieve the ache between your thighs that had garnished and cooked your insides for him until you burned with the need to release the steam that wouldn’t escape you without his guiding hand.

In all of that, you’d been entirely oblivious to the two sets of eyes that had been fixated on you while they watched you with utter absorption. With the visage of your cheeks that had reddened from the blood that had rushed to them and the slow, uneven walk you’d taken back to your office amidst your thighs that stung from your efforts, it had been all too apparent that you hadn’t really gone to use the restroom for the purpose it was intended to be used for.

Jungkook himself had smirked at that and when his irises had switched away from you and to his own boss, the CEO, whom had his own workspace directly next to his own, Jimin’s teeth had gnawed on his lower lip until you disappeared behind the curtains of your office before resuming with the Skype conference with one of the company’s chairmen.

With your head full of your illicit indecency that the man standing in front of you now had caused earlier, you try to fight past the fluttery feeling in your chest as you splutter, “U-um, well, it was no problem at all!” You croak as one of his brows lift in amusement as you fidget under his all-encompassing stare to blurt, “Always a, uh, pleasure helping you, Jungkook.”

Truly, you don’t know how you managed to acquire a degree in English with how eloquence seems to suddenly be a foreign concept to your mind, but your vice president seems to be wholly unbothered and oppositely entertained by it as one side of his lips lift while he cocks his head to the side to divulge, “A pleasure indeed, Y/N,” his voice dips as he comes ever closer to you, his palms now splaying over your desk as his long, iron colored tie swings forward to dangerously dangle close to your own hand that twitches in the want to grasp it and pull him forward until his lips have nowhere to go but on your own as he urges, “You always take care of me so well. I want to return the favor to you, but I just,” his irises lower from your eyes to your mouth as you draw your lip between your teeth and when they rise back up once more, he professes, “can’t put my finger,” he drums his index and middle fingers along the timber of your desk, “on how I want to repay the favor.”

Memories of last night filter through your mind like an echoing song as they tune your brain to the way he’d pummeled into you, your legs thrown over his shoulders as he’d ravished you after you’d begged him to let you ride his face and you’d dared to sit back and grab his cock in the midst of his attentions to your pussy. You’d screamed through the delicious pleasure that was too much to bear and he’d been more than eager to leave you a mess of limbs and cum on the bed in his wake as he’d fucked you so crazedly, his efforts guided by the need to see you ruined with his seed a success in how mercilessly he’d given it to you and how greedy you’d been to take it all.

Heat floods your core at the anything but holy thoughts, for your boyfriend surely became a demon in bed that you would gladly fall to your knees to be taken by over and over again.

“You,” you swallow past the lump in your throat and have to remind yourself to keep your legs locked together lest you succumb to the urge to rub them against each other as you give a choked answer, “you don’t have to do anything. My salary is payment enough.”

“Oh, but is it? Is there nothing else I could give you to show you how much I appreciate you?” He looms closer, his raven’s wing hued hair kissing at the tips of his cheeks while tenderly embracing the sides of his forehead amidst the hands of oils that part it down the middle and slick it in their essence as he inquires, “Is there not some kind of bonus that you desire? Say it and it is yours, my beloved secretary. After all,” his eyes glint tellingly, “you’ve always been such a good girl for me. I want to reward you, beautiful. Will you let me?”

“Jungkook,” your cheeks heat up as you whimper, “Please.”

You try not to think about the implications of what your response might lead one to believe, but under his heady gaze, there’s little you can do but let your words tumble from your mouth.

He’s called you beautiful a number of times whilst in the presence of other clients and coworkers and each time, your heart had done a flip against your ribcage. The fifth month after he’d become your boyfriend, you’d once questioned him why he called you that and he’d simply shrugged his shoulders before offering, “I should think you would know, pretty girl. It’s because I find you attractive.”

You’d gone home that night after he’d vowed to bring you your favorite takeout food to make up for having to stay longer at the firm and you’d hugged him with the dumbest smile stretching across your features before turning to leave while he’d smiled fondly at you as you’d skipped like a lovestruck teenager all the way back to your apartment and wondered all night long what he might have been doing while you’d put on your favorite k-drama and bundled yourself up in blankets for your nightly binge of the show, your thoughts void of anything and everything that was not Jungkook in your straying attention from your tv session that was entirely your boyfriend’s fault.

When he’d come home to you that night, he’d made sure you victualed atop his lap while you’d fidgeted with an ulterior motive leading your body, your moans of enjoyment for the soup he spooned to you all too loud and drawn out amidst your purposeful movements that had been quick to have him hardening beneath you and before you’d known what had happened, he’d thrown you atop the table and fucked you well into the morning hours.

Now, in the silence that has seeped through the office in the lack of occupancy that is limited only to you and your two bosses, the word has an entirely sinful meaning in the deepness he’s pillaged it with.

When he darkly chuckles, mischievousness and everything that promises lasciviousness colors the sound as he pushes off your desk and stalks damningly closer to you, his much taller frame engulfing your own as he hovers before you to lowly inquire, “What do you want, beautiful? Say it,” he steers himself around the desk until he stands in front of you, anticipation welling up within you as he wraps one arm around you until one palm is pressed against the small of your back and in one fluid motion, he streams your body against his, your breasts cascading along his chest as you suck in a breath at the rocky plane of muscle laid over him even through layers of clothing, your hands-as if siphoned forth to him-planting themselves along his pectorals as he utters, “Tell your boss how bad you want it.”

“Vice President,” your breath hitches when another hand boldly finds purchase along your ass before it slides down to cup your thigh as he pulls your leg up and around him so that it is wrapped around his slim, hourglass waist as you fight the mists of lust that cloud your abdomen as you try, “we c-can’t. This isn’t…it’s not proper.”

“Do you think I give a damn about niceties when you’re fucking tempting me with how short that little skirt that barely covers your ass is?” He growls as he ducks his head, his lips ghosting along the sensitive junction just under your ear as the hand on your thigh trails upward, his digits just grazing your panties as you shakily sigh out while his other hand dives under your blouse before he husks, “Do you think it is proper to go in the bathroom and fuck yourself with your fingers after you fucking fed me with them? Huh?”

“You were watching me, vice president?” You gulp at the realization that he knew, “I thought I had been discreet…”

“Such a dirty little girl,” he muses as the fingers he’s snuck under your V-necked linen shirt run along your skin in languid circles before he blows a puff of warm air against your neck, your skin prickling in his wake as he noses at your jaw, “Did you honestly think that when you went to the ladies room for twenty fucking minutes that I timed on my watch that I didn’t know what you were doing?” His lips brush against the column of your neck as you let your head fall back in silent offering to him as he goes on, “Did you honestly believe that when you walked out of there and wafted the smell of sex across the office that I couldn’t fucking tell what you were doing in there as you fucked yourself while you thought about me?”

Caught as you are in his hold, you cannot escape the mortification that drops like an anchor to your shoulders and then down through the bowels of your body in its infinite heaviness at the realization that he’s got you red-handed. Embarrassment is what has your lids closing in your inability to see the source of your lust swim in the knowledge of the waters of your sins that streamed from him.

Despite it all, his digits draggle along your southward lips as he rubs them against your pussy, your walls clenching around nothing as he groans at the wetness that begins to coat your panties as he coos, “Fuck, you’re so naughty, babygirl. Look at that pretty cunt cry for me because it’s been neglected without the only one that really satisfies it,” his finger pulls the ruined cloth away from you and suddenly the hand that had been exploring the ridges of your spine dips in its exploration to pool around your hip and with a dangerous flash of his eyes, he pulls you down over a semi-hardening bulge between his legs, a moan slipping from your lips as he impels you against his member to grunt, “You like this, baby? Does it turn you on to know that I’m aware that you got off to me in the bathroom? Would’ve been so fucking hot to see you get fucked with your fingers, baby. God, it’s making me hard just thinking about it.”

His dirty words soil you in as he covers you with them just as tangibly as you’d been spoiled by your own juices, your brain short circuiting in the jolts of heat he wracks you with as his touch thunders over your skin that begins dewing with the beads of sweat in the high temperature that he flusters you with.

From the very first time you’d seen him years ago in the shabby little bar where time had seemed to stop as you’d locked eyes with him while he passed you by, you had been under his spell and now, as he holds you to him with desire simmering in his gaze, you’re struck with that sensation of beating wings in your chest as you let him finally lay his lips over the junction of skin along your collarbone, the pillow of his lips bedding themselves over you lightly as the fingers of one of your hands curl inward into his shirt in your effort to hold onto something to ground yourself against the lightness lifting at your insides as you manage the only word that your mind can possibly internalize in the midst of your fading cognition with a whisper, “Jungkook.”

Your vice president smirks against your skin as he bedecks you in his osculation. Saliva is left in his aftermath as featherlight kisses are flitted along your collarbone and when the hand on your waist pushes you down onto him to urge your hips into moving, you whine as he combines this with the stroke of his fingers at your steadily swelling bud of nerves that gardens the flower of your pussy.

“Answer to me, beautiful,” he brings you both back until his back hits the glass wall, his hips instantly rolling into yours as he coaxes your other leg to join your other around his waist before he flicks a long, hot tongue along your mastoid that cords your neck as he declares, “If you want me to fuck you like I know you’ve been craving for me to,” he mouths against you, “Tell me how much you fucking want me, beautiful. Let me hear how badly you need me to take you because you can’t possibly be pleased by anyone else, pretty girl.”

Heat swirls in your belly as he lazily draws shapes into your clit, his member hardening impossibly more for you when you grind yourself against him while you wrap both arms around him to brace yourself as you hump him like an animal in rut, the hand he’d had on your hip quickly cupping your ass to hold you up while he stares hotly at you.

Knowing that you will face punishment in the bedroom later if you do not do as he asks, you try to wrack your brain for the string of words that you need to scramble out of their jumblement amidst the need that throws them into a whirl as you breathe, “Want you, Jungkook. I want you so badly. Please, let me-“

“Oh, but do you think you deserve it, Y/N? Do you believe you should be allowed to have my cock when you denied me for so long today?” He taunts, his teeth taking your earlobe between them as he continues, “Do you know how long I’ve wanted to put my cock inside that little cunt of yours? How many times I thought about bending you over this damned table and fucking you into oblivion?” You gasp in the risqué admission as he sweeps you over him, his wrist disentangling from your clit to pull your skirt up so that he has no obstructions while he shamelessly ogles your dripping cunt before you lower yourself down on him to earn a cautionary hiss from him, “Watch it, beautiful. If you can’t control yourself, I’ll take you right fucking here in the middle of your office. If I can wait all day to finally have the chance to fuck you again after you denied me, so can you.”

"Why did you, ah-" he slots one thick thigh under you, a cocksure grin spreading over his features as he helps you thrust yourself over the thatch of muscles lining every inch of his leg, your voice cracking when both hands clutch your ass as he pulls you down and over him to brokenly whisper, "Why did you take all day to finally fuck me, sir-" your lips are suddenly captured in a heated kiss, his mouth roughly claiming yours as your head falls back while he flicks his tongue along the roof of your mouth to claim every bit of you before he pulls away to leave you heaving as you try again- "I-I wanted you to come to me earlier when I was in the b-bathroom,” your breaths are labored from the air he’s thieved from you to leave only your wanton admission, “wanted you to give me your cock and t-take me against the wall while I begged you to let me have your cum inside me...”

"Such a little slut for me, aren’t you? You didn’t have enough cock this morning when I stuffed it between your hungry little lips and fucked your face? You know," he groans when one of your hands slides down his defined chest as you drag it to its destination before settling over the fully hardened member as you gyrate your hips atop him, " I taught you that when you want something, you ask, yeah? Could’ve had what you needed if you’d just been obedient and used that fucking mouth to request a good fuck, but instead, I had to use my fucking hand to imagine it was your pretty little cunt that my cock was in," you whimper at his confession, your fingers curling over his member as you swirl your hips up and down his leg in a frenzy, your core heating like a wildfire when his eyes darkly flash, " You're going to suffer as I did, pretty girl. You're going to feel how fucking desperate you made me while I jacked off to pictures and videos I recorded of you when you were innocently batting your eyes at me from all the way over here while I was in my office with my hand on my cock."

“Jungkook,” you whine, “I don’t know if I can take that. Not agai-“

"Oh, but you will, baby. You will do what I say because I'm the fucking boss, yeah?" One hand gropingly lifts from your ass to grasp at a bra-clad tit, a whimper falling from your lips when he squeezes hard and with his other hand, his fingers sink into your side as he pivots your waist down on his thigh, his muscles jumping at you and catching at your core as he urges you over him and in response, your fingers constrict around him to earn a hiss, "God, it was too easy to make you fall apart on me. Come on, baby," he challenges as he takes your lip between his teeth to nip at you, "Show me what you've got, yeah? Fuck yourself on me. You have sixty-nine seconds to finish before I pull you off me and go back to my office."

With his demand, you’ve no choice but to obey and instantly, you bear your hips down on him with renewed fervor, the firm and solid thew tautening beneath you as clamp him between your legs while you sway yourself back and forth like a seesaw, a moan stuttering from you when he pushes aside your shirt to grip one breast in his hand, his digits expertly rolling your nipple between them as you teeter precariously atop him, your waist stammering amidst his ministrations when slams his mouth against yours once more, his tongue thrusting inside your warmth as he captures you under his osculation and possessively wraps his wet muscle around yours as he steals your breath away.

When he pulls away, you chase him with growing hunger that latches itself to you, your mouth connecting to his in a softer kiss as you kittenishly lick at him while he kneads at your breast.

Your core clenches around nothing when he pairs this with a harsh propulsion of his thigh into your cunt as his sinewy skin slides deliciously along your clothed cunt, the tingling friction finding every inch of your pussy as you avidly grind against him.

You compress your fingers over his rock hard cock that has your salivary glands producing excess spittle in want of him and when you dare to start rubbing him there while you busily buss his jawline that you think might cut you in its sharpness if you aren’t careful, that’s when he growls out, “God, you’re such a fucking minx,” he angles his head back to welcome your lips against him, “Time’s ticking, princess. You have ten seconds.”

“Jungkook, please, I…I’m almost there,” you cry out, “Please don’t leave me,” you blurt as you bounce on his thigh rapaciously while you fervidly litter his neck with the stains of your crimson lipstick, “I’ll do anything,” you beg as he smirks while he watches you with interest, “I’ll let you do anything you want to me later, just…please, let me cum. I’ve thought about this all day long, thought about you fucking me all day long,” you blabber as your pride is burned away by his searing gaze while he pushes his thigh impossibly deeper into you as you whine out, “let me finish, sir.”

Perhaps it the fact that your boyfriend is quite honestly the hottest man you’ve ever seen walk the earth (really, how could you ever be satisfied with anyone else when your boss and boyfriend is a literal incarnate of sin and sex) or maybe it is because he’d edged you this morning in the shower, for his much longer and larger fingers had played with you like you were his favorite toy and that had you quickly winding up around him. Despite your cries, he’d not let you come after disobeying his orders to speak after he’d all but fucked your brains out following round four of your sexual escapades with each other on the kitchen table, the couch and the wall and then the bed. Maybe it is both of those, but you've never been so quick to rile up and Jungkook, the one who has his strings attached to you like you’re his damned puppet, well… it is easy for you to see why you are at the edge of the precipice he dangles you over with his strong threads.

He observes with amusement the way that you work yourself avariciously over him, your lips insistent in lavishing him with your attentions as you line his throat with the red coloring you’d put on your mouth until he’s decorated with it like a painting you’d artfully drawn yourself. He lets the seconds pass beyond what he’d told you, delight lighting at his eyes as he sees the relief wash through yours in the slow surety that streams in your irises beside it in your thoughts that he’s going to allow you to find your end.

It’s when your thighs begin tremble from the labors of your efforts and a low pant starts to push itself between your lips as you undulate yourself against him that the large hand on your breast twirls your nipple between deft fingers, fire flaring through your core as you moan out his name.

“That’s it, baby. Say it louder for me,” he groans as he bucks his hips against you, a devious glint in his eye gleaming at you that only has you burning hotter for him as he husks, “Let Jimin know who you’re fucking yourself like a dirty little girl on.”

Your end is near and you’re so close to plummeting into your end, but he holds you from it and refuses to let you fall into it. Not yet, anyway.

“Jungkook,” you whimper, “touch me.”

Your boss hums, “Mmm, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” He pinches your nipple only to cause you to squirm, the slight pain shooting sparks down to your pussy that clenches for him. He growls at this, for the flutter of your southward lips against his thigh has his cock throb beneath your fingers that still stroke him and suddenly, his hand is gone from your tit and instead finds its place in your hair that he clutches and yanks you forward with so that your chest is pressed flush against his front as his eyes flash darkly and he hisses, “Too bad, baby. I let you fucking use me so I could see how desperate I could make you while you tried to get yourself off. Now that I have you,” he torturously extricates his thigh from between yours and you all but sob at the loss of him as he sets you down on the floor, the hand in your hair wrenching forward until he crashes his lips to yours and sucks your tongue between his teeth as if he wants to devour you and all the while, the hand on your hip sidles down and, while he’s got your eyes falling closed, they shoot open as you moan into his mouth when he cups your sex, his middle finger prodding your hole and when he pulls them both away, carnality dilates his pupils as he declares, “I’m going to make you my fucking whore.”

Air evades you, but the fire lighting up in your core sustains the need for him as you attach your hands to his shirt to hold on for dear life in the midst of your weakened, feeble knees that have lost their strength in how much of it he’s sapped from you in your kisses. You shakily exhale what little of it remains as you bury your head in the crook of his neck, your shyness starting to return now that the haze of hormones clouding your brain is gradually rescinding in the lack of his touch.

Breathlessly, you whimper, “Need you now, Jungkook. Please-“

You’re effectively silenced when he presses his pointer finger to your lips to quiet you, your labored suspirations wrapping warmly around his digit as he croons, “Shhh…I know, babygirl. I’m so fucking hard for you right now,” his fingers enclose your wrist to coax you to put more pressure on his member and you do, your eyes fixing on how much smaller your hand is compared to his own as you urges you to run your hand back and forth over him as he groans, “Feel that? That’s all for you, baby. God, that little mouth felt like heaven around me this morning. Did I tell you that? Did I mention how beautiful you looked with tears falling from those pretty eyes? Fuck, you were so cute with spit dripping from those lips while you sucked me off like a needy little slut.”

You choke a strangled sound out at that while you burrow your face deeper into his neck as if to escape from the filth he wants to dirty you with, but you don’t get too far with the way that his finger taps expectantly on your lip as he prods at you and you need no further instruction than that as you tentatively open your mouth to welcome the digit he promptly slides in as he praises, “There you go, babygirl. Such a good girl even when I deny you your orgasm. You know you deserve to have it withheld from you, don’t you?”

You lick at his finger in answer as you breathe, “Yes, sir. I’ve been bad to you today, haven’t I? I’m sorry,” you try a new tactic in effort to release some tension that has coiled into a knot deep in your belly as you whisper, “Will you let me make it up to you, handsome? Want your big, fat cock inside me so badly…”

You let your words be swallowed within your mouth as you close it around him only to suction your wet warmth around his digit, a grunt quick to release itself from him as his pupils blow wide at the sinful sight of his finger disappearing into your mouth. His mouth parts at the lewd sounds that escape your mouth as you take him inside you, your tongue flicking against him with precision as you lock your eyes on his and in them he sees the kindling of desire that smokes and hazes them over.

“Fucking hell, Y/N,” he watches as you innocently blink at him with your head still nestled onto his shoulder and when you swallow around him, that has him twitching under your hand that continues to palm at him, his fingers tightening around your wrist as he husks, “Are you that fucking gone for me? Shit, baby. If that’s how you are with just my finger, imagine how you’ll be with my fucking cock shoved in your pretty pussy.”

“Want it,” you mumble around his finger as you lave at his digit,” want you so much. Please, Jungkook, take me.”

“So desperate for me. Just how I like you, babygirl. If you want me that bad,” he pries his finger from your mouth, both of you watching the string of spittle that follows him before breaking off and only then does he lean forward, his lips just shy of touching yours as he commands, “Come to me in five minutes. I need to have a quick word with one of the representatives of the company for funding and then I’ll have the rest of the night to fucking ravage you, yeah?” He pushes off the window while he drags your hand away from him and you can’t deny the cold that is left in his absence when he moves away from you and you pout because of it while tucks your skirt back down.

He grins at the way your knees buckle and, responsively, he helps you to sit down. One tattooed hand finds its place on your hip while the other splays possessively over your abdomen as he walks you backward and once he’s got you sitting, you catch the way his hands linger as if he doesn’t want to let you go, but with an imploring look you tell him more than your words would convey as you place one of your own hands over his while you urge him to stay with a small squeeze of your fingers over his.

He’s utterly gone for the way you adorably purse your lips as if to plead with him and it doesn’t go unnoticed by your boss that you whine as he pulls away to chuckle to himself while he strides away from you. In his absence, your pussy yearns for him as it deposits even more of your taint into your ruined panties in his tormenting separation from you.

By now, he’s at your door and before he disappears, he turns with his back still facing you to add, “Oh, and one more thing,” his irises dip down as he gestures to a dampened, wet patch on his pant leg where you’d been sat atop of earlier before he peers back up at you with a hooded gaze, “If I find out you finished yourself off in here without me,” his voice becomes brusque as he deepens it,” The only thing that cunt will have jammed in it for the next few months will be the vibrator you brought to work last week.”

“How did you,” you clear your throat amidst the clog that has clumped itself in a ball within the middle of it,” you heard about that? You saw that?”

“I’ve heard the whispers that all the women believe they are too quiet for me to detect, but you,” He flicks a sculpted brow up as embarrassment mutes you, your cheeks coloring themselves red as the remnants of lipstick that still remain on your mouth as he pokes his tongue against his cheek in a sight that has you instantly wanting to get on your knees once more for him as he says, “you’re such a slave to your desire for me that you just can’t keep that little mouth shut, that you just can’t help but to tend to that needy little cunt because of me,” his eyes scintillate with sin, “you thought I didn’t notice you take that vibrator to the supply closet with you after I had you massage my thighs that you like to tell the other women that you love so much, but I did, baby,” he watches you rub your thighs together, a pained sound resounding from your lips as he finishes, “You put on such a show for me on the camera I have installed in there. God, you have no idea how bad I wanted to fuck you senseless while you tried to stop yourself from calling my name.”

Your jaw just about drops at his admission, mortification causing you to wrap your arms around yourself as if that will make you smaller against the very large realization that he knew of your feral treachery and with a devastating grin, he leaves you a heaping wet mess on your chair as you try to figure out how one man could be responsible for turning you into a human succubus that needed sex with him as much as you needed air to breathe for your body.

In the silence that follows your boyfriend and boss, all that can be heard are the perpetually unrelenting ticks of a small wooden clock atop your desk. They chink to the uneven beats of your heart that pounds against your chest as you clutch at it to count the breaths that elude your contracting lungs against the tethers that Jungkook himself had put there.

Trying to focus now would be like attempting to look away from your boyfriend while he’s stark naked and lounging on the living room recliner in readied receival of you after being away from him for the three-week long and very lonely secretarial seminar that Jimin sends you to every now and then to keep you sharp in your duties that you were expected to carry out as the unofficial manager of both the CEO and Vice President of Bangtan Industries.

It just doesn’t compute in your mind that has gone haywire in the wake of Jungkook that you can do anything but to keep your attention fixated on the little circular face of the clock, its spindly hands moving far too slow for your liking as you try not to think too much on the teardrops your sex cries in its grief of losing him. When you make the mistake of shifting and sibilate at how drenched you really are in the movement, you look away at your soaked skirt to find it ruined where your sex sits, a groan coming from you as you battle the urge to just bring one or two fingers to your clit to water the fire of need burning there.

“Jungkook,” you whisper to no one in particular, “You fucking win.”

Heat still washes you through in the fluidity and you clench your hands into fists atop the table as the waves of it try to ebb your hand down to relieve you of the need that swelters within your core and you are quick to lay your forehead against the desk in need of a colder landscape to battle the Sahara desert’s scorch that has manifested itself in your belly.

“That’s what I thought, doll. Better not touch yourself, baby,” the familiar voice of your boyfriend chimes through the multiline phone system sat next to your computer, your eyes widening as your back straightens and you sit up with widened eyes, your hand quickly jerking away from your womanhood as you stare surprisedly at the red blinking button that signifies that presently, you are being recorded. He must have turned it on when he’d been sitting you down and, like a siren, you’d been entirely lulled by his distraction.

“Jungkook, I-“

“You don’t get to make excuses when I heard you fucking moan with how badly you must want to use your fingers to relieve yourself of me. It’s hard, isn’t, baby?” You can see the shit-eating smirk he gives you even from the other end of the line as he sonorously says, “I would advise that you don’t try anything without me, love. Because if you do,” his voice hardens,” I don’t think you’ll like the consequences.”

“Need you,” you whine as you push your breasts against the wood in effort to stimulate yourself elsewhere as you try, “Please, sir, let me touch myself. I can’t take it without you.”

“Oh, but you must, pretty girl,” he voice dips deliciously, “If you put so much as one finger on that little clit of yours,” he threatens, “I promise you’ll get none of this cock for a long time. I am a patient creature, beautiful, but you? You are not and I’m going to teach you what happens when you want to get me hard while I’m at work, you fucking vixen.”

“But…” you don’t get to say much else because he’s fast to cut you off.

“But? There are no buts, babygirl. Sit there and obey like a good girl. Got it?” His domineering tone captures you in its hold as you grimace in the banishment of sensation you’d been trying to quell with the aridity searing your core.

He expertly extricates your own voice as you submissively tell him, “I understand, sir. I’m…I’m sorry I’m so needy.”

“That’s more like it, pretty girl. Be daddy’s good girl, yeah? He’s almost finished and when he’s done,” he lowly admits,” he’s going to fuck you until you can’t tell the north from the south.”

With that, the red button loses its light and fades with the end of the call and you don’t need to peer down to know that your skirt is beyond being saved by the air dryer in the bathroom.

To divert your attention anywhere but at your sopping core, you open your new Macbook Pro that Jungkook had recently gifted you only to find three new messages that have come in, each sliding along the upper right hand of the screen only to glide away after presenting themselves to you.

Two are from Jungkook and the other is from your CEO, Jimin.

Curiosity awakens in you and has you tilting your head as you open the older one first.

Jimin:

[1:45pm] What were you doing with Jungkook for lunch? You two were in there awfully long just for him to eat some Italian food. I was going to ask if you could chat with me about agendas and travel plans for the symposiums, but you seemed like you were in a hurry, so…

You chew at your lip at the memory of the way the off-white taint had dripped down the side of Jungkook’s lips and how he’d asked you to clean him up before pulling you into his lap so that you could lick it off with your tongue before he’d captured it in his mouth and given you the most passionate, intense French kiss you’d ever had as he sucked your wet warmth clean before pulling away ask for more.

For the life of you, you can’t remember if Jungkook’s blinds had been drawn in your fixation on each other. Since his office was directly next to and connected with Jimin’s, it was possible that if he hadn’t closed them that Jimin might have seen-

You click out of the message at the same time you cancel your thoughts from going down a network of ideas that would only make the unbearable pressure between your legs even heavier, your legs sticking together in your fidgeting movement as you hiss through the collection of your essence that coagulates there.

When you skid your mouse over only to click down on the mousepad and the next message pops up, you nearly fall to the floor with how quick you are to lean forward, your fingers gripping tightly onto the table to keep yourself from making contact with the carpeted ground as you read the next text.

Jungkook:

[2:36pm] Thanks for the meal, babygirl. You took such wonderful care of daddy. That alfredo sauce was delicious, but not as succulent and sweet as that pussy when I’ve got my mouth on it. I hope that pretty cunt is ready for me later when I put my fat fucking cock inside you and split you open on top of me. I’m hard for you right now, doll, but all good things come to those who wait, yeah?

[2:58] Oh, and I got you a dress to wear for that gala we are going to. I do believe you should have already made arrangements to attend, my precious petal. You’ll look so beautiful for me and I know you’ll be the belle of the ball. You’re going be all mine, pretty girl. I can’t wait to show you off to everyone before I tear that gown off you and show you who you belong to. And when you can’t walk anymore, I’ll carry you home and we can watch your favorite show while you lay on top of me so that I can play with your hair and tell you how exquisite you are while we eat macaroni and cheese and watch your k-drama that you like to put on so much :)

Truly, you don’t know how your boyfriend can turn your insides to mush with just a light glance or even a few words to then, a second later, have your core fluttering in anticipation of his dark vows. You had not one inch of doubt that he would make good on his promises and excitement flits through every contour of your body as you smile fondly at the screen.

The telltale ping that pongs through speakers set beside the two twin monitors behind your laptop bounces around the glass walls and suddenly your attention is ricocheted to those screens as your hand closes over the wireless mouse and you open the source of sound that you had chosen to alert you of incoming emails.

Amongst the thousands of emails, the bulk of them come from your bosses and the next mass of them originate from the plethora of dealers that your bosses worked with that often had to go through you before acquiring an audience with either of them.

Next were the intermediary reconciliations and discussions with coworkers outlining their status and progress on assignments within the firm that you were tasked with collecting and organizing before presenting it to Jungkook, who would relay it to Jimin. On occasion, you would report to Jimin first when he’d come to your office and sit down with you to discuss the overview of all the information, his eyes never straying from you even when you’d get up and walk about the room in your experiments to measure his interest in what you were talking about.

Jungkook set your body on fire in his scalding affections and attention, but Jimin…Jimin’s soft gaze that was speckled by the sugar of sweetness around you, well…it was like night and day.

You had come to love Jungkook as fiercely as the sun that has now ducked under the skyscrapers that rise high in the sky and Jimin had come to be someone you adored in the gracious geniality he swathed you in that contrasted so very much with Jungkook’s own feral ferociousness in how the latter had easily seized your heart in the palm of his hand.

With tangling thoughts of the two of them in your mind, you open the new email that was just sent moments ago. You don’t really know what to expect as you watch the circling icon in the middle of both screens as the content of the email loads, but the longer that you stare at the rotating wheel that-with every pass- has inquisitiveness circumnavigating and spiraling around you, the stronger that the emotion builds in you as you wait, your eyes only now just processing the subject of message.

Do you like this? Don’t think I forgot what you were telling me last week…

It’s innocent enough in the initial reading of it, but your mind really can’t help but to soil a more pure intent in lieu of a darker one if Jungkook is involved, after all. The man was insatiable and had tainted you with that same craving for him during every waking moment of your consciousness (and subsequently in your unconsciousness through your dreams that had become borderline pornographic in what your mind would conjure up illicit indecencies wrought upon you by your boyfriend).

When the spherical icon dissipates, so too does your last shred of self-restraint that is ripped away from you as you loudly whine out, your core clenching around nothing as you devour the eye candy.

Sweat sluices every bit of skin on both your boyfriend and Jimin, who are the models of the picture, and you’re quite certain that this might be the most profanely peccable thing that you’ve ever seen.

Jungkook smirks wickedly with his head thrown back against the wooden panel, his eyes closed and mouth parted in pleasure and the white t-shirt he wears sticks to his muscled chest to suck away its color in patches of perspiration that display wet blotches of where hidrosis has penetrated through the thin material to display musculature that the god of lust himself, you are convinced, had a hand in decorating him with.

His bicep bulges before the picture cuts off just below the upper half of his abs and you don’t need to think to know he’s jacking himself off with his face contorted into such a satisfied expression.

It is a sight that has your thighs rubbing together, a whimper sounding from you try to calm your breathing that has instantly become erratic in the breaths that refuse to stay lodged in your lungs as your boyfriend expels them expertly without even being physically present to do so.

It takes some effort to pull your irises away from Jungkook, who has you now on the edge of your seat as you rub your breasts against the edge of the wooden table in your need to feel his big, warm hands on you once again as you whisper, “Please…”

You lay your head on the table to ground yourself against something of the earthly plane before your soul descends to the fucking nether realm, but in so doing, your vision trails along Jungkook’s other arm that is pushed against Jimin’s own. The slightly older man has his head tilted so that his nape rests on Jungkook’s shoulder, his full lips open to permit sounds you wish you could hear while his eyes, like your boyfriend’s, are shut in a countenance twisted by rapture and you wonder what it is that they’re thinking about that they’ve both succumbed to.

Distantly, you want them to have been thinking of you, but self-consciousness nips at you despite it because how could two of the most beautiful men you’ve ever seen both be frozen in time like this through a picture of their pleasure amidst minds full only of you?

You shake your head at the thought and choose to fixate your attention back on Jimin, who has you salivating in the open v-cut black shirt that, with its short sleeves, leaves little to be imagined in the mound of muscle mounted along his own arms. He’s sitting back, like Jungkook, and is in the midst of his own sinful delight in the way that one arm is curled around his body in the way that it snakes downward and just out of the frame where you know his cock is in hand.

You make a pained sound in your solitude where neither of them can help you under Jungkook’s own order as you curse, “Damn you, Jungkook. You knew what this would do to me.”

You really don’t know how you’re able to look away from the delicatessen that is them, but when you slide one hand under the cup of your bra to clasp your breast and tease at the nipple there while you push against the desk so that your other is not neglected, the movement disturbs your line of vision so that you see the words he’d torturously typed under the picture sent from hell.

Don’t think that I forgot that you have a sweet tooth for our little Jimin, here, babygirl. When you got fucked against the walls in your office and I had you begging for your release, remember how I asked what you thought of him after he happened to walk in on us and then he ran away while I made you fucking scream so loud for me that he could still hear it even outside the building?

His tongue had been four inches deep inside you while he’d knelt on the floor for you to eat you out and your cheeks burn in the memory of how he’d had you a crying mess atop of him and in that moment, with your climax so close, he’d played you like his favorite toy in the truths that had been so easy to spew with the slew of his wet muscle that had the threads holding you together weak in their stitching in your need for the one operating your body to fix it all by bringing you to your end.

It had been purely an accident that you’d neglected to lock the door behind him when Jungkook had come to you with a dark glint in his eye that held only carnality in its iris after Jimin had kept you from him all day for meetings. The moment your boyfriend had snatched you away from your other boss, you’d fallen into his arms readily in the need for him that had tuned you like an instrument until you sung for him in your highest key.

Lost in each other, neither of you had heard the chink of the door that had borne your coupling to an observer who had stood with his cock hardening at the sight of you both in each other’s ecstasy until Jungkook had thrown you over your desk only for him to face Jimin, your CEO. The man’s eyes had bulged big as saucers when he’d been caught and Jungkook had only grinned as he eyed the tent in Jimin’s pants that broadcasted his obvious arousal. Your walls had constricted around the cock plunged deep inside you and you’d hit your third climax with a deadly snap of your boyfriend’s hips into you all while Jimin had ogled you before running as far as his legs would carry him.

Secure in the knowledge that you ardently cared about him after many confessions from you in the throes of passion and in the softer moments where Jungkook’s stoicism melted away in the wake of your praise and sweet utterances to him, he knew that you wanted to be with him and that you’d come to love him. It was why he had been so keen to tease you about Jimin in the following days upon realizing that you’d gotten off to being watched by the older man. If it meant your pleasure, he would gladly partake in anything and he’d professed as much to you on many nights (and mornings) in the tender aftercare he would treat you with, ever the doting yet adventurous lover that he was.

It was why you’d been able to let it slip when he’d had his long fingers plunged in you last night that no one could make you feel as good as he could, but that you were interested in seeing what Jimin’s smaller ones could do and how delicious his plush lips might feel on you. Jimin had always been sweet as honey to you and, in his lathering of that over you in your many moments together at work, you’d discovered that you wanted to get even more of a taste for him.

Never could you have expected that your boyfriend would do this and torture you with such hankering desire to be sated that it all but burned like a wildfire in your body, but you could hardly be expected to endure it in his absence.

You make a pained sound as you look at the picture that has damned your sex with even more taint to drip between your thighs and you cross your legs over each other in attempt to get some kind of friction. The attempt is fruitless and when there is nothing to relieve you, you squeeze at your breast and imagine that it is Jungkook who is doing so while the ridges of the table dig into your other and you fanaticize that it is Jimin’s ringed fingers that are palming at you as you cry out in desperation’s grip for either of them to come save you from the agony of their absence.

You moan at the cool, prickly sensation of your fingers on your skin, your nipple hardening amidst your digits that the cold air of the office has chilled as you seek more stimulation. Your boyfriend’s name falls like an icicle from your lips and when your voice pierces through the thin audio line that Jungkook had screenshared your computer to watch and hear you through Facetime with, he licks at his lips at your exposed cleavage as he watches you pop open another button as you titillate your tits and huff in frustration as you uncross your legs in some misguided effort to encourage friction that he knows you are incapable of granting yourself in your current situation by his own order.

He feasts his eyes on you as your breasts are shoved against one another, the ‘y’ shape of them bursting from your bra now as you cup one between the fingers of one hand and the other is butted into the table as you moan once more and call his name.

“Help me, Jungkook…” You breathe, your irises still sticking to the picture that has ruined you from wanting to do anything holy for the rest of the day, week or even month for that matter. With your head swimming in sin spurred by your boyfriend, all you can think about now is Jungkook, Jimin, Jungkook, Jimin, Jungkook, Jungkook and lastly, Jungkook.

It is your voice that cracks your boyfriend’s fixation on the way your breasts rise and fall with your labored breaths as pulls his eyes from the trenches of your tits before peering up to your lovely face that is marred with the aching affliction he knows wracks your core, his own cock twitching with interest as you repeat his name like a mantra in what little else your mind can internalize with how your sex must be sobbing for him right now.

Lust seeps through the rips and tears that have begun to open and enlarge your pores as it spreads through your fragile body in the trembles that have you shaking in your attempts to abstain from the slow destruction that has reduced the filling inside your core to wet, ruined fibers like a tainted toy. Without realizing what you’re doing, one hand skids over the wet patch of your essence that has stained your skirt, your palm aquaplaning through that to dive under your skirt and when you slot it between your legs and streamline it into your sopping core with the image of your boyfriend’s hand doing this to you in your mind while Jimin watches, you keen.

