#without calling them out on their activities

[philosophicalparadox]

Reminder that aside from peperomia, Begonia and Monstera, all of these are deadly poison to kids, cats, dogs, birds and reptiles that eat them. Alocasias, Anthurium, Syngonium, Caladium and Ficus all have irritating sap as well and should not be trimmed without gloves. Begonia are technically edible, or at least not toxic in most cases, but they do have a lot of calcium oxalate and are covered in spines and sharp, irritating hairs.

Pothos are not super poisonous, you need to eat a few leaves usually, but they too are full of oxalate crystals that are sharp and can rip up small stomachs and cause kidney distress.

Peperomia isn’t poisonous per se, but it does contain alkaloids that are laxative in their effect.

Monsteras aren’t exceptionally edible except for deliciosa, but they aren’t particularly toxic either, they’re just extremely tough and have so much cellulose they feel like plastic. They can cause bowel obstruction if the leaves or any raw part of the plants are consumed, and they sink heavy metals into their green parts, so not advised to let things nibble on them too much.

Ficus are all poisonous aside from their fruits, (and not all figs produce edible fruit!) to mammals in particular, and have caustic latex that causes chemical burns, in addition to being full of sharp oxalate crystals. Never let pets chew on or scratch them.

Happy houseplant hunting, but keep them responsibly, and make sure they’re out of reach. Philodendron in particular are very poisonous, containing a ton of not only calcium oxalate but other oxalates, nitrate and phosphate compounds as well, and some species in the family, in particular Spathyphyllum, (peace lilies) are cardiotoxic, too, so keep them away from anything that might chew on them. Alocasias are similarly toxic.

In case of poisoning by any of them, do not induce vomiting, and call poison control or go to the nearest ER/ED. Activated carbon doesn’t do anything to calcium oxalate in the stomach and is likely to exacerbate symptoms, so don’t use that either. Instead drink a lot of water, A LOT, and immediately go to a hospital or call the poison hotline, though they’ll probably advise you to go to emergency anyway. If you’re not sure, better safe than sorry — kidney damage by acute calcium oxalate poisoning is difficult if not impossible to reverse, especially in cats and smaller animals.

Stay safe out there.

Plants 🌱

[salty-tang]

The Suit Problem™

Congressman!Bucky Barnes x Congresswoman!Reader

Summary: someone commented, and i quote verbatim "I can't imagine Bucky in a suit without thinking of him flexing & accidentally ripping his sleeves. Just to share that imagery."

Warnings/ tags: MATURE THEMES, Original Characters galore, political tension with feelings, lots of tension, suit kink (very heavily implied), emotional restraint and physical damage, making out in federally inappropriate spaces (the bathroom), clothed intimacy

Word count: 3k

off the record masterpost || AO3 || congressman bucky masterpost

The First Time It Happens

It’s a standard afternoon hearing – oversight – dry, procedural, and criminally under-attended. Some poor GAO witness is walking the committee through a line-by-line breakdown of federal allocations for energy storage grants. You’re barely following. The numbers aren’t the problem, the problem (as is with many other things in life these days) is Bucky Barnes.

Specifically, Bucky in the third chair diagonally to your left, rolling back his shoulders and shrugging his jacket up higher on his frame like it isn’t already fighting for its dear life. Like the seam at his right shoulder isn’t straining with every millimetre he moves.

You’ve seen the shrug before. He does it when he’s bored. When he’s too warm. When he knows you’re watching.

It makes him look younger – unruly and a little too charming for your peace of mind.

Normally, you can take it.

But then –

riiip

A soft tear. Audible, but just barely. Right at the seam where his sleeve meets his right shoulder. Not the metal arm.

The flesh one.

You don’t mean to look. But you do, reflexively.

The fabric’s split open like a bad alibi, pulled too tight over muscle he has no business keeping in that good of a shape. The shirt underneath clings and you can see the edge of his bicep where the cotton’s pulled taut.

You freeze.

Then you blush.

And then you realize you’re blushing, and you nearly drop your pen.

He looks over. Of course he looks over.

He knows.

And his mouth quirks up like he’s won something, and perhaps he has.

You tear your eyes away and pretend to reread your notes, except that your entire mental slate has just been wiped clean by the sight of one extremely illegal shoulder doing irreversible things to navy wool blend.

Mills, three chairs behind you, texts the group slack in real time:

He BROKE THE JACKET. That’s the REAL oversight. my kinsey score will never recover

You press your lips together. You do��not react. This is a federal setting.

But somewhere in the back of your head – right between this is wildly inappropriate and I did not know this was a thing for me – there’s a voice whispering: not even the metal arm. Jesus Christ.

In the Hallway Immediately After

You catch him just outside the hearing room. You're clutching your notes to your chest – mostly to hide the fact that your hands are shaking slightly. From frustration, obviously.

“Barnes,” you call out. 

He turns, slow. Too slow. His suit jacket’s slung over one shoulder now, exposing the ripped seam like it’s a war medal.

You narrow your eyes. “Do you enjoy making my staff reconsider their sexuality during active committee meetings?”

He bites down on a smile. "It was an accident."

A pause.

Then – lower, silkier, “your staff, or you?”

You go still.

It’s not fair, the way he says it. Like he’s just asking a question and he isn’t the living embodiment of every problem you’ve ever sworn to ignore.

Your jaw tightens. “Don’t test me, Barnes.”

He smiles properly now – wolfish, pleased. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

You take a step closer. That’s your first mistake because he smells like cedar and clean soap and faint Capitol dust, and he’s still doing that thing – head tilted slightly, mouth soft at the corners, like he knows exactly how close you are to either slapping him or kissing him.

“That’s a campaign funded jacket,” you say, voice low. “You keep destroying them like this and I’m going to have to file you under infrastructure damage.”

“I’ll expense it,” he says, deadpan. “Line item 22: legislative tension.”

You exhale sharply. “You know you’re not supposed to look like that in public. It's unbecoming of a Congressman.”

He leans in, just a little.

“You keep looking at me like that,” he murmurs, “and I’ll break the other seam too.”

Your breath catches.

He sees it and smiles.

“You’re impossible,” you say, weakly.

“You’re flustered.”

“I’m not.”

He shrugs.

Again.

The sound that comes out of you isn’t quite verbal.

Somewhere behind you, a staffer coughs awkwardly.

You straighten up and smooth your blouse, all while pretending that your entire blood supply hasn’t migrated somewhere wildly inappropriate for federal property.

“I’m telling Mike to order you three new jackets,” you say, already turning to leave.

“Better make it four,” he calls after you. “Just in case I sit down too fast.”

You don’t give him the satisfaction of looking back, because you're smiling. 

The Fitting

The tailor is a compact, fastidious man named Victor. He works out of a discreet Dupont Circle storefront and has measured no fewer than four Supreme Court justices and at least one war criminal. Nothing rattles him.

Enter Bucky Barnes.

You are only here because you know Victor personally. That, and because Mike flagged Bucky’s latest jacket incident with a single phrase in your shared calendar:

URGENT: Barnes needs congressional-grade tailoring before someone loses an eye.

Victor gestures for Bucky to step onto the platform. “Try lifting your arm.”

Bucky rolls his left shoulder back in a deceptively casual shrug. The fabric of his shirt pulls like it's being winched over a steel cable. You hear it before you see it – a subtle groan of resistance from the sleeve.

There’s a long, painful pause.

"Okay," you say slowly, eyes fixed on the fabric. "So that’s a no."

The tailor clears his throat. “We might need a reinforced seam or – pardon me – structural adjustments for… exceptional anatomy.”

You hum. “Exceptional anatomy. That’s generous.”

Bucky shoots you a look, half mortified, half amused. “You dragged me here.”

“Because you tore your third jacket in two months,” you say, very calmly. “You can’t keep walking into committee hearings looking like you lost a bar fight with your own sleeves.”

He mutters something about deadlifting and polyester. You don’t respond. You’re too busy watching his biceps test the limits of a very expensive shoulder seam.

“I could just wear the old black suit,” he offers.

You raise an eyebrow. “The one you ripped open lifting a box of printed memos?”

"...It was a heavy box."

You shake your head as you pace about the store. You’ve chosen to pace because you will not be hovering while Bucky shrugs in and out of suit jackets like a Calvin Klein fever dream.

Victor starts measuring. Professional, focused, barely blinking until he gets to Bucky’s shoulders.

Victor sighs. “Sir, I’m going to need you to relax your shoulders.”

Bucky grins. “They are relaxed.”

You do not look over.

You will not look over.

Behind you, Jenna – assigned to ‘observe and document’ this appointment – is standing by the sample books, typing into her phone like a woman possessed.

#suitwatch (active)

[Jenna]: she just said “exceptional anatomy” out loud. in public. to his face. [Micah]: this is a First Amendment violation and also the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard [Devon]: sleeves are a construct. arms are forever. [Mills]: he’s looking at her like he’d say yes to anything even the double-breasted one even charcoal pinstripes

Victor measures in silence, muttering every now and then things like “This cannot be standard”, and, as he loops the measuring tape around Bucky’s chest, “I’m going to need heavier thread for the buttons.”

Bucky glances at you through the mirror with a smirk. “Enjoying the show, Congresswoman?”

You cross your arms and lift your chin. “I’m imagining filing a workplace complaint.”

He grins wider. “About my arms?”

“No, about your attitude.”

A pause.

Then, quieter, “though the arms are definitely a secondary violation.”

Victor drops his pen.

*

Victor retreats into the backrooms to retrieve a reinforced thread spool, muttering something in Italian that sounds less like measurements and more like final blessings, and you drop onto the edge of the leather bench to watch Bucky undo the last jacket with surgical precision and barely restrained biceps.

"Out of curiosity," you say, elbow on your knee, chin in hand, "how much can you bench?"

He glances over, mid-button, brows raised. "Why?"

You gesture vaguely at the battlefield of defeated suit samples around him. “Trying to figure out whether the problem is vanity sizing or the fact that your upper body mass violates OSHA standards.”

He pauses for a second to think. Then he shrugs one shoulder – very carefully, this time.

“Dunno. Probably a Hummer H1. Full bed. Loaded?”

You blink. “The military one?”

“Yeah.” He nods at you, expression infuriatingly mild. “Yeah. The old diesel kind. Not the electric one.”

You don’t dignify that with a response. Just press your lips together and mutter under your breath, “exceptional anatomy, my ass.”

Behind you, Jenna makes a strangled sound that might be a laugh or a quiet breakdown. You're not sure which.

Three weeks later…

The tailor’s delivery arrives at 10 am on the dot – three full suits, pressed and wrapped, with Victor’s signature scribbled on the invoice like he is issuing a personal challenge. Devon brings the garment bags to your office with a look that says I know everything and I’m telling the group chat the moment I leave this room.

You thank him, barely.

It’s sheer coincidence, of course, that the floor’s scheduled a major vote for the afternoon, the kind they put on banners and b-rolls. C-SPAN and Politico have already parked their crew outside the chamber. You yourself are already dressed for the day in a sharp navy suit, statement earrings, and subtle heels. You’ve been on camera twice this morning and will be again before the end of the day. You've barely had a chance to have your coffee. 

And so it is just a function of practicality that Bucky Barnes shows up at your office just before noon with the sleeves of his day shirt rolled up and his tie stuffed in one pocket.

"Victor delivered?" he asks, already loosening the collar of his shirt as he toes the door shut behind him.

You gesture toward the rack. “Personally. Go with the charcoal pinstripes and try not to break it before the cameras roll.”

He unzips the garment bag and glances back at you. “Want me to change in here?”

“I don’t care where you change, Barnes,” you reply without looking up from your tablet, “as long as the jacket makes it through one vote without structural failure.”

He shrugs. “You staying?”

“I’ve got too much left to read," you say quietly, eyes still on the tablet, "and nowhere better to be.”

You keep your gaze fixed on the screen. You will not stare while he peels his shirt off like a man who has never once had to worry about being perceived.

You do not register the sound of buttons slipping free.

You do not notice the rustle of fabric, the stretch of muscle, the quiet exhale he lets out when the collar loosens.

The section header on your screen reads: Summary of proposed appropriations for FY26.

You’ve read the page four times. You would not be able to repeat its contents if your life depended on it.

He buttons the new shirt slowly, leisurely. You can hear it in the way he moves.

When he reaches for the jacket, you’re already standing.

You don’t say anything as you take the jacket down from its hanger, brush the shoulders once, and hold it out for him.

He pauses in front of you but doesn’t reach for it.

“I can do it,” he says softly.

You shake your head. “Let me.”

He turns without comment.

You slide the jacket up over his arms, settling the weight of it across his back. It fits like it’s supposed to – no pinching at the shoulders, no strain at the seams. You smooth it over his frame and let your hands linger just long enough to tell yourself you're just feeling for tension along the stitching. 

You circle in front of him, new tie in hand. You adjust his lapels and button the top button of his shirt yourself, slow and firm.

Before you can speak, he asks – mildly, almost carelessly, but not really at all, “you gonna tie it for me?”

You respond by sliding the fabric around his neck, slow and deliberate, letting it settle against the collar of his new shirt. It fits – too well. Clean lines, pressed seams, nowhere to hide.

“You could do this yourself,” you murmur.

“Sure,” he replies. “But your approval ratings are better.”

You don’t rise to it, not out loud.

Instead, you start the knot.

Not fast. Not businesslike. You take your time, fingers grazing the hollow of his throat, the soft scrape of new cotton against your knuckles. He exhales – shallow, quiet, controlled.

You don’t finish it.

Just as the final loop would tighten, you let the tie fall slack in your hands and take a step back.

His brow lifts, amused. “Giving up?”

“Letting you contribute,” you say, tone dry. “God forbid you show up to a vote half-dressed again.”

He chuckles low in his chest, but finishes the knot with a flick of his wrist. His eyes don’t leave you. “You like the charcoal?”

You brush a speck of lint from his lapel. Let your palm settle there for a beat too long.

“Victor’s best work,” you murmur. “If you break this one, I’m filing that workplace hazard report.”

“I’d like to see that paperwork,” he says, leaning in. His voice drops. “Will it mention how close you’re standing?”

You tilt your head. “Only if you wrinkle the jacket.”

He smiles – sharp, wrecked, beautiful. You ignore it.

"You’re ready,” you murmur. It’s meant to be a statement, but it comes out feeling like a dare.

“Are you sure?” he asks, voice lower than it needs to be.

You straighten the line of his collar and let your thumb graze the base of his throat like you have the right.

“Don’t ruin it until after,” you say, adjusting the knot at his throat like it’s the only thing you still have control over.

He leans in. “That a dress code policy or a personal plea?”

You say nothing and ignore the way your face heats up. 

He lets the silence stretch, inordantely pleased. 

Then, while adjusting his cuffs and grinning. "Either way, I'll try not to disappoint." 

You step back. “You have five minutes to make it to chamber,” you say, tone even. “Go be legislative.”

He nods, heading for the door. But he does glance back once, shameless. "I'll do my best." 

And then he's gone, leaving you standing in your office, adjusting the cuffs of your own jacket lilke it might keep your hands from shaking. 

~*~

Recess is called five minutes into the session. Some kind of procedural delay – something wrong with the roll call, something about a faulty vote counter.

You’re not listening.

You’re watching him.

Bucky hasn’t looked away since you adjusted his jacket fifteen minutes ago. Since your fingers brushed the collar like you were daring him to keep it together. And apparently, he can't.

He waits until the chamber begins to thin before he moves – silent, clean, intentional – and you follow.

Neither of you speak.

You end up in one of the hallway bathrooms – technically gender-neutral, technically a staff washroom, technically not a place for professional misbehaviour.

But the moment the door clicks shut behind you, it stops being technical.

He turns and you’re already there.

Your hands immediately go to the lapels. Again. But not to fix them this time.

This time, you pull.

“You look like a problem,” he mutters.

“Then solve it.”

The kiss is not sweet. It’s not soft. It’s been months in the making. Every ripped seam, every stare across committee hearings, every time you told yourself you could handle the sight of him in a suit he doesn’t deserve to wear this well – it crashes down like a tsunami.

He grunts when your mouth meets his, and he crowds you into the counter. His hands are everywhere – hip, waist, jaw, anchored in your blazer like he has no intention of letting go.

You fist your hand in his tie – new tie, freshly pressed tie – and drag him closer until he groans into your mouth like it hurts.

“You said not until after,” he breathes against your neck.

“You waited,” you kiss him again, just to punish him for it. “Congratulations.”

His mouth curves into a smile, but it’s wrecked. “You gonna yell at me for the wrinkles?”

You grip the lapels again and pull.

“Try me.”

He laughs – low, feral, ruined– and kisses you deeper, hungrier. The jacket groans in protest under your grip. One of you knocks something off the counter that falls to the floor with a crash. You don’t even bother to see what it is.

He palms the back of your thigh and mutters, “still going strong. You stress-testing for structural failure?”

You kiss the edge of his jaw. “No,” you whisper. “I’m trying to cause it.”

His hands go under your blouse. Yours slip beneath his waistband like a threat. He grips the counter behind you like it’s the only thing anchoring him.

He shrugs. That goddamn shrug.

Your knees nearly give out.

“You’re going to ruin me,” you whisper.

“You’re letting me,” he says, somewhere between reverent and fucked.

Your phone buzzes with your two minute timer.

You pull back first. Barely, just enough to breathe.

Your lipstick is gone. His tie is a disaster. Your blouse is askew. The shoulder of his jacket is unmistakably wrinkled. 

He touches just beneath your lip. His thumb lingers. “You should touch that up.”

You glance down. At the tie. The crease in the jacket. The faint imprint of your grip still visible across his chest.

"You won't fix it?" you murmur. 

“I want them to wonder,” he says slowly, entirely unrepentant. 

You hold his gaze for a beat longer than necessary.

You open the door and walk out first.

He waits exactly ninety seconds.

And follows.

A/N: I need to touch some grass!

off the record masterpost || AO3 || congressman bucky masterpost

[sthilarions]

Hmm. Thinking about Edwin and Learned Helplessness

To rapidly summarize a complex psychological concept (and skipping over some nuance we’ve discovered recently), Learned Helplessness is basically when an animal internalizes the idea that they have no way to escape/control an unpleasant stimulus or situation, and stops trying to do so.

The classic example is with an electrified floor and two rats. The floor shocks the rats periodically. One of the rats has a way to escape or end the shock: by jumping over a barrier, pushing a lever, etc. The other does not. The rat that has a way to escape will keep trying to do so, even if it doesn’t always work. However, the rat that reliably has no way to avoid the shocks will stop trying. They’ll eventually stop looking for ways to get away and just lie down and let it happen.

And here’s the key part: the rat that gives up will stay given up even if you later present them with a clear way to escape. Once a rat has accepted that there’s no way to avoid the shocks, you can give them a lever, let them jump over a barrier, or just straight up open the cage, and they’ll just keep lying there.

Experiments have shown it’s possible to retrain animals who have acquired learned helplessness to believe they have control, but it requires active work from an external source. Something like physically lifting them out of the cage repeatedly to show them that they can leave and that leaving stops the shocks. If you leave them alone, the rats will keep just sitting there getting shocked right next to an open door forever.

So where does this rather depressing and fairly unethical concept relate to Edwin, you ask

Well - remarkably enough, Edwin doesn’t seem to have fully 100% acquired what one might call generalized learned helplessness. He keeps trying to escape, eventually succeeding after 73 years. But! There are two sources of nuance here

One: he clearly does canonically experience some form of learned helplessness, because that’s exactly what he expresses to Charles when huddled against the wall in Hell. There’s no use trying, I run and it catches me, over and over, you should leave without me because there is no point in me trying to escape. That’s learned helplessness in a nutshell.

How he was able to get past that to escape in 1989, I’m not sure, but it seems to fluctuate for him from moment to moment. (He has it badly in that scene, but the previous scene, when he first sees Charles before getting eaten, he seems to have hope).

Two, and this is less canonical and more me spinning off canon-compliant thoughts, he might have a more specific learned helplessness response going on, as opposed to just a generalized one. Because running, trying to escape, can delay the pain. But fighting? Fighting does nothing but make things worse.

We talk a lot about him freezing, but I’m imagining him, in the first while after Hell, when a threat gets too close, just… going limp. Because he’s had 73 years of continuous torture conditioning him that running may help delay being caught but once he’s caught, there’s nothing he can do. Flailing around just gets him more pain, gets a slower death instead of a quick one. Relaxing his muscles makes it hurt less when they’re torn off his bones. He’s just loosening into the fall, is all.

Charles figures this out pretty quickly. It’s hard to miss your partner just… flopping down on the ground every time he’s about to get injured.

He starts finding ways to accommodate it. First by keeping an eye out and jumping in whenever Edwin goes into Accept Death Mode, but then trying to pre-empt it. Keeping Edwin back, at the edge of the fight, so Edwin never gets close enough to the threat for his learned instincts to kick in, which over time turns into a fixed dynamic of “Charles as brawn”, and over more time Edwin picks up offensive magic so he can stay at the back but still fight.

Charles realizes at some point that Edwin won’t fight for himself but will, occasionally, fight for Charles, and starts trying to leverage that, putting himself in danger to make Edwin start fighting so Edwin will learn he can fight. Edwin puts a very harsh stop to that, once he figures out it’s happening, but it remains true, that Edwin will fight for Charles but not himself. (We see him try to throw a punch at Esther after Esther tosses Charles, in canon, but not, at any Post-Hell point that I can recall, when anyone tries to hurt him.)

Edwin stops collapsing, eventually, after a lot of work from him and Charles, starts just freezing instead, and to other people that freezing would be Bad but it’s a step up, for Edwin. Eventually he starts even being able to still move a bit, and talk - like when he puts a hand over Crystal’s mouth and mutters an explanation to her before freezing, with the Misery Wraith, and… and when he just stands there and keeps talking when the Cat King rocks up to him and puts him in a binding spell. He still doesn’t try to stop the threat, doesn’t fight or even run, once it’s already close, but he doesn’t become completely incapacitated, either.

And that’s about where he’s at, by 2024. Charles is still trying to work on him, but they’re still at a point where Edwin physically can not defend himself from a nearby threat: hence the failed boxing lesson. Charles wants him to be able to physically fight, and he may even want that himself, but he can’t, can only throw a punch to protect Charles. He can’t even properly swing at Charles with boxing gloves, because either Charles isn’t a threat, in which case Edwin doesn’t want to attack him, or he is, in which case Edwin can’t attack him. (There’s no in-between space in his head for “putting force behind a hit without either of you being in danger”.)

Anyway. Yeah. That’s my thought, I guess, is the boys developing their role-division because of Edwin’s learned helplessness, and Charles working with him to both accommodate it and try to decondition it over time, but only able to get so far, even after 35 years, because it was conditioned into him over more than twice that time and a lot more forcefully than Charles can do.

But it’s progress.

[joshujin]

dude, nice try!

◀ part one • series masterlist • part two

joshua hong has had the immense privilege of living 30 whole years without ever feeling so much as an ounce of jealousy. that is, until you come prancing into his picture-perfect life on your dumb burner account with evidence that his long-time girlfriend is cheating on him… with your boyfriend.

as he gets tangled up in your chaotic plan to get back at your adulterous partners, he begins to wonder if this growing discomfort in his chest was ever even heartbreak to begin with, or if it’s something entirely new to him—something that has the ability to eat him alive from the inside out.

♫ get him back! olivia rodrigo ⟡ my kink is karma chappell roan ⟡ see u never niki ⟡ good to me seventeen

pairing: joshua x fem!reader part two: 14.6k words cw: strong language, mentions of/implied sexual activity, kms joke, reader is highly emotional and tbh kind of crazy maybe even toxic but idc bc i support women’s rights and wrongs <3 tags: cheating (not between main ship), strangers to partners-in-crime to partners PERIOD, joshua pov, pining, he fell first AND harder oops, he’s also so incredibly whipped from the jump, a few smau bits but mostly writing, no smut, inspired by get him back! by miss rodrigo a/n: oh nothing, just me getting carried away with the dialogue and my word count like usual :) to the anon that requested this: pls feel free to pop back into my ask and tell me how you think this is going LOL. i'm having fun writing it but i know the jealousy isn't fully fleshed out yet. to everyone else: ENJOY!

dividers by @cafekitsune cover by yours truly!

joshua was being sincere with you when he told you he wasn’t a good bar to set yourself against when it came to breakups. 

there was stephanie from when he was still in college in the U.S.; they broke up because he decided to move back to korea. it was amicable for the most part, but he probably could’ve given her a more generous heads up than the two weeks he did give her. it wasn’t until a year or so later that she realized how unfair that had been and made sure joshua knew—with a series of voice memo texts that were nearly 15 minutes each. 

then, he dated miyoung. she was nice but she also decided she wanted to get married within the next year only three months in, and as a 23-year-old, joshua was freaked out enough to run almost immediately. his relationship with miyoung ended on a phone call that lasted three hours because she was sobbing so hard, he didn’t have the heart to hang up even though he had no idea how to comfort her. he saw her consistently for weeks after out of pure guilt until jeonghan pointed out that this was just a disguised way of stringing her along.

after that, there was bada, nari, bora, aram, and hana, all girls he casually dated for no longer than a handful of weeks before one of them decided it actually wasn’t a fit for various, mostly dumb reasons. nari told him she didn’t like that he collected cologne and had three times as much perfume as she did. he left aram because she ate so messily, it gave him the ick. though apparently, that might be something he doesn’t mind anymore.

he dated yumi for six months, and to this day, she’s still the only serious girlfriend of his that broke up with him. she told him that she felt like after six months, she still barely knew him, and that he was “too concerned” with upholding an image of himself that “didn’t feel real.” he went straight to therapy for that one.

and when he felt a little better in his own skin and ready to put a “realer” version of himself out there, he met mina. mina, his longest relationship, and up until now, someone he was convinced was his first love. he said as much anyway. he was the first to tell her he loved her, he reminded her he did every day, and he thought they had a nice, long future ahead of them. what he pictured in that future exactly, he had no clue. but after an odd and somewhat unlucky streak in dating, he finally felt like mina was a nice and comfy place to land.

he’s never been more wrong about something in his entire life. 

and after the laughable amount of breakups he’s experienced, he’s also never been angrier after the end of a relationship in his entire life.

mina was proving to be a lot of firsts for him—first cheater, first master manipulator and liar, first person who’s ever made him wonder if he could possibly switch over to dating men instead… or simply stop dating at all! sure, he would die alone but he would die in peace. 

whatever the case, he's quickly approaching the conclusion that “first love” is not among those firsts, and it probably never was. no amount of teasing from you or jeonghan did it, but in less than a handful of minutes spent breaking up with mina, he is a million percent sure this was not someone he could have loved. or else what did that say about him and his taste?

sixteen minutes earlier

joshua arrives at mina’s apartment exactly two hours after work ends for her—5 p.m. every day because she always scheduled a pilates class at 5:30 p.m. thirty minutes for her to get to her class, one hour for her to finish it, 30 minutes for her to get home, zero minutes for her to get clean because he doesn’t care how presentable she is when he dumps her. 

plus, however long it takes joshua to end this—hopefully a lot shorter than his experience with miyoung.

he hadn’t bothered to tell her he was coming over; he didn’t think she really deserved that courtesy. he may be intent on a clean break, but he also wanted this to be as annoying for her as it has been for him.

so at a prompt 7 p.m., joshua finds himself casually leaning against the elevator’s railing, ascending the floors of mina’s apartment and feeling almost excited to be free of this experience. 

after he got off the phone with you, he decided he would bite the bullet when work was over. he spent the rest of his day absentmindedly finishing his reports, periodically stopping to scribble an idea for what he would say to his soon-to-be ex-girlfriend.

he takes the folded piece of paper out of his pocket now and runs over his options again.

his levels of shame and self-pity were sky high when he first pulled out his notepad at the office to write his thoughts out, but after texting you and letting you know what he planned to do, you insisted on meeting at a cafe beforehand to brainstorm together while he waited for mina’s pilates class to end. and once you both workshopped the entire list, his embarrassment diminished almost completely.

it was clear you took this a lot more seriously than he did. he doesn't know what he expected; you probably have a manila folder stuffed full of notes for what you plan to do to siwoo.

as such, you were very helpful. sure, you were also really distracting, with your subtle, spiced perfume he recognized as lola james harper, and your daunting and unrelenting eye contact, and the way your eyes smiled all on their own when they weren’t busy crying over siwoo, and the fact that you graced him with your laugh in person for the first time (every bit as fun as he thought it would be), and everything else that came with just existing in your presence.

all of it was really distracting—almost to the point of it being entirely counterproductive for him. almost, if it weren’t for the fact that you were so determined on his behalf to make this the most unpleasant experience for mina. he was mostly pleased with where you two landed, and if anything, he at least had a better idea of what he wanted to say.

he reads the completely ruined paper, a mess of his black ink and wrinkles where you kept trying to grab it out of his hands. it was already a vulnerable enough occasion talking about this with you; he did not need you seeing his notes on top of it.

