#today has involved some in-depth conversation

[taeghi]

casual

you thought you could handle being casual with notorious fratboy!heeseung, but when feelings get involved, you soon realize that 'casual' isn't so simple.

PAIRING : fratboy!heeseung x reader

GENRE : smut ( 5 smut scenes lol), fwb to lovers, enemies? to lovers?? & a little angst?? praise & degradation, power control, face sitting, oral lol. also unprotected sex (pls wear a condom@)

WC : 17.7k

MDNI

YOU LOVE CASUAL SEX.

you've always prided yourself on being the type who keeps things casual. it's not that you're afraid of commitment; rather, you find comfort in the simplicity of fucking and then never seeing the person again. there’s no messy entanglements or feelings. it’s a way to satisfy your desires without the emotional baggage that comes with more serious relationships.

you’d rather be alone, but you still have fun with your friends when you go out. you've never been content with surface-level explanations or shallow interactions. you crave depth, in people and experiences. which you have found to be, truthfully, hard in today’s day and age. 

you’re sensitive to most things, so you try to cover it up– protect yourself– with all the partying, the drinking, the sex. 

and tonight, like every other normal friday night; you’re at a party. 

there’s a familiar thump of music and loud chatter around you that you’ve grown accustomed to. yooyeon and gracie, your closest friends are an inseparable couple, are by your side. they've been together for what feels like forever, the kind of relationship that makes you simultaneously envious and relieved you're not in a relationship.

as you continue to sip your drink, yooyeon leans in with her knowing smile, “so, y/n,” teases, “have you decided when you’re gonna settle down? find yourself a nice guy and stop with all these one night stands?” 

you roll your eyes playfully, used to this conversation. "never," you reply with a grin, "casual hookups forever, remember?"

gracie chuckles, shaking her head fondly. "come on, yn," she chimes in, her voice warm with affection, “you know it’s gonna have to get boring at some point.” 

you shrug nonchalantly, though their words do make you pause for a moment. "maybe someday," you concede, though deep down, you're not so sure. relationships have never been your thing, and the thought of settling down feels suffocating.

"come on, yn," yooyeon nudges you gently, her expression softening, "we love you just the way you are. but don't close yourself off to the possibility, okay?"

you nod, grateful for their understanding. deep down, you know they're right—they always are. but for now, you want to find someone to relieve the ache that’s been in your core all day. 

you turn to gracie, the one who always knows all the drama on your college campus, “who is here that i can hook up with?” 

gracie rolls her eyes and looks around the crowded frat house, “hm,” she thinks outloud, “well jeongin and bella broke up this week…” 

you shake your head, “too soon, i don’t want to be a potential rebound for him.” 

yooyeon scoffs and continues to drink, listening to your guys’ conversation. 

“how about,” gracie, “mark? he’s real chatty though.”

you groan, “then no.”

gracie goes on a small list of people that she sees around, but none of them suffice. none of them are your type or seem to be able to satisfy you. you tell your friends that you’re going to go get another drink– you’ll need one. 

the kitchen table has a handful of drinks to choose from. there’s punch and beer and vodka, half of it has been spilt all over said table. 

“the punch is good,” a voice suddenly says from beside you. 

when you turn, you instantly recognize him– he’s one of the frat boys that lives in this house, maybe the most popular one of them all. 

lee heeseung stands beside you with an air of confidence that is probably more on the cocky side. his posture is relaxed yet demeaning. his hair is tousled and his clothes give off a carefree attitude. 

pretty much everyone at your college knows lee heeseung from his parties, his stories, the multiple girls he has slept with. you’ve heard enough stories about him to write an entire book, yet his entire persona is more annoying than appealing to you. his entire act is one that you’ve seen played out too many times before. 

“good to know,” you say and grab a beer instead. 

heeseung raises his eyebrow at your choice, “i’m heeseung.” his voice is smooth and cuts through the noise of the party. 

you take a sip of your beer, “i know who you are.” you reply bounty, not bothering to hide your disinterest.

intrigued by your coldness, “right,” he acknowledges with a smirk, “and i know who you are.” 

“congrats," you say dryly, with a fake excitement to your tone. 

heeseung suddenly leans in closer to you and whispers into your ear, his voice low, "you're the girl who only does casual sex, right?"

you're taken aback by his boldness, but there's a flicker of curiosity in your eyes. "i might be,"

heeseung smirks down at you at your answer. you let yourself think that maybe the notorious fuckboy is pretty handsome. his complexion seemingly glows, his eyes are full of a flirty playfulness, and his smile is charming enough. 

“well, do you wanna have casual sex with me?” 

if it wasn’t lee heeseung standing in front of you, you would be surprised. 

instead, you let out a groan, your face contorts in disgust, “god no.” 

heeseung tilts his head, “why not? i thought you were into that.” 

“because you’re like a walking std.” 

instead of getting offended like you had hoped, heeseung bursts out laughing in the middle of the kitchen, his eyes squinting. 

"damn, straight to the point," he manages between chuckles, clearly amused by your blunt response. 

you roll your eyes, trying not to let his laughter get under your skin. "just being honest," you retort, though there's a hint of begrudging amusement in your tone. 

“i’ll see you around, y/n.” 

you turn on your heel, your back already faced him when you reply, “no, you won’t.” 

you walk back to gracie and yooyeon, who greet you with curious expressions. "what took you so long?" gracie asks, her eyebrows raised expectantly.

you sigh, shaking your head with a hint of annoyance. "lee heeseung just asked me for casual sex," you reveal, your voice tinged with disdain.

yooyeon's face scrunches up in disgust, mirroring your sentiment. "ugh, gross,”

gracie nods in agreement, her expression reflecting your collective disappointment. "every girl he gets with is so desperate," she comments, her voice laced with frustration.

"and heeseung is just... ugh," you add, unable to hide your distaste. gracie giggles mischievously. "and hot," she adds playfully.

yooyeon and you groan simultaneously, sharing an exasperated look. you push thoughts of heeseung aside, deciding to focus on enjoying the party with your friends instead. because the thought of hooking up with lee heeseung and becoming another one of his girls makes you want to throw up more than this beer you’re drinking. 

later, when the party winds down and you’ve danced and drank and socialized as much as you could, you look around and realize that yooyeon and gracie are nowhere to be seen. when you glance at your phone you notice gracie texted you half an hour ago.

gracie : [yooyeon is throwing up so i’m taking her home, sorry]

you groan, great, they were your ride home. 

and now you're stranded at this frat house. 

you head out to the porch, contemplating whether you should walk or call an uber. 

sitting on the porch, the night air cools your frustration slightly, but you're still annoyed at the situation. just as you're about to say fuck it and call an uber, the front door swings open behind you. 

“well, if it isn’t y/n sitting all alone on my porch,” a voice says that makes you turn your head to unfortunately recognize lee heeseung. 

you roll your eyes, not in the mood for his games. "what do you want, heeseung?"

heeseung chuckles, unbothered by your tone. "just wondering why the girl who is known for loving one night stands is sitting here alone.” 

"don't you have anything better to do?" you retort, crossing your arms defensively.

he leans against the railing, looking down at you sitting on the stairs. “like what? catching an std?” 

you scoff, “yeah, exactly that actually.” 

heeseung laughs, a low, genuine sound. "come on, yn. don't be so cold. why don't you come back inside? there’s still some people inside."

“no thanks, i’m calling an uber.” you shiver as you finish your sentence, the night air circling harshly against your bare arms and legs. 

heeseung notices and his expression softens slightly. "how about i get you a sweater before you leave?"

"no," you reply quickly, but your body betrays you with another shiver.

"come on," heeseung insists, his voice surprisingly gentle. "it'll take two seconds, and you seem so cold. how long have you been sitting out here?"

you sigh, ignoring his questions as you stand up, your arms wrapped tightly around yourself. "let's get me a sweater," you mutter, conceding to the chill. "and make sure it's a clean one."

heeseung laughs, a warm sound that oddly makes you feel less irritated. "i promise," he says, leading the way back inside. there’s a few people left in the living room as you walk past it. you don’t miss the way they stare at you following heeseung. you recognize the few boys as other owners of the house– heeseung’s frat brothers. and you’re sure the girl they’re with are their hookups for the night. you feel like throwing up when you realize you look like one of them as you follow heeseung into his room. 

heeseung opens the door on the furthest left and gestures for you to enter first. 

lee heeseung’s room is exactly what you imagined it; messy, with clothes strewn everywhere and empty whiteclaws piled high on his desk that is definitely ruining the textbooks underneath them. you raise an eyebrow but heeseung just grins sheepishly. 

“what? i like the lived-in look,” he jokes, closing the door behind you. he heads over to his closet and rummages through it for a moment before pulling out a sweater and handing it to you. “here you go. freshly laundered, just for you."

you take the sweater, feeling the warmth and softness between your fingers. "thanks," you say, pulling it over your head. the fabric is warm, and you can't help but feel a bit grateful despite your annoyance with him.

heeseung watches you with a bemused smile. "see? not so bad, right?"

you roll your eyes, not looking at him and instead looking around his room. 

why so tense?” heeseung's voice breaks through your thoughts. you guess it’s hard to pretend lee heeseung doesn’t exist when you’re standing in lee heeseung’s room. 

you finally look at him, leaning casually against his dresser with that annoying smirk on his face. “what do you want, heeseung?”

he laughs softly, taking a step closer. “what do you think? i want to have a good time, and you’re the most interesting girl here tonight.”

“oh, is that so?” you reply, crossing your arms. “and what makes you think i’m interested?”

heeseung raises an eyebrow, “because you’re here, aren’t you? and you’re not exactly running away.”

you hate how smooth he is, how easily the words roll off his tongue. like he’s planned this all along. “maybe i’m just cold and wanted that sweater you promised.”

“maybe,” he agrees, his eyes never leaving yours. “but i think there’s more to it than that. you and i—we’re not the relationship type. we both know it. so why not have some fun?”

you don’t like how close he is to you know. you can feel the back of your bare thighs touching his desk now that he’s stepped so close to you. 

“fun?” you echo, half-amused, half-annoyed. “you mean, be like every other girl you’ve been with? you think i’m just another easy girl?”

“not at all,” heeseung says, shaking his head. “you’re different. you’re not looking for anything serious, and neither am i. it’s perfect. no strings attached.”

“perfect,” you mutter, more to yourself than to him. the idea is tempting, as much as you hate to admit it. no strings attached, just two people having a good time. isn’t that what you’ve always wanted? no guy getting obsessed with you after one night. not hurting anyone’s feelings. plus, it would be easier to get laid– you wouldn’t have to rely on gracie to see who’s available. 

“think about it,” heeseung says, his voice dropping to a whisper as he steps even closer. “no pressure, no feelings. just... fun.”

you look up at him, his face now inches from yours. you feel like he’s reading your mind. you really think it’s that simple, heeseung?”

“it can be,” he murmurs, his breath warm against your skin. “if we let it.”

you hesitate, trying to think of all the cons to accepting his offer but, “fine,” you finally say, your voice steady. “but if you think you can play games with me like all the other girls, you’re wrong.”

heeseung grins, clearly pleased with your answer. “of course not.” he sticks out his pinky finger so it’s in between your bodies, “no strings attached?” 

you don’t hesitate to interlock your pinky with his at this question, “no strings attached.” 

heeseung’s eyes turn dark at the first feeling of your skin touching, “so, what do you think? should we start now?”

you nod slowly, feeling a strange mix of excitement and apprehension. “yeah. let’s start now.”

heeseung’s hands found your hips, pulling you against him as his lips descended to yours. you could feel the hardness of his muscular body and the heat radiating from him. your lips met, and you hate how you thought of how soft his are against yours. you part your lips, letting his slip against yours. 

the kiss was rough and needy and demanding. his lips move early against yours. his tongue traced every corner of your mouth, exploring you for the first time. you kissed him back fervently, your hands staying perched on the corner of the desk behind you. 

he tasted like mint and alcohol, and you hated that you wanted more. 

the kiss deepened as heeseung explored your mouth, sucking on your lower lip before delving inside again. you found the urge to moan into his mouth.

heeseung's hands left your hips, sliding up your body to cup your breasts, kneading and squeezing gently. you arched into him, your desire growing with each touch and kiss. he broke the kiss, trailing hot, wet kisses along your jaw and down your neck, nibbling and sucking on the sensitive skin, leaving your breath coming in short, quiet gasps.

"you feel so good against me," he murmured, his lips brushing your ear, sending shivers down your spine that you hoped he didn’t notice. 

heeseung's hands slid down your body, cupping your ass, lifting you, and you wrapped your legs around his waist. you could feel his hardness pressing into your core, making you ache with need. he carried you a few steps to his bed before lowering you onto the soft mattress.

you lay back, your breath coming in quick pants as heeseung loomed over you, his eyes dark with lust. he hovered above you for a moment, before claiming your lips once more, kissing you deeply. his hands begin to explore, mapping your body with eager fingers. heeseung's kisses trailed lower, nipping and sucking at your neck. you have to tell yourself to not moan. 

heeseung pulled back, his eyes glistening as he looked down at you laying in his bed, chest heaving from kissing. he hooks his fingers into the waistbands of your skirt and panties, pulling them down your legs slowly, his eyes staying on your now exposed core. 

heeseung kneels between your legs, gripping your thighs so they stay pushed apart, “god you’re so wet.” 

you nod at him, figuring that you were since you’ve wanted to get laid since this morning. you waited all day to come to this part, just to end up with lee heeseung of all people. though, you feel exposed to him. your core is pulsating as you watch him lean in, his pink tongue sneaks out to taste you. 

you instantly gasp at the feeling, biting your lip to contain any other sounds of your own. you didn’t expect his tongue to feel so good– but you tell yourself it’s because you’ve been needy all day and not because heeseung is an apparent god with his mouth. 

“do you like it, y/n?” he asks you, his mouth mumbling into your core. hsi voice is hoarse ashe looks up at you from your legs, “you like my tongue on your sweet pussy?” 

you grip his sheets with your hands, determined to not give the cocky lee heeseung a bigger ego boost. you breathe through the pleasure of his tongue circulating your clit. his tongue puts heavy pressure on your clit as he slowly circles it before dropping his tongue to your aching hole. he moans at the taste of your weeping juices. 

heeseung slides one of his hands up to your clit to rub it as his tongue fucks you. his tongue does fast motions back and forth in your hole. it makes your squirm and cuss mentally as he brings you close to the edge so quickly. 

just as you start thinking you could cum, he stops– completely pulling away from you. 

you sit up on your elbows and look at him between your legs, your eyes furious as you pant, “what the fuck?” 

heeseung only dryly laughs at you, “you want this, don’t you, y/n?” he murmurs, his hot brath fanning against your thighs, “tell me you want me.” 

you bite your lip, your heart pounding in your chest. you don’t want to give him the satisfaction, but your body is betraying you with its needy responses to everything he does, “no.” you whisper defiantly.

heeseung leans in closer to your pussy, just millimeters away, “tell me you want me, or i’ll stop.” he threatens, his hand moving down your thigh, “tell me, and i’ll make you feel so good.” 

you blame your horniness for your decision, “i want you.” your voice is full of desire as your body basically cries out for release. 

then, heeseung buried his face in your core, his tongue swishing back and forth, wanting to pleasure you. a shockwave of pleasure rips through you, and you cry out, your hand flying to cover your mouth. you feel your eyes roll to the back of your head as he began to makeout with your core. 

you tried to control your reactions, but your body was betraying you. your one hand stayed on your mouth, preventing any sounds from escaping, while the other hand stayed gripping his sheets. 

heeseung glances up and notices your hand on your mouth, “don’t hide your moans, y/n,” he growled, “let me hear how good i’m making you feel.” 

heeseung slips two of his fingers into your wet hole as you open your mouth to respond with a snarky answer but instead, a loud moan leaves your mouth. the sudden intrusion makes you buck your hips up, wanting him to find your g spot, wanting him– lee heeseung– to make you cum. “oh, fuck,” 

“that’s it, y/n, let me hear you,” he mutters into your core, his fingers starting to thrust in and out of you, “you can’t hide that i’m making you feel good. i can tell by the way your pussy is clenching around me.” 

your breath quickened as he spoke, his words only serving to heighten your pleasure. “i hate you, heeseung.”

he hums in response, sending vibrations through your core, you could feel your knees buckle around his shoulders, “you don’t hate this, though, do you, y/n?” his voice is smug as he continues to lick and nip at your throbbing clit. “you can’t deny how much you’re loving my mouth on your pussy.” 

“oh god,” his words make you squirm, they’re adding to your pleasure. your hands grip tighter onto his sheets. “i’m gonna–” 

“cum for me, y/n,” heeseung demands of you, “let me feel you cum all over my face.” 

his encouragement makes you cum with a strangled cry. your body shakes uncontrollably as waves of pleasure crash through you. heeseung doesn’t stop, licking and sucking at your flesh as you ride out your climax. finally, when he thinks you can’t take anymore, he pulls away, a cocky smirk on his face as his chin is covered in your juices and saliva. you tell yourself the image of him has no affect on you. 

your chest is heaving as you try to catch your breath, “fuck,” you whisper out, your body buzzing. 

“i told you i can make you feel good,” heeseung shrugs nonchalantly. 

“shut up.” 

“gladly,” heeseung says as he hovers over your body again, his lips meeting yours in a frenzy. he lays you back down on his bed, your tongues colliding, tasting each other. the kiss was sloppy and wet and you’re sure that if anyone saw the kiss they would be grossed out– but it feels so good. 

you pull apart, heeseung stands off his bed and starts to undress. you take off your shirt, leaving you completely naked on his bed. 

“shit.” heeseung states as he stares at you, not looking away from you as he takes off his pants. it’s your turn to smirk at him, your hand slides down to your clit, rubbing it, feeling your hand get soaked from how wet and sticky your pussy is already. heeseung’s eyes are bulging out of his head as he takes off his shirt, leaving him naked. 

now that he’s distracted you take a chance to look at him. his body is lean and tan and he has a faint set of muscles that make you drool. he really is good looking, though you’d never tell him that. 

his cock is long and hard and veiny as he points upwards, obvious that he’s turned on by you. 

heeseung reaches over to his bedside table and grabs a condom, ripping open the package with his teeth as he continues to stare at your hand pleasuring yourself. 

“wow, lee heeseung’s a condom guy– i would’ve never thought.” you speak as he slides the condom on his cock easily. 

“yeah, because contrary to what you think, i am not a walking std.” 

before you could speak again, heeseung is back on the bed and gripping your waist to spin you around. your face is in his pillows and stomach on his mattress. 

“you’re such a bad girl, y/n,” heeseung tsks at you, you can feel the head of his cock nudge at your entrance, and despite your inner debate of if having sex with lee heeseung was a good idea or not, your body craves him. he grabs your hips and pulls you back onto him, burying himself deep inside your waiting cunt with one rough thrust. “you act like you don’t want this but your walls practically suck me in.” 

you can tell it’s true by the way he stretches and fills you up, the way it’s so hard for him to pull out completely since your walls are so tight around him, wanting him inside you. 

“ahh,” you moan out, your neck feeling limp as he starts to thrust into you slowly. 

“fuck, you feel good,” heeseung groans, not surprised at all, “but you knew that didn’t you? knew that your pussy was made for my cock?” 

you remain silent, not wanting to give his ego any satisfaction. heeseung begins to move faster, now that your walls have adapted to his size. his thrusts are hard, and his balls slap against your clit with each thrust. 

the force of his movements pushed you forward with each impact. the slap of skin against skin filled his bedroom, accompanied by your growing moans as you tried, and failed, to muffle your cries of pleasure.

heeseung leaned forward, his mouth close to your ear again as he whispered dirty words. "you like it rough, don't you, you little slut? you like being taken hard and deep, feeling my cock pounding into your tight cunt."

you found yourself nodding against the pillow, unable to form words as the pleasure overwhelmed you. heeseung's hands slid up your body, gripping your hair in a makeshift ponytail and pulling it back, making you look at him over your shoulder as he continued to fuck you roughly. "that's right, take it like a good girl,”

you whimpered, your breath coming in short gasps as he held on tight to your hair– the pain mixing with the pleasure. heeseung released your hair, your upper body falling flat the mattress again. his hands moving down to grasp your hips once more, “come on, y/n, I know you're close," he grunted, his own control slipping as he chased his own orgasm. "let go for me, come on my cock."

his filthy words sent you over the edge, and you cried out as your pussy clenched tightly around his invading member, milking him as your juices flowed freely. heeseung groaned, his hips stuttering as he buried himself deep one last time, flooding the condom with his hot cum.

spent, the two of you pull away from each other as heeseung pulls out of you. you both lay in his bed, catching your breaths from the strong orgasms. 

“now,” heeseung says, “tell me why us having casual sex is a bad idea?”

for the first time tonight, you feel yourself laugh (probably because of the post-nut haze not because lee heeseung is funny!), and brush your sweaty hair out of your face. 

as heeseung stands up, throws out his condom and throws you his sweater to put back on, you think that maybe this isn’t such a bad situation to be in. 

as long as he sticks to your “no strings attached” agreement, everything should work out fine. 

right?

you hated all your afternoon classes, and so during them, you would be constantly checking your phone or talking with gracie who always sits next to you. she is scrolling through her instagram feed, her phone is angled so you can see it too. the professor’s voice fades into the background. 

suddenly, a post from heeseung pops up on gracie’s screen. she groans softly, rolling her eyes at the way heeseung is posing. “whatever happened when he asked you to have casual sex with him last week?” 

you try to keep your voice nonchalant when you answer, “uh, nothing much– i called him a walking std and walked away.” 

gracie giggles quietly, careful not to draw the attention of your classmates and professor around you. she returns to looking at his instagram account, swiping through all the cringey fuckboy pics, “but he is kinda good looking though, right?”

you shrug, feigning indifference. “eh, i guess.”

you’re already pinching yourself about lying to your best friend. you don’t mean to keep secrets from her, or yooyeon, but you know they wouldn’t want you to be another one of lee heeseung’s girls. the thought of becoming just another notch on his bedpost makes you already sick to your stomach.

before you can dwell on it any longer, your phone vibrates in your lap.

heeseung : [i need ur mouth asap] [3:48]

your heart skips a beat and you jerk your phone away so gracie doesn’t see it. you were not expecting to hear from him right now. 

your thumbs hover over the keypad as you think of an answer. 

heeseung : [answer pls i’m so fucking hard] [3:50]

you sigh as you feel his written words make you tighten your legs together. 

you : [where r u?] [3:51]

heeseung : [2nd floor bathroom] [3:52] heeseung : [the one with the single stall] [3:52]

you : [i’ll be there in 10] [3:53]

you bite your lip as you glance over at gracie beside, her pretty hair wrapped in twists. you hoped she wouldn’t ask too many questions at your departure. you knew that you wouldn’t be able to lie to your friends for long. you just weren’t that type of person.  

“you know what grace?” you whisper to her, “i’m not feeling that great, i’ll see you in the next class.” 

gracie’s face etched into one of concern, “oh?” she subconsciously reaches to her bag, “do you want me to come with you?” 

you put your hand out to stop her as you sling your backpack over your shoulder, “no, no. i’ll be okay i just need a break– i’ll take some meds and see you in an hour with yoo.”

her lips turned into a frown, “okay y/n. if anything happens just text me.” 

after telling her that you would, you briskly leave the classroom as quietly as you could, slowly shutting the heavy door behind you to avoid it slamming. you knew exactly what bathroom heeseung was talking about– you knew it was popular amongst students since it was so private. 

you briefly wondered how many girls heeseung has brought to the private bathroom before. 

but you are forced to push the thought out of your head as you knock on the door of it quietly. only a second later and it opens, heeseung face appearing and as he sees you, a wicked smirk grows on his face. his hand reaches out and grabs your wrist, yanking you into the bathroom so fast you almost fall. you hear him close and lock the door behind you. 

you turn around to look at him, he’s leaning casually against the sink, an annoying smirk on his face as he watches your bewilderment expression turn into annoyance. 

his dark is tousled, and the harsh bathroom lighting makes his jawline and cheekbones more highlighted. he’s wearing a baggy black t-shirt that hangs over his lean frame. his eyes are dark and full of mischief as they lock onto yours. 

“you know i was in class right?” you ask him, arms crossing over your body. 

heeseung scoffs, “so?” 

“so, i can’t just always leave class or something else for you.” 

heeseung feigns a pout, “but i couldn’t stop thinking of what your mouth would feel like around my cock.” you feel the air leave your lungs as he walks closer to you, his hands reaching out to grab your hips, holding you still. “would it feel just as good as your pussy?” 

he leans his head down to press a kiss on your lower jaw, “tight?” another kiss under your ear, “warm?” his lips attached to your neck and suckle on it for only a second, “like heaven?”  

you look up at him as he pulls away, he can see that your eyes are just as full of lust as his own. 

“i guess you’ll just have to see then.” you speak, your voice coming out quieter than you expected. 

heeseung’s smirk widened, "get on your knees, then, and show me what your mouth can do."

your breath hitched as you sank to your knees, your eyes never leaving his. you could see the desire in his gaze, but also satisfaction as he realized he had won this round between you.

you reach out and start to pull down his blue jeans and boxers. his hard cock springs out, red and hot and heavy, and so long. 

“that’s it,” he encouraged you,” his hands tangling in your hair as you leaned forward, your mouth mere inches from his hardening length. "you're so hot when you hate-fuck me.”

you wanted to protest, to tell him that you didn't hate-fuck, that this wasn't about love or emotions—it was purely physical. but his cock was so close now, and you couldn't deny your craving to taste him, to feel him on your tongue.

wrapping your hand around the base, you guided him to your waiting mouth and moaned softly as you tasted him for the first time. heeseung hissed above you, his hips bucking slightly as you swirl your tongue around the head, teasing the sensitive slit.

"fuck," he groaned, his hands tightening in your hair. "take me deeper, baby."

you obliged, relaxing your throat as you took him inch by inch, hollowing your cheeks as you sucked. heeseung's breath quickened, and he began to move his hips in a slow, steady rhythm, fucking your mouth gently.

"that's it, take it all," he encouraged, his voice hoarse. "you try to hate me, but you can't get enough of my cock, can you? you're my little cockslut, right?"

his degrading words and the way you’re literally on your knees for him makes your pussy clamp around nothing. you hummed in response, the vibrations sending shudders through him. you couldn’t deny that you loved the way he dominated you.

heeseung began to thrust a little harder, a little faster, his balls slapping against your chin. "you're so good at this, taking my cock like a pro.”

your eyes fluttering closed as you focused on the pleasure you were giving him. somewhere in this encounter, you realized that game you were playing with yourself; you wanted to prove that you were the best he'd ever had. that he would always crave your mouth. that no one else could compare to you. 

“you know, most girls can't handle my cock. they gag and choke, and can only take me in their mouths for so long before they’re pulling away.” he grunts as he speaks, his words sending shivers down your body. 

you pulled back slightly, your eyes look up at him as he traces his cock over your wet lips, “i’m not like most girls, heeseung. i can take it. take all of your big cock.” 

heeseung slaps his cock against your lips when you’re done speaking. a spark enters his eyes as he watches your spit shine all over his cock. 