“Jungkook,” you try, “n-need you. Want you to fuck me and let Jimin see how good you make me feel, daddy. Your doll is about to tear herself apart because you won’t play with me…”

At that, there’s a low growl that booms through the speakers that amplify his voice that promises danger as it demands, “Get your little hand out of that wet ass pussy before daddy makes you regret even thinking about disobeying me,” his voice deepens as he orders, “Since you can’t keep your hands to yourself, get the fuck in my office. Now.”

Your core contracts at his dominance that is injected into each word and, per his command, your palms shoot away from you as if you were a puppet that he’d pulled on the strings of to whisk your hands away from where he knew you would damage yourself further.

You rise from your chair on legs that wobble both from Jungkook’s earlier ministrations and your own, your extract dyed onto your chair as you peer back and your cheeks burn at the damned deposit of it that has seeped through your panties and skirt. One knee quivers dangerously as your joints fight to hold you up through the numbness that your boyfriend had left in his wake and you have to plant a hand on your desk to hold yourself up while you steady yourself for the moment.

From the computer, your boyfriend glares darkly at you as he brings the window that his own computer records himself with to the forefront of your tabs, your attention being sucked like a black hole into him as he declares, “You’re going to sit in daddy’s lap and if you choose to be a bad girl and not listen to what daddy tells you, you’re going to go without cock for as long as I decide to withhold it from you. Understand?”

“I…I understand, sir.” You nod as you will the strength back in your legs despite his words that threaten to steal it yet again.

“Good. So submissive. Just how I like you, baby,” he groans as his irises settle on the gleaning mess painting across your thighs from the field of view the camera grants him, “You’ve got me so hard already. I bet that cunt must have drenched itself for me, huh? I guess we’ll find out in a little bit when I clean it all off of you with my tongue,” he has you whining at that as he brings a hand to his chin to rest his face against it as his eyes glint with lasciviousness as he makes a sound of consideration, “Or maybe I should use my fingers? My cock? Perhaps since you’ve been defiant and tried to please yourself, I won’t touch you at all, hm? How would you like that?”

You reach out for him even through the screen, panic coloring your tone as you implore with pleading eyes, “J-Jungkook, please…don’t. I’m ready for you. I might just break down in tears if you deny me again, so please-“

“You’ll get what I decide to give to you, babygirl. I gave you simple instructions and I expect that you follow through with them or that little cunt won’t be the only thing that cries for me tonight, doll. Now,” he states with no room for anything but obeyance, “get the fuck in here.”

Your sex quivers at that and you nod in affirmation as he ends the call once more, your weakened, numbed legs reducing you to a tottering mess of limbs as you emerge out of your office and amble closely to the walls, one hand held out against them to support you in the dangerous dalliance between remaining upright and falling to the floor in your shuddering ligaments that are entirely the work of Jungkook. You don’t have to walk far, but in your slow pace, the seconds stretch on and every step has your slick lewdly dripping down your legs much to your mortification that takes its form in the heat that rushes to your cheeks in the blood that manifests itself there.

You hobble along the glass walls that offer the view of the city that blinks to life below you in the lights that wink at you while tiny specks of moving bodies bedeck the pavement and once, long ago, when you’d been but a freshmen in college, you’d stood amongst them as you stared in awe at the same building you now work within in. Time had passed but in an instant and when you’d met Jungkook by happenstance one night in a bar with your friends and he’d been quick to pay your tab before sweeping you off your feet and walking with you through the city, you’d had no idea how much your life was about to change when you’d gone home to discover the small piece of parchment he’d slipped in your purse when you hadn’t been paying attention with as distracted by his beauty both in body and soul as you’d been while the two of you had chatted about everything and anything that kept the conversation flowing as easily as the waters in a forest brook. You’d not hesitated in calling him the day after and he’d been eager to see you again.

You’d gone on your first date with him that night and day after day, the two of you met again and again, for his company was as refreshing as the midnight air that caressed your skin after a long day of classes and before you’d known what had happened, it had been a year and it had only been after letting it out that you wanted an internship with a firm that he’d told you what exactly he did and what company he worked for.

Your jaw had hurt with how wide your maw had opened in disbelief and when he’d offered to bring you in as part of the team, you’d been all too happy to accept. You really had tried to keep things professional, but Jungkook had not a care in the world for appearances where you two were concerned and your escapades in the bedroom soon made it to the corporate sphere. You could not deny him no matter how hard you tried. It was as if your body had been made to fall into his skilled hands and you would gladly grant him anything if it meant his appeasement.

After all, you’d become putty in his palm while you had unknowingly wrapped him around your own fingers.

Perhaps that is why, when you finally reach the familiar double doors that permit entrance into Jungkook’s office, your hand quavers in the anticipation that has you in its clutches down to your very bones and there is not a moment of pause that stops you from opening them as your hand curls around the brass handle only for you to slip inside, the small clink of the knob resounding around you when you close it behind you.

Covering the oaken floor, a rug that you’d picked to decorate the room is lain over it. Threaded and crafted in India, it was one you’d seen in the marketplace he’d taken you to on one of his business trips to meet with a dealer that had contacted the firm in their interest to have the firm build a hotel there. You’d taken one look at the ornate swirls colored black as night and red as a rose in the way that the pattern had intertwined in rotating spirals and whirls and your boyfriend had not missed your small whisper about how nice it was while you’d both walked by it amongst the bustle of street life that filled the area packed with people and vendors energetically trying to sell their merchandise.

You hadn’t thought that he’d heard you, but he’d promptly asked if you liked it and you really hadn’t been expecting anything at all when you’d commented and that it would complement his office in his knowledge that black and red were your favorite colors. With a smile, he’d taken out his wallet (much to your surprise) and taken out a wad of cash that he’d easily passed to the unsuspecting vendor before buying the rug and turning to the group of onlooking teenage boys to pay them off in their efforts to carry it over to your lodgings on your way to the consultation with your dealer.

Later that night, he’d taken you to a very nice and very extravagant firelit, poolside meal at the Giardino by the the Jai Mahal Palace in Jaipur that you both were sharing a room in. He’d had you giggling every other minute between the fond touches that he’d brush along your cheek or stroke your clothed thigh with from atop the high-necked silk dress that he’d bought for you and after, you’d both had taken a stroll by the surrounding greenery and woodlands beyond the pool. The stars had gleamed in your eyes when you’d peered lovingly at him and not for the first time, he’d been struck with that pang in his chest whenever you looked at him like that while you both had reminisced about how you’d met in that dingy little bar about a year and a half prior.

When you’d both kissed under the cover of the trees, that feeling that flew around his ribcage had fluttered when you’d adoringly pecked the mole beneath his lower lip as you’d earnestly and heartfeltly thanked him for everything that he’d done for you. When you’d confessed that he’d quickly become the light of your life, he’d tenderly pressed his forehead to your own as he’d pressed his lips to yours once more, the word that had fled him for so long that foretold his own emotions finally surfacing through the depths of his mind.

He’d declared then and there that he loved you with sincerity beating as fast as his heart through every word. He’d been quick to gently thumb away at the teardrops of joy that spilled from your eyes when he’d finally said it while you wrapped your arms tighter around his neck as you reciprocated the sentiment in a breathless voice that held so much affection for him that it made his chest swell with the emotion and in that moment, he’d decided that he wanted to give you something that-when you looked upon it and felt its weight on your skin- you would be reminded of who loved you that intricately and implicitly.

He’d held you close with only the moon’s eye presiding over you both while he’d cutely nudged at your nose, his fingers interlacing with your own that you readily accepted and when he’d pulled away, a new resolve had settled in his pupils as he tugged you forward and soon you found yourself being ushered through the busy, bustling streets of Jaipur.

Bordering on the desert’s boundary, it was a city that you are sure could have been taken right out of a picture in the pinkened sandstone that every store and building had been crafted out of. Ancient structures erected in times past still stood strong among the newer and more modern creations of contemporary origin and the contrast boasted of a rich diversity that had you wanting to learn more about it despite the books that your boyfriend had gotten for you in a homely little bookstore earlier in the day. Youths had run through the streets with vivaciousness tailing them like the dogs that happily ran with them while the old had shuffled along and chattered about their daily lives and it was a place that was dyed in the warm color its inhabitants adored it with.

Distracted as you had been with the scenery that painted itself into your memory with artful amalgamation of colors, you’d not noticed where he was intent on leading until he was opening a door for you and coaxing you inside with a reassuring nod despite your confused quirk of your chin, you let him guide you inside only to have you gasping under the fluorescently lit store that was notoriously known throughout India for its high class bijouterie called Tanishq.

Though you had never heard of it, Jungkook himself had been told about the company from a contact in Mumbai that he’d visited with you in their interest in building an additional wing within the library and, upon seeing the way that you both had been inseparable in the tendency to be joined at the hip at all times, he’d suggested the store to your boyfriend after you’d gotten up from your place on his lap to go explore the books that had been crammed on the bookshelf while they’d both watched you curiously tap your fingers against the aged spines of the books. The elderly man had seen fondness for each other well up in your gazes as whenever you and your boyfriend looked upon each other and, after telling Jungkook he only saw that kind of amity in a newlywed couple, he mentioned the name of the store that only the wealthiest of grooms would purchase jewelry for their beloveds from.

It had purely been by chance that you both had happened to walk by the same store the gray bearded man had spoken to him of and amongst seeing the way your eyes had widened bigger than the largest diamond in the store, Jungkook had decided you were priceless in how cute you were as he chuckled and told you to pick out anything you desired.

You’d crinkled your nose in confusion, your brows creasing as you’d told him that you were perfectly happy to just have the treasure of him, but he’d only brought his lips to your forehead as he’d mused, “You know, you really are so adorable, Y/N. I want to spoil you. Won’t you let me do that for you, baby? I want to decorate you in my mark so that everyone will know who your heart belongs to. Please allow me to do so, petal.”

You really had not been able to resist the big bunny eyes as he’d coaxed you forward and so he’d sat down on the leather loveseat in the corner of the room, the business-suited employees quietly looking on as you moved about.

Jewels of every size, color and cut were decoratively placed within rectangular glass casings along either side of the first floor of the trendy store swathed in white walls and artificial illumination. Set within the walls themselves were square nooks that housed singular pieces separated from the rest that were couched on plush satin. The entire place was full of glittering jewelry that beckoned the eye, but your boyfriend had been noticed the way that you bit at your cheek as you passed them all by in your indecision since the collection of necklaces, rings, earrings and bracelets were all so pretty to you.

When he’d risen to inquire about any other pieces, the store representative had seemed reluctant at first to give such critical information, but it had taken only a moment for the older woman to retreat to the back to retrieve one of the store’s most coveted pieces that only respected customers could have the privilege of even looking at after Jungkook had, without your notice, stuck his hand into the inside pocket of his Gucci suit jacket to pull out a thick wad of American bills and rupees, his Rolex watch revealing itself from under the sleeve of the black outer garment whilst he did.

When the woman had returned with a black lacquered box in her hand to set it down on the four-legged glass table and told Jungkook that the necklace inside was one of the store’s most prized possessions, his interest had been piqued as he called you over and, with a questioning expression, he’d chuckled as he walked over to you to gently ease you forward with a hand on the small of your back you’d come to before the little chest.

He’d been gentle as he’d urged you to open it as you stared at the box, ever the patient man that he was as he waited for you to finally lift the lid of the chest. You hadn’t known what to expect when you heeded him, but it certainly hadn’t been the article of jewelry inside as it immediately drew your eye as your breath hitched at the sight of it.

Sat on bed of velvet, you’d grown fond of it the second you saw it in the way it glinted with each sliver of light that seemed to be drawn toward it. It commanded attention in the way it glittered and glistened in the rays of light that bounced off it and innocently, your fingers hovered over it yet never touched for the fear that you might destroy something so fragile and delicate.

You hadn’t trusted yourself with it, but Jungkook had been all too eager to lift it up and off its resting place to lay it over your neck before clasping it around you and telling you to look in the mirror at yourself.

Beset in white gold, diamonds grew within two thin metal vines that trailed and wrapped around your neck amidst buddings of flowers that intermingled along each side, the pistils of gems at their centers made of rubies. Upon the dip of the necklace along the notch between your clavicles, a slightly smaller floweret sprouted a larger one beneath it and connected to that was a falling petal that dangled prettily just under your collarbones.

“You look beautiful in that, my precious flower. Its charm becomes you well, pretty girl.”

Upon his praise, you’d preened as you’d thanked him for the adulation and before you could do anything else, he’d slid his black card out of black snakeskin Gucci wallet before telling the associate to simply ‘run it through’ with no hesitation as he drew his lip between his teeth as he watched you lightly skim your fingers over the ornate piece of jewelry.

The representative had informed him when she’d brought it out that it was a grand total of $37,713 and yet, he would gladly give that small bit of money to bejewel you so that you could shine like the gem that you were to him. You never asked for any material things nor expected them of him like other women once did in your poorer upbringing that had left you destitute and in debt when you’d met him and despite all of that, you never requested aid from him and it was one of the reasons why he enjoyed lavishing such gifts on you in addition to paying off your school of his own volition even amidst your efforts to tell him that he didn’t have to (and yet he always wanted to wherever you were concerned).

He’d assured you once more how lovely you looked, your cheeks turning red as the rubies you wore as he came behind you to plant his mouth under the clasp of the necklace along your nape, one of your hands reaching back to intermingle with his own as you’d quietly let him know how grateful you were and that he really didn’t have to expend so much effort to show you how he felt about you to which he wrapped his arms around you to seep the waters of his truth into you as he’d answered, “ Nonsense, petal. I want you to accept this so that whenever anyone looks at you and asks who got this for you,” he’d let his lips wander along flowing foliage of gems and gold as he’d soiled you with his kisses, “you will tell them that your boyfriend, whom you love so much, was the one who got it for you,” his mouth had lifted as he’d inched close to the shell of your ear as you shivered in the hot breath that prickled at your skin, “When you’re torn away from me because of work or anything else, I want you to remember that you twined yourself around me like the vines on this necklace and that I fell for you as surely as the petal that descends from it.”

You’d been helpless to whimper at that as you’d turned your head to the side to meet his waiting lips that had been all too willing to receive you as you smiled into the kiss.

Later that night, you’d been sure to show to him just how thankful you really were as you’d ridden him well through the midnight hours only to wake him with your lips wrapped around the very cock that, even in sleep, he’d ground against your ass in his voracious appetite that he liked only to consume from you.

When you’d found yourself sitting atop him, his back lain against the headboard as you’d fucked yourself over his cock while the sun had begun to peek over the horizon, the jewels had glimmered enthusiastically amidst the riled rotations of your hips over him. Seven months later, the same brilliant bijou envelops your throat as you look down to the floor submissively like your boyfriend had taught you to do upon entry into his much larger and grander office, your fingers linking together behind your back just as he’d always instructed you to do.

Two flat screen televisions are perched atop onyx oak media stands on either side of the room, their screens set alight with virtual fireplaces that blaze within them. Between them and atop the rug Jungkook had had brought over from India is a mid-sized sofa the color of mahogany and flanking that are two lounge chairs of colored like cream and in front of them is a square glass table. Jungkook had made sure to test the durability of just about every piece in the room, for he’d fucked you over just about everything as far as the eye could see and had done so too many times for you to even be able to count anymore in his constant craving for you.

There are wooden blinds that span the length of every glass wall, each of them opened to allow the moon’s silvery beams to filter through them amidst the lamps positioned precariously around each corner of the room, the lampshades that top them covering the sides of the room in golden ambient incandescence that softly lights the edges of the office up in a yellowed hue that reminds you of much smaller rays of sunlight despite the moonlight that coalesces around the central figure in the room amid your boyfriend’s command that calls it forth upon him.

Presently, Jungkook is sat in an expensive and executive leather chair the color of soil, his legs thrown atop the wenge wood desk that was crafted and imported all the way from Africa in the rare material cut from the tough bark of the legume tree native to the country.

You see none of this and fidget uncomfortably in the steadily oozing taint of your arousal that continues to percolate down your thigh while a voice low as a baritone emits itself from the iPhone lain over Jungkook’s desk as your boyfriend eyes you with interest, a smirk twitching at the side of one lip as he takes in your debauched state while the caller on his phone fills the room with his thick voice in the midst of the business call that he’d been made to make.

It’s not the first time he’s had you come to him in the middle of a phone call, but you have to fight the whimper that wants to wheedle its way out of you at the memory of how he’d called you in here but a month ago to suck him off while he’d been in the middle of one with a client, his need for you too strong for him to lay to bed when he’d watched you hungrily gorge yourself on a banana from your seat in your office.

“Jungkook, I need answers as we near the end of the fiscal year. You had many opportunities for appraisals this quarter and those preceding it and as such, I want to know where our dealers and contributors were most dense and what their appeal was so that we can draft out potential areas of interest to focus our fixed assets on. Surely in all of the trips and consultations you had for the last several months, you already have a response on the tip of your tongue.”

“On the tip of your tongue,” your boyfriend makes a sound of thought as he taps his finger against his chin while he devours you with his roving gaze, “Perhaps I do, co-founder Taehyung. Speaking of evaluations,” your boyfriend’s voice darkens, “my secretary has been quite valuable to us.”

At the mention of you, your heart does a flip in your chest as you fix your eyes somewhere between your feet because you know if you dare to look anywhere else, you might just become a fucking puddle of limbs on the floor.

“Come here, Y/N,” Jungkook orders, your back straightening straight as an arrow at the instructions.

You don’t know how you manage it with your legs as feeble as they are, but you move forward unsteadily despite the threatening numbness that leaves your ligaments dangerously close to giving out on you in the strength that has been stolen from them by your boyfriend.

The clack of your high heels reverberates along the walls and is loud amidst the blood that pounds in your ears, your heart racing amidst the heavy, hot attention that is as warm as the sun’s rays over your bared skin as your boyfriend looks on at you.

You move as drawn to him like he’s some kind of magnet and in the attraction for him that pulls away any rational thought, you find yourself standing before him, his hands rising to swaddle your hips in his hold. His touch, even through the black button down linen shirt that you wear, is warm and has you melting the instant his palms leisurely drag themselves up and down your sides as you relish in his attention.

Taehyung continues with an impressed snort, “Jungkook, Jimin has informed me all about your little secretary many times over,” your boyfriend’s digits curl inward to sink into your soft skin at that as he informs, “This is not the time to be rambling about how she’s snatched both your heart and cock in each of her hands. I want facts, not sentiments.”

“Oh, but that’s the thing, Tae,” Jungkook lilts, his grip on you tightening as he ushers you between his legs that he spreads for you, your own bones liquifying like goo under his strength that he’s spent many hours in the gym working to acquire as you make a sound of startlement when he suddenly turns you around and whisks you into his lap, your ass sitting down upon the hardened bulge that readily receives you as Jungkook chuckles in the mess of your taint that darkens the fabric of his pants where your core is perched over him to amusedly offer, “ She has erected more than just my cock, however many times it has been, I’ll have you know. She was the one who orchestrated dealings with, hm,” one hand lifts from your side so that long fingers can coax your chin up and to the side so that the two of you lock eyes, “how many dealers this year did you have coming for me, darling? Tell Taehyung here. I think he’s underestimating how useful you’ve been to me.”

“S-sixty nine,” you blurt as the hand on your chin descends down the ‘v’ of your shirt, his deft digits popping open the small buttons without pause and the plummet you’d taken in his dilating irises that promise nothing but sin, you have to climb along their edges only to realize what you’d said and quickly you stammer as you amend, “I-I mean, 669 contractors, T-Taehyung. I helped to orchestrate that number of dealers that were taken by the company.”

“Everything alright, baby?” Your boyfriend husks into the shell of your ear, his teeth taking one lobe between them as the last button is undone, your shirt opening to reveal your bra-clad breasts as his hand flows freer than water in the way he draggles it along your abdomen until he possessively wraps it around one breast to give you a harsh squeeze, your head falling back against his shoulder as you bite at your lip to keep quiet while your skin pebbles at his touch.

“Jungkook,” you breathe, “do something. Please.”

“Mmm, you’ve been so good for me, so good for the company, petal,” He emphasizes as he trails his lips down the column of your neck and you turn into the featherlight touch of his lips and between them, he utters,” Don’t you agree, Jimin?”

Your eyes widen at the name despite the heat that fertilizes your arousal deep in your core, but you don’t dare look away from Jungkook without permission. Your boyfriend nips at the tender spot along the base of your neck where the garden of jewels wrap themselves around you that he’d bought for you months prior and it is only when the hand on your breast slowly streamlines downwards to slip under the waistline of your skirt to slide between your sopping folds that he hisses into your ear, “Fuck, baby, are you that turned on in the knowledge that he just watched me do all this to you?” You moan, but it is trapped behind the hand he covers your mouth with while his fingers prod at your hole, your entrance begging him to find himself in your wet warmth in the way you clench around nothing as he rasps, “Look at him, babygirl. I want you to see what you’ve done to him because you just can’t resist me, can you? Go on, doll. Make him fall to his knees for you just like I did.”

With your head still laid against his shoulder as he lavishes you in the brush of his soft lips against you, you shift your visage away from your boyfriend with some effort, your irises wandering from Jungkook’s deadly distending ones that are colored black as a shark’s in the predatory way he looms above you to those of the only other man in the room that might just be a puppy in disguise with the way his light brown irises implore your own for some much wanted attention.

Dressed in a plain black suit that contrasts his unique beauty, your CEO wears a tie over a white dress shirt that you wish you could see through to gage which of the pair of them is more muscled between the two of them. His hair is carefully styled in its parting that leaves his entire forehead naked to your sight amidst the thick tufts that arch up along the left while the right side is pressed loosely along his scalp, his sideburns extending to the middle of his ear that is ringed with three hoops along each side. Perfectly sculpted brows frame almond eyes that beg for yours and lips that rival your own boyfriend’s decorate him below a straight nose. His lower lip is slightly thicker than his upper one and they are quite shapely around the thumb he currently gnaws at much like a chew toy, his tongue longer than a dog’s as it curves under the digit while he waits for his master to give him notice.

Jimin is entirely lost in the way that his other hand is presently wrapped around the tie as if it is a leash that keeps his hand from going lower so that he can rut into himself like you know he must want to given the white of his knuckles that mar his skin as he clutches at the thin piece of silk. His hand appears so much smaller around the article of clothing, his fingers so much shorter than your boyfriend’s that clamp down over your mouth as one finger pushes into your hole, your walls clenching around him and the whimper that wants to escape never makes it out of you and when you see Jimin’s digits begin to tremble with how tightly he holds onto the tie, you wonder what they might be able to do to you despite their littler size.

“That’s it, babygirl,” Jungkook tells you as he runs his tongue at the sternocleidomastoid muscle cording the base of your neck, your walls contracting within you as he drives his digit back and forth with his middle finger while using the others to run along your folds as he does, your face contorting into one of pleasure as your hips buck atop him all while Jimin bites hard onto his own thumb as he watches the both of you and it is then that Jungkook mutters lowly, “Keep doing that. He’s getting hard for you, petal. He could never get as hard for you as I do, but he’s getting there, doll,” your boyfriend nibbles at your now exposed shoulder to stifle the groan when you press your ass more insistently on him as he pulls your shirt off of you to give a sotto voce demand, “Use my fingers and get yourself off with them, pretty girl. Fuck yourself on me and let him watch you fall apart on top of me, Y/N.”

You don’t need to be told twice and, following his instruction, you plant both hands in front of you with each on one of this thighs, your fingers curling inward to pitch themselves into the grounds of built up muscle that compose his legs to lift yourself up only to sink back onto his digit that easily goes all the way down to his knuckle in how deep his digit is plunged inside you. Your whine is captured by the hand he replaces with his lips in a passionate kiss that draws all your attention back to him before they flutter closed, his mouth overtaking your own as he glides his tongue along your lower lip before twisting around your own as he feasts himself on you.

Taehyung’s voice cuts through it all as he huffs, “I don’t know what is going on over there, but someone better give me some answers,” there’s a pause and the sound of fabric rustling when your moan writhes itself between Jungkook’s lips that are held over your mouth when a second finger is added and he deliciously curls his fingers in a come-hither motion as your hips jerk atop him and when he pulls your bottom lip between his teeth only to release your mouth and leave you in a dizzied daze amid the loss of oxygen he’d taken from you, his lips lower to graze the nape of your neck as your head falls forward amidst the sudden jerk of your hips over him as Taehyung clears his throat, “Jimin, is what Jungkook said what you know to be true? If so, have you any idea where most of her accounts were set up so that we can look into stimulating more in those areas?”

“So sensitive for me,” your boyfriend mouths at your skin, this thumb brushing your clit to have you stutter your hips as he works you open on top of him,” So fucking wet, too. Come on, babygirl. Show them how bad you want me. Make them wish they could fuck you every night like I do,” he husks as he impels his fingers back and forth inside you, your pussy clinging to his fingers in the lewd squelches that permeate the room and all the while, Jimin’s visage is tugged to the sight of your boyfriend’s digits disappear within your cunt as his own member begins to weep precum in want of you.

“S-she um, well…yes, correct,” he flounders as words scramble in every direction within his mind as he observes a sex film right in front of him that is infinitely more arousing than any porno he has seen before in how receptively submissive you are to Jungkook who has you looking fucked out when he’s only just begun his ministrations on you.

You, who has been in Jimin’s dreams and thoughts during many nights when he has been alone in bed with his only company being the pillows he’d rut into for some semblance of relief when his hand would become too tired to bear the burden of lust that you had inspired without even knowing.

Helpless as an abandoned puppy, he can only look on as a rumble razes from between his lips s you raise yourself off of Jungkook’s digits only to fall back down on them as he scissors them into you with precision, each finger stretching you out around him as your own hands tighten their hold on his thick thighs amidst the whimper that is heaved from your lips when his thumb flicks at the bundle of nerves foresting your core to have your jerk atop his rock hard member that strains against the confines of his trousers.

The fingers on your side bite into your skin as he constringes them around you while he leans forward to growl, “Watch it, baby. I never you said you could ride me yet,” you whine only for him to connect his lips to the spot just under your ear to suck the skin into his mouth and that has you keen as your hips careen into the fingers that have deliciously started to thrust into you as he hisses, “You want daddy’s dick, huh? Do you think you can fucking take it, doll? I’m not so sure… I think,” his thumb pressurizes itself into your clit in slight palpitations that are too calculated and measured against the rapid beats of your heart while a third finger is inserted and propelled inside to have you cry out as his tone bottoms in pitch amidst the way your back bows against him, “I think that since you were two minutes fucking late in getting here, you need to be taught a lesson about coming on time. Jimin, come here.”

“You guys act like such children over your toys, fuck. I just wanted to have a normal business call for once,” Taehyung’s voice drones on, but there’s a slight tick to it that suggests he might not be as irritated as he wants to sound while he grumbles, “I don’t want to be privy to this. I’ve only heard Jimin’s voice get like that once when I took him to a strip club and I’m not going to stick around for your little threesome or whatever the fuck you all are about to do.”

“Oh, but you will, co-founder Taehyung,” Jungkook’s hand rises from your hip to unclasp your bra and when he divests it off of your writhing body, it falls with a thump to the floor with the last of Jimin’s self-restraint, his fingernails digging into the silk of his tie to leave crescent moons in his palms as he rises to lick at his lips in the way that your tits sway temptingly to the motions as you jounce atop your boyfriend while Jungkook smirks, his lips hovering only an inch from your own shoulder as his irises flash darkly at Jimin when he asserts, “Jimin here has some nice, big lips and he likes to put them to use and run his mouth around me,” Jimin’s eyes widen as his teeth come down on his cheek while Jungkook’s smile lethally widens, “He’s told me all about what you did the night you came to the office in the supply closet with one of my receptionists and how you told him that you let a particular name slip from your mouth when you had your cock in someone else’s.”

Jimin’s back goes rigid as a rod and he stops midway in his journey toward you, the filaments of his tie near their tearing point with how tightly his hand is wound around it as his cheeks puff out while he peers pleadingly at Jungkook who simply ticks his head to the side, one brow arching in amusement as he asks, “What was the name again, Jimin? I’ll let you touch her if you tell Taehyung the truth. I know you must want to see how responsive she is under your fingers, yeah?”

“For fuck’s sake, Jimin, do not listen to Jungkook-“

“Y/N,” he softly says despite the rough hold on his tie in its stitching that has started to tear. With Jungkook’s heavy ultimatum resting on his shoulders, it really hadn’t been possible for him to crumble under its dense weight with the sweet serendipity of you that was so near that he could almost taste it.

Your face lifts at the mention of yourself, your eyes meeting Jimin’s and in them there is surprise that is flecked by lifted brows, but it is soon smeared away by the desire that blotches them as Jungkook chooses that moment to let his tongue peek from between his lips only to trail it along the nape of your neck before closing his mouth around you to siphon you once again between them, your neck gradually becoming a woodland of reddened petals that rival the color of a rose in the passion that had been emitted in the making of them.

Appeased, Jungkook hums, “Mmm, good boy. I knew you would listen to me. Come and claim your reward,” he husks as he circles your clit with his thumb the way he knows you like it, your end rapidly nearing as your boyfriend shoves all three fingers into you without pause at the same time that you frenziedly meet his ministrations in faltering jolts of your hips over him and when you watch Jimin tortuously pull his lower lip under his perfect buck teeth as he moves mercifully closer, you moan out when Jungkook’s middle finger prods at the cluster of nerves deep within you as your boyfriend groans at the way your slick drips down his fingers with how much taint you produce in want of them both before he goads, “Go on, Jimin. Touch her. Her tits were made by a fucking succubus. God, they’re so good for a nice cocksleeve aren’t they, babygirl?”

“Yes, Jungkook…yes,” you breathlessly reply as your nipples harden in the cold air that prickles at your exposed skin, a dangerous jab of his fingers deep into you drawing a guttural sound deep from the recesses of your body that he expertly forges you with as his thumb swirls over your clit to leave you panting.

In your labored suspirations, your chest heaves back and forth, your tits being pushed out and in to have Jimin’s fingers shuddering from their prison of their cage in his tie while his other hand mindlessly reaches for you.

As he nears you, Jungkook speeds up his ministrations inside you, his fingers curving dangerously to rub against your walls that clench around him and it isn’t until Jimin hovers awkwardly by the side of Jungkook’s desk that he notices the way that Jungkook drags one hand away from your side to snake it around your abdomen and pull you flush against his chest as he clucks his tongue, “Tsk, tsk, tsk, Jimin… did I tell you when you were allowed to touch her? Did you think you could just come over here and have what is mine without my permission?”

Jimin’s hand shoots away from you as if he’d been burned as he shamefully casts his visage to the floor as he speaks haltingly,” I-I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…she’s just pretty as a doll on your lap, Jungkook. Please, let me have her. I’ll be good to her, I promise.”

“Did you both forget that I’m still here? Christ. I can’t believe you told Jungkook that I said the name of his damn girlfriend while I was getting sucked off, Jimin,” there’s a sound of a belt buckle opening as his voice hardens, “I guess I can’t really help it. You do have quite an eye for women, Jungkook. None more so than this one, though,” You feel the grin against you amidst the skin that is currently being suctioned between his lips as he decorates you in another necklace that blossoms in blots of purple and red under the one made of gems gleaming enticingly around you as Jungkook suddenly brings your ass down onto his clothed, yet colossal cock in time with digits that pierce you all the way to your g-spot, your eyes rolling back with your head that lands on your boyfriend’s shoulder as Taehyung cavils, “It’s her fault for getting my dick wet whenever I come to visit the office. You should thank whatever god is up there that you found such a loyal little girl to give herself to you," You preen at the words despite the fingers currently driving themselves ferociously into you as Jungkook agrees with a nod while he rambles, "I will say I tried making a move on her when I last came to the office and when she refused and instead went to your office, that's how I found myself in that supply closet."

“So I heard from Jimin, Taehyung,” Jungkook muses as while he helixes his digits inside you without fail, the arm that still is enclosed around you pulling you back into him so that there is no space that remains between you as he hotly intones into the shell of your ear loud enough for them all to hear, “I fucked her maybe seven different ways that night because of that. She just couldn’t get enough of me, could she, babygirl?”

You agree as you hoist yourself up only to heft yourself back down with a broken moan as Jimin turns to the table in the absence of you to rut himself into it, his face contorted into one of concentration as he tries to think about anything but how your pussy would feel around the cock that cries wantonly for you.

“Look at him, baby,” Jungkook urges as he swirls his thumb over your clit, “he can’t even contain himself for you anymore,” he speaks up, “He just can’t take it, can he?”

“Can…can take it, Jungkook, please. I need to feel her. Need to touch her,” Jimin manages despite the obstinate grooves of the desk that scuff and scrape his member rigidly as he tries, and fails, to simulate some semblance of relief without you as he attempts to say, “You’re t-torturing m-me. Let me do something to her, anything to her.”

“Do you think you should be allowed to touch what isn’t yours so freely? She’s mine,” Jungkook growls as he curves his digits purposefully inside you, his own cock throbbing at the way your juices have now coated his entire hand whilst your walls flutter tellingly around him as you submerge yourself on his digits with thighs that now tremble with your rigorous efforts, a moan slewing from your lips as he slides his fingers so deep inside that they press skillfully at the bundle of nerves that has your back arching against him while he possessively wraps his hand around your throat that had been on your abdomen to keep you in place and when his thumb twiddles itself around your clit, that’s when you cry out for your boyfriend who then smirks knowingly, his eyes flitting from you only to sear into Jimin's as he arches a brow to ask, “She’s almost there, isn’t she, Jimin? How badly do you want to touch her? Beg for me and maybe I’ll let you have a small piece of her before she fucking gets stuffed full of my cock for the fourth time today.”

Your end is so close, yet so far away. Like the waters of an ocean, it washes over your feet, but the waves of pleasure in the distance that roll deeper in the seas of rapture are too far away from you to reach as you sink into the sands that are grained with Jungkook’s control over you to keep you from moving toward it. With your end so close, you hardly even process what is said when Taehyung talks under his breath that has quickly become erratic in your sounds of ecstasy that have wrapped around his cock as he jacks himself off on the other end of the line.

“Tell him what he wants to know, Jimin,” Taehyung advises, his voice strained through the strenuousness of his own indecent actions as he wishes it was your cunt that his cock was enveloped in while his voice deepens, “I don’t like to be kept waiting.”

“You’ll both wait until I decide when Jimin can play with what belongs to me,” Jungkook professes, his fingers speeding themselves inside you and when you whimper at the way he slides his digits deliciously inside you at the same time his thumb strikes your clit, it’s enough to have you buck your hips as he tightens his fingers around your throat in warning while he orders, “You’re not allowed to cum yet, babygirl. Don’t even think about it. I want to put my cock in you so you can warm me up for later, yeah?”

“Jungkook, I can’t hold on for much longer,” you confess through elusive breaths as his fingers constrict around your throat for daring to admit that.

“You’ll hold on as long as I tell you to, baby. That cunt won’t get off on its own, will it?” He husks whilst his fingers deftly stroke your walls in curled motions as his thumb falls from your clit to ream the outer lips of your sex and you sob out at the loss of stimulation to the nerves crowning your womanhood as he watches your expression change in a myriad of different countenances before you settle on submission and nod knowing that you won’t get what you want if you disobey him after many lessons imparted to you in the bedroom.

“That’s right, baby. Obey,” Jungkook groans as you clench around him and it’s when he hears Jimin call for him in a hushed tone that a devious idea unfurls itself in his mind and he doesn’t have to look over at Jimin to see that the older man is bent over the desk and is mindlessly grinding into it to resolving none of the tension that coils around his hardened member.

This little game was far too fun to end so soon and so Jungkook chuckles darkly as you stretch yourself open atop him, his digits tracing the sensitive skin around your hole despite the three fingers that are knuckles deep within you as he starts, “As for you, Jimin, I believe I said you’d need to beg for her if you want her that badly You do want her, don’t you?.”

The older man stops his movements at the referral of his name, his eyes glinting pleadingly as he turns his head to lay his cheek on the table, the bones of his hands pressing taut against the whitened skin he grips the sides of the desk with as he wracks his brain for anything resembling a coherent sentence and it is the sight of you with your eyes closed and mouth parted as you rebound up and down on your boyfriend’s fingers that has his own quiver in the wish to feel you himself as he swallows to comply, “I-I want her so bad, Jungkook. I’ll…I’ll do anything you want, but please, let me touch her.”

Jungkook seems to be satisfied with that as he nods, his irises blazing in acknowledgement as he demands, “Kneel for her, Jimin. That’s what all men eventually do for her and this precious little cunt.”

The words are barely out of his mouth before Jimin falls before you, his hands closing around Jungkook’s knees just inches below your own that squeeze your boyfriend’s thighs in a vise-like grip.

Need saturates his eyes and shaking fingers as he waits patiently for Jungkook to give him the green light and like this, the view he is granted might just make him cum untouched in the way that Jungkook sinfully shears his fingers in your cunt as you come down on them in frantic sweeps of your hips, his hand entirely drizzled in your essence that glistens as if to tempt him in the soft light of the room.

He doesn’t realize that he’s salivating like a fucking dog until Jungkook gruffly commands into the shell of your ear that he flicks his tongue against, “Open your eyes, babygirl. I want you to see how fucking desperate you’ve made our little Jiminie. God, you’re fucking hot, doll. I’m so damn hard for you right now.”

Not wanting to disobey him, you let your lids flutter open, your breath catching at the sight of the pretty boy that is on his knees for you. His once perfectly styled hair is tousled after he runs his hand through it, his tongue darting between his plush lips as he stares at you like you’re food he wants very badly to eat.

And how you’ve wanted him to do just that for weeks, though you know deep down that Jungkook would always take you to the seventh heaven without fail.