TALKING POINTS FOR BREAKING UP WITH EVIL GF i know you’ve been cheating on me, and don’t try to deny it because someone sent me proof! — cannot say this without exposing that y/n knows about siwoo!!! i know you’ve been cheating on me, and don’t try to deny it because i went through your phone and saw your text messages! — better, but am i willing to look crazy just to cover for y/n?  yes  what am i saying NO  this will do ✓ how could you do this to us? i loved you! — seems disingenuous? note: yell at jeonghan and y/n for putting ideas in my head later! i literally gave you everything you could’ve wanted, and that still wasn’t enough? what does any other man have that i don’t? — ok met with y/n for feedback. says this sounds pathetic and that i can't let her think this affected me. but she cheated on me? this LITERALLY affects me. i will come back to this one  ok y/n made a different, better point: i am perfect •ᴗ• and i shouldn’t present myself as lacking. so true. she's very good at this! •ᴗ• do you really think anyone with half a fucking brain cell who's willing to homewreck a relationship is really going to give enough of a fuck about you to be capable of putting up with your insufferable ass and treating you as well as i did? — y/n suggested. had to workshop bc she's alarmingly vulgar. plus, maybe toxic to say i "put up" with mina ?? not sure do you even regret hurting me? — y/n says this is silly bc siwoo and mina obviously do not regret anything, but i want mina to feel guilty. y/n now agrees and says i should add: "or are you just so heartless you don't care?" she said this more colorfully, but i will remain respectful  why should i remain respectful? mina is literally the most disrespectful person i’ve ever met. i’ll say what y/n suggested ⤵ your commitment to being a heartless asshole has you by your ugly ass neck and i hope it starts squeezing with both hands  GET SOME HELP! — more for catharsis. won’t be yelling this at her you're going to regret this and if you think there's a world where i take you back when you do, you're mistaken — wow, no notes from y/n! must be very good •ᴗ• definitely say this one!! please never contact me again — note from y/n: "why are you being so goddamn polite? tell her to fuck off and if you ever see her number on your phone screen, you'll set up an appointment on her behalf to get a lobotomy." ????? note from ME: have a serious discussion with y/n at a later time about why i, a MAN, can't just talk to WOMEN like this!

despite the circumstances that led to having to make the list at all, joshua can't help but grin at it. the time spent with you at the cafe was not only helpful; it was fun. maybe the most fun he’s had with a woman since he started dating mina, who chased off all his female friends within the first two months of being in his life. joshua winces as he pockets the list, wondering how he didn’t see the red flags. 

his thoughts are interrupted with the loud and obnoxious ping of the elevator as it arrives on mina’s floor. the doors slide open, and immediately, he hears the obscene sounds of a woman moaning down the hall. his eyes widen as he steps out and turns down the hall in the direction of mina’s apartment. 

the walls of her place were always thin; they were constantly getting into wars with the neighbors that involved banging on the floor, ceiling, and shared walls with her broom. still, he had never heard this kind of noise from her neighbors. 

“tell me about it.”

joshua looks to his right to find an older woman stepping out of her apartment and locking her door. he must have a look of shock on his face because she snorts and nods in what seems like solidarity as she tucks her empty reusable bags into her armpit. 

“that girl doesn’t seem to ever stop,” she informs him. “i’ve complained to the building manager so many times, and still, here she is, screaming like a little banshee and disrupting this entire floor’s peace.”

joshua feels his skin break out into a cold sweat as his mind starts to go a mile a minute. “huh… interesting…”

“i mean,” the woman turns to step into the elevator joshua just walked out of. “what is she even doing? auditioning for a god damn porn? she sounds like my fucking shih tzu’s squeaky toy!” 

he forces a laugh, too distracted to even feel uncomfortable over the inappropriate joke. “maybe,” he mutters. “she sure is putting on a performance.”

“oh my god!” the voice shrieks in perfect timing, making him flinch. 

“ugh, inconsiderate! all hours of the day! does she even work?!” the woman shakes her head and clicks her tongue in disapproval as she presses a button and the doors close. 

joshua stands there for a moment, staring at the elevator, unable to move as he listens to the noises of what could possibly be his girlfriend having sex with siwoo right now. it didn’t even sound remotely like her, and that fact terrifies him even more because if it is her, then she had to be faking it with someone. was she faking it with joshua or with siwoo?

he groans, letting his head fall into his hands. 

“who cares?” he grumbles to himself. the last thing he should be worrying about is whether or not an adulterous liar like mina thought he was good in bed. he should definitely not care anymore. “i don’t care.”

joshua can practically hear jeonghan’s voice telling him, sure you don’t. he shakes his head, trying to banish his jeonghan-shaped conscience from his brain.  

he doesn’t even know if it’s mina. it could very well be some other female neighbor; it’s not far-fetched for people to be having sex. he could just be paranoid right now since he knows she’s cheating on him. 

each floor of mina’s apartment is huge—a maze, really. dozens of units, at least ten near the elevator, several people who could be having sex. 

he always counted himself lucky that mina lived so close to the elevator, just down the hall a few units down. today, though, as the wailing reverberates off the walls of the hallway leading to the elevator, he thinks mina’s floor plan is the worst thing that’s ever happened to him.

his phone is to his ear before he can fully consider what he’s doing. 

“did you do it?” you seem to dislike greeting people on the phone properly like a normal human being. you speak a little louder than usual, your surroundings lively and buzzing with the noise of what sounds like several conversations. “that was fast.”

“uh,” joshua elongates the sound for a few seconds while his brain tries to tune out the “porn audition” long enough to comprehend your question. “no… nope. i haven’t done it yet.”

“oh. then what’s up? you need backup after all?” you ask too seriously for him to confidently say you’re joking. 

before you both parted ways at the cafe, you offered him company and said you could tag along and jump mina for him. you both laughed and said your goodbyes, but if what joshua fears right now is true, he definitely doesn’t hate the idea of you jumping her. 

“i’m a little busy—well, kinda, not really—but i can fake some kind of horrific emergency and get out of here and over to you in…” you trail off, probably checking the time. “twenty minutes… maybe ten if i’m okay with breaking a few laws. which, rest assured, i am!”

he feels the dread over his predicament slipping as you keep talking, his emotions turning into an incredibly confusing mix of panic, amusement, anxiety, relief, and so on and so on. the number of odd emotions you elicit out of him are countless. 

joshua glides over what he assumes is a joke and straight to the point; the faster he finds out what he needs to, the faster he can hopefully escape this building.

“do you know where siwoo is?” he asks, taking the first few tentative steps to mina’s door. he walks painstakingly slowly, almost tiptoeing even though there’s no possible way anyone could hear him over the lewd moans. 

“he’s at dinner with his vile parents,” you say, sighing like you’d rather talk about anything else. 

“are you sure?”

“yes… why?”

“like… how sure?” joshua presses. 

“uh, 100 percent.” he can picture the frown on your face that usually matches this tone of yours—confused bordering on annoyed. “i’m literally staring at him as his awful monster of a mother tucks a napkin into his collar like a little fucking devil baby, bro.” 

joshua doesn’t know how at a time like this, his brain has the capacity to still take note of how much he loathes when you call him bro. it’s a weird thought to have to process alongside the thousands of other things he’s suddenly feeling.

“i’m at the bar of this pretentious ass restaurant waiting on the bartender to finish their drink orders while they eat all the appetizers without me, like a good, little stay-at-home girlfriend slash maid slash server slash revenge connoisseur!” you inform him, your voice sarcastically cheerful. “i’m going to spit in all their drinks.” that bit comes out in your normal, low—and a little irritated—voice.

“wow” is all he says because his brain doesn’t supply him with anything else.

“like i said, revenge connoisseur,” you say, sounding bored. “so yes, i’m 100 percent sure he’s here. we have to have dinner with these assholes once a week but—” you cut yourself off as you address someone else. “ah, thank you! oh wait, can you actually remove the espresso beans from this one? the abominable woman who gave birth to my boyfriend doesn’t want to have too much caffeine this late in the day.”

joshua realizes his brain has the capacity to do a lot of things in stressful situations as long as he’s talking to you. because he stops walking and immediately starts laughing when he hears the bartender deadpan: “it’s an espresso martini.”

you sigh like you’ve had to explain this a million different times to a million different bartenders. 

“joshua? hold on, okay?” you tell him before immediately addressing the bartender without waiting for him to reply. “listen, i get it. you don’t have to tell me. i know! she’s a ridiculous airhead who gets her life force from making little people like me suffer and ask for embarrassing things on her behalf. i don’t even care if you stick your bare fingers in there to pluck them out—in fact, i actually kind of prefer you do that. i just need them gone before she comes poking her snobby, little nose over here and demands you make her an entirely brand new one.”

that seems to do the job because the next thing you say is: 

“thank you so much. and please give yourself a 50 percent tip—100 even!” you shout the last part as, joshua assumes, the bartender walks away. “it’s on their card, go crazy!” 

the bartender says something that he can’t make out and you laugh. the sound of it—so light and mischievous and charismatic—completely severs the already increasingly weakened grip his panic has on him. he feels like he can breathe a little easier, even among the horrible sounds filling the hallway. 

“okay, i’m back, sorry,” you say into the phone, picking up exactly where you left off as if you never stopped talking. “like i was saying, we do this shit every week, so i can definitely get out of this if you need me to. why are you asking about siwoo anyway?” 

there’s something comforting about the way you’re ready to drop everything to get to joshua even though you just said bye less than an hour ago and you don’t even know why he’s calling. though, he does realize your eagerness is also probably due to the fact that you just don’t want to be around your cheating boyfriend and his family.

joshua exhales slowly through his nose. “well, it’s not quite your 100, but i am like, at least… 70 percent sure that mina is having sex with someone in her apartment as we speak. i thought it was siwoo, but…” he lets you come to your own conclusions.

the silence on the other end of the phone is so much more threatening than the gasping and yelling he expected. it stretches for so long that at some point, joshua wonders if you even heard him. 

“did you—”

“i heard you,” you say, your voice clipped. you pause again for a shorter period and when you speak, you sound a lot less short. “i was trying to ignore it because i couldn’t imagine what the hell it was, but you definitely sound like you’re on the set of a porno.”

joshua grimaces, stepping away from the side of the hallway that mina’s apartment is on as if that will help—it doesn’t, not with the way it echoes off the walls. he cups his hand around the mouthpiece of his phone, hoping that it will keep the shih tzu squeaky toy sound effects from traveling to you. “shit, i’m sorry,” he breathes, scurrying down the hallway and several units past mina’s apartment in a desperate attempt to get away from the moaning. “i didn’t realize you could hear it clearly.”

“are you running away from the noise, joshua hong?” you ask, obviously amused.

“um, maybe.”

“wow, what a gentleman, protecting my innocence like this,” you fake-sigh like you’re swooning on the other end of the line and he blushes furiously. he can’t help the smile that tugs at the corners of his lips. “chivalry is not dead.”

“you’re so insufferable!” he whisper-yells at you. the poor residents of this floor already have to deal with ‘round-the-clock sex; they don’t need to add him being obnoxiously loud on the phone too. “i’m having a horrible time right now, and you’re joking around?!”

you giggle. “okay, fine. i’m insufferable. but at least i made you smile.”

“and how on earth could you possibly know that if you can’t even see me?”

you snort. “please. i can hear it in your voice. your smile transcends all obstacles, hong. you could smile on the other side of the world and i’d know it.”

the claim makes joshua’s hands clammy, and he finds he has no idea what to say to that. he can barely breathe, but this time, it feels a little different—not quite so wrought with anxiety like it was when he first exited the elevator.

sensing you may have gone overboard with your compliment this time, you clear your throat and steer the conversation back on track.

“mina is a real piece of work,” you state the obvious before rambling a little. “cheating on you… cheating on siwoo… though, is that called cheating if siwoo is also her sidepiece…? no, right? she’s just cheating on you twice—fuck, sorry, that was so callous and dumb to say.” he hears something that sounds like you hitting your forehead repeatedly. 

“yeah… i don’t know…” his mind is not on the logistics of the cheating.

“okay, so here’s what we’re going to do,” you say, voice kicking into high-gear. “i’ve been gone from the table for almost… 10 minutes; these rats get impatient after, like, two.”

joshua leans against the wall, finding your little plotting voice weirdly comforting.

“siwoo is going to stand up any moment now to see what’s taking so long at the insistence of his egg donor.”

he closes his eyes and tries to calm his heartbeat, smiling a little at your refusal to call siwoo’s mom anything but his mom. 

“and when he does, i’m—oh my god, i’m amazing.”

joshua opens his eyes and frowns. “what?”

you laugh in disbelief before frantically whispering, “siwoo just got up and is walking over here. he is so predictable. also, i just got the ick so bad. this idiot forgot to take his little napkin bib off. okay, he’s almost here. don’t reply to anything i say, alright?”

“al—”

“oh my god, are you serious?!” you shriek at joshua. he immediately brings his phone away from his ear. “are you okay?” you pause like you’re listening to a nonexistent response. “holy shit, girl—” your next words are an exaggerated whisper. “—it’s soph, she’s on a date, having… explosive diarrhea!”

joshua looks at his phone incredulously. he doesn’t know how you manage to sound so convincing when it’s clear to him everything you say comes to mind the very second before you say it. 

“that’s disgusting.” his eyes involuntarily narrow at what can only be siwoo’s voice. he sounds just as dumb as joshua thought he would.

“i have to go!” you exclaim. 

“what?! why?”

“did you hear me?! soph is having a crisis! what am i supposed to do, just leave her in the bathroom of some dingy sushi restaurant covered in her own shit while her date thinks she snuck out on her?!” she speaks back into the phone. “hold on, girl.”

he snorts as he passes a hand over his face in embarrassment even though he’s completely alone. he’s truly amazed at how committed you are to your act. he would’ve cracked before he ever even got to utter the word “diarrhea.”

“uh, yes? we’re at dinner with my parents and that sounds like a really gross her problem.”

joshua rolls his eyes. siwoo is an asshole through and through. 

you pause and he likes to imagine you’re taking a moment to really process what a fucking dick your boyfriend is. “i’ll be quick, baby,” you say through barely concealed annoyance. his eye twitches at the term of endearment anyway. “tell your parents i said sorry! i’ll text you when i’m on my way home! soph, i’m on my way!”

“y/n!” his voice is further away than he previously sounded. “what about our drinks?!”

“ask the bartender!” you practically bellow at him. “fucking incompetent. ‘what about our drinks?’” your impression of siwoo is simply an exaggerated baby voice, and joshua thinks it sounds exactly the same. “what the fuck kind of question? where else would you get your drinks?” you mutter—to yourself, joshua presumes. “okay, shua, i am free and i am on my way!”

he doesn’t even have the opportunity to be surprised about you coming to mina’s apartment; he’s too caught off-guard by the sudden nickname. 

“hello?” you call, suddenly sounding like you’re, at the very least, brisk-walking if not fully running. “you can talk now! i am not in the restaurant anym—oop, excuse me, sorry!”

“shua?” joshua repeats mindlessly.

“aw, don’t like it? we can workshop that too,” you huff, excusing yourself as you navigate whatever street you’re on. “i think it’s cute, though. no? shua... shua!” 

you repeat it a few more times like that will get him to agree. most of the instances of “shua” are breathed out in a quick exhale as you move, and joshua is almost completely convinced you’re running. 

“okay, i’m kind of losing the meaning of ‘shua’ now. i swear it’s cute, though.”

he smiles. “uh, yeah, it’s… cute. different but cute.”

“right? josh is tired,” you claim. “shua feels more fitting for you. anyway, give me… 12 minutes and i will be there.”

“why are you coming here again?’ he asks, remembering to feel confused about your plans. 

“for moral support, hello?” you answer like it’s obvious. “ah! sorry!” you shout at someone who curses. “you have me now, dude.” dude is better than bro, he supposes. “we don’t have to go through these traumatic events alone anymore! i’ll be there and if you want me to blow my cover and this entire plan so i can slap mina across the face, i will!”

his mouth twitches to keep from smirking. the thought is tempting. “you really don’t have to—”

“shut up, i just told siwoo my best friend is having explosive diarrhea for you,” you point out, practically panting now. “we cannot walk this back! now go break up with that horrid bitch, and if she really is fucking someone in there, you tell me and i’ll march up there and win my very first fistfight… uh, what floor is her apartment, by the way?”

joshua shakes his head, trying his hardest not to grin. “no, you stay downstairs. there will be no fistfights tonight. i’ll see you in a bit.”

“got it, boss.”

“and stop running,” he orders. “you’re just going to hurt yourself.”

“mmm, agree to disagree,” you heave. “see you soon!” you hang up in a hurry, giving him no time to say bye. 

as he stands in the hallway, he realizes that in the time he spent with you on the phone, the moans subsided. between the absence of your mayhem and the vulgarity of maybe-mina’s maybe-cheating, it’s almost eerie how suddenly quiet the floor is. 

he drags his feet as he makes his way back to mina’s door. when he gets there, he tentatively presses an ear to the wood, and when he can’t hear anything, he raises his fist and knocks before he can change his mind. several seconds pass and he doesn’t hear anyone coming to the door or even speaking. his discomfort eases a little as he starts to think maybe she’s not even home.

mina isn’t one to deviate from her plans; she gets irritable when she has to, so joshua knows that pilates definitely had to be on the agenda today. and if she’s not home yet, then she should be arriving any moment now. he punches in the code for her apartment, determined to wait it out and get this over with because he has no plans to spend another day tied down to a cheater.

“mina?” he calls out as soon as he steps in. he almost bends down to take his shoes off, thinks twice about it, and leaves them on. what did you call it again? taking your small joys wherever you can. tracking dirt into mina’s apartment felt like a small joy right now. 

with no response, he heads into the kitchen to grab himself a water bottle before sitting on a stool at the breakfast bar. he’s about to take his notes out again when he hears a door click. he frowns. 

“hello?” mina’s voice tentatively calls out from the hallway. 

“it’s me,” joshua says, leaving his notes where they are in his pocket. “i knocked but i guess you didn’t hear.”

“josh?” mina rounds the corner, in her bathrobe. she smiles brightly when she confirms it’s him. “hey, baby. what are you doing here?”

she walks up to him with the ease of a loyal girlfriend. he’s astounded by it, actually; how she can act so sweet and kind and cute when she’s sleeping with siwoo every chance she gets. if he thinks about it too hard, it actually scares him. 

she loops her arms around his waist and hugs him from behind, hooking her chin on his shoulder. he tenses and immediately slips off the stool and out of her grip. 

“i wanted to talk to you, remember?” he says, stepping away when she tries to reach for him again. she frowns like she’s finally understanding there’s a problem. “yesterday. but you said you were busy.” busy fucking siwoo. 

even with a direct reference to her infidelity, mina doesn’t bat an eye. he thinks she could probably thrive in a career in acting. “yeah, i had to clock some overtime yesterday,” she lies. “it was such a drag,” she complains as she gets her own water bottle from the fridge. “i paid for my pilates class and everything and had to pay the fee for missing it.”

the lies roll of her tongue so effortlessly, joshua knows he would’ve easily believed them if he didn’t have cold, hard proof. even with the cold, hard proof, he wonders if there’s any way you could have still gotten it wrong. he knows you didn’t. maybe he is gullible because after two days, he already trusts you more than he does mina. 

“pilates,” he repeats in a daze. 

she raises an eyebrow as she takes a sip. she caps her bottle again and nods slowly. “yes, baby, pilates… is everything okay?”

“mina, have you ever cheated on me?”

joshua sees it then—the crack in her facade. her eyes widen, not with surprise or disbelief the way an innocent person’s probably would, but fear. to her credit, it passes quickly as she schools her expression into one of bewilderment. if joshua hadn’t known to look for it, he knows he would have missed it. he would have missed it along with all the other red flags he’s missed. 

“why are you asking me that?” she asks, her voice sharp with the vexation of someone who’s been offended. joshua doesn’t let it faze him.

he shrugs, clenching his jaw briefly before speaking again. “just answer the question, mina.”

mina seems to realize joshua isn’t in the mood for games because her shoulders deflate the tiniest bit, her eyes flicking from one side of the room to the other as she tries to think of what to say. he knows it’s because in the year they’ve been together, joshua has never—not once—lost his temper or expressed any kind of annoyance with her.

it’s always “joshua is so sweet,” “joshua is such a gentleman,” “joshua is so kind,” “joshua is so mild mannered,” “joshua is so fucking gullible.”

joshua is done.

“mina.”

he doesn’t mean for his voice to come out sharp and raised the way it does, but when she flinches, he realizes his patience is slipping faster than jeonghan could ever dream of making it.

“wh—?” she squeezes her eyes shut like she’s trying to understand how they got here. “what?” she suddenly shrieks, eyes opening wide with disbelief and what he’s sure she thinks is translating as devastation. “what are you even saying, joshua?!”

the sheer amount of willpower it takes to keep from rolling his eyes is staggering. “it should be an easy question to answer,” he sighs, running a hand over his face tiredly. “so i think the fact that you refuse to is an answer in itself.”

he sets his bottle on the counter and moves to step around her so he can leave and just let it be over with—going out, not with a bang, but with a pathetic little sigh—but she steps the same direction, palms out like she’ll shove him if he gets any closer to the door.

“what the fuck are you on right now?” she asks, eyes narrowed and mouth twisted into an ugly, displeased sneer like a switch just flipped.

joshua feels the hair on the back of his neck stand as he frowns down at her. she doesn’t try to wrestle her face into playing along with her placating, innocent girl act. instead, she wears her scowl proudly, crossing her arms across her chest in defiance as she blocks his way from his emergency exit. 

“you’re not leaving until you tell me why you’re asking me that,” she states.

he finds her rage as discomforting as yours but in wildly different ways. your anger makes him freeze up and almost panic; it renders him unable to speak or even think, and he’s still not even sure why. but mina’s makes him physically cringe away. it… annoys him.

just like she wasn’t used to his impatience, he wasn’t used to her being angry—at least not at him. all mina’s ever been angry about have been baristas who used 2% instead of fat free milk in her lattes (and yes, she insists she can tell), long wait times, and her boss demanding she work overtime. though joshua realizes that was probably just an excuse to see siwoo.

“mina, why are you doing this?” he asks, exasperated.

“why am i doing this?!” she repeats, scoffing so obnoxiously hard in his face, spit lands on his cheek. 

he closes his eyes for a brief moment as he wipes it away, willing his patience to hold out long enough to get him out of this building.

“why are you doing this?! why are you as—”

“because i know!” he shouts over her increasingly high-pitched whining. “i’m asking because i know all about how awful you’ve been, mina! and i wanted to see if after a year together, you’d at least have the decency to be honest with me!” 

mina’s attitude drops, her hands immediately combing through her hair frantically, a nervous tic she always had.

“i know you were faking business trips, i know you were sleeping around, i know you were fucking him last night when i told you i needed to talk to you—when your boyfriend of a year wanted to see you!”

she stares at him helplessly, mouth hung open and her eyes quickly filling with tears. he realizes as he stares back, feeling nothing but resentment and disdain for her, that your wildly fluctuating emotions unnerve him because he wants to find a way to get you back to your baseline, if not all the way to the other end to happy.

as he watches mina begin to weep, he feels none of that. for the first time in his life, joshua yearns to be cruel. he wants to make her cry harder, and it makes him resent her even more—for making him think and feel something so reprehensible.

he suddenly sees why you’re so open to letting your fury flow through every part of you before unapologetically releasing it right out into the world the way you do. after a lifetime of insisting on being the calm one, the collected one, the unbothered one, the unfeeling one, he realizes that being angry like this is addicting—freeing.

“baby, i…”

“don’t, mina, i’m not your fucking baby,” he says. even he can hear how tired he sounds. 

“i’m so sorry,” she whispers, voice cracking. “i am, i really am. i don’t know why i did it. i—i don’t know—i’m so—i…”

“save it,” he puts her out of her misery of trying to find the right words to manipulate him into thinking she’s anything other than the deceitful cheater she is. “i know you don’t regret hurting me like this. i—”

“no, i do!” she wails, throwing herself at him now.

he immediately starts untangling himself from her hold but she makes it impossible, her grabby hands all over him as she tries to get him to stop attempting to escape her.

“mina, let go o—”

“i regret it, joshua, i swear to god i regret it!” she weeps so loudly now, he starts to feel dread gathering in the pit of his stomach the way it did when he broke up with miyoung. “i never wanted to hurt you, i love you!”

“holy shit,” he grumbles, shoving her hands off him and stepping away from her even though it meant being farther from the only exit. “how can you even say that to my face right now?”

“it’s true!” she screams, grating his nerves. “i love you! i want to spend the rest of my life with you! it was all a mistake! minhyuk was just a temptation i gave into at a weak moment, and i swear it didn’t mean—”

“who the hell is minhyuk?” he asks, frowning when her words finally catch up to him.

mina freezes, and it’s like her tears get the memo because they stop too. it’s the only reason joshua knows that no matter how convincing, this was also just an act.

he glares now.

“who. is. minhyuk. mina?” he staggers his words like it’ll help her few remaining brain cells unite long enough to understand and answer his question.