“i know you can, baby. i’ve heard about your mouth before,” he nods his head at you, his tip teasing your mouth. “heard about how far you can take dick down your throat.” 

his statement made your mind race. he’s heard about your sex life from other guys? you’re shocked that they talked about you like that, and even more shocked that lee heeseung, of all people, has heard the rumors about you. a part of it boosts your ego while the other part is so curious about what else he might have heard about you. 

“what?” heeseung asks, seeing your perplexed expression, “i told you that i’ve heard about you before. i didn’t tell you how though.” slowly, heeseung starts to slide his cock back into your mouth, your lips happily wrapping around it. “didn’t tell you i heard how much of a slut you are for a big cock.” 

despite his degrading words, you couldn’t help but think of it as true. 

he takes his cock out of your mouth again, letting it rest on your face, “it’s true, right? you’ll do anything for a man if his cock is big and hard just for you.” 

“yes,” you answer, your voice weak already. you can feel yourself submitting to heeseung and you hate that you love it. “anything.” 

“is my cock big enough for you, slut?” he asks, slapping his cock on your face. the degrading act gets your face covered with his precum and your saliva. 

“yes, it’s so big.” 

heeseung smirks at you, “then take it whole like a good girl.” 

he allows you to put his cock back into your mouth. you gag as he hits the back of your throat. your eyes water, but you relax your throat and let him in deeper, wanting to prove to him that you can take it. like you aren’t like the other girls. 

heeseung pants above you, his control slipping as pleasure washes over him. 

"fuck, you're really so good.” he groans out, “no one's ever taken me this deep. your mouth feels so fucking tight." 

you moan around his cock in response, his degradation turning into praises makes you wanna whimper. you continue to suck and lick him as he thrusts his cock into your throat. you felt his balls tighten against your chin. 

“you’re such a good girl,” he moans out, his hips thrusting involuntarily, “i might- might cum.” you sucked harder then, hollowing your cheeks around him. “oh fuck!”

you felt his cock twitch, and he abruptly pulled out, his hand wrapped around the base as he stroked himself. but you wanted to feel his hot cum hitting the back of your throat. you whimper out before you take his cock in your hand and put it back into your mouth, swallowing around him again. 

"fuuuck!" heeseung cried out, his fingers tangling in your hair as he lost control. "take it, god please take it. swallow my cum for me, baby.” 

his words sent a thrill through you, and you sucked hard, milking him harder. he let out a strangled curse as his orgasm hit, his hips jerking as he shot his cum down your throat. you swallowed eagerly, reveling in the taste of him. 

heeseung leaned right against the bathroom wall, breathing heavily, his eyes closed as he savored the aftermath of his release. you thought that that would be an image for you to think about later. you sat back on your heels, a sly smile on your lips, your chin glistening. 

"damn,” he panted, opening his eyes to look at you. "that was..."

“the best you ever had?” you smile up at him playfully. 

“i’d say close to it.” 

you smile is replaced by an annoyed look and you immediately stand up and bend over the sink, washing your hands free of saliva, cum and bathroom floor. 

“oh come on, y/n,” heeseung nudges you, smiling at your annoyed expression. you don’t look at him, instead you fix your hair, that he’s messed up, in the mirror. “i was joking! of course it was the best– i got to cum in your throat, remember?” 

you slam the sink taps off and look at him, your expression makes him burst out laughing. so, you turn and unlock the door, stepping out of the cramped bathroom. the air feels lighter but your mind is still spinning. 

“so, does this mean we’re on for later?” he asks, his tone dripping with mock innocence.

you roll your eyes, annoyed. “don’t push your luck, heeseung.”

he chuckles, enjoying your frustration. “you know, you’re kinda cute when you’re annoyed.”

“shut up,” you mutter, turning to leave.

heeseung’s laughter follows you, but then he calls out, “wait, you still have my sweater, by the way.”

you pause, glancing back at him. “oh,” you forgot you even had it, “i can give it to you at the end of the day.”

“okay,” he agrees, his eyes glinting with amusement. “meet me at the parking lot.”

without another word, you walk away, leaving him standing in the bathroom with his jeans still undone at his hips.

at lunch, you, yooyeon, and gracie are sitting in the cafeteria, a lucky find considering how busy it always gets at this time. yooyeon is complaining about her morning class, something about how she hates her professor, she’s waving her fork around for emphasis. 

“i swear, if i have to listen to professor kim drone on about supply and demand one more time, i might just lose it,” she groans, stabbing at her salad with unnecessary force. “it’s like he enjoys torturing us.”

gracie laughs, taking a sip of her iced coffee. “well, at least you’re not stuck with professor park, she assigns so much reading, i can barely keep up.”

as they continue to talk about professor, your eyes start to drift and wander around the busy cafeteria. and of course, your eyes can’t help but land on lee heeseung across the room. 

heeseung is wearing the same clothes as earlier, but now they’re fixed and worn right again. he’s leaning against the wall, arm over a girl’s head, as he traps her back against the wall. you can tell they’re flirting by the way the girl is giggling and hitting his chest lightly and of course, he’s wearing that annoying smirk. 

a strange feeling starts to boil up in your chest as you watch them. it feels like anger and hurt, but you know that can’t be right. this is lee heeseung, the notorious fuckboy. you can’t be angry that he’s flirting with another girl, that’s all he ever does! plus, there are no feelings between you and heeseung. you’re just having casual sex. 

you take a deep breath, reminding yourself to be chill, reminding yourself of who you are. you’re the girl who only does casual sex, who doesn’t get attached. this shouldn’t be bothering you. but still, the sight of them together leaves a bitter taste in your mouth. 

“are you feeling better, yn?” gracie asks you, “you still don’t look so good.”

you turn your head back to look at your friends. concerned etched on their face. your bitter expression must have been obvious on your face. 

“i’m alright, guys. don’t worry,” you smile at your loving friends. 

yooyeon’s eyes narrow as she glances at you, always so damn observant. “why were you looking at lee heeseung?”

your heart drops. gracie’s head snaps up, curiosity written all over her face. “what? you were looking at lee heeseung?”

you shift uncomfortably, feeling the heat rise in your cheeks. “what? no,” you say, too quickly.

yooyeon isn’t buying it. “are you sure? because as soon as you looked over in that direction your smile dropped.”

you sigh, knowing you’ve been caught. lying to your friends has never worked; they’re too good to you. “fine, okay, i was looking at him.”

gracie’s eyes widen. “what? why?”

you take a deep breath and come clean, “i might’ve hooked up with him last weekend.”

both of your friends jump in their seats, shocked. “why? what the hell?” gracie exclaims. 

“you know how he treats women! you literally make fun of him and the girls that hook up with him all the time!” yooyeon exasperates. 

you bury your face in your hands. “i know, i know. it’s part of the reason why i didn’t want to tell you guys.”

gracie’s eyes softens. “you didn’t want to tell us?”

you look up, seeing their concerned faces. “well, i didn’t want you to judge me and call me a hypocrite because i’m already doing that myself.”

yooyeon reaches over, grabbing your hand. “we would never do that, y/n. we were just shocked.”

gracie nods, her expression serious. “yeah, as long as you’re being safe and having fun, we don’t care. we love you.”

“i love you too, guys.” 

yooyeon grins mischievously. “okay, but tell us more about you and lee heeseung.”

you sigh and look over to where he was last standing and realize that him and the girl have left. you briefly wonder if he’s taken her to the bathroom where you sucked him only an hour ago. 

“uh, we hooked up at the party after you guys left,” 

“is his dick really as big as they say?” gracie chimes in her, eyes twinkling. 

yooyeon elbows her, “why do you look so excited to hear about lee heeseung’s dick size?”

“sorry, sorry,” gracie apologizes and kisses yooyeon on the cheek. “but y/n, was it?” 

“yeah, it’s pretty big.” 

“oh my god,” gracie can’t help but giggle out, yooyeon has to elbow her again to get her to stop. 

yooyeon turns to look at you, resting her elbow on the table, “and have you seen him since?”

“uhh, yeah.” 

“when?” yooyeon tilts her head, interested. 

“um, an hour ago?” 

“what?!” gracie jolts, shocked from your confession. “is that why you left class early?” 

you smile sheepishly at your friends in response. gracie covers her mouth as yooyeon rolls her eyes. 

“it’s just casual between us, though. we’ve made an agreement of no strings or feelings attached!” 

gracie and yooyeon share a look before yooyeon asks, “so when are you seeing him again?” 

you think about it for a second before you see his sweater peeking out of your backpack, “after our next class- i have to give him back his sweater.” 

“ouuu,” gracie moves her eyebrows up and down, “you wore his sweater?” 

“oh my god stop!” you laugh at her, “it’s casual! nothing serious— i was cold and he let me borrow his sweater!” 

yooyeon and gracie share a look again that makes you roll your eyes at them. 

you check the time on your phone, “we should get going, class starts in ten minutes.” 

the three of you start packing up your bags and lunches and the two follow you out of the cafeteria. 

“i can’t believe we’re friends with one of lee heeseung’s girls,” gracie giggles out playfully.

“oh my god, grace,” you groan out, “i am not! it’s chill and casual, i’m not gonna turn into one of his stalker fan girls.” 

“you’re one of his girls, y/n, and that’s alright!” 

“no, i’m not.” 

“yes.”

“no.” 

“yes!” 

you groan inwardly. the very thought makes your stomach churn. you would never end up in the same category as all those girls you make fun of. you shuffle ahead, not meeting their eyes, as yooyeon and gracie follow behind, giggling at your obvious annoyance. you know their laughter is a gentle tease, but it still doesn’t fix the frustration you’re feeling towards yourself and lee heeseung. 

did he have to be so hot?

after class, you head to the back parking lot where heeseung told you to meet him. you say goodbye to your two friends as they drive home together without you. you told them that you’ll just walk home after meeting with heeseung. 

you wait outside the college for longer than you expected. almost everyone in the school has left at this point and you start to think that heeseung had forgotten your plan to meet up and give him his sweater. 

when there was only a few more cars parked in the parking lot you sighed, annoyed and frustrated. you figured he had left if he hadn’t showed up by now. you felt almost embarrassed to be standing there by yourself for so long. 

you throw your bag over your shoulder again and step off the sidewalk, planning to walk home now since your friends had left earlier. you were already plotting your next words to heeseung for making you wait after school for him for no reason. 

“y/n!” 

you turn at the sound of your name. 

the back door of the school was swung open as heeseung rushed to step outside, his bag thrown over his shoulder as he waved at you. you huff, stopping to wait for him to catch up to you. when he reached you, you could tell he was a bit frazzled. 

“i’m so sorry, i had a surprise test i had to do,” he says, a hint of genuine apology in his voice.

you huff, reaching into your bag and pulling out his sweater, handing it to him. “here.” 

he takes it from you and you feel a sudden drop of water on your hand. both of you glance up at the sky, noticing that the clouds are starting to turn gray and a few more water drops are starting to fall slowly. 

“great,” you mumble to yourself. just your luck. 

“do you have a ride?” heeseung asks, noticing your growing frustration. 

“no, i was hoping to walk home before the rain started.” 

heeseung suddenly feels bad that you had to wait so long for him. “i’ll give you a ride,”

you hesitate at his offer. you eyed him suspiciously, wondering his intentions; did he want to drive you home because he was being nice or did he want to fuck you in his car? you wondered if people doing casual sex with each other drive each other home? 

he sees your hesitation and further explains, “it’s just a drive and it’s raining. come on, get in my car.”

you sigh, weighing your options. you felt the rain start to increase, “fine,” you finally say, giving in. he leads you to his car, a black, shiny, expensive-looking one, and you slide into the passenger seat.

you look around his car. it’s clean and sleek. and you internally debate if this is what you expected from him or not. he gets in the driver's seat and starts the car. he turns on the heat and you instantly realize how cold it was with the rain hitting you, drenching your hair slightly. 

heeseung notices and adjusts the heaters to aim at you, letting you warm up quickly before he’s even pulling out of the parking lot. you tell him your address and give him a few directions on how to get there. hopefully this drive doesn’t take long. 

“do you have any roommates?” heeseung asks you, trying to break the silence. 

“yeah, i’ve got one. she’s cool.” 

“is she one of those girls that you’re always with? the ones you were sitting with in the cafeteria today?” 

you pretend to not be shocked that he noticed you in the cafeteria earlier, “gracie and yooyeon? no, they live together. they’ve been dating for a while now.” 

heeseung hums, “oh, i never realized they were dating.” 

you scoff slightly amused at the possibility that lee heeseung could ever realize something about you or your friends, “hm, yeah. i guess you’re too busy hangin’ with your annoying frat bros.” 

heeseung laughs over the steering wheel. his laughs makes a small smile crack on your face. it’s a pure, hearty laugh that echoes loudly in the car. 

“hey! my frat bros are not that bad!” he mocks your use of words, “actually they’re some of my closest friends. they've helped me a lot.” 

you nod, taking in his words. you wondered how they have helped him before that would make him speak of them so admirably. “which one are you closest to?”

heeseung things for a second, “probably jake. but, he's a year younger than us.” 

it goes silent again besides a few directions you give him to get to your apartment. your mind starts to wonder about seeing him with the girl at the cafeteria earlier. you hate to think about him taking her to the bathroom you were just in with him. or worse, taking her to the backseat of the car you’re currently in. you wonder if there’s going to be more girls like her that you’ll have to see him with during the entire time you’re being casual with him. 

you gulp, taking a breath before you ask him, “will you be hooking up with other girls as we're like, being casual?” 

you keep your eyes out the window once your words are out, watching the rain droplets trail down it. you couldn’t possibly look at him right now.

finally, he speaks, “no, probably not if i have you.” 

you force yourself to keep your head turned to the window now. you cannot let him see the smile that creeps along your lips. his words make your chest and heart settle. the girl in the cafeteria is no longer in the back of your mind. 

“will you?” 

his questions make you turn to look at him, not expecting it. but you keep your face expressionless, keeping your cards close to your chest. “maybe, if they have a bigger cock than you.” 

you don’t expect him to burst out laughing again, his voice interrupting the rain landing on the car. it makes you laugh along with him. his eyes squinting as he looks at you with a large smile. 

you realize that no matter how hard you try to keep heeseung at a foot length with your usual insults, it doesn’t work. he never gets offended or hurt like all the other guys you’ve hooked up with before. it’s something you commend him for. but it also makes you worry for your own heart. 

“good luck trying to find that.” 

you grin at him, looking out the window and pointing to the apartment for him to stop at. he puts the car in park and lets you gather your things as you reach for the handle to leave. 

“thanks for the ride, heeseung.” you tell him with an earnest smile. 

“no problem,” you open the door as he continues, “oh and by the way, it’s your turn.”

“my turn for what?” your face is scrunched up in confusion. 

“your turn to text me when you’re needy.” 

you roll your eyes at his answer, “yeah, whatever.” 

you get out and slam the car door behind you, pretending to not be amused at his words. you walk up the front sidewalk to your apartment, almost to the door when you hear him again. 

“thanks for the blowjob, y/n!” 

you turn around your jaw dropped as he rolled down his window to yell at you, his annoying smirk on his face. you stick up your middle finger at him from the door, you could hear his laughter as he starts to drive away. 

you hope none of your neighbours heard him.

tonight you’re rolling around on your bed, fingers hovering over the keyboard as you contemplate your next move. you lock your phone, staring at the ceiling, thoughts racing. after a week without seeing heeseung, you thought he would’ve caved in by now, but he hasn’t.

sighing, you open your phone again, hesitating before typing out the words. finally, you hit send on a simple message.

you : [can i come over?] [8:38]

he responds almost instantly, as if he was waiting.  heeseung : [ yes ] [8:39] heeseung :  [  ;)  ] [8:39]

you smile to yourself, standing up off your bed and grabbing your coat before leaving, heading straight to the frat house that has held too many parties to remember. 

you have only one thing on your mind tonight : make lee heeseung beg for you. 

you knock on the frat house door, and it swings open almost immediately. heeseung stands there, shirtless and in sweatpants. you have to remind yourself to be cool and not completely stare him down like you’re ready to pounce on him. 

he squints at you, a smirk creeping onto his face. “i actually applaud you for waiting so long to text. i thought you would've caved in sooner.”

you scoff, brushing past him into the house. “i thought the same about you.”

“nope,” he replies casually, closing the door. “i told you, it was your turn.”

rolling your eyes, you respond sarcastically, “well, here I am.”

heeseung steps closer, his hands finding your waist as he leans in with that signature smirk. “let’s go to my room.”

you can’t help but feel a mix of annoyance and excitement as you follow him. 

inside his bedroom is the same, messy and chaotic, but his bed is clear and clean. you wonder if he had just made it before you came. 

heeseung comes up behind you now that he’s closed and locked the door. he wraps his arms around your waist, his bare chest flush against your back, “did you miss my cock, baby?” he whispers into your ear. 

you feel yourself melt against him as you nodded, looking over your shoulder to look at him directly. his eyes were darker and his bangs had fallen over his forehead and eyes as he looked at you. he smirked at your answer and then suddenly pushed you onto his bed. 

you lay with your head on his pillow as he gets on his bed and hovers over you. before you can speak his mouth crashes down on yours, his tongue demanding entrance. you moan into the kiss, your hands clutching at his shirt. his hands start roaming your body possessively, keeping you close to him. 

heeseung pulls away from your lips to start pressing kisses down your neck, sucking and biting at the sensitive skin. you take your chance and flip over his body so now he was under you, his head where yours was previously. 

you’re straddling his waist as he chuckles, “you wanna be on top, baby?” his voice is teasing and almost mocking. 

you glare at him, trailing your hand over his abs and stopping over his hardening cock in his pants. “i’m gonna be on top.” 

he raises an eyebrow, a challenge sparkling in his eyes. "go on, then. show me what you got."

your confidence surges as you lean down, your lips brushing his ear. "take off your clothes," you whisper, nibbling on his earlobe. "i want to see how hard your cock is for me."

heeseung listens and pulls down his pants and boxers. when he’s finally naked, you bite your lips, admiring his muscular chest, flat stomach and the small trail of hair leading below his navel. but it's his hard cock, so red and veiny, that catches your eye. 

you wrap your hand around the base, pumping slowly as you lean down to press a kiss to the tip. "mmm, you taste so good," you purr, licking up a bead of pre-cum.

heeseung's breath hitches as he threads his fingers through your hair, but you gently bat his hands away. "no, no. i'm in charge here, remember?"

"oh, yeah?" he smirks, his eyes glittering with amusement. "let's see how long that lasts.”

you scowl at him, but it only fuels your determination. tightening your grip, you begin to stroke him faster, using both hands to cover his length. his hips bucked involuntarily, and he groans, his eyes fluttering closed. "fuck, that feels good."

"you like that, hee?" you ask, your voice sultry. "you like it when i take control?"

"yeah, baby, I do," he admits, his breath coming in short gasps as your hands continue. you hate that the pet name makes you shiver. you hate how fast he seemingly submits to you. 

a you take the tip of his cock into your mouth, he threads his fingers through your hair, guiding you along his length. you hollow your cheeks, sucking and bobbing your head up and down, relishing the taste of him on your tongue. "oh fuck, baby," he murmurs, his hips jerking involuntarily. "please don’t stop."

you hum in response, the vibrations sending him wild. heeseung tangles one hand in your hair, holding you in place as he begins to thrust slowly, fucking your mouth. you let him take control for a moment, enjoying the way he uses your mouth for his pleasure. you can tell he’s getting close, that he’s starting to feel like he’s the one controlling you right now. 

but then, you grab his hips, pulling him out of your mouth with a loud pop.

heeseung opens his eyes, a questioning look on his face. you respond by grinding your clothed core against his hardness, eliciting a low groan from him. "i want to ride you," you whisper, your voice full with desire.

his face contorts into one of begging,. “please, need to feel your pussy so bad."

you don't need to be told twice. quickly shedding your clothes, you straddle his lap, lining him up with your entrance. slowly, you lower yourself onto his thickness, moaning as he stretches you deliciously. heeseung's hands grip your hips, guiding you as you bounce gently a few times to adjust to his size.

once you've taken all of him, you pause, relishing the feeling of being filled so completely. "fuck, heeseung, you feel so good inside me," you pant, leaning forward to press your breasts against his chest.

"you like that, baby?" he teases, his hands squeezing your ass. "you like my cock buried deep inside your tight pussy?"

you nod, biting your lip as you begin to move, rising and falling on his shaft. his hands slide up your back, tangling in your hair as he pulls you down for a hungry kiss. you moan into his mouth, your hips picking up the pace as you ride him with abandon.

suddenly, you pull away, rising up on your knees to give yourself more leverage. you remember what you were thinking when you came here. you remembered taking control of lee heeseung and proving to him that you can make him feel good. heeseung's eyes widen as he realizes your intent, but he says nothing, watching you with a mixture of arousal and curiosity. you lean forward, wrapping your hand around his neck, and begin to choke him, cutting off his air supply slightly as you ride his cock.

you can't believe how submissive he's being, allowing you to take control like this. it turns you on even more, and you find yourself bouncing faster, your core clenching rhythmically around his shaft. heeseung's eyes roll back slightly, and he moans, his hands tightening on your waist. the sight below you, with his cock hitting deep inside of you with your hand around his throat, makes you bounce harder, making him grunt, “fuck, baby, you're so tight. i'm not gonna last long."

a sense of pride courses through you at hearing him say that, but you have no intention of letting him finish just yet. slowing your movements, you grind your hips in circles, feeling the sensation of his cock rubbing against your sensitive walls. heeseung whimpers, his body thrashing beneath you as he tries to buck his hips up to chase his release.

"please, baby," he begs, his voice hoarse. "i need to cum. let me fuck you, please."

you grin down at him, loving the sight of the so called confident, cocky lee heeseung reduced to begging and submitting. but you're not ready to give up now.. "no," you taunt, bouncing harder on his cock. "who's in control here, heeseung? hmm?"

"you are, baby," he pants, his eyes glazed with lust. "but please, i need to be inside you when I cum."

hearing him say that sends a thrill through your body, and your pussy clenches tightly around him. but your knees are starting to ache from the constant bouncing, and your energy is beginning to falter. your bouncing gets sloppier and slower, his dick still hits your g spot. 

heeseung realizes that you’re getting tired, and takes advantage by quickly flipping you onto your back, his cock staying lodged inside of you when he does. he pins your body to the bed before you can realize. 

your hands fly to his shoulders for support now that he’s hovering over you. “hey!” you pout, at him, “i was riding you!”

heeseung chuckles, his hands gripping your thighs as he begins to thrust deeply into you. "i know you were, baby, and you did an amazing job. but now, let me take over. let me make you cum."

his words make you whimper as he sets a punishing pace, pounding into you relentlessly. you groan as your plan to dominate lee heeseung failed, but the way he’s fucking into you seemingly makes you even forget your plan in the first place

his hips slam against yours, his balls slapping against your sensitive flesh with each deep thrust. "fuck, heeseung," you moan, your nails digging into his shoulders. "harder!" you submit to him so easily, letting him do whatever he wants to you. it just feels so good. 

heeseung grunts in response, but he fucks into you harder anyways. his cock slides in and out of your drenched pussy, the slick sounds of your sex filling the room. heeseung leans down, capturing one of your nipples with his mouth, tugging and sucking it between his teeth as he continues to pound into you.

you cry out, your back arching off the bed as pleasure courses through your body. "that's it, baby," he encourages, his breath hot against your skin. "cum for me. Let me feel that tight pussy clenching around my cock."

his words are your undoing, and you shatter around him, crying out his name as your body convulses with pleasure. your body felt so spent as he continued to pound into you through your orgasm. 

the feeling of your walls clenching around him, your juices flowing out of you and around his cock, make heeseung cum soon after. he grunts out your name as he spills deep inside of you. his hips stuttering as he fills you with his release. 

collapsing onto your chest, he peppers kisses along your collarbone as he catches his breath. you’re too busy coming down from your orgasm to tell him that that’s too intimate. so instead you revel in the feeling of his weight on top of you. your chests heaving as you catch your breath together. 

heeseung gently pulls out of you and gets up. you watch as he leaves his bedroom, leaving you naked and sweating on his bed. 

he comes back with a damp cloth from the bathroom. his bare back muscles flexing with each step. you can feel a subtle change in his bedroom now. it’s more softer and intimate. and it scares you. 

you know the cloth is to clean up the mess between your legs so you reach your hand out for it, “thanks.” 

but heeseung doesn’t give it to you, “it’s okay, i can do it. you’re tired, y/n. let me take care of it.” 

you open your mouth to protest, to insist that you can do it yourself, but you realize that you are in fact exhausted. your knees ache from being on top. 

heeseung leans down between your legs again. he gently starts to clean you, his touch is feather light. he hums gently to himself as he makes sure every substance is off your legs. 

you’ve never let anyone clean you up after sex before. it’s always you that takes care of things afterward, alone. there’s something vulnerable and exposing letting someone else do this for you. but heeseung’s touch is so tender that you find yourself relaxing into it. you think that maybe it’s okay just once to let someone else take the lead.

once he’s done, he kisses your inner thigh, his lips brushing softly against your sensitive skin, and you suppress a shiver. 

he hands you a soft t-shirt, helping you slide it over your head, his fingers grazing your skin gently. you inhale the fresh scent of the fabric. heeseung pulls on a pair of sweatpants that cling to his lean, muscular frame. 

heeseung lies down beside you, his body warm against yours. its silent in his room and the lights are still on. you realize that you’ve never just laid in bed with a guy before without it leading to sex. 

after a while, you break the silence. “i should go,” you say, starting to sit up.

heeseung sits up too, watching you, “you should stay. it’s late, and your knees hurt.” 

you hesitate, but the truth is, you’re tired, and your knees really do ache from holding your body up. you nod, and lay back down. your heart thumping in your chest. 

“okay,” you whisper. 

heeseung smiles and turns off the lights, plunging the room into a soft darkness. you both lay there in his bed. a meter apart is between both of you. it’s silent and uncomfortable. 

heeseung breaks the silence first. "you okay?"

you nod, even though he probably can't see you in the dark. "yeah, just... not used to this."

"used to what?" he asks, turning slightly to face you.

"this," you gesture vaguely around the room, "staying after."

he chuckles softly. "so, i'm your first?"

you scoff, rolling your eyes. "don't flatter yourself, heeseung."

"i'm serious," he says, and you can hear the genuine curiosity in his voice. "you've never stayed the night with anyone before?"

"no," you admit quietly, "i haven't."

both of you go silent again, thinking. you’re only wearing his t shirt and the thin sheet on his bed isn’t keeping much heat in. your legs shiver against the bed. 

you feel heeseung move beside you, “come here.” 

“what?” 

“come here if you’re cold.” 

you hesitate for a second before scooting closer to him. he wraps an arm around your shoulder, pulling you against his chest. it’s warm and so much better for your half naked body. it’s intimate, and you try to keep your breath steady as you breathe in his cologne and fabric softener. 

