#whoever you are reading this don’t read it unless you’ve seen late night confessions already GAHSHAHA | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

kingexpl0sionmurder · 4 years

Text

Missed Connection - Shinsou Hitoshi

Author: @kingexpl0sionmurder Rating: NSFW 18+ Warnings: Unprotected sex, blowjobs, dirty talk, poking fun at fakes who shop at UO and wear band t-shirts for bands they don’t listen to, terrible poetry, Kaminari is a weirdo. Pairing: Shinsou Hitoshi/F!Reader Words: 4,554 AN: This is for the bnharem server collab, the theme is pen pals! We were able to write basically anything as long as there was some kind of communication/writing/texting etc! This is the first time I’ve written for Shinsou and I head cannon him as a fucking closet goth so don’t at me. Collab Masterlist (Please go check out everyone else’s contributions!) My Masterlist Buy me a Ko-fi -- When his phone started ringing, Shinsou was tempted to throw it halfway across the room. Whoever thought it was okay to call him at - he turned to squint at the clock on his bedside table - 10 in the morning on his day off, better have a good excuse. He frowned at the screen once he’d found his phone, and sighed.

“The world better be on fire, Kaminari.” His palm rubbed over his face as he pressed the phone to his ear, his eyes closing again.

The blonde chuckled, full of energy as usual. “Aw, come on ‘Toshi! It’s not that early.”

A million ways he could kill his friend and make it look like an accident flashed through his mind. “You know I like to sleep late on my days off.” He left it at that, no further explanation needed. Kaminari knew he stayed up impossibly late on his off days, crawling under the covers only when the sun started to rise.

“You want to hear this, I promise. I wouldn’t call this early unless it was important.” Shinsou listened to the sound of a keyboard clicking through the phone, waiting impatiently for his friend to continue.

“So, you know how I sometimes like to fuck around on the internet?” This was a rhetorical question. Of course he did. “Well, occasionally I like to browse through Craigslist, and this morning I was in the missed connections section, and I found something interesting.”

“Why do you look through missed connections?” He didn’t really care, he just thought it was kind of...weird. But, then again, this was Denki, so he shouldn’t have been surprised.

Kaminari huffed. “Dude, sometimes it’s so sad to read how they saw someone and thought there was a connection. It makes me wonder if they ever find each other.” He was quiet for a moment like he was deep in thought. “But then sometimes, it’s like ‘You farted in the produce section and I’d still date you, let’s go out’ and it kind of loses the romantic appeal.”

“You’re a sap. Also, gross.” He found himself drifting off, bored with the conversation already. “Do you have a point?”

“God, you’re impatient! Listen, I was scrolling through the ads and I found this one, I think you should hear it.” Clearing his throat, he began to read.

“You were the sleepy purple-haired man in the cat cafe on Main, I was hiding behind an orange tabby by the window. I was staring, but I wasn’t trying to be creepy. You just looked kind of lost, and the black and white short hair on your lap seemed to have all your attention. Oh, I think his name is Socks. Isn’t that unoriginal? Anyway, I’ve seen you there a few times and I want to know more about you. If you see this, please respond.”

Shinsou sat up in his bed, ignoring the sharp pain of his muscles protesting at the sudden movement. “What the fuck?”

“This is about you, isn’t it?” Denki’s excitement was clear. “You’re the only sleepy guy with purple hair I know who frequents that cat cafe on Main Street.”

“How long ago was that posted?” Hitoshi felt strange, restless energy flowing through him. Someone had noticed him and decided that he was interesting enough to want to get to know? He wasn’t anything special, and he kept to himself mostly. What did this even mean?

“Last night! When did you go to the cafe?” He didn’t even wait for a response. “I’m forwarding this post to you, and you better send them an email! It’s been too long since you’ve dated someone, ‘Toshi, and I’m concerned.”

Unfortunately feeling more awake than he wanted to be, Shinsou shifted until his feet were on the floor. “Yesterday afternoon. And it hasn’t been that long.”

“It’s been like a year, dude.” Kaminari sighed. “Okay, I sent it. Please write back to them. Let me live vicariously through you in this weird turn of events.”

Shinsou sighed and said goodbye, ending the call and staring off into space for a minute. He needed coffee before he could even think about reading it for himself and then maybe responding.

Uh, hello.

I can’t help but feel like this was about me? I’m not even really sure what to say. This feels weird. You could have come over and said hi, maybe. I don’t bite. I might have stared at you and made things awkward but I feel like it would have been a surefire way to talk to me instead of posting this on craigslist of all places and expecting me to see it.

You’re lucky I have a friend who likes to scour the dark recesses of the internet for entertainment purposes and happened upon this post.

-Shinsou

How do I know this is really the person I’m talking about? What were you wearing when you went to the cafe? That’s like the only way I can be sure you are who you say you are.

The only reason I didn’t come over and talk to you was that I had Oliver on my lap and he is a grump and didn’t want me to get up until he was good and ready. (That’s the orange tabby’s name, by the way.) By the time I was able to coax his fat ass off of me you had gone.

Honestly, I’d let those cats climb all over me like their own personal cat tree all day long and not complain about it, but I digress.

I didn’t expect you to find this or reply, it was kind of my way of convincing myself that I’d given it a shot, even though I really hadn’t done much.

-Y/N

I was wearing the following:

A Joy Division t-shirt depicting the cover of Unknown Pleasures, which is arguably the most cliche t-shirt I own. It’s become one of those shirts that people wear who have no idea who Joy Division is, they just like it for the aesthetic. (I’ll have you know I happen to know who they are and like their music very much.) This shirt was more than likely covered in cat hair.

Black jeans, which were probably covered in cat hair as well.

Black boots, a staple of mine.

I am a closet goth. I don’t know what else to say. I won’t deny it. I’ve learned to embrace who I am. I happen to know that Oliver is a grumpy shit, so I am not surprised he kept you pinned down for so long. That cat has been known to knock people over and purr loudly while “making biscuits” on their chests for hours at a time. I’m glad to know that you survived his assault.

So what are you going to tell me about yourself now? I have confessed to you about my goth status, so I demand something in return.

-Shinsou

Yeah, it was you.

I was hoping that you actually liked Joy Division and you weren’t one of those Urban Outfitters aesthetic people. I can now rest easy. I like them too, but I really like New Order more? I hope this isn’t the end of our budding friendship.

I will not say that I am a goth, though I have goth-like tendencies? Or I just appreciate the music. Whatever. I don’t have, like, a pet bat or anything. I own a pair of Doc’s, though.

I have been on the receiving end of one of Oliver’s attacks before, so you don’t have to tell me about them. I have experienced his pushy demeanor on more than one occasion.

So, something about me? I don’t know. I spend a lot of time in that cafe because I love cats, but that’s kind of a given, isn’t it? I usually bring my laptop and make an attempt to work on my homework, but it’s usually futile. I’d rather pet the cats.

Oh, I guess that counts as something right? I go to college. I’m an English major and taking a fuck ton of creative writing courses. What about you?

-Y/N

An English major? That sounds like fun. I think if I had a need to go to college I’d have liked to take something like that. I have a friend who writes ultra depressing Gothic poetry, that would be right up his ally as well.

I’m a pro hero, hence why I didn’t need college. Saving people is something I’ve always wanted to do, especially since I was always bullied about my quirk as a kid. It kind of made me more determined, I always wanted to prove those assholes wrong, you know? So, here I am.

I’m glad to know we can wear matching Doc’s together, and that you don’t keep a bat as a pet. As cute as their faces are, they’re not very easily domesticated.

New Order is fine. The real question is, The Smiths or The Cure? Your answer to this question will be what determines the longevity of our friendship.

-Shinsou

This is the worst question you could ever ask me. How could you do this? I could never choose between them. Both? The answer is both.

I hope your next email will not be your last.

Bats are cute but they always seem to dive bomb my head when they’re around. Not that I go places with bats often, but I used to go camping as a kid and they always did that. It was not a good time.

I think it’s amazing that you’re a pro hero! You’re really out here, fighting the bad guys and saving people and then coming into the cat cafe and petting kittens and drinking coffee like a normal person. I think it’s admirable how hard you worked to achieve your dream. I know we don’t know each other that well, but I’m proud of you. Why were you bullied for your quirk? You don’t have to answer that if it makes you uncomfortable.

I wish I could write ultra depressy Gothic poetry. Here let me try:

The night is black like my soul Clove cigarettes burn slowly My life is Meaningless

How was that? Do I get a gold star? Or a black skull? Which is appropriate?

-Y/N

I’m printing that and sending it to Tokoyami. Thank you for making my entire existence with that poem. I’m breaking out the red wax candles and putting on “How Soon Is Now?” right now.

You get a star, but it’s a pentagram. We have to keep with the theme.

My quirk has to do with mind control, so I was always told I was meant to be a villain. You can imagine what that could do to a kid’s psyche, being told by peers and adults alike that you weren’t hero material, when that’s all you wanted. It’s okay though, I did what I wanted and they can eat my ass.

Sorry if that was too raunchy, but it’s how I feel.

If my earlier comment wasn’t proof enough, I prefer The Smiths, but I cannot deny the impact of Disintegration. Lullaby is a really great song.

That being said, this will not be my last email, so you can breathe easy.

On a semi serious note, I really enjoy talking with you. We have a similar sense of humor, and you like cats which makes you automatically better than most people. Would you like to get coffee sometime? I know a nice place that’s quiet and filled with fluffy kittens...

-Shinsou

—

I’m glad I haven’t lost your friendship due to my opinion. I know how important that feud can be to some people. People get very passionate about it. Kind of like with Blur versus Oasis, or Brand New versus Taking Back Sunday. I hate that these are the only examples I can think of.

It wasn’t too raunchy. Those people can most definitely eat your ass. I’m glad you have decided to use your powers for good. You’ll have to explain to me how your quirk works sometime.

I shall treasure my shiny pentagram sticker with my entire heart.

Isn’t Tokoyami the Jet Black Hero: Tsukuyomi? He looks like the type to write Gothic poetry. I am not even mildly surprised.

Even though the way we met was unconventional, I’d like to think I’d have gotten up the courage to speak to you the next time I saw you in the cafe. Somehow this is better, though. It makes for an interesting story, you know?

I’d love to get coffee. I think I know the place you’re talking about. Let me know when.

-Y/N

—

Shinsou was nervous. It was stupid really. He’d been exchanging emails back and forth with you for a few days, and even though you’d barely revealed much about each other, the easy banter through your messages was comforting. He felt like the two of you would be compatible. He just hoped that he was able to keep the conversation going in real life.

When he entered the cafe, he ordered his usual and picked his normal table towards the back. Socks, his favorite black and white companion, was at his side almost immediately. He let his hand drift down to scratch behind her ears, his gaze fixed on the door as he waited for you to arrive.

Out of habit he was a little early, but he figured it would be easier this way. He had no idea what you looked like, but you knew him, so he knew you’d come over when you got there, and it would make things less awkward.

A few minutes later he saw the door open, and he immediately knew it was you. Black Doc’s and thigh high stockings, a black skirt and an oversized deep red sweater adorned your body, a leather jacket over your shoulders and your hair tucked under a black beanie, cheeks pink from the chill of the autumn weather outside. You were pretty, and he felt his nerves increase tenfold when your eyes met his, a smile gracing your face.

He watched as you ordered a drink at the counter, the paper cup clutched in your hands as you made your way to his table. He stood up when you approached, letting himself appreciate you up close. “Y/N?”

“Hi, Shinsou.” You were so much shorter than he was, and he found himself having to gaze down at you when he was standing at his full height.

“It’s nice to put a face to all those emails.” The way you blushed under his attention made his heart flip. “Please, sit.”

You nodded, sliding into the seat across from him. He sat back down, his hands moving to grip his coffee cup.

“This is kind of weird, isn’t it?” You looked down when Oliver made his way over, rubbing himself against your boot. “I almost feel like I don’t know what to say.”