“i… what do you mean? you said… you said you knew that i… you said—”

“i know about siwoo,” he clarifies, his temper at its breaking point. he’s a moment away from calling you to come up here and make sure he doesn’t land himself in jail, wrecking mina’s entire apartment in an attempt to claw his way out of it. “who the fuck is minhyuk?”

joshua doesn’t think he’s ever cussed this much in his life.

“i—”

“who the fuck is siwoo?” 

joshua’s head whips around toward the voice, coming from the hallway that leads to mina’s room. the laugh that immediately escapes his mouth is instinctive and hysterical. he doesn’t know any other way to react than to start laughing; if he doesn’t, he’s positive he’ll somehow spontaneously combust. 

because standing in mina’s hallway is one of the many reasons her neighbors despise her. a very half naked reason, dressed only in boxers.

“are you for fucking real?” mina hisses, shutting her eyes and pinching the bridge of her nose as if joshua isn’t even in the room. “i told you to wait in the room and be fucking quiet, you moron. are you—”

“who is siwoo?!” the man shouts now.

joshua’s laughs peter out, and with them goes his anger. he sighs, shaking his head and remembering how drained he feels. 

“i take it you’re minhyuk.” the man glares at him but doesn’t respond, so he nods. “well, mina, i guess you were truthful about one thing: you really were busy last night, weren’t you?”

“how did you even know siwoo stopped by here?!” she yells. joshua hopes building management kicks her out after the noise complaints she’s bound to get from today alone.

“i can’t believe you’re fucking cheating on me!” minhyuk disappears back into mina’s room, shouting nonsense as he gathers his things. 

“you’re definitely not the one who was cheated on!” joshua calls after him, rolling his eyes. he turns back to mina, mustering up the very last of his energy to finally end it. “mina. you’re disgusting. i will move on from this remembering you as nothing other than a nasty stain on my otherwise amazing life.”

a squeak of protest erupts from her mouth, but he doesn’t let her get a word in.

“but you... you’ll continue to do whatever sleazy shit you’ve been up to for who knows how long, and one day, you’ll wake up and realize how empty and tragic and ugly you and your life both are—” she has the audacity to look offended at the word ugly. “—and you won’t be able to do anything to change that because no one worth having around will have cared enough to stick by you.”

her tears start again and this time, they feel real—they don’t come with screaming or begging or lying. they steadily stream down her face and it makes joshua feel like he’s high.

“your commitment to being a selfish asshole really has you by the neck and i pray to god it starts squeezing with both hands,” he says, delivering your line with a tight-lipped smile.

he finally steps around her, making his way to the door. he opens it and just before he leaves, he thinks, what the hell? and turns back.

“mina,” he calls softly. she turns back to him, face red and splotchy. “don’t contact me. if i ever see your phone number on my screen, i’ll personally call every single cafe on this fucking continent and make sure they only serve you whole fat milk for the rest of your life.”

she gasps like he just made a legitimate threat, and he gets the immature and overwhelming urge to ridicule and laugh at her.

“oh, and get some fucking help,” he adds before turning away and leaving without waiting for her reaction.

fortunately, he gets the elevator immediately. 

unfortunately, none other than minhyuk comes barreling in before the doors close. he has the sense to at least look ashamed, throwing joshua a pitiful smile, but it isn’t enough, so he steps forward and presses a finger to the button that keeps the doors open.

he doesn’t say anything, blankly staring at the man who apparently had sex with his girlfriend either before or after siwoo did last night. minhyuk gets the clue and sighs.

“bro, we’re on the 13th floor,” he protests.

he still doesn’t respond. finally, when several seconds of minhyuk fidgeting have passed, the man groans dramatically—not unlike mina herself—and he stomps out of the elevator and toward the stairwell.

joshua smiles to himself, releasing the button and letting the elevator doors close and take him down to the lobby—down to you.

when joshua exits mina’s building, you’re waiting exactly where you had accosted the two of them the night before, sweaty and disheveled from your run over, but somehow still looking so incredibly pretty. 

you take one look at his face and know exactly how the entire conversation went down without even having to ask. then, an interesting thing happens: you do something joshua thinks is akin to exploding, and he has to hold you back from storming the building. you don’t even know where mina lives, but he knows if he lets you go, you’ll knock on every single door of all 25 floors until you find her and sock her in the face. 

and even as he tries to calm you down now, something warms his heart knowing you care enough to do something as ridiculous as that.

“you’re causing a scene,” he grunts, stepping in your way again when you try to dodge him.

“if you think this is a scene, you’re gonna hate what i’m about to cause on whatever goddamn floor that bitch lives on!” you inform him. 

“i’m not telling you and the front desk won’t either. he’d probably call security on you before you even get to the elevators.”

“i don’t care! i’ll punch the man at the front desk too! my fists are rated E for everyone!” you shriek wildly, darting back and forth as you try to get around him. against his will, an amused snort escapes him.

when it’s clear to you that joshua’s height and long legs are going to make it impossible for you to fake him out, you give up on going around and decide to go through.

joshua shouts in surprise when you barrel right into him, opting for pushing him backwards to get a few steps forward. he catches on quickly and digs his heels in, gripping your shoulders and holding you at arm’s length.

“she’s not worth this time or energy,” he tells you. 

“oh, i disagree, i think she’s worth a lot of my time and energy!” you refute. “i think she’s worth as much of my time and energy as it takes for me to rock her shit!”

you groan as you struggle against his hold, and he almost laughs at how hard you seem to be trying because it’s relatively easy to keep you where you are. you shrug his hands off and slap him away, charging forward again, but before you can, he plants his palm on your forehead, stopping you in your tracks.

“yah! joshua hong!” you shove his arm away from your forehead, and he can’t help when the laughs finally break free. “how are you laughing right now? i could kill her!”

he shrugs, his laughter suddenly snowballing until his hands are on his knees and he’s trying to catch his breath. 

he can’t do anything other than laugh. he has to laugh at the year he’s wasted with mina, or he’ll drive himself crazy asking himself what’s wrong with him that his taste led him so astray (something to unpack when he inevitably returns to his therapist). he has to laugh at the memory of walking in while minhyuk was still there or he’ll fixate on the fact that he has no idea how many men mina’s cheated on him with—and the fact that he needs to go get tested for STDs immediately. there is no other option but to laugh because he has no idea how someone’s life can change this fast because of an instagram DM.

when he finally stops, he sighs, straightening up to find you looking at him with a blank expression.

“oh, you’re so not okay,” you mutter.

“i’m fine,” he insists, shaking his head. he rests his hands back on your shoulders, this time gently, and he nods once. “this has just been the most ridiculous 24 hours of my life, and i’m tired and i’m starving. can we please escape this hellhole and eat? i’ll even pay.”

your eyes narrow at that, studying his face like you’re trying to see if he’s lying to you about being okay. he isn’t—at least he doesn’t think he is—but he also doesn’t think you’d be able to tell if he were anyway.

“i know a ramen spot near here?” you offer hesitantly.

it irks him that you not only have a go-to fried chicken spot in the area but a ramen spot too, and only because you’ve followed siwoo here enough times to have favorites. he thinks you deserve to find favorites in more meaningful ways.

he doesn’t say that, though, of course. instead, joshua looks you up and down before he scans himself, pointedly staring at how sweaty the two of you are in this sticky summer heat. 

“ramen is good for the soul,” you say, reading his mind. “the best comfort food. plus, you’ll sweat out all your heartache.”

“i have no heartache to sweat out.”

“right,” you agree, nodding easily and in a way that makes him question if you’re being sarcastic or not. “maybe we should invite jeonghan.”

he tilts his head. he’s not opposed because he needs to fill his best friend in, but he’s also not enjoying you being the one to suggest it. “why…?”

you shrug. “my offers to dole out violence on your behalf can only go so far. your best friend will probably be better equipped to handle… whatever that was that just happened right now.”

he snickers and rolls his eyes. “okay, i’ll text him.”

“no need, i already did!” you say as you loop your arm through his and begin to pull him away from the building. 

he scoffs, a little too aware of the scowl that erupts on his face. “how do you have jeonghan’s number?”

you look up at him and snort. “we all exchanged information last night, remember?”

no, you and joshua exchanged information last night after he insisted on it so he knew when you got home safe. his eye twitches when he thinks about jeonghan sneaking you his number too—and maybe even texting or calling you as much as he was today.

“he’s waiting for us at the ramen shop.”

he clenches his jaw before forcing a smile. “you really are such a well-prepared individual, aren’t you.”

“gotta be if i’m going to ruin siwoo and mina’s lives.”

“mina? i thought—”

“oh baby,” you say it with fake pity like he’s actually a child, but he finds he likes it a hell of a lot more than dude. infinitely more than bro. “she doesn’t get a pass anymore. that ship sailed when she decided to do my shua like that.” oh, he likes that one a lot. “she’s officially back in the plan.”

joshua grins genuinely now, nodding without arguing. even if he didn’t want you to wrap your metaphorical revenge hands around mina’s ugly neck and shake violently (he does), he knows arguing with you is futile.

“okay.” he feels the exhaustion from earlier slowly leave his body, already feeling lighter as he walks with you, arms looped together like you’ve been best friends for years. “let’s ruin some lives then.”

you look up at him and squeeze his arm, jumping a little as you squeal, “let’s!”

“bye, y/n.”

joshua tries not to glare as jeonghan pulls you into a hug, one arm snaking around your waist as he grins over your shoulder at him. he flashes his eyebrows at him and all his efforts go to waste. he gives him the nastiest glower he can. his best friend’s smirk just widens. 

he doesn’t know what’s going on—with jeonghan, with you, with the both of you, with himself. for the first 40 minutes sitting in the restaurant, joshua retold the hellish afternoon he experienced and took all of his best friend’s many i-told-you-so, what-a-bitch, and i-knew-she-was-a-snake comments with grace. but as soon as that was over, jeonghan flipped a switch.

all night, the man has been acting so weird with you, laughing too hard at everything you say, touching you any chance he gets, saying things just because he knows you’ll agree. and all night, for a reason he can’t quite put his finger on, it’s been driving joshua up the wall. it’s probably because you’re literally still in a relationship. his best friend could at least wait until you’re properly single before he starts doing whatever jeonghan-styled mating call this is.

nope. that’s not it. that thought drives him even further up this insufferable, metaphorical wall.

“later,” you say as you step back. “don’t forget to send me that brand of hair remover you were looking at.” you turn over your shoulder and joshua immediately drops his glare and smiles. if you saw the look he was giving jeonghan, you don’t show it. instead, you wink at him. “we’re going to need that for mina’s shampoo now, huh, shua?”

“shua,” jeonghan repeats, obviously delighted, eyebrows rising and grin quickly entering shit-eating levels. “cute!”

you turn back to him excitedly. “right?! i think so too!”

“you’re such a genius, y/n,” he says, sounding nauseatingly lovesick. joshua silently scoffs at him behind your back. he should know better, though, because that just eggs him on. “i’ll text you the link as soon as i get home. or—” he meets his eyes again. “—i’ll just call you!”

“sure, whatever,” you shrug, as indifferent as ever. it makes joshua happy. maybe a direct rejection would make him even happier, though. “get home safe!”

“yeah, get home safe,” joshua echoes as jeonghan steps around you to hug him as well. “don’t fall into a manhole or get run over by a massive truck or anything,” he mutters too quietly for anyone else but him to hear. 

“i love you too, man,” jeonghan laughs, rubbing his back and squeezing his shoulder as he steps away. “call me if you need to drink your sorrows away. see you two!”

he finally walks off toward his car as you step up to joshua’s side, looping your arm through his again. his heart immediately slows, recovering from the irritation of dealing with a menace.

“jeonghan knows i have zero interest in dating him, right?”

joshua can’t help the bark of laughter that all but rips its way out of him.

“no, like,” you laugh a little, “he comes on so strong? i don’t think i’ve ever met someone as bold as he is.”

that’s ironic, seeing as joshua has never met anyone as bold as you.

“i don’t know if he knows that,” he says honestly. “but either way, he wouldn’t make a move until you were single.”

he gets brief flashes of jeonghan’s fingers brushing up against yours, jeonghan delivering wings onto your plate, jeonghan hugging you a beat too long, jeonghan existing around you. 

“i think,” he adds, frowning.

you make a sound of disbelief as you both watch jeonghan pull out of his spot and drive away. you both stay rooted to the spot, watching nothing in particular.

 “i am single. for all intents and purposes, i am absolutely single.”

joshua is alarmed at how horrible the chill that runs up his spine feels—like an omen of how unbearable his life will become if two crazy people like you and jeonghan join forces to become one.

“i just happen to be a single woman pretending to still love her ex so she can obliterate his entire existence from the inside out.”

“right,” he says, nodding. “of course. i just mean that… i—uh… i have no idea what i mean. but i’ll tell jeonghan to fuck off.”

you whistle, laughing after you do. “i think that’s the first time i heard you cuss,” you inform him. “my shua cussing…” 

you don’t finish your thought because you giggle, and he thinks the sound triggers his fight or flight. he lets you laugh and when it fades, you shake your head.

“don’t tell jeonghan to fuck off,” you tell him. “it’s fun. flattering.”

“flattering?” he repeats, raising an eyebrow.

you shrug. “i’ve been with that idiot, siwoo, for two years. i guess it’s nice to know that someone thinks i’m cute enough to flirt with. at least i know i’m still an eligible bachelorette.”

joshua huffs out a laugh of disbelief. “are you serious?”

you yank your arm out of his, startling him. “what?! you don’t think i’m cute enough to flirt with?!” you ask, half offended but obviously thoroughly amused.

“quite the opposite, actually,” he says before he can convince himself not to. he’s about to start sputtering about how he means it in the most platonic and objective way possible, but since you’re you, he doesn’t need to.

“good, that’s what i thought,” you say, grinning and weaving your arm through the ditch of his elbow again. “i’m very cute.”

joshua is glad you’re so comfortable to be around. he knows if he agreed with you now, you’d happily accept the compliment, but if the roles were reversed, he would be flustered for the next week. 

you two enjoy a comfortable silence before he sighs contentedly and looks down at you to ask if you’re ready to leave. he forgets what he’s about to say when he meets your eyes, though.

you’re already looking up at him and smiling softly. “did you like the ramen? do you feel better?” you ask, tilting your head.

he thinks you would look nice resting it against his shoulder. “i feel much better,” he confirms. “thanks again—for coming so fast and so last minute without me even asking you to.” he pauses to think, frowning when he confronts how ride-or-die you’ve been for him today. “and even before that. thanks for workshopping all those horrible lines with me.”

you grin. “don’t mention it, dude.” he’s too content right now to make a face at that. at least it’s not bro. “it was a lot of fun, actually.”

“i still don’t think i have any heartache to sweat out into any other bowls of ramen—” you snicker. “—but it’s nice to know i have two people to cry to if i ever do.”

you nod enthusiastically. “exactly! you have jeonghan, and you have me now.”

he hums, feeling an intense desire to say you have him too—because you do, and you unfortunately already have jeonghan as well—but he stops himself. he’s only known you one day, and he’s just not as courageous as you are with your words. 

“it’s nice,” you mutter, “to have people to go through these things with.”

joshua doesn’t voice his curiosity about your own friendships. were there no other people you were able to expect this kind of support from? where was this soph you used to excuse yourself from dinner? any other friends? family? 

he lets his curiosity simmer. you’ve already subjected each other to incredibly intimate parts of your life; the rest can come another day.

“hopefully, it’s the first and last time we go through this,” he remarks, chuckling.

“one can hope,” you agree. “and the ramen?” you prod. “was it good?”

“i loved it,” he says honestly, “but—”

“‘but’?!” you practically shriek. “but what?! the ramen here is really good! what could you possibly have to say about the ramen here?”

he laughs, looking away from you and rolling his eyes at how fast you are to pounce. “i love the ramen, but,” he continues, “we need to find you some favorites that don’t involve roaming around the area that siwoo and mina happen to be in. i’ll show you some of my favorites. away from here. and if you want your own favorites, then we’ll go to a place you’ve never been and we’ll find you new favorites. but i hate to inform you… this will be the last time we eat in this godforsaken area so i hope you enjoyed that.”

when joshua looks back down at you, you’re no longer smiling. he tenses when he realizes you look a little sad, your mouth turned down at the corners so slightly, he probably wouldn’t notice if he weren’t so close to your face.

“oh,” he breathes, “y/n, i’m sorry, i didn’t—”

you shake your head quickly and he clamps his mouth shut.

“y’know,” you say quietly, like any louder and you’ll start crying. he doesn’t doubt that you would. it’s been a whole 24 hours since you did—at least in front of him. “it really fucking sucks… finding out your boyfriend is cheating on you, and on top of that, having to continue relying on him.”

your hold on his forearm tightens for a moment, and before he can think about it, he removes his right hand from his pocket and closes it over yours.

“and i know that we’ve only known each other for like… a day,” you say, laughing even though your voice is getting dangerously watery, “but every time we talk… i stop to think i’m really lucky that of all the people i could’ve been suffering through this with, it turned out to be you.”

joshua’s mouth parts to say something, but nothing comes out because nothing even comes to mind. there you go again—so honest and forthcoming and bold and you. there you go again, making his brain the most useless organ in his body without even trying.

“you’re really nice,” you sigh. “thank you.” you turn away and wipe at your eyes quickly before taking your hand back from his and releasing his arm altogether. he immediately feels a little colder. he returns his hand to his pocket. “for my last dinner in this stupid fucking neighborhood.”

he clears his throat. “you’re welcome.”

“i’ll hold you to it, y’know,” you warn him, bumping his shoulder. “don’t think you can say nice things like that and then have no follow-through.”

from the way you say it, he knows you’re thinking of siwoo. he wonders what sort of tiny things siwoo promised you that he never delivered on if he couldn’t even do something as simple as stay true to you. joshua thinks it will be easy for him to show you how nice people can be when they aren’t taking you for granted.

“good, hold me to it.”

“i will! you owe me a favorite chicken shop, a favorite ramen shop, a favorite boba shop, a favorite ice c—”

“jesus christ, how often were you here?”

you laugh loudly. “you owe me so many favorites.”

joshua smiles. “come on,” he says. “we’ll get you all those favorites. but for now, let’s get you home.”

“goodbye forever, ramen shop,” you bid the establishment farewell happily. “and goodbye, stupid fucking neighborhood!”

he grins. “good riddance, stupid fucking neighborhood!”

you’re consumed by giggles hearing him curse again.

acting normal while texting you proves to be the hardest thing joshua has done every single time he does it. it’s either you’re being incredibly funny and he’s smiling at his phone like an idiot, or you’re saying a bold inside thought and he’s smiling at his phone like an idiot. either way, even if he thinks he does a good job at appearing normal via text, he knows he looks crazy in person.

“you’re cheesing real hard, bro.”

joshua immediately locks his phone and shoves it into his pocket as he forces his face into a blank stare. 

“smooth,” jeonghan says, snickering from where he’s sprawled across the other side of joshua’s couch, no longer paying attention to the movie he begged to put on. “texting y/n?”

“no.” the lie comes out before he can even think about it. “watched a funny video.”

he hums, a soft smile on his lips. joshua knows he doesn’t believe him. “well, speaking of her, what’s going on with the two of you anyway?” 

“what?”

“what’s going on with—”

“no, i heard you,” he laughs. “i just meant, like… what do you mean? i’m helping her with siwoo. you know that.”

he narrows his eyes almost imperceptibly, but being his best friend, joshua is educated on all the nuances jeonghan’s face comes with.

“what?” he asks again. 

“do you like her?”

“yeah, she’s cool. kind of intense but cool. don’t you?”

jeonghan rolls his lips between his teeth like he’s trying not to smile too widely. he cocks an eyebrow at him. “i mean, do you like like her? do you fancy her?”

joshua scoffs. “what?”

it’s such a ridiculous question to ask someone who broke up with his girlfriend not even a full week ago. he thinks he was mostly telling the truth when he told you he had no heartache for him to expel from his body because both his heart and brain have been fairly quiet since that afternoon, but even then, he’s still too disoriented from how fast his life changed to think about liking anyone.

“it’s been days since mina and i broke up,” he reminds his best friend. “how could i already be interested in someone else?”

“well, mina didn’t wait to break up before she bec—”

“okay,” joshua holds a hand up to stop him from pointing out mina’s infidelity for the thousandth time since they found out. “mina and i aren’t the same. i can’t just jump into something else so quickly after. and it’s not even about mina.”

“oooh,” jeonghan sits up properly and crosses his legs, folding his hands over his knee. “explain.”

he shrugs. “i don’t really feel all that torn up about her as much as i am about how bad my instincts are.”

he frowns. “your instincts?”

“yeah, like… the signs were glaringly obvious,” joshua explains. “you knew she was a snake before all of this; you just didn’t know why. how come i didn’t see any of that? and,” he practically yells as he resituates himself on the couch so that he’s fully facing jeonghan, “how could i have thought i was going to possibly marry someone like that? i can’t even think about looking at another person until i wrap my mind around how i could have ever thought i was in love. what if i don’t even know what love is?”

“whoa, okay—”

“what if i end up with another mina?”

“—slow down,” jeonghan raises his hands like he’s trying to calm a bull. he mirrors his position, fully turning to him on the sofa now. “first of all, you know what love is. your judgment was just clouded for a little bit! you were lost in the joy of having a girlfriend that lasted a lot longer than the others. or you were being a weirdo and getting swallowed up by the plight of being in your 30s with no prospects for marriage, so you deluded yourself into thinking mina was it.”

joshua’s mouth pops open in shock a little at that. “i mean… that’s… plausible.”

“whatever it is—even if it is that she fooled you and you were blind to all the red flags, that doesn’t mean you don’t know what love is. how could you not know what love is when i’m your best friend? i love the shit out of you.”

he does crack a smile at this. he lets the reminder sink in and marinate in his brain. jeonghan could very much be right on the money with this one; after all, mina came at a time when joshua was starting to question if his love life was cursed. he was fresh out of therapy he sought out because his ex broke up with him for essentially being a robot, and he was eager to share more of himself with the next one—to love the next one harder than he had the rest. maybe he really was just forcing something to be that wasn’t meant to be.

“say it back.”

he laughs. “i love you too.” he sighs. “what else?”

“huh?”

“you said ‘first of all.’ i assume you have a second of all?”

jeonghan frowns for a moment before a light bulb goes off in his head. “yes! second of all, y/n is not mina.”

“wait, what?”

“you said, ‘what if i end up with another mina?’ y/n is not mina.”

“of course she’s not mina,” joshua says. that much is obvious; if mina is one end of the spectrum, you’re so far on the other end, it went all the way back around to mina. “but why are we even talking about y/n?”

“because it’s clear you like her,” he informs him, amused. 

“i don’t like her like that,” he disagrees confidently and somewhat exasperatedly. whenever jeonghan got ideas like this in his head, it became an inarguable truth to him regardless of what anyone else said. he knows if he doesn’t nip it in the bud, he’ll run with it for the rest of their lives. “she’s funny and nice and cool to hang out with, but she’s just a friend.”

“is that why you’re texting and calling her 24/7 when the rest of us feel like we’re pulling teeth trying to get you to respond to us?” jeonghan points out. joshua opens his mouth to refute his point, but he steamrolls right over his words. “is that why you’re extra mean to me whenever the three of us hang out?”

“we’ve only hung out all three of us twice. and what do you mean i’m mean to you?”

his best friend laughs openly in his face. “you’re really going to tell me you don’t notice the way you kick me or interrupt me or glare at me whenever so much as an ounce of y/n’s attention is on me instead of you?”

is that what his odd behavior at the ramen shop was about? he was trying to get on joshua’s nerves as some kind of experiment?

joshua narrows his eyes at him. “i do those things because you’re annoying me.”

“i’ve annoyed you our whole lives,” he shoots right back. “you’ve only started abusing me recently.”

“you’re so dramatic and wrong.”

“okay!” jeonghan agrees too easily. he stands up.

“where are you going?” joshua leans back to look up at him. “aren’t we getting dinner later?”

he hums in thought before quickly saying no. “rain check! i think i’m going to ask y/n if she wants to go out instead. i’ve been thinking about asking her out.”

joshua is not dumb. joshua is actually very smart. he graduated top of his class from an ivy league in the U.S., he has an MBA, and he—much like you were supposed to be before siwoo upended your life—became a director at his company before 30, still on track to become the youngest senior director.

joshua is smart and he knows what jeonghan is trying to do, but his dumb face frustratingly doesn’t get the memo. before he can even fully process the words, his eyebrows are pulling down, eyes sharpening into a glare, and jaw clenching so hard, he knows jeonghan can hear his teeth grinding.

“oh, really,” he deadpans. 

“yup!” he has the audacity to grin at joshua, eyes so full of mischief and mirth, he wants to kick him again and give him something to really complain about. “i’ll see myself out, don’t worry about getting up. bye joshuji! i’ll tell y/n you said hi!”

joshua scoffs as he watches him actually leave his apartment. and again, because various parts of his body seem to be missing signals from his brain that he doesn’t care, once the door clicks closed behind jeonghan, he throws himself back onto the couch mindlessly and hastily, struggling to retrieve his phone from his pocket. 

“why are these jeans so fucking tight,” he mumbles as his hand gets a little stuck. when he finally rips the phone out of his pocket, he briefly considers texting you but lands on calling you instead. what he’s going to say, he has no idea. 

“i was just about to call you,” you once again answer without greeting him first. 

“oh. hi,” he says, a little thankful for the non-greeting for once because it gives him some time to come up with an excuse for calling you other than he wanted to beat jeonghan to it. “why were you going to call?”

“because you were taking a long ass time to reply again,” you say simply. he snickers at your streak of impatience. “why are you calling?”

that wasn’t a lot of time to come up with an excuse at all, but joshua thinks “so we can make plans. i don’t feel like texting” is more than good enough. 

“oh yay,” you accept the fib easily. “well, as an unemployed idiot, i am free… let me see… oh yes, all day every day, but extra free on whatever day siwoo’s parents decide to hold me hostage at dinner with them.”

joshua laughs, slowly relaxing against the couch once more. “well, how about tonight?”

“ugh, unfortunately, they do not want to have dinner tonight, but yes, i am free.”

“how about we meet to discuss your top secret plan tonight and then hang again whenever your dinner with that nightmare family is?” he suggests. 

“joshua hong, my knight in shining armor,” you joke. his cheeks warm at the words. “sounds like a plan. can we meet at yours, though? i don’t want to reveal how crazy i am in a public setting. that seems too vulnerable. and i’d invite you over here but it’s probably best we don’t discuss these plans in the home of the man whose life i’d like to destroy.” joshua truly admires your way with sarcasm. 

“yeah, i’ll text you my address,” he agrees. and because he’s extra irate with jeonghan for thinking he can manipulate him into becoming some kind of jealous monster, he adds: “you can come over whenever—even now if you want. i’m free all day” just in case his best friend calls you too after you hang up.