Your hips stutter yet again at the visage of him when you lift your head, one of your hands lifting so that your fingers can trace the outline of his shapely mouth. You are slow to make contact with his lips that are softer than a feather yet rival those of the Bratz dolls you’d play with when you were younger. He relishes in your touch and even leans into you as if to grant silent permission for more and when you run your digit down his lower lip to watch it snap back up against his teeth, you moan at the thought of what it would feel like if he-

Your hand is suddenly pulled away as your boyfriend’s long fingers enclose themselves around your wrist as he brings your arm back to marionette it behind you and when he brings your palm down on his weeping member that sobs for you even through his trousers, that’s when you suck in a breath whilst the fingers on your throat release you to grasp your chin so that your head is turned to the side, your visage instantly being pushed back to him as he gives a devastating blow to your pussy through the twist of his fingers in your cunt to have you whine out when he jams them inside you.

“I believe I taught you to wait for my approval before I let you do anything, didn’t I, babygirl?”

“Yes, sir. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to disobey,” you try even knowing that the last time he went unheeded by you, he’d left you on your bed to finish yourself off with your own hand.

“And yet you did, baby. Do you think you deserve to cum now?” your boyfriend inquires, his fingers slackening inside you to have you whimper when he extricates them from you only to bring all three digits to his lips, his tongue laving at them as his eyes scintillate with fervor to have you clench around nothing and Jimin watches the way your essence oozes out of you without Jungkook to clog you now as your boyfriend’s irises simmer hotly into yours that he trails down your body and everywhere his gaze goes, the ire of fire is stoked in every crevice of you as he decides, “I think you need to be reminded of who really owns you. Take my cock out, babygirl. Do not make daddy wait.”

With your back still flush against his chest, it’s hard to fight past the haze of arousal that clouds your mind. Your boyfriend knows this just by peering down at you and, taking pity on your afflicted state, he helps guide your hand to where his zipper is. With how unbelievably large he is, you don’t need to search for his cock in its obscene girth and lewd length. You don’t have to work at it his zipper for long, for it opens to you easily and really, you can’t think too much on the fact that he’s not wearing any boxers underneath his pants as his cock springs free and your fingers slip along it until you hold him in your palm.

He’s heavy in your hand with the blood that engorges his member and your walls contract at the way his veins all but bulge out against your hand as you drag your hand down all the way to his base before gripping him to earn a groan from him that you swallow down your own throat when he draws you forward into a French kiss that leaves your tongue numb in how roughly he sucks it into his mouth.

When you’re on the verge of losing what little breath you had left and you squeeze his cock, that’s when he releases you to rasp, “Good girl. Now, sit the fuck down on me and ride me.”

Needing no further prompting, you raise yourself off him to line yourself up with him and when you sink down onto him and welcome him into your wet warmth, your head falls forward in the lack of ability to hold it up anymore, your mouth dropping open with the way that he fills you so wholly and completely that there is no room to think of anything but him.

It is a lucky thing indeed that you have a birth control insert so that you don’t have to worry about anything in times such as these and it is pure bliss that pangs through every corner of your body the moment he finds his home inside you and you can only repeat his name with how deep his cock is lodged inside you.

Below you, Jimin raptly observes how your boyfriend disappears inside you as you start to grind atop him, your hips eagerly canting him as he sits back and enjoys the show.

“P-please, Jungkook, can I?” He questions, not caring at this point what Jungkook will let him do so as long as he can do something.

“You know, you do have some really pretty lips, Jimin,” Jungkook considers, his irises burning into Jimin’s own in the view of him he’s given with your head down between your shoulders as you unthinkingly sweep your hips over him to have him grunt, “How about you kiss her with them?”

A shaky breath trembles as it is dislodged from between Jimin’s lips, your eyes irises drawn to the source of the sound as you gaze into eyes that widen bigger than a Boston Terrier’s and you don’t have time to process what has just been said before a familiar hand wraps around the underside of your breast, a groan falling from your boyfriend’s mouth at how supple your skin is between his fingers as he holds one breast as if to offer it to the older man, your nipple hardening as his digits that have been chilled by the cool air cause goosebumps to raise themselves up over you.

You watch as Jimin’s sight becomes entirely transfixed by the way that Jungkook’s hand completely closes around your tit whilst you continue to gyrate your hips atop him, a wantful moan releasing itself from your throat when Jungkook leans forward to take the clasp of the necklace he bought for you between his teeth as he pulls it back with him so that you follow him when he seats himself against the backrest of the chair once more.

In the movement, your breasts sway while you pirouette your hips around Jungkook and, as if to entice Jimin, your boyfriend swirls his thumb around your areola that puckers itself out around the cold digit that draws itself around it.

Jimin makes a sound akin to a wail and it’s what has Jungkook smirking wolfishly behind you as he taunts, “I bet it must be so difficult to just sit there and watch her get fucked so well, isn’t it? You want her, Jimin? Kiss her.”

You observe the way that Jimin’s tongue swipes itself along his lips and the blonde haired man before you does not need to be told again before he slants himself forward and, all in one movement, opens his mouth to take the breast your boyfriend holds inside it.

“Ah…please,” you whimper as his warm lips heat your cooled skin and your boyfriend chooses that moment to constringe his fingers around your breast to the same time that Jimin’s agile tongue flicks along the underside of your tit. His mouth and tongue are smaller than your boyfriend’s, but you’re beyond the point of caring as both men make it their motive to please you.

When your boyfriend plants hot kisses to the tip of your spine right under your nape and below the fastener of the necklace he’d just been tugging on, Jimin seems to notice and suddenly, he’s hollowing his cheeks as he suckles from your tit like a newborn babe.

You splutter as your waist stammers atop of your boyfriend once more as he drives his hips into you, a grin lifting at his features as Jimin hums in satisfaction at the way your flesh melds around his mouth, the vibrations shooting like an arrow straight down to your cunt as your boyfriend impels himself inside you with a powerful thrust that had been drawn from the bow of his own hips.

It’s enough to have you keen, one of your hands lifting behind you and back to tangle in the roots of your boyfriend’s tresses while your other cards through Jimin’s locks as you encourage both of them while you plead, “Please, don’t…don’t stop. I’m getting c-close.”

“What are you guys fucking doing to her? She sounds like she’s about to break,” Taehyung comments against the slick sounds of his hand fastening its pace along his length as he chides, “Jungkook, it’s rude to ignore your superior when he’s asking you questions.”

“You should consider it a privilege that I am allowing you to be part of this at all considering that you tried to take what will never be yours,” Jungkook groans when you pull at his hair while you swivel your hips erratically over him as you turn your head to the side to peer at him with a gaze that appears as fucked out as he will soon feel and he makes haste to attach his lips to the spot beneath your ear, his tongue darting along your sensitive skin while Jimin doubles his efforts on your breast to have you whining and when your boyfriend releases you, his other hand latches onto your neglected breast, his fingers expertly tweaking your nipple between them to have your own fingers tightening along your boyfriend’s thigh at the same moment that your walls contract around his member in warning whilst he amusedly discloses, “Since you’ve you been so complacent today, however, I think I will be merciful and let Jimin, your dear best friend, explain.”

With your breast still in his mouth, Jimin’s eyes have become clouded by the lust that hazes them and Jungkook grins at the sight of the elder man’s ruin while he manages, “I…I’m sucking at her tit, Taehyung. Jungkook was right. They’re so soft in my mouth,” he draws shapes along your areola as he swallows and it’s only when you let your fingernails trail along his scalp that he is coaxed into continuing, “Jungkook is, well… she’s riding him and facing me so that I can see everything. You’d probably c-come if you saw this, Tae. She’s…she’s absolutely heaven in my mouth and her pussy just keeps swallowing Jungkook like it can’t get enough of him. It’s hotter than anything we’ve ever seen at the s-strip club.

“Good boy, Jimin. So obedient for me. You may have your reward now,” Jungkook grunts while you bear yourself down on him at the same time that he slams his hips up into you all while he gropes at both breasts in his mission to have as much of you as he possibly can before he instructs, “Kiss her where she needs us most, Jimin. Taste her for yourself and see how fucking divine she is and understand why all men eventually get on their fucking knees for this cunt of hers.”

The sounds of sluiced skin reverberate through the phone that lays innocently on the desk despite the sin unfolding around it and Jimin does as he’s told like the perfect little student and before you realize what’s happening, he liberates your breast from his mouth and delivers devastating osculation down your chest in flurried busses amidst lips soft as snowflakes as he descends down your body slowly.

Your own movements atop your boyfriend’s member quicken in the rapid anticipation driving you back and forth on him and when you watch him pause his ministrations when he gets to the apex of your thighs, for you are entirely fascinated by the way that Jimin draws his lower lip between his teeth as he stares at your sex that greedily clings to your boyfriend’s dick.

When his eyes roam upward and he meets your own, something flares in them to stoke the already fierce fire within you and when you curl your fingers in his locks to encourage him toward you, he relinquishes to you as if he’s merely your own plaything that you can do with as you wish.

When his mouth finally affixes itself to the bundle of nerves that sit above your glistening folds, you cry out as your cunt closes around your boyfriend’s member, your fingers tethering onto them both as your thighs begin to tremble once more in the attention that is lavished on you between them.

Your boyfriend’s fingers find themselves winding around your neck once more as he draws your back against his chest and he croons, “Are you close, my love? Do you want Jimin to help you cum on me?” He hums when you nod frenetically to say, “I bet it must be really difficult not to let go and get daddy all dirty with your cum, huh? That’s alright. I’ll let you finish on me soon, but first,” his fingers constrict around your throat as he breathes into the shell of your ear, “What did I tell you that you need to do when you want something?”

Language lurks somewhere in your addled brain and, as if to save you from punishment, Jimin lightens his ministrations to your cunt and instead airily pecks at your clit as you search your mind for what your boyfriend wants to hear.

The longer you take, the more compactly his fingers curve around your throat and it’s when the hand still around your breast possessively squeezes you that breathe the air that begins to threaten to enter your airway as you respond,” Words, sir. You have taught me that I need to use my words to get what I want.”

“That’s my girl. You’ve been so good for daddy, haven’t you?” He asks as he propels his hips into you in a harsh sweep of his hips that you readily receive as your walls welcome him.

“Yes,” you suspire when his fingers release you around your throat to dive down and rest on your hip as he eagerly pulls you back down on him to earn a whimper from you, “I want..want to cum on you, daddy. Will you let your babygirl have her release, please? Want it so bad. Want you so badly, sir.”

“Mmm,” your boyfriend hums, “I like it when it you beg for me. Since you’ve been so well behaved and let daddy do whatever he wanted with you, I will give it to you,” he says between kisses down your spine that his own bones will allow him to grant you before he straightens and speaks up, “Jimin, take her into your mouth once more, but this time, make love to her with your lips while her boyfriend fucks her tight little cunt, yeah? I want to see if she’ll squirt for us.”

Jimin does just as he’s told, his mouth closing around your clit at the same time that your boyfriend crams himself inside you whilst his hand whorls around your areola as you squirm atop him. Jimin is tentative in the way he brushes the bundle of nerves with his tongue, but your boyfriend is surefire in the way he pistons himself up into you, your cunt fluttering around him in warning as you blurt,” C-close, Jungkook. Please-“

“Cum all over me, babygirl. Get daddy all fucking wet and cream all over these pants that you fucking ruined because you need me so bad,” your boyfriend declares, both of his hands reaching for and trapping one breast in their hold as you fuck yourself over him before he husks, “Let Jimin see how good you are for me, doll. Show him how much you love my cock by coming around me and soaking me in your sweet juices, baby.”

It is with a devastating swipe of Jimin’s thick tongue against your clit while your boyfriend tweaks your nipples between his fingers as he drives his hips purposefully into you that you throw your head back, your eyes rolling as you careen off the edge of the release you’d been dangling over for so long. It hits you like a watery wave that cascades over you and you scream out your boyfriend’s name as your walls swell around him and he throbs inside you while your walls clench repeatedly in their need to keep him locked within you until the last of your release has deluged you.

Your essence pours down from the rainforest of your sex and you don’t know how long your womanhood ebbs and flows with it as your body is flooded with endorphins that liquifies your insides as Jungkook fucks you through it whilst Jimin sucks at your clit without pause, his tongue lapping at your sopping center that is doused with your taint like he’s a starved man eating away at the delicatessen that is you.

“That’s it, babygirl. Let him taste how fucking delectable you are,” your boyfriend croons, his lips securing themselves to your exposed shoulder to bring your flesh between his teeth as he too suctions you within his mouth as he coos, “She’s getting me all wet, isn’t she, Jimin? Does she taste as good as she looks? Come on, tell me, pretty boy.”

Jimin releases you once he runs his tongue between your silken folds, his entire chin smeared in your essence as wipes it away with the back of his hand before licking away at that which has soiled his own skin as he peers with a hooded gaze up at you to confirm, “She’s sweeter than honey, Jungkook. I don’t think I’ve ever tasted pussy that appetizing. I…I could eat her out all day.”

“Of course you could,” Jungkook amusedly replies, one hand settling on your hip to still your shaking limbs as his aching cock sobs for more within you, his thumb rubbing soothing circles into your side while the digits of his other palm fondly trace the blooming petals of red and purple marring every inch of your throat and shoulders as he muses, “And what of you, babygirl? Did daddy take good care of you?”

“Yes,” you try between labored breaths despite the way you lean into your boyfriend’s wandering fingers, “You treated me so well, sir. Felt so amazing.”

Your boyfriend watches you lay your head back onto his shoulder, a smirk rising along the edges of both lips in amusement as he observes how your eyes flutter closed, your body sagging back against him despite the cock that is still lodged balls deep inside you.

“I do hope that’s not all that you’ve got to give me, babygirl,” Jungkook tells you, the fingers along your nape ascending until he’s grasping your chin to urge your head to the side so that you stare into his simmering irises that are quick to light the fire of desire within you anew before he darkly declares, “because daddy’s not done with you yet.”

Your breath hitches at that and Jungkook finds it adorable that your eyes manage to widen so largely while Jimin’s own just about bulge from his head at the insinuation.

“D-daddy, I don’t know if I can take it,” you hardly manage to get out before he roughly consumes them himself, his mouth attaching to yours and drawing what little breath you had left away from you as his tongue glides across your lower lip before he nips at you in punishment.

When he pulls away, you’re left entirely breathless as he taunts, “You will do what I tell you to because you want to please me, don’t you? You say that you can’t handle more, but you’re the same person that begs for my cock every night because you’re such a fucking slut for me, aren’t you?”

“I…” You trail off when his irises dip languidly down your body until they souse themselves where you are still connected to him and underneath that, the collection of your slick that you’ve deposited over every inch of his nether region.

“Cat got your tongue, baby? Or should I say cock got your tongue because of how needy for me that little cunt is?” He asks with a flick of a dark, sculpted brow.

Despite the release that has just washed over you, you find the tide of lust soaking you through with each word he speaks, your core dripping even more of your essence onto the pool of it that has accumulated over Jungkook.

Jimin only looks on in rapt interest, his own cock quivering with the want that strikes him through at the spectacle of you spread open atop of your boyfriend.

“Did she get off on you, Jungkook? Shit, that’s got me hard again,” Taehyung curses through the phone that had long been forgotten by you and Jungkook in the rapture that had befallen you both.

“She did, Taehyung. She loved it, too,” your boyfriend affirms as you nuzzle him affectionately before he chuckles at your adorability, “She’s ready for round two now, I think. Jimin,” Jungkook’s blackened irises sear into the elder man’s, “You are to go to the couch over there and strip for her, but keep the tie on. Once you’re done with that, lay down on your back and wait for my precious doll to come to you when I tell her to. Got it?”

“I-I understand.” Jimin responds as he stands, his knees sore from being on them too long as he leaves the two of you and begins divesting himself of his attire much to none of the notice of the both of you.

Jungkook allows you to nudge his neck with your nose, your warm breaths tickling his skin and when you make the mistake of shifting, he hisses, “Careful, baby. You wouldn’t want me to take you right here again, now would you?”

You lick at your lips while you stare openly at his, the hand that still is entrenched in his tresses sliding down to cup the base of his neck as you apologetically blink up at him to admit, “I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to.”

“I know you didn’t, petal,” he caresses your cheek with the knuckles of his hand before he helps you off of him only to turn you around in his lap, his still hard cock springing back against his chiseled abdomen and it is only when you face him that he tucks a stray strand of hair behind your ear to praise, “You’ve been so good for me, baby. Do you want me to give you a reward?”

“You already have, my love,” you whisper as you lean forward to kiss the freckle beneath his bottom lip that you love so much before you tell him again, “You already have.”

“So wonderful for me,” he adulates as he cups your cheek and runs the pad of his finger along it to utter, “Wanna make you come again, beautiful. Will you let me?”

You nod, your own hand taking his tie between your fingers and twirling it around them as you bite your lip, “You already know the answer a thousand times over, Jungkook. I want to please you, too. Can I?”

The hand on your waist wraps around you to pull you close so that you hover only an inch or so away from him and he groans at the way your hand closes around the base of his member to stroke him tortuously, his eyes flashing perilously as his own fingers enfold themselves around you to hold you in an iron hold as he husks, “You want to make me feel good, baby? Fine. Take off this shit covering my chest. I want feel you against me when I fuck you so good you’ll beg for me never to stop.”

The ire of desire blazes at that within you, your fingers quickly moving to unknot the tie wound around the base of his neck. You make quick work of it, for you’d been the same one who had put it on him this morning after he’d taken you in the shower and bed. The coat is next and he has to let go of you for a tormenting amount of seconds that drag on agonizingly slow in the loss of you, but once you get rid of the suit jacket he’d had you pick out for him, the black dress shirt is mercifully the last piece of clothing that separates you from him.

You salivate as you pop open the buttons that had already been opened down to the middle of his chest and with each iota of flesh kissed by the sun that is revealed to you, your salivary glands reproduce within your mouth to birth even more spittle as you hurriedly undo the fastenings of his garment. When the last button has been unsecured, that’s when you wet your lips amidst the aridity of desire that has dried them, your irises drinking him in as if drunk off of him as hunger coils low in your stomach.

Muscle cords every inch of him and the six pack that proudly ridges itself along his abdomen boasts its vigor in the way that they jump against your fingertips that lightly trace along the tautened skin that is so eager to receive you against it.

You push the shirt open thirstily amidst your throat that suddenly has become dryer than the Sahara desert as your irises roam upward to pectorals that must have been crafted by the gods in the thew of musculature that surrounds them.

His darkly colored nipples stand to attention as you draw your fingernails over them to earn a growl from him as he takes both hands and pins them behind your back in one of his own while his other coaxes your chin up as he lifts your head so that you have nowhere to look but his eyes that burn with want into your own as he warns, “If you keep doing that, I’m not going to be able to handle myself. Don’t you want to play with Jimin? If you want to toy with me instead,” his voice hardens as your walls contract around nothing, “I’m more than happy to entertain you myself.”

You whine at his restraint and he simply clucks his tongue at you, “ I know that it’s hard to control yourself around me, babygirl, but wait just a bit longer for daddy, okay? Look,” he urges you to peer over at the couch that presents Jimin to you both and the man lies on his back as he’d been instructed to, his hand on cock as he palms at himself while he watches the two of you, “he’s waiting for you, doll. See what you’ve done to him?”

You can only whimper at the sight of the erect dick that sticks out of the pants he’s left open, his own coat long discarded with his dress shirt to leave only his black tie that dangles just before his cock. He’s about half the size of your boyfriend (of whom has the most monstrously made cock you’ve ever had the pleasure of having inside you), but you have not a care in the world about that as you observe the precum that he swirls around the head of his member, his eyes hooded as he gazes at you and calls for you, “Y/N…please…”

You hardly realize what you’re saying before the words leave you in stilted whisper, “Want you both. Want you to fuck me so well like you always do while I play with him, daddy,” you pull your sight away from Jimin to glance back at your boyfriend who is smirking cockily as you ask, “Can I have your permission?”

“Since you asked so nicely,” Jungkook ghosts his lips along your jawline, “go ahead, baby. Go warm yourself up on him and get ready for me, yeah?”

“Yes, sir,” you answer breathily whilst he attaches his mouth along the edge of your maw and flicks his tongue devilishly against you before pulling away to help you up, the hand that had been holding your own prisoner releasing you to find the zipper amid your backside only to pull it open, your skirt sliding down your legs to puddle around your feet.

You thank whatever force of nature had made you decide on your white lace thong for the day because Jimin’s gasp from behind you is audible to your ears as you preen at Jungkook’s own hitched breath that is fast to deepen into a growl as each thumb hooks under the sides of the panties he’d bought for you, his irises dilating at the sight he’d been denied when he’d been fucking you earlier.

“Can’t believe you were wearing these for me, babygirl. You really do want to tempt daddy into losing his fucking mind over that pussy, huh? Such a fucking whore for me,” he rasps as he pulls the pearled strings of the panties apart so that they too join your skirt on the floor as you rub your thighs together amid the finger he slides between your glistening folds, your own hands finding his shoulders and clutching onto him as you moan, your head falling back as he rubs his digit along your slit.

“Only for you, Jungkook,” you tell him as he spreads your legs apart with his other hand whilst the one currently nestled between your folds drags along your labia.

“As you should be, baby,” he announces as he collects your juices and brings two fingers to his mouth only to suck on them as heat floods your core at the damning view of that as he groans at your succulent taste, “Now go and prepare yourself for me. Rub yourself on top of Jimin’s little cock and when I’m ready, I’ll join you.”

He waits for you to take a step away from him, your knees buckling under you as your weight makes them wobble after what your boyfriend has allowed to be done to you and before you have time to let fear grip you in your descent toward the floor, his hands are there to grasp each side of your waist to steady you whilst your own grapple for each of his wrists as you cling to him for support.

A strong chest melds itself to your back once more as he chuckles, “Everything okay, baby?”

“Yeah,” you nod, “I’m fine. Thank you.”

“Think nothing of it, doll,” he lowers his head to whisper hotly into your ear, “When I’m done with you, you won’t even be able to walk, let alone stand, my love. Now, hurry along,” he ushers you forward and watches you stumble forth amidst the heels that you kick off in effort to reorient yourself with using your feet, a grin rising along his lips as he takes in your cuteness before his eyes flick down to the phone still sat atop his desk, “You’re being awfully quiet over there, Taehyung. Has the masturbation brought you that much satisfaction while you imagined it was my girlfriend that you were trying to fuck?”

“Shut the fuck up, brat,” Taehyung huffs in annoyance.

“Brat? Is that what you call the man that let you listen in while he fucked his soon to be fiancé? Interesting,” he muses as he runs a hand through his hair, his tongue poking against his cheek in visage that is not missed by you, your heart fluttering at the words he’d many times uttered to you in the tender aftercare of passionate lovemaking and you smile at that despite the gruffness to which your boyfriend speaks with next as his irises find and melt into yours, “Such an ungrateful prick that you are, Taehyung. Since you want to act like a dick, I think I’ll just leave you to trying to keep your own hard while I ravage my girlfriend. How does that sound for being a brat?”

“Jungkook, do not hang up on me,” Taehyung cautions, “You’ll regret it. As co-founder of this company, I can take her from you.”

Jungkook growls, his jaw clenching at the same time that you sex contracts around nothing as he ticks his head to the side in a habit you’ve grown fond of whenever he’s especially unappeased with something as he bites out, “You dare to threaten me, Taehyung? You have the audacity to challenge me for what has always been mine and that which fucking ran from you and into my waiting arms when you tried to make advancements on my fiancé? You’ve just awoken the fucking lion, co-founder Taehyung,” Jungkook spits out, “Try me and you’ll get the fucking claws. She is mine and I decide where she goes, got it?”

“Such a child,” Taehyung laughs mirthlessly from the other end.

“Such a fool,” Jungkook jabs, “to lose to the likes of a child that will now ravish what you’ve sought after for years and yet, she chose me. She’ll always choose me.”

“Jungkook, if you end this call, I’ll-“

The man never finishes his sentence, for Jungkook terminates the call with the press of a finger, his chest puffing out in a show of virility that has you wanting to whimper for him as his eyes lift from the screen to your own to raze your insides with heat of a wildfire as he demands, “Get on Jimin right now before I change my mind and take you home to screw you senseless into our bed until I’ve fucked all this irritation out of me.”

Desire flares in your sex as you quickly plant both hands on Jimin’s much narrower chest and swing your leg over him until you sit astride him on the couch, your irises pulled into the magnets of your boyfriend’s eyes that attract you so even when you’re straddling another man.

He stalks forward towards you and, needing to relieve some of the knotted tension between your thighs, you shift and seat yourself over Jimin’s smaller cock, your mouth parting as you rub yourself along his length only to plead for you boyfriend, “Jungkook…more. Come to me, please.”

Your voice wraps around your boyfriend like cool water on a stinging wound and, promptly, the anger that had begun to well up within him is drained by you as you implore him with begging eyes whilst you drag yourself over Jimin’s hardened length and Jungkook is helpless to watch as Jimin’s veiny member slides between your still sopping folds as you draw yourself along his dick.

The elder man stays quiet, his hand rising to cover his mouth to stifle the sounds he’d make so as not to bear the brunt of whatever Taehyung had done to Jungkook, for he knows full well that Jungkook could snap if you do not completely calm the storm that had begun to brew within him.

Your boyfriend looms ever closer and, like a predator to its prey, he stands tall above your much smaller body as his irises distend over you and he devours the sight that is you as you work yourself over Jimin and lather him in your essence. His already rearing member prods at your hole on one particular sweep of your hips over him and your boyfriend catches the way your breath is shakily exhaled from you as you peer up at him and only him, for you do not dare to look away when he’s looking at you like you’re a five course meal he’d eagerly eat.

And gorge himself on you he does, because in the next moment, he’s behind you and sitting on his knees as his fingers spread your ass apart to reveal a puckered hole for him. His dick twitches at the thought of what he will soon do, one finger tracing the rimmed entrance that borders the back of your ass and when his finger is replaced with his mouth, that’s when you moan only for him to shove his tongue inside you as he suckles at your asshole.

“Fuck, you’re still so tight even after the many times I’ve fucked you right here. Relax for me if you want my cock, Y/N. You want it, don’t you?”

“Yes,” you breathe, “want it so much, sir. Please, give it to me. I’m ready.”

Jimin, utterly enticed by the way your breasts bounce in your movements, leans up to take one in his mouth while your boyfriend opens you up for him, your walls rigid at first yet soon they soften to grant Jungkook greater access as he preps you.

The tight ring of muscle around Jungkook’s tongue loosens around him when Jimin dances his tongue along the floor of your tit that he welcomes into his mouth, pleasure lighting you up inside like dynamite as you buck your hips over the elder man’s length.

“You’re not ready if daddy has to work this much to get you to open up for him, baby. No matter,” he hums even with his tongue still stuck inches deep within you to send vibrations at sonic speed to your core as he goes on, “I don’t mind fucking you with my mouth if it means you’ll be able to take my big, fat cock.”

When Jungkook pushes in a finger to join the tongue that swirls around your asshole, that’s when your back bows inward as he strings you like the puppet your body is for him around his digits, his finger curling inside you devastatingly as his tongue whorls around it to have you stutter, “P-please. Don’t want to wait for you anymore, daddy. Need you inside me now.”

“You want something to fill that little cunt of yours?” Jungkook’s tongue extricates itself from you only for two fingers to take its place beside the one he’d already put into you as all three scissor you and you can only make a choked sound until he orders, “Then try and see if you can fit Jimin’s fucking dick inside it and keep his cock warm until mine joins it in your fucking ass.”

Your boyfriend’s fingers shear into you with precision as you obey, your fingernails biting into Jimin’s pecs as you align yourself with his thinner cock and finally sink down on it to sit obediently on top of him in wait of your boyfriend’s next set of instructions. When your boyfriend takes you like this, usually you feel like you’ll burst with how large he is and how wholly he fills you. Jimin, however, is a miniature version that is much easier to maneuver yourself on without the colossal member attached to your boyfriend that you’ve known to satisfy you for so long now.

Jimin’s eyes shut as he releases your breast from his mouth only to litter the underside of it with light kisses. He’s careful not to mar your flesh with his mark, for you do not belong to him and he knows that doing so will only stir Jungkook’s wrath later on, so he chooses to be wiser and avoid that as your hips still upon the final inch of him that you seat yourself on as Jungkook’s hands grip your sides roughly for leverage as the three fingers he’s plunged in you are impelled into you in forceful motions that have you whining in want of him.

“You listen so well, baby. Your ass is so fucking tense, but I guess it’s been a while since I fucked you back here, huh? I’ll have to keep it in mind to put my cock in your ass more often, I think.” He draws his fingers out of you, his fingertips grazing your walls on the way only for him to propel them roughly within you as you fight the urge to ride the man beneath you as Jungkook asks, “Are you ready for me? I don’t think I can wait for you any longer, baby. I’ve been without you for long enough.”

“Please,” you beg as you present your ass to him the best that you can while you’ve got a dick nestled between your netherlips, “Want you so badly, Jungkook. Let me have your big cock. You always take me so well with it.”

The words have hardly left your mouth before the fingers inside you are pulled out, the tip of his well lubricated dick prodding at your hole as his fingers tighten along your sides for him to apprise, “Once I start, I won’t be able to stop until you’re milking the dick inside you while you beg for the mercy only I can give to you. This is your last warning.”

You feel the shift of the couch behind you as your boyfriend rises to his knees, his tip poking at your hole as he hovers over you.

Your hand closes around his wrist as you look back at him to offer, “I won’t stop you. I won’t ever stop you, my love. Do it. Let me feel you inside me once again, for the absence of you is too difficult to bear,” you release a sigh of satisfaction as he inches himself inside you as you breathe,” I yearn for you, Jungkook. Let me have you.”

You watch your boyfriend’s eyes darken as he taunts, “You want me, baby? You can fucking have me.”

With that, he plunges his cock into you without pause, a slight burn searing your walls as he stretches you out with his member as you cry out his name. You’re jostled atop of Jimin in the power that Jungkook sheathes himself into you with, your sex riding Jimin’s member without either of you doing anything in the aftershocks of what Jungkook quakes your body with as his teeth bite at the nape of your neck whilst he pummels you ruthlessly.

Pleasure pangs through you as your boyfriend rocks into you from behind and, wanting Jimin to do something to quell the need that smolders within you, your fingers wrap around the tie still draped around his neck as you pull it so that he’s made to sit up as you narrow your eyes, “Fuck me, Jimin. Let me see if you can please me like my future husband can. No one has ever made me feel as good as he has. Show me what you can do to me, Jimin.”

He gulps, his Adam’s apple bobbing in the movement and when your boyfriend thrusts violently into you to have your back arching and your eyes rolling to the back of your head, Jimin’s irises set determinedly before he impetuses his hips within you to have you moan out for them both.

“No one fucks you like I do,” Jungkook hisses as he rams into you, your fingers constricting around the tie as you inhale the same air that Jimin releases in what little space settles between your lips as you bounce on the blonde-haired man while your boyfriend grunts, “And when I have you in our bed later tonight, I’ll make sure to fucking remind me you of that. The only reason he’s here right now is because I can’t say no if it means my babygirl will be happy.”

You bob atop of Jimin as Jungkook continues to pound you, his dick far too little for your cunt that has become too used to the fullness of your boyfriend who splits you open every time he’s inside you and you whine in desire of more, your forehead resting against Jimin’s as you release his tie and drag his hand up so that it envelops your breast, his tiny fingers a stark contrast to Jungkook’s much longer ones as they stroke your supple skin while you part your lips for him and wait for him to take the offering you give to him.

“Kiss me, Jimin,” you plead, your other hand laying itself over his cheek amidst the jerking field of vision your boyfriend wracks you in as you breathe, “Let me prove to him that your lips are as pretty as they look.”

“My…my lips are pretty?” He swallows as you nod and he meets you willingly with soft, plushy lips that are soft as pillows against you and he’s much gentler than Jungkook as his tongue tentatively drapes itself over your own as it asks for entrance and when you grant it, his warm muscle dances with your own to the rhythm of your rapidly beating heart, his digits splaying themselves over your breast to rub soothing circles into them as he holds you close, your whimper taken into his mouth as your hips rotate atop him so that his length brushes the very edge of the cluster of nerves deep within you that your boyfriend aids in pushing him further into you with alongside the shove of his own cock into your ass.

Jungkook swivels his own hips into you while he watches Jimin tilt his head to the side to receive you, the two of you soon becoming enraptured with each other as he traces your lips with his tongue whilst you nibble at his bottom lip.

“Keep going, Jimin, you’re making her feel good,” Jungkook husks.

With each kiss, Jimin seems to grow bolder, his lips soon traveling southward as he busses your chin and then down the column of your throat as you lift your head to give him access. He’s sure to let his tongue brush your flesh as he goes, your core clenching around him when he laves his tongue over your nipple that you lower into his mouth.

“That’s it, Jimin, keep going. She’s getting wet again, isn’t she?” Jungkook inquires, one hand dipping from your side so that his fingers slide through your soddened folds as he groans, “Fuck, she’s so wet for us, Jimin. She likes what you’re doing, doesn’t she, babygirl?”

“Ah-“ you gasp when he attaches his lips to your abused breast, his tongue lapping at your nipple as he you gyrate your hips atop him before Jungkook pounds into you once more, “I like it so much. Your mouth is so much better than I ever thought it would be, Jimin, fuck.”

“I’m glad you think so, Y/N,” he mouths from around the tit that is presently within his mouth, his lips caressing your sensitive skin as he says, “You don’t know how long I thought about doing this,” the hand that still enfolds your other tit warmly kneading at it as he licks at your hardened bud to continue, “You have no idea how badly I wanted to kiss you here, how much I wanted to feel you like this.”

“Consider yourself lucky that I’m the one allowing you to do what you are to her, Jimin. If it were any other man she’d asked me to do this with, I’d have said no. Want to know why?”

“Why?” Jimin mutters against the slick ‘pop’ that his mouth makes as he relinquishes your breast only to focus on the other, his hand draggling down your stomach to catch on the press of his cock against his palm from within you as you moan when he bucks up into you as Jungkook burrows brusquely inside you.

“Because,” Jungkook smirks knowingly at the blonde-haired man as he damns you with his cock through a devastating blow of his hips into you, the sounds of skin slapping sluicing the air around him as Jungkook confesses, “ You’re the only male that’s been around her for more than a week and not succumbed to her fucking charms that she likes to cast on just about everyone that owns a dick.”

“It’s not my fault,” you pout and Jimin takes the opportunity to sweep his thumb under your lip as you turn your head into his touch so that he swipes his digit along your lip that you eagerly pucker your lips against in a fleeting kiss to his finger before you take his wrist to tug it down the line of your chin and along the column of your throat until he’s descending among the valley of your breasts while Jungkook jostles you forward and back. When Jimin’s fingers nurture the bud of nerves hedging the garden of your pussy, you moan, “How can I be blamed when I don’t even do anything but get their cocks wet for me, daddy?”

“It’s all a game to you, isn’t it? God, you look like a fucking ragdoll with how rough you’re being handled, babygirl,” Jungkook says as he slams his hips into you to give a grunt, “Of course it’s your fault when you look like such a pretty little toy that they want to fucking break. You only opened your seams for me, though, yeah?”

“Yes, Jungkook,” you laboriously get out and it is only then that you feel your boyfriend’s chest press down over yours, his arms falling forward to cage you into the solid plane of Jimin, your own breasts falling over the blonde-haired man’s pectorals as you as you’re melded to lay flush against him. Your hips jerk when Jimin’s cock grazes the clump of nerves deep inside you at Jungkook’s powerful ministrations, your mouth dropping open and your eyes fluttering closed as your breath hitches, “O-oh…Jimin…”

The blonde-haired man’s cock twitches inside you at the mention of his name, but in the following moments that Jungkook screws you without abandon, he watches your face contort into one of unadulterated pleasure as he whisks his middle finger over your clit that has become engorged with the blood that pulsates needily for him and the male above you. It is a wonder that the space between your bodies is just small enough to allow him this and he touches you like you’re a glass figurine while your boyfriend fucks into you like you’re his puppet.

“Jungkook, you should see her. She’s so hot. Shit,” Jimin doesn’t know he’s said what he’d been thinking aloud until there’s a dark chuckle that consumes any other sound as it emits itself from between your boyfriend’s lips as he rails you against the elder man and when Jimin drives his hips into you the same way he’d seen your boyfriend do to meet him halfway in reducing you to a mess of limbs between their chests, you give a guttural scream that has the windows around you shaking in the shrillness pitching your voice that has them threatening to crack.

“Ah, there it is,” Jungkook husks, his hot breath drifting over the crook of your neck as he teases, “I’ve got you screaming for me just as I promised I would,” his tongue laves at the nape of your neck before teeth nip the tender spot as he forges forward into you all while Jimin ogles you from beneath him as your boyfriend utters, “What of my other vow to you, baby? Can you fucking tell which direction is which or have I turned that upside down, too?” You shake your head as he plows into you, your world spinning as he corkscrews himself within you as he taunts, “Can you even remember anything beyond my name anymore, doll?”

Your walls clench around Jimin, who hisses at the sudden succumbing of his member to your sex as you’re knocked repeatedly into him like the pendulum of a seesaw, one side of your thoughts swinging to the other as you try, “J-Jungkook…Jimin …I-again…n-need-“

“Mmm,” Jungkook hums,” She’s close. She can’t even fucking talk anymore. Jimin,” black eyes raze his own, “let’s wrap this up, shall we?”

“What,” Jimin swallows as he watches the way your digits quiver around him as he skillfully skims his finger along the bud of nerves cresting your sex and your chest slides against his in the sweat that slickens you along him, the knot of pleasure deep in your core tightening just as your own hand does over the blonde-haired man’s wrist whilst your other grabs onto the twisted nodule of fabric at the base of his neck in your effort to hold onto something as you whisper his name pleadingly and Jimin is helpless to give you what you ask for at your glassy eyes that so resemble a priceless statuette as he adds a second finger to join the first to stimulate the button decorating your treasure as he asks, “what can I do to your beautiful little doll, Jungkook?”