"better?" he asks, his voice a low rumble in your ear.

"yeah," you murmur, "better."

you lay there for a while, in his arms. you try to fall asleep, but it feels strange. and you keep debating if it’s a good strange or a bad strange. heeseung starts tracing lazy circles on your arm, and you find yourself relaxing. 

"you know," he says softly, "you're not as tough as you pretend to be."

"oh, really?" you challenge.

"yeah," he replies, "you're actually kinda sweet."

you snort at his compliment because when have you ever been sweet to lee heeseung? 

you close your eyes again. thinking more about heeseung and everything you know about him and everything he knows about you. the things he might’ve heard about you before you even met. and you think about how sweet he’s actually been to you. 

"heeseung?" you say after a while.

"yeah?"

"thanks for letting me stay."

"anytime," he replies, his voice soft and sincere.

you feel his grip tighten slightly around you, like you might leave. 

but even though there’s a voice in the back of your head telling you to run; you don’t. you stay in lee heeseung’s bed with his arms wrapped around you until you both feel your eyelids grow heavy and drift off to sleep for the night. 

as you drift off, you realize that maybe, just maybe, there could be more than just casual hookups between you and lee heeseung. 

when you and heeseung wake up the next day, the sunlight filtering through the blinds, you both groan at the early hour. heeseung stretches, his arm brushing against you as he yawns.

"we gotta get to class," he says, rubbing his eyes.

"yeah," you agree, sitting up and swinging your legs over the side of the bed.your knees feel better this morning. 

heeseung gets up first, grabbing a t-shirt from his closet and slipping it on. "i can drive you home if you want," he offers casually.

"thanks," you say, standing and smoothing out your clothes. "i'll get changed."

heeseung nods and heads for the door. "i'll wait downstairs.” 

you quickly change into your clothes from yesterday, trying to shake off the strange mix of emotions from the night before. once you're dressed, you head down the hall towards the stairs, but stop when you hear your name.

when you and heeseung wake up the next day, the sunlight filtering through the blinds, you both groan at the early hour. heeseung stretches, his arm brushing against you as he yawns.

"we gotta get to class," he says, rubbing his eyes.

"yeah," you agree, sitting up and swinging your legs over the side of the bed. you feel a slight ache from how you slept, but it's not too bad.

heeseung gets up first, grabbing a t-shirt from his closet and slipping it on. "i can drive you home if you want," he offers casually.

"thanks," you say, standing and smoothing out your clothes. "i'll get changed."

heeseung nods and heads for the door. "i'll wait downstairs. take your time."

you quickly change into your clothes from yesterday, trying to shake off the strange mix of emotions from the night before. once you're dressed, you head down the stairs, but stop when you hear your name.

"when did yn leave last night?" a boy's voice asks.

"uh, she didn't," you hear heeseung reply.

there are multiple gasps of confusion. "she slept over?" 

"she's upstairs?"

"yeah, so what?" you hear heeseung say, a bit defensive.

"what's going on between you two?" someone asks.

"nothing-- we're just casual," heeseung responds.

his final response hurts you more than you expect. you don't even know why it stings so much, but it does. you take a deep breath before you walk down the stairs. in the kitchen you can see the group of frat boys who live there all gathered around. they look at you curiously. 

heeseung smiles at you. "ready to go?"

you force a smile and shake your head. "nah, i'm just gonna walk, it's okay."

he starts to argue, but you cut him off. "bye," you say, turning and leaving quickly, closing the front door behind you.

as you walk home, a mix of confusion, hurt, and anger churns inside you. you wonder why he was so nice to you the night before. how he cleaned you up so intimately and made sure you were okay. you weren’t use to such niceness. you were usually the one to kick someone out after sex or leave before you do get kicked out. why did he let you stay if he thinks it’s just casual between you. 

you remind yourself to be chill. there's nothing between you and lee heeseung. 

but the feelings linger, refusing to be ignored.

days later and your professor ended your afternoon class early. you pull out your phone to ask yooyeon and gracie where they are. but you see a text from your mom instead. 

mom : [your dad and i have broken up. please call me when you get the chance] [2:46]

your heart sinks, and you stop in your tracks, trying to hide the sudden wave of sadness and panic that washes over you. you quickly turn into a quiet hall. you don’t want anyone to see you like this. you curse your mom for picking such an awful time to tell you this. 

you keep staring at her text, the words blurring as your eyes fill with tears. you knew they were having problems, knew they were talking about divorce, but you didn't think they'd actually do it. just as the first tear escapes and trails down your face, a voice speaks up, startling you.

“what’s wrong?” 

you turn and see heeseung, his expression full of concern. you quickly wipe at your face, trying to pull yourself together. "everything's fine. see you later," you say, trying to walk away.

he stops you, gently taking your arm. "you're crying. what's wrong? you can tell me."

you sigh, not being able to process the new information yourself yet. you feel like you can’t think or speak straight. you hand him your phone, etting him read the message. his eyes scan the screen, and then he looks at you with understanding and sympathy. "i'm so sorry."

he pulls you into his embrace, his arms wrapping around you tightly. "it's going to be okay," he murmurs, his voice soothing. he kisses your forehead, and you pull away slightly, shocked.

"what if people see?" you ask, worried about the implications.

heeseung shakes his head. "who cares?" he says, pulling you back into his embrace.

you melt into his touch again, the confusion and hurt still there, but his presence brings a strange sense of comfort. why is he doing this? you can’t help but feel a little more at ease, even aw your mind races with questions and doubts. 

“are your parents divorced?” you ask him as you pull away. 

heeseung shakes his head, “nah, they’re coming to the house this weekend actually.” he pulls out his own phone and looks at the date. 

“oh really?” 

he shrugs, “yeah, they wanna see where i’m living this year and see the other guys.” 

“oh,” 

in the quiet hall it’s silent again and you have so much on your mind you forget to even speak until heeseung does again. 

“want me to drive you home?” 

you smile up at him, “please?”

he wraps his arm around your shoulder and guides you out of the school to his car where he can warm you up again.

heeseung texts you again to come over. something that’s been happening for weeks now. you’re at his house more often than not. and now, you don’t hesitate to go to the frat house you once hated. 

heeseung meets you at the door, a lazy smile on his face as he knows exactly what the both of you are thinking. you step inside and the surroundings are now familiar to you. heeseung shuts the door, his eyes burning with desire as he takes a step towards you. without a word, he pulls you into his arms, and your bodies fit together perfectly, as if they were made to slot together just like this.

"i've been thinking about this all day," he murmurs, his lips brushing against your ear, sending shivers down your spine. "want you so fucking bad, y/n."

you feel his hands roaming over your body, cupping your ass and pulling you against his growing erection. he's not shy about what he wants, and you love how forward he is. moaning softly, you tilt your head back, giving him better access to your neck as he plants eager kisses along your sensitive skin. his hands are everywhere, slipping under your shirt to touch your bare skin, making you ache for more.

"fuck, you feel so good," he groans, his voice thick with desire.

you pull back slightly, looking into his dark eyes, sparkling with lust. "then take me to your bedroom, hee."

“please, take her to your bedroom.” a voice says from inside the house. 

you turn and see jake sitting on the couch, his eyes begging as he had to watch and hear the interaction between you and jake. you giggle out at his reaction– jake too– is something you’ve become familiar with during the past few weeks. 

heeseung only smirks and takes your hand, leading you both towards the familiar path to his bedroom. 

as soon as the bedroom door shuts behind you, heeseung is on you again, this time much more desperate. 

he pushes you against the door, his mouth crashing onto yours in a hungry kiss. you respond eagerly, your hands tangling in his hair as you deepen the kiss. he moans into your mouth, his tongue seeking yours, tasting and teasing until you're both breathless.

he breaks the kiss, trailing heated kisses along your jaw, down your neck, nipping and sucking at your sensitive skin. "want to taste you, baby. Want you to sit on my face."

you whimper at his words, feeling your core clench with need. heeseung kneels on the bed, his eyes burning with intensity as he watches you undress. slowly, you peel your shirt over your head, enjoying the way his eyes roam over your body, taking in every inch of exposed skin. You kick off your shoes, wiggling out of your pants, and step out of your underwear. his eyes never leave you.

heeseung licks his lips, a hungry look in his eyes. "so fucking gorgeous, y/n."

you blush, but the heat in your core overrides any embarrassment.

once on the bed, he lets you take control, enjoying the show as you straddle his face, your pussy hovering over his waiting mouth.

"you gonna tease me again, baby?" he asks, his hot breath fanning your core, making you tremble.

you don't answer, instead, you lower yourself onto his mouth, moaning as his tongue swipes against your wet folds. he groans in appreciation, his hands gripping your thighs as he pulls you closer, his tongue delving into your slit. he's eager, lapping at your juices, sucking on your clit, and making you see stars. you grind your hips, riding his face as he eats you out with enthusiasm.

"oh, fuck, heeseung!" you cry out, feeling your orgasm building already. "feels so good, baby!"

He doesn't hold back, using his tongue to bring you pleasure, licking and sucking until you're a quivering mess. You cry out his name as you climax, your juices flooding his mouth. He laps it all up, humming in satisfaction as he continues to lick you through your orgasm.

As the pleasure subsides, you collapse beside him, panting heavily. Heeseung, however, is not done. He kisses his way up your body, pausing to suck your sensitive nipples into his mouth, making you mewl with pleasure. His hands roam over your body, caressing your curves, molding your body to his.

"i need to be inside of you," he says, his breath hot against your ear.

You feel a rush of heat between your legs at his words. That possessive, needy side of him is what draws you in, what makes you ache for him. You nod slowly, your lips parting to speak, but no words come out.

instead, you turn over and and lean forward. you place your palms on the bed and push yourself up on your knees, exposing yourself to him. 

heeseung's eyes darken as he takes in the sight of your round ass and your pussy, glistening with your juices. He reaches out, his fingers trailing lightly over your skin, leaving a trail of goosebumps in their wake.

he teases your entrance, circling it lightly, making you whine and rock your hips unconsciously.

"you're so wet for me, y/n," he says, his voice like velvet. "are you ready for my cock?"

"please," you whisper, your voice thick with need. “need your cock, hee.” 

with a growl, he grabs your hips and pulls you back, positioning his hard length at your entrance. you both moan as the tip teases your hole, then he slowly starts to push inside. You gasp as you feel yourself stretch around him, inch by incredible inch. heeseung's cock is thick and long, and you feel deliciously full as he bottoms out.

he doesn’t need to pause to let you adjust to his size anymore. you clench around him, your pussy gripping him tightly, and he groans, his head falling back. "fuck, y/n, you feel so tight. So fucking perfect. could stay like this forever."

he pulls your body back onto him, and then he begins to thrust. slow and deep at first, he sets a steady rhythm, pulling out almost all the way before slamming back into you. you cry out with each thrust, your body rocking back to meet his. his balls slap against your clit, sending sparks of pleasure through your core.

he leans over you, his chest pressing against your back, his breath hot in your ear. "that's it, baby, take it all," he grunts, his voice strained as he picks up the pace. "your tight pussy was made for my cock, wasn't it?"

you moan, your head falling back as he thrusts into you. "fuck yes, heeseung, it was," you pant. "it was made just for you."

His hands squeeze your hips as he slams into you, his hips meeting your ass with a loud, satisfying smack. The force of his thrusts rocks your body forward, and you brace yourself, pushing back against him, meeting his fierce rhythm. The sound of skin slapping against skin fills the room you’ve memorized by now. 

Heeseung's breath is ragged, his grunts of pleasure filling your ear. "You like that, baby? My cock pounding into your tight hole?"

"Yes! Harder, Heeseung! Fuck me harder!" you scream, your body on fire, desperate for release.

He obeys, gripping your hips so tightly you'll have bruises tomorrow. But you don't care, the pain only adds to the pleasure. He slams into you with such force the bed shakes, and you cry out, throwing your head back, your body shaking with the force of your orgasm. You clamp down on his cock, milking him, your juices flowing as your body pulses with pleasure.

"Fuck, y/n, you're making me cum," he groans, his thrusts becoming erratic as he loses control.

You reach underneath yourself, your fingers finding your clit as he continues to thrust. You rub circles around it, riding out your orgasm as you crave for more. "Cum for me, Heeseung," you pant. "Fill me with your cum."

He growls, his body tenses, and then you feel it. His cock pulses and twitches as he releases, his warm cum shooting inside you. He groans your name, his hands grasping your hips tightly as he rides out his peak.

As his thrusts slow, he pulls you back against his chest, his arms wrapping around your body possessively. You can feel his heart pounding against your back, his breath still ragged as he recovers. it feels intimate with him. his cum deep inside of you while his cock softens, and he keeps you so close to him. 

when both of you catch your breaths, heeseung falls into his new routine of cleaning you up and making sure you’re okay before he lays back down in bed beside you. 

the routine is repetitive and comforting. you feel safe and cared for while your with heeseung. it’s something you’ve never felt with anyone before. and you especially never though you would feel this with lee heeseung. 

but over the past few weeks that you’ve been hooking up with him, the more you’ve gotten to know him– the things he likes, hates, some personal things that he’s never told anyone before except for you. 

you feel like heeseung has become someone you can rely on. he’s been there for you more than your friends have been recently. he’s there when you’re sad, frustrated, stressed and happy. you’ve seen more sides of him than you thought he even had during the weeks you’ve been tangled in his sheets with him. 

you’re scared that you’ve started to catch feelings for lee heeseung. 

the thought is almost too much for you. you instinctively stand up from his bed and start to pull on your clothes. heeseung stayed laying in his bed, his arm draped over his head on the pillow. he watched you start to dress silently. 

“you know,” heeseung smirks playfully, “it’s so great you’re not clingy.” 

you froze, looking back at him. "what do you mean?" you asked, trying to keep your voice steady. you hear a sense of sarcasm in his tone, his eyes hold a look of teasing. 

heeseung shrugged casually. "you're not clingy like other girls. it's refreshing."

the words stung more than you'd care to admit. "yeah, sure," you replied, your tone colder than you intended. the thought of him being with other girls besides you makes you tense up. it reminds you of what you and heeseung really are. you are not in a relationship at all. he can freely hook up with other girls all he wants. he’s not yours. 

heeseung seemed to take your response lightly. "i mean, no drama, no expectations. it's perfect, right?"

something in you snapped. "perfect?" you echoed, you turn to face him, standing in only your panties and t shirt, pants in your hand. "is that all you see this as? some drama-free convenience?"

heeseung frowned, clearly taken aback by your sudden change in tone. he sits up in his bed when he answers, "what's with you? you're overthinking this."

you scoffed, feeling your frustration boil over. "i'm not overthinking anything. i'm just... i don't know, expecting a little more respect maybe?"

heeseung rolled his eyes dismissively which only fueled your anger. "oh, come on. don't be like that. we agreed this was casual, no strings attached."

"yeah, we did," you snapped, grabbing your bag. "but that doesn't mean you get to treat me like i'm some disposable... i don't know, thing!"

heeseung sighed, running a hand through his hair. "i'm just joking, okay? you're taking it too seriously."

"just joking?" you repeated, your voice rising. "god, you really don't get it, do you? i'm not asking for much, just a little acknowledgment that I'm a person with feelings."

heeseung stands up, his own annoyance beginning to show. "look, if you want to end this, just say so."

you stared at him, hurt and anger mixing into a painful lump in your throat. "maybe I do," you said, heading for the door. "maybe I don't want to be just another convenient hookup for you."

you hear him try to stop you by calling your name, but your hand was on the door knob and pulling it open. 

only then, you freeze in place. standing in the hallway were two older adults, looking at you with curious expressions.

“oh, hello,” the woman said, her eyebrows raising slightly.

you felt your cheeks burn with embarrassment. “um, hi,” you stammered, glancing back at heeseung, who was now standing behind you, only in his boxers and you with your pants in your hand. 

“heeseung?” the man, presumably his father, spoke, looking over your shoulder at his son. “is this your friend?”

before you could say anything, heeseung stepped forward, putting his arm around your shoulders. “yeah, this is yn,” he said smoothly. “mom, dad, this is my girlfriend.”

you blinked in surprise, looking up at him with wide eyes. girlfriend?

“nice to meet you,” his mom said, smiling warmly. “we’ll just wait downstairs while you two… get dressed.”

they turned and walked back down the stairs, leaving you standing in the doorway, stunned. you closed the door and whirled around to face heeseung. you were embarrassed, frustrated, angry and confused. 

“what the hell was that?” you hissed, trying to keep your voice down.

heeseung shrugged, looking a bit sheepish. “they always want me to have a girlfriend. and you were in my bedroom, so… just play it cool, okay?”

“play it cool?” you echoed, groaning in frustration. “this is so not cool, heeseung.”

he raised his hands defensively. “look, it’s just for now. they won’t stay long. just go with it, please?”

you sighed, rubbing your temples. this was the last thing you needed right now, but you were stuck. “fine,” you muttered. “but you owe me for this.”

once you and heeseung were dressed, you made your way downstairs. his parents were waiting in the living room, and they both stood up when you entered. you could tell they were slightly disgruntled from the mess that was in the frat kitchen. but what could they really expect from five frat boys living together?

“it’s so nice to meet you properly,” his mom said, pulling you into a warm hug. you stiffened slightly, not used to this kind of affection from someone else’s parents. his dad followed suit, giving you a firm handshake.

“how long have you two been dating?” his dad asked, looking between you and heeseung.

“only a few months,” heeseung answered smoothly.

“are you in college as well?” his mom inquired.

you nodded. “yes, i am.”

heeseung glanced at his phone and then at his parents. “actually, yn has to get to class soon anyway.”

“it was lovely meeting you, yn,” his mom said with a warm smile. “we’d love for you to join us at our beach house this summer. heeseung always has a great time there, and we’d be delighted for you to meet the rest of the family.”

you glanced at heeseung, who raised his eyebrows, silently urging you to play along. “yeah, sure,” you said, forcing a smile. “it was so nice meeting you both.”

you made your way to the door, feeling the weight of the situation settle in. as you stepped outside, your thoughts swirled with confusion. what was happening between you and heeseung?

his words and reminders of your no strings attached deal shouldn’t bother you; but they did. and the fact that you were here, meeting his parents and getting wrapped up in his family plans, only made things more complicated.you knew deep down that you wouldn’t be hurt by his words if you weren’t catching feelings for him. you realize that for once, you were the one breaking the no-strings-attached deal.

you were sitting in your dorm room with gracie and yooyeon, the three of you sprawled out on the floor with snacks and textbooks scattered around. you needed to be with your friends after the morning you had meeting heeseung parents. 

“so, how’s heeseung?” yooyeon asks you over her biology textbook. it’s like she could read your mind. 

“he’s uh, good.” you reply, your eyes not leaving your notes. 

“are you still hooking up with him?” gracie tilts her head to look at you. you nod in response hesitantly, because after today you weren’t sure if you were. “what’s wrong? i can tell you’re upset.” 

you sigh and put your papers down, looking at your friends. their faces are etched in concern as they  look at you. they know you so well. 

“well uh, i think i’m catching feelings for heeseung,” you admitted, glancing down at your hands. you find it hard to look at them as you tell them the secret you’ve been hiding from them. 

gracie immediately frowned. “yn, he’s a loser. he doesn’t deserve a great girl like you.”

yooyeon nodded in agreement. “seriously, you can do so much better.”

you groan and cover your face with your hands. you throw your head back so it rests on the backside of the couch. “i know, i know. but, sometimes he can be… sweet. but then today we fought, and he just- i don’t know. he doesn’t have feelings for me and it hurts.” 

just then, your phone rang, interrupting the conversation. gracie’s eyes widened. “is that heeseung, now?”

you looked at the caller id and nodded. “yeah, it’s him.”

“well, don’t answer it,” yooyeon said firmly. “he doesn’t deserve your time.”

you sighed, feeling a pang of guilt as you put the phone down without answering it. the ringtone stopped, leaving an awkward silence in the room.

“i know you have feelings for him,” gracie said gently, “but you deserve someone who feels the same way about you.”

yooyeon added, “you’re worth more than some guy who only wants sex.” 

you forced a smile, trying to push away the lingering disappointment. “thanks, guys. you’re right.”

you sat back and tried to enjoy the night with your friends, but your mind kept drifting back to heeseung. despite your best efforts, you couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe, just maybe, there was more to him than what he was showing you. that maybe in another universe lee heeseung could like you back.

the next night, you lay in bed, you’d skip the entire day of classes. you’d told gracie and yooyeon you were sick, but you knew they saw through the lie. your mind was a tangled mess of thoughts and feelings for heeseung. you couldn’t stop thinking about how sweet he was with you, how he took care of you, listened to you, and comforted you. he made you laugh when you were sad, and that meant more than you ever wanted to admit.

suddenly, your phone buzzed with a new text message. it was from heeseung.

heeseung: [i'm sorry about yesterday] [9:38] heeseung: [but i really need you] [9:38] heeseung: [i'm so hard right now] [9:39] heeseung: [i keep thinking of your pussy] [9:39]

you stared at the message, your heart racing. memories of your conversation with gracie and yooyeon the day before played in your mind. they were right, heeseung was a player, and you knew you shouldn’t be getting so attached. but despite knowing this, your heart ached for him.

after a moment of hesitation, you sighed and typed out a response.

yn: [i’ll be there in 30] [9:42]

as you hit send, you tried to ignore the sinking feeling in your chest, telling yourself it was just casual. but deep down, you knew it was more than that for you. you threw on some clothes, grabbed your bag, and headed out, trying to convince yourself that you were making the right choice.

you show up at heeseung’s house, and he lets you in, leading you up to his room. unlike all the other times, it feels awkward. the usual comfort and ease between you two is missing, replaced by a tension that is seemingly suffocating. 

heeseung closes the door behind you, and you both stand there for a moment, unsure of what to do or say. finally, he breaks the silence.

“i’m sorry about yesterday,” heeseung says, his voice low. “i was just trying to joke because you got up from the bed so fast. i didn’t know how to respond. you were leaving so quick.”

you nod, understanding but still feeling a bit hurt. “i get it. it just... caught me off guard, that’s all.”

he continues, “and thanks for pretending with my parents. i just, always disappoint them, and i didn’t want to this time. i knew they’d love you.”

you smile shyly, feeling a mix of emotions. heeseung steps closer, wrapping his arms around your waist. his touch is warm, and you find yourself leaning into him despite everything.

“come on, smile for me,” heeseung says softly, trying to lighten the mood. his eyes search yours, and he leans in, and you let him. you let him press his lips against yours in a soft, gentle kiss. a kiss that shouldn’t be done between two people who have a no strings attached agreement. 

the kiss is tender, different from all the others. it feels like he’s pouring all his unspoken words and feelings into it. you melt into his embrace, the awkwardness slowly fading away. for a moment, everything feels right again. 

"i need you," he murmurs, his eyes searching yours as he pulls back slightly.

you lean in and capture his lips in another kiss, pouring all your feeling into it, wanting him to know without a doubt how much he affects you. heeseung's hands roamed your body, caressing your curves with a tenderness that made your heart melt.

as you kisses grew more heated, you realized how badly you wanted him now. you needed to fele him inside of you. you let him push you down onto his bed. neither of you talk as you both rush to get undressed. ripping off your clothes and throwing them onto his floor into one big messy pile. 

without even thinking, you turn onto your knees. you know heeseung loves fucking you from the back by now. he’s told you over and over again how it’s his favourite position. it allowed him to take control and watch his cock slide in and out of your wet pussy. 

heeseung’s hands wrapped around your hips, you could feel him lean down and press a soft kiss onto your back, “can i fuck you in missionary? i wanna see your beautiful face.” his compliment makes your cheeks turn red, but you let him turn you over so your head is in his pillow. 

heeseung positioned himself above you. your legs on either side of his waist as he guided his hard length to your entrance. you gasped as he slowly sank into you, his eyes never leaving yours. the expression on his face was one of pure adoration that made your heart skip. 

heeseung’s hands gripped your thighs, holding onto you as he thrusted into you. “you feel so fucking good," he groaned, his eyes fluttering shut for a moment before snapping back open to look at you. "i love watching my cock disappear inside that tight pussy."

you moaned at his words, your head falling back as pleasure washed over you. but you quickly brought your gaze back to his, wanting to drink in the sight of him losing control. his eyes were dark with desire, his usually cocky smile softened by a look of raw need.

heeseung’s eyes don’t leave you. his hands trail down your stomach, “god you’re so beautiful- so soft.” 

you whine in response, loving how gentle he was being with you. it was different from all the other times you’ve had sex. it was slow, and passionate. 

his fingers reach down where your bodies are meeting and starts to rub slow circles on your clit, making you cry out. 

heeseung leans over your body and presses his lips onto yours. the kiss isn’t sloppy and wet like his usual kisses during sex. it’s full of something that you aren’t sure of. it’s sweet and gentle. 

his cock continues to thrust into you, filling you up. the intimacy between you makes the coil in your stomach start to unwind quicker than ever. it all feels so close and almost, loving. 

“heeseung,” you whimper out against his lips. 

his eyes flew open, locking with yours as you continued to move together in perfect sync. you could see the passion and intensity in his gaze, and you felt yourself falling even deeper.

"cum for me, baby," he urged, his voice hoarse with longing. "let me feel you tighten around me."

your breath hitched as you felt your orgasm building. heeseung quickened his pace slight. your hips starting to move to meet his as you both chased the release that was so close. 

"that's it, baby," he encouraged, his eyes never leaving yours. "cum for me. let go."

with a cry, you surrendered to the pleasure, your body shaking as you fell over the edge. heeseung followed soon after, his eyes rolling back in his head as he filled you with his release. cumming together even felt more intimate this time. 

heeseung pulls out of you and moves to lay beside you. both of you are catching your breaths. it feels overwhelming for you. his touches are gentle as he traces his fingers down your arm. he’s pressing soft, lingering kisses into your shoulder. this doesn’t feel like something casual; it feels like love, like a relationship. a relationship that you suddenly realize you want. but you know heeseung doesn't want the same, and that realization hits you like a ton of bricks.

you feel like you have no other option than to jump out of his bed. to get away from him. you start trying to get dressed quickly, but tears start to fall, blurring your vision. your breaths are hitched as you try to grab your clothes. 

behind you, heeseung sits up, concern etched on his face. 

“what’s wrong?” heeseung asks, but you ignore him, the emotions are too raw and painful. “please, tell me,” he continued to pry, his voice breaking with worry.

you start to head for the door. your heart and head telling you two opposite things. but when you reach the handle, heeseung has already stood up and grabbed your arm. he spins you around so your body is pressed between him and his door. he’s pulling you close to him so you’re forced to look at him through your tears. “did i hurt you, baby? i didn’t mean to if i did, you couldn’t told me to stop, i-”

you dryly laugh, because his concern that he may have physically hurt you makes you fall for him harder. he’s too gentle with you, too sweet. 