“I know what you mean. We could just sit here and email each other, if that would make you feel better.” Your laugh was like music to his ears. “I’d rather hear your voice though.”

Your face was red when you looked back up at him. “I have to agree.” You leaned your elbow on the table, your cheek cradled in your palm. “Tell me more about yourself, Shinsou.”

“It’s Hitoshi. You can call me Hitoshi.”

—

If anyone would have told him that the night would end this way, he’d have said they were insane, and should probably get themselves checked into the nearest institution.

But here he was, his face pressed into the spot where your neck and shoulder met, lips ghosting over soft skin, his calloused palms sliding underneath your sweater. You were purring, your head thrown back and your fists clenched in his t-shirt, your back pressed against the wall in the hallway that led to his bedroom.

“Fuck, ‘Toshi.” You mumbled, pressing yourself closer to him. “Bed?”

You didn’t have to ask twice, his hands sliding down to lift you up by the backs of your thighs, his cock hard and straining in his jeans as you rutted against him. He turned himself and began walking toward his room blindly, his eyes still shut as he sucked a mark into your neck.

He pulled back so he could peer over your shoulder and maneuver your bodies through the doorway without bumping into anything, laying you back on the bed.

The events of the night were a blur, your coffee date turned into him taking you out for ramen at the restaurant down the street, and then he asked you back to his apartment to show you his record collection.

It was mostly a ruse though. You’d been flirting back and forth, the both of you getting bolder as the night went on. He was only half surprised when you’d entered his apartment, barely removing shoes and coats and hats before you spun around on him, pressing him against the door and kissing him like your life depended on it.

He rested on his forearms, poised above you, looking over your flushed face and kiss bruised lips. Your legs wrapped around his waist and pulled his hips closer, making him groan. “Impatient?”

Your hands moved to cup his face, pulling him down toward you. “Very.”

He wasn’t expecting your strength, caught off guard when your lips crashed into his, your body pushing him over until he was on his back and you were straddling him, knees on either side of his hips. You ground down against him, moaning when his hips snapped up reflexively. He was happy to give you control for a while, especially when you sat up and grabbed the bottom of your sweater and pulled it over your head. The view was spectacular.

He let his hands wander, tracing along the lines of your thigh highs from under your skirt, and up to the lace at your hips. Your chest heaved as you tried to catch your breath, the devilish glint in your eye was not lost on his as you shifted down his body, fingers swiftly working to unclasp his belt and undo the button on his jeans.

You slid off of him, and he lifted his hips to aid you in pulling his pants down his legs, his boxers following. His cock was achingly hard, the tip angry and red as it sprung free from it’s confines, nearly slapping his stomach. You eyed it greedily, and he was lost for words when you surged forward, delicate fingers wrapping around his length and stroking him, your tongue peeking out to taste him.

Amethyst eyes rolled back when you took the tip in your mouth, tongue swirling around the head, a low moan sounding from the back of your throat. The warmth and wetness that surrounded his cock when you closed your eyes and bobbed forward had him breathless, his hand threading through your hair, and his palm resting on the back of your head. He kept himself steady, fighting back the urge to buck his hips and push you down further on his length.

Shinsou bit down on his lower lip, his stomach muscles tensing as he tried to keep it together. Kaminari had been right, it had been a while since he’d been with someone, and he wanted this night to last as long as possible. The sweet and innocent look in your eyes as you looked up at him through your lashes, your mouth enveloping him all the way to base, was nearly too much for him to handle, his hand tugging at your hair gently to pull you off of him. “I’m not going to last if you keep that up, kitten.”

You visibly shivered at the pet name and he grinned, loving the feeling of being able to invoke that reaction from you. He scooted forward when you sat back on your knees between his spread legs, his arms circling your torso as he worked at the clasp on your bra, pulling the straps down your arms when he unclipped it. Strong hands gripped your waist and moved you to the side as he stood up, reaching under your skirt to tug your panties down your legs.

He took a moment to consider what he’d do next. He wanted to taste you, it was only right for him to return the favor, and he was almost certain you would taste as sweet as you looked. Another part of him wanted to hike up your legs around his waist and slam inside of you, desperate to hear you moan his name as he pounded you into the mattress. As he contemplated what to do, reached back and pulled his shirt over his head, and then let his hands wander up to the apex of your thighs, digits sliding through your folds. You gasped, falling back onto your elbows, back arching as he toyed with your clit, letting his long fingers slip inside your heat. “So wet. Just for me?” Eyebrows raised, he teased you.

“Fuck, Hitoshi, please.” Breathless and panting, you gazed up at him, biting your lip.

“Please what? Tell me what you want.” You would make the decision for him. “Would you like my mouth or my cock? I’ll let you choose.”

Huffing, your hips rutted against his hand impatiently. He kneeled on the bed between your legs, adjusting his arm and adding a second finger in with the first, his thumb finding your bundle of nerves again. He listened to your breath hitch, and your quiet mewls, pride filling his chest that he was the one coaxing those noises out of you. Finally, you breathed deep and answered him. “Fuck me, Hitoshi.”

Ignoring the protesting whine that left your lips when he removed his fingers, he brought them up to his mouth, maintaining eye contact with you as he sucked on them, tasting you. “You’re delicious, kitten. I’ll have to make sure to taste you properly later.”

Wasting no time, he lifted your legs up to rest your legs over his shoulders, one hand on his cock. He lined himself up with your entrance, grabbing at your hips and pushing himself inside you. If he thought your mouth was hot and wet and basically everything he thought was heaven, he was mistaken. This was it. This was everything. He wasn’t even inside you all the way and he was fighting back the need to cum again, cursing himself and breathing deeply. He leaned forward, forearms on either side of your head as his mouth crashed against yours, all lips and tongues and teeth, his need for you growing tenfold as you wiggled your hips in an attempt to feel more of him.

Groaning, he bucked forward, filling you up, the both of you sighing in relief at the feeling. He gave you a moment to adjust, lips moving down your jaw and tongue laving at the mark he’d left on your neck earlier. “You feel so good, kitten.”

“Toshi, you can move…” Your hands were gripping his biceps, nails leaving crescent shapes in his pale skin, breathing ragged as you clenched around him.

Hissing, he followed your instructions, hips pulling back until he was almost completely out, before sliding back in. Your arousal made the glide easy, your back arching underneath him. He started a steady rhythm, grunting quietly and letting the feeling of you pulsing around him keep him grounded. He let one of his hands wander, shifting his weight so he could ghost his palm over your side, fingers pinching your nipple and rolling the hardened bud between them. You keened, chanting his name like a prayer, the sound of blood pounding in his ears almost masking the sound.

It spurred him to move faster, his chest tight, sweat pooling at his temples and between his shoulder blades, purple locks sticking to his forehead. His gaze was locked on you, and it stole his breath. Your chest and neck were flushed, the most beautiful sounds spilling from your lips as he fucked into you. It became clear to him that he wasn’t going to last much longer, and neither were you.

“Hey, kitten. You gonna cum for me?” He shifted back to his knees and trailed the fingers on his left hand down your stomach, coming to rest between your parted legs. “I want to hear how pretty you sound when you come apart.” He kept a firm grip on your hip to keep you from sliding away, rolling his hips and rubbing tight circles on your clit.

“Fuck, Hitoshi!” The effect was almost immediate, your body and lungs seizing, eyes rolling back as you fell over the edge, your cunt clenching around him like a vice.

Falling back over you, his thrusts became sloppy as he chased his own release, barely able to move with how tight your pussy was gripping him, your orgasm still rolling through you. He felt your hands on his face, guiding him to kiss you again, fingers carding through his hair and down his back, your nails raking red trails down his back. He felt like he could barely breathe, lost in you. “Y/N…”

He felt his muscles tense, and moved to bury his face in your neck, his hips stilling as he came hard, filling you up with his release. You squeezed around him again, and he sighed into your skin, eyes closed as he tried to regulate his breathing.

Rolling over to the side, he hissed when he pulled out. You chuckled, and he turned to look at you, a lazy smile on his face. “What?”

“Is that what you call showing me your record collection?”

Snorting, he propped his head up on his palm, leaning on his elbow, his free hand reaching out to push a piece of hair away from your face. “You attacked me, remember?”

“I couldn’t help it!” Protesting, you blushed. “I wanted to kiss you from the moment I walked into the cafe.”

It was his turn to blush. “Yeah?”

Shrugging, you turned on your side to face him. “Mm. Can you do me a favor?”

His body was still buzzing, muscles loose and pliant as he shuffled closer to you. “Anything.”

“Can you thank your friend for being a weird internet troll and finding my post?”

Shinsou coughed a laugh, leaning forward to rest his forehead against yours. “Please, I can’t do that. It’s all he’d ever talk about for the rest of our lives if I did.”

You leaned up and kissed him, your fingers pushing back his hair.

He hummed against your lips, feeling content, shifting himself on the bed and wrapping his arms around your waist, tugging you into him. “Maybe I’ll send him a text later. For now, I have other plans.”

Kaminari’s phone buzzed on the coffee table, and he picked it up, eyes widening at the message that appeared on the screen.

Toshi: I owe you a crate full of Pokemon cards and my eternal gratitude for being a weirdo meme king who trolls the internet.

Denki: Oh, you’re in a good mood. Did you get laid?

Toshi: Fuck all the way off.

Denki: That’s a yes. You’re welcome.

2K notes · View notes

neokollection · 6 years

Note

Could you do how NCT members confess to their crush? Sorry if it's too mucj

NCT 127

A/N: OMGGGG SO LATE!! Sorry, I held on to this for a while because I wanted to do it, but knew it required a lot of thought kinda- I’ll save HC for DreamGifs don’t relate btw^^ Listening to Touch~

Taeil:

This awkward turtle……… Ugh, everyone totally knew he has a thing for whoever he’s crushing on, but he shows it in weird ways so his crush may not know and may just say he’s being friendly…He gets super excited at the sight of them and you can’t really blame him for whatever he does next. He’s dorky, so he makes dad jokes and even goes as far as physical things such as cutting your cutlet for you or something.He doesn’t really plan on verbally confessing, he just hopes his actions and manner can convey it and if you’re interested you’ll convey it back… or not.He’s deeply sentimental and I think a verbal confession would only happen if the sentiment was there- over phone, text, or person, it’d just happen. So, if maybe you felt close enough to him to talk about feeling lonely or maybe an ex-lover- Once he feels the deep feelings he’d want to let you know it’d be okay and share possibly good news? That you’re beautiful and he likes you if you’ll take him. Sort of offering himself to you–

Johnny:

Johnny is a self-proclaimed true romantic. He knows how to read an atmosphere probably better than any of the others and his confession would be really sweet.He’d be one to know he should confess. He doesn’t want to dwell on it if his crush doesn’t like him, so he’d make his moves. By moves I mean yes, flirting, to the point you’d know he had a thing for you, or at least your friends would always tell you if you’re thick… He’s showing you that he’s interested so that maybe you’ll become interested in him or show him some sign back- He’s not shy of it, in his mind you deserve to be loved and know it, so he doesn’t really feel embarrassed about putting himself out there. He also uses a lot of actions to speak instead of words, putting his hands on your shoulders when he’s behind you, tying your shoe for you, etc… When it comes to actually confessing, he’s probably still not sure if you like him back because he’s probably been overthinking everything you do and found contradictions. Anyway… He does it in person and it’s low-key planned. I mean like he asks your schedule or something and finds a way to fit himself in. He doesn’t want it to seem like a date, so he makes it something casual like deciding to walk you home after one of your lectures because he’s ‘in the area’ that time. Kind of odd, but FGSUIRHFWRUIA! So, he sorta will manipulate the conversation while he’s with you, he wants to turn it towards something romantic because he wants to confess to you at your doorstep. “I’ve wanted to say this for a while- You may already know; I like you, a lot- And I just wanted to let you know because you deserve to.”A line straight out of a movie T T He can give a whole speech about why you’re so wonderful if you ask any more about it really.