“Look at me while I fuck you, babygirl,” Long fingers curl around your jaw as he turns your head to the side so that you’re granted a glorious view of them both, your breath hitching at the way beads of sweat clamping to thick strands of tresses black as a raven’s wing falling perilously over your boyfriend’s eyes that glint dangerously at you, his own lips red as a rose from biting them too much as he snaps his hips ferociously into you, a moan drawn forth from you at the sight of him in combination with the frisk of Jimin’s shorter fingers along your clit as your boyfriend smirks, “As for you, Jimin, you may keep touching her where she needs it. I’m going to help you ruin her needy, pretty cunt and when I do,” you skin pebbles when Jungkook’s hot breath billows over it as he orders, “You’re going to damn her with your cock at the exact moment I decimate her with mine. Understand?”

“Can she handle that, though? What if she-“ Jimin never finishes because Jungkook’s voice that is draped in certitude covers it.

She will take it because she was made for me and will do whatever I ask of her, won’t she, babygirl?” As if to prove a point, his cock converges with your sex, your nipples poking into Jimin, who makes a choked sound as you rake your fingernails through his hair as satisfaction strikes you through whilst Jungkook’s fingers constrict just enough so that your attention does not stray from him and look away from him you do not when a familiar calloused thumb joins the two of Jimin’s that had been measuredly swiping themselves over your bud as Jungkook flicks a brow up in expectation, “Come on, baby. Tell Jiminie here that you can take it for daddy.”

“J-Jungkook,” you implore with a nod, for the only language that you can possibly speak at this point is his name as he rocks into you while his thumb circles languidly at your clit alongside Jimin that are slower and softer in their ministrations, your eyelids drooping amidst the dark bliss the heavies them.

“Good girl,” Jungkook praises and you preen at that, a dopey smile crossing your features in the vapors of lust that have settled over you while Jungkook’s thumb fastens its movements to reward you as he commands, “Jimin, match your pace with mine, yeah? Playtime is almost over for this one.”

Jimin doesn’t need to be told twice with his own end on the horizon. With determination that twines itself through his eyes, his two digits that he has attached to you mirror Jungkook as if your boyfriend is the puppeteer of you both. Jungkook swirls his thumb expertly along your button while he marionettes his cock into you with fervor and you clench as he licks his lips to husk, “So beautiful, doll. You look like you’re about to fucking break,” he gives a sharp shunt into you, his balls slapping against your ass as you clench around Jimin, a strangled sound coming from between his lips and Jungkook doesn’t have to be in your cunt to know that you’re just as near as Jimin looks to be with the way that drool pools along the sides of his mouth and, with a grin, Jungkook’s irises string from yours to the blonde-haired man’s as he winds you up around him and when he hastens his fingers over you to have you whimper, that’s when he orders, “Now, Jimin. Screw her with your cock while I fuck her with mine until she cums all over you.”

“Fuck,” Jimin curses, his hips twisting up into yours at the exact moment that your boyfriend deliciously drills his own dick with into your plushily lined sex as you’re reared against the blonde-haired man and geared like a fucking machine between the cogs of them both that grind into you and when Jimin’s cock throbs tellingly within you while your boyfriend stares down at you with danger flashing in pupils that dilate automatically for you, that’s when you fucking scream.

The glass rattles as your voices pierces the air around you while you’re battered like a stuffed animal between two rough children and Jungkook’s eyes strike you deep with the cocks that fill you up as they devastatingly pair their thrusts together and when your boyfriend’s fingers intertwine with the one you’d unknowingly been clutching at the couch with, that’s when he grunts, “Come on, baby. Want you to come for daddy. Can you do that for me? Can you show Jimin how beautiful you are when that pretty little cunt finishes all over his cock while you look at me?”

With the wind that is continually knocked out of you, all you can do is blink up at him in answer as you wrap your fingers around his at the same time the digits of your other hand tighten and tug at Jimin’s scalp only for the blonde-haired man to peer up at Jungkook as you’re dangled over the edge of your precipice once more, your walls fluttering in warning and Jimin, through irregular breaths that are drawn out of him in the rigorousness of his efforts, understands enough to let your boyfriend know, “She’s about to meet her end, J-Jungkook. Sh-She’s squeezing my dick. It feels so good.”

“Feels like heaven around your cock, doesn’t it? Of course it does,” Jungkook groans as he plunges himself into you while Jimin rolls his hips, your head falling forward so that your temple rests against Jimin’s forehead while your mouth parts as their fingers quicken against your clit as you moan only for him to husk, “Shit, you’re so good for us, baby. I think I’ll let you cum for me in a minute, but first, what do you say when you want something from daddy?”

Your mind has become wired only to the pleasure that pangs through you with each sweep of their cocks within you, but somehow, you wrack your brain to find the only other words that you know always appease him to pant, “Please, Jungkook…n-need you.”

“That’s it, baby,” he rasps as your boyfriend runs his finger ruinously between Jimin’s own digits that draw shapes into your button and when Jungkook’s digit suddenly drags itself in hard figure-eight motions along it to the same time that his cock cataclysmically crashes impossibly deep into your ass, that’s when you’re thrashed against Jimin. The elder man perfectly times the buck of his hips into you so that his cock arcs against the clutter of nerves hidden precariously inside you, your irises jerking over the him before they’re threshed to your boyfriend that lodges his cock once, twice and then three more times within you to finally command, “Cum for me, babygirl. Get Jimin all fucking soaked because of what I let him do to you. Give me your fucking orgasm, doll. Give it all to me and let him watch you, yeah?”

With the sin he spews, you release is swift to unravel you as you come undone, your walls spasming violently over Jimin and he hisses at the way you contract around him as if to pull him in, his own end quick to follow yours as your sex shudders around him amidst your trembling thighs that shake with the rest of your body as you shriek shrilly, your fingers constricting around Jungkook’s own as you hold onto him for dear life.

When Jimin shoots a hot rope of seed inside you as his member twitches erratically, you hardly have time to moan at the sensation of it before your boyfriend possessively curls an arm around your front to pull you up and against his chest as he sits back on his heels to have Jimin’s own dick slip out of you and the other man throws his head back against the armrest of the couch to stroke himself needily as he hastens to replicate the feel of you around his member while he continues to spill all over himself amidst the pool of your own juices that you’ve splashed all over his dick.

“You’re mine,” Jungkook’s other hand releases your own to wrap around your throat so that your head falls back against his shoulder as he crazedly crams himself into you again and again, the palm on your abdomen resting where his much larger cock pokes against it before trailing up to grab one breast as you whine while your own orgasm still forcibly strikes you through in unending sparks that electrify you as your boyfriend powers into you from behind before he growls, "Let him fucking see you fall apart for the only cock that you'll ever love, baby. You belong to me. Say it."

“Y-yours, Jungkook…yours,” you cry out and it is that that has your boyfriend descending into his own end as he gives a guttural groan that you engulf when he urges your head to the side so that you can swallow the sound through the attachment of your mouths and he keeps his sealed against you until you kittenishly slide your tongue against his lower only for him to open his mouth to you and suck your tongue, along with any remaining air that you had, between his lips as he feasts on you until you have no oxygen or saliva left to give him.

Jimin observes it all, heat stirring in his abdomen as he rubs furiously at his softening length that even now still oozes with the cum both you and he have drenched it with.

Infatuation influxes the blonde-haired man at the way desire rings itself around the corner of your eyes from you in the cords of pleasure you’d been fibrously instilled with whilst Jungkook holds you close, your brows scrunching together as you bite your lip between your teeth in the aftershocks of your orgasm as your chest heaves over your boyfriend’s, the petalled marks that Jungkook had left over you blushing your flesh in your labored breaths.

It’s captivating as a current and Jimin is pulled asunder for you all while Jungkook watches the emotions ripple across the blonde-haired man’s face, amusement lifting at your boyfriend’s lips at how easy it had been for you to capture yet another man in the palm of your hand.

When Jungkook carefully extricates himself from to lay back on the opposite side of the couch with you still in his arms, he chuckles to himself as you silently nestle yourself against his side to snuggle up to him, one arm draping over his chest as you peer adoringly up at him while he makes room for you beside him to entwine his own limb around yours as he croons, “You’re so adorable after you get fucked, baby. Always have to cling to me afterward, huh? You know,” he traces the marks he’d left behind and you sigh with satisfaction as he does, “You’re cute, petal. Have I told you that today?”

“Mhm,” you purr as you turn on your side to give innocent pecks to his chest while your eyes close as fatigue pulls at them and you affirm, “All the time.”

“I think someone’s a little tired, doll. Do you want me to carry you to the car?” Jungkook asks as he brushes an especially red mark that has purple smearing itself around it and you lean into the touch as a smile lifts at your lips while you stare at the brands he’d left on you.

“’S fine. I can stay awake a-“ you yawn, your mouth opening only a little as you stretch your arms out before settling back next to your boyfriend –“little while longer.”

“Yes, you sound awfully convincing, don’t you?” He teases as he sits up and you immediately whine until he laughs and helps you onto his lap as he urges, “I think it might be best to take you home now, baby. You’re about ready to fall asleep. Help me zip myself up, will you?”

Responsive to him as ever, you tuck his member away before fastening his pants so that he looks presentable should someone see you and when he tucks you inside the blanket you’d hand-stitched and made for him for his birthday, you link your hands around his neck as he cradles you, his irises softening as he peers down at you while you whisper, “Thank you.”

The double meaning is not lost on him as you have always said those words whenever he’s done just about every single thing for you and he drags his knuckles along your cheek as he offers, “You’re welcome, baby. Anything for you. You know that, don’t you?”

You giggle as you beam up at him with the toothy smile that still has his heart flipping in his chest to let him know, “I do. Do you know that I would do everything for you?”

He kisses you along the tip of your charming little nose as he nudges at your cheek, “And how could I ever forget that?”

He carefully swaddles you in the fluffy fabric until you’re completely covered and all the while, his fingers lovingly caress your sides as he gathers you up and stands with you swathed in the safety of his arms. With his attention captured by your irises that swim with devotion for him, he starts moving forward and with his back to the other man that still is splayed along the couch, he glances back to say, “Ah, and I did not neglect to acknowledge that you’re here, too, Jimin,” he winks, “You did well. I can tell she enjoyed herself. I’ll be in touch. Please make sure you lock up, for I have more important things,” he peers back down at you with affection crinkling his eyes for you, “to attend to.”

Jimin waits until the two of you vanish until he allows his own lips to lift out of joy born from watching such domesticity manifest itself in the form of two individuals that clearly were in love with each other with the way the emotion had so colored both of you and, with that emotion lifting his own heart, he dresses and locates his phone amidst the piles of clothes (both yours and his) that had long been forgotten.

Knowing that you wouldn’t be able to walk, Jungkook had decided that foregoing your outfit would be best and so, as he carries you through the halls like the bride you will soon be to him, he smiles as he gazes tenderly at you, your eyes closed as you snooze comfortably in the cushions of his body as he holds you.

You sleep peacefully in the passenger seat of his Mercedes S-Class Coupe and he glances at you every so often, your skin glowing amidst the emerald greens and ruby reds your skin shines with under the traffic lights as the city passes by in a whir with the constant to it all being your slumbering figure that gives him so much strength and stability in a ceaselessly churning life.

You were the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen even from the first time you’d caught his eye and now, after so much time has passed, you still remain the most priceless jewel to ever gleam for him amidst the dull, dim passersby that pale in comparison to your transfixing bright light.

When he’s pulled into the quiet mansion that stands tall in front of the richly hewn garden you have tended to that borders an impressive watering fountain that cost him thousands, none of it holds a candle to the treasure he takes into his arms as he withdraws you from the car and gently brings you upstairs. He’s careful not to make sound so as not to wake you and when he sets you smoothly on the bed, you do not rouse until the sound of water from the shower in the adjoining master bathroom trickles over your ears.

You divest yourself of your covering in search of the kind of warmth only your fiancé can grant to you and when you join him in the shower, he welcomes you and washes your hair before his hands trail along your body to clean that, too. You sigh in satisfaction as you thank him once more and with some insisting on your part, you do the same for him even in his concern that you might be too sore to do so. Mindless touches turn into something not so sinless as your hands wander along his chiseled figure that has the power to have you salivating with only one glance.

He’s hesitant at first because he knows you ache from the strenuousness of the night’s illicit activities, but in your want to reassure him that you are not as fragile as you appear, you fall to your knees before him and take him into your mouth, his groans heating you up as you rut against his leg while you suckle him. You eagerly devour his seed that you’ve come to love so much when he is ready to feed you and once he helps you rise from the ground, he’s sure to give you a kiss that would rival that of the one in the most beloved romance story before he dries you both against your ailing and feeble legs that are weak for him and when he sweeps you off your feet once more, he still kisses you like his hunger will never stop its craving for you.

Even when he lays you down like you’re a glass doll that might shatter if he’s not careful, he still treats you like a piece of art as he looks at you reverently whilst he makes love to you amid your breathless admissions of love for him while he fills your canvas with his seed until he can give you no more of his paint to taint you with.

And when the breeze blows against your sweat sluiced skin as you lay over him, your chin resting on his sternum while you innocently let the pad of your fingers brush his chest, he asks you, “Did I please you tonight, my love? Did you have fun?”

“Sweetheart,” you press your mouth to the dip between his collarbones before you breathe, “whenever I am with you, those two things are always a given.”

His heart dances in his chest at your admission and the fingers that skim your sides splay out to hold you closer as you stare fondly at him.

“Such a wonderful girl for me. Have I told you how perfect you are for me lately?” He questions, his thumbs drawing shapes into your skin as he goes on, “I don’t know if I have or not. I suppose you’ll have to remind me.”

"Every morning," you brush your lips against his own in a soft kiss before you pull away, "and every night, my love. Not a day goes by that you don't tell me that or how beautiful you think I am," you smile at him.

"It's because it's true. You are the best thing that has ever happened to me and this, "he holds up the phone to show a text from Jimin you’d both missed in the middle of your lovemaking as he kisses the crest between your brows, "was for you, pretty girl. Whatever you want, I will always give it to you."

"You're too good to me, Kookie. I really am so lucky to have you," you caress him, your knuckles tracing his jawline as you stare tenderly up at him, "You've always been the best for me and when we marry," you coax him toward you and he heeds your urging fingers along his maw as he meets you halfway to connect your lips to his own, but this kiss is one that he takes control of and you let him, your lips parting for him as his tongue dips low into your mouth to reclaim every contour of you in his touch before he disconnects from you for you to vow, "I enjoyed messing around with Jimin, but once marriage binds us together forever, I will love you and only you until the end of my days. No matter what, I will always yearn for you."

"God, I love you so much. I can’t wait to marry you and put a ring on your finger so that everyone knows that you’re all mine," he ardently declares as he rests his forehead against yours to breathe in your air as he confesses, "They say that happy marriages look to the future and not the past," he lays back and brings you with him so that you're lain across his chest, his heart beating to the same rhythm as yours as he grins, "but baby, you are what I want my time to be filled with. You're my past, my present and my future and what we have together, my beloved flower, will never wilt."

#btsbookclub #bangtanarmynet #ksmutclub #btsguild #jungkook x reader #jungkook x you #dom!jungkook #sub!jimin #dom jungkook #jungkook smut #jimin smut #bts smut #jungkook #jungkook fanfic #bts scenarios #hot jungkook #jksource

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openheartthot · 4 years

Text

Holding On

Part 1: The Inevitable | Part 2: Selfish | Part 3: Letting Go

Pairing: Ethan Ramsey x f!MC (Camille Prescott)

Word Count: 2,551

Warnings: None that I can think of.

Summary: Ethan can’t live without her.

***

Ahh guys it’s been so long omg. I know I’ve missed reading a lot of fics but I swear once finals are over I’m gonna go back and harass everyone with my reblogs lmao. This is sort of all over the place, but I figured I’ve been wallowing in my writer’s block long enough!

Ethan watches her all night.

She’s radiant in a wine-colored dress, her perfectly coiffed golden hair a far cry from the messy ponytails and buns that she used to sport around Edenbrook.

It’s hard to believe that this is the same woman who’d once started every morning tangled in his bedsheets, who’d held his hand across the table in Derry Roasters.

The same woman who once tried to tell him she loved him in an airport, before he stopped her.

Pain battles with pride in the pit of his stomach as he watches her flit around the hotel ballroom. She’s completely in her element as she rubs elbows with the elite of West Coast medicine. No longer is she the bright-eyed young intern by his side.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise, Ethan always knew she’d be great.

And yet...he can’t help but worry that he might be too late.

Her dress is just a bit risqué for a medical conference, but none of the other doctors or representatives seem to mind. They are completely enraptured by her wide smiles and sharp wit. Especially the young, sandy-haired doctor all but glued to her side. Ethan doesn’t miss the way his hand alights on her waist every now and then, nor the wonderstruck way he gazes at her.

Jealousy roils in Ethan’s stomach, completely unwarranted. He has no claim on her, not anymore.

Ethan turns bitterly back to his scotch, determined to drown his sorrows in the amber liquid before him. One more drink at the bar, and then he’ll leave to continue his pity party upstairs in the privacy of his hotel room. There’s no point in torturing himself with the sight of her with another man.

He knocks back his drink, and another one appears in front of him almost instantly, though he hasn’t ordered one.

For a moment, he’s confused.

But only for a moment.

He catches a whiff of her perfume before any of his other senses realize she’s behind him. He breathes in deeply, savoring the gentle floral scent that lingered on his pillow long after she left for the last time.

“Hell of a speech,” Ethan says into the drink she bought him. He can’t look at her-- he’s scared of what he might say if he gets a glimpse of those green eyes.

He’s broken a lot of his own rules when it comes to Camille, but he won’t make a move on a woman in a relationship. No matter how badly he wants to punch her companion in the jaw.

“I wasn’t expecting you to be here. You hate conventions.”

Ethan grits his teeth against the onslaught of emotions triggered by that voice. That soft, silvery voice that he used to have the pleasure of hearing every day.

God, how he took her for granted back then.

“To your first keynote? I wouldn’t miss it.” Ethan says, fighting to keep his voice even.

It’s true. Ethan avoids conventions like the plague, but when he heard Camille was to be the keynote speaker of a conference held in her new home city of San Francisco, he’d booked a flight without a second thought.

He’s been telling himself it is just to celebrate her success as a former mentor, but he can no longer pretend that he doesn’t have ulterior motives. That he didn’t want to know if she’d come alone, or on the arm of some well-built pretty boy--

“The blonde Clark Kent? Who’s he?” Ethan asks, not entirely on purpose. The scotch has loosened his tongue more than he realized.

“Adam is... just a colleague.” Camille says, and then Ethan catches a glimpse of red silk and blonde hair in his periphery as she sinks onto the barstool beside him.

He can’t ignore the flicker of hope ignited by her words, but then reality comes crashing back in. They live on opposite sides of the country. He told her to leave.

“I was your colleague too, once.” Ethan says, immediately wishing the words didn’t sound so resentful.

“Once.” Camille muses in agreement, and Ethan can’t help but wonder if the bittersweet reel of their relationship plays on a perpetual loop in her mind the way it does in his.

“So, you aren’t seeing anyone?” Ethan can’t help but ask, unable to shake the growing tingle of hope.

“No.” Camille says softly, “I don’t know if I’m ready for anything serious.” She stares down at the bar, unaware of the physical ache that the words cause in Ethan’s chest. The cautious tone of her voice hurts more than he cares to admit.

His Camille, the one who boldly strode past all of the boundaries that he had so painstakingly created, would never be so hesitant when it came to love.

She’s supposed to be foolish, and headstrong, and impulsive...and it’s Ethan’s fault that she isn’t any of those things anymore.

Ethan takes another swallow of scotch, for courage, before he turns to face her.

He had watched her during her speech, of course, and from afar as she made her rounds through the room, but seeing her up-close is almost more than he can handle.

Ethan meets her eyes, and for a minute, he swears he forgets how to breathe. The rest of the room fades away, and it feels like all that exists is him and her. All he can see through his tunneling vision are those green eyes.

Those eyes bring him back to Miami, to that first passion-fueled kiss on a balcony under the light of a thousand stars, both of their inhibitions clouded with wine.

Those eyes bring him back to long nights spent in the diagnostics office, toiling over a case; to her fingers laced in his under the table; to a million little moments shared between the two of them over the course of their relationship, both professional and romantic.

“Dance with me.” Ethan says. He can’t think of a single other thing besides encircling Camille in his arms and holding her close, even if it’s only for the duration of a song.

“...Okay.” Camille agrees after a moment, although Ethan isn’t sure whether it’s out of pity, or because, like his, her hands are burning with the need to touch him.

She follows him to the dance floor, and when she steps into his arms, Ethan can’t stop his eyes from watering. He is convinced there is nothing more right than Camille against his chest, the way her arms slide around his neck, the way that his hands know the curve of her waist.

“I want you.” Ethan murmurs. He can’t help it, with her in his arms, it’s almost like no time has passed at all.

Camille stiffens, her arms tensing where they rest against his shoulders. Her gaze flicks to the elevators, and she swallows hard before looking away.

“You know I’m not interested in being a casual hookup anymore.”

Ethan’s chest tightens, knowing that he was the one that made her feel cheap, disposable. Even so, his own hurt swells.

“There was nothing casual about the nights we spent together, not for me.” Ethan says curtly, stung by her implication.

“For me either.” Camille says in exasperation. “But…”

“I want to be with you.” Ethan says, the words welcome on his tongue after spending so long pretending that he didn’t miss her. Pretending that it didn’t bother him knowing that Camille was building a new life on the other side of the country. A life without him.

“Stop it.” Camille falters, missing a step and almost losing her balance. Ethan pulls her securely against his chest, but she avoids his gaze. “Missing me isn’t the same thing as wanting to be with me.”

“I know,” Ethan insists, refusing to back down.

“Since you left Boston, I’ve been a shell of a man, living only for your visits. And when those stopped…” He takes a deep breath. “I can’t live without you, Camille, I need you.”

“That’s not healthy.” Camille snaps, her expression knitting into a scowl. “And you were the one who told me to move in the first place!”

“I was, and I stand by that. It was the right decision for your career.” Ethan counters reflexively before his voice drops, husky with emotion. “Whether it’s healthy or not, I don’t want to be without you. Not for another second.”

He dips his head, just enough to let his jaw brush against her temple.

Camille lets out a tiny sniff, and when he pulls back to meet her eyes, he finds them shimmering with tears.

“Ethan…” Her lips part on his name, her eyes filled with a yearning so deep that Ethan instinctively tightens his hold on her, his fingers tracing the notches of her spine.

Slowly, tentatively, she relaxes into him, her head resting on his chest just above his beating heart. Ethan freezes, terrified that the slightest movement will scare her away.

“I want that, too.”

He doesn’t waste another second. He tilts her chin up, and then her hands are in his hair, tugging him roughly down until his mouth meets hers. The kiss is desperate and consuming, her hands roving over his back and chest while Ethan traces patterns on the exposed skin of her back.

“I’ve missed this.” Ethan manages before crushing his mouth back to hers. “I’ve missed you.”

Camille sighs in agreement, pulling him close and melding her body against his until it’s hard to tell where his body ends and hers begins.

Her hips rock boldly against him, and Ethan bites back a groan, all too aware that they’re still in the middle of a very public dance floor.

As their frantic kiss slows to gentle brushes of his lips against hers, Ethan smooths his hands over her back, holding her as tightly as he dares. He gazes down at her in amazement, and she stares back, her eyes alight with joy and promise.

“Is that a yes, then? To being with me?” Ethan asks, trying to keep his giddiness at bay. He doesn’t deserve this woman, not even a little, but if she’ll have him... The rising tide of his hope is an almost overwhelming warmth in his chest.

“I…” Camille’s voice trails off, and the light in her eyes extinguishes. She pulls back, not quite out of his embrace, but enough for the distance between them to feel insurmountable.

Ethan closes his eyes, feeling a fresh wave of despair wash over him. He’s too late, too much time has passed. Whatever they once had is unsalvageable. He had known that it was a longshot, but he knows he couldn’t live with himself if he hadn’t at least tried.

“I want to say yes, I really do.” Camille says, shaking her head despondently. “But I can’t move back to Boston. I have a life in San Francisco, now. I have an apartment with a great view of the Bay, and my career is finally taking off… You don’t get to follow me and ask me to give all of that up, it’s not fair.”

She looks up at him, restrained hope in her eyes, as if she’s waiting for Ethan to make a grand gesture, to convince her that he’s worth another chance.

“Does your apartment allow dogs?” Ethan asks instead.

Camille looks away, and he can see the disappointment wash over her face. Disappointment in him, for once again choosing to take the path of least resistance, and once again refusing to fight for her.

“The song’s over, and I’m not interested in making small-talk about my apartment with you. I should go.” She tries to pull back, but Ethan doesn’t release her, maintaining a firm but gentle grip on her waist.

“It’s not small-talk. You should know I hate that more than anyone.” Ethan says, his fingers pressing insistently against her waist, the smooth fabric of her dress bunching beneath his fingertips.

“I need to know if your apartment allows dogs. I need to know if I can have Alan put Jenner on the first flight out to San Francisco tomorrow morning, or if I have to wait until we find a new place.”

Camille’s eyes search his face with obvious confusion.

“What? I don’t… Jenner?” Camille stammers for a moment as she collects her thoughts, her hands absentmindedly resting on his chest. Ethan feels his heart skip at the casual intimacy of her fingers toying with his lapels. “You want to move out to San Francisco?”

“Yes.” Ethan says shortly. “When I said I didn’t want to leave your side, I meant it.”

“Ethan, we’ve been over this. If one of us gives up our career for the other we’ll just end up resenting each other. You’ve been working at Edenbrook for over a decade, I can’t let you give it up for me.”

“Edenbrook is…wonderful. I have enjoyed working there, but at the end of the day it’s just a job. When I came home to an empty apartment at the end of the day, it wasn’t Edenbrook I was thinking about, Camille, it was you.”

“But you love Edenbrook.” Camille says uncertainly, her eyes begging for an explanation.

“I like Edenbrook, most assuredly.” Ethan cups her face in his hands, running his thumbs over her smooth skin. “But I love you.”

“You…love me?” Camille asks, her green eyes gazing up at him, starry with hope. Her cheeks are flushed pink, and Ethan is sure he’s never seen her look more beautiful.

“I do.” he murmurs, unwilling-- unable to look away from her awed expression.

“You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting to hear you say that.” Camille whispers back, a luminous smile growing on her face.

“Camille, I’ve been a complete fool, I know that. But I have to know… if you still…” Ethan stumbles over his words, his grip on her tightening in thinly veiled desperation.

“If I still love you back?” she prompts, her light and teasing tone a far cry from her earlier anguish.

Ethan nods, the agony of not knowing threatening to consume him altogether.

Camille’s expression softens, and her fingers drift to his face, tenderly tracing the contour of his cheekbone.

“Of course I do. How could I not?” she asks with a soft laugh, lifting one shoulder in a bashful shrug that is entirely too alluring. His eyes trail over her exposed collarbone.

Ethan can’t wait to take her to his suite upstairs and find out if the skin under that red dress is as sweet as he remembers. But there will be plenty of time for that later, after he hears the three words that have been haunting him ever since she boarded that plane.

“Say it. Please.” Ethan presses his forehead to hers, unbridled joy threatening to bring him to his knees. There are few scenarios that involve the great Ethan Ramsey being reduced to begging, and every last one centers around the gorgeous, brilliant woman in front of him.

“I love you, too.”

This time, she pushes herself onto her tiptoes to close the distance beteen them. And when their lips meet, Ethan knows that he has made the right decision. Edenbrook, Boston, he can take or leave all of it, as long as he has her.

***

Tagging separately since I have no idea if tumblr will decide to work or not :)

#open heart #ethan ramsey #oph #oh #ethan ramsey x mc #ethan x mc #open heart fanfiction #playchoices

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cleololax · 4 years

Text

Bubbles | A

Ghost!Jimin x MourningFiance!Reader

AN: My first story post and it’s really really angsty so buckle up, buttercups (and don’t be stingy with the tissues T-T). Inspired by the RUN era because it was my first debut with them and it’s still my favorite.

Warnings: Death of a loved one, mourning, intense grief and pain

_______________________________

You normally hate taking baths, preferring to get that tedious part of your routine over with. So you really don’t know what compels you today out of all of them, or so you tell yourself. The bathroom is small and quaint, quiet besides the sound of your jeans and the front button hitting the ground. The cold floor is covered in checkered tiles and light lavender walls. It was decorated long ago to fit your taste when you moved in, still single and excited to get your first place. It is fairly girly yet he had oddly loved it in here. The white tub is situated in the middle of the room, giving it that Parisian chateau feeling. You turn the gold faucet, unleashing the warm rushing water to fill the tub up to the brim. The bath soap is on top of the sink counter, ready to slide down any minute before you quickly grab it. The pink gel is squeezed into the water in a little stream that you are entranced by. Little wisps form before they disappear, leaving white froth in their midst. You slowly drop your undergarments and hastily twist your hair into a messy bun. You test it in the mirror, bobbing your head around in front of the small mirror to make sure that it stays. Your reflection looks back at you, but a much different one than you remember. It turns out that the lack of sleep has gotten to you, shading the space under your eyes a darker purple than before. Getting away with two hours of sleep every night consecutively can never work out and deep down you know that. Still, it angers you that you are, once again, no exception to a rule. Not wanting to see the sight anymore, you turn around and make your way to the tub. The water is warm and you go down slowly, not wanting to let the water escape. Your body soon gets enveloped and your nerves relax as the warm water does it’s magic. The towel behind you offers your head comfort as you lean back from your sitting position. Nancy, the therapist that has been seeing you since you moved to the city, had been right when she had proposed the idea of you doing this a couple times a week as a form of meditation. You mentally remind yourself to thank her later on. The plethora of bubbles surround you, creating a sea of iridescence so pretty it makes you want to cry and you would, if your eyes weren’t already swollen and dry. The little light above you makes them brilliantly shine and for a moment, you are lost to the sight. Nothing else matters outside of your little world. This sparks pleasant memories in your head. There is that time the two of you had a water fight, sloshing water back and forth, getting your clothes soaking wet.You had laughed all night and even after as you put the clothes in the noisy dryer. It isn’t enough, never enough. These memories won’t bring him back to you, no matter how hard you wish. They won’t provide you warmth on those rainy nights when he isn’t there, but there is a hope that they’ll keep the darker thoughts away. The scent fills the room with the sweet tinge of honey and roses, a great contrast to the bitterness that is settling in your heart when you think of how unfair life is. No, you never are the exception. He was going to be a dancer on the Broadway stage and you’ll never get to watch his gracefulness, a determined look on his face as he lets the music take over. He’ll think he has forever to climb his way to the top, but it’ll be ripped from him. Your eyes momentarily close, trying to shut out all of the thoughts racing in your head. The ones that keep you from joining the living around you.You have to be calm because that is the whole point, after all. To relax and to find a new way of coping besides the self destructive path you have been treading on. When you feel yourself getting lighter, a voice cuts in. A faint one at first, but slowly growing. Like when you’re asleep and it is all muffled. It is a voice you recognize, one that had said silky ‘I love yous’ not so long ago. The blood in your veins seems to catch on because it grows cold, all too quickly. It couldn’t be. Your mind has to be imagining it. It isn’t real, can’t be. And you wonder how your senses can play their mean tricks on you, taunt you in a way similar to a knife twisting through the heart. You are slowly losing your sanity and it’s not the way you want to go. Your eyes are still shut, hoping that you can take yourself out of here, imagine yourself elsewhere. It isn’t until you feel the water by your feet move that you gain the guts to open your eyes wide. It’s your name said aloud this time, and you figure out that it’s coming from the door. Not from somewhere, but from someone. The person you thought you’d never see again is suddenly leaning on the door, his arms crossed before him. You hesitantly look into his face, no longer met with the pale shade it had been the last time you saw him. His lips are no longer blue, but the plush pink you have always been jealous of. He has an amused grin on his face, his eyes trying to read your expression. He was always frustratingly good at it, making it impossible for you to hide the feelings you hadn’t wanted him to see. Your eyes are probably still the size of saucers and your jaw still open wide. Breathe you tell yourself, just breathe. He isn’t real. Why did he look so real, then? “It’s nice to see you too, love” he slowly speaks out. Those words seem to snap you out of your trance and confusion. Your heart still beats the same rhythm, maybe recognizing the person it still belongs to. And all of a sudden, the anger bubbles up from somewhere. He comes towards you.

“Ah-ah, I have only a little bit of time. Let’s make it count.” You are still shocked, fingers digging into the palms of your hand. He comes to sit on the edge of the tub.

“After all those times of begging you to come take a bath with me, you finally do it after I’m gone. I’m hurt, Y/N.”

He jokes and it makes you remember all those times he had pouted and whined for you to join him, but you never wanted to. You should have because you wouldn’t have regretted it like you do now. His fingers glide through the warm water, occasionally popping some bubbles. Then, you feel the warm anger that creeps up your neck. How could he be joking right now, of all times?

Three months of loneliness and emptiness make your mouth feel dry and it’s hard to speak. He always tried to lighten the mood and it drove you wild, especially now.

“Really? You’re here and it’s the first thing you do is... laugh? You fucking bastard.“ Everything is a blur and you don’t know how you’re there on the rim of the tumb, hands pounding on his chest, water soshing around you.

“I haven’t washed your stuff, I keep your keys on the counter the way you left them. Everything is as you left it!” Even me. The words tumble out, even if they’ve swirled around in your mind, ontoletters that your therapist advised you to write. Warm hands catch a hold of your wrists.

“Y?N I-” Regret is laced in his tone and the red tinges on your vision disappear as soon as they appeared.

“No, no don’t say anything.” your body deflates. You lean your forehead on his thighs. The energy you stored is gone, all gone. After some time, you regain your senses.

“How are you here, right now? Are you really here, or have those pills finally screwed with my mind?” You try to not let your voice crack, and instead let a sad smile take its place. You’d rather a sad one than none at all. He looks at you then, his earlier humor gone.

“You were thinking of me again weren’t you? I couldn’t be here if you weren’t. I’m so sorry, love.”

He reaches out to touch your hand, lovingly, like he has so many times before. You have to imagine that the warmth is still there. You look up at him. A beautiful sight he was, is, to behold. Even in death he has remained beautiful. A pure angel with the sparkle in his deep chocolate brown eyes and his orange hair, glistening under the artificial lighting. It looks exactly like the first night he had come home with it, surprising you. You want to remember it, him like this, for the rest of your life. You suddenly forget how to breathe. You got that very word tattooed one night on your bicep with him by your side, and you still can’t even remember to do it. He notices the way you look at him suddenly.

“I miss you, Jiminie.”

“And me you. Always and always.”

As if reading the swelling of emotions in your eyes, he silently adds, “It’ll get easier, I promise. “ He reassures you with a smile. “Should I join you?” he asks.

You follow his hand to where it meets the hem of his white shirt. You frantically reach out to stop him. You don’t want him to take it off if it means that those markings will be visible, taunting you. Reminding you that they could have been prevented if only you hadn’t been too late.

“It wasn’t your fault. I was the stupid one. I should have listened to you and just stayed home.”

All of a sudden he gets into the tub, across from you. You need to be there, close to him, so you cross the space and bubbles and time and he opens up his arms wide.

“I should have been there, when you were calling out my name.” The tears slowly trickle down, dropping. The saltiness is hard to swallow. You snuggle closer.

“The doctor told you, I’m guessing. All that matters is that you’re here now.”

Jimin kisses the top of your head, missing the strawberry scented shampoo.

“Marnie still sniffs by the door, ya know. Always around the time you used to take her for her walks”, you say quietly. You toil with his silver necklace, tracing his collarbones and beauty mark as you hear his steady breathing.

“My two favorite girls. But I need you to stop taking the pills, Y/N. They’re ruining you. I don’t want you to join me sooner than you have to. I’ll wait.”

“They help me, though. With everything. The numbing helps me get through the day, Minnie.”

“Well, stop. Find the passion you had for living again, Y/N. Get one of those canvases and start painting again in the morning, go out and plant something weird. I know you can do it, baby. Nothing could ever stop me from seeing you, but I won’t do it if it makes everything worse. Promise me.”

“I promise,” you faintly sigh.

You can’t imagine him not visiting you anymore. You haven’t realized it until today when the hunger to have him here hung over you. Time lapses together in that small room. You’re listening to his heartbeat or you imagine that you do. He hums by your ear. Your need to close your eyes has never been more strong in that moment. Just one little action could keep him in your embrace forever. Of course, he probably wouldn’t let you keep your head under for too long. “I have to go.”Take me with you.Those whispered words bring back reality. Jimin kisses the top of your head and gently tugs your arms off of him so he can get up. You’re on your knees, the bottom of the tub feeling rougher on your soggy skin. He sees the frown on your face and sits on the rim again.

“I’ll come back. This isn’t the last time. I’ll do anything to make sure I see your beautiful face again.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

The hand that’s in the tub picks up a handful of pink bubbles and he blows it your way with a kiss. He winks and it seems like the charm hasn’t left him either. He murmurs the words “I love you” that make your shoulders visibly relax. You have wanted to hear those words. You’ve imagined them on your way to work, to the store, in your sleep. However nothing could beat the real thing. In the blink of an eye, the magic that the room held is gone with him. The pink bubbles don’t quite hold their shine or their scent, each one eventually popping. With a fluffy towel wrapped around you, you decide that it’s time to go to bed. Before you turn the knob, a little message appears on the fogged up mirror. This time and for the first time in a long time, a genuine smile graces your lips. In his neat handwriting, the words “my butterfly” linger, until the steam disappears and the water droplets travel down, making the text unrecognizable.

#bts fanfic #bts smut #bts angst #bts reactions #park jimin #park jimin scenarios #jimin fic #bts fake texts #bts fluff #bangtan sonyeondan

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fallen029 · 4 years

Text

I’ve been trying to get a part of OpB out a month, but this month I got swamped and just didn’t have time. I’m hoping I get it finished by this weekend, but it might not happen, so for the ones of you who follow me over here, I thought I’d post the first half (or quarter, really), for you to read over. This part involves a lot coming together all at once, so it’s just been a bit of a hassle to piece together.