“no, you didn’t,” you say, choking on your tears.

“then why are you crying? tell me, baby,” heeseung pleads, his eyes searching yours.

you take a shaky breath, finally letting the words tumble out. “because i want more than this, heeseung. i want a relationship. i want you.” he stays silent as he stares at you, “but i know, we made a no strings attached deal. so i understand that we don’t want the same thing anymore.” 

heeseung’s eyes widen in surprise, and he gently sits you back down on the bed. he wipes your tears away, his touch tender and comforting. part of you wants to melt into his touch, and the other part is screaming at you to leave. 

“yn, i’ve loved you since i met you at that very first party,” he confesses, his voice soft but sure. “i didn’t think you’d ever feel the same about me. i mean, i had heard so many times that you’re only into casual sex, so i didn’t think i’d have a shot.”

you look at him, your heart swelling with relief and joy. “really?”

“really,” he says, smiling. “i was an idiot for not telling you sooner.”

you laugh through your tears, “we were both idiots.” 

heeseung leans in, and you both share a sweet, deep kiss. the first kiss that doesn’t have any hidden intentions. both of your true feelings were out in the open, allowing you to feel them in this kiss. 

heeseung pulls back, a mischievous glint in his eyes. “so, does this mean i can call you my girlfriend now?”

you laugh, playfully shoving him. “shut up, heeseung.”

he grins, pulling you into another kiss.

the sun was setting over the horizon, casting a warm, golden hue over the beach. you, gracie, and yooyeon are lounging on beach chairs outside heeseung’s family beach house. the soft sound of cicadas from the day were quieting out. 

gracie sips her drink and looks over at you with a teasing smile. “why didn’t become casual with heeseung sooner, yn?”

yooyeon nods in agreement. “yeah, we could’ve been spending our summers here all along. this place is amazing.”

you laugh, “because he was the “walking std” remember?” gracie and yooyeon laugh and clink their drinks together before drinking from them. 

as you’re laughing at them for celebrating your relationship,  you feel a pair of arms wrap around you from behind, and you squeal in surprise as heeseung kisses the side of your neck.

“well i guess you were right,” heeseung says in your ear. 

“about what?” you question him as you look upwards.

“being casual with me wouldn’t work out.” 

everyone bursts into laughter. you lean into heeseung’s embrace as he sits down beside you, feeling his warmth and comfort that have become so familiar to you. 

“yeah, i think we figured that out,” you say, smiling up at him.

heeseung kisses you again, and you close your eyes, savoring the moment. surrounded by your friends and the boy you love, everything feels perfect. 

you love being in a relationship.

you’ve realized the finding someone special, who makes your heart race and brings joy to your life is easier than pushing everyone away. you’ve learnt to find comfort in the depth and connection that comes with a committed relationship. there’s something beautiful about sharing your life, dreams, and fears with someone who truly cares. you no longer want any fleeting encounters with no meaning.

and you’re happy that you’ve found that with lee heeseung (even if he is kind of annoying).

@ taeghi, 2024. do not repost or reuse in anyway.

PLEASE REBLOG IF YOU ENJOY, AS LIKES MAKE IT HARD FOR WORK TO BE SPREAD AND ENJOYED BY OTHERS :)

stay safe everyone :)

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[sankttealeaf]

Can I request Tav and astarion but they get trapped together and astarion has to feed but feels like Tav offering isn’t really giving consent since they are trapped and he thinks they feel obligated. Bonus points if they’re also bickering and pining for other

this was so much fun to write! i may have gotten a little carried away but i hope you enjoy!! requests are still open if anyone is interested<3 i'm really enjoying writing these and am open for more ideas!!

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

trapped

pairing ; astarion x gender neutral!reader

summary ; a wild treasure hunt leads to an unfortunate situation where you find yourself stuck in a cave-in with Astarion. / ao3

other info ; wyll, karlach and gale get special roles in this because i physically cannot stop myself from including other companions in the background. no real spoilers for the game so you're free to read wherever you are in the game!!

warnings ; vampire feeding, blood mention, vague mention of Astarion's past, general conversation surrounding consent (but everything is consensual because that's hot)

word count ; 5.9k (again. went a little wild)

You have no idea how long you have been walking for. It feels like days though you are certain it was only a few hours. The lack of sunlight is starting to get to you and the cramped cave system you are walking through is really not where you wanted to be today.

Was it a little ridiculous to be chasing a lead you found on a note on a dead traveller? Probably. Did you have to convince everyone that it wouldn't be a waste of their time? Yes. But here you are, travelling in the dark to hunt down buried treasure.

Karlach was more than happy to join you, in fact she was the first one who volunteered to be part of the “treasure hunting team”, as she called it. She managed to get Wyll involved and you were happy with this group. As you were getting ready to leave you had a last minute addition to the team - Astarion. Why he wanted to join you trekking through a damp cave, you had no idea. You weren’t going to ask, either.

So, here you are in the depths of a cave system, following a badly drawn map that should lead you all to hidden treasure. It took you way too long to get to this location and the day is already drawing to a close. You are certain you weren’t going to make it back to camp before nightfall. This treasure has to be worth it.

Through flooded areas and tight walkways, the deeper you get into the cave the quicker your hopes that this treasure would be easy to find crumbles. On the map it looks simple, yet the actual cave was difficult to navigate and you are not as prepared as you thought you would be. Perhaps you should have taken the spare rope from Halsin before you left camp. Karlach spends the time picking up interesting rocks she comes across, rushing over to show you with a grin on her face and a list of places to put it back at camp. You have a few rocks she gave to you in your pocket and you are glad that her optimism never falters the longer you travel. Wyll has marked arrows on the walls to keep track of where you have been, which is an idea that didn't even cross your mind until you noticed him doing it. And Astarion is… complaining.

Maybe complaining is the wrong word. It's more like he has been announcing loudly how he thought this would be an easy task to complete. He didn't sign up to be wading through knee deep cave water or scrambling over rocks to get to the next area. Neither did you, but you aren’t complaining about it.

You have managed to drown out his comments for the most part, keeping your focus on following the map and making sure not to get lost. There have been a few times where you almost walked on some loose stone and went plummeting down into the depths of the cave and you really didn't fancy getting stuck down here. You have also noticed the further you went into the cave the more dust and debris that fell from the ceiling. A sinking feeling begins to settle in your stomach and you approach each step with caution.

“Personally I think this map is leading us to a dead end,” Astarion says as he slinks up next to you, ignoring how lost in focus you were. “We should cut our losses and return back to camp before nightfall, don’t you agree?”

The dust from the ceiling drops in front of you again as you pause, reaching an arm out to stop Astarion in his tracks. “Be quiet, would you?”

“Everything alright?” Wyll asks from behind, hand reaching for his rapier in case something jumps out to attack.

Either something was down here with you or the cave ceiling isn’t as strong as you would like. You didn't know which thought was worse. Turning back to Wyll and Karlach, you shake your head slightly. “Be on your guard. Something’s off.”

“This is what I’ve been saying for the past five minutes. Have you seriously not been listening to me?” Astarion asks as you continue walking at a slower pace now, acutely aware of every foreign noise that doesn’t come from your group.

“Not really. I’m trying to keep us alive here,” you reply quietly, eyes darting from the floor to your surroundings in quick succession.

You stop in your steps as you hear the rumbling grow louder, though Astarion keeps talking even after you shush him again. It’s a rolling noise, one that grows the more you focus on it; a sound of rock against rock and a low rumble from above. You cast your gaze upwards and spot the beginnings of a large crack splitting the ceiling. Like pressure on ice, it splits into several off shoots before crumbling beneath whatever weight was on it.

You quickly pull Astarion towards you, dragging him away from the collapsing ceiling as you both fall to the floor with a thud. In an instant, your surroundings grow darker as a wall of stone and rubble barricades you and Astarion from Wyll and Karlach. The dust settles from the sudden upheaval of rock and the noise you have been hearing stops. Shit.

“Are you both alright?” Wyll calls out from behind the rubble and you can hear the sound of stone grating against stone which only cements your idea that this could be an early grave for you both if you didn't think fast.

You glance over at Astarion who is dusting himself off, rubbing at his elbow in a way that makes you assume he landed on it wrong. “We’re alive… just.”

“Does the map show any other ways to get to you? I’m not certain we can budge all this stone…” Wyll asks as you hear the sound of metal against the stone and a disappointed sigh from Karlach. You sit upright, grabbing the map from where it fell onto the ground and frown. It was a one way system, looping back around the way you came once you got to where the treasure was. This pathway is the only way in and out of the cave. You are stuck.

“So, uh… bad news… There’s no other way around,” you reply. The silence that follows on their end is not a good sign, however it is quickly broken by Astarion.

“What?!” He looks at you in dismay, his face falling at the thought of being stuck here. “You cannot be serious.”

“We’ll find a way to get you guys out! Don’t even stress!” Karlach yells. Her voice gets quiet but you can still hear her. “Do you think they’re stressed, Wyll?”

You take a moment to assess the cave-in, trying to budge a few rocks out of place but nothing moves. Perhaps with enough force they could be displaced, but you don’t have anything on that level right now.

“Wyll? Do you have anything that could push the rocks away?” you ask, hoping he has something in or on him that could force the rocks out of place.

“I don’t…” he pauses for a moment, before you hear him click his fingers together as an idea forms. “But Gale does. I know the spell you are hinting at. We can go back and get him?” he suggests, and you run the time it would take for them to get back to camp and back here again in your head. They would be back by early morning at the earliest… Which means you will need to spend the night in a cold, slightly damp cave. You give Astarion a look.

“Don’t look at me like that. I’m not going to dig our way out. My hands are way too delicate for that,” he says, turning his back to the problem at hand.

“Gale seems to be our only way out, which means we may need to spend the night here…” you tell him.

“Gale? Our only hope? What is he going to do, talk the rocks to death?” He rolls his eyes. “Surely there’s another way out?”

“There isn’t.” You sigh, rubbing at your temples as you begin to feel a stress headache forming. “And he can use spells, Astarion. Gale can shatter the rocks or something. They’re too tightly packed to move them normally. We’re stuck here until he can sort it out.”

“Great. Wonderful, actually. I’ve always wanted to spend a night in a cave. Thanks for this, really!” His voice drips with sarcasm and you have to physically hold yourself back from getting annoyed at him.

“I didn't personally cause this cave in! You think I want to be stuck here with you like this? Gods, you are infuriating.”

Before the argument could escalate, Wyll calls out from behind the wall of rocks that he and Karlach are going to head back to camp and grab Gale. They’ll be as quick as they can, he promises. It gives you some reassurance that you will not be stuck here for too long with Astarion.

The sound of your fellow companions leaving fills you with anxiety as the clock begins to tick on getting you both out alive. This is not how you planned this trip to go and you are starting to wonder if this was even worth it at this point. Astarion didn't seem to think so.

"For your information, I am not sleeping on the floor with no bedroll. This is expensive fabric, I’m not ruining it.” Astarion gestures to his outfit as you begin to set yourself down on the ground, ready to call it a day.

“We’ve camped in worse places, I don’t understand why you’re complaining so much about this,” you say, rummaging through your bag and thanking the Gods you packed some food for yourself.

“At least at camp I have my tent. And all my belongings. And comfort. Do I need to go on?” He shifts in his stance, looking down the tunnel to avoid your gaze.

You glare at him. “Okay, fine, I guess this isn’t an ideal place to rest. But I don’t want to travel too far in case we get lost. And then we’ll probably die down here. Do you want that?”

He sighs but doesn’t make a comment. You take it as a win.

After placing the contents of your bag onto the ground you come to two conclusions. One: the floor is far too damp to start a fire which means you are going to spend the next few hours cold. Two: you have enough food for yourself, but you aren’t sure if Astarion bought anything of use with him. You didn't see him pack much before he said he was joining you. He is still standing when you look over to him again.

“Are you going to stand all night?” you ask as he nods, still avoiding your gaze.

“Like I said. Expensive fabric. I’m not ruining it because someone got us trapped in here,” he replies and you roll your eyes. Wordlessly, you unbuckle your cloak from your shoulders and place it down on the floor for him. The dampness of the floor is most likely going to ruin your nice and expensive cloak, but at least it will stop him complaining. Hopefully.

He looks from you to the cloak and back again, confusion crossing his face and disappearing as quickly as it arrived. “What’s that for?”

“Just sit down. Please.” You start to reorganise the contents of your back, returning the tinderbox and an almost empty waterskin but keeping out the food you swiped before you left. When you look back up, you see Astarion has sat down atop your cloak. You hold back a smile.

The silence that falls over the both of you is broken by droplets of water or the sound of other vaguely ominous cave noises. If your timing is right you are certain it was now early evening. Hopefully Karlach and Wyll have left the cave by now.

“Did you bring any food?” you ask after a little while passes. It’s only when the question leaves your lips that you realise it is a stupid one. The look Astarion gives you only enhances your point.

“Yes, actually. I have three live rabbits tucked neatly away in my bag in case I fancied a snack,” he responds, opening up his pack with a flourish. “Did you want one? I’m so happy to share.” A few books and his trusty thieves tools were the only things you spot before he shoves his bag to the side with a frown. “Of course I didn't bring any food.”

You feel bad holding a stale bread roll in your hand as he tells you that and you lower it down slightly, letting him continue his rant.

“I was considering going to hunt down a cave bat or something. Not what I wanted, but I guess a life of “adventure”-” he says the word with exaggerated air quotes around them, “means that I bury the idea that I’ll ever get a lavish meal again.” He crosses his arms in annoyance.

“You shouldn’t eat a bat. You could get sick. Rabies, or something like that,” you tell him, though you aren’t sure your fun fact is a welcomed sight right now. The look on his face tells you that it isn't. “Halsin told me that after I tried to convince him to keep a family of bats that were living near one of the spots we set up camp a while ago…”

Astarion blinks, unsure of how he is supposed to react to that nugget of information. “Now my meal options have been reduced to nothing. Thanks. You’re truly a beacon of hope.”

An idea pings into your mind as you take in how irritated he is getting, most likely from the lack of food on his part. Not that you have been keeping tabs on when he would feed but from your calculations it had been a while. The last time he fed on you was a week or so ago and you still felt the sting of his fangs against your neck even now. It is an uncomfortable sensation and you were certain that it would only happen again in dire circumstances.

This feels like a dire circumstance…

“You can feed on me if you want.” The words come out quickly before you have a chance to think too deeply about the implications of it. You take a mouthful of bread to stop yourself from taking back the offer.

The irritation on his face dissipates into a softer look, one you didn't recognize. His usual quick remarks have vanished at your suggestion and it takes him a good minute to respond. The minute feels like hours to you as you start to regret even offering. Was it weird? Did you say it in a strange way?

“You don’t… I mean, I’m sure I’ll manage until we get back to camp.” He waves nonchalantly though you are unsure if he really means it.

“No offence but I have noticed you lagging behind a little lately…” you begin, unable to hold your gaze on him. “I just assumed, well, y’know… Plus I have a lot of blood to spare, so I don’t mind.” You cringe a little at that last sentence, wondering why you said it like that.

“It’s really not a big deal, I’m perfectly fine! If need be I can always go and find…” he grimaces at the next few words that leave his mouth, “a cave rat or something.”

You aren’t sure if you should feel offended at how he hasn’t jumped on the opportunity to feed from a person. Maybe it is because of how little you allowed him to feed on you. Maybe he hates you and would rather drink blood from a rat than you. You push that thought away with a frown.

“Astarion, I’m offering this to you if you need to,” you say as you set down your own food. “I’d rather you do it while I’m awake this time.” You see that he is thinking of more ways to put barriers between him and feeding on you and you wish he could be straightforward with you and say no.

“You’re all the way over there and like I said before, I don’t want to get my clothes wet,” he says and you can’t help but laugh at that. “What?”

“You can tell me no, it’s okay. I just thought I’d offer seeing as I really doubt you’ll find many cave rats around.”

He’s quiet for a moment and you can’t work out what he’s thinking. With what little you know about Astarion and his past you can’t help but assume he hasn’t had that many opportunities to say no to things.

He considers his words, opening and closing his mouth a few times before sighing, looking at you with a soft frown. “I don’t want you to feel like you are obligated to do this considering our circumstance.”

You blink in confusion at that, unsure why he feels that way. You wouldn't have offered if you didn't feel comfortable in allowing him to feed, so why was he convinced you were doing this because there was no other option?

“We haven’t built up much of a feeding rapport, that’s all! We haven’t… done this much. It still feels new.” He looks away and it clicks in your head at once - he’s nervous. You are also incredibly nervous about this, but if it means he is at the top of his game afterwards then the pain would be a small price to pay for it.

“I have no idea how else I’m supposed to say this: I’m giving you permission to feed on me, Astarion.” You want to know what he is thinking as your words hang in the air. You want to tell him that this is you telling him it’s okay, you’re wanting this just as much as he needs it.

He waits a moment, like he is expecting you to tell him you're joking or change your mind but it doesn't happen. When he realises you mean this and aren't saying it for the sake of it, he gives you a nod.

"Alright. Only if you're sure," he says quietly, moving over on your cloak to give you room beside him. You move over to sit next to him, glad to be off the cold floor and sitting on something that wasn't as uncomfortable.

"Is this alright? Do you need me to be in a certain position?" you ask quickly, shifting yourself from sitting on your knees to crossing your legs.

"It's easier if you lay down," he replies, quickly adding, "for the blood flow."

"Right. That makes sense." You check to see how much room you have of your cloak behind you before shuffling forward, coming face to face with Astarion for a moment. The sudden closeness causes you to stop in your tracks for a moment, holding his gaze for a moment longer than what is normal.

It's strange how you never really see Astarion without his guard up. Whenever you two bicker it was always with his signature smile on his face and a carefree laugh after each comment. But seeing him here and now with the gentle furrow of his brows and the soft lines etched along his face you can't help but try to memorise it all. Without even realising you found yourself moving a hand up to brush some hair from his face, stopping yourself once it rested ever so lightly against his cheek. You are about to pull away until you feel him lean into the touch, something you had not planned on happening.

The sound of a loose rock falling a little way away causes the moment to break as you pull away from him quickly, ready to move in case there was another cave in.

In an instant, the facade he has is pulled back up. "Are you trying to get me to starve to my death?" he asks once you have realised there was no chance of another incident. You laugh a little in response, cheeks warming up at the moment the two of you just shared.

"Wanted the last thing I saw to be something good. You know, in case you drink all of my blood and I die," you tease, before laying back on your cloak. The reality of what was about to happen is starting to settle in now and you keep your focus on the ceiling above you, not on Astarion.

"I promise you I won't kill you. I don't have any way of getting you back and I'd rather not have to explain to the others what happened," he replies, hands moving to either side of your head to hold himself up. He's at an angle, legs staying to one side of you. It's a little awkward and you can tell it's not ideal for him.

"That's good to hear! I do bring a scroll of revivify with me everywhere so we have a backup plan… just in case." It is hard to keep your gaze on the ceiling now as Astarion leans over you. Your heart pounds heavily against your chest and you cannot work out if it's because you know you are about to lose blood and it was working to keep it flowing or perhaps because of something else you didn't want to admit to yourself.

"Are you ready?" he asks softly, and you can already anticipate the sharp sting of his fangs piercing your skin. You give him a nod and turn your head to the side, exposing your neck to him.

He leans in and you can feel his breath against your neck. It takes everything in you to not turn to look at him, even seeing him so close out of the corner of your eye was enough to redden your cheeks. You hope he didn't notice.

The sudden pain is sharp and takes you off guard, reaching to grab onto Astarion's shoulder tightly to try and take your mind off of it. It's not as bad as the first time he fed from you, but it certainly isn't any better. He shifts positions as you see his legs now straddling you, and if anyone were to suddenly burst down the wall of rock it would be a rather embarrassing encounter for everyone. You forgot how intimate this whole ordeal could be.

You close your eyes as the pain subsides, now giving way to a feeling of numbness that crashes over you. You're very aware of the feeling of his lips against your neck and it would be so easy to let yourself imagine this was something else entirely. But then you move and the discomfort of your blood being removed from your body kicks back in and you have to stop yourself from allowing him to take too much from you. You give his shoulder a soft squeeze, and when there's no response from him you are forced to find your voice.

"Hey…" You mumble, tightening your grip on his shoulder. "Astarion..?"

He does nothing except press himself closer to you, savouring every last drop he could get. Black spots begin to fill your vision and with what little strength you had in you, you smack your arm down into his side to get him to stop.

He pulls away from your neck at the impact, blood smeared across his lips and his pupils dilated - you can hardly see the red anymore. Would it be odd to say that he looked so very handsome like this?

"Shit," he says breathlessly, "might have over indulged there. Sorry."

You give him a weak laugh, feeling your head spin at the sudden blood loss. "S'alright. Just glad you didn't kill me."

His eyes glance back at your neck as you speak, and when he leans you worry that he was going in for round two. You are taken aback when he licks across the area he had just bitten. If you weren't so dizzy you would have questioned him as he sits back, still straddling your waist.

"I'm not about to waste perfectly good blood," he says, noticing the confusion on your face. "Are you alright, though? You look a little pale."

You give him a thumbs up, still laying down. "All good. Missing some blood, that's all."

He nods, watching as you close your eyes again. You could quite easily drift off to sleep right now, the dizziness and the general feeling of not being right only adding to the need to rest. When you don't feel Astarion move off of you, you open one of your eyes to make sure he was okay.

"Are you alright?" you ask, catching him deep in thought.

"Oh, yes, I'm great. Wonderful. Absolutely perfect," he replies too quickly for it to be truthful. You frown, sitting up slowly to be at eye level with him.

"Is there more blood there still?" you ask him, watching as his eyes keep going back to your neck. "If there is, you should get it."

His touch is so soft you cannot discern if he was cleaning up some blood on your neck or if it is a kiss. When it happens again you realise he isn't cleaning up your neck but kissing over the spot he had just bitten. It is a strange feeling and one you didn't expect to feel after being drained from your blood, but as he moves along your neck leaving faint kisses in his trail you wonder if perhaps he had similar feelings towards you as you did him. You have always been happy to push those feelings down, keeping your focus on the main goal at hand. But here, trapped in a cave with no one to bug you to keep on track, maybe you could indulge yourself this once.

Astarion pulls back from your neck to look at you, his lips are still tinted a softer red from your blood and you find yourself staring at them for a little too long. Gently, you place your hand back on his cheek, smiling when he leans into the touch again. His hand moves to cover yours and you are still in shock at how soft his movements are.

The gap between you both closes slowly and you are aware of what this would lead to. Playful remarks and comments about hooking up were one thing, but this was not playing out like how you imagined it would. You didn't picture yourself being stuck in a cave with him, for starters. You want to ask him if this was okay, if this was even allowed.

You opened your mouth to speak and are suddenly caught off guard by the sound of more rocks falling elsewhere, echoing through the cave. The sudden sound causes you to flinch as you both turn to look in the direction it came from, further along the tunnel. At least it wasn't the way you came, you thought.

Astarion looks back at you after a moment and clears his throat, sitting back to put some distance between you both.

"You should get some rest. I'll, uh, keep watch in case the others turn up," he says quickly, climbing off of your lap in a clumsy manner. You can't help but feel slightly sad at the loss of his touch, but sleep was begging for you to join it.

"Wake me if anything happens," you tell him as you lay back down, already closing your eyes. You don't hear his response as sleep greets you with open arms.

Sounds of your name being called over and over again wakes you up from your slumber. Your head hurts and you feel as if you've been fighting fifty different battles and didn't win one of them. There was a pressure on your chest and as you come to you are met with a mess of white hair laying on you, Astarion's arms wrapped tightly around your midriff. You smile softly at the scene, hand moving to brush through his hair slowly. He hums in response but the moment is broken by your names being called again.

"Are you both still alive?" It's Wyll, you note, which only means he and Karlach had either gotten lost and returned back or they had Gale with them.

"We're still here!" you call back, still groggy from sleep. "Is Gale with you?"

Gale's voice is heard next and you have never been so happy to hear him speak. "The one and only!"

"Thank the Gods. Gale, I promise you that I will buy you whatever you want when we get to Baldur's Gate, just please tell me you have a way to get us out of here," you say, hoping that he had good news with him.

Astarion stirs from all the loud conversation, pressing himself closer to you in an attempt to drown out the noise. You move your hand from his head as you try to sit yourself up. It doesn't work.

Gale continues speaking. "I have a way to get you both out, don't you worry. I will need to ask you both to stand as far back as possible. I mean it. Far. Back."

You give Astarion a shake of his shoulder, trying to wake him. "Hey. Get up. We're almost out of here."

"This is not a good time to wake me up," he grumbles, swatting your hand away with a groan. "Too early."

"Gale is literally on the other side ready to blow this wall of rocks up. Wake up." You continue to shake him awake, ignoring the groans of protest.

He turns to look up at you with pleading eyes. "He can wait five more minutes. Please?"

You want to say yes, to give in and allow himself a moment of comfort. But your back hurts from laying on rock for hours and you want nothing more than to sit in your own tent and get some fresh air. You sit up quickly, causing Astarion to lose his place on your chest and sit up with you.

"I cannot believe this betrayal," he exclaims dramatically, giving you a half-asleep but playful glare. "Being this pretty doesn't come easy, you know. I need my sleep."

"You don't even sleep," you mumble, ignoring how your head sways as you push yourself up to your feet. "And you're pretty enough already." You blame the aches and pains for that last comment, though it doesn't seem to go past Astarion as quickly as you wish it did.

He grins. "You think I'm pretty?"

"Shut up and move your things. I want to get back to camp." You begin to pack away your belongings, shoving things back into your pack and waiting for Astarion to do the same. He picks up your cloak and gives it a quick brush off before putting it on himself. You're too busy putting distance between yourself and the rocks to even notice this. He slides up next to you after a moment, arm wrapping around your shoulder with a grin.

"Okay, I think you're good to go!" you yell, hoping Gale can hear you through the wall. You get confirmation almost immediately afterwards.

You feel Astarion lean towards you as you wait. "I think we should get trapped together more often. Who knows what else it could lead to?"

"More puncture holes in my neck, probably," you mumble in response. He laughs, his lips meeting your neck again just under the place where he drank from you hours ago.

"But you're so delectable," he whispers and you glare at him. The blush rising on your cheeks tells him you aren't mad.

With an almighty crash of thunder, the rocks that made up the wall you have been trapped behind suddenly disperse, the larger ones shattering and the smaller ones turning into dust. You cover your face at the impact and when your ears stop ringing you turn to see Gale, Wyll and Karlach on the other side.

Karlach immediately runs over, arms outstretched and embracing both you and Astarion without thinking.

"I'm so glad you both aren't dead. I have no idea how I'd break the news to Scratch and the Cub! Or everyone else, I suppose," she says once she lets go of you both, your clothes slightly singed by the warmth emanating from her.

"Did you find the treasure?" Gale asks when the three of you walk back to him and Wyll and is only slightly disappointed when you shake your head no. "Ah, well, nothing lost then! I'm sure there's plenty of other treasure to be found. Hopefully not in caves, though. Might I suggest avoiding them in the future?"