Taeyong:

So, when it comes to his crush, I think TY would be pretty shy- He’d be sort of all over the place and his crush definitely wouldn’t be able to read him- Being normal and even kind of flirty when he’s feeling close, but occasionally being distant and clamming up…He’s always wondering if his touches go noticed or if they feel their palms perspire at the mere sight of his eyes like he does-He’s kind of a coward when it comes to love and being honest about his feelings… So, I don’t think he’d actually confess in person. This being said, I think it’d happen over text- It’d probably be late at night- You in your bed on your phone and him chilling after a tolling session of choreography. Finally, you guys got a conversation going, before it was always off/on neither of you wanting to seem clingy- Once he feels close as friends too he’d be more open to opening up. He wouldn’t confess to someone he wasn’t close with, he’d just admire them from afar- Anyway, so probably a few flirty texts are hidden in your guys’ conversation and he’s smiling to himself. He’d probably feel a bit nervous if the conversation turned to relationships or loneliness because then he’s prone to confessing with something sorta hidden like;“You’d make a really good S/O. Anyone would be lucky to have you.” “You think so? That’s so sweet-”“I’d feel lucky.”Which… he’s prone to being friendzoned or his crush missing his point, but if it’s you, you won’t :’)The type to also freak out a little when he realizes he’s outted himself also.. and send a whole thread of messages one after another, tapping his foot impatiently, eyes glued to the screen in seriousness as he checks for your reply.

Yuta:

Well- Bitch would have to be blind to not know he’s into them. He’s so shameless honestly. He’s confident in that he’s suitable boyfriend material and handsome + charming, so he wouldn’t be shy about letting them know. He wants them to know actually, he wants them to feel loved and do whatever favors he can to help them, even if it’s stupid like giving them his umbrella in exchange for the promise of a date next weekend. HE HASN’T EVEN CONFESSED YET, but I guess you could take that as a confession. But… He’s kind of flirty with a lot of friends, so you may not think of it blatantly as a ‘date’.His confession would probably come indirectly a lot of times through his words.“Why don’t you have a boyfriend already?”“I don’t know- Life’s busy and I guess I just don’t have someone like that in my life.”“I’m right here though-”He’s a smooth dude, but if you constantly brush him off as ‘just joking’ maybe you’re nervous yourself about jumping the gun then he may turn serious about it and say it directly so he can get a direct reaction and answer, a simple “I like you.”

Doyoung:

Kind of similar to Taeil in that I don’t think he’d want to directly say it. He’s sort of a coward too, like Taeyong. He wouldn’t want to be found out either because he’d feel super embarrassed and childish, so he’d be discreet about his actions and words and ultimately admire his crush from afar….. He’d need a push from others to do something bigger- OR, like Taeil, his heart may bubble to the surface during emotional or deep moments- Perhaps you broke-up with a past lover and are rattled over it and need someone to confide in. He’s always been great with this kind of stuffs– And he knows he shouldn’t make it about himself, but he wants to let you know there’s someone else who can take care of and love you, even better than your past trash. BUT, it probably wouldn’t be when you’re crying in the moment, it’d probably be hours after you’ve calmed down and DY’s been thinking about confessing for hours now and finally lets it out. Or just during a deep talk about love or something he may realize he should be honest about his feelings and say it plainly; “I like you..” followed by 20 other rambles, “I mean not as a friend- I mean! I like you as a friend too! But also more- Ah….”

Jaehyun:

This boy is out of a drama. He’s pretty versed in navigating love and his feelings, so I don’t think he’d get flustered in front of you or embarrassed. He’d just try to put on a natural persona, maybe getting a bit closer than usual. It’s really just innocent though, ruffling your hair and laughing at your jokes, smiling nearly every time he sees you- It’d be a wonder if you didn’t fall for him uh…….. He’s also a great friend who’s always reliable and he’d become even more reliable when knowing his feelings are growing.Sort of like Johnny, he’d be pretty honest about his feelings. He’d make sure the mood and environment are appropriate before talking to you in private. But I don’t think he’d do it unless he’s getting vibes that you like him even just a little too- He’d kinda bombard and fluster you with it being a lot at once, but he knows your cheeks flush like that because you like him too.“What do you think of me?”“All of a sudden? Hmm, you’re great-”“Great?”“W-Why are you smiling like that? Yeah, you’re great and-”“Do you like me?”“O-”“I like you~”“aH-”“It’s sudden isn’t it? Hah- It’s not really, it’s maybe been a year..”“It’s so unlike you to be like this-”

Win:

He doesn’t know what to do around his crush T THe’s all over the place… He wants to seem cool and chill, but just is a major cutie dork- He goes from being hyper around you to being ‘too cool’ and acting like you’re not even there- If he looks at you he might get a heart attack so maybe it’d be better not to…Sounds bad, but I think he’d need to be feeling emotional or upset to confess. Maybe over text or in person…. An example would be if he liked you for a whole year, but this past week Lucas has been really flirty with you and Winko is catching some vibes he doesn’t like and then Lucas confesses to you. Win would be pretty upset and feel it’s unfair since he’s liked you longer and still hasn’t confessed- So he’d probably write you a long email text about how he’s liked you longer and out himself lmao.Or maybe if he’s just feeling emo and homesick he may confide in you a lot and sorta out himself unintentionally by saying things like ‘I miss you.. You’re all I have here’ Or if in person may just need some hugs and tell you how important you are which kinda leads to how much he admires you for being tough and that leads to how he likes you and anyone would be lucky to be with you-

Mark:

Mark seems like one to try to make himself stop liking someone once he catches feelings. Maybe by talking to you a little less for a bit or just convincing himself he shouldn’t ruin a friendship-He’s stupid though and is whipped so he can’t calm himself every time he sees you, you’re not just a friend. His plan might back-fire and he may think ‘It’ll be better to confess now so she can reject me and I can move on-’ He doesn’t have confidence in this and assumes he won’t be liked back because he hasn’t seen and ‘obvious’ signs that you like him, but he’s frickin oblivious half the time. In some movies and stuff the friends can stay as friends after getting friend-zoned so he hopes it’ll be able to just blow over like that… He’d probably pick a random and awk time to do so tho;“Hey, uh… I just wanna say- Liek, I know I shouldn’t like you like that, but I do kinda like you like that. I think I just need to hear rejection tho so I can get over it, like it’s probably just a phase, right? A lot of people have that with their friends-”“…Who said I’d reject you…?”“Wait- Wot?”

291 notes · View notes

thetourguidebarbie · 6 years

Note

6 + 99 please!

Bookshop au + Magical accidents (+ mermaid/siren + werewolf + Only One Bed™) for one of my favorite people in the whole wide world. Definitely positively absolutely not safe for work. I’m self-fiving at it not breaking 10k words. It was a struggle.

Thank you to @garglyswoof for tolerating my constant idea bouncing and ‘can you look at this real quick pleeeeeease’ harassment, and to @chica-cherry-lola for helping me get started and @goldcaught and @candycolamorgan for letting me creepily watch them like a hawk in a hotel room while they read the first draft and listening to me complain about how many words this was.

I hope you like it Laine

Caroline tried her best not to give Werewolf With Dimples the evil eye as he walked through the front entrance of the bookshop, the bell letting out a shrill clang.

To be fair, she wasn’t ten thousand percent sure he was a werewolf, but every time he entered Mystic Books her skin would get all prickly, letting her know that another supernatural non-witchy type was around, and there were only a few choices that came out in daylight and could pass for human.

She didn’t know Werewolf With Dimples’s name, nor had she ever had any direct interaction with him. Occasionally she caught him glancing at her when she was shelving new releases—the section he frequented—but other than that, no communication whatsoever.

Anyway, she kind of hated him, mostly on principle.

She’d been working at the magical bookstore on the edge of Mystic Falls for most of the year while she took night classes towards her degree in Economics. The owner, Sheila, taught part-time as a visiting professor in the Religious Studies department, and Caroline had really loved her History of Paganism and Witchcraft in Literature class when she took it for a gen ed credit. She’d quickly pinned on a minor in Religious Studies and asked Sheila to be her advisor. After a few enthusiastic office-hour conversations about the books she was assigned and a side-mention of how she was looking for a part-time gig for the summer, Sheila had offered her a job.

She wished the customer she was ringing up a good day and as soon as they were out the door she glanced around the bookshop to re-locate Werewolf With Dimples with the intent of trying to convey her displeasure through murder eyes as she aggressively shelved books in his immediate vicinity. She was seriously tempted to unclasp her necklace and let her fangs out in the hopes that she’d spook him and he’d take his own ass out the door without any extra effort. Unfortunately, all he did was glance up and meet her eyes with a small smirk before returning to his reading.

She took a moment to remind herself that Sheila would get mad if she ate customers. She was lucky that the owner had trusted her enough to give her a chance. It had been terrifying to admit her secret, the confession leaving her in a low, shaky voice after her fangs had broken through her gums and scared one of the teenage boys that unsubtly eyed her legs while she reshelved books. Sirens had to feed on blood to walk on land and were often mistaken for vampires due to their similar diet, but Sheila knew better and thankfully understood. She made her a necklace to dampen her cravings, imbuing it with enough magic that she could feed from it instead of humans, letting her keep her legs without having to hurt anyone.

Combined with the free access to all the books she could want and the steady air conditioning, if you ignored Werewolf With Dimples ruining her day it had so far been the most stress-free summer she’d had. She glanced up at him again to give him a good stink eye and was absolutely not at all distracted by the shape of his forearms revealed by the henley rolled up to his elbows or the way his long fingers wrapped around the cover of whatever book he was flagrantly consuming without a thought at all to the ‘NO BROWSING WITHOUT BUYING’ sign she’d made the week before and thoughtfully thumbtacked to the shelf by the armchair he always sat in.

The demand for printed grimoires, their best-selling section, was waning because you could find most of the common ones online. They were struggling to stay open as it was, had even opened a magical pastry counter in an attempt to gain more revenue, and she was infuriated that Werewolf With Dimples just came in, read books, and left without buying anything.

Not even from the pastry counter.

Frankly, Caroline thought it was more than a bit rude. This wasn’t a library. You weren’t supposed to be able to just walk in and read whatever you wanted without buying anything. It was a respectable capitalist establishment. She’d taken to mentally ringing up the price of all the books he’d read and then reshelved, and he’d already hit over $500 of stolen knowledge.

He sometimes also reshelved things wrong, watching her with a small smile on his lips when she went to fix it after he got up. She was 99% sure he was doing it on purpose.

Honestly, he was lucky that she didn’t eat customers.

The only good thing about Werewolf With Dimples was that he was cute. She suspected that it was how he’d gotten away with being a flagrant thief for so long. The Halo Effect was a real thing. It was just science.

She swore to herself every time he left that next time she’d tell him that they had the right to refuse service to anyone and to please see himself out unless he was going to purchase something, but for some reason she’d never been able to go through with it.

Until now.

She squared her shoulders and took a deep breath before walking over, trying not to look too aggressive. He was lounging on a plush chair in the corner of their rare grimoire section, reading a leather-bound tome that looked like one of the newer releases.

“Hi,” she said with her best customer service smile, waiting until he looked up at her to continue. “So, I’ve noticed that you’ve been coming here a lot lately.”

He smirked, and she immediately realized that her opening could be taken in a much different way than she’d meant it. She cleared her throat and jabbed her finger at the sign a foot away from his ear and continued. “We have a policy here about browsing.”

“Do you?” he asked, his voice low and smooth. She hadn’t been expecting the accent, but she shook it off like a champ and nodded.

“Yeah. You can’t just like, read the books without buying things. No browsing without a purchase. This is a bookshop, with the emphasis on shop.”

“Consider me informed,” he said, clearly trying not to laugh, and she glared at him, crossing her arms in front of her chest.

“Okay, great! I am. So, you going to buy that?”

“I must admit that I wasn’t planning on it, no.”

“Great!” she said with forced cheer, tugging it out of his hands. “I’ll reshelve it then.”