I don’t usually post OpB shit over here and I’m not going to start, but if you see this and wanna follow the rest of it, it’s over on Fanfic and Archive. You don’t have to be all caught up or even read any of the rest of the Remember Me shit to understand it. It stands on it’s own, loosely in the Fairy Tail realm, focusing on the slave trade in Bosco. Nearly full OC, and kinda just me indulging my own shit a bit. It’s not for everyone, but I rather like it.

Operation Bosco: A Call to Arms, IV

it was always strange.

The feeling of it.

Waking up.

Since Haven had been revived following the mishap on the gauntlet, it was always a bit of a jolt, first thing, as her eyes peeked open and she was greeted to a new day. There were some difficulties in adjusting, right at the start, to the feeling. Her chest would get heavy and the breaths she drew in always seemed to burn, just a bit, as the scarring over her stomach itched.

For as bad as the nights were though, the mornings made it worth it.

She’d never really taken a break. Before. Had always been on, constantly. From the day her parents let her start snagging the fliers off the job board, she’d either spent her days completing them or training to be able to do so. Days were meant for toiling and nights were meant for getting fucked up in her father’s guildhall. Her mind was focused on very few things and everything felt simple. Easy. Broken down.

Get stronger and reward yourself along the way.

But when she was revived, things were different. She couldn’t take jobs right off the bat, she was too weak to train in the first few weeks, and her father no longer held a guildhall for her to act out in, with not too veiled hopes of gathering his attention.

Everything was different.

Locke had to go back out, on jobs, and even once she was up to training, she had no one but her boyfriend’s father or Ajax to do it with. Navi was gone, Locke now had friends, real friends that he wanted to spend time with, if he wasn’t out, and it was jarring.

All of it.

Her family was there, but she was trying to ease back into those relationships and they were dealing with their own trauma, what with her coming back to life and her father disappearing in the middle of the night.

She’d spend days, both with or without Locke, at a bit of a loss as to how to get back to where she was. Or, honestly, how to be sure she’d never return to it. There was a call for the long stretches of solitude and peaceful atmosphere she was rewarded with, but at the same time, it felt far more like a punishment.

She was a woman of action. Strong action. Constantly falling in and out of dangerous scenarios in order to prove her worth. Those few months of either taking no jobs or taking one and needing a be recovery period was hard on her.

Very hard.

“I never want to be like this again,” she told Locke, more than once, and he only snickered, smiling even, in the beginning when he was still just amazed to see her alive and breathing, with him once more. “Don’t nothing. Sitting around. Waiting.”

“It’ll be different in Bosco,” he assured her and it was still a dream to them then, not fully realized or understood, what it would mean.

What any of it would mean.

She spent months getting stronger and him proving himself to the guild master, just to find their power and prowess useless. He’d spent the majority of their time away on guard duty, back on base or across the border, while her true powers had been suppressed and her new, fancy one she was so pleased to wield had only come into play once.

And for what?

So she could find herself folding clothes in a sweatshop, hoping to win the approval of women that saw her as little more than a kid. A fucking, stupid kid whose current placement in life did more to depress them than, perhaps, their current surroundings. Reminded them of their first time. Times. In new places, adjusting to the new regulation and lack of freedom they were presented.

There was a resignation, back in Ewings, but it wasn’t buried nearly as deeply as it was the majority of the women she was currently housed with. The majority of them were too old, had been under too long, and she was made known of this the second she tried to broach the topic with any of them.

It was a headbanging kind of realization, the ones she had every single day and night, as she tried to assimilate herself with these women. She lacked the nerves or fears she had, on Ewing’s manor, but they were instead replaced with frustrating jitters of wanting to do something, to start something, but not quite being able.

She didn’t connect well with other people. She never had. But it was now a major part of the job and, though she wished that both Locke and Shae were able to carry the heavy load in this, she knew that her position in the hoped revolution was very important.

One of the things that she’d learned recently from the short months she’d spent back home actually came during that down time she hated. And from Marin, her lame younger sister, of all fucking people. Marin possessed the potential for all the power in the world, but balked in her formative years, and instead had to build other skills.

She wasn’t great at it either, after all. Connecting to other people. And maybe that was Haven’s fault, at least somewhat, but whatever it was, Marin found ways to overcome it. Where Haven thought to prove herself physically and violently, Marin managed her natural awkward disposition in another way.

With her natural abilities repressed, she found herself accessing social skills in other ways. She learned things about people, rather easily. She served them beers and fed them filling food until they felt comfortable enough to express things to her. Whether this was intentional or not, it allowed her to easily transverse any other personal relationships she was forced to have with others. They felt naturally inclined to consider her something. Not exactly a friend and maybe not a confidant, but at least someone that, even when sober and starving, they could count on to be there for them.

The best part of this arrangement was that Marin hardly had to offer anything difficult up to others; she merely had to provide the expected level of care. This wasn’t exactly an imparted benefit on Haven through word of mouth, but rather observation. She watched her mostly quiet and reserved sister in the guildhall many times following her resurrection, and it was a very alternate experience from how Marin was once treated around the place.

By doing her work, she found an avenue that otherwise wouldn’t be easily presented to her.

Haven wanted to be like that. With her job. To do her job and make friends along the way. It used to be that way, anyways, when she was just a regular mage, running around helping others. She fell in and out of relationships in her time away from Fairy Tail, nothing serious, but her prowess had always spoken when she was unable. Helped her fall in with the people she needed in the moment who required her powers just as heavily.

But now she didn’t need them. Didn’t have them. Couldn’t use them. It felt better, honestly, than it had back at Ewings place, now able to at least use her transformation magic, but it still ached a bit, as it always would, whenever she couldn’t draw electricity through her veins at will.

It was depressing.

Just how things had felt, when last year’s long, hot summer had faded into the darkness of a new season. But now she was trapped in the dull shadows of a hotbox sweatshop, equally as shut-in and alone, but just for different reasons.

Sulking wasn’t productive though. Nor was her natural inclinations towards anger and brash attitudes. Shae and Locke were both out of their element and struggling to find ground, but she was given the easiest job of all; she couldn’t fuck it up.

She just had to gain the trust of a bunch of old women.

Marin did it with the older men in the bar, plying them full of beer and liquor and listening to their problems. Finally, for once drawing true inspiration from her sister, Haven found that getting frustrated with her position wasn’t going to get her anyways; she just had to do her job and keep her head down.

So she tried it.

Haven had always been kind of afraid of it. Silence. Left to her own devices. To think. After her ventures into the afterlife’s eternity, she found mostly that she’d never not be afraid of the concept. Silence was just too much for her to handle.

But without even Shae now, it was what her days were mostly filled with. And as she focused, tried hard to get the folding and sorting all down, box breaking and box opening, but fuck.

Fuck.

It was just hard.

But she seemed to be endearing herself more, this way. Or at least she thought. There was a woman, anyways, of the few that were on folding and packing duty, that seemed to not look on her as harshly as she once had.

She was a...hearty woman, Haven thought. Homely, maybe, was the word. She kept her messy brown hair clipped back and out of her face for the most part, but sometimes a strand would fall from its containment and she was mutter curses just loud enough for the typical blonde to catch. A dark, rough patch laid over the older woman’s eye and she cursed about it at times too, wiggling a finger beneath the fabric to deal with an itch.

She went by Bea, the woman did, and she was a glimpse into the world Haven was merely visiting.

It started just like that. Not so harsh looks and, eventually, her grumbling at Haven to take a seat, beside her and two of the other women, during lunch break, down in the grass.

There wasn’t much to talk about. They probably didn’t really have much in common, removed from their current position, but they were trapped, all of them, with the magical marker denoting them as less than, and if they only had one thing to speak on, then it made sense that they eventually would.

“You wanna ask about it,” Bea remarked one day in that gruff she had. They’d had a few conversations by this point, short and to the point. Grumbles over the food, the work, maybe on a too cool summer evening, about the pond water. But this time, as they sat together in the warm grass, sun bearing down on them as they scarfed down their lunch, it seemed different. The tone. The intention. “All the new people do.”

Haven knew what she was talking about, of course, but even for as socially inept as she typically was, even she knew that she was heading down the entirely wrong path. Quickly shaking her head, she had to swallowed the hardened sliver of bread and warm meat of some sort that they’d been served before saying, “N-No, I haven’t. I-”

“Things were different,” Bea told her simply and this, at least, hadn’t been the first time she’d heard such at hing. “Around here. Before.”

Haven paused, not wishing to ward off the potential for further conversations, but also being reverent of letting this once slip through her grasps.

“Before?” she asked softly.

“Before,” the older woman went on, “the current master. The young one. The son.” She almost sneered, maybe, shaking her head as she insisted, “He’s not nearly the...man his father was.”

“Did he...did he take your-”

“Plucked it right out.” She made a popping noise with her mouth that made a woman sitting nearby visibly appear revolted. Bea only reached up, almost absently, to sneak a finger beneath the flap, scratching with a sigh. “Punishments were stiffer. The work harder. What we were dealin’… But I was so young then. Your age, maybe younger. Things were just...different.”

“That’s fucked,” Haven remarked, but Bea only shrugged.

“I’ve seen yours.” Then she made that face again, that sneer, the finger slipping back out from beneath the patch so that she could gently tap the pad against the course fabric. “Well, as well as I can see somethin’-”

“What do you mean?”

“Your scars. On your stomach.” Bea raised an eyebrow. “Told ya mine.”

Which meant she wanted Haven to tell hers. It was probably the entire reason she’d brought up the conversation in the first place.

It was with a bit of a sigh that Haven thought about it. All of it. She had a lot of scars, of course, and wore them well, but the most important…

The fact it was even visible was her own fault, honestly. Her transformation wasn’t that draining, but she needed it to be perfectly even, refilled and never taking away too much. Leaving her scars where they were, hidden beneath her clothing, was an easy concession. And the visible ones only added to her credibility. But they all stripped together, each night, and even though the moonlight didn’t illuminate much, all light only revealed the most inconvenient. Or at least it always had for Haven.

“I got cut open,” she admitted, softly, and though it wasn’t the full truth, as she looked away and reflected, she told just enough of it that her pain was not only convincing, but real. “Died. A-Almost, I mean. I almost died. Someone was able to use magic to save me.”

“All that miracle,” Bea sighed with a click of her tongue and a shake of her head, “only to land you here.”

“Only,” Haven agreed, “to land me here.”

Things only seemed to look up from there. It was difficult, of course, to be too optimistic for the future when you were dealing in such a dank reality, but Haven did feel good about herself. Bea seemed to like her well enough, maybe, and though the other women all seemed to be distant, it was nice to have something of an in.

She felt comfortable in it, at least somewhat, and was very ready to shove it in the often doubting Locke’s face one day when she disappeared off into the shed, equally anticipating her boyfriend as she was the soda pop he’d bring.

Which was why, as he slipped in empty handed, she had a bit of a glare.

“Nothing?” she questioned. “I literally have nothing to look forward to and you still manage to disappoint-”

“Haven.” He rushed the short distance to stand before her, his goofy gaze rather harsh that day. Clouded. Concerned. Reaching out, he grasped her cheeks in his hands, forcing her to stare up at him, linking their gaze. “Something’s happened. Or is happening. I don’t-”

“Is it Shae?” She shoved him off, tossing up an arm and, originally intending it to crackle with the heat of electricity, she instead found herself merely flexing. “We’ll fuck ‘em up, Locke. We’ll-”

“No, Have, it’s…” He only frowned at her. “It’s you.”

Deflating some, Haven returned the gaze though hers was accompanied by a raised brow as she questioned, “What do you mean?”

He wasn’t quite sure, honestly.

The concern came from Shae herself.

Locke had the benefit (misfortune?) of being one of the guards sent up to the penthouse, not for their irregular defiling of select hostages, but rather to rouse Monty from where he was shirking on his duties. It had been with a bit of a huff that Wick chose him, finding the young man eating with some of the other guards in the dining room, and as he and Locke bounded up the stairs, his only offered explanation was, “You talk sense to him, Hux. He likes you.”

But he didn’t like Wick.

No one liked Wick.

He was a cold man, older than the other guards and from the old breed, Anderson had sneered to Locke once behind the man’s back. He kept to himself and mostly seemed to find his time spent trying to get Monty to do anything other than drink and hide in his arcade or penthouse.

It was a difficult task.

But recently, the Master had taken quite the liking to Hux and, while that was annoying to some of the other guards, Wick saw this as a new, unexplored advantage. Guys listened to their friends, after all, and if the new guard could, at the very least, supply an easy way to control the Master, then, well, his presence was worth it.

Up in the penthouse though, as Wick moved through the living area, unconcerned mostly with the women that hung around, and instead headed to bang on Monty’s bedroom door, Locke uneasily glanced around at the women seemed equally as uneasy to see him. He almost raised his hand to wave at their very pointed avoided glanced, but he didn’t have a chance as someone came rushing over to him.

Shae had spent the past few days sitting by the door, mostly. She avoided Monty when she could, but felt it very important that she get to Locke, as soon as possible. Being locked away in the penthouse, this felt completely impossible as the man, she knew, would avoid the place like a plague. Still, there really wasn’t anything to do, at all, other than slowly go insane in the place and though she knew she was meant to be gaining trusts of the women around her, she found herself far more worried over something else.

She’d gotten up. Right before he came in. To find what had been left for them to eat in the kitchen. There was more, here, than down in the sweatshop, but most of the women, especially those who’d been there long, seemed to survive mostly on their pills and alcohol.

But Locke came in, while she was doing that, and at first, the sight of Wick stalking through the apartment wasn’t a welcome one to the woman and she hung back. But as he was barking for Monty, Shae saw the man she was actually looking for and, not knowing exactly when she’d be given another opportunity, she ran right for him.

It was awkward, the next few motions, as she hesitated and Locke tensed, at the feeling of someone approaching him in such a manner, but then there was the awkwardness of all the women staring and one of them had to say something, but it had to be here, because she was the one who had something to say, and while he was too shocked for much more than his silence, Shae knew she need to get the information to him as subtly as possible and, well, given their implied relations by that point, she figured it wasn’t too out of the realms what she did next.

Somehow, it was even more awkward.

Locke pulled back, when he realized what he was doing and it was like pressing her lips against nothing, mostly his chin, honestly, as she leaned up, but not enough to account for how hard he was trying to evade.

Pulling away herself, just slightly, she whispered, “Haven’s in trouble.”

Locke blinked with a questioning, “What?”

“Take this.” And her hands had been wrapped around his neck, but one of her balled up fists opened then and a folded slip of paper tickled the back of his neck as it tumbled down beneath the collar of his tucked in shirt and came to rest around his hip line, right where his too tight cut off passage. Shae’s eyes were wild as she insisted to the man, “You have to do something.”

It was on instinct, almost, the way he nodded at her solemn tone, but again, the seconds in this encounter were stifled by another immediately following it.

Wick had been coming out of the bedroom then, chewing out an inebriated Monty while he was at it, but this stopped suddenly when he saw what was taking place. Shae still had an arm wrapped around Locke’s neck and he was still too dazed to do much about it. The sight, for some reason, caused Wick to shout at them, but his gaze was quickly somewhere else.

“Enough,” he’d growled, the older man had, and all the women, who hadn’t really relaxed the entire time, seemed even more uneased by the action. With a deep growl, he was stalking right back across the room then to grab Shae roughly by the arm and toss her to the side. “You will not-”

“Hey!” Locke bucked right up as Shae, fighting against all instinct she knew, forced herself to only fall away and not bite back at the man.

“Shut your fucking mouth.” And Wick turned to Locke once more, raising his hand and striking him, sharply right above his left ear. Having been raised on such things, if anything the feeling made the hardy mage almost nostalgic. If only the hit wasn’t so weak with no true iron behind it. As Locke blinked away the feeling, his direct superior only glared darkly into his red eyes. With a shake of his head, Wick insisted, “You will never do that again. Do you understand? You are on duty. And in front of her?”

“In front of who?” Locke griped as he resisted the urge to rub at his ear. “What are you talking about?”

But Wick just huffed then, turning on his heel and walking over to where some of the women were coward, wincing as he came close, but there was only one that he seemed interested in. Locke had seen her before and, though she hadn’t stood out to him before, he recognized her as one of the women that worked in the kitchen. Not marked. Hired help. She was the youngest one of them, a teenager, and Locke had mostly steered clear of the kitchen help, not quite sure how they fit into liberation.

He grabbed her though, Wick did, hissing something about how she shouldn’t be up here, right now, and she was wide eyed, the teenager was, nodding her head and being drug from the penthouse while everyone else stood stock still and eerily silent.

As the teen and Wick disappeared out the door, a beat would come to pass before Monty, the only one capable of breaking the tension laughed, drunkenly, shaking his head as he continued on then.

“C’mon, Hux,” he slurred as he came to weakly slug the man in the shoulder. Grinning, his glassy eyes found Locke’s as he remarked, “Gotta finish work, huh?”

“Yeah,” Locke agreed with a nod and, though he did glance at Shae, he turned to follow after the Master.

Monty stumbled down the stairs with Locke’s help and, with some more assistance, the mage managed to shove the guy into his office where, following, he was certain to close the door behind them.

“Wick’s just freaked,” Monty explained, going to fall into his chair. “That I don’t, uh, seem presentable to my uncle.”

“Your uncle?”

“Alwood.” He sniffled though, at the man’s name, Monty did. Raking a hand across his face, he groaned some as he said, “Man look’s out for me.”

But he couldn’t even think about that sort of thing, in that moment, Locke couldn’t. Instead, he only paced a bit, around the small office, while Monty continued to rub at his face trying to wake himself up.

“Can I ask you something?” Locke finally asked and Monty waved his hand a bit.

“Sit down and do it,” he grumbled a bit. “Giving me a headache.”

Hesitating, Locke glanced at the door before going to sink into one of the plush chairs that set before the desk. Softly, he asked, “Who was that? That girl?”

“I dunno,” Monty replied as he rubbed a palm roughly into one eye, the stinking eventually causing him to gasp and drop his hand. Then, dryly, he replied, “You’re the one fuckin’ her.”

“What? No, I meant… The one that Wick drug out of there,” he explained. “The young one. Who-”

“That’s Wick’s fuckin’ daughter.”

“He’s what?”

Monty snorted then, sneering some as he sat back in his chair and focused on the ceiling for a moment. “I’s a kid when it all happened. It was under my dad that it all happened. That fucker. Left me all this shit to deal with. And fuck Wick too. Asshole. Thinks he so good. So great. Knocked the woman up. Down in The Factory. Judges me. He does the same fucking thing. Did. Whatever.”

Locke shifted, a question on his tongue, but doing so caused the slip of paper down the back of his shirt to scratch against his back and, suddenly, he couldn't give a shit about Wick.

“Hey, man, are you going to be alright?” Jumping up, Locke forgot for a moment that he actually, sort of, had a job to do and straightened at the remembrance. As he looked over Monty, he added, “If I take off?”

Monty ran a hand for once through his hair, causing it to become even more disheveled. Shaking his head, he said, “Gotta, uh, sober up. Before Alwood comes around.”

Locke found it unlikely that this would be accomplished, but he had his own problems to worry about. Not only did he imagine Wick would be on his ass, should he run into the man again, but he needed to get that slip of paper and read it over as soon as possible.

His room was empty, thankfully, when he arrived at it. On occasion, the other guys would be lingering around to talk or try and goad him into going into town with him. They all got their checks every two weeks and, now with a sizable accumulation of cicles, the offer seemed like it should have been more enticing to him than he was displaying to the others.

But he didn’t want to leave the property. Not with Haven around. If he told her about it, she’d goad him into going out with the other guards, get to know them better, study them, learn something useful to the cause, but fuck that. He wasn’t leaving her alone on the property.

It was hard enough knowing she was so close and yet barred off from him the majority of the time.

His chest was pounding, as it had since what had popped off upstairs, but alone now, closed off in his tiny bedroom, his heart felt like it was trying to rip from his chest. Ripping off his shirt, he probably looked a foo as he spun around in a tight circle, trying to find where the slip of paper had fluttered off to, freed now.

It wasn’t much. As he found the white slip sticking out against his dark hardwood floor, his fingers trembled some and he was both disappointed and terrified by just how short in length Shae’s note was.

She had to be straight to the point, of course, and there wasn’t much there for him to glance over, but still, he found himself collapsing onto the edge of his bed as his eyes traced over the short writing.

Alwood’s taking Haven back with him. Stop her from going. I’ve heard bad things about him. She’s not safe.

The note didn’t tell him much. And though he tried to get what he could out of the guys he had patrol with the next morning, because of the former, he didn’t have much to offer Haven that day, as he stared with heavy concern at what, truly, was a strange woman, but exuded all the warmth (or lack there of) that his girlfriend did.

He’d spent the majority of his life trying to protect her. And others. It was in his nature, since he was a boy. He liked for all the people he cared about to be as safe as possible. This was a difficult task, growing up as a mage, but he always saw after his friends. Haven especially.

His whole point in coming to this place was for that exact reason. He dreamed of more, he wanted more, but deep down, it was the only thing that really mattered.

“Alwood is going to try and take you,” he told her simply. “But I’m not going to let him.”

Haven stood there for a moment, after his words, losing her tension and fear for Shae and, at least somewhat, gaining some for herself.

“Alwood,” she repeated his name softly then, frowning, “knows Ewing.”

“What?”

“I told you. That’s where I know him from.” Turning from the man, she could only blink in the darkness, her desire for static, not to draw, but to expel, pooling in the pit of her stomach. “What if Ewing told him about me? And he came here to get me?”

“Haven, I don’t think-”

“He knew me, Locke.” She shook her head some. “From the last time. When I was there. The first time. He knew exactly who I was. He’s connected and shit and is after me now, I bet, and-”

“If you need me to get you out of here-”

“What?”

Locke looked quite serious when she glanced over her shoulder at him. Softly, he said, “I’ll sneak you out. Whatever. That’s why I came. If you or Shae run into trouble-”

“I’m not in trouble.”

“What do you mean? You think some rich fucking sicko is out to get you.”

“Are you kidding? Fuck him. He’s after me? Ewing’s after me?” She turned quickly then, bouncing on her feet, seemingly amped. “Fuck him. He doesn’t know what he’s messing with.”

“Haven-”

“I’ll kill him. I’ll kill them all.”

“You’re not-”

“I’ll fucking kill them, Locke.” She threw up a fist again, still with no electricity behind him, but as the blow connected to Locke’s chest, he had to suck in a breath. Twisting her fist, she pressed harder into him, but didn’t stumble forwards, instead only hanging her head, arm taut and rigid as she breathed heavily down at their feet. Bravado deflated, she only whispered, “I’ll fucking kill him, Locke.”

“You won’t have to.” He balled his own fist, but it was only to crash it down on the top of her head, sighing some as he took in her new look. When she raised her eyes, they were dark and not her own, but the heaving of her chest alternated perfectly with his own as he tugged her to him. “I fucking will.”

Haven rested there for a moment, indulging maybe, if just for a moment. Shoving him off after a beat, she only whispered, “You can’t kill shit. Fucking worthless.”

“If you had killed Ewing back at his place,” Locke retorted with a frown, “then we wouldn’t even be having to deal with this shit.”

“You’re an asshole.”

“You’re,” he replied, “in trouble. You get that, right? This isn’t a joke. You can’t go back with Alwood. And if he’s intent on taking you, then it’s probably best if we start figuring a way to get you out-”

“No way.”

“Haven-”

“Give me time,” she insisted. “We can’t fuck this up. Shae upstairs, I’m down here, you’re a guard… This is too perfect to not be the plan. How it’s meant to be.”

“I’m not going to let you-”

“I’m not going with him. I won’t.”

“Then-”

“I don’t fucking know, okay?” Shaking her head, she asked instead, “How do you even know they’re taking me? Have you spoken to him? Alwood? Or did your little friend the master-”

“Shae told me.” He rubbed at the back of his neck. “She, uh, passed me a note.”

“How does she know?”

“Haven, I don’t fucking know.” It was his turn to be annoyed. “How do you not know? If she does? I thought you told me you were making friends.”

“Friend. I’m making a friend.”

“Haven-”

“I’ll ask her about it.” Haven seemed to snap out of her funk, if only for a moment, as she snapped her fingers together. “I’ll ask her to tell me everything she can about Alwood and if she knows why he’d even want me, what for and all that, right? She’ll tell me. We talked, you know? Seriously talked. About-”

“You’re not going,” Locke told her simply. “With Alwood. If I have to drag you out of here kicking and screaming-”

“Calm down. Idiot.” Haven held her head higher. “I didn’t want to go with him either. I’m not going to. Especially not if he’s tangled with Ewing. That’s not why we came. We came to get access to tunnels or some shit, right? So I’m going to fucking get us that.” Then she conceded a bit, “We’re going to fucking get those. I’m going to talk to Bea and you’re going to actually be fucking useful and we’ll figure out how to avoid Alwood all together. When does he leave?”

“I don’t know. I-”

“Useless.” She shoved him this time, but it was playfully, maybe, and Locke pushed her back, maybe too hard, but he was kind of tired of being smacked that day. Still, when she sighed, he gave one back, only nodding his head when she ordered, “Find out. Okay?”

It felt weird, when she turned her head up to press her lips to his, and Locke laughed some into the kiss, which got him shoved again, but he only shook his head.

“Doesn’t feel right,” he told her. “Here. With...this you.”

She snorted, shoving passed him then, “if you could make yourself taller-”

“I’m going to find out when he’s leaving,” he insisted. “And if we haven’t figured a way to make sure he’s not taking you with him-”

“You worry too much, Locke.” And she clipped his name the way that he liked. Poised to head right out of the shed, she only reminded, “Do what I told you and everything will be alright.”

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marshmallowprotection · 5 years

Text

Petunia

Assistant Lila AU!

Link: AO3 | FFN

Pairing: Choi Saeran/Original Female Character(s)

Description: Unknown always wanted to have his own assistant. One that is bathed in wisteria and petunias, covering their throat until they suffocate or give in. There are some things that he can’t do by showing his face and that’s where someone who was very much his equal in sense of the word would be able to help him achieve the goals of Paradise. He’s got his eyes set on somebody and surely, with her, the success of Mint Eye is ensured.

Based on the Prologue’s Bad Ending. A standalone fic that can read without reading any of the other stories in the series.

Chapter One

2: Hostage

When Lila awoke the next morning she found herself in unfamiliar territory.

The walls were barren and the temperature was well below freezing in this room. She knew she was inside because it was fall and it was hardly this cold out yet. She involuntarily shivered and sat upright without thinking first, looking around the room to see where she was.

There were a lot of monitors and a mammoth hard-drive on the opposite side of the room. Apart from that, there was the couch that she was laying on, a couple of filing cabinets, and a couple of extra spare storage containers that she couldn’t see inside. It was like a basement or a dungeon, there was no window or any windows for that matter.

It was solid.

This place was built to keep things in and keep things out.

“I guess… he really did take me,” she whispered. "But, where did he take me?"

She rubbed at her eyes, wondering what had happened the night before that had caused her to wind up in this place. She could remember her interaction with Unknown and how he had forced her to walk with him until they reached a car, and then he covered her eyes.

It was a blur from that point as her body had been on autopilot.

The rest was… lost.

So, this was what she had to work with. She rose to her feet and began to inspect her surroundings to see if she could locate what exactly would explain the purpose of his room or if there was some kind of hint on how to get out of the room.

Pushing against the door didn't work as it seemingly locked from the outside.

That was a damn fire hazard!

The computer was password locked, so that was a moot point, and nothing else gave her what she needed. Frustrated, she sat down in the chair and stared at the blue light from the monitors praying for something to happen or materialize. It never did.

She sat there for quite a while until the door slid open and the sound of boots thudded against the floor. She seized and tried not to turn around. She knew that that had to be Unknown; There was no telling how he was going to react or what he was going to do when he realized she was awake.

His hand pressed to her shoulder and he chuckled at the way she tensed up and tried to remain calm, "Hello, princess. I see you've finally woken up. Good. I have work to do and you have a lot to learn."

She sucked in a breath, "Where the hell are we?"

He leaned in closer so that his breath ghosted against her ear. He chuckled, "Mmm. I know you're not really daft. Don't tell me you forgot what happened last night. This is paradise, remember? I brought you here to save you from those who continue to hurt you out there, and you're going to repay me by being my cute little assistant.”

"I- I never… agreed to that," she whispered, almost inaudible.

Lila wasn’t looking at him. She was staring at his reflection in the monitor and his wicked smirk only grew as her discomfort did. He just watched as she squirmed and slowly lost what remained of her composure.

Unknown’s hand caressed her cheek, cooing, "Oh, I knew you might say that. You never disagreed, either, cupcake."

Well, he was right.

She never said no.

✿✿✿✿✿✿✿✿

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Go through those files,” he said, bluntly.

She stared at the back of his head with pursed lips, “And what exactly am I looking for in these, anyway?”

His patience was wearing thin. It was obvious that he didn’t like that she couldn’t read his wants and desires as soon as he thought of them. Lila was no mind-reader, and she wanted to know what the hell she was doing for him. She hadn’t exactly gotten much out of him since he would often leave her hanging without giving away much.

Mint Eye was a paradise for the down-trodden.

This was a safe haven for people that had been hurt, and it was supposed to be a place where pain didn’t exist at all, supposedly.

Well, the ache in Lila’s body seemed to prove that was wrong. She was hurting and exhausted to the bone. There was no sense of peace in her heart right now. She hadn’t seen enough of it to make her own conclusion. Unknown had her on a ball and chain.

She couldn’t stray far from him as his trust was low in other humans.

Lila could see that he was close to being rash. She changed her tone, carefully, and looked down at her lap. “I understand that your mission is very important to you. If you want me to help you, then I have to know something. What is this goal? What are we trying to achieve here? What exactly is it you’re all aiming for?”

His chair spun around and he faced her, one leg crossed over the other and head resting against one of his hands as if he were bored. “Let’s just say the goal is to show my Savior something amusing. There are people out there that don’t give a fuck about how much they hurt others and they reap what they sow, what goes around comes around, right?”

Lila still struggled to connect what that had to do with the messy documents about people that seemed very average. There was something about a student, a businessman, his assistant, an actor, an infamous photographer, and a hacker. It seemed like a weird group. It was like somebody was playing Mad Libs and grouped the strangest options.

She gripped at the paper in her hands, “What exactly do these people have to do with that? What did they do?”

His mint eyes narrowed.

Oh, that was the wrong question, wasn’t it? Quietly he rose from his chair and began to walk in her direction from across the room, and she went quiet. There had been a few times now that he had lashed out at her for saying too much or too little. She knew that she was walking a tightrope but she needed to understand this man.

Why did he want her so badly for this?

Unknown was a quiet man, most of the time, anyway.

He was swallowed up in his work and once he got to work on something that had to be done right then, thusly, he paid her no mind whatsoever and just continued to toil away on a very so-called big “important project”. She wasn’t even sure what he wanted her to take care of, as she was left to her devices most of the time.

It felt more like she was a glorified toy, rather than some assistant.

Though, it wasn’t like he was denying her anything that she needed.

She may have been stuck to his side like super-glue but she still could do basic human fun. Nobody will know how grateful she felt to be able to take a hot shower of all things after days of being trapped in this damp cellar of a room. She just ran on his schedule most of the time and that was no way for a to live.

Unknown took care of himself pretty poorly as far as she could see since he worked as long as humanly possible and beyond that, and she wound up spending a good amount of time making sure that he ate something when she did.

It took a bit of pressing to get him to agree to let her roam the halls. But, it wasn’t like she could escape when he could watch the cameras wherever she went.

It went a little something like:

She had been staring at him for some time and it still flabbergasted her that this man could push himself to the brink of passing out, and as much as she wasn’t sure how she felt about this guy, he couldn’t up and die on her in this room. “Hey, you haven’t eaten in hours.”

His fingers never left the keyboard and he continued to type the next set of the log, “What of it, princess? I’ve gone far longer without food and drink than a few hours. This is nothing to me.”

Her expression fell flat.

Just what was this place like if he felt like he had no choice but to starve himself? What had he gone through that made this a reality? She shook her head, “...That’s not okay? I don’t know what you’ve been through but you need to eat if you want to keep up your energy on this… project.”

“Tch,” he scoffed.

Unknown seemed less than impressed with her attempts at trying to be nice to him.

“You’re the one that said I’m your assistant now, well, part of that job means that someone makes sure you have everything that you need,” She said, pointedly. “So, let me out of this room and I’ll go and make you something.”

Unknown paused, and then finally, looked over his shoulder at the girl. “Fine. If it’ll get you to stop nagging me every couple of hours. You better not try and make a fucking run for it. You’ll be punished severely if you do.”

Lila stared at him, “I won’t. I know I’m in no position to do something like that. You’re the one that controls all the cameras. It’s pretty pointless to make a break for it when you’re with the strongest guy in the building. I just… figured you would benefit from eating something substantial instead of crackers. I know that’s not filling.”

Her gaze shifted away from him momentarily.

“You’re practically skin and bones, you know? I’ve... been there before and it’s not fun. It’s a really bad habit to stay off of it and reward yourself with it later. I spent a lot of time in and out of the hospital when I was younger for those types of choices, I’d hate to think of anyone going through that, even somebody like you, Unknown.”

Unknown didn’t know what to say to that.

He just looked over her face to see if there was a lie in any of those words. Most of their banter to this point had been about work and her constant inquiring of this and that. It led to a lot of bickering back and forth.

Perhaps it was that he didn’t know how to respond to somebody that had nice intentions. Nobody had ever thought of him enough to do something like that. He was always looking to do what others expected of him and all his other needs did not matter.

A part of him was sure she was doing this so that she could keep breathing here without worry, but her tone was so genuine.

“Fine,” he said, lowly. “Just don’t speak to anyone when you’re outside of this room or there will be a price to pay.”

Lila snapped out of her daze when Unknown stopped in front of her and reached out with both of his hands. She thought that he was going to touch her but instead he grasped from the loose papers from her hands and stared into her eyes.

“You’ll know soon enough,” his voice was haughty. “They’re a group of liars and traitors that work under the guise of helping others. They act high and mighty when in reality they throw every person that is in need under the bus. You may look for the good in everyone but I assure you that these people are rotten to the core.”

Lila was taken back by his tone. She flinched at the vicious vitriol and bitter animosity in his voice as he spoke of them. She had seen him become sour before but it was never like this. He was angry, but never like angry enough to seethe.

She slowly nodded her head to show that she understood his words.

“I… I understand,” she murmured.

Then, like the flip of a dime, his expression changed, and he brushed his fingers against her cheek in such a tender motion.

His lips curled upward enough to hint amusement or pleasure, but you would blink and miss it.

“You like to wait and listen, don’t you? You look for as much information that you can seize out of people before you speak to them. You know you can’t trust everyone, and you’re wary, cautious. It’s an admirable trait. That’s what I want you to do, princess. Learn everything about these bastards and relay whatever information that you can find.”

“...That’s it?”

“That’s it. I have to focus on more important matters. I’ve seen as much of these people as I need to see to know their type. Why waste my time when I have you here to help my mission? I’m a very busy man, princess. My Savior expects me to do better than I did before.”

Savior, again.

He wasn’t the boss of whatever this place was as he answered to a higher person and they often called him and told him what to take care of. He would listen so closely to the voice on the other end of the speaker that it seemed like he was hypnotized. Anytime she inquired about that person Unknown would tell her that she had no reason to be with the woman yet.

His Savior was busy running this place.

However, there would come a time very soon when she would be by to see how much progress she was making at Unknown’s side.

Unknown was a strong presence, already. To even imagine that there was somebody at this place that held more power and respect than he did with the believers? It was hard to think about. Every time she passed by someone in the halls they would duck their head and hurry away from her sight as fast as they could do so.

He made it abundantly clear that she was with him.

If anyone crossed him… well, she was scared to think about what may become of that person.

“Because… I’m here?” Lila supplied, unsure.

“Exactly.”

What was she supposed to provide to prove her worth to somebody like that?

She was hardly that great of a person in the first place and the fact that anyone had some kind of faith or expectations to be better than she was made the air more suffocating than it already was.

She was far from great.

Unknown seemed to sense her troubled thoughts.

It was like she was as open as a book without having to say anything. Cupping her face in his hands to give her the first gentle touch she had received from anyone in days was quite a shock. They were so close at that moment that she could feel his breath against her cheeks.

“I wouldn’t have chosen you if I didn’t believe you were worth the trouble,” he murmured. “I don’t waste my time on people that won’t satisfy my aspirations. I wanted you from the moment I saw your face. Don’t take that lightly.”

“I…”

He shushed her immediately. “Don’t open your trap, princess. We both know your weaknesses, and how you hate yourself. I see your worth. You should learn to see it for yourself. You could be so much stronger if you just accepted it.”

His praise didn’t come to just anyone.

She had seen the way he looked at the rest of the believers and seen the way that he was when he was alone and with her instead. He barked orders at those that were useless and not good enough to do what they had to do. She was different to him. As strange as it was, she kind of liked the fact that someone needed her so much.

She had never been needed by anyone before.

Nobody had ever thought of her as more than an annoyance. Even her big sister had to pity her for the trouble she caused. That was why none of them had even bothered to speak with her since she decided to leave.

They were probably glad that she was gone now.

Glad to be rid of something that stained their good family name.

It might have seemed awful at first to come to this place, but perhaps it wasn’t such a bad thing that she came here.

Unknown was different.

He saw something that nobody else did. He saw worth in her talents. He saw the person underneath the weakness and tears. He had chosen her out of anyone else he could have had. He could have had anything he wanted, it wouldn’t have been that difficult with his ability.

Maybe he was right, after all.

✿✿✿✿✿✿✿✿

Lila peered over his shoulder at the monitor.

She could see bits and pieces of that messenger app that he had used to speak to her with, except this variation looked much less glitchy compared to what they had been using. “So, the app you tested on me was only the beta form of what you’ve been building over here?”

He didn’t seem to bother her inquiry if it was into her knowledge of his strength.