"Suggestion taken. I miss sunlight," you reply, feeling Astarion's hand move from your shoulder to the small of your back.

"We had fun though, didn't we? A cave-in can certainly bring people closer together. Right, my dear?" Astarion grins, giving you a wink.

"As much as we all would love to know what that's insinuating, we really should get out of here before there's another freak accident," Wyll suggests, gesturing to the way out.

You nod, wanting nothing more than to breathe fresh air and be away from cramped spaces.

The journey out of the cave is long and feels longer due to the woozy feeling of having a little less blood than you started the journey with. You find yourself leaning on Astarion for support every now and then and he is more than happy to wrap an arm around you to keep you up. The two of you are at the back of the group; you didn't want your slow pace slowing everyone else down.

"I never thanked you earlier," Astarion says quietly to you, a look of sincerity on his face.

"Oh, it's no problem," you reply, nudging him with your elbow. "Just don't almost kill me next time."

"Next time?" He raises an eyebrow with a grin. "You'll allow me to go for seconds?"

"As long as you treat me as nicely as you did afterwards, I may consider it." Thinking about the almost kiss that happened after makes you blush and Astarion shrugs casually, though you can spot the faintest hint of pink spreading across his cheeks.

"Maybe. We can always do that without the biting part," he suggests. "Only if you want."

"I'd like that." You give him a smile, leaning over to press a kiss onto his cheek. "Only if you want, too."

The first sign of daylight causes you to pull away from him before he can respond as you rush over to the opening of the cave with Karlach, thankful to get fresh air again.

Astarion watches you go, listening to you cheering and praising Gods you didn't believe in. How quickly his plans could crumble. How quickly you made him feel accepted. There was a knot present in his stomach that was slowly untangling itself the more he thought about intimacy with you. Perhaps, one day, he would want that with you.

[pygmi-says-hi]

how to write romantic tension

we all love enemies to lovers but some of you get to the lovers part so fast you don't even finish typing 'enemies'. enemthey'refuckingnow to lovers. which is ok if that's what you wanna read but personally, my favorite part is the tension.

So...

Off we go!

What makes a good enemies to lovers story?

Believable tension, likeably irritating themes, and potential. Among other things, but this is what I want to talk about with the 'tension' perspective. There needs to be a good reason, obstacle, and rapport. If they're mad at each other just because, idgaf.

I want to write this but I dunno how to frame the tension?

It's kind of a tricky trope, to be honest. Enemies/rivals/foes however you wanna pitch it, takes an interesting twist on seductive emotions.

pride. a feeling of self-sufficiency, power over somebody else, or superiority. How would this play into a relationship type deal? Well:

Pride in a relationship or in regards to another person can involve a feeling of equivalence. "Do I feel unworthy of them?" "Are they out of my league?" "will the way people perceive me change if I go for it?" Social insecurity is a big aspect, and so the frustration that comes with that leads to friction because of the character's insistence on keeping their dignity. which leads me to the next point...

vulnerability. Attraction to another person is accompanied by a feeling of vulnerability and openness. This is always a hard position to be in, especially if extenuating circumstances make honesty impossible (power imbalance, politics, etc). If a character feels too vulnerable and exposed, they might shield themself with aloofness and sharp words.

desperation/yearning. They have to want each other. the only thing stopping themselves is each other. It's overcoming the above emotions to reach the point where they have no choice but to accept it. Throughout the whole deal, there should be an undercurrent of desire.

When all of those come together, it creates an emotional battle. This battle has several war tactics (hittin with the allegories today dayum)

banter. a favorite of all. wonderfully tense and combative conversation that highlights the reason for disagreement and the romantic tension. 10/10

self-sabotage. like, ohthey'resoclosetheirhandsaretouchingoooohnope. someone chickened out, heard something from someone that made them reconsider, plans changed, they felt angry and ruined the whole deal. back to square one. it's like edging your readers. (ew but you know what i mean. bring em up to bring em down)

miscommunication. "I thought you hated me." "only because I thought you did too..." love it. beautiful. or, there was miscommunication years ago that led to a deep rift when actually, it was entirely unfounded.

and many more...

Another important point:

There needs to be progress. Slow and steady wins the race, but even slow means going forward. If you throw too much tension and obstacles in the way, it gets old really fast. Give them baby steps to take. It'll keep people interested.

Internal turmoil:

Oh, that wonderful period when they know it's inevitable but they're so terrified of it happening....pick an emotional direction.

Are they scared? Hiding from their attraction? Are they angry? Frustrated that they can't have them/became attracted? Are they desperate? So in love that they act out of pure lust?

What is the character's opinion of what is going on? Pick reactions and convo that corresponds with that. Enemies to lovers doesn't always mean sass-battles and hate sex. It can also be someone cold and cut off slowly warming up. Or somebody shy and critical becoming relaxed and open-minded. there are sooooo many opportunities for good emotional depth, spice it up a little!

Things to improve on:

Working on banter/bickering. This is really funny, but the banter should have some kind of meat to it. random back-and-forths are a nice palate cleanser, but so often it just sounds petty. Incorporate plot and past disagreements with it. it'll add depth to the relationship without needing to do a prologue or exposition paragraph.

Not just making them hate fuck and then be head over heels. (I mean if you wanna write/read that, go ahead, but if you're frustrated with the transition stage, I gotchu.) It is a weird moment of going from 'fuck you' to 'fuck me' to 'ilysm'. AWKWARD STAGES ARE OKAY!!!!! It's gonna be a bit of a new thing, esp for the characters. Great opportunity for wholesomeness; if they're trying really hard to get better but don't know how?? UGHH I EATTT IT.

hopefully this provides some pointers?

xox keep writing, comment/message any questions or requests!

[dushysworld]

Journey of a Human soul through different Signs/Nakshatras :

> We will consider each sign as a stage of a soul when it is sent here on this planet to experience different aspects of life from birth to death.

1. Aries ♈, at this stage the soul is very very immature, even at times too demanding *just like a little child who gets angry or cries when things don't go their way*. But the most important thing about this sign is its honesty and assertiveness. It never shy away from speaking the truth even if its harsh. Still a stage when the soul has just begun its journey of understanding basics of life but has to work more on their subconscious as their subconscious is what keeps them in the backfoot.

The first part of Aries *Ashwini* makes a person very headstrong and very very quick with each and every task that they set to accomplish. They don't like to listen to what others have to say about their work or way of working since Ashwini is a Ketu ruled Nakshatra which makes it detached at times from their dear ones especially because it is only then they learn the basic meaning of independence. Ketu makes them disciplined at a very young age. *More about nakshatras in depth in other post for sure*.

The second part *Bharani* makes a person with enormous amount of

tolerance or patience for literally anything in life. Bharani influenced are often seen in caretaking facilities and hospitals which is no wonder they like to help and nurture people as much as possible. Some of these natives are also rigid and stubborn when it comes to their expenses as they spend recklessly and don't think twice.

The last part *1st pada of Kritika* makes someone who's a great leader but lacks proper finance management knowledge. They are also counted among impulsive shoppers because of their nature to get the most luxurious or solid item that's out there.

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Basically at the Aries ♈ stage a soul is still quite impulsive and lacks proper analysis that is required to work/function at the best level. Still Aries makes a soul honest, diligent and confident in their decisions.

2. Taurus ♉, at this stage the soul has started to understand about materialistic and other values from the family and elders especially. *Just like the little kid who likes to play with toys and gets possessive over things which it owns*. The best about this sign is that the soul here is very very loyal but at times can act stubborn instead of thinking practically.

The first part of Taurus *Last three padas of Kritika* makes a person very materialistic, lack emotional stability at times but brings greater understanding of humans due to early success. Are often seen leading many companies where the ego 🌞 is important.

The second part of Taurus *Rohini* is yet another best placements especially for moon to be at since Moon & Rohini are closely linked in Vedic.

Storytime: *as according to the Vedic history, Moon/Chandra had 27 wives (all these constellations), but he truly loved Rohini and spent most of his time with her due to which the other sisters complained to their father Prajapati Daksha(the first son that Lord Brahma/creator of the universe had in first manvantra), which later resulted in Daksha giving Chandra the curse that his light would get completely turned into darkness (which is the new moon today). But later after requests of Chandra and other deities, Lord Shiva 🕉️(The Destroyer of Universe) decreased the effect of the curse by granting Moon the wish to keep changing its lunar cycle. *Instead of always being a full moon, now the moon was supposed to undergo various cycles for almost a month.

Rohini part of Taurus makes a person involved in beauty, luxury and other comforts of live with keen interest in family & personal endeavours. This makes the person's mind very balanced for the most part.

The last part of this sign *1st & 2nd pada of Mrigashirsa* brings out the more conversational side of the person. The person influenced more by this part of Taurus sign often like to involve in artistic or other unique pursuits which make them successful.

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Hence at Taurus ♉, a soul truly understands what are the things that make it feel secure and safe. Whether it is emotional, physical, material or even spiritual. The soul has learnt how to make a living for itself by being grounded and self efficient.

3. Gemini ♊, at this stage the soul has started to get involved in more stimulating conversations and gets to understand more about courage, communication, intellectual side and other things meant to survive in the society. *Just like a kid who's learning to make new friends by making good use of their speech and thoughts*. This is naturally an outgoing sign which is meant to be quite extrovert and makes people like to delve more into stimulating conversations.

The first part of Gemini *Mrigashirsa pada 3rd & 4th* makes a person focused towards mental side of every relationship and also makes him restless at times due to constant fear that comes with putting their guard down at times. Mrigashirsa is linked with deer. Deers are highly susceptible of even the little dangers so Mrigashirsa people usually got those sixth sense in them.

The second part *Ardra* (which is considered to be Lord Shiva's birth constellation) is another one of the best sides of Gemini. This nakshatra influence makes a person intellectual and sharp minded to a level which is sometimes above those who doubt them. Ardra also makes a person quite intimidating as they never sit quiet unless & until they fulfill that very purpose. Ardra knows how to use their communication and other skills to defend/help someone who's unprivileged & are at the losing end of the war of LIFE.

The last part of Gemini *first three Punarvasu* deals with the more communicative and humble side of the sign. It makes a person very group work oriented and using their intellect towards every day matters *even family related*.

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Hence at Gemini ♊ a soul truly understand that one needs to understand the proper manner to communicate with others especially the family, friends and people we're working with. Get a proper understanding of how one thinks and operates on a mental level & what do they actual mean by saying.

*Couldn't add gemini and cancer sign photos due to 10 images limit max in a post 🚶💀*.

4. Cancer, at this stage the soul has started to understand the emotions a lot more than the previous signs, the focus here is on the moon/mind in our lives.

*there's 3 parts/Nakshatras which come in the cancer sign*

The first being punarvasu (4th pada) which is more about playing the role of guru in people's life and having an optimistic approach as well. In other words living a life full of good karmas, honest, obedient and detached approach as well.

The second part *Pushya* is a very very emotional Cancer Nakshatra. It makes a person very intuitive and nurturing to the capacity of them going out of their way to help somebody just because they can feel their pain.

The last part comes *ashlesha* is a bit different from the first two. This is mercury ruled Nakshatra and makes one very intellectual & analytical towards their approach. They are also nurturing and caring like the other two signs but in a more practical sense.

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Hence, Cancer is the stage where a soul is starting to under understanding life in the form of emotions. Delving deep into their emotions and figuring out what is it that they like or don't like.

5. Leo, at this stage the soul has started to function at its ego *Sun*. The soul still operates on emotions but the emotions here are detached for the most part *Leo/Sun influenced like to show their care for someone by their actions not by words*.

*I'll talk more about nakshatras after this but let's make this just a highlight on Signs in general*

The first half *magha* of Leo helps in understanding detachment at its best, gives seat of authority at a young but brings on lessons revolving around detachment with possessions as well as loved ones.

The second half *purva Phalguni* teaches a person how to become more creative & still lead others. It also makes someone who's not able to take anyone's order & is likely to give their work to others instead. They know how to manage someone under them/their subordinates.

The third part *Uttaraphalguni* teaches one how to to act in a more introspecting and know more about how to enhance their innate qualities to even more refined level.

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At Leo the soul understands his/her place in the society and his thoughts about what they want to truly do. *follow someone and always rely on guidance living a life full of honesty, or become someone who has the purpose to lead others in their respective field of expertise*.

Leo teaches many things about one's personality, ego, decision making ability and on top of that Detachment as well *magha mostly*.

6. Virgo, at this stage the soul is starting to get started working on daily affairs and other things that need to be perfected in life. At Virgo and virgo one can truly become their best self to the highest level *skill wise*.

Virgo also shows the point where a soul is starting to learn to become more disciplined, understanding their purpose as well & working towards that onna regular basis.

*Virgo produces excellent craftsman, software engineers, architects & other different professionals which are expert in works which require attention to detail, practical approach.

The first part *other padas of Uttaraphalguni which come under Virgo sign* makes a person serious and even quite intimidating at times. They are very honest and like to ask the same from everyone else around them.

The second part *hasta* produces excellent craftsman who are very good with work related to their hands. They are skillful & have high emotion quotient as well due to Moon lordship over this constellation.

The last part *Chitra* makes one of the best architects, visual artists, and creative to a very high level sometimes *depending on the rest of the chart*. They have one of the best ability which is "attention to detail".

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Virgo ♍ is hence the point where the soul is understanding life in a critical, disciplined & creative manner. Afterall it is very important to become critical after understanding the meaning of leadership *Leo ♌*.

7. Libra, at this stage the soul is at a quite successful level *financially* due to all the hardwork & methodical approach it followed, but now the main focus in Libra ♎ is to learn how to balance all the relationships, partnerships one has in life. The soul has to understand how to balance its ego even when it has achieved much success. The soul understands that it needs to calm down its ego *that which it understood in Leo*.

The first part *Chitra last padas falls in Libra* makes one creative in business and likes to live out there in the society rather than staying at home, and also makes one quite secretive with dealings *chitra 4th pada*

The second part *Swati* makes a person very very self going and independent. Swati influence also makes one initiate good within their relationships & they are very humble as well.

The last part *Vishakha till 3rd pada* makes a person very curious about life *Relationships/partnerships wise as well* and due to that curiousity they tend to get good guidance in life thus learning to stay firm within their bonds with others and growing together but towards different directions. The last part of Libra makes a person at times very very indecisive.

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Hence at Libra ♎ the soul learns the importance of relationships & true bonding & also learns to maintain partnerships in life.

8. Scorpio ♏, at this the soul has now understood each and every relationship in his/her life. Now the time is to delve deep into your own mind and the most deepest & vulnerable part or sides of you. Now comes the stage where one has to strengthen the relationship even more and learn to avoid attachment to things & possessiveness to anything.

The first part *vishakha 4th pada* makes one quite wise but still secretive with their dealings of any sort whether emotional or physical.

The second part *Anuradha* makes a person firstly very very hardworking, they don't shy away from their shadow side and work towards improving themselves to even better level. Secondly, Anuradha also makes one understand hardships at a very young age due to Saturn lordship over this constellation, but the life after their self growth is always the best and the most luxurious.

The last part *jyestha* makes a person quite more secretive than the first two parts/nakshatras. Jyestha makes an authoritative & secretive at the same time. They are also very intellectual & communicative individuals & also understand the basic/complex psychology of themselves.

*Apart from this all the parts/Nakshatras under scorpio ♏ have to understand difference between protective nature & possessive nature. They need to learn to give the other person their space even if they mean a lot to them*

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Hence at Scorpio one truly understands life (relationships, self psychology, finance management even many other esoteric aspects of life) at a very deep level. Since scorpio 🦂 likes to go deep into the ocean of wisdom and hidden knowledge which would benefit the humanity in general.

9. Sagittarius ♐, at this stage the soul is learning to understand the adventurous, philosophical, religious and freedom side of Life. The soul needs to understand what true freedom means whether its freedom of speech or action *only if the action and speech aren't ill intended*.

The first part *Mula* of Sagittarius is more about wisdom, diving deep into the roots/knowledge from our ancestors, practicing detachment & other forms of methods to control the mind *like meditation*.

The second part *Purva Ashadha* makes a person very creative and achieve early victory in life, also makes people enjoy the luxury of travelling and other adventures that life has to offer.

The last part *Uttarashadha upto 3rd pada* makes a person a Leader as well as very adventurous. A very wise soul but young by actions and outwardly nature at times with close ones.

At all these parts Sagittarius teaches the person different aspects of life in philosophical sense and much spiritual manner as well.

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Thus at Sagittarius ♐ the soul learns philosophy, religion and other higher learning by living a life full of adventure now away from all the work and stress *even work is imp but it's imp to take time out for yourselves and be out there in the nature*.

10. Capricorn, at this stage the soul starts working towards its career and obligation towards the society even more after learning the philosophy and truths that life taught him/her after passing through Scorpio & Sagittarius.

Capricorn is about work, ambition, sense of duty & purpose.

The first part *last pada of Uttarashadha comes under Capricorn* makes a person very ambitious but still lacks the clarity between spiritual and material values at times.

Natives of this part/nakshatra pada are seen to be quite successful in career.

The second part *Shravana* makes a person very intuitive and empathetic. Makes a person a very good listener and is quite popular in their respective fields.

The last part *first two padas of Dhanishta* makes a first very athletic and outgoing individuals who are quite independent & successful in life. At times these natives are seen to stay single for the most part if their life *until they're finally ready to commit to someone after achieving a lot in life*.

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Hence at Capricorn ♑ a soul truly understands ambitions, goals and gather material security for later life.

11. Aquarius at this stage the soul is now beginning to become more friendly, social *mostly at career or world out there*. The soul is meant to understand what's humanity truly about.

The first part *Dhanistha last two padas* makes a person very artistic and successful in everything they pursue. These are better for marital harmony than the first two padas under Capricorn ♑.

The second part *Shatabhisha* makes a person very very friendly, intellectual, sharp and even secretive at times *when it comes to things that are personal*. These people are also very successful and accomplished in their given work sectors. Most are also seen in divination related works as they tend to be spiritual too a certain extent.

The last part *Purva Bhadrapada till 3rd pada comes under Aquarius* makes a person intense, wealthy through own efforts, at times one of the worst tempers. This is also very friendly and humanitarian side of Aquarius but a lot more anger issues are seen here. The people influenced by this constellation have to only focus on two things : Their temper & their dual nature *deciding one thing & doing the complete opposite then*.

Hence at Aquarius ♒ a soul truly understands what humanity and spirituality is about. And how the material and spiritual can truly be balanced after all the hardships.

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Now now now comes the final and most interesting sign of them all *my own moon sign which is my I can explain this one in much depth as I live that way in my mind*

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12) Pisces, at this stage the soul has now reached a point where it has understood everything about materialism and what's spirituality about in his/her life. Pisces teaches the soul how to delve deep into the cosmic ocean of subconscious to a much much farther level than the rest of the signs because this is the higher plane the point where one is truly able to connect to the Divine Consciousness.

The first part *4th pada of Purvabhadrapada comes under Pisces* makes a person quite spiritual and honest but with the anger issues revolving around their life. They get frustrated even the little things which is the short side of this pada but apart from that this part of Pisces is about work towards the society and being at service to others.

The second part*Uttarabhadrapada* makes one very noble & beautiful inside out. Whatever they think is what they speak and that's the honesty about this Pisces constellation. UBP makes one very humane and generous with their wealth and quite introspective towards research about Humanity and origin in much more depth than other constellations. This constellation also signfies the spiritual awakening one experiences early in life which guides them to follow a spiritual path early.

The last part *Revati* makes a person very intuitive upto the highest level, sharp witted and curious individual. They are quite successful at a young age due to their sharp mercury qualities *Mercury rules over Revati Nakshatra* & also learn about spirituality early due to Jupiter influence, so they end up sharing their wealth of knowledge & material wealth with those who aren't able to experience those luxuries in life. *Another very humane constellation with a highly charitable nature*. They are also quite detached which helps them in the path of enlightenment.

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Hence at Pisces ♓ a soul truly understands what their soul purpose is truly in life *at times quite early in life due to good fortune of Jupiter over the Pisces sign*.

The soul now has now surrendered to God & is now at his service *service towards the other children of God*.

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Hope you guys liked this my in-depth perspective on the signs and how the soul behaves according to different sign placements.

Disclaimer: this is an original work by me so kindly ask my permission before putting any of this info out there anywhere.

Also people who are very much interested in getting to know about their soul purpose according to Vedic astrology, they may kindly consult me. DMs are always open and I'm also open for an honest yet productive conversation.

[sardonic-the-writer]

Better Call Saul characters with saying I love you for the first time? Don’t care who you have but can it at least include Howard and Nacho?

yeah sure! slight spoilers for season five.

—JIMMY ☆

The first time Jimmy ever tells you he loved you happened after his trek through the desert. He had come back, sunburnt to hell and dehydrated out of his mind. Looking like he had just dragged a few bags of bricks from hell and back—which wasn't far off from the truth. So when you picked him up, fingers anxiously tapping on your steering wheel, it was the most he could do to reassure you with a slight squeeze of your hand.

Only once you had gotten back home and lowered him into a cool bath did Jimmy close his eyes, letting a small 'I Love You' slip from his chapped lips. Which were swiftly rewarded with a kick kiss, the first genuine smile breaking out on his face in days.

—KIM ☆

You said it to her first.

Kim has a difficult time reading people and their emotions outside of her workplace, something that bled into your relationship together. Of course, you understood, taking your time with her and getting comfortable as a pair. That's why it took so long for you to say anything to her that would take your relationship to the next level.

It most likely occurred on some random movie night. The both of you in sweatpants sitting on the couch watching a black and white movie, curled around each other and just forgetting about life's worries. She took a moment to pause the movie, facing you and your caring gaze. Kim captured your lips in a soft kiss after a moment, washing away any worries that might have been lingering at her delayed response.

—HOWARD ☆

HMM had the privilege of being the place where Howard first confessed the true depth of his love for you.

He hardly could sit still. It was the third boring meeting of the day, discussing something he couldn't care less about when you were sitting next to him. It was all he could do to contain his giddy feelings, occasionally nudging your foot foot under the table with a barely contained smile. So the minute after everyone had slowly trickled out of the conference room, he caught the tail end of your suits cuff, pulling you into a heart melting kiss, both of your teeth occasionally clicking together on accident.

"You know what?" He mummbled against your lips, his own buzzing with electricity. "I think I love you."

"I think I love you too Howie."

—NACHO ☆

Part of the reason Nacho was so invested in you was the feeling he got when catching a glimpse of you. It was one he didn't feel often anymore; after getting involved with the drug ring and such. One of security. Warmth. Being home. The only other person who ever made him feel like that was his dad. And things hadn't been going to well in that department lately.

Nacho was quiet around you. Not the same stony kind of silence he presented in his pine of work. That was pure defensiveness, not letting anyone see into his head unless he wanted them too. No, around you he was quiet becuase he preferred to hear your voice. To listen to you talk to him about your day and carry on a conversation just by looking at him for a non verbal response. He loved how you knew what he was trying to say without actually saying it.

"I love you (Y/n)." He had mummbled into your hair one evening—between your tales of horrid days working in customer service. "I love you more than I've ever loved anyone."

—LALO ☆

Light had barely begun to peak through the curtains, and Lalo was already rolling out of bed with a sigh. Pulling away from your warm embrace, yet another night without sleep plauging his mind with things he had to do today.

"Sorry querido." He would chuckle, slipping into more formal clothing as you quietly called for him to come back to bed. "You know I have to go tend to some things."

His smile softened even more as you rolled over in his direction, eyes still closed and scrunched with drowsy annoyance. Accompanied by a small frown.

"Fine. Bu' be quick. L've you."

Lalo paused, a patterned shirt draped over his bare shoulder in the moment. You would later remember the dozens of kisses he peppered across your face in a moment of adoration, mirroring your accusation of love in between each one.

"Por dios serás mi muerte."

[genderqueerdykes]

Being Plural IRL: Telling People, Living Your Lives, & Other Tips.

View On WordPress.

We have been living as a system for 10 years now, and it's one of the first things new people notice about us when meeting us. We've had people tell us they could 'just tell' we were plural before we had ever brought it up. For years we kept it a secret, acting as though other people wouldn't notice, or would always have a bad reaction, but sometime ago, sometimes all it takes is providing that person with exposure to plurality that helps them understand that it is a real phenomenon.

There will always be people who don't believe in plurality, and people who believe only those with disordered plurality can be plural. This is a constant, but there's also a wide variety of people in between with a mixture of reactions, most of which involve acceptance. Even if someone doesn't understand the concept, I've found it's more common that someone will play along and try to grasp on to it as you give them more information.

If someone doesn't have an IRL reference, it can be hard for them to digest that something is real. I think people think that even systems on YouTube, TikTok, twitter, and so on are faking because there's a level of disconnect, not because they 100% genuinely believe that plurality is false. I really think it is the disconnect from the experience that causes most people to have such repulsion and negative opinions.

Stay casual, avoid using medical terms & overly clinical definitions and terms your first few conversations when bringing up plurality to someone who doesn't know anything about it. The best way I've found to bring it up to people in a way that helps them believe what you are saying, is to be casual, but informative, and say something to the effect of "Oh, I look and sound different today because you are talking to a different person who lives in this body. There are others in here and this will happen sometimes, nice to meet you," or "You met [headmate] last time, I'm [name], several people live in this body." Something like that. Confidence is key, the more assertive you are with your language, the more it becomes apparent you are serious.

Avoid dumping on people with very specific and in depth system terms (protector, host, little, switching, co-fronting, etc.) right away, and it's especially best if you don't go into origin labels or "types" of systems unless that person specifically asks what you think caused your system, or what causes some people to be plural. Unless someone asks, the origin story really isn't worth it and I've found that adds a layer of confusion for some singlets, because they weren't thinking super hard about it to begin with, but now the concept has become way more complicated and confusing.

Honestly the best way to approach it naturally is to just mention the names, pronouns, identities, accents, voices, and styles of dress of any headmates they may commonly see. Give them indicators as to who they can potentially look out for. It's alright if you are plural and don't know your system very well, you can tell people you're still getting to know them, or that you personally struggle with communicating with the others, but they will get to meet them. You don't have to make it super complicated and you don't have to come up with information if you don't have any. If people ask how many of you there are and you don't know, it's okay to say you don't know. We personally don't find that question helpful and try to avoid answering it because we literally just don't know.

Be patient with people who are just finding out about plurality, they are not going to know how to keep up with switches right away, especially if your system is quite large. They will get confused, not notice switches, not be able to identify folks at first and that's okay. Especially if you are a covert system it can be hard at times, be patient and willing to work with people, especially if you are literally the first plural person they have ever met.

Living your own lives can be tricky- it can require a little extra income at times to do certain things, such as expanding your wardrobe to include outfits and accessories for others, but it doesn't have to get outlandish. Many headmates in a system find they have different styles of dress and fashion. That is a perfect way to get people to be able to recognize who is out is to allow that system member to dress in a way that makes them feel safe, comfortable, and like themselves. You don' thave to buy entire new outfits if you are very poor, you can often times make accessories or have small indicators like pins or bracelets that help show who is out.