“oh great!” you say. “siwoo is out all day doing lord knows who or what and i’m done brushing the toilet with everything he owns, so i can be on my way once you send it.”

joshua smiles. “perfect.”

he knows he literally just played right into jeonghan’s game, but somehow, he still feels like he won.

it doesn’t take you long at all to get to his apartment, and when you do, he’s a little stunned to open the door and find your arms completely empty—no files full of information only the CIA would have or fat manila envelopes stuffed with plans to eviscerate your exes like he expected. instead, you stand there, hands clasped in front of you with nothing but your purse hanging on your shoulder. 

“nice place,” you comment as you look around his apartment, unabashedly looking at the books on his shelves, art on the walls, even running your fingers across the strings of his guitar in the corner. “you play?”

he hums as he plops back down on his couch. “yeah, since i was young. do you?”

you laugh like he told a joke. “no. i’m not creatively gifted. it doesn’t really surprise me that you are, though.”

he’s about to ask you what makes you say that but you turn to him and clap your hands together once. 

“okay! let’s do this! we have a lot of material to get through tonight.” 

you throw your purse on the counter of the breakfast bar, make your way to the coffee table in front of him, take your phone out of your pocket, and sink to the floor. 

“let’s start with mina; i think she’ll be much easier since she doesn’t have a family-owned empire for us to topple.”

joshua’s eyes widen. “a family-owned what for us to what?”

you wave your hand like it’s an irrelevant detail. “we’ll get into it later,” you assure him as you get to wherever you were swiping to on your phone. you read a few lines and then nod, looking up at him. “so mina is a grade A gold-digger.”

joshua huffs, leaning his elbows on his knees and shaking his head. “i’m not saying i disagree because you have very solid evidence—good job, by the way—”

“thank you!” you chirp happily, smiling widely.

“—but i am not rich enough for anyone to try digging for gold around here.”

your smile disappears, expression flattening into a glare as you pointedly look around his apartment. he follows your gaze, and yes, he sees what you see: a very spacious apartment, all of the interests and hobbies he can afford to indulge in, and furniture he hired an interior designer to curate for him. he’ll give it to you—he’s definitely a little more than just comfortable, but he’s not gold-digging material. he never even gave mina much money; he just paid for dates, and he tells you as much.

“well, i did some digging, and that’s all she would’ve really needed you to pay for. little miss busy body had multiple streams of income,” you tell him, swiping on your phone until you’re showing him screenshots of instagram profiles. the first is siwoo’s. 

joshua would never admit it, but his curiosity got the best of him after overhearing your conversation with siwoo over the phone, and he found his profile after combing through the accounts you follow. the man’s face was tolerable enough, though not anything special to look at, in joshua’s opinion. he definitely thinks you can do a lot better. but for mina, though, he’s perfect. they’d make monstrous, ugly, little children.

“so here are my theories,” you announce. “correct me if you think i’m wrong with any of this since you know mina better.” he nods in agreement. “i think siwoo was target number one. she thought because he’s the heir to a sizable company, that he would be a good sugar daddy to land, but he was already taken by a smart, beautiful, kind, and insanely funny woman that turned out to be way too good for him.” he grins at you. “and because too many people have eyes on his finances—mommy, daddy… and me but only because i started snooping—”

joshua snorts, looking down at his lap when he thinks of the things you’re pushed to do when a man is making you feel insecure. it’s not fitting for you and he hates it.

“—he probably couldn’t give mina as much money as she was expecting. but she thought she’d keep him around in case there was ever an opportunity to go full-time with him,” you theorize. you turn your phone back to you, swiping to the next account. “minhyuk.”

joshua looks up and rolls his eyes when he sees an account full of shirtless photos of the man he met in mina’s apartment. “yeah. minhyuk.”

“he lives about 30 minutes from mina’s apartment in the opposite direction of siwoo, putting them about an hour away from each other,” you inform him.

“how the hell do you know that?”

you smile slyly. “i have my ways.” when he keeps staring at you, you roll your eyes. “his full name is on his instagram so i looked him up on linkedin and facebook, and the latter had photos of him moving into his apartment, okay? kids nowadays don’t care about internet safety; it’s not rocket science, shua. anyway,” you point back to the screenshot of his account, trying to redirect his attention, “that’s a healthy enough distance that she probably felt safe dating these two. on top of that, minhyuk is a pilot for korean airlines—did you know they can make up to 300 million won a year? absolutely rich enough to warrant mina’s attention.”

joshua has to admit that maybe he should reconsider what he thinks is rich versus what is comfortable if 300 million won was impressive to you.

“so mina snatches him up, knowing it won’t be much of a time commitment since he’ll constantly be flying all over the place,” you explain. “then, we have…” you swipe and sigh, shaking your head. “this guy.”

joshua narrows his eyes at the screen where he’s met with the account of a man he’s never seen before. he’s very tatted, with a kind face and a nice smile, and if his photos are any indication, he works out just as hard as minhyuk apparently does. 

“and who is this?” he asks, already knowing the answer.

“boyfriend number three,” you say a little uncomfortably. “jeon jungkook.”

joshua grunts but says nothing, so you continue.

“before you ask how i found him, i went through all of the people mina follows on instagram, and—”

“her profile is private,” joshua points out.

“that’s what burner accounts are for,” you respond.

“she approved aggretsuko’s request to follow her…?”

you smile. “no, silly, i followed her from my believable burner. aggretsuko is more just for being able to blindly like and follow whatever and whoever i want to. i have a fake account featuring a fake person with a fake life and fake followers. she let that one follow her.”

“i should really stop questioning you. you’re obviously very capable at this whole revenge thing.”

“yeah, the sooner you do that, the faster our conversations will be. so i went through all the accounts she follows, which thankfully aren’t many because the bitch likes having a skinny mini following to follower ratio.” 

joshua shakes his head at your name-calling but fights off a smile anyway.

“i picked out every man—again, not many because she was probably mindful of them being able to see each other’s accounts—and i looked up their occupations on linkedin and if they made a good salary, they made the cut. from there, i just heavily cyberstalked them until i had no choice but to rule them out, or in jungkook’s case, until i found something incriminating.”

he doesn’t bother asking because he can see you get a kick out of explaining this to him.

“a photo of him and mina at a romantic dinner, dated a year and a half ago.”

“before me.”

you nod. “yup. jungkook is an investment banker, aka basically a bank, period, to mina. and seeing as the korean stock exchange is based in busan, he’s constantly flying between there and here for work—”

“making him another good candidate for a boyfriend since he wouldn’t demand a lot of her time.”

you nod and point at him. “exactly! which brings us to boyfriend #4.” you put your phone on the table and gesture at him. “you.”

he nods. “me.”

you tilt your head at him. “honestly, i couldn’t figure out what it was that made mina choose you.”

he scoffs. “wow.”

“no, don’t get me wrong,” you say, shaking your head calmly. “you’re a fucking catch—leagues better than any of these guys as far as i can tell.” he feels his cheeks get hot. “but that’s why i couldn’t figure it out. mina digs her claws into these rich, kinda vain, kinda power-hungry men, and then she found you, and you’re yes, rich, but also kind, sweet, caring, and all of the other good words in the dictionary.”

the heat spreading across his face grows exponentially warmer. 

“therefore, i concluded that mina chose you to be her real boyfriend.” 

joshua frowns. 

“doesn’t it make sense? she chooses guys who are either romantically unavailable or physically unavailable, so she still has all this time on her hands. the girl is evil but she’s also human so she craved an actual partner. she chose you.”

it sounds like it should be a compliment, but joshua feels even more repulsed by the idea that three just wasn’t enough for her. she really went out of her way to find him and torment him when she had more than enough to go around.

“this is the kind of greed the bible warned us about,” joshua mutters under his breath, mostly to himself. you hear it though, and the sound of your laugh immediately makes him smile back at you.

“yeah, mina is definitely a warning sign from god.”

“wish i listened.”

you give him a smile. “eh, where’s the fun in that?”

he knows you’re just trying to make him feel better but that you probably don’t believe that. he hasn’t forgotten what you were like the first night you met—how you cried and drank so miserably. still, you somehow found it in yourself to joke around like this. it makes him stop moping.

“okay,” he says, nodding and leaning forward with renewed vigor. “so she’s really good at time management. now what?”

you laugh. “she doesn’t need to be good at time management because i learned that mina doesn’t even fucking work, bro.”

the information is jarring enough that he doesn’t fully register what you call him. “what?”

“i called the company you mentioned her working for and pretended to be a recruiter calling for a reference, and they said no one by that name has ever worked there,” you report. “i think she’s making her living off her boyfriends. which is why i said that she only needed you to pay for dates. the others are funding her whole life.”

“oh my god, i hate her,” he says plainly as he thinks of all the “overtime” she had to clock in and the “business trips” she went on and the never-ending complaints about a boss that didn’t even exist. “what kind of fucking sociopath…”

you nod solemnly. “it at least makes our job easier; all we have to do is cut her from her money source.”

“the boyfriends.”

you hum affirmatively. “you and minhyuk are already done, so we just need to get siwoo and jungkook to cut her off. but now that she’s suddenly out two streams of income, i’m sure she’ll be really laying it on thick with those two to make up for it. we’ll have to be a bit creative.”

the craziest, most intrusive thought enters joshua’s head and in the next second, it’s exiting his mouth. “mingyu returns this weekend.”

you raise an eyebrow at the sudden change of topic but you don’t comment on it. “mingyu, the man you kept accusing me of being when i first messaged you?” you ask, sneering at the mere mention of his name. “that mingyu?”

he nods. “yup. there’s always been three of us: me, jeonghan, mingyu. he’s been traveling and he comes back in a few days.”

“okay… and what exactly does that have to do with ruining mina’s life?”

joshua grins, feeling excitement bubbling in his stomach. “kim mingyu, y/n, is rich. and not just comfortable—actually rich. as in rich enough for mina to drop all her boyfriends and quit scouting rich guys for the rest of her life if she had reason to think he was willing to fully support her.”

“does she not know what one of your best friends looks like…?” you question, making the most judgmental face joshua thinks he’s ever seen. he snickers.

“nope,” he says, popping the p. “mingyu’s been gone for the entirety of our relationship, traveling all over the place, so she never met him and his social media presence is equivalent to your aggretsuko account—for looking, not posting. all he does online is try to prank me.” he laughs more fully now, shaking his head at how perfect it is. “he’s a bored trust fund baby who knows how to act. he’s going to love doing this.”

your mouth drops open in awe, staying there for several seconds before you realize you haven’t said anything. “well,” you mutter, a smile very slowly beginning to spread across your face, “if you say he’s rich, then he must be absolutely rolling in it. and if he’s rolling in it—”

“then mina’s going to take the bait.”

you grin widely now, leaning forward onto the coffee table and shaking your head. “you, joshua hong, are so much more diabolical than you let on.”

he smirks. “learning from the best.”

“oh, she is so over.”

a/n: thanks for your patience! i'm afraid i will require more of it as i continue getting used to my new schedule LOL (´｡• ᵕ •｡`) ♡

if you’d like to be added to the tag list, comment here or send me an ask! if you requested to be on the list but weren’t tagged in this post or the reblog, it’s bc you don’t have an age indicator on your page. pls add that (and lmk that you did) if you want to be tagged next time.

part three teaser

"i really lost myself in this, y'know?" you whisper, head tilting up at the sky like maybe you'll find whatever it is you think you lost up there in the never-ending black. 

joshua follows your gaze. “i don’t think you lost anything. i think it’s all still there.”

“how would you know? you didn’t know who i was before siwoo changed every aspect of me and my life,” you remind him like he needs to be reminded at all. every day, he found himself thinking about what life would be like if he had met you before siwoo had. he doesn’t need the reminder.

“i know because there’s no way any part of you that’s here with me right now is because of siwoo,” he tells you confidently. “you’re so… funny and smart and confident and reliable and cool. and you want me to believe any of that is because of siwoo?”

that gets him a small smile. “careful or i’ll start to think you have a favorable opinion of me.”

he snorts. “if you don’t already think that, i’m probably not being a good enough friend.”

joshua looks down when you press your shoulder against his. the breeze blows strands of hair into your face, and he suppresses the desire to tuck them behind your ear. “you’re a great friend. probably the greatest i’ve made in my adult life.”

he nods. “you too. all of you—every version of you before, during, and after siwoo. i like them all. even the ones i never got to meet."

"you're so..." you start but never finish.

"hmm?"

"nothing," you say. "thanks."

"for?"

"saying all of those nice things."

"pfft, don't get too big-headed about it," he says, trying to play it cool. you smile. "i just can't stand the idea that you think any part of who you are today is due to an idiot like siwoo."

you sigh and rest your head against his shoulder. he has to actively try to keep his body relaxed when you do. “did you know that the name siwoo means divine intervention?”

joshua shakes his head. “i didn’t.”

“divine intervention,” you repeat, scoffing this time. “like, yeah. he definitely intervened and derailed my whole life, that’s for sure. i have no idea where the fuck ‘divine’ comes from, though.”

“are you sure you didn’t misread it and it’s actually disturbing intervention?”

you laugh and slap his arm softly. “what does joshua mean?” you ask after a few moments of silence.

“uh,” he squints as he tries to remember what his mom told him, “salvation, i think.”

you suddenly lift your head up off his shoulder and look at him, eyes narrowing a little as you very closely and openly study his face. he feels self-conscious, a feeling he seems to have gotten used to around you.

“salvation…” it sounds like you’re testing the word on your tongue. you scan his face for something he doesn’t have the composure to ask about right now. no, his composure is nowhere to be found as your gaze rakes every centimeter of every feature of his face, taking your time like you're simultaneously trying to understand him and committing him to memory. “huh" is all you say when you're done.

“what?” he asks quietly, resisting the urge to pass a hand over his face in case there’s something on it. 

“nothing,” you say, face relaxing one again. you smile a little, and even with the lessened intensity, your stare is starting to feel like it’s burning a hole right through him. “it’s just… fitting. joshua. salvation.”

and why exactly would that be fitting?

tag list: @coupsma @tokitosun @nothingbutadeadesceane @ateez-atiny380 @minghaofied @reiofsuns2001 @turtash @https-seishu @gaslysainz @dawn-iscozy @mrsjohnnysuh @sunnysidesins @thepoopdokyeomtouched @faizaa09 @hearts4itoshi @iamdkayyyyy @randojeon @iwannakisspoutycheol @youre-on-your-ownkid @justanotherkpopstanlol @sanaxo-o @seokqt @tjtales @ilouvwonwoo @littlemisshyperfixation @mxelatrix-x @papichulomacy @o-schist @sumzysworld @alyssa19123456

[lassiie]

Power Play pt.2

sub!boss Jake x co-worker!dom reader (ft.jay)

CONTENT ↠ nsfw! smut!, sub Jake, dom reader, needy sub attitude, power play, sexual tension, worship/mommy kink, toys, edging, cum denial, servitude kink, head recieving, overstimulation, premature climax, degradation play, rope, fluff and romance (what should i say i'm a romantic...),yapper Jake is my shit, feat Jay my love !!

WORDCOUNT ↠ 11k~ (no proof reader yet !)

Part 2 of Power Play is here!! 💥 I rushed this one out early just for @ri4-lovesenha, @raven-unkind & @bambiihee I promised, more sub!Jake 💗 It’s freakier than Part 1 since they’re in a full sub/dom dynamic now

It’s been two months since Jake Sim — golden manager, corporate darling, quiet wet dream of half the women in the building — officially became yours. Not yours in the polite, romantic, LinkedIn-appropriate way. No. Yours in the real, stripped-down under-the-table kind of way. Yours like : “get on your knees and don’t speak unless I let you.” Yours like: “you’ll cum when I say so — not a second before.” And he’d thanked you for it. Every fucking time. His eyes glossy, mouth open, gratitude pouring off him like sweat.

You’re dom and sub now. Officially! And the active kind, not the online-inspo-board, “I call him sir on weekends” kind. You’d made it clear from day one that if you were going to do this, it would be structured, with intention. You’re a professional after all. PowerPoint-level organization, calendar reminders, one session per week— minimum—On Friday night. Penciled between boardroom battles and email chains that could kill a man.

But somewhere along the way, it stopped being just about rules. Because Jake... Yeah, Jake freaking Sim was not just a perfect boss. And not just a needy sub begging to be ruined. He also was—and god help you— one of the cutest men alive.

You noticed it one Sunday, when he spent twenty quiet minutes fidgeting with your nails, a dumb smile on his face, while you both watched a documentary on Roman history. Then again the next week, when he curled up against you with a book in one hand and the other idly tugging at your hoodie string like a cat in a sunbeam. And don’t even get started on the nipple thing. It was endearing until it wasn’t—until one night he got so carried away stroking and pinching slowly harder and harder, that your tits actually hurt the next morning, and you had to ban him from even looking at them without explicit clearance. He apologized with a handwritten note and home somthings that looked like breakfast. You accepted.

So yes, it’s… domestic. Comfortable. The line between scenes and real life began to blur in the softest ways. Now, it’s a habit—to eat together after a particularly brutal night. To shower together and split the loofah like sinners trying to cleanse their sins. You don’t cuddle. Not officially. But he sleeps better with his head on your lap or your belly and your fingers carding through his hair... So you let him.

And at work? Nothing’s changed.

Jake is still the picture of leadership — polished, poised, too damn polite for his own good. And you? You’re still you. Frost-edged, perfectly put together, politely untouchable. But now, he belongs to you. Which makes things easier. Especially on days like today.

Days like this.

flushed like he’s about to combust, back to the wall, eyes wide. You’d texted him mid-meeting, one line, no emoji.

You’ve got four minutes, meet me in the west wing bathroom... Women’s

And he obeyed. Because he always obeys. He slipped in like a shadow, breath already shaky, pupils blown wide with anticipation.

You follow heels sharp on the tile, sliding the lock with a metallic click that might as well have sealed his fate. You don’t speak. Just turn around and corner him, pressing close — so close your chest brushes his tie, your perfume curling around his brain like a noose.

“Pants,” you murmur, voice soft but razor-sharp.

He obeys. Too fast. Belt unbuckled, zipper down, trousers around his knees. You catch a glimpse of the tip — flushed, already leaking. Boxers thin and helpless, no barrier at all.

And then you lean in.

Your hand slides between you — slow, casual — until your palm cups him through the fabric. And god, he whimpers.

Your fingers flex around his cock, pressing, not stroking — just reminding him who owns it. Who decides what he gets, and when. He jerks in your hand like it’s the first time anyone’s ever touched him.

You lean closer, lips against the shell of his ear, and smile.

“You think I brought you in here to suck you off like you were good?”

He twitches. “I—I thought—”

“Oh, baby,” you purr. “You’re so far from good.”

From your bag, you pull out a device — a sleek little ring of black silicone and a small chrome design, smooth and sexy. Jake recognizes it immediately. His breath stutters. He looks like he might cry from hope.

“Boxers off.”

They hit the floor instantly. You kneel, slide the ring over his cock and balls in one practiced motion. And he gasps high and wrecked, nearly collapsing against the stall door. Then you reach into your bag again and lift your phone — screen glowing, the app already open.

His eyes blow wide.

“You’ll wear it through the rest of the day,” you say, tapping the setting labeled 'steady pulse', watching him twitch in real time as the gentle hum starts low. “Meeting starts in ten. If you can hold it together...”

You glance up from beneath your lashes, smile wickedly.

“Dinner’s on me.”

He blinks, almost breathless. Gasping at your finger working the app.

“And tonight,” you whisper, licking your lips just to fuck with him, “you can ask for anything.”

He nods too fast, “Anything?”

You smile.

“Anything your little broken brain can think of, mr. Sim.”

You kiss the tip of his cock, just once to tease him. Enough to make him moan through his gritted teeth.

“Then pull it together,” you whisper, stepping back. “And fix your pants. You’re late.”

Then you leave him there, red-faced and straining, cock caged, soul on fire.

And at 4:05 sharp, Jake Sim enters the conference room with his tie too tight, his glasses perfectly straight, and his eyes locked on the PowerPoint like it’s the only thing keeping him from whimpering.

And you? You take your seat across from him. And just before the first slide clicks onto the screen, you reach for your phone.

Tap.

And watch him flinch. Like he lives for it.

Jake lasts.

Somehow.

Through the entire finance review, even when you tap the “pulse” setting mid-sentence while asking for clarification on Q3 projections — his voice hitching slightly, just enough for only you to notice.

He even makes it through the all-hands. Barely. Sweat beading at his temple, legs clenched tight, knuckles white where he grips his own wrist under the desk like he’s seconds from buckling. You watch him like a hawk, occasionally flicking your phone open just to see that tiny icon still glowing in the corner of the screen. Active. Synced. Steady.

At one point, you accidentally hit the "randomized wave" setting while stirring your coffee. His pen snaps. Just cracks in half, ink bleeding onto his neat notes, a quiet fuck under his breath that no one but you hears.

By the end of the day, he’s twitchy. Soft-eyed. Glazed.

The moment 6:04 hits, your phone buzzes.

🕛 Mr.Sim Jake (Work): I’ll wait in my office Please

No “Miss.” No punctuation. Just that one word, begging inside its own silence. Please.

You don’t respond. Just close your laptop, smooth your blouse, reapply your lipstick like you’re heading into a negotiation — because in a way, you are. He thinks this is his reward. That he’s about to be used, broken, maybe allowed release if he grovels right.

But you’re not done yet.

You step into his office without knocking, and what greets you nearly makes you laugh.

Jake Sim — polished, professional, always composed — is on the fucking floor.

On. The. Floor.

Suit jacket gone, tie loose and twisted, hair disheveled, pants unbuckled, boxer-briefs pulled taut around his thighs, cock flushed violently red and still caged in that perfect black ring. He’s clutching the carpet like it’ll ground him, gasping, hips twitching like he’s on the edge of a nervous breakdown.

And the second he sees you?

He looks wrecked. Worshipful. Pathetic.

You shut the door behind you and tilt your head like a curious cat.

“You couldn’t even wait on your feet?”

“I—I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to— I just— I can’t—”

You wave a hand. Dismissive. “No time for that, baby. I still have work.”

He blinks, like you slapped him with math.

You walk past him — slow, commanding, letting your heels click like a countdown to chaos — and sink onto the couch near the side wall, crossing your legs as if you’re just here to decompress.

From your bag, you pull a slim folder of papers.

“Come here,” you say, tapping the floor in front of the coffee table. “You’re still my superior, aren’t you? Gotta review these before I file.”

Jake crawls.

He actually crawls.

And kneels beside the low table, hands resting obediently on his thighs, lips parted as if he might start panting again. His cock twitches visibly in its ring — red, aching, wet at the tip. You ignore it.

Open the folder.

“You’re going to validate each paragraph for me, Mr. Sim. Verbally.”

He nods quickly.

You start reading aloud. Slowly. Bored, almost.

“Based on the Q2 metrics, we project a 12.4% increase in productivity following the onboarding of—”

“Yes,” he breathes.

One paragraph down.

You scroll your thumb across your phone. Vibrations hum through him.

Next one.

“The reduction in turnaround time aligns with adjusted expectations from last quarter—”

“Yes—” he gasps. A little too breathy.

And then you flick to a new setting. One you’ve been saving.

You hit “Voice Sync Mode.”

Jake twitches violently.

“Oh, right,” you say casually, tapping again. “Almost forgot. New feature. Vibrates based on… voice modulation. Funny, huh?”

You lower your tone, let it dip low and rich.

Jake bucks. Just slightly. Eyes wide, mouth open.

“Say yes for this one.”

“Yes,” he moans.

It triggers again. His hips stutter.

You keep reading. Keep your voice smooth, varied, slightly sing-song in parts just to fuck with him. Every line, every syllable — translated into chaos below the belt.

And he starts losing it.

“Yes,” he pants after every paragraph. Louder. Shakier. More breath than voice now. His hands twitch off his thighs, one dragging toward his cock before he jerks it back with a choked sob like he knows the rules.

By paragraph five, his voice cracks. By seven, he’s humping the air — subtle at first, then not. His head drops to your thigh like it’s the only safe place left on Earth, and he starts rubbing his cheek there. Like a cat in heat. Like a man desperate for grounding in a world that’s unraveling by the second.

You keep reading.

“Final page. If you can make it through—”

But he can’t.

He shudders.

One strangled, broken cry leaves his throat, and you feel the warmth of it — the twitch, the helpless thrust — and then he’s gone. Cumming in his briefs, thick and shameful, whimpering into your thigh, his whole body trembling like a fault line.

You don’t say anything.

Just gently stroke his hair.

Let him breathe.

Let him twitch and shake and sigh into the afterglow like a man who just gave up every ounce of pride he had left and didn’t even want it back.

And when the silence settles, heavy and warm, you finally speak — voice soft, back to that dangerous kind of care that feels more intimate than any orgasm ever could.

“You tried your best,” you murmur, brushing his hair off his forehead. He nods against your leg, ruined.

“Good boy.” Another whimper.

You glance at the clock. Pick up your folder.

“I’m heading home,” you say lightly, gathering your things. “Sleep. Hydrate. Lock the door if you’re gonna clean up here.”

And then you left him there kneeling, soaked, still wearing your ring, like the good little office pet he is.

You couldn’t play on Saturday.

Not because you were too busy, or tired, or felt the shift in the weather deep in your bones — though the forecast did have the nerve to threaten rain just as you left the office. No. You couldn’t play because Saturday, in some inconvenient act of cosmic irony, was your birthday.

A day you kept quiet. Deliberately. Not out of shame, or fear of getting older — god, no. You wore your age like you wore everything else: sharp, polished, with just enough bite to make people hesitate before asking anything too personal. You didn’t need celebration. You had plans to do absolutely nothing. Maybe a glass of wine. Maybe an orgasm. Maybe both at once. Alone.

But Jake, your painfully attentive, painfully eager, painfully good boy Jake… caught on.

You didn’t tell him.

He just knew.

And on Sunday, he asked if you’d still be willing to play. But — and this was where it got suspicious — he asked if you’d have dinner with him first. “Before the session,” he said, too casually. “Just us. I’ll text you the address.”

You agreed. Not thinking much of it.

Until you got there.

Until your heels clicked down the pristine marble hallway of a hotel that had no business being that opulent on a Sunday evening, and the concierge greeted you by name.

Until the elevator opened onto a private suite, and the door — already slightly ajar — creaked open with a whisper.

And there it was.

The dining table, perfectly set beneath dimmed golden lights, with soft music curling through the room like warmth in smoke. Low candles. A bouquet of white orchids. A bottle of red you’d once mentioned liking, twice, months ago. And at the center of the table — a cake. Small. Elegant. Iced in cream. With a single candle.

Jake stood by the far wall, hands behind his back, nervous in a way that didn’t suit him — cheeks pink, eyes flicking toward you like he’d been rehearsing this and still thought he’d fuck it up.

And then.

He sang.

Voice soft, slightly off-key, barely above a whisper — like it wasn’t meant to echo off the chandelier or the crystal glasses. Just for you. Just between the two of you.

Happy birthday to you.

You blinked once. Then again. A breath caught somewhere near your collarbone.

He smiled when he finished. And when you didn’t respond right away, he stepped forward, one hand awkwardly lifting the cake toward you like a shy waiter on his first day.