“Mmm. You could say that I’ve been building this from the bottom up from old traces that the Savior kept,” Unknown said, his voice was very matter-of-fact. “I’ve nearly uncovered what I need to get it stabilized.”

So, he had built this from nothing, only going off of images and photos. It was impressive. She could remember coding websites in high school and the numbers even then had been far over her head and too much for her to understand, she wasn’t ever the brains, she was always the creative one that made things look good.

This was a whole other ballgame compared to that functionality.

His goals right now are to build this from the bottom up and learn as much as humanly possible about the RFA. That was split between the two of them now, but he was making much more progress than she was if she was being honest.

She was backtracking social media and looking up as much reachable information was available to her as humanly possible.

Everyone has accounts but not all of them were active enough for her to find what she needed. It also made her sick to her stomach when she got too far into it. Lila had never really stalked anyone’s profile before. She never really saw a point in it. She was hardly active on her own pages sans for posting her work and fashion photos.

Unknown had made it sound so simple, easy, and without much issue.

“What’s going to happen when you finish it?”

A chuckle escaped from the back of his throat. “That’s when the real fun is going to begin. If you want to see a real wild adventure take place then you’ll love it when we get to that point. I haven’t decided yet how far I want to take it. But, I know what I want. It’s only a matter of time until it’s within my grasp.”

She knew what he wanted.

He wanted the destruction of those people… the RFA.

This group of people that supposedly held parties for charity and did good for the sake of others, but everything that Unknown said seemed to imply that that was a cover.

They all had different levels of issues and yet, there were two members that made him angrier than anything.

All of them were guilty by association in his eyes. Lila looked away from him and then blurted out without thinking, “You mean your revenge against Luciel? I-I mean, that redhead, right? That’s what you’re excited about? Right?”

She hadn’t meant to say that name.

“That’s what you’re looking forward to doing… it’s all you talk about so I just thought...”

Excuses.

If she so much brought them up he would begin to berate her and speak down of those people. She didn’t know them as he did. She was an outsider looking in trying to learn as much as she could and his help never went far enough to give her what she needed. What was so evil about a man who took photos or a man that seemed to work for an underground ring to survive?

What was it about them that made them evil?

All she was seeing was the surface.

A man who was quiet and too polite for his own good, and somebody who seemed to laugh and have fun teasing others. Where was the evil in that? She didn’t know. He would never tell her about the past at length. If she said anything that sounded even the slightest positive, her back would hit the floor and he would damn near wrap his digits around her throat.

Curiosity kept hurting this cat.

Today was no different than those times, the minute she spoke that name to him, it was like the gates and chains holding him down had been unlocked in the zoo.

She found herself pinned against the wall with his fist mere inches from the side of her face. Her breath was quickened and she stared at him with wide, fearful brown eyes.

“I told you not to say that name,” he hissed.

“I- I’m sorry, I forget,” she choked. “But that’s it isn’t? That’s why you’re working so hard. You want to get him back for what he did to hurt you in the past, right?”

He was every bit furious with the world as he was smart. His being was intimidating was that of fury and scorn. Everyone could see the hatred in his eyes and they treated him accordingly, but Lila could have sworn she saw a glimmer of something more underneath that pain.

Hurt?

Trepidation?

Dare she say, scared?

When he spoke of that man, it was like he wasn’t even seeing the room in front of him anymore.

It was like he was envisioning a memory or the past of the future, it was never entirely clear. He wasn’t looking at her with his rage. He was looking at the idea or the vision of this man that had hurt him in such a way that left him unable to explain it.

His voice was venom, and his fingers on her arm were as cold as ice, “I’m going to ruin everything that that redhead has built for himself out there in the world. He thinks he can live carefree when he knows what he did.. He’ll rue the day he fucking decided to do what he did. I can’t wait to see him burn down to ashes. It’s all I can think about. It’s all I’ve ever wanted to see happen to that bastard. It’s what he deserves. When that traitor is finally in my grasp, I’ll show him what hell is.”

Unknown meant what he said.

He wouldn’t stop until he destroyed that man.

✿✿✿✿✿✿✿✿

Unknown had been gone for a long time.

He often left her alone to work in this room without so much as a goodbye and it would be hours before he came back. Her only liberty to leave was to go one place and then come right back; She wasn’t technically an inducted member of Mint Eye, yet, that would be coming soon, Unknown would remind her every now and again.

If she was a full-time member then a lot more freedom would be given to her to exist. For now, she was stuck under Unknown’s lock and key. It’s what his Savior dictated. He did whatever she wanted him to do.

Lila wasn’t sure she was a fan of that idea.

Freedom sounded great.

But, she didn’t believe in any of the ideology they spouted that came with that freedom. She knew that their intentions weren’t as holy as they seemed to be. She was trapped here without a choice, however, so what she wanted wasn’t going to be considered.

Her phone had been tinkering with so that it only worked to communicate with Unknown as far as that went. She never answered when he called and she always had to answer when he called or else he would scold her actions.

He was the only person in her world and without him around things got rather dull, rather fast.

When he wasn’t working, it was so easy to speak to him. He listened to anything that she wanted to say and he would expect the same of her. A lot of that talk revolved around work, but there were lingering moments when he would give her more information about himself as a reward for her hard work on this project.

She figured out that she had him read wrong from the start.

His past really had been horrible from what he did say. Years of not being allowed to eat or go outside, years of loneliness, years where he considered the only friends he would ever have flowers in the garden outside of Mint Eye. It wasn’t all of the pieces to the mental puzzle she was building but she was getting a better understanding of this man.

He was a mystery she wanted to unravel.

It was strange.

This person was more than just who he wanted people to believe that he was, and she couldn’t help but want to know more. He knew everything in the world that he could dig into about her due to his long research. She didn’t have that liberty with him. She wasn’t that smart. Sure, she knew her own way about things but he was another caliber.

Another class entirely.

With pursed lips, she stared down at her device with a frown.

Where was he now? What was he up to? Was he working in the field for more intel or was she speaking with his Savior? When would he decide it was time to come back? There weren’t many places that she could think of, and he wasn’t somebody to do things at his own leisure.

Her hours were defined by time with and time without. She couldn’t get a lot of work done without his help.

He knew that.

Time began to blur and she was lost in a daze until the sliding door opened and the room was illuminated with the natural light. She squinted at the doorframe and rubbed at her eyes until her vision cleared up.

She wasn’t sure who it was but that figure just seemed too small to be Unknown’s own, he was a lot taller than that. Still, her voice was ever hopeful as she stared at the person, quietly questioning the person, “...Unknown?”

Their face was still distorted from the light but Lila could see the hint of a smile, “Oh? Is that what he decided you should call him? Interesting. Though, I’m not very surprised. He’s not fond of that other name.”

Her voice was soft. She sounded like she was very kind, and gentle. She seemed to radiate the light that she was bathed in; It was strangely comforting and foreboding in a way. She stepped inside the room and broke the illusion. That was the first time that Lila really got a look at this woman and she noted her features.

She was hardly taller than Lila was when she stood up. Her long blonde curls framed her face in such a way that curved just right and what stood out the most were her eyes. They were deep emerald green, just as Unknown’s were in a way, but these were far more natural compared to the unnatural hue that he had.

She had this air about her that made you respect it. She may have been small but it was easy to see that she could be a force to be reckoned with if she so chose to be.

His other name?

Oh.

His real name.

There was something in her gut telling her that this woman was more than just a regular visitor, and that would stand to be proven. Lila bit at her lower lip, “...You wouldn’t happen to be his Savior, then, would you?”

The woman’s lips turned into a smile.

She began to walk forward, “Yes, that would be me. What a clever girl you are. I am the Savior of Mint Eye, and you’re the girl that Unknown chose to help him with his duty. I must admit, I was hesitant to believe that he went out to find a partner for himself. He’s very dedicated to Mint Eye’s cause, and if he thought he needed help I would have supplied it myself.”

Lila didn’t budge from her spot. She didn’t think that she could. Her voice sounded so sweet but the implication in her words was far from polite.

“So, when he told me that he found someone worthy of our cause on his own, I wasn’t sure why he would do such a thing. But, now I understand. You’re a pretty thing, and he’s always had trouble with that. I would hate for him to get distracted from his work because of some girl,” the Savior stopped in front of Lila.

She paused, reaching forward to gently brush a strand of hair behind the girl’s ear. “But, I’m pleasantly surprised. His work has gotten much quicker since he took you at his side taking care of things. You may just be a great asset to my boy, and to me. You haven’t even tried to escape, though Unknown can be a brute if he doesn’t get his way. You’ve just quickly dedicated yourself to our cause.”

Lila swallowed, “Well... Unknown made a very great spiel about Mint Eye. He’s very convincing and it wasn’t that hard to choose an allegiance from the way that he describes this lovely place you’ve created to protect others.”

The Savior did as Unknown would do, looking through her words and her expression to try and locate a lie of some kind. It might make matters worse if she thought she saw something she didn’t like. This woman controlled Unknown’s life by all accounts.

She was the reason he was working himself to death, the reason why he hardly ever slept or ate, the reason why he saw no option but destruction, the reason why he was fighting so damn hard, and the reason why Lila had to try and dodge a minefield of danger to ensure that Unknown was functioning as a human being.

This woman was dangerous.

Lila had to watch what she was saying.

“I don’t see why I shouldn’t help him or Mint Eye. He’s given me an opportunity to be useful,” Lila added. “It would be foolish on my part not to recognize something this important. It’s a pleasure to ensure your goals. I realize I am not privy to everything yet but I hope to prove myself worthy of his selection.”

She seemed satisfied with that answer, now. Her hands dropped back to her sides and she hummed thoughtfully.

“I’m glad to hear you say so. I would hate to think about what would befall of Unknown if you were to cause any trouble. After all, he vouched for you. If you make trouble then he will suffer for it. I can’t control what others may do… or think of him if you were to mess things up. It seems my worries were for naught. In due time, my dear, your ceremony will take place. I look forward to it. I hope you do as well.”

Ceremony?

Unknown had mentioned his once when she inquired. It was different for everyone who went through it and how you reacted to it would change drastically depending on who you were. It involved a small number of tests… as well as something else he wouldn’t say aloud.

The final test, perhaps?

Lila had a feeling though, that it had something greatly to do with his dependency on that glimmering bottle of liquid that appeared in his hand every couple of days. It was clearly a batch of something strong.

His moods would change drastically before and afterward. If she asked about it, he would never answer directly, he said that he only took enough of that to ward off the headache he had. It was his special medicine. A few swigs of something was one thing. But whatever that something was, it seemed like nobody should take it at all.

Those so-called natural remedies that people made never turned out to be good in any sense of the word. If they were making stuff like that, what else was going on in this place?

If she was going to have a ceremony soon…

Lila couldn’t stomach that thought.

What was worse was the realization that his Savior was holding his safety over Lila’s head.

She was making herself clear and she didn’t care what happened or how Lila reacted to it. If she messed up then somebody was going to pay. She didn’t want to be the reason that Unknown got hurt or the reason he got into trouble. He already had the weight of Mint Eye on his back, being the only person in charge of damn near all security.

Lila would give this woman credit for something:

She knew how to control people and bend them to her will whether they liked it or not.

✿✿✿✿✿✿✿✿

Lila’s worry had been justified.

Unknown was gone for nearly two days straight.

She wasn’t entirely sure if the hours were right because she didn’t really have the sunlight to go by most of the time, just the clock on her phone that signified the hours and how long it had been since they had spoken. She didn’t have anything but her thoughts and worries to keep her up at night.

It was weird without Unknown.

She almost forgot what it was like to be alone with her worries and thoughts. She spent that time pilfering online to look at this and that. There was nothing interesting going on with the RFA that she could read over and that left her with just the option to look back home to see what everyone was up to there.

Did they miss her? Were they even worried? Did they even care that they hadn’t heard from her in weeks?

Lila clicked each profile one by one and her heart sank. There wasn’t even a mention of her name and they were doing all sorts of family events. It was like she didn’t even exist. It was like they were doing it on purpose. It was like she wasn’t even alive.

Nobody gave a fuck where she was or what she was doing.! She wound up tossing the device on the floor out of sheer rage and frustration. She covered her face in her hands and just wept. There had been a reason why she hadn’t even considered checking back home. Lila feared that this was what was going to happen if she dared to click open.

It was true.

It was all true.

Nobody cared. Not a soul had even been bothered to ask where she was or how she was or what was happening. It was a cruel reality. It stung and it cut into her insecurities like a knife. Unknown had been right.

Nobody out there appreciated her in the slightest, and she was a fool to think that she could just keep living like that. He had wanted to protect her from getting hurt like this, and that was why he brought her to this place.

Lila didn’t want to believe it.

But, the facts were right in front of her face and she couldn’t deny that.

This was the universe’s way of letting her know that she never really mattered to anyone and her life was just sort joke of cosmic joke. She hoped that whoever was laughing at her expense was happy with themselves. Because she understood now the truth that she had long been denying and lying to herself about.

For a long time, she just laid there on the ground and stared mindlessly at the ceiling. Her heart was so tired and weary she couldn’t even bring the tears to spill out anymore. It felt like this was all she was going to know from now on.

Unknown might not come ever back. His Savior might have finally punished him for bringing an outsider into their midst. He could have realized that she wasn’t even worth his trouble, either. So, it was much to her surprise when the door finally opened in the middle of the night and Unknown was politely shoved into the room.

He looked far different from the strong man that he made himself out to be. He staggered, stumbled, and fell to his knees. His chest heaved in and out, but whatever he had in him was all but gone from his body.

Unknown looked like he had been run through a wringer.

His face was pallor, hair was unkempt, and his clothes were disheveled. Whatever had happened to him while he was gone had not been good at all and it showed in the way he could barely pull himself off of the floor. It looked like he was hurting too damn much.

Lila almost immediately sprang to his side and the door shut as soon as she reached him, locking them both inside. She pressed the back of her hand to his forehead and nearly recoiled at how hot it felt to the touch. It wasn’t okay.

He wasn’t okay.

“Hey,” she whispered, mostly to herself because he seemed to be in a world of his own. “Hey, you’re really warm. I need to help you lay down, okay? Can you work with me?”

He grunted in response.

It wasn’t enough but it was something and she could work with someone who at least had some sense left. It took a good bit of energy for her to help him but after a few minutes of struggling to hold his weight up, he flopped over onto the couch with a thud.

It was haphazard, but hey, she was working with fire!

Lila glanced around the room for a moment. There wasn’t much in here that would help him and since she had heard the lock from the outside with an audible click, that meant that she couldn’t get out and get him anything to ease his fever.

“Shit,” she cursed.

There wasn’t a lot that she could do for him, now. It made her feel really helpless. Whatever they had done to him had really messed him up good. This was just a beating, they had given him too much of something and let it burn in him. There was no way he was going to be able to get up out of this on his own.

Lila would have to go through a list in her head and see what she had and didn’t have on her, first, that would be the smartest bet. There was a bit of water somewhere in this room that she hadn’t finished and she could probably makeshift a rag if she tore hard enough at something. He was in no state to do much besides sweat this out.

She looked back down at Unknown. Something in her chest stirred at the sight of him. She wasn’t sure what it was but it was one of those sensations that you couldn’t ignore.

He looked… vulnerable.

There was no scowl or mask for him to hide behind in this state. For the first time, she was really seeing him. His tired eyes, his worn expression, his feathered brows, how small he was, and how fraught with deep pain he was.

She tore her eyes away from him and went to work as quickly as she could manage, returning a few moments later to his side. Lila sank down to her knees and gently placed the rag against his forehead, smoothing out his tousled locks in the process. It wasn’t much at all, but it could ease some of his discomfort.

She wished that she could do more for him but this was all that she could do now. Lila found herself asking him as she lowered her face in her hands, “Is this because of me? Do they do this because you brought me here?”

His voice was as surly and blunt as ever, even in a state like this, “...No.”

Lila looked up at him, surprised to hear an answer so soon.

Unknown was looking at her but it seemed like he wasn’t all there with her just then. He was awake but he was looking right through her instead of at her. He winced and turned his head to look back at the ceiling.

She didn’t want to rush him, but she wanted to understand why they would hurt him if he was so important to everything. How was she supposed to believe in this cause of his if they were going to hurt him? He said nobody got hurt in this place!

Why would you put the strongest person out of commission like he wasn’t that important?

“Why, then? Why are you like this?”

“It’s a… reminder.”

“Of what?”

“...”

“Unknown, please…”

“...”

He didn’t respond.

Lila wasn’t going to get an answer from him.

She started to get up, thinking that she would check the room for anything she may have missed but was stopped when something grasped her wrist. It was clammy, but it was his hand.

When she turned her head to look back at him, his green eyes were far different than the ones that she had come to know these past few weeks. Lila didn’t see a hardened and calculated gaze of a cold genius, instead, she saw the eyes of somebody who was hurting badly and seeking some form of comfort from the ache.

It was like…

It was like he was an entirely different person.

Her breath caught in her throat. Until this point, there had only been vague glimpses of something more in his eyes and now she was seeing clearly what was underneath his cold exterior. Unknown was running himself ragged. He couldn’t keep doing this. He was tired, and he was looking for something to fix this.

He couldn’t do this alone, he had said.

“Don’t leave me alone,” he said, his voice quiet and so unlike himself. At least, the man she had come to know. His plea was desperate and it was seemingly all that he had in him. “Please, don’t leave me… please… please.”

Lila’s heart sank.

She knew that she shouldn’t let herself start to view this man more than her captor but it seemed more and more like he was trapped as well without a choice in the matter. His green eyes were as mysterious as ever and she found herself drawn into them like a river flowing out to sea.

She was drowning, being lured out in deeper and deeper water, so deep that her feet couldn’t touch the ground any longer.

There was no turning back from this point.

Lila gently removed his grasp from her wrist and laid back next to him. She maneuvered his arm a bit so that it rested over her hip. If she was drowning in this place, then she was going to be the one to drown herself within him, nobody else would make that choice for Lila.

“I’m here,” she told him. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to stay here with you. I won’t ever leave you, okay? I promise.”

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the-fiction-witch · 6 years

Text

The Artist And The Writer

MOVIE: MAZE RUNNER

COUPLE: NEWT X READER

RATING: KINDA SEXY IN PARTS BUT MOSTLY ADORABLE AF!

Newt's Pov:

I sighed I can't get to sleep again, I think I should go for a walk it might put me back to sleep, I climbed out my hammock taking my little spare notebook, I wondered around the dead heads doodling plants and leaves but it didn't help so I began my walk back going the long way round to try and tie me out I spotted y/n sleeping peacefully in her little hammock I couldn't help but smile my heart jumping out of my chest seeing her nuzzling into the pillow lightly smiling the way she only does when she's dreaming, I went sitting in my hammock looking at her slowly and carefully drawing the perfect lines of her skin,

the way her hair falls loose and messy against her pillow, the way her lips look so kissable, her skin glimmering in the moonlight my hands buckled a little drawing her breasts pressed tight to her pillow without her bra on, it made me blush a little but I can't draw them, it would look strange if I didn't as

soon as I was done I put my pencil away and hid my book in my pillow case laying down and getting to sleep.

Y/n Pov:

I yawned stretching my arms out as I woke up, I looked out to the glade and smiled getting my little book trying to think of something to write...Mornings in the glade in some ways are like waking in another world of your dreams, the way the bright golden sun peaks over the grey static walls creeping in to touch the peaceful glade, the rays of magic touch from each tit blade of green grass to the tip top brown branches of the tallest tree's, falling to the soft blankets of the boys sleeping out on the common ground, to the soft strong strings holding each hammock keeping we each keeper in there rest. I giggled as I spotted a familiar morning sight, newt fast asleep in his hammock so I smiled turning a page or so

The restful sleep, of the hardworking. He lays still in his deep dreams, his feet tucked up tightly to his red Blanket trying to make sure in his twists and turns he wouldn't lose his blanket to let in the draft. His legs had a little pillow about a quarter of the size of a regular pillow for his ankle so it wouldn't hurt him in his sleep as much, his skinny body snuggly sinking into the soft hammock his brown pants undone at the waist he always does it before bed, the boys say he used to take them off completely when he went to bed but, since I showed up being the only girl he doesn't do that anymore, his tight orange vest clings to his skin some places more than others where the elasticity of the fabric was going over time, his hoodie hung on the rope of the hammock, his toned arms hung a little out the hammock where he was slowly tipping out his beautiful face cuddled into his pillow his soft lips open where he was drooling a little onto the pillow, the mop of blonde and brown hair a mess where he had moved in his sleep, the way the sunlight caught it made him almost seem to... Glow like a beautiful angel.

As soon as I finished I hid my book away and climbed out of bed going over to newt and putting his arms back in his hammock readjusting him to he wasn't going to fall out any time soon as I do every day I smiled fixing his hair a little and giving his head a little kiss he seemed to smile as I did nuzzling closer to his pillow. I sighed doing my work for the medjacks nothing overly interesting Today so I sat by the window with my little book trying to find something worth writing... And I spotted my little source of inspiration. And began to write...

The garden filled with dirt and sweat, but also sugar. The heat embracing his body as he toiled with the hard manual labour, his toned arms visible where his grey hoodie held him tightly the sleeves rolled to his elbows giving a hint of the form below, he stood from caring for seeds and saplings wiping the loaded sweat from his brow, his golden hair matted from the heat, the world seems to freeze as his hands reached for the hem of his jumper pulling it off him and to the ground beside him in one perfect motion. He stops looking at his surroundings with those chocolate coloured eyes, resting his arm on his slender neck he reached flexing his toned form his vest clung to his dripping body everywhere hardly concealing anything to the eye, his pecks obvious as well as the flat skinny stomach leading eyes to the bulge in those tight pants the tightness normally a mere suggestion of what hides below but today, it seemed so tight it was more like a brag. Making any girl with a hundred miles cross her legs and bit her lip begging for his attentions.

Ooh la la that got steamy. It's just newt in the gardens for goodness sake, well every writer has to embellish I suppose. I really hope we don't all die and this little books gets taken to be studied as the example of what the glade was.

Newt's Pov:

I smiled as y/n came to sit with us at the bonfire and she giggled waving at me from the other side so I waved back having another bite from my stick of food a few boys made some comments and I admit I took notice too y/n was wearing a skirt... I know that doesn't sound like alot but y/n doesn't often wear a skirt and when she does it's normally lower than that. I blushed a little trying to not look even if most boys where wolf whistling and making lewd comments I think she noticed I wasn't looking and she smiled getting up much to many boys dismay even if a few where trying to look up her skirt she hopped over and sat next to me she smiled and I smiled to blushing alot she giggled in that sweet little way she always does that makes my tummy fill with butterflies and bubbles I froze as she pressed a kiss to my cheek not even a second just a little peck but I could feel my face going bright red. Many boys making comments and noises at us I glanced to Minho a minute making my best help me expression as I was lost for what to do he simply smirked and made a kissy face so I looked back to y/n still very nervous so much I realised I was holding my breath though all that I jumped forward and kissed her I went to kiss her cheek but I got her mouth by accident so I pulled back as quickly making her giggle a sweet little honey glow in her cheeks where she blushed too the glade was going insane at us y/n took my hand pulling me up with her and tugging me along with her an explosion of wolf whistles and comments and all sorts of things came from them but we where going fast enough to be away from the noise pretty fast she tugged me back to the hammocks and sat on her own so I sat on mine we both got ready for bed tucked up the tightly she giggled blowing me a kiss it made.me blush harder if that was possible I went to speak but she shhhed me nuzzling herself close to her bed and pointing to the asleep Alby close to us I know she's right the glade could be having a firework show and he doesn't move yet me and y/n start whispering and he hears every word so I blew her a little kiss too before tucking myself in a bit better she went to sleep pretty quickly but I couldn't I was too happy and to excited to fall into my dreams all I've ever wanted was to kiss her and I've done it here in the real world, not even dream me has got that far yet it was like a dream come true I got my little pad and smiled making a little drawing it was just going to be us kissing but...I'm not good at drawing me so I just let my imagination run wild.

Her sweet beautiful body on her knees, that little skirt left as sheds on her legs her hands covered herself as he had on underwear on, I tried to draw her shirt but it never looked right so I did it in s little bra with lace and frills on it her hair down bouncing on her shoulder s little her face read of many things, shock, giggling, that innocent look of ohh I'm not wearing anything under my skirt, as well as that, underlined ohh I'm not wearing anything isn't it sexy,

I had to stop as soon as I had finished as the boys were starting to wonder back now so I hid my book away and went to bed

Y/n's pov:

I yawned sitting up a little I turned and saw newt fast asleep I giggled giving last night my tummy still full of bubbles and butterflies where he kissed me, I know it wasn't intentional he was going to kiss my cheek but zart shoved him. I was about to sweetly call him to wake him up nicely this morning but-

Alby rushed over In a panic yelling about I'm not sure bathroom sinks I think I'm not awake enough for his yelling which woke newt and made him fall out his hammock him and all his stuff dumped on the floor I laughed at him and he looked unhappy with me as Alby wondered off tipping me out my hammock and into the floor with him scattering my stuff with his we had a laugh about it before getting up to sort out putting our stuff back in our hammocks I put my book in my bag and got ready for work as did newt he was about to go but I tugged his arm he stopped and turned to me blushing a little given last night so I stood up on my toes and gave his lips a tiny kiss and even giving his nose a little Eskimo kiss before running off before he could say anything I know he was turning red I could see it from here as I ran off to work. I sat for ages nothing much going on so I got out my book to do some writing but I turned the first page and my writing wasn't there, but a beautiful drawing of the glade from the top of the watchtower it was really good all the pages had similar beautiful drawings of glade places mixed in with little doodles of plants and flowers from the gardens, my favourite I found was of the garden in full bloom it looked like a fairytale. I looked through more and there was a person in them, a girl beautiful and perfect I looked at them all spotting one in a hammock they where of me? From the way they had been draw, it was obvious that newt had drawn them, and it made me giggle he was such a good artist. I noticed the time my lunch break I should really return his book he'll be missing it.

Newt’s pov:

I yawned a little already bored of Minho, Zart and Winston badgering me about last night, there's only so many times you can say nothing happened. Till it was break so I went sitting by the flowers there was a daisy just starting to bloom so I got my pad flicking through the pages but I noticed they didn't have drawings there where words, I read a couple they where all beautiful stories and descriptions of the glade and the people in it, I kept reading ones about a person in bed and it hit me...it was me? That's how I sleep knowone else does. Kept reading the beautiful words only one person could have written this.

Y/n’s POV

I wondered thought the gardens looking for him but Zart said he had gone wandering off so I went to the deadheads where he likes to wonder and I spotted him with my notebook

"hello" he smiles

"hey" I smile

"I uhhh- this is yours" he says handing me the book

"thank you, here this one is yours" I tell him handing him his book back "there beautiful" I tell him

"thank you" he blushed

"but you made me far too pretty" I giggle

"no I didn't, that's how pretty you look to me" he smiles "your stories...there amazing, you must have been exaggerating I'm not nearly that perfect" he laughs

"I think you are" I smile giving his cheek a kiss and he blushed giving my check a kiss too I giggled holding his hand as we wandered back to the glade sitting in the little bench by the bonfire snacking on our lunch as I wrote and he drew I smiled leaning on his shoulder and giggled "is that me?" I ask

"Yep, looking nice and beautiful" he smiles

"is that you?" I ask

"yeah" he laughs

"are we kissing?" I ask slsly

"I don't know, maybe..." He smirked "maybe I need a little inspiration?" He whispered so I smirked wrapping my arms around his neck and kissing his soft lips he happily kissed me back wrapping his arms around my waist as our kiss deepened till I pulled away

"that enough inspiration for you?" I ask

"for now" he shrugs going back to his drawing for a while till he stole my book having a read of what I was writing "ohhhh...my my you smutty little thing" he smirked rubbing his nose with mine "so... We passionately make out and fool around by the fire then I take you into the dead heads all lustfully then what?" He asks

"I don't know I haven't gotten that far" I giggled "maybe I need a little inspiration newtie" I smirk running my hand down his chest

"humm alright" he smirked ...

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thefudge · 6 years

Note

Harry Potter question, do you or did you ever ship Hermione x Tom. Hermione x Snape. Hermione x Lucius. ? (I'm a Hermione fan lol)

aaaah this is a tough one, but super interesting (and i like her too!)

so here we go

(after the cut cuz this got looooong)

in short, i dabbled in all of them to various degrees

hermione/tom - in theory, i should like this pairing a lot, but i have a lot of issues with the way they are written together; aka they’re either portrayed as incredibly beautiful genius sex gods, or hermione is weak and constantly thwarted by tom’s sexy moves. there is some good fic out there that explores what it would actually be like if these two had to butt heads, but it’s hard for me to find this dynamic written the way i feel it, which is very solipsistic of me i know lol. it’s also a tough ship to get right, imo. because tom/voldemort has no reason to be that impressed with hermione. yes, she is brilliant and cunning, but i think tom is faaar more fascinated by emotions than intellect, ironically. he has a slew of talented wizards and witches around him, but he doesn’t care a fig about them. meanwhile, he’s constantly cursing harry’s resilience and humanity because he craves it. he’s more drawn to folks who thrive on unconditional love. it’s reaaaally hilarious when u think about it. but i don’t hate it? i just think it’s a tough ship to get right. i was into it in high school, but i shipped tom/ginny more because ginny has no business impressing him ahahahah

hermione/snape - once upon a long-ass time i was definitely taken with this ship because it used to be the It Ship in the olden days. if you were around circa 2003-2004 on livejournal and ffnet and schnoogle? HOO MAN, this was where you found the BEST angst and smut, hands down. i think we all had a snamione phase, it’s like part of growing up. the older i got, tho, i just…got bored with it, which is super sad! i think maybe it’s the fact that you can’t take this pairing into many directions. it’s mostly about hermione “healing” snape and giving him a second chance to repair the damage with lily. oh, and snape also empowers her intellectually. mmmkay. that’s nice. yawn. i mean! it’s great! but….yawn? listen, hermione is brilliant, but can we quit it with making everything about her intellect? 90% of snamione fics are about him helping her win the nobel prize or some shit like that, i swear to god, you got fics with titles like “Euclidean geometry and the arithmancy algorithm” or whatever, and it’s mostly these two nerding out and saving the world with their massive intellect. and that’s rly cool! i’m so glad there’s a space for that! but….can we…take a break from all that studying? my 15 yo self felt like i should be doing homework when i read about how hermione was breaking her back trying to prove to snape how goddamn proficient she was, sweating and toiling over her cauldron. it’s almost like saying “if you don’t exhaust yourself intellectually, you’re not worthy of snape”. and that was a real bummer. also, in a lot of those fics hermione and snape were super shitty to the poor idiots who did not understand their super complicated invented algebra. a lot of needless ron bashing too. ANYWAY. this ship will always have a place in my heart but it’s too stagnant for me and doesn’t take me anywhere new. (i do remember a great old fic where hermione developed an eating disorder because she was exhausting herself intellectually, trying to be absolutely perfect, and snape actually helped her return to her goddamn senses and made her take a break, lol that was one of my faves tbh)

hermione/lucius - ha okay, ironically the ship i like the most in this line-up. back in the day, fanfic for this pairing was kiiiind of cringey since it involved a super angsty lucius who had to torture a slave!hermione and get her to accept voldemort as her lord and saviour… eh. it was messy and little of it was actually nuanced and good, sorry folks. but!! this ship has matured together with its dedicated writers and it has weirdly become one of the more nuanced hermione pairings out there. i think once the dust settled on this series, big ships like dramione and snamione dried up a little bit, while the smaller ones flourished. so i’ve seen rly cool takes on lucius malfoy post-series as an older guy who fucked up his life and his family and has to reckon with that, especially since he was never committed to the cause like bella, but his pride would never let him ask help from the order. lumione (?) is also a slightly more relaxed ship cuz u dont have lucius making her work on quadratic equations for fuck’s sake (lookin at u, severus) and he also wouldnt overwhelm her with his sexy evil plans (lookin at u, tom). like he wouldn’t expect sooo fucking much of her, you know? though ofc there would be sniping and antagonism and blood prejudice etc so there’s a lot to unpack. but fanon-wise? yeah, this ship wins lol

in general, the more i look back, the more i think that all of these ships just put too much fucking pressure on hermione to be this be-all and end-all of the harry potter universe, especially in terms of brains. as someone who was constantly insecure about intellectual prowess growing up, to have to read hundreds of fanfics where she was constantly humiliated and put to the test by these “brilliant” men felt really disheartening to me. i enjoyed some of it, but a lot of hermione fics left me exhausted. hermione had to do so much emotional and intellectual labor just to be allowed to touch a mediocre dick? SPARE ME lol.

and i realized a lot of the girls/women writing those stories were “hermione’s” too, or obviously identified as such (me included). and they must have believed that they too could only be worthy of a dude’s attention if they became the next marie curie. it’s like “if i work hard enough, i’ll be the equal of the pretty, bubbly girl”. cuz this is the really whack, misogynist, self-defeatist narrative a lot of us were raised on. and it showed in the goddamn hermione fics where she can only squeeze a tiny bit of pleasure if she works herself to the bone.

fuck that.

so yeah, this kind of makes me ambivalent about many of these big ol’ ships and whether, if we want them to move forward, we should change our optic about what hermione represents to a lot of us

lol sorry this got away from me

#hp meta #hermione granger #my stuff #hp

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victoriagloverstuff · 6 years

Text

Is it time to remove Zuckerberg from (his) office? – TechCrunch

A colleague, who shall remain nameless (because privacy is not dead), gave a thumbs down to a recent column in the NYT. The complaint was that the writer had attacked tech companies (mostly but not exclusively Facebook) without offering any solutions for these all-powerful techbro CEOs’ orchestral failures to grasp the messy complexities of humanity at a worldwide scale.

Challenge accepted.

Here’s the thought experiment: Fixing Facebook

We’ll start with Facebook because, while it’s by no means the only tech company whose platform contains a bottomless cesspit of problems, it is the most used social platform in the West; the de facto global monopoly outside China.

And, well, even Zuckerberg’ thinks it needs fixing. Or at least that its PR needs fixing — given he made “Fixing Facebook” his ‘personal challenge’ of the year this year — proof, if any more were needed, of his incredible capacity for sounding tone-deaf.

For a little more context on these annual personal challenges, Zuckerberg once previously set himself the challenge of reading a new book every two weeks. So it seems fair to ask: Is Facebook a 26-book sized fix?

If we’re talking in book metaphor terms, the challenge of fixing Facebook seems at least on the scale of the Library of Alexandria, say, given the volume of human content being daily fenced. It may, more likely, be multiple libraries of Alexandria. Just as, if Facebook content was housed in a physical library, the company would require considerably more real estate that the largest library of the ancient world to house its staggeringly-massive-and-expanding-by-the-second human content collection — which also of course forms the foundation of its business.

Zuckerberg himself has implied that his 2018 challenge — to fix the company he founded years before the iPhone arrived to supercharge the smartphone revolution and, down that line, mobilize Facebook’s societal ‘revolution’ — is his toughest yet, and likely to take at least two or three years before it bears fruit, not just the one. So Facebook’s founder is already managing our expectations and he’s barely even started.

In all likelihood, if Facebook were left alone to keep standing ethically aloof, shaping and distributing information at vast scale while simultaneously denying that’s editing — to enjoy another decade of unforgivably bad judgement calls (so, basically, to ‘self-regulate’; or, as the New York Times put it, for Zuckerberg to be educated at societal expense) — then his 2018 personal challenge would become just ‘Chapter One, Volume One’ in a neverending life’s ‘work-in-progress’.

Great for Mark, far less great for humans and democratic societies all over the world.

Frankly, there has to be a better way. So here’s an alternative plan for fixing Facebook — or at least a few big ideas to get policymakers’ juices flowing… Bear in mind this is a thought exercise so we make no suggestions for how to enact the plan — we’re just throwing ideas out there to get folks thinking.

Step 1: Goodbye network of networks

Facebook has been allowed to acquire several other social communication networks — most notably photo-focused social network Instagram [1BN monthly active users] and messaging app platform WhatsApp [1.5BN] — so Zuckerberg has not just ONE massively popular social network (Facebook: [2.2BN]) but a saccharine suite of eyeball-harvesting machines.

Last month he revealed his sunless empire casts its shadow across a full 2.5BN individuals if you factor in all his apps — albeit, that was an attempt to distract investors from the stock price car crash conference call that was to follow. But the staggering size of the empire is undeniable.

So the first part of fixing Facebook is really simple: No dominant social network should be allowed to possess (or continue to possess) multiple dominant social networks.

There’s literally no good argument for why this is good for anyone other than (in Facebook’s case) Zuckerberg and Zuckerberg’s shareholders. Which is zero reason not to do something that’s net good for the rest of humanity. On one level it’s just basic math.

Setting aside (for just a second) the tangible damages inflicted upon humans by unregulated social media platforms with zero editorial values and a threadbare minimum of morality which wafts like gauze in the slipstream of supercharged and continuously re-engineered growth and engagement engines that DO NOT FACTOR HUMAN COST into their algorithmic calculations — allowing their masters to preside over suprasocietal revenue stripping mega-platforms — which, to be clear, is our primary concern here — the damage to competition and innovation alone from Zuckerberg owning multiple social networks is both visible and quantifiable.

Just ask Snapchat. Because, well, you can’t ask the social networks that don’t exist because Zuckerberg commands a full flush of attention-harvesting networks. So take a good, long, hard look at all those Stories clones he’s copypasted right across his social network of social networks. Not very innovative is it?

And even if you don’t think mega-platforms cause harm by eroding civic and democratic values (against, well, plenty of evidence to the contrary), if you value creativity, competition and consumer choice it’s equally a no brainer to tend your markets in a way that allows multiple distinct networks to thrive, rather than let one megacorp get so powerful it’s essentially metastasized into a Borg-like entity capable of enslaving and/or destroying any challenger, idea or even value in its path. (And doing all that at the same time as monopolizing its users’ attention.)

We see this too in how Facebook applies its technology in a way that seeks to reshape laws in its business model’s favor. Because while individuals break laws, massively powerful megacorps merely lean their bulk to squash them into a more pleasing shape.