Having different places that you frequent for different headmates helps a lot. Introducing yourself as different people in different places can often times be a good way to test how you feel about your own plurality, as well as a really cool way to feel more accepted and like yourselves. These two places can be completely unrelated, so these people who know you by another name may never know your host's or body's name, and may never know otherwise. It's a very cool way to get yourself used to introducing yourselves as different people.

Having different social groups, groups of friends, social media pages, chat groups/servers, etc. who know you by your different headmates' names can also help a lot as well. Sometimes, system members want their own friends independent of the rest of the system. Sometimes, a headmate needs to be themselves and feel like they are a person in control of a body for some time. It's okay to foster an environment where everyone can feel like an individual. You can use apps like Simply Plural to help organize your system, and you can create different pages on social media sites, different tumblr blogs, pinterest pages, join different Discord servers, Facebook groups, and so on.

Allowing different headmates to engage in different hobbies, if they have differing hobbies, is also very crucial. Even one small activity like allowing one system member to journal for a bit a day, or letting someone work out at the gym, or watch movies, or whatever it may be can help someone feel a lot more like themselves. Even if the rest of your system doesn't care for it, if you can allow that one person to do it for a bit, it can help tremendously.

Doing activities with each other when possible is also very crucial. Watching shows, playing games, eating, going on walks, and even dates together can be very healthy activities that can help your system grow, flourish, and understand who they are. You are absolutely allowed to socialize with your other selves and use that as an opportunity to find out what makes each of you yourselves, if that is something you are capable of doing, or, would like to work toward. Acknowledgement from another system member goes a long way, and socializing with one another helps strengthen your internal views of one another.

Learning your different system members' favorite foods, perfumes, scents, toys, games, etc. and surprising them with little gifts, and letting others know that they enjoy being surprised with small things (like sweets for example) can also help. Positive triggers are a big part of the experience- triggers do not have to be negative all the time, they can be positive and even neutral. Discovering what things trigger you to front can be beneficial, as you can learn how to pull people out when needed or just wanted, especially if that person has expressed desire about fronting for long periods of time, but struggles to do so.

Not every single person in your system has to have a different voice, style of dress or presentation, or "feel" completely different. It's okay if you all have to introduce yourselves. It's okay if you have to remind people who's fronting. Many systems have members that look and sound very similar, and may even be very similar if not versions of the same person. That's alright, too. You still deserve to be acknowledged for being separate people.

I hope this helps some folks approach the concept of telling IRL strangers and friends that you are plural. It's frightening at first but I've found that if you keep it simple and express it in a way that's natural for you, instead of trying to adhere to a dictionary definition, you will find some more success. Of course, if someone reacts negatively, there's a chance you may not be able to get them to see your way, but it's better to figure that out for sure. That doesn't mean you have to stop living as a plural.

Johnny

[free-and-to-none-accountable]

Posted on July 29, 2022 by Jean-Carl Elliott

Growing the IWW isn’t just about increasing the size of our membership, it’s also about increasing its depth. Part of “building the new world in the shell of the old” entails developing the people who will be able to run it once it’s built. We aren’t simply signing up workers from our jobs and industries for their dues. We are signing them up to make them into Wobblies! Being a Wobbly means that we know where we stand in the class struggle, we know the lessons learned from those who struggled before us, and we stand in solidarity with other Wobblies who are continuing the struggle today. Being a Wobbly isn’t just about having a Red Card, it’s about leveling each other up! I’ve met so many Wobblies throughout the years who sign a Red Card and then don’t know what to do next. Without a sense of direction, our members tend to gravitate towards other activist groups or they leave the union altogether. We want to keep workers involved and to give them a sense of purpose in the IWW. This article will be part of a series on how to level up your IWW membership. In this first edition, we’ll cover some ways that individual Wobblies can increase their participation in the One Big Union through developing their skills as workplace organizers. Future editions will focus on branches, committees, and other parts of the union. If you think of some additions to these lists, write them up and send them to Industrial Worker!

Take an Organizer Training

The IWW has two Organizer Trainings: the OT101 and the OT102. In the OT101, trainees learn the basic techniques of starting a workplace organizing committee.  The committee meets regularly and plans direct actions on the job to build power and address grievances. The training is revised every few years based on the experiences of IWW organizers. We keep the stuff that is working and change the stuff that has been falling short. It’s also a really great way to get in touch with other Wobblies who are organizing their workplaces. 

The 102 builds off of the 101. Once you have a committee up and running, you’ll need to learn how to sustain it. Business unions will usually start a committee and then once it’s up and running, they will petition the employer for recognition or they will file for a union election with the government. The IWW is a revolutionary union though. We don’t need or want the government to intervene in order to provide stability. We maintain our momentum through practicing better internal democracy and through recruiting more workers to take part in bigger workplace actions. You should take the 102 early on because it gets more into the details of practicing direct democracy, escalating direct actions, and sustaining your committee. It’s important to incorporate healthy committee practices and strategic planning at the early stages of a campaign. Our greatest weapon is solidarity and these trainings teach the nuts and bolts of Solidarity Unionism.

Start Organizing Your Workplace

There are all sorts of benefits that you and the union can get from organizing your own workplace, even if you just take the initial steps. When you start building good organizing habits, they will start to come more naturally over time. Getting people’s contact information will feel less awkward and you will start drawing your maps in more detail. One-on-one conversations with coworkers will flow more smoothly the more practice you get. And so even if you only make a small amount of progress at one job, you can build off of that experience at future jobs. 

Take Another Training

No two trainings are ever the same! Each time, you will be learning from different trainers and with a different set of trainees. They all bring unique training styles and organizing stories. And let’s be honest with ourselves: each training is 16 hours worth of material. We are never gonna memorize it all after one take, or even two for that matter. Take lots of trainings and have fun with them!

Become a Trainer

Organizer Trainers are credentialed by the union to give our official trainings. You can draw from your experiences to give a personal touch to your trainings. It can be inspiring for trainees to hear personal stories from the front lines, even if it is just you showing a map or social chart from one of your workplaces. When you become an IWW trainer, you will be paired up with other trainers to do trainings and so you get to learn from their teaching styles and experiences. It’s a great way to learn new lessons and to pass along your learning experiences in the union.

The Organizer Training Committee (OTC) can train you to be an OT101 Trainer, an OT102 Trainer and a Training For Trainers (T4T) Trainer. There’s a leveling up system for trainers as well. First off, you can’t become a trainer unless you have taken the training. So in order to become a 101 Trainer, you should have taken the training a few times and put it to use in your own workplace. Same for the 102 and to be a T4T Trainer. At the end of each T4T, you will be reviewed by your trainers and they will decide if and how you will be credentialed. 

At each T4T, you will learn some new training techniques, but it is assumed that you are coming in with some familiarity with the curriculum. This is why it’s good to have taken the training a few times and to have gained some first hand organizing experience. Don’t worry about knowing every single detail; you will get a better grasp the more trainings you do, and when you start as a trainer you will be paired with a more experienced trainer. On the flipside however, if your trainers don’t think you are ready, they aren’t obligated to credential you and they might recommend you go to another training and take another T4T.

Keep Organizing!

The more we organize and train other Wobblies to organize, the better organizers and trainers we become. Sometimes a campaign might only get so far as being able to draw up a social chart, but then you can use that social chart when you train other IWW members to do it! Maybe you participated in a direct action that flopped. You can turn that into a learning experience by debriefing with your coworkers or by writing about it. The more we learn to tackle the smaller hurdles, the better prepared we are to take on the next ones and to bring more Wobblies with us. Keep fighting the good fight and never stop leveling up!

[gothhabiba]

hi! sorry to bother and if you've answered this before. of course, you dont have to answer this. you mentioned in one post that you were still learning Darija and also your posts on scolarship are very interesting. ive been trying for a while to learn my dad's language since i didn't grew up speaking it, but have always been interested in persian literature and the evolution of the language so this has been a difficulty for me. i was wondering if you have any tips on improving the way a language is learned, since you're amazing at explaining things and making even complicated subjects clear.

Thank you and have a nice weekend!

Thanks for the compliment!

I don't think that I have anything like my own original foolproof method for learning languages; this is the first language I've self-taught for which there aren't a lot of materials, and everyone learns differently. Here's what I've been doing & what I can broadly recommend when learning a language for which there isn't an enormous amount of teaching material:

Be specific about what it is that you want to do in the language. Chop this up into small sections. So, instead of "I want to learn [language]" (an enormous, vague, impossible task—even native speakers do not know 100% of their languages), think "I want to be able to understand recipes," or "go to the market or a restaurant," or "make small talk and general conversation," or "text friends and family," or "read literature," or "read theory" (and for those last two goals you might have a waypoint goal of "read storybooks" or "read materials intended for language-learners or children").

I began by learning the Arabic script (resources for this abound, and the abjads used for Persian and Darija only add a few characters), and I always write Darija in this script (even though most people write it in the Latin script) to get practice.

I also learned the standard phonology at this point. But the phonology for Persian and Darija are different and involve fewer consonants than Arabic, since some of them have merged, so you won't need to worry about the Standard or Classic pronunciaton of some of the letters. The Wikipedia page for Persian phonology should be a good resource; the IPA symbols for various sounds are noted, and they have explanations of how the sounds are produced and playback that you can listen to. Note that there are obviously regional variations in phonology, but this is a good start. This is a script with a pretty standard orthography, so at this point you can theoretically pronounce any word you read (with diacritics).

cut for length:

I took inspiration from how I had been taught French and divided information up into "units" (first greetings and introductions; then numbers and colours; then telling time; then time including days of the week and months of the year, words for "today" and "yesterday" &c.; the weather; family; then personal pronouns "I" "you" "me" &c. and the verb "to have" to begin forming simple sentences such as "I have three sisters" or whatever—you'd also want to learn "to be" at this point, but Darija doesn't often use it—then I decided that my first priority after very basic conversation was cooking, so I learned terms for food items and cooking verbs).

If you can find online resources or textbooks that will teach you things in units of this type, all the better (I got started on speakmoroccan.com). If you can't, try following an online course or textbook for learning another common language (such as French, German, Spanish, English) but substitute out the vocabulary terms by using a dictionary (for Darija I used tajinequiparle).

You may be able to find some materials (at least greetings, introductions, numbers and the like) on YouTube—I recommend using these even if you can find these same terms elsewhere, to get practice listening to the language.

I feel that I learn best from textbooks and by understanding the syntax and grammar of sentences in depth. However, the materials I've consulted for Darija (and there aren't too many materials in existence) tend to give lists of words but no grammar, or example sentences that are translated in full with no explanation. Even materials that do go into the grammar (such as the Lonely Planet phrasebook) are targeted at tourists and do so with an ethos of "good enough" that may fudge the details to make them more similar to French (which is the language the book is in). So I write down and compile example sentences that I come across (there's an English/Darija dataset already in existence to help with this kind of thing) and compare them to each other to determine which word means what, which affix might be the marker for past tense or infinitive or the object pronoun or whatever, and write down my guesses to test as I go. This may be more difficult without an education in linguistics, but probably not impossible.

I separate my studying into two phases, which I go back and forth between: creating study materials, and learning from those materials. Creating study materials means finding words and writing them down in my little book, figuring out grammar and writing out the rules, writing down example sentences, and making flashcards to learn vocabulary terms (with one or more example sentences on each one).

Studying from those materials involves running through the flashcards and coming up with new example sentences for each term (so I see the side of the flashcard with the English "banana" and come up with a sentence in Darija that's something like "they have eight yellow bananas"). You could also have flashcards separated by category (pronouns / numbers / verbs / nouns / adjectives) and pick a flashcard at random from a few categories (the selection "I" / "sixteen" / "want" / "new" / "oranges" prompts you to construct and speak the sentence "I want sixteen new oranges" in your target language); this is basically analogue duolingo.

As you go about your day, name objects and colours you see and talk to yourself about actions you undertake; try to 'translate' as many thoughts as you can into your target language.

You can also construct dialogues or short compositions at the end of each "unit" you finish. Write a dialogue between two friends greeting each other after not having seen each other for a while. Write a composition about your family members; explain how they're related to you, what they look like, &c. Look up any vocabulary that you notice you're missing.

Once you have a decent vocabulary base, you'll be able to start reading. If you can find writing that's intended for children or language learners, that's great! There may also be fora or message boards online devoted to conversation in your target language. If you can find a dictionary from the target language to a language you understand, this becomes a lot easier—unfortunately I haven't found one for Darija (the lack of a standardised orthography would probably make one difficult to make). Persian has a history of being written that Darija doesn't, so you may have more luck on this score than I did.

I have an "index" in the back of my little book with abbreviations for each of the sources that I get vocabulary from, and I use these abbreviations to take note of where I got sentences, phrases, and vocabulary terms from (whether dictionaries, textbooks, youtube, online courses, online fora, reddit, academic / linguistic articles, &c.). This is so that I can return to these sources and verify what I've written down, just in case; and also because different vocabulary terms are used in different regions, so it's a good idea to have a way to look up who uses which terms.

If I come across anything by serendipity (whether in an academic article about some sociological aspect of Darija, or in the dictionary I've been using, since there's no complete words list that I can find so serendipity is the only way to discover some of the words that are in it), I write it down then and there regardless of how useful I think it will be to me immediately. This is because I have no way of knowing whether I'll ever come across it again! I don't need to memorise it right away, but maybe I'll want to learn it later.

I don't think this will help you, but for some minority languages or dialects there may be a colonial language other than English in which materials for that language are easier to access (for example, I tend to search for Darija resources in French, not English).

[system-of-a-feather]

Honestly, I was talking to my sister who was a teacher in the Bronx about some cultural respect / nuanced discourse topics from a multicultural and intersectional lens since I had questions that I felt really was out of my range of experiences as it pertained to afrolatine individuals from the inner city and low socioeconomic status and I will be 100% honest, the amount of individuals I have in my "regular talking group" that are of african descent, latine descent and of more lower-economic status inner city backgrounds are pretty low - really only having one individual from the "lower-economic status inner city background" in the people I talk to regularly and it was a really interesting and insightful conversation that helped me develop and see further depth and complexity into topics that - as an outsider that has just been told how to not be racist - always thought of in a very simple single faceted lens.

And me and my sister like to just talk about these things and she called it "theory" when we were closing up cause she was like "Yeah during summer I absolutely do not want to talk about kids and children in any regard cause its trauma (/hj, worker rights is garbo but she likes what she does)" and it made me think today

A lot of people look at discussions around "internet topics" as some sort of "not productive, too online" sort of conversation, a waste of time more or less because you aren't "really going to change much"

And to some level I agree (and to some level I also disagree), but I think one of the perspectives that might be a large difference between the rhetoric and aggression I see in #syscourse VS the atmosphere of the people i talk to in and around #sysconversation and just people I like to actually talk to is a LARGE perspective and intent change between "I want to make a difference and change how things are" and "I want to understand and learn more about the human condition because I either enjoy it, it makes me a better person, it helps me understand the world, and/or it helps me understand myself and others better"

Because as much as I like the intent and sentiment of the first (and I was also very much there), I find that it is 1) not really congruent with the method of delivery as it is often not the right target and the online environment is not a really good depiction of the real off-line environment and 2) it is focused on trying to control and dictate behavior and experiences of others without spending much time to actually reflect on your place and role in all of everything that is going on.

It's good to want to make a difference and change how things are, but its really important to know that the only person you can realistically control is yourself and trying to exert that energy onto others is throwing your energy into a void; most importantly, I find that for every topic that needs improvement, there is not a single person who is completely innocent in being a COMPLETELY uninvolved in the system that keeps it up. And that ISNT bad, it's just a statement of realistic, honest, cultural humility. Every social issue, every social topic, is multilayered and multifaceted involving multiple people with multiple traits that are undeniably intertwined to the point that you can't really say "okay but this is ONLY about this" - and in every social issue, with how many layers there are to it, there is always going to be something you have relative privileged over others with; and that's something very important and helpful to analyze and reflect upon because you can control how that privileged affects your views, your actions and the way you handle these complex discussions.

If we are talking on an explicitly online environment, then one of the best ways you can make an ACTIVE change that you can ACTIVELY see in the world, it is to look at yourself and see what you can do to make a productive change towards your goal

((And its also helpful to actually sit and think about the change you want to see and reflect upon what your stances / arguments that are the 'hills you will die on' and see if the core values and changes you'd like to see are in line with those values))

[taeghi]

casual | teaser

full release : read here

you thought you could handle being casual with notorious fratboy!heeseung, but when feelings get involved, you soon realize that 'casual' isn't so simple.

PAIRING : fratboy!heeseung x reader

GENRE : smut, fwb to lovers, enemies? to lovers?? & a little angst?? + 5 smut scenes lol

WC : probs 20k

taglist : ???

YOU LOVE CASUAL SEX.

you've always prided yourself on being the type who keeps things casual. it's not that you're afraid of commitment; rather, you find comfort in the simplicity of fucking and then never seeing the person again. there’s no messy entanglements or feelings. it’s a way to satisfy your desires without the emotional baggage that comes with more serious relationships.

you’d rather be alone, but you still have fun with your friends when you go out. you've never been content with surface-level explanations or shallow interactions. you crave depth, in people and experiences. which you have found to be, truthfully, hard in today’s day and age. 

you’re sensitive to most things, so you try to cover it up– protect yourself– with all the partying, the drinking, the sex. 

and tonight, like every other normal friday night; you’re at a party. 

there’s a familiar thump of music and loud chatter around you that you’ve grown accustomed to. yooyeon and gracie, your closest friends are an inseparable couple, are by your side. they've been together for what feels like forever, the kind of relationship that makes you simultaneously envious and relieved you're not in a relationship.

as you continue to sip your drink, yooyeon leans in with her knowing smile, “so, y/n,” teases, “have you decided when you’re gonna settle down? find yourself a nice guy and stop with all these one night stands?” 

you roll your eyes playfully, used to this conversation. "never," you reply with a grin, "casual hookups forever, remember?"

gracie chuckles, shaking her head fondly. "come on, yn," she chimes in, her voice warm with affection, “you know it’s gonna have to get boring at some point.” 

you shrug nonchalantly, though their words do make you pause for a moment. "maybe someday," you concede, though deep down, you're not so sure. relationships have never been your thing, and the thought of settling down feels suffocating.

"come on, yn," yooyeon nudges you gently, her expression softening, "we love you just the way you are. but don't close yourself off to the possibility, okay?"

you nod, grateful for their understanding. deep down, you know they're right—they always are. but for now, you want to find someone to relieve the ache that’s been in your core all day. 

you turn to gracie, the one who always knows all the drama on your college campus, “who is here that i can hook up with?” 

gracie rolls her eyes and looks around the crowded frat house, “hm,” she thinks outloud, “well jeongin and bella broke up this week…” 

you shake your head, “too soon, i don’t want to be a potential rebound for him.” 

yooyeon scoffs and continues to drink, listening to your guys’ conversation. 

“how about,” gracie, “mark? he’s real chatty though.”

you groan, “then no.”

gracie goes on a small list of people that she sees around, but none of them suffice. none of them are your type or seem to be able to satisfy you. you tell your friends that you’re going to go get another drink– you’ll need one. 

the kitchen table has a handful of drinks to choose from. there’s punch and beer and vodka, half of it has been spilt all over said table. 

“the punch is good,” a voice suddenly says from beside you. 

when you turn, you instantly recognize him– he’s one of the frat boys that lives in this house, maybe the most popular one of them all. 

lee heeseung stands beside you with an air of confidence that is probably more on the cocky side. his posture is relaxed yet demeaning. his hair is tousled and his clothes give off a carefree attitude. 

pretty much everyone at your college knows lee heeseung from his parties, his stories, the multiple girls he has slept with. you’ve heard enough stories about him to write an entire book, yet his entire persona is more annoying than appealing to you. his entire act is one that you’ve seen played out too many times before. 

“good to know,” you say and grab a beer instead. 

heeseung raises his eyebrow at your choice, “i’m heeseung.” his voice is smooth and cuts through the noise of the party. 

you take a sip of your beer, “i know who you are.” you reply bounty, not bothering to hide your disinterest.

intrigued by your coldness, “right,” he acknowledges with a smirk, “and i know who you are.” 

“congrats," you say dryly, with a fake excitement to your tone. 

heeseung suddenly leans in closer to you and whispers into your ear, his voice low, "you're the girl who only does casual sex, right?"

you're taken aback by his boldness, but there's a flicker of curiosity in your eyes. "i might be,"

heeseung smirks down at you at your answer. you let yourself think that maybe the notorious fuckboy is pretty handsome. his complexion seemingly glows, his eyes are full of a flirty playfulness, and his smile is charming enough. 

“well, do you wanna have casual sex with me?” 

if it wasn’t lee heeseung standing in front of you, you would be surprised. 

instead, you let out a groan, your face contorts in disgust, “god no.” 

heeseung tilts his head, “why not? i thought you were into that.” 

“because you’re like a walking std.” 

instead of getting offended like you had hoped, heeseung bursts out laughing in the middle of the kitchen, his eyes squinting. 

"damn, straight to the point," he manages between chuckles, clearly amused by your blunt response. 

you roll your eyes, trying not to let his laughter get under your skin. "just being honest," you retort, though there's a hint of begrudging amusement in your tone. 

“i’ll see you around, y/n.” 

you turn on your heel, your back already faced him when you reply, “no, you won’t.”

@ taeghi, 2024. do not repost or reuse in anyway.

PLEASE REBLOG IF YOU ENJOY, AS LIKES MAKE IT HARD FOR WORK TO BE SPREAD AND ENJOYED BY OTHERS :)

stay safe everyone :)

[warrioreowynofrohan]

Today’s (Jan 3) Silmarillion Daily section covers the end of the Ainulindalë, and the very start of the first chapter of the Silm proper, “Of the Beginning of Days”. This is because both of those parts are about the early wars between the Valar and Melkor, prior to the Ages of the Lamps, so it made sense to me to put them together; and also because they mention how the Valar first took on physical forms, and it made sense to put that before the Valaquenta where some of their physical forms are described. After this we’re going to have a one-day break before starting on the Valaquenta.

Until I started putting together the Silm Daily entries, I didn’t remember that the Ainulindalë contained anything about events within Eä; I had thought it had ended after the Music and the vision.

And the first work of the Valar is not just shaping the lands and life-forms of an already-existing Planet Earth, but creating it (and all the other stars and planets) basically from scratch; this is the distinction between Eä (the universe) and Arda (Earth).

So began their great labours in wastes unmeasured and unexplored, and in ages uncounted and forgotten, until in the Deeps of Time and in the midst of the vast halls of Eä there came to be that hour and that place where was made the habitation of the Children of Ilúvatar.

(There’s plenty of space for headcanons and fic here - for example, the many uninhabitable planets in the universe including ones that the Valar were trying to make habitable and that Melkor wrecked, with the Earth being their last try.)

The main work on making Earth is done by Manwë, Ulmo, and Aulë, which makes sense given that their domains are air, water, and earth. (Melkor’s own original domain seems to involve both heat/fire and cold; both are mentioned in connection with him both in this section of the Ainulindalë and in Ilúvatar’s earlier conversation with Ulmo, and Melkor uses both in his wars with the Elves). Varda is initially off doing her own thing in the rest of the universe (creating stars and other cool astronomical objects); the Valaquenta says that “Out of the depths of Eä she came to the aid of Manwë,” during the first war with Melkor over the newly-made Earth. This may also be the case for the other spirits that Manwë calls - they are coming not newly from the Timeless Halls, but are coming from elsewhere in Eä (other planets?) to Arda:

…and [Manwë] called unto himself many spirits both greater and less, and they came down into the fields of Arda and aided Manwë, les Melkor should hinder the fulfillment of their labours forever.

After the initial battle where Melkor tries to lay claim to the Earth (Arda) and is driven off, he goes to other parts of Eä, while the Valar focus on Arda and take on physical forms.

Then there seems to be an additional group of Maiar who come to Arda (possibly, again, from elsewhere in Eä rather than from outsude it) after that early battle is over, to aid in the shaping of the planet:

And the Valar drew unto themselves many companions, some less, some well nigh as great as themselves, and they laboured together in the ordering of the Earth and the curbing of its tumults.

Then Melkor is envious of the beauty of the Earth and of the Valar in it, and he makes a physical form for himself as well, “as a mountain that wades into the sea and has its head above the clouds and is crowned with smoke and fire”. The battles between the Valar and Melkor change the Earth greatly, and nothing is set up the way the Valar intended, but over time it takes on a more permanent form. For most of the war Melkor is winning, even against all the rest of the Valar (this kind of gives an indication of why they’re so concerned in later ages that fighting him directly could destroy the earth or render it uninhabitable, and are so wary of doing so.) But at last they win when Tulkas shows up (from ‘far heaven’, which could be either elsewhere in Eä or in the Timeless Halls, but I kind of think the former) and Melkor runs away from him into the parts of Eä outside Arda, and there is peace for a long age.

[strawberrystepmom]

an absolute astrology party in here today, u are truly killing it here!! it is like we are at a slumber party painting nails and having those four am in depth conversations…. and i am also joining in fbfhjbjh

i am a gemini sun capricorn moon scorpio rising and honestly i have Never Felt like a very good gemini. outgoing communicator? absolutely not no thank you!! so is it the moon/rising that is tamping down the Typical Gemini™️ ….

it's day two now! hahaha it has been a lot of fun answering everyone's questions!! i really do feel like im sitting here shaking the magic 8 ball while we all giggle aldjfalsdkjf

so first of all i will say that a lot of people who are gemini sun's and even gemini rising's feels this way and it's the most gemini way to possibly feel. an area of struggle that is extraordinarily common for gemini placements is identity bc the sign itself doesn't really have one. it's benevolent and airy and kind of like perfume in the sense that it's everywhere and they fill a room with their spirit but they sometimes struggle with being able to identify who they are within themselves. who am i when the party is over happens a lot and i think this is even harder for more introverted type gemini because you can't cover it with socialization and wonderful conversation.

i also feel that the seriousness of capricorn moon and scorpio rising are likely to very heavily influence the more mutable qualities of gemini. a mutable placement isn't a bad thing, it's just less likely to be a placement you look at and see yourself in if it's surrounded by stronger energies. the frivolity of gemini is probably very dampened by a precise and mature capricorn internal thought process. scorpio is distrustful at its worst and deeply self involved always although they aren't self centered, they just withdraw into themselves, which goes against everything gemini stands for.

you may not identify with some of the more stereotypical aspects of gemini but even admiring you from afar as i am wont to do, i feel like you definitely embody the friendliness, wittiness, and curious nature of your sun sign. i think it can be a bit of a misconception that the only way to be a gemini is to be in everyone's ass 24/7 when really it's more about just generalities and the way you feel about other people as a whole instead of individuals.