He watched with clear amusement as she inspected the cover, trying to find the title, and she figured out why when she saw it, stamped in gold on the front of the leather cover. Maybe in her first month she would have blushed and been more than a little flustered at ripping a book clearly about sex spells and potions from an attractive man’s hands, but at this point she felt like she’d seen everything.

“Can I help you find anything else?” she asked, grabbing a stepstool and carrying it over to reshelve the book.

He didn’t answer, and when she turned around after sliding the book into its proper place he was gone.

As she’d said. Fucking rude.

He still showed up every day after that (except the three days around the full moon, which totally confirmed her werewolf theory), but he now bought a pastry from the counter before he settled down to read. He’d apparently taken the ‘no browsing without a purchase’ rule to mean that any purchase was sufficient, which was so not the case, yet despite her annoyance she sometimes found herself irritatingly distracted by his tongue darting over his lips to catch the flakes of the buttery croissants, or by the look on his face as he read.

After hours she sometimes stuck around to read books in the back room, and she’d started to pick up whatever he was reading out of curiosity. His choices were good, she was loathe to admit. They seemed to have a lot in common in terms of their favorite subjects. However, it didn’t stop him from being a total ass.

She didn’t have much time to confront him even if she’d wanted to, anyway. Katherine had decided to move back to Bulgaria and Sheila was out of town for winter break. That left Caroline completely alone to do all of the stocking herself. She was pulling multiple shifts, and though the overtime pay was nice, it was still a lot of work.

Caroline was busy sorting the books that were too old for new arrivals but hadn’t been sold yet when she felt someone come up behind her, nearly dropping the newest edition of the magical creature encyclopedia and barely catching it before it tumbled down to what would have been a painful fall onto her toes. She whirled around to have some serious words with whoever had snuck up on her, leveling her glare at none other than Werewolf With Dimples.

Of fucking course.

She pushed a slightly damp curl out of her face, the air conditioning having inconveniently broken just after Sheila had left, trying to calm her racing heart. She didn’t like being startled, her fight-or-flight instincts tending to scream “swim before you become siren sushi,” and it was even worse when she was on land when she just looked jumpy.

“Can you not sneak up on me like that?” she asked, abandoning all semblance of her normally stellar customer service attitude.

“Sorry, love. I was just going to ask if you needed help.”

“You don’t work here,” she said shortly, placing the book she’d been holding on the pile for magical creature research and turning to the next one.

“I’m here enough to know my way ‘round,” he pointed out.

“That’s weird, since you somehow don’t reshelve books correctly when you’re done browsing without a purchase.”

He didn’t even try to deny it, and she huffed at the knowing smirk on his stupid smug face.

“I’d be more of a help than a hindrance, I think. And you look like you’re a bit overwhelmed.”

“I’m not overwhelmed,” she said, her tone a bit sharper than she’d meant it to be, but Werewolf With Dimples didn’t seem to mind, his lips twitching before he nodded.

“Well, suit yourself, then.”

She huffed, the temptation of an extra hand outweighing both her pride and her common sense for one crucial moment that she was sure she’d regret. “Wait,” she said, and he turned around, his eyebrows raised. She kind of hated that he looked so smug that she was clearly about to let him help, but she didn’t really want to be stuck in the shop too late.

“Yes, love?”

“If you can just sort the books into piles according to their sections while I shelve them, that would be a huge help.”

“Of course,” he said easily, walking over and standing beside her, leaning over the table. He smelled really good, even with her necklace dulling her hunger. She had to resist the urge to linger, instead clearing her throat and gesturing to the large bucket of unsorted tomes before picking up a pile for the Rituals section.

“I’ll be right back,” she said, and he shot her a dimpled smile, his eyes sparkling as though he knew what she’d been thinking, and she hoped that she’d turned around before he could see her blush, her tongue running over her teeth just to make sure she hadn’t accidentally let her fangs appear.

What was wrong with her?

He was attractive, and she wasn’t above admitting that she’d totally go home with him if they had met in a bar. If he hadn’t been such a dick about the browsing thing, she might have even considered indulging in a little flirting at the store, maybe even a fling if he’d been a decent person, but she couldn’t justify it now that he’d shown himself to be the actual worst. To be fair, he had offered to help, though she doubted he had pure intentions from the way he watched her. What was the harm in taking advantage of his willingness to make her job easier? She totally deserved it for putting up with him.

As much as she told herself that he was a means to an end--her being able to go home at the end of her shift and bingewatch some Real Housewives--she found herself distracted from her work wondering how his long fingers would feel curled inside of her as he breathed filthy things in her ear, whether his eyes would flash wolfgold with want when he looked at her. She would never go through with it obviously. Purely a physical attraction.

But it was still annoying.

Ugh. He was just a really hot thorn in her side. He’d help out and she’d send him on his way, their totally unfriendly antagonism continuing to run its course. She shelved the books much too slowly, trying to get her heart rate back to normal, and when she returned he was already halfway through the bin, methodically sorting them into the piles she’d created.

“Thanks for helping,” she said, trying to keep her voice neutral.

“It’s my pleasure.”

That smile should be illegal. Like, a federal crime. It made her feel like he wanted to eat her, but in a good way.

She swallowed, snatching up the next pile and speed-walking away to shelve it without another word. She was highly aware of his eyes on her every time she climbed the ladder to slide the books into their proper places one-by-one. She was surprised that she wasn’t more nervous, centuries of her kind being hunted out of existence by humans making her wary of anyone who watched her so intently, and when he drank her in his eyes were hungry. Though she’d long noticed the shivers he sent down her spine, the nervousness that werewolves tended to bring out in her, it suddenly hit her that she’d never actually felt unsafe. They were only wolves for one night per month, it was true, but that didn’t make them powerless in human form; their accelerated healing and enhanced strength were still a definite threat to her if they weren’t friendly. A siren could tempt a wolf to give chase, could draw them in with the same heated looks and magnetic draw that they used to trap their human prey, but only at the risk of becoming a meal themselves once they were caught.

The heated glances he sent her made her blood rush, her heart thumping in her chest from the intoxicating high of being hunted, but in an entirely different way than she’d expected. He was hungry for her, and since she obviously didn’t want to give in, not one bit, it was deeply irritating.

When she turned back he seemed absorbed in his task, and she saw that he was almost done sorting the entire pile. Clearly she’d been procrastinating on each section for too long. She picked up the next set of books, looking up at him when he spoke.

“I’m Klaus,” he said softly. The low tone felt odd to her after the heated glances and wicked taunting smirks she’d come to expect from him, the abrupt shift throwing her off.

“Caroline,” she said, putting down the book pile to shake his hand, her breath catching at the heat of his touch, the way the energy seemed to crackle between them. Like witches, sirens could sense magic by touch, could read a baseline of intent, but she’d never felt a charge so strong before. She met his eyes and found that she couldn’t look away. He seemed as surprised as she was by their weird magic-y connection, his gaze finally darting down to where their hands were still clasped, the feel of his calloused palm pressed against hers somehow throwing her off-balance even more.

“Caroline,” he repeated, as though testing how her name rolled off his tongue, and she felt a totally unwanted flush creep up her cheeks at his tone. “Is there anything else I can do?”

She swallowed, desperately looking for a way to diffuse the tension. “Um... Yeah. Reshelve these and then I have some other stuff you can help with. If you want, I mean. Come with me.”

She walked just a bit too fast in the direction of the stockroom, hoping she’d managed to turn quickly enough that he hadn’t seen her blush.

Klaus, as it turned out after a few hours voluntarily trapped in his presence, was annoyingly charming. He had a dry sense of humor that made her laugh before she could think to suppress it, and they ended up in the back stockroom close to midnight, still doing inventory that she probably could have finished up herself by ten.

It was weirdly worth it, though.

She didn’t have many people to talk to other than her roommate, who honestly was kind of a killjoy, and her friends from high school. Even from just snooping on the books he’d read she’d been able to have a real conversation with him about magical theory and history that was much more engaging than any she’d had in university classes. He really listened to her when she talked instead of planning his next point during her debates, and she kind of hated that she liked him for achieving the basic low bar of being attentive when she said words.

Maybe it was more than that, she admitted to herself when she glanced at the clipboard for the last aisle, highly aware of him just behind her. Maybe it was that she hadn’t had this much fun in a really long time. Maybe it was that he seemed to get her. Earlier she’d attributed the heated intense looks to physical chemistry, a primal sort of hunger that had everything to do with how he thought she’d look tangled in his sheets with his mark between her thighs, but she abruptly realized as he laughed at one of her jokes in their first ten minutes in the stockroom that it was more than that. He looked at her like she was fascinating.

They were approaching one in the morning when he’d said it, and honestly he’d chosen what was most likely the worst possible time. She’d been insisting that she could shelve a grimoire that looked like it weighed more than your average ten year old, mostly out of principle when he’d offered. The book was too valuable to keep out front and totally not something for a non-employee to mess with if she didn’t want to face Sheila’s wrath.

He hadn’t argued, just given her an exasperated look that she found more endearing than patronizing, and stood back as she climbed the ladder, subtly trying to spot her. She used a burst of her magic to boost it to the top shelf, slightly off balance from the toll it took on her. Her necklace must need a bit of a refresher spell, she noted. “What are you?” he’d asked, blurted really. It was clearly impulsive, but he didn’t move to apologize, apparently choosing to stand by asking her such a personal question.

She bristled at his rudeness, the distraction making her weight shift unexpectedly. Her arms flapped as she tried to regain her balance, and she managed to hold onto a shelf and steady herself on the ladder before glaring at him. “Excuse me?” she asked, her voice high pitched and defensive. “Seriously? You don’t just ask people what they are.”

“I’m a werewolf,” he said bluntly, and she huffed.

“I know.”

He didn’t seem surprised that she’d figured it out, though to be fair he hadn’t tried to hide it—a lot of the books he borrowed were about werewolves—and as a certified snoop herself she couldn’t exactly blame him for being nosey. Still, she didn’t owe him an explanation, especially since most stereotypes about sirens weren’t all that flattering.

“Well then it’s only fair to enlighten me as well.”

She rolled her eyes. “I don’t think that’s how that works.”

“What are you afraid of?” he asked, and she gritted her teeth.

She doubted he’d attack her, especially in his human form, and she’d seen that he’d read a book or two with content about sirens that was accurate. It wasn’t like she was going to eat him. Her self-control was excellent, and he had no idea how weak she currently was. If he reacted badly she’d ask Sheila to add him to the barrier spell on the door. Not only did it emit an electric shock to anyone who was on the list--usually thieves or rude customers--but Katherine had fended off her boredom during an unusually slow afternoon enchanting it to scream creative insults at the unwanted guest.

What was he going to do, write his congressman?

“I’m a siren,” she said reluctantly, fingering her shell necklace nervously out of habit. “But I don’t like, eat people.”

“Isn’t that how you keep your powers?” he asked, and she was relieved that he didn’t seem at all on edge or nervous. Just curious.

“My necklace is enchanted so that I don’t have to feed. Eating people is kind of rude.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Is it?”

She snorted, hopping down from the ladder and taking the next book he handed her. “Well, humans are fragile, you know? I don’t want to accidentally give them anemia or something.”

“Fair. Does the necklace also give you enough power to keep your legs?”

She slotted the book into its proper place and made a mark on the clipboard, nodding. “Yep! My powers with my necklace are basically limited to some basic magic and being kickass at karaoke, but that’s only useful at parties. No tail unless the necklace comes off.”

Klaus looked intrigued more than anything, and she resisted the urge to go into more detail as she moved the ladder down a bit and plucked the next book out of his hands, climbing up to shelve it. She was so determined to look normal after revealing such a huge secret that she accidentally knocked one of the artifacts down with her elbow, and it fell to the ground with a clang followed by a shattering of glass.

“Oh, shit,” she breathed, looking around with wide eyes.