“It’s got that cream you like,” he said quietly. “Not too sweet. Just—like you.”

And you laughed. You had to. Because this man, this man who moans at your feet with your heel on his throat, just called you not too sweet like that was a compliment.

The dinner was incredible, of course. Not because of the food — though it was excellent — but because of him. Because Jake was attentive in a different way tonight. Still soft. Still sweet. But a little... lighter. He let himself be funny. Made you laugh twice so hard you had to cover your face. His hands trembled when he refilled your glass.

And when dessert came — after the cake, after a gentle toast, after your walls had lowered inch by inch without you realizing — he handed you a gift box.

Long. Sleek. Heavy.

You opened it, and froze.

Thin, stiletto-pointed, patent black high heels.

The expensive kind.

The fucked-up expensive kind.

The kind you’d once pointed at in a store window, laughed, and said, “The only way I’d justify those is if I was allowed to use them to stomp on someone. Otherwise, that price tag is a war crime.”

Jake hadn’t forgotten.

“I remembered,” he said, eyes wide and proud and so goddamn hopeful. “I know it’s kind of dramatic, but you—you said it. And I thought maybe…”

You raised a brow.

“You bought me shoes so I’d step on you?”

He flushed. “N-not just that. I mean—yes. But also… I thought you’d look good in them.”

You stared at him. At the shoes. At the man sitting across from you in a tailored shirt and a slightly shaky smile like he just handed you his throat in a velvet box.

And then you laughed. Low. Delighted.

“Oh, Jake,” you sighed, sliding one heel out of its bed of tissue paper. “You’re so easy.”

His breath hitched.

“You want me to try them on?”

He nodded. Fast. Almost trembling.

So you did. Slowly. Letting the heel dangle on your finger like a weapon before lifting your leg, extending it toward him under the table.

He didn’t even have to be asked. He slid to his knees beside your chair and took your foot in both hands — reverent. Careful. Slipping the shoe on like a prince in a fucked-up fairytale, except he was the one being ruined.

The heel clicked against the floor when you set it down.

He shuddered.

“Do the other,” you murmured, tone already turning silkier, darker.

He obeyed. You leaned back in your chair, legs crossed, watching him fumble slightly with the strap, his breath shallow, fingers lingering just a little too long at your ankle.

You reached down — ran your fingers through his hair, soft and slow — and he melted into the touch like you’d blessed him.

“You’re so predictable,” you whispered, dragging a nail against his scalp. “You see me in new shoes and your first thought is: God, I hope she steps on my cock with them.”

He whined. Whined.

“You’re disgusting,” you added, voice lowering to that tone that made him squirm. “And I’m going to ruin you for thinking you deserved them.”

His eyes fluttered shut and his lips streached in a soft smile. But your fingers didn’t stop stroking. Didn’t stop soothing.

They moved gently through Jake’s hair — soft little passes, nails grazing his scalp. And he leaned into it without thinking, without pride. Just instinct. Like his head was meant to be there, pressed against your thigh, like your hand had become some sacred thing in his world—the thing that settled him, grounded him, reminded him he was owned.

You watched him breathe.

Watched the rise and fall of his shoulders, the trembling hush in his chest — like he couldn’t tell if this was aftercare or the beginning of something worse. And quietly, without words, something warm started to bloom beneath your ribs.

It wasn't just the usual heat and lust. Not the thrill of control you usually fed off of. No, this was quieter, closer to peace. And it wasn't the first time the past two month...

Like, somehow, this— the candlelight, the new shoes, his mouth against your thigh— was exactly where you were supposed to be.

You almost thought it aloud... But no... Nevermind...

Instead, you hummed softly and let your other hand trail down to his cheek, tilting his chin up so he is forced to look at you. He did. Of course he did. Eyes wide and glassy, like something holy had cracked open inside him and spilled out right onto the hotel carpet.

“Remember what I said on Friday?” you murmured. “About rewards?”

Jake blinked, dazed. “Y-yes." His lips parted.

“I said if you were good, you could ask for anything.”

He nodded quickly, eager, already breathing faster.

“And tonight?” You smiled. “You were very, very, very good. Jake.”

Jake’s breath caught, fuck he loves it when you drop the mr. Sim act.

His hands— those shaky, fidgeting, obedient sexy hands— lifted toward his own lap, smoothing his pants like he was trying to behave, trying to stay calm, but already failed. His gaze dropped. He tried to keep eye contact, you know, tried to stay confident. But the moment you gave him permission— real permission— to speak his wants out loud?

He cracked.

“I… um… if I’ve really been good,” he whispered, voice a little pitched, “C-can I…” He hesitated. Swallowed, his eyes on your thighs adjusting himself like it prevented you from seing his hard on. “Can I eat you out again? it's been ages... I want to make you cum, like before. But like, now. On the floor. Or the couch. Or the bed. Wherever. Please—I'll be good, I promise.”

You raised an eyebrow, and smile streached.

“Is that your first wish?” He nodded hesitant. But then his mouth opened again.

Of course...

“And maybe—maybe I could wear the collar? While I do it? Like... Just the collar and nothing else... Like your—your birthday toy.” Y-you can even put me on a leash if you want— please, I’ll be good, I won’t hump your leg unless you let me—”

You bit your bottom lip, just to keep from smiling even more. Man, his brain had slipped its leash the second you gave him permission. It made you wet straightaway.

“And can I… can I touch myself? Not cum, just—just stroke while I do it. Just feel how hard I get from tasting you. And when I finish, you don’t even have to let me cum, you could just—just spit in my mouth and call me your good little fuckhole—”

You didn’t answer. Just kept petting his hair. But he can read you better than you do to him. You don't realise how turned on your face is. Even your grip on his fluffy hair got harder. Fuck, Jake loves you.

Yeah... I love you. Jake bit his lip.

“Or—or you could make me jerk off onto the floor while you watch, and make me beg to make love with you. Like I’m disgusting. Like I don’t even deserve your attention unless I earn it—Or maybe… if I’m really good—”

He stop.

You press your fingers to his lips and he trailed off, eyes fluttered. slidding your finger inbetween his shy plump lips. It was like even saying it was too much. Like he didn't already write the whole fiction of tonight in his head.

“Tell me, Jake.”

He looked down again, cheeks flushed, voice almost too small to hear.

“Can I... Call you Mommy tonight?”

Silence. Tense. Heavy. Drenched in anticipation.

"I know it's not really your thing..." he blabered, "But I was wondering—if maybe... We could try tonight.

Then—

You leaned in, brushed your thumb over his bottom lip, and smiled.

“Oh, my cute puppy,” you purred, letting the word drag like honey down your throat. “You’re going to get everything you asked for.”

He whimpered. Like the word alone undid him. His breath came hot and shaky against your palm. His eyes looked up at you, fully gone — feral, hungry, a little stupid with need. Like he wanted to crawl inside your skin and beg for permission to exist there.

You sank back into the chair like it was your throne — one leg draped over the other in a lazy cross, elbow resting along the back like you had all the time in the world, like you weren’t already wet just from the look on his face — and without a word, you lifted your foot, the sharp new heel catching the light as it hovered by his lips, until he opened up like a trained thing and started mouthing at the pointed tip, desperate, reverent, like kissing your shoe might earn him oxygen.

“Jake, take off your clothes.”

He scrambled.

Shoes. Shirt. Pants. Everything peeled off with frantic sexiness, like each layer was an offense to the role he was meant to play — until he was kneeling there, naked and flushed, chest rising fast, ears pink, cock already half-hard from nothing but the sound of your voice.

And fuck, his body — God, his body — lean and sharp like he was carved from something meant to bleed for you, muscles smooth but defined, not bulked but taut beneath skin that showed every line, every ridge, every twitch. His back, deceptively broad, flexed as he shifted onto his knees, and you caught the way his arms looked almost too toned for someone who claimed to be helpless— the way his veins ran like threads of promise down to those shaking, obedient hands. And when he reached into his bag— of course he brought it, because your good boy always comes prepared— and pulled out his collar without being asked, you nearly sighed, because it was all too much.

Too perfect. Too fucking yours.

He held it out like an offering. And you put it on him. You dragged your heel along his shoulder. He shivered.

“You wanted to worship Mommy tonight?”

He nodded, mouth agape. “Then come show me, be a good dog.”

And when he crawled forward on hands and knees — panting, eyes blown wide, mouth open — you knew : You were going to let him have everything.

Because you loved seeing him like this, loved it... Your game... You... loved him ?

Maybe...

He reached your knees. And then he groaned. Loud and wrecked.

Your panties — soaked. He buried his face in them immediately, moaning into the fabric, licking you through it like he’d been starved for days and finally stumbled upon a feast. You stayed still, head tilted, watching him degrade himself with quiet fascination.

And then he used his teeth — gently at first, then not — dragging the lace aside, tearing holes in the delicate fabric just to get to you, to taste you raw, no barriers, no patience.

The moment his tongue touched your pussy, he let out the most pathetic sound — a sob disguised as a moan — and you saw it in his whole body: the way his arms trembled, the way his shoulders rolled forward, the way his hips twitched helplessly against the carpet.

Like worship was killing him.

He licked with hunger first. Frenzied. Like he couldn’t get enough. His mouth moved fast — messy circles, tongue flattening, then curling, lips sucking at your clit with zero grace. No rhythm. Just need.

You almost laughed. “Jake,” you breathed, threading your fingers into his hair. “You’re making a fucking mess.”

“M’sorry,” he panted. “Tastes too good. Can’t stop—can’t—”

You yanked his head closer in answer. “Don’t you dare stop.”

And he didn’t.

He buried himself deeper, tongue working in tighter, sharper patterns. He found rhythm then. Purpose. His hands came up, gripping your thighs, spreading you open wider. He let your heel rest against his shoulder, the other curling behind his neck like a leash, and you let yourself fall back against the couch with a long, low moan — head tipping, mouth parting, hips beginning to twitch.

You were close. Too close.

And he felt it. The tension in your thighs. The way your breathing shifted.

So he slowed.

The fucking bastard slowed.

“Jake,” you growled, but he just hummed into your clit, tongue drawing soft little circles now — featherlight. Infuriating. And then, just when you were about to command him again—

He sucked. Hard.

You came.

Fast. Violent. A sharp, hot surge that slammed into your spine and rolled through your body like a goddamn earthquake. You moaned, bit your bottom lip to keep from crying out, hips stuttering against his face as your hands fisted in his hair like you were drowning.

And he didn’t stop.

Not for a second.

He groaned into your cunt like it fed him. Like your orgasm gave him oxygen. He sucked through it, licked every aftershock, every twitch, every whimper that escaped you. And then — when your thighs trembled and your hips tried to retreat — he shifted.

One hand — previously gripping your thigh like a man clinging to salvation — slid down.

Between your legs.

And without asking, without hesitating, he pressed two fingers against your soaked entrance, teasing first, just circling — and then he shoved them in.

You gasped — hard.

“Jake—”

He curled them immediately. Like he knew. Like he’d memorized the blueprint of your body and knew exactly what would shatter you. He didn’t give you time to adjust. Just fucked his fingers into you fast and deep, knuckles slick with your first orgasm while his mouth stayed latched to your clit, sucking like a man possessed.

Your body jolted — thighs trying to close, hips stuttering against his face, your hands flailing for something to grab, anything — the armrest, his hair, your own wrist.

“Jake, I can’t—”

“Yes, you can,” he mumbled, voice low and hot and buried in your cunt. “Let me. Please, Mommy—let me make you come again.”

And fuck, you did.

The second orgasm ripped through you — louder, messier, wetter — your walls clenching around his fingers as he kept driving them into you, his palm slick, heel of his hand grinding against you as you moaned so hard it felt like you might pass out.

"Holy fuck—" you cried, legs spasming.

But he still. Didn’t. Stop.

Your voice broke. "I said stop—"

He pulled back from your clit for one second, just long enough to moan against your folds, "I'll make you feel good—"

Then went right back to it.

His fingers curled harder now, precise, brutal. Three now — you didn’t even know when he added a third — but you felt it. Deep. Full. Your body couldn’t tell where the pleasure ended and pain began, everything smearing together into one long, mindless scream that echoed through the room as your third orgasm crashed into you like a fucking freight train.

You shoved him off, finally — heel pressing into his chest just enough to make him stumble back, fall onto his ass, panting and glassy-eyed and soaked with your slick. He blinked up at you like he didn’t even know where he was.

You were still shaking, legs trembling from the overload, breath ragged. You sat there — limp, fucked, worshiped — and stared at the man who’d just made you come like that with nothing but his tongue, and fingers and a death wish.

You’d never felt this safe. This powerful. This wanted. And he crawled back forward. Pressed his cheek to your thigh. Didn’t say anything. Just breathed against you.

You reached down and pulled him into a kiss — wet, sloppy, tongue-first and desperate, all teeth and spit, and god, he melted into it. Of course he did. You were still soaked from what he did to you, thighs a mess, cunt twitching with aftershocks — and he was the one trembling.

You pulled back and let your palm curl around his cock, rough and flushed and leaking across your fingers like it had been hurting for attention. He hissed when you touched it, and then groaned — loud, helpless — when you dragged your heel down, pressing it gently at first into his balls before slowly, firmly, crushing down.

“Mm. You look like you’re suffering right there,” you murmured, voice all syrup and sin.

He nodded, panting through clenched teeth.

“Is eating me out really getting you this excited?” you purred, cocking your head like it actually surprised you.

He nodded again. Hissed when you pressed harder with your heel. “Yes, Mommy—fuck, yes—it’s so much, I can’t—”

You let go of his cock.

“Touch yourself.”

He froze.

“I didn’t say you could cum,” you added lazily. “But I want to see you do it. Look at you. A grown man on the floor, balls bruised, begging for permission to jerk off in front of the woman who just came on his face.”

Jake’s hand moved fast — too fast — and you could already tell he was on edge. He gripped himself tight, started stroking, sloppy and aching, cock bobbing under his own frantic rhythm. But his eyes were locked on you.

You leaned back, legs still spread, panties ruined somewhere under the couch, slick still glistening on your thighs.

And you smirked.

He whimpered.

“Oh, god—” he gasped, jerking himself harder. “Please, just—just watch me—watch me, Mommy, please, I want you to see me—”

You raised a brow. “Why?”

He blinked. Swallowed.

“Say it.”

“Because—” he choked, “because I look pathetic—and… you’re still so perfect and I’m just here, jerking off on the floor like a freak—”

You tilted your head, letting your gaze drift over him slowly, from his flushed face to his slick stomach to the veins in his arms flexing with every stroke.

“You think I’m enjoying this?” you asked flatly, voice bored. “You think I want to see you make a mess of yourself like some shameless animal?”

He moaned.

“I—I hope s—”

“You hope so?”

He bit his lip. His hand never stopped. He was panting now, eyes burning into your body.

“And you like being watched?” you asked. “Even like this?”

He nodded, voice breaking. “I like when you see how bad I want you. How stupid I get. I-I-I want you to know what you do to me. I want to look at you and see your thighs and your cunt and your attitude and know I’m not allowed to have any of it—unless you let me.”

You hummed.

“And what do you want me to do to you, Jake?”

His eyes glazed over. “Everything—” Hips jerking.

“No. Be specific.”

He whimpered.

“I want you to hit me when I cum—open palm, across the face, hard enough that I feel it later. I-I-I want you to spit in my mouth again, like last time, and tell me I’ve earned it. I want you to put that heel back into my cock until I’m shaking—until I can’t move without permission. I want you to laugh when I beg, call me pathetic, make me say what I am. I want you to choke me—tight—long…hng… Long enough that I have to ask to breathe—and wh-when you let go, I want to thank you. I want your slick on my face, dried down my neck, smeared over my mouth like a collar—and I want to sleep in it. Don’t let me clean up. Make me keep it…”

You watched him stroke harder, hips twitching, spit almost sliding down his chin from how hard he was panting.

“I want you to ruin me and then hold me after… I….  Want to make you cum again and again until I cry. I want you—to never… Never stop looking at me.”

You leaned forward. And he shuddered. You didn’t say a word. Just watched.

And when he came — loud, messy, too fast and too much — he cried your name. again. and again. and again.

You reached down and pulled him into a kiss — wet, tongue-first, needy. Sloppy and lost. And he melted. Of course he did. His mouth opened instantly, like instinct, like prayer. His lips were soaked from your cunt, and yours still tasted like his worship, so the whole thing was just spit and sin and heat. He groaned into it, soft and broken, like the kiss alone was enough to undo him.

You were still a mess — slick between your thighs, muscles twitching from the high he forced out of you, panties ruined and forgotten — and yet he was the one shaking. 

shit it felt good !

You broke the kiss first, dragging his bottom lip between your teeth until it snapped free. Then your hand dropped — right to his cock. Hard. Leaking. Angry-red and trembling in your palm like it had been hurting for you. You curled your fingers around it with practiced ease, thumb smearing his mess along the head just to make him whimper.

And then your heel dragged between his legs. Slowly.

You pressed into his balls — lightly at first, then firmer — until he gasped, jaw tightening, hips frozen like he didn’t know whether to rut forward or flinch.

“Mm.” You let your voice drip with amusement. “You look like you’re suffering right there.”

He nodded fast. Too fast. Shoulders tense. “Yes, Mommy—yes, it hurts—but it’s so good—I need more—please—”

You gave his cock a lazy stroke. Nothing to write about but enough for him to jolt.

“Is eating me out really what did this to you?” you murmured. “Made you this hard?”

He nodded again—practically whining.

“Mommy, it’s you, it’s always you—I get like this when you look at me, when you talk to me—fuck, fuck, fuck, even your voice makes my cock hurt.”

You smiled. Let go.

“Touch yourself.” He froze.

“You don’t get to cum,” you added, like an afterthought. “You cum without permission, and I walk out of this room. Leave you like this. Understand?”

He nodded, mouth open, eyes wet. “Yes. Yes, Mommy.”

He reached for himself instantly—like he’d been waiting hours for that command. His hand wrapped around his cock and started stroking hard, fast, filthy. His other hand trembled on his thigh, like he didn’t know what to do with it. His whole body was tight, twitching, sweat glistening down his chest and veiny arms. You could see every muscle working just to keep himself upright.

But he was looking at you. Your body, your gaze. Never looked away.

You leaned back into the couch, legs still spread, one arm draped lazily over the backrest. Slick still shone between your thighs. You didn’t say anything. Just watched, and played with the sound your own wetness.

Jake moaned immediately. “Please—please keep watching—please, I—I want you to see me like this—”

“Why?” you said flatly.

He swallowed, hard.

“Say it.”

“Because—because I look like a mess,” he whimpered, stroking faster without thinking. “Because I look fucking pathetic, and it’s only for you—you did this to me—your pussy, your voice, your fucking eyes, everything—”

You tilted your head.

“You think I enjoy watching you jerk off like some pathetic little mutt on the floor?”

“I—I hope you d—” he gasped. “maybe I hope you don’t—maybe I hope you think I’m disgusting. Because I am, Mommy. I’m a disgusting pervert for you. No one else gets to see me like this. No one can. Just you—Just you.”

You exhaled slowly, like you were watching an experiment spiral into something deliciously ugly.

“And what do you want me to do to you, Jake?”

His hips jerked forward like the question alone hit his prostate. “Everything,” he moaned.

You narrowed your eyes. “No. Be specific.”

He looked up at you like he was about to cry.

“I want you to slap me when I cum,” he whimpered, “hard. Across the face. Make me feel you for days. I want you to spit in my mouth again—please, like last time—while I’m begging. I want you to wear those heels and step on me. Make me thank you while you do it. Tell me I’m nothing. Laugh when I fuck you and swear to me.”

His stroking grew faster — slick, loud, hips twitching like he was fighting to stay in his body.

“I want you to choke me until I have to ask to breathe,” he gasped. “And when you let go, I want to thank you. Like a good boy. Like your property.”

He was shaking now.

“I want to sleep in your slick. Face coated in it. Neck wet. Chest marked. Don’t let me wash it off—please, I want to wear it. Like a collar. Like a proof.”

You said nothing. Just stared. And he broke.

“I want you to ruin me. And then hold me after. Kiss my forehead like I’m not broken. Make me make you cum again until I’m crying from how much I need you. Mommy, I swear to god—” he sobbed, “no one else can do this to me. It’s you. It’s always been you. I’m think of you—your body, your voice, your pussy—I want to live under you—”

your thighs were twitching. His breath was ragged. His whole body trembled like it was about to shut down.

“Please look at me when I cum,” he begged, “please—please see me—please, I need you—”

You nod and almost moan in your breath, And he came.

Loud. Raw. A broken, choked sob of your name as cum spilled over his knuckles, painting his abs, his thighs, the floor. He kept stroking through it, messy and wild, eyes locked on yours even as tears welled up in them. He looked wrecked. Ruined.

He cried out again. Your name again. and again and again. Whispered like a prayer, repeated like a compulsion — quieter each time, like he couldn’t stop saying it, like it was the only thing left tethering him to reality. And when the last of his orgasm spilled over his wrist and onto the floor, his body simply… slumped.

Collapsed at your knees now closed.

Shaking, silent, mouth open but not speaking anymore — breath coming in little broken bursts as if the air around him had gotten too thin. And for a moment, you just watched him. Not as a dom. Not as a goddess. Just… watched the boy you adored fall to pieces in front of you.

Then you moved. You slid down from the couch to the carpet, kneeled in front of him — with him — and reached out. He flinched at first, not from fear but fragility and maybe self consciousness.

But you cupped his face anyway. Held him gently, thumbs brushing across his hot, damp cheeks, and leaned in to press a soft kiss just under his eye.

“Shh,” you whispered, voice low. Warm. Real. “You’re okay, baby. I’ve got you.” Jake’s eyes fluttered shut. His body leaned into yours like gravity had given up. And then — quietly, barely audible — he sniffled.

“I’m sorry,”

You froze. “Why?”

He swallowed hard. Still wouldn’t open his eyes. “For saying too much. For… being too much of a sub.”

You pressed your lips to his forehead. Then his temple. Then his cheek.

“You weren’t too much,” you said, kissing between words. “You were honest. Perfect. Mine.”

He whimpered— a small, broken sound— and then his arms wrapped around your waist, so tight, so desperate, like he didn’t care about the mess or the sweat or the fact that he was naked and half-crying on a hotel room floor.

You held him. Stroked his hair. Kissed behind his ear. Whispered things only he was allowed to hear.

“My good boy.” “My perfect thing.” “You did so well for me.”

Minutes passed like that. Or hours. You weren’t sure. The quiet felt infinite, like the world had shrunk down to the warmth of two bodies pressed together under dim light and the soft scent of sex and sweat and trust.

Eventually, he pulled back — reluctantly — just far enough to look at you. His eyes were sleepy, still red. But he smiled, small and exhausted.

“…Can we—” he hesitated. Bit his lip looking at you. “Can we sleep here?”

You raised a brow. “We don’t have anything packed.”

“I know.” He blinked. “I just don’t want you to leave. Not tonight. I wanna fall asleep with you... Please.”

You looked at him for a moment. Then nodded.

“Okay,” you said softly. “But first, let’s clean up.”

Jake followed you wordlessly to the bathroom, still trembling a little, wide-eyed like he couldn’t believe you were really going to stay.

The water ran hot, steam blooming fast as you stepped under it together — skin on skin, sticky and marked, your bodies pressed close in the quiet rush of heat.

You reached for the soap, lathered slowly, and started with his chest.

He gasped — not from the temperature, but from the way you touched him. Like he was something precious. Something yours.

You washed him soft. Careful. Thumbs running down his ribs, lips brushing over his shoulder once, twice. His hands stayed on your hips like he didn’t know what else to do — until you turned, smiled lazily over your shoulder, and offered him the bar.

“Your turn.”

He took it like a gift.

And then his hands were on you — warm and slow, fingers sliding over your skin like he was worshiping you in silence, like rinsing the sweat and slick off you was the most important job he’d ever been given. He kissed your neck. Your shoulder. Your lower back. You felt it in your knees.

By the time the water turned lukewarm, he was panting softly behind you, hard again without a word spoken, cock brushing your thigh like a question.

You didn’t answer it. Not yet. You just turned, kissed his cheek, and whispered, “Bed.”

And he followed you, lifting you, dripping and obedient, like you were the only thing in the world that made sense.

He didn’t let go of you, not even when you reached the bed. You both collapsed into the blankets, half-covered in nothing but the weight of each other.

And then — quiet giggle in his chest, warm kiss on your neck — Jake tugged you closer. And called your name.

You smiled into his collarbone. “Hmm?”

“…Can I fuck you sweet?”

You looked at him. He looked nervous. Flushed. But serious.

“…Not rough. Not a scene too. Just… I wanna make you feel good. Wanna be in you. Close.” His eyes did that triangle thing that made you smile.

Ans your heart did a weird thing in your chest. You didn’t say anything, just kissed him. Slow. Deep.

He slid into you like it was meant to happen in silence. No teasing. No commands. Just soft hands and warm breath and your legs curling around his hips, pulling him in like he belonged there— Oh he did.

You moved together like something practiced.

His forehead pressed to yours. His eyes never left your face. It wasn’t the kind of sex that left bruises. It was the kind that stayed under your skin for days.

And when you both came — whispering each other’s names, holding on like sleep might take you too soon — you didn’t bother separating. Just tangled yourselves up tighter under the blankets, legs and arms everywhere, breath syncing until the air went quiet.

Jake fell asleep first from exhaustion . Still inside you. Face tucked into your neck, hand resting on your hip and over your head, smile barely there.

And you followed. One last kiss to his hairline. One last thought, whispered only in your head.

Maybe I love you, Jake.

🕰️

Monday came too soon.

The city clicked back into motion like it hadn’t been on its knees three nights ago — like you hadn’t spent the weekend riding high on power and orgasm, like Jake Sim hadn’t buried his face between your thighs and cried your name like it was a gospel, like nothing in your bed had shifted something irreversible between you. But here you were. Blazer sharp. Hair tied up like a noose. Coffee in one hand, to-do list in the other. Face clean. Voice calm. And Jake?

Jake was perfect. Of course.

Golden manager. Corporate fantasy. Tie straight. Shoes polished. Smile polite, crisp, neutral — as if he hadn’t begged to sleep in your slick two nights ago. As if his mouth hadn’t broken you open like prayer.

He passed your desk at 9:02. On time. Silent. But his eyes flicked toward you — fast, hot, reverent — like he was starving for permission to even look.

Yeah. Not subtle.

The week dragged. Deadlines. Briefings. Emails that made you want to cry. A dozen little brushes of Jake’s arm at meetings, a few too-long looks across the conference room. Nothing said. Everything felt.

And then Wednesday came. And Jay walked in like a plot twist.

Jay — from the international branch. Jay who hadn’t changed a bit except in jawline and confidence. Tall, lean, just the right amount of cocky, with that you-can-trust-me grin and rolled-up sleeves that said he wasn’t here to play humble. You knew that walk before he even reached your side of the office. And you smiled before he even said your name.

“Holy shit,” he laughed, arms open, warm and loud and exactly the same. “Is that you?”