[quaranmine]

The Incandescence of a Dying Light (Chapter Three)

In which Grian is not immune to the good times, and both fire and watching happen. 

Chapter Three: 8,718 words

<< Chapter Two | Masterpost | Chapter Four >>

hiiiiiii! welcome to chapter three! this is the other half that i had to split off of chapter two and as you can see by its wordcount, i probably could've split it again if there was a place to do so. lots of firewatching related things in this one, so it was fun to write!

CW: mild conversational talk of past injury, conversation/story involving alcohol/drunkeness. Continuation of the themes of loss/grief. This chapter may contain spoilers for Top Gun (1986)

May 1989

It’s a sunny day, like the day before it and the day before it. Summer is creeping into the mountains, slowly taking the frigid edge from the wind that whips around Grian’s lookout tower. And although temperatures often still dip below freezing at night, the stream in Thunder Canyon is fuller and fuller with each passing day as the snow melts off the southern slopes of the peaks. 

There’s wildflowers on the alpine meadows in the distance, dotted between fresh green grass. There’s birds in the trees. When Grian steps outside, he hears the sounds of running water wherever he goes–little trickles of ephemeral streams borne from the snows of the winter. 

Grian is cleaning his tower today. It’s a day he’s working, so his process goes a little like this:

Sweep part of the floor. After a minute, look up and scan the horizon. Go back to sweeping, sweep the dust out the door, start to scrub on the dirtiest parts of the floor, and realize you’ve got no water.

Go fetch water for cleaning, and haul the heavy bucket up the four story tower from the spigot on the ground. Do an in-depth scan around the tower since it’s been a while since the last time you looked. Work on the floor some more, get bored, set the bucket aside and begin organizing shelves and supplies. Stand up every so often to look again.

You get it. Grian’s not fully sure yet what the best rhythm for looking is–he doesn’t want to miss anything, but surely there isn’t much opportunity for changes if he does it every few minutes. It’s a little jarring to have your attention so split between tasks, but that’s the job. You can do whatever you want in the tower as long as you remember to look. The looking is the reason he’s paid, and as distracted Grian may be, he still intends to do this job with a determination to make Mumbo proud. 

Grian is just about to set out to clean the windows when his radio goes off again. It’s Scar. He sets down his supplies to go pick up the radio. 

“Good morning, Two Forks,” Scar greets breezily. “What are you up to this fine morning?”

“Are you feeling separation anxiety already?” Grian snipes back. “We only spoke an hour ago when we did morning weather reports with the rest of the Forest Service.”

“No! Can’t a man be curious?”

Grian rolls his eyes. “I’m just cleaning. It’s amazing the amount of dust that gets blown in here.” Or tracked in here from his boots every time he ventures into the forest, oops. 

“Hm. At least that’s something to do,” Scar says, before complaining: “I’m bored.”

“I don’t think this is the job for you if you’re bored,” Grian says. 

“Hey!” Scar cries. “I’ve done this job a lot longer than you have. I’m allowed to be bored. Rookies aren’t allowed to be bored.”

Grian’s been here for three weeks, but he’s already accepted his fate that he’s now Scar’s go-to person to talk to when he’s bored. He wants to ask if Scar has ever tried to strike up friendships with the other lookouts in the area, or if he always talks this much to the lookouts he’s supervising, but he feels like that question will only put Scar on the defensive. And really, he doesn’t mind the guy–it’s just this is nothing like what he anticipated when he took the job. 

For some people, the isolation of it all is precisely the draw. 

Grian starts to clean the windows, sticking the radio in his pocket for easy access since Scar’s in a clearly talkative mood again. The windows must always be clean, lest some spot or smudge on the glass make it difficult for smoke to be spotted in the distance. 

After a minute or two of silence, Scar speaks again. “Do you like movies, G? What’s your favorite movie?”

“I don’t know,” Grian says. “I don’t have one.”

Movies were always Mumbo’s thing, not Grian’s. He hasn’t paid attention to anything that came out in the past year or so. It just wasn’t important anymore. 

He smiles a bit though, remembering how Mumbo was always dragging him to the theater near their university back in England. They’d try to sneak into movies without paying sometimes, and had gotten kicked out on three separate occasions. But the owner of the theater had liked Mumbo, with his endearing smile and nervous habits,  and had never tried to ban him from the theater. When Grian thinks back on it, he wonders if sometimes they had just been allowed to stay. 

“I can’t believe you don’t have a favorite movie,” Scar says. “My favorite movie is Top Gun! Did you ever see it?”

“Um, no,” Grian says, although he remembers the name. It was everywhere, for a while. Entertainment about the American military didn’t exactly spark any patriotism in him though, dual citizenship or not.  

“Oh my goodness,” Scar says. “Not only do you not have a favorite movie but you’ve never seen Top Gun! You’re in worse shape than I thought, G-man.”

“How will I ever survive,” Grian says. 

“It’s only the greatest movie of all time,” Scar says. 

“Uh-huh,” Grian says. If he plays this right, he’ll be able to finish cleaning the windows without having to reply at all. “What’s it about?”

“Wait, you’ve never even heard of it? You don’t even know what it’s about? Top Gun? It was like the biggest movie of the year?”

“I guess you’ll just have to tell me about it,” Grian says, and ah–that’s done it. He’s bought time.

“Oh my goodness,” Scar says, and Grian can’t help but smile ever so slightly at how excited he seems. “So it opens with this amazing synth score, and like–the score on the whole movie is incredible, really. And it opens with the great music, and the whole intro is just the jets flying around–it’s about Navy pilots–and they’re real planes! They actually filmed in F-14 fighter jets–”

Grian sets the radio on the deck and carefully steps around it, cleaning the outside windows, sun warm on his back. When it’s time to step inside to look again, he picks the radio up and takes it with him, carrying Scar’s voice along. 

He’s talking about some volleyball scene that’s apparently iconic, although Grian had been under the impression this was a plane movie, not a sports movie. He also talks about which actors were his favorites in the film–some Grian has heard of, others not so much. Mumbo’s probably heard of them all, though. 

Grian frowns at the streaks on the window. He thinks that next time he’s asked to report any feedback, he’ll ask if they can supply his tower with a new squeegee, since the rubber on this one is very worn. He’d been a little surprised that such a specific tool had been in his tower at all given the distinct lack of other amenities–like running water, for one–but it made sense for a room surrounded on all sides by windows. 

The next time he tunes in, Scar is giving him a demonstration of that highway to the danger zone song he’s heard all over the radio. Grian stops what he’s doing and puts a hand over his mouth to stifle his laughter, as if there’s anyone around at all to hear him laugh. The thing is, Scar wouldn’t be half bad at it if he was taking it seriously but this rendition of the song is…distinctly not. It has no right being as charming as it is. 

Grian lets him ramble for a long time. The exact length of time doesn’t matter, because a location like this lays the very nature of time at your feet, rippling out infinitely along with the hills. There’s just the warm spring sun and cool spring breeze and the clouds in the bright blue sky and the cry of birds and the whisper of wind in the trees and the sound of Scar’s voice. They’ve got forever and a day out here, where Grian measures the passage of time by the length of the shadows on the deck.

“You have to watch the movie,” Scar concludes his spiel with. 

“I feel like I’ve seen it already,” Grian says, and he isn’t exaggerating.  

“No no no,” Scar says. “Something like this has to be seen with your own eyes! Experienced! Felt! It’s about the atmosphere, the music, the feelings! You gotta go rent it whenever you go home.”

“And if I don’t?” Grian says. He’s walked back inside temporarily to scan the horizon once again. There’s no little wisps of smoke to be found. “You’ve done such a good job explaining the plot to me already.”

“Then you aren’t allowed to come back as a lookout next summer,” Scar says petulantly. “I will remember, you know. I’ll ask you every time until you see it. Eventually it’ll get so annoying you’ll have to watch it. ”

And it’s–it’s at this moment where the reality of this hits Grian once again. The wind feels colder than it did a moment ago. Scar thinks Grian might come back next year. And maybe that’s some of Grian’s fault, because he’d played up how much he wanted this job when he was interviewed for it. When he answered the newspaper ad with his resume and application, he’d asked for placement in Shoshone National Forest as his first and only preference. He’d emphasized this location specifically. They must all think of him as particularly enthusiastic for fire-watching. 

But the only thing that mattered about this location, this national forest, this tower, this job, was Mumbo. He just has to get close. He was sent home empty-handed last time, the search parties had eventually turned from “rescue” to “recovery,” searches were altered and stopped due to fires and eventually stalled altogether when the weather finally turned in the fall. So he just…he has to get close, because Denver is too far away, but as long as Grian is right here it’ll all be fine and he can fix it. 

Grian has plans to skip town the moment he finds Mumbo. 

“Do you think I’m coming back?” he asks quietly. 

Scar seems to interpret the question a little differently than Grian meant it. “I think you’re doing great G-man,” he says. “You’ve learned everything so quickly. I don’t see why they wouldn’t hire you for next summer. You’re so thorough and determined to get things right that the Forest Service would be dumb if they weren’t glad to have you.”

“Uh,” Grian says, a little unclear on how to accept a compliment. “Thank you.”

“Of course,” Scar continues, “as your supervisor, I can report any issues I see with you, so you’d maybe wanna think about seeing Top Gun. Wouldn’t want me to mark you as deficient, of course.”

“This is manipulation,” Grian says. “I’m telling everyone that this is an unsafe workplace. I’m being coerced! Coerced into seeing a plane movie!”

“Grian,” Scar cries, scandalized. “How could you possibly call it a ‘plane movie’ after everything I’ve just told you! Were you even listening?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Grian says. “Synth, danger zone, F-14s, motorcycles, need for speed, volleyball. Is that all?”

“There’s so much more than that! But, well, maybe that too. It’s a lot of fun.” Scar pauses for a moment, and Grian uses the space to try and think of something else to banter back with, but before he gets a chance Scar speaks again, softer this time. 

“I liked Goose’s death,” he says, before quickly walking that statement back into something a little less shocking. “Or–I didn’t like it, it made me sad but…things happen, I guess. It was an accident. It was preventable. It wasn’t Mav’s fault. But he was still…guilty, when he grieved. And we watched him grieve.”

“Oh,” Grian says, and he doesn’t really know what else to add to that. “That sounds nice.”

“It is. I told you it’s my favorite movie.”

“Maybe I should watch it.”

»»———-　　———-««

June 1989

Some hikers stop by in the early morning, just after Grian makes his weather report of the day. They are the first people he’s actually seen since he started not quite a full month ago, although Scar told him there’d likely be more as they got deeper into the summer. Particularly, he said, there might be more tourists this year since people want to check the extent of the damages from the severe fires last year. A lot of people had been concerned that the whole Yellowstone area burned to the ground after the media firestorm, you see, and wanted to see it for themselves.

The hikers are keenly interested in the tower and happy to ask Grian questions about it, which he answers to the best of his ability. He lets them briefly tour the lookout tower–it’s a small room so there’s not much to see and it’s cramped with three additional people in it. They look out the windows at all of the country they’ve been hiking through and trace their paths along the mountains. Grian points out Jonesy Lake, the place they’d been camping, to the west. 

It feels like being put on the spot though, to answer all these questions with so little experience in the job, so he’s happy when they decide to get going a few minutes later. 

“I saw some hikers,” Grian says into his radio, watching them hike away until they disappear into the forest again. 

“Are they on their way out?” Scar asks.

“Yeah,” Grian says. “I told them about the storm this afternoon and they said they knew about it and were heading back.”

“Hm, that’s good at least,” Scar says. He sighs. “They were leaving on your trail?”

“Yeah.”

“That trail is difficult,” Scar says, and Grian agrees–it’s one of the reasons he’s opted to not go back into town on his days off. It’s just too much trouble. The other reason is that his days off are already preoccupied with a more important activity. “Maybe you should contact the rangers and give them a heads up that these people are on the trail.”

“Like what?” Grian asks. “You don’t think they’re going to make it?”

“They might,” Scar says. He sounds tired. “They might not. Last thing we need is a couple of drenched wet freezing hikers on that trail. If you give the rangers a heads up, they might be able to check the trailhead to make sure they got back to their car on-time.”

 “Copy that,” Grian says. “I’ll be back.”

He flips the radio back to the official frequency, the one that broadcasts forest-wide, and calls in. He always feels a little self-conscious on this line, never quite sure of who can hear him. It goes out to dispatch, fire crews, other lookouts, rangers, and any hobbyist who might know the frequencies to listen in on. There’s dozens of unknown ears listening to his every word.

He waits a moment, making sure he isn’t interrupting any priority call taking place, and proceeds when the channel is silent. 

“Dispatch, this is Two Forks.”

“Two Forks, proceed,” comes the response. 

“Reporting three hikers that stopped at the tower this morning around 9:30 am,” he says. “They were traveling from Jonesy Lake onto the Thorofare trail back to the trailhead. It’s a long hike and I’m concerned they might get caught in the storm this afternoon before they make it back so I’m giving a heads up.”

“Copy that,” Dispatch says. “We’ll check the trailhead after the storm to make sure they made it back. We’ll be able to find their permit too. Pay attention this afternoon, Two Forks, it’s officially fire season now.”

“Affirmative,” Grian says.

He flips his radio’s frequency to the now-familiar channel he and Scar use exclusively.

“I reported the hikers to the Service,” he says. “They said they’ll check the trailhead later to see if they made it back. I didn’t know their vehicle, of course, but I doubt there’s any others there right now besides mine.”

“Oh, good,” Scar says. 

There’s something brushing the back of Grian’s mind today. Scar just sounds different. “How are you this morning, Thorofare?” Grian asks. “It’s been so long since we did the weather report an hour ago.”

“I’m fine,” Scar says with another sigh, which really isn’t like him at all. 

“You sound bad.”

“Thanks, G-man,” Scar says sarcastically before admitting: “It’s the storm. The weather changes always make everything hurt more.”

“Hurt more?” Grian asks. It’s something he’s heard people complain about, but nothing he’s ever experienced. 

“It makes my joints hurt,” Scar says. “More than usual, I guess.”

“Do you have any pain medicine in your lookout?”

“It doesn’t really help,” Scar says. “Not anymore.”

“Oh,” Grian says. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine, I’m used to it,” he says, but the slight edge in his voice is telling Grian that used to it doesn’t mean can’t feel it.

“Why does it hurt?” Grian asks. 

“What do you mean why?” Scar replies. “Like, in general? No clue. Weather changes seem to make it worse. It’s also worse in the winter but I’m not in this tower in the winter so I’ve got a little more control over how I deal with it then. But as for why me, it’s because of old injuries.”

“That sounds awful,” Grian says. “Can I help? I mean, I don’t know how since I’m all the way over here but…if you think of anything.”

“You could talk to me,” Scar says. “It’ll either distract me or overwhelm me but we could try.”

“Okay. Um, what do you want to talk about?”

“Tell me a funny story from England,” he says. 

Grian stops for a moment to think. What’s a good funny story? He probably has many of them, but it’s hard to pick one specific scenario out, so he narrows it down to his university years and immediately remembers a good one. 

“Right,” he says. “I had a lot of friends in university.”

“Showing off?” Scar says. “Mr. Popular?”

“Shush,” Grian says. “I’m telling you a story. A lot of people I knew in college, and even a few from secondary school went to the same university as me so I basically already knew them.”

Grian slowly spins around in his tower, giving the hills near and far a glance over. There’s no smoke to be seen, but he can already tell that big clouds have built on the horizon. They won’t all be storm clouds, but the weather is clearly right for it. He goes back to his story. 

“I had this one group of friends: Timmy, Martyn, and Joel. Most of us were studying different things but we had some overlapping time and liked to hang out after class. Joel had made really close friends with a girl named Lizzie, and we’d ended up spending a lot of time with her too. Anyway, in this story though, we’d gone to the pub without her.”

“I don’t think anything has ever gone wrong at a pub,” Scar says solemnly. 

Grian laughs. “Yeah, alright, we all got super drunk at the pub. It’s 11 pm, we’re all drunk, and Joel announces he wants to confess his love for Lizzie. And this is like, the best idea we’ve ever heard, because Lizzie is super cool, maybe even cooler than Joel is. So we’re like, let’s go now.”

“Oh no…”

“Have no fear, Scar,” Grian says. “I told you it was a fun story.” 

Grian continues. “We leave the pub and decide to go find her flat near campus. We got turned around once or twice because Timmy’s awful at navigation and the one person who actually knew where she lived, Joel, was too busy trying to come up with poetry or something. I don’t know. It was nearly midnight when we finally found her flat, but her light was on so we knew she was home.”

“Did you guys throw rocks at her window?” Scar asks. “Like a modern Romeo and Juliet?”

“I thought about that actually,” Grian says. “But she had a ground floor entrance so Martyn just said we should knock on the door instead. Which was probably a smarter option, honestly.”

“Did she answer?”

“Her roommate did, actually, but she just rolled her eyes and went to go fetch Lizzie. The rest of us stood back while Joel presented her with a gift, which was actually just some small yard ornament he stole off of someone’s front garden a little down the street. I didn’t actually remember that part, Lizzie told it to me. She made him go put it back the next morning.” 

Grian sighs and shakes his head a little, a smile on his face at the memory. They’d been so dumb, but he’d give anything to be back there right now. Back then, he had all his friends–now, they were all either across oceans or in different countries, or both. Or…or they were missing. 

He shakes his head again, this time not at the thought of his previous shenanigans, but to dispel the darker thoughts from his mind before the cloud out the funny memory.

He continues, “When she answered the door, Joel had some great speech planned. Well, I don’t know if it was actually great. I did mention we were all pretty drunk. It sounded good to me, though. He said he was in love with her and she was so smart and so pretty and he wanted to go on a date with her. And then she started laughing, so hard she almost started crying.”

“What?”

“We were all confused too. But then she wiped her tears and said, and I remember these words as clearly as if it was yesterday. She said, ‘Joel, we’ve been dating for three months now.’”

“Wait, really?” Scar says. “They were already dating? Did you just not know or forget?”

“Dude, I don’t think I could have defined what was going on with the two of them if I tried. I'm not convinced Joel knew how to define it either until then.”

“That was a good story,” Scar says. “I gotta know, though! Did it work out?”

Grian grins. “Well, they got married a few years later, so I think it did.”

"Aww! I love a fairytale ending," Scar says. 

"Did you go to university?" Grian asks. "We were all so stupid then. I’m not convinced we’re any less stupid now, we just know how to act like we aren’t."

"Uh, no," Scar says. "I did some work in landscaping though. Before all this."

"I was an architect."

Grian wonders if that career is all but shot. It’s an unexpectedly painful thought to have, but it had been his dream job for so long. He'd only been just done with certification and doing his own clients during the time they'd been in Colorado. He wasn't exceptionally experienced or anything. 

He hadn't left the job on good terms either, with a string of no-shows, subsequent disciplinary actions, and a final letter of resignation wherein he specifically wrote he planned to take this lookout job because "nobody believed in Mumbo but him."

He winces. All his past coworkers probably thought he was insane. Maybe he was.

"Ooh, now that's a fancy job," Scar says.

Grian wants to move on from this discussion, before Scar has a chance to ask why he's here instead of at that fancy job, so he quickly says: "It's your turn for a question now. Ask me anything."

It occurs to Grian after he saysvthis that maybe telling Scar to ask him anything didn't exactly save him from the potential of awkward questions and just opened him up to a wider world of awkward questions. He's already tossed the ball back to Scar though, so now he just has to wait.

Scar is silent on the other end of the line for a while, and when he speaks again there's a more somber quality in his voice.

"What's the worst pain you've ever felt?" he asks.

Yeah, he should have just asked Scar to trade another funny story instead. Because he just…can’t answer this. He sucks in a breath, trying to steady the way his heart rate spiked with just that one question. 

It’s a question that pulls him back into that black hole that threatens to break open his chest everyday. He's circling the event horizon. They should've stuck to funny stories. 

Grian scrambles for a safe answer, one that doesn't involve the marked up topo maps in between the books on his desk–hastily slotted out of view from the earlier hikers–or missing posters. An answer that keeps his head above water for this conversation. 

There’s just, there’s just a certain kind of whiplash from talking about funny experiences with his friends in university –friends who weren’t even Mumbo–and then being reminded of the elephant in the room once again. He carries that pain with him wherever he goes now. 

He isn’t the person he used to be in university in England, or when he was an architect in Denver.

He looks down at the radio in his hand that demands his immediate reply, and his attention flicks to his forearm. 

“I broke my wrist two years ago,” he blurts out. “It’s a funnier story than it sounds, I promise.”

This is a safe memory. It’s even a safe memory of Mumbo, because even though the edges of it are vignetted with pain, the memory still sticks out brightly as something that makes Grian smile. It still hurt, of course. Grian didn’t enjoy breaking his wrist. That wasn’t why it made him smile. 

It’s just that the memory of Mumbo following him around their flat like a puppy for a week apologizing to him sticks out more than the white-hot shock of pain when it happened. It’s Grian calmly navigating them to the ER because Mumbo was the one who was almost too freaked out to drive, something Grian teased him about endlessly. 

“Ouch,” Scar says. “I sure know that feeling.”

“I fell off a bike,” Grian says. “Well, that makes it sound too simple. It was more like I lost control on a steep hill, drove it off trail, crashed, and my poor wrist took the worst of it when I tried to catch my fall.”

“Oh no! Did they do surgery?” Scar asks. 

“No, it healed by itself, fortunately,” Grian says, and decides to tell the rest of the story anyway since it makes him smile. “I’d gotten my roommate a mountain bike as a gift, since he was really interested in that stuff. He loved it–although we actually had to take it back and get another one ‘cause he was too tall for the one I bought, but he said it was the thought that counted. He was so excited to try it that he made me come with him and rent my own bike.”

“Which you then immediately crashed?”

Grian sighs. “Pretty much. You should’ve seen his face, though. I think he was panicking more about it than me. I was like, okay, we’ll just walk back to the car and go to the ER, you can help me walk the bike up this hill. But I thought he was going to pass out!” Grian smiles. “I got a lot of leverage out of that, though, since he’s the one who talked me into it.”

“Oh, I have no trouble believing that,” Scar says. “So no biking for you?”

“No,” Grian says. “I’ll just walk, thank you. Besides, I had to pay for repairing that rental!”

“Mm, more options for hiking trails that way anyway.”

Grian scans the horizon again, eyes lingering on Scar’s lookout just a little longer than necessary. “What’s yours?” he asks. “The worst pain, I mean.”

Scar doesn’t answer for a moment. It’s not a long enough moment to assume he didn’t plan on answering at all, but right after Grian speaks it hits him. He wants to slap himself. “Oh. It’s the old injuries you mentioned earlier. The ones that still hurt right now.”

“Something like that,” Scar replies. 

“What was it?” Grian says. “Can I ask?”

“I was in a really bad car accident a few years ago,” Scar says. He’s miles away but sounds more distant than usual. “It nearly killed me, actually. I broke a lot of bones, spent a lot of time in the hospital, recovered for a long time, you get it.” 

“That’s awful,” Grian says. “I’m really sorry.”

“Well,” Scar says. “It happened, I guess. Nothing you can do about that.”

“For what it’s worth,” Grian says, “I’m glad it didn’t kill you.”

When Scar speaks again, it’s quieter than before. “I don’t know if I always felt the same,” he says. “But I think I do now, these days.” 

Oh. Grian doesn’t even have words to say to that, but he doesn’t need to, because Scar is still holding his radio’s button down. Still on the line, preventing Grian from responding. 

Scar sighs. “Listen, it’s been nice chatting with you G, but I have to go feed Jellie and do a few things before this storm hits, so I gotta let you go.” His voice is brisk now. 

“Um, okay,” Grian responds. “Do you feel any better? Did it distract you?”

“It gave me something else to focus on,” Scar says firmly. “But now I need to go. Talk to you when the storm hits, okay?”

“Okay.”

»»———-　　———-««

The National Weather Service in Riverton has issued a severe thunderstorm warning for Park County in Northwestern Wyoming, Teton County in Northwestern Wyoming, Fremont County in Northwestern Wyoming, Hot Springs County in Northwestern Wyoming until 6:00 PM. 

At 4:26 PM, a severe thunderstorm was located over Yellowstone National Park moving west at 40 miles per hour. Hazard…60 miles per hour wind gusts and quarter sized hail. Impact…Hail damage to vehicles is expected. Expect wind damage to roofs, siding, trees, and/or power lines.

Locations impacted include Yellowstone National Park, Canyon Village, Shoshone National Forest, Wapiti, Cody, Powell, Teton Village, Jackson, Meeteetse, Dubois. For your protection move to an interior room on the lowest floor of a building or get inside a sturdy structure and stay away from windows.

Along with large hail and damaging winds, continuous cloud to ground lightning is occurring with this storm. Move indoors immediately. Lightning is one of nature’s leading killers. Remember, if you can hear thunder, you are close enough to be struck by lightning…

The message ends with a harsh beeping tone, and Grian turns the volume down before it can repeat itself. The message had cut in and out with static the entire time, probably due to the distance and the mountains, even though it was being transmitted from Cody. A moment later, Grian flips the channel from the National Weather Service frequency back to the one he and Scar use, which is surprisingly stable.

Grian steps out onto the deck surrounding his tower. The sky is dark blue to the west, and the tops of the trees are already being picked up by the wind. It’s a little disconcerting, actually, to be way up in the top of the tower. The thick wooden support beams still allow a little bit of sway when the winds are strong enough. 

There’s suddenly a CRASH from rolling thunder, and Grian flinches involuntarily. Right. The radio had just said that if he was close enough to hear thunder, he was close enough to be struck by lightning. Grian decides that he should step inside, instead of standing around outside. 

Although, if he’s being honest with himself, inside doesn’t seem much better either. All this talk about moving to the lowest floor of a building and staying away from windows doesn’t mean much when your only shelter is a four story wooden tower on the highest mountain top around, encased on all sides by windows. 

But that’s the job, isn’t it?

He doesn’t get to take shelter–if there were a place for him to take shelter in the first place–because his job is to watch from this perch. He’s supposed to be noting and locating every lightning strike he possibly can and looking carefully to see if any of them start fires. Lightning causes even more fires than humans, typically. 

He’s been provided a wooden stool with glass feet to use during the storm since both of the materials are not very conductive, but that isn’t really sparking a lot of confidence in him. And there are some lightning rods and other protective grounding measures, but it’s still a little…disconcerting.

Grian’s glad he turned his radio back to its normal frequency, because Scar calls in a moment later. “Here she comes!” he cries. “I know you heard that thunder too.”

“It’s getting so dark,” Grian says. 

The lights aren't on right now–although he doesn't normally need them midday anyway–so the rapidly approaching weather fills the tower with almost palpable shifting gloom. Earlier Grian had switched off the generator at the bottom of the tower and covered it with a tarp in preparation for the storm. 

“This might be an interesting one,” Scar says. “We might see some of the first fires of the season in this area today.”

“That’s what they said this morning when they reported the fire risk. And what the ranger told me after I reported those hikers.”