She wasn’t sure what she’d knocked over, and she frantically tried to find the label on the shelf she’d knocked it from before sighing in relief. It wasn’t anything important, just some empty vials.

The sigh was short-lived, her panic over the vials upending her balance, and she fell off the ladder with a thump, her arms aching, vaguely recognizing the sharp high note of something shattering against the concrete floor. She stared at the ceiling unseeingly, too distracted by how her hips suddenly felt like they were on fire. It took about half a second to realize what the familiar sensation was, the itchy bubbling of scales already tingling on her lower abdomen as her skin tightened and shifted.

“Caroline?” Klaus asked, sounding worried, and she winced as she heard the rip of cloth, her fusing legs ripping her jeans and thong in half as the spell crept down her thighs.

“My necklace,” she said frantically, clumsily rolling over on her elbows and reaching for the shell and cord that lay a foot away, trying to crawl toward it. She knew that it was most likely shattered and therefore stripped of its magic, but her tiny flame of hope that it had just become unfastened was extinguished when Klaus followed her line of vision and immediately bent down to pick it up, handing her the leather cord with only a fragment of the shell still clinging to it. “It’s broken,” she said unnecessarily, staring down at it.

“Where can you get another?” Klaus asked, and Caroline sighed.

“Well, Sheila can enchant one for me, but she’s out of town.”

He winced, clearly trying not to stare at the shimmering scales that had replaced her legs, the transformation only just finishing with her feet elongating into the end of her tail as she tried to sit up. She swore, and as soon as Klaus noticed what she was doing he bent to help her, his hand warm against her arm as he helped her regain her balance.

“Can I help in the meantime?”

“You’ve already done me like, fifty favors today,” Caroline pointed out, knowing that any decent person would help her get home instead of leaving her to lay on the stockroom floor unable to walk, but feeling like she had to say it out of principle.

He seemed to agree, giving her a disbelieving look before turning to her jeans and the red lace scrap that had previously been her thong. She probably would have been embarrassed if she wasn’t so stressed from her predicament. “You can leave those there,” she said. “Just grab my phone out of my pocket.”

He did as she directed, checking both back pockets and pulling out her phone. “Your purse is by the front desk?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll be right back,” he promised, returning moments later with her purse over one shoulder and bending down to pick her up. “My car is the only one in the lot, but if you’d prefer I can get something to hide the tail.”

“No, it’s fine. It’s dark anyway,” she said, distracted by how warm he was and how good he smelled. She hated how even though she felt completely helpless in her current form, she felt oddly safe cradled against his chest.

“Your apartment?” he offered, and she shook her head.

“I live with a roommate. She doesn’t know. I don’t want to give her a heart attack.”

“I live alone?” he offered. “I even have a bathtub, if you’d prefer.”

She resisted the urge to snort, not wanting to be rude him when he was being nice (and she’d heard dumber questions before by far).

“Your place would be great, but don’t worry, I won’t need to take over your bathtub for anything other than bathing.”

She could have sworn she heard an off-beat thump of his heart, the hitch of his breath. Her words replayed in her mind and she tried to keep her composure while fighting the image of him walking in on her in the bath out of her mind. She wondered how entranced he’d be by the glistening of her scales, whether his gaze would trace the beads of water... She caught his eyes, noticed they were darker than they had been just a moment before. Had his thoughts been wandering in the same direction?

A few days ago she might have found the idea of him thinking of her naked creepy and irritating, but now she had to internally admit it was kind of hot...

She felt the light pierce of her teeth against her gums and shook herself, trying to push down the sudden bite of hunger she’d felt. He smelled even better now that her powers weren’t suppressed, his heartbeat temptingly strong and his jugular just inches away from her watering mouth. She was highly tempted to ask him whether he’d let her have a little taste so that she could get her legs back and they could both pretend this never happened, but feeding from someone was intimate, gave her a rush of adrenaline and pleasure and was as potent an aphrodisiac for whoever she was taking blood from as it was for herself. It would be taking advantage of him to ask, especially considering that he was clearly into her, and if she connected with him like that, things could get messy.

It would be better to wait for Sheila to come back and solve this without any unnecessary complications.

The night air was cool against her skin as they exited the shop, Klaus scanning the parking lot as though looking for threats before he brought her to what must have been his car, clumsily poking at the lever with his foot to move the chair back so that she could rest in the passenger seat comfortably. “Thanks so much, Klaus. Really,” she said, needing to break the silence somehow as she strapped herself in.

“You’re welcome, sweetheart.”

Her heart fluttered and she swallowed audibly, staring determinedly at a streetlamp out the window, listening to the driver’s side door slam and the car start up, not wanting to meet his eyes. Maybe it was more than lust, she realized, chewing her lower lip. Maybe she liked him. Just a little.

Ugh.

Had she seriously managed to catch feelings for this guy she’d been annoyed with for literal months? Seriously?

She was too exhausted to give it any real thought, she decided, determinedly leaning against the cool glass of the window and trying to ignore Klaus’s glances at her whenever they stopped at a light. She managed to doze off against the window as they drove, and it felt like just a moment had passed when he gently touched her shoulder to wake her. They’d arrived at a brick apartment building that she’d noticed before when she was downtown, and she unbuckled her seatbelt as he got out, a bit embarrassed at how helpless she was in her current state but deciding it was better not to draw attention. She took deep calming breaths as he carried her up the stairs in silence, doing her best to avoid catching his scent.

She hadn’t really thought this plan through, she realized once Klaus got the door to his studio open. It was a small space, which made sense given this housing market and that he couldn’t have been more than a year or two older than her, but it also meant that the one bed took up a good third of the non-kitchen living space.

It was late and she was exhausted. She could tell Klaus was getting tired too, but werewolves were natural night people, and considering that he barely ever came into the bookshop until afternoon she’d assumed that he either slept late every day or had a morning job.

“It’s a recliner,” he said as he set her down on a chair in the tiny living room. “The lever is on the side.”

She quickly figured out how to operate it, the footrest popping up to support her tail, and she sighed in relief as she leaned back against the cushions. It wasn’t as comfortable as a bed, and she’d have a nasty backache the next day, but hopefully she could borrow Klaus’s computer and get a hotel until Sheila got back from London. “Thanks.”

“Of course, love. The remote is in the side drawer and I can get the wi-fi password for you in a moment. I just need to start the laundry for fresh sheets. I hadn’t expected guests.”

“Laundry?”

He gave her an exasperated look. “For the bed. You can’t possibly think I’d make you sleep on that?”

“Klaus, I’m the one intruding on your space. I don’t want to make you go out of your way—“

“Honestly, Caroline, it’s not a problem. If you’d feel more comfortable with me in the chair that’s all right, but my mother would roll in her grave if she knew I’d let a young lady sleep on my apartment’s equivalent of a couch.”

She eyed him for a few seconds gauging his sincerity before deciding that sleeping in a chair instead of a bed was not a hill she wanted to die on. At all. Especially since she wouldn’t be able to get out of the chair.

She was putting her trust in him and it was scary, but her instincts told her that he wouldn’t hurt her. He was dangerous, but so was she and it wasn’t like she wasn’t a perfectly functioning member of polite society. As long as she didn’t give into the temptation to take just a taste of him, everything would be fine.

“We can use the bed, but I’m too tired to wait for laundry,” she said, fighting back an unwelcome yawn even as she spoke, and he smiled slightly.

“All right, love. Shall I get you something to sleep in?”

“Just a shirt is fine. Thanks.”

He nodded and went to the dresser in the corner, opening a drawer and bringing a henley back to her, murmuring that he was going to use the restroom. She changed quickly, wrapping her bra in her shirt and throwing it in the general direction of her purse, satisfied when it landed just behind it.

The fabric of the shirt was soft against her skin, and it was comfortable enough that she knew she wouldn’t mind sleeping in it. She yawned again, stretching, and she vaguely heard the door open and saw Klaus come out shirtless in just a pair of boxer-briefs. She tried her best not to let her eyes wander, but she couldn’t seem to manage it, absorbing his abs and the tattoo inked across his shoulder, barely stopping herself from licking her lips, wondering what his skin would taste like. “I live alone so I don’t keep anything to sleep in as a general rule. If it makes you uncomfortable, I’ll take the chair.”

She hoped that he couldn’t see her flush at how loaded his tone was. He clearly knew that the only discomfort she had was with their chemistry, and she was hoping he didn’t comment on it. He had a mirror after all, and she didn’t want to get into a conversation about whether she found him attractive or not. It was too much effort, and she was practically falling asleep in the recliner.

“It’s fine,” she said, thankful that she could keep her voice even. “Can you move me?”

He nodded, picking her up easily and setting her down on the mattress, making himself busy plugging his phone in and offering her an extra charger, which she accepted. While he pawed through her purse for her phone she managed to wriggle to the other side of the bed, trying to make herself as comfortable as possible while soaked in his scent and craving a taste. She felt herself sink bonelessly into the mattress, her eyes closing, and it wasn’t long before she fell asleep.

Caroline stirred slowly, instinctively turning to blindly fumble for her phone from where her side table usually was and coming into contact with Klaus’s chest instead, her eyes flying open when he grumbled softly, stirring but not waking.

It was then that she realized she was in a bit of a quandary.

She was half underneath him, her face level with his shoulder, and she suspected that she’s slept with her face tucked into it (whoops), pressed against him comfortably with his arms tight around her, the heat and scent of him cloaking her. The beat of his pulse thumped insistently next to her ear and her mouth watered at the prospect of just a taste. The magic in the necklace had only been enough to keep her from being uncomfortably hungry, and now that she didn’t have that safety net, she was fucking starving.

“Klaus,” she hissed, poking him lightly in the chest, feeling slightly bad for waking him up but figuring he’d be happier being awake and not breakfast rather than the alternative. He shifted, and her breath hitched when she felt his morning erection pressed against the sensitive skin where her scales met skin.

“What, sweetheart?” he asked, his voice low and rough from sleep.

“You need to get up.”

“What time is it?”

“I don’t know but I’m hungry,” she said, unable to resist taking a deep inhale of his neck before he pulled away, looking at her with bleary, sleep-glazed eyes.

“I can do a coffee run in a bit if you—“

“No, like, hungry,” she emphasized. “Like hungry as in for you.”

He suddenly looked much more awake, his eyebrow quirking as he clearly fought not to laugh. “Is that so?”

She huffed, knowing that a flush was creeping up her cheeks to show her embarrassment at her poor choice of words. “Like, for your blood.”

“Do you want to eat?” he asked, his tone loaded with innuendo as he moved to brush her hair out of her face in a surprisingly tender gesture that made her heart flutter and her pulse race. “I don’t mind.”

She bit her lip, part of her wondering whether he knew what he was signing up for and the rest of her tempted beyond belief.

“Feeding on a person is intimate,” she said slowly, shifting underneath him, just the prospect of the rush of his blood on her tongue making her nipples pebble. She doubted the flush in her cheeks was just from embarrassment now. “I don’t want you to do it because you feel like you have to. Like, I can stop myself from—“

“I want to,” he interrupted. “I’ll heal, Caroline.”

“I know,” she said, trying to keep her voice from growing thick with lust. “It’s not just intimacy though. It’s also kind of sexual.”

“You can’t possibly think that I would say no to the prospect of spending the morning satisfying all facets of your hunger for me,” he murmured, the goosebumps bubbling up on her skin and the quiver of her tail against his leg betraying how much she wanted to give into him. She took a deep shaking breath, licking her lips and trying to muster her very best glare.

“This is a one-time semi-hate fuck,” she said as though it was an announcement, one they both knew was most likely completely false.

He snorted. “Is that what your plan is?”

“Once,” she repeated, and he smirked, bending down to nip her ear.

“I’ll try to change your mind then, shall I? I’d like nothing more than to coax you into my bed again, Caroline,” he whispered, his hand skimming down her scaled hip up to her side, sneaking under the henley she’d borrowed to stroke her soft skin. “Are you open to being convinced?”

“You can try,” she said, too stubborn to admit that she was most definitely open to it. Wanted it, even.