You stood to greet him, surprising the whole office, and for a second it was easy to forget anything else existed.

Jay had been your twin at your first job — the only rookie who matched your speed and fire, the one who helped you learn the ropes while you taught him how to cheat the system without getting caught. You’d shared too many late-night reports and too many energy drinks in parking lots to pretend this wasn’t real.

You hugged. Tight. No hesitation. His hand curled behind your neck like he’d missed you properly. “Good to see you.” he whispered.

“I didn’t even know you were stationed here,” you said into his shoulder.

“Temporary,” he replied, pulling back, smiling like trouble. “Two weeks. Project lead on cross-regional integration. Had to say yes when I heard who was running one of the teams.”

You rolled your eyes, grinning. “Still charming.”

“Still bossy,” he said, looking you over with a spark you didn’t bother flinching from. “God, you look good.”

Across the room, Jake watched the whole thing, leaning on a co-worker desk for a review. And if there had been a heart rate monitor clipped to his tie, it would’ve flatlined.

To everyone else, he looked as normal as the rest of this office watching. But his jaw was tight. His hand had stopped scrolling his subordinate mouse. Because Jay wasn’t just some regional project lead— he was Jake’s old friend. One of the few people he trusted, who knew things about him from years ago, who used to sleep on his couch in between overseas rotations and share shitty bar ramen and management rants.

And now he was here. Shaking your hand. Pulling you into hugs. Looking at you like he’d found something. And worse — you looked happy to see him. Not performative-happy. Not polite. Actually happy. You leaned in to talk. You laughed, like… Twice.

Jake couldn’t hear the conversation. He didn’t know Jay had just told you that Jake was famous in the international branch — that half the floor still referred to him as “the one who doesn’t fuck up.” He didn’t know that you’d laughed and said, “He’s still like that,” or that you’d softened when Jay said, “Honestly, I’m not surprised you two haven’t killed each other. You always scared me a little more than him anyway.”

Jake didn’t know that your giggles weren’t flirtation. They were about him.

All Jake saw was the closeness. The familiarity. The way Jay’s hand brushed your arm when he made a point. The way you didn’t flinch. The easy rhythm between you. And then, just to gut him further, Jay turned around during a meeting break and dapped Jake up like a brother.

“Still as stiff as ever,” Jay said, grinning, leaning against Jake’s desk like no time had passed.

“Still can’t read a brief without fucking the formatting,” Jake shot back. They laughed. It was real. Jake wanted to be happy to see him.

But his eyes kept flicking past Jay’s shoulder. Back to you. Because even if Jake and Jay were old friends — you and Jay looked like something else.

Jay invited the team to dinner that Friday. Said it was casual. Team bonding. International-branch hospitality. You said yes before Jake could even pretend to be indifferent. Like postponing your session was nothing.

Jake sat through the rest of the week in silence. Smile plastered on. Voice tight. His keyboard clicks a little too sharp. His jaw clenched every time Jay walked past your desk.

It wasn’t that he thought Jay was a threat. It was that you seemed… open around him. Relaxed. Familiar. The kind of open Jake had only seen when you were half-naked, straddling his thigh, calling him names while riding his face.

And now?

Now you were laughing at another man’s joke. Jake spiraled. Quietly. Painfully.

🕰️

By the next wednesday morning, Jake was unraveling like a ribbon since you texted him.

Cannot make it this week… Let's wait for next friday, mr. Sim

Mr. Sim ?? Mr. Sim ??

You called Jay by his first name even in the office. Joking about his korean name, in team dinners. But even in texts Jake stayed “Mr. Sim”, if it wasn’t a scene you never called him Jake. If it wasn’t in a bedroom, never let him touch you like Jay did.

He was mad. 

Oh, he hid it well — always did. The tie still sharp, the voice still calm when he led meetings like a man who hadn’t spent the week watching you share private smiles with someone who knew you from before he did. Someone you hugged without hesitation. Someone who called you by your first name with that easy kind of familiarity Jake had only ever earned through submission.

You weren’t ignoring him. Not really. But you weren’t touching him either. No texts. No sexy glances. No little cruel reminders of what he was to you. Just distance. Controlled and professional. Like the weekends together hadn’t happened.

And Jake? Jake was starving for the leash. And your presence, he missed the intimate you. 

So when the elevator opened that morning, and you stepped in, followed by two project leads and someone from HR, he took his chance.

Jake slipped in last. Stood at your side. And said nothing, even after exchanging cute eye contact with him.

The numbers ticked up. Floors grew away. One by one, everyone stepped out.

Until it was just…  You and him.

He stepped closer. Just a little too close. You didn’t turn to look at him. Not yet. Cause recently it had been hard on you pretending you weren’t in love with him. Pretending in front of his long time friend and yours there was nothing between you two. But you felt it — his body tight with restraint, his breath catching just a little louder than it should.

“I-I don’t care if you don’t want me recently,” he said, voice low, barely audible.

Your brows lifted about to turn around but he leaned closer, his lips brushing your ear.

“You’re still my Mistress.” 

You turned then, expression unreadable.

He didn’t flinch. He exhaled. And then—he took your hand. Just your fingers. Slipped something cold and small into your palm and curled your fingers shut around it.

A key. You stared at it. Felt the weight.

“Friday can’t come fast enough,” he whispered, voice shaking just a little now. “It’s already hurting. I can’t stop thinking about you. I put it on last friday night. Haven’t touched myself since. Not even once.”

Your eyes snapped to his desperate, hot, worshipful bulge he made you palm, moaning to the contact of your unsure fingers, his forehead falling on yours.

He almost smiled — a little unhinged.

“I locked myself for you. Because I needed to remember. Because I needed you to own me.”

The elevator chimed. He stepped back. Straightened his tie. Smoothed his jacket.

Turned to you like he hadn’t just dropped a live grenade into your hand.

“I’ll be waiting until you want me again Mistress,” he said, voice calm again, composed. Just a touch sad.

Then he walked out. And left you there. Alone. With the key to his cock clenched in your fist.

And the knowledge that he’d caged himself for you, for days, just to suffer in silence until you decided he was worth your attention again. Fuck only holding it made you wet.

🕰️

Jake caught Jay by the coffee machine an hour after that— late enough in the day that the fluorescent lights made everything look a little harsher, even your name in conversation.

“Hey,” he said, low, casual. Actually not casual at all. “You and… her.”

Jay turned slightly, brow raised. “Yeah?”

Jake swallowed. “You’re not—” his voice caught, and he rolled his shoulders, tried again. “You’re not trying to… go for her, right?”

Jay blinked, the idea of playing his naive ass dying after one second of thinking,  then he smiled — not sharp, not smug. Just knowing.

“Nah, man. She already said no.”

Jake stilled.

Jay took a sip from his paper cup. “Told me she’s into someone else, a complicated situationship.”

That should’ve settled it. Should’ve made something inside him untwist.

But it didn’t.

Because Jay glanced over his shoulder, toward the open floor where you stood— and added, tone lower now, not cruel, just honest: “If it were me, I’d stop hiding behind roles and secrets and all that shit going on and just tell her. Straight up.”

Jake didn’t move.

Jay looked at him again. “She’s into you, bro. That’s obvious… From what I understood.” He clapped Jake’s shoulder once — firm, not teasing. “Only thing left is whether you’ve got the spine to stop waiting for her to drag it out of you.”

🕰️

Fuck.

Jay was right.

This thing between you — the structure, the sessions, the rules he clung to like they made him safe — it was never meant to hold forever. It worked because it was clean. Controlled. Because you both pretended it didn’t mean more, didn’t bleed more. But Jake had already gone too far, and every time he knelt, every time you touched his jaw and made him beg like something sacred, he fell harder into something that wasn’t just powerplay anymore — it was love. Messy. Real. Suffocating.

And now?

Now he couldn’t stop thinking.

What if you started dating someone?

Would he still get his sessions — or would you say it wasn’t “appropriate” anymore?

Would you let him keep watching you from across the meeting room — or would he have to pretend you were just his superior again, like you hadn’t screamed his name while grinding on his face four nights ago?

Would he be allowed to touch you? At all? To kiss your ankle while you read? To hold your thigh under the table just because he needed to feel you?

Would lazy Sunday mornings in bed be cancelled — would the books, the wine, the home-cooked meals and terrible documentaries turn into someone else’s life with you?

Would he still be allowed to look at you the way he did?

To smile at you like you were the only thing that had ever been his?

Or would you pull away the next time he leaned in?

Would Jake go back to “Mr. Sim”?

Would your voice lose that edge when you said his name?

Would you take your laugh with you? Your eyes? Your mouth?

That smug little smirk when you wore heels that bruised his ribs and made him say thank you for it?

That cold, commanding tone that shattered him?

That soft, dangerous warmth when you licked his tears off your knuckles after he came shaking in your lap?

What if it all disappeared?

What if he lost not just the kink — but you?

All versions. The hard one. The gentle one. The funny, brat-taming, snack-sharing, throat-grabbing, book-reading, leash-holding, rule-breaking you.

What if he lost the one person who saw all of him — and didn’t flinch?

What if he had to start calling you “miss” again, just to keep from saying mine?

No.

He wasn’t going to survive another week of pretending. Not another goddamn day of acting like giving you his body wasn’t also handing you his heart.

It had to be tonight.

He texted you one line, with a pin to the address:

“Come here tonight. 9PM. Please.”

You arrived right on time.

And the address — when you reached it — wasn’t a hotel. Wasn’t a suite. Wasn’t the clean, clinical setting where you usually got him on his knees and made him sob.

It was a house.

His house.

You blinked.

Then walked in.

Jake opened the door like he’d been pacing behind it for an hour — sweater soft, hair undone, eyes wide and helpless and shining like he had no idea how you were going to respond to any of this.

The first thing you noticed was how expensive everything was — the dark wood, the subtle lighting, the quiet warmth of real money used by someone who didn’t need to show it off. The second thing was his dog — tail wagging, greeting you like you’d been here a thousand times before.

The third?

Family photos.

Jake as a kid. In school uniforms. With his mother in Seoul. With classmates. With some awful international branch birthday cake, and that smile — the smile, just smaller, softer, untouched.

You turned slowly. Took it all in.

He watched you like a man watching a dream walk through his bedroom.

“You like it?” he asked, unsure.

Your answer was in your eyes — in how slowly you moved, in how carefully you touched the edge of a frame, in the way you smiled and looked back at him for detailed comparaisons.

“You’ve never let me in here,” you said. “That's… New.” you smiled.

“Yeah,” he murmured. That was the problem. he thought. 

Dinner was tense. Not because anything was wrong, but because everything was shifting — plates warming your hands while your eyes stayed fixed on his face, red wine sweet on your tongue while you waited for the dam to crack. 

Jake broke first. “It’s not homemade,” he said, sheepish. 

“Unless you want to end up in the hospital.” 

You laughed. And then — you turned to him, voice like a knife sliding in slowly.

“Are you really wearing it?”

He swallowed. His jaw twitched. Then he nodded half looking at your reaction.

“I bought a smaller one,” he whispered, like it hurt to admit. “The one that hurts when I get hard.”

You didn’t blink. Just tilted your head, like the predator you were.

“And when did you?”

Jake leaned forward, voice raw, fingers twitching by the number of times he passed them through his hair before hiding in his palm?

“Monday,” he said. “When you wore the heels I gave you” then he whispered, “I remembered the way they left marks on my back while I tasted you— I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I was hard all day… It ached.”

You crossed your legs, slowly. Grin flickering.

“Wednesday, I saw your thighs,” he added, faster now, like he couldn’t hold it in. “Bare under your skirt — just a glimpse, but I kept wondering where they stopped. If they were warm. If they were sticky with someone else’s mouth.”

Your breath hitched, but your face didn’t change.

“T-thursday,” he said, almost breathless, “when I saw you smile at Jay, and I wanted you to snap. I wanted you to pull me by the collar and spit in my mouth in front of everyone just so I could feel claimed.”

And then softer.

“Y-yesterday… I thought about kissing you in the hallway. About grabbing you and just… giving it away. Not caring who saw. Not hiding anymore.”

You let it hang.

Then:

“What?”

Jake’s hands trembled.

“I was jealous,” he said. “You looked so comfortable with him. Like he was allowed to see parts of you I only get when you’ve got your hand around my throat. And I couldn’t say anything — because I’m not your boyfriend. I’m not your partner. I’m just the guy who comes when you tell him to. If he’s lucky.”

You leaned in, voice cool and soft.

“And?”

He met your gaze like it burned.

“And I thought maybe… I wasn’t worth more. That everything I’ve shown you — the crying, the leash, the begging — maybe that made me… disposable.”

Silence.

Heavy.

You stared at him like you were looking at something precious. Fragile. Real.

Then you smiled.

Blush blooming over cheekbones, hidden behind the wine glass.

“What should I do, Jake…” you said, low, sultry, devastating. “You made me too ruined to date anyone else now.”

Jake made a sound. Half-sob, half-laugh, and really looked at you, your validating beautiful eyes. Then, he stood. Walked over. Grabbed you like he was afraid you’d disappear if he waited one more second.

And kissed you like it hurt.

“I love you,” he breathed against your lips. “I’m in love with you.” He kissed again, “I’ll give you everything.”  kissed again, “I’ll let you ruin me for the rest of my life and beg for more, I swear.”

You laughed in his embrace and looked at him with sudden dare.

“Prove it Jake.”

He stripped for you like he was peeling away fear itself. and you did the same messily kissing.

Quiet obedience. Until he stood naked inch from you, flushed, forehead against forehead, trembling, cock caged and faintly purple, swollen from days of frictionless ache. It looked smaller, pulled tight by metal and denial. Beautiful in its own way — his way. His whole body looked like it was waiting for permission to feel again, all veiny and hot.

You dropped to your knees.

Unlocked him with the little silver key.

And the second the cage clattered to the floor, he moaned — not from pleasure. From pain. His cock sprang out — red, angry, twitching like it didn’t know if it was free or dying.

You reached forward, wrapped your hand around it, and he came instantly.

“F-fuck—Hng, no, no, no—I’m sorry—I’m sorry—please—” he gasped, whole body convulsing, cum spilling down your wrist in helpless pulses. “I didn’t mean to—it’s been d—I didn’t want to—please—”

You smiled. God, you loved it. all cruel and loving on him.

“It’s okay, baby,” you cooed, rising to kiss his cheek. “That was just the appetizer.” And he kept coming with slow strokes on your thighs now like it was his first time.

In his bedroom, you tied him up with smooth, sure hands— wrists to headboard, thighs wide, legs restrained too with ropes he prepared— and then climbed on top of him 

He was still trembling. Still leaking. Still whispering your name like he couldn’t believe you were real.

And then, just when he thought he might get softness —

You leaned in and blindfolded him. And your voice made him tremble.

“Jake,” you whispered, brushing your lips along his jaw. “Do you think Jay would’ve made me scream like you do?”

His breath hitched. You grinned.

“Do you think he’d eat me better than you?” you asked, tongue flicking against his earlobe as he twitched under you. “Would he cry when I ride his face? Would he beg for my spit too?”

Jake whimpered. His cock jerked. You pressed down harder against him.

Moaning in the most outrageous way.

“Would he fuck me better than the boy leaking into his sheets right now?”

“Stop—please—no,” he gasped, face trying to find your lips with shame and heat.

You laughed. Gently.

“Then make me never want to find out,” you said. “Be a good boy. Show my pussy, Jake.”

And he did. You pulled on the ropes and realized him.

He fucked you like a man possessed. Getting inside your wetness in one go. Like a man breaking out of something. Like he’d die if you didn’t keep screaming his name. He thrust with raw need, face twisted in love, in agony, in fucking reverence.

He came again. And again. Still hard. Still inside you. Still trying to earn you with every snap of his hips. His cum painted your thighs, your cunt, your stomach — you didn’t want to stop. And he didn’t stop.

“I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you[...]” He kept moaning on  your lips, in your neck, mouth at your tits.

And when he finally collapsed into you, ruined, panting, completely undone? You kissed him and whispered : 

“I love you too.”

🕰️

You did it on the floor next.

Then against the wall.

Then the window. Then the shower. Then the kitchen table while his dog slept soundly in the living room like nothing sacred was happening in the next room.

No rules. No safe words. No games.

Just “I love you” in every thrust, every bite, every knot of fingers in hair and bruises bloomed in the shape of home.

You didn’t fuck like dom and sub that night . You fucked like people who’d been starving for each other in plain sight — and finally broke the lock.

Thank you so much for reading Part 2 of Power Play 🖤 Our sub!Jake and boss x co-worker chaos has officially evolved—now it’s not just a dom/sub dynamic... it’s real romance too💗

I’d love to hear what you thought, so don’t be shy—drop your feedback, scream with me, anything!!

P.S. Yes, Part 3 is already in the works… get ready 😏✨

xoxo ©Lassiie

TL : @heekolazz @shariasweet @heeseungsbm @monoidol @v1shwa-xo @thesundys @xiaoszone

[whatifitis]

♡ to build a home - LN 4 ♡

Summary: You're beginning to build a life with Lando. One of the steps you were excited for the most was building a home with him. So when it's time to finally start furnishing the house... let's just say we're glad everyone got to keep their fingers.

WC: 950

CW: fluff, two idiots in love trying to use their shared braincell..., not proofread

-=+=-

It’s finally time! A chapter in your life you were waiting for for so long. Not just building a life with your favorite person, but building a home with them too. You and Lando recently bought a home together and were excited to finally decorate it after having renovated it yourselves. 

The two of you (mainly just you) spent ages on pinterest and various furniture websites, trying to put together an aesthetically pleasing home that could also make the environment feel homey and warm, something Lando had lived without for so long, well, at least until you joined his life. From the day you’d met, his life suddenly seemed brighter and warmer, like he’d been living in a plain, grey world prior. 

After some conflicts and adjustments to the mood board, you both had settled on some furniture that you both loved. Some things were ordered to the house while the others were picked up in the store by you and Lando. Lando, of course, insisted on helping because 1. It could be some nice bonding time since he’s away a lot and 2. He’s a “Big strong man” who can help you carry everything… In other words, he was afraid another man would come to your rescue and steal you away. But that would never happen. 

As you awaited everything you’d ordered, your home still only held a mattress, Lando’s gaming set up and boxes that were filled with various objects. One of those boxes held your collection of books. Your collection grew through the years as you got older, the collection expanding a lot quicker since you and Lan had started dating. Everytime he traveled without you, he would stop by a bookstore and get you a book. Whether it be a special edition of a book or just something he thought you’d like, he always came back with one to add to your collection. 

“Baby.” Lando called to you, jumping onto the mattress where you laid. 

“Baby.” you reply. 

“I was thinking-”

Sitting up fast and gasping, “You can do that?”

Lando’s jaw dropped, “Rude?! You know what? Nevermind.” begins to stand up to walk away, hiding a smile. 

“No! Come on, baby. I was joking. Tell me what you were thinking.” you say, pulling his arm so that he falls over top of you on the bed. 

“Fine. Only cause I love you so much.” the man says, receiving several kisses from you that scatter his face. 

“I love you too. Now, tell me.”

“Do you wanna go to ikea? I know we ordered most of the furniture or we’re going to some stores in person but we need to get some bookshelves for your books. We can get to building them today and putting away the books.” he says, moving to stand, “That way we can clear a few boxes and we’ll have more room for activities.” he says as he pranced around the room, twirling in the air as if he was a dancer. 

You laugh at the show before you, being eternally grateful for his existence and the chaos he brings with him, “That sounds amazing, Lan. We can go now. That way we’re not up late trying to put together the bookshelves.” 

“How hard can putting together bookshelves be?”

-=+=-

Lando and you took the opportunity to enjoy the day to the fullest. The sun was out so you guys drove with the windows down, blasting some Taylor Swift and singing your hearts out to each other. 

Although the drive was fun, the same can’t be said for the adventure in Ikea… The two of you got lost for 5 hours inside of the Ikea. And don’t ask how, cause not even God knows how the two of you got lost, though it might have to do with the fact that you guys share a brain cell…

Eventually, with the help of an Ikea employee, the two of you made it out to the other side, half tempted to kiss the ground once you saw the sun again. 

-=+=-

Finally, after a stop at Mcdonalds for some dinner, the two of you were safe and sound at home, cutting open the boxes that contained the pieces of wood to build the bookshelves. As Lando was unboxing the pieces, he began throwing things about, not paying any mind to what was going where. 

“Lan, calm down. We’re gonna lose the instructions if you keep doing that.” 

“Pish posh. Who needs instructions for bookshelves? It’s easy. I built that desk myself with no instructions.” he says, pointing to the desk that holds his gaming set up… the most basic table to have ever existed. 

You put your hands on your hips as you exhale loudly, “Lan, that table has 5 pieces total…”

“And? I still did it. Ya know why? Cause I’m super smart and super strong. I don’t need the instructions… Now… where do we start…?” he says as he rests his hands on his hips, squinting as the mess of screws and panels of wood he scattered on the floor. 

-=+=-

Building a bookshelf was NOT as easy and Lando claimed it would be. Not only were the instructions missing, but Lando kept insisting he didn’t need them. You tried to help him but it felt as if the pieces kept moving on their own. You felt like the boys in the Maze Runner, trying to figure out the pattern of the maze changes every night. 

It’s been two hours since anyones spoken… so it startles you when he breaks the silence, “How… is the bookshelf… inside out…?”

“It’s 9pm… and we still haven’t finished the first bookshelf… we have 6 more to build…”

“FUCK”

[heavenlybodies333]

Insubordination -A.H

Aaron Hotchner x coworker!reader

The second you step through the door, you feel every head in the room turn.

Late. Unapologetically. And very obviously not wearing a bra under your white button-up.

Your nipples are stiff from the chilled air, outlined like punctuation marks under the thin cotton. Subtle was never your strong suit. Neither was following orders. Which, unfortunately, happens to be Aaron Hotchner’s kink and his trigger.

Your heels click through the silence as you make your way to the only open seat—directly across from him. You don’t apologize. You just drop into the chair, toss your hair over your shoulder, and casually fold your arms under your chest.

Which, of course, only pushes them up more.

“Glad you could join us,” he mutters, without lifting his gaze. “Though I’d suggest reviewing Bureau expectations regarding punctuality.”

You smile sweetly. “I’ll study extra hard.”

Someone behind you coughs to cover a laugh. His eyes flicker up—just for a second—and land squarely on your smirk. His jaw tenses.

You are so going to pay for this later.

9:47 AM – Meeting Adjourned

Hotch closes the folder with a decisive snap.

“That’s all,” he says curtly, standing. “The unsub profile will be distributed by noon. And in the future—” his eyes scan the room, lingering only briefly on you “—let’s remember how important discipline and professionalism are in this line of work.”

There it is. That sharp, clipped delivery. The verbal equivalent of a warning shot. You stay seated, watching as agents file out, mumbling their goodbyes and tapping their watches. Hotch busies himself at the head of the table, back turned, stacking files like he hasn’t just been half-hard for the past forty minutes.

You rise slowly, heels clicking softly as you cross the room behind him.

Then—pinch.

Right on the sensitive spot at his side, just above the waistband of his slacks.

He jumps. Actually jumps.

Spins on instinct, dropping the file in his hand as he glares down at you. “Jesus Christ,” he hisses under his breath. “What the hell was that?”

You tilt your head, all innocence and venom. “Sorry. Just checking if that stick was still up your ass.”

His eyes narrow. “You’re pushing it.”

You step closer, eyes raking over his flushed neck and clenched jaw. You bat your lashes. “You’re tense.”

“You were late.”

“And you were staring.”

“I was not—” His eyes drag over you again. He clears his throat. “You’re being inappropriate.”

You smirk. “I thought you liked inappropriate.”

His jaw clenches. You lean closer, voice barely above a whisper. “You gonna punish me for it, Hotch?”

“You think you can do whatever the hell you want because we’re sleeping together?”

You lean against the door, crossing your arms. “No. I think I can do what I want because I’m good at my job and you can’t discipline me without giving away your favorite extracurricular activity.”

He takes a step forward, his voice stern with anger. “My office. Now.”

11:24 AM – Hotch’s Office

You’re sitting in one of the chairs in front of his desk, spinning slightly. Legs crossed, skirt inching up just enough to press a point. When he walks in, he shuts the blinds without a word.

That’s how you know you’ve won.

“I don’t even know where to start with you,” he says, walking to the desk.

You raise a brow. “Good thing you called this meeting then.”

Hotch steps behind you, suddenly closer than you expect. His hand clamps down on your jaw, fingers pressing just enough to tilt your head back.

“You think this is a game?”

“Pretty sure it’s just foreplay.”

His hand releases you, but the tension remains. He steps around the desk, loosening his tie, eyes locked on yours like a warning.

“You think this is funny?” he asks, arms folded.

“Little bit.” You cock your head. “You should’ve seen your face. The moment you realized what I wasn’t wearing?”

He exhales hard through his nose. “You show up late, half-dressed, and think it’s a joke?”

“I think you liked it,” you counter, stepping closer. “Your voice cracked twice. You barely looked at me the whole meeting.”

“I was leading a federal briefing.”

“And now you’re not.” Your hand reaches up, fingers lightly grazing the buttons of your shirt. “So what now, Agent?”

His eyes drop.

Hooked.

You pop a button. Slowly. “If I recall correctly, insubordination’s grounds for a very thorough… reprimand.”

His mouth is a hard line. His eyes are anything but.

You pop another button.

You barely have time to react before you're pressed back against the edge of his desk, the polished wood cold against your thighs, your shirt half-open, chest heaving under his stare. His hands cage you in—one planted on the desk beside your hip, the other gripping the back of your neck with barely restrained control.

“I don’t know if you’re brave,” he murmurs, voice low and dangerous, “or just really fucking stupid.”

You smile. “They’re not mutually exclusive.”

His hand tightens slightly, just enough to make you swallow your next quip.

“You want a punishment?” he asks, eyes flicking down to your exposed chest, the peaks of your nipples taut and aching under the air-conditioning. “You think I won’t give you one right here?”

You shrug, lips curling. “Think? I’m counting on it.”

He curses under his breath—and then he grabs you.

Turns you around in a swift, commanding motion, bending you over the desk with practiced ease. Your palms flatten against the surface as you feel him press behind you, his hips flush to your ass, his breath hot against your ear.

“You don’t follow rules,” he growls. “You don’t show up on time. You don’t wear a bra to my meeting.”

You wiggle your hips slightly, grinning. “And now I’m bent over your desk.”

His hand comes down hard—smack—against your ass. You gasp, biting your lip.

“Keep talking,” he warns, “and I’ll make sure you can’t sit through tomorrow’s briefing.”

You hum, pressing back into him. “Is that a promise, sir?”

Another sharp smack. Then his hand tangles in your hair, yanking your head back enough to hear your breath hitch.

He drags your skirt up and groans when he realizes you’re not wearing anything underneath.

“You planned this,” he mutters, kneeling behind you. “You wanted to piss me off.”