“Lightning starts most of our fires out here,” Scar says. “They might let it burn if it’s a lightning based fire, but I’m not sure after how bad it was last year. They might want to suppress it to keep the public happy. Generally though, human-caused fires get suppressed but natural ones might be allowed to burn.”

“Yeah, you told me a few weeks ago that the ecosystem needs fire or something.”

“It gets along pretty well by itself without our help,” Scar says. “We just…like to keep the pretty parts to ourselves. Don’t wanna see ‘em get destroyed.”

“I get that,” Grian says. He sighs. “Do you feel any better?”

“Um,” Scar replies. “Not particularly.”

“Oh. I thought you sounded better.”

“Thanks, I’m good at that.”

"You shouldn't have to be good at that."

"I'd never get anything done otherwise," Scar says.

Grian turns to watching the leading edge of the storm roll in. It’s really beautiful up here, on his little perch. The sky is a dark blue-black to the west and clear to the east. The thunderhead is high and lofty. Grian can see the slopes in the distance disappearing in a curtain of rain, the same blue-gray color as the clouds. 

“Keep an eye on that cloud and right around it,” Scar says a few minutes later. “We might lose visibility when it passes over us but it’s close enough now for us to count the lightning strikes.”

Just as Scar speaks, Grian spots the first one in the distance, darting down quickly to the ground and branching as it goes. It’s beautiful too. Grian quickly lines it up in the sight of his firefinder, spinning the circle around until it’s pointing directly at the strike area. He marks down the general area with a pencil on the map in the center of the disc. 

Just after he finishes doing that, thunder claps and it feels like it rattles the whole cabin. Grian decides maybe it’s time for him to stand on the stool, just in case. 

When the storm draws closer, the lightning will probably be too fast to keep up with. Grian’s already having issues finding them in the firefinder before another strikes. For this reason, he has a profile map of the area around his tower too, with the peaks drawn exactly in the way he can see them from the center of his tower. He marks little X’s in pencil on the areas of the slopes the lightning strikes. 

“This storm has a lot of lightning,” Grian says into his radio. “How do you keep up?”

“Just try your best,” Scar says. “The profile map helps. We’re mostly trying to just remember the areas where it struck, so that later we can keep an eye on them for fire.”

“Do you think it’ll cause a fire?” 

As soon as he lets go of the call button, he spies another strike, way off near Scar’s tower to the North. He dutifully marks it down. It dances down from the sky, landing somewhere in the mountains between them.

“We might not be able to tell until after the storm,” Scar says. “And sometimes it’s hard to tell right after because of fog and stuff. You’ll figure out what real smoke looks like soon enough.”

“Doesn’t the rain put these fires out?” Grian asks. 

“Sometimes,” Scar says. “Sometimes they smolder for a while. We might need to keep an extra eye on these lightning strike locations for a few days in the future, which is why we're marking it down."

The thunder continues to rumble all around him, and soon rain starts to fall. They're big fat drops too, and it takes no time at all for the deck outside to be completely covered. They start to hit the windows too, so Grian squints around them as best he can. Sometimes the lightning just flashes all around him, no discernable ground contact in sight. 

"I'm losing visibility," Grian says into the radio.

Scar replies, but the words are lost in the background noise of the rain and the wind and the thunder. 

It's pouring buckets now, and Grian sets down his pencil. He can't see anything but rain now, and maybe the softest outline of the next closest hill, so there’s nothing to report. Experiencing the storm in this little glass cage is unique. It’s chilly, with the wetness and the clouds bringing the chill back into the normally sun-warmed cabin. It’s also very loud–the rain hitting the glass and the wood and the thunder rattling the window frames nearly drown out Grian’s own thoughts. 

Grian shuts his eyes against the sway of the tower in the wind, as if he can keep it grounded by willpower alone. 

The air feels charged and buzzing. Grian’s fingers feel a little tingly, and the hair on his arm starts to stand up with the static. He’s got enough presence of mind to think huh, that’s weird, before–

CRASH!

There’s a horribly loud noise all of a sudden, and Grian flinches so hard he nearly falls off the stool he’s standing on. It’s accompanied by a flash of bright light that he instinctively closes his eyes against. It’s blinding even against his eyelids. When Grian blinks them open and steadies himself, heart beating wildly out of control, everything just looks…normal. The tower is fine, and so are the misty treetops he can see closest to the tower.

It must have been lightning, it had to have been. Maybe not on the tower or in his obscured sightline, but close enough to nearly send Grian to an early grave from a heart attack. He feels horribly shaky now, and it takes him a few tries to firmly depress the button on the side of his radio. 

“S-Scar,” he says. “I think there was just–there was lightning.”

He can barely hear Scar, but he thinks he says, “Did it hit the tower?”

“No–no I don’t think so,” Grian says. “But it had to be close.”

“As long as you’re okay,” comes the muffled reply. 

It isn’t long before the rain begins to taper off. It isn’t long at all, actually–it’s sort of surprising how quickly the worst of it passes, but the storm had been moving quickly according to the weather service. Through the mist of rain, he can once again see the Thorofare Lookout through his northern window. With the visibility restored, he goes back to marking down lightning strikes. His map is full of them now. 

“It seems like it passed,” Grian says, once the rain is just a sprinkle. “What do we do now?”

“For the rest of the day? Probably not much–the ground is really damp. But we’ll keep an eye out on the lightning strike areas for the next few days for smoke. They might send planes to inspect the forest after the storm.”

“Planes…” Grian says. “You know, it’s a wonder they still hire these jobs with all that technology available now. Why don’t they just use planes, helicopters, radars, and satellites?”

“Well, they do,” Scar says. “This is kind of a dying job? But–the difference with us is that we’re here all the time. You and me, we can get more familiar with this area by looking at it everyday than a pilot could from a couple of flybys. They’ll still need us, for a while at least.”

“For a while,” Grian repeats. “Until they replace the jobs with something cheaper.”

Scar laughs. “I’d be shocked if they can find a piece of technology cheaper than my salary,” he says. 

“God, if that isn’t true,” Grian says. “I don’t know how people afford anything. My roommate wants a computer so bad but they’re, like, all a million dollars so we couldn’t get one. He’d be good at it though, he was learning computer-aided design at work. Best in the office!”

“Maybe you’ll get one eventually,” Scar says. “Not on this salary though.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me,” Grian says. “I didn’t choose this job for the money, that’s for sure.”

The sun is breaking out behind the clouds now. Everything looks fresh and shiny and bright, glittering with illuminated raindrops. There’s a steady drip-drip from the lookout tower’s roof. With the strength of the sun, it’ll be no time at all before it’s all dry. The sky is still a deep blue to the west behind the storm, and the golden sunlit trees against the dark sky make a pleasing contrast. 

Everything feels just a little new, a little fresh. He basks in the feeling. 

»»———-　　———-««

It’s 11 AM. The sun is bright and the sky is blue. 

"I see smoke," Grian says. "I know I was wrong last time but I'm not this time."

The smoke is rising, thin and wispy, from a forested section on the southwestern flank of Trout Peak. 

"Confidence, I like that," Scar says. "Go on and give me the reading, then."

The motions are getting familiar now. The firefinder is a disc that sits in the middle of the tower on a small table. The edge of the circle, its arc, is covered in little degree markings. The firefinder is a type of alidade, which is a turning board that allows someone to determine line of sight for triangulating locations. They date back to ancient times–astronomers used a version called an astrolabe for navigation, telling time, and to locate the position of celestial bodies. 

It's fascinating how, when surrounded by emerging technologies, we can turn to the very tools humanity has been using for millennia. 

The disc has two sights opposite to each other: an upper sight with a peep hole and a lower sight with two crosshairs. Grian spins them around the arc until he is in the vicinity of the smoke, and then looks through the upper sight. He marks the degree that the opposite crosshair has landed on around the arc. That’s the azimuth of the fire. The azimuth is the horizontal angle from a cardinal direction–this fire sits northwest of Grian’s tower, and its azimuth is 321°. For a more precise measurement he takes the minutes off of the vernier, another set of markings that rotates around the base of the firefinder. His final reading is 321° 45’.

Then he looks at the map that is permanently fixed to the center of the disc. His lookout tower is situated in the middle. Grian can estimate the distance on the map from a metal tape that stretches across. Given the scale of the map, two miles is represented by an inch–Trout Peak is 5 inches on the map, so it is 10 miles away. 

The upper peep hole has markings that are used to determine the vertical height of the fire, but which ones to use are dependent on if the fire is above or below the lookout. This fire is below Grian’s perch on the mountaintop, so when he looks through the sight to the crosshair on the opposite side of the firefinder, he uses the bottom crosshair. 

It’s measuring -8°, so Grian does a little math. He knows the height of his lookout, he knows the distance of the fire, and now that he knows the vertical angle he can determine how much lower the fire is than him. Once he gets the number he subtracts it from his own elevation. Now he knows the fire is at an elevation of 7,150 feet. 

So to recap: he’s got a fire northwest at 321° 45’, 10 miles away, at 7,150 feet above sea level. 

He relays this information to Scar on the radio. 

“Excellent!” Scar cries. “Here, I can see the fire so I’ll give you my measurements too. Where our azimuths cross will be the exact location. With all of this information, they’ll definitely be able to find the fire.”

Scar already has the numbers ready, indicating he did his own measurements while waiting for Grian to complete his. Scar probably made them faster, too, but Grian’s choosing to be proud of himself instead. This work is a lot more complicated than he expected it to be in the beginning. He writes down Scar’s information on a stray piece of paper nearby. 

“Do you want to make the report?” Scar says. “I mean, you sighted it so it’s yours. It’ll look good for you.”

“Alright,” Grian says, “talk to you in a bit.”

He goes back onto the official channel and reports the fire to the Forest Service. He gives both his and Scar’s measurements, along with a general description of the area and nearby landmarks. He includes information on the probable cause of the fire–lightning from the storm two days ago–and the sort of landscape it is burning in. He gives an approximation of the size of the fire too. It’s a small one. 

They thank him for his report and promise to give updates through the official channel. Scar’s got a second radio tuned to that all the time, so Grian flips his channel back to the one he and Scar use exclusively. 

“I did it,” he says. 

“Good job!” Scar says. “And good eye to notice that smoke.”

“I don’t know if I have good eyes,” Grian chuckles. “I wear glasses, you know. The Forest Service wasn’t very happy with that but I passed the eye test as long as I could wear them so they just made me bring two pairs in case one gets broken.”

“Aw, you have glasses? Are they those big silly ones? I hope they’re those big silly ones, you’d look good in them. So fashionable."

“Scar, you have no idea what I look like.”

“I’m correct though, aren’t I?”

Grian rolls his eyes. “No comment.”

“By the way,” Scar says. “You did good reporting those hikers earlier in the week.”

This snags Grian’s attention immediately. “Did they get lost?” he asks. 

“I don’t think they were lost, but they were definitely unable to get back to their car before the storm hit. A ranger went up the trail after the storm passed and found them part of the way down, soaking wet. He helped them warm up and get back.”

“They must have been cold,” Grian says. “It’s warm out but not warm enough to be caught in a thunderstorm.”

“Oh for sure,” Scar says. “It’s possible they would have made it back fine but it’s also possible that being wet and cold could have slowed them down enough to be in big trouble. It just got colder over the evening and they might not have been able to start a fire with all of the tinder being wet.”

“It’s weird how badly everything can go wrong,” Grian muses. “And how quickly.”

“You did a good thing, though,” Scar says. “You helped someone. That’s what we’re here for.”

“I’m glad they’re safe,” Grian says, and for some reason he has a lump in his throat again. It’s like he can’t get away from it, this pain that rubs against his every movement. He can’t even be happy with a compliment to his work, or proud of himself for spotting a fire, because it always boomerangs right back into despair and self-pitying.

It’s a hole he can’t escape. He helped someone, but he can’t help himself, can’t help Mumbo.

He hopes Mumbo is somewhere warm, right now. 

»»———-　　———-««

There’s nothing but the soft wind in the trees and the crunch of Grian’s boots in the gravel as he steadily climbs the hill to his lookout. The late afternoon light slants on the ground, throwing shadows across his path. But it’s well into summer now, and the sun doesn’t set until 9 PM, so there’s hours of warm light left. 

It’s a little strange that the small cabin feels like home now, but after sleeping in a tent for three nights that’s exactly what it feels like. Grian’s work schedule grants him days off just like any job–sometimes he works 10 days on for 4 days off, like he did this week. Further into fire season, his hours will probably lengthen. 

Most lookouts go into town on their days off for a taste of civilization, but Grian doesn’t. His reasons are twofold. First, he’d rather not sacrifice two days of his break just to hike that difficult trail in and out. 

Second, he’s still not lost sight of his original goal: finding Mumbo. 

He spent most of the last few days searching an area on the edge of his lookout territory called Deer Creek. On paper, it’s a perfect spot–there’s a year-round water supply close by, some sheltered areas between rocky outcroppings and forest, and perhaps even some very old structures from historic homesteads or ranches. 

Of course, he’s coming home once again empty-handed. He saw several hawks, an elk, a fox, and some deer, and no Mumbo. 

As he approaches the tower, the generator is turned off, so Grian goes to turn it on again. The Forest Service had assigned a temporary volunteer lookout to cover his shift while he was gone, but that person had left early this morning in order to get back to the trailhead. They must have turned off the generator before they left to save propane. 

Grian will have to ask Scar if the volunteer was as interesting to talk to as he is. He hasn’t spoken to Scar in several days, in order to save the battery on his radio. His radio’s charger is plugged in at the tower, although he has extra batteries for emergencies. 

The first thing Grian notices when he walks up to the base of the tower is that there’s an object leaned against the stairs. It’s a bicycle of some sort. He first wonders if it’s something the volunteer lookout left behind, but that doesn’t make any sense. It’s too perfectly placed for him to find it. 

It’s too…familiar?

It’s a bicycle of some sort, except that when Grian really looks at it for the first time he freezes, because it’s the sort of bicycle that Grian recognizes instantly.  Grian stops in his tracks, and suddenly his heartbeat is loud in his ears. His eyes dart all over the bike, taking in every tiny detail. 

It’s painted in what was once bright green and yellow, but the color is faded from the sun and rusty from exposure. There’s scratches on it, and the chain looks clearly messed up. 

It’s a lot worse for wear than the day Grian bought it, but he’d never forget what it looked like. He’s been looking for it for a year now. 

Why is Mumbo’s mountain bike leaned against the Two Forks tower staircase?

<< Chapter Two | Masterpost | Chapter Four >>

[mopcycle100]

Differences between animated Telepathy Arc (ep7) vs manga Telepathy Arc (ch.98 pgs 1-67)

ok hi. telepathy club arc is finally starting in the anime, and i've been excited to see this episode. and it was very enjoyable to watch, especially seeing Takenaka finally animated, especially with all the little mannerisms they animted for him. makes him feel real and alive!! it was awesome!!

but, as i was watching the episode, i realized there was a LOT cut out of the arc... tons of lines of dialogue and jokes that were omitted, shortened, or rewritten to rush to the car scene. So I'm here to cover some changes to lines and dialogue to get anime-onlys up to speed on what was left out of today's episode! (I wanted to cover everything but well. covering EVERY single line missing at this current moment might be overkill)

To start, in the opening, where Tome disbands the club, there is the removal of each of the other Telepathy Club member's thoughts involving Tome's seriousness, though I do think it would have distracted from the focal point of the scene, being Tome's feelings.

The second one is after Tome leaves the clubroom. This scene has been reduced to a measly 3 lines where the remaining members come to terms with their disbandment, acknowledge that they underestimated Tome's investment, then look into reading the books. This scene is longer in the manga, where Inukawa, Kijibayashi, and Saruta have a much more in depth conversation about Tome and what they should do next.

Next, the scene of Mob and Ritsu, where Ritsu asks about Dimple's whereabouts, the lines where he brings up searching for Dimple is omitted.

There's also several lines referring to how it's easy for your youth to pass by you / there's not enough time to do the things you want that have been omitted. This is an interesting omission, as Reigen actually brings up the "spring of your youth" line in the s3 PV trailer.

The anime skips over the few lines of Inukawa trying to shoo away the Shiratori brothers, since he thinks they wouldn't be much help (and it'd be a waste of time... lots of removals of the mention of time hm)

I've seen this mentioned already, but the panel of Takenaka bringing up Tsubomi has been completely omitted from the anime. (Also since I have this panel shown, Inukawa already knows Takenaka is in the Tennis club in the anime)

Takenaka is much, MUCH more wordier in the manga. He goes out of his way to overexplain his reason to being in the clubroom, as seen here.

The joke where Musashi enters the clubroom upon their second attempt with using the noise to summon a telepath is gone.

Takenaka is not as much of an asshole in the anime, compared to the manga. Lots of small tidbits and even lines I was looking forward to were omitted.

Again, Musashi's appearance was cut in the anime, alongside Ritsu and the Shiratori brothers reading the room.

The club explaining their plans to Takenaka isn't shown BUT it's possible these panels may show up in ep8 instead, in a sort of flashback instead.

An interesting choice on the anime's part: they combined the driver's mark joke from later in the arc with Reigen reacting to the discussion of oversleeping.

There's definitely more, smaller lines that were probs cut or rewritten, but these were the ones I noticed. I can understand why these lines were omitted, because the arc has so much dialogue, it probably wasn't feasible to adapt it all. But this came at the expense of some characterization and jokes not landing. It is definitely possible that ep8 will pick up the slack so fingers crossed...

[primordialsoundmeditation]

This week’s astrology forecast: January 29thth to February 4th

Message for the week:

The week starts off with a flurry of exciting, innovative, productive energy with Mars in productive Capricorn in a trine to future seeing Uranus. Uranus can bring favorable unexpected opportunities for moving forward. With Uranus having just turned direct, all the planets are now moving forward and accelerating the pace.

The energetic surge at the start of the week peters out by midweek, with no major aspects until Friday’s Mercury stimulating sextile to imaginative Neptune. Although this enhances all creative and spiritual activities, it does pull attention away from more worldly activities—like work.

The weekend is excellent for the personal side of life. Saturday has all the makings for dating and romance, with the Moon in intimate Scorpio in harmony with passionate Mars, romantic Neptune, and mentally stimulating Mercury.

Monday: Stay open to novelty and unexpected opportunities while Mars is in a flowing trine to innovative Uranus today. This leads to intuition in action—don’t wait for your intuition to inspire you, instead, set about your activities and your intuition will assist you. The Moon is in task-oriented Virgo and forms a grand trine with Mars and Uranus, leading to things clicking into place smoothly. You may have to harness your attention this afternoon to stay on point while the Moon opposes escapist Neptune—keep to what is real and right in front of you.

Tuesday: The Moon is in cooperative Libra in harmony with Pluto in Aquarius, enhancing all cooperative endeavors. You may be called on to use Libra’s diplomatic skills this evening while the Moon is in an aggravating square to Venus (relationships), and others may have a different agenda than you. Peace is assured with the Moon then moving into a flowing trine to the Sun.

Wednesday: You may have to walk lightly around others today with the Moon in fair-minded Libra opposite the wounded healer Chiron this morning, and then square to agitating Mars this evening. This may make you hypersensitive to injustices and things that just aren’t fair. The high road (there is always a high road) is to stay in Libra’s cherished center, and basically to mind your own business and hold to your integrity.

Thursday: Cooperative endeavors are favored early in the day, but not so much this afternoon. The Moon starts the day in cooperative Libra, good for negotiations and all one-to-one interactions. You may feel like being alone this afternoon as the Moon moves into privacy-seeking Scorpio midday and forms a disruptive square to molten Pluto. Buried emotional issues can come to the surface requiring private time to work through them.

Friday: Mercury (the mind) is in an uplifting sextile to imaginative Neptune today, favoring artistic, creative, and even poetic mind. The Moon is in Scorpio opposite Jupiter before dawn—you may feel like having an indulgent breakfast. The Moon is sextile Venus, enhancing all relationships by stimulating greater depth of involvement. The Moon does square the Sun this afternoon, creating a resistance to anything superficial and letting you know which conversations you don’t want to partake in.

Saturday: a stellar day in the heavens with the Moon in Scorpio with exclusively harmonious aspects throughout the day. The Moon starts the day with a sextile to Mars moving into a flowing trine with Neptune and a stimulating sextile to Mercury this evening. A good date night with a mixture of magnetic, passionate, and mentally engaging energy.

Sunday: The Moon is in enthusiastic Sagittarius, awakening the urge to get out and adventure a bit. You may have to tend to some pressing responsibility midday during the square to pressure-laden Saturn—otherwise a day to play and explore as you please. Mercury enters free-thinking Aquarius tonight, liberating the mind and giving greater freedom to speak your mind.

May the stars be with you!

Donations: Although these weekly updates are free, if you would like to support the newsletter with a donation, go to my website and click the “Donate” button on the menu. You can donate in increments of $5. You can also donate through Venmo: David-Pond-17 If you would like to send a check, contact us for our mailing address. Thanks for your support!

Consultations: I am available for consultations if you would like to see how your astrology chart can help you connect with your true self, explore your life’s purpose, better understand relationships, find your right vocation, or to align with current astrological influences. Contact us by email, phone, or through the “Services” tab on our website, to set up a session.

Email: Dpond11@gmail.com

Website: Davidpond.com

Phone: 360-918-8411

[glagger-true]

Howdy dear reader! I'm your host Glagger, and today I'm here to bring you the fifth post in my medal analysis series for the visual novel Password by Grizz.

This post is the third, and final installment of the day 9 medals trio. This trio's important connection is going to be explained in depth in the next post, the series first intermission.

Post contains SPOILERS FOR THE NOVEL, as usual. So please, if you haven't read the novel yet, and don't want to be spoiled, leave for now.

Pisces, the medal of Forgiveness, Empathy and Acceptance:

Pisces is found at the bottom of the river in the forest by Dave. Dean leads Dave there so they can spend some quiet time together, which leads into a conversation about his friendship with Sal and how Dave thinks friends shouldn't hurt each other. Dean says as long as apologies are done after a fight and both forgive, it's okay, assuming you can apologize for the harm that was done. Dean also uses the fact Tyson hurt Dave but then became a friend to back that statement.

Dave asks what are the things you can't apologize for, and after promising not to tell anyone about what's about to be shared, convinces Dean to come clean about his sin. Dean committed a mistake that ruined a friends's life an caused said friend to attempt suicide. He expresses how much he wishes for a do-over or simply to have the chance to apologize for what he did.

Dave asks how he can help, and Dean says he already is, thanking him for doing so, and then staying in silence with his arm around Dave's shoulders. Dean kisses Dave's cheek and asks if he's okay after he catches him overthinking in silence about their relationship's future. Dave then spots the medal as Dean is reassuring him, and the bear fishes the medal with a stick. He ends the scene by carrying Dave back to the mansion on his back.

Pisces, in astrology, is the mutable negative water sign of the zodiac. It's a passive, adaptable sign that is said to be the most empathetic of the zodiac wheel, which is a result of it being the last sign. Pisces absorbed and learned all the lessons from the other signs in the wheel, all of their joys and pains, hopes and fears.

Astrologers say, those born in Pisces are the most psychic, empathetic, and compassionate amongst people. They are so sensitive physically and emotionally that they run the risk of being swallowed by emotions, needing to remember to ground themselves often. They are kind, gentle and romantic, loving to share experiences that involve their creative pursuits with loved ones. They effortlessly adapt to their surroundings, but easily become lost between fantasy and reality, which makes them seem delusional when taking decisions and addressing their problems.

Pisces is ruled by two planets. The old ruler Jupiter, who represents gifts, luck, tolerance, and spiritual growth. And the modern ruler Neptune, who represents creativity and dreams, psychic receptivity, illusion and deception, and escapism. This combination is what gives Pisces its duality between reality and fantasy. Pisces is patient and wants to grow spiritually in reality, but often attempts to swim away from its issues. They use ignorance as both a shield to avoid addressing the reality of the problem, and as a seed for their imagination to create fantasies where these issues are solved.

In Greek and Roman myth, while visiting Syria, Aphrodite and Eros (or Venus and Cupid) are attacked by Typhon, and two fish save them by carrying them on their backs. In another version, after an egg falls into the Euphrates, some fish nudge it to the shore, and after doves warm it up, Aphrodite is born from it. In gratitude she sends the fish to the skies where they become a constellation.

Dean reveals a trauma that affects his life constantly, he has to swim against it and the insecurities generated from it everyday not to drown in them. This metaphorical monster makes him feel the need to always be perfect, because the guilt makes him feel like he's still a terrible person who constantly needs to do and be better all the time. This toxic perfectionism causes Dean to behave in ways that can unwillingly upset others he cares about, while also deeply affecting his romantic and sexual relationships and how he perceives them. Dave also has complications with romance and sex; the trauma of losing his father essentially killed his desire for both. He also behaves in negative ways to those he cares about thanks to the scars of his pain. This shared issue between Dean and Dave parallels perfectly with how Aphrodite, goddess of love and sexuality, and her son Eros, god of love and erotism, both need to be saved from the monster trying to kill them. Dean and Dave seem to play the role of the fish trying to save their desire to love and be intimate with one another from their inner demons, sharing an intimate emotional moment with one another as a first step towards that.

The secondary myth seems to complement this idea. By the end of their interaction after fishing the medal from the river, their relationship with one another seems to finally hatch into something substantial, much like how Aphrodite hatches from the egg after the fish saved her. And the scene ends with Dean carrying Dave on his back to the manor like the fish in the myth do to Aphrodite when they carry her to the shore.

The relationship between Dave and Dean is complicated. This is because they both refuse to acknowledge and deal directly with the disconnection they have with one another, caused by their issues. They both ignorantly lead the other on, avoiding the main problem while pretending a perfect fantasy date will solve their issues and solidify their bond. They patiently tolerate every failed attempt in their way, awaiting for the time they believe to be right in their fantasy. What they fail to understand is that creating the perfect scenario in reality is up to them. All that parallels well with Pisces' rulers.

The traumas Dean and Dave suffered have made them extremely emotional, sensitive and empathetic people, who are very kind, gentle, loving, passive and receptive men. Those traits are even stronger when it comes to people they care about, like Tyson and Sal. They both show adaptability in how they found a way to keep on living and trying to bond with others and be happy, despite the pain wearing them down. Together, their flexibility allows them to start healing and improving in order to become better people like they wish to be.

Craig's commentary on the medal is that it's a sign that fights against both joy and pain, hope and fear, constantly battling two opposing forces as if swimming upstream without ever giving up to either. Craig theorizes that perhaps that's why they found the medal together in the moment they did, a moment of vulnerability, which he says could go a long way if one is willing to allow it to. This is a reference to how Dean and Dave both fight against their pain and fear to overcome their personal issues, while simultaneously self-sabotaging and going against their own happiness and hope by forcing themselves to be perfect all the time. They both like one another and want to progress their bond, but don't actively pursue it and lead the other on, something that only begins to change once they allow their vulnerability in the moment to change it.

Banner and artwork were both made by Xernok on Discord.