“I’ll do more than try, sweetheart,” he said, bending down so that his lips hovered over hers, stopping just short of brushing them together.

He was waiting for her, the ball definitively in her court, and she was too impatient to feign stubbornness anymore. She brushed her nose against his, catching his lips in a soft kiss, the swipe of tongue against her lower lip making her moan softly, her back arching at the sensation of his hand gliding down her spine, the brush of his calloused palm over her sensitive skin making her gasp. She let her finger trace the tattoo on his shoulder as she bent to kiss the other side his neck, her tongue tracing the dip of his jugular, her fangs splitting through her gums just from the anticipation. “You sure?” she asked, pulling away to look at him. He was watching her with parted lips and dark eyes, a finger reaching out to trace the line of her lip before he cupped her cheek, brushing the pad of his thumb against her fang, slicing into the skin. She moaned at the scent of it, her eyes closing as she lightly sucked a bit of blood from the wound, unable to tear her eyes away from his, enjoying the way he swallowed audibly, the low rumble in his throat when she flicked his skin with her tongue as she withdrew.

“I’m sure,” he said, and she grinned at the obvious lust in his voice, pulling off the borrowed henley so that she could feel his skin on hers as she bent to nip his shoulder, his cock hard and hot against her hip through his boxerbriefs. She flicked her tongue to catch the blood that welled up, grinning at his answering groan. “Take more,” he said, his tone rough and demanding and full of need.

She bent to sink her fangs into his neck, moaning loudly as she sucked gently, his blood rich and thick against her tongue. She felt her skin begin to relax, her scales melting away to reveal pliant flesh, and Klaus wasted no time sliding his hand under her thigh to part her legs, settling himself in between them as she fed, his cock pressed against her inner thigh, the fabric separating them giving her a delicious sort of friction just inches from where she really wanted it..

She reached beneath the waistband of his boxerbriefs to wrap her fingers around his length, stroking him firmly and ghosting her thumb across the tip, and it was immensely satisfying to hear the way he swore out her name, how his hips moved automatically, chasing her touch. She lazily explored the skin of his abs with her fingertips as she stroked him slowly, pulling back to look at him with dazed, blooddrunk eyes.

His gaze was focused on her tongue as she licked his blood from her lips, and he reached down to wrap his fingers around her wrist, stopping her from stroking him. “Fuck, Caroline...”

“If you didn’t I’d be really disappointed,” she muttered, shifting to try to get friction against his covered cock, needing to soothe the persistent ache between her thighs.

He chuckled, bending down to catch her mouth with his and tugging her lower lip roughly between his teeth as he slipped two fingers inside of her, his lips parting slightly with a groan when he found how wet she was, fingers curling against her walls with a practiced motion that made her muscles tighten as she rolled her hips for more, her moan almost embarrassingly loud. The blood high had gotten her most of the way there, and when he brushed her clit with his thumb she dug her nails into his back and chased his touch, panting out his name and falling back bonelessly from her release.

“Disappointed?” he asked lightly, a wicked smirk playing on his lips that turned her on even more.

“It was pretty fast. Was that all?” she teased, knowing that it was completely impossible for him not to know how good it had been, her breathing still shallow and quick.

“Oh, that was just the beginning,” he murmured, drinking her in with dark eyes that flashed gold for just a moment when she reached to trace the already healed wound her bite had left on his shoulder. “I’m not nearly done with you, sweetheart. The full moon is close, and you’re not the only monster here.”

“I’ve had wolf sex,” she breathed, still shallow from coming down from her high but turned on enough that she didn’t stop him when he lazily slipped two fingers back inside of her, hooking them against her walls as he watched her face intently. “My ex was one.”

His eyes flashed again for just a moment, his thumb pressing down on her clit as he dragged his nails just shy of her g-spot, and she bit her lower lip hard enough to draw blood, trying to stifle what would have been an embarrassingly loud moan.

“So you know about what the moon does to me, then?”

“Yeah.”

“And you don’t mind?”

“Do I really seem like a ‘please fuck me gently’ type of girl after that?” she asked, her eyebrows raised, though she was barely able to get the words out evenly when he brushed his thumb against her clit again, his other hand pressed against her hip to keep her from getting too much friction. He clearly wanted to draw it out, and she wasn’t opposed.

“Then what do you want, sweetheart?” he asked, a slow, pleased smirk spreading across his face, and she felt her breath catch as Klaus found her g-spot again, pressing in a way that made her legs turn to jelly. “Tell me.”

“I want to come again,” she said. “From your cock this time.”

His smirk grew into a full smile, one that was almost feral, that showed all of his teeth. “I’ll fuck you from behind then, shall I? I’ll fill you with my cock while while you feed from my wrist. Do you like it rough, sweetheart? Do you want me to take you hard and fast? To claim you?”

“Yes,” she breathed, spreading her legs for him as he continued to fuck her with his fingers, and he withdrew, making her whimper, squirming for the touch he’d taken from her.

He leaned down to nip her ear, his breath hot on her neck as he spoke. “I’ve wanted you for months, Caroline. My wolf has wanted you, to claim you. I’ve spent hours wondering what pretty sounds you would make if you bent over the counter for me with your legs spread. I imagined you wet and panting, begging for my cock as you held the skirt of your sundress around your waist, craving the feel of my hands as I mapped every inch of your skin.”

She gasped softly at the visual he painted for her, her pussy clenching around nothing, craving to be filled.

“Get on your knees for me, sweetheart,” he said, his voice low and rough as he pulled back to let her flip over, his hands returning to her hips to steady her before they slid down to encourage her to part her thighs. His palms lingered on her skin for a moment as though he couldn’t get enough of the feel of her, and she tensed as his hands moved up slowly to settle on her hips, somehow knowing that if she complained he’d make a point to go even slower. He let out a pleased hum that made her flush as he dragged his finger gently along the flesh of her ass before bending to kiss her shoulder and toy with her nipple. Her heart was pounding with anticipation, and she bit her lip hard when she heard the rustle of fabric and some movement behind her before she felt the tip of him at her entrance, teasing her.

“Klaus,” she breathed impatiently, looking behind her to see him looking down at her with want and something that resembled affection. Her heart fluttered in her chest, and she took in a sharp breath as he bent to press his chest against her back, his voice low as he pressed open-mouthed kisses to her shoulder blades, speaking between each one.

“You’re so fucking beautiful like this, sweetheart. Bent over with your pretty arse in the air...”

She pressed back against him to try to get him to speed up and push inside of her, and he groaned, his hands pressing into her hips to hold her in place. “So impatient,” he murmured, and she huffed, curling her fingers into the sheets.

“I was promised rough,” she reminded, and he chuckled, pressing one last kiss to her spine before filling her with one thrust of his hips.

He definitely didn’t disappoint, fucking her hard and fast, his fingers rubbing her clit as he spoke to her, beginning to outline some of the fantasies he’d had of her while he was watching her shelve books, his voice growing thicker with lust as he spoke and listened for her reaction.

“I wanted to watch you drape your legs over the armrests of one of the chairs, watch you touch yourself,” he said, his voice a low growl, pinching her ass lightly when she moaned, the sharp pain a delicious contrast to the way his cock felt inside of her that it made her whimper out his name, her high building steadily, every part of her achingly sensitive for his touch. “Even more now, I want you to show me how you like it, what you do when you come around your own fingers wishing it was my cock. I must admit I’m not sure if I could let you finish without the chance to touch you. Perhaps you’d let me watch up close. Would you like that, Caroline? For me to kneel between your thighs and watch you touch yourself until I grow impatient and convince you to let me replace your hands with my tongue?”

“Yes,” she hissed, nodding. She heard him chuckle, felt his hands wrap around her thighs to adjust her position to get deeper, and she swore when he started to move faster.

“I’d love to taste you,” he said, his breathing harsher now, tone rough with lust. “Perhaps during the day, sneaking you off to a back section where people hardly ever wander. Watching you struggle to stifle your moans of my name would be as much a pleasure as making you come on my tongue.”

She was more than a little turned on by the idea of someone walking in on them having sex in the back of the shop, a soft gasp escaping her as he finished speaking, and he chuckled quietly. “Does that appeal to you, then? Spreading your legs for me in secret, knowing that at any moment someone could walk in and see you with your legs wrapped around me, moaning my name? Or perhaps on your knees? I’ve often wondered what your lips would look like wrapped around my cock...”

She moaned softly, clenching around him as he spoke. He was into the dirty talk thing, clearly, and the filthy words that were coming out of his mouth in his rough growl through gritted teeth were definitely the hottest thing she’d ever heard in her life. His breathing was heavier between words now, thick with want, and she could tell from how tightly he was gripping her hips and the strain in his voice that he was trying to hold himself back from coming, clearly wanting her to fall apart first. She was so close...

“Keep talking,” she panted out, and he chuckled.

“You make the most beautiful sounds, Caroline. It would almost be a pity to stifle them, but I think it would be just as sweet to watch you lick my come from your lips.”

She felt her muscles grow tight, her toes curling as he brought her to the edge, her breathing shallow and fast. He pinched her clit and dragged his teeth along her shoulder, and she licked her lips when he offered her his wrist, holding it in front of her mouth as an invitation. She could feel her gums break as her fangs pushed through, hear the rush of the blood in his veins even as the sound of skin against skin filled the room. Klaus’s encouraging groan when she ran her tongue along his wrist was all she needed to hear before she pierced his skin, moaning at his taste and tipping over the edge, taking just a few gulps before withdrawing and running the tip of her tongue along the closing wound to get every last drop. She felt him come inside her as she nipped his wrist with her blunt teeth, his body a comfortably heavy weight on hers before he rolled off of her. She shifted to face him, breathing hard, and she moaned when his hand moved between her thighs to build her up again.

He looked at her, reaching to wipe blood from her lips with his other hand and groaning softly when she licked it from his thumb before laying back so that he could climb on top of her, spreading her legs for his fingers, needing more.

His nails dug into her hip as he bent to press kisses to her neck, his cock hardening against her thigh when she tangled her fingers in his hair and traced his spine, breath hot on her neck. She took a sharp breath when he lazily circled her clit with a slick finger, her eyes widening when he spoke. His tone was smoother now, more seductive than rough and heated, and it only took a few words for her to realize that if she thought that he’d be satisfied with just one day with her, and she with him, she was sorely mistaken.

“We’re not so different, you and I, Caroline. We’re predators. I love the thrill of the chase, the anticipation, the catch. You’re a different sort of monster. You’re a temptress, luring your prey to you with just a simple look and finishing them before they realized that the pretty girl they thought they’d chased so easily had teeth when they got too close. I’m not fool enough to think that you’re mine already. We’ve only just begun. But tell me, Caroline, have you ever considered letting anyone close enough to catch you?”

She took a deep shaky breath, moaning as he began to press inside of her again, her walls stretching deliciously to accommodate him. She tried to gather every shred of annoyance she’d felt for him over the last month and a half to channel it into a stubborn glare, barely managing to keep her voice from being too breathless. “Not yet.”

He pushed himself on his elbows as he moved, the pace slower than it had been before but just as pleasurable, and her breath caught when she saw the way he was looking at her, drinking in every slight shift of her expression as though memorizing it.

“Perhaps one day you’ll let me.”

#klaroline #klaroline drabbles #klaroline drabble #klaroline smut #klaroline fanfiction #my fanfiction #mydrabbles #lalainajanes #ask #answer

98 notes · View notes

bekaroth-reads · 7 years

Text

Grell Sutcliff x reader

(Since I know this is a highly debated subject, I will let you know why I used feminine pronouns for Grell. There is a panel that was written by the author of Black Butler that was Grell answering questions in which Grell claims to be a lady. That being said, it's not technically canon, so I understand if you do not agree. I hope that you can still enjoy this, however, and thank you for reading it.)