Facebook is not just spending big on lobbying lawmakers (and it sure is doing that), it’s using technology and the brute force of its platform to pound on and roll over the rule of law by deforming foundational tenets of society. Privacy being just one of them.

And it’s not doing this reshaping for the good of humanity. Oh no. While democratic societies have rules to protect the vulnerable and foster competition and choice because they are based on recognizing value in human life, Facebook’s motives are 100% self-interested and profit-driven.

The company wants to rewrite rules globally to further expand its bottom line. Hence its mission to pool all humans into a single monetizable bucket — no matter if people don’t exactly mesh together because people aren’t actually bits of data. If you want to be that reductive make soup, not a “global community”.

So step one to fixing Facebook is simple: Break up Zuckerberg’s empire.

In practical terms that means forcing Facebook to sell Instagram and WhatsApp — at a bare minimum. A single network is necessarily less potent than a network of networks. And it becomes, at least theoretically possible for Facebook to be at risk from competitive forces.

You would also need to at keep a weather eye on social VR, in case Oculus needs to be taken out of Zuckerberg’s hands too. There’s less of an immediate imperative there, certainly. This VR cycle is still as dead as the tone of voice the Facebook founder used to describe the things his avatar was virtually taking in when he indulged in a bit of Puerto Rico disaster tourism for an Oculus product demo last year.

That said, there’s still a strong argument to say that Facebook, the dominant force of the social web and then the social mobile web, should not be allowed to shape and dictate even a nascent potential future disruptor in the same social technology sphere.

Not if you value diversity and creativity — and, well, a lot more besides.

But all these enforced sells-offs would just raise lots more money for Facebook! I hear you cry. That’s not necessarily a bad thing — so long as it gets, shall we say, well spent. The windfall could be used to fund a massive recruitment drive to properly resource Facebook’s business in every market where it operates.

And I do mean MASSIVE. Not the ‘10,000 extra security and moderation staff’ Facebook has said will hire by the end of this year (raising the headcount it has working on these critical tasks to around 20k in total).

To be anywhere near capable of properly contextualizing content across a platform that’s actively used by 2BN+ humans — and therefore to be able to rapidly and effectively spot and quash malicious manipulation, hateful conduct and so on, and thus responsibly manage and sustain a genuine global ‘community’ — the company would likely need to add hundreds of thousands of content reviewers/moderators. Which would be very expensive indeed.

Yet Facebook paid a cool $19BN for WhatsApp back in 2014 — so an enforced sell off of its other networks should raise a truck tonne of cash to held fund a vastly larger ‘trust and safety’ personnel bill. (While AI systems and technologies can help with the moderation challenge, Zuckerberg himself has admitted that AI alone won’t scale to the content challenge for “many years” to come — if indeed it can scale at all.)

Unfortunately there’s another problem though. The human labor involved in carrying out content moderation across Facebook’s 2BN+ user mega-platform is ethically horrifying because the people who Facebook contracts for ‘after the fact’ moderation necessarily live neck deep in its cesspit. Their sweating toil is to keep paddling the shit so Facebook’s sewers don’t back up entirely and flood the platform with it.

So, in a truly ideal ‘fixed Facebook’ scenario, there wouldn’t be a need for this kind of dehumanizing, industrialized content review system — which necessitates that eyes be averted and empathy disengaged from any considerations of a traumatized ‘clean up’ workforce.

Much like Thomas Moore’s Utopia, Zuckerberg’s mega-platform requires an unfortunate underclass of worker doing its dirty work. And just as the existence of slaves in Utopia made it evident that the ‘utopian vision’ being presented was not really all it seemed, Facebook’s outsourced teams of cheap labor — whose day job is to sit and watch videos of human beheadings, torture, violence etc; or make a microsecond stress-judgement on whether a piece of hate speech is truly hateful enough to be rendered incapable of monetization and pulled from the platform — the awful cost on both sides of that human experience undermines Zuckerberg’s claim that he’s “building global community”.

Moore coined the word ‘utopia’ from the Greek — and its two components suggest an intended translation of ‘no place’. Or perhaps, better yet, it was supposed to be a pun — as Margaret Atwood has suggested — meaning something along the lines of ‘the good place that simply doesn’t exist’. Which might be a good description for Zuckerberg’s “global community”.

So we’ll come back to that.

Because the next step in the plan should help cut the Facebook moderation challenge down to a more manageable size…

Step 2) Break up Facebook into lots of market specific Facebooks

Instead of there being just one Facebook (comprised of two core legal entities: Facebook USA and Facebook International, in Ireland), it’s time to break up Facebook’s business into hundreds of market specific Facebooks that can really start to serve their local communities. You could go further still and subdivide at a state, county or community level.

A global social network is an oxymoron. Humans are individuals and humanity is made up of all sorts of peoples, communities and groupings. So to suggest the whole of humanity needs to co-exist on the exact same platform, under the exact same overarching set of ‘community standards’, is — truly — the stuff of megalomaniacs.

To add insult to societal and cultural injury, Facebook — the company that claims it’s doing this (while ignoring the ‘awkward’ fact that what it’s building isn’t functioning equally everywhere, even in its own backyard) — has an executive team that’s almost exclusively white and male, and steeped in a very particular Valley ‘Kool Aid’ techno-utopian mindset that’s wrapped in the U.S. flag and bound to the U.S. constitution.

Which is another way of saying that’s the polar opposite of thinking global.

Facebook released its fifth annual diversity report this year which revealed it making little progress in increasing diversity over the past five years. In senior leadership roles, Facebook’s 2018 skew is 70:30 male female, and a full 69.7% white. While the company was fully 77% male and 74% white in 2014.

Facebook’s ongoing lack of diversity is not representative of the U.S. population, let alone reflective of the myriad regions its product reaches around the planet. So the idea that an executive team with such an inexorably narrow, U.S.-focused perspective could meaningfully — let alone helpfully — serve the whole of humanity is a nonsense. And the fact that Zuckerberg is still talking in those terms merely spotlights an abject lack of corporate diversity and global perspective at his company.

If he genuinely believes his own “global community” rhetoric he’s failing even harder than he looks. Most probably, though, it’s just a convenient marketing label to wallpaper the growth strategy that’s delivered for Facebook’s shareholders for years — by the company pushing into and dominating international markets yet without making commensurate investments in resourcing its business in international markets….

Fascinating detail from @karaswisher interview w/ Zuck where he admits Fb's margin comes from rest of world – i.e. where fb is under-resourced vs impacts/damage its platforms can have – and not from the US. So, tl;dr, fb's profitability is reliant on fb's lack of responsibility pic.twitter.com/UNG7OFssjF

— Natasha (@riptari) July 19, 2018

This facet of Facebook’s business becomes especially problematic when you consider how the company has been pouring money into subsidizing (or seeking to) Internet access in emerging markets.

Initially via its Internet.org ‘Free Basics’ initiative which was marketed as a ‘humanitarian’, quasi-philanthropic mission to ‘wire the world’ — though plenty of outsiders and some target countries viewed it not as charity but as a self-serving and competitive-crushing business development tactic. (Including India — which blocked Free Basics, but not before Facebook had spent millions on ads trying to get locals to lobby the regulator on its behalf).

More recently the company has been putting money into telecom infrastructure a bit less loudly — presumably hoping a less immediately self-serving approach to investing in infrastructure in target growth markets will avoid another highly politicized controversy.

It’s more wallpapering though: Connectivity investments are a business growth strategy predicated on Facebook removing connectivity barriers that stand in the way of Facebook onboarding more eyeballs.

And given the amounts of money Facebooks has been willing to spend to try to lodge its product in the hands of more new Internet users — to the point where, in some markets, Facebook effectively is the Internet — it’s even less forgivable that the company has failed to properly resource its international operations and stop its products from having some truly tragic consequences.

The cost to humanity for Facebook failing to operate with due care is painfully visible but difficult to quantify.

Not that Zuckerberg has let those inconvenient truths stop him from continuing to suggest he’s the man to build a community for the planet. But again that rather implies Facebook’s problems grow out of Facebook’s lack of external perspective.

Aside from the fact that we are all equally human, there is no one homogenous human community that spans the entire world. So when Zuckerberg talks about Facebook’s ‘global community’ he is, in effect, saying nothing — or saying something almost entirely meaningless as to render down to a platitudinous sludge. (At least unless his desire is indeed a Borg-esque absorption of other cultures — into a ‘resistance is futile’ homogenous ‘Californormification’ of the planet. And we must surely hope it’s not. Although Facebook’s Free Basics have been accused of amounting to digital colonialism.)

Zuckerberg does seem to have quasi-realized the contradiction lurking at the the tin heart of his ‘global’ endeavor, though. Which is why he’s talked suggestively about creating a ‘Supreme Court of Facebook‘ — i.e. to try to reboot the pitifully unfit for purpose governance structure. (Although talk of ‘community-oriented governance’ has neither been firmed up nor formalized into a tangible structural reform plan.)

While the notion of a Supreme Court of Facebook, especially, does risk sounding worryingly like Zuckerberg fancies his own personal Star Chamber, the fact he’s even saying this sort of stuff shows he knows Facebook has planet-straddling problems that are far, far too big for its minimalist Libertarian ‘guardrails’ to manage or control. And in turn that suggests the event horizon of scaling Facebook’s business model has been reached. Hello $120BN market cap blackhole.

“It’s just not clear to me that us sitting in an office here in California are best placed to always determine what the policies should be for people all around the world,” Zuckerberg said earlier THIS YEAR — 2018! — in what must surely count as the one of the tardiest enlightenments of a well educated public person in the Western world, period.

“I’ve been working on and thinking through,” he continued his mental perambulation. “How can you set up a more democratic or community-oriented process that reflects the values of people around the world?”

Well, Mark, here’s an idea to factor into your thinking: Facebook’s problem is Facebook’s massive size.

So why not chop the platform up into market specific operations that are free to make some of their own decisions and let them develop diverse corporate cultures of their own. Most importantly empower them to be operationally sensitive to the needs of local communities — and so well placed to responsively serve them.

Imagine the Facebook brand as a sort of loose ‘franchise’, with each little Facebook at liberty to intelligently adapt the menu to local tastes. And each of these ‘content eateries’ taking pride in the interior of its real estate, with dedicated managers who make their presence felt and whose jobs is to ensure great facilities but no violent food fights.

There would also need to be some core principles too, of course. A set of democratic and civic values that all the little Facebooks are bound to protect — to push back against attempts by states or concerted external forces seeking to maliciously hijack and derail speech.

But switch around the current reality — a hulkingly massive platform attached to a relatively tiny (in resources terms) business operation — and the slavering jabberwocky that Zuckerberg is now on a personal mission to slay might well cease to exist, as multiple messy human challenges get cut down to a more manageable size. Not every single content judgement call on Facebook needs to scale planet-wide.

Multiple, well resourced market-specific Facebooks staffed locally so they can pro-actively spot problems and manage their communities would not be the same business at all. Facebook would become an even more biodiverse ecosystem — of linked but tonally distinct communities — which could even, in time, diverge a bit on the feature front, via adding non-core extras, based on market specific appetites and tastes.

There would obviously have to be basic core social function interoperability — so that individual users of different Facebooks could still connect and communicate. But beyond a bit of interplay (a sort of ‘Facebook Basics’) why should there be a requirement that everyone’s Facebook experience be exactly the same?

While Facebook talks as if it has a single set of community standards, the reality is fuzzier. For example it applies stricter hate speech rules to content moderation in a market like Germany, which passed a social media hate speech law last year. Those sorts of exceptions aren’t going to go away either; as more lawmakers wake up to the challenges posed by the platform more demands will be made to regulate the content on the platform.

So, Zuckerberg, why not step actively into a process of embracing greater localization — in a way that’s sensitive to cultural and societal norms — and use the accrued political capital from that to invest in defending the platform’s core principles?

This approach won’t work in every market, clearly. But allowing for a greater tonality of content — a more risqué French Facebook, say, vs the ‘no-nipples please’ U.S. flavor — coupled with greater sensitivity to market mood and feedback could position Facebook to work with democracies and strengthen civic and cultural values, instead of trying to barge its way along by unilaterally imposing the U.S. constitution on the rest of the planet.

Facebook as it is now, globally scaled but under-resourced, is not in a position to enforce its own community standards. It only does so when or if it receives repeat complaints (and even then it won’t always act on them).

Or when a market has passed legislation enforcing action with a regime of fines (a recent report by a UK parliamentary committee, examining the democratic implications of social media fueled disinformation, notes that one in six of Facebook’s moderators now works in Germany — citing that as “practical evidence that legislation can work”).

So there are very visible cracks in both its claim to be “building global community” or even that it has community standards at all, given it doesn’t pro-actively enforce them (in most markets). So why not embrace a full fragmentation of its platform — and let a thousand little blue ships set sail!

And if Facebook really wants one community principle to set as its pole star, one rule to rule them all (and to vanquish its existential jabberwocky), it should swear to put life before data.

Locally tuned, culturally sensitive Facebooks that stand up for democratic values and civic standards could help rework the moderation challenge — removing the need for Facebook to have the equivalent of sweat shops based on outsourcing repeat human exposure to violent and toxic content.

This element is one of the ugliest sides of the social media platform business. But with empowered, smaller businesses operating in closer proximities to the communities being served, Facebook stands a better chance of getting on top of its content problems — getting out of a reactive crisis mode piled high with problems where it’s currently stuck to taking up a position in the community intelligence vanguard where its workers can root out damaging abuse before it gets to go viral, metastasize and wreak wider societal harms.

Proper community management could also, over time, encourage a more positive sharing environment to develop — where posting hateful stuff doesn’t get rewarded with feedback loops. Certainly not algorithmically, as it indeed has been.

As an additional measure, a portion of the financial windfall gained from selling off Facebook’s other social networks could be passed directly to independent trustees appointed to the Chan Zuckerberg Foundation for spending on projects intended to counter the corrosive effects of social media on information veracity and authenticity — such as by funding school age educational programs in critical thinking.

Indeed, UK lawmakers have already called for a social media levy for a similar purpose.

Step 3) Open the black boxes

There would still be a Facebook board and a Facebook exec team in a head office in California sitting atop all these community-oriented Facebooks — which, while operationally liberated, would still be making use of its core technology and getting limited corporate steerage. So there would still be a need for regulators to understand what Facebook’s code is doing.

Algorithmic accountability of platform technologies is essential. Regulators need to be able to see the inputs underlying the information hierarchies that these AI engines generate, and compare those against the outputs of that shaping. Which means audits. So opening the commercial black boxes — and the data holdings — to regulatory oversight.

Discrimination is easier to get away with in darkness. But Mega-platforms have shielded their commercial IP from public scrutiny and it’s only when damaging effects have surfaced in the public consciousness that users have got a glimpse of what’s been going on.

Facebook’s defense has been to say it was naive in the face of malicious activity like Russian-backed election meddling. That’s hardly an argument for more obscurity and more darkness. If you lack awareness and perspective, ask for expert help Mark.

Lawmakers have also accused the company of willfully obstructing good faith attempts at investigating scandals such as Cambridge Analytica data misuse, Kremlin-backed election interference, or how foreign money flowed into its platform seeking to influence the UK’s Brexit referendum result.

Willful obstruction to good faith, democratically minded political interrogation really isn’t a sustainable strategy. Nor an ethically defensible one.

Given the vast, society-deforming size of these platforms politicians are simply not just going to give up and go home. There will have to be standards to ensure these mega-powerful information distribution systems aren’t at risk of being gamed or being biased or otherwise misused and those standards will have to be enforced. And the enforcement must also be able to be checked and verified. So, yes, more audits.

Mega-platforms have also benefited from self-sustaining feedback loops based on their vast reach and data holdings, allowing them to lock in and double down on a market dominating position by, for example, applying self-learning algorithms trained on their own user data or via A/B testing at vast, vast scale to optimize UX design to maximize engagement and monopolize attention.

User choice in this scenario is radically denuded, and competition increasingly gets pushed back and even locked out, without such easy access to equivalently massive pools of data.

If a mega-platform has optimized the phasing and positioning of — for example — a consent button by running comparative tests to determine which combination yields the fewest opt outs, is it fair or right to the user being asked to ‘choose’? Are people being treated with respect? Or, well, like lab rats?

Breaking Facebook’s platform into lots of Facebooks could also be an opportunity to rethink its data monopoly. To argue that its central business should not have an absolute right to the data pool generated by each smaller, market specific Facebook.

Part of the regulatory oversight could include a system of accountability over how Facebook’s parent business can and cannot use pooled data holdings.

If Facebook’s executive team had to make an ethics application to a relevant regulatory panel to request and justify access each time the parent business wanted to dip into the global data pool or tap data from a particular regional cluster of Facebooks, how might that change thought processes within the leadership team?

Facebook’s own (now former) CSO, Alex Stamos, identified problems baked into the current executive team’s ‘business as usual’ thinking — writing emphatically in an internal memo earlier this year: “We need to build a user experience that conveys honesty and respect, not one optimized to get people to click yes to giving us more access. We need to intentionally not collect data where possible, and to keep it only as long as we are using it to serve people… We need to be willing to pick sides when there are clear moral or humanitarian issues. And we need to be open, honest and transparent about challenges and what we are doing to fix them.”

It seems unlikely that an application to the relevant regulators asking for ‘Europe-wide data so we can A/B test user consent flows to get more Europeans to switch on facial recognition‘ would pass the ‘life before data’ community standard test.

And, well, it’s well established that the fact of being watched and knowing it’s happening has the power to change behavior. After all, Facebook’s platform is a major testament to that.

So it may be more that it’s external guidance — rather than a new internal governance model — which Facebook sorely lacks. Some external watchers to watch its internal watchmen.

Step 4) Remove Zuckerberg from (his) office

Public companies are supposed to be answerable to their shareholders. Thanks to the share structure that Mark Zuckerberg put in place at Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg is answerable to no one except himself. And despite Facebook’s years of scandals, he does not appear to have ever felt the urge to sack himself.

When the idea of personal accountability was brought up with him, in a recent podcast interview with Kara Swisher, he had a moment of making a light joke of it — quipping “do you really want me to fire myself right now? For the news?” before falling back on his line that: “I think we should do what’s gonna be right for the community.”

And, you know what, the joke was exactly right: The idea that Zuckerberg would terminate his own position is both laughable and ludicrous. It is a joke.

Which means Facebook’s executive structure is also a joke because there is zero accountability at the highest level — beyond Mark’s personal threshold for shame or empathy — and that’s now a global problem.

Zuckerberg has more power than most of the world’s elected politicians (and arguably some of the world’s political leaders). Yet he can’t be kicked out of his office, nor lose his CEO seat at any ballot box. He’s a Facebook fixture — short of a literal criminal conviction or otherwise reputation terminating incident.

While you could argue that not being answerable to the mercenary whims of shareholder pressure is a good thing because it frees Zuckerberg to raise business transformation needs above returns-focused investor considerations (albeit, let’s see how his nerve holds after that $120BN investor punch) — his record in the CEO’s chair counters any suggestion that he’s a person who makes radical and sweeping changes to Facebook’s modus operandi. On the contrary, he’s shown himself a master of saying ‘oops we did it again!’ and then getting right back to screwing up as usual.

He’s also demonstrated a consistent disbelief that Facebook’s platform creates problems — preferring to couch connecting people as a glorious humanitarian mission from whence life-affirming marriages and children flow. Rather than seeing risks in putting global megaphones in the hands of anyone with an urge to shout.

As recently as November 2016 he was still dismissing the idea that political disinformation spread via Facebook had been in any way impactful on the US presidential election — as a “pretty crazy idea” — yet his own business had staffed divisions dedicated to working with US politicians to get their campaign messages out. It shouldn’t be rocket science to see a contradiction there. But until very recently Zuckerberg apparently couldn’t.

The fact of him also being the original founder of the business does not help in the push for disruptive change to Facebook itself. The best person to fix a radically broken product is unlikely to be the person whose entire adult life has been conjoined to a late night college dorm room idea spat online — and then which ended up spinning up and out into a fortune. And then into a major, major global mess.

The ‘no better person than me to fix it’ line can be countered by pointing to Zuckerberg’s personal history of playing fast and loose with other people’s data (from the “dumb fucks” comment all the way back in his student days to years of deliberate platform choices at Facebook that made people’s information public by default); and by suggesting entrenched challenges would surely benefit from fresh eyes, new thinking and a broader perspective.

Add to that, Zuckerberg has arguably boxed himself in, politically speaking, thanks to a series of disingenuous, misleading and abstruse claims and statements made to lawmakers — limiting his room for manoeuvre or for rethinking his approach; let alone being able to genuinely compromise or make honest platform changes.

His opportunity to be radically honest about Facebook’s problems probably passed years and years back — when he was busy working hard on his personal challenge to wear a tie everyday [2009]. Or only eat animals he kills himself [2011].

By 2013’s personal challenge, it’s possible that Zuckerberg had sensed something new in the data stream that was maybe coming down the pipes at him — as he set himself the challenge of expanding his personal horizons (not that he put it that way) by “meeting a new person every day who does not work at Facebook”.

Meeting a new person every day who did work at Facebook would have been far too easy, see.

Is it even possible to think outside the box when your entire adult life has been spent tooling away inside the same one?

Step 5) Over to you…

What are your radical solutions for fixing Facebook? Should Zuckerberg stay or should he go? What do you want lawmakers to do about social media? What kinds of policy interventions might set these mega-platforms on a less fractious path? Or do you believe all this trouble on social media is a storm in a teacup that will blow over if we but screw our courage to the sticking place and wait for everyone to catch up with the cardinal Internet truth that nothing online is what it seems…

Cool read from TC Source Link

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clan-of-reaching-stars · 6 years

Text

Boil, Toil, and Trouble

@jadedragons

“What are you making Daddy?” Nita asked, perched on the edge of the cauldron. Tobai smiled at his adopted daughter, “I was thinking about making a surprise for your father.” He scooped her up, away from the concoction that gave off a faint light. “If I can get the ingredient I need.” He hummed softly, tail swishing behind him, as he set Nita down on his desk. “Would you like to be my little assistant?”

“Yes please!” Nita’s wings spread, she was still such a small hatchling, a bright spot of warmth, like a little flame. He knew she’d get big eventually, but for now he’d enjoy his daughter’s small size, “alight, see that book over there? The open one?”

“Yes!” She scampered over too it, perching on the top of it, “are we making him a new lab coat?”

“Yes, after he burned that hole in his last one,” Tobai wasn’t sure how his husband had done that, he worked with electricity not fire, but perhaps he was better off not knowing, “you wouldn’t know anything about that would you?”

Nita giggled, her dark blues gleaming, Tobai narrowed his eyes.

“Did he tell you not to tell me?”

“Poppa said it was our little secret.”

Tobai shook his head, “alright. Well this one is ours.” He raised one his paw to his mouth to put a finger over his lips, the little nocturne mimicked him.

“Alright, so can you read me the recipe for a red lab coat?”

Nita nodded, and studied the page a moment, “two scoops of grey slime.”

Tobai went to the rows of bottles holding his alchemical supplies, and retrieved a bowl, before finding the bottle that held the slime, “two scoops grey slime.”

“Three cups of red goo.”

Tobai nodded, moving along the row, “makes sense. Three cups?”

“Yes, daddy!”

“One, two,” Tobai paused to shake the cup, “goodness it’s stubborn.” He heard Nita giggle and looked to her, “not nearly as pretty a red as you.”

“Daddy!” she ducked her head, and Tobai laughed. He tapped the cup against the bowl, Nita parroted the metal clang it made. Tobai tried not to cringe at the sound, please let that have been a one time thing, or Victor was going to have words with him about that.

“And three,” the third cup was equally slow to pour, but Tobai managed to get it out into the bowl.

“Alright, what next!”

“Five cups green ooze!”

“Of course it requires that,” Tobai muttered under his breath, “Nita, does it say to mix these separately from the purple sludge?”

“Yes!”

“Good.” He thought he’d remembered that, but he wanted to make sure. With any luck, said purple sludge was boiling away in his cauldron. “You’re such a big helper.”

“Thank you!” Nita chirped brightly as he carried the now almost full bowl over to the desk. Gently he moved the book, and his daughter, so there was space. Nita jumped and fluttered to perch on his back and peer over his shoulder.

Tobai could see her out of the corner of his eye, red in both warmth and color, and gently patted her.

Nita sat on his shoulder patiently as he stirred this part of the mixture, after a bit he offered the spoon to her, “would you like to stir?” There was no risk at this stage, with the ingredients at room temperature, the worst that could happen is he’d need to give his daughter a bath.

Nita jumped onto the table, looking at him eagerly, “can I?”

Tobai offered the spoon to her, Nita took it with wide eyes.

“Just mimic what I was doing,” he told her, Nita smiled up at him.

“I can do that!” His daughter began to slowly stir, Tobai’s heart warmed at how perfectly she took to alchemy. Maybe someday she’s be his apprentice.

“Okay, you take care of that, Daddy needs to check on the cauldron.”

Nita nodded, and with one last check to make sure she was handling things properly, he check his cauldron. To his relief the liquid had boiled away into a smooth sludge, one that was a beautiful purple color. With the final ingredient ready, the two of them could continue the recipe.

He scurried back to his desk, “Nita that’s perfect. I couldn’t have done it better myself.”

His daughter’s face twitched awkwardly, and Tobai’s heart ached as he realized she was trying to mimic how his crests splayed with delight. “Alright, so my little assistant, what do we do next?”

Nita ran over to the recipe, “we slowly pour the mixture into the cauldron and then wait two hours and ten minutes, before pouring it into two glass beakers to let cool.”

“Thank you, Nita,” Tobai carried the bowl over to the cauldron, the good thing about his heat vision was he could see if anything was overheating. However, the mixture and the cauldron were both the perfect temperature, making it easy to safely pour his and Nita’s hard work in. It was a strange almost blood red color, he hoped it would settle to a red closer to the gems that decorated his mate’s feathers.

Once the mixture had poured in, and he’d stirred it all together, he sat back on his haunches, checking his pocket watch for the time. “And now we wait.”

Nita, also sitting on her haunches, looked at him curiously, “what do you do while you wait?”

“Normally I stay here and clean up,” he nodded to the dirty bowl and slightly splatters on the desk, “I don’t suppose you want to help with that too.”

Nita made a face, “why is alchemy so messy?”

“I think that’s just your father’s alchemy,” a familiar voice spoke, one that filled Tobai with warmth even as he turned to glare at the Skydancer.

Victor stood in the doorway, taking in his mate, the bubbling cauldron, and their daughter, “I suspected I’d find her here.”

“Come to save her from cleaning up?” Tobai asked, stepping into Victor’s space, his mate pressed his forehead to Tobai’s, the gem there was cool against Tobai’s scales, he always hoped Victor could feel just how happy Tobai was to see him. Victor’s eyes widened and he jumped out of the way of Tobai’s tail, just because he was happy to see him didn’t mean he appreciated comments about him being a messy alchemist.

“Poppa!” Nita flew to him, happy perching on his shoulders, “I was helping Daddy make a recipe. But it’s a surprise.”

“Is that so?” Victor glanced at Tobai who shrugged.

“You’ll have to wait and see what it is Victor.” He winked two of his eyes at Nita, “but she’s quite the little helper.”

“Soon she won’t be so little,” Victor playfully sank, “getting so big…”

“Poppa!” Nita flicked her tail back and forth, “I’m not that big yet!” She settled into his feathers, looking almost like one of the clusters of gems that speckled her father.

“Not yet,” Victor stood back up, Tobai turned to him, “do you mind if I spend some time with our daughter?”

“Of course, I’ll clean up here,” Tobai shooed them off with one paw, “go have fun and get out of here before you ruin the surprise.”

“Can we make something else tomorrow?” Nita asked, her blue eyes bright, “this was a lot of fun.”

“Only if you promise to help clean that one up,” Tobai replied, Nita pouted a moment, before she sighed.

“If I have to.”

“You do, and if you stay much longer, I’ll put you to work now!”

“Poppa no, don’t let him!” Nita laughed, hiding in Victor’s crest again, Victor smiled at Tobai as he moved away, careful of Tobai’s equipment.

“No, I shall not let you, you foul alchemist.”

“Hey!” Tobai flicked his tongue out, “I’m making you a gift. Just for that,” he raised his front paws, wiggling his fingers at them, “run, run, before I make you both clean!”

He carefully chased them out of his lab, Victor and Nita’s laughter was infectious and bubbled out of him as he watched them run down the hallway, he leaned against the doorway and watched them until they were out of sight. Then he sighed, and headed back in, grabbing a rag and a bucket to start cleaning.

#Clan Lore #Tobai #Victor #Nita #Flight Rising

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academiablogs · 7 years

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Lessons About the Novel, From Finishing My First Novel

This week, I got my first rejection on a full manuscript. Three months and a handful of days into querying, I received a kind but stern “no” on my first novel. And I won’t lie- it stung. It doesn’t matter how many novels we’ve written since, nor how distant I claim myself from this book: rejections hurt. But after nursing my wounds on poetry and wine, I final;y understood one of those universal truths: your first novel is the hardest to sell.

And that can feel a bit unfair to the novice author. First novels, statistically, take the longest to write and revise. We toil over them with ink, and sweat, and tears, striving so much just to finish, polish, and share with the whole wide world. The greats got their first novels published, after all; surely you can too? There’s a six-figure deal in the wings, just waiting for you. Surely Warner Bros. will call you any day now for a seven-movie adaptation, pleasing your wondrous fanbase?

The reality of the first novel is much less glamorous, and more about becoming a novelist. To learn, after all, we must first try. We must fail, climb, change, and grow. This is true of life, and it’s true of writing. And I can think of no better example than the story of my first novel, and what I learned from writing it.

If you dug through my old, old, old notes, I mark Chimehour's start point in 2012, which is half true. That summer, I scratched out concepts for a bunch of stories that I will probably never write. Almost 20, and not yet in college at this point. A good friend and I sat down one slow afternoon to kill time. The following conversation unravels:

“There should be a story about a seer therapist who deals with troubled monsters and fae. Like, he solves problems that way rather than having weapons and powers, like in Natsume’s Book of Friends.”

This is not Chimehour yet. But it plants a thought in my head.

My good friend and I started clashing. We were fighting; then we stopped the fighting, because we stopped talking. Unrelated issues unfold when I’m caught in a head-on collision with a drunk driver, leaving permanent damage to my leg. Your life does flash before your eyes in incidents like that, and you realize you still have a lot to do at 20.

In the following September, I sat down and wrote a prologue. The same prologue that begins Chimehour, sans some changes and edits.

I also begin the new year by losing that prologue to computer failure. I save what I can and start again. I begin camping out at my nearest Starbucks, and tell a couple of people that I’m writing a “steampunk zombie story.” I begin filling binders with notes, pictures, maps, dialect quirks, mythology. socioeconomics, and any related thing I can get my hands on. I spend the next year drafting this book and its sequel, from January to November.

And how much of that draft still exists, you might ask? One scene- maybe two. There’s a fight in the middle of the book where my protagonist first faces off this manic Druid. It was written at 4am to the tune of a lot of caffeine; it was the best writing session I’ve ever had to date, and the scene still reads perfectly. Everything else? Edited, revised, or thrown out. Because first drafts are always going to be pretty bad. Finishing them is the first step. Don’t fear the re-writes.

Revision was much larger task than I expected. I suspect this puts new authors off from editing a lot, because you return to a first draft a month later, only to find your precious novel is imperfect. Dare I say- messy. I treated this as a crisis for a bit, but eventually buckled down and began taking Chimehour apart. Re-reading, rewriting, and editing with two early readers for almost six months. A break, then I did it again: read, revise, rewrite, each pass making the story a little clearer. Working with different, trusted early readers and beta readers also helped clarify something- that authors do not always have the clearest perspective about their work.

In fact, they probably have the least clear perspective, muddled by closeness and the high of a first draft. My earliest readers picked out weakness and oddness in my writing that I might otherwise miss, allowing me an easier path with editing. Yes, I had to kill some darlings along the way, but editing isn’t a defamation of the author’s vision. Rather, it’s refinement; it’s the polish that makes the project sparkle.

I revised for almost three years, writing a few new projects along the way. A lot happened in that span of time (so much, it could easily fill a whole other blog), and slowly, I felt myself returning to Chimehour with less to say. When I finished a round of revisions early this past spring, I realized that there wasn’t any more I could do it. It wasn’t perfect yet, but… I was finished. This was hard to stomach, the idea that you will stop pulling returns from a project, and it can still be flawed. But then, I’ve heard plenty of stories about books that have been edited to death. NYT bestseller, Shannon Sanders, talks about how her first novel was deemed unpublishable due to over-editing. There comes a day where you recognize that your book- your baby, has grown up and entered the University of Queries and Publishing. You, the author, must now step aside and let the work speak for itself. It is no longer your work, but the world’s to read.

It’s hard. It’s heartbreaking, and there’s still so much rejection to be found. You look back at the years of writing, revision, and work, wondering if that journey was really worth it?

And the short answer is yes. Because novels aren’t just about finishing and publishing and fame. This is why it’s silly to compare yourself to other authors, because novels are the product of learning, and becoming a better novelist than the one you were yesterday. It’s also about learning to be a better you, in some ways. I know the person I was when I started Chimehour is not the person I am today, and I have my book to thank for that.

I started a new novel this year, unknowing of the roads it will open. But it’s that beautiful? When we start a novel- our first or our fifty-fourth, our work with it is more about a journey than a destination. It is about the lessons we learn, the projects we finish, and the person we become through creating something new.

#amwriting #novels #writing #writer's life #first novel #first draft

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thecornerofthemoon · 7 years

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Here’s my theory for why students were sorted into their houses in Harry Potter - the student’s deepest motivations were what the Sorting Hat pinged.

I narrowed down the four motivations between the houses as these: Gryffindor is for justice, Ravenclaw for truth, Hufflepuff for love, and Slytherin for power.

Gryffindor: Justice

Gryffindor is commonly known as the ‘courage’ house. Basically any quote associated with it on HP blogs has the word ‘courage’ or ‘fear’ in it. But courage isn’t a goal or motivation, courage is a reaction to a circumstance. My theory is that Gryffindors are motivated to pursue justice despite difficulties. In a seedy crime serial TV show, the Gryffindor character would be the grizzled cop. Righteous and spiteful.

While fighting against injustice is usually good, it can also go too far. Whether it’s against perceived injustice that is taken out of context, or simply punishment for wrongdoings taken to extreme violence, it can become twisted into revenge or cruelty.

Harry, for example, is elated when Sirius Black is rescued from an unjust fate in PoA. He’s practically gleeful when Aunt Marge is blown up like a balloon. He’s beyond irate when questioned in the Wizenmagot for saving himself and Dudley from dementors in a farce of a trial. He’s also beyond pissed when he unfairly doesn’t get to go to Hogsmeade because his uncle wouldn’t sign his stupid form. But... Harry also gets so angry at Bellatrix Lestrange for killing Sirius that he successfully Crucios her with cruelty on his mind. He wants to hurt her - punish her - for what she’d done.

Hermione campaigns for house elves to be freed in her S.P.E.W. program for years after she learns about them being mistreated and oppressed. She also starts up the resistance group Dumbledore’s Army. But... she gets so angry at Marietta Edgecombe for snitching on the group - betraying them to a corrupted authority - that she permanently scars Marietta’s face with a nasty hex.

Ron is the most laid back in the Golden Trio, but even he gets Fred and George to help him break Harry out of Privet Drive in CoS with the Ford Anglia. He yells at Snape for calling Hermione a know-it-all after he’d done it to her a thousand times as a friend. But... He also gets so mad he doesn’t talk to to Harry after Harry gets picked in the Triwizard Tournament, because he thinks Harry went behind his back to get in.

Ravenclaw: Truth

Ravenclaw is known for being the scholarly house, all about books and learning. But I think the motivation underlying is for the student to find truth. Not all truth is in books, after all. In a seedy crime serial TV show, the Ravenclaw would be the nosy reporter. Uncovers the truth, but can be unfeeling or callous towards victims or people they deem stupid.

Luna Lovegood is the perfect example of this. Even though she is in Ravenclaw, she doesn’t ascribe to the by-the-book way of looking at things. She explores the world around her without preconceptions. She reads her Quibbler upside-down, which seems mad to other people until they know that the Quibbler’s articles are printed upside down. She believes in magical creatures like nargles that nobody can see, she loves thinking about complex riddles, she believes Harry when nobody else does... Luna searches for truth in the world around her, even if she doesn’t fit the stereotype of the put-together scholar. She’s the dreamy philosopher your mother warned you about. It makes sense that her father runs a newspaper the way he does, as he was also in Ravenclaw.

Hufflepuff: Love

Hufflepuff is known for hard work and loyalty. I think the underlying motivation here is love. If you love something, you work hard at it, whether it’s an art piece or a sport or a musical instrument. You want it to succeed. Loyalty is love, of a sort; steadfastness, absolute devotion, unquestioned support. In a seedy crime serial TV show, the Hufflepuff would be the consoling, sympathetic profiler. Caring, but sometimes too fragile for the realities of life.

Newt Scamander, for example, rolls up his sleeves and gets messy in the dirt to take care of his magical creatures. He travels all over the world to find them or transport them, gets into incredibly dangerous situations to help them, and spends all his time taking care of them. He wholeheartedly cares for and toils for them, to the point of sacrifice. He’s also unfailingly loyal to magical creatures in general - even though many of them are dangerous, he argues to anyone that will listen that humans are the problem. He writes a book to help people understand the creatures a little better, so as to stop hurting them. He equally loyal to his human friends, like when he gifts the silver shells to Jacob at the end of Fantastic Beasts. Everything he does, Newt does out of love for someone. Even if it hurts him, in the end.

Slytherin: Power

Slytherin is known as the ‘ambitious’ house that strives for ‘greatness.’ I take this to mean power is the main motivation. In a seedy crime serial TV show, the Slytherin would be the police chief, or possibly a lawyer, someone influential in the goings-on of the plot’s conclusion. Whether the character is positive or negative depends on the characterization and which side they’re on. Power is not inherently bad - it is only as bad as the people that wield it.