And then his tongue is on you—no warning, no hesitation. He licks a stripe up your slit and moans when you twitch under him, grabbing onto the desk like you might lose your footing.

“Fuck—Hotch—”

He wraps an arm around your thigh to keep you in place, tongue flicking, sucking, tasting every reaction. He’s rougher than usual. Sloppier. Like the lines between punishment and praise have blurred.

You’re whining now—hips grinding back against his face, thighs trembling. “Aaron—!”

He pulls away only long enough to unbuckle his belt and flip you onto your back across the desk, pants barely down before he’s inside you—hard, thick, stretching you in the best way. The desk creaks violently under the weight of his thrusts.

“Gonna fuck that brat out of you,” he growls.

“Better fuck harder, then,” you moan back.

You moan, biting your forearm to keep quiet. It’s barely working. “You’re dripping,” he mutters, thrusting harder. “You’re fucking soaked and I haven’t even touched you properly.”

“You are,” you gasp, “so mad right now.”

“Oh, I am,” he hisses into your ear, one hand gripping your shoulder as he drives into you faster. “I’m furious. Furious that you make me this fucking stupid.”

You cry out when he grabs your hair, pulling you up against his chest.

“I should’ve let you sit there and squirm through that meeting,” he pants. “Should’ve let you suffer.”

His hand slides between your legs and rubs tight, brutal circles over your clit. You scream.

“That the mouth you bring to team meetings?” he pants.

You nod, wrecked. “Yes, sir.”

“Let’s see how smart it is when you’re full of me.”

Hotch grabs your wrists, pins them to the desk with one hand, and fucks into you so hard the entire surface creaks under your bodies.

“Fuck—Aaron—” You come again—so hard you black out for a second. His pace is brutal now. Deep, claiming strokes that steal your breath. Hotch doesn’t stop. He grits your name, thrusts twice more, and then he’s spilling inside you with a low, desperate groan.

For a long, quiet moment, the room is filled with nothing but your ragged breathing.

Then you say, “So… do I get a formal write-up, or…?”

Hotch pulls out slowly, dragging your panties back up with rough precision. “You get dinner.”

You glance back at him, smug. “So now I’m rewarded for bad behavior?”

He buttons your shirt for you without meeting your eyes. “You’re getting dinner so you don’t try this again in front of my entire team.”

You grin. “Guess I’ll have to find a new way to drive you insane, then.”

He pauses, leans in close.

“I’m counting on it.”

a/n: soft doms have a special place in my heart

⋆•★⋆ MASTERLIST ⋆★•⋆

[alanisstonedd]

singledad!ony x teacher!reader

cw: fluff, single father, profanity, suggestive themes, black!reader, not proofread unfortunately

an: omggg omg. this was so fun yallll i love himmmmmm. i already have fic ideas for them, so so juicy. im so excited to share wit y'all!!! finally!!! enjoy, kisses!!! alsoooo, ୨˚̣̣̣͙୧ is y/n just so yall aint confused

₊˚.༄ so y’alls little meet cute starts your second year of teaching. lowkey still fresh out of school, degree acquired, little life set up and ready to inspire the children! you’ve worked at this for so long and you’re buzzing to be able to say that you’re finally where you want to be in life. the kids, the environment, the hours, you just feel so fulfilled… for a single woman, working and living on her own – saturday night’s out with the girls only give you so much.

₊˚.༄ you especially look forward to meet the teacher, just before the first day of school – always excited to get a first look at your students that year and the parents you’ll need keep that right eye out for. howeverrrr, you didn’t expect to have such a good-looking surprise that year. meet the teacher goes off without a hitch ofc, but about an hour before you should start closing up your classroom for the evening, in walks ony… holding the tiny hand of his adorable, bright-eyed daughter amira. 

₊˚.༄ ony steps into the classroom and immediately clocks you – legs crossed at your desk, gloss sparkling, runway-grade teacher fit, and attention currently on some other parent - unfortunately for him. while you’re chatting, he takes a minute to stay stunned, amira running off to play with the few kids left in the classroom. he would’ve bet every penny to his name that love-at-first-sight didn’t exist, but he’d be a broke ass mf today if the feeling spreading through his body is any sign. he's watching your lips while you talk to that other woman like he already knows he wanna kiss them for the rest of his damn life. 

₊˚.༄ “you must be amira’s dad” your warm, bright greeting sounds like seduction to him, having to physically shake his damn head to clear it – you’d been expecting him and amira all day, grateful for the chance to meet them before school starts. ony, on the other hand, thinks he actually might be in a dream – he swears he can see you glowing like an angel, and the sweet, luscious scent invading his senses couldn’t possibly be anyone else in the room. he wants to take you out TONIGHT, but he figures he should probably respond first. “damn… uh–yeah. i mean, yeah. onyankopon. but.. you could just call me ony.” he so outta practice he don’t even know what to say, just grinning in your face really. you’re very professional, and take your place of work very seriously but you definitely notice his nerves – you think it's cute how surprised he is that you’re bad.

₊˚.༄ as soon as he and amira leave the classroom, he’s texting his group chat “yo. i jus met my wife”

₊˚.༄ amira lovesss you off rip. obsessed. right next to you during read aloud, always participating even if her answer is dead wrong, never afraid to ask for extra help, begging you to play with her and her little friends at recess. she’s practically attached at your hip. AND tink got a mouth on her lowkey. always ratting out her daddy like “miss ୨˚̣̣̣͙୧, my daddy says you too pretty to be teaching these bad ass kids” you literally laugh out loud and almost drop your whiteboard marker but it’s not funny “amira! what did i say about quoting your father? and! what i say about cussin?”. you tell him about it when he picks her up and he just looks away smirking like “mm… you mad she being honest?”

₊˚.༄ amira draws one of ony’s hoodies for a “favorite things” activity because “he wears it all the time. he thinks miss ୨˚̣̣̣͙୧ likes when he wears it.”

₊˚.༄ at first you only see him at morning drop-offs through the open window of his truck, just a lil smile when he winks at you before you both get on with your lives. but best believe he's got a plan – he gon make sure you see him dammit, and you start seeing LOTS more of him. you head outside for morning drop-off? he parked first in line, leaning against the front side of the sparkling truck, waving you over with that sneaky ass smirk that's saying “c’mere. i know you wanna”. so you decide to chop it up with him – innocently OFC - while you wait for your signal to start letting kids in. y’all try to make small talk but ony gets bored of that with a quickness. this is all he gets to see of you - ofc he's making the most of it. yall talk about everything under the sun in that drop-off line – work, young parenthood, goals. but that deep, rough voice like a hot kiss on your neck… he could get your social security number out of you if he wanted to. he doesn’t though, he wants your favorite meal so he can learn it like the back of his hand. he wants your hobbies and what you do with your freetime so he can plan the PERFECT date for y’all. he wants your family plans, so he’ll know if he can turn you out like he's planned since meet the teacher.

₊˚.༄ that's really not enough for ony though. how else is he supposed to be blessed with your presence? everytime he even gets close to bringing up a date, you curve him on some professional shit. he decides it's time to amp up the pressure, because you’re clearly not understanding how serious he is. soon enough, he's first in line at pick-up too – waiting against his truck for baby girl to come running out yelling “daddyyyyy!!!”, with you trailing right behind her, smirking at his persistence.

₊˚.༄ then he's dropping her off and picking her up early so he gets to see you without all them other eyes, walking all the way into the building just for a few minutes of alone time with you. stays working you up just cuz he likes to see you sweat him a lil, looking you up and down, fingers brushing your side like he can’t stop himself from touching you. “when you gon let me take you out…” he mumbles softly like he’d spend all day in this classroom with these snotty ass kids if it meant he could be next to you. “when you gon quit showing up here like my landlord on the first, mr. ony?” you smile up at him like you want them juicy lips on yours right tf now, but your professionalism keeps him at arm's length - he’s a parent of a student! telling yourself you just need to be cautious until you know how serious he is.

₊˚.༄ he always got some excuse to come into the classroom midday and be sneaky while the kids aren’t watching - “she forgot her snack, i swear”, “i just wanted to say hey, you look real pretty today miss ୨˚̣̣̣͙୧ ...”, “oh, i just forgot to give her a jacket this morning, it's too damn cold. you warm enough miss ୨˚̣̣̣͙୧?” he’d give you the hoodie off his back if you said yes. neverrr misses a parent teacher conference, always on time with some beverage for you and a whole damn folder of shit. obviously he's tryna impress but you have no clue what could possibly be in there??

₊˚.༄ what gets you the most? hes such a good dad and its sexy as hell. patience like a saint, makes her laugh nonstop, gentle giant but the protective dad instincts are always on ten. plus, amira’s hair is always laid - cute baubles and bows, slick back styles, braids, twist outs… he does it all!! and does it very very well. you see the adorable lunches he packs her, flower shaped fruit, heart shaped sandwiches, cute little notes that sometimes include a little message for her to pass along to you - she’ll jump at any excuse to skip up to your desk and yap. 

₊˚.༄ every time he shows up, you swear he got finer. soft hoodie, grey sweats, clean sneakers, and the most delicious cologne you’ve ever smelled in your life. your professional act crumbling more and more every time you see him, all he has to do is bend over to tie her little crisp ass dunks, and let that hoodie ride up a lil bit exposing them thick ass chocolate abs, that v-line? you have to remind yourself that you’re at work all damn day, getting flashbacks to that flash of skin like it's the victorian era.

₊˚.༄ he starts volunteering for school events and chaperoning… coming around all fine and big, just for the wasp moms to absolutely swarm him, all while he's undressing you from across the room - that lip bite was NOT for them! haha!

© 2025 alanisstonedd. all rights reserved — do not steal, plagiarize, or modify my content.

hope y'all liked this! comments, likes, reblogs and all the rest are much appreciated!!!

xoxo, lani 💋💋💋

tags: @lovey-3 @bxrbie1

[letsdosciencetoit]

WIP - BuckTommy - 5+1 - Part 6e

5 times the 118 worries about how to tell Buck that Tommy got married, and 1 time they realize they don't have to.

I'm pretty sure this is the end of the short little self-indulgent piece that ended up being around 9000 words. Thanks for everyone who came along for the ride. I have loose plans to write how Buck and Tommy reconcile, as well as their points of view during their encounters with their friends. I'm going to get this cleaned up and posted to AO3 at some point soon.

If you have any questions, or want to see any extras from this little world, I'm happy to accept prompts. I had a lot of fun with this one.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 +1 a +1b +1c +1d

+1 - Ravi

The party has been underway for about an hour, and Buck has been popping in and out of the house for the finishing touches.  He’s had enough of a presence in the backyard that people aren’t suspicious, but Ravi can tell the guests are starting to get restless.  It’s definitely starting to feel like they’re all waiting for something.

Ravi gabs Buck by the arm to get his attention as he was bouncing between groups of people.  “You think it’s time to get this show started?”

Buck took in the crowd of friends and family gathered in the back yard and smiled. “Yeah.  I think everyone is here and ready to go.  Can you get the mic to Sal, and I’ll turn the sound system on when I head inside.”

Ravi snags the microphone from where they’d left it charging and pocketed it before he made his way over to where Sal is standing with his wife, chatting with a group of firefighters from their station.  Sal jerks his head in a nod when Ravi approaches and palms him the microphone. 

Buck’s parents are off in the side yard, chatting with the head of the catering team. The two people Buck hired as bartenders are waiting with them, nearly bouncing with excitement. From what Buck said all of their vendors were ready to jump on board as soon as they learned they were doing a surprise reception.

Ravi’s job now was to make sure the photographer and her assistant were able to set up without being noticed. Ravi feels honoured that Buck considered him close enough to be involved in the surprise.  It was probably partly partnering with Buck for months, and actively supporting Buck and Tommy getting back together, but he never would have pictured himself in this kind of situation.

May and Athena are running interference so the newcomers go unnoticed as they get set up.  Ravi gets the photographer set up to have the best vantage point in the yard so she’ll be able to capture everyone’s reactions. 

His phone vibrates with a text from Buck, telling them everyone is ready inside.  Tommy’s been hanging out in the garage with everyone he’d invited to the party that would have raised suspicion.  Ravi looks to Sal, who nods back, and moves to stand on the dance floor.

Sal turns the microphone on and taps in quick succession to get everyone’s attention.  The loud drone of conversation peters out, though the kids continue making noise off to the side. A lot of the faces in the crowd show confusion, and Ravi is pretty sure he hears someone call out “Who the hell gave Deluca a microphone?”

Ravi is pretty sure it’s one of the guys from the 122, but Chimney follows quickly after with, “You’d better not be doing karaoke, Sal.  We’ve heard you sing once, and that was enough!”

There is a chuckle that ripples through the crowd, and Sal is smiling on stage.

“Fortunately for all of our ears, I’m not singing,” Sal jokes back, and a smattering of laughs ring out again.  He lets it die down before continuing.  “A lot of you are probably wondering who I am, and where I got the microphone.  I’m Salvator Deluca and I’m Buck’s captain at the 122. 

“Under better circumstances it would have been someone else up hear saying what I’m saying, but they had to settle for me.”

The mood turns a little somber, but Chimney saves it by shouting out, “What are we settling for?”

“They got me up here to tell you guys that Buck invited you all here under false pretenses.”  The people gathered start to exchange glances, and murmur to one another.  “Buck wanted an excuse to invite all of his nearest and dearest over so that I could have the pleasure of acting as master of ceremonies tonight, and introduce you all to the almost new Mr. and Mr. Kinard!”

Unsurprisingly, the group gathered erupts into noise as an upbeat song starts playing and Buck and Tommy come out of the house in matching cream linen suits. Ravi has never seen the two of them look as happy as they do now.

He’s pretty sure he hears Karen yell out, “I called it!” and looked over to see Josh and Linda handing her money.

Buck and Tommy don’t even make it to the dance floor before they’re swarmed by the Hans and the Wilsons.  He hears Maddie sniffling, and catches her saying “Of course I’m happy for you. I just wish I could have been there!”

May sneaks up on him, and Ravi doesn’t even realize she’s by his side until she’s slipping her hand into his, interlacing their fingers. He hears the lyrics “I’m so happy, I am just where I want to be,” and can’t agree more. 

Tommy’s crew and friends are now mingling with the rest, the service staff is set up to start passing out more food, and the bar looks open for business.  The surprised party goers are now starting to crowd around Buck and Tommy to pass along their congratulations.  The rest of the evening is going to have dinner, drinks and dancing, maybe some speeches, and everyone is going to leave feeling hopeful and full of love.

Beside him, May starts laughing.

“What’s so funny?” Ravi asks, a little afraid to hear the answer.

“I’m pretty sure the song they picked for their grand entrance is about being kidnapped.”

Tag List: @fenrirscarsback, @gayjaytodd, @wiay04, @daughterofscotland, @thuperrah, @anniegraceinreallife, @v88sy @chemistry66, @partofthelouniverse, @teabroomsandbooks, @buffaluff, @theallyandhisbeast, @mysterious-skin, @kinardsevan, @hcrm, @cliophilyra, @shushshesbeingsmart, @buck-up-buck, @pikaguppy, @bigheartbuck, @thats-the-biz-babe,

[elodieunderglass]

But there must be a way to save hobelars in the cultural memory right? Can we reprint the document that has the poem?

Just yesterday, i had heard my friend say something along the lines of war is rock paper scissors and i accepted that without a second thought and your post about hobelars came at the right time to add delightful nuance. And i want to remember and share about hobelars

References: this post where I note, on a post about medieval mounted warfare that articulated this as knights and horses in armour charging pikemen, that the overlooked mounted unit of the “Irish” hobelar - a lightweight cavalry skirmisher, mounted nearly-bareback on pony-horses called hobbies - would have neatly fitted into the gaps in that narrative. Here’s another post about hobbies i wrote too.

By asking, you are doing the work. Thank you./.

In their time, hobelars were a useful unit of medieval warfare; originally in defending themselves against the English, and then used abroad against others. A contemporary poem, which describes the Siege of Calais, mentions a hobelar on a hobby, describing their fighting style; but the only copy of this poem on the internet is a single badly scanned document of a book from the 1840s that will be reasonably difficult (but not impossible!) to source on paper.

There have been a total two books written about hobelars - one in 1914, and one in 1954 - and they are mentioned in passages of two or three out-of-print books about medieval warfare. They have a Wikipedia article which contains incorrect information like claiming that the hobby is the same horse as the Connemara Pony (it isn’t.) There is one single medievalist who has published recently and sparsely on hobelars, and necessarily he does this by arguing with The 1914 and 1954 Guys. He has not brought in any horse knowledge or political connectedness to his theses, but he’s all I’ve got, so I cling to him like he clings to the other two guys.

Irish Hobbies, the hobelar’s little horses, fare a bit better. Before going extinct, they gave their name to “hobbies,” activities done for pleasure, and we still use “my hobbyhorse” to describe our personal passions. @mylittlehony , a Horse Expert, produced an incredible list of mentions of hobbies in sixteenth and seventeenth century literature, including in other languages, which is literally an advancement on the internet’s collective knowledge of hobbies. Any piece of work you’re doing here is a contribution.

Still, without any in-print documentation, or active scholars, or any interest in them at all, they’re a very niche hobby! As I said in the post you’re asking about, a well-placed EMP could destroy all of our knowledge of hobelars and prevent us from making connections to recover them. .

To answer your question? That’s what PhDs are for. That’s what they’re supposed to give to humanity. Spending three years of dedicated research time, learning and gathering all the sources available, and collecting every lost scrap of data about hobbies and hobelars that has been scattered and lost. We know they’re in the quartermasters’ receipts, where they were described as cheap units without special equipment; we know that an English king specifically prevented hobbies being exported to Scotland fight against him, because they would have granted the Scottish an advantage. There are documents that mention them sidelong and sideways and misspelled, and a PhD could delightfully be spent fossicking about in libraries and archives and museums, working out exactly what their “darts” were like, and whether hobbies ambled or paced, and what social class hobelars had been in Ireland, and how far they made it in Wales, and whether they WERE the missing piece of European horse archers, and whether hobbies DID come from Spain, and maybe even whether the Thoroughbred racehorse has any hobby in them at all. The person doing this PhD could probably recover the shape of the extinct horse, the fighting style of the rider, and so on.

And they’d publish their papers, and their thesis, and on the Internet and in the backups and in the journals and in the great library of their Alma Mater and in their own home, that knowledge would be stored and connected, networked and made accessible, known and signposted, forever. Resilient to loss, resistant to disruption, a piece of work to add to humanity’s grain store - designed and destined to outlive you.

That’s what a PhD is. That’s why they’re meant to be done.

Why haven’t they already? Obscurity, probably; and as I’ve written, medievalists tend to take the tone of English and French kings to dismiss Celtic influence as primitive and negligible. There have to be intersecting spheres of nerdery to make the person who will take this on. They will probably have to be a horsegirl first, a medievalist second, and probably from a Celtic culture themselves, to better pierce through the political layerings; they ought to be the kind of nerd who gladly takes on the case of the underdog; and, ideally, be someone with a lot of hobbies. Just as you can see the missing shape of the hobelar, you can see this person and know that someday they may answer the call.

(Possibly even because of these posts. That’s, secretly, part of why I write them like I do. They’re not ragebait or clickbait; they’re go-to-grad-school-about-it-bait. I hope to catch someone someday.)

But in the absence of some person taking on this PhD, here’s how I’m doing my part.

The reason I am tumblr’s biggest hobelar apologist is because I have a character in a larger writing project who is a time-ghost of a hobelar and his hobby. They appear in a pattern in the story, which is called Throw Your Heart Over, based on the saying for jumping: throw your heart over the hurdle and your horse will follow it.

I toy with the idea of The Hobelar being the originator of the saying, after jumping a notable hurdle on his hobby.

But it won’t be enough to just self-publish an ebook about it, especially since it won’t break containment. The best way to get a correct answer on the Internet is to post a slightly wrong answer, in a tone of authority, and have everyone pile in on you for the joy of being the one to correct you.

So I’m going to write something provocative and tantalisingly incorrect-sounding about hobelars, just to provoke and annoy. It will have to be ragebait of unparalleled mastery. I will have to construct a scene that is SO WRONG, and somehow get the story SO IMPOSSIBLY POPULAR, that hopefully someone will be forced to do, like, a YouTube essay to horsesplain my sins to me, and THEN they’ll discover that first they must do a PhD.

And when they call me out, after four years of study, and tell me I have no idea what I’m talking about, I will lower my eyelashes demurely 🫦 and say oh dear what a shame if people started acting like they’d always known about hobelars because of all this, and a breeding project started trying to recreate the extinct Irish Hobby, and a video game came out about them or something, or anything. if I fuck it up again will you do more? Do you prommy??

So I’ll say: once upon a time, Killie’s ancestor was a hobelar. And he fucked up - or something, I don’t know what yet - and he asked his hobby to jump a pike-wall -

And the people will be jumping up and down saying THAT CAN’T BE RIGHT- he wasn’t there, he wasn’t wearing that, he didn’t ride that way, he probably wasn’t barefoot, NOBODY CAN JUMP A PIKEWALL, that can’t be right!!

And i said: none of this was right-! It’s a story about generational trauma. Nobody should have been there. And he grabbed mane, and asked for the jump, and the horse didn’t want to, but she trusted him -

And it didn’t happen, and it didn’t happen like that -

And it didn’t happen, and it didn’t happen like that -

And people will say: it never could have happened, and CERTAINLY not like that -

And I’ll say - and everyone else should say this too - make an OC or tell a story or find some way to hang on: some of what our ancestors gave us was garbage!! Some is useful!! Some should be lost and some should be kept!! And if academia won’t keep it then we will! Until they come and do it better!

We’ll all say together: he threw his heart over and she follows it still; and they’ll never land! and they’ll never land!!!!

[groovypalacehorselover]

Snape was smarter than James and Sirius

I saw a TikTok in which the op was mentioning how the Mauraders were smarter than Severus, and I can't help but come out here and say that that's a load of bollocks.

Their argument was them becoming Animagus while underage, as well as the creation of the Mauraders map. Along with McGonagall mentioning how they were the smartest of their year.

Now, don't scroll yet, this is where I want to object.

Turning into an Animagus is a ministry observed action. And while turning in itself without supervision and in school years is an amazing feat, it's clear that it's a manual followed process.

Rita too was an unregistered Animagus, let's not forget. And the Mauraders map?

Let's take the magical logic that was established in the books. Charmed objects are created/charmed by a wizard, by already existing spells and putting multiple spells at once.

Hermione did something similar with the DA signing form.

What does this mean? The Mauraders map is a mixture of spells and charms, maped out with the help of invisibility cloak and 4 students who explored at night.

Smart right? So what makes Snape smarter?

Snape was a creator.

He created his own spells, now would you call that smarter than putting multiple spells in a piece of paper?

Severus altered his potions book, improving already existing recipes, which were made by professional potioneers and published. He had a basic and in depth knowledge of potions, far beyond his age.

A teacher only notices students who are active participants in class, and given James and Sirius's personality (we can see in Snape's worst memories that James actively tries to engage the audience in Severus's humiliation), it isn't far off to assume that they were actively answering in class to impress others, compared to Severus, who is shown to have a much more reclusive and secretive personality. So to any teacher, this would obviously create an image that James and Sirius were just smarter than the rest of the students.

So for a fandom that loves reading in between the lines, some people sure do love ignoring things that don't benefit their favs.

[swaggyfishii]

Hello!!

I don't use tumblr that much and more active on twitter but i'd like to make an post on an popular fan artist who has harmed me and many other victims.

I am here to make another call out on @eechytooru but this time a lot more information has came out on them since 2023

TW// NSFW, IRL NUDES TO MINORS, INCEST

I'd like to talk about the old callout post briefly. The original post was made out of panic and anger so it seemed rushed and I acted very immature and for that I say I'm not proud of that on my part. Here is my first thread I made about Eechy / Teenbeeny / Vera (here)

Now onto the stuff that happened after the first blog I made, (I will be calling "Eechy" as Vera for the remainder of the post) Vera was fired on this Russian show called "CFMOT" for "allegations of hurting a victim". The whole thing received backlash so then she was re-hired. A former voice actor, Muzy Frile, who also worked on CFMOT left during this ordeal and made a thread of tweets. ( you can read the whole thing here ). To sum it up, the creator of the show is known for not firing off actors who has done heinous acts due to "popularity" and only fired them because he was pressured too.

Some time after, Vera would post more on this site, gaining more popularity rather than discipline. She would post art of Welcome home, Inside Out 2, Cookie run, and Undertale/Deltarune and her posts would get up to 1,000+ notes (note: I don't know much about tumblr but I am guessing notes are for likes, comments, etc). I say this because I know that there are minors on this app/website and I want them to be careful incase she talks to more minors in the future, I say this because she frequently hosts whiteboards and magmas with her followers!!

RECENT EVENTS!! vvvvv

In 2025 of this month, the 8th episode of CFMOT released not too long ago. Eechy was in the credits but not under her usual username (Teenbeeny) , but instead "Vera". I believe this was done to hide the fact that Vera was still working on CFMOT from the English viewers but it was quickly found out of and INSTANTLY got called out.A user on twitter made a post regarding this (here) and the news spreaded quickly throughout the ENG and RUS OSC.

It was then TWO MORE VITCIMS of her's spoke out and recalled their experiences with her: The first other victim I saw during the drama was of twitter user, @/keymasta778. They recall being in a NSFW object show camp hosted by Vera when the OP was 13 at the time. (Tweet can be found here)

The second victim was the final nail in the coffin for me. Twitter user, @/DonValski makes a google doc explain their experience with Vera with evidence of dms between them, Erp's (some of which including incest) while OP was 13 and other participant were 15 or younger, Vera was 16/17. Sometime, Vera sent the OP a nude picture of herself to the 14 year. I will end this suddenly because the rest is really sickening but I highly recommend you read the Gena's doc in full. (here)

The following day, I remembered about Vera's tumblr and reminded everyone on twitter about it. It wasn't until then that I was informed that @/eechytooru is "one of the most popular welcome home fanartists" said by one user. This is my calling to make another blog to remind and not forget what she has done so feel free to reblog and share this around!! I really want whatever fandom Eechy has been in and make them aware so they become a more safer place to hangout in without a groomer being out there.

I know this is VERY unlikely but I hope Partycoffin sees this post and reblogs this to make the fandom more safe! I'll be tagging all the fandoms that Eechy is in!!

[b0ne-merchant]

Hi I love love love ur writing<3 I have a request 4 u. Could you do head cannons for UT, UF, and US with S/O who gets really lethargic during their period. I won’t leave bed for days on end when I’m on mine and I’m tired of people calling me lazy for it. I HAVE ENDOMETRIOSIS😭

Yes yes yes!!! I extended this to just be generally about when you're on your period, as it is a classic ask for an x reader blog to include 😁 i gotta cover all the tropes!!!

Undertale!Bros, Underfell!Bros, & Underswap!Bros with an S/O on who's their period

Sans

Sans is honestly super chill about the whole thing (He just likes that it gives you an excuse to stay in bed all day with him).