The streets of London were dimly lit. It wasn’t that the street lamps were dimmed or anything. The problem was that there was was fog. It was that the fog was so thick you couldn’t see your hands in front of your face. The street was still visible, just only to a certain extent. That being said, there was enough fog for you to lose your way. You weren’t sure where you were exactly, but you knew it wasn’t where you wanted to be. To make things worse, you were pretty sure that you were getting close to a perish that you knew to be somewhat dangerous after dark. There was no telling how far from or into the parish you were and there was enough fog to make the street signs hard to see unless you were very close to them, and you felt that going any further than you already had was a bad idea. The best idea right now would be to head back the way you came, and hope to come across an officer that could help you find where you were.

“My, my~ what’s a little thing like you doing out on a chilly night like this?” A voice crooned behind you suddenly. You turned quickly to see who was there. There was a tall figure who was clad in mostly red. The thing that stood out the most was the long, red hair that flowed slightly in the wind. “Who- who are you?” You questioned, honestly hoping that whoever it was startled easily and would leave if you actually tried to talk to them, but sadly for you that was not the case. “What sort of lady do you think I am? Why, even the thought of giving my name to a complete stranger that I met in the streets!” The person huffed in what was supposed to be an indignant voice, but something in it seemed to feel fake, playful even. Well, at least whoever this lady was, she had enough standards to not just give her name out to- “Oh, why am I playing so hard to get? My name is Grell, Grell Sutcliff, and, oh, when I saw you walking down the street I just ~had~ to introduce myself!” She said in a very sing-song voice.

Suddenly, Grell was walking closer to you, and you decided that being close to such a forward stranger with no one else in sight was not the best thing to do. Thinking quickly, you looked at her and gave a quick, “Well, it was a pleasure to meet you.” and started to walk away at a quick pace. “Wait, please! We barely even talked to each other! I don’t even know your name!” Grell called as she followed you. If you had your way there would be no possibility of this stranger knowing your name. Maybe you were being paranoid, but there was something that seemed a little wrong about the situation. It wasn’t like this woman was overly grungy or dangerous looking. She was actually very attractive. Somewhat different than other women that you had seen, but still had a large amount of womanly charm. That was what the problem was. This Grell was almost too alluring, like there was some sort of otherworldly aura about her. You couldn’t quite place what it was, but you knew that she wasn’t an ordinary person.

When you realized that this Grell person was still following you after about a minute or two, you started to actually run to get away from her. There wasn’t any certainty of where you might end up running blindly in this fog, but you felt that if there was something otherworldly about the person following you then you needed to try to get away as quickly as possible. You ran not even taking the time to look behind you to see if your pursuer was still there. After you were sure there was a good distance between the two of you, you ducked into a small side street that could almost be considered an alley with the plans to hide there until you thought that the forward lady that was after you had passed. Even if you were being paranoid and this Grell was in fact just a person and not a supernatural being, it would still probably not be a good idea to be alone with such a person this late in the evening.

“Well, look who’s playing hard to get now.” Grell’s voice suddenly wafted from behind you. You were at a loss for words at the moment. How did she find you? More importantly, how did she get behind you? There was no way that she could have gone to the other end of the alley and sneak up on you in the amount of time you had been waiting for her to pass by. These questions were soon answered when Grell finally managed to get close enough for you to make out her features clearly other than just a person in red. Her eyes were green, but not like you’ve seen with other people. Theses were chartreuse and almost seemed to glow. Her teeth were not like human teeth either. They were pointed and sharp looking. Your debate was finally over. There was no way that Grell was born of this world. You still weren’t sure what exactly she was, but you knew that she wasn’t human.

The biggest question you had now was why did Grell want to talk to you? You were certain that you were going to die, or at least be cursed or something. After all, that’s how all of the legends and stories where people had met supernatural entities while they were alone in the night ended. “My, my! I have to say I ~LOVE~ someone that’s able to pretend they weren’t immediately overwhelmed with my feminine wiles. But, it’s not entirely me who’s been on the flirtatious side this evening, now is it?” Grell almost giggled as she got even closer to you than she was before, making you back into a wall on one of the sides of the alley. You still weren’t able to talk, but you did accidentally communicate your surprise to Grell when your eyes widened when she hinted that you had been flirting with her. The look on you face as you were pressing against the wall made her let out a giddy laugh that was similar to the ones you would hear a schoolgirl do when they saw their crush walk by.

“Ooooooooo~ I just love the adorable face that you make! Please, you must tell me your name!” She swooned and almost begged. You still weren’t sure that giving your name to this person was the best idea, so you just continued in your silence. After she saw that you weren’t going to say anything, she gave a little pouty face in a attempt to get you to cave in. All Grell managed to do was confuse you even more. How old was this woman? She looked to be an adult, but acted like a child that had too much caffeine with how her mood changed so quickly. When you still said nothing, Grell got a toothy smile, and started to talk again. “Well, seeing as you are obviously too overwhelmed with my beauty to speak even something as simple as your name, I shall choose what I will call you.” This didn’t sound too appealing to you, but at least she wouldn’t know your actual name. That might have seemed like a trivial thing, but right now it seemed like the only thing that you had control of. “I will call you… LOVEY! Oh, that’s perfect! A nick name that tells how we feel about each other!” She called into the night, and you were surprised and upset that no one heard her and came running to see what was going on with how loud she was.

Lovey wasn’t really something that you wanted to go by, but you got the felling that Grell would keep calling you that no matter what you would say. She seemed to think that you were in love with her, and you had no idea where she got that idea. You had just met her, and honestly hadn’t really said anything to her yet. Thankfully. Your voice decided to come back in time for you to ask about this before things got too out of hand. “I beg your pardon, but why did you say that I was flirting with you? Also, when did I ever said that I loved you?” You asked, trying your best not to sound rude for fear of what might happen to you if Grell became angry with you. She laughed in response before giving you an answer. “Oh, Lovey, no need to keep up the tough act. If you remember to not too long ago you were the one that mysteriously arrived where I was, asked my name, and ran through the night like you were Cinderella, yet you didn’t even leave me a shoe to follow. You even played a little game of hide and seek with me. And, when I found you, you looked at me for such a long time that I knew that you must have been inthralled with me to the point where you could no longer bare the thought of being with out me, even though we had only met tonight!” Grell said as if she were quoting a fairytale of some sort. Suddenly, her wistful look into the sky turned into a playful one to you.

“Come on, Lovey!~ Just admit it! You are trying to seduce me~” she said with a wink. You were taken aback, and surprisedly questioned, “I was trying to seduce you?!” This wasn’t good for you, because Grell took your question as a confession, and suddenly flung herself into you. “Oh, Lovey, I’m all yours! Love me until the end of time!!” She cried excitedly as she crashed into you. The two of you would have fallen down if you hadn’t been against a wall. You were in shock. Never did you think that something like this was ever going to happen to you, yet here you were with a inhumanly strong lady hanging onto your neck rambling excitedly about something that you weren’t even able to comprehend because she was talking too quickly in her excitement. “Lovey, Lovey!” She started as she looked into your eyes, “Please, I know we just met, but we cannot be separated! Let me go home with you tonight. I promise to be on my best behavior~” Grell pleaded with you before getting another playful look on her face that looked a little more dangerous than the first. “Unless you don’t want me to be~” she whispered in an almost husky voice.

You turned bright red at the suggestion, and tried to think of a way out of this awkward situation. “W-well, you see. I actually lost what street I’m on, and it’s going to take me awhile to find my home. I wouldn’t want to drag you all the way around the city with me until I found where I was.” You knew that in most cases it was not wise to let someone know that you were lost in a back alley this late in the evening, but you felt like this might have been the only way to get Grell to leave you long enough to find a patrolling officer an let them know what had happened. Not that you expected the officer to believe that you met someone that wasn’t human, but they would at least help you get home and watch for anyone that fit Grell’s description. Your plan backfired, but not in a way you thought it would. Once you had told Grell what was happening, her smile widened even more. “Oh, my! You’ve lost your home? Well then, you’ll just have to borrow mine for the evening.” She giggled flirtatiously. Suddenly the two of you were moving at an inhuman speed. Things were going so fast that you couldn’t even tell what direction you were going in. In a moment you were at a small apartment that was adorned in lavash read furniture. You looked over to see Grell locking the door behind her with her sharp toothed grin looking even more dangerous in the dim light of the apartment. “Welcome home, Lovey~” she chuckled as she started to walk towards you. What were you going to do?

#grell sutcliff #grell sutcliff x reader #black butler grell #black butler

118 notes · View notes

thecounterplan · 7 years

Text

What the United 3411 Incident is Really About

by Brice Ezell

If you've followed the news at all in the past week, a recap of the events of United Express flight 3411 is unnecessary. For those who limit their news intake or even avoid the news – in this political climate, not an unreasonable move as far as stress and mental health are concerned – here's a recap: 3411, a plane leaving Chicago's O'Hare Airport for a short-haul flight to Louisville, Kentucky, was overbooked the day of its departure, Sunday 9 April. Overbooking is problem enough for paying customers, but in the case of 3411 there was an additional complication. United had several employees that needed to be on the plane, as they had to work on a flight in Louisville the next day.

With the flight being overbooked, United offered to give a night's stay in a hotel plus $400 USD to any customer willing to give up their seat. When no one took that offer, United upped the offer to $800. No one was enticed by that, a clearly considerable sum that likely outweighed the cost of the original plane ticket. According to some reports, United ended up offering $1000. When no one accepted these cash incentives, United randomly selected four passengers to be removed from the plane to accommodate the United staffers that needed to be in Louisville the next day. Three left the plane, undoubtedly frustrated, but without making much of a scene. The fourth, one Dr. David Dao, a practicing physician, refused to leave on the grounds that (a) he paid for his seat and (b) he needed to be at the hospital the next day to tend to patients. Despite the reasonability of those claims, United called the airport police on Dao, who was physically yanked out of his seat and dragged off the plane, leaving him bloodied.

Since then, United has faced a hailstorm of media criticism, and with good reason. As it turns out, using state-sanctioned violence to take from someone a service he had paid for makes for bad PR. It didn't help that the official Twitter statement by Oscar Munoz, the CEO of United, sounded like it was drafted by a corporate jargon bot, like horse_ebooks attempting to give an apology. United presumably compensated Dao and the other individuals removed from the plane, and in a surprisingly classy move, the airline did later refund all passengers on the plane the price of their ticket. Yet in examining how this thoroughly terrible event came to pass, it doesn't take long to figure out that this is but a single manifestation of a much larger problem, and that United could have saved itself a lot of grief by acting sensibly.

Before getting to the crux of what 3411 represents, there is one particularly bad argument that is worth addressing right out of the gate. I've seen it crop up across social media, but one grating iteration of it appears in the post called "I Know You're Mad at United but… (Thoughts from a Pilot Life about Flight 3411)", by Angelia J. Griffin. An early paragraph in Griffin's post features this confession, "If a federal law enforcement officer asks me to exit a plane, no matter how royally pissed off I am, I’m going to do it and then seek other means of legal reimbursement. True story."

This kind of argument is popular any time there is an instance of accused (or even likely) abuse of power by a law enforcement officer. "If only that unarmed black man who wasn't doing anything wrong at all simply did exactly what the officer told him, he would still be alive today!" This mindset is a curious thing to exist in America, a country founded on rebellion from the government that’s also home to the most guns per capita by a long shot – almost one gun per American (skip to page 47 of that PDF). Thee "if an officer says, you do" mentality is a whisper away from total fascism, if not an outright capitulation to it. I know that in the era of Donald Trump it's popular to bandy the word "fascism" about the minute something bad happens, but I do not use the term lightly here.

Just so it is crystal clear: a badge and a gun do not prima facie put an officer in the right. The presence of a badge does not mean that everything an officer says or does is correct. Asserting the high standing of the law does not negate the fact that many officers of the law fail to uphold their obligations to the law, and in some cases even abuse the law. Respectfully questioning an officer, or standing your ground when you know you are within your rights, does not make you a criminal or a degenerate. It makes you a human being, one that does not let the mere presence of power take away your dignity. Griffin's tone in her piece turns her seemingly "I don't want to cause any trouble" point into something closer to, "Shut up and obey orders when you're told." I and I don't think most Americans want to live in a society where that is the default response to authority figures.