Individual agency, for example, is a good thing. I can easily imagine an abused child coming to Hogwarts such as Snape, wanting to assert their newfound agency. Someone wanting to protect the vulnerable with the authority they earn, someone wanting to use their platforms or successes to let silenced people be heard, someone just wanting to protect themselves from any more suffering; these are worthy ambitions.

On the other hand, power is easy to abuse once it’s been acquired. The climb to power can also be corrupt. Using people as stepping stones, throwing loyalties aside for a promotion, feeding lies about the opponent... you get the idea. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and all that.

So yes, Voldemort was a prime example of power abuse. And manipulation. And warmongering. And racism. Etc. So is Lucius Malfoy, on a lesser scale, with all his politicking in the Ministry and constant one-up-manship games against Arthur Weasley, not to mention his additional Death Eater status.

But Merlin was also in Slytherin, as in the King Arthur’s court Merlin. A great wizard, who made amazing discoveries and advancements in magic while advising the king at the time. He had influence, both in his own time and down the line. His name is known even now. Merlin wasn’t evil, but he was unquestionably powerful.

In the end, there are pros and cons for every house. Everyone wants at least a little bit of every four of these motivations; what determines the house is the leading motivation for you.

Hope this helps when you’re trying to find out your house and you hit a wall! It definitely does for me. Tag yourself I’m the grizzled cop :P

#harry potter #harry potter meta #meta #my things #my words #my writing #hogwarts houses #hogwarts houses meta #uhhh what else do i tag #gpoy #i way overthought this #that's what happens when you get a different sorting every time you take the sorting hat quiz #you overthink what the houses mean on a fundamental level i guess

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accrafreepress · 5 years

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The Blood and Toil of Our Fathers: The Making of an African Football Powerhouse – Fiifi Anaman

Source: Fiifi Anaman

In the year of the Ghana Black Stars’ 60th anniversary, Fiifi Anaman examines the origins of Ghana football’s crown jewel, as well as the men, philosophies and circumstances that fuelled its initial rise not only to the apex of African football, but to global prominence.

“Our coach once taught us a skill at training…”

This is Dogo Moro speaking, recalling an event from 1958: a Ghana national football team training session. It’s been over 60 years, but the man who Ghana’s foremost newspaper, Daily Graphic, once hailed as the country’s “greatest center half”, still remembers.

Dogo Moro during his playing days

Now an octogenarian, Moro is one of the oldest surviving Ghana national team players, having represented the nation from 1958 till 1962.

“Even before he finished demonstrating that skill,” Moro, with an impressive photographic memory, continues, “…one of my teammates, Osman Seidu, had already done it. Our coach was pleasantly surprised. He couldn’t stop talking about how impressed he was. He told us that what Seidu had done was not only exactly what he had intended to teach us, but it was in a much better form.”

The student had out-demonstrated the teacher.

But there was no surprise there. Osman Seidu was an exceptional talent. So exceptional, in fact, that many have called him Ghana’s greatest ever footballer. You may think this is a leg puller because the name does not ring a bell.

Hang on.

Baba Yara

Osman Seidu was the real name of a footballer whose performance moniker was “Baba Yara”.

Yara — who tragically died 50 years ago aged 33, and after whom Ghana’s largest stadium in Kumasi is named — was not an isolated case. He was a paradigm of the physiological make-up of footballers of that era.

Like most of his contemporaries, Yara was what Ohene Djan, one time Ghanaian FA President and later Director of Sport, described as a “natural footballer”.

“Yara abhorred orthodoxy,” Djan wrote. “He believed that a coach’s primary duty, like the music master, was to teach the student to read the notes and that the student’s own ingenuity and creativity should enable him to make melodious music.”

Make no mistake: Ghanaians have always had a thing for football. Like Djan noted in his book: A Short History of Ghana Football and the rise of the Black Star Group: “The habit of playing football is acquired by every young Ghanaian as a matter of course.” The average Ghanaian young boy, ever since the sport made an entry into the country in the early 1900s, seemed to know football even before the sport was introduced to him. The talent for the sport here perhaps even pre-dated the advent of it. As early as in 1951, a British coach named David Wall, after having observed Ghanaian footballers, remarked: “It is of no use teaching these fellows ball play.”

Not every footballer exhibited Yara’s level of genius, but the average player was great with the ball at his feet. The country had no problem with raw talent — it was an endowment by default, abundant in its vault, like its gold. Heard of Arthur Wharton, the world’s first black professional footballer? He was Ghanaian. Coincidence?

Writing in his famous column for the Daily Graphic in 1953, the great Ghanaian sports writer Kofi Badu, described this theory best, while referring to his compatriots as “a people who can do wonderful things with the least assistance — a people with the sort of innate abilities…”

“Any proof for this?” Badu asked. “Well, take our footballers. For years they have performed all on their own, without assistance, without coaching.”

Badu’s claim was truth, hard to dispute. From the early 1900s up until the late 1950s, Ghana neither had expert guidance nor enabling infrastructure to nurture footballing talent, yet the nation had been able to churn out great footballers, among them James Adjaye, Charles Kumi ‘C.K’ Gyamfi and Chris Briandt.

How great were they? Well, not that they needed validation, but these performers received praise from the very inventors of the game themselves — the English.

In 1951, Ghana, then known as the Gold Coast, sent its national team, the Gold Coast XI, on a tour of the U.K. The team was without a coach. The players played barefoot. They ended up losing eight of their 10 games. Yet some of them made an indelible impression. James Adjaye was reportedly described by a British commentator as a player who “all things being equal could hold his own among the best inside forwards in England.” C.K Gyamfi, top scorer for the team during the tour, was so beloved for his “clever dribbling and body swerving” that Fleet Street sports reporters described him as the star of the team, nicknaming him “Cheeky Charlie”. Chris Briandt, who captained the team, would many years later be described by Sir Stanley Matthews, the Ballon d’Or’s first recipient, as “one of the greatest footballers and finest sportsmen I met on my West African tour”.

So yes, that great. As great as subsequent generations of Black Stars who shone in a different era and thus benefitted from TV exposure, the likes of Abedi Pele and Tony Yeboah, Michael Essien and Sammy Kuffour.

The fact that Ghanaian footballers were predominantly gifted was a given, but the gift was never going to guarantee success, though it was going to make it easier to achieve. The gift was not an end, but a means to it.

A gift, like a natural resource, is only valuable after it is refined. It is great to have it, but it has no power without being harnessed. This is what Ghanaian footballers needed — the raw talent had to be processed, the rare gift had to be converted to winning currency. “The inborn ability is there,” Badu wrote. “What is required is that bit of sandpapering in skill and we will be building a nation that will be the envy of millions as far as sports is concerned.”

That “sandpapering” eventually came in many ways. In 1957, Sir Stanley Matthews was invited by Ghanaian club giants Hearts of Oak to tour the nation, and he ended up having a lot of exhibition sessions and clinics to hone talent across the many municipalities he visited.

Before Sir Stanley left, he prescribed more sandpapering. He advised that the Ghanaian football authorities bring in an English “league player of merit” like himself, or one nearing retirement, to develop football talent.

So, in March 1958, the Ghana Amateur Football Association (GAFA), as the country’s FA was then known, helmed by Ohene Djan, took steps to realize that advice.

Sir Stanley had been modest. Perhaps he had suggested a player because that was what he felt a nascent nation like Ghana could afford.

But Djan and his men had other ideas.

A player? Why not a proper professional coach?

Chris Briandt (second from left) and James Adjaye (first from right

Remember the coach Dogo Moro referred to at the start? That was George Edward Ainsley, the first ever professional coach hired by Ghana. Hired by Djan and his men.

He was imported from England, with the help of one Mr E.F.K Epton, an official at the Ghanaian High Commission in London. Epton served as an international football “representative” of sort for GAFA, looking out for Ghanaian football interests abroad.

Ainsley, then 42, had come in highly recommended. He had spent close to 20 years as a footballer, playing for the likes of Sunderland, Bolton Wanderers and Leeds United.

George Edward Ainsley

After acquiring his coaching badges, he rose to become a ‘chief FA staff coach’, a respected role owing not only to the fact that these senior officials coached and examined other coaches, but also because there were only six of such officials in the world.

Another added advantage — and a bragging right — was that Ainsley had trained another coach called Les Courtier, who was then in charge of Nigeria, Ghana’s traditional arch rivals against whom they played the annual “Jalco Cup”.

Ghana had struck gold. They had secured a man who, according to former FA and FIFA President Sir Stanley Rous, was “the most experienced coach in Britain.”

The GAFA going for the best coaching talent from the home of football showed the character of the person who had taken charge of the country’s football governing body. Ohene Djan was a man who had taken it upon himself to transform Ghana football, to turn talent into trophies. Ambition was his very nature.

Djan had risen to power as a young firebrand usurping an old order in September 1957. He was a key architect of a torrential dissent that swept away the administration of Richard “Lion Heart” Akwei, the Gold Coast’s most powerful football politician since 1930. Djan was 33 and exuded exuberance so strong that it led to him labelling his regime “the reformation”.

Ghana football pre-Djan was not well regarded. The 1951 UK tour — masterminded by Akwei — had been the only major watershed. The minuses far outweighed the plusses. There were no coaches. Players played without boots. There was no national league. The various regional football associations were at odds with each other, and with the national administration. Indeed, Kojo Botsio, who chaired the GAFA from 1960 till 1966, claimed that prior to the reformation, “any claim to systematic organization of football in this country was mere pretence.”

To be fair, the Akwei years — though described by some, including the anti-establishment Kofi Badu as “jumbled, messy, chaotic and unsymmetrical” — still saw some progress because, again, Ghanaians had a thing for football. Botsio believed that though the period was “haphazard for football organization, only enthusiasm and natural talent maintained the game of association football in this country for the first half century of its introduction.”

This ‘enthusiasm’ — the passion, the zest — was a by-product of the talent. Ghana was so famed for football enthusiasm that Ainsley, long after he had left, remarked that there was nowhere in the world where the game of football was played with such enthusiasm as in Ghana.

Football in colonial Ghana essentially relied on natural talent and enthusiasm, but these two were not strong enough to carry the load of potential within the sector. A lot of work needed to be done — work in development, work in modernization — but there were challenges. The country, especially in the 50s, had been preoccupied with the struggle between natives and colonial masters for political independence, pushing football down the pecking order of attention.

Ohene Djan

Akwei thus had his work cut out for him and deserved acknowledgement for doing his bit. Indeed, though football under him suffered from a lack of sophistication, Djan believed that ‘Lion Heart’ had to be “given credit for being, as the Akans vividly put it, ‘the native doctor who at least, managed to sustain the life of the patient before the successful operation was conducted by the new doctor.”

Djan, the ‘new doctor’, knew that this “operation” Ghana football needed had to be an intense procedure. He had accused Akwei’s administration of being “incapable of maintaining the international prestige of Ghana soccer.” He had to walk the talk. He had to be different.

Besides, there was a lot at stake: Ghana, in March 1957, became the first Sub-Sahara African nation to attain independence, and so it was important for the nation to live up to its responsibility of leading the way in all spheres. And there was no more potent sphere than football — the world’s number one sport.

Football inevitably became important. Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first Prime Minister and President (and also, patron of GAFA) charged Djan and his reformers “to come out with bold schemes to make Ghana soccer a showpiece on the continent of Africa.”

The Djan administration thus began industrializing the sector, because they needed finished products to achieve greatness on the international stage.

Raw talent wasn’t going to cut it. It was a diamond in the rough that needed cutting.

Ohene Djan and Kwame Nkrumah constituted a duo who shared friendship and chemistry. A young Djan had held a position in Prime Minister Nkrumah’s cabinet in the early 50s. It was unsurprising that Djan also shared Nkrumah’s well-documented affinity for ambition and the adoption of radical methods to realize it.

“Always remember that organization decides everything,” Nkrumah had told Djan as he began his GAFA reign. “You have my personal support and that of my government.”

Djan was thus properly empowered to bring in Ainsley and contract him with a handsome salary (£2000 per annum tax free). Ainsley, who arrived in March 1958, was also given a car and an annual outfit allowance of £70.

There was also the added perk of a furnished bungalow in Accra; but he hardly stayed put, because Djan put him to work, sending him all over the country to scout the best talent and train them for the national team.

“A new phase is about to be opened,” wrote sportswriter J.K Addo Twum. “Ainsley has come to Ghana filled with determination to train the best men that Ghana can find.”

Ainsley was an invited guest at the country’s first ever FA Cup final, played between arch rivals Asante Kotoko and Hearts of Oak at the Accra stadium. After seeing the game, which Kotoko won 4–2, the Englishman made his assessment.

“The potential standard of Ghana soccer is tremendous,” he began. “But much work remains to be done in learning the major techniques and skills of football craft in general play.”

The focus of the Ainsley tenure became clear: sharpening the skills and technique of the footballers he trained.

As he crisscrossed the country, his presence further heightening the enthusiasm, he noticed that most players exhibited a natural potential for shooting, heading, passing, ball control et al, and so his job was to put the gloss on it and make those skills lethal.

Ghanaians became fond of their maiden national coach, accepting his teachings; the most distinct of which was an insistence on keeping the ball on the ground, because, as he later coined into a catchphrase, “remember, angels don’t play football”.

“The West African student of soccer is proving an apt pupil and learning to keep the ball on the ground,” Ainsley would later observe long after he was gone.

Hewas gone pretty early too: Ainsley signed for 18 months, but lasted for barely eight. In October 1958, on the eve of a crucial Jalco Cup clash, Ainsley resigned after falling out with the notoriously demanding and difficult Djan, over what the latter insinuated was salary increase issues.

His eyes firmly on the prize, the GAFA boss didn’t take long in finding Ainsley’s replacement: Swedish coach Erik Andreas Sjoberg.

A former footballer and Ski Jumper, Sjoberg was athletic looking, a physique gave an insight into his philosophy. He was a specialist in fitness and stamina. In an interview with J.K Addo Twum, Sjoberg, after months of observing Ghanaian footballers, assessed that they possessed world class skill, but this skill needed to be combined with stamina in order to “sustain them through a full 90-minute international match.”

How was he going to build this stamina?

“To be able to stand the strain,” Sjoberg said. “I feel a regulated training period of about 8 to 10 weeks is extremely necessary to develop the heart and the respiratory organs. It must be noted that player performances are controlled by a proper functioning of these organs.”

In that interview, which appeared in the Daily Graphic, the Swede noticeably evaded the subject of tactics and formations. It was clear: Addo Twum even tried to feel him out without success. He asked Sjoberg about what was supposedly called the “W formation”. He asked about a tactic called the “Third Back System” and whether he would use it.

Sjoberg’s response, mildly dismissive, was telling as to his lack of interest — and perhaps, a lack of authority too — in that area. “If we have a team which possesses players with skill and stamina and can combine well, then of course, we can think of the third back game.”

There was subtle worry in Addo Twum’s tone in the concluding paragraph of the interview. “The national coach however did not disclose the formation he will teach our boys when they are camped,” he wrote. This, it seemed, was a disappointing detail for both Addo Twum and the Ghanaian football fandom, who were by then obsessed with formations and tactics; components which defined what they called “scientific football”.

In the next issue of the Daily Graphic, Sjoberg issued a disclaimer which saw him clarifying his comments with a lecture: what Addo Twum had called the “M formation” was actually the “WM formation”, he said. He talked about how he was in favour of using it, and how he even planned on modifying it especially for the Ghana national team.

Addo Twum’s response to the disclaimer was a sigh of relief: “I am pleased Mr Sjoberg has now given us his views on formations.”

Sjoberg executed his predilection for endurance building by adopting a boot-camp approach. He regularly took the players through mountain and marathon expeditions. He worked them hard, military-style.

“Sjoberg?!” Moro laughs. “You had to sweat and pant. It was intense.”

The stamina, over time, was built. And it yielded results. Tangible results. Take for instance, a match between the Black Stars and the Pharaohs of Egypt in December 1959. Though the Egyptians totally outplayed the Ghanaians — much to the displeasure of Kwame Nkrumah, who had watched the game at the Accra Stadium with his Egyptian spouse Fathia — they ended up losing 2–0.

It was a strange result, but there was a reason. Due to what Addo Twum called “sheer stamina”, the Ghanaians had outlasted the Egyptians, scoring two late goals five minutes from time. Ohene Djan diagnosed that the Egyptians, after all their “technical excellence”, had “melted in the dying minutes”.

“Stamina is our weapon,” read the title of one of Addo Twum’s columns. Sjoberg’s men had become immune to fatigue. They were just too fit.

Being fit was essential, but it was not sufficient: it needed to be complemented by tactical intelligence.

This need became glaring in December 1959, when the biggest, most successful club in Czechoslovakia, Slovan Bratislava, toured Ghana.

The tour idea was another Djan administration initiative; to invite top European teams into the country to mentor Ghanaian footballers through exhibition games. In Djan’s own words, the touring teams — the likes of Blackpool, Austria Vienna, Dynamo Moscow and Real Madrid — were brought in “to enable our players to see, appreciate and copy in a practical manner, the salient facets of modern soccer.”

Bratislava, who arrived in Ghana as defending champions of their league, opened their tour with a 2–0 win over a Southern Ghana Representative team, before going on to thrash an Ashanti Representative side 5–2. In their final game, against the Ghana national team, they completed a three-peat, running away with a 1–0 victory.

Assessing the Ghanaians, a Bratislava official praised their “amazing stamina.”

But…

“…if Ghana footballers hope to attain international recognition in the field of football, they must concentrate on their positional play, which was faulty.”

There was more revealing feedback from German club Fortuna Dusseldorf, who in August 1959, had preceded Bratislava in touring Ghana. Fortuna trainer, Herr Herman Lindemann, said the Black Stars had “great technical abilities.”

But…

“…everyone does what he wants to do. Everyone plays for himself. These flexible, enthusiastic lads must still learn that football is a team sport.”

Sjoberg’s narrowed focus on fitness was at the expense of strategy, confirming the fears of Addo Twum. While Ghana could now boast of footballers in top notch physical condition, when they took to the pitch, there was a conspicuous lack of harmony and coordination. Team work was feint. Tactical patterns were non-existent.

So non-existent, in fact, that it had frustrated another Daily Graphic sports writer, Sam Boohene, into declaring that the national team “lacks tactics!”, after a match against an Accra Representative Team in January 1960.

That match was a friendly in preparation for the first ever West Africa “Nkrumah” Gold Cup — a West African regional tournament founded by Djan and funded (trophy-wise) by Nkrumah — the first edition of which was to take place later that month.

Despite winning 6–3, Sjoberg’s team, per Boohene, played like “an orchestra without a conductor”. “For 90 minutes, they moved about on the field like a herd of cattle frightened by the sound of a gunshot. It was disappointing.”

The team never “exhibited anything which could be called tactical”, Boohene further complained. “Their passes were inaccurate, their moves faulty, and their shots in front of goal erratic.”

Boohene desperately wanted “something practical” to be done about “the moves of our boys.”

Things had to change.

Change came as a Hungarian named Josef Ember, Sjoberg’s successor as Ghana national football coach.

Ember arrived in April 1960, signing an 18-month contract to build on the work of Sjoberg and Ainsley — to build on technique and stamina.

To understand why the experienced 57-year-old was brought in and what he was bringing to the table, you need to understand the backstory to his appointment.

Ember was poached.

From?

Slovan Bratislava. The same team that had beaten all Ghanaian opposition on tour and criticized their “faulty” tactics.

Djan, in another display of his famed ambition, had boldly approached Ember while Bratislava was in Ghana and offered him the job.

The Hungarian was respected. He held the “master certificate” — the highest coaching certification in Hungary.

You might be thinking: Hungary? Who cares about a certificate from Hungary?

Well.

Hungary was football royalty in that era. In the early to mid-1950s, they emerged as the world’s leading football nation, conquering all that stood in their path. Coached by the innovative Gustav Sebes, the team, known as the “Mighty Magyars” lost only a single game in 50 matches from 1950 to 1956. That single game was the 1954 World Cup final against Germany in Switzerland.

They went about battering every country into submission with their ethereal football, based on a tactical blueprint that became iconic, and a group of players — the core being Ferenc Puskás, Sándor Kocsis, Nándor Hidegkuti, Zoltán Czibor, József Bozsik and Gyula Grosics — who were insanely talented. They became Olympic gold medallists in Helsinki in 1952, and a year later won the Central European International Cup.

Perhaps the most recognizable feat associated with them was their 6–3 humbling of the inventors of the modern game, England, in 1963. That game, which saw the Queen’s nation lose for the first ever time on home soil, later became known as the “Match of the Century”.

The Hungarians went on to add more salt to English wounds with a 7–1 annihilation back in Budapest a year later.

Here’s where it gets interesting: Most of the players that made up the Mighty Magyars had been coached by Ember at youth level. Most notable amongst them was a man named Ferenc Puskas, who at his peak, playing at Real Madrid, was one of the world’s best footballers. Thee Puskas of the ‘FIFA Puskas Award fame’.

InEmber, Djan had found a man who would infuse Hungarian genes into Ghana’s footballing DNA.

And these genes were in hot demand — especially in Africa, a continent which was experiencing the emergence of fledgling football nations hungry to succeed. Ember’s pal, Pal Tikos, also a Hungarian coach, had been snapped up by Egypt and had successfully implemented the Hungarian model with success, winning the Africa Cup of Nations in 1959, as well as qualifying them for the 1960 Olympics.

Ghana wanted in on such success, and the timing was great too.

After years of ceremonial friendlies under Akwei, Djan decided it was time for the national team to venture into the world of competitive football. He sorted out CAF and FIFA affiliation by 1958, and in 1959, set out to qualify for the Olympic Games (Rome 1960). In those years, the Olympics featured the senior teams of countries and was considered in some quarters to be as prestigious as the World Cup.

Shortly before the qualifiers for the Olympics were scheduled to start, Fortuna Dusseldorf touched down to touch lives. Except theirs was a harsh touch: on August 9, 1959, the Germans lashed the Southern Ghana Representative team — then a quasi-national team — by six goals to one, a result the Daily Graphic called a “real massacre”.

With Olympic qualifiers on the horizon, a worried Djan was provoked by the humiliating defeat to dismantle and reconstitute the national team under a new identity. The team had evolved under two names — it was Gold Coast XI until it became Ghana XI upon the attainment of independence in 1957.

But a new era beckoned, Djan reckoned. He wanted a name that would be symbolic of Ghana’s identity, one that would make the country stand out, the same way “Mighty Magyars” had carried Hungarian dominance around the world.

Eventually, the name “Black Stars” was settled on, because, according to Djan, “in the center of the national flag of Ghana is superimposed a Black Star, symbolic of the rising spirit of black Africa.”

And so eight days after the Fortuna massacre, Djan announced the establishment of the “Black Star Group”. The team was convened in Nsawam, just outside Accra — where Djan lived — with Andreas Sjoberg in charge.

“Only your best will be good enough for the Black Star Group,” Djan told the players. “And that means you must rededicate yourselves to the task of making Ghana a soccer force worthy of the greatest respect.”

The Black Stars team pose with Ohene Djan (seated, first from left), Kwame Nkrumah (middle, with the trophy) and Kojo Botsio (seated, first from right). Dogo Moro is the one standing third from left.

High standards were set — player performances were put under constant review, with underperforming players standing the risk of expulsion, to be replaced by eager talent on the fringes. Djan said the Black Stars was built on “discipline, dedication and devotion,” and was “the highest group of distinction to which the best players in Ghana could aspire.”

The team, not least because of their name, soon became the poster boys of Kwame Nkrumah’s narrative of a rising Africa.

Sjoberg, the Black Stars’ first coach (and Ghana’s second overall), failed to qualify for Rome 1960, falling short in a group containing Nigeria and Egypt. He however did manage to win the first Nkrumah Gold Cup in January 1960, before leaving the job shortly afterwards.

During his 12 months on the job, Ghanaian football fans had essentially seen Sjoberg as a “physical instructor” and not a football coach. J.K Addo Twum described Sjoberg as a “lucky coach”, because the Black Stars had managed to “achieve wonders beyond the real capabilities of Sjoberg.”

“He has not been successful in building up a skilful national team, but what he lacked in science was amply compensated for in strength,” wrote Addo Twum, who admitted that Sjoberg had indeed made Ghanaian footballers “durable”.

Four months later, Josef Ember was in town to make that durability count. He had come to transform the Black Stars into a team that would rule the continent and be known globally. “I realized that the Ghana side was a potential force,” he said, while explaining why he accepted the Ghana challenge. “And in talks with the energetic Association chairman Mr Ohene Djan, I promised to come to this new nation and do my best to develop football in Ghana and at least bring Ghana soccer to a first class standard.”

And he had come well equipped. The Hungarian style has been considered by many to be the precursor of the “Total Football” system, employed by the legendary Dutch coach Rinus Michels in stints with Ajax and the Netherlands in the 1970s and 80s. Like Total Football, the Hungary way was based on attack-mindedness, and hinged on players not necessarily being tied down to one position but interchanging in a fluid manner. It was, more importantly, very cerebral. “The essence of modern football is to rely more on brain than brawn; move with precision and understanding; keep the ball on the ground and make the maximum use of empty spaces,” Ember explained.

Let’s get acquainted with the Hungarian football philosophy through an article that appeared in the Daily Graphic in May 1960. Titled “Secret Weapon of the Hungarian Soccer team”, the piece offered interesting insight, though it examined a Hungarian national side that had sprung up after the decline of the Mighty Magyars (who broke up following the Hungarian revolution in October 1956).

This new breed of Hungarians that the article examined were preparing to partake in the 1960 Olympics in Rome, but they were guided by the same rich ideals that had come to be admired the world over; the same ideals that defined the Magyars’ greatness.

Addressing their beliefs, the Hungarian coach, 53-year-old Bela Volentik, revealed in the article that the entire team was taught to switch instantly, as one man, from attack to defence as soon as the opponents gain possession of the ball. “But the emphasis is on attack, attack, attack. Always attack,” Volentik said.

That Hungarian team performed brilliantly in Rome, topping their group with a 100% record. They however lost to Denmark in the semi-final, but ended up consoling themselves with a finish on the podium, beating Italy 2–1 to claim bronze medals.

Well, congratulations to them, but Ghanaians were not interested in their result per se. It was their philosophy, tried and tested, that Ghanaians craved. And it is what they expected with the arrival of Ember.

Even before Ember flew in, Djan had tasked Mr Epton — the same man who had helped sign Ainsley — with flying into Bucharest to sign up two more Hungarian coaches to work with Ember. One of them was Tibor Kemeney, a former Hungarian international.

These coaches, later joined by Italian Rino Martini and German Otto Westphal, were to be unveiled to launch what the GAFA called a “five-year development plan” for football. This plan, starting from 1960, was to transform Ghana football into “an attractive and effective machinery.”

Those were exciting times. Ghanaians expected a revolution of their football with the arrival of coaches from the Mighty Magyars school of thought.

It was a revolution that would happen.

Ember’s first game was a trial match against the school team of Presbyterian Training College in Akropong. The Black Stars team won 5–1, but the school boys, though talented, weren’t a good enough test for the national team. The students were “playing under the handicap of inferiority complex”, as Sam Boohene succinctly summarized.

Ember’s imprint on the team would begin to show soon. A few weeks later, Ghana travelled to Lome, the capital of Togoland (now Togo) to play the national team of the Francophone country as part of their independence celebrations. In what was a closely fought encounter, the Black Stars emerged victorious, edging the Togolese by a goal in a five goal thriller.

“A critical analysis of the game itself indicates that our boys are now beginning to play real football,” Boohene assessed. “For once, I saw them play according to specific patterns. The way they used the open spaces in particular was very good. I saw marked improvement.”

Boohene’s conclusion proved prophetic: “I hope under coach Josef Ember, the Black Stars will soon hit the headlines in world soccer.”

The Black Stars did indeed hit the headlines: in May 1960, they beat Blackpool — a highly rated team earlier made popular by Stanley Matthews — 5–1 in a game in Accra. Two years later, they drew 3–3 with the great Real Madrid, a five-time European Cup winning team featuring Alfredo Di Stefano and Ferenc Puskas.

Blackpool captain Hugh Kelly admitted that he knew of no West African team as polished as the Black Stars, further claiming that the Ghana boys were “unequalled” in tactics, speed and accurate shooting. Alfredo Di Stefano claimed that the Black Stars were “too advanced.” “They compared favourably with most of the leading teams we’ve played against,” he said.

This was in the 1960s, when Sub-Saharan Africa was still a terrain of nations yet to gain independence, yet the Black Stars were so far advanced with exploits that was getting them acclaim from connoisseurs. He may have been blowing his own trumpet, but Djan aptly believed that the rise of the Black Stars was a “phenomenon unique in the history of football development.” This rise, Djan wrote, had “compelled the soccer world to pause and acknowledge the fact that a new soccer force has arisen along the West coast of Africa.”

Ember’s tenure brought impact. He lost just 6 of his 31 games in charge. He won the second Nkrumah Gold Cup in October 1960, with a famous 3–0 defeat of hosts Nigeria. He almost qualified Ghana for the 1962 World Cup, falling at a last-but-one hurdle to Morocco. He led the team to a successful tour of Europe in 1961, which saw the team win eight of 12 matches against opposition from the USSR, East and West Germany, as well as Czechoslovakia.

“This man from Hungary, the home of scientific soccer, has within a short space of time transformed the face of Ghana soccer,” Boohene praised.

Ember had promised to work to the best of his ability to make the Ghana national team “a star in African soccer”. “Provided the players are willing and the association co-operative,” he had said.

The players had proved willing. The association had been co-operative. Ghana had become a star in African soccer. Ember had delivered.

More importantly, he had done so while instituting the tactical sophistication many observed had been a missing ingredient under Sjoberg. “I understand he has thirty different methods of attack and defense for our boys,” Boohene speculated.

Ember had been the anchor leg man of what Ohene Djan described as a Ghanaian “relay of coaching” between foreign experts. “George Ainsley whipped up interest and enthusiasm, Andreas Sjoberg built up stamina and physical condition, and Ember polished our footballers in technique and tactics,” Djan opined.

It was time to pass on the baton. But to whom?

The irony of Ghana gaining independence in 1957, and appointing three consecutive foreigners as national coaches from 1958 to 1962 was glaring.

But this was a well-calculated irony.

The plan by Djan had been to use foreign expertise to lay the foundations, while building local capacity for eventual take-over.

The capacity building started in 1958, almost concurrently as Ainsley’s arrival. While the Englishman was touching down, two Ghanaian footballing greats from the 50s — James Adjaye and Chris Briandt — were also flying out to Germany to learn coaching.

In 1959, a third great from that era, C.K Gyamfi, was also flown out to Germany to train as a professional coach. Germany was an ideal destination not only because the Ghanaian government had gotten scholarships from there (Briandt-Adjaye), or that Fortuna Dusseldorf facilitated the opportunity (Gyamfi), but also because the Germans — 1954 world champions — treated football with a seriousness that Ghana could use in addition to the Hungarian influence.

In 1961, 10 more Ghanaian footballers were shipped out to Prague, Czechoslovakia in 1961 for four-month coaching courses, returning to be deployed into the various regions.

Adjaye and Briandt, meanwhile, had returned in 1959 and posted into the hinterlands of Ghana — the North and the East — where football was underdeveloped. They also worked under Sjoberg as assistant national coaches, but never reached the pinnacle. None of them became the Ghana national coach.

It was C.K Gyamfi who got that momentous honour. He had returned from Germany late in 1960 and had understudied Josef Ember before eventually being chosen for the take-over: the man who led Ghana’s independence from foreign coaches.

Gyamfi was the ideal candidate. He was a veteran of the national team: an influential striker since 1951, captain since 1958, and even player-coach for the gap months between George Ainsley’s resignation and Andreas Sjoberg’s arrival. He knew the team inside out.

More significantly, Gyamfi was a man who everyone praised for exhibiting a rare understanding of the game, and an even rarer ability to communicate this understanding. He was what Djan described as a “natural coach.” The training and exposure in abroad— which saw him become the first ever black professional footballer in Germany while playing for Fortuna Dusseldorf — had been the ‘sandpapering’ he needed to become the top coach Djan envisioned he would be.

And so in January 1962, it began. Ember was promoted to Technical Advisor, while Gyamfi was made national coach at the age of 33. An African coach — a qualified one at that — handling an African national team, in the 1960s, was unheard of. A novelty.

Gyamfi had been well prepared for the role: Djan had posted him to serve in various capacities within the Ghanaian football system since his return from training. It was an attempt by Djan, who had then left his role as GAFA boss to become Ghana’s overall Director of Sports, to test and spread the knowledge Gyamfi had acquired while combining coaching education with professional football in Germany.

In 1963, a year after operating under Ember’s technical guidance, Gyamfi was put in full charge by Djan, because, as Kwame Nkrumah famously advocated in his independence speech, “the black man is capable of managing his own affairs.”

Djan and his reformers had had a clear vision of where they wanted to take the country’s football and had made things happen to that effect. Those “things” were either policies or institutions. The policies were many: like hiring expertise in coaching, training local footballers as coaches, inviting top teams from abroad for local tours.

While the Black Stars can be argued as the Reformation regime’s biggest institution, there were others set up to feed the Black Stars set-up. These were what Djan described as the “essential cogs”. There was the Academicals — a junior national team made up of players scouted from secondary schools. There was the New Horizons — a national team ‘B’. There was the FA Cup and national league, set up in 1958 to “provide a constant flow of material for international assignments”.

And there was the infamous but impactful Real Republikans.

Like the Black Stars after the Mighty Magyars, Real Republikans was a club modelled after Real Madrid, the most dominant club of that generation.

The idea to form Republikans was born out of an order from the very top: Kwame Nkrumah. “My interest in soccer is so great that I propose, in the near future, to encourage the formation of a model club which will offer leadership and inspiration to clubs in the country,” Nkrumah, who had then made a transition from Prime Minister to President, said in June 1960.

That near future came as early as 1961, when Nkrumah’s proposal gave Djan the impetus to raid Ghana’s top clubs for their two best players to form Real Republikans, a club later nicknamed OOC — Osagyefo’s Own Club, after Nkrumah’s nickname of “Osagyefo”.

Republikans inspired hatred all around, because not only were Ghana’s top clubs forced to give up their best players for its formation, it was also seen as a political project, the pet club of a President who had his enemies. But that did not prevent them from winning four FA Cup titles and a league title, also reaching the semi-final of the inaugural Africa Champion Clubs Cup (CAF Champions League) in 1964.

Republikans, though, had not been established to succeed on its own. It was conceived to aid another institution. Essentially, Republikans was a shadow Black Stars team. The idea was to have Ghana’s elite footballers play together regularly for the purposes of forming telepathy — telepathy that could be replicated while these same players played for the Black Stars.

A great team needs its players to be around each other for a long time, but could that time be afforded by international football’s tight calendar? Republikans was the answer.

Djan’s analogy to explain what he called “The Republikan experiment” was that while the Black Stars had “pumped fresh blood into the arteries of Ghana football”, OOC had “sustained the orderly circulation of the national soccer blood.”

This was part of the Hungarian ideology, further evidence of the influence of Josef Ember. Bela Volentik, remember him? He explained: “An international side should be like a club XI, only better. A real international team should be drawn from about 25 players who have been together at least a year and are taught the same style of football. They should play at least six international matches together each season.”

Real Republikans was a polarizing project. It almost collapsed the club football system in Ghana, with Asante Kotoko leading a fierce resistance. But it was a reformation masterstroke that propelled the Black Stars into global prominence.

Alf Bond, a respected English football referee who had been brought into Ghana by Djan to train Ghanaian referees, wrote an article on his departure in 1961. Ghana, he felt, would be one of the world’s leading football nations “in five years”.

Call that an accurate prediction or a true prophesy, because, the Black Stars, spurred on by the Republikans — and its youth team, the ‘Real Ghana Group’ — evolved with frightening speed from 1961 to 1966.

Under C.K Gyamfi, they went on a successful East African tour in 1962, won a third Nkrumah Gold Cup, went on to win back to back Africa Nations Cup titles in 1963 and 1965 — a continental record at the time.

In 1964, the team became the first African nation south of the Sahara to play at the Olympics, in Tokyo. They reached the quarter final and were later ranked 7th out of 14 teams. But for an African boycott of England 1966, the Black Stars could have — maybe even would have— become the first Black African nation to play at the World Cup.

It had taken Djan and the reformers under a decade to take Ghana football from the beginnings of “undirected enthusiasm” to the dizzying heights of Africa Cup dominance and Olympics impact.

Real Republikans, by the way, collapsed as a consequence of the February 1966 coup d’etat that toppled Nkrumah.

Tellingly, it would take Ghana 12 years wandering in the wilderness of trophylessness before encountering another major title.

The modern era has seen the Black Stars stripped off the reputation of being Africa’s most successful team. They have not won an Afcon title since their fourth in 1982, and have since been overtaken by Cameroon (5) and Egypt (7).

But the team, arguably, continues to command respect as the continent’s most popular and most powerful football name.

The 2010 World Cup in South Africa offers an interestingly case-study for this assertion. Perhaps the zenith of the Black Stars’ popularity in its 60-year existence, that Mundial iconized the team.

Real Republikans

Almost the entire globe threw its support behind them as they came within a whisker of becoming Africa’s first ever World Cup semi-finalists. The team not only worked its way into the league of the world’s best national teams, it earned a spotlight that put the country on the map, as close to a billion people saw that World Cup.

What most watching didn’t know, however, was that the Black Stars’ weren’t just emerging — they were, as we have learnt, Africa’s first true superstar football nation, ruling the roost in the early to mid-60s.

What most didn’t know, was that it took a group of visionary ‘reformers’ years of meticulous planning and hard labour to create a system that birthed and aided the rise of the Black Stars.

What most didn’t know, was that the foundations of the beloved brand were laid, as a portion of the Ghana national pledge reads, “through the blood and toil of our fathers.”

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