Just for you, he breaks the metaphorical "in case of emergency" glass and brings out a huge fluffy blanket and fresh pillows that aren't sad and flat.

You might have to fight him for the heating pad. He'll take it from you in his sleep and curl around it like a cat.

Sans will never pass up an opportunity for some sleepy time with you when your period is making you lethargic. He is completely okay with this arrangement.

He has a whole playlist of science documentaries lined up for the days where you don't want to leave your bed.

There were a few nature documentaries in that playlist, but he took them all out when you cried over a gazelle being hunted by a cheetah.

When you want for something, he's already clambering out of bed and telling you to stay put while he gets it.

At one point he leaves the room for a few minutes, and when he comes back there's a tampon in his nasal cavity and he asks you if he did it correctly. This man lives off of being a complete weirdo, but he's your weirdo.

Do NOT bring him with you when you need to buy pads and/or tampons, he will very loudly announce that "babe i think the adult diapers are in the next aisle over."

Despite his little pranks and jokes, Sans is very tender. He'll hold a water glass up for you to drink from when you need it, he knows exactly when you're good to take another ibuprofen, and he'll squeeze you close when a cramp shakes your system. Even if it's natural, he can't stand to see you in pain and knocked out of your usual routine.

Papyrus

Papyrus is just a little squicked out at the thought of you shedding the lining of an organ (any sort of blood gets to him, really), but he is right by your side throughout the entire process.

He uses his healing magic on you when your cramps get bad. Even without the soothing buzz, the way his magic warms his hands against your stomach chases the pain away.

He takes you sleeping more than usual as evidence that you're actually dying. You have to calm him down and assure him it's nothing to worry about.

Very excellent bedside manner. You need some ibuprofen? It's already on the nightstand with a glass of water. Need to cry? He'll let you sob into his scarf and pat your back. Tired? Lay your head on his lap and he'll stroke your hair.

Every day of this retched week, he'll draw you a nice hot bath with a cup of tea to decompress. He'll even stay and wash your hair, if you'd like.

At first, he tries to get you on your feet and exercising, since he read that it's a way to relieve your symptoms.

When he sees you're just too out of it, Papyrus quickly switches his rhythm and instead makes sure you're as comfortable as possible so you can sleep it off.

Kisses are a mandatory step in the healing process, as are words of encouragement.

"YOU AND YOUR UTERUS ARE DOING EXCELLENT, KEEP IT UP!"

Your Papyrus is ever the cheerleader. Just, be prepared for a little bit of shock when you have to tell him that this happens every month.

Fell!Sans (Red)

He's mad he can't squeeze your boobs cause they're tender during your period.

A little blood won't stop him from other activities, however.

Your mood swings are his mood swings. If you get pissed at him, he's getting pissed at you. If you start crying from his attitude, he feels really terrible and gets sad, too.

He might feed into your anger and irritation a little too much. When you start venting about something, he'll pop a piece of (your) chocolate into his mouth and say, "ugh, tell me about it."

The way he complains about your period, you'd think he was bleeding for 5-7 days out of the month, too. Not just about obstructing your sex life, but also for making you feel like shit for its duration. "this is so unfair," Red groans.

He'll shove his face in your stomach and tell your uterus to knock it off.

Red's totally into any odd craving you get while you're on your period. He'll bring up a whole buffet to munch on in bed with you.

He is so happy when you're too sleepy to do anything else, because it's a free ticket for him to sleep with you and claim that he's just trying to be emotionally supportive in this trying time.

I think he'd be a little embarrassed to buy you pads and tampons alone, but by the stars will Red thug it out just for you.

He will expect a little compensation when your period is over for his brave and chivalrous efforts.

Fell!Papyrus (Edge)

"THIS IS DISGUSTING," Edge says as he holds you tightly and massages your abdomen with great care.

He's like, extremely impressed you go through this every month. Nobody he knows could bleed out for five to seven days straight and live. He has a ton of respect for you.

He calls you his warrior for your resilience.

When you get a cramp, he'll cheer you on and tell you to fight it, and to not let it win. When it subsides, he congratulates you on your victory and rewards you with an uncharacteristically soft kiss to your temple.

Though his healing magic is weaker than Papyrus's and Blue's, he will still deploy onto you with the best of his ability. In fact, he starts working a little harder on it just for situations like this.

He thinks it's cute when you get all irritated and moody. Sometimes he purposefully pisses you off just to watch your face get all red.

You're pretty much not allowed to get out of bed or do anything for yourself until you're back to normal. If you need anything, Edge has it covered.

He brings out some tea for you to drink. You didn't even know he liked tea before this. He sternly tells you to not let anyone else in on this secret, for fear that it would make him look soft.

He actually takes some time off from his duties to tend to you. That's how you know he's serious about this.

While he detests the fact that you have to sleep more than usual, he'll dutifully tuck you in tight and make you promise that you'll get your strength up as you rest.

Swap!Sans (Blue)

Blue's terrified when he first learns about periods because he mixes up the menstrual cycle with lycanthropy.

When he realizes that you aren't a bloodthirsty monster of the night, he breathes a very heavy sigh of relief and shakes off the powdered garlic he sprinkled on himself (he also confused a vampire's weakness for a werewolf's).

He has a whole selection of sanitary products for you to peruse. It's like he bought one of everything at the store, and he is way too excited about it.

Blue cries with you when you're having particularly bad cramps. Seeing you in pain activates his inner empath to an excruciating level.

Similar to Papyrus, Blue uses healing magic on you, massaging his fingers into your stomach and giving it little kisses.

He definitely tracks your period so he knows when to stock up on pads and tampons and chocolates for you. You two practically share your period.

When your cycle is off, he only freaks out a little bit.

He's reluctant to let you rest all day, but he'll do it for your sake. He's too energetic to lay in bed with you most of the time, but he will check on you throughout the day just to make sure you haven't died.

Don't be surprised if you wake up from a nap and he's right there, trying to check your pulse.

He does come bearing gifts, however -- a full platter of cut up fruit that he'll feed you by hand. Only the best from nurse Blue for his favorite patient.

Swap!Papyrus (Stretch)

Getting out of Stretch's grasp while you're on your period (and any other time) is a tough ordeal. Just threaten to bleed on him, though, and he'll let you go pretty quickly.

Watching him squirm when you talk about blood is a very amusing activity that you definitely don't abuse.

He's basically built like a really big heating pad. He's warm and comfortable to snuggle up to. Sleeping with him is like cuddling up to a huge pillow.

He has a huge stash of chocolates and sweets that he shares with you. He'll also share some of his "special" chocolates with you if you'd like.

He'll bake you something super chocolatey and unhealthy for these days because you deserve it (and not just because it gives him an excuse to also eat like he's on a tour of Wonka's chocolate factory).

The compliments come out in droves from Stretch during this time. His main priority is to keep your mood stable and happy.

When you tense up from a cramp, he'll start telling you dumb knock knock jokes to distract you from it.

He does the same when you get a little snippy at him from your mood swings. Usually the jokes just make you more irritated, though. He'll apologize with a few kisses (and more candy).

Like his shorter counterparts, Stretch is very happy that he can be lazy with a purpose with you and lay in bed all day. He gets a little smug when he gets to tell Blue that he can't get up because he's tending to his partner.

"i wish you had your period all the time." You shoot him a very dirty look.

[mariacallous]

FEMA now has an end date. President Donald Trump said yesterday that he intends to phase out the Federal Emergency Management Administration after this hurricane season, canceling it like an HBO series. States should lead their own disaster response, he said, suggesting he does not understand that states already do lead disaster response; they just can’t do it without an infusion of FEMA dollars and expertise when the disaster is too big. “The governor should be able to handle it,” Trump said. The buck has been passed.

The Atlantic hurricane season lasts from now until November. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is predicting an above-normal number of named storms this year. The weather doesn’t stop after that, of course. Fire season overlaps with hurricane season, another time of intense FEMA activity, and in recent years, fires have broken the bounds of any usual seasons; the devastating Los Angeles fires were in January. Even if this year’s disasters do quiet after November, hurricane season starts again next June. The administration will convene a council to eliminate FEMA “as it exists today,” Kristi Noem, the secretary of Homeland Security, said yesterday—but those few short months in between seasons are hardly enough time to dismantle the federal apparatus of disaster response and transfer full responsibility to the states without casualties. Literal casualties, potentially. (FEMA did not respond to a request for comment.)

But, fine, we get FEMA for this hurricane season. Already, it will be a test of what happens when FEMA is hobbled and anemic. Under the Trump administration, the agency has lost roughly a quarter of its core staff. One acting chief of FEMA was pushed out after saying that the agency should not be abolished; his replacement told staffers he wasn’t aware that the United States had a hurricane season. (The administration later said this was a joke.) Should any single storm—or, worse, multiple storms—turn into a major disaster this year, the responsibility that state governments might be expected to shoulder in a FEMA-less America could come as a shock to them, and to their constituents.

Many close watchers of FEMA do think the agency needs a dramatic shake-up and that states should be responsible for more of the financial burden of catastrophe. FEMA was originally intended to handle a relatively small number of catastrophic disasters a year, but now deals with many dozens annually, both because the rate of disasters is increasing and because the agency is being drafted into handling more of them. The ballooning costs of response and recovery regularly exceed FEMA’s main disaster budget, requiring emergency and ad hoc funding to bridge the gap.

Meanwhile, states have come to rely on federal funds to bail them out and, in the quiet moments between storms and fires, are free to make imprudent development decisions: Might as well let developers build those waterfront homes if FEMA will pick up the tab when they flood. “Our system creates some really perverse incentives that need to be addressed,” Andrew Rumbach, a senior fellow at the nonprofit Urban Institute, told me. More risk should be transferred to the states, he and others said.

But that would take time to do safely, and require a major infusion of cash to the states to bolster any FEMA-replacing infrastructure, according to the experts I spoke with. Ending FEMA, as Trump says he will, could easily result in a highly uneven landscape of disaster safety.

The logic for FEMA was all about efficiency: For many states, disasters are rare, and having 50 sets of personnel and resources on standby for those rare events is far more costly than having a centralized stockpile that can be deployed around the country as needed. Good disaster response also requires time spent in disaster mode. States with infrequent disasters naturally lack that. FEMA’s strength is that it deals with crises all the time.

That experience is part of what the agency is now losing. Many senior personnel, including those who coordinate responses during emergencies, have left since January, according to The New York Times. Those decades of experience aren’t easy to replace, Jeffrey Schlegelmilch, an associate professor at Columbia University who has worked in disaster planning, told me. “Emergency management isn’t something where you take a few courses and all of a sudden you can run a complex emergency.” And in states that don’t regularly handle floods or hurricanes, staff, “won’t have the muscle memory” of how to respond when a storm suddenly intensifies, North Carolina Governor Josh Stein said in a press conference last week. He said his state experienced this firsthand when Hurricane Helene hit western North Carolina last year: That part of the state had “a lot of new people in emergency-management positions,” he said. “We need the expertise that exists in FEMA.”

Wealthier states, such as California, and states that, like Florida, have extensive experience in response coordination may not be as hurt by changes at the federal level. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has said his state doesn’t need FEMA; just give Florida a chunk of money instead. (Trump’s intention to end FEMA does not yet clearly include major transfers of funds to states to run their own response and recovery programs; he said yesterday that future funds may come directly from the “president’s office,” rather than FEMA.) Rumbach says he heard that same desire from officials in Kentucky, when he taught an emergency-management training workshop there. “Their main argument was ‘We don’t need FEMA. Just give us the money; we know what to do with it.’”

Poorer states and states that rarely see disasters will inevitably be most vulnerable to FEMA’s total absence. Arizona, for example, has received among the fewest FEMA funds in recent years, in part because it isn’t in the path of hurricanes and recent wildfires have not burned as ferociously there as in other western states. But that means the state is ill-prepared for a low-probability but high-devastation event, as The Arizona Republic recently noted. If and when Arizona’s luck runs out, it may not have the infrastructure or the funds to manage the crisis alone.

“You’re going to see a lot of states not prepared. And a lot of people in harm’s way may not be fully capable of recovering if there is an event,” Carlos Martín, a vice president at Resources for the Future, an environmental think tank, told me. Plus, an every-state-for-itself approach comes with the obvious challenges of a free market: At present, FEMA stockpiles essential goods to distribute after emergencies. If that stockpile isn’t maintained, wealthier states could handily outcompete poorer states for supplies during multistate emergencies, according to the Atlantic Council, which found that red states are likely to be on the losing side most of the time.

This all means that more citizens may fall through the disaster-assistance cracks. FEMA has said, for instance, that it will stop its door-to-door outreach this season and rely instead on “more targeted venues”; when a federal disaster is declared, FEMA often goes around the area and knocks on every person’s door to let them know what programs they could apply to for assistance. Now, Rumbach worries, people living in the most rural places, as well as people who may not be mobile—the elderly and those with certain disabilities—may never know about those programs. “A lot of the stories about how badly things went are going to come out later,” he said.

Even in a state with personnel on the ground to capture the full scope of need, a lot of disaster response after that step is paperwork, Schlegelmilch said. Right now, an entire private-sector ecosystem of organizations helps states apply for FEMA funds, and helps FEMA direct its resources. Even if states are on their own, they will still need a system to do something similar. Remaking grant-application processes and managing the bureaucracy of distributing funds will be yet another growing pain of the transition. “That’s going to shock all of the states,” Schlegelmilch said.

If Trump were to decide that reforming FEMA were a more prudent choice than scrapping it, ideas abound. As FEMA’s administrator during Barack Obama’s presidency, Craig Fugate promoted the idea of a “disaster deductible” for states modeled off insurance deductibles; state officials might then be held more accountable for preparing for disasters (which right now tends to mean little to voters) rather than rewarded politically for acquiring disaster funding after the fact. The previous Trump administration created a fund (which Joe Biden expanded) meant to help states prevent the worst impact of disasters before they happen. That program moved billions in funds under local control, with the aim of fixing long-standing infrastructure problems that would have made future disasters more dangerous and expensive. But Trump already canceled it this term. “It’s hard to see how they’re not increasing risk,” Rumbach said. “We’re going to pay for it one way or another.”

For all these reasons, Rumbach is betting that “reality will set in,” and that the federal government will not radically shrink its share of disaster spending so quickly. But the loss of key personnel and the looming dissolution mean that major damage to national readiness has already been done. And the hasty budget changes mean some people will get hurt. The country’s emergency-management system “doesn’t have to be completely broken to have really bad impacts,” he said. If the national ability to respond to disasters falters at all, then “recovery is slower, more chaotic, less efficient,” Rumbach said. “When that happens, people are suffering for longer, they’re more traumatized, communities don’t recover as quickly.”

The United States has already seen what happens when a major weather catastrophe arrives shortly after a president hastily rearranges FEMA. After the newly formed Department of Homeland Security took over the agency in 2003, George W. Bush’s administration eliminated emergency managers and resources, particularly in regional offices. When Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, the depleted agency badly botched the response. “We’ve read this story before,” Schlegelmilch said. There’s little reason to think it’ll end differently this time around.

[lokiandbuckysdoll]

Request: Loki and Y/N meet Captain James Conrad while on vacation in South Africa. Y/N mentions to Loki how much James looks like him. Loki denies it. Loki and Y/N end up going on a dangerous adventure with James.

ᴍɪʀʀᴏʀꜱ ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡɪʟᴅ

A/N: I hope you enjoyed what I wrote :)

It was supposed to be a quiet getaway.

You had begged Loki for a “normal” vacation, no Asgardian wars, no magical relics, no portals to realms that smelled like sulfur and misfortune. Just sunshine, wildlife, and a bit of peace. Loki, ever the reluctant companion, had agreed with an eye-roll and a muttered, “Mortals and their heat-stroke havens.”

They landed in Cape Town and began a scenic trip through South Africa, heading north toward Kruger National Park. The golden savannahs rolled endlessly, dotted with acacia trees and wildlife that made even Loki’s frostbound heart stir.

On the fourth day, they met him.

You spotted the man first, tall, broad-shouldered, rugged with a sun-worn face and piercing eyes. He was talking to a local guide near their safari truck, his voice rough with command but tinged with charm.

“Oh my god,” you whispered, elbowing Loki in the ribs. “He looks exactly like you.”

Loki scoffed, adjusting his sunglasses. “Ridiculous. He looks nothing like me.”

You grinned. “Same jawline. Same nose. Same cheekbones. And the smug look? Dead match.”

Loki narrowed his eyes and observed the man closely. There was something familiar, maybe it was the confidence, the way he held himself like someone who’d been through hell and lived to glare about it.

They didn’t have long to wonder.

The man strode toward them, noticing the way you had been looking at him. “You two headed north?” he asked. “I’m Captain James Conrad. There has been some odd activity near Limpopo. The locals are nervous. You don’t want to be caught unaware.”

You blinked. “Captain Conrad? Like, Skull Island Conrad?”

James tilted his head. “That was a long time ago. But yes.”

Loki stepped forward, posture regal and faintly amused. “And what does a captain of monsters want with two tourists?”

Conrad gave Loki a once-over. “You look familiar.”

You beamed. “Told you.”

Loki ignored you and turned to James. “We’re just sightseeing.”

James raised an eyebrow. “Then you might want to keep your eyes open. Something’s stirring in the bush. I’ve seen signs, large footprints, broken trees, and gutted antelopes. Whatever it is, it’s not from around here.”

That’s when the roar came.

It rumbled through the trees deep, guttural, and distinctly not lion-like.

Within minutes, the three of you were in Conrad’s jeep, speeding toward the disturbance. Loki had conjured his daggers without even thinking, and you held tightly to the rail, half-thrilled, half-terrified.

They found the remains of a camp, tents shredded, supplies scattered, and a claw mark across a boulder the size of a car.

“What the hell is that?” You whispered.

James knelt beside the claw print. “This isn’t anything native. And it’s not the first time I’ve seen something like this.”

Loki’s voice was quiet. “This is...not of Midgard.”

You looked between them, the mirroring expressions, the stoic intensity. “Okay, seriously. Are you sure you two aren’t clones?”

James gave Loki a crooked smirk. “Could be worse things to look like.”

Loki rolled his eyes. “You’re too dirty to be my clone.”

“I fight in the dirt. You look like you complain when your boots scuff.”

You raised your hands. “Alright, boys. Focus. Giant clawed monster. Remember?”

The next few days were a whirlwind. The creature, an ancient thing disturbed by illegal mining deeper in the savannah, was stalking nearby villages. Loki, James, and you formed an uneasy alliance, combining James’s survival skills, your sharp mind, and Loki’s magic.

There were close calls, Loki saving James from being crushed under a collapsing ridge, you talking down a frightened village chief, James dragging Loki out of the jaws of the beast (while Loki indignantly shouted that he had it under control).

By the end of the ordeal, the creature was sealed in an ancient chasm, and the three of them stood under the starlit sky, covered in dust, sweat, and the glow of shared victory.

James looked at Loki and smirked. “Still think we don’t look alike?”

Loki sniffed. “Your chin is inferior.”

You laughed, pulling them both into a photo. “I’m keeping this. The moment I got Loki and his rugged twin to play nice.”

James nodded to Loki. “If you ever get tired of royalty, we could use you out here.”

Loki smirked. “And if you ever tire of chasing monsters, perhaps I’ll lend you a kingdom.”

You sighed. “Best vacation ever.”

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[chiming-bluebells]

sittings, theatre, and bonfires , about as festive as my maze runner dr gets ; stripped to the essentials.

. . . so i can finally shut up about them after this.

(it is midsummer, so i am in a festive mood. and a festive mood calls for a festive post.)

if you’ve ever had the (dis)pleasure of reading one of my many endless musings on my maze runner dr, chances are you’ve come across the words ”sittings” and ”bonfires” more times than you’d like to admit. and by now, you’re probably sick and tired of hearing of them. so in an attempt to put an end to these (otherwise) never-ending repetitions of mine, i decided to devote an entire post to them….this time with an added function: theatre. you’ll never know if i did it out of spite or sheer generosity.

so without further ado, let’s go over the holy trinity of the gladers: sittings, theatre, and bonfires. allll the way down to the nitty gritty details. survival tips added. this will be a long one. welcome to ned’s lexi’s declassified.

⋆ ˚｡⋆ ᨳ

bonfires.

if you’re already somewhat familiar with the tmr franchise, then you’re probably also familiar with the bonfires shown in the first movie.

the bonfires are essentially a hazing ritual celebration of the newest arrived greenie; each month a new greenie arrives in the box, and each month a bonfire is held in commemoration of said greenie. though, i must say that the focus is less on the newcomer and more on the already routined gladers. and the booze, oh the booze… can’t forget about gally’s special brew. it takes a focal point during these occasions, for better or for worse. (don’t ask him for the recipe though, it’s a trade secret)

i , preparation : sticks are collected, bacon is cooked, and the keepers stumble down the basement stairs on a quest to collect lighters and jars of moonshine. a crude statue of a griever is built using some of the collected sticks, some twine, and the skull of a long-gone cow. and the greenie is coaxed out of his hiding spot.

ii , activities, the whole shebang : to mark the start of the bonfire, the gladers light wooden spears and throw it at the griever statue placed on the pile of firewood. it’s in defiance of W.C.K.D.

the rest of the bonfire is mostly mingling and snacking on food. there’s a sand pit (i call it a sandbox. makes them mad, which i find hilarious) for those who want to roughhouse? wrestle? yeah idk why they thought that’s a good idea. but whatever.

the first and second in command usually call the bonfire off once it starts getting late.

iii , what to expect : a scared greenie hiding from the ruckus. grilled meat for a snack. deafening loud laughter. possibly being bumped into by gladers roughhousing. smelling like smoke for the rest of the week.

iv , survival tip : keep away from the fire. get buzzed, not drunk. the smoke will stick to your hair and your clothes, it takes a few washes…. so don’t wear your favourite outfit. expect sand in your shoes if you walk in the sandbox the manly sand pit, sorry

⋆ ˚｡⋆ ᨳ

sittings.

my personal favourite. not present in the franchise, but rather a personal addition to my dr, and heavily inspired by the student culture of my country.

sittings are, in their truest essence, chaotic and borderline anarchic dinners. they consist of a three course meal, music blasting from the record player in the grass, and lots of good company. they always end with a dance floor as well, perhaps appealing to you if you’ve managed to completely disintegrate your conscious by then, that is. sittings only happen once a month (sometimes twice). enough times to satisfy us, but also enough times as to not become overbearing. other times we have them bi-monthly.

sittings are almost exclusively held outside. this is to minimise damage to the homestead, and to minimise the risk of someone mistaking a window for a door (has happened before, by the way… ”doors with high thresholds are called windows, and you’re not allowed to go through those” <- a real sitting rule.)

i , preparation : preparations are plentiful. sittings are considered a special occasion over here, after all. food is to be prepared. so…much…food. three meals: starter, main course, and dessert….for every single glader. most gladers help out in the kitchen, cooks or non-cooks. the outside dining area is prepped with table cloth and diy:ed decorations. sometimes the sitting has a special theme: hospital theme, pirates, etc. getting dolled up before a sitting is a whole vibe in and of itself.

ii , activities, the whole shebang : at least two toastmasters (TM) are assigned for each sitting. when TMs have an announcement, they ring the bell situated by the homestead porch. guests are expected to fall silent once the bell is rung, yet this rarely happens at once. the deeper into the night, the harder it is to shut the crowd up.

when the sitting is about to start, TM redirects everyone to their designated seats. singing the song ”squeeze on in” is customary.

-> the song book: here we have a collection of all glader songs ever written. some gladers have their own personal song book, but don’t worry if you don’t own one yourself yet — communal song books are always handed out to each table either way. it’s customary to write and draw in each other’s books, so don’t be shy with your pen.

now that you’ve found your seat, it’s time to introduce yourself to your tablemates. already know the person sitting next to you? (which… chances are, you do) doesn’t matter; say ”hi stranger” and introduce yourself, that’s just the polite thing to do. during the evening, chat with your tablemates; they’re probably not as unpleasant as they seem.

when the food is served, you thank and accept it. you eat and offer a compliment to the kitchen. nothing too complicated. when it’s time to sing, there are many rules and traditions that can’t be fully covered here. to summarize, certain songs must be sung in a specific order, and some experienced gladers tend to stray from the script. however, there’s no need to worry. you’ll never really understand it anyway. none of us do.

the rest of the evening is filled with pleasant conversations, occasional games, readings of hilariously written poems by hammered gladers (followed by a lambo - drinking game - where the people the poem is about have to stand on their chair and drink up whatever’s in their glass), music, and too much chaos.

iii , what to expect : a confused greenie when it’s time to sing (be nice and open the right page in the song book for them). shit-faced gladers. mouthwatering food. chatty tablemates with 0 filter.

iv , survival tip : dog-ear the pages of the most popular glader songs in the song book (you’ll quickly learn which ones they are, trust me), it’ll come in handy many times throughout the night. bring a pen. keep your glass full , unless it’s your time to lambo , then keep it half-full (not empty, that’ll just earn you the crowd shouting ”re-do” at you). come in time if you want to mingle before the party, come late by 30 minutes if you’re only there to eat.

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theatre.

another added feature to my dr by me. theatre. the interactive kind, where the audience has a say in the direction of the story. happens like… what,,, once a year? we’ve only had one so far, and the next one won’t see the light of day for a while.

i , preparation : a screenplay is written by volunteering gladers. there’s only one requirement: be witty and creative. there are really no requirements for who can be an actor. want the job? you got it.

the scene is poorly built. the builders threw it together in an hour, but it does the trick. costuming is not grand either. at all. actors borrow the clothes from other gladers, mixing and matching them to create their costumes…. so nothing’s sewn or created from scratch (we really can’t be arsed to do that). they borrowed my white maxi skirt once to create a wedding dress, just to put things into perspective.

ii , activities, the whole shebang : find a good seat in the grass by the wooden scene, bring a blanket or a pillow to sit on. the performance is usually 1–2 hours long, with breaks.

the performances are usually satirical ones, and often times making fun of the creators and the grievers. expect lots of parodies of songs and lots of improv.

as mentioned, the show is interactive. meaning: you in the audience can influence the performance. go bananas with your newfound power. dissatisfied with the delivery of a line or an act made by the actors? simply shout your demands at them from where you’re sitting: ”say it angrier” , ”close the door” , ”sing it in french instead” , ”more romantic” , ”CLOSE THE DOOOOOOR”. get creative, the actors won’t mind (most of the times).

iii , what to expect : the crowd never shutting up. the audience stomping their feet in unison. don’t expect a professional show, you’ll be disappointed.

iv , survival tip : if a song is performed, always clap when it ends, even if it’s in the middle of an act. when the audience are stomping their feet, join them. again, bring a blanket or a pillow to sit on (as the temperatures fall at night, the grass gets wet…)

so!!!! that was that! if you stayed til the end: thank you. are you alright, though? i do have so so much more to say but this would’ve been an endless rambling otherwise. soo yep, my dr heavily diverts from canon (as one might’ve noticed). it’s basically its own seperate entity, heavily inspired by uni student culture (i’m a girl and i need to have fun !!!! grievers and maze be damned)