Dao was not in the wrong for insisting that he needed to tend to patients the next day. I'm willing to bet that his reason for needing to be in Louisville the was better than most of the others' on board.

While the initial response to Dao's injuries was widespread sympathy and outrage, it wasn't long before a certain disingenuous brand of argumentation reared its head in opposition to the outrage. Basically, it boils down to this: "But the rules!" United Airlines, like all airlines, has each passenger sign a contract of carriage with each ticket – though, of course, most passengers click "I accept" on this contract without ever actually reading it. One stipulation of most if not all contracts of carriage is that airlines can in fact deny boarding to paying customers, given a particular set of circumstances. This brief primer by USA Today illustrates some of the myriad reasons why one might be denied entrance to a plane even after she has bought a ticket. (The article also notes that a contract of carriage runs up to 37,000 words.)

Descriptively, the "play by the rules" argument is valuable, for it reminds airport passengers of just how much legal scaffolding exists for the process of air travel. United and the other major airline carriers have their asses covered, and the minute you cry foul, they will let you know of that. Given that most customers don't have time to parse through 37,000+ words of text every time they need to buy a plane ticket, it is good to know what stipulations come in the contract of carriage.

As a claim against Dao's sympathizers, however, the "play by the rules" argument – espoused by Griffin and many others – is nothing more than pedantry. Yes, it is true that airlines have contracts of carriage that come with certain rules. Yes, it is true that people should be better informed about these things. But the fact that rules exist isn't the substance of the matter for those angry about what happened on 3411. In the battle of Single Paying Customer versus Giant Corporate Airline With Its Army of Lawyers and Whatnot, everyone knows that the latter will always win out, even if slight concessions are granted. The outrage isn't that rules exist at all; it's that the rules set by the airlines are fundamentally unjust and result in pernicious outcomes like 3411's.

It is first of all worth noting that the "rules are rules" line of reasoning might not even exonerate United in the case of 3411. As many have already observed, there is a distinction in contracts of carriage between being denied boarding and being refused transport. The former is what the "rules are rules" crowd is leaning on: if a plane is overbooked or there are airline employees in need of transportation, it is true that passengers can be denied boarding. However, being denied transport – that is, an airline's refusal to fly a customer to his destination after she has boarded the airline – is a different situation. Were Dao denied boarding prior to getting on the plane, legally United would have been in the clear, but since Dao was violently removed from the plane having already been boarded and seated, United's legal footing is a lot less sure. There is ambiguity in the contract of carriage on the line between "denied boarding" and "refusal of transport," but in contract law, ambiguity in a contract stipulation works against whoever drafted the contract – in this case, United.

United also promised federal regulators in 2014 that all ticketed passengers were guaranteed seats, but unsurprisingly a "promise" from a large corporation without any legal apparatus behind holds as much water as the notion of Southwest Airlines being a budget carrier.

Furthermore, there is a practical consideration in the case of 3411. Given that the flight was full of paying customers and the airline did have a need to send employees to Louisville for work the next day, the easy solution would have been to rent a car for the four employees and have them drive to Louisville, a four and a half hour trip which would have put them in Louisville with time enough for sleep. Airline employee's unions do require certain standards of accommodation for employees, and considering that I am unaware of them I might be speaking out of turn here. But on the surface, at least, this solution would have met the airline's need of getting its employees to their next work location without depriving paying customers of their seats.

But suppose United was legally in the clear, and that at best Dao would get a tiny settlement in going after the airline through legal means. I'm not one to elevate late night talk show hosts as beacons of reason, Jimmy Kimmel made an excellent point in his televised remarks on 3411: in no other industry would customers tolerate the policy of overbooking. Imagine, Kimmel suggests, going to an Applebee's and after having ordered your food, you are removed for other paying customers who wanted to sit down. Applebee's would be out of business in a heartbeat. (That is, unless people really love riblets.) Yet for some reason, with airlines overbooking comes with the cost of soaring through the skies. No federal or state law prohibits overbooking.

In the first instance, it makes sense why airlines overbook flights. Air travel, even when an airline has economies of scale, is an expensive enterprise, and all airlines have the financial prerogative to ensure that every seat is filled. Any unfilled seat represents wasted space and lost revenue. Hedging on the possibility that some travelers won't make the flight for which they've bought a ticket – which given the expense of a plane ticket strikes me as a low possibility – air carriers overbook flights such that if a seat becomes empty, a passenger on the wait list can board, and the airline is then ensured of its revenue. I am thinking in the aside of that last sentence that most travelers wouldn't outright skip a flight; I am aware there are other reasons to miss flights, including the not insubstantial number of people who miss flights due to TSA security delays. However, I have yet to see compelling statistical data that shows that missed flights pose such a profit problem for airlines that the practice of overbooking becomes necessary.

It is incumbent upon airlines to prove the financial need for overbooking. Even with the practice of overbooking in place, airlines remain almost systemically unprofitable, and it is implausible that missed flights by some customers would constitute absolute financial ruin for air carriers, above and beyond the harms caused by the already problematic standard operating procedures in the industry. But logical scrutiny and good business are not correlated, so for the time being it appears that the outrage over 3411 will fizzle out in the short term, and airlines will go back to doing whatever they want in the long term because they know air travel is a necessity in a globalized business world.

The fact that airlines know that necessity has in large part enabled the industry to become anything but the free market many would like to think it is. Alex Pareene puts it directly and astutely in the title of his article “Airlines Can Treat You Like Garbage Because They are an Oligopoly.” An oligopoly (think “oligarch”) is a market controlled by a few core players, in this case the “Big Four” of commercial American aviation: American, United, Delta, and Southwest.

Central to an oligopoly is the limitation of competition, and in the aviation game, there is little of it. If you go on Kayak or any airfare aggregator like it, you’ll find that with few exceptions, most airlines stay within a predictable cost range for their flights. For example, I can fly to New York City from Austin round-trip -- if I buy well in advance -- for around $200-$250, and in most cases I can have my choice of American, United, or Delta. (As for Southwest: see my previous comment about it being definitely not cheap.) I could go to a budget airline like Spirit (or Frontier if I was heading west), but those airlines are only deceptively cheap. The budget flights on those airlines usually only exist for select airports, and even for those fares that are comparatively lower than those of the Big Four there is a well-known nickel-and-diming that occurs after the initial ticket purchase. (For reasons that remain opaque to me, it costs more on Frontier and Spirit to bring a carry-on bag -- which the major carriers don’t charge for -- than it is to check a bag.) This may seem odd on face: wouldn’t each member of the Big Four want to stake out the most competitive rates, thereby ensuring that they draw more customers?

Well, as it turns out, no. The Big Four appear quite happy with the sky oligopoly. (Skoligopoly?) As Pareene puts it,

This is called oligopoly, and, for airline shareholders, this is great! It truly is a new golden age of aviation, for people who fly in private jets but own stock in airlines. For the rest of us, this is most of why flying sucks now (the rest of it is the ever-expanding and largely incompetent security state), and also why United is not that worried about you sharing that video of a man being brutally dragged off their plane. They are not embarrassed, and you will not embarrass them. Airlines feel no need to perform the dance of corporate penitence. If you’ve chosen to fly somewhere, it’s probably because you don’t have a good alternative to flying...

What does United care if the internet is mad at it? The airlines divvied up the sky between themselves, and if you live or work in United territory, at some point you’ll face the real “choice” offered to consumers in a post-consolidation industry: flying with them, flying a more time-consuming and circuitous route with some other, probably equally horrible airline (if such a route is available), or not flying anywhere. Do you need to get from Fargo to Denver in a hurry? Congratulations, you are now a United customer.

So long as each airline can generate profit and earn regional advantage in certain places, these companies have no incentive to compete for the purpose of lowering prices. The utter hilarity of the “trickle-down” notion of profit-seeking is also illustrated by the airline oligopoly. Writing for Vox, Alex Abad-Santos points out,

Flights are still expensive, even though the cost of jet fuel, a reason commonly cited by airlines for raising prices and adding fees, has gone down — in 2016, jet fuel prices were a third of what they were in 2014, but ticket prices didn’t decrease in kind. It’s cheaper for airlines to operate now than it was a few years ago, but they haven’t passed any savings on to customers.

To boil it down to its essence: United, along with the three other members of the Big Four controls the skies. Who cares what passengers want? What power do they have against the airlines?

In response to the outrage following 3411, many in the “rules are rules” crowd also touted the classic “hit ‘em with your wallet!” line of reasoning. “If you don’t like it, don’t give your money to United! That will show them what their customers prioritize, and if enough people do it United will change its behavior.” This argument is predicated on the notion that the airline industry resembles anything like a free market, and that airlines are responsive to customer inputs in the way a market competitor theoretically would be. But since the skies are ruled by just four airlines, corporations like United don’t have to care about customers in the way a business freely competing with others would. Many have touted the heavy airline deregulation instigated under the Carter administration in the late 1970s -- prior to that, airlines were highly regulated by the government -- as an example of giving choice and lower prices to the consumer, thereby making air travel more democratic. In seeing the corporate merger-driven oligopoly that now controls the air, I cannot help but think of the classic line from the film No Country for Old Men, a question I think well applies to more than one stipulation of United’s contract of carriage: “If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?”

This is the heart of the matter when it comes to 3411. The anger following Dao’s horrible mistreatment is not about what the rules are, but rather why the rules are, why the airlines are in such a place that they can treat customers in this way. The airlines are able to implement policies like their overbooking practices because there is no regulation that forbids it -- or, seemingly, even tempers it -- and there is no means by which customers can hold these companies to account. This compounds the initial frustration of 3411 further: it’s not just that airlines behave in a way anathema to good customer relations, but they also have no incentive to change.

Some will instinctively backpedal at the slightest hint of regulation, suggesting that deregulation led to lower fares and greater choice for consumers when shopping for plane tickets. Given the increasingly non-competitive airline marketplace, one wonders how competition will be fostered by the status quo. But more importantly, knee-jerk anti-regulation relies on a fundamental misunderstanding of coercion. Matt Bruenig writes,

What’s amusing about libertarians and laissez-faire people (and the loose way certain economists talk) is that they will describe my choice to pay rent as non-coerced and voluntary while describing my choice to pay income taxes as coerced and involuntary. But there is no neutral construction of “coercion” that would ever support such a distinction. As [Robert] Hale aptly demonstrates, coercion occurs when there are “background constraints on the universe of socially available choices from which an individual might ‘freely’ choose.”...

...When we talk about the economy, we are not arguing about whether we want coercion. We are arguing about what coercion we’d like.

The same holds true for airlines. There will always be rules for flying on a commercial airliner, and customers should know those rules. But wanting a different set of rules isn’t tantamount to a new imposition of coercion; instead, it’s a question of how coercion ought to function in an airline-to-customer transaction. Looking at how United’s overbooking policies -- which are similar if not the same to the other contracts of carriage in the Big Four -- resulted in Dao being yanked out of his seat and bloodied in the process, I think it’s high time those rules be reconsidered. So long as things stay the same, let’s not pretend that the air is just another competitive marketplace.

In thinking on 3411 and all the follies of American capitalism it represents, I've come up with what I call the Greenspan Rule, the name of which is inspired by this classic observation of Noam Chomsky's, which he delivered in response to one of former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan’s characteristic panegyrics on the free market. The Greenspan principle is simple: if you hear a businessman, CEO, corporation, or pro-corporate politician singing the praises of the free market, you can almost be certain that the market they envision is anything but free.

Some further reading on Chomsky's response to Greenspan's claims about the virtues of the free market can be found here. See specifically the section "Saint Greenspan and the transistor."

#United Airlines #United #Flight 3411 #economics #airlines #David Dao #airline industry

5 notes · View notes